No one seems to have liked that way SEC chief Christopher Cox handled his job during the financial crisis. Congress thought he should have done more to keep banks and investment houses from using tremendous leverage to make bets on…
By Douglas A. McIntyre
· 3:44pm ET Consumer confidence is at a multi-year low. Housing prices are off 18% compared to a year ago. To complete the trifecta jobless claims are at a 26-year high. First-time applications for state…
Douglas A. McIntyre The Shanghai Composite, which measures the combined share value of most of the large public companies in China, fell 65% this year. Among the major US indices, the sharpest drop was the…
Douglas A. McIntyre As hard as it may be to imagine, the stock market will move back up someday. It always has. When a market recovers, there are always one or two sectors which are…
Douglas A. McIntyre The management at AIG (AIG) is extremely clever. Every time it runs into trouble paying back the $144 billion credit facilities provided by the federal government, it asks for a change in the terms…
American banks are still trying to move the goal posts in their favor on the accounting football field. Current rules govern how they set the value of assets on their balance sheets. The banking…
The Fed will step into the market next year and buy mortgage-backed securities with a vengeance. It has finally dawned on the agency that cutting rates and providing banks with low-cost emergency funds is…
Last summer, a gallon of gas cost over $4. Now the prices has dropped below two bucks and is still falling. The sharp drop in crude oil is to blame. Intuition would say that…
There are rumors going around that Dell (DELL) will fire its chief of operations and its head of marketing. The PC firm’s turnaround is not going so well. The answer to most corporate strategy…
According to Reuters, housing and consumer confidence both suffered record drops. Reuters reports that GMAC eased lending rules after the government provided it with $6 billion. Reuters reports that the Madoff probe now extends…
Some markets in Asia were closed. The Hang Seng rose 1.1% to 14,387. It was down 48% for the year. The Shanghai Composite was off .7% to 1,821 and was off 65% for the…
Hovnanian (HOV) News on housing prices pushes homebuilder down. Drops to $1.56 from 52-week high of $13.50. Parent (KIDS) Files for Chapter 11. Sells down to $.05 from 52-week high of $6.43. Ballard Power…