Comments(0) By DAVID STREITFELD – New York Times
CHICAGO — Just in time for a recession, the debt collection industry is working to shed its reputation for remorselessly hounding people.
Oh, the collectors still want the money. But now they would like to be seen as helpful and sympathetic, even a force for good.
Comments(0) The online edition of Canadian Business reports that Security Capital Assurance Ltd, a Bermuda based bond insurer, stop writing new policies Thursday after reporting a $1.2 billion loss.
Comments(0) Several hedge funds with assets of more than $4 billion (£2 billion) were on the brink of collapse last night or had halted withdrawals, despite moves by the US Federal Reserve this week to ease America’s deteriorating credit crisis with a $200 billion collateral lending facility.
Comments(0) Washington Post Staff Writer
Comments(0) The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Carlyle Capital is near collapse as lenders are expected to seize its assets.
“Although it has been working diligently with its lenders, the Company has not been able to reach a mutually beneficial agreement to stabilize its financing,” the fund said in a statement.
Comments(0) By Charles Wyplosz -Financial Times
In 1971, with the greenback weak and falling, US Treasury secretary John Connally famously told the rest of the world that the US dollar was “our currency and your problem”. Thirty years later, with the dollar strong and still rising, Robert Rubin, his successor, no less famously stated that “a strong dollar is in the interest of the United States”.Read the article
Comments(0) Citigroup, the banking giant, moved Monday to shore up six of its hedge funds pressured by a tightening in the municipal bond market, the newest problem to entangle the struggling company.
Comments(0) More news to start a fresh week. Same old song, different week.
Hedge Funds Reel From Margin Calls Even on Treasuries (Update1)
By Tom Cahill and Katherine Burton
March 10 (Bloomberg) — The hedge-fund industry is reeling from its worst crisis in a decade as banks are now demanding more money pledged to support outstanding loans even when the investment is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.
Comments(0) Financial Times
By Robert Cookson and Joanna Chung in London and Michael Mackenzie in New York
Turmoil in the credit derivatives markets is having an increasingly brutal impact on the wider financial system as a vicious cycle of forced selling drives risk premiums on company debt to new highs.Read the Article
Comments(0) This column first appeared in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal.
SAN DIEGO — From the “credit where credit is due” department: When the auction-rate-securities market went into its recent deep freeze, turning cash into what appears to be trash at many companies, Joe Morgan wasn’t the least bit surprised.
As the head of portfolio management at San Francisco-based SVB Asset Management, a division of SVB Financial Group (SIVB) , he started warning corporate clients as far back as 2004 to steer clear of auction-rates as a virtually no-risk, slightly higher-yielding alternative to sleepy money-market funds, Treasurys and even commercial paper.
Comments(0) Kathleen Pender Sunday, March 9, 2008
Problems in the banking and credit markets intensified last week, spreading to sectors that had been weathering the storm.
The week started with Thornburg Mortgage, which specializes in high-quality jumbo loans, saying it couldn’t meet margin calls from lenders.
By week’s end, investors were dumping the securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, considered the bedrocks of the housing market.
Comments(0) March 7 (Bloomberg) — Boston taxpayers spent $10,120 last year maintaining a derelict condominium building on Hendry Street. According to public records, one of the three apartments belongs to Morgan Stanley and another to Dallas-based leveraged buyout firm Lone Star Funds.
Comments(0) I guess it is a sign of the times when bus tours include the area’s recent foreclosures.
Foreclosure bus tour gives buyers a different view of shaky real estate market
As a bus packed with prospective homebuyers rolls down Peyton Drive in Far North Dallas, Tess Langevin crouches to look out the windshield.
Comments(0) Comments(0) March 7 (Bloomberg) — The collapse of the subprime- mortgage market has disrupted Carlyle Group, the world’s second- biggest leveraged-buyout firm by assets.
Carlyle Capital Corp., the firm’s mortgage-bond fund, was suspended from Amsterdam trading today after it failed to repay lenders, who in turn sold assets held as collateral. The fund expects more margin calls, which may deplete capital. The pool may be liquidated and the stock left worthless, Bear Stearns Cos. analyst Keith Baird said in a note to clients.
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