Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Wednesday July 4 Housing and Economic stories



TOP STORIES:

Goldman paid bulk of Rajat Gupta's legal fees: NYT - (www.reuters.com) Goldman Sachs has paid for the bulk of former board member Rajat Gupta's legal defense in an insider trading case that ended in his conviction, the New York Times reported, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter. Gupta, a consummate business insider who also sat on the board of Procter & Gamble, was convicted on Friday of leaking secrets about Goldman at the height of the financial crisis, a major victory for prosecutors seeking to root out illicit trading on Wall Street.

Dimon Faces ‘Harsher And Crazier’ House Crowd In Second Round - (www.bloomberg.com) Dimon didn’t hesitate to push back against lawmakers who criticized the bank’s lobbying or size. He said big banks like JPMorgan provide loans for homeowners and businesses of all sizes. “I assume you want us to do that,” he said. “We’re the biggest small, or one of the biggest small business lenders in the United States. We raised four or five hundred billion dollars for the biggest American corporations. We bank some of those corporations in 20 countries around the world.” “That’s what we do,” he said. Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, asked Dimon to explain why JPMorgan has lobbied against provisions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act which overhauled financial regulation. Dimon has been especially outspoken in his opposition to the so- called Volcker rule, which bans banks from engaging in most proprietary trading.

Spain Back in Cross Hairs - (online.wsj.com) The brief afterglow from Greece's vote Sunday to try to remain in the euro was quickly extinguished by a cascade of bad news out of Spain that again rattled faith in the currency bloc's ability to support its most troubled members. Fresh data from Spain's central bank showed the country's lenders were sitting on the highest level of bad loans in 18 years and that their deposits continued to leak away. The gloomy figures—and worries that consultants scouring the creaky banking system will find yet more problems—helped drive Spanish bond yields deep into territory that is widely viewed as unsustainable.

Greece Set For Bailout Reward As EU Sees Tweaked Aid Terms - (www.bloomberg.com) Greek voters are likely to get a reward for backing pro-euro parties, with European creditors set to ease bailout terms on the debt-swamped country mired in the fifth year of recession. A first step will be when Greece’s still to-be-formed government requests modifications to the 240 billion-euro ($304 billion) rescue programs, leading to a revision of Greece’s economic-performance targets sometime before September, a European official told reporters in Brussels today. Europe floated the relief as the victor in the June 17 Greek election, Antonis Samaras of the New Democracy party, accelerated preparations for a coalition government including his historic Socialist rivals with a mandate to loosen the bailout constraints while keeping Greece in the euro.

French businesses fear "systematic strangling" - (www.reuters.com) France's new Socialist government risks smothering businesses under new taxes and regulation, the head of the employers association said on Tuesday as figures showed company morale plummeting to crisis levels. Bracing for a less business-friendly government, Medef President Laurence Parisot said employers' concerns were falling on deaf ears in the government as they faced what she described as unprecedented uncertainty due to Europe's debt crisis. She warned margins were tumbling, orders collapsing and cashflow dwindling as investment and hiring were put off or cancelled outright in the face of the uncertain economic outlook.






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