These are some of the top upgrades we have seen this Monday morning with about 2 hours until the open:
Jon C. Ogg
October 6, 2008
Because management at Countrywide turned out to be thieving goons, Bank of America (BAC) is stuck with mortgages which should never have been granted by the huge housing lender.
As they must do to keep their jobs, state attorneys general went after Countrywide for bilking homeowners into buying houses which they could not afford, causing serial defaults. It does not seem to matter that the people who wanted the mortgages refused to do the math on what they could afford.
Perhaps the Fed and the Treasury have saved the banking and brokerage industries. The Fed has certainly provided hundreds of billions of dollars at its emergency window and Paulson has his $700 billion.
Next up in the rolling disaster which is taking down the American economy is all of those big companies, cities, and states which may not have access to capital to keep themselves operating. With plenty of mouths to feed, there may not be enough salvation to go around.
A sword was brought, and Solomon ordered,"Cut the baby in half! That way each of you can have part of him." 2 Chronicles 1.1-1.3
If Vikram Pandit at Citigroup (C) had not screwed up the purchase of Wachovia, the Fed would not have to be involved. Wells Fargo (WFC) came in with a competing offer. The whole fiasco has ended up in court. Citi had successfully argued for a stay of the WFC buyout. Then a appeals court said the decision was not valid.
Now, the New York Fed has been pulled into the action and hopes to fashion some compromise among the three banks.
Santa will be thinner this year, a sign that he cannot afford all that rich food. It is a good thing that he wears a beard because can’t afford a razor.
By most estimates, this will be the worst holiday shopping season since 1991. That is optimistic. The better benchmark is probably the deep recession of 1973.
Some retailers may not have access to the credit needed to keep items in inventory. It won’t matter much to them if shoppers show up or not. They won’t have anything to sell.
Bloomberg reports that "Richard Fuld, the chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., may tell legislators angry about Wall Street’s excesses that eroding confidence in the financial system led to the demise of his firm."
Fuld is set to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and seems likely to invoke the "crisis of confidence" and "run on the bank" explanation for Lehman’s collapse. If that sounds familiar, it should. Testifying before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee on February 7, 2002, former Enron CEO — and current federal inmate number 29296-179 — told Congress that "It is my belief that Enron’s failure was due to a classic run on the bank, a liquidity crisis spurred by a lack of confidence in the company. At the time of Enron’s collapse, the company was solvent and highly profitable — but apparently not liquid enough."
According to Reuters, regulators around the world are trying to shore up the banking system.
Reuters reports that the Fed is trying to broker a deal for whether Citigroup (C) or Wells Fargo (WFC) will buy Wachovia.
Reuters writes that Eli Lilly (LLY) is set to buy Imclone for $6.1 billion.
Markets in Europe were sharply lower at the open.
The FTSE was off 4.8% to 4,891.
The DAXX fell 4.3% to 5,547.
The CAC 40 dropped 4.8% to 3,885.
Data from MarketWatch
Douglas A. McIntyre
Markets in Asia sold off sharply.
The Nikkei fell 4.3% to 10,473. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial fell over 9%. Other financial stocks fell sharply as did big exporter Canon.
The Hang Seng sold down 4.4% to 16,901. China Construction Bank fell over 6%. PetroChina (PTR) fell almost 5%. Lenovo was off over 6%.
The Shanghai Composite was off 5.2% to 2,174.
Data from Reuters
Douglas A. McIntyre
| Today’s top tickerspy Indexes | |
| Domestic Telecom ... | +2.6% |
| Stem Cell Stocks | +2.3% |
| Pain Management S... | +2.1% |
| Ethanol and Biofu... | +1.9% |
| Savings and Loan ... | +1.8% |
 | |
| |
RSS Updates
Email Updates
