Friday December 18 Housing and Economic stories

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U.A.E. Authorities Block London Times - (online.wsj.com) Times newspaper was removed by authorities from shelves in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday amid intensive reporting of Dubai's debt problems, an executive at the paper said. The National Media Council ordered the paper blocked by distributors without providing a reason, an executive at the paper in Dubai told Zawya Dow Jones. The Sunday Times edition available in the U.A.E. on Nov. 29 featured a double-page spread graphic illustrating Dubai's ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum sinking in a sea of debt. The Times wasn't given a reason for the block, or a timeframe when it will be lifted, the executive said. A government official in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the U.A.E., said that the picture of Sheik Mohammed, which accompanied a story entitled: The sinking of Dubai's dream, was "offensive." Under the U.A.E.'s media code, publications are prohibited from criticizing the sheikdom's rulers. Local media and government officials have criticized international press coverage of Dubai's debt crisis. Markets around the world fell last week after the government requested a debt standstill for one of its biggest conglomerates. Earlier this month Dubai's Sheik Mohammed told reporters gathered at an investment conference in the city to "shut up" and stop criticizing the emirate and its crucial relationship with Abu Dhabi. Dubai is struggling to deal with it debts estimated to exceed $80 billion. The Sunday Times is part of News International, a unit of News Corp., owner of Dow Jones & Co. The Times and The Sunday Times are published in the U.A.E. through a local partner SAB Media.

Chavez threatens to nationalize Venezuelan banks - (www.finance.yahoo.com) President Hugo Chavez threatened on Sunday to nationalize banks that violate regulations, saying he'll do whatever is necessary to prevent irregularities amid a scandal that already has prompted his government to take over management of four banks. "I warn the country's private bankers: I'll take away any bank from anyone who slips up," Chavez said during his weekly television and radio program. "Do you want me to nationalize the banks?" he said, adding that he would have "no problem" ordering state takeovers. The government took over management four small banks Nov. 20, citing various irregularities. The four institutions -- Canarias, Confederado, Bolivar and BanPro -- account for 5.7 percent of Venezuela's banking sector. They were purchased in September and October by a group of investors headed by Ricardo Fernandez, who is involved in the food industry and sells products to a network of state-run subsidized markets known as Mercal. Fernandez and his lawyer, Jose Camacho, have been arrested on charges of misappropriating deposits and providing loans to other businesses in which they were investors. Since taking office more than a decade ago, Chavez has ordered the nationalization of major players in steel, electricity and oil sectors. His government has also seized control of dozens of other private businesses, including coffee processing plants, sugarcane mills and cattle ranches. Fernandez's connections with state-run businesses have prompted Chavez opponents to seize on the scandal as evidence that Venezuela's socialist leader has failed to crack down on corruption and cronyism involving top-ranking government officials and their private-sector associates. "The president is attacking not corruption but rather one of the criminal organizations that is operating within the government," Delsa Solorzano, an opposition politician, said in a telephone interview. "This scandal is linked to internal conflicts surrounding the president involving groups that manage state resources." Chavez did not directly address such criticism Sunday, but he said some Venezuelans who claim to support his "Bolivarian Revolution" -- a political movement named after 19th century independence hero Simon Bolivar -- betray its leftist ideals and embrace capitalism. "There are people from the proletariat in this struggle that end up siding with the devil," he said. The state-run banking agency has appointed officials to oversee operations of the four banks. The National Banking Council, a private banking association, has voiced its support for the government takeover, saying the initiative is aimed at protecting depositors. A Venezuelan court has barred 16 bank executives linked to those banks from leaving the country while prosecutors investigate. But Chavez said he would like to see them arrested because they might flee. "They have planes and private airports; they leave," he said. "I spoke with the prosecutor and I told her whoever must go to prison, must go to prison." Chavez, a former paratrooper, also announced that he ordered Attorney General Luisa Ortega to investigate a state-run bank, Banco de Fomento Regional Los Andes, because its board of directors raised suspicions within the government by "putting a huge amount of resources in private banks." "That's an administrative irregularity, and it must be combated," he said. "We cannot continue to allow a group of officials to continue playing with people's money."

The 'Real' Jobless Rate: 17.5% Of Workers Are Unemployed... - (www.cnbc.com) As experts debate the potential speed of the US recovery, one figure looms large but is often overlooked: nearly 1 in 5 Americans is either out of work or under-employed. According to the government's broadest measure of unemployment, some 17.5 percent are either without a job entirely or underemployed. The so-called U-6 number is at the highest rate since becoming an official labor statistic in 1994. The number dwarfs the statistic most people pay attention to—the U-3 rate—which most recently showed unemployment at 10.2 percent for October, the highest it has been since June 1983. The difference is that what is traditionally referred to as the "unemployment rate" only measures those out of work who are still looking for jobs. Discouraged workers who have quit trying to find a job, as well as those working part-time but looking for full-time work or who are otherwise underemployed, count in the U-6 rate. With such a large portion of Americans experiencing employment struggles, economists worry that an extended period of slow or flat growth lies ahead. "To me there's no easy solution here," says Michael Pento, chief economist at Delta Global Advisors. "Unless you create another bubble in which the economy can create jobs, then you're not going to have growth. That's the sad truth." Pento warns that forecasts of a double-dip ("W") or a straight up ("V") recovery both could be too optimistic given the jobs situation.

...34.5% for Blacks - (www.washingtonpost.com) These days, 24-year-old Delonta Spriggs spends much of his time cooped up in his mother's one-bedroom apartment in Southwest Washington, the TV blaring soap operas hour after hour, trying to stay out of the streets and out of trouble, held captive by the economy. As a young black man, Spriggs belongs to a group that has been hit much harder than any other by unemployment. Joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression proportions -- 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population. And last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment in the District, home to many young black men, rose to 11.9 percent from 11.4 percent, even as it stayed relatively stable in Virginia and Maryland. His work history, Spriggs says, has consisted of dead-end jobs. About a year ago, he lost his job moving office furniture, and he hasn't been able to find steady work since. This summer he completed a construction apprenticeship program, he says, seeking a career so he could avoid repeating the mistake of selling drugs to support his 3-year-old daughter. So far the most the training program has yielded was a temporary flagger job that lasted a few days. "I think we're labeled for not wanting to do nothing -- knuckleheads or hardheads," said Spriggs, whose first name is pronounced Dee-lon-tay. "But all of us ain't bad." Construction, manufacturing and retail experienced the most severe job losses in this down economy, losses that are disproportionately affecting men and young people who populated those sectors. That is especially playing out in the District, where unemployment has risen despite the abundance of jobs in the federal government. Traditionally the last hired and first fired, workers in Spriggs's age group have taken the brunt of the difficult economy, with cost-conscious employers wiping out the very apprenticeship, internship and on-the-job-training programs that for generations gave young people a leg up in the work world or a second chance when they made mistakes. Moreover, this generation is being elbowed out of entry-level positions by older, more experienced job seekers on the unemployment rolls who willingly trade down just to put food on the table. The jobless rate for young black men and women is 30.5 percent. For young blacks -- who experts say are more likely to grow up in impoverished racially isolated neighborhoods, attend subpar public schools and experience discrimination -- race statistically appears to be a bigger factor in their unemployment than age, income or even education. Lower-income white teens were more likely to find work than upper-income black teens, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, and even blacks who graduate from college suffer from joblessness at twice the rate of their white peers. Young black women have an unemployment rate of 26.5 percent, while the rate for all 16-to-24-year-old women is 15.4 percent. Victoria Kirby, 22, has been among that number. In the summer of 2008, a D.C. publishing company where Kirby was interning offered her a job that would start upon her graduation in May 2009 from Howard University. But the company withdrew the offer in the fall of 2008 when the economy collapsed. Kirby said she applied for administrative jobs on Capitol Hill but was told she was overqualified. She sought a teaching position in the D.C. public schools through the Teach for America program but said she was rejected because of a flood of four times the usual number of applicants. Finally, she went back to school, enrolling in a master's of public policy program at Howard. "I decided to stay in school two more years and wait out the recession," Kirby said.

Sacramento man's health ordeal puts face on uninsured – (www.sacbee.com) Tony Andrade struggles for the words to bear the news, heart pounding and hands clammy as he grips his cell phone. Mom, don't freak out or anything, he begins. It's cancer. Sandy Cooper's voice quavers. I'll be right there, she tells her son. Bladder cancer. Andrade clicks off the phone and stops to absorb it, alone amid the bustle of nurses, doctors, orderlies and patients at Kaiser Permanente's south Sacramento emergency room. The last thing he needs is more medical bills to stuff into the shoe box under his bed. The past-due notices for prior emergency room visits now swell into the tens of thousands of dollars. The phone calls from the bill collectors keep coming. Andrade never had much money. His bank account already is depleted. Nearly four years ago, he lost his home when he could not keep up with the payments. In many ways, Andrade, 47, is the Everyman of President Barack Obama's push for overhauling the country's health care system: working, but for low wages, without health benefits – in the company of 37 million employed Americans who are uninsured. Six months ago, days before Andrade's June 17 visit to the emergency room, the president took his proposal to the American Medical Association's annual convention in Chicago. Obama called it a moral obligation to widen access to health insurance and urged quick action from Congress. He acknowledged it could cost $1 trillion, perhaps more, but said, "The cost of inaction is greater." On June 20, House leaders unveiled legislation intended to bring relief to the country's uninsured. But it would be months before the proposals would get a full hearing before the House and Senate. Meanwhile, Andrade's own health care crisis continues to unfold, providing a window into the options – and obstacles – that face the uninsured. It begins on a summer morning, when Andrade makes a troubling discovery: drops of blood in his urine. The day ends with scribbles on the back of an envelope, a slapdash diary that will form a jumbled collage of his state of mind. June 17 – "Diagnosed with tumor. Cancerous. Had to tell mom and kids. Scared, feeling real uneasy. … Lucky I went right away." Andrade makes a choice familiar to the uninsured that day, when he heaves his linebacker's frame into a gray, 1999 Suburban and heads south seven miles to the emergency room. He knows that by law ER doctors have to see him whether he can pay or not. Like many of this state's 7 million uninsured, Andrade earns too much to qualify for Medi-Cal, the state's version of Medicaid, but too little to buy insurance on his own. His pre-existing health problems, such as diabetes, inflate the premiums he'd pay for private insurance, if he could even get coverage.

OTHER STORIES:

Falling rents aid homeowners in mortgage trouble - (www.latimes.com) Joyce Ann Cato is out of work and about to lose her San Bernardino home to foreclosure.

Home loans will hold fewer surprises - (www.latimes.com) Anyone who has purchased or refinanced a few homes has probably learned to dread the closing statement, which all too often included a pile of new...

Dubai looks to oil-rich neighbor for possible aid - (www.latimes.com) As world markets absorbed the shock of Dubai's debt crisis, the ruler of the once-booming city-state left town for an...

Insured but not covered - (www.latimes.com) As if the lousy economy hasn't done enough damage, here's another thing to worry about: more people driving without automobile insurance.

Man with health issues must make his assets last - (www.latimes.com) Dear Liz: I have a brother-in-law who has a very hard time finding employment because he has frequent seizures. He is 59 and needs about $40,...

Professor advises underwater homeowners to walk away from mortgages - (www.latimes.com) Go ahead. Break the chains. Stop paying on your mortgage if you owe more than the house is worth. And most important: Don't feel guilty about it. Don'...

Average home sale price virtually unchanged in third quarter - (www.latimes.com) The average price of houses sold in the county's 32 largest metro areas was virtually unchanged in the third quarter from the same period a year ago,...

Black Friday store spending edges up; online soars - (www.latimes.com) Shoppers who endured long lines and sometimes-frigid temperatures spent only slightly more during their Black Friday shopping sprees than...

Bernanke makes case for strong Fed role on banks - (www.latimes.com) The chairman of the Federal Reserve is concerned that congressional efforts at financial reform could weaken the central bank's ability to...

Climategate: the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'? - (www.telegraph.co.uk)
So Long Jobs, Hello Mom & Dad - (news.yahoo.com/s/ap)
Problem Bank List Climbs to 552 - (money.cnn.com)
FDIC $8.2 Billion in the Hole! - (jacksonville.bizjournals.com)
Seriously: Is Your Bank Safe? - (www.elliottwave.com)
More News Sites Weigh Google Block - (www.bloomberg.com)
15 Symptoms that Wall Street's Pathology is Spreading - (www.marketwatch.com)