24 Oct 2008

Posted at 16:35h in The Friday Brief by
Everyone is wondering if there is a bottom? Markets around the world tumbled yesterday on the same fears driving our markets down. How badly will a global recession hurt corporate profits? As investors sell on earnings fears, they exacerbate the fragile stability of the credit markets – a self-perpetuating spiral. Every drop in stock prices reduces further the assets of banks and corporations, suggesting that an increasing number of them will have trouble paying their debts.

03 Oct 2008

Posted at 15:34h in The Friday Brief by
We began the third quarter with most of the major stock markets in bear market posture, off 20% or more and we continued to decline from there. The Dow Jones Industrials dropped another 4.4% while both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq fell over 9% more. From top to bottom the Dow lost a maximum of 27% while the S&P and Nasdaq toppled 30%.  It was a quarter of ugly new records as the largest bank in US history failed and the largest US insurance company appealed for government help. Every investment bank on Wall Street is now gone. The nation’s first money market fund the Reserve Primary Fund went below a dollar a share or “broke the buck” when Lehman defaulted on a large chunk of debt owned by the fund. The rates banks charge each other on loans reached record highs bringing those markets to a standstill. In fact, it’s hard to find a market that has not been significantly affected by near and complete freezes in credit flows. And broken record or all broken records, by the end of a three-month ordeal Wall Street finds itself begging for help from a less-than-sympathetic US House of Representatives.

19 Sep 2008

Posted at 16:32h in The Friday Brief by
High schools pep their football teams, Space Shuttle Endeavour moves to the launch pad, Democrats and Republicans head to Orlando to tackle though healthcare issues, and all over America folks go about their daily routines, while dire radio and television forecasts for Wall Street’s brokers and huge banks ring in their ears. They are understandably worried and confused. Until just hours ago, government regulators seemed equally confused.

15 Aug 2008

Posted at 16:49h in The Friday Brief by
The summer of ‘08 has been anything but a typical lazy, quiet break from an otherwise frenetic calendar. Global equity markets dropped like October meteors in July; oil and gasoline prices exploded past record highs as the summer driving vacation season approached; record levels of rainfall in the mid-west sent the mighty Mississippi River pouring over thousands of acres of rich farmland, destroying much of the nation’s bread basket; thousands of Americans have lost or are near losing their homes to foreclosure; China puts its best national face on for the rest of the world as they host the 2008 Summer Olympics – a time for peace and international friendship, and two Russian and Georgian women hug during their medal ceremony as their countrymen kill one another.