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Administration Releases New Data on Making Home Affordable Program
December 7, 2009--Today, the Obama Administration released the next monthly report for the Making Home Affordable (MHA) loan modification program. As part of an ongoing commitment to transparency, the report includes for the first time state-specific trial modification numbers. With more than 650,000 modifications under way across the country, the program is on track to meet its goals over the next several years.
"As this report demonstrates, struggling homeowners in every state now benefit from reduced monthly mortgage payments and have an opportunity to stay in their homes," said Treasury Assistant Secretary Michael S. Barr. "The program is having a pronounced impact in areas particularly hard hit by the housing crisis. We're reaching borrowers at a larger scale than any other modification program to date, but there is still much more work to be done."
Monthly MHA Report
Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury
U.S. International Reserve Position
December 8, 2009--The Treasury Department today released U.S. reserve assets data for the latest week. As indicated in this table, U.S. reserve assets totaled $136,431 million as of the end of that week, compared to $137,128 million as of the end of the prior week..
I. Official reserve assets and other foreign currency assets (approximate market value, in US millions)
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December 4, 2009 |
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A. Official reserve assets (in US millions unless otherwise specified) 1 |
Euro |
Yen |
Total |
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(1) Foreign currency reserves (in convertible foreign currencies) |
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136,431 |
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(a) Securities |
10,580 |
14,473 |
25,053 |
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of which: issuer headquartered in reporting country but located abroad |
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0 |
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(b) total currency and deposits with: |
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(i) other national central banks, BIS and IMF |
15,333 |
7,050 |
22,383 |
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ii) banks headquartered in the reporting country |
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0 |
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of which: located abroad |
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0 |
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(iii) banks headquartered outside the reporting country |
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0 |
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of which: located in the reporting country |
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0 |
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(2) IMF reserve position 2 |
13,755 |
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(3) SDRs 2 |
58,818 |
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(4) gold (including gold deposits and, if appropriate, gold swapped) 3 |
11,041 |
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--volume in millions of fine troy ounces |
261.499 |
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(5) other reserve assets (specify) |
5,380 |
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--financial derivatives |
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--loans to nonbank nonresidents |
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--other (foreign currency assets invested through reverse repurchase agreements) |
5,380 |
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B. Other foreign currency assets (specify) |
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--securities not included in official reserve assets |
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--deposits not included in official reserve assets |
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--loans not included in official reserve assets |
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--financial derivatives not included in official reserve assets |
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--gold not included in official reserve assets |
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--other |
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view report
Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury
Secretary Timothy Geithner Remarks at the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force Event
December 7, 2009--Thank you, Rob. And thanks to Secretary Donovan and Attorney General Holder for your excellent leadership.
Let me close by putting this new Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force into a broader context.
We are emerging from a severe financial crisis and a deep recession caused, in part, by failures of financial regulation and consumer and investor protection.
Basic regulations in our financial system that were designed to provide those protections instead allowed many financial institutions to operate completely outside of them with little supervision and oversight.
Institutions were able to shop for the weakest regulator and the weakest form of regulation.
This helped make it possible for millions of Americans to be sold subprime mortgages they could not afford.
rad more
Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury
New EDHEC-Risk Position Paper Shows No Evidence of Speculation in the US Oil Futures Markets
December 7, 2009--Because many aspects of the global oil markets have not been sufficiently transparent, it was unclear how much of the oil-price rally that peaked in July 2008 could be put down to speculation. This uncertainty has led to concerns that there was actually excessive speculation in the oil derivatives markets.
On October 20th, 2009, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) released three years of enhanced market-participant data for 22 commodity futures markets in its new “Disaggregated Commitments of Traders” report. With this report, Hilary Till, Research Associate with the EDHEC-Risk Institute, was able to examine whether the balance of outright position-taking in the exchange-traded oil derivatives markets has been excessive relative to hedging demand during the past three years.
The new EDHEC-Risk Position Paper, entitled “Has There Been Excessive Speculation in the US Oil Futures Markets? What Can We (Carefully) Conclude from New CFTC Data?” finds, using a traditional metric for evaluating speculative participation, that the level of outright position-taking in U.S. exchange-traded oil derivatives contracts has largely fluctuated in a normal range based on historically relevant benchmarks.
BNY Mellon Selected by Geary Advisors to Provide Custody For Texas and Oklahoma ETFs
First ETFs to Focus on Businesses within Specific States
December 4, 2009---BNY Mellon Asset Servicing, the global leader in securities servicing, has been selected by Geary Advisors, LLC to provide custody, fund administration, fund accounting and transfer agency services for the Oklahoma Exchange-Traded Fund (NYSE Arca: OOK) and the Texas Large Companies Exchange-Traded Fund (NYSE Arca: TXF), the first two exchanged-traded funds (ETFs) to focus on businesses in specific states.
Geary Advisors, LLC, part of The Geary Companies Inc., is the investment advisor for both ETFs. "We are impressed with the high quality of the services that BNY Mellon provides for ETFs," said Keith Geary, chairman of The Geary Companies. "BNY Mellon is providing us with customized services that enable us to offer these targeted, innovative ETFs to the investment community."
"We are seeing heightened interest in ETFs, as investors demand a cost-effective method to target an increasing number of market niches," said Joseph Keenan, managing director and head of relationship management for financial services companies at BNY Mellon Asset Servicing. "We are investing in the technology required to deliver ETFs that are easily scaleable for both active and passive investors."
Source: SOURCE BNY Mellon
U.S. Department of the Treasury Economic Statistics - Monthly Data
December 4, 2009--U.S. Department of the Treasury Economic Statistics Monthly Data Update is now available.
read more
Source: U.S. Department of the Treasury
Treasury secretary challenges Goldman aid claims
December 4, 2009--Tim Geithner on Friday rejected Goldman Sachs’ claim that it could have withstood the financial crisis without government intervention, adding that all banks were at risk of being wiped out.
“None of them would have survived a situation in which we had let that fire try to burn itself out,” the US Treasury secretary said on Friday in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
Goldman has suggested that, short of a complete meltdown, it could have survived without government assistance. The bank has since powered out of the crisis with large profits, putting many of its employees in line to receive bonuses that may approach levels last seen in the boom years.
read more
Source: FT.com
ProShares UltraShort Basic Materials Fund (SMN) Class Action Filed by Bernstein Liebhard LLP
December 4, 2009--Bernstein Liebhard LLP filed a class action lawsuit on December 3, 2009 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, on behalf of all persons who purchased or otherwise acquired shares in the UltraShort Basic Materials fund (the "SMN Fund") (NYSE: SMN), an exchange-traded fund ("ETF") offered by ProShares Trust ("ProShares"),
pursuant or traceable to ProShares' false and misleading Registration Statement, Prospectuses, and Statements of Additional Information (collectively, the "Registration Statement") issued in connection with shares of the SMN Fund (the "Class").
The Class is seeking to pursue remedies under Sections 11 and 15 of the Securities Act of 1933 (the "Securities Act").
The complaint names ProShares, ProShare Advisors LLC, SEI Investments Distribution Co., Michael L. Sapir, Louis M. Mayberg, Russell S. Reynolds, III, Michael Wachs, and Simon D. Collier, as defendants (collectively, "Defendants"). ProShares sells its Ultra and UltraShort ETFs as "simple" directional plays. As marketed by ProShares, Ultra ETFs are designed to go up when markets go up; UltraShort ETFs are designed to go up when markets go down. The SMN Fund is one of ProShares' UltraShort ETFs. The SMN Fund seeks investment results that correspond to twice the inverse (-200%) of the daily performance of the Dow Jones U.S. Basic Materials Index ("DJBMI"). Accordingly, the SMN Fund is supposed to deliver double the inverse return of the DJBMI, which fell in approximately 52 percent in 2008. Rather than increase approximately 104 percent (double the inverse), the SMN Fund has fallen approximately 3.5 percent in 2008.
read more
Source:Bernstein Liebhard
This Month in Futures Markets – November 2009
December 3, 2009--For each commodity, the COT reports provide information on the size and the direction of the positions taken, across all maturities, by three categories of futures traders.
These three trader categories are called “commercials", "non-commercials”, and “non-reportables”.
Commercial traders are those who use futures or option contracts in a given commodity for hedging purposes, as defined in CFTC regulations. Commercial traders hold positions in both the underlying commodity and in the futures (or options) contracts on that commodity. By contrast, non-commercial traders do not own the underlying asset or its financial equivalent; they hold only positions in futures (or options) contracts. Finally, non-reportable positions are those held by traders who do not meet the reporting thresholds set by the CFTC (usually small traders).
View This Month in Futures Markets – November 2009
Source: CFTC.gov
CFTC Announces Additional Markets to be Disaggregated in Commitments of Traders Reports
December 4, 2009-- The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced that effective today, Friday, December 4, 2009, the CFTC will include disaggregated data on all U.S. physical commodity markets in its weekly Commitments of Traders (COT) reports.
The CFTC began publishing disaggregated data for 22 major physical commodity markets on September 4, 2009, and is now disaggregating data on the remaining physical commodity markets where there are 20 or more reportable traders.
The CFTC is disaggregating COT data as part of an ongoing effort to improve market transparency by providing more detailed data regarding traders. While previous COT reports had broken traders into commercial and noncommercial categories, the CFTC now disaggregates the data into four categories of traders:
• Producer/Merchant/Processor/User;
• Swap Dealers;
• Managed Money; and
• Other Reportables.
The CFTC’s market transparency initiative is described more fully in a CFTC press release 5710-09 entitled, “CFTC Implements New Transparency Efforts to Promote Market Integrity.”
As it did with respect to the initial 22 markets, the CFTC will shortly make available three years of historical data for the remaining markets.
The CFTC also is working to create a new COT report for all of the financial markets in a form that will improve transparency for those markets. The categories of this new financial COT may be different from those being applied to the physical markets described above. The CFTC is working on improvements to the agency’s Form 40, Statement of Reporting Trader, to improve the accuracy of trader classifications.
View The Commitments of Traders (COT) reports
VoewDisaggregated Commitments of Traders Report
Explanatory Notes
Source: CFTC.gov