KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Monday September 1 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

The Most Ambitious Project In Atlantic City History Is Closing Down - (www.businessinsider.com) Revel, the most expensive hotel and casino in Atlantic City history, will shut down Sept. 10 after no qualified bidders emerged to bail out the project. CBS' Jeff Kolakowski reports over 3,200 workers' jobs will be affected. Earlier this summer, the resort filed for bankruptcy for the second time in two years, listing liabilities of up to $1 billion. The development posted an operating loss of $21.7 million in the first quarter of 2014. Revel first filed for bankruptcy less than a year after it opened in 2012. Revel cost $2.6 billion to develop and is New Jersey's second-tallest building. Planned at the height of the pre-Lehman bubble, the project face numerous delays after the financial crisis. The greatest setback came when principal owner Morgan Stanley walked away from its $1 billion investment in 2010.

Over 100 rally against proposed Atlantic City tax increase - (www.pressofatlanticcity.com) Holding signs "Do AC: Do Low Tax" and "Very soon, Atlantic City will be a ghost town", more than 100 Atlantic City residents protested Tuesday morning outside City Hall against the 29 percent tax increase proposed by Mayor Don Guardian and approved by City Council. Organized by Emily Vu, who had talked the Vietnamese community into a protest last month, this protest brought together marchers of all backgrounds, from the South Asian community that supported Guardian in last year's election, to members of the black community. "The message is that these are outrageous taxes," Kenny Pham said. "People can't afford to pay property taxes like this." David Tayoum said that with the closing of several casinos and tax appeals, it was understandable there would be some increases.

Brokers Lure Soldiers Out of Low-Fee Federal Retirement Plan - (www.bloomberg.com) John Turner suspected that brokers were encouraging federal workers to ditch their top-flight retirement plan. So he went under cover. The former U.S. Labor Department economist called representatives at companies such as Bank of America Corp., Charles Schwab Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. He identified himself as a potential client grappling with what to do with his own nest egg. Turner thought he knew the right answer: Leave it alone. As a legacy of his government service, he kept his money in the Thrift Savings Plan, considered the gold standard of 401(k)-type programs for its rock-bottom fees. Yet all but one company told him to roll over all his money into individual retirement accounts. On average, stock funds charge almost 50 times more than the government plan. “It’s a scandal,” said Turner, director of the Pension Policy Center in Washington. “They are trying to sell me an IRA clearly not in my interest. It’s in their interest. They want to get the fees.”

Chavez Friends Get Rich After His Death as Venezuela Slides Into Chaos - (www.bloomberg.com) Retired Venezuelan Army Captain William Biancucci paces around his sparsely furnished Caracas office, clutching a red, bound copy of Hugo Chavez’s socialist constitution. He’s discussing his plans to buy a private jet to ease travel to and from his cattle ranch in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest. From a sprawling stretch of pastureland, he packs cows by the thousands on ships headed to Venezuela. Biancucci, 55, who grew up poor, says he won contracts to supply Venezuela with livestock thanks to friendships with military officers now in the government. His voice rises with emotion as he says he’s been a devotee of Chavez since military college, when the late leader was his history professor. In 1992, Biancucci joined 140 other officers in staging a coup attempt led by Chavez. Although the coup failed, Chavez was elected president six years later -- and Biancucci’s business thrived. Socialism, Biancucci says, is the solution to poverty, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its September issue. Chavez’s socialism, he says, has made him personally rich. “I’m a socialist, but I love having cash in my hands,” he says, shaking a fist holding an imaginary wad of money. “Socialism is wealth.” Biancucci is one of a coterie of Venezuelans close to Chavez who acquired wealth during his 14 years inpower and under his successor, former bus driver and union leader Nicolas Maduro.

Bubble Market Stunner: Revenueless Biotech Goes Public, Drops, Trades For Six Days, Then Voids Entire IPO - (www.zerohedge.com) In what is certainly a historic, and quite stunning, market first, not to mention prima facie evidence that Janet Yellen was right about the biotech (and not only) bubble, last week the equity markets experienced something that has not happened in decades: a biotech firm went public, traded for six days, only to announce Friday that it would void its IPO and won't issue shares after all, thanks to a key investor's failure to follow through on a commitment to buy stock. In other words, days after going public, yet another darling of the momo bubble mania du jour, decided to undo everything, and went back to being private (and soon: bankrupt).

OTHER STORIES:

Biotech Firm Goes Public And Then Goes Un-Public In A Never-Before-Seen IPO Fail - (www.businessinsider.com)