After beating up on the brokers, let’s give them a rest and bash the greenbacks!
Well, a report from Credit Suisse may do that for us. When the firm sat down with Giles Keating, the head of Credit Suisse Global Economics and Strategy Group, he noted that the dollar would be the first victim of the global economy’s recovery.
So, does that mean we’re recovering? Keating thinks so, even though he states that the resurgence is starting from a very low base and that we still have lots of unused capacity and high unemployment.
He points to the investors who were left behind by the initial pick-up in the stock market and their eagerness to put their money back to work, and he notes that policy makers have signaled that they would maintain a “very expansive economic policy” that will... more»
According to a report in MarketWatch, Genworth Financial is selling common stock to raise roughly $500m in new capital.
We say good luck to Genworth (GNW: 11.01 -1.08%) and hope brokers trying to sell the stock don’t cross paths with pop burlesque princess Lady Gaga. The artist recently told BBC Radio One that she is most driven to succeed in order to impress her father; and then sang a piano-only rendition of her hit Poker Face (not forgetting the line where she claims to be ‘bluffin’ with her muffin’).”
Certainly it’s catchy stuff. And now it’s bleeding over to brokers, with this latest version coming to us from a Wall Street insider:
Broker Face (sung to Poker Face - Lady Gaga)
I want to trade ‘em like they did... more»
An independent filmmaker posing as a pimp and an associate posing as a prostitute used undercover camera equipment to film ACORN Housing employees in Baltimore allegedly explaining how to obtain a mortgage to purchase a home to start a brothel, including lying to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
ACORN calls the entire incident a smear campaign, with the video being an unfair representation.
The video appears to show two ACORN Housing employees explaining how the “pimp” and “prostitute,” respectively played by filmmaker James O’Keefe and his associate, Hannah Giles, may falsify tax returns to satisfy lending requirements. When the duo tells the ACORN Housing employees they intend to bring underage girls from out of the country to staff the brothel, they are seen to encourage the... more»
Seven months after President Obama signed the Recovery Act in February with the promise of a transparent injection of nearly $800bn into the economy, we’re finally finding some clarity.
And the first celebration of local stimulus success comes not from California, where IOU’s are becoming currency, and not from Arizona, where the foreclosure pile continues to grow, or from Detroit, where unemployment plagues every street corner.
The news comes from Hollybrook Farms, a 124-unit affordable apartment community in Laurel, Delaware.
Last week, Delaware Governor Jack Markell and US Senator Tom Carper gathered with dozens of others to celebrate the rescued apartment project.
Hollybrook Farms received a combination of public and private funding last year to renovate the aging community, but in... more»
Homebuilder Hovnanian Enterprises announced a new marketing campaign that uses recent signs the economy may be recovering to encourage consumers to act on the notion that now’s the time to buy before prices return to normal.
Hovnanian’s “Pounce Before the Bounce” campaign was announced Thursday during a conference call detailing the builder’s fiscal third quarter results. (The company said it lost $168.9m, an improvement over the $202.5m loss one-year prior.)
The campaign is an interesting strategy on Hovnanian’s part, especially given that many industry observers believe this summer’s price increases are only a blip on the radar, and prices could go down when more REO properties — those stalled by the myriad foreclosure moratoria that are now winding down across the country... more»
Viral video or not, the grand prize-winning YouTube video will earn its maker a check for $9,000 or roughly three months of mortgage payments.
Building product manufacturer James Hardie Building Products (JHX: 33.836 +0.79%) unveiled a new contest for consumers of its exterior home siding.
James Hardie asks contestants to submit a YouTube video no more than three minutes long, showing the front-facing exterior of their home and completing the statement, “I love my Hardie home because….”
The contest runs through October 26 and will grant the winner “three months of mortgage payments,” according to a press release, to be awarded as a check for $9,000.
“The idea grew from the company’s participation in social media,”... more»
In a world where Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans are processed without meeting all government verification requirements, a group of aliens come to planet Earth to save originators from themselves. Equipped with fraud detection software, the aliens keep the bad loans out and get good loans processed.
Sound like a nail-biting drama? It’s the plot to one of a series of videos Interthinx posted on YouTube to promote its fraud detection services. The videos take footage from old movies and dub them with new scripts to fit a number of FHA-centered storylines.
The four films are “Attack of the FHA Loan Files,” “Evasion of the FHA Vampire,” “The FHA Affair,” and “The Courtship of Donald’s Sister.”
Obviously, we’re not talking about Oscar-worthy cinematography here,... more»
During the course of my exploration of non-profit housing counseling groups, the efforts of which you can read about in the September edition of HousingWire, I learned a lot about the strategies of groups like the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN), its affiliate group ACORN Housing, the National Urban League (NUL), the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR).
I also learned about where these organizations hope to place their efforts as the country continues to navigate the recession.
Many readers have written in with strong opinions about these groups. A lawyer from Idaho called ACORN a “criminal enterprise” in response to a online story about the group’s protesting efforts.
It got me wondering what... more»
Auctioneer Williams and Williams is making television interactive.
The Tulsa, Okla.-based real estate auction house will auction 70 homes during a live television program on the ION Television network. The “absolute” auction means there are no price reserves on the homes and the highest bidder will be awarded the property.
“An ‘absolute’ auction provides the most transparent buying experience and gives bidders confidence that the high bidder will be the winner,” Williams & Williams president and chief operating officer Pamela McKissick said in a statement.
Homes from Ohio, Florida, Missouri, Indiana, Arizona and other states will be on the auction block. The auction will also be broadcast on the Internet, and viewers can join the prospective buyers at the auction by bidding... more»
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency this week announced an upcoming round of workshops for community bank directors in Charlottesville, Va.
The workshops aim to “expand directors’ skills and understanding of issues facing their banks” and cover topics like risk assessment and credit risk, according to a media statement.
It seems only natural that regulators like the OCC would host workshop events to address the troubles facing community banks. There may be no better time (except, perhaps, for four years ago before the height of the housing bubble) to educate community banks on risk assessment than when they seem to drop like flies every Friday with a new batch of bank failures.
The workshops might proactively prevent bank failures by educating directors. They come... more»
