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Clueless
Democratic State Rep Wants To Muzzle Your Free Speech & Access To
Government - (www.mfi-miami.com)
Michigan State Representative
Ellen Cogen Lipton has introduced a bill in the Michigan Legislature that
narrowly defines the term "journalist" in FOIA requests for public
documents to anyone who works for a "newspaper or FCC-licensed radio or TV
station" This would not only bar bloggers or writers for hyper-local sites
like Ferndale115.com located in Lipton's district or specialty sites like
MFI-Miami from obtaining public documents, it would even bar online wire
services like the Associated Press and Reuters from obtaining records. Local
media sites like Deadline Detroit, MLive and international sites like the
Huffington Post and other recognized news websites would be barred as well.
Lehman
Brothers Abyss Had Paulson Seeking Prayer Amid Crisis - (www.bloomberg.com) People weren’t taking Dick
Fuld’s calls the weekend before Sept. 15, because Dick had been in
denial for a long time. As the chief executive officer of Lehman Brothers, he
had asked the New York Fed and the Treasury weeks earlier to put capital into a
pool of nonperforming illiquid mortgages that he wanted to put in a subsidiary
he called SpinCo and spin off. We had explained that we had no authority to do
that. He thought somehow there was something the government could do to help.
How could it be that no one would want to buy his company? He just couldn’t
believe it. I was one of the few people speaking with him, and I told him what
was happening: We couldn’t find a buyer, and without one, the government was
powerless to save Lehman. He was devastated.
Indonesian central bank
surprises market with rate hike - (www.cnbc.com)
Bank Indonesia raised its
benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points to 7.25 percent on Thursday. The
move comes as a surprise to market participants who widely expected the central
bank to keep rates on hold after it raised the benchmark rate by 50 basis points
in late August in an attempt to prop up the beleaguered rupiah. The bank also
raised the overnight deposit facility rate, known as the FASBI, by 25 basis
point to 5.5 percent. Thursday's rate hike is the fourth for the Indonesian
central bank this year; rates stood at 5.75 percent in January, 150 basis
points below their current level. The central bank's hawkish stance is largely
aimed at curbing weakness in the rupiah, which has fallen over 16 percent
against the U.S. dollar year to date, as well as the country's troubling
current account deficit.
[Bloomberg]
Italian Yields Rise on Political Instability Concerns - (www.bloomberg.com) Italian borrowing costs rose to the highest in
almost a year today at a sale of three, five and 15-year debt as investor
concern about the country’s political stability persists. Italy sold 4 billion
euros ($5.3 billion) of three-year notes maturing in November 2016 at 2.72
percent, up from 2.33 percent when Italy sold similar maturing debt on July 11.
That’s the highest yield since October 2012. Investors bid 1.52 times the
amount of the notes sold, up from 1.34 at the previous sale. “Our borrowing
costs, instead of decreasing, continue to suffer because of political
instability,” Prime Minister Enrico Letta said yesterday at the Senate in Rome.
“It’s a significant cost, every year we pay 85 billion euros.” Earlier this
week, Italian 10-year bond yields rose above those of Spain for
the first time in 18 months on concern that former Premier Silvio
Berlusconi will pull his party out of the current coalition
government if he’s expelled from the Senate following a tax fraud conviction. A
Senate panel is scheduled to resume discussions of the matter today.
HUD
Revises the Rules Related to Reverse Mortgages - (mandelman.ml-implode.com) It was last April, right after the release of
President Obama’s 2014 budget, when Assistant Housing Secretary Carol Galante was quoted as saying… “The President’s
budget projects that FHA may need a $943 million credit from the U.S. Treasury
in October to make certain sufficient reserves are on hand today to cover
projected losses over the next 30-years. This is not a certainty and FHA
is taking every appropriate action to reduce the likelihood that such
assistance is needed.” So, what’s going on here? Why is the Federal
Housing Administration (“FHA”) projected to lose so much money on its insuring
of reverse mortgages? The overall answer is
simple… it’s just another outcome of the severe decline in U.S. home values,
which began during the summer of 2006. You see, one of the key benefits
of HUD’s Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (“HECM”), is that they are
“non-recourse” loans. That means that at the end of the reverse mortgage, which occurs either upon
the death of the last surviving spouse or the sale of the home, if the balance
owed exceeds the home’s value… then the borrower (or borrower’s heirs) can just
walk away and owe nothing… with the balance paid by FHA, who is the insurer of
these loans. To cover this risk of loss at the end of a reverse mortgage, FHA
receives an initial premium and an annual mortgage insurance premium, which
borrowers pay at the rate of 1.25 percent of the outstanding loan balance.
Companies
Embrace Low Interest Rates by Selling Bonds to Raise Billions - (www.nytimes.com)
Analysis: Five years after Lehman, risk moves into the shadows - (www.reuters.com)
Analysis: Five years after Lehman, risk moves into the shadows - (www.reuters.com)
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