From Reuters:
Late on Sunday, the U.S. government unveiled a bailout plan for Citigroup Inc, agreeing to shoulder most of the potential losses on $306 billion of high risk assets, in the latest attempt to restore confidence in the stricken financial system.
The government will also inject $20 billion of new capital, on top of $25 billion it just put into the bank, and receive preferred shares with an 8 percent dividend. Citigroup received the latest injection after its shares plunged 60 percent in the last week, amid worry it lacked enough capital to survive.
Perhaps it is just time to forbid firms from getting “too big to fail.”
The housing market and the regional approach
Tuesday, January 13th, 2009I’m sure the JS story this morning saying that home prices in the region fell 4.6% is right, but defining the real estate market as the entire region sure disguises the extent of the price collapse in central Milwaukee, where homes are selling for less than 50% of their assessed value (and assessments are based on sales prices). The paper does report that Milwaukee County prices are down 12%, but even that doesn’t get at the extent of the Milwaukee problem.
However, the regional approach could be really useful in other areas of reporting — how about reporting crime stats on a regional basis? Milwaukee would improve immensely. Same with student test scores — why not report on a regionwide basis and just footnote the results from individual school districts?
Tags: financial crisis, real estate
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