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Archive for October, 2009

Many students normally apply for loans when they want to join college to help them cater for the various expenses. These loans have seen many students start and complete their studies in a stable environment. When you graduate it is easy to become overwhelmed by your student debt since that is when you start making payments. In order for you to make your repayments more manageable then you can look at the student loan consolidation option. There are two main types of student loans, federal and private. If you get a federal student loan there are many benefits to consolidating your loan so that you can manage your debts easily.

When you go for federal student loan consolidation you are offered a lower interest rate which makes the repayment process easier. You are also dealing with one loan instead of multiple ones. This is helpful as you will be able to keep track of the payments made since you are paying on a specific date instead of keeping track of multiple dates.

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31
Oct

Bank Failures: 115 and Counting

If my count is right and nothing more happens this evening, the FDIC took down 9 more banks today and I believe that is 115 for the year. Three or four years back we had zero closures for the year. Quite the change. Not S&P crisis levels in quantity, but the dollar values are right up there.Continued Real Estate WoesRemember Fannie Mae (FNM)? You should, because we own it. Lest you missed the news, virtually all new mortgages issued these days are ending up with the GSEs, either Fannie, Freddie (FRE) or Ginnie. In any event, it would appear they are not doing so well. Below is a chart I have borrowed from Calculated Risk and I link here the actual blog, which I highly recommend. As you can see from the chart, things are not going as well on the real estate front as the media would have you think. I cannot recall many charts this extreme.

What does this all mean? I think it means the market was right to go down today. Disclosures: None.

Some cancers are particularly nasty because they spread so quickly through the body. The same can be said for the way insider trading can spread its black wings throughout the financial system. This comes to mind as one contemplates the latest revelations about Galleon Group, the formerly $3.7 billion hedge fund whose founder, Raj Rajaratnam, has been charged in the largest hedge fund insider-trading case ever. Rajaratnam is out on $100 million bail.

The latest news about Galleon does not expose all the new cancer sites — but it adds some color to what we already knew. Specifically, it reveals how the SEC failed to investigate Galleon in 2001 after a Galleon associate was convicted of wire fraud, even though a concerned JPMorgan Chase (JPM) analyst reported to the SEC that year that something was fishy at Galleon.

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There’s nothing worse than realizing you owe too much money to the credit card companies. Worse yet is wondering how the heck you’re going to pay it back. When you look at how small those minimum payments are you’ll soon realize it will take much more than that to pay them off. It’s going to take paying much more than the minimums each and every month to make any progress in paying off those high balances.

So where do you get the money to pay off your credit card debt? Well, let’s assume you’re not going to win the lottery anytime soon. So the next best thing is to develop a budget for yourself. A budget can be very beneficial on many fronts. But the main thing a budget will show you is if you where you stand financially. Once you develop your budget you may have good news or you may have bad news. Either way it’s your start to getting out of credit card debt.

You see, you may be able to find funds that will allow you to pay off these credit cards quickly. Y

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By now, we should all be familiar with Toyota Motor’s (TM, news, msgs) woes. No sooner had the automaker finally ascended to the No. 1 global spot, displacing General Motors (MTLQQ, news, msgs), now known as Motors Liquidation, than it began to hit speed bumps and potholes. There were historic financial losses, lawsuits and embarrassing, tragic recalls. At one point, it was widely believed that Toyota could do no wrong. All of a sudden, it could do no right.

World’s most expensive cars

So the Tokyo Motor Show, by all rights, should have been an opportunity for Toyota to redeem itself in its own backyard. Along with Honda Motor (HMC, news, msgs) and Nissan Motor (NSANY, news, msgs), Japan’s two other big carmakers, Toyota had the place to itself. Read more…

Bank account numbers have risen again, the BBA confirms. The popularity of basic-functionality bank accounts continues to increase, figures from the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) have suggested.

New statistics from the industry group show that 107,000 new post office accessible accounts were opened over the second quarter of 2009, bringing the UK total to 7.9m.

Basic-functionality bank accounts are designed for those users who might not qualify for a standard high street current account.

In the past, customers could take out two separate kinds of basic account services.

Some accounts could only be operated through banks, while others were also post office accessible.

However, the BBA said that there had been a “convergence” trend in the sector over recent years.

For example, an agreement with HBOS in 2008 allowed 3.5m basic functionality accounts to be post office accessible for the first time.

The second quarter total for new accounts is around 30,000 lower than that of the first quarter.

David Dooks, BBA statistics director, said that this decline was “not unexpected”.

He added: “This particular customer market has matured in recent years and basic bank accounts are no longer an automatic progression from other accounts, for example those opened for children or by people from overseas working temporarily in the UK.”

Earlier this month, the government confirmed that its target of halving the number of Britons who did not have a bank account had been met.

This total has fallen from 2 million in 2004 to just 900,000. Read more…

Government credit card plans have sparked debate. Read more…

Many people are worried that enrolling in debt consolidation programs will reflect negatively on their overall credit score. In most cases, this fear is purely irrelevant, as consolidation typically serves to improve the overall credit score of those who successfully complete their streamlined repayment plan. The only two ways that consolidation could hurt your credit is if 1) you choose a fraudulent agency that takes your money without repaying your creditors or 2) you fail to make your monthly loan repayments to your agency. If you stay faithful to your end of the bargain and you choose a reputable agency that will provide an honest service for a fair price, you should have nothing to fear in terms of a negative effect on your credit score.

Research

The best way to select a debt consolidation service that will not hurt your credit is to take the necessary time to sift through the wolves in sheep’s clothing and find the good guys in the bunch. S

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