Bradford and Bingley

Generali

HankMcSpank wrote: »

Disagree...the Dow has fallen 3.3% in just two days this week! Hot off the wires....

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Dispatch/080521markets.aspx

"The Dow's loss today comes on top of a 199-point loss on Tuesday. The 427-point decline for the blue-chip index in the last two days is the worst two-day loss since Feb. 28-29. All 30 stocks in the Dow were lower on the day"

Oil has just hit (another) all time high of $134 per barrel.

HSBC securitzaion yesterday resulted in them paying a whopping 170 basis points over base rate (hardly a sign that things are well)

My opinion is that the DJIA is more a take on the future prospects of the companies whose shares make it up than on the banking sector.

I read a very interesting piece this week by Goldmans on the oil price. If you have access to the site it's on the most read section of the portal.

My point isn't that things are going well in finance as they're clearly not. What I was trying to say is that it seems that a bottom is being found. Once that happens then at least we know where we are as opposed to the current cluster fck.

EdInvestor

The Dow got its knickers in a twist over inflation. Not the credit crunch.Not the collapse of the banking sector and the demise of the world as we know it.

Just good old inflation.

How incredibly normal.



Very encouraging.

Generali

EdInvestor wrote: »

The Dow got its knickers in a twist over inflation. Not the credit crunch.Not the collapse of the banking sector and the demise of the world as we know it.

Just good old inflation.

How incredibly normal.



Very encouraging.

I'm pretty negative about the outlook from here but the thing with predicting the end of the world as we know it is that it's something that doesn't happen very often. If you predict that sort of thing then you're most likely to be wrong.

ManAtHome

Generali wrote: »

The HBOS deal shows people will lend if you adequately reward risk.

Wasn't that one (the £500 mill) 6.7% for 62.5% LTV - presumably they couldn't get a mortgage on their "prime" mortages... (wasn't the LTV of the stuff they've flogged not much over 60% - what the hell is the alt-a and sub-prime really worth).

ManAtHome

EdInvestor wrote: »

The Dow got its knickers in a twist over inflation. Not the credit crunch.Not the collapse of the banking sector and the demise of the world as we know it.

Hmm, but wasn't the old "inflation monster" woken up by the "bail out the crunch and the banks" strategy..? Banks were ok for a couple of months, then a substantial chunk of the bailout-ben dosh found it's way into commodities etc (well yer banks have to make their bonuses etc...), and The Wall Of Dollars... errrm dropped the dollar.

Generali

ManAtHome wrote: »

Wasn't that one (the £500 mill) 6.7% for 62.5% LTV - presumably they couldn't get a mortgage on their "prime" mortages... (wasn't the LTV of the stuff they've flogged not much over 60% - what the hell is the alt-a and sub-prime really worth).

You're right, it was very prime stuff they sold. The point is that it sets a price and shows the right stuff sells at the right price.

Risk premia (premiums?) have been chased down since 2001, it's about time they were repriced. That this deal has gone through shows that a section of risk has been priced in a way acceptable to both buyer and seller. That the premium on this deal is higher than has been seen for a few years reflects a lack of realism recently IMO.

brit1234

HankMcSpank wrote: »

Oil has just hit (another) all time high of $134 per barrel (Crude is up 17% this month and 39% this year alone)

One day the US Federal Reserve will realise that cutting interest rates is not only weakening the dollar but also the petro dollar. If OPEC sells its oil and increasingly it is devalued when exchanging for other currencies then they are going to make less money. Solution put oil prices up in Dollars or sell in Euro's.

However Iraq changed from selling oil in Dollars to Euros, but then it was strangely invaded. :huh: Oh yes WMD

Iran is thinking about changing oil sales to Euro's and now the US is planning attack strategies. :huh: Oh yes potential WMD

And when Saudi turned off oil I think in the 70's strangely the US told threatened them with invasion. I'm sure they had WMD as well. Thats why the US doesn't like us arming the Saudis with our jets making them more difficult to invade hence the British BAE arrests in the US.

Anyway if the US doesn't stop cutting interest rates and starts putting them up we are going to have $200 oil barrel by Christmas.:eek:

Thats going to bring mega inflation to the UK.

Oh yeah B&B are toast.:rotfl:

kennyboy66_2

HankMcSpank wrote: »

I predict the rights issue will be a washout, then they'll be strapped for dosh, then the story will be big, then there'll be a run on the B&B as all the small punters read about it in the Sun....then it'll go bust cos the Govt will neither have the gall or the resources to stop another bank from failing.

The rights issue may well be a wash out, however B&B will still get the £300m, as the issue is underwritten by UBS (who get paid 3%, to effectivly insure the rights issue).

kennyboy66_2

brit1234 wrote: »

However Iraq changed from selling oil in Dollars to Euros, but then it was strangely invaded. :huh: Oh yes WMD

Iran is thinking about changing oil sales to Euro's and now the US is planning attack strategies. :huh: Oh yes potential WMD

And when Saudi turned off oil I think in the 70's strangely the US told threatened them with invasion. I'm sure they had WMD as well. Thats why the US doesn't like us arming the Saudis with our jets making them more difficult to invade hence the British BAE arrests in the US.

Anyway if the US doesn't stop cutting interest rates and starts putting them up we are going to have $200 oil barrel by Christmas.:eek:

Thats going to bring mega inflation to the UK.

Oh yeah B&B are toast.:rotfl:

Your conspiracy theory about BAE is undermined slightly by the fact that that the biggest arms producer & exporter in the World is the USA - and their biggest customer is Saudi Arabia.

FraudBuster

Mervyn King 14th May 2008

Wenxian Chen,
Xinhua News Agency,
People's Republic of China:
Do you think that one or two of UK's relatively small scale banks,
maybe Alliance or Alliance and Leicester and B and B will be
acquired or merged by others before credit conditions are c…..

Mervyn King: I don’t know what on earth leads you to imagine that I will
comment on individual financial institutions and I don’t propose

to do so.