Bloomberg: Maid-Turned-Realtor Ran Vegas Mortgage Scam, Prosecutors Say

Las Vegas couple allegedly arranged fake sales on some houses five times. Then, according to the indictment, they walked away from the mortgages, leaving lenders in the lurch. stashing the cash in 80 bank accounts.

watoday: Dollar dive: 40 US cents warning

The Australian dollar may fall to a record low next year, possibly dipping below 40 US cents for the first time, as slowing growth in emerging markets cools demand for the raw materials exported by the nation.

The Oil Drum: Will the UK Face a Natural Gas Crisis this Winter? (Part 1 of 2)

In recent years, the UK has become increasingly dependent on natural gas as its primary energy source. However during the last three years, UK nat gas production has declined at an annual rate of 8-10%, which many energy analysts expect will continue.

Posted by drewster @ 09:37 PM 7 Comments

NYTimes: Consumers Feel the Next Crisis: It’s Credit Cards

After years of flooding Americans with credit card offers and sky-high credit lines, lenders are sharply curtailing both, just as an eroding economy squeezes consumers. The pullback is affecting even creditworthy consumers and threatens an already beleaguered banking industry with another wave of heavy losses after an era in which it reaped near record gains from the business of easy credit that it helped create. Lenders wrote off an estimated $21 billion in bad credit card loans in the first half of 2008 as more borrowers defaulted on their payments. With companies laying off tens of thousands of workers, the industry stands to lose at least another $55 billion over the next year and a half, analysts say. Currently, the total losses amount to 5.5 percent of credit card debt outstanding,

New Statesman: Europe's looming crisis

It all started with sub-prime loans in the United States. Or did it? As the IMF is called in to bail out failing economies, the scale of European exposure to toxic debt is becoming clear

Daily Express: BUY A HOUSE... AND GET A FREE ASTON MARTIN

DESPERATE estate agents are giving away free Bond-style cars in a last ditch bid to get cash strapped Brits to buy houses.

guardian: Barclays Capital cancels Xmas party

Oh yeh and Jonathon Ross has been suspended, thought this was very important news...lol

Posted by mark @ 08:03 PM 12 Comments

FT: Closing doors

The CEBR estimates bonuses in London will fall 60 per cent this year, while New York State says a 50 per cent drop is likely. The mix between shares and cash is also set to change. “There will be fewer people earning the really big money,” says Nick Studer from Oliver Wyman, a consultancy. Moreover, many of the investment banks that paid the biggest bonuses are now grafted more tightly on to retail banks, where compensation tends to be lower. New York and London are forecast to shed nearly 100,000 banking-related jobs by the end of 2009 – and banks that survive are unlikely to return to this decade’s dizzying profit levels any time soon. But even those who believe change is in the air wonder how long the restraint will last.

Forbes: Nomura in red in Q2, hit by trading losses

Nomura Holdings Inc, Japan's largest brokerage, posted its third consecutive quarterly net loss on Tuesday as financial market turmoil led to big trading losses and discouraged companies from issuing shares or making deals. Nomura, which last month bought Lehman Brothers (nyse: LEH - news - people )' operations in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and the Middle East, also warned of potential losses on exposure to crisis-hit Iceland and further write-downs on its stake in Fortress Investment Group (nyse: FIG - news - people ). The outlook for Japan's brokerage sector remains bleak with the benchmark Nikkei average sliding to a 26-year low this week, depressing trading commissions and demand for capital raising, mergers and other fee-generating deals.

CNN: AmEx to cut 7,000 jobs

Don't these have UK offices in Chester?

The Telegraph: UK house prices likely to be hit by forced sellers, Nationwide warns

"As the economy weakens further there is likely to be more movement on asking prices as sellers adjust to the prevailing conditions and reassess their own needs. Some may choose not to sell after all, thus reducing supply, but others will adjust their prices accordingly,"

Dailymail: Goldman Sachs ready to hand out £7bn salary and bonus package... after its £6bn bail-out

Goldman Sachs is on course to pay its top City bankers multimillion-pound bonuses - despite asking the U.S. government for an emergency bail-out. The struggling Wall Street bank has set aside £7billion for salaries and 2008 year-end bonuses, it emerged yesterday. Each of the firm's 443 partners is on course to pocket an average Christmas bonus of more than £3million. The size of the pay pool comfortably dwarfs the £6.1billion lifeline which the U.S. government is throwing to Goldman as part of its £430billion bail-out.

Posted by lvmreader @ 05:33 PM 23 Comments

FT: Beware the unwinding of the yen carry trade

Japan has a $15,000bn pool of savings, the deepest in the world and worth more than the annual economic output of the US. In the past days, as spectacular moves in global currencies reveal, the carry trade has been violently unwound. With last week’s panic retreat from risk assets of almost every description came a dramatic rise in the yen, partially reversed in the past two days on rumours of a Japanese interest rate cut.

FT: Interest-only mortgages blocked

Debt charities have accused banks of failing to uphold Gordon Brown’s promise that repossession would be a ”last resort” for insolvent homeowners. Cheltenham & Gloucester, part of Lloyds TSB, has attracted criticism by announcing that borrowers cannot move from repayment mortgages to interest only loans, which offer lower monthly payments. However estate agents and brokers said restricting interest only loans was prudent. Falling house prices mean borrowers who do not reduce the size of their loan through repayment mortgages are at risk of negative equity and could have difficulty refinancing their property in the future.

Posted by musn't grumble @ 05:09 PM 16 Comments

Rat and Mouse blog: The most embarrassing auction in the west

Seventy-four lots, 100 attendees... err... three bids, and no sales. Welsh estate agents Peter Alan have been blamed for overpricing the properties, but reports suggest that apartments that had at one time seen valuations of £200,000 were offered at £30,000; yet, still no takers.

Guardian: WTO: open public services to market

A government consultation report released last week says the UK faces demands to 'remove all establishment restrictions on hospital and social services, rest, convalescent and old people's homes'. Other demands include the removal of distinctions between postal and courier services and calls for Britain to end subsidies to broadcasting organisations. This could have massive implications for the BBC. Nick Mathiason The Observer, Sunday October 13 2002 Article history But under Gats, commitments are irrevocable. Countries will be locked in, which is incompatible with democracy.'

Posted by malct @ 03:01 PM 14 Comments

BBC: Reaction to falling house prices

From the quotes: JAMES KNIGHTLY, ECONOMIST AT ING: "This wealth destruction, coupled with growing concerns about negative equity, is likely to keep consumer confidence very weak." Wot? When a house burns down, that is wealth destruction. If its market value changes, that is neither wealth destruction nor wealth creation.

Posted by mark wadsworth @ 02:53 PM 14 Comments

cnn: 6 Chinese knock-offs

Off topic but relevant in a way... For many years we have been borrowing money, buying cheap imported goods, in the end we get screwed for both, we should borrow less and be more self reliant as a country, grow our own foods, etc.... After all do we know if we are buying the real thing, look at the recent milk scare, are the goods really organic? Are the eggs real, etc we rely on honesty from countries with so much corruption they simply make copies and knock offs of the real things... This article is a new level even for China

Posted by mark @ 02:40 PM 7 Comments

This Is Cornwall: Cornwall

"Statistics in the report show that the average salary in Cornwall is just £16,484 yet the income needed to be able to get a mortgage to buy a home in Cornwall currently stands at £63,128. The average house price in Cornwall is £232,578." -Still a long way to fall then! "There are areas in the South West which are among the most unaffordable places in the country to buy a home and we also have the highest proportion of second homes." -Well that is already starting to change. If you look on Rightmove, a large number of Holiday lets are starting to come back on to the market, a trend that in my opinion will accelerate as holiday belts tighten.

bbc: Saver still waiting for £24,000

A saver is still waiting for a £24,000 transferral from the UK arm of an Icelandic bank to appear in his bank account three weeks after making it. Rhys Livsey, 29, from Cardiff, withdrew the money from Kaupthing Edge a day before it was taken over by ING Direct after a financial crisis in Iceland. In an email the company told Mr Livsey his money "had been held up". A spokesman for ING Direct said the administrators were working on clearing payments from prior to the takeover. Mr Livsey, who works as a PA, told BBC News he had decided to move his money, a total of £24,067, after reading some reports of problems with the bank on the internet.

Posted by mark @ 01:32 PM 9 Comments

Wales Online: Buy a house – get an Aston Martin free

As an incentive to drive up interest, the company is now offering two V8 Vantage models of the Aston Martin, worth about £90,000 each, to buyers who secure the house keys. The company said purchasers this weekend would automatically own the vehicle and the idea came on the back of tomorrow’s release of the latest James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, which features the 190mph DBS version of the Aston Martin.

Posted by sold out @ 01:15 PM 19 Comments

bloomberg: Maid-Turned-Realtor Ran Vegas Mortgage Scam

Eve Mazzarella was a Las Vegas success story. The high-school dropout and former housemaid moved to the Nevada city in 2000 from Seattle, got a certificate from the ABC Real Estate School and started selling houses in what would become the hottest market in the country. In 2006, Mazzarella recorded sales of $13.8 million and made the National Association of Realtors'

ASSETZ: Mervyn King must resign - Base rates must be cut by 2% now

Another comedy classic "We need a lion and not a mouse to lead us through these turbulent times. Next Thursday's MPC meeting should end with an announcement of a 2% base rate cut and the end of the Mervyn King era. Mervyn King should resign."

Posted by sold out @ 12:45 PM 19 Comments

Guardian: Auctions point to steeper fall in house prices

"The average price of a property sold at auction dropped nearly 30% over the past 12 months leading analysts to predict that house prices in the general market have a lot further to fall."

cnn: Groups seek credit card debt forgiveness

This is getting annoying now, the next boom i am going to borrow as much as I can and then ask if someone can bail me out or forgive me for my debts, why should i save and get nothing...

BBC: HBOS: Breaking the bank

The take over of HBOS by Lloyds TSB will create the biggest ever British bank with more accounts and mortgages than any of its high street rivals. Only a year ago a merger on this scale would have been unthinkable, but a year is a long time in banking.........

Posted by jack c @ 12:32 PM 6 Comments

MoneyWeek: Inflation could make a comeback sooner than you think

"...we borrowed lots of money - arguably too much - and now we have to pay it back, regardless of what the world’s governments and central banks would like us to do. It’s not that hard to understand. Lots of people don’t seem to like the idea, because it sounds moralistic. But it’s no more moralistic than pointing out that if you throw an apple into the air, at some point it will fall back down again."

Telegraph: Porsche and VW share row: how Germany got revenge on the hedge fund 'locusts'

how financial predators became the prey in the audacious multi-billion takeover of VW by Porsche While "hedgies" bet on VW shares falling because of the global economic downturn, regarded by some as "the safest play in town", Porsche had been secretly building up a 74.1 per cent stake in VW through intermediaries. When Porsche showed its hand, it sent the VW share price rocketing and exposed the hedge funds to breathtaking losses. "I have had hedge fund managers literally in tears on the phone," said one London-based analyst yesterday. Others likened the Porsche disclosure to a "nuclear bomb going off in our faces", describing the resulting losses as "a bloodbath".

Posted by malct @ 11:28 AM 24 Comments

Hiday.net: IS BULGARIAN PROPERTY MARKET DEAD?

Recent news reports seem to indicate that the property market in Bulgaria is now at a complete stand still.

yahoo: arling warns taxes may rise

Britons have been told to prepare for higher taxes and lower spending after the next election as Chancellor Alistair Darling effectively did away with Gordon B

Posted by mark @ 10:12 AM 18 Comments

yahoo: Domino Printing to cut 200 jobs

Cambridge-based company whose products are used to print 'best before' dates and barcodes.

Bloomberg: Treasury, FDIC Said to Consider Guarantees to Stem Foreclosures

Scheme coming to UK very soon I'm sure. All it does is push the problem into the future. The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are considering a program that may offer about $500 billion in guarantees for troubled mortgages to stem record foreclosures, people familiar with the matter said. The plan, which might put as many as 3 million homeowners into affordable loans, would require lenders to restructure mortgages based on a borrower's ability to repay. Under one option, the industry would keep lower monthly payments for five years before raising interest rates, the people said.

Posted by tyrellcorporation @ 09:12 AM 22 Comments

Bloomberg: Deutsche Bank Posts Profit as Rules Limit Writedowns

WHERE'S THE TRANSPARENCY? Surely this makes the situation worse not better? ``Earnings were better than feared and the use of new accounting rules helped,'' said Thomas Koerfgen. WTF?!?

Credit Writedowns: Nationwide: UK house prices down 14.6%

Fionnula did put her positive spin on this but the annual rates of decline are accelerating to 14.6% from 12.4% and 10.5% in the two previous months. With the UK in recession, Earley's ability to spin this positively are limited. Let's look for rate cuts is about all she can say. That's what I heard her say on Bloomberg TV.

Nationwide: October press release

Even Fionnula can't think of any way of spinning this.

Posted by mark wadsworth @ 07:47 AM 22 Comments

BBC: Low sales drive house prices down

UK house prices continued falling in October and are now nearly 15% lower than a year ago, says the Nationwide. The building society's latest survey says property prices fell by 1.4% this past month, pushing the annual rate of fall up from 12.4% to 14.6%. This means the price of an average house was £158,872 - £30,000 less than a year ago.

Posted by little professor @ 12:19 AM 6 Comments

money and markets: Fed rate cut a DUD! Fed rescues go WILD!

Mr. Bernanke cannot drop interest rates below zero! He cannot force banks to lend money! He can’t compel consumers to borrow, or make people spend. Nor can he turn back the clock to undo decades of financial sins … or repeal the law of gravity and stop investors from selling.

The Times: Federal Reserve slashes US rates to 1%

The Federal Reserve acted last night to stave off a severe US recession, cutting American interest rates to 1 per cent, matching the lowest levels of recent decades and paving the way for further cuts to unprecedented lows ... Pressure on the Bank of England to take aggressive action was ratcheted up by David Blanchflower, an external member of its rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee.

KCET: Foreclosure Alley

Depressing but interesting video about how repossessions are executed in South California (12:27)

BBC News: Bank insider warns of recession

"The current financial crisis may be more far-reaching than even the 1929 crash, a Bank of England policymaker has warned."

Wall Street Journal: Fed Cuts Rates by Half Point Amid Economic Deterioration

"Central banks around the world have unleashed a new assault on the global economic downturn, with authorities in the U.S., China and Norway announcing interest rate cuts and several others lining up to follow in the days ahead." So, What and When will GB/AD do?

Bloomberg: Pound Posts Biggest Two-Day Advance Against Dollar in 23 Years

Losses by the pound also reflected ``extreme levels of risk aversion,'' Paul Robinson, a currency strategist in London at Barclays Capital, said in a Bloomberg Television interview. The currency may trade at $1.55 in three months, he said. But for today stocks and GBP riding high, yay

bbc: Grants cut over funding

Shame this takes second place over Ross and Brand, as this is much more important than a joke....

Posted by mark @ 06:02 PM 16 Comments

MyFinances: Buy-to-let landlords warned of defaulting tenants

Landlords are being warned the coming recession will bring higher numbers of tenants falling behind on their rent. Unemployment is set to rise in the coming year as the economy contracts, and landlords are being urged to protect themselves.

The Sun: World bank is going bust

THE world’s bank — the International Monetary Fund — is going BUST and must be bailed out, Gordon Brown warned last night. ***Hope there is some left when we need it....

Posted by whostolemyendowment @ 04:29 PM 10 Comments

Bloomberg: European Stocks Climb as Credit Costs Ease; RBS, Daimler Rally

European stocks gained for a second day as falling credit costs spurred a rally in financial shares, while higher commodity prices pushed up oil and metals producers. //...// The drop in money-market rates "shows that the system is beginning to unclog,'' said Charles Mackinnon, chief investment officer at London-based Thurleigh Investment

boston news: Area's rents up 4.2% in one year

Rents in the Boston area spiked 4.2 percent over the past year, the biggest increase in seven years, while rising foreclosures and a slumping housing market pushed more people into apartment living.

bloomberg: Credit `Tsunami' Swamps Trade as Banks Curtail Loans (Update2)

Richard Burnett's lumber company had started loading wood onto ships heading for China. More was en route to the docks. It was all part of an order that would fill 100 40-foot cargo containers. Then Burnett got a call from his buyer at Shanghai VIVA Wood Products Co. The deal was dead. He told Burnett, president of Cross Creek Sales LLC in Augusta, Georgia, he couldn't get a letter of credit to guarantee payment for at least six months.

bbc: China cuts interest rates again

The rate cut, which will come into effect on Thursday, will see rates fall from 6.93% to 6.66%.

Posted by mark @ 01:26 PM 18 Comments

Mish: White House: "Banks Need To Stop Hoarding Money"

Here is an important announcement from the President Bush "Banks Need To Stop Hoarding Money". "Start lending money. In fact we demand it. ...Taxpayers will make billions when this plan succeeds. It's a 'win-win can't fail' situation. The more money banks lend the more money banks will make. It never fails. And the beauty of the plan is taxpayers benefit. If it looks like the plan is not working it's only because banks are not lending enough."- press secretary Dana Perino.

Posted by mountain goat @ 01:05 PM 6 Comments

MoneyWeek: Why the government should be grateful to BP

BP's huge profits are good for our pension funds and good for the public coffers. Rather than calling for windfall taxes, the government should be grateful that at least one British company is making money...

The Renegade Economist: Gordon Brown's Cover Up

Crash Gordon's Cover Up Has Begun -

Posted by neo-serf @ 12:13 PM 6 Comments

mirror: Argos double charges 190,000 customers leaving many in the red

They found their debit and credit cards had been charged double for items. Thousands of furious customers could now be plunged into the red and face hefty bank charges.

Guardian - Joe Public blog: Shiny new investments are turning into potential slums

My landlord, "William", is an unlikely property tycoon. He was generally affable and usually reasonable, even if he delegated repairs to me. I only recently discovered that he had accumulated 12 buy-to-let properties but still worked full time.

Telegraph: The bigger the party, the longer it takes to clear up the mess

An interesting discussion point in an unusually subdued style for Jeff Randall. Nothing particularly new, but a reminder that stock markets can do nothing for more than 20 years.

bbc: Icelandic-owned airline bankrupt

Up to 700 passengers have been left stranded at London's Gatwick airport after an Icelandic-owned airline said it would file for bankruptcy.

bbc: 'Temporary lay-offs' at car plant

it told employees that up to 800 of the factory's 2,000 staff would be temporarily laid off in December due to the economic climate.

reuters: CSR to cut 40-50 UK jobs as volumes fall

British bluetooth specialist CSR Plc (CSR.L: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Wednesday it would cut 40-50 jobs in the UK in a drive to save $20 million of costs in 2009, in reaction to the consumer downturn hitting its markets.

reuters: Lufthansa's fuel hedging hit by Lehman crisis

Airlines use hedging to protect themselves against sharp rises in jet fuel costs, one of their biggest expenses. Lufthansa's fuel costs in the first nine months rose 48.9 percent from the year-earlier period.

cnn: Magazine publisher Time Inc. set for layoffs

Time Inc., a major magazine company that publishes People, Sports Illustrated and Real Simple, will cut jobs as part of a restructuring to reduce costs and centralize the company's business units.

Sky News: Mortgage Approvals: Surprise Hike

The Bank of England said mortgage approvals rose to 33,000 last month from a record low of 32,000 in August, the first rise since June 2007. Mortgage lending last month was more than twice market forecasts - but it followed a downward revision to August which showed the first net repayment since the series began in 1993, the BoE said. // ... // Consumer credit rose by just 251 million pounds in September, the weakest rise since February 1994 - supporting anecdotal and survey evidence that consumer spending is weakening.

Posted by 51ck-6-51x @ 10:14 AM 15 Comments

Assoc. Press via Yahoo: Fed weighs another rate reduction to limit fallout

Yahoo!My Yahoo!Mail Make Y! your home pageYahoo! SearchSearch:Sign In New User? Sign UpFinance Home -Help Welcome [Sign In] To track stocks & more, Register Financial News Enter symbol(s) BasicPerformanceReal-time MktDetailedChartResearchOptionsOrder Book Symbol Lookup AP Fed weighs another rate reduction to limit fallout Tuesday October 28, 5:03 pm ET By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer Fed considers another rate reduction to cushion pain from credit, financial crises WASHINGTON (AP) -- Disappearing jobs, burrowing consumers and skittish companies are reasons for the Federal Reserve to ratchet down interest rates and brace the tottering economy. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues opened a two-day meeting Tuesday

Guardian: BP quarterly profit hits record $10bn

BP was at the centre of a huge row yesterday after unveiling record quarterly profits of $10bn (£6.4bn) - a rise of 148%

BBC News: Darling to reassure on borrowing

With the government planning to increase borrowing and spend its way out of an expected recession, the chancellor will say fiscal policy must support efforts to shore up the economy.

thisismoney: Rate cuts not 'magic bullet' for recovery

Monetary Policy Committee member Tim Besley said the Bank has 'limited' power to ease the cost of borrowing. Commercial banks are reluctant to lend to each other, meaning the BoE is finding it hard to transmit rate changes into the broader economy.

Posted by matt_the_hat @ 08:59 AM 7 Comments

BBC News: Rate cut hope lifts global shares

The Federal Reserve is widely tipped to cut US rates later on Tuesday. Many analysts expect the Bank of England and European Central Bank to follow suit next week.

Huffingtom Post News: The Next Great Depression Is Here... If We're Lucky

Don't panic — this is just a speed bump. You want to ride this one out. Think long-term. It's a marathon, not a sprint. Keep your money where it is — trust the market. The worst thing you can do is panic. Reassuring words, which can all be traced, ultimately, to the same dudes who ringed our noses and walked us to the edge of this particular ravine in the first place Collectively and individually, we are already enslaved to a diminished future by decades of unrestrained gluttony and greed. And we are getting fatter, stupider, and more indebted by the moment. I'm not being judgmental; that's just a sober read of the stats.

the International Herald Tribune via TS: Chinese exporters feel the pinch as demand slows

GUANGZHOU, China: From manufacturers of chain saws to producers of stereo headphones, and makers of practically every product in between, exporters in China are running into trouble as demand slows in the United States and Western Europe. As the world's largest export fair opened here Wednesday, executives from across China complained of rising costs and falling sales. "Most of the suppliers are disappointed with this financial crisis - it's a disaster," said Kevin Cao, the export manager of the HuangYang Bronze Company, a producer of aluminum wire that has seen its exports drop by nearly half since July and that has had to cut its work force by a quarter.

The Times: Lloyds TSB blocks interest-only mortgage switch

Lloyds TSB, one of Britain’s biggest mortgage lenders, came under fire yesterday after it emerged that it was stopping borrowers switching from repayment mortgages to interest-only deals. The lower monthly repayments of interest-only mortgages are often a lifeline for hard-pressed borrowers.

Posted by quiet guy @ 07:23 AM 13 Comments

Economist: US house prices: Still no end in sight

On Tuesday October 28th the S&P/Case-Shiller index of house prices for ten cities showed a record decline of 17.7% in the year to September.

Times: London public toilet sells for £403,000

Amid cries of negative equity and stalling property sales, a public lavatory in South West London has triumped in the face of adversity and sold for almost four times its asking price. Walham Green Toilets on North End Road, Fulham went for an astounding £403,000 at auction on Monday after a competitive bidding war pushed its asking price through the roof. The two-storey toilet block was initially advertised in the Bricks & Mortar section of The Times last week with a guide price of £90,000. This was however elevated to £130,000 by the estate agents, Savills, prior to the auction.

Posted by little professor @ 11:34 PM 7 Comments

Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank: Minneapolis Fed Challenging Claims Made by the National Fed

Facts and Myths about the Financial Crisis of 2008" examines these four arguments: 1. Bank lending to nonfinancial corporations and individuals has declined sharply. 2. Interbank lending is essentially nonexistent. 3. Commercial paper issuance by nonfinancial corporations has declined sharply, and rates have risen to unprecedented levels. 4. Banks play a large role in channeling funds from savers to borrowers.

Press Association: TV presenter launches gas campaign

Its all for "cherity mate". So THATs what shes up to.

Posted by techieman @ 04:32 PM 8 Comments

BBC: US consumer confidence nosedives

US consumer confidence has fallen to a record low in October, as global stock markets fall, homes are repossessed and firms lay off workers. The Conference Board said the monthly consumer confidence index fell to 38, down from a revised 61.4 in September and below analysts' expectations of 52. It is the lowest since the board began tracking consumer sentiment in 1967.

A New Book By: Harry S. Dent, Jr.: The Great Depression Ahead

Between mid to late 2009 and mid to late 2012, the U.S. will see the next Great Depression and the deflation of the “three bears,” bubbles in stocks, housing, and commodities. This occurrence will represent the de-leveraging of the greatest credit bubble in history and will have much greater effects than we have seen thus far on banking and financial systems. Americans will see the first and last “Great Depression” of most of our lifetimes. Most people simply are not prepared for this coming dramatic change in our economy. Aging Baby Boomers will see the worst of the economy in their retirement years, much as the Bob Hope generation saw the worst in their early years in the 1930s and in World War II on an 80-year generational cycle.

Posted by sold 2 rent 1 @ 03:45 PM 37 Comments

Telegraph: Stock trader arrested over arson hours after selling house

Internet trader Richard Hardy, 55, told neighbours he faced repossession of his home in Upton St Leonards, near Gloucester. The blaze started in the early hours of Friday morning, less than 12 hours after Mr Hardy exchanged contracts with a new owner, a married father-of-three. Neighbour Martin Atkins, 51, said: "Richard had lived here for 12 years, I've been here for just over 11 years.

Business Scotsman: RBS silent on claims it faces a £10bn hit on toxic assets from ABN deal

WRITEDOWNS at the Royal Bank of Scotland are set to blast through the £10 billion barrier this year, analysts warned last night. The new blow to the beleaguered bank comes as the international banking crisis continues to dissolve the value of its toxic assets. Analysts yesterday estimated that the effect of this on RBS would be to force it to write down a further £6.8bn in assets and investments when it releases details of its latest effort to shore up its finances later this week. That figure will be in addition to the £5.9bn writedowns announced in the first half.

Scotsman Business: QIA 'to raise its Barclays stake'

BARCLAYS yesterday declined to comment on reports that Qatar Investment Authority was set to up its stake in the bank as part of a £2 billion rescue bid. The QIA could subscribe to £1bn of new loans stock in the bank, in which it already holds an 8 per cent stake, with another £1bn being taken up by the bank's institutional shareholders, according to reports. The reported plan could help Barclays to recapitalise without help from the UK government's banking rescue plan.

IFA Online: IMF may need to "print money" as crisis spreads

Moves by Hungary, Ukraine and Belarus to seek emergency loans from the IMF have now set off a dangerous chain reaction across Eastern Europe. Romania had to raise overnight interest rates to 900pc on Wednesday to stem capital flight, recalling the wild episodes of Europe's ERM crisis in 1992. The CDS spreads on Ukraine's debt have topped 2,800, signalling total revulsion by investors.

FT.com: Iceland lifts rates to 18% from 12%

Dorothy, Iceland, Bye Bye Iceland’s central bank lifted interest rates on Tuesday to 12 per cent from 18 per cent on the orders of the International Monetary Fund, highlighting the dramatic impact the organisation will have on the country’s ability to control economic policy. The move is an attempt to support the Icelandic krona, which has lost 70 per cent of its value during the crisis before trading in the currency halted. It is due to re-float within a matter of weeks, a development that is regarded as a key step in restoring Iceland’s international credibility.

The Independent: The rush to rescue those in debt is cruel on us savers

"Why save up for a house, holiday, umpteenth pair of shoes, if you could buy at once, confident that the same item would soon cost more – and, in the case of a house, that it would probably make you more money over the same time-scale than most people could ever earn from work."

NY Times: One Day Doesn’t Make a Trend

The dirty little secret of the government’s $250 billion handout to nine banks to get them lending again is this: So far, they have stuffed it under their mattress like the rest of us. Need a mortgage? An auto loan? If you are a business or consumer, it’s almost as hard to get a loan this week as it was last. “It doesn’t matter how much Hank Paulson gives us,” said an influential senior official at a big bank that received money from the government, “no one is going to lend a nickel until the economy turns.” I bet UK banks are no different, despite the little clause that makes banks lend at 2007 levels in the UK bailout agreement.

Posted by mountain goat @ 01:28 PM 11 Comments

bbc: The £5,000bn bailout

If I were you, I wouldn't get too worked up by the Bank of England's estimate that credit-crunch losses now total £1,800bn on an assortment of financial assets, such as mortgage-backed securities and corporate bonds. Of course it's a big number - rather bigger than the annual economic output of the UK. not recommend to those of a nervous disposition, is its estimate that £5,000bn has implicitly or explicitly been made available by central banks and governments since April 2008 to support wholesale funding by banks.

Land Registry (pdf): House prices down 2.2% MoM, 8% YoY

For so long the Land Registry figures showed ongoing growth whilst the Haliwide indices showed prices tanking. Nice to see the 'official' government figures catching up with reality. That's a huge monthly drop, and for the annual figure to reach -8% when it was YoY positive not so long ago is amazing.

Posted by little professor @ 11:42 AM 21 Comments

Mail Online: Repossession threatens 500,000 families as cost of credit crunch hits £1.8trillion

The number of families at risk of losing their home could rise nearly fourfold as the credit crunch bites, the Bank of England has warned. In a bleak analysis, it says that more than half a million households could fall three months or more behind on their mortgage payments - putting them at risk of repossession.

BBC: Repossession total 'is up by 71%'

The number of people losing their homes after failing to meet their mortgage repayments climbed sharply, says the UK's financial watchdog. The number of repossessions in the second quarter of the year was up 71% compared with the same period a year earlier, at 11,054. The Financial Services Authority said the number of consumers struggling to clear their home loan arrears was up. This comes after the Bank of England predicted more woe for homeowners.

BBC: Iceland's interest rate up to 18%

Iceland's central bank has raised its key interest rate to 18% from 12% as the country battles against a complete financial collapse. The increase comes less than two weeks after it cut rates from 15.5%. News of the rise came as Iceland's prime minister said the country needed another $4bn (£2.6bn) in loans. Iceland has been struggling to avoid collapse since it was forced to take over its three biggest banks, which had been hit by the credit crunch.

Posted by jack c @ 10:36 AM 18 Comments

PropertyWeek.com: 1.2m face negative equity says Bank

"About 500,000 home owners are already in negative equity after a drop in house prices of almost 15% from last summer’s peak, the Bank’s figures indicate. An identical fall in prices would push another 700,000 of Britain’s 11.7 million mortgage holders into negative territory, it says.

Posted by 51ck-6-51x @ 10:19 AM 7 Comments

Mortgage Introducer: 23 per cent of mortgage products withdrawn in last week

moneysupermarket.com comments on the number of mortgage products pulled by lenders in the week to 27th October 2008

Guardian: News Article

Now how do you deter the greedy ones? ... Talk about kids, they are no problem. It's those who set the example...

Bloomberg: Indonesia Plans `Response Policy' to Boost Currency

Indonesian stocks are headed for their worst yearly performance on record and the country's bonds are the weakest performer in Asia as a global credit crisis prompts investors to flee from the nation. Indonesia was one of three countries in the region to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund during the Asian financial crisis a decade ago. ``The most effective measure would be'' the central bank selling dollars, said Aldian Taloputra, an economist at PT Mandiri Sekuritas in Jakarta. ``But this problem is of global scale, so what the government could do is to minimize the impact of the outflow.''

Telegraph: Toxic debt losses now £1,800bn, say Bank

The Bank's estimates on the size of writedowns facing banks, insurers and hedge funds – published today in its Financial Stability Report – have more than doubled since its last update in April, and raise the spectre of massive new provisioning by Britain's troubled lenders. Royal Bank of Scotland, for one, is expected to reveal another £4bn of writedowns on Friday. In the UK, the Bank calculates, "mark-to-market losses" have hit £123bn compared with the £63bn estimated in April. To date, Britain's lenders have collectively written down less than £20bn, though the Bank conceded that the market may be overstating the losses by reflecting "substantial discounts for uncertainty".

Posted by flintster1994 @ 08:42 AM 6 Comments

TheOnion: Swaggering Down 87%

NEW YORK—According to an alarming new study published Monday in The Journal Of Applied Behavioral Science, the time-honored American activity of swaggering, an extremely arrogant manner of walking, has dropped by nearly 90 percent since 2007. The severe economic turmoil of recent weeks and the United States' diminished credibility and moral standing on the world stage are just two of the major factors named in the study as contributing to the precipitous decline in self-important locomotion.

The Times: Persimmon suffers as homebuyers walk away

Cancellation rates at Persimmon, the housebuilder, have risen to 35 per cent recently as market conditions scare off prospective buyers.

Telegraph: Bank of England: 1.2million face negative equity as property slumps

New Business Secretary Lord Mandelson warned that the scale of current financial crisis was "unparalleled". "I don't think people have yet realised what the impact is going to be on the real economy, on businesses and jobs back at home," he said Last night, it emerged that the Government is considering a radical plan to ensure some homeowners can hang onto their homes, with families selling their homes to an investment bank and renting them back at a reduced rate.

Posted by gardeniadotnet @ 05:28 AM 7 Comments

Telegraph: IMF may need to "print money" as crisis spreads

The Fund is already close to committing a quarter of its $200bn (£130bn) reserve chest, with a loans to Iceland ($2bn), Ukraine ($16.5bn), and talks underway with Pakistan ($14.5bn), Hungary ($10bn), as well as Belarus and Serbia. Neil Schering, emerging market strategist at Capital Economics, said the IMF's work in the great arc of countries from the Baltic states to Turkey is only just beginning.

FT.com: NHS records project grinds to halt

What on earth does this thing do does anybody know? Isn't it a few computers and a database? Sounds like it should be raising people from the dead at that price.

Posted by whiteknight @ 12:47 AM 13 Comments

BBC: Banks launch overdraft appeal

UK banks will appear in the High Court later to challenge a ruling that the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) can decide whether overdraft charges are unfair. Seven banks and the Nationwide building society will argue that the consumer contract regulations do not give the OFT the necessary powers.

yourmortgageoryourlife: No Hope for Homeowners - Foreclosure Prevention Program Falters

As banks continue to line up for the taxpayer funded handouts designed to ease their withdrawals from years of dependence on high yields derived from ridiculously reckless lending practices, homeowners continue to seek avenues to prevent the looming possibility of foreclosure - typically cited as the root cause of the economic ‘crisis’ that currently grips world financial markets.

Business Week: The Housing Crisis Spreads to China

Across China, property sales fell 15% in August over the previous year. They're off more than 55% in Beijing and by 39% in Shanghai, reports the National Bureau of Statistics. Prices across the country registered a slight decline in August, the first time in years they haven't increased. In the south, where the downturn began last year, prices are off by 30% in the past 12 months. "There is a big likelihood that next year will be even lower," says Li Yong, general manager of real estate brokerage Century 21 China in Changsha, an industrial city located 700 miles west of Shanghai.

thisismoney: Volvo truck sales plunge 99.7%

The depth of the recession was revealed today as truckmaker Volvo admitted demand across the Continent has crashed by 99.7% as it took orders for just 115 new lorries in the last three months. That compares to orders totalling 41,970 in the third quarter of 2007. Global orders for Volvo slumped 55% in the last three months while Scania, of which Volvo has majority control, said its western Europe truck orders collapsed by 69%

Posted by malct @ 06:27 PM 13 Comments

Property Wire: Charity property competitions emerge as latest UK selling fad

Property competition fever is beginning to sweep across the UK as developers get involved in various schemes.

evening Standard: Monthly figures reveal huge fall in property prices

FRESH evidence of London's collapsing property market emerged today as new figures revealed prices in the capital fell almost nine per cent in the last month. Homes in Kensington & Chelsea lost an average of £13,000 last month alone, while those in neighbouring Hammersmith & Fulham fell by £7,700, Richmond by £7,500 and in Wandsworth and Merton by £6,000, the Hometrack figures reveal. To add to the gloom, data from the National House Building Council reveals that house building in London has hit an all-time low, with only 517 private homes started last month.

Posted by little professor @ 05:31 PM 12 Comments

Telegraph: We now face Keynesian conditions and need truly Keynesian solutions

"This has raised a hornets’ nest of controversy, with people holding forth with much sound and fury – and often signifying nothing." Nothing like that here of course.

Posted by letthemfall @ 05:03 PM 9 Comments

Guardian: Argos card charges 222.7% interest

Argos have introduced a new store card with an interest rate of 222.7%. There previous card had a rate of 27.9%, so Argos customers certainly aren't going to benefit from the base rate cut.

Posted by jonb @ 04:22 PM 8 Comments

International Herald Tribune: In Europe, crisis revives old memories

"I haven't forgotten history," says Gert Heinz, a tax adviser in Munich. "If you depend on paper money you can lose everything. We've learned that the hard way after two world wars." So when Chancellor Angela Merkel went on television recently to tell Germans that their bank accounts were safe, Heinz, who at 68 still remembers the rows of canned food that his mother hoarded in the attic, decided he would rather be safe than sorry. He converted another chunk of his savings into gold and stocked up on a six-month supply of rice, sugar, flour and a special brand of milk powder that lasts for half a century.

Posted by sold out @ 03:47 PM 6 Comments

New York Times: Prices Decline but New-Home Sales Rose Last Month

Sales of new homes recorded an unexpected increase in September as median home prices dropped to the lowest level in four years. The (US) Commerce Department reported Monday that sales of new single-family homes rose 2.7 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 464,000 homes. Economists had expected sales would drop from the August level. If this sustains we may be next? At least the USA housing market may, just may, be bottoming out. Come back Anatole K, all is forgiven...

BBC: Building group in administration

A building company, which employs 320 workers, has gone into administration. The property downturn has been blamed for the move involving David McLean Holdings Ltd, of Flintshire. The company has house building, property development and contracting subsidiaries, with offices in Cardiff and Shrewsbury. Administrators Deloitte said McLean's house building division was continuing to trade as they seek a buyer. The contracting division is to close.

FT: UAE property prices set to fall

“A real estate correction could happen, but UAE banks are cushioned... the banks are safe,” Sultan Nasser al Suweidi, the central bank governor, said at a conference held by the Arab Monetary Fund in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE.

BBC: Financial crisis: World round-up

A look at the regions of the world most affected by the financial crisis, and what governments are doing to try to alleviate the financial turmoil.

Economist: Eastern Europe. Who's next?

WILL an ex-communist country be the next Iceland?

MyFinances.co.uk: 1 in 20 homes sold at loss

Research by UKValuation for Financial Times shows the number of homeowners being forced to sell up remains low, but is no longer uncommon with a £200 million loss for sellers expected this year.

Contract Journal: David McLean in administration, contracting to close

Contracting and house building group David McLean has gone into administration.

FT: Locking in a Loss

One in 20 homes sold in August fetched less than it had the last time it was sold, an analysis for the Financial Times shows. The 5 per cent of owners nursing a loss when they sold their home has leapt up from only 1.4 per cent a year earlier. This is how the downward spiral begins. If this rate accelerates then real price drops occur as sellers are forced to lower prices. These stats show us that the process has already begun.

Telegraph: Kaupthing becomes first European borrower to default on samurai bond

Two holders of the Reykjavik-based bank's 50 billion yen in 1.8pc notes, who declined to be identified, said they didn't receive funds that were originally due on October 20. Kaupthing had a one-week grace period to make its payment, according to terms in the notes' sale prospectus. The default indicates Kaupthing, seized by Iceland's government on October 9 as the nation's financial system failed, may not honor all of its £17bn in outstanding bonds.

mortgagestrategy: Student and holiday rentals shine through market gloom, says Assetz

Student accommodation, hotel rooms and UK holiday homes are proving increasingly popular with buy-to-let investors in light of falling rental incomes, says Assetz. Stuart Law, chief executive of Assetz, says that rising mortgage costs are forcing property investors to readdress the balance of their property portfolio. "re-balance or face the less attractive alternative of selling cash-negative units in their portfolio" - this must be a misprint - surely house prices can only go up

Timesonline: G7 'preparing to drive down the yen'

Members of the Group of Seven (G7) nations may be considering a joint market intervention to prevent a further surge in the yen as the Japanese currency’s sharp rise threatens the world’s second biggest economy and other Asian economies.

FT: Darling to scrap Brown’s fiscal rules

"Alistair Darling is planning new targets for cutting borrowing and formal external oversight of the public finances as part of proposals to replace Gordon Brown’s fiscal rules." .............."But the chancellor will make it clear he plans to ditch fiscal rules that are perceived as too rigid – including Mr Brown’s “golden rule” only to borrow to invest over the economic cycle – and which economists say have been already been bent."

MSN: Brown hints at further joint rate cuts

So he has found a way round the independant bank, just get everyone to cut rates together then inflation, and currency problems do not matter!

reuters: RBS faces more writedowns as turmoil persists

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS.L: Quote, Profile, Research) could this week announce billions of pounds of fresh writedowns due to a further deterioration in the value of risky assets as the financial crisis deepens, analysts forecast. The forecasts for additional writedowns range from 1 billion pounds to over 3 billion pounds ($1.5 billion-$4.6 billion).

reuters: Woolworths lenders appoint Deloitte as adviser

Bank of Ireland (BOI.L: Quote, Profile, Research) division Burdale Financial and GMAC Commercial Finance, which together lent Woolworths 385 million pounds ($600 million) in January..... valuing the group at just over 50 million pounds

MoneyWeek: Why sterling will fall even further

Cutting interest rates won’t get banks lending again, and spending more government money will just store up problems for the future. But both of these things will have some effect on the economy, says John Stepek. They will send the battered pound even lower.

Centre for Economics and Business Research: House prices 'to recover by 2013'

Phew, this house price crash will over and we'll see 20% rises in 2010 and 2011. The CEBR must have access to a crystal ball. Marvellous.

Posted by doom&gloom @ 11:19 AM 19 Comments

Metro: House prices may fall 25 per cent by 2010

This is just a rehash of the CEBR report, but all good stuff nonetheless. You do wonder who is daft enough to buy into this market.

Posted by mark wadsworth @ 09:43 AM 7 Comments

Citywire: Persimmon prepares for further housing pain

Shares in house builder Persimmon were down in weak morning deals as the group said it is writing off £600 million of the value of its land to reflect weakening house prices. However, it said it is on track to meet full year expectations and to cut debt.Persimmon shares were down 0.25p, or 0.12%, to 217p after it said it is having to make the new provisions in the face of the increased downward pressure on selling prices. The group now anticipates a 10% reduction in selling prices, up from 5% at the half year stage.

Times: Shares plunge as pound buckles

Sterling plunged again against the dollar this morning, having fallen through $1.60 for the first time in five years on Friday. The pound lost a further 3 cents to $1.542 amid mounting fears of a prolonged UK recession. The same fears forced down the FTSE 100, which plunged 185 points, or 4.7 per cent, after the opening with banks and insurance companies leading the way. European stock markets were also down around 5 per cent, following big falls in Asia with Hong Kong's Hang Seng down more than 10 per cent and the Nikkei in Tokyo losing 6 per cent.

Posted by flintster1994 @ 09:02 AM 23 Comments

Western Mail: ‘Days of inflated house prices are over’

THE credit crunch will prompt a return to old-fashioned housing market values, according to Cathy McLean, director of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Wales. She said the “madness” of the days of inflated house prices and five-times salary mortgages will never return. “It was never sustainable,” she said. “It was madness that people thought prices were always going to go up. Everybody wanted everything today, rather than saving for it. People were just rushing into the property market thinking there was never ever going to be a problem." She attacked TV shows like Property Ladder for fuelling greed and an obsession with house prices

Posted by little professor @ 08:41 AM 8 Comments

TimesOnline: Nouriel Roubini: I fear the worst is yet to come

What does Roubini think is going to happen next? Rather worryingly, in London last Thursday he predicted that hundreds of hedge funds will go bust and stock markets may soon have to shut – perhaps for as long as a week – in order to stem the panic selling now sweeping the world.

BBC News: Brown to defend higher borrowing

They described a focus on public works projects and higher spending as "misguided and discredited". The latest quarterly public debt figures hit a record £37.6 billion - higher than the whole of the previous year. Following the zimbabwe model of economic managment.

Posted by matt_the_hat @ 07:17 AM 6 Comments

Independent: House prices fall to two-and-a-half-year low

Hometrack, which monitors the UK housing market, says that the fall in house prices increased faster in October, than in either August or September, adding that the supply of new homes coming to the market has also dried up.

Daily Mail: House prices will tumble £40,000 by end of 2009

The average price of a home will tumble by as much as £40,000 by the end of next year, experts claim today. A study shows a peak-to-trough fall in house prices of up to 20 per cent by December 2009, taking the figure back to 2004 levels. The figures come from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR), which predicts the market will not show any signs of stability until 2010. However, the organisation believes prices and sales will see a new boom in 2011 and 2012. The CEBR puts the average house price peak at £196,000 in 2007 with a predicted figure of £157,000 by next Christmas.

Posted by little professor @ 12:56 AM 39 Comments

Guardian: UK house prices fall at record pace in October

U.K. house prices fell at the sharpest rate on record in October both on the month and the year, and they look set to continue plunging, a survey by Hometrack showed Monday. House prices fell 1.3% from September and by 7.3% on the year. Both declines were the largest since the survey began in July 2000. In September, house prices fell 1.0% on the month and 6.2% on year. Richard Donnell, Hometrack's director of research said:"The expectation of a forthcoming recession and rising unemployment will further undermine demand for housing and continued price falls are inevitable in the months ahead." A separate report from the CEBR predicts the average property will fall in price by £50,000 by the end of next year to 2004 levels.

Mail Online: Countdown conundrum: Carol Vorderman takes £800,000 off the price of her flat

Vorderman put the Thameside flat – which overlooks parliament – on the market in May for £5.75m. And she may have to settle for less as her most serious bidder is said to be offering just £3.5m.

East Anglian Daily Times: Small grey hut with £45,000 price tag

A tiny beach hut has gone on sale for £45,000 - even though the country is in the middle of its worst economic crisis for more than 70 years. The small grey building in Southwold, Suffolk, was put on the market after a similar one sold for over £80,000 in the summer before the financial woes. The estate agents involved are confident of finding a buyer despite a collapse in the market. Richard Leeming, a director of the estate agent, said: "Southwold is a special place in people's hearts and it is popular for holidays, holiday homes and people from the city with second homes. Life is tough at the moment for most people but maybe not all of them." Despite the optimism, Mr Leeming admits there has been a slight reduction in interest.

Posted by drewster @ 10:24 PM 6 Comments

The Telegraph: UK recession is here to stay, experts warn

US President Harry Truman’s comments of 50 years’ ago: “It’s a recession when your neighbour loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.” .............

Mail: Brown predicts lower household bills as he says 'other countries should have listened to me on the world economy'

''Mr Brown said his only regret over his time as Chancellor was that other countries failed to heed his advice, which he claimed could have averted the world economic crisis.''

Posted by hpwatcher @ 08:38 PM 14 Comments

News of the World: When the tabloids start using the "c" word it's game over

A SEASIDE flat which a year ago fetched £133,950 has now sold for a PITIFUL £15,500 as house prices across Britain nosedive, the News of the World can reveal. The staggering 88 PER CENT price drop is the starkest indication yet that the credit crunch has sent now the housing market into freefall. Our investigations turned up scores of properties—most of them repossessed by banks and building societies— that are now worth a fraction of their previous value. A riverside apartment in BIRMINGHAM which fetched £157,000 a year ago, sold for just £68,000 at a London property auction—a price drop of 57 per cent. A smart, open-plan flat in PRESTON failed to sell, despite a reserve of just £80,000—less than half its £199,995 sale price two years ago.

Posted by little professor @ 08:36 PM 13 Comments

BBC News: Brown on end of "boom and bust"

Video of said monster denying he ever said he had ended boom and bust. People with high blood pressure,heart problems or pregnant mothers should not click this link.

Thisismoney: Up to our necks in the R-word

What a delightfully realistic, mixed-up mangle of inconsistency: "The Bank of England [...] has spent the past six weeks fighting a pretty desperate battle on the cliff-edge of a global panic; it now knows that a broad business recession is unavoidable as the aftershock of the banking crisis." "Obviously, house prices were allowed to rise far too high." "The Bank of England has in the past taken far too little interest in the housing bubble when setting interest rates. Yet now it is cutting interest rates, and will cut them further - perhaps down to 2.5% in the next 12 months. I suspect house prices are now the Bank of England's central concern as the bubble bursts." "The housing bubble led people into taking on too much debt in order to buy houses at a price they could not afford."

BBC: Ukraine set for $16.5bn IMF loan

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is to offer a $16.5bn (£10.4bn) loan to Ukraine to help it "maintain confidence and economic and financial stability". The country has been badly shaken by the global credit crunch, with stock markets and the Ukrainian currency tumbling and banks needing propping up. Internal political turmoil has also delayed economic development. The loan depends on Ukraine being able to balance its budget and make reforms to its banking sector.

Bloomberg: U.K.'s Darling to Say Crisis to Be Deeper, Longer Than Expected

U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling will say this week that the economic crisis will be deeper and longer-lasting that the government first predicted, the Sunday Times reported. The government hasn't lost control of the public finances, although the crisis has hurt its revenues, Darling will say in a speech at the annual Mais lecture in London on Oct. 29, the newspaper reported, without saying how it got the information.

CNN: Throwing the bathroom sink at the economy

The Bank of Japan cut its benchmark rate to just about zero and left it there for much of the 1990s. But that did little to end a decade-long economic slump there. Rates in Japan today are 0.5% so Japan also has little room to cut.

BBC: Economy worries hit Gulf shares

Shares in the oil-rich Gulf region have fallen sharply as investors worried about the impact of the global economic downturn on the region. Kuwait said legislation to guarantee deposits held in its banks would be introduced, prompting concerns about the state of financial institutions. It followed Kuwait's second largest lender, Gulf Bank, saying it had made losses on derivatives trading. And Saudi Arabia said it was making cash available to low-income citizens. The plan to put 10bn riyals ($2.7bn; £1.7bn) into the Saudi Credit Bank for interest-free loans to help people tackle financial difficulties intensified fears that the global financial crisis was extending to the Gulf region.

LA Biz: Calpers unloads stock

Yes, it's come down to this: The nation's largest public pension fund needs cash. As explained by the WSJ, Calpers has to meet commitments to various investors - among them private equity firms and real estate partners - and only 2 percent of its assets on hand is in cash. That’s not enough to cover its obligations, so a bunch of stocks are being sold - fast. This need to raise cash quickly could partially explain why stocks have fallen so sharply so quickly. Hedge funds face much the same problem because many of them are so highly leveraged. And because they don't have to file financial reports, no one knows how many more of their dominoes will fall.

Observer: Struggling vendors bow to the crunch and cut their prices

Another lurch downwards coming.

Posted by letthemfall @ 01:07 PM 10 Comments

NY Times: How to Quell Financial Anxiety

Sticking to my resolution to stop posting only doom and gloom, here is a post on controlling anxiety in the face of economic armageddon. "Q. Day after day of economic turmoil is making it hard for you to concentrate on your work. You can’t stop worrying about your job security, your retirement portfolio and your whole future. Is this normal? A. It’s only natural to feel anxious during a financial crisis. But understand that anxiety can distort reality, disrupt thinking and erode performance — unless you take steps to manage it...Yoga, meditation, exercising or simply taking a walk can help dispel symptoms, Dr. White said. "Any time you’re really stuck in your mind, moving your body helps shift it,” Dr. Wehrenberg said."

Posted by mountain goat @ 12:25 PM 12 Comments

Guardian: Economists blast Chancellor's plans

A group of senior economists have branded the Government's plan to spend its way out of the looming recession a "misguided and discredited" approach that could make things worse. [Sounds like these guys have heard than Keynes isn't good news]

EADT: (UK) Harvest breaks records despite the rain

Demand for food is unlikely to undergo a demand shock. According to this, 2008 was a bumper production year, up 28% (wheat) from 2007. I post this because it is related to food inflation and our excessive food import requirements and so onto the value of the pound. However, looking ahead to 2009, http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2008/10/23/112774/cereal-growers-face-2009-losses.html , we are looking at more expensive food because unfortunately the farmers didn't have much choice about the timing of buying fertilisers and suchlike, and had to pay a heavy price. So the harvest of 2009 will not be so 'bumper' . You can't really know at this point though. Although the UK government think they have control of monetary policy our trading situation may prevent their reflationary policies.

nebusiness.co.uk: Grainger shares slump after pay-out offer to bondholders

Shares in the UK’s biggest listed residential landlord Grainger plc slumped to an eight-year low yesterday after it offered an early pay-out to holders of bonds in exchange for a bigger stake in the company. The Newcastle company saw its value plunge by 44% to 70.75p a share after it unveiled the offer which could help cut its debts. Grainger, which had seen its share value sink from more than 600p just three years ago, has been keen to reduce its debts as its assets are largely tied up in residential property. British house prices are falling at record rates, down 12.4% year-on-year in September according to both Halifax and Nationwide, the two most closely-watched monthly surveys.

RGE Monitor: The Coming Global Stag-Deflation (Stagnation/Recession plus Deflation)

This one argues for a deflationary outcome based on the fact that globally, as well as the UK, there is a demand shock, people want less, prices will fall to clear stocks and there will be downward pressure on wages as fewer workers required. Against this, for an inflationary outcome is that they are associated with supply shocks and there aren't any supply shocks. Well, I think there was a supply shock earlier this year with oil and wheat etc but that does seem to have finished. Relating this to the previous article post I can see that specifically for the UK, dependant on imports, it is not impossible that we will induce a supply shock with a devaluation of sterling, which would lead us into inflation. Neither of them include any figures or evidence but I do feel ...(continued)

TimesOnline: A weak pound won’t solve all our problems

This is a commentary about the risk of overshoot for the falling pound. The argument is basically our trade balance won't be funded if sterling falls, and that the two are self-reinforcing. The other point made is that we will get inflation (in the price rising sense, not the monetary expansion sense) on our imports. I think our requirement on imported food and energy are going to mess us up in some way, perhaps this it. Goes on to suggest that this will anchor inflationary expectations as these price rises are so visible.

ICH: Down For The Count "The whole system is contracting"

"The great inter-war slumps were not acts of God or of blind forces. They were the sure and certain result of the concentration of too much economic power in the hands of too few men (who) felt no responsibility to the nation." The US Treasury and Federal Reserve are now underwriting the entire financial system. The free market has been abandoned altogether. Everything from commercial paper to money markets is now backed by the "full faith and credit of the United States". Without that explicit government guarantee, the credit markets would still be frozen and the system would crash. Foreign investors and central banks are no longer providing the capital to support the US $700 billion current account deficit. They have lost confidence in America's ability to bounce back

Telegraph: Brown’s Keynesianism is bankrupt – and will bankrupt us

But now, with the UK in the grip of the credit crisis New Labour has revealed its true statist colours. “We are spending more to get the economy moving,” said Brown last week. “That’s the right thing to do.” More spending from where - future earnings (tax) - previous earnings (inflation)

Posted by matt_the_hat @ 07:25 AM 17 Comments

Guardian: It's not perfect - but this new code could say homeowners

Some good news at last for struggling homeowners? It seemed so from the headlines last week. The government announced a new set of rules - a 'pre-action protocol' - designed to tackle the growing number of repossessions, which, if they work, will make it hard for lenders to take borrowers who are in difficulties straight to court, as many do now. My prediction - won't make a jot of difference

Posted by matt_the_hat @ 07:21 AM 9 Comments

Times: Turn a profit from sinking pound

NVESTORS are rushing to exchange sterling for “safer” currencies after it plunged to new depths. Sterling hit record lows against the euro — falling to €1.22 — and a six-year low against the dollar, trading at less than $1.53 on Friday.

Posted by matt_the_hat @ 07:19 AM 6 Comments

Times: Banks exploit legal loophole to seize homes

According to the Ministry of Justice, 97,026 charging orders were granted by courts in England and Wales last year, a tenfold increase since 2000. They allow financial institutions to order the sale of a property to pay off unsecured debts on credit cards, personal loans, store cards and car finance. Some will have been used only to threaten the debtor, or to levy a surcharge on the mortgage to recoup the debts. Nationwide, the building society, and Northern Rock, which was nationalised earlier this year, are among the most aggressive in using the court orders. The rate at which the courts have granted charging orders has increased sharply in the past two months, according to Citizens Advice, National Debt-line and the Consumer Credit Counselling Service.

Posted by drewster @ 01:33 AM 8 Comments

Telegraph: Europe on the brink of currency crisis meltdown

Currency pegs are being tested to destruction on the fringes of Europe’s monetary union. “This is the biggest currency crisis the world has ever seen,” said Neil Mellor, a strategist at Bank of New York Mellon. Experts fear the mayhem may soon trigger a chain reaction within the eurozone itself. The emerging market crash is a vastly underestimated risk. It threatens to become “the second epicentre of the global financial crisis”, this time unfolding in Europe rather than America. Exposure is 85pc of GDP for Austria, 50pc for Switzerland, 25pc for Sweden, 24pc for the UK, and 23pc for Spain. The US figure is just 4pc. America is the staid old lady in this round. Whether you realise it or not, your pension fund is sunk in Vietnamese bonds and Indian steel magnates. Didn’t they tell you?

Posted by drewster @ 11:49 PM 8 Comments

Times: Carol Vorderman forced to slash £800,000 off asking price for her flat

Carol Vorderman is facing a financial countdown of her own after slashing the asking price for her Thameside penthouse by £800,000. Vorderman has been unable to find a buyer since putting the flat – which overlooks the parliament buildings – on the market in May for £5.75m. In a concession to the property slump, the price tag has now been reduced to £4.95m. It is possible Vorderman may have to settle for even less as her most serious bidder is understood to be offering just £3.5m.

Times: How Japan learnt how to stop worrying and love the recession

After Japan's bubble, the very core of what it meant to be Japanese changed direction decisively, and by no means all for the worse. Views on economic right and wrong swerved left. Belief in the fast buck was replaced with tortoise v hare. Bubble-phobia became the underlying policy of successive Cabinets. Profit was OK, but excess profits became faintly disgusting. Japanese instinctively hoarded cash for a rainy day: financially and philosophically. Household risk aversion now commands cultish devotion: books about living on a fiver a day sell in millions, and TV programmes on the theme are primetime fare. Chains of upmarket second-hand stores suddenly arose for a public no longer obsessed with novelty and pristineness. Japanese companies became the most energy-efficient on Earth.

Posted by drewster @ 07:34 PM 16 Comments

reuters: U.S. has plundered world wealth with dollar: China paper

BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States has plundered global wealth by exploiting the dollar's dominance, and the world urgently needs other currencies to take its place, a leading Chinese state newspaper said on Friday. The front-page commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily said that Asian and European countries should banish the U.S. dollar from their direct trade relations for a start, relying only on their own currencies.

Posted by malct @ 06:54 PM 23 Comments

Daily Express: BRITAIN FACES ARCTIC FREEZE

Can somebody explain why the underlying cause is global warming?

Posted by mark wadsworth @ 03:21 PM 22 Comments

daily mail: Lord Mandy, his murky friends and the debasing of our democracy

The influence over the British political system by a relatively small and, in some cases, corrupt group of super-rich individuals is the single most poisonous legacy of Tony Blair's decade in government. It is well-documented that he allowed the corporate elite to dictate government policy and buy access to senior ministers - including the prime minister himself. Shamefully, Blair's priority was to put private greed above public duty. Until 1997, standards of public life in this country were a model for the rest of the world. Traditionally, meetings between business tycoons and ministers were carefully monitored by civil servants. Detailed notes would be taken of these encounters in order to ensure that nothing irregular happened.

Posted by malct @ 02:21 PM 16 Comments

Guardian: A matter of protocol

So what are we to make of Brown's statement? One housing barrister suggested to me it was simply a "layman's mistake", but others take a more sceptical view. The CJC should be mightily miffed that its hard work has been plucked away, bandied about the Commons and spun into something it's not by a prime minister desperate for an initiative to show he was "doing something" about the home loans catastrophe. If he was simply misinformed then he had better get on and really do something because a gentlemanly, voluntary, administrative protocol is not going to solve the housing crisis.

New Statesman: A debt spiral we could have avoided

Who, five years ago, would have predicted the part-nationalisation of private banks, the UK Treasury considering abandoning its fetish of “inflation targeting”, and prudent Gordon Brown breaching the EU cap on government spending? ***Also from the NS back in ancient times of Sept 2003 www.newstatesman.com/200309010011 title: Coming soon: the new poor

Posted by whostolemyendowment @ 12:51 PM 7 Comments

Economist: China's housing market - What goes up...

HOMEOWNERS in a middle-class district in northern Beijing are angry. The developer of their block of flats has slashed the prices of new flats now on sale. China’s housing market, barely existent a decade ago, is undergoing its first big downturn after years of boom. The earlier buyers want their money back.

Scotsman: Scots urged to raise pension saving as house prices fall

Pension saving in Scotland is significantly down on the UK average, with 49 per cent not putting money into a pension scheme, compared with 41 per cent across the UK as a whole, according to research by adviser and broker Brewin Dolphin. Instead it revealed that 20 per cent of Scottish homeowners – and seven million UK homeowners in total – intend using their property to fund their retirement. As house prices fall, however, that strategy could backfire badly, warned David Rankin, assistant director of financial services at Edinburgh-based Bell Lawrie, a division of Brewin Dolphin.

Posted by quiet guy @ 10:54 AM 9 Comments

BBC News: House price falls mean bargains for some

Brief video about a first time buyer getting a one bedroom flat for £78K instead of allegedly original price of £150K. New builds are a bit risky for build quality but even so, the repayment must be close to rentals at that price. Let's hope we see more of this soon.

Posted by quiet guy @ 10:52 AM 15 Comments

The Market Oracle: Financial Crisis Turning Into an Economic Crisis

This situation is no ordinary financial crash, this is definitely on par with what happened in the Great Depression.

Telegraph: Property market: Word on the street

Though repossession is a harsh sentence, it is one most frequently handed down to those who have overextended themselves. Supporting them would only encourage people to borrow more in the future. Better instead to improve the support we give those who have lost their homes. Repossenssion is the best thing can ever happen to people who refuse to learn their financial reality through any other rational means.

Posted by peter_2008 @ 10:39 AM 11 Comments

Evening Standard via SOTT: Shock in the City as UK economy falls off a cliff

Meanwhile, City Minister Lord Myners admitted the Prime Minister had failed to give the Bank of England sufficient powers to ensure financial stability. He said: "The Bank has been hampered by the limited instruments available to it, which is one of the reasons we're proposing new legislation."

Economist via SOTT: Shutting up shop

THE Sharper Image store on Manhattan’s West 57th Street is sharp no more: its last state-of-the-art massage chairs and stylish humidifiers have been put in storage and its windows papered over. A few doors away, the assistant in the Sharper Image-like Brookstone shop seems unusually desperate to make a sale. In between, huge posters adorn the storefront of Metropolitan, an antique shop, proclaiming that it is “Going Out of Business”. The economic downturn has struck at the heart of the world’s shopping capital, and not even the influx of foreigners taking advantage of the weak dollar has been enough to save Sharper Image or its neighbour. source http://www.sott.net/articles/show/168022-Shutting-up-shop-The-long-feared-surge-in-bankruptcies-in-America-is-now-under-way

Robert Fisk Independent via TS: Financial doom and gloom is everywhere – except Lebanon

Beirut's Blombank has just boasted a record 34 per cent rise in profits in the first three quarters of this year. The chairman of Audi Saradar Bank, who happens to be minister for the displaced in the Lebanese government, says that Lebanon is expected to record its highest GDP growth in many years. House prices continue to soar. And this in a nation that suffers a $45.5bn public debt. So out came the little leather-covered Fisk notebook this week to garner words of Lebanese wisdom from the men (few women) who know the secrets of the country's financial miracle.

FT.com: Hard times on home front

Even before unemployment started to jump, a sharply rising proportion of owners has been forced to sell up at a loss.

Telegraph: Financial crisis: Recession to be 'worse than the 1990s', experts warn

Families must prepare themselves for a recession which could be deeper, more painful and longer-lasting than the early 1990s, experts warned after the economy shrank for the first time in 16 years. Roger Bootle, managing director of Capital Economics, said: "What we are going to see of the next two years is a contraction of the same magnitude [as the early 1990s]. That one lasted two years, but this one could go on for four or five years." Those at most risk are homeowners who have bought recently, and face negative equity, and those working in the finance or retail sectors, which are likely to be hardest-hit as consumers abandon the high street.

Business Scotsman: Scots urged to raise pension saving as house prices fall

NEARLY half of all adults in Scotland do not save in a pension, a new study has found. Pension saving in Scotland is significantly down on the UK average, with 49 per cent not putting money into a pension scheme, compared with 41 per cent across the UK as a whole, according to research by adviser and broker Brewin Dolphin. Instead it ADVERTISEMENTrevealed that 20 per cent of Scottish homeowners – and seven million UK homeowners in total – intend using their property to fund their retirement.

NY Times: Housing Resales Rose 5.5% in September

Monthly home resales rose the most in five years in September, according to figures released Friday, with the sales driven largely by bargain-basement prices on foreclosed homes. But the numbers probably do not reflect a permanent turn in the markets, because the credit crisis has intensified since these transactions took place, it says here... Also - we might add - a 5.5% rise on a very very tiny base makes a mockery of comparisons with the last 5 years!

Mail: BBC tells reporters: Don't mention the 'R-word'

"The BBC is facing claims that it is avoiding using the 'R-word' - recession - to avoid being too depressing about the gloomy situation. It has been alleged that reporters have been encouraged to opt for 'downturn'. Sources have suggested that those covering the story for the BBC World Service have also been given the phrase 'global financial crisis' to use. " Won't help the BBC's rep one bit, particularly considering repeated allegations of bias.

Telegraph: Recession: just how bad can it really get?

Chancellor Alistair Darling said: “I’ve lived through the recessions this country saw in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. The difference is this time we are determined to do everything we can and as soon as we can to help people so that if they lose their jobs they can get back into work.”

Posted by gardeniadotnet @ 11:28 PM 6 Comments

Telegrath: Oct 24, 1929: Wall St crash

Today was the 79th Anniversary of Black Thursday, and will it be followed by another Black Monday. This time it appears that citizens have borrowed too heavily to invest in property the last paragraph says it all, just swap a few words.

FT: Transcript challenges UK position on Iceland

Was poor UK govt. also the final nail in the coffin for Icelandic banks? Was a run expedited by the actions and words of Alistar Darling and Gordon Brown? Brilliant, since Mandelson's return.anything that they do how ever bad seems to get a good press.

MSN Money: Housing market shows improvement

Why are the media permitted to publish such utter nonsense?

Posted by highland property bubble @ 08:47 PM 6 Comments

FT: Denmark lifts rates to defend krone

Denmark’s central bank on Friday raised its key interest rate for the second time this month to defend the krone, demonstrating the cost to the country of staying outside the eurozone. The 50 basis point rise to 5.5 per cent stands in marked contrast to recent rate cuts in neighbouring Norway and Sweden, and threatens to push Danish housing prices down further and depress an already stagnating economy.

Guardian: Gordon Brown launches attack on 'scandalous' Opec

Speaking to business leaders in Nottingham, Brown condemned the proposal to pump less oil in unusually strong terms. "I think it is absolutely scandalous that Opec is thinking of meeting in the next few days to cut oil production so they can push up the price of oil again and we will certainly try and prevent this happening," he said.

Bloomberg: AIG Taps $90.3 Billion From Government Credit Line

American International Group Inc. has used $90.3 billion of a U.S. government credit line since it was bailed out last month, an amount exceeding the size of the original loan meant to save the insurer. AIG may need more than the $122.8 billion now available to the New York-based insurer, Chief Executive Officer Edward Liddy said Oct. 22.

Mortgage Strategy: Woolwich drops B2L LTVs

Woolwich has dropped LTVs on its buy-to-let portfolio tracker to 50% from tomorrow.

Posted by whostolemyendowment @ 07:27 PM 28 Comments

News Biscuit: Global financial meltdown averted as drunk points out ‘It's all just made up numbers innit?’

The World’s Financial Crisis was dramatically halted yesterday thanks to the intervention of a drunken man in a pub with an analysis of simplistic logical brilliance that put the markets right back on track. Terence Bould, 43, also known as ‘Tel the Smell’ due to his occupation as a sewage engineer, was returning from the toilets at shortly after 10pm in his local pub in East London when he proclaimed that the current financial meltdown ‘was all a load of bo£ - £ocks anyway – as it’s just made up numbers and {other stuff}. sorry I thought we all needed some light refreshment - see you down the pub

Telegraph: Thousands of hedge funds to close, says GLG chief Emmanuel Roman

Thousands of hedge funds are on the brink of failure as the global economy contracts with unexpected severity, according to the chief executive of GLG, Europe's biggest hedge fund Emmanuel Roman, of GLG Partners, said 25pc-30pc of the world's 8,000 hedge funds would disappear "in a Darwinian process", either going bust or deciding meagre profits are not worth their efforts. "This will go down in the history books as one of the greatest fiascos of banking in 100 years,"

This is Money: Volvo truck sales plunge 99.7%

There will be less accidents on the M25

The Mail: 'Worst financial crisis in human history': Bank boss's warning as pound suffers biggest fall for 37 years

'Worst financial crisis in human history':The pound suffered its biggest one-day fall for 37 years today after official figures revealed Britain is on the brink of recession. The economy shrank by 0.5 per cent between July and September, its biggest decline since 1990 and the first quarter of negative growth in 16 years. No more boom and bust in otherwords.

Telegraph: Yes, PM: there should be an inquiry ... into Britain’s finances

The House of Osborne has been Mandelised. Windows of opportunity have been smashed and proceeds of opinion-poll growth dragged into the gutter. Having experienced the Mandelights of dining with a mortgage fiddler, Boyish George is struggling to pay a hefty bill for his not-so-free lunch. Here’s the punchline: if Mr Osborne did not squeeze even a measly £50,000 from an oligarch over a boozy session in Corfu, yet still contrived to have the non-event become a national scandal, how can Tatton’s MP be the man to look after the public purse – all £600 billion of it – in a crisis? Says Jeff Randall

guardian: For sale at $1,250: the Detroit houses behind the sub-prime disaster

Haley's firm, Prime Financial Plus, has homes on its books for as little as $649 (£416). But these tend to be in poor shape, damaged by squatters, looters and vandals. For something a little classier, buyers will need to dig deep - by writing a cheque running into four figures.

Sky: 'Credit Tsunami Was Not My Fault'

Former US Federal Reserve boss Alan Greenspan has denied the nation's economic crisis was his fault - calling the banking chaos a "credit tsunami". [many typos, but there you go!]

BBC: Iceland asks for $2bn in IMF help

Iceland's government has said it has asked for $2bn (£1.3bn; 1.58bn euros) of support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). It is the first Western country to have made an approach to the IMF for such help since 1976. If approved, it will have immediate access to $860m, Iceland said. Iceland's financial system is close to collapse after the country was forced to take over three of its biggest, debt-laden banks this month.

Posted by jack c @ 04:31 PM 6 Comments

CNN: Enough of the apocalypse already!

This doomsday business just gets old after a while, you know?

Posted by holding out @ 03:35 PM 14 Comments

Credit Writedowns: National City sold

PNC, down only 13% this year-to-date, very good for a bank stock, is acquiring beleaguered Ohio bank NCC for $5.5 billion. The price represents a huge discount to the prevailing market price before open today and NCC was down 34% in early trading.

Guardian: Property slump claims 20% of Rightmove staff

Rightmove, Britain's biggest property website, announced a 20% cut in staff numbers yesterday as it warned the housing slump would last well into next year. The move, part of the portal's plans to cut costs by £5m, came as the British Bankers' Association (BBA) revealed that UK mortgage approvals in September were 57% down on the same month last year. About 60 of Rightmove's 300 staff face redundancy as the company scales back its overseas business in response to dwindling demand.

PBS: Top Theorists Examine Rippling Economic Turbulence

PAUL SOLMAN: We sat down with Taleb and the man he calls his mentor, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, pioneer of fractal geometry and chaos theory. And even more than feeling vindicated, they're both scared. NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB: I don't know if we're entering the most difficult period since -- not since the Great Depression, since the American Revolution. PAUL SOLMAN: The most serious situation we've been in since the American Revolution? NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB: Yes. PAUL SOLMAN: Professor Mandelbrot, can that possibly be true? BENOIT MANDELBROT, Mathematician: It's very serious. PAUL SOLMAN: More serious than the Great Depression, possibly? BENOIT MANDELBROT: Possibly. I hope not. I think that we may be experiencing something that is vastly worse

Posted by malct @ 02:01 PM 22 Comments

BBC News: Audio Slideshow: A guide to the credit crunch

It seems as though the term 'credit crunch' is becoming common parlance. But do you know what it actually is - or how it came about? Spend a few minutes with the BBC's Business Editor Robert Peston, as he explains why we are in the middle of a global financial crisis.

Craig Murray: The Balding Butt Plug

Britain's outspoken Ex Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan I was depressed lately partly by the problems over getting the book published, but mostly by despair over the "Bailouts" in the US and UK. This incredible misuse of taxpayers' money represents the biggest net redistribution of funds from the poor to the rich in all of human history. The lack of real analysis in any of the media is what plunged me in to gloom so deep it was not even much relieved by cont.

irishtimes: Bank no longer a creditor of Taggart

A leading Northern Ireland businessman warned yesterday that the collapse of Taggart could leave the region's construction industry in "meltdown". Brendan Cunnane, secretary of local lobbying organisation the Construction and Property Group (CPG), said the failure of Taggart meant the end of the road for many other building firms, and pointed out that the industry in the region was effectively in the banks' hands. "I would say that over half the developers in Northern Ireland are waiting for a call," he said.

Moneyweek: Why the gold standard could make a comeback

To invest in gold, I recommend you buy physical gold and keep it hidden on your property. Pick up the yellow pages and look for gold brokers or coin dealers. Ask them what price they charge on gold bullion coins. Buy from the broker with the lowest price and the longest history of doing business in your town. One more thing, don't buy it right now. Physical gold is in short supply and prices are at rip-off levels

Posted by sold out @ 01:20 PM 16 Comments

irishtimes: EU to set up phone service for financial emergencies

FINANCE MINISTERS facing market meltdown have a new number to call day or night for help as part of EU efforts to avoid ill-thought responses that could upset neighbouring states and break the bloc's rules.

MoneyWeek: Latest: FTSE in meltdown, and now the pound crashes

As if a stock market crash, banking collapse and impending recession weren't enough, the UK is now in the midst of a currency crisis. So what does this mean for Britain?

Posted by damien @ 12:56 PM 15 Comments

Money and Markets: Important change in our outlook

A deflationary outlook, with a short opinion on the direction of gold. Does anybody really know?

Posted by p. doff @ 12:41 PM 17 Comments

The Times: Panic over hedge funds 'could close markets'

Regulators could be forced to shut down markets for as long as a fortnight in order to stanch the panic beginning to beset the hedge fund industry, a leading expert predicted yesterday. Nouriel Roubini, a professor at New York University, told a London conference that hundreds of hedge funds are poised to fail as frantic investors rush to redeem their assets and force managers into a fire sale of assets. He said: “We've reached a situation of sheer panic. Don't be surprised if policymakers need to close down markets for a week or two in coming days.”

Posted by debtfree @ 12:13 PM 11 Comments

bbc: Remember the last recession?

Although the UK was technically out of recession by the time it left ERM on so-called Black Wednesday in September 1992, its effect continued to be painfully felt, especially in areas that remained in negative equity. Sarah Stewart, now 48, believes it cost her marriage. Three years after buying her flat in Newcastle for £18,000 in 1991, she moved south to start a new job and tried to sell it but it was now worth less than she paid for it. An offer came in for £15,000 but the lending bank - as many did at the time - said that was too low. Meanwhile it was regularly getting broken into, so repair costs were mounting. "I handed back the keys because I couldn't cope with it anymore," says Ms Stewart, who is now a city councillor on the south coast.

The Press Association: Oil producers to slash output

Oil cartel Opec has agreed to cut production in a move that is likely to halt the recent slide in UK petrol prices

Posted by sold 2 rent 1 @ 11:43 AM 12 Comments

Assoc. Press via sott: Greenspan: 'Once in a century credit tsunami' to have severe impact

He said that a necessary condition for the crisis to end will be a stabilization in home prices but he said that was not likely to occur for "many months in the future." In his testimony, Greenspan put the blame for the subprime collapse on overeager investors who did not properly take into account the threats that would be posed once home prices stopped surging upward. "It was the failure to properly price such risky assets that precipitated the crisis," he asserted.

bbc: Ryanair to close base in Valencia

The move will affect 750,000 passengers a year and 750 jobs in the region will be lost, according to the airline.

SOTT brings you USA TODAY: Economy rocks China as factories close by the thousands

River Dragon shut down on Oct. 7. Tao and Yan have vanished, leaving behind more than $290 million in debt and a lot of anger in this city 140 miles south of Shanghai in the Yangtze River Delta. The company's demise put 4,000 workers on the street and jilted hundreds of suppliers and creditors. The speedy rise - and speedier fall - of River Dragon is a depressingly familiar story in China these days. Thousands of Chinese factories have shuttered in the past year, done in by:

BBC "News": Downturn snapshot: Day's events

What's the real impact of the economic slowdown? In a special day of coverage BBC News is taking the temperature across the UK.... They make it sound like it's something that will be gone tomorrow. I hope those folks at the BBC have got plenty of spare underwear because this has only just started.

MoneyWeek: How the hedge fund squeeze will push stocks even lower

If you think the market's bottomed, you're wrong, writes David Stevenson. Hedge funds who bought shares with borrowed money are being forced to deleverage – which means dumping stocks. And that's going to drive prices down further...

reuters: UK contracts, firms suffer, China says outlook grim

Markets expect the Federal Reserve to cut U.S. rates sharply next week to help head off a sharp recession. To that end, investors will scrutinise U.S. home sales data due later.

FT.com: Ask Lucy: Should I be ashamed for being an investment banker?

At a dinner party last Saturday I was asked by a fellow guest what I did and I said I was an investment banker. I might as well have said I was a paedophile. Suddenly the whole table – all friends of my wife from the art world – turned on me with such venom I was really taken aback. I tried to defend myself by saying that I had nothing to be ashamed of in the work that I do in M&A, but the more I argued the more hostile the other guests became. Next time this happens – and I fear there will be a next time – should I accept guilt for what isn’t my fault, or should I lie and say I’m a librarian? Investment banker, male, 42

Posted by lukeskywalker @ 10:11 AM 14 Comments

Economist: A helping hand to homeowners

“no-recourse” home loans, which are standard in America (though not elsewhere). If a borrower defaults, a bank can claim back the property used as collateral, but nothing more. When the value of a home drops below the size of the mortgage, a borrower has a reason to default to escape his negative equity.

Home Move: Capital Economics predict 35% fall in house prices

Previously, the organisation had forecasted that prices would fall 35% by 2010, but in the wake of the economic downturn, the fall will be much quicker. The fall means that approximately £65,000 will be wiped off the average property with the average home costing £120,000. At the peak of the property boom last summer, the average home was worth £186,000. Earlier this week, Knight Frank estate agents said house prices in the UK will fall 30% from their high of summer 2007 and fall to levels of September 2003.

BBC News: Plunge in house prices predicted

Welsh house prices predicted to fall 38% from their peak just over a year ago. The average number of people out of work by the end of this year is also expected to be 10% higher than in 2007.

Telegraph.co.uk: Financial crisis: Asia suffers further stock market slide

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 average led the charge, a morning slump continuing into the afternoon, finally closing 811.9 or 9.6pc at 7,649.08, its lowest level since May 2003. If it falls much further, it will start to hit figures not seen for a quarter of a century.

The International Forecaster: Insider profiting will bring the hyperinflation juggernaut

M3 continues to rampage, will manifest as hyperinflation 6 months/1 year, pressure to bail out of treasuries will reach critical mass and the whole world is going to run for the exits at once. Then all those parked and hoarded dollars will come back to haunt us with a vengeance, and we will be completely, utterly and immediately Weimarized as everyone tries to grab as many tangible, real US assets as they can get their hands on. We will literally be awash in dollars, as if a dollar tsunami had just been unleashed by a Force 10 earthquake. We also expect to hear more threats from OPEC nations to break dollar pegs as the price of oil continues its downward spiral, and this could be the straw that breaks the camels back. If you don't own gold and silver, you will be wiped out.

Posted by planning4acrash @ 07:58 AM 42 Comments

The Onion: Greenspan, Entourage Demolish Hotel Room

LOS ANGELES—Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan once again found himself in legal trouble Monday, when he and several members of his extensive entourage were arrested for allegedly destroying a penthouse suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

FT.com: Business failures inevitable, say banks

But the British Bankers’ Association, the industry group, said “commercial realities” made it “inevitable that some businesses will not survive” the recession. There simply is nothing that needs to be added to this article; the bankers now "safe". (well they think they are but lets just leave it there for now) ... now get down to the real business of ensuring everybody else has to play by the "rules" and go to the wall if necessary. .... as aided and abetted by the government. Other people are running businesses that cannot survive the environment you understand.. so they must go out in the cold.

Posted by whiteknight @ 10:20 PM 9 Comments

CNBC: Greenspan: I Was 'Partially' Wrong On Credit Crisis

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress on Thursday he is "shocked" at the breakdown in U.S. credit markets and said he was "partially" wrong to resist regulation of some securities.

Posted by alan @ 09:17 PM 22 Comments

Number 10: Financial Stability

It is actually quite a good speech.

Telegrath: Food sales fall for first time since 1986

The Office for Nobbled Statistics reveals that food sales have effectively dropped over the summer with M&S meat sales down 28%. Analysts expect High Street retailers to be hit hard as hard pressed consumers increasingly shop online, whilst serious bargain hunters are turning to 2nd hand goods with internet searches for such items up 22 percent.

Times: Is this the end for the amateur buy-to-let investor?

Landlords will need a licence-to-let and a business plan to take out a mortgage, under proposals published by the Government today. In a report that could sound the death knell for amateur buy-to-let investors, independent housing policy experts recommended a raft of measures that would turn letting property into a business rather than a bit of cash on the side. The licence, which could operate a bit like a driver’s licence, would mean that landlords who fail to measure up could have points deducted or lose their licence altogether and be banned from letting property.

Posted by little professor @ 07:20 PM 19 Comments

bbc: JCB staff vote for shorter week

Thousands of JCB staff have accepted a shorter working week in order to save about 350 jobs across the UK. The GMB union said 2,500 of its members in the UK had accepted a 34-hour week by a two-thirds majority. The firm, based in Rocester, Staffordshire, had said 500 jobs could be axed if the plan was not accepted and 150 jobs will still be cut. JCB has 11 factories across the UK and said fewer working hours had been its preferred option.

BBC News: Now there are runs on countries!

First the money markets close, then banks collapse, now whole countries collapsing as credit unwinds. Of course Iceland has already gone, now it's S Korea, Hungary. Watch and learn - the currencies collapse, and the stockmarket collapses. LINE UP AND WATCH WHOLE COUNTRIES FALLING. Luckily, IMF has funds to support the early fallers, but no organisation has enough funds to bale out a country the size of the UK or US. "And now we're seeing a massive flight of capital out of economies perceived to have been living beyond their means - either because they have a substantial reliance on foreign borrowings, or because they are net importers of good and services, or both." This means us soon, here in UK. Get ready....

Posted by doom&gloom @ 06:18 PM 25 Comments

Yahoo: Find Out How Safe Your Bank Is

n Spot Banks Before They Go Bust, I explained the usefulness of credit default swaps (CDSs) in terms of measuring risk. CDSs provide insurance on debt, guaranteeing a holder's money will be covered if a company goes under. The riskier a bank, the more expensive it is to insure its debts. CDSs are measured in basis points (one hundredth of a percentage point). If a bank has a CDS of 100, insuring a £1 million investment would cost £10,000. To put things into perspective, CDSs in Icelandic banks were trading near 3,000 basis points before they went bust.

Bloomberg: Roubini Says `Panic' May Force Market Shutdown

Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Hundreds of hedge funds will fail and policy makers may need to shut financial markets for a week or more as the crisis forces investors to dump assets, New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini said.

Public Finance Magazine: RSLs rush to snap up private homes for social housing

A third of the £200m set aside by the government to buy unwanted private homes has been allocated to housing associations in just three months. Since July, more than 2,000 homes built by developers before the mortgage crisis have been snapped up by associations using £70m of public funds, it was announced this week.***by the way Registered Social Landlord (RSL)

Bloomberg: Bianco Calls Fed Liquidity Efforts 'Hyper-Inflationary': Video

Smart guy talking about credit problems. Housing problems have blown a hole in the banking system. Fed actions are hyperinflationary. But "if we shrink the real world to the size of the financial system we get Great Depression II."

WSJ: Banks face another Wild Card

This financial crisis has shown that history is an unreliable guide for gauging future losses. Banks relying on historical models were fooled when it came to potential mortgage hits. They similarly miscalculated with structured-debt products. Now, the same may hold true for credit cards. Banks and big card issuers have seen card losses climb and are projecting that things will worsen in 2009.

Chris Martenson.com: Crash Course Chapter 20: What Should I Do?

Here it is, the last in the excellent 20 part series by Chris Martenson.

WSJ: The Auction-Rate Securities After-Party: Lehman Gets an Invite

M. Brian Maher and Basil Maher sold their family’s billion-dollar shipping business and invested some of the proceeds with Lehman. After the auction-rate market collapsed, they lost access to $286 million that was tied up in the securities. Brooklyn Prosecutors are probing whether Lehman put the securities into the brothers’ and other customers’ accounts despite knowing the market could collapse. A spokeswoman for a unit of Barclays PLC, which bought Lehman’s core U.S. business following its bankruptcy, declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn. In a statement, attorneys for the Maher family said it is “aware of and is cooperating with an investigation of Lehman Brothers by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York.”

Bloomberg: Goldman Sachs May Slash 3,200 Jobs as Credit Turmoil Worsens

Oct. 23 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. plans to eliminate about 3,200 workers, adding to more than 125,000 job cuts across the securities industry this year. Goldman will cut about 10 percent of its 32,500 workforce as the credit crisis worsens, said a person briefed on the plans who declined to be identified. Paul Kafka, a spokesman for Goldman in London, wouldn't comment. Banks worldwide are shelving deals and cutting employees as the unprecedented turmoil in credit markets spreads and spurs concern the global economy may fall into a recession. Goldman, the top-ranked adviser on mergers and acquisitions this year, has dropped by almost 50 percent in New York trading this year, and plans to convert into a bank from a securities firm.

International Tribune: Argentina nationalizes $30 billion in private pensions

Argentina's government said Tuesday that it would seek to nationalize nearly $30 billion in private pension funds to protect retirees from falling stock and bond prices.

Sydney Morning Herald: New South Wales in the Red.

And I bet they have not found the majority of losses yet NSW suffered its first monthly deficit in eight years in August as a result of weak property and financial markets. And it barely managed to record a surplus for the 2007/08 financial year. The continued budget pressures point to a savage mini-budget, due to be introduced on November 11, as the Rees Government seeks to squeeze spending across the board.

Straitstimes: Mahathir sees no end to crisis

FORMER Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad, the leader who steered Malaysia through the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, said that the current global turmoil is far from ending and will soon spread to the region's export-dependent economies, in an interview with Bloomberg News. 'The worst is not over yet. We do not even understand what is happening,' Tun Dr Mahathir, who stepped down as prime minister in 2003, said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday in Putrajaya, Malaysia. 'Asian countries are going to feel the pinch of a world where the market has collapsed.'

citywire: Big rate cuts will not prevent 20% house price falls in 2009, economist warns

"House price falls will intensify next year even if the Bank of England slashes interest rates to as low as 2.5%, a major economics consultancy has warned. " I'm a so called vulture, ready to buy a house chain free - for the right price. Found the house of my dreams but so did someone else too. How do i get them to realise they are paying too much...

Bloomberg: CDO Cuts Show $1 Trillion Corporate-Debt Bets Toxic

Investors are taking losses of up to 90 percent in the $1.2 trillion market for collateralized debt obligations tied to corporate credit as the failures of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Icelandic banks send shockwaves through the global financial system. The losses among banks, insurers and money managers may spark the next round of writedowns on CDOs after $660 billion in subprime-related losses. They may force lenders to post more reserves after governments worldwide announced $3 trillion in financial-industry rescue packages since last month, according to Barclays Capital. ``We'll see the same problems we've seen in subprime,'' said Alistair Milne.

Posted by lvmreader @ 02:17 PM 14 Comments

Telegraph: Crisis mounts in East Europe after shock 3pc rate rise by Hungary

The fast-moving crisis echoes the final days of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992, when Britain, Italy, and Sweden raised rates to extreme levels to defend their currencies despite economic recession, with little success. Hungary's premier Ferenc Gyurcsany said the county was left with no choice as the forint went into a free-fall. It has dropped 16pc against the euro since the start of the month and is now at the bottom of its ERM band. "There is still an exceptionally large speculative pressure on the forint. We will take every measure necessary," he said. It is unclear whether the move will prove enough to prevent a forced devaluation. The treasury had to cancel a bond auction yesterday as buyers stayed away.

Posted by lvmreader @ 02:07 PM 11 Comments

Evening Standard: Candy Bros in talks to sell Chelsea Barracks stake

Sources have told the Standard that the brothers, who have pioneered developments for the super-rich, are in negotiations to get their cash out of Chelsea Barracks which has been beset by planning rows, a revolt by wealthy local residents and claims that the brothers and their partners paid far too much for the 12.8-acre site. Project Blue the joint venture set up between the Candy brothers and investment group Qatari Diar paid almost £1billion for the plot when it was sold by the Ministry of Defence last year at the height of the property boom. There is justice after all. I don't suppose these two will be sleeping in the back of a van though. Shame

bbc: Carmakers fear hard times ahead

Carmakers have forecast a tough year ahead, as the financial crisis takes its toll on the car industry. Italian carmaker Fiat said in a worst-case scenario its 2009 profits could fall by 65%, while global demand for its products could drop 10 to 20%.

Telegraph: Financial crisis: hard-up consumers are selling jewellery for cash

People are selling their gold jewellery because the price of gold is so high, and they have no money. Not in the Krugerand coin form preferred by speculators, but still shows why gold is going down in price, not up.

Posted by jonb @ 01:40 PM 10 Comments

ICH: Maybe U.S. Needs Yard (garage) Sale

October 22, 2008 "Toronto Sun"-- At the end of Second World War the British Empire still ruled nearly a quarter of the globe. But the war bankrupted Britain. Its once mighty empire quickly collapsed and the United States inherited much of the British Imperium. Six decades later the United States is close to bankruptcy thanks to a national orgy of borrowing, the replacement of manufacturing by financial manipulation, ruinous foreign wars and a government whose stunning incompetence and arrant stupidity was exceeded only by its reckless imperial arrogance. Bankrupt people, companies and nations have to sell assets to meet their debt obligations. China and Japan alone hold over $1.5 trillion of U.S. (IOUs). Their nervous central bankers now want real assets rather than more paper.

London Evening Standard: The iPod generation has the most to lose in a global recession

"... I cannot overemphasise how much trouble responsible young people may be in. The property bubble was a transfer of wealth between the generations. Pensioners who took a windfall profit sold on to young or youngish couples who saddled themselves with enormous loans. The mortgages did not look extravagant when the property market was roaring ahead and they could dream of selling on, too. After the crash, their debts have turned from investments into shackles."

Posted by doomwatch @ 01:18 PM 6 Comments

Emoire Burlesque via SOTT Perception Management: The God That Failed

Perhaps the most striking fact revealed by the global financial crash -- or rather, by the reaction to it -- is the staggering, astonishing, gargantuan amount of money that the governments of the world have at their command. In just a matter of days, we have seen literally trillions of dollars offered to the financial services sector by national treasuries and central banks across the globe. Britain alone has put $1 trillion at the disposal of the bankers, traders, lenders and speculators; and this has been surpassed by the total package of public money that Washington is shoveling into the financial furnaces of Wall Street and the banks. The effectiveness of this unprecedented transfer of wealth from ordinary citizens to the top tiers of the business world remains to be seen.

Posted by malct @ 01:00 PM 26 Comments

Mortgage Introducer: Household bills going unpaid as the crunch starts to hurt

"The amount of electricity bills that have gone unpaid in the past six months has jumped from 1.31 million to 1.96 million and approximately 1.61 million Brits missed a gas bill compared to 1.16 million in the final six months of 2007."

Telegraph: Northern Rock staff could get bumper bonuses

Northern Rock's 4,000 staff will be paid extra if they help the bank pay back its £26 billion Government loan on time. Those enjoying the possible bonus include chief executive Gary Hoffman, who could get an extra £420,000 on top of his £700,000 salary. Ho hum I'll get my wallet.....sigh

The Guardian: Alphabet of Global Downturn

When I first joined the site, the predictions page was at that time door-stopped by the seemingly 'out-there' views of financier Jim Mellon. But how right he was. Worth re-reading in full. It's three years old now, but for some people this is still going to come as hot off the presses news. 'In short, within three years the world economy will be in a significant downturn, and the correction process for the Anglo-Saxon economies will last as long as a decade. Pay, and therefore living standards, will have to adjust to the effect of Chinese competition. Stock markets will collapse, house prices in the over-extended markets of the UK and the US will fall by up to 50 per cent, and major investment banks and other financial institutions will go bust.'

FT: Mortgage approvals drop 56.6 per cent

The number of mortgages approved for house purchase dropped by 56.6 per cent in the year to September 2008, the latest British Bankers Association (BBA) statistics show. In September this year, 23,422 mortgages were approved for house purchase compared with around 54,000 in September 2007. The number of mortgages that were approved for house purchase in September 2008 however, rose by 8.8 per cent to 23,422 compared with 21,342 approvals the previous month. Remortgage approvals also lifted in September compared with August from 51,523 to 47,260.

FTAdvisor: Leaviss predicts deflation for UK and Europe

I think it is certain we are now in debt deflation, as people cannot clear their debts through liquidating assets. The main thing to watch now is the actions of the UK government, and to try and see in advance which way existing (and currently reducing) wealth is going to be transferred. Mortgage holders would certainly benefit from partial government ownership, and in effect would have won themselves subsidised council housing. As there has never been a successful escape from debt deflation in the past (WWII not counting as a success) I think the key issue now is not the fundamental economics which have made their effect abundantly clear, but the correct anticipation of the actions of a socialist leaning New Labour government, in particular what level of debt they consider ...

reuters: Libya eyes European, US equities after price drop

"We are going more towards (sectors) ... such as pharmaceuticals, telecoms, utilities and food manufacture," he told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Cairo.

reuters: Goldman Sachs to cut about 3,260 jobs

LONDON, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research) plans to cut about 3,260 jobs, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

reuters: Wolseley to close 86 U.S. branches and cut 3,000 jobs

LONDON (Reuters) - Wolseley (WOS.L: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Thursday it planned to restructure its loss-making U.S. building materials business by closing branches, leaving some states and cutting another 3,000 jobs. The company, which says it is the world's largest specialist trade distributor of plumbing and heating products

FT (Westminster Blog): Time to nationalise the housebuilders?

It has been described by one former cabinet minister as the ultimate Keynesian move - the nationalisation of the housebuilding industry.

Posted by whostolemyendowment @ 10:23 AM 24 Comments

cnn: 81,312 homes lost to foreclosure in September

Nevada once again had the nation's highest foreclosure rate, with one out of ever 82 homes in foreclosure. Florida had the second highest rate in September, with one in every 178 homes in default. California came in third, with one in every 189 homes there receiving foreclosure filling last month.

24Dash: Beckett to receive Rugg Review on private rented housing market

Proposals to grow the private rented housing market in the UK were being put forward in an independent report being presented to housing minister Margaret Beckett today.

MarketWatch: Wall Street's 'Disaster Capitalism for Dummies'

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Yes, we're dummies. You. Me. All 300 million of us. Clueless. We should be ashamed. We're obsessed about the slogans and rituals of "democracy," distracted by the campaign, polls, debates, rhetoric, half-truths and outright lies. A housing-credit bubble -- while secretly planning for a meltdown. Finally, the coup de grace: Along came the housing-credit crisis, as planned. Press and public saw a negative, a crisis. Disaster capitalists saw a huge opportunity. Yes, opportunity for big bucks and control of America. Millions of homeowners and marginal banks suffered huge losses. Taxpayers stuck with trillions in debt.

Financial Times: Fed offers $540bn liquidity to money market funds

The US Federal Reserve on Tuesday said it would finance up to $540bn in purchases of short term debt from money market mutual funds, in its latest move to shore up a key pillar of the US financial system.Money market funds have faced severe redemption pressures over the past month as the financial crisis deepened - but have struggled to find any buyers willing to pay the full value for their assets since all these funds are selling at the same time. This has left them wary of investing any cash that they have, making it difficult for companies and banks trying to raise funds in the commercial paper market.

Guardian: Home sellers have 'unrealistic market expectations'

The Rightmove index of estate agent asking prices continues to decouple from reality with a 1% increase in asking prices last month. Sellers are continuing to ask for more money in the hope that any discounts are negotiated on the basis of the higher asking price. In reality, if you aren't on the first one or two pages when sorting lowest price first, buyers aren't going to even look at your property.

Posted by jonb @ 09:30 AM 12 Comments

Assoc. Press via Yahoo: Asia stocks fall on profit fears; SKorea off 7 pct

HONG KONG – Asian stocks fell for a second day Thursday, with South Korea's market sinking more than 7 percent, as a barrage of downbeat company forecasts deepened fears of a global recession. But in a positive sign, most major indices pared losses in afternoon trading as some investors bought beaten down shares. Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average tumbled 7 percent at the open but recovered some to closed down 2.5 percent at 8,460.98. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index was down 4.7 percent at 13,603 after falling more than 6 percent earlier.

SOTT: Perception Management and the Economic Spider's Web

Summary: A battle for global economic hegemony is under way. The banking bailouts have moved from the original US proposal of simply buying bad assets to substantial recapitalisation and even nationalisation of banks that just months ago were considered strong and healthy. Bank deposits are rapidly being guaranteed around the world and government guarantees for short and medium term bank debt are freely available. Just who is running these bailouts, and for who's benefit?

Sky News: Prices Slashed In Housing Gloom

"If a home-owner thinks they can value their property at the same level as six months ago, they should expect their estate agent to tell them otherwise for their own good", said Ed Ogden from Bushells estate agent in west London.

Bloomberg: Rightmove to Cut Staff by 20% Amid Slump in Property Industry

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Telegraph: A third of Poles driven home by recession

The rise of the Polish zloty against the pound has meant that some Poles can earn almost as much in their native country as in the UK. A third of the Polish people living in the British Isles will leave the country next year, driven out by the recession. In their home country job prospects are better and the economy has not been hit by the credit crisis. Such a large-scale withdrawal could damage the British economy. The departure of so many skilled workers could prompt fears that building sites will face a major labour shortage. The extensive building programme ahead of the 2012 London Olympics could also be at risk. Polish labour agencies are already reporting that the trickle of returning countrymen is steadily turning into a flood.

Posted by drewster @ 01:04 AM 19 Comments

telegraph: The pound suffered its biggest fall since the aftermath of Black Wednesday in 1992 after the Prime Minister and Governor of the Bank of England warned that the UK is entering a recession

Sterling plummeted by almost 6¼ cents against the dollar as investors abandoned the UK currency after the warning, originally delivered by Mervyn King on Tuesday night. The pound ended the day worth just $1.6334, compared with almost $1.70 the previous close

Fred H: Foreign Press associaton news conference

Fred in glorious technicolour on the rampage. Has a "bit" of a go at Gordon. Whether you believe in LVT or not its good to watch. The video doesnt go into LVT - but just basically states that Gordon isnt a superhero and the plan wont work.

Posted by techieman @ 11:50 PM 10 Comments

Estates Gazette: Colliers sues investor over fraud accusation

Hardeep Johal blames agent for the loss of £67,000 See attached document for the story has gone to print in the estate Gazzete, maybe now you can consider this a high priority story, since colliers is the 3rd largest property companies in the world after all. And the global crisis 2008 is all a property overvaluation issue just as occurred in this case. I am just the first of many investors that have been scammed by colliers in this investment, i have located one other investor who has been frauded out of approx £150k. In total the fraud relates to millions of pounds of losses for both the investors and the banks involved. I am sure there are many more who searching for other investors however colliers has attempted to keep all investors separate by hindering information.

Guardian: Police raid Germany's 'dumbest bank'

"German prosecutors and police today raided the Frankfurt headquarters of state-owned bank KfW, looking into a case suspected criminal breach of trust. Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation into whether the bank's executives acted criminally in allowing KfW to transfer €319m (£251m) to US investment bank Lehman Brothers on the day it went bankrupt." Always look for the screw up before looking for the conspiracy :)

Bloomberg: Wachovia Lost $24 Billion as Customers Drained Funds

"The bank wrote off $810 million in option adjustable-rate mortgages, up from $508 million in the previous quarter. Borrowers aren't paying interest on about $9 billion of the loans, or 7.6 percent of the total". Wells Fargo expects a cumulative loss of $26 billion from option-ARMs, with more than 90 percent of those credit costs to be incurred by the end of next year. Steel in September estimated such losses would reach about $14 billion. Option- ARMs, which Wachovia no longer offers, allow borrowers to defer part of their interest payments, boosting the principal.

Bloomberg: Credit-Rating Companies `Sold Soul,' Employees Said

Same buggers that had Iceland's debts rated at AAA the week before they went into melt down... So what do they rate US debt at now? AAA? now is that an honest AAA or a fook me we are knackered type AAA! Be honest now Honestly.... I can't judge you... but St Peter will!

FT: Insight: Shattered illusions of liquidity

Sovereign wealth funds are not real, unleveraged liquid cash ready and waiting to be mobilised to support assets around the world. They are hit by deterioration of US credit quality and by problems in the US financial sector and are just a part of the self-referential global financial system that created candyfloss money - lots of it spun out of a limited amount of real money which eventually collapses back on itself. The abundance and liquidity of sovereign funds and central banks is an illusion created by excessive debt and leverage and as the world deleverages we pull back the curtain and see smoke and mirrors.

Posted by icarus @ 06:44 PM 8 Comments

Property Week: Housebuilding will suffer after Brown’s rescue plan

"The damage is already severe. Housing starts are negligible and mortgage applications at all-time lows. Not only is that bad news for construction, but it spills over into falling consumer confidence."

CNBC: Please read below

As below

CNBC: The Unfolding Financial Crisis

One of the best bears in the world speaks - he may be right he may be wrong.

Posted by submedia @ 04:52 PM 10 Comments

Telegraph: Rental demand up by 50 per cent

[Same article as FT below, only free to view]. The number of people signing up for rented accommodation rose in September, with demand up 50 per cent year on year, according to the UK's second largest lettings agent Your Move, which has 250 branches nationwide. The number of leases commencing in September jumped 4.34 per cent compared to August 2008 - far beyond normal seasonal fluctuations, the agent added.

Posted by drewster @ 04:32 PM 17 Comments

FT: Rental demand up 50%

The number of people signing up for rented accommodation rose in September, with demand up 50 per cent year on year, according to the UK’s second largest lettings agent Your Move, with 250 branches nationwide. The number of leases commencing in September also rose, up 4.34 per cent compared to the previous month, coinciding with mortgage advances being at an all time low, which Your Move said was an indication that would-be buyers are renting rather than buying property.

Yvette Cooper gets grilled by Andrew Neil on UK debt: Yvette Cooper gets grilled by Andrew Neil on UK debt

I think this must be Yvette Cooper's worst interview yet. AN corners her on household debt and she has no escape other than to trot out her usual well worn phrases. Watch it here

Posted by crown @ 02:59 PM 21 Comments

Telegraph: Pound slumps and shares tumble as Gordon Brown admits recession is looming

The pound has plunged by the most in 16 years against the dollar and the FTSE 100 tumbled after Gordon Brown joined the Governor of the Bank of England in admitting for the first time that the economy is entering a recession. Still don't worry I am sure the prudent Mr Brown stashed a few Trillion away for just such a rainy day!!

mortgagestrategy: New build prices drop again

The average price of a new home fell for the fourth consecutive month in September, reports SmartNewHomes.com. This takes new home prices to £236,142 – down 2.6% from August 2008. This represents the sharpest monthly decline of 2008 so far. David Bexon, managing director of SmartNewHomes.com, says: “New home buyers can now enjoy excellent value for money on sale prices, boosted by added incentives such as help with deposits and legal fees paid, as well as the new stamp duty threshold...........

cnn: Merck to cut jobs as profit sinks 28%

The new restructuring program announced Wednesday aims to eliminate about 7,200 jobs, 400 of them currently vacant, across the company worldwide by the end of 2011. As part of the program, Merck will streamline management layers by eliminating about 25% of senior and mid-level executives. The company currently has a total of about 56,700 employees. The new job cuts come on top of a massive 2005 restructuring program, just about completed, that eliminated 10,400 jobs.

FT: Pound plunges as King warns on recession

but good news - “The age of innocence – when banks lent to each other unsecured for three months or longer at only a small premium to expected policy rates – will not quickly, if ever, return,” he said.

Posted by andrew @ 01:54 PM 18 Comments

Telegragh: Wind farms: Britain has enough offshore to provide power to 300,000

"In a special video message played at the London conference Gordon Brown said Britain had the best wind and wave resources in Europe and had now overtaken Denmark as the largest producer of offshore wind in the world." I agree Crash, now put some of our money where your mouth is.

Posted by mountain goat @ 01:37 PM 24 Comments

BBC: Plan to ease repossession rates

Guidance will be issued to judges in an attempt to ease repossession rates, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said. Mr Brown told the Commons that lenders would have to demonstrate to the courts that they had exhausted every avenue. Chief Secretary to the Treasury Yvette Cooper said that she wanted "stronger rules across the board" to make sure homeowners were supported.

Posted by little professor @ 01:25 PM 10 Comments

Independent via truthseeker: Oligarchs, Mandelson and Osborne

My only excuse as a business editor in writing about what is essentially political mudslinging is that the newly ennobled Mandelson is now Britain's Business Secretary. Wherever he goes, fireworks seem to follow, so his new charge can at least expect a lively couple of years, assuming he lasts that long. The trouble started almost immediately Mr Mandelson was summoned back from exile in Europe to be part of Gordon Brown's political fightback.

BrightSale Blog: BrightSale

In a communication to all its members last night, RightMove effectively rejected calls for it to reduce its fees or to move to a different form of charging (per property rather than per branch). The company’s argument appears to remain that estate agents should reduce their print advertising budgets instead. The other major change is a reduction in focus on overseas property – which we were aware RightMove was already struggling with. To us this looks like another clear indication that the British public’s previous rush (we might call it the Place in the Sun stampede) into overseas property is slowing abruptly.

reuters: Recession fears swamp signs of bank crisis easing

"We are far from the end of the road back to stability," he said late on Tuesday. "But the plan to recapitalise our banking system, both here and abroad, will I believe come to be seen as the moment in the banking crisis of the past year when we turned the corner." His comments were underlined by U.S. dollar short-term funding costs falling further in London and Asia, a sign that banks are beginning to regain trust in each other.

bloomberg: CDO Cuts Show $1 Trillion Corporate-Debt Bets Toxic

Investors are taking losses of up to 90 percent in the $1.2 trillion market for collateralized debt obligations tied to corporate credit as the failures of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Icelandic banks send shockwaves through the global financial system. The losses among banks, insurers and money managers may spark the next round of writedowns on CDOs after $660 billion in subprime-related losses. They may force lenders to post more reserves against losses after governments worldwide announced $3 trillion in financial-industry rescue packages since last month, according to Barclays Capital.

bloomberg: Hungary Raises Benchmark Rate to Defend Its Currency

Hungary's central bank raised the benchmark interest rate by 3 percentage points today, after a series of earlier measures to prop up the forint failed to halt the flight of investors from local assets.

Mortgage Stratergy: A&L pulls all two-year trackers

Alliance & Leicester is withdrawing all of its two-year base rate trackers at close of business today.

The Guardian: Russia, Iran & Quatar Announce Cartel that will control 60% of world's gas supplies

As I've mentioned ad nauseam, the present financial 'crisis' is merely a monumental stuff-up over the handling of notional forms of wealth. The real wealth (underpinning the actual value of its representational forms - one example: currency) is being depleted and diminished at an alarming rate or, as in this case, being corralled by the new energy world powers. Britain is effectively finished. Its economy has basically depended on a global economic system which has now contracted alarmingly, and its indigenous energy supplies - vital for any sort of manufacture or production - are approaching exhaustion point. Its one thing to seize oil from a weakened state like Iraq, but who's going to start a war with Russia? Or its ally Iran, with its ability to block oil supply via the Hormuz Straits?

Posted by lierbag @ 11:02 AM 13 Comments

The Ludwig von Mises Institute: Explaining Japan's Recession

This is al old article (2002) that may have already been posted here in the past - if so bare with me please. Really worth a good read because unlike recent articles, this was written long before things started to go wrong in US and UK and long before rescue plans were drawn. It makes the relevance of this piece even more striking and could well confirm that the future of UK is not bright at all. I am looking forward to reading your comments!

reuters: "Under water" mortgages are growing threat to U.S.

Long before she filed for bankruptcy, Ann Neukomm was "under water" -- she owed more on her mortgage than her house was worth -- a situation more and more Americans are finding themselves in. As the financial crisis hits Main Street America, nearly one in six U.S. homeowners are finding themselves in the same position, threatening the U.S. economy with a new wave of foreclosures and bankruptcies. About 12 million U.S. homeowners owe more than their homes are worth, compared with 6.6 million at the end of last year and slightly more than 3 million at the close of 2006, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.

bbc: Financial crisis: World round-up

Bruce Richall is an IT consultant based in the affluent Connecticut suburb of Westport. He describes how the loss of his job at a multinational bank triggered a rapid spiral into poverty. Having depleted his savings and unable to afford rent, he now sleeps in the back of his car.

Posted by mark @ 10:47 AM 18 Comments

bbc: Disney calls for Lehman inquiry

Walt Disney has become the latest company to call for an investigation into the dealings of investment bank Lehman Brothers before its collapse. Disney says it is owed $92m (£56.5m) and wants to know how money was moved between Lehman Brothers Commercial and its parent company before bankruptcy.

Introducer Today: CHL Mortgages put 40% of staff on consultation

CHL mortgages has placed 65 members of its marketing and sales division on consultation. This follows the previous shedding of 50 employees in April for the company, which is the specialist lending subsidiary of Irish Life & Permanent. www.chlmortgages.co.uk

Yorkshire Evening Post: Property tycoon Simon Morris bailed

PROPERTY magnate and former Leeds United director Simon Morris has been bailed after being arrested for alleged fraud and money laundering. Two weeks ago the YEP reported that Mr Morris's multi-million pound property empire was lying in ruins after SRM Holdings based at Brewery Wharf, Leeds, called in the administrators with estimated debts of £50m. BTW whats happened to Homes under the hammer this morning? Have the BBC realised they may be held liable for misselling on national TV!

Estate Agent Today: Propertylive.co.uk set to launch with 50,000 properties

Propertylive.co.uk, the new portal from the National Federation of Property Professionals, was due to go live last night (Tuesday). NFOPP chief executive Peter Bolton King said that it had been hoped to launch the portal over the weekend but a couple of glitches had forced the delay.

Citywire: Iceland to receive £3bn loan from UK to pay back Icesave depositors

The Treasury is preparing to lend £3 billion to Iceland so it can pay depositors in the UK hit by the collapse of the country's online bank account, Icesave. Reports indicate that Treasury officials are preparing to head over to Iceland this week to finalise details of the plan, in an effort to alleviate the concerns of UK investors who put their money in the overseas account.

Posted by jack c @ 09:27 AM 14 Comments

BBC: Barnsley building society rescued

The Yorkshire Building Society is to takeover its smaller rival, the Barnsley Building Society. The Barnsley said it was protecting itself against the possible loss of up to £10m deposited with Icelandic banks. The deal is the latest in the trend towards further consolidation among the UK's building societies. The deal is expected to be completed by the end of the year and there will be no windfall for Barnsley savers, nor will there be a vote of members.

The Times: Pound tumbles on King recession warning

The pound plunged against the dollar in early trading today as global markets took fright over a stark warning by Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, that the UK economy was on the brink of a prolonged recession.

Posted by titaniccaptain @ 08:40 AM 38 Comments

telegraph: Argentina seizes pension funds to pay debts. Who's next?

My fear is that governments in the US, Britain, and Europe will display similar reflexes. Indeed, they have already done so. The forced-feeding of banks with fresh capital - whether they want it or not

BBC News: Gloomy forecasts for UK economy

"Meanwhile, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research says the UK is on the brink of its first full year of recession since 1991. It says Britain will "suffer the worst setback" of all leading economies."

Posted by renting2 @ 07:15 AM 22 Comments

Telegraph: Financial crisis: House-price slump to cost economy £50 billion

House prices are set to fall 35 per cent from last year's peak, as the property slump costs the wider economy almost £50bn as people stop buying homes, economists warned. With house prices predicted to make their biggest fall in British history by dropping 35 per cent by autumn next year, the associated consumer spending is expected to plunge, they said ... This is expected to have a huge impact on the wider economy as each house sale triggers around £4,000 in new spending on household goods, on items such as washing machines and other white goods.

Posted by quiet guy @ 11:34 PM 7 Comments

Wall Street Journal: Experts: The Bailout Worked! So Far. That is, We Think.

"An increasing number of experts say the U.S. Treasury has taken just the right number of steps to end the financial crisis, and good things should start happening any time now. " Phew!! So it's back to 'normal' then?

BBC: Repossessions: your stories

Sam, 29, was earning £20,000 a year, as well as receiving income from two buy-to-let London properties. "I spotted a deal in a property magazine, for five flats in Birmingham for the price of just four. It was irresistible so I bought the flats in 2005 with a 90% mortgage. They said I could get a rent of £750 a month.That turned out to be rubbish. With £15,000 I went for voluntary repossession for all five. I went bankrupt in December 2007. I have lost everything. It is so sad. I am an accountant, but may not be able to work for five or six years. I wish the government had better protection for consumers as I had got my original mortgages for the Birmingham flats in minutes. Government should stop these unscrupulous deals.

Posted by little professor @ 06:13 PM 37 Comments

Telegraph: Flash Gordon flies round the world, but the Good Ship GB is holed

"WHILE Flash Gordon is off saving the world, those he's left behind prepare for the worst. The Prime Minister's bank bail-out plan is winning plaudits around the world but back in Blighty we're suffering the fallout from a less successful period in his career – the decade he spent as Chancellor. If the world wants to know what they're getting with Gordon, they might like to first consider what he's done to Britain". "White elephant capital projects, non-jobs in the "community" or box-tickers to check we're all complying with red tape, Brown and Darling obviously can't be trusted to spend our money on our behalf".

Time: London's Gathering Storm

Some good B&W photos of the City. Pic number 3 is my favorite.

Spectator: The unravelling of the great buy-to-let scam

Good summary, though little new information. Interesting comments...! I have developed a rather ghoulish pastime. It involves thumbing through auction results for repossessed apartments in city centres, then checking what those same properties sold for when new, a year or two ago. My record so far is a two-bedroom flat in a development called Beauchamp Place, Coventry, which was auctioned in September for £85,000 — less than 40 per cent of the £214,000 for which it was sold new in June 2006.

Posted by james @ 05:13 PM 6 Comments

BBC Radio 4: The Crash: A Walk Through The City

City veteran John McLaren visits the Square Mile to meet bankers and headhunters, shopowners and cab drivers, to find out how they are coping with the current economic turmoil and what the future may hold. More fun stories of bonuses being squandered on Chelsea flats etc that now have to be sold up.

Hotproperty: Property prices 'will not fall' in the UAE

Speaking to Emirates Business, the chairman of Dubai project Falconcity of Wonders, salem Almoosa said the price of property in the emirate 'will never go down' and he disagreed with those who see a correction coming.

BBC: House sales slump 53% across UK

At these low low levels of house sales, the HP indexes are not going to be accurate. and .. "The key factor in the sales slump has been the lack of funds ...". Now hang on a mo, it wasn't that long ago when the BBC kept up the house prices staying high because of sound fundamentals, crowded island, demographics, divorce etc etc bullsh1t.

Posted by voiceofreason @ 02:08 PM 9 Comments

bbc: Hundreds of mill jobs 'at risk'

An Aberdeenshire paper mill employing almost 400 workers is facing closure, it has been announced. International Paper said its Inverurie plant was "unprofitable and not financially viable". The company has now started a three-month consultation with its 371 staff at the mill and admitted closure was an option.

MoneyWeek: Stock markets rally – but the bear market is far from over

"...we can expect house prices to keep falling, and that means we can expect consumer spending to keep falling, along with corporate profits."

MailOnline: House prices 'to plummet by 35%' - the biggest ever fall in Britain

The average price of a home, which was £186,000 at its highest point last October, will collapse to just £120,000

Posted by v stor @ 01:44 PM 11 Comments

yahoo: British manufacturers gloomiest since 1980

Orders for UK goods have plunged at their fastest rate in almost a decade, sending business confidence plummeting to its lowest in more than 28 years.

Boston Herald: Baby Boomers go bust as retirement savings tank

The Wall Street calamity that obliterated $2 trillion in retirement savings nationwide has left Bay State baby boomers with shattered careers, retirement plans and hopes. “It’s like a kick in the gut right now,” said Deborah Banda, state director for AARP Massachusetts. “Many, many people are hurting.” Boomers are especially hard-hit. There are 76 million Americans between the ages of 44 and 62. An AARP survey of 1,628 employed Americans ages 45 and older found that 65 percent said they will delay their retirement if the economy does not improve. Just 37 percent of survey respondents said it is likely they will save more for retirement. Randi Wasik and her husband, Larry Gundrum, were struggling amid the fiscal slowdown even before the economy collapsed into a global financial -

bloomberg: Citigroup Defeats Parmalat, Wins $364 Million Verdict

Parmalat went bankrupt after revealing that a 3.95 billion- euro ($5.34 billion) account at Bank of America Corp. didn't exist and documents certifying the account were falsified. Parmalat emerged from bankruptcy and returned to the stock market in 2005 after a two-year reorganization under Bondi.

bloomberg: French Bistros File Record Bankruptcies as Le Big Mac Reigns

It's lunchtime in Paris and the packed restaurant has neither checkered tablecloths nor carafes of red wine. It's a McDonald's and the French are lovin' it. While rising prices and record low consumer confidence drive the French to throw their culinary pride to the wind and embrace le Big Mac, traditional bistros are hurting. About 3,000 independent French restaurants filed for bankruptcy in the first half

Posted by mark @ 12:45 PM 8 Comments

BBC: Factory gloom 'worst since 1980'

Falling demand for UK-made goods and a drop in output has caused the sharpest single-quarter fall in manufacturing confidence in 28 years, a survey says. In the past three months, 16% of firms had seen a rise in new orders but 46% said they had fallen, the CBI's Industrial Trends survey said. It also found orders for UK-made goods had declined at their fastest rate since 1999 as domestic demand fell.

321 gold: The Panic of 2008

Bob Moriarty People who have been following this site know that I have been predicting a depression for years. It's here. Even the dolts in Washington are starting to figure it out. The credit system has ground to a halt. Commerce is on the verge of a complete breakdown. 18 hours after the bank holiday starts, the riots begin. The United States dollar is going to default soon. We have known since late 2002 that the US was in deep trouble. Treasure Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed the United States Government had a real debt of $44 trillion and it was growing at a rate of $2-$4 trillion per year. As of last year the debt was up to $59.1 trillion. Even before the government started throwing money around like a drunken sailor US spending was totally out of control. crazy man

Metro: New slump in mortgage lending

"A total of £17.7 billion was advanced during the month, 10% less than during August and 42% below the level for September last year, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. The figure was also the lowest since January 2005, and the weakest figure for the month of September since 2001." A quick look at Nationwide's 'house prices adjusted for inflation' shows that in absolute terms, prices are back to early 2006 levels, and adjusted for inflation, back to late 2004 levels. Which supports my theory that house price bubbles and credit bubbles are two sides of the same coin.

Posted by mark wadsworth @ 10:32 AM 33 Comments

Barrons Up and Down Wall Street: It Isn't Over

Buffett: great but not infallible. Most of all, Buffett despite his long experience and savvy hasn't run into a crisis quite like this one because, pure and simple, it has no true precedent. That alone anyone should give anyone with fewer resources than Buffett, intellectually and otherwise, pause. Contrary to what he's saying, we can't remember anything that deserves to be called a bull market that had to be caught early and it certainly wasn't true of the last two we've enjoyed. As to his allusion to robins in the spring -- a nice play on it's the early bird that catches the worm -- as someone has noted, it's the second mouse that gets the cheese.

Naked Caoitalism: Loan Market Suffering Sharp Writedowns

While all eyes have been fixed on the interbank market, and the plunge in the Baltic Dry Index has also garnered some attention, the sudden decay in the loan market (meaning for the most part leveraged loans, the sort used to finance LBOs) has gotten far less commentary. Yet this will wreak havoc on bank balance sheets, as it did last year. Banks have gone to some length to try to reduce their loan inventories, even going so far as to finance sales heavily. But values have continued to erode. Loans were recently trading in the mid 80,. Some contended those prices were suspect, on small volumes to cooperative counterparties.

seeking alpha: What Makes Me Bearish? Hedge Fund Sales on the Horizon

If you ask me what makes me most bearish, what makes me think that the S&P 500 could go to 600, it is not the recession. Recessions we have seen before. Highly leveraged fund liquidation by over-compensated money managers in an industry that gets paid not to take losses whose time horizon is next quarter and whose clients thought they would earn money in any market environment we have not seen before. No, what makes me very worried and why I am not deploying capital just yet, even though the market is getting cheap, is the tsunami of hedge fund sales that may be on the horizon. That is what worries me.

The Truth About Mortgage.com: SoCal Home Sales Up 65 Percent in September

Southern California home sales surged 65 percent in September compared to the same period a year ago as foreclosure sales accounted for half of all resales, according to a new report from DataQuick. A total of 20,497 new and resale homes and condos sold in six Southland counties last month, up 5.8 percent from the 19,366 sold in August and 64.6 percent more than the 12,455 sold in September 2007. The year-over-year increase is the largest on record for any month since DataQuick began collecting data back in 1988. While last month’s home sales were the highest of any month since December 2006, it was still the second-lowest September total since 1996 with sales 17 percent below the 20-year sales average for the month.

Telegraph: Prudential insists capital position remains 'robust'

Since it is clearly the latest fashion, I would like to tell everyone that my capital position also remains robust. I have absolutely no exposure whatsoever to the housing market.

Credit Writedowns: Lehman Brothers: a primer on Credit Default Swaps

Somethings happening later today (I think) but it's not in the news yet, so here's a recent primer. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers was a credit event which triggered a massive liability to participants in the large and potentially dangerous Credit Default Swaps (CDS) market. This is a market that represents the "weapons of financial mass destruction" label which Warren Buffett gave to the derivatives. Below, I will attempt to explain, with much help from Wikipedia, what Credit Default Swaps are, how the market functions and why it is THE derivatives market that needs to be regulated before systemic risk threatens the global financial system.

Posted by malct @ 08:43 AM 25 Comments

skynews: Housing Market 'Crash' Until 2011

A housing expert has told Sky News that part of the property market has crashed and many people will no longer qualify for mortgages. Fewer sales show that parts of the property market have crashed, said Miles Shipside, commerical director of Rightmove. He said house prices will hit rock bottom in 2010, causing problems for those who need to borrow money. "I think we're going to see a paradigm shift in the housing market. I think a lot of people looking at housing in the future will not qualify for a mortgage. "First time buyers perhaps are going to find that lenders are going to be a lot stricter."

Posted by malct @ 08:36 AM 43 Comments

cnbc: In Favor of the Dollar

In Favor of the Dollar The long-term outlook for the greenback is positive, says Callum Henderson, head of FX strategy at Standard Chartered. He advises investors to buy dollar dips against most Asian currencies. He tells CNBC's Amanda Drury why.

reuters: Lloyds TSB staff "will still get bonuses"

The paper says that Eric Daniels told employees in a recorded message that the group faced "very very few restrictions," despite the injection of up to 5.5 billion pounds of taxpayers' money.

FT.com: Fear that mortgage lending will be negative by January

More money is set to be taken out of the housing market than is being put back in for the first time in more than 20 years, economists warned yesterday. Net mortgage lending - the value of new loans extended minus repayments of principal - could turn negative by the end of the year, economists said following data on mortgage outlays from the Council of Mortgage Lenders. That has not happened since the CML began collecting data in 1987. If mortgage lending turned negative, it would imply that demand for house purchases was falling and that home prices were likely to go on falling.

australian: THE Australian heads of several global investment banks are warning the Goverment and regulators that their exclusion from bank guarantees will limit their lending capacity and damage the economy.

THE Australian heads of several global investment banks are warning the Goverment and regulators that their exclusion from bank guarantees will limit their lending capacity and damage the economy.

age: Crisis could cost 20 million jobs

The crisis gave an ''opportunity'' to re-balance globalisation which had grown ''unfair, unsustainable and unbalanced,'' he added.

age: NAB warns of worsening outlook

National Australia Bank today warned of a marked slowdown in growth in Australia in the face of the global credit crunch as it unveiled a 10% fall in cash earnings for the last 12 months to $3.9 billion - a result hit by a sharp increase in bad debts.

NY Times: How This Bear Market Compares

Great Graph! For all those Anoraks out there.

FT Alphaville: Rationing and Depressionomics

Sadly, some risk exists that financial events could still unfold like a proverbial “dam break.” This might leave policymakers treating very serious and lasting damage to the financial system, rather than preventing further erosion. With no desire to exaggerate, this might be considered the “financial pre-conditions of a depression” as improving financial conditions are a pre-condition of a cyclical recovery

BrightSale Blog: What Does RightMove’s October Survey REALLY Tell us about the State of the Market?

A lot of estate agents will probably have had the same response to the "news" that sellers INCREASED their asking prices in October (by 1% over September): i.e. Are You KIDDING?? The explanation RightMove gives for this seeming anomaly in the current difficult market is that if a seller knows he is going to chipped away on price he (and his agent) might as well start with the highest number possible! But there is a more intriguing other possibility which would also explain the result, as BrightSale suggest in this blog post ...

Mish: Armageddon in Corporate Bonds

Credit markets have fallen far, yet investors are still selling. Prices of loans rated below investment grade declined to a record low 66.1 cents on the dollar, virtually guaranteeing investors get their money back, based on historical recovery rates. Yields on corporate bonds show investors expect 5.6 percent of the market to go bust, the highest default rate since the Great Depression.

australian: RESERVE Bank governor Glenn Stevens is warning the Rudd Government its blanket guarantee of deposits is creating serious dislocation in the entire financial system and must be changed

The Government ignored the RBA's strongly voiced concerns about the impact of an unlimited guarantee scheme in its rush to announce a guarantee of all deposits in Australian deposit-taking institutions on October 12.

Wall Street Journal: EU Banks Get Leeway on Making Write-Downs

"LONDON -- European banks could soon find it much easier to avoid write-downs thanks to changes in accounting rules being pushed through by European policy makers. In moves that analysts say could boost earnings but make it harder to discern the financial health of banks, the European Union and international accounting standard-setters are loosening so-called mark-to-market accounting rules, which require banks to value investments at the price they would get if they sold them immediately." Goodbye transparency, although we never actually met.

brisbanetimes: Why real estate spending could make Australia the new Iceland

During 17 years of unbroken economic expansion and a 10-year commodities boom, it took a lot of people, borrowing a lot of money, taking a lot of unproductive risk, to get to where we are today: a nation with excessive debt and excessive vulnerability to external circumstances barely within our control.

Sky: Bank Crisis: 'Regulators To Blame'

Lord Levene, chairman of Lloyd's of London says he lays the blame for the current banking crisis on the financial regulators speaking to Jeff Randall. Then he gently drops the government into the mess..

Assetzzz: And now for the good news.

However, there is now some optimism, particularly in the wake of the recent government initiatives to help the banks. Nicholas Leeming, director of Propertyfinder.com, said that just now this hope is a "glimmer", but suggested things will soon lighten up, stating: "Homebuyer confidence has taken a knock but lower house prices and the promise of a bargain will begin to encourage some people back into the market once mortgage availability improves." Property firm Young Group states "Buy-to-let is arguably the world's second oldest profession and is certainly alive and kicking. With the correct advice and an analytical long term approach, good returns are there to be made."

Ambrose telegraph via SOTT: Do our rulers know enough to avoid a 1930s replay?

The commodity and emerging market booms are breaking in unison, leaving no more bubbles left to burst. Almost every corner of the world is now being drawn into the vortex of debt deflation. The freight rates for Capesize vessels used to ship grains, coal, and iron ore have fallen 95pc to $11,600 since May, hence the bankruptcy of Odessa's Industrial Carriers last week with a fleet of 52 vessels. Cargo deliveries dropped 15.2pc at the US Port of Long Beach last month, but that is a lagging indicator.

Standard via SOTT: I never believed I was worth my $2.3 million bonus

From his position as managing director of one of the largest trading desks in Canary Wharf, Michael Sharp has witnessed the impact of the City's rampant bonus culture first hand. "I have watched people come into the City being normal and humble," he says. "When they get their first million-dollar bonus, you tell them they have been lucky, that it has been an exceptional year, that it will never happen again, and they listen to you. "But after three years of ever-escalating multi-million dollar bonuses, most bankers become arrogant and start to believe they are getting paid because they are smart, because they are worth it." He shakes his head. "I was never under the illusion that I was worth my bonus.

Timesonline: Government home help fails first time buyers

"If everyone who does qualify did apply, the money simply wouldn’t be there. No wonder the government has been keeping stumm.”

Posted by matt_the_hat @ 05:11 PM 11 Comments

startups: Scarborough leads the way for enterprise

The development of sectors such as surfboard manufacturing

Posted by matt_the_hat @ 05:08 PM 6 Comments

London Evening Standard: I've hit my personal property slump

Get used to it you silly selfish sheep "Property Slump is more of a niche ailment, specific to homeowners, with those who bought at the market's pinnacle most susceptible. In my case, the symptoms include generalised anxiety, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and rapid heartbeat on seeing words such as "crash" writ large in headlines."

Posted by doomwatch @ 05:06 PM 9 Comments

citywire: UK unemployment to rise to 5% as recession hits

TEM is forecasting that unemployment will be 5% by the end of 2010 (reaching 7.8% on the Labour Force Survey), double the 2.5% level at the end of last year.

telegraph: Mortgage lending falls by a record amount

The number of mortgages advanced in September dropped by 42 per cent from the same period a year ago. This is a 10 per cent fall from the previous month - the highest ever decline since its records began in 1994. Who's still borrowing thats what I want to know

guardian: Bernanke comments boost markets

US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has given markets a lift by suggesting the American economy might need another boost to revive its growth prospects. You couldn't make this stuff up.

Posted by matt_the_hat @ 04:56 PM 7 Comments

BBC Moneybox live (listen): Mortgages: Your questions

The number of mortgage products available has reduced rapidly since the credit crunch began. Mortgage providers are tightening their lending criteria, asking for larger deposits and raising fees. And despite the recent cut in the Bank of England Base Rate of 0.5 percentage points to 4.5%, not all lenders have passed this cut on in full and some have increased their tracker rates. So if you are coming to the end of an existing loan or trying to find your first mortgage you may be struggling to obtain a suitable offer.

bloomberg: Merrill Chief Thain Expects `Thousands' of Job Cuts

Most of the cuts will fall in information technology, operations and ``corporate functions,'' Thain, 53, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Dubai today. Jobs in the fixed income and commodities divisions won't be eliminated after the deal, he said.

bbc: As if world has come to a halt

In the beginning Ian Broadfoot thought his problems selling the family home in Inverness were a hangover of the winter. But having remained unsold since March, it appears the property, like thousands of others across Scotland, is frozen in the glacier-like housing market. Mr Broadfoot, 60, who is now trying to rent out the house, said: "It just seems to be that everything has stopped. "It is almost as if the world has come to a halt."

bbc: Couple fear loss of Iceland £1.2m

A couple who put £1.2m from the sale of their family business into an Icelandic bank fear they have lost the money.

Posted by mark @ 04:04 PM 11 Comments

cnn: Bernanke: Congress should weigh stimulus

Fed chief says Congress should weigh another plan to juice the economy. He cites risk of 'protracted slowdown.'

Times: It pays to rent a property

More like suddenly no one is buying & we need to grab money from somewhere, so let's pretend renting is glamorous and "smart". It is smart, but we've known that for a long time & not just when the game is up & paid to write by the VIs. Must have really stuck in your wrinkled throat old dear. "Suddenly it's a smart way to sit out the credit crisis. Jane Ingram, director of national lettings at Savills, notes: “We are seeing a new, more glamorous breed of tenant. It's no longer Rising Damp out there.”"

Lost your savings ?: Welcome to Lost Your Savings?

Looks like the people who lost their money in the Icelandic banks collapse are getting their electronic begging bowl out. Some very sad stories on there, sounds like lots of peole were badly advised, maybe they should have read this site !!!

FT: Barratt seeks investment partner in land bank

The land bank figures are too vague to gloat about, but this is brilliant: "Barratt also has offered steep reductions on some of its completed homes, particularly ones designed for first-time buyers. These are attracting discounts of up to 43 per cent for buyers who purchase five or more properties at a time." as is this "Barratt is in the process of divesting part of its holding in Wilson Bowden Developments, a division of Wilson Bowden, which Barratt bought last year for £2.2bn. The sale of the portfolio would reduce Barratt's debt by about £200m."

Posted by mark wadsworth @ 02:44 PM 9 Comments

FT Alphaville: Libor fixes: credit and phase transitions

Pure water cooled to its critical point makes a sudden transition to ice, often due to a small impurity. The thaw is a slow process. In the mean time house prices fall like leaves after the frost.

Posted by mountain goat @ 02:24 PM 8 Comments

wirrals buzz: Borrowing soars to record high

Borrowing soared to a record high in September as the nation's finances came under more pressure. The Office for National Statistics said net borrowing rocketed by £8.1 billion, a record for the month.

chrismartenson.com: Future Shock

No plan B. Oops.

Independent: James Daley: I'm getting back into the market

The FTSE is down 40% from its peak during 2007. James Daly is aware there may still be problems ahead but does not believe that we are on the verge of Armegeddon so has put his money where his mouth is. Personally I think there is some value to be gained in the right sectors, i.e companies heavily funded by the public sector but I'm not too sure the bottom has been found in the UK yet and expect a little more volatility.

Telegraph: Do our rulers know enough to avoid a 1930s replay?

Quote "The world stole prosperity from the future for year after year, with the full collusion of governments, regulators, and central banks. Now the future has arrived." This sums up the current situation, whatever your views on AEP. It's a bitesized, economic newby friendly summary which I plan to use on anyone who asks me what's going on.

Posted by goweresque @ 01:17 PM 10 Comments

BBC News: UK government in borrowing record

No surprise that the govt has already borrowed as much this year as last, but a look at the DMO gilt auction calendar shows a rapid fire of new gilt auctions coming up. Who has the cash to buy these now? - will the supply swamp the demand?

Times: ING sells Taiwanese arm hours after government lifeline

The Dutch financial giant raises $350m from fire sale of life business after €10bn was pumped in at the weekend by the dutch government

Times: Growing signs of art slump

Just two weeks ago, in the midst of financial turmoil, a collection of Damian Hurst "art" exceeded all price expectations at auction. Yesterday a Freud portrait failed to reach expected price of £7m. Works of art are only worth what the next "investor" will pay for them so are classic bubble fodder. Another asset bubble popped. There can't be many left now.

Daily Mail: Estate agents selling homes for NO fee as property sales collapse

A chain of London estate agents is offering to waive its fee on any property sold before the end of the year. The move, which could cost it up to £10,000 on each transaction, comes as sales have collapsed due to the credit crunch and financial crisis. A leaked email reveals how a senior sales executive at Lauristons has written to potential clients in south and west London offering to sell their homes 'for an unbeatable 0 per cent selling fee'.

Posted by whostolemyendowment @ 12:43 PM 7 Comments

Metro: Two million face trap of negative equity

If prices indeed fall by 42%, then there'll be three million in nequity, as it happens. The more times they repeat this story the better, with a bit of luck it will put off the remaining few potential FTBs from buying, thus speeding up the crash.

Posted by mark wadsworth @ 12:13 PM 18 Comments

Guardian: Bank of Scotland offers home loan at eight times joint salary

Peter and Josie Connell are City traders. They could not believe their luck when the bank approved their £1.5m mortgage to buy a dream Sussex farmhouse last December, despite monthly repayments almost equalling their combined take-home pay. Peter says: "We didn't lie. Last year we had guaranteed bonuses which nearly doubled our income, but this time they will be zero." He says: "After four months, we had to give up. The bank refused a payment holiday because we admitted we had problems. We had to put the property back on the market. We are victims of irresponsible lending which was unsustainable."

Posted by little professor @ 12:06 PM 17 Comments

Sky News: British House Prices Down By 40%

One flat in Folkestone, Kent, went on the market on January 28 this year at £125,000, and has now been reduced to £75,000. The one-bedroom, lower ground floor property lies in an upmarket area of the coastal town, and is in need of refurbishment. When Sky News Online posed as cash buyers, the estate agent Fell Reynolds confirmed the flat had been slashed from £125,000 to £99,950 and then to £75,000 because of the housing slump. One two bedroom house near Worthing, West Sussex, was first advertised last October at £319,950 - but is now down a staggering 53% to £149,995. A similar home in Cardiff, Wales, has been slashed by 45% from £184,950 to £100,000 in less than a year. The situation is even worse in London, where estate agents have made an average of just eight sales in 3 months

BBC News: How are estate agents surviving?

"We've resorted to buying cheaper teabags and coffee because the situation is that difficult." "I'm even considering getting a job stacking shelves at Tesco to get some extra cash." How can you not feel for these people? Sitting in empty offices all day, pretending to work and look interested in their computers :-(

Posted by doom&gloom @ 11:38 AM 6 Comments

" title="External Link" target="_blank">Portfolio: Hedge Fund Manager: Goodbye and F---- You

Andrew Lahde, manager of a small California hedge fund, Lahde Capital, burst into the spotlight last year after his one-year-old fund returned 866 percent betting against the subprime collapse. Last month, he did the unthinkable -- he shut things down, claiming dealing with his bank counterparties had become too risky. Today, Lahde passed along his "goodbye" letter, a rollicking missive on everything from greed to economic philosophy. Enjoy. Today I write not to gloat. Given the pain that nearly everyone is experiencing, that would be entirely inappropriate. Nor am I writing to make further predictions, as most of my forecasts in previous letters have unfolded or are in the process of unfolding. Instead, I am writing to say goodbye.

Posted by malct @ 11:36 AM 32 Comments

Property Week: UK housebuilders say Government has damaged consumer confidence

UK housebuilders said that the Government’s new housing measures are not only ineffective but have ruptured consumer confidence, especially in the wake of job losses. Last month’s Government housing initiatives were viewed as ’tokenism’ by the industry, with one senior industry member branding the announcement as ’a press-spin exercise that has failed’

MoneyWeek: Darling's wrong: we can't spend our way out of recession

The government wants to borrow billions to spend on big projects to get us through the recession. Nice idea in theory, says John Stepek, but too much borrowing is what got us into this mess in the first place.

Posted by damien @ 11:16 AM 13 Comments

Rightmove: October House Price Index

"Housing market unlikely to ever be the same again"

bbc: Chinese economy growth rate slows

Correspondents say indicators from steel prices to housing sales suggest a severe economic slowdown could be in prospect.

Business Day (NZ): Australia unveils A$10.4b stimulus plan

"The housing sector is a major beneficiary. The Government will triple to $21,000 the current $7,000 first-home buyers grant for people buying a newly constructed home. Those first-home buyers moving into existing properties will receive a doubling of the allowance to $14,000. The plan is "designed to support activity in the housing sector and the housing sector is critical to the economy overall," Mr Rudd said." It's only a question of time before they try this over here!!

reuters: Big jump seen in number of UK companies in trouble

The number of distressed British businesses was almost 500 percent higher in the third quarter than in the same period a year ago, corporate restructuring specialist Begbies Traynor will reveal on Monday, according to the Financial Times. In a sign of the effect of the global financial crisis on the wider economy, 4,566 companies are facing critical problems compared with 791 in the third quarter of 2007, it said.

BBC News: Mortgage lending slump continues

The slump in mortgage lending continued in September, according to the latest figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).

Ernst & Young: Out of the financial frying pan into the fires of recession

The Ernst & Young ITEM Club Autumn forecast. * A short and shallow recession. * Credit conditions will continue to remain tight. * But scope to cut interest rates dramatically. * Corporate sector will struggle and employment will fall. * Consumers will continue to be stretched. *Hard to see the bottom of the housing market. * Light at the end of the tunnel?

Kitco: Deflation Scare the Perfect Camouflage

The US is the world’s greatest debtor. Money printing will bring on monetary inflation, which will wipe out those debts, savings, as well as the US dollar. That is the real scare that markets today, as well as foreign creditors, should be pricing in. It is only a matter of time. To borrow a line from the classic film ‘The Usual Suspects’: The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

Posted by sold 2 rent 1 @ 10:07 AM 8 Comments

Yahoo: House Asking Prices Are On The Up

The asking price of homes has risen by 1% in the last month! Sellers are tempted to think their home is more desirable than others on the market and some have sent the average price of a house in England and Wales up to £229,691. Capitulation seems a long way off then.

Posted by crash n burn @ 09:42 AM 31 Comments

The Cultural Economist: Where The Heck Is The Bottom?

Let’s summarize the “challenges” ahead …. * Home loans. Additional Option ARMs and Interest Only loans are scheduled to reset through 2012. Almost a trillion dollars of debt to roll over, and most of the original loans are “under water”. Many home owners will chose to walk. It could be long into 2010 before we know the true value of our banking system’s housing portfolio. * Housing. In some areas, it will take several years for the market to recover. Start with excess inventory, factor in higher unemployment, and we have a recipe for sluggish sales. Economists appear to be unsure how to measure the impact of the mortgage crisis, the rash of financial institution failures, or the sudden decline of available credit. No one seems to know how to include these three “challenges”

Mirror: Exclusive: War on Home Front

Thousands of empty houses are to be bought by the Government in a bid to beat the economic crisis, it will be revealed today. Housing Minister Margaret Beckett will announce the plan to buy from developers who cannot sell their new build homes. They will be rented to people waiting for a council house. As well as cutting the waiting lists, it will boost the building trade, where thousands of job losses are expected in the economic downturn. Ms Beckett said: "This deal will help deliver much needed affordable homes while supporting housebuilders facing difficult times. It is part of a range of actions we are taking to help overcome the challenges in the housing market.

Posted by little professor @ 08:54 AM 22 Comments

telegraph: Brown to splash billions on schools and hospitals

Gordon Brown is planning to inject billions of pounds of emergency funds into new schools and hospitals to stimulate the economy as Britain heads into recession, it emerged last night. As the Prime Minister warned yesterday of a "defining moment" for the country, it was revealed that public spending earmarked for after the 2010 general election will be brought forward to encourage growth. Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, is drawing up plans to raid 2010-2011 Budgets and "fast-track" the money to public service building projects.

The Telegraph: House prices are close to affordable levels, reveals survey

""We think that house prices could bottom out mid to late next year," she said. " She's clearly spent the last month in a vacum crunching her numbers for the report.

Posted by jonathan @ 12:23 AM 21 Comments

Telegraph Newspaper: Standard Chartered chief Peter Sands was quiet architect of Britain's bank rescue

......Darling, call that clever banker chap. He'll get us out of this.....Oh! And tell him we'll pretend it was my idea...

wsj: Spain's Showy Debt Collectors Wear a Tux, Collect the Bucks

Companies in the fast-growing field include The Scottish Collector, which threatens to send a bagpipe player in highland dress to debtors' homes, and the Monastery of Collection, whose employees arrive decked out as Franciscan friars. Others dress as bullfighters, Zorro or the Pink Panther.

Telegraph: Sarkozy bank account raided in internet scam

Mr Sarkozy complained to police in September after 'small amounts' began disappearing from the account. Police said financial thieves regularly make lots of small illegal withdrawals as a means of trying to keep their crimes undetected.

Telegraph: Negative equity 'affecting 60,000 families a month', report reveals

More than 60,000 families a month are now falling into negative equity, as the collapsing housing market wipes thousands of pounds off the value of homes.

Posted by mark @ 08:08 PM 8 Comments

Daily Mail: Two million set to enter negative equity as Docklands development has 82 of its 84 flats repossessed

Up to 2 million households will enter negative equity by 2010, outstripping the 1.8 million affected in the last housing slump, it has been claimed.

Daily Telegraph: Dutch to inject cash into ING

They are expected to report a loss soon, and are getting a bail-out from the Dutch government, If you had the maximum limit in Kaupthing, Heritable and ING, you should consider moving some of it very quickly - and if you don't fancy filling claim forms in Dutch, you also need to consider your options. There is a 20+ minute wait for them to answer the phone at their call centre at the moment

Mises Institute: Can a video game explain the ridiculous housing bubble? And its aftermath?

A few animated futuristic army folk who have their weapons reposessed after investing in sub-prime loans!

BBC: ING to get Netherlands cash boost

Dutch banking and insurance company ING is to receive a cash injection from the government of the Netherlands. The move follows a weekend of meetings with Dutch finance officials, after ING revealed it expects to make a 500m euro ($670bn; £387bn) third quarter loss.

BBC: Troubled French bank set to meet

France's Caisse d'Epargne, which lost millions of euros in a trading incident, is meeting to decide the future of its management, reports say. On Friday it was revealed that the savings bank lost 600m euros (£466m).

BBC: UK economy 'already in recession'

Ernst & Young Item Club report that the country is in recession and that government policy will hit the economy "very hard" and follow up with a bit of crystal ball gazing to make everyone feel a bit better.

Times: Bank rescue won't stop the misery index rising

Economic numbers will never be the same again. A trillion here, a trillion there and soon you are talking about real money. The bank rescue pales everything else into insignificance, even if it has not yet calmed jittery markets.

Washington Post: Financial Rescues Can Set Off New Problems

"If there was one thing policymakers could agree on during the recent economic turbulence, it was that interest rates on U.S. home mortgages ought to come down, and fast. But as the government stepped in recently to shore up the nation's banks, those rates went up." The law of unintended consequence (One for MW and P4AC). Get a free log-in and read the comments.

The Guardian: SFO may launch probe into Peston bank scoops

The Serious Fraud Office could launch an inquiry into BBC business editor Robert Peston's recent string of market-moving banking 'scoops' after David Cameron's Tories raised suspicions that he could have a 'mole' inside 10 Downing Street or the Treasury.

Posted by flintster1994 @ 03:34 PM 15 Comments

YouTube: My Old Man's A Banker (Credit Crunch Song) By Jo Waite

Watch it from start to finish and the tune becomes hard to forget.

bbc news: ministers plan repo help

ahhh...feet up.

BBC News: Credit crunch hits homeowners

"He originally borrowed 95% of the house's value in his mortgage. But, thanks to the credit crunch, banks just won't lend that much anymore." ...... "He's worried that will push his payments up to a thousand pounds a month. That leaves me about £150 a month, just for food, running the car and going out."

Posted by renting2 @ 02:33 PM 10 Comments

Guardian: Darling to inject billions into public sector to boost economy

listair Darling said plans for two aircraft carriers and a new nuclear deterrent would go ahead. London's £16bn Crossrail project and the £9.3bn budget for the 2012 Olympic Games were also safe.

Posted by matt_the_hat @ 01:32 PM 6 Comments

The Independent: Rock borrowers face rate rise – or repossession

'I just don't understand this mad rush of the Government to repossess'

Posted by sosoon @ 12:16 PM 7 Comments

FT.com: Darling to fast-track public spending

.. or realise we left it in an Icelandic bank account after we were CLEARLY and CATEGORICALLY informed there would be a problem.

Posted by whiteknight @ 11:59 AM 7 Comments

The Sun: Des Res to Dead Res

Two years ago all 84 of these luxury flats in this Thames side development were sold, for up to £400,000. Incredibly, just two years on, the prestige development lies virtually ABANDONED. Neglected, overgrown and swarming with vermin, Hill House today stands monument to the savage effect of the credit crunch. A staggering EIGHTY-TWO of its EIGHTY-FOUR homes have been repossessed. Empty apartments are infested with rats and cockroaches. Windows have been broken and mailboxes smashed open by squatters and junkies, while stairwells have been disfigured by graffiti. The local council have bought 22 of the empty flats, allowing council tenants paying as little as £380 a month to live in flats once valued at a quarter of a million pounds.

Posted by little professor @ 11:53 AM 13 Comments

The Scotsman on Sunday: Credit crisis robs Scots of homes

Just hand the keys Back and go and work in a beach bar in Thailand

Posted by sosoon @ 11:14 AM 9 Comments

Max Keizer's Karmabanque: [978] The Truth About Markets - 18 October 2008

After predicting Iceland's fall in 2007, discusses the fall of nations, strain of the Eurozone, Describes the new financial system as forced speculation and gambling, as a modern version of the fascist model. Saving and productive activity penalised. Explains how our limited vocab makes it difficult to describe the crisis, that poor people taking the loans are not to blame, and much more.

Common Dreams: Guided by An Invisible Hand

Make no mistake: we are witnessing the biggest crisis since the Great Depression. In some ways it is worse than the Great Depression, because the latter did not involve these very complicated instruments - the derivatives that Warren Buffett has referred to as financial weapons of mass destruction; and we did not have anything close to the magnitude of today's cross-border finance. The events of these weeks will be to market fundamentalism what the fall of the Berlin Wall was to communism. Last month in the United States almost 160,000 jobs were shed - making more than three-quarters of a million this year. My guess is that things will get considerably worse. I have been predicting this for some time, and so far, unfortunately, I have been right.

Observer: High earners need to be brought down to Earth

"As Martin Wolf wrote in that well-known socialist organ the Financial Times, 'either banking should be treated as a utility, with regulated returns, or it should be viewed as a profit-seeking industry that operates in accordance with the laws of the market, including, if necessary, mass redundancies'. Since the latter is unacceptable, he concluded, we have to move towards the former - and regulation must include pay above all."

Guardian: Bank chiefs ordered to cut home evictions

Banks will face new curbs on home repossessions to prevent families from being evicted when they fall into financial difficulties, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has promised. The pledge was made by Yvette Cooper in an interview with The Observer as the government braces itself this week for official confirmation that Britain is entering recession for the first time since the early Nineties.

Posted by quiet guy @ 10:07 AM 11 Comments

Cabinet Office: National Risk Register

You’d have thought that collapse of the housing market and failure of a large UK bank would be included as risks, wouldn’t you? Especially as our economy relied so heavily on them. See also: http://www.financialsectorcontinuity.gov.uk/ And http://www.ukresilience.gov.uk/ And http://interactive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/documents/security/national_security_strategy.pdf

Posted by renting2 @ 09:55 AM 12 Comments

Independent: So will mortgage lenders ever let us come back in?

Housing is going from bad to worse despite the Government's multi-billion- pound bailout scheme for British banks. Agents blame the banks, and their continued lack of willingness to lend, for the moribund state of the property sector. "There is demand out there – people want to move home. The market is like a hosepipe full of water but the banks have their foot on it, causing pressure to build up with no outlet," says Nick Salmon, an estate agent and board member of the National Federation of Property Professionals.

Independent: The Financial Crisis: Now the real problems begin

According to Peter Spencer, chief economist at Ernst & Young, Britain is in a recession that will last for a year. He predicts the downturn will bottom out in the second half of 2009, and that there will be growth in 2010, but only by 1 per cent.

Times online: Time to swoop on bargain properties?

In its latest research, agents Knight Frank predict that prices will continue to fall until at least the middle of next year, flattening out only when they are 30% below the peaks reached late last spring – or, put another way, back to levels last seen in September 2003. Indeed, it will not be until 2015 that average prices in the country will return to where they were last year, they believe. Other predictions paint an equally gloomy picture.

sky news: Banks Urged To Cut Home Evictions

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury is said to be working with the Ministry of Justice on tightening requirements on lenders seeking repossession orders in the courts. "We need a more responsible approach to repossessions," she told The Observer.

Timesonline: Credit crunch will only make things worse

The law has always expected a lot from its employees. There is an assumption that the long hours are just part of it – people often refer to it as a vocation rather than a job.

Mirror: Credit crunch latest

Meanwhile, inflation hit a 16-year high of 5.2 per cent. This means that, after tax and inflation are taken into account, savers will find it near impossible to make headway. Moneyfacts.co.uk says a standard rate tax-payer needs to find an account paying 6.5 per cent just to break even, while a higher rate taxpayer needs to earn 8.63 per cent.

FT.com: Little respite for borrowers after rate cut

The most attractive two-year tracker mortgage from Lloyds is now a 5.75 per cent offer which requires a 40 per cent deposit and carries a fee of £695. The move follows decisions by Halifax, Abbey and First National to raise the margins on their tracker rates by 0.5 per cent, which in effect wipes out the rate cut for prospective new borrowers.

guardian: Recession is here, warns Item Club

Item expects GDP to decline outright next year by 1 per cent - the first full-year decline since 1991. It predicts a gradual recovery in 2010, with the economy recording growth of just 1 per cent.

motley fool: Is it time for japanese real estate

reference to the size and length of the japan house price crash because its similar to this one. In Japan the high was 1989 like our own here in the UK only it crashed until well perhaps now and prices fell by around 70% over a 15 year period. I am not sure what is happening to them now with this current crash. there were beginning to bottom out in 2006 but that process may now have stopped. A warning to all those overly optimistic who keep on saying UK house prices will recover a year or so

Sunday Times: Negative equity ‘to reach 2 million’

No mention that the Sunday Times' Property Porn Fests may have contributed to the problem.

FT.COM: October 2013: that was the week that will be

What a week! The utility-dominated FTSE 100 celebrated the fifth anniversary of the crash of 2008 with a 2 per cent gain to close at 1,950, its biggest five-day surge since early 2009. Sir Robert Peston, who took over as governor of the Bank of England earlier this year following its long-heralded absorption of the Financial Services Authority, welcomed the government's decision to delay privatisation again. "Speculation, encouraged by irresponsible media coverage, has got out of control," he said, reminding journalists of their duties under the 2011 Dangerous Blogs Act.

Financial Times: Letter: Andrew Lahde

Andrew Lahde made a fortune by being on the other side of US banks' trades and reckons the banks are stupid and leaden-footed, easy meat for hedge fund managers betting against them. Their ineptness leads to corruption - they are often the privileged few who don't know how to make a living, so when they've lost their money they go running to mommy, daddy, uncle Hank and uncle Ben, who give them a stern look and more money and tell them to look after it this time. These are the people who make up the banking "system" that we're all supposed to revere and support.

Posted by icarus @ 09:17 PM 6 Comments

Truthseeker: 20bn barrel oil discovery puts Cuba in the big league

Friends and foes have called Cuba many things - a progressive beacon, a quixotic underdog, an oppressive tyranny - but no one has called it lucky, until now . Mother nature, it emerged this week, appears to have blessed the island with enough oil reserves to vault it into the ranks of energy powers. The government announced there may be more than 20bn barrels of recoverable oil in offshore fields in Cuba's share of the Gulf of Mexico, more than twice the previous estimate. If confirmed, it puts Cuba's reserves on par with those of the US and into the world's top 20. Drilling is expected to start next year by Cuba's state oil company Cubapetroleo, or Cupet.

Posted by malct @ 07:09 PM 10 Comments

Guardian Online: Financial Crisis: What Happens Next?

Truth is, despite what the pundits, or the politicians, or the bankers or anyone here says, no one knows what the future holds... good article listing them from v-shaped recession to Armageddon. I'll not be putting a bet on. I've no money left!

WSWS via Truthseeker: US bank losses wipe out years of paper profits

A milestone was reached Thursday by the US banking system: With the announcement by Citigroup and Merrill Lynch of billions of dollars in additional losses in their third quarter reports, all of the profits accumulated by the nine biggest banks during the three-and-a-half-year housing boom had vanished. . . . these very same bankers are declaring that they have no intention any time soon of using the billions in taxpayer money handed them by the government to resume lending and unfreeze the credit markets—the ostensible purpose of the bailout measures whose estimated cost to the American people has risen to $2.25 trillion.

Mortgage Introducer: Countrywide appoints Guy Batchelor as Corporate Business Director

"Guy joins Countrywide on 20 October and brings more than 25 years experience in the banking and financial services market, including his most recent post at Lehman Brothers, where he was a Senior Vice President in the Mortgage Capital Division."

Mirror: 10 credit crunch jokes to have you laughing all the way to the bank

What's the difference between an investment banker and a large pizza? A large pizza can still feed a family of four. --- What's the capital of Iceland? About £3.50 --- Why have estate agents stopped looking out the window in the morning? Because otherwise they'd have nothing to do in the afternoon. --- What's the difference between investment bankers and pigeons? The pigeons are still capable of making deposits on new BMW's. --- What's the definition of an optimist? A banker who irons five shirts on a Sunday. --- Knock knock. (No answer). Knock knock. (No answer). Look I'm just trying to do a knock knock joke, I'm not here to repossess your house! ---

Posted by drewster @ 02:44 PM 13 Comments

FT: Darling to fast-track public spending

Plans to fast-track billions of pounds of public spending on building projects such as new schools and hospitals are being drawn up by Alistair Darling to give an emergency boost to the British economy as it heads into an expected recession in 2009.

Posted by renting2 @ 12:07 PM 12 Comments

communities.gov.uk: House Price Index - August 2008

The headline rate of –3.4% masks the true scale HPI on this report, Have a look at the Graphs on the PDF PDF with Graphs, Download the Appendices, Northern Ireland went from HPI rate of 45.4 August 2007 to –18.6 August 2008 This data has not yet been added to the HPC site.

Telegraph: Property market: When the going gets tough…

Shreena, 21, graduated last year. She bought her one-bedroom flat in Battersea, south London for £165,000, after negotiating down the asking price of £180,000. "All my friends feel the same - renting is throwing money away. I know that house prices in London will go up. I'm hoping to stay here for two to five years and then afford somewhere better."

Posted by little professor @ 09:22 AM 36 Comments

IPSnews: ECONOMY-US: No Joy in Hooverville

With a massive spike in the number of foreclosures and evictions over the past two years, communities throughout the U.S. have witnessed the sprouting of tent cities -- many of them home to once middle-class citizens fallen victim to the economic downturn. Encampments have formed in or near large urban areas including Reno, Los Angeles, Chattanooga, Columbus, St. Petersburg, Seattle and Portland. The phenomenon is similar to the social upheavals of the Great Depression of the 1930s -- an era frequently referenced these days -- when "Hooverville" ad-hoc shanty towns, some as big as 15,000 people, were erected around the country, named after the president at the time, Herbert Hoover.

Truthseeker: Crisis may make 1929 look a 'walk in the park'

Original Telegraph article came up as valid so didn't get posted. A view from less than four weeks ago. The ECB's little secret is that it must never allow a Northern Rock failure in the eurozone because this would expose the reality that there is no EU treasury and no EU lender of last resort behind the system. Would German taxpayers foot the bill for a Spanish bail-out in the way that Kentish men and maids must foot the bill for Newcastle's Rock? Nobody knows. This is where eurozone solidarity stretches to snapping point. It is why the ECB has showered the system with liquidity from day one of this crisis. The International Monetary Fund still predicts blistering global growth of 5 per cent next year. If so, markets should roar back to life in January

Posted by malct @ 08:10 AM 18 Comments

The Times: Tracker rates to stay above minimum threshold

Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS), the country’s biggest mortgage lender, which is set to be taken over by Lloyds TSB, will not cut tracker rates if the bank rate falls below 3 per cent. Nationwide Building Society, the second-biggest lender, will also refuse to pass on any decreases if the base rate sinks lower than 2.75 per cent.

Times Online: Northern Rock accused over level of repossessions

Debt charities have accused Northern Rock, the state-backed bank, of “aggressively” repossessing the properties of mortgage borrowers who have been struggling to meet repayments.

The Telegraph: Britain faces deflation for first time since 1960

For the first time since 1960, the cost of living will start to shrink next year, in a worrying parallel of the Japanese "disease" of the 1990s, according to new research.

Posted by titaniccaptain @ 11:22 PM 17 Comments

Washington Post: Treasury's Rescue Plan Hits Technical Snag

"Banking regulators are working today to resolve accounting roadblocks that would hold up the government's plan to revive financial markets by investing $250 billion in the nation's banks."

Telegraph: Savills issues profit warning

Savills reported its half-year results just seven weeks ago but said the market had become "increasingly challenging" since then

Guardian: Top Wall Street bankers to receive $70bn pay deals

Just to assure you all's well with the world this Friday evening. Buy gold: hit them over the head with it.

Posted by letthemfall @ 08:55 PM 6 Comments

Market Beat: More Baby Steps for Libor

"Three-month US dollar Libor dropped to 4.41875% from Thursday’s fixing of 4.5025%, while the one-month rate fell to 4.18125% from 4.2775%. The three-month rate now stands at its lowest since October 8, when central banks orchestrated emergency coordinated interest rate cuts. The overnight rate tumbled to 1.66875% from Thursday’s 1.9375%, edging closer to the Federal Reserve’s Fed funds target rate of 1.5%."

Bob Chapman's - The International Forecaster: Liquidity Injection Will Not Help Wall Street

Because of the extent of the financial destruction reeked by the Illuminist morons and their rocket scientist creators of Frankenstein derivatives, the ability of the Illuminists to run up the stock markets looks unlikely. So, Plan A having failed, they will now implement Plan B. What is Plan B? Plan B is to use this insider trading scam to make non-insiders chase after the Illuminist insiders as they manipulate the markets, with non-insiders always coming up a day late and a dollar short because they do not know when the manipulations will occur, or whether markets will be driven up or down. Instead of ripping you off all at once, they will dismantle you one piece at a time. Simply put your sales proceeds from dollar-denominated paper assets into gold and silver related assets and wait.

Findaproperty: Buyers vs Sellers Creates Stalemate In London

Transaction activity in Central London has fallen by as much as 60 per cent in some postcodes, according to Knight Frank's autumn review of the market. The downturn in activity comes as vendors continue to resist realistic pricing in the tougher climate.

CNN: Buffett: I'm buying stocks

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett used a guest commentary article in the New York Times on Friday to announce that he's sticking with stocks. Buffett, the so-called Oracle of Omaha for his ability to buy up the right companies at the right time for his holding company Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), said the worst may not be over for the faltering economy. "In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary," Buffett wrote. But for that reason, the Berkshire CEO said, he has converted his personal portfolio almost entirely to U.S. stocks. Previously, he said he owned nothing but Treasury bonds.

Posted by mark @ 03:36 PM 27 Comments

Metro: £500 million lost in French banking disaster

At least it was French taxpayers' money. Do you think they'll go back to Sarkozy and ask him to bump up that €360 billion bank bail outby another €600 million?

FT Alphaville: Gold prices 1, Conspiracy theorists 0

Want to know why gold isn't performing like it should? You could ask s2r1 - he'll blame it on 'market manipulation'. Or you could read the informed comment of the FT's commodities correspondent.

Posted by james @ 02:50 PM 30 Comments

ICH Ron Paul: Capitalism Without Capital?

Not only is our nation on the verge of bankruptcy, but so are its people and private institutions. We are now repeatedly hearing about businesses “needing to access the credit market to make payroll.” This is an unmistakable sign of more dire consequences ahead for the economy. If businesses must borrow just to make payroll, this is evidence of a severe undercapitalization that cannot be sustained, even for the short run. Couple these facts with items such as the explosion of the “payday loan” industry and the unmasking of the false sense of economic well-being is nearly complete. These payday loan companies use preferred access to easy credit to inject cash into the hands of the working poor. They are nearly always set up in lower-income neighborhoods.

Posted by malct @ 02:19 PM 6 Comments

yahoo: Inchcape issues profit warning, job cuts

The group said trading conditions have deteriorated significantly in the UK and are weakening in a number of its other markets due to the events in the financial markets and weaker consumer confidence. It expects these factors will result in current trading conditions remaining tough for the rest of 2008 and throughout 2009. Inchcape will undertake a "substantial overhead reduction programme" to "right-size the business" in the light of current difficult conditions.

FT Alphaville: Swiss to fund $60bn ‘bad bank’ for UBS

The Swiss economy is very vulnerable to a UBS default.

Posted by mountain goat @ 01:17 PM 13 Comments

reuters: Premier Foods shares dive on jitters over loans

Shares in Britain's biggest food manufacturer Premier Foods Plc (PFD.L: Quote, Profile, Research) fell over 50 percent on Friday as traders cited market speculation that the company had, or was about to, breach banking covenants.

Posted by mark @ 12:25 PM 10 Comments

Daily Telegraph: Financial crisis: Interest rates to hit lowest level since 1694

The Bank of England faces cutting borrowing costs to beneath two per cent - or even as low as one per cent - within months as it battles to protect Britain from the financial crisis and the worst recession in decades, economists said. This would be very very dangerous IMHO. Might be good for exporters i guess but still overall very worrying.

Posted by submedia @ 11:43 AM 61 Comments

BBC Panorama live special: Britian in the Red

For the HPC fraternity out last night celebrating with large amounts of disposable income, thanks to not been mugged into buying an over-priced house with a comedy mortgage, here's chace to watch "look what you could have won".

Posted by doomwatch @ 11:39 AM 14 Comments

Telegraph: Banks in bail-out scheme cannot pay dividends for five years under EU law

The banks are now in urgent discussions with the Treasury to renegotiate the terms of the bailout.

MoneyWeek: Petrol prices will fall – regardless of what Gordon Brown does

Petrol prices are falling because we're facing a massive recession - despite what Gordon Brown might try to say...

Posted by damien @ 11:04 AM 16 Comments

Washington Post: Banks Hoard Cash as Credit Card Defaults Rise

Consumers are increasingly unable to pay off their credit cards, forcing banks to hoard cash to protect against future losses and lend to fewer people, according to reports yesterday from several of the nation's largest banks. These financial disclosures showed a spike in credit card loans going bad, putting further pressure on already-stressed balance sheets. J.P. Morgan Chase said the number of credit card loans in default rose 45 percent in the third quarter from the comparable period a year ago and predicted that default rates would sharply accelerate through 2009, with 7 percent of credit card loans going bad. "We have to be prepared that it gets a lot worse," J.P. Morgan chief executive Jamie Dimon said about the overall economic outlook.

Posted by malct @ 09:45 AM 7 Comments

Market Oracle: JPMorgan Responsible for the Destruction of U.S. Financial System

The tag team of JPMorgan as the monster and Goldman Sachs as its harlot represent a powerful pair that is more responsible for destroying the entire US financial system than 95% of the American public has any awareness. The colossus of JPMorgan is a monster, a predator, nurtured by pond scum. It has gobbled up Chase Manhattan, Manufacturers Hanover, Chemical Bank, Bank One, and more over the past two decades. Their profound presence in keeping the USTreasury Bond yields down can never be understated. They do so by managing 85% of the credit derivatives on the planet. They distorted usury prices, as in price of borrowed money, thus aggravating the LIBOR (London InterBank Offered Rate) market in a very visible manner. Jim Willie - hot and angry

Telegraph: Homeowners 'in denial' about plummeting property prices

32% think prices haven't dropped, perhaps there is still time to STR to one of this lot!

Posted by yoss @ 09:27 AM 16 Comments

Rense: Not Enough Money In The World To Fix Things

Unsustainable mortgages are a key factor in the global crash, of course. And many people did take out mortgages they would not be able to afford if the housing bubble ever burst, which it has, most spectacularly. And yes, it is undeniable that the financial services industry has been tempting people with easy credit like schoolyard pushers flashing reefers. But this alone would not have been enough to threaten the destruction of the entire global financial system, nor cause the blind, screaming panic that has strangulated the financial markets. The house of cards has fallen down, and revealed a hole of derivatives-based debt that could not be filled, literally, by all the money in the world, much less by the mere trillions that national governments are frantically throwing at it today

Posted by malct @ 09:10 AM 8 Comments

BBC: MPs could be moved out of Commons

The Commons authorities have commissioned a £250,000 feasibility study into the options for relocating MPs while it is completed. The work was not likely to start until 2012, he added.

Posted by malct @ 08:39 AM 10 Comments

Whitehall News: Cameron attacks PM over economy

Almost plausible, well present speech. The sheople wil fall for it hook, line and sinker.

Posted by malct @ 08:35 AM 22 Comments

Timesonline: Gordon Brown demands garages slash petrol prices

Emboldened by international praise for tackling the banking crisis, Gordon Brown accused petrol retailers of charging too much and told them to follow the lead of Asda and Morrisons in bringing prices below £1 a litre. You can't stop him anymore... next thing you know he is going to ask BTL to slash their asking prices

Guardian: We'll get tough with City, says watchdog

Lord Adair Turner admitted that the Financial Services Authority had tried to regulate Britain's big banks "on the cheap" in the past, but said a more stringent regime was on the way. Turner said the FSA was recruiting staff in order to stiffen up regulation of banks and other institutions considered too big to fail. "We will pay more than necessary to attract the correct quality of people from outside. Poachers turned gamekeepers are very attractive to hire. The FSA, in relation to systemically important firms, was [until now] trying to do regulation on the cheap."

Posted by malct @ 07:26 AM 33 Comments

Guardian: Experian to help lenders chase delinquent debts

"The credit checker Experian is restructuring to help bank clients collect debts - after years of providing credit-scoring services to help them lend cash." A clear sign of the times.

BBC News: Internet bank website 'stalled'

They say they had a power cut.. - Sorry, but people like this have protected 'uninterruptible' power supplies. They all do.. This cover doesn't wash - something is wrong at Santander..

Posted by uncle tom @ 11:00 PM 19 Comments

FT: How buy-to-let turned into a mug’s game

Patricia, a single mother I encountered recently, is typical of buy-to-let casualties. Her mortgage costs on five buy-to-let apartments will shortly jump by £1,000 a month. Her rents do not even cover current interest and the value of the flats has fallen 20%. “I’ve just lost my job and I’m temping, so my income is reduced,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. It’s horrendous.” She is likely to lose all her properties, including her own home, and crystallise an unpayable £60,000 debt. Mr Panayiotou expects lenders to start pursuing struggling buy-to-let landlords more aggressively over the next few months. But Ajay Ahuja, a pioneering buy-to-let investor, told me he plans to buy hundreds of cheap properties when prices stabilise. Other bargain hunters will follow suit.

Posted by little professor @ 10:08 PM 9 Comments

Bloomberg: Blankfein's $70 Million Would Survive Paulson's Rules

"Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s Lloyd Blankfein, whose $70.3 million paycheck made him Wall Street's most highly compensated chief executive officer last year, could still earn tens of millions annually under the bank-rescue plan run by his former boss, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson."

321gold via SOTT: Why Gold Is Dropping When It Shouldn't? - and what it all means

Why is gold dropping right now when anyone in their sane mind would expect it to rise? The simple answer to this question is, "because Comex-gold isn't gold" - and because it deceptively pretends to be 'the' price-setter for real gold. Gold is gold, paper is paper, and "Comex gold" is nothing but paper masquerading as gold while simultaneously pretending to be the price-setting medium for actual gold in the world. Now, finally, Comex-gold is in the process of being unmasked. HOW ABOUT PAPER MASQUERADING AS HOUSES? The Limits of Financial Power The financial elites can twist and squirm all they want, but nothing they are able to do within their own limited powers will work. All they can do is shut down markets, shut down banks, or create more debt. Period.

Posted by malct @ 09:04 PM 17 Comments

Gordon Brown's House Price Boom And Bust: The second 'boom and bust' video

With as many relevant clips as I can find http://thecrownblogspot.blogspot.com/2008/10/gordon-browns-house-price-boom-and-bust.html He will try and squirm out from blame again

Posted by crown @ 08:53 PM 7 Comments

New York Times: Drama Behind a $250 Billion Banking Deal

WASHINGTON — The chief executives of the nine largest banks in the United States trooped into a gilded conference room at the Treasury Department at 3 p.m. Monday. To their astonishment, they were each handed a one-page document that said they agreed to sell shares to the government, then Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said they must sign it before they left. by 6:30, all nine chief executives had signed — setting in motion the largest government intervention in the American banking system since the Depression What happened during those three and a half hours is a story of high drama and brief conflict, followed by acquiescence by the bankers, who felt they had little choice but to go along with the Treasury plan to inject $250 billion of capital into thousands of banks

BBC News: Audit chiefs have £10m in Iceland

The watchdog conducting an inquiry into local authorities' decisions to invest in Icelandic banks has admitted it has also got £10m tied up in the country. LOL

yahoo finance: EU, US call for a global summit to reshape banking

"I believe there is scope for agreement in the next few days that we will have an international meeting to take common action ... for very large and very radical changes," Brown told reporters before meeting for talks on the financial crisis with other EU leaders, who on Wednesday endorsed a $2.3 trillion continentwide emergency bailout for the banking sector. "We now have global financial markets but what we do not have is anything other than national and regional regulation and supervision," Brown said. "The IMF has got to be rebuilt as fit for purpose for the modern world. We need an early warning system for the world economy." Brown's paper urges "globally accepted standards of supervision and regulation applied equally and consistently in all countries."

Assoc Press via SOTT: A New Bretton Woods, NWO style: EU, US call for a global summit to reshape banking

Brussels, Belgium - The Group of Eight major industrial nations announced Wednesday they will hold a global summit - perhaps as early as November in New York - to forge common action to prevent another economic meltdown. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said all European Union nations backed radical restructuring of global institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. He called for a meeting "preferably in New York, where everything started" and said it should lead to "a new capitalism." Sarkozy said emerging economies such as China, India and others outside the G-8 should also participate because "no one should feel excluded from what we are recasting." Brown, a longtime former Treasury chief widely seen as a leader in crafting policies to combat the

Times Online: Cahoot loses website after powercut in Spain

Spanish practicing how they will blag depositors when it all goes *.* up!

Times Online: Cahoot loses website after powercut in Spain

Spanish Banks tests out new witholding tactics

The Economist: Hurting the real economy

Although China’s iron ore imports in the first nine months of the year were up by 22% on 2007, there are fears among Australian mining firms that the cuts in Chinese steel production could presage a pause in China’s boom. Mount Gibson, an Australian producer, has given warning that stockpiles of ore are piling up in China. Iron-ore prices on the spot market have fallen by roughly half this year, to $100 a tonne or less. The prices of copper, nickel and zinc have also fallen by half or more this year, and aluminium is down by a third. Those drops, in turn, have battered the share prices of mining companies. Rio Tinto is even more sanguine: it does not foresee China’s growth falling below 8%. Tom Albanese, its boss, says the Chinese economy is merely “pausing for breath”.

Information Clearing House: U.S. Could Guarantee $2 Trillion For Banks

The government may guarantee nearly $2 trillion in U.S. banks' debt and deposit accounts for more than three years in an effort to break the crippling logjam in bank-to-bank lending. That's the equivalent of about 20 percent of the national debt, which recently blew past $10 trillion, and roughly 14 percent of U.S. gross domestic product — the economy's total output of goods and services. The temporary guarantees for banks by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. are in addition to the new $250 billion plan announced by the government Tuesday to directly buy shares in U.S. banks. from comments THE RED SYMPHONY The key to understanding our world is the 1938 interrogation of Illuminati insider Christian Rakovsky (Chaim Rakover) by the Stalinist secret police

Posted by malct @ 06:44 PM 6 Comments

ICH: The 56 Trillion Dollar Deficit

Comptroller General David Walker, explains that we have a debt of $480,000 per US household? from comments :- Tell me why the first words out of David Walker's mouth are always "reform social security." The gov't has raided OUR Social Security trust fund for years to pay for their boondoggles. Now, they are going to come and say "we can't afford social security." That is B.S. David Walker is a shill for the right wing people like Grover Norquist who are transferring wealth like crazy to the already wealthy. DO NOT BE FOOLED LIKE BILL MAHER APPARENTLY IS. and The bad news? We're going down. The good news? We're taking everyone else with us. New World Order? You betcha!

australian: RBA plans drastic rates cut as world markets tumble

"Markets expect the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates aggressively to less than 4 per cent within six months," he said. The futures markets expect the Reserve Bank to cut rates at its November meeting on Melbourne Cup day and at its final meeting for the year in December, with reductions totalling 1.25 per cent, bringing the cash rate down to 5.5per cent.

FT.com: Millions of loan applications rejected

Report from MoneyExpert estimates that a total of 3.27m credit card applications and 1.56m loan applications have been refused by lenders during the six months to mid-September 2008, the equivalent of 27,000 rejections a day. People whose applications are being approved are also having to pay higher rates than they were being charged 18 months ago e.g. the interest rate on personal loans has doubled from 8.6% to 15.3%... credit has really crunched in the last six months. Is the government bailout going to change this? Can't see how, personally.

Wall Street Journal: FDIC Chief Raps Rescue for Helping Banks Over Homeowners

"Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair on Wednesday criticized the federal government for failing to take more aggressive steps to prevent Americans from losing their homes, highlighting a rift between her and other senior U.S. officials over terms of the $700 billion rescue package." The same this side of the pond. The banks f*** up, save em. The little people foul up, f*** 'em. Result - more quick forced sales, more the HPC gathers pace.

BBC: Losses pile up at key US banks

US banking giants Merrill Lynch and Citigroup have both reported massive quarterly losses, $5.15bn and $2.8bn respectively, as market turmoil has led to further write-downs.

The Onion via don't panic lighten up: Bush Calls For Panic

My fellow Americans, the time for running aimlessly through streets while shrieking and waving our arms above our heads is now," Bush said. "I understand that many of you are worried about your economic future and our situation overseas, and you have every right to be. Yet there is only one thing we as a nation can do in times like these: give up all hope and devolve into a lawless, post-apocalyptic, every-man-for-himself society." For those of you who have remained resolute in your belief that things will turn around eventually, I urge you to close your eyes, take shallow rapid breaths, and begin freaking out immediately," Bush added.

BBC: How Brains might have foretold the big crash

Posted by george monsoon @ 02:47 PM 21 Comments

Guardian Online: Bail out under thread as banks eye new deal

Of interest HPC favourite David Blanchflower is mentioned. "Yesterday's financial mood was further darkened when David Blanchflower, a labour market expert and member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, said the 164,000 rise in the jobless total to 1.79m was "truly horrendous and much worse than I had feared". He added that he expected the jobless total to be more than 2 million by Christmas."

CNN: Credit gets looser

Frozen pipelines show signs of a thaw as the overnight and 3-month bank-to-bank rates edge lower. Treasury prices down.

The Comet: Order in the housing market

ESTATE agents in Comet country are kicking the credit crunch amid speculation that people are shying away from the housing market.

Assoc. press via SOTT: Subtle call to panic: Bernanke says economic recovery won't be quick

Washington - The country's economic health won't snap back quickly even if badly needed confidence in the U.S. financial system returns and roiled markets finally calm, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke cautioned Wednesday. Comment: No doubt. Especially if they keep reminding the markets that the situation is painful and long-lasting. "Stabilization of the financial markets is a critical first step, but even if they stabilize as we hope they will, broader economic recovery will not happen right away," "I am not suggesting the way forward will be easy." "credit markets will take some time to unfreeze," and the far east markets were listening.

yahoo finance: Is Your Mortgage Going To Get Cheaper?

The Bank of England recently cut its base rate by a half a percentage point. This should mean good news for mortgage borrowers on variable rates. After all, that's the key advantage of choosing a variable rate over a fixed rate: your monthly payments come down when the base rate is cut. But not all lenders passed on the full 0.5% cut. Here's a list of the biggest 10 lenders and their Standard Variable Rates (SVRs) those that have not passed on the full 0.5% cut are highlighted:

yahoo: Jaguar Land Rover Cuts 200 Jobs

Car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover has announced it is to cut 198 jobs from its UK workforce. The firm, which employs about 15,000 people in the UK, will seek voluntary redundancies from its plants on Merseyside, in Birmingham and in Solihull.

WTF: Tracker mortgage 'battle' starts

Great journalism - return lending to 1997 levels. Really wish they'd learn that numbers do actually mean something.

Posted by phdinbubbles @ 12:49 PM 8 Comments

TimesOnline: Housing slump could be over next year, MPs hear

David Miles, chief UK economist at Morgan Stanley, said that if mortgage rates stayed at present levels, an educated guess from sophisticated economic estimates was that house prices would fall by another 5 to 10 per cent and wipe a further £17,000 off the value of an average home before the market bottomed out next year. However, Professor Miles, who previously has advised Gordon Brown, added that if a recent decline in the cost of mortgage funding continued, price falls could soon end.

Posted by renting2 @ 12:42 PM 9 Comments

Bloomberg: Iceland Cuts Key Interest Rate to 12% From 15.5%

"Iceland's economy may contract as much as 10 percent after the collapse of the banks sent the krona [their currency] into a tailspin. The rate cut indicates the central bank has given up on controlling inflation, which may accelerate to as much as 75 percent in the next few months. The krona hasn't been traded between banks outside of Iceland this week after the central bank tried and failed to fix its value the week before. Its value remains undetermined. Iceland's benchmark stock index yesterday plunged 77 percent. Credit agencies don't expect the banks to be able to honor their foreign liabilities to bond investors. The government has so far failed to respond to questions on how it plans to pay back foreign bank debt."

BBC News: Estate's £1m prize draw delayed

People who bought raffle tickets to win a house in Devon have been told the prize draw, due to take place later, has been postponed.

Posted by matt @ 12:08 PM 10 Comments

Sustainable Economics Green Party: October Newsletter of the Monetary Reform Policy Working Group of the Green Party of England and Wales

1 Editorial 2 Official: Banks Create Money! 3 Fingers to Nose, Hamburg Gives Naples Help with Its Trash W.K. 4 Book review: Making Poverty – A History, by Tom Lines Brian Leslie 5 SOME LIGHT ON ECONOMIC EUGENICS Frank Taylor 6 JFK vs The Federal Reserve John P. Curran 7 Greenhouse mitigation: How economists get it wrong Ted Trainer 8 Quality of Life and the Price of Gold Shirley Farlinger 9 BAIL OF THE CENTURY SchNEWS 10 Money: Myths or Facts? The SOCIAL CREDITER letter posted in comments

Posted by malct @ 11:38 AM 6 Comments

MoneyWeek: Why stock markets will keep crashing

Financial authorities have thrown billions at the money markets - but it hasn't done any good. Investors have twigged that, whatever governments do, a nasty recession is coming.

Posted by damien @ 11:33 AM 6 Comments

CNBC: Brown urges IMF reform, global financial order

BRUSSELS, Oct 15 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund must be reshaped to help regulate the world's financial system and avoid a repeat of the global credit crisis, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Wednesday ahead of an EU summit. "The IMF has to be rebuilt as fit for purpose for the modern world," Brown said after talks with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.

Posted by malct @ 10:53 AM 40 Comments

ft: Spending watchdog linked to Iceland

Oxford university has “about £30m” of its own cash and college money frozen in Icelandic banks – more than twice the amount any university has revealed so far, writes David Turner. Twelve universities, including Oxford, have so far admitted to a collective loss of £77m in Icelandic accounts. Oxford’s investment in the two Icelandic banks accounts for about 5 per cent of the cash deposits which are managed by the university.

FT: How buy-to-let turned into a mug’s game

Doesn't really say anything that regular readers here don't already know, but a good read. The author is at least honest enough to say that he's a BTL landlord himself.