Category: Finance
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Mark Cuban sued
Blogger billionaire Cuban is being sued by the SEC over alleged insider trading. An interesting turn of events given his involvement in Sharesleuth.com. Mr. Cuban stated, “I am disappointed that the Commission chose to bring this case based upon its Enforcement staff’s win-at-any-cost ambitions. The staff’s process was result-oriented, facts be damned. The government’s claims…
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Selling your soul at Moody's
Rating agency Moody’s employee emails: Employees at Moody’s Investors Service told executives that issuing dubious creditworthy ratings to mortgage-backed securities made it appear they were incompetent or “sold our soul to the devil for revenue,” according to e-mails obtained by U.S. House investigators. I love this one: An e-mail that a S&P employee wrote to…
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Yahoo results
Well Mr Market has liked Yahoo’s decision to fire 1,500 workers. The shares are trading up by about 5% in after market. The purge outlined Tuesday represents a 10 percent reduction in Yahoo’s payroll of about 15,000 employees. It’s the second time in nine months that Yahoo has resorted to mass layoffs in what so…
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"Buy American. I Am."
Is it time to start calling a bottom on the market when Warren Buffett tells New York Times readers that it’s time to start buying? I’m not sure, but it’s certainly worth a read. Buffett’s firm, Berkshire Hathaway, has recently been involved in purchasing stock in Goldman Sachs (albeit preferred stock) and General Electric. Other…
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Irish savings accounts
For the savers out there, First Active have launched a new savings account. It pays 5.5% AER on balances between €15,000 and €1m. It looks like one of the better deals out there.
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HP cut 25,000 jobs
No word yet on whether the job cuts include Irish staff. Hewlett Packard, which acquired Electronic Data Systems for nearly $14 billion this summer, plans to trim its company-wide workforce by nearly 8 percent as part of that acquisition. Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP will announce restructuring plans for the EDS division to “streamline costs, invest…
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Wall Street implodes
We started the year with five big investment banks. Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. Bear fell earlier this year. Now Merrill and Lehman have disappeared in a weekend. Only Goldman and Morgan remain. How will the market react later today? Dow futures are off by 300 points, the dollar…
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ETFs
The Sunday Tribune had a rather odd article today about commodity ETFs. Eddie Lennon seems to get his facts wrong, or at least misses the point with regard to the advantages ETFs provide: ETFs are bought and sold on the stock market just like shares. They offer an easy, inexpensive entry to the markets and…
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The housing bubble
I came across this over at the Pin. Martenson posted this presentation as an explanation of the US housing bubble a couple of weeks ago. You could take everything he says and apply it to our own housing bubble. It’s very well worth a look. I am trying to get data together on our housing…
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The Big Bailout
The US government is to step in and help out Freddie and Frannie. I guess it was bound to happen after the events of recent weeks, there was really no way to get let these mortgage lenders go under, in IndyMac Bank fashion.