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Strategies & Market Trends : The Stock Market Bubble -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Box-By-The-Riviera™ who wrote (1642)	9/15/1998 9:03:00 PM
From: Box-By-The-Riviera™	Respond to of 3339

[ Business \| US Market \| By Industry \| IPO \| AP \| S&P \| International \| PRNews \| BizWire ] Tuesday September 15, 4:38 pm Eastern Time Wall St. jitters shake New York apartment market By Holly Rosenkrantz NEW YORK, Sept 15 (Reuters) - The jitters that have spooked Wall Street this summer have begun seeping into New York City's real estate business, where the stock and real estate markets are more closely linked than in many other cities. Prices are still holding at their lofty levels, but top Manhattan residential real estate companies said buyers have been behaving more cautiously during the stock market decline of recent weeks. Some buyers have even backed out of deals, blaming their eleventh-hour concerns on the stock market. Barbara Corcoran, chairman and chief executive of the Corcoran Group, one of the Manhattan's largest residential real estate companies, said five buyers canceled their deals on August 28, the day after Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 357 points. One of those buyers was a Wall Street investment banker. And Brown Harris Stevens, one of the largest sellers of luxury apartments in Manhattan, said it has seen about 15 percent of its buyers pull out of their deals in recent weeks. About half of them, though, later came back, saying their original need to buy an apartment had not gone away. ''Since the last week of August, everyone has gotten a little nervous, and it has nothing to do with the value of real estate,'' said Kent Swig, co-chairman of Brown Harris Stevens. ''People have been shook up by what's happening on Wall Street and are saying, 'let's re-evaluate what we're doing,'' he added. Amid the Wall Street bull market of the nineties, the real estate business in New York has been booming, and prices for apartments, already among the highest in the country, have grown astronomical in the past few years. But with the stock market poised to continue the roller coaster ride it began in August, real estate companies in New York City said they are bracing for more uncertainty after years of booming business. The Corcoran Group, for example, has begun training its brokers on how to calm apartment buyers who are now scared of where Wall Street is headed. Other companies said they are hoping that people looking into buying a New York apartment are savvy enough to understand that volatility on Wall Street generally does not hurt property values over the long haul. ''Most of our buyers seem to be hardened after 10 years of a gyrating stock market,'' said Clark Halstead, managing partner of Halstead Property Co. ''After (the 1987 stock market crash), everyone was paralyzed for 90 days, but by now, I think people understand that we have a sound regional and national economy,'' he said. In the short-term, of course, New York City's local economy could be hurt if Wall Street faces more troubles. Brokerages companies have said they do not expect this market downturn to produce anything like the wave of layoffs that came in 1987. However, several commercial real estate brokers said they were concerned that companies -- particularly the financial services firms -- will hold off on expanding their office space in New York if the stock market takes a bigger and more damaging tumble. ''We're beginning to detect anxiety,'' said Tom Falus, president of the New York office of Cushman & Wakefield, one of the city's largest commerical real estate companies.

To: Box-By-The-Riviera™ who wrote (1642)	9/15/1998 9:06:00 PM
From: Box-By-The-Riviera™	Respond to of 3339

Tuesday September 15, 3:50 pm Eastern Time Soros calls for global credit insurance agency NEW YORK, Sept 15 (Reuters) - International investor George Soros repeated his call for a global credit insurance body and called on the U.S. Congress to authorize increased funding for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In an article published in Sept. 15 edition of The Wall Street Journal and based on his planned testimony to the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services on Tuesday, Soros said, ''The global capitalist system that has been responsible for our remarkable prosperity is coming apart at the seams.'' Soros, the chairman of Soros Fund Management, said the default of Russian banks on their obligations and the subsequent shutdown of Malaysia's financial markets to foreigners has led to a ''global credit crunch in the making.'' ''The flight of capital has how spread to Brazil and put the rest of Latin America at risk,'' he said. Soros cautioned U.S. policymakers against complacency just because most of the trouble is occurring outside the borders of the United States. He said the global capitalist system involves not only free trade but, even more importantly, the free movement of capital in a ''gigantic circulatory system'' in which capital is sucked up by financial markets and institutions at the center and pumped out to periphery. The Asian crisis reversed the direction of that flow, Soros said. Capital began to flee the periphery, at first to the benefit of the financial markets at the center. The U.S. economy then enjoyed the best of all possible worlds as cheap imports helped to keep inflation in check and stock prices moved to new highs. But Soros said the crisis has reached the point where distress at the periphery is not good for the center. ''The pain at the periphery has become so intense that individual countries have begun to opt out of the capitalist system, or simply fall by the wayside,'' he said. Finally, the programs of the international monetary authorities have not worked and thus, those authorities have been unable to reassure the financial markets, Soros said. To help maintain stability in financial markets, institutions besides the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may be necessary, he said. Soros repeated his proposal for an International Credit Insurance Corp. to establish some kind of supervision over national supervisory authorities. ''At the same time, there remains the urgent need for Congress to authorize an increase in the capital of the IMF,'' he said. Soros also called for the creation of Special Drawing Rights that could be used to guarantee the rollover of the already existing debt of countries that receive the IMF's seal of approval. ''If there is no reward for good behavior, meltdowns and defections will multiply,'' he said. But Soros admitted that such ''radical ideas'' could not even be considered until Congress ''changes its attitude toward international institutions in general and the IMF in particular.''