Early morning/overnight news

Good morning. Since we are posting from Europe we can give you a round up of things from late yesterday and early this morning:

UBS: $14 Billion in Mortgage Write Downs That is a lot of money - and not the first write downs for UBS.

Bond Insurers Face Downgrade Despite Call for Delay This is not a good story. It probably has to happen - the house of cards must fall - but this will be a disaster.

F.B.I. Opens Subprime Inquiry Was there actual criminal activity in the whole subprime mess? Probably, but I think it will be a tough case for the FBI to prove.

The dollar was down a tenth of a penny in early morning trading.

A round up of business and finance headlines from the NY Times.

Calculated Risk

Calculated Risk (http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com) is a blog we have been turning to daily now for the last several months (they first started posting in 2005). This site is a great place to find news and informed commentary about the latest economic shenanigans - especially those involving the housing market and all things related. For example a post from today: New Home Sales: Cliff Diving