NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Merrill Lynch booked its fourth-straight quarterly loss Thursday, this time losing nearly $5 billion, as the nation’s largest brokerage was forced to once again take massive writedowns.
Merrill said it lost $4.9 billion overall. On a continuing operations basis, it lost $4.6 billion, or $4.95 a share, down from a profit of [...]

NEW YORK (Fortune) — They own or guarantee $5 trillion worth of mortgages­ - nearly half of all the country’s outstanding home loan debt - and they’re crashing. But not everybody is convinced they should be.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are struggling with an investor loss of confidence so great that, while they’re unlikely [...]

Storm clouds continue to gather over the economy and the market. With the major indexes near their 52-week lows and their lows for the year to date, the market is telling us that the worst of the credit crisis may not be behind us. Here are some of this week’s highlights.

Treasury Secretary [...]

UBS, the European bank most affected by the US subprime crisis, surprised the market yesterday by saying it may be saved by a 3bn Swiss francs (€1.9bn) tax credit from posting a loss in the second quarter.
Some analysts estimated the Swiss bank, which has written off almost 38bn francs (€23.6bn) from its [...]

Happy Independence Day. Reader Tsky pointed out this Reuters story in the comment section, and it’s worth a post: “A lawsuit filed by a Wisconsin couple against their mortgage lender could have major implications for banks should a U.S. appeals court agree that borrowers can cancel their loans en masse when [...]

APPLYING FOR FINANCIAL aid often triggers apprehension in college-bound students and their parents, but today’s crisis in the educational loan industry has only escalated fear and anxiety.
Ben Miller, who writes for Ed Policy Watch, claims, “to date there haven’t been any reported cases of students being unable to obtain a Federal Family Educational Loan (FFEL). [...]

Europe’s banks need to head back out on the fund-raising circuit. They may have to bring in as much as $141 billion, according to Goldman Sachs. Reuters writes that this capital will be necessary “to reach an aggregate Tier I ratio of 9 percent — a level achieved by European banks that have recapitalized recently.”
Since [...]