BizAnalyst Network: 12/01/2009

US Economy May Contract In 2010

Stiglitz Warns US Economy May Contract Next Year

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz warned there's a "significant" chance the U.S. economy will contract in the second half of next year, and urged the government to prepare a second stimulus package to spur job creation.

"The likelihood of this slowdown is very, very high," Stiglitz told reporters in Singapore. "There is a significant chance that the number will be in the negative range."

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Travelers Insurance Opens Securitization Markets

Travelers Insurance Raises $500 Million in Catastrophe Bond

Travelers Cos., the insurer added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, raised $500 million selling catastrophe bonds, the biggest issuance this year of securities that allow investors to bet against natural disasters.
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Victor Lloyd Smith

Millennium Lyon Asset Management

Web: www.mlgcap.com

Harvard Swaps Go Belly Up!

Harvard Swaps Are So Toxic Even Summers Won't Explain

Anne Phillips Ogilby, a bond attorney at one of Boston's oldest law firms, on Oct. 31 last year relayed an urgent message from Harvard University, her client and alma mater, to the head of a Massachusetts state agency that sells bonds. The oldest and richest academic institution in America needed help getting a loan right away.

As vanishing credit spurred the government-led rescue of dozens of financial institutions, Harvard was so strapped for cash that it asked Massachusetts for fast-track approval to borrow $2.5 billion. Almost $500 million was used within days to exit agreements known as interest-rate swaps that Harvard had entered to finance expansion in Allston, across the Charles River from its main campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

-full article

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All the Best

Victor Lloyd Smith

Millennium Lyon Asset Management

Web: www.mlgcap.com

Legacy Capital: The Driving Force of the American Dream

Get your copy: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Audio Series, e-Book

Banks Take Losses on Short Sales as Foreclosures Soar

Banks Take Losses on Short Sales as Foreclosures Soar

Banks are beginning to go along with short sales in increasing numbers, three years into a U.S. housing slump that pushed the economy into a recession and cut resale values by 30 percent from the peak in July 2006. Short sales almost tripled to 40,000 in the first six months of 2009 from the same period a year earlier.

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Contact us more information on trends for distressed assets (REO & Notes).

www.mlgcap.com/reo

Victor Lloyd Smith

Millennium Lyon Asset Management

Web: www.mlgcap.com

Legacy Capital: The Driving Force of the American Dream

Get your copy: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Audio Series, e-Book