Tuesday November 5 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

So, 70,000 Furloughed Federal Workers Filed Unemployment Claims - (www.huffingtonpost.com) The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits dropped from a six-month high last week, but remained elevated as California continued to deal with a backlog related to computer problems. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits fell 15,000 to a seasonally adjusted 358,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had expected first-time applications to rise to 335,000 last week. A Labor Department analyst said claims in California, which has experienced technical problems during a conversion to a new computer system, remained at similar levels as in the prior week. There had not been a perceptible increase in filings last week from non-federal workers furloughed because of the just-ended government shutdown, the analyst said.

Wells Fargo cuts 925 more mortgage jobs - (finance.yahoo.com) Wells Fargo & Co , the largest U.S. mortgage lender, is laying off 925 employees in its home loan unit as rising rates cut into demand for refinancing. The San Francisco bank provided a 60-day notice on Wednesday to the workers whose jobs will be eliminated nationwide, a spokesman said in a statement. The bank will continue to evaluate its staff levels in response to market conditions, the spokesman added. Wells Fargo's mortgage unit is in a "transitional period" as higher interest rates in recent months have made refinancing unappealing, chief financial officer Tim Sloan said on an October 11 conference call with analysts. The bank made $80 billion in home loans in the third quarter, down 42 percent from the same quarter last year and the slowest quarter for home loans since the second quarter of 2011.

Shutdown deal averts catastrophe but leaves economy in peril  - (www.washingtonpost.com) The deal reached by Congress on Wednesday to end the government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling averts a financial catastrophe but leaves the weakened U.S. economy facing new threats. The agreement will send about 450,000 federal employees back to work and restart paychecks for the 1.3 million employees who stayed on the job during the shutdown. Getting those salaries back in circulation will help economic growth, particularly in the Washington area. More important, the threat of a default on the national debt has been avoided, along with the recession and financial crisis that may have accompanied a failure to raise the borrowing limit. But while the bipartisan deal ends a period of disruption that has slowed the economy — the shutdown removed more than $20 billion in direct government spending and related economic activity — it creates new perils, setting up other economy-shaking deadlines in just a few months.

Healthy Gen Yers won't buy Obamacare: Wilbur Ross - (www.cnbc.com) A cornerstone of Obamacare is getting enough healthy young people to sign up and pay for insurance that they'll use less frequently than their older and sick counterparts. Thus, making health insurance more affordable for everyone. "I think that's a very doubtful assumption," private equity billionaire Wilbur Ross told CNBC on Friday. "I think the healthy young people are going to wait until they get sick, worry through the six months" until the next open enrollment period and then sign up, he said on "Squawk Box." Obamacare does not exclude people with pre-existing conditions. Starting in 2014, most Americans will be required to have health insurance or face a tax penalty. As has been widely reported, the online marketplaces—particularly Healthcare.gov run by the federal government for 36 states not operating their own exchanges—have been riddled with glitches since they opened for business on Oct. 1. So far, that's led to only a fraction of people who've shopped for coverage to actually enroll.

Vast majority of Obamacare exchange visitors don't enroll - (www.cnbc.com) Obamacare has a 99.6 percent rating—and not in a good way. A paltry 36,000 people managed to enroll in the federal online health-insurance marketplace in its first, software-glitch-ridden week of operation, a grim new analysis found Wednesday. That's "far fewer than one percent of all visitors to HealthCare.gov" for the week ended Oct. 5, wrote Matt Pace, managing director of research firm Millward Brown Digital, on a blog post entitled "A Bleak First Week." In fact, the firm found 99.6 percent of HealthCare.gov's visitors left before enrolling in coverage, a sobering statistic given the Obama administration's goal of signing up 7 million people on new government-run health exchanges by 2014.

OTHER STORIES:

Corporate Japan to hunker down and save gains from tax cut: Reuters poll - (www.reuters.com)

EU Races for Bank-Failure Deal Deadline to Avert Quagmire - (www.bloomberg.com)
China Growth Rebounds After Li Stimulus to Meet Target - (www.bloomberg.com)

Italy's Monti quits party as budget opposition mounts - (www.reuters.com)
Merkel to enter full coalition talks with centre-left SPD - (www.reuters.com)

Fall in Revenue at Goldman Sachs Raises Concerns - (www.nytimes.com)

Barclays, Citigroup, RBS FX Messages Probed by Regulators - (www.bloomberg.com)

Merkel Backs Coalition With German SPD as Hard Bargaining Looms - (www.bloomberg.com)

As Secession Talk Swells in Catalonia, Business Leaders Remain Wary of Costs - (www.nytimes.com)