Monday February 13 2017 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

Even Trump’s Spectacular Tweets Don’t Help Twitter - (www.wolfstreet.com) Twitter, which has been laying off people and subletting large sections of its office space in San Francisco to other companies, reported today that neither the election campaign – despite the closely followed tweet storms of presidential contenders Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and to a lesser extent Hilary Clinton and other candidates – nor the even more closely followed tweets of President Elect Trump produced visible results on its fourth-quarter revenues and earnings. Twitter now has reported net losses – as accounted for under the required Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) – every year of its existence. Pretty soon it adds up: Over the past four years, those losses amounted to $2.2 billion.

The Senate War Against Border Tax Begins - (www.zerohedge.com) One week ago, we wrote that "Two Wars Are About To Break Out Over Border Adjustment Tax": one of which would include a group of opposing Republican Senators (and their lobbyists), and US retailers and importers, and a second which would be waged between the US and all of its major trading partners.

Today, the war against BAT fired its first salvo, when the previously profiled Senator David Perdue of Georgia, former CEO of discount retailer Dollar General, emerged as the top Republican critic of the House GOP plan to adjust business taxes at the border, threatening the divisive proposal's legislative prospects. Unlike other members of the upper chamber, Perdue has harshly criticized the tax idea in the press and actively tried to sway his colleagues against it.

Mortgage Ratings Blamed for Subprime Crisis Still Flawed, Ex-Insider Says - (www.bloomberg.com) The system for rating mortgage bonds and similar securities is still flawed a decade after loose grades helped trigger a financial crisis, and fixing it may be as simple as making a single rule, a former analyst for S&P said. Howard Esaki, who retired from S&P Global Ratings in 2015, said he believes that for securities like mortgage bonds, issuers should be required to ignore the most lenient grade they receive. If a bank selling a bond seeks ratings from three firms, for example, it should have to use the two that are based on stricter standards, Esaki wrote in a forthcoming paper to be published by the Milken Institute. 

Global automakers blame tax policy, Lunar New Year for China sales drop - (www.reuters.com) China vehicle sales in January fell by the largest margin since 2015 for several global automakers, with General Motors Co (GM.N) and Ford Motor Co (F.N) blaming the roll back of a tax cut on small-engined vehicles and the Lunar New Year holiday. Ford Motor said on Thursday that its sales fell 32 percent year-on-year, while GM said sales dropped 24 percent, making the biggest drop since the two automakers first began reporting data for retail sales of their vehicles in China in the second quarter of 2015. China's central government raised the purchase tax on cars with engines of 1.6 liters or less to 7.5 percent this year from a special rate of 5 percent last year, a policy originally instituted to shore up sales in a weakening economy. It plans to return the rate to 10 percent in 2018.

Exclusive: Tesla pausing factory for Model 3 preparation this month - (www.reuters.com) Tesla Inc said on Wednesday it will shut down production at its California assembly plant for a week this month to prepare for production of its high-volume Model 3 sedan, moving the company closer to meeting its target to start production in July. Tesla said the "brief, planned" pause would allow the company to add capacity to the existing paint shop to prepare it for the Model 3, and other general maintenance. "This will allow Tesla to begin Model 3 production later this year as planned and enable us to start the ramp towards 500,000 vehicles annually in 2018," said a Tesla spokesman. He added that the pause was not expected to have a material impact on first-quarter production or delivery figures, as the company had added production days to compensate.

OTHER STORIES:

Wall Street closes little changed; banks weigh on Dow - (www.reuters.com)
Political jitters lift gold, dent euro and French debt - (www.reuters.com)

Dollar Policy Confusion Keeping Currency Traders Up at Night - (www.bloomberg.com)
Worries Grow Over Euro’s Fate as Debts Smolder in Italy and Greece - (www.nytimes.com)

Trump Promises Airlines New Infrastructure, Less Regulation - (www.bloomberg.com)
Greece optimistic of deal with lenders on reforms, debt, next week - (www.reuters.com)