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Druckenmiller Sees Storm Worse Than ’08 as Seniors Bankrupt
Kids - (www.bloomberg.com) Stan Druckenmiller, one of the best- performing hedge fund managers of
the past three decades, has a warning for the youth of America: Don’t let your
grandparents steal your money. Druckenmiller, 59, said the mushrooming costs of
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, with unfunded liabilities as high as
$211 trillion, will bankrupt the nation’s youth and pose a much greater danger
than the country’s $16 trillion of debt currently being debated in Congress. “While
everybody is focusing on the here and now, there’s a much, much bigger storm
that’s about to hit,” Druckenmiller said in an hour-long interview with Stephanie Ruhle on Bloomberg Television’s
Market Makers. “I am not against seniors. What I am against is current seniors
stealing from future seniors.”
Realtors
Fight To Keep FHA - (www.nationalmortgageprofessional.com)
Since the private mortgage market collapsed, the Federal Housing
Administration (FHA) has played a critical role by helping make mortgage
insurance available to millions of qualified home buyers. That is exactly the
way Congress designed the mortgage insurance fund to operate when it was
established 80 years ago, the National Association of Realtors (NAR)said in a
recent testimony. NAR President Gary Thomas testified before the Senate
Banking Committee that without the FHA, the housing downturn and economic
recession would have been far worse for the nation. “FHA helped fill the void
over the past five years after private lending fled the market by providing
safe, affordable access to mortgage credit to millions of Americans who wanted
to purchase a home,” said Thomas, broker-owner of Evergreen Realty, in Villa
Park, Calif. “Had FHA not stepped in to fill the market gap, many families
would have been unable to purchase homes, current homeowners would have
experienced far greater drops in equity and their home’s value, and our
nation’s economy would be much further from a recovery.”
MBIA's
Municipal Bond Insurer Cut Three Steps to Junk by S&P - (www.bloomberg.com) The MBIA Inc.
(MBI) bond insurance unit created in 2009 to jumpstart the
company’s municipal-debt guarantee business was cut three levels to junk by Standard & Poor’s. National
Public Finance Guarantee Corp. was lowered to BB from BBB with a “developing”
outlook, the New York-based ratings company said yesterday in a statement. The
MBIA parent company’s B- rating, four steps lower than the insurance
subsidiary, was affirmed with a negative outlook. The downgrade came a day
after MBIA, shut out of the bond- guarantee business after backing mortgage
securities that soured during the financial crisis, said there is “substantial
doubt” about the ability of its MBIA Insurance Corp. unit that insured the debt
to continue as a going concern. While National Public Finance was created to
split off its main muni-bond business from those losses, S&P said yesterday
that the new unit may not be able to recover about a $1.6 billion intercompany
loan to the distressed unit if regulators seize that subsidiary as loss claims
erode its capital.
Student-Loan Delinquencies Among the Young Soar - (online.wsj.com) The number of young borrowers who have fallen behind on their student
loan payments has soared over the past four years, the Federal Reserve Bank of
New York said in a report released Thursday. According to the report, 35%
of people under 30 who have student loans were at least 90 days late on their
payments at the end of last year, up from 26% in 2008 and 21% at the end of
2004. The new figures, which exclude borrowers who are still in school or
aren't yet required to make payments, show that young Americans are having a
tougher time repaying college loans as debt loads increase and job prospects
remain shaky. Amplifying the burden: a growing number of young adults
have become student borrowers. All told, 43% of 25-year-olds had student debt
in the fourth quarter of 2012, up from about 33% in the fourth quarter of 2008.
Monte Paschi Sues Nomura, Deutsche Bank Over Derivative Bets
- (www.bloomberg.com) Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA,
which yesterday received a 4.1 billion-euro ($5.3 billion) government bailout,
sued Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) and Nomura (8604) Holdings
Inc. over two derivatives that soured. Monti Paschi filed separate suits in
Florence seeking damages over two contracts from 2008 and 2009 dubbed Santorini
and Alexandria, the Siena, Italy-based lender said in a statement today. The
bank also sued former executives Antonio Vigni and Giuseppe Mussari for
colluding with the banks in the transactions. The lender didn’t specify how
much it’s seeking. Kathryn Hanes, a spokeswoman for Deutsche Bank in London, and Rob Davies, a spokesman for Nomura, declined
to comment. Lawyers for Vigni and Mussari didn’t return calls.
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