Important News - Oct. 20 update 1
By Daniel at 20 October, 2009, 12:00 pm
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1) “Homes: About to get much cheaper”
Let housing prices collapse. Don’t get in the way of it or you’ll be crushed.
2) “Niall Ferguson: U.S. Empire in Decline, on Collision Course with China”
3) U.S. poised to bring more insider trading cases
BOSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fresh from laying charges in the largest hedge fund insider trading case in history, U.S. federal investigators are poised to bring further “significant” cases.
The targets will include financial professionals also involved in insider trading, a source familiar with the matter said. It was not immediately clear whether the new cases will be related to the one that ensnared hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam and executives from some of the largest U.S. companies.
4) “starts of apartments and condos have plunged 69%.”
Well that’s not really a surprise. This has been in the news for a while and even talked about on consumer radio shows. For example: APARTMENT VACANCY RATE SET TO BREAK RECORD
5) AIG spends $2B of bailout money to pay debt of aircraft leasing unit (Los Angeles Times)
The taxpayer-rescued insurance giant American International Group said it loaned an additional $2 billion of U.S. bailout money to its aircraft leasing unit, International Lease Finance. A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said the money was used to satisfy a $2 billion debt to Citigroup and other lenders that came due last week.
6) More on Superfreakonomics
Most people who know Yoram Bauman think of him as the funniest economist around. But he is also very knowledgeable about the issue of climate change, and unlike some economist-bloggers, he is not a bomb thrower.
So when he says he is disappointed in the Freakonomists’ chapter on climate change, it is worth taking seriously. See his analysis here. See his correspondence with Steve Levitt here.
7) How The Fed Bailed Out The World
I’m going to have to reread this to fully comprehend it, but holy guacamole!
Education Last Century, and Economic Growth Today
Edward L. Glaeser is an economics professor at Harvard.
Two weeks ago, I wondered why Argentina’s economy had fared so poorly during the 20th century. Argentina’s current income is indeed quite low relative to its income one century ago, but the country’s low income today is less surprising given its education level in 1900. I ended my post with this graph showing the strong correlation between education in 1900 and income in 2000.
9) Many people have no idea what is hitting them.
“This is a quiz. What do the record-high Wall Street bonuses have in common with the record-low yields for savers? Answer: They show yet another way that prudent people, especially those living on fixed incomes, are being cheated by the government’s bailout of the imprudent.”
10) CEO perks, benefits went up while banks took bailout money
While some of the nation’s biggest financial companies took $350 billion of bailout money from U.S. taxpayers, they increased executives’ perks and benefits by an average of 4%, an analysis of corporate financial disclosures showed. GMAC Financial Services’ CEO, Alvaro de Molina, got $2.5 million from his company to help out with his personal tax bill. The chief executive of Comerica, Ralph W. Babb Jr., got more than $200,000 for country club expenses. Perks and benefits for CEOs at the 29 biggest financial companies rescued with taxpayer money averaged more than $380,000 in 2008.
11) Jobless rate may stay high :Despite an improving economy, some jobs won’t return in key industries.
12)
Russia Prepares To Short $18 Billion USD (saxplayer00o1)
Russia is planning to issue $18 billion of dollar-denominated government bonds early next year. This will be the first government debt issue aimed at international investors since 2000. It will also be, conveniently, a huge $18 billion short-dollar position.
13) Challenging the Banks (M.W.)
Millions of families are going backwards to homelessness, and insecurity. Downward mobility is now a mass phenomenon.These large banks are run by the miscreants FDR called “banksters.” They are reporting super profits and giving out obscene bonuses. Their lobbyists are blocking new regulations and eroding old ones while presiding over the largest transfer of wealth in history from the working poor to the flamboyant super rich. Can they be challenged?
So far, very few have been. While the banks are aggressively lobbying; citizens groups are passively sending e-mails. Never before have so many allowed so few to dominate this discourse. The banks are clearly winning over the regulators and critics.
14) California hit by recession (Video)
15) More currency (dollar) intervention by Hong Kong, by Taiwan, by South Korea, and by Russia (page 2) (saxplayer)
16) French official says U.S. trying to inflate away debt (saxplayer)
“PARIS, Oct 20 (Reuters) - The United States is pumping out liquidity to try to inflate away its debt, leading to the depreciation of the U.S. dollar, Henri Guaino, a top advisor to French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Tuesday.”
17) U.S. Commercial Property Values Fall 3% in August (saxplayer)
‘Commercial real estate prices are forecast to fall additional 17 percent through the fourth quarter of next year, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said in a Sept. 30 report, citing scarce credit,
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18) Kansas has backlog of 12,000 Medicaid applications (saxplayer)
“Rising unemployment, the swelling ranks of the uninsured, outdated technology and the state’s budget problems have led to a backlog of 12,000 Medicaid applications in Kansas, health officials said.
A contractor that processes applications for the Kansas Health Policy Authority is supposed to complete them in two to six weeks, but has taken up to four months in some cases.”
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