CNN:  …In short sales, borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, agree with their bank to sell their homes at the lower market value. In return, the bank agrees to absorb the loss.

During the quarter, homes sold in short sales went for an average price of $175,461, the lowest level since RealtyTrac began tracking foreclosures in 2005…

Banks typically get about 20% more for a short sale than they would for a foreclosed home. In addition, short sale deals get done much more quickly than foreclosures, which can take years to unload, during which expenses, like property taxes and insurance, mount up…  (more)

From the FINANCIAL TIMES:

First-quarter growth for the US was revised down from an annualised rate of 2.2 per cent to 1.9 per cent on a day of gloomy data for the world’s largest economy.

The downward revision to gross domestic product came alongside a weak jobs report from ADP, the payrolls processing company, and a rise in new claims for unemployment insurance.

Economists await two crucial reports on Friday – official payrolls data for May and the purchasing managers’ index for manufacturing – but it is getting harder to blame weakness on temporary factors, such as unseasonal weather earlier in the year, rather than an underlying loss of momentum…

Click here to read the full article.

HUFFINGTON POST:   A federal appeals court Thursday declared that the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutionally denies federal benefits to married gay couples, a groundbreaking ruling all but certain to wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In its unanimous decision, the three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said the 1996 law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman deprives gay couples of the rights and privileges granted to heterosexual couples.

The court didn’t rule on the law’s more politically combustible provision, which said states without same-sex marriage cannot be forced to recognize gay unions performed in states where it’s legal. It also wasn’t asked to address whether gay couples have a constitutional right to marry…  (more)

PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS:  And in the category of, hey, in politics ya can’t do nuthin’ without tickin’ somebody off, Gov. Corbett is catching flak for nominating his chief of staff to be an Allegheny County judge.

First, fellow-Republican and state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ron Castille says he had a deal with Corbett not to fill judicial vacancies because courts are in a fiscal pinch and judges cost money: in the case of county judges, $200,000 a-pop….

Plus, Castille said the state court system has an $8.7 million shortfall and each local judge, with salary, benefits, office and staff, costs taxpayers about $200,000 (each county judge currently makes $169,541)….  (more)

Well Bill, this sounds like the future of the Lancaster County convention center.

But I digress. The incinerator has been a problem for years and should have been addressed by Rendell and perhaps those before him. We don’t need a criminal investigation to know malfeasance was rampant. It almost always is.

If Mr. Unkovic has criminal information he should get it out there and stop baiting the public with hear say scandal.

THE HILL:   Senate Democratic leaders have shown little appetite for taking on Wall Street before Election Day, despite urging by one of their star recruits, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.

Warren has called on Congress to resurrect the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which established a firewall between investment banks, which traditionally specialized in speculative trades, and commercial banks, which historically earned money primarily from lending…

For more than six decades, the law prohibited commercial banks from engaging in the risky trading business of investment banks, containing the national economic impact of financial meltdowns. The lack of a firewall in 2008 allowed big commercial banks such as Citibank to get sucked up in the financial crisis, freezing the credit businesses rely on…  (more)

From the NEW YORK TIMES Editorial:

…Mr. Obama has demonstrated that he can be thoughtful and farsighted, but, like all occupants of the Oval Office, he is a politician, subject to the pressures of re-election. No one in that position should be able to unilaterally order the killing of American citizens or foreigners located far from a battlefield — depriving Americans of their due-process rights — without the consent of someone outside his political inner circle. …

It is too easy to say that this is a natural power of a commander in chief. The United States cannot be in a perpetual war on terror that allows lethal force against anyone, anywhere, for any perceived threat. That power is too great, and too easily abused, as those who lived through the George W. Bush administration will remember….

A unilateral campaign of death is untenable. To provide real assurance, President Obama should publish clear guidelines for targeting to be carried out by nonpoliticians, making assassination truly a last resort, and allow an outside court to review the evidence before placing Americans on a kill list. And it should release the legal briefs upon which the targeted killing was based.…

Click here to read the full article.

ALJAZEERA:  THE US NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY:

• The internet surpassed newspapers as the main news source in 2010
• Print ads account for 86% of the newspaper industry’s revenue
• Daily newspapers still have about 45 million paying customers in the US
• Vocus report: 152 newspapers stopped operating in 2011
• State of the Media report: 151 newspapers stopped operating in 2010
• Thousands of journalists have been laid-off as newspapers close around the US
• Print advertising revenue fell by $2.1bn in 2011
• Half of all smartphone owners say they use their devices for news
• The newspaper industry is worth about $34bn yearly – down from $59bn in 2000
• Stock prices for newspapers fell by about 25% in 2011
• Digital circulation now accounts for 14% of newspaper circulation
• Weekday digital circulation has grown by nearly 62%
• Total online ad spending grew 23% in 2011, to $32bn
• Digital ads now make up at least 20% of total US advertising

… (more)

FINANCIAL TIMES:   ….US benchmark borrowing costs plunged to levels last seen in 1946 and those for Germany and the UK hit all-time lows as investors took fright at what they see as a disjointed policy response to the debt crisis in Spain and Italy.

In a striking sign of the flight to haven assets, German two-year bond yields fell to zero for the first time, below the equivalent rate for Japan, meaning investors are willing to lend to Berlin for no return…

“They are extreme levels because we are in an extremely perilous situation. People just want to put their money somewhere where they think they will get it back. People may soon be paying Germany or the US to look after their money,” said Gary Jenkins, head of Swordfish Research, an independent credit analysis company…  (more)

by Bill Keisling

In a court hearing held on May 22, 2012, the former receiver of Harrisburg suggested that Gov. Tom Corbett and his top staffers are the main obstacles in preventing a criminal investigation of Harrisburg’s growing debt scandal.

The former receiver went on to suggest that the governor is in cahoots with bad actors in the debt crisis.

Gov. Corbett, the former receiver suggested, is not only protecting the bad actors in the debt crisis from investigation. Corbett, the former receiver testified, is favoring the same bad actors for an early taxpayer bailout despite their involvement in apparent misdeeds.

As if all this wasn’t bad enough, former Harrisburg Receiver David Unkovic went on to suggest that Corbett and governor’s office staffers forced him out of his job because he called for a criminal investigation of Harrisburg’s $1 billion-plus mountain of debt.

Unkovic was a seasoned bond industry counsel working for the state Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) when he was appointed by Gov. Tom Corbett in late 2011 to oversee a recovery plan for Harrisburg.

By all accounts, Unkovic quickly nettled and alarmed top state Republicans by attempting to get to the bottom of the debt crisis, and suggesting fair treatment for Harrisburg’s victimized taxpayers, as well as criminal investigations of the perpetrators.

The turning point for Unkovic’s receivership came with the January 2012 release of a $1.2 million forensic audit of the Harrisburg incinerator. The audit was commissioned by the Harrisburg Authority, the nominal owner of the incinerator.

The audit detailed, among other subjects, how the bond underwriters and insurers who financed a botched incinerator retrofit finance deal were aware that the project made no financial sense, despite what the paperwork said, and were only involved because the bond float had been guaranteed by Dauphin County commissioners.

The forensic audit reports, for example, that, “In a December 18, 2003 e-mail message Mr. (James) Losty of RBC (Dain Rauscher) (the bond underwriter for the deal) communicated with an individual from TRowePrice, stating, “My only word of advice is if you are trying to evaluate this on a revenue generating basis, you are the only one including the bond insurer. Bottom line is that there is an AA County with a full faith and credit general obligation pledge.”

In return for guaranteeing this questionable 2003 bond deal, the report notes, Dauphin County Commissioner Jeff Haste insisted the county receive an unusual $1.9 million fee skimmed off the top from the resulting deal.

These same bond interests and their insurer had earlier joined Dauphin County commissioners in what now appears to be a smokescreen lawsuit in county court designed to place themselves at the front of the line to be paid by the sale and/or lease of Harrisburg’s assets.

In effect, the forensic audit suggests, the same players who had knowingly bankrupted the city were now, with Gov. Corbett’s consent, maneuvering not only for legal protection, but an early payout that would leave other creditors, and Harrisburg taxpayers, stranded, without assets to generate future income or to pay off more than a billion dollars of additional debt.

A bond counsel with some 30 years experience and former general counsel of the DCED, Receiver Unkovic appeared genuinely appalled at what he was learning about Harrisburg’s debt crisis.

“This city had been mismanaged for twenty years!” Unkovic intoned on the witness stand in federal court on March 21, 2012, pounding his fist. He said fraud, inside deals and corruption were all around him in the city.

After the hearing, as he stomped from the courthouse, Unkovic went on to warn, “It’s all a house of cards, and now the house is coming down!”

A week later, on March 28, Unkovic called for state and federal criminal investigations of Harrisburg’s debt. About the same time, Dauphin County Judge Todd Hoover amazingly approved a request by his county commissioners and the bonding interests to appoint a separate receiver for the incinerator, undercutting Unkovic.

The next day Receiver Unkovic hastily resigned.

“I have done my best to use my powers as receiver to bring fiscal stability to the city of Harrisburg,” he told the court in a handwritten note dated March 30. “However, I find myself in an untenable position in the political and ethical crosswinds and am no longer in a position to effectuate a solution.”

What exactly had happened leading to Unkovic’s hasty resignation? taxpayers and observers wondered.

At a bizarre Commonwealth Court hearing on May 22, intended to confirm Unkovic’s replacement, former Receiver Unkovic took the stand and suggested that Gov. Corbett had forced him out because of the Unkovic’s calls for a criminal investigation of the debt mess.

The same creditors who had helped put Harrisburg in its mess now had been put in charge of the incinerator, thanks to Judge Hoover’s ruling, Unkovic complained in court

“I was extremely concerned,” Unkovic testified. “It was not just the naming of another receiver (for the incinerator). The county was an active party. I felt very strongly about a whole host of things in connection with the incinerator financings.

He went on to say that he felt he had been “put in a box” not only by creditors who should be investigated, but by Gov. Tom Corbett and his staff, who were displeased that Unkovic had spoken “out of school” by calling for a federal criminal investigation of the parties involved

Rather than getting to the bottom of the fiasco, and letting the chips fall where they may, as a governor should, Tom Corbett has once again, perhaps predictably, and certainly unwisely, positioned himself as an agent of cover-up and deceit, owned by special interests, like the bonding industry

The day after Unkovic called for criminal investigations, Unkovic recounted that Gov. Corbett’s general counsel, Steve Aichele, told him he would soon be fired

“I offered to resign, and Mr. Aichele proposed that I might no longer be able to remain on as receiver, but might stay on at DCED and continue to work on Harrisburg matters behind the scenes,” Unkovic testified. 的 came away from that meeting believing I would be removed as receiver and therefore decided to resign and leave state government at the same time.

Gov. Corbett has since appointed Aichele as his new chief of staff.

Corbett’s former chief of staff, Bill Ward, was sacked this month amid growing perceptions of incompetence and corruption in the governor’s office, and speculation of other cover-ups and obstructions of justice involving former Attorney General Corbett, such as the long-running Joe Paterno/Penn State/Jerry Sandusky scandal and its fallout.