John Stepek is Deputy Editor of the UK-based financial weekly MoneyWeek. He is also the editor of daily investment email Money Morning UK. John graduated from Strathclyde University in 1996. He has worked for a number of financial magazines and newsletters including Families in Business, Shares Magazine and The Sunday Times.
Everyone assumed that the government would ride to the rescue of doomed brokerage Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH). Everyone was wrong. The financial markets are close to ruin. But there is a bright side, says John Stepek in British financial magazine MoneyWeek. The remaining players now know that not everyone is too big to fail…
Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) collapsed because foreign bonn holders panicked and fled, says John Stepek in British financial magazine MoneyWeek. Now, the US government is crossing its fingers and hoping that the housing market picks up If matters improve, the government might even turn a profit on its stake in the toxic twins…
Things must be getting bad. Politicians are resorting to telling the truth. Chancellor Alistair Darling caused something of a stir at the weekend by admitting that economic conditions are “arguably the worst they’ve been in 60 years.” The financial crisis will be “more profound and long-lasting than people thought,” he said in an interview with The Guardian.
There’s a merger boom going on right now, but amid all the gloom, no one’s really paying much attention.
Inflation’s soaring, the pound’s collapsing, and the Bank of England reckons we could be heading for recession. But one man still has a smile on his face.
It’s time to sell Russia. The end of the easy money era and the war in Georgia don’t, at first glance, seem to have an obvious connection. But they are linked. Bear with me, and I’ll explain why.
It’s like something out of a cheesy disaster movie. Just when we thought all was lost, and the Western world was going to be consumed by recession, the mighty US market drags itself back to its feet. The Dow Jones jumped by more than 300 points on Friday.
British banks and their shareholders are having a tough old time of it. But their woes have made at least one person an awful lot richer.
In the wake of the sub-prime crisis, there’s been a lot of nonsense talked about how the financial markets have proved unable to regulate themselves. Apparently intelligent people have been arguing that what we really need is greater government intervention in the markets.