Asia lost about 4% overnight, and the same is true in Europe.
Futures indicate the US market will open at least 3% down, and the trend is sharply down. Hold on tight.
Note: CNN/Money’s charts are extremely inaccurate. They are showing the MDAX (similar to NASDAQ for German stocks) down 11%, which would be huge news – but going to the Deutsche Bank web site (who computes the index), it is only down 2.5%…. This is not the first time CNN’s web site has been extremely wrong. Use Bloomberg
First you demonize people who travel in private planes. Then you suggest that the President doesn’t really need that new fleet of helicopters after all.
Well, Textron makes Cessna airplanes, and Presidential helicopters (as a subcontractor to Lockheed/Martin Marietta). Textron has already maxed out its $3 billion bank credit facility.
Friday, in the midst of all the other chaos, Textron announced it is selling off the portion of its company that makes control systems for military planes, tanks, helicopters, etc… in order to “maintain liqudity”. They also laid off a significant portion of the Cessna work force that makes mostly private planes.
Do laid off airplane workers count as “jobs lost”, “jobs not yet saved” or “George Bush’s fault”?
At a time when banks have no place to earn even meager interest safely, the FDIC has announced it needs an “emergency” increase in the insurance rate charged to insure your deposits.
The one time assessment with be 20 basis points ($.20 for each $100 on deposit), expected to generate $15 billion
The ongoing fee will be raised from $.14 to $.16 per $100 on deposit.
This was a completely predictable outcome of the Congressional mandate to increase the FDIC limit to $250k to cover deposits in banks for which no premiums were being paid in the past. It’s like allowing people to buy house insurance the day after their house burned down.
Thank you John McCain.
Citigroup Common stock immediately lost 41% of its value.
*** Update ***
Since the US Government is moving its claim of ownership to the end of the line, Citigroup Preferred stock is zooming up – up 70%….
AFP (the French news service) reports that the Sports Business Journal reports that Bank of America and JP Morgan approached the NBA about lending them $175 million to help them get through the tough times.
Does this mean the $500k governemnt salary cap needs to apply to the NBA?
According to an unnamed source[“Tim Geithner”], the US Treasury may set up an $18 billion fund to prop up unprofitable car parts manufacturers, so their failure doesn’t end up shutting down GM.
S&P downgraded 10 life insurance companies today. For some reason, Bloomberg’s story singles out MetLife for special mention.
If/when these companies become insolvent, they will make the banks look like small potatoes, and almost nobody seems to have this on their radar.
A -very- long article about Timothy Geithher – who he is, where he came from, the problems that he faces.
It’s important to keep in mind that Bloomberg is not an observer just standing on the sidelines. Bloomberg’s own investment advisor is the guy just named to run the GM/Chrsyler auto bailout project for Tim Geithner, and Bloomberg’s terminals are used by subscribers to access the Treasury’s “temporary” Commerical Paper funding program (and probably other things).
The article mentions a number of times that the Credit Default Swap market needs a marketplace to increase transparency of the risks. I wonder if Bloomberg has any interest in running that?
One of the reasons for GM’s prosperity in the “good old days” was GMAC. The amount of money that GM made selling a car was secondary to the money it could make from the financing of the car through GM’s car financing subsidiary.
President Obama’s idea to get the US government involved in car loans tries to replace the market forces that drove GM to seek profit from lending money for cars rather than building cars with a central government controlled agency which will be motivated by policy objectives and government control. Create a fund like this, you put everyone else in the financing business out of business. Car finance companies don’t have a printing press that lets them print money to lend.
If the US Government starts becoming an auto loan lender, how can it avoid repeating the mistakes of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? What if someone wants to borrow money to buy a car made by a non-UAW manufacturer?
The woman who was widely mocked for saying that now that Obama is President, she won’t have to make her house payment and will get a free car was telling you the truth – the problem is people didn’t believe her.
Hearst newspapers says it will probably have to sell or close the San Francisco Chronicle.
Question to think about: once all the newspapers are dead, where will Matt Drudge get his news?