Monday April 14 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

$1 trillion student loan debt widens US wealth gap - (www.cnbc.com) Every month that Gregory Zbylut pays $1,300 toward his law school loans is another month of not qualifying for a decent mortgage. Every payment toward their student loans is $900 Dr. Nida Degesys and her husband aren't putting in their retirement savings account. They believe they'll eventually climb from debt and begin using their earnings to build assets rather than fill holes. But, like the roughly 37 million others in the U.S. saddled with $1 trillion in student debt, they may never catch up with wealthy peers who began life after college free from the burden. The disparity, experts say, is contributing to the widening of the gap between rich and everyone else in the country.

Brookstone plans bankruptcy filing: Report - (www.cnbc.com) Specialty retailer Brookstone is preparing to file for bankruptcy as early as Sunday with a plan in place to be bought by another specialty retailer, theWall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Spencer Spirit Holdings, which owns the retail chain Spencer's and costume retailer Spirit, has been in discussions with Brookstone for weeks, and both retailers are looking to finalize sale paperwork over the weekend leading up to a bankruptcy filing, the report said. Brookstone could not be contacted by Reuters outside regular U.S. business hours. Brookstone sells products ranging from massage chairs to bathroom slippers and operates more than 300 stores throughout the United States and Puerto Rico.

Exclusive: U.S. to require casinos to vet high rollers' funds - sources - (www.reuters.com) U.S. casinos may soon have to vet where their high rollers' funds come from under a requirement being developed by the U.S. Treasury Department, according to two people familiar with the matter. The move is part of a push to address longstanding regulatory and law enforcement concerns that criminals can use casinos, which have not historically been as closely monitored as banks for compliance with anti-money laundering laws, to convert proceeds of crime into money that appears clean. Under current law, casinos are required to report suspicious activity. A customer who used a large sum of cash to buy chips, gambled briefly, and then asked to cash out with a casino check, for example, would likely get reported to authorities.

'Very painful': World heading for bust 'unlike any other', says Jeremy Grantham - (www.smh.com.au) Mr. Grantham -- the cofounder and chief investment strategist at the $US112 billion ($123 billion) Boston-based fund manager GMO --said he wouldn't invest his clients' money in US stocks for at least the next seven years because of the Fed's ''misguided policies''. Mr Grantham has an impeccable track record, having called both the internet bubble and then the US housing bubble. In November he said he believed the US sharemarket could rise another 30 per cent, although he believed it was overvalued, before crashing again.''...  ''Over the next seven years we think the market will have negative returns. The next bust will be unlike any other because the Fed and other central banks around the world have taken on all this leverage that was out there and put it on their balance sheets. We have never had this before.

Pending home sales fall to lowest level since October 2011 - (www.reuters.com) The number of contracts to buy previously-owned U.S. homes fell in February to the lowest level in more than two years, a sign the housing sector has yet to shake off the impact of higher interest rates and a harsh winter. The National Association of Realtors said on Thursday its pending home sales index, based on contracts signed last month, fell 0.8 percent to 93.9 in February. That was the lowest level since October 2011. Interest rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages have risen about a percentage point since May, while much of the United States has experienced an unusually cold and snowy winter. Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the realtors group, said the drag from bad weather was likely to reverse itself soon.

OTHER STORIES:

In Ukraine Crisis, a Broader Struggle for Influence - (www.nytimes.com)

Fees matter: Red flags in mutual fund investing - (www.cnbc.com)

New crop of US loans getting riskier - (www.ft.com)
Will the fixed-rate mortgage become extinct? - (www.cnbc.com)

Mirage of the ‘new economy’ - (www.marketwatch.com)

Japan's Diet Debates WWII as Nationalism Clouds Abenomics - (www.bloomberg.com)
Obama meets Putin ally with Ukraine still in mind - (www.businessweek.com)
G-7 nations to meet in Brussels instead of Sochi, without Russia - (www.latimes.com)