Empiric Student Property Share Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 26/11/2010 08:44

Spain = Foreclosed Homes May Flood Spanish Market as Banks Offload Unwanted Assets

Spanish lenders have a total of 181 billion euros ($242 billion) in "troubled" construction and real estate loans, the Bank of Spain said last month. Since Sept. 30, the banks have been required to account for falling property values more quickly, encouraging them to shed assets without waiting for the market to recover from a three-year decline.

Under the changes introduced by the Bank of Spain in September, lenders must take account of a drop in value of at least 30 percent if they keep the assets for more than two years. They must also make provisions for bad loans after 12 months, rather than as long as 72 months.




Too big to fail OR too big to bail ???

German plans to push for bondholder haircuts in Europe as soon as next year have triggered a surge in default risk on European bank debt and set off further flight from Spanish, Portuguese and Irish bonds.

[briarberry] 23/11/2010 16:26

Existing Home Sales - Yr/Yr Change -25.9 %

[briarberry] 22/11/2010 11:46

Home Buying Gets Tougher as Lenders Restrict FHA Loans

Mortgage lenders including Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of America Corp., the two largest, have raised the minimum credit score on FHA-insured loans that they will buy to 640 from 620. About 6.3 million people fall within that range, according to FICO, which created the formula for the ratings.

[briarberry] 19/11/2010 21:14

China's central bank announced Friday it would raise the deposit reserve requirement ratio for banks by 50 basis points from Nov. 29, the fifth such hike this year and the second increase this month.

[briarberry] 13/11/2010 22:37

The Irish Republic is in preliminary talks with eurozone officials for financial support, the BBC learns, but Dublin denies the report.

[briarberry] 12/11/2010 12:07

Shanghai Composite down 5%

[briarberry] 11/11/2010 15:51

New Risks Emerge in Munis
Debtholders Are Left Steamed as Some Cities Forgo Repayment Promises

The housing crisis was fueled by cash-strapped homeowners who walked away from their mortgages. Some analysts and investors now are worried about the same problem happening with debts of cities and towns.


(down over 2%)

California faces a $25.4 billion budget deficit over the next 20 months - nearly double what some leading lawmakers predicted a week ago - and a solution to this newest crisis is expected to be far more difficult than in years past

[briarberry] 11/11/2010 14:46

China - will China raise rates again ?

The price of food, which accounts for one third of the basket of goods used to calculate China's CPI, surged 10.1 percent year on year in October because of price increase on the global agriculture markets and frequent natural disasters at home, Sheng said.

[briarberry] 10/11/2010 22:57

Record prices for many soft commodities. Prices for agricultural exports increased for the third consecutive month in October and are up 15.7 percent since October 2009.

[briarberry] 10/11/2010 20:13

Japanese QE in 2001, US QE has no guarantee of success especially if the world economy slows again...


Let's learn from the Japanese lesson with its QE experiment. The day the Bank of Japan launched the program on March 19, 2001, the Nikkei surged 7.5%, from 12,190 to 13,103. It went on to make a fresh high on May 7, at 14,529 (just under two months after the announcement) - rallying another 11%. And that is all she wrote. Three months later, as it became painfully obvious that the real economy was not responding well to the shock therapy, the Nikkei index slid 16% to just over 12,000. Moreover, the day before 9/11 it had already tumbled all the way down to 10,500 (down 27% from the nearby post-announcement high and 14% lower than the day of the announcement itself!). Forewarned is forearmed.

David A. Rosenberg

[briarberry] 10/11/2010 19:27

The buying (money printing) starts on Friday

Tentative Outright Treasury Operation Schedule

[briarberry] 10/11/2010 19:02

Fed will buy $105 billion in bonds in next month

Deficit panel co-chairs recommend $200 bln in cuts

U.S. Oct. budget deficit $140 bln in October: Treasury

[briarberry] 10/11/2010 18:00

Fed will announce QE2 timing and amounts tonight at 7pm GMT

[briarberry] 10/11/2010 16:33

China's central bank raised lenders' reserve requirements = up 0.5% to 18%

Reserve requirements will increase 0.5 percentage points from Nov. 16, the People's Bank of China said in a statement on its website about eight hours after the trade data. The announcement followed media reports today of increases for selected banks.

Inflows of cash from monetary easing abroad and investors speculating on gains in the yuan threaten to worsen Chinese inflation forecast to have risen to a two-year high in October.

The increase takes reserve requirements for the nation's biggest four banks to 18 percent and will drain about 360 billion yuan ($54 billion) from the financial system, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch said in a note.

...
The nation's property prices rose 8.6 percent in October from a year earlier, the smallest gain in 10 months, as the government cracked down on speculation to limit asset-bubble risks, a separate report showed today.

[briarberry] 09/11/2010 22:15

CME ups margins on silver...

By Matt Whittaker - Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

Traders will now be required to put up $6,500 in margin to hold a benchmark 5,000 ounce silver contract overnight. The former margin had been $5,000.

[briarberry] 09/11/2010 15:38

Richard W. Fisher

As to the proposition that higher prices of financial assets will liberate those most in need, I wondered aloud if that were indeed true. We are already seeing the beginnings of speculative activity in stocks, bonds, buyouts and commodity markets. The rich and the quick are certainly able to exploit these circumstances to get richer. I have no problem with market operators making money; I did so myself in my previous life as a funds manager (before I took the vow of financial chastity and joined the Fed!). But I take no comfort, and see considerable risk, in conducting monetary policy that has the consequence of transferring income from the poor and the worker and the saver to the rich. Senior citizens and others who saved and played by the rules are earning nothing on their savings, while big debtors and too-big-to-fail oligopoly banks benefit from their subsidy. I know of no presidential administration or Congress, Republican or Democrat, that will tolerate, let alone advocate for, that dynamic for long, and I expressed my worry that this could come back to bite us and possibly threaten our independence.

[briarberry] 08/11/2010 00:37

Oil = due to QE2 everyones watching oil prices. I guess the danger is that high gasoline prices will slow the economy more than the Fed is boosting it ?

I'm not sure how similar this is to 2007 when the Fed lowered rates, but by 2008 crude had risen to the $140s

[briarberry] 05/11/2010 19:43

The bailout bubble is still growing around the world :)

[briarberry] 05/11/2010 19:41

Japan - BOJ to buy REITs, Nikkei 225 ETFs and government debt...


Japan's central bank today held the overnight call rate to between zero and 0.1 percent. It also said in Tokyo that part of its 5 trillion yen ($62 billion) asset fund will be used to purchase Japanese real-estate investment trusts with credit ratings of AA or higher.
[...]
The BOJ also said today it will buy ETF that track the Nikkei 225 Stock Average and the Topix index, and will start purchasing government debt early next week. It plans to buy 3.5 trillion yen in government debt, 500 billion yen each of corporate bonds and commercial paper, 450 billion yen in exchange-traded funds and 50 billion yen for real-estate investment trusts, over a year.

[briarberry] 04/11/2010 19:37

New York Fed buys $4.765 billion in Treasurys (under QE1.5)

QE1.5 + QE2 = $25 billion per week approx

[briarberry] 03/11/2010 18:17

Fed says pace of bond buys about $75 bln per month
Fed to buy $600 bln in bonds by Q2 2011
Fed says maturity of bond buys between 5-6 yrs

[briarberry] 03/11/2010 15:53

Did the GOP win leave gold out in the cold ???

(although Americans are saying that neither party ever cut gov spending ?)