The Australian share market fell by its largest amount in two months amid renewed concerns about credit markets.
A warning by equipment company Caterpillar that the housing slump in the US was starting to spread to other parts of the economy saw US shares fall at the end of the week.
The domestic market followed suit this morning, with shares in most sectors losing value.
At 11.30am AEST, the All Ordinaries Index shed almost 2 per cent to 6,591.
Stocks exposed to the US economy suffered the most, with Macquarie Bank falling by about 4 per cent, while James Hardie Industries was down by almost 2.5 per per cent....
Minorities bear biggest load of subprime loans (click here)
BY JENNIFER BJORHUS Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated: 10/16/2007 09:56:17 PM CDT
Minnesota ranked No. 12 in the nation last year for how frequently minority homebuyers got high-interest-rate subprime home loans.
Of all the mortgages made to minority homebuyers in Minnesota in 2006, 42 percent were high-rate subprime loans compared with 17 percent for white homebuyers, according to the Annual Minority Lending Report out Tuesday by Richmond, Va.-based Genworth Financial Inc., an insurance company, and Compliance Technologies, a Washington, D.C.-based mortgage-lending consultant.
The Minnesota disparity is slightly wider than the nation's. Nationally, 39 percent of the mortgages minority homebuyers got were subprime compared with 18 percent for whites.
Home buying in Minnesota last year dropped off dramatically for all borrowers, the study also showed - more dramatically than it did for different groups nationally. Nationally, home buying activity picked up a slight 1 percent last year for African-Americans.
Neither the declines, which came as housing prices peaked locally, nor the disparities surprised local housing experts. That minority borrowers are more likely to get subprime loans has been well documented, experts agree, though they don't always agree on why.
Banks and mortgage lenders charge several percentage points more for subprime home loans to people they deem a higher risk because of dented credit or high debt-loads. Housing activists have long accused the country's mortgage lenders of unfairly targeting minority neighborhoods...
August 22, 2005
State of the (Labor) Union (click here)
By Mark Devlin
The AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations) has fractioned. Membership has dwindled. The AFL-CIO, Union Network International, and the National Education Association are boycotting Wal-Mart. Is this a good thing?
According to this article, only a month ago three labor unions split from the AFL-CIO: The Service Employees International Union, The International brotherhood of Teamsters, and the United Food and Commercial Workers. These disaffiliations resulted in the AFL-CIO's loss of 4.6 million members....
Congress Turns Up Heat on United Space Alliance (click here)
Members of the United States Congress are turning up the heat on NASA and the United Space Alliance (USA) to stop their push to gut the economic security of America’s space program workforce. Last June, USA forced IAM members of Local 2061 at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center out on strike by demanding cuts in pension and other key benefits. NASA and USA are now making similar demands in other negotiations at the Houston Space Center.
Congress, who has oversight and budget powers over NASA, is taking notice. This week, Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), a member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, spoke out from the floor of the House of Representatives. Kaptur called IAM members “among the most talented and trained workers in our Nation,” and questioned NASA and the United Space Alliance’s attempts to take away pensions from their workers, while USA’s CEO, Richard Covey, qualifies for at least three pensions himself. “I would ask Mr. Covey and the folks at USA Space Alliance to pay close attention because Congress is paying close attention,” said Kaptur.
“We built a great Nation when America had a system where workers could be confident that their wages would increase with increasing productivity and that their retirement years would be secure,” said Kaptur. “I would just say that the Nation is taking very close notice of an agency that gets a $16 billion budget whose top executives all get their pensions and now who hire subcontractors who are telling the very people who have their hands on the equipment down at the Kennedy Space Center that, sorry, you don't get the same type of consideration by the Government of the United States.”...
And when exactly was the REFORM to the bankruptcy laws passed? (click here) Prior to the collapse of the Sub-prime meltdown? Oh. And who are the primary people that suffered due to the subprime lending? Ah, huh. Who works for a living that lost everything they worked for? Who protects the wages that support housing sales?
Help Pass Bankruptcy Reform Bill (click here)
Two similar bills, one in the U.S. Senate and another in the House of Representatives are aimed at protecting the interests of workers and retirees in corporate bankruptcies.
“Wealthy executives get rewarded in bankruptcy for their failures while front-line workers shoulder the burden of corporate restructuring,” said Transportation GVP Robert Roach, Jr. “H.R. 3652, introduced by Representative John Conyers and S. 2092, introduced by Senator Richard Durbin, will address the inequities in the current bankruptcy law.”
IAM Representatives and airline members joined lawmakers at a U.S. Capitol press conference announcing the bills. All IAM members are asked to contact their Senators and Representative to urge their support for the “Protecting Employees and Retirees in Business Bankruptcies Act of 2007.” Messages can be sent directly from the IAM website by following this link.
Key components of the bill include barring companies from leaving pension plans for executives intact when the employees’ pension plan has been terminated, and requiring judicial review of a company’s foreign and domestic holdings in their entirety to determine whether relief from a labor agreement is warranted....
Bankruptcy Rates In United States On The Rise Ahead Of Reform Anniversary (click here)
October 10, 2007 9:10 a.m. EST
Ayinde O. Chase - AHN Staff
Denver, CO (AHN) - A Denver law firm specializing personal and professional bankruptcy says Colorado's bankruptcy cases are on a steady rise -- a bad sign for an economy already under pressure with the mortgage meltdown. Next Monday marks the second anniversary of the bankruptcy reform bill when Congress voted to make declaring bankruptcy more difficult for consumers.
The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was originally designed to reduce fraud within the bankruptcy system and deter people from filing bankruptcy by adding more legal stipulations and stringently enforced deadlines. While the bill has made filing for bankruptcy more difficult in procedurally it has not been the strong deterrent the bill's authors had hoped for.
Bankruptcy cases plunged to a 20-year low in the first three months of 2006, reflecting the passage of the tough new bankruptcy law, but now the pace of new filings is steadily rising. According to Lundquist Consulting, an organization that tracks bankruptcy trends, courts now see an average of 2,000 new filings a day -- four times the number that were filed in November 2005 after the bankruptcy law went into effect....
Go Figure ! (Time of this particular entry 10.22.07 @ 12:46 AM) My life simply runs into this consequential issues of disruption of information all the time. Dumb luck, huh?
Monday, October 22, 2007 12:43 AM (click here)
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I guess a review and analysis of the unemployment rate in the USA will have to wait. But, to scan the papers today, the federal authorities are stating the rate is stable, while states are reporting a rise in some instances since September. Best I can do right now, perhaps another weekend. It would seem as though the 'stats' are top secret due to priorities of war. I mean that is the excuse for every other action of the Bush Regime. Every law of the land falls under "Eminent Domain" to be manipulated 'at a time of war.' Why else continue a war of genocide against the Shia?
The war economy and the costs of war, part II (click at title of entry)
By Cedric Muhammad-Guest Columnist-Updated Oct 4, 2007, 12:15 am
...History will record the years of record budget surpluses, during the Presidency of Bill Clinton, as one of the greatest political opportunities ever squandered. The unexploited opportunity of the American government to utilize tax revenues and fiscal policy to grow the economy, fund certain social programs and pay down its enormous debt, is one that many will live to regret. The decision of President George W. Bush to go to war in Iraq, may be recorded as the event that ensured the breaking of the American economy.
If I were forced to list the factors—all things staying the same as they are now—that make it virtually impossible for the American economy to survive this decade, unbroken, I would point to: 1) the continued fall of the dollar (In September, the American currency reached record lows against the euro and Canadian dollar); 2) the coming boom in the number of Americans who qualify for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits (“We face a demographic tsunami,” says U.S. Comptroller General David Walker); 3) the Federal Reserve policy that effectively mandates a certain level of unemployment (this means that America will never be able to create enough jobs for the poor, and increasingly middle-class); and 4) the increasing commitment to military spending...
essay to follow...
