KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Tuesday February 17 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

'The bailout failed' - (www.businessinsider.com) Greece's new leftist prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, said on Sunday he would not accept an extension to Greece's current bailout, setting up a clash with EU leaders - who want him to do just that - at a summit on Thursday. Tsipras also pledged his government would heal the "wounds" of austerity, sticking to campaign pledges of giving free food and electricity to those who had suffered, and reinstating civil servants who had been fired as part of bailout austerity conditions. In his first major speech to parliament as premier, the prime minister said he was still optimistic he could reach agreement with Greece's EU partners on a new debt pact and transitional agreement. "The bailout failed," he said. "The new government is not justified in asking for an extension ... because it cannot ask for an extension of mistakes." Tsipras's speech will have been closely watched by European Union leaders who to date have shown scant willingness to meet Tsipras's demands, fearing a wholesale backtracking on the fiscal and economic reforms international lenders have demanded in exchange for some 240 billion euros worth of assistance.

Stream of Foreign Wealth Flows to Elite New York Real Estate - (www.nytimes.com) On the 74th floor of the Time Warner Center, Condominium 74B was purchased in 2010 for $15.65 million by a secretive entity called 25CC ST74B L.L.C. It traces to the family of Vitaly Malkin, a former Russian senator and banker who was barred from entering Canada because of suspected connections to organized crime. Last fall, another shell company bought a condo down the hall for $21.4 million from a Greek businessman named Dimitrios Contominas, who was arrested a year ago as part of a corruption sweep in Greece. A few floors down are three condos owned by another shell company, Columbus Skyline L.L.C., which belongs to the family of a Chinese businessman and contractor named Wang Wenliang. His construction company was found housing workers in New Jersey in hazardous, unsanitary conditions. Behind the dark glass towers of the Time Warner Center looming over Central Park, a majority of owners have taken steps to keep their identities hidden, registering condos in trusts, limited liability companies or other entities that shield their names. By piercing the secrecy of more than 200 shell companies, The New York Times documented a decade of ownership in this iconic Manhattan way station for global money transforming the city’s real estate market.

What you need to know about the Swiss bank leak - (www.businessinsider.com) A group of journalistic institutions, including the Guardian, Le Monde, the BBC, and the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists, just published a huge story on global tax evasion through private Swiss bank accounts based on leaked documents from HSBC's Swiss subsidiary, HSBC Private Bank. It's hard proof that the world's elite keep a lot of money away from the prying eyes of their respective countries' tax collectors by keeping private accounts in Switzerland, which the country's bankers are legally bound to keep quiet about. There are about 30,000 documents from the years 2005-2007, with assets totalling about $120 billion. These aren't new documents, they were leaked to the French government in 2010 and shared with various governments around the world. The US Department of Justice fined HSBC $1.92 billion — a record, at the time — back in 2012 after receiving the documents. Matt Taibbi wrote a long piece in Rolling Stone about it in 2013.

Oil price fall exacerbated by hedging, energy firms' debt: BIS - (www.reuters.com) Oil’s dramatic price fall since mid-2014 cannot be explained by changes in production and consumption alone, with hedging and energy firms' high debt levels also playing a part, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said on Saturday. The BIS compared oil's recent fall, which saw prices collapse to below $50 a barrel from levels of above $100, with declines in 1996 and 2006 and concluded that unlike on previous occasions, this time oil production has been close to expectations and consumption was only slightly below forecasts. “The steepness of the price decline and very large day-to-day price changes are reminiscent of a financial asset,” said the organization, representing central banks around the world. While the recent OPEC decision not to cut production “has been key to the fall”, other factors could have exacerbated it, the BIS said. These included increased indebtedness in the oil sector in recent years. The Basel-based organization said this greater debt burden may have had an influence on the oil market itself. “Against this background of high debt, a fall in the price of oil weakens the balance sheets of producers and tightens credit conditions, potentially exacerbating the price drop as a result of sales of oil assets,” it said.

Europe Fractures: France Pivots To Putin, Cyprus Offers Moscow Military Base, Germany-US Splinter On Ukraine - (www.zerohedge.com) Following yesterday's summary of the utter farce that the Minsk Summit/Ukraine "peace" deal talks have become, the various parties involved appear to be fracturing even faster today. The headlines are coming thick and fast but most prescient appears to be: Despite John Kerry's denial of any split between Germany and US over arms deliveries to Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Steinmeier slammed Washington's strategy for being "not just risky but counterproductive." But perhaps most significantly is France's continued apparent pivot towards Russia... Following Francois Hollande's calls for greater autonomy for Eastern Ukraine, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has come out in apparent support of Russia (and specifically against the US), "we are part of a common civilization with Russia,” adding, "the interests of the Americans with the Russians are not the interests of Europe and Russia." Even NATO appears to have given up hope of peace as Stoltenberg's statements show little optimism and the decision by Cyprus to allow Russia to use its soil for military facilities suggests all is not at all well in the European 'union'. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier doubled down on Germany's rejection of weapons deliveries to Ukraine in a speech here Sunday...

OTHER STORIES:

Greek finance minister: The euro will collapse if Greece exits - (www.businessinsider.com)

Greece has exposed the economic Achilles heel - (www.businessinsider.com)

Greece has spent 90 of the past 192 years in financial crisis - (www.businessinsider.com)