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California
has nation's worst credit rating, Pew study finds - (www.sacbee.com) California has the worst credit rating of any
state now and the nation's worst credit rating record over the past 11 years,
according to a new nationwide compilation by
the Pew Center on the States. The compilation is based on Standard and Poor's
credit ratings and covers every year since 2001. Thirteen states sit atop the
Pew chart with AAA credit ratings while California is alone at the bottom at
A-minus and is the only state to dip to the worst possible rating, BBB, during
the 11-year period. That happened in 2003, during a state budget crisis so
severe that then-Gov. Gray Davis was recalled. The highest
rating California achieved during the period, A-plus, came in 2006. "The
states with the lowest grades typically have trouble keeping their spending in
line with their tax revenues." Pew's Stephen C.
Fehr writes in an explanation of the research. That observation applies to
California, which has struggled to balance its budget for the past decade and
whose current budget assumes that voters will approve sales and income tax
increases in November.
A
County Considers Rescue of Underwater Homes - (www.nytimes.com) Browning lawns surround the
otherwise neat houses in these once-sparkling developments where foreclosures have
become more common than neighborhood cookouts. Each patch of dead grass is a
reminder of the inescapable truth: many homes here, as they are elsewhere
around the country, are worth half what they were just five years ago. Desperate
for a way out of a housing collapse that has crippled the region, officials in
San Bernardino County, where Fontana is one of the largest cities, are
exploring a drastic option — using eminent domain to buy up mortgages for homes
that are underwater. Then, the idea goes, the county could cut the mortgages to
the current value of the homes and resell the mortgages to a private investment
firm, which would allow homeowners to lower their monthly payments and hang
onto their property.
OC
Shadow Inventory: What it really is and how large it really is - (www.ochousingnews.com) Rather than allowing
delinquent borrowers to remain hidden in shadow inventory, State law in New
York requires every delinquent borrower be noticed. If these numbers were
widely reported, there would be no inventory in the shadows, and we would all
know how bad the problem really is. The Division published preliminary figures
in October 2010 but has never updated these numbers. … Through the end of March
2012, a total of 192,000+ pre-foreclosure notices had been sent to delinquent
owners in NYC. This does not include delinquent investor-owned properties
because the law did not require servicers to send notices to them. There are lots
of 2-3 family homes in the four outer boroughs of NYC. I estimate that there
are roughly 75,000+ delinquent investor-owners. This means there are roughly
265,000 seriously delinquent homeowners in NYC who have not yet been foreclosed.
Why so many? The banks do not foreclose in NYC. As of May 24, foreclosure.com
reported a total of 301 foreclosed properties on the active MLS and 103 in
Brooklyn. Together, these two boroughs have a total of 4.7 million residents. …
Hard as it may be to believe, the situation is even worse on Long Island. With
fewer than 3 million occupants, Nassau and Suffolk Counties showed a total of 175,000
pre-foreclosure notices sent out as of the end of March.
Drought
In U.S. Now Worst Since 1956; Food Prices To Spike, Economy To Suffer
- (www.nwsource.com) The nation's widest drought
in decades is spreading, with more than half of the continental United States
in some stage of drought and most of the rest enduring abnormally dry
conditions. In its monthly drought report, the National Climatic Data Center in
Asheville, N.C., announced that 55 percent of the country was in a moderate to
extreme drought at the end of June. The percentage of affected land is the
largest since December 1956, when 58 percent of the country was covered by
drought, and it rivals even some years in the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s,
although experts note that this year's weather has been milder than that
period, and farming practices have been vastly improved since then.
Are
Millennials the Screwed Generation? - (www.newgeography.com) Today’s youth, both here and
abroad, have been screwed by their parents’ fiscal profligacy and economic
mismanagement. Neil Howe, a leading generational theorist, cites the “greed,
shortsightedness, and blind partisanship” of the boomers, of whom he is one,
for having “brought the global economy to its knees.” How has this generation
been screwed? Let’s count the ways, starting with the economy. No generation
has suffered more from the Great Recession than the young. Median net worth of
people under 35, according to the U.S. Census, fell 37 percent between 2005 and
2010; those over 65 took only a 13 percent hit. The wealth gap today between
younger and older Americans now stands as the widest on record. The median net
worth of households headed by someone 65 or older is $170,494, 42 percent
higher than in 1984, while the median net worth for younger-age households is
$3,662, down 68 percent from a quarter century ago, according to an analysis by
the Pew Research Center.
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