Some late breaking news on a Friday night:
WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is proposing a sweeping overhaul of the way the U.S. financial industry is regulated.
In an effort to deal with the problems highlighted by the current severe credit crisis, the new plan would give major new powers to the Federal Reserve, according to a [...]

Robert Novak, one of my favorite political commentators reveals the inside scoop on who made the decision to bail out Bear Sterns and why there is cause for concern. He says the decision was “approved in private by unelected officials” and reports that “a Fed official conceded privately this week that “we may have crossed [...]

Bear Sterns is sold for $2/share. What a collapse – consider that in January 2007 its shares sold for $171.52. Am I being paranoid here? Greenspan says this could be the worst financial crisis since WWII, the President is huddling with the big dogs today to discuss the financial crisis and in a rare weekend [...]

Today was a historic day, for on this day, the US government announced the largest government bailout of a U.S. securities firm. In case you’re not familiar with todays events, Bear Stearns, one of the largest securities firm on Wall Street was teetering on the brink of collapse from a lack of cash [...]

At the risk of sounding like an alarmist I’m going to reveal a few things that’s been bouncing around my head ever since the Fed abruptly dropped rates by 75 basis points that sunny January morning (hey it was sunny in Phoenix). I’m normally not like this, but it hasn’t helped that there are two [...]

The Federal Reserve cut the key federal funds rate today by 0.50%. It is now 3.00% (which makes prime = 6.00%).  Here is a brief snippet of what the Fed said today:
Financial markets remain under considerable stress, and credit has tightened further for some businesses and households. Moreover, recent information indicates a deepening of the housing [...]

I’ve received a lot of calls asking about rates today. Everyone calls and wants to refinance since the Fed lowered the federal funds rate by 0.750%. I patiently tell everyone that the two rates (federal funds rate and mortgage rates) are not directly related. In fact the two are sooooo unrelated that they actually moved [...]

Wow! 0.750% cut in rates. That means the Federal Funds rate is now at 3.50% and prime is at 6.50% (a full 1.750% reduction since September 2007).
This is a complete surprise. The Fed wasn’t going to meet until next week. A rate cut was expected, but with the plunge in global markets yesterday, the Fed [...]