- Tsipras Asks for Courage as EU Plays Down Chances of Deal. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said Friday there are no more technical reasons to withhold aid from Greece. The country’s creditors are not convinced. Hours after the Greek leader told lawmakers in Athens that the euro area needed only political courage to unlock more financial aid, a European Union official in Brussels told reporters there’s still technical work to be done before Europe’s most-indebted state will get any more money.
- Ukraine’s Poroshenko Says Fighting Killed 7,000 as Truce Strains. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said about 7,000 civilians have been killed during the conflict with pro-Russian separatists, as military casualties placed fresh strain on the fragile cease-fire. Two soldiers were killed and 26 wounded in clashes with rebels in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters in Kiev on Friday. Separatists shelled government positions using weapons that should have been withdrawn from the conflict zone under the truce agreement signed in Minsk, Belarus, in February, he said.
- PBOC Vows to Walk Fine Policy Line as Debt Endangers Growth. China’s central bank said it will walk a fine line in its policy operations to avoid excessive easing as rising debts endanger the nation’s economic expansion. “We will prevent excessive easing to avoid cementing economic distortion or pushing up debt and leverage levels; on the other hand, we will create a neutral and appropriate monetary environment” for growth, the People’s Bank of China said in its monetary policy report published on Friday. The bank also said that China’s exports won’t see big improvement, hours after data showed an unexpected fall in overseas shipments in April. “Economic growth is, to a large extent, still relying on government-led investment, and the room for further expansion is quite limited,” the central bank said. “In addition, the rising debt size is forcing China to use a lot of resources in repaying and rolling over debt, which leads to contraction effects for the macro economy.” China’s total debt has reached 282 percent of GDP, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.
- The $364 Billion Real Estate Threat Inside China’s Biggest Banks. Fitch Ratings has called real estate the “biggest threat” to Chinese banks as surging loans tied to properties coincide with defaults and falling sales. Corporate loans backed by buildings have grown almost fivefold since 2008 and residential mortgages have more than tripled in the period among lenders rated by Fitch, the company said Friday. That’s seen property loans held by China’s four biggest lenders soar to a total 2.26 trillion yuan ($364 billion), according to their annual reports.
- Another Chinese Firm Defaults on Its Dollar Bond. China’s credit markets sent their latest sign of stress Friday as coal importer Winsway Enterprises Holdings Ltd. became the nation’s second company to default on a dollar-denominated bond this year. The Hong Kong-listed company isn’t able to pay $13.15 million of semi-annual interest due Friday on $309.3 million of notes that mature next year, according to a Hong Kong stock exchange filing on Friday. A 30-day grace period expired May 8 after it skipped the payment April 8 and hired advisers to restructure its debt. The failure sends a signal that prices of coking coal used in steelmaking are far from rebounding as China’s economic slowdown deepens and the government steps up efforts to curb pollution.
- China Auto Retail Sales Climb at Slowest Pace in Five Months. Passenger-vehicle sales in China rose at the slowest pace in five months as weaker economic expansion hurt demand for big-ticket purchases. Retail deliveries of cars, multipurpose and sport utility vehicles climbed 6.2 percent to 1.61 million units in April, the China Passenger Car Association said on its website today. It’s the slowest pace of growth since November.
- China Stock Picker Beating 90% of Peers Says Rout Isn’t Over Yet. The worst isn’t over for Chinese stocks after the biggest three-day rout since June 2013, according to HSBC Global Asset Management. China’s government will probably take further steps to curb the use of borrowed money for share investment after margin debt rose to a record, said Mandy Chan, whose $111 million HSBC China A-Share Fund topped 90 percent of peers tracked by Bloomberg in the past year with a 96 percent gain. Mid- and small-capitalization stocks are most vulnerable to declines, she said.
- German Industrial Production Falls as Economy Risks Grow. German industrial production unexpectedly declined in March in a sign that Europe’s largest economy remains vulnerable to global economic weakness. Output, adjusted for seasonal swings and inflation, fell 0.5 percent after stagnating in February, data from the Economy Ministry in Berlin showed on Friday. The typically volatile number compares with a median estimate of a 0.4 percent gain in a Bloomberg survey. Production rose 0.1 percent from a year earlier.
- Europe Stocks Jump After Cameron’s Election Win, U.S. Jobs Data. European shares posted this year’s biggest advance, buoyed by a surprise election win for British Prime Minister David Cameron’s party and improving U.S. jobs data. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index surged 2.9 percent to 400.16 at the close of trading, up 1.4 percent for the week.
- Hard Money Comes Easy as Wall Street Funds Home Flippers. Real estate buyers seeking money to renovate and flip U.S. houses are getting help from some of the world’s biggest investment firms. Colony Capital Inc., Blackstone Group LP and Cerberus Capital Management are among the companies that have started making bridge loans to investors who buy homes to sell them quickly for a profit. Borrowing costs -- traditionally the highest in residential lending -- are tumbling as the firms compete for customers. The foray represents a deepening bet on the housing market by Wall Street-backed companies, many of which have built rental-home empires during the past three years and started specialty-lending businesses to finance smaller investors. Big firms with deep pockets and access to cheap capital may have an edge over local private lenders that have dominated flipper financing.
- Bill Gross: Central Banks Are Gaming Asset Prices. (video)
CNBC:
ZeroHedge:
- Americans Not In The Labor Force Rise To Record 93,194,000. (graph)
- The Reason Why There Is No Wage Growth For 83% Of US Workers. (graph)
- Crude Lifts As Pace Of Rig Count Decline Slows. (graph)
- Free Lunches, Fragile Fed Faith, & Minsky Moments.
- Goldman Crushes The American Manufacturing Recovery Dream - Auto Sales Expectations Are Unrealistic. (graph)
- Bursting Bund Bubble: 2 Charts And Some Lessons From History.
- Europe "Baffled" By Bizarre Varoufakis "Blueprint".
- Old Workers Hit New All Time High As All April Jobs Go To The "55 And Older". (graph)
- Wholesale Sales YoY Worst Since Lehman As Inventories Grow At Slowest Pace In 2 Years. (graph)
- April Payrolls Miss At 223K, March Revised Much Lower, Wage Growth Disappoints Again. (graph)
- 210 Zappos employees — 14% of the staff — take buyouts after CEO ultimatum to embrace self-management or leave.
- The disconnect in the US stock market just keeps getting bigger. (graph)
- Shake Shack(SHAK) has one huge problem that could undermine its expansion. Shake Shack is entering a market already packed with similar chains.
- Syria's government has been 'lying about what they did with sarin' nerve gas Assad promised to give up.
- Ukrainian rebels may take advantage of Victory Day celebrations to launch a new offensive.
- Russian-backed Ukrainian rebels are gearing up for a new offensive.
- The eurozone is refusing to change its position on Greek debt.
- Liberal Britain just got slaughtered.
- Austria's Schelling warns Greece of dangers of default. Austria's finance minister warned Greece on Thursday about the dangers of defaulting on its debt and said a sensible solution to the country's financial problems was nowhere near despite months of talks.
No comments:
Post a Comment