Amid all the “feel good” human interest stories about the athletes at the upcoming Olympics, I somehow doubt that this story will be so prominent. It deals with gender testing of the athletes. This is just too funny, especially for those of us who remember the character of unknown gender, “Pat,” from [...]

Brokerage firm Merrill has announced that it has a third quarter write-down of 5.7 billion and at the same time, as part of this effort to raise capital and face these write-downs, it is selling 8.5 billion in new stock. The primary buyer of the new shares is the government fund of Singapore. [...]

Congress approved a long-awaiting housing market rescue bill on Saturday, July 26th, 2008, and President Bush is expected to sign the bill promptly. The bill offers emergency financing to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and creates a $300 billion fund to help distressed homeowners.
America is in its deepest housing slump since the Great Depression, with [...]

Here is a link to a Business Week article with a fairly lengthy explanation of the drop in the used car market, which particularly discusses the used truck market. One “take away” from this article is that the correction we are now seeing may be too strong and it may thus be a good [...]

As has been previously noted here, the Federal Reserve can make money more available to lenders, which it has done, but it cannot force a bank to make a loan. So, in the current economy, lenders are raising their lending standards on all loans, especially loans to businesses.
Quote:
But if the newfound caution [...]

I am not the first one to make the connection between social mood and the markets. As we compare the success of the recently released and morally confused Batman movie to the current state of the markets, it is possible to see that the slide in the US economy is far from over. Again, the [...]

During the second quarter of 2008, U.S. foreclosure filings more than doubled from a year earlier, as falling home prices left borrowers owing more on mortgages than their properties were worth.
According to RealtyTrac Inc., one in every 171 households was foreclosed on, received a default notice, or notice of a pending auction. Almost 740,000 properties [...]

In the case of Waggoner v. Wal-Mart, the estate of William Waggoner is suing Wal-Mart after Waggoner suffered fatal injuries while exiting a Wal-Mart in Marble Falls, Texas, through a faulty door. A dispute arose over the location of a deposition for a Wal-Mart representative. The parties were unable to agree whether the deposition should [...]

David Cameron, leader of Britain’s opposition Conservative Party, pledged that he wants to introduce bankruptcy laws modeled after the U.S. system to give struggling businesses time to recover during the economic downturn.
“We will consult on taking the best aspects of the American Chapter 11 system and give good companies breathing space to allow them to [...]

The Federal Reserve’s actions (exponentially increase the money supply) have reduced the value of the dollar. One of the unintended (but known) consequences of a devalued dollar is that foreigners, mainly foreign governments, will seek to reduce their exposure to the falling dollar by moving away from the US currency. This has already [...]