Reuters: The Nikkei topped 11,000 for the first time since October 2008 Reuters: The White House will announce housing aid for those having difficulty with making their mortgage payments. Reuters: A Fed agency is…
It would be hard to come up with a better way to stop the rising rate of foreclosures than to eliminate mortgage payments altogether. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the…
by Paul Kiel, ProPublica How many struggling homeowners will get a mortgage modification through the government’s $75 billion program? It would seem to be a simple question. But for the past year, the administration…
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have finally decided, after bilateral talks, to allow the IMF to join any bailout of Greece. Dow Jones Newswires reports “The support of France is…
A number of media outlets have pointed out that the euro was slaughtered earlier today when a minor Chinese official said that the sovereign debt probably will become a plague which will reach beyond…
Ambac (ABK) may be the last of the big financial firm flameouts coming out of the credit crisis. The only probable exceptions are Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE), which the government may take…
Ernst & Young, which handled the audit duties for Lehman, is trying to persuade its customers and the public that it will not suffer the same fate that Arthur Andersen did after the bankruptcy…
Updated throughout the day. The Treausury Department may begin to sell its 27% stake in Citigroup (C) (Bloomberg) Billionaire Nelson Peltz will not try to buy CKE Restaurants, owner of the Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr.…
Twitter has, by most estimates, 75 million visitors a month, which makes it one of the largest social networks in the world. All major media companies are on Twitter and some have more than…
The CTIA released its semi-annual survey of wireless phone use in America. The number of cellular subscriptions in the US rose to 285 million, confirming industry concerns that the market is now saturated with…
Some members of Congress were as excited about Google (GOOG) leaving China as founder Sergey Brin was. Brin said that the repressive regime in the People’s Republic reminded him of his homeland the Soviet…
Short sellers pushed into tech, communications, and industrial companies for the period ending March 15, but largely moved out of financial shares. Short interest in Cisco (CSCO) was up 12% to 53.7 million. Shares…
Shares of Chinese search engine, Baidu, which has a market share of about two-thirds of the internet users on the mainland, have risen from $170 a year ago to $609 today. The firm has…
The desert kingdom of Dubai has come up with a novel way to pay its debt–it will roll it over to another day in another year sometime in the future. It will give creditors…
Reuters: EU leaders are divided on Greece before their summit. Reuters: Changes in the health care bill will go back to the House. Reuters: China described interest rates as a “heavy-duty weapon” in the…
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the world’s second-largest drug maker, just can’t seem to catch a break
Twitter has, by most estimates, 75 million visitors a month, which makes it one of the largest social networks in the world. All major media companies are on Twitter and some have more than…
Government mortgage modification programs have so far targeted people’s monthly home loan payments. These plans have proven to be failures. There are a number of theories about their lack of effectiveness. One is that…
JPMorgan (JPM) is about to get what it deserves–a $1.4 billion tax refund from the United States. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of the bank, may be more clever than his peers, but in this case…
It was not unheard of for American media correspondents to pass information to the US military during WWII. Perhaps the Chinese had that in mind when they accused Google (GOOG) of spying for the…