Thursday October 28 Housing and Economic stories

KeNosHousingPortal.blogspot.com

TOP STORIES:

Randy Quaid, wife arrested - (news-briefs.ew.com) Actor Randy Quaid and his wife Evi were arrested in Vancouver on Wednesday for immigration violations charges after recently skipping a court date in California. The actor, 60, and his wife, 47, are set to appear before a Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board hearing this afternoon, a spokesman for the department told CTV News. The headline-grabbing couple originally made news back in September when they were charged with felony burglary on suspicion of illegally squatting in the guest house of a California home they owned in the 1990s. Evi was also charged with resisting arrest. Earlier this week, a judge in Santa Barbara issued $50,000 bench warrants when the Quaids failed to show for their arraignment hearing. Celebrity bounty hunter Duane ‘Dog’ Chapman issued a public challenge to the couple on Thursday night, urging Quaid to turn himself in or he would capture them personally.

Robo-signing is just the tip of the iceberg - (money.cnn.com) Robo-signing is just the tip of the iceberg. The revelation that loan servicers were rapidly signing foreclosure documents without even reading them has uncovered a morass of serious paperwork problems. These issues could potentially prevent some foreclosure cases from proceeding and allow delinquent borrowers to stay in their homes indefinitely or wrangle settlements from their servicers. "The whole robo-signing scandal has caused many judges to mistrust what servicers are saying in foreclosure petitions," said Patricia McCoy, a law professor at the University of Connecticut, who co-authored "The Subprime Virus." "Many judges will scrutinize filings more closely."

Here's Why Massive Mortgage Write-Offs Could Be The Only Way To Save Iceland's Middle Class - (www.businessinsider.com) The Icelandic financial crisis has been ongoing since 2008 when all three of the country's major commercial banks collapsed after they failed to refinancing their short-term debt and a run on deposits in the U.K. In July, I talked about how Iceland is totally not a post-crisis miracle as Paul Krugman claims, but just how are things now with Land of Fire and Ice? $2 Billion Mortgage Write-off - Who Will Pay? Bloomberg (clip below) reported that Iceland government last week proposed a debt relief bill to write off up to 220 billion króna ($1.99 billion) in mortgage loans. This is after about 8,000 protesters gathered outside parliament demonstrating their anger over rising homeowner insolvencies. Most of Iceland’s mortgage debt is inflation-linked. So, what that means is that the principal has gone up 41% in three years, while everything from wage, income to real purchasing power has gone the opposite direction. This debt relief sounds all nice and dandy, but the problem is a write-down of almost $2 billion is equivalent to about 8 percent of total assets at Iceland’s three biggest banks, their 2009 balance sheets show. Moreover, Iceland’s pension funds, which hold most of the bonds behind the nation's mortgage debt, said they will try to block proposals. If the banks are forced to take a flat write-off, the government most likely will need to cover the loss of pension funds, i.e. taking on more debt.

Meet The 23-Year-Old Banker Who Got Drunk And Helped Her Boyfriend Rob Bank - (www.businessinsider.com) A branch manager at NatWest in the UK was sentenced to 12 years jail for helping her boyfriend steal more than $582,000, the Telegraph reports. Rachael Shariar-Namini gave her boyfriend, William Wormald, detailed maps of a branch in Yorkshire, as well as explicit details on the daily procedures of the bank. Then she left those maps in her hotel room, and the rest is history. The Judge took no pity on a weepy Shariar-Namini, and told her, "You are a bright, hard-working girl who had a good future ahead of you. You have chosen to throw that away. It's astonishing, with that kind of future ahead of you, you chose to involve yourself as you did in this offence." Also terrible, Shariar-Namini said she was drunk when she drew up the plans.

California Pension Promises May Top Taxes Fivefold - (www.bloomberg.com) To keep their promises to retirees, the California Public Employees Retirement System, the biggest plan, the California State Teachers Retirement System, the second-largest, and the University of California Retirement System may have combined liabilities of more than 5.5 times the state’s annual tax revenue by fiscal 2012, according to the study released today by the Milken Institute. Levies are forecast to reach about $89 billion in the year that began July 1. Debts to government retirees including those in California, the biggest state by population, have grown into a national crisis as pension plans strive to meet obligations to more than 19 million active and retired firefighters, police officers, teachers and other state workers. Fewer than half the plans had assets to cover 80 percent of promised benefits in fiscal 2009, according to data compiled for last month’s Cities and Debt Briefing hosted by Bloomberg Link. “California simply lacks the fiscal capacity to guarantee public-pension payments, particularly given the wave of state employees set to retire” in future years, said researchers Perry Wong and I-Ling Shen in the Milken report. “Structural shifts, coupled with the financial design and the accounting practices of state pension funds, all point to the fact that reform is imperative.”

OTHER STORIES:

Stocks end day mixed, slightly higher for week - (money.cnn.com)

Germany Accuses US of Indirectly Manipulating Dollar - (www.cnbc.com)

NetNet: America Hates Wall Street - (www.cnbc.com)

Hey banks, buy back these crappy loans - (money.cnn.com)

Retirement saving: How to catch up - (money.cnn.com)

Debt busters! Up to $90K gone - (money.cnn.com)

After a layoff: 'Blessed I found a job' - (money.cnn.com)

Probability of Easing 'Pretty High': Fed's Waller - (www.cnbc.com)

Tribune CEO Resigns Amid Stories of Raunchiness - (www.cnbc.com)