U.S. government to sue JPMorgan in mortgage case

The U.S. Justice Department is preparing to sue JPMorgan Chase & Co over mortgage bonds it sold in the run-up to the financial crisis, a sign the bank's legal troubles are not yet over.

A lawsuit, first reported by Reuters, could come as early as Tuesday, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

JPMorgan spokesman Brian Marchiony and Justice Department spokeswoman Adora Andy Jenkins declined to comment.

The bank disclosed in August that federal prosecutors in California were conducting criminal and civil investigations into the bank's mortgage securities.

In those investigations, government lawyers have concluded that JPMorgan committed civil violations of securities laws in offering mortgage bonds from 2005 to 2007 that were backed by subprime and other risky residential mortgages.

The expected charges come less than one week after the largest U.S. bank paid $1 billion to resolve investigations into its "London Whale" trading scandal and issues surrounding the wrongful billing of credit-card customers. Read more >>

Bank of America to lay off thousands in mortgage business

Layoffs at Bank of America Corp's mortgage business will amount to about 2,100 positions, a source told Reuters on Monday, in response to weak refinancing activity.

The downsizing reflects the second-largest US bank's "ongoing efforts to streamline our facilities and align our cost structure with market realities," Bank of America said in a statement in response to questions about the planned layoffs, the total number of which was first reported by Bloomberg on Monday.

Bank of America workers in states such as Ohio, Florida and Virginia received notice of planned layoffs in late August, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. About 1,000 of the workers to be laid off are based in the Cleveland, Ohio area, according to local filings. A person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday that about 2,100 jobs in total would be eliminated.

Large US banks including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase & Co and Wells Fargo & Co have said they expect a decline in refinancing volume, driven by higher interest rates, to hit revenue in the near term. Applications to refinance mortgages have dropped 63 percent since a peak in early May, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association refinance index. Read more >>

U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans

A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

"I have never heard of anything like this at all," said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers. Read more >>

Japan nuclear body says radioactive water at Fukushima an 'emergency'

Highly radioactive water seeping into the ocean from Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant is creating an "emergency" that the operator is struggling to contain, an official from the country's nuclear watchdog said on Monday.

This contaminated groundwater has breached an underground barrier, is rising toward the surface and is exceeding legal limits of radioactive discharge, Shinji Kinjo, head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) task force, told Reuters.

Countermeasures planned by Tokyo Electric Power Co are only a temporary solution, he said.

Tepco's "sense of crisis is weak," Kinjo said. "This is why you can't just leave it up to Tepco alone" to grapple with the ongoing disaster.

"Right now, we have an emergency," he said.

Tepco has been widely castigated for its failure to prepare for the massive 2011 tsunami and earthquake that devastated its Fukushima plant and lambasted for its inept response to the reactor meltdowns. It has also been accused of covering up shortcomings. Read more >>

Obama to let spy agencies scour Americans' finances

The Obama administration is drawing up plans to give all U.S. spy agencies full access to a massive database that contains financial data on American citizens and others who bank in the country, according to a Treasury Department document seen by Reuters.

The proposed plan represents a major step by U.S. intelligence agencies to spot and track down terrorist networks and crime syndicates by bringing together financial databanks, criminal records and military intelligence. The plan, which legal experts say is permissible under U.S. law, is nonetheless likely to trigger intense criticism from privacy advocates.

Financial institutions that operate in the United States are required by law to file reports of "suspicious customer activity," such as large money transfers or unusually structured bank accounts, to Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

The Federal Bureau of Investigation already has full access to the database. However, intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, currently have to make case-by-case requests for information to FinCEN. Read more >>

Is Facebook envy making you miserable?

Witnessing friends' vacations, love lives and work successes on Facebook can cause envy and trigger feelings of misery and loneliness, according to German researchers.

A study conducted jointly by two German universities found rampant envy on Facebook, the world's largest social network that now has over one billion users and has produced an unprecedented platform for social comparison.

The researchers found that one in three people felt worse after visiting the site and more dissatisfied with their lives, while people who browsed without contributing were affected the most.

"We were surprised by how many people have a negative experience from Facebook with envy leaving them feeling lonely, frustrated or angry," researcher Hanna Krasnova from the Institute of Information Systems at Berlin's Humboldt University told Reuters.

"From our observations some of these people will then leave Facebook or at least reduce their use of the site," said Krasnova, adding to speculation that Facebook could be reaching saturation point in some markets. Read more >>

Disney plans layoffs

Walt Disney Co started an internal cost-cutting review several weeks ago that may include layoffs at its studio and other units, three people with knowledge of the effort told Reuters, in an early sign that big companies may not be finished tightening their belts.

Disney, whose empire spans TV, film, merchandise and theme parks, is exploring cutbacks in jobs it no longer needs because of improvements in technology, one of the people said.

It is also looking at redundant operations that could be eliminated following a string of major acquisitions over the past few years, said the person. The people did not want to be identified because Disney has not disclosed the internal review. Read more >>

Boeing to cut 30 percent of management jobs

Boeing Co said on Wednesday it will restructure its defense, space and security business and cut 30 percent of management jobs from 2010 levels as part of a broad cost-cutting drive.

Boeing, the Pentagon's second-largest supplier, said it also will close some facilities in California and consolidate several business units in an effort to trim $1.6 billion in costs by the end of 2015, on top of $2.2 billion in reductions achieved since 2010.

"We are raising the bar higher because our market challenges and opportunities require it, and our customers' needs demand it," Dennis Muilenburg, chief executive of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, told employees in a memo obtained by Reuters and confirmed by Boeing.

He said the total savings of $4 billion would make the company healthier and better able to deal with an increasingly complex and challenging marketplace. Read more >>

Durable goods drop worst since recession

New orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods in August fell by the most in 3-1/2 years, pointing to a sharp slowdown in factory activity even as a gauge of planned business spending rebounded.

The Commerce Department said on Thursday durable goods orders dived 13.2 percent, the largest drop since January 2009, when the economy was in the throes of a recession. Orders for July were revised down to show a 3.3 percent increase instead of the previously reported 4.1 percent gain.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected orders for durable goods -- items from toasters to aircraft that are meant to last at least three years -- to fall 5 percent. Last month, the drop in orders reflected weak aircraft and automobiles demand. Boeing received only one aircraft order in August, down from 260 in July, according to information posted on the plane maker's website. Read more >>

Four-Week Jobless Claims Average Reaches 2012 High

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits was little changed last week, according to government data on Thursday that suggested the labor market was struggling to regain momentum.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 2,000 to a seasonally adjusted 387,000, the Labor Department said. The prior week's figure was revised up to 389,000 from the previously reported 386,000. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims falling to 380,000 last week.  

The four-week moving average for new claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends, increased 3,500 to 386,250 — the highest level since early December. Read more >>

Housing Starts Plunge

CNBC reports that housing starts fell in May. The Commerce Department said on Tuesday that groundbreaking on new homes dropped 4.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 708,000 units. The reading, which is prone to significant revisions, was below the median forecast in a Reuters poll of a 720,000-unit rate. 

This from Zero Hedge:

We just got another indication of how US housing has "bottomed"... if only in terms of promises and strong words. While permits, or promises that at some point in the indefinite future, a house will be built, soared from 723K to an annualized rate of 780K, the highest since September 2008, on expectations of a 730K print, actual holes dug, or Starts plunged from a revised 744K to 708K, the biggest miss of expectations of a modest improvement from the pre-revision number since April 2011, and the biggest sequential drop since August 2011. 

And while recently all the starts strength was in multi-family units as America prepares to become a renter society, in May it was actually the 1-unit houses that saw an increase from 500K to 516K units, as multi-family tumbled from 236K to 179K. So much for the REO-To-Rent plan? Finally, looking at actual completions, the number tumbled by 10.3% from an annual rate of 667K to 598K in May.

More Than 1 Million Americans Underwater on Home

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More than 1 million Americans who have taken out mortgages in the past two years now owe more on their loans than their homes are worth, and Federal Housing Administration loans that require only a tiny down payment are partly to blame.

That figure, provided to Reuters by tracking firm CoreLogic, represents about one out of 10 home loans made during that period.

It is a sobering indication the U.S. housing market remains deeply troubled, with home values still falling in many parts of the country, and raises the question of whether low-down payment loans backed by the FHA are putting another generation of buyers at risk.

As of December 2011, the latest figures available, 31 percent of the U.S. home loans that were in negative equity - in which the outstanding loan balance exceeds the value of the home - were FHA-insured mortgages, according to CoreLogic. More...

Realtors: We Overcounted Home Sales for Five Years

Image via WikipediaData on sales of previously owned U.S. homes from 2007 through October this year will be revised down next week because of double counting, indicating a much weaker housing market than previously thought.

The National Association of Realtors said a benchmarking exercise had revealed that some properties were listed more than once, and in some instances, new home sales were also captured.

"All the sales and inventory data that have been reported since January 2007 are being downwardly revised. Sales were weaker than people thought," NAR spokesman Walter Malony told Reuters.

"We're capturing some new home data that should have been filtered out and we also discovered that some properties were being listed in more than one list." More...

A Den of Vipers and Thieves

Image by Webbaliah via FlickrScott Johnson
For some, the upcoming dollar extinction event will be completely unexpected. For others, the coming days may be seen as the unraveling of the greatest silent oppression story humanity has ever had the displeasure of calling reality. Mislead by the deceitful words from generations of countless “professional politicians”, the lives of all Americans will be forever changed over the next two years, no person to be excluded.

We now live in a society where lies are presented as truth, military imperialism is justified in the name of humanitarianism, and more debt continues to be issued to “promote” economic health and stability. The long-run is not in focus, and short-term perspective is constantly subject to manipulation.

The staples of life, such as the food we eat, the water we drink, the education we receive, and the medical practices developed have all fallen victim to the hands of profiteer-ism, lacking respect for the well-being of the population, better known as crony capitalism.

America’s children have been taught to memorize, repeat, and to be entertained. We have been told that we are nothing without a college degree, in which many are forced to take out student loans in which opens the precedent to a life of debt. What sort of precedent is this setting our future up for? (Approaching one trillion dollars… larger than all credit card debt).

Our media has been hijacked, as responsible journalism has all but vanished from the mainstream arena. Many complain about specific networks or mediums, when in truth it matters not which different “race”of news one mentions, for they are all fed by the two dominant mainstream news sources, Reuters and Associated Press.

Our economy has been morphed from a goods producing private sector, into a government subsidized welfare state. The basis for what is left of the American economy depends on consuming cheap goods, many in which come from China and other openly oppressed nations. Regardless of this known fact, the American Public and the U.S. government adopt the “out of sight, out of mind” philosophy with respect to ethics and morality of the exploited labor. If this was truly the land of the free, why do we play benefactor to the exploitation of labor trade?

So it is no wonder why in these times, so many are confused, angry, and even frightened about what the future holds. For those who are opening up to the world, they are greeted by the many harsh unspoken realities in which this world is founded upon. And for those who remain unaware, the life they have known seems to be changing at an increasing rate. Both types of people are left asking why?

The answer is quite straightforward, yet elegantly complicated in its delicacies. To understand why all these illusions are converging upon the next several years, one must look at the common denominator among these large and complex lies, or the heart of the beast one may say, currency (money). More...

Surveys Show Manufacturing Slowing Worldwide

Factory activity worldwide stalled last month as new orders tumbled, heightening fears that the global economy might be heading for another recession and driving stock markets lower.

In the euro area, the purchasing managers’ indexes showed that manufacturing contracted for the first time in almost two years in August, echoing earlier data from South Korea and Taiwan, where new export orders fell sharply.

Britain’s manufacturing sector shrank at its fastest pace in more than two years, hurt by a sharp decline in demand for exports.

The pace of growth in the U.S. manufacturing sector slowed to a crawl but fared better than economists had forecast.

The Institute for Supply Management said its index of national factory activity edged down to 50.6 from 50.9 the month before. The reading topped expectations of 48.5, which would have signaled a contraction, according to a Reuters poll of economists. More...

18 Straight Weeks Over 400K

As we predicted last week when we reported that the surprise 398K claims beat was "quite amusing as next week's upward revision will mean the 400k+ streak will continue", we were again correct: today's print of 400K (which will be revised to 404K or so next week) allegedly beat expectations modestly, but the kicker is that last week's 398K was pushed up to 401K, meaning that the unbroken streak of 400K+ prints is now at 18 weeks. Welcome to the depression. Continuing claims came in worse than expected at 3,730K on consensus of 3,700K, from an upward (of course) revised 3,703K to 3,720K. In other words, whatever happens at tomorrow's NFP will happen, without any feedback either positive or negative from today's claims number. More...

There's no economic turnaround, just the opposite

In his latest report, John Williams estimates the government is routinely overstating job growth by “230,000 jobs” a month. Using simple math, 192,000 created jobs (according to BLS) subtracted from 230,000 overstated jobs gives you an actual net loss of 38,000 jobs. I called Williams to check my analysis, and he told me it is not that simple because the government’s estimations are “the worst in modern economic history.” Williams says unemployment numbers are “openly misleading” and virtually “worthless.” More...

Wheat Poised for Longest Rally in 14 Months

Image via WikipediaWheat rose in Chicago, set for the longest winning streak since November 2009, as North African importers boost purchases to curb food inflation amid riots over high prices.

Egypt purchased 659,800 metric tons of U.S. wheat from the start of the marketing year on June 1 through Jan. 6, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show. That’s up from 366,000 tons last year, according to the USDA. Tunisia bought 100,000 tons of wheat on Jan. 24, Reuters reported. Elevated food prices contributed to outbreaks of rioting in both countries.

“In the case of wheat, prices are reflecting food-security issues we’ve seen recently,” said Erin FitzPatrick, an analyst at Rabobank in London. “There’s certainly some correlation with a lot of those countries coming into the market and saying they want to increase their stock levels.” Read more...

Kuwait's Petroleum Council - Oil Could Reach $110 in Next Few Weeks

Image via WikipediaSpeculation could push oil prices to rise to $110 per barrel within a few weeks, which may prompt OPEC to raise production, a member of Kuwait's Supreme Petroleum Council said on Sunday.

"Demand will increase slightly, but this increase in price is usually technical, due to analysts' forecasts and speculations," Imad al-Atiqi, a member of the country's highest oil policy body, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"This (increase) could be a reason to increase production so the oil market does not get worried ... especially if the rise was quick and crossed the $110," he said. More...

US private sector cuts 10,000 jobs in Aug

(Reuters) - U.S. private employers unexpectedly cut 10,000 jobs in August compared to a revised gain of 37,000 in July, a report by a payrolls processor showed on Wednesday.

The July figure was originally reported as a gain of 42,000.

The median of estimates from 34 economists surveyed by Reuters for the ADP Employer Services report, jointly developed with Macroeconomic Advisers LLC, was for a rise of 19,000 private-sector jobs in August.

The ADP figures come ahead of the government's much more comprehensive labor market report on Friday, which includes both public and private sector employment.

That report is expected to show a fall in overall nonfarm payrolls of 100,000 in August, based on a Reuters poll of analysts, but a rise in private payrolls of 41,000. [ECI/US]

Economists often refer to the ADP report to fine-tune their expectations for the payrolls numbers, though it is not always accurate in predicting the outcome.