ShareWhy aren’t more municipal bonds being downgraded by the ratings agencies Fitch, Moody’s and S&P?  If you look at sovereign debt in revenue-constrained countries like Greece, Portugal or Ireland, the ratings agencies are issuing warnings. 
But, states and municipalities are suffering from the same revenue constraints. Tax revenues have plunged. Governments have shut down services [...]

ShareI have said on a number of occasions that a sovereign nation that issues debt in its own fiat currency cannot default involuntarily.  The case most people point to as a counterfactual is Russia in 1998.  I mentioned Russia in a recent post:
Countries that have gone bust, Russia, Mexico, and Argentina were borrowing in foreign [...]

ShareCIT has the approval of debtholders to file a prepackaged bankruptcy. This comes via Business Wire:
CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT), a leading provider of financing to small businesses and middle market companies, today announced that, with the overwhelming support of its debtholders, the Board of Directors voted to proceed with the prepackaged plan of reorganization [...]

ShareAnnaly Capital Management’s blog has a good piece up on foreclosures, inspired by yesterday’s Case-Shiller data (hat tip Scott). If you missed it, The S&P/Case-Shiller index showed a pretty steep 1.2% month-on-month increase in U.S. house prices in its latest figures (for August 2009). This is the fourth consecutive month of increases, signaling to some [...]

ShareRemember the iconic Depression-era movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which Jimmy Stewart plays the wholesome young man in Washington out to do good? Well, Mr. Smith could just as easily have been your friendly banker at Washington Mutual. Unfortunately, Mr. Smith lost his way and turned predatory lender – and that’s the subject [...]

ShareThree years ago, MetLife agreed to sell the community of Stuyvesant Town (Peter Cooper Village) to Tishman Speyer and BlackRock for the exorbitant sum of $5.4 billion at the top the market. That deal has now gone completely pear-shaped and bankruptcy is expected soon in another bizarre chapter in the history of one of the [...]

ShareThe Seattle Times has a must-read piece on Washington Mutual today which reveals a lot of the fine detail on how the company was run and what led to its demise (hat tip calculated Risk).
As with many of the other busted financial giants like Northern Rock and Lehman Brothers, indications that something was amiss were [...]

ShareThis is probably my fourth post on the tangled web woven by securitization, which puts a considerable distance between home owners and mortgagees which own a mortgage.  The issue is causing huge problems in bankruptcy and foreclosure in courts around the U.S. 
This morning, Gretchen Morgenson has another good piece out describing how a judge [...]

ShareThis is good. H/T Michael Panzner.

ShareA sign that the commercial real estate (CRE) market continues to cause headaches comes this weekend in the form of news of Capmark Financial’s imminent demise. Capmark is one of America’s largest commercial property lenders with about $10 billion in assets.
The New York Times’ Dealbook reports:
The Capmark Financial Group, the big commercial real estate finance [...]