Building façade comes crumbling down in #NYC #Sandy

Sandy's trail of devastation: 13 dead, 6.5 million people in the dark -- and it's not over - CNN.com
Here is the video showing the building façade falling!
Sandy's trail of devastation: 13 dead, millions in the dark -- and it's not over - CNN.com

Billionaire Ross Interested in Buying #Spanish #Bank Assets - Bloomberg

At least someone is looking to buy...

Billionaire Ross Interested in Buying Spanish Bank Assets

Wilbur Ross, the billionaire who’s taken stakes in distressed U.S. and European lenders, said he’s interested in Spanish banking assets as the country takes steps to resolve bad loans stemming from its real-estate bubble.

Ross’s WL Ross & Co., which holds about 10 percent of Bank of Ireland Plc. (BKIR) and teamed up with Richard Branson to buy part of Northern Rock Plc, is in talks “almost every week” with representatives of the large Spanish banks, he said in an interview in Abu Dhabi, without naming potential targets.

“Maybe next year will be the year for Spain,” he said. “We’ve been doing a lot of work in Spain. We’ve put a lot of time and effort into Spain but haven’t put any money in yet.”

Officials in the euro zone’s fourth-largest economy are setting up a bad bank, similar to one in Ireland, to help lenders shed soured real estate loans and to boost lending growth. The government is seeking to purge about 180 billion euros ($235 billion) of bad assets linked to property, which its central bank says remain on lenders’ balance sheets.

“Spain has yet to go through the catharsis of real estate,” Ross said. “I don’t know if it’ll be another six months or another 12 months or whatever, but at some point we might very well do something in Spain.”

The country’s economy contracted for a fifth quarter, with gross domestic product shrinking 0.4 percent in the three months through September from the previous quarter, the Bank of Spain said today in an estimate in its monthly bulletin.

Northern Rock

Ross’s firm invested about 350 million pounds ($560 million) with Branson’s Virgin Money to take over the retail operations of Northern Rock, the British bank whose reliance on short-term financing resulted in its becoming the first casualty of the global liquidity crunch.

Ross was also among five investors who took a 35 percent stake in Bank of Ireland, one of six lenders guaranteed by taxpayers in 2008, for 1.1 billion euros. He has a board seat.

He has taken stakes in institutions such as Oregon’s Cascade Bancorp (CACB), New Jersey’s Sun Bancorp, and union-owned Amalgamated Bank in New York, all of which required financial aid after writing down bad real estate loans.

Spain secured a 100 billion-euro financial-sector lifeline earlier this year and may request a European Union bailout, putting the region’s newest crisis-fighting tools to the test in an economy that’s twice the combined size of Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

‘Interesting Country’

“Spain in many ways is a very, very interesting country,” Ross said. “But we’re thinking they’re just now beginning to recognize the magnitude of the problems. Until now they’ve been in total denial.”

Bad loans as a proportion of total lending in Spain jumped to a record 10.5 percent in August from a restated 10.1 percent in July as 9.3 billion euros of loans were newly classified as being in default, according to data published by the Bank of Spain on its website on Oct. 18. The ratio has climbed for 17 straight months from 0.72 percent in December 2006, before Spain’s property boom turned to bust.

The country’s request for European Union financial aid to shore up its banks is increasing concern about its growing liabilities. Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country’s debt rating by two levels to BBB-, one step above junk, from BBB+ on Oct. 10, saying it wasn’t clear who will bear the cost of recapitalizing banks.

Bad Assets

“Bad assets are going to have to be removed from the banks,” Ross said. “It’s very, very difficult to have a bank simultaneously managing a huge amount of bad assets and trying to grow its good assets. It’s just tough.”

The firm would probably look to invest when there is a need for a cash injection after assets are removed into a so-called “bad bank,” he said. Many of the Spanish regional banks which expanded into other areas need to “shrink” back to their original locales and focus on building core deposits, he said.

Spanish banks expanded lending by 3.5 times from 2000 to 2008 when the credit boom peaked, according to Bank of Spain data. The lenders had more than 46,000 branches open in 2008 compared with about 39,000 in 2000 as they expanded their networks to accompany the boom.

President Mariano Rajoy has struggled to trim a 2011 budget deficit that was more than three times the EU limit, after the country’s deepening recession pushed the jobless rate over 25 percent.

To contact the reporter on this story: Dale Crofts in Dubai at dcrofts@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dale Crofts at dcrofts@bloomberg.net

Read the article online here: Billionaire Ross Interested in Buying Spanish Bank Assets - Bloomberg

Violence Breaks Out at Greek Anti-Austerity Demo

Crunch time...nothing's changed.

> Greece is also seeking a two-year extension to its economic recovery program, due to end in 2014. Without the extension, it would need to take €18 billion worth of measures instead of the €13.5 it is currently negotiating.
>
> Athens hopes to get the next loan installment around mid-November. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said the country will run out of cash by the end of that month, meaning Greece would most likely have to default on its debt and potentially end its membership of the euro currency.


ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Hundreds of youths pelted riot police with petrol bombs, bottles and chunks of marble Thursday as yet another Greek anti-austerity demonstration descended into violence.

Tens of thousands of people took to the street during the country's second general strike in a month as workers across the country walked off the job to protest new austerity measures the government is negotiating with Greece's international creditors.

The measures for 2013-14, worth €13.5 billion ($17.7 billion), aim to prevent the country from going bankrupt and potentially having to leave the 17-nation eurozone.

Riot police responded with volleys of tear gas and stun grenades as protesters ran from the area of clashes in the capital's Syntagma Square outside Parliament, splitting the demonstration in two.

Hundreds of police were deployed in the Greek capital ahead of the demonstration, as such protests often turn violent.

However, a protest march by about 17,000 people in the northern city of Thessaloniki ended peacefully.

Thursday's strike was timed to coincide with a European Union summit in Brussels later in the day, at which Greece's economic fate will likely feature large.

The strike grounded flights, shut down public services, closed schools, hospitals and shops and hampered public transport in the capital. Taxi drivers joined in for nine hours, while a three-hour work stoppage by air traffic controllers led to flight cancellations. Islands were left cut off as ferries stayed in ports.

Athens has seen hundreds of anti-austerity protests over the past three years, since Greece revealed it had been misreporting its public finance figures. With confidence ravaged and austerity demanded, the country has sunk into a deep economic recession that has many of the same hallmarks of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"We are sinking in a swamp of recession and it's getting worse," said Dimitris Asimakopoulos, head of the GSEVEE small business and industry association. "180,000 businesses are on the brink and 70,000 of them are expected to close in the next few months."

Higher taxes expected to be levied in the new austerity program will destroy many of the struggling businesses that have managed to weather three years of the crisis so far, he said.

"In 2011, only 20 percent of businesses were profitable. So these new tax measures present small businesses with a choice: Dodge taxes or close your shop."

The country is surviving with the help of two massive international bailouts worth a total €240 billion ($315 billion). To secure them, it has committed to drastic spending cuts, tax hikes and reforms, all with the aim of getting the state coffers back under some sort of control.

But while significantly reducing the country's annual borrowing, the measures have made the recession worse. By the end of next year, the Greek economy is expected to be around a quarter of the size it was in 2008. And with one in four workers out of a job, Greece has, along with Spain, the highest unemployment rate in the 27-nation European Union.

The country's four-month-old coalition government is negotiating a new austerity package with debt inspectors from the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank. The idea is to save €11 billion ($14.4 billion) in spending — largely on pensions and health care — and raise an extra €2.5 billion ($3.3 billion) through taxes.

After more than a month and a half of arguing, a deal seems close. On Wednesday, representatives from the EU, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank, said there was agreement on "most of the core measures needed to restore the momentum of reform" and that the rest of the issues should be resolved in coming days.

Greece is also seeking a two-year extension to its economic recovery program, due to end in 2014. Without the extension, it would need to take €18 billion worth of measures instead of the €13.5 it is currently negotiating.

Athens hopes to get the next loan installment around mid-November. Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said the country will run out of cash by the end of that month, meaning Greece would most likely have to default on its debt and potentially end its membership of the euro currency.

___

Elena Becatoros and Nicholas Paphitis in Athens contributed.

Read the article here: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/violence-breaks-greek-anti-austerity-104017177.html?l=1