As of mid-day (and as the Dow futures market had predicted), the DJIA is down, though not by a record amount: 174 points, or about 1.88 percent. The Nasdaq and Standard & Poor’s 500 edged down somewhat more, at 2.9 percent and 2.3 percent, respectively. One of the important factors in getting the Panic of 2008 rolling last month was that some money-market mutual funds “broke the buck” — that is, priced their shares below a dollar each, which was always theoretically possible, but never really supposed to happen, certainly not to a venerable old fund like the Reserve Primary…

In the midst of an economic downturn in the U.S., hotel REITS face challenging times ahead. The health of hotel assets are greatly tied to the performance of the U.S. economy, and, since a hotel’s “leases” are nightly room rentals, the effects of an economic downturn are felt almost immediately, in comparison to an office building, which has tenants committed to five-to-10 year leases, said Maria Maslovsky (pictured), assistant vice president and analyst at Moody’s Investors Service.The difficult times that hotel REITS are facing is illustrated in a report released recently by Robert W. Baird & Co. Analysts David Loeb,…

As CPN reported in our Daily News REport Morning Edition(subscribe here), we are shocked, shocked that some in the markets might seek to profit from the misery of others. But a joint investigation, between New York attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, and the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Michael Garcia, into credit-default swaps for financial-firm stock is looking into just that, according to a report in The New York Times. They are looking to see if the financial instruments—which insure against defaults on bonds–were used to push down share prices. The SEC is also looking at the swaps. At issue is the…

The federal government’s efforts to steady the financial markets may be well-intentioned, but they are not addressing the heart of the problem, argues real estate finance expert and economist Peter Linneman. “Lest you think that nationalization is a panacea, we’ve been to this movie before,” said Linneman, a professor of business at the the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business. He made the remarks Friday afternoon during a Webinar sponsored by NAI Global and moderated by Jeff Finn, the firm’s president & CEO. The history of government-controlled banks is rife with political scandal, insufficient lending and inefficiency, charged Linneman,…

The hard punch, such as it was, came at the end. In testimony this morning before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Budget, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke concluded by endorsing, to the understated extent that a Fed chairman can, the idea that Congress should pass an economic stimulus package. Bernanke (pictured) began by summarizing recent financial developments, describing the ongoing crisis as “the aftermath of a credit boom characterized by underpricing of risk, excessive leverage and an increasing reliance on complex and opaque financial instruments that have proved to be fragile under stress.” The Fed chairman…

The market felt like an up Monday, and so it was: a solid 4.67 percent for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The Nasdaq also finished the day strongly up (3.43 percent), as did the Standard & Poor’s 500 (4.77 percent). Energy stocks seem to have led the way.Does this count as a dead-cat bounce of some kind? The Conference Board is reporting that leading economic indicators rose 0.3 percent in September, after dropping 0.9 percent in August. The leading index is a reflection of 10 separate indicators, six of which rose, such as real money supply, consumer expectations and interest…