4 of 19 Banks Fail ‘Stress’ Test

Daily Real Estate News | Wednesday, March 14, 2012

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Four of the the country’s 19 largest banks do not have enough capital to withstand another economic downturn, if one occurs, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest stress test for banks.  

The four banks at risk named in the report are Citigroup, SunTrust, Ally Financial, and MetLife. 

The hypothetical stress test, conducted annually by the Federal Reserve but not usually released publicly, analyzes if banks could weather the storm if the economy saw a 21 percent reduction in home prices, 13 percent unemployment, and a 50 percent drop in stock prices. The test aims to see which banks would be able to continue to lend money to individual and businesses even if such catastrophic losses occurred. 

For any banks that fail the stress test, the Fed can force them to raise money, such as by selling additional stock or issuing debt. 

For the banks that did pass, they are able to raise their dividends and take action in luring more investors to their stocks. This year’s results are “clearly good news — the U.S. banking system can now withstand a quite severe recession without falling over,” Douglas Elliott, a fellow at Brookings Institution, told the Associated Press. Among the banks that passed the stress test are U.S. Bancorp, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.

Source: “Federal Reserve Annual Stress Test Fails 4 of 19 Big Banks,” The Associated Press (March 12, 2012)

Pricing your home realistically will most certainly get potential buyers through the door, but how do you get them to fall in love with the home? A recent article at U.S. News & World Report offers some of the following tips for sellers in enhancing their home’s appeal. 

1. Add curb appeal: “Make sure the house is cleared of winter clutter, that windows are washed, that the front door is painted or clean,” says Brad Knapp, regional vice president for the National Association of REALTORS® for Ohio and Michigan. “You have to give the house good curb appeal.”  
2. Declutter: Remove clutter from the home so that buyers can actually see what all the home has to offer. Any excess belongings of the sellers should be stored in the garage or in a storage unit. 
3. Be careful not to offend: “Hunters and fisherman often have game hanging on the walls,” Knapp notes. “Some people are offended, so get that off the walls and into the garage.”
4. Consider staging: “It might behoove [sellers] to hire a professional stager to help them,” says Robert Simon, a professor at Cleveland State University. “You have to get it right so it looks lived in, but definitely not cluttered.”
5. Complete routine maintenance: Make sure your sellers complete any routine maintenance projects before the home is listed. Also, sellers need to realize that “people don’t care if you spent $15,000 fixing the roof. It’s worth nothing,” Simon says. “The market expects the roof to be in tip-top shape. You have to go above and beyond.”

Small Business owners can use cool new visual technology tools to showcase their business.

My first camera was an AGFA 35 which at that time was a leading edge “film camera”. As a kid I remember the thrill of going to a camera store to buy the camera with my dad and my brother. How times have changed!

Little did I know that my phone would now be my camera of choice. I have a Samsung Galaxy S 2 and it takes 8MP pictures and uploads them in real-time to various social networks.

We are so lucky that the process of taking a visual picture of the business from “click to share” has become a very easy process. Your customers are doing it. See all the pictures on Flickr for the search term Whole Foods .

Also look at the results for a Google Image search for Whole Foods Now think about all the times you had a great happy moment in your business -an arrival of a new product, a happy customer, a colorful holiday display, anything that conjures up a image in your mind.

Folks like to see pictures. I visited Dubai last summer and watched a lot of videos and saw a lot of pictures as we were planning our visit. We chose the hotel after seeing the pictures and also the activities we wanted to do while we were there.

Everyday billions of videos are uploaded and watched on YouTube. The same with photos – Facebook, Flickr, Instagram, twitpic are some of the popular sites for photo social networking. A newcomer Pinterest is getting a lot of buzz and traction. You should check it out.

Advantages of sharing photos from your business

• Ability to increase the “findability” of your business in search results. Along with text results, search engines show image andvideo results as well
• Showcase your products through images
• Humanize your business by showing pictures of the personalities behind the business
• If there is a special occasion make sure you have pictures to show future customers

Things to do with your pictures

• Group them and tag your visual content. A tag is an important piece of information you are giving a photo or a video to enable people searching to find your picture easily
• Add a link to your website for people to get more information about your business
• If you would like other people to use the pictures and link back to your website , licence your pictures as Creative Commons. This is a good strategy to get nbound links and to spread your content further (not a good strategy if you are in the professional photography business)

Work flow to upload pictures

• If you are uploading pictures from your phone you can use several apps to share them with your friends. A word of caution here is that you should make sure the pictures are appropirate and have been tagged properly.
• Share your pictures or videos in networks where you have more followers.
• Use tools like Google’s Picasa to import from your camera and organize them.

If you are taking pictures of people within your business it may be a good idea to get their consent. Docstoc has some sample Photography release forms. I am not a lawyer so I would recommend that you to get some advice on this.

Another use of uploading pictures/videos to social networks is that you can use these picures or videos on your website by embedding them into your website and save space.

Have fun showing the world the visual side of your business. Let us know how you use visual tools to create awareness of your business.

Author: Shashi Bellamkonda     Shashi Bellamkonda on the Web Shashi Bellamkonda on Twitter Shashi Bellamkonda on LinkedIn Shashi Bellamkonda on Google Plus Shashi Bellamkonda RSS Feed

Shashi Bellamkonda currently oversee all social media and public relations activities at Network Solutions, a firm that helps small businesses start and market their businesses on the Web. In this role, he has compiled an impressive record of achievements that includes transforming the company’s Web presence,… View full profile

This article originally appeared on Wood Street News & Blog and has been republished with permission.

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