Analyst says Northwest may hit financial crisis
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Northwest Airlines (NWAC), a relative financial stalwart in its troubled industry, may be approaching a cash crisis that few have seen coming.
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Bear Stearns Cos. Inc.  may have to bail out a second troubled hedge fund that it manages, Merrill Lynch analyst Guy Moszkowski wrote on Monday.
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SEATTLE -- "We got problems here." So explained Craig S. Weaver, a seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey and chief of its Pacific Northwest earthquake studies project. "There will be earthquakes. You can take that to the bank."
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For some prospective home buyers in Southern California, the effect of the U.S. mortgage crisis has been to keep them on the sidelines of the home market, wary of stepping in for fear prices will fall further.
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Northern Rockâs need for emergency funding represents a broadening of the effects of the global financial crisis.
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Washington Mutual Inc said on Monday that most U.S. housing markets are weakening, creating a "near perfect storm" that may force the largest U.S. savings and loan to set aside more money for bad loans.
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No one knows how large the earnings losses at banks will be, but the turmoil in the credit markets will likely hurt the industry over the next couple of financial quarters.
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Continental Airlines Inc. and Northwest Airlines Corp. pilots might offer to revamp their pensions after a United Airlines threat to terminate its pension plans to save money sparked worker fears that a trend might be starting.
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Lots of debt could mean tough times ahead.
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Troubles buffeting the U.S. mortgage market could get worse as resurgent crude oil prices squeeze the finances of already hard-pressed borrowers, analysts say, and that could spell more trouble for Wall Street.
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Northwest Airlines plans to hire Evercore Partners as a financial adviser, signaling that Northwest may be considering a merger.
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Investor's Business Daily - Bill Gross, chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co., or PIMCO, said the subprime mortgage crisis will hurt the economy and force the Fed to cut interest rates by year-end. &quot;The subprime crisis is not an isolated event and it won&#39;t be contained by a few days of headlines in the New York Times,&quot; said Gross, who manages the world&#39;s biggest bond fund. He said subprime woes will reduce consumption and new-home building over the next 12 to 18 months.
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MELBOURNE (Dow Jones)--China&#39;s economy could be running into some serious turbulence, with the possibility of some associated panic in offshore equities markets for raw materials suppliers, Smith Barney, a unit of Citigroup Global Markets, warned Thursday
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As more banks report write-downs tied to the global credit crunch, analysts say Wachovia Corp  may have losses lurking in an area that has garnered less investor attention.
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As investors place bets on whether the economy will experience a hard or soft landing. One Wall Street veteran suggests a third possible outcome Â no landing at all.
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A pair of Forrester Research analysts gave CIOs a passel of advice Thursday on how to deal with the possibility of a U.S. economic recession.&quot;We are not predicting a recession, but we think its important for CIOs to be proactive, to get their businesses ready in case there is a recession,&quot; said analyst Andrew Bartels, who conducted the teleconference with colleague Alex Cullen.Their recommendations boiled down to a number of main themes: The right ways to cut costs, to work closely with CFOs, and to plan not only for the lean times but for the good ones that inevitably follow.&quot;Get close to your CFO. You want to be arm in arm with that CFO,&quot; Bartels stressed.Forrester said there is a 55 percent probability the economy will remain essentially stabilized, due to factors including U.S. exports boosted by a weak dollar. The firm projects a 35 percent chance the country will enter a shallow recession, and a 10 percent chance it will fall into a deep one.The analysts said to watch for two key warning signs: Gas prices rising above $4 a gallon and two or more consecutive months of non-farm payroll employment.If they haven&#39;t already, CIOs should prepare now by reviewing their portfolios and identify which projects could be postponed, cut, or cancelled, he said.&quot;If you&#39;re running things well, adapting to recession is easier,&quot; Cullen noted.The tradeoffs vary depending on the type of cut, he said. For example, delaying hardware purchases could result in increased service outages.CIOs could also try other tactics, such as renegotiating vendor pacts or enacting hiring freezes, according to Forrester. Such measures could antagonize business partners and overburden staff, they said.But those types of risks are mild in comparison to that posed by cutting certain types of &quot;low-hanging fruit,&quot; such as time and support for research and development.&quot;These things look like they don&#39;t have immediate payback, so the question is &#39;Why are we doing them when times are tight?&#39;&quot; Cullen said.Likewise, it would be foolish to pull money and resources away from architectural strategy, he argued: &quot;You&#39;re going to be impeding your ability to take a long-term view of IT investments. When the tap opens up again people are going to be creating silos ... and you&#39;re going to spend your time unwinding these things.&quot;&quot;The worst thing you can do as a CIO is get so focused on cuts that when you come out of a recession, your department can&#39;t take the business where it wants to be,&quot; Bartels added.Outsourcing IT may also look like an appealing option, but the analysts issued a stern warning against it as a quick fix.Large-scale outsourcing deals take a long time to close, for one thing, Cullen argued: &quot;This is not near-term savings. This is not 2008 savings.&quot; But outsourcing of a particular IT function could make sense, he said.The hot trend of the past couple of years -- SaaS (software as a service) -- is not necessarily a fitting remedy during a recession, the analysts argued. While SaaS vendors relentlessly tout the cost savings their offerings can provide, it would cost a lot more to rip and replace legacy assets with SaaS products, the analysts said. However, they added, SaaS might offer lower upfront costs for a new technology.
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Washington's real estate industry, already pinched by a slowdown in residential construction, is bracing for further retrenchment after last week's meltdown in the mortgage market.