KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Thursday January 19 Housing and Economic stories

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Thursday January 19 Housing and Economic stories

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Too-Big-to-Fail Definition May Expand to National Lenders, Shadow Banking - (www.bloomberg.com) Global regulators may expand the definition of a too-big-to-fail financial firm, signing up domestic lenders, clearing houses and insurers to capital rules designed for the world’s biggest banks. The “framework should be in place for domestically systemically important banks by the end of the year,” Mark Carney, chairman of the Financial Stability Board, said yesterday after a meeting of the group in Basel, Switzerland. Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), BNP Paribas SA (BNP) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) were among 29 banks subject to the so-called capital surcharge on globally systemic financial institutions drawn up by the FSB in November. Banks will have to boost reserves by 1 to 2.5 percentage points above minimum levels agreed on by international regulators.

Spain May Need Back-Door Bailout for Regions - (www.bloomberg.com) Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy may need to skirt Spanish law to backstop the nation’s indebted regions, mimicking the European Union’s dodging of its no- bailout rule to save Greece, Ireland and Portugal from default. “We consider the Spanish government should guarantee or take responsibility for the debt it has authorized the regions to issue,” said Albert Carreras de Odriozola, Catalonia’s deputy finance chief, in a telephone interview. “It must be possible to talk and find a mechanism.” Catalonia, Valencia, Andalusia and Madrid, which account for 60 percent of Spain’s economy, are shut out of markets as they brace to repay 9 billion euros ($11.5 billion) to lenders this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Spain’s 10- year yield has risen to 5.3 percent from 5.09 percent on Dec. 30 when the government said its 2011 deficit had ballooned to a third larger than its target.

Spanish Banks Try to Build Their Way Out of Home Glut - (online.wsj.com) On a weedy dirt lot here, lender Bankia is pursuing its answer to a banking and property crisis that has left Spain with a glut of around one million vacant homes. Its approach: Build even more. Bankia and a local developer plan to build a 212-unit housing complex featuring a gym and movie theater on the central Madrid site where a bus station once stood. Construction begins early this year, even though sales of existing properties are practically nonexistent and only 45 of the planned new units have been sold in advance.

Europe’s $39T Pension Threat Grows as Economy Sputters - (www.bloomberg.com) Even before the euro crisis, people were worried about Europe’s pension bomb. State-funded pension obligations in 19 of the European Union nations were about five times higher than their combined gross debt, according to a study commissioned by the European Central Bank. The countries in the report compiled by the Research Center for Generational Contracts at Freiburg University in 2009 had almost 30 trillion euros ($39.3 trillion) of projected obligations to their existing populations. Germany accounted for 7.6 trillion euros and France 6.7 trillion euros of the liabilities, authors Christoph Mueller, Bernd Raffelhueschen and Olaf Weddige said in the report. “This is a totally unsustainable situation that quite clearly has to be reversed,” Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said in a telephone interview.

EU Banks Resist Draghi Bid to Avert Credit Crunch - (www.bloomberg.com) Banks are hoarding the European Central Bank’s record 489 billion-euro ($625 billion) injection into the banking system, thwarting attempts by policy makers to avert a credit crunch in the region. Almost all of the money loaned to 523 euro-area lenders last month wound up back on deposit at the Frankfurt-based central bank instead of pouring into the financial system, ECB data show. Banks will use most of the three-year loans to meet their refinancing needs for this year and next, analysts at Morgan Stanley and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc estimate. “It’s illusory to think that the measure will translate into credit generation,” Philippe Waechter, chief economist at Natixis Asset Management in Paris, said in an interview.