Sunday, August 4, 2013

Monday August 5 Housing and Economic stories


Analysis: Top fund managers were blindsided by U.S. bond market carnage - (www.reuters.com) The plunge in the U.S. Treasuries market in the past couple of months may well have been one of the most well-telegraphed reversals in financial market history. Top money managers and investment strategists had warned the U.S. Federal Reserve was likely to soon begin paring back its bond-buying stimulus if U.S. economic data remained robust. Bill Gross, who is known on Wall Street as "the Bond King," said on May 10 he believed "the 30-yr secular bull market in bonds" had likely ended at the end of April. Other leading Wall Street figures told the New York Fed they were concerned about the exposure of mom-and-pop investors in the event of a bonds slump. And yet, when the market saw its swiftest rise in rates in a decade, many of those managers got caught napping, suffering big losses that hurt many institutions and individuals banking on steady returns from the bond market.


[ Das] Japan’s ‘kamikaze’ economics risk Asia debt crisis - (www.marketwatch.com) Abenomics,” the efforts of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to revive Japan’s moribund economy, has important implications outside of Japan. Japan’s recovery would assist the global economy and generate demand for imports to Japan. The world’s third-largest economy would also continue to be a source of capital to the rest of the world. Failure would be equally significant. If economic growth does not pick up, then a combination of budget and trade deficits that require financing would affect the global economy. Japan’s overall current account may move into deficit as soon as 2015. Japan would gradually run down its overseas investments, selling foreign assets and repatriating the capital. The selling pressure would affect prices and rates for a wide range of assets, transmitting financial market volatility.

ECB's Asmussen rejects call for troika to be abolished - (www.reuters.com) European Central Bank policymaker Joerg Asmussen rejected on Wednesday a call from the EU justice commissioner for the "troika" of the European Commission, ECB and International Monetary Fund to be dissolved. Commissioner Viviane Reding, said on Tuesday "the time of the troika is over", arguing that in future Europe must resolve its problems without the IMF. But Asmussen, a member of the ECB's Executive Board, said there was no other immediate option. "There is, in the short-term, no functional alternative to the Troika," he told newspaper Rheinische Post's online edition. "The Troika also works very well together, as one sees on the ground in Athens, for example," he said. "There is no reason, in the middle of the crisis, to change this proven structure."

Investing in Expensive Renovations for Rental Apartments (finance.yahoo.com)  Her clients spent about $1 million on the upgrade. But when their lease is up, they will be leaving most of these improvements behind. In competitive real-estate markets, some luxury renters are making a surprising decision: putting tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into upgrades on their temporary lodgings. They are investing in redos at a time when rental vacancies nationwide are at their lowest since 2001—currently at 4.3%, according to real-estate research firm Reis. Meanwhile, rents have been rising rapidly, up 3.8% over the past year. The result: More renters are deciding to stay put and put their money into improving their current homes. "People don't want to live in something that's not up to their standards. They're willing to make big changes even if they'll only be there a couple of years," says Noble Black, a broker with Corcoran inNew York, where the vacancy rate was just 1.9% in the first quarter of 2013, down from 2.1% a year earlier.

Michigan Needs To Ban Adverse Possession Squatting Like Florida - (www.mfi-miami.com) You may remember this story from last year of Heidi Peterson, who came home from an overseas to find squatter, Missionary Tracey Elaine Blair living in her home.   Blair had stripped radiators, stained glass windows and anything else of value and sold them for cash.  Peterson unable to afford lengthy litigation to evict Blair was forced to live with Blair in the house for 90 days before all the unwanted media attention forced her out. The squatter is gone but the damage she did to the house remains as Heidi and her 20 month old daughter struggle to pick up the pieces and clean up the mess of lead paint, holes in the walls and ceiling, jimmy-rigged plumbing and other home improvement projects that make it appear Tracey Blair thought she was Scotty the Engineer from Star Trek. Heidi Peterson is not the only victim of Missionary Tracey Elaine Blair, a former Write-In Candidate for President of the United States, MFI-Miami has found other homes where Blair has filed bogus mechanic liens and other bogus documents in the historic neighborhood of Boston Edison, where people like Mitt Romney, Barry Gordy, Henry Ford and other prominent Detroiters once lived.





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