The Markets Have Evened Out When ...

Five reasons to fiddle while Wall Street burns

(NEWSER) - For a dedicated silver-lining hunter like Michael Lewis, there are plenty of upsides to the total collapse of the US financial system. “A lot of attractive office space seems to be opening up in midtown Manhattan, for instance,” he writes in Bloomberg. Here are five other reasons to celebrate:

• We get to see what’s inside big Wall Street firms. Lehman Brothers’ smoldering pile of liabilities should prove illuminating.

One year in, credit crunch has upset all expectations about modern markets

(NEWSER) - Last summer, central banks injected hundreds of billions of dollars into the financial system, desperate to restore liquidity to battered markets. But by then the credit crunch was on—and after 12 months, it shows no signs of abating. The Financial Times looks at how risky US mortgages set off the worst economic crisis in 70 years. More»

Small savers are suffering, but giving financiers a free ride

(NEWSER) - America's financiers have driven the country into crisis with stunning recklessness, James Grant writes in the Wall Street Journal, but public anger seems strangely dormant. Populist politicians railed against Wall Street during past financial crises, Grant notes, but today's politicians appear largely uninterested in taking aim at the easy target. More»

$140B in commercial paper is coming due, and forecast is fuzzy

(NEWSER) - Almost $140 billion in commercial paper has matured and is up for renewal by next week, and banks need to attract buyers to pay it off. The yield on the short-term loans, which are entangled in the subprime mortgage crisis, is skyrocketing. "This could be a pivotal seven to 10 days,'' one credit strategist tells Bloomberg. More»

Banks jumping back into lucrative market

(NEWSER) - That whole "subprime crisis" hasn't scared banks away from the lucrative world of subprime lending. The nation's top subprime lenders—like Capital One, GM Financial, HSBC, and JPMorgan Chase—are all trying to woo back less-creditworthy borrowers, who tend to rack up late fees while paying rates as high as 29%, the New York Times reports. "It's clear that we are returning to business as usual," said a former Federal Reserve regulator. But that's not entirely true; the focus hasn't yet shifted to mortgages, it's on auto loans. More»