Economy | News-Opinion
TOP NEWS: Economy: June 28, 2012
- JP Morgan Trading Loss May Reach $9 Billion
- News Corp. Split Signals Twilight for Rupert Murdoch
- After Years of False Hopes, Signs of a Turn in Housing
- Reverse Mortgages Worry Regulator
- Leaders Set Deal On Highway Bill, Student Loans
Excerpts and more top stories
JP MORGAN: JP Morgan Trading Loss May Reach $9 Billion
Jessica Silver-Greenberg & Susanne Craig – Losses on JPMorgan Chase’s bungled trade could total as much as $9 billion, far exceeding earlier public estimates, according to people who have been briefed on the situation.
MEDIA: News Corp. Split Signals Twilight for Mega-Mogul Rupert Murdoch
Sam Gustin, TIME – News Corp.’s plan to split itself into two companies marks the end of an era for Rupert Murdoch‘s decades-long, largely successful quest to build the most powerful media company in the world. Company shareholders have already applauded the plan to spin off the conglomerate’s newspaper assets from its much more lucrative entertainment holdings, sending News Corp. stock soaring 11% to the highest level in four years.
REAL ESTATE: After Years of False Hopes, Signs of a Turn in Housing
Binyamin Appelbaum, NY Times – Announcements of a housing recovery have become a wrongheaded rite of summer, but after several years of false hopes, evidence is accumulating that the optimists may finally be right.
REGULATION: Reverse Mortgages Worry Regulator
Maya Jackson Randall, NY Times – A U.S. financial regulator warned that new rules may be needed to address hidden dangers in reverse mortgages, the special loans that enable cash-strapped seniors to borrow against the equity in their homes.
STUDENT LOANS: Leaders Set Deal On Highway Bill, Student Loans
Corey Boles and Naftali Bendavid, WSJ – The measure would include a one-year extension of lower interest rates on federal student loans. If Congress failed to act, the rate would double on Sunday to 6.8% for about 7.4 million students expected to take out new Stafford Loans, the most common kind of student borrowing, over the next year.
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BANKING: Record Low Confidence in Banks
MJ Lee, Politico – Americans’ confidence in U.S. banks has dipped to a record low, according to a new Gallup Poll.
ECONOMIC GROWTH: US Jobless Struggle as Economy Grows 1.9%
Anjli Raval, Financial Times – The US economy grew at an annualised rate of 1.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2012, as the world’s largest economy battles with a less robust pace of spending and export growth, while fresh jobless claims data failed to alleviate concerns.
MARKETS: Gross Says Decades Needed to Normalize From Too Much Debt
Liz Capo McCormick, Bloomberg – Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said economies and their financial markets take decades to normalize after the havoc of a debt crisis, making U.S. securities still the safest bet for investors.
DEFICIT: Should All Young Americans Be Fiscal Conservatives?
Michael Sivy, TIME – Resources keep shifting to the elderly at the expense of the young, who will end up paying off a mountain of debt while their own standard of living is eroding.
MARKETS: Major Indexes Rally Again But Retail Sector Gets Punished
David Saito-Chung, Investor’s Business Daily – Good news on the American economic front helped spur broad buying Wednesday. But volume was mixed and a critical sector of the market suffered heavy selling.
MARKETS: While Fed Does the ‘Twist,’ Market is Not Dancing
Josh Boak, Politico – Stocks dipped downward for three days after the announcement that Operation Twist would run through the end of the year, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing almost 322 points, or 2.51 percent.
