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Las
Vegas: a case study in successful housing market manipulation - (www.ochousingnews.com) Chris and Candace Rodgers
wanted to move to a bigger house in a better neighborhood. With the Las Vegas
housing market recovering—prices still down over 50 percent from the recent
peak—they figured it was the perfect time. Unfortunately, there was nothing to
buy. Demand is up somewhat off the lows of the recession, but it’s nowhere
close to what it was in the early 00s even prior to the housing bubble mania.
Prices are going up because there is no supply on the market. “We looked at a
lot of the existing homes, and some of them were bank owned and were in pretty
bad shape,” said Chris. “By the time you replaced old stuff, put in new carpet
and paint, you’re up to this price, so they might have been bargains for the
base price but not after.” Instead, the Rodgers turned to new construction.
They bought exactly what they wanted from Pardee Homes, a Los Angeles-based
builder with a large footprint in Las Vegas. …
Banks saved, but Europe risks "losing a generation"
- (www.reuters.com) Europe has spent hundreds of
billions of euros rescuing its banks but may have lost an entire
generation of young people in the process, the president of the European
Parliament said. Since the region's debt crisis erupted in Greece in late 2009, the European
Union has created complex rescue mechanisms to prop up distressed countries and
their shaky banking sectors, setting aside a total of 700 billion euros. But
little has been done to tackle the devastating social impact of the crisis,
with more than 26 million people unemployed across the EU, including one in
every two young people in Greece, Spain and parts ofItaly and Portugal. That crippling level of
unemployment has led to protests and outbreaks of violence across southern
Europe, raising the threat of full-scale social breakdown, including rising
crime and anti-immigrant attacks that can further rattle unstable governments.
Nuclear Industry Withers in U.S. as Wind Pummels Prices - (www.bloomberg.com) A glut of
government-subsidized wind power may help accomplish a goal some
environmentalists have sought for decades: kill off U.S. nuclear power plants
while reducing reliance on electricity from burning coal. That’s the assessment
of executives and utility experts after the U.S. wind-energy industry went on a
$25 billion growth binge in 2012, racing to qualify for a federal tax credit
that was set to expire at year’s end. The surge added a record 13,124 megawatts
of wind turbines to the nation’s power grid, up 28 percent from 2011. The new
wind farms increased financial pressure on traditional generators such as Dominion Resources (D) Inc. and Exelon Corp. (EXC) in their operating
regions. That’s because wind energy undercut power prices already driven to
10-year-lows by an abundance of natural gas.
Italy may delay stability plan due to politics - source - (www.reuters.com) Italy may miss an end-of-April
deadline to present a annual programme of reforms and fiscal consolidation to
European authorities if it cannot form a government in time to sign off on its
plans, an Italian diplomat said on Monday. Italian elections on February 24-25
produced an inconclusive result that left no party able to form a government,
unsettling investors and reigniting concerns over the economic outlook for the euro zone.
The
Coming Housing Collapse: The Fed, Instead Of Lehman, Owns The Mortgage Market -
(www.forbes.com) The Fed Chairman’s demeanor
froze for a second, after which he continued “it’s acquiring securities in
order to reduce interest rates and ease financial conditions in the economy,”
tacitly accepting the “money printing” comment. Precisely those purchases of
assets to further ease monetary policy are cooking a bigger financial crash
than in 2008, Peter Schiff of Euro Pacific Capital argues, and that collapse
will start with the housing and bond markets. Paradoxically, the housing market is firing on all cylinders,
with homebuilders like KB Home and Lennar trading close to their 52-week
highs. This is irrational exuberance, according to Schiff, as the market
is fully subsidized by the Fed. “The U.S. government is guaranteeing all
mortgages, and then buying them up,” explained Schiff, “it’s an artificial
market, but the Fed, rather than Lehman Brothers, owns it.” Schiff incredibly
agrees with what has become a mainstream opinion: the Fed is behind this rally,
both in stocks and bonds, and even in real estate markets. Yet Schiff
differs in that, while most believe the Fed-induced rally has “training wheels”
that can later come off, the Fed’s support “are the only wheels” keeping the
market going, and removing them will spark a crash.
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