Archive for the 'Economy' Category
PetroChina: First Firm Worth $1 Trillion
November 5th, 2007Via: AP: PetroChina became the world’s first company worth more than $1 trillion on Monday, surging past Exxon Mobil as the Chinese oil producer’s shares nearly tripled in their first day of trading in China. State-owned PetroChina Co., a unit of state-owned China National Petroleum Corp., is the country’s biggest oil and gas producer. Its […]
Saudi Prince Loses $4 Billion on Citigroup
November 5th, 2007Priceless. Via: Telegraph: The lift in Prince AlWaleed bin Talal’s Saudi Arabian Kingdom Holdings building has just two buttons. One is marked “ground floor”, while the other says, simply, HRH. AlWaleed is Saudi’s most famous businessman, a nephew of King Abdullah, the grandson of a former prime minister of Lebanon and a friend of Charles […]
If Stocks Tank, Watch Gold
November 5th, 2007WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument. Lots of very serious weirdness in the markets at the moment. The banking sector is on the ropes and isn’t catching any breaks at all. If U.S. equity markets sell off hard today—the futures are tanking at the moment—let’s see what […]
Death Threats for Analyst Covering Citigroup
November 5th, 2007“At some point, this thing is going to start looking less like a financial crisis and more like a mob war.” —Unloading Toxic Waste Mortgage Backed Securities: “We Americans Were Very Clever†Via: Globe and Mail: Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce analyst Meredith Whitney says she’s received multiple death threats because of a research note […]
Citigroup CEO Resigns, Replaced by Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin
November 5th, 2007“Such a tight relationship between politicians and business in the making of policy has probably not existed in the United States since the time of the “robber barons” in the late nineteenth century.” —The Democratic Facade by Daniel Hellinger and Dennis R. Judd Brooks To understand the nature of power in the United States, one […]
New Zealand: Geneva Finance Hits the Wall
November 5th, 2007Via: National Business Review: Geneva Finance has secured a moratorium on capital withdrawals for the next six months at a shareholder meeting in Auckland today. The moratorium resolution passed by an “overwhelming majority,” the company said in a statement. During the moratorium investors will receive interest payments monthly. Geneva will continue to trade and lend […]
Gold Closes Above $800 at Highest Level Since 1980
November 3rd, 2007Via: MarketWatch: Gold futures rallied Friday to close above $800 at their highest level in nearly 28 years, boosted by rallying crude-oil prices and the dollar’s tumble to a new record low against the euro. Gold for December delivery rallied $14.80 to finish at $808.50 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier, the […]
CITI FACING LIQUIDITY CRISIS
November 2nd, 2007Via: Business Week: For all its financial might, Citigroup (C) is undercapitalized according to some Wall Street analysts sounding fresh alarms about the banking behemoth’s balance sheet. Citigroup shares tumbled nearly 7% on Nov. 1 after three analysts downgraded the company’s stock. Citigroup’s tangible capital is 2.8% of assets, just over half the industry average […]
Unloading Toxic Waste Mortgage Backed Securities: “We Americans Were Very Clever”
November 2nd, 2007We’ll see how clever they are when the Good Fellas show up to collect. At some point, this thing is going to start looking less like a financial crisis and more like a mob war. How do I know? Because I got a job that resulted from a decapitation strike against the computer systems of […]
New York Attorney General Sues First American Corp. for Allegedly Colluding with Washington Mutual Inc. to Use a List of Preferred Appraisers to Inflate Mortgage Appraisals
November 2nd, 2007Note this passage from the story below: Washington Mutual isn’t listed as a defendant. At the press conference, Cuomo said his office chose not to pursue Washington Mutual as a defendant because of jurisdictional issues since the company is a chartered federal financial institution. Washington Mutual executives should expect a visit from the feds at […]
