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| Jobless rates dip in SW Florida
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| Unemployment rates in Southwest Florida dipped for the second consecutive month in April, but experts cautioned that the decline does not signal an end to the deep recession gripping the area.
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| @ Sarasota Herald Tribune | Posted: 05/26/09 at 0201 EDST
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| Hidden fees can ruin that 'low, low' rate
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| No matter how you cut it, it all comes down to the role that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or the government plays in pricing your mortgage interest rates.
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| @ Bradenton Herald | Posted: 05/26/09 at 0315 EDST
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| Possible good news in housing market: Pinellas, Pasco short sales nearing market price
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| For the past nine months the gods have smiled on home sales. Measured year to year, sales have risen every month since August, thanks in part to investors buying foreclosure homes.
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| @ St. Petersburg Times | Posted: 05/26/09 at 0320 EDST
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| Home insurance prices likely to rise by 10 percent
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| The Florida Legislature passed sweeping legislation this spring to allow home and condominium insurers to boost statewide rates by up to 10 percent. The measure aims to reduce financial risks for Floridians if a major hurricane hits. But the bill is in sharp contrast to laws the past two years that aimed to hold property insurers accountable and lower premiums after they doubled or tripled in some cases after the 2004 and 2005 hurricanes.
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| @ Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel | Posted: 05/26/09 at 0330 EDST
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| 'Dramatic' drop in Midwest farmland value
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| The value of good farmland in several U.S. Midwestern states fell by a "dramatic" 6 percent in the first quarter, the biggest decline since 1985, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago said.
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| @ Crain's Chicago Real Estate Daily | Posted: 05/26/09 at 0345 EDST
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| Hope For One Homeowner
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Meet the only lender to successfully navigate the government's $300 billion effort to staunch the foreclosure flood.
Editor's Comment: This is a good read
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| @ Forbes | Posted: 05/26/09 at 0400 EDST
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| Maryland's fleeced taxpayers fight back.
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| One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.
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| @ Wall Street Journal | Posted: 05/26/09 at 0655 EDST
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| New Homeowners' Aid Plan Finds Potential Backers
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| The Obama administration is attempting to revive a stalled government foreclosure prevention program that could restore equity to hundreds of thousands of borrowers whose home values have plummeted.
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| @ Washington Post | Posted: 05/26/09 at 0415 EDST
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| JPMorgan $29 Billion WaMu Windfall Turned Bad Loans Into Income
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When JPMorgan bought WaMu out of receivership last September for $1.9 billion, the New York-based bank used purchase accounting, which allows it to record impaired loans at fair value, marking down $118.2 billion of assets by 25 percent. Now, as borrowers pay their debts, the bank says it may gain $29.1 billion over the life of the loans in pretax income before taxes and expenses.
Editor's Comment: This is a good read
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| @ Bloomberg News | Posted: 05/26/09 at 0419 EDST
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| China's Yuan: The Next Reserve Currency?
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| Skeptics have dismissed Beijing's talk of de-emphasizing the U.S. dollar, but China is making moves that could soon lead to a convertible yuan
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| @ Business Week | Posted: 05/26/09 at 0646 EDST
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| What explains the rapid decline of sovereign-wealth funds?
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| Remember sovereign-wealth funds? SWFs were the gigantic pools of capital amassed by governments that were export powerhouses (China, Singapore, Korea) or commodity exporters (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Persian Gulf sultanates, Russia) benefiting from the boom in global trade and spiking prices. In 2007, after a five-year global boom, they emerged as a suddenly massive asset class. Morgan Stanley analyst Stephen Jen, one of the first to latch on to their importance, notched their collective net worth at $2.3 trillion in March 2007 and at about $3 trillion later that year.
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| @ Slate | Posted: 05/26/09 at 0652 EDST
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