TOP
STORIES:
Mortgage
debt relief may bring new pain: a tax bill - (www.latimes.com) A special exemption on
principal reduction and other aid from banks, in place since 2007, is set to
expire at year's end. Some lawmakers are seeking an extension. Struggling
homeowners who obtain reductions in their mortgage debt face a new obstacle
starting next year — a bill for taxes on that aid. A special exemption of as much as $2 million
per household in principal reduction and other aid from banks, in place since
2007, is set to expire at year's end. It
is one of a number of similarly expiring tax provisions — most notably the
President George W. Bush-era
tax cuts — and the large automatic government spending reductions looming at
the same time that are referred to as the fiscal cliff. Housing advocates and
lawmakers are worried that the exemption will disappear just as thousands of
homeowners are receiving large amounts of mortgage debt relief from the
nation's five largest banks as part of a national settlement of foreclosure
abuse investigations.
German media warns unlimited ECB aid could ruin euro - (www.reuters.com) Germany's conservative
newspapers on Friday accused ECB chief Mario Draghi of writing a "blank
cheque" to troubled euro zone states that could put the entire currency at
risk, with top-selling Bild warning his policies could make the euro "kaputt".
The Italian president of the European Central Bank unveiled a new plan on
Thursday to lower the borrowing costs of euro zone states like Spain and Italy
by buying their bonds. Germany's central bank opposes the ECB's move.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has supported Draghi while insisting Bundesbank chief
Jens Weidmann's public criticism of the bond-buying has been useful too. For
the country's conservative newspapers, many of which have taken an increasingly
euro-sceptic stance as the three-year-old euro zone debt crisis wears on,
Draghi's latest measures went too far.
Economist Sinn Rattles Merkel Laboring to Save Euro - (www.bloomberg.com) Dressed in his customary gray three- piece suit
at a conference in Frankfurt on June 15, Hans-Werner Sinn
folds his hands and listens without expression as a series of speakers
criticize his economic theories. Willem
Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup Inc., goes so far as to decry
them as “nonsense.” Taking his turn at the microphone shortly afterward, the
64-year-old president of the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research says
he regrets it when investment bankers such as Buiter “lose their composure.” He
then lays out once more his argument that Germany is
paying more than it thinks for Greece’s
fiscal recklessness and that the struggling southern European nation should
long ago have left the euro zone, Bloomberg Markets magazine
reports in its October special issue on the 50 Most Influential people in global finance.
Mario Draghi promised a bazooka but produces a pea-shooter -
(www.telegraph.co.uk) Mario Draghi has promised to
do whatever it takes to save the euro. Was the bond-buying initiative the
European Central Bank president announced today enough, as he claimed, to
"backstop" European monetary union? If, like me, you have come to see
the single currency as unsustainable in its present form, both politically and
economically, then plainly not. But, as with previous ECB initiatives, Mr
Draghi has at least managed to buy a bit more time. The endgame has been pushed
further, possibly quite a lot further, into the future. Markets responded
accordingly. Without the conditional bond-buying programme agreed by the ECB
governing council today, the show would certainly have been over by Christmas,
with either Spain or Italy blowing it up in frustration. We can forget poor
little Greece, which in its pride still manfully soldiers on with a project
which condemns the country to permanent depression. Whether it leaves or stays
no longer makes much difference to anyone else. Most of the preparation for its
exit has already been done.
Forget
four years ago: We're worse off than in 2011 - (www.money.cnn.com) The problem is it's unlikely
we will get to that magic number anytime soon. Compared to where we were a year
ago, the economy is headed in the wrong direction. Here's the trend: Over the
past six months, the economy has added an average of 97,000 jobs a month. At
this time a year ago, the six-month average was 136,000, meaning the economy
was growing 40% faster than it is today. For the whole year, the economy has
added an average of 139,000 jobs a month. That's better, but still worse than a
year ago when that figure was 143,000. What's more, those numbers come from the
survey of employers. When the Labor Department asks individuals about their
employment status, the situation looks a good deal worse. According to that
survey, which many say does a better job of capturing new businesses and the
self-employed, six-month average employment gains drop to a measly 6,000 jobs,
or nearly one-sixth fewer than we were adding a year ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment