Home prices in Manhattan have remained largely immune from the housing crisis gripping the US… until now.

According to Reuters, the New York real-estate market is showing a significant reduction in new deals as Wall Street sheds staff to reduce costs.

“For the most part, the subprime crisis is past its inflection point,” says Eric Roseman in the Offshore A-Letter. “What matters now is how and when other credit indicators normalize.”

Subprime has found a new victim, reports Bloomberg: municipal bonds. Already, the amount of municipal bonds that have defaulted this year is three times that of 2007.

So far this year, $736 million in municipal bonds have defaulted. That doesn’t necessarily mean they didn’t pay investors; they may have just drawn down reserves. That’s what happens just before they stop making payments to bondholders.

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An unexpected increase in German business confidence sent the euro to a one-month high versus the dollar yesterday (Wednesday) on speculation that the European Central Bank could be forced to hike interest rates to combat inflation.

Lenders have severely cut back on lending. Since last June banks all over the world were forced to write-off $323 billion in bad debt. There’s much more to come.

From 1982 until the first half of 2007, global bank stocks led the secular long-term bull market in company profits. Long-term interest rates plunged from over 21% in 1981 to a low of just 3.5% in 2004. As a result, earnings at the majority of banks were literally stupendous, including huge dividend increases and massive shareholder buybacks.