Implode-Explode Heavy Industries news feed

IMF Begins Distancing Itself From Neoliberalism

Tue, 31 May 2016 17:26:53 GMT

``The results, the IMF researchers concede, have been terrible. Neoliberalism hasn't delivered economic growth -- it has only made a few people a lot better off. It causes epic crashes that leave behind human wreckage and cost billions to clean up... From the 1980s the policymaking elite has waved away the notion that they were acting ideologically -- merely doing "what works". But you can only get away with that claim if what you're doing is actually working. Since the crash, central bankers, politicians and TV correspondents have tried to reassure the public that this wheeze or those billions would do the trick and put the economy right again. They have riffled through every page in the textbook and beyond -- bank bailouts, spending cuts, wage freezes, pumping billions into financial markets -- and still growth remains anaemic.'' -- It's not just bailouts and definitely not about "free markets"; the problem lies in centralize money and banking, crony capitalism, and decidedly-unfree chimera markets that prop themselves up using the machinery (and influence) of the state. But, mere details...

Piggy bank raiders: half of parents dip into children's savings (UK)

Mon, 02 May 2016 14:57:27 GMT

``Some 46% of parents of children aged between four and 16 years old said they have taken money from their child's savings, a survey by Nationwide Building Society has found. The average amount taken over the past year was £21.41, while one in 10 parents had taken £50 or more during that period.''

Drvenkar Custom Homes / Tex Best Custom Builders files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy

Fri, 22 Apr 2016 21:15:56 GMT

``Drvenkar Custom Homes LLC -- a homebuilder based in Huffman, Texas, northeast of Houston -- filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on March 25 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston, according to public records.... Drvenkar Custom Homes' bankruptcy filing includes a list of nearly 50 creditors, including homeowners, construction vendors and banks... The homebuilder -- which also went by Tex Best Custom Builders, according to the bankruptcy filing -- also re-roofed and redesigned homes, remodeling kitchens and bathrooms and adding covered porches, according to the company's website.''

W.J. Bradley Mortgage Capital permanently closes down

Wed, 16 Mar 2016 13:56:08 GMT

``Orderly wind-down? Maybe not. According to the Rob Chrisman report on Mortgage News Daily, employees were told not to show up for work on Monday.''

Why doesn't America's "4.9%" unemployment rate feel great?

Sun, 07 Feb 2016 21:04:27 GMT

``During the worst of the Great Recession, 6.8 million people were long-term unemployed. So there's been improvement, but there are still roughly double the number of long-term unemployed than in normal times... [and] wage growth is only 2.5% a year. As Sharon Stark of D.A. Davidson notes, normally when unemployment is this low, wage growth should be humming along at about 4% a year.''

Global Earnings Downgrades Haven't Been This Bad in Seven Years

Sat, 16 Jan 2016 21:40:20 GMT

``Stocks are losing their last line of defense. Amid a selloff that erased more than two years of gains -- about $14 trillion -- from global stocks now on the brink of a bear market, at least earnings stood as a potential bright spot. Those hopes are fading: analyst profit downgrades outnumbered upgrades by the most since 2009 last week, according to monthly data from a Citigroup Inc. index that tracks such changes.''

IMF: keep interest rates low or risk another crash

Sun, 11 Oct 2015 14:37:37 GMT

``The International Monetary Fund concluded its annual meeting in Lima with a warning to central bankers that the world economy risks another crash unless they continue to support growth with low interest rates. ''

Is The Price Of Gold Really Headed To $20,000?

Thu, 13 Aug 2015 12:28:21 GMT

``There is a massive chasm between the Fed's balance sheet and today's gold price. This is one of the many reasons the gold price is set for a historic upside surge (see chart below).''

The Austrian Black Swan Claims Its First Foreign Casualty: German Duesselhyp Collapses, To Be Bailed Out

Mon, 16 Mar 2015 18:26:50 GMT

``Because if a 1.5% write down in the assets of a supposedly well-capitalized German bank can lead to almost overnight insolvency, one can almost imagine what will happen when the Austrian black swan wave reaches Europe's actually "undercapitalized" banks...''

Greek currency crisis calls for controlled exit

Mon, 16 Mar 2015 14:00:45 GMT

``A preparation for Grexit is not about a Plan B in the top drawer. It means a pre-agreed sequence of actions ready to be implemented. A changeover of a currency regime within a short period of time constitutes an organisational and logistical challenge that goes beyond anything normal states ever do... the conclusion is inevitable: the best way to avoid a Grexident is to prepare for a Grexit. ''

Creditors Face Losses as Austria Halts Hypo Alpe Support

Mon, 02 Mar 2015 14:24:53 GMT

Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International AG creditors face losses after the Austrian government ruled out providing fresh capital and put the failed lender into resolution.
After 5.5 billion euros ($6.2 billion) of taxpayer money was injected into Hypo Alpe over five years, Chancellor Werner Faymann's administration decided on March 1 to stop supporting Hypo Alpe's bad bank, Heta Asset Resolution AG, when it was told Heta may need another 7.6 billion euros.

Doral Financial in Puerto Rico Is (FINALLY) Shut Down by Regulators

Sun, 01 Mar 2015 21:10:59 GMT

``Doral Financial, the troubled Puerto Rico bank that was once a darling of Wall Street before becoming known as a political pariah on the island, has been shut down by banking regulators. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation expects to lose about $748.9 million from Doral's collapse, making it the most costly bank failure since April 2010, when another Puerto Rican bank collapsed.''

Swiss Franc Wiped Out Everest's Main Fund

Tue, 20 Jan 2015 14:02:48 GMT

``Marko Dimitrijevic, the hedge fund manager who survived at least five emerging market debt crises, is closing his largest hedge fund after losing virtually all its money this week when the Swiss National Bank unexpectedly let the franc trade freely against the euro, according to a person familiar with the firm. Everest Capital's Global Fund had about $830 million in assets as of the end of December, according to a client report.''

Ukraine's electricity crisis deepens as a plan to import South African coal collapses

Sun, 07 Dec 2014 14:20:50 GMT

``Ukraine's fuel crisis has deepened after a deal to buy South African coal collapsed. The head of a Ukrainian state energy firm has been arrested on suspicion of embezzlement in relation to the deal.''

U.S. housing starts fall 2.8% in October

Wed, 19 Nov 2014 17:23:44 GMT

``Construction started on new U.S. homes fell 2.8% in October, led down by volatile apartment building, according to government data released Wednesday. The annual rate of total housing starts declined to 1.01 million last month from 1.04 million in September, the U.S. Commerce Department reported. The October starts rate in buildings with at least five units dropped 15.5%. Meanwhile, construction starts for single-family homes rose 4.2% to hit the highest pace since November 2013. Economists polled by MarketWatch had expected an overall October starts rate of 1.03 million, compared with an originally estimated pace of 1.02 million in September''

Russia May Go For Its Own Space Station, Walk From ISS

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 16:04:41 GMT

``The Russian space agency is reportedly considering construction of a high-altitude orbital station starting from 2017. This means that Moscow may walk away from the ISS after 2020, when its obligations under the current project are fulfilled.'' -- Seems much more in Russia's interest to have a station orbiting over its own territory and the arctic, actually...

BofA Reportedly Cutting Back 1000 Jobs in Mtg Fulfillment; Adding To Loss Mit

Fri, 10 Oct 2014 02:02:37 GMT

This just in from a reader:

BOA just shut down all fulfillment jobs (over 1000) in Jacksonville FL site and announced a majority of us will be converted to loss mit. As a DE underwriter, I am patiently waiting to see if they pay my salary to be a Hamp Underwriter. This shows the economy is sucking, Hamp was ended 2 years ago, and now it is panic mode at Bank of America.

The economy is still in the toilet, you say? We are shocked... SHOCKED...

Doug Noland: What We Know

Sat, 27 Sep 2014 13:56:47 GMT

``Heightened global market instability has began to be transmitted to U.S. securities markets... We can safely assume that the $10bn of uncovered fraud in the commodities financing area is the tip of the iceberg. I feel comfortable with my assumption that the financial world has never seen fraud and malfeasance to the extent that has manifested throughout China over the past decade, particularly during the post-crisis stimulus fiasco.''

Welcome to the Everything Boom, or Maybe the Everything Bubble

Wed, 09 Jul 2014 14:17:25 GMT

Welcome to the Everything Boom -- and, quite possibly, the Everything Bubble. Around the world, nearly every asset class is expensive by historical standards. Stocks and bonds; emerging markets and advanced economies; urban office towers and Iowa farmland; you name it, and it is trading at prices that are high by historical standards relative to fundamentals. The inverse of that is relatively low returns for investors.
...
Prefer a more solid asset? The price of office and apartment building has risen similarly; office space in central business districts nationwide costs $300 per square foot on average, up from $147 in early 2010, according to Real Capital Analytics. In Manhattan, an investor in an office building can expect rent payments after expenses to add up to only a 4.4 percent return, known as the capitalization rate, lower than even in 2007, the top of the last boom.

New Year's Eve Gold Rush At Shanghai Shopping Mall

Wed, 01 Jan 2014 18:36:51 GMT

``Total sales at the shopping mall were 578 million RMB, a little less than 100 million dollars. 200 kilos of gold bars is already 10% of the total. So 200 kilos of gold bars and gold jewelry and diamond, and luxury watch sales make up a big percentage of total sales. This is just one shopping mall in a city of 30 million people. And Shanghai is just one city in a country of 1.4 billion people. ''