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Strategies & Market Trends : The Residential Real Estate Crash Index -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (82417)	7/30/2007 3:40:56 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 306849

GMAC profit falls 63 pct as home loans weigh Mon Jul 30, 2007 2:36PM EDT reuters.com NEW YORK (Reuters) - GMAC, the finance company in which General Motors Corp. (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) sold a majority stake, posted a 63 percent decline in second-quarter profit on Monday, hurt by losses in its home lending unit. Results, however, improved from the first quarter's after the company reduced lending risks, and GMAC bond prices rose. Net income for GMAC fell to $293 million from $787 million a year earlier, but showed improvement from the first quarter's $305 million loss. Results included a $254 million loss at Residential Capital LLC, or ResCap, compared with a year-earlier $548 million profit, amid what GMAC called "severe illiquidity" in the market for subprime mortgages. That loss, however, was 72 percent smaller than the first quarter's $910 million. Excluding ResCap, profit at GMAC more than doubled to $547 million from $239 million. "I'm actually pretty pleased," said Pete Hastings, a fixed-income analyst at Morgan Keegan & Co. in Memphis, Tennessee, who favors shorter-maturity GMAC debt. "They've done a terrific job reducing exposure to subprime. The ResCap loss is roughly on the order of what we were led to expect." Like many lenders, ResCap has struggled as falling home prices and rising interest rates made it tougher for many homeowners to keep up with their mortgage payments. GMAC Chief Executive Eric Feldstein in a statement said efforts to trim risk "have reduced ResCap's losses, quickly and significantly, despite increasing challenges in the U.S. mortgage market." He nevertheless projected that "widespread weakness" in housing and mortgages will persist this year. ResCap will reduce its subprime mortgage exposure and "right-size" its expense base as industrywide volume declines, he said. Continued...

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (82417)	7/30/2007 5:31:21 PM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

I think what people miss when they say American workers aren't benefiting from increases in productivity is where does the increase come from, does it come from the worker who is better educated, who employs more advanced methods and thus able to produce more or does it come from a workforce whose skills are deteriorating where capital equipment is making up the difference. For many years capital equipment has been closing the education gap in the US. As machines get smarter a large part of the workforce is devolving. Some capital equipment has so much intelligence built into it that you can put a very low skilled worker on it and still increase productivity. If this is the case, profits will be used to increase investment in equipment, not people, so the gains will flow naturally to capital not workers. Of course, whoever does these calculations isn't counting the outsized gains that go to the "workers" at the top....they don't see them as "workers".

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (82417)	8/2/2007 2:01:20 AM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

You miss the point, Lizzie- -intentionally, I think. The question of whether GDP is calculated correctly or not is not a partisan issue. If it's wrong, you fix it. But another matter you don't seem to understand is many economic numbers are inherently political. The Fed's target interest rate is one obvious one. Another is CPI- -COLA for many recipients of federal grants is tied to it. And CPI is so "rubbery" that you could practically give me any answer you wanted and I could get there- -fairly. What is or is not included in the GDP calculation and the weighting each item gets is the same. I don't remember you complaining about the way GDP was calculated when Clinton was cheering on the bubble to its inevitable crash. Only NOW do you want to raise the issue. These are MEDIAN incomes from 1990 to 2004: infoplease.com What was your complaint again? Here's 1982 to 2007: hud.gov (Estimated for 2007, obviously.) BTW, you never have explained that discrepancy between 0.2% and 1.0%.