TOP STORIES:
Portugal's
BES steadies nerves, losses still a puzzle - (www.reuters.com) Portugal's government and central bank assured
investors on Friday that the southern European country's financial system was
sound, aiming to quell worry about the spillover effects of trouble at the
Espirito Santo business empire. "It is important that Portuguese and foreign
investors... remain calm about the bank and our financial and banking
system," Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho told reporters in
Lisbon. Recent disclosures of financial irregularities at a web of family-held
holding companies behind Portugal's largest listed bank, Banco Espirito Santo (BES.LS), have raised questions about
potentially destabilizing losses at the bank and other companies in the
family's orbit. That worry sparked a rout in global markets on Thursday,
pushing up
Puerto
Rico Electric Agency Used Reserves for July 1 Payment - (www.bloomberg.com)
The Puerto
Rico Electric Power Authority, which supplies most of the
island’s electricity, used reserve funds to pay investors July 1, according to
a Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board filing. The utility, known as Prepa,
paid bondholders $417.6 million on maturing bonds and interest, according to a
statement from the Government Development Bank, which manages the
commonwealth’s finances. The provider used about $41.6 million from reserves
for that payment, according to a notice today on MSRB’s Electronic Municipal
Market Access website, known as EMMA. Investors were doubting Prepa’s ability
to make the July 1 payment after it took $100 million from its capital fund in
May to purchase fuel. The utility must repay $671 million of bank lines of
credit by mid-August and doesn’t have the cash to pay the full amount, Judith
Waite, a Standard & Poor’s analyst, wrote
in a report.
Germany
Instructs Its Companies To Limit Cooperation, Procurement Orders With The US
- (www.zerohedge.com) Congratulations America: after severing ties
with Russia, crushing cordial relations with China (leading to this stunning announcement by China's president),
alienating France (which is now openly calling for an end to the petrodollar), the Obama
administration - following not one, not two, but three spying scandals in just the past
year - has managed to sour relations with Germany to a point where one wonders
just who is a remaining US ally in Europe these days. According to Bloomberg,
the German chancellor’s office has issued instructions to national
intelligence services to limit cooperation with U.S. following alleged U.S.
spying case, Bild reports without saying where it got information.
Germany
Expels U.S. Intelligence Envoy Amid Spying Allegations - (www.bloomberg.com) German Chancellor Angela
Merkel’s government expelled the top U.S. intelligence official in
Berlin over allegations of espionage, escalating a conflict that one of her
aides said has caused “grave” political harm. The U.S. embassy official was
asked to leave Germany after the Federal Prosecutor began investigating spying
practices, according to the statement from Merkel’s Chancellery today. “The
government takes these activities very seriously,” Steffen Seibert, Merkel’s
press secretary, said in the statement. A trustful relationship with the U.S.
remains “indispensable” to Germany, “but for that, mutual trust and openness
are necessary,” he said.
He's
the Top U.S. Mortgage Salesman. His Daughter Isn't Buying It - (www.bloomberg.com) David Stevens, chief executive officer of the
Mortgage Bankers Association, has spent his career lauding the merits of
homeownership. One person still isn’t buying it: his daughter. Sara Stevens, 27, knows interest rates are
low, rents are high and owning a home can build wealth. She also had a
front-row seat to the worst real-estate slump since the Great Depression. “The
world has changed,” she said. Six years since the collapse of Lehman Brothers
triggered a financial meltdown, some young adults are more risk averse and view
the potential upsides of status and wealth more skeptically than before the
crisis, altering the homeownership calculation. It’s more than the weight of
student loans, an iffy job market and tight credit -- even those who can buy
are hesitant.
Fed's
George says rate hike possible this year - Dow Jones - (www.reuters.com) Certain economic formulas are pointing to a
Federal Reserve interest rate hike as early as this year, a Fed official said
on Thursday, according to Dow Jones. "As I look at some of the policy
prescriptions that the Federal Reserve relies on, looking at formulas that help
guide you on when it's time to change, many of those are already pointing to
lifting off of zero as early as even this year or next year," Kansas City
Federal Reserve President Esther George said, according to Dow Jones.
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