Fed Acts Irresponsibly, Again!

The root cause of the current financial crisis was a lose monetary policy pursued by the Federal Reserve for most part of this decade. What is their solution to the current crisis? More of the same. Americans have been borrowing and consuming too much, and saving and investing too little. So here comes Fed with an incentive to save - a drop in interest rate to 1%. That should give a shot in the arm to the saving habits of Americans!

The solution for an indebted society, as far as the bureaucrats at the Fed goes, is to get them into debt some more. Talk about insanity

Here is the FOMC statement.

The Federal Open Market Committee decided today to lower its target for the federal funds rate 50 basis points to 1 percent.

The pace of economic activity appears to have slowed markedly, owing importantly to a decline in consumer expenditures. Business equipment spending and industrial production have weakened in recent months, and slowing economic activity in many foreign economies is damping the prospects for U.S. exports. Moreover, the intensification of financial market turmoil is likely to exert additional restraint on spending, partly by further reducing the ability of households and businesses to obtain credit.

In light of the declines in the prices of energy and other commodities and the weaker prospects for economic activity, the Committee expects inflation to moderate in coming quarters to levels consistent with price stability.

Recent policy actions, including today’s rate reduction, coordinated interest rate cuts by central banks, extraordinary liquidity measures, and official steps to strengthen financial systems, should help over time to improve credit conditions and promote a return to moderate economic growth. Nevertheless, downside risks to growth remain. The Committee will monitor economic and financial developments carefully and will act as needed to promote sustainable economic growth and price stability.

Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; Timothy F. Geithner, Vice Chairman; Elizabeth A. Duke; Richard W. Fisher; Donald L. Kohn; Randall S. Kroszner; Sandra Pianalto; Charles I. Plosser; Gary H. Stern; and Kevin M. Warsh.

In a related action, the Board of Governors unanimously approved a 50-basis-point decrease in the discount rate to 1-1/4 percent. In taking this action, the Board approved the requests submitted by the Boards of Directors of the Federal Reserve Banks of Boston, New York, Cleveland, and San Francisco.

Did Laissez-Faire Cause the Great Depression?

The enemies of the free market often quote Andrew Mellon, the treasury secretary under Hoover as evidence that President Hoover's hands off approach is what prolonged the great depression.

"Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate. . . . [That] will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people"

However, using the above quote as evidence of laissez-faire is distortion of the truth. In fact, President Hoover was too much of an activist to sit on his hands and let the markets work. Until the crash of 1929, the general policy of the federal government to an economic crisis was a relatively hands-off approach. However, Hoover wanted to bail out the failing enterprises. Here is what he said during one of his campaign speeches in 1932 on this matter.

"we might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put it into action. . . . No government in Washington has hitherto considered that it held so broad a responsibility for leadership in such times. . . . For the first time in the history of depression, dividends, profits, and the cost of living, have been reduced before wages have suffered. . . . They were maintained until the cost of living had decreased and the profits had practically vanished. They are now the highest real wages in the world. Creating new jobs and giving to the whole system a new breath of life; nothing has ever been devised in our history which has done more for . . . “the common run of men and women.” Some of the reactionary economists urged that we should allow the liquidation to take its course until we had found bottom. . . . We determined that we would not follow the advice of the bitter end liquidationists and see the whole body of debtors of the United States brought to bankruptcy and the savings of our people brought to destruction."

Again from Hoover's memoirs...

"We developed cooperation between the federal, state, and municipal governments to increase public works. We persuaded employers to “divide” time among their employees so that as many as possible would have some incomes. We organized the industries to undertake renovation, repair, and, where possible, expand construction."

"I determined that it was my duty, even without precedent, to call upon the business of the country for coordinated and constructive action to resist the forces of disintegration. The business community, the bankers, labor, and the government have cooperated in wider spread measures of mitigation than have ever been attempted before. Our bankers and the reserve system have carried the country through the credit . . . storm without impairment. Our leading business concerns have sustained wages, have distributed employment, have expedited heavy construction. The Government has expanded public works, assisted in credit to agriculture, and has restricted immigration. These measures have maintained a higher degree of consumption than would otherwise have been the case. They have thus prevented a large measure of unemployment. . . . Our present experience in relief should form the basis of even more amplified plans in the future."

Rhetoric is one thing and reality is another. Reality was a Keynesian's delight. Huge deficit spending by the Hoover administration. The following is from America's Great Depression by Murray Rothbard(PDF format).

Federal expenditures rose from $4.2 billion in 1930 to $5.5 billion in 1931—excluding government enterprises, it rose from $3.1 billion to $4.4 billion, an enormous 42 percent increase. In short, in the midst of a great depression when people needed desperately to be relieved of governmental burdens, the dead weight of government rose from 16.4 percent to 21.5 percent of the gross private product (from 18.2 percent to 24.3 percent of the net private product). From a modest surplus in 1930, the Federal government thus ran up a huge $2.2 billion deficit in 1931.And so President Hoover, often considered to be a staunch exponent of laissez-faire, had amassed by far the largest peacetime deficit yet known to American history. In one year, the fiscal burden of the Federal government had increased from 5.1 percent to 7.8 percent, or from 5.7 percent to 8.8 percent of the net private product.

Hoover's (not FDR) Glass-Steagal

One thing Hoover was not reticent about: launching a huge inflationist program. First, the administration cleared the path for the program by passing the Glass–Steagall Act in February, which (a) greatly broadened the assets eligible for rediscounts with the Fed, and (b) permitted the Federal Reserve to use government bonds as collateral for its notes, in addition to commercial paper.

Does the following sound familiar?

During 1932, President Hoover greatly stepped up his one man war on the stock market, particularly on shortsellers, whom he naïvely and absurdly persisted in blaming for the fall in stock prices. Hoover forgot that bulls and bears always exist, and that for every bear bet there must be an offsetting bull, and also forgot that speculation smooths fluctuations and facilitates movement toward equilibrium. On February 16, Hoover called in the leaders of the New York Stock Exchange and threatened governmental coercion unless it took firm action against the “bears,” the shortsellers. The Exchange tried to comply, but not aggressively enough for Hoover, who declared himself unsatisfied.

Having warned the Exchange of a Congressional investigation, Hoover induced the Senate to investigate the Stock Exchange, even though he admitted that the Federal Government had no constitutional jurisdiction over a purely New York institution. The President used continual pressure to launch the investigation of what he termed “sinister” “systematic bear raids,” “vicious pools . . . pounding down” security prices, “deliberately making a profit from the losses of other people.” Beside such demagogic rhetoric, constitutional limitations seemed pale indeed. Secretary of Commerce Lamont protested against the investigation, as did many New York bankers, but Hoover was not to be dissuaded. In answering the New York bankers, Hoover used some unknown crystal ball to assert that present prices of securities did not represent “true values.”

Federal Home Loan Bank, a Hoover creation

President Hoover, we remember, had wanted to establish a grandiose mortgage discount bank system to include all financial institutions, but the rejection of the scheme by insurance companies forced him to limit compulsory coverage to the building-andloan associations. The Federal Home Loan Bank Act was passed in July, 1932, establishing 12 district banks ruled by a Federal Home Loan Bank Board in a manner similar to the Federal Reserve System.
$125 million capital was subscribed by the Treasury, and this was subsequently shifted to the RFC.

It didn't end there...

Measures such as Federal and state and local public works, worksharing, maintaining wage rates (“a large majority have maintained wages at high levels” as before), curtailment of immigration, and the National Credit Corporation, Hoover declared, have served these purposes and fostered recovery. Now, Hoover urged more drastic action, and he presented the following program:
(1) Establish a Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which would use Treasury funds to lend to banks, industries, agricultural credit agencies, and local governments;
(2) Broaden the eligibility requirement for discounting at the Fed;
(3) Create a Home Loan Bank discount system to revive construction and employment measures which had beenwarmly endorsed by a National Housing Conference recently convened by Hoover for that purpose;
(4) Expand government aid to Federal Land Banks;
(5) Set up a Public Works Administration to coordinate and expand Federal public works;
(6) Legalize Hoover’s order restricting immigration;
(7) Do something to weaken “destructive competition” (i.e., competition) in natural resource use;
(8) Grant direct loans of $300 million to States for relief;
(9) Reform the bankruptcy laws (i.e., weaken protection for the creditor). Hoover also displayed anxiety to “protect railroads from unregulated competition,” and to bolster the bankrupt railroad lines. In addition, he called for sharing-the-work programs to save several millions from unemployment.

Did I mention Smoot-Hawley or Hoover Dam?

It should be obvious that the Keynesian "improvements" at best did nothing to help the situation during the depression, and at worst worsened the depression. 10 years after the crash of 1929, the unemployment still hovered around 20%.

Now, let's look at the Japanese experience. We all have heard the expression Japan's lost decade - 1990s. Is that description really accurate? Japanese stock market recently hit the 1982 levels just last week. So it is more like 3 lost decades. Japanese followed the advise of the Keynesian and Monetarist economists. They started running huge deficits and public works programs ( Keynesian ) and dropped interests rate to effectively zero and printed money like it was going out of style ( monetarist ) and yet 20 years after the crash in Japan, the economy still sputters. The public works program has put the entire country under a think layer of concrete ( Isn't it amazing that the evironmentally friendly Keynesians would put whole nation under layer of concrete, to stimulate consumption? ), and yet it had no stimulatory effect.

Tractors for Stockbrokers, Maseratis for Farmers

Says Jim Rogers...

Peter Schiff Interview On Glenn Beck Radio

Part I



Part II

Greenspan's Flaw

Alan "Serial Bubble Blower" Greenspan, being an early admirer of Ayn Rand was for a Gold standard and hard money. In 1966, he wrote an essay titled "Gold and Economic Freedom". Ironically, went on to become a Central Banker. He supervised the biggest expansion of credit and money out of thin air backed by nothing.

Early Greenspan was not a free-marketer in the Friedmanite mold, instead, he was even more rooted in free market in the Misesian mold.

His whole life became a lie, the moment he became and advisor to President Richard Nixon.
Recently, Fox business interviewed Mr. Bubbles, where Alan, in a moment of honesty, revealed that he still believes in Gold standard. His 19 years at the helm of the politbureau, was a complete lie, he was doing something he never believed in.

Watch it here for yourself - the admission comes at 6 minutes and 35 seconds into the video.



In addition, in the above video, Greenspan asserted that he never discussed with his mentor Ayn Rand, the proper role of central banks in an economy; thats something really hard for me to believe.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock has a very interesting take on all this...

Only the free market can judge risks. The failures are not of the free market,
the failures happened because we did not have a free market.
Instead we had
governments sponsorship of the GSEs, government sponsorship of the ratings
agencies, micro management of interest rates by the Fed, fractional reserve
lending compounded by Greenspan himself authorizing sweeps of checking
accounts.
Sweeps permitted nearly every penny of money that is supposed to be
available on demand to be lent out. Money that you think is in your checking
account is simply not there. It has been lent out.

Here is congressman Ron Paul on Neil Cavuto discussing Greenspan's lies.

Motley Fool: Why Oil Prices Will Rise Again

Back in July, around the time the oil price peaked, common consensus went
along the lines of ...
The world is running out of oil.
World demand for oil is high and only going to get higher still in the years and decades ahead.
Most of the world's cheap oil has already been discovered.
Oil exploration companies increasingly have to drill for oil in more and more
difficult places. This adds to the cost of exploration and in the event of a
discovery, the cost of extraction. Either the price of oil stays high and goes
even higher, so that it makes these new discoveries economical for the oil
companies, or the oil stays in the ground. Given the increasing demand and the
world's complete reliance on the naturally depleting natural resource called
oil, it has to come out of the ground.
Oil was seen as a natural hedge for the falling U.S. dollar.

Click the subject line for the link to the Motley Fool article

Government Solutions

In trying times like this, we need some real inspiration :)

Poll: Whither Price Of Oil?

Admission of Guilt! A Reply to Mish

Mish over at the Global Economic Analysis asks the following in the comments section:

“Can I ask a question?

With oil at $84 ....
Where is Oil Shock?

Mish
Like this comment?
link to the post

Oil Shock was indeed wrong. Yes, I called the bottom at $90 for oil. It was indeed the bottom until Oil declined one more time. Yes, so far it about 7% below that price. I still have called a perfect bottom in gold. Dollar index is about 2% higher than my prediction top.

Australian Dollar cliff dived yesterday, partly due to the unwinding of the carry trade. Just two months ago, the Ozzie was at near parity with the USD, but today you could buy 1 Ozzie for 64 cents U.S. Do you think Australian economy is fundamentally a lot weaker than the U.S economy? Do you think what happened to Iceland and Australia are impossible to happen here?

Much of the strength in dollar index is due to the weakness of Euro, it is not an indication of Dollar strength. Euro is a doomed currency. I heard somebody put it as the Deutsche Mark + some parasites, and that is very true.

Was my bottom and top calls based on any specific formula? No. It was just rhetoric meant to say that inflation is still in play. Did I strongly believe in my prediction? Yes I did. Did I know that for 100% sure that Oil will bottom at $90.00, and Gold at $750? No I did not.

As for all those deflationary derivatives worth 500 trillion floating around, it is all hogwash. Derivatives can go to zero and 80-90% of them do, even in a bull market. Have you read stats on options? Most of them go to zero? If one were to really believe that those derivatives are part of the money supply, what do you think the price of a refrigerator full of groceries would be?

Is there an unwillingness to lend right now? Yes. But all the debt will be monetized away, and some more will be accumulated by the local, state, and federal governments and monetized.

Stop kidding yourself. Oil at $84 is a lot higher than were it was, when Mish started denying that inflation was non-existent, go back, he has a lot of charts and graphs starting from 2005 to prove his point.

Mish has been consistently wrong for many years with his predictions, and yet he needs a great deal of credit for predicting the crisis very accurately as it unfolded. There were a lot of guys predicting shallow recessions, muddle throughs etc. But Mish could see a lot further than those others; he predicted a deeper recession. He was just a little early. Mish is still wrong about deflation.

Real wealth is ability to produce real goods, and that is one area that American economy lacks clearly. Yes, America has a lot of productive capacity, but no where close the purported size of the economy. So, what really is backing our dollar? yes,a lot of productive capacity, and a lot more of hot air.

Bail Out: What the Media didn't report

People protesting against the bail out. Why was this not reported in the MSM?

Inflation or Deflation?

Mish at Global Economic Analysis is still convinced that we are headed for deflation. I am not so sure. Here is why:

What will be the effect of all the deficits that the local, state, and Federal governments will be running. The fact that we are entering this recession/depression from a period of high levels of deficits, don't give me much confidence in deflationary theory.

All the Keynesians and Monetarists infesting the government wouldn't want government to shrink, people wouldn't want it either. What will that do to the dollar?

What if the Chinese and Japanese governments use their dollar reserves to stimulate their economies? What impact will it have on the dollar?

I also believe, that it's not just subprime borrower, but our whole country is broke. How could that be good for us as a borrower? How can that be good for the dollar? Do you think, given the conditions, it will be easy for the deficit spending government to knock on the door of People's Bank of China, Bank of Japan or Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, and get approved for credit as we frequently as we will need them?

The fact that no player in the market wants to buy the subprime loans is telling. It is worthless. Who would want to buy the currency ( increasingly backed by failed mortgages ) of a country that is essentially bankrupt?

There is no doubt that the credit turmoil in America will have it's ripple effects across the rest of the world, but does it change the fact that we still are the subprime borrower ?

Addendum 10/04/08 12:04AM pacific:

Another way to look at USD as a CMO backed by the worst mortgages in America. A mortgage backed currency called Assignat was once tried in france. It led to hyperinflation and a collapse.

Peter Schiff versus Diane Swonk ( 06/13/06)

Loose Money And the Roots Of the Crisis

Judy Shelton writes for the WSJ

If capitalism depends on designating a person of godlike abilities to manage demand and supply for all forms of money and credit -- currency, demand deposits, money-market funds, repurchase agreements, equities, mortgages, corporate debt -- we are as doomed as those wretched citizens who relied on central planning for their economic salvation.

Think of it: Nothing is more vital to capitalism than capital, the financial seed corn dedicated to next year's crop. Yet we, believers in free markets, allow the price of capital, i.e., the interest rate on loanable funds, to be fixed by a central committee in accordance with government objectives. We might as well resurrect Gosplan, the old Soviet State Planning Committee, and ask them to draw up the next five-year plan.

Bail-Out: What's the alternative?

Comrades,

I was asked by a couple of readers, what the alternative to the bail-out is. The concerns are well placed. If the credit dries up, even good businesses will suffer, it will affect their day to day operations, ability expand, and make good on payments including salaries.

By taking away the bad debts from the books of the banks, one is not only rewarding bad behaviour, but also ignoring the fundamental problem - the cartelization of credit. It is a bad system; it is pyramiding of credit; and it creates a set of winners and losers, not according to their merits and demerits, but according to their ability or inability to pervert the system.

The main cause of the banking crisis is the inability of the borrowers to repay their debts.Too much credit shoved down the throat of undeserving borrowers is what caused the crisis; more of the same isn't going to solve it. The bubble also created a glut in housing and related industries, malinvestmets as Austrian Economists would call it; and that needs to be purged.

Bailing out the banks will not reverse the tightening of the credit standards. 20% downpayment will be the standard, one would hope. More over, the option-ARMs are still adjusting, which means housing prices will continue to sink, leading to further pressure on the banks. Commercial real estate, credit cards and autoloans are under stress, as we speak. So this staggering 700 billion price tag is only just the beginning.

Further more, Fed is injecting staggering amounts of credit into the banking system, with out any Congressional approval I might add. Fed's balance sheet is chock full of bad loans. The bail-out bill was intended to provide the power to the treasury to do targeted operation to permanently take the bad debt off the balance sheet, rather than general injection of new credit into the system.

Last but not least, there will be opportunity costs to the bail-out. By diverting real resources, either through taxation or through inflation, the government will be taking capital resources away from successful companies and directing it towards failed enterprises.

Chart: Monetary base

The regulators have a decision to make, whether they want to prolong the agony of pulling off a band-aid.

Contrary to popular belief, the current group of goons managing the economic policy are not freemarketers. Which is why I have often said time and again that Milton Friedmanites are Keynesians in drag. Keynes is a fabian socialist whom most leftwing economists worship openly, and their right wing counterparts worship secretly. Sure, they all talk-up a good game.

Finally, if bureaucrats and politicians are such supermen/superwomen, who could solve any real crisis in the economy ( a creation of these very people ) by waving a magic wand, shouldn't we just transfer the responsibily of planning the economy ( as to how many pencils and lipsticks to be produced per year ) to these very same superdudes and superdudettes? In other words, comrades, shouldn't we all embrace Marxism?

Why did Keynesians and Monetarists Get It All Wrong?

Bailout marks Karl Marx's comeback ( click to read the whole article )

In his Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, Karl Marx proposed 10 measures to be implemented after the proletariat takes power, with the aim of centralizing all instruments of production in the hands of the state. Proposal Number Five was to bring about the “centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.”

If he were to rise from the dead today, Marx might be delighted to discover that most economists and financial commentators, including many who claim to favour the free market, agree with him.

Indeed, analysts at the Heritage and Cato Institute, and commentators in The Wall Street Journal and on this very page, have made declarations in favour of the massive “injection of liquidities” engineered by central banks in recent months, the government takeover of giant financial institutions, as well as the still stalled US$700-billion bailout package. Some of the same voices were calling for similar
interventions following the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2001.

“Whatever happened to the modern followers of my free-market opponents?” Marx would likely wonder.

Blast From The Past

Peter Schiff on Neil Cavuto:



All these fools, who didn't see the crisis coming, are claiming they can solve the problem with 700B. Not counting all the bad debt that the Fed has already accumulated already, this 700B will be just the start. THere is a commercial real estate collapse still ahead of us, So is it with all the Alt-A, Option-ARM and then prime mortages.

The guy with the long hair apparently is on monetarist/supply-side kool-aid and Mike Norman is a Keynes cultist.

Peter Schiff versus Art Laffer:


Here is another one - Debate with Art Laffer. "Libertarian" Art Laffer's expertise will be sought by the GOVERNMENT to "solve" the current crisis.

Art Laffer said Economy is working beautifully, because of good monetary policy, good economic policy, good trade policy etc. He and his supply-side statists have no right to blame democrats or the government for the current crisis. He quotes GOVERNMENT produced lies, damn lies and statistics to "buttress" his statements.

Peter Boockvar: Let The Market Fix The Crisis

Peter Boockvar makes a case against the bail out of the plutocrats.

Fed Seize WAMU & Bail Out In Shambles

Bail Out In Shambles:

Plutocrats, by that I mean the punters on Wall Street and the plunderers in D.C. have underestimated the will of the general public. Protests are breaking out all over the country, especially in D.C. and on Wall Street. Congressmen and Senators have their phone lines, fax lines and email inundated with calls, faxes and emails from their constituents.

An email from Manhattan: "I just walked by the New York Stock Exchange. Hundreds of demonstrators have gathered to protest the government's bailout of Wall Street. Several were holding placards that read "Stop the bailout! Read The Road to Serfdom by FA Hayek. Read mises.org " They were also handing out copies of Ron Paul's 2003 speech introducing his bill to eliminate subsidies to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. ( from blog.mises.org/blog )

Republicans have grown cojones ( pardon my French ) and decided to not go along, at least for now. Even if that is just a political stunt, if it really works, there is still hope for the rest of us mere mortals.

WAMU No More:
In the mean time, in an instance of biggest retail banking collapse in history, the Feds have seized the operations of Washington Mutual. A deal has been struck to transfer most of the operations to JP Morgan Chase.

Your Daddy's Financial Crisis?

The best case scenario for a way out of the current mess, at least as this amateur sees it, is a 1970s style high inflation decade. If the bail out goes through, there is a real possibility of a currency collapse. America is addicted, not just to foreign oil, but to foreign credit.

If bank collapses cascade, that in itself is negative for confidence in the dollar. Shrinking government revenues at local, state and federal level is enough incentive to run the printing presses. When push comes to shove, some form of bail out will happen anyway. But 700 billion price tag is a staggering start, not counting all the bad paper that the Federal reserve has already accumulated.

In conclusion, daddy's Financial Crisis is the best possible scenario. Let's hope that it doesn't get any worse.

Oil Shock is here!

"Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon" - Milton Friedman.

It is not the price of things that is going up, it is the value of money going down. See the chart. (Money supply in green and Gasoline price in Red). Price of gasoline futures are up a good 14 cents, just today.

I believe there is enough evidence to suggest that peak oil is here. But the mainstream public or the financial markets have not bought it completely. There has not been any serious declines in global oil production. Given that scenario, peak oil alone could not possibly explain the current prices.

Oil is bubbling according to the "experts", at the moment. It would seem as though it will climb until it breaks the back of the U.S economy. Prices are likely to be higher 2-3 years from now, regardless of whether it goes down in the near term. Peak Oil come to mind. An attack on Iran and all bets are off.

Bernanke's "strategy" of bailing out crooks through inflation, is clearly not working. Benny is not as fortunate as his predecessor - when greenspan expanded money supply, the price of stocks, bonds and housing (later on) went up. Now, real tangible things have a lot of catching up to do.

Art Laffer Owes a Penny to Peter Schiff

Art Laffer is a Nobel Prize winning economist and father of Supply side economics. Peter Schiff is a investment advisor/Broker with an Austrian perspective on Economics.

Monetary Deja Vu

Ron Paul Asks Tough Questions - 11/08/07

House finance committee testimony of Fed Chairman Bernanke

The Bubble Man

Enjoy the music.

David Walker on Fiscal Responsibility ( lack of it )

Credit Bubble Update - 08/26/07

'Notional' value - like trying to nail down Jell-O

It's hard to think of anything more discretionary, non-vital or even downright unnecessary than a BlackBerry.

Oh sure, they're convenient. Your spouse can e-mail you a to-do list and you can't pretend you didn't get it. You can settle bar bets on the spot with a quick Google search. You can thumb away on the putting green like a big shot. Sometimes you even get work done with it.


Drowning in debt? Lifeguard is credit counseling service

The good news for the Consumer Credit Counseling Service is it's hiring like crazy.

The bad news is, it has to do that.

overwhelmed by desperate homeowners across the country teetering on the brink of foreclosure as the subprime mortgage industry implodes.


Indian outsourcers start to feel subprime fallout

Ripples from the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis have reached India's back-office outsourcing sector, where mostly smaller firms are feeling the pinch as U.S. companies cut back or stop some spending on services.

Already struggling with a stronger rupee and rising wages, the fear for outsourcers is that the subprime woes will spread, although larger players such as Infosys Technologies say this could open up new opportunities.


Sub-prime mortgages catalyst for freefall

For a while there, it seemed like the fair-weather types on Bay Street, and elsewhere in the financial world, had it right. We could all sit back, put our feet up and relax.

The tempest that convulsed the world's capital markets in late July and early August would be short-lived. Even those of us who were enjoying family vacations when the turbulence hit could hardly overlook the alarming reports on TV and radio newscasts and the startling headlines that appeared on the front pages of our newspapers.


Foreclosure fallout: Rescue scams

Jennifer Falke and her family had been in their Columbus, Ohio, home for nearly 12 years when they hit a rough patch in 2006. Falke was out of work and fell behind on the mortgage.

Falke said a flood of mailings and flyers then arrived at her door promising help from foreclosure rescue companies claiming to act as an intermediary between her and her lender to keep her from losing her home.


Moody's cuts 120 subprime RMBS tranches from 2005

Moody's on Wednesday cut the ratings on 120 subprime residential mortgage-backed securities tranches, citing higher-than-anticipated delinquency rates of first-lien subprime mortgage loans securitized in the second half of 2005.

The action affects over $1.5 billion of securities.


Ben Bernanke Walks the Line

Much of what Ben Bernanke spends his days doing oscillates between the incomprehensibly arcane and the unspeakably dull. Lately, though, the Federal Reserve chairman has a stark, even exciting task at hand. He's been imitating Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life and trying to halt a bank run.

While Stewart's George Bailey had to make do with his powers of persuasion and his honeymoon fund to save the Bailey Building and Loan, Bernanke has the full faith and credit of the U.S. government behind him. The Fed can effectively print U.S. dollars at will. It can even, as Bernanke famously suggested in 2002, drop them out of helicopters, if that's what it takes.


Realtor numbers thin during slump

Victoria Rodriguez was not only a thriving real-estate agent in recent years, she was honored as one the area's top-selling real-estate agents four years in a row.

That was in the boom time, and that spigot shut down to a trickle nearly two years ago.


Mortgage Mess Hurts Main Street, Beyond

The walls are bare, the closets are empty, and Connie and Timothy Pent and their two teenage children are living out of boxes as they wait for a dreaded knock at the door of their three-bedroom house in Ocala, Fla.

They've fallen behind in payments on a their home loan, and their lender told them in July that foreclosure was imminent.