Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Thursday July 2 Housing and Economic stories


Soros Hedge Fund Charged For Bringing Down Greek Banks - (www.valuewalk.com) George Soros, the hedge fund manager credited with “bringing down the Bank of England,” is at it again, this time in Greece; although it does not seem the scale of the bet was anywhere near as large as Soros' GBP bet. Soros and his Quantum Fund are among 20 Hedge Funds who have waged a short war against Greek banks and Hellenic regulators are now fighting back. Quantum Fund, along with other major names such as Toscafund, Everest Capital and Abbeville Partners, have all received fines in the past three months from the Hellenic Republic Capital Market Commission, the Greek version of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Weekend of Fear in Greece as Monday Brings Salvation or Ruin - (www.bloomberg.com) Dorothea Lambros stood outside an HSBC branch in central Athens on Friday afternoon, an envelope stuffed with cash in one hand and a 38,000 euro ($43,000) cashier’s check in the other. She was a few minutes too late to make her deposit at the London-based bank. She was too scared to take her life-savings back to her Greek bank. She worried it wouldn’t survive the weekend. “I don’t know what happens on Monday,” said Lambros, a 58-year-old government employee. Nobody does. Every shifting deadline, every last-gasp effort has built up to this: a nation that went to sleep on Friday not knowing what Monday will bring. A deal, or more brinkmanship. Shuttered banks and empty cash machines, or a few more days of euros in their pockets and drachmas in their past - - and maybe their future. On a street corner, a performance artist burned what he said were his last euros. Nearby, an Afghan beggar joked about how he should have gone to Sweden instead. A mother grabbed her toddler’s hand as a dozen policemen motorcycled past, heading to a rally outside Parliament. And in his neighborhood restaurant Panagis Vourloumis, a 78 year-old ex-CEO, current investment banker and survivor of coups, dictators and communists, leaned forward and laid his worries on the table.

Calif. to gather data on its Obamacare customers - (www.cnbc.com) Covered California is watching! The Golden State's Obamacare exchange reportedly plans to collect and maintain sensitive insurance company data about its 1.4 million customers to analyze the performance of health plans—and says no customer will be allowed to opt out of the oversight. That level of scrutiny over peoples' drug prescriptions, visits to psychiatrists and gynecologists, and screening tests is raising concerns among privacy experts. But the Covered California insurance marketplace defends the data mining as crucial to making sure insurers and medical provides are doing their jobs correctly under the Affordable Care Act. "There is potential for so much public good, but there is a greater public good in protecting privacy and security," Michelle De Mooy, deputy director for consumer privacy at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, told the Los Angeles Times. "I think asking permission is absolutely integral. It is not the state's data." The Times reported that the state in April signed a five-year contract with Truven Health Analytics to run the database that will store information about customers. Truven Health, which will receive $9.3 million for its work, is set to begin receiving patient data as early as this fall from insurers that sell health plans on the exchange.

Confirmed: WH Lied About Jonathan Gruber’s Role in Developing ObamaCare - (www.cnbc.com)  President Obama’s dismissal of MIT’s Jonathan Gruber as just “some adviser” he barely remembers, rather than a key architect of ObamaCare, has always been one of the flimsiest and most transparent lies told by this profoundly dishonest White House. Everyone knew Gruber was critical to ObamaCare, and when he was caught on tape high-fiving himself for helping to fool what he described as “stupid” American voters with the Affordable Care Act’s web of false promises and ludicrous projections, he was speaking from the Administration’s heart. It’s still newsworthy that the House Oversight Committee has released emails to the Wall Street Journal showing Gruber had a far closer working relationship with the White House than it wanted to admit: The emails show frequent consultations between Mr. Gruber and top Obama administration staffers and advisers in the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services on the Affordable Care Act. They show he informed HHS about interviews with reporters and discussions with lawmakers, and he consulted with HHS about how to publicly describe his role.

For The First Time Ever, Total ECB Claims On Greek Banks Surpass Total Greek Deposits - (www.zerohedge.com)  Net of the latest ELA increase, when adding some €38 billion in collateralized EFSF bonds and other collateral usage, we find that we have not only reached parity but crossed it: as of this moment Greek deposits, which are generously estimated at €120 billion but in reality are lower, are less than the total ECB claims on Greek banks and the Bank of Greece, amounting to €126 billion. And with that the possibility of a Greek bail-in which could amount to up to 100% of total Greek deposits, becomes all too real.




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