Infinite Unknown

Chrysler President Jim Press: “Maybe towards the end of ‘09, going into 2010, there’ll start to be some signs of recovery.” Maybe not.
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The Wall Street Journal is reporting Auto Sales Tumble, But Industry Sees Signs of Hope.

Sales of cars and light trucks fell 15.5% to 1.25 million last month, down from 1.48 million a year earlier, according to Autodata Corp. The closely watched seasonally adjusted annualized selling rate was 13.7 million vehicles, up from 12.55 million in July, but down from 16.3 million in August 2007, Autodata said.

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Tags: bankruptcy, Chrysler, Economy, Ford, General Motors, GM, JPMorgan, U.S., Wall Street

Sept. 4 (Bloomberg) — JPMorgan Chase & Co. will stop selling interest-rate swaps to government borrowers in the $2.6 trillion U.S. municipal bond market roiled by an antitrust probe and the near bankruptcy of Alabama’s most-populous county.

At least seven former JPMorgan bankers are under scrutiny in a Justice Department criminal investigation of whether banks conspired to overcharge local governments on swaps and other derivatives. The bank also is embroiled in negotiations over how to resolve a debt crisis with Jefferson County, Alabama, where the county’s former adviser says a group of firms led by JPMorgan, the third-largest U.S. bank by assets, overcharged it by as much as $100 million for financing a new sewer system.

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Tags: Bank, bankruptcy, Credit Crisis, credit crunch, debt, Economy, Government, JPMorgan, Justice Department, U.S., UBS, Wall Street

China has resorted to stealth intervention in the currency markets to amass US dollars, using indirect means to hold down the yuan and ease the pain for its struggling exporters as the global slowdown engulfs the economy.

A study by HSBC’s currency team in Asia has concluded that China’s central bank is in effect forcing commercial banks to build up large dollar reserves, using them as arms-length proxies in a renewed campaign of exchange rate intervention.

Beijing has raised the reserve requirement for banks five times since March, quickening the pace with two half-point rises in late June. Continue reading »

Tags: bankruptcy, China, Dollar, ECB, Economy, Government, HSBC, OECD, Politics, Recession, Stock Market

“There may have been multiple ‘positions’ which were reclassified … but they all appear to have been held by just one trader, and this was a very special trader, with an enormous concentration of positions in crude oil amounting to perhaps 460 million barrels, and not much interest in anything else,” noted John Kemp of RBS Sempra Commodities.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - A quiet data revision that has boosted by nearly 25 percent the number of oil futures contracts U.S. regulators think are held by speculators is raising eyebrows in the energy trading community.

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Tags: bankruptcy, Barclays, Commodities, Futures, Justice Department, NYMEX, Oil, Oil Futures, Oil Prices, RBS, SemGroup, Speculators, Trader, U.S.

NEW YORK, Aug 3 (Reuters) - The United States is in the second inning of a recession that will last for at least 18 months and help kill off hundreds of banks, influential economist and New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini told Barron’s in Sunday’s edition.

Taxpayers will pay a big price for helping bail out the rest of the financial services industry as well, Roubini said — at least $1 trillion and more likely $2 trillion.

The banks will become insolvent because of mounting losses as a result of the housing bust and because they have only written down their subprime loans so far, he said. Still in front of them are their consumer-credit losses, for which they lack the reserves, Barron’s reported.

He also said there are hundreds of millions of dollars outstanding in home-equity loans that could be worth zero, too.

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Tags: bailout, Bank, bank failure, bankruptcy, Economy, Fannie Mae, Fed, Federal Reserve, financial crisis, Freddie Mac, Government, mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Nouriel Roubini, taxpayers, Treasury, U.S., Wall Street

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Standard & Poor’s on Thursday cut ratings on all three major U.S. automakers deeper into junk status, citing expected losses due to higher gas prices and a weakening U.S. economy.

S&P cut its ratings for General Motors Corp (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Ford Motor Co (F.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Chrysler Automotive LLC to “B-minus,” or six levels below investment grade, from “B.” It also cut to “B-minus” from “B” the finance arms of Ford, Chrysler and GMAC, which is 49 percent owned by GM.

Related article: GM Posts $15.5 Billion Loss; More Job Cuts Possible

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Tags: bankruptcy, Chrysler, Economy, Ford, Gas prices, General Motors, rating, Standard & Poor's, Stock Market, SUV, Wall Street

Matt Jackson of the Meals On Wheels program waits to deliver a meal to a home in Charleston, W.Va. The program is losing volunteer drivers nationwide because of rising gas prices.

Bankruptcies soar as retirees, agencies struggle to keep up with rising costs

Bob Emily put in an honest day’s labor every day of his life.

“I worked for the railroad, for the town marshal, security, bars, Sealy down here, UPS,” said Emily, 82, of Commerce City, Colo. “Worked hard all my life until I got sick.”

Then the bills started piling up.

“Hospital bills built up,” said Emily, who didn’t have health insurance. “I had to get loans to take care of my bills. Then I was getting behind on the loans.”

Every day, more calls and letters would come in from creditors and collectors. “I just got tired of it,” Emily said, so three months ago, he filed for bankruptcy.

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Tags: bankruptcy, Economy, Food Prices, Government, health insurance, Labor Department, retirement, U.S.

NEW YORK: In the narrative that has governed American commercial life for the last quarter-century, saving companies from their own mistakes was not supposed to be part of the government’s job description. Economic policymakers in the United States took swaggering pride in the cutthroat but lucrative form of capitalism that was supposedly indigenous to their frontier nation.

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Tags: bailout, bankruptcy, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke, CFR, China, Chrysler, Council on Foreign Relations, debt, Depression, Dollar, Economy, euro, Fannie Mae, Fed, Federal Reserve, Freddie Mac, George Bush, Goldman Sachs, Government, Henry Paulson, Inflation, Japan, Jimmy Carter, JPMorgan, mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Oil, Politics, Recession, Treasury, U.S.

July 21 (Bloomberg) – Ben S. Bernanke and Henry Paulson are under pressure to embrace the big-government policies of America in the 1930s, or Sweden in the 1990s, to contain the conflagration engulfing the U.S. housing and financial markets.

Among the ideas: Using taxpayer money to shore up the capital of loss-ridden Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, setting up new agencies to buy and refinance mortgages in default, even taking over failing financial institutions.

The government’s current “fire-brigade approach to dealing with the fallout from the extremely weak domestic economy is eroding general confidence in the U.S. financial system,” says Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at Lexington, Massachusetts-based Global Insight. “Bold, creative, aggressive policy action is needed.”

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Tags: bank failure, bankruptcy, Ben Bernanke, Congress, Depression, Economy, Fannie Mae, Fed, Federal Reserve, financial market, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Freddie Mac, George Bush, Government, Great Depression, Henry Paulson, mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Nouriel Roubini, Politics, taxpayers, U.S.

I called the death of Indymac Bancorp on Monday, July 7th. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation seized Indymac on Friday, July 11th.

I called the implosion of the two Government Sponsored Entities in the mortgage business, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on Wednesday, July 9th. Sunday, July 13th the White House announced a bailout for them.

Related article: Fed: No more bailouts, except Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Want to know what happens next? It’s ape ass ugly and it’s going to happen to you, so don’t say I didn’t warn you. Continue reading »

Tags: bailout, Bank, bank failure, bankruptcy, Bear Stearns, crash, Credit Crisis, Economy, Fannie Mae, FDIC, Fed, Federal Reserve, financial crisis, financial system, Freddie Mac, Gold, Government, hedge funds, IndyMac, Meltdown, Politics, Silver, U.S.