Friday May 20 2016 Housing and Economic stories

TOP STORIES:

Shopping pall trashes NYC commercial real estate - (www.nypost.com) The fall-off in sales at US brick-and-mortar stores is starting to hit Manhattan’s pricey commercial real estate. Building owners across town are being forced to cut their rents as sales slow and retailers become cautious, a report due out Monday reveals. Retail rents in 10 of 17 top Manhattan shopping corridors are getting marked down — some by as much as 16 percent, the report shows. Rents first showed signs of weakness last fall after a building spree created an apparent glut of available ground floor spaces — but the discounting has accelerated as vacancies multiplied, according to the Real Estate Board of New York Spring Retail Report.

These Charts Show the Truly Dismal State of Young People in Bailed-Out EU Countries - (www.wolfstreet.com) The human aspects of the European crisis, such as the effects of horrific youth unemployment in some countries, have largely receded from the headlines that ECB potentate Mario Draghi rules with his beautifully concocted negative-interest-rate absurdity and his efforts to manipulate the financial markets. Lesser ECB figures also try to get into the headlines edgewise, including German Bundesbank president Jens Weidmann, but no one listens to him anymore. Yet, and despite Draghi’s bluster, the real problems in the EU, particularly in Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, and Spain, have not been solved – and I mean, not at all – as shown by the results of the big poll about young people in the EU. The survey, commissioned by the European Parliament and conducted by TNS opinion, led to an evocatively-titled report, “Most young Europeans feel marginalized by the crisis, says Eurobarometer poll.”

Bull Market Losing Biggest Ally as Buybacks Fall Most Since 2009 - (www.bloomberg.com) Corporate America has its eye on a new target as executives look to tighten their belts amid a slump in profits -- and this time shareholders won’t like it. After snapping up trillions of dollars of their own stock in a five-year shopping binge that dwarfed every other buyer, U.S. companies from Apple Inc. to IBM Corp. just put on the brakes. Announced repurchases dropped 38 percent to $244 billion in the last four months, the biggest decline since 2009, data compiled by Birinyi Associates and Bloomberg show. Coming amid the worst profit slump since the financial crisis, the slowdown may signal companies are preserving cash as economic and political uncertainty whips up from Europe to China and in the U.S. At stake is the primary source of buoyancy for the second-longest bull market in history, at a time when individuals and money managers are bailing out and valuations sit near 14-year highs.

Shadow Banks Make Diciest Loans While Wall Street Retains Risk - (www.bloomberg.com) Wall Street has cut its lending to the riskiest companies, shifting its financing to nonbanks that make the loans instead, according to a team of analysts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “Since those policies reach beyond individual banks and target risk in the entire banking system, they are more likely to trigger significant responses that may have unintended consequences,” said the report by Sooji Kim, Matthew Plosser and João Santos. Nonbanks, part of what’s called the shadow banking system, are financial institutions that don’t take deposits and fall outside the purview of banking regulators. 

Central Bankers’ Wisdom Faulted as Gold Holdings Surge 25% - (www.bloomberg.com) The great gold rush of 2016 is gathering pace. Holdings in exchange-traded funds have now surged by a quarter, with investors taking advantage of lower prices over the past two weeks to enlarge stakes on rising concern about central bank policy making worldwide. The holdings have increased to 1,822.3 metric tons, the most since December 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, after bottoming at a seven-year low in January. In the past two weeks, as prices lost 1.6 percent, ETFs swelled 63.2 tons, rising every day. Gold is the best-performing major metal this year after silver amid rising concern over negative rates in Europe and Japan and whether the Federal Reserve will be able to tighten further. 

OTHER STORIES:

Oil hits six-month highs on supply outages, Goldman forecast - (www.reuters.com)
Dell Said to Offer Premium to Lure Buyers to EMC Bond Deal - (www.bloomberg.com)
China Quietly Targets U.S. Tech Companies in Security Reviews - (www.nytimes.com)

Oil Rally Lifts Commodities, Global Equities as Treasuries Slip - (www.bloomberg.com)

Emerging Currencies Fall Toward Lowest Since March on China Data - (www.bloomberg.com)
Two-Minute Plunge Roils China H Shares as Futures Volume Soars - (www.bloomberg.com)
Deutsche Bank’s Problems May Be ‘Insurmountable,’ Berenberg Says - (www.bloomberg.com)