US Finance World

Credit Cards, Bank Rates, Insurance, Loans, Debts and Mortgages News

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.

Read more…

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.

Read more…

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

Read more…

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…