Montenegro anuncia redução de IRS nas rendas, isenção de mais-valias e maior dedução à coleta

[Branc0]

Mais "confiança" para o mercado digerir...

Homebuilder Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. said late Tuesday it lost four times as much money in its fiscal fourth quarter compared to last year because of fallout from the housing downturn and an accounting charge.

It was the fifth consecutive quarterly loss for Red Bank-based Hovnanian, which operates in 19 states.

After paying preferred stock dividends, the company reported a net loss of $469.3 million, or $7.42 per share, for the quarter that ended Oct. 31. This compared with a loss of $117.9 million, or $1.88 per share, for the same period a year ago.

E outra...

Merrill Lynch may be forced to pre-announce another big writedown of mortgage-related losses in the coming days or weeks, according to senior people at the firm.
As previously reported, the brokerage giant may write down anywhere from $3 billion to $6 billion in additional losses besides the $8.4 billion announced in November. That could bring the total writedown to more than $14 billion.

[Hawk66]

Analysts in fantasyland
Despite years of reform, the latest numbers show that Wall Street prognosticators are every bit as deluded and inaccurate as they ever were.
By Geoff Colvin, senior editor-at-large

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Maybe Wall Street analysts are more honest and less compromised than they were pre-SarbOx, but recent events show that they're still awful at their most important job: predicting bad news. They haven't lost their habit of falling in love with the companies they cover and refusing to face unpleasant realities until everyone else has already done so. Now, eight years after they were inflating the bubble, we again have to question whether analysts do retail investors any good.

The latest evidence: Analysts have only just discovered that corporate profits in the fourth quarter aren't going to be nearly as strong as they had supposed a month or two ago. The consensus view going into the quarter was that S&P 500 profits would go up 12 percent to 15 percent, a large jump coming on top of the 20 percent rise in last year's fourth quarter. In light of the credit crunch, the housing collapse, and the towering price of oil, that forecast seemed highly - one might say insanely - optimistic. This it proved to be, but only after the quarter began did the consensus view finally lurch into the real world. Their growth forecast is now about 1.5 percent and still falling.

It has been obvious for many months that profit growth would have to slow way down simply because it couldn't continue at recent rates. Profits have been rising sharply the past few years, which makes sense after the hole they fell into in 2001 and 2002. But by early this year they had grown to 12 percent of GDP, way above their historical average of 9 percent. Analysts knew all this, and in case they didn't, various commentators (including Fortune's Shawn Tully) were insistently pointing it out. But the analysts, ever hopeful, chose to believe that U.S. companies would perform magic.

They still believe it. To see the stubbornness of Wall Street's Pollyannas, look at new data from Merrill Lynch. The firm's chief North American economist, David Rosenberg, regularly and realistically forecasts S&P 500 profit growth. He cut his 2008 forecast sharply (to zero growth) in June, even before the credit crunch. He has since cut it twice more, and it's now -3 percent.

But Merrill's analysts hold a far different view. Add up their 2008 profit growth forecasts for individual S&P companies, and you get 14 percent. In analyst-land, 2008 is going to be another knockout year, with profits yet again growing several times faster than the economy. What's more, Merrill's analysts have actually been increasing their 2008 growth forecasts in recent months. In their bizarre world the logic goes like this: Since we must now admit that 2007 profits will be much lower than we expected, and since we're still certain that 2008 will nonetheless be totally fabulous, then the percentage increases will be even bigger than we thought.

How these nonsensical situations arise is no mystery. Each analyst can accept that the future may be tough overall while still believing that the companies he or she covers are special and will beat the trend. The analysts individually think they're being reasonable, but in the aggregate, they're crazy.

It's similar to what happened in subprime mortgages in recent years or stocks in the late 1990s: Many players realized the situation wasn't sustainable but figured they were especially perceptive and would get out ahead of the pack.

In the days of the market bubble, when many analysts failed to cut their earnings estimates until the collapse was underway, we blamed their motivation. They were afraid their firm's investment-banking arm would lose business. That problem has at least been reduced by SarbOx and by fear of public scrutiny. But if analysts are still predicting fantasy earnings, who cares why? Individual investors are no better off than they were.

Not every analyst gets it wrong. It's always possible in retrospect to find some who hit bull's-eyes. The trouble is, you never know who they'll be. Of course, you may be tempted to believe that while analysts in general are poor, the ones you're relying on are special and will ... no, wait. We know how that turns out.

[Keyser Soze]

December 18, 2007
Fed Shrugged as Subprime Crisis Spread
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON — Until the boom in subprime mortgages turned into a national nightmare this summer, the few people who tried to warn federal banking officials might as well have been talking to themselves.

Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve governor who died in September, warned nearly seven years ago that a fast-growing new breed of lenders was luring many people into risky mortgages they could not afford.

But when Mr. Gramlich privately urged Fed examiners to investigate mortgage lenders affiliated with national banks, he was rebuffed by Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman.

In 2001, a senior Treasury official, Sheila C. Bair, tried to persuade subprime lenders to adopt a code of “best practices” and to let outside monitors verify their compliance. None of the lenders would agree to the monitors, and many rejected the code itself. Even those who did adopt those practices, Ms. Bair recalled recently, soon let them slip.

And leaders of a housing advocacy group in California, meeting with Mr. Greenspan in 2004, warned that deception was increasing and unscrupulous practices were spreading.

John C. Gamboa and Robert L. Gnaizda of the Greenlining Institute implored Mr. Greenspan to use his bully pulpit and press for a voluntary code of conduct.

“He never gave us a good reason, but he didn’t want to do it,” Mr. Gnaizda said last week. “He just wasn’t interested.”

Today, as the mortgage crisis of 2007 worsens and threatens to tip the economy into a recession, many are asking: where was Washington?

An examination of regulatory decisions shows that the Federal Reserve and other agencies waited until it was too late before trying to tame the industry’s excesses. Both the Fed and the Bush administration placed a higher priority on promoting “financial innovation” and what President Bush has called the “ownership society.”

On top of that, many Fed officials counted on the housing boom to prop up the economy after the stock market collapsed in 2000.

Mr. Greenspan, in an interview, vigorously defended his actions, saying the Fed was poorly equipped to investigate deceptive lending and that it was not to blame for the housing bubble and bust.

On Tuesday, under a new chairman, the Federal Reserve will try to make up for lost ground by proposing new restrictions on subprime mortgages, invoking its authority under the 13-year-old Home Ownership Equity and Protection Act. Fed officials are expected to demand that lenders document a person’s income and ability to repay the loan, and they may well restrict practices that make it hard for borrowers to see hidden fees or refinance with cheaper mortgages.

It is an action that people like Mr. Gramlich and Ms. Bair advocated for years with little success. But it will have little impact on many existing subprime lenders, because most have either gone out of business or stopped making subprime loans months ago.

Before this year, officials here enthusiastically praised subprime lenders for helping millions of families buy homes for the first time. “I was aware that the loosening of mortgage credit terms for subprime borrowers increased financial risk,” Mr. Greenspan wrote in his recent memoir, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World.” “But I believed then, as now, that the benefits of broadened home ownership are worth the risk.”

As housing prices soared in what became a speculative bubble, Fed officials took comfort that foreclosure rates on subprime mortgages remained relatively low. But neither the Fed nor any other regulatory agency in Washington examined what might happen if housing prices flattened out or declined.

Had officials bothered to look, frightening clues of the coming crisis were available. The Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit group based in North Carolina, analyzed records from across the country and found that default rates on subprime loans soared to 20 percent in cities where home prices stopped rising or started to fall.

“The Federal Reserve could have stopped this problem dead in its tracks,” said Martin Eakes, chief executive of the center. “If the Fed had done its job, we would not have had the abusive lending and we would not have a foreclosure crisis in virtually every community across America.”

Mr. Greenspan, hailed as perhaps the best central banker in history when he left the Fed in early 2006, is now feeling defensive. In an extensive interview last week, he adamantly disputed the assertion that he could have prevented the mortgage bust.

The housing bubble, he said, had far less to do with the Fed’s policy on interest rates than on a global surplus in savings that drove down interest rates and pushed up housing prices in countries around the world.

As for his role as a regulator, Mr. Greenspan argued that the Fed was ill-suited to investigate deceptive lending practices.

“I got the impression that there were a lot of very questionable practices going on,” he said. “The problem has always been, what basically does the law mean when it says deceptive and unfair practices? Deceptive and unfair practices may seem straightforward, except when you try to determine by what standard.”

Mr. Greenspan also contended that the Federal Reserve’s accountants and bank examiners were ill-suited to the job of investigating fraud.

“It becomes essentially an enforcement action, and the question is, who are the best enforcers?” he said. “A large enough share of these cases are fraud, and those are areas that I don’t think accountants are best able to handle.”

Others are more critical.

“Hindsight is always 20-20, but it’s clear the Fed should have acted earlier,” said Ms. Bair, who became chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 2006. “Financial innovation is great, but you have to have some basic rules. One of the most basic rules is that a borrower should have the ability to repay.”

A Booming Industry

Mr. Greenspan and other Fed officials repeatedly dismissed warnings about a speculative bubble in housing prices. In December 2004, the New York Fed issued a report bluntly declaring that “no bubble exists.” Mr. Greenspan predicted several times — incorrectly, it turned out — that housing declines would be local but almost certainly not nationwide.

The Fed was hardly alone in not pressing to clean up the mortgage industry. When states like Georgia and North Carolina started to pass tougher laws against abusive lending practices, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency successfully prohibited them from investigating local subsidiaries of nationally chartered banks.

Virtually every federal bank regulator was loathe to impose speed limits on a booming industry. But the regulators were also fragmented among an alphabet soup of agencies with splintered and confusing jurisdictions. Perhaps the biggest complication was that many mortgage lenders did not fall under any agency’s authority at all.

Subprime loans carry high interest rates, sometimes as high as 12 percent, and were designed for people with weak credit records. Unlike traditional banks and thrifts, which traditionally financed their loans with deposits, most subprime lenders are financed by investors on Wall Street who buy packages of loans called mortgage-backed securities.

Starting from a virtual standstill 10 years ago, subprime lenders became by far the fastest-growing segment of mortgage lending before they collapsed. They made $540 billion in mortgages by 2004 and $625 billion at their peak in 2006 — about one-quarter of all new mortgages.

Mr. Gramlich, a Democratic appointee to the Federal Reserve who had spent much of his career studying problems of poverty, saw both great benefits and great perils in the new industry.

As head of the Fed’s Committee on Consumer and Community Affairs from 1997 to 2005, he agreed that subprime lending had opened new doors to people with low incomes or poor credit histories. Home ownership, which had hovered around 64 percent for years, climbed to almost 70 percent by 2005. The biggest gains were among blacks and Hispanics, groups that had suffered discrimination for decades.

What alarmed Mr. Gramlich was that many subprime loans were extremely complicated and loaded with hidden risks.

Borrowers were being qualified for loans based on low initial teaser rates, rather than the much higher rates they would have to pay after a year or two. Many of the loans came with big fees that were hidden in the overall interest rate. And many had prepayment penalties that effectively blocked people from getting cheaper loans for two years or longer.

“Why are the most risky loan products sold to the least sophisticated borrowers?” Mr. Gramlich asked in a speech he prepared last August for the Fed’s symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo. “The question answers itself — the least sophisticated borrowers are probably duped into taking these products.”

Turning Away a Bigger Role

In 2000, Mr. Gramlich privately urged the Fed chairman to send examiners into the mortgage-lending affiliates of nationally chartered banks. Many of them, like Bank of America’s affiliate, had already come under fire from state regulators and consumer groups. Fed examiners, Mr. Gramlich argued, could clean up those practices from the inside.

Mr. Greenspan was against the idea. In an interview last week, he said he feared that Fed examiners would fail to spot deceptive practices and inadvertently give dubious lenders what amounted to a government seal of approval.

“I remember telling him, ‘be careful,’ ” Mr. Greenspan said. If the Fed gave the appearance that it was overseeing thousands of local institutions, which he said it did not have the resources to do, “we’re going to end up with a situation that very well could be worse rather than better.”

To be sure, some of the speculative excesses of the housing bubble and the subsequent bust were driven by broader forces.

The Fed helped stoke the housing market by slashing short-term interest rates from 2000 to 2004. The rate cuts drastically reduced the effective cost of buying a house, which added more fuel to what was already a powerful housing boom.

In addition, foreign investors were pouring trillions of dollars into American securities. Much of that money, often described as the “global savings glut,” flowed directly into mortgage-backed securities that were used to finance subprime mortgages.

But by 2005, federal banking regulators were beginning to worry that mortgage lenders were running amok with exotic and often inscrutable new products.

The agencies, however, were like a Rube Goldberg machine with parts moving in different directions. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency was in charge of nationally chartered banks and their subsidiaries. The Federal Reserve covered affiliates of nationally chartered banks. The Office of Thrift Supervision oversaw savings institutions. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insured deposits of both state-chartered and nationally chartered banks.

Because each agency receives its funding from fees paid by the banks or thrifts they regulate, critics have long argued that they often treat the institutions they regulate as constituents to be protected. All of them are wary about stifling new financial services.

Ms. Bair was an exception, especially for the deregulation-minded Bush administration. As a former assistant secretary of the Treasury in 2001 and 2002, she had worked with Mr. Gramlich to raise concerns about abusive lending practices. Indeed, she tried to hammer out an agreement with mortgage lenders and consumer groups over a tough set of “best practices” that would have covered subprime mortgages.

But that effort largely stalled because of disagreement. Though some big lenders did endorse a broad code of conduct, she recalled, they soon began loosening standards as competition intensified.

The drop in lending standards became unmistakable in 2004, as lenders approved a flood of shaky new products: “stated-income” loans, which do not require borrowers to document their incomes; “piggyback” loans, which allow people to buy a home without making a down payment; and “option ARMs,” which allowed people to make less than the minimum payment but added the unpaid amount to their total mortgage.

Fed officials noticed the drop in standards as well. The Fed’s survey of bank lenders showed a steep plunge in standards that began in 2004 and continued until the housing boom fizzled in 2006.

But the regulators found themselves hopelessly behind the fast-changing practices of lenders. In a bid to set new standards for exotic mortgages, the agencies waited until December 2005 to propose a “guidance” to banks and thrifts. They did not agree on the final standard until September 2006.

Standards for Lenders

But the real shock to consumer groups — and even to some of the regulators — was that the new underwriting standards did not apply to subprime loans. Instead, they applied to only a fairly narrow array of exotic mortgages like “option ARMs.”

“The gaping hole was that it would only apply to nontraditional mortgages,” Ms. Bair said. But the exotic mortgages were already fading from the market, in part because of bad publicity. Subprime lending, by contrast, was still booming and represented a much bigger business.

“We hadn’t really focused on that,” said John C. Dugan, Comptroller of the Currency, who had pushed hard for the new guidance. “From our own perspective of national banks, it was really a smaller part of our universe.”

It was not until March 2007 that the group of regulators proposed yet another “guidance,” this one to address standards for subprime lending. But those standards were not finished until June 29. By that time, more than 30 subprime lenders had gone out of business and many more were headed that way.

Several people familiar with the regulatory deliberations said the delays stemmed in part from intense resistance among some policy makers to challenging subprime lenders.

“I had concerns, I really had concerns,” acknowledged Mr. Dugan, adding that he became convinced after listening to enough public comment on the issue.

In the end, any concerns for the industry quickly became moot. Less than two months after the new standards were issued, the subprime industry was essentially dead.

Ben S. Bernanke, who succeeded Mr. Greenspan as Fed chairman, is now scrambling to head off a recession. Last week, the Fed lowered its benchmark interest rate for the third time since August, and officials now worry that the subprime crisis has inflicted deep damage on credit markets that could in turn derail the entire economy.

Gretchen Morgenson contributed reporting from New York.

[Sei lá]

Então achas mais fácil juntar grupos de cidadaões que se sentem lesados para levar uma instituição bancária a tribunal, em vez de o orgão regulador agir no dia seguinte?

quando 2 partes assinam 1 contrato voluntariamente o único regulador necessário é 1 tribunal

Não me respondeste à pergunta.

Eu acho que um regulador que faça cumprir a lei, será sempre mais rápido e menos dispendioso que qualquer outro meio. Não estou a ver nos EUA um caso destes entrar no próprio dia e sair no dia seguinte.

[Camisa Roxa]

Então achas mais fácil juntar grupos de cidadaões que se sentem lesados para levar uma instituição bancária a tribunal, em vez de o orgão regulador agir no dia seguinte?

quando 2 partes assinam 1 contrato voluntariamente o único regulador necessário é 1 tribunal

[Branc0]

Então achas mais fácil juntar grupos de cidadaões que se sentem lesados para levar uma instituição bancária a tribunal, em vez de o orgão regulador agir no dia seguinte? Deves ter sociedade em escritórios de advogados.

Nos EUA não só é mais fácil como é mais rentável (já estavam todos a ser bem indemnizados a esta hora).

[Sei lá]

mais uma vez dás-me razão: o Estado nem para fazer justiça serve! uma das poucas áreas "core" do Estado e mesmo assim este nem consegue ter força suficiente para fazer cumprir algo tão elementar como 1 contrato entre 2 partes!

Meu caro, que o nosso estado é uma porcaria já todos sabemos. Falha em quase todas as áreas já sabemos. Vai continuar a falhar e a piorar? Eu acredito que sim, porque simplesmente ninguém lhe exige responsabilidade, antes pelo contrário, querem tirar-lhe responsabilidade.

Então achas mais fácil juntar grupos de cidadaões que se sentem lesados para levar uma instituição bancária a tribunal, em vez de o orgão regulador agir no dia seguinte? Deves ter sociedade em escritórios de advogados.

[Camisa Roxa]

foi assinado um contrato entre o banco e aqueles a quem foi emprestado dinheiro

se há quebra do contrato de alguma das partes, recorre-se à justiça, é assim num estado de direito

Gostas do caminho mais difícil.

mais uma vez dás-me razão: o Estado nem para fazer justiça serve! uma das poucas áreas "core" do Estado e mesmo assim este nem consegue ter força suficiente para fazer cumprir algo tão elementar como 1 contrato entre 2 partes!

[Branc0]

foi assinado um contrato entre o banco e aqueles a quem foi emprestado dinheiro

se há quebra do contrato de alguma das partes, recorre-se à justiça, é assim num estado de direito

Gostas do caminho mais difícil.

[Sei lá]

foi assinado um contrato entre o banco e aqueles a quem foi emprestado dinheiro

se há quebra do contrato de alguma das partes, recorre-se à justiça, é assim num estado de direito

Gostas do caminho mais difícil.

[fsma]

"Caramba temos rendimentos de 2000 USD e vivemos a grande e a francesa.... Deve estar qualquer coisa mal aqui!"

É caso para dizer que o ditado popular já há muito tempo que devia ter sido mudado para "vivemos à grande e à americana".

[Camisa Roxa]

Veja-se o caso do que o Banco Popular fez na semana passada.... como seria sem regulação?

foi assinado um contrato entre o banco e aqueles a quem foi emprestado dinheiro

se há quebra do contrato de alguma das partes, recorre-se à justiça, é assim num estado de direito

[Sei lá]

Mas o problema é só um e é como o Midas tem na assinatura, sempre houve e sempre haverá: ganância

Não poderia estar mais de acordo contigo!!

É por isso que eu tenho muita dificuldade em imaginar como seriam certas áreas completamente liberalizadas, sem qualquer tipo de controlo estatal. E mesmo o controlo estatal é permeável à corrupção do lobby dos interesses privados... mas ainda assim deverá ser melhor assim do que o mercado todo por sua conta. Veja-se o caso do que o Banco Popular fez na semana passada.... como seria sem regulação?

[Thunder]

"Caramba temos rendimentos de 2000 USD e vivemos a grande e a francesa.... Deve estar qualquer coisa mal aqui!"

É caso para dizer que o ditado popular já há muito tempo que devia ter sido mudado para "vivemos à grande e à americana".

Se calhar tens razão

Um abraço

[Thunder]

Mas o problema é só um e é como o Midas tem na assinatura, sempre houve e sempre haverá: ganância

Olá Branco

Eu sei disso. Se há caracteristica que eu não tenho é ser ingénuo.

O problema é orgãos e entidades "superiores" entrarem neste jogo de ganância e no final pagarmos todos por isso....

Um abraço

[fsma]

"Caramba temos rendimentos de 2000 USD e vivemos a grande e a francesa.... Deve estar qualquer coisa mal aqui!"

É caso para dizer que o ditado popular já há muito tempo que devia ter sido mudado para "vivemos à grande e à americana".

[Thunder]

Como diz e muito bem o nosso colega Djovarius:

O que há é uma forte crise de confiança, daí que os Bancos deixassem o mercado interbancário quase moribundo.
Se eu, Banco comercial, tenho necessidades de caixa para cobrir os buracos, por que razão vou emprestar ao vizinho cujo barracada nem sequer conheço bem !?
Lógico, isto aplica-se a quem foi apanhado pelo descalabro dos derivativos de alto risco

Isto é o problema principal.

[Branc0]

Mas o problema é só um e é como o Midas tem na assinatura, sempre houve e sempre haverá: ganância

[Thunder]

Olá a todos

A questão mais importante quanto a mim não é se existe obrigação ou não.
O problema é estas pequenas empresas de mortgages estarem a operar num mercado totalmente deturpado onde facilmente poderiam "passar" a batata quente a outra entidade. Colossos como Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac absorveriam as "burradas" feitas....

E os "refinanciamentos" feitos com base em valores de imóveis totalmente inflacionados.....

Como em tudo na vida as pessoas querem tudo fácil e sem grande esforço.... Não se contentam com aquilo que tem e aspiram a metas totalmente futeis e inatingíveis.... Gastam como se não houvesse amanhã, sem sequer refletirem! Será que não pensam: Caramba temos rendimentos de 2000 USD e vivemos a grande e a francesa.... Deve estar qualquer coisa mal aqui!

O problema é que como na maioria das vezes vai pagar o justo pelo pecador.

Um abraço a todos e BN

[Sei lá]

Continuo sem ver a obrigação dos bancos em emprestar dinheiro. O que me parece ter existido foi uma aproximação dos bancos às cominidades para potenciar os empréstimos, mas não me parece que os bancos tenham emprestado dinheiro contra a sua vontade.

Talvez a vontade de querer fazer mais empréstimos e criar mais riqueza para a instituição sem olhar bem para os riscos, tenhja resultado na crise do "subprime". Mas essa foi a ideia com que fiquei desde o início da crise.

As práticas dos bancos poderão não ter sido as adequadas, não salvaguardando o seu investimento em caso das coisas correrem mal. Desde o verão que leio comentários sobre isto onde se reclama maior controlos dos bancos centrais para certas operações complexas como estas, o que me leva a pensar que terá sido o excesso de liberalização que potenciou a crise.

[fsma]

Mais um esclarecimento a juntar ao do Branco...

Abstract
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) encourages lenders to make mortgage
loans to certain classes of borrowers. However, the law does not apply to all
lenders, and lenders do not necessarily receive credit for all loans made to borrowers
of a particular class. Specifically, only commercial banks and savings institutions
are subject to the CRA, while mortgage bankers are not. Further, CRA
credit is given for loans made to higher-income borrowers who purchase homes
in lower-income neighborhoods, but not to other higher-income borrowers. We
use this variation to test whether or not CRA-affected lenders cut interest rates to
CRA-eligible borrowers; in other words, we test for the presence of a regulationdriven
subsidy. Our theory suggests that loans made by commercial banks and
savings associations (“relationship lenders”) and mortgage companies (“transaction
lenders”) will differ from one another depending on borrower risk and homeownership
benefits. Empirically, we find that CRA-eligible loans at CRA-affected
institutions do carry lower mortgage spreads compared with other loans at the
same institution. However, once we control for risk and benefit effects suggested
by our theory, these differences in mortgage spreads become economically and
statistically insignificant.
Journal of Economic Literature classification numbers: G21, G28, H23, R21

[fsma]

Mais um esclarecimento a juntar ao do Branco...

Abstract
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) encourages lenders to make mortgage
loans to certain classes of borrowers. However, the law does not apply to all
lenders, and lenders do not necessarily receive credit for all loans made to borrowers
of a particular class. Specifically, only commercial banks and savings institutions
are subject to the CRA, while mortgage bankers are not. Further, CRA
credit is given for loans made to higher-income borrowers who purchase homes
in lower-income neighborhoods, but not to other higher-income borrowers. We
use this variation to test whether or not CRA-affected lenders cut interest rates to
CRA-eligible borrowers; in other words, we test for the presence of a regulationdriven
subsidy. Our theory suggests that loans made by commercial banks and
savings associations (“relationship lenders”) and mortgage companies (“transaction
lenders”) will differ from one another depending on borrower risk and homeownership
benefits. Empirically, we find that CRA-eligible loans at CRA-affected
institutions do carry lower mortgage spreads compared with other loans at the
same institution. However, once we control for risk and benefit effects suggested
by our theory, these differences in mortgage spreads become economically and
statistically insignificant.
Journal of Economic Literature classification numbers: G21, G28, H23, R21

[nunofaustino]

Sei bem do que falo pois movimento-me muito no algarve e andaluzia onde as maiores bolhas do género ocorreram.
E se aqui, a coisa tem "esvaziado" mais ou menos ordenadamente, a Espanha está a levar um "porradão" sem paralelo na história, já que tem 1 milhão de imóveis devolutos para venda sem qualquer interesse comprador.

Abraço

dj

Mas olha que ainda n se nota muito... a construção ainda continua em força e os preços das casas novas ainda n baixaram muito (os usados já, os novos ainda não). Ouo seja, ainda falta um bom bocado até atingirmos o fundo...

Um abr
Nuno

[Branc0]

Bom, dei uma vista de olhos super rápida mas acho que chega para refutar essa tua leitura da lei.

O bold é meu.

The Community Reinvestment Act is intended to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they operate, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound banking operations.

Crédito a pessoas que se sabe que não podem pagar não considero safe nem sound.

.29(b)–2: Is an institution required to enter into agreements with private parties?
A2. No. Although communications between an institution and members of its community may provide a valuable method for the institution to assess how best to address the credit needs of the community, the CRA does not require an institution to enter into agreements with private parties. These agreements are not monitored or enforced by the agencies.

[djovarius]

Eu também concordo que sempre houve e sempre vai haver bolhas.
Mas, tantas e tanto exagero no espaço de uma década é que não é normal ou saudável.

As bolhas eram sempre resultado de euforias, o que se compreende.

O que se tem visto recentemente é excesso de "moeda" à procura de maior rendibilidade.
O excesso de liquidez em permanência é que não é normal, alimentando todos os exageros, incluindo empréstimos de 200.000 euros a quem não se qualificaria para um de 100.000 euros, o que provoca, por exemplo, vendas de imóveis a 200.000 euros, imóveis que seriam, em condições normais, não mais do que 100 ou 120 mil.

Sei bem do que falo pois movimento-me muito no algarve e andaluzia onde as maiores bolhas do género ocorreram.
E se aqui, a coisa tem "esvaziado" mais ou menos ordenadamente, a Espanha está a levar um "porradão" sem paralelo na história, já que tem 1 milhão de imóveis devolutos para venda sem qualquer interesse comprador.

Abraço

dj