The Housing Bubble

LOL. Ever looked at the fat and calorie content in Top Ramen or Cheetos?

No, but I have seen the fat content walking in and out of Wal-Mart.

Bring back trans-fats. They can’t use them any more here in New York and the McDonald’s french fries are just a shell of their former self. Because the lardos can’t control themselves I have to eat bland fries. Nice country this has become.

You know it isn’t so much the fat issue…

I can usually avoid tourons, but sometimes our paths meet and i’m constantly amazed at the low level of fitness in this country.

People that look “normal”, of regular body proportions, that are struggling to walk 1/2 a mile.

LOL. You forgot their laziness - Why not use those stainless cooking appliances for a change before the foreclosure proceedings begin?

Use the stainless? Fahgeddaboudit! It’s been ripped out and sold already!

“Why not use those stainless cooking appliances for a change before the foreclosure proceedings begin?”

Because they show fingerprints, and that might lower the value of the house and deter the FBs who might bail them out.

“No, but I have seen the fat content walking in and out of Wal-Mart.”

Damn funny!

At Costco you can now buy “emergency food” in a 5 gallon white construction bucket for $100. I did the math and this would allow 1 person to live on 3 meals a day for a month. The DH calls this the “AMHM Special” (Adjustable Mortgage Happy Meal).

I’m guessing that bucket o’ food would last the typical American a week.

I actually thought these buckets were a great idea for disaster preparedness. But they suck for California. If we have a major disaster it will be an earthquake. In an earthquake water will be scarcer than food. These meals all need water to prepare. Oh well.

I didn’t think about “FB Surviver Rations.” One more reason to be glad we didn’t buy during the height of the mania. Can you imagine living on dehydrated food because all your money goes to paying off the people who own your debt and thus you?

Here in Sacramento, we worry about too much water >; )

http://www.preparedness.com/mohodifopa90.html

I’m actually thinking about investing in freeze-dried food companies, after doing the unthinkable and ordering a 90-day supply in case of a rainy day. Could be the next big thing. Does anyone have any good candidates?

I make $2200 a week base, $2400-$3000 with overtime. I cannot afford a home here by traditional standards.

…this is insane!

Not according to him, I asked. Plenty of houses in wellesley, weston, brookline and others. This company has been in business for almost 40 years. They feel it is the economy. Not good.

He’s waiting for a storm, preferably “the big one.” Who knows, maybe this year’s hurricane season will oblige.

I know several people who are putting even the most minor purchases on their credit cards to collect from reward programmes. They are paying the bill in full every month by automatic transfer from their savings accounts.

I would, however, NOT consider them typical.

I have noticed an upswing in panhandlers at or around gas stations. And it’s not the hormal homeless looking crowd eather. People drive up in newer cars, dressed clean, look normal, but are begging for a couple of bucks in gas.

I think all of the CC stories should be tempered by changes in technology. There are people (like me) who will put everything they can on a CC so that I can

1. download it into quicken and track the spend, and
2. collect 1-10% back on my purchase.

Balance is autopaid every month (ie, I’m a deadbeat in CC parlance) but it provides me with lots of knowledge about where our money is going.

I’m another one use uses his CC for 90% of purchases. I have to pay it off every month…it’s an AMEX card. Since a make a good number of reimbursable charges I like letting AMEX cover the float between charge and reimbursment.

what’s funny is seeing a good looking girl in Irvine which is a nice area asking for some money for food. her significant other was standing nearby, also looked like a decsent guy looked worried, I kept thinking—–is this just a couple who is trying to make a couple of bucks the easy way or are they really in trouble that they dont have any extra money. the second thought was scary!!!

Begging gas money happened to me in Houston recently too.

I did this for a while, and noticed I spent a lot more doing it this way. I found having the physical currency and handing it over helped me really consider purchases more, and recognize how much I was spending.

Actually it’s the opposite for my family. Since 95% of my money spent is by debit card transactions, I know exactly where I spend my money each month. I simply download all my DC transactions from my bank website into Quicken. I have categories set up to see exactly how much I spent on any given month.

When I did the cash only thing, I could never remember where the money went, I just knew it was spent on something.

Probably habit. I put everything in Quicken and pretty much use only cash, even for rent. I’ve been doing it since 1990. There’s something about knowing exactly where you spend your money, and paying with cash makes it real. Analyze the data at the end of every year, and figure out what’s going to change for the next year.

I’m with lurker–cash burns a hole in my pocket. I was only really able to control cash once, when I was in grad school. I’m not totally happy with my current system, but what I do is use a credit card and track my purchases online, making sure I don’t go over my monthly allowance.

Everything I earn over my allowance goes straight into interest-bearing savings acct. During the year, I look for investments to shift my savings into, keeping a three month cash cushion.

The nice thing about CC is that it takes away the anxiety of overdraft fees, too. I always kept about $800 extra in my checking when I had an ATM card, which was both a liability of sorts and an economic cost.

I have offered to pay for large purchases with debit or cash, though, because it is cheaper for the merchant.

I’ve been using debit cards exclusively for about 7 yrs. I love them. I may switch to using a CC with a cash back. I have no problem with paying it off each month.

Did all you CC and DC folks ever consider that EVERYTHING you purchase, everywhere you do so, at what hour of the day, and how much you paid is recorded electronically for anyone who wants to know? Very scary.

Cash is anonymous. I get enough junk mail and unsolicited phone calls as it is. To the majority of people in the world, I want to be invisible.

Hi Palmetto,

Well, Hyde Park is . . . uh, still pretending to be Beverly Hills. Fortunately, almost nobody here feeds their pets ordinary commercial pet food, so there haven’t been as many poisonings here as other places. My vet has had two or three cases. Of course, some of the offenders were Iams and Eukanuba, and another even more expensive brand, so big companies are still deceiving the masses (putting their labels on crap and selling it at premium prices).

Lots of “for sale” signs, especially on the north side of Swann, and there is an tacky development of townhouses called “The Brownstones of Soho” behind the Sweetbay grocery store that looks virtually empty. They start at 400k, but I understand only three have sold since last summer, and all apparently to flippers hoping to get rich. One bought one, put in a big screen television, and immediately put it on the market for a million. The architects goofed, and put the rows of townhouses too close together, so residents can’t get their cars in between and into their tiny garages without multiple starts and stops and maneuvers, and heaven help them if somebody else is trying to get in or out. I see bicycles piled up, and I suppose the places will become section eight housing for poor people who don’t own cars. Down the street from me, a punch of townhouses that started at 600k a couple years ago are for sale, again. The flippers (I think realtors) keep taking down the “for sale” signs, waiting a few weeks, then putting them back up. Meanwhile, half the stores in Hyde Park Village have gone belly-up, but the new owners are remodeling, and putting in a bunch of new condos, presumably anticipating an influx of rich New Yorkers. I remember when the most expensive townhouses there were going for 160k. Everywhere, speculators have built junk for which they’re asking California coastline prices (into the millions), even for places built next to the Crosstown Expressway, and in really trashy neighborhoods. There are no foreclosures listed for this zip code on foreclosure.com.

I get depressed from the traffic and crowds, but the city of Tampa has actively worked to get people to move here. They used to promote this dump as “America’s next great city,” and evidenly believed their own PR, and the locals really think this is a major metropolitan area up there with Paris, London, and New York. It is simply astounding. Can’t they look out THEIR windows and see how horrible and primitive Tampa really is?

NO NO NO the architects didnt goof…they ASSUMED you wouldnt have any money left over after the mortgae for anything bigger then a Geo or Ford Escort!….

Somehow my Landlord manages to get his KaddyLack between the two houses… but i’ve seen some new row houses you can stretch your ams and litteraly touch both houses, with a garage in back.

The architects goofed, and put the rows of townhouses too close together, so residents can’t get their cars in between and into their tiny garages without multiple starts and stops and maneuvers,

“Can’t they look out THEIR windows and see how horrible and primitive Tampa really is?”

No, they can’t, Incredulous. Tampa should just concentrate on being what it is or was, a sort of halfway charming sleepy little Southern port city with some interesting architecture and a laid back atmosphere. Not some unsuccessful Cali/NY hybrid wannabe.

I hope Hillsborough goes for light rail, though. That might help.

I don’t think a GEO or Ford Escort would fit. Maybe a very small golf cart. I haven’t see a single car actually accomplish the feat of getting between the rows (where the garages are). The builder would have to knock down the entire front row of townhouses to give owners real access, and this would mean an imaginary loss of millions of dollars. These places are so tiny, each floor is the size a single-car garage, and there are three or four floors per unit.

The builder wants to add even more of these horrors across the parking lot of the grocery store behind them, and has bought the property. Of course, everybody wants to spend a million dollars to live on the Sweetbay supermarket parking lot.

Incredulous,

I used to Iams, ’til one day I opened a can and it was very watery, not solid like it had been. So I started looking at ingredients, nad found that the “healthy” stuff was basically the same at the cheap stuff. So my cat gets the cheap stuff.

She hasn’t mentioned any problems so far…

Paul

Hi Paul,

My cats get “Wellness” dry food (20 bucks for a small bag), which is allegedly human grade quality. They love it, grew up on it, and look beautiful. They also have the energy of kittens. I’m careful to stick with the chicken, because salmon, like tuna, can cause problems in cats (I speak from experience), though, on occasiona, I’ll get them a tiny bag of the salmon “Wellness” for a treat.

The ingredients in most commercial cats foods are horrific.

Palmetto, Tampa was always awful. When I moved here as a kid, I remember crying because I was so horrified. At least back then, it was quiet, and one could go to Ybor City and get deviled crabs from street vendors (now I don’t eat them, because my conscience won’t allow me to eat something cooked alive), and real estate was cheap, and the bays were clean (you could see to the bottom), and there was NO traffic, not even on Dale Mabry. We used to ride our bikes across Gandy Bridge in complete safety. And downtown St. Pete was a real treat.

Actually, that part is still true, so that’s where I hope to move at some point. I want a real loft in a real old building, with incredibly high ceilings, and NO neighbors.

You spend $20 for a small bag of cat food? What century is this? Have I been asleep for too long?

“Tampa should just concentrate on being what it is or was, a sort of halfway charming sleepy little Southern port city with some interesting architecture and a laid back atmosphere. Not some unsuccessful Cali/NY hybrid wannabe.”

I’ll agree with that. For some reason, people here think that they are entitled to major cash just b/c their house is in Hillsborough County.

I know a couple who bought a 3/2 1000 sf cracker box track house in Brandon for $179K in Nov 05. When the house was listed, it was listed for $172K and this couple got into a bidding war with another buyer. They are now trying to sell the house for more than they paid b/c their ARM is due to reset soon and they want to “pay off some bills”. They are delusional that they will get anything more than 140K for that house, if they’re lucky. Even the over-inflated Property Appraiser’s estimate is $138K.

Hi WAman, yes I do, though “small” means about 5 lbs. It’s one of the more expensive pet foods, but I’ve seen some twice that high, and prescription foods are also generally expensive. I won’t let my animals have any pet food from the grocery store, because it’s just too disgusting.

“You spend $20 for a small bag of cat food? What century is this? Have I been asleep for too long?”

Hey, I spent $1000 for a cat. A CAT!! What a dickhead I am.

We tried to get a law passed that would allow year round shooting of cats. Got on the national news and the pet lovers put a stop to it. I still shoot any cats I see. Cats are a destructive nuisance.

Shoot my cats, I shoot you. Cats the major reason why we don’t have outbreaks of Bubonic plague and Hanta virus; they are among the most import creatures in our ecosystem. Your comments aren’t funny. Why not get a law passed to shoot children? I bet that would get more laughs.

You want a nuisance, try owning a dog. Needy, whining, dirty, attention-starved, crap everywhere and then roll in the crap, leg-humping, salivating hand lickers, bark all night long at absolutely nothing. If I want that kind of trouble I’ll have a kid instead. I say no thanks to both!

I love dogs. No trouble at all. And incredibly loyal.

Keep all the cats and the dogs. Shoot the children.

OMG ex-nv that was priceless! Although I read it as “You want a nuisance, try having a boyfriend” Thank god I found a sane one and married him on the spot. Now I also have 3 Maine Coons which lb. for lb. is like having a large dog.

WILDLIFE ENEMY NUMBER ONE

“Wisconsin residents support a plan to legalize wild cat hunting, according to voting results released Tuesday.

At meetings across the state Monday night, residents in 72 counties were asked whether free-roaming cats should be listed as an unprotected species. If so listed, the cats — including any domestic cat that isn’t under the owner’s direct control or any cat without a collar — could be hunted.

A total of 6,830 voted yes and 5,201 voted no, according to results released by the Department of Natural Resources.”
and

“Although the position varies from state to state, the “house cat” is a “non-game mammal” to be killed if “unduly predatory” and the “wild house cat” is an unprotected animal to be shot with impunity.”

and from California
“Ron Jurek, a wildlife biologist for the California Department of Fish and Game, has kept a close eye on the impact feral and free-roaming domestic cats have on native species, like the California least tern, a federal endangered bird that nests along the coast.

“Cats do kill wildlife to a significant degree, which is not a popular notion with a lot of people,” he said.

So don’t give me the Cats are good BS - they cause far more problems than rodents.

Maybe where you live cats aren’t a problem, but when they become a problem… the problem is out of control. It wasn’t meant to be funny, Cats are the single largest predator of small birds and animals. And unfortunately most cat owners let their cats roam and an incredible number of morons get tired of their cat and release the cat in the “wilderness” aka my farm.

Cats cause

Here in Davis, CA we have wild domesticated turkeys. I kid you not. They flock around the Nugget off Covell and the surrounding neighborhoods. They are escapees from a ranch here years ago and have been living in the green spaces between Woodland and Davis. There is nothing like driving to your house and noticing the neighbors yard is covered in dinner.

Remind me to stay out of Wisconsin, land of cheese and nothing else, except for fat, cheesy people. As for cats killing birds, blame Mother Nature. This is part of the natural balance that HUMANS have tried to alter. Cats are not vicious or dangerous; they’re cats, and attributing human vices to them is hilarious. Ten-to-one, the people behind these initiatives are hunters, looking for something else to shoot, or superstitious religious fanatics, who probably also think bats are evil. There is no species as destructive as the human one, and the fact that humans voted for such a stupid law just reinforces this fact. Here in Hillsborough County, the locals voted to allow Animal Control to sell homeless dogs and cats to the USF medical school for so called medical research. What a bunch of slobs. The fools who pushed this law had fat asses on television saying, “If experimenting [a.k.a. torturing and killing] all these cats and dogs can save me or my kids from cancer, then hell yes, I’m for it!” It never entered their minute brains that putting down the Twinkies and Big Gulps, and getting off the sofa might have far more beneficial effects, but, then, why should they sacrifice for themselves when they can find scapegoats to do it for them? Of course, not a single medical discovery has been made by the quacks at USF who claimed the law was so vital to human progress. I say, if people want to experiment, let them experiment on themselves, and instead of shooting wild cats, let them shoot each other. Not one of these horrors is worth a single hair on my cats, and if I ever caught someone trying to shoot my cats as nuissances, I’d shoot the bastard without blinking, and proudly go to trial.

“This is part of the natural balance that HUMANS have tried to alter. ” BS

Get your facts straight! Cats are not a native species in the US and have no business being let outside. Do you let your cats outside - then in Florida you may be violating state laws.
From the Florida Fish and Wildlife
http://myfwc.com/cats/
and a 33 pg pdf file on the impact of cats on Florida wildlife.
http://tinyurl.com/2slowp

So don’t blame hunters - cats are the problem!

It seems that Wisconsin residents understand and discuss the problem while Florida residents to the dismay of The Florida Fish and Wildlife Service ignore it. Florida is welcome to all the wild cats in Wisconsin.

Hoz:

The solution to your cat overpopulation problem is two-fold:

1. Your city needs to engage in a feral cat spay/neuter program.

2. Your city needs to discourage people from feeding feral cats without having them spayed/neutered.

Shooting the little buggers is not OK. And it’s true that they are an important part of any high-density or agrarian human society. That’s why the Egyptians confered upon them a god-like status. Without cats, ALL of our wheat would be tainted with rat poison, and the diseases carried by rodents would be out of control.

As far as cats hunting small wildlife, that’s just natural. If wild animals have no predators, then their populations get out of control. In the case of the domestic cat, it is at the top of the food chain, so it needs no predator. The problem doesn’t lie in lack of predators, it lies in an overabundance of food (i.e., human food waste and bowls of food on the porch).

Cats are not natural in the US. So in an attempt to control a non native invasive species, Wisconsin restocked Coyotes. Cats are no different than rabbits or cane toads in Australia, brown snakes in Guam, Starlings in NY parks or any other gross destructive species.

Humans are not native to this continent, either, so why aren’t the rednecks of Wisconsin doing something to seriously control their population as well? What a strange argument. Just imagine the harm you do to Wisconsin every time you eat pineapple. Cattle are not native to Great Britain, horses are not native to South America, and heaven knows cheese is hardly something Nature intended. Every time you drink milk you’re violating Natural Law, since milk is only intended for babies, and cow milk is only intended for calves.

Without cats, we’d all be dead from diseases they keep in check. Several places have tried to wipe out cats before, with terrible results. In the Middle Ages, religious loons killed them in huge numbers because they thought they were demonic, and Bubonic Plague was the result. This has happened time and again, but I guess the good Lutherans of Wisconsin think they’re somehow different, better, or more divinely in tune, and know better than Nature itself. As usual. The housing bubble is only one piece of a Stupidity Bubble that dwarfs all progress by comparison.

“Shoot my cats, I shoot you.”

Just when I begin to become suicidally depressed I find hope!

Cats are not the problem. Yes, feral kitties need to be controlled with spaying and neutering, but as usual, and the one thing this blog is really about, it’s the stupid people who don’t take responsibility for their actions that cause the problems. Morons who dump unwanted pets in the country instead of taking them into a shelter, or get a kitten and ignore the grown cat until it runs away for survival purposes.

Quit ripping on Wisconsin. The state capital has a housing bubble going on that put’s the rest of the Midwest to shame.

http://madisonhousingbubble.blogspot.com/

Cheese has that effect.

If you’re so desperate to shoot something, shoot FBs. They’re a drag on the country, and there’s too many of them underfoot already.
Cats are essential to keep rat population in check. With 300 million humans, the pristine balance of nature is already out of whack. Cats are the only effective rat deterrent.
Don’t like dogs? Well, as long as you never lose a child, or lose your eyesight, or get caught in a natural disaster, it probably doesn’t matter. If any of the above does happen to you or your family, I do hope there are no dogs available to help you. NYPD relies on dogs for drug sniffing and of course bomb sniffing…but you would never need that kind of help, would you?

Mother Nature has many clients

I am absolutely stunned at the cognitive dissonance expressed by the cat lovers. I have presented sound scientific facts with sources showing that cats are a great hazard. I have documented the cost to society from cats. And the only fall back is cats “control diseases”, and comparing an invasive pest to humans. Humans are not native to this continent nor are horses or pigs (cows are native to this continent and freely interbreed with buffalo) . This is as fallacious as “real estate always goes up”. Where are your sources? Why do you make blanket generalizations not supported by any recognized scientists? And then your manifest ignorance regarding Cats as effective rat killers shows that you have never researched the cats effectiveness and are relying on the same pablum as the realtors spill out.

Loving cats is fine, refusing to believe there is a cat problem when shown facts about the problem is stupidity at best.

“The Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus, also called the brown rat or sewer rat) is a destructive pest found in urban and suburban neighborhoods.
…Control by Cats and Dogs. Many rat problems around homes can be related to the keeping of pets. In fact, rats may live in very close association with cats and dogs. Rats frequently live beneath a doghouse and soon learn they can feed on the dog’s food when he is absent or asleep. Although house cats, some dogs and other predators kill rats, they do not usually provide effective rat control.” (did you notice that rats aren’t a problem on farms?)

from Vermont’s website
“Feral cats are extremely efficient at preying on small birds and mammals. The general public typically only sees cats as a way of removing pest species and as pets, but they are also direct competitors with declining raptor populations and destructive to native species. In a study by George (1974), he asked 49 wildlife protective agencies about the distribution and density of cats in the U.S. None had any data on cat numbers. In 1916 Forbush wrote extensively about the great harm done by farm cats and feral cats to bird populations. There is lack of knowledge of cats and an understanding about their effects as an introduced species. Laboratory studies have suggested that hunger and hunting in cats are controlled by separate parts of the brain. Even though humans may feed cats, cats still have an instinct to hunt. Bradt reported that a cat that consumed domestic food killed 1,600 mammals and 60 birds in an 18-month period.

“In Connecticut alone, cats are the third largest carriers of rabies. Nation wide, they are the domestic animal most frequently reported to have rabies. They may transmit the human disease toxoplasmosis. Fleas and well as tapeworms may present problems. Cat-scratch fever is a danger. They have spread feline leukemia virus to mountain lions and feline panleucopaenia (feline distemper)(Van Rensburg et al. 1987) to the Florida panther (Coleman et al.1996).”

From Florida’s website:
“Cats compete with native predators and spread disease.”
So much for cats stopping diseases.
From The Illinois Prevention and Control
Rat Fact Sheet
http://tinyurl.com/3e5zws

In summary your ignorance is boring: you perpetuate myths and have no regard for facts alien to your parochial beluiefs.

Solution for feral cat problem: don’t hunt ‘em, trap ‘em. Fill up a bunch of vacant McMansions with the kitties, and let them feast on the rotting corpses of FBs who are about to knock themselves off. Throw in some realtors, mortgage fraudsters, and other members of the RE-industrial-complex, and those felines are guaranteed to stay fat for a long while.

Heh heh… look at the 2nd definition of “suicide”. Did someone from Ben’s blog edit the dictionary?
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/suicide

The best course to me seems to stand pat again, but I really don’t know whether Bernake has the fortitude to stand firm. Neither alternative leads to a good result. Lowering rates will kill the dollar and trade balances and may precipitate investor flight. Raising the rates will finish off the ARM borrowers and increase the costs of borrowing and debt service. We’ll see, of course.

The pundits are beginning to blame inflationary pressures chiefly on the rent market. What are the odds that BB will consider eliminating housing from the core data? They’ve already thrown out food and energy, why not something equally meaningless to survival, like shelter?

“Might does not make right, but it sure makes what is.”- Edward Abbey

“…equally meaningless to survival, like shelter?”

Last time I checked (which was many years ago — early 1990s), the shelter component of the expenditure basket used to compute the CPI was something like 27%. Of course, with all the high risk lending going on (including stated income loans where the payment actually exceeds the borrower’s income), that 27% might be a severe underestimate.

I coulda been a conned-debtor.

I am not so quick to give these pinheads credit for being above the fray. I think they create analysis which justifies their entry into an area where they see large profit opportunity. An asset mania like what we’ve had is more pervasive than just a consumer-wanting event.

Number-crunching morons with no real world common sense populate Wall Street and our universities.

Here are a couple possibilities:

1. As the article describes perhaps they were shocked and awed. Therefore, not fully hedged. As a result, they are going to absorb losses for bad loans. Add to that, future revenue losses as a result of New’s demise.

2. They shorted New on the way down and made some money as it crashed. I don’t know if that covers the bad loan losses, however. Nevertheless, they are going to lose future revenue from the second biggest originator in the industry. Incidentally, I read here yesterday that HSBC is getting out of the subpslime space.

Of course hedging is rarely perfect. ISTR Fannie got into trouble post 9/11 because their hedging of interest rate risks just wasn’t designed to handle rates so low. That was when the becmae “Technicall Insolvent.”

Cue the ragtime piano theme from “The Sting”. LOL!

Dadadadadadadada dadadadeedlydedadada…

Keep in mind, like HSBC, these guys have other revenue sources. Nevertheless, apart from potential loan losses and future revenue losses, other bottom line threats may originate from the political and legal arena. In the current unfavorable sociopolitical mudslinging subslime environment, it’s possible we may see a FB class action lawsuit OR even some type of governmental sanction.

Stunning!

“blow’d up good, It blow’d up real good”

Big Jim McBob & Billy Sol Hurok

From the place that brought you Al Peck’s Used Fruit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_City_Television

“…everyone in management seemed shocked/suprised that subprime blew up the way it did.”

Recommend this book to your management:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fooled_by_Randomness

I actually have that book sitting on my desk at work! It’s an excellent book. Unfortunately, the book everyone is reading is called “Fooled by Stated Income Borrowers”.

Hehe, they could still be normal, but with larger kurtosis (fatter tails).

The problem with risk modeling is it always looks backwards…. ALWAYS. Doesn’t matter how sophisimacated it is. Blowups generally happen when things that have never been correlated, ever, suddenly go to R = 1. Well of course stuff blows up, because all anyone’s computer thinks is that X and Y never correlate! Oops!

Actually no. A normal (gaussian) distribution always has the same shape (adjusted for standard deviation). Kurtosis measures deviation from normality. A fatter-tailed distribution could still be “bell-shaped” though, maybe that’s what you’re thinking of.

“Blowups generally happen when things that have never been correlated, ever, suddenly go to R = 1. Well of course stuff blows up, because all anyone’s computer thinks is that X and Y never correlate! Oops!”

Good point, Apocalypse. A lot of people think non-correlation is the holy grail. But they don’t realize that just like the duration of MBS can change, correlation can and does change depending on the measurement period and has little precise predictive value.

“suddenly go to R = 1″

Many so-called analysts on Wall Street fail to account for the fact that humans are mammals, and mammals habituate to circumstances. When humans see real estate inflating up and up, then humans collectively attempt to catch a piece of the action (builders, homebuyers, lenders, MBS packagers, etc), and all these habituative actions drove prices to ever more unsustainable heights, and the correlation in risk across the different components of the real estate sector to 1.

And the tails get thicker when you start leaning against the sides of the bell curve.

“…won’t it happen this year ?? Fed does not want to be playing with rates next year in a election year ??”

That’s what I’d have thought.

Mafia folk don’t call themselves anything. They just introduce each other as “cosa nostra” which literally means “our thing” or more loosely “one of us”.

Outsiders then heard “cosa nostra” and capitalized it to make it more formal, thus “Cosa Nostra”

Mafia is a word that came from a play in the 1800’s, describing gangs, and was later applied to the Cosa Nostra by the Italian govt.

My understanding is that mafiosos never refer to themselves as mafia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia#Origins_of_the_term_.22mafia.22

We spent a week in Sicily about 8 years ago…

When one says “Sicily” one also says “Mafia” and maybe we were looking in all the wrong places, but all we saw was a beautiful island, with a rich history, as Sicily was everybody’s terra firma, @ some point in the game.

2500 year old Ancient Greek structures abound. A nice array of them in Agrigento, 4 or 5 of them, that are floodlit @ night.

We are always talking about going back…

My mistake:

“delinqencies” not “foreclosures”

[I saw the NYC map and comment above about "dueling foreclosure maps"]

But still a very interesting story in that national map.

Hang me me Hoz…

We’ll make beautiful statements, together.

Many years ago my hubby pointed out the potential for this problem. We never buy anything to cook in or eat off of if it is made in China.

I’ve read that China is going to have significant water and food problems because pollution is so bad. Had a friend who traveled to China in 1991 and came back complaining about how her eyes bothered her the whole time due to the pollution.

You don’t even have to buy anything from China to be affected:

When an American hockey player suffered symptoms from mercury contamination, he never expected that he might have power plants half way across the world in China to blame. With its growing appetite for energy, China is finding its many coal-burning power plants hard at work generating the much needed electricity power – as well as huge amounts of air pollutants like sulfur dioxide and mercury. The earth’s climate system, however, does not recognize national borders, and that is how increased quantities of Chinese pollutants have joined, what the authors in this article call, a global “conveyor belt of bad air.” This conveyor belt circles around the world, sending airborne polluting chemicals and particulates from one country to another, posing global health threats. Some scientists have estimated that 30% or more of the mercury settling into America’s ecosystems comes from abroad – China, in particular. Experts have sought for possible solutions to transboundary pollution, but international environmental treaties have seldom worked effectively and the economic incentive for Chinese power plants is weak in this case. How to make local policies responsive to global problems? – YaleGlobal

Nice post Hoz…

The little tiny ($1 1/2 TRILLION) thing we owe them, looms large as well.

They are already there and Russia is really worried about it. Every couple years there are these massive pograms when the Russians clean out Chinese villages/towns that were established since the prior pogram.

The Chinese are primarily engaged in logging, fishing, hunting (tiger penis anybody?) and farming. Sometimes they establish mini factories producing all kinds of stuff.

I read Jim Roger’s “Investment Biker” many years ago and it opened my eyes up to the difference between Russia and China…

Russia never had any history of capitalism and look what they’ve done with their oil proceeds?

I hate to call you out, but you look like cold weather versions of the other wastrels, that have oil… in the Middle East.

From Borscht to Bling, Bada Bing!

P’cola:

There’s a very good reason there are Chinese lurking around Russia.

The smell of opportunity, reeks.

“I hate to call you out, but you look like cold weather versions of the other wastrels, that have oil… in the Middle East.”

LOL. You are not telling me anything I haven’t known for about ten years. I have also heard much better (worse) comparisons/analogies. Just remember that those ME guys only have oil while Russia has about 40% of the world’s supply of everything on the Periodic Table!

“Russia never had any history of capitalism and look what they’ve done with their oil proceeds?”

No question they can squander it but somehow over the last seven years Russia has amassed the third largest hard currency reserves in the World. The ruble has also strengthened about 17% against the USD over the past four years.

Lol, Hoz. You posted that response to something else and then alad’s comment about the smell of opportunity reeks appears above your comment. LMAO.

I still like the, “Investor Seeks Apprentice-$20,000/month!”

How does this work? The “apprentice” takes out a rigged, excessive loan, and splits the difference with the “investor?” It sure looks illegal.