Georgia home prices were essentially flat in October from a month earlier, but are still off significantly from the same period last year, according to a report issued Tuesday.
According to the Standard & Poors/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, the price of a home in Atlanta declined 0.2 percent following monthly rebounds in price over the summer months. Still, prices overall are off 8.1 percent from October 2008, though that figure has narrowed.
The report comes a week after the National Association of Realtors said the sales prices of existing homes in November rose 2.4 percent from the same period last year.
Sales volume was up 33 percent over November 2008, one of the deepest months in the recession, according to the NAR report.
"The turn-around in home prices seen in the Spring and Summer has faded with only seven of the 20 cities seeing month-to-month gains, although all 20 continue to show improvements on a year-over-year basis. All in all, this report should be described as flat," David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at Standard & Poor's, said in a statement.
The annual rate of decline has also improved nationally, and is the ninth straight month of improvement. The 10-city and 20-city composite indices were down 6.4 percent and 7.3 percent, respectively, for October.
Then national price was flat in October compared to September.
Denver was the healthiest market among the 20 cities, posting a 0.1 percent drop in home prices. The decline was 0.6 percent in Dallas, the next-healthiest market, according to the monthly survey.
Las Vegas remained the weakest market among the 20 cities, with a drop of 26.6 percent. It was followed by Phoenix, which saw a price decline of 18.1 percent.
The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index tracks sales prices of typical single-family homes in leading metropolitan areas.
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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will be a featured speaker at an economic forum in Atlanta next month.
Bernanke will speak Jan. 3 at the American Economic Association annual meeting at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis.
Bernanke’s speech will open the AEA’s 125th anniversary meeting. The AEA publishes several economics periodicals, including the American Economic Review and the Journal of Economic Literature easy payday loans.
Other notables attending the three-day summit include Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
The reactor would have command-and-control systems and passive safety features, and be buried in an underground containment building and monitored 24-7 with sensors. It wouldn’t need water for cooling. The fuel would be loaded in the factory prior to delivery and there would be enough to operate nearly 20 years. After that, its uranium fuel cartridge would be switched out with a new cartridge. About 95 per cent of the fuel waste from the old cartridges would be recycled into new fuel.
Sandia isn’t the only group thinking this way. Power-plant equipment maker Babcock & Wilcox has entered the small nuclear market, and a number of start-ups – Hyperion Power and NuScale Power among them – are also blazing a trail.
New York State is known as the nation’s financial capital, yet nearly one in 10 of its residents do not have a checking or savings account.
And while Texas is densely populated with banks, nearly a quarter of households in the Dallas-Forth Worth area have gone to a pawn shop or check cashing company recently to carry out a simple financial transaction.
Those were just a few of the findings of a new government survey released Wednesday on Americans’ access to basic banking services.
The survey, which tallied responses from roughly 54,000 U.S. households, marks the first time that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has published such data.
Perhaps one of the biggest revelations of the study was that approximately 7.7% of all U.S. households, or 17 million Americans, were considered "unbanked," meaning they did not have any sort of a checking or savings account.
The most common reason cited, according to the study, was a lack of funds. More than a third of those considered "unbanked" said they did not have enough cash to warrant having a bank account.
In fact, nearly 20% of all U.S. households earning $30,000 or less per year did not have a bank account.
The study also found that almost a quarter of all households headed by someone who didn’t finish high school were considered "unbanked." Meanwhile, nearly one of every five African-American or Hispanic households do not have a checking or savings account, according to FDIC data payday loan.
Another key finding of Wednesday’s survey, was that many Americans that actually have bank accounts still look elsewhere to cash their checks or borrow money.
In fact, nearly 18% of all U.S. households have relied on payday lenders, pawn shops or check-cashing outlets at least once in the past five years.
Such businesses have often been criticized for charging consumers rates that would even make loan sharks blush. In some instances, borrowers pay the equivalent of an annualized interest rate as high as 500%.
People who were polled, however, said they continued to use these services simply because they were convenient or because it was easier to get a loan from them.
Hoping to migrate consumers away from such expensive options, the FDIC has enacted a number of initiatives including a short-term loan pilot program it launched in February 2008.
As part of the program, a select group of banks have agreed to offer short-term loans of up to $2,500 to low-income Americans.
Wednesday’s survey report was yet another effort to expand consumers’ access to basic financial services, agency officials said.
"By better understanding the households that make up this group — who they are and their reasons for being unbanked or underbanked, we will be better positioned to help them take that first step," FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said in a statement.
Loans to households and companies in Europe posted their second straight annual decline in October as the economic slump curtailed demand for credit and made banks more reluctant to lend.
Loans to the private sector fell 0.8 percent from a year earlier after a drop of 0.3 percent in September, the European Central Bank said today. On the month, loans slipped 0.2 percent. M3 money-supply growth, which the ECB uses as a gauge of future inflation, slowed to 0.3 percent in October, the lowest rate since records began in 1981, from 1.8 percent in September.
The economy of the 16-nation euro region resumed expansion in the third quarter after global trade boosted exports and government stimulus measures fueled domestic consumption. Still, growth is likely to remain muted unless credit flows improve and companies and households increase spending. The ECB has cut its benchmark interest rate to a record low of 1 percent and is flooding banks with cash in an effort to revive lending.
“The euro-zone recovery could be held back by a significant number of companies being unable to get the credit that they need,” said Howard Archer, chief economist at IHS Global Insight in London. Today’s data point to “very muted inflationary pressures” and “support the case for the ECB to only very gradually withdraw its emergency liquidity measures and to keep interest rates down at 1 percent until deep into 2010,” he said.
Weak Banks
While an ECB survey last month showed European banks expect to ease credit standards for companies in the fourth quarter after tightening them less aggressively in the third, it may take up to three years for lending to return to pre-crisis levels, according to Daiwa Securities SMBC Europe Ltd.
In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, banks may have to write off another 90 billion euros ($136 billion) on bad loans and securitization instruments, the Bundesbank said yesterday.
The world’s largest financial-services companies have racked up more than $1.7 trillion of losses and write-downs since the start of the financial crisis, according to Bloomberg data.
The euro-area economy will expand 0.7 percent in 2010 and 1.5 percent in 2011, after contracting 4 percent this year, the European Commission said on Nov. 3.
M1 Growth Slows
M1, which captures the most liquid form of money in the economy such as cash and overnight deposits, grew 11.8 percent in October from a year earlier, the ECB said, down from an annual increase of 12.8 percent in September.
The ECB has said it will “gradually” withdraw the additional liquidity it has pumped into the banking system as financial markets normalize and the economy strengthens. It has already signaled it is unlikely to offer banks 12-month loans next year after its third tender in December.
Economists don’t expect the ECB to raise interest rates until the third quarter of next year, a Bloomberg survey shows.
“From the real economy side, there’s no single reason why they should hike interest rates or even think about hiking interest rates,” said Carsten Brzeski, senior economist at ING Group in Brussels. “Economic growth is still too fragile.”
Alan Webber, former St. Louisan, co-founder of Fast Company business magazine and author of "Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Yourself," was back in St. Louis last month to speak to the St. Louis group of Southern Illinois University business school alumni.
Webber writes that "Rules of Thumb" originated as notes on 3×5 cards when a business leader said something insightful, those ah-ha moments that you remember and get you thinking.
In the spirit of the book, the answers in this week’s Five Questions are abbreviated so they could be on 3×5 cards (well, maybe spilling over onto both sides).
As a native St. Louisan back in the city, what do you think of how St. Louis has changed and what lies ahead?
When I was working in the mayor’s office in Portland, we believed that downtown is the heart of the city, and neighborhoods have to have a stake in downtown’s success. The mayor went to Seattle and talked with the Nordstrom folks and sketched out where a store might be built in downtown. That store was an iconic project, and it got the backing of the community.
St. Louis needs an iconic project that the community will buy into and support.
In "Rules of Thumb" I use the metaphor of Zoysia grass. The growth spreads out from one plug that takes root and grows. A great example is Delmar Boulevard and what Joe Edwards has done and what has sprung up from what was one restaurant, Blueberry Hill.
How do you make innovation a part of workplace culture?
Creative ideas often come from other places. In Fast Company we had a piece that interviewed a NASCAR pit crew leader on team building, and another focused on a Native American chief on the importance of tribe because a company’s employees are a tribe.
What’s your take on how newspapers might be able to survive and maybe even thrive again?
Storytelling is important. There are so many ways you can connect with readers so that they feel that it’s time well spent. A newspaper should deliver not what’s nice to know, but what one needs to know no teletrack payday loans.
Rule 15 in the book is all about innovation. It suggests that there are four keys to innovation: Chance, connections, conversations and community. Newspapers have a huge opportunity to harness the energy and imagination of their readers.
A newspaper is no longer a one-way communication. It’s a conversation.
It’s an exciting time. Newspapers aren’t ever going to go back to their glory days. They have to reinvent themselves. And someone somewhere is going to go find something that works and show everyone else the way.
In your book, you write that when interviewing business leaders you often got the most revealing answers when you asked "What keeps you up at night?" and "What gets you up in the morning?" So what keeps you up at night?
The state of education in America worries me. In Santa Fe, where I live, 50 percent of students drop out before graduating. In Los Angeles, the number is even higher. The superintendent there said recently, "I don’t know why we keep trying the status quo because it’s obviously not working."
We need to find a way to engage the community to find something that begins to solve this massive urban problem. Otherwise, people vote with their feet — people choose to raise their kids where there are good schools, and that means cities are losing jobs. The smartest cities are talent magnets.
What would be your 53rd Rule of Thumb?
In the book, I left the 53rd Rule of Thumb blank so readers could write in their own. But I learned a lesson recently while hiking in the Grand Canyon. It’s a core rule of hiking. At the bottom of the canyon is the Phantom Ranch, and as you hike up to the rim of the canyon it’s important that you don’t look up. In business and life, when you are faced with a challenge, take things one step at a time. Focus on what’s in front of you. And you’ll get where you’re going one step at a time.
It began 41 years ago when a meandering drive through then-rural south St. Louis County landed Orville Roy at the Chrysler assembly plant in Fenton.
Recently discharged from the Marine Corps, Roy decided to fill out an application. A job offer came two days later and, with it, a legacy was born.
Eventually, three of Orville Roy’s sons, a daughter-in-law and a grandson, Michael Roy Jr., would follow him through the Fenton plant gates.
"It’s been our living, our livelihood," said Michael Roy Sr., 48, Orville’s son.
No more.
On July 10, Michael Roy Jr. and 600 other Chrysler workers will punch their time cards and go down in history as the final shift at a location that has turned out the automaker’s products for a half-century.
"There’s no middle class anymore," said Michael Roy Sr., forced to retire from Chrysler in December due to medical problems. "The middle class is gone."
That may be an overstatement from a former worker angered and betrayed by what he sees as the failure of the United Auto Workers and Chrysler to protect local production jobs now outsourced to Mexico and Canada.
But it still rings true for families, like the Roys, who have come to view assembly line positions at Ford, General Motors and Chrysler as a birthright.
Multigeneration families employed by and loyal to a single car manufacturer have long been "part and parcel of the automobile business," said Michael Smith, director of the Walter Reuther Library at Wayne State University and an expert on the labor movement. "That’s why the auto crisis is so devastating."
Matthew Diemer, an assistant professor of counseling at Michigan State University, said it may be premature to declare the "death" of a tradition of children following parents and grandparents into blue-collar manufacturing jobs.
"But maybe," he allows, "what we’re seeing is the death knell."
COMPLICATED OPTIONS
The bell tolled for the Roy family on April 30, the day Chrysler announced it was laying off what remained of Fenton’s Dodge Ram pickup truck work force. (The company halted minivan production at the Fenton location last year.)
After work that afternoon, 24-year-old Michael Roy Jr. and his mother, Cheryl Roy, repaired to a local tavern to consider a series of complicated options.
In mid-May, Cheryl Roy, made her up her mind. An autoworker for 14 years, she rejected a possible transfer to a Chrysler facility in either Illinois or Michigan and took a company buyout.
Cheryl is collecting severance benefits, searching for a job and staying at the family home in Arnold to care for her husband, Michael Sr., who retired following diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Also looking for work, Michael Roy Jr. wonders what the future holds for a young man who aspired to retrace the footsteps of his grandfather and father.
"I’m good with my hands," he said. "And if you’re good with your hands, what can you do now?"
The official answer: Move from the production of goods and services dependent on nonrenewable resources to the production of environmentally sustainable commodities. Manufacturing the blades used in power-generating wind turbines is a commonly cited example.
State and national leaders across the nation, including Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, contend that so-called "green jobs" represent the next wave of American manufacturing.
Michael Jr. knows that getting a foothold in the clean energy work force means going back to school. A few credits shy of an associate’s degree, he walked away from his education to accept an offer of a part-time Chrysler job that he saw as a stepping stone to full-time employment personal loans no credit check.
Strapped by declining income as he helps tend to his father, Michael cannot afford, in terms of either time or money, to return to his studies at Jefferson Community College.
Smith agrees that Michael’s best hope rests in furthering his education,
A former autoworker himself, Smith laments that the days when a union membership card served as a portal to a middle class lifestyle are slowly disappearing.
"The jobs that dad and grandpa had, that didn’t require anything more than a high school education, are no longer around," Smith said. "Even auto working is not just about putting on hubcaps anymore. It’s a lot more sophisticated."
ITS OWN REWARD
That was not the case when Orville Roy, now 80, began working his way through various administrative departments, including payroll, in 1968.
"In the old days, if you knew somebody and you wanted to get hired, all you had to do was ask for a recommendation," he said.
All the better if that acquaintance happened to be a blood relative.
Putting aside their disappointment that jobs once performed in Fenton are now held by workers in Canada and Mexico, Michael Sr. and Cheryl Roy acknowledge their family of six has done all right by the nation’s No. 3 domestic automaker.
"We have four kids that wanted to play sports and take dance classes and do all sorts of things," said Cheryl. "Somebody had to pay for it."
Until Cheryl went to work in the pickup plant in 1995, that somebody was her husband, who had started as a "floater" in the chassis department 11 years before.
"I worked on the line, and that was punishment," said Michael Sr.
"I’ve shoved in engines, I’ve thrown tires and I’ve thrown bumpers," said Michael Sr., lapsing into autoworker jargon to describe the tasks he performed at Fenton. The "punishment" of the line, though, had its own reward: By the time Michael Sr. retired late last year, he was earning $29.95 an hour, plus the heralded UAW benefit package.
There was also the intangible benefit, Michael Jr. noted, of spotting a Dodge Ram on the road and thinking, "I made that truck."
TUG OF TRADITION
Michael Jr. never matched his father’s salary.
Nor, because his tenure paralleled Chrysler’s shrinking market share, was Michael Jr. ever offered a full-time position at the plant.
Michael Jr. can lay claim, however, to a dubious distinction: He worked both the last day and night shift to produce a minivan at the South Plant and, later, was assigned to the last North Plant night shift to build a pickup.
Michael Jr. was circumspect last week as he reflected on the irony of a callback has placed him on a shift that will soon assemble the final Chrysler product ever built in Fenton.
"It’s frustrating," Michael Jr. said. "But (unlike his dad and grandfather) I haven’t put my whole life into it."
Resolved that the time has come for him to move forward, the son of Michael Roy Sr. and grandson of Orville Roy nonetheless feels the tug of the tradition that began on a long ago leisurely drive that wound up, improbably, at a car factory.
"I was kind of hoping," Michael Jr. said wistfully, "that my grandkids would work there."
His lender, TD Canada Trust, said there would be an $8,000 penalty to break his five-year closed mortgage – an amount he found tolerable.
"By the time we sold in April 2009, TD Bank quoted us a doubled penalty of $18,000. Now, they are stating it will be approximately $25,000 upon closing in June," he says.
Most mortgage contracts and renewal forms specify that clients seeking an early exit will pay either three months’ interest or an interest rate differential (IRD), whichever is greater.
The IRD is calculated by taking the outstanding balance, multiplying it by the gap between your existing mortgage rate and the current rate for a term similar to what you have left, and multiplying by the number of months left to the end of your term.
Mortgage rates have fallen steadily since last fall, making the IRD penalties grow bigger and bigger.
Once I got involved in Moosa’s case, TD worked hard to cushion the blow. It sent him to a mortgage specialist, who suggested making a 15 per cent lump-sum prepayment using a line of credit that would be paid back at closing.
Since TD hadn’t told him about this option last October, Moosa asked for and received the right to make a 30 per cent prepayment to reduce the outstanding balance.
The estimated penalty is now $11,000 to $14,000.
"We won’t know for sure what the exact penalty will be until the payments are made using the line of credit next week," Moosa says.
He wonders why TD dragged its feet when told about his financial problems last fall.
"Our branch representative should have advised us that we could pay a 15 per cent lump sum to reduce the penalty.
"TD needs to have a better process in place, particularly when dealing with clients whose largest investment is in their hands electronic check payday advance."
Moosa’s comments will be reviewed, Hechler said. "We could have moved more quickly to help and provided clearer information from the beginning."
Kevin Plautz, also a TD mortgage customer, felt he received misleading information when he asked about breaking the deal to take advantage of lower rates.
His financial adviser initially quoted a penalty of $2,100, based on three months’ interest. Other TD staff he spoke to later did not challenge that figure.
Only when he was ready to renegotiate did he learn there would be an IRD penalty of $5,900.
"I wouldn’t have bothered doing a renegotiation if I had just been told the correct penalty at the start or one of the many times I asked about it since then," he says
TD agreed to reduce his IRD penalty to $4,000 after I escalated his complaint to the head office.
"We have offered to substantially reduce the amount of Mr. Plautz’s IRD penalty as a goodwill gesture in recognition of the confusion he experienced over the amount he was quoted," Hechler told me.
While planning to take the offer, Plautz is leaving TD. He’s found another bank that will give him a lower interest rate and cover $225 of his $270 mortgage discharge fee.
"I have a very bad taste in my mouth. I think I still prefer to move my business," he says.
I’d like to hear from readers. Have you tried to renegotiate a mortgage amid falling interest rates? How did the lender respond and what penalty was charged? I’ll publish comments in a future column.
Write to onyourside@thestar.ca
or check the On Your Side blog at www.ellenroseman.com
Cisco Systems Inc Chief Executive John Chambers said on Monday that he would probably stay in his position for at least another three to five years.
Asked at a JP Morgan technology conference about his future plans — for example, if he would move into politics — the 59-year-old head of the biggest U.S. network equipment maker said he was more likely to teach.
“I love what I do. I’m going to retire here at Cisco and after that I will teach,” he said. “I intend to stay at Cisco for probably a minimum of three to five more years, assuming I can earn the shareholders’ trust, our employees’ trust, our customers’ trust, and assuming my health holds up low fee pay day loans.”
Since Chambers took the CEO role in January 1995, Cisco has grown from a company with $1.2 billion in annual revenue to nearly $40 billion, as the expansion of the Internet fueled demand for routers and switches that direct Web traffic.
(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando, editing by Maureen Bavdek)
Will a recession force Nestl
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