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Wednesday, December 31, 2008
FOXBusiness.com's Year in Review 2008
Erik Berte and Julia Limitone
FOXBusiness
January
January 2: The price of crude oil hits $100 a barrel for the first time in history.
January 22: Federal Reserve cuts interest rates by 0.75 percentage points, the largest single-day reduction in the bank's history.
January 28: French bank Societe Generale uncovers alleged $7.14 billion fraud by futures trader Jerome Kerviel, who fooled regulators and overstepped his authority.
February
February 13: President Bush signs into law a $168 billion two-year stimulus
package to put spending money into the pockets of millions of Americans.
March
March 11: Federal Reserve announces plan to lend up to $200 billion of Treasury securities to primary dealers.
March 13: The dollar falls below 100 yen for the first time since November 1995.
March 16: JPMorgan Chase acquires Bear Stearns in a sale brokered by the Fed and the U.S. Treasury.
April
April 27: Continental Airlines calls off merger talks with United Airlines.
Tropicana Casinos Owner
Lehman Brothers
Circuit City
Tribune
KB Toys
JPMorgan acquires Bear Stearns
Verizon Wireless buys Alltel
Bank of America purchases Countrywide
Anheuser-Bush is acquired by InBev
May
May 3: Microsoft walks away from its offer to buy out Yahoo!
May 15: Bureau of Labor Statistics announces the biggest one-month increase in food and beverage prices in 18 years.
May 21: American Airlines says it will start charging passengers a $15 fee for the first checked bag, the first major carrier to do so
June
June 8: Gas hits national average of $4 per gallon for the first time.
June 5: Verizon Wireless agrees to buy Alltel Corp. for $5.9 billion, making it by far the largest cellular carrier in the U.S.
June 6: FTC opens formal antitrust investigation of Intel, the world's largest maker of computer microprocessors, for anticompetitive conduct.
June 25: Three states file legal against Countrywide Financial, saying it engaged in "unfair and deceptive" practices to get homeowners to apply for risky mortgages.
June 27: Bill Gates steps down as the CEO of Microsoft in order to focus on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
July
July 1: Bank of America Corp. completes $4 billion purchase of Countrywide Financial, making it the leading U.S. mortgage originator and servicer.
July 9: Standard & Poor's stock index falls 29.01 points, entering its first official bear market since 2002.
July 11: Federal regulators close mortgage lender IndyMac Bank in the second-largest bank failure in US history, the fifth bank to fail in 2008.
July 13: Anheuser-Busch agrees to be acquired by Belgian brewer InBev for about $52 billion, forming the world's largest brewer.
August
August 2: IndyMac Bancorp files for bankruptcy protection, less than three weeks after being seized by federal regulators following a bank run by depositors.
August 4: Consumer spending drops as Americans are hit with biggest increase in prices in 27 years.
September
September 15: Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 protection, the largest ever bankruptcy in the United States.
September 15: Bank of America acquires Merrill Lynch for $50 billion in the seventh largest-ever bank acquisition.
September 16: Federal Reserve announces unprecedented $85 billion rescue loan for insurance company American International Group.
September 18: SEC temporarily bans “short selling,” the routine practice of betting that a company's stock price will fall.
September 22: The price of oil jumps $16.37 to $120.92 per barrel, its biggest single-day gain ever.
September 25: JPMorgan Chase buys banking assets of Washington Mutual assets after FDIC seizes WaMu in the largest failure ever of a U.S. bank.
September 29: The Dow falls 777.68 points to mark its largest one-day point loss in history.
October
October 3: President Bush signs the $700 billion economic bailout package.
October 12: Warren Buffett replaces Bill Gates on the Forbes list of richest Americans, after recalculations based on the recent financial downturn.
October 15: Retail sales plunge by the largest amount in three years in the midst of the country's financial meltdown.
October 22: Labor Dept. says the number of mass layoffs have risen to the highest level since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
October 30: The gross domestic product drops 0.3%, the first decrease to the GDP in 17 years.
November
November 4: Stock market stages its biggest Election Day rally since 1984.
November 4: Obama Wins Election
November 12: Treasury Secretary Paulson says financial bailout program will not be used to buy troubled mortgage-backed assets, as originally intended.
November 17: Citigroup says it plans to cut 53,000 jobs -- 20% of its work force -- in a dramatic move to slash costs, manage debt crisis.
November 17: Yahoo! announces that co-founder Jerry Yang is stepping down as the company’s chief executive.
November 17: Treasury Dept. supplies $33.56 billion to 21 banks in second round of payments from the $700 billion rescue program.
November 19: Housing starts reach an annual rate of 791,000 in October, the lowest level since the department began tracking starts in 1959.
November 25: Fed says it will purchase $600 billion more in mortgage-related assets and lend $200 billion to holders of securities backed by various types of consumer loans.
November 26: Consumer spending falls by 1% in October, largest drop since terrorist attacks of 2001.
December
December 1: E-commerce spending jumps 15% on Cyber Monday to $846 Million, the second-heaviest online spending day on record.
December 8: Media giant Tribune Co. becomes the first major newspaper company in several decades to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
December 9: Feds arrest Gov. Rod Blagojevich, alleging he put a 'for sale' sign on Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat in an Illinois 'pay-to-play' scheme.
December 11: Former Nasdaq stock market Chairman Bernard Madoff is charged with securities fraud, accused of running a raudulent $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
December 19: President Bush authorizes $17.4 billion in emergency loans to stave off bankruptcy for the auto industry.
December 19: The average national price of gas falls to $1.66 a gallon, its lowest point in nearly five years.
FOX Translator
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It's time to let you in on a dirty little secret: You may not own the stock you own. That's right, if you invest with a brokerage firm, the shares you bought are almost certainly not held in your name. Technically, they're held in the name of the Wall Street firm you do business with, hence the term "street name."
No, you haven't been robbed. Ultimately, the decision to hold shares on the books under a different name doesn't affect the economic ramifications for you. You¿re listed as the "beneficial owner," even though the firm is the official owner of the shares. But, you are giving up some rights, and investors concerned about good corporate governance might want to get that stock back in their own names.
Here's the problem: If your stock is technically owned by, say, Merrill Lynch, then Merrill Lynch gets to do things with it that might work against your wishes. Take short selling. Investors who want to sell shares short need to first borrow those shares. The lenders are often the big Wall Street firms that are handing out Street-name shares. So, if you feel that a company you own is a victim of aggressive short selling, chances are your own shares are being used to fuel the shorting.
Also, your brokerage firm can cast ballots on some corporate matters affecting a company without getting your input. Technically, this can only happen in votes considered ¿routine¿ by securities regulators. But, there's a big catch: some big events, like board elections, are considered "routine" under law.
The good news is that you can easily fix the Street name problem: Just request that your brokerage firm makes you the listed owner of the shares. If they refuse, find a new firm.
