Credit Card Fees

The Obama Administration is looking to help consumers with their credit cards. In the first of hopefully many overhauls, the credit card fee structure is being changed, limiting the hiking of sudden late fees and phone payment charges among others. The administration is looking to change spending habits by helping people manage their money better and understand that there are always consequences to actions.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124272801896734045.html

President Obama: GM Bankruptcy Speech

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Equity Swap

An Equity Swap is a swap agreed to right now for a future exchange. It involves, like any other swap, a principal and payment intervals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equity_swap

Bank of American to finance Fontainebleau

Bank of America will reportedly be funding Fontainebleau in their new multibillion dollar resort project which recently came odd speculation when MGM Grand and their Saudi partners were having a falling out over money issues.

Read the Wall Stree Journal article summary here. Search Google for the blog title for the full article.

Collateralized Debt Oligation (a.k.a. CDO)

Collaterilzed Debt Obligation's are in essence asset backed securities that are made up of a portfolio of underlying assets, mainly fixed income assets.They are assigned risk classes then packaged to sell to financial institutions. The major downside to CDOs is that rather than spreading risk through diverisification, they pass along risk through the financial system so the risk is technically supposed to be minimized through sharing. Many major investors and financial giants like Warren Buffet and Alan Greenspan claim to not understand CDOs mainly because of the way the risk is spread and the way they are setup.

Read more about CDOs, Tranches (the asset classification system), Asset-Backed Securities, and
Structured Finance here:

Collateralized Debt Obligation
Tranche
Asset-Backed Securities
Structured Finance

Unemployement

Once again, unemployment has risen from the previous week and more than analyst estimates. Unemployment rose to 640,000 from 613,000 and 5000 more than estimates for this week. Another closely related figure is the amount of unemployment claims as people try and find ways to make ends meet to ride out the current financial and economic crisis.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30364714/

Bank Stress Test

Critics are now criticizing the government's stress tests for major banks to check their durability during recession like conditions. The critics are saying now that the wrong areas are being tested and are questioning if they actualy reflect what will happen in the real world.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30368110/