Empiric Student Property Share Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 25/3/2008 18:28

UK inflation...

The REAL cost of inflation: Why family bills 'have gone up by £1,400 in one year'
By JAMES CHAPMAN - 25th March 2008



Struggling: Increases in food, housing, transport, amd taxes have easily outstripped pay rises
Household bills have soared by £27 a week in just a year, it was claimed last night.

Overall, rising inflation means household spending on basics rose to an average of £388 a week in January, a five per cent rise year-on-year. At the same time, the Tories claimed, real incomes are falling.

[briarberry] 25/3/2008 17:54

"The euro interbank offered rate, or Euribor, for three- month cash increased 3 basis points to 4.70 percent, the highest level since Dec. 27 and its 14th straight gain, the European Banking Federation said today. The one-week rate rose 4 basis points to 4.32 percent, also the highest since Dec. 27."

"``Everyone is just waiting for the next bank to go down. There is no trust in the market. They're very afraid.''

"The euro rate rose even after the European Central Bank provided an extra 14 billion euros ($21.8 billion) of emergency cash to banks today."

[briarberry] 25/3/2008 17:51

Iceland - interest rates up to 15% due to inflation...

"Iceland's central bank unexpectedly raised its benchmark interest rate to 15 percent at an unscheduled meeting after a slump in the krona threatened to fuel inflation that is already running at more than twice the bank's target.

The repo rate was raised from 13.75 percent, the Reykjavik- based central bank said on its Web site today. The bank hadn't planned to hold a rate meeting until April 10. "

"Iceland's gross external debt stood at five times the size of the economy last year, with more than 80 percent of that stemming from the country's biggest lenders.

Today's announcement ``somewhat takes the steam out of our expectations for rate decreases later in 2008,'' Jensen said"

[briarberry] 25/3/2008 16:45

Rising costs forcing some South Korean factory owners to flee China

QINGDAO, China: Scores of South Korean-owned factories are closing surreptitiously in eastern China as their owners flee rising costs, leaving behind embittered workers like Li Hua.

a growing number of South Korean factories have abruptly closed down and the South Korean owners have disappeared as a slew of policies, including rising labor costs and an end to tax breaks, bite into their profit margins

In Qingdao, Sung Jeung Han, manager of the Korean Society and Enterprise Association said 20 percent to 30 percent of the 6,000 South Korean firms in that eastern port city were losing money.

"The wage rise, yuan appreciation and higher input prices are the main reasons," he said by telephone.

[briarberry] 24/3/2008 20:22

even after all the Fed intervention, nothing has changed for the better yet...


Bank of America, the largest U.S. retail bank, may set aside a record $6.5 billion in the first quarter to cover possible future loan losses, including in its mortgage and home equity portfolios, according to a banking analyst.

UBS shareholders will consider a proposal for a fresh capital hike of 10 billion Swiss francs ($9.88 billion) next month, according to a Swiss newspaper report on Sunday.

JPMorgan was last week rushing to reassure hedge fund clients of Bear Stearns' prime brokerage of its commitment to the business to prevent an exodus of assets before the integration, according to Financial News.

Carrington Capital Management, a $1 billion hedge fund specializing in mortgages, is trying to persuade its investors to lend it up to $200 million to replace bank loans, in the latest sign of concern about banks pulling credit lines to hedge funds, The Financial Times reported.

[briarberry] 24/3/2008 19:36

Visa IPO, a lot of people are asking, why now?

If you believe the big money - makes profits private, makes losses public
- then this is probably the last chance to make Visa public before the recession really hits credit card companies...


Visa Inc. ignored the bear market on Wall Street and carried out the biggest-ever U.S. initial public offering in style, with its shares surging 28 percent Wednesday in their first day of trading.

[briarberry] 24/3/2008 16:09

Existing Home Sales - Level - SAAR

(house prices inc condos) prices down 8.2% yoy and thats just official figure...

Lower prices are helping sales as the median price fell 1.9 percent to $195,900, down a steep 8.2 percent on the year. The decline in price spells trouble for consumer spirits and increases the risk of foreclosures for those homeowners who need to borrow on their home equity to meet payments.

The median price of single-family homes dropped 8.7 percent from February 2007, the most in four decades of record keeping.

[briarberry] 24/3/2008 14:03

WSJ: Builders' problems are now threatening losses for small and medium-size regional banks. Muscled out of the mortgage business by large national lenders, many of these banks flocked to construction lending as the housing market boomed. Though these institutions were generally less exposed to the subprime-backed securities that have generated billions of dollars in losses for national banks, they are the front-line casualties when builders and developers can't make their payments.

Delinquencies on loans to build single-family houses reached 7.5% of the value of all such loans in the fourth quarter, up from 2.1% a year earlier, according to Foresight Analytics, an economic and real-estate research firm. There's likely more pain ahead. Also this week, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said it had "increased [its] overall concern" about banks with high concentrations of construction loans, particularly those for residential developments, its strongest warning to date about these banks.

[briarberry] 24/3/2008 13:38

US new home sales are still overstated by 40%

[briarberry] 22/3/2008 19:02

Borrowers in Britain owe £225 billion on credit cards and personal loans and spend 10 per cent of their income on interest payments




For most of the last decade, consumers here went on a debt-financed spending spree that made them the most indebted rich nation in the world, racking up a record £1.4 trillion in debt ($2.8 trillion) - more than the country's gross domestic product.

By comparison, personal debt in the United States is $13.8 trillion, including mortgage debt, slightly less than the country's $14 trillion G.D.P.

The average British adult has 2.8 credit or debit cards, more than any other country in Europe. As a result, Britons are spending more than they earn, racking up a household debt-to-income ratio of 1.62 compared with 1.42 in the United States and 1.09 in Germany.

[briarberry] 21/3/2008 00:02

"The number of houses and condominiums sold in California plummeted 30 percent in January from a year earlier to 313,580, and the median price for an existing home dropped 22 percent to $430,370, according to the California Association of Realtors. The time it would take to deplete the supply of homes on the market at the current sales rate more than doubled to almost 17 months in January from a year earlier."

"California had 481,392 foreclosure filings on properties last year, the most of any state, said Daren Blomquist, a spokesman for RealtyTrac."

[briarberry] 21/3/2008 00:01

Courtesy Peter Schiff - www.europac.net

The problem with these mortgages (other than the borrowers lacking any means or desire to repay them) is that the underlying collateral is worth a fraction of the face amount. With recent foreclosure recovery rates amounting to less than 50 cents on the dollar, it is no wonder that no one wants them. The real estate bubble allowed borrowers to leverage themselves to the hilt using inflated home values as collateral. However, now that the bubble has burst, mortgage balances far exceed current property values. It is a trillion dollar time bomb that no one can possibly defuse.

[briarberry] 20/3/2008 13:31

SPX - small traders getting very short

10 day ma of equity put call ratio

[briarberry] 20/3/2008 13:27

initial jobless claims rise 22,000 to 378,000

[briarberry] 20/3/2008 12:18

Fed - lots of headlines recording how much money is being pumped in, but you don't hear much about how much money is going out. US tax collections are falling etc


The Fed did a near record drain of $31.5 billion from the market on Wednesday, including $15 billion in outright bill sales (offsetting the latest 28 day repo) and $7.25 billion in reverse repos, on top of $9.25 billion in expirations. That drove the 5 day net to a probable record drain of $43.25 billion. The Fed continues to take away with the left hand what it gives with the right. The action drove the Fed's asset base to the lowest level since September 2006.

[briarberry] 20/3/2008 02:26

The USA has not had a lack of liquidity, what with FCB (Foreign central banks) buying all their debt (Freddie and Fannie paper) and the Yen carry trade

As a number of people are pointing out, it's much more fundamental,

It's just that the US public have already borrowed far more than they can repay

Hence the Fed's actions are going to have much less of an effect than expected.

[briarberry] 20/3/2008 02:19

I should have been watching the commodities Wednesday, big down day (6%+)...

energy
mining



from another trader

[/quote]

Well that's 2/3 of the wonder rally given back already (SPX).

I bet the super-leveraged hedgies who have been hanging on by the skin of their nutsacks thanks to commodities will be slightly concerned by the wee downtick in gold and commodities generally today.

The Margin Man is getting to be a pain in the A$$

[briarberry] 20/3/2008 00:49

there's no confidence for good reason, they're all broke...


"Merrill Lynch & Co. sued XL Capital Assurance Inc. over default protection on $3 billion of collateralized debt obligations that the bond-insurance unit of Security Capital Assurance Ltd. is seeking to void."

[briarberry] 18/3/2008 18:19

US rates cut 0.75% to 2.25%

[briarberry] 16/3/2008 15:30

NYTimes, Gretchen Morgenson: Bear Stearns should be allowed to fail - there's not enough money in the world to allow nothing to fail...




I think this site will be worth watching

[briarberry] 14/3/2008 16:08

not since the great depression...

News that J.P. Morgan Chase was acting as a conduit to lend money to Bear Stearns evoked images of J. Pierpont Morgan himself in 1907 stepping in to backstop the financial system in the wake of one of the last century's worst banking panics.

But it's possible that this is more like the 1930s. Tony Crescenzi, in a comment today, notes that reserve banks are authorized "in unusual and exigent circumstances" to extend credit to a company that is "not a depository institution" if they can't get credit from other sources. Bear Stearns isn't a depository institution - and they're getting the money through J.P. Morgan, which is.

Mr. Crescenzi notes that loans of this type were used in the 1930s - but have not been used since.

[briarberry] 14/3/2008 13:21

Bear said yesterday that everything was A OK !


*DJ JPMorgan Chase And Federal Reserve Bank Of NY To Provide Financing To Bear Stearns

*DJ Bear Stearns Confirms Talks About Permanent Financing,Other Options
*DJ Bear Stearns: Liquidity Position In Last 24 Hours Significantly Deteriorated

Bear is the 2nd or 3rd biggest hedge fund prime broker