Research Zeitgeist: Top Posts and Hot Topics
Florida real estate broker Mike Morgan certainly struck a nerve this week. His dispatch from the front lines of the housing crisis was our most popular post by a long shot. His assessment of how bleak thinks look was also reflected in the second most-popular post, Moody’s warning that homebuilders are likely to be squeezed by banks who can no longer afford to cut them any slack while they face problems of their own.
The homebuilders’ fortunes will not be helped by news that despite slashing prices by a record amount, new home sales still plunged by 8.5% to a 17-year low in March.
“The Sippy Cup Scare” over bisphenol-A in plastic bottle and food containers drew strong interest and seems sure to have broad repercussions for the food packaging industry and others.
Banking remained a hot topic, as poor results at Citi and elsewhere caused a rally in financial stocks because the results weren’t even worse. In normal times the Royal Bank of Scotland’s write-downs and record rights issue would have been considered humiliating and big heads would have rolled. But the Swiss trumped the Scots with UBS’s comprehensive mea culpa over how broadly and deeply it had messed up during the subprime crisis. The stakes have been raised.
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