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Archive for August, 2008

Big Three Automakers seek $50 Billion in Federal Loans to Help Retool Plants

WASHINGTON — Detroit’s Big Three automakers are planning an aggressive push on Capitol Hill as they seek up to $50 billion in low-cost loans to speed the development and production of more fuel-efficient vehicles.

General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC would use the money to help pay for retooling of older assembly plants and developing advanced technologies.

The lobbying effort comes as the carmakers face dramatically higher fuel economy mandates and consumers are demanding more fuel-friendly options in an era of high gas prices. The Big Three are revamping their product lineups to include smaller, fuel-sipping models.

Oil Makes Record One Day Drop

Oil prices tumbled more than $6 a barrel Friday — the biggest one-day percentage plunge in nearly four years after a rebounding dollar and a Russian troop pullback in Georgia sparked another frenzied sell-off.

Housing Prices Are Falling With No End in Sight

Does it Make Financial Sense to Try and Save Your Home?

These days many homeowners are justifiably very nervous about their homes.

Mortgage pillars Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are on the verge of financial meltdown and Federal Bailout.

Transportation, energy, food costs, and unemployment are rising.

More people out of work is going to put even more pressure on people being able to pay their mortgages. That will lead to lead to more foreclosures, and More People Walking Away From Their Homes!

Many experts believe housing prices are not even close to reaching their bottom, including Alan Greenspan Former Federal Reserve Chairman.

While it is a gut wrenching decision, sometimes the best thing to do is walk away and start over.

Mortgage Giants Stocks Plunge on News of Federal Bailout

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Shares of mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, suffering their worst day since a mid-July free fall, plunged Monday to their lowest points in nearly two decades.

Russia Lashes Out of Missile Shield Deal in Poland

WASHINGTON — The United States and Poland reached a long-stalled deal on Thursday to place an American missile defense base on Polish territory, in the strongest reaction so far to Russia’s military operation in Georgia.

Russia reacted angrily, saying that the move would worsen relations with the United States that have already been strained severely in the week since Russian troops entered separatist enclaves in Georgia, a close American ally. At a news conference on Friday, a senior Russian defense official, Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, suggested that Poland was making itself a target by agreeing to host the anti-missile system. Such an action “cannot go unpunished,” he said.

Those fears were codified to some degree in what Polish and American officials characterized as unusual aspects of the final deal: that at least temporarily American soldiers would staff air defense sites in Poland oriented toward Russia, and that the United States would be obliged to defend Poland in case of an attack with greater speed than required under NATO, of which Poland is a member.

Polish officials said the agreement would strengthen the mutual commitment of the United States to defend Poland, and vice versa. “Poland and the Poles do not want to be in alliances in which assistance comes at some point later — it is no good when assistance comes to dead people,” the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Polish television. “Poland wants to be in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours of — knock on wood — any possible conflict.”

Foreclosures Increase 55% and Home Values Continue Fall

12.7% of U.S. Homeowners Will Be Forced Out of Their Homes!

Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) — Banks repossessed almost three times as many U.S. homes in July as a year earlier and the number of properties at risk of foreclosure jumped 55 percent as falling prices made it harder to sell or refinance.

“It’s getting worse,” Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s executive vice president for marketing, said in an interview. “The number of properties that have been foreclosed on by the banks and still haven’t sold is the highest we’ve ever seen.”

California led with the most total filings, followed by Florida, Ohio, Arizona, Michigan, Texas, Georgia, Nevada, Illinois and New York.

U.S. home prices fell 15.8 percent in May, the most since at least 2001, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index. One-third of home sellers in the second quarter lost money, Zillow.com, a Seattle-based provider of home valuations, reported this week.

Foreclosures could put 8.4 percent of total U.S. homeowners, or 12.7 percent of homeowners with mortgages, out of their homes, according to New York-based analysts at Credit Suisse. About 53 percent of subprime borrowers, those with poor or incomplete credit histories, will have negative equity in their homes this year, and that percentage will rise to 63 percent next year, the analysts said in an April 23 report.

Chrysler Announces Plans to Retool and Expand Jefferson North Assembly

TRAVERSE CITY — Chrysler LLC said Wednesday it would invest $1.8 billion retooling and expanding its Jefferson North Assembly Plant to build a new car-based sport utility vehicle to be sold under the Jeep nameplate.

The company’s vice chairman and president, Tom LaSorda, said the money would be used “in new vehicle programs” and a 285,000-square-foot expansion of the plant “including a new body shop that will allow increased flexibility and higher output.”

LaSorda, attending the Center for Automotive Research’s Management Briefing Seminars, told reporters at lunch that the plant would build at least 120,000 vehicles including a next-generation Jeep Grand Cherokee under the program beginning in the spring of 2010. The vehicle will have the company’s all-new more fuel-efficient Phoenix engine and a more advanced axle.