Norwegian Housing Bubble Seen by Shiller Deflating: Mortgages

Norwegian Housing Bubble Seen by Shiller Deflating: Mortgages

Trine Dahl, a broker at Norway’s second-largest realtor DNB Eiendom, says the number of potential buyers at her viewings has fallen by 50 percent in the past year and she now has to make as many as 15 calls to sell an Oslo apartment. A year ago, Dahl says, selling was as easy as sitting at a cash register. “The change came in the summer and since August and September, it has been really different,” Dahl said in an interview at DNB Eiendom’s office on Oslo’s upscale west side. “It’s very hard to say which property is a difficult house to sell and which is easy. In a normal market, that’s easy to do.” Read more of this post

Norway’s $800 billion oil fund is under pressure to show it can handle the risks associated with emerging markets as the world’s biggest sovereign wealth investor looks for ways to boost returns

World’s Biggest Wealth Fund Told Return Target Raising New Risks

Norway’s $800 billion oil fund is under pressure to show it can handle the risks associated with emerging markets as the world’s biggest sovereign wealth investor looks for ways to boost returns. The government-appointed Strategy Council yesterday cautioned against underestimating the risk of expanding into emerging markets. The comments come amid concern that unprecedented stimulus from central banks in the biggest economies has skewed asset prices as investors chase yield in riskier markets. Read more of this post

London, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur in three-way fight for Islamic finance crown

London, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur in three-way fight for Islamic finance crown

8:52am EST

By Bernardo Vizcaino

DUBAI (Reuters) – When the British government said last month it would issue its first Islamic bond, the implications went far beyond the debt market: it was a signal that London will not back down in an escalating tussle among cities for Islamic financial business. London has long been the default center for international firms to issue sharia-compliant bonds, part of a fast-growing Islamic finance sector that will be worth $2 trillion globally next year, according to consultants Ernst and Young. Read more of this post

Loeb Says Central Banks Provide Global Put, Aiding Stocks

Loeb Says Central Banks Provide Global Put, Aiding Stocks

Billionaire hedge-fund manager Dan Loeb said easy-money policies by central banks in the U.S., Asia and Europe are providing protection for equity investors in the near-term, even as stock prices surge. Loeb, the founder of New York-based Third Point LLC, highlighted the European Central Bank’s decision Nov. 7 to cut its benchmark interest rate to a record low, along with programs in place by other central banks around the globe. ECB President Mario Draghi has pledged to hold down borrowing costs to combat pressure from weakening prices. Read more of this post

Blackrock’s Fink Says Fed Should Start Tapering in December or Risk Bubble

Fink Says Fed Should Start Tapering in December or Risk Bubble

BlackRock Inc. (BLK) Chief Executive Officer Laurence D. Fink said the U.S. Federal Reserve should start reducing its unprecedented asset purchases next month or risk creating a bubble. “I actually believe there’s a need to begin tapering,” Fink said today at the annual meeting for the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association in New York. “That sounds like a bubble to me when you buy over 100 percent of all public and private debt issuance.” Fink said the Fed bought about 80 percent of all public and private debt issuance in 2012. If the U.S. deficit decreases by about 30 percent as projected, the central bank will be buying more than 100 percent of debt issuance, Fink said. The Fed should continue to keep the interest rate at zero, he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alexis Leondis in New York at aleondis@bloomberg.net

Lady Gaga for Free Online Shows Boom Missed by U.S. GDP: Economy

Lady Gaga for Free Online Shows Boom Missed by U.S. GDP: Economy

Since completing a master’s degree in electrical engineering in 2009, Ti Zhao, a self-described “education junkie,” has continued to take classes. The total price tag for the last eight in which she enrolled: $0.00. “It’s hard for me to imagine ever paying for a class again,” said Zhao, who has taken advantage of free studies provided by edX and Coursera Inc., including a public-health course taught by a Harvard University professor, after hearing about online education services through a friend. The 27-year-old San Francisco resident had been spending about $500 a class to enroll in a local university’s continuing-education program. Read more of this post

Facing up to the impending property market correction

Facing up to the impending property market correction

Owning a condominium — or, for the really ambitious, landed property — is many a Singaporean’s dream. But anything that is not an hour’s commute from the city centre can be eye-wateringly expensive and out of reach for most of my generation (those born in the 1980s).

BY CHARLES TAN MENG YEAH –

3 HOURS 29 MIN AGO

Owning a condominium — or, for the really ambitious, landed property — is many a Singaporean’s dream. But anything that is not an hour’s commute from the city centre can be eye-wateringly expensive and out of reach for most of my generation (those born in the 1980s). Read more of this post

Emerging-Market Banks Threatened by End of Credit Boom

Emerging-Market Banks Threatened by End of Credit Boom

The world’s largest emerging markets recovered quickly from the 2008 financial crisis because consumers and companies went on a borrowing binge. Now that credit spree is coming back to haunt banks in those countries. As economies cool, delinquent loans are rising from Turkey to South Africa. India is injecting money into state-run lenders facing a surge in soured debt, while Chinese banks have been told to increase provisions for the same reason. Read more of this post

Default ‘Wave’ of $1.6 Trillion Looming for Junk, Fridson Says

Default ‘Wave’ of $1.6 Trillion Looming for Junk, Fridson Says

Almost $1.6 trillion of junk bonds globally will default between 2016 and 2020, according to Martin Fridson, chief executive officer of New York-based FridsonVision LLC, a research firm specializing in speculative-grade debt. With historical evidence indicating default rates will surge between 2014 and 2016 and persist, implying a rate of more than 30 percent cumulative during four years, Fridson estimated in a report for Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ Leveraged Commentary and Data that the face value of total defaults will be $1.576 trillion. That’s a market value of $752 billion, according to Fridson, who started his career as a corporate debt trader in 1976. Read more of this post

Who You Calling a BRIC?

Who You Calling a BRIC?

I spent last week in Indonesia, working on a series for BBC Radio about four of the world’s most populous non-BRIC emerging economies. The BRIC countries — Brazil, Russia, India and China — are already closely watched. The group I’m studying for this project — let’s call them the MINT economies — deserve no less attention. Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey all have very favorable demographics for at least the next 20 years, and their economic prospects are interesting. Read more of this post

Ex-Bank Executive May Face Death in Vietnam Fraud Trial

Ex-Bank Executive May Face Death in Vietnam Fraud Trial

A Vietnam court will consider the death penalty for two former executives if they’re convicted in a $25 million fraud scheme, signaling an aggressive stance as leaders seek to clean up the banking system. The People’s Court of Ho Chi Minh City may hand down the death penalty for Vu Quoc Hao, the former general director of Agribank Financial Leasing Co. (FLKO) No. 2, who is charged with embezzling 531 billion dong ($25 million) of state property, the official Vietnam News reported yesterday. Dang Van Hai, the former chairman of a construction company, also faces the death penalty in the case, the newspaper said. Read more of this post

Korean subcontractor of Singapore’s Downtown MRT line goes bankrupt

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 12, 2013

SMEs stranded as rail sub-contractor goes bust

$2m cheques issued by Samdaiyang Development to local firms bounce

MINDY TAN TANMINDY@SPH.COM.SG

Just months after a Downtown line main contractor went bust, a sub-contractor working on another part of the rail network has also become insolvent – PHOTO: SPH

[SINGAPORE] Just months after a Downtown line main contractor went bust, a sub-contractor working on another part of the rail network has also become insolvent. This has left a handful of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore holding some $2 million in bounced cheques. Read more of this post

Indonesia Rate Rise Signals No Current-Account Relief for Rupiah

Indonesia Rate Rise Signals No Current-Account Relief for Rupiah

Indonesia’s surprise interest-rate increase signals a wider-than-anticipated current account gap that threatens to deepen the rupiah’s three-week plunge, according to United Overseas Bank Ltd. and Barclays Plc. The rupiah, Asia’s worst performing currency this year, has tumbled 5.7 percent to 11,596 per dollar since trading at a seven-week high Oct. 25. In a move that was predicted by only one of 25 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, Bank Indonesia raised the reference rate to a four-year high of 7.5 percent yesterday, a day before officials are slated to release third-quarter current account figures. Read more of this post

M’sia lost nearly 2 trillion litres of water in 2012

M’sia lost nearly 2 trillion litres of water in 2012

Wednesday, November 13, 2013 – 10:26

Patrick Lee

The Star/Asia News Network

PETALING JAYA – Leaky, ageing pipes are taking a huge toll on the country, with close to two trillion litres of treated water lost to seepage, poor water quality and frequent disruptions at the consumer end. And it’s going to get worse. Much of the problem lies in the 43,890km of ageing pipes around the country. Made of asbestos-cement (AC), these pipes were installed in vast numbers decades ago. Read more of this post

Miner to Pay in Bitcoins for Work at Tungsten Project

Miner to Pay in Bitcoins for Work at Tungsten Project

A Canadian mining company agreed to pay a contractor in Bitcoins for exploration work to be carried out at a property that contains tungsten. Alix Resources Corp. (AIX) said today in a statement it will pay Ridge Resources Ltd. for the work at its Windy property about 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of Cassiar, British Columbia. Read more of this post

Venezuela Bonds Plunge as Military Takes Over Electronics Store to quell inflation that’s soared above 50 percent

Venezuela Bonds Plunge as Military Takes Over Electronics Store

Venezuelan bonds tumbled, sending yields to a 22-month high, after President Nicolas Maduro dispatched the military to take over a retail chain as part of his effort to quell inflation that’s soared above 50 percent. The country’s benchmark bonds due 2027 fell 3.9 cents to 72.1 cents on the dollar as Maduro’s seizure of electronics retailer Daka and his warnings to other businesses to cut prices to “fair” levels deepened investor concern that growth is being choked off by government controls. Yields on the bonds soared 0.79 percentage point to 13.82 percent, the highest since January 2012, at 3:19 p.m. in New York. Read more of this post

Buffett’s favorite market tool is flashing red

Buffett’s favorite market tool is flashing red

This little-known valuation metric has entered familiar territory. Here’s why investors should share the Oracle of Omaha’s concerns — and how they can protect themselves.

By David Sterman

In the go-go days of 1999, Warren Buffett grew very concerned. Not because his value style of investing had grown unpopular, but because investors were becoming delusional in their zeal for further gains. In a speech he made to friends, as recounted in a 1999 article in Fortune magazine (that was published just a few months before the market peaked and then plunged), Buffett warned that “once you reach the point where everybody has made money no matter what system he or she followed, a crowd is attracted into the game that is responding not to interest rates and profits but simply to the fact that it seems a mistake to be out of stocks.” A simple test of how much stocks were loved: The aggregate value of the largest 5,000 U.S. companies (as measured by the Wilshire 5000) exceeded the GNP of the U.S. economy. In fact, a market melt-up took this ratio up to 150% by early 2000 (meaning the Wilshire 5000 was 50% larger than the U.S. economy), which set the stage for one of the most painful corrections ever for investors. Read more of this post

Privatization should occur ‘carefully’ in China

Privatization should occur ‘carefully’

Updated: 2013-11-12 02:53

By Mike Bastin ( China Daily) Read more of this post

Name Game in Shanghai Trade Zone; Supposed to Make Things Easier, a Reform Testing Ground Has Firms Lining Up for Days to Register

Name Game in Shanghai Trade Zone

Supposed to Make Things Easier, a Reform Testing Ground Has Firms Lining Up for Days to Register

JAMES T. AREDDY

Nov. 11, 2013 7:48 p.m. ET

SHANGHAI—On a recent morning, Kitty Zhang stood in high heels and a pink blazer poised to jump into China’s next big business opportunity. But first, she needed a company name—any name. The 21-year-old, hired to register a financial business, is part of a wave of tens of thousands of people over the past month or so seeking to stake a claim in the new Shanghai free-trade zone. Authorities inaugurated the “testing ground for new policies” in late September, identifying it as a reform hub for the 21st century. Read more of this post

Long silent, China’s entrepreneurs push for change

Long silent, China’s entrepreneurs push for change

Long silent, China’s entrepreneurs speak up for rights, reforms, criticize totalitarianism

By Gillian Wong, Associated Press16 hours ago

BEIJING (AP) — As Chinese career trajectories go, wealthy businesswoman Wang Ying’s has taken an unusual turn. She quit her job as head of a private equity fund to become a full-time political critic. Wang, who was a low-profile member of China’s business elite for years, is now a leading voice among entrepreneurs troubled by the growing ranks of business owners who have suffered under the government’s authoritarian excesses and by signs Beijing wants to further tighten its controls on society. Read more of this post

In China, Luxury Is About More Than High-End Labels

In China, Luxury Is About More Than High-End Labels

ASHLEY KINDERGAN, THE FINANCIALIST NOV. 11, 2013, 6:15 PM 2,737 1

There was a time, not too long ago, when all a luxury goods maker had to do to make a sale in China was to make sure their label was prominent enough. Customers wanted quality, of course, but what they wanted as much or more was the caché that such a purchase conveyed. Those days are over. Like the Chinese economy itself, the country’s luxury goods sector has matured. What matters now is style—and it matters a whole lot more than you might think. Chinese buyers now account for about a quarter of all global luxury goods sales, a larger share than any other country, according to Credit Suisse’s luxury goods analyst Rogerio Fujimori. The success or failure of a high-end brand now depends as much on satisfying the whims of China’s increasingly discerning consumers as it does on the Fashion Week in New York or Milan. Read more of this post

How China’s Filthy Rich Use Macau To Launder Their Money

How China’s Filthy Rich Use Macau To Launder Their Money

MAMTA BADKAR NOV. 11, 2013, 2:51 PM 3,609 3

A stunning $202 billion in “ill-gotten funds are channeled through Macau each year,” according to The Congressional-Executive Commission on China Annual Report 2013. Diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks claimed that the casino and hospitality sector accounted for over 50% of Macau’s GDP but that, “its phenomenal success is based on a formula that facilitates if not encourages money laundering.” Read more of this post

Fraud at this Chinese bitcoin exchange cost clients $4.1M. Here’s why the broader market barely noticed

Fraud at this Chinese bitcoin exchange cost clients $4.1M. Here’s why the broader market barely noticed

BY MICHAEL CARNEY 
ON NOVEMBER 11, 2013

Bitcoin has come a long way in the last year, but it’s still the wild west in terms of regulation and market stability. China, too, has come a long way economically in recent decades, but remains largely unregulated and could be described as the wild east. So it’s not surprising that the recent surge in popularity (and price) of bitcoin in China would be accompanied by fraud. Read more of this post

Chinese cities investing in ‘skynet’ surveillance networks

Chinese cities investing in ‘skynet’ surveillance networks

Staff Reporter

2013-11-12

Various cities across China are building “skynet” networks that can achieve full coverage of a fixed area with real-time monitoring and recorded video surveillance, reports Duowei News, an outlet run by overseas Chinese. A recent slate of terror attacks, including a high-profile jeep crash in Tiananmen Square in Beijing late last month, has again highlighted the country’s plans to increase public surveillance under the banner of “maintaining social order and combating illegal activity.” Read more of this post

China’s US$3.6tn forex reserves becoming an unruly monster

China’s US$3.6tn forex reserves becoming an unruly monster

Staff Reporter

2013-11-10

At US$3.6 trillion, China’s forex reserves have become a major headache, not a symbol of national power. According to the State Foreign Exchange Administration, China’s forex reserves increased by US$301.7 billion in the first three quarters this year and may top US$400 billion for the whole year. The number will triple 2012’s US$130.4 billion, assuming the renminbi continues at its expected revaluation. Read more of this post

Beijing Weighs Bigger Private Role in State Firms; Reforming State-Owned Enterprises Has Been Thorny Because of Their Size, Political Clout

Beijing Weighs Bigger Private Role in State Firms

Reforming State-Owned Enterprises Has Been Thorny Because of Their Size, Political Clout

Nov. 11, 2013 11:26 a.m. ET

BEIJING—China is considering letting private investors take larger stakes in state-controlled firms, according to one official, in what would be a modest move toward greater private-sector involvement in areas of the economy dominated by Beijing. “We welcome private capital to invest in the state-owned enterprises. And there are many ways to do that,” said an official from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, or Sasac, in response to queries following a report by the state-run China Daily newspaper on Monday that said Beijing will allow private investors to hold up to 15% of state firms. Read more of this post

Asia’s low-cost carriers hit turbulence

November 12, 2013 1:33 am

Asia’s low-cost carriers hit turbulence

By Jeremy Grant in Singapore

“The People of India deserve to fly. Everyone should be able to fly,” Tony Fernandes, owner of AirAsia, tweeted recently. His comment was a call to arms typical of the Malaysian entrepreneur’s relentless drive to expand his low-cost carrier across the region – most recently to India. The ambitions of Mr Fernandes are another sign of how low-cost carriers (LCCs) have been aggressively growing in Asia as a rising middle class starts to afford air travel for the first time. Read more of this post

Teens Flee Abercrombie for Upstarts as Phones Top Malls

Teens Flee Abercrombie for Upstarts as Phones Top Malls

Teens don’t shop the way they used to.

Where young consumers with spare cash once thronged the likes of Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (ANF) and American Eagle Outfitters Inc. (AEO) for clothing that telegraphed their identities, the new generation is poorer, shuns logos and socializes more on the Internet than at the mall. They’re also increasingly global fashion citizens, mixing garments from brands across the world that are now accessible from their smartphones. Read more of this post

Moncler Looks Beyond Ski Slopes to Repeat Cucinelli IPO Success

Moncler Looks Beyond Ski Slopes to Repeat Cucinelli IPO Success

Moncler’s $1,220 quilted polyester jackets have been a hit with wealthy skiers for decades. Whether the luxury clothier can prove as popular with investors this week may depend on attracting more non-Alpine customers. Moncler, which today starts investor presentations for an initial public offering in Milan, gets about three-quarters of sales from winter apparel, a reliance that makes it a riskier investment proposition than peers like Brunello Cucinelli SpA (BC), according to Rahul Sharma, managing director of Neev Capital, a London-based consulting company. Read more of this post

Thai Senate Rejects Amnesty Bill That Sparked Bangkok Protests

Thai Senate Rejects Amnesty Bill That Sparked Bangkok Protests

Thailand’s Senate rejected a bill that would have provided an amnesty for political offenses stretching back to the nation’s 2006 coup, easing concern that street protests in Bangkok may escalate into violence. Senators voted 141-0 against the draft after more than 10 hours of debate, Surachai Liengboonlertchai, vice president of the Senate, told reporters in Bangkok late yesterday. The bill will be sent back to parliament’s lower house, which can re-submit the bill after 180 days, Surachai said. Read more of this post