BP Stock Heads To $55 Despite Russian Raids, Gulf Platform Closures

Just this past week the energy major had its Moscow offices raided in relation to its aborted attempt at partnering with Russian giant OAO Rosneft without the consent of its current Russian joint venture partner TNK-BP. We have a $55.30 price estimate for BP, which is a 45% premium over its current market price.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2011/09/06/bp-stock-heads-to-55-despite-russian-raids-gulf-platform-closures/

consolidate my debt consolidation debt loan payday consumer debt advocate consumer debt collection

What Occurs When A Public Business Files Bankruptcy, Does The Stock Still Have Value?

A business that files for bankruptcy can cause several folks to begin asking questions, and many of the most concerned people are typically the stock holders and investors. Typically, a bankrupt firm loses the stock value quite speedily, although you will find many outcomes that might occur as a result of the bankruptcy filing. Corporate [...]

Source: http://www.legaldebthelponline.com/2011/09/06/what-occurs-when-a-public-business-files-bankruptcy-does-the-stock-still-have-value/

christian debt relief clear your debt cnn debt calculator consolidate my debt

The Credit Card Trap - 2 Things to Watch For

[WizardRSS: unable to retrieve full-text content]

Do you know how much the credit industry makes per year and; more importantly, how they make this money? The answers may surprise you, unless you're one of the few people who actually can understand the fine print. The banks and card-issuers take in early $170 billion before expenses, three-quarters of which comes from the steadily-rising interest rates they charge us for not paying off the credit each month.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/6509792

capquest debt recovery christian debt relief clear your debt cnn debt calculator

Credit Card Traps - Another Thing to Look Out For

[WizardRSS: unable to retrieve full-text content]

In the previous article of this three-part series focusing on investigating the spurious charges with which credit-card companies hit us, we covered avoiding banking at the same place from which you received your card (so that the fine print doesn't allow them to extract funds from your actual account in the event that you are too late repaying your credit card balance) and paying close attention to grace-period adjustment tactics. The former is a bit underhanded because more often than not, the bank will allow you to be late for a period of time before they finally go directly into...

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/6509878

debt advisor debt arbitration debt clearance debt collection agencies uk

There Are Two Big Reasons Why Goldman Sachs Just Got Sued For Fraud Again (GS)


dan-sparks

The FHFA's massive bank lawsuit extravaganza is a reminder of the horrific behavior that took place inside the subprime mortgage machine: fraud.

In it's lawsuit against Goldman Sachs, the FHFA claims that Goldman directly committed common law fraud, and particularly claims that Goldman "aided and abetted fraud."

This is the second time a government agency has accused Goldman of fraud. It's a big deal.

The agency seeks to recover the damages it sustained as a result of Goldman's wrongdoing, including the amount it paid for the securities ($11.1 billion) plus interest, the amount the value of those securities have lost, and legal fees.

The most serious of the FHFA's 10 causes of action against Goldman is for fraud.

And there are two big reasons why the FHFA says Goldman's actions were fraudulent. In short, they are the money it paid to get a window into the mortgage origination process and Dan Sparks.

Here's the first. From a key sentence in the FHFA lawsuit:

Because the information that Goldman provided or caused to be provided [to ratings agencies] was false, the ratings were inflated... [and] also that Goldman Sachs knew, or was reckless in not knowing, that it was falsely representing the underlying process and riskiness of the mortgage loans... because Goldman’s longstanding relationships with the problematic originators, and its numerous roles in the securitization chain, made it uniquely positioned to know the originators had abandoned their underwriting guidelines... [and because] as a result, the GSEs paid Defendants inflated prices for purported AAA (or its equivalent) Certificates, unaware that those Certificates actually carried a severe risk of loss and inadequate credit enhancement.

The big thing here is that Goldman funded mortgage originators, who encouraged property appraisers to inflate home values by firing them if they didn't and gave half million dollar loans to people like hairdressers and gardeners.

The other main reason Goldman is getting sued for fraud is that some of its employees signed the "shelf registration documents" registering the securities for multiple issuance with the SEC.

The FHFA alleges that those employees made false statements and omitted facts such as:

  • A number of the properties were stated as "owner-occupied" when in fact they were second homes or investment properties. (The FHFA says this is material because a borrower who lives in a mortgaged property is less likely to stop paying their mortgage and thus a better investment.)
  • The mortgage loans' Loan-To-Value (LTV) ratios, key numbers in determining the risk of a mortgage loan, were said in Prospectus Supplements to have ratios of 80% or less (meaning that the borrower got a loan for less than their house is worth -- a much more attractive investment than a borrower who took out a loan for more than their house is worth) when in fact many were higher because the appraised values given to the homes were significantly higher than the actual value of the homes.
And those documents, which were key in determining the value of the securities sold to Fannie and Freddie, are alleged to have been manufactured fraudulently by Goldman and its employees.
The reason Goldman the company is sued for manufacturing these documents and not the people named seems to be that Goldman 1) provided money to the mortgage originators so that they would grant more mortgages to borrowers and sell them to Goldman to securitize, 2) incentivized its employees to securitize and sell as many loans as quickly as possible*, and 3) that there was "significant overlap between the management of the Goldman Sachs Group and the directors and officers of GS Mortgage Securities," meaning basically that Goldman made mortgages a big part of its business.

(In fact, in subprime RMBS securitizations, Goldman's deal volume increased from $2.1 billion in 2003 to $9.7 billion in 2004, to $14.5 billion in 2005 to $15 billion in 2006. And in ALT-A RMBS securitizations, Goldman's deal volume increased from $3.8 billion in 2004 to $10.4 billion in 2005 to $20.5 billion in 2006, according to the lawsuit.)

Goldman is also on the hook because it saw the poor quality of the loans it bought from the mortgage originators it funded (the lawsuit says Goldman received daily updates on how many loans were delinquent), retained third-party due diligence providers to analyze those loans that it considered securitizing regardless of the delinquencies (a smart move considering that it might have absolved Goldman of responsibility for any poor-quality loans in the Securitizations) but Goldman didn't listen to the companies' recommendations to exclude a significant number of loans. Goldman included the loans in its Securitizations anyway. Then it got the ratings agencies to rate them attractively. But it stated in offering documents that the loans had generally met the guidelines of the due diligence review.

 Our takeaways: Dan Sparks is full-on attacked in the lawsuit. The FHFA basically blames the rot of Goldman's mortgage business on him and his team's "traveling the world" to "make some lemonade from some big old lemons" (his words).

Of all the Goldman employees named as defendants, Sparks is the bad guy this time. The others are barely mentioned. 

It's the FHFA's imperative to encourage the mortgage industry to support a robust housing market. So at first it might seem that the lawsuits are counter-productive for discouraging lending during a time when already, few are lending.

And in a way, it is. But the FHFA lost billions. And they're a regulator that has to disincentivize fraud, which of course makes home buyers wary of the housing market.

This lawsuit, and any others that might follow, help achieve that goal.

Endgame: It seems like a settlement is coming.

It's a hard sell, to us at least, that Goldman can be found directly at fault for Fannie and Freddie's losses because 1) No matter who it paid to do so, Goldman didn't originate most of the loans, and that's where the real fraud took place; 2) Fannie and Freddie should have investigated the quality of the loans before investing in them (although the FHFA says it could not have known); and 3) Much of the blame is on this system that created impossible loans to pay off so that someone would actually invest in those loans (incredible yield) so that it could grant loans to people who couldn't pay them off because discriminating against poor people was litigously discouraged back in 1992.

This lawsuit certainly spells out Goldman's role in each step of that system (Using evidence from the lawsuit, we could probably create a flip book of Sparks blazing the trail for each of them), but Fannie and Freddie remain "sophisticated investors."

* The lawsuit says "Defendants had enormous financial incentives to complete as many offerings as quickly as possible without regard to ensuring the accuracy or completeness of the Registration Statements or conducting adequate and reasonable due diligence... if for no other reason than to quickly get them off Goldman's books." 

In reality Goldman and its employees had two incentives:

1. GS Mortgage Securities was paid a percentage of the total dollar amount of the offering whenever the Securitization was complete, if GSMS was the depositor (and it was in most of the relevant instances in this lawsuit regarding securities that Fannie and Freddie invested in).

2. GS, the underwriter, got a commission based on how much it sold the Certificates for. 

Please follow Clusterstock on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/sl37LdjFijM/goldman-fhfa-lawsuit-2011

debt advice uk debt advisor debt arbitration debt clearance

How To Research Funds On Your Own

How important is your input when it comes to investing? Studies of successful investors show they get personally involved in the decisions that affect their investments by conducting their own research.

For example, 64% of ultra-wealthy investors (those with $25 million or more in assets) rely equally on information from their financial advisors and daily financial publications as part of their research. More than half of them also go online to check out financial services companies and research investments every week.

Researching Mutual Funds

While you may not have $25 million to invest (yet!), you can do what rich people do and research your investments as well. For mutual fund investing like Dave recommends, online mutual fund screeners are a good option to help you find and choose good funds.

These screeners are simply databases of information about individual mutual funds. Yahoo! finance has a good screener you can check out for free. With some digging, you can answer the three most important questions about a mutual fund: What's the long-term track record? What is the fund's rank within its category? What are the fund's expenses?

Most screeners work the same way and allow you to organize the information to suit you. Screeners allow you to:

  • Create lists of mutual funds based on returns.
  • Compare specific funds.
  • Review pages of graphs and stats for each fund.
  • Set up your own portfolio page.

But gathering more in-depth information will be a challenge, and you can't really do an apples-to-apples comparison of funds with incomplete data. For example, the free screener shows only 1-, 3- and 5-year returns, but you may want to know about a fund's performance over 15 or 20 years. If you're the kind of investor who needs extensive detail on your investments, consider subscribing to a professional-grade mutual fund screening system.

Professional Advice for the Final Decision

No matter how powerful your screening program is, it can't make your investing decisions for you. Those studies of wealthy investors' habits also show that, although 68% said they have the skills and talent to manage their own portfolios, 70% of them trust their financial advisors to help them grow their investments.

That's why Dave recommends you combine your research with the advice of an investing professional. These experts will work with you to make sure your investments are on target to meet your goals?and help you keep them that way. Dave's investing Endorsed Local Providers are pros in your area who will give you the same great investing advice Dave would. Contact your ELP today!

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://www.daveramsey.com/article/how-to-research-funds-on-your-own/lifeandmoney_investing

debt stoppers debt to income ratio calculator debt to wealth debt trouble

5 Steps to Help Shoppers Get Out of Debt

[WizardRSS: unable to retrieve full-text content]

Do you use shop therapy to feel better when you're depressed? When you see something you want, do feel the need to buy it as if driven by an unseen force? Are you over your head in debt but keep on shopping anyway? Is your spending affecting your relationships and personal life? Do you find yourself feeling depressed and guilty after a big shopping spree?

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/6522575

debt reduction calculator debt reduction companies debt reduction loan debt reduction software

Nomura On The Big Difference Between "Low Growth" And "No Growth"


Is the US headed for a recession, or just an ongoing stretch of really mediocre growth?

The question is significant according to a new note from Nomura's Ian Scott.

When you have periods of sub-2% growth (on average, over three years), equity returns drop off big-time.

chart

One problem with the exercise: There just aren't many that periods in history of negative returns, and negative extended bad growth.

Here's an interesting look at 3-year growth rates over the last 100+ years.

chart

 

Please follow Money Game on Twitter and Facebook.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/A068_Ec1EWo/low-growth-vs-no-growth-2011-9

grants to pay off debt green path debt solutions home equity debt consolidation international debt collection