Archive for March, 2009

What will the new rules for the banks achieve?
Lord Turner is an intelligent and hard working man. He is untainted by the failures of the bankers and their regulators over the last giddy decade of excess credit. Let us hope he shows some wisdom in responding to the present crisis, and let us hope he understands that Regulators have to look ahead. The issue today is not how we stop the last crisis, but how we stop the next one. It is likely to be different from the last one. Leaks imply the authorities now think banks should be made t

UK’s Northern Rock made risky loans after rescue (The Malaysian Insider)
LONDON, March 20 — British mortgage lender Northern Rock continued to write high-risk loans for months after authorities stepped in to give the bank emergency support, a public spending watchdog said today. Northern Rock became the first British bank to fall victim to the financial crisis in September 2007 when the Bank of England gave it an emergency loan after it had problems raising finance …

(AFX UK Focus) 2009-03-18 11:15 US mortgage applications spike on refinance demand (Interactive Investor)
NEW YORK, March 18 (Reuters) - U.S. mortgage applications surged in the latest week, driven by a spike in demand for refinancing as the average rate on 30-year fixed-rate home loans fell, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Wednesday. Refinancing applications jumped 30 percent in the week ended March 13 as the borrowing rate dipped 0.07 percentage point to 4.89 percent, tying the record low …

Taxpayer backs fifth of Lloyds home loans (Guardian Unlimited)
More than 20% of home loans from Lloyds Banking Group, Britain’s largest mortgage bank, have been included among the group’s most toxic assets and pushed into the government’s insurance scheme in an effort to insulate the firm from the full impact of further house price falls. Hundreds of thousands of mortgages, worth £74bn, have been included among £260bn of assets placed under the taxpayer …

Debt Relief and Regulation
“ We’ve explained the difference between a recession and a depression before. But we’ll do it again. A recession is a pause in an otherwise healthy, growing economy. A depression is when the economy drops dead. ” Bill Bonner, The Daily Reckoning There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that Obama’s economics team understands the fundamental problem with the banks and knows what needs to be done to fix it. The bad news is that Bernanke, Summers and Geithner all have close ties to the bi

Using Mortgages As An Investment For Financial Success
by Chris Channing Mortgages are commonly associated with a first-time home owner obtaining his or her first home. But for entrepreneurs, mortgages are commonly used to fund investments of all sorts- from real estate to retail businesses. Knowing of such options enables individuals to launch businesses with even small amounts of capital. All investments take a large amount of money, especially those that are considered to be devoid of high risk. One such industry that is shown to succeed more

Using Mortgages As An Investment For Financial Success
by Chris Channing Mortgages are commonly associated with a first-time home owner obtaining his or her first home. But for entrepreneurs, mortgages are commonly used to fund investments of all sorts- from real estate to retail businesses. Knowing of such options enables individuals to launch businesses with even small amounts of capital. All investments take a large amount of money, especially those that are considered to be devoid of high risk. One such industry that is shown to succeed more

Is GE Next in Line for Government Bailout?
Even though it just posted its third-highest annual profit ever, investors hammered shares of U.S. industrial giant General Electric Co. ( GE ) last week on a triple play of bad news: Its first dividend cut in 71 years. Speculation over a possible credit-ratings downgrade. And growing worries that the once-unthinkable was becoming possible - a corporate bankruptcy that would put GE on the growing list of onetime Corporate America heavyweights that are now taking government bailout mo