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STORIES:
Lender
manipulation of MLS inventory is remedy for housing bust - (www.ochousingnews.com) When lenders make loans, they far prefer borrowers to repay those loans;
in fact, their entire business plan relies on it. As long as borrowers are current
with their payments, lenders are happy and making money. When borrowers
don’t make their payments, the end result is a distressed sale. If there are
enough of these, market prices are reduced dramatically which causes
significant lender losses. Lenders know this too, so when distressed loans
become an overwhelming problem, they devise can-kicking methods including loan
modifications, mark-to-fantasy accounting, and when all else fails, they simply
allow the delinquent borrowers to squat in shadow inventory.
Loan Modifications
Once a borrower stops paying on the loan, the
first step in the process is to attempt a loan modification. Many
borrowers are using this step as a place to game the system for more time in
the property. If the loan modification is successful, then the borrower is
made current and everyone is happy. Very few loan modifications are
successful mostly because it isn’t in a borrower’s best financial interest to
get temporary relief and sustain the huge debt. Loan modifications are the
first step in the amend-pretend-extend dance.
Short Sale
The next option is a short sale. This process
generally goes nowhere because Banks Refuse to Recognize HELOC and
Second Mortgage Losses. To give a sense of scale of this problem, consider this (2010
data): “Together with Citigroup the banks hold about 42 percent of the $1.1
trillion in second-home liens. Unlike first mortgages, they are typically not
bundled and sold off to investors but kept on the banks’ books. The biggest
home-equity lender in the U.S. is Bank of America, holding some $138 billion in
such loans. Wells Fargo has about $123.8 billion of home-equity loans.” These
loans are all going to go bad, and it will decimate the banking industry when
these losses are finally recognized. Restoring collateral value to second
mortgage liens is one of the primary reasons Bernanke and the fed are obsessed
with re-flating the housing bubble.
Analysis: Cyprus rescue may set unwelcome euro zone precedent
- (www.reuters.com) Cyprus hardly seems to have the sort of debt crisis that could provoke a
domino effect across the euro zone; its economy is tiny and
the bloc's financial exposure to the island is modest. Nevertheless, Cyprus is
fast becoming a risk for efforts to tackle problems in the euro zone's much
larger economies because almost any way of solving the crisis - from
restructuring its debts to imposing losses on banks - is likely to
set a precedent for other troubled states. The danger is that a rescue for
Cyprus, which heads to the polls on Sunday, will hurt fragile confidence on
financial markets and undermine progress that the euro zone has made in
shoring up the rest of its "peripheral" members. "It's not a big
issue in terms of financial exposure, but it sets a precedent for what happens
in other countries," said Jennifer McKeown, a senior economist at Capital
Economics.
Spain's Bankia shares fall 22 percent as big dilution looms
- (www.reuters.com) Shares in
Spain's Bankia (BKIA.MC) opened down 22.65
percent after a suspension on trading in the stock was lifted on Thursday. The
stock was trading at 0.40 euros ($0.54) at 6:01 eT after recovering slightly.
The shares closed on Wednesday at 0.47 euros. Trading in the stock was
suspended just before 3 a.m. ET on Thursday, after a newspaper report said that
the nationalized lender's shares would be valued at 0.01 euros each in a
recapitalization. Spain's bank restructuring fund FROB, which controls Bankia,
dismissed the report, saying it had not yet decided on a valuation. It added
however that existing shareholders would likely be heavily diluted in the
recapitalization.
Big investors lead bets against junk bonds - (www.ft.com) Some of the
world's most sophisticated credit investors have been ramping up their bets
against junk bonds even as retail investors have been pouring money into the
asset class. The list of junk-bond bears includes GSO, the credit arm of
Blackstone; Apollo Global Management; Centerbridge Partners; Oaktree Capital;
and a host of credit and so-called "macro" hedge funds, according to
executives familiar with the firms' investment activities. These investors
began paring their junk-bond holdings during late 2012. In more recent weeks,
some have been taking short positions in the market, betting that the price of
junk bonds will decline and their yields will go up.
Cattle Disappearing Amid Drought Signals Beef Rally:
Commodities - (www.bloomberg.com) Bill Donald, the third-generation owner of Cayuse Livestock Co., sold
the calves he raised early last summer and cut purchases of cattle after
pastures dried up. The herd grazing his land now is about 85 percent of normal.
“There’s a huge cattle country that is in need of quite a bit of moisture,”
Donald, 60, the former president of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association,
said by telephone from his ranch near Melville, Montana. “It’s going to take a
major change in the weather patterns.” The worst U.S. drought since the 1930s
is shrinking a cattle herd that’s already the smallest since 1952 and signaling
tighter beef supplies and higher costs for restaurant owners. Chipotle Mexican
Grill Inc. says the burrito chain may have to raise prices, while government
data show a pound of boneless sirloin steak cost consumers $6.781 on average in
December, 10 percent more than a year earlier.
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