Vampire squid latest: Would you believe Goldman Sachs when it said overnight that the International Monetary Fund could help Greece with an aid program worth about €20 billion ($US27 billion) over 18 months? After all Goldman Sachs helped Greece hide debt and shuffle its assets back in the early years of the past decade, which made its already poor financial position and growing debts look better than they were. Overnight there seems to have been agreement among EU leaders of some sort of approach to helping Greece, but Germany is demanding tough conditions before the IMF can become involved. And the head of the ECB, Claude Trichet told a French TV station that IMF involvement was “very very bad”. Trichet argued that Greece had issued false figures. He seems to be quite rightly saying that Greece has been rewarded for lying. But France agrees with Germany and Greece seems happy, for the time being.

Where are the property bubblers? Where are the housing alarmists when the RBA reveals some contrary facts on housing? All hiding, waiting for one of their tame economists or consultants to cackle about stress or affordability, no doubt. For example, the RBA said in its first Financial Stability Report of the year that it was was “estimated that currently around 27,000 households are 90 or more days in arrears on their housing loans, compared with an estimate of 23,000 at the end of 2008.” And that the quality of home loan portfolios remained “very high by international standards”, with only 0.63% of mortgages in arrears in December. The problems are greater in business: “The ratio of non-performing business loans rose to 3% at the end of last year, around 0.35% higher than six months earlier.”

Bubblers #2: Or this point from the RBA: “Indebted owner-occupier households only comprise around one third of all households … Arrears rates on other household loans have also improved over the past year. After peaking at 1.3% in the March quarter 2009, the arrears rate for credit cards has recently declined by around 25 basis points … By loan value, the share of non-performing housing loans on banks’ balance sheets was around 0.6% as at December 2009, little changed over the second half of the year, and around 7 basis points higher than a year earlier; most of these loans remain well covered by collateral…The rate of mortgagees’ court applications for property possession declined substantially over the second half of 2009.” Where’s an alarmist when you need one?

The biggest loser: Bruce Gordon has lost the legal brawl he had with former WIN CEO David Butorac. A court hearing on Monday in Sydney saw Butorac win his case for damages against WIN. Gordon didn’t make it to court, but settled anyway. We could learn more next week.  Contrary to other reports, it was not settled earlier this month and Butorac did not walk out, as those reports claimed. He was sacked, as Monday’s court decision confirms.

That’s what I call a crunch: The American newspaper ad revenue slump improved in the fourth quarter of 2009. Revenues “only” fell 23.7%, the smallest fall for the year, to $US7.68 billion from $10.07 billion for the last quarter of 2008. Overall, 2009 revenues were $US27.6 billion ($A30 billion) from print and online ads. That’s down from $US37.8 billion in 2008. The $US10 billion in lost revenue was the same as earned in the December quarter of 2007. According to the Newspaper Association of America figures, online ad revenue fell almost 12% to $US2.7 billion, worse than the 2% fall in 2008.

Crunch 2: But US newspapers have seen revenues plunge by $US22 billion, a 44% fall over the past two years. And our newspaper and media executives cry poor at a 10% to 25% fall in revenue (The Australian average last year was a paltry 8%). More than 100 US papers closed or went bust last year. Many of emerged from bankruptcy with smaller staff, smaller debts and the chance, they feel, to cope with ad revenues that will never return to their previous high levels. Classifieds, the lifeblood of papers, fell 38% last year to $US6.2 billion. That was down 68% from the 2000 peak of $19.6 billion. And the fall is worse because the figures are not inflation adjusted. Classies once accounted for 40% of US papers’ revenues, now its 22% and the internet has not made up the difference.

ANZ’s Kiwi problem: According to New Zealand media reports, the NZ Commerce Commission’s has delayed letting us know if it will prosecute ANZ National Bank over its promotion of two frozen ING New Zealand funds. Media reports yesterday said the delay was two weeks, with commission boss Mark Berry telling a Parliamentary Committee that an announcement would probably come in the first two weeks of April after he had previously indicated it would come before the end of this month. The regulator is investigating if the sale of ING’s diversified yield and regular income funds breached NZ’s Fair Trading Act. The funds collected some $700 million from about 14,000 investors before being frozen in March 2008. Almost all investors in the frozen funds accepted an offer from ING that saw them receive 60 cents in the dollar for investments in the diversified yield fund, and 62 cents in the case of the regular income fund, though they had to forgo any right to legal action.

The Westpac gougers. A reader writes. “Regarding recent articles on Westpac, e.g. Westpac gets ready to gouge Australia, (March 23) and others, I was reminded of the following footnote in The Life and Death of Sandy Stone by Barrie Humphries and edited by Collin O’Brien. “The Bank of New South Wales, the oldest commercial bank in Australia, which has since changed name, with American advice, to Westpac which sounds, according to Mr Humphries, ‘like something you’d ask for quietly in a chemist shop when there are no other customers about’.  It is understood that other names seriously considered for this bank were Whitpac, Packerpac and Wransac (BH).”

The American nightmare: It may be a month behind, but the detailed look at America’s unemployment picture tells a depressing story. The report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics adds to the monthly report. The news was bad. Thirty five metropolitan areas with unemployment rates at or above 15% in January. California and Michigan are still the worst, with 19 cities in California showing rates above 15%, Michigan had 6. In December, there were 25 cities with jobless rates above 15%, most of which were also in California and Michigan. Overall, jobless rates increased in 363 of the nation’s 372 metropolitan areas in January. The number of metro areas with jobless rates above 10% reached 187 in January. The unemployment rate was 9.7% in January (and February).

California destroys jobs: Of California’s 27 metropolitan areas during January, El Centro was the one city where the jobless rate fell, had the highest rate in the nation, at 27.3%. Merced, had the second highest rate at 21.7%, followed by Yuba City, Calif., at 20.8%. All are in the agricultural; heartland where seasonal work in the huge farms means a continuing high level of unemployment. Fargo and Bismarck in North Dakota, registered the lowest unemployment rates in January, 4.8% and 4.9%, respectively. (Part of Fargo is also in Minnesota). These figures for the various cities and towns are not seasonally adjusted. The original rate in January was 10.6%.

Good read for the weekend: Michael Lewis (Liar’s Poker, Moneyball) has a new book; it’s called The Big Short and will tell you more than any book so far written about how and why the subprime mortgage mess turned into the biggest financial crisis the world had seen since the Depression; who was responsible; explain how Howie Hubler, the head trader of Morgan Stanley lost so much money (an estimated $US9 billion), that he imperiled the bank and the CEO, John Mack, didn’t understand. Nor did any other CEO of a bank, or regulator or politician understand what had been created on Wall Street. A few economists did, regulators and the Fed didn’t. Lewis chases down a trio of small fund managers (two of them were off everybody’s radar) and who spotted the problem back in 2005 and started shorting the subprime market. It’s enthralling and in the process you get an education about CDOs, RMBS, ABS, subprime mortgages, “Silent Seconds”, asset pools, Credit Default Swaps, loan pools, Liar Loans and a host of other often arcane terms and concepts that all played a part in the subprime collapse. You will understand how it dragged the rest of America and the world into the black hole that saw well over $US3 trillion destroyed and trillions more used to prop it up. The culprits went unpunished and were rewarded with millions of dollars in bonuses and pay. You will understand why bankers are despised by most Americans.