Market Meltdown Great News For Factoring Company Woodbridge Investments

The U.S. central bank doubled its planned auction of cash to banks, increasing it to $900 billion. The US Central Bank also unveiled a unit to buy commercial paper, which is debt used by companies for short-term funding. In an unprecedented effort to further ease the current economic crisis, the worst since the Great Depression, the Federal Reserve and four other central banks coordinated to lower the Global interest rate.

Amongst all this economic woe, one company continues to thrive despite wall street's chaos and market downturns, U.S. factoring company Woodbridge Investments. Factoring companies lend money or purchase receivables such as structured settlements, annuities, and lottery payments. These companies are helping consumers get cash in this tight credit market.

Woodbridge Investments, LLC, a leader in buying insurance settlements, structured settlements and lottery payments, reported a record 3rd quarter with an unprecedented increase in factoring transactions, up 45% from same quarter last year. Jennifer Fierro, a company spokesperson and Senior Vice President for Woodbridge said, "We are at the forefront of providing superior service to our customers as evidenced by our company's continued growth. We are opening additional offices and increasing staffed personnel to make sure we maintain our position of excellence where it comes to providing and accommodating every one of our customers with need to cash out their various cash flows, and settlement streams."

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Settlement Quotes, LLC Creates Structured Settlement Broker Services Division

Settlement Quotes, LLC, the leading marketplace for selling the rights to future structured settlement and other annuity payments, creates a marketplace designed specifically for financial planners, attorneys, and structured settlement brokers.
Michael Rudy, a financial planner with Wolakota Financial Advisors, came to Settlement Quotes, LLC after a judge ordered a client of Mr. Rudy to seek a financial planner to ensure that a structured settlement transfer was in his client's best interest. Mr. Rudy came to Settlement Quotes seeking competitive lump sum quotes and to make sure that his client was receiving the best offer.
Settlement Quotes, LLC was able to offer Mr. Rudy and his client an increase of 19% or $14,500 net of all fees.
"So impressed was I with their transparency, helpfulness and results, I am actively working to bring their work to the attention of the executives of my professional financial planning association, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors," said Mr. Rudy.

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Credit Default Swaps Weapons of Financial Mass Destruction

The latest downward spiral in the global commodity and stock markets, coinciding with several high profile bank failures, is conjuring up fears of the calamities of the Great Depression of the 1930's. European and Asian stock markets are plunging as terror and panic hits Wall Street. The US Congress finally passed a massive $700 billion rescue package to unclog the credit markets, yet US stock markets have continued to plummet, shedding $1.5-trillion in value.

Hindsight is the best sight, but the chaos gripping the markets started with US Treasury's reckless decision to allow Lehman Brothers (LEH) to fail, which set-off an unstoppable chain reaction that unleashed a torrent of panic selling on global stock markets, and froze the European and US banking systems. LEH left its creditors holding $150 billion of near worthless bonds, and common and preferred shareholders were completely wiped out. “Until the day they put me in the ground I will wonder, why we were the only one that was not rescued,” former Lehman chief Larry Fuld told Congress.

However, there were also huge losses for companies who wrote credit protection on LEH's bonds over the past five-years. Those sellers of credit protection are now staring down the barrel of billions of dollars in claims, and are scrambling to raise money by selling anything they can get their hands on, including commodities and stocks. Warren Buffet has referred to these credit defaults swaps CDS's, as “weapons of financial mass destruction,” and the fuse on the time-bomb has been lit.

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Realty investors take equity route to offset tax burden

Though the realty sector has been hit by the general economic slowdown, smart property investors, who raked in the moolah when the going w
as good, made use of the equity markets to reduce the tax they paid on those gains.

According to tax consultants, people whose income is derived from other sources, say a salaried employee, can and have in the past offset derivatives losses against short-term capital gains made in property transactions to reduce tax incidence on the property gains.

Gains from property are deemed short-term if they are held for less than three years. Once a derivatives loss is offset against the gain, the balance short-term capital gain is clubbed with the salary income and taxed at the normal rate.

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Northern sued by college over loss

For 20 years, Chicago-based Northern Trust Corp. held the hand of the University of Washington, providing it the kind of steady, safe investment services that earned the bank its nickname "the Gray Lady of LaSalle Street."

But over the course of a few dramatic days in September, all that changed. The Wall Street financial disaster that took down such titans as Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Washington Mutual Inc. also damaged Northern's relationship with the school, proving that even the most staid financial dealings have become vulnerable to the turmoil sweeping the country.

A suit filed in Seattle by UW describes the harrowing days following Lehman's collapse, when mounting losses in Northern's once-steady securities-lending business stunned the university and allegedly pushed Northern to seek the help of the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury Department. Those requests were rejected, the suit said.

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Sudan towards another Lebanon

Sudan is in practice a country without a national army. This situation came into the Sudanese political history when the Islamists’ of sheik Hassan El Turabi after staging their military coup d’état in June, 31st of 1989 which saw the Islamisation of everything in the country from the public service, militarisation of the youth as well as the heads of departments by sending them to the transformation jihad training camps, not even the university professors where spared.

The Sudanese national army was systematically restructured by eliminating all the top officers who were of different political background in the sense that the new devilish system was preparing themselves to plunge the whole country into the current Islam motivated political chaos.

All Sudanese military, police, public service were all turned upside down for the sake of establishing a system assumedly would retain the by then collapsing Arab Islamic political dominance in the face of the south Sudanese resistance led by SPLM/A.

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U.S. Treasury Steps Up Debt Sales to Reduce Shortages

The U.S. Treasury began selling an additional $40 billion of debt to meet demand for government securities in an effort to alleviate ``protracted shortages.''

The first two of four so-called reopenings of 10-year notes sold at higher yields than the outstanding securities were trading at before the auctions. In giving dealers one hour to prepare for the sales, the government was forced to offer concessions, meaning it lost $345 million in potential proceeds, according to an analysis by Credit Suisse Securities USA LLC.

Demand for the relative safety of government securities has surged this month as the seizure in credit markets around the world deepened. That has resulted in trades in the repurchase agreement, or repo, market going uncompleted. Such failures to deliver or receive Treasuries in the $7 trillion-a-day market for borrowing and lending securities have set a record.

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InvestSource, Inc.: Barclays Capital Begins Trading in Acquired Foreign Exchange and Commodities Businesses

Barclays Capital announced that it has fully integrated Lehman Brothers' US foreign exchange and commodities businesses under the Barclays Capital name.

In FX, sales and trading have resumed in spot, forward and options products, now integrated with Barclays Capital's existing currency trading. Commodities trading previously conducted by Lehman Brothers in North America has similarly been incorporated into the comprehensive suite of commodity products and services offered by Barclays Capital.

"We are pleased to resume sales and trading in FX and commodities for Lehman Brothers clients," said Rich Ricci, Chief Operating Officer of Barclays Investment Banking and Investment Management businesses. "Our clients can expect the enhanced service and global reach that comes with a combination of two leading franchises." The successful integration of the FX and commodities businesses adds to Barclays Capital's existing strength as one of the world leaders in both markets. Ranked in the top three for global market share in FX in 2008[*], Barclays Capital offers a full range of products from vanilla FX to structured FX derivatives, along with an award-winning electronic platform, BARX. With superior execution across the entire spectrum of commodity products, Barclays Capital is widely recognized as one of the top three banks in overall commodities market share, and was named Commodities House of the Year by Risk Magazine in 2008.

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Structured Settlement Sale Prevents Home Foreclosure in Florida, According to J.G. Wentworth

J.G. Wentworth reported that the firm’s purchases of structured settlements during the third quarter of 2008 have increased versus purchases made during the third quarter of 2007.

Commenting on the increase, Randy Parker director of quality assurance for J.G. Wentworth, noted that among the higher volume of transactions are a larger number of cases where the seller is trying to overcome some form of financial distress which was not contemplated at the time they settled their lawsuit – including the possible loss of their home through foreclosure.

According to Mr. Parker, “Our client Janine D. living in Sarasota offers a typical example of some of the financial distress we are now seeing. Sudden and persistent illness undermined Janine’s ability to maintain her income. She had few other assets other than her settlement payments, but these were inadequate for the circumstances she found herself in.”

Janine D. said, “I have been unable to work due to an illness for the past 21 months and the bills were piling up. I had nowhere to turn to and could not find a job due to the constant in-and-out hospital visits.”

Through J.G. Wentworth, Janine D. was able to sell a portion of her regular monthly payments for 4 years in exchange for $16,000 in cash.

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Belgian banking map changes

Friday’s decision by the Netherlands government to nationalise Fortis’s banking and insurance businesses in the Netherlands left the Belgian government little choice than to nationalise the rest or urgently find a buyer to maintain confidence in the institution.

The result is a radically changed banking landscape in a country where banking had always been a dependably staid affair. Although Fortis did have a structured credit portfolio – some of which is being hived off in a separate vehicle as part of the BNP Paribas settlement – its chief undoing lay in the takeover last year of ABN Amro and a style of communication that subsequently eroded investor confidence.

Fortis’s disappearance leaves KBC, a well-capitalised retail-funded bancassurer of the old school, and Dexia, the Franco-Belgian lender that was subject to a €6.4bn ($8.6bn) bail-out by France, Belgium and Luxembourg last week, as the two sizeable banks left in Belgium.

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