Soldier laid to rest

Summerville native Matthew J. Taylor, who enlisted in the Army the day after Sept. 11, 2001, received a hero's farewell Sunday with full military honors and was remembered as an exemplary soldier, loving husband and father. Staff Sgt. Taylor, 25, was killed by hostile small arms fire Sept. 21 while on patrol in Baghdad. He had last spoken with his family just the day before, when he called to wish his 5-year-old daughter a happy birthday, and was due home in November. On Sunday, hundreds of people attended Taylor's funeral at New Covenant Church of God in North Charleston, where dozens of members of the Patriot Guard Riders lined the pathways outside holding American flags. Taylor had planned to join the volunteer group after completing his military service next year. Inside the church while waiting for the service to begin, the crowd of about 300 watched a photographic memorial play out across large screens, showing Taylor as he grew from a little boy to a Fort Dorchester High School student to a soldier with a family of his own. "He was very proud of his family," said Capt. Ryan Woolf, addressing the audience from a podium behind Taylor's flag-draped casket. "As a soldier, he was simply the best." Woolf recalled Taylor as an always-smiling practical joker, but also an accomplished leader. "At the age of 23, he was my youngest and best squad leader," said Woolf. "He was my go-to guy." Taylor was a member of the U.S. Army 10th Mountain Division, an outfit known as the Spartans. He served a tour in Afghanistan, re-enlisted and served a second tour in Afghanistan. When his enlistment was extended, Taylor was sent to Iraq. "As a leader, I admired him," Woolf said. "As a husband and father, he will live on forever through his wife and three beautiful girls." Don Taylor, Matthew Taylor's father, said his son led through serving, and that his death brought a time of great sadness but also great pride. Addressing his son's comrades in arms, Don Taylor said his son would want them to know "that you are all true heroes and should be treated as such." After the church service, an escort of police and Patriot Guard Riders led the lengthy funeral procession to Carolina Memorial Funeral Home. There, Taylor's family was presented with his medals and ribbons, including the Bronze Star awarded for his actions during a 2007 battle with Taliban fighters on an Afghanistan mountaintop. Taylor coordinated air support and the evacuation of wounded after one of his unit's leaders was hit. A military guard honored Taylor with a traditional three-volley rifle salute, taps was played and his widow and mother were presented crisply folded American flags that had draped Taylor's coffin. The family attended Taylor's entombment in private. He is among 65 South Carolinians killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Woolf, at the church, promised that Taylor's fellow soldiers will carry on his mission. "They will not let democracy or freedom die," Woolf said.

James Island's First Neighborhood, Riverland Terrace

Historic Ft. Pemberton,

photo by Peter Evans

Riverland Terrace, developed in the 1940s, is James Island's oldest neighborhood. The Terrace is located just 10 minutes west of downtown Charleston along Wappoo Creek and the inland waterway. The neighborhood boasts a public boat landing , Charleston Municipal Golf Course , a playground, five restaurants and numerous antique shops.Leading into the neighborhood is the historic Avenue of Oaks, consisting of 73 live oak trees believed to be over 100 years old. They once led to Wappoo Hall Plantation on the Stono River. A Civil War fortification known as Fort Pemberton, built in 1862, remains today.The Terrace consists of approximately 800 homes. Sizes and prices vary greatly. Starter homes of 900 square feet begin at $200,000. Riverland Terrace has an active neighborhood association that meets 3-4 times each year. The community actively works to preserve the historical integrity of the community, thus contributing to the hometown feel.

Market gloom returns. Stocks dive, oil prices shatter 1-day record; Compromise sought on bailout.

By PATRICK RIZZO Associated Press Tuesday, September 23, 2008 NEW YORK — Elation in the financial markets over the $700 billion bank bailout plan evaporated Monday and was replaced by all-too-familiar anxiety, pummeling stocks and sending oil prices to their biggest one-day gain. Worries that the rescue package would cost too much, drive up inflation, swell the already-bloated deficit and hurt the ailing economy also led global investors to flee the U.S. dollar. The Dow Jones industrials lost 372 points, wiping out the gains the index made Friday after administration officials and congressional leaders promised swift action to get bad debt off the books of banks and end the financial crisis. Mark LennihanAP Stock tickers light up Morgan Stanley headquarters Monday in New York. Late Sunday, the Federal Reserve granted Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the country's last two major investment banks, approval to change their status to bank holding companies. "Investors had a weekend to look at the news that was streaming out, and they are now finding fault in it," said Joseph Battipaglia, market strategist in the private client group at the investment firm Stifel Nicolaus. Oil prices briefly spiked more than $25 a barrel before falling back to settle at $120.92, up $16.37, on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That shattered the previous record for a one-day jump in crude oil of $10.75. Monday also was the last day for investors to trade the October oil futures contract, adding fuel to the rally. But the November contract also saw a sharp gain, up $6.62 to $109.37. The government agency that regulates commodities markets said it was working with Nymex to "ensure that no one is taking advantage of the current stresses facing our financial marketplace for their own manipulative gain." The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in a statement it was "closely monitoring today's large movement in the price of crude oil." Analysts said some of the gain could have come from large investors trying to cover short positions, or bets that prices would fall. Four days after word of a massive government rescue plan began to hit the market, investors had little by way of details. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson introduced the plan Saturday in a document that ran less than three full pages. By Monday, investors still knew little about how the Bush administration would pay for mopping up the bad debt, how the process would work, who would run it and what the Democratic-controlled Congress would ask for to approve the plan. President Bush prodded Congress during the day to pass the rescue plan quickly, declaring, "The whole world is watching." The Bush administration is already forecasting that the federal deficit will hit a record $482 billion next year. Analysts say the bailout costs mean a $1 trillion annual deficit is not out of the question. "When you try to print $1 trillion, that will kill your currency, lifting oil prices, which then in turn will not help the stock market," said Gary Kaltbaum, who runs the money management firm Kaltbaum and Associates in Orlando, Fla. "It is a vicious cycle, and we are seeing that right now." Lacking specifics, many investors — especially foreigners — sold U.S. dollars on worries that paying for the plan would increase the federal deficit and exacerbate inflation. Over the past year, overall inflation is at 5.4 percent. The 15-nation euro rocketed past $1.48 in late afternoon trading Monday, up more than 3 cents from Friday in its largest single-day move against the dollar since the European currency was introduced in 1999. The British pound leaped to $1.8584 from $1.8365, and the dollar dropped to 105.40 Japanese yen from 107.01. The price of gold, a traditional safe-haven investment in times of financial turmoil, rose $40.30 to settle at $909 an ounce. The Dow finished at 11,015.69, down 372.75 points, more than 3 percent. The sharp drop was reminiscent of last week's wild trading, which included two days of 400-plus-point drops for the Dow and two days of 300-plus-point increases. Credit markets, the lifeblood of the economy, loosened a bit. They had seized up last week when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection and the government rescued giant insurer American International Group Inc. with an $85 billion, two-year loan. Late Sunday, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, the country's last two major independent investment banks, were granted government permission to change their status to bank holding companies and open commercial banking subsidiaries. As Wall Street sold off, Washington was tinkering with the plan, trying to find a compromise that Congress and the Bush administration could present to American taxpayers who would be footing the bill. By the time markets closed Monday, the Bush administration and leading lawmakers had agreed to tack mortgage help for homeowners and strong congressional oversight on to the legislation, said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. "We'll see how hard they fight — it's something we care about," Frank said. Lawmakers in both parties appeared to be coalescing around the idea that executive compensation limits should be part of the bailout, although Paulson is said to be concerned that such curbs would discourage companies from participating. As for tottering financial firms, there still were divisions on which would be helped and what kind of assets the government could buy as part of the bailout. And in a fresh sign of a challenging road ahead, Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the top Banking Committee Republican, blasted the emerging plan as "neither workable nor comprehensive." "In my judgment, it would be foolish to waste massive sums of taxpayer funds testing an idea that has been hastily crafted and may actually cause the government to revert to an inadequate strategy of ad hoc bailouts," Shelby said. Lawmakers on both extremes of the political spectrum assailed the plan as a massive, poorly conceived bailout. Bush said: "Obviously, there will be differences over some details, and we will have to work through them. That is an understandable part of the policymaking process." But he also said, "It would not be understandable if members of Congress sought to use this emergency legislation to pass unrelated provisions, or to insist on provisions that would undermine the effectiveness of the plan." Treasury spokeswoman Brookly McLaughlin said, "We are confident that we can get a bill done this week." Rachel Beck, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Tim Paradis, Madlen Read and Stevenson Jacobs of The Associated Press contributed to this report. Copyright © 1997 - 2007 the Evening Post Publishing Co.

Stocks stumble amid new Wall Street landscape

By TIM PARADISAP Business Writer Stocks tumbled and Treasury bond prices soared Monday as investors reacted to a stunning reshaping of the landscape of Wall Street that took out two storied names: Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 330 points. Stocks posted big losses in markets across much of the globe as investors absorbed bankruptcy plans at Lehman and Merrill Lynch's forced sale to Bank of America for $50 billion in stock. And perhaps most ominously, American International Group Inc. is asking the Federal Reserve for emergency funding. The world's largest insurance company plans to announce a major restructuring Monday. The swift developments are the biggest yet in the 14-month-old credit crises that stems from now toxic subprime mortgage debt. Investors are worried that trouble at AIG and the bankruptcy filing by Lehman, felled by $60 billion in bad debt and a dearth of investor confidence, will touch off another series of troubles for banks and financial institutions that may be forced to further write down the value of their own debt assets. Wall Street had been hopeful six months ago that the collapse of Bear Stearns would mark the darkest day of the credit crisis. But AIG's troubles a week after its stock dropped 45 percent are worrisome for some investors because of the company's enormous balance sheet and the risks that troubles with that companies finances could spill over to the companies with which it does business. AIG, one of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow industrials, fell $5.63, or 46 percent, to $6.51 Monday as investors worried that it would be the subject of downgrades from credit ratings agencies. "I think people were hoping that there was going to be a savior over the weekend and that hasn't happened," said Scott Fullman, director of derivatives investment strategy for WJB Capital Group in New York. "This is sort of groundbreaking type stuff." In the first hour of trading, the Dow fell 326.33, or 2.86 percent, to 11,095.66. Broader stock indicators also fell. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 34.61, or 2.77 percent, to 1,217.09, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 44.48, or 1.97 percent, to 2,216.79. A sharp drop in oil below $100 also weighed on energy names, including several Dow components. Exxon Mobil Corp. fell $2.06, or 2.7 percent, to $75.44, while Chevron Corp. fell $2.31, or 2.7 percent, to $81.93. Light, sweet crude dropped $5.02 to $96.16 on the New York Mercantile Exchange after damage to Gulf of Mexico oil infrastructure from Hurricane Ike was less than investors feared. Worries about a slower economy have also weighed on oil prices in recent weeks. Oil is down sharply from its mid-July highs when it hit a record over $147 a barrel. Investors will be watching to see whether the Dow moves below the 11,000 mark, a level it hasn't traded and closed under since mid-July. The S&P 500 last tested the 1,200 level in mid-July. Bond prices surged as investors fled to the security of government debt. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, plunged to 3.54 percent from 3.72 percent late Friday. The dollar was lower against other major currencies, while gold prices rose. Investors did have some more solid footing than they might have predicted at the end of last week, when Lehman's troubles and those of AIG weighed on the markets. A global consortium of banks, working alongside government officials in New York, announced a $70 billion pool of funds to lend to troubled financial companies. And the deal for Merrill Lynch pays a 70 percent premium to the brokerage's closing price Friday. The stock has been squeezed in recent weeks, leading many Wall Street veterans to point to the company as the next behind Lehman as likely to run into trouble with bearish investors and get hit by intensified selling. The deal to pair the company with Bank of America, a huge bank with a big asset base, removes some of the worries that Merrill would be the next to fall after Lehman. Merrill rose $5.13, or 30 percent, to $22.18, while Bank of America fell $3.82, or 11 percent, to $29.92. ___ On the Net: New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com [http://www.nyse.com] Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com [http://www.nasdaq.com]

Stocks stumble amid new Wall Street landscape By TIM PARADISAP Business Writer Stocks tumbled and Treasury bond prices soared Monday as investors reacted to a stunning reshaping of the landscape of Wall Street that took out two storied names: Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 330 points. Stocks posted big losses in markets across much of the globe as investors absorbed bankruptcy plans at Lehman and Merrill Lynch's forced sale to Bank of America for $50 billion in stock. And perhaps most ominously, American International Group Inc. is asking the Federal Reserve for emergency funding. The world's largest insurance company plans to announce a major restructuring Monday. The swift developments are the biggest yet in the 14-month-old credit crises that stems from now toxic subprime mortgage debt. Investors are worried that trouble at AIG and the bankruptcy filing by Lehman, felled by $60 billion in bad debt and a dearth of investor confidence, will touch off another series of troubles for banks and financial institutions that may be forced to further write down the value of their own debt assets. Wall Street had been hopeful six months ago that the collapse of Bear Stearns would mark the darkest day of the credit crisis. But AIG's troubles a week after its stock dropped 45 percent are worrisome for some investors because of the company's enormous balance sheet and the risks that troubles with that companies finances could spill over to the companies with which it does business. AIG, one of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow industrials, fell $5.63, or 46 percent, to $6.51 Monday as investors worried that it would be the subject of downgrades from credit ratings agencies. "I think people were hoping that there was going to be a savior over the weekend and that hasn't happened," said Scott Fullman, director of derivatives investment strategy for WJB Capital Group in New York. "This is sort of groundbreaking type stuff." In the first hour of trading, the Dow fell 326.33, or 2.86 percent, to 11,095.66. Broader stock indicators also fell. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 34.61, or 2.77 percent, to 1,217.09, and the Nasdaq composite index fell 44.48, or 1.97 percent, to 2,216.79. A sharp drop in oil below $100 also weighed on energy names, including several Dow components. Exxon Mobil Corp. fell $2.06, or 2.7 percent, to $75.44, while Chevron Corp. fell $2.31, or 2.7 percent, to $81.93. Light, sweet crude dropped $5.02 to $96.16 on the New York Mercantile Exchange after damage to Gulf of Mexico oil infrastructure from Hurricane Ike was less than investors feared. Worries about a slower economy have also weighed on oil prices in recent weeks. Oil is down sharply from its mid-July highs when it hit a record over $147 a barrel. Investors will be watching to see whether the Dow moves below the 11,000 mark, a level it hasn't traded and closed under since mid-July. The S&P 500 last tested the 1,200 level in mid-July. Bond prices surged as investors fled to the security of government debt. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note, which moves opposite its price, plunged to 3.54 percent from 3.72 percent late Friday. The dollar was lower against other major currencies, while gold prices rose. Investors did have some more solid footing than they might have predicted at the end of last week, when Lehman's troubles and those of AIG weighed on the markets. A global consortium of banks, working alongside government officials in New York, announced a $70 billion pool of funds to lend to troubled financial companies. And the deal for Merrill Lynch pays a 70 percent premium to the brokerage's closing price Friday. The stock has been squeezed in recent weeks, leading many Wall Street veterans to point to the company as the next behind Lehman as likely to run into trouble with bearish investors and get hit by intensified selling. The deal to pair the company with Bank of America, a huge bank with a big asset base, removes some of the worries that Merrill would be the next to fall after Lehman. Merrill rose $5.13, or 30 percent, to $22.18, while Bank of America fell $3.82, or 11 percent, to $29.92. ___ On the Net: New York Stock Exchange: http://www.nyse.com [http://www.nyse.com] Nasdaq Stock Market: http://www.nasdaq.com [http://www.nasdaq.com]

Fannie and Freddie

The move was made by secretary Paulson to calm the greater financial markets and restore confidence in the mortgage / housing sector. Both Fannie and Freddie are now under government conservatorship. There will be a huge capital infusion into the mortgage backed securities. What we expect to see in the next 90 days: With restored confidence we expect to see improved interest rates (today 5.625% is available on 30 year fixed) We also expect to see much stricter underwriting guidelines from Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae had tightened loan approvals on June 1 with their new guidelines; we expect to see Freddie follow suit in the near future. Now is a great time to buy or sell,

Banking companies post profits in S.C.

By Michael Buettner The Post and Courier Monday, September 1, 2008 South Carolina banking companies saw a major improvement in their profits in the second quarter despite an industry environment that remained pretty tough. According to freshly released numbers from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. , the 92 banks based in the Palmetto State posted a total profit of $52 million in the three months ended June 30. That was a big change from the $118 million loss the homegrown lenders saw in the first three months of the year. Among the most profitable in the latest period was the largest locally based institution, First Federal Savings and Loan of Charleston, which reported net income of just more than $6 million, according to FDIC. Also posting profits were Community FirstBank, Bank of South Carolina, Southcoast Community Bank, Tidelands Bank and relative newcomer Harbor National Bank. Another recent startup, Atlantic Bank & Trust, remained in the red during the quarter, where it was joined by Carolina Federal Savings Bank, which saw its loss narrow to $81,000 from $152,000 in the first quarter. Total assets of South Carolina-based banks rose slightly to $55.1 billion at the end of June from $54.5 billion at the end of March. And that was with one less company in the mix: Cheraw-based Sentry Bank & Trust dropped off the list when its parent company, Great Pee Dee Bancorp, was acquired by Troy, N.C.-based First Bancorp. Storm watch With Gustav swirling around in the Gulf of Mexico and the anniversary of Katrina fresh in memory, it's an appropriate time to think about homeowner insurance and disaster planning. The Insurance Information Institute, an insurance industry-backed nonprofit, says Hurricane Katrina cost insurers $41 billion in paid claims, making it the single most costly disaster in industry history. And the potential losses have continued to climb since then: The institute says the value of coastal property exposed to hurricanes rose 24 percent from 2004 through 2007 to a total of $8.9 trillion. South Carolina ranks as the eighth-highest state on the institute's list, with a total exposed property value of about $192 billion. Not altogether surprisingly, the institute's first recommendation for coastal property owners is to make sure they have enough insurance — and the right kind. For instance, if you've made improvements to your home, make sure their value is reflected in your coverage. And if you want to be covered for flood damage, make sure you have a flood policy; it won't be included in your standard homeowner coverage. Reach Michael Buettner at 937-5553 or mbuettner@postandcourier.com. Copyright © 1997 - 2007 the Evening Post Publishing Co.