Blog

Life insurance companies currently have $150 billion of commercial real estate exposure, and $308 billion total mortgage exposure according to Fitch Ratings.

The industry needs to brace itself for billions of losses unless commercial real estate markedly improves.

Fitch expects life insurers’ losses on commercial real estate investments to hit 9% of exposure.

Investment News: Fitch projects the potential losses from commercial-mortgage-backed securities owned by life carriers to be between $13.1 billion and $16.0 billion. Directly-placed mortgages will generate $5.4 billion to $6.6 billion in losses through 2011, under Fitch’s core stress scenario.

…

Fitch also notes that the steep declines in statutory capital over the last 18 months have hobbled the insurers’ ability to get through an extended downturn. To date, the life insurers have not recognized material impairments or losses on investments related to commercial real estate, according to Fitch.

Read more here.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Bill Ackman Has Made An $800 Million Killing On Bankrupt Commercial Real Estate (GGP)
• Distressed Commercial Real Estate Now 600% Larger Than 2006
• Commercial Real Estate Slide Kills City Budgets

Things are moving as fast as usual at Mozilla Labs and, hardly a week after the previous release, the developers have released a new beta for Mozilla’s bookmark and settings sync project for Firefox and Fennec, the organization’s mobile version of the web browser. Weave Sync 1.0 Beta 2 fixes several bugs which affected the previous beta and is another step towards the final release which should come soon enough.

The new beta also brings several of updates and improvements of the existing features. Users should find it easier to recover their passwords or secret phrases in this new release and Mozilla says this should come in handy for those setting up the add-on on a second machine, as it looks like many were having trouble remembering their credentials at this point.

The new Weave Sync beta also improved the way it handles same-name folders which have different bookmarks on different computers. On occasions, Weave Sync would place the bookmarks in the wrong folder, but this issue should now be fixed. The add-on now syncs history deletion as well, so removing a website from the browser history on one machine will now remove it in all of the synced browsers. The functionality had been available only for bookmarks until now.

Lastly, Weave Sync now automatically labels tabs which were opened… (read more)

Diego and Monica “Zuzzù” has a simple wall hack for us.

“To create this simple but original composition we used the Traby system: 4 shelf units and 2 doors. We removed the door handles and plastered the holes. Then we painted the doors white. We also add the new Grip handles at the top the doors. As alternative drawers, we used two Branas Basket in the two centre shelves.”

See more on their blog facciotuttodaseduto (I do everything seated) which is in Italian.

ChurchHatesTucker writes “The ABA Journal was unable to secure an interview with the USPTO chief, so they published a faux business method patent for securing an interview. Within four hours, they got their interview.”

Yes, but the real question is whether or not the USPTO would approve the patent…

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

HPDirect.com will be selling the HP Pavilion dm3z notebook for just $529 on Black Friday. This is up to $329 off the their regular price of $858, depending on the configuration. This notebook comes with Window 7 Home Premium , an AMD Athlon processor, 2GB of RAM, a 160 GB Hard Drive, 13.3” high-definition display and HDMI port.

This affordable and portable notebook is less than 1” thick and weighs only 4.21 lb, making it easy to carry around town. The Pavilion dm3z is metallic, making it look a lot different than other PCs in this category. Please visit HPDirect.com to get this deal.

This model of hp starts at $529 with basic, quick ship model for this laptop comes in $599.99 (quick ship model means its ready to ship and will ship on same day), where as recommended model starts with $719.99. At this point of time HPstore hasn’t declared the detail configuration of Notebook which they are putting on deals. So we have listed the configuration choice available for this notebook.

HP Pavilion dm3z Notebook Specification:

Source

HP’s Pavilion DM1 is still yet to show up for pre-order on the company’s US site (though the support pages are full of information) but that hasn’t stopped Netbooked from grabbing one of the 11.6-inch ultraportables for review. They reckon the DM1 “fares decently” among its peers, though they’re not impressed by the amount of screen flex on show (you can press the trackpad buttons by pushing down on the edge of the lid when closed).

Similarly, the keyboard is more cramped than on other 11.6-inch machines, with Netbooked blaming the wasted space either side. That leaves you with smaller-than-normal function keys, while the trackpad is also cramped and lacks multitouch support.

On the positive side, it runs at 1,366 x 768 resolution, can handle 1080p Full HD video playback and manages to squeeze in a 6-cell battery with no protrusions. That battery is good for around 4.5hrs normal use, too. What we still don’t know is how much HP USA will be charging for the Pavilion DM1; HP Japan are asking the equivalent of around $686.

Source

Gold is on a tear this morning, just breaking $1,182.

The dollar is losing serious ground against the Euro during early AM trading. Check out the Euro/Dollar spike in the second chart below.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Panicked Gold Buying Forces Vietnam To Devalue Currency
• Get Gold Exposure For Just $940 An Ounce (ABX)
• HSBC Tells Gold Bugs To Take Their Bullion And Gold Coins Somewhere Else

‘The Zhu Zhu pet is one of this year’s must-have gifts, so popular it’s almost impossible to find in stores.”

“There is one place you can find them, online, but be ready to pay a premium.”

“Chris Handy bought 15 the day he first heard about Zhu Zhu’s. His wallet is thicker today… ‘We got about ten times what they were worth’”

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• This Year’s Hottest Fad Toy: Zhu Zhu Pets
• FOMC Minutes: Fed Admits That ZIRP Could Fuel A New Speculative Bubble
• UBS: There’s A "Buffet Bubble" In Railroad Stocks That Could Burst Any Day Now (UNP)

Social media has grown tremendously this year pushed forward by the likes of Facebook and, to a lesser degree, Twitter. But despite having been around for years, businesses are still trying to get the hang of this new opportunity to bring in customers and, at the end of the day, make more money. One company which seems to get it, at least in this case, is Ikea which has put together a hugely successful campaign to promote a new store and did so at a significantly lower cost than if it had used traditional marketing methods.

The idea was simple enough but it didn’t need to be any more complicated. IKEA made a Facebook profile for Gordon Gustavsson, the manager of the new store in Malmo, Sweden, and then uploaded several images from the Ikea showroom over the course of two weeks. Nothing groundbreaking so far, but the interesting part was that the first Facebook user to tag his or her name on one of the products in the picture won it.

As you could expect, people got really into it and soon enough the story spread throughout Facebook from profile to profile as the people added Gustavsson as a friend or tagged one of the photos. Not only did the campaign got a lot of people to visit the profile and, more importantly, the actual showrooms most users lauded the company for the innovative approach.

read more)

If the climate expected in the 2080s occurred today, the EU would face yearly GDP losses between €20 and €65 billion, depending on the temperature increase in Europe (2.5°C to 5.4°C). This is one of the forecasts of the final report of the PESETA study, published today by the JRC Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS). The PESETA study also looked at different regional impacts of climate change across the EU. Damages would occur mainly in Southern and Central Europe, while Northern Europe would be the sole region to benefit, in economic terms and for the aspects studied, from climate change.

The modest recovery in house prices over the past four months caught almost everyone by surprise, including those who are now explaining it away as an obvious byproduct of artificially low interest rates and the home-buyer tax credit.

The recovery’s momentum is slowing, however, and it seems likely that house prices will now resume their fall and drop another 10%-15%.

Why?

First, prices are still too high. 

As these charts from Calculated Risk show, price-to-rent and price-to-income ratios have not yet reached their average levels from before the bubble.  Normally, after a bubble like this, ratios would be expected to fall through their long-term averages and trade below those levels for several years. 

Calculated Risk has detailed observations about the current state of prices here >

Second, two of the key forces that contributed to the bubble are continuing to unwind:

• Lending standards are still being tightened
• Consumers are reducing their debts

Third, the unemployment rate is still shockingly high and will likely remain elevated for years.  This will likely shrink the amount of money that consumers have to spend on housing.

Fourth, nearly a quarter of all households still have negative equity, which is a prime cause of foreclosures.  The more foreclosures that hit the market, the more housing supply there will be, and the more pressure this will put on prices.

Fifth, inventories are still high, especially if you include the “shadow inventory” of foreclosured houses and impending foreclosures, which some people estimate to be as high as 7 million units (vs. the 3.5 million that are currently on sale).

Sixth, rents are declining, as Americans take advantage of the tax credits and low interest rates to buy instead of rent.  This temporarily improves demand for existing houses, but it doesn’t eliminate the overhang of housing supply.  As rents fall, the price-to-rent ratio for houses rises, and renting becomes more attractive again.  House prices then need to fall to bring the ratios back in line.

Seventh, the current “affordability” of houses will change fast if rates begin to rise.  Houses are very affordable right now–if you have a solid job, lots of savings, and aren’t deeply underwater on your old house.  If and when rates begin to rise, however, this will quickly make them less affordable.

The good news is that, after what we’ve been through, another 10%-15% decline will feel like a walk in the park.  It does seem likely that the house price decline will resume in November and December, though.  If so, it will be interesting to see what impact that has on the stock market and the rest of the economy.

See Also: The Most Important Housing Chart Shows Things Are Still Getting Worse

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Case-Shiller: Home Price Recovery Stumbles, Results Worse Than Expected
• Latest Facts About The State Of The Housing Market
• The Most Important Housing Chart Shows Things Are Still Getting Worse

The United Nations Climate Change Conference will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark, between December 7 and December 18, 2009. The conference includes the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 5th Meeting of the Parties (COP/MOP 5) to the Kyoto Protocol as well as meetings of other working groups and subsidiary bodies. COP 15 is the supreme body of the Convention. It currently meets once a year to review the Convention’s progress.

The sessions (COP 15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are open to Parties of the Convention and Observer States (Governments), the United Nations System and observer organizations (IGOs and NGOs) duly admitted by the Conference of the Parties.

UNFCCC’s Overview Schedule of COP15 could be found here and the link to the Side Events at COP15 could be found here.

The European Union is working for an ambitious, comprehensive and legally binding global climate agreement that will prevent global warming reaching dangerous levels, that is, more than 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures, as researchers have projected for this century.

The EU has independently committed itself to reducing its emissions by at least 20 per cent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, and is now implementing this reduction with the help of a legislation package that entered into force earlier this year, along with a comprehensive programme for increased energy efficiency.

What is expected to happen politically in Copenhagen?

Parties agreed at Bali in 2007 to jointly step up international efforts to combat climate change and get to an agreed outcome in Copenhagen in 2009. Thus, an ambitious climate change deal will be clinched to follow on the first phase of the UN’s Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The Copenhagen agreed outcome need not resolve all details, but it must provide clarity on four key issues:

–   Ambitious emission reduction targets for developed countries
–   Nationally appropriate mitigation actions of developing countries
–   Scaling up financial and technological support for both adaptation and mitigation
–   An effective institutional framework with governance structures that address the needs of developing countries

Copenhagen is to result both in a post-2012 outcome as well as important decisions and start-up finance to immediately kick-start action on climate change in 2010.

You could find more information about the event and its background on the following websites: http://en.cop15.dk/ and http://unfccc.int/

A lenda da Mangaba

Conta a lenda que um índio muito corajoso chamado Diaí , lutou inúmeras vezes para defender a natureza e protegeu principalmente a seringueira que os homens brancos estavam destruindo.Numa dessas lutas foi ferido e morreu, sendo abençoado pela Lua.

Do seu coração brotou a mangabeira que se tornou uma árvore sagrada para os índios, dando frutos doces e polpudos, cujo leite se parece com o látex. Um dia uma jovem índia chamada Ytaciara estava desesperada para salvar Koara , seu grande amor, que estava para morrer. Uma velha índia ensinou Ytaciara a preparar um chá da folha da mangabeira para o seu amado.
Ao tomar o chá, Koara sobreviveu e todos conheceram o poder de cura da planta.1

Fontes: 1 – http://www.humaita-am.com; Seagri; foto de Fernando Tatagiba

	Quick Spin: Nissan Leaf the tip of mass market EV spear Ghosn’s plan of attack makes sense, especially when the first shot is this silver (blue) bullet.		Volt battery life affected by hot weather, but 10 years means 10 years The most expensive part of the pack will last, says GM.
	REPORT: Electric Infiniti will be a performance-oriented ZEV Speaking of attack, here’s Round Two.	Other news: Consumer Federation of America pushing CAFE to climb to 45 mpg by 2020 Last Garage Team Standing: Illuminati Motor Works promising big things from Seven REPORT: Downey, CA mayor claims Tesla Model S plant deal 99.9% done

AutoblogGreen for 11.25.09 originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

There are a lot of metrics for website traffic, unique visitors, user numbers, and the likes. Measuring a website’s “influence” is a harder proposition though, it’s not exactly something you can count. Some people beg to differ though and ://URLFAN aims to do just this, measure a website’s influence by counting the number of mentions it gets on blogs. It’s not the most objective metric out there, but it’s probably as good as it gets and it’s an interesting perspective.

The ReadWriteWeb blog put together a list of the top sites on the service and their standings a year ago. At this moment, despite the growing number of people predicting its demise, Wikipedia sits at the top as the most influential site on the planet. It’s not much of a surprise this one, the crowd-sourced encyclopedia holds huge amounts of content and information which comes in handy when you’re trying to put something in perspective or provide more background information.

Wikipedia is followed by YouTube and then Flickr, which have switched places since last year. Their presence is entirely expected, one being the most popular video site on the planet and the other being the most popular photo sharing site among bloggers, even if it’s not the biggest in its category. Things only get interesting on fourth place where Twitter… (read more)

The World’s Biggest / Largest / Longest Multi-Touch (and evidently Multi-User) Wall [sensory-minds.com, click Projects then choose 19.07.2009) seems to be installed in Nürburgring, a famous motorsport race track around the village of Nürburg, Germany The two-piece wall consists of a huge LED media facade (at the top), and a multitouch information-wall (at the bottom), and impresses by its physical size, as it totals a surface of about 425 square meters, equaling more than 6000 computer displays.

The interactive interface emerges out of 34 million pixels generated by 15 high definition projectors, supported by sound produced by 30 directional speakers. The multitouch capturing itself is based on laser technology, also called Laser Light Plane Illumination (LLP). This means more than 80 users can simultaneously get informed about news and activities around the ringworld. Now imagine the sorts of sparklines this device could display…

You can watch a documentary movie below.

Charlize Theron, Regis Philbin, DWTS castoff, Wolfmother

Add this to your queue
Added: Wed Nov 25 10:43:04 UTC 2009
Air date: Tue Nov 24 00:00:00 UTC 2009
Duration: 38:05

Despite regulatory threats on the horizon, the outlook for the credit default swaps (CDS) market remains bright. While the CDS market’s notional value of outstanding contracts fell 14% in 2009, it’s still at massive $36 trillion of notional value.

Swaps brokers and clearinghouses don’t appear worried about its future according to DealBook.

DealBook: …trading in swaps has so far survived the crisis and market reforms are on the way. Barring unexpectedly draconian regulatory changes, a comeback looks likely, Breakingviews says.

…

it looks likely that reforms to improve the market’s workings will trump the idea of shutting it down. With that in mind, forecasting a return to robust market growth makes sense, according to Breakingviews. Central clearinghouses and electronic trading led the energy derivatives market to bloom in recent years. The return of credit risk-taking wouldn’t please everyone, Breakingviews concedes, but the credit-default swaps market could emerge bigger and stronger, too.

Despite the regulatory risk, recent data supports this view that the credit default swaps market will continue to grow. For example interdealer broker ICAP’s recent interim results showed that the company’s credit-related trading revenue 37% year over year, despite all the scorn.

Thus we’ll take DealBook’s view a step further — even draconian regulation won’t be able to stop this market’s expansion. What you might ban in the U.S. or Europe will simply move offshore.

the end it isn’t crazy that bondholders might want to purchase insurance against default. Given the gigantic size of the global bond market and today’s technology, someone will find a way to meet this massive need. Thus less regulation would be better than more, since it would keep these markets onshore and under closer supervision.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Here Comes OTC Derivatives Regulation, At A Cost Of Nearly $1 Billion Over 4 Years
• That Chinese Company Might Actually Be A Giant Pile Of Derivatives (CCA, ZNH)
• Credit Default Swaps Augur Yen Body Slam

Perhaps a little reluctantly, Google has been slowly adding more rich content to its search engine. It’s still as spartan as it gets, but there’s certainly an evolution and now it’s making the same changes to the ads it serves on the search results page which now feature videos, images, and even maps.

“To provide a better search ads experience, we’ve been developing and testing a variety of new ad formats. These formats are focused on giving you the information you need, while retaining what you love about Google advertising: that the ads are relevant and useful,” Susan Wojcicki, VP of product management at Google, wrote. “If you’re looking to buy your mom a new handbag for the holidays, for instance, you might want to see pictures, prices, the addresses of boutiques in your area and a map of how to get there — all within the ad.”

Some of the new ad units have been in testing for a while now, but Google wanted to showcase them, perhaps because it’s ready to introduce them on a larger scale. The company is working on several new units, but the general theme is ‘bigger is better’. There’s a good reason for that, bigger ads equal more clicks therefore better revenue for the company, but this only works up to a point. Part of the reason why people chose Google to do their searches is the clean in… (read more)