The Potential For A Glut Of Properties
A report from MarketWatch. “‘It is 2005 all over again in terms of the valuation extreme, the psychological excess and the denial.’ That’s what James Stack, who accurately predicted the last housing crash, told Bloomberg about what he’s seeing with home prices these days. Stack explained that his ‘Housing Bubble Bellwether Barometer’ of home builder and mortgage company stocks, which enjoyed an 80% rally in the past year, is once again sounding the alarm for overconfident real-estate investors. ‘People don’t believe housing is in a bubble and don’t want to hear talk about prices being a little bit bubblish,’ Stack, who manages more than $1 billion for high net worth clients, told Bloomberg.”
From the Press Herald in Maine. “For the third consecutive year, Maine set a statewide record for home sales volume in 2017, according to Maine Listings data. The evidence that limited inventory in southern Maine curtailed what could have been an even bigger sales year can be found in the data for York and Cumberland counties, said Michael Sosnowski, owner of the Portland real estate brokerage Maine Home Connection. ‘Nearly every community in the Greater Portland area experienced sales declines in 2017 – some in double digits,’ Sosnowski said. ‘For example, Portland, which eclipsed 600 annual single-family homes sales for the first time in history in 2016, recorded a decline of 15 percent in 2017.’”
“Portland homebuyers Charlotte Harrison and Sam Tracy said they experienced firsthand the effects of a housing market in which demand far outstripped supply. Harrison and Tracy, both 26, visited about a dozen homes before placing the winning bid of $425,000 on a four-bedroom, 1,960-square-foot home on Noyes Street in Portland’s Oakdale neighborhood. ‘It ended up being pretty much our dream house,’ Tracy said. ‘It’s big and yellow and has a turret.’”
From the Los Angeles Daily News in California. “Housing prices in the San Fernando Valley ended the year at a median price of $643,783, the highest ever recorded in the area, according to the Southland Regional Association of Realtors. ‘Today’s resale activity is a shadow of what the local housing market once was,’ said Gary Washburn, president of the association in a statement. ‘Even with record prices, people clamor for housing more than ever, yet there simply are not enough homes listed for sale.’”
“A report from the California Association of Realtors said all major regions posted year-over-year sales declines, with sales in the Los Angeles metro region dropping 7.1 percent, the Inland Empire decreasing 3.5 percent.”
The News Press in Florida. “Fort Myers, Naples and other parts of Florida do not have enough workers. The shrinking labor force is a big issue that a nationally acclaimed economist said he could not stress enough ‘You’re out of people,’ said Elliot Eisenberg. ‘This is a real problem. You will have problems in ’19 or ’20 because there will be no one to hire.’”
“Quickly: there’s no housing bubble, student loans have gotten ‘really big,’ but millennials will be fine, and consumer confidence is good. Taking everything into consideration, ‘it’s virtually impossible for us to have a recession this year,’ Eisenberg said, adding the only way he sees that happen is if the stock market crashes.”
“A weaker dollar is a concern. Gross domestic product was 2.5 percent this past year, but it’s unlikely to increase much due to productivity issues and labor force growth. ‘It’s just not that good,’ he said. ‘We can’t do much better. It’s not possible. Economically we’re running out of workers. It’s going to slow us down.’ Changing that reality will not be easy, with workers on the sidelines unlikely to jump in. ‘We’re just out of workers, and the workers that are available, they can’t pass a drug test,’ he said.”
The New Haven Register in Connecticut. “Single-family home sales in Connecticut last month fell dramatically compared to December 2016, according to a state real estate trade group. ‘You have to look at the prospect of rising interest rates,’ said Donald Klepper-Smith, chief economist for New Haven-based DataCore Partners. ‘I would not use the word ‘robust’ to describe this housing market.’”
“Add to the mix the problem that more people are leaving Connecticut than are moving in and you have the potential for a glut of properties on the market.”
The Real Deal on New York. “The number of luxury contracts signed in the residential market last week looked a lot like this time last year. But prices were pushed way down due to big reductions on the week’s priciest deals, according to Olshan Realty’s luxury market report. The week of the Martin Luther King holiday saw 18 contracts signed at $4 million and above, the same number from a year ago. But luxury units saw a 20 percent discount from their original to final ask, a result of developers who spent years marketing their units at what Olshan called ‘fantasy prices.’”
“The priciest contract signed was on the penthouse at DHA Capital’s 12 East 13th Street in Greenwich Village, which took a haircut of nearly 60 percent from its original ask. The 5,704-square-foot triplex went into contract with an asking price of $12.95 million, down from the $30.5 million it was asking when it first hit the market in December 2013.”
From Champagne and Shade. “Margaret Josephs isn’t the first person on Real Housewives of New Jersey to have money problems. She is the latest! New reports claim that the ‘powerhouse in pigtails’ is facing the foreclosure of not one, but two properties due to failure to pay. According to Page Six, Margaret Josephs and her husband, Joe Benigno, were sent a foreclosure notice by Unity Bank on December 15. More recently, information from the paperwork was entered in as a public record in Bergen County.”
“The bank notice seeks to recover a $1.2 million mansion owned by Josephs and Benigno as well as the property right next door. Now, this is where it gets weird. According to the report, Margaret and her husband took out two mortgages on the two separate properties in late 2016. That would have been around the same time that Margaret should have started filming Real Housewives of New Jersey with her new group of friends.”
“It was pointed out that Margaret hosted her 50th birthday party in the home despite having an empty living room and making excuses about how she wasn’t done renovating yet. Did she run out of money in the middle a la Sheree Whitfield from RHOA? Or did the RHONJ couple just bite off way more than they could pay for?”
‘You’re out of people,’ said Elliot Eisenberg. ‘…We’re just out of workers, and the workers that are available, they can’t pass a drug test’
Did they legalize medical crack in Florida?
I heard a rumor that the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s is severely undermanned due to potential candidates not being able to pass drug tests and other issues. Same thing up here, plus the lower pay in parts of north Florida adds to it. Even the armed forces are unable to find enough people to feed the maw of the MIC due to lack of people matching the standards set. Maybe that’s a good thing, though.
The army appears to be lowering some standards … drugs included …
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/10/10/army-accepting-more-low-quality-recruits-giving-waivers-marijuana-hit-targets/750844001/
Just a reminder …
https://youtu.be/aYHDzrdXHEA
😁
LOL, I love those old 50s PSA reels.
On a more serious note, though, have you ever worked with a stoner? Really bites the big one having to clean up after them, they make mistakes ALL THE TIME. And don’t ever ask them to do any research. You’ll get back the most garbled mess you ever read. And they have accidents because they can’t judge distances or effort required.
Usually they have a pleasant demeanor, though. And they laugh a lot. It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.
Thanks for the feedback, palmetto. Given what I’ve heard, these stoners are all high-producing pillars of society, that same way all the DACA kids are in medical school. Now you’re telling me that they can’t even avoid accidents (potty accidents?)? Much less produce quality work.
I knew of some users, but they were all occasionals. They seemed ok. But the regulars are all losers.
There’s a propaganda clip where Helen Hunt takes a toke or two, goes crazy and hurls herself through a second floor window.
Yep, that seems to be the solution to a whole host of problems. People not meeting standards? Lower the standards! Works with mortgages, right?
Looking at the current rate of mass murders committed by former army personnel, be very afraid when the new batch has a war or 2 under them.
I heard the same thing about how difficult it was ti hire people in NC.
Same issues, passing a drug test and background check.
Too many ‘olds’ living there - many from the utopian paradise of ILLANNOY.
By the way - 2B - the article yesterday about the exodus from ILLANNOY - take a look at Illinois Rising by a radio host named Dan Proft for the full story of why it is so……very…….bad in ILLANNOY.
So glad to be out of there.
This guy sounds like the drunk loner who has to talk to me at the bar.
“And another thing, these kids today (hiccup) can’t pass a drug test!”
My guess is the geriatrics living in Florida can’t pass a drug test either sir.
‘You’re out of people,’ said Elliot Eisenberg. ‘…We’re just out of workers, and the workers that are available, they can’t pass a drug test’
This country is so full of lies and $hit. Memo to the hiring companies, ‘you are NOT paying enough!’ I have a friend who’s in IT and looking for a job. He is in his late 30’s, a Project Manager and quit his job last September to do a charity work in Kenya. He came back just before Thanksgiving. He’s been applying for jobs and his salary expectations are no more than what he was making in his last job. He gets calls but says that most HR people are upfront about they can’t match his salary expectation. It’s a freaking lunacy out there.
could be a sign of a recession coming soon
But that’s not what they tell you. Some in Congress are even proposing to increase H1B numbers right now. You can’t make this stuff up.
I’m starting to feel the leaves of change turning. The largest employer in the state (my employer) did a stealth layoff today:
https://www.ksl.com/?sid=46244864&nid=148&title=intermountain-healthcare-to-move-2300-workers-to-new-employer-says-move-will-save-70m
Microsoft just did the same this week as well:
https://www.petri.com/microsoft-cuts-payroll-layoffs-across-several-orgs
The media doesn’t cover this very much either.
Keyboard tappers are a dime a dozen.
There’s a shortage, my man. That’s what I hear all the time any way. LOL
He’s been applying for jobs and his salary expectations are no more than what he was making in his last job.
But how long was he at his last job?
Over time, salaries increase in part based on what you can do, and in part because it is costly to replace you after you have knowledge of an organization. Being in his late 30’s and being comfortable enough to quit and do charity work implies that he was at his prior position for long enough to be somewhat overpaid based on the desire of his employer to NOT have him quit his job to go somewhere else.
He really expected to simply pick up where he left off?
May have been less than 3 years in his last position. I know his salary expectation and believe me he’s asking for less considering the ‘hot’ market.
His employer wanted him to go ‘unpaid’ but he was thinking of quitting the company anyway.
He quit to do Charity work in Kenya..
What is coming. The brick wall.
+++++
Housing Market Supply And Demand: Just The Facts
Dave Kranzler · January 25, 2018 · Investment Research Dynamics
The National Association of Realtors reports that December existing home sales fell more than the NAR led its Wall Street lap-dogs to believe they would decline. Larry Yun, the NAR’s market elf, has been blaming phlegmatic housing sales over the last two years on low inventory. There’s only one problem with this assertion: it’s not true based on historical data:
The bigger factor driving the economics of the housing market right now is the deteriorating financial condition of any household that might want to buy a house. The Fed and Government have largely exhausted the population of would-be mortgagees that can make a 0-3% down payment on a conventional mortgage plus carry the monthly burden of servicing that mortgage. The tax advantage from deducting real estate taxes was stripped from the equation.
One thing to keep in mind. A large percentage of homes purchased and financed with 0-3% down payment mortgages in the last couple of years are underwater. When a buyer puts almost nothing down on a mortgage-financed home, the transaction costs all-in are about 10% of the value of the home. These homes are underwater at closing. Except in certain bubble areas, homes have not appreciated in value enough to make up for the amount that low down payment buyers are underwater when they closed.
Just like any market bubble, I believe the housing market is reaching the point of exhaustion. As households continue to get squeezed financially, there will be a lot of homes put on the market hoping for last year’s price.
Greenwich, Connecticut housing values are down 20%. Greenwich would be the “poster child” for the high-end housing market. NYC values are starting to get hammered. For taxpayers who itemize, the new tax law limits the deduction for State, local, sales and property taxes to $10,000. This will hammer the high-end market, which in turn will put downward pressure on everything below it.
‘This will hammer the high-end market, which in turn will put downward pressure on everything below it.’
Seems like the high end has been getting hammered / adjusting downward for a year or more, but that hasn’t translated into any relief in the sub $300k market, to the extent it still exists.
We’re in the parabolic phase of Housing Bubble 2.0 now, with prices still climbing but ever fewer buyers willing or able to make purchases. Next up: Collective shock that U.S. real estate prices are dropping.
Re-post:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-25/new-home-sales-crash-december-prices-reach-record-high
One of the comments from the article:
“I operate in a very active market and fund over 100M a year in real estate loans….It is crickets now.”
It’s crickets, crickets I tell you!
Crickets all the way down!
da bear
Genius is 90% mental.
And, for multiple years during the Obama Administration, GE paid zero federal corporate income taxes…
And, in the end, they destroyed their company.
+++++++
The decline and fall of General Electric, the poster child of Obamanomics
Washingtonexaminer.com | 1/23/2018 | Timothy P. Carney
Sometimes we look back a decade or so and reconsider our word choice. For instance, I used to call General Electric — with its heavy lobbying, its intimate ties to the White House, all its bets on green energy, on embryonic stem cells, on Obamacare, on industrial policy — the “for-profit arm of the Obama administration.”
No company has spent as much on U.S. lobbying since 2000 as General Electric. And no component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average has performed worse since 2000 than General Electric.
The company’s stock is tanking. Its profit margins range from sclerotic to negative. Its recent big bets on Europe and green energy are proving to be duds. GE has already sold off its appliance business and is trying to find a buyer for its light bulb business.
GE CEO Jeff Immelt kicked off the start of former President Barack Obama’s administration with a letter prophesying a golden era of American industrial planning, ushered in by the bailouts and a new president who promised a “remaking” of America.
The letter bragged, “We have gained access to government funding programs that put us on equal footing with banks,” and described GE as “ a natural partner” with federal agencies, “as the role of government increases in the current crisis.” GE is “a particularly desirable partner for governments,” Immelt assured shareholders.
When Obama created a “Jobs Council,” his jobs czar was Immelt.
GE lobbied for and was expected to profit from Obama’s green-energy subsidies and regulations, which would enrich the conglomerate’s many renewable products, including wind turbines. Obama was a tireless champion of export subsidies, of which GE was a top recipient.
Heck, in 2013, GE actually became officially “Too Big to Fail,” designated by the Financial Stability Oversight Council as TBTF. “Material financial distress at GECC could pose a threat to U.S. financial stability,” FSOC determined.
There are countless explanations for GE’s collapse, but here’s one: GE spent a decade chasing the shiniest new winner picked by government, instead of looking for lasting value as dictated by the market. Government can provide billions in stimulus and maybe even some regulatory protection from your competition, but it can’t create wealth or provide lasting value.
Since Thursday seems to be joke day …
What General Electric needs is the return of Jack Welch and his wonderful Six Sigma.
😁
GE once was a huge American industrial company
Then GE became a slightly less industrial company with a financing division
Then GE became a huge financial company that happened to make a few things.
Then GE became a crony capitalist, lick the boots of obama, to get on the government gravy train company. GE CEO Jeff Immelt was the chariman of the obama “Jobs Committee” while he shipped thousands of jobs to China. And I already mentioned GE paid zero corporate taxes.
Then GE was about to go bankrupt - and got a huge obama bailout.
Now GE is Zombie corporation.
How to save it?
Get back to its roots on MAKING things people and businesses want. It is not sexy but it works. And be the best in what you do.
Stay out of politics.
And throw GE CEO Jeff Immeltin in jail after clawing back every single bonus.
“Be the best in what you do.”
Jack Welch was very fixated on being #1 in everything, to the point of making commercials about it (I remember those). And how did they achieve being #1 in everything? By selling off any division that wasn’t #1. And ta-da, still #1 in everything they did.
Some execs (poor things, they had ethics years ago), were appalled when Welch sold the light bulb manufacture to China. Light bulbs weren’t a blockbuster but they were profitable… but still… lights bulbs … are what built GE in the first place.
Mr Welch also had a policy of firing the bottom 10% of performers every year. Imagine all the politics and brown nosing people did to stay out of the wretched bottom 10%. The back stabbing must have been breathtaking.
Imagine being at GE for 20 years, a solid and consistent performer, only to be pulled into you boss’s office one day and being told the you don’t cut it anymore, even though your performance has actually improved. He then shows you redacted peer reviews where your peers (who remain anonymous) bad mouth you. Buh bye!
Enron did that too. Hire 10% new fire 10% low performers. They called it rank-and-yank.
I wonder about that other ol dinosaur, IBM.
Didn’t it sell off everything of value also?
The reason GE has taken it on the chin lately has to do with its long-term bet on insurance care for the elderly (e.g. nursing homes and assisted livings). It sold policies for too cheap and made bad actuarial decisions. Guess what, health care is super expensive in the US and if you sell policies for too cheap, you will wreck your company.
Last week, General Electric said it was taking a massive loss — $6.2 billion — related to an obscure corner of the company: long-term-care insurance.
Long-term-care insurance is this kind of insurance that anyone can buy. It covers things like nursing home care, or a home health aide.
But recently, GE came out and said it was having an “adverse claims experience” with these policies. Basically, the company got the math wrong, and lost billions as a result.
This isn’t just about GE. MetLife got out of this business and so has just about everybody else. They all said the same thing: we underestimated how much this was going to cost.
Today on the show: How did the insurance companies get the numbers so wrong? And why can’t they get it right?
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/01/24/580432527/a-long-term-bet-gone-bust
Yup. GE’s bread-and-butter small appliance and other manufacturing divisions made a consistent single-digit percentage profit, year-in, year-out.
But that wasn’t high enough. Nope, they wanted to chase those medical, aerospace, and military double-digit percentage profits, so those divisions that made consumer stuff got sold off.
And GE up until the 1980s was one of the leaders in the electric vehicle component manufacturing world. All of that got shut down and sold off in the Reagan years.
To paraphrase Keynes, “long-term care is DEAD.”
Which sucks. Baby boomers ruined long-term care insurance like everything else, so of course Gen X gets nada.
I seem to remember GE owning the turbine powerplants in many of the airliners around the country. After 9/11 they received a huge bailout, IIRC. The retired pilots, think pesions, were asked to turn-around and take one for the team.
To paraphrase Keynes, “long-term care is DEAD.”
Dry humor?
As a FYI.
I am a somewhat history buff.
During WWII - America crushed Germany and Japan in high quality and high production of war material using Statistical Process Control (SPC) and Six Sigma.
W. Edwards Deming and his methods were so successful that they were classified as a national secret during WWII.
After the war, America industry ignored everything it learned because it could sell practically anything it made with little competition.
Deming went to Japan, the rest is history and today Deming is a national hero in that country.
99/100 Americans could not even explain to you what a standard deviation is today.
Jack Welsh wanted to bring SPC back to America. Unfortunately, he never really “got” it. Six Sigma is just a small part of SPC. Other parts include treating your skilled workmen like treasure, getting rid of slogans/quotas and rewarding people on the factory floor.
During WWII - America crushed Germany and Japan in high quality and high production of war material using Statistical Process Control (SPC) and Six Sigma.
When I hear that there are people running around calling themselves six sigma black belts, it makes me think much of it is a waste of time in practice. If that sort of thing was going on during the war, we’d all be speaking German today.
I seem to recall reading that we won because we produced a lot of simple equipment that GI’s could fix themselves when it broke, whereas the German gear (like say Tiger tanks) was overly complex, broke a lot and was hard to fix. Because we kept it simple, we made a lot more tanks than they did.
Technically, the German stuff was superior and when it worked it was great. But it was expensive and it broke a lot.
Technically, the German stuff was superior and when it worked it was great. But it was expensive and it broke a lot.
And now that describes us.
In summary: BMW hasn’t changed in 80 years
And now that describes us.
Yup, except we do have superior numbers. But yeah, I can’t see GI’s fixing their Abrahms tanks themselves.
BMW hasn’t changed in 80 years
Yup, when they’re new they’re great. But once the warranty expires …
Yup, except we do have superior numbers.
Superior to who?
But yeah, I can’t see GI’s fixing their Abrahms tanks themselves.
In the British documentary series World at War, there were some British veterans who were impressed at the German soldiers’ dedication to maintaining their tanks in North Africa, though they didn’t specifically mention that they were poorly built. In the episode that covered the Battle of France, it was stated that the French had better tanks than the Germans but failed to get them out to the battlefield in time.
So quality was an issue, but only one issue. America’s greatest achievement was probably in the area of quantity.
Wrong.
America’s greatest achievement - even in the midst of war - has always been Individual Liberty.
It always has been, and is THE chief reason for our dominance. No tank, strategist, access to resources, geographical isolation, etc., even comes close to that achievement.
Our belief system is what made us great. Period.
I was referring specifically to the production of armaments during WW2.
Part of the individual liberty stuff is supposed to be the freedom for everyone to have their own belief systems.
Deming went to Japan, the rest is history and today Deming is a national hero in that country.
Deming is from my little hometown and almost nobody there has ever heard of him. It also the home of a WWII Japanese internment camp and everybody has heard of that.
My understanding is that Deming tried to talk to American industry first but they wouldn’t listen. So eventually he went to Japan because nobody else would give him the time of day.
I got training in SPC and ATS at P&G in the ’70s. It helped me tremendously as a Process Engineer in many subsequent jobs.
I remember a friend of mine remarking that he had attained his black belt. I found that odd, as he was not in the greatest physical shape. But it wasn’t a martial arts black belt, it was the “Six Sigma” black belt.
If any company advertises that they use Six Sigma to control their software dev life-cycle, you can guarantee that it will be; a tedious place to work, cannot respond quickly to market demands, drives process over creativity and will generally suck at retaining talent.
Agile it is, but most orgs are not equipped or structured like that.
Have you ever gone to the grocery store and paid too much? So you look at your receipt, point out the highest price items, and say, “If I eliminate a few of the higher price items, I can lower my bill just as much as eliminating many lower price items.”
Have you ever done that? Congratulations, you’re a yellow belt.
“Don’t pay for the higher price items, just steal them. Now you are a black belt. You are qualified to work in Gov and Banks.”
In other news, Jack Welch just beat the Street by a penny.
da bear
In a bizarro universe, far-far away, GE is tired of winning…
I recall the day during the finance collapse a few years back that the value of a share of GE stock was what near 2 clams for a short while. Who wudda thunk that?
Wrong! Immelt has nothing do with GE’s downfall. Stock price anyway.
I confess it was me. I made a mistake of buying 200 shares a month ago…and it has gone nowhere but down since.
@butters, you and I should start a blog. People can just do the opposite of what we do and they will be sure to generate huge profits.
Bitcoin is next I am afraid although so far I have made a decent gain.
Article/slideshow asks how do you know you’re done with San Francisco?
http://m.sfgate.com/local/article/How-you-know-you-re-done-with-San-Francisco-12489239.php
The first slide in the series is about human waste on public transportation.
Welcome to the Bay Area 2018
Totally worth the cost to live there.
What are Hinge and Bumble? They look like new dating sites.
That’s exactly what they are. From what I can remember, bumble is an app where women have to make the first move, so instead of getting a dozen “ayyyyyy gurrrrl” messages, a woman can skip that garbage and just talk to the guys she thinks look interesting/hot.
Hinge I’m not familiar with.
Do the math for housing prices.
Destroying or chasing out your productive middle class and bringing in moochers from third world sh!tholes.
All to keep your party in party.
How many will be buying $500,000 starter homes?
+++++
High Taxes Produce a Moving Experience
Townhall.com ^ | January 25, 2018 | Cal Thomas
One reason Democrats seem so fixated on importing illegal immigrants and allowing their children to stay and become citizens may be the exodus from high-tax and traditionally Democratic states.
The Washington Free Beacon has analyzed the data and found people are leaving Illinois, New Jersey (where the new Democratic governor has promised to raise taxes) and New York, among other high-tax states. Sixty-three percent of outbound moves were from Illinois and New Jersey. New York (61 percent), Connecticut (57 percent) and Massachusetts (56 percent) rounded out the top five. It is hardly coincidental that these states are mostly controlled by Democrats. Illinois, with its Republican governor, is the lone exception, though the state remains heavily blue.
California’s top marginal income tax rate is 13.3 percent, the highest state income tax rate in the country, according to the National Tax Foundation. The state also ranks highest nationally in its sales tax of 7.25 percent. Anyone filling up at a gas station in California sees some of the highest prices per gallon in the country, thanks mainly to added taxes.
If Democrats think they can replace American citizens who are leaving some of these high-tax states with “Dreamers” and other undocumented people, they might want to consider a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll conducted just prior to the government “shutdown.”
You can’t post these kind of links here.
Huh? Like cleaning the server with a cloth?
My sense is that the whole DACA issue has been put to rest, after the Schumer debacle. I got a chuckle out of the fact that the “Dreamers” turned on him when the shutdown ended, due it his failure to push it through. They went over to his house and staged a loud protest.
How stupid do they have to be to pull a stunt like this? He might not have succeeded, but at least he was on their side and did his best to push the issue, even if he did have a weak hand. Think about it: a group of non-citizens, who shouldn’t even be in the US to begin with, who could at any moment be rounded up by ICE, savages their ally in the Senate. Way to go! That right there ought to tell you something about their intelligence.
If I’m a politician observing this, I’m making mental notes to stay away from the issue. And if I’m Chuck Schumer, I’m washing my hands of these folks and I’ll be thinking about getting even.
The political pundit and former Bill Clinton adviser Dick Morris says the Democrat party has been captured by militant Latinos.
No, they are pretty smart.
But democrats have turned them into good entitlement zombies (who will vote democrat for generations if given that right) who now expect everything for free and will turn on those who don’t give them more and more free sh*t.
Just a small data point but makes my argument.
Cuomo wants to let Dreamers go to college for free
NY Post | 1/24/18 | Carl Campanile
Gov. Cuomo wants to give another break to immigrant Dreamers by extending free public college tuition to students who were brought into to the United States illegally as kids.
Cuomo tucked a provision in his $168 billion budget plan that would amend state education law to make the undocumented students eligible for the Excelsior Scholarship program, which covers tuition costs for students from families with incomes of up to $125,000.
On Tuesday, he said the state would continue providing Medicaid to Dreamers regardless of any federal changes to the Deferred Action Childhood Arrival Program, or DACA.
+++++
That right there ought to tell you something about their intelligence.
“No, they are pretty smart.”
Giving people free sh*t makes them smart. OK.
Voters. Loyal obedient voters.
Call me stupid, but when I was in high school, you needed to prove academic achievement in order to get a scholarship. You proved it with high grades, getting very high % on the SAT or ACT, or taking a separate test. I did them all.
And many scholarships were paltry, in the hundreds of dollars. Full rides were few and far between.
I knew a guy whose kids both got free rides. They both scored in the 99th percentile on their SAT and ACT. I also know of kids who scored in the 95th percentile, and they got NOTHING. Unless you’re in a protected class, full rides are hard to get.
I heard once that one of the state universities has some policy like that - a big scholarship for those who score in the top 10%. When you consider the fact that SAT scores are highly correlated with family income, it just means that the state is giving a big discount to a lot of kids from rich families. The other issue is the motivation. These schools want to increase the average SAT scores of the next incoming freshman class because will help with their US News rankings.
The new badge of honor for admissions officers of private schools is how much of their incoming class fall into the category of “first of their family to ever go to college”. I suspect a lot of aid will be going to these kids.
And so I keep on funding the 529 plans.
And many scholarships were paltry, in the hundreds of dollars.
And local college tuition was paltry, in the hundreds of dollars.
And local college tuition was paltry, in the hundreds of dollars.
You have to go back to the 60’s for that. It was already in the four figures in the 80’s at many State U’s
a big scholarship for those who score in the top 10%
Not in the Centennial State. CSU and UNC ( Greeley) give just $2000 a year to the top 10%. CU gives nothing.
You have to go back to the 60’s for that.
At my little local college in Wyoming (not UW) it was only hundreds in the mid 80s. Subsidized by the state of course.
And Cuomo is angry that the rest of the US can no longer subsidize this sh*t through a SALT deduction.
I expect that the market for forged Mexican birth certificates will skyrocket in formerly middle-class regions of NY as parents figure out that’d be better for their kids to be “illegal” during their college years…
The joke would be on them if they caught by ICE and deported.
Why not? If I can wall into the ladies room at Target, claiming that I’m a woman, why can’t they claim that they identify as Hispanic?
There appears to be a misunderstanding there. It appears that Cuomo is proposing to extend an existing program to dreamers. So there would be no benefit to pretending to be a non-citizen.
Funny story. Actually I walked into a ladies room a week ago. It was a dead department store. Traffic very low. I needed to pee badly. Looked for restroom all over the floor for 10 min.
When I saw it I just walked in. Did my bidness and was about to wash my hands. A lady walks in. I said ‘excuse me, you are in the wrong restroom.’ She looks at me with half a smile and says ‘no you are!’ I was like ‘OMG OMG’ and walked out without washing my hands. Yes it was a ladies room…luckily they didn’t call security or police on me.
The lack of urinals is usually a good indication that you’re in the wrong restroom.
Hey, just proclaim your gender as being female and you are set.
Aka Militinos!
da bear
I think the tide of sentiment has finally turned on immigration, especially illegal immigration. It took Trump to put the issue front and center in stark terms and to get people to face the reality of the situation.
It’s not just a Latino thing, either. When you see members of a Pakistani spy ring working in IT in Congress, and being very well paid for it, when your “gifted” kid graduates and keeps getting rejected for tech and IT jobs by the Pradeep Sundeeps in corporate HR, you start doing a bit of a slow burn.
You’re gonna get reported for #WrongThink if you keep posting this.
The media attack has been sneaky so far, but Trump holding his ground (along with his staff and the Repubs in the House) have force the media to shout there narrative louder and louder… and they overshot.
People are finally figuring out that the 700K is not just about the 700K. It’s a foot in the door for another 10-15 million. DACAs waving signs in Spanish and demanding “all of us or none of us” didn’t help.
And that 11 million is at least 40 mil.
If a democratic politician/supporter sees that kind of loyal voters, you would be stupid to oppose it.
With that said one thing is clear. Repubs should get the best deal they can get in immigration right now. If they wait much longer they will be crying over wasted chances for decades to come. Right now the hardliners are messing up their own chances with absurd (to all dems and many repubs as well ) demands of their won. Focus on few things and get it done. Don’t try to conflate and confound the issues. Anyway I look at it I see either Trump not getting anything or signing a bad bill in desperation.
And that 11 million is at least 40 mil.
A quarter of Mexico, or another California. I can see all the underfunded school districts, medicaid programs, etc. being strained to the point of snapping while trying to provide for all the newcomers, not to mention the rampant crime and other problems they bring. Lice, anyone? Schools didn’t have lice outbreaks before the landscape began to transform.
My kids went to parochial school, and we didn’t have lice issues, unlike at the local public schools. We also didn’t have gang or drug issues issues either at the parochial, but we did have a zero tolerance policy: one strike and you were out.
Republican voters don’t get it; they are literally being replaced.
LEGAL immigrants vote between 65-80% democrat, and illegals (when given amnesty) vote in similar patterns.
LEGAL immigration alone is on pace to turn Texas and Florida into blue states in the next 8 years. Once that happens, the Republican party is DONE. A republican never wins another presidential victory and the dems vote for even more immigrants to keep the tide in their favor.
Forget about amnesty for dreamers, that in and of itself could turn Arizona blue or put it close to the teetering point.
Americans need to wake up. We’re letting the democrat party replace us all so they can win elections. Someday soon it’s going to be pointed out that what they’re doing is treason. And there will be hell to pay.
Well, turns out I was wrong about DACA:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-25/trump-give-path-citizenship-18-million-dreamers-exchange-wall-funding
Not good news, I’m afraid. I’d rather have no wall and no DACA.
Repeat the Reagan playbook. Way to go.
Desperation time. The Orange man will sell out.
He’s trolling them. He knows he’ll never get funding for a wall, so no amnesty and he can say “don’t blame me, it was the other guys who walked away”
I hope you’re right.
Apparently he’s also proposing to cut legal immigration down.
The good thing about the “Dreamers” is that they’ve lived here for a long time–we have a pretty good sense of which ones are upstanding members of society, and which are not.
If the tradeoff is to keep more people who we know, and exclude more people that we do not know, that doesn’t seem to crazy to me.
Don’t fret, Palmy. This is the narrative I was talking about earlier So far, every news story I have read has the headline of TRUMP TO GIVE CITIZENSHIP FOR WALL FUNDING
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(and oh by the way, Trump wants “other measures” [or "border security"] too.)
The media does *not* want to say that those other measure are chain migration and diversity lottery; for fear that readers would agree with Trump.
Hey Donk
“My kids went to parochial school, and we didn’t have lice issues, unlike at the local public schools.”
When I was at Cal Poly I was standing in line outdoors right behind a South Asian guy (India perhaps) who was in the hot sun wearing a goose down coat and his hair was oiled heavily like a 30’s gangster. Upon closer examination I could see several lice walking along stands of hair. Yikes!
I don’t buy for a second that 80-90% want the Dreamers to be given amnesty. I don’t believe it’s even 50%. It’s pure BS, like the polls that said the Screecher had it in the bag. They weren’t saying it was going to be close, they were saying she was going to win in a landslide.
https://media1.s-nbcnews.com/i/newscms/2016_48/1815061/161130-newsweek-clinton-wins-610p_9fa2b8be87c77ffc1d05389008674acd.jpg
As I posted above, turns out Trump wants them to be given amnesty.
Reagan, Trump. Never blame the Democrats for amnesty. It’s always the Republicans.
He hasn’t done it yet. He let the Dems shutdown the government rather than actually give them amnesty, and the Dems folded. He’s trolling them regarding amnesty. In the end, he might make a real deal, but he will want something in return. Maybe banning chain migration, which unlike the wall won’t cost anything.
Maybe banning chain migration, which unlike the wall won’t cost anything.
That costs votes. That is one of dems’ prized possession. They are not giving up that. No chance at all.
Wall is something they may agree to. Seriously this country went for trillion dollars wars to nowhere can’t come up with 30 bil. In terms of really keeping people out, the wall/fence is a waste of money, but I guess it will save a face.
If they are truly serious and I don’t think even Trump’s people are that serious. They need to make it tougher on the employers and citizens of this country to hire any illegal. If you are hiring illegals, you are going to jail. If you or someone you sponsor overstays visa, you will be fined. Make it tougher so people will leave/flee themselves.
They won’t agree to either. Trump can throw up his hands and say “hey, I tried to help the dreamers!”
That Newsweek cover reminds us all of 1948, of course. So something like that must come up around once every 70 years.
I think the tide of sentiment has finally turned on immigration, especially illegal immigration.
LOL. If you listen to the trumtards it seems like the legal immigration is a bigger problem. They can’t see the forest from the trees. They will blow this golden opportunity with people people like Miller and the fat man in charge.
I am a fan of Miller. The way we’ll know if Trump is trolling or not is if Miller stays or goes. Miller will hand in his resignation if there’s a cave on DACA.
It also occurred to me that a DACA cave would be a little kiss for the old fraud Sessions.
Miller will stay. He loves war with Iran more than he does DACA.
It’s ALL immigration. It’s been too many, too fast, for too long.
Just tamp it down for a few decades.
One reason Democrats seem so fixated on importing illegal immigrants and allowing their children to stay and become citizens may be the exodus from high-tax and traditionally Democratic states.
So the next challenge for the Democrats would be to get the illegals to give up their work on farms and slaughterhouses in the Midwest and South and move to New Jersey.
Maybe I am getting these Housewives confused as I am a thrift engineer with no cable.
But didn’t she and her husband already go to jail for fraud with real estate?
+++++
From Champagne and Shade. “Margaret Josephs isn’t the first person on Real Housewives of New Jersey to have money problems. She is the latest! New reports claim that the ‘powerhouse in pigtails’ is facing the foreclosure of not one, but two properties due to failure to pay. According to Page Six, Margaret Josephs and her husband, Joe Benigno, were sent a foreclosure notice by Unity Bank on December 15. More recently, information from the paperwork was entered in as a public record in Bergen County.”
Thursday must be joke day …
“‘it’s virtually impossible for us to have a recession this year,’ Eisenberg said,”
“virtually impossible.”
Got it.
‘Today’s resale activity is a shadow of what the local housing market once was,’ said Gary Washburn, president of the association in a statement. ‘Even with record prices, people clamor for housing more than ever, yet there simply are not enough homes listed for sale.’
From the graphic at this link:
https://www.scribd.com/document/369748138/30-years-of-San-Fernando-Valley-housing-price-data
SFH sales
1985 11,322
1986 13,985
23 5
1987 13,334
-4.7%
1988 15,263
14.5%
1989 12,753
-16.4%
1990 8,726
-31.6%
1991 8,585
-1.6%
1992 7,774
-9.4%
1993 8,899
14.5%
1994 10,860
22.0%
1995 9,775
-10.0%
1996 10,519
7.6%
1997 11,545
9.8%
1998 13,242
14.7%
1999 12,858
-2.9%
2000 12,421
-3.4%
2001 12,501
0.6%
2002 13,863
10.9%
2003 13,878
0.1%
2004 13,283
-4.3%
2005 12,786
-3.7%
2006 9,632
-24.7%
2007 6,271
-34.9%
2008 7,094
13.1%
2009 7,793
9.9%
2010 6,815
-12.5%
2011 6,335
-7.0%
2012 6,333
0.0%
2013 6,064
-4.2%
2014 5,643
-6.9%
2015 6,108
8.2%
2016 5,863
-4.0%
2017 5,922
1.0%
Not much clamoring there.
Collapsing demand in a sea of excess, empty and defaulted houses.
When Gary Washburn was mentioned I thought for a second it was the editorial writer from the Chicago Tribune who hounded His Honor Mayor for life Daley.
I didn’t see number of units for condos or townhomes. Maybe the increase was in attached product.
All of the above.
Move your valuable Beanie Baby collection from the basement up to the attic:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-25/basements-in-new-york-mumbai-seen-as-uninsurable-in-next-decade
Warmists gonna warm.
Another joke …
https://ny.curbed.com/2017/6/9/15768032/climate-change-nyc-visualization-video
More chuckles. This time a (cold) Blast From Da Past …
https://youtu.be/L_861us8D9M
great youtube! I remember those winters very. Those winters and global cooling. We will all need to live underground by 2020 or freeze to death. (if i recall the year correctly)
What I’m wondering is; How long does the water have to rise before the water level goes up?
I love the fake news media.
Not ONE hurricane in almost 10 years (2005-2015). Despite Al Gore’s promised that multiple CAT 5 hurricanes would be yearly event by that time. And Florida would be literally under water.
So the fake legacy news media reclassify “Rising Storm Count” as a storm that caused at least ONE death. Look - it is rising over 30 years!!! We are doomed! Quick - raise taxes! Who cares if more people live near the coast and how the population has grown.
Heck, with that fake news definition - Chicago has had a major storm EVERY WEEK
Two words: James Hansen
http://dailycaller.com/2016/04/12/scientist-who-predicted-ny-city-would-be-underwater-says-hes-not-an-alarmist/
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-25/ray-dalio-slams-mnuchins-dollar-strategy
Nobody’s listening, Ray. Ray? Ray? Wasn’t Comey part of your “team”? You might want to think about lawyering up, Ray. Because a team of folks might show up any minute wanting to have a little talk with you. Except they won’t be from the FBI. Maybe US Marshals if you’re lucky.
This was an interesting article in the Boston Herald, by Howie Carr:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/howie_carr/2018/01/carr_scandal_ridden_fbi_must_be_abolished
“The solution is very simple — we have the DEA take over all federal police functions, just like they did with the Whitey Bulger investigation here in Boston because the FBI was too corrupt to be trusted. Maybe the U.S. Marshals could help out, too. They’re a lot better at finding fugitives than Famous But Incompetent.”
That was interesting, that bit about Whitey Bulger. The FBI was kicked off the case. I never knew that.
I heard that Zerohedge is a Russian propaganda website.
FWIW …
https://www.accredited-times.com/2017/10/09/zero-hedges-tyler-durden-outed-russian-agent/
Speaking of that…what happened to our own resident Russian troll?
Gone with the wind.
when u buy stocks and homes u supporting american business! dont bet against money printers!
The Outflow of Bay Area Residents Spreads to Higher Income Levels
By Issi Romem
Urbanist Article December 15, 2017
What happened: The median household income of those leaving the Bay Area and those moving into the region reached new highs. In 2016, the household income of people moving out of the Bay Area reached $81,500, while the average household income of new residents reached $90,000. This makes the Bay Area the national outlier in both the extremely high income of people who relocate out of the region as well as the income ratio between new residents and those who leave.
What it means: Over the last few years, the incomes of those moving into the Bay Area have risen faster than Bay Area wages, suggesting that the deterrence of potential newcomers is occurring at higher income levels than before. Similarly, the concurrent rise in the income of those moving out suggests that the ranks of people “crowded out” have swelled to include higher earners than ever before.
The Bay Area is one of the world’s most dynamic and vibrant urban economies. But since the 1970s, it has greatly decreased the pace at which new housing is built, and housing prices have risen significantly. As a result, the Bay Area exerts an intense gravitational pull on people but has insufficient housing to accommodate them all.
The high cost of housing deters potential newcomers from moving here, especially if they have modest financial prospects once they arrive. It also prompts current residents to leave as they often seek more affordable housing in other regions.
By dampening the flow of newcomers and tipping the scales so that more residents leave, the rising cost of housing prevents the population from exceeding what the current housing stock can accommodate. This price-driven mechanism has implications with respect to the identity of who moves to the Bay Area, who stays and who leaves. Housing price appreciation has skewed the inflow of new residents towards higher income levels, while skewing the outflow towards those who earn comparatively less.
The selective inflow and outflow of people from the Bay Area is reflected in the median household incomes of those arriving, staying and leaving. Since the Great Recession, the median household income of Bay Area residents has risen largely as a result of rising wages in the industries and occupations present in the Bay Area, but in- and out-migrants’ incomes have risen much faster. As of 2010, both in- and out-migrants’ median household income was about 75 percent of the median for all Bay Area residents, but by 2016 that of in-migrants was on par with that of all residents, and for out-migrants the gap had been cut in half from about $20,000 to $10,000.
http://www.spur.org/publications/urbanist-article/2017-12-15/outflow-bay-area-residents-spreads-higher-income-levels
seems like a big debt orgy down there.
Second floor amenities pool pump room:
https://imgur.com/a/2hFzG
I’ve scrolled past this a couple of times and each time I thought it said “poop pump”.
I get this report periodically……read on HBB’ers.
Brian S. Wesbury, Chief Economist
Robert Stein, Deputy Chief Economist
Date: 1/25/2018
New single-family home sales declined 9.3% in December to a 625,000 annual rate, below the consensus expected 675,000. Sales are up 14.1% from a year ago.
Sales fell in all major regions in December.
The months’ supply of new homes (how long it would take to sell the homes in inventory) rose to 5.7 months in December from 4.9 months in November. The gain was due to both a slower sales pace and an increase in inventories.
The median price of new homes sold was $335,400 in December, up 2.6% from a year ago. The average price of new homes sold was $398,900, up 4.3% versus last year.
Implications: New home sales came in weaker than expected in December, posting their biggest monthly decline of the year, as the boost in sales following the hurricanes finally ran its course. Sales of new homes fell 9.3% in December, but are still up 14.1% from a year ago. Despite the disappointing headline number, the details of the report show the upward trend in sales remains, with 2017 posting the highest annual total in a decade. The biggest drag on today’s number came from the South, which alone represented 56% of the decline in the pace of sales. This represents a return to trend after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma caused many people in that region to buy new homes to replace those destroyed in the aftermath, temporarily driving up activity. Going forward it’s important to remember that new home sales are volatile from month to month, but prospects remain good for further growth over the next few years. Sales of new homes were typically about 15% of all home sales prior to the end of the housing bubble in the previous decade. They fell to about 6.5% of sales at the bottom of the housing bust and now have recovered to about 10%. And if there’s plenty of room for growth in new home sales, that means plenty of room for home building to grow as well. Yes, inventories posted their largest monthly gain since 2006 in December and now sit at a post-crisis high. But this monthly gain was almost entirely due to homes where construction has yet to even start, and completed units make up only 22% of overall inventories, which means builders still have plenty of room to expand. With jobs continuing to grow at a healthy pace, wages accelerating, and a tax cut taking effect, we maintain our optimism about home building in the years ahead. Although the new tax law trims back the mortgage interest deduction for some high-end homes, the value of the mortgage interest deduction was affected more broadly by the marginal tax rate reductions in the 1980s, during which housing did well. Yes, the new tax law also trims back state and local tax deductions, including the property tax, but we think that’s going to affect where people live, not overall home building nationwide. The US economy is looking up and housing is one of the sectors leading the way. In other news this morning, initial jobless claims rose 17,000 last week to 233,000. Meanwhile, continuing claims fell 28,000 to 1.937 million. Expect payroll growth of about 175,000 in January, another solid month.
Pelosi is ALL for HIGHER taxes on the rich.
Just not herself.
Mostly - For the little people and those not politically connected.
And you can connect the dots on her vast wealth, real estate and corruption.
+++++
Pelosi Tries to Extend $137,000 Tax Break for Two of Her Multi-Million-Dollar Homes
Washington Free Beacon - 1-25-2018 - Susan Crabtree
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), who often rails against income inequality and calls on the wealthy to pay its “fair share” in taxes, took pains in late December to try to preserve tax breaks for two of her multi-million-dollar homes one last time before the new tax law kicked in.
Largely thanks to her husband Paul, a real-estate and venture-capital investor, Pelosi is the wealthiest woman in Congress with a net worth of more than $100 million and the seventh wealthiest member overall, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Pelosi’s annual property tax bill alone on three luxury homes last year—$137,000—is more than twice the 2016 U.S. median household income of $59,039, which the U.S. Census reported last fall.
Just days after President Trump signed the sweeping tax bill into law late last month, Pelosi and her husband tried to preserve $64,000 in property tax breaks, known as the state and local taxes (SALT) deductions, for her two California homes. The new tax law limits the deduction to $10,000 and went into effect Jan. 1.
Like many taxpayers with big property tax bills across the country, the Pelosis in late December prepaid the second half of their 2017-2018 property tax bills for their $7.2 million estate in San Francisco’s tony Pacific Heights and Napa vineyard and residence worth more than $4 million, according to San Francisco city-county and Napa county property records.
The couple paid the full annual property taxes on their luxury Washington Harbor condo on the Georgetown waterfront before the tax bill became law.
Pelosi spokesman Henry Connelly justified the pre-payment by arguing that it is legal and thousands of other Californians also tried to pre-pay their 2018 taxes in December.
The sweeping changes to the tax law are hitting the Pelosis’ real-estate holdings particularly hard. Despite their wealth and assets, the couple still carries heavy mortgage debt.
Because all of their homes were purchased before 2018, they can still deduct the first $1 million in mortgage-interest debt on each home, but the Pelosis also have equity lines of credit on each of the three properties in question, totaling approximately $1.1 million to $2.25 million, according to her 2016 personal financial disclosure form, the latest available.
Under the old tax law, mortgage interest on the first $100,000 of each of those equity lines would be tax-deductible; the new law eliminates tax breaks for equity lines entirely.
Pelosi and her husband also own four other residential and commercial properties with a combined total value of $7.5 to $36 million and reported annual rental income of between $315,000 and $3,050,000 from them, according to her most recent financial disclosure report, which only provides broad value ranges.
u cant buy a home on a sh@tty service job wage, working part time or if your out of work.
You can when the government backs your loan in one form or another.
Actually you only need 3% downpayment & that can be borrowed.
You can in Fort Myers FL, if you and a buddy work full-time in $15/hr drug test jobs, the two of you can pitch in for a $120K condo.
Better yet rent it for half the monthly cost. Buy it later after prices crater for 70% less.
2banana’s Rule.
Long term democrat/socialist rule + public unions + free sh*t army = misery, ruin and bankruptcy
And few people wants to live under these conditions.
“The island’s response has worsened matters. Politicians raised taxes, allowed governmental bureaucracy to balloon, borrowed to pay the bills and promised pensions that the island could not afford.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/05/03/puerto-rico-bankruptcy/101243686/
+++++
Puerto Rico warns its population and economy will plunge
CBS News - January 25, 2018
Puerto Rico’s governor submitted a revised fiscal plan overnight Thursday that estimates the U.S. Caribbean territory’s economy will shrink by 11 percent and its population drop by nearly 8 percent next year. The island is continuing to recover from the crippling impact of Hurricane Maria.
The proposal doesn’t set aside any money to pay creditors in the next five years as the island struggles to restructure a portion of its $73 billion public debt. The original plan had set aside $800 million a year for creditors, a fraction of the roughly $35 billion due in interest and payments over the next decade.
The five-year plan also assumes Puerto Rico will receive at least $35 billion in emergency federal funds for post-hurricane recovery and another $22 billion from private insurance companies.
The plan does not call for layoffs or new taxes. Instead, Gov. Ricardo Rossello once again called for labor and tax reforms and the privatization of the island’s power company to help generate revenue and promote economic development amid an 11-year recession. He noted that nearly half of the island’s 3.3 million inhabitants lived in poverty prior to the hurricane and that Puerto Rico still faces an 11 percent unemployment rate. Nearly half a million people have fled for the U.S. mainland in the past decade in search of jobs and a more affordable cost of living.
The US should just grant PR it’s independence, revoking US citizenship for any still living on the island.
Imagine the all the feet stamping if that were to happen.
Sounds like a sensible idea. Who’s opposed to it?
You guessed it, Dems and Repubs.
and the people of Puerto Rico
“‘I’ve never seen a soft-landing in 53 years, so we have a ways to go before this levels out,’ Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo said on a Tuesday conference call. ‘I have to prepare the company for the worst that can happen.’”
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=1134
Good ol’ Angelo.
the tan man made so much money he never has to work again.
Ok who was Getstucco? I’ve forgotten.
Was it pbear?
“‘It is 2005 all over again in terms of the valuation extreme, the psychological excess and the denial.’ That’s what James Stack, who accurately predicted the last housing crash, told Bloomberg about what he’s seeing with home prices these days.”
Try not to get stucco…AGAIN!
2 B -
This……
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-ed-burke-assessment-appeal-conflict-of-interest-20180122-story.html
The scowl on Burke’s face? Priceless!!!
Another headline over there: “Emanuel won’t say whether city should challenge low commercial property assessments”
A Dem politician taking up for the rich guys over the average folk?! Impossible!
Lack of workers? No mention of housing affordability or commuting expenses for the people who work in Naples or Longboat Key.
Islamorada on the East Coast of Florida had the same problem.
Yeah, no. They made it into a discussion about drugs and geriatrics instead. Neat trick, that. I fell right into the trap.
Mountlake Terrace, WA Housing Prices Crater 7% YOY
https://www.movoto.com/mountlake-terrace-wa/market-trends/
The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem
By ANGUS DEATON
JAN. 24, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/opinion/poverty-united-states.html
You might think that the kind of extreme poverty that would concern a global organization like the United Nations has long vanished in this country. Yet the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, recently made and reported on an investigative tour of the United States.
Surely no one in the United States today is as poor as a poor person in Ethiopia or Nepal? As it happens, making such comparisons has recently become much easier. The World Bank decided in October to include high-income countries in its global estimates of people living in poverty. We can now make direct comparisons between the United States and poor countries.
Properly interpreted, the numbers suggest that the United Nations has a point — and the United States has an urgent problem. They also suggest that we might rethink how we assist the poor through our own giving.
According to the World Bank, 769 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013; they are the world’s very poorest. Of these, 3.2 million live in the United States, and 3.3 million in other high-income countries (most in Italy, Japan and Spain).
As striking as these numbers are, they miss a very important fact. There are necessities of life in rich, cold, urban and individualistic countries that are less needed in poor countries. The World Bank adjusts its poverty estimates for differences in prices across countries, but it ignores differences in needs.
An Indian villager spends little or nothing on housing, heat or child care, and a poor agricultural laborer in the tropics can get by with little clothing or transportation. Even in the United States, it is no accident that there are more homeless people sleeping on the streets in Los Angeles, with its warmer climate, than in New York.
The Oxford economist Robert Allen recently estimated needs-based absolute poverty lines for rich countries that are designed to match more accurately the $1.90 line for poor countries, and $4 a day is around the middle of his estimates. When we compare absolute poverty in the United States with absolute poverty in India, or other poor countries, we should be using $4 in the United States and $1.90 in India.
Once we do this, there are 5.3 million Americans who are absolutely poor by global standards. This is a small number compared with the one for India, for example, but it is more than in Sierra Leone (3.2 million) or Nepal (2.5 million), about the same as in Senegal (5.3 million) and only one-third less than in Angola (7.4 million). Pakistan (12.7 million) has twice as many poor people as the United States, and Ethiopia about four times as many.
Get a job and then you’ll have some cash to put in your purse Mikey.
How dumb do you have to be to believe in this, or worse - write this chit? The worlds very poorest are mostly in Italy, Japan, and Spain, are you kidding me? Maybe there are some that dont have to spend much per day as they own everything they need, including land which they can farm. I could also buy europe having some poor just from the influx of african rapefugees, but even that number will be dwarfed by those in africa. Japan? NFW, aint nobody got time to be poor there, smart people have better things to do. Yet another worthless piece written by a fool who’s never been outside their bubble and traveled to the countries they laud or lament.
And didnt you just post an article about Clownifornia, the leftist s-thole and poorest state in the country and how “vibrant” its economy is? Well which is it, is poverty good & vibrant or bad? Yeah, we know, poverty is bad but leftist policies are good and produce vibrant economies even there there is no evidence anywhere at any time in history indicating such a correlation. In fact, quite the opposite which is what we’re witnessing all over the US, Europe, S. America, etc.
The worlds very poorest are mostly in Italy, Japan, and Spain, are you kidding me?
Read it again. It says that 3.3 million out of the out of the 769 million poorest people on the planet are in those three countries.
Your remarks about California and “leftist policies” can only lead to a superficial discussion. If we want to discuss the merits of various policies, it’s best to discuss them individually and not use terms ending in -ist and -ism.
“According to the World Bank, 769 million people lived on less than $1.90 a day in 2013; they are the world’s very poorest. Of these, 3.2 million live in the United States,”
I think the World Bank needs to check again Tea Potty Patriot.
The Homeless dude with a “Hungry Anything Would Help” sign at the I -95 South 45 Street Exit in West Palm made $ One-Fitty today, hooked up with his partner who was one exit South who had a similar take, ate an early dinner at Red Lobster and should be passed out by now in their Hotel Room. But none of that cash is showing up on anyone’s books.
Exactly! In Seattle on a good corner, you can make $100-200 per day begging, tax-free. Too many feel-gooder liberals think they are actually helping by giving people money out of their car windows.
Our poors are junkies and crazies.
The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem
By ANGUS DEATON
JAN. 24, 2018
And now for a song from 1964
From Wikipedia
“King of the Road” is a song written and originally recorded in November 1964 by country singer Roger Miller.[1] The lyrics tell of the day-to-day life of a vagabond hobo who, despite being poor (a “man of means by no means”), revels in his freedom, describing himself humorously as the “king of the road”.
Roger Miller King Of the Road
4,959,625 views
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmOe27SJ3Yc
Stop the Presses: Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Believes in Economics, High Dollar Hurts Exports
Published: 25 January 2018
The level of ignorance among people who report on economic issues can really be astounding sometimes. Steven Mnuchin made a statement about trade that is almost definitionally true. He said a weaker dollar would improve the trade balance.
This is associated with the idea that a low price increases demand. When the US dollar falls, our exports are cheaper to people living in other countries. Fans of economics believe this will cause them to buy more US exports.
On the other side, imports are more expensive for people in the United States. This will mean that we will buy fewer imports and instead purchase more domestically produced items.
Somehow, the fact that Mnuchin accepts this simple economics is deemed major economic news.
http://cepr.net/blogs/beat-the-press/stop-the-presses-treasury-secretary-mnuchin-believes-in-economics-high-dollar-hurts-exports
if he wants foreigners to buy our treasuries he should not be wanting a weak dollar.
Cuz he’s an idiot serving other idiots around him.
Flagler Beach, FL Housing Prices Crater 8% YOY As Beach Property Values Plunge
https://www.movoto.com/flagler-beach-fl/market-trends/
The empire needs immigrants
The welfare state needs immigrants
The debt based economy needs immigrants
Legal or Illegal in all cases.
No it doesn’t.
Dang right. Where does this shiite come from?
Otherwise how do you explain the reluctance from the ptb’s?
The “Globalists” need to level the field for all they consider minions. They expect that will reduce friction.
Re-posting Howie Carr’s column from the Boston Herald:
Abolish the FBI:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/howie_carr/2018/01/carr_scandal_ridden_fbi_must_be_abolished
“As a society, we’ve eradicated earlier threats to the public order — the American Communist Party and La Cosa Nostra, among others. Is the current police-state incarnation of the FBI any less sinister than either of those two mobs?
The solution is very simple — we have the DEA take over all federal police functions, just like they did with the Whitey Bulger investigation here in Boston because the FBI was too corrupt to be trusted. Maybe the U.S. Marshals could help out, too. They’re a lot better at finding fugitives than Famous But Incompetent.
Abolishing the FBI may sound like a radical solution, but they have metastasized into a clear and present danger to the Republic.”
Of course, I would argue that we never really eradicated the Communist Party.
Watertown, MA Housing Prices Crater 20% YOY As Housing Correction Expands
https://www.zillow.com/watertown-ma/home-values/
https://snag.gy/m5EzRB.jpg
Did you max out your credit card to buy Bitcoin?
http://time.com/money/5117306/buying-bitcoin-investors-crazy/
Cryptocurrency
These Are Some of the Insane Things That Bitcoin Investors Are Doing Now
By Ryan Derousseau January 25, 2018
Nearly everyone you meet these days seems to have an opinion about which cryptocurrency is poised to be the next Bitcoin. Will it be Stellar or NEM or Ripple? The names change every week, like a parlor game.
But that implies that folks are playing an innocent game where the stakes are low and the entertainment value is high. Unfortunately, recent surveys indicate that the cryptocurrency craze is anything but harmless.
Here are all the risky things people are doing to jump on the Bitcoin bandwagon:
Maxing Out Credit Cards to Buy Bitcoin
A recent survey of Bitcoin investors found that 18% purchased their cryptocurrencies with the use of credit cards, according to the consumer group LendEDU.
It gets even worse. Of those investors that used credit cards to purchase Bitcoin, 22% had not paid off their card balances. What’s more, 70% argue that the interest they’re paying on that credit card debt is worth the price of owning Bitcoin.
Ask your local bank teller about asymmetrical risk.
da bear
where we’re going we don’t NEED banks…
“Single-family home sales in Connecticut last month fell dramatically compared to December 2016, according to a state real estate trade group. ‘You have to look at the prospect of rising interest rates,’ said Donald Klepper-Smith, chief economist for New Haven-based DataCore Partners. ‘I would not use the word ‘robust’ to describe this housing market.’”
With prices already cratering after virtually no rate increases since 2008, I frankly find the Fed’s stated rate increase plan to be implausible. It is not in their political interest to precipitate the collapse of Housing Bubble 2.0.
Wall Street to Fed: “More tequila, please.”
‘My biggest concern is how little concern there is’ — private equity titan Jim Coulter
Matthew J. Belvedere | @Matt_Belvedere
Published 22 Hours Ago Updated 15 Hours Ago
…
“I explained it to my son the other day. It’s like you’re at a party at midnight, you maybe should go home as an investor, and someone brings in some tequila,” he said. “What is clear is that late in the party you don’t want to drink as much tequila.”
…
they want to raise rates a little so they can cut them when these bubbles implode.
Just like last time they claim they cant see the bubbles.
Its pretty apparent we have some nose bleed stock prices for sure.
Where is the selling? Is everyone just riding this thing up as long as they can? when it turns it will be a violent reversal as all the pent up selling comes.
OMG!
https://youtu.be/IyQ2JnCdSk4
That’s why business is so good for you!
With home equity loans ebbing, tax change injects uncertainty
By Alexander Soule and Chris Bosak Updated 2:26 pm, Wednesday, January 24, 2018
As Brian Skarda sees it in his role as head of residential lending for Union Savings Bank, things can happen to houses that make access to a home equity line of credit worth the cost.
For borrowers, that cost is going up on the heels of the federal tax reform package enacted last month.
Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act enacted in December, homeowners can no longer deduct interest owed on home equity loans if they use the money for purposes besides home renovations or the purchase of property.
https://www.thehour.com/business/article/With-home-equity-loans-ebbing-tax-change-injects-12522052.php
Food fight!
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/26/bitcoin-criticized-at-wef-in-davos-but-cryptocurrency-world-fights-back.html
Bitcoin is getting bashed at Davos but the crypto world is fighting back
While the potential of blockchain, the underlying technology behind cryptocurrencies, was praised, bitcoin got slammed.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller told CNBC ahead of Davos that it may be around for 100 years, though it’s more likely to collapse.
Bitcoin’s reputation as a currency that is primarily used for illicit activities still lingered too.
Arjun Kharpal | @ArjunKharpal
Published 1 Hour Ago 7:27 AM ET Fri, 26 Jan 2018
Bitcoin
Bitcoin Is Dropping Again. This Time, Look to Japan
Bitcoin Plummets After South Korea Announced It May Close Its Exchanges
The cryptocurrency dropped in Asia trading.
By David Meyer 6:40 AM EST
http://fortune.com/2018/01/26/bitcoin-coincheck-japan-ethereum-ripple-nem-cryptocurrencies/
It’s Bitcoin drop time again, kids. This time it’s down 7% against the dollar—while rivals Ethereum and Ripple are down 5.5% and 12% respectively. Bitcoin is currently trading at $10,570.
The cause seems clear: Coincheck, one of Japan’s largest bitcoin exchanges, has abruptly stopped letting customers withdraw their money and halted Bitcoin trading. It’s also frozen trading in the NEM cryptocurrency, which is as a result down 16.5%.
The Tokyo-based exchange announced its moves in a blog post without explaining its reasons.
According to Bloomberg, Coincheck does not have a license from the Japanese financial regulator, but is nonetheless one of the country’s most popular cryptocurrency exchanges.
Mr. Banker says:
Cash out that home equity (if there is any left 😁), max out that credit card
and …
BUY THE DIP!
Author: Andy Greenberg
Your Sloppy Bitcoin Drug Deals Will Haunt You For Years
Researchers have used the blockchain to tie years-old Silk Road bitcoin transactions to current, public accounts.
HOTLITTLEPOTATO
https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-drug-deals-silk-road-blockchain/
Perhaps you bought some illegal narcotics on the Silk Road half a decade ago, back when that digital black market for every contraband imaginable was still online and bustling. You might already regret that decision, for any number of reasons. After all, the four bitcoins you spent on that bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms would now be worth about as much as an Alfa Romeo. But one group of researchers wants to remind you of yet another reason to rue that transaction: If you weren’t particularly careful in how you spent your cryptocurrency, the evidence of that drug deal may still be hanging around in plain view of law enforcement, even years after the Silk Road was torn off the dark web.
looks like buying oil at the lows was a brilliant move. as the dollar craters watch the cash roll in.
Lil Sis is kicking herself for rejecting my advice to HODL her commodities fund.
What next? StarCoin?
No, COINSTAR! Blockchain enabled loose coin counting machines! Can’t lose.