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Wall Street Journal
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Dec 14, 07 7:20 AM CST
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Citigroup will take over seven subprime-plagued investment funds, with $49 billion in assets, and provide emergency support if necessary, to keep them solvent, the Wall Street Journal reports. The decision yesterday to bail out its affiliated SIVs—structured-investment vehicles—is a reversal of Citi's earlier decision to keep them off its balance sheet, and it led Moody’s to downgrade Citi’s credit rating.
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Bloomberg
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Dec 12, 07 11:54 AM CST
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Major restructuring and sales of businesses appear to be on the table for embattled Citigroup, Bloomberg reports, with new CEO Vikram Pandit today promising a "front-to-back review" of operations at the financial giant battered by the subprime crisis. Citigroup stock has fallen 40% this year; one analyst called it "the worst-capitalized bank of its peers by a long shot."
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Financial Times (UK)
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Dec 12, 07 11:14 AM CST
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Predicting even tougher times for the US housing market, Freddie Mac chief Richard Syron yesterday told investors in New York that the government-sponsored mortgage lender would report another net loss in the fourth quarter and credit losses to $12 billion on its mortgage portfolio, reports the Financial Times. Freddie Mac reported a record $2 billion loss in the third quarter.
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CNN
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Dec 11, 07 12:54 PM CST
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About half of Americans say borrowers snared in the subprime mortgage mess brought the trouble onto themselves, but they nevertheless deserve "special treatment," CNNMoney reports. In a poll of 1,002 adults, 51% also said they felt sorry for borrowers, with 46% blaming financial institutions' lending policies for the situation.
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Wall Street Journal
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Dec 10, 07 1:13 PM CST
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How does the current mortgage debacle measure up to the savings-and-loan meltdown of the 1980s and the tech crash of 2000? Losses look manageable, the Wall Street Journal reports in a detailed analysis of how this crisis differs from other crashes, and how likely it is to spin the economy into a recession. But it could be exacerbated and prolonged by complex differences.
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Wall Street Journal
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Dec 10, 07 11:11 AM CST
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US home sales jumped in October and will rise slightly overall next year, beating forecasts, the Wall Street Journal reports. The National Association of Realtors' index for pending sales of existing homes spiked 0.6% in October over September, which was up 1.4% over August—but those increases are still part of a recovery from a year-long plunge, the third-biggest on record, Reuters reports.
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Bloomberg
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Dec 10, 07 7:32 AM CST
(Newser) -
Investors from Singapore and the Mideast will breathe $11.5 billion in new capital into UBS as the Swiss banking giant announces that it will write down an additional $10 billion in subprime holdings, Bloomberg reports. The bank said the subprime losses, the biggest by a European bank, will wipe out expected fourth quarter profits, resulting in a loss for the year.
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Wall Street Journal
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Dec 8, 07 1:34 PM CST
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Critics of the government’s new rescue plan for strapped homeowners may be investors who would cash in on a foreclosure-ridden market, one of the plan’s chief architects charges. Sheila Blair, head of the FDIC, speculated that naysayers may have a conflict of interest, the Wall Street Journal reports. “I do worry that some of the investors have taken short positions” on the subprime-mortgage securities index.
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Washington Post
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Dec 7, 07 12:50 PM CST
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Many who played it conservative during the housing boom are miffed about the mortgage rate freeze, grumbling that it rewards the greedy and irresponsible, the Washington Post reports. "What about those of us who played by the rules?" asks one. "Can we get six months of free gasoline?" Politicians are trying to figure out how to deal with the looming backlash.
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New York Times
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Dec 6, 07 2:56 AM CST
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Democratic candidates are criticizing President Bush's plan to bail out homeowners in the subprime mess for not going far enough and have outlined their own, more ambitious, proposals, the New York Times reports. "It appears that the president is pushing a freeze for a very narrow group of borrowers,” said Hillary Clinton, who traveled to Wall Street to push for fixes. Bush will formally introduce his plan today.
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Reuters
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Dec 5, 07 1:07 PM CST
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President Bush will detail tomorrow the Treasury Department's plan to hold interest rates steady for subprime borrowers at risk of defaulting on their mortgages when rates rise, Reuters reports. The plan, negotiated with mortgages lenders and investors, would freeze for five years adjustable loans due to jump to higher rates between Jan. 1, 2008, and summer 2010.
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Wall Street Journal
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Dec 5, 07 10:42 AM CST
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Several high-profile Wall Street firms that packaged and sold subprime mortgages have been subpoenaed by New York prosecutors, the Wall Street Journal reports today. Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, and Deutsche Bank—among others—will be asked to explain how the offerings were reviewed before they were sold to investors, and what relationship the firms had with credit-rating services.
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Wall Street Journal
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Dec 3, 07 11:12 AM CST
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Borrowers with shady credit who never should have been allowed near a dotted line weren't the only ones swallowed by the subprime debacle—credit-worthy borrowers received 55% of all subprime loans in 2005, the apex of the subprime surge, reports the Wall Street Journal. Incentive-motivated mortgage brokers put many borrowers into subprime loans, even those who qualified for better, more stable rates.