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To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (4119)	4/15/2003 9:45:33 AM
From: 4figureau	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5423

U.S. housing market cooling – Fannie Mae CEO REUTERS 6:38 a.m., April 14, 2003 NEW YORK – The U.S. housing market, the lone bright spot in a sluggish economy, is showing signs of cooling but is not in danger of a bust that some had feared, Fannie Mae Chief Executive Franklin Raines said Monday. "The housing market is going to slow down. It's already slowing down. Home prices won't increase at the rate they have increased in the last two or three years," Raines said in an interview with CNBC television. Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored enterprise and the biggest buyer of U.S. home loans, reported Monday a 60 percent increase in first-quarter earnings, fueled by Americans' huge appetite for loans to refinance mortgages or buy a home at low interest rates. "We are going to see the natural process of gradual slowdown, which we have seen in the past. We never had a boom-bust cycle in the United States and we don't expect to see one now," Raines said. Home sales and construction have subsided from last year's record highs, but analysts have blamed the downtick on a long harsh winter and reluctance among consumers to commit to buying a home after the U.S.-led war against Iraq began. Weekly mortgage application volume, especially refinancing, has also slid from its record peak set in mid-March. Raines maintained that a decline in refinancings would not hurt its bottom line. "Refinances don't have a significant impact on us because it really is replacing one loan with another loan and so it doesn't drive our business," he said. "Although the volumes of business will go down, we don't see that it's going to have a significant impact on our profitability." The National Association of Home Builders will release at 1 p.m. EDT (1700 GMT) Tuesday its April reading on homebuilder optimism. In March, the group's index fell to 52 points, its lowest level since November 2001. On Wednesday, the Mortgage Bankers Association of America will report applications for the week to April 11 at 7 a.m. (1100 GMT). At 8:30 a.m. (1230 GMT) on Wednesday, the Commerce Department will release its March data on U.S. housing starts. Analysts polled by Reuters on average forecast that home construction would have rebounded to an annualized 1.692 million units in March from February's 1.622 million units. signonsandiego.com

To: Jim Willie CB who wrote (4119)	4/15/2003 9:50:39 AM
From: 4figureau	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5423

China's 1st-Qtr GDP May Have Grown at Fastest Pace in 4 Years By Chi-Chu Tschang and Mike Forsythe Beijing, April 15 (Bloomberg) -- China's economy may have expanded at the fastest pace in more than four years in the first quarter as factory output surged, officials are signaling. The economy grew 9 percent from a year earlier in the first three months, the Business Weekly said, citing an unidentified official at the National Bureau of Statistics. The Economic Observer newspaper, citing other officials, put growth at 9.9 percent. That's ``not far off the mark,'' statistics bureau spokesman Yao Jingyuan told Bloomberg News. The government is due to announce the figure on April 17. The official hints suggest that China, the world's sixth- largest economy, beat its 8.1 percent fourth-quarter growth rate, already the highest among major economies. Factory output surged in the first quarter as companies such as cell-phone maker Nokia Oyj and automaker General Motors Corp. produced more at their China plants. Whether the growth spurt continues may depend on China's handling of a deadly pneumonia outbreak. ``Industrial production was so strong'' that 9.9 percent growth is ``possible,'' said Suiyo Li, an economist at Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo. Factory output was ``largely driven by car production and some electronic products. These two kinds of products are the driving force for the high growth.'' Record Pace Factory production rose 17 percent in the first quarter, the fastest pace of growth since records were first published in 1995. Growth is being driven both by export demand and by rising sales to China's expanding middle class. Retail sales in China last year were higher than those in the U.K. or France. Car sales doubled to 383,400 vehicles during the first quarter, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, as rising wages and falling prices meant more of China's 1.3 billion people could afford a car. Sales of General Motors' Shanghai-built Buick sedan rose 152 percent in the first two months of the year. For Nokia, China is the second-largest market after the U.S. and a major production center. The Finland-based company last year made 32 million mobile phones in China, of which it exported about two-thirds. Exports, which account for about a quarter of China's economy, rose by a third in the first quarter to $86.3 billion, making China the world's fifth-largest exporter after the U.S., Japan, Germany and France. Private-sector economists expect first-quarter economic growth to be slower than the Business Weekly and Economic Observer reports suggest. The median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of 11 economists was for an expansion of 8.2 percent. That compares with growth of 7.6 percent in the first quarter of 2002. Deadly Disease Growth may slow in coming months because of the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, economists say. About two-fifths of the known cases of the disease are in China, which has reported 1,418 cases and 64 deaths. Globally, the disease had infected 3,169 people and killed 144 as of yesterday. China has been criticized by the World Health Organization for responding too slowly to the outbreak. In Hong Kong, the second most affected area, the disease has slashed travel, tourism and consumer spending as people avoid crowded areas. The SARS outbreak may cut China's economic growth by 0.2 percentage point this year, said Kenneth Rogoff, director of research at the International Monetary Fund. Morgan Stanley has cut its full-year forecast for China gross domestic product growth to 6.5 percent from 7 percent because of the SARS crisis. CYTS Tours Inc., the country's No. 2 travel company, says bookings from the U.S., China's second-largest source of tourists after Japan, have fallen by more than half in the past month. Tourism makes up about 5 percent of China's economy, and spending by foreign tourists makes up about 1.5 percent, according to Deutsche Bank. quote.bloomberg.com