Filed under: Housing

What started as a subprime mortgage mess has morphed into a much larger problem of home value destruction. Houses have now lost value for the seventh consecutive quarter with no end in sight. Are we anywhere near an end to this carnage?

No one knows for sure. That’s because we are no longer looking at loans gone bad because people overextended themselves; we’re now looking at such a significant fall in home prices that about 30% of homes that were sold in the third quarter were sold at a loss. That’s up from 23.7% in the second quarter. We’re no longer just dealing with people who made bad credit decisions, we’re also dealing with the fallout from large layoffs and the financial hardships that follow.

Houses being sold now are primarily foreclosures or short sales, but people who must move because of a job loss or for other personal reasons can only do so if they’re willing to sell at the same distressed prices. So if you don’t need to sell, don’t. Unfortunately, as job losses continue to mount, more and more people will be forced to sell, driving prices even lower.

Continue reading Houses lose value for 7th straight quarter, where is the help?

Houses lose value for 7th straight quarter, where is the help? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read

Share This

Share This

Filed under: International markets, Forecasts, Products and services, Consumer experience, Economic data, Oil

In a new report today, the International Energy Bureau warned that an insufficient amount of investment into oil supply is going to result in a serious supply shortage that could make the recent record high oil prices look weak in comparison.

Oil prices spiked to a record high $147 a barrel earlier this summer, but have since been in a pretty steady downward spiral, and were down again this day, as the credit crunch and recession fears have created fear among oil investors that oil demand is going to erode over the months to come.

Prices were off sharply again today, and in afternoon trading oil was down another $3.17 a barrel to $56.16, off 5.3% on the day, as the U.S. government lowered its forecast for oil next year to $63.50, down from its previous estimate of $112 that it maintained back in October.

Continue reading The International Energy Agency warns of lack of investment in oil production

The International Energy Bureau warns of lack of investment in oil production originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

Share This

Share This

An anonymous reader writes “Chemical & Engineering News just ran this story that relates how government regulations create a terribly restrictive atmosphere for people who do chemistry as a hobby. (A related story was previously posted.)” The article gives some examples of why hamfisted regulations are harmful even to those who aren’t doing the chemistry themselves: “Hobby chemists will tell you that home labs have been the source of some of chemistry’s greatest contributions. Charles Goodyear figured out how to vulcanize rubber with the same stove that his wife used to bake the family’s bread. Charles Martin Hall discovered the economical electrochemical process for refining aluminum from its ore in a woodshed laboratory near his family home. A plaque outside Sir William Henry Perkin’s Cable Street residence in London notes that the chemist ‘discovered the first aniline dyestuff, March 1856, while working in his home laboratory on this site and went on to found science-based industry.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

Mayors, governors prod Congress for financial help - San Diego Union-Tribune
The nation’s mayors and governors are prodding Congress to jump-start the economy by increasing food stamp payments, extending unemployment insurance and boosting funding for Medicaid. The groups said in separate announcements Thursday that the ideal

2nd UPDATE: US Lawmakers Chide Banks For Not Using TARP Money - CNN Money
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- U.S. lawmakers put banks on the defensive Thursday, chastising them for not using billions of dollars from the Treasury Department to lend to consumers and businesses and threatening to legislate if improvements aren’t made

UC sees $20m jump in research money - Cincinnati.com
The University of Cincinnati brought in $353 million in research money last year, up $20 million from the year earlier. The increase comes as budgets for federal research agencies remained flat. The 5.9 percent increase for the year that ended June

Banks say they’re using bailout money for loans - BusinessWeek
Some of the nation’s largest banks sharing in the $700 billion government bailout of the financial industry tried to assure lawmakers Thursday they are using the money to make more loans and help financially strapped homeowners avoid foreclosure

Cassidy: Tech Awards celebration shows true value of technology - Silicon Valley
Before there was Kiva, there was Yunus. And Wednesday night Muhammad Yunus, the dad of micro-lending, was on stage picking up his humanitarian award at the glitzy Tech Awards at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. The award itself was a nice

Bank executives saying their using federal bailout money for loans - Newsday
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Some of the nation’s largest banks sharing in the $700 billion government bailout of the financial industry tried to assure lawmakers Thursday they are using the money to make more loans and help financially strapped homeowners

PRESS DIGEST-New Zealand newspapers - Nov 14 - Reuters
Stories may be taken from either the paper or World wide web editions of the papers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. DOMINION POST(www.stuff.co.nz) Shop as the economy drops: Low sales have sparked a retail

Public art is huge money for NYC - San Diego Union-Tribune
NEW YORK – The city has hosted two grand public art installations in the last three years: the saffron fabric Gates exhibit in Central Park in 2005 and the current Waterfalls show near the shorelines of Manhattan and Brooklyn. In both cases

Soros, Falcone Defend Hedge Funds at House Hearing (Update2) - Bloomberg
Nov. 13 (Bloomberg) — George Soros and Philip Falcone , in a rare appearance by hedge-fund managers before Congress, defended their industry’s practices and profits while splitting over whether the U.S. should impose stricter regulations. “This is

Anne Hathaway’s ‘unsanitary’ ex - Boston Globe
Anne Hathaway’s ex-boyfriend says he’s being held in “unspeakably unsanitary” conditions in jail. Raffaello Follieri - who was jailed last month for wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering - claims his health has deteriorated and has requested a

Share This

Share This

SpuriousLogic sends in a sad note from the BBC: “NASA states its Phoenix lander on the surface of Mars has gone silent and is almost certainly dead. Engineers have not heard from the craft since Sunday 2 November when it made a brief communication with Earth. Phoenix, which landed on the planet’s northern plains in Might, had been struggling in the increasing cold and dark of an advancing winter. The US space agency states it will continue to try to contact the craft but does not expect to hear from it.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Rumors, Products and services, Dell (DELL)

Dell, Inc. NASDAQ: DELL) indicated this week that it has no plans to re-enter the digital music player market. For some reason, the blogosphere has been abuzz in recent weeks with possible rumors about Dell — again — trying to compete in the digital MP3 player market. With its extraordinary success the last time around, it makes perfect sense, right? Of course not.

Although Dell has reinvigorated its laptop Computer designs in the last 18 months, has entered retail and has gained a little of the market share back it lost of Hewlett-Packard Corp. (NYSE: HPQ), the fact remains that it makes boring, commodity personal equipment. Nothing more. Nearly every single time the company wants to break into another market, the competition beats them down and spits them out. So, it’s good to hear that Dell won’t be getting back into the digital audio player market.

The weird twist here is that Dell bought Zing Software recently, which made wireless access technology for over-the-air audio and video downloads to digital audio players. It’s interesting to see that Dell bought Zing but less in 18 months later said it wouldn’t re-enter the hardware music player business. Of course, a lot has changed for the company in that time (and in the PC industry), and launching new products and categories in this economic environment is precarious at ideal. Perhaps Dell has shelved digital audio players until sometime in 2010 or later.

Dell: no new music players coming out originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read

Share This

Share This

Filed under: Market matters, Citigroup Inc. (C), JPMorgan Chase (JPM), Federal Natl Mtge (FNM), Amer Intl Group (AIG), Wells Fargo (WFC), Housing, Cramer on BloggingStocks, MBIA Inc (MBI)

From TheStreet.com Network

• Treasury Mulls Private Role in TARP
• CEO Payday Draws S.C. Governor’s Ire

TheStreet.com’s Jim Cramer states that’s the real problem, and every little bit helps.

Many are decrying that the AIG (NYSE: AIG) (Cramer’s Take) bailout now helps the holders of the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) who bought insurance against them from AIG. The idea is simple: These CDOs are worth, in many cases, next to nothing depending upon the vintages, geographies and FICO scores, but they will now be paid back at pretty much face value — AIG CEO Ed Liddy said the prices will be negotiated, but I don’t see how they have the ability to get any less because AIG guaranteed it and the U.S. isn’t abrogating any of these guarantees.

It’s an obvious windfall and still one more piece of the stinking puzzle that involves unwinding the bogus real estate finance that prevailed from 2004 to 2007. The more massive issue, though, is whether the government will then take over MBIA (NYSE: MBI) (Cramer’s Take) and Ambac (NYSE: ABK) (Cramer’s Take) — I know people at those companies say they don’t need it, so OK, they don’t … but let’s say they do for the purposes of reality — and have them make good on all of the credit default swaps they wrote against bad CDOs.

If the government is willing, they can buy several trillion dollars of these easily through this method and then sit on them and hopefully they’ll come back to some value.

Continue reading Cramer on BloggingStocks: Fix the home glut

Cramer on BloggingStocks: Fix the home glut originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink

Share This

Share This

Money-Market Funds Notch $21.21 Billion in Net Buying - Wall Street Journal

Money-Market Funds Notch $21.21 Billion in Net Buying Wall Street Journal Share This Share This No Comments » 13 11 2008 Obama’s Election Means a Return of Vampire Flicks Posted by: in Politics News gyrogeerloose writes “In a column in Saturday’s San Diego Union Tribune, Peter Rowe makes a connection between the popularity of horror motion picture genres and the political celebration in the White Home. A Republican administration presides over a period of zombie movies while a Democrat in the Oval Office brings on a cycle of vampire movies. Why? Possibly because the two genres ‘are really competing parables about class warfare.’ Hmmmm, maybe. On the other hand, it might just be a coincidence.” Socialists are ideal represented by lycanthropes, and the Libertarians are most closely tied to any sort of horror from space. Read more of this story at Slashdot. Share This Share This No Comments »

Search Subscribe Your email:   Subscribe Unsubscribe   Pages About Contact-us

RSS Feed   November 2008 M T W T F S S « Oct   Dec »   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Recent Posts NASA Mars Rovers Hit 5-Year Anniversary Expectations approach rock-bottom for KB Home’s fourth-quarter earnings Obama Picks RIAA’s Favorite Lawyer For Top DoJ Post Amazon.com video streaming added to Netflix set-top box Test For Prostate Cancer Gene Soon To Be Available Tell-tale stat: Manhattan apartment sales decline for 4th straight quarter Israel, Palestine Wage Web War More Evidence For a Clovis-Killer Comet Can’t make your automobile payments? Just give it back Falcon 9 Is Now Fully Integrated At Cape Canaveral Categories Housing Life and Money Life and Science Politics News Products and Services Shopping Today News Uncategorized Video Archives January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007