Bits Bucket for September 27, 2014
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
All the poor places seem to have a community center.
“…fired at the officer, who was shot in one arm.”
Fortunately they’re not being beheaded, yet.
]]>Apparently we prefer loan _approvals_ for undesirable applicants??? Huh???
]]>…house. (Freudian slip is showing again…)
]]>Sux to be a landlord with trailor trash tenants!
]]>An Officer Is Shot in Ferguson, Mo.
By ASHLEY SOUTHALL
SEPT. 27, 2014
A Ferguson, Mo., police officer was shot on Saturday night, in an incident that authorities said was unrelated to continuing protests over the death of teenager shot by a police officer there last month.
The officer was shot around 9:10 p.m. while checking on a community center, the Ferguson police chief, Thomas Jackson, said in a brief press conference Sunday morning. The center is not near where the protesters have gathered.
The officer spotted two men, who began running when he approached them, Chief Jackson said. The officer chased them, and as he closed in on one of the suspects, Chief Jackson said, the second suspect pulled out a gun and fired at the officer, who was shot in one arm.
The officer said he fired several shots in return, but there was no indication that he hit either of the suspects, Chief Jackson said.
Officials did not release the officer’s name or say how long he had been on the police force.
The shooting happened in a neighborhood off West Florissant Avenue, a major artery in the area, about two miles from where Michael Brown, a black teenager, was shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, on Aug. 9. Chief Jackson said he did not think the shooting was related to protests over Mr. Brown’s death.
“I don’t think it is,” he said. “It didn’t happen within the proximity of the protest area. This is a very secluded area. I wouldn’t have any reason to think that it was linked in any way, shape or form.”
…
Most interesting statistic in the article posted below: The percentage of adults age 70+ “in the labor force” (working or seeking employment) is anticipated to double by 2022 compared to 1992. Not sure if this is a positive sign that we are living longer and healthier, and thus able to work much farther into our senior years than our parents could, or a negative sign that people who used to be able to retire at age 65 and open an opportunity for a young person to replace them are now so broke that they have to keep working into their golden years just to pay the bills.
December 2013
Labor force projections to 2022: the labor force participation rate continues to fall
Because of the decreasing labor force participation rate of youths and the prime age group, the overall labor force participation rate is expected to decline. The participation rates of older workers are projected to increase, but remain significantly lower than those of the prime age group. A combination of a slower growth of the civilian noninstitutional population and falling participation rates will lower labor force growth to a projected 0.5 percent annually.
…
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
Have you escrowed $6k to cover your losses to depreciation on your house this year?
Yes. Lawnmowership builds characters.
Hopelessly indebted shady characters. Millions of them.
when you have shoddy contractors like yourself you might need to escrow more than that. you cut corners a lot I’m sure.
Book as a loss Az_Fraud. Year after year after year.
still a loser after 10 years
Your rapidly depreciating house will be a loss every year you own it.
What are you losses to depreciation so far? $40k?
Much more decent people are renters. Because renters will be evicted if they do not pay the monthly rent to the landlord. Loanowners don’t seem to be evicted for several years if they stop payments.
You are in a safer neighborhood when it’s all renters.
That hasn’t necessarily been my experience. There are a lot of dirtbag renters who take no pride in a property they don’t own.
I remember a rental home my SIL used to live in. They discovered trash that was literally stuffed into various nooks and crannies around the hose.
Sux to be a landlord with trailor trash tenants!
…hose.…house. (Freudian slip is showing again…)
The commander in chief lays out his justification for the war in Syria and Iraq.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/25/threatiness_obama_speech_islamic_state_bombing_iraq_syria_khorasan
do the saudis want a pipeline through syria?
Not the Saudis - the Qataris.
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Qatar-Rich-and-Dangerous.html
War is the health of the state.
War is the existence of the state.
War is a force that gives us meaning (EXCELLENT book by Chris Hedges).
http://www.amazon.com/War-Force-that-Gives-Meaning/dp/1400034639
Santa Ana, CA Sale Prices Crater 10% YoY; Down 24% QoQ
http://www.zillow.com/santa-ana-ca-92704/home-values/
Where on the link is the discussion of cratering prices?
Select median sale price from the drop down field.
Wow — how did the Zesstimates get so far out of whac with market reality?
92704 Market Overview
Data through Aug 31, 2014
$413,200 ZHVI
5.0% 1-yr forecast What’s This? (Aug 31, 2015)
$359,900 Median listing price
$309,650 Median sale price
Their “zesstimate” seems to align with the fantasy in the minds of homedebtors. It doesn’t align well with the stark reality does it?
I’d bet they want it all pumped up so they use a formula that uses the highest recent comp and tweak every variable to the upside to make it generally higher than warranted.
Then you have outliers who whine that their house is too low anyway.
Debt donkeys, zillow your shack now and report back whether you think it has you too high or too low.
Doesn’t the median sale price set the median ‘value’? Or are they actually using the term ‘value’ the way it was meant to be used, is - when sales prices go down, value goes up?
“I’d bet they want it all pumped up so they use a formula that uses the highest recent comp and tweak every variable to the upside to make it generally higher than warranted.”
If so, there is nothing whatsoever surprising about seeing current sale prices 25% below the Zesstimates during the Echo Bubble decline phase:
(309,650/413,200-1)*100% = -25%.
Zesstimates = Potemkin valuations
“Doesn’t the median sale price set the median ‘value’?”
Apparently the Zesstimates are working off a whole new model.
Seattle, WA Sale Prices Plummet 14% YoY; Demand Falls Through Floor
http://www.zillow.com/seattle-wa-98136/home-values/
25% Of Miami Housing Underwater
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/personal-finance/article2242300.html
Eventually they’ll surpass NY, CA, WA and OR.
more bs today?
You ask, I oblige.
Portland, OR Sale Prices Nosedive 29% YoY
http://www.zillow.com/portland-or-97201/home-values/
you cant even interpret data you pos
Falling housing prices angers you.
you cant even interpret data you pos ??
He’s not attempting to…What he wants is response so he will post whatever it takes to get that no matter how twisted the information may be…Ignore the dude…
im tired of your bs here every day actually.
Get used to it and get on with your life.
That link says prices are up??
Read the data.
What is it you guys don’t understand about make believe Zesstimates?
Median sale price (aka market price) discount to list price:
($311,500/$449,900-1)*100% = -30.8%
Constant BS in housing hucksterism. The huckleberries line up to be a BS, Broke Seller.
Is your bank “too big to fail”?
I don’t know if my bank is too big to fail, but I’m reasonably sure that you post at least half a dozen responses to your own question before the morning is over.
Related question: Do you work for a too big to fail bank?
If I had to buy back millions of defective products at a grossly inflated price knowing I’ll lose 90% or more, I’d be in denial too.
Markets
FDIC’s Hoenig Keeps Wall Street on Edge
Straight-Talking Bank Regulator Leads Crusade to Ensure No Institution Is Too Big to Fail
By Ryan Tracy
Sept. 25, 2014 11:55 a.m. ET
FDIC Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig has emerged at the head of a crusade to ensure no financial institution is too big to fail. Melissa Golden for The Wall Street Journal
One month before he assumed the No. 2 post at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Thomas Hoenig sat before a group of global bankers in Tokyo and told them he believed their firms ought to be broken apart.
“Holy mackerel,” a U.S. bank lobbyist who was in the audience that day in October 2012 recalls thinking. “Thank goodness he’s not the chairman.”
Mr. Hoenig isn’t the FDIC’s leader, but as vice chairman he wields enough influence to keep big banks on edge. The 68-year-old former head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has emerged as one of the most influential detractors of big banks—the only top regulator in Washington who has directly called for their dismantling.
His stance has helped shape policies that are restricting and restructuring the way megabanks do business. Mr. Hoenig helped push through stricter capital rules adopted earlier this year, won tougher regulatory language outlining how the government would unwind a large, failing financial firm and urged fellow regulators to send big banks back to the drawing board on their “living will” plans to avoid a taxpayer bailout in the event of a crisis.
This week, he signaled he won’t stop pressuring banks to fix those plans—a worrying prospect for Wall Street given that the FDIC and Federal Reserve have the power to force divestitures at firms that can’t show they have a credible bankruptcy path.
Mr. Hoenig declined to be interviewed for this article. “We have concentrated our risk in these [larger] institutions,” he said Tuesday in a speech in Arlington, Va., where he distributed charts he often carries showing large banks use more borrowed money to fund loans than smaller banks. “My major worry is the perception that, since the passage of the [2010 Dodd-Frank] Act, we have really become a much more sound and stable financial system. I question that.”
Mr. Hoenig’s tough talk is reverberating on Wall Street, where bankers privately fret about his pronouncements that big banks remain risky and benefit from a continuing perception the U.S. would rescue them in a crisis.
Tim Pawlenty, head of the industry group Financial Services Roundtable, hinted at his frustration with the stance advocated by Mr. Hoenig while appearing on stage with him at a banking conference in March. The Dodd-Frank law, Mr. Pawlenty said, made taxpayer bailouts illegal, but “many policy makers look at that and say … ‘I choose not to believe what’s written on the paper.’ ”
Mr. Hoenig said at the conference that the law allows for temporary government support, sending the message that the biggest banks will remain open for business and giving them a competitive advantage. Asked whether a solution could be found this year for the perception that some banks are too big to fail, he quipped, “It depends on whether or not people listen to me.”
A Vietnam War veteran and son of a plumber from Fort Madison, Iowa, Mr. Hoenig served for decades as a bank supervisor for the Kansas City Fed, where he helped administer more than 100 bank failures. Colleagues and friends say that experience instilled in him a belief that a bank, no matter its size, needs the discipline that comes from knowing it won’t be saved by the government. Mr. Hoenig, they say, noted that regional banks in his district with more traditional retail-banking business models weathered the financial crisis, while large, Wall Street firms with investment-banking businesses needed bailouts.
Mr. Hoenig fits with a tradition of Fed leaders from outside New York who are wary of Wall Street and warn of the dangers of “too big to fail.” He is “a believer in competition, letting the little guy have the air to breathe and grow,” said Richard Fisher, a friend and president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “And [he is] very suspicious of the concentration of power.”
…
That article mentions Richard Fisher. He’s retiring next year as is one other member of the FOMC.
Fisher was a hawkish voice and was mentioned to succeed Greenspan. He was likely not accommodating enough for Wall Streets taste.
http://m.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/2014/09/23/dallas-feds-richard-fisher-announces-plans-to.html?page=all&r=full
the historical book value multiple for the s&p 500 since 2000 is 2.7.
Home depot is almost 10.
The hosing is coming folks, its a matter of time.
Me thinks that most of these so called stock investors dont know how to value a business.
Dont get caught up in the hype.
At what multiple of book value do you plan to start buying stocks (assuming share prices ever return to earth)?
Maybe Fisher will join his former colleague Hoenig at the FDIC. That would be an awesome combination of knowledge, experience and conviction to line up against the East Coast too-big-to-fail bankster establishment! Who knows — maybe America can return to a healthy free enterprise economy before the crony capitalists finish destroying it?
From what I’ve heard so far of the Carmen Segarra saga, it sounds like Goldman Sachs calls the shots at the Fed.
In other news, the sun is forecast to rise in the east on Sunday morning, September 28, 2014. What is it about Great Vampire Squids that is a mystery to anyone these days?
And why does it even matter whether the public views Wall Street Megabanksters as empty suits if they have a persistent leg up on the rest of the financial playing field from their K-Street allies?
ft dot com
September 26, 2014 1:39 pm
Wall Street meets its match in people power
By Gary Silverman
Investors are making it clear they no longer think their money managers are all that smart
The protesters of Occupy Wall Street didn’t do it. The prosecutors and the regulators who have been poking around in the dark corners of the New York financial world and the City of London hardly came close.
But a force has finally emerged to hit the big financial interests where it really hurts. They are members of the statistical cohort known as the American people, and they are calling into question one of the great selling points of the modern Wall Street industrial complex: its reputation for brain power.
Retail investors and public pension fund guardians are making it clear they no longer think their money managers are all that smart – or at least smart enough to merit the kind of remuneration that has landed so many of these masters of the universe on the lists of richest Americans, alongside tech titans, energy barons and Walmart heirs.
The most celebrated example of this growing scepticism came last week when the biggest US public pension fund – the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or Calpers – marked the sixth anniversary of the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank by announcing that it would pull its money out of hedge funds.
Hedge funds charge a lot – an annual fee of 2 per cent of assets and 20 per cent of profits, according to the industry shorthand – on the assumption their complex strategies will produce superior returns. Only that hasn’t been the case lately, and Calpers concluded it would be better served by less costly and less complicated fund managers.
But Calpers was only part of a broader trend. It joined a veritable stampede of Main Street investors clamouring for lower fees and simpler products, such as those offered by Vanguard, the Pennsylvania pioneer of index funds that enable people to tie their fortunes to a benchmark such as the S&P 500 for a fraction of the annual costs of a hedge fund.
Only days after Calpers disparaged the hedge fund industry, our friends at The Wall Street Journal reported that Vanguard’s assets under management reached $3tn for the first time – a sum greater than the gross domestic products of all but four countries.
Populism gets a bad rap these days, but this is American populism – pure and simple. The people are thinking for themselves and I would venture to say that their critique of Wall Street is potentially more damaging to its long-term prospects than the appraisals that appeared in the more immediate aftermath of the global financial crisis.
Wall Street’s earlier critics on the left, by contrast, consistently admired its moneymaking abilities. The Occupy forces saw the big banks as diabolical, but almost supernaturally endowed. Their sensibility was perhaps best expressed by Matt Taibbi’s characterisation of Goldman Sachs as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money”. I’m no financial analyst, but that certainly suggests a potential return on equity well into double digits.
The prosecution of insider traders by the US attorney for the Southern District of New York left a similar impression. The scores of shysters convicted at trial were objectionable on multiple counts, but their rat-like cunning and bottom-line focus were undeniable. In a world where Silicon Valley has yet to invent a wearable device equipped with a moral compass, this sort of display might appeal to more aggressive profit seekers.
The emerging problem for Wall Street professionals is that the public is coming to see them as empty suits. Bankers and private equity firms might find solace in the notion that much of the disdain is being expressed for peddlers of other financial services. But if the hedge fund crowd no longer inspires awe – and the concomitant big fees – who on Wall Street will be capable of such things?
…
He da man…
From the article
Fisher has had a colorful career at the Federal Reserve, calling the American economy “the best looking horse in the glue factory.”
“Today, I want to muse aloud about whether QE has indeed put beer goggles on investors and whether we, the Fed, can pass the camel of massive quantitative easing through the eye of the needle of normalizing monetary policy without creating havoc.” – Remarks to the National Association of Corporate Directors, January 2014
“I’m trying to be candid, but I’m also a team player and I’m only one on the team.” – Quoted in a Bloomberg article from November 2005
“We must strive to develop reliable real-time data collection technologies … That process is ongoing. To paraphrase singer-songwriter Robert Earl Keen, the road goes on forever and the analytical party never ends.” – Remarks to the New York Association for Business Economics on Nov. 2, 2006
“I labored briefly in the vineyards of partisan politics, but all it yielded was prune juice.” – In a 2004 news release announcing his appointment as Dallas Fed president
“We were at risk of what I call a ‘Hotel California’ monetary policy, going back to the Eagles song which is, ‘you can check out any time you want but you can never leave.’” – In a CNBC interview on Dec. 14, 2012
Fisher was a Wall Street stooge just like everyone else at the Fed.
Saying it doesn’t make it so, but go believing that.
Believing in what they say is the worst thing you could do for yourself.
Dallas is a long way from Wall Street.
If he was a contented stooge of the system, why would he have made remarks that threatened to bring down the walls of Jericho?
If Fisher had any principles, he would have been a lot more vociferous in his criticisms of the Fed, and in his position he could have done far more to block and call attention to the reckless and irresponsible actions of Bernanke and Yellen. He made a few tepic criticisms but always fell into line. He was the token opposition to preserve the illusion that the Fed somehow had dissenters.
Pushing his views too hard could have led to a concerted effort to force him out of his position.
Smoke and mirror
the best looking horse in the glue factory.
I’ve never heard this line before. It’s fantastic!
Agree about the aptness of the line. Fisher for Prez?
Is he the only voice admitting the Fed is over a barrel?
Over a barrel
Meaning
Helpless, in someone’s power.
Origin
This is an American phrase and first appeared in the mid-20th century. It is supposed that it alludes to the actual situation of being draped over a barrel, either to empty the lungs of someone who has been close to drowning, or to give a flogging. Either way, the position of helplessness and in being under someone else’s control is what is being referred to.
The first reference to the phrase used with that meaning that I can find is rather later than might be expected - 1938. That’s in a cartoon from the Pennsylvania newspaper The Clearfield Progress.
The cartoon writer’s colloquial use of the phrase and the lack of any explanation of it implies that that the audience was expected to be familiar with it. Given that, we may yet find an earlier citation.
In the following year Raymond Chandler made what appears to be an punning reference to the phrase, in The Big Sleep - referring to a gun barrel:
Heard on the Street
China’s Bad Bank Fails to Turn Good
China Cinda Asset Management Shares Fell Below IPO Price
By Aaron Back
Sept. 26, 2014 9:17 a.m. ET
China Cinda Asset Management Chairman Hou Jianhang, third from left, flanked by other executives at a investor meeting shortly before the company’s IPO last December. Reuters
Bad times in China are supposed to be good for China Cinda Asset Management. (1359.HK -1.11%) It’s not working out that way.
Cinda is one of four “bad banks” originally set up to take nonperforming loans off the books of the major state-owned banks. In the weeks after its initial public offering in December shares rose over 50%, but on Friday they closed below the IPO price for the first time.
Cinda buys nonperforming loans from banks, and debt from other sources, and turns them around, such as by recovering collateral or by swapping debt into equity. It was pitched as a countercyclical play: the more bad debt in the system, the more opportunity for profit.
So this should be Cinda’s moment. The banking system added 102 billion yuan ($16.6 billion) of nonperforming loans in the first half of the year, more than in all of 2013, according to CLSA.
In fact, the countercyclical case for Cinda was flawed from the start. A weakening economy increases the supply of distressed loans, but Cinda needs strong market conditions to nurse them back to health and exit its positions.
For instance, the company’s IPO prospectus revealed that 62% of its equity holdings from debt swaps were in the coal industry. With China’s benchmark coal price down 24% so far this year, these holdings are likely losing value.
The strains are showing up in Cinda’s results. By the end of June, its assets swelled by 70% from a year earlier, but return on equity fell to 13.3% in the first half from 14.6% a year earlier.
…
“return on equity”
Haaaaaaaahahaha!
A reader sent this to me. Check out the photos and Sydney’s fastest growing suburbs data to the right:
Bidding started at $1 million but a series of $100,000 bids quickly took the price above $1.5 million.
A member of the crowd told Domain that when the bidding hit $2.25 million, the auctioneer called the property on the market.
The buyer is understood to be an investor who was an underbidder at two previous Millers Point auctions.
So far the state government has netted just under $13.4 million from the sale of five properties at Millers Point.
Every property has sold for well above the price guides given to buyers.
The Minister for Finance and Services, Dominic Perrottet, said: “The sales agents received more than 1370 enquiries, conducted around 200 property inspections and issued over 70 pre-auction contracts”.
http://smh.domain.com.au/real-estate-news/fifth-millers-point-terrace-fetches-227-million-20140925-10lzo1.html
Collapse will be spectacular. Guaranteed.
The place looks like a tear-down.
Wow…That place is a crap-shack…Those prices seem to rival San Francisco…Maybe even pricier…Thanks for the post Ben…
Every corrupt Chinese oligarch must want to live there like in CA or Vancouver.
Every corrupt Chinese oligarch must want to live there like in CA ??
Cali is a big state…I am quite sure the oligarch’s are not buying in Modesto Ca….
Nor in San Bernardino, Chico, Redding or Fresno.
The Chinese investor action is in the high-priced coastal cities.
Do coastal people really prefer corrupt Chinese oligarchs to decent hardworking poor class american as their neighbors?
Coastal home sellers prefer corrupt Chinese oligarchs to decent hardworking poor class Americans whose mortgage loan underwriting limits qualify them to pay over $100K less on a home purchase.
Those huge $2 million to $4 million boxes look like substandard tenement buildings. Uninspiring. Keeeeerash!
Housing Demand Falls Year over Year In 48 Of 50 States
http://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public/State/State_Turnover_AllHomes.csv
And yet the Zesstimates have never looked better…go figure!
Turnover (Sales volume) figures are out for August and the declines are stunning.
ME down 80%
DE down 41%
VA down 27%
NV down 26%
DC down 18%
http://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public/State/State_Turnover_AllHomes.csv
It’s pretty amazing to see this happening before the Fed even hints that it is going to raise interest rates any time in the foreseeable future. I can’t wait until the real estate boosters on this board all find themselves enjoying a delicious crow barbecue when these turnover figures translate into sizable price declines.
Crony Capitalism’s First Family becomes a dynasty.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/27/chelsea-clinton-announces-daughters-birth-on-twitter-and-facebook
Another child to be raised by a nanny.
But of course. Chelsea has important societal contributions to make.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) — A Republican Super PAC defended the broadcast, on Saturday morning, of an attack ad highly critical of Hillary Clinton’s newborn granddaughter, Charlotte, who was born on Friday.
The ad raises several serious questions about the newborn, at one point accusing her of being “related to Benghazi.”
In criticizing a one-day-old infant, the ad is believed to be the earliest political attack ad on record.
“Charlotte Clinton Mezvinsky is fair game,” a spokesman for the Americans Concerned About Charlotte Super PAC said. “We have to assume that she is the presumptive Democratic nominee in 2052.”
Spain, maladministered by yet another Goldman Sachs “alumni,” faces a groundswell of unrest as one of its most wealthy states seeks to go its own way, rather than being an ECB-Goldman Sachs colony.
http://www.businessinsider.com/catalonia-defies-spain-and-calls-secession-vote-2014-9
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The president of Spain’s powerful northeastern region of Catalonia on Saturday formally called an independence referendum, the latest secession push in Europe and one of the most serious challenges to the Spanish state in recent years.
Catalan leader Artur Mas signed the decree to call the referendum in a solemn ceremony in the regional government headquarters in Barcelona, flanked by most of the region’s political leaders who support the vote.
“Like all the nations of the world, Catalonia
This has been brewing in Catalonia for quite some time…Maybe seeing Scotland actually get it to a vote has created a tipping point…Difference here is the final outcome will likely be the opposite…
Catalonia has no oil revenues. This will change nothing.
Spain won’t accept the vote. it’s against their Constitution.
Let’s have a war. Our neocons won’t mind bombing Catalonia if it comes down to that.
Spain is in the UN, isn’t it? They’d have to break international law to refuse to let a conquered and colonized people choose freedom. Not that laws are much in play these days, but still…
Spain won’t accept the vote. it’s against their Constitution.
I’m pretty sure surrendering their sovereignty to Goldman Sachs is also against their Constitution.
1 in 4 Americans 25-54 Not Working
8:35 AM, Sep 26, 2014 • By DANIEL HALPER
“There are 124.5 million Americans in their prime working years (ages 25–54). Nearly one-quarter of this group—28.9 million people, or 23.2 percent of the total—is not currently employed. They either became so discouraged that they left the labor force entirely, or they are in the labor force but unemployed. This group of non-employed individuals is more than 3.5 million larger than before the recession began in 2007,” writes the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee.
“Those attempting to minimize the startling figures about America’s vanishing workforce—workplace participation overall is near a four-decade low—will say an aging population is to blame. But in fact, while the workforce overall has shrunk nearly 10 million since 2009, the cohort of workers in the labor force ages 55 to 64 has actually increased over that same period, with many delaying retirement due to poor economic conditions.
“In fact, over two-thirds of all labor force dropouts since that time have been under the age of 55. These statistics illustrate that the problems in the American economy are deep, profound, and pervasive, afflicting the sector of the labor force that should be among the most productive.”
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/1-4-americans-25-54-not-working_806178.html - 81k -
The Millenials, dumbed down genetically and through our “everyone’s a winner” public education system, voted overwhelmingly for Hope ‘n Change. So let them enjoy what they really voted for: a looted crony capitalist economy.
The Millineals have no Eye of the Tiger. They are well fed, well entertained and well medicated. We are an incredibly productive society. Making Soma is cheap.
voted overwhelmingly for Hope ‘n Change. So let them enjoy what they really voted for: a looted crony capitalist economy ??
For 20 of the last 34 years the White House has been occupied by Republicans…
The repoCONS presidents acted like demoCRAPS and democraps presidents acted like repocons, so what’s your point?
The repoCONS presidents acted like demoCRAPS and democraps presidents acted like repocons, so what’s your point ??
Point is that the cause & effect is not because of this;
voted overwhelmingly for Hope ‘n Change. So let them enjoy what they really voted for: a looted crony capitalist economy ??
a looted crony capitalist economy ??
Cheap money and low interest rates are the the clear path to Nirvana.
The Republicrat duopoly creates the illusion of “choice” for the sheep with their kabuki-theater elections, when both parties pursue identical policies and are both bankster-controlled.
There. Fixed it for you.
How many of them are on the dole and don’t contribute squat to the system…Disability & government assistance payments aren’t even taxed…So, when someone gets their $1,000. a month rent payment made, its like the common man earning $1500…Thats like earning $18,000. per year…Couple that with all the other types of assistance and it makes you wonder how many will ever look for a job again…
A lot are stay at home mothers.
Daycare is very expensive and it doesn’t always make financial sense to have both parents working.
Yes, and mothers staying with kids is something that Republicans often praise.
A lot are stay at home mothers.
What dats shows there has been an increase in stay at home moms since 2007?
And stay at home mom doesn’t mean a single mother on the government dole whose baby daddy lives with her in fraud on the welfare authority rules so she can keep having kids on the government dime.
And stay at home mom doesn’t mean a single mother on the government dole whose baby daddy lives with her in fraud on the welfare authority rules so she can keep having kids on the government dime.
Gee, thanks for defining the term for those who were unclear about that.
Where is the data showing more stay at home moms since 2007? There’s plenty posted here on the increase in dole users.
Where is the data showing more stay at home moms since 2007? There’s plenty posted here on the increase in dole users.
There’s none. They just made it up to feel good about themselves.
Nobody is asserting that there has been any increase.
Some leftist on a news channel this morning says Obama is for the working man. I agree. He is for those few who remain lucky to be employed.
I never heard of anyone getting a job from a poor man.
“I never heard of anyone getting a job from a poor man.”
With Minimum Wage laws, this would be illegal, as a poor man clearly could not afford to pay above Minimum to hire someone.
The use of statistics is misleading here. Before the recession about 20% of Americans aged 25-54 had no job. Now that fraction is up to 23%. That’s certainly a unfortunate development, but not as drastic as the article depicts it to be. Of course, some of those people not working are housewives, who stay home and take care of the kids while their husbands go out and work, a fading tradition which Republicans often admire.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9dY4j9JeK9E/U5HAblAnHsI/AAAAAAAAfS8/p88XUCupj0E/s1600/EmployPop2554May2014.jpg
So it’s all good? I was gettin’ worried there for a minute.
I didn’t claim that it’s all good, just not as drastic as the Weekly Standard suggests.
Record 92,269,000 Not in Labor Force; Participation Rate Matches 36-Year Low
September 5, 2014 - 9:07 AM
By Ali Meyer
(AP Photo/Mike Groll)
(CNSNews.com) - A record 92,269,000 Americans 16 and older did not participate in the labor force in August, as the labor force participation rate matched a 36-year low of 62.8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
…
And that’s true for 98%+ of all crisis mongering, regardless of its origins.
“Never let a good crisis go to waste.”
At below 65% as of last spring, the U.S. homeownership rate was at the lowest level since 1995; some knowledgeable commentators have suggested it is headed all the way down to 55%.
Could there possibly be a correlation between labor force participation and the homeownership rate?
U.S. Homeownership Rate Falls to the Lowest Since 1995
By Prashant Gopal
Apr 29, 2014 8:00 AM PT
The homeownership rate in the U.S. declined to the lowest in almost 19 years as rising property prices and mortgage rates held back demand.
The share of Americans who own their homes was 64.8 percent in the first quarter, down from 65.2 percent in the previous three months, the Census Bureau said in a report today. The rate is the lowest since the second quarter of 1995, when it was 64.7 percent.
Recovering home prices and mortgage rates that have climbed from near-record lows last May have put real estate out of reach for some would-be buyers. The S&P/Case-Shiller (SPCS20) index of values in 20 cities increased 12.9 percent in February from a year earlier after rising 13.2 percent in the 12 months through January, the group said today.
“The homeownership rate is held back by slow job growth, tight mortgage credit and declining affordability,” Jed Kolko, chief economist of San Francisco-based property-listing service Trulia Inc., said in an interview before the report was released. “We’ll see it stay around this level for some time.”
Sam Zell, chairman of apartment landlord Equity Residential (EQR), said yesterday that the rate will fall to as low as 55 percent because more Americans are choosing to rent as they postpone getting married and having children. As of 2010, about 54 percent of adults were married, down from 57 percent a decade earlier, according to Census Bureau data.
…
With fewer than 93 million working age noninstitutionalized American civilians out of the labor force, there really is no cause for concern.
“Of course, some of those people not working are housewives, who stay home and take care of the kids while their husbands go out and work, a fading tradition which Republicans often admire.”
Others in this age group wouldn’t have been working anyway because they are busy doing Bath Salts and chewing people’s faces, a new tradition which Democrats seem to be OK with because it is not a war on women, the face chewers are not climate change deniers who should be jailed, nobody in the LGBT community has had their face chewed and the chewers are not racist Washington Redskins fans who want close the southern border.
You forgot to mention teleprompters and czars.
The 3 in 4 Americans who are working are stuck doing the work for 4 out of 4.
Actually, if 62.8 percent of the labor force is currently employed, doesn’t that mean 37.2 percent are not working?
Perhaps I need to brush up on my arithmetic…
Analyze this: We are in a depression. It continues to worsen. It is going to be the deepest and longest depression in our history. 40 years of malinvestment and reckless borrow/spend have a price.
It comes on the heels of the biggest credit expansion in our history. Debt donkeys out there, you brought this thing down on all of us. Unfortunately, war is probably the only distraction that will serve. Thanks, thanks a lot, debt donkeys.
Yesiree there it is.
I truly dread the next leg down, as it will be a Minsky moment at the point when the government bailout mechanism has run out of bullets.
Analyze this: We are in a depression. It continues to worsen. It is going to be the deepest and longest depression in our history. 40 years of malinvestment and reckless borrow/spend have a price.
Bingo. Crony capitalism has killed the American dream.
“Analyze this: We are in a depression. It continues to worsen. It is going to be the deepest and longest depression in our history. 40 years of malinvestment and reckless borrow/spend have a price.”
+1 A scorpion asks a frog to carry him over a river…
Those percentages are for everyone over the age of 16, including your parents.
I don’t think so, but I will get back to you after I find a reference.
You’re right! I was under the mistaken impression that the officially defined “labor force” ended at age 65.
Most interesting statistic in the article posted below: The percentage of adults age 70+ “in the labor force” (working or seeking employment) is anticipated to double by 2022 compared to 1992. Not sure if this is a positive sign that we are living longer and healthier, and thus able to work much farther into our senior years than our parents could, or a negative sign that people who used to be able to retire at age 65 and open an opportunity for a young person to replace them are now so broke that they have to keep working into their golden years just to pay the bills.
December 2013
Labor force projections to 2022: the labor force participation rate continues to fall
Because of the decreasing labor force participation rate of youths and the prime age group, the overall labor force participation rate is expected to decline. The participation rates of older workers are projected to increase, but remain significantly lower than those of the prime age group. A combination of a slower growth of the civilian noninstitutional population and falling participation rates will lower labor force growth to a projected 0.5 percent annually.
…
Could there possibly be a connection between the high percentage of Americans not working and the dismal rate of U.S. household formation?
9:52 am ET Sep 22, 2014
Global
Rate of Americans Starting Own Households ‘Disturbingly Slow’
By Nick Timiraos
CONNECT
New data show that household formation slowed considerably last year, a potentially ominous sign for the housing market.
Household formation is a key driver of demand for housing. When the economy stumbles and joblessness rises, more people tend to move in with family or double up with roommates. When the economy expands, the opposite takes place as people strike out on their own. Household formation also rises when immigration increases.
Last week, an annual Census Bureau survey showed that the U.S. added just 476,000 households in the year ended in March, compared with an average of 1.3 million in each of the prior two years.
The Census releases a separate quarterly survey that also provides household formation figures, though economists say the annual survey is a better gauge of household formation. The quarterly survey has also shown weak household formation—around 650,000 new households—for the same period measured by the annual survey that runs from March to March.
Either way, for the most recent year, both surveys “show disturbingly slow growth,” said Thomas Lawler, an independent housing economist in Leesburg, Va.
The surveys may help shed light on why the housing market hasn’t recovered as steadily as many had expected over the past year. Sales and construction of new homes are barely running ahead of last year’s pace, though the vacancy rate for professionally managed apartments has fallen to a 13-year low, according to real estate data firm Reis Inc.
Additional calculations of the same annual survey from Jed Kolko, chief economist at Trulia, show that the U.S. population grew by 2.3 million last year. If household formation continued at the rate of the past few years, the U.S. would have added 1.2 million households last year. Instead, Mr. Kolko’s calculations show it added just 425,000—and nearly all of them were renter households.
…
New tapes show the Fed is Goldman Sach’s prison bitch, but then we already knew that.
http://nypost.com/2014/09/26/tapes-showing-meek-oversight-of-goldman-are-about-to-rock-wall-street/
Nothing will happen. Obama Justice department will most likely get that woman arrested some silly $hit.
Agreed.
It’s the dollar, stupid.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-26/its-dollar-stupid
To claim that this is the market at work makes no sense anymore. Today central banks, for all intents and purposes, are the market. Our overall impression is that the Fed has given up on the US economy, in the sense that it realizes – and mind you, this may go back quite a while - that without constant and ongoing life-support, the economy is down for the count. And eternal life-support is not an option, even Keynesian economists understand that. Add to this that the “real” economy was never a Fed priority in the first place, but a side-issue, and it becomes easier to understand why Yellen et al choose to do what they do, and when. When the full taper is finalized next month, and without rate rises and a higher dollar, the real US economy would start shining through, and what’s more important - for the Fed, Washington and Wall Street - the big banks would start ’suffering’ again.
“When the full taper is finalized next month, and without rate rises and a higher dollar, the real US economy would start shining through,…”
Given how many predicted QE3 would lead to dollar collapse, how could slowing the money spigot to a trickle possibly not lead to a stronger dollar and higher (aka more normal) interest rates?
Looks like the oligarchs are touting debt “forgiveness” for the Eurozone - meaning debts get transferred from the big banks’ ledgers to the public books.
http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics-blog/2014/sep/26/eurozone-crisis-forgive-debt
I am glad Holder resigned. He was really bad but I give him kudos for putting so many banksters in jail.
As Holder patiently explained to the Wall Street-owned Republicrat empty suits on Capital Hill, the banksters were too big to jail. He had to give them free rein to commit their unfettered fraud and criminality. For the children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3zwhp5-jXA
Virus Probed In Paralysis Cases in 9 Colorado Kids
Health officials are investigating nine cases of muscle weakness or paralysis in Colorado children
by MIKE STOBBE AP | September 27, 2014
Health officials are investigating nine cases of muscle weakness or paralysis in Colorado children and whether the culprit might be a virus causing severe respiratory illness across the country.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday sent doctors an alert about the polio-like cases and said the germ – enterovirus 68 – was detected in four out of eight of the sick children who had a certain medical test. The status of the ninth case is unclear.
The virus can cause paralysis but other germs can, too. Health officials don’t know whether the virus caused any of the children’s arm and leg weaknesses or whether it’s just a germ they coincidentally picked up.
————————————————————————–
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT RELATED PANDEMIC DISEASES ARE APPEARING IN THE US
04 Sep, 2014 by Dave Hodges
Our Children Are At Risk
In one of the articles that I wrote at the height of the illegal immigration crisis, I stated that within a few months, these illegal immigrant children would be sitting in classrooms next to American children and could possibly expose our children to illnesses for which Americans have no immunity. Well, that day has arrived.
A new and unidentified respiratory illness has come to Missouri and it is sickening hundreds of kids, and it’s causing trouble throughout the entire state.
At St. Louis Children’s Mercy Hospital has seen more than 300 cases of enterovirus 68 since mid-August. A doctor there says it is. The children have difficulty breathing. Ten to 15 percent of the children are needing intensive care.
St. Louis Children’s Hospital reports that it has seen more than a 100 children with similar symptoms in the past week. St. Louis Children’s hospital, just like Children’s Mercy, is full and is not able to admit anymore patients.
Despite the emerging pandemic, Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, an infectious disease specialist at Children’s Mercy, said samples it sent to the CDC were almost all enterovirus 68, but the CDC refuses implicate the virus as a cause for this latest outbreak. Of course, we would not want to implicate the CDC for turning a blind eye to this emerging crisis. Despite the fact that all of the samples sent to the CDC tested positive for enterovirus 68, the CDC says there is insufficient statistical data to draw any conclusion.
Dr. Jackson says good hand washing, covering your cough and not sending your child to school if he or she appears sick can help control the spread. In other words, there’s no anti-viral medicine for enterovirus 68 and no vaccine. Subsequently, washing their hands is your children’s only defense.
Mysterious Illness Sweeping Through Border Towns
Officials from the CDC have confirmed that they are investigating a mystery illness that has been rapidly emerging in towns and military bases housing these undocumented immigrants. The CDC has outbreak specialists in place who are currently attempting to identify whether the causative agent is bacterial or viral. These illnesses are appearing in communities near where the government housed scores of illegal immigrants in detention centers.
As I predicted late last spring, these outbreaks are among the first of a long line outbreaks we were going to see as a result of unscreened illegal aliens.
http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com/…/ - 55k -
It’s all for the greater good. Sacrifices must be made if we are to realize Pelosi’s DNC permanant supermajority and advance our society to a bright collectivist future, presided over by our benevolent globalist-oligarch plantation overlords.
Are you in love with Pelosi?
Are you retarded?
Tapes showing meek oversight of Goldman are about to rock Wall St
By Post Staff Report
September 26, 2014 | 10:51am
Wall Street is about to be rocked by secretly recorded audio tapes that purport to show a too-cozy relationship between the New York Federal Reserve Bank and the financial institutions it is supposed to regulate.
The 45 hours of tapes, made by Carmen Segarra, a former NY Fed worker, capture former co-workers, whose job was to keep banks like Goldman Sachs in line, instead deferring to the banks, being unwilling to take action and being extremely passive, according to public radio’s “This American Life,” and ProPublica which obtained the tapes and is scheduled to air a program about the matter Friday night.
Michael Lewis, best-selling author of “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt” and “Liar’s Poker,” said after listening to the tapes: “The Ray Rice video for the financial sector has arrived.”
nypost.com/…/ - 170k -
Unless the tapes have some pretty amazing 10-15 second sound bites of obvious and blatant impropriety no one will care.
And if those pretty amazing 10-15 second sound bites are in fact there, we probably would have already heard a few of them by now, about 1000 times.
As the 2008 and 2012 elections showed, and as will be affirmed in 2016, 95% of American voters will gladly and willingly bend over for Wall Street and its wholly owned political subsidiary, the Republicrats.
City Officials, Developers Recommend “Coffin Apartments” For Middle Class
Austin, Texas, follows NYC’s lead in developing high-priced, 220 square foot apartments
by Kit Daniels | Infowars.com | September 26, 2014
More American cities are following New York City’s lead in developing “micro apartments” as small as 220 square feet, allowing city officials to gain more tax revenue and control at the expense of their residents’ mental health.
In Austin, Texas, real estate developers are currently working with the city council to amend zoning regulations to allow developers to build more coffin apartments, which would allow the city to expand the tax base and promote dependence on public transportation heavily subsidized by taxpayers.
“Are Austinites ready to start living in 21st century boarding houses?” Joe Lanane asks in the most recent Community Impact Newspaper. “That is how at least one Austin developer describes micro units, small residential spaces that are less than 400 square feet.”
And in Providence, R.I., a developer recently converted Arcade Providence, the oldest indoor shopping center, into a 38-unit micro apartment complex.
These units range in size from 225 to 300 square feet and include a living room, bedroom, bathroom, built-in storage and an ovenless kitchen.
But what’s the typical rent for coffin apartments? Existing micro units in New York and Austin start out at nearly $1,000 a month and skyrocket from there.
“The 55 units being built in Brooklyn will include 22 rent-restricted units, which will run from $939 to $1,873 a month depending on the income of the renter,” reported Sabri Ben-Achour with Marketplace. “The remaining 33 will be market rate, which means they could go for higher.”
And the Cresent at Austin, an apartment complex south of downtown, is renting out 392 square foot apartments for an average of $1,272 a month.
Micro apartments in San Francisco are even smaller, with the city having approved 220 square foot apartments back in 2012, and to put that size into perspective, the interior of an average school bus is larger at nearly 250 square feet.
Psychiatrists warn that these micro-sized units can lead to claustrophobia, domestic abuse and even alcoholism.
“Sure, these micro-apartments may be fantastic for young professionals in their 20s, but they definitely can be unhealthy for older people, say in their 30s and 40s, who face different stress factors that can make tight living conditions a problem,” Dak Kopec, director of design for human health at Boston Architectural College, told The Atlantic.
The cities green-lighting the development of coffin apartments are motivated in part by the expanded tax base resulting from packing as many people as possible within city limits.
And because parking is already at a premium in urban areas, city officials attempting to implement the United Nations Agenda 21 Sustainable Development program will exploit the increased population density to demand the development of expensive and inefficient public rail systems which increase centralized government control while also reducing the use of private transportation.
Signed in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush and later phased in by President Bill Clinton, the Agenda 21 program is based on communitarianism, which calls for government to eventually take control of all land use without leaving any decision making in the hands of private property owners.
“It is assumed that people are not good stewards of their land and the government will do a better job if they are in control,” Agenda 21 expert Rosa Koire wrote, who is a Californian Democrat and the author of Behind The Green Mask: U.N. Agenda 21. “Individual rights in general are to give way to the needs of communities as determined by the governing body.”
My dorm room in Austin was smaller.
But this is a good start!
Does anyone else feel that there’s a propaganda element in all this micro-apt publicity?
As in, “200 sq ft is the way of the future, so you better buy that 2 bed/1 bath house for $1 million while you can!” Buy now or be priced out (and doomed to claustrophobia, domestic abuse and alcoholism) forever!”
There is enough land in Texas to give everyone in in the world at least half an acre, I am guessing.
Climate change: this summer of 2014 had 10 days of 110 and above. That is fewer than the 11 days per summer average since 1895.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/weather/2014/09/27/fall-weather-arrives-phoenix-area/16323243/
In Austin, Texas, real estate developers are currently working with the city council to amend zoning regulations to allow developers to build more coffin apartments, which would allow the city to expand the tax base and promote dependence on public transportation heavily subsidized by taxpayers.
This is good news, no? The city government is reducing regulation to allow developers to provide what consumers want.
Generation Wuss
» by Bret Easton Ellis
26/09/2014 À 17:17 | PUBLIÉ LE 26/09/2014 À 17:17
My huge generalities touch on their over-sensitivity, their insistence that they are right despite the overwhelming proof that suggests they are not, their lack of placing things within context, the overreacting, the passive-aggressive positivity, and, of course, all of this exacerbated by the meds they’ve been fed since childhood by over-protective “helicopter” parents mapping their every move. These are late-end Baby Boomers and Generation X parents who were now rebelling against their own rebelliousness because of the love they felt that they never got from their selfish narcissistic Boomer parents and who end up smothering their kids, inducing a kind of inadequate preparation in how to deal with the hardships of life and the real way the world works: people won’t like you, that person may not love you back, kids are really cruel, work sucks, it’s hard to be good at something, life is made up of failure and disappointment, you’re not talented, people suffer, people grow old, people die. And Generation Wuss responds by collapsing into sentimentality and creating victim narratives rather than acknowledging the realities of the world and grappling with them and processing them and then moving on, better prepared to navigate an often hostile or indifferent world that doesn’t care if you exist.
http://www.vanityfair.fr/…/livre/articles/generation-wuss-by-bret-easton-ellis/15837 - 60k -
selfish narcissistic Boomer…
Many of today’s problems can be traced here. They are trying to make it to the finish line with the most toys and if they have to burn down the economy to get theirs, well tuff nuggies.
I think a certain amount of this helicopter parent hate and denouncement of the Millenials being so spoiled is a function of the elitist crowd writing it who spoiled their own kids because they were never around. You know, virtually all of the people who make up the MSM.
Police, media label beheading ‘workplace violence’
‘You have to go back to the motive, and the motive was he was mad’
Published: 17 hours ago
(ABC News) A man beheaded one woman and stabbed another at an Oklahoma food processing plant from which he had just been fired, authorities said.
Law enforcement officials have not discovered any evidence to suggest that the beheading had a connection to radicals overseas and have made no ties to terrorism. The officials said they believe that workplace anger was the main source of his rage.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/09/police-media-label-beheading-workplace-violence/#htR1F895cCYvQw6C.99
But the fear mongerers still use that Oklahoma guy as a reason for the USA to go to war in the middle east. My second cousin, a West Point grad, uses that excuse.
Have you noted all the idiotic strawman laments about how U.S. housing policy is to blame for low rates of mortgage lending? Never mind how the Echo Bubble has levitated prices out of reach of American families, many of whom lost jobs or income during the great recession; what this market needs is looser lending standards!
Business
U.S. housing policy needs an upgrade
September 25th, 2014, 1:04 pm
…
WHAT I THINK: The United States is in desperate need of a housing policy. We have no policy, and therefore, no direction. We certainly are going nowhere fast.
This week the federal government released the very disappointing 2013 Home Mortgage Disclosure Data (HMDA) on loan activity. Approximately 8.7 million borrowers received new loans, a number that is 11 percent lower than 2012’s funding totals.
Almost 38 percent of the 14 million total applications were denied. Loans funded to minority borrowers were at a 14-year low. The one bright spot was purchases increased by 13 percent compared to 2012.
Becoming a nation of renters is no answer.
This further hollows out the middle-class and every American’s best opportunity for wealth building through homeownership. Renters are far more vulnerable than owners to unaffordable payment spikes. And renters have few legal protections from landlord move-out demands.
Here are my suggestions for a healthy housing policy;
1) End lender fines and loan buyback demands for honest mistakes on loan files that did not harm the consumer or the loan performance. This will surely attract desperately needed private capital back to the market.
2) Come clean with the public about Fannie and Freddie. Merge them together as one. We don’t need both. We can’t eliminate both of them either as we need an independent and fluid source of mortgage funds.
3) Standardize underwriting and pricing for all loans being insured or guaranteed by any government entity (FHA or Fannie for example) so that lenders cannot make up their own rules and phantom fees (known as overlays and LLPA’s). This will stop loan denials and over-pricing for undesirable applicants.
4) Regulators and lenders must stop assuming all borrowers are dishonest. Humiliating human beings drives these taxpayers to not want to participate. Just like the criminal justice system, a presumption of innocence is in order.
5) Reduce the cost of homeownership by eliminating “guarantee fees.” These G-fees amount to a hidden tax for Fannie and Freddie loans, adding on average more than 0.5 of a percent to the interest rate.
6) Rollback FHA mortgage insurance premiums to 50 percent of today’s prices.
“This will stop loan denials and over-pricing for undesirable applicants.”
Wouldn’t charging applicants who pose greater credit risk a higher interest rate help prevent mortgage loan defaults down the road?
If it doesn’t discourage deadbeats from borrowing money they are unlikely to ever repay, at least the creditors will be rewarded for making riskier loans by interest payments high enough to cover their losses on default.
“This will stop loan denials and over-pricing for undesirable applicants.”
Apparently we prefer loan _approvals_ for undesirable applicants??? Huh???
The comments in the above article indicate that at least some folks in the mortgage lending business are still drunk on the subprime lending Kool-aide and living under the delusion that subprime underwriting standards are soon to return.
They aren’t.
crater
Region IV
Dimwitted debt donkeys
Thugs are taking over Ferguson now. Heckuva job!
It’s open season on police in Ferguson, MO now.
An Officer Is Shot in Ferguson, Mo.
By ASHLEY SOUTHALL
SEPT. 27, 2014
A Ferguson, Mo., police officer was shot on Saturday night, in an incident that authorities said was unrelated to continuing protests over the death of teenager shot by a police officer there last month.
The officer was shot around 9:10 p.m. while checking on a community center, the Ferguson police chief, Thomas Jackson, said in a brief press conference Sunday morning. The center is not near where the protesters have gathered.
The officer spotted two men, who began running when he approached them, Chief Jackson said. The officer chased them, and as he closed in on one of the suspects, Chief Jackson said, the second suspect pulled out a gun and fired at the officer, who was shot in one arm.
The officer said he fired several shots in return, but there was no indication that he hit either of the suspects, Chief Jackson said.
Officials did not release the officer’s name or say how long he had been on the police force.
The shooting happened in a neighborhood off West Florissant Avenue, a major artery in the area, about two miles from where Michael Brown, a black teenager, was shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer, on Aug. 9. Chief Jackson said he did not think the shooting was related to protests over Mr. Brown’s death.
“I don’t think it is,” he said. “It didn’t happen within the proximity of the protest area. This is a very secluded area. I wouldn’t have any reason to think that it was linked in any way, shape or form.”
…
“…while checking on a community center…”
All the poor places seem to have a community center.
“…fired at the officer, who was shot in one arm.”
Fortunately they’re not being beheaded, yet.