Monday May 16 2016 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

Luxury Condo Boom Is Ending in Manhattan - (www.nytimes.com) Demand in Manhattan’s super-high-end condo market has dried up amid global economic jitters, just as the market has been flooded with unprecedented supply. It is a potent recipe for a bear market in a sector that has reshaped the peaks of the Manhattan skyline in recent years. The slowdown appears confined to this rarefied segment of New York’s condo market; demand remains strong and supply more limited for more moderately priced units. But it is a scenario also playing out in other super high-end markets that subsist on billionaires’ spare cash. Prices have fallen, for example, in London’s luxury property market, the high-end art sector and even the classic car market.

Glencore CEO Lists Mining's Mistakes After $1 Trillion Spree - (www.bloomberg.com) Glencore Plc’s billionaire Chief Executive Officer Ivan Glasenberg wants the mining industry to learn from past mistakes after a $1 trillion spending spree left the world awash with metals. Growth for the metals industry should mean cash flows and earnings, not digging up as many tons as possible, Glasenberg said in a presentation on Tuesday. Profit can be improved by accepting lessons from the 12 years when mining companies poured cash into boosting production of everything from copper to iron ore. "Accept that volume growth cannot be an end in itself,” according to Glencore’s slides from the Bank of America Merrill Lynch mining conference in Miami.

Yingli Green Says It Probably Can't Repay Debts Due on Thursday - (www.bloomberg.com) Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd. said it probably can’t repay 1.7 billion yuan ($260 million) of debt that matures on Thursday and that it’s in talks with creditors about refinancing. Liansheng Miao, chairman and founder of the Chinese solar panel maker, said he expects to negotiate a “successful resolution” to Yingli’s woes. He has proposed bringing in new investors and creditors as well as selling assets. Yingli expects its shipments and margins to climb this year and at least 735 million yuan from disposing of land-use rights. Unprofitable since 2011, Yingli has breached its debt covenants for more than a year and has been kept alive by state-backed institutions led by the China Development Bank and Bank of Communications Co. Until 2014, it was the world’s biggest solar panel maker, part of a wave of Chinese companies that flooded the market with low-cost equipment and sent down the price of photovoltaics.

Puerto Rico’s Fiscal Fiasco Is a Harbinger of Mainland Woes - (www.nytimes.com) To tourists, Puerto Rico means piña coladas and sunbathing. To Puerto Ricans, it looks very different: The unemployment rate is over 12 percent, schools and hospitals are closing, and the government debt is so huge it makes Detroit’s look modest. Puerto Rico is now supposed to pay an unfathomable $2 billion to bondholders on July 1 — which it cannot do — even as it accrues pension obligations to its workers and lets public works lapse. A relief bill is expected to be introduced in Congress on Wednesday, but even if it passes and works, the island will not be able to pull out of its financial tailspin for years. But mainland residents should not look smugly at Puerto Rico. Across America, dozens of cities, counties and states may be heading down the same financial rabbit hole. Illinois, New Jersey, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Jacksonville, Fla., to name just a few, are all facing their own slowly unspooling financial disasters.

LendingClub Struggles to Assure Investors as Bond Deals Stall - (www.bloomberg.com)  Questions swirling around LendingClub Corp.’s leadership shakeup this week are threatening to compound a concern already weighing on its stock: Will investors keep snapping up its loans? In interviews, people in the business of buying debts from its platform said Tuesday the company hasn’t adequately explained what prompted the management shuffle, causing some to consider scaling back or delaying purchases. Separately, Jefferies Group and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are holding off, at least temporarily, on buying LendingClub loans they planned to bundle into new securities, people with knowledge of that situation said. LendingClub surprised the market Monday by announcing its founder and chief executive officer, Renaud Laplanche, resigned after an internal review into two incidents: The firm’s staff altered application dates on $3 million of loans before their sale, and the CEO failed to disclose his interests in a fund that LendingClub was considering investing in. 

OTHER STORIES:

China party mouthpiece echoes Soros’ debt fears - (www.ft.com)
Euro-Area's Problem Child Lags As Renzi Chases Italy Growth - (www.bloomberg.com)
Gulf governments set debt record as oil slumps - (www.ft.com)

Ahead of inauguration, China says Taiwan to blame for any crisis - (www.reuters.com)
Politics clouds Greek debt talks - (www.ft.com)
Georgia begins U.S.-led military exercise, angering Russia - (www.reuters.com)