The Housing Bubble

I see this as a delevering of households at the expense of government leverage (your *). Overall, this is a good thing, perhaps not on an overall balance sheet basis, but on a cost of capital basis.

Pay down credit card debt by borrowing long term from other people at 4-5%. Seems like we are refinancing and saving 15%!

In my case, I have increased my “savings”, because there is a 50-50 chance that I will be unemployed by the end of the year. And if I’m kicked to the curb, there’s a better than 50-50 chance that I’ll be out of work for a year or more.

No pay raises that I have heard about.
No savings that I have heard about either, save one person who has always saved the max for 401k. I know many who are either getting roomates, or looking to downsize the rental they are in.

I also dont’ see more ppl shopping. Just the necessities.

On the flip side of the coin, when you’re as rich and famous as MJ was, you can avoid convictions through discrete ‘paydays’ and so forth. O.J. was aquitted. TONS of rich white dudes have avoided consequences they otherwise would have to face. If MJ had been white, I bet it wouldn’t have even gotten to court.

I certainly agree with a lot of what you say. I just thought it fair to point out that Jackson was never convicted of molesting kids, and one could argue, after looking at the facts that are available, that he deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Because in GM’s case, he was discarding it in favor of a Union, not for the taxpayers.

You guys are acting like the union’s stake in a government “supervised” car company is some kind of asset.

At this point, Chrysler may have a better future than GM.

Weren’t the bondholders getting a premium because there was a chance that GM would default?

Anyone with a lick of sense would have realized that if the US Government baled out the parisitic Bankers, there was NO WAY that they were going to let 10-15% of the US labor force go down the tubes with the automakers and their attached industries.

And when the government gets involved, common sense gets thrown right out the window, along with the so-called rulebook.

DId anyone hear yesterday’s NPR Marketplace segment on folks going cold turkey on their credit cards? I probably haven’t charged anything in about 4 months, and use a debit card for convenience.

The only reason for a credit card is to protect your debit card and for convenience.

Why you ask? If you use that little Visa logo on your debit card to it’s full potential (i.e. use debit card as a credit card) then someone with your number can empty your bank account.

With a credit card you have charges you can dispute the charges if someone has fraudulently used it. With a debit card you are trying to get your money back.

In the end you win either way. Just scarier trying to get your money refunded vs. disputing a charge.

Just remember, in history..every “great” Empire has fallen…

“Just remember, in history..every “great” Empire has fallen…”

Timberrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Just remember that tomorrow is yesterday tomorrow, and that nothing is forever.

Including the USA, and you and I.

Jack

Yeah that’s what I was implying by my “politically - no so” part. As long as the empire is building and/or stable - usually they’re profitable. That will most likely include the U.S./British oil empire BTW, but also see British 1700’s example, and also Holland, France, Portugal, Spain etc. from the same timeframe, and past examples of Romans, Greeks, Chinese etc.

It’s after the empire becomes unstable, requiring war to attempt to maintain it, that it becomes net negative. But was I was including that under the “war” part, not the “empire” part - though it’s really both; the two overlap.

Yeah that’s what I was implying by my “politically - no so” part.

Ah, gotcha. By politically I thought you meant bureaucratizing and legislating an empire on the domestic front. We were saying the same thing, however.

On the so-called “downward side of the curve” the British did manage to squeeze millions of men out of their turnips to fight on their behalf for the so-called “world war”. The “downward side of the curve” included at least one major famine caused by what can be charitably characterized as “negligence” by the turnip juicers. Coincidentally, that famine happened at the same time as war efforts were in full swing and resources from all colonies were being misappropriated towards this end.

So yes, the British benefited from “downward side of the curve” just as much as Goldman does when the stock market moves downwards.

Unfortunately much of what we call “diplomacy” consists of promising aid, trade favoritism & loans to various regimes.

Capturing a tin mine can improve your balance sheet. But there’s no inherrent reason that running a tin mine in a foreign country should any more efficient than in one’s own. Ditto farms, plantations, tax receipts etc.

Funny you should mention tin mines, Jim.

Part of my family hails from County Cornwall, which is way out there in Britain’s wild west. Back in the 1800s, when the Empire was kickin’ right along, the Cornish tin mining industry was too.

Then the Empire started importing cheaper tin from Malaysia. And that doomed Cornish tin mining.

Thousands of Cousin Jacks and Jennies left to seek their futures elsewhere. They had to. According to one of my elderly relatives, people were starving to death.

These days, Cornwall is a major holiday destination. Among the main attractions are the ruins of the tin mines. They’re quite picturesque. People come from all over the world to see them.

But the Cornish economy is but a shadow of its former self. County Cornwall is now one of England’s poorest.

And of course there was a special court system with Stannary courts for tin miners.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stannary_Courts_and_Parliaments

!!

DinOR,

Just the usual right-wing talking points.

oxide,

Left OR Right, why be so ‘cryptic’? ( Evidently I’m a “newbie” ) ?

I hope everyone recalls that the savings rate is calculated as the (net income - net expenditures) / (net income). Paying down debt counts as savings, even though it is just offsetting past savings.

Furthermore, in an period of declining salaries and increasing unemployment, it takes more “savings” too offset previous “spending”.

CTRL + Print Screen

Paste to your favorite picture editor and save it. A fun trick is to do this to an unsuspecting cohort’s desktop and open the picture on their screen… they will get irritated when they can’t open anything!

Hey, DinOR, don’t hate! They could be busy Ducks!!

And if the trucks are full of supplies, perhaps that’s because the supplies aren’t being installed anywhere….

sleepless,

Have it your… way! You know, when you walk to work and then have only to glance out your off. window, you get a different perspective than you did when you were a long-range commuter?

I’m simply agog at the “bustling” activity? Granted, much of it is probably replacing a door or minor addition but ‘that’ is more what these guys were actually adept at?

Can’t speak for others but I never made the assumption that my Assoc. from SIU in any way qualified me to be a “developer”! ( Which is why I stick to my knitting, I suppose? )

LOL!

typo, probably “Playstation” i.e. Sony Playstation

What’s a “GameStation”? ) Anybody..?

I believe that its a fictional game console featured in a cartoon show about 5 teen super heroes.

Hee, hee, well, you’re all entirely right. I’m just so freakin’ old I evidently know the proper name for the product. We don’t own one and probably never will. I’m so old, I played D & D out of books.

Ahm not on unemployment, luckily.

“and stay there”

+1

Assuming any of it is legit, just having a temp. knee-jerk reaction to the worst financial crisis in human history won’t cut it!

Start liking it America!

Investments aren’t savings, yo.

Hence,

A house is not an investment which equals not saving.

I remember Reagan raising taxes. My paycheck suddenly didn’t go very far and wages didn’t keep up.

Americans work more hours than anyone else in the INDUSTRIALIZED world, yet our “productivity” is only a few percentage points higher. So little it really doesn’t make any difference… except to the banks.

And WT Economist, you’re right. There are only so many hours in the day and the week and wages haven’t been keeping up with real inflation for decades.

I have a graph of that stat BTW - I’ll have to post it later though. It’s from BEA. You could probably google “personal savings rate” and find it.

Here’s a link : http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/data/PSAVERT.txt

According to this, we dropped below 5% back in 1995 and never looked back. Before 1994, we’d never dipped below 5%. It looks like we bounced around between 6 and 10 since ‘59 and only in the last decade and a half have we completely lost our minds.

Thanks for that link sfbb - I didn’t know that was in the FRED data actually.

Here’s a link to the corresponding graph:

Personal Savings Rate

packman,

Your link is way more useful!

Exactly Jon.

“Though I am not aware of a better way of reducing carbon emissions. Any ideas?”

Stop Breathing? Not sure.

*not in Oregon and our 6 weeks of Summer.

Strangely enough, the biggest user of solar panels worldwide is Germany.

Having lived through many Northern European summers, I can attest to the lack of direct sunlight up above 50 degrees lat. We live like Morlocks up there

And GH - totally agree with you about the solar panel thing - the govts pumping in a few billion to ‘weatherize’ housing, why not take the time to put a few solar panels up at the same time?

It may not be the solution for business and industry, but its feasible to make enough power for residences to power some (if not all) of their own power.

Oh, and Kudlow hates the Climate Bill - which gives me hope that it might have some legs after all…

speedingpullet,

I have a friend that retired up toward the OR Dalles. One of the best ME’s “I” have ever met. He’s gone off-grid w/ a windmill, solar etc. and it’s… a constant pain.

True, his MIL lives w/ them and she can’t ’stand’ anything over 70 so he’s running Central AIR 24/7 for months, but there’s lots of upkeep and “brown-outs”. Batteries need to be replaced etc. You’re basically starting a utility company for (1).

I think if you’re going to get serious about it, you just have to use a whole different yardstick to measure your standard of living?

I understand what you are saying. Several years ago we built a house out in a very rural area. We installed two turbines, primary and back-up, solar hot water, and PE panels. The reason for doing it was because it was cheaper than the cost of commercial power due to the distance to the commercial power. In our case we needed to buy and bury two miles of service line. It worked fine, but you had to really be aware of power usage. Some mornings we had to decide between coffee or toast. You quickly become aware of the phantom power loads caused by modern appliances. Of coarse, the size of the system is based on what you can afford. What people don’t understand is that these systems require constant, costly maintenance. If you can’t climb a tower or do your own electrical work don’t attempt it.

What is geo themal not pushed more ? It’s using the earth as a heat pump. Ground down below the frost lines is a constant 50 degrees year round. Has been used in commercial industrial applications for about 50 years.

Anon in DC,

Especially in my target area of Klamath Falls, OR. Most of the public bldgs. and numerous homes are heated by geo. I’m looking at “heated slab” designs ( among several )

crash1,

I’ve never been out to my buddy’s home, but he’s pretty good at describing the challenges. Since I’m thinking “hay bale” I understand heating ( even in chilly S. OR ) isn’t the issue. Yet I’m willing to consider some fairly extreme measures to get out from under the utility companies. Certainly on a 2nd home. Just what I ‘need’, a SECOND set of bills!

One of the main reasons that I got out of the residential solar business last year was that after a decade or so of being a big proponent, the engineer in me realized that it just doesn’t make much sense at the residential level. Yeah, you can do it easy enough these days, but when you look at the life cycle costs very few residential solar systems will ever achieve a real energy payback.

Instead, put the solar panels on large commercial roofs where there’s enough energy production to justify the monitoring and maintenance, or put them on large utility structures designed to last 100 years. Putting dozens of extra holes in residential roofs that need replacement every 15-25 years, for a trickle of power, isn’t a good idea.

DinOR and Crash1 - I totally understand what you’re saying - going totally ‘off grid’ does require a different way of thinking, and if you’re not willing to invest in the skill-set to make it work, then its probably more hassle than getting the utility guys to come and dig the trench.

What I was suggesting - by my now-apparent-to-me throwaway line was something a little less hardcore.

A LOT of energy is wasted by SFRs for a variety of reasons - largely due (at least here in sunny SoCal) to there being no insulation in the houses, old water heaters, no double-pane windows, lack of provision for separating ‘grey’ water from sewage for watering yards etc…
In addition to bringing these paces up to scratch insulation-wise, it would be feasible to place solar panels on some of the roofs.

No, it wouldn’t make the properties totally ‘energy free’, but allowing SFRs to make a small amount of energy from the roof panels during the day, will in some small way take the load off of the energy plants for the area.

Even if its just heating the pool, or providing enough energy for a dishwasher cycle or a load of laundry - a lot of small measures will add up to less demand from the source. Any easing of pressure on the utility plants will have some effect, even of its small and disparate.

The real ‘problem’ of course is that there’s still almost no decent technology for storage - personally I’d love to be able to recharge my car overnight from solar panels on my garage/carport. But, unless there’s a way of storing the energy after the sun has gone down, then its not really practical.

Personally, I’m looking to make any house I buy as ‘energy free’ as I possibly can, but until good - and practical - batteries are also included in the solar ‘package’, its going to be hard to convince yer average suburbanite that solar is the only way to go. Even here in the state with 250+ sunny days a year.

So, I sound slightly bi-polar on solar (har har), but I think its a fundamentally good idea for us all here in the southern West Coast - but a lot more innovation and research into the ancilliary aspects needs to be made.

speedingpullet,

( Or should we say “Bi-Solar” ) ?

My sentiments exactly. I recently had an energy audit from PGE after complaining loudly about my “estimated” bill.

The guy WAS an expert and pointed out a NUMBER of things I could be doing better! For instance, we have (2) cordless phones. Just think about it. Good thing they’re “cordless” ( otherwise I’d have a tangled mess )

We also have a seperate answering machine!? He gave me mad props for not having a BigScreen TV but pointed to a number of appliances we seldom use but are constantly plugged in w/ LED’s etc. Also pointed to the clock on the stove… PLUS a clock 18″ away on the microwave! Lots of improvements left to go!

For household use, you need costs to be about 1/4 of what they are now & produce about double the power. That may actually be achievable in 10 - 15 years with some of the new technologies by Nanosolar and similar competitors. But its definitely a loser today.

A LOT of energy is wasted by SFRs for a variety of reasons - largely due (at least here in sunny SoCal) to there being no insulation in the houses, old water heaters, no double-pane windows, lack of provision for separating ‘grey’ water from sewage for watering yards etc…

After many years as a solar installer in NoCal, my brother-in-law switched gears — or switched emphasis — and became a seeker of energy inefficiencies.

He decreases energy consumption not by choosing green technology per se (though he will use it if it makes sense for any particular building), but by ferreting out as much waste as possible in the system. He currently works for a large midwestern university, and has saved them millions of dollars with his approach so far.

What the heck happened to nuclear power?

I was once against this, now I feel it’s an option that should be seriously considered.

For me the goal should be to get us out of the Middle East and away from the oil.

Nuclear is good on paper, but it does have the problem of what to do with the waster afterward.
Yucca Mountain, even if the politics behind it were more favourable, is already pretty much ‘reserved’. They’d have to start building a new silo for all the new waste, as all of the existing waste will just about fit into YM.

Plus, you have the problem of getting it from A to B - using our crumbling infrastructure.
Imagine if that train derailment in DC last week had had radioactive cannisters on board? Or 18-wheeler carrying nuclear waste causes a pileup in the outskirts of Philly?

I’ll be ‘for’ more nuclear if they can guarantee a 100% safe way of flying the waste into the sun. That’s pretty much the only good place for it.
But shuttles fail, trains derail and trucks crash occasionally - if humans have a hand in it, at some point something will go wrong, despite all the failsafes.

I personally think the money is better spent on updating our energy grid and working on new ways to provide energy from renewables.

There’s no 100% way to do anything with precision, you realize. Even dropping a quarter onto an ‘x’ in the ground can be disrupted by gust of wind. Dumping the coal waste into the air seems fairly irresponsible as well. You have to pick your poisons (literally) with a lot of these things.

*Note : I’m not saying Nuclear is the only way to go or anything. I’m just saying demanding 100% safety from anything is not feasible, and we’re already polluting like crazy for our current energy consumption.

You can reprocess the used nuclear material and break it down into strontium and cesium which have half-lives in decades instead of centuries. Keep the material on-site and then dispose of it once it’s less radioactive.

Yes, ah…Strontium…..how I love you, in my bones….

I get your point, and a fair few of the nuclear power plants we have already do keep it on site for the above reasons.

I’m just saying that - rather than investing years, and billions, into a technology that’s already showed its flaws to us in the 20th century - we would be better off spending money on something new that doesn’t have the same aftereffects as either coal or nuclear.

Unless we throw out any environmental laws we already have and do like China does, by throwing up a new coal-powered plant a month, then this would seem to be the right time to re-think our energy sources and do something different.

Both nuclear and coal stations require a long time to plan and build, and if we’re looking 10, 20, 30 years down the road, rather than trying to supply our immediate needs, then I would still rather they spent all that time and money on good quality cheap solar, inexpensive batteries and re-gigging the grid to make it more efficient.

I’m not a tree-hugger by any means,I use my AC and have a flat screen TV and have all the creature comforts I could want - but I’d still like to have my power produced in a sustainable way.

Back to burning logs for fuel it is!

Seriously, with aggressive reforestation to recapture the hydrocarbons, it’s Solar without all the fancy high tech stuff!

Okay, so it’s sustainable, but not very scalable. Or portable. Try stuffing your gastank with twigs.

LOL - my car’s already made of spit and baling wire, so a few twigs might actually help some.

You can use them to plug holes in fuel lines and so forth…

GH,

I’ve been looking for property in So. Oregon to do just that. It’s been explained to me that I need a “solar survey” done first to see it it’s even a prop. that’s feasible.

Another consideration has been… ( for the interim ) going propane. LOTS of people do it there and as long as I’m *not contributing to the ongoing commitment of funding our retired PGE’s CEO $765,000 a YEAR retirement than I’ll have to content myself w/ that.

“China and India do not have all the money; we do”.

Really? Well if you consider all the debt all the money, then you are correct, other wise you have it bassackwards.

Thanks, wmbz. That was real mature of you.

If I owe a man $10000 he may be in the drivers seat
If I owe him $12,000,000,000,000,000 the car is flying down the road at 200mph, the windows are blacked out and the brakes aren’t working.

Packman:

You do realize that we are in charge of our own trade agreements, right? There’s no reason we can’t do exactly what you’re proposing.

That’s backdoor “protectionism.” Might not be a bad idea, but try to get it through Congress.

Agree with you packman - it would also be an under-the-counter way of getting China and India to go some way to looking to their own methods of production.

Though, oxide has a point - any hint of protectionsim is going to cause bellows of protest.

Anyway, this whole conversation is making my head hurt- I’m going to go to my favourite yarn stores’ ‘cash only, going out of business due to the recession’ blowout sale to get some yarn to make another wedding blanket for upcoming nuptuals in september. Maybe if people stopped getting married, I could actually use the time to make and sell stuff, rather than doing it for free…

Cable news seems to have misplaced all other news other than MJ karking it, and I don’t think I can stand another repeat of “Thriler”….

That’s backdoor “protectionism.” Might not be a bad idea, but try to get it through Congress.

Yep - that’s exactly why we don’t do it.

This to me shows that environmentalists either:

A) Just don’t think about things like this - that are immensely important, or
B) Are really only interested in saving the environment when it doesn’t conflict with their interest of getting paid by whoever.

P.S. the same principle applies to human rights, including such things as minimum wage etc. E.g. people who advocate minimum wage somehow conveniently ignore the fact that 99% of our stuff is now made by people who make far less than minimum wage. Oh and we get extensive product safety issues and a wrecked economy to boot.

Free trade starts with a level playing field.

My experience has been that construction industry contractors are just like dentists/orthodontists. Any work that you have had done previously is crap, that all needs to be redone to the new guy’s standards.
Wow. An old dentist of mine even warned me about that. The last bit of advice he gave me before he retired was, “Some dentists will tell you to have all your old work replaced by new work. If it’s not causing a problem, it doesn’t need to be replaced.”

With all due respect to your dad……..

Not my dad!

X-Philly’s dad?

+10
That’s always the smart ass response. In fact one jackass “meteorologist” on the weather channel, can’t remember her name( Heiny something) wanted those that disagreed with the global warming scam,to have their credentials pulled. Great open minded group! As their supreme leader instructed, the debate is closed! LOL!

I am a software engineer. Not a climatologist. My understanding of the situation is that essentially all of the folks who have the credentials to weigh in on the subject agree that the planet is warming. However, there is somewhat less agreement that humans are the cause of the warming and even less agreement that we can do anything to stop it if we are.

However, when I say “less agreement” I still understand that we are talking about the vast majority of scientists in this area. I also understand that no one has been able to generate a test that shows that the theory of human caused global warming is false.

Given the above, I have to make a decision on whom to trust on this issue. The vast majority of scientists in this area? Or a bunch of guys on various blogs, and various scientists who work for petroleum companies?

My trust will go to the former. Though I will maintain a healthy amount of skepticism and look forward to those scientists with opposing views finding testable theories that might lead to other conclusions.

In the meantime, I am willing to pay higher costs in order to hopefully mitigate the consequences if the current theories are true. I understand that 6 billion human beings have never lived on this planet when it is this hot, and getting hotter. It is possible that at higher temperatures the planet cannot support that population. I would not want to be in the non-supported category.

Good thing you’re just a software engineer.

I cringe at the notion that someone accepts something as true unless it is proven false. That’s what passes as “fact” these days? Funny - the thinking process deemed unacceptable to the typical liberal (Bush and WMDs) now is totally acceptable because it fits their view of the world.

Used car salesmen adore people with that sort of rationalization process. As do politicians.

For the record, the creator of The Weather Channel - John Coleman - believes global warming to be a fraud.

I have a science degree. I saw the data when I took physical geography. Then I saw some more data when I took ecology. Then I saw some more data later when I read a paper. And another paper.

There is a scientific consensus on this one.

“There is a scientific consensus on this one”.

The jury is still out, but nice try.

Sorry wmbz - pretty much the whole scientific community is in agreement about Climate Change.

I have no idea what ‘jury’ you’re referring to. You may not be a ‘believer’ but like religion, that’s a matter of faith, not science.

Put it this way - all that coal, oil and natural gas is nature’s ‘carbon sequestration’. The planet’s really good at scrubbing carbon and greenhouse gasses out of the environment and locking it away - in the sea bed, in coal seams, in oil and gas fields, etc.

Left to it own devices, all that stored energy is inert.

So what humans have been doing for the last 150 years or so is extracting all that ’sunny day in the Carboniferous Era’ energy out of its hidey holes and reinfusing it back into the atmosphere and environment.

Its an addition to the planet’s current carbon/greenhouse gas level - because if we hadn’t pulled it out of the ground and burnt it, it would have stayed there.

So, yeah, to a certain extent its a man-made problem - there’s many hypotheses on how much it affects the atmosphere, but there’s little doubt that it is having an effect.

From Wikipedia:

Scientific consensus
A question which frequently arises in popular discussion of climate change is whether there is a scientific consensus. Several scientific organizations have explicitly used the term “consensus” in their statements:

American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2006: “The conclusions in this statement reflect the scientific consensus represented by, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the Joint National Academies’ statement.”[25]

US National Academy of Science: “In the judgment of most climate scientists, Earth’s warming in recent decades has been caused primarily by human activities that have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. … On climate change, [the National Academies’ reports] have assessed consensus findings on the science…”[76]

Joint Science Academies’ statement, 2005: “We recognise the international scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”[77]

Joint Science Academies’ statement, 2001: “The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise IPCC as the world’s most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus.”[78]

American Meteorological Society, 2003: “The nature of science is such that there is rarely total agreement among scientists. Individual scientific statements and papers—the validity of some of which has yet to be assessed adequately—can be exploited in the policy debate and can leave the impression that the scientific community is sharply divided on issues where there is, in reality, a strong scientific consensus…. IPCC assessment reports are prepared at approximately five-year intervals by a large international group of experts who represent the broad range of expertise and perspectives relevant to the issues. The reports strive to reflect a consensus evaluation of the results of the full body of peer-reviewed research…. They provide an analysis of what is known and not known, the degree of consensus, and some indication of the degree of confidence that can be placed on the various statements and conclusions.”[79]

Network of African Science Academies: “A consensus, based on current evidence, now exists within the global scientific community that human activities are the main source of climate change and that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible for driving this change.” [22]

International Union for Quaternary Research, 2008: “INQUA recognizes the international scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”[80]

Australian Coral Reef Society, 2006: “There is almost total consensus among experts that the earth’s climate is changing as a result of the build-up of greenhouse gases…. There is broad scientific consensus that coral reefs are heavily affected by the activities of man and there are significant global influences that can make reefs more vulnerable such as global warming….”[81]

What? She can’t say that!

The debate is closed, or so says someone without ANY credentials and a mammoth ‘carbon’ foot print.

Since the human animal is carbon based, and we inhale and exhale wouldn’t it reduce the evil CO2 if we stopped exhaling?

I can’t think of a single reason to include new-home sales, other than possibly just to have a larger sample size in some podunk town that only has 100 houses.

The value of new homes is implied by the value deltas of existing home sales.

e.g. Home A is new in 2007 and bought for $X, and then sold in 2009 for $Y.

Similar new home B was built in 2007, original asking price was $X but it never sold. Its value is now $Y, based upon the resale value of home A.

Same for things like estimating “underwaterness” of mortgages (e.g. to make a decision whether to mail in the keys or not). If you a house that was built in 2005, and want to know if you’re underwater - you don’t care about the prices that new houses are going for now - you care about direct comparisons - i.e. the price decline of sales in 2005 vs. houses sold now. If the mix has changed, causing the median to rise or fall - that’s irrelevant, because your home size has not changed.

FWIW - one reason to use median data (including new homes) is just because there isn’t any existing published data on resales. Actually this is true for CA as a whole - Case/Shiller doesn’t publish that. However that doesn’t validate the CAR data. The CAR data at at least *some* data whereas otherwise there wouldn’t be any. Though even in CA’s case I think the sum of the FHFA data for the CA metropolitan areas (similar method to C/S, but more complete) would be better.

Because one doesn’t need to have monolithic opinions on a subject.

One can love Wagner’s music and deplore his views at the same time. They are not related.

One can recognize the genius of Einstein while remembering that he said some pretty asinine things about quantum mechanics.

And so on and so forth …

Whatever the man’s flaws, he definitely had a gift for music.

I don’t think that Einstein’s opinions about quantum mechanics are on quite the same level as Michael Jackson’s molesting little boys. Whom are you kidding ?

If he was so great at music, why didn’t he write “Love Shack?” Huh? Answer me that!

And I’d argue that the media’s attention to his death has been pretty monotonous… loss of a great entertainer… blah blah blah. I guess if Nixon can get a death induced white-wash, so can Michael. (Not that he didn’t try a little white-washing while alive! Take that however you want.)

As to your point, I’m relatively sure the odds of him molesting another kid were higher than the odds of him releasing another hit song, so all in all a net benefit to society.

Am I done being a jerk yet? I am? Okay. Done for now.

What goes “plop, plop, fizz, fizz”?

Twins in an acid bath.

What goes “clop, clop, bang!, bang!”
An Amish drive-by shooting.

“Because one doesn’t need to have monolithic opinions on a subject.”

I know, I hate his music, too.

Hee-hee, hoo-hoo

I liked his music when he was a little black kid singing with his brothers.

Since Michael Jackson was 90% plastic, they are going to melt him down and turn him in to Legos so children can play with him for a change.

And risk getting parts of him stuck in bits of the children? WHY DO YOU WANT TO PERPETUATE THE CYCLE!

Note : I got a lego stuck in my nose as a child. True story. Had to go to the emergency room as my dad couldn’t reach it with the needle-nose pliers.

It was rumored his Nose was high tech plastic and held on with magnets

I’ll bet your dad fixed almost everything with duct tape ! We called my Dad’s plumbing fixes “wrap jobs”.

Electrical tape for my dad. He rewired our entire built-in-1901 house. Then, when it was time to sell we paid an electrician to fix it.

“It was rumored his Nose was high tech plastic and held on with magnets”

This is not a joke, but I wondered if it stayed on through CPR.

I wonder if his whole face did. He was getting pretty crypt-keepery towards the end.

The absenteeism rates are the same.

Then frame your questions around English skills. How many of these low income people can speak or argue without using any 4 letter words?

Proper communication skills have been neglected in our schools and of course in our music.

I really don’t think MJ would be too successful today, because he was not ghetto.

Hey Shwaty i got the peterone and my 2 step it’s on and im getting hot in here, so come ride with me and smell the herbs.

So now we are comparing Michael Jackson to Hitler? What are you on? It must be pretty powerful.

BTW, admit it. You ARE a Republican, right? You guys are haters. Period.

Perhaps you never owned a bug

Well, would you let your brother, son, or young cousing sleep in his bed ? I doubt it.

sorry - cousing = cousin. Long week, and more to come tomorrow.

Again he was never found guilty of anything. Honestly, I think years of abuse growing up and being the super star he was left him as a child. There is a good chance he really did like children, and not in the wrong way.

He was different, but I refuse to attack the guy the day after he died. I wouldn’t let my kid sleep in your bed either. What is your point?

Like that’s a large amount? (hidden smirk)

When have you?

Never.