KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Monday September 15 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

Argentina Set for Second National Strike as Economic Woes Deepen - (www.bloomberg.com) Argentina is bracing for a day of road blocks and disruption as labor unions stage a second national strike in less than five months while July’s bond default threatens to fuel inflation and undermine growth. Truckers, train conductors, port workers and waiters were set to walk off their jobs today in a 24-hour strike to demand higher wages and in protest at dismissals. Some state employees started protests yesterday, picketing the main entrances to Buenos Aires and marching through the center of the city. “There’s a great desire to take part and show the government that people are fed up, tired and seeking answers to these demands that haven’t been met,” Hugo Moyano, secretary general of the General Workers Confederation and a former government ally, told reporters yesterday.

Public Pensions Cannot Stop Chasing Performance - (www.businessweek.com) Two basic principles of investing hold up remarkably well: Past results really don’t predict future performance, and high fees eat away at your returns. Smart investors don’t chase performance (as much as they can help themselves) and keep costs to a minimum. Unfortunately for taxpayers, the experts who run public pension funds aren’t following these rules. What’s more, they have little incentive to start. First, the good news: Public pensions in California, Ohio, and New Jersey have been reducing their investments in hedge funds, noting high fees and poor performance, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Los Angeles Fire and Police fund invested $500 million in a hedge fund that returned less than 2 percent over the last seven years; the fund had comprised just 4 percent of Fire & Police’s portfolio but 17 percent of investment fees paid. The pension plans reconsidering these high-fee, low-performance investments include those with allocations to hedge funds ranging from 1.6 percent to 15 percent of assets, according to the Journal. What they share, though, is dismal returns: The average hedge fund return for public pensions was 3.6 percent for the three years ended March 31, a period when returns from stocks were up more than 10 percent.

China's housing plunge sparks clashes - (www.marketwatch.com) The sharp drop in China’s housing prices has led to an outburst of anger among property owners, leading to violent clashes in some cases, according to local media reports Tuesday. In one case, scores of property owners surrounded a Shanghai sales office of Greentown China Holdings Ltd. to protest the developer’s 25% cut to prices within a five-day period, according to a report on the NetEase news portal site 163.com. Protesters held banners with slogans such as “You cheated us!” and “300,000 yuan [$48,750] worth of assets evaporate within five days — years of work in vain!” according to photographs of the demonstration posted on the site.

Chicago school bans homemade lunches, the latest in national food fight - (news.yahoo.com) Students who attend Chicago's Little Village Academy public school get nothing but nutritional tough love during their lunch period each day. The students can either eat the cafeteria food--or go hungry. Only students with allergies are allowed to bring a homemade lunch to school, the Chicago Tribune reports. "Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school," principal Elsa Carmona told the paper of the years-old policy. "It's about ... the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke." But students said they would rather bring their own lunch to school in the time-honored tradition of the brown paper bag. "They're afraid that we'll all bring in greasy food instead of healthy food and it won't be as good as what they give us at school," student Yesenia Gutierrez told the paper. "It's really lame." hundreds of comments so far. One commenter, who says her children attend a different Chicago public school, writes, "I can accept if they want to ban soda, but to tell me I can't send a lunch with my child. ARE YOU KIDDING ME????

Hutchin Hill, Citadel See Assets Jump as Pensions Call - (www.bloomberg.com) Neil Chriss is hitting his stride. The math doctorate turned hedge-fund manager founded Hutchin Hill Capital LP more than six years ago and built it to cater to large investors. After posting annualized returns of 12 percent, about six times the average of his peers, he finds himself in the sweet spot for fundraising. Hutchin Hill’s multistrategy approach is the most popular hedge fund style this year, helping the New York-based firm double assets by attracting $1.2 billion. Chriss, 47, is one of the prime beneficiaries as investors are on track to hand over the most cash to hedge funds since 2007, driven by a search for steady returns and protection from market declines. The biggest firms, such as Citadel LLC, Och-Ziff(OZM:US) Capital Management Group LLC and Millennium Management LLC are bringing in the biggest chunks of money, yet a select group of smaller firms like Hutchin Hill have collected more than $1 billion each.

OTHER STORIES:

Are we in a bull market or a bear market? - (www.millersmoney.com)