U.S. home prices are falling again in most major cities after posting small gains over the summer and spring, the latest evidence that the troubled housing market won’t recover any time soon.
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index released Tuesday showed prices dropped in September from August in 17 of the 20 cities tracked. That was the first decline after five straight months in which at least half the cities in the survey showed monthly gains.
A separate index for the July-September quarter shows prices were mostly unchanged from the previous quarter.
David M. Blitzer, chairman of S&P’s index committee, said that while the steep price declines seen between 2007 and 2009 appear to be over, home prices are down from the same time last year and do not show signs of easing.
“Any chance for a sustained recovery will probably need a stronger economy,” Blitzer said.
Atlanta, San Francisco and Tampa, Fla. posted the biggest monthly price declines. Prices in Atlanta, Las Vegas and Phoenix fell to their lowest points since the housing crisis began four years ago. Blitzer called the new lows reached in those three cities a “bit disturbing.”
Prices rose in New York, Portland, Ore. and Washington.
Americans are reluctant to purchase a home more than two years after the recession officially ended. High unemployment and weak job growth have deterred many would-be buyers. Even the lowest mortgage rates in history haven’t been enough to lift sales.
Some people can’t qualify for loans or meet higher down payment requirements. Many with good credit and stable jobs are holding off because they fear that prices will keep falling payday loan lenders.
Sales of previously occupied homes are on pace to match last year’s dismal figures _ the worst in 14 years. And sales of new homes are shaping up to be the worst since the government began keeping records a half century ago.
“Despite record high affordability of real estate, the psychology of home buyers is still being weighed down by economic uncertainty, keeping them on the fence when it comes to buying homes,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow.com, which measures home values.
The Case Shiller index covers half of all U.S. homes. It measures prices compared with those in January 2000 and creates a three-month moving average. The September data is the latest available.
Prices are certain to fall further once banks resume millions of foreclosures. They have been delayed because of a yearlong government investigation into mortgage lending practices.
Home prices had stabilized in coastal cities over the past six months, helped by a rush of spring buyers and investors. But this year, prices in many cities, including Cleveland, Detroit, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tampa, have reached their lowest points since the housing bust more than four years ago.
Foreclosures and short sales _ when a lender accepts less for a home than what is owed on a mortgage _ are selling at an average discount of 20 percent.
A Russian businessman who owns Portsmouth Football Club has been arrested in London in connection with a Lithuanian money laundering probe.
Lithuanian prosecutors had issued a European arrest warrant for 36-year-old Vladimir Antonov, and his Lithuanian partner Raimondas Baranauskas, probing alleged fraud and money laundering at a bank that local authorities say will have to be liquidated.
Prosecutors said Friday that Baranauskas, 53, had also been detained in London. When asked whether Antonov had been been arrested, London police read a statement saying that two men _ age 36 and 53 _ were arrested in response to a Europe-wide arrest warrant.
British officials do not name suspects until they have been charged.
Police say the two men are due to appear in a London court later Friday.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) _ Lithuania’s central bank said it would dismantle a bank controlled by a Russian businessman after regulators discovered large sums of money missing.
Lithuanian prosecutors said Friday that Raimondas Baranauskas, minority owner of Snoras Bank, has been detained in London after they had issued a European arrest warrant on Wednesday.
Prosecutors could not say whether Russian citizen Vladimir Antonov, the bank’s majority owner, was also detained. Antonov is the owner of the Portsmouth football club.
The Bank of Lithuania said late Thursday that the dismantling of Snoras was the best solution for the Baltic state’s financial system and economy, which have been jolted after the bank was nationalized and its operations halted.
Bank chief Vitas Vasiliauskas said should not waste taxpayers’ money trying to help “a plane that won’t fly.”
“There is no other way to solve this situation,” he said.
Hundreds of millions of euros (dollars) are believed to have been siphoned off from Snoras and Latvijas Krajbanka, a subsidiary bank in neighboring Latvia.
Janis Brazovskis, an official with Latvia’s Finance and Capital Markets Commission who was appointed to oversee Latvijas Krajbanka, said Wednesday that Antonov’s failed attempt to acquire the troubled Swedish automaker Saab might have triggered the downfall of the two Baltic banks.
He said that approximately 100 million lats ($200 million) were siphoned from the bank to increase its charter capital and finance Antonov’s investment projects _ including the unsuccessful takeover of Saab.
Deposit holders in both countries are now forced to wait in long lines to withdraw money from cash machines, while companies and municipalities have seen the working capital virtually disappear.
Still, authorities in both Lithuania and Latvia say the two banks’ collapse does not pose a systemic risk since they are mid-sized and the two states have ample reserves to guarantee deposits.
Latvijas Krajbanka was Latvia’s 10th largest bank by assets after it was taken over by regulators on Monday.
Libya’s transitional government was sworn in Thursday before the country’s interim leader, another step in the oil-rich country’s roadmap to elections next year.
Starting with Prime Minister Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib, each minister faced the transitional council’s leader, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, placed his hand on a Quran and swore to “remain loyal to the goals” of the revolution that overthrew longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Each shook Abdel-Jalil’s hand as he stood in front of two national flags, and some also embraced him.
The country faces huge challenges now, but el-Keib said he and his ministers were “upbeat” and optimistic about leading Libya toward elections by next June.
“We are looking forward to having an exciting seven months ahead of us, with lots of things to do and hopefully good results,” el-Keib said.
The lineup of relative unknowns, almost all of them older men, will confront daunting challenges, like establishing control over the fractured nation after the ousting of Gadhafi’s 42-year regime, along with building up state institutions practically from scratch.
El-Keib pledged to represent the interests of all Libyans.
“I am a son of all Libyans,” he said. “I will represent everyone and share wealth with everyone.”
The transitional Cabinet includes 24 ministers, though several, including the defense minister, were missing from Thursday’s ceremony. The prime minister explained that they were out of Tripoli, some of them attending to personal preparations in their hometowns before taking up their new posts.
Among the institutions that must be built is a justice system that will be able to put on trial two key members of the Gadhafi regime _ Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, the dictator’s recently captured son and one-time heir-apparent, and the ex-intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi.
The International Criminal Court has charged them both with crimes against humanity for alleged atrocities committed during the recent civil war.
Libyan authorities insist the be tried in Libya, and not at the court in The Hague, Netherlands, a decision aimed at asserting their national authority. However, they have promised to work with the ICC and with the United Nations in investigating the alleged crimes.
ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told The Associated Press on Thursday that the court received the formal pledge of cooperation in a letter from Abdul-Jalil, the NTC chairman.
Moreno-Ocampo said he was satisfied with that move, which appeared to settle a dispute between the international court and Libyan authorities over which body should try Seif al-Islam Gadhafi.
Moreno-Ocampo said the most important thing is for “face of the old regime” to face justice.
It “is very important for the world and for Libya to understand what happened here, how they attacked these people, how they killed these people,” Moreno-Ocampo said.
He said investigations are under way into the alleged crimes committed by Gadhafi’s son and that he believed it would be ready for trial “in a few months.”
Seif al-Islam was captured on Saturday and is being held by fighters from the Libyan town of Zintan, who flew him there after his arrest in the south. He appeared to be in good health despite a hand injury, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which visited him Tuesday.
Officials with the NTC have reported that al-Senoussi, the former intelligence chief, has also been captured. But some later cast doubt on that assertion, and his whereabouts are not known.
A tax cut that reaches 160 million Americans and government aid for the long-term unemployed will expire at the end of the year _ sucking $165 billion out of the economy next year _ unless Congress takes action.
Economists hoped the so-called congressional supercommittee would decide whether to extend both measures. But the committee couldn’t even agree on how to reach its main goal, cutting $1.2 trillion from the federal budget deficit.
If the tax cut goes away, the average family would pay about $1,000 more in taxes next year, the equivalent of an extra tank of gas every two weeks. Someone earning $100,000 would pay $2,000 more.
And if long-term unemployment benefits are allowed to expire, about 6 million people would lose weekly checks averaging about $300. For most of the long-term unemployed, that is their main source of income.
“There’s an awful lot of uncertainty ahead,” said Michael Hanson, senior U.S. economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Both changes would leave Americans with an estimated $165 billion less to spend. The Federal Reserve expects the economy to grow only 2.7 percent next year, and economists say the expiration of the two programs could reduce growth by a full percentage point.
The government said Tuesday that the economy grew at a 2 percent rate in July, August and September, down from earlier estimates of 2.5 percent.
To bring unemployment down significantly, the economy has to grow more than twice as fast as it grew this summer.
Congress could extend the tax cut and unemployment benefits when it returns from Thanksgiving recess next week. But the same partisan philosophical differences that sank the supercommittee could complicate the debate.
At the same time, Congress may be unwilling to force what is essentially a tax increase on tens of millions of Americans just as an election year begins.
Both measures were part of a deal struck in December 2010 by President Barack Obama and Republicans in Congress.
The cut applies to the tax that pays for Social Security. The tax applies to the first $106,800 a person makes in a year. The deal lowered the rate paid by individuals to 4.2 percent from 6.2 percent for this year. Companies also pay a 6.2 rate on their payroll.
Some Republicans have indicated they could support extending the tax cut, but there would almost certainly be a fight over how to pay for it. Without spending cuts or other tax increases, renewing the Social Security tax cut would swell the deficit cash advance in one hour.
Obama, as part of his jobs bill in September, Obama proposed lowering the rate further, to 3.1 percent, and cutting the employer portion to 3.1 percent up to the first $5 million on their payrolls.
Cuts at that level would pump almost $250 billion more into the economy compared with last year, when individuals and employers both paid the 6.2 percent rate.
Obama, speaking Tuesday in New Hampshire, urged Republicans to continue the tax break.
“Don’t be a Grinch,” the president said. “Don’t vote to raise taxes on working Americans during the holidays.”
On Monday, White House press secretary Jay Carney suggested that renewing or deepening the tax cut could be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy. Republicans have refused to consider doing so.
Most states provide up to 26 weeks of unemployment benefits. The deal extended benefits to up to 99 weeks in states with the highest unemployment rates.
Unless that is renewed, almost 2.2 million people out of work will lose benefits by the first week in February. About 6 million people would lose weekly benefits by the end of the year.
Just the uncertainty of not knowing what Congress will do could cause businesses to hold back on hiring and investment, and therefore drag down economic growth, Hanson said.
Most economists would like to see lower budget deficits, but most would like the government to reduce the deficit gradually, to avoid hurting the weak economy. And they would all prefer robust economic growth to solve the problem.
The supercommittee’s failure triggers $1 trillion in automatic cuts in government spending beginning in 2013. Congress could undo them, but then credit rating agencies might downgrade the government’s long-term debt, as Standard & Poor’s did in August.
An even bigger hurdle looms at the end of 2012. That’s when the tax cuts passed during the Bush administration are set to expire. Losing those tax cuts would cost taxpayers up to an additional $4 trillion over 10 years.
Combined, all those factors would reduce growth in 2013 by between 1.5 and 3.5 percentage points, Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office, estimated last week.
Regulators on Friday closed small banks in Iowa and Louisiana, lifting to 90 the number of bank failures in the U.S. this year.
The number of closures has fallen sharply this year as banks have worked their way through the bad debt accumulated in the recession. By this time last year, regulators had shuttered 149 banks.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized Polk County Bank, based in Johnston, Iowa, with $91.6 million in assets and $82 million in deposits. It also closed Central Progressive Bank, based in Lacombe, La., with $383.1 million in assets and $347.7 million in deposits.
Grinnell State Bank, based in Grinnell, Iowa, agreed to assume the deposits as well as the loans and other assets of Polk County Bank. New Orleans-based First NBC Bank agreed to acquire all the deposits and $354.4 million of the assets of Central Progressive Bank.
The failure of Polk County Bank is expected to cost the deposit insurance fund $12 million; that of Central Progressive Bank is expected to cost $58.1 million.
Polk County Bank was the first bank in Iowa to fail this year, while Central Progressive Bank was the first Louisiana lender to fail this year.
In all of 2010, regulators seized 157 banks, the most in any year since the savings and loan crisis two decades ago. Those failures cost around $23 billion. The FDIC has said 2010 likely was the high-water mark for bank failures from the Great Recession.
In 2009, there were 140 bank failures that cost the insurance fund about $36 billion, a higher price tag than in 2010 because the banks involved were bigger on average. Twenty-five banks failed in 2008, the year the financial crisis struck with force; only three were closed in 2007.
From 2008 through 2010, bank failures cost the fund $76.8 billion. The FDIC expects failures from 2011 through 2015 to cost $19 billion.
The deposit insurance fund fell into the red in 2009. With failures slowing, the FDIC’s fund balance turned positive in the second quarter of this year; it stood at $3.9 billion as of June 30.
Patricia Ranzini was appointed executive director of St. Anthony’s Charitable Foundation at St. Anthony’s Medical Center.
She will be responsible for strategic direction, oversight and implementation of the foundation’s fund-raising programs and long-range planning.
Ranzini has worked for 12 years in the development field, most recently for the Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club payday advance online. She is a member of the Association of Hospital Philanthropy, the Association of Fundraising Professionals and the Women’s Leadership Council of the Humane Society of Missouri.
UPDATED AT 6:50 p.m. with more details.
Die-hard bargain shoppers might want to opt for some coffee after Thanksgiving dinner this year.
Not only are a number of big box and department stores opening at midnight on Thanksgiving, but now most of the shopping malls in the St. Louis region are following suit as well.
“Everybody wants to join the party,” said Marshal Cohen, retail analyst with consulting firm NPD Group. “It’s going to be midnight madness.”
Chesterfield Mall, Mid Rivers Mall, South County Center, St. Clair Square, and West County Center will all open their doors at midnight to accommodate stores that have asked to open at that hour, mall operator CBL & Associates announced Monday.
Victoria’s Secret, Aeropostale, The Limited, Bath and Body Works, and American Eagle are some of the stores that have said they will open at midnight. It will put a complete list of stores that will open at midnight at area malls on its website next week, CBL said.
“It seems to be growing as time goes on,” Sean Phillips, CBL’s regional marketing director, said of the list. “I think everyone feels they need to be open at midnight to be competitive.”
The rest of the stores in CBL malls will open at 5 a.m. Friday - an hour earlier than last year. Some eateries and coffee shops may also open in the middle of the night, too. For example, the Starbucks at West County Center has already said it would open at midnight.
The St. Louis Galleria will officially open at 6 a.m. - also an hour earlier than last year, said Earl Dorsett, manager of the St. Louis Galleria. But the Galleria will unlock the doors and turn on the lights in the mall so stores that want to open at midnight can do so, which is a first for that mall payday loans.
The mall has never opened this early - or been open on Thanksgiving Day - with the exception of the movie theaters, he said.
In recent weeks, a number of big retailers such as Target, Best Buy, Macy’s, and Kohl’s have said they will open at midnight this year to kick off Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping events of the year.
Walmart will roll out its first round of doorbusters at 10 p.m. Thanksgiving Day. And Toys R Us, which is trying to stay ahead of the pack, said Monday that it will open its stores at 9 p.m.
However, the midnight openings are not sitting well with some employees. A Target employee from Nebraska has started an online petition that has garnered thousands of signatures asking Target to open at 5 a.m. on Black Friday instead of at midnight.
“A midnight opening robs the hourly and in-store salary workers of time off with their families on Thanksgiving Day,” the petition says.
But Cohen said he thinks that in this economy, there are a number of employees out there who would be willing to volunteer to work the extra hours to make overtime pay.
He expects the midnight opening to be popular among shoppers who would be up then anyway and would prefer to shop at that hour than to have to wake up before dawn to get the best deals.
Besides, he added, shopping is not necessarily at odds with the spirit of the Thanksgiving, which is a family-oriented holiday.
“Guess what - shopping to some people is a family-centric activity,” he said.
Dubai’s fast-growing airline Emirates is kicking off the Mideast city’s airshow with an order for 50 Boeing 777s.
The list price for the deal is $18 billion, but airlines typically negotiate discounts for large orders. The announcement was made Sunday by Emirates chairman and CEO Sheik Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum.
Emirates is the Middle East’s largest carrier. It is owned by the government of Dubai, which is recovering from a debt-fueled financial crisis that came to a head two years ago.
The carrier is Boeing’s largest customer for the wide-body 777. Its young fleet also includes Airbus A330s and A340s, and the double-decker A380.
The threat that floodwaters will inundate Thailand’s capital could ease by the beginning of next month as record-high levels in the river carrying torrents of water downstream from the country’s north begin to decline, authorities said Sunday.
The Flood Relief Operations Command made the comments just a day after reports that Bangkok’s main Chao Phraya river was overflowing its banks deepened concerns that the city would be inundated. The report said the river was at its highest levels in seven years.
The command’s chief, Justice Minister Pracha Promnok, said in a televised press conference Sunday that people should not be too concerned about the river’s spillover because it could be drained off. He also said water in Klong Prapa, a major canal that had been overflowing, was receding, and that plans to drain water to the east and west were working well.
Floodwaters that have spilled onto highways north of the capital, including near Bangkok’s second airport in the Don Muang district, came from rising groundwater that will quickly recede, he said.
Off the highways, however, the situation remained dire. Associated Press reporters found people scrambling for safety outside a hospital in northern Rangsit district, where the water was waist-deep.
The flood relief agency said “people should adjust their lifestyles in accordance with the situation” and check all information because rumors have been quick to circulate. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said Saturday that the waters may take up to six weeks to recede to manageable proportions.
The death toll from the flooding, which began in August in northern Thailand before moving south, has reached 356, while the economic costs are estimated to be as high as $6 billion and still counting.
Residents of Bangkok and its suburbs have settled into a daily routine of waiting and worrying. Advice from the authorities has generally been vague or sometimes overly detailed, giving little idea of the urgency of evacuation, so many people have decided to hunker down in their homes and hope for the best.
Many are hoarding supplies for the aquatic siege, and supermarket shelves have been emptying faster than they can be restocked. Bottled water, batteries and canned food were among the first items to go.
At a supermarket in central Bangkok’s business district _ which is not under immediate threat _ sandbags were lined up at both entrances Sunday, forcing shoppers to step over to go inside. Many of the shelves were bare, with the handful of shoppers inside grabbing the few snacks that were left small personal loans. Cat food and toilet paper were gone.
While larger stores in Bangkok have kept their prices fixed, in the flooded zones north of the city, smaller merchants were raising theirs. A Rangsit resident, Taweetit Hongsang, complained that the price of a papaya, 10 baht (33 cents) a week ago, had shot up to 30 baht ($1)
The front lines in the battle against the flood have been shifting every day, but always drawing closer to the capital. The latest red zone is the Don Muang area in northern Bangkok, where the city’s second and older airport _ now serving as an anti-flood headquarters and evacuation center _ is located.
Other spots of concern in Bangkok are in the west, where several thousand people living along the Chao Phraya river have been advised to move, as high tides expected late Sunday could cause the river to overflow its banks in some areas, and in the east, where barriers were being erected to protect an industrial estate.
At least five major industrial estates north of Bangkok have been forced to suspend operations, contributing to an estimated 700,000 people put out of work by the flooding. Among those affected are Japanese carmakers Toyota and Honda, which have halted major assembly operations. The electronics industry has also suffered, including computer hard drive maker Western Digital, which has two major production facilities in the flooded zone.
Some flooding on Bangkok’s outskirts was expected after Yingluck ordered floodgates opened Thursday in a risky move to drain the dangerous runoff through urban canals and into the sea. Nobody knows with any certainty to what extent the city will flood.
In a weekly radio address Saturday, Yingluck said that “during the next four to six weeks, the water will recede.”
In the meantime, the government will step up aid to those whose lives have been disrupted, including 113,000 people living in temporary shelters after being forced to abandon submerged homes, she said.
The flooding is the worst to hit Thailand since 1942, and the crisis is proving a major test for Yingluck’s nascent government, which took power in July after heated elections and has come under fire for not acting quickly or decisively enough to prevent major towns north of the capital from being ravaged by floodwaters.
U.S. Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo., have introduced legislation that will prevent the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) from requiring the removal of homes or businesses built within the boundary of a hydroelectric project, the senators announced this morning.
The move comes in response to a uproar, chronicled recently in the Post-Dispatch and STLtoday.com, over a federal threat to require existing landowners to remove their properties from a federally regulated zone near the shoreline.
According to FERC, thousands of property owners built homes, decks, gazebos and patios on land that belongs to Ameren Missouri’s Bagnell Dam and Osage hydroelectric project, which the agency regulates. So FERC issued an order stating that all of the so-called nonconforming structures must be removed payday loans online.
St. Louis-based Ameren, caught in the middle of the dispute, has asked the federal agency to reconsider, at least with respect to the 1,200-plus residences in jeopardy. The utility, which manages the shoreline under federal oversight, wants to redraw the hydroelectric project boundary to exclude most, if not all, of the homes in danger.
About four thousand properties would be in jeopardy, according to a news release from Blunt and McCaskill. In September, McCaskill and Blunt strongly urged FERC to rescind its plan and allow Ameren to redraw the project boundary, according to the release.
Now they have drawn up the . which would prohibit FERC from issuing any shorelines management plan that requires the removal of structures along the lake, and would be enforced retroactively to January, 2011
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