House Prices Drop US/UK Housing Crash? Subprime Bubble

Telegraph.co.uk: Interest rates cuts: Interest rates need to fall to 1pc to kick-start housing market Housing experts today warned that The Bank of England needs to cut interest rates further to 1pc in order to get the housing and mortgage markets back on track.

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Original post by v stor

Telegraph: Banks pull most generous mortgage deals, despite pleas from Gordon Brown Britain’s biggest banks have pulled their most generous mortgage deals for new customers, as tensions mounted between the Treasury and the lenders about passing on the benefit of the lowest interest rates for more than 50 years.

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Original post by flintster1994

Times: The mechanism’s broken, rate cuts won’t fix it Buried at the end of the article: “Some [banks] are facing a sharp rise in bad debts, particularly those, such as HBOS, that have a big exposure to commercial property. It is widely reported that commercial property values have fallen by 20 per cent over the past year, but NB Real Estate, the property agency, says that, based on recent deals, the figure is nearer 30 to 35 per cent. This makes banks concerned about new lending because they fear that they will find themselves falling below the level of capital required [by the government]. The banks are arguing that capital levels should be allowed to fall at this stage of the cycle.” — Commercial property prices are ahead of residential, so we can soon expect house price falls of *at least* 30-35%.

Original post by drewster

The Local - Germany’s News in English: ECB slashes eurozone interest rates The European Central Bank (ECB) on Thursday cut its main interest rate by a surprisingly hefty 75 basis points to 2.50 percent in an attempt to boost the flagging eurozone economy.
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The move to lower borrowing costs for Germany and the other eurozone countries came as Europe’s monetary authorities remained concerned about the impact of the global financial crisis. via sott - http://www.sott.net/articles/show/170156-ECB-slashes-eurozone-interest-rates

Original post by malct

This is London via SOTT: UK: City financier threw himself under a train as the credit crunch worsened The wife of a City financier who threw himself under a train as the credit crunch worsened has told how he talked about killing himself days earlier.
Multi-millionaire Kirk Stephenson, 47, was a £330,000-a-year chief operating officer of Chelsea-based Olivant Advisors which had a £1billion stake in Swiss baking giant UBS.
But as the global financial crisis deepened, Mr Stephenson became gripped by fear of its impact on the business and his financial status, an inquest into his death heard yesterday. After leaving his £3.6 million Chelsea home, which he shared with his wife Karina Robinson and their eight-year-old son, Mr Stephenson drove his Mercedes to Taplow station in Buckinghamshire, a notorious suicide spot.

Original post by malct

Newsbiscuit: Government to provide fund-managers with attractive girlfriends to boost confidence Alistair Darling has unveiled a radical new package to boost investor confidence in which all the men working in senior positions in the stock market will be provided with beautiful women who pretend to really fancy them.
‘Confidence amongst City Bankers is at an all time low’ explained the Chancellor. ‘But our research shows that when attractive young blondes laugh at their jokes and tell them how clever they are, traders begin to feel better and share prices rise.’
sorry, thought we all needed a laugh after the train story

Original post by malct

Mecury News Silicon Valley via SOTT: Adobe to cut 600 jobs, report lower fourth-quarter revenue On the heels of other tech company layoffs, Adobe Systems said Wednesday that it will cut 600 jobs — or about 8 percent of its workforce — because of the global economic downturn and slow demand for one of its flagship software products.
Adobe declined to provide details on how the layoffs announced Wednesday will be implemented but said it expects the cuts to result in one-time restructuring charges of $44 million to $50 million. Several other Silicon Valley companies, including Sun Microsystems, Applied Materials, Yahoo and eBay have announced layoffs in recent weeks.

Original post by malct

Delicious with red wine, but HEARTBURN IS POSSIBLE! [1]

I don’t have the heart for anything but humour and bad puns today.  However, the "grownups" are all in deadly earnest.  Bob Rae called Harper’s address Nixonian.  CBC’s talking heads dismissed Dion’s as YouTube’ish (it is now )  American Doomers please watch this carefully.  Harper just won the latest round but the game is not over.  Look here to start exploring this in more detail.  Economically and in many other ways this stuff is going to be high-impact on America too.

[1]: "GG agrees to suspend Parliament: Harper — Meeting gives Tories reprieve from possible no-confidence vote Monday", CBC, December 4, 2008.
Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean has granted a request from Stephen Harper to suspend Parliament until late next month, the prime minister announced on Thursday, a move that avoids a confidence vote set for Monday that could have toppled his minority government.
"Following […]

Original post by John M.

contract journal: House builders themselves driving prices down, says Bellway Bellway has slammed rival house builders for driving prices down with the excessive use of sales incentives.

Original post by mark

University of Maryland: This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of. Financial Crises “Unprecedented” and “historic” seem to crop up everywhere in the media. But is this really the case? This study shows the opposite. “We find that serial default is a nearly universal phenomenon as countries transform themselves from emerging markets to advanced economies. Major default episodes are typically spaced some years (or decades) apart, creating an illusion that “this time is different”. A recent example of this is the false belief that domestic debt is a novel feature of the modern financial landscape. We also confirm that crises frequently emanate from financial centres with transmission through interest rate shocks and commodity price collapses. Thus, the recent US sub-prime financial crisis is hardly unique.”

Original post by mountain goat