Is this a first, or is there more to come?
“The vast majority of the business lines performed fine,’’ Costas said in an interview. “The area that gave us some trouble was the one that’s been highlighted here in the reports by the bank and that was the sub-prime space.’’
The hedge fund that Costa worked for Click Here to continue reading.
There is a certain amount of irony in the fact that people in this world are burning perfectly good corn for heat and putting coal products into feed. From a New York times article….
For years, producers of animal feed all over China have secretly supplemented their feed with the substance, called melamine, a cheap additive that looks like protein in tests, even though it does not provide any nutritional benefits, according to melamine scrap traders and agricultural workers here.
“Many companies buy melamine scrap to make animal feed, such as fish feed,” said Ji Denghui, general manager of the Fujian Sanming Dinghui Chemical Company, which sells melamine. “I don’t know if there’s a regulation on it. Probably not. No law or regulation says ‘don’t do it,’ so everyone’s doing it. The laws in China are like that, aren’t they? If there’s no accident, there won’t be any regulation.”
All I can say is that I hope none of my chicken feed comes from China.
This is taken from a Washington Post article…
Car valuations matter because an increasing number of consumers are “upside down” on their auto loans, meaning they owe more than the car is worth. In the first quarter of 2007, 29 percent of consumers were upside down on their vehicles, Kelley Blue Book reports. Additionally, on average, people traded in cars on which they still owed more than $3,600. And what do many of these buyers do with that loan balance when they want another car?
They roll that negative equity — the $3,600 and often much more — into yet another vehicle loan.
A lot of this insanity stems from the Big Three pushing their product. As the Washington Post article says in another place….
Increased pressure on automakers and dealerships to sell vehicles over the past few years has led to more car loans being made to riskier borrowers. Auto dealerships originated $50 billion in new-vehicle loans to subprime borrowers last year, according to retail data from the Power Information Network (PIN), a division of J.D. Power and Associates, a marketing research firm.
To make the loans work for many of these subprime borrowers, who typically have shaky credit, the lenders are offering longer payment periods. New car loans lasting more than five years in 2006 accounted for nearly 55 percent of loan originations, according to the Consumer Bankers Association.
Subprime vehicle buyers, those with credit scores below 650, have loans that last an average of 61 months, compared with 56 months for more creditworthy consumers, PIN found. Higher-risk buyers also tend to make lower down payments as a percentage of the purchase price, paying about 11.6 percent compared with 17.4 percent for other buyers.
Nobody is ever going to exploit me for money. I’m not going to work and work just to make a little more money to buy a few more things. I know, down to the core of my being, that life’s not about money.
I grew up knowing how to do without. My dad seldom worked overtime Click Here to continue reading.
This from Robert Rapier…..
The gasoline supply situation in the U.S. is just about unprecedented, and for April it is unprecedented. If I go back to 1991 (as far back, it appears, as the EIA maintains a statistic on “days of supply”) then this week’s inventory is the 7th lowest out of 842 weeks. The lowest 6 all happened at the end of summer driving season (late August and early September). In other words, 99.2% of the time we have been in a better inventory situation than we are in right now. More importantly – again going back to 1991 – we have never had inventories this low in the month of April; just when we need to be building supplies for summer.
Last week I went out on a limb and said this week or next week gasoline inventories would turn up. My limb is starting to crack. Something has to give soon. We could be headed for record high prices to reign in demand a bit. Just hope for a mild hurricane season this year
Read the rest of Rapier’s informative post here.
Those of us with English degrees are very greived that Acme is currently participating in two 100% Effort initiatives, and considering two more. These are supposed to be company-wide initiatives that preempt all other demands and get complete support. It strikes me that we cannot do more than one thing with 100% of our resources, Click Here to continue reading.
Another bank with a reputation for being well run says that Subprime is affecting its bottom line.
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina: Capital One Financial Corp. on Thursday reported a 24 percent decrease in first-quarter earnings and lowered its full-year profit forecast, citing revised expectations for its mortgage banking business.
The McLean, Virginia-based company, a credit card issuer that continues to expand into retail banking, provided revised earnings for 2007 of $7 to $7.40 per share. In January, Capital One gave guidance between $7.40 and $7.80 per share.
“This is clearly a very challenging time for our mortgage banking business,” Richard D. Fairbank, Capital One’s chairman and chief executive officer, told analysts on a conference call.
Capital One pointed to last year’s acquisition of subprime lender North Fork, which operates banks in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
A leading US securities regulator Tuesday issued a rare warning to investors over the record $321bn of debt being used to buy stocks and bonds.
Ordinary mortals are naturally inclined to be afraid of derivatives. Especially those ordinary mortals who know that the nominal value of all derivatives is around 300 trillion dollars.
But more sophisticated people would like to tell you that there is nothing to worry about. They would tell you that derivatives actually make the market safer.
Steve Randy Click Here to continue reading.
China’s behavior has just been insane over the last couple of months. There is simply no other word for their actions. They are engaging in activities that are so bizarre that I can barely believe that the people running China’s economic policy have enough intelligence to cause their hearts to beat. Click Here to continue reading.