Glad you're back!

Read in the The Wall Street Journal reports that commercial-real-estate may be ready to deliver "a roundhouse punch to the U.S. economy just as it struggles to get up off the mat." Mortgage-backed securities failing due to foreclosures brought us the 2008 financial crisis, and now $700 billion in commercial-mortgage-backed securities appear to be about to fail. The delinquency rate in was July six times the rate at the same time last year, and these loans are hard to refinance. At the close of 2012, $153 billion in loans in commercial mortgage backed securities will be due, and nearly $100 billion worth will have problems getting refinanced. Read it at The Wall Street Journal

Credit? Hardly.

Foreclosures aplenty.

Financial institutions and myriad other companies will continue to fail, and unemployment will remain high.

But, we've had a large increase in HedgeLoan applications over the past two weeks. Evidently people have decided that securities financing products and services have "weathered the storm", and you know what?  We have.

Now more and more people are beginning to think that being able to have one's stocks working for you at the same time you use the non recourse loan cash from securities financing for investments, debt restructuring, or other means of maintaining and strengthening financial health -- is the only way to survive the economic storm.

If you'd like to "have your stocks and use them too", consider a securities loan. We have a wide range of tailored securities loan products, including institutional "never sold or traded, stay in account" Premier for those who feel security is paramount.

You really must read this article . . .

Mistresses of the Universe

Nicholas D. Kristof, writing in the New York Times tells us that
"At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, some of the most interesting discussions revolved around whether we would be in the same mess today if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters. The consensus (and this is among the dead white men who parade annually at Davos) is that the optimal bank would have been Lehman Brothers and Sisters." (Italics mine)

"Wall Street is one of the most male-dominated bastions in the business world; senior staff meetings resemble a urologist’s waiting room. Aside from issues of fairness, there’s evidence that the result is second-rate decision-making."

And, the same conclusions are being reached around the world: The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -- Endogenous steroids and financial risk taking on a London trading floor; Stanford University, and The Journal of Economic Theory.

So that's the job I'm applying for . . . Mistress of the Universe

Read his full article here . . . The New York Times.

In the AIG debacle, where AIG has officially estimated a discount of 20% to 50% for clients who have been offered the opportunity to redeem half the fund; and while they can redeem residual income, due to mature in 2012, now, it appears that will be at 30% lower than face value. Finally, some Ethics are being exercised in the world of  working "other peoples' money" While I don't lately think of ethics and Wall Street banks in the same sentence, Barclays Wealth says they will "step up to the plate" to offer their clients support in recovering from AIG. An unnamed  Barclays spokeswoman confirmed the bank's earlier comment: “We have a dedicated team working with AIG to determine the best way to achieve the return of all funds to our clients. This team is working closely with other private banks. We are focusing our efforts on representing the interests of our clients in these discussions. You may recall that Sallie Krawcheck (known as one of the most powerful women on Wall Street,  named as one of Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women)  resigned from Citigroup's wealth division in September, "after failing to persuade her former employer that it should compensate clients for investment losses" according to the Wall Street Journal. (Read the article, it wasn't the only reason she left, but it makes her a hero in my book.) Maybe the Universe will right itself . . . maybe.