Who Will Struggle in 2011

Will The Housing Market Continue To Decline?
. The quick answer to the headline of this article seems to be yes. The volume of housing that is in Mortgage trouble is rising as prices drop in vulnerable markets around the country. There isn't a sufficient floor of buyers in those markets to stop further declines and Foreclosure sales that appear to be on the horizon. It depends on the market. For example, the recent Case-Shiller 20 cities report shows that coastal California has had a positive trend: Los Angeles +4.4%; San Diego +5.0%, and ...

Stop panicking over muni defaults!
Meredith Whitney is raising the alarm on the fiscal imbalances at the state and municipal level, which is sending muni bond investors into a panic. But the fear of sweeping defaults is far overblown. Meredith Whitney sees doomsday ahead. In the past two months, the $2.8 Trillion municipal Bond Market has gone from being one of the most boring and predictable markets to one of the most volatile and talked about – it even made it onto 60 Minutes this week. But the recent selloff in this nor...

Economy Grew Modestly In Third Quarter
The economy grew at a moderate pace last summer, reflecting stronger spending by businesses to replenish stockpiles. More recent barometers suggest The Economy is gaining momentum in the final months of the year. Gross domestic product increased at a 2.6 percent annual rate in the July-September quarter, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. That's up from the 2.5 percent pace estimated a month ago. While businesses spent more to build inventories, consumers ended up spending a bit less. M...

Economy grew modestly in July-September quarter
The economy grew at a moderate pace last summer, reflecting stronger spending by businesses to replenish stockpiles. More recent barometers suggest The Economy is gaining momentum in the final months of the year. Gross domestic product increased at a 2.6 percent annual rate in the July-September quarter, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. That's up from the 2.5 percent pace estimated a month ago. While businesses spent more to build inventories, consumers ended up spending a bit less. M...

Economy grew modestly in July-September quarter
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Economy grew at a moderate pace last summer, reflecting stronger spending by businesses to replenish stockpiles. More recent barometers suggest the economy is gaining momentum in the final months of the year. Gross domestic product increased at a 2.6 percent annual rate in the July-September quarter, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. That’s up from the 2.5 percent pace estimated a month ago. While businesses spent more to build inventories, consumers e...

Economy grew modestly in July-September quarter
(12-22) 07:28 PST WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Economy grew at a moderate pace last summer, reflecting stronger spending by businesses to replenish stockpiles. More recent barometers suggest the economy is gaining momentum in the final months of the year. Gross domestic product increased at a 2.6 percent annual rate in the July-September quarter, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. That's up from the 2.5 percent pace estimated a month ago. While businesses spent more to build inventories, co...

Change Has Come to Congress
The advocates of Big Government are now singing a different tune. A new Congress begins two weeks from today, and if the American People sense that change is coming, they’re right. We got a preview last week when the president signed a bill that extends current income-tax rates for the next two years. After insisting for the past two years that the best way to help The Economy was to send Trillions of dollars to Bureaucrats in Washington, here was the president praising a Tax Cut that, as...

Japan's export growth sees boost in November
However, the November figure missed expectations for a 10.8 percent rise in a poll of Economists by Dow Jones Newswires. Analysts said the Japanese Economy remains locked in a trend of shrinking exports due to a stronger yen, which makes Japanese products more expensive in overseas markets, and expectations that overseas demand will weaken. "Japan's exports are slowing, a trend that remains the same," said Taro Saito, senior economist at NLI Research Institute. "The Economy continues to be press...

Congress freezes federal pay
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- It's official: Federal workers won't be getting a pay increase for the next two years, despite the best efforts of the unions that represent them. First proposed by President Obama three weeks ago, the freeze required the approval of Congress. On Tuesday, both chambers passed a short-term Budget fix that included the pay freeze. Email Print Comment Once President Obama signs that bill, it's a done deal. And federal workers are none too happy. "We are suffering th...

2011's Warning Signs: Europe and the Housing Market
Here's a nice printable resource for casual observers of the US economy: 10 Economic Questions for 2011, from the Housing Market, to State Government hiring, to the European Debt crisis. My read is that everything seems to be getting better, slowly, except in two categories: anything having to do with Europe's finances and almost everything having to do with our housing market. So these are important questions: 1) House Prices: How much further will house prices fall on the national repeat sales...

San Francisco Fed Offers Sympathy to Pre-Crisis Mortgage Lenders
By Michael S. Derby Mortgage lenders may deserve more sympathy for their performance in the years leading up to the Financial Crisis than they now get credit for, new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco argues. Bank Economist John Krainer , with Visiting Scholar Stephen LeRoy , argue in a note Monday that even though the market ended up blowing up, mortgage lenders had rationally priced in what was understood about Housing Market risk at the time they wrote the loans. That&#...

Home sales rise 5.6% in November
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Existing Home Sales picked up steam in November, though they are still down nearly 30% from this time last year. Sales of previously-owned homes jumped 5.6% in November to an annual rate of 4.68 million, the National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday. The rate was down 27.9% from 12 months earlier, when a homebuyer Tax Credit helped lift sales to a two-year high of 6.49 million. Email Print Comment The report came in slightly better than expected. A consensu...

When fat cats talk
Charles Gasparino It took continued 9-plus percent Unemployment, falling Approval Ratings and a "shellacking" in the November Elections, but President Obama finally appears to understand that he actually needs at least some of those fat cats in the business community, if he's going to fix The Economy anytime soon. At least that was the feeling to come out of a private dinner this month, where two key Obama advisers met with 20 or so top business leaders. The meeting was at the swank Manhatta...

Student loans leave crushing debt burden
The cost of a College Education is rising faster than the cost of medical care and as much as three times as fast as consumer prices in general. But that's just the beginning of the price of admission. This is the story of a Debt crisis few are talking about. Americans now owe more on their Student Loans than they do on their Credit Cards — a Debt fast approaching $1 Trillion with no end in sight. Students borrow because they see little choice. A college education, after all, is a key to ...

Oracles can be wrong
Well, between now and the close of the year all of our intellectual and insightful prognosticators will once again share their fortunetelling for 2011 and beyond. Prepare yourself for their well-thought-out social, economic and global predictions for our nation and abroad. The invention of science and statistics has replaced old-school fortunetelling in very insidious ways. Now, while careful to disclaim — past performance is no guarantee of future results — hucksters of all sorts try to s...

Recession trims Census count in final stretch
If highfliers such as Nevada and Arizona had not been battered by a troubled economy and the collapse of the Housing Market, the 2010 Census population counts released Tuesday might have been very different for the whole country. The U.S. population totals 308.7 million, up 9.7% since 2000, the Census Bureau announced Tuesday. "How big could it have been if we had kept going?" asked Robert Lang, a demographer and planning expert at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. "Without the Recession, we'd...

Home loan demand drops, lowest in nearly 1 year
By Julie Haviv NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mortgage applications tumbled to their Lowest Level in nearly a year as a six-week-long rise in Interest Rates took a significant toll on demand, an industry group said on Wednesday. The Mortgage Bankers... Has QE2 worked? NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mortgage applications tumbled to their Lowest Level in nearly a year as a six-week-long rise in Interest Rates took a significant toll on demand, an industry group said on Wednesday. The Mortgage Bankers Association on...

Group calls for national mortgage servicing standards
A group of 52 academics and investment professionals are pressing federal Regulators to adopt national Mortgage servicing standards as soon as possible. Controversy over problems in Mortgage documentation now emerging in Foreclosure proceedings is threatening recovery in the Housing Market and the nation's entire economy, according to the authors of the letter, which was sent to federal financial regulators. "The chaotic situation in the Mortgage market today demands immediate action to ensure...

Wells Fargo agrees to modify California ARM loans
Wells Fargo Bank has agreed to make $2 billion in loan modifications for California Homeowners with risky pay-option, adjustable-rate Mortgages that Wells purchased from other banks, and to pay $32 million to 15,000 borrowers who had similar loans and lost their homes to Foreclosure, according to an agreement with the California Attorney General's office. "Customers were offered adjustable-rate loans with payments that mushroomed to amounts that ultimately thousands of borrowers could not aff...

Home loan demand drops, lowest in nearly 1 year
By Julie Haviv NEW YORK | Wed Dec 22, 2010 7:01am EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mortgage applications tumbled to their Lowest Level in nearly a year as a six-week-long rise in Interest Rates took a significant toll on demand, an industry group said on Wednesday. The Mortgage Bankers Association on Wednesday said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage applications, which includes both purchase and refinance loans, for the week ended December 17 decreased 18.6 percent, reaching its Lowest Level s...

UK economic growth revised down
The UK economy grew less than previously estimated between July and September, revised figures have shown. It blamed the revisions on weaker growth in the construction, business services and Manufacturing sectors. The latest official figures are likely to increase concerns that the rate of Economic Growth will slow further in 2011 as a result of the impact of the government's £85bn Spending Cuts, and VAT rising to 20% from 17.5% on 4 January. A number of organisations have already rece...

China aims to improve trade balance in 2011
Beijing | Wed Dec 22, 2010 4:00am EST Beijing (Reuters) - China will try to import more in 2011 while keeping exports steady, Commerce Minister Chen Deming said on Wednesday, in a sign that the world's second-largest economy is keen to pull more weight as a consumer. In a statement on the ministry's website www.mofcom.gov.cn, Chen said China wants to better balance its trade account, and will step up purchases of high-tech goods and commodities such as grains and cotton next year. "We will im...

Berlusconi Cites Debt Crisis in Fight to Survive: Euro Credit
Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Silvio Berlusconi’s fight for his political life enters its final round today with the Italian premier using the European Debt crisis as a shield. “We could become targets of international speculators like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, a tragic risk with disastrous consequences,” Berlusconi told supporters in Naples on Dec. 5. “The Ratings agencies have confirmed our top rating but have said that it’s conditional on maintaining political stabi...

Congress clears federal spending budget
WASHINGTON — The US Congress approved a temporary spending bill that will fund the Federal Government for another 10 weeks through March 4 in order to avoid a government shutdown. The Senate adopted the stopgap measure 79-16 followed by the House of Representatives 193 to 165 before the continuing resolution -- a law funding the Federal Government -- was set to expire Tuesday at midnight. President Barack Obama must now sign the bill into law. It freezes the Budgets of government agencies ...

House OKs Tax Package; No BABs
WASHINGTON — House members on Thursday night voted 277 to 148 to approve an $858 billion tax package that contains few bond-related provisions and no extensions of the Build America Bond program or the increased small issuer limit for bank-qualified bonds, both of which expire Dec. 31. The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which garnered a surprising number of votes from Democrats, many of whom had complained about the tax benefits the bill w...