TOP
STORIES:
Michigan
Tax Board To Investigate City Of Detroit For Overcharging On Property Taxes - (www.mfi-miami.com) Adjustments Could Cost City $35-$40 Million A Year In Ill-Gotten
Property Tax Revenues. One of things that pissed me off when Detroit Cancer
Mom, Kelly Parker and I were battling to keep her home wasn’t the arrogance of Wayne County political
appointees like Assistant Treasurer David Szymanski and his
staff or the foul mouthed ghetto fabulous divas
at the Wayne County Register of Deeds, but the fact that Kelly’s
property tax bills are based on values that appear to have been taken from a
condo development on Fantasy Island rather than in the neighborhoods of Detroit.
I began writing about this in November of 2012 when
all the details of the deal saving Kelly’s house were finalized. As I
have I have pointed out, Kelly’s tax bills were based on the the purchase
price of the house from 2005. Like in Kelly’s case, many of these
homeowners purchased their homes at top dollar before the crash and thanks to
unscrupulous finance people these purchase prices were based on inflated
appraisals. This tax scheme has allowed the City of Detroit and Wayne
County to enforce tax bills based on numbers 500% higher than they should be.
Assuming 90% of Detroit’s property owners were paying their taxes,
MFI-Miami’s calculation indicate Detroit would be losing about $35-$40 million
a year in receivables.
American Dream Eludes With Student Debt Burden: Mortgages -
(www.bloomberg.com) Luke Nichter of Harker
Heights, Texas, said he’s not a renter by choice. The Texas A&M University
history professor’s $125,000 of student debt means he has no hope of getting a
mortgage. Nichter, 35, who’s paying $1,500 a month on loans for degrees from
Bowling Green State University in Ohio, is part of the most debt-laden
generation to emerge from college. Two- thirds of student loans are held by
people under the age of 40, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, blocking
millions of them from taking advantage of the most affordable housing market on record.
The number of people in that age group who own homes fell by 4.6 percent in the
fourth quarter from the third, the biggest drop in records dating to 1982.
“Student debt has a dramatic impact on the ability to buy a house, and to buy
the dishwashers and the lawnmowers and all the other purchases that stem from
that,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist of Mesirow
Financial. “It has a ripple effect throughout the economy.”
I Have Never Seen Anything Like This Crash in Gold - (www.businessinsider.com) The quote of the day belongs to the always
enthusiastic newsletter writer Dennis Gartman. In the latest Gartman
Letter he writes: "We've traded gold for nearly four decades and we've
never… ever… ever… seen anything like what we've witnessed in the past
two trading sessions. Spot gold as we
write is trading $1450/ounce in dollar terms and that is a rally, hard thought
that might seem to believe." On Friday, Gartman wrote that he was long of
gold in Yen terms and that the "technical prospects for gold/U.S. dollars
appears week." At the time he wrote if gold got to $1,555 it could unleash
a "torrent of selling." Today he follows up on that: "Never,
however, did we think that gold would plunge by $100+/ounce, and certainly we
did not believe that gold would fall by $150/ounce as it has thus far. We
thought perhaps that gold might fall $25/ounce… perhaps $35/ounce... but never
would we have imagined it selling down by this sum.
Slovenia Asset-Sale Plan Fails to Ease Debt Squeeze Concern
- (www.bloomberg.com) Slovenia’s plan to sell
shares in state-owned companies failed to ease investor concern that the
country will become the next euro-area nation to need a bailout. Slovenia’s
default risk rose to a six-month high and bond yields hovered near records as
the country prepares to tap markets this week. Prime Minister Alenka Bratusek’s
April 12 announcement of plans to sell stakes in companies, including a bank,
looks like an effort to stall rather than to obtain financing, according to
Milan Smiljanic, head of trading at Perspektiva d.d. “There is skepticism that
they are only buying time and will try to fix debt problems, avoiding
privatization,” Smiljanic said by e-mail from Ljubljana. “There are no bank
bidders at the moment.” Slovenia, the European Union’s fourth-smallest economy,
is trying to avoid becoming the sixth euro-area state to seek a bailout after
international lenders agreed to help Cyprus. The government will sell 500
million euros ($654 million) in 18- month Treasury bills at an auction in two
days as it tries to shore up confidence that it can recapitalize its ailing
banks without seeking outside assistance.
J.C. Penney Draws $850 Million From Credit Facility - (www.bloomberg.com) J.C. Penney Co. (JCP) drew $850
million from its revolving credit facility as new Chief Executive Officer Myron
Ullman hunts for cash in the wake of his predecessor’s failed overhaul. A week
after replacing Ron Johnson as CEO, Ullman is trying
to improve J.C. Penney’s liquidity following the first year in which retailer’s
operations consumed cash in decades. The drawdown on the $1.85 billion credit
line will be used for capital
spending and to replenish inventory as the company opens
renovated home departments next month, the Plano, Texas-based retailer said
today in a statement. J.C. Penney, which today said it is working with advisers
to raise additional capital, is focused on selling debt, said a person familiar
with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.
While raising cash by selling a stake to a private-equity firm is being
considered, it’s not the primary option, the person said.
IRS:
We can read emails without warrant - (www.thehill.com)
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has claimed that agents do not need
warrants to read people's emails, text messages and other private electronic
communications, according to internal agency documents. The American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU), which obtained the
documents through a Freedom of Information Act request, released the
information on Wednesday.
In a 2009 handbook, the IRS said the Fourth
Amendment does not protect emails because Internet users "do not have a
reasonable expectation of privacy in such communications." A 2010
presentation by the IRS Office of General Counsel reiterated the policy.
Stocks Decouple From Bonds as S&P Gain Defies Yield Drop
- (www.bloomberg.com)
Gold’s Rout Deepens as Investors Reduce Holdings on Recovery - (www.bloomberg.com)
Gold’s Rout Deepens as Investors Reduce Holdings on Recovery - (www.bloomberg.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment