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Despite aggressive interest rate cuts by the Federal Government to maintain jobs and even a stimulus package sent out to assist with finances, consumer confidence is still lingering around its lowest level in close to two decades. With everything much more expensive now and the dollar still staggering to keep up against to the Euro, consumers are more likely to remain pessimistic about the economy and market landscape until at least sometime next year, and this fact is something that hurts the housing market the most more than anything else.

Indeed, a combination of the mortgage crisis and weak consumer confidence will cause the real estate market to suffer extensively throughout the year, hitting the industry with a double blow that squeezes it from both ends. The mortgage mess has led to an enormous number of foreclosures that have brought thousands of homes to the market, while a weak response from consumers means that these homes won’t be sold anytime soon.

Lynn Franco, leading director of the Consumer Research Center of TCB, or The Conference Board, has commented on the issue and said that consumer confidence is at the weakest it has been in 17 years. The Conference Board is recognized as producing the Consumer Confidence Index, a representation of the optimism consumers feel towards the economy which is measured by their activities of spending and saving.

In regards to the latest CCI evaluations, Franco believes that the current values look troubling in terms of where the economy is heading overall, and especially in regards to the housing market. She says that what with the way consumers are feeling apprehensive towards the market, not only concerning current circumstances but also future possibilities, they will most likely put off such an enormous purchase until they start to believe that things are at least a little more stable in the economy.

There was a report by the CCI in early 2007 that recognized a swelling of consumer confidence at the time, something that influenced economists to predict that the rest of the year would witness a turnaround for the real estate industry. However, this never happened, and in fact, consumer confidence went down considerably for the remainder of the year.

Inflation has had a considerable impact on consumer spending too, and especially in regards to real estate. With the cost of fuel prices and food at the level they are currently, very few people are willing to commit to the opportunity of buying a home, seeing it as a risky maneuver that can significantly burden them financially. Furthermore, employment is seen as something that is at risk for people across the nation, with job layoffs a very real threat currently for hundreds of individuals. When taking these aspects and seeing the big picture, it comes as no surprise that the housing market is suffering through one of the toughest times in decades.

Even though homes may been cheaper now than they have been in years, buyers are sitting on the sidelines still because they fear that their credit scores aren’t good enough to warrant finding a loan that can purchase them a home. Others are simply waiting it out and wanting to see how low prices are going to drop until they feel there’s a good enough opportunity to take the plunge into purchasing a new home.

Joe Kenny writes for Rebuild.org, offering home equity loans, they also have some great offers on home refinance for any homeowners looking to release equity.

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In recent months, technology magazine Wired in collaboration with NewAssignment.Net has embarked on unique project - to launch a reporting project that would focus on a particular trend or area of interest, and then open up its reporting process to outsiders, who would work with the Wired editorial staff to carry out interviews with key individuals in the area of interest being analysed. The project is called Assignment Zero, with the tagline ‘Pro-Am Journalism Opens on the Web’.

Appropriately enough, the first subject matter for the Assignment Zero participants was crowdsourcing itself. More than eighty interviews were carried out by the participants, and have since been published at Assignmentzero.net. A selection of the interviews, considered to be the most significant or well written, have also been published in Wired magazine.

Jay Rosen, Executive Editor of Assignment Zero, explained the philosophy behind Assignment Zero: “Inspired by the open-source movement, this is an attempt to bring journalists together with people in the public who can help cover a story.

” The investigation takes place in the open, not behind newsroom walls. Participation is voluntary; contributors are welcome from across the Web. The people getting, telling and vetting the story are a mix of professional journalists and members of the public — also known as citizen journalists. This is a model I describe as “pro-am.”
“The “ams” are simply people getting together on their own time to contribute to a project in journalism that for their own reasons they support. The “pros” are journalists guiding and editing the story, setting standards, overseeing fact-checking, and publishing a final version.”

Also on the professional team for Assignment Zero is Jeff Howe of Wired magazine, who wrote the original article on the topic which kick-started interest in the crowdsourcing concept. In a recent post on his own blog, he analysed the initial Assignment Zero project and described it as “snatching a qualified victory from the jaws of defeat”. He notes that a crowdsourcing project must have a central link (i.e. a person) who will control the flow of the project.

“Crowdsourcing projects are generally characterized as being the product of a few super-contributors and a mass of people who contribute some minor bits. I’ve heard this called the “dirty little secret of open source,” the fact that most of the heavy lifting is done, not by the crowd per se, but by a few select individuals from within the crowd. I’d like to posit another rule: Any crowdsourcing project must install one go-to guy (or girl) who will thanklessly toil day and night to keep the project on the rails.”

He also emphasises the importance of maintaining the community itself during the process:

“The plain fact is that in the future, journalists will have to develop these skills if they want to succeed in a future in which their readers are also their writers. The crowd does not contribute in a vacuum. They do so as part of a community of other contributors. I see this again and again in researching my book and, no surprise, it was true with Assignment Zero as well.”

The Assignment Zero project has produced a wealth of high quality interviews with key individuals who are influencing the direction of crowdsourcing in different ways. No doubt, other media organisations will have been following the Assignment Zero project to discover whether they can apply crowdsourcing methods to their own titles, or perhaps wondering at the back of their minds whether crowdsourced journalism might someday sweep them away entirely.

Yes job growth was twice what the expert analysts were predicting. I am beginning to wonder if these expert analysts are just making it up and phoning it in.

This is on the heels of better than expected GDP news for the month of October.

Source: Hiring strong despite housing woes

Larsen & Toubro Ltd (L & T), a Engineering and Construction company has announced that it will be investing Rs 1,800 Crore in the oil, gas and port sectors.The company would invest around Rs 650 crore for building an installation vessel for the upstream sector. K Venkataramanan, L & T President(operations), said that L & T is keen to acquire technological strength in deep water exploration for which it is entering into collabaration with foreign companies. And the company is also upgrading its facility at Hazira.

As more foreign companies bid under the new exploration licensing policy, L & T would have an enormous oppurtunity for providing onshore and offshore rigs for drilling.Apart from this, L & T is also setting up a project management institute at Baroda. L & T would also invest Rs 1000 crore for constructing a shipyard and was also building a port at Sohar near Oman at an investment of around Rs 118 crore. Beside the energy sector, L & T is also engaged in the construction of Greenfield Airports at Hyderabad and Bangalore.

From yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:

Imagine flipping through a jargon-free annuities-offering document.

The day is inching closer when that might be possible.

Industry groups are banding together to present prospective buyers of annuities with streamlined, plain-English descriptions of the basic features and costs of annuities, much like those now offered by some mutual-fund companies. Those shopping for an annuity also may be able to go online and compare the costs and features of one annuity to those of another.

As part of a pilot program, a simplified, 2½-page document is being tested in Iowa and West Virginia. The document was developed by the American Council of Life Insurers, or ACLI, in Washington, in conjunction with the National Association for Variable Annuities, or NAVA, in Reston, Va.; insurance-agent groups; and others in the industry.

Annuity Papers, Please. Hold the Jargon ($)

How much information will be available?

“We want to provide useful information, not an overwhelming amount of information,” says Carl Wilkerson, vice president and chief counsel, securities and litigation at the ACLI [American Council of Life Insurers]. The idea is to help consumers be “better equipped to make apples-to-apples comparisons,” he says.

My question is: if people can actually understand them, will they buy them? LOL! Once they know how expensive they can be, will they still want them? Will brokers be able to sell them once there is no longer a scary prospectus to hide behind? Will the broker’s compensation from the product be readily available?

Let’s face it, the insurance industry loves the complexity of annuities. They are hard to compare to each other and very hard to fully understand. Heck, lots of insurance salesmen don’t even fully understand them.

I’m interested to see how this plays out. Oh, and if anyone has access to the new 2½ page document mentioned in the article, I’d love to see it.

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