Little Orphan Fannie Mae

The commission learned from John Kerr, an examiner with the Federal Housing Finance Agency, that Fannie was "the worst-run financial institution" he had seen in 30 years as a bank regulator. Austin Kelly, an official at FHFA's predecessor agency, said regulators couldn't trust Fannie's numbers because their "processes were a bowl of spaghetti."And you should hear what people were saying inside these firms. Former Fannie Mae Chief Risk Officer Enrico Dallavecchia wrote in a 2007 email to the company's COO that Fannie "was not even close to having proper controls processes for credit,Fashion Dresses market and operational risk." He added that "people don't care about the risk function or they don't get it."Over at Freddie, former CEO Richard Syron acknowledged in an interview with the commission that one of the reasons he fired longtime chief risk officer David Andrukonis in 2005 was that Mr. Andrukonis opposed relaxing Freddie's loan underwriting standards.

According to civil charges filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, around the end of 2004 Mr. Syron rejected the advice of Freddie credit risk officers who had urged him to stop Freddie from guaranteeing so-called NINA loans, which required no verification of borrower income or assets.Adding to the absurdity of the FHFA suit,Fashion Dresses even Fannie and Freddie don't claim they were innocent. The two companies have agreed to a deferred prosecution agreement in which they don't deny misleading investors about the size of their investments in subprime mortgages and liar loans.The SEC is still suing former senior executives at both companies for securities fraud. The cases may not come to trial until 2015,Fashion Dresses which is convenient for the government as it pursues the Fan-and-Fred-as-victims case with Morgan and other banks.

You never know what a trial might tell us about how the companies decided to buy mortgage-backed securities sold by banks.But we do already know that Fan and Fred were in constant communication with issuers and Fashion Dresses were informed in detail what exactly they were buying. In its 2005 annual report, Freddie told investors: "We manage institutional credit risk on non-Freddie Mac mortgage-related securities by only purchasing securities that meet our investment guidelines and performing ongoing analysis to evaluate the creditworthiness of the issuers and servicers of these securities and the bond insurers that guarantee them."

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Twitter Prepares to Feed New Hunger for I.P.O.'s

Now, underwriters say, companies are more willing to price their offerings slightly lower to ensure that their shares trade well from the start. That means occasionally putting up with big "pops," or significant jumps in price on the first day of trading: Rocket Fuel and FireEye both doubled their offering prices in their first day of trading last month. Such sharp rises suggest that companies raised less than was possible.Twitter itself is planning to sell its shares at $17 to $20,Fashion Dresses less than what many optimistic analysts had expected. Company executives may raise that price if they find exuberant demand in their week-and-a-half trip across the country.The company and its advisers will spend the next nine days traveling to major cities like New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles,Fashion Dresses meeting with institutional investors like mutual funds and hedge funds.

On Nov. 6, they will assemble the final order book determining the final price and size of the offering.Twitter would then begin trading on Nov. 7 on the New York Stock Exchange, under the symbol TWTR.While Twitter is expected to be the most prominent tech company to go public for some time, smaller but still popular contemporaries could follow suit in the next year or two.Names mentioned by the rumor mill include Square,Fashion Dresses the payment company founded by Twitter's chairman, Jack Dorsey; Dropbox, an online storage company; and Lending Club, a specialist in online peer-to-peer lending.Such is the strength of the I.P.O. market that not even the two-week government shutdown earlier this month significantly harmed business. Deal-makers said that companies already on the road pitching their offerings witnessed little effect, though some issuers about to start the process waited until an end to the political impasse was in sight.

A bigger factor has been the strong growth of the equity markets, especially with interest rates still hovering near record lows. Philip Drury, one of Citigroup's co-head of equity capital markets for the Americas, said that investors had proved eager to pay significantly for investments that outperform the market and shares in fast-growing companies help fill that need.The rise in listings has been relatively spread out across industry sectors,Fashion Dresses though it has been dominated by the likes of energy and health care. This is my favorite article:Download IMA's First China Salary Survey.

Trucks loaded with tomatoes

Trucks loaded with tomatoes, milk and almonds clog the two main highways that bisect California's farm heartland, carrying goods to millions along the Pacific Coast and beyond. This dusty stretch of land is the starting point for one of the nation's most expensive public infrastructure projects: a $68 billion high-speed rail system that would span the state, linking the people of America's salad bowl to more jobs,Fashion Dresses opportunity and buyers.Five years ago, California voters overwhelmingly approved the idea of bringing a bullet train to the nation's most populous state. It would be America's first high-speed rail system, sold to the public as a way to improve access to good-paying jobs, cut pollution from smog-filled roadways and reduce time wasted sitting in traffic while providing an alternative to high fuel prices.

Now, engineering work has finally begun on the first 30-mile segment of track here in Fresno, a city of a half-million people with soaring unemployment and a withering downtown core littered with abandoned factories and shuttered stores.Rail is meant to help this place,Fashion Dresses with construction jobs now and improved access to economic opportunity once the job is complete. But the region that could benefit most from the project is also where opposition to it has grown most fierce."I just wish it would go away, this high-speed rail. I just wish it would go away," says Gary Lanfranco, whose restaurant in downtown Fresno is slated to be demolished to make way for rerouted traffic.

Such sentiments can be heard throughout the Central Valley, where roads are dotted with signs such as: "HERE COMES HIGH SPEED RAIL There goes the farm." Growers complain of misplaced priorities, and residents wonder if their tax money is being squandered.Aaron Fukuda,Fashion Dresses a civil engineer whose house in the dairy town of Hanford lies directly in one of the possible train routes, says: "People are worn out, tired, frustrated."Voters in 2008 approved $10 billion in bonds to start construction on an 800-mile rail line to ferry passengers between San Francisco and Los Angeles in 2 hours and 40 minutes, compared with 6 hours by car now during good traffic. Since then, the housing market collapsed, multibillion-dollar budget deficits followed, and the price tag has fluctuated wildly ―Fashion Dresses from $45 billion in 2008 to more than $100 billion in 2011 and, now, $68 billion.

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Bankers' Fee for Market Debut

The shutdown started on Oct. 1 after Congress couldn't come to agreement on stopgap legislation to continue funding the government,Fashion Dresses known as a continuing resolution, because of deep divisions between the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-led Senate over the health care law.Talks to end the government shutdown and extend the nation's borrowing authority continued Friday with some Senate Republicans saying a deal could be reached in the next few days.Even if the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau resumes operation in short order, however,Fashion Dresses that doesn't mean it's business as usual for craft breweries. It typically takes more than a month, sometimes longer, for label approvals under normal government operations, so breweries are preparing for a backlog.

The social-media service will probably start a roadshow with bankers to promote the deal in the last week of October, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the details aren't public. Twitter, which is leaning toward listing on the New York Stock Exchange, is still negotiating with that exchange and Nasdaq on the ability to handle the IPO, as well as associated listing fees, one of the people said.Twitter's ability to negotiate a fee well below the norm for U.S. IPOs --Fashion Dresses which have averaged 5.7 percent, according to 2013 data compiled by Bloomberg --Fashion Dresses shows investment banks are still willing to take tens of millions of dollars less to land a high-profile role with a large client. Missing out on the Twitter IPO could cost an investment bank in reputation among technology clients and in future IPOs with smaller startups.

"It's a low fee for Twitter to have to pay, and it's a very positive development," said Josef Schuster, founder of IPOX Schuster LLC in Chicago. "It may set a standard that will help companies with future IPOs save costs when they come to market."Twitter's fees are higher than those paid by Facebook Inc. FB because it's a smaller offering, said two people with knowledge of the negotiations. Facebook raised $16 billion at its IPO in May 2012, paying banks 1.1 percent.Twitter hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as the lead underwriter, which typically earns a bigger cut of the deal.Globally, the average IPO fee this year is 4.5 percent, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In 2012, IPO managers in the U.S. earned an average of 4.3 percent in fees, while globally they made 3.7 percent, the data show.

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Score another one for the Apple doom-and-gloom crowd

Score another one for the Apple doom-and-gloom crowd. "Apple's Mac Shipments Decline In US PC Market In Q3 As Tablets Continue To Erode Worldwide PC Sales," declared the International Business Times. Why the focus on the U.S. Fashion Dresses you might ask? Because the "data" such as it is comes from reports by IDC and Gartner, which themselves are nothing but surveys. Apple will release actual sales results on October 28,Fashion Dresses where it will tell the world precisely how many computers it sold in the quarter. While it's quite probable the total will be down versus a year ago, here's an equally accurate headline: "Apple On Verge Of Becoming Top 5 Global PC Maker For The First Time Since 1996."

To clarify, neither Gartner nor IDC believes Apple is in that top 5 though it's possible they're wrong. And however close Apple is, the only reason it's on the cusp is because sales at Asus are collapsing,Fashion Dresses down at least 22% and perhaps 34%, depending on which of the two firms' numbers you believe. Things are scarcely better for fourth place Acer, which has seen similar sales declines in the past year. The good news for the market overall, though, is that the top three: Lenovo, HP and Dell, have each eked out small gains. Unfortunately, they're becoming bigger in a market that's still becoming smaller: Total PC shipments are down 8% versus 2012 and IDC doesn't like the immediate future: "Despite being a little ahead of forecast, and the work that's being done on new designs and integration of features like touch, the third quarter results suggest that there's still a high probability that we will see another decline in worldwide shipments in 2014."

Gartner notes this time of year is often strong: "The third quarter is often referred to as the 'back-to-school' quarter for PC sales, and sales this quarter dropped to their lowest volume since 2008," said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. That's Great Recession-level volumes. Not surprisingly it puts the blame on increasing use of tablets. ""Consumers' shift from PCs to tablets for daily content consumption continued to decrease the installed base of PCs both in mature Fashion Dresses as well as in emerging markets." But the continued myopic look at tablets as consumption devices misses the disruptive impact both they and smartphones have had. Consider the chart from Asymco.

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Central Bank Deputy Governor Yi Gang

Liu Li-Gang and Zhou Hao, economists at ANZ Bank, said China's sliding export sales were also a result of a rising yuan.They said activity was further hurt by the Mid-Autumn festival, which fell in the middle of September this year,Fashion Dresses reducing the number of working days in the month compared with 2012."The strong renminbi has eroded China's export competitiveness," ANZ Bank said in a note. It said there were risks that China's economic growth may miss market forecasts this year, but predicted 2013 growth would hit 7.6 percent.The yuan,Fashion Dresses which hit a record high of 6.1090 to the dollar on August 12, has gained 5.7 percent against 60 other currencies since January, data from the Bank of International Settlements showed, outstripping a 3 percent rise in the dollar.In the face of China's unsteady economic recovery, Beijing has repeatedly expressed confidence that the country can still achieve its 2013 growth target of 7.5 percent.

Central Bank Deputy Governor Yi Gang was quoted as saying this week in Washington that China's annual economic growth this year could hit about 7.6 percent.Anlaysts have long warned that a recovery in China's economy may be fragile and brief, especially if Chinese leaders stick to plans for financial reforms, including curbing extravagant investment,Fashion Dresses which would hurt growth in the near term."Despite the subdued export outlook, we expect the government to maintain its current policy stance," said Kuijs from RBS."We expect it to hold on to the firmer monetary stance that it is trying to pursue in order to rein in overall credit growth."An unexpected drop in exports led to China's trade surplus narrowing to a disappointing $15.2 billion in September from $28.6 billion in August, customs figures showed Saturday.

Exports fell 0.3 percent year-on-year to $185.64 billion last month, while imports increased 7.4 percent to $170.44 billion, the figures said.The statistics could signal potential headwind for the world's number two economy, which relies heavily on global demand for its products.Exports in August jumped 7.2 percent year-on-year to $190.7 billion. The positive figures had led analysts to point to optimism in China's economy.However,Fashion Dresses the September trade result was worse than expected, with a survey of nine analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires forecasting a trade surplus of $27 billion.Analysts say China's national holidays falling in September, along with a strong local currency, could have stalled exports.
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White House Encourages Praise of Fed's Yellen

All signs point to President Barack Obama nominating Janet Yellen for the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve.In phone calls to Senate Democrats, White House officials have been asking them to talk favorably about Ms. Yellen in public settings, a Senate Democratic aide said Friday. Also, the White House has asked senators to lay out any objections they might have to Ms. Yellen now, rather than after the nomination is announced, the aide said."Every signal we've received since Lawrence Summers withdrew Fashion Dresses is that she is their pick," the aide said."The message has been it would be nice if folks could start saying positive things about her and if you have any issues please let us know now because we don't want to be sandbagged by anything."

Another Senate official familiar with the White House's thinking about the Fed selection also said the White House has told him Ms. Yellen – who is now vice chair of the Fed — is the likely nominee.Nothing's for certain Fashion Dresses, though. At one point Mr. Summers, a former top White House economic adviser, was the front-runner to succeed Ben Bernanke as Fed chairman. But the Summers candidacy collapsed as Senate Democrats complained about his ties to Wall Street and urged that Ms. Yellen be chosen instead.The White House declined to comment Friday.With no nominee in place, the Senate isn't likely to hold a confirmation hearing until late October or November, the Senate aide said.

Bipartisan good feeling is never in abundance on Capitol Hill. But the atmosphere is especially toxic these days due to the budget fights. If lawmakers can't reach a compromise,Fashion Dresses the Fed nomination hearings could unfold at the same time Congress is arguing about shutting down the government and lifting the debt ceiling."I don't think it necessarily endangers her confirmation because Democratic support is very strong and Republicans have made positive noises," the aide said. "But it could delay it –Fashion Dresses and delay is always bad."It sounds like the plot of TV drama like "24," or, more recently, the acclaimed "Homeland," whose third season premieres Sunday on Showtime. In fact, it's the real-life story of British national Samantha Lewthwaite, who is suspected of participating in last weekend's bloody terror attack on Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall.
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Health law challenge threatens government shutdown

A conservative challenge to the president's health care law has the federal government teetering on the brink of a partial shutdown.The Senate has the next move on must-do legislation required to keep the government open past midnight on Monday, and the Democratic-led chamber is expected to reject the latest effort from House Republicans to use a normally routine measure to attack President Barack Obama's signature health care law.Congress was closed for the day on Sunday after a post-midnight vote in the GOP-run House to delay by a year key parts of the new health care law Fashion Dresses and repeal a tax on medical devices as the price for avoiding a shutdown. The Senate is slated to convene Monday afternoon just 10 hours before the shutdown deadline,Fashion Dresses and Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has already promised that majority Democrats will kill the House's latest volley.

A House GOP leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, said the House would again rebuff the Senate's efforts to advance the short-term funding bill as a simple, "clean" measure shorn of anti-heath care reform provisions.Since the last government shutdown 17 years ago, temporary funding bills known as continuing resolutions have been noncontroversial, with neither party willing to chance a shutdown to achieve legislative goals it couldn't otherwise win. But with health insurance exchanges set to open Tuesday,Fashion Dresses tea party Republicans are willing to take the risk in their drive to kill the law, so-called "Obamacare.""You're going to shut down the government if you can't prevent millions of Americans from getting affordable care," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

A leader of the tea party Republicans, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, insisted the blame rests with Senate Democrats."The House has twice now voted to keep the government open. And if we have a shutdown Fashion Dresses, it will only be because when the Senate comes back, Harry Reid says, 'I refuse even to talk,'" said Cruz, who led a 21-hour broadside against allowing the temporary funding bill to advance if stripped clean of a tea party-backed provision to derail Obamacare. The effort failed.The battle started with a House vote to pass the short-term funding bill with a provision that would have eliminated the federal dollars needed to put Obama's health care overhaul into place. The Senate voted along party lines to strip that out and set the measure back to the House.
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