Empiric Student Property Share Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 01/12/2009 14:05

Angela Merkel alarmed by worsening credit crisis

The German government is rushing through a fresh package of measures to shore up ailing banks and prevent a second wave of the debt crisis suffocating large parts of manufacturing industry.

...
The move comes days after the Bundesbank revealed that German banks face a further €90bn (£82bn) of likely write-downs over the next year.



Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, told Le Figaro on Wednesday that banks worldwide have so far admitted to just half of the $3.5 trillion (£2.1 trillion) of likely damage.

"There are still large hidden losses: perhaps 50pc tucked away in balance sheets. The proportion is higher in Europe than in America. The history of banking crisis, notably in Japan, shows that there won't be healthy growth again until the banks have been cleaned up completely," he said.

[briarberry] 30/11/2009 15:22

Retail, more customers but they're spending less...


Trade group National Retail Federation said Sunday that while 195 million shoppers, or 13% more than last year, visited stores and websites over the Black Friday weekend, the average spending over the weekend declined 7.9% to $343.31.

[briarberry] 28/11/2009 23:18

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reported Tuesday that U.S. bank loans fell by $210.4 billion or 2.8% during the third quarter – the biggest drop since the FDIC started keeping records in 1984.

Loans to businesses fell 6.5%, and real estate loans plummeted 8.1%

Non-current loans rose more than 10% during the quarter to $366.6 billion or nearly 5% of all loans, the highest rate on record.

[briarberry] 25/11/2009 20:23

Nov. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Russia's central bank will add Canadian dollars to its reserves and may include more currencies as it seeks to reduce its dependence on the U.S dollar.

[briarberry] 25/11/2009 18:33

Jesse's Cafe...

As part of the quantitative easing regime, the Fed has so debased the financial system that dollar debt is paying negative interest rates once again as it did in the 1970's.

with chart

[briarberry] 24/11/2009 16:38

Overnight, the Shanghai Composite slumped 3.5% as China's banking regulator warned the nation's lenders to strictly comply with capital requirements or face sanctions. Concerns have mounted that government stimulus and loose lending have fueled a real-estate bubble in China.

[briarberry] 23/11/2009 21:47

P/E ratio 140 (GAAP method), yeah it looks like the S&P have stopped publishing P/E ratio data...


Standard & Poor's New Policy: Concealing the S&P 500 P/E Ratio from the General Public

Gary North - Nov. 17, 2009

Some high-level decision-maker at Standard & Poor's has decided that the public should no longer be allowed easy access to this crucial number: the Price/Earnings ratio of the S&P 500.

That number went above 140 on September 30, 2009 -- the highest ever recorded. It had continued upward all year.

I went to the old page late last week. The page has been totally redesigned. The P/E ratio was missing.




Chart of the Day
With a large majority of third-quarter earnings in the books (87% of S&P 500 companies have reported for Q3 2009), today's chart provides some long-term perspective to the current earnings environment by focusing on 12-month, as reported S&P 500 earnings. Today's chart illustrates how earnings declined over 92% from its Q3 2007 peak to its Q3 2009 trough, which makes it easily the largest decline on record (the data goes back to 1936).

[briarberry] 23/11/2009 16:43

The economic miracle continues :)


Treasury sells $31 billion 6-month bills at 0.142%
Treasury sells $30 billion 3-month bills at 0.041%
Treasury sells $44 billion in 2-year notes at 0.802%

$105 billion in one day !

[briarberry] 19/11/2009 23:47

short term rates down near zero

[briarberry] 19/11/2009 22:37

Dell earnings fall 54% as PC sales drop

[briarberry] 18/11/2009 13:57

U.S. Oct. CPI up 0.3%
U.S. Oct. core CPI up 0.2%
U.S. Oct. new car prices up 1.6%, most in 28 years
U.S. core CPI up 1.7% in past year

U.S. housing starts down 30.7% year-on-year

[briarberry] 18/11/2009 01:33

PPI - apparently the, cash for clunckers, discount was included in the PPI stats ?


The fall at the core level was due mainly to declines in prices for light trucks and passenger cars.
Light trucks includes vans, pickups, and sport utility vehicles (SUVs)

[briarberry] 17/11/2009 18:48

inflation...

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- The cost of borrowing in dollars for six months between banks fell below the yen rate for the first time in more than 16 years as Federal Reserve officials signaled they may keep interest rates low for longer

The London interbank offered rate, or Libor, for six-month dollar loans fell 1 basis point to 0.506 percent today, compared with 0.516 percent for yen loans, according to data from the British Bankers' Association. That's the first time the dollar rate was lower than the yen rate since May 1993.


deflation...

Lehman Mortgage Notes Are Offered at 70% Discount by Germany's Bundesbank - Germany's Bundesbank is offering to sell mortgage-backed bonds that Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. pledged as collateral for loans for as low as about 30 percent of face value, according to a list of the assets seen by Bloomberg News


who's winning ?

[briarberry] 17/11/2009 13:38

U.S. Oct. PPI up 0.3% on higher energy, food costs
U.S. PPI down 1.9% in past year
U.S. Oct. crude PPI up 5.4%

[briarberry] 16/11/2009 13:35

Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) -- The options market shows investors are growing increasingly wary that U.S. debt sales may push yields higher even as inflation remains in check.

The cost to hedge against rising yields on Treasuries as measured by the so-called skew in options on interest-rate swaps is at a record high, according to Barclays Plc data. At more than 37 basis points, the measure is almost 40 times higher than the average before credit markets seized up in August 2007.

[briarberry] 14/11/2009 20:44

The Mortgage Bankers Association's purchase index fell 11.6 percent in the week to a nine-year low.

[briarberry] 14/11/2009 16:15

Pacific Coast National Bank is the 123rd FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the fifteenth in California.

...
Unofficial Problem Bank List increases to 507
Seven institutions with assets of $1.6 billion were added to the list.
The list is compiled from regulator press releases or from public news sources

[briarberry] 12/11/2009 20:51

US deficit larger than receipts (monthly)

U.S. ran deficit of $176 billion in October
U.S. October receipts $135 billion, Treasury says
U.S. October outlays $311 billion, Treasury says

receipts are down a year-on-year 18 percent

[briarberry] 09/11/2009 21:26

MBIA Q3 loss $3.50 vs $3.42 loss

MBIA, Inc. (NYSE: MBI) is a financial services company, a member of the S&P 500 index. It was founded in 1973 and headquartered in Armonk, New York and has approximately 400 employees. MBIA is the largest bond insurer.

[briarberry] 09/11/2009 18:03

Up Against a Wall of Debt, Part II

As a practical matter, the IMF doesn't think that governments can easily inflate away their debt, in part because much of it is short-term and has to be rolled over constantly. The report estimates that increasing inflation to 6 percent annually would on average eliminate less than a quarter of projected increases in debt-to-GDP ratios.

[briarberry] 07/11/2009 23:52

Broader Measure of U.S. Unemployment Stands at 17.5%

In all, more than one out of every six workers - 17.5 percent - were unemployed or underemployed in October. The previous recorded high was 17.1 percent, in December 1982.



22% here

[briarberry] 07/11/2009 21:12

The FDIC announced five more bank failures on Friday. They included San Francisco's United Commercial Bank, which was the fifth largest bank to fail so far.

This brings the total to 120 for the year so far.