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Then there is the financing issue. The federal government has done a lot to try to keep interest rates low - like buying up mortgaged-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - but loans over a certain size are often exempt. The rates on "jumbo" loans (generally those that run about $417,000) have historically been about .25 percentage points higher than on regular mortgages. That spread jumped all the way up to 180 basis points last fall, according to data-tracker HSH Associates - but has since settled down to about 100. Still, that's a big added expense. Plus...
Speaking at an annual conference of real estate editors, James Lockhart, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said on Thursday the government shouldn't run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Lockhart should know. He leads the agency that has been doing just that since last September, when the giant mortgage insurers were put into government conservatorship. Lockhart said his experience with Fannie and Freddie as well as helping to run other government insurance programs taught him that government ownership for these types of companies doesn't work. (See what to expect when the recession ends...
Circuit City. Lehman Brothers. Fannie Mae. The economic crisis has devastated a slew of companies that once ranked among the country's most admired. Best-selling author and corporate researcher Jim Collins spent five years studying the decline of great businesses for his fourth book, How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In. He spoke with TIME about finding lessons amid the corporate wreckage, his choice for "entrepreneur of the decade" and why the rocky business climate may be here to stay. (See the top 10 bankruptcies...
Some of the fallen companies you analyze, like Circuit City and Fannie Mae, are companies whose strengths you'd previously praised. What happened...
...rhetoric of just a couple of months ago is now gone, as is any notion that Beijing will stop buying huge amounts of Treasury debt anytime soon. In fact, in March, China's direct holdings of U.S. Treasury securities alone (excluding so-called agency debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) rose $23.7 billion, to reach a new record of $768 billion, according to preliminary U.S. data, making China far and away America's biggest creditor...