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The other real estate bubble, Long Island’s commercial mortgage

Long Island Business News, Oct 30, 2009 by David Winzelberg

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing lately over the commercial mortgage market and whether it constitutes a “second bubble” that could take the air out of a speedy economic recovery.

Most of the worrying centers on commercial property owners who bought buildings at the peak of the market with help from lenders who financed as much as 95 percent of the property’s value. Most of the loans were later “securitized,” meaning they were sliced and diced by Wall Street as collateral for other financial instruments, such as bonds.

Now, as those five-year loans come due, building owners need far more equity than they have to qualify for refinancing on the same property, which in many cases is worth much less than the amount of its current debt.

If this all sounds suspiciously like the subprime housing mess, you’re on the money.

Rising delinquencies on commercial mortgage-backed securities for Long Island properties show some of the strain. About $300 million in securitized commercial real estate loans on 21 Nassau and Suffolk properties are already in default, according to numbers from Manhattan-based Trepp, a research firm that specializes in commercial mortgage-backed securities, or CMBS. Included are eight office buildings, five retail properties and three industrial buildings, Trepp’s statistics show.

That means nearly 5 percent of the $6.2 billion in Long Island CMBS loans are delinquent, and the default rate could double next year. The good news? The troubled properties are limited to a small number of landlords and likely will not cripple the entire market. Overall, local banks have nearly three times as much invested in commercial mortgages, and at much more conservative terms.

George Klett, a vice president of Signature Bank in Melville and a longtime critic of securitized loans, said many of the CMBS deals were predicated on inflated property values and “outrageous assumptions” of increased cash flow.

Nationally, CMBS loans represent about 20 percent of all outstanding commercial property debt, with about $80 billion coming due in 2010, Trepp reports. Locally, one Long Island landlord has $60 million in CMBS debt due next year. Another is reported to have more than $180 million san diego real estate in securitized loans on one office complex. Then there are the owners of a popular shopping mall who are now more than 30 days late on their mortgage payment, according to a source.

Commercial mortgage broker Jonathan Goldman, of M

DigitalGlobe Announces New Agreement With Microsoft for High-Resolution Aerial Imagery

Market Wire, October, 2009

DigitalGlobe (NYSE: DGI), a leading
global provider of commercial high-resolution world-imagery products and services
for defense and intelligence, civil government, and commercial customers,
today announced it has signed an agreement with Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) to
launch the Clear30 program, an initiative to distribute high-resolution,
30-cm aerial imagery of contiguous landscapes, initially in the U.S. and
Western Europe. These orthophoto mosaics will be available through Bing
Maps and through DigitalGlobe channels.

The Clear30 initiative is a new agreement that expands the current
relationship between Microsoft and DigitalGlobe and reflects a commitment
to increase accessibility and use of high-resolution digital imagery. To
collect the first ever multicontinental aerial imagery from 30 cm, the
companies will use the UltraCamG , a large format digital aerial camera manufactured by Vexcel Imaging
GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft, which is based on Vexcel’s
UltraCam large format camera systems, the top selling large format aerial
sensors internationally.

“We’re excited about the launch of the Clear30 program and our continued
relationship with DigitalGlobe,” said Steve Stanzel, general manager of
Bing Maps at Microsoft Corp. “By providing DigitalGlobe exclusive access to
our advanced UltraCamG imagery, we can provide our mutual customers easy
access and integration of high-resolution digital aerial orthophotos for
vast landscapes around the world.”

“We are very pleased to be expanding our relationship with Microsoft and
look forward to introducing the UltraCamG imagery into our world imagery
solutions,” said Jill Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of
DigitalGlobe. “The addition of large quantities of very high-resolution
digital aerial imagery, collected quickly and published on a consistent
update schedule, will further enhance our ability to distribute a
comprehensive digitized globe to our customers.”

The companies did not provide financial details concerning the agreement.

Imagery from the UltraCamG will further expand DigitalGlobe’s industry
leading ImageLibrary and will
complement the satellite imagery products available from the DigitalGlobe
high-resolution satellite constellation, including the recently launched WorldView-2 satellite.
Current collection areas for the UltraCamG program include the contiguous
United States and Western Europe.

To learn more about advanced DigitalGlobe’s constellation of sub-meter
satellites, please visit www.digitalglobe.com .

About DigitalGlobe

DigitalGlobe ( http://www.digitalglobe.com ) is a leading global provider of
commercial high-resolution earth imagery products guy gets girl and services. Sourced
from our own advanced satellite constellation, our imagery solutions
support a wide variety of uses within defense and intelligence, civil
agencies, mapping and analysis, environmental monitoring, oil and gas
exploration, infrastructure management, internet portals and navigation
technology. With our collection sources and comprehensive ImageLibrary
(containing more than 730 million square kilometers of earth imagery and
imagery products) we offer a range of on- and off-line products and
services designed to enable customers to easily access and integrate our
imagery into their business operations and applications. For more
information, please visit www.digitalglobe.com .

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the
Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended.
Forward-looking statements relate to future events or our future financial
performance

Insurer enjoys further success

0 Comments | South Wales Echo (Cardiff, Wales), Oct 17, 2009

ADMIRAL has recorded a pounds 294m turnover in the past three months.

The Cardiff-based insurer, which is expanding its operations to a number of overseas countries, said turnover for this year’s third quarter increased by 22% compared to the same period in 2008.

Its number of customers increased 17% to 2.01 million.

s chief executive, said: “I’m pleased to report that not much has changed in three maryland auto insurance quotes months. Our successful business continues to grow and prosper.

“In particular, our price comparison business in Spain launched its first TV campaign and our direct insurance operation in the US opened for business in Virginia.

“Admiral’s UK car insurance business had yet another fine quarter. We grew vehicle count by 16% year on year to 1.81 million and have continued to increase premium rates.”

The company said price comparison subsidiary Confused.com saw its turnover in the three months increase 32% compared to the same period in 2008.

Turnover from non-UK car insurance increased by 53% compared to the year before, to pounds 10.3m.

It added that its financial position remained “strong” and the company was “on track” to meet analysts’ consensus profit estimates for 2009.

House Democrats unveil health-care reform bill

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Oct 30, 2009 | by David Espo Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Cheered by President Barack Obama, House Democrats rolled out landmark legislation Thursday to extend health care to tens of millions who lack coverage, impose sweeping new restrictions on the insurance industry and create a government-run option to compete with private insurers.

But even as party leaders pointed toward a vote next week, there were fresh questions that went to the heart of their ambitious drive to remake the nation’s health-care system.

Congressional budget experts predicted the controversial government insurance option would probably cost consumers somewhat more than private coverage. At the same time, rank-and-file conservative Democrats sought additional information about the bill’s overall impact on federal health-care spending.

There was no official estimate on the total cost of the legislation, which ran to 1,990 pages. The Congressional Budget Office said the cost of additional coverage alone was slightly more than $1 trillion over a decade. But that omitted other items, including billions for disease prevention programs.

Yet another $230 billion or more in higher fees for doctors treating Medicare patients, included in an earlier version of the bill, was stripped out and will be voted on separately.

The measure “covers 96 percent of all Americans, and it puts affordable coverage in reach for millions of uninsured and underinsured families, lowering health-care costs for all of us,” boasted Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., at a ceremony attended by dozens of Democratic lawmakers. She spoke on the steps of the Capitol, not far from where Obama issued his inaugural summons for Congress to act more than nine months ago.

Pelosi said the legislation would reduce federal deficits over the next decade by $104 billion, and congressional budget experts said it would probably reduce them even further over the following 10 years.

While saying they expected a vote next week, Democratic leaders were careful not to claim they had yet rounded up enough votes to pass the legislation. Still, the day’s events capped months of struggle and marked a major advance in their drive — and Obama’s — to accomplish an overhaul of the health-care system that has eluded presidents for a half-century.

Across the Capitol, the Democratic-controlled Senate is expected to begin debate within two weeks on a bill crafted by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. It, too, envisions a government-run insurance option, although states could opt out, unlike in the bill the House will vote on. That portion of the Senate version appears likely to be weakened even further, as moderates press for a standby system that would not go into effect until it was clear california auto insurance quotes individual states were experiencing a lack of competition among private companies.

Obama called the House legislation “another critical milestone in the effort to reform our health-care system.”

Republican reaction was as swift as it was negative

Space bound

SuperScience, Nov-Dec, 2009

When Clara Ma, 12, thought about the name she would give a spacecraft bound for Mars, one feeling kept coming to mind: Curiosity! That’s what Clara proposed to call NASA’s new Mars rover, a robot on wheels. She won an essay contest to name the space vehicle.

The Kansas sixth-grader’s first-place essay won her a trip to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. new zealand vacation There, she signed her name on the rover, which is expected to travel to Mars in 2011. Curiosity will search for clues about whether the red planet has ever supported life.

Pond-scum power: going really green

National Review, Nov 2, 2009 by Kenneth Green

SINCE the days of Richard Nixon, the United States has sought a replacement for oil, for reasons economic, political, and environmental.

Our reliance on oil makes our economy vulnerable to oil-price spikes. Each oil-price shock since the 1970s has been followed by an economic recession, and as our oil imports have risen, that impact has become more severe. Some economists credit the most recent oil-price spike with contributing to, or even kicking off, the global recession.

Also, keeping military equipment moving uses a lot of oil. The U.S. military uses 130 million barrels of oil each year, which is about how much the entire country of Sweden uses. The idea of being dependent on oil supplies from hostile regimes is troubling, as is the idea of facing guns and bombs that were purchased with dollars you provided.

Adding to the pressure to find a replacement for oil is the drumbeat of alarm over greenhouse-gas emissions, especially as China and India continue their economic development, adding millions of gasoline-powered vehicles to the world’s roadways.

Unfortunately, an economically feasible replacement for oil is hard to find, because oil is a marvelous, energy-dense fuel, inexpensive compared with alternatives. Ethanol from corn, a favored contender as an alternative to gasoline, has lost its luster as it shows itself to be both economically and environmentally disastrous. (The government continues to subsidize it, of course.) Converting coal to liquid fuel is a proven technology, but it too fails tests both economic and environmental.

But a new contender has entered the ring. That contender is (drum roll)–pond scum. More precisely, algae, which can be turned into a renewable, environmentally friendly replacement for gasoline, diesel, aviation gas, and more. Algae fuels hold so much promise, in fact, that venture capital is pouring into their development even in the face of a massive recession–suggesting that, unlike other “green” fuels, it won’t need government subsidies to thrive. More than 150 companies around the world are putting money into algae-fuel research. And you know things are serious when Big Oil buys in: Shell, Chevron, Conoco-Phillips, and ExxonMobil have jumped into the pond with big money, hoping to find another source of liquid fuel to complement oil in meeting expected world demand. ExxonMobil is in the game to the tune of $600 million, serious money even for them.

Here’s how it works. Algae use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide (the dominant man-made greenhouse gas) into sugar molecules, which they then convert into the myriad chemicals they need to live. They have high population-growth rates, and, most important, they’re oily: About half their mass is fat, which can be chemically converted into diesel fuel, gasoline, aviation fuel, etc.

Several things make algae especially interesting from a fuel perspective.

First, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that algae can produce 10,000 times more oil per acre than other biofuel crops, such as soybeans. That means we can produce a significant amount of liquid fuel in a relatively small area. The Carbon Trust estimates that algae biofuels could displace 12 percent of annual global jet-fuel consumption by 2030, if aggressively developed. Estimated prices for algae biolipids are only slightly higher than those for oil, at $70 to $100 per barrel. Since algae fuels are more akin to gasoline than to alcohols, there’s no need to change the existing infrastructure that transports liquid fuels to our many millions of vehicles, nor is there a need to change multi purpose aluminium ladders the vehicles themselves

Iconic vision.(”Encounters with God: In Quest of the Ancient Icons of Mary”)(Book review)

First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, November, 2009 by Milliner, Matthew J.

ENCOUNTERS WITH GOD: IN QUEST OF ANCIENT ICONS OF MARC

landscape photography by SR. WENDY BECKETT

Orbis Books, 132 pages, $22

ANY STUDY OF ART history at the graduate level will lead to the inevitable and not terribly surprising conclusion: Art history is in chaos. An entire generation of scholars has arisen–so long ago that some are now approaching retirement–whose sole aim was to undo the neat historical narrative that rolled out like a red carpet from the galleries of midcentury Manhattan.

Along the way, the origin of art history as a discipline was endlessly scrutinized, to reveal essentialist fantasies and national agendas that few are eager to perpetuate

Yes, gentlemen do prefer a girl who has curves

0 Comments | Daily Mail (London, England), The, Oct 28, 2009

Byline: Fiona MacRae Science Reporter

IT’S a good reason to ditch that diet and celebrate with a piece of cake.

A study has found that men really do prefer ‘normal’-sized women with a few curves to those who are fashionably thin.

They find a body like Scarlett Johansson’s or Kate Winslet’s more attractive than the angular frames of Posh Spice and Paris Hilton.

The results will be welcomed by the millions of British ladies who are a perfectly healthy size but believe they would be more popular with men if they were thinner.

The research from St Andrews University, published in the journal Perception, involved a group of male students. Researchers asked them to rate photographs of female faces for attractiveness.

The women in the ‘normal’ weight range were rated as better looking than the skinny ones. Researcher Professor David Perrett said: ‘This sends out a strong message to all the girls out there who believe you have to be underweight to be attractive.

‘The people making judgments in our study were all between the ages of buy phentermine no prescription 18 and 26 and they did not rate the underweight girls most attractive. They preferred normal-weight girls.’ Overweight women were also rated as being less attractive, and judged to be in poorer health

Berkeley overwhelms El Cerrito, 50-0

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Oct 29, 2009 | by Jimmy Durkin

Is it playoff time yet?

That thought had to creep into some minds on the Berkeley High sidelines Oct. 23 after a shockingly easy 50-0 dismantling of host El Cerrito in a battle of the Alameda Contra Costa Athletic League’s lone credit report companies remaining unbeaten teams.

“I was a little surprised,” Yellowjackets coach Alonzo Carter said of the score. “I expected a little more. But you have to give credit to my guys. As good as El Cerrito is, we were better and a little more hungry.”

Berkeley (8-0, 4-0 ACCAL), ranked No. 3 in the Bay Area News Group East Bay poll, had the Gauchos’ number from the opening coin toss, which the Yellowjackets — naturally — won..

Melvin Bellard snagged an interception on El Cerrito’s first possession. Leading East Bay rusher Rickey Galvin — back after missing a week with an ankle injury — finished a 10-play drive with a 5-yard touchdown run. Galvin added touchdown runs of 2 and 27 yards to make it 20-0 with 24.3 seconds left in the half.

Galvin rushed for 171 yards on 22 carries, and now has 1,368 rushing yards 16 touchdowns this season.

With El Cerrito (4-3, 2-1) trying for a late first-half score, Berkeley linebacker Keenan Coogler intercepted the Gauchos’ Byron Thomas and went 61 yards for a touchdown and a 27-0 lead at intermission.

The second half didn’t get any better for El Cerrito. Head coach Kenny Kahn was ejected late in the third quarter, and 50-year coaching veteran Dan Shaughnessy took over.

Berkeley got 1-yard scoring runs from Michael Ned (17 carries, 177 yards) and Keir Abrams, and Coogler finished the scoring with a 48-yard run as the Yellowjackets totaled 422 rushing yards.

“We were so focused,” Galvin said. “This was a big game. Everyone was just on the same page.”

Encinal 34, St. Mary’s 27: Jets quarterback Tyrone Duckett threw three touchdown passes and rushed for 190 yards and another TD to help Encinal hang on for a thrilling victory over the Panthers at Willie Stargell Field on Oct. 23.

The victory by the Jets (6-1, 4-0) gave them the edge over St

United stretch their run

0 Comments | Evening Gazette (Middlesbrough, England), Oct 29, 2009

WILF NOBLE BUILDING SUPPLIES ESKVALE AND CLEVELAND LEAGUE LINGDALE UNITED made it four wins out of four when they beat Brotton Railway Arms 6-2. Following a goalless first half and going behind to a Scott Templeman goal, United soon got back on terms through Andrew Smith and pressed home their advantage with goals from Adam Dunston, Bob Ovington, Josh Bint, Mally Whitehead and Michael Woodhouse.

Loftus Athletic also hit Whitby Fishermen for six, with the damage done in the first half.

Five goals arrived from Jordan Smith (two), Danny Condell, Steve Starsmore and a 35-yard Chris Morrison free-kick.

Despite dominating much of their game, Staithes needed second half goals from Andrew Midgeley and Gary Gilding to get a point after being two goals down at home to Great Ayton.

And Goldsborough needed a late goal from John Foster to secure a point in their 3-3 draw at home to Carlin How.

The Hollybush moved three points clear at the top following their 3-2 win at Stokesley and Dormanstown Corus maintained their challenge, hitting five without reply against Boosbeck United.

Two goals in two minutes from Brian Warrior and Lee Brady gave them the lead at half time and second half strikes were added by Liam Allinson, Lance Skelton and James Swan.

In the first round of the Northern Echo Cup, Lingdale beat the Fox Inn 3-0 with goals from Matty Jones, Liam Raw and Ryan Scott, while Boosbeck St Aidan’s saw rent generator off the challenge of the Bull’s Head with a 5-2 win.