_Economy and Finance

27 Sep 2012 4:08 PM CRE Losses Moderating for U.S. Financial Institutions Fitch Ratings-Chicago-27 September 2012: Four years after U.S. financial institutions' commercial real estate (CRE) loan portfolios began to come under extreme pressure during the credit crisis, moderate improvements in CRE loan loss performance are supporting steady but slow asset quality recovery for most U.S. financial institutions rated by Fitch. The trend is positive and reflects a view that the recovery in CRE will not be as financially painful as Fitch had previously expected, although the return to normalized levels of performance and growth may be more prolonged.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. - Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), “The Garden of Eden” Ch. 11

Special Report: How Romney energy czar fuels business with politics By David Sheppard and Joshua Schneyer and Alexander Cohen NEW YORK/WASHINGTON | Fri Sep 21, 2012 7:00 pm EDT (Reuters) - It's a cornerstone policy in Mitt Romney's bid for the White House: build the Keystone XL Pipeline. The controversial $7.6 billion conduit would pump a river of crude from Canada down to Texas refineries. President Barack Obama has postponed until next year a decision on whether to approve the line, as environmentalists decry its route across ecologically sensitive areas. Romney says it will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and promote energy independence. In April, he told fellow Republican Party leaders: "I will build that pipeline if I have to do it myself." http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/21/us-hamm-romney-profile-idUSBRE88J12L20120921

SQUARE FEET American Real Estate Investors Seek Opportunities in European Debt Crisis By TERRY PRISTIN Published: September 18, 2012 While the world is anxiously watching to see how the European debt crisis will unfold, many real estate investors in the United States are eagerly seeking opportunities to reap profits from the Continent’s distress. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/realestate/commercial/american-real-estate-investors-seek-opportunities-in-europes-debt-crisis.html

http://www.cnbc.com/id/49093881 Will Lower Oil Prices Be a Surprise in October? Published: Wednesday, 19 Sep 2012 | 5:53 PM ET By: Patti Domm CNBC Executive News Editor Absent a Mideast crisis, oil prices have likely seen their 2012 highs, and Brent could easily slide to $100 or below before the end of the year.

Colony Capital to raise €500m to €1bn for European debt strategy Posted on September 18, 2012 3:33 pm by James Wallace Colony Capital is looking to raise between €500m and €1bn over the next 12 months for a first lien European senior debt strategy, deepening the global private equity firm’s real estate debt offering across the capital stack, CoStar News can reveal. http://costarfinance.com/2012/09/18/colony-capital-to-raise-e500m-to-e1bn-for-european-debt-strategy/

Carbon markets Complete Disaster in the Making The world’s only global carbon market is in need of a radical overhaul Sep 15th 2012 | WHAT would you say about a market that has helped reduce carbon emissions by a billion tonnes in seven years, attracted $215 billion of green investments to developing countries (more than any private environmental fund) and cut the cost of climate-change mitigation by $3.6 billion? The answer, to judge by a United Nations panel looking into the workings of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is: you’d say it is a shambles.