KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Wednesday April 13 Housing and Economic stories

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Dying Banks Kept Alive Among Secrets Fed Data Will Reveal - (www.bloomberg.com) U.S. regulators closed Chicago- based Park National Bank in October 2009 when it owed $345 million to one of the lowest-cost lenders in town: the Federal Reserve’s discount window. Park National had been a constant customer at the window for more than 18 months before it failed, records show. That glimpse into the loan program, gleaned through the Freedom of Information Act, will be expanded this week with an unprecedented view of the secret lifelines the Fed extended to hundreds of banks. Officials plan to release documents that amount to more than 6,000 pages, according to court records. Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, and News Corp.’s Fox News Network LLC requested the records under FOIA, then sued after the central bank refused to release them. Without identifying them as of yet, Fed officials say all the discount window loans made during the worst financial crisis since the 1930s have been repaid with interest. Cases such as Park National’s show how the lending amounted to a secret public subsidy, with few questions asked. “Solvency is the big issue,” said Arthur Wilmarth, a professor at George Washington University Law School in Washington. “Was the Fed keeping banks alive when they should have died?”

Food Inflation Kept Hidden in Tinier Bags - (www.nytimes.com) Chips are disappearing from bags, candy from boxes and vegetables from cans. As an expected increase in the cost of raw materials looms for late summer, consumers are beginning to encounter shrinking food packages. With unemployment still high, companies in recent months have tried to camouflage price increases by selling their products in tiny and tinier packages. So far, the changes are most visible at the grocery store, where shoppers are paying the same amount, but getting less. For Lisa Stauber, stretching her budget to feed her nine children in Houston often requires careful monitoring at the store. Recently, when she cooked her usual three boxes of pasta for a big family dinner, she was surprised by a smaller yield, and she began to suspect something was up. “Whole wheat pasta had gone from 16 ounces to 13.25 ounces,” she said. “I bought three boxes and it wasn’t enough — that was a little embarrassing. I bought the same amount I always buy, I just didn’t realize it, because who reads the sizes all the time?”

Chuck Schumer Preps His Colleagues For A Conference Call - (www.businessinsider.com) Every so often, reporters get to see or hear the whole stupid game revealed. The New York Times today captured such a moment: Moments before a conference call with reporters was scheduled to get underway on Tuesday morning, apparently unaware that many of the reporters were already on the line, Charles Schumer of New York, the No. 3 Democrat in the Senate, began to instruct fellow senators on how to talk to reporters about the contentious budget process. After thanking his colleagues — Barbara Boxer of California, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Tom Carper of Delaware and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — for doing the budget bidding for the Senate Democrats, who are facing off against the House Republicans over spending for the rest of the fiscal year, Mr. Schumer told them to portray John Boehner of Ohio, the Speaker of the House, as painted into a box by the Tea Party, and to decry the spending cuts that he wants as extreme. “I always use the word extreme,” Mr. Schumer said, “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.” A minute or two into the talking-points tutorial, though, someone apparently figured out that reporters were listening, and silence fell.

BP Managers Said to Face U.S. Manslaughter Charges Review - (www.bloomberg.com) Federal prosecutors are considering whether to pursue manslaughter charges against BP Plc (BP/) managers for decisions made before the Gulf of Mexico oil well explosion last year that killed 11 workers and caused the biggest offshore spill in U.S. history, according to three people familiar with the matter. U.S. investigators also are examining statements made by leaders of the companies involved in the spill -- including former BP Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward -- during congressional hearings last year to determine whether their testimony was at odds with what they knew, one of the people said. All three spoke on condition they not be named because they weren’t authorized to discuss the case publicly.

The Birth Certificate Donald Trump Produced Is Not An Official Document - (www.businessinsider.com) After spending the last week casting doubt on the nature of Obama's birth certificate Donald Trump may have some birther issues of his own. Turns out the birth certificate he 'released exclusively' to Newsmax earlier this week is not the actual thing. Ben Smith at Politico reports that what Trump provided was a hospital "'certificate of birth' meaning the piece of paper the hospital gave to his family saying he was born. Such a document typically has the signature of the hospital administrator and the attending physician." Apparently an actual birth certificate would would have the Dept. of Health's seal as well a signature of the city registrar. Oops. Take it away Ben Smith: Trump's mother, it should be noted, was born in Scotland, which is not part of the United States. His plane is registered in the Bahamas, also a foreign country. This fact pattern -- along with the wave of new questions surrounding what he claims is a birth certificate -- raises serious doubts about his eligibility to serve as President of the United States.