Friday June 24 2016 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

Record buybacks fail to lift S&P 500 - (www.cnbc.com) U.S. companies in the S&P 500 bought their own stock at a record pace the 12 months ending in March, new data show, but the buyback tidal wave did little to lift the stock market as the benchmark was actually down about 1 percent during the period. During the March 2015 to March 2016 period, U.S. companies spent a record $589.4 billion in share repurchases, according to figures released Wednesday by S&P Dow Jones Indices. That eclipsed the previous record of $589.1 billion set during the market peak in 2007. In the first quarter, share repurchases totaled $161.4 billion, up 12 percent from the fourth quarter of 2015 and the second highest quarterly buyback total ever.

The European Union: Government By Deception - (www.zerohedge.com) The benefits of the union flow to a select few countries, and to a select few within those countries. And ever fewer are selected as economic policies continue to fail. It is frankly beyond me to see why anyone would want to be part of that. It’s not about Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage or George Osborne, that is just more deception. It’s about being ruled by midgets, as Forsyth puts it...the very structure of the EU self-selects for sociopaths and/or worse.

Ex-Deutsche Bank Trader Admits to Rigging Libor in U.S. - (www.bloomberg.com) A former Deutsche Bank AG trader secretly pleaded guilty in New York to conspiring to manipulate a benchmark interest rate tied to trillions of dollars in securities and loans and prosecutors said he agreed to help U.S. investigators in their probe. Timothy Parietti, who served as a managing director of the bank’s money markets derivatives trading desk in Manhattan from January 2005 to December 2012, admitted on May 26 that he conspired to rig the London interbank offered rate for two years, according to a transcript unsealed Wednesday. The plea was reported earlier by Reuters.

Even if Brexit Vote Wins, there may be No Brexit: Daiwa - (www.wolfstreet.com) Daiwa Capital Markets, the investment banking arm of Daiwa Securities Group in Japan, issued a laundry list today of the biblical catastrophes that a Brexit will cause to the pound sterling, global equity markets, global futures markets, credit spreads…. It would “cause serious economic/market damage,” and “hardest hit, of course, would be UK financial assets.” And it would trigger a recession. So the Leave vote would cause a lot of bloodletting among Daiwa’s constituents and globally. The Leave vote would be to blame. We get that. But it gets more complicated: And while it may be expected that, after the initial knee-jerk response, some of the risk-off sentiment would quickly dissipate in most other markets, the likely economic and political fallout in the UK would affect asset prices there for a considerable period.

Fed Up With The Corruption: Mexico On Brink Of Revolution - (www.zerohedge.com) The Mexican government’s deadly crackdown on a teacher’s union protest has rattled the nation in recent days, as 200,000 doctors on Wednesday joined the ongoing national strike against President Enrique Peña Nieto’s neoliberal reforms. Anti-government sentiment is mounting after police forces opened fire on a teacher protest in Oaxaca on Sunday, killing at least eight.

OTHER STORIES:

Stealth China Stimulus Means Fiscal Gap Over 10%, Economists Say - (www.bloomberg.com)

2 Brexit polls give edge to 'remain' camp - (www.marketwatch.com)
Final Brexit Appeals Made as ‘Leave’ Edges Ahead in Two Polls - (www.bloomberg.com)
Yellen Productivity Concern Shows Slump’s Theory-to-Policy Shift - (www.bloomberg.com)

Stocks Climb With Pound Before Brexit Vote as Italian Bonds Gain - (www.bloomberg.com)
Yuan Extends Declines Versus Peers on Economic Outlook Concern - (www.bloomberg.com)
Brexit Polls and Markets Disagree in Campaign’s Final Hours - (www.bloomberg.com)
EU referendum: Five key moments from the Great Debate - (www.reuters.com)