California’s credit rating on $64 billion of general obligation bonds was cut by Standard & Poor’s today as the most-populous U.S. state faces renewed strains over a $20 billion budget deficit.
Gabriel Petek, a San Francisco-based S&P analyst, said the rating was lowered one level to A-, the seventh-highest investment grade. He said the company has a negative outlook on California debt, a sign its standing may decline further. The rating company also cut $13.3 billion of other state debt, including that backed by lease payments.
The Securities and Exchange Commission voted for a proposal that would require brokerages that rent out their access to the markets to have rules in place to protect against potential mishaps from unlicensed traders.
In the practice known as "sponsored" access, brokerages that have been approved to trade on an exchange rent their access to traders, who are then able to shave milliseconds from the time it takes to access the markets.
In "naked sponsored" access, also called "unfiltered" access, the brokers do not screen orders en route to markets, making electronic trading even faster.
(CNNMoney.com) -- The U.S. government posted a deficit of $91.9 billion in December, nearly double the shortfall of a year earlier and marking the government's 15th straight month in the red, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday.
The Financial Crisis commission has started hearings. The Huffington Post has a blow by blow (with video clips).
You maybe wondering why we have not amplified these hearings. Today at least, as expected, one heard a whole lot of generalities with a lot of rambling justifications from CEOs and not a lot of substance.
So, in my view this commission will be for show. A lot of Populist rage, possibly some great sound bytes and youtubes, but in terms of really nailing any corporation or any issue, I doubt it.
Here's some confirmation on what we already know. The large banks know the U.S. government will save them.
f there was any doubt that Wall Street thinks the government will step in to save "too big to fail" firms, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein dispelled it on Wednesday morning.
A lot of ink has been spilled concerning the budget problems on the state level, but so far few have mentioned the budget problems on the city level.
(Reuters) - U.S. cities will face a collective budget shortfall of at least $56 billion over the next two years, with the current recession not seen hitting bottom until 2011, according to a report on Wednesday.
Now the FDIC is asking for comments on this proposal.
The FDIC is seeking comment on how these types of risks should be accounted for when setting an institution’s risk-based assessment.
Employee compensation programs have been cited as a contributing factor in 35 percent of the reports prepared in 2009 investigating the causes of insured depository institution failures and the associated losses to the DIF.
You've heard the term Ponzi Scheme. Well now I want to introduce you to the term Ponzi Economy.
Here’s the problem that the U.S. Fed’s “exit” poses in simple English: Our fiscal 2009 deficit totaled nearly 12% of GDP and required over $1.5 trillion of new debt to finance it. The Chinese bought a little ($100 billion) of that, other sovereign wealth funds bought some more, but as shown in Chart 2, foreign investors as a group bought only 20% of the total – perhaps $300 billion or so. The balance over the past 12 months was substantially purchased by the Federal Reserve. Of course they purchased more 30-year Agency mortgages than Treasuries, but PIMCO and others sold them those mortgages and bought – you guessed it – Treasuries with the proceeds.
The House Oversight Committee will issue a Subpoena to the New York Federal Reserve due to it's 100% payout of AIG Credit Default Swaps and trying to stop AIG from disclosing this via their 10-k release.
“To help the committee’s investigation of payments made by AIG to its counterparties, I am issuing a subpoena today to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,” Edolphus Towns, the New York Democrat who runs the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in an e-mailed statement. “This subpoena will provide the committee with documents that will shed light on how and why taxpayer dollars were used for a backdoor bailout.”
Recent comments