Friday April 24 Housing and Economic stories

KeNosHousingPortal.blogspot.com

TOP STORIES:

Fed Orders Bank Silence Over Stress Tests - (www.bloomberg.com) The U.S. Federal Reserve has told Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and other banks to keep mum on the results of “stress tests” that will gauge their ability to weather the recession, people familiar with the matter said. The Fed wants to ensure that the report cards don’t leak during earnings conference calls scheduled for this month. Such a scenario might push stock prices lower for banks perceived as weak and interfere with the government’s plan to release the results in an orderly fashion later this month. “If you allow banks to talk about it, people are just going to assume that the ones that don’t comment about it failed,” said Paul Miller, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets in Arlington, Virginia. Regulators are using the tests to determine whether the 19 biggest banks have enough capital to cover loan losses during the next two years if the economy shrinks, unemployment surges and housing prices keep declining. The tests are a linchpin of the plan Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced in February to bolster confidence in the nation’s banks and restore financial-market stability. Geithner has likened the stress tests to those used by doctors to evaluate a patient’s health. They’re designed to mesh with the administration’s effort to remove distressed mortgage assets from banks’ balance sheets. The Fed is overseeing the administration of the tests, people briefed on the matter say.

Marc Faber: Market in Rebound - (www.bloomberg.com) The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index may rise 17 percent to 1,000 in the next three months as government spending boosts bank profits, investor Marc Faber said. U.S. stocks probably reached their bear market low when the S&P 500 fell to 666.79 during trading on March 6, Faber, who publishes the Gloom, Boom and Doom report, told Bloomberg Radio in an interview from Thailand. Financial shares may increase further after the S&P 500 Banks Index jumped 25 percent on April 9, the biggest rally since at least 1989. Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are among more than 30 S&P 500 companies scheduled to announce results this week. “You have essentially a government that gives financials free money at the expense of the taxpayer,” Faber said. “With this free money, they may actually have decent earnings in the near future.”

Job Market Especially Cruel for Older Workers - (www.latimes.com) More Americans 55 and older are working longer, and those who are looking for jobs face a technologically transformed market where potential employers may deem them overqualified. Their savings in shambles from the economic downturn, jobless seniors are dusting off their briefcases and trying to head back to work. Many, like Jim Mitchell, a 63-year-old former sales executive, are finding a merciless job market where decades of experience aren't necessarily an asset. The Long Beach resident rises daily before dawn and dresses neatly in business attire to keep himself motivated. He pops in brilliant blue contacts to brighten his eyes and combs back his graying hair to look more youthful. Not that it matters. He's not getting much face time. Many recruiters these days want only e-mail applications and refuse to take phone calls. Mitchell is at sea when it comes to using online sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook for networking. He leaves his college graduation date off his resume. But in two years of full-time job hunting, he hasn't gotten a single callback."I don't want to think it's about age, but sometimes you suspect it is," he said. "But 60 is supposed to be the new 40. I just want a fair hearing."

New City in Florida to Run on Solar Power - (www.miamiherald.com) A new city will be powered by solar energy -- and cost the average Florida Power & Light customer about 31 cents a month. A Florida developer announced an ambitious plan Thursday for a 19,500-home city with energy-efficient buildings that will be ``the first city on earth powered by zero-emission solar energy.'' The new city, Babcock Ranch, will be developed by Kitson & Partners on 17,000 acres northeast of Fort Myers. It will include the world's largest photovoltaic power plant, which will be operated by Florida Power & Light. Buildings will be certified green and surrounded by thousands of acres of open space.

Nationwide, 1 in 9 Homes Sit Empty - (www.usatoday.com) The white notice taped to the front window of a luxury home in the Vasaro subdivision is a telltale sign. "Bank-owned," says real estate agent John Groves, without skipping a beat. There are other clues. Dirt where a lush lawn should be. Vacant lots on either side. And the sale price: $729,900 for a never-lived-in, 5,500-square-foot, five-bedroom, 3.5-bath custom home that about a year ago was listed for more than $1.2 million. In a nearby subdivision of this community of 246,000, one of the largest suburbs in metropolitan Phoenix, a foreclosure sign in the front yard of a more modest house signals yet another financially troubled home needing a buyer. Multiply that scenario hundreds of thousands of times. From Maine to Hawaii, millions of new McMansions, post-World War II bungalows, modern downtown lofts, exurban town homes and inner-city row houses sit empty. This unprecedented glut of vacant homes — one in nine homes across the USA, according to the Census Bureau — will change the real estate landscape for years. Already, rock-bottom prices in the hardest-hit markets are attracting first-time home buyers who could not afford a home during boom times. Some areas may see real estate values stabilize by the end of this year, as buyers seeking bargains begin to reduce the backlog of homes for sale. At the same time, the availability of rental housing will widen, potentially pushing down the cost of renting. "We overproduced by 1 million new units," says Edward Glaeser, economist at Harvard University. "Now we have to work our way through the stock." What happens to the 14 million empty houses, condominiums and apartments and the 9.4 million that are for sale? How long will it take to absorb this massive and unprecedented oversupply of housing? "Two more years," Glaeser says. His is one of the more optimistic estimates. Projections by housing analysts range from as early as this year in some areas to as late as 2014 in others.

Change: Obama and Habeas Corpus -- Then and Now - (www.salon.com) Back in February, the Obama administration shocked many civil libertarians by filing a brief in federal court that, in two sentences, declared that it embraced the most extremist Bush theory on this issue -- the Obama DOJ argued, as The New York Times's Charlie Savage put it, "that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team." Remember: these are not prisoners captured in Afghanistan on a battlefield. Many of them have nothing to do with Afghanistan and were captured far, far away from that country -- abducted from their homes and workplaces -- and then flown to Bagram to be imprisoned. Indeed, the Bagram detainees in the particular case in which the Obama DOJ filed its brief were Yemenis and Tunisians captured outside of Afghanistan (in Thailand or the UAE, for instance) and then flown to Bagram and locked away there as much as six years without any charges. That is what the Obama DOJ defended, and they argued that those individuals can be imprisoned indefinitely with no rights of any kind -- as long as they are kept in Bagram rather than Guantanamo. Last month, a federal judge emphatically rejected the Bush/Obama position and held that the rationale of Boudemiene applies every bit as much to Bagram as it does to Guantanamo. Notably, the district judge who so ruled -- John Bates -- is an appointee of George W. Bush, a former Whitewater prosecutor, and a very pro-executive-power judge. In his decision (.pdf), Judge Bates made clear how identical are the constitutional rights of detainees flown to Guantanamo and Bagram and underscored how dangerous is the Bush/Obama claim that the President has the right to abduct people from around the world and imprison them at Bagram with no due process of any kind (click image to enlarge):



OTHER STORIES:

GOP Admits it "Owns" Fox - (www.dailykos.com)
China Slows Purchases of US & Other Bonds - (www.nytimes.com)
Harry Schultz: Flation - (www.marketwatch.com)
Business Week: It's Now a Renter's Market! - (www.businessweek.com)
The End of the Boston Globe - (www.nytimes.com)
Average College Credit Card Debt Rises - (www.usatoday.com)
Ellen Brown's Open Letter to Obama: Bring Back the Greenback - (www.commondreams.org)
Caller to C-Span: 'Why do you keep bringing these neocons on?' - (www.thinkprogress.org)

Squatters Increasingly Call Foreclosures Home - (www.nytimes.com)
Pentagon Prepares for Economic Warfare - (news.yahoo.com/s/politico)
Job Market Especially Cruel for Older Workers - (www.latimes.com)
New Worries Over Japanese Banks - (www.forbes.com)
Japan Plans $153 Billion in New Stimulus - (www.bloomberg.com)
Do or Die Time for Japan - (www.bloomberg.com)

SEC to review whether BofA broke the law - (www.ft.com)
Glamour Dims as Hecklers Hit the Auto Show - (www.nytimes.com)
Delta, AMR May Lead U.S. Airlines to $2 Billion Quarterly Loss - (www.bloomberg.com)
Brand Names Live After Stores Close - (www.nytimes.com)
Lehman Sitting on Bomb’s Worth of Uranium Cake as Prices Slump - (www.bloomberg.com)
The Global Financial Crisis: How bad will it get - (www.debtdeflation.com)
What’s the tab for the bailout? Take your pick - (www.msnbc.msn.com)
Fed’s Fisher Forecasts Steep Contraction in U.S. GDP - (www.bloomberg.com)
Fed Buys $7.37 Billion in U.S. Debt Due in Two to Three Years - (www.bloomberg.com)
Workers’ Confidence About Retirement at Record Low, Survey Says - (www.bloomberg.com)
Bankruptcies surge despite law meant to curb them - (finance.yahoo.com)
Oregon's jobless rate soars to 12.1% in March - (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
GM Bonds Fall to All-Time Low Following Ratings Cut at S&P - (www.bloomberg.com)
N.Y. Pension Deals Seen as Focus of Wide Inquiry - (www.nytimes.com)
Recession knocks VC funds to 5 1/2-year low - (www.sfgate.com)
Carry Trade Comeback Means Biggest Gains Since 1999 - (www.bloomberg.com)
The Student Loan Industry Pushes Back - (www.washingtonpost.com)
More Hotels Facing an Uncertain Future - (www.nytimes.com)