Always a great article every 6 months or a year it’s published. I always scramble to see if any cities in the Bay Area have made it and I’m almost always disappointed to see that we’re very, very far from being at the top. Here’s just a list of the cities ranked best places to live - of course you can also read more detailed reasons why these cities made it into the top 100. But if you just want the list, I’ve listed up to #5 here. There are 75 more at the link provided above:
- Plymouth, MN
- Fort Collins, CO
- Naperville, IL
- Irvine, CA
- Franklin Township, NJ
Last week saw some rather bad news when it comes to our economic situation. Just a bullet point summary:
- New home sales dropped by 8.5% in the month of March, the lowest level since October 1991
- Sales of existing homes dropped by 2% in the month of March
- Interest rates climbed up due to a very real fear of inflation
- Consumer confidence fell to a 25-year low
- Employment growth may be on the brighter side but considering the amount of jobs just lost the week before, it might not be so great after all. (more…)
As Morgan Stanley recuperates from its mortgage-based losses it is also finding other ways to cut expenses including laying off 1,000 jobs. They have announced that they “will shutter its U.K. business that issues home loans and significantly scale back its mortgage business in the United States.”
Although the investment bank appears to be pulling out of mortgages altogether they will continue to service the loans still held by them through their Saxon Mortgage Services branch. It will also still offer its residential mortgages through brokerage clients with Morgan Stanley Credit Corp. (more…)
Can one man actually help our economic woes?
“On CNBC Tuesday morning Warren Buffett announced that he has offered to help out three bond insurers by offering a second level of insurance on as much as $800 billion in municipal bonds.
The three companies, Ambac Financial Group, Inc., MBIA Inc., and Financial Guaranty Insurance Company have gotten into deep financial trouble following their entry into the business of insuring mortgage-backed securities and Wall Street has been consumed for weeks by fears that one or more of the companies might fail.
Buffet is not offering to do anything about the complicated derivatives that are behind the financial worries but his offer to back-up municipal bonds with insurance issued by his AAA rated Berkshire Hathaway may take some of the pressure off of the bond insurers although one has already rejected Buffet’s offer.
Buffet said he was not acting out of altruism but rather saw the need for the second insurance as a “way to make money.”
At least he’s being honest.
The FBI has announced its investigation into 14 companies ranging from mortgage institutions to investment banks for “possible accounting fraud, insider trading or other violations in connection with home loans made to risky borrowers.”
The agency has not yet identified which companies are under investigation. The “Federal Bureau of Investigation is working in conjunction with the Securities and Exchange Commission on the corporate-fraud probe.” The interest in the possible misdoings of these 14 companies has been opened after the mortgage crisis created a flare of mortgage fraud cases, increasing the amount of cases from roughly 800 to 1,210. (more…)
