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| Bad loans still haunting SW Florida banks
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| A review of financial reports for the three months ended March 31 shows that the 20 largest community banks lost $38.6 million, or 429 percent more than the $7.3 million they lost during the same period a year ago. At the same time, these banks reported $281 million in non-performing loans, more than double the $128 million they reported last year.
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| @ Sarasota Herald Tribune
| Posted: 06/08/09 at 0201 EDST
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| Experts: Lull in Manatee County, Bradenton; foreclosure filings temporary
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| Lenders filed 65 foreclosure suits in Manatee County Circuit Court last week, including a low of five Tuesday, court records show. That’s the fewest since the short holiday week of Dec. 29 and marked the first time in 22 weeks that the number of filings didn’t crack triple digits. A state law that took effect Monday increased the cost to file a foreclosure suit from $295 to between $395 and $1,900, depending on the amount of the delinquent loan. As a result, lenders’ lawyers now have to file with foreclosures a detailed estimate of how much the borrowers owe.
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| @ Bradenton Herald | Posted: 06/08/09 at 0315 EDST
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| Florida real estate crash means Tampa Bay homes are too cheap, report says
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| IHS Global Insight, a economic forecasting company took a measure of our depreciated home prices, population density, household income and historical attractiveness and insists our median home price of about $131,000 is 16.9 percent too low. Three years ago, when a typical home sold for $186,400, IHS deemed us 30 percent overvalued.
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| @ St. Petersburg Times | Posted: 06/08/09 at 0320 EDST
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| Lingering Effects Take Toll on Tomato Industry
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Last year's salmonella outbreak - estimated to have had a more than $500 million economic impact, according to the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, an agricultural cooperative - rocked the industry, putting farmers in an already weak position to face the economic turndown. Now, as their costs rise and the odds against them multiply, growers are working at a loss - and trying to hold on.
Editor's Comment: This is quite a read on the results of one terrible mistake by the Federal government has significantly reduced the value of Florida agricultural land.
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| @ Lakeland Ledger | Posted: 06/08/09 at 0330 EDST
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| Chicago hotels racked by glut of rooms
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| Local market is feeling the impact of declining demand, falling rates as new properties open, compete for tourists during summer months
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| @ Chicago Tribune | Posted: 06/08/09 at 0345 EDST
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| Rockford banks wade deeper into troubled loan waters
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| Of the 31 banks with branches in Boone, Ogle and Winnebago counties, 26 saw their percentage of noncurrent loans — loans more than 90 days past due that have not been written off — increase from March 31, 2008. The average noncurrent loans to loans percentage of the 31 banks jumped from 1.55 percent to 3.15 percent. Rockford-based AMCORE Bank, a $5.3 billion operation, and Rock River Bank of Oregon, which had $77 million in assets, saw the most striking rises in noncurrent loans in the year ending March 31. AMCORE’s percentage of noncurrent loans to loans over the past year jumped from 2.9 percent to 11.2 percent. Rock River Bank, a subsidiary of Peotone Bancorp, had its noncurrent loans percentage climb from 1.8 percent in March 2008 to 9.8 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2009.
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| @ Rockford Register Star | Posted: 06/08/09 at 0400 EDST
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| U.S. job losses slow in May, fueling recovery hopes
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| The Labor Department said on Friday that U.S. employers cut 345,000 jobs in May, the fewest since September and far less than economists had forecast. They cut 504,000 jobs in April. However, the unemployment rate raced to 9.4 percent, the highest since July 1983, from 8.9 percent in April, partly because people who had given up looking for work re-entered the labor market, a sign economic confidence was returning.
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| @ Reuters | Posted: 06/08/09 at 0415 EDST
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| Second Thoughts On The Jobs Report
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| Why those Labor Department numbers might not be so great after all.
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| @ Forbes | Posted: 06/08/09 at 0419 EDST
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| Bottom fishing in the International housing market
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Lower prices are tempting bargain-hunters back into the most depressed markets. FEARS of a general deflation may be receding but in the rich world’s housing markets at least, falling prices are still the norm. Property values are slumping in almost all of the 19 countries in our latest global survey.
Editor's Comment: This is a good read
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| @ The Economist | Posted: 06/08/09 at 0646 EDST
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| UK economists see pause in recession
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| In a survey conducted at the end of last week, 11 out of 20 economists said the economy had stopped contracting in June and was likely to start growing in coming months. The majority of those believing the economy was still shrinking thought the bottom of the downturn was near.
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| @ Financial Times - UK | Posted: 06/08/09 at 0652 EDST
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| German Economy to Contract by 6.2 Percent
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| Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, is reporting the country's economy will contract by 6.2 percent in 2009 as a result of the global economic crisis. A recovery is expected to start in 2010, but economists warn Germany will struggle at least until 2013.
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| @ Der Spiegel | Posted: 06/08/09 at 0655 EDST
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