Bits Bucket for February 12, 2013
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Wharton School economist Jeremy Siegel, author of two classics, “Stocks For the Long Run” and “The Future for Investors,” is one of America’s most respected financial minds. He recently told cable channel CNBC that Dow 15,000 was “definite,” with 50-50 odds of Dow 17,000 by year-end 2013.
He even doubled down in Kiplinger’s: “My Dow 17,000 projection may turn out to be too timid.” Now that’s real bull, a 20%-plus gain for 2013.
Dow 15,000? Dow 17,000? Irrational exuberance? DNA flaw? Delusional? Or are these predictions just typical marketing hype calculated to drive Main Street’s 95 million investors into Wall Street casinos for another end-of-a-bull-market slaughter?
Whoa, stop, take a deep breath before we dissect Siegel’s over-the-top Dow 17,000 prediction. First, a refresher course in basic market psychology. Let’s remind ourselves: There’s a profound difference between the DNA, brains and biases of bulls versus bears.
A bull brain has a massive blind spot. They can’t see the light-at-the-end-of-a-tunnel. Only short-term profits. Wall Street makes money on the action, on volatility. Whether up and down generates opportunities and profits. Bulls blindly hang on till the profitable last drop. Bears do see the light. But once lured into the game, they’re blinded by the light. Trapped as both ride over the cliff.
One more time, Wall Street will push everyone to the edge … and over
…
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” This comment of Mark Twain applies with great force to policy on money and banking. Some are sure that the troubled western economies suffer from a surfeit of money. Meanwhile, orthodox policy makers believe that the right way to revive economies is by forcing private spending back up. Almost everybody agrees that monetary financing of governments is lethal. These beliefs are all false.
When arguing that monetary policy is already too loose, critics point to exceptionally low interest rates and the expansion of central bank balance sheets. Yet Milton Friedman himself, doyen of postwar monetary economists, argued that the quantity of money alone matters.
Measures of broad money have stagnated since the crisis began, despite ultra-low interest rates and rapid growth in the balance sheets of central banks. Data on “divisia money” (a well-known way of aggregating the components of broad money), computed by the Center for Financial Stability in New York, show that broad money (M4) was 17 per cent below its 1967-2008 trend in December 2012. The US has suffered from famine, not surfeit.
As Claudio Borio of the Bank for International Settlements puts it in a recent paper, “The financial cycle and macroeconomics: what have we learnt?”, “deposits are not endowments that precede loan formation; it is loans that create deposits”. Thus, when banks cease to lend, deposits stagnate. In the UK, the lending counterpart of M4 was 17 per cent lower at the end of 2012 than in March 2009. (See charts.)
Those convinced hyperinflation is around the corner believe that banks expand their lending in direct response to their holdings of reserves at the central bank. Under a gold standard, reserves are indeed limited. Banks need to look at them rather carefully.
Under fiat (that is, government-made) money, however, the supply of reserves is potentially infinite. True, central banks can pretend reserves are limited. In practice, however, central banks will advance reserves without limit to any solvent bank (and, as we have seen, to insolvent ones). With central banks able to supply reserves at will, the constraints on lending are solvency and profitability. Expanding banking reserves is an ineffective way to increase lending, not a dangerous one.
In normal circumstances, bank lending responds to changes in interest rates set by central banks. But, as Lord Turner, chairman of the UK’s Financial Services Authority, argued in an important lecture given last week, “Debt, Money and Mephistopheles”, this lever is broken.
The response of policy makers is to try even harder to make the private sector lend and spend. Central banks can indeed drive the prices of bonds, equities, foreign currency and other assets to the moon, thereby stimulating private spending. But, as Lord Turner also argues, the costs of this approach might turn out to be high. There is “a danger that in seeking to escape from the deleveraging trap created by past excesses we may build up future vulnerabilities”. William White, former BIS chief economist, expressed a similar concern in a paper on “Ultra Easy Monetary Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences”, last year.
Alternatives exist. As Lord Turner notes, a group of economists at the University of Chicago responded to the Depression by arguing for severing the link between the supply of credit to the private sector and creation of money. Henry Simons was the main proponent. But Irving Fisher of Yale University supported the idea, as did Friedman in “A Monetary and Fiscal Framework for Economic Stability”, published in 1948.
The essence of this plan was 100 per cent backing of deposits by public debt. This scheme, they argued, would eliminate the instability of private credit and debt, dramatically reduce overt public debt and largely eliminate the many defects of current forms of private debt. “The Chicago Plan Revisited”, a recent working paper from the International Monetary Fund, concludes that the scheme would indeed bring these benefits.
…
CS grenades are a metal canister with milspec nato threaded fuse at one end. They burn hot enough that you can’t pick one up once ignited, but they don’t glow red. FWIW, the popularity of wall to wall carpet is a likely cause. Remember those 70’s avocado shaggy carpets? Poof!
]]>Realize that these elected saviors are laughing all the way to the bank, and they’re dining on shrimp scampi while they expect you to survive on disabled gerbil. What you need is a television with a Lexan laminate plate so you could bust a few caps or throw something at these liars.
Heck, need another dark beer already. Someone should outlaw these darned 12-oz bottles.
]]>Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
uropean societies typically assume that humanitarian crises only take place in the aftermath of natural disasters, epidemics, wars or civil conflicts.That such a crisis could happen in a European country, especially one that is a member of the European Union, seems out of the question to many of us.
And yet a number of experts would maintain that Greece is currently in the centre of a humanitarian crisis. The head of Médecins du Monde, Nikitas Kanakis, the largest and most prominent NGO in Greece, was among the first to declare it openly. The port area of Perama, near Athens, in particular, is in the midst of a humanitarian disaster. The Medical Society of Athens, the largest professional body of its kind, has even sent a formal letter to the UN asking for intervention.
If this humanitarian crisis has so far been little talked about, there are political reasons why. By acknowledging the severity of the situation, the Greek government and the EU would also have admitted that the current state of affairs has been brought about by the so-called economic “rescue” of Greece. So the authorities have chosen to keep quiet.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/11/greece-humanitarian-crisis-eu
Hey frankie, are you as furious about the shrinking size of Walker’s crisp packets as we are? Here’s some Blighty newz for USA readers:
“U.K. inflation held at the highest rate since May last month and pipeline price pressures increased as crude oil costs rose.
Consumer prices rose 2.7 percent from a year earlier, the Office for National Statistics said today in London, matching the median estimate of 36 economists in a Bloomberg news survey.
U.K. inflation has been boosted in recent months by price increases by some of Britain’s biggest electricity and gas companies. The pound’s decline is also adding upward pressure by increasing import costs.
Today’s report also showed that retail-price inflation, a measure used in wage negotiations, accelerated to 3.3 percent in January, the fastest in nine months, from 3.1 percent in December.”
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-12/u-k-inflation-remains-at-2-7-as-price-pressures-increase-1-.html
No I’m more concerned that I might be eligible for the Grand National at Aintree!
A desolate abattoir in a remote corner of Romania was last night revealed as one of the main sources of the horse meat in our supermarkets.
The slaughterhouse dominates the tiny village of Roma, in the north east of the country, and makes no secret of the hundreds, if not thousands, of horses it butchers each year.
Visitors to the plant, which employs a fifth of the village’s 1,000 inhabitants, are greeted by an enormous hoarding displaying a grazing horse next to a cow.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2277223/Horsemeat-central-Inside-abattoir-Romania-revealed-main-source-contaminated-products.html#ixzz2KhWfABHX
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Considering the above mentioned inflation in UK, wouldn’t the horse burgers be considered an acceptable economic substitute good?
No and neither is Donkey.
just look at how they handled bosnia.
The amazing lack of forethought presented in this piece used to surprise me.
It no longer does.
Most people in thwe world, including many of those in positions of authority or power, are stupid. Those that aren’t are corrupt.
“Authorities” often keep quiet. Including European authorities.
BTW, who else here is aware of what went on in Sri Lanka in 2008-2009? Talk about a humanitarian crisis that’s been swept under the rug by “authorities”.
Is it time for another HBB meetup yet? I’m scared to see what it would be like with the agressive “new blood”. Maybe we could talk some of the old timers into coming out again.
There’s a possibility of something in the DC area in May.
i live in the DC area…who’s bringing the popcorn?
I will bring Berger cookies to represent my hood.
I’ll come to DC area meetup….
I may be out to DC in May. Will keep y’all posted.
I’ll be in DC in May. That would be perfect.
I may be able to do DC in May…
Some face-to-face time with other board members would surely help return some civility to the proceedings. That and a good tiki bar….
It might be fun to time a meet-up around one of the NAR’s annual conferences:
May 13-18 Midyear Meeting and Trade Expo - Washington, DC
Nov. 8-11 REALTORS® Conference and Expo - San Francisco, CA
Now THAT is an awesome suggestion.
Respectfully, DC proper is not a good place to be during expos!
Any locals know if Georgetown / American U / Catholic U / Marymount / George Washington U rent out any dorm space as tourist slots during the summer? That might be the sanest alternative, pricewise, for Slim. She could still walk around in Georgetown/DC. I’m not sure you could slip a bike through the crowds, what with the conventioneers and tourists, though.
I’m back after four years and even though I turned off msnbc after the election, evidently conservatives are still racist. I thought that was just a myth. Conservatives didn’t create hate, they just question authority.
Welcome back, hopefully the first of many.
evidently conservatives are still racist
Yep! All conservatives are still racist!
You’re obviously one of those liberals into diversity and tolerance who can paint groups of people with a broad, intolerant brush and not see the hypocrisy/irony of it.
hell I thought she was kidding.
Oh, you might be right! If so, I certainly apologize!
Accepted!
Koch Planning Tea Party Since 2002, New Research Paper Reveals
Shattering the public perception that the Tea Party is a spontaneous popular citizens movement, a new academic paper provides evidence that an organization founded by David and Charles Koch, attempted to launch the Tea Party movement in 2002.
The peer-reviewed study appearing in the academic journal, Tobacco Control and titled, ‘To quarterback behind the scenes, third party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party, shows that the group Citizens for a Sound Economy launched a Tea Party movement website, http://www.usteaparty.com, that went live in 2002.
According to the website DeSmogBlog.com, who broke this story earlier today, CSE was founded in 1984 by the infamous Koch Brothers, David and Charles Koch in 1984. David Koch sat on the board of CSE for many years and the group’s first president, Richard Fink, went on to become a senior VP at Koch Industries.
The common public understanding of the origins of the Tea Party is that it is a popular grassroots uprising that began with anti-tax protests in 2009.
ISTR reading that during the Bush administration, the workplace raids targeting illegal immigrants came to a screeching halt after a Koch-owned factory was raided. I think it was in Ohio.
the tea party would have never begun had it not been for the housing bubble.
Hi Ann!
I moved to KS. Jo bought a house. PB is now Cantankerous Intellectual Bomb Thrower. Ben is saving the world one foreclosure at a time. And Allena published a book! I’m thinking a lot more has happened in the last four years, but those are the highlights off the top of my head.
How’s the camera?
-S-
Hi RE bear! Thanks for the update and greeting.
Tucson. Any time. Just give me a holler and we’ll meet somewhere.
Flafstaff?
Flagstaff?
Flagstaff sounds fun in spring!
Bink are you still in Hawaii? (I’m terrible at remembering who is where.) I’d vote for Hawaii! Or Kansas. Or Eureka Springs, Arkansas which is a fantastic town about 2.5 hours from me.
I hope the DC people get together again. It was a small, but fun group!
Yes, I’m still in Hawaii. We’re planning a trip with the baby back to DC in May.
“socialists” who play harpsichord and ride bikes with rainbow streamers aren’t dangerous
Until they run out of other people’s money to spend.
See also Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” to learn what Obama wants for USA.
Why even bother with gulags when you’ve got drones?
We bring the gulag to you.
“’socialists’ who play harpsichord and ride bikes with rainbow streamers aren’t dangerous” — unless they’ve a mini-14 slung over their shoulder and mayhem in their heart.
FTR: I play harpsichord, but only tie streamers on horse tails. (They don’t have spokes, you see….)
“they’ve a mini-14 slung over their shoulder ”
guns are illegal in D.C., so i am defenseless whilst I ride along Massachusetts Ave. hopefully union goon thugs will not take advantage.
mini-14 slung over their shoulder
I’m glad you have a friendly brown gun instead of an evil black one :-).
Do you play the big one?
You must be rich, those things are like $5000.00?
In my youts, Spookster, in my youts. I was never a huge fan of Haydn anyway, but it was fun play Adams Family sonatas….
How about Alice Coletrane?
You really need the CD and a fatty to hear whats going on; but this recording is a good example.
Her piano and harp technique are very similar. She makes the transition seem easy.
I had no idea John Coletrane married up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smisXZ7KVpo
yes she was formidable in her own right.
thanks for the link, Spook.
JFYI: The harpsichord is the hammered forerunner of the modern piano(forte). I still have my great aunt’s concert harp, but my fingers would be bleeding three measures into Coltrane’s rifs….
This is me playing my badassed electric lyre in the Boston Symphony. I’ve since shaved off all my hair.
We’re really good but could use a talented harpsichordist though.
http://images.wikia.com/memoryalpha/en/images/7/7a/Adams_instrument.jpg
Trelane,
Do you wear your tunic to work or only when you’re playing your harpsichord?
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y28/Sir_Lance/Squire5.jpg
Believe it or not, that actor was a dear friend (and neighbor) of mine. Charlie Napier– in more flicks than Kevin Bacon.
If you bought a house after 1998 you are sitting on a devastating loss from which you can never recover. Sell asap because it will be worth less each subsequent month. 65 percent less.
Where is the anecdotal evidence, or even better, actual data to back up this foundless claim? Is 65% just a catchy number?? If my anecdotal evidence is worth nothing(other than ID ing me as a braggart, whiner, sleazeball, lying, realtor) what is this then besides pure drivel? I am not even a lawyer! Tell me where you got this evidence that you assert and parrot daily and I’ll leave yall alone. Really.
The 65% etc is RAL’s trademark screed; Joe is just mocking RAL.
btw, yesterday RAL was probably referring to ME as the liar/pimp/whatever, not to you. He seems to need it to get through the day.
Not mocking, meme-img. Ral has a good general point. I’ve explained my best guess of how it will play out but it is probabilistic, not black and white.
Cuz that is more accurate than extrapolation from anectdotal evidence from real events which I get skewered for providing?
0 times 0 is 0 and that is your credibility; but you are in and I am out. Find a nice funny cat if you’re looking to spew meaningless memes.
Taxes been good to me this year. $7200 EIC to my family. Not that I don’t need the $$. Teaching the next generation of kids at 20 per don’t pay the bills but this helps us. I have 4 days of HS accounting and business fundamentals coming up. Go figure!
I was saying that an isolated anecdote is worth zero compared to data.
And three anecdotes (your 3 from yesterday) are still zero compared to the data.
Don’t internalize the broader discussion. RAL’s valid point is that the vast majority of people should NOT be buying and should NOT listen to the MSM, realtards, etc.
Look at all the foreclosed lemmings rushing to buy another house after losing their first one. Clearly Americans don’t get it.
My wife is a teacher and I agree that her profession has a great deal more social value than anything I do. At times I am jealous. I am glad it is satisfying for you, I never personally wished you anything bad. And I like hearing your stories, I just wouldn’t substitute them for data or entertain the notion that a few anecdotes should cause me to rethink my #1 rule of HBB: A primary residence is an expense, not an investment.
Thanks Joe
I don’t hold anything against you personally either. Just enjoy the discourse. I am sure you and your wife are decent folk and
wish you the best.
I made lots more money selling vegetables in the organic farming business; but the product of children is much more satisfying to work with for me personally. Some people cant tolerate children; others hate veggies. I had 8 boys having lunch with me every day last week; the geeks, the misfits, the teacher’s pets. Somehow they sensed a kindred spirit in me. It was priceless. I hope some of them remember me as a compassionate soul who took an interest during a time (middle school) when fitting in seems so difficult.
Here is how I came across my last gig at my kids school. This teacher my daughter holds in high esteem and he has been her rock for the last three years.
Some girls(maybe 10 of them) had taken to cutting themselves. This teacher takes things too much to heart. He counselled the girls; then took to cutting the shit out of himself (possible bi-polar episode), was hospitalized for a week and he specifically asked me to help out. I stepped in to help out. So the jabs here, although painful at times, really are not so harmful. Senseless killings around the world and of innocents; and someone here calls me a liar! Wah!
Never would have known I wanted to teach had I not hurt my back and needed to seek out a “desk” job. Found out I get along better with kids than I do adults!
Mike-
What is the social/psychological reward in cutting? (Especially in an adult male?) Is there some sort of group bonding thing (like getting pierced or tramp stamped), or is it a private suicide gesture to be borne alone? Or what?
It seems a relatively new phenomenon. Do you know how it come about?
Do you know how it come about?
After Obama was elected in 2008. Cutting is just part of the Kenyan/Indonesian, voodoo, witch doctor, shaman, trickster, cultural relativism that along with Sharia law and gay marriage, Obama wants to force upon us in his mission to “fundamentally transform” America.
Forward
D’oh! Of course! (slaps forehead) Silly me… I got my scars the old fashioned way.
What is the social/psychological reward in cutting?
Pretty sure it delivers a big dose of brain chemicals that some people are chronically depleted of. It’s hard for them to stop once they discover it. But that’s different from actually trying to commit suicide.
What is the social/psychological reward in cutting?
Often they start doing this after they’r put on psychotropics.
The so-called biological basis of mental illness has never been proven, BTW. The meds don’t cure any “chemical imbalance” but they sure as hell cause one.
” But that’s different from actually trying to commit suicide.”
….unless of course you do 1,000 of them.
D’oh! Of course! (slaps forehead) Silly me… I got my scars the old fashioned way.
And wait until you read ahansen’s book. Much more humor like this.
Well played, Dale. Well played.
The so-called biological basis of mental illness has never been proven, BTW. The meds don’t cure any “chemical imbalance” but they sure as hell cause one.
There are many, many studies documenting both neurochemical and neurobiological correlates to mental illness - enlarged ventricles in schizophrenic patients with negative symptoms, organ-based differences in many disorders including autism, neurochemical imbalances in many, many disorders. Cutters appear to receive a significant serotonin burst that assuages depressive symptoms. The fact is that the brain is a complex organ, so it makes it difficult to pinpoint illnesses to discrete functional deficits, but saying that there is no biological basis for mental illness is misinformed and simplistic drivel.
Hey Oregon RealtLiar….
It’s been demonstrated many times over that a 65% decline from current inflated asking prices of resale housing reflects actual value.
You just don’t like it because it blows a hole in your big lie. Worse yet, you’re too stupid to understand it as JoeSmith as demonstrated with kid gloves.
Dont demonstrate; replicate(show me data that supports your claim; I am not disputing that housing is going to crash again). I am selling my house for goodness sake; I do believe you and am not calling YOU a liar. Does it make you feel good to call me a liar? I hope so. But ask yourself; with the amount of scorn piled upon me here; what on earth would compel me to make stuff up?
The cutting thing; I am perplexed about it.
It became sort of a trend in our school among one boy and several girls in 7th/8th grade. Some research suggests it is done to gain a feeling of control, or to attain temporary relief from anguish. Especially when feeling overwhelmed with new situations or expectations. Some probably do it to “fit in”; as messed up as that sounds.
But it is a relatively new manifestation of teenage angst.
Obviously the teacher that did it has major issues. And did enough of it to end up hospitalized. I suspected an underlying illness in him for a long time as he is quite manic at times; other times down.
He showed up back to work yesterday and the kids noticed that his hands were all sliced up. A reminder to me to not take smallish problems too seriously, not that cutting is a small problem, but it is not suicidal behavior in itself.
When it lands you in the hospital for a week, and you are an adult male; then it is more alarming.
Sorry I can’t shed more light.
It’s already been explained to you and the other debt-junkies time and time again. It’s not that difficult. You just don’t like it.
“Obviously the teacher that did it has major issues.”
I’m surprised that he was allowed back in the classroom; must have a strong union.
Is 65% just a catchy number??
If you say (or post) something often enough, it becomes truth.
Or something like that.
The 65% decline is your loss. No one elses.
Or maybe you just live in it, especially if you bought it pre-bubble and didn’t do moronic things financially. Pay it off for retirement.
Or like us, we paid cash for a modest home, fixed it up (interior, soon exterior) and will live here for under $700/mo (Insurance, Taxes, Maintenance) in So Ca no less, in a nice neighhborhood.
There are many variables.
What kind of law do you practice, Joe?
Where is the data since you say anecdotes are worthless?
I would refer to Professor Schiller for the data. I wholeheartedly agree with his body of work.
A primary residence is an expense, not an investment.
Making money on rentals, after accounting for all costs (including one’s own time, opportunity cost, cost of capital, etc) requires a lot of skill, discipline, and savvy. 98%ish percent of people will not have the right skill set. They may make money over some period of time but will not be able to do it in the long run (after accounting for all costs, see above). A favorable tax situation and local conditions (zoning, regulations, local economy) are also virtually a requirement.
Making money on rentals, after accounting for all costs (including one’s own time, opportunity cost, cost of capital, etc) requires a lot of skill, discipline, and savvy. 98%ish percent of people will not have the right skill set. They may make money over some period of time but will not be able to do it in the long run (after accounting for all costs, see above). A favorable tax situation and local conditions (zoning, regulations, local economy) are also virtually a requirement.
Don’t underestimate the time it takes. Fixing tenant messes and mishaps can eat your days and nights. Not to mention the weekends.
Very true words. One needs to find good tradespeople, pay them decently (not top dollar, but don’t hassle them to get rock bottom either), and send them lots of referrals and other work. They’ll see you as an ongoing concern rather than a one-off job. And they’ll troubleshoot and tell you the best way to do things for the long run. The quickest or cheapest fix is not always the best.
Re: cheapest isn’t always best, no one should attempt landlording who can barely afford to pay their own bills, etc. It’s a disaster waiting to happen. If you’re putting off maintenance and repairs, or if you rush to take rent from a questionable person because you “can’t afford to let the unit sit empty” for a few more weeks (to find a good tenant) you are going to be sheared like a sheep.
“Rent seeking behavior” is an art as well as an economic term.
Too many current investors can’t figure out a simple ROI. I see this daily in my local enclave in Phoenix, where newbie speculators trying to get rich on rent will let properties vacant for months to get the extra $50 they need to make their own mark-to-fantasy return.
Some back of the envelope calculations show that my neighbor has left (so far) $3900 on the table by not renting at $1300/mo vs. waiting the three months for the mythical $1500/mo renter that still hasn’t arrived. I don’t know their cost basis, but they’re losing at least $250/mo on HOA + insurance alone.
Leaving money on the table=surest sign of an amateur or someone who really doesn’t know what they’re doing.
How many millions of house-junkies left money on the table? Millions of them. Dummies.
“I would refer to Professor Schiller for the data. I wholeheartedly agree with his body of work.”
I think Schiller’s same home sale data revolutionized how people look at home prices over time.
However, Professor Shiller still has not responded to my question of how he reconciles the way the government has changed how CPI is measured over time when preparing his 100+ year graph on inflation adjusted home prices…and whether it would change his conclusions…I caught his ear once (he responded to an earlier e-mail I sent that didn’t note such a potential fundamental flaw in his analysis), but he hasn’t given me any answer to my very critical question.
His credibility on the longer-term trend is waning in my mind because of this lack of critical analysis of his own data…too hard to backtrack on his perspective at this time, I suppose.
I was a landlord for a year. I have all the skills. Just like anything, smart people do fine.
I just keep getting out bid on rental props. You make your money the day you buy it (if you buy well)
I am a huge Shiller fan too.
“Just like anything, smart people do fine.”
Not all smart people have the right tolerance level, not all smart people are willing to get their hands dirty for a weekend (or many weekends) to set something up for the long run, not all smart people can “read” people to figure out who might make a decent tenant and who will make a lousy one.
“Some back of the envelope calculations show that my neighbor has left (so far) $3900 on the table by not renting at $1300/mo vs. waiting the three months for the mythical $1500/mo renter that still hasn’t arrived. I don’t know their cost basis, but they’re losing at least $250/mo on HOA + insurance alone.”
Yup.
A gentleman that I know doing this strategy will discount rent pretty significantly for a 6-month lease if he can lease-back to the prior occupant, and avoid all downtime, etc.
Then again though, he comes from a second-generation real estate family, so he understands the math of downtime. When that 6-months is up, activity on the portfolio (rehab, etc.) will be less, with more rental income overall, and he’ll be able to (at his own pace), move these below market occupants to more market-rate renters.
“”Not all smart people have the right tolerance level, not all smart people are willing to get their hands dirty for a weekend (or many weekends) to set something up for the long run, not all smart people can “read” people to figure out who might make a decent tenant and who will make a lousy one.”"
I guess I mean “wise.”
I can do all the above. Not a problem. I guess I mean “wise.” Since you redefined “smart.”
I agree there are times things can work out. You have to define your parameters, not let realtor do the defining. Surely you agree that most Americans are easily duped.
I do government contracting and acquisitions. I work mostly with FAR, NCAA, COCA, and related regs. We advise contractors how to bid, how to challenge prior to bidding (to get the rfp reissued to be more favorable), and how to protest losing a bid or re award. We also defend false claims act qui tan actions.
Most of the clients are defense or information tech. Occasionally a help them do due diligence on acquisition or mergers; our new York office does the actual corporate work.
Ndaa not NCAA. Cica not coca.
Mmmmm, hot chocolate.
Oh, coca/Cica.
I tried like crazy to get my employer on the supply services schedule years ago, but just could not get us through all the hoops.
I’ve heard that the GSA is doing a major weeding of its schedule. Meaning that it may be winnowing the list down to what the government will actually buy.
Context of this conversation: I wanted to get on the GSA Schedule. Don’t think I’ll bother with that effort now. Person telling me about the winnowing agreed.
Ben, you didn’t ban MikeinBend?
Buyout-Boom Shakeout Seen Leaving One in Four to Starve
By David Carey - Feb 12, 2013 12:00 AM ET (bloomibergi)
Private equity, an investing trade plied by 4,500 firms with $3 trillion in assets, is bracing for a shakeout that’s been brewing since the collapse of credit markets choked off a record leveraged-buyout binge.
Firms that attracted an unprecedented $702 billion from investors from 2006 to 2008 must replenish their coffers for future deals and avoid a reduction in fee income when the investment periods on those older funds run out, typically after five years. As many as 708 firms face such deadlines through 2015, according to London-based researcher Preqin Ltd.
…“There will be some carnage,” said Jay Fewel, a senior investment officer for the $73.5 billion Oregon state pension fund in Salem, Oregon, which has been investing in private equity for more than 30 years. “A lot of folks raised money in the mid-2000s, when it was pretty easy. Now there are probably too many funds out there.”
————
Starve? Carnage? I find that awfully ballsy considering the amount of OPM they slosh around without a second thought. Can’t say I feel sorry for these high rollers. The pensioners in Oregon, on the other hand…
In come cases private equity firms backed successful new firms. In some cases private equity firms improved management and rescued declining firms.
But in most cases they just did some financial engineering in the hopes of selling to suckers in the public markets.
Public employee pension funds tried to increase their returns by investing in private equity. What they didn’t realize is that private equity only works if they are the suckers on the back end.
“But in most cases they just did some financial engineering in the hopes of selling to suckers in the public markets.”
—————–
This is the “Mittens Model”.
And you know what’s great? There’s always one or two acquisitions that actually do “turn around”, usually because fo a change in the economy or a breakthrough product. The turn-arounds usually are not attributable to anything the lawyers/bankers/accountants did. But it doesn’t stop them from citing these relatively few turnarounds as examples of how they “heal sick companies”.
IMHO, quality of management trumps market factors every time, and assuming there’s a critical mass, it doesn’t bounce around as much.
PE people aren’t that different than Realtors.
Both are merely Variations on a Theme of Hypebeast.
(hypebeast = http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hypebeast )
Now its 65% per month? Where your data
My spreadsheet from talk is light on specifics.
Check ral dot com for info?
From ral*
So the word of RAL is gospel and my anecdotes are junk worth 0?
Just tryin to understand the vitriol expressed towards me specifically here as I have stuck my neck out to play the FB here(I admitted I walked from a condo and stayed until the bank sold it). Do I deserve the wrath that y’all feel towards all the FBs out there? Maybe I do. As people are getting shot at I can take some anonymous mean comments in context; as talk is cheap but life is precious IMO.
I have been truthful of my perspective of the bubble from a speculator/accidental landlord’s view of things. Keep in mind I bought in 95 after the last crash as somewhere to live and was very surprised to hear that appreciation had run rampant in the decade I held the home. I got complacent and believed another dangerous meme, namefully, that housing always goes up. I understood not one whit of securitization and truly believed that a bank would not lend money to anyone who truly needed it. Did not know that risk was being sold downriver. Now I understand lots more thanks to this blog which I found a couple years too late.
It did not make wealth for anyone but myself, as Ben has pointed out, but it did provide for my family when I was hurtin on the couch; the bubble years were not bad for everyone. Avocado also cashed out at the top, as well as some others here. For me it paid for medical treatment, food, shelter, and re-education. All I had to give up was my job, health and lifestyle and I got to provide for my family. What would you have done?
And I got to stay home with my kids; which I wouldn’t have done had I been able to keep on working in my field(organic ag)
In America, is the individual’s obligation to provide for their own. And many(most?) fortunes have been made clamboring on the backs of the downtrodden. Your posting of your dad’s business model suggests you are well aware of this; even if you don’t agree with it morally. Most rich folks got there at the expense of others.
And who lost when we realized we were paying 2k for a mortgage when we could rent next door for 1k. To stay and pay on a property we overpaid for would have been more foolish than buying it in the first place. We would have been on the dole even quicker that way.
Never took out a heloc; but put 80k down; paid 80k in payments, stupidly, before pulling the plug as advised by the city attorney. We kept the place up, paid the HOAs. Then the bank took it back and cashed out 200k on it. How did the bank do compared to us?
We sunk over 160k into the place for three years then the bank sold it for 200k. So someone received 360k in payments on a condo we “purchased” for 385k. How much did the taxpayer have to kick in on this?
I can fully understand why you made your decisions and can not say I would have done different.
A few comments.
Understand the time/value relationship of money. For example - 100K ten years ago is not equal to 100K today.
You still had to live somewhere with your family - not all the money you gave to the bank was “wasted.”
The “someone” who received your payment could have well been the old widow down the street (either directly through a bond investment or indirectly through a pension or IRA).
We sunk over 160k into the place for three years then the bank sold it for 200k. So someone received 360k in payments on a condo we “purchased” for 385k. How much did the taxpayer have to kick in on this?
Lots of people feel superior to others as a result of luck and fortunate timing going in their favor.
You mention that there’s been numerous people on this board over the years who sold at the top and made lots of money.
I wonder how many such people criticize realtors and bankers for making lots of money for doing basically the same thing they themselves did: screwing the buyer.
I wonder how many people on HBB who sold their home for a massive gain actually sold their property for $100-$1000K than they could have because they thought it unethical to obtain obscene profit so easily at the expense of the unwitting dupe who came along.
Many knew full well that they were screwing the buyer. Just like many realtors and bankers knew they were screwing the buyer.
Consider that some may not appreciate your honesty, mikeinbend. That may be the reason your posts aren’t appreciated. It may be that your posts serve to remind them that they aren’t exactly above the fray themselves.
“Consider that some may not appreciate your honesty, mikeinbend.”
We’d all agree with that if this ongoing ruse were honest.
I wonder how many such people criticize realtors and bankers for making lots of money for doing basically the same thing they themselves did: screwing the buyer.
FWIW, Mike merely sold his property for what the market would bear at the time. He didn’t manipulate the market to raise prices. He didn’t hand out NINJA and subprime loans to unqualified buyers. He didn’t create a shadow inventory. He didn’t tell buyers “buy now or be priced out forever”. He simply sold his house in Santa Barbara for what the market would bear. Isn’t that what “capitalism” is all about? Or are we advocating price controls?
I know that if a mega bubble hit my little burg and doubled the price of my house that I would sell it in a heartbeat and rent, enduring the taunts of the “smart people”, who would remind me incessantly that I just priced myself out forever.
My family sold our family home in 2005 and I’m still renting. My siblings all bought dream homes, thanks to finding bens blog I might be able to buy in 2025.
And what are their losses so far?
In Colorado:
Then why all the animosity here against mikeinbend?
From where I sit, he was doing exactly what others here did 2-3 years before mikeinbend did.
They got lucky and got away with their bling. They cashed out and consider themselves genuises.
mikeinbend is an underemployed idiot apparently because he didn’t swipe the Titanic deck chair early enough. Sucks to be him.
If he had any brains, he would have been born 10 years earlier.
Bully for those of you out there that made out.
You are brilliant.
He keeps telling us over and over what he did and how he made out or didn’t make out…like he wants a whipping for it.
In Colorado:
Then why all the animosity here against mikeinbend?
Envy?
Envious of a mountain of debt with nothing to show for it?
Do I deserve the wrath that y’all feel towards all the FBs out there?
It’s the honesty thing - it throws some people.
My monthly P&I for a 2 bedroom SFH in San Francisco proper (with an awesome front AND back garden) is $1650. Over 1K less than the rent on our last rental.
5K in yearly property taxes is offset by 3K back every April (MID + a nifty little thing called MCC).
But I’m a liar…..
Envious of a mountain of debt with nothing to show for it?
Isn’t the house he rents out paid for?
“But I’m a liar…..”
But funny math is expected when your entire financial future is hinged on the housing religion.
Psssst…… it’s a religion…. and you’re an adherent.
For what it’s worth, my animosity is not that Mike cashed out. Fine.
My animosity is that, even after he paid all his bills, he still pissed away something like $500k in cash.
The Smartest Guys I Know Are Moving… Should You, Too?
Dr. Steve Sjuggerud - Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Last week, I learned four different friends are doing something that will save each of them tens of thousands – or even hundreds of thousands – of dollars each year.
They’re moving…
And they’re not the only ones. Many of the smartest guys I know are moving this year.
They’re not just thinking about moving… They’re not saying “maybe someday”… They are doing it right now.
“I’m moving here,” he said. “I love California. But moving to Washington state saves me $133,000 a year in state taxes on every $1 million I earn.”
This is not just a millionaire thing…
In Oregon, for example, if you make more than $7,750 in a year, your state-income-tax rate is 9%. (If you make more than $125,000, it is 10.8%).
Just this weekend, a friend of mine from Oregon came to visit me in Florida. He had a busy schedule – with realtors.
He and his wife are planning to leave Oregon. They may move to Washington state or to Florida. They actually have very few ties to Florida, but the state-income-tax rate is zero. It would be like getting a 10%-plus raise.
State governors don’t believe that people move out of states for tax reasons. But they do! Maryland’s governor learned this the hard way…
In 2008, roughly 3,000 people in Maryland had incomes over $1 million. To bring in more money, Maryland’s governor created a “millionaire’s tax bracket.” One year later, it brought in less money… because one-third of the millionaires disappeared from Maryland’s tax rolls. (The full story is here.)
It looks like California is about to learn the same lesson. California’s government raised its highest tax rate to 13.3% for 2013. The state thinks this approach will bring in more money. But judging by my friends, it looks like it’s going to backfire…
Governor Rick Perry is inviting Californians to his no-income-tax state of Texas… He took out a radio ad in California, which seems to have irritated the heck out of California’s Governor Jerry Brown. (You can check out the story here.)
Brown’s point is, “Why would anyone want to leave California to go to Texas?” The answer is, simply, taxes.
The smartest guys I know are moving. It’s not because they want to… It’s because their states are forcing them to, through high state-income taxes.
Living in Houston sounds like paradise. Where do we sign up?
Once you visit Houston, you come to appreciate zoning regs.
I’ve never been there in the summer, I hear the humidity makes even central FL seem quite lovely.
They did set the film “Reality Bites” in Houston. Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, and Ben Stiller made living in Houston look so cool. Even cooler than that freakfest “Slacker” set in Austin.
I was there a few months before the astrodome closed for baseball, for a relatives wedding.
They had a temperature inversion over 95 probably 90% humidity, even if you stood in the shade and your back was dripping wet….plus they were selling asthma inhalers outside the stadium the pollution was the worst I ever encountered in my life….
I like old ballparks. and how the fields/ fences affected the game,
———————————
On October 3, 1999, the Astros played their final regular season game at the Astrodome, and clinched the Central Division title with a 9–4 win over the Dodgers. The final Astros game in the stadium occurred 6 days later when the Braves eliminated the Astros in Game 4 of the Division Series.
Joe, Houston is the reason they make riding lawn mowers with headlights.
Detroit was once the third largest city in america. It was destroyed by total control and unbroken control of liberals/progressives, insane public unions and higher and higher taxes. I could a plethora of other examples with the same underlying themes that mirror exactly what is going on in California…
People can and do vote with their feet
I just takes time for it to happen. What pisses me off also is a lot of the rules and regs really screw mom and pops. Basically favors big corporations cause they can deal with all the red tape. It creates monopolies in business.
Try to build a house in CA and see all the hoops you have to jump through and fees to pay to put a roof over your head.
I want opportunity to build a business.
“I want opportunity to build a business”.
Forget it, az dude. Opportunity to build businesses won’t come for most until the federal government markedly shrinks in size. That won’t happen for 20-30 years.
It costs a lot of money, yours and mine, to keep government running.
In the meantime, good luck with your business.
OTOH, perhaps you should start an IT business. I hear they’re making lots of money these days siphoning taxpayer money as “private” contractors. You may have to bed a bureaucrat or two, but what the heck?
Now MacBeth thinks zoning regs are federal? I strongly suggest you go ahead and call your state’s Congressional delegation and complain about zoning regs. They deserve a laugh.
Don’t forget safety. Nothing will make a person fold up their tent, take their ball and go home like having a pistol shoved in your face as they empty out your cash register.
Polly, I said no such thing.
What I did say is that starting a business will not be feasible for most until federal government shrinks in size.
State governments are the puppets of federal. “Do this, or you will not get federal funding, blah, blah…”
It is not until fed shrinks that states will find a way to relax their onorous or costly regulations.
I guess you federal folks don’t think of such things. No surprise, that.
Too bad for az dude.
Macbeth:
Sequestration will take care of some of the waste goin on in IT contractor spending. At least the word is now out to public about this overspending and overpaid contractors.
Sequestration will take care of some of the waste
No it won’t.
The invisible army of government contractors will never stop growing.
NEVER!
“State governments are the puppets of federal. “Do this, or you will not get federal funding, blah, blah…”
It is not until fed shrinks that states will find a way to relax their onorous or costly regulations.”
That is it folks. State regulation is the fault of the federal government. Those states just can’t possibly be expected to give up federal funding for a program even if they don’t want the program in the first place. Is there a chance that state restrictions are the fault of the elected officials of that state? Nope. It is all on the feds. And not the Congress, mind you. Federal workers.
By the way, I love posters who fall for lawyers tricks. Put even the slightest exageration of what they said in a post and you get a detailed explanation of their internal conspiracy theory. Discovery/information letters should always be this easy.
Detroit was destroyed by 30 years of offshoring.
Period.
I disagree Eco:
Maybe 30 years of Ebonics first….then the off shoring because no one spoke English.
If by offshoring, you mean to non-union friendly states then yes. Hell, even foreign automakers assemble vehicles in the south now.
They made a crappy product and when competition appeared their answer was vinyl roofs, opera windows and “Corinthian leather”. They eventually got it right, but long after the cow got out of the barn, but they did try offshoring (to Mexico) before that. Apparently cheap labor wasn’t the solution for the Big 3’s problems.
Maybe 30 years of Ebonics first….then the off shoring because no one spoke English.
So you’re saying that all those white guys in the UAW spoke Ebonics? And that’s why they moved auto plants to Mexico? (It had nothing to do with $3/hr wages). Those Mexican autoworkers didn’t speak English either, BTW.
There used to be auto plants all over California, too. GM and Chrysler in my area. I guess every last one of them is shut down.
Offshoring hurt CA as well.
Everytime I hear people blame this country’s economic problems on ANYTHING other than offshoring, I know the corporations have won and there will NEVER be any positive change for J6P in our lifetimes, because people can’t even remember recent history.
This is not opinion, but fact. Offshoring destroyed the middle class.
Texas wouldn’t be my first choice for a place to live, but I have to say, in my dealings in the “stuff” business over the internet, Texans have been some of the most gracious, delightful people I have ever dealt with, hands down. Polite, not stingy, and, I might add, literate. Also humble. Decent. The sort of nasty way Texas is portrayed in the media does not square with my great interactions with Texans themselves.
I’ve said this before, it’s a dang shame Bush and Perry represent Texas to the country, even the world.
They certainly bring their “can-do” spirit to Colorado. We’ve talked to a few tow truck drivers and their consensus is that Texans are the most likely out-of-staters to drive their Big Azz Truckz (that are not crawlers or lifted) up into four wheel drive backcountry roads and get themselves stuck needing a $500+ tow.
They are also really sh*tty skiers. Bring your tourist dollars here, but stay on the green and blue runs, please.
Nice. Real nice.
A running joke here in the Centennial State:
Q: Why is it windy in Colorado?
A: Because Wyoming blows and Texas sucks.
Yeah, there’s little appreciation here for the sons of the Lone Star state.
IIRC, txchick57 didn’t care much for the Lone Star state either.
They are also really sh*tty skiers.
They still wear jeans skiing too, don’t they?
‘They still wear jeans skiing too’
People from Brownsville TX wear jeans to swim in the ocean.
People from Brownsville TX wear jeans to swim in the ocean.
LOL! Lots of jelly fish on South Padre Island.
I got into a jellyfish on the north side of Padre one time…
‘the north side of Padre’
It’s 150 miles long. Care to elaborate?
Whatever part of the island that you get to just south of Corpus Christie. We didn’t feel like driving all the way down to the south end. We were swimming at the beach and a jellyfish managed to wrap itself around my leg.
Oh, yeah, another thing about Texans that I’ve dealt with: they’re not whiners and complainers. They tend to handle the crap that’s thrown at them quietly and just go about their business.
Never been there, but God bless Texas.
Bush and Perry represent Texas only to those ignorant enough not to know any better.
Texans are used to it.
Same is true throughout the South, which is populated by nothing more than racist hillbilly rednecks.
A sidenote for the clueless: When a Southerner says “bless your heart”, it often is not a compliment.
“Same is true throughout the South, which is populated by nothing more than racist hillbilly rednecks.”
You must not get out much. Been to Altanta lately?
Yes, everyone in Atlanta is a racist redneck hillbilly.
As is everyone in Asheville. And so it goes as well in Jackson, Birmingham, Nashville, Knoxville, Little Rock, Charleston, Baton Rouge and Charlotte.
Must be something in the water that makes ‘em stupid and racist.
The weird thing is why so many Yankees continue clamoring to move there. The yen makes no sense.
“The weird thing is why so many Yankees continue clamoring to move there.”
I’m telling ya. But I think it’s because Yankees really enjoy telling people, especially Southern racists, what to do.
Perhaps carpet bagging ……old habits die hard.
The way the Clintons carpetbagged the North East, the south owes us big time.
The only Perry from Texas that I support is Katy Perry.
Most Texans I deal with love Bush and Perry.
And they do NOT want a bunch of “looser” socialists running away from their blue state hellholes to infect Texas.
And/or try to change Texas into the same hellhole they just left.
They would be more than happy if they just stayed put and suffered in their democrat workers paradises they HELPED create…
I’ve said this before, it’s a dang shame Bush and Perry represent Texas to the country, even the world.
The Bush family aren’t Texans. Look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush#Congressional_years
‘Bush was elected in 1966 to a House of Representatives seat from the 7th District of Texas, defeating Democrat Frank Briscoe with 57% of the vote;[17] he became the first Republican to represent Houston.[13] Bush’s representative district included Tanglewood, the Houston neighborhood that was his residence;[18] his family had moved into Tanglewood in the 1960s…He was elected to a second term in 1968. In 1970, Nixon convinced Bush to relinquish his House seat to again run for the Senate against Ralph Yarborough, a fierce Nixon critic…Yarborough then endorsed Bentsen, who defeated Bush, 53.4 to 46.6 percent.[23] As Bush’s political career waned, he moved out of Houston and sold his first Tanglewood house, but for periods of time continued to have a house in Tanglewood…Following his 1970 loss…Nixon noticed and appreciated the sacrifice Bush had made of his Congressional position,[13] so he appointed him Ambassador to the United Nations.[11] He was confirmed unanimously by the Senate, and served for two years, beginning in 1971.[13]‘
‘Amidst the Watergate scandal, Nixon asked Bush to become chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1973.[11] Bush accepted’
Note this: ‘Despite being a first-term congressman, Bush was appointed to the powerful House Ways and Means Committee’
Well how about that? This guy won two house races. And he ends up running the Republican party, the CIA and becoming president. He must have a lucky rabbits foot.
“The Bush family aren’t Texans.”
I know that. They’re carpetbaggers, Jeb’s got Florida. Or so he thinks. He may have aspirations for 2016, but I have a feeling that Marco Rubio’s gonna throw him under the bus and try to grab the brass ring.
Anyhow, my point was that the Bushes have given Texas (and Florida) a bad rap.
Anyhow, my point was that the Bushes have given Texas (and Florida) a bad rap.
The Bushes give the whole USA the bad rap. Suck it up, TX and FL!
And the Clintons….And the Obamas. Eff ‘em all!
‘They’re carpetbaggers’
That’s right. GHWB used a hotel room in Houston as his ‘residence’ while he was VP. GWB got his Maine license suspended for DWI. That’s all you need to know; Texans don’t have Maine drivers licenses.
Bush is more Texan than Obama is black.
Listen now, don’t bring Maine into this either. We never claimed them as ours; just a bunch of flatlanders coming in to visit.
When there are no microphones around GWB sounds just like George Plimpton.
‘don’t bring Maine into this either’
That must be where they go to do some drinking and driving. GWB was born in New Haven CT and GHWB was born in Milton MA, according to the intertubes. Yet with their mansions, they decide to go live in MIDLAND TX?
The Bush Family compound is in Kennebunkport, Maine.
The Bush family, until recently, was very elite and northeastern. No idea what happened to the current crop. They got caught up in Bush-41’s faux-Texasism it seems.
Lauren Bush (Neil’s daughter) seems the best by far. I hold out hope for Barbara (W’s) as well.
Lauren Bush - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Bush
Jeb’s kids, in particular, are train wrecks. Here is his namesake, Jeb, Jr.
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/crime/bush-nephew-nabbed
I believe Noelle was busted for either crack or coke. I think she ended up finally getting her degree, she was going to Florida State for a while I know.
George P. Bush went to Rice and then UT Law and has his eyes set on becoming a Ted Cruz Teabagger Congresscritter it seems.
LOL goonie. And Seattle is such a cheery place to spend one’s millions…. See y’all. Bye.
Living in Houston sounds like paradise. Where do we sign up?
Not sure I could deal with the big hair and boob job I would need in order to fit in.
Please Don’t Secede, Texas—We Need You
The American Interest | 02/13/2013 | Russell Mead
The Lone Star state boasts all-star status when it comes to job creation and economic growth. Writing for City Journal, Wendell Cox brings us a great in-depth look at one of the healthiest state economies in the U.S. Texas job creation is well above the national average, with the number of jobs having grown 31.5 percent since 1995. Even more impressive, many of the new jobs were high-paying, coming from professional and technical fields. Cox explains why:
A pro-business climate has unquestionably been a substantial advantage. In its annual ranking of business environments, Chief Executive has named Texas the most growth-friendly state for eight years in a row. (California has been last for the same eight years.) The reasons included low taxes and sensible regulations; a high-quality workforce (Texas ranked second only to Utah in that category in 2012); and a pleasant living environment….
Part of the explanation for the high living-environment score is doubtless Texas’s low cost of living…. More than three-quarters of the cost-of-living difference between Texas and California can be explained by housing costs….
Other states should be looking to Texas for inspiration. It’s no coincidence that Cox compares Texas and California so frequently in his article. California may still have the biggest economy, but at the moment Texas has all the momentum.
gov job creation and debt! ahh… the GOP way!
ya cant borrow your way to prosperity, son.
I was just there, it felt third world… almost.
Wait until they see their property tax bill.
It is ALL relative.
Property taxes are low in Texas when compared to any state in the NE.
Plus no state income tax?
It is enough to make a New Yawker cry.
I’ll agree that some places do have insane taxes. But I would never consider property taxes “low” in Texas. I can only imagine what the tax bill would be on one of Brett’s dream condos in downtown Austin. My brother paid just under $2000 a year for an $80K house in Brownsville.
The condos I like (low to mid 300s, 1br / 1ba) is between 6k and 7k…
“The condos I like (low to mid 300s, 1br / 1ba) is between 6k and 7k…”
That’s more than my combined property and income tax bills.
State income tax bill, just to be clear.
That’s not relevant.
We have no clue what kind of property you own.
Comparing a $350k condo in Texas to a $50k shack in Colorado is apples to oranges
What on earth makes you think that a software engineer in his early 50’s (I think?) with a wife and kids lives in a $50K shack. He has switched jobs at least once in the past few years so he lives in an area where high tech jobs are reasonably plentiful.
Come on, Brett. You know better than this.
Oh come on Brett, he lives in metro Denver, I believe Loveland?
All the losers (or loosers) who could not hang in inland CA ran off to Texas.
Austin is apparently the best city, and I was not impressed at all. I could have been in Glendale (only worse weather and fewer Armenians)
I prefer Boise.
Holy heck, is Avocado = DennisN?
They have regular TV ads in Texas for visiting California, and the ex-governor participates in those. Ads for Denver itself, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, and New Hampshire also show regularly.
I’m not sure what the big deal is. Is highlighting savings vs spending somehow verbotten?
What do tourism ads have to do with anything? They run the California ads with Ahnold here too. So what?
So let me see……these guys are moving out of California, taking a 50% pay cut (at best), just to avoid a maximum income tax increase from 10 to 13%.
And they will be stuck in Texas.
I love how people make up statistics… 50% pay cut, uh?
Okay, maybe I exaggerated. But not by much.
Salaries in my line of work are 30-40% higher across the board, than they are here in Flyover.
I’d pay an extra 3% income tax, if I got a 40% raise.
Our idiot governor is bragging about eliminating the income tax. Which at it’s highest, was only about 6%, under even the most Socialist of the Democrats.
To make up the revenue shortfall, Sales taxes are as high as 10% (average is 8.5%, compared to 3% back in 1990), gasoline taxes are high, property taxes are slapped on everything (even “parts cars”), they are eliminating MID, and the cops are now writing a blizzard of tickets.
Well, a big part of the reason to move operations to flyover is the allure of lower wages. I’ve had recruiters respond to my balking at low ball salary range with the old saw: but taxes and the cost of living are lower here! To which I respond: So at best its a wash, but I have to move to a hot, humid and crime infested dump to work for you.
but taxes and the cost of living are lower here! To which I respond: So at best its a wash, but I have to move to a hot, humid and crime infested dump to work for you.”
yep
… and their utility bill will offset any gains.
ya cant fix stupid… but you can profit off them
Confirmation that yes, Obama phones are bankrupting USA:
“The U.S. government spent about $2.2 billion last year to provide phones to low-income Americans, but a Wall Street Journal review of the program shows that a large number of those who received the phones haven’t proved they are eligible to receive them.”
The article comments are an enlightening summary of the angry teabillies’ emotional imprisonment on the meme plantation
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323511804578296001368122888.html
Millions more of these phones needs to be given away. It’s the right thing to do.
Lest you forget, without a phone, how do you call the police?
Allow me to own a gun and you can keep your Obamaphone.
Why not own the gun and also get obamaphone?
“Less government” usually results in less ability to means test/enforce/discover.
“Set up for failure” is the oldest trick in the book.
Bubble example in Austin!
What can you possibly do to a home for it to up in price by 800k?
The taxes on this $1.5M home would be $35,700 in Austin (2.38%).
MLS# 3308587
1601 Pearl ST, Austin, TX 78701
Bedrooms 4
Bathrooms 5+1½
Square Ft 4241
Jan 10 2013 Price Change $1,499,000
Dec 15 2012 Listed $1,600,000
June 18 2012 Sold (MLS) $712,500
The Brady House is a 3/3.5 3100 sq/ft 1910 Arts & Crafts home filled with modern touches in the heart of Judges Hill. The stunning details include restored, original windows that fill the house with light, beautifully refinished original hardwood floors, high ceilings, custom cabinetry, wide crown molding, elegant formal areas, cozy family areas, a fantastic wrap-around porch, and large corner lot. Separate 1/1 1000sq/ft guest house could be a detached office or rental. Historic tax abatement.
“The Brady House”
Does it have that awesome mid-century modern staircase?
Of course it does!
Check out the pictures for yourself (link attached)
“What can you possibly do to a home for it to up in price by 800k?”
Solid gold fixtures?
Wish upon a star?
“What can you possibly do to a home for it to up in price by 800k?”
Only dumb bubble luck can do that.
Here’s the Zillow blurb, which is about six months behind the times:
“Bring your restoration contractor! The Brady House, a 1915 arts and crafts bungalow, is a City of Austin Landmark located in the historic Judges Hill neighborhood. The one-and-a-half-story house has a rock-face brick facade and sits on a corner lot with expansive porches on two sides. The main house interior needs complete restoration, but there is a 2008-vintage garage apartment above the over-sized garage in the rear.…”
So, evidently somebody brought his restoration contractor and did a complete restoration, including painting all that beautiful Craftsman woodwork white. The kitchen alone looks like $70-80K. But, $800K? btw, I really like the over-garage apartment..
I used to live on that street, but in the west campus area.
Some of the oldest homes in Austin are north of DT and south of the University.
Most have been transformed into law firms or other offices.
Memo to coastal elitist media/academia bedwetter libtards: black people don’t want USA to turn into Mexico either
“No sooner did President Barack Obama and a group of senators separately outline proposals to revamp the nation’s immigration system than the phone lines on several African-American oriented talk radio shows heated up with callers blasting the plans.
“Amnesty,” complained Frankie from Maryland recently on the nationally syndicated “Keeping it Real with Al Sharpton.”
A political payback to Hispanic voters that does little or nothing for African-Americans, reasoned Sam from Milwaukee on Wisconsin’s 1290 WMCS AM’s “Earl Ingram Show.”
A 2009 study by George Borjas of Harvard University, Jeffrey Grogger of the University of Chicago and George Hanson of the University of California, San Diego, looked at 1960-2000 Census data and found that as immigrants disproportionately increased the supply of workers in a particular area, wages of African-Americans in that area fell, the employment rate declined and the incarceration rate rose.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/02/11/182697/many-african-americans-concerned.html
When your party is based on nothing more than giving free government cheese to its supporters
It matters if someone may be taking your cheese.
It is all academic talk - Obama could be video taped having sex with a five year old boy on the white house front lawn while drinking a 48 oz soda and he would still get 98% of the black vote.
And 107% of the black vote in Philly
Is that the halftime show for tonight’s State of the Union? LULZ
“And 107% of the black vote in Philly”
That is racist.
(no, goon’s trademark is on the phrase “That’s racist”. What I’ve said here is not, nor is it intended to be, a direct ripoff of goon’s trademarked phraseology).
“All of the American South is Racist but none of the Northeast is Racist” [trademark pending]
We can’t take credit for that. Racist® is a trademark term owned by the Media Academia Race Hustlers Industrial Complex.
An anecdotal observation of one of our first experiences with the MARHIC was at State U, with an English professor, PhD UC Santa Barbara sometime in the 1970’s, aging white hippie. We took his classes on Romanticism and Shakespeare. When the media was all kerfluffle over Jesse Jackson’s love child, he gave the black-power fist salute in front of the class and declared, “we’re with you Jesse!”
Not sure what that had to do with Byron and Keats, but he somehow did.
darn that Reagan and those 3 million he gave Amnesty too! Setting a precedent!! I thought the GOP still worshiped Ronnie!?
I think my area is less than 1% black. Less than 3% Asian. And the Mexicans are all cool! It is the white trash over the hill that worry me.
I would make them legal but not eligible to vote. Not eligible to vote for at least 20 yrs anyway…
You get voting rights only when you are fluent in English, have adopted US as your home country, and only when you have shown capacity to vote based on ideology not based on skin colors.
“You get voting rights only when you are fluent in English, have adopted US as your home country, and only when you have shown capacity to vote based on ideology not based on skin colors.”
Like that’s ever gonna happen. And don’t forget, the only color that means anything is the long green, so assuming these folks get a path to sh*tizenship, they’ll be voting for the party that promises the most cheese. Self-interest and all that.
What ticks me off is that citizens don’t have the opportunity to sell their citizenship. Rome, at least, allowed this. A poor Roman citizen could sell off the only asset he had and travel to Gaul or Brittania or wherever and start over. But that’s how cheap US citizenship has become.
What ticks me off is that citizens don’t have the opportunity to sell their citizenship.
It’s actually worse. It costs you money to renounce us citizenship.
and only when you have shown capacity to vote based on ideology not based on skin colors.
Uh-oh, that would really kill the Republican Party.
The Persistence of Racial Resentment
Caution: actual facts, research and numbers presented
In 2012, Obama won 39 percent of the white electorate. Four decades earlier, in 1972, George McGovern received a record-setting low of the ballots cast by whites, 31 percent. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey won 36 percent of the white vote; in 1980, Jimmy Carter got 33 percent; in 1984, Walter Mondale took 35 percent of the ballots cast by whites. As far back as 1956, Adlai Stevenson tied Obama’s 39 percent, and in 1952, Stevenson received 40 percent – both times running against Dwight D. Eisenhower. Two Democratic nominees from Massachusetts, Michael Dukakis in 1988 (40 percent) and John Kerry in 2004 (41 percent), got white margins only slightly higher than Obama’s in 2012 — and worse than Obama’s 43 percent in 2008.
Hope and Change
“A combination of high crude prices (Obama), refinery shutdowns (Obama), and early speculation (Obama) has sent gas prices soaring to seasonal highs earlier than usual this year, with no signs of prices at the pump falling until spring, according to recent estimates.
Gas prices have climbed every day for the past 25 days, reaching a national average of $3.59 per gallon Monday, the most expensive national average ever for Feb. 11, according to AAA.
During just the past two weeks, average prices have climbed almost 25 cents, the biggest jump in gas prices in almost a year.”
Forward
http://m.csmonitor.com/Business/2013/0211/Gas-prices-hit-a-historic-high-What-s-driving-them-up?nav=87-frontpage-entryNineItem
Sign at the entrance to Capitol Hill:
“Welcome! How can we assist you in bending over our constituents?”
Why buy a house at these grossly inflated prices? Buy later, after prices crater for 65% less.
What’s up with all rhe Texan haters in this forum?!
Have y’all even been to Austin?
It’s a great place to live; young, healthy, fun! People are kind, friendly, laid-back! It is warmer than SoCo, but it’s a great reason to spend time by the pool, lake or river of your choice! Music, restaurants, festivals! It’s great down here!
DFW and Houston have great areas to live too! They’re just like any other large metro area; a little bit of everything.
Is traffic an issue? Sure! But it’s no worse than LA or DC. The key is to try to live as close to the workplace as you can. It takes 10/15 mins to get to work!
I would much rather live in a low-tax state like Texas and have $$$ to enjoy life than to live in Cali and be house poor or use CCs.
People hate Texas because it’s full of racist cowboys and American folklore.
How ever do you deal with it?
Are you Hispanic?
I really think you’ve been dealing with the wrong kind of Texans…. Stop watching MSNBC
“What’s up with all rhe Texan haters in this forum?!”
I don’t get it either. If it weren’t for the weather, I might consider a move there myself. And I live in Florryduh. But during the summer, when we’re sweltering here, and I look at the weather map and see that Texas temps are even worse, gives me pause.
No worries, mate. I live in Boston and have never been to Texas… I am seriously considering a move there. Not everyone on the coast is a libtard commie douche.
Not Austin, but I’ve been to San Antonio and DFW. Hot as a sauna (I don’t even want to think about Houston). My car was vandalized twice. Once at a stop light some thugs tried to carjack me (I bolted through a red light to escape). When I was walking in downtown San Antonio in broad daylight a guy walked up to me and offered to sell me drugs.
My sis lives in DFW. One day a guy claiming to be from the cable TV company knocked on her door, claiming he had to fix something inside. They don’t have cable. The guy’s van was unmarked. Needless to say, she didn’t open the door.
My brother lived in Brownsville. His house was burglarized, and he had an alarm.
“My car was vandalized twice.”
Buddy of mine moved temporarily to Austin. Hated it. Came out of a diner only to find a cluster of Texicans gathered around his car (filled with all his worldly possessions) evaluating it. They did disperse when he walked up, but at that point he realized it wasn’t for him. Said the heat was godawful, made Florida seem like Alaska.
But it’s a dry heat. Well, actually it’s not.
Texas is a big place. Dallas is a lot less humid than central Texas. But you know, I don’t get all the gripes about weather. All the way through high school we didn’t have air conditioning at the schools and we couldn’t wear shorts. That’s all changed. I lived in the Dallas ‘area’ for a while. There was a lot of crime and it’s worse now. No matter to me, I just don’t like big cities.
Oh well, here at my place it just crept above zero degrees at 9:30 AM. It was 16 degrees below zero when I got up.
One of my tenants, an attractive 25yo woman, was driving around Sunday night looking for a parking spot. The city had a parking ban in effect from the snow storm on Friday and parking was at a premium. As she’s slowly cruising for a spot, a guy in a black Dodge passes her. They both had their windows open a bit (probably to deal with fogging). The guy says, in typical douchebag fashion, “How you doing?” as he passes her car. He then proceeded to fishtail and hit her car with his, and then take off.
The guy tries to pick her up with a lame line from SNL, hits her car, and then drives away… again, this is Massachusetts. Idiots are everywhere.
Did he say “How you doing”?
They say “Wassup?” around here.
My daughters quit jogging, when being followed/hit-on by 3-4 guys driving POS/hoopties started becoming a daily occurrance.
Wassup is back?
I was in Austin last Fall. Totally overrated! I’ll take Santa FE, NM over Texas any day. (but you still get to deal with Texans every summer as they flee the heat and head north. They are the loud ones with big hair and lets just say, large jeans on.
Gang related shootings happen weekly in Dorchester and students at Boston University have been mugged repeatedly by thugs looking for smart phones and cash. Certain stops on the Red line and Orange line are almost guaranteed to get you mugged or assaulted.
All this in the Socialist Paradise of Boston, Massachusetts… the lesson is crime exists everywhere.
Thank gawd for the tough gun laws of Massachusetts…
Because I HAVE been to all those cities off and on for decades.
It is warmer than SoCo, but it’s a great reason to spend time by the pool
I like hot places to lounge by a pool when I’m on vacation and don’t have to work or do outside chores.
Colorado summers are short and far less intense than in Texas, but I’m always glad when September rolls around.
Hot and dry is OK, hot and humid like FL is nasty.
If grapes grow there, I like it!!
DFW was okay back in the 60’s……Now it’s just a big, effed up mess.
Centrally located = Close to nothing. Thousands of people working $10/hour lucky duck jobs, shipping crap to the far corners of the earth thru DFW or Alliance.
Of the 12-20 million illegals in the USA, about 4 million live in DFW.
The poster town for unorganized urban sprawl. Take a drive on East Belt Line from I-35. I’ve never been in a place where it goes from ghetto to industrial park, to high rise office buildings to industrial park, to high dollar houses, and back to ghetto………in a four mile drive.
No sense to the road network whatsoever. The only was to get anywhere quickly by car is the privately owned toll roads…..paying what? A buck a mile, as I recall.
And you had better buy a Garmin, because depending on signs to help you navigate is taking your life in your own hands. Poorly placed, if there is even a sign at all. I remember one for an exit for a major street off I-35. The only sign is less than half a mile from the exit. Unfortunately, they don’t bother to mention that it is a “left exit”. So you end up crossing 5 lanes of traffic to get to, or drive two miles down the road and double back.
The city of Allen spent $60 million bucks putting up a HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL STADIUM (Google it). That should tell you all you need to know about their priorities.
And don’t get me started about their business practices. Used to be, Texans would brag, but bust azz to get the job done. Now it seems like they underbid everything just to get the work, then either make excuses when the thing runs late, or do it on time, but do it half-azzed.
My personal favorite was when they underbid a $2 million job on an airplane, then during the arrival debrief, started whining about needing more time and money. (I knew their bid was BS, but they bypassed me and someone, somewhere got a kickback of some kind.)
Give me Minnesotans/Wisconsinites/Michiganders any day. They seem to go by the motto “Underpromise, and Over-deliver”
I get a sore neck visiting DFW twisting it like a hoot-owl with all the fine looking ladies there. Is there something in the water?
In average south has hotter women than north. Must be the warm weather.
In average south has hotter women than north. Must be the warm weather.
They just wear less clothing so there is more to look at.
“Is there something in the water?”
Women on the coasts would opt for 300cc; women in Texas (and New Jersey) shoot for 600cc. It’s a regional thing.
So you’re saying if somebody asks me what’s the difference between the north and the south I should say 300cc?
where it goes from ghetto to industrial park, to high rise office buildings to industrial park, to high dollar houses, and back to ghetto………in a four mile drive.
—-
I guess you’ve never been to LA. That’s in 5 blocks.
I have spent the last 3 days in San Antonio at the Marriott Rivercenter. I am impressed with SA from what I have seen. Morton;s Steakhouse was terrific! We took a tour bus to the missions and downtown, etc and it was a treat.
The weather was overcast and cool (the way I like it). We toured hill country and what I saw was OK but not great. A lot of Texas looks like a Florida orange grove after a big freeze and with a lot of rocks strewn around. Of course February is probably an ideal time to visit (I am Florida native and resident).
Overall I like SA but do not like Texas terrain in general. I wonder how Texas knows when they are in a drought; it looks like it has been arid forever.
Washington Post propaganda:
“The problem lies in all the over-the-top stuff GOP lawmakers say regularly that isn’t quite crazy enough to earn widespread condemnation, as Nugent’s quotes have, but are still whacked out enough to encourage an atmosphere that helps keep millions of GOP base voters sealed off from reality. The problem is the perpetual winking and nodding to The Crazy that is deemed marginally acceptable — the hints to creeping socialism, the claim that modest Obama executive actions amount to tyranny, the suggestions that Obama’s values are vaguely un-American and that Obama is transforming the country and the economy into something no longer recognizably American, and so on”
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/02/11/the-problem-runs-a-lot-deeper-than-ted-nugent/
the hints to creeping socialism, the claim that modest Obama executive actions amount to tyranny, the suggestions that Obama’s values are vaguely un-American
LOL. Socialism is becoming a larger and larger part of America. Obama’s executive actions are coming closer to tyranny. Or do Obamacare, Drone attacks, and death-lists not count?
Leave it to the libtard left to try and discredit the entirety of the Republican Party over what is the truth… truly insidious.
The real question is “what can we do?”. Had mittens won it would be more of the same. How do we derail these douche bags?
Had mittens won it would be more of the same. How do we derail these douche bags
This goes back to the 2-party divide. I don’t have an answer, as the far-right bothers me as much as the far-left. A new party would seem to be the answer, but the Green party has been around awhile and hasn’t made much impact…
“the Green party has been around awhile and hasn’t made much impact…”
Probably because the appeal isn’t there.
However, the GOP is pretty much on life support. Not much appeal there. It’s really only got a handful of members anymore: Sheldon Adelson, Karl Rove, Jeb.
They’re waving the white flag.
The boobster will be delivering his rebuttal speech half in English, half in Spanish. Get that? Not once through in English, then once through in Spanish. Half and half. lol.
The boobster will be delivering his rebuttal speech half in English
No wonder the hispanics dislike GOP. This pandering would offend me too if I were a Hispanic.
So Ron Burgundy reads from a teleprompter today?
Political, laws have been put into place over the decades specifically to stop any 3rd party from forming.
That the Green party is able to to get candidates elected at even the state level is damned amazing. But they are up agains billionaires and even stronger anti-3rd party laws at the national level.
Remember what happened to Romeny on national TV at the convention? You can’t win when the rules are changed to favor one side.
“No wonder the hispanics dislike GOP. This pandering would offend me too if I were a Hispanic.”
They’re really going for the gold here, lol. There’s enough offense in that for EVERYONE! Hispanics will be offended, Anglos will be offended, and so will everyone who didn’t get at least a little snippet in THEIR language.
If I’m Obama and the Dems, I’m laughing my ever-lovin’ butt off. The GOPs should just prop up a white flag in a bucket of sand and let the camera cut to it after the marketing construct is done with his blabber.
The boobster will be delivering his rebuttal speech half in English, half in Spanish. Get that? Not once through in English, then once through in Spanish. Half and half. lol.
Politicians in Canada do that in their speeches sometimes. They switch back and forth between English and French, the two official languages of Canada.
There’s such a consensus, don’t you know..except among the people. Lotsa pushback on FB and newspaper blogs over this “comprehensive” crap going down. Almost all negative, lol.
Political, laws have been put into place over the decades specifically to stop any 3rd party from forming.
Doesn’t this seem unconstitutional? Maybe some of our resident attorneys could add an opinion here…
resident attorneys
They have already joined the family. They are your enemy.
Give me the text or at least the citaction of an actual law and I’ll take a stab at telling you whether it is unconstitutional or not. Here’s a hint. Requiring a few thousand signatures to get on the ballot isn’t a problem.
Until you can get people to stop voting for them you can’t. But even reasonably intelligent people get sucked into voting for one just to try to stop the other.
The real question is “what can we do?”
There’s actually a good answer to that question. In the last few years both the Tea Party folks and the Occupy Wall Street people had the right idea. Ordinary people can form popular movements. Much has been accomplished though organizing, protesting, etc. For example, that is the way that women achieved the right to vote.
Don’t need to go that far. Emails and phone calls to Congress did wonders the last two times they pushed amnesty on us.
Ordinary people can form popular movements.
But neither of those movements have enacted real, permanent change. I’m all for helping organize a movement, but I want that movement to become a real, honest-to-goodness, political party that gives the bird to the far left and the far right…
Charlie: Eh, lieutenant, what were you doing there?
Goose: Communicating.
Maverick: Communicating. Keeping up foreign relations. You know, giving him the bird!
Goose: You know, the finger
Charlie: Yes, I know the finger, Goose.
but I want that movement to become a real, honest-to-goodness, political party that gives the bird to the far left and the far right… ??
Count me in…
Wasn’t exempting the military from cuts Romney’s plan?
Pentagon urges delay in “devastating” $46 billion budget cuts
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter adjusts his glasses during his meeting with Japanese Senior Vice Defence Minister Shu Watanabe in Tokyo July 20, 2012. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao
By David Alexander
WASHINGTON | Tue Feb 12, 2013 10:27am EST
(Reuters) - The Pentagon will have to put hundreds of thousands of civilian workers on unpaid leave, slash ship and aircraft maintenance and curtail training if $46 billion in scheduled spending cuts take effect in two weeks, Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said on Tuesday.
Carter, testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, urged Congress to delay the automatic across-the-board cuts known as sequestration, saying: “These devastating events are no longer distant problems. The wolf is at the door.”
He said the military faced a crisis of readiness by the end of the year due to the $46 billion in cuts required by sequestration and by Congress’ failure to appropriate defense funding for the 2013 fiscal year.
Carter was testifying alongside the military service chiefs and the Pentagon comptroller.
The Pentagon, which is five months into the 2013 fiscal year, is operating under a continuing resolution that has kept its base budget at 2012 levels. While the funding is approximately the same, the money is in the wrong accounts.
Carter told lawmakers that as a result of the converging financial problems, the Pentagon faced a $35 billion shortfall in its operations and maintenance accounts that it would have to make up in the remaining seven months of the fiscal year.
“In the near-term, these reductions would create an immediate crisis in military readiness,” Carter said.
…
Contractors are 70% of the Pentagon’s costs for delivering services.
They will *NOT* have their government cheese taken away.
Thank you Joe Smith for advocating on behalf of these true patriots.
Now back to your regularly scheduled Obama phone Drudge Report links
Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics *by themselves* are each >10% of the Dept. of Defense budget.
If you include the other BigBoyz you’d be well on your way to a majority of the so-called “defense” budget. (The other Big Boyz are Northrop-Grum, L3, and Boeing.)
I posted the figures once, perhaps I will look them up again sometime.
What is your point? Should we have Mom and Pop defense supplier stores? We don’t even do that for retail. Perhaps we need a big box Defense-Mart where the military shops for items made in China. What options do you propose or are you just simply “anti”? BTW, I do not have nor ever have had any connection to defense or government business whatsoever, just my thoughts.
“Now back to your regularly scheduled Obama phone Drudge Report links”
You really are fixated on Drudge Report, aren’t you? Why do you follow it so closely?
Does anyone see the connection between the threat of Sequestration on the US military, the draw-down of US military presence in Afghanistan, and the constant political “kicking-the-can” of US budget issues and the latest Nuclear test from North Korea, the Iranian Ayatollah disregarding US diplomatic attempts in Nuclear negotiations, and the recent Israeli airstrike in Syria?
This is what it felt like in Rome as the Empire pulled it’s Legions back from it’s far-flung territories… this is what a crumbling and bankrupt empire felt like 1500 years ago.
Our enemies no longer fear us and our allies our desperate to get our attention… as I said in a previous post: No state can afford long, drawn-out war (never mind a never-ending war on terror, drugs, etc.). This lesson was taught 2500 years ago in China.
And they didn’t even have obamaphones to pay for…
If the growth of Obama Phone spending continues on its current trajectory, by 2025 Obama Phones will cost us 125% of GDP annually. It’s all true, it was in the Washington Times.
+1.
Unlike the banks and the economeeeeeee, this area can’t be manipulated any further.
The NoKo thing is really interesting, IMO. Sort of throws a monkey wrench into the works. Considering NoKo is China’s proxy, what’s the issue there exactly?
Considering NoKo is China’s proxy, what’s the issue there exactly?
I’m no expert on NK, but my understanding is they are China’s “pitbull on a leash”. The problem is NK can’t survive without significant aid from SK and the West. Stop the food “payoffs”, and what’s to stop NK from rolling over the DMZ and invading SK again? The US military is weak from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan for 12 years and our nation can’t afford to maintain it’s foreign military presence any longer. China can barely control NK’s behavior, especially if junior is out to prove something to the NK military leadership…
Stop the food “payoffs”, and what’s to stop NK from rolling over the DMZ and invading SK again?
Let them invade. It’s bout time SK pull its own weight.
China can barely control NK’s behavior
If a NK nuke goes off in Shanghai, the PRC would have no trouble killing off its pit bull. Not that this could ever happen.
Let them invade. It’s bout time SK pull its own weight.
Gangnam style!
LOL. Every time I see or hear the word “Gangnam”, I mentally replace it with “Gundam”, and all I can picture is giant dancing robots…
China tolerates North Korea, because NK creates a lot more problems/distractions for the US/ROK/Japan than they do for China.
Nukes or not, the NK would last about 45 seconds, if China ever decided that they were more trouble than they were worth.
So NK is to China as Israel is to USA?
Every time I see or hear the word “Gangnam”, I mentally replace it with “Gundam”, and all I can picture is giant dancing robots…
That’s preferable to the “condom style” that my 6 year-old was singing (or at least it sounded like condom, it was just a made-up word, I guess).
Awkward.
So NK is to China as Israel is to USA?
Sounds about right…
And no country can afford social programs that have utterly failed.
Liberals have always talked about the war on drugs being a failure. Ask them how about the war on poverty. We spent far more on that war than on the drug war.
Gasp! How could you say that? Look at how successful Head Start has been…er…uh….
It’s free daycare ain’t it? well there you go.
All I know is that without a Federal program, a lot of kids locally wouldn’t be getting breakfast. Or lunch.
One of them wouldn’t have gotten dinner either, if he hadn’t been hanging around our house about 90% of the time. Kinda hard to go grocery shopping, or make a run to TACO Bell, when you are 15, live in a shack 8 miles out in the country, with no transportation.
(I supposed he coulda bootstrapped himself by riding a bike down the gravel roads to Quik Trip to pick up groceries…..I guess, by giving him rides, I was “fostering dependency”)
Of course, both of his parents were doing their best to support the booze and illicit drug businesses, so thet should get brownie points for supporting local businesses.
Our family was pizz poor when I was growing up. Can’t recommend it.
“Our enemies no longer fear us and our allies our desperate to get our attention… as I said in a previous post: No state can afford long, drawn-out war (never mind a never-ending war on terror, drugs, etc.). This lesson was taught 2500 years ago in China.”
There are some small uninhabited islands that China and Japan are at odds regarding legal claim. State department is getting itchy.
“This is what it felt like in Rome as the Empire pulled it’s Legions back from it’s far-flung territories… this is what a crumbling and bankrupt empire felt like 1500 years ago.”
that’s what i have been telling people for a while…obama is not the cause…he is just a symptom…a runny nose so to speak.
Our enemies no longer fear us ??
Take the gloves off…
We do not need to be the world’s policeman pretending we are not an empire.
Our allies need to step up and we need to get out of the empire business.
At today’s accelerated rate of everything, fall of empire will come lot faster and harder than in anytime in history if we continue to pursue that now historical dead end.
Apparently President Obama did not agree to follow Romney’s plan.
9:25p Obama rejects saving military alone from sequester
In the old days, the U.S. program for foreign-student visas helped developing nations and brought diversity to then white-bread American campuses. Today, the F-1 program, as it is known, has become a profit center for universities and a wage-suppression tool for the technology industry.
International students are attractive to strapped colleges because they tend to pay full tuition or, in the case of public institutions, pay more than full price in out-of-state rates.
Last year, this was taken to a new level at California State University, East Bay, a public institution just south of Oakland. The school directed its master’s degree programs to admit only non-California students, including foreign students. Even before this edict, international students made up 90 percent of its computer-science master’s program.
The pursuit of foreign students by U.S. schools affects not only college access for Americans but also their careers. Back in 1989, an internal report of the National Science Foundation forecast that a large influx of F-1 doctoral students in science, technology, engineering and math — the STEM fields — would suppress wages. The stagnant salaries would then drive the American bachelor’s degree holders in these fields into more lucrative areas, such as business and law, after graduation, and discourage them from pursuing STEM doctorates.
It’s all about the dollars.
Bloomberg
Plus the state school charges foreigners full freight (unless they’re illegals)
Plus the state school charges foreigners full freight (unless they’re illegals)
Not sure why many would be foreign students don’t do this? Buy a plane ticket to Mexico and cross the border. Fee edumcation.
Unless they are local HS grads they can’t do it.
Someone has to pay for $400,000/year administrators and $200,000/year professor pensions…
Last year, this was taken to a new level at California State University, East Bay, a public institution just south of Oakland. The school directed its master’s degree programs to admit only non-California students, including foreign students. Even before this edict, international students made up 90 percent of its computer-science master’s program.
There is a YouTube hidden video of a seminar from a few years ago that specializes in showing companies how to game the tech worker visa program.
I’m sorry I don’t have the URL anymore nor time to research this
But hell yes, they game the labor market.
Whaddya mean the business model of borrowing $200,000 to attend CostCo University Law Skool to graduate and make $40K isn’t sustainable? That’s unpossible!
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/02/11/us/lawyers-call-for-drastic-change-in-educating-new-lawyers.xml
I am all cash since Friday. Sold all my stock holdings for a sizable gain. Same with 401k…went 100% “stable market fund.”
Hoping for a market crash….come on big crash….give me a big crash….
Soon come…Beware the Ides of March.
Caesar:
Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue shriller than all the music
Cry “Caesar!” Speak, Caesar is turn’d to hear.
Soothsayer:
Beware the ides of March.
Caesar:
What man is that?
Brutus:
A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.
A closely-watched pot never boils over.
Wall Street survey: Sequester likely, will take stock market toll
By Peter Schroeder - 02/11/13 02:17 PM ET
Most market professionals do not believe the White House and Congress will strike a deal to avoid automatic spending cuts, and the stock market will pay the price as a result.
A survey of money managers from the Potomac Research Group reveals split opinion among the investing world about the future of the nation’s fiscal policy. Fifty-three percent of respondents expect sequester cuts to take effect beginning March 1, while 47 percent believe a deal will be struck in time to avoid them.
The financial industry is also divided when it comes to the impact of those cuts if they occur, as 51 percent of the 55 respondents believe the Dow Jones Industrial Average would drop at least 5 percent if the sequester occurs. Another 42 percent believe the stock market would experience little to no change if those billions of dollars’ worth of cuts take effect.
The respondents are much more optimistic about avoiding a government shutdown, due to arrive when the government’s continuing resolution expires March 27. Just 15 percent of those surveyed are anticipating a government shutdown, as the overwhelming majority believes both parties can strike a funding compromise to keep the government’s doors open.
While many investment professionals see long odds in a government shutdown, they are united on the havoc it would wreak on the stock market. Eighty-two percent of those surveyed believe a government shutdown would drop the Dow by at least five percent.
Despite those looming threats to financial stability, those surveyed overall had a rosy perspective when it came to the financial markets going into 2013.
…
so god made a banker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rCkIgBfP1I4#!
+1 Hard to believe that 40% of our GDP consisted of loaning money to each other rather than producing things with intrinsic value. We’ll pay dearly for this sin.
We’re already paying dearly.
Ever lower standard of living for the middle class the 30 last years and trillions spent rewarding Wall St failure instead of infrstructure and science projects.
I’m not all in cash but I’m ready for a correction. Maybe I should cash out a little more…
Makes me wonder, with so many people calling for a crash, can it crash?
I too believe a big correction is long overdue. But that DOW just keeps going up.
“But that DOW just keeps going up.”
You better get in now before someone else does!
Crash? Where were you 7 years ago?
50% reduction isn’t a fender bender.
And not one banker in jail…
And didn’t GM/AIG run ALL those commercials saying that they paid pack every single dime?
—————————–
Losses mounting in bank bailouts
By David Weidner - MarketWatch - 2/12/2013
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — About those bank bailouts…
Remember the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as TARP? When we last heard from the Treasury Department on Jan. 23, TARP was being wound down. It was suggested, in the estimation of Timothy Geithner & Co., a success: 93% of the $418 billion dispersed had been collected including $70 billion last year. Read the latest Treasury Department progress report on TARP.
The idea that TARP is somehow a wash because a few banks repaid the bailouts with interest is misleading. The reality is that bailed out firms essentially wrote off their losses on their taxes. As of Dec. 30, TARP was still owed $67.3 billion, including $27 billion in realized losses — that is, that money is gone and is never coming back. See the inspector general’s Jan. 30 report on TARP.
Now, TARP is losing money as it tries to exit the programs.
A new report by SNL Financial shows the Treasury Department is taking a beating in auctions of the Capital Purchase Program, one of the pipelines through which bailout money flowed.
The auctions essentially sell off TARP debt and equity to private investors. Unfortunately, investors aren’t really interested in zombie bank debt. It’s been selling at an 8% to 20% discount each month. The last auction on Jan. 25 saw a 35% discount. In all, the latest CPP auction cost taxpayers $104.5 million. Read about how zombie banks are being kept afloat through bailouts.
There are additional, less hidden costs, of course. Ally Financial, the old GMAC auto financing company, is still $14.6 billion into TARP. The plan is to exit, but there’s no indication private investors will step up given the company’s recent financial record.
The Treasury Department said it was selling the remaining 16% stake in American International Group Inc. (AIG) in December, and it claimed a $7.6 billion profit on that bailout.
More than one person has questioned where that $7.6 billion comes from. Neil Barofsky, the former inspector general for TARP, noted that a third of the AIG stock sold came from the Federal Reserve. So, the proceeds of that part aren’t going back to taxpayers.
Then there was the tax benefit. The AIG “turnaround” story wouldn’t be complete without its amazing $19.8 billion profit at the end of 2011 — $17.7 billion of which was an accounting gain from “carry forwards,” or tax write-offs.
That’s just AIG. Bank of America Corp. (BAC), Citigroup Inc. (XNYS:C), and General Electric Co. (GE) also famously benefited from crisis-era losses that turned into tax write-offs down the road.
This state of affairs is due largely to a bailout program that was rushed into action by the government, according to Christy Romero, the special inspector general for TARP.
But it also should buy us some security. Too big to fail has been made worse. The concentration of financial power at B. of A., Citi, J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) puts the nation’s economic future at risk, all in the name of stabilization.
AIG? The guys that are suing the government because their bailout wasn’t enough?
Yeah. Eff them straight to hell.
ya mean they lied to us?? Bankers? lie??? for the money???? ahh… who needs regulations?
Such Outrage Such Enthusiasm, we are doomed!
Fed official: Fixing the job market could take years
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Healing the job market should take “center stage” on the Federal Reserve’s agenda, but that task could still take years, a high-ranking member of the central bank said Monday.
Janet Yellen, who as vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve Board is number two in command to Ben Bernanke, believes that the central bank should continue to focus its policies on boosting the economy and the job market in particular.
“It will be a long road back to a healthy job market,” she said. “It will be years before many workers feel like they have regained the ground lost since 2007.”
Yellen is known as an inflation dove, concerned more about the weak job market than the possibility of prices rising rapidly any time soon. Those on the opposite side of the spectrum, known as inflation hawks, criticize the Fed’s policies for weakening the dollar and potentially fueling asset bubbles, for example in bonds or farmland.
Yellen nodded to those critics in her speech, but given the current low inflation rate, she said “it is entirely appropriate” for jobs “to take center stage.”
She also cited the unemployment rate of 7.9% and the poverty rate at 15% as signs that both Congress and the Fed need to do more to boost the economy.
“These are not just statistics to me,” she said. “We know that long-term unemployment is devastating to workers and their families.”
The Fed’s recent policies keep interest rates at record lows and entail buying $85 billion a month in Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, in an effort to lower interest rates even further.
The hope is that by making it cheaper for consumers and businesses to borrow money, they’ll spend more on homes, cars and other items.
“I believe that these steps will increase demand, and more demand means more jobs,” Yellen said.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/11/news/economy/federal-reserve-jobs/index.html?iid=HP_LN
Short of WW4, the job market will never be fixed within our lifetimes.
Get used to it.
file under: state universities are sportz factories
“TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A former five-star recruit for the Alabama Crimson Tide was arrested for the second time in two days and was among four freshmen who face charges of second-degree robbery or fraudulent use of a credit card stemming from Monday arrests.
Eddie Williams, who was also a safety in high school but did not play a down at his listed position as a receiver for Alabama in 2012, was first arrested Sunday on a charge of carrying a pistol without a license.
According to a police report acquired by at least two Alabama newspapers, Williams admitted to investigators that he physically assaulted another man “and rendered him unconscious” on campus Monday morning at 3:21 CT at Bryant Hall dormitory. Williams then stole a credit card and used it for several purchases, according to police. The report said it was used at a vending machine.
More from TideNation
Everything Alabama, from recruiting to news to game coverage, is available at ESPN.com’s TideNation.
More:
• ESPN.com Recruiting coverage
• ESPN.com’s SEC blog
Defensive end D.J. Pettway (second-degree robbery), and linebackers Tyler Hayes (second-degree robbery) and Brent Calloway (fraudulent use of a credit card) were arrested Monday along with Williams, according to online records from the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office.
In addition to the apparently unrelated Sunday gun charge, Williams faces second-degree robbery and fraudulent use of a credit card charges.
According to police, Williams, 20, said he was accompanied by Pettway and Hayes, “both of whom he stated were involved in an earlier robbery with him, as well. ”
http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/8939251/dj-pettway-4-alabama-crimson-tide-freshmen-facing-charges
Pay them! Make the socialists owners pay for the talent development.
The real question is why was he allowed to attend the college? Once they start getting their heads full of uppity book learning and lusting for white women, they turn to violence and robbery. This wouldn’t have happened when Wallace was in the Governor’s mansion.
Take America Back!
I’ll set everyone right. Just watch my rebuttal right after the marketing construct wraps up.
Restore Our Future!
JEB 2016! (Lol, under the bus(h), jerkoff! It’s Boobster Time!)
MARCO 2016!
How dumb are these guyz?
They stole a credit card… and then used it at a vending machine rather than, say, an online electronics retailer or to buy sneakers/gold chains/etc?
Stupid.
How dumb are these guyz?
#ParoleTied dumb
Got currency coordination clusterfork?
Financial Times
Last updated: February 12, 2013 3:23 pm
G7 fails to defuse currency tensions
By Chris Giles and Alice Ross
An attempt to smooth currency tensions between the world’s largest rich economies fell into disarray on Tuesday after a joint statement created just the currency volatility it was supposed to prevent.
The yen fell after comments by a top US official and a Group of Seven statement that appeared to give the green light to Japan’s efforts to reinvigorate growth. But it then bounced back after a G7 official was quoted in the US as saying the statements had been “misinterpreted” and was intended as a warning to Japan, exacerbating recent disorderly movements in exchange rates.
British officials, who had brokered the statement, meanwhile insisted there had been no misinterpretation with one saying, “the statement is not about an individual country or currency”.
Lael Brainard, the top US Treasury official for international affairs, sent the yen plummeting on Monday evening after commenting publicly that the US supported “the effort to reinvigorate growth and end deflation in Japan”. The US dollar rose more than 1 per cent against the yen on these public comments with its value rising from Y93.4 to Y94.4.
The dollar gained further ground after the G7 statement was published in the morning in London, as it was interpreted by financial markets as a sign that the developed nations would not interfere with Japan’s domestic plans.
The statement from finance ministers and central bank governors of G7 countries – comprising the US, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan – said they would “consult closely” on any action in foreign exchange markets.
“We reaffirm that our fiscal and monetary policies have been and will remain oriented towards meeting our respective domestic objectives using domestic instruments, and that we will not target exchange rates,” the ministers and governors said.
“We are agreed that excessive volatility and disorderly movements in exchange rates can have adverse implications for economic and financial stability.”
…
Only $599k in SLO
2 bdrms, 4 sheds
http://www.century21.com/property/1151-leff-st-san-luis-obispo-ca-93401-C2137637730
That is a seriously ugly house.
4 sheds? Is this the “serial killer special”?
The reason we left SoCal: stupid house prices.
Sadly, it seems that it will stay that way, at least in the areas I would choose to live.
There was a remark yesterday, predicting Silly Valley’s fall into irrelevance, with the prediction that its tech would become “commoditized”
That has been happening for decades. Yet Silly Valley is still an employment powerhouse with some of the highest wages and housing prices in the nation.
There was a remark yesterday, predicting Silly Valley’s fall into irrelevance, with the prediction that its tech would become “commoditized”
Indeed. NPR highlighted the latest craze in the online security world… hack shops that find digital exploitations and sell them to the highest bidder, which often ends up being governments.
Those who are predicting Silicon Valley’s future irrelevance have never read Gibson or Stephenson. They fail to understand that the digital world is fast becoming more important (and relevant) than the physical world.
more important (and relevant) than the physical world
Maybe in the first world. Tell that to the billions of Lucky Ducks who spend 50+ percent of their incomes to buy food. When the global humanoid population hits 10 billion it’s gonna be a real paradise on Earth, because the problems created by the existing 7 billion humanoids will only get better by adding 3 billion more of them.
When the global humanoid population hits 10 billion it’s gonna be a real paradise on Earth
I predict that more and more people will use the digital world to escape from the horrors of a real world with 10+ Billion people. If I can work, communicate, enact commerce, and be entertained in the digital world, one only limited by our creativity, why would I leave it except to eat, sleep, fornicate, and relieve myself? Especially when the digital world is so full of possibility while the real world is so full of disappointment.
Gilded cage, that’s why not.
Why leave the digital world at all? Just strap them to a toilet and an intravenous feeder. Wait, that sounds an awful lot like a hospital.
We’re getting closer and closer to that “Matrix” moment… sans machines using people as batteries.
More like closer to Idiocracy
“GO AWAY! I’M BATIN!”
The reason we left SoCal: stupid house prices.
Zillow “local info” for San Luis Obispo 93401:
Median Household Income: ~$32,000
Median House Sales Price: ~$550,000
yes, but we all know what can be said about statistics.
SLO is a college town, are kids with zero income counted?
Does it count wages? Or all income from all sources?
yes, SLO is a paradise of educated, underpaid workers.
70 degrees and blue skies today.
“70 degrees and blue skies today.”
Overcast with a dash of mid 30’s fog. Sux!
I ran by the Post Office this morning and saw a homeless guy on a ramshackle bicycle towing a rickshaw style cart. Wow, talk about filthy. I’m certain the rain runs off of this guy just like a duck. It’s still pretty fugg’n cold out, and he was headed north too. Gotta wonder about his core temperature?
Thedre is only one thing that is going to fix teh socal stupid: the big one.
Yep! About as ugly as they get and then that “seasonal creak” is hilarious!
Most homes here in that area look like:
http://www.californiamoves.com/property/details/2760972/MLS-190817/1026-Mill-San-Luis-Obispo-CA-93401.aspx
too bad Realturd are awful at everything including photography and too cheap and ignorant to spend $100 to have a semi-pro shoot it.
600k for that? more like 200k at most.
It looks like a garage/workspace where someone decided to throw on some siding and toss on some dry-wall. I can’t imagine signing up for thousands per month in mortgage payments for that POS.
you can always rent a room out to a student for $750 a mo.
This is a huge factor.
Seasonal creek?
A gully that gets washed out when it rains?
Realturd-speak
That look was all the rage when, 1978?
And not a buyer in sight.
Imagine the price declines when CA becomes a recourse state.
“Imagine the price declines when CA becomes a recourse state.”
+1 OzWhole [sic] Californians will never be held responsible for their financial behavior, but I agree that H U G E price declines are baked-in. Epic disconnect.
The so-called biological basis of mental illness has never been proven, BTW. The meds don’t cure any “chemical imbalance” but they sure as hell cause one.
True, dat. But the lack of a proven biological basis sure hasn’t stopped Big Pharma, now has it?
OK, enough is enough! What is with 11.5 oz beers and hard cider??
it was bad enough when 1/2 gallon ice cream containers shrunk and tried to fool us!
so god made a realtor:
http://www.lexingtonrealestatesearch.com/blog/god-made-realtor/
Article referenced in above post regarding UK inflation:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2212803/Walkers-slammed-putting-just-FIVE-crisps-multi-pack-bag-packets.html
I got a good laugh last week from the people in line at a Subway.
The girl asked foot long or six inch?
I said, I`ll have the eleven inch.
After finding itself in the middle of an 11-inch controversy, Subway has responded to claims that its “Footlong” subway sandwich is one inch too short by saying that “Footlong” is only a name and not a measurement.
The Subway Footlong debate began on Tuesday, when teenager Matt Corby ordered a supposed 12-inch sub from a Subway in Perth, Australia. Before eating, he pulled out a tape measure to see if the sandwich really measured up, only to discover that his Footlong was a measly 11 inches.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/19/subway-response-footlong-controversy-measurment_n_2511316.html - 297k
Oh the stupid things homowners say.
Speaking of food, what is the combination you get with your eight-piece?
How many breasts, thighs, legs, wings?
I don’t eat chicken.
“Oh the stupid things homowners say.”
HEY!
I said stupid things when I was renting from 2005-2012 too.
“The girl asked, “Foot long or six inch? “
BA DUMP BA!
BLS:
“Well, people are choosing to drink beer and eat ice cream less, so we’ll call that 0% inflation.”
Porcine beauticians can only hide so many blemishes, and utterly fail at disguising a pig’s true identity.
David Weidner’s Writing on the Wall Archives
Feb. 12, 2013, 1:40 p.m. EST
TARP: The bailout success story that wasn’t
Commentary: Wall Street’s bailout sinkhole keeps sinking
By David Weidner, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — About those bank bailouts …
Remember the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as TARP? When we last heard from the Treasury Department, on Jan. 23, TARP was being wound down. It was, in the estimation of Timothy Geithner & Co., a success: 93% of the $418 billion disbursed had been collected including $70 billion last year. Read the latest Treasury Department progress report on TARP.
But hold the Champagne. It ain’t over till it’s over.
The idea that TARP is somehow a wash because a few banks repaid the bailouts with interest is misleading. The reality is that bailed-out firms essentially wrote off their losses on taxes. As of Dec. 30, TARP was still owed $67.3 billion, including $27 billion in realized losses — which is to say, that money is gone and is never coming back. See the inspector general’s Jan. 30 report on TARP .
Now, TARP is losing money as it tries to exit the programs.
…
I’ve noticed a recent tendency for 2banana’s and my posts to converge.
Could it be a sign of the second coming?
All of the problems in this country are the result of:
A) Labor unions
B) Obama
C) All of the above
Pick C and head over to Drudge Report to collect your meme-of-the-day.
Ditto.
Signed,
Ditto Head
You really have a fixation on Drudge Report. Why dont you ease up and just quit visiting the site? If Drudge Report was not popular then it wouldn’t be oh I don’t know, say popular.
Can`t wait to see Flintlock Feinstein at the State of the Union address.
I wonder if she has seen this?
January 03, 2013
FBI: MORE PEOPLE KILLED WITH HAMMERS, CLUBS EACH YEAR THAN RIFLES
By AWR HAWKINS, Breitbart.com
According to the FBI annual crime statistics, the number of murders committed annually with hammers and clubs far outnumbers the number of murders committed with a rifle.
This is an interesting fact, particularly amid the Democrats’ feverish push to ban many different rifles, ostensibly to keep us safe of course.
However, it appears the zeal of Sens. like Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) is misdirected. For in looking at the FBI numbers from 2005 to 2011, the number of murders by hammers and clubs consistently exceeds the number of murders committed with a rifle.
Think about it: In 2005, the number of murders committed with a rifle was 445, while the number of murders committed with hammers and clubs was 605. In 2006, the number of murders committed with a rifle was 438, while the number of murders committed with hammers and clubs was 618.
And so the list goes, with the actual numbers changing somewhat from year to year, yet the fact that more people are killed with blunt objects each year remains constant.
For example, in 2011, there was 323 murders committed with a rifle but 496 murders committed with hammers and clubs.
http://nation.foxnews.com/gun-rights/2013/01/03/fbi-more-people-killed-hammers-clubs-each-year-rifles - 39k -
Ammo availability tracker:
http://www.gunbot.net/
A buck a round for 5.56mm……….LMFAO.
The local Wally World is still well-stocked with a variety of .30-06 cartridges. Some of it well under $20/box.
So much for the “AR is cheaper to shoot” meme.
Yeah, but how many mass-murders were committed with hammers and clubs?
And besides, if J6P is walking down the street, and sees someone carrying a rifle, his/her inclination is to run like hell. Thus reducing the bodycount
And besides, the stat says “Blunt Objects”. Are they including rocks and liquor bottles?
If they are part of the “blunt object” total, clubs and hammers are getting a bad name.
This stat proves nothing. Sorta like saying most hit and run victims were done in by blue Chevrolets.
“And besides, the stat says “Blunt Objects”. Are they including rocks and liquor bottles?”
I am sure, probably tire irons, bricks etc. also. None the less, if I was going to push for a gun ban (which I am not) it would be hand guns.
“In 2010, there were 11,078 gun-related homicides, or roughly 30 per day. According to preliminary figures for 2011, there were 11,101 homicides last year, which also is roughly 30 murders per day.”
“in 2011, there was 323 murders committed with a rifle”
So unless Flintlock Feinstein and her merry band of high capacity magazine assault rifle haters can ban murder, they might want to look at hand guns and gangs instead. Unless they have some ulterior motive.
Warzone 2012: Chicago Devastated By Gangs, Murder
Dec 29, 2012 40 By Associated Press
CHICAGO (AP) — It was February, the middle of lunch hour on a busy South Side street. The gunman approached his victim in a White Castle parking lot, shot him in the head, then fled down an alley.
The next month, one block away, also on West 79th Street: Two men in hooded sweatshirts opened fire at the Bishop Golden convenience store. They killed one young man and wounded five others, including a nephew of basketball superstar Dwyane Wade. The shooters got away in a silver SUV.
In July, a Saturday night, two men were walking on 79th when they were approached by a man who killed one and injured the other. This shooting resulted in a quick arrest; police had a witness, and a security camera caught the shooting.
These three violent snapshots of a single Chicago street are not exceptional. It’s been a bloody year in the nation’s third-largest city.
A spike in murders and shootings – much of it gang-related – shocked Chicagoans, spurred new crime-fighting strategies and left indelible images: Mayor Rahm Emanuel voicing outrage about gang crossfire that killed a 7-year-old named Heaven selling candy in her front yard. Panicked mourners scrambling as shots ring out on the church steps at a funeral for a reputed gang leader. Girls wearing red high school basketball uniforms, filing by the casket of a 16-year-old teammate shot on her porch.
A handful of neighborhoods were especially hard hit, among them Auburn-Gresham; the police district’s 43 homicides (as of Dec. 21) ranked highest in the city, and represent an increase of about 20 percent over 2011. The outbreak, fueled partly by feuds among rival factions of Chicago’s largest gang, the Gangster Disciples, rippled along 79th street, the main commercial drag. That single corridor offers a window into the wider mayhem that claimed lives, shattered families and left authorities scrambling for answers.
http://newsone.com/2115994/chicago-2012/ - 92k
America Doesn’t Have a Gun Problem, It Has a Gang Problem
December 31, 2012
By Daniel Greenfield
Chicago’s murder numbers have hit that magic 500. Baltimore’s murder toll has passed 200. In Philly, it’s up to 324, the highest since 2007. In Detroit, it’s approaching 400, another record. In New Orleans, it’s almost at 200. New York City is down to 414 from 508. In Los Angeles, it’s over 500. In St. Louis it’s 113 and 130 in Oakland. It’s 121 in Memphis and 76 in Birmingham.
Washington, D.C., home of the boys and girls who can solve it all, is nearing its own big 100.
Those 12 cities alone account for nearly 3,200 dead and nearly a quarter of all murders in the United States. And we haven’t even visited sunny Atlanta or chilly Cleveland.
These cities are the heartland of America’s real gun culture. It isn’t the bitter gun-and-bible clingers in McCain and Romney territory who are racking up a more horrifying annual kill rate than Al Qaeda;
Chicago’s murder rate of 15.65 per 100,000 people looks nothing like the American 4.2 rate, the Midwestern 4.5 or the Illinois’ 5.6 rates, but it does look like the murder rates in failed countries like Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe. To achieve Chicago’s murder rate, African countries usually have to experience a bloody genocidal civil war or decades of tyranny.
But Chicago isn’t even all that unique. Or the worst case scenario. That would be New Orleans which at an incredible 72.8 murder rate is ten times higher than the national average. If New Orleans were a country, it would have the 2nd highest murder rate in the world, beating out El Salvador.
St. Louis has a murder rate just a little lower than Belize. Baltimore has a worse murder rate than South Africa and Detroit has a worse murder rate than Colombia.
A breakdown of the Chicago killing fields shows that 83% of those murdered in Chicago last year had criminal records. In Philly, it’s 75%. In Milwaukee it’s 77% percent. In New Orleans, it’s 64%. In Baltimore, it’s 91%. Many were felons who had served time. And as many as 80% of the homicides were gang related.
Chicago’s problem isn’t guns; it’s gangs. Gun control efforts in Chicago or any other major city are doomed because gangs represent organized crime networks which stretch down to Mexico, and trying to cut off their gun supply will be as effective as trying to cut off their drug supply.
America’s murder rate isn’t the work of the suburban and rural homeowners who shop for guns at sporting goods stores and at gun shows, and whom news shows profile after every shooting, but by the gangs embedded in the urban areas controlled by the Democratic machine. The gangs who drive up America’s murder rate look nothing like the occasional mentally ill suburban white kid who goes off his medication and decides to shoot up a school. Lanza, like most serial killers, is a media aberration, not the norm.
Our national murder rate is not some incomprehensible mystery that can only be attributed to the inanimate tools, the steel, brass and wood that do the work. It is largely the work of adult males from age 18 to 39 with criminal records killing other males of that same age and criminal past.
If this were going on in Rwanda, El Salvador or Sierra Leone, we would have no trouble knowing what to make of it, and silly pearl-clutching nonsense about gun control would never even come up. But this is Chicago, it’s Baltimore, it’s Philly and NOLA; and so we refuse to see that our major cities are in the same boat as some of the worst trouble spots in the world.
Lanza and Newtown are comforting aberrations. They allow us to take refuge in the fantasy that homicides in America are the work of the occasional serial killer practicing his dark art in one of those perfect small towns that always show up in murder mysteries or Stephen King novels. They fool us into thinking that there is something American about our murder rate that can be traced to hunting season, patriotism and bad mothers.
But go to Chicago or Baltimore. Go where the killings really happen and the illusion comes apart.
There is a war going on in America between gangs of young men who bear an uncanny resemblance to their counterparts in Sierra Leone or El Salvador. They live like them, they fight for control of the streets like them and they kill like them.
America’s horrific murder rate is a result of the transformation of major American cities into Sierra Leone, Somalia, Rwanda and El Salvador. Our murder rate now largely consists of criminals killing criminals.
As David Kennedy, the head of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control, put it, “The majority of homicide victims have extensive criminal histories. This is simply the way that the world of criminal homicide works. It’s a fact.”
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/america-doesnt-have-a-gun-problem-it-has-a-gang-problem/ - 100k -
Sounds like a problem that can only be solved by J6P out on the prairie somewhere losing the ability to buy a standard mag for his AR.
Circles
Yeah, but how many mass-murders were committed with hammers and clubs?
What makes a mass murder so much worse than the same number of individual murders? I suspect it’s the demographic being killed skewing a bit differently…
LOL, anyone remember Tom DeLay, aka The Hammer?
Jeebus, the GOPs screwed the pooch BIG TIME!
Did you know he was the Transportation Committee Chairman?
Delay. Get it?
Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up.
The GOP’s went neo-con with Reagan forward, spending all the money, benefiting the few….
Now the TeaBillies pretend they are real conservatives, yet they cant stop spending either…cant stop the pork, cant stop the scams… cant stop bailing out their banker bros…
Obama, is the new conservative.
Dorner. Our own Palestinian?
Very soon to be dead… probably from a sniper’s bullet.
Incendiary drone attack?
Someone at the scene heard a single gunshot before the fire started. I never expected Dorner to want to be alive if he had no way out. Nor did I expect LAPD and their other LE friends to want Dorner to be alive to talk trash about the LAPD during any hearing.
why do tear gas gernades end up burning everything ?
why do tear gas gernades end up burning everything ?
CS grenades are a metal canister with milspec nato threaded fuse at one end. They burn hot enough that you can’t pick one up once ignited, but they don’t glow red. FWIW, the popularity of wall to wall carpet is a likely cause. Remember those 70’s avocado shaggy carpets? Poof!
http://newsroom.transunion.com/press-releases/transunion-national-mortgage-loan-delinquency-rat-984451#.URrEgaXAd8E
The link to the source for the prior article I posted.
Motor city mad man will be a guest of some (R) kook tonight for the speech?
Will the market start the crash tomorrow? Will the Fed ever back off the gas??
gotta set up the DVR.
This whole story is too funny.
The GOP bring Ted Nugent.
The Dems bring a rocket scientist.
Says it all right there.
Hey everybody Our wonderful racist town Sanford Floorriddah is back in the newzz
A pregnant woman is recovering from an attack after Seminole County Sheriff’s deputies said she was beaten during a brawl in Sanford by 12 people, including four juveniles. The youngest suspect is 12 years old.
http://www.myfoxorlando.com/story/21129163/twelve-arrested-following-beating-of-pregnant-woman
Isn’t that Precious?
Police: Mom helped daughter beat up girl in class
Carrie Blackmore Smith, The Cincinnati Enquirer
7:10p.m. EST February 12, 2013
Police say an Ohio mom, her daughter and another woman beat up a 15-year-old girl in a classroom.
…
Teacher Kim Kilby suffered a black eye in the scuffle.
But any adult who takes a school matter into his or her own hands will be held accountable, Cincinnati Police Chief James Craig said Monday.
“You hear this story and you wonder: ‘Why would a parent get involved when this is something that should have been handled through the school?’ ” Craig said. “This should be a message to any adult, or parent or guardian who decides to engage in this type of activity.”
Police have charged the mother, Precious Allen, 31, of Cincinnati, with felonious assault and aggravated criminal trespass.
…
Precious?
OMG!
lmao.
“So Mom got involved and started punching the young lady and held her down while her daughter was striking her in the face with a combination lock she had in her hand.”
Craig said. “This should be a message to any adult, or parent or guardian who decides to engage in this type of activity.”
How exactly did we get to a point where any adult, parent or guardian has to get a message that they will get in trouble if they punch a kid and hold them down while their kid smashes the other kids face with a combination lock in a GD school? What planet is this?
Flashbang or fire drone?
The KTLA helicopter holding a close pan on the cabin where Chris Dorner was apparently holed up, suddenly announced that the air police had just ordered an immediate eight-mile air clearance perimeter and blackout. Highly unusual, as the news helos here typically assist in unofficial recon for search and clear operations from a mile or two away. The crew complied, and within seconds of their announcement, the cabin was engulfed in flames. Not just in the process of igniting, but the entire cabin fully involved and billowing black smoke.
Wood doesn’t ignite that fast even with multiple incendiary teargas canisters; it usually takes at least a couple of minutes before the structure fully catches fire.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the first drone execution on US soil was perpetrated against a cop? In any case, Donald Trump is getting his revenge tonight for Obama interrupting his “You’re Fired” moment on whatever that TV show was he had.
The news stories so far have offered no explanation of how the cabin spontaneously combusted.
If you have a story that provides details, please post.
Just in time for the State of the Onion Address:
Monday, Feb 11, 2013 09:29 AM PST
Dorner: A drone target on U.S. soil
The manhunt for cop-killing ex-cop helps inaugurate drone targeting within American borders
By Natasha Lennard
Updated, 1:30 p.m. ET: Ralph DeSio of Customs and Border Patrol has contacted Salon to state that reports that he confirmed the use of drones in the Dorner manhunt — such as the comment cited by MSNNow below — are incorrect. “Reports that U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s unmanned aircraft systems are being used are incorrect. CBP UAS are not flying in support of the search.”
However, a source named only as a “senior police source” reportedly told the U.K.’s Daily Express:
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If the suspect didn’t leave the cabin burning, who did it?
Source: Suspect didn’t leave burning cabin
Associated Press / February 12, 2013
BIG BEAR, Calif. (AP) — The man believed to be fugitive ex-cop Christopher Dorner never came out of a California mountain cabin, and a single shot was heard inside before the cabin was engulfed in flames, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.
The law enforcement official requested anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
A fourth person — a deputy — died earlier in the latest confrontation with America’s most-wanted man, which seemed to be coming to an end.
Officials were waiting for the fire to burn out before approaching the ruins to search for a body.
“We have reason to believe that it is him,” San Bernardino County sheriff’s spokeswoman Cynthia Bachman said.
…
Ah you posted it. Thanks. I won’t shed a tear for the dead communist. I shed tears that the cops of LAPD are still not going to do a thorough internal investigation. Top one: All the ones who shot the two women and shot at the surfer in the Torrance neighborhood should be fired and without any pension immediately. But of course that won’t happen.
Tinfoil hat heaven!
The great thing about using a domestic drone strike in circumstances like these is that anyone who calls you on it will be immediately labeled a tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist, allowing you to get away with it in broad daylight.
How can you increase the average wage and the unemployment rate at the same time?
9:17p Obama backs hiking minimum wage to $9 per hour
Maybe their senior loudmouthed liar Krugman can explain this sun rising in the west phenomenon. He’s pretty good and making 2 and 2 equal 5.
I think the minimum wage should be raised to $100 per hour. How many wealth redistributors here on HBB agree with me?
Watch the inflationistas line up.
Great. Obama is clearly laying out a plan to reflate.
I guess I should buy stocks and a house.
Why work?
So you can afford your monthly after you borrow $100K’s to buy a home?
Who says I am going to pay?
“Who says I am going to pay?”
+1 You learn quick, Grasshopper.
Could one buy in CA, stop working and paying, then immediately qualify for Foreclosure Relief?
Now BO is cheerleading the housing recovery, and promising to further spike the housing market punch bowl by giving “every responsible homeowner in America the chance to refinance at today’s rates,” to “help our economy grow.”
Wealthy homeowners are deserving of special taxpayer-funded giveaways; renters are loosers and deserve nothing.
The Liar-In-Chief addresses his lying actors at the behest of the FR.
FR??
And now the Liar Response from the other side of the false dichotomy begins with rafts of BS, smoke, mirrors and lies.
These fawkin guys are bad news. Real bad news. ALL of them. Looking right at the camera and lying.
“Looking right at the camera and lying.”
Realize that these elected saviors are laughing all the way to the bank, and they’re dining on shrimp scampi while they expect you to survive on disabled gerbil. What you need is a television with a Lexan laminate plate so you could bust a few caps or throw something at these liars.
Heck, need another dark beer already. Someone should outlaw these darned 12-oz bottles.
FR??
Whoops; the fed.
Better open another dark beer.
Threw a curve with those caps!
I knew you’d catch it.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Marijuana and Firearms
Can you imagine the Christmas parties?
Financial Times
February 12, 2013 6:45 pm
The case for helicopter money
By Martin Wolf
I fail to see any moral force to the idea that fiat money should only promote private spending
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” This comment of Mark Twain applies with great force to policy on money and banking. Some are sure that the troubled western economies suffer from a surfeit of money. Meanwhile, orthodox policy makers believe that the right way to revive economies is by forcing private spending back up. Almost everybody agrees that monetary financing of governments is lethal. These beliefs are all false.
When arguing that monetary policy is already too loose, critics point to exceptionally low interest rates and the expansion of central bank balance sheets. Yet Milton Friedman himself, doyen of postwar monetary economists, argued that the quantity of money alone matters.
Measures of broad money have stagnated since the crisis began, despite ultra-low interest rates and rapid growth in the balance sheets of central banks. Data on “divisia money” (a well-known way of aggregating the components of broad money), computed by the Center for Financial Stability in New York, show that broad money (M4) was 17 per cent below its 1967-2008 trend in December 2012. The US has suffered from famine, not surfeit.
As Claudio Borio of the Bank for International Settlements puts it in a recent paper, “The financial cycle and macroeconomics: what have we learnt?”, “deposits are not endowments that precede loan formation; it is loans that create deposits”. Thus, when banks cease to lend, deposits stagnate. In the UK, the lending counterpart of M4 was 17 per cent lower at the end of 2012 than in March 2009. (See charts.)
Those convinced hyperinflation is around the corner believe that banks expand their lending in direct response to their holdings of reserves at the central bank. Under a gold standard, reserves are indeed limited. Banks need to look at them rather carefully.
Under fiat (that is, government-made) money, however, the supply of reserves is potentially infinite. True, central banks can pretend reserves are limited. In practice, however, central banks will advance reserves without limit to any solvent bank (and, as we have seen, to insolvent ones). With central banks able to supply reserves at will, the constraints on lending are solvency and profitability. Expanding banking reserves is an ineffective way to increase lending, not a dangerous one.
In normal circumstances, bank lending responds to changes in interest rates set by central banks. But, as Lord Turner, chairman of the UK’s Financial Services Authority, argued in an important lecture given last week, “Debt, Money and Mephistopheles”, this lever is broken.
The response of policy makers is to try even harder to make the private sector lend and spend. Central banks can indeed drive the prices of bonds, equities, foreign currency and other assets to the moon, thereby stimulating private spending. But, as Lord Turner also argues, the costs of this approach might turn out to be high. There is “a danger that in seeking to escape from the deleveraging trap created by past excesses we may build up future vulnerabilities”. William White, former BIS chief economist, expressed a similar concern in a paper on “Ultra Easy Monetary Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences”, last year.
Alternatives exist. As Lord Turner notes, a group of economists at the University of Chicago responded to the Depression by arguing for severing the link between the supply of credit to the private sector and creation of money. Henry Simons was the main proponent. But Irving Fisher of Yale University supported the idea, as did Friedman in “A Monetary and Fiscal Framework for Economic Stability”, published in 1948.
The essence of this plan was 100 per cent backing of deposits by public debt. This scheme, they argued, would eliminate the instability of private credit and debt, dramatically reduce overt public debt and largely eliminate the many defects of current forms of private debt. “The Chicago Plan Revisited”, a recent working paper from the International Monetary Fund, concludes that the scheme would indeed bring these benefits.
…
Feb. 13, 2013, 12:01 a.m. EST
Dow 17,000? Main Street lambs led to the slaughter
Commentary: Bullish predictions drive Wall Street’s casino
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Wharton School economist Jeremy Siegel, author of two classics, “Stocks For the Long Run” and “The Future for Investors,” is one of America’s most respected financial minds. He recently told cable channel CNBC that Dow 15,000 was “definite,” with 50-50 odds of Dow 17,000 by year-end 2013.
He even doubled down in Kiplinger’s: “My Dow 17,000 projection may turn out to be too timid.” Now that’s real bull, a 20%-plus gain for 2013.
Dow 15,000? Dow 17,000? Irrational exuberance? DNA flaw? Delusional? Or are these predictions just typical marketing hype calculated to drive Main Street’s 95 million investors into Wall Street casinos for another end-of-a-bull-market slaughter?
Whoa, stop, take a deep breath before we dissect Siegel’s over-the-top Dow 17,000 prediction. First, a refresher course in basic market psychology. Let’s remind ourselves: There’s a profound difference between the DNA, brains and biases of bulls versus bears.
A bull brain has a massive blind spot. They can’t see the light-at-the-end-of-a-tunnel. Only short-term profits. Wall Street makes money on the action, on volatility. Whether up and down generates opportunities and profits. Bulls blindly hang on till the profitable last drop. Bears do see the light. But once lured into the game, they’re blinded by the light. Trapped as both ride over the cliff.
One more time, Wall Street will push everyone to the edge … and over
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