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recession-watch
recession-watch
Ex-Merrill Lynch Boss John Thain Is A CEO Again
After successfully redecorating his office, merging Merrill Lynch with Bank of America, and then getting fired -- John Thain is once again a CEO. This time he'll be heading up a recently-bankrupt commercial and consumer finance company, CIT. More »
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After 3 Months, Only 35 Paying Customers For Newspaper's Web Site
Newsday is a Long Island newspaper. Some people bought it for $650 million and put it behind a pay wall. Three months later, they've got 35 subscribers. Yes, 35. More »
Borders CEO Quits After A Year On The Job
(Photo:travelin' librarian)
Borders CEO Ron Marshall has decided to move on to better things after only a year. The troubled bookseller is currently in the process of closing 182 of its Waldenbooks stores (more than half of them), and is generally being frowned upon due to its lack of initiative in getting into the e-reader market. (Amazon has the Kindle, B&N has the Nook, and Borders has um...hmmm...) Now they'll have to find a new CEO to turn things around. More »
Big Bankers Will Only Pay Themselves $40 Billion In Bonuses
(Photo: nicora)
Three top Wall Street financial firms, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, plan to cut the bonuses offered to their top executives, as part of an effort to show that they're willing to cut back on what the White House recently called "obscene" compensation. For 2009, the three banks will award themselves just $39.9 billion, down from $44.7 billion in 2007.
According to Bloomberg, "even with lower amounts allocated in the fourth quarter, the compensation costs are enough to pay each employee at the three firms $336,843, more than six times the U.S. median household income of $50,303 in 2008." More »
According to Bloomberg, "even with lower amounts allocated in the fourth quarter, the compensation costs are enough to pay each employee at the three firms $336,843, more than six times the U.S. median household income of $50,303 in 2008." More »
Largest Ever Single Residential Property Deal Collapses Under Debt Mountain
(Photo:dandeluca)
The company that paid the most ever for a single residential property in the US is giving up and giving the development back to its lenders, says the WSJ. More »
White House Proposes New Banking Rules, Wall Street Freaks Out
(Photo: White House)
So, we used to have this thing called the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated investment banking from commercial banking. Then we didn't anymore. Now the President has proposed new rules that would effectively restore some of the provisions of Glass-Steagall. Wall Street is like, so not cool with it, however. More »
Starbucks Remembers How To Sell Coffee
(Photo:Great Beyond)
Starbucks used to make a lot of money selling coffee-like sugar bombs that people loved and would pay for with cash from their HELOCs. Those days are over, but there's good news. Starbucks has remembered how to sell coffee and is now doing so in a profitable way. More »
Citi: We Lost $7.6 B, But On The Bright Side, We Fired 100,000 People
(Photo:pstardesign)
Citi CEO Vikram Pandit is reassuring investors today after his firm lost $7.6 billion in 2009 by telling them to look on the bright side -- at least they fired 100,000 people. More »
Rental Vacancies Are Up Along With Foreclosures. Wait, What?
(Photo:walkerspace)
So apparently apartment vacancies were up to 8% in the last quarter, which is weird because one would assume that people getting tossed from their foreclosed houses would be renting. Marketplace has some thoughts on the problem. More »
Think Times Are Tough? Try The Recession Of 410-1100
(Photo: Terry Jones' Medieval Lives)
Cheer up! Sure, you may be unemployed. The bank may be close to foreclosing on your home. And other creditors are circling like vultures to make sure they get a piece of your hide before you declare bankruptcy or go underground. But at least you don't have to deal with a complete collapse of all commerce, no infrastructure to speak of and the total loss of all skilled labor. Of course, as long as you weren't covered in sh*t, you were probably doing OK. More »
Million-Dollar Homeowners Defaulting At Double The Rate Of Others
(Photo: Coffeego)
The mortgage crisis isn't just about homeowners with underwater subprime mortgages on unsellable houses. Folks with million-dollar homes are also finding it difficult to get out from under their hefty mortgages, and are defaulting at rates that are double those for homeowners with mortgages under $250,000. The difference? They're often willing to sell at a loss, and their lenders are willing to let them do so, instead of foreclosing and destroying their credit ratings. More »
Citi Getting Out From Under TARP
(Photo: Maulleigh)
Citigroup plans to repay $20 billion that it borrowed from U.S. taxpayers through the Troubled Asset Relief Program. That's good news for Citi execs, who will be able to pay themselves whatever they want once they're free from TARP restrictions. And it may be good for taxpayers, as long as Citi doesn't take any of those ultra-cheap Federal loans like BofA did. Citi shareholders? Hey, somebody's gotta pay for this. More »
15-Year-Old Cheese Sells For Only $50 Per Pound
Photo: stu_spivack
Do you enjoy cheddar cheese? Do you prefer your cheese well-aged? Perhaps you would enjoy, for $50 per pound, what the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel calls "the single malt scotch of cheddar." It's 15-year-old cheddar from Hook's Cheese Co. of Mineral Point, Wisconsin. And the few stores allowed to carry it can barely keep it on the shelves. More »
Give Us Your Questions For The White House: Small Business Edition
(Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
Yesterday, President Obama spoke at the Brookings Institute about his administration's plan for spurring job growth in our not-quite-a-recession-anymore-but-still-pretty-much-a-recession. Now they've invited Consumerist to bring our readers' questions about the program to Austan Goolsbee, the staff director and chief economist on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. More »
Live From The White House: Obama Plan For Job Growth
In a speech this morning, President Obama is expected to address the economy, and "outline some key priorities for encouraging businesses to invest and create jobs," according to White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer. Will it work? Watch the speech here at 11:15 a.m. EST, and let us know what you think. More »
Your COBRA Subsidy Is Ending, What Now?
(Photo:RussBowling)
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) provided a 65% reduction in premiums for health benefits under the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, which you probably know as COBRA. Now the benefits are ending for the first wave of unemployed people who signed up at the beginning of the program. More »
About 1 In 4 Borrowers Is Underwater
(Photo:Jay Santiago)
The Wall Street Journal says the number of borrowers currently underwater on their mortgage (meaning they owe more than the property is worth) has swelled to 23%. Ouch. More »
New Record! 9.64% Of All Mortgages Delinquent!
The Mortgage Bankers Association has announced that 9.64% of all mortgages are now delinquent, and this delinquency rate breaks the record set last quarter. The records are based on MBA data dating back to 1972. More »
Pontiac Silverdome Sells For Only $583,000
35 years ago, taxpayers paid $55.7 million to build the Pontiac Silverdome, former home of the Detroit Lions. The city of Pontiac has been itching to be free of the stadium's $1.5 million umaintenence bill, so it sold the property at auction. For $583,000. More »
