Cesarnc's market talk, gossips, rumours & fun

I saw this scene and thought, Damn. That could be me when I have children.

OH MY GOD A CHART, In this thread

Dollar gaining against the swissy

2 wierd things at once

Morning all

Sure thing... I was skeptical about Duchovny at first, but man, this guy is good...

I just love the beatup Porsche. He just couldn't drive another car

Soros talking

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=700464629&play=1

@BWR

1.0245 TP?

Forget that. GBPCHF, looks like it's finished, time to hop on the elevator to hell, NOW. Suddenly I notice that I am talking in freakin cryptotext in order to not sound like I'm giving trade advice and get us all banned!

Bernie BS-ing again??
When this thing happens, usually we can forget all the technical analysis.. just smoke some pot/crack/whatever, fly high and trade high..

Not only Uncle Bernie but the rest of gang including guys from Wall Street.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the central bank moved to assist troubled investment bank Bear Stearns to protect the U.S. economy against severe consequences.

This is the standard speech. Some 10 years ago the same happened in Brazil. Central Bank bailed out a tiny investment bank by claiming "systemic risk".

:

April 3 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire George Soros called the current financial crisis the worst since the Great Depression and said markets will fall more this year after a brief rebound.

``We had a good bottom,'' Soros said yesterday in an interview in New York, referring to the rally in stocks and the dollar after JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to buy Bear Stearns Cos. on March 17. ``This will probably not prove to be the final bottom,'' he said, adding the rebound may last six weeks to three months as the U.S. moves closer to a recession.
(...)

The euro has climbed 7.5 percent against the dollar this year and the Japanese yen has gained 9.1 percent. These and other currencies may continue to strengthen, he said.

``There is an increasing unwillingness to hold dollars, though there's a lack of suitable alternatives,'' he said. ``It's a period of heightened uncertainty.''
Federal Reserve officials dropped their benchmark interest rate 2 percentage points this year to 2.25 percent, and Soros doesn't see that they can lower the rate much further, given the weak dollar.

``We are close to the limit,'' he said.

For us, currency freaks, this is one nice article:

"The Most Beautiful Money in the World"
http://www.cnbc.com/id/23826876?photo=1

Some beautiful bills!

OKAY...

5 bucks as guys will get back here pretty soon after this.

Do you think it is getting awfully crowded in the rowboat adrift on the financial seas. But hey look at the bunda on that Menina.

Ex-UBS president may seek break-up of bank: report
Thu Apr 3, 8:17 PM ET


Luqman Arnold, a former president of UBS AG (UBSN.VX), is pushing for a potential break-up of the troubled Swiss bank, the Wall Street Journal said in its online edition on Thursday.
Arnold is chairman of Olivant Advisers Ltd in London, which holds a 0.7 percent stake in UBS worth about $470 million, the report said. Arnold had served as UBS' president before being ousted in December 2001 after a dispute over strategy with current Chairman Marcel Ospel.
The challenge follows UBS' announcement this week that it will raise 15 billion Swiss francs to bolster capital, after a $19 billion write-down tied largely to U.S. mortgages led to a roughly $12 billion quarterly loss. Ospel said he would quit as chairman and be replaced by in-house counsel Peter Kurer.
Citing a letter from Arnold to the UBS board, the Journal said Arnold believes UBS should separate its investment bank from its private-client bank and ultimately sell the investment bank, and sell its asset-management arm to raise capital.
A representative in Olivant's office in Singapore declined to comment. A call to Olivant's office in London was not immediately returned.
UBS also did not immediately return a call seeking comment. An earlier version of the Journal article said Arnold's letter was sent Thursday night, and that a UBS spokesman said he was not aware the bank might have received such a letter. A later version of the article did not include these details.
The ouster by UBS of Arnold, who is British, came just eight months after he had taken up his post at UBS, in what the bank at the time hailed as a move toward a more international management culture.
Arnold was replaced by Peter Wuffli, who would become UBS chief executive in 2003. Wuffli was replaced in 2006, before the subprime mortgage crisis, but UBS was even then facing calls to bolster results and consider a break-up.
Olivant on its Web said it invests where "an opportunity exists to increase shareholder value through strategic, structural and operational change," and where it has "the necessary influence directly or through agreement with other shareholders to implement the changes."
After leaving UBS, Arnold became chief executive of Britain's Abbey National Plc, and sold that company to Spain's Banco Santander SA (SAN.MC).

American dream hit by dollar’s decline

By Richard Lapper in São Paulo
Published: April 1 2008 20:55 | Last updated: April 1 2008 20:55


Migrant workers are choosing to move to Europe, Australia or Canada instead of the US in order to protect the purchasing power of the money they send home to their families, according to one of the world’s leading experts on remittances.

The shift is a result of sharp falls in the value of the US dollar against other international currencies, many of which have been boosted by the rise in commodity prices.

“We are seeing workers from Bangladesh, Nepal and especially the Philippines choosing destinations where they’ll get paid in stronger currencies,” Dilip Ratha, head of the World Bank’s remittances and migration unit, told the Financial Times.

Mr Ratha said the trend was especially notable among skilled workers, such as doctors, nurses and information technology specialists.

In its most recent analysis of remittance trends, published at the end of last year, the bank said the slowdown in the US economy had depressed the growth of remittance flows to Mexico and some other Latin American economies. However, overall flows to developing countries were still expected to have grown by 8 per cent to reach $240bn (€150bn, £121bn).

Mr Ratha said that in the past four years the US share of remittances to Central American and Andean countries had declined from more than 90 per cent to 80 per cent, with migrants from Ecuador and Bolivia especially likely to favour European destinations.

Recent evidence from Brazil shows a similar preference for Europe and Canada, even among unskilled workers. Migrant workers from Brazil have been especially affected as the country’s own currency, the real, has nearly doubled in value against the dollar since early 2003.

In a survey of 200 migrants who had recently returned to the Brazilian city of Governador Valadares, local sociologist Sueli Siqueira found that 28 per cent planned to migrate again but this time to Europe or Canada.

Mr Ratha argues that much of the recent increase in remittances in many countries has been due to efforts by migrant workers to protect the purchasing power of their families at home, in the face of inflation and local currency appreciation.

Stripping out the impact of local currency appreciation and local inflation, Mr Ratha found that, between 2004 and 2007, cash flows to the Philippines, India and Mexico – the three countries which, along with China, receive most remittances – increased by 3 per cent, 13 per cent and 19 per cent respectively, compared with increases in nominal dollar terms of 50 per cent, 44 per cent and 38 per cent.


Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

By Bob Ivry

April 4 (Bloomberg) -- Banks are so overwhelmed by the U.S. housing crisis they've started to look the other way when homeowners stop paying their
mortgages.

The number of borrowers at least 90 days late on their home loans rose to 3.6 percent at the end of December, the highest in at least five years, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington. That figure, for the first time, is almost double the 2 percent who have been foreclosed on.

Lenders who allow owners to stay in their homes are distorting the record foreclosure rate and delaying the worst of the housing decline, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, a unit of New York-based Moody's Corp. These borrowers will eventually push the number of delinquencies even higher and send more homes onto an already glutted market.

``We don't have a sense of the magnitude of what's really going on because the whole process is being delayed,'' Zandi said in an interview. ``Looking at the data, we see the problems, but they are probably measurably greater than we think.''

Lenders took an average of 61 days to foreclose on a property last year, up from 37 days in the year earlier, according to RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure database in Irvine, California. Sales of foreclosed homes rose 4.4 percent last year at the same time the supply of such homes more than doubled, according to LoanPerformance First American CoreLogic Inc., a real estate data company based in San Francisco.

Reluctant Banks
``Some people stay in their houses until someone comes to kick them out,'' said Angel Gutierrez, owner of Dallas-based Metro Lending, which buys distressed mortgage debt. ``Sometimes no one comes to kick them out.''

Banks are reluctant to foreclose on homeowners for a variety of reasons that include the cost, said Peter Zalewski, real estate broker and owner of Condo Vultures Realty LLC, a property consulting firm in Bal Harbour, Florida.

Legal fees and maintaining a vacant property while paying the mortgage, insurance and taxes can add up to as much as 15 percent of the value of the home, and it may take months for the foreclosure to work through the legal system, he said.

``The end result is taking back a property that the bank will have to manage, rent out and or sell,'' Zalewski said.

In many cases, lenders also have to foot the bill for fixing up vacant homes that have been vandalized.

Real estate broker Georgia Kapsalis is offering a home for sale in Birmingham, Michigan, a Detroit suburb, where the owner last wrote a mortgage check in July. He still lives in the house, she said.

Empty Houses
``Some of the banks just don't want the houses to be empty, especially if it's in an area where there's a lot of theft or there are five other houses empty on the street,'' said Kapsalis, who works at Added Value Realty LLC in Livonia, Michigan, another Detroit suburb. ``They'll lose toilets, plumbing, appliances, everything. Banks are getting wise and allowing people to live there longer.''

Alexis McGee, president of Internet database Foreclosures.com in Sacramento, California, said she toured a property where the departing resident tried to make off with the outdoor air conditioning unit by sawing the metal legs off its concrete apron.

``People take what they want to take,'' McGee said. ``They feel that they're owed.''

With home sales dropping and national inventories rising, the lenders have another reason to delay foreclosures, said Howard Fishman, a real estate investor based in Minneapolis.

``What are the banks going to do?'' Fishman said. ``They don't want the house. They have a mortgage for $1 million and the house is worth $750,000.''

Flooded Market
Five million existing homes were sold in February, down 31 percent from the peak of 7.25 million in September 2005, data compiled by the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors show. More than 4 million existing homes were on the market in February, 53 percent more than the 2.6 million average of the past nine years, the Realtors reported.

``Excess inventories pose the biggest risk to the market,'' Michelle Meyer and Ethan Harris, New York-based economists at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., wrote in a report last month. ``As long as inventories are high, home prices will fall.''

Growing inventory pulled median home prices down to $195,900 in February, a 15 percent drop from the peak of $230,200 in July 2006, the Realtors said.
The civil court in St. Lucie County, Florida, is getting about 44 foreclosure cases to file every day. That's the same number it averaged in a typical month in 2005, said Clerk of the Circuit Court Ed Fry.

`Moral Hazard'
``It's pretty overwhelming,'' he said.

Fry said he has 12 full-time employees and two temporary workers he just hired handling nothing but foreclosures. Still, the 50-page filings sit in cardboard boxes for three weeks before the court staff can process them, Fry said. Then it takes another two months to get a date on the court docket, he said.

Mortgage servicers, who collect monthly payments and are responsible for starting the foreclosure process, also were caught short-staffed, said Grant Stern, a mortgage broker and owner of Morningside Mortgage Corp. in Miami Beach, Florida.

``The most experienced people you can bring in are origination people,'' Stern said. ``But for a bank it's a moral hazard to have the same people who originated the loans now modifying those loans. That wouldn't be desirable. Once around is enough.''

Servicers Expand
The five largest servicers -- Countrywide Financial Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., CitiMortgage Inc., Chase Home Finance Inc. and Washington Mutual Inc. -- together manage more than half the home loans in the U.S., according to New York-based National Mortgage News, an industry publication.

While more than 100 mortgage originators have suspended operations, closed or sold themselves since the beginning of 2007, mortgage servicing units are expanding.

Chase Home Finance, a unit of New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the fourth-largest U.S. servicer, expects to spend $200 million more servicing loans in 2008 than it did last year, said spokesman Thomas Kelly.

Kelly wouldn't say how many Chase borrowers have quit paying their mortgages and remain in their homes.

Efforts to keep borrowers paying their bills have slowed the foreclosure process, Mark Rodgers, a spokesman at CitiMortgage, a division of New York-based Citigroup Inc., said in an e-mail message.

Delayed Foreclosure
``In a number of cases, we have delayed foreclosure proceedings to allow our loss mitigation teams additional time to explore potential solutions to keep distressed borrowers in their homes,'' Rodgers said.

Joe Ohayon, vice president of community relations for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage in Frederick, Maryland, a unit of San Francisco-based Wells Fargo, said trying to modify loan terms case by case adds time to the foreclosure process.

``Foreclosure is only a last resort after all available options for keeping the customer in the home have been exhausted,'' Ohayon said in an e-mail message.

Olivia Riley, a spokeswoman at Seattle-based Washington Mutual, said in an e-mail that the company's goal is to keep customers in their homes ``with payments they can afford.''

Representatives for Calabasas, California-based Countrywide, the biggest U.S. mortgage servicer last year, didn't respond to requests for comment.
Few mortgage companies will admit they allow homeowners to stay in their homes without paying their bills.

State Laws
``No servicer will say you can live rent-free for six months, go ahead,'' said Paul Miller, a mortgage industry analyst at Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co. in Arlington, Virginia. ``Eventually, the servicers will clear these guys out.''

Homeowners usually get 90 days to resume paying before foreclosure proceedings begin with the filing of a complaint or notice of non-payment.
State laws determine the length of time between the filing and an auction of the house. In most states, it's two to six months, according to Foreclosures.com. In Maine, it can be up to a year and in New York, 19 months; in Georgia, it's as quickly as one month, and in Nevada, it can be 35 days, according to the database.

Borrowers in California who fight foreclosure can stretch the process to 18 months, said Cameron Pannabecker, chapter president of the California Association of Mortgage Brokers and president of Cal-Pro Mortgage Inc. in Stockton.

That doesn't take into account the woman he knows who hasn't made a mortgage payment in eight months and hasn't heard from her lender, Pannabecker said.

``Now she's afraid to mail in a payment for fear it'll come to somebody's attention,'' he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Ivry in New York at [color=#0000ff][email protected][/color].
Last Updated: April 4, 2008 00:01 EDT

Yep, this smells like a classic reversal. Blood in the water, horrible data, doom and gloom, and bam we'll see +250k new jobs created

the question is only when?...not today,...i think it will be still bad, but better then expected...aprox 30k in red...who knows...i would be suprised if i see a plus...