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A congressional watchdog panel warned on Thursday that mounting commercial real estate losses could endanger the banking system and thwart economic recovery.
A total of $1.4 trillion in commercial real estate loans will require refinancing in the next four years, the Congressional Oversight Panel said in a report. More than half of those loans are underwater, written for properties whose value has dropped like a rock.
The expected losses when loans go bad could hit between $200 billion to $300 billion and threaten 3,000 small and mid-size banks with a disproportionate share of commercial real estate assets on their books, according to the panel.
The report is intended to "wave a red flag" to the White House and Congress that the commercial real estate loan market is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
"We’re at a point where even as TARP is ramping down another major challenge in our economy is ramping up," said Elizabeth Warren, the oversight panel’s chairwoman. "We need to start now, before the system is on the brink of collapse to figure out a plan," she added.
The panel’s research found that 2,988 banks are heavily invested — with more than three times their assets tied up — in commercial real estate loans. Of that number, 2,500 banks each have less than $1 billion in assets.
Indeed, many such smaller banks have already failed. Small bank failures"will intensify sharply over the next few years," Warren said.
"When commercial properties fail, the result is a downward spiral of economic contraction, as these are the same small banks that create jobs and boost economic activity," she said Business Card Holders.
Solutions: The panel offers a number of possible solutions for policymakers to head off a commercial real estate crisis. For example, it says the Treasury Department should "stress test" banks that are concentrated in commercial real estate loans.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said at a congressional hearing last fall that "it is not realistic or feasible" to review such a large number of banks in a detailed level.
The oversight panel also suggested that the federal government should consider other remedies, including injecting capital into these small banks, buying their toxic assets or guaranteeing loans.
Bank regulators could also simply allow banks to extend underwater loans rather than requiring them to recognize losses, but the panel worries that such a move could delay a rebound in bank lending. But the panel also worries that massive writedowns throughout the banking system could stymie lending and create a "negative bubble."
"There’s a need for a nuanced response," Warren said. She said that banks should recognize some commercial real estate losses, but that regulators should monitor them closely to ensure that losses don’t spiral downward and drag down the larger economy.
Honda announced it is expanding a previously announced recall to replace an airbag inflator in an additional 438,000 vehicles worldwide, including 379,000 in the United States.
In a statement posted on its Web site late Tuesday, Honda said the driver’s airbag inflators in these certain vehicles may expand with too much pressure, which can cause the inflator casing to break and could result in injury or death.
The expanded recall includes 2001 and 2002 Accord, Civic, Odyssey, CR-V, and selected 2002 Acura TL vehicles, the statement said. Honda said there have been 12 incidents related to the airbag inflator problem.
One Honda Pilot car and one Acura CL vehicle may also be affected, the spokesman said.
The original recall involving this issue was announced in November 2008 for 2001 and 2002 models of Accords and Civics as well as some 2002 model year Acura TL vehicles, a Honda spokesman told CNNMoney.com. It affected 3,940 U.S. vehicles, and 265 in Canada and Mexico.
Last summer, Honda added 510,150 cars to the recall worldwide, including 443,727 additional units in the United States payday loans in 1 hour.
The recall now affects a total of 952,118 vehicles, with more than 826,000 in the United States.
Although none of the reported problems occurred after July 2009, Honda said it was still expanding the recall because it could not be sure that the inflators in the aforementioned vehicles would work correctly.
Honda said it will notify affected customers by mail and phone with instructions on how to have their vehicles inspected and updated at an authorized dealer. The entire production of each of the models in question is not necessarily included in the recall.
Last month, Honda announced a separate recall of 646,000 2007 and 2008 Fit, City and Jazz models worldwide, after a fire hazard involving a power window switch resulted in a death in South Africa.
Florida is among a handful of states that posted the largest monthly gains in the number of online job postings, which were up by 25,500 in January, according to The Conference Board’s Help Wanted OnLine Data Series. Only California, with a 67,600 jump, had more.
"The last three months have shown a sharp upturn in employer demand for workers," said Gad Levanon, associate director of macroeconomic research at The Conference Board, in a news release. "These increases have brought us back near the labor demand levels that existed in November 2008, just prior to the huge losses resulting from the financial turmoil in the last quarter of 2008. This is very good news since these seasonally adjusted increases come in two months, when we normally see employers cut back on advertising for workers."
And, while that’s good news, the number of unemployed continues to exceed the number of advertised vacancies in all 52 of the metropolitan areas The Conference Board looks at.
In Miami, there were nine unemployed people for every five vacancies posted in November 2009, the latest month for which unemployment data was available.
Among the 10 occupation groups with the largest number of online advertised vacancies nationwide, office and administrative support occupations posted the largest January gain, up 74,100.
Demand for health care support workers has remained relatively steady throughout the recession, although the number of unemployed seeking work in this field has remained relatively high, The Conference Board noted.
Today, Norty Cohen opens Buzz-hound Learning Lab in Maplewood, sharing space with Hatch, a focus group and research facility. Among its initial offerings, Buzzhound will offer classes on search engine optimization, the process of improving a website so it ranks higher in search engine results.
Cohen says he sees a strong market for the 10-member classes (prices range from $600 to $700 per person) at a time when there is so much emphasis on reaching customers through the Internet — particularly when research suggests it is critical to rank high in search results. By some estimates, 65 percent of all searchers will go to the first 10 sites they see.
It seems like we hear a lot these days about search engine optimization. Why is that?
There are 100 billion searches a month online. More and more people are using their cell phones to search and that’s where people are finding customers and businesses.
Even though Yellow Pages is still a $16 billion-a-year business, where everything is going is search. If you are in business or if you are in marketing, you need to understand search.
What is the most important thing one needs to know about SEO? And are there any big no-nos?
You need to understand how and why people are coming to your site. And how and what you need to do to improve your content. And to make more opportunities for people to find you online.
… There are people who will say that you can’t fool the search engine, that you can’t do this thing called black hat, where you put in some things that may not be true. I think the biggest no-no is not doing anything and assuming people are going to find you.
You have this lab set to open today low interest rate personal loans. What sort of response are you expecting?
We’ve had several major corporations commit to sending people to the classes. We tried to price it so that it’s incredibly reasonable, while at the same time, there is a ton of information that happens in one day.
There are two instructors, so it is a five-to-one student-teacher ratio. These people are experts much more than myself. Several major corporations have committed to sending several people, and that’s just in our first couple of announcements. We’re really going to start much more heavily marketing next week.
What prompted you to open Buzz-hound?
I’ve been trying to learn this subject for some time. And I found it to be incredibly hard. It was hard to follow webinars. It was hard to follow books. It was sort of like an advanced math problem that you just needed someone to show you how to do it.
And once you got into understanding it, it became very basic. And I realized we could create a business that could truly teach people how to help their businesses.
You’ve said you don’t think this is the sort of thing that can be taught or learned online. Why is that?
Search engine optimization is a language. It’s just like learning any other language. Someone has to show you and speak it for you so you can hear them.
If you go into the lab and you try the programs and the instructor shows you how to use them, it becomes very natural to you. But it’s the whole sort of foreign language aspect to it that makes it difficult to learn.
The Pentagon will hold public meetings in late February regarding the F-35 jet fighter possibly coming to Luke Air Force Base in Glendale.
The Phoenix suburb of El Mirage says noise tests of the new fighter should be completed at Luke before those public Feb. 22-26 forums. The U.S. Defense Department has not yet said if and when such tests might be conducted.
El Mirage officials cite concerns that F-35 will be far nosier than the F-16, which now flies out of Luke on training missions. El Mirage Mayor Michele Kern asked U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., last year to bring F-35s to Luke for noise evaluations and the senator said he would.
“The noise needs to be studied,” said El Mirage spokeswoman Stacy Pearson.
Glendale spokesman Jerry McCoy said Glendale is open to the Luke tests, but they should be conducted in a uniform way and at the same time as at other sites being considered for F-35 training fast payday loans. Luke is the U.S. Air Force’s prime training base for F-16 pilots and Glendale is leading the effort to bring the F-35 training to Arizona.
The F-35 is succeeding the F-16 in the U.S. military arsenal.
Luke fighters now take off and land over El Mirage to the north of the base and Goodyear to the south.
McCoy also said Glendale is urging residents and base supporters to attend the DOD meetings.
Luke is competing with bases in Florida and New Mexico for F-35 training. Sites and times for the public forums on Luke have not yet been announced.
Safeway Inc. is sponsoring a gameday area on Sunday for the Arizona Cardinals home game in Glendale.
Safeway’s Gameday Experiene includes games, video game and TVs broadcasting other National Football League games. It also features food and drink stands offering samples of tailgating fare and other products fans might buy from the grocery store.
Safeway hosted a similar event outside University of Phoenix Stadium for the Nov payday loans with no fax. 15 game against the Seattle Seahawks.
The Cards game against the Minnesota Vikings is televised Sunday night on NBC. The Safeway promotion is free and located east of the stadium. The game starts at 6:20 p.m.
MONTREAL – Canadian National Railway Co. and the Teamsters union reached a deal on Wednesday to end a strike by locomotive engineers, avoiding a potential blow to the fragile economic recovery.
Teamsters Canada president Daniel Shewchuk said the engineers will get back to work as quickly as possible, but didn’t provide a timeline.
Federal Labour Minister Rona Ambrose said restoring full service quickly is critical to the economy.
"Canada is still at the early stages of a recovery from the global economic downturn and could not afford slowdowns and stoppages in such a critical component of the national infrastructure," Ambrose said in a statement.
The minister said the deal to end the strike, which began on Saturday, was reached as a result of "intense bargaining."
Under the terms of the agreement, CN (TSX: CNR) will not proceed with controversial work rule changes it announced last week including increasing the monthly mileage cap for the locomotive engineers.
CN and the union have also agreed to continue negotiations to resolve issues related to wages, benefits and work rules, but if there is no agreement any dispute over wages and benefits will be settled by binding arbitration.
The two sides may also agree to submit work-rule issues to binding arbitration, but only if they can agree on the ones that should be subject to arbitration.
CN president and chief executive Hunter Harrison said the deal gives both sides the flexibility to negotiate issues further, but also ensures the finality of binding arbitration for issues that remain in dispute.
"We have always sought, since starting negotiations 14 months ago, to achieve a settlement with the TCRC through negotiations or binding arbitration," Harrison said in a statement.
Ambrose said she will appoint federal mediators and an arbitrator to help finalize the other outstanding issues.
The deal came after Ottawa introduced legislation Monday to end the strike.
CN is the country’s largest railway and the government cited worries about the weak economy to justify the strike-ending legislation.
"Continuing the strike for any further amount of time would have had grave consequences for our economy," Ambrose said.
Managers have been running the trains since the walkout began.
Edward Jones analyst Brian Yarbrough said the deal looks positive for both sides.
"You never like to see people out there unemployed in this kind of environment and you don’t like to see the potential negative impacts this could have caused to the overall economic rebound," Yarbrough said from St. Louis.
Since the strike was so short, there shouldn’t be any serious economic effects, he added.
The 1,700 engineers, members of the Teamsters Canadian Rail Conference, have been without a contract for almost a year.
CN shares closed down 27 cents at $56.03 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Staples Inc reported third-quarter results that topped analyst estimates and forecast higher sales in the current quarter as trends improve at its North American retail business.
The results, which sent Staples shares to their highest level since September 2008, contrasted those reported by smaller rivals Office Depot Inc and OfficeMax Inc, who both posted sharply lower quarterly sales in October.
Staples continues to gain market share against those two rivals in North America, Sanford Bernstein analyst Colin McGranahan said in a research note.
Traffic in the company’s North American stores rose for the first time in nine quarters. Sales at North American stores open at least a year, or same-store sales, were flat in the third quarter after posting declines since last December.
CEO Ron Sargent said initiatives to boost its business in core areas like ink and paper during the recession were paying off with higher same-store sales.
“The North American retail and Staples business delivery (sales) trajectory are encouraging,” J.P. Morgan analyst Christopher Horvers said in a note to clients. He added that the profit outlook for the current quarter seems low compared with the company’s sales view.
The company also said it had a good start to the holiday shopping season over Thanksgiving weekend, and would ratchet up efforts to lure customers this year with promotions on items like printer ink. Staples cut back on marketing and promotional spending in 2008 in response to a bleak retail environment.
“I think it probably will be a pretty promotional holiday season,” Sargent said during a conference call.
Q4 FORECAST IN LINE
Office-supply retailers have suffered in the tough economy as both corporate customers and other shoppers have curbed their appetite for nonessential items, especially expensive goods like furniture and business machines.
Staples said it expects fourth-quarter earnings of 36 cents to 38 cents a share before one-time items, and a sales rise of 1 percent to 3 percent.
Analysts on average were expecting Staples to earn 37 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. They had forecast sales of $6.14 billion, a decline from last year’s fourth-quarter tally of $6.17 billion.
Third-quarter net earnings rose to $269.4 million, or 37 cents a share, from $156.7 million, or 22 cents a share, a year earlier.
Excluding one-time items, it earned 39 cents a share in the quarter, which ended on October 31, beating analysts’ average forecast of 38 cents.
Sales fell 6 percent to $6.52 billion but beat analysts’ average estimate of $6.45 billion.
The United Arab Emirates’ Central Bank stands behind local and foreign banks operating in the country and made an additional liquidity facility available to them, it said in an e-mailed statement today.
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