FT.com - mortgage approvals fell for a seventh month in December to the lowest level since the 1990s, Bank of England data showed, signalling that the UK housing market has already slowed more sharply than during the 2005 downturn.
Mortage rates increase (AP)
AP - Rates on 30-year mortgages rose for the first time this year after four straight weekly declines.
California foreclosure bill fails (AP)
AP - California’s state senate narrowly defeated a bill Wednesday that targeted the growing problem of foreclosed homes sitting vacant for months, drawing squatters and creating blight.
Here Come the Waterworks
Here Come the Waterworks Big business is bigger and better than ever, with better hair, bigger hits, and the kind of overwhelming Norman Schwarzkopf-style force that rolls like thunder, stings like a missile, and–above all–takes no shit. On Here Come the Waterworks, their second full-length, bassist/vocalist Jared Warren and drummer Coady […]
Aviva agrees to buy S Korean insurer (FT.com)
FT.com - Aviva, the UK’s biggest insurer, said on Thursday it had signed an agreement to buy South Korea’s LIG Life Insurance in a consortium with local partner Woori finance (NYSE:WF) for Won137.2bn ($145.4m).
Rabobank bonds deal shows liquidity fears (FT.com)
FT.com - Rabobank, one of the world’s safest banks, has such concerns about the ongoing liquidity crisis that it turned EU30bn ($44bn) of its mortgage book into one of the largest asset-backed bonds ever structured to guard against a sudden funding need.
Carniv le
Carniv le HBO’s pioneering series takes the dark carnival gambit of Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, drops it in the bleak heartland of Dust Bowl-era America and jolts it with a compelling undercurrent of Biblical apocalypse. That’s no easy dramatic flux to musically evoke, but veteran TV composer Jeff Beal graces […]