Articles

Emails from UBS continue to paint a picture of banks knowingly selling damaged and failing investment products to individual investors in bids to reduce their own exposure.

Preliminary figures show Japanese inflation at a 10-year high of 1.5%.

The Congressional Budget Office released a letter today and outlines the probable cost of fortifying and keeping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac solvent.

Fed officials have gone on record as saying that the next move the Fed makes will be a rate increase. It won't be happening anytime soon though.

Banks will have to refinance an estimated $787 billion in floating-rate notes by the end of 2009. They need money to refinance. Guess one place they'll go to get it?

Goldman Sachs, the SEC, Fabrice Tourre - What A Day? It could almost be a song. Read the SEC Filing on the case, there are some dandy quotes. Including the following:

There's a lot of bad news out there but there are also some positive things happening. A story that has gotten somewhat lost in the credit and banking crisis is the fact that the price of oil has collapsed. It was trading as high as $140/barrel last summer and today finished below $65/barrel.

Over the last two weeks, the Fed has set up programs to purchase mortgage backed assets, student loans, credit card loans, and more to help restart lending. But it might not make a difference because consumers are already eyeball high in debt and need less of it, not more.

As President-elect Obama prepares a massive public works program that will be funded via Obama Bonds, the evidence is growing that the US economy looks quite a bit like Japan's in the 1990s after its real estate bubble popped. Even the Japanese are making the comparison and providing some advice on what the US can do.

Will the safest bonds in the world be defaulted on? Take a look.

For all you municipal bond investors, cities and towns are having a hard time paying their bills. Most munis are probably safe but make sure you pay attention to what you are buying. Even "rich" towns like East Hampton are having trouble paying the bills.

Quicken is going to the freemium model. They're offering their base service free now to compete against several other free online services and then offering upgrades to more powerful services. Still, for the average user, the free service is good news.