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Non-Tech : Banks--- Betting on the recovery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Asymmetric who wrote (978)	7/5/2010 3:32:38 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1428

Mansion squatter not finished I figured the arrest of the Kirkland mansion squatter last week would be the end of that crazy story. Danny Westneat I figured the arrest of the Kirkland mansion squatter last week would be the end of that crazy story. But it only gets curiouser and curiouser. As we go down the rabbit hole of the housing meltdown. The woman who was hauled away for squatting in a $3.3 million house? She has no intention of backing down. She's going to keep staking her claim to a house she insists nobody actually owns. Plus she is staking claims to 10 other houses in the Seattle area that have gone into foreclosure and been passed from bank to bank. She's doing it all, she insists, not to make money. But to stick it to the banks. "Banks do whatever they want and nobody holds them accountable," Jill Lane said by phone from Disneyland, where she was vacationing after being released by Kirkland police. "It makes me ill to see what the banks are doing. They aren't using their bailout money to help anyone. So I'm standing up for the people who are being brutalized by banks every day." "This is a national movement," seconded Jim McClung, a former Bothell real-estate agent and owner of NW Note Elimination, a company he runs with Lane that counsels people in how to "eliminate mortgages" as well as take over empty, foreclosed houses. "What happened in Kirkland is just the tip of the iceberg." It sure is, suggests the FBI. Last week the feds released a report saying housing-related schemes are soaring, including what the agency called "property theft targeting bank-owned properties." People file false deeds on houses in foreclosure, either to try to take them over or to bamboozle the police and courts long enough to rent them out to unsuspecting tenants, the FBI says. McClung and Lane say what they do isn't stealing. They say they have no moral or ethical hangup about it. If a court determines a bank rightfully owns the Kirkland mansion, Lane says she'll respect that. She just wants to force the banks to prove it. Such tactics apparently have worked in a few cases around the country. Last fall a federal judge in New York voided a $461,000 mortgage when the lender essentially couldn't find a note assigned to the property. When the mortgage was sold and resold with pools of other securitized mortgages on Wall Street, the seemingly crucial question of who actually owned the underlying property was never properly recorded. McClung said he was interviewed by an FBI agent the week before last, but has nothing to hide. "We're exposing that what the banks are doing is greedy and illegal," he said. Both he and Lane said they eventually want to claim abandoned properties and either give them to the poor or turn them into affordable rentals. Michael Greif, for one, finds this Robin Hood twist to the story hard to take. "They say they're after the banks. But they're really after people like me," he says. Greif, a 47-year-old from Lynnwood, paid NW Note Elimination $5,000 in May to help him stake his own claim to an empty, foreclosed house, also in Kirkland. Brand new and on the market for $1.3 million, the house fits the profile. A builder lost it to a bank, which in turn went belly up, its assets transferred by the feds to another bank. The plan was to try to force this second bank to prove its ownership, and, if it couldn't, simply take over the house by filing deeds and liens and then trying to sell it. In addition to the $5,000 upfront, NW Note Elimination was to receive half the proceeds of any sale. Within two days, though, Greif started having doubts. A friend warned that it sounded fishy. When Greif called the listing agent on the house and said he was going to file documents staking a claim, the agent told him he was out of his mind. "It's all embarrassing to admit to you," Greif told me. "There's an entire underground industry of this kind of stuff going on. I knew it was wrong, so I've got no excuse. I got caught up in it." Why tell your story? People will call you a fool, I said. "I am a fool," he said. "I wish I could have read a story about someone else who was a fool so I wouldn't have ended up the fool." He's been trying for six weeks to get his money back. The check was made out to McClung's company. McClung told me Saturday it's all a misunderstanding — that Greif was misled by a wayward employee who no longer works with McClung. "So I can put in the newspaper that you hereby pledge to refund his $5,000?" I asked McClung. "Yes," McClung said. "He'll get it back next week." I'm obviously no lawyer, but the NW Note Elimination contract that Greif signed looks to me to be gobbledygook. For example, it refers to quit claim deeds as "Quick Claim Deeds," suggesting whoever wrote it doesn't know much about real estate. McClung said he's troubled by the "greedy, negative spin" of recent press coverage. "We're trying to help people," he said. The spotlight hasn't been all bad. Ever since Lane squatted in that mansion, the pair says, they have been deluged with e-mails and phone calls. Not from skeptics. From people saying, "The banks are screwing me, too. Can you help me out?" "We're getting so much interest we've been turning people away," McClung says. Like I said: Down the rabbit hole we go. seattletimes.nwsource.com

To: Asymmetric who wrote (978)	7/21/2010 2:24:51 PM
From: tejek	1 Recommendation Respond to of 1428

Manufacturers' view rosier as demand returns By Scott Malone and Nick Zieminski BOSTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three major manufacturers raised their profit targets for the rest of the year on Wednesday, saying they were confident a rebound in demand for industrial goods would hold. The shares of United Technologies Corp (NYSE:UTX - News), Textron Inc (NYSE:TXT - News) and Eaton Corp (NYSE:ETN - News) rose after they posted second-quarter results that topped Wall Street's expectations, easing concerns the economy might be sliding back into recession. All three companies also posted better-than-expected revenue, meaning they had more than cost-cutting to thank for their growth. In addition, United Tech noted that orders, an indicator of future sales, were up across its business units, something Chief Financial Officer Greg Hayes called "a sign that the worst is behind us." The revenue beats stood in contrast to recent reports from largest U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co (NYSE:GE - News), as well as banks, including Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC - News) and Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C - News), which topped Wall Street's profit expectations, but missed the mark on revenue and saw their shares slide. "As you look at the order rates, it suggests pretty good global growth," said analyst Jeff Hammond of KeyBanc Capital Markets. "As I talk to my companies, they feel better about the demand cycle than the investment community and the macro data points do." For a graphic on manufacturing earnings, click on link.reuters.com United Tech, the world's biggest maker of elevators and air conditioners, posted better-than-expected quarterly profit and revenue and it raised its 2010 profit target for the second time this year. It expects full-year profit of $4.60 to $4.70 per share, representing growth of 12 percent to 14 percent. The Hartford, Connecticut-based company, which also makes Pratt & Whitney jet engines and Sikorsky helicopters, for the first time since 2008 reported quarterly organic revenue growth, a measure that factors out the effect of currency fluctuations and acquisitions. Providence, Rhode Island-based Textron, the world's biggest maker of corporate jets, also posted results that beat Wall Street's forecasts. Textron, which also makes Bell helicopters and EZ-Go golf carts, looks for full-year profit of 55 cents to 65 cents per share. At the high end, that range represents growth from last year, suggesting the company could return to profit growth sooner than new CEO Scott Donnelly's target of 2011. UNCERTAINTY REMAINS Donnelly, a former GE official who became Textron's CEO in December, acknowledged demand for big-ticket items, including Cessna jets, wavered late in the quarter in the wake of Greece's sovereign debt crisis. "The pace of the recovery remains uncertain with the European sovereign debt concerns, which have negatively impacted business and consumer confidence," Donnelly said on a conference call with analysts. Profit growth at Textron's helicopter, military and industrial units offset a slide at Cessna. Growth outside the United States has been a key boost for major manufacturers this year and the greatest risk many face is the possibility of slowing demand in Asia, which has been robust. Eaton CEO Alexander Cutler cited that concern, although he expressed confidence the Cleveland-based maker of hydraulic and electrical systems would manage its way through it. Eaton raised its profit forecast sharply, looking for earnings of $4.90 to $5.10 per share, above its earlier forecast of $4.30 to $4.60 per share. It also said it would raise its quarterly dividend. "While the debt problems in Europe are likely to slow the rate of growth in some European markets, and the rate of economic growth in China has moderated slightly, we anticipate solid global growth continuing during the second half of the year," Cutler said. Still, the fact that these companies grew profits at a better-than-expected pace -- and expect to continue to do so -- suggests the risks are manageable for businesses that have just survived the worst downturn in the world economy since the Great Depression of the 1930s, investors said. "You have a mind-set and sentiment that is very negative, so the negative sentiment is telling you that things are bad because you see them with your eyes and yet the companies are telling you that they're not horrible," said Peter Klein, senior portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management in Cleveland, Ohio, which holds United Tech shares. "Eventually, sentiment is going to have to take that into account and have a little hope." The top executive of U.S. staffing company Manpower Inc (NYSE:MAN - News), which generates the bulk of its profits in Europe, said he believed investors exaggerated the risks the Greek debt crisis posed to the rest of the world. "The notion of the euro blowing up? No, the stuff isn't happening," Manpower CEO Jeff Joerres said in an interview. "Is (growth) going to be robust? Not necessarily, but Armageddon is not on the horizon here. Investors will get a further look at where the manufacturing sector is heading later this week, when companies including Caterpillar Inc (NYSE:CAT - News) and 3M Co (NYSE:MMM - News) report quarterly results. Textron shares rose 8 percent to $19.48 and Eaton rose 6 percent to $73.08, while United Tech shares were up less than 1 percent at $67.86 on the New York Stock Exchange. The industrial sector has moderately outperformed the broader market this year, with the Standard & Poor's capital goods industry group (^GSPIC - News) notching a rise of 0.75 percent at a time the broad S&P 500 (^SPX - News) is down 3.9 percent. finance.yahoo.com