Read a little. Learn a lot. • Tightly-written news, views and stuff • Follow us on Twitter • Be a Facebook Fan • Tumble us!

01 Jan 2011 21:54

tags

Biz: Henry Paulson personally lost $1 million in the housing crisis

  • See? Treasury secretaries suffer just like the rest of us. You can call Henry Paulson a lot of things, but one thing you can’t call the Bush-era Treasury Secretary is “unaffected by the financial crisis.” See, Paulson’s home just got sold on the D.C. housing market, and it went for far less than he bought it for. Let’s check the numbers already:
  • $4.3M the cost he paid for his home, near the National Cathedral, in 2006 (which is swank, BTW)
  • $4.6M the amount Paulson, no longer a bureaucrat, put the home on the market for in April
  • $3.25M the amount Paulson’s home finally sold for a couple of weeks ago – a $1 million loss source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

31 Dec 2010 22:07

tags

Biz: Rough-and-tumble year for stocks ends on the upswing

  • 11% jump in the up-and-down stock market in 2010 source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

31 Dec 2010 11:45

tags

Biz: Give it time: Electric cars not really flying off the shelves yet

  • >350 the reported sales of the hopemobile, the Chevy Volt, in December … but it’s kind of a novelty right now
  • >10 the reported sales of the Nissan Leaf in the last two weeks; the odds that Ed Begley Jr. owns one? Even source
  • » It’s not really a demand problem: The issue here is more supply. The cars simply haven’t hit most parts of the country yet, and there are waiting lists 50,000 people long for the electric cars, which are slowly ramping up production and should go nationwide by 2012.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

30 Dec 2010 12:26

tags

Biz: Groupon founders cash in big time with latest financing round

  • $950M the size of Groupon’s current funding round, started this week
  • $500M of that funding has already been raised (impressive!)
  • $345M of that total is going to founders and existing shareholders  source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

30 Dec 2010 12:10

tags

Biz: New jobless claims back down to pre-financial-crisis numbers

  • 388,000 the number of new jobless claims last week (the week of Christmas), the lowest it’s been in ages
  • 07/12/08 the last time new jobless claims dipped below 400,000 in a week – in the midst of the housing crisis source
  • » Is this a corner turned? It’s important to note that while weekly jobless claims figures aren’t exactly the end-all-be-all of unemployment statistics, the number has been headed in downward direction for weeks and is nearly 250,000 less than its peak in March 2009. While the numbers are seasonally adjusted, the Christmas holiday can have an effect on them, so it’s good to keep an eye on this number to see where it goes after the first of the year.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

29 Dec 2010 01:14

tags

Biz: After spurning Google, Groupon plans massive financing round

  • $950
    million     the amount in financing that the IPO-pondering Groupon wants
  • $7.8
    billion     the value of the company based on that financing round source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

28 Dec 2010 11:09

tags

Biz: Ready to be depressed? Read this assessment of housing numbers

  • The double-dip is almost here. There is no good news in October’s report. Home prices across the country continue to fall.
  • Standard & Poor Index Committee Chairman David Blitzer • Expressing fear that recently-released housing numbers are a harbinger of a double-dip. The numbers, which showed a 1.3 percent decline in home prices in 20 key cities, were apparently much more dire than many analysts were expecting. “It was a bit of a surprise,” said IHS Global Research’s Pat Newport. “I wasn’t expecting it to lag so badly in all 20 cities.” source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

28 Dec 2010 10:57

tags

Biz: Consumers bought more this Christmas, but not feeling confident

  • good Consumers bought more stuff in the week before Christmas than they did a year earlier – a solid 4.8-percent jump. It’s a great holiday season overall for retail.
  • bad However, consumer confidence managed to fall in December, suggesting that we still in fact have a long way to go before we’re back to normal, guys. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

27 Dec 2010 14:34

tags

Biz: H&R Block can’t loan you your tax refund early anymore, guys

  • situation H&R Block offered instant loans to those who didn’t want to wait a couple of weeks to get their tax refund – which often benefited low-income customers.
  • conflictUnfortunately for them, the US government stepped in and forced the bank backing the loans, HSBC, to stop offering them, in part due to their very high interest rates.
  • defeatThe decision was made very late last week, and now H&R Block’s stock is down by a solid 10 percent, because they don’t have a backup for HSBC’s loans. source
  • » A weakened competitive position: Unfortunately for H&R block, that 10 percent drop isn’t the only bad news they have to deal with. See, the IRS informed HSBC and Republic Bancorp that they wouldn’t be underwriting the controversial loans anymore, and wouldn’t be informing tax services which consumers were eligible for said loans. But their top competitor, Jackson Hewitt Tax Service, managed to find other banks to offer the service, so as a result, they’ll have a significant competitive advantage over H&R Block next year – which has caused H&R Block’s stock to lose nearly half its value and Jackson Hewitt to skyrocket 37 percent in recent weeks. Just a tip to our friends who use these loans – their interest rates are predatory in nature, so be careful.
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

24 Dec 2010 11:05

tags

Biz: Will that Comcast/NBC Universal deal finally go through?

  • Depends on which bureaucrat you ask. In what’s looking to be a banner week for the FCC (note dripping sarcasm), Julius Genachowski said that he’s angling to approve the mega-merger, which would put Comcast in a position to screw over millions of consumers at once. That said, the merged company will agree to be willing to share their content with other companies (important) as well as with Web video firms like Netflix and Hulu (EXTREMELY important). The Justice Department, however, has yet to offer an official opinion on the merger but is rumored to not be super-happy about how the deal might affect competition. So, even if the FCC passes it, the DOJ may decline it for antitrust reasons. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
<< newer 
top tags
older >>