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BEA 4th Quarter GDP 1st Estimate 0.7% Q&A: Why Did GDPNow Rise After Durable Goods? When are Construction Revisions Coming? Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the current market turmoil is in many ways 'identical' to that which occurred in 1987 and 1998, when the giant hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management nearly collapsed. 'The behavior in what we are observing in the last seven weeks is identical in many respects to what we saw in 1998, what we saw in the stock-market crash of 1987, I suspect what we saw in the land-boom collapse of 1837 and certainly [the bank panic of] 1907,' Mr. Greenspan told a group of academic economists in Washington, D. C., last night at an event organized by the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, an academic journal. Bubbles can't be defused through incremental adjustments in interest rates, Mr. Greenspan suggested. The Fed doubled interest rates in 1994-95 and 'stopped the nascent stock-market boom,' bu...

CNBC was chirping all day on the post FOMC rally. Most of it was attributed to a 'softening' in the statement by the Fed leaving the way for a pause. Let's see if we can spot that 'softening'. The last two FOMC statements are below and I bolded some differences. May 10th FOMC Statement I was recently asked if I saw anything whatsoever that suggested lenders are tightening at all in the face of declining collateral and rising debt service pressures on their customers. The answer to that question is a resounding no. In fact the latest data shows the opposite: credit standards are still getting easier and businesses are still trying to expand or capture market share regardless of the consequences down the road. Bank Lending SurveyAccording to the April 2006 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices The Arizona Republic is reporting Firm is failing to pay its carpenters. A closer look at the article shows that subcontractors are not paying workers bec...

BEA 4th Quarter GDP 1st Estimate 0.7% Q&A: Why Did GDPNow Rise After Durable Goods? When are Construction Revisions Coming? The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an informal investigation into the stock sales of the chief executive of Countrywide Financial, a person briefed on the matter said last night, the latest problem to hit the struggling mortgage lender. Countrywide’s chief executive, Angelo R. Mozilo, has come under criticism from shareholders who have questioned the timing of the sales, which allowed him to gain more than $132 million in the months before the price plummeted amid the deepening mortgage crisis. Since 2004, Mr. Mozilo has sold shares through prearranged selling programs, known as 10b5-1 plans after an S. E.C. rule. But the pace of the sales, which have generated $300 million in gains for him since 2005, began to increase in October 2006 when he put a new program in place. Since October 2006, Mr. Mozilo has twice raised the number of shares that c...

The cost to borrow in euros through the end of the year plunged after the European Central Bank added an unprecedented $500 billion to the banking system as part of a global effort to ease credit-market gridlock. BEA 4th Quarter GDP 1st Estimate 0.7% Q&A: Why Did GDPNow Rise After Durable Goods? When are Construction Revisions Coming? The amount banks charge each other for two-week loans in euros dropped a record 50 basis points to 4.45 percent, the European Banking Federation said today. The rate had soared 83 basis points in the past two weeks as banks anticipated a squeeze on credit through year-end. 'These are strong-arm tactics intended to show the market they're seriously committed to breaking the deadlock,' said Marc Ostwald, a fixed-income strategist at Insinger De Beaufort SA in London. 'The ECB is helping to bankroll banks out of a problem that they themselves created.' The Bank of England held the first of two special operations today, offering 10 bil...

Vancouver appears bound and determined to beat out Miami in the Super Bowl of Condo Insanity. Flashback Summer 2005: The cover of Time Magazine was 'Why We are Gaga over Real Estate'. The same summer people were camping out overnight and entering lotteries, hoping to be one of the lucky ones to be able to buy Florida condo units before they were even built. Prices were rising by the hour. Flash Forward November 2007: Investors line up for piece of Bloor Street condo BEA 4th Quarter GDP 1st Estimate 0.7% Q&A: Why Did GDPNow Rise After Durable Goods? When are Construction Revisions Coming? Flashback Summer 2005: The cover of Time Magazine was 'Why We are Gaga over Real Estate'. The same summer people were camping out overnight and entering lotteries, hoping to be one of the A new condo at Yonge and Bloor Streets is already the hottest property in the city before it even goes on the buyer's market. Although the sales office at 1 Bloor Street doesn't open for an...

Bill Gross writes aboutA Gift That Should Keep on Giving in his Investment Outlook for January 2006.Let's take a look: BEA 4th Quarter GDP 1st Estimate 0.7% Q&A: Why Did GDPNow Rise After Durable Goods? When are Construction Revisions Coming? The historical 12-18 month lag between a tightening cycle/flat yield curve is what fools many analysts into thinking that yields are still stimulative and that the Fed has more wood to chop. It takes that long for higher yields to affect the housing market, mortgage equitization, and corporate investment cycles, whereas many economists feel it should work more like an anesthetic in the operating room where the patient counts backwards from 10 to 1 and is out before he reaches 5. It doesn’t work that fast. The Fed knows this, but often is willing to risk an overshoot and a curve inversion in order to insure benign inflation and sufficient economic slack over the foreseeable future. Chart I shows but one of a series of graphs PIMCO uses to i...

BEA 4th Quarter GDP 1st Estimate 0.7% Q&A: Why Did GDPNow Rise After Durable Goods? When are Construction Revisions Coming? Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's largest mortgage lender, said Thursday it had borrowed $11.5 billion from a group of 40 banks to fund loans in a move that shows just how deep the lending crisis has become. 'Countrywide has taken decisive steps which we believe will address the challenges arising in this environment and enable the company to meet its funding needs and continue growing its franchise,' Countrywide President and Chief Operating Officer David Sambol said in a statement. The move to beef up its portfolio of conforming loans could erode Countrywide's earnings prospects, because such loans 'suffer thin margins barely covering overhead costs,' Goldman Sachs analyst James Fotheringham said in a research note Thursday. 'Credit costs are set to increase even further than we had anticipated as riskier loans are added t...

BEA 4th Quarter GDP 1st Estimate 0.7% Q&A: Why Did GDPNow Rise After Durable Goods? When are Construction Revisions Coming? Alliance Bancorp, a residential mortgage lender based in Brisbane, Calif., has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and will liquidate its assets. The company listed assets and debts of more than $100 million each in its bankruptcy petition, which was filed Friday in Delaware. In a Chapter 7 case, a trustee is appointed to liquidate a company’s assets. It differs from Chapter 11, which allows a company to protect itself from creditors and reorganize through a bankruptcy court. Alliance could not be reached to comment. A letter posted on the company’s Web site said Alliance shut its doors Friday. “Unfortunately the latest market was more than we were able to overcome,” the chief executive, Lisa Duehring, says in the letter. “We have exhausted our resources and do not have the means to move forward. Therefore, it is with great sadness that I announce that we have ceas...