Friday April 3 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

This after-school program has cost taxpayers $1.2 billion, and it doesn't work - (www.businessinsider.com)  After school programs, or out-of-school time programs, burst into view in the late 1990s. The federal government—flush with budget surpluses of hundreds of billions—began spending more on the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) program. The program was created by the 1994 Improving America’s Schools Act and had languished as an obscure provision to promote schools as community resources. Initially, the program received no appropriation, until Congress appropriated $40 million for it in 1998.  Spending exploded after the program pivoted to support after school programs. By 2002, the program’s appropriation was $1 billion. For a federal program to grow from $40 million to $1 billion in a few years happens rarely.

Canada's Biggest Oil Casualty To Date: Calgary's Nexen Shutters Oil Trading Desk - (www.zerohedge.com) Last December, traditionally perma-bullish energy trader Andy Hallshocked the world when he became the first casualty of the oil crash after Phibro, his 113 year old employer then owned by Occidental Petroleum after its sale by Citigroup, would liquidate in the US after it failed to buy a buyer. He wouldn't be the last. Overnight, Nexen Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of China's CNOOC Ltd, reported it too would close its crude oil trading division following a round of job cuts announced last week, four market sources said on Monday.

As Silence Falls on Chicago Trading Pits, a Working-Class Portal Also Closes - (www.nytimes.com) The pits where generations of sweating traders in colorful jackets once bellowed out orders for wheat, corn and cattle contracts, using hand signals and sheer force of personality, are almost empty. The smattering of traders who hung around them on a recent day appeared listless, some glancing at tablet screens, others staring blankly into space. Open-outcry futures trading, a profession that took root here in the mid-19th century, becoming part of the city’s identity and influencing trading systems around the world, is going extinct. Most of the futures pits inside the Chicago Board of Trade building, an Art Deco tower that looms over downtown’s LaSalle Street, are scheduled to close by July after being choked by a decade of technological advancement that has made face-to-face trading largely obsolete. “It’s a computer product now,” said Anthony Crudele, a 37-year-old trader who started as a clerk in Chicago in the 1990s and was an early adopter of new trading technology. He said the planned closing was inevitable. “As far as we’re concerned,” he said, it’s been closed for many years.”

Yemen is in danger of a complete meltdown - (www.businessinsider.com)  Syria’s civil war hasn’t gone away, but to many, it has suddenly become less urgent. The chaos unfolding in Yemen has drawn international energy and attention away from the conflict in Syria, now in its fifth year. Compared to Syria, Yemen’s neighbors see fewer battle lines and much greater proximity, alongside the same Iranian hand. Yemen also gives the impression of being easier, since 10 million people have not been forced from their homes. But the parties in Yemen are not nearly exhausted, and a flood of armed support to Yemen likely means the problem will get much worse before it gets better. And all this will happen as the other wars continue to rage around the region.
 

As Ocwen Downsizes, It Faces Delisting On NYSE - (www.mfi-miami.com)  Last week on the heels of Ocwen’s announcement that it was selling $45 Billion in mortgage servicing rights to JPMorgan Chase, Ocwen announced it was selling $9.6 Billion in servicing rights to Walter Investment Management Corporation, the parent company of Green Tree Loan Servicing.  This is on top of this, Ocwen also sold $9.8 billion in mortgage servicing rights to Nationstar Mortgage Holdings in February. Selling off $64.4 Billion in servicing rights may not be enough to cure Ocwen’s problems. Ocwen announced after the market closed on Monday that it had been threatened with a possible delisting by the New York Stock Exchange for failing to file its 2014 annual financial statement on time. Ocwen also admitted that it didn’t know when it would be filing the statements.  According to the Wall Street Journal, “Ocwen claimed that the principal reason it had missed deadlines to make the disclosures was because it needed more time “to analyze and review” an affiliated company that finances the purchase of mortgage-servicing rights for Ocwen. The company is looking into whether the company, Home Loan Servicing Solutions Ltd., has the “ability to continue to meet its obligations to fund new servicing advances.”

OTHER STORIES:

Oil rises more than 1 percent, boosted by weaker dollar - (www.reuters.com)
Dollar falls on more unwinding of bullish bets after Fed - (www.reuters.com)
Deadlines Near as Greece and Germany Seek a Consensus on Debt - (www.nytimes.com)
Merkel Points Tsipras Toward Deal With Greece’s Creditors - (www.bloomberg.com)
Tsipras, Merkel display goodwill, little sign of debt progress - (www.reuters.com)

French Output Growth Cools as Manufacturing Weakness Persists - (www.bloomberg.com)
Stripped Safeguards Signal Hazards in Europe for Leveraged Loans - (www.bloomberg.com)
Williams Says Fed Rate-Rise Discussion Should Begin Mid-Year - (www.bloomberg.com)
[Pesek] The Unbearable Exuberance of China's Markets - (www.bloomberg.com)