UBS..a Swiss banking firm is writing off $19Billion in american real estate holdings..which is code for junk subprime loans. Their chairman is also "stepping down". From the NYT:
UBS said the write-down would result in a first-quarter loss of about 12 billion Swiss francs, or $12 billion, and that it would seek new capital of about $15 billion, the second time it has announced plans to raise money since the credit markets began to contract.
Also taking it in the shorts is Deutsche Bank. They are dumping $3.9 Billion in american real estate loans. Just a look at the 'big picture':
Global banks have now written down more than $200 billion of soured loans since last summer when the subprime mortgage market began to implode.
UBS has written off $37.1 billion in losses related to the American housing market, including the $18.1 billion it wrote off in the third and fourth quarters of 2007, a bank spokesman, Dominik von Arx, said in Zurich.
Hot damn..$200 Billion? Like its nothing? And my husband bitches that I don't keep tabs on my checking account..
To add to this fiasco..the Shanghai stock market is taking a huge shit:
A year ago, investors like Guan Ling were ebullient. Chinese share prices had climbed over 500 percent in the span of two years, setting off a nationwide stock buying frenzy.
When experts periodically warned about the possibility of a bubble, prices would dip temporarily then soar even higher, breaking records and inciting another mad dash to snap up equities.
*snip*
That was last year. The Shanghai composite index has plunged 45 percent from its high, reached last October. The first quarter of this year, which ended Monday with a huge sell-off, was the worst ever for the market.
Suddenly, millions of small investors who were crowding into brokerage houses, spending the entire day there playing cards, trading stocks, eating noodles and cheering on the markets with other day traders and retirees, are feeling depressed and angry.
Other parts of Asia are as bad, or worse. In India, stock prices have plunged 31 percent in Mumbai; they are off 31 percent in Japan and a whopping 53 percent in Vietnam, another booming economy. Angry investors have burned a securities regulator in effigy in Mumbai, and some are in tears in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
I am so glad I am too fucking poor to play the stock markets..so damn glad. This crap is affecting the entire Global Economy..and we can blame it all on one thing...
