Chez Synthia SAINT JAMES Opens in Harlem, NY

Guest House Gallery: Chez Synthia SAINT JAMES Opens in Harlem, NY – by Synthia Saintjames « Absoluteartscom’s Weblog

Guest House Gallery: Chez Synthia SAINT JAMES Opens in Harlem, NY – by Synthia Saintjamesabsolutearts.com Portfolio

Chez Synthia SAINT JAMES

Guest House Gallery: Chez Synthia SAINT JAMES will open their doors to the public from 1-6pm on Saturday, October 4th, 2008 and on Sunday October 5th in conjunction with Art Harlem Tours.

This premiere exhibition will feature the artwork of international award winning artists Synthia SAINT JAMES and Charles BIBBS along with the artwork of several local Harlem artists.

This “BY APPOINTMENT ONLY” gallery is housed in a brownstone right in the heart of Harlem, New York on the corner of Lenox and 119th Street. The street address is 181 Lenox Avenue.

Synthia SAINT JAMES will be in attendance on Saturday, October 4th from 1-6pm.

For further information please call 323.993.5722 or email kikusaintjames@aol.com.

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Courtesy of: absoluteartscom.wordpress.com

Harlem in the Himalayas Jazz Series @ The Rubin Museum – 2008 Fall Schedule

Harlem in the Himalayas Jazz Series @ The Rubin Museum – 2008 Fall Schedule Posted: 2008-09-25

Harlem in the Himalayas Jazz Series: @ The Rubin Museum – New York City

Remaining Fall 2008 Dates

Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th Street
NY, NY

$18 in advance | $20 at door
Box Office: 212.620.5000 ext. 344

September 26
7:00 PM-David Ornette Cherry with the Ensemble for Improvisers
David Ornette Cherry, composer, piano
Roy Campbell Jr., trumpet
Tony Falanga, bass
Willie Jones III, drums

October 3
7:00 PM -Reggie Workman Trio
Oliver Lake, saxophone
Reggie Workman, bass
Andrew Cyrille, drums

October 17
7:00 PM -The Jonathan Batiste Trio

Friday, November 14
7:00 PM -Anat Fort and Paul Motian

Friday, November 21
7:00 PM- Bern Nix / Francois Grillot Duo
Bern Nix, guitar
Francois Grillot, bass

Friday, November 28
7:00 PM -Grace Kelly Quintet
Grace Kelly – saxophones/vocal
Jason Palmer – trumpet
Jake Sherman – piano
Evan Gregor – bass
Jordan Perlson – drums

Visit website

SOURCE: Two for the Show Media

Government Seizes WaMu and Sells Some Assets

Government Seizes WaMu and Sells Some Assets – NYTimes.com

Government Seizes WaMu and Sells Some Assets

By ERIC DASH and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

Washington Mutual, the giant lender that came to symbolize the excesses of the mortgage boom, was seized by federal regulators on Thursday night, in what is by far the largest bank failure in American history.

Regulators simultaneously brokered an emergency sale of virtually all of Washington Mutual, the nation’s largest savings and loan, to JPMorgan Chase for $1.9 billion, averting another potentially huge taxpayer bill for the rescue of a failing institution.

The move came as lawmakers reached a stalemate over the passage of a $700 billion bailout fund designed to help ailing banks, and removed one of America’s most troubled banks from the financial landscape.

Customers of WaMu, based in Seattle, are unlikely to be affected, although shareholders and some bondholders will be wiped out. WaMu account holders are guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation up to $100,000, and additional deposits will be backed by JPMorgan Chase.

By taking on all of WaMu’s troubled mortgages and credit card loans, JPMorgan Chase will absorb at least $31 billion in losses that would normally have fallen to the F.D.I.C.

JPMorgan Chase, which acquired Bear Stearns only six months ago in another shotgun deal brokered by the government, is to take control Friday of all of WaMu’s deposits and bank branches, creating a nationwide retail franchise that rivals only Bank of America. But JPMorgan will also take on Washington Mutual’s big portfolio of troubled assets, and plans to shut down at least 10 percent of the combined company’s 5,400 branches in markets like New York and Chicago, where they compete. The bank also plans to raise an additional $8 billion by issuing common stock on Friday to pay for the deal.

Washington Mutual, with $307 billion in assets, is by far the biggest bank failure in history, eclipsing the 1984 failure of Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust in Chicago, an event that presaged the savings and loan crisis. IndyMac, which was seized by regulators in July, was one-tenth the size of WaMu.

But fears of the fallout from the government takeover of a big bank were balanced with the removal of one of the largest remaining clouds looming over the banking industry.

“This institution was a big question mark about the health of the deposit fund,” Sheila C. Bair, the chairwoman of the F.D.I.C., said on a conference call Thursday. “It was unique in its size and exposure to higher risk mortgages and the distressed housing market. This is the big one that everybody was worried about.” She said that the bank’s rapidly deteriorating condition prompted regulators to seize it Thursday, and not on a Friday as is typical for bank closures.

For weeks, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department were nervous about the fate of WaMu, among the worst-hit by the housing crisis, and pressed hard for the bank to sell itself. Washington Mutual publicly insisted that it could remain independent, but the giant thrift had quietly hired Goldman Sachs about two weeks ago to identify potential bidders. But nobody could make the numbers work and several deadlines passed without anyone submitting bid.

But as panic gripped financial markets last week after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, WaMu customers started withdrawing their deposits. The government then stepped up its efforts, at points going behind WaMu’s back to work privately with four potential bidders on a deal. On Wednesday afternoon, the government solicited formal written bids. On Thursday morning, regulators notified James Dimon, chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, that he was the likely winner.

“We are building a company,” Mr. Dimon said in a brief interview. “We are kind of lucky to have this opportunity to do this. We always had our eye on it.”

But the seizure and the deal with JPMorgan came as a shock to Washington Mutual’s board, which was kept completely in the dark: the company’s new chief executive, Alan H. Fishman, was in midair, flying from New York to Seattle at the time the deal was finally brokered, according to people briefed on the situation. Mr. Fishman, who has been on the job for less than three weeks, is eligible for $11.6 million in cash severance and will get to keep his $7.5 million signing bonus, according to an analysis by James F. Reda and Associates. WaMu was not immediately available for comment.

The government has dealt with troubled financial institutions differently. Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual, which were less entangled with the rest of the financial system, were allowed to collapse. But the government took emergency measures to stabilize Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and the American International Group, the insurance giant.

Federal regulators had been trying to broker a deal for Washington Mutual because a takeover by the F.D.I.C. would have dealt a crushing blow to the federal government’s deposit insurance fund. The fund, which stood at $45.2 billion at the end of June, has been severely depleted after suffering a loss from the sudden collapse of IndyMac Bank. Analysts say that a failure of Washington Mutual would have cost the fund as much as $30 billion or more.

The deal will end WaMu’s 119-year run as an independent company and give JPMorgan Chase branches in California and other markets where it does not have a big presence.

Until recently, Washington Mutual was one of Wall Street’s strongest performers. It reaped big profits quarter after quarter as its then chief executive, Kerry K. Killinger, enlarged its presence by buying banks on both coasts and ramping up mortgage lending.

His goal was to transform what was once a sleepy Seattle thrift into the “Wal-Mart of Banking,” which would cater to lower- and middle-class consumers that other banks deemed too risky. It offered complex mortgages and credit cards whose terms made it easy for the least creditworthy borrowers to get financing, a strategy the bank extended in big cities, including Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. With this grand plan, Mr. Killinger built Washington Mutual into the sixth-largest bank in the United States.

But underneath the hood, the bank’s machinery was failing.

Then the housing market began to crumble. Like so many other financial institutions, the bank tried to hedge its mortgage bets — but did so poorly. It retrenched on its branch-building ambitions. But none of that was enough to deflate ballooning losses on mortgage loans, nor defuse ticking time bombs like interest-only and pay-option amortization products that had reeled in bottom-grade borrowers.

With rising mortgage payments and higher gas and food bills, WaMu’s losses in its big credit card loan portfolio also surged.

By then, however, WaMu’s troubles had set off alarm bells on Wall Street, which ground its share price down daily.

With options narrowing, WaMu frantically reached out to several banks and big private equity firms, including the Carlyle Group and the Blackstone Group.

In March, JPMorgan Chase saw an opportunity and urged WaMu in a letter to consider a quick deal. On the same weekend that Mr. Dimon negotiated his daring takeover of Bear Stearns, he secretly dispatched members of his team to Seattle to meet with WaMu executives. When JPMorgan Chase offered WaMu $8 a share, largely in stock. But Mr. Killinger balked at the deal.

In April, David Bonderman, a founder of the TPG private equity firm, and a group of institutional investors agreed to infuse $7 billion of capital into the bank. Mr. Killinger kept his job, and Mr. Bonderman, who had served as a WaMu director from 1997 to 2002, returned with a board seat and 176 million WaMu shares priced at about $8.75 each — steep discount of more than 25 percent to that day’s share price.

While the deal was sweet for Mr. Bonderman, it eroded the value for existing shareholders, enraging them. They moved on June 2 to strip Mr. Killinger of his chairmanship. Mr. Bonderman, meanwhile, watched his golden bet turn to dross. In a statement Thursday, TPG said: “Obviously, we are dissatisfied with the loss to our partners from our investment in Washington Mutual.” [NYT]

Four Groups Submit Bids to Take Over Starrett City

Four Groups Submit Bids to Take Over Starrett City – NYTimes.com

Four Groups Submit Bids to Take Over Starrett City

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

Four groups submitted their final offers for the sprawling Starrett City housing complex on Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn on Thursday.

None of the groups would say how much they bid for the 5,881 apartments in 46 towers at Starrett City, the largest federally subsidized complex in the country.

But with the turmoil on Wall Street and in the credit markets, real estate executives who have been briefed on the offers said it was clear that the bids had gone down, not up, since the groups made initial offers of roughly $700 million to $850 million in July.

Among the final bidders were two groups that received letters from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development earlier this week stating that it had concluded that they lacked “the financial and managerial capacity and the experience necessary to own and operate Starrett City.”

But the two groups — the NHP Foundation and the Allen A.M.E. Housing Corporation; disputed that assessment and submitted bids anyway.

“We think we’re very good at putting together a financial package that makes sense,” said Edwin Reed, chief executive of Allen A.M.E., adding that that “will enable us to maintain Starrett as affordable housing.”

The federal housing agency said that its assessments were preliminary and that it was up to the owners to decide whose bids they wanted to consider.

A group led by the Cogsville Group, which includes the Christian Cultural Center and the Clarett Group, also submitted a bid, as did a fourth group, which includes Westbrook Partners, the New York City Central Labor Council and the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.

The bidding for the property became more difficult this month when the Department of Housing and Urban Development decided to approve a smaller increase in the rent subsidies for the complex than the owners had anticipated.

 [NYT]

Bedbugs Emerge as New Area of Housing Law

By E.B. SOLOMONT, Staff Reporter of the Sun | September 26, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/new-york/bedbugs-emerge-as-new-area-of-housing-law/86658/

Lawyers who visited Brooklyn housing court were abuzz recently, when bed bugs were reportedly spotted inside a courtroom on Livingston Street.

A spokeswoman for the courts insists the courts are insect-free, but the claim came as attorneys for landlords and tenants said bed bug disputes are filling the docket in New York City courts. At stake are thousands of dollars, including the cost of extermination, destroyed property, and rent for infested apartments. The cases are also setting new precedents in the emerging field of beg-bug law.

“To be honest, up until a year ago, I never even heard of a bed bug or knew about them. I never came across it,” a real estate attorney, Martin Heistein, said.

According to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which keeps track of complaints about bed bugs and issues violations against property owners who fail to exterminate them, there were 8,830 bed bug complaints in fiscal year 2008, which ended June 30, up from 1,839 in 2005. This year, the department issued 2,757 bed bug violations, up from 366 in 2005.

In New York City, landlords are responsible for getting rid of bed bugs in infested buildings and units and they must pay for extermination.

This was not always the case, but a turning point was a 2004 case, Ludlow Properties, LLC, vs. Young, in which Judge Cyril Bedford sided with a tenant who refused to pay rent for six months because of a persistent bed bug problem.

“Although bedbug are classified as vermin, they are unlike the more common situation of vermin such as mice and roaches, which, although offensive, do not have the effect on one’s life as bedbugs do, feeding upon one’s blood in hoards nightly turning what is supposed to be bed rest or sleep into a hellish experience,” Judge Bedford wrote.

A lawyer at Shafer Glazer, LLP, Timothy Wenk, said the Bedford decision has rippled through the legal community. He said the case reversed a long-standing decision in a 1908 case, Jacobs v. Morand, which held that tenants must pay rent regardless of vermin infestation.

Now, Mr. Wenk said, “The tenants are winning the landlord-tenant cases.” He pointed to another recent case, Mathias v. Accor Economy Lodging, Inc., in which a Chicago judge awarded $362,000 to a brother and sister who were bitten by bed bugs while staying at a motel. “The brother and sister really hit pay dirt and got pay dirt,” said Mr. Wenk, who called it “the mother of all bed bug cases.”

One reason why bed bug disputes are landing in court is because it is hard to prove where the bugs originated. While some landlords have accused their tenants of bringing bed bugs into the building, tenants have reported bed bug infestations that spread to their homes from neighboring apartments.

“It gets back to the issue of responsibility,” an attorney for tenants, Ronald Languedoc, said. Mr. Languedoc, who is an associate at the firm Himmelstein McConnell Gribben Donoghue & Joseph, said he has heard of cases where landlords asserted claims against their tenants, but he said he could not imagine how to prove that was the case. “In law, the party that asserts a claim usually has a burden of proof,” he said. “I think it is probably hard to track down where, precisely, they came from and how they got in there.”

One attorney, Steven Wagner, said he is currently handling a case for a client on the Upper West Side who moved out of his new apartment within 60 days because of bed bugs. The client, who was renting a three-bedroom apartment on West 92nd Street for $7,000 a month, learned shortly after moving in that apartments on adjacent floors were infested with bed bugs. Mr. Wagner said his client’s landlord assured him that there would be no problem, but then the client’s son was bitten in the middle of the night.

“My client feels as if they had been defrauded into even signing this lease,” Mr. Wagner said. “Had they known there were bed bugs in the building, they never would have signed the lease.”

Mr. Wagner said bed bug cases were unlikely to yield huge rewards, but litigation is a way to minimize losses. “If people sign a one to two year lease at these kinds of rents, and then their children start getting bitten, they’re angry,” he said. “In these cases, people feel they have no choice.”

He speculated that bed bug cases could have a ripple effect in the real estate market. “I wonder if this is a new way of getting rid of tenants who are regulated,” he said.

He also predicted new case law would emerge from a growing area of litigation. “I don’t know how bad the bed bug epidemic is, but I can tell you it is non-discriminatory,” he said. “There are going to be people who are spending a lot of money and can litigate these issues.”