Archive for March 31st, 2009

Delinquencies Continue To Rise At Fannie And Freddie

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 […]

Leverage Is Still A Problem

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 […]

Stuff I Found Interesting Today

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

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

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

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 […]