KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Saturday April 17 Housing and Economic stories

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TOP STORIES:

Columbia Center misses mortgage payment - (seattletimes.nwsource.com) The owner of the Northwest's tallest building, the 76-story Columbia Center, missed a mortgage payment this month, providing fresh evidence of the troubles facing downtown Seattle office landlords. Boston-based Beacon Capital Partners failed to make a scheduled payment of $1.65 million on a $380 million loan it took out when it bought the tower three years ago, according to a recent report by Wells Fargo Bank, which administers the debt. The loan faces "imminent default due to cash flow issues,"says a note in the report. A spokesman for Beacon, the Seattle area's largest office landlord, declined comment. The 1.5-million-square-foot Columbia Center appears to have been especially hard-hit by the recession, which has pushed rents down and vacancies up all over downtown. Downtown's overall vacancy rate is at or above 20 percent, according to brokerage reports. At the Columbia Center, however, almost 600,000 square feet — nearly 40 percent of the building — is listed as "available" on online commercial real-estate database Officespace.com.

Being penalized again and again for not taking stupid risks - (www.eyeonmiami.blogspot.com) During boom times when you wouldn't lift an eyelash to question the destruction of the US economy by the "free market", I raised three children in the same house in less than 2000 square feet. I didn't buy a bigger house here in Miami, where so many homes purchased after 2001 were speculative investments based on inevitable price appreciation. I didn't buy into the Cool-Aid, but I-- like every other US taxpayer-- have been dragged into the incredible morass of those who did, encumbering my children's generation with trillions in debt. I look at mortgage modification this way: I am being penalized again and again for not having taken the risk that the de facto standard of fiscal prudence would be free money. If I had participated in bad economic decisions that helped plunge the economy into a time-release depression, I would be have been rewarded. That doesn't seem fair to me or my family who lived in the same 1800 square feet for more than 15 years. If the government and you--virtually indistinguishable-- can find a way to give tax dollars I've paid to other homeowners, and if you can find a way to print money to buy trillions of dollars of mortgage securities whose origination already shed off billions of dollars in commissions, fees, stock options and executive compensation to your executives, to Wall Street enablers, to the engineering cartel to real estate attorneys and on and on, please find a way to give me some of that free money too.

Cash-strapped society explores history tax - (www.portlandtribune.com) Do Portlanders really care about their history? More to the point, are they willing to pay for it? We may soon find out. The Oregon Historical Society – bruised by multiple hits to its funding and slashed services – is exploring creation of a “heritage taxing district” empowered to collect a modest amount of property taxes, with voter approval, in Multnomah County. If the taxing district or alternative fundraising ideas don’t pan out, the 112-year-old nonprofit, which operates the Oregon History Museum and research library in downtown Portland, expects to exhaust its cash reserves by late next year or early 2012, says George Vogt, the society’s executive director. If the society’s board of trustees doesn’t see a path to stable funding by late June, Vogt says, “they’re likely to put the place in a phased shutdown.”

California unemployment rate holds steady at miserable 12.5% - (www.latimes.com) California's unemployment rate in February held steady at 12.5% for a second straight month, indicating that the state's economy may be leveling off and could turn upward by late spring. But economists warned that even sizable jumps in key activities, such as retail sales, international trade and orders for big-ticket manufactured goods, probably wouldn't lead to a big drop in jobless figures this year. One sign supporting that forecast came in the state Employment Development Department report released Friday. The number of nonfarm jobs, which grew in January for the first time in several months, fell by 20,400 in February. "We're building a bottom, but the recovery will be painfully slow for most people," said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto.

JPMorgan, Lehman, UBS Named in Bid-Rigging Conspiracy - (www.bloomberg.com) JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and UBS AG were among more than a dozen Wall Street firms involved in a conspiracy to pay below-market interest rates to U.S. state and local governments on investments, according to documents filed in a U.S. Justice Department criminal antitrust case. A government list of previously unidentified “co- conspirators” contains more than two dozen bankers at firms also including Bank of America Corp., Bear Stearns Cos., Societe Generale, two of General Electric Co.’s financial businesses and Salomon Smith Barney, the former unit of Citigroup Inc., according to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on March 24. The papers were filed by attorneys for a former employee of CDR Financial Products Inc., an advisory firm indicted in October. The attorneys, as part of their legal filing, identified the roster as being provided by the government. The document is labeled “list of co-conspirators.”

2,000 House staffers make six figures - (www.politico.com) Nearly 2,000 House of Representatives staffers pulled down six-figure salaries in 2009, including 43 staffers who earned the maximum $172,500 — or more than three times the median U.S. household income. Starting salaries on Capitol Hill are still low — many entry-level congressional jobs pay less than $30,000 a year. And many of the most highly paid staffers could make several times the maximum by jumping to lobbying and consulting jobs in the private sector. But the salary data, compiled for POLITICO by LegiStorm.com, show that it’s possible to make an enviable living in Congress, even without winning an election. The 43 staffers who maxed out at $172,500 — the salary cap for leadership and committee staffers — include John Lawrence, chief of staff to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Paula Nowakowski, the late chief of staff to House Minority Leader John Boehner; and House Parliamentarian John Sullivan. They earned only slightly less than rank-and-file members of Congress, who make $174,000.