Sunday, July 1, 2012

Monday July 2 Housing and Economic stories



TOP STORIES:

Angry Bagmaker Shows China Slowdown Worst In Wenzhou - (www.bloomberg.com) Jiang Xiangsong has 18 days to pay a 2 million yuan ($314,000) bank debt or his suitcase company in eastern China will go bankrupt. He’s close to tears as he realizes his last hope, a government-backed office, won’t help. “This is totally useless: If I had any collateral, why the hell would I come here?” he yells at an official in Wenzhou’s state-run loan service, set up to help small businesses after rising bankruptcies and suicides prompted Premier Wen Jiabao to visit in October and pledge support. Wenzhou’s more than 400,000 businesses make everything from shoes in dusty side streets to synthetic leather in dilapidated factories, much of it financed by unregulated lenders that spread during China’s record 2009-10 credit boom. The decline of so-called shadow banking in the city, triggered by Wen’s move to rein in a national property bubble, has left Wenzhou bearing the brunt of the country’s economic slowdown.

Rajoy Declares War On Central Bankers To Counter Crunch - (www.bloomberg.com)  Spain and Italy appealed to European policy makers to step up their response to the financial crisis after a 100 billion-euro ($125 billion) lifeline for Spanish banks failed to calm markets. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said today he’ll “battle” central bankers refusing to buy debt from peripheral nations. Rajoy published a letter to European Union leaders calling for the European Central Bank to buy debt from the countries struggling to shore up their finances. “That is the battle we have to wage in Europe,” Rajoy told the Spanish parliament in Madrid today. “I am waging it.” His Italian counterpart, Mario Monti, told lawmakers in Rome Europe faces a “crucial” moment. The leaders of southern Europe’s biggest economies went on the offensive as bond yields jumped following the announcement of a bailout for Spanish banks that was intended to quell concern over the countries’ finances. The decline wiped out the effects of 1 trillion euros in ECB loans for euro-region banks that had held yields in check since December.

Analysis: Endless QE? $6 trillion and counting - (www.reuters.com) Many more years of money printing from the world's big four central banks now looks destined to add to the $6 trillion already created since 2008 and may transform the relationship between the once fiercely-independent banks and governments. As rich economies sink deeper into a slough of debt after yet another wave of euro financial and banking stress and U.S. hiring hesitancy, everyone is looking back to the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of England and Bank of Japan to stabilize the situation once more. What's for sure is that quantitative easing, whereby the "Big Four" central banks have for four years effectively created new money by expanding their balance sheets and buying mostly government bonds from their banks, is back on the agenda for all their upcoming policy meetings.

Italy Tax Increases Backfire As Monti Tightens Belts - (www.bloomberg.com) Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti is facing signs that tax increases are beginning to backfire as his new levy on real estate goes into effect.
Value-added tax receipts have declined since Monti’s predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, raised the rate by 1 percentage point in September as the economy was slipping into recession, government data released June 5 showed. The amount collected fell in the 12 months ended April 30 to the lowest since 2006. Finding the right deficit-reduction mix as Monti fights to meet budget targets is critical for Italy to avoid becoming the biggest victim yet of Europe’s financial crisis. A slump that is driving up welfare spending is adding urgency to Monti’s effort to make the economy more competitive amid a growing backlash across Europe against austerity.

Why Obama's JOBS Act Couldn't Suck Worse - (www.rollingstone.com) I thought there was a chance Barack Obama was listening to the popular anger against Wall Street that drove the Occupy movement, that decisions like putting a for-real law enforcement guy like New York AG Eric Schneiderman in charge of a mortgage fraud task force meant he was at least willing to pay lip service to public outrage against the banks. Then the JOBS Act happened. The "Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act" (in addition to everything else, the Act has an annoying, redundant title) will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market. In fact, one could say this law is not just a sweeping piece of deregulation that will have an increase in securities fraud as an accidental, ancillary consequence. No, this law actually appears to have been specifically written to encourage fraud in the stock markets. Ostensibly, the law makes it easier for startup companies (particularly tech companies, whose lobbyists were a driving force behind its passage) to attract capital by, among other things, exempting them from independent accounting requirements for up to five years after they first begin selling shares in the stock market. The law also rolls back rules designed to prevent bank analysts from talking up a stock just to win business, a practice that was so pervasive in the tech-boom years as to be almost industry standard.





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