timeshare news

A new Chairman is scheduled to assume command of the Federal Reserve. How will this affect the timeshare market?

Do you remember who was Chairman of the Federal Reserve before Alan Greenspan spent eighteen years in the job?

Neither does anyone else.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul A. Volcker, has not slipped from our memories because he failed to leave his mark on the American economy. Volcker in fact, is credited with taking runaway US inflation from an ugly 9% in 1980 to a highly tolerable 3.2% by 1983.

It’s just that Alan Greenspan has been the chief watchdog of the American economy for such a long time—two and a half Bushes, one Reagan, and a Clinton, to be exact. We apparently assumed that despite the absence of a clutch bag and a tiara, Greenspan, was like one of the British royals, and would hold the job forever.

Not true. On January 31, 2006, Alan Greenspan will pass the torch to Chairman-nominee, Ben Bernanke. Like Greenspan, Volcker, and all who have gone before him, Bernanke will face the challenges of balancing healthy growth with an appropriately healthy measure of inflation.

The strategy is pretty simple: when prices go too high, the Fed pushes up interest rates. We stop buying things on borrowed money, and prices come back down. Of course, it’s not really simple at all. Especially since the US Federal Reserve doesn’t actually control any part of our economy except interest rates. The ups and downs in our financial system are a mixture of backlash response to changing interest rates and pure chance.

Paul Volcker accomplished no monetary miracle other than the predictable result that occurred when the Reserve temporarily kicked interest rates into double-digit numbers in order to bring inflationary growth under control once again. Alan Greenspan has been using this same technique in moderation throughout his time at the helm, and using it aggressively since June 2004, when the Federal Reserve started tightening the screws on borrowing and lending.

In the summer of 2004, the federal funds rate (the interest rate at which banks loan money to each other) was at an amazing low 1%. The prime lending rate (the interest rate at which banks loan money to consumers) was sitting at only 4%. So Greenspan and his merry men began nudging up the interest rates, in tiny, palatable quarter points. And Bernanke will have no choice, but to follow the plan—at least for a little while. After all, he can’t start out appearing to be soft on inflation.

If you are buying real estate—whether it is a new house, office building, vacation home, or timeshare property—and you are planning to borrow money for your purchase, it is probably better to take out that loan now than to wait until the first or second quarters of 2006. On the flip side, if you are the seller, this may be a good time to get your property on the market, while buyers can take advantage of current interest rates.

No real magic ever happens at the Federal Reserve. No one gets sawn in half or even pulls a scraggly rabbit out of a top hat. But when it comes to juggling acts, Bernanke has his work cut out for him filling the shoes of Greenspan and Volcker.

Combining results from sources like Google News and Yahoo! News, our new Timeshare News channel will provide instant access to the latest news stories from the world of timeshare.

One of the great things about our blog software is that it allows for the hosting of separate channels, in which we can create syndicated feeds from specific search results. By making subtle adjustments to the query criteria, we can offer a channel composed of the latest timeshare news found on the biggest online news sites.

The end result is our new “Timeshare News” channel. We’re still tweaking the query criteria, so bear in mind it could be several days before we get the kind of results we want. At this time, the feed is picking up a variety of old stories, some of which are seemingly random. This means we have to adjust our filter to allow for only the freshest, most relevant news stories in this channel. You can view our progress on this channel by clicking the “Timeshare News” link in the upper-right-hand corner of the Timeshare Owners’ Blog homepage.

Once these details are finalized, this channel has the potential to gather an impressive quantity of timeshare news onto one syndicated webpage. Ultimately, one will have a hard time finding a higher concentration of timeshare news stories anywhere else on the internet.

Stay tuned for more upcoming new features from the Timeshare Owners’ Blog!

Cendant’s decision to split itself into four publicly traded companies has many folks wondering what Cendant will do next.

For what we can assume to be a wide variety of reasons, Cendant Corporation announced on October 24 that a plan has been approved which will ultimately separate Cendant into four separate publicly traded companies by next summer. Cendant itself describes the break-up as a strategy to increase shareholder value, while some cynically say that the giant conglomerate is insulating certain of its holdings from possible legal trouble. Regardless of the reasons why, Cendant has been very busy in the past few weeks, possibly accelerating the break-up and reorganizing its corporate structure.

As Cendant is one of the major forces in timeshare today, timeshare owners and prospective timeshare buyers would do well to keep up-to-date with these stories. Google News is a good resource, as one can track these stories by date, as they happen. Cendant’s original press release gives some details on the intent behind the de-merger as well as the possible future fate of these companies.

Don’t think this story affects you? Not only is Cendant heavily involved with timeshares around the world, this corporation also owns an impressive share of the global travel, lodging, and leisure industries. Cendant is a massive conglomerate which currently numbers a wide array of subsidiary companies among its holdings. Take a look at the Hoover’s fact sheet for Cendant Corp., and you’ll see what I mean.

Guest speakers to include a number of CEOs and other major players in the industry.

From today, October 17, through October 19, The Peabody hotel in Orlando hosts the seventh annual Timeshare and Resort Investment conference. This gathering has attracted some of the most successful, high-profile companies and individuals representing the vacation and hospitality industries.

Timeshare owners might find some interesting information in these presentations, but for the most part these sessions are geared toward investors and developers who want to break into this lucrative industry. Fractional ownership, condo hotels and other recent timeshare trends will be explored, as well as legal issues and marketing challenges.

The list of speakers is very impressive, including a number of CEOs from the biggest names in the timeshare world.

As I glanced at the schedule of presentations, I didn’t notice any sessions specifically dealing with industry ethics. It might be a good idea for future conferences to devote more coverage to this issue.

This conference follows close behind the latest Timeshare and Resort Investment conference, held in Dubai in late September of this year. 

For more on the Timeshare and Resort Investment conferences, visit the official site at http://www.timeshareinvestment.com/orlando/orlando.html.