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Europeans planted seeds of crisis in Cyprus - (www.nytimes.com) When European finance chiefs explained their harsh terms for rescuing
Cyprus this week, many blamed the tiny Mediterranean nation’s wayward banking
practices for bringing ruin on itself. But the path that led to Cyprus’s
current crisis — big banks bereft of money, a government in disarray and
citizens filled with angry despair — leads back, at least in part, to a fateful
decision made 17 months ago by the same guardians of financial discipline that
now demand that Cyprus shape up. That decision, like the onerous bailout
package for Cyprus announced early Monday, was sealed in Brussels in secretive
emergency sessions in the dead of night in late October 2011. That was when the
European Union, then struggling to contain a debt crisis in Greece, effectively
planted a time bomb that would blow a big hole in Cyprus’s banking system — and
set off a chain reaction of unintended and ever escalating ugly consequences.
'Run for the Hills' Now, I'm Doing It: Jim Rogers - (www.cnbc.com) The EU/IMF
raiding bank accounts in Cyprus to bail out the country's financial system sets
a dangerous precedent and investors should "run for the hills" said
investor Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, on "Squawk on the Street" Thursday. Rogers said
that with Cyprus, politicians are saying that this is a special case and urging
people not to worry, but that is exactly why investors should be concerned. "What
more do you need to know? Please, you better hurry, you better run for the
hills. I'm doing it anyway," Rogers said. "I want to make sure that I
don't get trapped. Think of all the poor souls that just thought they had a
simple bank account. Now they find out that they are making a 'contribution' to
the stability of Cyprus. The gall of these politicians." "If you're
going to listen to government, you're going to go bankrupt very quickly,"
he added.
Investors
Pile Into Housing, This Time as Landlords - (finance.yahoo.com) Jeff Pintar
had buyer's remorse as he purchased 12 foreclosed homes in five Southern
California counties on a single day. His regret: that he didn't buy more homes
a year earlier. "Things have turned around faster than anyone
anticipated," said Mr. Pintar, who first began buying properties here four
years ago and now owns or manages 1,700 homes, which he rents out for between
$1,000 and $3,800 a month. Here in Orange County, nearly every home listed for
less than $400,000 "is being pursued by institutional investor
capital," he said. U.S. housing recoveries almost always have been ignited
by rising demand from families and individuals looking for a place to live.
This recovery is different. Investors—including some big Wall Street
players—are leading the way, say industry executives and analysts. Their role
is noteworthy given that flippers and speculators were blamed for helping to
inflate the housing bubble of the past decade.
Cypriots face draconian cash controls to stop run on banks -
(www.telegraph.co.uk) The measures were
designed to prevent a run on the banks after a tumultuous two weeks in which
Cypriots learnt they would lose billions of euros from accounts in an accord
drawn up by the government to secure a €10bn bail-out from international
lenders. After confirming that banks will open for six hours today from midday,
the island’s central bank said that cashing of cheques will be banned and bank
withdrawals limited to €300 a day. A spokesman said that the effectiveness of
the controls would be evaluated on a daily basis, but a leak of the details to
a Greek newspaper, Kathimerini, said that the curbs would stay in place for at
least a week. It also suggested that:
• Cypriots wanting to send money overseas would have to
prove that the transactions met rules laid out by the authorities
REITs Trigger Fed Warning as Kain Tops $100 Billion - (www.businessweek.com) Gary Kain spent 20 years at Freddie Mac managing as much as $800 billion
of bonds before the U.S. took over the company. Since 2009, he’s used his
knowledge of the home-loan market to help turn American Capital Agency
Corp. into the fastest growing mortgage debt investor. American Capital’s
assets grew to $100.5 billion at the end of last year from less than $5 billion
three years earlier, making the Bethesda, Maryland-based real estate investment
trust the largest after Annaly Capital Management Inc., in an industry
that’s drawing attention from investors and the Federal Reserve for its
double-digit yields and rapid expansion. REITs bought more than $100 billion of
government-backed mortgage securities in 2012, the most since at least the
credit crisis, and will purchase another $60 billion in 2013, JPMorgan Chase
& Co. estimated this month. Fed Governor Jeremy Stein pointed to the
expansion of mortgage REITs, which have amassed almost $400 billion of the
debt, during a speech last month on risky behavior in credit markets influenced
by the central bank holding borrowing costs near zero for a fifth year and
investors searching for high-yielding assets.
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