KeNosHousingPortal.blogspot.com
TOP STORIES:
Stockton: The town the housing boom broke - (www.reuters.com) For decades, Stockton, California suffered a civic inferiority complex. Los Angeles had celebrities and sunny beaches. San Francisco was awash in tech futurism and post-pubescent billionaires. Stockton was the polyester, buy-generic cousin, a dingy commercial hub for Central Valley farms that was just far enough from the San Francisco Bay area to be an irrelevance for the state's coastal elites. For decades, Stockton, California suffered a civic inferiority complex. Los Angeles had celebrities and sunny beaches. San Francisco was awash in tech futurism and post-pubescent billionaires. Stockton was the polyester, buy-generic cousin, a dingy commercial hub for Central Valley farms that was just far enough from the San Francisco Bay area to be an irrelevance for the state's coastal elites. But then came the housing boom, and sorry Stockton practically started to strut. Its loamy farmlands - among the most fertile in the United States - gave way to shiny subdivisions. Middle-class families, priced out of the Bay area housing market, snapped up the new homes, happily trading extreme commutes for the suburban niceties of four bedrooms and a yard. Mayor Gary Podesto, a colorful character given to slicked-back hair and Guys and Dolls suits, saw the sudden influx of developer dollars and property taxes as the key to an urban renaissance. He kicked it off with a plush downtown sports arena complete with a Sheraton hotel, and a swank redevelopment of the waterfront that transformed it into a showpiece to rival San Antonio's Riverwalk. Sushi joints started opening up. Reiki masters moved to town. Stockton started to turn, well, Californian. If only it could have lasted. At the February 28 city council meeting, which ran for more than six hours, Mayor Ann Johnston started the proceedings by saying, "Lord, please help us." A beat. "Lord, we need your help." Pending any divine intervention, Stockton would skip its next bond payment and enter negotiations with its creditors. The process could end with Stockton, population 292,000, becoming the largest U.S. city ever to file for bankruptcy. It has a little more than two months left to mediate with creditors.
Has Goldman Sachs Become the Dumbest Firm in the World - (www.forbes.com) If maximizing shareholder value is, as Jack Welch said, “the dumbest idea in the world,” has Goldman Sachs become the dumbest firm in the world? Has Goldman Sachs, by relentlessly and single-mindedly pursuing shareholder value to its ultimate conclusion at the expense of everything else, shown itself to be not merely corrupt but also unintelligent in the extreme? As commentators have pointed out, Greg Smith’s OpEd article in the New York Times on Wednesday didn’t tell us much that we didn’t already know. “Goldman Sachs, it turns out, is still evil,” wrote Halah Touryalai on Forbes. No real news on the ethics front. But Smith, as an insider, did reveal to us something new: Goldman Sachs has become stupid. The principal sign of stupidity is an inability to learn. Goldman Sachs may be full of smart, sharp people, but they are still doing very unintelligent things. Goldman shows no signs of learning
Worst Bond Rout Since 2010 Sparks Inflection Anxiety - (www.bloomberg.com) Bonds of all types worldwide are generating their biggest losses since 2010 this month, raising concern that the four-year bull market that pushed interest rates to record lows may be ending as the flood of easy money from the U.S. Federal Reserve subsides. “For a very long time, the market dynamics in interest rates have been overwhelmed by Fed monetary policy,” said Jeffrey Rosenberg, chief investment strategist for fixed-income at New York-based BlackRock Inc., the world’s biggest money manager which oversees $3.5 trillion. “Has the big inflection point been reached?”
Senators terrified with abuse of Patriot Act’s secret laws - (www.rt.com) Horrified with the way the US government uses the Patriot Act against its own people, two senators have been trying to make these practices public for years. Tired of being ignored, they're now taking their fight against secret programs to public. Two US senators wrote the attorney general of the United States this week, urging the federal government to give the American public evidence explaining how the Patriot Act has been interpreted since signed into law in 2001. In a joint letter to Attorney General Eric Holder sent Thursday, Senators Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and Mark Udall (D-Colorado) plead with the government to provide the American people with the facts behind what the Patriot Act can let America’s top investigators do. The lawmakers, who have rallied for disclosure of these details for more than two years, say citizens would be “stunned” to learn what the government believes it can get away with under the law. The controversial USA Patriot Act was hastily signed into legislation after the September 11 al-Qaeda attacks under the guise of a being a necessity for preventing future terrorist efforts, but for over a decade since the law has become notorious for its ability to stick federal eyes into seemingly every aspect of the American public in the name of counterterrorism. Although the government has gone on the record to downplay the constitutionally-damning powers they are granted under the law, Senators Wyden and Udall say it is time that the feds fulfill the demands of millions of concerned Americans and discuss in detail what they can do under the act — and what they’ve already done.
Growing Antitax Movement Shows Irish Stoicism Wearing Thin - (www.nytimes.com) Throughout the European financial crisis, Ireland has won plaudits for the way it has handled austerity. But growth has stalled here once again, and an incipient tax revolt is being taken as a sign that even this most stoic of nations is becoming fed up. Urged on by promoters of a tax boycott, fully 85 percent of Irish homeowners have yet to pay a $130 property tax that is due March 31. The latest official figures show that just 225,000 property owners out of 1.6 million have paid a total of $29 million — well short of the more than $200 million the government was planning to raise to help support public services. The government has so far dismissed talk that the boycott is gathering strength, saying the Irish are notorious procrastinators on money matters.
No growth capitalism's post crash manifesto - (www.marketwatch.com)
Market's Next Big Worry: A Dismal Earnings Season Ahead - (www.cnbc.com)
Italy is trapped in a monetary Vlkerkerker
US builders began work on fewer homes in February - (www.washingtonpost.com)
Bank stress tests don't end the pain - (www.bloomberg.com)
Barriers to Change, From Wall St. and Geneva - (www.nytimes.com)
Why Our Recession Call Stands - (www.businesscycle.com)
Treasuries Extend Biggest Weekly Drop in 8 Months - (www.bloomberg.com)
No comments:
Post a Comment