Jay's Daily News

A thread a started a while back about economic news and events didn't fly. I suppose the "suit and tie" approach of the thread didn't suit the style of more than a few.

So this thread will be different. It's a place to talk, chew the fat, analyze and even jump on our soapboxes about current events. The main focus will be economic news, but that doesn't mean we can't have fun once in a while. Let's just keep in mind that we're around the water cooler and there are other people working.

I hope to be able to remove the thread permissions over the next couple weeks at the most.

For f@#k's sake, that idiot Barney Frank is at it again.

Fannie, Freddie asked to relax condo loan rules: report

(Reuters) - Two U.S. Democratic lawmakers want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to relax recently tightened standards for mortgages on new condominiums, saying they could threaten the viability of some developments and slow the housing-market recovery, the Wall Street Journal said...http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-H...55L39120090622

Barney, here's a tip for you. Relax lending standards is what got you into this mess to begin with!

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_SZc9hEspn3...nkingQueen.jpg

This is not the way I intended to begin this thread. That being said, we had to wave goodbye to two individuals who marked many and have forever influenced American culture. They will be missed. -Jay

May they rest in peace.

http://991.com/newGallery/Michael-Ja...ller-23672.jpg

Michael Jackson, 1958-2009



http://graneyandthepig.files.wordpre...cettposter.jpg

Farrah Fawcett, 1947-2009

got some news for you..from the other thread...i think it worth to put it here.



Dear Client:

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I think you're missing the point of this thread and the definition of "current events".

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive


By Tom Leonard in Flint, Michigan
Published: 6:30PM BST 12 Jun 2009

Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

Most are former industrial cities in the "rust belt" of America's Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.

"The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we're all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way," said Mr Kildee. "Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity."

Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley, said there was "both a cultural and political taboo" about admitting decline in America.

"Places like Flint have hit rock bottom. They're at the point where it's better to start knocking a lot of buildings down," she said.

Flint, sixty miles north of Detroit, was the original home of General Motors. The car giant once employed 79,000 local people but that figure has shrunk to around 8,000.

Unemployment is now approaching 20 per cent and the total population has almost halved to 110,000.

The exodus – particularly of young people – coupled with the consequent collapse in property prices, has left street after street in sections of the city almost entirely abandoned.

In the city centre, the once grand Durant Hotel – named after William Durant, GM's founder – is a symbol of the city's decline, said Mr Kildee. The large building has been empty since 1973, roughly when Flint's decline began.

Regarded as a model city in the motor industry's boom years, Flint may once again be emulated, though for very different reasons.

But Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained American cultural mindset that "big is good" and that cities should sprawl – Flint covers 34 square miles.

He said: "The obsession with growth is sadly a very American thing. Across the US, there's an assumption that all development is good, that if communities are growing they are successful. If they're shrinking, they're failing."

But some Flint dustcarts are collecting just one rubbish bag a week, roads are decaying, police are very understaffed and there were simply too few people to pay for services, he said.

If the city didn't downsize it will eventually go bankrupt, he added.

Flint's recovery efforts have been helped by a new state law passed a few years ago which allowed local governments to buy up empty properties very cheaply.

They could then knock them down or sell them on to owners who will occupy them. The city wants to specialise in health and education services, both areas which cannot easily be relocated abroad.

The local authority has restored the city's attractive but formerly deserted centre but has pulled down 1,100 abandoned homes in outlying areas.

Mr Kildee estimated another 3,000 needed to be demolished, although the city boundaries will remain the same.

Already, some streets peter out into woods or meadows, no trace remaining of the homes that once stood there.

Choosing which areas to knock down will be delicate but many of them were already obvious, he said.

The city is buying up houses in more affluent areas to offer people in neighbourhoods it wants to demolish. Nobody will be forced to move, said Mr Kildee.

"Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said.

Mr Kildee acknowledged that some fellow Americans considered his solution "defeatist" but he insisted it was "no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again".

GREATER INTERNATIONAL ROLE
China should buy gold as falling dollar hedge - China CP research

A senior China Communist Party researcher fears for future of dollar and says the country should buy gold, natural resources, U.S. Land and wants IMF's SDR reformed to give yuan a 20 percent share.

Author: Zhou Xin and Alan Wheatley
Posted: Thursday , 25 Jun 2009
BEIJING (Reuters) -

China should buy more gold because the dollar is poised for a fall and the metal is needed to support the greater international role envisaged for the yuan, a senior researcher with the ruling Communist Party said on Thursday.

Li Lianzhong, who heads the economic department of the Party's policy research office, said China should use more of its $1.95 trillion in foreign exchange reserves to buy energy and natural resource assets.

Speaking at a foreign exchange and gold forum, Li also said that buying land in the United States was a better option for China than buying U.S. Treasury securities.

"Should we buy gold or U.S. Treasuries?" Li asked. "The U.S. is printing dollars on a massive scale, and in view of that trend, according to the laws of economics, there is no doubt that the dollar will fall. So gold should be a better choice."

There is no suggestion that Li, even though he is a senior researcher, was enunciating an agreed party line.

However, a debate is swirling in China about how the country can reduce its exposure to the dollar and to U.S. assets in case America's ultra-loose fiscal and monetary policy rekindles inflation and erodes the value of the dollar and U.S. Treasuries.

To that end, China has said it will buy up to $50 billion worth of bonds denominated in Special Drawing Rights, the International Monetary Fund's unit of account, to be issued by the IMF.

Chinese companies, at Beijing's bidding, are also snapping up energy and commodity supplies around the globe to fuel its fast-growing growing economy.

Sinopec, China's largest oil refiner, agreed on Wednesday to buy Swiss oil explorer Addax Petroleum Corp (AXC.TO: Quote) for $7.24 billion in China's biggest overseas acquisition.

China disclosed on April 24 that it had increased its holdings of gold to 1,054 tonnes from 600 tonnes since 2003.

However, China's foreign exchange reserves have grown so fast over the same period that gold's share of the stockpile, the largest in the world, has shrunk.

Li cited the high share of gold in the foreign exchange reserves of the United States, Italy, Germany and France, to argue that China's gold holdings, which account for about 1.6 percent of its reserves, are too small.

REFORMING THE SDR

China does not disclose the composition of its currency reserves, but bankers assume around 70 percent of it is held in dollar assets.

China is the largest single holder of U.S. Treasuries, with $763.5 billion at the end of April, according to U.S. Treasury data.

Analysts say this data set understates the true number as it does not capture paper bought through dealers in London or elsewhere.

Li said a second reason for buying more gold would be in anticipation of the yuan one day becoming a reserve currency.

The yuan is not convertible on the capital account, meaning it cannot be freely traded for other currencies for financial transactions that are not related to trade.

This rules out the yuan's use as an international reserve currency, for central banks would not be able to convert it quickly if necessary.

But, in a very preliminary step towards that goal, China is paving the way for greater use of the yuan beyond its borders.

The People's Bank of China has arranged currency swap deals with six countries since December totalling 650 billion yuan ($95 billion) so that trade and investment with China can be conducted in yuan, not dollars.

And China will soon allow selected firms in the southern province of Guangdong that trade with Hong Kong to settle their transactions in yuan, or renminbi.

"If the yuan should go international or become a reserve currency, China needs more gold to back that," Li said.

When the yuan does become an international currency, which Li acknowledged was a long way off, he said the composition of the SDR should be reformed to include the Chinese currency.

Ideally, in the long term, the SDR would be made up of the dollar, euro, sterling and yen and yuan, each with a weighting of 20 percent, Li said.

The SDR is currently made up of the dollar (with a weighting of 44 percent), the euro (34 percent), the yen (11 percent) and sterling (11 percent)

The four currencies in the SDR, which must be convertible, are those issued by Fund members with the largest share of global trade. The weights assigned by the IMF are based on the value of exports and the amount of reserves denominated in those currencies.

The composition of the basket is reviewed every five years. the next review is due in 2010.

(Reporting by Zhou Xin and Alan Wheatley; Editing by Ken Wills)
Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved.

Citi Suspends Mortgage Apps Over Missing Documents; Questions Raised

Thursday, June 25, 2009 10:40

http://www.chartingstocks.net/wp-con...up-150x150.jpgCitigroup has suspended mortgage applications at a unit which produced nearly $58 billion (half of the their mortgage business) after the bank discovered that income verifications and property appraisals were ‘missing.’ Other missing information includes employment verifications, phone numbers, credit reports and rent verification.
In a letter to clients, Citigroup stated that the division has stopped accepting new loans on June 23rd and will resume operations on July 6th. The bank has not disclosed how many documents went missing.

“The suspension of correspondent lending is a bold step that may frustrate Citigroup’s mortgage-banking partners and put them on notice that the company will no longer tolerate incomplete loan submissions“, a mortgage consultant tells Bloomberg. He goes on to say that ““This is a positive sign of Citi’s commitment to correspondent channel…They want to improve their process, so they can remain an active player.”
Noticeably absent from the Bloomberg article, however, are critical questions- How can these documents be missing in the first place? Are we to assume that missing credit reports, appraisals, and rent verifications may have overstated the value of tens (or even hundreds) of billions of dollars in mortgage loans? Who owns these mortgages? If they remain on Citi’s balance sheet, can we trust their figures? If they are owned by investors, what were they rated? Have the rating agencies placed the securities on downgrade watch?

This is how you destroy a country, one bill at a time.

House narrowly passes major energy-climate bill

Why it's a bad idea is very simple. If an entrepreneur wants to open up a factory, he will need to go through even more red tape than he did before. Already OSHA and the EPA were no picnic, this is only making it worse.

That same entrepreneur has a choice to go across the Rio Grande or across the Pacific in China where he doesn't have to deal with this drivel, what do you think the choice will be? The patriotic environmentally friendly one or the path of least resistance?

Saw this and thought it a worthwhile addition to Xaron's post about China's Dollar options by Nouriel Roubini. Short excerpt follows...

...With the revision of the SDR basket (so far including only dollar, euro, yen and pound) coming to the table next year it is clear that the Chinese will push for including the renminbi in the new SDR basket. And senior Brazilian policy sources suggest in private that, if the RMB is included in the SDR, so should the Brazilian Real as there is already a much deeper bond market for Real debt and as - unlike China - Brazil has a more liberalized capital account.

And the Russians are now openly pushing for commodity currencies - the Canadian and Australian dollar but also the Ruble - to be included in the SDR basked. And the BRICs are on record pushing for the IMF to issue SDR denominated debt.

So the process that will lead - in the medium-long term - to a challenge of the US dollar as the major global reserve currency has started...

http://www.rgemonitor.com/roubini-mo...super_currency

Not related directly to the economy but news from your neck of the woods Jay, so I thought I'd post.

South to Boost Surgical Strike Capability Against North

By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter

The South Korean military plans to speed up efforts to deploy ground, air and naval weapons systems for use in strikes against key facilities in North Korea in the event of war, the Ministry of National Defense said Friday.

The plan is part of a revised version of a military modernization package. The ministry unveiled the revision of the Defense Reform 2020 initiative drawn up in 2005.

The updated plan is focused on securing independent capabilities to remove North Korea's asymmetrical military threat of nuclear and missile programs by deploying sophisticated surveillance, reconnaissance and striking assets.

In the case of an emergency, the military could conduct pre-emptive strikes against nuclear and missile facilities, an official at the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

``That depends on a decision by the leadership,'' the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

Under an integrated defense mechanism, the Air Force's multi-purpose satellite, early warning aircraft and high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles, along with a ground-based early warning radar, conduct surveillance and reconnaissance missions around the clock, according to the defense reform plan.

Once signs of unusual movement, such as missile and nuclear tests, are detected, F-15K and other advanced aircraft are to conduct surgical strikes against the relevant facilities, it says.

Both ship-based and ground-based interceptors are ready to shoot down missiles from the North, it says.

The military is considering the introduction of up-to-date SM-6 extended range active missiles, which are being developed by the U.S. Navy and Raytheon, the JCS official said.

The purchase of the PAC-3 missile interceptor system is also under consideration, he said.

The Army, for its part, will triple the number of its K-9 self-propelled howitzers and next-generation multiple launch rocket systems to counter attacks by North Korea's long-range artillery deployed near the border.

About 15 trillion won ($11.6 billion) will go towards producing and deploying about 1,000 K-9 and new multiple launch rocket systems by 2020, said the JCS official.

The North is believed to have about 1,100 long-range artillery systems, including 60-kilometer-range 240mm rocket launchers, along the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas.

Under the revised plan, the military has readjusted its target troop reduction number to 517,000. The original plan called for cutting the troop level from 690,000 to 500,000 by 2020.

For example, the military has decided to decrease the number of Marine force cuts from 4,000 to 3,200, in a bid to boost defense against North Korea's provocation in the volatile western waters.

The military has also decided to withdraw a plan to slash the number South Korean service members supporting the U.S. Army here, called Korean Augmentation Troops to the U.S. Army (KATUSA).

In an Army restructuring plan, five regional corps and two mechanized corps will be operated separately from three specialized commands for air operations, guided missiles and special operations.

The Capital Defense Command in Seoul will serve as the regional corps responsible for the defense of the capital area after merging with the Capital Defense Corps currently based in Gyeonggi Province.

The Army will maintain 28 divisions in peacetime. In case of an emergency, the number will increase to 38 with the reinforcement of reserved troops.

Jay... the Big Boys are reading your thread dude!!

I posted that link to the RGE Monitor artiicle 3 hrs ago, and this guy just posted the same link in the FF news section a half hour ago... can you negotiate us a Finders Fee or something?

http://www.forexfactory.com/news.php?do=news&id=178794


Attachment

You keep on doing a great job like this, you'll be Anderson Cooper's replacement

This is the first thread with it's own slogan. Jay's Daily News, providing the early scoop!

...the straight poop, stayin' in the loop, for those who like to snoop!

Were you a rapper in a past life?

I love it!

Word, yo!

BERNIE MADOFF SENTENCED TO 150 YEARS IN PRISON


Bernie Madoff was sentenced today to 150 years in prison for his $65 billion Ponzi scheme that wiped out the savings of thousands of investors.

Cheers and applause broke out in the courtroom after the judge read the sentence. full article==>

China Allows Trade Settlement in Yuan in Hong Kong

June 29 (Bloomberg) -- China approved use of yuan to settle cross-border trade with Hong Kong, part of a drive to broaden the use of the currency and reduce reliance on the U.S. dollar.

Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive Joseph Yam said he hopes the first transactions will start next month after signing an agreement with People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan at the city’s airport today. Zhou said the program would reduce foreign-exchange risks and transaction costs. full article==>

Swiss Banks Shun Americans as U.S. Compels Disclosure

June 29 (Bloomberg) -- Swiss banks are shutting the accounts of Americans as the U.S. Internal Revenue Service accelerates the hunt for tax dodgers.

UBS AG and Credit Suisse Group AG, the country’s biggest banks, have told Americans to move their money into specially created units registered in the U.S., or lose their accounts. Smaller private banks such as Geneva-based Mirabaud & Cie. are closing all accounts held by U.S. taxpayers. full article==>

$15.3M in gold missing from Royal Canadian Mint: Report


OTTAWA — There may have been a massive gold heist at the Royal Canadian Mint, an external audit has found.

The findings of the long-awaited audit, released Monday, conclude that $15.3 million in missing gold is not the result of accounting or bookkeeping errors, raising the distinct possibility it might have been stolen. (Duh, ya think?)

The Royal Canadian Mint says the precious metals seem to have vanished from its inventory in the 2008 fiscal year, according to the third-party review conducted by Deloitte and Touche. full article==>