The Residential Real Estate Post-Crash Index-MODERATED

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To: Giordano Bruno who wrote (68315)	5/30/2012 5:21:48 PM
From: ggersh	3 Recommendations of 91162

As Greece goes, so goes the world 30 May 2012 Freedom in Europe Is Eroding From the Edges, Financed by the Banks "Greece is not an exception. It is one of the main testing grounds for a new socio-economic model of potentially unlimited application: a depoliticised technocracy in which bankers and other experts are allowed to demolish democracy." Slavoj Žižek "Corruption is a tree, whose branches are of an immeasurable length: they spread everywhere; and the dew that drops from thence hath infected some chairs and stools of authority." Beaumont and Fletcher, The Honest Man's Fortune This is a fascinating perspective on the financial situation in Europe from Slavoj Žižek which appeared in a recent edition of the London Review of Books. It reads like a modern variation of an age old script with dollars and bankers replacing bullets and shock troops, at least for now. The role of Goldman Sachs and some of the other banks, with their attendant politicians who are in many cases now their direct representatives in the erosion of freedom in Europe, is fascinating to watch, in the manner of a train wreck in slow motion. The monied interests are putting forward their own agendas and candidates while maintaining the charade of popular government, goose-stepping to the tune of financial expediency and the 'iron law of oligarchy' that helped to spawn the cult of the Übermensch at the beginning of the twentieth century. The counter example is Iceland, and at an earlier period Sweden, which took a different course of action with their banks, direct confrontation and resolution of crony capitalism and the debt trap, rather than accomodation and appeasement. The US and UK are little better off, having established a temporary equilibrium in which the monied interests are consolidating their gains. How else can one explain the lack of investigations and prosecutions of financial frauds, that become increasingly blatant and brazen, while the national economy continues to stagnate under the burden of crony capitalism and the most powerful political agenda is more tax cuts and sinecures for the super rich? And freedom continues to be assaulted and deconstructed in the name of the endless war on terror. At some point the people will make a stand, and the Banks will make them an offer which they think that they cannot refuse. This is playing out now in Greece, and is coming to a country near you. London Review of Books Save us from the saviours By Slavoj Žižek 25 May 2012 Imagine a scene from a dystopian movie that depicts our society in the near future. Uniformed guards patrol half-empty downtown streets at night, on the prowl for immigrants, criminals and vagrants. Those they find are brutalised. What seems like a fanciful Hollywood image is a reality in today’s Greece. At night, black-shirted vigilantes from the Holocaust-denying neo-fascist Golden Dawn movement – which won 7 per cent of the vote in the last round of elections, and had the support, it’s said, of 50 per cent of the Athenian police – have been patrolling the street and beating up all the immigrants they can find: Afghans, Pakistanis, Algerians. So this is how Europe is defended in the spring of 2012... The prophets of doom are right, but not in the way they intend. Critics of our current democratic arrangements complain that elections don’t offer a true choice: what we get instead is the choice between a centre-right and a centre-left party whose programmes are almost indistinguishable. On 17 June, there will be a real choice: the establishment (New Democracy and Pasok) on one side, Syriza on the other. And, as is usually the case when a real choice is on offer, the establishment is in a panic: chaos, poverty and violence will follow, they say, if the wrong choice is made. The mere possibility of a Syriza victory is said to have sent ripples of fear through global markets. Ideological prosopopoeia has its day: markets talk as if they were persons, expressing their ‘worry’ at what will happen if the elections fail to produce a government with a mandate to persist with the EU-IMF programme of fiscal austerity and structural reform. The citizens of Greece have no time to worry about these prospects: they have enough to worry about in their everyday lives, which are becoming miserable to a degree unseen in Europe for decades... Here is the paradox that sustains the ‘free vote’ in democratic societies: one is free to choose on condition that one makes the right choice. This is why, when the wrong choice is made (as it was when Ireland rejected the EU constitution), the choice is treated as a mistake, and the establishment immediately demands that the ‘democratic’ process be repeated in order that the mistake may be corrected. When George Papandreou, then Greek prime minister, proposed a referendum on the eurozone bailout deal at the end of last year, the referendum itself was rejected as a false choice. There are two main stories about the Greek crisis in the media: the German-European story (the Greeks are irresponsible, lazy, free-spending, tax-dodging etc, and have to be brought under control and taught financial discipline) and the Greek story (our national sovereignty is threatened by the neoliberal technocracy imposed by Brussels). When it became impossible to ignore the plight of the Greek people, a third story emerged: the Greeks are now presented as humanitarian victims in need of help, as if a war or natural catastrophe had hit the country. While all three stories are false, the third is arguably the most disgusting. The Greeks are not passive victims: they are at war with the European economic establishment, and what they need is solidarity in their struggle, because it is our struggle too. Greece is not an exception. It is one of the main testing grounds for a new socio-economic model of potentially unlimited application: a depoliticised technocracy in which bankers and other experts are allowed to demolish democracy. By saving Greece from its so-called saviours, we also save Europe itself. Read the entire article here. Posted by Jesse at 10:42 AM Email This BlogThis! Share to Twitter Share to Facebook

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To: patron_anejo_por_favor who wrote (68311)

5/30/2012 7:24:56 PM

From: John Koligman

of 91162

It will be interesting to see if Icahn and Southeastern can get the board seats they want. Icahn got into CHK not too long ago and made a couple hundred million on a trade. On the other hand, I recall he bought MOT in the high teens and that never did work out. I bet the Japanese would LOVE to get CHK's assets.... Last I looked, NG over there sells for something like 16 vs our 2.45...

Regards,
John



Japanese companies are buying natural gas assets and fields around the world, setting the nation on course to be the first of the 10 largest energy users to bet its future on a less-polluting fuel than oil or coal. Mitsubishi Corp. (8058) led purchases this year as trading and energy explorers bought gas properties in four countries and pledged at least $30 billion to develop deposits. They’re capturing supplies to generate power after authorities idled the nation’s 54 nuclear reactors since the Fukushima disaster. The spending plans and closures, which doubled gas’s share of the Japanese power mix to about 50 percent, tie the country to a single fuel more than any other major energy-consumer. While that leaves Japan vulnerable to rising prices in the years ahead, the world’s third-biggest economy is gaining an advantage trading the fastest-growing fossil fuel for electricity. “The big Japanese players are moving to lock in this supply,” said Ken Courtis, founding chairman of Next Capital Partners LP based in Tokyo. “They have the ability to take on these large projects today like few others in the world,” backed by domestic banks insulated from Europe’s credit woes. Japan’s six major trading companies, which together with Mitsubishi are Mitsui & Co. (8031), Itochu Corp. (8001), Sumitomo Corp (8053), Marubeni Corp. (8002) and Sojitz Corp. (2768), had $62 billion in cash as of March 31. Mitsubishi’s cash pile is the highest since 1995, while Mitsui’s is close to the most in at least 20 years. While the U.S. has used hydraulic fracturing to become the world’s largest producer of gas and is becoming an exporter, Japan is solidifying its position as the biggest liquefied natural gas importer. Age of Gas “When we look back in a decade, we will understand that the U.S. has moved from the age of oil to the age of gas,” Courtis said. “Japanese companies see the strategic opportunity and have the means to capitalize on it.” Japanese companies announced 652 billion yen ($8.2 billion) in gas and oil acquisitions in the first four months of this year, close to the total for all of 2011, which set a record for at least a decade, Tokyo-based researcher Recof said. The spending indicates Japan, due to publish a new energy policy this summer, is charting its future largely on gas after idling its last nuclear reactor this month, completing the removal of a third of its pre-Fukushima electricity supply. Japanese utilities plan to build an extra 24,000 megawatts of gas-fired capacity, 40 percent more than now, within a decade, according to government reports. Japan will also add 10 LNG import terminals to an existing 28 in the same period, thus increasing storage capacity by 23 percent, the data show. Risky Dependence “Raising dependence on LNG above 50 percent will probably be thought of as risky” because of the fuel’s high price, said Shigeki Sakamoto, a researcher with Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp. in Tokyo. Japan should add coal and other fuels to the mix to avoid being “ripped off” on LNG, he said. Higher fossil fuel imports may bring Japan into current account deficit sooner than expected, which will make the yen more sensitive to events abroad and tie its rate movements more closely to that of the oil price, Barclays Capital analysts Aroop Chatterjee and Amrita Sen said yesterday in a report. Gas-fired generation has risen to about 50 percent of the total since three reactor cores melted at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi power station following the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan last year, according to CLSA Asia- Pacific Markets. “It’s very tough to sustain that level for a long time, but you may have to if nuclear doesn’t come back online,” Penn Bowers, a Tokyo-based utilities and trading companies analyst with CLSA, said by phone. Gas Reliant Of the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, five rely on gas for more than 50 percent of their electricity, with Luxembourg the most dependent, followed by the Netherlands, Ireland, Mexico and Italy, according to International Energy Agency website. Japan would become the most gas-reliant in the top 10 energy consumer countries, IEA data show. Japan’s government has yet to win public support to restart any of the country’s idled reactors. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has said some nuclear generation will be needed to ease the strain on the economy. Even on the premise that Japan cuts half to two-thirds of its nuclear capacity and energy efficiency improves, the country will need to replace more than 20 percent of its base load power, Courtis said. Lock In Supply Inpex Corp. (1605), Japan’s biggest energy explorer, bought 17.5 percent of Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSA)’s Prelude LNG venture in Australia in March, in a deal Macquarie Group Ltd. (MQG) valued at $700 million. Inpex also committed this year to spending $24.7 billion on developing its Ichthys LNG project in west Australia. Mitsubishi and Mitsui, Japan’s top two traders, this month agreed to buy a $2 billion stake in the Browse LNG project in Australia, operated by Woodside Petroleum Ltd. (WPL) Last month the two joined Sempra Energy (SRE) of the U.S. to fund a $6 billion LNG export facility in Louisiana. The traders are also partners in Russia’s Sakhalin II LNG project, which OAO Gazprom (GAZP) said in January may be expanded for as much as $8 billion. Australia has a further $5 billion of LNG assets up for sale, Adrian Wood, a Sydney-based analyst at Macquarie, wrote in a May 2 report. Among those may be stakes in Chevron Corp. (CVX)’s A$29 billion Wheatstone LNG venture and BG Group Plc (BG/)’s $20.4 billion LNG project in Queensland, he said. “Australia is a preferred supply source, but they are also starting to look beyond Australia,” said Neil Beveridge, a Hong Kong-based analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Demand Shortfall Japan will probably need to obtain a further 20 million tons of LNG annually by 2018 to meet demand, Noel Tomnay, head of global gas research at Wood Mackenzie Ltd. in Edinburgh, said in a phone interview. Replacing all 49,000 megawatts of nuclear capacity with the same of gas-fired generation would require buying an extra 49 million metric tons of LNG, according to calculations by Osamu Fujisawa, an independent energy economist in Tokyo. Japan imported a record 83 million tons in the year ended March 31. Japan’s investment activity in energy has always been high and the nuclear shutdown is only part of the reason for the recent up-tick, said Michael Joyce, a partner at Norton Rose (Asia) LLP in Tokyo, who advises Japanese companies on foreign asset purchases. The companies are enjoying the situation in which the yen has gained 53 percent against the dollar in the past five years while the rivals of the Japanese companies struggle to raise finances, Joyce said. Mitsubishi Confidence Ken Kobayashi, the chief executive officer of Mitsubishi, Japan’s biggest LNG importer, said he sees investing in gas as having little downside. Global LNG use is likely to grow 50 percent by 2020 from 2011 and Mitsubishi could market its foreign gas both domestically in the production country and in Japan and the rest of Asia. Mitsubishi has increased its own LNG capacity to 705,000 metric tons last year, up 42 percent from 2007. The company accounted for 41 percent of all Japan’s LNG imports in 2010, which includes production and trading volumes. Mitsubishi also wants to diversify LNG sourcing geographically and make take on operating roles in new development, Kobayashi said. “On a 10-15 year horizon, LNG is going to continue to be Japan’s core energy source,” Kobayashi said in a meeting with analysts May 11 in Tokyo. Ballooning Costs Whether Japanese companies buy more assets or not, they are already committed to “ballooning development costs” at their current assets, Jogmec’s Sakamoto said. Japanese companies may need to speed up gas investment because traditional suppliers such as Indonesia are lowering the volumes as their fields become exhausted and more of the fuel is needed domestically, CLSA’s Bowers said. Many of the new investments are aimed at the U.S. and Canada on the premise that both countries will gradually lift restrictions on exporting the fuel since vast quantities of gas have been found in shale rock formations. The gap between U.S. gas, which is mostly priced at Henry Hub, and Asia’s oil-linked rates has widened to a record $13 per British thermal unit, heightening interest in LNG exports from North America to the world’s most populous region, Barclays Capital analysts Shiyang Wang and Michael Zenker said in a May 15 note. Were U.S. gas to trade at the Asian price the sellers would earn an extra $1 billion a day, Wang and Zenker said. Gas Glut Marketed U.S. gas production may climb 4.4 percent this year from a record 66.22 billion in 2011, the Energy Department said May 8 in its Short-Term Energy Outlook. Sumitomo and Tokyo Gas Co (9531) in April agreed to buy 2.3 million tons of LNG a year from Dominion Resources Inc. (D) in the U.S. with the price linked to Henry Hub. The arbitrage with Asian gas prices would allow the companies to sell the fuel in Japan for under $10 per Btu, Kunio Nohata, a senior general manager at Tokyo Gas, said April 27. That’s more than 40 percent less than what Japan currently pays. The sales contract is also dependent on the U.S. approving Dominion Resource’s Cove Point facility for export activity. “People talk about Henry Hub and what it can do for Japan, but there’s absolutely price risk to that over the long-term,” CLSA’s Bowers said. “It could be good, it could be bad.” With the north American gas market at a fledgling stage and the premise vast, buying gas assets today is the equivalent of acquiring oil reserves about a decade ago when crude traded at $10 a barrel, Courtis said. Oil futures in New York are trading around $91 a barrel today. To contact the reporters on this story: Yuriy Humber in Tokyo at yhumber@bloomberg.net; Yuji Okada in Tokyo at yokada6@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Rebecca Keenan at rkeenan5@bloomberg.net bloomberg.com

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To: Giordano Bruno who wrote (68319)	5/30/2012 7:51:30 PM
From: ggersh	of 91162

Here's a newbie...-g- Time To Load Up On Denmark CDS - Moody's Cuts Nine Danish Financial Institutions: Luxor Thesis In PlaySubmitted by Tyler Durden on 05/30/2012 - 16:35 Bank Failures Black Swan Bond CDS Creditors Danske Bank default European Union Finland France Germany Gross Domestic Product International Monetary Fund Investor Sentiment None Rating Agency ratings Real estate Reality Sovereign CDS Unemployment Last time we looked at Denmark it it was in the context of Luxor Capital which had some very ugly things to say about the Scandinavian country in " Rotten Contagion To Make Landfall In Denmark: CDS Set To Soar As Hedge Funds Target Country." Now, 6 months later, Moody's has finally gotten the memo: "Moody's Investors Service has today downgraded the ratings for nine Danish financial institutions and for one foreign subsidiary of a Danish group by one to three notches. The short-term ratings declined by one notch for six of these institutions. The rating outlooks for five banks affected by today's rating actions are stable, whereas the rating outlooks for two banks and for all three specialised lenders affected by today's rating actions are negative The magnitude of some of today's downgrades reflects a range of concerns, including the risk that some institutions' concentrated loan books deteriorate amidst difficult domestic and European conditions, with adverse consequences on their ability to refinance maturing debt. The latter concern is exacerbated by structural changes in the terms of Danish covered bonds and the mix of underlying assets that lead to increased refinancing risk. While Moody's central scenario remains that financial institutions show some resilience to what will likely be a prolonged difficult environment - and the revised rating levels for most Danish financial institutions continue to reflect low risks to creditors - today's rating actions reflect the view that these risks have increased."

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To: ggersh who wrote (68317)	5/30/2012 7:52:38 PM
From: posthumousone	2 Recommendations of 91162

market ticker - inflation tax - Watch the spin machine ramp up into high gear! Europe is crumbling. China is slowing. The Federal Reserve is dithering. Yet the biggest threat to the emerging U.S. economic recovery may be Congress. John Boehner, the leader of the House Republicans, has promised yet another fight with the White House over the debt ceiling -- the limit Congress has placed on the amount the federal government can borrow. If this sounds familiar, it’s because we suffered through an identical performance last summer. Our analysis of that episode leads to a troubling conclusion: It almost derailed the recovery, and this time could be a lot worse. Recovery? What recovery? The US Government has debased your purchasing power by 10% a year for four years running -- that is, it has emitted new credit money into the system equal to approximately 10% of the economy for the last four years. If you have a job you've managed to gain 7% over the last three years in your wage. If you don't see something wrong with this picture you're not very bright. You've lost 33% (compounded) in purchasing power due to monetary debasement by the government over three years' time but you got 7% back. Unless you went to a different school than I did you're down 26%, more or less, *or one quarter of your purchasing power, over the last three years (and another 8% or so in the 4th!)* Now of course some people have done better, and some worse. But this is the what the *average* American has seen over the last three years. Yet Bloomberg publishes OpEds from "Professors" such as Betsey Stevenson who argue that "Republicans are taking the government's creditworthiness hostage when they threaten not to increase the debt ceiling." There is no such thing as the government's creditworthiness. It's your money that is being pledged, not theirs -- there is no "theirs"! But refusing to raise the limit wouldn’t free the government of its existing spending obligations. Rather, it would leave the government with no choice but to default on its debts. The government has no spending "obligations." Debts are obligations. Entitlements are not. Social, military and other spending is not an "obligation." Those are political promises and a choice. Only debt, contractually entered into, is an obligation. Of course the convenient lie that we have "obligations" is trotted out on this point whenever the debate arises. What's not talked about is how raising the ceiling is in fact *naked shorting* the currency and thereby destroying the purchasing power and wealth of every American. It is monetary inflation, and that inflation must show up somewhere. If there are 10,000 units of production and 10,000 units of currency and credit in the system, and you emit another 1,000 units, every one of the existing 10,000 units is devalued by 10%! That's theft and it's an outrageous fraud to state that this is somehow "good" for the American public or the economy. It most certainly is not. This is nothing other than a massive *tax increase* in terms of its impact on the average America. It's impact is huge -- for the average American who pays somewhere around a 20-25% blended Federal Tax rate (including FICA, Medicare and income tax) *their effective tax burden has literally doubled over the last three years as a result of deficit spending!* Tax cuts? There have been no tax cuts! There have in fact been massive tax increases imposed on everyone. You, I, everyone. We've all had our wealth and income stolen and given to the banksters who gambled in Europe and the United States on bets that soured, and rather than force them to take their losses and perform supervisory functions as required by law so that depositors are not at risk the government regulators refused to act as required by law and now they're screwing you blind to the tune of more than a trillion dollars a year to prop up these *****s -- over $3,000 per person, per year for the last three years has been siphoned off through these policies and given to the likes of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Citibank and JP Morgan never mind foreign institutions like Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse! There is no solution to this problem to be found down this path; dilution of the consumer's purchasing power cannot work because the entire premise is that you can "restart" consumer borrowing growth to get leverage expanding again -- the precise scam that was in the 1980-2007 timeframe. How is the consumer going to increase borrowing when you've stolen 25% of his purchasing power and intend to steal another 7-10% a year going forward?** He won't because he can't. This is the flaw in the scheme and it is exactly the same scheme that was run in Europe and blew up in the face of Greece and now threatens to blow up Spain. What's worse is that we're still playing this game here with pension funds -- funds that assume and proclaim the ability to earn 8% in safe forward returns in a world where the ten year risk-free rate (so says the market) is 1.65%. That's an outrageous and intentional scam; did you notice, incidentally, that the 25% you've lost in purchasing power is about the three-year run rate on the difference between the assumed pension return and the actual risk-free return? Guess what -- if you have a pension you think you're going to receive in 5, 10 or 20 years your fund is short the same 25% as you are or it's exposed to the risk of even greater losses and in fact you're rather likely to get zero! The so-called "university professors" and "policy people" who argue a policy path of "more borrowing and continued deficit spending" are traitorous jackasses who deserve to be run out of town on a rail. The firms that employ these people may as well be Bernie Madoff prototypes as their alleged "paths" will end in exactly the same way his "securities deals" did. Universities who hire so-called "professors" that spew this garbage on OpEd pages and allow this sort of mendacious crap to be taught to kids are issuing "degrees" that have the precise value of used toilet paper. If you bring these people and firms into your life or business you deserve what you get. We have options in the US today but we won't have them for long. Right now we are benefiting from people running away from Europe which is about to go prompt critical and into our Treasuries, which leads us to believe we can borrow unlimited amounts of money for 10 years at 1.65%. That's a nice thought -- but how are you going to pay it back ten years hence? If you're not, and intend to keep rolling it over, what happens if and when the rollover price is 5% instead of 1.65% -- and you can't make the interest payments at 5%? This is how Greece went down the drain and it's what's facing Spain. And it is what we will face here if we allow people like Betsey Stevenson to keep putting forward policy pronouncements that fail the fundamentals of 3rd grade arithmetic.

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