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a bidding war, realtor get office staff to pose as buyers - (www.theglobeandmail.com) Manager at Vancouver real estate firm resigns after employees posed as
house-hunters. A “senior manager” has resigned from the real estate marketing
firm from which two employees posed as prospective buyers for televised
newscasts. MAC Marketing Solutions president Cameron McNeill said in an
e-mailed statement he has accepted the resignation of the senior manager
following a number of staff interviews. However, he would not disclose the
manager’s identity or what role the manager played in the ruse. “What I can say
is that I am dealing with this internally and I am confident that this was an
isolated incident,” he said. The newscasts, which aired on Feb. 9, were on the
supposed spike in home sales around the Lunar New Year. The two employees posed
as house-hunting sisters at a downtown condo development – being marketed by
MAC – and told cameras their parents would be visiting from China to help them
purchase a condo.
JPMorgan Expects Headcount to Fall by About 4,000 This Year
- (www.bloomberg.com) JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM),
the biggest U.S. bank, plans to reduce
headcount by as many as 19,000 people in its mortgage and community banking
businesses through 2014 as Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon cuts expenses. The
lender, employing about 259,000 people at the end of December, will cut 13,000
to 15,000 jobs in its mortgage unit and 3,000 to 4,000 in community banking
excluding home lending through 2014, the company said today in presentations
on its website. Firmwide headcount will shrink by about 4,000 people this year,
mainly through attrition, while some people are redeployed to other areas, said Kristin Lemkau, a spokeswoman.
Italy Renews Market Concerns as Voters Reject Monti - (www.bloomberg.com) Italy’s inconclusive election triggered renewed market
convulsions over Europe’s debt crisis as
recession-scarred voters repudiated budget rigor and established former
comedian Beppe Grillo as a political force. In the four-way race, pre-election
favorite Pier Luigi Bersani won the lower house by less than a half a point.
Silvio Berlusconi, the former premier fighting a tax-fraud conviction and
charges of paying a minor for sex, called for a recount and won a blocking
minority in the Senate. In its first national contest, Grillo’s group got more
than 25 percent support. “The political situation across Europe is effectively
a race between austerity and reforms on the one hand and the rise of populist
movements on the other,” said Alberto Gallo, head of European macro credit
research at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc. “Austerity is painful, and if
reforms are not implemented in time, you run the risk of social unrest and
populism. It hasn’t happened so far in Greece, it hasn’t happened in Portugal or Spain, but we are
very close in Italy.”
Merkel’s Euro Doctrine Threatened as Italians Reject Austerity
- (www.bloomberg.com) Silvio Berlusconi may have the last laugh -- at Europe’s expense. Once the subject of German Chancellor
Angela Merkel’s barely suppressed titters, the former Italian leader roared
back from the political wasteland in yesterday’s election, blocking the
formation of a new Italian government and fracturing the euro zone’s brittle
newfound stability. The billionaire’s resurrection coupled with the emergence
of comedian-turned-politician Beppe Grillo risked igniting anti- austerity
forces in southern Europe’s depressed economies, overturning the German-led
crisis-management formula and renewing doubts about popular backing for the
euro. “This is a catastrophe for Europe,” Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean
Asselborn said in a telephone interview. “There are a lot of people in Italy,
in Europe, who think that Europe is to blame for Italy’s problems. Second, I have very serious doubts that
populism would make it possible to find a solution to create stability in
Italy.”
Fed Faces Explaining Billion-Dollar Losses in Stress of QE3
Exit - (www.bloomberg.com) Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s efforts to rescue the economy
could result in more than a half trillion dollars of paper losses on the
central bank’s books if interest rates rise abruptly from recent levels. That
sum is the difference between the value of securities in the Fed’s portfolio on
Dec. 31 and what they may fetch in three years, according to data compiled by
MSCI Inc. of New York for Bloomberg News. MSCI applied scenarios devised by the
Fed itself for stress-testing the nation’s 19 largest banks. MSCI sees the
market value of Fed holdings shrinking by $547 billion over three years under
an adverse scenario that includes an economic contraction and rising inflation.
MSCI puts the Fed’s mark-to-market loss at less than half that, or $216
billion, if the economy performs in line with consensus forecasts of gradually
rising growth, inflation and interest rates.
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