Just a few weeks ago, experts were saying the credit crisis was on the mend and we could all get back in the pool. But as we discussed in an earlier post, worries about Fannie and Freddie are on the rise, and the increase in agency spreads back in January was probably the biggest trigger [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘Federal Reserve’
July 3, 2008
Fed Will Struggle To Keep Economy Positive
Readers have taken to throwing brickbats when I post material that suggests that raising interest rates (at least in advanced economies) might not be a good move right now.
We’ve said before that the reason the Fed kept rates too low too long was it looked at inflation as strictly a domestic phenomenon and ignored the [...]
June 30, 2008
Bank Of International Settlements Warns of Big Contraction
The newly-released annual report of the Bank of International Settlements sounds as if it is unusually lively reading. Most official documents strive for an anodyne tone, while this one appears to be unusually blunt. However, while some reporters have their hands on it, the report is not yet up on the BIS website, so those [...]
June 26, 2008
The Calm Before The Storm?…Credit Instability Is Increasing…
(From NakedCapitalism.com)
The Fed’s decision to stay on hold with interest rates is an indirect acknowledgment, despite some brave talk otherwise, that the banking system is plenty fragile (has everyone forgotten that the Fed facilities are a form of life support?) and the concomitant economic downturn may only be in its early innings.
There have been some [...]
June 24, 2008
Fannie and Freddie Slow To Enter Jumbo Conforming Market…Buying Own Securities Back and Lending 50% Of What Congress Hoped For
June 24 (Bloomberg) — Three months after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac won the freedom to step up home-loan purchases, the government-chartered mortgage-finance companies are doing what critics in the Federal Reserve and Congress had predicted.
Instead of using powers granted by Congress to buy jumbo loans for the first time, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae [...]
June 19, 2008
Feds Arrest Bear Managers, Mortgage Fraud Targets…
(From Forbes.com….)
One year since the collapse of two Bear Stearns hedge funds signaled the beginning of the credit crisis, law enforcement officials came out swinging Thursday to hold people accountable.
The managers of those Bear Stearns funds were indicted on multiple charges of fraud, conspiracy and, in the case of one, insider trading.
At about the time [...]
June 10, 2008
The Not So Good…The Bad…and The Ugly
BAD NEWS: The forgettable first half of 2008 is stumbling to a close. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that American employers axed 49,000 jobs in May, the fifth straight month of job losses—an event that signals a recession sure as the glittery ball dropping on Times Square augurs a New Year. The report, which [...]
June 8, 2008
Subprime Hindsight…It Takes A Pillage
(From the Salt Lake Tribune)
Yes, the executives at Countrywide Financial Corp. planned a top-dollar shindig at a ski resort earlier this year, just after the bank’s multibillion dollar losses on subprime mortgages required a shotgun marriage to Bank of America. (A Wall Street Journal story forced them to cancel the party.) And sure, Bear Stearns [...]
mb007