KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Sunday July 3 Housing and Economic stories

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TOP STORIES:

The US Is Having A Catastrophic Nuclear Emergency In Nebraska And The Obama Administration Is Covering It Up -- Russia - (www.businessinsider.com) Here's an interesting report from Pakistan's daily newspaper The Nation. It cites a Russian regulatory agency as saying that the US is currently having a major nuclear emergency at the flooded plant in Nebraska and that the Obama Administration is trying to cover it up. The Russian report describes the Nebraska situation as one of the worst nuclear accidents in the history of the United States. Bear in mind that this report comes from Russia and Pakistan--two countries that aren't particularly happy with Obama right now. But the FAA has enacted a no-fly zone over the Fort Calhoun nuke plant, which was damaged by a fire and flooding from the Missouri river. Here's the report from The Nation: A shocking report prepared by Russia’s Federal Atomic Energy Agency (FAAE) on information provided to them by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) states that the Obama regime has ordered a “total and complete” news blackout relating to any information regarding the near catastrophic meltdown of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant located in Nebraska. According to this report, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant suffered a “catastrophic loss of cooling” to one of its idle spent fuel rod pools on 7 June after this plant was deluged with water caused by the historic flooding of the Missouri River which resulted in a fire causing the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to issue a “no-fly ban” over the area.

A Mass ‘Strategic Default’ Movement Begins – Time to Rebel Against Economic Tyranny By Walking Away From Your Mortgage Payments (OpESR) - (www.ampedstatus.org) As a result of fraudulent actions by the “Too Big to Fail” banks, 28% of US homeowners now owe more on their mortgage than their homes are worth. A new survey by Fannie Mae found that 27% of American homeowners are considering walking away from their mortgage. Why should we be forced to pay an overvalued mortgage when it was the big banks who wrecked the housing market? After getting bailed out with trillions of our tax dollars, the big banks are reaping record profits and their executives are giving themselves record bonuses. Meanwhile, as they continue to push home values off a cliff, we are forced to pay for their crimes with outrageous mortgage payments and increased property taxes. This scandalous exploitation of the American public has to stop. The time is now to strategically default on mortgage payments en masse. A National Mortgage Default Action will begin on the 4th of July. Celebrate your financial Independence by joining this movement here.

UK banks abandon eurozone over Greek default fears - (www.telegraph.co.uk) Senior sources have revealed that leading banks, including Barclays and Standard Chartered, have radically reduced the amount of unsecured lending they are prepared to make available to eurozone banks, raising the prospect of a new credit crunch for the European banking system. Standard Chartered is understood to have withdrawn tens of billions of pounds from the eurozone inter-bank lending market in recent months and cut its overall exposure by two-thirds in the past few weeks as it has become increasingly worried about the finances of other European banks. Barclays has also cut its exposure in recent months as senior managers have become increasingly concerned about developments among banks with large exposures to the troubled European countries Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Portugal. Moves by stronger banks to cut back their lending to weaker banks is reminiscent of the build-up to the financial crisis in 2008, when the refusal of banks to lend to one another led to a seizing-up of the markets that eventually led to the collapse of several major banks and taxpayer bail-outs of many more. While the funding position of UK banks is far stronger now than it was back in 2008, the banking systems of several other major European countries, including Spain, Germany and Italy, are showing increasing signs of weakness. Analysts at UBS have warned that eurozone banks are “particularly exposed” having not done enough since the crisis to cut their reliance on the wholesale funding markets and remain acutely sensitive to the withdrawal of liquidity from the inter-bank market. Simon Adamson, a banks analyst at CreditSights, said it was clear many eurozone banks had been having trouble funding themselves for several months.

Greece’s 2010 bailout falls flat, puts nation back on brink of default a year later - (www.washingtonpost.com) The government officials and economists who put together a bailout for Greece in May of last year knew there was a substantial chance the program would fail but were unprepared for how fast their efforts unraveled, putting Europe’s economy again at risk, according to people involved with the talks and others who closely followed them. The three-year, $160 billion program was admittedly ambitious, requiring Greece to make deep cuts to its social programs, slash public payrolls and sell state-owned property and businesses. But a year later, the initiative has fallen so far short that the country is again running out of money. The rescue program undermined Greece’s growth, reducing government spending and salaries by billions of dollars in a country already in deep recession. Private companies closed or fired workers faster than forecast, driving unemployment beyond what the International Monetary Fund expected. Business and consumer spending fell further than anticipated, depriving the country of tax receipts. Sales of state-owned property proceeded slower than expected, and changes in economic policy also began to lag. The country is back at the brink, with potentially calamitous results for Europe and the United States. In recent days, Greek interest rates have again spiked amid renewed fears among investors that the country would default.

El-Erian: Europe Is At Risk Of Wasting Billions More To Save Bondholders - (www.businessinsider.com) Europe is at risk of wasting billions more on Greece and other countries if they don't reform their economies to increase growth, according to Pimco's Mohamed El-Erian. "Further on, if this approach is kept up, more money will be wasted to save private creditors and the risk of a disorderly restructuring of the debt will be greater," he said, according to Reuters. El-Erian argues that, thus far, Europe has just been providing cash to fight the crisis. And, even with all the support in place, it's failing to boost the region's economies, and, instead, the economy situation has gotten worse. There are some hints that Greece's new unity government plans to put in place structural reforms that would reduce the importance of the public sector in the country's employment structure.