Today’s Economic Market News…….

8. November 2007 by Burbank Real Estate.

A wave of negative news hit today…….

• Washington Mutual was hit by continued allegations of fraudulent appraisals. Additionally, analyst reports came out that questioned the viability of Citibank and others and indicated that banks would write down $100B in portfolio losses this year. Needless to say stocks got hammered with a 360 point loss on the Dow and the S&P suffered a 3% loss on the day.

• Non-Farm Productivity rose to 3.9$ in the 3rd quarter. Given that the Fed is concerned with inflation this is important data for the Fed to consider because when productivity rises, labor costs go down which in turn is less inflationary for the economy.

• GM reported losses of $39B, $38B was due to an accounting charge, the remaining $1B was larger than expected.CEO of Washington Mutual is predicting lower home prices, lower loan volumes and tighter lending standards for 2008.

• An analyst report on Morgan Stanley cited a potential for a $6B loss on their loan portfolio.

• A Chinese government official said China needs to diversify out of weak currencies (i.e .the dollar) For more on this topic, check out Ricardo Bueno’s interpretive post!

All in all a very negative day. Tomorrow Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will speak before the Joint Economic Committee and you can be sure he’ll be asked plenty of questions surrounding the state of the subprime mess and the economy.

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