Monday, October 8, 2012

Tuesday October 9 Housing and Economic stories



TOP STORIES:

Tables turn on Spain with pressure to seek bailout - (www.reuters.com) Spain once pushed hard for Ireland and Portugal to ask for bailouts from their partners in the euro because it was keen to shelter itself from an accelerating sovereign debt crisis. Now the tables are turned and Madrid is holding back from applying for help, not least because the Spanish government knows all too well what befell its Portuguese and Irish peers once they did seek help -- voters dumped them. Facing an important regional election on October 21, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is in no rush to yield to nervous pleas, from France, Italy and indeed Ireland, that he request a rescue deal that might dampen investors' concerns about their own debt.

Germany Losing Patience With Spain on Aid, Merkel Ally Says - (www.bloomberg.com) Germany’s governing coalition showed growing exasperation with Spain, as a senior ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel said Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy must stop prevaricating and decide whether Spain needs a full rescue. “He must spell out what the situation is,” Michael Meister, finance spokesman for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, said in an interview in Berlin today. The fact he’s not doing so shows “Rajoy evidently has a communications problem. If he needs help he must say so.” Meister’s comments underscore Europe’s crisis-fighting stalemate amid discord over a banking union, Greece’s ongoing debate on how to meet bailout commitments and foot-dragging by Spain on a possible aid bid. European Union President Herman Van Rompuy warned today against “a tendency of losing the sense of urgency” in fighting the debt crisis three years after it erupted in Greece.

More Bank Layoffs Coming: 'Bad as I've Seen It': Whitney - (www.cnbc.com)  Banks have been behind the curve in terms of downsizing, with their employees paying for it now through a rash of furloughs, analyst Meredith Whitney told CNBC. The industry has seen a recent spate of big layoff announcements, including 16,000 from Bank of America alone. Though banks already have jettisoned about half a million workers since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008, Whitney said more are to come as the shrinking big institutions struggle to compete.

Hillary Clinton: Raise Taxes on the Rich Everywhere - (www.cnbc.com) It's no secret that the foreign policy of the United States tends to reflect the world views of the occupant of the White House. Sure, there used to be some homage paid to the notion that "politics stops at the water's edge," but that hasn't really been true for generations. Particularly if you are out to improve the world, you are going to wind up exporting your own ideas about world improvement. Free-market types will urge freer markets, even when these take the form of the kind of corrupt privatization that gave rise to Russia's oligarchs. And the Obama administration, well, it thinks the wealthy need to be taxed more — everywhere.

AMERICAN DELAYS SOAR - (www.money.cnn.com)  American Airlines and its pilots union blamed each other Monday for a surge in flight cancellations and delays tied to contract issues at the bankrupt carrier. Flight tracking service FlightStats.com says 103 flights were canceled as of midday, the second highest one-day number of cancellations since problems at the airline began on Sept. 16. That brought the total number of flights canceled to 570, or about 3.5% of its total schedule. Less than half of American's flights have been on time in the past eight days, according to FlightStats. American, which said last week it would reduce its flights by 1-2% to deal with service problem, took issue with the cancellation number. Spokesman Bruce Hicks said many of Monday's grounded flights were scrubbed in advance.






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