Posted by Zachary Ogilvie on July 3, 2011
The face of Ireland’s crisis
FOR most of the 2000s the job of Ireland’s finance minister was fun: watch the revenues roll in, don’t ask too many questions and spend enough to ensure re-election. For Brian Lenihan, who died of cancer on June 10th, it was impossibly hard. On his appointment in May 2008 he said that it was his misfortune to take on the job just as Ireland’s property boom was ending. He could not have foreseen just how unfortunate.
Mr Lenihan will be remembered for one decision in particular. In September 2008 the collapse of Lehman Brothers prompted him to announce a blanket guarantee to creditors of Ireland’s big lenders. In hindsight that was a huge mistake. The scale of the banks’ bad debts overwhelmed the ability of the Irish state to meet its promise. Ireland’s bail-out last November can be traced to that moment; a debate on imposing losses on bank bondholders still rages.
At the time, of course, things were less clear-cut. Few realised just how ropy the banks were. Protecting cr
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Posted by Madison Backhouse on July 2, 2011
Our Rancho Cucamonga foreclosure defense attorneys have watched the news on the robo-signing investigation by the attorneys general of all the states, hoping it would provide information and meaningful penalties. So we were interested to see an apparently independent investigation being launched by the attorney general of New York, Eric Schneiderman. Schneiderman’s office has requested information and meetings with Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, the New York Times reported May 17. In particular, his office appears to be looking at the way the three institutions bundled mortgages into investments. Those practices have been the focus of many private lawsuits.
Securitization is widely considered one reason for the housing crisis, under the theory that passing along the risk to investors took away lenders’ incentives to make sure borrowers could pay back their loans. Some recent lawsuits allege that financial institutions bundled loans they knew were bad into securities, then misled investors about the quality of the securities. That’s one possible avenue of investigation, the Times said.
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Posted by Sophie Egge on July 2, 2011
Treasure worth ‘billions’ found in Hindu temple in southern India A Hindu temple in southern India seems to have delivered the mother lode. Archeologists have reportedly uncovered over $11 billion in treasure at the Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple, according to AFP. The treasure has been found in at least 5 different vaults.
The temple The temple, which is better-known for its intricate sculptures, is located in the Kerala state, near the Southern tip of the country. MSNBC reports that the foundation for the current tower, containing the treasure, was laid in 1566.
The find The valuables have an estimated preliminary worth of over $11.2 billion, said Kerala Chief Secretary K. Jayakumar, catapulting the temple into the league of India’s richest temples. The find consists of thousands of necklaces, coins and precious stones which have been kept in at least five underground vaults at the temple. Apparently, devotees have been donating to the temple for centuries. Among the treasure was what archeologists described to be an 18-foot necklace. Other
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Posted by Madison Backhouse on July 1, 2011
Our Riverside County foreclosure defense attorneys work every day with clients who are looking for alternatives to a foreclosure, with its financial losses and major credit hit. One alternative is a short sale — selling the property for less than you owe — but these can be difficult to finish because banks tend to drag their feet before approving or rejecting short sales. So we were interested to read a June 1 article from the Contra Costa Times suggesting that short sales have started to speed up. According to the article, observers of the real estate market say the difference is not extreme, and short sale buyers still shouldn’t expect approval to happen quickly. But for those who are able to wait, real estate agents said they see short sales finishing faster now than they did a year ago.
A real estate agent who handled a recent short sale in Walnut Creek told the newspaper that short sales are taking less time in early 2011 than they took in 2010. However, the agent said buyers should still expect to wait 120 days or more; a California Association of Realtors survey found that fewer than three in five short sales closed at all.
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