Dec. 17 (Bloomberg) -- International Brotherhood of Teamsters President James Hoffa said Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is creating derivatives trades that would profit from the bankruptcy of YRC Worldwide Inc., the trucking company trying to avert failure with a debt exchange.
The most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history “is actively soliciting bond trades for clients and underwriting credit-default swaps to benefit from a failed exchange and resulting bankruptcy,” Hoffa, the union leader, wrote in a letter dated yesterday to Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton and Heritage Foundation fellow Brett Schaefer have a new book out. It's called ConUNdrum (get it?!): The Limits of the United Nations and the Search for Alternatives. I confess to not having read the book yet, so I hesitate to pass judgment. But you know who does have an opinion? Fiji's UN Ambassador, Berenado Vunibobo. He hosted a book launch for Bolton and Shaefer at the end of October.
This raises eyebrows, shall we say, because Fiji has been under military rule since December 2006, when Commodore Bainimarama toppled the government. Since then, Human Rights Watch reports that Bainimarama has consolidated his power and detained political opponents. Fijian troops are even barred from participating in UN Peacekeeping missions. And, just last week, the self-appointed Bainimarama expelled top diplomats from Australia and New Zealand who criticized his regime.
The volume of bank-owned foreclosed homes — known as REOs, or real-estate owned properties — is growing at an alarming rate, compounding the foreclosure crisis by sticking hard-hit neighborhoods with vacant and often trashed homes that drive down property values even more. REOs are foreclosed homes that lenders take back after they don’t sell at foreclosure auctions or sheriff’s sales. They keep the homes in inventory until they can be sold again.
The bottom line is that many of these homes( as many as 3 out of 5) are in condos, townhome or single family homeowner associations. And, the banks or FANNIE dont want to be on the hook for the assessments. So they just let the homes sit idol. To them nothing is happening. To the community the rest of the owners are dealing with not only the blight of them, they are dealing with the budget shortfall that empty homes cause and there is absolutly no help coming out of Washington DC. If the number of home in the US that are in common interest communities is any where near the number trade groups like CAI post ( http://www.caionline.org/about/press/Pages/IndustryLeadersFormCAIChapterinNewMexico.aspx ) then this housing debacle is far from over and your government is trying it's best to cover it up.
