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Daily Highlights: 12.17.09
- Asian currencies decline, led by Won, Peso, as US recovery boosts dollar.
- China stocks fall on new share sales, worst losing streak since September.
- Dollar rose to a 3-month-high against the euro FOMC remarks.
- ECB said to start consulting Banks, investors on collateral transparency.
- Fed signals markets return to health while extending low rates for economy.
- Homeowners with mortgages of more than $1M are defaulting at almost twice the US rate.
- Hong Kong asset prices face risk of 'sharp corrections,' Central Bank says.
- Leading Index in US probably rose, signalling sustained economic growth: Bloomberg Survey.
- Oil falls to near $72 in Asia as investors mull global crude demand outlook.
- Singapore exports jump 8.7 percent in November, first annual increase in 19 months.
- US House approved $154B economic-aid package and a $290B hike in legal limit on govt debt.
- ABM Industries beats by a cent, posts Q4 EPS of $0.39. Revs dip 4.2% to $868M.
- AIG reportedly set to list Asian unit in Hong Kong, seeking to raise up to $20B.
- AMR Corp may increase the $1.1 B it’s offered to invest with TPG in Japan Airlines.
- ANZ raises A$2B from convertible preference share issue; takes its Tier I ratio to 10%.
- AutoZone Board authorizes repurchase of an additional $500M of its common stock.
- Brian Moynihan to succeed Ken Lewis as BofA CEO.
- Cedar Fair LP to be purchased for $11.50/sh by Apollo Global Management LLC.
- Cisco's bid to acquire Starent Networks Corp. gets regulators approval.
- Citigroup sold 5.4B shares at $3.15 apiece, less than the $3.25/sh paid by US govt.
- Danaher Corp. sees Q4 EPS at $1.05-1.10 (prev $0.99-1.09) on lower costs, strong demand.
- FTC accused Intel of using illegal tactics to stifle competition.
- Herman Miller's Q2 sales fell 28% to $343.7M, earnings down 70.5% at $9.6M.
- Hovnanian Entrps posted qtrly loss of $250.8M, revs fell 39.4% to $437.4M.
- J&J to acquire privately held medical-technology company Acclarent Inc. for $785M.
- National Australia Bank to buy Axa Asia's Australia, NZ units for $4.2B, trumping AMP.
- Nissan expect to sell 600,000 passenger cars next year in China, up 16% from 2009 levels.
- Paychex Inc. reported 10.1% fall in Q2 earnings at $125.9M; revs fall 5.2% to $496.6M.
- Treasury halts plan to sell off Citi stock as investors demand lower prices.
Economic Calendar: Data on Initial & Continuing Claims, Leading Indicators to be released today.
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TYLER or ZH readership / Anyone have a link to this referenced story (thanks):
Homeowners with mortgages of more than $1M are defaulting at almost twice the US rate
Update:
Homeowners with mortgages of more than $1m are defaulting at almost twice the US rate and some are turning to so-called short sales to unload properties as stock-market losses and pay cuts squeeze wealthy borrowers.
'The rich aren’t as rich as they used to be,' said Alex Rodriguez, a Miami real estate agent with JM Group USA, whose listings include a $2.9m property marketed as a short sale because the price is less than the mortgage, leaving the bank with a loss. 'People have reached the point where they can’t afford the carrying expenses of a $2m home.'
Payments on about 12% of mortgages exceeding $1m were 90 days or more overdue in September, compared with 6.3% on loans less than $250,000 and 7.4% on all US mortgages, according to data from First American CoreLogic, a research firm. The rate for mortgages above $1m was 4.7% a year earlier.
bloomberg.com
Read more: http://www.propertyweek.com/story.asp?sectioncode=297&storycode=3155313&c=3#ixzz0ZxGLEiQD
where in THE hell has this site been all my life?? my gawd, it's my soul-site! Tyler must be my identical. Unreal stuff.
Cannot agree more with you T about the govt. going under. Unless the Govt. can rewrite economics and make it stick...they are stuck like chuck.
Meridith Whitney lowers guidance for GS and MS
Dubai going to meet with Geithner.
Remind me which asian country uses the Peso?
The Philippines
Philippines
Well we're only stuck if we decide to keep the current system. But we don't need to do that.
Besides, who wants to keep this old, crusty, piss poor functioning system, when the American Credit system developed by Alexandar Hamilton is just a couple of pen strokes away.
Sadly you have to have people who want to make those pen strokes. Too bad Obama is in bed with the Queen of England and her malthusian policies. Of course the repubs are worse (in office, not the average republican while clueless has their heart in the right place), but hey at least we KNEW that going in when electing Bush I or II. We did, because all the info was out there (pre-internet) even in the 80's about how bad the Bushies were. Even an 11 year old could see it.
With Obama, he was voted in as the anti-british candidate (anti wall street = anti-british among other factors), except, he's a tool for the british. I was concerned about that when he met with them around June 2008. But if you look, that's when he started backing their policies. That's the start of him making the 'left' mad. He used the left to get elected. He got the left to vote for a guy who would just continue on with Bushies policies.
Kucinich, Dean, you got one helluva shot at unseating Obama coming up in 2012. Don't screw it up.
Again we choose depression every day we don't switch BACK to the American Credit system (pre fed), end the fed, restore glass/steagall, pass the HBPA of 2007, and push through LaRouche's Four powers plan, new bretton woods, cancel the bailouts/derivatives. All of which can be done. All of which MUST be done. But we don't want to yet, so we'll just sit here in our depression until that critical tipping point. Except by that time, it may be too late. (well it never is 'too late', but too late to avoid a 10-20 year recovery period). It would of been about 2 years, which means we'd be pretty much over it now. But no we bailed out and pretended things will be fine. So we still have lots of crash and volatility left. Eventually saner minds will realize we are only doing this to ourselves to save a crappy system, that is not the only form of capitalism there is. In fact, going back to the American Credit System is MORE attuned to the bedrock principles of capitalism than what we currently have. Except they don't want you to KNOW that.
So if you aren't pressuring your fellow Repubs or Dem congressmen on these issues, then nothing substantial will change for the better, and we're all going to go down. Going down only stops when we decided to get off this lunatic merry-go-round. Which we enter and stay on by our decision.
Keep saying we have free markets (or had the past 40 years), and there will never be a reason to change.
Realize they aren't (and we haven't for 40 years), and you are halfway there. It wasn't welfare that brought us down, it was tax cuts, wars, free trade, the cannibalization of the minimum wage, and a lack of direction, and greed. The removal of bretton woods was a HUGE market imbalance, free trade as well. These aren't real concepts - floating exchange rates, free trade that isn't free - nor equitable (American workers competing aginst slaves is NO free market...it's a distortion). Not to mention if it was really free, our exports wouldn't be subjected to import taxes and levies . But again then the problem is everything is based on the lowest common denominator. All we did was hollow out our manufacturing, which is what not only pulled us out of a great depression, and won the war, but was the MAIN reason we rose as a superpower. None of that would of been possible with 'free trade'. Thus is it very hard to see that the opposite has been happening since we went with free trade? Of course not, you just have to stop lying to one's self.
Overall they're just more sophisticated ways to steal. Not the average person, the ones that manipulate them for who the rules are really there for. We don't have free trade, and floating exchange rates to benefit YOU, it's to benefit THEM. They just snake oil sold you.
The other half of the equation besides realizing our problems, and how deep they run, invovles a congress and president that aren't idiots like; Kucinich, Sanders, and Ron Paul.
Yes both legitimate extremes (the relgious right while a factor, are not a true rebpulican ideal, it's considered far right when it shouldn't even be on the politcal spectrum), because going to the middle just means half measures and bend overs. The middle is wall street. We don't want middle. We want certain things from Ron Paul's side, and other things from the side of Kucinch/Sanders. Staying in the middle is great for wall street though, but horrible for everyone else.
The metrics we use have been gamed. Center is not good. If anything the center is the problem. Free trade isn't good, it's part of the problem. Low taxes
Remember globalization = imperialism under a new name. A name that doesn't sound as bad. But remember, if you aren't the Queen of England, or Duke of Edinburgh, or Queen Beatrix, imperialism is the worst thing for you. Of course it's good for them, but we aren't them, are we. But we're bending over for them, their rules, their wealth. Kind of sad we're going through this whole downturn because a few people deem it so.
Remember, we're only stuck like chuck, if we choose to be stuck, and choose to be chuck. We needn't do neither. What is pushing us to do both? Simple, we still believe all the bs that took us here. Until that is over, we won't be going anywhere but down. Derivatives or bust. It's bust, whether we choose to bust it, or it busts itself.
One way we would have control over it, the other way, a victim of its control. We're headed for the latter. Mainly because people seem to think the only capitalism that deserves to exist is the form we've had the past 40 years. Well again, the past 40 years haven't been capitalism, so what you are really pushing for subconsciously is not capitalism. What we have now isn't capitalism. It's a crappy sub-form of it, tilted to enrich a few because their rules are different than ours. The bailouts are just more overt, and bigger in scope. But the presmise is still the same as the past 40 years.
Now they want Copenhagen-Bonn (bonn is next global warming summit in June) to complete the coup de'tat under the guise that the average human being simply being alive is the cause of all our problems.
Everything we find important, has already been shaped by them. All to finalize the bailouts.
How do we pay for the bailouts, and end this business cycle and start the next? Their idea, and a crappy one....Cap N Trade. That's the idea, and everyone must suck it up to pay for the bailouts via this new derivatives scheme that will make 150 oil look like chump change.
That's what they're pushing. To make the bailouts legitimate by forcing cuts that will pay for them. Cuts to social spending, infrastructure, health, etc. They are actually paying people to remove farm land at a time when 1 billion people are starving. It's insane that that is where we are, and they want to RAMP it UP!
It's sad too, because their whole thing is to get us to not trust our gov't (because it is how well our normal American gov't functions that whips the british a$$. The fact is, a good gov't will surpass all. We've just seen crappy governance, mainly because they were bought and paid for by the people that wish to destroy the concept of the nation-state. So over the course of the past 40-50 years we've had this sociological pressure to hat e gov't because it does stupid things. (rather than focus on WHY the gov't was doing stupid things)
What better way then to start the vietnam war, sowing that distrust further over the past 40 years. Gulf war anyone? Operation Iraqi Liberation? Afghanistan? The bailouts themselves which helped them, was also a means to destroy the confidence. A realy two-fer. You get what you want, and the people trust the gov't less creating a situation that will foster an (which is your end game strategy on the matter anyways)
Actually it was three-fer considering the Vietnam war was the reason we went off the gold standard. All 3 check marks for the british. That's 3-0 british winning.
I just love how they are pushing us to confront Iran too. See latest new revelation about the nuclear trigger.
We need to trust our gov't more, not less. BUT, and here's the big BUT, you really have to put into office people you CAN TRUST. We need both. One without the other won't work. That's why you can't lose trust, you just, or we just as a whole society must get better at picking WHO we can trust. Whether it be Bush, or now Obama, the one thing I think we can all bank on, is that both the left and right have been jilted or hijacked by the center.
The people actually need to read and think. Not what did someone on 'the hill's' say last night. What they hell did congress do last night. If that does not happen, the status quo of descending will not abate.
The dems need to make people put up or shut up. If some people want to derail real reform, whether it be healthcare, or financial reform, then they must do that. Then we must use our new found experience of being jilted, to put into power candidates on BOTH sides that do not follow the Bush/Obama policies that serve Wall Street and the Queen of England.
We must have the right info, the right focus, and project that upon those who are derailing the real reforms. Single payer of bust. End the Fed or bust. Etc, etc. Those that do not, need to be voted out and most importantly you can't be afraid to vote for new people that promise change. Because only Obama has been a dipsh** at change.
Sullying the word for all after them that really WANT and would PRODUCE change. (the british aren't dummies, but destroying our faith in our own system is key to their economic survival). Thus why Obama is so dangerous. He doesn't see he's been screwed over. Meanwhile everything he stands for, change, is being sullied every time he backs wall street, or Prince Phillip.
Again, we are choosing to go down this road because we're talking about tea bags, and faux reforms. Put the pressure where it needs to be, or expect failure. Both dems and repubs. Because we don't need to just kick out the Michelle Bachmans, we need to kick out the Jay Rockefeller's. In their place we need more Pauls (in lieu of bachaman) and more Kucinich/Sanders (in lieu of Rockefeller). We must choose, or the british will chose for us, and it won't be pretty, like it hasn't already.
Great work TD and ZH. I love this site.