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

To: Les H who wrote (158734)	10/21/2008 11:25:45 AM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

That is something. A free market rate of 9.8% compared with a government subsidized rate of 6.35% for a 30 year mortgage. A 3.45% subsidy, for a total savings of 35%. That's quite a welfare program the U.S. is providing for home owners. It's like when the Japanese Treasury directly lent money to home buyers at 3% because banks wouldn't or couldn't lend at that low of a percentage. .

To: Les H who wrote (158734)	10/21/2008 1:41:11 PM
From: Les H	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 306849

Argentine Bonds, Stocks Plunge on Pension Takeover Speculation By Drew Benson and Bill Faries Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Argentine bonds soared above 24 percent and stocks sank the most in a decade on speculation the government will seize private pension funds and use the assets to stave off the second default this decade. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will unveil a new pension fund plan at 4 p.m. New York time today, the country's social security administration said in a statement. Fernandez will nationalize the system, giving the government control of $29 billion in retirement accounts, La Nacion reported, citing government officials it didn't identify. ``It's horrible,'' said Jaime Valdivia, who manages $1 billion of assets for Emerging Sovereign Group in New York. ``We're going back to the dark ages. Not even in times of the worst financial stress did the government ever think about taking over the private pension system.'' Fernandez has struggled to raise cash to cover growing financing needs as the global financial crisis drives down prices on the country's commodity exports and erodes demand for higher- yielding, developing-nation debt. The government's borrowing needs will swell to as much as $14 billion next year from $7 billion in 2007, RBC Capital Markets, a Toronto-based unit of Canada's largest bank, said today. Yields on the government's 8.28 percent bonds due in 2033 surged 4.35 percentage points to 24.77 percent, the highest since the country issued the debt in a 2005 restructuring, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. The bond's price sank 7.9 cents to 29 cents on the dollar, leaving it just pennies above the price on defaulted debt that investors held out of the 2005 renegotiation. $95 Billion Debt Default Argentina's benchmark Merval stock index tumbled as much as 13.8 percent today to a four-year low, extending its losses this month to 37 percent. The South American country hasn't had access to international capital markets since it defaulted on $95 billion of bonds in 2001. Holders of some $20 billion of those bonds rejected the government's 2005 payout of 30 cents on the dollar, the harshest sovereign restructuring since World War II. The social security administration didn't provide details on today's announcement. The press offices at the presidential palace and the pension fund regulator declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg News. ``This is negative, very negative, for the markets,'' said Mariano Tavelli, a portfolio manager at Tavelli & Compania in Buenos Aires. ``It's going to cause a sharp drop in confidence in the country and this government.'' `Last-Ditch Measure' Nestor Kirchner, Fernandez's husband and predecessor, began tightening restrictions on private pension funds last year, requiring them to keep more investments in the country as part of an effort to sustain a five-year-old economic expansion. Argentina created the private accounts in 1994 with the aim of phasing out the government-run system. A government takeover of the accounts would probably require congressional approval, Tavelli said. Argentina's private pension fund administrators managed 94.4 billion pesos ($29 billion) in savings at the end of September. About 55 percent of the investments are in government debt, according to the pension fund regulator's Web site. Nationalization would allow the Fernandez administration to write off the government bonds held by the funds, said Javier Salvucci, an analyst with Buenos Aires-based Silver Cloud Advisors. ``The government is explicitly saying that it has problems meeting debt maturities and this is a last-ditch measure to do so,'' Salvucci said. ``For accounting purposes, this debt will no longer exist.'' Central Bank Intervention Argentine bonds have lost 37 percent this year, putting them on pace for the worst year since the 2001 default, according to a Merrill Lynch & Co. index. The bonds lost 62 percent that year. A pension funds takeover may add to capital flight as Argentines seek the safety of U.S. dollars, RBC said Capital Markets said in today's report. The peso was little changed today, rising 0.2 percent to 3.2163 per dollar, as traders said the central bank intervened in the foreign exchange market to shore up the currency. The bank sold ``large amounts'' of dollars, said Gustavo Quintana, a trader with Lopez Leon Brokers in Buenos Aires. A central bank spokesman didn't return a phone call seeking comment. The cost of protecting Argentina's bonds against default soared. Five-year credit-default swaps based on Argentina's debt jumped 1.57 percentage points to 31.18 percentage points, according to Bloomberg data. Credit-default swaps, contracts to protect against or speculate on default, pay the buyer face value should a borrower fail to adhere to its debt agreements. `Closer to the Abyss' That price means it costs $3.118 million to protect $10 million of the country's debt from default. In September 2006, it cost just $244,000 as record exports of wheat, soybeans and corn fueled economic growth and swelled government coffers. Commodities have dropped 40 percent from a record high reached on July 2 as the global financial crisis has deepened a global economic slowdown, according to UBS Bloomberg CMCI Index of 26 raw materials. Growth in South America's second-biggest economy, which gets more than half its export revenue from commodities, will slow to 5 percent this year and 2.5 percent in 2009, RBC Capital Markets said. The economy expanded 8.8 percent on average over the past five years as Kirchner and Fernandez used surging tax receipts to boost government spending on everything from civil servant pay rises to energy subsidies. ``Argentina is ever closer to the abyss,'' RBC said in the report. bloomberg.com