US: More Ammo For The Treasury Bazooka

treasury

Treasury has reloaded its bazooka and stands ready to shock and awe the housing market.

Though, Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller data showed a fifth month of improvement yesterday, analysts still expect prices to fall 10 percent or more next year as various government supports wind down.

Political pressure ahead of midterm elections will likely force the administration to do something in response and Treasury’s Christmas gift of nearly unlimited support for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac gives them a powerful weapon to do so.

But it will be a tough fight as artificial, government-sponsored demand dries up.

The housing tax credit — $8,000 for first-time buyers, $6,500 for move-up buyers — ends in April. Meanwhile, the Federal Housing Administration plans to tighten its loose lending standards as its reserve fund has dwindled.

Moreover, mortgage rates may head higher as the government ends purchases of mortgage-backed securities. Treasury’s $220 billion buyback program ends this week. The Federal Reserve’s $1.25 trillion program ceases in March.

And then there’s the continuing flood of Treasuries to finance the federal deficit. Morgan Stanley estimates that could drive 30-year mortgage rates back above 7.5 percent, an effective 40 percent increase in the cost of financing home purchases. That looks high, but even a smaller jump will drive buyers from the market and force house prices down.

Read moreUS: More Ammo For The Treasury Bazooka

The No.1 Trend Forecaster Gerald Celente: The Terror And The Crash of 2010

Listen AMERICA! Listen WORLD! Listen!!!

Stop listening to elite puppets like Obama, Bernanke and Geithner or you are doomed!!!


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Paul Krugman: Dubai or not Dubai — that is the question

Update:

Dubai World Unit Faces Default Test Monday With Bond Payment (Wall Street Journal):

DUBAI (Zawya Dow Jones)–Debt-laden Dubai World’s unit Jebel Ali Free Zone Authority, or Jafza, faces on Monday a coupon payment on a 7.5 billion U.A.E dirham ($2.04 billion) Islamic bond in the first key test of whether it will default.

Abu Dhabi to aid Dubai “case by case”: official (Reuters):

ABU DHABI (Reuters) – Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates and one of the world’s top oil exporters, will “pick and choose” how to assist its debt-laden neighbor Dubai, a senior Abu Dhabi official said on Saturday.

“We will look at Dubai’s commitments and approach them on a case-by-case basis. It does not mean that Abu Dhabi will underwrite all of their debts,” the official told Reuters by telephone.

Japanese banks’ exposure to Dubai at JPY100 bln -Nikkei (Reuters):

Nov 28 (Reuters) – Japanese financial institutions, including three major banks, face loan exposures of about 100 billion yen ($1.16 billion) in Dubai, the Nikkei business daily said.

Dubai debt woes may hit U.S. property market (Reuters):

“This downturn has had more of a global impact,” said Tony Ciochetti, chairman of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Real Estate in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“Dubai may have to unload some very prestigious properties at distressed prices and this will drive the price of all commercial real estate lower,” wrote Richard Bove, a banking analyst at Rochdale Securities in Lutz, Florida.


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The Atlantis hotel in Dubai.

Dubai or not Dubai — that is the question. Dubai’s sorta-kinda default (a state-owned enterprise seeking a rescheduling of its debts) is, by itself, not that big of a deal. But who else looks like Dubai? What kind of omen is this for the next stage in the financial crisis?

As far as I can tell, there are three ways to look at it — three stories, if you like, about what Dubai means.

First, there’s the view that this is the beginning of many sovereign defaults, and that we’re now seeing the end of the ability of governments to use deficit spending to fight the slump. That’s the view being suggested, if I understand correctly, by the Roubini people and in a softer version by Gillian Tett.

Alternatively, you can see this as basically just another commercial real estate bust. Either you view Dubai World as nothing special, despite sovereign ownership, as Willem Buiter does; or you think of the emirate as a whole as, in effect, a highly leveraged CRE investor facing the same problems as many others in the same situation.

Finally, you can see Dubai as sui generis. And really, there has been nothing else quite like it.

At the moment, I’m leaning to a combination of two and three. For what it’s worth (not much), US bond prices are up right now, suggesting that the Dubai thing hasn’t raised expectations of default.

Read morePaul Krugman: Dubai or not Dubai — that is the question

Dubai meltdown: Crash hits new low; The emirate can no longer meet its obligations; Celebrities caught out

Dubai is broke and will become a ghost town.

“Altogether, the Dubai government and its companies have more than $80 billion of debt. The emirate, which has a population of only two million, has been forced twice to approach its oil-rich neighbour in Abu Dhabi for the funds to bail it out.”


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The Atlantis (!) hotel in Dubai

David Beckham and Brad Pitt are believed to be among the celebrities and sportsmen who bought villas in Palm Jumeirah in Dubai, a luxury development that juts out into the Gulf. But when the property bubble burst this year, residents saw the value of their investments collapse. Yesterday their situation worsened as Nakheel, the developer, and its state-owned parent made a request to suspend debt repayments.

The statement rocked credit mar-kets around the world and prompted analysts to question whether Dubai, the most populous of the United Arab Emirates, will be able to meet its obligations. The concern is that Nakheel will be unable to continue developing the Palm and neighbouring projects, leaving Dubai and its coastal waters an ugly, unfinished construction site.

When the 2,000 villas and townhouses on the Palm went on sale in 2002, they sold out in a month. Passing through en route to the World Cup in Japan and Korea were the England football team, and several players stopped off to sign up for £1 million properties on the artificial island, with Michael Owen, David James, Joe Cole, Andy Cole and Kieron Dyer, it was reported, joining Beckham on the beaches. Pitt and Angelina Jolie are also said to have bought homes.

Joe Cole was one of the few who got out in time. The Chelsea player sold his villa for about $3.5 million (£2.1 million) last summer as Dubai’s property bubble approached bursting point.

Nakheel is now in deep trouble and struggling to cover its debts. Dubai World, a government conglomerate that owns the developer, is $60 billion in the red. Yesterday’s announcement by the Dubai government that it wishes to suspend repayment of Dubai World’s debts for six months, including a $4 billion bond held by Nakheel that was due to be repaid next month, is the clearest indication that the emirate can no longer meet its obligations.

Work has stopped on several major projects around the city and companies have had to accept huge cuts in the value of their contracts. More than 400 projects worth more than $300 billion are said to have been cancelled or shut down as a result of the property collapse.

Read moreDubai meltdown: Crash hits new low; The emirate can no longer meet its obligations; Celebrities caught out

Meredith Whitney on CNBC: ‘I Haven’t Been This Bearish in a Year’; ‘S&P Expensive Across the Board’; Expects Next Leg Down in the Housing Market Soon



Nov. 16 (Bloomberg) — Meredith Whitney, the analyst who cut her rating on Goldman Sachs Group Inc. last month, said bank stocks are overvalued after rallying faster than the U.S. economy and share prices will fall to tangible book value.

“I haven’t been this bearish in a year,” Whitney, founder of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group LLC, said today in a CNBC television interview. “I think you can sit on cash for a little bit, because you have to wait for a leg down in valuations. The S&P is expensive across the board.”

Read moreMeredith Whitney on CNBC: ‘I Haven’t Been This Bearish in a Year’; ‘S&P Expensive Across the Board’; Expects Next Leg Down in the Housing Market Soon

A to Z of what’s wrong with America

A is for Aspartame – The magic powder that turns diet soda into brain poison.

B is for Bailout money – Because all we really need is another trillion dollars.

C is for Codex Alimentarius – Because we all need to be protected from dangerous vitamins, right?

D is for Dumbing Down – No matter how uneducated the kids are, there’s always a public school willing to compromise its standards just enough to let them pass.

E is for Environmental Policy – Because treating the rivers and waterways like America’s toilet makes for fascinating beach swimming.

F is for FDA (or Foreclosures) – Just what we need: A Big Pharma tyranny enforcement branch in Washington D.C.

G is for Genetically Modified Organisms – Because playing God with the food supply sounded like such a great idea, we just couldn’t resist.

H is for Health insurance (or lack thereof) – Just another financial scam to enslave Americans in a medical police state while denying them access to real health services.

Read moreA to Z of what’s wrong with America

If You Thought the Housing Meltdown Was Bad … Wait Until You See What’s in the Cards For Commercial Real Estate

The Real Tsunami Is Coming

next-bubble-commercial-real-estate
Cartoon courtesy of Giovanni Fontana

That’s right, the next train wreck will be in commercial real estate. Couldn’t be worse than last year’s residential market crash? That remains to be seen. But it’s coming soon, probably as early as the second quarter of next year, and there’s nothing that can prevent it. The government will intervene, trying desperately to delay the day of reckoning, and may even succeed. For a while. But make no mistake about it, that train is going off the tracks no matter what.

Every part of the sector – from multifamily apartment buildings to retail shopping centers, suburban office buildings, industrial facilities, and hotels – has accumulated a huge amount of defaulted or nonperforming paper. It’s an impossible, swaying structure that cannot long stand.

Just ask Andy Miller.

Andy is one of the most knowledgeable people around when it comes to commercial real estate. Co-founder of the Miller Fishman Group of Denver, he has spent twenty years buying and developing apartment communities, shopping centers, office buildings, and warehouses throughout the country. He’s also worked extensively – especially lately – with asset managers and special servicers (those who handle commercial mortgage-backed securities, or CMBS) from insurance companies, conduits, and the biggest banks in the U.S., advising them on default scenarios, helping them develop realistic pricing structures, and making hold or sell recommendations.

It isn’t easy. Commercial real estate sales are off a staggering 82% in 2009, compared with 2008, and last year was worse than ’07. No one is selling at depressed prices, but it hardly matters as there are no buyers, either because they’re afraid of the market or can’t meet more stringent loan requirements. Two years ago, the value of all commercial real estate in the U.S. was about $6.5 trillion. Against that was laid $3-3.5 trillion in loans. The latter figure hasn’t changed much. But the former has sunk like a bar of lead in the lake, so that now between half and two-thirds of those loans will have to be written down, Andy estimates.

“If the banks had to take that hit all at once, there wouldn’t be any banks,” he says.

And it’s actually worse than that. As even average citizens became aware during the subprime meltdown, loans in recent years were bundled into exotic financial vehicles that could be sold and resold, a class generically known as conduits. These commercial mortgage-backed securities, while less well known than their cousins built upon home loans, are nonetheless ubiquitous.

Read moreIf You Thought the Housing Meltdown Was Bad … Wait Until You See What’s in the Cards For Commercial Real Estate

US: Home Vacancies Rise to 18.8 Million on Defaults

Recovery!


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Plywood covers the windows of a vacant home in Denver on Oct. 27, 2009. (Bloomberg)


Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) — About 18.8 million homes stood empty in the U.S. during the third quarter as banks seized properties from delinquent borrowers and new home sales fell in September.

The number of vacant properties, including foreclosures, residences for sale and vacation homes, rose from 18.4 million a year earlier and 18.7 million in the second quarter, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report today. The record high was in the first quarter, when 18.95 million homes were vacant. The homeownership rate, meaning households that own their own residence, stood at 67.6 percent.

The worst U.S. housing crash since the Great Depression has led to a record number of foreclosures and shaved almost a third off property values. The S&P/Case-Shiller Index of 20 cities in August was 29 percent below its 2006 high, after rising for four consecutive months.

“We are bumping along the bottom of the housing market,” said James Lockhart, vice chairman of WL Ross & Co. and the former director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. “There is the potential for another swing down.”

Sales of new U.S. homes fell 3.6 percent in September to an annual pace of 402,000, the Commerce Department said yesterday. That was lower than the 440,000 median forecast of 75 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

Read moreUS: Home Vacancies Rise to 18.8 Million on Defaults

To all homeowners in foreclosure: Judge wipes out $460,000 mortgage debt

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur has become something of a crusader for homeowners’ rights in the wake of the housing crisis, as well as a major critic of US banks. Moyers played a clip of her giving a speech this past January in which she urged homeowners to ignore eviction notices and become “squatters in [their] own homes” if they need to:

“So why should any American citizen be kicked out of their homes in this cold weather? … Don’t leave your home. Because you know what? When those companies say they have your mortgage, unless you have a lawyer that can put his or her finger on that mortgage, you don’t have that mortgage, and you are going to find they can’t find the paper up there on Wall Street. So I say to the American people, you be squatters in your own homes. Don’t you leave. In Ohio and Michigan and Indiana and Illinois and all these other places our people are being treated like chattel, and this Congress is stymied.”

Source: Top economist: President Obama ‘missed opportunity’ to reform financial system

See also: Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur: There Has Been a Financial Coup D’Etat


foreclosures


FOR decades, when troubled homeowners and banks battled over delinquent mortgages, it wasn’t a contest. Homes went into foreclosure, and lenders took control of the property.

On top of that, courts rubber-stamped the array of foreclosure charges that lenders heaped onto borrowers and took banks at their word when the lenders said they owned the mortgage notes underlying troubled properties.

In other words, with lenders in the driver’s seat, borrowers were run over, more often than not. Of course, errant borrowers hardly deserve sympathy from bankers or anyone else, and banks are well within their rights to try to protect their financial interests.

But if our current financial crisis has taught us anything, it is that many borrowers entered into mortgage agreements without a clear understanding of the debt they were incurring. And banks often lacked a clear understanding of whether all those borrowers could really repay their loans.

Even so, banks and borrowers still do battle over foreclosures on an unlevel playing field that exists in far too many courtrooms. But some judges are starting to scrutinize the rules-don’t-matter methods used by lenders and their lawyers in the recent foreclosure wave. On occasion, lenders are even getting slapped around a bit.

One surprising smackdown occurred on Oct. 9 in federal bankruptcy court in the Southern District of New York. Ruling that a lender, PHH Mortgage, hadn’t proved its claim to a delinquent borrower’s home in White Plains, Judge Robert D. Drain wiped out a $461,263 mortgage debt on the property. That’s right: the mortgage debt disappeared, via a court order.

So the ruling may put a new dynamic in play in the foreclosure mess: If the lender can’t come forward with proof of ownership, and judges don’t look kindly on that, then borrowers may have a stronger hand to play in court and, apparently, may even be able to stay in their homes mortgage-free.

The reason that notes have gone missing is the huge mass of mortgage securitizations that occurred during the housing boom. Securitizations allowed for large pools of bank loans to be bundled and sold to legions of investors, but some of the nuts and bolts of the mortgage game — notes, for example — were never adequately tracked or recorded during the boom. In some (many) cases, that means nobody truly knows who owns what.

Read moreTo all homeowners in foreclosure: Judge wipes out $460,000 mortgage debt

Federal Reserve Bailout Money Ends in Deserted Shopping Mall

The commercial real estate crisis will make the subprime mortgage crisis look like peanuts.


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The Crossroads Mall in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (REUTERS)

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – A $29 billion trail from the Federal Reserve’s bailout of Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns ends in a partially deserted shopping center on a bleak spot on the south side of Oklahoma City.

The Fed now owns the Crossroads Mall, a sprawling shopping complex at the junction of Interstate highways 244 and 35, complete with an oil well pumping crude in the parking lot — except the Fed does not own the mineral rights.

The Fed finds itself in the unusual situation of being an Oklahoma City landlord after it lent JPMorgan Chase $29 billion to buy Bear Stearns last year.

That money was secured by a portfolio of Bear assets. Crossroads Mall is the only bricks and mortar acquired through bailout. The remaining billions are tied up in invisible securities spread across hundreds, if not thousands, of properties.

It is hard to be precise because the Fed has not published specifics on what it now owns. The only reason that Crossroads Mall has surfaced is that it went into foreclosure in April.

Noah Diggs, who had just successfully concluded a search for work here as a shop assistant, was surprised and somewhat alarmed to learn the U.S. central bank now owned the property.

Read moreFederal Reserve Bailout Money Ends in Deserted Shopping Mall

FDIC Insuring 8200 Banks with $9 Trillion in Deposits and ZERO in the Deposit Insurance Fund.

“Your money is safe!” Sure!

It is much safer to believe in Santa Claus.


FDIC Calls Banks to Prepay Assessment of $45 Billion.

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The FDIC has greatly underestimated the problems of our nation’s banking system.  Earlier in the week the FDIC proposed that banks put up $45 billion to protect bank depositors.  The average American must be amazed that a system backing $9 trillion in deposits is essentially broke.  Clearly the FDIC has the backing of the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve but there is some irony in having the FDIC tell banks to pay an early assessment to protect our money.  These banks are going to use bail out money to pay to protect taxpayer deposits!  The banking system is going to have some deep and profound issues as the $3 trillion in commercial real estate loans go bad in the next few years.

The problem is how the banking system is structured.  Take a look at how assets are distributed over the 8,204 banks:

fdic-banks

This is an incredible chart.  Total assets at FDIC insured banks amount to $13.3 trillion.  However, out of 8,204 banks 116 hold a stunning $10.28 trillion of these assets.  We can have the smaller banks fail and the asset base would hardly move.  Yet the issue of course is that the vast majority of big dollar problems are in the bigger banks.

The FDIC made the call for the prepayment this week because it is now officially in the red.  It is no surprise given that a system backing some $7.42 trillion in loans with what is now no reserve is doomed to fail.  It was destined to run out of money.  Yet it is naïve to think that only $45 billion is going to protect the system from the $3 trillion in commercial real estate loans that are held in many not too big to fail banks.  The end outcome is more trouble for banks and the taxpayer should gear up for a second round of bailouts.  If you doubt this the Federal Reserve has already discussed “Plan C” which was a backroom talk to preemptively bailout the commercial real estate industry.

Read moreFDIC Insuring 8200 Banks with $9 Trillion in Deposits and ZERO in the Deposit Insurance Fund.

Spain tips into a full-blown economic depression

Spain is sliding into a full-blown economic depression with unemployment approaching levels not seen since the Second Republic of the 1930s and little chance of recovery until well into the next decade, according to a clutch of reports over recent days.

Two Miura fighting bulls are silhouetted against the sky at the Miura ranch near Lora del Rio, southern Spain
Bull run is over: Spain is sliding into a full-blown economic depression akin to that seen in the 1930s Photo: AP

The Madrid research group RR de Acuña & Asociados said the collapse of Spain’s building industry will cause the economy to contract for the next three years, with a peak to trough loss of over 11pc of GDP. The grim forecast is starkly at odds with claims by premier Jose Luis Zapatero, who still says Spain’s recession will be milder than elsewhere in Europe.

RR de Acuña said the overhang of unsold properties on the market, or still being built, has reached 1,623,000 . This dwarfs annual demand of 218,000, and will take six or seven years to clear. The group said Spain’s unemployment will peak at around 25pc, comparable to the worst chapter of the Great Depression.

Spanish workers typically receive 50pc to 60pc of their former pay for eighteen months after losing their job. Then the guillotine falls. Spain’s parliament has rushed through a law guaranteeing €420 a month for long-term unemployed, but this will not prevent a social crisis if the slump drags on.

Separately, UBS said unemployment will reach 4.8m and may go as high as 5.4m if the job purge in the service sector gathers pace. There is the growing risk of a “Lost Decade” akin to Japan’s malaise after the Nikkei bubble.

Roberto Ruiz, the bank’s Spain strategist, said salaries must fall by 10pc in real terms to regain lost competitiveness, replicating the sort of wage squeeze seen in Germany after reunification.

Read moreSpain tips into a full-blown economic depression

US: Hyperinflation Nation

Hyperinflation Nation starring Peter Schiff, Ron Paul, Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Tom Woods, Gerald Celente, and others.

Prepare now before the US dollar is worthless.

Part 1 :

Read moreUS: Hyperinflation Nation

On the Edge with Max Keiser (09/04/09): The Banksters have free reign in America

Related articles:
Goldman Sachs Wrong on Economic Recovery, Macro Hedge Funds Say (Bloomberg):

Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) — Paul Tudor Jones, the billionaire hedge-fund manager who outperformed peers last year, is wagering that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley got it wrong in declaring the start of an economic recovery.

“If we have a recovery at all, it isn’t sustainable,” Kevin Harrington, managing director at Clarium, said in an interview at the firm’s New York offices. “This is more likely a ski-jump recession, with short-term stimulus creating a bump that will ultimately lead to a more precipitous decline later.”

Head of China Investment Corporation: China & America are addressing bubbles by creating more bubbles (Reuters):
“It will not be too bad this year. Both China and America are addressing bubbles by creating more bubbles and we’re just taking advantage of that. So we can’t lose,” he said.

US: Biggest pension funds record steep losses of almost $100bn (Financial Times)

CalPERS Admits California “Pension Costs Unsustainable” (Global Economic Analysis)

CalPERS Invested More than $110 Million with Former ‘Car Czar’ CalPERS has invested more than $110 million with financier Steven Rattner, who resigned as President Barack Obama’s “car czar” amid an investigation into his dealings with New York’s public employee pension fund.


Guest is Mike Morgan of GoldmanSachs666.com

Mike Morgan: “Obama is the worst thing that could happen in the US.”

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Read moreOn the Edge with Max Keiser (09/04/09): The Banksters have free reign in America

On the Edge with Max Keiser (08/28/09): Guest Mike “Mish” Shedlock

Related articles:
Fed official: Real US unemployment rate at 16 percent
Federal Reserve bailout revelations put on hold by judge
RBS chief credit strategist issues red alert on global stock markets
The US is in a ‘Death Spiral’ and ‘in the Tank Forever’, says Davidowitz
Racketeering 101: Bailed Out Banksters Threaten Systemic Collapse If Fed Discloses Information
Economy & Stock market: There is no recovery
Bank CEO: 1000 Banks to Fail In Next Two Years


I still disagree with Mish Shedlock on the deflation vs. inflation issue.

I expect hyperinflation and the destruction of the US dollar.


“The entire US banking system is insolvent.” – Mike “Mish” Shedlock

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Read moreOn the Edge with Max Keiser (08/28/09): Guest Mike “Mish” Shedlock

Bank CEO: 1000 Banks to Fail In Next Two Years

Meredith Whitney: There Will Be More Than 300 Bank Failures


The US banking system will lose some 1,000 institutions over the next two years, said John Kanas, whose private equity firm bought BankUnited of Florida in May.

“We’ve already lost 81 this year,” Kanas told CNBC. “The numbers are climbing every day. Many of these institutions nobody’s ever heard of. They’re smaller companies.” (See the accompanying video for the complete interview.)

Failed banks tend to be smaller and private, which exacerbates the problem for small business borrowers, said Kanas, who became CEO of BankUnited when his firm bought the bank and is the former chairman and CEO of North Fork bank.

“Government money has propped up the very large institutions as a result of the stimulus package,” he said. “There’s really very little lifeline available for the small institutions that are suffering.”

Read moreBank CEO: 1000 Banks to Fail In Next Two Years

Foreclosures rise 7 percent in July from June, up 32 percent from last year

Stress Map
A foreclosure sign tops a sale sign (AP)

WASHINGTON – The number of U.S. households on the verge of losing their homes rose 7 percent from June to July, as the escalating foreclosure crisis continued to outpace government efforts to limit the damage.

Foreclosure filings were up 32 percent from the same month last year
, RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. More than 360,000 households, or one in every 355 homes, received a foreclosure-related notice, such as a notice of default or trustee’s sale. That’s the highest monthly level since the foreclosure-listing firm began publishing the data more than four years ago.

Banks repossessed more than 87,000 homes in July, up from about 79,000 homes a month earlier.

Read moreForeclosures rise 7 percent in July from June, up 32 percent from last year

Dubai: Real Estate Down 50% From Peak

“Saud Masud, a real-estate analyst at UBS, said a decelerating price fall doesn’t necessarily point to market recovery. “The underlying trends are not supportive of a recovery in the market anytime soon,” he said.”

Related article:  In Dubai, guest workers are stranded without jobs


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Property prices in Dubai are down 50% from their peak in the third quarter of 2008.

DUBAI — Home values in Dubai have fallen by about half from their peak late last year in the wake of the global real-estate slowdown, a widely watched index of Dubai property prices showed Monday.

Property prices in the emirate, which had been driven sharply higher in past years as foreign investors snapped up real estate, have been sliding since the third quarter of 2008.

Read moreDubai: Real Estate Down 50% From Peak

FDIC: Troubled Bank Loans Hit a Record High

money-banks

OVERALL loan quality at American banks is the worst in at least a quarter century, and the quality of loans is deteriorating at the fastest pace ever, according to statistics released this week by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The report highlighted that even as the government and major banks have scrambled to deal with the impaired securities the banks own, the institutions have been plagued by an unprecedented volume of old-fashioned loans going bad.

Of the entire book of loans and leases at all banks — totaling $7.7 trillion at the end of March — 7.75 percent were showing some sign of distress, the F.D.I.C. reported. That was up from 6.9 percent at the end of 2008 and from 4.1 percent a year earlier. It also exceeded the previous high of 7.26 percent set in 1990 and 1991, during the last crisis in American banking.

Read moreFDIC: Troubled Bank Loans Hit a Record High

The perfect commercial real estate storm: NO NEW LEASE ON TRILLIONS IN DEBT

TRILLIONS IN COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE LOANS ARE COMING DUE

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General Growth Properties
KEY ASSET: South Street Seaport

A trillion-dollar storm is gathering over the commercial real estate landscape that’s threatening to add further pain to an already bruised US economy.

At the center of the worries is some $3.5 trillion in debt backed by everything from strip malls to offices and apartments across the nation — the lion’s share of which is badly underwater because this recession followed a five-year commercial property boom fueled by easy money and loose underwriting standards.

Now the owners of the less-than-full malls, apartment complexes and office buildings are succumbing to the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression — because they can’t refinance the debt.

The commercial debt securitization market is dead.

Read moreThe perfect commercial real estate storm: NO NEW LEASE ON TRILLIONS IN DEBT

From the Palm Islands to Emirates Bank, grand Dubai, United Arab Emirates, feels the economic crunch


From the Palm Islands to Emirates Bank, grand Dubai, United Arab Emirates, feels the economic crunch

They were heralded as “The 8th Wonder of the World” by numerous travel sites. They required a staggering $60 billion to construct, according to their developers. They attracted A-List celebrities from the Jolie-Pitts to the Beckhams to Lindsay Lohan. They were, in fact, “one of the most enterprising and ambitious ventures to ever have been imagined,” according to travel Web site Destination 360.

“They” are the epic Palm Islands, a series of three man-made islands in the shape of a palm tree, that along with the surrounding city of Dubai, were considered the “it” playground to the stars, a chic status-symbol to the rich, and a mammoth, epic, super-expensive, luxury landmark to the rest of us.

When you”re this high, you”ve got a long way to fall… And fall they have.

Yes, the global recession seems to be official, as the Palm Islands and Dubai have smacked into economic trouble, according to numerous published reports.

“It is clear that tens of thousands have left, real estate prices have crashed and scores of Dubai”s major construction projects have been suspended or cancelled,” the New York Times reports.

And the Palm Islands themselves? Not looking so good. The Mirror reports that the islands” real estate values have plummeted – by about half. Properties that were selling for about $4.5 million are now going for around $2.3 million. Probably not welcome news to celebs like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie who own property there, the paper reports.

But it gets worse. Real estate developer, Nakheel, maker of Dubai”s Palm Islands, has suffered recent layoffs, according to ABC News. The Guardian reports that the third of the Palm Islands, the Palm Deira, which was previously under construction, is on hold, and VIrtualTripping.com reports that it is downsizing in scale.

Read moreFrom the Palm Islands to Emirates Bank, grand Dubai, United Arab Emirates, feels the economic crunch

Peter Schiff: Speech on America’s Bubble Economy (3/13/09)

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Added: March 15, 2009
Source: YouTube

Read morePeter Schiff: Speech on America’s Bubble Economy (3/13/09)

The bankruptcy of the UK is a very real probability, says leading investment bank

The Numis report says: “The bankruptcy of the UK is a very real probability as the UK Government is trying to stimulate a greater debt burden in a grossly indebted economy. We believe the scale of the macro imbalances in the UK means there is no prospect of a recovery in 2009 and we expect the UK to be mired in a deep recession through all of 2010.”


House prices may fall by a further 55 percent and there is a “very real probability” that Britain will be bankrupted, a leading investment bank has warned in a private note to clients.

People who bought buy-to-let flats are expected to “begin panic selling” and the average home value could drop below £100,000.

The predictions in a 298-page report from Numis Securities, a City investment bank, are the bleakest yet on the deteriorating state of the British property market.

House prices have already fallen by about 20 per cent over the past year.

However, in the note written last month, Numis said: “Despite UK house prices already having fallen 21% from the peak, we do not believe that the correction is anywhere near over.

“Our core headline forecast is that UK property prices remain between 17% and 39% overvalued based on fair valuation. Moreover, history has shown us that when property…which has experienced a price bubble corrects, the price tends to fall below fair value for a period of time, as confidence in that market remains low. Prices could fall a further 40-55% if the over-correction was as bad as the early 1990s in our view.”

Read moreThe bankruptcy of the UK is a very real probability, says leading investment bank

Apartment Buyers Abandoning 6-Figure Deposits

“The penthouse, which first went on the market in October 2007 at $9.25 million, has since been appraised at $6.5 million, and its owner has decided to offer the property in a sealed-bid auction-like process in March, with a starting bid of $4.995 million.” “Mr. Orenstein says the owner decided on this process because he plans to move soon to Italy with his wife and baby.”

There are many millionaires and billionaires fleeing from the U.S. right now. No big city on this planet will be a safe place in the future.


THE real estate market in Manhattan has become so unnerving to buyers that some are forfeiting six-figure deposits rather than close on deals they have made.


FORFEITED A buyer for this Spring Street penthouse, with stunning river views, walked away from the deal, and a $780,000 deposit.

At 304 Spring Street, a sleek condominium building in SoHo with stunning Hudson River views, the buyer for the duplex penthouse recently decided he would not go through with the deal and walked away from a $780,000 deposit.

At 1120 Park Avenue, a classic prewar co-op filled with multimillion-dollar apartments, it appears that a buyer forfeited a deposit of as much as $1.1 million.

Real estate agents representing buyers of at least three other multimillion-dollar properties also report clients who knowingly left deposits of more than $1 million or hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table.

In each case, the buyers had signed their contracts before the financial meltdown last fall, but decided in recent months that because values in the luxury real estate market have dropped 20 to 40 percent, it no longer made sense to go through with their deals.

Read moreApartment Buyers Abandoning 6-Figure Deposits

Santander fund seeks to halt redemptions

Spanish bank Santander has sought regulatory permission to freeze payouts from its main real-estate fund after investors sought to withdraw 80 per cent of the vehicle’s capital at once.

The bank, the biggest in the eurozone by market value, said in a regulatory filing on Monday that the Santander Banif Inmobiliario FII fund, the country’s biggest, “currently lacks the necessary liquidity” to meet redemption demands worth €2.62bn ($3.35bn), or 80 per cent of the fund’s value at the end of January.

Santander is seeking authorisation to suspend full reimbursements from the fund for two years, while it “starts an orderly programme of disposals”.

The fund, which was 67 per cent invested in residential rental properties at the end of December, lost about 15 per cent of its value between the end of the third and fourth quarters last year as asset values were adjusted to reflect difficult market conditions.

This, coupled with investors’ need for cash, triggered a run on the fund during a two-week redemption window that closed on Friday.

Spain’s residential property bubble burst almost two years ago, leaving at least 1m new houses unsold.

Read moreSantander fund seeks to halt redemptions