President Barack Obama convened a “who’s who” of executives from the nation’s largest banks Friday to mend fences with Wall Street and drum up support for his plans to stabilize the financial system.
While congressional leaders this week excoriated the leaders of banks that have received billions of dollars in government bailout money for not doing enough to end the credit crisis, it may actually be consumer fear of borrowing that’s blunting banks’ efforts to lend.
Citigroup Inc. (C) is lifting the curtain on the $45 billion in taxpayer capital it received, saying it plans to use $36.5 billion to fund U.S. mortgage loans and assist credit card holders and businesses.
Investing icon Jim Rogers and Australia’s Macquarie Funds Group have teamed up to create an agricultural-commodities index that will help investors profit from shifting patterns of food consumption in the burgeoning market of Mainland China.
The Macquarie and Rogers China Agriculture Index is an investable index that will track price changes of the market “basket” of the agricultural commodities most commonly consumed in China. Macquarie Funds is the asset management arm of Australia’s Macquarie Group.
Macquarie actually created the product in November, and continued to operate it in December, when the China agricultural index posted a return of better than 11% – outperforming most agricultural indices and handily besting most stock markets in that part of the world, Asian Investor reported. That provided Macquarie Funds…
Morgan Stanley (MS) and Citigroup Inc. (C) are about to launch a joint venture of their brokerage units in a move that may be motivated as much by a desire to placate impatient government overseers as by financial imperatives.
No one person is responsible for the credit crisis, the failure of investment banks, the insolvency of commercial banks world-wide, the implosion of the world’s stock markets, or for leading us to the precipice of another great depression.
President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday that an analysis of his stimulus proposal found that the capital infusion could save or create as many as 4 million U.S. jobs by 2010, nearly 90% of them in the private sector.
South Africa Cuts Interest Rates; BlackRock Cans 500; Empire Co. Posts 13% Profit; KB Toys Files for Bankruptcy; Citi and UBS to Buy Back $30 Billion in Securities; Bank of America to Cut 35,000 Jobs
Consumer Confidence Climbs; Home Prices Record Plunge; Troubled Banks on the Rise; Oil Falls 7%; Slim’s Bank Buys Citi Stock; D.R. Horton Shares Vault
Expect more pain in the housing market next year, says Don Miller. Rising unemployment will keep the foreclosures coming. And as the backlog of inventories swells, Don says homebuilders still look ripe for shorting in this environment.
