@ November 12, 2008 # No Comment Yet
American Express wants $3.5 billion in taxpayer bailout money, which explains why earlier this week Amex was deemed by the Federal Reserve to be a “bank holding compnay”, giving it access to Fed financing.
American Express has hit troubled times recently because its business model relied heavily on selling packages of credit card debt to investors; [...]
@ October 12, 2008 # No Comment Yet
The FDIC announced on October 10, 2008 that it was dropping a restriction on insuring beneficiaries of revocable trusts. Historically, each immediate family member beneficiary of the trust account was eligible for the $100,000 insurance payment. However, extended family members and non-family members were not eligible. The change in law makes every beneficiary eligible, and [...]
@ October 12, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Chrysler, the number 3 US auto manufactuer and GM, the number 1 US auto manufacturer, are rumored to be discussing a merger. Chrysler’s majority owner is Cerberus Capial Management LP. The talks hit a bump when the question of how to value Chrysler’s losing operations came up.
In the proposed deal, Cerberus would get GMAC and [...]
@ October 11, 2008 # No Comment Yet
The head of the International Monetary Fund (”IMF”), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, thinks we are on the brink of a global financial meltdown as prices crashed more than 20 percent last week and steps taken so far have not stabilized the markets. The IMF also prediced that shares could fall another 20 percent in the next few [...]
@ October 10, 2008 # No Comment Yet
Today the stock market ended its “worst week ever” with the Dow losing a modest 128 points, for an 8 day total loss of about 2,400. Both the Dow and the S&P suffered their worst weeks in point and percentages losses. Finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of Seven nations met with Bush [...]