Addicted To A ‘Masters Of The Universe’ Economy
It’s Friday desk clearing time for this blogger. “In all, Rhode Island recorded 3,479 foreclosures last year, among 390,403 residential properties. ‘It’s not just community by community; it’s neighborhood by neighborhood,’ said Richard H. Godfrey, executive director the state’s housing agency. ‘Those are the neighborhoods that saw the fastest appreciation in the last four to five years, and they’re the neighborhoods that saw the most subprime loans.’”
“Housing prices in those neighborhoods skyrocketed, beginning in about 2004, Godfrey said. ‘Now, they’re coming down just as fast, if not faster.’”
“Godfrey said first-time buyers in those neighborhoods, many of them immigrants, were seduced by low introductory rates on adjustable-rate mortgages. ‘Buy a house for less than the price of a car,’ he said. ‘People who have no hope of owning and were struggling to pay the rent, when someone says you can own a piece of the American Dream, it’s very hard to turn that down.’”
“‘Consumer spending from 2002 to 2008 was equal to what people borrowed in home equity loans. That’s the investment bankers. And, when housing valued dropped the tail spin started,’ said U.S. Rep. James P. Moran to members of the Mount Vernon-Lee Chamber of Commerce. ‘Next year over one half of home owners in this country will be technically bankrupt. They bought homes they never could afford not realizing that when the first low interest payments were over, the payments would skyrocket. In some cases payments are more than their total income.’”
“He cited a case in Northern Virginia where 200 homes in one development were sold on margin with an escalating interest rate. All 200 home owners have now been evicted due to foreclosure.”
“LandAmerica Financial Group Inc., a bankrupt Henrico County-based company with Richmond roots dating to 1925, is closing down. Severance packages will not be awarded because the company is in bankruptcy, LandAmerica spokeswoman Carol Gentry said.”
“‘The problem here is the company has no money,’ said Robert M. Lawless, a bankruptcy law professor at the University of Illinois law school. ‘This is what’s known as turnip law. You can’t get blood out of a turnip.’”
“Some communicable diseases can be traced back to what medical researchers call ‘patient zero,’ the first carrier of an illness and often someone who has no symptoms. One of the most notorious examples of this is ‘Typhoid Mary.’ The global recession has a ‘patient zero’. ‘Patient zero’ bought a house in Stockton, California, in 2003 after getting a subprime mortgage. He defaulted on that mortgage 39 months later.”
“He was a client of Countrywide. He got a $250,000 mortgage five years ago, He did not have to put a nickel down to get the loan. The value of real estate in Stockton, California, where he bought his home had been rising at 10% a year for four years. He was a good credit risk not because of his income but because the value of the asset he bought was bound to go up 100% by the end of this decade. Two months after his mortgage reset in 2006, he lost his job. He was in default less than 90 days later.”
“Somewhere in the Countrywide archives are his number, phone number, and most recent forwarding address. He is still looking for permanent employment.”
“Oklahoma home builders on their way back from Las Vegas saw the latest in eye-popping, sales-inducing home products and services at the annual International Builders Show. A star attraction this year was Tulsa-area builder Joe Robson’s ascendance to chairman of the board of the National Association of Home Builders, organizer of the huge trade show.”
“Oklahoma City builder Chuck Robinson joked that Robson might decide he’s taking the national reins a little late, having missed the housing boom by a few years. ‘Kind of like when you go to the lake and they say, ‘Oh, you should have been here last week. We were really catching them,’ Robinson said.”
“Oklahoma foreclosure filings were 50 percent higher in 2008 than the year before, according to RealtyTrac.”
“Things are about to get tough for homebuilders in Texas, which until now has been a rare safe haven for recession-battered builders. ‘Texans are a little bit shell-shocked because it’s come home that we’re going to deal with this, too,’ said Pam Minich, a real estate consultant specializing in Texas.”
“In a sense, housing in Texas is a victim of the state’s success. While Texas did not experience the most extreme overbuilding, that carpetbagger enthusiasm produced too many developed lots, complete with utilities, Minich said. ‘As the housing industry suffered, everybody heard Texas was holding up, so homebuilders from other parts of the country came here and got too aggressive for reality,’ Minich said.”
“Arizona is paying the piper for overbuilding in the first six years of the decade, said economist Elliott Pollack. The Valley is spending the last four years of the decade working through the excess, Pollack said, and home prices will continue to fall until equilibrium is reached. ‘Until we work off that oversupply we’ve got nowhere to go. It’s that simple,’ he said at the Glendale Civic Center.”
“Arizona’s Republican senators…favor a plan that shores up the housing market, cuts taxes and doesn’t expand new spending indefinitely. ‘We’re trying to provide a floor so housing values don’t decline anymore,’ said Sen. Jon Kyl.”
“After reading your recent article, ‘Some NJ legislators eager to tweak rules on housing,’ I am compelled to respond…What is so often forgotten in conversations on this topic are all those people…with incomes from $30,000-$45,000, who need affordable housing, and it’s these people who will help keep New Jersey’s economy moving.”
“New Jersey is at war with itself on affordable housing and has been for years. Because of our unbalanced income structure, many people in this income range can not afford to live here. Why should someone who works full time in our state not be able to afford a decent place to live?”
“How can New Jersey legislators and towns debate how to avoid affordable housing while ignoring the hard working New Jersey citizens who are the backbone of this economy and can not afford to live here?”
“The rising cost of living in the five boroughs, combined with a city economy that has been unable to create enough well-paying jobs, has led tens of thousands of middle class New Yorkers to leave the city in recent years and kept others stuck among the ranks of the working poor, a new report shows.”
“In 2006, 151,441 residents left the city, a 7% increase over 2002. The overall population increased as a result of natural births and immigration. The number of New Yorkers with bachelor’s degrees who left the city rose to 29,370 in 2006, up 127% from a year earlier. ‘The city, probably going back to Mayor [John] Lindsay really hasn’t focused on the middle class,’ said Joel Kotkin, an urban historian and the report’s coauthor. ‘It’s becoming increasingly addicted to a ‘Masters of the Universe’ economy, which has now completely fallen apart.’”
“In one of history’s more candid reflections, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Treasury Secretary under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, confessed, ‘We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.’”
“Just six years after crafting the New Deal, Morgenthau declared that their efforts to create jobs and restore America’s depression-ravaged economy by expanding the federal government to unprecedented levels had been a failure. By Morgenthau’s own assessment, the New Deal saddled our country with ‘as much unemployment as when we started…and an enormous debt.’”
“In 2004, a team of UCLA economists concluded that the policies of the New Deal, which suppressed competition and kept unemployment in the range of nine to 16 percent, actually prolonged the Great Depression by seven years. Amity Shlaes, an economic scholar and Great Depression historian, has argued that the sheer ‘arbitrariness’ of the New Deal actually exacerbated the crisis.”
“As in 1933, today our nation is confronted with an economic crisis that grows worse each day. The burst of the housing bubble and the subsequent credit crisis has badly impaired our financial markets. Some in Congress are rallying around a ’solution’ that sounds alarmingly familiar: spend more than we have ever spent before. The federal government doesn’t have the money. We are approaching a tipping point whereby creditors will be unwilling to buy government debt.”
“‘Our economy was built on excessive borrowing,’ said South Charleston native Thomas Hoaglin, who retired last month as CEO of Huntington National Bank. ‘That didn’t feel bad until recently. We got what we wanted when we wanted it. A tremendous number of individuals were spending more than they were making every year. Businesses were leveraging up.’”
“‘We lacked in financial services adult supervision over the last several years,’ he said. ‘There’s no other way to put it. There were unsupervised mortgage brokers and unsupervised, very greedy Wall Street bankers who created unregulated products. And there were rating agencies motivated to give high ratings in order to generate fees. That’s a formula for failure. Compensation practices are so front-end loaded - get the loan, make the fees, don’t worry about the long-term performance. Those practices are going to be altered significantly.’”
“Almost all banks on Main Street have remained active lenders - including Huntington Banks, he said. ‘Lending is what we do. But we all have to be mindful of changing circumstances. We must be mindful of the precipitous fall in land values.’”
“At today’s sales pace, it would take more than 10 months to clear all the houses for sale in the Richmond market, she said. A four-month supply is considered healthy. ‘The problem last year was an oversupply — we were building too many houses,’ said economist Christine Chmura, a speaker at yesterday’s forecast meeting of the Home Building Association of Richmond.”
“Speaker Lloyd Poe, president of LifeStyle Builders & Developers Inc. in Midlothian, said the country is worried about the auto industry and workers. Homebuilders ‘are having it much worse than they are,’ he said, pointing to data that show 3 million housing industry jobs were lost last year. ‘For the first time in history, we have lost the ability to sell housing as a great investment.’”
“Faith might move mountains, but can a small piece of plastic move a four-bedroom house? In this dismal real estate market, lots of people think so, provided that the plastic is a figurine of St. Joseph. Shops that sell religious paraphernalia are reporting phenomenal sales of tiny statuettes of St. Joseph - the earthly father of Jesus and the patron saint of the home and house sellers - to real estate agents and homeowners.”
“‘We have over 5,000 items in our store,’ said Norma DiCocco, who owns the St. Jude Shop in Havertown, Pa. ‘And you know what the No. 1 item is? The St. Joseph statue.’”
“It wasn’t until the real estate market really tanked that St. Joseph took off the way it did,’ said Dan Loughman, president of Roman Inc. of Bloomingdale, Ill., which distributes the St. Josephs nationally. ‘It was always a best-seller, but now it’s a super-best-seller. It sells everywhere. You can find it in hardware stores, gift shops and religious stores.’”
“John Badalamenti, an associate broker in Collegeville, Pa., keeps a St. Joseph on his desk. He recommends the figures when all else fails. ‘But first,’ he said, ‘I offer a few other thoughts: Make sure the house is properly priced, take care of deferred maintenance, and consider paying the buyer’s closing costs in a slow market.’”
Be sure and register for the Las Vegas meetup on this last day.
Another great week! I would have had this post up 3 hours ago, but my aircard couldn’t get a signal at the house I was at this afternoon. My thanks to those who support this blog and those who are joining us in Vegas. Please check back this weekend.
As always some great articles…
Hope all you Vegas bound HBBers have a great time!
I read today the Stations Casino Group is filing BK. Don’t know which casinos they own out there.
Too bad you didn’t schedule the HBB fest to coincide with the NAHB convention. Just think of all the ways you could have tweaked those builders.
In the 90’s I worked in the building products manufacturing business, and went to the NAHB show several times (it’s only in LV every third year). Builders are true gamblers, both at the blackjack table and in their boardrooms. They also like to show off their wealth, including their trophy wives. It would have been interesting to see what the atmosphere, and the attendance, was like this year.
Bill…I was there that weekend and I intended to go but just decided to lay around instead…As you know since you have went before it takes a couple of days of walking to see the entire show…I just decided I did not have the energy to do it…I also wonder how well the show did given the circumstances…
Station Casinos owns: Palace Station, Red Rock Casino, and The Green Valley Ranch, among others…
“He cited a case in Northern Virginia where 200 homes in one development were sold on margin with an escalating interest rate. All 200 home owners have now been evicted due to foreclosure.”
All of them?! ALLLL??! Oh, Sweet Baby Jeebus, that…I mean, that’s just…* agargle, choke, choke, paws at the air feebly *
Man, I wish there were some photos available. That would be amazing to look at. 200 houses. A really, for true, actual ghost town…
If I weren’t married and a little younger (i.e., would anger anyone if I got arrested), I would be organizing monster parties at places like that.
I love running through drywall.
It’s all fun and games ’til you “find” the studs… hehe
“They bought homes they never could afford not realizing that when the first low interest payments were over, the payments would skyrocket. In some cases payments are more than their total income.’””
NOT REALIZING???
Try again…How about not caring. After all, these Kool-Aid swilling numbskulls just knew they were going to perpetually re-fi and extract fortunes from neverending equity growth.
DOC
“Arizona’s Republican senators…favor a plan that shores up the housing market, cuts taxes and doesn’t expand new spending indefinitely. ‘We’re trying to provide a floor so housing values don’t decline anymore,’ said Sen. Jon Kyl.”
Reason #1 why Kyl will never get my vote.
Jon Kyl, is exactly what his last name implies, a Kyl (not Kile)
He is a numbskull of the nth degree and hopefully will take his and
McSame’s sorry arses and lose this next go around.
Both of them are major obstructionists and want to put a Floor under housing just so they can get votes.
Not because they give a rats arse or patootie if anyone loses their home. Gosh they have theirs.
Don’t get me started. Just spent some time calling all these elected lowlifes who don’t understand finances and yet and yet…
Rule as if they are the know it alls.
Please HBB take over their jobs.
Kyl has cost our government millions and perhaps billions by helping to keep the online casinos overseas…He is financially driving nails in the countries coffin by doing this…
Fecaltime!
Back when they were cramming TARP down the throats of citizens, I wrote Kyl and asked him to oppose it.
A few days after it past, he wrote me with a fairly long email saying…
He intentioanlly waited to respond until it was done.
We citizens had been mislead by a negative media…
So, he told me he doesn’t care what I think and he knows better than 90% of the population.
FU Kyl!
I’m trying my best to oust those two ass clowns by voting libertarian (I’m an AZ resident).
“Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Treasury Secretary under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, confessed, ‘We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.”
I should e-mail this article to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The numbers team Barry are pumping out make Hoover & FDR look like pikers.
Yes we can’t!
CONgress has started down the same path, and tonight they’re ready to up the ante another $900 Billion or so. Good luck with that.
We are sooooo skrued.
“In 2004, a team of UCLA economists concluded that the policies of the New Deal, which suppressed competition and kept unemployment in the range of nine to 16 percent, actually prolonged the Great Depression by seven years. Amity Shlaes, an economic scholar and Great Depression historian, has argued that the sheer ‘arbitrariness’ of the New Deal actually exacerbated the crisis.”
This must explain why Roosevelt was voted into office three times, once by the largest margin ever in a presidential election. I mean, it’s not the like people who were there might have seen a material improvement in the country.
Consider too that by tempering the worst excess of capitalism he saved the country from a couple of competeing systems people were known to fight for, maybe Shales has heard of them: facism and communism.
The worst excesses of capitalism were in the late 1920’s and they were tempered by events from Oct. 1929 to right before FDR took office in March 1933.
Please don’t confuse the delusional with actual facts. Remember even fearless leader #2 Joe Biden thought FDR was president in 1929 and went on television (which didn’t exist) to reassure the public. LOL!
“This must explain why Roosevelt was voted into office three times,”
How does the saying go? You can never underestimate the stupidity of the general public. Seriously, Bush got reelected.
You say W was re-elected? No, because he wasn’t elected a first time. He stole it from algore. Which reminds me.. I’d like another recount, please.
We are not stupid… We just elected the Messiah. What more proof do you need?
I heard Bush stole both elections plus the 2002 Congressional elections and even the 1994 Congressional elections.
Yes, I need to make a couple of points about that Kay Bailey Hutchison article. First of all, most respectable publications would give more details when citing an academic study. She writes “In 2004, a team of UCLA economists…” Oh, is that true? What are the names of the professors? Was this study published in an academic journal that I can look it up in?
Then she goes and quotes Amity Shales, who recently wrote a book about the New Deal. There are two important points to remember keep in mand. First, absolutely nobody in D.C. is proposing that we should do everything that FDR did during the New Deal. What is on the table is a proposal to use increased federal spending and tax cuts to try to create jobs and generally reduce the severity and duration of the recession. Another important point is that Amity Shales is something of a right-wing crackpot.
Senator Hutchison begins her column by decrying increased federal spending. She then ends her column by saying that she wants a stimulus package that “would emphasize tax relief”. She completely ignores the possibility that everyone is talking and writing about, namely that most individual taxpayers are not in the mood to spend and that they will probably take most of their tax cut and pay down debt or save for a rainy day.
She conludes with “What we have learned from those before us is that excessive spending may prolong a recession.” Where does she get that notion? I don’t think that there is any economist who would support that idea. Excessive spending may leave us with an excessive amount of debt that we’ll have deal with over the coming decades, but there’s no reason to believe that it will somehow prolong the recession.
‘excessive spending may prolong a recession’
KBH isn’t my favorite politician, but this stuff didn’t work for Japan (after twin asset bubbles, BTW), and some would say it prolonged their recession.
I agree. Excessive public and private deficit spending got us into trouble, so how in the world will it get us out?
Excessive spending caused the recession. It was sexy. It was wild fun. Party time.
The politicians just want their turn.
This is just another of many examples of politicians using a crisis as a means to push their agenda, whatever it may be. Those who want bigger government will use the recession as a reason to push for it. Those who want more tax cuts will say that it helps the economy. Our leaders at work.
I think it’s fair to say that when it first got into office, the Roosevelt Administration was just trying anything to see what works. Most of what was done in the famous “100 days” was later undone. The lasting work of the new deal came a couple of years later: the Social Security Act was in 1936.
Whatever stimulus act passes will be a desperate mess. The and auto bank bailouts already have been, and I’m not thrilled about the next one. Hopefully we’ll get some real reforms out of Obama down the road, although we may have to kick out a few members of congress to give him a chance.
Perhaps crises aren’t opportunties after all.
Seems she hit a raw nerve. All the finest leftists are out to crucify her.
Um, did some digging regarding ‘lil Miss Amity. She has an English degree from Yale, and her rise to prominence as an “economist” slash pundit, seems to have coincided with her marriage to Seth Lipsky, former editor-in-chief of the New York Sun. Sounds so very Ayn Rand. Lots of articles on the internet which refute her claims, but then, like Ann Coulter, ideology trumps facts.
Nice job, Salad!
Yes, I’ve seen her in interviews, and was definitely not impressed with her reasoning skills. She’s the type who just spouts talking points instead of using logic and actually detailing how it all works and **why, specifically** things work the way she claims they do.
Shlaes is a stalwart on the wingnut welfare circuit, a malleable tool hired to produce and promote economic propaganda that is flattering and beneficial to her corporatist backers.
She’s the modern equivalent of the medieval kings who hired scribes to write fairy tales of their virtue and bravery in battle.
’saved the country from…communism’
I suggest you read up on the affiliation of FDRs first VP. And if people thought getting reelected was so great, why did they ban the practice? Oh, and he committed treason w/Pearl harbor, but no biggee.
This comment has me wondering… but I’m afraid to ask.
‘I’m afraid to ask’
Uh huh. Back in the 80’s the history channel ran a documentary called treason at pearl harbor. I made a copy and let some people borrow it. One was a lady who had lost 2 young sons on the Arizona. She watched one minute and refused to go on. Too painful to contemplate. She was afraid to ask too.
Jeebus, this stuff has been out there for decades. Just look it up.
Oh please.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
I saw that History channel episode also.
There are countless books on Pearl Harbor.
US torpedoes didn’t work until until 1943, zeroes were better that US fighters until late 43. Patton drilled with horses in the late 30s…. The entire war was an endless parade of huge blunders by every army.
You do great work helping people, but on this you just showed your own biases. (which we all have)
Why is human stupidity so hard for people to confront?
“Why is human stupidity so hard for people to confront?”
Because people would rather call something “stupid” or “incompetent” than acknowledge it for what it is, evil. Of course, all that WW2 stuff was stupidity, but when it comes to US involvement in Latin America, that’s deliberate, right? Or was Pinochet a blunder? Enlighten me.
‘I saw that History channel episode also’
There’s a lot more than that. Did you know the US govt got a recording of Churchill calling FDR on a radio phone just before? The german intelligence had taped it, and it was discovered after the war. It’s in our govts files. There is a transcript in a book, but the source material is on file. Look that up too.
I remember back when CNN had guts, and this stuff got published they debated it. At the end, Robert Novak angrily said that FDR had done the right thing, as it had to be done to stop the Axis, etc. From what I understand, that is publically the way the matter was left.
I ask this; what would have happened if the US public had known on December 8th what we know now about the US decoding Japanese radio transmissions?
There is evil.
To say otherwise is to be blind.
There is also a necessity to believe in order. The Human mind seeks survival, patterns, order; “Where did the Mammoth cross the river last year?”
Unfortunately, then, chaos, disorder, randomness become antipathetic to us.
Most of us would rather believe that there is order, that someone is in control, whatever that source may be.
A cursory reading of many military campaigns in WW2 shows just how much prediction fails us. The blunders were of such magnitude as to defy explanation. Where there conspiracies in place to fail in a particular? Curiously, the answer to that is yes, sometimes there were, or it appears there may have been.
Yet, this misses the point. There are countless examples of just pure unadulterated stupidity of vast magnitude in the midst of a struggle for the survival itself.
A great documentary is “The fog of War.” It’s a documentary primarily of McNamara. He argues again and again that “in the end we just lucked out.” He was referring Armageddon.
By all logic, he points out, things were so much out of control during the 13 days, that Nuclear Holocaust should have been the result.
Every account of that time period bears this out.
Now was there evil? Yes.
Where there a conspiracies? Most definitely.
Was anybody in control? No.
No, I do not know that and neither do you.
You know of a supposed transcript in a book concerning a President which was hated by the upper classes of this Country because they thought he had betrayed them.
I do known, as is well known, that the British knew Japan would attack British and American interests in the Pacific on Dec 8th (there was huge confusion because of so many time zones) Many other things are known, if one choses to it can be painted to look as a conspiracy.
It is undeniable that both Churchill and FDR wanted and believed that the US would sooner or later would be in the war, and sooner was better.
I posted more under Palmetto.
There is so much to talk on this subject of conspiracies.
And yes, conspiracies do exist, as does evil.
Oh, heck, people today know about the WMD BS and all that happy horsepucky. It’s been staring them right in the kisser for years. OBL was almost captured at Tora Bora but the order was given to stand down and let the tribal chieftans handle it. And yet little Caligula rests easy deep in the heart of Texas. People just can’t believe it, they don’t want to. It would be too horrific to even contemplate. And then they’d have to actually do something about it.
Much easier to praise the lord and pass the ammunition.
Palmy,
There is evil.
To say otherwise is to be blind.
There is also a necessity to believe in order. The Human mind seeks survival, patterns, order; “Where did the Mammoth cross the river last year?”
Unfortunately, then, chaos, disorder, randomness become antipathetic to us.
Most of us would rather believe that there is order, that someone is in control, whatever that source may be.
A cursory reading of many military campaigns in WW2 shows just how much prediction fails us. The blunders were of such magnitude as to defy explanation. Where there conspiracies in place to fail in a particular? Curiously, the answer to that is yes, sometimes there were, or it appears there may have been.
Yet, this misses the point. There are countless examples of just pure unadulterated stupidity of vast magnitude in the midst of a struggle for the survival itself.
A great documentary is “The fog of War.” It’s a documentary primarily of McNamara. He argues again and again that “in the end we just lucked out.” He was referring Armageddon.
By all logic, he points out, things were so much out of control during the 13 days, that Nuclear Holocaust should have been the result.
Every account of that time period bears this out.
Now was there evil? Yes.
Where there a conspiracies? Most definitely.
Was anybody in control? No.
Thank you Ben. Some Demoncraps just are too much in denial that their socialist hero FDR could do any wrong. I did not bring this issue up because I am sure the nutcase demoncrap socialists would be screaming at me. And besides, this is your blog.
Actually, I have a transcript of my Nana’s diary entry from December 7th— she lived in Pearl City. As did her mother, and I have a transcript of a letter she wrote to her Navy husband.
The latter has an offhand comment about the state of intelligence which implies that she was sure that they knew about the raid, but aside from the stress that would naturally cause, she didn’t seem outraged.
Anecdotal evidence only, but interesting nonetheless.
Exactly. As I’ve said before, one thing that career spooks (folks in the spy business, before some dork starts yelling racism) know is that one way of hiding something is to make it so incredible that no one would believe it.
The incredible is done over and over, but most people are pitifully incapable of confronting it and toss it off as tin-foil hat. “Oh, they’d NEVER do a thing like that”. Would they?
It’s amazing what the so-called “elites” will do. And not do.
“(Soldiers are) dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.” Henry Kissinger
As I noted earlier today, some “conspiracies” are real. After seeing what Ad execs would do for $ in NYC, I have no problem believing nearly anything.
‘As I noted earlier today, some “conspiracies” are real.’
Back in the day I taunted an army of trolls who used to post here with that argument, whenever the subject of the PPT manipulating the stock market came up. I never claimed to have any firm evidence that the PPT was propping up the market — just found it curious how some stocks (like the Wall Street sponsored home builders) seemed to defy gravity when fundamentals suggested they should have sunk to the basement — and then the trolls would go on and on and on about how anyone (Madoff) who merely suggested (Enron) the possibility of a conspiracy (Madoff) must be (Enron) wearing a (Madoff) tinfoil (Enron) hat.
Some conspiracies are indeed real, and those who perpetrate them can provide themselves with good cover by labeling anyone who merely suggests the possibility as a true believer in little green men flying around in black helicopters.
“Oh, they’d NEVER do a thing like that”
The best place to hide something is in plain view.
So true, PB…
Okay, I’ll ask. How did FDR commit treason w/ Pearl Harbor ? Just curious, and what are your facts which you are basing that assertion on ?
Oh, well it is very simple: FDR knew the attack on Pearl Harbor was going to happen through some “intercepted radio transmissions,” but did nothing about it. See, the conspiracy theory basically accuses him of knowingly letting thousands of us servicemen die just so we would be drawn into a war with Japan earlier than we would have anyways. Oh, yeah, and what better way to start that war than having most of your South Pacific fleet destroyed? To me anyways, it doesn’t pass the smell test.
Kind of like I do not like Bush, but I refuse to believe the left wing conspiracy theories that he sent thousands to die for some great plot for oil. Maybe I m naive, but If that is really the type of country we live in, then what is the point?
I mean people you disagree with you can just be incompetent and not evil!!!
‘If that is really the type of country we live in, then what is the point? I mean people you disagree with you can just be incompetent and not evil’
I’ll let that one hang out there…
Yes, it was Wallace. He seemed to be a good man that just got sucked in by the ideology of communism/socialism. He later admitted his error. Why? we won’t know for sure.
Don’t you mean FDR’s second VP, Henry Wallace?
“Cactus Jack” Garner was FDR’s first VP.
Well, I finally broke down and supported the economy with some preventative maintenance!
I bought a cut-rate 700 cc auto battery and plopped it in myself Detroit.
Sheesh…37,000 miles, I bought it from a little old lady with 14,000 and I needed a new battery before I need a tune-up. The car is only 9 years old and NOW… good for another 9 YEARS.
+++ may need a tune-up someday as mileage may vary subject to CD sounds, mood and small lead foot
Not being able to do much in that regard myself, I recently dropped my ten-year-old European car off at the dealership’s repair shop for some work–a new wheel bearing and new brakes. Not surprisingly, this was taken as a massive selling opportunity: the customer service person called me up at work to inform me that “there are a lot of problems.” I subsequently was presented with a list of recommended repairs that topped $7,000. I declined every one except for the items I had brought the car in for in the first place. Not selling a lot of cars, are we?
You can only really appreciate honest mechanics, like good neighbors, when you’ve had to suffer their opposite.
“Faith might move mountains, but can a small piece of plastic move a four-bedroom house? In this dismal real estate market, lots of people think so, provided that the plastic is a figurine of St. Joseph.”
Shouldn’t they be burrying statues of St. Jude in the yard??? I believe he was the patron saint of lost causes wasn’t he?
I keep trying to understand why a real estate salesperson whose income depended upon commissions would recommend, instead of a price reduction, burying a religious figurine.
While I’m on the subject of faith and the unexplained, CNN this morning had a piece on the increase in visits to psychics, many of whom charge well over one hundred fifty dollars an hour and, ironically, are being asked by customers to speak with the spirits on financial matters. One such “seer” was interviewed by the reporter, and revealed what the national economic future held — no chance of immediate recovery and continued declines in real estate prices. Time to conduct a seance and invite Senator Kyl.
off topic short comment:
very very light vehicle traffic here in citrus heights area (n sacramento) on the first furlough friday.
love it. feels like 1983 again where you could actually drive somewhere in a reasonable time.
hell, I say let the whining crybaby overpaid selfish state union workers have a few more days off . . .
Some of those selfish union cry babies, came to work, did their job knowing they won’t be paid.
And scored a few brownie points when the layoffs hit. Call it Preventive Unemployment.
———–
did their job knowing they won’t be paid.
Kristin Davis, the madam in question, went public to ABC News this week; ABC will be broadcasting her interview Friday at 10 pm. Davis says she has a list of 9,800 clients, many of whom she says New York prosecutors deliberately avoided when taking her case, even though she offered them her annotated client list.
Wall Street CEOs, lawyers, bankers and media executives chalked up thousands of dollars in prostitution charges on their corporate credit cards — swiping their cards for $2,000 an hour prostitutes, according to a New York madam who pleaded guilty last year.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Wall_Street_CEOs_investment_bankers_charged_0206.html
But only one client wrote an article in the WaPo.
“…9,800 clients…”
Busy, busy, busy. I wish my wife were 1/8000th that busy!
LOL!!!!
Station Casinos isn’t exactly filing BK just yet. They defaulted on a bond interest payment early this week. They’ve put forth a restructuring plan to screw their bondholders. If 2/3 of the bondholders don’t vote to approve it by March 2, then Station will probably file Chapter 11 BK on March 3, which is the expiration of the 30 day grace period to cure the bond default.
Station caters to Las Vegas locals, and owns properties such as Green Valley Ranch, Boulder Station, Sunset Station, Palace Station, and about 7 others. The collapse of the tourism industry has led to mass layoffs in Vegas, which in turn has hurt Station’s business…
“It’s like a big hand came to Park City real estate and turned the faucet 95 percent off,” …
“The Catch-22 for a Realtor, however, is that freezing of the transactions is keeping prices up, protecting the success of the market in the future….
“The lubricant needed to loosen up this frozen market is confidence, Reid said. ….He thinks the buyer/seller disconnect is merely a symptom of the larger problem: people are still scared.”
“Portions of the bailout plans and stimulus packages will put money in mortgage markets making it easier for interested buyers to get loans,”…
From the Park Record: “Sales way down, prices holding”.
“The Park City Real Estate market has NO BUBBLE and therefore is NOT GOING TO BURST! ” (a local realtr)
Hundreds of units are still being completed all over town.
Meanwhile, Tarp recipient JPM canceled two yearly ski outings of up to 100 of its employees to 750-2000 dollars-a-night Erikson Lodge.
“The lubricant needed to loosen up this frozen market is confidence, Reid said. ….He thinks the buyer/seller disconnect is merely a symptom of the larger problem: people are still scared.”
It is quite amazing to me that top policy makers are still mired in denial this late in the price correction. Eventually prices will bottom out, at which point ‘confidence’ will mysteriously return, as buyers will actually be able to afford homes at reasonable fractions of their permanent incomes.
..‘Buy a house for less than the price of a car,’ he said. ‘People who have no hope of owning and were struggling to pay the rent, when someone says you can own a piece of the American Dream, it’s very hard to turn that down.’”
Heaven forbid these people should turn on a TV late at night. Oh, the humanity!
Just like the housing bubble has a homeowner zero, it also should have an economist zero. I nominate Lereah for the utter subordination of intellectual analysis to huckster salesmanship, although Greenspan is the logical choice. Other candidates: Fishkind, Snaith and Yun.
Stimulus Bill retains homebuyer tax credit: “Senator Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota, said measures including a homebuyer tax credit and auto tax credit would remain in the final package.”
“Some communicable diseases can be traced back to what medical researchers call ‘patient zero,’ the first carrier of an illness and often someone who has no symptoms. One of the most notorious examples of this is ‘Typhoid Mary.’ The global recession has a ‘patient zero’. ‘Patient zero’ bought a house in Stockton, California, in 2003 after getting a subprime mortgage. He defaulted on that mortgage 39 months later.”
True, except that this Typohid Mary’s only sypmtom was orange skin. It was not a customer who spead the desease, but the president of Countrywide who, along with his counterparts at WaMu, IndyMac and five or six others, spread the notion across the country that houses were there free for the taking. Nothing down, below market inerest, all to be paid for by refinancing the certain appreciation. After all, NAR assured us that US house prices NEVER declined. Add a few quacks like crooked wall street bankers, gullable investor, and blind regulators and you have the plague we now suffer.
That article is sooooo much bunk.
It states that prices had already been rising 10% per year for 3 years….
Me thinks the real patient 0 was atleast 3 years before this buyer they claim to be patient 0.
“True, except that this Typohid Mary’s only sypmtom was orange skin.”
Syphiloid Angelo
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Palo Alto, CA
The Stanford Graduate School of Business endowment soared to nearly $1 billion this August, making it one of the wealthiest business schools in the nation and the envy of the management education world. But this fall, the fund took a serious hit, and the seemingly untouchable business school, which depends heavily on endowment earnings for its operating budget, found itself on shaky financial footing. Faced with a gaping $10 to $15 million shortfall for this school year and a similarly gloomy outlook for 2010 and 2011, Dan Rudolph, the school’s senior associate dean for operations, did the unthinkable: He laid off 49 school employees, or about 12% of its 400-person staff. “It was very painful,” says Rudolph, who also put eight staff members on a reduced work schedule, eliminated 12 contractor positions, and reduced budgets for travel, food, and the library.
Business Week Online - January 30, 2009
I do not know whether to laugh or cry. Bwahhahahhahahhabwa
Sounds like they’re going to need a bailout.
Lee County Electric Cooperative, Inc.
North Fort Myers, FL
No building means no permits, and that means no work at the Lee County development review office. That translates to layoffs. Community Development Director Mary Gibbs said her department laid off 20 workers Friday. The building division now has 59 employees, which is fewer than it had 20 years ago. “Twenty years ago we had about 70,” Gibbs said.
Naples Daily News (Florida) - January 31, 2009
latest news
Yellen: Swift passage of stimulus is necessary
Five reasons not to buy a home this year
Homes are more affordable, but don’t rush — prices won’t skyrocket soon
By Amy Hoak, MarketWatch
Last update: 12:15 a.m. EST Feb. 6, 2009
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — The unemployment rate is creeping up and home prices keep falling: Two great reasons why it might be best to put your home buying plans on hold.
After all, your own job could be the next on the chopping block. Plus, why not wait until home prices have reached their bottom and you can safely buy knowing your new house won’t depreciate like a car coasting out of the dealership?
“It may be 2010 or 2011 before the general public believes it’s safe to go back into housing,” said Steve Fifield, president of Chicago-based Fifield Companies, a firm that builds condominium, apartment, and office buildings. “You don’t want to be the first guy to go back in.”
Gallo Glass Company
Modesto, CA
Gallo Glass Co. has laid off 45 of the 900 employees at its Modesto bottle factory, company officials said Tuesday. The layoffs, which took effect Sunday, resulted from reduced demand for wine bottles and the upcoming rebuilding of two furnaces at the plant, spokeswoman Susan Hensley said.
Modesto Bee - February 4, 2009
Fortunately I like most of the civilized world don’t have to worry about wine in glass bottles since we can get it in plastic boxes. It is not like a single malt scotch.
I like the boxes, personally.
NCR Corporation
Dayton, OH
Carrollton, TX
NCR Corp. has laid off workers at its ATM-manufacturing plant in Carrollton, Texas, and the company will discontinue making two lines of ATMs for the retail market - the EasyPoint 3300 and EasyPoint 3600 models, according to a company spokesperson. Last Thursday, Dayton, Ohio-based NCR handed pink slips to 14 employees who work at the NCR EasyPoint factory. The spokesperson declined to say how many workers the plant employs and how many models of ATMs the factory makes.
Cardline - January 30, 2009
Oops no more ATMs. No more moneys. Get your dollars now or be priced out forever.
So far, the first twenty-five jolts of the defibrillator has left the heart attack victim lying on the ground and appearing as dead as ever, but perhaps the twenty-sixth jolt will prove a charm?
Financial Times
Treasury and Fed set to team up on rescue
By Krishna Guha in Washington
Published: February 7 2009 02:26 | Last updated: February 7 2009 02:26
The Federal Reserve is likely to join forces with the US government in a fresh assault on illiquidity in credit markets as part of the financial rescue plan set to be announced by Tim Geithner, Treasury secretary, on Monday.
This may involve direct financing for investors willing to buy assets such as new commercial mortgage-backed securities, jumbo residential mortgage-backed securities and municipal bonds, as well as expanded support for consumer credit.
FDIC Friday news…after watching the spectacular demise of Countrywide, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Indymac and others last year, the thrill is pretty minimal in the cases of these small-fry bank failures with less than $2bn in assets.
Three U.S. Banks Shut by Regulators as Financial Crisis Deepens
By Margaret Chadbourn and Ari Levy
Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) — Three banks, two in California and one in Georgia, were seized by regulators, bringing this year’s tally of closings to nine as a recession and record foreclosures extend the biggest financial crisis in more than 70 years.
County Bank of Merced, California, with deposits of $1.3 billion and assets of $1.7 billion, was shut yesterday by the state’s Department of Financial Institutions, according to an e-mailed statement from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Westamerica Bancorporation, holding company for Westamerica Bank, acquired all the assets and deposits.
The Georgia Department of Banking and Finance closed McDonough-based FirstBank Financial Services Inc., which had $337 million in assets and $279 million in deposits as of Dec. 31, the FDIC said in a statement. The California Department of Financial Institutions shut Culver City-based Alliance Bank, with assets of $1.14 billion and $951 million in deposits.
Rational Man, RIP. We need more stupid people in economic models to explain the housing bubble and its aftermath.
The Death of ‘Rational Man’
By David Ignatius
Sunday, February 8, 2009; Page B07
What allowed some people to see the financial crash coming while so many others missed its gathering force? I put that question recently to Nouriel Roubini, who has come to be known as “Dr. Doom” because of his insistent warnings starting in 2006 that we were heading into a global firestorm.
…
Why did Roubini act? The answer is that he decided to trust his gut, which told him there was trouble ahead, rather than Wall Street’s “wisdom of the crowd,” which — as reflected in stock prices — said everything was rosy. He concluded that the markets were not pricing in the degree of risk that was actually present in housing.
“The rational man theory of economics has not worked,” Roubini said last month at a session of the World Economic Forum at Davos. That’s why he and other prominent economists are paying more attention to behavioral economics, which starts from the premise that economic decisions, like other aspects of human behavior, are influenced by irrational psychological factors.
The most compelling rebuttal of the rational model, paradoxically, was delivered by the ultimate rationalist, Alan Greenspan. “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders,” the former Fed chairman told Congress last October.
That’s why Greenspan didn’t see it coming, argues Daniel Kahneman, a Princeton professor who is often described as the father of behavioral economics. His rational-actor model wouldn’t let him.
Greenspan couldn’t SEE it coming ?
Dubya and his Mba couldn’t SEE this coming ?
The MSM couldn’t see this coming ?
All of those lobbyist-bought, experienced congress puppets couldn’t see it coming ?
All those Wall Street and Goobermint experienced regulators and all those de-Greed Phd’s and Mba’s in FIRE couldn’t SEE it coming ?
Spare me…an ASTUTE 5th Grader could have SEEN this DISASTER COMING the frigging PIKE !!!!
Remember how a few short months ago, the whole planet’s economy was going to go down in one ginormous flush of the toilet bowl unless HP’s stimulus (aka TARP 1) was passed? Well now we get to hear more of the same from OBwan’s economics dream team — pass our bailout or else face the kiss of doom — even though the Paulson plan was supposed to be the bailout to end all bailouts.
it looks like i will be a bitter renter for a very long time.
at least i live in a mediocre building more than 30 years old that was long paid off by the management co. and attracts no interest — esp. now — as a target for condo conversion or demolition. nobody is going to foreclose on us and cause us worthless equity-free tenants to be kicked out onto the street.
but i intend to wait and bank my depreciating savings and watch others die economically while i am merely nicked.
is anybody else enjoying the show as the stupid ones die economic deaths worthy of cinematic villains?!