KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Wednesday April 22 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

Flash Move Haunts Bond Traders Heeding Dimon’s Warning of Crisis - (www.bloomberg.com) Six months after an unexplained flash rally in Treasuries sent markets reeling, bond investors are bracing for it to happen again. Prudential Investment Management is trading more futures because they’re both liquid and anonymous. State Street Corp. is making smaller bets. And Pioneer Investments is looking for returns in higher-quality securities that are easier to sell. On Oct. 15, benchmark Treasury yields swung the most relative to overall yields since at least 2000, scarring debt investors who say they’re still trying to figure out why it happened. JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief Jamie Dimon called the move a “warning shot” last week, blaming it on central-bank hoarding of bonds along with regulations that have led dealers to retreat from making markets. Others say the rise of electronic trading is at fault.

Greece casts shadow as ECB money printing buoys euro zone - (www.reuters.com) European Central Bank policymakers gathering on Wednesday will examine possible further emergency funding for Greece's banks as they take stock of a wider economic picture showing early signs of improvement. With falling prices in the euro zone beginning to stabilize, ECB President Mario Draghi will be able to claim an early success for the quantitative easing scheme -- money printing to buy chiefly government bonds -- launched by the bank in March. The ECB's borrowing rates are all but certain to be held at record lows, but continued wrangling between Greece and the euro zone over reforms and aid is casting a cloud of uncertainty over the 19-country currency bloc. Athens has until the middle of this week to improve a package of reforms required for the release of euro zone loans that it needs to stay afloat. Were Greece ultimately to tumble out of the euro, it would deal a blow to the credibility of the currency union. Athens was first bailed out almost five years ago by the euro zone with another aid deal in 2012 but its future remains uncertain.

Russia opens way to missile deliveries to Iran, starts oil-for-goods swap - (www.reuters.com) Russia paved the way on Monday for missile system deliveries to Iran and started an oil-for-goods swap, signaling that Moscow may have a head-start in the race to benefit from an eventual lifting of sanctions on Tehran. The moves come after world powers, including Russia, reached an interim deal with Iran this month on curbing its nuclear program. The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin signed a decree ending a self-imposed ban on delivering the S-300 anti-missile rocket system to Iran, removing a major irritant between the two after Moscow canceled a corresponding contract in 2010 under pressure from the West. A senior government official said separately that Russia has started supplying grain, equipment and construction materials to Iran in exchange for crude oil under a barter deal. Sources told Reuters more than a year ago that a deal worth up to $20 billion was being discussed and would involve Russia buying up to 500,000 barrels of Iranian oil a day. Officials from the two countries have issued contradictory statements since then on whether a deal has been signed, but Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Monday one was already being implemented.

Court mulls forcing reveal of details of secret wireless kill switch - (www.nakedsecurity.com) US courts are once again asking the government why it won't release details of its wireless service kill switch. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has been trying to wrangle documents concerning the kill switch - officially known asStandard Operating Procedure 303 - from the tight grip of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) since filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in July 2012. DHS created SOP 303 in the mid-2000s, and the protocol was approved in March 2006. As EPIC describes it, SOP 303 is an "Emergency Wireless Protocol" that codifies a "unified voluntary process for the orderly shut-down and restoration of wireless services during critical emergencies such as the threat of radio-activated improvised explosive devices." The details have never been revealed to the public, but a federal appeals court has now asked the US government why it should be allowed to keep secret its plan to silence phone service during "critical emergencies".

Mighty Rio Grande Now a Trickle Under Siege - (www.nytimes.com) On maps, the mighty Rio Grande meanders 1,900 miles, from southern Colorado’s San Juan Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico. But on the ground, farms and cities drink all but a trickle before it reaches the canal that irrigates Bobby Skov’s farm outside El Paso, hundreds of miles from the gulf. Now, shriveled by the historic drought that has consumed California and most of the Southwest, that trickle has become a moist breath. “It’s been progressively worse” since the early 2000s, Mr. Skov said during a pickup-truck tour of his spread last week, but he said his farm would muddle through — if the trend did not continue. “The jury’s out on that,” he said. Drought’s grip on California grabs all the headlines. But from Texas to Arizona to Colorado, the entire West is under siege by changing weather patterns that have shrunk snowpacks, raised temperatures, spurred evaporation and reduced reservoirs to record lows.

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