Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Wednesday October 26 20916 Housing and Economic stories


How the Ballooning “Pension Crisis” Will Impact the Economy - (www.wolfstreet.com) In the very simplest terms, the Dallas Police & Fire Pension Fund is going broke, and the police who are counting on it for their retirement are beginning to panic. Police involved are retiring as early as possible and taking cash payouts because they fear that the fund will run dry and future checks may not be forthcoming. The whole thing is beginning to look like a run on a bank and it is just making matters worse. It’s not that the DPFP is all that different from most of the public and private retirement funds; it’s just that what is happening has been noticed and made the headlines. When you consider the number of people involved and the amount of money involved, the Dallas Police Retirement Fund is pretty insignificant considering that retirement funds in places like Chicago and the State of Illinois are probably in as bad a shape. Then there is the big daddy of all retirement funds, the Social Security Trust Fund.

Bankruptcy Bust: How Zombie Companies Are Killing the Oil Rally - (www.nasdaq.com) Their owners may be bankrupt, but the sprawling mines of Wyoming's Powder River Basin are still churning out coal. It is the same story in oil fields along the Gulf Coast and with shale-gas wells in the Rocky Mountains. Energy investors have long hoped that falling prices would solve themselves by driving producers into bankruptcy and stanching the flood of excess supply. It turns out that while bankruptcy filings are up, they have barely impacted fossil-fuel markets. The theory that bankruptcies would help balance the market "was misguided to begin with," says Roy Martin, a research analyst at energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. "And people are starting to come around to that now."

Banks preparing to leave UK over Brexit, says banking body chief executive - (www.reuters.com) Big international banks are preparing to move some of their operations out of Britain in early 2017 due to the uncertainty over the country's future relationship with the European Union, a top banking official said. Writing in the Observer newspaper, Anthony Browne, the chief executive of lobby group the British Bankers' Association, said the public and political debate was "taking us in the wrong direction" and businesses could not wait until the last minute. "Most international banks now have project teams working out which operations they need to move to ensure they can continue serving customers, the date by which this must happen, and how best to do it," said Browne.

Texas hospital reaches settlement with nurse infected with Ebola - (www.bloomberg.com) A nurse who contracted the Ebola virus while treating the first person diagnosed with the deadly disease in the United States has reached a settlement with the Dallas hospital where she was in a team caring for the man, a statement on Monday said. Terms of the deal between the hospital's owner, Texas Health Resources, and nurse Nina Pham, the first person infected with Ebola in the United States, were not disclosed. Pham sued last year, saying that Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital did not do enough to prevent her from contracting the deadly virus and invaded her privacy after she was diagnosed with it.

German Momentum Grows for Curbs on Chinese Overseas Investment - (www.bloomberg.com) Germany is seeking tighter control over foreign investment in European companies, in a sign of a growing protectionist reaction to China’s appetite for overseas acquisitions. Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel on Monday reopened a review of the takeover of Aixtron SE, which supplies equipment to the semiconductor industry, by China’s Grand Chip Investment GmbH. That follows calls by Gabriel, who is also Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy, for European Union measures to give national governments more powers to block or impose conditions on shareholdings of non-EU companies.



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