I don't know about you, but after years of fleecing America for billions of dollars in illicit personal gains, after years of manipulating our mortgage markets so that home prices grew to unsustainable levels, and after years of insane personal wealth creation for the few at the expense of the masses, frankly, when the mass layoffs come at the investment banks (and they will), I think HP should declare it a holiday.
August 04, 2007
Jim Cramer thinks we should care that thousands of investment bankers will be losing their jobs at Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns etc. Do you care?
Posted by
blogger
at
8/04/2007
36
comments
Labels: alt-a, cdo's, investment bankers, lbo's, liar's loans, mortgage meltdown
August 03, 2007
And then the Great Housing Ponzi Scheme ended for all to see, and the blood ran in the streets
Remember "Discredit" from Manias, Panics and Crashes. Then go pick up a Wall Street Journal, and it will all become clear my friends. It hath been foretold.
Credit Woes Hit Stocks Again
A host of housing and mortgage-related stocks have seen punishing selloffs in recent sessions as investors moved to flee at the first whiff of trouble.
Countrywide, Accredited Home Lenders and Beazer Homes are among those who have endured precipitous drops, regardless of whether the problem was more imagined than real.
Bear Stearns was getting crushed after Standard & Poor's cut its rating outlook for the broker to negative from stable. Earlier this week, the company said it is facing losses in a third mortgage-related fund. Bear Stearns, which has lost 19% over the last month, was down another 7.5% to $106.90.
Posted by
blogger
at
8/03/2007
56
comments
Labels: alt-a, cash back mortgage fraud, cdo's, countrywide, discredit, goodbye indymac, lbo's, liar's loans, mortgage meltdown, subprime
July 26, 2007
FLASH (for wonks): Chrysler and Alliance Boots debt deals fail, bankers left holding the bag, housing crash to blame, real trouble starts now
And the long-awaited credit meltdown is here. We have our two big LBO failures, the banks got stuck holding the bag, and now, the real fun starts.
Add these two debt failures to the Countrywide news, the CDO meltdown, the Bear Stearns failures, and the meltdown in Blackstone's IPO, and they all tell a neat and tidy story for those smart enough to listen.
The days of easy credit, CDOs and LBOs are over. The days of passing on the risk are over. The cost of financing some of the recently-announced mega-deals has skyrocketed. New deals won't get done. And it's over. O-V-E-R, over.
How does this relate back to housing? Uh, guess what HP'ers, America's housing crash started this chain of events. Read Manias, Panics and Crashes. After debt parties come the cleanup. And oh, what a mess we have on our hands. Now if the lenders would just Mark to Market and get it over with.
Hat-tip to Calculated for the two links. And yes, I know the car in the photo is a Ferrari, but since that's the car all over my neighborhood, I thought it was appropriate as the debt spigot dries up.
KKR's Banks Fail to Sell $10 Billion of Alliance Boots LBO Debt
July 25 (Bloomberg) -- Deutsche Bank AG, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and six more banks are stuck with 5 billion pounds ($10 billion) of loans for Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co.'s purchase of Alliance Boots. The banks will keep the senior loans after failing to find investors to buy them, said four people with direct knowledge of the deal,
``If you're a bank, it's a case of once bitten, twice shy,'' said Willem Sels, head of credit strategy at Dresdner Kleinwort in London. ``The banks won't push so hard for LBOs now. The leveraged loan market will have difficulty recovering.''
Bankers Postpone Chrysler Debt Sale
Bankers raising $20 billion in loans for Chrysler Group have postponed a sale of $12 billion in debt for the auto company and are planning to fund the bulk of that debt from their own pockets for the time being, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Bankers have been unsuccessfully marketing the financing package to major institutional investors since June, but recent turmoil in the mortgage industry has weakened demand for leveraged loans and high-yield debt. With no investor appetite, the seven banks led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. will instead keep the debt on their books.
For buyout shop Cerberus Capital Management, it was one of the few ways to keep its $7.4 billion acquisition on track. But it was a stunning turn of events that indicated investors were not comfortable taking on debt of the troubled automaker, and showed just how cold the U.S. credit market has grown.
Posted by
blogger
at
7/26/2007
12
comments
