The Housing Bubble

Debt to America!

Whoa! What happened with currency markets during the night? Dollar down to 79.6, Gold up to 976. (Hmm - I just noticed the correlation there). Crude up to 66.

Did the Fed announce something?

Bernanke Bid to Lift Housing Scuttled by Rising Rates, Defaults.

May 29 (Bloomberg) — Kyle McGee went to his mortgage broker’s office yesterday hoping to refinance and save about $200 a month. He walked away empty-handed.

McGee was expecting a rate of 4.7 percent; the broker offered him 5.375 percent. The average 30-year fixed-mortgage rose to 5.08 percent May 27, according to Bankrate.com.

“We feel like we might have missed the boat,” said McGee, 37, an adjunct professor of social work at Hunter College School of Social Work in Manhattan.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s efforts to bring down borrowing costs to revive the housing market and help the economy are stalling. Mortgage rates are almost back to where they were in March before the 30-year rate fell to a record and sparked a refinancing boom. Mortgage delinquencies rose to a record 9.12 percent of U.S. home loans and house prices dropped the most on record in the first quarter, industry reports show.

“Housing is not going to be the engine to get us out of this recession,” said Robert Eisenbeis, chief monetary economist for Vineland, New Jersey-based Cumberland Advisors Inc., and former research director at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta. “They’ve squeezed a lemon and now they’re trying to squeeze some more, but you can only get so much juice out of a lemon.”

Rates are rising as President Barack Obama is trying to spur a housing recovery. Obama has pledged to spend $275 billion to help keep as many as 9 million Americans in their homes and stem the rise of foreclosures. His measures also include a tax break of as much as $8,000 for first-time homebuyers that wouldn’t require repayment.

Whoa…Defcon 2? Anyone hear anything about this? I know it’s from a Macedonia site, but then again, I wouldn’t expect it to be on a US site.

http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/6893/2/

Next American scam, people don’t understand a draw is a loan and the employer expects repayment or will sue in small claims court…..

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Compensation is 100% commissioned based, but there is a $500 weekly draw against commissions to help smooth out your income flow.

THE MOGAMBO GURU

Germany wants its gold back from the United States and is advising Dubai to do likewise, while China is heading towards a gold-backed yuan. Which suggests not all governments are utterly stupid and incompetent - and that gold, for the moment, looks incredibly cheap, even as it shoots up in price.

Rumor has it that Germany wants all of their gold returned to Germany, other countries are asking the same. Is it really there? This is going to get really interesting quick.

Obama Offers Prime Posts to Those Who Helped Bankroll Campaign

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/newspid=washingtonstory&sid=adfv4RHV3Kmk

My cousin Nancy from Wyoming replied to our conversation about her on the 24th by saying these things:

1. She bought her rental property in central Wyo in November 2007, paid $137K. She put $25K into renovations. Someone recently offered her $180K for it, she turned that down. The agent recently said it could be listed at $220K. In the interval, Nancy lost 20% in stocks. She says “you do the math.”

2. She says HBBer Isabel from Cheyenne is wrong in the sense that Poor Little Cousin Nancy is making money from the rent. There are “plenty of tenants around here.”

******************** So, here’s my challenge to the bears, including myself:

Surely in November 2007 we’d have all told Poor Little Cousin Nancy NOT to buy a rental house (she already owns a house to live in). Apparently, we’d have been wrong then. How can we cogently argue that the top of her wave has been reached now?

az_lender
(Really, it’s me. Nancy mistakenly posted under my ID on the old thread.)

All that glitters, is not in the NYC showroom:

NEW YORK (AP) — Jewelry retailer Tiffany & Co. said Friday that its first-quarter profit plunged 62 percent on a steeper-than-expected drop in sales as consumers continued to pull back on spending.

Still, the earnings matched Wall Street’s expectations and the company maintained its profit outlook for the full year.

The New York-based retailer earned $24.3 million, or 20 cents per share, for the three months ended April 30, down from $64.4 million, or 50 cents per share, a year ago.

Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, whose estimates generally exclude one-time items, predicted net income of 20 cents per share.

“Despite reduced consumer demand in the luxury sector, Tiffany is, and is projected to remain, solidly profitable and will generate substantial cash from operations,” Chairman and Chief Executive Michael J. Kowalski said in a statement.

…Wonder how long before Tiffany gets a bailout and N. Pelosi is minding the store???

Stock market should skyrocket today. Nobody really knows why - they will make up the reason later.

Didn’t the US “Lease” out the gold to traders in return for? PaPer wonderful move if you will. China is the No. 2 holder of gold behind Switzerland. Makes you wonder, especially if the Yuan is making a bid for reserve currency status world wide. This might be the trigger for the next leg down. No predictions mostly questions. Cash might still be king for another two weeks or so.

Just a little more K.D. this Friday morning:

“The government’s game of “a chicken in every pot” is directly contrary to the desire to have low and stable borrowing rates for mortgages and other purposes. The Obama Administration is making the precise same set of mistakes that were made in the early 1930s - believing that the government was “omniscient” it spent like a madman and the market forced liquidity to be withdrawn and rates to rise, causing a devastating second-order crash that turned the 1929 market rout into The Depression.

We are headed down the precise same path and intervention cannot prevent it - only an alteration in government policy can change the outcome!

The Fed knows the risks: If they try to meet the “call” of their bluff by the Bond Market, they risk a potentially-ruinous death-spiral of people tendering into The Fed’s programs. That is, increasing the buyback amounts in response to this pressure only leads to the market demanding more, just like a heroin junkie who gets his free “fix”.

The Fed has already sabotaged the recovery: By preventing asset prices from correcting they have made the inevitable “work out” out of the bad debt far worse than it would have been back in August of 2007 if they let the people who made the bad bets go bust. We’ve seen oil prices double in the last few months despite every possible barrel and ship in which to store it being filled - why? The reason is simple: The rest of the world believes The Fed is debasing the dollar by effectively exchanging good dollars for trash, thereby “in essence” printing money rather than lending it. As I have repeatedly pointed out many of these programs, particularly the MBS, AIG and Bear purchases, are unlawful. The damage already done is severe but it can and will become much worse if The Fed was to “double down”; we could see oil spike up well over $100 and gas rise beyond $4/gallon, instantaneously destroying any prospect for economic recovery. Bluntly put we cannot recover until the bad debt is flushed out of the system, and attempts to short-circuit this process only cause more damage.”

Bond Vigilantes Confront Obama as Housing Falters (Update1)
By Liz Capo McCormick and Daniel Kruger

May 29 (Bloomberg) — They’re back.

For the first time since another Democrat occupied the White House, investors from Beijing to Zurich are challenging a president’s attempts to revive the economy with record deficit spending. Fifteen years after forcing Bill Clinton to abandon his own stimulus plans, the so-called bond vigilantes are punishing Barack Obama for quadrupling the budget shortfall to $1.85 trillion. By driving up yields on U.S. debt, they are also threatening to derail Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s efforts to cut borrowing costs for businesses and consumers.

The 1.5-percentage-point rise in 10-year Treasury yields this year pushed interest rates on 30-year fixed mortgages to above 5 percent for the first time since before Bernanke announced on March 18 that the central bank would start printing money to buy financial assets. Treasuries have lost 5.1 percent in their worst annual start since Merrill Lynch & Co. began its Treasury Master Index in 1977.

“The bond-market vigilantes are up in arms over the outlook for the federal deficit,” said Edward Yardeni, who coined the term in 1984 to describe investors who protest monetary or fiscal policies they consider inflationary by selling bonds. He now heads Yardeni Research Inc. in Great Neck, New York. “Ten trillion dollars over the next 10 years is just an indication that Washington is really out of control and that there is no fiscal discipline whatsoever.”

Investor Dread

What bond investors dread is accelerating inflation after the government and Fed agreed to lend, spend or commit $12.8 trillion to thaw frozen credit markets and snap the longest U.S. economic slump since the 1930s. The central bank also pledged to buy as much as $300 billion of Treasuries and $1.25 trillion of bonds backed by home loans.

For the moment, at least, inflation isn’t a cause for concern. During the past 12 months, consumer prices fell 0.7 percent, the biggest decline since 1955. Excluding food and energy, prices climbed 1.9 percent from April 2008, according to the Labor Department.

Bill Gross, the co-chief investment officer of Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co. and manager of the world’s largest bond fund, said all the cash flooding into the economy means inflation may accelerate to 3 percent to 4 percent in three years. The Fed’s preferred range is 1.7 percent to 2 percent.

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Bill Gross, co-chief investment officer of bond mutual-fund giant Pimco, on Thursday offered investors a sobering market outlook in which he sees lower returns, decreased U.S. growth and the loss of the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

In a speech delivered to advisers and investment managers at the Morningstar Investment Conference, Gross outlined what Pimco colleague Mohamed El-Erian has termed the “New Normal.”

In a world of more regulation, private-sector deleveraging and less consumption, “it’s hard for [Pimco] to imagine” the Dow Jones Industrial Average /quotes/comstock/10w!i:dji/delayed (INDU 8,404, +103.78, +1.25%) climbing back to 14,000 or home prices returning to 2006 levels, Gross said.

“Growth will be stunted,” he said. “It will be a different type of world and we have to get used to that.”

The U.S. economy will grow at between 1% and 2% a year rather than 2% to 3% a year for the next three to five years at least, Gross said. “That will make a significant difference for corporate profit growth,” he said.

Moreover, unemployment will hover around 7% to 8% rather than the recently typical 4% to 5%, he added, and the higher rate would be around “for a long time to come.”

Gross added that inflation would also start to accelerate in about three to five years’ time.

Looks like the Countrywide website is history; now it says Bank of America Mortgage.

Now, why did I invite them here to Mesa, AZ for a discussion? Well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to bail you out:

May 29 (Bloomberg) — Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and a lifelong Republican, boarded Air Force One for the first time in February. Neither President George H.W. Bush nor his son, President George W. Bush, had invited her on the world’s most famous jet in the five years she worked for them. It was a Democratic president, Barack Obama, who asked her to fly to Washington after the two had unveiled his administration’s foreclosure relief plan in Mesa, Arizona.

“Sheila, come on back. I want to talk to you,” Obama told Bair, who was seated in the plane’s conference room. He then escorted her into his airborne Oval Office for their first private meeting, where they discussed the government’s role in alleviating the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.

“It was great,” Bair says of her meeting with the president. “He’s got an agenda which we share. Banks are a means to an end. You stabilize the banks to support the economy. But you don’t stabilize the banks for the sake of stabilizing the banks.”

After being left out of big decisions by Bush administration officials, such as the push last year for the $700 billion bank bailout, Bair, 55, has become one of the most powerful policy makers in Washington. Driven by a combination of circumstances and her own candor, Bair has presided over the biggest expansion of the FDIC’s authority since its founding in 1933 to insure bank deposits.

‘Bites Like Jaws’

“She looks like Bambi and she bites like Jaws,” says Wade Henderson, president of the Washington-based Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, who has known her for 27 years. “There’s a quiet intensity about her. She’s idealistic in spite of her 30 years in Washington.”

“Growth will be stunted,” he said. “It will be a different type of world and we have to get used to that.”

Hey, by golly… things could be worse…from the article about the second largest extinction on earth due to a volcano in China:

“…After the eruptions, it took another 500,000 years for life to return to the same level as before,…

Volcanic Eruption Caused Ancient Mass Extinction:

By Ryan Flinn May 28 (Bloomberg)

Mr. Bear will not always be someone who has to call the landlord to replace the garbage disposal…:-)

Watch for more of this. . . .

Starbucks Corp., the world’s largest coffee-shop operator, is pushing some U.S. landlords for as much as a 25% reduction in lease rates, taking advantage of a declining real estate market to save on rent.

This is unusual in an age of inflation. It’s downright deflationary!

Bought a Winston-Matic 2000.
Can’t make the darn thing stop.
Green shoots everywhere.
Oh, the humanity.

Bottom callers will call bottoms. San Diego must exist in an economic vacuum, as there is no mention in this article of the looming GM bankruptcy, the recent uptick in l-t interest rates (including mortgage rates), the prospect that CA state employee worker unemployment will soon tic up or that the state may take money from the San Diego city budget to patch up its $21 bn black hole.

Some signs local slump near bottom
USD data point to first economic uptick in 2 years
By Dean Calbreath
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. May 29, 2009

Despite growing unemployment, continuing home foreclosures and a crippling state budget deficit, there are growing signs that the economic slump in San Diego County could be approaching a bottom.

Home builders are returning to the market. Home sales are on the rise. Consumers are feeling more confident. Local companies are doing better in the stock market.

“Things aren’t falling as badly as they have been,” said Kelly Cunningham, economist at the National University System Institute for Policy Research. “Consumer sentiment is improving. People seem to be realizing the worst of the downturn may have already occurred.”

The questions are how real are these “green shoots” of growth – as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke calls them – and are they strong enough to withstand the continuing drought in employment?
…
Perhaps one of the least-expected signs of improvement is a recent uptick in home-building. In April, 418 building permits were issued in San Diego County. Though down from 521 in March, it’s up dramatically from 87 in January and 86 in February, the worst months for local home construction on record.

In contrast, builders were putting up more than 1,500 homes per month at the peak of the construction boom in 2003.

“The March and April numbers are not great, but they are less bad than what we have been doing,” Gin said. “These numbers make me think that we’ll do better than we did last year, which was the worst year on record.”

In another positive sign, sales volume has been creeping back up. Last month, 3,375 homes were sold in the county, a 20 percent increase year-over-year.

Moreover, after two years of decline, prices have begun to stabilize. The median home price in San Diego County remained flat at $285,000 in both February and March and inched up to $290,000 in April. But the vast majority of purchases involved either foreclosures or short sales – properties being sold at a loss by lenders.

“People are tiptoeing back into the market, but they’re not coming back like they did after the downturns in the 1980s and 1990s,” London said. “We’re still at the bargain-basement phase, and we could see another wave of foreclosures before there’s any bid-up in pricing.”
…
“The key to turning things around is if this increased consumer confidence translates into increased purchases, particularly of bigger-ticket items such as houses and automobiles,” USD’s Gin said.

Foreclosures increasing for prime loans
Rate has doubled in the past year
By Emmet Pierce
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. May 29, 2009

The mortgage crisis that has shaken the nation’s economy is expanding beyond the subprime market to include borrowers with prime loans and solid credit ratings, said a survey released yesterday by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The rate of foreclosure on prime, fixed-rate mortgages doubled in the past year, said Jay Brinkmann, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Association. Nearly 6 percent of such mortgages were in the foreclosure process or behind by at least one payment at the end of the first quarter.

Among all types of mortgages, the survey showed that a record 12 percent of homeowners had fallen behind on their payments or were going through foreclosure. The report reflects a significant threat to the ailing housing market as well as the overall economy, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com.

“As long as foreclosures are rising, house prices will decline, which will undermine household wealth,” he said. “It will be very difficult for the economy to gain any traction. A lot more foreclosures are coming.”

May 29 (Bloomberg) — Nouriel Roubini, Dr. Doom himself, has found an economy even he can love: South Korea.

That might sound surprising for a nation in the news for the wrong reasons. North Korea’s nuclear test, the suicide of former President Roh Moo Hyun and stock-market-bubble worries are making for some very ugly headlines this week. Getting Roubini’s seal of approval has been a rare and welcome news- cycle counterpoint.

Recent Korean data “suggest there is the beginning of an economic recovery, and growth might be already positive in the second quarter,” Roubini said at a May 27 conference in Seoul.

Roubini, among the few to predict the global crisis, is likely to be right about Korea, too. And there are two reasons the world should be paying more attention to Asia’s No. 4 economy. One, the lessons larger economies can draw from its experiences. Two, what recent events suggest about North Korea.

The first point isn’t an insignificant one for the U.S. The reason Roubini says Korea may grow more than 1.5 percent next year is the economic-policy changes made over the last 10 years. The 1997-1998 Asian crisis seemed like a curse at the time. It devastated the nation of 49 million and forced the government to accept a humiliating International Monetary Fund bailout.

Today, that experience is proving to be a blessing in disguise. The government assessed the magnitude of its problems and admitted how bad things were. It allowed weak companies and commercial and merchant banks to fail. It acted quickly to rid balance sheets of bad assets. As a result, Korea was the first Asian economy to recover from the crisis and repay the IMF.

Korean Lessons

Economists pondering how bad things might get in the U.S. tend to look at Japan. More insights may be found in Korea. Even though they are spending trillions of dollars stimulating the economy, U.S. officials remain in denial. Adding liquidity isn’t enough. Steps to restore confidence and trust among corporate executives, investors, and consumers are far more important. Korea did it. The U.S. still needs to.

Ariana Huffington scored big points toward credibility with me today. She is a confessed Obamaniac but really blasted the administration for it’s actions to prop up the zombie banks.

So what’s the etiquette when you’re on a first date a the girl mentions that she wants to buy a house by the end of the year to get the 8k tax credit.

Do you:

a) Smile and nod
b) Encourage her as it’s a good idea
c) Try to explain why it’s not a good idea
d) Get up and walk away immediately

(strictly hypothetical of course…I most certainly didn’t find myself in this situation last night)

K, this is really *really* the last time I’m going to post about this.

For the Firefox users, I have a web page up now that’ll allow you to “automatically” install the extension I’ve been working on, as well as a feature list and screenshots. The extension is a nice aid for keeping up with this blog, especially later in the day.

http://home.avvanta.com/~drumminj/joshuatree.html

Makes this blog a lot easier to keep up with and navigate, IMO.

Gov’t allows short-term loans for tax credit
Government allowing FHA borrowers to get advances on $8,000 tax credit

Alan Zibel, AP Real Estate Writer
On Friday May 29, 2009, 10:40 am EDT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Thousands of first-time homebuyers will be able to get short-term loans so they can quickly make use of a new $8,000 tax credit that was designed to boost the battered U.S. housing market.

The Federal Housing Administration on Friday released details of a plan in which borrowers who use FHA loans can get advances from lenders that effectively let them receive the credit before they complete their taxes.

The FHA had no estimate of how many borrowers would qualify. But the agency, which backs about a quarter of new home loans, is projected to guarantee about 2.2 million loans in the next budget year.

Borrowers can claim the credit by filing an amended 2008 tax return or can wait for their 2009 return.

The change “will present an enormous benefit for communities struggling to deal with an oversupply of housing,” Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan said in a statement.

Borrowers will still have to come up with the FHA’s required 3.5 percent down payment, unless they work through a state or local housing program. But officials say the money can still be used for closing costs or a larger down payment.

The tax credit was included in the economic stimulus package signed by President Barack Obama in February.

California is talking about closing many many state parks. Won’t post a link as this will never go through, but it’s all over the news.

So…

Q: Who exactly owns that land?

A: The State of Cali manages it for its citizens, who own it.

But YOU won’t be able to access it, even though it’s yours, if THEY close it. So much for public land. And don’t bother to mention the argument that they have to close it or people will wreck everything if there’s no one there to mind it. In my home state of Colorado, volunteers have taken over some of that watchdog status quite successfully (e.g. Yankee Boy Basin above Ouray). Just another lockstep in the march to the Nanny State.

And I’m an environmeddler and don’t want to see things destroyed either, but I also want to be able to visit such places, they belong to US, not the gubmint.

OK, guess I’d better head back to Montana where my anarchist peers live.

From Krugmans home page

The focus these days is on the mismatch between China’s electricity consumption and a key measure of industrial output.

For most of the past decade, China’s industrial value-added growth (IVA) –industry output less input costs – has moved broadly in step with movements in electricity consumption. But the relationship’s broken down recently: electricity use is still seeing negative growth, while IVA is growing at a decent positive rate again.

Some China analysts are crying foul: If IVA growth figures are being cooked, surely that means China’s recent GDP data have been overstated too. China’s statisticians use IVA output to estimate what accounts for nearly half of China’s GDP.

China’s association of electricity generators has a solution: it’s stopped publishing consumption data.

Is Your Home a Good Investment?

finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/107122/Is-Your-Home-a-Good-Investment?

From today’s Seattle P.I. :

“Mortgage delinquencies, foreclosures continue to rise”

http://tinyurl.com/lqk638
During the first quarter, 0.74 percent of Washington mortgages started the foreclosure process, and 1.8 percent were in foreclosure at the end of the quarter. These were up 64 percent and 145 percent, respectively, from a year earlier and 12 percent and 22 percent from the fourth quarter…
Washington’s small quarterly increase in delinquencies is deceptive because delinquency rates generally decline from the fourth quarter of one year to the first quarter of the next. While the nationwide delinquency rate dropped nearly 5 percent, it actually increased nearly 16 percent when adjusting for seasonal variations. The mortgage bankers do not provide seasonally adjusted state numbers.

….Interestingly, the association warned that its seasonally adjusted rates “should be viewed with a degree of caution because the statistical models behind the adjustments were estimated based on a much more benign environment…

Soooo, which IS it? Are we ‘different’ here, or not?
Me confused!
*paws at brow in puzzlement *

wife and i signed a new annual lease for the townhouse we are renting five minutes from both of our offices in northern va…and at the same time we told our landlord it looks like we need a new air conditioner…ouch.

i always tell my wife that you can’t hardly put a price on piece of mind.

HBBers, is life crazy or what?? My lease is up on my beautiful custom house here in Moab in 3 days. I can stay, but it’s costing me an arm and leg and fortune. No luck finding anything else, and I need to be back in Montana in August anyway for school.

Some of you may recall I sold my house here a couple of years ago and a very wealthy woman bought it, added a story, and completely remodeled it, it’s really cool. She just called and told me I can spend the next 3 weeks there free, as she and her husband are traveling. I have an entourage of cats and dogs, but she’s OK with that, loves animals.

After that? Well, maybe one of you has a guest house or will be travelling…

If not, I’ll just go camp out for awhile, Hwy, where are you gonna be next? I like your style…Bantering Bear, you can join us…

Hey, you HAVE to watch this, it’s very short - this little girl puts our politicians to shame with her knowledge of geography, very very cute… (put dots in the spaces)

http://www thisisbozeman com/detail/smarty-pants-dance/

Israel to ignite all-out regional war?
Mon, 25 May 2009 10:39:47 GMT

Israeli soldiers
The Israeli military holds its most extensive nationwide drill, signaling its intentions for a possible attack on Iran which they admit can ignite an all-out war in the region.

The nationwide exercise “Turning Point 3″ will begin on May 31 and will last five days, Ynetnews reported.

During the drill, Israeli forces and civilians will exercise a war against Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran and will also practice counterinsurgency tactics against Israeli Arabs.

Last week, Israel’s Air Force held a three-day drill to exercise possible missile and air strikes by regional countries — a clear warning to regional foes such as Syria and Iran.

Israel’s hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Sunday’s cabinet meeting tried to placate Israel’s regional countries, saying “this is a routine drill, which was planned several months ago and is held every year in order to coordinate between civil and military systems.”

Tel Aviv accuses Tehran of nuclear weapons development - a charge rejected by both Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog, which has so far made over 14 snap inspections of the country’s nuclear facilities.

This is while Tel Aviv is widely regarded as the sixth-largest nuclear power in the world and the sole possessor of an atomic arsenal in the Middle East.

In the early 1970s, Israel had already developed missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads to most countries in the region, including Iran and Russia.

Moreover, Israel reportedly houses at least 100 bunker-busting bombs, which come in the form of laser-guided mini-nukes with the ability of penetrating underground targets.

The right-leaning government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran’s enrichment facilities out of existence.

I posted this a couple of days ago, but with a link, so it got eaten (I think).

From the ground in San Francisco:

About 80% of all blocks in the city have at least one FOR RENT or FOR SALE sign. In my twenty years of living here I have never seen anything like it.

All the people who droned on about how “real estate never goes down in San Francisco” are very very quiet right now.

Yesterday I even saw a for sale sign that said PRICE REDUCED in Specific Whites (Pacific Heights).

Of course, it’s still ridiculously expensive here, to rent or to own. People seem excited about the chance to buy a fixer-upper shack in the ghetto for just barely under half a million…”now’s the time to buy!”. Shaddup.

Been reading this blog for a few years and feeling like the bubble would never burst here, but it has and it is. Not real capitulation yet, but I think it’s coming.

I am in my 40’s and I have yet to meet a single peer who has been able to buy a house in San Fran without help from mommy and daddy.

Schadenfreude has made me a *little* less of a bitter renter. And the landlord just visited and didn’t mind a bit that we have 3 hens in the backyard. Phew.

Hey new Yorkers…..Sunday looks like nice day To see my Band The Catholic Girls…let meet up ..it will be fun

The Catholic Girls will be playing live in New York City this Sunday, May 31st at 3PM at the Riverside Park on The Pier as part of NYC’s “Summer On The Hudson” series. Here’s the scoop:

Mamapalooza - Sunday May 31st
Riverside Park So. (On the pier. Entrance at West 68th St)
Noon - 5PM
Celebrate mothers and the people who love them at our annual music and art filled afternoon featuring Swingset Mamas, Moey’s Music, tot- rocker AudraRox, and The Catholic Girls at 3PM, plus a Gymboree Play Tent, arts & crafts, food and fun! FREE (Rain or Shine)

Is Congress finally waking-up? They better start looking toward the FED’s hand in this also.

Senator asks government to curb oil speculators

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders has asked the federal futures market regulator to crack down on speculators whom he blamed for pushing up crude oil and gasoline prices.

He said the CFTC should immediately classify bank holding companies, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, as speculators and impose strict contract position limits on them.

Sanders said such companies “should not be allowed to make windfall profits in the oil market when in one division their analysts predict that oil prices will skyrocket, thereby driving new buyers to make investments in oil futures, while in another division their traders harvest huge returns on their oil positions.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE54S4KA20090529

LOL! If any country should know!

American capitalism gone with a whimper!
Front page / Opinion / Columnists
27.04.2009

Source: Pravda.Ru

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

What’s a good place to find out about foreclosure listings?

I keep hearing about prices being pulled down by foreclosures, and am interested in trying to find out for myself.

Whenever you hear the liberals discussing another “tax the rich” scheme, try to remember the practical realities:

“Millionaires Gone Missing”

Here’s a two-minute drill in soak-the-rich economics:

Maryland couldn’t balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O’Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were “willing and able to pay their fair share.” The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would “grin and bear it.”

One year later, nobody’s grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller’s office concedes is a “substantial decline.” On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year — even at higher rates.

No doubt the majority of that loss in millionaire filings results from the recession. However, this is one reason that depending on the rich to finance government is so ill-advised: Progressive tax rates create mountains of cash during good times that vanish during recessions. For evidence, consult California, New York and New Jersey.

The Maryland state revenue office says it’s “way too early” to tell how many millionaires moved out of the state when the tax rates rose. But no one disputes that some rich filers did leave. It’s easier than the redistributionists think. Christopher Summers, president of the Maryland Public Policy Institute, notes: “Marylanders with high incomes typically own second homes in tax friendlier states like Florida, Delaware, South Carolina and Virginia. So it’s easy for them to change their residency.”

All of this means that the burden of paying for bloated government in Annapolis will fall on the middle class. Thanks to the futility of soaking the rich, these working families will now pay Mr. O’Malley’s “fair share.”

-WSJ Online 5/27/09