Underwater Mortgages Hit 11.3 Million
There is a reason that 702 American banks, nearly one in ten, were on the FDIC “problem list” as of the end of 2009. A large number of small and mid-sized banks are burdened with home and…
All Work
Douglas A. McIntyre
BofA: Dilution Before Dishonor (BAC)
Bank of America Corp. (NYSE:BAC) holders decided that swallowing more dilution was preferable to having Uncle Sam as a business partner. After all, it is easier to have a little less than to have every…
Sixty-One Percent Of Unemployed Not Hopeful About Finding Work
In another blow to the notion that unemployment will improve, those with their feet on the streets looking for jobs are remarkably pessimistic about their prospects. A new Gallup poll shows that 61% of…
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of ObamaCare
By Max Fisher, The Atlantic Wire President Obama unveiled his health care reform plan Monday morning. Forged as a compromise between the Senate and the House, and to a lesser extent between Democrats and…
Crumbling Consumer Confidence
It is possible to see both clear gains in economic statistics and very clear destruction in the economic statistics. Today’s consumer confidence reading was a major erosion and far worse than expectations. The reading…
Schwab Exchange Identity Crisis (SCHW)
Charles Schwab Corp. (NASDAQ: SCHW) is changing its listing from the NASDAQ to the New York Stock Exchange. Technically, this is either again or back to it. The company said that it expects to…
Top 10 Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades (BRCD, GLW, DISCA, FSLR, KFT, MIR, PAAS, PALM, RIMM, TKC)
These are this morning’s top ten analyst upgrades, downgrades, and initiations seen in Wall Street research calls this Tuesday: Brocade Communications (NASDAQ: BRCD) Cut to Hold at Jefferies; Cut to Hold at Stifel Nicolaus.…
Signs There Is No Intelligent Life At Consumer Reports: High Grades For Toyota
Consumer Reports released its study of the best vehicles sold in the US. Honda (HMC) finished in first place, Subaru in second, and Toyota (TM) in third. The firm said that it suspended ratings on…
Book Review: Liaquat Ahamed’s Lords of Finance
By John Tamny of Forbes Long before Ben Bernanke, Henry Paulson and Tim Geithner were empowered to allegedly save the world’s financial system from collapse, a collection of four central bankers from the…
Today’s Best Market Rumors (2/23/2010)
Updated throughout the day. Canada’s Brookfield may bid against Simon Property Group (SPG) for the assets of real estate from General Growth. (Bloomberg) The deal for GM to sell Hummer to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery…
Look For Toyota CEO To Exit After Visit To Congress
The press has pointed out that Akio Toyoda, CEO of Toyota, does not spend a lot of his time out of the office shaking hands and kissing babies the way that his US counterparts do.…
India Joins The Race For Oil Reserves
One way to predict the future price of oil is to consider how many companies and countries are aggressively pursuing new reserves. China has closed deals around the world in crude-rich regions including Venezuela, Brazil,…
Apple, LL Bean, And Amazon Make BusinessWeek Customer Service List, But So Does Toyota’s Lexus
The problem with customer satisfaction surveys is that, by their nature, they look back in time and not forward. Bloomberg BusinessWeek announced the results of its customer service poll recently. The project used JP…
Media Digest 2/23/2010 Reuters, WSJ, NYTimes, FT, Bloomberg
Reuters: The $15 billion jobs bill advanced in the Senate. Reuters: Toyota (NYSE:TM) faces a US criminal probe. Reuters: KKR and TPC are close to a deal to buy Morgan Stanley’s (NYSE:MS) share of CICC.
Asia Market And Europe Open
Markets in Asia were mixed. The Nikkei fell .5% to 10,352. Toyota (NYSE:TM) and Honda (NYSE:HMC). The Hang Seng rose 1.1% to 20,600. The Shanghai Composite dropped .7% to 2,983. At the open in…
Toyota And Barry Bonds
Toyota (TM) should never have had a chance to be the No.1 car company in the world. It began as one of the small corporations built during the industrialization of post-WWII Japan. It eventually became…
Reply.com Files for IPO (RPLY)
Reply! Inc., an operator of a proprietary auction marketplace that facilitates online locally targeted marketing, has filed today for an initial public offering. While no financial terms were disclosed, the IPO is for up…
Walmart Buys VOD Firm Vudu, May Not Change Industry Landscape
The New York Times reports that Walmart (WMT) has bought video on demand hardware and software company Vudu. The firm’s service is built into set-top boxes and Blu-ray devices. The paper reports that Vudu recently “announced deals to…
Movie Rental Risk… Wal-Mart & Vudu (WMT, NFLX, BBI, CSTR, TIVO)
Deciding who wins and who loses in movie rentals has proven to be a difficult task other than stating the obvious…. Online distribution and delivery distribution have major benefits over being a brick and…
Toyota Lied?
“Toyota Lied” is a good headline and catchy enough to get a reader to look further into a story. In this case catchy is not where it ends. According to The Wall Street Journal,…