Thursday, August 11, 2016

Friday August 12 2016 Housing and Economic stories


The Feds Don't Care If You Dropped Out of College. They Want Their Money Back - (www.bloomberg.com) When it comes to collecting on student loans, the U.S. Department of Education treats college dropouts the same as Ivy League graduates: They just want the money back. New data show the perils of that approach. Dropouts who took out loans to finance the degrees they ultimately didn't obtain often end up worse off for attending college. Unlike their peers who earn degrees, dropouts generally don't command higher wages after leaving school, making it harder for them to repay their student debt. The typical college dropout experienced a steep fall in wealth from 2010 to 2013, figures from the Federal Reserve in Washington show, and an 11 percent drop in income—the sharpest decline among any group in America. It should therefore come as no surprise that half of federal student loan borrowers who dropped out of school within the past three years are late on their payments, according to Education Department figures provided to Bloomberg. More than half of those delinquent borrowers are at least 91 days behind. By comparison, just 7.2 percent of recent college graduates are more than three months late on their debt1.

Social Security's looming $32 trillion shortfall - (www.cnbc.com) You can look at the financial health of Social Security in many ways. The official version, found in the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees' annual report, is this: Social Security's total income is projected to exceed its total cost through 2019, as it has since 1982. After 2019, interest income and money taken out of reserves will provide the resources needed to offset Social Security's annual deficits until 2034. By then, if Congress does nothing, the federal government will collect enough in payroll taxes to pay about 75 percent of scheduled retirement benefits until 2090. The Social Security Administration projects that unfunded obligations will reach $11.4 trillion by 2090. That's up $700 billion from the $10.7 trillion the administration projected for its 2089 shortfall.

Italian banks may face rising funding costs after DBRS review - (www.reuters.com) Italy's banks face the prospect of higher funding costs after DBRS put the country's last "A" credit rating on review citing uncertainty over a referendum scheduled for the autumn on a set of changes to the constitution. A spokesperson said the unexpected move "irritated" the Economy Ministry of Pier Carlo Padoan, who like Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has said the government would resign if the referendum does not approve the new measures which are central to its agenda. DBRS rates Italy "A (low)", making it the only one of the four major agencies whose rating the European Central Bank can use, to keep Italy in the top band for collateral requirements for its lending to banks. That means a downgrade from DBRS would raise the cost for Italian banks of using government bonds as collateral for taking loans from the ECB.

Hacked Bitcoin Exchange Users to Lose 36% - (www.bloomberg.com) Hong Kong-based Bitfinex said all users will lose 36 percent of their deposits after the bitcoin exchange concluded its review of a $71 million hacking attack. Start your day with what’s moving markets. Get our markets daily newsletter. To compensate its customers, Bitfinex said users will receive tokens that may later be redeemed or exchanged for shares in its parent company. Following the announcement, bitcoin climbed to $594 as of 10:55 a.m. on Sunday in Tokyo, based on prices from Coinbase. The virtual currency dropped 12 percent to $577.23 in the week through Friday, its largest weekly decline since June, according to Bloomberg prices. “After much thought, analysis, and consultation, we have arrived at the conclusion that losses must be generalized across all accounts and assets,” the exchange wrote in a blog post on Saturday. “In place of the loss in each wallet, we are crediting a token labeled BFX to record each customer’s discrete losses.”

City of London Office Values Plunge 6% in One Month - (www.wolfstreet.com) In July, a sharp mechanism started working: one of the hottest commercial real estate markets in the world, and one of the most expensive, began to deflate. And the hiss is deafening. Capital values for offices in the City of London – the financial district of London – plunged 6.1% in July, from June, real estate firm CBRE reported today. In its monthly index, “capital value” represents the probable prices that would have been paid at the date of valuation. And it extended beyond London: In the UK office values dropped 4.1% from June. Commercial property values overall – including office, retail, industrial, and other – dropped 3.3%, which chopped year-over-year growth to 0.4%.



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