Empiric Student Property Share Discussion Threads

[briarberry] 18/5/2009 18:08

not much change

The NAHB-Wells Fargo index rose to 16 in May from 14 in April on a scale of zero to 100. It's the highest since the 17 recorded in September. The index got as low as 6 in January. Before the current housing meltdown, the index had never gotten below 20 in its 24-year history. It peaked at 72 nearly four years ago.

[briarberry] 18/5/2009 13:53

Glass-Steagall Act (lots of peeps are saying that the Act should be reinstated?)

The bill that ultimately repealed the Act was introduced in the Senate by Phil Gramm (Republican of Texas) and in the House of Representatives by Jim Leach (R-Iowa) in 1999.

Financial events following the repeal

The repeal enabled commercial lenders such as Citigroup, which was in 1999 the largest U.S. bank by assets, to underwrite and trade instruments such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations and establish so-called structured investment vehicles, or SIVs, that bought those securities. It is believed by some including Elizabeth Warren, one of the five outside experts who constitute the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, that the repeal of this act contributed to the Global financial crisis of 2008–2009.

The year before the repeal, sub-prime loans were just 5% of all mortgage lending. By the time the credit crisis peaked in 2008, they were approaching 30%. Although, this correlation is not necessarily an indication of causation, as there are several other significant events that have impacted the sub-prime market during that time. These includes the adoption of mark-to-market accounting, implementation of the Basel Accords, the rise of adjustable rate mortgages etc.

[briarberry] 18/5/2009 13:48

Cargo Ships Treading Water Off Singapore, Waiting for Work

735, according to AIS Live ship tracking service of Lloyd's Register-Fairplay in Redhill, Britain. These vessels total more than 41 million tons and represents almost 4 percent of the world's fleet today.

Ships are anchoring at other ports around the world, too. There were 150 vessels in and around the Straits of Gibraltar on Monday, and 300 around Rotterdam, the Netherlands, according to the AIS Live tracking service.

China said that its exports nose-dived 22.6 percent in April from a year earlier, while the Philippines said that its exports in March were down 30.9 percent from a year earlier.

The cost of shipping a 40-foot steel container full of merchandise from southern China to northern Europe tumbled from $1,400 plus fuel charges a year ago to as little as $150 early this year, before rebounding to around $300, which is still below the cost of providing the service, said Neil Dekker, a container industry forecaster at Drewry Shipping Consultants in London.

Investment trusts have poured billions of dollars over the last five years into buying ships and leasing them for a year at a time to shipping lines. As the leases expire and many of these vessels are returned, losses will be heavy at these trusts and the mainly European banks that lent to them, said Stephen Fletcher, the commercial director for AXS Marine, a consulting firm based in Paris.

[briarberry] 15/5/2009 23:15

Today's chart illustrates that 12-month, as-reported S&P 500 earnings have declined over 90% over the past 20 months (with over 90% of S&P 500 companies having reported for Q1 2009), making this by far the largest decline on record (the data goes back to 1936). In fact, real earnings have dropped to a record low and if current estimates hold, Q3 2009 will see the first 12-month period during which S&P 500 earnings are negative.

[briarberry] 15/5/2009 22:39

Capacity Utilization in April continued its downtrend, slipping to 69.1 percent from 69.4 percent in March. And again set an historical low for this series which goes back to 1967.

[briarberry] 15/5/2009 16:36

J.C. Penney Co. said Friday that its first-quarter profit declined 79%, hurt by higher pension expenses and consumer cutbacks in discretionary items such as jewelry.

[briarberry] 15/5/2009 01:50

What is B Obama going to do next ?


May 14 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending "unsustainable," warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.

"We can't keep on just borrowing from China," Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. "We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children's future with more and more debt."

Holders of U.S. debt will eventually "get tired" of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. "It will have a dampening effect on our economy."
--------------------------------------------------------

1 cut spending and go into a deeper deflationary recession ?
2 cut borrowing but print more and continue spending ?
3 just continue current policy until there's a crisis ?
4 ?

[briarberry] 15/5/2009 01:24

big retailers...


Nordstrom posted a 9.2 percent fall in sales and a 32 percent drop in quarterly net profit. Nordstrom's net profit fell to $81 million in the first quarter compared with $119 million a year earlier.

Kohl's net profit fell to $137 million from $153 million a year earlier, a 10% drop. Sales rose 0.4 percent.

Macy's Inc posted a 9.5 percent drop in first-quarter sales on Wednesday and stuck to its forecast for sales to fall for the full year. Macy's said its net loss widened to $88m from $59m a year ago.

The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc, whose low prices have attracted shoppers during the economic slump, posted a roughly flat quarterly profit.

[briarberry] 15/5/2009 00:58

U.S. sales of video games fell 17 percent in April to $1.03 billion, research group NPD said on Thursday, the second steep monthly decline in a row. Software sales declined 23 percent to $510.7 million

[briarberry] 13/5/2009 18:22

Banks - yeah makes you wonder...


The banks: The stress test was so obviously so much window-dressing that it's rather questionable what utility the whole process actually served. I mean, c'mon: The banks negotiated the results of the test (!). This is a far cry from Roosevelt's bank holiday in March '33-a far cry? Hell, it's a whole other musical genre. But even if the stress tests had been on the up-and-up, it is clear that Team Obama will not do what has to be done-nationalise the banks, fire management, liquidate the stock-holders, write off the bad assets, get the bond holders to take haircuts (or quasi-decapitations, as the case may be) and turn the banks around and send them on their way, FDIC-style. Why they won't do this is besides the point, though capture by Wall Street-akin to state capture of East European governments by the native oligarchy-seems to be the general consensus. Regardless, the banks are zombies-and they will remain zombies indefinitely. Zombie banks can undercut solvent competitive banks, strangling financial competition and ironically curtailing market liquidity, because the zombies know they will always be propped up by Uncle Sam (sorry for the mixed metaphors, but you get the idea). This is exactly what happened-and is still happening-in Japan. Zombie banks will take the government's largesse, lend out no money, squeeze out their non-zombie competition, and wind up turning the entire financial industry zombie-and Team Obama has no idea how to stop this, aside from shoveling even more liquidity in their direction. Or maybe they DO know what has to be done-put an FDIC receivership bullet in the brains of these zombies-but lack the political courage to do so.Either way, the result is the same: Zombies everywhere, killing everything, ironically curtailing liquidity even as they are propped up in the name of improving liquidity.

[briarberry] 13/5/2009 18:20

Friedman bought GS stock at the bottom once the bailout fix was in...


May 12, 2009 -- I read about what's going on in the Fed and the Treasury, and I can't believe it. Friedman, former president of the powerful NY Fed, (he's also a director of Goldman) buys 52,600 shares of stock in Goldman Sachs, and he's accused of a conflict of interest. Friedman quits -- but where does he quit? Why I'll be damned, he quits his Fed job -- and chooses to remain a Goldman director. What a surprise!

It's now obvious that the Fed and the Treasury want, above all, to save the banks. Everything else is secondary. It's also increasingly obvious that the bankers own the nation and that Goldman Sachs runs the nation and the banks. The whole thing is so flagrant that my head spins. And what Goldman doesn't control, the Pentagon controls.

(subscription site)

[briarberry] 13/5/2009 15:54

smaller banks are in trouble now too...


Geithner seeks to broaden TARP to community banks

[briarberry] 13/5/2009 14:17

Reinhart and Rogoff studied every banking crisis of the past generation and made some startling observations. One in particular caught my attention. It has to do with the subsequent rise in government debt which, according to Reinhart and Rogoff, has been "... a defining characteristic of the aftermath of banking crises for over a century". According to the authors, governments inevitably underestimate the ultimate cost of a banking crisis, because the indirect costs (such as falling tax revenue in subsequent years) end up much higher than predicted.

The IMF estimates that the cost of the current crisis to the United States will eventually reach 34% of GDP or close to $5 trillion. However, the Obama administration, through its various implicit and explicit guarantees, is already using a number close to $9 trillion4. And Reinhart and Rogoff's historical average of 86% of GDP implies an ultimate cost of over $12 trillion!

[briarberry] 13/5/2009 14:12

The Treasury posted a record $20.9 billion deficit in April, a month that since the recession of 1983 has seen nothing but tax-based surpluses. Purchases of agency debt totaled $11.5 billion in the month with TARP-based outlays totaling $3.2 billion. The fiscal year-to-date deficit is also of course a record, at $802.3 billion. Just yesterday, the administration upped its fiscal-year deficit projection by $89 billion to $1.8 trillion

[briarberry] 13/5/2009 13:33

retail sales -0.4%

[briarberry] 13/5/2009 12:55

April foreclosures rise 32 percent, with more bank reposessions likely to come

MIAMI (AP) -- The number of U.S. households faced with losing their homes to foreclosure jumped 32 percent in April compared with the same month last year, with Nevada, Florida and California showing the highest rates, according to data released Wednesday.

More than 342,000 households received at least one foreclosure-related notice in April, RealtyTrac Inc. said. That means one in every 374 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing last month, the highest monthly rate since the Irvine, Calif.-based foreclosure listing firm began its report in January 2005.

April was the second straight month with more than 300,000 households receiving a foreclosure filing, as the number of borrowers with mortgage troubles failed to abate.

The April number, however, was less than one percent above that posted in March, when more than 340,000 properties were affected. The March data was up 17 percent from February and 46 percent from a year earlier.

[briarberry] 12/5/2009 22:55

California State Controller's Office

Compared to April 2008, General Fund revenue in April 2009 was down $6.3 billion
(-39%). The total for the three largest taxes was below 2008 levels by $6.3 billion
(-40.3%). Sales taxes were $452 million lower (-50.9%) than last April, and
personal income taxes were down $5.7 billion (-43.6%). Corporate taxes were $142 million below (-8.6%) April of 2008.

[briarberry] 12/5/2009 21:50

Don't forget how much the Fed is bailing...

The March 18, 2009 Fed policy statement introduced the program to purchase $300 billion of Treasury securities. The plan to buy agency debt was raised by $100 billion to $200 billion and the mortgage backed securities purchase plan was increased by $750 billion to $1.25 trillion.

[briarberry] 12/5/2009 21:32

May 12 (Bloomberg) -- Home prices in the U.S. dropped the most on record in the first quarter from a year earlier, led by California and Florida, as banks sold foreclosed properties.

The median price fell 14 percent to $169,000, the National Association of Realtors said today. Prices dropped in 134 of 152 metropolitan areas.



The National Association of Realtors said Tuesday that median sales prices of existing homes declined in 134 out of 152 metropolitan areas compared with the same period a year ago. Prices rose in the other 18 cities.

Nationwide, sales of foreclosures and other distressed properties made up about half of the market. Overall, sales dipped 3.2 percent from the year-ago period.

Real estate agents hope the $8,000 tax credit (bailout!) for first-time buyers included in the economic stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama earlier this year will boost sales.



Freddie Mac Q1 loss $3.14 a share

[briarberry] 12/5/2009 15:51

world slump continues...


US exports dropped a sharp 2.4 percent while imports slipped 1.0 percent. Year-on-year, overall exports slipped to down 17.4 percent in March from down 17.0 percent in February while imports improved to down 27.0 percent from down 28.7 percent the previous month.

French output was down 1.4% on the previous month, said national statistics office INSEE.

Meanwhile monthly production in Italy fell for the 11th month in a row, down 4.6% on February's output.

India's industrial production fell the most in 16 years in March. Output at factories, utilities and mines plunged 2.3 percent from a year earlier after a revised 0.7 percent drop in February, the statistics agency said in New Delhi today.

RIGA- Latvia's GDP officially dropped 18 percent in the first quarter of 2009, according to the Central Statistics Bureau.

China's exports in April were down 22.6% from a year ago, the sixth successive month of decline. April's fall in exports was also bigger than the 17.1% annual decline recorded in March.

Canada's economy shrank at its fastest pace on record in the first quarter, contracting by an annualized 7.3 percent, the Bank of Canada estimated.