Archive for the 'Economy' Category
New Century Stops Accepting Loan Applications
March 9th, 2007HAHA! Right down the street from the Wall Street Chop Shop I worked for… Via: Business Week: Subprime lender New Century Financial Corp. said Thursday it has stopped accepting all new loan applications as it struggles to obtain financing amid market speculation that the company could file for bankruptcy. In a Securities and Exchange Commission […]
Goldman Sachs Chief Economist: “There Are Going to be Dead Bodies Around When This Is Over”
March 8th, 2007Ahhyep. Via: Telegraph: The global currency storm of the past week is starting to infect the corporate bond markets and may prove harder to contain than last year’s May sell-off, Goldman Sachs has warned. Jim O’Neill, the bank’s chief global economist, said investment firms playing the “carry trade” had been caught on the wrong side […]
U.S. REGULATORS ANNOUNCE CRACKDOWN ON SUBPRIME LENDING PRACTICES
March 5th, 2007Maybe I need to get a blinking siren thing for Cryptogon… We’ve got a perfect storm situation in the markets now. Via: Finfacts Ireland: The Wall Street Journal reports that US Federal bank regulators have announced a crackdown on loose lending standards on subprime home mortgages as two major lenders struggled to cope with losses […]
STOCKS, GOLD CONTINUE SELL OFF ON YEN ADVANCE
March 5th, 2007I’m trying to understand the clobbering of gold right now, which went limit down in Tokyo today. Maybe institutions need liquidity to cover their yen (carry trade “easy money”) bets as that thing squeezes relentlessly higher. How? Panic yen covering on the one hand, selling off gold on the other? If the capital from the […]
What Happened to Gold as Global Stock Markets Sold Off?
March 3rd, 2007WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy sell or hold any financial asset or investment. Again, the assumptions for gold proved to be wrong. As stock markets sold off around the world last week, gold declined sharply. How can this be? Gold has been turned into a funny money bet, just like stocks, bonds […]
Yen Carry Trade Players Decapitated
March 3rd, 2007What is the real value of the yen carry trades? Nooooooooooooooobody knows… But if that thing continues to get squeezed, look out. Via: Times Online: Hedge funds gambling on highly leveraged bets in the markets driven by the gap between Japan’s low interest rates and higher ones elsewhere may have seen a year’s worth of […]
Husband and Wife Lawyers and 11 Top Wall Street Workers Charged in Federal Securities Fraud Scheme
March 1st, 2007Just another day at the office. Via: Yahoo / AP: Husband and wife lawyers and 11 top Wall Street workers were charged Thursday with making more than $15 million in illegal trading profit through an alleged federal securities fraud scheme, authorities said. Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the Division of Enforcement for the Securities and […]
Dow Jones Industrial Average “Tabulation Trouble”
February 28th, 2007The New York Stock Exchange should be cordoned off and sealed with “CRIME SCENE” tape! As the black boxes were flushing the DOW30 issues yesterday, the system that calculates the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced—wait for it—“tabulation trouble.” The futures were not reflecting the values of the underlying stocks because the average was not updating! […]
DOW ENDS DOWN 416 POINTS
February 27th, 2007The tapped-out U.S. consumer was like the iceberg that pierced the hull of the Titanic. We moved through a brief phase where the band kept playing and the tumblers were refilled with booze, again and again. (This was when the writing on the wall became crystal clear to people like you and me and we […]
U.S. DURABLE GOODS ORDERS PLUNGE BY RECORD 7.8%
February 27th, 2007Via: CNN: New orders for U.S.-made durable goods fell by a much worse-than-expected 7.8 percent in January, as a steep drop in civilian airliner orders helped push orders for nondefense goods to their biggest monthly decline on record, a government report showed Tuesday. The Commerce Department reported that excluding volatile transportation orders, which are heavily […]
