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Call it the First National Bank of Uncle Sam. Those who will be implementing the Bush administration’s new $250 billion initiative to stabilize the floundering financial system aren’t calling it bank nationalization, but perhaps that’s a distinction without much of a difference. Under a plan announced this morning by President Bush at the White House’s Rose Garden, the federal government will spend up to $125 billion to buy preferred shares in nine major U.S. banks: Bank of America Corp., Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan…

Was Monday’s upward rush of stock prices an example of a dead-cat bounce (a really big dead cat, maybe a puma bounce)? Hard to tell after today’s performance. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost ground, but not much: 76 points, or a scant 0.82 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 fell 0.53 percent, and the Nasdaq lost somewhat more as a percentage–3.54 percent–but then again tech stocks seem to have issues not directly related to the credit meltdown, such as anxiously waiting for Intel Corp. to report its profits (which after the bell turned out to be 12 percent up)….

Less than a year after the National Basketball Association created NBA China, the organization has formed a joint venture with Los Angeles-based sports and entertainment presenter AEG to design, market, program and operate multi-purpose, NBA-style sports and entertainment arenas in major cities throughout Greater China. NBA officials called China an exciting marketplace with a growing appetite for sports and entertainment. AEG, the developer and operator of the O2 arena in London, will work with the NBA to create relationships with the Chinese government as well as local developers to oversee the design and development of arenas and entertainment districts. The…

HDG Mansur has tapped James Mann to be the managing director, head of commercial development in the United States. He will be responsible for overseeing the company’s existing and new commercial developments on a national basis. Before coming to HDG Mansur, Mann was with LNR Property Corp. in Atlanta, Ga., for 14 years in a variety of positions. He also held senior management positions with Equitable Real Estate Investment Management, Union Pacific Realty Co., Chevron Land and Development Co., and Oppenheimer Cos.He earned an MBA from Harvard a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from Northwestern University.  HDG Mansur provides…

Back in early 2007, many industry observers suggested that pricing in the commercial real estate markets did not reflect traditional risk and that a correction was likely. Of course, they did not expect residential subprime lending to ignite one of the biggest meltdowns in the history of the global credit markets.In a little over a year, debt markets that were once a punchbowl from which everyone could drink have halted their flow, resulting in limited credit, failures of major financial institutions and significant government intervention. Right now, fundamentals in the multi-family and commercial sectors are not expected to reach distressed…

Stock markets in Asia and Europe were up on Monday, after their significant losses Friday. Hong Kong was the star performer, up 10 percent, while various Euro-markets were up between 5 percent and 8 percent. Compared to the aggregate declines of last week, however, these were fairly modest gains. No one is predicting that any of the equities markets around the world will out of the woods soon, or even near a path that would take them out of the woods. Still, it looks like it might be a good day for Morgan Stanley. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial is going ahead…

Following an emergency summit Sunday in Paris, the 15 countries of the Euro zone agreed to guarantee new bank debt until the end of next year. The move will let governments prop up struggling banks by buying preferred shares. Although the coordination effort, for better or worse, will still allow individual governments to decide exactly how they’ll implement the measures, it does represent a new level of continent-wide cooperation in the face of the worst financial and credit crisis in decades. Within its own borders, the U.K. has committed $64 billion to shore up the Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS…

With its stock having vacillated between a high of $30.73 per share and a low of $3.31 per share over the last 52 weeks, Los Angeles-based Maguire Properties has had a rough year. However, a recent stock purchase proves that investors remain interested in the REIT that boasts the title of the largest owner of Class A office buildings in Downtown Los Angeles. Between Sept. 29 and Oct. 7, California Capital L.P. shelled out a total of nearly $27.5 million to acquire 4,650,000 shares of Maguire common stock accounting for 9.7 percent of the company’s total outstanding common stock. California…

“Catching a falling knife” is the analogy used lately to describe trying to figure out just the right time to buy a stock these days, since presumably the Dow Jones and all the other indexes will not, in fact, descend to zero. Eventually, fundamentals will re-assert themselves in the case of some stocks, and some will rise again. But when? Not Friday, at least. The DJIA ended down 128 points at 8,451.19, after bounding up and down all day (at one point, below 8,000). About 2.95 billion shares changing hands on Friday, a very high volume. Some investors are trying…

President Bush spoke to the public from the Rose Garden Saturday after meeting with financial ministers from the G-7 nations. Bush met with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and finance ministers from the G7 — Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and Japan. With Bush while he spoke were Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg, president of the Eurogroup of countries, managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn of the International Monetary Fund, president Robert Zoellick of the World Bank, Chairman Mario Draghi of the Financial Stability Forum.Saying it was important for citizens to understand that what “affects Wall…