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Untitled

Tue Aug 09, 03:45 PM
Via: CP24 on twitter

Heavy rain Tuesday morning caused flooding on several roads in the GTA, wreaking havoc on traffic.

In downtown Toronto, one lane of Lower Simcoe Street at Bremner Boulevard has reopened after an earlier closure due to flooding, a city transportation services representative confirmed.

On Bathurst Street, city crews are working to fix a broken watermain created that created a sinkhole at around 3:30 p.m. 

Toronto police on scene said Bathurst Street between Glen Park Avenue and Glengrove Avenue would likely remain closed until around 5 p.m. The morning downpour also left a tree resting on power lines on Dovercourt Road.

Toronto police said that traffic on Dovercourt Road is being rerouted at Dundas Street and Mackenzie Crescent.

There is no word on how long the closure may last.

North of the city, police and fire services fire services are dealing with street flooding at a number of locations in Vaughan.

The problem areas include:

Highway 7 West and Edgeley Boulevard
Highway 7 West and Interchange Way
Rivermede Road and Bowes Road
Rivermede Road and Keele Street
York police are urging commuters to avoid these areas.

Transit services are also being impacted.

The 107 Keele North bus is not servicing Rivermede Road and North Rivermede Road due to the flooding, the TTC said.

Power outages

Toronto Hydro is reporting power outages in areas across the city.

Roughly 2,000 customers in the area bounded by Finch Avenue to the north, Highway 401 to the south, Bathurst Street to the west and Leslie Street to the east are currently without power. A further 600 customers in the area bounded by Highway 401 to the north, Lawrence Avenue to the south, Caledonia Road to the west and Bathurst Street to the east are also without power. Photo by: (Jay/MyBreakingNews)

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Housing Market Remains HOT! www.asifkhan.ca

By David Fleischer|Aug 08, 2011 - 12:29 PM

Housing remains hot

Sales continued to spike in July with the GTA housing market recording 23 per cent more sales than the same month last year.

Nearly 8,000 homes sold across the GTA last month, about 1,600 of them in York Region, up 35 per cent from July 2010, according to the Toronto Real Estate Board’s latest numbers.

While the average price of a home in the board’s territory now sits just less than $460,000, it’s even higher in York Region, at $542,000, up more than 10 per cent from a year ago.

Last year’s slowdown was attributed to higher mortgage rates, new lending roles and misconceptions about the impact of the new HST, board president Richard Silver said.
“If the current pace of sales holds up, we could see the second best year on record under the current TREB market area,” he said.
A tight market has been a driving force, but listings are starting to loosen up, board senior manager of marketing analysis Jason Mercer said. That should lead to a slowing in the rate of price growth.

Here’s a closer look.
• Not surprisingly, most home sales are in the region’s south. Markham saw more than 400 sales, while 391 homes changed hands in Richmond Hill and an even 300 in Vaughan.
• Nearly 60 per cent of all regional sales were detached homes, with an average price of $646,755. Only East Gwillimbury, Georgina and Newmarket had average prices below $500,000.
• Condominium apartments accounted for more than 10 per cent of all sales in the region in  July, with an average price just under $310,000. Vaughan, Richmond Hill and Markham each posted 55 or more sales.
• Every York Region municipality except East Gwillimbury saw sales up substantially compared to July 2010. Sales were up at least 20 per cent in every other municipality, including a 98 per cent increase in Whitchurch-Stouffville and a 67 per cent increase in Aurora.
• The picture changes somewhat when you look at the year-to-date numbers, however. Overall sales are up 5 per cent, but only Aurora, Richmond Hill and Whitchurch-Stouffville are posting higher numbers than they did in 2010.
• So far this year, York Region homes are selling in an average 23 days. Markham homes have averaged 19 days on the market, while Richmond Hill homes averaged 20. At the other end of the spectrum, it’s taking an average 55 days to sell a home in King.
• More than 17,000 homes have gone on the market in York Region since Jan. 1. More than half of those are in Markham and Richmond Hill.

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Stock Markets Prepare For More Volatility - INVEST IN REAL ESTATE! www.AsifKhan.ca

Sun Aug. 07 2011 9:10:12 AM | The Canadian Press   TORONTO — The Toronto stock market could be in for more stomach-churning volatility this week as investors weigh whether the U.S. is slipping towards another recession and try to regain a commodity that went AWOL from markets last week: confidence. It practically evaporated last week as the European debt crisis worsened with Italy's borrowing costs surging, highlighting just how vulnerable the eurozone is and how insufficient its anti-crisis measures are. And then on Friday night, Standard & Poor's said it is downgrading the United States' credit rating in an unprecedented move. It said it's cutting the country's top AAA rating by one notch to AA-plus. S&P said it is making the move because the deficit reduction plan passed by Congress earlier in the week did not go far enough to stabilize the country's debt situation. The bitter, partisan wrangling over raising the U.S. debt ceiling had already taken a toll on investor sentiment as U.S. lawmakers came to an agreement that nobody seemed to really like just before an Aug. 2 deadline expired. "I just think what happened here is the fiasco in Washington last week got the ball rolling, got people nervous and selling and it's fed on itself," said Doug Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets. "They unleashed a series of events that is beyond what they can control now." But 11th hour rescues, such as the debt ceiling agreement and the announcement of a second bailout for Greece at the end of July that didn't solve anything in the long term have stretched investor patience to the breaking point. And other analysts suggest that is another reason why investors have chosen to sell off in this market. "We think at the end of the day that people always will do what's necessary to fix things," said Andrew Pyle, investment adviser with ScotiaMcLeod in Peterborough, Ont. The TSX had a dreadful week, losing 783 points or six per cent, despite an American employment report on Friday showing a better than expected 117,000 jobs were created during July. The showing left the TSX down almost 10 per cent this year -- a loss of many tens of billions of dollars of market value. But this isn't a time for panic and Pyle cautioned investors against drawing parallels with the fall of 2008 when stock markets plunged thousands of points. For one thing, he pointed out that we aren't in a credit crisis partly triggered by the fall of investment bank Lehman Bros. Pyle pointed out that "corporations in the U.S. are sitting on $2 trillion in cash and if anyone goes to the market today with a bond issue, it gets lapped up. There's plenty of demand out there for commercial paper (short term, unsecured debt instruments issued by corporations), where in 2007, you wouldn't touch paper." And as with many negative stories, there is a positive side to the extreme volatility seen in markets recently. A big reason why investor fear over the U.S. economy increased was poor economic performance in the first half of the year, in what was originally thought to be a soft patch for the economy. Poor growth numbers were caused in large part by a tremendous surge in oil and gasoline prices when unrest was spreading across the Mideast in February and March. Oil rose almost to the US$115 level in short order. But now those prices are retreating quickly, with crude down to around US$85 at the end of last week. "So that drain on household budgets fades, and gasoline prices are fading too, and lo and behold mortgage rates in the US dropped to eight month lows again," said Pyle. "So if we have those two things happening going into the end of the third quarter, is that enough to rejuvenate demand?" After a two week run of big losses, investors can only hope that the jobs report from Friday provides a reason to at least take a paused and regroup. "It's a big feat in itself just to get somebody to step back and think about this and what we saw last week was more of a panic based unloading of risk," he said. "It was almost like, what they told me back in the spring was right, this market is going to fall and I'm just going to sell into it. So, first things first, you have to get individuals to step back just to even think about this let alone entertain the fact of getting back in." Asif Khan, ABR Re/Max All-Stars Realty Inc.   www.asifkhan.ca www.teamkhan.net

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China revives calls for a new stable global reserve currency to replace the U.S. Dollar. Could the strong Canadian Dollar be the answer?

TOP NEWS
World leaders confer on debt crises this weekend
Sat, Aug 06 19:18 PM EDT

By Paul Taylor and Stella Dawson

PARIS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global leaders on Saturday arranged a round of emergency calls to discuss the twin debt crises in Europe and the United States that are causing turmoil in financial markets.

After a week that saw $2.5 trillion wiped off global stock markets, they are under pressure to show political leadership and reassure markets that Western governments have both the will and ability to reduce their huge and growing public debt loads.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who chairs the G7/G20 group of leading economies, conferred with Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron ahead of a call planned for this weekend by G7 finance ministers and central bankers.

"They discussed the euro area and the U.S. debt downgrade. Both agreed the importance of working together, monitoring the situation closely and keeping in contact over the coming days," a spokesman for Cameron said.

Standard and Poor's deepened the urgency for action late on Friday by stripping the United States of its top-tier AAA credit rating, a move that over time could ripple through markets worldwide by pushing up borrowing costs and making it more difficult to secure a lasting recovery.

It cited the acrimonious debate in Washington on raising the debt ceiling and near political paralysis over the best way to reduce the its $14.3 trillion debt, which on the current trajectory could climb above 100 percent of U.S. national output this decade.

President Barack Obama called on lawmakers once again on Saturday to set aside partisan politics and work together and to put the nation's fiscal house in order and stimulate the stagnant economy.

But the most immediate concern for financial markets was the debt crisis in the euro zone, where yields on Italian and Spanish debt have soared to 14-year highs on political wrangling and doubts over the vigor of budget cuts.

The European Central Bank was scheduled to hold a rare Sunday conference call. Markets are anxiously looking for the central bank to start buying Italian and Spanish debt on Monday to stabilize prices, a move that has split the ECB governing council.

Investors saw the ECB's failure to include Italy and Spain in a relaunch of its bond purchases late last week as a sign of the depth of political divisions over the role of the euro zone currency. German officials want to see stiffer austerity programs in place before the ECB would shoulder more Italian and Spanish debt. The danger is that further pressure on Italian and Spanish bonds could undermine an already damaged European banking system and lock Italy, the world's eighth largest economy, out of the market.

Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, his government weakened by infighting, ruled out early elections to stem market panic. "This has never been an option," Berlusconi said. Instead he has pledged to bring forward austerity measures and balance the budget by 2013, a year ahead of schedule -- steps the ECB will consider to gauge whether to buy its bonds.

S&P's one-notch downgrade of the U.S. sovereign credit rating to AA-plus, while not totally unexpected, adds another level of uncertainty. Loss of gold-plated status for the world's benchmark interest rate risks pushing up borrowing costs on everything from car loans, mortgages and corporate debt to government bonds worldwide.

"However justified, S&P couldn't have picked a worse time to downgrade the U.S.," said Rabobank in a note to clients.

A senior European diplomatic source said the U.S. downgrade, coupled with Europe's problems, raised the need for international policy coordination. G7 finance ministers and central bankers of the major industrialized nations were to hold talks by telephone on either Saturday or Sunday, the source said. Their deputies from the broader G20 were due to hold a call on Saturday evening, a Brazilian finance ministry source said.

A U.K. official said "senior officials" also would talk late on Saturday. There was no indication of whether a statement would be issued by G7 or G20 policymakers, the usual method by which they lay out policy steps designed to soothe markets or provide them with direction.

DEBT ADDICTION

China, the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, took the world's economic superpower to task for allowing its fiscal house to get into such disarray. It also revived its calls for a new stable global reserve currency to replace the U.S. dollar, gaining a sympathetic ear in the United Kingdom.

"The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone," China's official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.

Xinhua scorned the United States for a "debt addiction" and "short sighted" political wrangling. China, it said, "has every right now to demand the United States address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China's dollar assets."

China and Japan have called for coordinated action to avert a new worldwide financial crisis. India's Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told reporters: "There is no need to unnecessarily press the panic button."

Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager said: "I am in constant contact with colleagues in other countries and am following the development of the financial markets closely."

Recrimination flew thick and fast among U.S. politicians over its debt downgrade, with each side seeking to blame the other for the impasse over how to solve the fiscal crisis.

Senator Jim Demint, a Republican, said Obama should demand the resignation of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

In contrast, French Finance Minister Francois Baroin said France had faith in the United States to get out of this "difficult period." Friday's U.S. unemployment numbers were better than expected and so things were heading in the right direction, he said.

"One should not dramatize, one needs to remain cool-headed, one should look at the fundamentals," he told France's iTele.

"There is no need for panic," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. "We will see in August, and maybe more intensively in September what the effects for the world economy will be."

(Additional reporting by Isabel Versiani and Brian Winter in Brasilia, Laura MacInnis in Washington, and other Reuters bureaux worldwide; Writing by Angus MacSwan and Stella Dawson; Editing by Eric Walsh)

Asif Khan, ABR
Member of Re/Max Hall of Fame
Re/Max All-Stars Realty Inc., Brokerage
905-888-6222

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PM wishes Canadian Muslims a blessed month as Ramadan starts

Via 680News:

TORONTO, Ont. - Today marks the first day of Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and a special time when participating Muslims fast during daylight hours.

To mark the first day of Ramadan, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a statement to all Canadians observing the holy period.

"Today marks the beginning of Ramadan, a time of spiritual commitment, devotion and self-sacrifice for people of the Muslim faith," Harper said. "During this sacred holy month, Muslims in Canada and around the world fast from sunrise to sunset, abstaining from food, drink and other daily routines with a view to strengthening their faith through reflection, humility and patience."

The word "Ramadan" is derived from an Arabic word for intense heat or scorched ground and shortness of food and drink.

"(Ramadan) is also a special time when Muslims gather with family and friends, sharing meals and providing support to those less fortunate," Harper said. "Laureen and I wish Canadians observing Ramadan a blessed month and peace and happiness throughout the year."

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