Empiric Student Property Share Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 02/8/2010 20:33

$730 billion in 6 months...

Treasury expects to borrow $350 bln this quarter
Treasury to borrow $380 bln Oct.-Dec '10 quarter

[briarberry] 02/8/2010 15:31

Bernanke: States may want to broaden taxes
Bernanke: State budget pressure to remain
Bernanke: Slow labor recovery weighing on spending
Bernanke: Boost from stimulus, restocking to wane

Fed chief Bernanke says states should build up larger rainy-day funds

[briarberry] 02/8/2010 15:24

ISM Mfg Index

New orders slowed abruptly in July, in what is the key headline of the Institute For Supply Management report. New orders fell to 53.5, still above 50 to indicate month-to-month growth but down five points from June to indicate a significantly slower rate of growth. The 53.5 reading is the lowest since the manufacturing sector emerged from recession this time last year.

- weaker orders and rising inventories points to smaller production gains.

[briarberry] 02/8/2010 11:22

House prices are still key, (same here in the UK) and mortgage rates are very low now in the USA...


Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has added his weight to warnings that the US economy may be heading for a double-dip recession.

Amid worries about a slowdown in economic recovery, Mr Greenspan said: "We're in a pause in a recovery, a modest recovery but a pause in the modest recovery feels like a quasi-recession."

Questioned on NBC's Meet the Press programme about whether the US could slide into another recession he said: "It is possible if home prices go down. Home prices, as best we can judge, have really flattened out in the last year."





I guess he means because of this

[briarberry] 01/8/2010 20:10

(RealtyTrac) US Banks took control of 269,962 properties in the second quarter, up 5 % from the prior quarter and a 38 % spike from the second quarter of last year -- Repossessions will likely top 1 million this year. From January through June one out of every 17 households in Nevada received a foreclosure notice.

[briarberry] 01/8/2010 12:47

WASHINGTON-U.S. regulators closed five more banks in four states, as a still-weak economy continues to batter the banking industry.

Federal regulators said banks in Georgia, Florida, Washington and Oregon failed, bringing the 2010 total to 108. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said the five failures would cost its insurance fund nearly $335 million.

[briarberry] 29/7/2010 22:33

Europe's €30 trillion headache

European banks have amassed €30 trillion in liabilities and face a serious funding threat over the next two years as authorities withdraw emergency support, according to a new report by Standard & Poor's.

S&P's credit strategist. Total liabilities are €23 trillion for the eurozone and €8 trillion for the UK, Sweden, and Denmark.

[briarberry] 27/7/2010 14:55

Emerging markets, over heating...

The Reserve Bank of India raised the reverse repurchase rate to 4.5 percent from 4 percent and the repurchase rate to 5.75 percent from 5.5 percent, according to a statement from the central bank in Mumbai.


India's M3 money supply rose an annual 15.3%, up from 14.5% in June

[briarberry] 26/7/2010 00:42

The potential for vendor financing, caused by import/export imbalances, still exists...


China's trade surplus widened to the highest this year and exports climbed more than estimated to a record in June, adding pressure on the government to let the currency gain after the U.S. said the yuan "remains undervalued."

The gap increased 140 percent to $20.02 billion from a year earlier, the nation's customs bureau said yesterday. That compares with the $15.6 billion median estimate of 24 economists Bloomberg News surveyed. Exports surged 44 percent and import growth moderated for the third month, rising 34 percent.

[briarberry] 24/7/2010 22:22

commodity ETFs

[briarberry] 17/7/2010 11:08

GDP - half of GDP growth is due to inventory rebuild (on FSN last week)

[briarberry] 17/7/2010 11:05

S&P 500 earnings are back up to the highs

Today's chart illustrates how earnings declined over 92% from its Q3 2007 peak to Q1 2009 low -- the largest decline on record (the data goes back to 1936). Since its Q1 2009 low, S&P 500 earnings have surged (up over 700%) and currently come in at a level that has only been exceeded during the latter years of the dot-com and credit bubbles.



I'm guessing that only half of the recovery in earnings is due to actual recovery. The rest is probably due to stimulus, accounting fiddles and low real rates, cost cutting etc

[briarberry] 17/7/2010 10:52

Investment banking isn't doing so well now that the Fed has paused printing...


BoA's investment bank - most of which comprises the broker-dealer Merrill Lynch that BoA bought in 2008 - saw profits fall to $927m, from $3.9bn a year ago, and from $3.2bn the previous quarter.

Most worrying for the stock market was that revenues at the division - a measure of the overall scale of business the bank is doing in financial markets and corporate advice - had dropped 40%

[briarberry] 17/7/2010 10:50

The US banking recovery is a sham

...
JP Morgan Chase, America's second biggest bank as measured by assets, has just done. Not only was the firm's quarterly profit up by more than 75%, it proved far better than even the most optimistic estimate by the experts.

What's more, it's part of a steadily rising trend in improved results.

The chart below shows JPMorgan's recent quarterly profits. These have now climbed right back to 2007's high point. That's nothing short of amazing. And it's more than enough to get bank bulls quite excited again.

But hang on a minute. Maybe there's a con trick being played here.

For one thing, JP Morgan hasn't achieved any 'real' growth. The bank's revenues actually fell by 8%. Investment banking and fixed-income trading results both dropped.

So where did all the money come from?

The figures aren't as good as they first seem

Well, the bank only turned in such a 'good' result because it slashed its "provision for credit losses" by two thirds, from $9.7bn to $3.4bn. In other words, all (and more) of JP Morgan's latest profit was due to the bank making a much lower allowance for bad debts – loans that could go sour because the debtors can't repay to the bank the money they've borrowed.

[briarberry] 14/7/2010 21:18

minutes from the Federal Reserve's June policy meeting indicated officials agreed to consider further policy measures to stimulate growth if needed

[briarberry] 14/7/2010 21:16

Mortgage purchase applications lowest since 1996

[briarberry] 14/7/2010 15:46

Spain 'relying on short-term funding' as councils go bust

A third of Spain's city councils are in dire straits and may be forced to suspend payments by the end of the year, replicating the woes in the US, where many states are bearing the brunt of fiscal tightening.

[briarberry] 13/7/2010 19:54

The Treasury's budget gap for June totals $68.4 billion, a bit lower than expected and brings the fiscal year-to-date gap to $1.004 trillion vs. $1.086 trillion this time last year.

[briarberry] 12/7/2010 21:16

Alcoa actually made a profit this Q, 13 cents per share...

Alcoa Q2 net income 13c vs 47c loss year ago

[briarberry] 12/7/2010 18:52

NEW YORK (AP) -- The credit scores of millions more Americans are sinking to new lows.

Figures provided by FICO Inc. show that 25.5 percent of consumers -- nearly 43.4 million people -- now have a credit score of 599 or below, marking them as poor risks for lenders. It's unlikely they will be able to get credit cards, auto loans or mortgages under the tighter lending standards banks now use.

Because consumers relied so heavily on debt to fuel their spending in recent years, their restricted access to credit is one reason for the slow economic recovery.

[briarberry] 12/7/2010 14:09

Now the con boils down to insuring the peasantry pay enough taxes to pay the interest on the Federal debt - interest which is sure to rise considerably. The 1% T-Bill rates were just part of the con to convince the peasantry that trillions of dollars could be borrowed "with no consequences." Those rates will steadily rise once the financial Power Elites own enough of the Treasury debt. Then the game plan will be to lock in handsome returns on long-term Treasuries, and command the toady politicos to support "austerity.

[briarberry] 12/7/2010 13:56

I'm not sure about this, but it's an interesting point, you never know...


Why (Hyper) Inflation Is Not In the Cards - July 12, 2010

The policies of the Federal government are set to benefit those who hold the levers of power. Deflation benefits those who own the debt, inflation benefits the debtors. The Financial Power Elites are not the debtors--we are.

The usual debate about what's in the cards, deflation or (hyper) inflation, assumes the market or the Federal Reserve/Treasury will be the definitive factor. The more fruitful analysis starts with asking what benefits the Financial Power Elites who influence the process of governance.

...
So who benefits from inflation? Debtors. Who suffers dramatic losses? The owners of debt/cash. And who owes trillions of dollars in debt? the Federal and local governments, of course, and the average American household owing a mortgage, student loans, auto loans and credit card debt.

Who is sitting on $8 trillion in cash? Some insurance companies, mutual funds and pension funds--so-called institutional investors--are sitting on piles of cash, but a significant chunk of the cash is owned by the top 1% of households who own the vast majority of all assets--liquid and fixed--in the U.S

[briarberry] 12/7/2010 13:32

The Con of the Decade Part I (It's the biggest confidence trick of all time)...


The con of the decade (Part I) involves the transfer of private debt to the public (the marks), who then pays interest forever to the con artists.

1. Enable trillions of dollars in mortgages guaranteed to default by packaging unlimited quantities of them into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), creating umlimited demand for fraudulently originated loans.

2. Sell these MBS as "safe" to credulous investors, institutions, town councils in Norway, etc., i.e. "the bezzle" on a global scale.

3. Make huge "side bets" against these doomed mortgages so when they default then the short-side bets generate billions in profits.

4. Leverage each $1 of actual capital into $100 of high-risk bets.

5. Hide the utterly fraudulent bets offshore and/or off-balance sheet (not that the regulators you had muzzled would have noticed anyway).

6. When the longside bets go bad, transfer hundreds of billions of dollars in Federal guarantees, bailouts and backstops into the private hands which made the risky bets, either via direct payments or via proxies like AIG. Enable these private Power Elites to borrow hundreds of billions more from the Treasury/Fed at zero interest.

7. Deposit these funds at the Federal Reserve, where they earn 3-4%. Reap billions in guaranteed income by borrowing Federal money for free and getting paid interest by the Fed.

8. As profits pile up, start buying boatloads of short-term U.S. Treasuries. Now the taxpayers who absorbed the trillions in private losses and who transferred trillions in subsidies, backstops, guarantees, bailouts and loans to private banks and corporations, are now paying interest on the Treasuries their own money purchased for the banks/corporations.

9. Slowly acquire trillions of dollars in Treasuries--not difficult to do as the Federal government is borrowing $1.5 trillion a year.

10. Stop buying Treasuries and dump a boatload onto the market, forcing interest rates to rise as supply of new T-Bills exceeds demand (at least temporarily). Repeat as necessary to double and then triple interest rates paid on Treasuries.

11. Buy hundreds of billions in long-term Treasuries at high rates of interest. As interest rates rise, interest payments dwarf all other Federal spending, forcing extreme cuts in all other government spending. = Austerity !

12. Enjoy the hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments being paid by taxpayers on Treasuries that were purchased with their money but which are safely in private hands.

Since the Federal government could potentially inflate away these trillions in Treasuries, buy enough elected officials to force austerity so inflation remains tame. In essence, these private banks and corporations now own the revenue stream of the Federal government and its taxpayers. Neat con, and the marks will never understand how "saving our financial system" led to their servitude to the very interests they bailed out.

The circle is now complete: in "saving our financial system," the public borrowed trillions and transferred the money to private Power Elites, who then buy the public debt with the money swindled out of the taxpayer. Then the taxpayers transfer more wealth every year to the Power Elites/Plutocracy in the form of interest on the Treasury debt. The Power Elites will own the debt that was taken on to bail them out of bad private bets: this is the culmination of privatized gains, socialized risk.

In effect, it's a Third World/colonial scam on a gigantic scale: plunder the public treasury, then buy the debt which was borrowed and transferred to your pockets. You are buying the country with money you borrowed from its taxpayers. No despot could do better.

[briarberry] 10/7/2010 21:54

The EU Banking System Is In Big Trouble - By Mike Whitney

A week ago, stocks rallied on news that EU banks would repay most of the €442bn one-year emergency loan from the ECB. The news was mainly a publicity stunt designed to hide what was really going on. Yes, the banks borrowed significantly less that analysts had predicted (another €132bn), but just two days later, 78 banks borrowed another €111bn. The additional loans makes it look like Trichet cooked up the whole thing to trick investors.
...

On Tuesday, euribor hit a 10-month high. The pressure is building despite Trichet's emergency programs. ECB bank lending is nearly €800bn while overnight deposits are roughly €240bn. Trichet is willing to drag the EU through 10 or 15 years of subpar growth and high unemployment (like Japan) to keep a handful of bankers and bondholders from accepting their losses.