akam

It now appears almost certain that the federal government will takeover Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNM) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE). The amount of money the Treasury will have to put into the companies to improve their balance sheets will probably wipe out common shareholders.

The news may foreshadow what will happen to Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH) if its gets into more trouble The value of its commercial loan portfolio and mortgage-back securities is bound to fall as the real estate market gets worse.

Several outside investors, including Japanese broker Nomura and the Korea Development Bank, may pump money into Lehman. It is not good news that no one has pulled the trigger on putting up cash. All of the interested parties are probably waiting for Lehman's next quarterly earnings report. If the numbers are bad the value of Lehman's stock, which has gone from a 52-week high almost $68 to $16, could fall further.

The lesson from Freddie and Fannie (and, to some extent, Bear Stearns) is that the Fed and Treasury do not care about common shareholders. They get to go down with the ship.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

With oil prices falling, some members of OPEC would like to see price cuts to put upward pressure on crude. That would make sense. It would bring members of the cartel more money and stretch out the pace at which they need to ship their current reserves.

Columbia, where the head of state Hugo Chavez seems to have no love for the U.S., has lobbied fellow OPEC members hard to dial back oil shipments. The Arab states may not be so eager. According to Bloomberg, "Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest producer and de facto leader of the 13-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Kuwait may reject calls from Venezuela and Iran to trim supplies at its Sept. 9 meeting in Vienna."

Increased cash flowing into the Middle East is feeding sharp increases in inflation, but that may only be a small part of the reason behind the motivation to do nothing with fuel supplies.

Saudi Arabia and its neighbors know that extremism continues to grow in the region. They are also not geographically far removed from the trouble in Georgia. The nation, which is at "war" with Russia, is close to the norther border of Iran. In other words, there is more than one threat to stability in the region.

The United States keeps a tremendous military force in and around Saudi Arabia. The kingdom may not want to go any further than it has to alienate America.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

As late as yesterday, forecasters believed that powerful Hurricane Ike would hit south Florida. Projections from the weather man now put its path straight over Cuba and into the Gulf of Mexico. The would make its U.S. landfall in either Texas or New Orleans. It would also bring it close to refineries and oil platforms that where threatened by weaker storms that ended up doing very little damage.

Ike, on the other hand, is a Category 4 storm, and that means the its damage could be exponentially greater than any storm that has hit the Gulf in three years. That leaves the potential of a real interruption in oil production and an increase in crude and gas costs.

So far, the price of oil has been immune to the weather, but OPEC may lower production and, combined with a big storm, crude begin to move back up toward $120.

The prevailing wisdom is that oil is on its way to under $100. But, prevailing wisdom has been wrong before.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

That fact that John McCain's son served on the board of the Silver State Bank until recently should not matter much to customers. The bank is gone.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "The lender, the 11th bank to fail in the U.S. this year, was overexposed to risky real-estate loans, a problem that's vexing many banks amid the worst financial crisis in a generation." Silver State had $1.7 billion in deposits the shut-down will cost the FDIC several hundred million dollars.

The FDIC has already indicated that it may need to go to the U.S. Treasury for more capital. Some experts think that dozens of banks will fail. At the pessimistic end of the spectrum economists believe that number could go into the hundreds, if housing prices stay in a free-fall.

The problems at FDIC-insured banks raises the question of how much capital Treasury has to spread around. In theory that amount is nearly unlimited. That is, off course, because U.S. tax-payers send the U.S. government so much money every year.

Those are the same tax-payers who are losing jobs and can't make their own mortgage payments.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Ford's (NYSE: F) latest PR push is based around the idea that the company can make money on smaller cars. Traditionally the big margins in the car industry have been on pick-ups and SUVs. But consumers don't want those anymore.

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), "Ford Motor Co. is expressing new confidence about the auto maker's ability to sell new small cars at a profit in the U.S. market, citing new data about how Americans are beginning to value premium features and dynamic design over vehicles desired simply for their size." That assumption is based on two factors, neither of which is likely to be true.

Ford believes that it can cut its cost base low enough to make money on cars that retail for $20,000 or less. Chopping production expenses may lower overall costs, but it also cripples the company's ability to "turn on the juice" if car sales make a sharp rebound. Fewer factories with fewer workers puts some brake on the company's ability to quickly push out more vehicles in a short period of time. Cars that can't be made can't be sold.

The other challenge to Ford's assumption is that it can get a large market share in a part of the industry that is already dominated by Toyota (NYSE: TM), Honda (NYSE: HMC), and Nissan. As Ford ramps up, the Japanese car makers are moving into hybrids and improving their own small cars. Most consumer satisfaction surveys put Ford behind the Japanese in terms of the quality of their products.

Aside from those few small details, Ford's plans should work just fine.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

An analyst who follows Citigroup (NYSE: C) believes that the financial services company will sell it Primerica division. The operation provides customer life insurance and investment products including mutual funds.

According to Reuters, Ladenburg Thalmann analyst Richard Bove said, "Primerica does not fit into Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit's goals of making the bank an international company across business lines." Bove thinks that Primerica could bring in over $7 billion.

Pushing Primerica out the door does not address Citi's core problems. Pandit has said he will cut costs across the company by 20%. If selling off revenue reduces those costs, it hardly helps the bank's margins. It's really not expense reduction at all.

At the center of Citi's troubles are its mortgage-related securities portfolios, LBO debt, credit card business, and slowing revenue into its investment banking operation. There has been no clear sign that Pandit plans to take tremendous costs out of these operations that are critical to the bank's recovery.

Fixing Citi does not involve selling a life insurance company.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

While a number of other banks and brokerages have settled charges that they improperly marketed auction-rate securities, Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) has been a bit of a hold out. Pressure from government legal authorities is charging that the NY State Attorney General has been especially forceful in trying to bring the big financial services firm to its knees.

The question is why BAC has taken so long. A number of other companies got this issue behind them weeks ago. According to Reuters, most firms in the industry "agreed to buy back a total of at least $44 billion of the securities from individuals, nonprofits and small businesses."

Regulators love making "examples" of corporations who move slowly on big industry settlement talks and Bank of America is risking penalties and sanctions by being one of the last to the negotiating table. It is not likely to do shareholders any good if the firm gets to be the poster boy for a government crackdown on auction-rate bad behavior.

Bank of America should have settled when its peers did.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) yesterday posted its lowest price in nearly five years. The stock moved to $17.75, down from a 52-week high of $34.08.

The Wall Street Journal pushed the idea that this was an options play. "Trading in Yahoo options leapt to four times the normal level as investors picked up 168,000 calls that allow them to buy the company's stock." In other words, some traders are willing to gamble that the shares will go up.

But, they won't go up. There is growing evidence that marketers prefer search internet ads to display advertising. Yahoo! sells a great deal of display inventory and is a distant second to Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) in search. Some of that may change as Yahoo! begins to use the Google system to create its search results.That may not offset the fact that Yahoo! probably has as much display advertising availability as any company in the world.

Because Yahoo! has shown it is unwilling to make major cost cuts, a flattening of its revenue growth would be a disaster for its investors. The firm's year-over-year sales improvement is already barely above 10%. What had been a growth stock three or four years ago has now become a buyout gamble. Investors still hang on to some hope that Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) or a large media company will make an offer for the portal company.

That means that Yahoo! still carries a "takeover" premium, which begs the question of where the shares might trade at the end of the year, if there are no offers. Investors are gambling that there is a 30% chance that Yahoo! will be bought, if it is not, the stock heads toward $13.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Bill Gross of Pimco, one of the most respected bond investors in the world, thinks the credit crisis is about to get much, much worse. He also believes that the federal government is the only entity that can save the markets.

Gross's biggest concern is that financial companies will have to keep selling assets to raise cash. With home prices falling, he does not see an early end to this, and that troubles him. According to Reuters, Gross wrote "Unchecked, it can turn a campfire into a forest fire, a mild asset bear market into a destructive financial tsunami."

Gross may be right, but his suggested solution is wrong. He wants the U.S. Treasury to start buying distressed assets to help build a floor for their values. Of course, the funding source for Treasury is the U.S. taxpayer.

Solving one problem by creating a larger one is rarely a good program. There is a great deal of evidence supporting the fact that taxpayers are already stretched to the limit. Job losses are up. Easy credit is gone. Gas, oil, and food cost much more than they did a year ago. The average person, who may already be unable to handle his own financial burdens, can hardly be asked to help support the purchase of assets being sold by large financial institutions.

If Gross's vision about the future of the credit markets is right, the financial system is only at the beginning of a growing disaster. But, turning to the U.S. citizen for cash is like looking through a man's pockets for a spare change. All the more valuable paper money has been spent.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) wants out of the business of owning factories that make PCs. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Dell has approached contract computer manufacturers with offers to sell the plants." Owning the manufacturing facilities cuts Dell's margins.

Analysts believe that in the current environment, where laptops have taken the lead in PC market share, owning facilities that pump out massive numbers of desktops is no longer practical.

Dell could be making a huge mistake in the name of short-term profitability. The company is particularly good at delivering "custom-made" computers quickly. Dell customers can configure the PCs with a large number of special features.

More importantly, Dell will lose some level of quality control if its manufacturing is owned by outside interests. Dell cannot afford to fall behind Hewlett-Packard (NASDAQ: HPQ) and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) in terms of the consumer's perception of product quality. Owning factories may hurt profits a bit, but Dell's reputation as a first class provider of PCs is priceless.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

New evidence shows that online advertisers are building their search engine marketing and moving away from big display ad investments. According to The Wall Street Journal, "Faced with a slowing economy, advertisers are sticking to what they view as the safest way to reach online customers directly: the plain text ads that appear on search-result pages."

To state the obvious, the news seems to be bad for Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), and AOL. These portals rely heavily on display ads for their revenue and have modest search income.

The data is much, much worse for newspapers. Companies like The New York Times (NYSE: NYT) are counting on online advertising to take the place of falling print revenue. A great deal of the advertising that runs at newspaper sites is retail and national display. Total ad revenue at The New York Times dropped more than 16% in July. Internet advertising was up less than 1%. Clearly, at that rate, online ads can do little to help that nation's big dailies.

The portals will struggle to keep their display growth intact. They have the lion's share of the market, so scale is on their side. They will almost certainly have the best chance of picking up the marketing dollars from the largest online advertisers. Even if the market keep slowing, their sales should be steady to modestly up.

Newspapers will not be so lucky.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Boeing (NYSE: BA) has been gambling that its machinist union would back down from further wage and benefit demands. Instead, according to The Wall Street Journal, the aircraft company's largest labor union "voted to strike Wednesday night, but the union agreed to postpone a walkout for 48 hours after federal mediators urged both sides to return to the bargaining table."

If the employees walk, the delays in delivering the company's new Dreamliner flagship product could be pushed back again. The launch has already been postponed three times. Airline customers are mad enough that some are asking for compensation because Boeing has not hit its schedules.

Boeing's argument is that it cannot be saddled with high future labor costs. If its business slows down, its margins could be hurt. But the union members can read Boeing press releases. The company has a substantial back order of planes which should feed earnings for the next decade. Boeing is also saying that growth in the Chinese market could help support its business for the next twenty years.

Boeing can afford to pay the union members a bit more. It can't afford a strike.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 24/7 Wall St.

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) has been building new chips for "netbooks," a product that is much smaller than most laptops and significantly less powerful. Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) has decided to drink that water and bring out a netbook of its own.

According to The Wall Street Journal, "One person familiar with the matter said the new device will likely sell for less than $400."

The launch is a waste of time and money. The smallest laptops now weigh under two pounds and have modest processors. That means the price points for them will keep dropping.

Over in the smartphone industry, companies like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and Research in Motion (NASDAQ: RIMM) are putting out more "computer-like" products each year. Larger handset companies are working to get into the same business because the higher price points of these handsets yield a better margin.

Dell should stick to what it does well. The "netbook" has too much competition and no future.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp (NYSE: NWS) and king of all he surveys, wants to buy The New York Times. At least that is what he told Vanity Fair according to a Reuters report.

It is hard to see why Murdoch would even bother to dream that dream. Based on the most recent quarterly earnings report and monthly figures reported by The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT), the paper probably loses money when the results of its online business are backed out. If ad lineage at the print product keeps falling, and it will, even NYTimes.com will not be able to save the bottom line.

While The New York Times is a trophy, it would almost certainly be an expensive one. The parent company has a market cap of about $2 billion, and the paper might go for more than that because of its unique position as the most respected news outlet in the US.

Murdoch is probably already struggling with The Wall Street Journal. He has to be. Newspaper ad revenue is simply dropping too fast for the Journal to be immune.

Owning another paper is just asking for more losses which would need to be offset by other businesses at News Corp.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Lehman Brothers (NYSE: LEH) is a dog of a brokerage house and a broken company. Yet, every time Wall Street turns around, some other financial company is considering investing in it. According to Reuters, "HSBC and the Chinese bank, along with top U.S. hedge funds, are competing with Korea Development Bank."

The fascination with Lehman is fascinating. While it may have a strong money management arm, the value of its commercial property portfolio is falling apart. It has the same kind of toxic mortgage-backed paper on its balance sheet as the one that plagues the balance of the financial industry. If they have any sense, top managers at Lehman will be getting out.

If investors are right about Lehman, the company may not make it. The stock trades at $16, down from a 52-week high of almost $68. With a market cap of only $11 billion, a $5 billion investment could push shares to below $9.

Credit markets are supposed to get worse this year. At least that is what the newspapers say. Lehman is as likely to be further damaged by that as any other large financial firm.

A few outside investors see something in Lehman that the markets don't. Perhaps they would be willing to share that with the rest of the world.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.