Washington’s latest attempt to resuscitate the moribund U.S. mortgage business moves the housing market out of the emergency room and into intensive care but by no means cures the patient.
The U.S. government announced on Sunday it was seizing control of troubled mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae (FNM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and Freddie Mac (FRE.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), which are vital to the U.S. housing industry and have posed risks to international investors.
The action should lend stability after a year of turmoil in financial markets, and is sure to be watched closely by other victims of deflated housing bubbles, such as the UK. But there is still a long way to go to right the U.S. economy.
“This is a slow process. This is a baby step in the right direction,” William Larkin, fixed income portfolio manager at Cabot Money Management in Salem, Massachusetts, said about the plan’s effect on housing and the economy.
Larkin added that “it is going to be a positive for our financial system.”
Anything that puts U.S $500 payday loan. growth on a firmer footing is likely to raise hopes for the struggling global economy, though it could raise risks of already elevated U.S. inflation if investors grow to view this as the government printing money to bail out the economy.
VITAL SUPPORT
U.S. financial officials have made clear that a recovery in the housing market, currently in its worst slump since the Great Depression, was vital to getting the economy back on its feet. That’s because so much of consumers’ total wealth is tied to the value of their homes that staunching declining property prices is a must before any rebound in consumer spending can be expected to take hold.
California American Water on Friday completed its transfer of ownership of the Felton water system to the San Lorenzo Valley Water District (SLVWD).
Under terms of the agreement, SLVWD paid $13.4 million for the operating assets of the water system that serves approximately 1,330 customers in Felton. The deal includes a $10.5 million cash payment and the assumption $2.9 million in debt related to the Safe Drinking Water Bond Act used to build the Kirby Street water treatment plant and other facilities.
Additionally, California American Water, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Voorhees, N.J.-based American Water (NYSE:AWK), donated all non-operating assets of the Felton water system to the SLVWD, including 250 acres of watershed land adjacent to Fall Creek State Park paydayloan. The donation includes a deed restriction that the timber on the land will not be commercially harvested, preserving the land for water production, water supply and conservation.
“We received premium value to rate base for our operating assets and were able to protect the timberland for future generations,” said Kent Turner, president of California American Water.
Former California American Water customers in Felton should contact SLVWD at 831.338.2153 for all customer service inquiries.
Target Corp. has purchased two Phoenix office furniture companies.
According to a press release on the Target Web site, the Minneapolis-based retailer purchased both Walsh Bros. and US Business Interiors Wednesday.
Calls to both companies were referred to Target's corporate office.
Jessica Hauser, Target spokeswoman, said the company has no intention of closing either operation, but they will be rebranded. Showrooms will be open to the public focusing on home offices, small offices and design services for business interiors. "We feel their experience and reputation in the Valley were a big factor in the acquisitions," she said.
According to the Target press release, the purchase will allow Target to focus in on its Target Commercial Interior operations and open up the Southwest market.
The company now operates Target Commercial Interiors businesses in several cities across its network, including Minneapolis, several cities in Wisconsin and Seattle cash advance loan.
"We are excited to integrate Walsh Bros. and USBI into Target Commercial Interiors," said Joe Perdew, president of Target Commercial Interiors in a statement. "Their years of client service and business expertise align well with Target Commercial Interiors' commitment to our 'Expect More. Pay Less' brand promise for the business customer."
As part of these acquisitions, Target Commercial Interiors will be expanding its partnership with Steelcase, a global player in the office furniture industry, executives said.
The deal leaves Goodman's as one of the remaining independent office furniture firms in the metro Phoenix area.
No doubt you’ve heard that 3-D has become the thing at the multiplex, and that Hollywood bigs like Jeffrey Katzenberg, Robert Zemeckis, and James Cameron are making movies that capitalize on new digital-projection technologies.
What has received far less notice is that 3-D could well turn out to be an even bigger revolution for live broadcast TV. That’s right: Journey to the Center of Your Living Room in 3-D.
The idea of sitting around your home wearing special glasses may sound cumbersome (and dorky). And right now there is a handful of 3-D sets for sale, but no programming to speak of. Plus - let’s face it - it’s hard to get jazzed about yet another new format of TV viewing while too many people still couldn’t tell you whether 1080p is some kind of high-def TV or an IRS tax form. Besides that, count me among the skeptics who have considered 3-D movies a bit of a niche, if not a gimmick.
Yet - forgive me, literary gods - seeing is 3-lieving. A few weeks ago I found myself in a converted warehouse in Burbank, where a rig housing two cameras shot my image and transmitted it onto a flat-screen TV on the other side of the room. With the benefit of polarized glasses - the cheap clear-plastic ones you now put on when you go to a 3-D movie in a theater - I saw myself in three crisp dimensions, practically leaping out of the television at … myself. I was visiting a small company called 3ality Digital, one of a bunch of players trying to push ahead with what is called stereoscopic broadcasting. The company’s calling card is that it made the U2 3-D movie that wowed audiences last year. While it is working on other film projects, 3ality Digital is focusing on the much bigger potential market for live TV.
In fact, demos of live 3-D have been quietly gaining buzz around the TV world: Last year both the NBA All-Star game and a Dallas Mavericks game were broadcast on a closed-circuit feed using equipment from Pace, the company that Cameron helped start and whose equipment he uses to shoot in 3-D. At the International Broadcasting Conference in Amsterdam in September, Katzenberg is scheduled to deliver a keynote in 3-D live from Los Angeles via satellite and 3ality gear. "This is similar to where we were in 2003 with high-def," Chuck Pagano, executive VP of technology at ESPN, told me. "This is a big win for TV in general, because it is jaw-dropping when you see a football or basketball game in 3-D." (See correction.)
Indeed, one thing the first wave of Hollywood 3-D blockbusters clarified is that 3-D can’t make a crummy movie good, but it might make a good movie better quick payday loan. With TV - particularly live TV - it enhances already proven programming. (The porn industry is also drooling over this, for obvious reasons.) As with all newfangled gadgetry, the big question is which standards will prevail: There are already several "3-D ready" displays on the market from the likes of Samsung and JVC, requiring different types of image coding and viewing glasses. In Japan one broadcaster is airing an hour a day in 3-D, and Philips (PHG) has a 3-D monitor for sale that does not require glasses but is, for now, too pricey for mass rollout. "I think the glasses are a necessary evil for the next few years," says Wendy Aylsworth, a Warner Bros. executive who is heading an entertainment industry group’s efforts to set technical standards. Still, expect more and better 3-D TVs to be the buzz at next January’s consumer electronics show.
ESPN’s Pagano estimates the first 3-D broadcasts in the U.S. are three years away. But they might be sooner if Hollywood’s 3-D craze gathers steam. Last month Disney’s Best of Both Worlds 3-D concert film featuring Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana was aired on TV and released in DVD - but it used the old-timey 3-D format known as anaglyph, which requires those glasses with red and blue plastic lenses. That format works on current TVs - sort of: Unlike the crisp stereographic images seen on the big-screen version, the colors through anaglyph are pretty brutal. Similarly, Warner (which, like Fortune, is owned by Time Warner (TWX, Fortune 500)) is planning to release its recent Journey to the Center of the Earth in DVD, but also using anaglyph. That’s the 3-D equivalent of releasing a color movie in black-and-white for home viewing. And for 3-D aficionados, that won’t do: In TV’s next big thing, the kid doesn’t stay in the picture. He’s practically sitting in your lap.
The local office of J.M. Waller Associates Inc. is helping to provide emergency operations support to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) following Hurricane Gustav’s landfall in Louisiana.
J.M. Waller provides logistics consulting to the FAA and has stepped up its responsibility to provide logistics coordination of supplies delivery to keep the FAA’s Air Traffic Control Tower at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport and Lake Front Airport operational.
J.M. Waller has been working to help the FAA effectively provide relief efforts in and out of the airports, company officials say. The company worked with the FAA to locate and deliver equipment and vehicles such as motor homes and RV’s for the FAA to the airports credit report. J.M. Waller has also sent personnel to New Orleans to provide oversight of all essential services to the FAA.
Fairfax, Va.-based J.M. Waller is a service-disabled veteran-owned small business specializing in environmental, facilities and logistics consulting and management services. The company has a large presence in San Antonio along with offices in Hawaii and Atlanta.
General Growth Properties has been awarded the management contract for the Kings’ Shops at Waikoloa Beach Resort on the Big Island.
General Growth has handled the leasing since 2005 for the 75,000-square-foot Big Island resort shopping center, whose tenants include Louis Vuitton, Coach, Tommy Bahama, Roy’s Waikoloa Bar & Grill and Merriman’s Market Cafe, the company said in a news release.
“General Growth has proven itself as a company who has the expertise to manage and lease retail centers in tourism destinations, especially in Hawaii,” said Cordell Lietz, president of CoastWood Capital Group, the managing member of Kings’ Shops owner, KS Owner LLC free credit report online. “They have done a great job leasing Kings’ Shops and we are pleased to expand their responsibilities to include management, marketing and operations.”
Kings’ Shops will be expanded by 25,000 additional square feet in 2010, the company said.
General Growth’s other Hawaii retail centers include Ala Moana Center and the Ward Centers.
Google Inc is adding YouTube-like video communications features to its business application suite, looking to make video-sharing among office workers as easy as trading e-mails or instant messages.
Unlike YouTube, which is aimed at consumers, Google Video for business is designed to be shared among designated users within an organization’s own Web domain, protecting executive speeches, product training, sales meetings or other employee video messages from unauthorized disclosure outside the company.
Google Video for business is being incorporated into the Internet search leader’s Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs $50 a user for year for a package of business software, e-mail, scheduling and Web site design capabilities.
“What YouTube did in the consumer world, Google Video for business is going to do in the enterprise,” said Matthew Glotzbach, product management director of Google’s Enterprise division, the unit responsible for Google Apps.
From Septr 8, educational users of Google Apps can try out the service free for six months and will be charged $10 a user to continue using video afterward.
Unlike videoconferencing services that require specialized hardware and software installations in offices, Google Video for business users can simply trade Web site addresses to view videos as the videos are delivered from Google computers.
“It’s for anyone who says, ‘I can’t remember how to do that step’,” said Nucleus Research analyst Rebecca Wettemann payday loans. “Google Video for business brings back some of the context to what we have lost by communicating with e-mail or IM.”
And unlike YouTube, which typically limits videos to less than 10 minutes, Google Video for business can run for an hour or more. The company has also developed an automated service that identifies scene transitions and creates a quick way to skip to specific segments of a video.
South Korea's exports increased less than economists expected as a strike cut production of vehicles.
Overseas shipments, which make up more than half of gross domestic product, climbed 20.6 percent in August from a year earlier, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said in Gwacheon today. That compared with July's 36 percent gain and the 23.3 percent median estimate of 14 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.
South Korea has been counting on increased shipments to China, Latin America and the Middle East to extend the economy's expansion as soaring living costs prompt local consumers to rein in spending. Higher fuel prices and a weaker won are fanning the fastest inflation in almost a decade, eroding the purchasing power of indebted households.
“It's the same old story that exports keep driving South Korea's economic growth,'' said Kwon Young Sun, an economist at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in Hong Kong. “Export growth will likely slow in coming months amid a global economic slowdown.''
The five-year government bond yield rose 5 basis points to 5.91 percent at 10:14 a.m. in Seoul. The won fell 1 percent to 1,100.20 versus the dollar. The Kospi index of stocks dropped 2.9 percent to 1,431.67.
South Korea's won has slumped 14 percent this year against the dollar, the worst performer in Asia outside Japan. The weaker currency has helped exporters by making their products cheaper overseas even as it has driven up local prices by boosting import costs.
Imports into South Korea climbed 37 percent last month from a year earlier because of higher oil and raw-material costs, resulting in a trade deficit of $3.23 billion, the biggest shortfall in seven months.
Trade Balance
“Today's trade data should continue to weigh on the Korean won sentiment, said Frederic Neumann, an economist at HSBC Holdings Plc. in Hong Kong. “The structural trade gap is likely to persist in light of continued elevated global commodity prices and an expected slowdown in external demand for Korean products.''
The trade balance may turn to a surplus in September as falling oil prices start to reduce the import costs of crude oil, the ministry said 24 hour payday advances. Crude oil has declined 20 percent since touching a record of $147.27 a barrel in New York on July 11.
Net exports, the difference between exports and imports, powered more than half of the economy's second-quarter growth rate of 0.8 percent.
Shipments to Latin America gained 87.2 percent in the first 20 days of August, sales to China jumped 33.1 percent and exports to the Middle East increased 41.2 percent, today's report showed. Shipments to the U.S. rose 16.3 percent.
Hyundai Steel Co., South Korea's second-largest steelmaker, said second-quarter profit surged 70 percent as increased exports helped the company weather rising material costs.
Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., the world's third-largest shipbuilder, said last month that it won $1.46 billion of new overseas orders.
Auto Exports
“We expect exports to continue their relative out- performance and domestic-demand growth to remain under downward pressure,'' Kwon Goohoon, an economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in Seoul, wrote in a report.
Exports of ships rose 147 percent and shipments of oil products climbed 99 percent. Exports of semiconductors fell 13 percent, while those of automobiles dropped 17 percent, today's report showed.
Workers at Hyundai Motor Co., GM Daewoo Auto & Technology Co. and Kia Motors Corp. have staged partial strikes as they demand pay increases and shorter working hours, resulting a loss of about $700 million in exports, according to the government.
Sporadic strikes this year have cost Hyundai Motor, South Korea's biggest carmaker, about 397 billion won ($362 million) and its affiliate Kia Motors 220 billion won in lost production, the companies said on Aug. 29.
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