KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Friday February 20 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

Distressed family swamped by an underwater home | The ... - (www.washingtonpost.com) The land had once been the site of Fairview, one of the Maryland’s largest slave plantations. Now it was Fairwood, an 1,800-home subdivision that would soon become the richest neighborhood in the richest African American county in the United States. A decade ago, Comfort and Kofi were at the apex of an astonishing journey they had made from Ghana in 1997, when they had won a visa lottery to come to America. They did not know it at the time, but they were also at the midpoint in their odyssey from American Dream to American Nightmare. Today, they struggle under nearly $1 million in debt that they will never be able to repay on the 3,292-square-foot, six-bedroom, red-brick Colonial they bought for $617,055 in 2005. The Boatengs have not made a mortgage payment in 2,322 days — more than six years — according to their most recent mortgage statement. Their plight illustrates how some of the people swallowed up by the easy credit era of the previous decade have yet to reemerge years later.

The "Catastrophic Shutdown Of America's Supply Chain" Begins: Stunning Photos Of West Coast Port Congestion - (www.zerohedge.com) One week ago, when previewing what may be the first lockout of the West Coast Ports since 2002, we cited the Retail Industry Leaders Association who, realizing that failure to reach an agreement between the dockworker union and their bosses, the Pacific Maritime Association representing port management would lead to devastating consequences for the US retail industry, had several very damning soundbites….

"The slowdown is already making life difficult, but a shutdown could derail the economy completely." Just so readers have a sense of what is at stake, this is what the average dockworker makes: $147,000 a year in salary, plus $35,000 a year in employer-paid health care and an annual pension of $80,000 (according to an association press release). It is the overtime compensation to the total shown here, which grosses to over a quarter of a million dollars, that dockworkers are negotiating to raise or else the key US supply-chains gets it. Incidentally, the demands of the dockworker union and their leverage is precisely the reason for the dramatic discrepancy we showed in the following chart:

ECB approves more emergency liquidity for Greek banks - newspaper - (www.reuters.com) The European Central Bank has extended the total amount of Emergency Liquidity Assistance that can be given to Greek banks by 5 billion euros ($5.7 billion), German newspaper Handelsblatt reported on Thursday. One euro zone source told Reuters that a single-digit billion euro extension for ELA had been granted. That comes on top of the 60 billion euros previously approved. Sources have also told Reuters that the ECB Governing Council discussed the issue of ELA in a telephone conference on Thursday.

I.M.F. Announces $17.5 Billion Package for Ukraine - (www.nytimes.com) The International Monetary Fund agreed on Thursday to throw a new $17.5 billion lifeline to Ukraine, hoping to stabilize the country as it teeters on the edge of default. The new plan replaces a $17 billion emergency bailout that was extended last year after mass street protests in Ukraine ousted the country’s president, Viktor F. Yanukovych; Russia annexed Crimea; and a violent separatist uprising began in the east of the country. That uprising has now stretched into a nearly yearlong battle that has severely crippled Ukraine’s economy. In addition to the heavy costs of the continuing military operation and the displacement of more than one million people from the east, Ukraine has had to grapple with a collapse in the value of its currency, the hryvnia, and spiking inflation. Trade with Russia, long Ukraine’s largest partner, has plummeted, paralyzing many industries. Foreign investment has dried up amid the turmoil. Announcing the program in Brussels on Thursday, the fund’s managing director, Christine Lagarde, acknowledged that there were serious risks in providing any credit to Ukraine but said that the aid was needed urgently.

Global Oil Layoffs Exceed 100,000 - (www.bloomberg.com) The promise of plentiful jobs and salaries as high as a quarter-million dollars a year lured Colombia native Clara Correa Zappa and her British husband to Perth, Australia, at the height of the continent’s oil and gas frenzy. Engineers were in high demand in 2012, when oil prices exceeded $100 a barrel, making the move across the world a no-brainer. Within two years, though, oil plunged to less than half the 2012 price and Zappa lost her job as a safety analyst. Now she’s worried her husband, who also works in the commodities industry, could also lose his job. Such anxieties are rising at a time when the number of energy jobs cut globally have climbed well above 100,000 as once-bustling oil hubs in Scotland, Australia and Brazil, among other countries, empty out, according to Swift Worldwide Resources, a staffing firm with offices across the world. “It’s shocking,” Zappa, 29, said in a telephone interview. There is “so much pressure for him to keep his job and even work extra.”

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