Some investors in 401(k) retirement funds who are moving to grab their money are finding they can’t. Even with recent gains in stocks such as Mondays, the months of market turmoil have delivered a blow to some 401(k) participants: freezing their investments in certain plans. In some cases, individual investors can’t withdraw money from certain…
The US government has told Bank of America that it needs to bolster its capital cushion by as much as $34bn (£22.6bn) after a stress test found weaknesses in the banks ability to withstand any further shocks. Bank of Americas executives learned of the figure from treasury officials before tomorrowspublic release of the results of…
A big bank CEO on a mission to deceive the public doesn’t have to tell outright lies. He can con people just as easily by using “perfectly legal” tricks, shams, and accounting ruses. First, I’ll give you the big-picture facts. Then, I’ll show you how big U.S. banks are painting lipstick on some of the…
NASHVILLE, Tenn, April 18 (Reuters) – The problems in the U.S. commercial real estate market are a real risk for the economy, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta said on Saturday. Dennis Lockhart said the Fed is still considering adding commercial mortgage backed securities as an asset class in the Term Asset-Backed…
April 17 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration’s bank- rescue efforts will probably fail because the programs have been designed to help Wall Street rather than create a viable financial system, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said.
HONG KONG — Reversing its role as the world’s fastest-growing buyer of United States Treasuries and other foreign bonds, the Chinese government actually sold bonds heavily in January and February before resuming purchases in March, according to data released during the weekend by China’s central bank. Graphic
A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqué issued by the G20 leaders amounts to revolution in the global financial order.
WSJ: Sales of new homes rose in February for the first time in seven months, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday, another sign that the housing market is thawing Bloomberg: Purchases of new homes in the U.S. unexpectedly rose in February from a record low as plummeting prices and cheaper mortgage rates lured some buyers. Sales…
* Economic crisis dire, risk of unrest and war – IMF * Recovery depends on cleaning up bank balance sheets GENEVA, March 23 (Reuters) – The world is in a dire economic crisis, but no recovery is possible until the financial sector is cleaned up, the head of the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The pace of the ongoing credit crisis quickened significantly Friday, March 20, when regulators seized three banks and placed two large corporate credit unions into conservatorship, citing a need to "stabilize the corporate credit union system."
The country is displaying early symptoms of being trapped in a so-called “debt deflation trap” where families find themselves pushed further and further into the red every month, according to a Bank report published today.
Russia suggests the G20 summit in London in April should start establishing a system of managing the process of globalization and consider the possibility of creating a supra-national reserve currency or a “super-reserve currency.” The Russian Federation’s proposals for ways out of the ongoing financial and economic crisis and for a post-crisis order of the…
Last week, the bankrupt insurance giant AIG received an additional $30 billion in bailout funds from the United States government, raising its total take to $170 billion. The funds, however, aren’t going into the benighted firms coffers to aid the liquidation and deleveraging process.
March 3 (Bloomberg) — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said policy makers may need to expand aid to the banking system beyond the $700 billion already approved and take other aggressive measures even at the cost of soaring fiscal deficits.
TARP investments are certainly “troubled.” And Washington, it turns out, isn’t the best short-term investor. The government’s investments in the nation’s ailing banks, made through the newly coined Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, have taken a huge hit since the program started making capital injections last October. Thanks to last week’s stock market sell-off,…
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Renowned investor George Soros said on Friday the world financial system has effectively disintegrated, adding that there is yet no prospect of a near-term resolution to the crisis.
Investors have taken to terming the flight from risky assets into gold a newworld’s banks on track — bedeviling investors across the globe — has produced a safe-haven trade into the likes of Treasurys and the dollar. However, the dollar’s success is, in some ways, a mirage, improving only because other major world currencies have…
Governing elites in Washington and Wall Street have devised a fiendishly clever "grand bargain" they want President Obama to embrace in the name of "fiscal responsibility." The government, they argue, having spent billions on bailing out the banks, can recover its costs by looting the Social Security system. They are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid….
Bay Street is likely to suffer less than Wall Street as global economic conditions worsen and international banks continue to grapple with bad loans and toxic assets, according to UBS. Researchers at the Swiss bank “expect Canadian banks to continue to outperform their global peers given superior asset quality, capital, liquidity, and return on equity.”
“Estimates of total expected asset write-downs suggest that the budgetary costs – actual and contingent – of asset relief could be very large both in absolute terms and relative to GDP in member states,” the EC document, seen by The Daily Telegraph, cautioned.