Credit Writedowns

Unfortunately this IS the real deal, Evander Holyfield — you’re losing your house. HousingWire is reporting that Evander Holyfield has become the second major celebrity to succumb to buckling home prices and financial difficulty this week. Earlier in the week it was the aged Ed McMahon of Publisher’s Clearinghouse and Tonight show fame. Now, it’s Evander Holyfield. I’m sure there’s [...]

Latest Additions 2008 05 26 UBS Falls After Saying More Mortgage Losses Possible2008 05 27 Banks, Brokers Cut 83,000 Jobs as Subprime Losses Mount: Table2008 05 28 Ambac shares hit record low after new disclosure2008 05 28 KeyCorp Slide Foretells Losses at `Delusional’ Banks2008 05 29 Royal Bank of Canada Profit Drops on Writedowns2008 05 29 Royal Bank, National Profits [...]

The U.S. economy is losing jobs fast. I will have more to say about this later, but I wanted to get out a link to Bloomberg’s coverage of the 8:30 unemployment report. There’s also a link to the report under the “Economic Data” section in my sidebar. Here’s what Bloomberg said: “The U.S. lost jobs in May for a fifth [...]

Caroline Baum has a great column at Bloomberg News today about U.S. Dollar policy. The basic thrust of the column was about asking Ben Bernanke to put his money where his mouth is. The Fed can talk all it wants — about the Dollar and anything else it affects. But if it’s not willing to do something about it, consider [...]

Every week the U.S. Department of Labor puts out the previous week’s jobless claims statistics through its Employment and Training Administration (Doleta). Analysts look at it to get a sense of how employment is being affected by the underlying economy in order to predict what consumer spending will be like down the road. The media blindly states the number of [...]

Canada has experienced a housing boom, not unlike many other English-speaking countries globally. According to the Globe and Mail, housing prices have doubled there nationally in the last 10 years. So, what are the prospects for Canadian housing and for the Canadian economy going forward? The prospects for Canada certainly are better than in the US; after all, Canada has [...]

From Bloomberg News in it’s entirety. This is a HUGE story. This means that Ambac and MBIA will go bust, no doubt. And there will be significant writedowns in Q2 and Q3. Expect to see a major financial institution fail (one that’s bigger than Bear) as a result of the writedowns emanating from this decision. Big, big news. See Credit [...]

Housing wire has a very interesting piece out today, suggesting that the mortgage crisis in the U.S. has moved far beyond merely subprime and even Alt-A; Prime borrowers are now where the greatest increase in mortgage stress is being felt. After all, if Ed McMahon can default, the situation is very worrying. “Among subprime borrowers, severe delinquencies — a measure [...]

Calculated Risk is reporting a huge decline in household wealth due to the deflating housing bubble. “The Fed released the Q1 2008 Flow of Funds report today: Flow of Funds. The Fed report shows that household real estate assets decreased from $20.046 trillion in Q4 to $19.717 trillion in Q1 2008. That is a decline of $328.9 billion. When we [...]

The Telegraph is reporting that “house prices are now suffering their sharpest annual drop in 15 years, according to the latest survey from Halifax.” See story. Related storiesHouse prices: Should the Government intervene?, Telegraph, 05 Jun 2008UK faces worst slump since the 90s recession, Telegraph, 05 Jun 2008House prices: Growing risk of a more than 20pc fall this year, Telegraph, [...]

Caroline Baum, one of the best financial reporters out there, has a new column today about the Fed. I recommend it highly. The article is about a new book by Robert Auerbach, Professor at the University of Texas, Austin called “Deception and Abuse at the Fed.” None of the Fed chairmen chronicled in the book come across well. Alan Greenspan [...]