From the monthly archives:
I’m not going to sugarcoat this morning’s economic data. It stunk to high heaven. A few details:
- Q2 2008 Gross Domestic Product grew just 1.9%, below the average forecast for a 2.3% rise. Q1 2008 growth was reviseddown slightly to 0.9% from 1%. Moreover, Q4 2007 GDP was slashed to NEGATIVE 0.2% from positive 0.6%
- [...]
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Standard & Poor’s is taking theaxe to its credit ratings for the major automobile manufacturers. GM, Ford Motor,and Chrysler were cut to B- from B. GM and Ford were removed from CreditWatch with negative implications as part ofthis move. A rating of B- is six steps below the investment grade threshold.
S&P said the following in [...]
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We just got the latest S&P/Case-Shiller figures, this time for May. Here is what the numbers showed:
* Prices fell 0.9% from April in 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas. That was another improvement on the month (April was-1.3%, March was -2.2%, and February was -2.6%). However, the year-over-year decline in prices came to 15.8%, worsethan the [...]
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It looks like 2009 could be a real doozy on the unbalanced budget front. While the federal budget deficit shouldcome in around $389 billion this year — down from an earlier forecast of $410 billion — it is set to explode to arecord $482 billion next year. That’s according to a new Bush administration forecastreleased [...]
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Just when Congress and Treasury (to say nothing of the SEC, FDIC, and so on) manage to put out one credit or banking market fire, another erupts somewhere else. Today, it was Washington Mutual thatsent tongues wagging on Wall Street. Wamu shares dropped more than 13% after tanking 20% yesterday amid concern aboutits financing options [...]
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It’s existing home sales day, with the latest numbers recently released by the National Association of Realtors.Here’s what the June data showed …
* Sales fell 2.6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.86 million in June from 4.99 million in May. That wasslightly worse than the average forecast of 4.94 million home sales. Sales [...]
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As the late, great “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin might havesaid, “Crikey!” The market is taking a huge chunk out of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s hides today amid ongoing fearsabout mortgage losses and potential, additional capital raisings.Shares of Fannie Mae were recently off 18%, while shares of Freddie Mac were down 21%. The spreads between [...]
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Thanks to the Fourth of July holiday, a lot of news is going to hit in the next two days. The job market data willbe front and center, with a trio of reports on U.S. employment conditions coming out.
The first is the report on layoff announcements from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. It wasreleased [...]
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Bloomberg has an excellentstory that explains why credit is tightening up at the regional- and small-banklevel. Essentially, banks are having a tougher time raising capital, so they’re being forced to cut bank on lendingactivity. Here’s an excerpt …
“Mountain 1st Bank & Trust Co. Chief Executive Officer Greg Gibson forecast 12 percent loan growth for his [...]
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This is kind of funny — General Motors shares are ripping higher today on news that adjusted sales were “only” down
19%. So I guess the auto business got better all of a sudden, right? Well, not really. GM’s boost was likely entirely
due to the late-month addition of “free money” — 0% loans of up to [...]
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