CVC To Keep Staff At BGI?

In this column by Kathleen Pender of the San Francisco Chronicle, Barclays Global Investors' impending deal with European private equity player CVC Capital Partners is reviewed. BGI insists that the new parent won't slash current staffing levels. 

But others aren't so sure, figuring that CVC will streamline operations and unload it during the next bull market. Just a thought ... what if that turns out to be fairly soon? Private equity firms can move fast ... but later this year or even next would seem awfully fast, even for the most optimistic and aggressive speculator. 

You can read the column here.

Bogle Takes On Institutional Money Managers

Vanguard founder John Bogle is raising an interesting point these days.

As noted in this New York Times column by Gretchen Morgenson, the indexing pioneer is pointing out that much of Wall Street's excesses resulting

This past weekend saw the federal government bail out the mortgage agencies, Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE). These two agencies combined either own or guarantee over $5 TRILLION worth of mortgages.

Why did the government step in? Because they had to! Over the past year, Fannie and Freddie have racked up a combined $14 billion in losses and write-downs. Both agencies, particularly Freddie Mac, were technically insolvent.

Foreign banks of all types, who own billions in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds, became aware of this. They became worried about getting paid back the value of those bonds when the bonds matured. These foreign banks told the US Treasury that unless something was done, they would immediately stop buying these bonds. That would have had devastating effects on the US mortgage markets.

So the Treasury acted. Both the common and preferred stocks of Fannie and Freddie are now nearly worthless. This