The Vig

Via Calculated Risk:
Trump Entertainment Resorts will have to skip a $53.1 million interest payment scheduled for Monday on its 8.5% senior secured notes due 2015 in order to maintain sufficient liquidity.
I’ve often considered his wealth to be illusory.   He’s wealthy not because of any particular smarts or any holdings…he’s wealthy because he’s wealthy.
He’ll probably [...]

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Watching coverage of the Christmas shoppers this weekend, I kept hearing the same line over and over.
Prices won’t get any lower than they are nw, so if you’ve had your eye on something NOW is the time to get it.
It’s the same line we’ve been hearing about real estate for almost 2 years now.  Yet [...]

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Goldy visits Fry’s on Black Friday.
The 19-inch HDTVs? Gone. The picture frames? Gone. The 32GB USB flash drives, which I didn’t really need, but how could I pass one up for only $29.99? Gone. Not that it really mattered, as there was no way in hell I was going to [...]

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Since the government began insuring money market funds, they’ve made $232 million in premiums and paid zero out.  We’re still early in this mess, but it’s still interesting.
OregonLive Reddit//

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Citi and GMAC are both offering some pretty nice rates on their cds right now.  Both, of course, could use the cash right about now and are willing to pay to get it.  What they don’t tell you though is if they fail and the FDIC takes over, the government will be under no obligation [...]

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People in the know about this economic crisis of ours’ point to 1907 as the closest thing to what’s going on now and not 1929.  I looked the subject up on Wikipedia last night and found it quite interesting.
Henry Paulson is no J.P. Morgan.  Of course, I think Morgan would have been smart enough to [...]

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Something I hadn’t considered but makes complete sense.
When I see Obama’s proposals for a big investment in infrastructure, I get this picture in my head of former mortgage brokers and bond salesmen on highway construction projects wearing hard hats and driving bulldozers. Actually, the employment benefit of infrastructure projects is more likely to go to [...]

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As we ponder the pending end of freaking Citigroup (remember it was just a month ago Paulson forced them to take $25 billion in TARP funds even though they said they didn’t need it), Sullivan points us to a guy who thinks this might not be the crisis we believe it is.
The TED spread today [...]

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I keep hearing about how the airlines survived their bankruptcies, the auto makers can too.  What no one discusses, however, was exactly how the airlines survived.  They did it by getting what’s called debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing.  Basically someone comes in and gives a bankrupt company funds to continue operations until their finances are sorted out.
Who [...]

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General Growth Properties, owners of Clackamas Town Center and Pioneer Place as well as the source of NYT columnist Tom Friedman’s wife’s fortune, is lawyering up for a potential bankruptcy.  I wish I could find the article, but as I recall, since April Ann Bucksbaum’s net worth has gone from well north of $1 billion [...]

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