Wealth Today

Fortune 500’s posted their Biggest Losers of 2007. Some I was not surprised by and some I’m rather shocked about.

1. General Motors (loss 38.73 billion USD)
2. Sprint/Nextel (loss 29.58 billion USD
3. Merrill Lynch (7.77 billion USD)
4. Advanced Micro Devices (3.38 billion USD)

We knew GM was having problems. With losing as much as ExxonMobil made in profits during 2007, I’m staggered by the irony. With Sprint, we all knew it was just a bailout of Nextel and to provide a transition as people move to more standard wireless connectivity. Merrill Lynch was hit hard by the falling real estate so we all expected it. The one I was surprised about was AMD. The CEO, Hector Ruiz,  sees it like I do though. With the acquisition of ATI, AMD had to spend a little to prepare themselves for the future, calling 2007 a “transitional year”. This is going to mean excellent big things for them because of GPU and CPU integration, but the combination of the purchase and the slow release of Opteron and Phenom processors set them back shiny gem.

With reports such as this one at Bloomberg, shed some alarming light into the dark world of the U.S. real estate economy. Some of the highlights include a 16 percent decrease in the average price of a home in Tampa while San Diego is the third worst in the nation, with a 21 percent plummet in value. Sacramento’s value dropped the most at 28%.

Watching this happen, I kind of believe it’s just beginning. I don’t know exactly how long it will continue, but I’m sure it’s not over, and I know things will turn around again. I feel that we’ll be experiencing more factors over the coming months that will be pulling down the value of home prices even more. We’re also seeing an increase in the unemployment filings, and as those increase we will likely expect to a corresponding increase in foreclosures which will affect the overall value of homes. Interestingly enough, the decrease in value will also affect tax revenue related to price of homes which has a negative impact on civic infrastructure.