It was only last week that the real estate industry was celebrating the good news.
The number of home listings within 27 major U.S. metropolitan areas slipped 2.42 percent in November 2009, compared to a month prior, and is down 27.64 percent compared to a year ago, according to a monthly report of homes listed for sale on Multiple Listing Services (MLS) in the markets surveyed by ZipRealty, a national real estate brokerage.
Fewer homes for sale means the supply and demand dynamics have turned up, which means that the housing market is bottoming, right?
You know where I stand, I hate the very concept of a transaction tax, but if we were to have one, then let me go the "lesser evil" route. Because as it stands, what's been proposed will not work. First the guy who posted about financial markets was spot on. You'll kill what's good about the markets along with bad. Companies need capital, hell the government now needs a stock market because it owns so much stock (as citizens, it would be nice if Uncle Sam made a profit on that stock so it could redeploy that capital to say infrastructure, I'm just saying.). Robert challenged me to come up with an alternative to meet his objections, so I will give it a go.
No surprise here. Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke gets Senate approval for a 2nd term. Now onto the Senate floor where there are 5 holds on his confirmation. The vote was 16 to 7, with 12 Democrats and 4 Republicans voting for Bernanke.
We've just seen health care turn into the for profit health lobbyists' wet dream and now here comes the financial lobbyists (as if the House bill wasn't a bunch of swiss cheese already).
The American Bankers Association issued a "Call to Action" on Wednesday, urging its lobbyists and member banks to make an all-out effort to crush regulatory reform in Senate. As part of that campaign, it lashed out at its community-bank rival, charging it with being too soft on bank reform efforts.
In an unusually frank memo from ABA Chairman Art Johnson, the lobby group congratulates bankers for sending some 300,000 letters to Congress opposing reform, crediting the effort with killing several significant provisions.
The House of Representatives just passed another Stimulus bill of which $75 billion from TARP will be used to pay for it's $155 billion dollar price tag.
The 119-page measure contains proposals from lawmakers including Democratic Representative Daniel Lipinski of Illinois requiring federal agencies to publish requests for waivers on their Web sites. Waivers that are granted must contain a detailed rationale with an analysis of the impact of the waiver on U.S. factory jobs, the legislation says.
No doubt the lobbyists will be all over this one, making sure Stimulus stimulates other national economies.
The U.S. government abruptly shelved plans to start trimming its 34% stake in Citigroup Inc., after investors demanded a price so low that the Treasury Department would have lost hundreds of millions of dollars on the deal.
The embarrassing reversal came two days after the Treasury said it planned to sell as much as $5 billion of stock in the New York company, as part of Citigroup's plan to pay back $20 billion in taxpayer aid the troubled bank received last year.
At the expected sale price of $3.15 a share, the U.S. government would have suffered a loss of 10 cents per share on its 7.7 billion-share stake in Citigroup, or about $770 million.
Could it be that the Treasury lost a whole bunch of money on the bailouts that it refuses to recognize?
The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period.
The above quote is from the Federal Reserve meeting minutes.
They also purchased $1.25 trillion in MBSes (mortgage backed securities) and $175 billion of agency debt. $1.25 trillion. That is one scary number and we still cannot get derivatives reform?
The Fed is also letting a host of special liquidity funds expire on 02.01.10.
The Persian Gulf nations have taken their first step to de-linking from the dollar.
“The Gulf monetary union pact has come into effect,” said Kuwait’s finance minister, Mustafa al-Shamali, speaking at a Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) summit in Kuwait.
The move will give the hyper-rich club of oil exporters a petro-currency of their own, greatly increasing their influence in the global exchange and capital markets and potentially displacing the US dollar as the pricing currency for oil contracts. Between them they amount to regional superpower with a GDP of $1.2 trillion (£739bn), some 40pc of the world’s proven oil reserves, and financial clout equal to that of China.
In case you missed this, a carefully worded Empire State Manufacturing Survey for November 2009, has a falling off the cliff drop of 20.96 points on general business conditions.
The October 2009 number was 23.51. November is 2.55.
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