Carmakers will close one of the most tumultuous years and unhappy in their history Monday when they report what is sure to be another awful lot of monthly sales figures.
Each of the six largest automakers, including foreign and domestic brands, is expected to say that its sales in the United States dropped by at least 30 percent in December. Bleakest numbers most likely will come from General Motors and Chrysler, which has received two billion dollars in loans from the federal government, at the end of December to help them to remain solvent.
Above all, say that 2008 will end up like the worst year for sales of cars and trucks in 1992. But this comparison does not capture how quickly the business has deteriorated in recent months, as tight credit markets and consumer confidence has sunk.
“This is a kind of self recession which, quite frankly, many of us have never been through,” Erich Merkle, an automotive analyst in Grand Rapids, Mich., The consulting firm Crowe Horwath, said Sunday. “We know that people who lost jobs are in the market for a new car, but even those who have jobs are not in the market right now, because they are concerned if we have a job in three, six or nine months. ” Read more…
President-elect Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are considering major expansions of government-assisted health insurance and unemployment compensation that they start intensive work this week on a two-year economic recovery package.
One proposal, as described by the Democratic counsel, would extend unemployment compensation to part-time workers, an idea that congressional Republicans have blocked in the past.
Other policy changes would subsidize employers’ expenses for temporary continuation of health insurance coverage laid off and retired workers and their people, as under a mandate of 22 years, known as Cobra federal law, and to allow workers who lose jobs, which did not come with insurance benefits to be eligible for the first time to apply for Medicaid coverage.
The proposals show how potential long-range changes that Mr. Obama intends to push the promised American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan, as called in his weekly Saturday address on the radio and YouTube. These will be combined with a time of measures which are more typical of the federal stimulus package to jump-start a weak economy, such as spending on roads and other job creating projects for public works. Read more…
Hard times are usually good times for debt collectors, who make their money the morning and evening, with the incessant ring of a telephone.
But in this recession, perhaps the deepest in decades, the unthinkable happens: collectors, who normally did not squeezing become a bit down on themselves.
After helping to promote the explosive growth of consumer debt in recent years, credit card are realizing that some hard-pressed Americans are not able to pay their bills as the economy deteriorates.
So, creditors and their collectors are rushing to raise money for what may, before things get worse, even if that means a part of forgiving some borrowers’ debts. Increasingly, they are stretching and payments acceptance of Dimes, if not pennies on the dollar as payment in full.
“You can not squeeze blood from a turnip,” said Don Siler, chief marketing officer at MRS Associates, a large collection, which works with seven of the 10 largest credit card. “The large settlements not only are there now.”
Lenders are not charities. They are simply trying to protect themselves.
Banks and card companies are bracing for a wave of defaults on credit card debt in early 2009, and they are vying with each other to be paid first. Besides, the earlier people get their financial houses in order, they will sooner can start lending again. Read more…
World stock markets hit new year trading Friday as brightly indices in Europe and Asia have increased, although trading volumes remained light with many traders do not return to their offices until next week.
The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was up 39.70 points, or 0.9 percent, to 4473.87, while Germany DAX was 68.80, or 1.4 percent, higher at 4878.00. France the CAC-40 rose 41.90 points, or 1.3 percent, to 3259.87.
Previously, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index led Asian markets that were open higher, vaulting 655.33 points, or 4.6 percent, to 15042.81. More than half of Asian markets, including Japan’s Nikkei, remained.
Investors remained skeptical that Friday’s Rally augurs well, if anything, about the prospects for 2009 after last year’s hefty rout.
Multe”va fail to start the first trading session of 2009 with a bang but any direction would be significantly hard to come by,’’said Jimmy Yates, a dealer at CMC Markets. Read more…
There was almost no place to hide from the crash of 2008.
When the New York Stock Exchange called bell years Wednesday, it tolled for virtually anyone with money in the stock market.
Finally, scrap sinistră only confirmed what investors have known for months: it was a very bad year to own stocks, any stocks - indeed, one of the most ever.
In a mere 12 months, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 4488.43 points, or 33.8 percent, the most punishing loss since 1931. Blue chips like Bank of America, Citigroup and Alcoa lost more than 65 percent of their value. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was down 39.5 percent, almost exactly matching its decline in 1937.
All told, about $ 7 trillion of shareholder wealth - the gains of the last six years - was removed in a year of violent market swings.
But what is striking is not only decreases the magnitude, location where they are, but also their width. All but two of the 30 Dow Industrials, Wal-Mart and McDonald’s, have decreased by more than 10 percent. Almost any industry that has been spared the crisis that occurred in the first subprime mortgage metastasized market and the economy was sunk in what could be a long recession.
As the new year dawns, Wall Street is looking to Washington, where the balance of financial power in a jet of permanent, in recent months. Analysts and investors are focusing on what Obama arrived administration and the Federal Reserve will do to revive the economy and financial system. Read more…
How bad property market yet? With home values by dropping rates faster each month, a real estate agent near Detroit said that if houses were not the low price of Foreclosures, they simply would not sell.
Sinistră stressed that the assessment of the numbers released Tuesday showing that home prices in 20 metropolitan areas in the country fell to a record rate of 18 percent in October from a year earlier as radioactive from financial collapse reverberated through the housing market.
Depending on the extent, Standard & Poor’s / Case Shiller Home price index, reported all 20 cities surveyed a year price declines in October. Prices in 14 of the 20 metropolitan areas fell to a record rate.
“October was clearly free-fall months,” said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the committee, the index Standard & Poor’s. “Everything went against us in October, without exception.”
After increasing steadily through the first part of the decade, home prices have fallen every month since January 2007, accelerating their slide as problems in the housing market infected the wider economy and bring down financial firms. Now, as buyers sit on the sideline and a glut of unsold homes clogs market, economists say that home prices could continue to slide throughout 2009. Read more…
Carmakers will close one of the most tumultuous years and unhappy in their history Monday when they report what is sure to be another awful lot of monthly sales figures.
