Empiric Student Property Share Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 29/9/2007 00:58

FDIC Shuts Down NetBank Because of Excessive Level of Mortgage Defaults

WASHINGTON (AP) -- NetBank Inc., an online bank with $2.5 billion in assets, was shut down by the government on Friday because of an excessive level of mortgage defaults.

It was the largest savings and loan failure since the tail end of the industry's crisis more than 14 years ago. Federal regulators appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. as a receiver for Alpharetta, Ga.-based NetBank.

[briarberry] 28/9/2007 22:44

Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Commodities had the biggest monthly gain in 32 years, led by wheat, crude oil and gold, as the dollar's slump enhanced the appeal of energy, grains and precious metals as a hedge against inflation.


Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. consumer price index continues to be a testament to the art of economic spin.

Since wages, Social Security cost-of-living increases and some agency budgets are tied to it, the government has a vested interest in keeping it as low as possible.

[briarberry] 28/9/2007 13:41

Oil (inflation adjusted) vs recessions

[briarberry] 28/9/2007 12:36

Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Inflation in Germany, Europe's largest economy, accelerated to the highest rate in more than six years in September as prices of heating oil and food rose.

The rate, measured using a harmonized European Union method, rose to 2.7 percent from 2 percent in August, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said today. That's the most since June 2001 and above than the 2.5 percent median forecast of 22 economist estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Consumer prices rose 0.2 percent in the month.

[briarberry] 28/9/2007 12:35

America is going to spend another $1 trillion they don't have, and Ben Banky will still be saying that there's no inflation, and that they have a strong dollar policy


WASHINGTON, Sept 27 (Rhoiders) - With the U.S. government fast approaching its current $8.965 trillion credit limit, the Senate on Thursday gave final congressional approval of an $850 billion increase in U.S. borrowing authority

The Senate voted 53-42 to raise the debt ceiling to $9.815 trillion, the fifth increase in the U.S. credit limit since President George W. Bush took office in January 2001.

[briarberry] 27/9/2007 15:57

Wheat price has almost doubled over the last 12 months...


Oats is 40% higher


Soybeans

[briarberry] 26/9/2007 20:36

BusinessWeek

Bernanke's belief that the central bank should slash rates at the start of a bear market is untested, inflationary, and bad for the buck



Bernanke believes that the Fed should have cut rates all at once during the start of the bear market instead of gradually over two years. He seems to be putting this belief to work right now. It means that he is gravely concerned about the state of real estate and banking in the U.S.

[briarberry] 25/9/2007 16:18

wow look at retail down 1.7%, already below last Tuesdays rate cut rally (consumption is nearly 70% of US GDP)

[briarberry] 25/9/2007 15:58

some US financial stocks have now retraced all of last Tuesdays rate cut rally

[briarberry] 25/9/2007 15:31

Existing home sales in the US fell 4.3 pct in August to a five-year low, leaving a record number of unsold homes on the market

Glut of unsold homes rises to 18-year high even as prices fall


NEW YORK (AP) - The decline in U.S. home prices accelerated nationwide in July, with prices posting the steepest drop in 16 years, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday.
Home prices have fallen by more every month since the beginning of the year.
An index of 10 U.S. cities fell 4.5 percent in July from a year ago. That was the biggest drop since July 1991.


MEW is still high, no wonder the SPX has managed to stay up (this should be drying up now)




Lennar Corp, the largest US homebuilder, today reported a quarterly loss of $514 million (£255 million), the largest in its 53-year history.

[briarberry] 24/9/2007 16:16

GM - union out on strike, the company is as good as bankrupt, yet the stock is up over 2% today

- that's what we're up against as small gamblers - the whole thing is upside down

UAW ON STRIKE AFTER GM NEGOTIATIONS FAIL: REPORTS

[briarberry] 22/9/2007 21:32

General Motors, $450 billion of debt, will they try to inflate all this away too...


GM can try closing plants, renegotiating its union contracts, laying off workers and asking for a government bailout of its staggering employee medical care expenses. In fact, I predict it will try all of the above. But none of this will erase GM's massive and ever-growing debt burden.

The simple truth is that GM can't make enough money selling cars to pay for its overhead, upkeep, salaries and dividend payments. Its solution has been to take on more and more debt, rather than spending its cash reserves, so that it can show a "profit" on quarterly income statements. In other words, GM is kiting checks all over town, using its MasterCard to pay off its Visa, burying itself ever deeper under a crushing mountain of debt.

Over the past decade, GM's gross profits have declined from $40 billion to $22 billion, while its debt has increased from $199 billion to over $450 billion.

[briarberry] 21/9/2007 22:07

some background on the credit bubble

So if you follow the bouncing ball, borrowed money bought borrowed money. And then because they had the blessing of credit-ratings agencies relying on mathematical models suggesting that they would rarely default, these CDOs were in turn used as collateral to do more borrowing.

When you add it all up, according to Das' research, a single dollar of "real" capital supports $20 to $30 of loans. This spiral of borrowing on an increasingly thin base of real assets, writ large and in nearly infinite variety, ultimately created a world in which derivatives outstanding earlier this year stood at $485 trillion -- or eight times total global gross domestic product of $60 trillion.

[briarberry] 21/9/2007 20:28

DJ MARKET TALK: 'Perverse' Gain At Some Brokers

2:21 (Dow Jones) Moody's pulls no punches with its initial reaction to
brokerage firms that are booking sizable gains thanks to an accounting rule
that lets them mark down liabilities when their creditworthiness deteriorates.
"It's sort of perverse to book positive returns on an eroding credit profile,"
says Moody's senior vp Blaine Frantz. Goldman Sachs (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS)
and Bear Stearns (BSC) said gains from dropping values of their debt boosted
their incomes by $225M (BSC) to $390M (MS). Lehman (LEH) didn't give a number,
but acknowledged it took the benefit. (JED)

[briarberry] 20/9/2007 17:29

new lows in the US$ - down at the low from 1992

[briarberry] 20/9/2007 16:14

Bear Stearns said that its profit fell 38 percent from the same time last year as it suffered heavy losses from its wrong-way bets on mortgages.

[briarberry] 20/9/2007 13:56

Goldman Profit Rises 79 Percent as Gain Boosts Trading Revenue

By Christine Harper

Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the world's largest securities firm, emerged from the worst credit markets in at least nine years to report Wall Street's only profit gain, after the sale of a power company boosted trading revenue.

[briarberry] 19/9/2007 23:05

everyone's talking about the US$


Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor
Last Updated: 7:29pm BST 19/09/2007

Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.



his blog from July (it sounds like Spain & Italy are in just as bad situation as Florida & Califonia)



I have been deeply involved in EU affairs for a decade, and spent five years covering the beast in Brussels. One thing I learned is that EMU experts at the European Commission and the ECB are very worried that the ever-growing divergences between North and South will lead to a systemic crisis for the euro, and may destroy the EU itself. One day, the greater public will find out what the insiders really think. They may be shocked.

[briarberry] 19/9/2007 21:23

Food-price fears in China - Sep 18th 2007 - From the Economist

Consumer prices rise at their fastest rate in a decade

Pigs have not been the only factor pushing up prices. The cost of eggs rose by 23.6% year on year in August (albeit a slower rate than the peak of 34.8% in June). Vegetable prices were up 22.5% over a year ago. Aquatic-product prices are also gaining momentum. Together these things matter. According to the government, food accounted for 37% of the average total spending of an urban household in 2005. When food prices are rising at 18.2% year on year, as they did in August, the risk that they could stoke public discontent becomes a very real concern for officials.

[briarberry] 18/9/2007 19:59

I sure got that wrong - as I was only thinking 0.25%

Although I did say don't short until we know !

I'm not sure what to think

it does show how bad things are

but how bullish is it in the short term - not sure ????

Long term - stagflation ???

He sure is helicopter Ben !

Yeah given the under-reported inflation statistics we'll soon be back at zero% real interest rates

[briarberry] 17/9/2007 18:13

Interest rates have risen well above overnight money market rates as banks have hoarded cash as a precaution in case they are forced to bail out off-balance-sheet debt vehicles they helped to set up during an era of abundant cheap money.

[briarberry] 17/9/2007 15:41

SPX update

consensus seems to be that a 0.25% rate cut is already priced in

the bulls are hoping for 0.5%

just a 0.25% rate cut will be a big disappointment



I think it'll only be 0.25% cut first time