Menu

With global fears of recession growing stronger and stock prices plummeting worldwide, a new ad in today's New York Times calls for a fix to the global trade imbalance that is accelerating the collapse of the world economy. The ad, sponsored by the Institute for America's Future features the image of a noose and says, "even the rope we're hanging ourselves with is made in China."

According to a new report from foodservice consultants Technomic, three out of five consumers (62 percent) who report purchasing more supermarket prepared meals than a year ago, are doing so at the expense of fast-food restaurants. The survey of more than 1,500 consumers found that family-style and casual-dining restaurants also were impacted to a somewhat lesser extent. Convenience was cited by 86 percent as the reason for buying more retailer meal solutions.

While the public financial markets are in crisis, U.S. private equity firms not only continue to stockpile capital but have picked up the pace of their fund-raising. Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst, using statistics from the LP Source database, reports that U.S. private equity firms raised $222.6 billion in 264 funds during the first three quarters of 2008, 11% ahead of the $200.4 billion raised by 298 funds in the same time last year. That is in contrast to the halfway point of this year, when fund- raising slightly lagged last year's pace, and is despite a slow-down in buyout fund-raising. The full-year fund-raising record of $313 billion was set in 2007.

Automotive finance providers that achieve high levels of satisfaction among dealers receive a larger share of business from those dealerships, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2008 Dealer Financing Satisfaction Study(SM).

The Conference Board Employment Trends Index (ETI)™ continued its decline in September, suggesting even more losses to come in the labor market. The index fell in September to 108.4, down 0.8 percent from the August revised figure of 109.3, and down almost 10 percent from a year ago.

Mortgage rates remained steady over the past week, with rates for 30-year fixed mortgages increasing slightly to 5.97 percent, up from 5.96 percent the week prior, according to the Zillow Mortgage Rate Monitor, compiled by leading real estate Web site Zillow.com(R).

Senior Lending Network(R), a program of World Alliance Financial Corp. and a leader in reverse mortgages, announced that despite the downturn in the overall economy, reverse mortgages remain a safe and valuable tool for seniors even as home prices decline and energy costs rise.

The biggest event in a very momentous week was not the roller-coaster ride in stock prices or another big drop in employment. At one point on Monday afternoon, stocks fell in the New York market by 400 points, in just six minutes. This is one of the major underlying problems with mark-to-market values. The value of U.S. business did not change by about 3 percent in just a few minutes. Mistakes in valuation and risk assessment lie at the heart of the continued turmoil in financial markets.

President Bush signed the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, or EESA, into law within two hours of its final passage in the House of Representatives on October 3, 2008, and declared that the legislation was "essential to helping America's economy weather this financial crisis."

The number of households in the US with $500,000 in net worth, not including primary residences, decreased by 5% to an estimated 15.6 million in 2008, according to TNS. That is the first time in six years that the number of affluent households has fallen.