Financial Crisis Monitor

China Investment Corp, a $200 billion sovereign fund, is set to spend $2 billion buying U.S. distressed assets from property to infrastructure via three funds, including one managed by Goldman Sachs, sources briefed on the plan said on Tuesday.
CIC’s latest swoop on U.S. assets comes after the state-owned investment vehicle lined up to invest up [...]

Big job losses and a spike in early retirement claims from laid-off seniors will force Social Security to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes the next two years, the first time that’s happened since the 1980s. It is just another case of fallout from greedy lenders and bad mortgages. [...]

In an article by JON HILSENRATH that appears in the Journal, we note that World Bank President Robert Zoellick questioned the wisdom of giving the Federal Reserve more power over banks, as the Obama administration has proposed.
In the text of a speech he is to deliver Monday at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced [...]

The federal government and states are girding themselves for the next foreclosure crisis in the country’s housing downturn: payment option adjustable rate mortgages that are beginning to reset.
“Payment option ARMs are about to explode,” Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said after a Thursday meeting with members of President Barack Obama’s administration to discuss ways to [...]

Barclays’ estimates show that in 2009, nearly $270 billion of mortgages on apartment complexes, shopping malls, and office buildings would require refinancing. In its November 17 report, Fitch Ratings said that there is every reason for commercial loan defaults to accelerate because banks and insurance companies would try to manage their balance sheets by restricting [...]