Morning Miscellany
August 12th, 2008 9:27 am | by John Jansen |The National Federation of Independent Businesses, the trade group for small businesses, reported that its business optimism survey fell to 88.2 in July from 89.2 in June. I quickly eyeballed the numbers from 2007 and the average for all of 2007 is around 95. Ominously capital spending plans by the small business respondents dropped to its lowest level since 1975.
The IEA cuts estimate of world oil demand.
Lost in the clutter of news is the JPMorgan write down of $1.5 billion of mortgage related assets. The bank blamed market turmoil in July for the losses. If JPM is experiencing those losses shouls we not expect that the FNMA and Freddie Mac giants should be ploughing through the same woes?
Morgan Stanley had its long term rating cut to A1 from AA3 late yesterday. Moody’s cited poor risk management as one of the reasons for the downgrade.
