According to Reuters, Wall St. closed its worst year since The Depression. Reuters reports that GMAC did not hit its goal of trading debt for equity and cash. Reuters reports that GM (GM) has…
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…
We’ve noted before that pipeline master limited partnerships must grow if they are to attract investors. For nearly all MLPs, that means access to credit at low interest rates. Does that sound like today’s…
The dispute between Russia and Ukraine over natural gas prices is following the same path as the fracas three years ago. Ukraine paid off part of its outstanding $2 billion gas bill yesterday, but…
Analysts at Piper Jaffray commented on Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) following comScore data which showed that total eCommerce sales declined 4% Y/Y QTD for Q4 and declined 37% Y/Y in the last full week of…
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 unemployment benefits…
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 39% plunge…
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 perceived as…
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…
Because of the number of rumors about the health of Apple (AAPL) CEO Steve Jobs, it is hard to know which has any validity. Jobs has suffered from islet cell neuroendocrine tumor a malignant…
The two most brutal recessions in recent memory are those that hit in 1973 and 1981. It appears that holiday retail sales for 2008 were worse than they were in either of those downturns.…
Platts is reporting this morning that Russian gas monopoly Gazprom will turn off gas supplies to Ukraine unless the former Soviet republic signs a natural gas export contract by January 1st. According to Gazprom,…
The Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday announced that it has approved new rules to "modernize its oil and gas company reporting requirements." Well, modernization, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The…