Sunday, September 7, 2014

Monday September 8 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

Car Repos Soar 70% As Auto Subprime Bubble Pops; "It's Contained" Promises Fed - (www.zerohedge.com)  As NBC summarizes: "The repo man is getting very busy as a growing number of car and truck owners are struggling to make their monthly auto loan payments. Experian, which analyses millions of auto loans, said Wednesday that the percentage of those loans that were delinquent or ended up in default with the vehicle being repossessed surged in the second quarter of this year." Hyperbole? Hardly. In fact, the auto loan subprime bubble may be the latest to burst (after student loans) as the rate of car repossessions jumped 70.2 percent in the second quarter, with much of that increase coming from finance companies not run by automakers, banks or credit unions. The good news: the percentage of auto loans that end in default is just 0.62% of all auto loans. However, as everyone but the Fed knows, what matters is the flow, not the stock, and the direction and acceleration in defaults simply means that the maximum saturation point has been reached and going forward lenders will experience ever greater losses, which in turn will limit their willingness to offer subprime loans to US consumers desperate to find a house (because clearly one doesn't need to home when one can sleep in their Chevy Tahoe).

Credit Suisse played role in Espirito Santo collapse: WSJ.com - (www.reuters.com) Credit Suisse helped put together billions of dollars in securities that were issued by offshore investment vehicles of Banco Espirito Santo SA and then sold to the Portuguese bank's retail customers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. In the article in its online edition, the newspaper cited corporate filings and people familiar with the situation, saying customers didn't know the investment vehicles were loaded with debt issued by various Espirito Santo companies and served as a mechanism to finance the Portuguese conglomerate. When contacted by Reuters, Credit Suisse in Switzerland said it had no comment on the story. WSJ.com said representatives of Credit Suisse and Espirito Santo declined to comment on the article as well. Troubled Banco Espirito Santo is Portugal's second largest bank. The Portuguese government said it will extend a loan of 3.9 billion euros ($5.2 billion) to the bank resolution fund in charge of rescuing Banco Espirito Santo.

Russia Shuts Moscow McDonalds Due To "Sanitary Breaches" - (www.zerohedge.com) Sanctions blowback? Russian food safety watchdog Rospotrebnadzor has ordered the closure of four McDonalds restaurants in Moscow, according to Reuters, due to "numerous sanitary breaches." *MOSCOW TEMPORARILY CLOSES SEVERAL MCDONALD'S RESTAURANTS. This was not entirely a surprise since Russia had previously raised concerns over McDonalds cheese and was angered when the fast-food restaurant ceased operations in Crimea. This also comes on the heels of McDonalds problems in China and Japan over food supply issues. It appears the "tangible losses" Putin promised, are beginning.

Argentina to Sidestep U.S. Ruling by Paying Bonds Locally - (www.bloomberg.com) Argentina’s bonds sank to a two-month low after the government said it plans to pay foreign-currency notes locally to sidestep a U.S. court ruling that blocked payments and caused its second default in 13 years. The government will submit a bill to Congress that lets overseas debt holders swap into new dollar-denominated bonds governed by domestic law, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said in a nationwide address yesterday. Payments will be made into accounts at the central bank instead of through Bank of New York Mellon Corp., the current trustee.

How the IRS is botching Obamacare tax collection - (www.cnbc.com) The Internal Revenue Service is struggling to collect a new tax that's critical to financing the health-care law—and auditors say the IRS' flawed collecting process is allowing it to raise only three-quarters or so of the revenue that was originally expected. A new report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) flags the enforcement of the medical device excise tax, one of a handful of new taxes imposed under the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act's excise tax—equal to 2.3 percent of the sales price of medical devices—took effect in January and is estimated to bring in about $20 billion through 2019, the Joint Committee on Taxation has said.





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