Wachovia Banks announced a $23.9 billion loss today. Citibank had previously agrees to buy Wachovia as part of a deal where the government agreed to back some problem loans. Wells Fargo came along an offered to pay more and forgo government guarantees. Wachovia predicted another $26.1 billion loss in 2009. Wells Fargo obviously wasn’t shocked, [...]
Archive | October, 2008
Is This What Ironic Means?
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have bid to manage the toxic home loans that the Treasury will buy in its bailout program. James Lockhart, the chief regulator for the companies said: They … have some skills in this area… via Planet Money
Government Transparency
The government promised transparency related to the bailout. That transparency doesn’t extend to how much companies receive in order to manage the bailout. Mellon Bank will administer the auctions and then track the assets and their disposition. The amount of Mellon’s compensation is redacted from the contract. The the contracts for the accounting firms that [...]
Politics of Division
The Daily Show continues to show why it’s the best place for real journalism. This past Monday they drove home my main complaint about the divisive Republican campaign. This constant drumbeat that the people who disagree with them are unpatriotic and of lesser value than those who don’t. The reason those ideas are wrong is [...]
Can We Go Back? Please!
A couple finance stories caught my eye recently. While stockholders in general are bummed about the state of the market, there’s a couple groups that are more bummed than others. At least others can see an upside down the road (even if it’s years down the road), but Yahoo and and Circuit City owners may [...]
This Makes My Head Hurt
This story makes my head hurt. A webhost pulled down some websites that offered free music downloads. Nothing new there. Except the website was for a record label for which all their artists give their music away for free on the label’s website,. Those were the files the webhost wanted proof of copyright for. And [...]
Multi-national, Integrated Theft
The UK Times Online (among others) is reporting about a sophisticated credit/debit card swiping fraud spree in Europe. Some card readers used at the largest retail chains in Europe (such as Tesco) are using card readers manufactured in China that contain bugs right on their motherboard. These read swiped cards, using a random pattern to [...]
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