Bits Bucket For June 19 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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foist … how are we going to employ all the functionally Illiterates anymore?
In Oregon they pump gas; it’s against the law to do it yourself.
Is that for real? If it is, I’m in shock.
Tried to pump my own gas in Oregon once and the attendant almost yanked the nozzle out of my hand. That’s what I get for being a stoopid Californian.
New Jersey is the same way…
Which is why I always make it a point to fill the tank before I take the NJ turnpike.
What’s wrong with having someone pump your gas? I kind of like it when I’m in Jersey.
I don’t mind them pumping my gas when I go through Oregon, though it might be annoying if I lived there. I usually stop at the same station around Roseburg, and there’s this really cool old man who pumps the gas, washes the windshield, both mirrors, and the back window of my truck canopy, AND gives my dog a HUGE milk bone, all with a great big smile. What a deal! I give him a nice tip.
A classic create work law…
I look at it the other way around: everyone who pumps their own gas is doing free work for the gas companies - many times in horrible weather. It’s the same with self-checkout at the grocery. We do the store’s work for free. I don’t think the prices go down when we do our own work, the companies just make more profit. It’s merely convenient for us. In an ideal world, we would have both self-serve and full serve and full serve would have the current gas price and self-serve would be cheaper. I support that wholeheartedly, only that’s not how it would work. Full serve is always much more expensive from what I’ve seen.
I also don’t care for restaurants where I make my own burger, etc. If I want to make my own burger, I’ll stay home and make it. What’s next? I get to wash my own dishes?
Kind of like the hidden cost of tipping.
I also don’t care for restaurants where I make my own burger, etc. If I want to make my own burger, I’ll stay home and make it.
Agreed — those kinds of places drive me nuts. I already know how to cook, I’m here so you’ll cook and deliver it to my table.
I look at it the other way around: everyone who pumps their own gas is doing free work for the gas companies - many times in horrible weather. It’s the same with self-checkout at the grocery. We do the store’s work for free. I don’t think the prices go down when we do our own work, the companies just make more profit. It’s merely convenient for us. In an ideal world, we would have both self-serve and full serve and full serve would have the current gas price and self-serve would be cheaper. I support that wholeheartedly, only that’s not how it would work. Full serve is always much more expensive from what I’ve seen.
I also don’t care for restaurants where I make my own burger, etc. If I want to make my own burger, I’ll stay home and make it. What’s next? I get to wash my own dishes?
Except for one thing batman - what are you doing while the worker is pumping your gas? I’d bet that 99% of the time you’re twiddling your thumbs, or perhaps talking on a cell phone, which you could also do while pumping your own gas.
Therefore there are essentially two people doing the work of one - very inefficient.
This is actually true in a restaurant as well, except for one thing - the cook can do a lot better job of cooking the meal a lot faster than you can. That’s not true of a gas pumper.
Same is somewhat true of checkout lines - it’s generally a lot faster for a checkout person to do it for you - especially when you have to deal with things like price checks etc. There’s also the security/shoplifting aspect of it, that you don’t have to deal with in gas pumping. Even with that though - note that self-checkout is actually catching on, because it is more efficient. I prefer it actually, even though “I’m doing the work” because usually the lines are much shorter in self-checkout.
Try again.
P.S. That’s exactly why the no-self-service gas pumping rules are enforced by the fire marshal - since efficiency can’t be used as a reason, they have to use the excuse of fire safety - which of course is complete hogwash.
I’ll pump my own gas (mostly because there is no alternative) but those self-checkout grocery lanes make me want to ‘go postal’ on the rare occasion when I use one.
Well the self checkout lanes work pretty well, so long as you’re not behind somebody buying produce (and waiting for them to find bell peppers on the menu) or beer (and waiting for a cashier to come and check their ID.
but those self-checkout grocery lanes make me want to ‘go postal’ on the rare occasion when I use one.
I love them at Home Depot. I can have myself checked out in 45 seconds or so. Way faster than the person at the checkout counter.
I was a reluctant convert to self-checkout lanes. Nowadays, I gravitate to them.
“…but those self-checkout grocery lanes make me want to ‘go postal’ on the rare occasion when I use one.”
“Unscanned item in the bagging area…unscanned item in the bagging area…unscanned item in the bagging area…unscanned item in the bagging area…unscanned item in the bagging area…u n s . . . .
The self checkouts are training. RFID will eliminate the security risk and cashier. Roll your cart through the panels (long range tag readers) and it’s all done. Heck it could read your Amex Blue that’s in your wallet
“Please wait for assistance…please wait for assistance…”
The other day, the self-checkout was stymied by a $2-off-any-purchase store coupon issued by that very store a few days earlier. I don’t know why, but those automated register voices make me want to smash ‘em!
My grocery store has scaner guns. Bring your own grocery bags (I use two large LL Bean canvas bags). Pick up item off shelf, scan it, bag it. Produce is the same way, drop it on one of the 10 scales in the produce area, hit the button representing that produce (or type in the code), out comes a sticker with a scanner tag. Scan, put in bag, done.
To check out, go to a kiosk, scan bar code, insert credit card, done.
I don’t care if I’m doing the work of some cashier guy, it is at least 5 minutes faster for me to scan. And, the bonus is that I know the price the minute I put it in the cart.
For security there is random audits at checkout.
Bad C,
Random audits eh? Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Betcha money some scruffy looking character or minority will be “audited”, take offense, and subsequently claim racial profiling at the checkout stand.
This would be a good SNL skit….
Over the intercom: “Audit on Isle 4….Audit on Isle 4″
Camera Pans to Checkstand: Scared black family swarmed by white clerks with scanner guns
Same here in NJ. Every time a legislator tries to change this “no-self-pumping” law, it goes no where.
Oregon’s “don’t pump your own gas” law has other unintended side effects. Rural stations - especially along Hwy. 95 - have had to close or drastically curtail hours because now they need TWO employees to stay open: one to watch the cash register and one to pump gas. Hwy. 95 is the main route from Northern California to Boise and there’s simply no gas available from the Nevada border to the Idaho border.
Heck in most rural places there are 24/7 stations that aren’t manned at all. Just put in your credit card and pump away.
It’s called government.
What’s your definition of functionally illiterate?
Shouldn’t we be more concerned with the masses of literate & larcenous who previously worked or currently work in finance, banking, and government?
Can anyone cite an example from any time or place in the modern history of the industrialized world of a housing market recovery against the backdrop of double-digit unemployment? If so, please post…
California won’t resume growth till late 2010: forecast
Tue Jun 16, 2009 4:05am EDT
By Jim Christie
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California’s economy faces more hard times this year and will not grow until late next year, weighed down by the ongoing housing slump and the state government’s need to slash spending, a UCLA Anderson Forecast report released on Tuesday said.
California, the country’s most populous state with roughly 38 million people, also faces a double-digit unemployment rate persisting until 2011, the report said.
“California is in for a continued rough ride for the balance of 2009 and is not going to see economic growth return until the end of the year, shortly after the U.S. economy begins to grow,” the report said.
A $24.3 billion budget gap faced by the state is sure to force deep spending cuts, which will limit the contribution of public spending to the state’s economic recovery, the report said.
“California’s state government, saddled with anachronistic revenue and spending processes, has no choice but to contract at the worst time,” the report said.
Just heard on NPR’s California Report (5:50am edition): Obama’s mortgage relief is not working in Central Valley towns where unemployment is high and housing prices are off in some cases by 70 percent.
“off by 70%”, ugh.
I would love to hear NPR call this something else, like “returned historical levels”, or “returned to affordable prices”.
How long is it going to take to get August 2005 out of people’s heads?
Kind of like 2000 stock prices.
WT Economist,
Amen. I think we’re getting there as most REIC’sters are now flailing w/ damage control measures and bottom feeding designs of their own, vice counting on a momentum play.
Still, all the gyrations to the end that they’ll wake up on the 31st of July… 2005.
Oh btw, for all non-PNW posters. The weather you’re likely experiencing is called “Juneuary”. And ‘we’ have it every year. Start liking it!
“Kind of like 2000 stock prices.”
How long before pets.com gets back to $100?
Two lost decades ought to get ‘er done.
RE: “Juneuary”
Please send more. It’s going to be uber windy in the Gorge this weekend = great windsurfing.
Anyone want to buy a house in bakersfield, merced or fresno?You can get an 8000.00 tax credit.They are not making anymore land you know.Anyone ever heard of wilton, near sacramento.You can now own a million dollar home for < 500k.Caveat emptor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Arizonadude I live in bakersfield and we will be looking at possible rentals today…might find something interesting.
Hahahahahaha! WILTON! Southern Sacramento County to the East of Elk Grove. Maybe if you buy an entire Section (640 acres) for agricultural use it would be worth $1 million. Me personally, I wouldn’t pay $1 million for an entire township (36 sections).
btw….Elk Grove used to be all farms like Wilton. Now EG has some of the most depressed housing prices in Sacramento County. Not to mention the increased rate of crime.
arizonadude-
fyi it’s not $8,000, but 10% of the purchase price, with a cap of $8,000. Form 5405 says to use the smaller amt.
robiscrazy-
Buying farmland (somewhere) is entertaining to me. If Jim Kunstler is right about regional and localized living (I don’t buy all his doom and gloom, btw) then it would be a winner. As Kunstler says, the 3,000 mile ceasar salad will be history.
awaiting,
Organic, local, and sustainable farming is very interesting, I agree with you. Many little pockets of it here in the Central Valley. Also agree with you regarding food supply. It’s ridiculous to burn jet fuel flying grapes from Chile just so we can have them in the middle of December. Many other examples.
Of course, here in Sacramento and places like Wilton we tilt up crummy houses on some of the most fertile land in CA. Not sure anyone will care about their stucco if they’re starving.
You are right about Kunstler. He’s easier to take in small doses, although his sarcasm is funny at times. He had a good interview at the Commonwealth Club of CA a year or more ago. You could probably find it online. Same content as his website and books.
As Kunstler says, the 3,000 mile ceasar salad will be history.
Even without a Kunstlerian scenario, the 3,000-mile caesar salad is hopelessly inefficient and usually comprised of over-the-hill, overprocessed ingredients anyway. That model of food distribution needs to die a quick, inglorious death.
robiscrazy-
Yeah, the importing of produce is dumb in so many ways. Good points you made, and might I add most so of the border countries have God awful pesticide laws, or none at all. One of the triggers of the Parkinson’s gene, is herbicides and pesticides, and that’s been known 25 years (factual).
Kunstler is a really bright guy and has command of the English language, but sometimes I shake my head. I listen to his podcasts weekly. Duncan (his sidekick) and him are entertaining.
We’re in Thousand Oaks, Ventura County- So Ca, and they’ve done the garage mahals over fertile farmland too. It makes me cringe. We’ve owned too ourselves. Next property, no HOA, and a victory garden. I’m growing my own food.
Thanks for the Kunstler interview suggestion.
Same here aw - a little further west…
We have a really good farmers market on sunday (Victory/White Oak), where you can guarantee that nothing’s been shipped further than 200 miles at the most.
Even at Trader Joes, I don’t buy produce that’s not organic, and hasn’t been grown in the US (if not in CA) - the new ‘country of origin labels’ make it even easier.
Yes, The Husband loves his grapes, but if they’ve been flown in from Chile - no matter how ‘cheap’ the price is, they’re still too expensive.
We have Stater Brothers grocery stores here in San Diego and I notice they’ve started to source all the produce. Kind of shocking that we need to ship friggin zuchini from Mexico. Anyone who has every grown zuchini knows how prolific these plants are, a small backyard garden could easily supply enough zuchini for an entire grocery store. I don’t get it….
Oh, I hope so, SaladSD, because I have four zucchini plants that are just really starting to take off this week. They seem to like the warmer temps and all the rain we’ve been getting.
garage mahals…..Classic awaiting! +1 I’ve not heard that one.
Good reminder on the problem with veggies from south of the border and too many pesticides. You’re idea is best, grow a garden.
Like speedingpullet I also always check the labels for country of origin which means no Mexican zucchini, avocados, lettuce, whatever. If it’s not in season, too bad.
btw…anyone know a good guide for what’s fresh and currently being harvested? I rely too much on the guys at the Farmers Market here every Sunday.
My zucchinis are just now flowering due to this extended “Juneuary” of which DinOR speaks. We’ve had an incredible amount of rain and cold this spring, and it’s supposed to rain all next week. I hope they get enough sun that they start producing soon.
Ok, after this I will not digress from housing, but does anyone know of a good book about natural pest control options for vegetable gardens?
one more quickie
Congress passed the “C.O.O.L” law (Country of orgin law) in 2008 and if the vendor/store sells $237K+ gross sales of produce, they must display on the sign, where it’s from.
http://www.countryoforiginlabel.org/
Well, this *is* the Bits Bucket, so nothing’s off-topic.
There’s a company called Gardens Alive! that sells natural pest control items. I don’t know much about controlling insects, but a good fence with its base set 6 inches below soil surface level goes a long way toward keeping out most critters. Bunnies and chipmunks are the worst pests in my garden.
awaitingwipeout-
I’m not sure what kind of pests you are talking about, but “Safer Soap” is very helpful for many pests, and is approved for organic use. I swear by it.
Since it’s Bits Bucket, nothing’s off-topic - and to me, growing some of one’s own food and enjoying it fits in seamlessly with other topics here, as a counterpoint.
A few weeks ago, I especially enjoyed reading that most HBBish of garden posts - by the renter who had 10 square yard movable garden units producing abundantly.
Our worst pest this year is the squirrels, although raccoons, armadillos and birds are all potential problems. It’s difficult even to harvest our tomatoes, basil, and cukes because of the reinforcements, patches, and additional fastenings that we have had to add to the chicken wire fence and plastic netting access points. We finally get the squirrels sealed out and we can’t get in to get our vegs!
I have just received my order of DEERVIK (contents: garlic, fish meal, cayenne pepper in a base of food grade grease - white mineral oil, zinc oxide, otacecenoic acid). You dip scent-tags into it and place them around your plants or if you have a fence around them, on the fence. It’s formulated to repel deer, but a neighbor has had some success against the squirrels that were eating her tomatoes.
We’re probably going to start tossing a little fox urine outside the raised beds too.
Blood meal repels armadillos, whose grub digging can make a mess of your garden.
I also heard that before your tomatoes get ripe, if you hang red Christmas decorations nearby, it confuses the sight signal of bird pests and perhaps squirrels.
Pests must vary with the neighborhood. I grow plenty tomatoes here in OH, squirrels run all over the back yard & almost never bother the fruit except out of curiosity. But then, they have a lot of choices of things to eat, and tomatoes must be low on their list. No armadillos around here, either.
They probably do have more around to eat in OH.
But I can’t help but feel like you have sweet little scampering squirrels happy to eat a natural diet of acorns and tree nuts and just clown around. While I - with my many well-protected bird feeders - have somehow selected for devious obsessive spiteful little buggers whose jaded appetites are only whetted by the “forbidden.”
Lest I sound like I DESERVE to have squirrels eating my tomatoes - I hasten to add that they are free to eat spilled seed under the feeders, which they do all day every day. And one feeder, which granted I don’t always fill, isn’t squirrel proofed.
I can’t help but feel like you have sweet little scampering squirrels happy to eat a natural diet of acorns and tree nuts and just clown around. Yup, that’s right. I do keep a slingshot next to my patio for rabbits who don’t respect my food. There’s a Havahart trap in the garage that hasn’t seen service in over a decade. I did spend 2 years in Austin 40 years ago, and never had any luck growing tomatoes in the caliche in our backyard near St. Ed’s. The ‘maters didn’t seem to like the heat of summer there, they would grow but bore no fruit. I did like the heat of summer there, as long as I had access to sufficient Fritos and Lone Star. It’s been too cool up here near Lake Erie.
Fritos and Lone Star.
Lone Star?! Eew. Try a ‘Shiner’.
Well, PB, during the reign of Pharoah Khufu, when construction of the Great Pyramid began;
mud huts, reed hovels, and dirt wallows became more valuable in the land of Giza.
That is the last recorded instance.
However, Emporer Obama has now committed a greater proportion of the country’s GNP on megalomaniacal debt-funded projects and programs, than any human since then.
Expanding that thought:
Can anyone cite an example from any time or place in the modern history of the industrialized world of a stock market market recovery against the backdrop of double-digit unemployment? If so, please post…
Surprise, surprise…Not! As Alan Greasepan once said in an interview on the Larry King’s Alive show (and I paraphrase) for all intents and purposes the Federal Reserve is above the law. No kidding, a private group that answers to no one,(except the occasional bone thrown to the morons in congress) is now being given complete control over the entire banking system.
‘Council of regulators’ has no power over Fed!
By Sarah O’Connor and Krishna Guha in Washington
Published: June 18 2009 21:58 FT.
The Obama administration’s plan for a “council of regulators” to monitor systemic risk is something of a sop to those who fear the Federal Reserve has won too much power in the regulatory overhaul, but Congress could yet give it teeth.
The new council, chaired by Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, would advise the Fed on its new role regulating systemically important institutions. It would be composed of the eight heads of the top regulators, including the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. It would talk about emerging risks and how to co-ordinate policy, have its own staff at Treasury, and send a report to Congress once a year. But these responsibilities would not be supplemented with any power to enforce recommendations, or any veto over the Fed’s decisions.
Frankenstein comes to mind.
IMO that would make an awesome subject for a WSJ op-ed piece.
At what point will the Fed stop in their ongoing attempt to grab more dictatorial power to apologize to Main Street America for helping Wall Street steal their retirements and collective prosperity? We have a failed system of financial governance in this country, which has led to a backroom deal to foist more of the same on the American public. Where is the input from voters on this? I bet if they put the idea of increasing the Fed’s power to vote, it would get shot down by a landslide. Are there any polls which pursue this line of inquiry?
Stealing retirements is easy. Retirees almost by definition are old and unlikely to rise up with torches and pitchforks. Ever seen an old lady flip over a police car and set it on fire?
It my most unfortunate and humble opinion that nothing will change until banks, multimillion dollar mansions, and sadly cities, start to burn.
actually I think that did happen back in the 1980s when they started making retirees pay a premium for Medicare.
I don’t know if that was the cause, but wasn’t there an incident in Chicago in the 80s where a bunch of oldsters impeded the progress of the car carrying a Representative, pounding on the hood and windows and shouting abuse? Dan Rostenkowski maybe?
HOUSE TITAN STAGGERED: ROSTENKOWSKI’S FALL
The Boston Globe (Boston, MA) | September 27, 1989| John Robinson, Globe Staff | Copyright (null) The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC.
THIS HAS NOT BEEN a smooth season for Rep. Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, the battle-ready chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Washington wags are calling him “The Eliminator” after he was ambushed last month on his home turf in Chicago by an elderly group protesting a proposed catastrophic illness surtax. Rostenkowski tried to escape in his chauffeured car.
In the undignified melee that ensued, one gray-haired protester ended up spread-eagled on his hood. “If the television cameras hadn’t been there,” the woman, Leona Kozien, reportedly said, “he would have crushed me like a …
Retirees are old and unlikely to rise up?
It’s obvious that you’ve never met me or my wife. I happen to be known far and wide
for my cantankerous curmudgeon ways; my wife
makes up for it with her sweetness and light.
So you can overturn the car and set it alight. Your wife can console the owner, “Oh never mind, you poor dear. Just let me heat up this cup of cocoa and marshmallows for you.”
Retirees own the most guns per capita. It’s all those youngun’s that are into the “turn the other cheek” mentality.
I’m glad we old coots have them buffaloed into slaving to supprt us.
I’m 42, unemployed, armed to the hilt, and MAD!
Just because you said that I’m going to go on govt’ assistance and spend my free time taking pot shots at Boomers out my window.
“I bet if they put the idea of increasing the Fed’s power to vote, it would get shot down by a landslide.”
I’m not so sure. HBB and like minded folks would vote against. A lot of people wouldn’t understand the issue and not vote. But you could be the financial community would come out in favour. Why wouldn’t the criminals vote for the corrupt/imcompetent sheriff?
I was amazed to see people come out against the amnesty bill. How do we get the same outrage focused on Fed powers?
I agree with the others: How will people be outraged if they can’t even figure out what happened?
On Charlie Rose last night, either WSJ or NYT Financial reporter assessed the newly proposed regulations as watered-down to improve likelihood of passage, saying new council and regs will be ineffectual once WS figures out how to get around them.
Reporter also said however that even more important than new regulations, ultimately it is the caliber, thinking, policies and actions of top leadership of President, Fed and Treasury Secretary that will determine degree of change going forward. He used the example of Alan Greenspan’s “let the market forces determine policy”, which is exactly what his underlings enforced and promoted, regardless of the actual laws on the books. Same was true of Treasury Secretary Paulson and Rubin before him. Look at the doormat policies (bordering on corruption) at the SEC - all reflecting the thinking and laissez-faire policies of their top leadership.
I think Geithner and Bernake are very much company men, meaning they will work to serve their President’s ideas more than their own. I think Obama’s leadership and policies will be at the forefront next 8 years. I don’t know what that really means though in practical terms to you and me.
Reporter also said however that even more important than new regulations, ultimately it is the caliber, thinking, policies and actions of top leadership of President, Fed and Treasury Secretary
That reporter left out a role for Congress to play. But then, Congress abdicated some time ago and dedicates all its time to collecting campaign contributions & running for re-election. The MSM passes over the role of Congress in our financial crisis the same way it passes over the role of China in the recurring North Korean crises.
Hot damn! As extraction technology improves the Bakken formation will pay off in a huge way. Forget the windmills and electric cars.
Scientists Confirm U.S. Has World’s Biggest Oil Reserves
By Pat Shannan-Americanfreepress.net
It has been more than a year since the Department of Interior announced that North Dakota and Montana have an estimated 3 to 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil in an area known as the Bakken Formation, but little is being done about it.
The April 2008, U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) assessment shows a 25-fold increase in the amount of oil that can be recovered compared to the agency’s 1995 estimate of a paltry 151 million barrels of oil. That would be 3,775 million (or 3.775 billion) barrels. New geologic models applied to the Bakken Formation, advances in drilling and production technologies, and recent oil discoveries have resulted in these substantially larger oil volumes.
The USGS Bakken study was undertaken as part of a nationwide project assessing domestic petroleum basins using standardized methodology and protocol as required by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 2000, yet only 105 million barrels of oil had been produced from the Bakken Formation by the end of 2007.
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At the time of the assessment, a limited number of wells have produced oil from three of the assessments units (AUs) in Central Basin-Poplar Dome, Eastern Expulsion Threshold and Northwest Expulsion Threshold. The Elm Coulee oil field in Montana, discovered in 2000, has produced about 65 million barrels of the 105 million barrels of oil recovered from the Bakken Formation.
The Bakken Formation estimate is larger than all other current USGS oil assessments of the “Lower 48” states and is the largest continuous oil accumulation ever assessed by the USGS. A “continuous” oil accumulation means that the oil resource is dispersed throughout a geologic formation rather than existing as discrete, localized occurrences. The next largest continuous oil accumulation in the U.S. is in the Austin Chalk of Texas and Louisiana, with an undiscovered estimate of 1 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil.
By tapping these domestic resources, rather than remaining dependent upon foreign sources, America could drastically reduce its cost of home heating and vehicular travel.
Technically recoverable oil resources are those producible using currently available technology and industry practices. USGS is the only provider of publicly available estimates of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and gas resources.
“It is clear that the Bakken formation contains a significant amount of oil—the question is, how much of that oil is recoverable using today’s technology?” said Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) “To get an answer to this important question, I requested that the U.S. Geological Survey complete this study, which will provide an up-to-date estimate on the amount of technically recoverable oil resources in the Bakken Shale Formation.”
Scientists conducted detailed studies in stratigraphy and structural geology and the modeling of petroleum geochemistry. They also combined their findings with exploration and production analyses to determine the undiscovered, technically recoverable oil estimates.
USGS worked with the North Dakota Geological Survey, a number of petroleum industry companies and independent, universities and other experts to develop a geological understanding of the Bakken Formation. These groups provided critical information for models used in the assessment.
“This sizable find is now the highest producing onshore oil field found in the past 56 years,” said The Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
James Bartis, leading researcher with the study, says America has more oil in this one compact area than the entire Middle East. And the stunning news is that we have more oil inside our borders than all the other proven reserves on Earth, and that it could be extracted at an approximate cost to Americans of only $16 a barrel.
Don’t tell this to the fuel cell/ethanol/wood chips/horse manure set. It will take away their favorite reasons to try to drag us back to the Stone Age.
Well, true enough, but I don’t see anything wrong w/ dispensing w/ the “He who has oil last, wins!” mentality.
Saying it’s there, and getting it out of the ground are two different things.
DinOR,
Yep. That’s why I tend to believe in Peak Oil. However, some of the followers are over the top. Matt Simmons is a bright guy that knows his stuff. (Energy Investment Banker)
awaiting wipeout,
Right, ‘what’ exactly is there to doubt? Imagine there’s this planet. And ‘on’ it there is a finite amount of a given resource. Now you’ve consumed your way thru HALF of it!
( How difficult of a concept ‘is’ that? )
I just get tired of it being used as a scare tactic. Where “I” am concerned, prices should have a lot more to do w/ how much energy it takes to ‘produce’ a barrel than any particular “demand” aspect? How hard is it to fluff up “demand”?
DinOR,
The time frame is the unknown. In my lifetime? (I’m in my early 50’s-yikes) Probably. In a year or two? Even Matt Simmons isn’t giving a “date”.
Are you by any chance a Jim Puplava listener?
Don’t tell this to the fuel cell/ethanol/wood chips/horse manure set.
What is with the knee jerk hostility to alternative energy? Why does it bother you that I fill my car with biodiesel? Which, BTW, is 50 cents/ gallon less expensive than petroleum diesel, even though I live on Maui, not exactly a cheap place to do business?
There are many ways to achieve energy independence. LPG is one. We have more LPG in this country than we know what to do with. Why aren’t we using it? PV technologies are getting cheaper and more efficient. Living on Maui, some of the highest energy prices in the country, why wouldn’t I want to use PV? Why wouldn’t I be happy that they put up windmills that generate 10% of the island’s electricity and reduce our dependence on terrorists and dirty technology?
“Why does it bother you that I fill my car with biodiesel?”
It bothers me not at all. What bothers me are government mandates that force ME to use inferior, engine-damaging fuel when there’s plenty of the good stuff right under our collective noses. And no, I don’t have a Suburban or Hummer, nor wish to, nor do I use any more fuel than I reasonably need.
The big thing being missed is that if the US has huge amounts of natural gas and oil in previously overlooked shale deposits, then the entire world must have at leat 50 times that. Look for peak oil to have just peaked if this holds up.
leat = least
If that alleged deposit was realistically exploitable we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq. But hey, if it does exist, now would be a great time to acquire the Hummer brand from GM.
Looks like you took the “Oil + Iraq” bait, huh?
Why else are we in Iraq killing 4500 Americans?
We should have just been honest, the Iraqi oil fields were of the worlds interest to protect from saddam…he destroyed kuwaits fields so why not his own?
And we should have let the Iraqis kill each other since this is what they wanted to do all along. and we should have just ringed our forces around the oil fields and supply lines….
probably could have saved 90% of our deaths.
OK, smart guy (or girl), you tell me why we’re there, and you’re not allowed to say WMD, spreading democracy, “central front of the war on terror,” or “they’ll follow us home.” We eventually will drill everywhere in this country; Alaska, the Bakken formation, off the Florida coast. It won’t matter. If we don’t have Iraq’s oil, our economy and living arrangements as currently configured won’t survive to our semiquincentennial.
There will never be another housing bubble, and the reason isn’t finance. It’s energy. I’m actually amused watching China spend its financial and diplomatic capital arranging resource deals in Africa and Latin America, while in this country we’re using our resources to bail out banks and encourage more homebuilding, thinking the restoration of the status quo is only a question of will.
I agree that our economy and living arrangements as currently configured are subject to a severe downgrade over the next few decades. The exact timing and extent of the damage (US vs. the entire world) is uncertain, however. We may make it to 2026. The war on terror would have been pursued quite differently had the US not been utterly dependent on buying so much cheap energy from sources who would rather see us dead.
The figures to follow are:
5.3 million barrels crude/day produced by the US (6/12/09), approx 1.4 million barrels exported from the US (as of 2/09)
9.0 million barrels/day imported into the US (6/12/09).
Add in our trade deficit, amounts borrowed daily from abroad & the our national debt, and the future looks dim indeed.
H1’s and Excursions for EVERYONE! HOORAY!
3,775 million barrels would be enough to supply the US for about 6 months.
we keep hearing about the Bakken field from the USGS but I’ve read engineers on this board say it’s awfully hard and expensive to extract. I’ve also heard that the Montana side is drying up.
Just don’t know who to believe, wah wah…
Let’s see….we use 20 million barrels a day…that
means the total extraction of the Bakken formation
would last just about half a year….
There is a reason Bakken hasn’t been exploited. While there is a lot of oil there, it is in very small pools over a very large area.
Saudi Arabia is the opposite. The main Saudi field is like a big deep bowl. If you drill a well down towards the bottom of that bowl the pressure of the oil higher up will act as a pump to force the oil to the refinery. If you want to double production, just dig another well. Saudi oil is fairly heavy crude but it is incredibly cheap to extract and move to a refinery.
Bakken is a thin layer of oil fairly deep down sandwiched between 2 layers of granite. It is extremely expensive to drill through granite relative to the sandstone in Saudi. Secondly, the thin layer of oil is in rolling valleys and depressions. So if you find oil, you may find just the top of a “hill” of oil. You can suck that dry in just a few days. If you find a “valley” you might suck that dry in a few weeks because the oil in the next valley, maybe just a mile away, can’t replace what you’re pulling out.
Yes it is “technically recoverable”. But the risks associated with leasing the drilling rights and finding a financially viable deposit are far too high for anyone to make that investment.
There will be some prospecting for the few productive wells that certainly exist. But it won’t be the panacea the article above makes it out to be.
The extraction technology used is horizontal drilling with several laterals placed at fractioned
zones. Very, very expensive drilling technique
and difficult to extract even 50% of the oil.
Oil has to stay about $65 a barrel for this to even break even. Plus, the decline is very similar
to gas wells, a lot at first with rapid declines in
output.
Who Are They Trying To Fool? (TNX)
Karl Denninger June 18th.
I mean, c’mon, $165 billion in Treasuries for sale in the next week?
$31 billion in 3-month bills
$27 billion in 7-year notes
$40 billion in 2-year notes
$37 billion in 5-year notes
$30 billion in 6-month bills
Annualized this is $8.58 trillion dollars!
Now obviously they won’t keep doing that for the next 52 weeks (one hopes) but you have to be smoking something if you think the market can continue to absorb this sort of supply and shrug it off.
Today the TNX was up over 5%, undoubtedly on this announcement, almost erasing the benefit from the recent stock market decline.
So Ben’s liquidity games have bought him about 15 basis points of improvement in the TNX, but he’s given up 35 handles on the SPX.
At this rate to get the TNX down to 3% he’ll have to sacrifice 230 points on the SPX, taking it down to about the March lows.
Rock, meet hard place.
To the government: Stop spending or the TNX will continue to ramp and you will be forced to crash the market outright to keep mortgage rates from going to 8%.
Disclosure: They won’t stop spending so I am of course short the broad market - the only logical trade to have on with this sort of stupidity coming out of Washington DC. We break a couple of key technical levels and I’m going to get so short I will be able to walk under my Suburban and not hit my head.
There is one way to keep TNX low and the market high….
There are a lot of scary posts on this discussion board, but those numbers have hit a real anxiety point for me.
Cant the FED just buy all the bonds?
Sure thing! But I hope you are ready for $20 loaves of bread…
Time to stock up on flour.
You think it will be that cheap?
Banks are the Straw Buyers. We have to finance 2.9 Trillion this year thanks to Bush and more so Obama & Congress. Foreign entities buy in the neighborhood of 400-500 Billion max in a year. The Banks have been funelled money for an extended period of time (1 year +). Now they will be instructed to put their clients into treasuries or else. This way when inflation starts to hit the Fed can raise the short end and claim to be fighting inflation. While the 10+ years are bought by the Banks and investment firms which have been receiving all the Bail-out money. Of course the inflation will come anyway although my guess would be somewhat more slowly as the Markets try to grasp whats going on. The inflation should begin to really accelerate as the added cominng Tax burdens to pay for it all kick in.
Just happy thought today…….UGH
I guess not everyone thinks it is a good idea to give control over the kerosene supply to the outfit who burned down the barn. I don’t understand the objection, as appointing new “Czars” is usually a politically appealing sales pitch.
UPDATE: Plan For Fed Power Boost Could Become Lightning Rod
Dow Jones
June 17, 2009: 06:24 PM ET
(Adds comment from Treasury Secretary Geithner)
By Maya Jackson Randall
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The Obama administration wants a super-charged Federal Reserve, but is balancing the expansion with a new regulatory council amid worries in Congress the central bank would have too much power.
The administration’s report entitled “Financial Regulatory Reform: A New Foundation,” recommends an interagency council to aid the central bank in monitoring threats to the U.S. financial system. It also calls for a broad review of the Federal Reserve System structure.
But, on Capitol Hill, the proposal is still likely to end up a lightning rod for criticism of the central bank, raising questions about how much new power the Fed will actually gain at the end of the day.
The administration’s financial regulatory reform proposal calls for the Fed to serve as an uber regulator of all large, interconnected firms that could jeopardize the financial system. The plan also would use the Fed to provide emergency payment and settlement services in an effort to make sure the plumbing of the financial system can operate in a crisis.
“These proposals would put into effect the biggest changes to the Federal Reserve’s authority in decades,” the administration wrote in a draft paper on its reform proposals.
Has The One bitten off more than he can chew?
1. Bailout/TARP/Government ownership of companies
2. More financial regulation, with FED as top gun
3. Revamping health care (1/6 of U.S. economy)
4. Cap and trade, revamping energy sourcing and use
5. What did I forget?
And now today I read where The One “dreams” of the day we have immigration reform. It’s difficult to focus enough simulataneous attention on two subjects to get them right. But four or more?
What’s missing from the list is any attempt to reduce the monstrous defecit.
“5. What did I forget?”
Two military quagmires in Islamic countries?
+1
Don’t forget:
- A certain saber-rattling Asian country with nuclear ambitions
- Another Islamic country on the brink of revolution - also with nuclear ambitions
- Illegal Immigration (though that one seems to be on the back burner for now)
Here’s my take on immigration. And, in the interest of full disclosure, this is coming from someone who is descended, in part, from a couple of ethnic groups that are considered to be from the “wrong side of the tracks” in the British Isles:
I’m of the mind that it should be difficult to become a citizen of the United States. Why? Because, for all of its faults, the United States is still a very desirable country. In the parlance of economists, there is great demand for U.S. citizenship.
And, compared to other countries, we make the process fairly easy. Try doing the citizenship thing in Japan if you weren’t born there and/or aren’t of Japanese descent. Now, that is tough.
Among other things, you will be subjected to a refrigerator audit. That’s right, authorities will come to your residence and inspect the contents of your fridge. They’ll want to know how Japanese your food choices are.
As for illegal immigration? The word that modifies the word “illegal” says it all. It’s against the law, which means that there are laws on the books that need to be enforced.
Who Will Regulate the Regulators?
www . lewrockwell . com /dilorenzo/dilorenzo173.html
How about instead of turning the Fed into the Supreme Financial Dictator of the U.S.A., somebody think up a system of checks and balance in financial governance so they cannot easily engineer* another financial disaster like the one we are currently trying to survive.
*I am not sure whether the engineering job was deliberate or accidental, but either way the Fed is not accepting any responsibility for what is playing out on their watch. “Nobody could have seen it coming” my arse.
*I am not sure whether the engineering job was deliberate or accidental,
I’ve pondered this myself. Personally I think there’s a decent chance it was deliberate, but I have no proof or direct evidence as such; there are only reams of circumstantial evidence in the forms of the various coinciding legislation, Fed, and media actions that caused the bubble, along with a leap of logic that the resulting expansion of corpo-government control would be the assumed and pre-known aftermath.
If it really was deliberate there would probably only be about a dozen or so people in the world who would know it - and they certainly ain’t tellin’.
Milwaukee Craigslist - this is a hoot!
$2300 / 3br - Nice house for Sale/Rent/Lease - formerly GB Packer owned (Elm Grove)
Reply to: hous-xvgrq-1229075740@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]
Date: 2009-06-19, 6:32AM CDT
I have a nice, open concept house that I am looking to sell/rent/lease. House is a cozy 4400 ft2 with 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bath. A 4th bdrm was converted into a walk-in closet.
House features a spa and indoor pool, nice bar, huge fireplace, complete-house sound system and more.
Satellite and security system -ready.
Great community, quiet street, friendly neighbors.
Let’s talk. Please email if interested.
Location: Elm Grove
it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
————–
Good Lawd - you just know it’s special ’cause a former (unnamed) green bay packer owned it!
Also missing is the sale price?
Leigh
A 4th bdrm was converted into a walk-in closet
Makes you wonder how big the other bedrooms are.
Satellite and security system -ready.
Translation: It doenst have a Satellite or security system, but we are trying to make it sound like there is one in there…
And a Green Bay Packer owned it, eh? THAT might even justify lowering the price by another 20% :)…
Especially if you’re a Bears fan.
when I read “cozy 4400 sq ft” my first thought was “bad floor plan?”
although I suppose cozy could also mean: this ad is addressed to someone aspiring to 6000 sq ft, but hey, a Green Bay Packer lived here
There is an older ad which includes photos and this information: “Price an rent can be negotiated, though I’d like to get AROUND $2200/month on a rental or $450,000 on a sale. But I’m negotiable. “
Good morning everyone!
Good morning! I hope you and the troops are staying safe today. Looks like the stock market is full of green shoots today, but I think Father’s Day will slow down attendance at the open houses and the “spring selling season” in RE will go out with a whimper.
In case I don’t get a chance to say it over the weekend: Happy Father’s Day to all the dads on the HBB!
The troops are great today!!
Our British and Aussie bretheren threw water balloons at us while we were running PT today…..
All good natured fun, But we will get them with super soakers when they come in the mail! We have to do something to get rid of the tense feelings around here..
So, should we be sending super soakers to our brave guys and gals serving us Americans and our nefarious govt? Hey, speaking of what ya’ll need?
If you want to send ANY soldier or airman or sailor anything, SEND THEM CHOCOLATE!!
Forget all the cards, and deodorant, send Oreo cookies!! And the girl scout chocolate chip cookies, (they only make these at one particular bakery, and you can mostly only get them in Savannah Georgia at the Girl Scout HQ’s, Me and the wife have a troop)! Trust me, we will love it..
Be careful of things that are full chocolate, like Hershey’s bars, they may melt in the middle east sun. But cookies are great. And Kool aide singles. You know, the ones designed to go in a water bottle. We have to drink alot of water, and I am starting to hate Crystal Light!
Your suggestions were given to Operation Gratitude and I suggested an Oreo campaign through Wal-Mart. You guys (& gals) must be roasting your toshs off. I bet Oreos would almost be as good as…(you know what).
We all love and appreciate all of you.
btw, Oreos have been around since 1912. They are part of the American culture.
I do AnySoldier.com and will keep that in mind.
stepn2me & oxide-
On Monday morning, I will contact NABISCO and see if I can open a door for Carolyn over at Operation Gratitude for Oreo care packages for the troops. She’ll take it from there. We touched base today. My background is marketing and management of shopping centers, so maybe I can do some good.
Thanks…
The Oreo cookies are my preferred taste, but you get the idea. We can get them in the PX, But I love it when we get them in a care package. We got care packages with the girl scout cookies and they didnt last a week. Thanks for keeping the home fires burning. Believe me, alot of service members are grateful to receive such things!
Leave it to the US military. After a low tech attack they fire back with the latest and greatest in water dispensing technology.
Forget the super soakers. Call in an airstrike. One of those air tankers used in forest firefighting would be ideal.
Well many of them ARE converted bombers…
Call in an airstrike
For some reason I got a big kick out of this idea. Having a basic water fight and calling in “air support”. All of a sudden a plane (or chopper) comes in and dumps on the other half of the field…
To be honest Drummin,
That idea has been thought of. I am a member of the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade. We thought of setting up something big, like having a (OH-58) Kiowa Warrior appear (it’s small enough) and drop water on the british compound that way when they attack us again…But that’s a little too much trouble..and the boss would kill us..
It looks like a lot of those al-qaeda guys never take a bath. I wonder if it would be “torture” to dowse them with a supersoaker? Maybe they would melt like the Wicked Witch of the West.
Got a question off topic - sort of…
Is anyone planning on answering any more questions on the census when they come to your door other than what is constitutionaly required? I plan on answering only how many is in my household. That ACORN is conducting alot of the survey’s disturbs me greatly. What are they going to do? Send me to afghanistan?
Oh wait…..:)
Outspoken Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann says she’s so worried that information from next year’s national census will be abused that she will refuse to fill out anything more than the number of people in her household.
In an interview Wednesday morning with The Washington Times “America’s Morning News,” Mrs. Bachmann, Minnesota Republican, said the questions have become “very intricate, very personal” and she also fears ACORN, the community organizing group that came under fire for its voter registration efforts last year, will be part of the Census Bureau’s door-to-door information collection efforts.
“I know for my family the only question we will be answering is how many people are in our home,” she said. “We won’t be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn’t require any information beyond that.”
Shelly Lowe, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Census Bureau, said Mrs. Bachmann is “misreading” the law.
Bachmann… The queen of psycho talk.
exeter,
Uh… were YOU fortunate enough to have gotten the “expanded” version of the last census? “I” was, and it’s not pleasant. It took an HOUR of -very- personal questions.
1. How long do you commute to work?
WTF? Much of it was the “interviewer” reading lengthy and detailed questions and my saying “I’m not responding to that”. ACORN? Nothing to see ‘here’ folks, move along!
Yeah, it’s totally evil to try to get some sort of accurate idea about how far or long the average American commutes to work…
It is if not answering subjects you to a $5000 fine.
If I said that my commute time is zero, would they send someone out to inspect my home studio?
We got the long census form last time too, and they really got into our business. The personal finance questions were to sell to marketers, imho.
Next, they’ll being asking about adult personal satisfaction habits for someone’s database. The adult toy industry awaits.
Maybe people(not the sheeple of course) should provide lots of misinformation i.e. heritage, income,ect. to help our responsible and trustworthy gov.t do their job…
Stpn, nothing would make me happier than to bring you guys home and have some of you on the border with Mexico.
And I would gladly go…Hopefully mexico smells better than afghanistan..
At least they serve Margaritas and beer.
Hopefully mexico smells better than afghanistan..
They don’t call it the t**rd world for nothing!
A census lady already has been by scoping out my house. I leaned out of the kitchen window and asked her what she was doing. She asked me what my house number was. I said it wasn’t my house. She asked me if the house had a second door, a front door. I replied that it was a matter of home security and that I was not at liberty to disclose that information. I smiled real big. She looked at me funny, looked at the front door funny, shurgged her shoulders and got back in her car.
I will be glad when you and my two sons come back from that hell hole whole.
I read somewhere they were going to GPS every front door. Does anyone have the skinny on this?
I’ve got just a tad of skinny, only because the makers of the GPS systems (Harris Corp) are headquartered close to where I work. I actually took a software development class from the chief engineer for Harris on this project.
They fully intend to collect the full address and GPS location of every single residential dwelling in the USA. They actually try to hit your front door with a laser which will give them the offset from their current GPS location. That way they can do it from their cars.
I have absolutely no idea why they want to do this though. I do know that Harris is very involved with the technology that allows cruise missiles to fly low over terrain and drop precisely on a specific GPS location. Which is probably why they were selected for the job.
I suppose that if you get out of line it will make it easier for black helicopters to drop federal agents on your home at night. Or maybe there is some less nefarious reason.
Uh-oh. Are they going to target me with cruise missiles?
Or maybe there is some less nefarious reason.
Addresses do change over time even when buildings don’t. My guess is the GPS data can be entered by computer into the census databases easier than addresses. GPS data also would be easier to use to divide the country up into districts than street addresses would.
They eliminate the long form and most of the questions, so these people are full of it.
Census info is a huge boon to marketers. The results of the 2010 census will help launch countless advertising campaigns that will be more targeted and more intrusive than ever before.
All I’d like to know is if “meat popsicle” is an acceptable answer for occupation. If not, I’ll just answer “consumer”. I mean why beat around the bush?
Again, occupation has been eliminated from the census.
They replaced the “long form” that one in six households got with the annual American Community Survey, which fewer people get, for better or worse.
Also gone — industry, occupantion, employment, means of travel to work, poverty, ancestry, rent paid, housing value, housing characteristics, vehicles available, etc. etc. etc.
It’s basically age, race, relationship to head of household (I think), tenure (rent or own), a couple of other things.
Every corporation will know more about the people in a given area than any member of the public will be able to find out.
Also gone — industry, occupantion, employment, means of travel to work, poverty, ancestry, rent paid, housing value, housing characteristics, vehicles available, etc. etc. etc.
Reasons to eliminate some of these categories:
industry: too many answering retail doesn’t look good
employment: can’t have accurate statistics on employment now can we?
poverty: see employment above
rent paid/housing value: daaaangerous potential for comparison
The census people came by to see us. I asked them what county they had us listed as living in. When they told me, I said,”Sorry, you’re wrong.”The county line is our propery line. They went away.
8 states see record unemployment rates in May; Nebraska, Vermont only states without increases.
By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer
On Friday June 19, 2009, 10:26 am EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The unemployment rates in eight states hit record-highs last month and only two — Nebraska and Vermont — did not report increases.
The Labor Department says 48 states and the District of Columbia saw employment conditions deteriorate last month. The fallout from the longest recession since World War II, was the worst in Michigan. Its unemployment rate rose to 14.1 percent.
The eight states that set records are: California, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia.
The West region reported the highest jobless rate at 10.1 percent. The last time any region had a rate of at least 10 percent was September 1983, when the country was emerging from a severe recession.
Nebraska’s jobless rate dipped last month, Vermont’s was flat.
CA May unemployment is reported at 11.5 pct. We’re number five…
CNNMoney dot com
Jobless rate rises in nearly all states
Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia post unemployment rates rise in May, while only one state - Nebraska - registers a decrease.
By Tami Luhby, CNNMoney.com senior writer
Last Updated: June 19, 2009: 10:30 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Forty-eight states and the District of Columbia recorded unemployment rate increases in May, the government reported Friday. One state registered a rate decrease, and one state had no rate change.
Over the year, jobless rates were higher in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Michigan once again led the nation with a 14.1% jobless rate, up from 12.9% a month earlier, followed again by Oregon at 12.4%, up from 12% in April. Thirteen states have rates above 10%.
…
Nonfarm payroll employment decreased in 39 states and increased in 11 states and the District of Columbia in May. The largest over-the-month decrease in jobs occurred in California, followed by Florida, Texas, and Michigan.
So compare this report with the one yesterday that suggested the national unemployment rate was down.
Hmmm???????
Yesterday’s report was one week in June. The article references previous data for May.
RE: Vermont’s was flat.
From the going’s on I saw on Church St. in Burlington during the town’s jazz festival last weekend, you’d never in the world believe their was a serious recession going on.
The bars and restaurants were packed.
$5 for a microbrew and $20 for a pizza (tipping & meal taxes extra) at the Flatbread to give you an indication as to what low level dining out costs in the People’s Socialist Republic of VT.
Living is real good for the health care providers at Fletcher Allen and public sector educators and bureaucracy at UVM.
I’m going to visit my aunt in Vermont later this summer. Looking forward to those beers and pizzas at the Flatbread. (Thanks for the tip, hd74man!)
I have the same feeling about the Fed’s current effort to grab more power as I did when the TARP was getting rammed down the collective throats of the American public last fall. I note that it was Hank Paulson who proposed consolidating the Fed’s power, and Obama seems resigned to following the former Republican Secretary of State’s guidance on the matter, which I find highly puzzling. I guess the voters have to take the politicians’ word for it that this is all for the common good, as apparently nobody has bothered to consult Main Street about the idea.
I would guess that many of the banks would be against this, If one bank, say GS, gets control of the FED there will be no one to reign them in. I think the theory that GS wanted Lehman out of the way and orchestrated that event is not without merit. What could they accomplish behind closed doors.
From the obvious desk
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A “distressingly slow” U.S. housing recovery, with inflation-adjusted home values expected to decline over the next five years, makes it unlikely that housing wealth will drive consumer spending in the next decade, a Reuters/University of Michigan survey found.
Consumers are apt to maintain their renewed emphasis on savings and paring debt, Richard Curtin, director of the survey, said in a June home price update on Friday.
Housing wealth changes have a lagged impact on spending, and the influence of declines seen in 2008 will depress growth in consumer spending in 2009 and 2010, the survey said.
“makes it unlikely that housing wealth will drive consumer spending in the next decade”
That’s okay. I’m sure real wage growth will step in to drive consumer spending. We just need to cut taxes more. That will drive economic growth, causing greater demand for labor, driving up wages. This has been shown to work time and again. Deficits don’t matter.
It does work but unfortunately the gov’t continues to spend more than it takes in despite the increase in revenue that comes from economic growth.
Why does this argument almost always focus on revenue? This is not rocket science, live within your means.
There are few things more deluded than the notion that we might have some sort of housing-driven economic rebound in the near future. It’s like saying that in 2001 we would have a pets.com-lead tech rebound.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A “distressingly slow” U.S. housing recovery, with inflation-adjusted home values expected to decline over the next five years, makes it unlikely that housing wealth will drive consumer spending in the next decade, a Reuters/University of Michigan survey found.
From the obvious desk at HBB, but one of the few widely distributed wire reports predicting declining values for the next five years. We have had analysts dancing around delayed recovery in 2010 or 2011, but not 2014. They also dare to use the ‘D’ word (Decade) in setting the tone of housing impact on economy.
U.S. homes recovery distressingly slow: Reuters/UMich
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A “distressingly slow” U.S. housing recovery, with inflation-adjusted home values expected to decline over the next five years, makes it unlikely that housing wealth will drive consumer spending in the next decade, a Reuters/University of Michigan survey found.
Consumers are apt to maintain their renewed emphasis on savings and paring debt, Richard Curtin, director of the survey, said in a June home price update on Friday.
Housing wealth changes have a lagged impact on spending, and the influence of declines seen in 2008 will depress growth in consumer spending in 2009 and 2010, the survey said.
“To be sure, refinancing has reduced the burden of mortgage payments, giving consumers more discretionary income, but the refinancing impact on spending will fade as mortgage rates increase,” Curtin said. “Moreover, conventional refinancing is largely limited to consumers whose home is worth about 20 percent more than their current outstanding mortgage.”
The pool of those homeowners is fast shrinking with each month that home prices sink. On average, home prices nationally have slumped by more than 32 percent from mid-2006 highs, based on Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller indexes.
Why do they suggest housing is “recovering” when it clearly is still in the tank with no bottom in sight?
Because Jim Cramer says so damn it!
NO SOUP FOR YOU!
“Housing wealth changes have a lagged impact on spending…”
I’m sure each of us knows at least one FB who has yet to come to terms with all this.
Ramrod restructuring:
Darrell Delamaide’s Political Capital
Jun 17, 2009, 2:34 p.m. EST
Washington rules
Regulator reforms confirm capital’s role as nation’s financial center
By Darrell Delamaide
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — With a raft of emergency measures and the virtual nationalization of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and the auto makers, the federal government has made Washington the financial center of the country over the past year.
Now, with its proposals for more stringent financial regulation across the board, the Obama administration will reinforce the position of the national capital as the chief locus of financial decision-making for some time to come.
The scope of the new rules means that Washington will be calling the tune in financial services.
If the administration’s proposals for regulatory reform are enacted into law, every agency from the Federal Reserve to a newly created Consumer Financial Protection Agency will have added authority and most financial institutions will have less freedom to conduct their business.
The long-expected regulatory fallout from last year’s financial meltdown has now fallen out, and the government has fine-tuned a reform program that matches the mood of Congress and should get speedy approval.
…
Sorry if this got post yesterday, but I found this today.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/82091ec2-5c2f-11de-aea3-00144feabdc0.html
Good grief. Is that all it takes to get a line of credit? Print up some fake notes. What self respecting banker would accept those notes and not question their authenticity?
+1 for the use of the word “nonplussed” in the article.
$134B in fake bills - holy cow! And physical notes for $500 Million! Wow. Who would possibly fall for such a thing?
Being of Sicilian decent, I have to hang my head in shame at the depths the mafia has sunk to. Give me the good old days of extortion and such.
packman,
PBS Frontline online has a mini documentary on how a small town in Italy got rid of the “extortion and such” of their small businessess, and won the war against the mafia (for good?). Great stuff.
This happened almost 2 weeks ago and it appears they are going with the counterfiet story. It has been blogged on some financial sites that the Japanese were unabashedly buying Tresuries on the 6th and Monday the 9th in very high volume. Just bloggers so I wouldn’t put too much credence in it
Link to Market Ticker article from a week ago.
NOTE: you need to scroll down it is the 3rd article
http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/2009/06/11.html
Hey PB,
A couple of days ago you posted about how the gov’t is interfering in the market and to the detriment of efficient market hypothesis (EMH). Here is an article about EMH and the credit bubble: it seems that it is under attack even without gov’t interference. I remember sitting in my Master’s Finance class at NYU 3 years ago and the professor was pumping this idea into the brains of the students in the Portfolio Theory class and I had my doubts then and I only have more doubts about it now.
Poking Holes in a Theory on Markets
By JOE NOCERA
Published: June 5, 2009
For some months now, Jeremy Grantham, a respected market strategist with GMO, an institutional asset management company, has been railing about — of all things — the efficient market hypothesis.
You know what the efficient market hypothesis is, don’t you? It’s a theory that grew out of the University of Chicago’s finance department, and long held sway in academic circles, that the stock market can’t be beaten on any consistent basis because all available information is already built into stock prices. The stock market, in other words, is rational.
In the last decade, the efficient market hypothesis, which had been near dogma since the early 1970s, has taken some serious body blows. First came the rise of the behavioral economists, like Richard H. Thaler at the University of Chicago and Robert J. Shiller at Yale, who convincingly showed that mass psychology, herd behavior and the like can have an enormous effect on stock prices — meaning that perhaps the market isn’t quite so efficient after all. Then came a bit more tangible proof: the dot-com bubble, quickly followed by the housing bubble. Quod erat demonstrandum.
These days, you would be hard-pressed to find anybody, even on the University of Chicago campus, who would claim that the market is perfectly efficient. Yet Mr. Grantham, who was a critic of the efficient market hypothesis long before such criticism was in vogue, has hardly been mollified by its decline. In his view, it did a lot of damage in its heyday — damage that we’re still dealing with. How much damage? In Mr. Grantham’s view, the efficient market hypothesis is more or less directly responsible for the financial crisis.
So, what will replace the holy EMH? Behavioral finance?
IGP (Inefficient Gov’t Pumping).
So, what will replace the holy EMH?
TEOTWAWKI
“Here is an article about EMH and the credit bubble: it seems that it is under attack even without gov’t interference.”
If the Fed stealthily distorts the market on an occasional basis and leaves no record of their actions, there is no way to test the effect of ‘govt interference’ on market efficiency. But I can say that when many individuals believe that financially idiotic actions will be rewarded with bailouts, one should not expect the markets to very efficiently price in risk.
Efficient Market Hypothesis, meet Bernankeberg Uncertainty Principle.
I look at it like animal herd mentality.
Before animals (bufallo, sheep, cows and horses and such) were domesticated, they still generally lived in herds. The herds were generally healthy. They had predators, and the predators generally took out the weaker members of the herd. The herd moved from place to place, and might do stupid things like get spooked by lightning and run, but generally they were smart enough to know not to get into a mass slaughter.
Now we have domesticated herds, with sheepdogs (regulators) looking out for their welfare, and fences (regulations) keeping them from going out of bounds. However if the fence breaks down, or if a predator makes a call, the herd can freak out and do stupid things. They simply can’t make it in the wild anymore - they don’t have the survival skills.
So the farms have to take care of them.
Then one day, the farmer opens up the chute, and has his dog round them up, and lead them up the chute… never to be heard from again.
In other words - much like pre-domesticated animals in the wild - free markets are certainly *not* perfectly efficient. There does exist some herd mentality, and some animals will die sometimes - especially the weaker ones.
The alternative - controlled markets - appears much safer. But when problems do occur they can be a lot worse because the animals can’t handle adversity.
If they don’t run into any problems they’re fine - until eventually they’re all lead to slaughter. Wild animals aren’t so easily lead to a slaughterhouse. They’re smarter and know better, because they haven’t been coddled and fed by a farmer their whole life, who they think they can trust.
“So the farmsers have to take care of them.”
Also meant to state that the herd dogs aren’t the regulators actually, in the strict sense of the term, but rather entities like the Federal Reserve, who don’t technically “regulate” things via rule, but rather “encourage” certain behavior, just like a shepherd dog does.
This is an important point that many people miss. They blame removal of regulations for the problems - e.g. CDS deregulation and Gramm-Leach-Bliley; the removal of some sections of the herd’s fence, but they ignore the fact that the Federal Reserve dog is the one on the other side who pushed the herd through the broken fence. If the dog was doing its job it would have keep the herd *away* from the fence. But that’s what you get when you try to use a wolf as a shepherd dog.
My parents have a border collie mix. A herding dog through and through. And she doesn’t “encourage” certain behavior. She’ll nag you (by staring at you, offering you her paw, and wagging her tail at you) until she gets her way.
My parents have a border collie mix. She’s a herding dog through and through.
And she doesn’t “encourage” certain behavior. She’ll nag you — by staring at you, offering you her paw, and wagging her tail at you — until she gets her way.
Oops! Excuse the double post. That’s what thinking about the Sandy-dog will do — she has a way of breaking one’s train of thought.
Sandy sounds adorable. I wag my tail, and my “paws”, until I get my way too.
(It’s a girl thing:) )
Adding on to the mother nature metaphor:
In the wild, most animals live in relatively small herds. Their might be millions of individuals living in tens of thousands of herds. Their is an expectation that disease and predators will cull a few individuals from all of the herds, and some of the herds will be wiped out entirely by unforeseen catastrophes.
So the best government should try to do is use its anti-monopoly powers to break up the banks into thousands of small banks instead of have 10 giants that can collude to cause catastrophes. Fewer regulations on vastly smaller & more banks.
Not sure I agree. Many herds in nature are huge - e.g. the North American bison herds were huge - thousands of animals in a given herd. Sometimes there’s efficiency in large sizes. This can be especially true of business entities.
In my view - anything that’s not exactly one (by definition actually) is not a monopoly, and shouldn’t be broken up unless proof of collusion can be shown. As long as legitimate competition exists, then they’re kept honest from monopolistic behavior like excessive pricing etc. That is - as long as there’s not a corrupt government involved to otherwise artificially help certain influential business entities, but if that’s true then that generally precludes the breaking up of such entities anyhow.
Maybe our Congresspeople could do some statesmen-like thing and develop a category of laws to deal with financial entities whose failure would pose a systemic risk, to cut them down to a size less risky for the rest of us. I can dream, anyway.
The folks in Gov keep thinking this is a typical recession and the recovery should be here soon. They will not face up to all the debt that has been put on the books and that the assets (housing) are decreasing in value. The debt will prevent a recovery until it is written off so the recovery is a long way off.
Unemployment will continue to increase and assets will continue to decrease. I don’t see a bottom.
On the unemployment, SC is the third worst but areas like Greenville are doing well. The unemployment in some counties is over 20%. It is the great depression out there.
Oh, our nefaious govt. knows what going on. They play stupid by design. If you want to learn about the history of our govt.’s propaganda (also the Nazi’s propaganda), learn about Edward Bernays. He was Sigmund Freud’s nephew, and his biography was pure evil, imho (and others).
My question: Does the USA have a “ministry of propaganda,” and what is it officially called? Or is the propaganda operation conducted informally on a decentralized basis as standard protocol for high level governance?
Obama Mortgage Refinancing Program May Expand, Lockhart Says
By Dawn Kopecki and Jody Shenn
June 19 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama’s program to help more homeowners refinance may be expanded to include borrowers who owe more than 105 percent of their homes’ values, Federal Housing Finance Agency Director James Lockhart said.
The Obama administration is considering allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance loans with current loan-to-value ratios of 125 percent or higher, Lockhart said at a National Association of Real Estate Editors Association conference in Washington yesterday.
The Home Affordable refinancing program, announced Feb. 18, is part of the U.S. government’s efforts to stem soaring foreclosures and bolster consumer spending.
The 125 percent level on loan-to-values would preserve the ability of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to package and sell the debt into so-called real estate mortgage investment conduits, he said. While 125 percent loan-to-value ratio is on the table, Lockhart said “it’s not necessarily the number we’re going to end up with.”
The program has been “seeing a slowdown” as mortgage rates increase, he said. The average rate on a typical 30-year fixed loan was 5.38 percent this week ended yesterday, according to McLean Virginia-based Freddie Mac. The rate is up from a record low of 4.78 percent at the end of April.
Under the program, borrowers with loans already owned or guaranteed by Washington-based Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac who have loan-to-value ratios of 80 percent to 105 percent and aren’t delinquent can refinance without buying mortgage insurance, or paying for more insurance than they already have.
Warehouse Lending
Lockhart also said yesterday that his agency, the companies’ regulator, is looking at ways for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help the so-called warehouse lending market, which provides financing to smaller, independent mortgage companies, amid a credit crunch.
While Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are prohibited by law from lending directly to other firms, Lockhart said they may be able to provide the market some liquidity by committing to purchase multifamily and other loans. The U.S. seized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and put them under FHFA’s control in September.
“The Obama administration is considering allowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to refinance loans with current loan-to-value ratios of 125 percent or higher, Lockhart said at a National Association of Real Estate Editors Association conference in Washington yesterday.”
Here’s a problem: If you create a graph tracking the LTVs vs. the probability of a re-default, the probability increases as the LTV increases. Which means that this is just another attempt to kick the can down the road.
Hi. Nice warm, not too hot, sunny day in DC.
I won’t pull the trigger on buying anytime soon if ever maybe. But do like watching the market. Here it gets stranger and stranger. For example one in town hood zip code 20008 mostly condos and coops. Inventory growing and growing. Prices still in clouds wishing prices. 2 bed 2 bath apartments for $600k +, tons of them. Of course they don’t even have parking. Other places in the suburbs prices down but inventory myteriously has dried up in the past month. There goes the comps. Oakton, VA - few miles from last Orange line Metro stop.$418K http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/10520-Elmenden-Ct_Oakton_VA_22124_1110071638
This is about a 2000 price. At top of the bubble these houses went for ~ $700K. There was one in this hood for $525K about 3 weeks ago. Don’t see it listed This might be priced low to start a bidding war.
Point being it’s just so funny how wacky prices and inventory are. Some sellers are in reality. Some still in 2005.
Well, sadly, my personal financial depression continues. It’s a shame that companies won’t tell you _why_ you weren’t chosen. Fear of litigation, I suppose, but I’m not sure what I could possibly sue them for?
And I was so looking forward to telling the Texas Workforce Commission to ’suck it’. One day, one day…
Drummin:
I keep tellin ya…they want barely over the line qualifications which bodes very poorly for the future of America
Like where are our next leaders coming from….the Dilbert cubicle?
See if they place the ad again in 2-3 weeks, see if they made any changes to it….you might get a big hint on what to sue for.
aNYCdj, I think you’re just a little too cynical here. It’s not unreasonable to think they’re looking for someone a bit more senior, or perhaps someone they feel is stronger technically.
Do you know what interviews are like for software engineering roles? It’s not easy. They’re looking to find your breaking point, not looking to see if you’re dumb enough to toe the company line. It’s not about pleasantries, but about whether you can communicate technical concepts effectively, how you approach problems (not necessarily whether you even solve them, but what your problem-solving approach is, what you consider, etc), what you do when you don’t know the answer.
Google isn’t going to get ahead by hiring sub-par engineers to design their database or search algorithms. Amazon isn’t going to dominate the e-book reader space if they don’t have good engineers figuring out how to get the longest battery life, and how to make the experience as appealing and intuitive as possible.
Perhaps your outlooks is warranted when it comes to the types of jobs you’ve been seeking. But I’m pretty sure in the engineering realm that the bar is still being set quite high. I just wish it were possible to get feedback on what made them decide I wasn’t the right candidate.
But Google is a LEADER, it’s a big difference from a common ordinary average company.
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Google isn’t going to get ahead by hiring sub-par engineers
But Google is a LEADER, it’s a big difference from a common ordinary average company.
I disagree if you’re considering tech companies. Google became a leader by hiring really bright, innovative people. Apple as well. Same with National Instruments (a former employer of mine, who’s a leader in their industry). Etc etc. Technology still moves fast enough that you need sharp people and to be agile.
Perhaps in more established industries that’s not the case. But I don’t see tech companies disqualifying people for being “too smart”. Sure, there are companies who aren’t looking for the highly-driven, start-up type people, as their business model just doesn’t work that way. But I don’t think that fits into your view of every company looking to hire people who think an etch-a-sketch is a laptop computer.
I had supervisory/managerial positions with several different companies during my professional career. When making my hiring decision, I ALWAYS made sure I hired the guy who was either the dumbest, had the least experience, or who let me know he was a slacker during the interview.
Does anyone believe that?
sadly, my personal financial depression continues
Do you have any experience with Ruby on Rails, MySQL and Test-Driven development? We are looking to hire for a developer who left recently for another start-up… contract to perm. Position is in Boston, but we just interviewed a developer from NC who would probably work remotely for a while.
Do you have any experience with Ruby on Rails, MySQL
Hi, Northeastener. Unfortunately, my experience is in C/C++ focusing on user interface development of desktop apps. I’m working on transitioning to mobile devices, as that’s clearly where things are headed. I’m confident I can get up to speed with pretty much any technology, but right now there are so many people in the job market, there likely are people who have the knowledge and experience already, there’s no reason for a company to take a “chance” on me.
Drummin:
But at what cost? If everything is mobile and jobs are mobile, then what the purpose of buying a house anymore Or even having an extra bedroom or two for an office?
I guess its huge amount of apps. for the I-phone, then social networking sites. Just seems like a way to part people with their money, ringtones..huh?
But i see the value if you are your own business. I can see musicians keeping in close touch with fans, letting them know on twitter good seats are available the day of the show if they text now.
I guess that’s my problem i like getting out of the house , and this work remotely, is exactly opposite of what i need right now…even though i still do some.
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I’m working on transitioning to mobile devices, as that’s clearly where things are headed
But at what cost? If everything is mobile and jobs are mobile, then what the purpose of buying a house anymore Or even having an extra bedroom or two for an office?
Just because computers get smaller and more ubiquitous doesn’t mean that people won’t want to have a fixed, stable place to live. It’s simply a question of accessibility. Being able to plug your guitar into your iPhone and have it transcribe the riff you just came up with…an electronic check register so you don’t have to write it with a pen and then enter it into the computer later, etc…it’s not just fluff to separate fools from their money, I don’t think.
Do people still play guitars? Check my handle and the videos for some real riffs..
If there is a piece of advice I can give you right now, it’s embrace the following: Agile development, Test-driven development, and a framework like Python/Django or Ruby on Rails. Enterprise Java and Struts would be a close third. The money is flowing for Python and Ruby developers because any startups looking to get funded have embraced it and Java has such a large install-base that we’ll be supporting and enhancing Java apps for the foreseeable future. Obviously, this is all server-side, and if your focus is mobile devices, then you can change it up a bit, just don’t lose sight that most of the compelling apps for mobile devices are server-based…
embrace the following: Agile development, Test-driven development, and a framework like Python/Django or Ruby on Rails.
I get your point. I’m still “idealistic” and trying to find work doing what I enjoy - which is front-end/user interface/usability work. So, I have a few options. Certainly there’s still a niche for desktop apps, and there always will be (someone’s got to make the web browser that all the web apps run in). There’s ‘mobile’ apps, and of course front-end web development.
Sure, Enterprise Java might pay the bills, but I wouldn’t enjoy my job…at least not long-term. All of my skills with regards to C++ will carry over to Java…and most employers see that. The problem is finding people looking to hire full-time (and thus are willing to have someone take a month to ramp-up), versus looking to hire for a short-term contract. Obviously I can do my best to ramp-up on Java on my own, and am seeking to do so, but it won’t stand out on my resume like it will for people who have been employed doing Java development.
slightly left-field here drumminj - but have you ever considered getting into game development?
I know for a fact that The Husband’s place of work always needs programmers - designers and artists are a dime-a-dozen, but good programmers are always hard to find. C/C++ seems to be industry standard - though the Husband is wanting to learn Python.
Game dev tends to have hubs - L.A, Austin, Seattle etc… but its one of the only industries around that isn’t shedding jobs left right and centre. Not to say that there’s not some downsizing, but it seems to be happening less than in other tech industries.
Just my tuppenceworth
drummin, please consider looking in the DC metro area. There is a minimum of $400B spent every year, year in and year out, in software engineering. The administration has prioritized cyber security in the presidential agenda. Regardless of your politics, this is an honorable problem to tackle.
The area has many well publicized downsides. The people are serious. E.g., generally lack a sense of humor, esp. in the work environment. The traffic is soul sucking. It was destroyed by the bubble. Counteracting those negatives - there are inexpensive rentals, as long as you stay out of DC. Paradoxically, DC itself is the armpit of the world, has the lousiest quality of life, is a concrete jungle - yet the apartment conversions are pricey, never mind the actual apartments. Go figure. Unless you are actually IN government, the jobs are with the contractors, who do not HQ in DC. The third counteracting positive: it is not a 60 hour a week culture, with all that entails. It is recognized that overwork makes people snappish and jeopardizes the project. Snappish exhaustion is out.
The professional arena is clannish, and lots of jobs go by word of mouth. If you are competent, there are lots of people on this very board who would, I’m sure, step up to grease some skids for you. Your characterization of the PNW SE interviewing environment describes the way things are done here, in the interview and OTJ as well. It is a team based analytical world, and they are interested in minimizing collateral damage, after which their assets generally walk. The killing question, after competence and how you roll in the grey areas: is there anything that would disqualify you from getting a security clearance.
Not saying PNW is not God’s country. In most respects, it is.
Whatever you do, my best vibes go to you. And to NYCdj, and to all of us HBBers who were left without a chair after the music stopped.
I generally agree that a more decentralized regulatory structure is preferred to a consolidated one where the Fed can stonewall and deny as it sees fit for reputation building purposes.
Financial Times
Bair criticises regulation plan
By Joanna Chung in New York
Published: June 19 2009 15:56 | Last updated: June 19 2009 15:56
Sheila Bair, the chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, on Friday went public with her criticism of the Obama regulatory plan, saying her agency should have a bigger decision-making role over firms that pose systemic risk.
‘’We would obviously like a seat at the table, a decision-making role,’’ Ms Bair said in an interview with CNBC. “The FDIC has tremendous exposure to the system so we would like a real say on systematic risk issues.”
Her comments come ahead of what is likely to be intense wrangling over the details of the Obama administration’s sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation. The plan needs Congressional approval.
Under the plan, the Federal Reserve would assume the primary responsibility for averting financial crises and overseeing institutions that are deemed ‘’too big to fail.’’While a council of financial regulators – of which the FDIC would be a member – would improve co-ordination between different agencies, the real power would reside with the Fed.
Ms Bair, who wants the council to have more ‘’teeth,’’ urged legislators to have a robust debate on the appropriate role of the council and the Fed.
‘’This is an institutional issue, it’s not a turf issue or personality issue,’’ she said. ‘’We’re hoping Congress and the White House too, and the Treasury, will continue those discussions to get the balance right.’’
The Fed has done so well in the past, let’s give them even MORE power.
That’ll fix things.
I received this as an email from a company looking for investors to fund hard money loans, and to be honest I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. It’s a lengthy read:
Four years ago, when we issued our first warning that the housing industry was ready to top out and predicted that both sales and prices would be hit hard, a great many builders, Realtors and investors chose to ignore our warning. They kept buying and building despite the fact that homes had moved up to a level that was not affordable to most Americans. Earlier this year we pointed to an opposite set of facts. Interest rates were incredibly low and home prices had again overshot, this time going below fair value. It was time, we said, to go out and look at homes on the market. But many delayed, thinking that much lower prices and even lower mortgage interest rates were coming as housing continued to slide in an all-out crash.
Well, sure enough, demand for housing has turned up. The mix of demand is different than it was before we went into the “time-out” we predicted four years ago. Back then, it was the bigger and biggest houses that faced the strongest demand. Subprime mortgages – often written with no effort to check on alleged income levels – allowed many people to take ownership of homes that were really far beyond what they should be buying. A lot of them ignored the fact printed on their mortgage agreement that mortgage rates would be rising after a stated period of time. This would hit very hard those people who had bought big expensive homes with mortgages that did not require any down payment and then allowed the buyer to make only interest payments, with no principal payments required. The betting on the part of borrowers and lenders alike was that home prices would continue to climb at a double digit rate – and many believed the upward growth in prices would continue at local levels of 15% and even 20% a year. That belief proved to be a mirage. Prices at first turned flat. Then they started to slide as falling demand caused inventories of homes for sale to pile high.
The net result of escalating mortgage rates written into contracts was that the monthly carrying charge for many of these poorly drawn mortgages doubled last year – often rising to levels that were at least equal to the full take home pay of the recent buyers. Large numbers of them responded by turning in their keys and walking away. These empty homes made potential buyers shy away from even looking at homes in such neighborhoods. But skeptics are now ignoring the prospective upside potential in housing. All those people who walked away from homes they could not afford still have to live somewhere, and are prospects for smaller and cheaper homes. Some moved in with relatives. Some moved to rental housing but chose not to sign leases that locked them in. They were joined by hundreds of thousands of newly married couples seeking a place to live. Years ago such couples would move into an apartment and saved money for a down payment and closing costs. But now we have a new Federal tax credit available to first-time buyers – and you might be surprised to learn how liberal that tax credit is and how many people qualify whom in years past would not be counted as new buyers. These new buyers, and evidence shows they include a great many single men and women who in past years were not thought of as prospects to buy a house, are impatient to move into their first home.
Wall Street is worried sick over unemployment and they wrongly assume that the 90%-plus of Americans who are fully employed or who own their own business are now too terrified to even think of buying a home. That is not so. Let me prove it to you with a simple fact. In Stockton, California – one of the epicenters of foreclosure in America – so many people are rushing to snap up the homes that are dumped on the market as a result of foreclosure that there is at present only a two-month supply of homes available for sale in that market. Now I want to repeat that statement to make sure you realize the significance of what I just said: In Stockton, California – a place where homes are being foreclosed at a rate that normally would make people think it is a disaster area for the housing industry – there are so many buyers standing in line at foreclosure auctions that there is now a shortage of homes available for sale. That is what is meant when you hear the phrase “two months supply of homes available.”
Today I hear some self-appointed experts talk about there being a two years supply of homes. What they mean is that in certain markets sales are running so slow that it would take two years of sales at the current rate to clear the market. But Stockton proves that once buyers come alive to the fact that they may never again see prices as low as they are today in a lot of areas, another set of facts suddenly kick in. There are mountains of cash available on the sidelines today. Personal savings had been running at zero as people bought and bought imports coming in from China, often on credit, as if they had to or their lives would become empty. Now everything is reversed. China is sitting on mountains of backed-up exports – many of them stuck at their docks or in harbors in China and around the world. The cash and credit that might have been used for those Chinese goods last year and the year before have been building up of late in banks, money market funds, and in the stock market (where the bold have realized large gains in the past few months).
The Federal Reserve has pumped $300 billion into the system in an effort to make it liquid again. I realize this has caused fears of coming inflation. But think for a moment what that inflation fear means to the housing market. With houses this cheap – not only in absolute terms but relative to replacement costs and to current income levels – what would even moderate reflation likely mean to average housing prices? I hear guesses of home prices in areas of heavy foreclosure could regain some of their recent losses. Even if buyers were to put down 25% of the purchase price and borrow the rest in the mortgage market, the fact remains that three to one leverage is at work. There are few other places in the investment world today where three to one leverage is looked at favorably. And then there are many possible tax advantages to buying a home… advantages not available to any other investments.
But let’s get back to the simple statement that there is only a two-month supply of houses on the market in Stockton, CA. That ratio could emerge at any time almost any place in the country. All it would take is a switch from fear to confidence among prospective buyers. People who are standing on the sidelines suddenly decide these bargains are too good to resist any longer, especially when they see their first and second choice already disappearing into the hands of buyers who feared losing them if they wait. When that happens, the average number of homes purchased in the most recent period swells up rapidly. That new total becomes a larger divisor. Then something else happens, or at least this is what has happened at the end of every housing recession in U.S. history. A significant number of homes that were listed on the market by people who thought we were heading for a continued steep decline in the housing world, are quickly pulled back off the market. That plus the actual new purchases reduces the number to be divided. When this happens we see how silly it is to talk about a two-year supply of homes on the market by using as a divisor an annual sales figure far below normal.
I dwell on this for a simple reason: All it will take to turn a housing market from a condition of dead in the water to one where local builders are hearing their phone ring for the first time in weeks as people who cannot find the home of their dreams on the market want them to build one for them, is a changed perception of where we stand in the long housing cycle. That change will come, and in fact I think has now come in a few markets, as people see with their own eyes that home purchases are running ahead of foreclosures plus new building plus existing homes coming back onto the market. Why do I think this moment is at hand? Because in several areas where foreclosures are running at a strong pace demand for foreclosed properties is running so strong that homes are being sold at competitive auctions at prices above the levels set by banks or other sellers. Please get ready for an unexpected recovery surge in housing. More next week.
Laugh, or cry? What do you mean, you should snap up some homes…
They have some truth and some deception in there. Like the best of lies.
The fed creating a few hundred billion isn’t a big deal if the banks are not creating new money (velocity). So, the mass of private debt outweighs the federal debt by near an order of magnitude.
The government and Fed can create a large amount of money and we could still have massive price decreases.
Stockton… places like this have an over supply of property. There are investors buying up the property. Fine.
However, you can look to falling rents and excess supply to keep prices from recovering.
Also since prices were driven by lending and easy qualifications and that has been curtailed expect the property values to stagnate. Standards are going up, slowly, as number of qualified buyers are dropping due to high unemployment. Additionally incentives are possibly causing further temporary distortions as well.
There are investors buying in some depressed areas and the supplies there are getting low. However, in an area like Stockton, building activity will increase and further supress price growth.
Now, if values are under historical trends for an area, such as 3x median income for an above average home, there might be good buys. Stockton and Sacremento are much closer to the bottom than areas like Marin, San Fran, West Los Angeles, Orange County exc. Since things are so unstable right now its still a highly risky and illiquid investment.
Its an highly unstable market in real estate. We have forclosure mormatoriums, changes in laws to protect renters, incentives exc. Cross defaults where the default is going to a bankrupt company. Fed manipulation of interest rates. Hoards of speculators.
Everything points to deflation. Unemployment means wages will fall. Defaulting loans means deflation. Lower velocity means deflation. We even see falling prices. Its everywhere.
Good luck.
DDX:
I think you forgot one important item:
Who in their right mind really, really wants to live in Stockton for the rest of their lives?
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But let’s get back to the simple statement that there is only a two-month supply of houses on the market in Stockton, CA.
Anyone else notice the decidedly negative tone the news media is taking with Obama? All of a sudden they have been very critical of everything that he does or says.
Any chance his hard line with Israel had anything to do with this shift? You know I told you this was going to happen, right?
It didn’t take long. Not long at all.
By negative, do you mean ABC news reporting from the White House with voices of opposition barred from giving their opinion? Or would it be CNBC’s breathless reporting of how BO ‘cooly swatted a fly’ (could it have been drawn to all the BS The One has been spewing of late?). Oh, maybe you are referring to how the media has completely ignored the IG firings, a story with legs that is being woefully undereported? If that’s what you mean by negative, yeah, they have been all over them.
Why don’t you check your retarded anti-Semitism at the door and take a look at how Iran and N Korea have bitch slapped Obama’s open hand foreign policy? The world is unraveling, and it has nothing to do with Israel.
“Oh, maybe you are referring to how the media has completely ignored the IG firings, a story with legs that is being woefully undereported”?
Barry is in complete and clear violation of the law and ‘they’ know it. Lots of back peddling going on. He is nothing more than a punk-azz thug, that can read well. In time more folks are bound to see that, even if the SRM (state run media)keeps right on kissing his —.
” take a look at how Iran and N Korea have bitch slapped Obama’s open hand foreign policy? ”
Thank you little men, may I have another.
You still haven’t given this up? Man…
At least we don’t have to be zombies anymore.
I say bravo if it is true.
U.S. Military Set to Intercept North Korean Ship Suspected of Proliferating Missiles, Nukes…
The U.S. military is planning to intercept a flagged North Korean ship suspected of proliferating weapons material in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last Friday, FOX News has learned.
The USS John McCain, a navy destroyer, will intercept the ship Kang Nam as soon as it leaves the vicinity off the coast of China, according to a senior U.S. defense official. The order to inderdict has not been given yet, but the ship is getting into position.
The ship left a port in North Korea Wednesday and appears to be heading toward Singapore, according to a senior U.S. military source. The vessel, which the military has been tracking since its departure, could be carrying weaponry, missile parts or nuclear materials, a violation of U.N. Resolution 1874, which put sanctions in place against Pyongyang.
The USS McCain was involved in an incident with a Chinese sub last Friday - near Subic Bay off the Philippines.
The Chinese sub was shadowing the destroyer when it hit the underwater sonar array that the USS McCain was towing behind it.
That same navy destroyer that was being shadowed by the Chinese is now positioning itself for a possible interdiction of the North Korean vessel.
This is the first suspected “proliferator” that the U.S. and its allies have tracked from North Korea since the United Nations authorized the world’s navies to enforce compliance with a variety of U.N. sanctions aimed at punishing North Korea for its recent nuclear test.
The ship is currently along the coast of China and being monitored around-the-clock by air.
The apparent violation raises the question of how the United States and its allies will respond, particularly since the U.N. resolution does not have a lot of teeth to it.
The resolution would not allow the United States to board the ship forcibly. Rather, U.S. military would have to request permission to board — a request North Korea is unlikely to grant.
North Korea has said that any attempt to board its ships would be viewed as an act of war and promised “100- or 1,000-fold” retaliation if provoked.
The U.S. military may also request that the host country not provide fuel to the ship when it enters its port.
Does anyone else think this is scary?
What? That they named a ship after the hothead? Yeah, that is scary.
They don’t generally name ships after the living. I’m sure it’s named after his dad, who was an Admiral.
Yep, Named after his dad who was named John just like his dad who was also named John. Three Johns, but they have nothing on George Foreman who named all his son’s George.
George,George,George,& George Foreman!
They ought to sink it anyway.
I’m curious to know if the Navy thinks that the “collision” with the towed array was an “accident”
That’s how the Russians got ahold of our technology…….snare the towed array, and reverse-engineer it.
LOL! A $70 Dollar price decrease. Whoo Hoo!
Type: Detached Single Family
Status: Active
List Date: 04/22/09
Price: $799,880
Original List Price: $799,950
Location: 2834 VIA CARMEN, San Jose, CA 95124 (map)
Area: 010 - San Jose - Willow Glen
Bedrooms: 3
Bathrooms Full: 2
Approx. Sq. Ft.: 1540
Approx. Lot Size: 7,150.sf
Approx age: 50
MLS#: 80920087
Old MLS# (6 digit): 80920087
Zip 95124 is Cambrian Park, not the more expensive Willow Glen.
Asking $799K. Zestimate $595K.
Obama’s Doctor Knocks ObamaCare
David Whelan, 06.18.09, 05:08 PM EDT
Dr. David Scheiner took care of Obama for 22 years. But they don’t see eye-to-eye on how to fix the health care system.
David Scheiner, an internist based in the Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, has a diverse practice of lower-income adults from the nearby housing projects mixed with famous patients like U.S. Sen. Carol Mosely Braun, the late writer Studs Terkel and, most notably, President Barack Obama.
Scheiner, 71, was Obama’s doctor from 1987 until he entered the White House; he vouched for the then-candidate’s “excellent health” in a letter last year. He’s still an enthusiastic Obama supporter, but he worries about whether the health care legislation currently making its way through Congress will actually do any good, particularly for doctors like himself who practice general medicine. “I’m not sure he really understands what we face in primary care,” Scheiner says.
Scheiner takes a few other shots too. Looking at Obama’s team of health advisors, Scheiner doesn’t see anyone who’s actually in the trenches. “I have a suspicion they pick people from the top echelon of medicine, people who write about it but haven’t been struggling in it,” he says.
Scheiner is critical of Obama’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary–Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who used to work as the chief lobbyist for her state’s trial lawyers association.
“He doesn’t see all the pain, it’s so tragic out here,” he says. “Obama’s wonderful, but on this one I’m not sure if he’s getting the right input.”
What should the president be focused on? Scheiner thinks that a good health reform would be “Medicare for all,” a single-payer system where the government would cover everyone and pay for it by cutting out waste in the system. “A neurosurgeon gets paid $20,000 for cutting into the neck of my patient. Have him get paid $1 million a year instead of $2 million or $3 million. He won’t starve,” Scheiner says.
The President should listen to his long-time doctor on this issue. Of course the insurance lobby would never go quietly into single-payer health care, and having a government-run program as the only option would be too drastic a step. All the big kahunas who don’t actually practice medicine should not be the only voices in reforming health care, or it will end up like the financial reform effort: DOA.
I have a suspicion they pick people from the top echelon of medicine, people who write about it but haven’t been struggling in it Only 3 people have ever understood how to pay for national health care. One forgot, one went insane, and the third killed himself.
From the Agora5.
Ready to be a part of debt history? You’re going to be soon… like it or not.
The U.S. government announced yesterday it will auction a record $104 billion in debt next week. Despite obvious warning signs that the world has had its fill of American paper, the Treasury will forge ahead: $40 billion in 2-years Tuesday, $37 billion in 5-year notes Wednesday and $27 billion in 7-year garbage on Thursday.
They must “get it.” Last week’s sharp rise in 10-year yields was as sure a sign as any that investors everywhere are getting cold feet. A prudent government would take a break… let things cool off. But there’s no rest for Uncle Sam, or his Treasury. They’ve got the mother of all Ponzi schemes to run:
The government chalked up a $189 billion budget deficit last month alone, another record and the eight-straight monthly deficit. We suspect they’d love to take a break from force-feeding the market notes and bonds, but they can’t… the Treasury will have to auction $2 trillion in debt this year just to keep the lights on.
I’m sure that day will arrive.
Hang tough.
Looking for a job can cause more wear and tear than many realize.
Prev. for drummin…
Don’t know why it landed down here.
does the census check with IRS?
i pay tax but lot’s don’t.
Looking for a job can cause more wear and tear than many realize
Thanks, milkcrate. It’s funny how one can take different perspectives. It sucks not having opportunities to even apply for, but I think getting ‘rejected’ is worse. One is a function of the environment. The other is ultimately a function of me. Regardless, ‘actively’ searching does take a lot of energy and effort. Then there’s fighting with the unemployment agency, the insurance company, etc etc.
Don’t take the rejection personally. Lots of companies have hundreds of people applying for a single job, even in engineering fields. It’s impossible to understand someone’s long term potential in a couple of 1/2 hour interviews. Someone could walk in with just the right buzzwords on the resume and that is enough to get a harried manager’s attention.
I’ve hired a lot of people. I’ve made a ton of mistakes by bringing in the wrong people. It is incredibly difficult to pick the right candidate for a long term position when you just don’t have the right amount of time to give to the effort (possible because your babysitting all of the knuckleheads you’ve hired in the past).
Good luck. There for but the grace of God…
Jon -
In your experience, what have you determined that you do incorrectly re: hiring? Have your mistakes been related to focusing on credentials, personalities (i.e., “fit”), with pegging candidates to certain niche/immediate need roles or something else?
After 20 years in corporate USA, my take is that too many hiring agents spend too little time examining a candidate’s critical thinking ability.
Drumminj and I (others, too) may benefit from your reply.
Thanks in advance.
will they ask how much my rent is?
Dog and pony show…
House targets Fed in Bank of America probe
House subpoenas documents that could shed light on Fed role in Bank of America merger
Anne Flaherty, Associated Press Writer
On Friday June 19, 2009, 1:57 pm EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — A House panel has subpoenaed documents that lawmakers say could shed new light on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s role in Bank of America’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch.
The subpoena comes ahead of a hearing next week in which Bernanke is scheduled to testify.
Lawmakers have accused Bernanke and President George W. Bush’s treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, of pressuring Bank of America Corp.’s chief executive, Kenneth Lewis, into buying Merrill Lynch & Co. and urging him to keep quiet about Merrill’s financial problems.
Failing to divulge that information would have violated Lewis’ fiduciary duty to the bank’s shareholders.
I call it Grand Kabuki Dance; same idea…
Someone just emailed me this. Thought you guys would like it…
A STIMULUS STORY
It is the month of August, on the shores of the Black Sea. It is raining, and the little town looks totally deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody is living on credit.
Suddenly, a rich tourist comes to town. He enters the only hotel, lays a 100 Euro note on the reception counter and goes to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one.
The hotel proprietor takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the butcher.
The Butcher takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the local pig farmer.
The pig farmer takes the 100 Euro note, and runs to pay his debt to the supplier of his feed and fuel.
The supplier of feed and fuel takes the 100 Euro note and runs to pay his debt to the town’s prostitute that in these hard times, gave her “services” on credit.
The hooker runs to the hotel, and pays off her debt with the 100 Euro note to the hotel proprietor to pay for the rooms that she rented when she brought her clients there.
The hotel proprietor then lays the 100 Euro note back on the counter so that the rich tourist will not suspect anything.
At that moment, the rich tourist comes down after inspecting the room and takes his 100 Euro note, after saying that he did not like any of the rooms, and leaves town. DAMN!
No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now without debt, and looks to the future with a lot of optimism.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States and the State of California are both doing business today!
Cute story.
Unfortunately not how it works, but cute. Debt tends to not be circular like that. E.g. we owe the Chinese $760 Billion, the Japanese $690 billion, etc. - but no one owes us anything .
(Or if any - not nearly the $3.3 Trillion total we owe the rest of the world).
Incidentally the same story can be used with wages and cash instead of debt.
- Hotel owner buys $100 of meat from the butcher
- Butcher buys $100 of pigs from the pig farmer
- Pig farmer buys $100 of feed and fuel
- Feed guys buys $100 of services from the prostitute, at the hotel
- Prostitute pays $100 to the hotel owner for usage
The interesting thing is that we’ve got a robust economy - $500 worth of GDP (actual goods and services provided), but no new money was actually created in the process, nor was any debt or credit used.
That illustrates that the economy is actually very much not dependent upon debt or the size of the money supply. What it’s dependent upon is the “velocity” of the existing money supply. Something that I’ve seen mentioned occasionally, but IMO not emphasized nearly enough.
Yes, except there are two different kinds of debt. Transfer debt - as in the story, and fractional reserve debt issued by the commercial banks.
its the reserve debt that is causing the issues today.
–w
Property tycoon loses his £21m home in Britain’s biggest ever repossession…
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 5:27 PM on 15th June 2009
A property tycoon has had his multi-million pound home taken off him in what is thought to be Britain’s biggest ever repossession.
Cevdet Caner bought the seven-bedroom home in Mayfair, London two years ago for £16million and spent £5million refurbishing it.
But last week bailiffs took the house after his Monaco-based property investment company Level One went into administration with debts of £1.2billion after it was badly hit in the economic slump.
The firm, which acquires low-cost homes and social housing Germany, collapsed last year and the house was put on the market in December, but did not sell.
However Mr Caner, who moved out of the house two weeks ago, claims he tried to prevent the repossession by offering to repay lenders Credit Suisse what he owed them but that they refused to accept his money.
He said: ‘The house was bought with a £16million mortgage.
‘I have offered to repay this amount back - most recently, through my lawyers, three weeks ago, but the lenders refused.
‘Instead they put the company into receivership, sent in bailiffs to repossess it and have not instructed agents to find a buyer.
Cevdet Caner
Cevdet Caner was CEO of Level One investment company which collapsed last year
‘I can’t understand why they are doing this, other than to humiliate me and damange my reputation.’
Hamptons International, joint agent for the house with Sotheby’s, will market the house this week for £20million.
If the house sells for more than £16million, than the money will be refunded to Mr Caner.
And if it sells for £21million or more than he will make a profit.
He said he will be keeping a ‘very close eye’ to ensure the lenders do not try to undersell the property.
So, did I waste water this morning? I sprayed the oleander in the back yard, so its red blossoms would continue to attract hummingbirds; the blue spruce, which has no business growing in the Valley but I keep it going nevertheless; a few patches of lilies I transplanted a few years ago that are covering a hillside where English ivy once had its way with the earth until I ripped most of it up with my gloved, bare hands; the azaleas, which don’t get full sun but wither even with 10-minute timed irrigation sprays; two watermelon plants my kiddo and I are growing from seeds; two potted cherry tomato plants that are growing great guns and fruiting in the ceaseless sun; some tender morning glory vines that were planted late from seeds, which have crimson flowers already; a rose bush that I thought was a blackberry plant when I moved it from one locale in the yard to a sunnier spot; and a little (not so little really) place of mint, which dries quickly and really is in the wrong place. In fact, many of these are in the “wrong” place, as far as growing natives goes.
I thought of this today as I learned that our Governor was going to visit Mendota, a thirsty hamlet west of here which is home to huge farms and small people who work for them. It’s no secret that court decisions, federal water policies, rights of appropriation and a host of factors are, this time, slowly closing the spigot to much of the commercial irrigation there. Usually, growers can get water allotments they need. And they don’t often pay the true cost of delivery with sweetheart contracts with the feds. But fate is catching up to them. They can influence Congress, but not so much appellate courts, and to a lesser extent, Nature. (There has been money spent on seeding the clouds to make it rain around the Kings River.)
I don’t know if the governor made it to his rural spot or what he could do about it anyway. I do know that with “development” stopped (prison building passes for development), and with thousands of fallow acres of land, and with sheriff’s cutbacks, and with the Border Patrol not canvassing the region, this is not a place where I would want to be after dark.
Yet, I water all my plants.
So I am a bit conflicted.
HOUSTON (AP) — Even with crude prices on the rise, three of the biggest oilfield services companies say they’ve cut more jobs as they adjust to sluggish exploration and drilling activity.
So oil is high but no one wants to drill for it. Hmmm?????
After all the recent rain here (Northern Colorado) we were told that there is no drought this year and that the resevoirs are full.
i just got a questionnaire from LL and a water ration warning!
Foreclosure numbers don’t add up
When the most frequently quoted source of foreclosure information released its April statistics, it estimated that 3,746 properties in metro Atlanta’s five core counties had been slapped with foreclosure sale notices.
But a review of local legal advertisements – the only official source of Georgia foreclosure information – suggested a decidedly different number for April, with 7,462 properties slated for auction on the courthouse steps.
What’s the right number? That’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer.
At a time when an explosion in the number of distressed mortgage loans has emerged as the most pressing economic issue in decades, there is no official government source for foreclosure statistics.
Private companies across the country tabulate statistics and produce estimates of national and local foreclosure trends. The best known among these is RealtyTrac. The California-based company, the source of the April statistics for Atlanta, has repeatedly faced questions about the accuracy of its data.
The lack of solid foreclosure information makes it difficult for policy makers to fashion solutions that make sense. Even now, Congress is debating dramatic changes to laws that govern mortgage lending without the benefit of detailed data about foreclosures.
The federal government does not collect that information. Neither does the state of Georgia.
“We know surprisingly little about this phenomenon, which is affecting virtually every community and every neighborhood,” said Frank Alexander, a professor at Emory University’s law school who is an expert in real estate law…
Atlanta is a big metro area. Not sure how this figure meshes with the numbers in this article, but a search within 35 miles of Atlanta on ForeclosureTown dot com yielded the following:
(Displaying 1 - 20 of 28387 Results)
For comparison, I did the same search (entered city name, searched over 35 mile radius) for a few well-known cities in the USA:
San Diego (Displaying 1 - 20 of 13,360 Results)
Los Angeles (Displaying 1 - 20 of 40,543 Results)
San Francisco (Displaying 1 - 20 of 7,086 Results)
Portland, OR (Displaying 1 - 20 of 9,715 Results)
Seattle, WA (Displaying 1 - 20 of 9,029 Results)
Spokane, WA (Displaying 1 - 20 of 3,085 Results)
Reno, NV (Displaying 1 - 20 of 6,313 Results)
Las Vegas, NV (Displaying 1 - 20 of 31,399 Results)
Salt Lake City, UT (Displaying 1 - 20 of 6,032 Results)
St. Louis, MO (Displaying 1 - 20 of 28,935 Results)
Chicago, IL (Displaying 1 - 20 of 79,111 Results)
Minneapolis, MN (Displaying 1 - 20 of 19,006 Results)
Detroit, MI (Displaying 1 - 20 of 45,957 Results)
Cleveland, OH (Displaying 1 - 20 of 25,341 Results)
New York, NY (Displaying 1 - 20 of 31,483 Results)
Miami, FL (Displaying 1 - 20 of 28,136 Results)
Washington, DC (Displaying 1 - 20 of 31,922 Results)
Houston, TX (Displaying 1 - 20 of 47,235 Results)
Conclusion: Either the data is not randomly selected, or Chicago has everyone else beat by a long shot, with Houston, then Detroit in distant second and third positions…
damn. I’m moving to hot ‘lanta