Times: Gordon Brown in struggle to shore up HBOS rescue

Gordon Brown was personally fighting to save the £12 billion proposed rescue of Britain’s biggest savings bank tonight amid growing doubts over the deal. “I am confident that the Lloyds TSB takeover of HBOS will go ahead,” he insisted.

Daily Mash: STOCKMARKETS RUNNING OUT OF UNDERPANTS

Need a giggle?!

newstatesman: Everything you want to know about the bank crisis

This is the worst financial crisis in 60 years, and it has shaken the banking system to its foundations. Even the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, has compared the crisis to the Great Depression and he is not given to overstatement. Banks are in the business of lending money they don't have - it is called "fractional reserve banking". But every so often the banks succumb to irrational exuberance, lend too much and find their reserves have been eaten up too fast, forcing them out of business. This is what happened to Northern Rock, and is now happening to all the big banks. That is why they had to be rescued to the tune of £50bn last month by the Bank of England - ie, us. They will be back for more.

Property Wire: UK mortgage lending association abandons short term property price forecasts

Trying to predict property prices in the UK in the short term is futile in the current economic turmoil, according to the country's trade association for mortgage lending industry. *Will Nationwide and Halifax indices go the same way?

Channel 4 news: Buy-to-let mortgage deals nosedive

One in 10 mortgages has been pulled during the past 24 hours following the nationalisation of Bradford & Bingley, figures showed. The number of buy-to-let loans has nosedived, with just 481 different deals now available, a 27% fall on Monday's figure of 662, financial information group Moneyfacts said.

Metacafe: Who will you vote?

A liar builds up your world, leaves with your money and your good intentions, knowing he's fooled you and walks away. He's proud of what he's done, building his and his friends' fortunes on the backs of people he's duped. Load of very interesting news that caused the US property boom...

Posted by mario @ 05:20 PM 10 Comments

FT: Lenders refuse mortgages based on City bonuses

We were told high-end, prestige homes in the £1m+ bracket would not experience as severe a decline as the rest of the market due to continued demand from the wealthy. Oh well, looks like demand from the wealthy was based on cheap, dodgy credit just like the rest of us - lenders are now refusing to lend on the basis of job bonuses (can't believe they were doing this anyway as a bonus can never be a guarantee). There goes the City end of the market overnight...!

Posted by an bearin bui @ 04:30 PM 9 Comments

Yahoo: London afternoon: HBOS battered on merger fears

A statement by Royal Bank of Scotland (LSE: RBS.L - news) to alleviate fears about its exposure to the fall-out from the Fortis (Amsterdam: FOO.AS - news) rescue may have succeeded in its aim, but the stock is still lower as investors threat about the UK banking industry

Posted by mark @ 03:19 PM 7 Comments

reuters: Global financial turmoil day by day

Following is a day-by-day summary of recent events in the financial crisis:

CNN: Record decline in home prices

July home prices plunge 16.3% in 12 months, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city housing index.

Posted by holding out @ 02:50 PM 8 Comments

Bloomberg: Libor Surges Most on Record After U.S. Congress Rejects Bailout

The cost of borrowing in dollars overnight surged the most on record after the U.S. Congress rejected a $700 billion bank rescue plan, heightening concern more institutions will fail. The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, that banks charge each other for such loans climbed 431 basis points to an all-time high of 6.88 percent today, the British Bankers' Association said.

Yahoo: Job cuts at ITV; journalists threaten action

The job cuts will include 430 redundancies in the 1,075-strong News department as the company seeks to reduce costs to free up money for investment in UK content.

mortgagestrategy: Buy-to-let product choice obliterated

84% of buy-to-let products were stripped from the market yesterday with the nationalisation of Bradford & Bingley and product withdrawals by UCB Home Loans and The Mortgage Works, reveals Moneyfacts.co.uk. The market as a whole saw 11.4% of mortgage products wiped out bringing numbers from 3,914 Monday morning to 3,469 today. The residential market was also hit hard losing 60% of its products in 24 hours.....“It appears that lenders are slowly turning the tap off on the number of mortgage products available and their appetite to lend. If the problems continue we have to start asking the question, will the tap will be turned off completely until stable markets return?”

BBC News: Irish Government Guarantees Banks

On Tuesday, the Department of Finance said the state would safeguard all deposits, bonds and debts in six banks and building societies for two years.

Posted by yoyo1 @ 12:58 PM 11 Comments

Firstrung: House sellers have to drop prices by as much as 12.5% to get a sale - RICS

Across the UK, houses are selling at an average of nine percent below the asking price with sellers in some regions being forced to accept as much as 12.5 percent discount off their advertised price, says RICS research... As economic fundamentals continue to worsen, the gap between selling and asking prices is widening. In the North vendors are accepting the lowest offers - averaging 12.5 percent below the marketed price. Vendors in the North West, East Midlands, West Midlands and Wales are accepting offers averaging approximately 10 percent below but in London the figure stands at 8.5 percent.

Posted by converted lurker @ 12:46 PM 6 Comments

Telegraph: Bailout failure 'will cause US crash’

The financial system could face a meltdown of 1929 proportions unless US politicians succeed in their efforts for a $700bn rescue scheme, Officials close to Paulson are privately painting a far bleaker portrait of the fragility of the global economy than that advanced by President George W Bush in his televised address last week. One Republican said that the message from government officials is that “the economy is dropping into the john.” He added: “We could see falls of 3,000 or 4,000 points on the Dow [the New York market that currently trades at around 11,000]. That could happen in just a couple of days.

Posted by malct @ 12:44 PM 16 Comments

Firstrung: Home selling transactions now at levels not seen since the 1960's - Hometrack

A survey by property consultants Hometrack has revealed that UK house prices have fallen for a 12th consecutive month in September, suggesting the government's decision to raise the threshold for stamp duty has done little to support the ailing housing market.... The latest drop has pushed up the annual rate of decline to a record level of 6.2% for the year to the end of September. Hometrack also recorded a further fall in the number of new buyers registering with estate agents; 5.3% less people starting the 'househunting' process in September 2008 compared with August 2008.

Counterpunch: Black Monday?

Once the banksters have offloaded their fraudulent securities and crappy paper on Uncle Sam, they will do whatever they need to do pad the bottom line and drive their stocks up. They'll move their capital wherever they think they can maximize their profits. In fact, a sizable portion of the $700 billion will likely be invested in commodities, which means that we'll see another round of hyperbolic speculation in food and energy futures pushing food and fuel prices into the stratosphere. Ironically, the taxpayers’ largesse will be used against them, making a bad situation even worse. Then again, if a rehabbed bill isn't passed, no one can predict with certainty what will happen.

Mail online: The day when buy-to-let died

The collapse of Bradford & Bingley sounds the death knell for buy-to-let. More than 1.1million British investors put their money into property for rent, borrowing against the value of their family homes. The hope was that the rental income would cover the mortgages, while they would cash in from the supposedly inevitable rise in house prices. However, the market has now been hit by a double-whammy which threatens mass repossessions and an even bigger property market collapse than the 1990s bust.

SOTT - Uffington Post: Why Bail? The Banks Have a Gun Pointed at Their Head and Are Threatening to Pull the Trigger

(It was remarkable how many so-called experts somehow could not see the housing bubble as it grew to ever more dangerous levels. It is even more remarkable that many of these experts still don't recognize the bubble even as its collapse sinks the economy and the financial system.) The decline in housing prices to date has already cost the economy $4 trillion to $5 trillion in housing equity. This would be expected to lead to a decline in annual consumption on the order of $160 billion to $300 billion. Given the loss of housing equity, I have actually been surprised that the downturn has not been sharper. Homeowners had been consuming based on their home equity. Much of that equity has now disappeared with the collapse of the bubble. We would expect that their consumption would fall.

Mortgage Introducer: Buy-to-let arrears below market average.

Statistical data released by the CML shows that the percentage of buy-to-let mortgages more than three months in arrears stands at 1.1% of all buy-to-let mortgages outstanding. This compares with a total mortgage market figure of 1.33% in arrears of three months or more. There are currently 1,103,000 buy-to-let mortgages outstanding out of a total market of 11,741,000. Source here - http://www.cml.org.uk/cml/filegrab/AP5.xls?ref=5217

Posted by renting2 @ 12:29 PM 10 Comments

Nationwide: House Price Index

It's the last business day of the month, so where are the Nationwide house price index numbers for September? This data always comes out before the end of the month. What's going on here then?

Posted by ana lytics @ 11:48 AM 23 Comments

OpEdNews: US Banking Collapse a 'Controlled Demolition'

What does the rest of the world know that we don't? The United States Dollar is dead. While we are being jerked around by the mainstream media here at home, the rest of the world has already drawn the final conclusion for us, and what they are saying about us isn't pretty. We are in the middle of a crisis much larger than most Americans could imagine, a portion of America can't even handle it, for that matter. The Bailout is an awful idea, and the majority of Americans realize that. There is even a provision that would grant Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson dictatorial powers, and that is obviously insane, but here we are debating it. It's like asking a dead man whether he wants to be buried or cremated;

CNN: The $55 trillion question

The financial crisis has put a spotlight on the obscure world of credit default swaps - which trade in a vast, unregulated market that most people haven't heard of and even fewer understand. Will this be the next disaster?

Times online: Consumers to foot bill for Bradford & Bingley bailout in higher bank charges

Bank charges and insurance premiums are set to rise after high street banks and insurers were ordered to pay up to £14 billion under the terms of Bradford & Bingley’s nationalisation. [Er, yes, and if it's unreasonable, customers will go elsewhere. Companies that can generate cash, with a working business model that convinces customers to pay them instead of their competitors, will indeed survive. It's known as a free market economy. Is this more naked bleating on behalf of the bankers?]

BBC News: UK confirms economy at standstill

The UK economy saw no growth in the second quarter of 2008, while the gap in the current account widened to its highest level in almost a year.

Nationwide: September 08 Index

Last day of September and still no release ? Never been this late ?

MoneyWeek: Markets are working just fine – it's government that has failed

The fall-out from the failed Wall Street rescue package will be brutal. But there could yet be a silver lining, says John Stepek. We might just be seeing the end of big government.

Posted by damien @ 10:31 AM 12 Comments

Yahoo: Murder Probe As Banking Exec Dies

Frank McGarahan, 45, who worked for Barclays Wealth, intervened in a brawl in Norwich city centre at 3am on Sunday.

Posted by mark @ 10:01 AM 7 Comments

BBC "News": 'Millions' of UK young in poverty

Millions of children in the UK are living in, or on the brink of, poverty, a report claims. The Campaign to End Child Poverty says 5.5 million children are in families that are classed as "struggling" - 98% of children in some areas. The campaign classes households as being in poverty if they are living on under £10 per person per day.

Posted by eyes_wide_open @ 09:55 AM 8 Comments

The Telegraph: Banking crash hits Europe as ECB loses traction

Mr Redeker said the latest alarming twist is a move by banks to deposit €28bn in funds at the European Central Bank in a panic flight to safety. This has jammed the mechanism used by the authorities to shore up the financial system in a crisis. "The ECB is no longer able to inject liquidity because the money is just coming back to them again. This is extremely serious. If monetary policy is no longer working, there is a risk that the whole system will blow up in days," he said.

Bank of England: Monetary & Financial Statistics - September 2008

Yesterday, the BBC insisted that mortgage lending was down 98% compared to a year ago, and that mortgage lending was down to £143 million a month. A glance at the tables on page T20 of the actual BoE report shows that gross lending was £20 bn (down a third on a year earlier). It is only NET lending (advances minus repayments) that is down to plus-minus-nothing.

Posted by mark wadsworth @ 09:34 AM 10 Comments

Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty: Ron Paul on the Bailout

He explains that the Fed already has the power to print all the money it needs, that social security will not go bust, but the dollar will if we continue borrowing and spending at will.. He talks about a Fed Audit bill he is putting forward (They aren't audited!) - Explains that free markets are not to blaim but that Fed cronyism is to blame.

Posted by planning4acrash @ 07:00 AM 26 Comments

Infowars: Calls For New EU Financial Order Increase As Total Meltdown Becomes Likely

Now that the Fed has managed to create carnage and nepotism on a grand scale, it appears that the problems it has created have led some of our "brightest stars" to propose a similar, unacountable, unfettered model here, in the "United" States of Europe. "With Belgian-Dutch group Fortis becoming the first major European bank to buckle, British mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley also being nationalized, as well as several other banks failing in Iceland, Denmark and Germany, economists have warned that more are teetering on the brink and only a radical centralization of power in Europe can stave off financial ruin."

Guardian: Lack of loans pushes approvals figure down by 95%

According to the Bank of England, net mortgage lending fell to £143m in August. This was less than 5% of the £3bn of net lending in July and the lowest level since records began in April 1993.

The Progress Report: If we don't bailout Wall Street, what happens to us?

The cause of all this mess is land speculation that has grown out of all proportion. The fact is that anyone who has bought a property in the last fifteen years has done it to make money as well as to live in it. Wall street bosses have just been better at it leveraging the boom. We need a proper taxation system based on land usage to move forward - not to bail out the people that benefited the most out of the boom - so they can do it again.

FT.com: Building societies angry at B&B liabilities

The use of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme by the government has provoked an angry reaction from the UK’s 59 prudent building societies, which will also have to contribute despite having no connection with B&B’s failure. “We are concerned at the use of the FSCS to help rebuild a nationalised bank’s balance sheet, as deposit taking institutions our members will be badly hit by this.”

Posted by enuii @ 10:53 PM 6 Comments

Telegraph: B&B: A Nail in the Coffin for BTL Investors

"Investors" borrowing at 7% to get a rental yield at 3.5% was always a sign of a bubble. I wonder how many canny property kings who thought housing was a one-way bet are now realising it only made sense if prices only went up.

MSNBC: Dow slammed, posts worst-ever point decline

NEW YORK - Wall Street ended a stunning session with a huge loss Monday, with the Dow Jones industrial average plunging 778 points — its largest point drop ever — after the failure of a House vote on the financial bailout plan.

Posted by renting2 @ 10:13 PM 6 Comments

Los Angeles "Times": Paulson Will Have No Peer

If the 700 Billion package - or a similar one - eventually makes it through Congress, one man will hold the power of life and death over everyone in the country. Certainly reading the phrase "unprecedented powers" in relation to Henry Paulsen makes the blood run cold. The reporter, Peter Gosselin explains -- "Under terms of the compromise announced Sunday, any firm selling troubled assets to the government would have to give Washington the right to take an ownership stake in the firm -- a more sweeping requirement than had been expected....Paulson's new powers will be almost breathtaking in their scope." And further, Paulsen can spend the "bailout" fund on any financial instrument he sees fit to "promote market stability" giving him unlimited power to cut deals with foreign banks. .

Posted by indiablue19 @ 09:47 PM 11 Comments

Bloomberg: Fed injects $680 billion into financial system

The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression. The Fed's expansion of liquidity, the biggest since credit markets seized up last year, came hours before the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry. The crisis is reverberating through the global economy, causing stocks to plunge and forcing European governments to rescue four banks over the past two days alone.

Posted by little professor @ 08:04 PM 53 Comments

MSN Money: Bailout bill fails; Dow drops more than 500

Stocks plunged this afternoon, with the Dow Jones industrials off more than 500 points, after the House of Representatives narrowly failed to approve a $700 billion rescue plan for the nation's financial system. (http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Won't-Get-Fooled-Again-lyrics-The-Who/761EF79AAB42FA9C48256977002E72F9 )

Bloomberg: U.S. House Rejects $700 Billion Financial-Rescue Plan

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. House rejected a $700 billion financial-rescue plan intended to restore confidence in the nation's banking system, dealing a blow to government efforts to contain a lending crisis. The House rejected by a vote of 228 to 205 the measure to authorize the biggest government intervention in the markets since the Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 554 points, or almost 5 percent to 10,589, at 2:32 p.m. New York time. ``The American people rejected this bailout and now Congress did likewise,'' said Republican Representative Mike Pence of Indiana.

Posted by flintster1994 @ 07:41 PM 23 Comments

BBC: House votes down bail-out package

The lower house of the US Congress has voted down a $700bn (£380bn) plan aimed at bailing out Wall Street. The rescue plan, a result of tense talks between the government and lawmakers, was rejected by 228 to 205 votes in the House of Representatives.

SOTT: Signs Economic Commentary for 29 September 2008

Summary: Let's start at the end and then go back to the beginning of the past week. The end result, as of Sunday night, the 28th, was a massive, $700 billion bailout agreed upon by the U.S. Congress and the President. So what caused this massive action, one that no one seems comfortable with, to avoid "a full-blown economic meltdown?" What happened on Wednesday that so spooked the stewards of the global economy, that pushed aside as the top story of the day the largest bank failure in U.S. history? According to a report on NPR, it had to do with the "commercial paper" market. Money almost couldn't be borrowed for a day by even the most creditworthy borrowers...

Mortgage Strategy: B&B deposits and branches go for £612m

Alongside Abbey and B&B’s deposits, Santander also acquired Alliance & Leicester in July for £1.2bn. The combined branch network across the lenders will now total 1,286 offices with a combined client base of 24 million consumers. * It is starting to show up who are the winners, and the losers in this banking monopoly game....!

FT: High and dry in Saudi property boom

After months of frantic but fruitless efforts to secure a home loan and buy a house, Hazim Bahjat’s wedding date was approaching and he had to change plans. He and his bride-to-be settled for renting an apartment in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

London Evening Standard: How Arsenal scored an own goal on £300m stadium flats

The extra time the Gunners have spent fiddling with the development has pushed sales completions into a period of plunging prices. Last week the club admitted the chance of scoring the expected profit was fading. A visit early Monday morning to what is now called Highbury Stadium Square was discouraging. Lights were burning in just three of the 680 units on the £300 million development. The vast majority of the pleasant-looking flats, set in a quadrangle around the pitch-turned-square, are clearly empty.

reuters via truthseeker: Bank of China says open to Wall Street buys

TIANJIN, China (Reuters) - Bank of China, the country's largest foreign-exchange lender, is open to buying into U.S. banks in the wake of the global financial crisis, a senior executive said on Sunday. Banking industry observers in China are torn over whether the fall in the share prices of many U.S. financial firms presents more of a risk or a buying opportunity.

Hub pages: Protests on Wall Street - what the news media isn't showing you64

Protests took place on Wall St. to protest the bail out plan - and the mainstream news media didn't even mention it Hundreds of protestors demonstrated agains the proposed $700 Billion bail out plan for the finance and banking industry, yet the national news media in America didn't even report it! Why not? It seems strange that this barely generated a gander from the big news outlets like ABC, CNN, CBS, NBC etc. all of whom have a presence in New York City.

Posted by malct @ 06:00 PM 19 Comments

CNN: Credit freeze and your paycheck

Take Drew Greenblatt, president of Marlin Steel Wire Products in Baltimore. He recently asked his bank to add $175,000 to his line of credit so he could purchase steel for two large customer orders. The bank said he could get the funding, but only if he first put $175,000 into a certificate of deposit.

Guardian: Banks will bear losses from B&B nationalisation

Banks make their money from loans. Surviving banks will have to pay the losses of B&B, NR etc(!). So, money made from loans is required to refund the government. So, mortgage holders will be liable for the bailout. Note, this isn't guarantee money, as in I will make good lets hope it doesn't come to that, this is real money from the banks future capital. Causing financial services to relocate before they get stung, and also causing mortgage costs to correspondingly increase for the remainder.

Posted by stillthinking @ 03:05 PM 11 Comments

Yahoo: CBI predicts City jobs cull

A plunge in profits across the financial sector will have cost the City "at least 12,000 jobs" during the past three months, the CBI warned Monday.

Mortgage Express: Urgent - Mortgage Express currently closed to new business

Following the decision to take the mortgage assets of Bradford & Bingley Group into temporary public ownership, Mortgage Express is now currently closed to all new business. We will not accept new applications for mortgages or further advances and re-offers will no longer be made.

Posted by renting2 @ 02:21 PM 26 Comments

CNN Money: Warren Buffett's Happy Housing Story

A subsidiary to Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway was also involved in lending to low income households but has managed to maintain profitability and has a low foreclosure rate. How? Because they avoided securitisation and so had to take responsibilty for the quality of their loan book. They also made sure loans were actually affordable and most importantly that the buyers were buying for a home, not a speculative investment. It all makes so much sense - so why couldn't all mortgage lenders have followed Buffett's model?

Ft.com: Hypo Real bailed out by German peers

We should have a more highly regulated system like the Germans..... so said someone on here last week.

BBC Robert Peston: B&B collapse to cost City £9bn

If I understand correctly, the government has handled this one with a touch of thought - and a spot of poetic justice. I am no fan of Gordon's Economic Disaster, but credit where it's due. In short, the Govrnment have bailed out depositors and dumped risk on the banks. Like it or not, that's a beauty - socialism for people, capitalism for companies. How does it work? The failure of B&B invokes the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, but we know the banks are broke, so the government steps into the breach and covers the amout due under the insurance, maintaining order. However, and this is the clever bit, the government gets the money back - with interest. Any shortfall after the mortgages have been paid off (or gone toxic) will be made up by the banks. They eat their own risk.

Posted by dohousescrashinthewoods @ 01:42 PM 14 Comments

FT: Builders' woes lead to fall in land prices

Residential development land has dropped by a third in value over the past year. Yorkshire and Humberside have been worst hit by the downturn, with land in all categories now worth about half its value from a year ago. The north-west has also been badly affected, with drops of 41 per cent and 36 per cent for brownfield and greenfield sites. The capital has avoided the full impact, with land prices in inner London falling by just 10 per cent. Outer London areas have fared only marginally worse, with a fall of 15 per cent over the past year. Vulture investors are entering the market to snap up bargains among the numerous forced sales of distressed builders. [Maths note: a 33% fall is the opposite of a 50% rise!]

Posted by drewster @ 12:45 PM 19 Comments

BBC NEWS: Iceland nationalises Glitnir bank

The Icelandic government has taken control of the country's third largest bank, Glitnir, after it faced short-term funding problems.

Posted by renting2 @ 12:41 PM 7 Comments

HIP-Consultant.co.uk: Pre HIP properties and your requirements

The Home Information Pack legislation is generally understood; that ‘all’ domestic properties being placed on the market require a HIP, except in a few exceptions. The important date of the 1st October 2008 looms in regard to the Energy Performance Cerification of properties; did you realise that if your house was on the market before the relevant Home Information Pack legislation was enacted that you will require an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC)?

MoneyWeek: The most dangerous financial cliché in history

'You can't go wrong with bricks and mortar,' they said. As another UK lender goes under, we're seeing again how how mistaken that is. And despite all the bail-outs, the crisis isn’t over yet. Property prices are still falling, and it will be a long time before they stop.

Telegraph: Financial crisis: Mortgage lending plunges 95 per cent as housing market 'decimated'

The value of mortgages lent to British homebuyers fell 95 per cent last month, according to the Bank of England. It said mortgage lending dived to just £143 million during August - its lowest since this data was first collected in April 1993 and a fraction of the £2.998 billion lent in July. In other words, unless you are paying cash, you probably won't be able to buy a house now.

Posted by jonb @ 11:42 AM 24 Comments

Firstrung: London house prices crash by 2% in August - Primelocation

Prime London sale values dropped by another 2% in August, according to data from primelocation.com. This is the third consecutive monthly drop and now means that values are 5.37% lower than in May. The data also shows that prime London rental prices and prime country sales values have also fallen showing a gloomy outlook all round for the prime property market... The latest data finds that, all prime London areas have experienced a monthly reduction in average prices and that annualised growth has reduced to 4.1% now at its lowest level since May 2006, following sales prices taking their third consecutive hit in August.

Firstrung: Mortgage rates set to soar as LIBOR climbs above 6% - Fool.co.uk

It has taken six months for the interest rate that banks pay to borrow from each other to fall from 6% to 5.7%. But following the recent turmoil in financial markets, it has taken less than a week for those costs to be completely reversed. In just four days, the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) has climbed back above 6%... Since March, the fall in LIBOR has benefitted homeowners as lenders passed on their cheaper borrowing costs. Six months ago the typical Standard Variable Rate (SVR) was 6.74%, when LIBOR was 6%. Six months on, LIBOR rates fell to 5.7%, with typical SVRs dropping to around 6.49%.

Firstrung: Net mortgage lending collapses by over 95 percent in August to reach lowest recorded figure

Mortgage lending virtually stopped during August, with advances diving to a stunning 5% of the previous month's total, figures released this morning by the bank of England have shown... Net lending was only £143 million during the month, a fraction of July's sum of just under £3 billion and the lowest figure ever recorded by the Bank of England's statistics series which began in 1993. Speculation over the Government's recent stamp duty flip flopping and later announcement is also thought to have caused people to delay making a purchase during August until the future of the tax was clearer.

Introducertoday: Sharpest house price falls on record – and more to come

The house price fall of 1.9% recorded by the Land Registry in August was the sharpest in the whole of the eight years that the official house price index has been going. But agents fear that because the Land Registry is so historic – recording prices of deals completed months after prices were agreed – worse is to come.

Market Oracle: Last Chance for Financial Crisis Truth

Martin Weiss writes: On this fateful Sunday morning, while Congress inches closer to approving the greatest financial bailout in history, while we teeter on the brink of what the President himself calls "a financial panic," and while you and I enjoy the momentary luxury of a quiet respite, it's time to sit back and take a long, hard look at what's best for us, our country, our children and their children as well.

Posted by sold 2 rent 1 @ 11:06 AM 25 Comments

Citywire: The death blow for buy-to-let?

......One thing is clear though. Even if the taxpayer is protected under the plan, the buy-to-let market is not. Bradford & Bingley was the industry's largest buy to let and self cert lender. With its collapse it is hard to imagine any other lenders wanting to get into this market.

Yahoo: Cazenove advises Lloyds TSB to raise cash now

Lloyds TSB should bite the bullet and raise cash now instead of risking being forced to do so if its proposed merger with HBOS

bbc: Akzo Nobel set to cut 3,500 jobs

The world's largest paintmaker, Akzo Nobel, is to cut 3,500 jobs by 2011 as part of a cost-cutting drive. Akzo Nobel, which bought ICI in an £8bn deal earlier this year, said the move to trim costs would lead to extra savings of 100m euros ($144m; £79m).

BBC News: Mortgage markets still slumping

More good news.

BBC News: Mortgage Lending Slumps

Mortgage lending collapsed in August, according to the latest figures from the Bank of England. Only £143m was lent by banks and building societies, just 5% of July's lending figure and only 2% of the lending in August 2007. August is traditionally the quietest month for house sales. But the Bank's figures also show that 32,000 new mortgages were approved in August, a new record low and 70% fewer than a year ago. This suggests that the fall in sales and prices will continue into next year.

CNN: Main Street turns against Wall Street

A populist backlash is changing America's political climate. Inflamed by the financial crisis and bailouts, a form of class warfare could haunt business leaders for years to come.

FT: A bad day for Benelux banking - a great day for Europe

The most important financial crisis-related news this morning is not the tentative agreement on TARP-lite reached over the weekend in the USA. At best this is a holding operation that buys (a little) time for the US banking system while the industry and the authorities figure out how to recapitalise the banking sector. It is also not the nationalisation of Bradford and Bingley, a systemically unimportant UK bank specialising in residential and buy-to-let mortgages. B&B is less than half the size of Northern Rock (at its peak).

BBC: Hypo shares crash after loan deal

Shares in German lender Hypo Real Estate plunged after it struck a loan deal with a consortium of German banks. Its shares lost three-quarters of their value, falling to 3.39 euros, before a slight revival to 63% down at 5 euros. The firm did not reveal the names of the loan banks, or even the deal amount, which may be up to 35bn euros (£27.8bn,$51.21bn) say media reports. Hypo has been badly affected by the financial markets crisis as it borrows heavily from the interbank market. It is thought the deal has ensured financing for the Hypo until the end of next year.

Posted by jack c @ 10:34 AM 6 Comments

CNN: Rescue bill unveiled

Don't be surprised if Paulson decides vanish to some south american country now with a pocket full of dosh....

Lew Rockwell Show: Hyperinflation?

Lew Rockwell interviews Jörg Guido Hülsmann. In this 15min podcast, he explains that the markets could solve this in 1-3yrs, but that the bailout means 10yrs plus of depression. He warns that the Euro is also at risk and touches upon the threat that this crisis will be used to formalise a global financial body. I personally say formalise, because central banks now seem to be co-ordinating all their efforts, with far more emphasis on the global than the local. Its as if the electorate didn't exist!

Telegraph: Santander buys Bradford & Bingley's branches

Santander, the Spanish banking giant and owner of Abbey National and Alliance & Leicester, has bought Bradford & Bingley's branch network and £21bn deposit book, leaving the Treasury to nationalise the failed mortgage lender's £50bn loan book.

Posted by paul @ 08:24 AM 35 Comments

Yahoo Finance: Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands partially nationalise Fortis

The Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourgian governments have taken 49% stakes of the subsidiaries in their respective countries. I'm not sure where that leaves the UK subsidiary. They have a few branches in this country which mainly deal with business and high net worth clients. They are also one of the largest car insurers in the country, selling policies through the likes of HSBC.

Guardian: UK house prices fall again in September

British house prices fell for a 12th month running in September to stand 6.2 percent lower than they were a year ago, a survey by Hometrack showed on Monday. The drop of 1.0 percent on the month to £165,300 pounds was bigger than the 0.9% decline in August and suggests the government's decision to raise the threshold for stamp duty has done little to support the housing market. Richard Donnell, Hometrack's director of research, said, "Looking ahead it is very hard to identify the mechanisms by which the current cycle of weak confidence, declining sales volumes and falling prices can be reversed in the near future." Properties in September typically took almost twice as long to sell as last year -- and the percentage of the asking price being achieved fell to the lowest level on record.

Posted by little professor @ 12:23 AM 7 Comments

telegraph: Hedge funds face record redemptions :

Financial crisis: Hedge funds face record redemptions Global hedge funds will this week be forced to hand back hundreds of millions of pounds to investors in the biggest round of redemptions the sector has ever faced.Hedge funds are preparing to return between 10 per cent and 50 per cent of their assets under management to investors who want their money back at the end of yet another quarter of dire investment performance. One prime broker said: “Many funds will have to close. There were a flood of redemption notices at the beginning of the quarter but many investors said they wouldn’t actually withdraw the money if performance improved. It hasn’t.”

Telegraph UK: Financial crisis: Bradford & Bingley nationalisation will cost taxpayers £150bn

Britain will effectively have its own Government-owned “toxic bank” with £150 billion of debt - £50 billion from Bradford & Bingley and £100 billion from Northern Rock......

Posted by tom101 @ 11:44 PM 9 Comments

Telegraph: Financial crisis: Fortis to become latest victim of bank crisis

Fortis, a giant Belgian-Dutch bank is poised to become the biggest European casualty of the banking crisis, with regulators in Europe trying to negotiate a rescue package. The bank, which has a significant presence in the UK – it is the country's third largest car insurer – could become the largest victim of the financial turmoil that has swept from Wall Street across the Atlantic.

Telegraph: Gordon Brown is 'bust', says David Cameron

"On the first day of the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham he said it was Mr Brown who spent too much while he was Chancellor and plunged Britain into debt. The Tory leader also raised the prospect of having to raise taxes if he becomes Prime Minister. And he warned against "bashing" bankers, and said he would not seek "cheap headlines" by blaming City practices for the current crisis".

Posted by alan @ 08:55 PM 18 Comments

BBC: Alchemy boss says recession looms

One of the UK's most outspoken businessmen, private equity boss Jon Moulton, has said the UK economy is weeks away from recession. He said he feared that the US financial rescue plan may not work. "Nobody really knows how it will work, there are no good models." "This vast package may not even be big enough." "I'm a very depressing bear at the moment."

TIMESONLINE: The Ten Biggest Stock Market Crashes of All Time

Some investors might think they have had a rough ride on the stock market over the past seven or eight months. But the recent share price gyrations pale into insignificance when compared with the biggest stock market falls of all time. David Shwartz, the stock market historian, says: “The very big stock market crashes are invariably triggered by a series of different events which unfold one after the other. So no need to worry then, but have you noticed that with the exception of 1929-32 the last 20years or so have be whoppers.Chances are the next one will be a double whopper.

Posted by plato @ 07:16 PM 6 Comments

BBC: B&B: end of an era

"The reverberations from the nationalisation of Bradford & Bingley will be profound. First, it takes out of the market the leading provider of buy-to-let and self-cert mortgages. Once the £41bn of B&B's mortgages is publicly owned, it will be run down over the coming years. And it's very unlikely that the Government will feel it wants to use taxpayers money to provide new buy-to-let and self-cert mortgages. In other words, two big chunks of the mortgage market will be all-but closed - since few other banks are remotely interested in providing this kind of mortgage, which are perceived as higher risk."

Posted by renting2 @ 06:02 PM 9 Comments

TBR news: The Voice of the White House

And may I give you several pieces of what I consider sound advice? First, if you have any extra money in one of the bigger banks, take it out and put it in a shoe box in your closet. If these banks start to collapse suddenly, which they are very likely to do, even the Government can’t supply them and their branches with enough paper to cover deposits. The second thought is to take some extra money, assuming you have any, and buy gold with it. Get this from a reputable coin dealer and buy older European gold coins like British Sovereigns and Half Sovereigns, French or Swiss francs. Keep away from weird gold from small countries…very hard to sell if you need to….and never, never buy gold and let some big company help you out by insisting they will store it in their “safe vaults.”

Market Ticker: MAKE THIS VIRAL - STOP THE BAILOUT! SAVE AMERICA!

Please think carefully about the following facts before you vote: · Public opinion is running anywhere from 100:1 to 300:1 against passing this bill, according to sources on Capitol Hill. You must return home after you pass this package to ANGRY constituents with an election less than a month away. Given the massive size of this package, the fact that it rewards the guilty on Wall Street and does nothing to address the cause that anger is fully justified. but - but - but GORDON SAID IT WAS OK !

Times Online: Savers flock to Northern Rock

NORTHERN ROCK is within days of being forced to stop taking savings from new customers after a rush of deposits into the nationalised bank. More than £1 billion of savings has flooded into it in the past two weeks, following the continuing chaos that has engulfed the banking sector. The government guarantees underpinning Northern Rock have been encouraging savers to move their cash. [Comment:] Ill thought-out knee-jerk reaction that attempts to control a market soon has its comeuppance when the government realises the market has more money than it does and it comes back to bite them. Should they: a) interfere further, causing further distortion, or b) back off and remove the distortion, so avoiding capital outflow from other banks, which endangers the rest of the system?

Posted by dohousescrashinthewoods @ 05:31 PM 10 Comments

Market Ticker: Mother of all Frauds

The claim is that this is intended to "promote confidence and stability" in the financial markets. It will do no such thing. It will instead strike terror into the hearts of investors worldwide who hold any sort of paper, whether it be preferred stock, common stock or debt, in any financial entity that happens to be domiciled in the United States, never mind the potential impact on Treasury yields and the United States sovereign credit rating. I predict that if this passes it will precipitate the mother and father of all financial panics, although exactly when the "short bus" riders who inhabit the equity market will figure it out remains to be seen. If they have an IQ larger than their shoe size it will commence at 9:30:01 AM Monday morning,

ICH via Truthseeker: Trouble in Banktopia

Last week, there was a digital run on the banks that most people never even heard about; a "real time" crash. An article in the New York Post by Michael Gray gave a blow by blow description of how events unfolded. Here's a clip from Gray's "Almost Armageddon": "The market was 500 trades away from Armageddon on Thursday" Roubini added: "The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown." and over here, the banks get B&Bsavers deposits and the tax payer gets the debt.

Posted by malct @ 04:31 PM 15 Comments

Seeking Alpha: It Could Happen - Cramer's Mad Money (9/26/08)

"We are truly in dire straits here people," Cramer told viewers. He said the failure of Congress to pass the bailout plan is causing the banking system to fall deeper into trouble. The markets, he said, are completely out of control.

Seeking Alpha: The Secret Villain Behind Our Economic Collapse

"I think what made this bubble more powerful than most was the sheer magnitude of the people who benefited from it..Even the village idiot got in on the act. He went from flipping burgers to flipping houses..and that makes for great TV..This ecstasy feedback loop was particularly powerful because people weren't just making money. They were underwriting "the American Dream". Isn't that what it's all about? In that way, this bubble was stronger than the "dot com" bubble or the Tulip bubble. It was almost as powerful as a gravitational black hole..The few people who did sound the alarm sounded like party poopers." House Price Crashers

Telegraph: Britain suffering from a buy-to-let blowout

Unusually, an article about the UK housing market. How bad things are looking and how dependent Bradford & Bingley is on buy-to-let mortgages.

Posted by monty032 @ 09:28 AM 17 Comments

Yahoo: Wealthy financier throws himself under a train

A wealthy financier said to be overwhelmed by the current global banking crisis has died after throwing himself in front of a commuter train. Married father-of-one Kirk Stephenson, 47, chief operating officer at private equity firm Olivant, died on Thursday near Taplow station in Buckinghamshire, police said. Olivant came to prominence as one of the bidders for Northern Rock in 2006. Mr Stephenson reportedly owned a £3.6 million house in Chelsea and another property in the West Country. A source said: "I imagine, like most high-flying bankers, he will probably have lost a lot of cash recently as a result of the credit crunch. It appears the pressure became too much to bear. Figures close to Mr Stephenson are worried that news of his death will lead to speculation about his company."

Posted by little professor @ 09:22 AM 25 Comments

The Market Oracle: Bradford & Bingley Nationalised Another UK Bank Wiped Out by Tulip Backed Securities

Bradford and Bingley's slow 12 month death march towards the same fate as Northern Rock finally looks set to have come to an end with expectations on Sunday that the beleaguered bank will be nationalised with a view to a break of the bank and liquidation of assets so as to cover in part the estimated £20 billion bailout cost that is required to fill the gap between assets and liabilities. The toxic mortgages will probably end up with the government owned Northern Rock bank which will increasingly be seen as the UK Governments Toxic Mortgage Dump where the tulip backed securities of further bank busts and partial bailouts will end up.

The Local: Germany's News in English: Steinbrück slams US for sparking global financial crisis

Germany headed the Group of Eight industrialized nations last year and advocated greater transparency in international financial transactions, especially in hedge funds. But it was thwarted by US and British resistance. The Germans are having a field day with this. Any problems in their own economy will be conveniently blamed on the UK and US. As they say in football, "We have gifted them this one".

Posted by last_days_of_disco @ 08:50 AM 6 Comments

Times Online: Bailout storm rages

One senior banker said: “People keep saying that banks are scared to lend to one another, but that’s not quite it. The money we lend is not ours, but our customers’. With everything going on in the markets, our corporate customers are only willing to deposit it overnight. It’s a corporate equivalent of all our personal customers moving their savings into their current accounts in case they need the money.”

FT: Washington Mutual

On Thursday night, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation descended to carve up Washington Mutual. After the Office of Thrift Supervision ordered the closure of the largest US thrift, the meat of WaMu’s business was immediately sold to JPMorgan Chase for a mere $1.9bn. Also see http://markets.ft.com/tearsheets/performance.asp?s=us%3AJPM & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPMorgan_Chase

CNBC Mad Money: Ron Paul on Jim Cramer's Mad Money

Ron Paul and Jim Cramer make unlikely allies, but I am delighted that finally an old-style politician of true sincerity has actually broken through into the mainstream. Here they summarise with wonderful clarity what is wrong with the world monetary system and explain how it causes boom and bust cycles. Ron Paul: "It is the distortion of interest rates by manipulating of the money supply that cause these bubbles to form." Jim Cramer to Ron Paul: "Why is it that people are turning on to YouTube to see you talk about something that 'everybody else' thinks is too boring??!?!!!?"

Times Online: Boris Johnson asks China for 2012 handout

THE mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is planning to go cap-in-hand to the Chinese government after the credit crunch and falling house prices left a £250m hole in funding for the 2012 Olympics.

BBC: Property slump in '40 year low'

It's that dastardly credit crunch again. No mention of insanely high prices putting buyers off who've finally worked out the "market" is a big scam and it's crash like the house of cards it is. Pointless rubbish.

Posted by doomwatch @ 10:19 PM 6 Comments

BBC: BREAKING NEWS: Treasury to nationalise B&B bank

Troubled bank Bradford & Bingley is to be nationalised, the BBC has learned. The bank will be nationalised using special legislation the Treasury put through when it took Northern Rock into public ownership earlier this year. BBC News business editor Robert Peston says the Treasury will almost instantaneously sell to a bank, or a number of banks. B&B's £50bn of loans will not be sold and will be nationalised on a long-term basis.

Posted by little professor @ 10:13 PM 16 Comments

CNN: Senate passes $634B spending bill

Automakers gained $25 billion in taxpayer-subsidized loans and oil companies won elimination of a long-standing ban on drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts as the Senate passed a sprawling spending bill Saturday. The 78-12 vote sent the $634 billion measure to President Bush, who was expected to sign it even though it spends more money and contains more pet projects than he would have liked.

Posted by mark @ 09:33 PM 6 Comments

FT: Regulators race to find B&B solution

The UK Treasury and financial regulators are racing against time to find a solution to help shore up Bradford & Bingley before the markets open on Monday morning.

thisismoney: House price crash myths: True or false?

Homeowners across Britain are facing up to a 'house price crash', but will it help you move up the ladder, are mortgages impossible to get and is buy to let dead? The Daily Mail updates white not-too-intelligent middle-class xenophobics.....

bbc news: morgage victims may go to court

Thousands of people who say they are trapped in their home by mortgages they took out in the 1990s could get the contracts changed by the courts. Lawyers say these deals were unfair giving too much to the banks and too little to the borrowers.

Bloomberg: U.K. Banks Seek Government Funding Plan to Help Restart Lending

British banks are proposing the government help bail them out of losses from the credit crunch so they can resume lending, Industry executives held talks this week about different options, including the establishment of a so-called bad bank, run by the government. It would take over assets including mortgage-backed securities that declined in value with the collapse of the U.S. subprime home-loan market, said the people, who declined to be identified because the negotiations are confidential. Not in my name.

BBC News: Lamborghini free with house

A seller whose Essex house has been on the market for three months has thrown in his Lamborghini as a sweetener.

Bloomberg: California Home Prices Drop Record 41%

The median price of an existing, single-family detached home fell to $350,140, the lowest since March 2003, and will likely fall further, the Los Angeles-based California Association of Realtors said today in a report. Sales increased 56.7 percent from August 2007 and 1.8 percent from July.

The renegade economist: Gordon's the Short Seller

Gordon Brown is the real villain, not his scapegoat: the short sellers. These traders sell shares they do not own, hoping to pocket a profit. This is now blamed for destabilising the banks, and the Prime Minister is promising to “clean up” the City. Another year and we'll be in the 2010 recession?

this is money: post office savers covered up to 80k

post office savers covered up to 80k

The Guardian: Want a new house? It's yours for free

"As offers go, it's pretty hard to beat. Buy a newly built home now and you can live in it for free - no mortgage, no council tax and no house insurance. The developer is even offering to pay your gas and electricity bills." This deal over a year amounts to only a 5% reduction on price and yet is decsribed in these terms by the reporter; "it looks as though the Persimmon deal has raised the bar again - and this in an industry that has already seen new houses being offered complete with linen on the supplied beds and towels in fitted wardrobes" Sorry, towels and linen??!! How much does that knock off the price of the house (and you'll be lucky in they're to your taste)? Only a lunatic would be tempted by the latest offer - but I guess there are still a few of those around...

BBC: Question Time 25th Sep 08

He let's rip "straight off the bat" with the first question ... "Property bubble ... pyramid selling scheme ... etc, etc." Hazel "Ronald McDonald" Blears thinks we've got a stable economy and refused to accept blame about housing market, instead trying to divert focus to those nasty short seller bogey men. I said over 2 years ago that the housing bubble would soon beocme a political hot potato if avoided.

Posted by doomwatch @ 03:21 PM 18 Comments

MoneyWeek: The role of central banks in the financial crisis

We've read a lot in recent months about central banks 'injecting' money into markets – but how does this work? And how deep are their pockets?

Telegraph: Financial Crisis does US face full scale run on its currency

Run on US $ unlikely because no viable alternative other than gold. Global recession a done deal. US has vitiality to emerge from it. EU (which isn't a real entity anyway) likely to be ripped apart. Some positive words for gold and silver bugs.

VOAnews: US Bailout Talks Continue; Britain's Brown Pledges Support

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown met with Mr. Bush at the White House late Friday, and offered his backing. "Britain supports the financial plan, and whatever the details offered, it is the right thing to do to take us through these difficult circumstances," he said.

Posted by cornishman @ 12:50 PM 19 Comments

Market Oracle: End of the Financial World- LIBOR TED Spread Flashes Trouble

Best thing you will read on this, for the exceptional info alone, even if you disagree. But call it a Stabilization Plan not a Bailout. He explains how paniced the credit markets are (excellent charts) and the consequences of inaction (a depression). "There is no reason for the taxpayer to lose money. Warren Buffett, Bill Gross of PIMCO, and my friend Andy Kessler have all said this could be done without the taxpayer losing money, and perhaps could even make a profit. As noted above, these bonds could be bought at market prices that would actually make a long-term buyer a profit. Put someone like Bill Gross in charge and let him make sure the taxpayers are buying value. This would re-liquefy the banks and help get their capital ratios back in line." Hold your nose and vote yes he says.

The Independent: Be in no doubt, Britain too is in the centre of this storm

We should not underestimate the extent to which the City is suffering from the same contagion as Wall Street. There was stupid lending and greed-driven recklessness in London, just as there was in New York. Our banks might not have been involved in the disgraceful business of selling sub-prime mortgages to poor Americans who could not afford them, but they were more than happy to buy up the high-yielding financial instruments that were linked to the value of these bad loans. And our larger investment banks still have a lot of this financial toxic waste on their balance sheets.

Posted by nooneo @ 12:13 PM 7 Comments

FT: It’s time to review the house rules

Merryn Somerset Webb calls for regulation of the dodgy property pumpers

Telegraph: Financial Crisis: The next decade could be our very own Great Depression

"History shows that whenever there is a banking crisis, an economic slump, with all that entails - mass redundancies, falling house prices, widespread bankruptcies - invariably follows. The scale of the recession depends on the size of the banking crisis; the past year has brought the biggest systemic financial collapse since the 1930s." But...but...but... interest rates are much lower than last time!

The New York TImes: Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending

The article from 1999 provides a historic insight into the birth of sub-prime and the seed of a large proportion of the current financial mess experienced today. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I do believe that alarm bells would and should have started ringing in the head of any individual reading this back in 1999, let alone those "professionals" in the financial World.

Right move: Property details -Save on stamp duty

Why would I want to save £1650 when I will lose £33,000 when prices drop a further 20%?

Telegraph: Hugh Hefner to sack Playboy bunnies amid financial crisis

Things must be getting really bad if Hugh Hefner is having to cut costs. If virtually all industry was wiped out by financial Armageddon, like cockroaches after a nuclear war, this is one of the industries I would expect to find crawling out from under a rock. Its not exactly the oldest profession, but speaks to the same desires. Perhaps Mr Hefner is just being shrewd,l maybe after all the turmoil is over this could be the next bubble. Imagine that, a Playboy bubble, what would that be like?

Posted by mikelivingstone @ 08:22 AM 9 Comments

Pittsburgh Tribune: The Ron Paul solution

Bill Steigerwald talked to Paul by phone from Washington early Thursday evening as the Beltway political powers were still meeting and trying to agree on how to fix the problem.

Telegraph: Financial Crisis: US bail-out plan will not rescue the British economy

Indeed, watching the supercharged policy action coming from US policymakers, the question for many here should be "what about us"? The contrast is staggering. UK challenges are arguably just as great, and without any imaginative actions here, the risk of a recession at least as bad as in any of the past 30 years, if not worse, could arise. UK mortgage lending has all but come to a standstill. Just based on this factor alone and its historical track record as a leading indicator, the UK could be entering a year of significant negative domestic demand, causing a large rise in unemployment and much misery.

Guardian: Fears for Bradford & Bingley as shares crash

Speculation intensified last night that Bradford & Bingley's days as an independent bank were numbered, after its shares were pummelled and its market value fell to £390m, a fall of more than 90% from its peak. Shares in Lloyds TSB, HBOS, and Royal Bank of Scotland also dived, amid heightened concern over stability in the financial system if plans for the $700m (£378bn) US mortgage market bail-out fail. The financial authorities were reportedly scrambling for a solution for Bradford and Bingley, amid worry that the stricken lender might have to be nationalised if no solution can be found.

Posted by stevie dee @ 04:52 AM 11 Comments

BBC: Large discounts by home sellers

Home sellers are being forced to accept offers on average 9% below their asking price, said the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics). The gap between asking and selling price is widening as the property market downturn worsens, Rics added. Property prices have fallen by 11% in the past year, according to major lenders, while sales have fallen by more than half.

Daily Mail: Stand by for Black Monday: Britain braced for meltdown

The City is bracing itself for a "Black Monday" meltdown after President Bush admitted he had failed to land a bank bail-out deal. Senior market figures said the FTSE-100 could fall by between 600 and 1,000 points when the stock market opens next week if no deal is forthcoming. The frightening prospect of a collapse to match the 1987 crash was raised as George Bush confirmed that he had not yet been able to persuade senior Republicans to back his $700 billion rescue plan.

Posted by little professor @ 10:58 PM 18 Comments

The Daily Express: Bank shares soar on $700bn bail out

I know we are only supposed to add articles from reputable sources, but you may be interested to know that in the Daily Express's parallel universe, everything is fine, and you don't need to worry, unless of course you happen to own the Daily Mail

Telegraph: Financial crisis: Bradford & Bingley to become latest victim

Bradford & Bingley can no longer continue as an independent bank and will have to be nationalised in some form in the coming days, City sources have warned. A B&B spokesman said: "We are fully-funded and we are one of the strongest capitalised banks in the UK ( yeah - whatever)!

Evening Standard: Stand by for Black Monday

The City is bracing itself for a "Black Monday" meltdown after President Bush admitted he had failed to land a bank bail-out deal. Senior market figures said the FTSE-100 could fall by between 600 and 1,000 points when the stock market opens next week if no deal is forthcoming. George Bush confirmed that he had not yet been able to persuade senior Republicans to back his $700 billion rescue plan.

Mortgage Introducer: Scottish economy grinds to a halt

The latest Lloyds TSB Scotland Business Monitor shows the Scottish economy grinding to a halt. This latest edition for the three months ending 31 August 2008 shows 39% of firms surveyed reporting a decrease in turnover, 32% reporting static turnover and 29% reporting an increase, giving a net balance of -10%, down significantly from the previous quarter's figure of +11% and the +28% recorded for the same quarter one year ago.

Evening Standard: London house prices hit by record monthly fall

London house prices suffered a record plunge last month, wiping more than £8,000 off the value of an average home. Economists warned that the dramatic 2.4 per cent monthly drop reveals that the meltdown in the capital's property market is accelerating and set to get worse.

Bloomberg.com: Marc Faber Says U.S. Credit Losses May Total $5 Trillion

Marc Faber, well known economist and investment analyst gives an interview on Bloomberg TV, providing his views on the current crisis and the US bailout plans. He regards the proposed $700bn bailout as 'nothing' and a drop in the ocean to what is actually needed i.e. $5 Trillion.

Times: Gordon Brown: time to end the age of financial 'irresponsibility'

Gordon Brown today called for an end to the “age of irresponsibility” in the financial sector, his most frank acknowledgment so far the City was allowed to run wild while he was Chancellor.

Posted by enuii @ 07:30 PM 18 Comments

MoneyWeek: Ireland enters recession – why Britain is next

Ireland's economy has finally gone into recession. And while many commentators argue that Britain won't be next, those commentators are wrong...

The Telegraph: House prices fall in all areas of the country

Title says it all real, old news I guess, but the land registry is finally caching up with reality.

the Guardian: We must seize the initiative on the economy

The economic system constructed under Thatcher and Reagan is collapsing around us. The Tory party was partly responsible for this failed system and this gives Labour the opportunity to take the offensive – provided it is bold and draws the necessary conclusions. Gordon Brown now has an opportunity to set Labour's agenda for the coming decade. Labour has to take the arguments of his speech that addressed these issues and follow through with policies that will protect the public. As someone is going to have to pay the price for this economic crisis, Labour has to make clear it will not be the people the party must represent but the Tories whose Thatcherite system created this mess in the first place.

Posted by sold out @ 04:11 PM 19 Comments

BBC news: Bush says bail-out will be passed

President George W Bush has said that legislators will "rise to the occasion" and pass the Wall Street rescue plan. In a statement he said that are still disagreements because, "the proposal is big and the reason it's big is because it's a big problem".

Posted by sold out @ 03:16 PM 13 Comments

Citywire: Fortis ( Belgo-Dutch bank) takes a pounding as shares continue to plummet

Shares in Belgian-Dutch financial group Fortis fell for a fifth consecutive day on Friday as speculation mounts about the bank's future. Fortis' shares were down 8.3% on Friday and hit a 13-year low of €5.66 (£4.48), amid worsening newsflow about the Belgo-Dutch bank. Newspaper reports from Holland suggested Fortis would have to sell off some of its core activities to raise liquidity and there were also reports of a run on branches of ABN Amro, the Dutch consumer banking operations of which Fortis purchased last year.However, ABN Amro's Netherlands head tried to quell the concerns and told De Telegraaf that there was no need for investors to worry about the bank's liquidity.

SOTT: Financial Advice From Gorlock

Stephen Colbert gets sound advice from his financial advisor Gorlock. short comedy video and on topic

Wall Street Journal: WaMu Is Seized, Sold Off to J.P. Morgan, In Largest Failure in U.S. Banking History

"In what is by far the largest bank failure in U.S. history, federal regulators seized Washington Mutual Inc. and struck a deal to sell the bulk of its operations to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co." Government intervention would stop this sort of thing. What kind of a world will we be left with if laissez-faire capitalism allows the powerful to make a killing in the boom and then gobble up the small players in the bust? We need intervention now and strict regulation of the banking system like Germany has.

Posted by mountain goat @ 02:40 PM 9 Comments

Yahoo: JJB denies covenant breach

Is JJB about to go down the pan?

Posted by mark @ 02:16 PM 15 Comments

The Times: Falling rents hit London homes

Rents have suddenly started to slide alongside house prices as pessimism sets in throughout the City, say Savills

MoneyWeek: The $700bn bail-out is already hurting your wallet

The US Treasury's financial rescue plan isn't going to work. Banks are already hoarding cash and lending rates are soaring. And that means the cost of your own borrowing is going up, too. As David Stevenson explains, the plan is just a plain bad idea.

Posted by damien @ 01:26 PM 6 Comments

Buchanan via truthseeker: The Party's Over

Patrick J. Buchanan – September 2008 The Crash of 2008, which is now wiping out trillions of dollars of our people’s wealth, is, like the Crash of 1929, likely to mark the end of one era and the onset of another. An unelected financial elite is now entrusted with the assignment of getting us out of a disaster into which an unelected financial elite plunged the nation. We are just spectators. What the Greatest Generation handed down to us — the richest, most powerful, most self-sufficient republic in history, with the highest standard of living any nation had ever achieved — the baby boomers, oblivious and self-indulgent to the end, have frittered away.

Telegraph: Give it a rest guys

Malct and Stevie Dee, you have posted twelve articles so far today and they are all about the general economic problems, not about house prices. The general economic problems are important but this is is the House Price Crash website. If I want to read about the general economic crisis I'll read the Economist. Please be a bit more selective about what you post.

Posted by monty032 @ 11:59 AM 116 Comments

BBC: House price falls 'accelerating'

The fall in house prices has accelerated in England and Wales, according to the Land Registry. Its latest report shows that prices fell by 1.9% in August, taking the annual rate of price deflation to 4.6%. The figures mean that the average property now costs £174,493; £8,320 less than a year ago, with £3,871 of that drop occurring last month. Prices in London fell by 3.2%, the first monthly fall since the Registry started publishing its figures in 2000.

Posted by jack c @ 11:53 AM 11 Comments

SOTT: Naomi Klein: The Bomb Has Yet to Detonate

Naomi Klein argues that by transferring Wall Street's gambling debt to Main Street (what she calls crybaby capitalism), the shock doctrine will come into play: "They have moved the disaster from Wall Street to Main Street by accepting those debts.... But the bomb has yet to detonate. The bomb is the debt that has now been transferred to the taxpayers.

Sky News: Revolt Scuppers $700bn Bail-Out

The McCain campaign told reporters the summit degenerated into a "shouting match". Two sources inside the room told Fox News that the president warned dissenters the plan had to be approved or "this sucker (meaning the economy) could go down".

Posted by matt_the_hat @ 11:34 AM 8 Comments

Forbes: Not This Time

Consumer spending accounts for three-quarters of the $14 trillion U.S. economy. But this time spendthrift Americans, reeling from multiple blows, may not be able to come to the rescue. Their homes are still falling in value; stock market volatility has set everyone on edge; cash-out refinancing has nearly disappeared; and credit from other sources will soon run dry. People are losing their jobs. Personal debt (mortgage and other) hovers at 100% of annual GDP. Even if people wanted to spend it's harder than ever to do so

Forbes: Bad News For The Bailout

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy. "It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number." Wow. If it wants to see a bailout bill passed soon, the administration's going to have to come up with some hard answers to hard questions.

Posted by malct @ 11:28 AM 13 Comments

Times Online: Songbird Estates suffers a £470m loss as banking crisis at Canary Wharf bites

Songbird Estates, which develops and leases most of Canary Wharf in East London, said yesterday that the value of its property portfolio fell by 9.6 per cent to £6.7 billion in the first half of the year.... Metrovacesa, the Spanish property company, is having problems selling all or part of the HSBC tower in Canary Wharf. It bought the skyscraper from HSBC in April 2007 for £1.1 billion, making it Britain’s most expensive building. Metrovacesa is selling the building to help to repay an £810 million bridging loan that expires at the end of November.

Huffington Post: Keith Richards, Cockroaches, and the Firm of Goldman Sachs

It's been said that when the dust clears from WWIII, the only things left standing will be Keith Richards, cockroaches, and the investment bank of Goldman Sachs. Having lived long enough to see the Stones, my old New York kitchen, and the events of the past week, I wish I could disagree. Mr. Buffett, will receive perpetual preferred shares in Goldman, Mr. Praag said. The preferred stock will pay a 10 percent dividend. shell game explained in hpc comments - article page slow, has 133 comments

Finance Markets: Are Wachovia Bank and Ambac next to fail?

As Washington Mutual fails, Wachovia Bank and Ambac look increasingly like the next two big banking failures.

The Times: Borrowers hit as HSBC and Barclays raise rates

Mortgage rates continue up, with Barclays and HSBC the latest to announce rate rises.

Rightmove: Space 7,Lower Fish Street Garage,ST IVES

£58000 for a car parking space in St Ives: Dimensions MAX HEAD HEIGHT 1.9M SPACE Width 4.36m SPACE Length 2.63m narr to 2.29m Mad, just mad. For that money you could park for 40 years in the public car park near the Tate in St Ives.

Posted by kernow @ 10:29 AM 6 Comments

CSPANjunkie: HEY! CONGRESS! LISTEN UP! The American People Are Not Buying It!

Genuine C-Span Washington Journal video headlines coverage and phone in are they too late?

Posted by malct @ 10:13 AM 6 Comments

BBC NEWS: Bank giant HSBC axes 1,100 jobs

"Banking giant HSBC is to axe 1,100 jobs worldwide, blaming the current financial turmoil for the decision." .... "Many of the job-losses will be at the headquarters of HSBC's investment banking division, which are in London's Canary Wharf." More downward pressure on London house prices/rentals? More potential teachers? (News this am about city workers turning to teaching as a safer career.)

Telegraph: US taxpayers are being enrolled in an economic chain gang

"To preserve their [the people's] independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude" - Thomas Jefferson

Posted by holding out @ 09:33 AM 6 Comments

financialdirector.co.uk: HMRC plans swoop on a million landlords

Up to one million landlords could be facing the taxman as part of HMRC’s drive to track down tax evaders HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is targeting up to a million landlords in an effort to track down landlords who could be liable to pay extra tax on their buy-to-let rental income.

Reuters: Central banks dole out cash as bailout doubts grow

Figures released late Thursday showed U.S. institutions borrowed from the Fed $188 billion per day on average in the latest week, almost four times the previous record.

The FT: Gold coin sales halted after retail rush

The rush by retail investors into gold on Thursday forced the US government to “temporarily” suspend the sales of the popular American Buffalo one-ounce bullion coin after depleting its inventories.

Posted by sold 2 rent 1 @ 09:00 AM 27 Comments

Counterpunch: Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Here is Ralph Nader's take. He would have a good chance, but the Presidential "Debates", once run by the league of women voters was taken in by a quango when, Quigley inspired Clinton was panicked by a 3rd party getting almost 10% of votes. The Debates commission is headed by a Republican and a Democrat, and guess what, they ban 3rd and 4th parties from the debate,. Ralph is important because he can get 10% in some states, so is the main challenge to the two party dictatorship. "Congress needs to show some backbone before the federal government pours more money on the financial bonfire started by the arsonists on Wall Street." Ralph unfortunately appears to think that a bailout is necessary, but he does ask for debate, oversight, tough conditions & understands the threat from derivatives.

Times: Tempers flare as $700bn US rescue deal stalls

But not to Dubya this time. That's for laters. As p4ac says get your s*it together now. Don't rule out anything happening.

U.S. Senate: SHELBY PROPOSES ALTERNATIVE

Proponents of the Paulson plan are telling the American people we can solve this problem with a single bill. I don’t believe that is credible. We have a number of interrelated problems that need to be addressed in order of their significance. First, and most urgent, is liquidity. Then we must address the solvency of our financial institutions and declining home values, not to mention our entire regulatory structure.

FT: Time for the UK policy makers to wake up and tackle the crisis

With no private counterparty considered trustworthy for unsecured transactions, and with the private tripartite repo markets also drying up because of lack of confidence in the ‘intermediaries’ that act as counterparties for both legs of a tripartite repo market transaction, it is time for the Bank of England to take up the role of universal counterparty in tripartite repo transactions between private entities, and indeed also in the unsecured interbank market. The Bank of England must become the interbank market. Indemnification of the Bank of England by the Treasury for any credit-risk related losses incurred as a result of its universal counterparty role will, of course, be necessary.

Nader.org: Congressional Backbone Needed

Congress needs to show some backbone before the federal government pours more money on the financial bonfire started by the arsonists on Wall Street.

Daily Mail: House prices falling by £83 a day - that's more than the average wage

The average UK house price has been falling £45 a day since the beginning of the year, research revealed yesterday. In the worst-hit part of the country - Merioneth in North Wales - prices are tumbling £83 a day. At this rate, a typical worker is losing more from the value of their home than they earn after tax. The average full-time worker earns £23,750 a year - equal to a take-home pay of only £69.65 a day. Price falls varied significantly by area, according to the report by property valuation website Zoopla.co.uk.

Posted by little professor @ 07:46 AM 8 Comments

FT: HSBC cuts 1,100 staff from its investment bank

Thursday’s cuts – equal to about 4 per cent of HSBC’s total employees in its global banking and markets division – come as investment banks around the world cut staff and trim costs in expectation of a continued slowdown in the business.

BBC: Regulator shuts Washington Mutual

Washington Mutual (WaMu) has been closed by its regulator, making it the biggest US bank to fail.

AP - Yahoo: WaMu becomes biggest bank to fail in US history

As the debate over a $700 billion bank bailout rages on in Washington, one of the nation's largest banks -- Washington Mutual Inc. -- has collapsed under the weight of its enormous bad bets on the mortgage market. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized WaMu on Thursday, and then sold the thrift's banking assets to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $1.9 billion. Seattle-based WaMu, which was founded in 1889, is the largest bank to fail by far in the country's history. Its $307 billion in assets eclipse the $40 billion of Continental Illinois National Bank, which failed in 1984, and the $32 billion of IndyMac, which the government seized in July.

mail: Named: The trader with a £1bn bet that British banks will fall

Paulson & Co was revealed as shortselling four of Britain's five biggest financial companies by holding £1 billion in shares. It has short positions of £352 million (1.18 per cent) in Barclays, £260 million (1.76 per cent) in Lloyds TSB, £90 million (0.95 per cent) in HBOS and £292 million (0.87 per cent) in Royal Bank of Scotland

mail: Homeowners face paying an extra £450 a year as lenders rush to raise mortgage rates

Billions of pounds have been put into the Bank of England’s overnight low-interest ‘ standing deposit facility’ – a sign of its nervousness. Although this was £9.5billion on Monday, it had fallen to £5.9billion on Tuesday, and just £35million on Wednesday.

spiegel.de: 'Europe Should Establish A Rescue Fund' In Europe, too, banks could suddenly find themselves in trouble. Europe needs to find a way to handle this, argues ex-banker and finance professor Dolf van den Brink.

Dolf van den Brink is an experienced banker. He lived through the Latin American debt crisis, the currency crisis that hit the European Monetary Fund, the fall of the British pound in 1991, the Russian crisis of 1997 and the Asia flu in 1998. But he has never seen anything that compares with what is happening with the current financial markets crisis on Wall Street.

Credit Writedowns: JP Morgan Chase buys WaMu out

JP Morgan Chase has taken over the deposit taking subsidiary of Washington Mutual. The transaction is effective immediately, meaning it has closed. This is the biggest deal in FDIC activity yet.

Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty: My Answer to the President

Also visit the Campaign For Liberty Website - Full e-mail in the first comment. Dear Friends: The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived. We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.

Posted by planning4acrash @ 02:55 AM 15 Comments

Property Week: West Mids estate agent Barbers goes into administration

One of the largest and oldest estate agencies in the West Midlands has been forced to call in administrators, close offices and cut 60 staff.

Evening Standard: Church accused of short-selling

The Church of England has been accused by a think-tank of using short-selling tactics to maximise profit on its £5 billion investments.

Guardian: FSA fines mortgage lender £1.1m

Sub-prime lender GE Money Home Lending has been fined £1.1m by the city watchdog for system failings that resulted in borrowers facing losses of more than £2.3m

Yahoo: HSBC hikes mortgage rates on market turmoil

HSBC is hiking the cost of its fixed mortgages from Friday in reaction to credit market turbulence last week, a move widely expected by analysts. HSBC, the country's ninth largest lender, said it would increase the interest on its range of fixed rate products to 6.27 percent from 5.97 percent, following in the footsteps of Yorkshire Building Society on Monday. Fees will decrease to 499 pounds from 799 pounds. "With swaps spiking over the last week by 40 bps, we have tried to maintain choice in the market, but also not reducing LTVs (loan to value)," said HSBC. Swaps are used by banks to finance fixed rate mortgages. Turmoil in the markets last week led to a tightening of wholesale funding and a jump in the interbank lending rates.

CNN: Democrats say they reached bipartisan agreement on set of principles, but Republican balk. White House meeting contentious.

Chaos erupted on Thursday in the negotiations over the proposed financial bailout as lawmakers bickered over competing counterproposals to the Bush administration's $700 billion rescue plan. A meeting at the White House between President Bush, congressional leaders and the presidential candidates was meant to speed approval of an agreement, but instead revealed deep divisions between Democrats and Republicans.

AP - Yahoo: No deal yet on financial bailout: Congressional leaders still working on $700 billion bailout

Key members of Congress claimed agreement Thursday on an outline and crucial details of an urgent multibillion-dollar plan to stave off national economic disaster, but a historic White House meeting with President Bush, the two men fighting to replace him and other congressional leaders broke up with conflicts in plain view.

Times: Hopes of interest rate cut rise as Kate Barker acknowledges dangers facing economy

Too much to sum up in this one but its worth the read for the MPC members views including; there is a real danger that the latest developments in the financial market will result in a large undershoot of the inflation target, and if we enter a recession it will be less severe than the early Eighties and early Nineties ones!

Posted by enuii @ 10:43 PM 9 Comments

The Times: Falling rents hit London homes

Falling rents will depress yields and further discourage any investors who may have been drawn in by higher relative returns as property values dropped. Lucian Cook, a director of research at Savills, says: “It will be very hard for investors to pin the tail on the donkey while rents are falling.”

Seeking Alpha: Is the $700 Billion Really for Bailing Out the Fed?

The Fed, according to PPT theory, acts as the PPT’s private slush fund. Money is taken out to pump up stock prices, and then taken back in so that prices will fall. The PPT players profit on the movements of the market, induced by this activity. If all of this is true, maybe, Bernanke and Paulson don't want to admit the embarrassing facts?

CNN: Oil rises on bailout worries

Crude ends the day higher as investors fret that the government's $700 billion economic rescue plan could cripple the dollar.

Telegraph: Banking bailout gets backing from congress

"News of the deal will spark speculation that Gordon Brown will soon have to introduce a copycat scheme for Britain's struggling banks. The Prime Minister is travelling out today to Washington DC to meet the US President and discuss the global financial crisis." A UK bank bailout might be tempting to our lame duck PM.

Bloomberg: U.S. Economy: Home Sales drop

Sales of new homes in the U.S. fell in August to a 17-year low and orders for durable goods dropped more than forecast, evidence of the mounting risks to the economy that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke warned of yesterday. Today's reports are ``a recipe for recession,'' said Guy Lebas, chief economist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia.

The Times: Wall St bailout - the deal is done

Gold!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by matt_the_hat @ 08:44 PM 20 Comments

via truthseeker: wall street bailout

says it all again but if they fall we fall http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/index.asp Israel Shamir: Hang 'Em High! Instead of spelling disaster, writes Israel Shamir, the financial collapse offers a unique opportunity to fix all of America’s ills More ...

BBC: US agrees to details of bail-out

Both US parties in Congress have reached agreement on the outlines of a $700bn (£348bn) bail-out plan to revive the financial sector.

daily mail: queens credit crunch

whoooooarrrgh.... the honourable lady still recieves benefits ..surely isnt right.

Evening Standard: Bailout hopes boost shares

"The US deal overshadowed gloomier economic news in Britain with high street lender HSBC setting higher interest rates for first-time buyers and Bradford & Bingley announcing 300 job losses in Hertfordshire"

HIP-Consultant.co.uk: How to make an offer on your dream home

You’ve located the house of your dreams; how should you approach making an offer on this property? There are some simple points to consider and remember but have you done so? HIP-Consultant.co.uk's guest writer Karen Donaldson offers some practical tips, advice and her thoughts.

Yahoo: Brown Backs Bush's Bail Out Plan

Gordon Brown has backed George Bush's rescue plan for the US economy. The Prime Minister said the taxpayer's bail out was essential to restore stability to the markets. ============================================ But I thought things were stable.....

Posted by mark @ 04:01 PM 53 Comments

The Nation: Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle

If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public--all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called "responsible opinion." If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics--exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion.

Posted by malct @ 02:31 PM 21 Comments

C-span via SOTT: Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur Puts a Beatdown on Bush Bailout (video)

Wall Street and the Administration want to play the bailout game, and this is how they propose to do it: 1.) Rush the decision 2.) Disarm the public through fear 3.) Control the playing field (hide info from the public, hold private hearings, and private teleconferencing calls) 4.) Divert attention and keep people confused 5.) The goal is to privatize gains and socialize losses You have perpetrated the greatest financial crimes ever on this American Republic. You think you can get by with it because you are extraordinarily wealthy, and the largest contributors to both presidential and congressional campaigns in both major parties. more here http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/23/14159/5504/484/60

Posted by malct @ 02:17 PM 7 Comments

Reuters via SOTT: China banks told to halt lending to US banks-SCMP

BEIJING, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday. The Hong Kong newspaper cited unidentified industry sources as saying the instruction from the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) applied to interbank lending of all currencies to U.S. banks but not to banks from other countries.

Posted by malct @ 02:06 PM 8 Comments

CNN: GE’s leverage problem

General Electric (GE) is the latest levered-up financial company to hit the wall.

supporter's e-mail: KUCINICH'S MAIN STREET RECOVERY PLAN

Listening to the mainstream Democrats and Republicans is useless. Denis is the voice of traditional Democrats and Ron Paul is the voice of traditional Republicans/Libertarians. This e-mail, just in, the rest is in the comments below: Dear Friend, While Wall Street and the Bush Administration try to blackmail Congress into a $700 billion bailout for corporations that have shown zero concern about the plight of the American people through the last decade, I have been working on a comprehensive alternative. Today, I am releasing a plan for economic recovery that will provide not only economic stimulus, but also fairness for everyday people on every "Main Street" in America. The plan is detailed below, and it will also be available on the campaign website.

bbc: Car giants set to get $25bn loan

The House of Representatives voted to back a spending bill that includes a low-interest loan for the industry. The US government has only bailed out a carmaker once before and that was with a much smaller amount of money.

Bloomberg: U.K. Banks Are Biggest Winners in Credit Turmoil: Matthew Lynn

"Once the chaos of the last few weeks eases and everyone gets a chance to sort through the rubble, one thing will be clear: The dominant members of the financial system that emerges will be British retail banks such as Barclays Plc, HSBC Holdings Plc and Lloyds TSB Group Plc." I don't agree with this, but interesting none the less.

BBC NEWS: Irish Economy Goes Into Recession

The Irish Republic's economy has fallen into recession after shrinking for a second quarter in succession. Full Story - http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/economy/current/qna.pdf

Posted by renting2 @ 01:35 PM 17 Comments

youtube: Congressional Joint Economic Hearing from yesterday morning

Check out the various statements to congress by Ron Paul on the issue on Google. Ron Paul discusses solutions taken "I don't know where you get the authority to create credit from thin air" - Bernanke blames Congress for delegating unconstitutional authority via the 1913 Federal Reserve Act. Way to go Ron! He also makes the elephant in the room statement, that Inflation cannot be solved with more inflation.

Posted by planning4acrash @ 01:34 PM 18 Comments

Citywire: Gaping cracks open in new-build buy-to-let

News coming out of the auction houses indicating that house prices still have further to fall and mortgage lenders will have to be much more realistic about the price they can expect to get for repossessed properties. Moreover buy-to-let investors who think they can just walk away from investments which are now in negative equity and worth less than the value of the mortgage will have to think again. The lenders will pursue them.

Mortgage Introducer: FTBs could take until 2023 to save a deposit

Fairinvestment.co.uk research has found that it could take first time buyers 15 years to save the deposit for their first home.

Posted by renting2 @ 01:10 PM 12 Comments

Times: B&B slashes hundreds of mortgage jobs, throwing future into doubt

"B&B said it remained strongly capitalized." Which usually means they are in big trouble

Guardian: Archbishops attack profiteers and 'bank robbers' in City

Perhaps this is off-topic, but now that only the fairies can hold up house prices I think are interest is broader. I welcome the Church offering their views, especially as politicians seem incapable of offering convincing leadership these days. ' "To a bystander like me, those who made £190m deliberately underselling the shares of HBOS in spite of a very strong capital base, and drove it into the arms of Lloyds TSB, are clearly bank robbers and asset strippers," he said.' Bystander, you're not the Archbishop are you???

Posted by letthemfall @ 11:58 AM 14 Comments

Truthseeker: When the gamblers bail out the casino

Bank's say they cannot value their troubled mortgage assets and that they're gumming up the system. This is just plea for bailouts to 'free up' lending again and 'get the economy going'. In fact there is a market for these assets. Hedge Funds and others regularly offer 55-60 cents on the dollar for them but banks hold out for an unrealistic 75-80 cents. Given bank's 30:1 leverage they cannot sell for 55-60 cents without destoying shareholder capital (even though maybe only 15% or less of that capital is in Level III junk). Another possibility is to allow the Saudis or the Chinese to take control of the failed banks - they'd pay the premium to have an insiders view of the inner workings of America.

IFAonline: Pointless to call bottom of house price crash - CML

It is ‘futile’ to make predictions of how far property prices will fall given the current market turmoil, says the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). Earlier this year, the CML predicted property price would fall by 7% during 2008, but recent reports suggest prices have already fallen by 12.7% and are set to fall even further in the next few months. In the latest CML News & Views newsletter, the industry association says the current market outlook is too uncertain, and the CML cannot commit itself to any further predictions.

Times online: Did they think buyers would just carry on?

“This is no time for a novice,” the Prime Minister declared this week. So how does he explain the elementary mistake his Government made over the housing market? - The Times points out what everyone on HPC.co.uk was pointing too within hours of the start of the dithering over Stamp Duty, sales plummeted and the housing market, effectively, rolled over and actually died. How can Crash Gordon keep using the same old rhetoric when his mantra of "No more boom and bust" will haunt him into his political grave?

Financial Times: Hedge funds move $100bn into safe havens

Hedge Funds - usually seen as no-holds barred risk takers - are fleeing markets for "safe" investments.

MSN: Bush: ‘Our entire economy is in danger’

"Without immediate action by Congress, America could slip into a financial panic and a distressing scenario would unfold," Bush said in a 12-minute prime-time address from the White House East Room that he hoped would help rescue his tough-sell bailout package.

Posted by renting2 @ 10:55 AM 14 Comments

SOTT: Financial Fascism

One of those provisions, summarized by the heading of Title III, ensured the "Legal Certainty for Swap Agreements," which successfully divorced the granters of subprime mortgage loans from any obligation to ever collect on them. That provision of Gramm's law is at the very heart of the problem. But the law went even further, prohibiting regulation of any of the new financial instruments permitted after the financial industry mergers: "No provision of the Commodity Exchange Act shall apply to, and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission shall not exercise regulatory authority with respect to, an identified banking product which had not been commonly offered, entered into, or provided in the United States by any bank on or before December 5, 2000. ..."

Posted by malct @ 10:36 AM 13 Comments

The Oil Drum: Paulson and Bernanke ratchet up the blackmail talk

The Fed has lent out $600 billion of its $800 billion balance sheet in an alphabet soup of emergency liquidity facilities innovated over the past year. Under Enron-style accounting, toxic waste securities were used as collateral for US Treasuries at 85% of face value. Without recapitalisation, the Fed is at risk of failure in the midst of this crisis. The Paulson Plan recapitalises the Fed without ever publicly admitting that it was dangerously overextended. The Fed is effectively "broke." This is not supposed to happen to a central bank, which can print money without restriction. In order to take on more toxic collateral from the banks, it would need to actually print money, which would immediately be visible and would be seen as very inflationary.

Posted by drewster @ 09:50 AM 24 Comments

Accountancy Age: Housing slump sees property developers take rental VAT hit

House builders unable to sell properties due to the housing market downturn could face a hefty tax bill if they decide to rent out new homes, HM Revenue & Customs has warned. Advice published by the government body warns developers may have to pay back VAT they have reclaimed due to the different treatment of VAT on selling and letting properties. HMRC claims than many house builders will not be affected as there are exemptions for small amounts of tax involving temporary lets. But some property developers could be liable for repayments before any rental income has been accrued, as the trigger for repayment was the intention to rent

ITV: Brown in New York for economy talks

Asked whether Downing Street had requested a meeting, an official said: "Mr Paulson is in Washington and we are in New York. "Mr Paulson is busy in Washington for completely understandable reasons." There is the prospect of an encounter with Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, however, as she has been attending the general assembly this week. Says it all really, bugger off we're busy we'll tell you what we have decided later

Lew Rockwell Show: The Bogus Financial Crisis

Latest 15min Lew Rockwell Show. The Fed are Pirates and this is a bogus crisis. The Fed created this crisis and the world would be vastly better off if they disappeared over night. (In my opinion, the "bailout" is the monetisation of derivatives that will cause this weapon of mass destruction to cause hyperinflation. Pre-bailout, derivatives remain impotent to all but the culprits, IMHO). This plutocratic robbery is the worst "solution". We are bailing those who made big mistakes, leaving others to fall that made no mistakes and the majority don't want it and are not fooled!

Times: 20 reasons to cheer falling house prices

Thousands of pounds may be wiped off the value of your home as you read this, but property market crashes are not all bad. Here are 20 reasons not to be downhearted about the downturn...

Posted by cha55a @ 06:56 AM 27 Comments

Prisonplanet.com: NO To The Paulson-Bernanke Derivatives Scam Bailout

Webster G. Tarpley is author of NYT Bestseller, "Obama, the Postmodern Coup" - "The mass of world derivatives is between $1 and $2 quadrillion. This sum is so large that it dwarfs the total value of the entire planet earth and all those who live here. It represents an insatiable black hole which is capable of putting an end, not just to civilization, but the human life itself." (Liquidised and invested in real assets, you will see hyper inflation that would make Zimbabwe look like a model of Monetary Conservatism) "The moral choice could not be clearer: humanity will either destroy the derivatives bubble in our time, or the derivatives bubble will surely destroy humanity. Those are the stakes in the current exercise."

Posted by planning4acrash @ 01:26 AM 8 Comments

Credit Writedowns: The Dummy's Guide to the US Banking Crisis

If you want the 3-minute version to the US banking crisis, this is it.

The Fkn Newz: THE AMERICAN DREAM - DEATH DEBT & DELUSION

"admis traitors bail out American dream preserving world financial nightmare" "UK shopping still popular despite emptiness of consumer lifestyle"

FT: Houses cost more in the summer. Here’s why.

UK.....house prices fell by 1.5 per cent in April, according to the Halifax index. Except: they didn’t. The Halifax’s own figures show that house prices rose in April, albeit by less than 0.2 per cent. The 1.5 per cent fall, widely reported, is the result of “seasonal adjustment”, an attempt to strip out predictable calendar patterns and report just the underlying trend. House prices usually surge in April, and this April the surge was disappointing enough to be reported as a fall.

Posted by jayk @ 12:15 AM 9 Comments

Telegraph: House price predictions 'futile' says CML

House price predictions are "futile" (me: so is trying to stabilise your investments) in the current market, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders which has abandoned forecasts for this year. The CML admitted that its prediction in May that house prices would drop by 7 per cent in 2008 had "underestimated the extent to which property values are set to adjust".

FT: Crisis seen as possible aid to China reform

WTF.....As usual the Chinese think they're not only immune but immortal! The global financial crisis will not delay, and could even accelerate, the pace of financial reform in China, one of the country’s leading financial officials said. His comments come amid signs that China will proceed with the introducing margin trading and short selling of shares in spite of the current turmoil. Many countries have imposed restrictions on short selling to combat market turbulence.

Times: George Bush to sell bailout to sceptical Americans with TV address

President Bush is tonight due to deliver a rare prime-time televised address to convince Americans - and a hostile Congress - of the urgent need to pass his administration's $700 billion rescue plan for the country's stricken financial sector.

MoneyandMarkets: Too Little, Too Late to End Debt Crisis

The bailouts...expected to cost over $1 trillion, are too small to rescue most institutions at risk, let alone address multiple problems with U.S. interest-bearing debts outstanding of $51 trillion and derivatives held by U.S. banks of $180 trillion.

Council on Foreign Relations: The Good and the Bad of the Bailout Plan

Steil proposes a different plan. Under his plan, financial institutions that wanted to sell mortgages would come to the Treasury, ask for their mortgage-backed assets to be evaluated, and pay a fee to have them evaluated. The Treasury would then classify the assets based on the evaluation and would offer to buy the assets at prices based on what tier they are in. The firms holding the assets would then be able to choose whether to sell them to the federal government, or could attempt to sell them to other investors through the open market.

cnbc: S&P to Fall Another 40%: Analyst

We have to look at prior bear markets or steep downtrends in the markets when considering this crisis, according to Roelof van den Akker from ING Wholesale Banking. Van den Akker expects the S&P 500 index to decline by up to 40% over the coming months to about 800.

BBC: Bernanke demains bail-out action

In what is one of the largest issues facing the US in generations, Chairman Bernanke urges politicians to "act quickly" and support the farcical mother of all bail-outs. The whole plan, which plans to buy debt at considerably more than its current market value will saddle the US taxpayer with debt in excess of $1 trillion. To top it all off the bail-out will ensure that top directors still receive their bonus. Presumably that bonus is just reward for the quite staggering grade A f**k up caused by almost unbelievable mis-management.

CNN: What about my job?

Since May, General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) laid off 19,000 hourly workers, Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500) cut 12,000 jobs and American Airlines (AMR, Fortune 500) announced it was cutting 7,000 jobs, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Other companies have instilled temporary hiring freezes or put their hiring plans on hold altogether. "Employment expectations are down substantially," according to John Dooney, manager of strategic research for The Society for Human Resource Management.

Sky News: 'House Prices Falling All Over'

During the 12 months to the end of June the cost of property fell in 21 of the 33 countries across the world for which there is reliable data.

Banking Times: B&B credit rating on the brink of “Junk”

Fitch Ratings yesterday downgraded the bank from BBB+ to BBB-, the lowest of the agency’s ten investment classes and only one notch above “speculative grade”, or in colloquial terms, “junk”.

Telegraph: Taxman to knock on landlords' doors

Buy-to-let landlords could get a knock on the door from the taxman as part of a Government drive to track down those who do not pay enough tax.

Dorset Echo: Estate agents cut jobs as housing crisis bites

PROPERTY prices in Bournemouth and Poole have plunged by up to 20 per cent according to one local estate agent who has been forced to cut his workforce by a third. Gary Witheyman, a former chairman of the National Association of Estate Agents, said: "Confidence in the market has gone; it's the worst trading time I can remember and has hit us much worse than the late 80s recession. "In January this year it was like someone had suddenly turned the lights off. We used to register between 800 and 1,000 new properties every month; at the moment it's down to 120 a month." He added: "In general house prices here have fallen by around 20 per cent. "Despite all the doom and gloom, if you've got the money it is a very good time to buy."

Posted by little professor @ 07:48 PM 10 Comments

Spiegel Online via Truthseeker: Merkel Says Washington Helped Drag Europe into the Credit Crisis

The United States government is campaigning around the world for support for its multibillion-dollar Wall Street rescue package. The reaction has been skeptical at best – and in Europe the plan has been met with bareknuckled criticism. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has accused the US government of serious failures which she believes contributed to the current credit crisis. In particular she blamed Washington for resisting stricter regulation.

Posted by malct @ 05:31 PM 14 Comments

CNN: Bank of New York's $22.5 billion headache

The Russian government is suing the Bank of New York for smuggling cash out of the country. Can a U.S. bank get a fair trial in Moscow?

Guardian: House price predictions are 'futile'

Honk! They're not playing any more and they're taking their ball with them!

LA Times: Only 31% favor bailout

The poll was conducted from Friday through Monday....My sense is that the bailout is becoming less popular each day, and that a poll taken this week would show even deeper opposition to the original Paulson plan

Posted by gardeniadotnet @ 02:01 PM 22 Comments

LA Times: Nigerian E-mail scam? Nope. It's the Paulson bailout. Seriously.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

Posted by gardeniadotnet @ 01:25 PM 14 Comments

Bloomberg: Goldman Gets Buffett Aid in $7.5 Billion Fundraising

GS are desperate and on their knees. A terrified market has withdrawn all liquidity. The great investor knows a bargain when he sees it. ``It's a hell of a deal for Buffett,'' said Brad Hintz, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. who rates Goldman stock ``market perform.'' ``The key thing for Goldman is making it through the credit cycle, and they're doing the right stuff.''

UK Telegraph: US dollar set to be major casualty of Hank Paulson's bailout

The US taxpayer bail-out of America’s banking sector is an event whose significance will reverberate for many years. What it means for free markets, for the way Western economies are run, for the prosperity of the world economy, must remain to be seen. But as investors scrambled to make sense of last week’s events, already one conclusion was all but irrefutable – the US dollar will have to take another major fall.

Posted by malct @ 12:15 PM 28 Comments

WSWS: US government to bail out Wall Street

“It’s the ultimate nightmare to have a run on the money markets—that is truly Armageddon—and they’re not going to allow that to happen,” When it comes to the social needs of the people, the universal cry from corporate America and the two parties is, “There is no money,” but when the fortunes of the financial elite are threatened, the full power of the government and unlimited resources are marshaled virtually at a moment’s notice. There was no suggestion in the statements of Bush and Paulson of any relief for the working class—nothing to stop home foreclosures or help those who have already lost their homes. Rather, hundreds of billions—and more likely trillions—of dollars in public funds will be used to prop up the banks.

MSN money central: Another devil in the financial crisis

This crisis is no longer about the U.S. housing market or mortgages, or even about failing Wall Street institutions. We're way beyond that. What's at stake now is the entire global financial system that has underpinned world economic growth over the past two decades or more.

MoneyWeek: How the short-selling ban could backfire on the banks

Short-sellers are being used as a scapegoat for a crisis which they did not create. Regulation is not the answer, says Dominic Frisby. In fact, the proposed ban on short-selling could have some nasty consequences...

Posted by damien @ 11:25 AM 17 Comments

Fool.co.uk: Published in Property Home on 24 September 2008 1 comments Should you cash in on the property slump by selling your home?

Over a few beers at the weekend one of my friends announced that she and her husband had put their house on the market. ‘Oh, have you found somewhere you want to buy?’ I said. ‘Well, we’re not looking at the moment,’ she replied, ‘we’re going to rent for a bit and see what happens.’ The plan, it seems, is to wait for property prices to fall, then either buy a similar-sized property for less money and or buy a bigger place for the same amount they sell their two-up two-down terrace for. Good luck to them, I say, but isn’t it a risky strategy? It’s certainly not an uncommon one at the moment. But like all cunning plans, it has a list of pros and cons.

Posted by housebear @ 08:56 AM 33 Comments

FT.Com: Housebuilders face extra tax on rents

Another nail in the coffin for the property developers. They could be forced to repay value-added tax they have already claimed back because of differing VAT treatment of selling and letting properties, according to advice published by Revenue & Customs. The tax implications of putting unsold properties on the rental market were likely to come as a shock to some builders.

Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor: The unraveling of the Shadow Banking System moves to hedge funds as Schmalpha replaces Alpha

The next stage will be a run on thousands of highly leveraged hedge funds

Posted by v stor @ 08:04 AM 6 Comments

nytimes: In the Land of the Koala, Bailout Bypasses Villages

It’s a different story for large Australian banks, which have also been hit by the United States mortgage troubles. It is not clear now how the bailout will treat foreign banks, but those with United States subsidiaries are expected to be bailed out.

Guardian: 'Cynical, but splendid - he will die with his boots on'

Cheesy, vacuous - and occasionally brilliant, this was indeed the speech of Gordon Brown's life ... this was the product of desperation, it's tactics a measure of how bad things have got and how far the PM is willing to go to cling to power.

FT.com: Bail-out faces flak from wary Congress

So the people pay the government (tax) to pay the banks so that they can stay in business to debt collection from them. Say what? Got to agree with people that say the money should go the other way around the system. If you are going to print up $700 billion then give it to the people to pay off their debt to the banks.

Lew Rockwell.com: The Mugging of America

Hank Paulson, has committed our future generations to trillions in obligations for the sins of his buddies on Wall Street. I know many heroes, and Hank Paulson is no hero.When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing. Perhaps the Federal Reserve can stave off the day of reckoning by purchasing GSE debt and pumping liquidity into the housing market, but this cannot hold off the inevitable drop in the housing market forever. In fact, postponing the necessary, but painful market corrections will only deepen the inevitable fall. The more peop

FT.com: Brown promises stability in a turbulent world

Agreed. Bye.

Posted by whiteknight @ 12:18 AM 6 Comments

Fun Online Poll: Gordon Brown's Labour Conference Speech

The top inanity from his otherwise cretinous speech - which took him and his little friends months to write - was this "Some people have been asking why I haven't served my children up for spreads in the papers. And my answer is simple. My children aren't props; they're people." I dunno. I can honestly say that I have never asked that question. I've set up a fun online poll to see whether anybody actually did.

FT: Lenders drop house price forecast

For those who don't have time to register for the FT online ..."The Council of Mortgage Lenders, whose house price forecasts have been among the UK’s most optimistic, on Tuesday threw in the towel, saying conditions were too difficult to make predictions, and that no improvement was likely until 2010. The CML’s last forecast, made in May, was for prices to be 7 per cent lower in the fourth quarter than last year. Indices from Halifax and Nationwide, both CML members, suggest that prices are already down by more than 10 per cent on the year. Halifax and Nationwide are forecasting peak to trough declines of 20 to 25 per cent and some private sector economists are predicting even steeper falls."

cnbc: NEXT HUGE FOOT TO DROP - WITH CLIENTS FALLING OUT OF BED

Hedge funds could have an unprecedented level of cash pulled out by investors this quarter, according to insiders

US Business Journal: CEO pay: What those involved in the financial meltdown made

As Congress considers a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street and the banking sector, there are calls to restrict the pay and severance packages for CEOs at investment houses, Executives from some of the major investment and commercial banks involved in the financial upheaval and bailout earned hefty paychecks last year, according to proxy statements outlining their salaries, bonuses and stock options:

.blackswantrading.com: Beijing’s burden: A slowing China bodes ill for the world economy

As the credit crisis unfolded over the past year, one of the few certainties in the global economy seemed to be China’s ability to plough on regardless at double-digit growth rates. Not any more. With Wall Street in tatters and Europe’s and Japan’s economies faltering, many investors are beginning to ask if China too might stumble badly. After five turbo-charged years of accelerating growth...

wsj: European Banks: Too Big to Rescue?

European Banks: Too Big to Rescue? European banks face greater capital shortages than their U.S. counterparts, but have become too big for any one European country to save, according to an article published Saturday by European economists Daniel Gros and Stefano Micossi on the Centre for European Policy Studies

BBC NEWS: CML says house price predictions 'futile'

Head - Sand - Bury

Posted by wdbeast @ 07:47 PM 9 Comments

NY Times: How Sweden Solved Its Bank Crisis

A banking system in crisis after the collapse of a housing bubble. An economy hemorrhaging jobs. A market-oriented government struggling to stem the panic. Sound familiar? It does to Sweden. The country was so far in the hole in 1992 — after years of imprudent regulation, short-sighted economic policy and the end of its property boom — that its banking system was, for all practical purposes, insolvent. But Sweden took a different course than the one now being proposed by the United States Treasury. And Swedish officials say there are lessons from their own nightmare that Washington may be missing. Sweden spent 4 percent of its GDP to rescue ailing banks. The $700bn that the Bush administration wants is 5 percent of GDP. But the final cost to Sweden ended up being less than 2% of GDP...

Posted by drewster @ 06:21 PM 7 Comments

CNN: THE BAILOUT

check out some of these comments on the biggest bailout in history

Posted by mark @ 06:12 PM 8 Comments

Democrat Congressman Denis Kucinich: Protecting the public interest in any economic "bailout"

Back from motivational clips to real news. You've heard what dictator Paulston has to say, curiously, no address from Bush! You can't make it up. Well, you heard solutions from Republican Ron Paul here that you won't see in any mainstream UK media outlets. Now, here, in the fold beneath, is an e-mail just this minute sent out by Denis Kucinich on his solutions. For background on him. He was responsible for putting forward 35, yes, 35 articles of impeachment of George W Bush. As the UK media didn't cover a whisper of impeachment proceedings, you won't read this in any UK newspapers or see it on any UK TV shows. Forget expecting any sense from any UK "politicians".

Posted by planning4acrash @ 06:02 PM 15 Comments

Telegraph: House sales fall to lowest level in 50 years

lThe number of houses sold plummeted to just 62,000 in August, which is the lowest level since records began in 1959 and less than half the figure for a year ago, according to HM Revenue and Customs. The sales statistics are the starkest evidence yet of how Britain's housing market has ground a halt.

The Mortgage Lender: The Great Financial Do-over

If we're going to start handing out Free Money, is this the only way to do it? If the problem is the collapse of the housing market, leading in turn to a collapse of these absurd credit default swaps, why not try, for once, a trickle-up approach? Spending nearly a trillion dollars to reduce foreclosures and homeowner debt would have a huge economic impact for the general public -- and it would help teetering credit default swap owners by increasing the value of those assets, or at least limiting the exposure from them.

Posted by malct @ 04:56 PM 9 Comments

321gold: INVESTMENT BANKERS DON'T NEED TO BE BAILED OUT

The answer to America's problems is clear. Thomas Jefferson said it two hundred years ago. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. Let's do what has to be done, America - or do you still want to blame Muslim terrorists and illegal immigrants for America's problems; or maybe you are still hoping that somehow maybe somehow Paulson's proposed trillion dollar government bailout of the rich and well-connected will somehow trickle down to you and save you and your family from being tossed out onto the streets when your house is foreclosed on by the banks he is going to save.

Posted by malct @ 04:51 PM 16 Comments

The Market Oracle: Recommendation to Congress Not to Spread Financial Panic

I've always found M. Weiss to be very pragmatic, prudent and reasonable with his market analysis, and he's been saying since 2001 that things are very bad - he probably just wasn't privy to Government machinations. Anyway, some very scary debt figures here based on his analysis, with recommendations to Congress on what to do. But, IMO they aren't interested in sorting America out, nor the global economy, so if these 'shoes' drop... "There are currently $14.8 trillion in mortgages in America. But beyond mortgages, there is another $20.4 trillion in consumer and corporate debt. This means that mortgages represent only 42% of the private-sector debt problem in America."

Yahoo: Is there any hope for the ailing property market, and for those of us hoping to get a foot on the ladder?

lets put this fool straight, he thinks crashing houseprices is bad for first time buyers...

Yahoo: Ryanair grounds planes as recession looms

High fuel costs and weak demand will force Ryanair (Dublin: RY4.IR - news) to ground 14 planes at Stansted this winter, the Irish low-cost airline confirmed Tuesday.

Posted by mark @ 02:51 PM 6 Comments

Yahoo: Monster pig traps Aussie woman in home

They both bite the owner, they both hold you hostage and both want more and more....ENJOY...

Firstrung: Government has no chance of meeting new home building targets - NHF

The Government's ambitious target of building three million new homes by 2020 could be missed by up to nine years unless ministers intervene further in the housing market, a leading expert has warned... National Housing Federation Chief Executive David Orr issued the stark warning at the ICC, in Birmingham, when he addressed the annual conference of the Federation, which represents England's housing associations.

Firstrung: Mortgage approvals now 64% lower than August 2007 as re-mortgaging finally begins to retract

In August, net mortgage lending rose only by £2.1 billion; less than half the average rise over the previous six months. The number of approvals for house purchase was again very low and those for remortgaging also fell. Consumer credit rose by £0.4bn in August, slightly above the previous 6 month average of £0.3bn. Personal deposit growth continued to be weak and the annual growth rate declined by 0.7% to 4.0%...

Halifax HBOS: Not everyone can profit from falling markets

I am appalled that HBOS is still getting away with putting this out there. Halifax Contracts for Differences (CFDs) are a way of making (or losing!) money from share price movements without owning the share itself. You simply own a contract which you buy at one price and sell at another making (or losing) the difference. This is gross neglect of responsibility and takes the p*** out of the UK people.

Times: Resale of the century

As a £10m house is repossessed, it’s clear that nobody’s safe from property-price pain

Posted by confused76 @ 12:36 PM 13 Comments

Youtube: "Country Boy Can Survive" Hank Williams Jr.

May seem off topic, but this dude knows about personal freedom and liberty. Want to avoid inflation? Stock up on silver and gold, find a local grocer who hoards silver and agree to buy at spot rate conversion to save him a trip to the coin dealer. Don't have land? Plant an apple tree in the local park! Whatever you do, just go do something to give yourself some kind of personal liberty! - "The interest is up and the stock markets down, and you only get mugged if you down town. I can plough a field all day long, catch cat fish from dusk till dawn, make our own whisky and our own smoke too, grow good old tomatoes and home made wine, we can skin a buck and run a truck line, because a country boy can survive, Country folk can survive! because you can't stomp us out and you can't make us run!!

Posted by planning4acrash @ 12:18 PM 42 Comments

CNN: Small biz credit crunch: In their own words

It burns my candles to see the bailouts going on, and that we have no recourse for the failed economy and loans. So give them money to set themselves straight and hang us out to dry? How fair is that?! Who will bail out us, the consumers that are being burned? Where is our money from the government? The measly $600 to stimulate the economy? That wasn't enough to make a mortgage payment.

MoneyWeek: Why fear is good for the dollar

It won't be the recession that kills off the dollar - it will be the recovery. Because as long as investors are fleeing risk, says John Stepek, the US has a very powerful force propping up its currency: sheer terror.

SOTT: Signs Economic Commentary for 22 September 2008

extracts :- The unwavering message of the mainstream coverage of the 'Credit Crunch' is... The impending implosion of our financial system is an unintended consequence of unreasoning, animalistic, undirected greed and fear. No-one could have predicted it. There is no predetermined objective. The people responsible for our great financial institutions are honestly trying to unf*** things as best as they can for the Common Good . - It will shift the banks' liabilities onto the federal government, sharply increasing government budget deficits and the US debt, a process that can only further erode the creditworthiness of the United States and place a bigger question mark on the value of the US dollar.

Information Clearing House: Grasping at Straws

No one has any idea of the magnitude of the deleveraging ahead or the size of the debts that will have to be written down. That's because 30 years of deregulation has allowed a parallel financial system to arise in which over $500 trillion dollars in derivatives are traded without any government supervision or accounting. These counterparty transactions are interwoven throughout the entire "regulated" system in a way that poses a clear and present danger to the broader economy. It's a mess. Mike Witney and again These counterparty transactions are interwoven throughout the entire "regulated" system in a way that poses a clear and present danger to the broader economy. It's a mess. Anyone really believe this won't hit the UK economy hard?

Posted by malct @ 11:14 AM 13 Comments

Metro: More renting as mortgage woe deepens

"Demand for rented accommodation has soared by two-thirds during the past year and is the strongest 'for decades'. The number of leases taken out during August was 65 per cent higher than in the same month last year... 'If you can't get the finance to buy a house, you're forced to rent.... the strong demand for rented accommodation was not driving up rents, as the demand was being met by supply from sellers who had opted to let their home rather than accept a lower price for it in the current market. Latest figures from the Bank of England showed that the number of mortgages approved dropped by 71 per cent year-on-year during July."

Posted by mark wadsworth @ 10:07 AM 11 Comments

BBC: Mortgage approvals 'at new low'

UK mortgage lending by the major banks fell to a record low in August with approvals for house purchases 64% lower than a year ago.

housing panic blog: The end of America as you knew it is at hand. It was a good 232 year run. But it is about to be stolen in the night.

America is about to be legally stolen from the people, and given to a very small group of powerful men. Yes, HP can be a bit dramatic sometimes. This is not one of those sometimes. The Patriot Act of Finance, otherwise known as Paulson's $700 billion bailout bill, if passed in its present form will be the nail in the coffin for an America by, for and of the people. Just like the Patriot Act appeared to be written before 9/11, so does this Patriot Act of Finance appear to be written before the housing crash. And yes, both were rushed through a panicked Congress and complacent media in the middle of the night.

Posted by malct @ 09:21 AM 46 Comments

hogtronix: This Account Has Been Suspended

There seems to be a bit of a problem with Fergus and Judith Wilson’s web site.The last time I heard Fergus blowing his trumpet was on this link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7432256.stm Given his leveraged position he must now have equity issues

independent.: Hedge funds could have an unprecedented level of cash pulled out by investors this quarter, according to insiders, just as they faced millions of pounds of losses from last week's shock regulation of short selling. It has been a tough year for the industr

The group's "imploded funds" list has hit 51 companies since the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the United States kicked off a widespread downturn. That compares with its historical list, stretching back more than a decade to the end of 2006, of just 14, including the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management and Amaranth. This year, big names including Peloton Capital

Commodity Watch Radio: Fred Harrison

In the latest Commodity Watch Radio Fred Harrison, The Renegade Economist, discusses the 18-Year Property Cycle and suggests ways for Gordon Brown, or whoever should succeed him, to avoid boom and bust in the future. Plus Michael Hampton aka Dr Bubb shares his views on Fred's cycle and the London property market.

Posted by frizzers @ 11:39 PM 6 Comments

telegraph: Financial Crisis: America rises to the occasion as storm heads for Europe

The European Central Bank stands aloof with Teutonic severity, as hawkish as the old Bundesbank – or the Reichsbank in 1931. It too is a prisoner of a rigid treaty mandate. There was a mad Wagnerian feel to its July rate rise. We now know that Euroland was already slipping into recession when it acted. Do the hawks mean to unleash Götterdämmerung on the peoples of Spain, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Greece, with all the dangers that must accompany a disintegration of EMU?

Bloomberg: U.S. Commodity Regulator `Closely Monitoring' Nymex Oil Prices

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is ``closely monitoring today's large movement in the price of crude oil'' on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the agency's acting chairman said.

ITV Tonight: Crunch time, Tonight, Monday 22 Sept, ITV1, 8pm

As the economic crisis worsens, Tonight asked the experts to predict what the current turmoil will mean for your savings, house prices and jobs. JD features heavily in this programme - pick it up online if you missed it - panel consensus -50% from peak.

Posted by jack c @ 10:32 PM 12 Comments

Ron Paul's Campaign For Liberty: Grassroots Action: “Crisis on Wall Street” Handout

The Campaign 4 Liberty staff has developed a simple one page handout that can be distributed door-to-door or easily handed out to anyone you come across. This handout sums up the current situation, gives a four-step solution to getting our country out of this mess, and includes contact information for people to reach their representatives and senators. It’s designed to get as much information in the hands of as many people as possible as fast as possible. Get the PDF here: Crisis on Wall Street

Posted by planning4acrash @ 09:40 PM 8 Comments

cnbc: Bear Market Still in Place:

If the US bailout plan is the first step in the right direction, we didn't see the markets responding positively to news on Monday. The bear market is still firmly intact,

cnbc: Hedge-Fund Concerns Mount

Hedge-Fund Concerns Mount The problems for the hedge-fund industry may only just be starting, according to Nouriel Roubini, chairman of RGEMonitor.com.

Yahoo: DOW Down 360

Explaination: You can blame it on shorts. Blame it on the rain and ban the world. Till the time you fix the source problem it will fall. ie. House Price Bubble

Posted by deepak @ 08:57 PM 10 Comments

CNN: Oil skyrockets

Oil prices jumped more than $20 a barrel Monday in biggest dollar jump ever as the dollar falls following the government's $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan. Oil surged $22.46 to $127.01 a barrel, after reaching as high as $128.55 - a $24 gain - at these levels it will be oil's biggest gain ever in dollar terms.

Posted by mark @ 07:55 PM 8 Comments

Telegraph: Repossessed properties at auction too pricey

An article about house prices crashing. Properties are not selling at auctions because the reserve price is too high, meaning they will have to come down a lot more for the market to start moving again. They are already down 25%, and with buyers on strike and repossessions increasing rapidly, they are going to fall a lot more.

CNN: Be ticked off - but get over it

argue that the bailout, while infuriating, is needed to prevent even more job losses, housing market woes and economic pain. Do you agree or disagree?

Bloomberg: NYC Loses More Jobs, London Homes Drop as Banks Reel

"London's motto, ``Domine Dirige Nos,'' or ``Lord Direct Us,'' is appropriate right now, said Stuart Fraser, policy chairman for the City of London and a former fund manager for Brewin Dolphin Ltd. ``I think we probably need that guidance,'' he said.

CNNMoney: Stocks slump after $700 billion plan

Wall Street weakens as investors look for clarity on the government's bank bailout plan. Morgan and Goldman become bank holding companies. Oil and gold prices spike. NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks tumbled Monday, as worries about the Treasury Department's proposed $700 billion bailout plan for the financial services sector overshadowed any relief about the outlook for Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) fell 190 points, or 1.7%, over two hours into the session. The Standard & Poor's 500 (SPX) index fell 2% and the Nasdaq composite (COMP) fell 1.5%. Another week of madness coming up but overall the Markets are tumbling.

Bloomberg: Morgan Stanley's Mack Seeks Protection From You: Jonathan Weil

Here's the truth about why Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wants $700 billion of your money to bail out stupid financial companies. It's not about protecting you, the unwitting American. It's about protecting people like him. ...

CNN: Here comes $500 oil

If Matt Simmons is right, the recent drop in crude prices is an illusion - and oil could be headed for the stratosphere. He's just hoping we can prevent civilization from imploding.

Posted by mark @ 04:05 PM 16 Comments

Telegraph: Financial crisis: Alistair Darling admits Britain will fall into dangerous debt

Darling, half of a lawyer/historian pair traditionally associated with maths skills, announced that the government will be going heavily into debt. This is reasonably interesting, I think there will be deflation at some point, so government borrowing won't necessarily cause inflation, but gov. borrowing will cause higher taxation. As in even if taxation stays the same, more will go on debt servicing not services, so we pay more. Basically if an economic stimulus works then good, and by that I mean people hold sustainable jobs and savings maintain value. This is just the beginning of what looks like collapse. Idiot Darling ignores the fact that Japan was a massive net creditor when they started expanding government borrowing, whereas the UK is the most indebted .....

Posted by stillthinking @ 03:49 PM 6 Comments

Flip This Burger - Patrick.net: You Must Act Now - THIS IS URGENT!

"The U.S. Government has allowed Treasury Secretary Paulson to hijack The United States of America - without one single bullet being fired. Hank Paulson is now the new dictator of America. George W. Bush might have the title of President of The United States, but the great folks down at FedEx/Kinko's are busily changing his business cards to read: George W. Bush Paulson's Bitch (and president) 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington DC Speaking of bitches, have you seen Ben Bernanke around lately?! You know why you haven't seen that little punk ass around? BECAUSE HE DOESN'T MATTER ANYMORE. And he's off hiding with Greenspan hoping the mobs don't come after them."

Posted by renting2 @ 03:15 PM 6 Comments

Youtube: Peter Finch wins best actor due to this speech

We know things are bad, more than bad,. Things are crazy. I want you to get mad! All I know that first, you have to get mad, God damn it. MY LIFE HAS VALUE!!

Posted by planning4acrash @ 03:11 PM 21 Comments

reuters: Market woes hit German economy

As the world's largest exporter of goods, Germany is exposed to its trading partners' woes and faces a sharp slowdown in export growth. The economy is probably already in recession and shows little sign of picking up soon. "Whatever happens to our trading partners will happen to Germany, with just a little lag," said Bank of America economist Holger Schmieding.

Government: Advice to landlords, builders and solicitors

Homes will require an EPC on rent from 1 October 2008.

reuters: Credit crunch sends shivers across nanny market

Watch out Mary Poppins, the hurricane howling through the world's financial markets is starting to be felt in the rarefied world of the British nanny. As bankers and money dealers fall like flies to a credit crunch that has seen three major U.S. investment banks disappear in a puff of smoke, so the nannies they have employed on salaries of up to 40,000 pounds ($73,000) have suddenly become expensive luxuries. "The problems are just starting. In the last week or two I have started getting calls from nannies saying one or both of their employers have lost their jobs and so they have too," said Kate Baker of Abbeville Nannies in south London.

Yahoo: Takeover rumours boost Bradford & Bingley

LONDON (ShareCast) - Bradford & Bingley (LSE: BB.L - news) soared on weekend reports that UK authorities are trying to broker a takeover of the buy-to-let mortgage group.

Redtape: MILLIONS AT RISK OF FORECLOSURE FRAUD

"The reason Carter, 55, is facing eviction, she says, is that she fell for a high-stakes scam that’s sweeping the nation, preying on the 1 in 11 consumers who are either behind on their mortgage payments or already in foreclosure."

Sky News: Gangs Make Mint Out Of Fake Coins

There are 30 million fake £1 coins in circulation. If the police were to suddenly stop them at source, and the banks find and destroy them, then 30 million would need to be removed from the banking system to replace current requirements for real in-use currency, as in taken out of the banking system, not shifted between banks. Thereby collapsing 300 million of mortgage funding currently available for the 40,000 housing transactions per month. I was hoping this would be more dramatic than it ended up.

BBC online: Warning over home equity release

Andrea Rozario, director-general of Ship (Safe Home Income Plan (Ship or is it Shi* - Safe Home Income Talk ) , claimed that Which's report was "outdated". "It has not taken into consideration the market advancements of the past decade, let alone the last 12 months," she said. "Equity release products offer increasing flexibility. There are now products that offer the security of fixed-rates with little or no redemption penalties, and recently we have seen rates falling, in stark comparison to the mainstream mortgage market. "This, coupled with safeguards offered by Ship members and compared to normal mortgages, not only means that the products are safe, but also incredibly flexible."

Bloomberg: U.K. Housing Market `on Its Knees,' Rightmove Says

``The housing market is on its knees and will remain so until financial institutions address the disastrous state of the mortgage funding markets,'' said Miles Shipside, commercial director at Rightmove.

Yahoo News: Huge Fall in UK Car Production

Even the wealthy ahem, are cutting back on necessitied opps, new cars. Sorry did I say wealthy, I meant debted up to the eye balls. It seems Range Rover have cancelled nights, Bentley are on a 3 day week and Jag, well are just Jaguar. But don't worry the worst is now over, according to Foxes Estate Agents.

John Stipek at MSN: How Much Will Our Obsession with Property Cost us?

More sense from Mr Stipek - good parallels with Japan

Yahoo: 'Huge Fall In UK Car Production'

Sky News understands there has been a dramatic fall in car production in Britain.

Posted by mark @ 12:12 PM 9 Comments

BBC: Wolseley hit by housing downturn

Building materials giant Wolseley has seen profits drop 77% after being hit by the US and UK housing slowdown. Pre-tax profits for the year to 31 July fell to £145m ($266m) from £634m a year ago, and Wolseley said conditions in many of its markets may get worse. As well as a slowdown in the UK, the US housing slump, where it makes about half its sales, has also hit profits. The world's biggest distributor of plumbing materials said it had cut 7,700 jobs since since last August.

MoneyWeek: Is this the death of capitalism?

"...when it comes to paying for the global property bubble, it won't just be those who over-extended themselves to buy over-priced houses who suffer. And it won't just be the bankers who sold them the loans. It'll be you, me, and every other mug who ever paid a penny in taxes to governments who blatantly ramped the idea of property ownership as a right."

Posted by damien @ 11:53 AM 49 Comments

Telegraph: Financial crisis: Alistair Darling promises not to raise taxes

Darling announces that he will not be reducing public services, and that taxes will not rise. He conceded public debt will rise. So Darling must think that government borrowing is at no cost. Well, I think he is going to be borrowing a massive amount. This borrowing will crowd out mortgage funding and I am sure we will be paying borrowing costs. Public sector workers need to understand that they are killing the economy, and that we just cannot afford such a huge state sector. Also, the government, because of chronic stupidity, ignore the fact that you need to consider total UK debt, not just government debt. Wait... Oh yeah, house prices ! Ummm. Going down like the poor old private sector.

Posted by stillthinking @ 11:35 AM 10 Comments

CNN: Mad as hell - taxpayers lash out

"NO NO NO. Not just no, but HELL NO," writes Richard, a reader from Anchorage, Alaska. "This is robbery pure and simple," Anna from Denver posted on CNNMoney.com's TalkBack blog this weekend. "It's our money! Let these companies die," added Claudio from Plainville, Conn.

Posted by mark @ 11:19 AM 9 Comments

The Financial Times: The Shadow Banking System is unravelling

The real economic side of this financial crisis will be a severe US recession. Financial contagion, the strong euro, falling US imports, the bursting of European housing bubbles, high oil prices and a hawkish European Central Bank will lead to a recession in the eurozone, the UK and most advanced economies.

Posted by v stor @ 09:39 AM 8 Comments

Bloomberg: U.S. Widens Scope of Bad-Debt Plan Beyond Home Loans

"The change to potentially allow purchases of instruments such as car loans, credit-card debt and other devalued assets may force an increase in the size of the package as the legislation proceeds through Congress." This is turning out to be a full and comprehensive bailout of the US consumer, where does the Dollar go from here?

Posted by tyrellcorporation @ 08:40 AM 14 Comments

The Times: As prices fall, homeowners take houses off market

The number of houses for sale is expected to fall as the credit crunch sets in and mortgages become more difficult to get

Posted by becky @ 08:29 AM 21 Comments

Telegraph: How we have learned the limits to free markets - the hard way

Perhasp not surprising given last weeks events Roger Bottle looks to have revised his focast for lower uk property prices further in the linked article in the Telegraph today " To me, much the most striking thing about the past week was the near failure of HBOS when the fall of UK house prices has hardly begun. On my reckoning, they have another 25-30pc still to fall. What position will the UK banking system be in when these falls have happened and the economy is performing in accordance with them?"

Reuters: House prices fall again

Asking prices for homes in England and Wales fell 1 percent on the month in September, leaving them 3.3 percent lower than a year ago, a survey showed on Monday. The Rightmove monthly survey showed the average asking price for a property dipped to £227,438 this month, down from £229,816 in August -- the fourth successive fall. However the annual rate of decline eased from 4.8% last month to 3.3% in September.

Posted by little professor @ 08:06 AM 7 Comments

FT: Goldman, Morgan Stanley to become regulated banks

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the last surviving big investment banks on Wall Street, have become regulated banks. The move effectively spells the end of the investment banking industry as a separate sector, leaving behind only small boutique securities firms. In doing so it ends the decades old division of the US financial industry into two halves, which dates back to legislation passed after the Great Depression.

Posted by gardeniadotnet @ 07:05 AM 7 Comments

FT.com: Brown attacks ‘irresponsible’ City bonuses

Does Barclays still have access to a penny of UK Taxpayers money? If it does (and i must admit i have not been paying attention) then why has it put up around $2.5 billion for US bankers never mind City bankers. This would mean that the UK Taxpayer was paying top US bankers bonuses for stuffing up the financial system. As i say - I am not sure if Barclays is still borrowing? is it?

Posted by whiteknight @ 12:55 AM 10 Comments

Times: FSA fails to find saviour for Bradford & Bingley

Attempts by the Financial Services Authority to find a buyer for Bradford & Bingley are understood to be floundering

Times: Survival depends on treading a fine line

Gordon Brown’s future depends on whether the public accepts his new slogan: “It’s the global economy, stupid”; as he develops a new narrative of limited responsibility. Not only is he, over the past 11 years as Chancellor and Prime Minister, not to blame for what has gone wrong but he now views himself as the experienced financial statesman and the right leader to handle these problems.

FT: More and different, including a debt-for-equity swap for the financial sector

I expect that Secretary Paulson or his successor will, if Congress grants the $700 bn request, be back for more before long. Probably at least another $700 bn, as it is unlikely that a crisis of the magnitude we are witnessing will be resolved without the tax payer coughing up at least 10 percent of annual GDP. US GDP for 2008 is likely to be around $14.5 trillion, so you can do the arithmetic.

BBC News: Ministers knew of housing bubble

The government knew there was a "bubble" in house prices but was not tempted to take control of interest rates, the City minister has said. Kitty Ussher said the Bank of England had thought it appropriate to keep interest rates low. And she rejected calls by Labour MP Jon Cruddas for a rethink of the way rates are set following recent turmoil.

New Zealand Herald: $450m housing project crashes

The construction project is the largest and most advanced in New Zealand to go under. Kensington Park Properties had planned to build 750 houses on the former Puriri Park camping ground in Orewa. Only about 60 have been built.

Guardian: Turmoil to spark slump in lettings

"New York may be 3,500 miles from the UK, but the fallout from crises afflicting the giants of the financial world is affecting our own housing market. The loss of thousands of Lehman jobs in the City of London and the Home Counties will have a severe impact on the corporate rental market, which had been one of the few property sectors performing well this year. Rental agents Savills say 64 per cent of its corporate tenants in London work in the financial services industry, a proportion mirrored in most top-end lettings agencies. Large-scale job losses will result in the termination of tenancies on hundreds of top-end apartments and houses - most of them at rents of £1,000 a week or more - in 'prime' London areas such as Docklands, the City and Notting Hill."

BBC news: Millionaire spooked from mansion

Spooked by something more than ghosts. Perhaps it was the site of those trunkless bodies as the tide went out.

Reuters: FSA faces legal action over short-selling ban-papers

*Not directly related to house prices*. The UK Financial Services Authority faces legal action from a group of leading hedge funds over the ban on short-selling financial shares it imposed on Thursday

politico news: Paulson plan could cost $1 trillion

Congressional leaders said after meeting Thursday evening with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that as much as $1 trillion could be needed to avoid an imminent meltdown of the U.S. financial system. Paulson announced plans Friday morning for a "bold approach" that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. At a news conference at Treasury headquarters, he called for a "temporary asset relief program" to take bad mortgages off the books of the nation's financial institutions. Congressional leaders had left Washington on Friday, but Paulson planned to confer with them over the weekend. includes - President Bush goes AWOL - where has he been lately? Where has he been during America’s worst financial crisis etc

Lew Rockwell: Understanding the Crisis

What caused this? It is a simple question, and yet answers are all over the map, as you might expect. Here's mine in two words: fiat money. The word fiat means: out of nothing. Money out of nothing is money that is eventually worth nothing. The possibility of precisely that happening emerged on August 15, 1971. Since Nixon severed the last tie of the dollar to gold, the world's monetary system has not been restrained by anything physical. We've depended on the discretion of central bankers. We can't trust that, and this crisis shows precisely why.

Independent.co.uk: Plunge in house prices outstrips the crisis of the 1990s

The crash in house prices is now the worst ever in Britain. HBOS, which has just been taken over by Lloyds TSB, will publish figures next month showing that the decline from last year's peak now exceeds the fall during the 1990s. From the top of the market in May 1989 to the bottom in February 1992, the bank's seasonally adjusted index of prices fell by 13.1 per cent. That fall has already been exceeded since the market peaked last August.

Posted by housebear @ 10:58 AM 29 Comments

George Washington's Blog: The Market is Now Pricing In the Genuine Possibility that the US Will Default on its Debt

An article in the Telegraph from today includes a here showing credit default swaps on US 10 year treasury debt, and explains: "Check out the chart showing the recent spikes in the US 10-year credit default swap. In other words, the market is now pricing-in the genuine possibility that the US will struggle to pay-back some of its long-term T-bills. That possibility is still deemed to be quite low. But the ultimate financial question - until recently, unthinkable - is now being asked. Yes siree, the mighty US government could default. That's how much the world has changed."

global research: It's the Derivatives, Stupid! Why Fannie, Freddie, AIG had to be Bailed Out

Why not let the free market work? Bankruptcy courts know how to sort out assets and reorganize companies so they can operate again. Why the extraordinary measures for Fannie, Freddie and AIG? The answer may have less to do with saving the insurance business, the housing market, or the Chinese investors clamoring for a bailout than with the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, one that is holding up the entire private global banking system. What had to be saved at all costs was not housing or the dollar but the financial derivatives industry; and the precipice from which it had to be saved was an "event of default" that could have collapsed a quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble, a collapse that could take the entire global banking system down with it.

Telegraph: FSA in talks to find buyer for B&B

The City regulator is involved in secret talks to engineer a takeover of Bradford & Bingley as it seeks a permanent solution to secure the future of the embattled buy-to-let mortgage lender, The Sunday Telegraph has learned. Last week, Moody's, the credit rating agency, downgraded B&B debt to one notch above junk status, underlining concerns about its financial health.

Posted by little professor @ 10:01 AM 6 Comments

TBR News: TBR News September 19, 2008

The American housing market has collapsed and the collapse is still in progress. The collapse of the American housing market means that while a homeowner may have a mortgage on a house once worth $200,000, this house now only can be sold for $125,000.That means that if the house is sold, the bank, holder of the mortgage, is now owed $75,000. Let me tell you all something: Given all the slicing and dicing and resales the criminally greedy banks and lending agencies indulged in, at this point, no one in any lending institution knows who holds the actual mortgage and, believe this, they can never find them. The person who owns the house can be forced into foreclosure but in court, they have the right to confront the mortgage holder.

Observer: Wall Street worries the crisis is not yet over

Politicians on both sides of the Atlantic will be watching the markets anxiously tomorrow, amid fears that the euphoria that greeted Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's plan to rescue American banks will give way to a renewed slump in the price of shares. ... UK banks probe massive mortgage frauds by criminal gangs as Bradford & Bingley lose £15m

The Times: Taxes will soar in credit crisis

Easily the biggest single effect on HPC coming to you and i soon, 5p in the pound would be nothing short of massive, even if this is over stated and its 3p it would be collosal, i am more convinced daily that the real time ( taking inflation into account ) HPC of 50% is not actually posible but likely

Economist: Derivatives: Nuclear Winter

"When Warren Buffett said that derivatives were “financial weapons of mass destruction”, this was just the kind of crisis the investment seer had in mind".

Commodity Watch Radio: Money Reform Party

Anne Belsey of the UK Money Reform Party suggests ways in which our monetary system should be changed to get rid of this endless expansion of debt. Playing time c 35mins.

Fool.co.uk: A House Price Crash Is Unstoppable!

House prices will continue to fall... and there's nothing anyone can do about it! How do you catch a falling housing market? Prime Minister Gordon Brown has given it his best shot. Housebuilder Barratt is giving it a go. And with nine out of the top 12 mortgage lenders recently cutting their rates, you could argue that banks and building societies are doing their bit as well.

WALL STREET JOURNAL: "One Week Later, a New World Order" (Their title not mine)

"In the annals of history last week will be remembered as the implosion. But the market heads into next week treading on a landscape where short-selling is prohibited, the government is engineering some kind of Golem-like structure to cleanse balance sheets, and investors cannot be sure if the two-day rally was for real or a mirage. Consider it sort of a financial demilitarized zone, where little remains, save perhaps for overturned tractor-trailers with piles of nickels lying about." - Bush Senior talks about it, Wall Street Journal talks about it, but it doesn't exist. Pure Orwellian Doublethink

Posted by planning4acrash @ 01:28 PM 27 Comments

FT: Long View: Increased regulation of financial markets

A very level-headed analysis.

CNN: The world's most expensive streets

Every city has one - a retail thoroughfare that houses the most exclusive stores. Real estate slowdown or not, these luxury corridors are still thriving - for now, at least.

CNN: 12th bank failure of the year announced

Ameribank Inc. was shut down on Friday by the Office of the Thrift Supervision, making it the 12th bank this year to go under.

The Sun: Good Friday

The Sun spins away at full pro-glubberment, whilst the comments under the article reveal that the majority of it's wordly wise readership who can be bothered to post have not had the wool pulled over their eyes. Lots of carefully chosen words words are used to polish the story up undoubtedly to instill spending 'confidence' in the credit/debt dependent masses.

Posted by enuii @ 11:41 AM 6 Comments

CNN: Bailout cost: higher than you think

Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke have saved us, for now, from a market meltdown - but at the cost of allowing the folks who caused the current crisis to keep ducking reality. In the long run, guess who gets to bear that cost?

FT: Arsenal on back foot over flat sales windfall

The property slump has hit Arsenal’s hopes of a windfall from the redevelopment of their old Highbury stadium, prompting the Premier League club to say that any profit from the sale of flats would now be regarded as “a bonus”.Arsenal had earlier this year confidently predicted it would generate turnover of more than £350m from its development projects, which would have provided a surplus of up to £100m. But a more sombre view emerged in Friday’s results, in which Peter Hill-Wood, chairman, said the sale of 680 apartments “may be affected” by the property market.

New York Times: Markets Soar, but New Rules Upset Traders

Computers that automatically buy and sell for big investors hit snags because they were not programmed for such a restriction. Securities firms and money managers that routinely sell short to hedge against possible losses wondered how they would cope. In certain stocks and funds traded on New York Stock Exchange, some prices and trades were “erroneous,” a spokesman said. Hedge fund managers who made vast profits betting against the nation’s financial titans called the ban unfair, and said the move would only prolong the financial crisis. Some traders said they were no longer betting on the intrinsic health of companies, but rather on what the government might do next.

FT: Lenders likely to lift fixed rates in next few days

"Recent cuts in mortgage rates have come abruptly to a halt as the banking crisis has brought renewed fear to the financial markets."

Wall Street Journal: Shock Forced Paulson's Hand

"If we don't do this, we risk an uncertain fate," Mr. Bernanke added. He said that if the problem wasn't corrected, the U.S. economy could enter a deep, multi-year recession akin to Japan's lost decade of the 1990s, or what Sweden endured in the early 1990s when a surge in bad loans plagued the economy and sent unemployment to 12%. One lawmaker asked whether the solution will prevent bank failures. Mr. Paulson said it will stabilize markets. "But we'll still see banks fail in the normal course," he said.

Guardian: Are house prices going to crash or are we looking at swift recovery?

Whichever way you look at it, this week's events are hardly going to help a property market that was already in the doldrums with prices between 8% and 10% down this year. At best, prices look set to continue their downward path to a predicted 10%-15% fall by the end of the year, followed by a similar fall next year. At worst, this week's events will send the UK market into a 1990s' Japanese-style freefall from which that country is yet to recover.

The Guardian: 'There is no money at Lehman, please gather your things and leave'

"It was then I realised how many lives had been screwed by the greed of a few" He's talking about himself and his fellow parasites!

FT: A TAD (Toxic Asset Dump) for the USSA

The punitive pricing of any assets acquired by the TAD should discourage future reckless lending by the banks. Requiring the individuals who took out excessive mortgages to live with the consequences of their actions is the best mechanism for discouraging future reckless borrowing by would-be home owners. They were consenting adults. There is no efficiency or fairness argument for the tax payer to cough up resources to enable those who borrowed too much in the past to continue to live in houses they can no longer afford. Individual over-leveraged home owners also don’t constitute a threat to systemic stability.

HIP-Consultant.co.uk: Improved Energy Performance Certificates - RDSAP v9.82

Energy Performance Certificates were implemented as part of the Home Information Pack legislation on 1st August 2007 and will also be required as of the 1st October 2008 in the rental market. EPC are now becoming more widely understood and the benefits they bring recognised. However, there has been criticism made about the accuracy of some assessments in certain scenarios due to the inherent limitations of RDSAP to include some less frequently found aspects.

CNN: Growing 'tent cities' blamed on foreclosure crisis

Number of tent cities in the US is growing

Mortgagesolutions: New homes in the Midlands at a standstill: Knight Frank

Development of new homes in the Midlands has reached a standstill with severe implications for the long-term economic and social health of the area, according to Knight Frank’s latest Central England residential development review. The firm said the Government’s prediction that housebuilding in the region this year would fall 10,000 short of its target of 41,061 homes was ‘overly optimistic’, as housing starts for the first quarter of the year were around 60% below the required level.

sky: us tent cities

here is some news about new campers from across the pond. lets hope this coming winter is a mild one for all the tent people in this world,

NEWS.scotsman.com: HBOS: The questions just keep piling up

SERIOUS doubts about Lloyds TSB's takeover of HBOS emerged last night after a leading City figure suggested there had been an abuse of the market rules as talks were being held. Keith Skeoch, the chief executive of Standard Life Investments, said there had been a delay before the talks were formally announced. Stock market rules dictate companies in advanced talks should make a formal announcement to the stock exchange, with trading in their shares being suspended. Panic dictated the government action. is this the final calamity they'll make?

Henry Makow: http://www.henrymakow.com/the_fed_is_making_a_killing_on.html

The purchase price for the two mortgage lenders, and Bear Stearns and AIG is over $300 billion. The assumption of the bad loans held by the banks may cost an additional one trillion dollars. If the US Treasury created its own money, this might be bearable. But last I heard the system of money creation has not changed. I'm not an economist but it seems that the Fed is making a killing on our banking woes. The Fed is creating this "money" out of thin air and using it to buy US Treasury Notes and Bonds. The Treasury (i.e. US taxpayers) are on the hook for these securities plus interest. In other words, The banksters are a trillion dollars richer thanks to this bail out.

The Truthseeker: It's the Derivatives, Stupid!

The Fed is buying an insurance company? Where exactly is that covered in the Federal Reserve Act? The Associated Press calls it a "government takeover," but this is not your ordinary "nationalization" like the purchase of Fannie/Freddie stock by the U.S. Treasury. The Federal Reserve has the power to print the national money supply, but it is not actually a part of the U.S. government. It is a private banking corporation owned by a consortium of private banks. The banking industry just bought the world’s largest insurance company, and they used federal money to do it. Yahoo Finance reported on September 17: comprehensive background stuff

Allsop: A Freehold Detached House subject to a Tenancy

This house was sold in 2005 (3 years ago) at 495K, "2005-09-02 67 Bronte Avenue, Stotfold, Hitchin, Bedfordshire, SG5 4FB £495,000" yesterday it was "unsold" for 400.000 it means more than 20% discount and they did not sell it!! Getting interesting to check auctions in these days, I tried for a couple of years and there was nothing worth to buy...

Yelnick Typepad: WELCOME TO THE LAND OF COMMUNIST AMERICA

Yelnick discussion on the Bailout: I shorted the market and was robbed! The government has mugged me. Watch out folks! It was me today and tomorrow maybe you. And that’s because I am the small guy and not Goldman Sachs with their dodgy borrowings and investments.

Market Oracle: The Real Reason for the Global Financial Crisis…the Story No One’s Talking About

The truth is more frightening than your worst fears. Yet you won't hear about itbecause “they” can't tell you. “They” are U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury Dept. They can't tell you what's really going on because they can't do anything about it, except add liquidity. JPMorgan Chase & Co. ( JPM )] bankers devised credit default swaps early 1990's to hedge their loan risks. They are not standardized instruments, aren't technically true securities in the classic sense of the word, not transparent, aren't traded on any exchange, aren't subject to present securities laws, and aren't regulated. They are, however, at risk – all $62 trillion (the best guess by the ISDA) of them. What's even worse, however, is that speculators sold and bought trillions of dollars of insurance, also at risk, e.g.AIG

Posted by planning4acrash @ 11:47 PM 6 Comments

Whatreallyhappened.com: SO, JUST WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO DO WITH THAT TRILLION?

Here is the Cliff Notes version of the economic disaster. 1. The banks and investment houses made up a bunch of products and sank their investors' money into them. 2. The banks and investment houses couldn't convince you to buy those products. 3. The banks and investment houses got the government to FORCE you to buy those products. Any questions?

BBC 'News': Northern Rock expands state debt

"By the end of June this year, the government had loaned directly the Northern Rock £21bn. However, the liabilities taken on through the Rock's takeover have boosted the national debt by much more - pushing it up by £92bn last October. "

Posted by paul @ 11:28 PM 8 Comments

MoneyWeek: The Fed’s ‘Bad Bank’ could make the financial crisis worse

US plans to set up a dud debt fund will only make things worse. It's only a matter of time before the share price rally disappears into thin air…

Times Online: Why the market meltdown is just like Reservoir Dogs

"The incredible scale of this market f***-up is so huge that it can only be expressed with inappropriate language. We really all need to sit down and take a moment. There’s simply no point in pretending that sober looking men with distinguished haircuts and well-cut suits have any sort of monopoly on wisdom and good sense. This is finance’s shame, and rock’n’roll’s finest hour. Mothers, don’t let your daughters marry a banker." Right on dude!

Posted by last_days_of_disco @ 08:49 PM 12 Comments

CNN: Will it work?

"The one thing you don't want is to have the economy grind to a halt because people can't get credit," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. ----------------------------------------------- But Credit caused all this, how stupid are these people?

The Times: Country property succumbs to the crunch

The country housing market is being damaged by a year of economic uncertainty and job losses at Lehman and other financial groups. Prime country house prices have fallen by 7.9 per cent in the past 12 months and by 4 per cent in the past three months.

Allsop: Auction

Here the result of latest Alsopp auction, they sold this four bedroom for 289.000, Charles Church asked me, for the same house, two year ago 480.000 pounds ridiculous ... we're on about 40%... another interesting point is that the house is a former showhome brand new, in a posh place in Milton Keynes (that should be the fourth city not affected by recession.... I suppose the property crises is bigger than what we read... Cheers Mario

BBC: Fewest UK bricks made since 1940s

Brick production in the UK is set to drop to its lowest levels since the 1940s, according to industry experts. Two of the biggest companies, Ibstock and Wienerberger, have announced that they are closing plants and axing jobs. They blame the pressures of the credit crunch and the downturn in the housing market resulting in fewer builders buying bricks.

Posted by jack c @ 03:48 PM 31 Comments

The Sun: Sir Al girl Kristina's out of a job

Some of you will remember the article with Kristina Grimes boasting about how Manchester was the property investment capital of Britain. You may also remember the discussions we had regarding Dandara's wendy house sized properties. What a change a few months makes!

The Times: Home loans on borrowed time

...no surprise here!!

Market Oracle: US Government’s Financial Disaster Fix-it Plan Sends Stock Markets Soaring

U.S. stocks rallied the most in six years yesterday (Thursday) - with traders actually cheering the ticker action from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange - on the news that the federal government is taking steps to shore up the unraveling U.S. financial system and end the global credit crisis.

Accountancy Today: Debt and Doom? (Dec 2003)

James Dean once put it pithily. “Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today”. Britain’s consumers have been behaving in a way that JD would like. They have been out there spending away like billy-o. Saving for tomorrow is largely out; expenditure for today is in. For example, on some measures, borrowing through extra mortgages and remortgaging is at all-time highs. I worry about this. A natural question is: could the remarkable debt levels in Britain lead bit-by-bit to a serious economic crash? It is impossible to say for sure. But I think the answer is yes. It is sensible to face the possibility that the decade might bring a nasty economic downturn caused by a domino-like spiral in confidence.

Bloomberg: Paulson, Bernanke Push New Plan to Cleanse Books

Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke proposed moving troubled assets from the balance sheets of American financial companies into a new institution. Congressional leaders who met with Paulson and Bernanke late yesterday in Washington said they aim to pass legislation soon. The initiative is aimed at removing the devalued mortgage- linked assets at the root of the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression. Today, the Treasury announced a $50 billion program to insure the holdings of money-market mutual funds for a year.

Posted by jack c @ 01:51 PM 7 Comments

Guardian: Letters page

On the topic of "Speculations on the credit crunch" ... "How about reducing interest rates and stopping the cheap credit being diverted into another housing bubble with a land value tax?" DBC Reed, Northampton

Posted by mark wadsworth @ 01:46 PM 6 Comments

washington post: Citing Grave Financial Threats, Officials Ready Massive Rescue

The Bush administration is urgently preparing a massive intervention to revive the U.S. financial system, including a plan to sweep away the unpaid loans that are choking banks and blocking the flow of money to borrowers. The plan involves using hundreds of billions of dollars in government funding to buy bad loans, leaving banks with more money and fewer problems, according to two sources familiar with what was said at the meeting.

Posted by malct @ 01:30 PM 19 Comments

Evening Standard: At last! The price is right

“Past sales have proved that old public loos make fantastic one-off commercial premises,” says the firm’s Paul Mooney. The guide price is £90,000.

The Renegade Economist: Gordon Brown's Toxic Tongue

To call the Prime Minister a liar is unedifying. And yet, what is a man to do when faced with Gordon Brown's claim that he is going to “clean up the financial system”?

Evening Standard: Only a fool will blame us short-sellers

A very interesting read, and a cautionary tale about Einhorn vs. Lehmans. “But look at it logically. We had this huge bubble of credit which was ­engineered by the government. It suited Gordon Brown to have all this money around. It produced lots of taxes which he was able to use to finance political schemes. That bubble has now burst. Jobs are being lost. Not because I have shorted shares but because those ­workers have been let down by policies that couldn't be sustained.”

Posted by paul @ 11:37 AM 6 Comments

City News: Lehman's collapse hits buy-to-let landlords

Letting agent Cluttons reports that a number of its tenants based in Belgravia and Wapping have immediately given notice on their rental properties, following redundancies resulting from the collapse of Lehman Bros. One tenant, an ex-Lehman employee, requested that his deposit should be used for his final month’s rent, as he wasn’t sure if he would be paid his salary at the end of September

Posted by paranoia blue @ 11:36 AM 12 Comments

Mises: Short-Sale Restrictions Are an Exercise in Naked Power

So, government are banning short selling. Is it because they want to force their Marxist Capitalist solutions onto the economy and do not wish the free market to determine the new economic order? Austrian Economists at Mises argue that short sellers are a key financial check and balance that help the market correct itself. Many put actions like this as how the Great Depression was solved in the 1930's. Peeps at the Mises Institute argue that the policies are the reason why the crisis last ed so long, that the free market a) would not bhave caused the crash in the first place and b) that free market principles would have resulted in a short sharp correction back to normality. Also read: Don't sell short selling http://mises.org/story/2527 -

Posted by planning4acrash @ 11:05 AM 7 Comments

MoneyWeek: Short-sellers didn't cause this crisis - the government and bankers did

Short sellers are only taking advantage of the underlying problem, writes John Stepek. The banks made wildly irresponsible loans all through the property boom, and now that the bubble has popped, they are in serious trouble...

Icecap: Lehman Brothers Close Ties to Gore, Hansen and Carbon Trading

Al Gore’s carbon trading business GIM was banked with Lehman Bros. It will be interesting to see how this will play in the future but I suspect that this increases the risk of participating in Carbon trading. Merrill Lynch, was also deeply involved in this business. Last year Lehman Brothers released a long and highly publicized report about climate change in which they preached about decarbonization, trying to make their investors keep getting high profits from the Kyoto carbon trade scheme and the support of huge public subventions. All that, of course, with the applause of the usual choir of politicians, the entire media and the Greens.

Posted by malct @ 10:28 AM 38 Comments

FSA: Speech by Callum McCarthy

"Let me turn to what the industry should do. For financial institutions I would draw three particular lessons. The first is the need for greater realism – some would say modesty – about their risk management capability." ........ "The second is the need for greater openness about the position of each bank." ....... "The third lesson is not for those financial institutions who originate or distribute financial products, but for those who invest in them. ....... understand what you are buying."

Times Online: Outcry as ‘superbank’ puts saving Scottish jobs above English ones

The clause on page one of the formal takeover document promises that “the management focus is to keep jobs in Scotland”. There is no similar reassurance about jobs in England and Wales.

Posted by gardeniadotnet @ 09:30 AM 15 Comments

Telegraph: Short selling helped promote truth about HBOS and Lehman Brothers

"the short sellers took the view that HBOS was going to have a funding problem next year, a view that was very probably right. By betting on the price going down, short sellers were signalling publicly what they thought about HBOS's prospects. They understood HBOS's prospects and helped the rest of the market understand them. They helped us know about a problem earlier than we would otherwise have done. Is that such a bad thing?"

Posted by paul @ 08:56 AM 13 Comments

Guardian: Harman lays into excessive City bonuses

'The Labour deputy leader, Harriet Harman, yesterday claimed the public were outraged at the level of city bonuses, which had brought "mad house prices" to London and sent ripples across the country.' Brown has been keen to pin the credit crunch on global issues now Harman is blaming house prices on the city.

Posted by quiet guy @ 08:47 AM 13 Comments

BBC 'News': FSA introduces short-selling ban

"While we still regard short-selling as a legitimate investment technique in normal market conditions, the current extreme circumstances have given rise to disorderly markets," said FSA chief executive Hector Sants. If it is a legitimate investment technique, and the UK operates a free market economy, why are they banning it? Does this mean we are turning into communists? I think so.

Posted by paul @ 08:45 AM 12 Comments

USNews: Panic Sweeping Wall Street May Leave No One Standing

Some background here accounting for Paulson's statement. The credit crisis on Wednesday threatened to drag down Wall Street banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. The Washington Post reports shares of the firms "tumbled as fears mounted that the two most-vaunted names in investment banking could fall victim to the credit crisis." The New York Times says on its front page, "Even Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, the two last titans left standing on Wall Street, are no longer immune," underscoring "how quickly a sense of fear is spreading through Wall Street."

Posted by malct @ 08:27 AM 6 Comments

Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty: Ron Paul Addresses Financial Crisis

Ron Paul explains that the issues are being caused, not by Capitalism, but by Interventionism that has failed and now been socialised. Do have a read of Ron Paul's New York Times Best Seller; The Revolution". If you enjoy that, "A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship" is a compendium of his foreign policy speaches to Congress since 1976, shockingly and refreshingly enlightening.

Market Oracle: Systemic Failure of the United States- Game Over

Another chilling article from Jim Willie. A must read.

Posted by sold 2 rent 1 @ 12:54 AM 14 Comments

Bloomberg: U.S. Stocks Rally Most in Six Years on Plan to Shore Up Banks

U.S. stocks rallied the most in six years on prospects the government will formulate a ``permanent'' plan to shore up financial markets, while regulators and pension funds took steps to curb bets against banks and brokerages. Traders erupted into cheers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 617 points from its low of the day. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index climbed 4.3 percent as 68 companies in the gauge rose more than 10 percent.

Posted by tyrellcorporation @ 09:53 PM 12 Comments

Rightmove: For Sale by Auction

Commercial Property - Agents for sale by auction, what goes around comes around.

The Times: If this fails, it will take down all Britain's banks

Sadly, the events of the past two weeks may be only the prelude, not the climax, of this amazing crisis. Even the apparent rescue of Halifax Bank of Scotland may result in a bigger crisis, if the drowning HBOS drags down its rescuer, Lloyds TSB. If this happens, every big bank in Britain, except possibly HSBC, will have to be nationalised, Northern Rock-style. This may happen next year when the HPC will really start to happen?

Ap - Yahoo: Stocks surge on report of entity for bad debt

Wall Street surged higher Thursday, with the Dow Jones industrials up more than 400 points after a report that the federal government is considering creation of a repository for banks' bad debt. CNBC said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is considering creation of an entity like the Resolution Trust Corp. that was formed after the failure of savings and loan banks in the 1980s.

Guardian: Lloyds TSB chairman struck HBOS deal with Brown at City drinks party

"The prime minister promised that the deal would not be investigated if the enlarged bank continued to provide funds to would-be homeowners" "Lloyds TSB has given the government a pledge that it will keep lending to first-time buyers, in return for assurances that its £12bn bid for HBOS, announced today, would escape the scrutiny of the competition authorities."

Finance Markets: Shares in US Financials rally after crisis

The immediate financial crisis appears to be over according to Wall St, with a massive rally in US financials since 6pm, and the Dow Jones up +4% already.

Bloomberg: Treasury, Fed Weighing Wider Plan to Ease Crisis, Schumer Says

U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve officials are considering a ``permanent'' plan to address the financial crisis, Senator Charles Schumer said. ``The Federal Reserve and the Treasury are realizing that we need a more comprehensive solution,'' Schumer, a New York Democrat who chairs the congressional Joint Economic Committee, told reporters in Washington today. ``I've been talking to them about it and I may throw out a few of my own ideas this afternoon.'' The discussions focus on ``trying to do something more permanent'' after a series of government interventions in individual companies, Schumer said.

Moneymarketing: FSA bans short-selling of financial stocks

The Financial Services Authority has banned the active creation or increase in net short positions in listed financial companies from midnight tonight. The FSA says the provisions will remain in force until January 16, 2009 but will be reviewed after 30 days. The regulator is also ramping up disclosure requirements forcing hedge funds shorting financial companies to disclose daily all net short positions in excess of 0.25 per cent of the ordinary share capital of the relevant companies held at market close on the previous working day. Disclosure of positions held at close on Friday, September 19 will also be required on Tuesday, September 23.

Posted by jack c @ 07:17 PM 14 Comments

Bloomberg: BOE's Dale Sees `Painful' U.K. House-Price Adjustment

The adjustment in U.K. house prices will be ``painful'' for many households as home values fall to a more sustainable level, Bank of England Chief Economist Spencer Dale said. ``A range of indicators point to further weakness in the months ahead,'' Dale said in a speech to business leaders in Dover today. ``This process of adjustment will be painful for many households.''

The International Forecaster: All Roads Lead To Hyperinflation

Losses and bankruptcies of the major banks that we predicted, trouble for the taxpayer who now shoulder a trillion in debt from bank failures, Why do we have to bail out Wall Street fraud? Lehman Brothers left to expire, We are watching our Zombie economy implode, Buy-outs are just throwing good money after bad, Toxic waste eats your equity capital, eats your stocks, your bonds, and eats your retirement funds. 1929 all over again. the Treasury has been given the right to stop dividend payments on both common and preferred stock of AIG shareholders, which means basically that they have both just been vaporized.

daily mash via SOTT: Satire: Nothing can possibly go wrong with gigantic new bank

HBOS and Lloyds TSB last night created a monstrous new banking entity safe in the knowledge that nothing can possibly go wrong. Politicians and businessmen breathed a collective sigh of relief as two of the biggest names on the high street formed one very long name that will never do anything other than be brilliant all the time. Martin Bishop, a senior trader at Madeley Finnegan, said: "History tells us that massive financial institutions do not fail. Ever. Okay, there is maybe a tiny handful of exceptions. "Okay, maybe 40 or 50 exceptions. Actually, you're right, this is starting to look really dodgy." just when you thought I was a miserable doomsayer - even my sense of humour prooves you right!

Posted by malct @ 06:10 PM 10 Comments

thisismoney.co.uk: House price crash calculator

I'm not sure if this has been posted before, but first time I came across it.

reuters via SOTT: China paper urges new currency order after "financial tsunami"

Threatened by a "financial tsunami," the world must consider building a financial order no longer dependent on the United States, a leading Chinese state newspaper said on Wednesday. The commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily said the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc "may augur an even larger impending global 'financial tsunami'."

der spiegel via SOTT: 'The World As We Know It Is Going Under'

Panic Is the Word of the Hour Traders abandoned the NYSE temple visually defeated and immune to the TV crews rushing past. The disastrous closing prices were flickering on the ticker above the NYSE entrance: American Express -8.4 percent; Citigroup -10.9 percent; JPMorgan Chase -12.2 percent. American icons, abused like stray dogs. Even Apple took a hit. "I don't know what I should say," stammered one broker, who was consoling himself with white wine and beer along with two colleagues at a bar called Beckett's. Ties and jackets were off, but despite the evening breeze, you could still make out the thin film of sweat on his forehead. His words captured the speechlessness of an industry.

321gold: Comrade Bernanke Does it Again

By nationalizing nearly 80% of AIG for $85 billion, the Fed is doing a lot more than simply flushing taxpayer money down the toilet. The greater wrong is allowing the agency that has the power to print money to take control of a private enterprise, especially without the approval of the company's shareholders. The move represents the largest lurch toward socialism that this country has ever seen, and signals the end of the vibrancy of America's once vaunted free market economy. Since there is no limit to the amount of money the Fed can create, there is no limit to the number of assets they can acquire.

Citywire: ETF Securities pushes for AIG collateral

Having made a paper loss on these, I sat in on an institutional-investor conference call this morning. This covers most of it, I will also add a comment.

Evening Standard: Goldman and Morgan Stanley on the ropes

The last two independent investment banks on Wall Street were today engulfed by the banking crisis. Morgan Stanley is being forced into a desperate merger to stay afloat. Goldman Sachs is also on the rack, having seen 14 per cent wiped off its share price last night.

Posted by mark wadsworth @ 03:54 PM 16 Comments

BBC NEWS: Brown pledge to 'clean up' City

Gordon Brown has pledged to "clean-up" the financial system following the rescue of Britain's biggest mortgage lender HBOS by Lloyds TSB. The prime minister said he had taken "quick action" to "maintain the stability of the financial system". But he said he also had proposals to end "irresponsible behaviour" in the money markets to prevent similar problems happening in the future.

Posted by sold out @ 03:11 PM 37 Comments

MoneyWeek: The ‘real’ economy is suffering as much as the financial one

It’s been a wild week in financial markets. But amid the havoc, there have been several reminders over the last few days that the 'real' economy is also getting markedly worse...

Property Week: UK 'in recession and things will be grim', says economist Bootle

Managing Director of Capital Economics, Roger Bootle said the speed at which house prices were falling could potentially be 'healthy' for the economy and could result in things recovering more quickly.

NJ Times: As Fears Grow, Wall St. Titans See Shares Fall

"Seeking to avoid the kind of fate that led Lehman and Bear Stearns to collapse, John J. Mack, Morgan Stanley’s chief executive, made an unsuccessful effort on Tuesday evening to persuade Citigroup’s chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, to enter into a combination, according to people briefed on the talks." Morgan Stanley approached Citigroup, Wachovia and several other banks.

CNN Money: How We Got Here: It's Housing, Stupid

"I would hesitate to say the worst is behind us," Achuthan said. So even with perhaps hundreds of billions of tax dollars going to AIG, Fannie and Freddie, one expert said the only real solution to the housing problem is for the correction in housing to finish running its course.

Posted by crutchley @ 12:50 PM 18 Comments

BBC: Surprise rise in UK retail sales

UK retail sales unexpectedly jumped in August, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show. High street sales rose 1.2% in August to stand 3.3% higher than a year ago. Analysts had expected a 0.5% drop after a swathe of gloomy surveys.

Posted by alan @ 12:18 PM 13 Comments

Yahoo: After HBOS - who's next?

They're folding like suitcases... Given the state of HBOS' stock, and the strength of Lloyds' bargaining position - and balance sheet - do you think 232p a share was too hefty a price? And who will be the next financial giant to go? Morgan Stanley?

Bloomberg: Central Banks Offer Extra Funds to Calm Money Markets

The Federal Reserve almost quadrupled the amount of dollars central banks can auction around the world to $247 billion in a coordinated bid to ease the worst crisis facing financial markets since the 1920s.

The Renegade Economist: The Great Crash of 2008

Galloping sprawl, such as we’ve experienced in California in the last 16 years, has set us up for “The Great Crash of 2008.” Urban sprawl inflates the price demanded for nearly every square foot of land from the redwoods to Mexico. It contributes to cycles of boom followed by bust when inflated land values collapse, as now. If the process were simple, we would have mastered it long ago instead of constantly repeating it. Yet they do recur in a rhythm that is almost predictable.

Evening Standard via SOTT: My anger over Lehmans' $5 billion 'betrayal' of London

The day after the fall of Lehman Brothers, Robert Daniels, a director and a senior departmental head at the Canary Wharf headquarters, is sitting contemplating his future over a stiff espresso when an incongruous email drops onto his BlackBerry. It is from Ravi Mattu, global head of research at Lehmans on Wall Street, and it says: "I am extremely pleased to announce that for the ninth year in a row, Lehman Brothers' fixed income research team is ranked number one in the annual institutional investor survey of 1,330 professionals at 490 institutions. This achievement is the direct result of a team effort and I want to congratulate the entire fixed income division for this tremendous honour."

Posted by malct @ 11:21 AM 9 Comments

MoneyWeek: What does the HBOS takeover mean for you?

"If you ever wanted to nationalise the banking system by the back door, you couldn’t think of a much better way than by opening a state-guaranteed savings account, paying commercial rates of interest. The law of unintended consequences strikes again."

Citywire: Concerns grow about funding for Lloyds/HBOS group

Shares in Lloyds TSB fell in morning deals as analysts fret about the risks inherent in the merger with HBOS. Market watchers fear the deal may take much longer to push through than hoped - distracting the management team from the key business of navigating the current market turmoil.Numis analysts said the bid does not solve the problem of structural weakness in the UK economy and what they think is likely to be a severe recession for eighteen months. 'The deal just creates a larger group with an even greater funding requirement,' they said.

FT: How to meet the dangers facing Britain

Whilst all around are losing their heads, Martin Wolf's remains firmly screwed on. Here's his prescription for the UK.

First Rung: House prices crash in the prime market - Knight Frank

Prices in the prime country house market fell by 4.0% during the third quarter of 2008, according to the Knight Frank Prime Country House Index.... The index has now fallen by almost 8% over the past 12 months. The most expensive properties have seen the smallest falls.

Posted by housebear @ 10:56 AM 8 Comments

BBC: Mortgage lending slumps in August

Mortgage lending continued its downward spiral in August, according to the latest figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). The total value of new lending was £21.8bn, down by 12% from July and 36% lower than in August last year. The CML said it was the lowest monthly figure since April 2005 and the lowest August figure since 2002. It blamed the continued fall in mortgagee lending on "exceptionally low housing market turnover."

Posted by jack c @ 10:30 AM 9 Comments

Bloomberg: Fed, ECB, BOJ Take Joint Action to Alleviate Tensions

The Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan joined with their counterparts around the world to pump dollars into the financial system and head off a deepening crisis. The Fed said it authorized other central banks to auction $180 billion in dollar funds to financial institutions, in a statement on its Website. A joint release said that the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada and the Swiss National Bank also participated. ``The action is designed to address the continued elevated pressures in U.S. dollar short-term funding markets,'' the banks said. ``The central banks continue to work together closely and will take appropriate steps to address the ongoing pressures.''

Posted by tyrellcorporation @ 09:40 AM 18 Comments

Reuters - Yahoo: Morgan Stanley in talks as fear grips financials

Morgan Stanley topped the list of major financial services firms scrambling to sell themselves as fear gripped global credit and stock markets, leaving the Russian bourse paralysed for a second day. Morgan Stanley was discussing a deal with U.S. regional banking powerhouse Wachovia, according to a source familiar with the matter, while CNBC said HSBC Holdings and China's CITIC Group were also eyeing the venerable Wall Street firm.

Telegraph: HBOS - Lloyds TSB merger likely to push up mortgage rates

Mortgage rates are likely to rise if Lloyds TSB takes over HBOS, according to personal finance experts. The merger will create Britain's biggest mortgage company, supplying more than one in four mortgages in Britain. advertisement Mortgage experts said the creation of such a big player would be bad for competition in the market, causing rates to increase.

MARKETWATCH: Treasury to provide cash to Fed market liquidity operations

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The Treasury Department announced Wednesday that it would provide cash to the Federal Reserve to fund the central bank's operations to provide liquidity to financial markets. In a statement, Treasury said that it would raise the cash in a program of Treasury bill auctions, known as a temporary Supplementary Financing Program. The auctions would be kept apart from Treasury's current borrowing program. Agency officials gave no details of the timing, size and maturity of any bills to be auctioned.

Money India: Banking in India, Past, Present & Future

Because Indian banks are heavily regulated in terms of the types of assets they can invest in, domestic Indian banks have largely been insulated from the credit contagion that is sweeping the globe.

Prisonplanet.tv: Nobel Prize Winning Economist: Crisis As Bad As Great Depression Or Worse

Two time Nobel-prize winner and former chief economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz has warned that the current financial crisis will continue for at least another eighteen months and in many ways represents a worse situation than the one faced by Americans during the great depression of the 1930s. This is an article to accompany the interview with Alex; radio interview.

Posted by planning4acrash @ 12:38 AM 13 Comments

The Market Oracle: Hedge Funds Crash Halifax, HBOS Rescued by Lloyds TSB

Hedge funds over the last 3 days have been in relentless pursuit of Britain's biggest mortgage bank, Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) as the next bank to be pushed over the credit crisis and housing bear market cliff, amidst an atmosphere of global defaults in the wake of Lehman's collapse on Sunday. In emergency action both sanctioned and sponsored by the Bank of England saw Lloyds TSB step in to buy the Bank before the Government was forced to step in and rescue the bank much as happened following the Northern Rock bust in September 2007.

BBC News: Lloyds TSB seals merger with HBOS

Just like that! Two of Britain's Big Five banks have completed an agreement on a merger. Competition be damned. Can't believe how quickly this has gone through. Asking price 232p per HBoS share - a premium of 58% over their closing price today of 147p. No mention as to why Lloyds would want to pay over the odds for this toxic wastedump, though it's likely to that Darling et al are sweetening the deal via backhand channels.

Posted by little professor @ 10:38 PM 24 Comments

BBC: Britain 'faces power cuts threat'

Industrialists warn about a "fearful void" in this countries energy policy and that, "The current credit crunch is a head cold compared to the double pneumonia this country will suffer if we don't implement an energy policy urgently".

Posted by enuii @ 10:22 PM 10 Comments

bloomberg: Japan Banks, Insurers Have $2.4 Billion Lehman Risk

Lehman's collapse ``could be rubbing salt into the wounds for the regional banking sector.''

Bloomberg: Deutsche Bank Limits Credit-Default Swaps Exposing It to Bank-Failure Risk

Well not exactly unexpected, but don't expect LIBOR to normalise anytime soon (AND THUS MORTGAGE RATES INCREASE), they are running for the hills after getting a wiff of that burning fuse.

Telegraph: HBOS - Lloyds TSB merger: mortgage rates to rise

Mortgage rates are likely to rise if Lloyds TSB takes over HBOS, according to personal finance experts. The merger will create Britain's biggest mortgage company, supplying more than one in four mortgages in Britain.

Posted by quiet guy @ 08:14 PM 11 Comments

Bloomberg: Morgan Stanley, Goldman Plummet After AIG Takeover

'The end of investment banking' was the phrase used on Channel 4 news.

Bloomberg: Morgan Stanley, Goldman Plummet After AIG Takeover (Update1)

Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the biggest U.S. securities firms, tumbled the most ever in New York trading after a government rescue of American International Group Inc. failed to ease the credit crisis. The cost to protect against a default by the banks rose to a record. Goldman fell as much as 26 percent on the New York Stock Exchange and Morgan Stanley plunged 44 percent, leading financial stocks to the lowest level in five years. ``They're fish in the barrel, the short sellers have them targeted,'' said William Smith, whose firm Smith Asset Management Inc. in New York manages $80 billion, including Goldman stock. ``Morgan Stanley's probably going to wind up doing a deal, it's really a matter of survival.''

Yahoo: Bank turmoil threatens more housing misery

Grenville Turner, chief executive of property services firm Countrywide said his biggest concern in the wake of Lehman's collapse was a drastic change in sentiment, which could prolong house price falls across the broader market."We had just started to feel a bit more relaxed that we had got through the worst of this. I have likened it to a motorway crash, where lorries pile up behind you and you just sit tight and wait for them to stop," Turner said "I got the sense that people were beginning to get back on the road again. But instead another two and maybe even three trucks have ploughed into the back of you," he said.

Reuters: BoE extends liquidity scheme as turmoil intensifies

The Bank of England will allow banks an extra three months to swap hard-to-trade assets for government paper because of the continuing turmoil in financial markets, extending a scheme that was set to close next month. How ironic!

FT: Cameron urges centre-right to back capitalism

Cameron states that the turmoil that forced HBOS into Lloyds TSB was due to imbalances in the UK economy caused by Gordon Brown. Growth in the UK had become too reliant on: housing, finance, government spending and immigration.

Posted by denzil @ 06:20 PM 6 Comments

Yahoo: London Scottish still loss making

Consumer finance group London Scottish Bank (LSE: LSB.L - news) said it remains loss making despite having made good progress in refocusing the group. The group said it is still in talks with interested parties, which may or may not lead to an offer being made for the company.

FT: Land behaves differently too

A good argument for Land Value Tax as a way of preventing house price/credit bubbles. By a chap from Lib Dems ALTER group (but let's not hold that against him...)

Bloomberg: Gold, Silver Climb as Credit Turmoil Spurs Demand for Haven

Gold climbed as some investors sought safety in precious metals on concern more financial institutions will fail as the credit crisis deepens. Silver jumped almost 4 percent.

Posted by cornishman @ 04:08 PM 25 Comments

Yahoo: Red or black: How much is HBOS worth? Have your say

check out the comments... I am really surprised we are not seeing queues of people waiting to cash out of halifax............

Posted by mark @ 03:32 PM 10 Comments

Yahoo: Russia suspends trading again

Russian regulators have halted trading on the country's two largest stock markets for the second day in succession as share prices continued to plummet.

FT Alphaville: How’s that for a logo?

Posted by mountain goat @ 03:14 PM 8 Comments

Times Online: HBOS merger with Lloyds TSB may cost UK 40,000 jobs

That number leaves me speechless. Is this what to expect in the coming months?

The Sun: EU can smash bonkers rules

I suggest that you nominate The European Communities Act 1972 as the one we ought to get rid of first ...

Yahoo: HBOS Talks: '40,000 Jobs At Stake'

Halifax Bank of Scotland has confirmed that it is in advanced talks with Lloyds TSB about a possible takeover that could cost as many as 40,000 jobs.

Posted by mark @ 02:34 PM 8 Comments

Market Oracle: Lehman's Bankruptcy the Ultimate Wall Street Derivatives Defaults Nightmare

We've lost count of how many times the authorities have virtually sworn on a stack of Bibles that "our financial system is fundamentally sound." But no one could possibly lose count of their recent desperate efforts to prevent the system's collapse — actions which directly belie their words: One — the coordinated efforts by central banks to flood the global economy with liquidity in the summer of 2007. Two — the hasty bailout of Bear Stearns in March of this year. Three — the giant Fannie and Freddie rescue announced just eight days ago. Each time they intervene, they say "we must not reward CEOs who deceive the public and walk off with multibillion dollar bonus checks." And each time they say it's the "last time we'll make an exception to that rule."

Daily Express: DON’T LET THE SPIVS DESTROY BRITAIN

The "stupidity of spivs in high finance" is to blame they say. But naturally no mention of the cause of all this turmoil, a crashing housing bubble that THEY helped ramp up. Greed and stupidity got us here but not only the stupidity of the high and mighty Mr Daily Express Editor. Nearly everyone, and that is 90% of the country, bought into this house price Ponzi scheme.

Posted by mountain goat @ 01:48 PM 9 Comments

Naked Capitalism: Lehman Collateral Damage: Some Hedge Funds Have Assets Frozen

The Wall Street Journal tells us that some less-than-nimble-footed hedge funds wound up not moving their prime brokerage accounts quickly enough out of Lehman to avoid having those assets frozen in the bankruptcy. Late last week, many hedge funds scrambled to shift that business away from Lehman and to other so-called prime brokers, which provide trading and lending services to the funds. But some were caught up in the bank's move to file for bankruptcy protection on Monday, say lawyers and other industry specialists. As a result, they have found their holdings effectively frozen, with no indication of when they might be able to access them. Legal experts cautioned that it could be weeks or months before the mess is sorted out, leaving hedge funds unable to unwind positions at a time wh

Naked capitalism: Comic Relief: "You've Got the Fed"

lighten up music video

The Australian: Global banks brace for derivative blow-up

The likes of Warren Buffett would have it that the defaults triggered by Lehman's implosion would resound fearfully through the multi-trillion-dollar derivatives market, generating a global, capital-burning bushfire in global markets. Then there are those who believe the systemic risk in the $US455 trillion derivatives market has been overcooked. But even those who maintain a less cataclysmic view than Omaha's Oracle accept that a major default event like the collapse of the 158 year old Lehman will result in massive value burn. And there will be hot-spots in unexpected places -- like, for example, a sad selection of deluded Australian councils and public works authorities

MoneyWeek: The economy will plunge, despite the AIG rescue

Just days after leaving Lehman Brothers to collapse, the Fed has ditched its concerns about moral hazard and bailed out insurance giant AIG. So what does this mean for the wider economy? Nothing good, says John Stepek.

Information Clearing House: Bank of America, Merrill Bailout Disguised as Buyout?

If that's the case, then it looks like all the banks are on the verge of complete failure. When are these analysts going to stop with their lies? It appears as if we are witnessing government bailouts using taxpayer money that are being deceitfully disguised as buyouts. Not just with the Merrill buyout but also this newly established $70 billion emergency bank fund, set aside to help out banks with future problems. Where do you think this money is coming from? The banks certainly don't have it. You see, the banking cartel – the guys that own the Federal Reserve – have been given a blank check and will make it through this crisis. JP Morgan Chase is already dealing with Bear Stearns so now it was time to ask Bank of America to take over Merrill.

Information Clearing House: US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling From Direct Hits

Call centers, IT operations, back-office operations, and manufacturing have long been moved offshore. Now high-value-added proprietary activities such as research and development, engineering, product development, and analytical services are being sent offshore. All that’s left is finance, and it is crumbling before our eyes. Independent broker-dealers are disappearing: Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers. These venerable institutions were too thinly capitalized for the risks that they took. Merrill Lynch is now part of the Bank of America, and Lehman Brothers is history. If we look realistically at the US economy, we see that what is not moved offshore is being bailed out.

Alex Jones Show: Alex Jones interviews Joseph E. Stigletz today, on the economy.

Part 1; Part 2. Read about Joseph E. Stigletz on Wikipedia Feeds and podcasts subscription advert free viewing.

Alex Jones Show: Alex Jones interviews Dr Paul Craig Roberts today, on the economy

Part 1, Part 2. Read about Dr Paul on Wikipedea Feeds and podcasts subscription advert free viewing.

reuters: U.S. regulators try to find WaMu buyer

U.S. federal regulators recently called a number of banks asking if they would consider buying Washington Mutual Inc should it eventually falter

Timesonline: After Lehman Brothers: desperate City wives

I find it very hard to feel sorry for these people. They had their opportunities for huge wealth, at the expense of prudence and the well-being of the whole, in their search for more and more. They knew what they were doing, while 'most' of us were and are innocent victims of the greed and avarice of the City. I know what I am saying will be attacked by some, but even they have to admit that this is a sad, pity filled article, maybe not for the author herself, but for all her (formerly) -rich friends. Good luck to them all finding new work in fields which add 'value' to society.

Posted by bystander @ 12:34 PM 10 Comments

Reuters: UPDATE 1-NY Fed repaid JPMorgan for $87 bln in Lehman financing

"The Federal Reserve Bank of New York took the unusual step of providing some $87 billion in financing to units of bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (LEH.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) to prevent disruption in trading markets as customers flee, according to a filing on Tuesday." Who knows what would have happened without this money. Forget tin hats you would need a bomb shelter!

bbc news: Gatwick Airport put up for sale

The UK's second-largest airport, Gatwick, has been put up for sale by its owner BAA.

London Telegraph via SOTT: Banking crisis: Is Britain heading for the worst recession since the 1930s?

Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist for Capital Economics, predicts a million job losses in the next two to three years and a further slump in house prices before recovery begins. "The collapse of Lehman Brothers will only prolong the uncertainty in the financial markets, meaning banks will remain reluctant to lend to each other and the credit crunch will continue for a long time to come," he said. "If people can't get loans the housing market will continue to fall and I think house prices have got a lot further to go before they hit bottom. They will probably keep coming down for another year or two. "We also think the economy will contract next year and around a million people will lose their jobs.

BBC: UK unemployment total rises again

The number of people out of work in the UK rose by another 81,000 between May and July, to 1.72 million, according to government figures. That took the official unemployment rate up from 5.3% to 5.5%.

Wikipedia: HBOS

The Bank of Scotland is the UK's oldest commercial bank, by an Act of the Parliament of Scotland in 1695. Halifax was founded in 1853 as the Halifax Permanent Benefit Building and Investment Society, which demutualised in 1997 to become a plc.[4] The merger of the Bank of Scotland and Halifax occurred in 2001[2] during a wave of consolidation in the UK banking market which began in the late 1990s. The Bank of Scotland played a key role in the process, firstly by launching a hostile takeover bid for NatWest, although the bid failed to a rival offer from the Royal Bank of Scotland. It later investigated a merger with Abbey National, when Halifax approached with an offer to merge. The merger created the fifth largest bank in the UK by market capitalisation.

BBC: Bank voted 8-1 to hold UK rates

Bank of England policymakers voted 8-1 in favour of the status quo at their interest rate-setting meeting earlier this month. Minutes of the meeting earlier in September show only David Blanchflower opposed keeping rates on hold at 5%, voting for a half point cut. The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) considered both raising and cutting rates before deciding to hold rates. The MPC had not changed its outlook on inflation, which rose again in August.

Posted by jack c @ 10:01 AM 8 Comments

press association: HBOS 'could merge with Lloyds TSB'

HBOS 'could merge with Lloyds TSB' 4 hours ago Troubled mortgage giant HBOS has become the subject of speculation that it could merge with rival Lloyds TSB. Earlier, shares in the group plunged for a third day in a row amid funding fears, diving as much as 50%, but recovered to 7% down after the report from the BBC. The broadcaster said HBOS and Lloyds TSB were in "advanced" talks over a combination. Asked about the discussions, an HBOS spokesman declined to comment. now announced on bbc

Posted by malct @ 09:50 AM 10 Comments

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Speaking to the News Letter, Jonathan Davis repeated his prediction of 18 months ago that the average house price in Northern Ireland would fall by 50 per cent but said that some of the most overvalued houses would plunge much further. I remember being on the Nolan Show on a Wednesday night a year-and-a-half ago and saying the market would fall 50 per cent – I was pretty well laughed off," he said. "I'm pretty comfortable in saying that the average fall in Northern Ireland will be 50 percent which means that some properties could fall 70 or 80 per cent. "It wasn't used, but I said on camera to ITV six months ago that the region in the country which would have the worst crash would be Northern Ireland because it went up the most – prices went up by 400 per cent in 15 years in Northern...

Posted by housebear @ 09:28 AM 11 Comments

BBC News: HBOS in merger talks with Lloyds

Lloyds TSB is is in advanced merger talks with HBOS to create a giant UK super retail bank, the BBC has learned. Under the deal, the valuation of HBOS shares would be closer to its closing price last week of 300 pence rather than its current level of around 100p.

Sky News: HBOS Shares Fall Heavily Again

Before trading Britain's biggest mortgage lender and savings institution had seen around £3bn wiped of its market value as the fallout from the collapse of Lehman Brothers continued. Statements from both HBOS and the city regulator Financial Services Authority assured investors that the bank's finances were sound.

Posted by malct @ 09:15 AM 27 Comments

Chicago Tribune: Jump in London rate to hit U.S. housing

The biggest jump in the London interbank lending rate in at least seven years could wreak further havoc on the U.S. housing market, and there's nothing the Federal Reserve can do about it. "U.S. home prices probably will tumble through 2010, Freddie Mac said in a forecast Monday." "If the Libor market seizes up and stays that way, it's going to complicate everything," said Bill Fleckenstein, president of Fleckenstein Capital in Seattle. "What you are seeing is the unwinding of the financial system as we know it."

Telegraph online: Capitalism - it's painful, but it works

After a year of grim financial news, it would be easy to dismiss the collapse of Lehman Brothers as just another bad day at the office. Easy, but wrong. This is a rare defining moment, when regulators call the bluff of those who say that the demise of such an important bank will ruin our economic infrastructure. It is the day of reckoning.

Credit Writedowns: The Federal Reserve bails out AIG

The Fed has lent to AIG. Thank god. I was thinking that Man U was going to have to change its kit

Mish's: Nationalization of AIG: Treasury to get 80% stake in return for $85 billion

In an extraordinary turn, the Federal Reserve was close to a deal Tuesday night to take a nearly 80 percent stake in the troubled giant insurance company, the American International Group, in exchange for an $85 billion loan, according to people briefed on the negotiations. All of A.I.G.’s assets would be pledged to secure the loan, these people said, and in return, the Fed would receive warrants that would give it an ownership stake. Stock of existing shareholders would be diluted, but not wiped out.

Posted by drewster @ 02:21 AM 12 Comments

Reuters: AIG hires law firm to draw up bankruptcy papers: report

American International Group Inc has hired law firm Weil Gotshal to draw up bankruptcy papers, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. AIG could file for bankruptcy as soon as Wednesday if a financing solution is not reached.

Yahoo: Who Killed the Economy? So Far, Greenspan's the Popular Choice

If this week's Wall Street meltdown and the general decline of the American economy have a villain, Portfolio.com may have fingered him: In an interactive story first posted in June, the site's readers have overwhelmingly picked former Fed chief Alan Greenspan as the culprit.

Bloomberg: Fed Said to Reverse Stance, Consider AIG Loan Package

The Federal Reserve is considering extending a ``loan package'' to American International Group Inc., the insurer facing a cash shortage, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. The stance by federal regulators is a reversal from a position they held as late as last night, and people with knowledge of the talks are ``cautiously optimistic,'' said the person, who declined to be identified because negotiations are confidential.

Posted by alan @ 09:21 PM 8 Comments

BBC Newsnight: Who has been UK's greatest post-war PM?

Newsnight wants you to help decide the UK's greatest and worst post-war prime minister. Find out more about the 12 PMs below, then use the form to rank them in order of greatness.

Posted by ash4781 @ 07:26 PM 14 Comments

Bloomberg: Fed Keeps Rate at 2%, Rebuffing Call for Cut to Soothe Markets

The Federal Reserve left its main interest rate at 2 percent, rebuffing calls by some investors for a cut after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s bankruptcy shook markets worldwide. ``Downside risks to growth and the upside risk to inflation are both of significant concern,'' the Federal Open Market Committee said in a statement in Washington. ``The committee will monitor economic and financial developments carefully and will act as needed to promote sustainable economic growth and price stability.''

Posted by jack c @ 07:20 PM 7 Comments

Forbes: Banks Can't Help AIG. Will Uncle Sam?

American International Group continues to plead for assistance in a meeting at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Tuesday with time running out and prospects fading for a private bank-led rescue. "No one was willing to step up," the source said, adding that the sums are just too staggering without any participation from the government.

Bloomberg: Greenberg-Led AIG Investors Consider Taking Control

The "Big Boys" have really been caught with their pants down. American International Group Inc. investors led by former Chief Executive Officer Maurice ``Hank'' Greenberg may consider taking control of the insurer through a proxy fight or buyout. The investors also are considering acquiring New York-based AIG's subsidiaries or making loans to the company. They disclosed their options today in a regulatory filing. Greenberg may be seeking to rescue the insurer that is struggling to raise cash amid losses tied to U.S. mortgages and credit downgrades. Greenberg, who was ousted in 2005 amid a regulatory probe into accounting, controls about 11 percent of the company through personal holdings and companies he heads.

Motley Fool: Who can you trust on house prices? See comment from Indianopolis

The major problem with the Land Registry data is the sample size. This does not seem to have been picked up much in the press. The LR uses a methodology that they term 'repeat sales regression'. Monitoring when a property is exchange twice and recording the change between the two dates. This is all fine in practice but the LR has only been recording sale price in the registry since around 2000, which they estimate is around 2% of the total housing stock. This is already a low sample but on top of this for a property to be registered in the index it has to have been exchanged twice between 2000 and today. In a market when numbers of transactions have collapsed by around 70%, the LR sample size each month must be incredibly low to the extent that it's statistically meaningless.

Reuters: S&P cuts HBOS PLC counterparty credit ratings

S&P said it is cutting ratings on HBOS and its main operating subsidiary Bank of Scotland to 'A+' from 'AA-', the fourth-highest investment grade. The outlook remains stable, said S&P...."The U.K. housing and mortgage markets are in a period of "severe strain" and are unlikely to recover in the near term, said the analyst.

mortgagestrategy: Moody's downgrades ''weakly capitalised'' B&B

Bradford & Bingley has been downgraded by Moody’s Investors Services in the face of weak capital and a dependence on funding from the Bank of England....Another area of concern for Moody’s is that 85% of B&B’s loan book is focussed in buy-to-let and self-cert. The ratings agency says the quality of the loans within these sectors has deteriorated much more quickly than similar asset classes held with rival lenders. Also - see share price decline at http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=BB.L&t=1y

HIP-Consultant.co.uk: Deciding on ‘the’ house

Deciding on ‘the’ house is part of our guide to buying your next home and potentially one of the biggest decisions you are ever likely to make. There are a number of factors to consider, this will differ from person to person but there are key themes than run throughout any search be it for a one-bed flat or five-bed detached.