Thursday June 1 2017 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:            

Goldman Sachs Accused of “Aiding and Abetting” Venezuela’s “Dictatorial Regime”  - (www.wolfstreet.com) It didn’t take long for sparks to fly after the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that, “according to five people familiar with the transaction,” the asset management division of Goldman Sachs had bought Venezuelan bonds with a face value of $2.8 billion from the Central Bank of Venezuela that it had held as part of its international reserves. The sale of the bonds – issued by state-owned oil company Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) in 2014 and due in 2022 – was completed on Thursday, according to the sources. That day and on Friday, the central bank’s international reserves jumped by $749 million, to around $10.86 billion, Reuters reported today. According to Reuters’s sources, including one at Goldman – oh my, all these leaks – the negotiations took place via middlemen in Europe.

"This Market Is Crazy": Hedge Fund Returns Hundreds Of Millions To Clients Citing Imminent "Calamity" - (www.zerohedge.com) "We think that there is too much risk in this market at the moment, we think it's crazy," Altair CIO Philip Parker said: "valuations are stretched, property is massively overstretched... Let me tell you I've never been more certain of anything in my life." While hardly a novel claim - in the past many have warned that Australia's housing and stock market are massive asset bubbles (which local banks were have been forced to deny as their fates are closely intertwined with asset prices even as the RBA is increasingly worried) - so far few if any have gone the distance of putting their money where their mouth was. That changed, when Australian asset manager Altair Asset Management made the extraordinary decision to liquidate its Australian shares funds and return "hundreds of millions" of dollars to its clients according to the Sydney Morning Herald, citing an impending property market "calamity" and the "overvalued and dangerous time in this cycle".

Bitcoin correction sees nearly $4 billion wiped off value of the cryptocurrency as price falls 19% - (www.cnbc.com) Nearly $4 billion has been wiped off of the value of bitcoin in the past four days after a correction that has seen the cryptocurrency's price fall almost 19 percent from its recent record high. On May 24, bitcoin hit an all-time high of $2.791.69. But on Monday, the digital currency was trading at an intra-day high of $2,267.73, marking a more than $520 drop or 18.7 percent decline since the record high, according to data from CoinDesk. "The correction was actually quite brief, the prices today are still higher than that of a week ago," Bobby Lee, CEO of BTCC, a major bitcoin exchange, told CNBC by phone.

Hong Kong's Throngs of Thousands Defy Bid to Cool Housing Market - (www.bloomberg.com) Snaking queues of thousands of prospective apartment buyers in Hong Kong signaled authorities have made no progress in cooling a red-hot property market, where prices are at records. People were lining up on Friday and over the weekend at Victoria Skye, a luxury project at the former airport site of Kai Tak, and at the Ocean Pride development by Cheung Kong Property Holdings Ltd. and MTR Corp. “Successive moves by the government in recent memory to cool the property market only resulted in it becoming crazier,” The Standard newspaper said in an editorial on Monday. “The result is a sea of madness.”

Italian bank worries leak into second week - (www.reuters.com) Concern over Italy's banks and Britain's national election dominated holiday-thinned European financial markets on Monday, pushing stock markets lower after Asian share indices fell back off two-year highs. Sterling, hammered by a slump for Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservatives in opinion polls last week, recovered after weekend polls confirmed the trend but showed her still on course to win next week's vote. European share prices were lower [.EU] overall, but Italian banks and blue chips fell as worries over recapitalisations of regional Italian lenders bled over into a second week.

OTHER STORIES:

Asia Stocks Mixed, Euro Falls on Draghi Comments: Markets Wrap - (www.bloomberg.com)
Japan’s Unemployment Rate Holds at Two-Decade Low in April - (www.bloomberg.com)
Senator McCain says Putin bigger threat than ISIS - (www.reuters.com)

Stocks Meander, Pound Rises in Holiday-Hit Trading: Markets Wrap - (www.bloomberg.com)
Draghi Says Euro Area Still Needs Extraordinary ECB Support - (www.bloomberg.com)

Fed's Williams Sees 'Much Smaller' Balance Sheet in Five Years - (www.bloomberg.com)
Fed's Williams Sees Gradual Policy Tightening of Three Hikes - (www.bloomberg.com)