Thursday October 30 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

Living The Grecovery Dream: Two Jobless Parents, Two Kids, One Cat All Living In A Car - (www.zerohedge.com) This is in Greece (not the US), just so there is no confusion!! Squeezed between steering wheel, handbrake, door and dashboard, Katerina reads in her history book, takes notes for school. Next to her, on the driver’s seat, cat Eddy stares right in the camera lens. It may look like a cute snapshot on a sunny day, if it wasn’t for a sad detail: a withering spring stuck in a roll of toilet paper.  A distinctive memory of a former normal life that turned into a grim reality for a family of four. At night the seat where Katerina sits during the day turns into a bed for her sister Fay. Cat Eddy cuddles with Katerina on the back seat. Father Nikos and mother Maria sleep in shifts on the driver’s seat. When the one parent is in the car, the other spends the night on a bench of the park where the car has been parked, on a side road of Irakleio suburb of West Athens. “It’s dangerous when it gets dark,” Maria says “we have to watch out.” With both parents without a job and all savings already spent, the family of four has been living in the uncomfortable environment of an old car for the last two weeks. They were evicted from the home they were renting due to a mountain of outstanding debts to the landlord and utility companies.

McDonald’s Gets More Expensive, Turning Off Some Diners - (www.bloomberg.com) Mike Hiner used to take his grandsons to McDonald’s (MCD)when they wanted a treat. With higher wage and food costs pushing up prices at the Golden Arches, he’s increasingly taking them to IHOP, Denny’s and Chili’s instead. “Those meals are the same price,” said Hiner, a 58-year-old geologist in Houston. “And they’re better.” The loss of bargain-seeking customers like Hiner underscores a growing challenge for McDonald’s Corp.: While the company still offers several items for $1, its menu is quietly getting more expensive. 

Oil Workers Earning $179,000 Expose Norway to Crude Crash - (www.bloomberg.com) Norway, where oil helped create one of the world’s most stable and prosperous societies, is among the most exposed to falling crude prices. Though the blessings of energy wealth have hardly turned to a curse, the industry’s labor costs, which saw the average offshore worker earn $179,000 last year, threaten to curb investment in new projects as oil tumbles. The country has already been coping with 13 years of production declines from its aging North Sea fields and reduced revenue will imperil further developments to replace that oil. Three projects led by state-owned Statoil ASA (STL), which is borrowing and selling assets to cover dividend payments, are at risk of being delayed or shelved, said Jarand Rystad, managing partner of Oslo-based consultant Rystad Energy.

FHFA Said to Plan Steps to Ease Lending to Riskier Buyers - (www.bloomberg.com) Fannie Mae (FNMA),Freddie Mac and their regulator are nearing agreement with mortgage issuers on efforts to boost lending and ease banks’ concerns that they will get stuck with bad loans when borrowers default. The initiatives include a consensus on when defaulted loans are so flawed that lenders must buy them back from the two mortgage-finance companies, a key sticking point in efforts to unlock credit, according to three people familiar with the discussions. The steps are part of a broader push to increase lending after banks had to repurchase billions of dollars of mortgages that were issued during the housing bubble.

A Scary Sentence From IBM ... - (www.businessinsider.com) "We saw a marked slowdown in September in client buying behavior, and our results also point to the unprecedented pace of change in our industry." CEO Ginni Rometty said this in IBM's Q3 earnings announcement, which revealed tumbling revenue and profits at the company. The statement is troubling because as a global provider of business software and services, IBM is a bellwether of business spending. And a boom in business spending is central to the bullish outlooks of many economists and market strategists.

OTHER STORIES:

[Appelbaum] Volatility Unlikely to Alter Fed’s Policy Course  - (www.nytimes.com)

[Hilsenrath] Federal Reserve Holds Steady Amid Market Volatility - (online.wsj.com)
Bullard Says Fed Should Consider Delay in Ending QE - (www.bloomberg.com)
Central bankers may have no quick fix as markets swoon, economy weakens - (www.reuters.com)

U.S. Stocks Advance as Apple Overshadows IBM’s Plunge - (www.bloomberg.com)

Russia Rating Cut by Moody’s on Sluggish Economic Growth - (www.bloomberg.com)

Texas Roughnecks Overrun Best Western as Boom Lives on - (www.bloomberg.com)

Hedge Funds Cut Bullish Bets on Crude as Prices Tumble - (www.bloomberg.com)