Monday, October 10, 2016

Tuesday October 11 20916 Housing and Economic stories


A Record $152 Trillion in Global Debt Unnerves IMF Officials – (www.bloomberg.com) Eight years after the financial crisis, the world is suffering from a debt hangover of unprecedented proportions. Gross debt in the non-financial sector has more than doubled in nominal terms since the turn of the century, reaching $152 trillion last year, and it’s still rising, the International Monetary Fund said. The figure includes debt held by governments, non-financial firms and households. Current debt levels now sit at a record 225 percent of world gross domestic product, the IMF said Wednesday in its semi-annual Fiscal Monitor, noting that about two-thirds of the liabilities reside in the private sector. The rest of it is public debt, which has increased to 85 percent of GDP last year from below 70 percent.

Heavy Truck Orders Plunge, Worst September since 2009 - (www.wolfstreet.com) Orders for Class 8 trucks – the rigs crisscrossing the US highway system that keep the nation supplied – plunged 27% in September to 13,791, according toFTR Transportation Intelligence. It was the worst September since 2009. The year 2014 had been great. Nearly 300,000 Class 8 trucks were built. 2015 started out even stronger, and the industry anticipated – in what has become a series of false hopes inspired by QE-nurtured optimism about capital expenditures – that 327,000 heavy trucks would be ordered, which would have been a record. But then the trucking industry began to sputter as the goods producing economy was swooning, and soon trucking companies, beset by overcapacity, began to curtail their purchases from heavy-truck dealers, and dealers with inventories piling up, began to cut orders to manufacturers. As 2015 wore on, orders continued to fall. Despite the strong beginning, orders ended the year down 5.3% from 2014, to 284,000 trucks.

Gundlach Says Deutsche Bank Woes Show Harm of Negative Rates - (www.bloomberg.com) Famed bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach said Deutsche Bank AG’s slumping share price highlights the impact of the negative-interest-rate policy in Europe on the region’s lenders and may help prompt central bankers to reconsider their approach. “You cannot save your faltering economy by killing your financial system and one of the clear poster children for this is Deutsche Bank’s stock price,” Gundlach, 56, said at Grant’s Fall 2016 Investment Conference on Tuesday in New York. “If you keep these negative interest rate policies for a sufficient future period of time you are going to bankrupt these banks.”

Online Lender Prosper to Halt Note Trading, Citing Low Volume - (www.bloomberg.com) The online consumer lender Prosper Marketplace Inc. is shutting its loan trading platform this month, a move that will effectively close a key liquidity outlet for retail investors. "Very few investors" were using the trading system, Prosper said in a letter to stakeholders last week. The firm instead is focusing on making and selling new loans, and on ensuring their quality, according to the letter. San Francisco-based Prosper will begin phasing out the system after Oct. 19, with the shutdown complete on Oct. 27, it said. Without an outlet to trade the notes, investors may be forced to hold the loans through their maturities, typically three to five years. Sarah Cain, a company spokeswoman, said in an e-mail that Prosper will continue to explore alternative outlets. American Banker reported the closure on Monday. Prosper helped pioneer peer-to-peer, or marketplace lending, initially matching borrowers with individuals who want to fund them. The industry boomed in recent years, but waned this year amid concern about rising loan defaults, prompting investors and banks to scrutinize their performance more carefully.

Trudeau Is Forcing All Canadian Provinces To Tax CO2 -- Even If They Don't Want To – (www.dailycaller.com) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will impose a national $10 per metric ton “floor price” on carbon dioxide emissions as part of his country’s plan to fight global warming. Trudeau’s national carbon tax would rise from $10 (Canadian) per metric ton in 2018 ton to $50 per metric ton by 2022, according to The Canadian Press. Trudeau said Canadian provinces can charge more than the federal “floor price” if they want, but would not tolerate provinces that didn’t tax CO2.





No comments: