‘Real Estate Could Take Biggest Hit’ In ‘Insurance Scare’
The Wall Street Journal reports on South Carolina. “Oh, how the world has changed. Along the coast, which includes Myrtle Beach, July sales of new and existing homes were off 42.7% from the same period last year, according to the South Carolina Association of Realtors. Here’s another clue to the state of the market in Myrtle Beach: Developers aren’t pushing away presale buyers anymore, they’re courting them.”
From the State. “An insurance crisis along the S.C. coast could drive people from their homes, devastate the real estate market and slow tourism. Mary Lewis shakes her head in disbelief. The letter has to be a misprint. She’ll have to find a way to pay an initial increase of $690. Lewis and her husband live on a fixed income, and the increase might force them to move out of their Waterway Village condo, which they bought seven years ago for $77,000.”
“‘We’re seeing nightmares across the board,’ said Bruce Langston, certified public accountant at a Myrtle Beach management company. ‘It’s every condo, no matter whether the condo costs $100,000 or a million dollars. This is going to result in foreclosures or people forced to sell.’”
“Growth along the coast and rising real estate values have tightened the state’s insurance market, said S.C. director of insurance Eleanor Kitzman. Every time a new home is built, more insurance is needed.”
“With skyrocketing reinsurance rates, and forecasts of severe hurricane seasons, the problem has worsened, she said. ‘A large part of this is the fear that insurance companies have of another Katrina-like event,’ Kitzman said. ‘That has really caused a lot of companies to reconsider how much business they want to write.’”
“Kitzman acknowledged that a 700 percent increase is ‘certainly a lot,’ but added: ‘If no one else will write it for less, I don’t know how you can think it is too much.’”
“A once-booming real estate industry could take the biggest hit. Condo owners can’t afford to pay an HOA fee that is almost as large as their mortgage. And when potential buyers find out what the insurance payments are, some might back out. Investors are finding they can’t raise rents enough to cover the increased cost.”
“The Myrtle Beach area has seen the number of condos on the market triple since last year and condo sales have fallen by 27 percent. ‘This is not going to help that. This is without the massive insurance scare. It’s just going to add to that problem,’said Tom Maeser, local market analyst.”
‘Every time a new home is built, more insurance is needed.’
During the boom, as developers rushed for waterfront property, this little fact was ignored. Why didn’t anyone question how billions of dollars worth of condos, etc, were going to be covered?
The price you pay for paradise — too d@mn bad!
Do you think they’ll ever stop building houses that fall into the sea in Malibu?
No. Every time we got a little rain here in San Diego some of the businesses in Mission Valley would flood. The owners would get on the news and boo-hoo about it. And folks just kept on building and building in a f@cking river bed. Eventually the city built a flood control project to protect their property.
My great grandfather used to own what is now Figure Eight island near Wilmington, NC. While it has a lot of expensive homes now, he sold it for a song proclaiming “beach property in that area is a bad investment”.
And if weren’t for government bail-outs, this would be true to this day. What we are seeing is the market making it a reality once again.
“Housing bubble is finally at bursting point”
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8210-2332487,00.html
back to california for a moment. 3rd 200K drop in about 2 weeks on 3 different properties.
15 Covered Wagon, Rolling Hills Estates, CA. 90274 $1,798,000*
Status: ACT Orig Price: $1,998,000
Located in community south of LAX.
I did all of the cabinets for this house in Malibu.
http://www.villadelpacifico.com/
It will close escrow in the next couple of weeks. I am also doing the house next door on the right side. It has an ‘Auto Museum’ in the lower level for about 10 autos. The cabinets unfinished are @ 157k.
Also, the seller of this house has already started his next house close by…of course another large house full of $ cabinets.
Where is this and who bought it? Stunning place.
It’s just money.
It is a huge waste of potential. If the market were not screwed up then the millions that went into building up huge encrustations of palaces like this would have gone into biotech and new retail concepts and buildings that serve people.
how bought next year ?
my biz is off already and will be gone for 07=poof
We’ve been in the beach area for 28 years.We do no advertising - only word of mouth and referrals. For a custom cabinet shop - we are fairly large @ about 60 employees. Because of the location, the folks that don’t move usually remodel there existing kitchens etc. Our back log is holding steady at about 6 months work.
I couldn’t afford the taxes on the place if they gave it to me for free. I’m pissed that they stole my idea of a blue sofa though, oh well. Nice shack!
San Simeon redux….. I could possibly afford the geraniums… Interesting peek at one of the 1%
The boom in construction on barrier islands has been a subsidized public policy disaster. There should be cheap little cottages out there, or trailers, accessible by ferry.
We should adopt a one-bailout policy, zero bailout for second homes and new construction. Build inland.
A case could be made that NYC should rethink redevelopment in the Rockaways, the one part of the city (aside from unlikely scenarios) most vulnerable to hurricane. The peninsula had non-weatherized cottages once. If a hurricane hits, that’s all that should go back there.
In Laws own a home on Long Beach island. Always a scary thing , but there haven’t been major scare for a long time. Are we due , or just worried over nothing? Who knows. Many of the locals are actually fighting tooth and nail AGAINST the proposed beach reclamation and shoring up plans that are now being proposed. If a hurricane hits LBI and insurance triples out there , lotta people’ll feel the hurt. It’s gotta be one of the most expensive non-city RE markets on earth. 18 miles of itty bitty little million dollar lots. Father in law always jokes that he should buy a house on the mainland bay - tuckerton or barnegat I guess- and just wait til Mother nature makes it Oceanfront.
I read an interesting article about a week ago. It was about a conference of disaster response experts. I think it was a gather in Vegas or something. At the opening of the conference they collected ballots voting for what the next major disaster would be in the U.S.. At the end of the conference, they read the results. The winner was a massive hurricane flattening Manhattan. Statistically, one is long overdue. It would be much worse than Katrina. I’ll see if I can dig up the article.
Has there ever been a massive hurricane flattening Manhattan? I know that Long Island got whupped decades ago, but Manhattan?
Not the article I was talking about, but read this (and be veerrry scared…)
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/38hurricane/hurricane_future.html
Choice quote:
“Experts now believe that after Miami and New Orleans, New York City is considered the third most dangerous major city for the next hurricane disaster. According to a 1990 study by the US Army Corps of Engineers, the city has some unique and potentially lethal features. New York’s major bridges such as the Verrazano Narrows and the George Washington are so high that they would experience hurricane force winds well before those winds were felt at sea-level locations. Therefore, these escape routes would have to be closed well before ground-level bridges (Time, 1998). The two ferry services across the Long Island Sound would also be shut down 6-12 hours before the storm surge invaded the waters around Long Island, further decreasing the potential for evacuation.”
Never really thought about it, but residents of Manhattan would more or less be trapped on the island with little way to escape, and rescue would be difficult.
Hey guys… cut the negative chatter re: weather disasters. I’m here trying to sell my NYC coop studio. Talk about hurricanes is not gonna help me sell this thing.
Don’t worry sports fans, her Hillaryness will save you (with my money).
Ijust called my insurance agent yesterday morning and got my homeowners reduced from $1200 to $900 because I replaced the shake roof. High fire danger and no e-quake ins but we in SoCal -may- have a quake and we -may- have a fire but the Gulf and East Coast -will- have storms.
This will be great for people like me who can afford to swim naked. By that I mean self-insure.
My alarm system dropped my rates 10% with State Farm.
Our homeowners insurance company left the state about 10 years ago. Our agent found us another carrier at 50% higher. We’ve self-insured since then.
“Louisiana Governor, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently
asking the Congress of the United States for $250
BILLION to rebuild New Orleans .
Interesting number; what does it mean?
Well, there were 484,674 permanent residents of New
Orleans prior to Katrina That number, above, includes
every man, woman, and child living in New Orleans .
If you were one of those 484,674 inhabitants, that
$250 billion would provide $516,528.00 to each of you.
For a family of four, that would be a very nice
$2,066,112.00 of our tax dollars.”
Nice. Maybe I’ll move to the coast and get rich.
Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New
Orleans , your household gets $1,329,787.00
You forgot the corruption tax at 99.5%.
“Nice. Maybe I’ll move to the coast and get rich.”
Great idea. You can live like a king in FEMA trailer surrounded by toxic sludge.
Actual amount spent so far is $40 billion, almost all allocated through crony and fraud-riddled FEMA and Small Business Administration. Vast majority of money is to rebuild levees, infrastructure and restore coastline, not individual residents.
STILL way excessive! How many times will the government continue to bail out levees, infrastructures, coastlines that continue to get whacked by hurricanes? There are plenty of natural disasters to go around in this country….why exactly do we pay for rebuilding in an area that is guaranteed to get hit again?
And there are plenty of stories of non-governmental entities (individual residents) that took blank checks and credit cards and partied hard in Vegas in $1,000 per day suites.
Hey, don’t be using facts. Stick to the truthiness. And clap louder please.
Great idea. You can live like a king in FEMA trailer surrounded by toxic sludge.
For a million dollars (or two), I’ll live in a FEMA trailer with toxic sludge IN IT! That’s crazy numbers if they are right, and if that’s what it costs to rebuild, then much as I love New Orleans, I’d say that half of it has to be left to sink into marsh and open water. It’s just not worth that ridiculous outlay.
But I have my doubts about the numbers’ accuracy, given the other gaffes: Since when do they have: Louisiana Governor, Mary Landrieu (D) ? What kind of journalism is this? Or was this copied poorly as it got passed from hand to hand? Maybe the numbers are right, though, and the rest of the article is wrong.
What kind of journalism is this?
It’s called Truthiness. Don’t worry about facts, just go with your gut. Landrieu must be planning to write out checks for $500,000.00 to everyone in NO, right?
I say we privatize the whole thing. It works like this:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/40525
Love the Onion.
Re: “STILL way excessive!”
I wonder if you would find the figure excessive if your house was underwater for two months. Yes, IMO it’s legitimate to try and bring back New Orleans in an intelligent and graft-free way (we’re now spending 60 billion a year destroying and rebuilding Iraq). As for blank checks and Vegas parties, handing them out says as much about FEMA’s competence as it does about the conscience of people who take advantage.
The reason for NO’s vulnerability to Hurricanes has to do with the Louisiana coast losing 16,000 acres of wetland each year, mostly as a result of population expansion into once pristine areas, destructive oil and gas drilling, pollution and land loss through lack of sedimentation. If the government washes its hands of everybody at risk from tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, droughts and hurricanes, that excudes nearly all of us.
For $1M, I’ll eat toxic sludge.
The NH State Budget is $4 billion. For $1.2 million people. I think that it would be cheaper to relocate that half a million people to NH as there’s a ton of empty land in the state. I don’t think that we’d really want them. My guess is that a lot of other states
don’t really want them either.
Got it Mike. Gotta’ keep them colored folks out. Live free or die.
Hey, at least you’re honest about it.
And in what way does a state budget have anything to do with the cost of rebuilding a city?
It may be a lot cheaper just to relocate these folks to other areas than it is to rebuild. Let’s say we spend $250 B. And the day after it’s spent, another storm comes in and wipes it out. Do we then spend another $300 B to rebuild?
I like keeping beach areas public so that everyone can enjoy them. This seems like a fairly wise strategy anyways as the coastal areas are more prone to destruction and expensive rebuilding compared to inland areas.
The minority population of NH is a little less than 5%. As a member of that group, I appreciate the opportunity for economic
prosperity that the state offers for those willing to contribute to their community and state as law-abiding and productive citizens.
If you believe that colored folks are incapable this behaviour, then I guess that I’d have to disagree with you as we have law-abiding and productive citizens from a variety of racial groups. Perhaps you need a refresher diversity education course.
You’re talking out of both sides of your mouth Mike. First you say it would be cheaper to relocate the refugees from NO in a place like NH that has plenty of “empty” land, but you wouldn’t want them to come there, and nobody else would either. But you also don’t think it’s worth rebuilding NO.
Yet you “appreciate the the opportunity for economic
prosperity that the state offers for those willing to contribute to their community and state as law-abiding and productive citizens” which obviously you don’t think the people from NO are, since you’ve already said that you don’t want them in NH.
Think about it, half a million Americans lost everything, and you’re playing word games about why you don’t want any of them coming to your state. I liked your posts better when you were out front about your bigotry, instead of being a mealy mouthed candy ass.
Completely consistent. The country should redistribute the population so that no one place has to bear the economic burden. As I wrote before, why rebuild at a rediculous cost in an area that is subject to the same problem again.
I’ve already written what NH wants in its citizenry. It’s your bigotry in that you believe that people of a certain color behave in a way that other states don’t want.
The biggest tradgedy of Katrina is that Jefferson Davis’s house was destroyed.
I have no problem welcoming displaced people who contribute something positive to society, regardless of income. But I have a huge problem with people who spend a large portion of their lives sucking from the public tit. A lot of us could have chosen that route, but chose to work hard instead.
Well, she probably meant the metro area, which is closer to 1.5 million people.
I hope the government keeps throwing money away like this. It will sink us that much sooner.
A $690 insurance increase is going to financially destroy them? I know people here is Florida paying that each month for costal coverage! I know fixed income seniors are hard hit by all these increases, but if they had a proper retirement savings, that one time annual payment shouldn’t be that big of a hit. I am not trying to sound ugly, and I know there are a lot of innocent people paying for this RE bubble, but I see so many people wasting there lifelong income on things they want, and never saving for the things they’ll need.
‘She’ll have to find a way to pay an initial increase of $690 along with the $1,600 a month she pays for her multiple sclerosis medication.’
The operative words are “fixed income”. Retirees are always screwed because they don’t get raises to offset inflation.
In fact, the whole purpose of an elderly couple buying a condo is to prevent inflation from hurting them in the form of rents.
“In fact, the whole purpose of an elderly couple buying a condo is to prevent inflation from hurting them in the form of rents. ”
Problem is, when you live in a condo you’re pretty close to renting anyway, same as people who live in trailers.
Lot rent, condo fees, same difference.
Retirees are always screwed because they don’t get raises to offset inflation.
Make that “real” inflation.
DC in LBV,
Well perhaps it’s about time someone said it? Since we’ve now utterly trampled the notion of “traditional financial architecture” what do people expect? Since the stock bubble of the late 90’s Americans have embraced an entirely new paradigm in financial planning.
It’s called “wingin’ it”!
That’s what we do now. Planning and saving is so “old school”. It’s for losers. Agreed there are and will continue to be innocent victims in this cuh-rash but not being able to confront a $690 a year add’l expense? I’m sorry, that’s pathetic. If you can’t “swing” less than 700 bucks over the course of a YEAR you should seek other living arrangements! Obviously if this is that big a set back you need to be living with your kids or getting room mates? Sorry.
Thrift is dead. It died a long time ago.
Not me. My finances would withstand scrutiny from a C.P.A. from 1966. Although 60% of the loans taken out last year were suicide loans, these only make up less than 20% of the market. Did you know that 50% of the homes in America are paid off outright?
George , glad to hear of your sound footing , stay the course I say! My fear is that you are the minority though and not the majority.
As for homes fully paid off , I have seen estimates ranging from 30-50 % , yes. “Based on the latest data available from 2003, nearly 35 percent of homeowners nationwide truly owned their homes free and clear, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Almost half of those who had paid off their mortgages were 65 years of age or older.”
Has this % increased or decreased over time?
I suspect but do not know , that the % has , and will decrease over time during extended periods of low interest mortgage availablity. In addition to the age cited , what would be intersting to know would be the median value of the mortgage free home as compared to those on which mortgages are held. And also the % of home values mortgaged (ie % equity held), and how this % has changed over time also, especially during the recent mania.
“You get an idea from a look at the books of one
prominent lending institution - Washington Mutual: At the end of 2003,
1%
of its option ARMS were negatively amortized (payments not covering
interest charges, so the shortfall is added to principal). In 2004,
that
figure was 21%. In 2005, 47%. By loan value, it was actually 55%.”- as per DR.
I say thrift is dead in a broad sense. Debt is the new wealth. For now.
Huck Finn is closer to the truth. My grandma has one of these paid off houses, but last year took out a $250K loan on it. There are no plans to pay that off. She’s just trying to enjoy her last days.
I know too many people who took advantage of HELCOs and cash out mortgages in the last 18 months. It’s pretty scary.
‘How could her homeowners association’s insurance premium increase from $126,000 to $879,000?’
I think the reporter meant the policy amount. Here’s something on North Carolina:
‘The Triangle’s housing market is showing more signs of cooling. The numbers of people contracting to buy homes declined in July for the second consecutive month, although listings were up. And Wake County, which accounts for about two-thirds of the region’s housing market, reported that the number of residential building permits fell nearly 24 percent.’
‘I don’t think there is any question that locally we’re going to have a bit of a cooling period,’ said Stacey Anfindsen, an appraiser in Cary.’
Cary: Containment Area for Relocated Yankees
Sorry, couldn’t help myself.
yea but that was good !
No. Her SHARE of the increase is an immediate $690.
My insurance is about 2% of a complete disaster per year. If their ins is 900k they think there is a 2% of $45million or a 4% of $22m or a 10% chance of a $10 million loss.
Assuming her $80k in ‘99 tripled the complex is worth about $25 million. Looks like the premium is appropriate for the risk.
end flood plain subsidies- end all subsidies !
Or just stop building in the flood plain, it would save us all a lot of money and pain.
Can’t get flood insurance of any kind in Australia. You build or buy in a flood prone area you self-insure. End of story.
Flood Insurance
Wind insurance
Earthquake insurance
Tornado insurance
Credit insurance
Reselling debt
Lead to the problem of moral hazard.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
(This will be great for people like me who can afford to swim naked. By that I mean self-insure. )
I agree. But that goes with my unwinterized cottages and trailers comment. That’s how the middle class should have second homes on barrier islands. Only what can be rebuilt with cash, or a small loan.
(The operative words are “fixed income”. Retirees are always screwed because they don’t get raises to offset inflation.)
I believe that ever since they tied Social Security to inflation in the early 1970s, inflation has been going up faster than the wages of 80% of us. More recently 98% of us. I don’t worry about those who are elderly today; they got the good deal. I worry about those who are middle-aged today and will be elderly tomorrow.
Larry L,
Your “cottage and trailer” comment was not lost on me. I have been banging on this thing for close to a decade now. Everyone in Chicago has relatives in WI or MN. The lakeside cabins of my youth were w/out insulation and either had a hand pump or just used the lake water. At the end of the summer they were typically boarded up and not given another thought until next spring. It was a BLAST!
Why Oh Why have we turned this notion of second/vac. homes into a luxury industry? Especially when it’s only a few weeks out of the year? I realize even most males now would prefer not to use an “out house” but roughing it and getting away from the trappings of civilization if only for a week was half the fun! Where did we go so awfully wrong?
I spent summers the same way on one of the Finger Lakes in upstate NY. Lakewater was pumped into the house for the plumbing. Woe to the guest who drank it! No AC or Heat, just a fireplace (and we were all required to split wood).
Simple times and lots of fun.
Yes, wasn’t it good when vacation houses were more rustic. Or not even rustic, but just basic? It felt like a vacation from suburban life, and it also felt good in a way to be back to suburban comforts when vacation was over. Best of all, in a flood/disaster, your total loss was on the order of $5,000, not fifty times that amount. Upkeep? A hammer and some paint! Insurance? Next to nothing, and that’s if you felt flush with cash and bought insurance!
I still remember my dad’s vacation house, built himself in the woods on high ground by a creek. The sides were sloped in at an angle because he didn’t have electricity to run a circular saw, so everything was made to use as many uncut 4×8 plywood sheets as would fit together! We slept on plywood bunks, and cooked on a portable gas stove. We loved it out there!
Now some of the nearby vacation homes seem just like my own house in the suburbs — complete with similar mortgage payments and insurance costs as well. And vacationing neighbors or permie residents everywhere. And noise and traffic. Gosh, just like hme. Uh, tell me again, why are we going on vacation?
Some of those “vacation” homes even have bloody HOAs. Red Feather lakes in North Fort Collins has some “subdivisions” nearby with 2 acre lots and silly covenants, you buy land totally out in the sticks and end with neighbors helping you decide on paint colors! It’s not like you get a choice either, the US forest service owns 98% of the land, so the private options are very slim.
Investors are finding they can’t raise rents enough to cover the increased cost.
But, but, but,…I was assured that I would be able to raise rents at will.
Wishing Rents can indeed be raised on a whim. It is Getting Rents that are more problematical.
Ocean-front condos for everyone!!
Americans’ net worth falls, report says
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Alison Grant
Plain Dealer Reporter
The net worth of many U.S. households has fallen as Americans cope with rising debt, flattening real estate values and stagnant wages, according to a report today from the Economic Policy Institute.
The study says the accumulation of stocks, bonds, bank savings or other assets aside from equity in their homes has eluded many Americans. In fact, about 30 percent of households have a net worth of less than $10,000.
http://www.cleveland.com/business/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/business/1156840646113880.xml&coll=2
How f*ckin’ brain dead can you be to purchase property on the ocean?
With all my ancestors bein’ native Mainer’s who made their living from the sea, nobody ever built their house on the water-storms would blow them away. Plus everybody’s sewers drained into the bays and eddy’s, so there were sporadic pollution problems if the tides got screwy.
It’s only with the noveau riche yups aspiring to be a Vanderbuilt, that this live directly on the water BS became fashionable.
I have zero empathy for these previously smug “hgh rollers”.
Pay the rent and shut the f up.
I second your emotion hd74man . In addition ,why re-build in some of these areas that are high risk . The people won’t be able to afford the insurance anyway in the future .We just got to find different uses for high-risk land than residential . Maybe a bunch of floating casinos.
I agree that many people aren’t very financially responsible.
But the other side of the coin is that wages are stagnant and inflation isn’t. A lot of the people that are slowly bleeding to death (or gushing, in the case of some FBs) were just trying to maintain the lifestyle they enjoyed in the golden age of the American middle class. Their financial skills probably would have cut it back when there strata had defined benefit pensions, good wage growth, and comprehensive health care. But that’s not today’s world.
This was supposed to be a reply to DinOR’s 2006-08-29 08:01:35 post.
If you have declining real income, then you still should live within your means. Even if that means downsizing. It’s not a lot of fun but the human mind can get used to a lot of things.
Exactly, Larry. This is the way all shoreline areas should be developed, with disposable shacks and mobile homes, at the owner’s risk. So many have been complicit in this insurance debacle, I really don’t have much sympathy for anyone involved. The insurance industry fueled this situation, by providing cheap insurance for these areas in the first place. The local governments permitted development in environmentally and weather-sensitive areas, something over which they had control. The developers took advantage of the opportunity and engaged in massive, “lugjury” development. Finally, the sheeple bought and are now complaining. Cry me a river. Really, the responsibility lies with individuals who buy, because if they didn’t, the developers wouldn’t build. They should know there’s always a price for living on the shore. It’s just a matter of when the bill is presented for payment. The only people I feel sorry for in this situation are those who live inland in sensibly built homes whose insurance costs also go up to subsidize the idiots.
eventually they’ll dump these costs onto the Feds and ghe taxpayers.
Did you see the report last week on Dauphin Island, Al. ? They interviewed several residents? , and all said this was their 3 time rebuilding thanks to the Govt. bailout to the tune of 250K each time. 2 of the interviewee’s were from Cal. Where there was no Govt. flood insurance ,there was no houses right up to the fence line…Don’t subsidize stupidity ,and they won’t build.
(The only people I feel sorry for in this situation are those who live inland in sensibly built homes whose insurance costs also go up to subsidize the idiots.)
That might be me. After all, I live in a “coastal county” Brooklyn. Of course I live at the top of the terminal morraine, five miles from the ocean, in a brick rowhouse with only 17 feet of exposure on two sides, shielded by similar houses 60 feet away on the exposed sides.
While there won’t be ocean flooding and the house won’t blow down, I’m not sure how vulnerable I am. A meteorologist told me it would be virtually impossible for NYC to get the front side of a hurricane — it would have to make a turn backward and go from east to west. We’d get the backside, suburban or second home Long Island the front side, as in 1938.
Might the backside of a Cat 3 blow in the windows, bringing flooding rains? Should I buy fitted plywood? How about the skylights? What to do about them? Everyone in Brooklyn has skylights. No one has been able to answer these questions, despite all the disaster preparedness.
In an event, my insurance was jacked up and the insurance company demanded a $10,000 deductable for anything that happens in an hurricane. I said fine, can you give me a $10,000 deductable for everything, and only insure losses I can’t afford? No one will do it.
Larry, your situation is what could be called “collateral damage”. This is how the bubble affects those who have been sensible, because you get to pay for your idiot neighbors. Didn’t they used to call that communism? Frosts my patootie.
“Frosts my patootie”
You crack me up with that saying, my sister uses it all the time.
Anyway - Larry should be ok in Windsor Terrace - high ground in Brooklyn - my folks are in Flatbush, which would have a huge problem if there was a big storm surge, as it is kept dry as it is without a hurricane by the pumping stations in Brooklyn College and out in Flatlands (Notice the names, Flatbush, Flatlands - they basically used to be swamp/farmlands before development at the turn of 19th/20th century). When they express their concerns to me about my moving to Florida, I remind them I will be on higher ground (36′ elevation) than they are - a big storm surge could reclaim all of South Brooklyn back into Jamaica Bay, whence it came from.
THE PAUSE THAT DEPRESSES: RECESSION TO BEGIN WITHIN SIX MONTHS AND DEPRESSION PRIOR TO 2008/Q2
http://tinyurl.com/lu6hy
Jas Jain’s essay is frightening. Anecdotal evidence, just found out that a 30-something cousin and her whole office in Indianapolis just got laid off by a leisure magazine publisher. Uhoh, realtors cancelling vacations.