This Roy Lichtenstein Painting Could Fetch A Record Breaking $45 Million At Auction

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Image: via Christie's

Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein's I Can See the Whole Room!...and There's Nobody in It! is expected to sell for a whopping $35 to $45 million at a Christie's auction in New York next month.

The painting, a comic book-style work that depicts a man looking through a peephole, first set a record when it sold at a 1988 Christie's sale for $2.09 million. It was expected to go for between $800,000 and $1.2 million.

The 1961 work is also poised to break the current record for the most expensive Lichtenstein work ever sold at auction. The current titleholder is “Ohhh ... Alright ...,” which sold for $42.6 million at last year's pop art sale.

I Can See the Whole Room!...is the highlight of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary sale, scheduled for November 8.

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A TIGER COMEBACK? Woods Broke A Record At A Florida Golf Course Yesterday

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Image: AP

It's been a seriously rough couple of years for Tiger Woods.

But there might be hope for the unlucky golfer. Woods went golfing at The Medalist in Florida yesterday and shot a 62, beating the previous record by two (Tim Rosaforte via Yahoo! Sports).

This is a good sign for Woods since he hasn't shot under 70 since coming back from injury.

Hopefully it will carry over for Woods at the Frys.com tournament this week.

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Airlines Squeezed Out A Record $1.83 Billion In Fees Last Quarter

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Check your wallet: The U.S. Department of Transportation reports it only took three months for airlines to rack up $1.38 billion in fees.

The fees fall into two catagories: checked baggage fees and reservation change fees.

BTS reports U.S. carriers collected $783,696,000 million worth of baggage fees this quarter, compared to $104,681,000 during the same time in 2007.

Topping this year's list was American Airlines, which earned $197,971,000 in baggage fees alone.

Reservation change fees cost travelers almost $600 million dollars this quarter, nearly $400 more than they paid in 2007. As a result of such fees, airlines are on pace to generate $5.5 billion this year, not including holiday travel spikes–a 300% increase from 2007.

Thankfully, the government is pissed about this practice too, and in July the Department of Transportation drafted a proposal requiring airlines to disclose more information on what fees are being collected and how they're going about it.

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Sebastian Janikowski Just Tied The Record For The Longest Field Goal In NFL History

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Two Monday Night Football games means an extra chance for amazing and historic play.

Tom Brady had a 99-yard touchdown pass earlier tonight and in the second half of the double header, Oakland kicker Sebastian Janikowski nailed a 63-yard field goal, tying the NFL record shared by Tom Dempsey and Jason Elam.

Both Elam and Janikowski booted their kicks in the thin air of Denver. Check out tonight's drive that ended the first half:

Video via ESPN

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The Average Loan In Foreclosure Has Been Delinquent For A Record 599 Days

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LPS Applied Analytics released their July Mortgage Monitor Report today. From LPS: LPS' Mortgage Monitor Report Shows Average Loan in Foreclosure Is Delinquent for Record 599 Days; First-Time Foreclosure Starts Near Three-Year Lows

The July Mortgage Monitor report released by Lender Processing Services, Inc. shows that foreclosure timelines continue their steady upward trend, as a payment has not been made on the average loan in foreclosure in a record 599 days. Of the nearly 1.9 million loans that are 90 or more days delinquent but not yet in foreclosure, 42 percent have not made a payment in more than a year with an average delinquency of 397 days, also a new record. At the same time, first-time foreclosure starts in June were near three-year lows, and first-time delinquencies accounted for only 25 percent of new delinquent inventory.

As of the end of June, 4.1 million loans were either 90 or more days delinquent or in foreclosure, as delinquencies remain two times and foreclosures eight times pre-crisis levels. Foreclosure sales remain constricted, with foreclosure starts outnumbering sales by a factor of almost three to one.

According to LPS, 8.34% of mortgages were delinquent in July, up from 8.15% in June, and down from 9.31% in July 2010.

LPS reports that 4.11% of mortgages were in the foreclosure process, down slightly from 4.12% in June, and up from 3.74% in July 2010. This gives a total of 12.45% delinquent or in foreclosure. It breaks down as:

• 2.48 million loans less than 90 days delinquent.
• 1.90 million loans 90+ days delinquent.
• 2.16 million loans in foreclosure process.

For a total of 6.54 million loans delinquent or in foreclosure in July.

This graph shows the total delinquent and in-foreclosure rates since 1995.

The total delinquent rate has increased recently (part of the increase is seasonal), but the rate has fallen to 8.34% from the peak in January 2010 of 10.97%. A normal rate is probably in the 4% to 5% range, so there is a long long ways to go.

However the in-foreclosure rate at 4.11% is barely below the peak rate of 4.21% in March 2011. There are still a large number of loans in this category (about 2.16 million) - and the average loan in foreclosure has been delinquent for a record 599 days!

This graph provided by LPS Applied Analytics shows the number of loans entering the foreclosure process each month and the number of foreclosure sales .

Looking at this graph, one might expect the number of loans in the foreclosure process to be increasing sharply since there are so many more starts than sales.

And there are very few cures too - what is happening is a large number of loans each month have been moving from "in foreclosure" back to "90+ days delinquent" status - so the number of loans "in foreclosure" hasn't increased recently.

The third graph shows mortgage origination by the original term.

This graph is interesting because of the surge in shorter duration loans.

This is probably being driven by two factors: 1) older borrowers are hoping to pay off their loans as part of their retirement planning and are taking out 15 year mortgages, and 2) many jumbo borrowers are probably taking out 5 year loans with a balloon payment since 30 year jumbo rates are much higher.

Earlier:
• Case Shiller: Home Prices increased in June
• Real House Prices and Price-to-Rent

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UBS's George Magnus: Here Are 5 Ways To Fix Near Record High Income Inequality

George Magnus, a senior economic adviser at UBS Investment Bank, says we're facing a crisis in capitalism and policymakers should read up on Karl Marx for dealing with it, he wrote in an Op-Ed for Bloomberg.

Magnus writes that as companies pursue greater profits and productivity, they are trimming their workforces. (Notice how his own firm, UBS, announced last week it was cutting 3,500 jobs as part of cost-cutting efforts.)

This has created a crisis -- U.S. income inequality is now close to its highest level since the 1920s.

To address the crisis, "policy makers have to place jobs at the top of the economic agenda, and consider other unorthodox measures." 

Here's five things he says policymakers should do:

1. Cut employer payroll taxes and create fiscal incentives to encourage companies to hire people.

2.  Allow for eligible households to restructure mortgage debt, or swap some debt forgiveness with future payments to lenders.

3. Well-capitalized and well-structured banks should be allowed some temporary capital adequacy relief to try to get new credit flowing, especially to smaller companies.

4. In dealing with the euro zone debt crisis, European creditors should extend the lower interest rates and longer payment terms recently proposed for Greece.

5.  Instead of using just bond-buying programs to defend against deflation and stagnation, central banks should target a growth rate of nominal economic output.

Read the full Op-Ed here >>

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German Electric Car Goes A Record 1,013 Miles On Single Charge

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The latest in electric vehicle (EV) technology is the epitome of the saying slow and steady wins the race — at least for now. Though the German engineered EV nicknamed “Boozer” only goes 28 miles per hour, it went further than any EV on a single charge.

Created in collaboration with Germany’s University of Applied Sciences in Offenburg and other academic groups, Schluckspecht, which in German means “heavy drinker,” was able to go 1,013 miles  in 36 hours on a single charge. That’s huge compared to EVs available to the public like the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf, which go 100 miles or less. According to Popular Science, Boozer even beat the previous record of the Mira EV, which was created by the Japan Electric Vehicle Club in 2010 and went 623.23 miles in 27.5 hours on a single charge.

Although Boozer only seats one, making it a poor option for the average person’s use, the technology could be translated for future EVs, according to Popular Science:

Instead of an internal engine and transmission, the car has two wheel-mounted hub motors, which the Schluckspecht team first developed five years ago.

. . .

Engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics built the car’s featherweight chassis [700 pounds according to Consumerist], designed especially for EVs. The car has 14 lithium-cobalt battery packs, providing 23 kilowatt-hours of battery capacity. It moves at just 28 MPH, but the trade off is stamina — a major hurdle for electric vehicles in this country and Europe.

But how did Boozer get it’s name, especially if it runs on a battery? Boozer was named after the gas-guzzling, first car developed by this team in 1998. The same team has been building prototypes for more than a decade.

This post originally appeared on The Blaze.

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