LPS: 13.2% of mortgages delinquent or in foreclosure - DS NEWS
One in every 7.5 homeowners with a mortgage in the United States is either behind on their payments or in foreclosure, according to new data released by Lender Processing Services (LPS) Monday. That equates to a record high 13.2 percent of the nation’s home loans.
Commercial real estate is a train wreck, but it’s already happened – Jamie Dimon, MarketWatch
Investors specializing in distressed debt and foreign buyers have been attracted by the lower prices, which has helped refinancing activity. Deals often take the form of a recapitalization, in which the lenders become the equity holders, Dimon added.
Kenya fishermen see upside to pirates: more fish – Yahoo
“There is a lot of fish now, there is plenty of fish. There is more fish than people can actually use because the international fishermen have been scared away by the pirates,” said Athman Seif, the director of the Malindi Marine Association.
The New Year’s Guide of 10 Key Charts To See Before You Buy A Home - New Observations
New Money - Satyajit Das
The only lesson that central bankers and politicians have learned is that there is nothing wrong with a Ponzi scheme. It is just that you can’t allow the game to end. Present initiatives to arrest the problems are merely designed to prolong the game without addressing the root cause and imbalances.
KB Home posts profit for quarter - The Los Angeles Times
The company earned $100.7 million, or $1.31 a share, in the three months ended Nov. 30. That included a tax gain of $191.7 million. On a pretax basis, KB Home lost $91 million as it abandoned land contracts and wrote down the value of joint ventures and inventory. In the fourth quarter of 2008, the builder lost $307.3 million, or $3.96 a share.
Even in a Recovery, Some Jobs Won’t Return - The Wall Street Journal
Many of the jobs created by the booms in the housing and credit markets, for example, have likely been permanently erased by the subsequent bust.
“The tremendous amount of economic activity associated with housing, I can’t see that coming back,” says Harvard University economist Lawrence Katz. “That was a very unhealthy part of the economy.”
In China, fear of a real estate bubble – The Washington Post
Some economists and bankers fear that they have read this script before. In Japan at the end of the 1980s and in the United States in 2008, residential real estate bubbles ended in big crashes, battered banks and slow recoveries. With China acting as a key engine of global growth, a bursting of the Chinese real estate bubble could be a pop heard round the world.
New Grown-Up Monitor Allows Children To Listen In On Parents Crying – The Onion
“Whether Mommy’s crying all day because she didn’t marry the man she really loved or Daddy’s sobbing in bed because he just knows some 23-year-old hotshot is going to get that promotion he desperately needs, children can feel secure knowing that they’ll be able to hear every last emotional breakdown in full, crystal-clear detail.” While the ParentCom is currently available only as an audio system, a new model with a video component allowing children to observe their parents sitting far apart in the living room and quietly seething is expected to be released next summer.
Revisiting Predictions Before the Bubble
