Chinese Property Shares Sink on Overpriced Home Prices

Marcum LLP and Bernstein & Pinchuk LLP Merge China Practices
NEW YORK and Beijing, Dec. 9, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Marcum LLP, one of the largest independent public Accounting and advisory services firms in the nation, and Bernstein & Pinchuk LLP, one of the largest middle market, PCAOB-reviewed auditors  in China, have merged their China practices to create Marcum Bernstein and Pinchuk LLP, effective January 1, 2011.  As a result of the Merger, China-based, middle-market, publicly-traded companies or those undergoing transitions to U.S. stock ...

Home Values Lose $1.7 Trillion in 2010, Prices Still Falling
Remember that brief period earlier this year when Home Prices appeared to be stabilizing? It didn't last. After a losing $680 billion of value in the first half of the year, the Housing Market is expected to lose another Trillion dollars in the second half, according to online Real Estate marketplace Zillow.com. A separate report from Real Estate consulting firm Clear Capital confirms that Home Prices continue to fall, down 5.8% in the last quarter. Let's start with the decline in the housing m...

China's financial system: Look again
Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise. By Carl Walter and Fraser Howie. Wiley; 250 pages; $29.95 and £19.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk IT COULD be said that any Financial System that appears to be robust will, in time, reveal some underlying rot. In the late 1990s, for instance, the Asian Financial Crisis appeared to confirm the virtues of London and New York—then the global Financial Crisis happened. Anyone who is overly impress...

Americans' Wealth Grew 2.2 Percent Last Quarter
After declining in the spring, Americans' wealth grew 2.2 percent in the July-September quarter as a rebound on Wall Street boosted stock portfolios. Household net worth rose to nearly $55 Trillion, even though the value of Real Estate holdings sank 3.7 percent, the Federal Reserve said Thursday. That's far above the bottom hit during the Recession: $49 trillion in the First Quarter of 2009. Yet net worth would have to rise an additional 20 percent to regain its pre-recession peak of $66 trillio...

What's hot for 2011: Mortgage-backed securities?
Remember those Toxic Assets that nearly wrecked the U.S. Financial System back in 2008? They're back, even though housing isn't. It seems like only yesterday that virtually everyone thought Mortgage-backed securities were evil. After all, the securities – backed by mortgages including subprime home loans – helped put the country's largest banks on the brink and the Global Economy into a dizzying downward spiral after the housing bust started. In the years leading up to the financial...

'Toxic assets' are hot again
What's hot for 2011: Mortgage-backed securities? Posted by Nin-Hai Tseng, writer-reporter December 9, 2010 11:39 am Remember those Toxic Assets that nearly wrecked the U.S. Financial System back in 2008? They're back, even though housing isn't. Image via Wikipedia It seems like only yesterday that virtually everyone thought mortgage-backed securities were evil. After all, the securities – backed by mortgages including subprime home loans – helped put the country's largest banks o...

Buy Physical Gold and Physical Silver Through a Commercial Bank and You May End Up with a Vault Full of Air
, if any physical gold and silver even back them at all. In addition, it’s not just banks you have to worry about these days. The incidence of Counterfeit gold coins and silver coins is on the rise along with the recent steep rise in the gold and silver price. The Financial Times recently reported that a wave of hard to detect Counterfeit gold coins is now coming out of China. Say goodbye to the days of gold-plated tungsten and say hello to a more complex Counterfeit gold alloy consisting...

Home prices gains in Canada slow down
Published: Dec. 9, 2010 at 12:31 PM Ottawa, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- Home Prices in Canada rose 0.1 percent in October, half the rate of increases in the previous month, Statistics Canada said Thursday. Prices in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, rose the most, 0.8 percent. In Greater Sudbury and Thunder Bay, Ontario, prices rose 0.5 percent, the government's statistical office said. Prices fell furthest in Calgary, Alberta, dropping 0.6 percent. In nine of 21 cities surveyed, prices were unchanged in the month. ...

Las Vegas home sales, prices see November gains after recent slide
The slide in Home Prices and sales in Southern Nevada that raised concerns a month ago about the future of the Housing Market has halted for now. The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors reported this morning that November sales of single-family homes rose 6.8 percent over October and that Home Prices rose 1.4 percent. That comes after October sales fell 7.4 percent from September and were down 27 percent from October 2009. November sales were down only 11 percent from November 2009, the GL...

Q3 Flow of Funds: Household Real Estate assets declined $650 Billion in Q3 2010
by CalculatedRisk on 12/09/2010 01:14:00 PM The Federal Reserve released the Q3 2010 Flow of Funds report this morning: Flow of Funds. According to the Fed, household net worth is now off $11 Trillion from the peak in 2007, but up $5.8 trillion from the trough in Q1 2009. The Fed estimated that the value of household Real Estate fell $684 billion to $16.55 trillion in Q3 2010, from $17.2 trillion in Q2 2010. Click on graph for larger image in graph gallery. This is the Households and Nonprofi...

Looks like we were right, residential housing looks like it went down
This goes to show you what we have been saying since we started this blog in late 2009. We were calling for at least a 20% loss in retail home values over the next three years. We were advising our blog readers to sell and rent and whatever happens do not buy. 2010 was a terrible year for Home Prices. The year is not over and it looks like we nailed it. Of course, that is still only my opinion. Economist are sorry predictors. I'd speak with a trader any day over an economist. Zillow published...

Region's housing market won't improve in 2011, experts say
The Washington area's Housing Market isn't expected to rebound for at least a year, and 2011 could mark a new low for some areas, according to Real Estate experts. Home Prices are expected to stay flat through at least the first half of the year, according to Rick Sharga, senior Vice President of RealtyTrac, a Foreclosure-tracking firm in Irvine, Calif. But in areas with higher foreclosure rates -- like Prince George's and Prince William counties -- the market could worsen. "In the more distres...

Home values tumble $1.7 trillion
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Can't sell your home for a decent price? You're not alone. American homes are expected to be worth $1.7 Trillion less in 2010 than they were worth last year, according to a report released Thursday by Real Estate website Zillow. Email Print Comment This year's drop in home values is 63% bigger than the $1 Trillion dip in 2009, and brings the total value lost since the Housing Market's peak in 2006 to a whopping $9 trillion. While the homebuyer Tax Credit helped prop u...

American Wealth Grows By $1.2 Trillion
What is this? A rising Stock Market during the July-September quarter has helped boost the net worth of Americans by 2.2 percent to $54.9 Trillion. The overall gain, reported by the Federal Reserve, came despite the fact that Real Estate values dropped by 3.7 percent. "Rising wealth and falling Debt are putting consumers further down the road toward improving their personal finances following the worst Recession since the 1930s, one reason why spending has picked up. The report also sh...

Warren Buffett, Robber Baron?
Over at American Thinker, blogger Christopher Chantrill poses and answers that question — affirmatively. It opens: I know that we are all supposed to love Warren Buffett as the Sage of Omaha, businessman and all-around good guy, but I keep reading stories that make me wonder. Here’s a story about Warren Buffett, the Estate Tax, and the life Insurance Industry. Did you know that the Life Insurance lobby is actively lobbying to restore the estate tax? Why would the Life Insurance indus...

Warren Buffett: The Billionaire Too Big to Fail
Good for Christopher Chantrill writing for American Thinker is ripping the shoulder off Warren Buffett’s Superman cape. It’s  about time America realizes that Buffett is still a Billionaire because of all of us, not because he is such a financial whiz. Chantrill calls the Oracle of Omaha whom we are all supposed to adore for his Berkshire Hathaway, Cherry-Coking, deals-on-a-handshake, a modern day “Robber Baron.”  Did you know that Warren Buffett owns ...

WARREN BUFFETT: Robber Baron? Warren Buffett isnt just noted as an owner of life insurance compa
Warren Buffett: Robber Baron? “Warren Buffett isn’t just noted as an owner of life Insurance Companies and a supporter of the Estate Tax. He’s also noted as a buyer of family businesses. . . . These two business strategies support each other. . . . It’s hard to think of Warren Buffett as a robber baron. He’s a jolly chap who just seems to be along for the ride. But the ugly truth is that his businesses benefit from one of the major big-government redistributive pr...

Tougher EU bank tests could ease crisis
BRUSSELS (AP) - With its plan to take another close look at the health of banks, the European Union could make a big leap ahead in its response to the government Debt crisis. But for the tests to be meaningful this time around, governments and Regulators will have to swallow their pride and expose some of the region's hidden skeletons. EU officials hope a second round of Stress Tests, planned for February, will do what the earlier ones couldn't: restore confidence in the region's banks by check...

Tougher EU bank tests could ease crisis
BRUSSELS (AP) — With its plan to take another close look at the health of banks, the European Union could make a big leap ahead in its response to the government Debt crisis. But for the tests to be meaningful this time around, governments and Regulators will have to swallow their pride and expose some of the region’s hidden skeletons. EU officials hope a second round of Stress Tests, planned for February, will do what the earlier ones couldn’t: restore confidence in the region...

US sends top officials to China over NKorea (AP)
WASHINGTON – The Obama Administration is sending its No. 2 diplomat and three top Asia hands to China next week for talks on North Korea as Washington presses a reluctant Beijing to do more to rein in Pyongyang. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg will lead the delegation to Beijing for the talks, the State Department said Tuesday. "They will meet senior officials to continue consultations with the Chinese on regional security issues, including recent developments on the Korean pen...

Paul Blumenthal: Incoming finance committee chairman relies on finance campaign contributions
The House Republican Steering Committee voted on Tuesday to name all Committee Chairman for the incoming Congress. Their choice to head the House Financial Services Committee, the committee in charge of overseeing the Financial Sector and the government's implementation of new Financial Reforms, happens to be the member of Congress most reliant on contributions from the financial sector. Contributions from the finance, Insurance and Real Estate sector accounted for 62.5 percent of all contribu...

The Retail Numbers Going Forward
By the official measure, 18 months have passed since the end of the nation's longest postwar Recession. Consistent with the modest pace of growth that has followed and with excessive slack in The Economy's now idle resources, labor markets have registered only middling improvements during this year's tentative recovery. The recalcitrance of the Job Market was underscored just last Friday, with the release of data for November measuring a rise in the national Unemployment Rate to 9.8 percent an...

Ron Paul to oversee Federal Reserve
Ron Paul issued a Press Release that he has been "appointed to head the Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee in the 112th Congress.  The subcommittee has jurisdiction over monetary policy, currency, Commodity Prices, and matters related to the Federal Reserve Bank generally." The announcement of Congressman Paul's appointment was made by incoming Chairman of the Financial Services Committee, Congressman Spencer Bachus. In Paul's announcement he say...

Study: Long-term interest rates will rise
Published: Dec. 9, 2010 at 12:13 PM Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (R) and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke participate in the Financial Stability Oversight Council held a meeting to discuss Mortgage servicing and Foreclosure issues, and to vote on several resolutions to advance implementation of the Dodd-Frank Act, in the Cash Room of the Treasury building in Washington on November 23, 2010. UPI/Roger L. Wollenberg London, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- An economic think-tank in London said lo...

New Madoff suits take aim at big global banks
Seven big global banks from the United States, Europe and Japan were sued Wednesday by the trustee seeking to recover assets from the massive Bernard Madoff Fraud case. The trustee, Irving Picard, is seeking more than one billion dollars from the banks, claiming they knew or should have known of the Fraud in accepting money through various Madoff funds. The seven latest banks added to the litigation are US-based Citibank and Merrill Lynch (now part of Bank of America); the broken-up former Bel...