RSS FeedFinance in the News: Bear Stearns
Before its recent collapse this year (2008), The Bear Stearns Companies, Inc. was one of the largest securities trading and brokerage firms and one of the largest global investment banks in the world. The main areas of business that Bear Stearns covered were the following: capital markets (fixed income, equities, investment banking), wealth management, and […]
What is Subprime Lending?
With the current economic crisis the United States is experiencing, there is a lot of talk about subprime lending practices, with specific attention on subprime mortgage lending. The term is fairly new and has been promoted via its use in the media. It refers to lending that financial institutions do that carries more risk than […]
Finance in the News: Freddie Mac
Freddie Mac is the nickname given to the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Company (FHLMC). Created in 1970, Freddie Mac was a government sponsored enterprise (GSE) authorized to make loans and loan guarantees by the United States federal government. Prior to 1968, the secondary mortgage market in the US had been monopolized by the Federal National […]
Finance in the News: Fannie Mae
Fannie Mae is the nickname given to the Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA). As a US publically traded government sponsored enterprise (GSE), Fannie Mae was a stockholder owned corporation that was authorized to make loans and loan guarantees. Founded as a government agency in 1938 as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal, Fannie Mae provided liquidity […]
Finance in the News: Financial Failures of September, 2008
The month of September 2008 has seen dramatic and sometimes shocking upheavals in the United States economy that have had profound effects on the economies of other countries across the world. These upheavals include the failure of the United States’ largest savings bank and the federal bailout of a major American insurance corporation. What follows […]
Understanding a Money Market Account
Money market accounts and money market funds are not the same thing. To understand the difference between both of them, it is best to start at understanding “money market”. Money Market is basically a generic term used to describe the market that banks and other financial establishments lend, borrow and trade money, Certificates of Deposit […]