Today's Business Press

Very Sloppy Journalism. Innumeracy!!!

LeRoy_Was_Here — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:24:09 GMT

Bernhard Warner writes: The Wall Street Journal and New York Times lead off their business coverage today with word that President-elect Barack Obama's economic recovery plan will include a larger-than-expected tax cut of roughly $300 million for companies and individual taxpayers. The tax breaks don't end there. Over the next two years, the cuts could reach $775 million, the WSJ calculates.

LeRoy: Nonsense. You meant billion in both cases, not million. A tax cut of $775 million is a ridiculously picayune number, a drop in the bucket of a $14 trillion economy. $775 million isn't even a billion! But you knew that, of course, right?

Or maybe not.

Andrew Cuomo Harasses Woman

Ricardo M — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 17:22:14 GMT

Andrew Cuomo has harassed, threatened and illegally interferred with a woman's personal business for over 2 and 1/2 years, all because she refused to chase him and compete for his personal attention. Her name is Denise and she is a NYC yoga teacher, and she has the written and recorded proof to bring Cuomo down and he knows it. This AG thinks he has the right to step outside the law for personal reasons. What an ego! Now an unethical reporter from a well known newspaper has gotten involved trying to set this woman up with Cuomo, but it didn't work. I have the reporters emails. Denise has had enough and she's retained an attorney. Look for details regarding Cuomo and his journalist associate's underhanded actions to is come out after national elections. This is a story the public will definitely want to know. The NYS Attorney General operates from a corruptive base behind the back of those he represents.

New bailouts imminent

Lemis66 — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:23:14 GMT

from the 20th floor. Beware of the squash and splatter while strolling in the worlds financial districts.

Victorious capitalism

endorendil — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:01:02 GMT

For well over 15 years the environmentalists have been sounding the alarm bell over global warming. For the last 10 years with increasing urgency and in recent years, with growing despair. Governments have turned out to be glacially slow to react, as politicians know very well that their hides will decorate the walls if they are seen to take actions that negatively affect the standard of living.

In rides our knight in shiny armor: global capitalism's main henchman, the financial sector. By completely self-destructing in a bonfire of greed and arrogance, the financial sector has paved the way for large reductions in GDP in the west, and has given its dittering governments the rationale to embark on a large program of reducing the efficiency of the economy in order to bring more people to work while matching the supply to the much lowered demand. This efficiency reduction will take many forms, but surely much of it will come from demanding sustainability and reduced carbon footprints.

We will owe Fuld and his ilk a great debt of gratitude if their recklessness leads to the reduction of productivity on a global scale by the requirement of sustainability.

Here's hoping...

1992 Dem Congress & Clinton era results are in - DEVASTATION

swiet — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:57:55 GMT

One thing that came out of this mess is being IGNORED by the mainstream media ... Affirmative Action and cries of discrimination in the housing market led to this current crisis. Although many who were foreclosed upon were white, the politices to open the lending market to lower income americans didn't originate over concerns that whites were being discriminated against. The race card was played over and over and over again, cries of discriminatory lending practices, and a political agenda to give minorities an opportunity they otherwise wouldn't qualify for. proved to be devastating to the housing market.

Was it discrimination not to lend to lower-income americans regardless of race? OR - was it responsible lending practices to deny loans to those who couldn't afford them? Not even a tough call as we see the results today!

Who is William C. Apgar, and what made HIM a housing scholar? Why is the Dem controlled Congress of 1992 avoiding public scrutiny of their actions? Why isn't the Clinton Administrations policies laid before the american people for all to see?

How could any honest Democrat remain silent as their felllow Dem House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stood before the american people and placed blame everywhere except where blame lies?

What do the FACTS tell us? What history revisionists don't want you to know - and we can all decide in retrospect what the definition of SUCCESS is:

By Ronald Brownstein
May 31, 1999 in print edition A-5

"It’s one of the hidden success stories of the Clinton era. In the great housing boom of the 1990s, black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded. The number of African Americans owning their own home is now increasing nearly three times as fast as the number of whites; the number of Latino homeowners is growing nearly five times as fast as that of whites.

These numbers are dramatic enough to deserve more detail. When President Clinton took office in 1993, 42% of African Americans and 39% of Latinos owned their own home. By this spring, those figures had jumped to 46.9% of blacks and 46.2% of Latinos.

That’s a lot of new picket fences. Since 1994, when the numbers really took off, the number of black and Latino homeowners has increased by 2 million. In all, the minority homeownership rate is on track to increase more in the 1990s than in any decade this century except the 1940s, when minorities joined in the wartime surge out of the Depression.

This trend is good news on many fronts. Homeownership stabilizes neighborhoods and even families. Housing scholar William C. Apgar, now an assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, says that research shows homeowners are more likely than renters to participate in their community. The children of homeowners even tend to perform better in school. Most significantly, increased homeownership allows minority families, who have accumulated far less wealth than whites, to amass assets and transmit them to future generations.

What explains the surge? The answer starts with the economy. Historically low rates of minority unemployment have created a larger pool of qualified buyers. And the lowest interest rates in years have made homes more affordable for white and minority buyers alike.

But the economy isn’t the whole story. As HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo says: “There have been points in the past when the economy has done well but minority homeownership has not increased proportionally.” Case in point: Despite generally good times in the 1980s, homeownership among blacks and Latinos actually declined slightly, while rising slightly among whites.

All of this suggests that Clinton’s efforts to increase minority access to loans and capital also have spurred this decade’s gains. Under Clinton, bank regulators have breathed the first real life into enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, a 20-year-old statute meant to combat “redlining” by requiring banks to serve their low-income communities. The administration also has sent a clear message by stiffening enforcement of the fair housing and fair lending laws. The bottom line: Between 1993 and 1997, home loans grew by 72% to blacks and by 45% to Latinos, far faster than the total growth rate.

Lenders also have opened the door wider to minorities because of new initiatives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac–the giant federally chartered corporations that play critical, if obscure, roles in the home finance system. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buy mortgages from lenders and bundle them into securities; that provides lenders the funds to lend more.

In 1992, Congress mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers. Operating under that requirement, Fannie Mae, in particular, has been aggressive and creative in stimulating minority gains. It has aimed extensive advertising campaigns at minorities that explain how to buy a home and opened three dozen local offices to encourage lenders to serve these markets. Most importantly, Fannie Mae has agreed to buy more loans with very low down payments–or with mortgage payments that represent an unusually high percentage of a buyer’s income. That’s made banks willing to lend to lower-income families they once might have rejected.

But for all that progress, the black and Latino homeownership rates, at about 46%, still significantly trail the white rate, which is nearing 73%. Much of that difference represents structural social disparities–in education levels, wealth and the percentage of single-parent families–that will only change slowly. Still, Apgar says, HUD’s analysis suggests there are enough qualified buyers to move the minority homeownership rate into the mid-50% range.

The market itself will probably produce some of that progress. For many builders and lenders, serving minority buyers is now less a social obligation than a business opportunity. Because blacks and Latinos, as groups, are younger than whites, many experts believe they will continue to lead the housing market for years.

But with discrimination in the banking system not yet eradicated, maintaining the momentum of the 1990s will also require a continuing nudge from Washington. One key is to defend the Community Reinvestment Act, which the Senate shortsightedly voted to retrench recently. Clinton has threatened a veto if the House concurs.

The top priority may be to ask more of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two companies are now required to devote 42% of their portfolios to loans for low- and moderate-income borrowers; HUD, which has the authority to set the targets, is poised to propose an increase this summer. Although Fannie Mae actually has exceeded its target since 1994, it is resisting any hike. It argues that a higher target would only produce more loan defaults by pressuring banks to accept unsafe borrowers. HUD says Fannie Mae is resisting more low-income loans because they are less profitable.

Barry Zigas, who heads Fannie Mae’s low-income efforts, is undoubtedly correct when he argues, “There is obviously a limit beyond which [we] can’t push [the banks] to produce.” But with the housing market still sizzling, minority unemployment down and Fannie Mae enjoying record profits (over $3.4 billion last year), it doesn’t appear that the limit has been reached.

All signs point toward a high-velocity collision this summer between two strong-willed protagonists: HUD’s Cuomo and Fannie Mae CEO Franklin D. Raines, the first African American to hold the post. Better they reach a reasonable agreement that provides more fuel for the extraordinary boom transforming millions of minority families from renters into owners."

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Current financial crises demonstrate Bush's economic

mark14 — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:16:50 GMT

policies are nothing but an elaborate Ponzi schemes. Unsustainable growth in investment and CEO salaries are nothing but passing the latest suckers investment money on to the first and hiding the mounting debt. This time it has even penetrated deep into government possibly bankrupting our treasury as well. "Free market" is nothing but unregulated capitalism which will lead to chaos every time.

To WHom it May Concern

Mark_RSM — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:37:38 GMT

Dear Friends,

Our government, both parties, are in the process of bailing out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and they are lying about the reason.

The reason is that most of the debt and stock is owned by China, and China has bought and paid for both parties.

If I make a bad investment in a house, is the government going to buy the house from for the price I paid for it, and then let me keep it?

The answer is no, they are going to repo the house, I lose all the money I have put into the house, my credit is ruinned and I have to pay higher interest for 9 years.

But if I was foreign investor into say Freddie Mac, and after they repo my house they found out they could not sell it, then the government will give them 100 percent on the dollar, because they are really trying to help out the home owner.

Well, this is the problem the home owner is the Chinese government and the person you should be helping out is the homeless prior that used to be a home owner.

So once again we will borrow money from Social Security that we can not pay back to send money to China, seems fair.

SS tax money is being used to fund the debt of the government, and the debt of the government is to support foreign investments that are now losing money.

Dang, I guess I should have givne 2300 to each party, and so should every American, as it would be a lot cheaper than given 400B to China.

Let the dam foreign investor lose his money that is what I say, and if they do not want to buy our debt in the future, I guess we will just have to balance our budget.

God Bless You

Where is the tipping point?

GETASHRUBERY — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 21:24:09 GMT

How high does the national debt have to be before it self destructs the economy?

Surely this is studied somewhere.

Waiting for the video...

endorendil — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:04:57 GMT

I predict that A-Q will release a video soon, in which OBL will claim that the financial collapse of the US is due to his tactics of luring Bush into a drawn-out and expensive war costing perhaps a trillion dollar - not counting the cost of additional homeland security, the direct effect of the 9/11 attacks and the persistent economic friction caused by enhanced security measures. After all, he set out this goal in a previous video a few years ago, predicting that the US would collapse under the cost of pursuing its wars, just as the USSR did.

####@@ SARAH PALIN @@####!!!!!!!!!!

mark14 — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 03:59:12 GMT

BORING...

hyperbole sells soap...

darwinist — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 03:52:44 GMT

Carpe Diem bursts bubbles: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/SMpxjaGOPyI/AAAAAAAAFoQ/IE0lD_L5qaE/s1600-h/bank1.bmp

Source is a daily great read: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/

Treasury to the rescue?

david wayne osedach — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 19:55:21 GMT

How much more bailing out can the U.S. treasury provide? We must be nearing the feared catyclismic collapse already.

First, Lets thank Bessemer for Public Libraries

blueskies — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 00:14:53 GMT

his process for making steel, used by Carnegie made Carnegie the richest individual on the planet. With a tiny fraction of that money Carnegie built some of our first public libraries across the USA after he retired.

Thank you Bessemer! Where would we go during recessions to hang out w/o him?

On oil, you know, the fix is in to lock it in the $50 to $80 a bbl range. When people objected to $50 a bbl oil went up to close to $150 a bbl to punish us. Now when it drops back to $65 a bbl we will be gushing our thanks to the monstrous commodity suppliers of OPEC.

Lost opportunity!

dsf3g — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:36:03 GMT

100 Billion a year? OMG, I can't believe it! I mean... we could have been occupying a third country with that amount of money. Due to these unpatriotic white-collar money launderers we had to settle for two wars instead of three. I feel cheated.

Nationalisation for the wrong reasons

endorendil — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:40:05 GMT

So, it's finally a fact: the pseudo-government bodies are now government agencies. About time, don't you think?

The alternative was to let them go bankrupt, which would force an asset sale of the bad bonds they hold, and a devaluation of the bonds they back. It would become very hard to get a mortgage for a while, and when it would become possible again, there would be more requirements put on lenders, and the costs of a mortgage would rise to reflect the real risk of default. The housing bubble would be over - prices would have to come down, and more people would continue to rent.

So why is nationalisation better? The intent is clearly to make sure that the government continues to artificially lower the price of mortgages. This will prevent the bubble from deflating further, and it puts in place all the ingredients for a new bubble to start.

And there's where the problem lies. During the bubble years, banks, real estate agents and home builders profit from the mispriced risk, offloading much of it on the government. When the piped piper comes calling, too much of the pain is transferred to the government, and hence the tax payer.

Moral hazard is a real danger in this case. The government simply shouldn't be in the business of helping to finance homes for anyone but the poor and lower middle class. If Fannie and Freddie aren't changed to become limited tools of government policy, the whole charade will simply start all over again. Unfortunately, everything indicates that the nationalisation of Fannie and Freddie is NOT going to lead to a change in their scope. They will simply be patched up and sent on their merry way again. Pointless.

A FINANCIAL BLACK HOLE FOR TAXPAYERS

PacificGatePost — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:08:00 GMT

OMINOUS SIGN BEHIND PAULSON’S ACTIONS

http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/09/secretary-paulson-reasures-foreign.html

And as usual the taxpayer is on the hook in the biggest bailout ever, and forever after that.

they could do a world of good with it...

daystar — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 03:15:03 GMT

but they won't. Four years ago I recommended nationalizing (read: seizing; same as what just happened) the GSEs and using them to issue new paper (read: bank loans) in the form of low interest loans for the nations housing... low interest in the form of simple interest. You could turn this nation upside right doing that; but Paulson will screw the nation and feed us to Wall Street; everyone knows that, that's why Wall Street rallied. After they whoop it up knowing they are in line for more candy, the street rememberred that it was also going to hurt the economy in the process, so they corrected. But, it would be so easy to do the right thing... if only we had one honest man in power right now.

Ronnie's fiscal polices Bankrupted the USSR

GETASHRUBERY — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 18:19:41 GMT

They followed them for 75 years. With the GOP leading the way via borrow and spend we may achieve bankruptcy in half that time.

The Beginning Of Capital Flight From America?

LeRoy_Was_Here — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:42:40 GMT

The following excerpt suggests that capital flight from America may have begun:

The WSJ cites a new report from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) that says global banks have been "funneling more funds out of the U.S. than into it" over the last 12 months. The Swiss-based BIS, often referred to as the central bankers' central bank, says that banks are voting with their feet and sending funds from U.S. branches to their offices abroad "as they turned to safer assets amid the global credit crunch," Reuters reports. From 2000 through mid-2007, global banks sent more than $1 trillion more into the United States across their balance sheets than they took out. That all changed with the subprime crash; since then, banks have taken some $321 billion more out of the U.S. than they sent in.

LeRoy: The interesting question, of course, is whether this trend will accelerate, and if so, what the expected consequences would be for the American economy. I suspect they will not be pretty.

Nationalization is a bad word in the USA

subrashankar — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:41:54 GMT

The F&F battered mortgage guarantee (giants,then)dwarfs need a booster and it is not available in the free market.The very market that used the debts and derivatives to the n th degree is unable and unwilling to hold the baby which is now wet

I personally feel it is just in time that Treasury Department stepped in sent a strong signal of support.If the rotting institutions need some overhaul and replacement of worn out parts,that is the way to go.I think Congress must legislate subjecting all CEO and Senior company officials severance to an overriding law that limits their severance package to three years pay and nothing more should the company financially collapse.This will help trim the huge and often ridiculous packages CEO and Senior staff manage to contract upfront and get away with it at the cost of the company,shareholders and stakeholders.

There ae so many staring examples like Enron etc within recent memory that costed a huge pile to the stakeholders and employees when what was swept under the carpet could have been exposed with checks and balances and responsible analysis of the real situation prevailing

Case-Shiller outside big cities???

jvanke — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:42:36 GMT

So now that the Case-Shiller house-price index is falling for the whole country, not just the big cities, the media are reporting the national index fall. That's an improvement. (Before, it was often just the big-city index, since that one fell first and made more dramatic news.)

But how about we extract the non-big-city markets from the Case-Shiller national index? I guess only Case-Shiller can do that (unless someone starts from scratch), and hasn't so far.

Those of use who live in the real world of never-hyper-inflated housing markets would like to know.

Chrome : Not bad, but not great

collier — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:46:01 GMT

Nicely uncluttered, and seems pretty speedy thus far...faster than my recently-installed Firefox 3.0.1, which was lagging big-time and which made me go "oh yay, new Google browser!" But the following three things mean I'm going back, alas, to Firefox:

* CTRL-ScrollWheel doesn't go forward/back in your history. Nor does any other logical combination of [Key]-ScrollWheel that I tried.

* Closing a tab should (yes, like in Firefox) result in being sent back to the last ACTIVE tab...not just the next adjacent tab to the left. More clicking. Forget it.

* I use a cgi IRC web interface daily, and the text input box at the bottom of the page is blocked by Chrome's "Waiting for site.com..." dialog box. Which means I can't see the first thirty characters of what I'm typing (unless I very carefully place my mouse over the dialog box, which bumps it down). BOOOO.

Nice and streamlined, so points for that, but "fix it or forget it."

merry christmas!

david wayne osedach — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 20:26:46 GMT

The recession which hasn't peaked yet (here in the US) is sure to curtail Christmas. Travel alone will be way off. Followed by unemployment.

And our new president...

JUST BETWEEN ME AND EULOGY

newsandverse — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:56:30 GMT

JUST BETWEEN ME AND EULOGY

NEWSWIRE--Bloomberg News mistakenly (and prematurely) published on its wire, an obituary for Apple Inc. CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs.

What was said within earshot
Seemed frank and sincere,
With phrases to flatter and fawn.
But I'd rather a clear shot,
While I'm still here,
To see what they'll say when I'm gone.

www.newsandverse.com
Light verse, ripped from the headlines

Banks that may fail.

Arctec — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:31:38 GMT

I have put together a list of banks that may fail and go bankrupt.

You can view it here at my blog.

http://bankruptbanks.blogspot.com/