text: Brooks Barnes has a detailed write-up on the studio’s updated Burbank facade here. For obvious reasons, I love it.
  Here’s some happy news. After being put so far on the back burner as to be almost invisible, Spike Jonze’s intriguing adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild Things Are” has been assigned a release date by Warner Bros. The film will apparently open on October 16, 2009, which should allow Jonze plenty of time […]
  
  The number of mortgages that are delinquent or in foreclosure is declining, but those in the pipeline are years away from clearing, according to a report from Lender Processing Services Inc. released today.
  Of all the loans in the foreclosure process in January 2012, 42 percent were still in the foreclosure process a year later, the report said. Only 22 percent had become real estate owned (REOs), and 11 percent had been liquidated through short sales or deeds-in-lieu.
  In states where the foreclosure process is handled by the courts, 58 percent of loans in foreclosure are more than two years past due. In judicial foreclosure states, that figure is 33 percent. Judicial foreclosure states have three times as much foreclosure inventory as judicial foreclosure states.
  In judicial foreclosure states, it takes an average of 62 months (more than five years) for a foreclosure to clear, almost twice as long as in a nonjudicial foreclosure state: 34 months, or nearly three years.
  Broken down by state, judicial states New York and New Jersey had the longest timelines: 607 months (more than 50 years) and 483 months (more than 40 years), respectively. By comparison, in nonjudicial Texas and Virginia, the averages were 40 and 39 months, respectively.
  But the difference between judicial and nonjudicial states is decreasing due to recently enacted "judicial-like" legislation in some nonjudicial states, the report said. In Nevada, legislation has resulted in a jump from a 27-month timeline in June 2012 to 57 months at the end of January, and in Massachusetts, the average timeline has risen from 75 to 171 months since last January, the report said.
  "As California’s recently enacted Homeowner Bill of Rights is closely modeled on the Nevada legislation, we’ll be watching that state closely over the coming months to gauge its impact, as well," said LPS Applied Analytics Senior Vice President Herb Blecher in a statement.
  The report found that states with high numbers of underwater borrowers are still seeing high levels of new problem loans, particularly "sand states" such as Nevada, Florida and Arizona where 45 percent, 36 percent and 24 percent of mortgages, respectively, are underwater.
  Credit standards have improved across the board in recent years, so the majority of the new problem loans are coming from "bubble" vintages (loans originated in 2007 and earlier). Loans to "subprime" borrowers — sometimes characterized as those with credit scores below 620 — were common.
  Currently, even loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration or guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs average credit scores above 700, LPS said. The average overall credit score in 2012 was 747.
  
  Like defrosting a fridge after too much ice accumulation has started to interfere with its working, so the economy was for long frozen over and in need of reinvigoration.
  Such overly frosty condition we call recession. When accompanied by much earnings collapses, employment losses and asset price declines, it can give rise to trauma and severely intimidated mindsets, especially business-wise, inhibiting expansion and fixed investment decisions.
  The manager of this particular fridge, so to speak, is the government. Its main agent is the SARB and its main defrosting tool is interest rates, also to the extent that these (and other actions) influence the Rand.
  Though SARB started cutting interest rates as long ago as December 2008, in a highly uncertain global crisis environment capable of many curved balls (not all of them foreseeable or favourable), the 20/20 hindsight of subsequent history suggests policy easing could have been more aggressive.
  Indeed, why we never quite took a leaf out of so many other countries’ policy books is somewhat of a mystery, because it never was as if this Great Crisis was going to pass us by but completely.
  Still, the slow coach also catches the monkey. Nearly two years on and prime has been lowered from 15.5% to 9.5%.
  But on a CPI inflation of 3.5% this still suggests a 6% real rate, slightly above the long-term ideal average of 5.5% of recent decades at full economic potential. And we are hardly yet back at full potential (although inflation has also yet to show where it will settle next, if ever).
  Over a year ago, on the cusp of ending recession, many people already sensed to be at the bottom of the interest rate cutting cycle (at prime 11%). Indeed, the Governor at the time intimated as much. Since then we have had three more 0.5% cuts, but the goalposts (inflation, Rand, domestic output gap) haven’t stopped shifting either.
  It is a fallacy that after repeated rate cuts, another one wouldn’t make much of a difference. Most economic and financial decision-making is hidden from view, with only the results in time reflected in published data.
  Meanwhile every change in the incentive structure counts, with the main impact on financial portfolio composition and changes there in affecting real economy decisions.
  The fact of the matter is that many households and businesses found themselves with too much debt when asset prices started to decline, income in many instances became uncertain and the credit game changed, both regarding cost and access.
  As exuberance made way for new sobriety, a sense of major overcommitment prevailed, aside of the minor matter of having to pay the higher interest rates while voluntarily or involuntarily deciding or wanting to deleverage debt.
  If in such an environment, no different in essence to so many overseas countries in deep trouble, the authorities had cut our interest rates much more aggressively early and faster, it might have assisted early resolution to the defensive debt workout, allowing an earlier and faster growth resumption in a deeper sense (ignoring inventory and export repair effects).
  For it wasn’t only households holding back on credit purchases and curtailing debt. Businesses were even more aggressive in cutting capex budgets and reducing debt on their balance sheets, through cost-cutting also enhancing their cash flows.
  But even if slow, at least SARB remained alive to changing conditions, as much locally as abroad, and following a change in leadership also proved willing to keep changing the policy stance in line with changing circumstances.
  And so the falling inflation rate, lingering output gap, and changing external and internal risks to the outlook led to serial rate cuts, until prime last month fell to 9.5% (a 30 year low).
  Despite the severity of the observed trauma, and despite the slowness in easing interest rates, such policy action did not remain without effect on the margin.
  We can observe this in the take-off in new car sales this year, the early resurrection in consumer confidence, the belated consumer inclination to become less cautious where it concerns credit and durable goods purchases (as per the FNB/BER consumer confidence survey), and not least the reviving bond and equity markets (though the later two mainly overseas driven).