Bits Bucket For June 8, 2009
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The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Good morning. It’s a beautiful morning in the sunshine state. Humidity, 100%, Temp of 92, values plummeting, inventories still growing and green shoots up my to my butt. Ya gotta love it.
Green shoots are on sale today: $1 trillion/lb.
Nonsense. I saw some green shoots at the neighborhood farmer’s market this weekend for $4/bunch.
Those the type of green shoots that make your pee smell funny? I saw some of those as well!
Hey, you’re making fun of one of our regular commenters!
Hey, you’re making fun of one of our regular commenters!
Who am I making fun of? I’m just saying that I saw bushels of asparagus at the farmers market yesterday as well. And asparagus makes your pee smell funny…
Look further down the thread. You just called out his name…
This is total BS. I just threw chair across room. There’s more here than pungent pee.
low in Saturated Fat, and very low in Cholesterol, also a good source of Vitamin B6, Calcium, Magnesium and Zinc, and a very good source of Dietary Fiber, Protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol), Vitamin K, Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Folate, Iron, Phosphorus, Potassium, Copper, Manganese and Selenium
Look further down the thread
Somehow I’m failing to follow you here (yes, I see that I called out sfrenter). Is it okay if I just smile and nod?
I think I might have killed some important brain cells on saturday night. Sure hope they regenerate, or my brain can route around the failure…
Oh. I get it now.
Derrrrrrrrrrrr. I should wear my helmet more often
My response was all sarcasm. I can handle anything.
Ha ha. And according to our friend Roubini (Business Insider, June 8), “those aren’t green shoots, they’re yellow weeds.” Also: we’ll be in recession another 6-9 mos, recovery will be weak, big risk of double dip, households aren’t deleveraging, real interest rates could spike, concern about hyperinflation. (Thanks, Nouriel, I guess that’s the good news.)
Morning Dime,
The Mrs. just brought me a cup of coffee. I’m sitting here in the office watching the deer on the other side of the river. Mom and two young ones. A mother duck and her goslings are gliding through the reeds in the quiet water near the bank. Just sitting here waiting for the other shoe to drop while
experiencing a beautiful morning. Morning everyone!
Good morning Rancher.
A young deer was grazing just at the edge of the hayfield below my window. It sure is quiet waiting for that shoe to drop.
Good morning all,
My friend w/7 acre horse farm for sale called me all excited last week. I thought she sold her house. No, but she was sitting next to a new baby fawn that was born in the mulch next to her home.
It was a surreal morning as she showed me the bird staring us down from her nest on the garage door opener in her garage, the half dozen sky blue robin’s eggs laying on the ground under her shrubs that her 12 year old wanted to wrap in her old baby blanket after the mother disappeared, and the chipmunk that skittered across the rock garden edging next to the fawn. While we chatted in the grass my friend said, “Move slowly and check out the bunny just a few steps behind you. It just hopped up to us.” Usually they move in the opposite direction. I thought we had just entered a scene from Bambi where all the animals of the forrest came to greet the new baby. Later that afternoon the mother came back to get her stronger, rested offspring and they slipped silently into the woods.
It is a glorious morning here too.
Typically in the desert it is in the 105-110 range sometimes over.
This past week and today it is in the 80s. Delightful.
No humidity.
Lots of fat lizards running around, lots of bugs to eat. Heard pack of coyotes do their ‘dinner chant’ these past evenings.
Lot’s of birds here in LQ, too. We have baby ducks at our lake. Tortoise is out and about. Weather is fabulous.
We have a hummingbird nest outside our living room. See the mom sitting on the nest most of the day. Can’t wait to see the babies.
—-A mother duck and her goslings —–
Result of interspecies romance???
regards
evil
Sheeeesh, we have so many geese here we have
to be careful where we walk, and any errors
in an earlier post can be directly attributed to
the lack of stimulant before posting.
News flash: an osprey has just been spotted
coming up the river looking for breakfast.
Good Morning everyone!
Well, it’s 18:00 (6 pm for you non military types :)). It’s 95 degrees as I look over the mountain range here in Kandahar Afganistan.
Just watching the housing debacle from here and getting that fuzzy feeling everytime you guys talk of lower prices…
I’d love to see what a Realtwhore ad would look like, for a house in Kandahar.
Help us out here…….:)
Its happening every now:
India clones second buffalo in three months
New Delhi (PTI): Indian scientists on Saturday said they have cloned the world’s second buffalo just three months after the first one died of pneumonia within a week of its birth.
The buffalo calf, named Garima, was born at 11 am at the National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal, and weighs about 43 kg, the institute’s Director A K Srivastava told PTI.
India has more meat of the hoof then America does yet millions starve each year…interesting religions that have .
I think you can eat buffalo, but you can’t eat the cows over there.
Hopefully, they make the wings extra big on these as I love buffalo wings!
Have you ever even been to India?
Beef is sold freely just a tad “discreetly”. Likewise, for beef on the menu. It’s quite freely available although not in the same form as the US naturally.
Same for Israel and pork.
I just remember a story on the news about McDonald’s opening up in a city in India and how they did not use hamburger meat in their hamburgers.
Foreigners are not given a license to do certain things that natives may freely practice - like serving beef.
That’s how most societies work.
Try opening an high-end Italian restaurant in Milan as an American. Even if you were the world’s leading expert on regional Italian cooking, you will be treated as suspect.
England with all its India folk, the McD’s has vegetarian quarter lb’ers.
I would think India has the same offerings.
‘my wife, she is a vegetable’
The Indian fast food, vegetarian equivalent is really good, and very tasty.
I wish they’d export it.
How about a mother duck and her geoducks?
ha ha ha ha
Hahaha! Yes, now there’s an image!
(those of you who somehow missed the previous HBB discussion of geoducks must now, this very minute, go and google ‘geoduck images’.
)
Yes, that’s really what they look like
Speaking of, I’m all in a fever for next week right around the Solstice when we’ll get a few days with minus tides of -3 and -4. That means I can reach more funny-lookin’ giant clams with my digginest little shovel! Oooh! I cannot wait!
*starts to drool slightly *
I would have said they aren’t THAT crazy good, and if someone came up and gave me the choice of a giant plate of BBQ’d ribs next to a coiled up pulsing giant clam of comical appearance*, I’d think I’d grab the ribs, yet I find that I really really really want to eat another geoduck. With wasabi and ginger, on rice.
*starts to drool lavishly *
*That was a trick question, of course. I’d eat them BOTH, and then eat the person who offered me them, and then eat the tablecloth as well.
…Oh, dear, I can see I should have eaten more breakfast. I’m STARVING.
I was in K’ Falls over the weekend doing our Annual Pre-Fitness Test test and the pollen count HAD to have been off the chart! You could barely breath and everyone on base was clutching to their kleenex tightly!
It completely wiped us out. Height & Weight measurement ( no strain ‘there’? ) then 41 push-ups follwed quickly by 43 sit-ups and then off to the mile and half run!
Now I’m sure… everyone here can knock that out without so much as breaking a sweat… but given the allergy meltdown, I was happy just to -finish- w/ a marginally passing score. Very difficult to breath. Thank God I’m in the “over 50″ bracket. The young guys ahead of me were almost puking.
I can do 21 push ups followed quickly by 43 sit-ups and then a mile-and-a-half run (over 50 category)
45north,
Outstanding! Remember though, Klamath Falls has an elevation of 4,120′. One of the 25-29 group told me he was finishing in the high 12’s in Grants Pass but was over 15 mins. there.
I’m no expert but there seems to be a consesus that training at that altitude is not without consequences. I suppose the reason ‘we’ don’t get any slack is that the guys in FL would be saying “Well yeah, but what about our humidity!?”
Never had a clue the pollen count was that high down there.
And we in California have to deal with all that lung-clogging smog!
Will be going to altitude (over 10,000′) in July for the Golden Trout opener in the ‘wilderness’. I live at sea level to keep from getting altitude sickness I acclimate at 5000′ for several days, then take viagra, ginko, and quinine. Works like a charm.
I think $tarbucks already has something like this (frappucino?)…. or Dunkin Donuts does. (coollatta?)
I barely drink hot coffee, and wouldn’t touch the cold stuff, so I don’t know.
Well I’m thinking of the health-nut smoothie: protein powder (vanilla) + blueberries + yogurt (vanilla) + green tea.
I guess for coffee lovers you’d need protein powder (chocolate) + plain yogurt + coffee + some fruit…cherries maybe?
I’m drinking Folgers watching crows attack the neighbor’s cat.
Got up at 7 AM, a bit earlier than usual. Had the first two cups of java while reading the WSJ out on the porch. Cool morning, temp about 65, low humidity, just a whisper of a breeze. Can hear lots of different kinds of birds singing in the trees until the mowers come to attack the adjacent fairway. But they finish fairly quickly and move on.
10 AM, just checked my schedule (empty for a change) and the weather forecast. Will be a great day for taking the boat out on the lake. I gotta remember the sunscreen.
“Nothin’ could be finer than to be in Carolina…”
I just learned a new term, “leaf peepers”. I’m traveling to NC in the fall with my sister and she keeps going on about how you pay a premium for lodging because it’s “leaf peeper” season. Is she pulling my leg? Maybe the leaf peepers can hang out with the green shoots.
Believe it or not, Family Guy did an episode about this very thing.
Google NH, white mountains or VT, green mountains in early to mid October for prime leaf peeping. If its a summer of heavy rain, the reds make for especially beautiful scenery.
Yup, the leaf peepers keep the (coastal Maine) B&B’s open through Columbus Day weekend.
except for what rhymes with “carolina”
?? Finer? What?
tgun,
I’m sure you must have meant angina “wink wink” as in - “Nothing could be finer than serial flippers with angina in the morning.”
Any other rhyming word I can think of would not be appropriate on this family oriented blog!
Wish we still had crows around here. They kept the bunny population in check. West Nile virus wiped them all out.
Don’t let the duck eat any of the green shoots.
Morning everyone. Stayed out late last night filming the sunset over the canyons and the moonrise, got a lot of really close coyote calls. Something right out of an old Western.
My dogs run down the hill towards the canyons when the coyote called, all bad, then come running back up, strutting around. It was a single coyote, maybe 200 feet away, but others in the distance answering. My dogs are close genetically to dingoes, Aussie dogs, so aren’t afraid of the coyotes and the coyotes are curious, but will run from them. Except I had one come near us one day, we all just sat and watched each other, and it finally turned around and around like a dog and laid down and went to sleep in the sun with its head on its paws. It was on a fin about 30 feet away, but a ravine between us. Got some nice photos.
On another note, groundhogday, if you’re out there, please contact me, I need info, chinlemiller at yahoo dot com. Thanks.
Lost in Utah, I hear coyotes calling every evening too.
I always think they either found a rabbit or someones small cat or dog that got let out for the evening ritual.
Send link to your sunset shots.
DD, they’re video footage, but I have some still photos on my blog, earlier postings if you check it out. Click on my handle for the link if interested. I’m collecting video for a nature film I want to do, but that’s down the road awhile, assuming the coyotes don’t get me first…
I love your blog very much, except that it makes me nostalgic and pensive and wish I was sunburned all over again.
*starts to sing ‘Memories’ loudly and prettily *
Serious, though, your photos of spring wildflowers wiped me out for one whole afternoon. Thanks!
Thanks, Oly.
Nice Rancher! You really do have green shoots!
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/08/nyregion/08trustafarians.html?ref=nyregion
Even the trust fund kids are having a hard time.
From the Article:
“Famed for its concentration of heavily subsidized 20-something residents — also nicknamed trust-funders or trustafarians — Williamsburg is showing signs of trouble. Parents whose money helped fuel one of the city’s most radical gentrifications in recent years have stopped buying their children new luxury condos.”
Also:
“Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements.”
“They say, ‘You want me to work eight hours?’ ” Mr. Illades said. “There is a bubble bursting.”
Ahh, now that’s a story I like.
WOW:
It is an adjustment that many have to deal with. Eric Gross, 26, a construction worker, was going to buy, with help from his father, a $600,000 one-bedroom condo with city views at Northside Piers, a luxury building, he said.
But his father, who works in the auto industry, said he had to reduce his contribution. “He’s pulling back the lifeline,” Mr. Gross said.
Yes Muggy those apartments were meant for the Bear Sterns Merrill Lynch people.
Having the “view” of Manhattan means a subliminal desire to strive to make more money so you can afford Manhattan prices not settle for Brooklyn….This worked out well didn’t it?
I never cared much for Williamsburg. I went to a few loft parties out there about when it was first declared “hipster.”
After I saw a concert in which the guitarist wore gun-range quality plugs because he couldn’t be bothered to hear his own music, I’d had enough.
The guitarist wore those ear plugs so he could continue to hear music, conversations, etc, for many years to come. Even the best plugs only knock down the sound level by 30 dB or so, which means going from ear-splitting 100 dB to a tolerable 70 dB.
Naw, they were like a quiet indy band… the drums weren’t even mic’ed and the bass/guitar were through amps. This guy was making a point of some sort.
I used to wear plugs, too — still, my hearing is not good.
Those gun range plugs are designed to block low frequencies but pass some high frequencies so you can hear the range master call cease fire. Other plugs block everything they can.
Funny how all my WWII vet friends are now hard of hearing.
I have been wearing plugs for 20 years and I play in “quiet” bands too. You can wreck your hearing in any live music scene if you have guitar amps and monitors set up right next to you.
And when I’m at the gun range I wear both plugs and phones.
In Montana,
While we’re completely… off topic, what “I” have found is that I practice a LOT louder than I perform. If the band played at the same level I practice at, it would be entirely out of control!
We recently played an outdoor gig and found it was totally different. Without any walls to bounce sound off of, the volume quickly fades. The bass player and I were talking later and he said if he stepped a few feet to the right or the left, he couldn’t hear himself at all?
Ahem, when it comes to monitors, mixing boards etc., the reason we’ve elected to “play it straight” is that’s how classic rock was originally played. Look at archival footage of The Who and you’ll see Kieth Moon ‘may’ have had (1) drum mike’d. Unlike “arena rock” where the each and every facet is pumped up to the inth degree. You know, there was a time when ‘where’ you sat would make all the difference? And that’s what we’ve strived to keep. Each listener’s night is a little different as is their account of it. This is how myths are born.
A part-time rocker, day-trading, bubble-blogger. My man!
During the boom Hudson county NJ (for those of you not familiar with this area it is right across the river from the financial district in Manhattan) thousands of condos were built. Even during the height of the mania I wondered who was going to buy all of these $500k1Br apartments. I guess we now know the answer, no one.
“He’s pulling back the lifeline,” Mr. Gross said.
How many condos/2nd homes were bought with extracted equity? I have a feeling it will take another 5 years before we truly know.
As I drink my morning coffee, “Trustifarians” is making me smile. I keep trying to give up schadenfreude… but there are simply too many idiots in this work for me to go cold turkey.
No, I’m not giving up coffee.
Got Popcorn?
Neil
ps
Hence, nor have we.
Nasty fever going through our daycare center. Our daughter has not slept well in 4 days.
Ouch. If baby ain’t happy, nobody is happy!
We just finally got our 8 month old through a sleep regression cycle. She was up every two hours for about 3 weeks.
Note that the article is about how lots of young people were getting “jobs” as “interns” or “freelancers” in New York, and could only work here because their parents were paying their bills.
That’s the other side of this. Unpaid labor.
First prior generations got a better deal by taking away pensions from those coming after. Then they took away health insurance. Finally they took away wages.
When I first lived on my own, I got an internship as an economist. It paid $18K, or $37,000 in today’s dollars, and shared a Bronx apartment with three other people.
It would seem that the ‘trustafarians’ are typical for what the book tells us. The Millionaire Next Door, found out that the 1st generation made the money, worked very hard for it, and were generally frugal. The 2nd generation not so much, the 3rd generation lost it.
Wasn’t that a Robert Kiosaki book? If so, it was all made up.
No, it’s not a Robert Kiyosaki book. But the book does have a serious issue of survivorship bias, which is covered in Nassim Talebs book ‘Fooled by Randomness’.
The culture of the area often mocks residents who depend on their families. Misha Calvert, 26, a writer who relied on her parents during her first year in the city, now has three roommates, works in freelance jobs and organizes parties to help keep her afloat while she writes plays and acts in films. There is a “giant stigma,” she said, for Williamsburg residents who are not financially independent.
“It takes the wind out of you if you’re not the independent, self-reliant artist you claim to be,” she said, “if you’re just daddy’s little girl.”
BooooHOOOOOOOoo….pobrecita! *makes sympathetic face which quickly dissolves into snarky giggles *
HAHAHAHAHAHA! This IS really funny.
Nice find, Frank.
When I’m doing concert photography, I try to wear the best earplugs I can find. Best of breed: Hearos.
Best of breed: Hearos.
I’ve got a pair of those that I actually used for the same thing (concert photog). Still get a good dynamic range, and you can hear when you get out of the concert!
Yup The Era of Dumb and Dumber is finally over.
Now its time for us Smart people to take back America, even those hipsters in Billysburg have a big azz whoopin comin.
If you see the same story out of Boulder we might be close to a bottom.
No kidding.
I’ll look forward to the same story here in the Alt-A Bay Area.
The trustafarians locally are fully entrenched. They might never have really done anything for themselves in their lives, but at least their parents have slowed the pace of buying them places to live.
The needle on my schadenfreude meter is pegged.
Welcome to the party pal(s)!
My fil is a trust fund baby. He tries very hard to live it down. Turned down plenty of invites for social club memberships, taught my husband that you show respect to even the garbage man if he’s doing his job well. He does his own landscaping and takes pride in being a “man’s man” making something beautiful through physical labor. The stories my mil shares about his mother make you wonder where he picked up these propensities. Sounds like my husband’s grandmother was quite the showboater. He was sent to all the best private schools.
He NEVER talks about his side of the family. He never talks about being in those schools only saying he wasn’t one of them. He’s very close to his war buddies fifty years later. He never passed on any of the skills I heard his father passed onto him. He has some cousins pretty high up in Washington. He never says anything negative but it may be fair to say that the dysfunction is obvious when they come to visit. I wonder how many others simply take the money and sink into quiet obscurity repulsed by a lifestyle one often assumes upon the windfall of great success.
I hope he considers his chosen path a great success. At 80 he is well loved by a large circle of friends and family and deeply appreciated for passing on some wonderfully balanced life skills to my son.
Kids mostly either follow the same path as their parents or decide to be the complete opposite. It sounds as if he was disgusted by the “showboating” and profligacy and decided to live a life of frugality and hard work. Sounds like he made the right choices, too.
I don’t know about frugality. He had his own successful career till retiring at 55. The career had nothing to do w/the source of his inheritance although his retirement age was definitely tied into its existence. His philosophy about it seems to be that he gets to take advantage of it for a while but like generations before him he is supposed to cultivate it and then pass it on.
My fil lived through and was not shielded from what was happening during the Depression. He then served several years in the Korean war before returning to an expanding America to start his family. Perhaps that’s what’s missing from today’s trust funders…..times when they were personally challenged. The whole “cultivate and pass it on” concept seems lost on some too.
CarrieAnn-
My bil is a trust fund baby too, and is the 180 your fil. Private schools, Beverly Hills, and the guests at their dinner table were impressive when he was growing up. Appparently, your fil took the honorable road. My bil doesn’t even clean up after himself, since he always had a maid growing up. Nice guy, but no work ethic, in and out of the house.
My dad is an anti-trust fund baby. My grandpa was really successful pharmacist (ceo of a chain that was bought by walgreens), and wanted to steer my dad into the same business/etc. As soon as he got out of highschool, my dad went to the college he wanted to doing geology (not pharmacy) and wouldn’t accept a dime from his parents for about the next two plus decades.
Fortunately he and his dad reconciled before grandpa passed on. My parents got an inheritance they wouldn’t touch until they retired and spent a small portion of it building a retirement home in AZ about 8 years ago. They are debt free and set fore retirement and paranoid about not ‘ruining’ kids and grandkids with too much money while at the same time trying to give it to us before the estate tax bites them.
I keep telling them to spend it on trips while they’re still young enough to enjoy it. And they do. For instance, my dad came and stayed in the motel 6 while we dirtbiked for a weekend. I told him that doesn’t count. My mom occasionally drives up to Tucson and stays at the motel 6 while playing in bridge tournaments. I tell her that doesn’t count.
We grew up poor and convincing them to spend money on themselves is harder than convincing a politician that bribery is immoral.
If trustafarians are being hit hard, look out Bozeman. It was a rare event in Bozeman when I met someone who actually worked for a living.
Hey, Groundhogday, please contact me, I need to get some accurate info about Boze, chinlemiller at yahoo dot com. Thanks
Best article in a good long while! It’ll be interesting watching these leeches wither away. They don’t even have the work ethic required to be a good criminal.
“They don’t even have the work ethic required to be a good criminal.”
I think some of them have what it takes to be a good white collar criminal. Combine a bit of creativity with a sense of entitlement and a desire for the good life, and you’ve got the makings for a good white collar criminal.
Or an Am-way salesman.
AP • New York Times • MSNBC • USA TODAY • FOX News • Gen Financial • Business News Videos
ALL BUSINESS: Bond-market rout lifts mortgage cost
Jun 6, 8:39 AM (ET)
By RACHEL BECK
NEW YORK (AP) - The Federal Reserve announced a $1.2 trillion plan three months ago designed to push down mortgage rates and breathe life into the housing market.
But this and other big government spending programs are turning out to have the opposite effect. Rates for mortgages and U.S. Treasury debt are now marching higher as nervous bond investors fret about a resurgence of inflation.
That’s the Catch-22 threatening to make an awful housing market potentially worse and keep the economy stuck in a funk. Kick-starting the economy requires higher spending, but rising rates mean fewer Americans will be able to refinance their home loans. And some potential buyers will be shut out of the market by higher monthly payments they won’t be able to afford.
To understand how this is all connected, you have to think like a bond trader. Inflation is their enemy because it means the purchasing power of the dollars they receive when bonds eventually are paid off will be diminished. The only question is by how much.
Yields on 10-year Treasury notes, a benchmark for home mortgages and other consumers loans, jumped from 2.5 percent in March around the time of the Fed announcement to as high as 3.7 percent in recent days as signs that efforts to stabilize the financial system and economy were starting to pay off. And 30-year mortgage rates jumped more than a quarter-point this week to 5.29 percent, the highest level since December, Freddie Mac reported.
“If the meltdown continues in the bond market, then mortgage yields will soon be at levels that choke off refinancing activity,” said economist Ed Yardeni, who runs his own investment firm. “Even worse, they could abort any necessary recovery in home sales and prices.”
Yardeni coined the term “bond vigilantes” in 1983 to describe how traders took matters into their own hands when they felt the Fed wasn’t doing enough to fight inflation, which was running at an annual rate of more than 3 percent at that time.
So what has set off the vigilantes this spring, at a time when the consumer price index is down at an annual rate of 0.7 percent?
One explanation is that bond investors anticipate a greater supply of government debt being sold to fund federal spending. Investors are also increasingly fearful that the trillions of dollars the government will need to borrow in the coming years to finance the various stimulus programs will lead to a new bout of inflation.
The White House estimates that the government will rack up an unprecedented $1.8 trillion budget deficit this year - more than four times last year’s all-time high.
“The bond market is calling the Federal Reserve out,” said Mike Larson, a real estate analyst at Weiss Research Inc. in Jupiter, Fla. “Investors are saying that the Fed can’t just print money out of thin air to finance a massive deficit.”
Shocker.
Who could have predicted this? No one.
If anyone tells you that they knew artificially low interest rates and printing money could cause inflation fears and higher interest rates, they are lying.
Report them to the NAR for re-eduction.
It’s attrocious that these rougue bond traders are worried about ‘fundamentals’ and such. It’s as if they are trying to protect the money that they invest or something. They need to just suck it up and let inflation devastate their holdings, or move their money into bubbly assets like everyone else.
Does the NAR re-education camp have “Haus Macht Frei” over the gate?
“Even worse, they could abort any necessary recovery in home sales and prices.”
“Necessary”…for WHOM??? Oh that’s right, for the banks. For everybody else (95% of the population), a recovery in prices is a destructive delay tactic.
What we need are some columnists (ha, and some politicians/economists) who don’t see things though Wall Street lenses.
“columnists (ha, and some politicians/economists) who don’t see things though Wall Street lenses”
Isn’t that self contradictory? Don’t the banks own the media and the politicians?
what gov program ever worked ?
“what gov program ever worked ?”
FAA, DOT, Coast Gaurd, rural electrification, Nuke Reg Commission, etc.
But rural electrification caused global warming!
Rural electrification undermined independent energy movements and instead made the rural areas *dependent* upon the central government. It was a trojan horse that will not be fully understood until the central government fails and rural areas are unable to afford/maintain their electrical grid. Without continued subsidies rural areas will lack WATER and with the latest building codes pressurized septic systems would be non-functional.
My comment was tongue in cheek. Seriously, the combination of rural electrification, the interstate highway system, and the financial hyper-stimulation of housing are probably the three largest contributors to the unsustainable development of the last 50 years.
To the degree that one perceives that we have serious environmental/sustainable development problems on our hand, those problems would be much less severe if the government had simply stayed out subsidizing energy consumptive development. It seemed to make so much sense at the time, though.
…Though those new cutters aren’t working out so well….
The Manhattan Project.
Normally, I’d let this slide but… the FAA really only exists for it’s own benefit. Has -anyone- ever… seen an accident or mishap where it was later revealed that THEIR policies & procedures were at fault? Nope. Never.
If the Coast Guard really were up to snuff, virtually all drugs consumed would be of domestic production. Nothing would be brought into the country ( and… I think well all know ‘that’ ain’t the case? )
But overall, if they didn’t exist, we’d need something awfully just like them? I ‘am’ a fan of needed regulation and I can’t phathom how any thinking person can look at what’s happened here of late and somehow come away w/ the impression the financial markets can “self regulate”?
DinOR…. the CG logic is weak. Most of the $hit comes through the north and south borders.
Things the federal goverment does with Gusto:
War
Law enforcement (war light)
Running prisons
Everything else is Subcontracting.
They suck at building, managing, investing exc. All that stuff gets thrown to subcontractors.
Running prisons
Isn’t this done by private companies quite frequently?
Local news radio in DC has a weekly segment now where they interview a VP at Long & Foster. He consistently tells us how inventory is down (25% less than last year!), prices are the bestest thing EVAR (can’t go lower!), and interest rates are at historic lows (he left that part out this week).
I really want to write to these fools and let them know how many more people are being set up for failure with the types of loans being made available recently.. but I gave up on them during the run up. I doubt they’ll listen now. Prices are down a smidgen inside the beltway, but the average single-family home in my neighborhood is still over $800k with many still selling for $1-2 million. These properties were around $400-500k in 2000.
in 22151 inventory is gone- prices are 2003 and holding
And yet no one mentions its the BEST time of the year to sell. October-February will be brutal this year. Bwaaahaaaahaaa!
(Yes, Oly does that better.)
Got Popcorn?
Neil
Is “sell in May and go away” now being extended to the housing market?
Nice to see you, Tax!
I missed your unique brand of
acerbic haiku.
Is that what is is?…
But yar, I missed taxmebootay, too.
Oooh, I just noticed I’m all over covered with sand and salty clam-spit. Stuff’s dripping off my elbows, even.
I must go rinse myself, and then I’m going to tell you all about it
bink,
Be happy. At least ‘these’ particular fellows are “sticking to their knitting”? All over PDX and I imagine elsewhere’s to boot, all “I” hear about is how ‘former’ developers and REIC-sta’s of every ilk are now gravitating toward the busted paper.
Now they’re bidding on non-performing loans and no doubt they’ll be every bit as “expert” at ‘that’ as they were w/ building and developing. Just what we need, guys that can’t figure out how to pour a foundation in a sqaure, entering yet another world of finance and whole other level of “in over your head”. How can ‘this’ end badly? Not to mention the conflicts.
WTOP is a fantastic station, but they too frequently interview easily accessible shills. For all sorts of things.
I know they have a superfast news cycle, but they really should do some digging sometime, and do some in-depth reporting. The corporations know that making themselves available to news radio makes their point of view that much more widely broadcast to the public.
This article makes me want to puke……. construction worker buying a $600K apartment with help from his parents? Hello? Long way to the bottom I am afraid for NYC real estate.
ps: I am just extra “energized” about this article because I am in the reverse situation: a young adult who supports his parents vs. the other way around.
NYTimes
By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY
Published: June 7, 2009
For the past five years, Ernie DiGiacomo has been able to count on parents to guarantee the $1,500 to $2,500 rents he charges for the 15 apartments he owns in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. When he called renters who had missed payments, he often heard, “My parents will send you a check.”
But in the past six months, the parents are pulling back financial help, he said, and as a result, he has watched more renters move out.
“Most of them are moving back with parents,” Mr. DiGiacomo said.
Luis Illades, an owner of the Urban Rustic Market and Cafe on North 12th Street, said he had seen a steady number of applicants, in their late 20s, who had never held paid jobs: They were interns at a modeling agency, for example, or worked at a college radio station. In some cases, applicants have stormed out of the market after hearing the job requirements.
…………………
It is an adjustment that many have to deal with. Eric Gross, 26, a construction worker, was going to buy, with help from his father, a $600,000 one-bedroom condo with city views at Northside Piers, a luxury building, he said.
But his father, who works in the auto industry, said he had to reduce his contribution. “He’s pulling back the lifeline,” Mr. Gross said.
So Mr. Gross is scaling back, shopping for a $300,000 apartment, said his real estate agent, Binnie Robinson of AptsandLofts.com.
“Scaling back” to a $300,000 apartment? And he does this as I have to live with 6 other individuals in a small a** room in this smelly country. I say bring back the draft….
I say bring back the draft…??
Over my dead body or should I say over my 20 year old brother’s dead body that the bassturds stole from me in 1969…
Yeah, there’s nothing like a little slavery to make people realize how good they got it…
over my 20 year old brother’s dead body that the bassturds stole from me in 1969…
I have no response to this, other than: ‘I am really and truly sorry to hear this’.
Sorry, Dave. Sorry.
I’m all for that but it ain’t gonna happen. Why? because if we had a draft and people like this had to do what you do we (the US) wouldn’t be in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our local paper published the results of a poll regarding what graduating HS seniors would be doing. 40% said they were going to college, and 16% said they joined the military. No shortage of cannon fodder for the time being.
But, 26-year-olds were ALWAYS exempt from the draft.
Memo from Eric Gross to Ron Gettelfinger:
“How could you let me down like that?”
Boo Hoo, a 26 year old won’t have dad to buy a $600,000 1 bedroom townhouse!
Sheesh! Back in 2001 I thought $200,000 was luxury that couples who saved for at least ten years could afford.
spoiled brats.
Inflation. It’s probably people of your age that benefit when young kids take on lifetime of debt to overpay for crappy apartment.
Just saying.
That’s not inflation, that’s just stupid.
I have been wondering when rates would finally rise to compensate for the actual risk. I was thinking about this the other day when I was shredding junk mail, incuding the credit offers that flood our box. I noticed that ALL of them are low into rates until 9/1 of this year followed by variable instead of fixed. I wouldn’t have noticed this unless I had a few months worth of stuff sitting here together. Seems to me as if the banks anticipate the start of the second leg down soon!
Despite my recently touting Morgan Stanley bonds, I decided to sell them this morning. They were a great buy in January, when the yield to maturity was something like 12% or 14%. Now that it’s 6 point something, I decided to take a capital gain and go for something that pays me to take a chance. How about Ford Credit? YTM maybe 15%. I haven’t bought them yet, am awaiting derision from HBBer’s.
Better wait for the Supremes to make their decision (or not) on the Chrysler bonds that various Indiana pension funds owned.
Question for y’all about that junk mail: Last year, I signed up for one of those “eliminate the junk” services. Name of said service was Green Dimes. It’s now called Mailstopper.
For a while, it worked pretty well. But then I noticed that, no matter how hard I tried to add my especially persistent junk mailers to their database, it just wasn’t happening. Which means that the junk keeps on coming.
I’ve looked at other services — ProQuo looks enticing.
Any thoughts?
I signed up with Cataloguechoice.org and my mail box is significantly emptier. Could never do a thing about the stupid credit card offers. They go directly into the shredder.
Look at the back of one of those stupid credit card offers. There is a phone number you can call to stop the offers. I have not received a cc offer in the 3 or 4 years since I called.
Cleaner, greener, driving your SUV! Also, Prius sales drop 45% YOY.
Think twice about ‘green’ transport, say scientists…
You worry a lot about the environment and do everything you can to reduce your carbon footprint — the emissions of greenhouse gases that drive dangerous climate change.
So you always prefer to take the train or the bus rather than a plane, and avoid using a car whenever you can, faithful to the belief that this inflicts less harm to the planet.
Well, there could be a nasty surprise in store for you, for taking public transport may not be as green as you automatically think, says a new US study.
Its authors point out an array of factors that are often unknown to the public.
These are hidden or displaced emissions that ramp up the simple “tailpipe” tally, which is based on how much carbon is spewed out by the fossil fuels used to make a trip.
Environmental engineers Mikhail Chester and Arpad Horvath at the University of California at Davis say that when these costs are included, a more complex and challenging picture emerges.
In some circumstances, for instance, it could be more eco-friendly to drive into a city — even in an SUV, the bete noire of green groups — rather than take a suburban train. It depends on seat occupancy and the underlying carbon cost of the mode of transport.
“We are encouraging people to look at not the average ranking of modes, because there is a different basket of configurations that determine the outcome,” Chester told AFP in a phone interview.
“There’s no overall solution that’s the same all the time.”
The pair give an example of how the use of oil, gas or coal to generate electricity to power trains can skew the picture.
Boston has a metro system with high energy efficiency. The trouble is, 82 percent of the energy to drive it comes from dirty fossil fuels.
By comparison, San Francisco’s local railway is less energy-efficient than Boston’s. But it turns out to be rather greener, as only 49 percent of the electricity is derived from fossils.
The paper points out that the “tailpipe” quotient does not include emissions that come from building transport infrastructure — railways, airport terminals, roads and so on — nor the emissions that come from maintaining this infrastructure over its operational lifetime.
These often-unacknowledged factors add substantially to the global-warming burden.
In fact, they add 63 percent to the “tailpipe” emissions of a car, 31 percent to those of a plane, and 55 percent to those of a train.
I have always thought that the real reason behind public transport systems, is control by the government of the people. It is sold as a cheap an easier way to go to work, but in reality, unless you live really close to the train stations, and your work is really close on the other side, and you do not need to change trains, it is not that quick nor convenient, as there are most likely other people using the system that more than likely are not going your way, so the train has to do multiple stops, is full and you can’t get in, it stinks in the summer, and is freezing in the winter… Etc, etc, etc.
Here in Mazzland, it has been used to badger people into accepting a higher sales tax, otherwise the commuter trains would be cut on saturdays, putting some people at risk to not being able to go to work, as they did not have a car, or license.
I have never thought that public transportation was either efficient, green, or user friendly, as most times it is built in a “spoke” and to get from different parts of the spoke, it was often counter productive to use, as you would have to go to the hub to take another train.
Say what you want about a car, but it does provide one thing governments loathe… Freedom. You can go wherever whenever you want with no limits. You are not beholden to schedules, and multiple points of failure.
I love the freedom to go anywhere that a car gives me, even if it incurrs in some maintenance costs, but here in Mazz, the cost of a monthly commuter train ride is bordering the cost of a monthly payment on a mid size car. Completely ruinous as you can only use it to go to work, and then what? Have a car, and the monthly pass? Yikes!
I just became a Metro subway system convert in Los Angeles County. I use it on weekends for adventures and doing business in areas it goes to. I live in Ventura County, so I park and ride. Between the subway and the bus system, the vacation from traffic and the high cost of parking is great. The added bonus is the terrific people I meet. But then again, I’m a train fan.
In Los Angeles, you can load a “TAP” card for $5- and have unlimited use of the bus and Metro train system for the day. At $1.25 one way, the train is cheaper than $3.25 gal for premium. I also drive when I need too. One is not inclusive of another.
Visiting Europe always remind me how useful trains can be. Take a train, hop a subway, grab a ferry, catch another train, roll your bags a half-mile.
Quite a qualitative change from the carcentric Central Valley.
Man, if Al Gore were dead he’d be turning over in his grave!
He’s still alive?
“Say what you want about a car, but it does provide one thing governments loathe… Freedom.”
Fellow HBBer, allow me to politely, but vigorously, disagree.
The automobile is a shackle, it is part of the state’s implicit control apparatus. Everywhere around me I see the “working poor” rushing off to work in large part to make their car payments. I see kids that should be paying their college tuition instead sending money to banks and car companies.
I went car-less, but not for any politician or ideology. I did it for myself. I estimate I keep about $15,000 grand in my pocket each year - money that otherwise would have gone to:
1. Gov’t - sales tax, gas tax, license plate, city sticker
2. Insurance companies - ewwwwww
3. Big Oil
4. Parking fees, traffic tickets, parking tickets
5. Car companies
6. Finance companies, banks
7. Repair shops, part stores
8. Gym membership, possibly even future medical costs
For a large portion of Americans today, the car is anything but a grantor of freedom. It keeps their noses to the grindstone and makes them feel like they are part of the “club”. As long as the government’s game is to push debt I hope to remain car-less.
In light of this administration’s Hurculean efforts to prop up zombie car companies, my rides have recently become exceptionally Quixotic and I love it!
My estimates by using a car, are about the same as yours by not using one, but there are several caveats.
1. I work on my cars (except Oil changes… for $29 it is dumb saving)
2. I do not replace cars, unless hopelessly broken down.
3. I drive safely, avoiding fines, and insurance over runs,
4. I do not take any mode of Public Transportation to go to work.
5. I do not make car payments (Cars paid off in full, bought used)
Granted that MOST people do not do any of those. I spend less money by driving my car around, than if I took the train. It is $7.50 for a train ride from my house to work. It is only 35 miles, so my ancient 300E will do it with a bit more than a gallon or for about $3.00.
That is half of what it costs to use PT, and then I am free to use it for other things like going to see the lovely fall foliage where no Public Transportation is ever available.
The YEARLY cost to insure both my cars is…. 750, and I live in MA, that is 2 dollars a day.
It would take a single ride on the train outside my schedule to go by groceries to spend much more in Public Transport than in keeping gas in my car.
Of course if people are not very smart, and go out and buy a 12MPG ultra lussury SUV with No money down and a 10% interest rate, they are going to have to work to pay for the beast, but that is their problem. They probably also use the thing to go to the public parking, to take the train to their “high” paying job in the city….
Don’t get me wrong, this is a matter of personal choice. No politician should tell you if you can have a car or not. At the same time we must entertain the thought that the gov’t can use the things “we” want to control us.
Edge. That is the beauty of this country, is it not? Each and every one can chose how to live their lives, and you can chose to use PT as much as possible, while I will bask in the ability to have a car.
There are countries out there, that will force you to do only one thing, and your options will be limited by policy or law. Hope that we never, ever get there though.
“Bask in the ability to have a car”
…….while various taxes/fees on your car subsidize public transportation.
Nobody ever asks what will happen to public transportation if you eliminate/greatly reduce the numbers of cars/trucks, and all the tax money they generate for various governments. I’m betting that public transportation will get a LOT more expensive …….especially when they get a “monopoly” on how most people get to work.
I’m currently working two part-time deals 50 miles apart, both jobs out in the boonies, both pay pretty decent….I couldn’t work either, unless I had a car.
MY Plan B would be to survive off public transportation, and be unemployed.
I couldn’t work either, unless I had a car.
Yar. I live way out in the sticks. I do frequently work from home (you all know when I am, because my pertinent and germane natterings about frogs and geoducks and Bigfoots and if I should paint my toenails ‘Sunset Mango’ or else ‘Sunrise Papaya’ become even more frequent, hahahaha) and when I drive I mostly drive a small convertible that’s pretty good on mileage, and I consolidate trips, etc etc. I’d like to bike more, or use the bus, but that is not an option.
Anyway, my point is I need a car. I wish there were more options for me, but there aren’t, alas.
Oly, I’m with you on the working from home thing. It’s great. But I can’t help thinking that being in a workplace with you would be fun.
Olygal,
So do you drive a Miata like me? At least you won’t have your manhood insulted by the people who don’t know any better.
32 MPG, Honda Civic level reliability, plus best in class handling. Not the fastest in a straight line but 8 seconds 0-60 is tolerable.
Very well put. The tyranny of the treadmill - it’s not just real estate!
The tyranny of the treadmill…
Speaking of, and relevant to the discussion of transportation, I have a neighbor up the way. A nice lady. Really quite chunky and often bemoaning the fact.
So last week she ordered a treadmill! I heard alllll about it, meeting at the mailbox, it’s just gonna be super dooper great! She’ll be skinny as a reed in nooooo time at alllll….
I just stood there and looked at her. I exercised (haha, get it) restraint and didn’t briskly b*tch-slap her or anything. I didn’t even SAY anything, probably because I was tuckered out at the time, but in the warm privacy of my own head I thought ‘Here we live, smack in the middle of one of the most beautiful places on earth, a lush green forest with giant trees and ferns, and the air smells like green mossy perfume, but instead of going on a little walk in this glory, oh, say to the lovely and wonderful beach down the road, or even just a little meander in the woods, you’re buying a treadmill??!!
…it’s for the best though–this way she will never ever have to turn off the QVC channel…
(yes, really.)
Sigh.
Noooo, no, no! She doesn’t want to go outside when she’s still chunky! People might see her!
Olympiagal,
I love ya Oly, but I am a daily treadmill lady myself. I do it early in the morning watching a documentary online or listening to NPR. Rain, sunshine, cold, or heat, I treadmill 28/31 days a month. I’m 50+, a size 2/3 and just bought a new bikini. I’ve been at it since I was 33.I walk outside for the pleasure of enjoying the scenery.
“…it’s for the best though–this way she will never ever have to turn off the
QVCFoodNetwork channel…”“… but in the warm privacy of my own head I thought …
Oly, I have long wondered…what goes on in there!?!
..but, then again, some of the Great Mysteries of the World, are best left..unsloved.
Oly, you need to start the Geoduck Fatcamp. Hang out in the woods and go for walks until the tide goes out, then everybody scurries down and digs like mad.
You only get to eat what you catch.
Oly, I have long wondered…what goes on in there!?!
Shoots, man! All kinds of assorted wisdoms and smart kinds of brain thingies! Obviously!
Like a smorgasbord, but with none of those little forks and cheese dips!
Exactly like that.
(awaiting wipeout said: )
I love ya Oly, but I am a daily treadmill lady myself.
But we’re not disagreeing or refuting each other here, awaity. Treadmills are fine, in their place.
Well. I guess; I don’t know. I’ve never been on one. But I bet if I did, it would end very badly for everyone nearby. Just an instinct I have about this.
I’ve been at it since I was 33.I walk outside for the pleasure of enjoying the scenery.
THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I MEANT! Jeeze, I shoulda smacked my neighbor, I really shoulda. Outside is for the pleasure of the scenery.
Edge
Could not agree more.
You forgot about the freedom to sit in gridlock.
I’ve always enjoyed car commercials. Sexy shots of whipping around the mountains in your convertible with the sexy blonde at your side. Not another car in sight.
I would love to see one with some noob sitting in traffic, slowly passing that ugly car accident with a tarps thrown over a couple of bodies while sucking in the carbon monoxide.
As a former auto mechanic, and someone who loves driving and road trips, I have to agree with Kinstler on the demise of Happy Motoring:
Lagging Recognition
By James Howard Kunstler
on June 8, 2009
Through the tangle of green shoots and sprouting mustard seeds, a certain nervous view persists that the arc of events is taking us to places unimaginable. The collapse of General Motors and Chrysler signifies more than the collapse of US car manufacturing. It spells the end of the motoring era in America per se and the puerile fantasy of personal liberation that allowed it to become such a curse to us.
Of course, many Nobel prize-winning economists would argue that it has only been a blessing for us, but that only shows how the newspapers are committing suicide-by-irrelevance. And if other societies, such as China’s late-entry industrial start-up, want to adopt a similar fantasy, they will only find themselves all the sooner in history’s garage with a tailpipe in their mouths.
Here in the USA, we will mount the most strenuous campaign to keep the motoring system going — in fact, we’re already doing it — but it will fail just as surely as two (so far) of the “big three” automakers have failed. It will fail because car-making is only one facet of a larger network of systems that is coming undone, namely a revolving debt cheap energy economy.
Americans will never again buy as many new cars as they were able to do before 2008 on the terms that were normal until then: installment loans. Our credit system is completely broken. It choked to death on securitized debt engineered by computer magic and business school hubris. That complex of frauds and swindles coincided with the background force of peak oil, which meant, among other things, that economic growth based on ever-increasing energy resources was over, and along with it ever-increasing credit. What it boils down to now is that we can’t service our debt at any level, personal, corporate, or government — and that translates into comprehensive societal bankruptcy.
The efforts of our federal government to work around this now, to cover up the “non-performing” debt and to generate the new lending necessary to keep the old system going, is a tragic exercise in futility. I’m not saying this to be a “pessimistic” grandstanding doomer pain-in-the-ass, but because I would like to see my country make more intelligent choices that would permit us to continue being civilized, to move into the next phase of our history without a horrible self-destructive convulsion.
Another consequence of the debt problem is that we won’t be able to maintain the network of gold-plated highways and lesser roads that was as necessary as the cars themselves to make the motoring system work. The trouble is you have to keep gold-plating it, year after year. Traffic engineers refer to this as “level-of-service.” They’ve learned that if the level-of-service is less than immaculate, the highways quickly enter a spiral of disintegration. In fact, the American Society of Civil Engineers reported several years ago that the condition of many highway bridges and tunnels was at the “D-minus” level, so we had already fallen far behind on a highway system that had simply grown too large to fix even when we thought we were wealthy enough to keep up. Right now, we’re pretending that the “stimulus” program will carry us over long enough to resume the old method of state-and-federal spending based largely on bonding (that is, debt).
The political dimension of the collapse of motoring is the least discussed part of problem: as fewer and fewer citizens find themselves able to buy and run cars, they will feel increasingly aggrieved at the system set up to make motoring virtually mandatory for all the chores of everyday life, and their resentments will rise against the elite that can still manage to enjoy it. Because our car-dependency is so extreme, the reaction of the dis-entitled classes is liable to be extreme and probably delusional to an extreme, too.
You can already see it being baked in the cake. Happy Motoring is so entangled in our national identity that the loss of it is bound to cause a national identity crisis. In places like the American south, the old Dixie states, motoring lifted more than half the population out of the dust, and became the basis of the New South economy. The sons and grandsons of starving sharecroppers became Chevy dealers and developers of suburban housing tracts, malls, and strip malls. They don’t have any nostalgia for the historical reality of hookworm and 14-hour-days of serf labor in hundred-degree heat. Theirs is a nostalgia for the present, for air-conditioned comfort and convenience and the groaning all-you-can-eat Shoney’s breakfast buffet off the freeway ramp. When it is withdrawn from them by the mandate of events, they will be furious.
Given the history of the region and the predilections of its dominant ethnic group, one might imagine that they will want to take out their gall and grievance on the half-African politician who presides over the situation. Among the ever-expanding classes dis-entitled from the so-called American Dream, the crisis is only marginally different in other regions of the nation. Mr. Obama faces a range of awful dilemmas, and it is painful to see them go unrecognized and unacknowledged by his White House. It’s hard to imagine that the president and his elite advisors are blind to these equations, but as the weeks tick by they seem stuck in a box of limited perception.
We’re in a strange hiatus for now. “Hope” levitates the legitimacy of the dollar, the stock markets, and the authority of leadership. In the background, implosion continues, debt goes unpaid, banks ignore bad loans to keep them off their books, jobs and incomes vanish, cars and other things go unsold, and a tragic wishfulness strains to sustain the unsustainable. Our expectations are inconsistent with what is happening to us.
It will be very painful for us to walk away from the car-centered life. Half the population faces the ugly obstacle of being hopelessly over-invested in a suburban house and all the life-ways associated with it. There will be no easy way out for them, whatever they chose to do politically, whatever noise they make, whomever they scapegoat, whatever fantasies they cultivate about what the world owes them, or who they think they are.
Mr. Obama should not waste another week pretending that we can keep this old system going. The public needs to know that we will be making our livings differently, inhabiting the landscape differently, and spending our days and nights differently — even while we suffer our losses. The public needs to hear this from more figures than Mr. Obama, too, from leaders in the state capitals, and the agencies, and business and education and what remains of the clergy. But somebody has to set in motion the chain of recognition, or events will soon do it for us.
The new — new Era of:
“I hope you like YOUR stuff’!”
Cause you can’t sell it.. and you probably can’t get credit to buy anyone else’s.
Migrating to:
“I hope you like YOUR neighbors!”
Because unless either of you foreclose and move on… you are probably stuck with each other. Why not help each other out?
Migrating to:
I hope yo lilke YOUR extended family!
Because eventually, you will probably be living together under one roof… to share income and expenses.
If you don’t like your stuff, neighbors, and extended family… you are in really bad shape in this new era!
Bet he’s really fun to invite to a party……
I have just two words…….”kit cars”.
“I hope you like YOUR stuff’!”
Actually, I’ve had no problem selling stuff on craigslist lately. Then again, I always price low because I’m just looking to get rid of it and get some cash in the process. I’ve never been one to try to squeeze every last dollar out of someone.
As such, I’ve sold an office chair, a set of monitor speakers, a book shelf, a pair of saw horses…anyone need a microwave?!
What? Dumminj! You sold your bookcase and you didn’t even tell me?!
*flounces out of room in a snit *
You sold your bookcase and you didn’t even tell me?!
I have another one! You want it? I just don’t have room for them right now..my books are all in boxes right now
But I don’t see that changing anytime soon, so I’m unloading these for now. I hate the idea of storing something until I *hopefully* have the chance to use it..but that’s not guaranteed…
edgewaterjohn,
True, I walk about a block to work every day. Like yourself, I’m no particular “environmentalist”. Not by any stretch. But as a young G.I stationed overseas, only officers and very senior enlisted guys had cars.
So, you learn to get around and to do so cheaply. Time the busses, learn the local lingo so you don’t get ripped off by taxi drivers. And walking, LOTS of walking. You also learn at a young age how to consolidate trips and accomplish as much as possible in a single trip. Then you’re done. Ah… sweet freedom!
If you’ve ever seen NYS Troopers box in a car at a thruway toll-booth, than you know cars don’t = freedom.
An interesting bit as I just drove by my wife’s high school, and truly a Kunstleronian nightmare: despite all the budget cuts, they’re still having driver’s ed. summer session. And only driver’s ed.
4. Parking fees, traffic tickets, parking tickets
People who don’t live in a big city have no idea how quickly a few parking tickets here and there (You will inevitably get them. Even if you have garage parking you’ll have to park on the street or at a meter sometime.) can add up over a year or two, especially now that police forces have been told they need to keep generating revenue on a constant basis. Our city police have been much, much more aggressive about ticketing for the smallest of parking infractions in the past half-year or so. We have a close friend who’s a Chicago city cop, and she’s confirmed that they’re told repeatedly to generate more parking/traffic violation revenue.
I went without a car by choice for quite some time, but with a small child, the idea of car-lessness for the next few years is quite daunting.
PS: this is tangential, but since you and I both seem to enjoy griping about our fair city’s attempt to nickel-and-dime us all out of existence, here’s a breakdown of the tax one will pay for dining downtown these days:
State Sales Tax 6.25%
Chicago Sales Tax 1.25%
Cook County Sales Tax 1.75%
RTA Tax 1.00%
MPEA Pier Tax 1.00%
(The MPEA Pier Tax only applies in downtown Chicago restaurants)
= TOTAL SALES TAX 11.25%
+
Restaurant Tax 0.25%
= TOTAL TAX 11.50%
I love Chicago, but one thing I don’t miss now that I moved is the constant tickets. I used to hate those orange envelopes.
I once saw an illegally parked car in my neighborhood accumulate tickets, one after another, each pasted to the other from the driver’s side mirror until the chain dragged on the ground. Patrolman humor I guess.
I am going to write a book… It’s title: “There are only 100!”
There are only 100 little percents of my income. Once you have all 100, there are no more.
Note to self: Be sure to drastically reduce income and productivity once big G is taking more than 50 of those percents!
Just about there!
LOL, ET, you reminded me about the time my friend actually forcibly removed a boot from his car when he was at U.Chicago.
I forget how much he ultimately paid, but he had to repay the city for the boot, and also destroyed his wheel in the process.
Muggy: yeah, taking off a boot seems like a whole world o’ trouble, but I can understand the impulse to do it. I’ve never gotten the boot, luckily.
Let me tell you what I learned about car ownership in japan. When you register the car you have to show the City office that you have a parking place for it. Or you pay more.
The first two years of the “car life” not from the time you own it. There is just a minor tax. Then every two years after that they tax it some more. Every few years they give it a really hard “inspection” anything and everything that can be fixed has to be fixed
By ten years the “inspection” is every year, along with a super high extra tax. about 6,000 dollars every year
When my girl told me all this. I asked what the point was, she told it was for the public good the roads are small and crowded and “bad” aka Old cars can break down in the middle of traffic and cause alot of problems.
I told her that wasnt so, if a car is properly maintained or fixed up, can be just a reliable. I shudder to think of all the nice classic cars that would be junked if we did that here. Also the high tax means that you must maintain a certain income in order to have the privilege of driving.
But thanks to Japan’s policies, Australia and New Zealand have enjoyed a great source of newer “used” cars.
Exactly my thinking. After living overseas for 3 years without a car, I felt completely liberated. At times I’ve owned a car (I lived in Silicon Valley for 3 years) but even then never drove more than a few hundred miles a year. Now we own one car that my wife drives and I walk to work. We are only looking at houses within walking or easy bus distance to work.
Saving money is part of it, but the FREEDOM is my main consideration. I don’t have to fix the bloody thing, worry about having an accident, etc…
Am I allowed to agree with both edgewater and Pinch?
All public transit systems, including the highway system, are one-size-fits-all, government-funded and -mandated atrocities that leach resources from the private sector to feed bureaucratic egos. Their true cost, in terms of evicting people from their houses and farms and destroying communities, can never be calculated.
Furthermore, probably 90% of travel that takes place in these systems is unnecessary, or would be if people would emphasize telecommuting and living closer to friends and family.
+1 to LehighValleyGuy!
Same here in the outer rings of MD/VA/Balt. suburbs - and the on-size-fits-all solution winds up in vociferous negative outcries from new light rail or metro station proposals.
The crime wave spread to these communities has been documented time and again.
Opening a new light rail station in my old hood of Glen Burnie, MD ( not a stellar neighborhood at the time) plunged further downhill with an entire shopping center and community decimated by a surge in shoplifting, robberies, burglaries etc.
The mixing of easy access to inner city has two paths.
The more I hear about cars, the more I like my bicycles.
Ah they are building a light rail line in Norfolk, VA. The new apartment buildings being constructed around it are all carrying a $300+/mo premium. Asking rents are roughly $16/sqft. Meanwhile jobs aren’t that great and wages in the area aren’t stellar. Not sure what we are going to do with 1500 new $1600/mo (2bd) or $1200/mo (1bd) apartments. Now it looks like the old apartments are moving to up the rents to those same rates.
1600 dollar a month for 100 square feet?
Cars give freedom for me from noise, smell, and the “che..de..da..che.. che.. che..de..da..che… “sounds coming from the gangster’s headphones sitting next to you… (if you’ve managed to elbow someone for a seat”).
Freedom is about choices. Some days I may take the train… but other days I may want my personal transporation due to schedule and comfort.
The next bubble……..hiring millions of people to calculate carbon credits/offsets/environmental impacts.
-Another bunch of people to fight the calculations, saying they aren’t strict enough, and
-Another bunch of people trying to prove that they are too strict.
Both hands, meet circle-jerk. Make sure you wash when you are done.
Sounds like fun. I’m in.
Although I am in sympathy with the basic point of the Chester and Horvath article (wmbz’s post), there’s a bit of a paradox in the notion that “it could be more eco-friendly to drive to into a city…rather than take a suburban train.” This is true only if you believe that your NOT taking the train will cause the schedule of trains to be reduced. And what if “everybody” rejected the train? That might reduce the train schedule, but what would it do to auto traffic? In the case of LA it might not make much difference, I suspect ridership is low relative to auto traffic; but in the case of the Eastern cities, rejection of public transit would certainly require addition of highways, probably double-decker.
WMBZ study must be brought to you by Exxon
” In some circumstances, for instance, it could be more eco-friendly to drive into a city — even in an SUV, the bete noire of green groups — rather than take a suburban train. It depends on seat occupancy and the underlying carbon cost of the mode of transport.”
So yes if the train has 6 people on it then it would probably be more efficient to send them in an SUV.
A worthless point to make, Very few people car pool in SUV’s and most trains that I’ve been on in from NY,London, Boston, Oregon,and San Fran are well used.
The coal arguement is BS to
According to the World Resources Institute, EVs recharging from coal-fired plants will reduce CO2 emissions in the country from 17 to 22 percent. Countries such as the U.S. and the U.K. use a mix of coal- and oil-fired facilities that produce an elevated level of SO2 and particulates. However, levels of HC, CO and NOx would decrease significantly. NOTE A train is much more efficient than an EV.
According to DOE
Airplanes require 31 thousand BTU to move 1 ton 1 mile
Semi require 3.1 thousand BTU to move 1 ton 1 mile.
Train even less
DOT review
A 1991 study performed for the Federal Railroad Administration analyzed relative freight rail and truck fuel efficiency. The study, A Rail vs. Truck Fuel Efficiency@ , which was designed to compare fuel use for a variety of route/commodity combinations where rail and truck are competitive, found that rail achieved higher ton-miles per gallon than trucks, carrying similar commodities over 32 routes studied. Using computer simulations, the ratio of truck fuel use to rail fuel use ranged from 1.40 to 5.61 for these Class I railroad scenarios. For routes less than 100 miles, comparing regional/local rail and truck service, trucks used from 4.03 to 9.00 times more fuel than rail. As this study notes, it is futile to develop a single number to describe rail energy intensiveness. Specific routes, equipment, and loads must be considered, as well as fuel used in rail terminal operations and for drayage to and from the rail line. However, some rough comparisons have been made. For example, according to the U.S. Department of Energy= s 1995 Transportation Energy Data Book, in 1993 rail moved 39 percent of U.S. freight ton-miles carried by truck, rail, and water yet consumed less than 12 percent of the total energy consumption required for movement of freight by these modes.
Land Use
Transportation facilities of all types require the dedication of substantial acreage, and expansion of facilities to relieve congestion or accommodate increased volumes of freight and passengers can be extremely expensive. For example, in Los Angeles, California, the Century Freeway, a 17.3 mile eight-lane project to add capacity and relieve congestion, cost $2.2 billion ($128 million per mile — including mitigation costs). In contrast, rail service can often expand within existing rights-of-way without additional land acquisition. Rail is also less land-intensive than highways, airports and related facilities, requiring less space to carry more passengers and freight.
Bottom line rail is much more efficient than SUV’s, uses less land, and emits fewer pollutants. Rail can be electrified easily.
Driving a hybrid car is more efficient than driving an SUV. If you have to move 8 people to town, most GIANT SUVs that can do this get 20mpg or less on the highway and much less in town. Two prius cars would average 25mpg highway or city. Now run the calculation if you only need to move 4,3 2 or 1 person.
Thank you! I had a running argument with some auto columnist who claimed that SUVs were more fuel effiecient since they can haul 8 people, versus a hybrid that can only accomodate 4. That’s only true if SUVs actually transport 8 people. 99.9 % of the time they don’t. It’s like arguing that pound for pound driving a Semi hauling freight is more fuel efficient than driving a passenger vehicle. Yes, that is true, and your point is?
‘WHACK’Y KUNG FU
CARRADINE KIN: PROBE THE MARTIAL ARTS MAFIA
By ADAM NICHOLS
June 7, 2009
A secret sect of kung fu assassins could have silenced actor David Carradine as he delved into their shadowy activities, according to his family’s lawyer.
In a twist that could be straight out of one the “Kill Bill” star’s movies, attorney Mark Geragos suggested that Carradine may have been killed as he tried to uncover groups working in the martial-arts underworld
Patience, Grasshopper
Why delve into their society in the first place? Obviously he wasnt given an invitation…
Maybe he just wanted to snatch the pebble from their hand?
I remember watching Kung Fu the Legend Continues when I lived in South Korea. It was vaguely amusing watching white guys do Kung Fu with Korean subtitles.
His family seems determined to ensure he’s not remembered like Michael Hutchence. If you read the papers released from his divorce (try thesmokinggun.com), the circumstances of his death become a bit more obvious.
LOVE The Smoking Gun and a pizza place in Portland off McLoughlin has an entire wall devoted to their “Mug Shots”. Too funny.
But Mark Geragos never met an outlandish defense tactic he didn’t like! Simply by having his ( Michael Jackson’s former atty. ) drug into it, lends the sordid affair a semblance of “credibility”. So as long as the family is willing to continue paying him, Mark is only too happy to publicly deny the obvious. It’s what he’s ‘paid’ to do.
I hope he is well compensated. It must be hard to spew out such nonsense with a straight face.
It’s the family’s contention that he was happily married, just bought a car and had several ‘other’ film offers/projects in the works?
Well, the guy was an ‘actor’. It would seem to me that just about anyone in that arena would have “projects”? Cars wear out and I’m glad he was happy w/ his marriage at the time! But it’s all circumstantial. People only whine about being “tried in the media” when things aren’t going their way.
I just tire of celebrities -always- getting the benefit of the doubt along w/ the opportunity to have their names immortalized by having a “cloud of uncertainty” over their passing.
Serious tin foil in that theory.
And we don’t condone tin foil hat theories ’round these parts.
They were trying to steal his pebble!
Credit card delinquency jumps 11% in Q1. But compare CC delinquency to mortgage delinquency, which is much higher, it is apparent that people prefer to keep their CC than their underwater houses.
NEW YORK (AP) — Credit card holders who in ordinary years might have used their tax refunds to pay down their balances apparently spent the money elsewhere as the recession deepened in the first quarter.
That’s one of the conclusions that may be drawn from data showing the delinquency rate for bank-issued credit cards rose 11 percent in the first three months of the year, according to credit reporting agency TransUnion.
The delinquency rate jumped to 1.32 percent this year, from 1.19 percent in the first three months of 2008, TransUnion said. The statistic measures the percentage of card holders who are three months or more past due on their payments for cards bearing MasterCard and Visa logos, along with American Express and Discover cards.
The average total debt on bank cards also rose, jumping to $5,776 from $5,548 last year.
Balances typically rise in the first quarter, as holiday spending comes due, said Ezra Becker, director of consulting and strategy in TransUnion’s financial services group. But retail sales results showed holiday spending took a steep drop. That likely means higher balances now reflect consumers using credit cards to pay for necessities, he said.
“You would have seen a much better retail season if people were spending on gifts,” Becker noted.
While delinquency rates typically rise in the first quarter, this year’s jump was higher, he said, in part because tax refunds were likely used to cover everyday expenses as the unemployment rate shot up.
Problem is, most people view and/or treat CC’s as income. I had to drive this point home to my fixed income retired mother. She patted herself on the back for paying off her AMEX every month, but didnt understand why it would be better to live off cash instead. Now they have canceled her credit line, and she will find out first hand…
So long as its paid off in full every month, using a credit card can be better than cash. I pay in full, but also get points on all my purchases, which I use towards a good portion of my Christmas gifts each year (no annual fee on the card either). Plus, our checking account earns interest (not much, but something).
ditto.
You’re getting a portion back of what the retailer pays to the banks in the form of transaction fees.
As we’ve moved to a credit card society, now the evil banks that we hate dearly are getting 3% or so of every purchase we make.
When the gov’t uses credit cards to make $1mil purchases and what not, that is tens of thousands of dollars straight to the banks.
And prices are raised commensurately. Bottom line, you’re coming out *behind* by using credit cards. True, if you use cash right now, you’re still paying the higher prices..but if more people would pay cash, prices would come down as the merchant wouldn’t be eating the fees the CC company charges.
CCs with rebates are carefully structured to exploit the tragedy of the commons.
We would be foolish to expect the masses to behave as you propose (since they will each act in their self-interest), so we would be doubly-foolish to behave as you propose and pay more ourselves to no effect.
we would be doubly-foolish to behave as you propose and pay more ourselves to no effect
perhaps, but you’d be living a principled life. That means Something to me, personally, but possibly not to many others out there.
Personally, I choose to pay cash wherever possible simply on the principle I don’t want the banks involved (and taking a cut) of every transaction. Where I can negotiate a discount I do that as well.
I respect your principled yet financially-disadvantageous choice.
I respect your principled yet financially-disadvantageous choice.
It’s the same issue as voting for a 3rd party, right? They’re not “viable” until many people step outside the box and do it. Me? I’m going to vote my conscience regardless.
Same is true for paying cash.
No problem here. Just need a new card for everybody so they can make the payments on the other cards with the new one. Geez, doesn’t anyone know how a bailout/recovery works?
The average balance per card is $5,776 (about a 4.1% increase from a year ago) but it would be interesting to find out what is the average balance per person, and how this compares with a year ago.
I myself am a transactor (read ” CC deadbeat”). I have not yet been affected by any CC deadbeat backlash, but I wonder if the banker’s wrath will eventually be felt by their CC customers with superior scores (>800) with zero debt who rent. Time will tell.
Can a renter achieve over 800 score? From what I’ve seen, the FICO scores are really highly based on having and paying off debt. No debt? No good score.
I’ve been a renter all my life and my FICO score is 820. I have two credit cards that both see activity every month and are paid off in full each month. No other debt of any kind. Just a perfect long-term track record of making on-time payments and a very low debt-to-credit-limit ratio is all it takes.
I am also a renter with an 810 credit score. No debt. Paid off student loans. Pay CCs each month.
Rats, I’m only 806 last time I checked.
yep - renter with 820 … it can be done
I may be wrong about this (the credit scoring algorithms are proprietary) but I believe years at residence(s) is what counts as opposed to actually owning your domicile. So if you move frequently, that counts against you. My history has been to rent for at least 5 years at any given address. The notion that one must be a homedebtor to have a high credit score is a myth.
I financed one car in my life and it was a lemon. I financed thinking that a loan will somehow help me if I got stuck with a lemon, but I soon learned that the people who run GM couldn’t care less (about anything). Before that it was cash for used cars, and now it is cash for new cars. The notion that you have to be in debt to have a high credit score is another myth.
Really, all you need to do is to be a “deadbeat” transactor with no debt.
Thats me, but I was taking hits because of the way Discover and Amex report. I pay off in full every month, but they still report a snapshot of what my balance was before I paid it off. Did not seem to help me.
Car payment, paid 100% in full no lates (paid off early).
Have a dispute with Verizon I cannot shake, and that seems to hurt me heavily. Everytime I send a dispute letter to the collection agency they switch agencies so it’s impossible to do anything about it.
I am a renter - never owned - and my credit score is 820 last I checked. School loans, car loans, and credit cards all paid on time, I guess.
I’m a lifelong renter and my lowest credit score was 822 last time I checked. CC’s paid in full every month, had several leases paid off over the years. Only outstanding debt is two leases.
Las Vegas Sun
Next foreclosure wave building with defaults on fixed-rate loans
By Megan McCloskey (contact)
Mon, Jun 8, 2009 (2 a.m.)
Back in 2000, long before subprime lending to credit-risky homebuyers overheated the housing market, Rosemary Murphy used her financial good standing to pay for a house the old-fashioned way.
There was no funny financing or gimmicks. No adjustable rates.
Safely employed by the Clark County School District, she secured a traditional, 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage.
She’s now in trouble. And she’s a face of the next wave of foreclosures: homeowners who thought they were doing everything right but have still been overrun by the recession.
Murphy, 55, left her job in 2004 and, profiting from the real estate boom, refinanced her home with another conventional loan after its value skyrocketed to $800,000. She used the newfound money to launch her own mortgage brokerage business in Texas, where she and her husband owned land.
But the recession — triggered by homeowners with subprime loans who were unable to adjust to rising mortgage interest rates — is expanding its reach. Murphy’s mortgage business collapsed last summer, and she has fallen behind on her $3,960 monthly payments.
The bank is warning her that, come August, the foreclosure wheels will start turning. Last week it turned down her attempts to modify her loan.
“I am so willing to scratch and give them every penny I have to stay in my home, but they won’t work with me,” she said.
Back in 2000, long before subprime lending to credit-risky homebuyers overheated the housing market, Rosemary Murphy used her financial good standing to pay for a house the old-fashioned way.
…and then use it as her own personal piggy-bank to fund a highly speculative business…
She used her home as collateral for a business venture and then cries when they come to collect. As much as I hear about “gen Y” being babies unwilling to accept reality, that doesn’t really appear to be a generational issue.
Sure she did “everything right”. Sure.
Right, quits secure-as-all-get-out guaranteeeeed job to join the ranks of the self employed. Not as easy as it looks, is it?
Of course it always helps when your source of funding is leaning very precariously on the very same house o’ cards you’re drawing from? Should have stayed handing out lunch tickets.
‘Sure she did “everything right”.’
Perhaps she did, at least from the perspective of the planet’s gambling capital…
but, but, but…she was following her dream! Coloring her parachute! or something like that.
“…homeowners who thought they were doing everything right but have still been overrun by the recession.”
We have been hearing this story over and over and over again… and EVERY time the “poor victim” has done a cash-out refinance. You would think that journalists could find someone who really did just take out a 30-year fixed, not refinance and still lost their home. I’m starting think that such a person doesn’t exist.
It COULD happen (30-yr fixed, losing house) if someone lost a high-wage job…so I’ll agree with the part where you say one would think a journalist could find a legitimate “victim.”
Oh I agree, I’m sure that these people exist. But given how hard it is to find them, it must be a very small percentage of the overall foreclosures.
Find those who put down ‘more’ than 20% and didn’t fake the application.
“…homeowners who thought they were doing everything right but have still been overrun by the recession.”
Huh? Quitting a secure job with the county in order to jump head first into housing mania at the peak is doing everything WRONG. These wannabe Trump’s are everywhere. They all have something in common, too. They loaded up on overpriced land. It’s been so annoying seeing these greedheads asking prices of $350k per acre in WA.
Rosemary…Just chalk it up to “Murphy’s Law”, that Anything that Can go Wrong — Will Go Wrong!”
Sheesh…my name is mikey and I have to tell YOU that.
“But Suzzane vetted these numbers.”
California MAY get rid of welfare….WHOA, it must be a cold day in Hades….
From the Drudereport:
Could California become the first state in the nation to do away with welfare?
That doomsday scenario is on the table as lawmakers wrestle with a staggering $24.3 billion budget deficit.
County welfare directors are “in shock” at the very idea of getting rid of CalWORKs, which has been widely viewed as one of the most successful social programs in the state’s history, said Bruce Wagstaff, director of the Department of Human Assistance in Sacramento.
“It’s difficult to come up with the right adjective to react to this,” Wagstaff said. “It would be devastating to the people we serve.”
H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the state Department of Finance, said California is in an unprecedented fiscal situation that has made all programs, from education to human services, vulnerable to deep and painful reductions.
“I don’t wish for a moment to minimize the profound impact” that eliminating CalWORKs would have, Palmer said. “But the easy decisions are way past being in the rearview mirror for us. We face the specter of California not having cash on hand to pay its bills in July.”
Wagstaff and other administrators are betting that the state will rescue the “welfare to work” program. But they are bracing for cuts that would slash benefits to the lowest levels since the late 1990s, when CalWORKs began as part of the federal government’s bold reform of the welfare system
This is just grandstanding by the legislators, if they want to fix the problem lay off 35000 state workers, investigate and prosecute fraud in the welfare system and throughout the government , and get rid of the state unions. It wont happen unfortunately
Agreed. This is more of the stuff of the same thing that was discussed here yesterday, in that case with respect to the state park system. They’re simply trying to manipulate public sentiment against necessary cuts, in this case targeting a different demographic than was done with the noises about park closings.
Where will these people go?
Oregon? Washington? Mexico? Detroit? China?
I’m starting to get NIMBY anxiety…
Oregon? Washington?
Oh, please say no! NnOoooooOOOOOOOOOooooOO!
It would be less expensive to buy every welfare recipient a house in Detroit, and first class oneway airfare. This would solve many of California’s woes.
Too many people here in CA…if they did get rid of welfare, watch out Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Utah. Oakies in reverse.
It’s unclear how many of these budget ideas floating around are scare tactics.
Will CA really close all the state parks? Get rid of welfare?
As California goes, so goes the nation.
If they come to Arizona, they’re going to be greeted with hoots, hollers, and other forms of derision. Matter of fact, they may wish they never left CA.
In short, we’re not very kind to welfare recipients here.
. They’re simply trying to manipulate public sentiment against necessary cuts,
I suspect they are trying to manipulate public sentiment for upcoming cuts.
Mr. Robertson we are going to have to amputate your penis and balls as payment for your hospital bills.
Then the next day
After some research and hard work it looks like we can get the same result by taking your nuts alone
Mr. Roberts response - Thank you Doc, Thanks for all of your hard work.
Good point. They’re probably trying to do some of both.
My point is that I’m sure we’re still a good ways from having salaries and pensions and benefits on the chopping block, and that’s where so much of the money is. For now, it’s all about cutting the services provided.
I posted this before, but it’s worth posting again:
I pay into STRS (State Teachers Retirement System/part of CALPRS). Teachers do not pay into Social Security.
Over $500 monthly is put into my pension/retirement from my paycheck.
There are some folks on this board who seem to think that state pension is free money. We pay into it, month after month and year after year.
There are some folks on this board who seem to think that state pension is free money.
sfrenter, how is your payout determined? Do you only get back what you paid in? Or is your pension some guaranteed amount that isn’t connected to what you contributed.
That would be my issue. If you only get back what you pay in, then there’s no need for the pension system. The only reason it would exist is to promise higher payouts to people than they pay in..ultimately a PONZI system that the taxpayer is on the hook for.
It should work like an insurance fund, but didn’t CalPers invest in a bunch of RE boondoggles?
It’s the way these funds are managed that pisses me off. They’re always jumping on the latest and greatest thing, like they’ll miss the boat if they stay to the prudent course.
Many, many pensions funds (and government investment programs as well) invested in worthless CDO backed funds.
I agree also…
Even better, how about Cali end all programs for Illegal immigrants? How much money could they save?
Here in MA, nobody has started questioning the ER as a doctor that most Illegals use to get medical attention, yet the costs are enourmous, and the hospitals are mandated to take them in and treat them, no matter that they will never get paid, and that they will have to charge more to either their other paying customers or to the health insurance mafia.
But that is just a pipe dream, as I am sure most of Cali dwellers will attest to the insane love of the Illegal Allien that the Cali goverment has.
At some time in the past decade it became impossible to hold a discussion about this topic.
Perhaps if there was a special tax that went to pay for these sorta things.
Pinch, californians did TRY to end benefits for illegals. They passed prop 187, I don’t know, was it ten years ago? And then every bit of that law was gutted by the Mexican-American Legal Defense & Education Fund with its endless lawsuits. The last step was the US Supreme Court saying that Calif voters had no right to set “immigration policy,” which is a Federal matter. The only way to stop benefits to illegals would be to stop benefits to everybody. (Which is the right answer, of course.)
the hospitals are mandated to take them in and treat them The mandate is a federal one, not a state one. Look up EMTALA. Brought to you & yours and maintained in its existence by our own Congress. Be sure to re-elect your own reps to this esteemed body every chance you get.
In Texas, each county has a hospital of last resort for indigents, although some county hospitals have been known to provide cab fare to another county.
I have voted against every single incumbent for a long time, but try getting rid of Teddy Kennedy, or Barney Frank….
Sigh.
By ending all programs and services for ILLEGAL immigrants, in conjunction with hard core enforcement of current laws (including hefty fines and incarcerations) which make it ILLEGAL to use their labor, CA could solve it’s budget crisis. In addition, as mentioned above, they need to eliminate thousands of useless, high paying public positions created under the governator, and cut pay to many existing ones. Someone posted a link where the head investment officer for CALPERS was making more than $500k per year plus bonuses, for LOSING money! Get rid of all of this flaky crap, CA!
Right, but again, in connection with Prop 187, the US Supreme Court held that Calif could not withhold services from ILLEGAL immigrants because that would constitute “making immigration policy,” which is a federal prerogative. Don’t blame Calif voters, blame MALDEF.
This could be addressed not by withholding services, but by aggressively pursing those who hire illegals, and enforcing stiff penalties (though perhaps this would fall in the same category?)
Obama just gave MALDEF six million $ out of the porkulous bill.
Well, first my fellow Californians of all political stripes must cease and desist hiring landscaping/housekeeping/maintenance workers based on the cheapest labor prices. Cheaper almost always means illegal.
“County welfare directors are “in shock” at the very idea of getting rid of CalWORKs,”
I’ll bet they are in shock!! The welfare departments have quite a hierarchy of job classifications that pay quite well.
Yep…
Yep those are the REAL welfare fraudsters collecting a guvmint paycheck every week, and doing very little to help people find work.
Being the huge cynic, I’ve decided that a percentage of the population (drug/alcohol abusers, meth heads, some psychiatric cases, a bunch of people who just grew up disfunctional for various reason, etc.) is totally unemployable (and the numbers are getting bigger all the time)……..the various “Social Programs” are just the price we pay to keep them off the streets, and from breaking into our property and assaulting our persons.
Asking the government “Social Welfare” system to “help people find work” would eventually put them out of business. Thus, they have no real incentive to fix the problem. And even if they did, there are a lot of people who won’t make the changes needed to keep a job.
The only “help” from the government that I have received is a weekly unemployment check…..they even do direct deposit. Yeah, that check came from the government, but I’m betting that I could have had a nestegg big enough to support myself for the 4-5 months between jobs, if I’d been able to keep the tax money that went to the terminally unemployed during the 25 straight years I’d been working before my first layoff.
Can you imagine the crime as the poor people rob the middle class people? Wow.
Pass out CCW’s to middle class people, and watch the middle class people shoot the robbers.
Ooops, robber stole the guns out of the middle class person’s home! With the gun bubble, I’m waiting to see if there is going to be some sort of crazy US riot situation where the inventory of ammo that has been built up is used up.
So get rid of Calworks and the rest of the social programs. Do it! I want to see 3 million californians showing up at the local churches begging for handouts to feed their children. I want to see the gangsters lighting up the cities! I want to see the national guard firing on citizens. Let the revolution begin!
Crime will rise for sure, but I think the more widespread scenario will be welfare recipients hightailing it to neighboring states (at least the non-working ones).
It pays to be the first state to remove welfare, then. Always be the first to panic!
Panic early and often.
It’s technically NOT a panic if you’re the 1st one to run off screaming and shouting !
Tried posting yesterday, but didn’t go through.
From Australia: http://tinyurl.com/rdazbd
Real Estate Agency Staff in Parking Scam / June 7, 2009
POLICE are investigating an inner-city car-parking scam in which workers at a real estate agency falsely claimed to be living at homes — without the real owners’ knowledge — in order to illegally buy parking permits.
The alleged fraudsters targetted properties with off-street parking, thinking that the real residents would not seek a permit.
Senior Constable Anthony Barro, from Richmond police station, said he “had no doubt” that the permit fraud was widespread and that other firms across the city were cashing in on unsuspecting residents.
The agency staff used a title search database to obtain the property owners’ names before fraudulently signing the papers.
But the scam came undone when one resident did apply for a permit and was told that the maximum three permits for that property had already been allocated. She protested, the council investigated and the scam was uncovered.
Ha! Leave it to Realtors…
Good morning to all. If anyone is interested in seeing pic’s of our trail ride into the Sierra’s to photograph the wild mustangs go to flickr.com, explore and type in irmaron/mustang/frontier.
That was pretty cool Salinas….I suppose the Hieroglyphics are Native Indian ?? Any idea of what tribe ??
“.I suppose the Hieroglyphics are Native Indian ?? Any idea of what tribe ??”
Northern Paiute Indians. Higher above camp was where they made camp and ground pinon nuts. Lots of obsidian for making arrow heads. The wild horses were part Spanish Dun.
Gas prices are shooting up again. Filled up using 89 Plus @ $3.10. Also Cali DMV is screwing me with a huge fee increase on my Corolla’s registration ($15000 purchased in 2007). $400. I think it is for recently purchased cars becuase my other older cars were either the same fees as last years or lower. Now, calculate how much it would be if you purchase a car at around $50000 recently. The state is desperate to make money.
Prices are increasing.
91 octane $2.96 this morning (Cosco)
But my registration was $135.
(2000 model year)
Hmmm… I’ll have to see what my wife’s 2007 costs later in the year. This could shift the repair/scrap equation by a year or two…
Got Popcorn?
Neil
And inventories are at a 20 year high.
registration
Is registration based on the value of the vehicle in California?
The fee is based on the value…
Add this up;
Oridinal sales tax on the new car purchase…
All the registration fee’s for the life of the car
Smog fees every few years
New sales tax every time the car is transferred to a new owner
Mandatory new smog check with a transfer even if the car was smog certified the day before the transfer…
What a racket…
I love my state’s personal property tax system. To get tags, you have to pay property tax every year.
Last year, my early 2000’s, full size American sedan’s tax was almost $300.
In the meantime, my early 70’s American muscle car (that would sell for twice what I could get for the daily driver) is “fully depreciated”………property tax? 12 bucks.
My state has a program for “Antique/Classic car” plates. Not putting one on mine…….why put a bulls-eye on yourself? Especially when all the local government “Quest for Fees” starts in earnest.
Tax increases have nothing to do with fairness. They have to do with the maximum amount of funding generated, with the smallest political fallout.
They have to do with the maximum amount of funding generated, with the smallest political fallout ??
Perfectly stated…
I just paid $160 registration tax on my 2006 sedan.
Regular is still $2.40 in my neck of the woods.
Some good news for those worried about the everday man’s lack of understanding of economics:
Our local middle school conducted an economics seminar where students participated in a Stock Market Game for 10 weeks w/an imaginary $100k investment. There were four teams, 3 that ranked in the top 100 nationally. One student who entered the InvestWrite essay contest came in 1st in NYS and 6th in the country for the middle school level.
Part of the seminar included a discussion w/a financial advisor from ING on investment topics that included the housing market.
The oldest kids in that school are 8th graders so I was impressed to see they were introducing these concepts early and that the students were mastering the concepts so well.
I’m not seeing this as good news at all. You’re talking about teaching kids to gamble on the stock market and listen to financial advisors. Looks like the school system is getting a new round of hosts ready to feed the FIRE parasites.
I remember playing the same game in American History class based on actual stocks and prices from the 1920s.
Everyone in class was doing great until October ‘29 came around.
Oh, brother. There’s that “listen to financial advisors” rubbish again.
Truth be told, my fellow HBB-ers are the best financial advisors I’ve ever met.
I agree with Al. Did they teach them anything at all about bonds, CDs, or plain old piggy banks?
It’s not really about investing strategies per se. Its about learning the basics of the stock market (what tickers are, where you go to find out how much a stock trades for), and then some really basic math for building a ‘portfolio’ and following it.
The idea is that you find some companies you are aware of as a kid (Disney, Hasbro, whatever) and learn how to take some ownership in them.
Al is right - the game itself is basically gambling, but the fundamentals of the stock market are a valuable thing to teach.
Plus, who didn’t learn how to play poker and blackjack in school as well? Perhaps taught some advanced strategies by coaches and gym teachers…
Yeah, bonds, cds, mutual funds, ponzi schemes, Madoff. I didn’t want to list all the subject matter they covered trying to save bandwidth.
… commissions, management expense ratios, trailing fees, etc. Then you have a valuable class.
LOL, perhaps that’s covered in the high school level version. : )
A big appreciative thanks to all I have learned on this board. I’ve posted very few times and it’s been a while since my last post.
In my opinion there’s still much to go in the New England area here. I’ve stopped going to open houses unless there is special interest. This past Sunday there was one as I happened to be driving by a house I knew went into foreclosure about 1-2 years ago. I knew because back then it was listed in the paper by the seller as a ‘PLEASE buy become it goes into foreclosure.
There was an open house sign. The buyer was a realtor. There was a disclosure he had never lived in the house, but there was ‘recent full bath/interior paint/carpeting/some kitchen cabinets.’ The recent full bath maybe cost $3-5K max to do as it basically involved a re-bath, new sink, light fixtures, and toilet - which was filthy because I lifted the lid to check. The recent paint jobs were not of the best quality. The majority of the kitchen cabinets looked to be original. The carpet was of okay quality. He didn’t know if the floors were wood under the carpet. He couldn’t tell me anything about the electrical wiring/phone jacks/cable connections. I figured that must have been done by the previous owner. The basement was damp with no washer/dryer and no sump pump.
The realtor stated during the tour ‘the last owner took the dishwasher for some reason.’ I refrained from asking, ‘How much would it have cost to put in a dishwasher to make the kitchen a little more presentable?’ The lawn needed to be mowed and weeded. The front porch needed to be painted or stained.
The ‘owner will also rent the property at rent with option to buy. ‘ In my opinion the going rental for this house would be maybe $1,000/month, okay $1,200 if the person has really lousy credit. The 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom house, built in 1907, was 892 square feet and at the asking price of $200K that made it about $220/square foot.
I went and checked the records. This house had gone into foreclosure in 2007 for $189K. The present ‘owner’ purchased it in 2008 for $158K ($142K mortgage with Countrywide). Interestingly the realtor purchased his own house in 1999 for $122K got a HELOC on it in 2006 for about $171K. I used to believe the people purchasing multiple properties had to be rich. Now it seems otherwise.
Ma and the NorhtEast is still in deep denial.
I think that part of it is the amount of HELOC money that was taken out of almost paid off houses here, to invest in “bubbly” lands like FL, and AZ.
I know of a person really close to me also that financed his “lifestyle” with multiple cash out re-fi, and now has gone BK. He is 50, out of a job, without a HS diploma (long story), used to make almost 100K as he worked in Telecom, just before it went belly up in 2002, but managed to hang on to his job just a couple more years, but now is finding that his past decisions are really impacting him.
Price drops are coming, but they will not come from the current crop of home sellers. They will come from the banks, when they try to sell the dumps that they have into the market, and find that the only people left in MA is above 65.
I’m not sure what to make of the over 65 crowd.
I’ve mentioned previously, while wife and I are doing open houses outside Boston, we are seeing quite a few homes of people who have moved to Florida full time and are just sitting on their Northern homes. Generally, the asking prices for these are out of control, but my fear is that they are in absolutely no rush to sell.
The abocve 65 crowd is generally not interested in buying houses in MA. Most of them are net sellers, and if they are staying put in MA due to family reasons, are most likely going to downsize somewhat, or stay put.
The question is.. Who IS buying? Those that are buying right now are the same population that bought in Cali in 2005, or in FL in 2006 when the first small decrease in home prices hit them. They feel that the state has hit bottom, and that due to the diversity of jobs, and industries, and being a nice blue state where the Gov, is friends with the Prez, that it is really different here.
I have news for the people in MA…. It is NOT different here, in fact the demographics are playing against you in the long run. I will not buy a house here, due to the very basic fact that the largest part of the population will be elderly retired from the state, and will need an ruinous amount of care, both in- house and at the foyer to heaven/hell nursing homes. Taxes therefore will only have one place to go. Up. State taxes, now a pack of cigarrettes is almost 8.00 dollars, but it would not surprise me, if they went for the 1.00 gas tax, the 10% sales tax, the 10% income tax to finance the spending ways of the Ma state legislature.
That will lead to only one outcome
I agree with you, Pinch-a-penny. This state has really shot itself in the foot, and the people that can save it are the ones that are most likely to leave.
Massachusetts will make the troubles in California look like nothing around 2025.
That sounds like a falling knife.
Wife and I are also did open houses yesterday, outside Boston.
Realtor quote of the day about the market:
“The spring selling season got off to a late start this year”!
??????
My wife and I do a couple open houses north of Boston every month. Usually as a reminder of the overpriced junk in the area. What we’re finding:
1) For the most part we’re the oldest people looking - in our mid 30s for the lowest price SFH in the area - $300k-$400k. I’m pretty sure we’re one of the few people at an open house with money down, let alone 20% or even 3.5%, and no existing house to sell.
2) They’re all junk houses.
3) Saw a house yesterday that had been HELOC’d to death. Full of junk (easy enough to deal with), old person stank, cigarette stank, and mildew stank. Real estate agent muttered under his breath as I helped him find the light switches, “they didn’t let me in until the minute it was scheduled to start”. Family was shuttered in one room you weren’t allowed to go in.
4) I have nothing wrong with mice in houses - it happens. Just move the traps before a open house so I don’t step on them, please?
5) It isn’t a finishable attic if the clear ceiling height is less than 5′-0″ once it is finished, ‘kay?
6) About number 4 and the mice - cleaning up your spilled food and putting the cat food in a secure container will help reduce your mouse problem.
Not much different in the south of Boston.
Boss just bought a house. It is in a high price south shore neighborhood. Paid close to 7 figures for a very normal house.
Problem is he is the account manager for an account that was lost and is going away soon. Even if he keeps his job, he will most likely have to relocate. High end is sort of floating in the same way the titanic held water after it hit the iceberg, but, you know it is coming in, and that sooner or later the band will start playing.
Just sold my Grandmother’s house, for 250, IMHO an outrageous amount for a house last updated in the late ’60s, and that needs a roof, sump pump, electric, etc. and is in a marginal ‘hood at best. Buyer is a handyman with no know steady job. I fully expect to see that house in the banks name in the near future. Said handyman also has lots of toys, a 66 mustang, a late 60’s camaro, Pick up truck, etc. Has 5 kids….
Who was the old person who stank? Was that the realtor™?
Nah, house had that “someone spent the past 10 years waiting to die” smell in it….
Maybe if they got rid of the cat food, they’d get rid of the mouse problem….
Good story, Serling.
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“Our nation was intended to be several states, with a federal system to oversee the protection of individual rights. It has become a single nation-state with all control coming from a central-planning leviathan. This is an untenable situation and was bound to lead to tyranny.”
~Gary D. Barnett
Good quote. Sadly, most people don’t recognize the first statement…
When I consider the farmlands and forests that were razed to the mud…Man! This just makes me ape-p0*0p crazy!
“Stalled projects leave muddy mess”
http://tinyurl.com/mqhc87
‘…Bulldozers stopped in mid-scrape, exposing raw, red dirt at the Gwinnett County site. When it rains, silt and mud wash into a nearby stream, threatening fish and other aquatic life…
“As we go further and further away from these sites having anyone maintain them, it’s going to get worse and worse,” Langley said. “Banks are recognizing they’ve inherited huge responsibilities.”…
State environmental officials said many bankers didn’t even know they were responsible for maintaining foreclosed construction sites.
“They’ve never owned things like this for long enough for it to become an issue,” Langley said…
Some banks in the Atlanta area are saddled with massive inventories of vacant lots — land bought for new home construction, often with utility pipes jutting out of the ground.
With so much supply, the value of lots has dwindled. Some lots have been appraised at little or no value at all, once the cost of maintaining the property is factored in, said Walt Moeling, a banking attorney at Bryan Cave Powell Goldstein…”
Geesh, sounds like Baja Mexico.
Local data point:
The four or five year-old condo building next door has a large unit up for sale: 4 bedroom, 3 bath (not clear if all of them are full bathrooms, but unlikely) duplex, one parking spot, approximately 3000 sq. ft., for the low, low price of $580,000.
Current assessments are $291 per month, current annual taxes are $6931.
In my neighborhood — even though prices have a way to drop — $580K can get you a vintage graystone two- or three-flat in good shape, or a nice single family home with a garage and a lawn.
I can’t see how a unit like that will sell anytime soon, but I’ve been continually surprised by the suckers still in the woodwork.
Was talking with someone from Roscoe Village last evening, she said there’s For Sale signs everywhere on ~$300k condos. 2002-3 prices will not move a unit in my building and rents are falling. Looks like late summer and fall are going to get awfully interesting around here.
Roscoe Village has some nice spots, but was way overbuilt. I’m interested to see what happens to those ugly, cavernous condo buildings that completely wrecked the proportions of Belmont Ave. near Roscoe Village (I’ve never been too clear on the neighborhood boundaries ’round there).
Roubini Scoffs at Green Shoots, Sees Dangerous Complacency
From The Business Insider, June 8, 2009:
Roubini spoke at some conference somewhere (see this Bloomberg video: Roubini Dismisses `Green Shoots,’ Sees `Complacency’). He’s still singing the same song he was a month ago:
* Those aren’t “green shoots”–they’re yellow weeds
* The crisis isn’t over, and everyone has become way too complacent
* We’ll be in recession for another 6-9 months
* The recovery after that will be weak
* Big risk of a double-dip
* Households aren’t deleveraging
* Oil could go to $200 just as economy starts to recover
* Real interest rates could spike, killing housing, etc.
* Concern about hyper-inflation
* All this could lead to “perfect storm” that will clip wings of economic and financial recovery
* So we need to stay focused on averting disaster before we redesign regulatory architecture.
Interesting read in NYT Mag yesterday about self-employed folks, mostly catering to the super-rich, slipping into unemployment, underemployment and poverty. Of course, these people are not reflected in official numbers of unemployed.
The Self-Employed Depression
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/magazine/07unemployed-t.html
I was confused about the yoga teacher who paid for her training with a home equity loan, but is a renter. Hmm. Also, she is planning to get more training, and will put the cost on a credit card. This makes me sad.
“Last summer, the gym that paid Feuer best closed”
Maybe they closed because they were paying Feuer too much.
Interesting article.
I know a fair number of people who fit into this category, but fortunately most of them have a spouse or partner with a steady income and benefits. And they’re already used to living a spartan lifestyle.
I’ve been self employed for almost 15 years. Although I’ve had some super-rich clients along the way, most haven’t fit that description.
What I have learned is that you have to be pretty darn frugal to make it in this self employment game. In other words, be prepared to sock away money on a regular basis. You’ll need it to pay those self employment taxes, if nothing else.
Other things you’ll need: Stamina. It’s much more than an 8-to-5 job.
And a thick skin. You’ll need that too. Because all sorts of people are going to say no to you. I mentioned the word “clients” up above, but lemme tell you something. For every one of them I’ve had, hundreds, if not thousands of people have turned me down.
Been self employed for over 20 years. My secret?
Try to put away half of every check received. Only splurge when way way ahead.
Keep at least 6 months of living expenses in a money market. If I have to use any of it, my goal is to pay it back asap.
Keeps things on an even keel when clients are slow to pay.
From the Agora 5…
“It is obvious,” writes Bill Gross, “that the Chinese and other surplus nations cannot fund the deficit even if they were fully on board — which they are not. Someone else has got to write checks for up to $1.5 trillion additional Treasury notes and bonds…
“The concern is that this can be accomplished in only two ways — both of which have serious consequences for U.S. and global financial markets. The first and most recent development is the steepening of the U.S. Treasury yield curve and the rise of intermediate and long-term bond yields. While the Treasury can easily afford the higher interest expense in the short term, the pressure it puts on mortgage and corporate rates represents a serious threat to the fragile ‘green shoots’ recovery now under way.
“Secondly, the buyer of last resort in recent months has become the Federal Reserve, with its publicly announced and near-daily purchases of Treasuries and agencies at a $400 billion annual rate. That in combination with a buy ticket for over $1 trillion of agency mortgages has been the primary reason why capital markets — both corporate bonds and stocks — are behaving so well. But the Fed must tread carefully here. These purchases result in an expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet, which ultimately could have inflationary implications. In turn, nervous holders of dollar obligations are beginning to look for diversification in other currencies, selling Treasury bonds in the process.”
So how does Gross recommend you proceed?
“Bond investors should, therefore, confine maturities to the front end of yield curves, where continuing low yields and downside price protection is more probable. Holders of dollars should diversify their own baskets before central banks and sovereign wealth funds ultimately do the same. All investors should expect considerably lower rates of return than what they grew accustomed to only a few years ago.”
The 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition…
To be introduced by GM (gubmint motors) this little gem will be availible at a gubmint appointed dealer near you.
Youtube is running the promo, couldn’t get it to link.
From The Agora 5…
“Don’t be fooled,” writes Chris Mayer, “banks are still in trouble. The thing to hide is debt. And our banks have mastered the art. The Financial Accounting Standards Board, or FASB — I’m sure its members are a blast at cocktail parties — is close to closing a loophole with some new rules. The new rules would require banks to bring some of their off-balance sheet assets back on their balance sheets.
“‘Off-balance sheet,’ is code for hiding in the footnotes. Banks during the boom created all kinds of special purpose vehicles to hide stuff. Well, the nerve of the FASB has the banking sector in an uproar. Bankers are writing pleading letters to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to try to get FASB to play ball.
“That’s because they’ve got trillions of dollars of debt hidden off balance sheet. And if they brought these debts back on their balance sheets, they would need to raise a lot more capital. That would dilute their shareholders and kill their stock prices. It would also shatter any remaining confidence that these banks are in good shape.
“And the numbers we are talking about here are huge. According to Bloomberg, off-balance sheet assets just for the four biggest U.S. banks were about $5.2 trillion at the end of 2008. The rumor is that the new rule would force these banks to recognize only around $1 trillion of that. And though people say ‘off-balance sheet assets’ — what we are really talking about is more assets bought with very little equity.”
Sounds like we HAVE to force that stuff back onto balance sheets or the system will never get purged.
However, I don’t think there will be a chance to keep all the bad paper covered from view. At this point I think the banking system is like a hungover guy who downed a lot of bad takeout the night before woken up at 7a.m. by a considerably unsettling rumble from the gullet. There’s no way to hold that in.
At this point all they can hope is that they can flush fast enough to avoid spillover.
“President Barack Obama is making a mistake on health care by insisting on a government insurance option for the middle class, influential Republicans said in a letter to the White House released Monday.”
And the reason influential Republicans (is that an oxymoron?) think it is a big mistake is because the corporations they work for would be really mad if there was competition. And if there was competition, these same corporations would be gone, meaning the campaign contributions Republicans get would be gone too.
Please President Obama, put these blood sucking traitors out of business before they hurt anyone else. Eradicate the entire rat-infested health insurance industry.
Do it!
I’m with ya, Banana!
Administration & doctors & nurses are all underpaid, hospitals are too small & lacking modern equipment, and there is a very valid reason why the medical “industry” triple bill seniors with dementia, and also why everyone is charged $3.17 for x1 q-tip…”sickness” is a growth industry
“…If individuals are not offered affordable choices, the use of a fallback public plan as a last resort plays a critical role,” said Snowe.
“About two-thirds of Americans now have private insurance coverage, the vast majority through job-based plans. But there is one government health program that enjoys widespread political support.
Medicare, created for seniors more than 40 years ago, has defied the predictions of critics that it would usher in an era of socialized medicine. Though the government controls every aspect of the plan, Medicare recipients enjoy a wide choice of doctors and hospitals.”
Medicare, created for seniors more than 40 years ago, has defied the predictions of critics that it would usher in an era of socialized medicine. Though the government controls every aspect of the plan, Medicare recipients enjoy a wide choice of doctors and hospitals.”
Where have you been since 1965? Medicare is socialized medicine. The eligible patients, doctors & hospitals have little or no choice outside the program, except that the docs & hospitals can (and do) shift their unmet expenses to other payors. The predictions for adequate funding for Medicare in the next 20 years look grim.
1. Medicare delivers care for a fraction of the cost of private insurance.
2. Private insurers often base what they pay on what Medicare pays.
3. Medicare is underfunded?? Well so is the entire US of A and the private insurance program. Have you seen the swelling rolls of the uninsured. Uninsured people don’t get preventitive medicine and get their medical care in the ER, which is much more expensive.
4. Doctors and hospitals have plenty of choice, ie they can refuse all medicare patients and only take privately insured and cash paying patients.
1. Medicare delivers care for a fraction of the cost of private insurance.
2. Private insurers often base what they pay on what Medicare pays.
Medicare’s pricing may only be possible due to the existence of private insurance/those outside of the system subsidizing the cost of the medicare patients. You can’t ignore the context in which medicare is supposedly ’successful’.
Medicare’s pricing may only be possible due to the existence of private insurance.
It’s exactly the opposite private insurance tries to avoid insuring sick people thus these people end up on medicare and medicaid or as uninsured ER visits. If you have high deductible insurance you may quickly go bankrupt and deplete your ability to pay for private insurance if you are retired or don’t work.
Doctors and hospitals have plenty of choice, ie they can refuse all medicare patients and only take privately insured and cash paying patients. You really don’t know what you are talking about. The set of “all medicare patients” is a huge chunk of all patients. Doctors in general practices such as FP, IM, Peds, GS, are not in a position to do that, except for those who really don’t need the income. Maybe some obstetrician/gynecologists would be. Kindly refer us to a list of general hospitals who refuse all medicare patients and only take privately insured and cash paying patients. (I mean general hospitals and not specialty hospitals like detox centers). I think the list (if it even exists) would be very short.
I really don’t think nurses are underpaid, at least in California. Many make well into six figures, as a result of their unions. Top 5-10% of the national income distribution for a career that can be attained at a community college is not underpaid.
My mother is a nurse and hospital administrator here in CA. She’s always saying how nurses are overpaid and her particular organization is afraid of the union which makes it impossible to dismiss anyone for poor performance or any other reason.
They almost had someone documented out for stealing pharma when the union some how got the problem employee into rehab and 6 months later she was back on the job.
According to her nurses also think they are entitled to their jobs, salaries, and regular pay raises.
Some of the stories I hear……just be careful if you are ever treated at a cough…cough…dare I say……@#$%!#%Sutter*I*$Hospital6&%
Some new downtown Phoenix condos seem to be having problems:
http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2009/06/07/20090607summit0608.html
Condos in this building currently rent for $1200-2000. There’s another large new project downtown that seems to have been completed months ago, but still no lights on in any of the windows—last time I checked they were asking $400K+ for one bedroom units. One of the buildings referenced in the article (Landmark Towers) had a complete failure of their air conditioning system last year, requiring a wholesale replacement due to its age. Condos that used to go for over $300K in that building are now down near $100K. Sounds like a bargain until you factor in the $900/mo condo fee to cover the cost of the AC repairs. Good luck to anyone buying a downtown condo in this environment.
Oh oh, PPT is back… how the hell do you even short in this market when during the last 30 minutes of the market session the PPT/missed-the-boat managers beat up shorts with no mercy every day?
I find the trick as a short is to forget about your short position. It makes the pain easier to bear
Honestly, I’m holding some short positions that have taken a serious beating. At this point I think I’ve decided it’s a battle of willpower. It takes no effort for me to remain short (especially if I don’t think about the losses I’m sitting on). However, the PPT has to fight every day.
At least, that’s how I manage to sleep at night
But it’s also not a large amount of money, so while it sucks to be down, it’s not going to greatly affect my life one way or the other.
Amen Bruth’a,
As FAZ and DXD positions wilt
Some blowhard real estate investor is talking about how his fund in emerging markets is up 95% in three months. China, India, Brazil- these are the markets he’s in. The most hysterical thing is that nobody once mentioned how unsustainable such rapid price movements are, or asked how incomes could support these sorts of spikes in prices. The “fundamentals” he was talking about were an increase in the numbers of buyers, and “sophisticated” financing. WHAT?! Have these people learned nothing over the past few years? Methinks the global meltdown hasn’t even begun.
Sorry, this was on CNBC with Maria Bartiromo.
Ah… the things that bubble through my brain…
Saw the North Korean’s had sentanced the American reporters to 8 years of hard labor. So I thought, wow, finally a couple of us Americans are actually doing some labor.
Then I thought, did this effect the employment statistics?
I realize the gravity of the situation too.
Naughty naughty! BUT HILARIOUS! Now I have to go sit in the corner as punishment for laughing.
This just in - the US Supreme has blocked the sale of Chrysler assets to Fiat.
Granted a delay, didn’t block. Not to say it’s not going to get blocked or renegotiated, but blocking is totally different than granting a delay.
Now if they could somehow block the health care fiasco from making it a crime to go to your favorite doctor.
What! They are looking at the law? Who do they think they are standing with anyway?
Boston Globe union votes against pay, benefit cutsJune 8, 2009 10:05 PM ET
All Associated Press news BOSTON (AP) - The Boston Globe’s largest union rejected a new contract Monday, refusing to accept $10 million in annual pay and benefit cuts despite threats of even deeper wage cuts or the possible closure of the 137-year-old newspaper.
The Boston Newspaper Guild, which represents 700 editorial, advertising and business employees, voted 277-265 against the new contract negotiated after the Globe’s parent company, The New York Times Co., said it needed $20 million in annual savings from Globe unions — half from the Guild — to avoid shutting down the newspaper.
About 80 percent of union members voted, officials said.
The contract included an 8.3 percent wage cut, five-day unpaid furloughs and cuts in health care benefits, 401(k) contributions and pensions. It also would have eliminated lifetime job guarantees for 190 Guild workers. Most got those promises in exchange for other concessions in a contract ratified in 1994, shortly after the Times Co. bought the Globe for $1.1 billion.
The Times Co. had said that if the Guild rejected the proposal, it would try to impose a 23 percent wage cut. It also could follow through on an earlier threat to close the newspaper, which would require giving 60 days notice to employees and the state.
CLOSE it!! Then you will see the Union’s power evaporate…If the paper isnt there, what’s there to negotiate?