KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Thursday February 16 Housing and Economic stories

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Thursday February 16 Housing and Economic stories

KeNosHousingPortal.blogspot.com

TOP STORIES:

Washington-Wall Street Revolving Door Keeps Spinning - (www.huffingtonpost.com) We've already made our choice for the best headline of the year, so far: "Citigroup Replaces JPMorgan as White House Chief of Staff."

When we saw it on the website Gawker.com we had to smile -- but the smile didn't last long. There's simply too much truth in that headline; it says a lot about how Wall Street and Washington have colluded to create the winner-take-all economy that rewards the very few at the expense of everyone else. The story behind it is that Jack Lew is President Obama's new chief of staff -- arguably the most powerful office in the White House that isn't shaped like an oval. He used to work for the giant banking conglomerate Citigroup. His predecessor as chief of staff is Bill Daley, who used to work at the giant banking conglomerate JPMorgan Chase, where he was maestro of the bank's global lobbying and chief liaison to the White House. Daley replaced Obama's first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who once worked as a rainmaker for the investment bank now known as Wasserstein & Company, where in less than three years he was paid a reported eighteen and a half million dollars. The new guy, Jack Lew -- said by those who know to be a skilled and principled public servant -- ran hedge funds and private equity at Citigroup, which means he's a member of the Wall Street gang, too. His last job was as head of President Obama's Office of Management and Budget, where he replaced Peter Orzag, who now works as vice chairman for global banking at -- hold on to your deposit slip -- Citigroup.

New-house purchases fall, 2011 worst ever for sales - (news.yahoo.com) Fewer Americans bought new homes in December. The decline made 2011 the worst year for new-home sales on records dating back nearly half a century. The Commerce Department said Thursday new-home sales fell 2.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual pace of 307,000. The pace is less than half the 700,000 that economists say must be sold in a healthy economy. About 302,000 new homes were sold last year. That's less than the 323,000 sold in 2010, making last year's sales the worst on records dating back to 1963. And it coincides with a report last week that said 2011 was the weakest year for single-family home construction on record.

Occupy Oakland arrests reach 400; City Hall vandalized - (www.latimes.com) Officials surveyed damage Sunday from a volatile Occupy protest that resulted in hundreds of arrests the day before and left the historic City Hall vandalized after demonstrators broke into the building, smashed display cases, cut electrical wires and burned an American flag. Police placed the number of arrests at about 400 from Saturday's daylong protest — the most contentious since authorities dismantled the Occupy Oakland encampment late last year. Mayor Jean Quan condemned the local movement's tactics as "a constant provocation of the police with a lot of violence toward them" and said the demonstrations were draining scarce resources from an already strapped city. Damage to the City Hall plaza alone has cost $2 million since October, she said, about as much as police overtime and mutual aid.

The working class rises up across Latin America - (www.csmonitor.com) When parking attendant Hugo Enrique Vera was beaten by a wealthy client in Mexico, allegedly for refusing to show the man where to find the jack in his car, the surveillance camera captured a stereotype dating to colonial times: The wealthy resident asserts authoritarian control over the worker, who takes the beating without question. But there was a twist: Mr. Vera filed a criminal complaint and condemned his perpetrator on national news, unleashing a charged debate about callousness toward the working class. For two decades, social movements in Latin Americahave centered on indigenous rights. Today the indigenous have earned new political representation, and open mistreatment will draw complaints. Yet daily life across Latin America is replete with symbols of stubborn class inequality that go unchallenged, such as condominium buildings that have separate elevators for domestic workers.