Fannie and Freddie are having more problems. The WSJ reports that delinquencies continue a relentless climb. Fannie and Freddie, which own or guarantee nearly $5 trillion, or half, of the nation’s mortgages, have seen their serious delinquency rates — mortgage payments 90 days or more past due — shoot to records in the past few […]
Archive for March, 2009
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Leverage Is Still A Problem
Posted by Tom Lindmark on March 31st, 2009
One word you don’t hear bandied about as much lately is deleveraging. It’s possible that as things have seemed to pass the crisis phase a sense that we are somehow going to be able to muddle through has started to take hold. A brief article in the Telegraph.co.uk makes me wonder if we might not […]
Tags: Stuff I Found Interesting Today
Posted by Tom Lindmark on March 31st, 2009
There’s a lot of interesting things popping up today. Here’s a quick compendium of some that you might find worth pursuing. Barney Frank & Mark-To-Market Not content to just get rid of MTM and trust the banks to tell us the truth from now on, Congressman Frank now thinks it might be a good idea […]
Hancock Building Sold At A Big Discount
Posted by Tom Lindmark on March 31st, 2009
Boston’s John Hancock building was sold at auction today to the partners controlling the senior portion of the mezzanine debt on the building. The sales price was $660 million — half the price that was paid for the building three years ago. You can’t draw straight lines from this transaction to derive a value for other CRE deals […]
The Bailout Roadmap-See Where Your Trillions Are Going
Posted by Tom Lindmark on March 31st, 2009
The Obama administration is out with a relaunch of financialstability.gov. It’s their attempt at transparency. Actually, there are some pretty cool features. One has an interesting map which shows state by state financial institution funding. Take a look. You can construct all sorts of conspiracy theories based on the data.
Here Are January Case-Shiller Numbers
Posted by Tom Lindmark on March 31st, 2009
The January Case-Shiller numbers are out. Still not very pretty. The overall rate of decline is flattening but it is still declining. About the numbers: The Case Shiller indices have a base value of 100 in January 2000. So a current index value of 150 translates to a 50% appreciation rate since January 2000 […]
Can The Creditors Win The GM Poker Game?
Posted by Tom Lindmark on March 30th, 2009
The real poker game started today. President Obama upped the ante by claiming that he was prepared to see GM go into bankruptcy. Now the unions and the creditors have to figure out if its a bluff or not. It’s not an easy call when you consider that the guy you’re playing cards with has […]
