Bits Bucket For July 21, 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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Name:Ben Jones
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Okay…. who needs coffee? I have a fresh pot here.
Got a temp pot at Wally World to fill the gap until Macy’s big sale later this month…a note here
about coffee cups..we use double walled glass cups
that are the absolute best for size, weight, and the
ability to keep the coffee warm, cost is a bit high but then the best usually is. I can see Oly girl using
them, she’s unusually bright even if she plays with
wood nymphs running through the forest…
‘.we use double walled glass cups’
where do you buy them and do they microwave without burning your mouth and hand afterwards.
Wood nymphs are great. Even a few wouldn’t nymphs could be OK too.
wood nymphs running through the forest
Been in afghan too long, missing the wife…
Aint gonna tell you what went through MY head when I read that…
Can I have the grounds bub?
coffee eater!
You’ll have to work that out with alpha.
I don’t think I’ve ever posted this early. Insomnia is wonderful. At any rate, I found this interesting from Marketwatch:
“Oil rises despite declining demand-
Declining demand in the U.S., the world’s biggest oil consumer, has pushed up total inventories of crude oil, gasoline, and other petroleum products to the highest level in 19 years, an analysis of energy data showed. Global petroleum consumption fell in the second quarter to the lowest level in four years.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/oil-rises-despite-declining-demand
Are any of you amazed by this current stock market rally.Six months ago a lot of these businesses were going under and now they are all of a sudden beating analysts expectations.Something seems a little crooked here.
Don’t underestimate the power of the stimulus. Not so much directly in the form of actual monetary support from the treasury, but indirectly in terms of market psychology. I know many on this board scoff at market psychology, but IMO they vastly underestimate its power.
I’m not talking in terms of driving long-term fundamentals, but of driving short-term economic changes. In short - the expectations of a rebound can actually *cause* a rebound, and that I think is what’s happening. People are more willing to open up their pocketbooks (in the form of less savings and/or more debt) if they perceive that there’s a turnaround coming. This in turn actually drives increased corporate revenue and profits.
Make no mistake though - this is borrowing from the future; the stimulus and bailouts are driving no fundamental improvement in the economy; in fact in the long run they are driving fundamental decay.
“Don’t underestimate the Force”
“The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.”
“Beware of the dark side.”
“Clear your mind must be, if you are to discover the real villains behind this plot.”
LOL - I didn’t have that in mind when I wrote what I did - but you’re right the parallels are striking.
“I’ve have a really bad feeling about this.”
- Hans Solo
“Barack - I am your father!” - Alan Greenspan
“Sir, the probability of successfully stimulating the economy is approximately 3720 to 1.”
“Never tell me the odds.”
I sense a great disturbance in the market, as if a million homeowners cried out, and got foreclosed.
Washington D.C. You wont find a more retched hive of scum and villainy. We must be careful.
“Nooooooooooooooo! That’s impossible…”
“Search your feelings, Obamie, you know it is true”
“Together as father and son, we will rule the U.S. and financial universe”
Would this be Darth Paulson, Darth Cheney, Darth TIMMAY!, or one of the others?
And why do we have so many Sith Lords in power these days? What about the “Rule of Two?”
Also don’t underestimate people’s inability to believe a recession can last longer than a yearor so.
When I tell people I think this will last 5 to 10 years, and forever change us as a nation, they look at me like I’ve just spoken in tongues. Even if they were just bemoaning how bad everything was. They still can’t fathom how it could last much longer.
All the amateur investors I know think the stock market’s at a historic bottom and now’s the time to get in. (If only they had the cash!)
–But no post war recessions have lasted more than a year and a half….. But of course one ignores the GD at one’s peril. Many people think that it could never happen again, as if the greed and stupidity that led to it have been eliminated from the human genepool. Don’t get me wrong, I think that the PTB became terrified at the possiblity of GD2 late last year and have been throwing metric ton’s of money at the monster ever since. So this downturn WILL be different. So we WILL see what the effect of massive intervention will be. But there is no easy, painless way for the economy to adjust.
“one ignores the GD at one’s peril”
Exactly! And I agree it looks like we may get to see what happens when you throw mega-bucks in front of it to slow it down. Unless, of course, the Dems get wiped out in Congress and the Repubs that replace them refuse to continue. Then we get a replay more like GD1.
Pawn brokers are the bell weather of the economy and I recently met two, one is a neighbor. Their outlook is minimum 5 yrs and maybe more of great business for them, and the economy? OY, not so good.
They were really forthcoming during long float in the pool.
By the way, when it is 114 day in/day out, the water is body temp. Not so refreshing.
WHAT ….no way to cool the water?
desertdweller,
[O/T] Do you still get anything from your garden, or is it totally dormant now?
When it’s hot here folks grab a tube and float down the Boise River. There’s a 5 mile stretch through downtown and $1 gets you a bus ride back to the starting point in Barber Park.
Boise River water is very cold even on a 100 degree day.
everything is dormant, still watering though and birds are making a mess out of the cool dirt.
..People are more willing to open up their pocketbooks (in the form of less savings and/or more debt) if they perceive that there’s a turnaround coming…
True.. and a third possibility is that some of the wealth they tried to preserve by selling stock in the “flight to safety” might now be put back into somewhat riskier markets.
To the moon, Baby!
Notice how a lot seem to be beating by $0.01 and $0.02.
’nuff said.
EPS can be something of a red herring. In some cases (like CAT this AM) revenues were lower than expected but EPS was up. Where did those “profits” come from? Layoffs and cutbacks.
Green shoots, indeed.
“Where did those “profits” come from? Layoffs and cutbacks.”
And accounting tricks. Cash flow statements are where the money is (or isn’t).
Increased productivity…
yah, sure you betcha!
more like use your vacation, it helps the bottom line accountingwise
“EPS can be something of a red herring. In some cases (like CAT this AM) revenues were lower than expected but EPS was up. Where did those “profits” come from? Layoffs and cutbacks.
Green shoots, indeed.”
Are you saying that we can’t just layoff everyone and cook the books to produce a healthy economy? How can that be?!
And the good news in all of this rally is to watch the 10yr yield creep up.
Pick your poison
“Pick your poison”
Diversify your poisons.
“It’s the dose that makes the poison.”
(old pharmacist’s saying)
Some say Goldman Sachs is capable of manipulating the market with big ol’ program trades ‘n’ stuff… Not sure what to make of those allegations…
“allegations” not really allegations, but truths. GoldmanSucks has been racketeering out country since before the first depression.
A Must Read…
The Match King- Ivar Kreugman by Frank Partnoy.
really enlightening. Within the first 20 pages you see literally where the country was highjacked from us, from right vs wrong and so forth.
Any half conscious person walking into a casino knows they are being manipulated… or will be. They get you drunk if possible, and distract your attention at every step. And the games are all “fixed” by the bad odds offered.
People know all that but still play, because they might get lucky.
That casino is little different than the securities market. We suspect big players sometimes manipulate prices.. but we still play.
And yet people who play both tend to complain about one and not the other.
I suggest this is due to one’s attitude.
Pretend the stock market is “entertainment”, like a casino, and you won’t care about losing money. If ya can’t do that, don’t play.
And you wonder why I got out of stocks? It looks like a way to steal money to me. When fundamentals start not working, something is wrong and someone isnt playing fair….
Goldman Sachs is behind this current decoupling of oil prices. They’re going to run it up and then short it.
If you read the Rolling Stones articles, they spelled it out in detail.
GS is one of the major culprits who regularly game the stock and commodities market. They are market makers.
It’s all rigged, but you can still make money as long as you understand this.
In my little corner of the world, I am seeing a huge influx of houses that were bought in the mid 400K’s, about 2 or 3 years ago, now being sold at mid 300K levels. These are short sales, even though these houses are not too bad, but still too expensive, considering that they were 150K in 1999. I live in the southeastern part of MA.
What I think might happen, is that these houses are finally lost to the bank, adding to the shadow inventory for a while. There is no way that the wage/income situation where I live can sustain a mid 300K house, as median income is between 45-60K depending on town.
They are just entering the denial mode. I am surprised that they have held out this long, but I guess that the price collapse might finally be coming to my neck of the woods. I have a little one coming in Feb next year, and eventually will want a house, but this gives me time to save more money!
Where in Southeast MA? Inside or outside 495? Are they classic little 2 over 4’s on a quarter acre or less, or something more impressive?
Outisde 495, 95 south. These are actually about 2000 square foot colonials on .25 or more.
I really do not want anything bigger as I do not want to heat it…
Mid $300’s in general vicinity of Attleboro? Really? And they used to be nearly $500K? Oh, dear. That is not a good thing.
.
“That is not a good thing”
It is a good thing if you’re a BUYER!!
Why is a stupid high price like mid $300K’s in southeastern MA a good thing? It is absurd. Mid $200’s would be too high for the overwhelming majority of that area.
“Why is a stupid high price like mid $300K’s in southeastern MA a good thing? It is absurd. Mid $200’s would be too high for the overwhelming majority of that area.”
Thank you, Polly. It’s refreshing to see who others understand how expensive a $300k house really is. Prior to this bubble, $300k houses were reserved for those who made WELL above the median income, people like doctors and lawers. Once strawberry pickers started buying $750k homes, $300k homes started to look like cheap starter homes in the minds of the masses. A $350k home is damn expensive.
“Why is a stupid high price like mid $300K’s in southeastern MA a good thing? It is absurd. Mid $200’s would be too high for the overwhelming majority of that area.”
I agree with you, Polly. As you know, the situation is the same in Maryland, where a $290,000 house is considered “a steal!” even if it is a dump?!
Are we talking Plymouth perhaps? That was an area we were looking at before ending up on the Cape and commuting way, WAY off-Cape. You would not believe how my old house’s value fell off a cliff in the last 6 mos. (or perhaps you would)
Congrats on that addition in Feb, pinch-a-penny!
“I do not want to heat it…”
don’t want to heat it, clean it, buy furniture for it, pay taxes on it, pay mortgage interest on the amount I didn’t need to pay for…… heh! heh!
‘There is no way that the wage/income situation where I live can sustain a mid 300K house’
It’s really that simple. I was talking with a retired guy last night who told me that houses under $400k still seemed to be selling well. I told him that was a lot of money in my book. Then another guy sitting nearby said, “I’m glad I’m renting. I might rent for the rest of my life.”
“I’m glad I’m renting. I might rent for the rest of my life.”
That’s how I feel, too, especially given Dr. Bernanke’s insistence that the Fed will rein inflation in once the crisis is over.
Actually, $200k is way a lot of money for a house today, just as it was way too much money for a house in the year 2000. But I have a Tucson, Az point of view (clean air, great mountain biking, and superb masters swimming program at the University of Az). So yeah I can understand the thought of renting forever if I have to be in LA/Baltimore/Philadelphia/Phoenix forever…
“Actually, $200k is way a lot of money for a house today, just as it was way too much money for a house in the year 2000.”
Accuse me (and us) for group think if you want but you’re correct on that. It wasn’t all that long ago that $200k would buy you a castle in new england with the exception of the inner ring in metro areas (boston mainly). Considering wages have been falling for years for those on earning under $60k, which I guesstimate is more than 70% of the working population, basically nobody cannot afford a $200k house. It just can’t be done.
Given a dose of reality, things will look very different at the end of all this. When that occurs is a mystery to me but it’s going to happen…..
I went to look at a 3/2 ranch, circa 1976 in CT last nite. As I’m looking at this shack and thinking about what kind of work it needs, it dawned on me that the shack would own me instead of me owning the shack. The fantasy price is $150k and I wouldn’t offer $70k for that very reason. Although it’s located in a desirable area, I believe the place is overpriced by at least a third if not more.
Where were you looking? Brigdeport, Danbury? Torrington?
I born & raised in Norwalk
Slim reporting in from Tucson…
Last night, I went to one of those mover/shaker parties in the Sam Hughes neighborhood. I get invitations to these things now and then, and, since this one was in a house that was on the market (for a seven-figure amount) a few years ago, I just had to be there.
For one thing, I was curious as to what made this place worth seven figures. Even in the oh-so-ritzy Sam Hughes neighborhood.
I can tell you that it certainly wasn’t because of the acoustics. That house had wooden floors, solid walls, and lots of people in it. Get ‘em all talking, and the sound was deafening.
I had to flee to the back patio, where I spoke with a semi-retired employment lawyer, who, in her heyday, was quite good at winning discrimination cases vs. the University of Arizona.
The backstory: Up until very recently, the UA had a not-so-charming habit of paying its female employees substantially less than men doing the same work. I saw this firsthand, experienced it, in fact, and, to this day, I’m very hesitant when it comes to making donations to the UA.
The lawyer had escaped to the back patio for the same reason I had, because she couldn’t hear a darn thing in the house. And, I’ll lay you dollars to donuts, when that house was on the market, it was probably advertised as a great place to do some entertaining.
Needless to say, I didn’t last long at this party. It was just too painful.
DJ, it was in Kent.
I guess they need to install lots of shag carpeting on the floors and walls.
Exeter:
Ahh Kent Henry Kissinger’s town…..i think he still lives there
Kent is neat.
A quarter million dollar house used to be called a quarter million dollar house.
I guess a quarter mil doesn’t go as far as it used to.
If the credit bubble ran the prices up, I wonder why people don’t believe removal of the credit bubble won’t take them back down. Very few homeowners can believe that the price of their home has/can decline, if at all.
“So yeah I can understand the thought of renting forever if I have to be in LA/Baltimore/Philadelphia/Phoenix forever…”
With Gangland spreading, buying a house near Baltimorgue seems like a bad idea. Not only are they not affordable AND are dumps, but can you really have any faith that “the ‘Hood” won’t be on your doorstep long before the place is paid off? Ugh… what a mess!
I think the Fed is pretty much powerless at this point. Raising interest rates won’t be allowed.
By whom? The Chinese?
The Fed can target whatever short term rate it wants to, and the market will react by moving long term rates and the value of the dollar in unexpected directions.
Did you read that CIT is paying its new creditors upwards of 10%?
Do you really think Bernake can pull a Volker and push interest rates to 18%? His job is already on thin ice.
If mortgage rates hit even 7% there will be a huge outcry from consumers and Congress.
The government, as the biggest debtor out there, has the greatest need for low interest rates. Wikipedia (2008 #s)is showing a $10T debt and a $261B interest payment, implying an average interest rate of 2.6%. This represents 9% of the 2008 federal budget (or 9.8% of federal revenues). There’s a linear relationship, so a 5.2% average interest rate would double the above numbers. With modest decrease in revenues and increase in debt, 20% of government money could be paying interest on debt very easily, without making a dent in the principal.
Skip:
You FORGET how many millions have Adjustable rate credit cards….millions will default overnight…
—————————————————–
If mortgage rates hit even 7% there will be a huge outcry from consumers and Congress.
The FED is all-powerful.
Rates will not rise. They would sooner destroy the dollar and the whole economy vs. letting the banks and home-moaners take their losses.
A future with squatters living in ruins that are still “worth” $500,000 on the opaque books of Mega-bank is not out of the question, IMHO.
Welll….If I can play devil’s advocate here. Median income doesn’t determine the price of ALL houses in an area. It just should relate to the median price. There will always be houses selling above and below that price. Not saying they’re worth it, or wise investments, just saying median price isn’t uniform price. (slips on asbestos jumpsuit)
Yup, I see this in Florida. I have to remind myself that there really are Honduran Banana Magnates outbidding J6P here.
50-cent’s househunting. (But he doesn’t want a long commute.)
“50-cent’s househunting. (But he doesn’t want a long commute.)”
Hey, I meant to respond to that — yes, 2-3 hour commutes are not uncommon in the NYC area. I worked with a guy that lived in Allen, PA.
Oh yeah. I believe it. I’ve seen it in places like Texas, too. I worked with people who thought nothing of a two hour commute. (I think they lived so far out in the boonies it was two hours to everything.)
I’m just saying the mega-rich (outside of the financial world) rarely have 9-5 commute-requiring jobs. Like, you can’t really imagine Mick Jagger sitting in grid-lock rush hour traffic worrying if the boss is going to be pissed at him for being late again.
There are very few mega-rich running around on this green/blue marble of ours.
alpha-sloth,
Well, true, but Mick & The Boys weren’t always like that. In fact at one point they were basically insolvent. They had the good fortune to be born at the right time and doing the right thing, but many, many others failed and died broke.
I think “Keef” has missed 2 days work in the last 40 some-odd years. Anyone that does the same thing ‘that’ length of time should be rewarded.
The Stones’ traffic advantage is they were doing the “opposite” commute. At 5pm they were going TO work. At 9am, coming home.
He was that strung out…..but Mick probably made sure he was ok before he started even lining up the tour dates.
————————–
I think “Keef” has missed 2 days work in the last 40 some-odd years. Anyone that does the same thing ‘that’ length of time should be rewarded.
Then ‘Keef’s” heroin addiction truly kept him ‘pickled’ then. Hard to imagine his body hasn’t collapsed under that. Hey, whatever works then…….:-)
In addition, since not everyone is participating in the market for houses, it is the median of the people who want to/can even think about buying that you need to consider. Some people are never going to be in that market (now that NINJA loans are, I hope, a thing of the past), so their income isn’t really part of the calculation.
Excellent point, polly. Take the top 65% of household incomes (e.g. discard the lower third that historical do not own), take the median income in that range, multiple by 3, and you should get roughly the median house price.
I’m not sure it is as simple as the top 65%. There used to be high income young people who rented because they weren’t sure where they wanted to be located a few years down. And there may be older people with paid off homes who have high assets but low income for a particular area. And there are some people who have a nice enough house and just won’t be looking to sell or buy. But top 65% might be a closer guesstimate than just 100% of all the incomes in an area. It just depends. Stats can be complicated.
Good insight, Prime.
Istr that occasionally over at Calculate Risk they break out charts that track high/medium/low prices (thirdiles?) That also help avoid some of the inconsistencies that using median prices causes.
Okay, maybe that’s why I didn’t do that well at statistics (although the Lebesque integrals were interesting) Quartiles are the THREE values that divide the population into FOUR equal parts.
That makes perfect sense. Median income determines median price to a point. What is happening is that a 150K house in 1999, was an affordable median house for somebody making about 45K. Now that same house is 350, and 2 or 3 years ago was 450-500, making it affordable for somebody earning 100-150K, even though the income has not increased significantly since 1999. That is what makes that particular house unaffordable for exactly the same kind of buyer as in 1999. I Think that houses are going to overshoot on their way down, but in MA, this is taking an agonizingly long time. MA was the first state to show YOY declines, in 2005, but we have not had the kind of implosion seen in Cali, or Florida… yet.
but we have not had the kind of implosion seen in Cali, or Florida… yet.
Could some of that be certain type of excesses were just greater in Cali and Florida - greater overbuilding, greater use of riskier loans, peak prices at greater multiples of income, more of the economy tied to housing/finance, etc.? Those types of places just had to crash harder and faster.
“Now that same house is 350, and 2 or 3 years ago was 450-500, making it affordable for somebody earning 100-150K, even though the income has not increased significantly since 1999. That is what makes that particular house unaffordable for exactly the same kind of buyer as in 1999.”
But here in caly with affordable housing we have a problem, that $450-500K house is going to $150K but what will the neighborhood look like. What I’m seeing with the slide here in Salinas I wouldn’t want to buy into at the new truly affordable pricing for those making $100K or more.
Don’t you think given determination that people making $60K could indeed pay for a $300K house?
Where I’m at it’s similar. Very mediocre places sell for $300K (Around the Norfolk VA area).
I own a house that I shouldn’t be able to on my income, but it’s because I rented very cheaply for an extended period and saved a large downpayment.
Same in Maryland.
A dump priced at under $300,000 is considered “a bargin” and any nicer house on even a 1/4 acre goes for $400,000 and up. Because, you know, everyone makes at least $100,000+ in Maryland - right!?
Did I forget to tell you LENNAR came to the desert RE offices to state they are going to build again in the Escena developement across from the airport, starting with over 30 houses @ high 300-500s.
??????????????????????????
Maybe the city told they had to finish the 450 home project as it makes for a nasty eyesore right across from the INTL airport and is bad pr for PR. Or maybe Lennar is crazy.
ps. I am not RE professional, I just play one on tv.
plus I know someone who knows someone…
and as for the escena dev, it is in the windy area. Sand blow for days.
Washington Post
Administration Delaying Release of Key Economic Report
“The Obama administration is delaying release of a congressionally mandated report on the nation’s economic conditions, spawning speculation that it is trying to tamp down bad economic news to avoid further complicating the already fraught legislative debate over health care reform.
The report, which is normally published by late July, is being delayed by several weeks, the administration acknowledged on Monday. Officials said the hold-up is not unusual in presidential transition years, noting that Presidents George W. Bush and former President Bill Clinton each published their initial budget updates weeks late.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/20/AR2009072002277.html?hpid=topnews
It may not be unusual for it to be late in a transition year, but this year of all years, they should have made the extra effort to get it out on time.
polly,
True, this isn’t the usual pork/skeletons in the closet. If it’s confidence you’re trying to inspire, start here. Is everyone in DC just hoping we’ll forget about it?
I expect it is just a matter of getting the numbers together. Government reports are hard to get out. They just are. Lots of people have to approve stuff or at least have their input considered. But you can set priorities. The report people should have been told that this one needed to be on the top of their pile and the managers should have been told that they couldn’t pull people off this one to do other things. It just looks bad. Bad planning.
polly,
Right, one needn’t imply anything ’sinister’ is going on to be disappointed. This is “Son of Stress Test” so you’d think it would be a priority?
“I” would have released ’something’ as scheduled w/ the proviso there’d be more to come shortly!
“I” would have released ’something’ as scheduled w/ the proviso there’d be more to come shortly!
No, Din, you wouldn’t have. Not the way government reports work. You can put ‘em out late. You can put ‘em out with sort of irrelevant data because a decision was made 3 years ago not to collect data the way it should have been collected. But you CAN’T put out a bad analysis of the information you have. Even if your report isn’t that important, you are dealing with a news cycle. People only really care the first time it comes out. You don’t get their attention twice. And you do get blamed for putting out bad product. And blamed and blamed and blamed.
FWIW, the White House just did a blog post on this topic:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/blog/09/07/20/CalendarClarity/
Any comments on the California Budget?
Looks to me like it’s another ‘kick the can down the road’.
From the Wall Street Journal ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124814401981267445.html )
==========================
Under the plan, state lawmakers would cut $15 billion in spending. The rest of the gap would be filled by taking funds from local governments and through one-time fixes and accounting maneuvers. The deal must still be approved by rank-and-file legislators, who are expected to vote on it Thursday.
============================
How do they plan to borrow to help cover the deficit and at what interest rate? How long before they have to actually balance the budget with NO borrowing or accdounting tricks? And what precedent does this set for the other 30 or so states that share the same problem?
Von Mises has an apt quote on this:
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”
The longer California delays … the longer the US delays … the more stentorian will be the solution required until such point …
Maybe Ben is right. The debt of the US and its satrapies can never be repaid. Lets just relax and figure out how to make a living in the decline and collapse …
Our IL budget passed last week is a total can kicker. FY 11 will already be ~$10B in the hole from the get go. (assuming no more revenue erosion!)
These pols are simply not up to the challenge. Having spent their careers in a time of unprecedented “prosperity” they are at a loss as to what to do. Expect a lot more retirements…eventually.
A politicians skill set is jawboning people with money into giving them enough to win elections. In no way does that qualify someone to manage multi-billion dollar budgets.
“and through one-time fixes and accounting maneuvers”
After six months to a year, then what? All this short term thinking and wishing for a quick turn-around to bail them out. When they finally figure out it’s not going to happen it will be an ‘ah ha moment’ and I expect a mass retirement of government officials because it just won’t be fun anymore.
When they finally figure out it’s not going to happen it will be an ‘ah ha moment’ and I expect a mass retirement of government officials because it just won’t be fun anymore.
I want to give them a forced “retirement” starting in November 2010, sooner if any of the recall efforts make it on an earlier
ballot. None of them have earned the right to continue in their current office.
SDGreg,
Right, only ‘this’ time w/ pensions and benefits commensurate w/ the damage inflicted under their watch!
I figure by the time they’re ready to retire from their new private sector careers, they’ll just about have it paid off ( just in time for their funeral? )
Right, only ‘this’ time w/ pensions and benefits commensurate w/ the damage inflicted under their watch!
I wish. At least the state workers loosely earn their pensions even if I don’t agree with the necessity of some of their jobs or the size of their pensions. The elected reps seem to get pensions that far exceed their service. It seems to be worst at the county and local level. No conflict of interest at all in setting your own pension.
SDGreg,
No argument there. I was referring to guys like Roland Burris who’s since announced he won’t be running for re-election. Well, at that point, he’s pretty much gotten everything out of the system anyway?
No call for flaming, I’m sure there’s plenty of Rep’s that have done well as one-hit-wonders themselves. And it’s part of the problem. Getting hooked up for life assures people are willing to do just about -anything- to get “in”.
Lets just relax and figure out how to make a living in the decline and collapse …
T-Shirts!
Having spent beaucoup time volunteering for this, that, and the other thing, I have more than enough tee shirts. Free tee shirts, I might add.
“The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”
I vote for voluntary abandonment, but it looks like another strategy is being aggressively pursued.
You really are going to be a prepper?? Alad was right, just a year early.
‘kick the can down the road’ ??
More like kicking the can of a cliff…The 2010-11 deficit will dwarf this one…
the can is getting heavier and harder to kick
hope it doesn’t turn out to be a can of “whoopa$$”
They are going to take whoops I mean borrow money from the counties of CA to help pay for the deficit
After Prop 13 the state started a funds transfer system to bail out the counties. I would guess they are just stopping these payments and letting the counties twist slowly in the wind.
They are going to take whoops I mean borrow money from the counties of CA to help pay for the deficit
Nice. The state reps will say they didn’t raise taxes (well more than they already have earlier in the year), then force county and local government to raise various taxes and fees to make up for the money stolen by the state.
And why should I possibly believe the state will be in a position to repay those funds in two or three years? This isn’t turning around any time soon. This is not a typical cyclical recession.
That’s pretty typical. In Florida, state politicians passed laws to cut and restrict taxes at the local level. They increased taxes at the State level. But now they can come home and talk about how they cut taxes. And most people are too ignorant to know the difference, so they vote them back in.
doesn’t that just about beat all.
Idjits think the feds “cut ” taxes, but your local taxes go up and the idjits can’t figure it out, but vote the thieves back into office.
Don’t that beat all.( shaking my head)
The budget is a fraud. Instead of the State of California running a budget deficit and borrowing money, it took money away from local governments — and told them to borrow money the state would pay back with interest.
How is that not running a deficit? Because you lenders have no choice?
How can the state government “borrow” from the cities?
Do the cities actually have surplus monies to “lend” to the state?
What happens when the state can’t pay it back in 3 years?
When it comes time to pay back the cities and counties they will not have the money so they will pay them back with warrants that carry a 3.75% interest rate, and then the cities and counties will sell them with a 10% discount, to their friends and acquaintances, so that they will be paying 13.75% to the buyer.
But,then the state will bill the others for more services by the way of fees, and collect it all back, somehow or another.
JackO
Subprime brokers mutate into loan fixers
NYT analysis: profit making loan modification firms often fail to deliver
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32007521/ns/business-the_new_york_times/
By Peter S. Goodman
From the ninth floor of a downtown office building on Wilshire Boulevard, Jack Soussana delivered staggering numbers of mortgages to homeowners during the real estate boom, amassing a fortune.
By Mr. Soussana’s own account, his customers fared less happily. He specialized in the exotic mortgages that have proved most prone to sliding into foreclosure, leaving many now scrambling to save their homes.
Yet the dangers assailing Mr. Soussana’s clients have yielded fresh business for him: Late last year, he and his team — ensconced in the same office where they used to broker mortgages — began working for a loan modification company. For fees reaching $3,495, with most of the money collected upfront, they promised to negotiate with lenders to lower payments on the now-delinquent mortgages they and their counterparts had sprinkled liberally across Southern California.
Ummm…since they can’t get the money from a HELOC and their credit card limits were reduced to their outstanding balance, where the heck is the money to pay the fee supposed to come from?
“For fees reaching $3,495, with most of the money collected upfront”
Skroodle, I am not knocking you… this has been posted repeatedly, and yes, it boils my blood, but these guys are out there doing it. Nothing is stopping any of us from becoming a loan modifier, right? I am slowly learning that my lifestyle is not popular in the land of the debtor. Hell, my FIL even told me that saving, according to the bible, is a sin!
We represent a small portion of the population. Yes, we all think we’re great, but to the rest of the world we’re money-grubbing doomers. We need to “put our money to work,” and “invest.” We’re the problem.
I don’t know what the deal is, but a lot of older folks think I am “lazy” because I am happy being a teacher. I’m constantly told to “go to law school” or “realize my abilities.” These loan-modifier guys would give my FIL a b*ner. They’re out there, “making a go of it” and “adapting” while “getting ahead.”
Does your FIL have a citation - oh, wait, in the bible it is a chapter/verse - for that?
Sounds like your FIL is trying to “fix” you to someone you are not. As long as your wife doesn’t agree with him, you are just fine. But do you really want to move to live near him?
These loan-modifier guys would give my FIL a b*ner. They’re out there, “making a go of it” and “adapting” while “getting ahead.”
Muggy, the following comment is not directed at you, but instead at those who think like your FIL:
I have zero tolerance for those who use shortcuts to get ahead on the backs of others. Innovation can be a very good thing. Trampling others to “get yours”, not at all. The former can make life better for many, the latter for one at the expense of many.
That these parasites are mostly not being prosecuted speaks volumes as to the state of our society and leadership.
“That these parasites are mostly not being prosecuted speaks volumes as to the state of our society and leadership.”
This is exactly what I am talking about though. We’re the only ones that don’t see them as “entrepreneurs” that are “quickly adapting to a changing market” providing a “valuable service” to “struggling homeowners.”
I’m telling you, the average person thinks we’re nuts, even after explaining all of this to them. My best friends think I’m nuts, and even they understand the bubble. Somehow they can’t put it all together.
I think it’s because everyone wants to be “the guy that risked it” and “won it all.”
Being slow and steady is boring, and unsexy.
This is exactly what I am talking about though. We’re the only ones that don’t see them as “entrepreneurs” that are “quickly adapting to a changing market” providing a “valuable service” to “struggling homeowners.”
Many people view entrepreneurship as a good thing. However, if you explain the details of certain types of entrepreneurship to them, do any of them get a little queasy?
I’m finding a whole underground set of people that are opting out of the whole thing. They’re setting themselves up with very low overhead, getting rid of most of their stuff and just hitting the road. So many people miss out on living their lives because they are planning for their future.
“So many people miss out on living their lives because they are planning for their future.”
Sha na, na na na na live for today
Sha na, na na na na live for today
And don’t worry, ’bout tomorrow
heyayaya hey
Oh wow, that’s where I came in. Far out!
HI Aretheycrazy.
I am seeing that too.
I am seeing lots of garage sales CL, stuff being sold, and it isn’t cause of the heat, they all say something like ‘ getting out of town’, ‘better job in another city’, ‘ changing lifestyle must sell’.
Yup:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nETEaZPKC4A
Sha na, na na na na live for today
Sha na, na na na na dream you’ll get laid
If they want to take risks and possibly make it big, power to them. They deserve to brag about that.
But, don’t come crying to me for money when your risk goes bad (well, extracting it from me via taxes and bailouts).
It’s not very impressive risk taking if you lose, and the Nanny State bails you out.
SDGreg,
Particularly after they basically ‘fessed up that… they really weren’t doing anything for the loanowner? They touted “success rates” north of 70% which was a total fabrication and have had to refund money in many instances.
Again, there wasn’t going to be a lot we could do to keep Iceland or Bear Stearns afloat, but this ‘was’ something within our control.
Particularly after they basically ‘fessed up that… they really weren’t doing anything for the loanowner? They touted “success rates” north of 70% which was a total fabrication and have had to refund money in many instances.
Wasn’t there a recent Fed report that only around 3 percent that wanted loan mods actually got them? How is it possible that anyone could have a “success rate” remotely approaching 70 percent, unless they define success as extracting most of the upfront fees without going to jail?!
“Hell, my FIL even told me that saving, according to the bible, is a sin!”
Didn’t he ever read the story of Joseph and the coat of many colors, particularly the part about his dream of seven fat years and seven lean years? Putting away excess in the fat years sounds a lot like savings to me!
+1
Muggy - if your FIL says that he’s nuts. The reverse is true actually - the Bible says that borrowing is foolish (not a sin necessarily, but foolish).
Charging interest is a sin as well.
Here’s another one:
1 Corinthians 16:2 (New International Version)
2 On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with his income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made.
sounds like the taxman
And don’t fergit Leviticus.
Every 7 years all debts are forgiven
I’m constantly told to “go to law school” OR “realize my abilities.”
Tough choice. Which way are you leaning?
Heh! DennisN always catches them!
The danger is “realizing your abilities” aren’t very employable.
Oh, for pete’s sake. My mother taught school for 22 years. She was the first to admit that there were teachers who were just there for the beer, but she and her colleagues considered them beneath contempt.
Mom and her colleagues were foreign language teachers, and, yes, there is a pecking order in any school. Math, science, and foreign language teachers are considered to be at the top of the heap (intellectually, at least). Social studies and phys ed (the “there for the beer” people) are at the bottom.
Hey Muggy,
Would love to hear the verse your FIL is claiming to say saving is a sin.
And while he’s fumbling around hemming and hawing, give him this one:
“The righteous man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children.”
Then lovingly tell him to pound sand.
Hey everybody, I was at the zoo with the littleman. Palmy, I thought of you — I saw a thug chick with “Lakeland” tattoed on her leg! WTF!!
Anyhoo, I’m not all that religious, so I don’t know exactly what he’s referring to, but he said something about burying riches in the whole thing. He also always refs the prodigal son, don’t know the details about that either. Most of the time I tune him out.
He is likely referring to the parable of the talents, which has nothing to do with saving money, but does teach that each of us should maximize our potential.
http://scriptures.lds.org/matt/25/14-30#14
Those who save are harder to control, hence savings is “bad” in the New Order of things.
Tuesday, Jul. 21, 2009
Home foreclosures spark bidding wars
The Associated Press
Each time Lance and Kelli Thorson thought they had found their first home, someone would outbid them. It’s happened at least 15 times.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be in a depressed housing market like Phoenix. Buyers are supposed to be able to walk in and get pretty much whatever they want. Now the Thorsons have taken up a tactic not seen since the heyday of the housing bubble. They are making offers on homes before they’ve seen them, as many as three per day.
In Phoenix suburbs and other areas of the nation saturated with foreclosed homes, low prices for bank-owned properties are sparking bidding wars that drive up sale prices, entice investors and frustrate traditional buyers who make dozens of offers and still can’t land a home.
Experts say the environment is strikingly similar to what they saw at the height of the real estate bubble.
Just as they did during the boom period, investors now are stocking up on homes, driving up prices and forcing traditional buyers to the sidelines in some areas, said Jay Butler, director of the Realty Studies program at Arizona State University.
Because they often pay cash and buy several houses at once, investors are attractive to banks trying to shed dozens of foreclosures, he said. Traditional buyers add time and hassle to the process because they have to be approved for a mortgage.
The market won’t stabilize until investor influence diminishes and it is once again driven by buyers who plan to live in the home, Butler said.
The problem is centered in newer, lower-priced communities affordable for young families and other first-time home buyers. They’re the same neighborhoods that were overrun with foreclosures as mortgage rates adjusted and home values dropped.
Homes are now listed at much lower prices than when they were sold just a few years ago. In the Phoenix area, the median resale home price last month was $125,000, down from a peak of nearly $265,000 three years ago. Prices have risen from a low of $115,500 in April, when agents say they began seeing a buying frenzy.
The problem is centered in newer, lower-priced communities affordable for young families and other first-time home buyers. They’re the same neighborhoods that were overrun with foreclosures as mortgage rates adjusted and home values dropped.
There’s got to be inventory available from old folks dying, you know - standard typical houses built in the 1950s with solid foundations but no granite countertops. From this article it sounds like the infestors are just recycling the pattern that happened a few years back when new construction developments were sold 50% to flippers.
x-philly,
And just like the “loan modifiers” noted above, this “echo bubble” is one of the aspects that was bound to surface I’ve dreaded the most.
…. to be truthful, many of us here, fully planned to be among them! That is, before we fully understood the magnitude of the toxic fallout.
At this point, realtors are just like politicians. They don’t care what you’re saying about them ( just as long as you spell their name right! ) This is the very benefit of attrition they’ve prayed for.
The old people’s estate all upgraded the places with granite and stainless steel to increase the value for resale.
The first of what will probably be a few large-scale hand-burnings.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all to actually see the Case/Shiller price index bottom and begin to rise the next few months. But as foreclosures continue to hit the market it is doomed to go back down again. In other words - a dead cat bounce.
It is the nature of every bubble burst in history. It’s just in slow motion this time, and it may be 15 years before we actually hit a true home price bottom.
Me and the wife looked at a house in Kernersville N.C. Last year it listed for 1.2 million. It is listed now at 870K. “Exclusive” neighborhood, space between houses, very nice. Maybe it will be in my price range in 5 or so years..:)
1.2 million in Kernsville. It must have changed since we left Winston Salem. Of course I’dnever pay anything like that for a house or even the reduced price.
“large-scale hand-burnings” LOL!
Right, the ER will be swamped! Doctor, we’re running out of gauze and I-don’t-know-what-to-do..?
“This wasn’t how it was supposed to be in a depressed housing market like Phoenix. Buyers are supposed to be able to walk in and get pretty much whatever they want. Now the Thorsons have taken up a tactic not seen since the heyday of the housing bubble. They are making offers on homes before they’ve seen them, as many as three per day.”
What the hell is wrong with these people !! People today have no patience or concept of time. In the housing market time is your friend, watch the neighborhoods turn over and watch which ones become slums. As for me, I’d just as soon buy a $200K house and keep $200K in the bank as to buy a $400K house and pay $200K down.
The actions of so many today betray a belief in a V-shaped recovery. The scramble to get in on the ground floor of something, anything, has probably never been greater. All this insistence on being in on the ground floor means we’re probably headed to the cellar at some point.
So what does keeping 200k in the bank have to do with anything, since you’d do it in both cases? All you’re saying is you’d rather buy a less expensive home. =p
What I’m saying is yes I’d like to buy the cheaper house and that $400K is a lot of money. Yes I’d like to buy a $200K house and keep my $200K free at my beck and call. However, I have seen an $800K house that should it approach the $400K range would cause me the pain of putting down the $200K to make if very affordable.
salinasron,
The truth is though, prices have already risen almost $10k just since April. I don’t know that the Thorsons are necessarily wrong?
It sounds to me that these infestors are going to hold on and feed their alligators ’til the market comes back in 2-3 years…get it?
They could easily take and flip the home for a 20% profit, but I’ll bet you five bucks they’re waiting for the big kill, they’ll want to realize 100% on the deal. Therefore, these houses will become shadow inventory.
I posted above about the older homes in established communities, but it seems the young folks (AKA the Thorsons) stay away from them because they are minus the two story foyers and “amenities” that are now standard in the kids’ house hunting lexicon. Any one of the old crackerboxes can be modified to meet your dream home standard - or close to it. And with the added bonus that they don’t come with an HOA!
I posted above about the older homes in established communities
I chose an older home (built in 75) in an established community rather than a bigger/”nicer” house farther out. I’d much rather have a solidly-built home with a short commute and a big yard than live way out and have to worry about competing with the homebuilder if/when I need to sell (and I did sell, and it was nice not having to compete with someone who can easily undercut me).
My friends? Not so much. Bought a 3000-4000ft^2 monstrosity that was built for them. Luckily they’re starting a family and hopefully will be settled there for a long time. We’ll see, I suppose.
Oh, I forgot to add that I’m one of those “young folks”
“The truth is though, prices have already risen almost $10k just since April. I don’t know that the Thorsons are necessarily wrong?”
But why would you be so desperate to tie yourself down and part with your money to bid sight unseen on a house? What will the neighborhood look like in the future? There is a rental near where I rent where the new tenants moved in and parked a sofa in front of the garage for the neighbor kids to play on so they aren’t in the house. Other houses are letting the lawns die, still others are parking the extra cars on the lawns. Starting to look like TJ around here.
This is the new aspect to the game. The houses will be flipped over and over with each echo Bubble and Bust (each of declining amplitude) as each infestor thinks they can get rich. Lots of money will be lost and lots of time will be wasted for those who just want a decent house at an affordable price.
“Experts say the environment is strikingly similar to what they saw at the height of the real estate bubble.”
All the easy money govt lending programs (including interest rate suppression by the Fed) have created a spike in demand.
PB,
Oh I have no doubt of that. And I don’t believe the NAR has a -shred- of credibility left, so their touting these programs is largely falling on deaf ears.
Is this more “empowerment” run amok? How do we atone for this behavior? Are KC’s somehow thinking we’ll -ever- revisit former highs.., again?
DinOr
The great majority of the current KC’s failed to see the current bust coming. And once again, they fail to see the next leg down. My neighborhood here in West L.A. is just now beginning to reset. Westside houses with current wishing prices of $750k were selling in ‘95 for $275k all day long.
When this domino starts falling the shock waves will knock that Phoenix *deal* from 125k down to 65K.
I just saw today an infomercial with Dean Graziozi (little faggy geeky guy) pitching flipping and cash-flow renting in TODAY’S (his emphasis) market with no money down and walking away with cash at closing. Who exacly is he marketing this ’system’ to? The same flippers that just got burned with his last system? WTF??? This country is doomed.
pressboardbox/cereal,
And I have no reason to think otherwise? We just can’t seem to break this speculative fever. This is why I’m all for re-instating the “Age 55 One-Time Exemption Rule”.
Back in the day (1) spouse had to be at least 55 to be able to sell, downsize and *not pay cap gains. I used… to be negotiable on that front, but after seeing evidence like this, not so much any more?
RE is just is latest venture, having moved on from making fortunes in classified ads and car titles. He’s been around a while.
.. Because they often pay cash and buy several houses at once, investors are attractive to banks trying to shed dozens of foreclosures…
I kinda see this as a healthy part of the unwinding.
Banks aren’t into managing or selling RE. They try to avoid REOs. If stuck with thousands, they certainly don’t enjoy messing with properties on the individual level.
Wholesaling inventory to investors in a cash sales puts the homes back on the market. Banks probably save time and money dumping them that way.
Retail buyers can then buy through traditional channels, and at prices far less than at the peak.
Will the investors take losses? Are the resold homes still falling knives? Maybe… but why care.
If this is what’s actually happening, it is reality. It’s the way the market is unwinding. Our wishing it would avoid what might look like a detour and unwind more quickly is wasted energy.
Three or four cycles of similar activity might be required before it’s finally over.
You know what is funny is that this article was in another newspaper weeks ago. It is obvious that our MSM is just regurgitated “news”.
Same couple, I read about their buying issues over week/half ago somewhere else.
Amazing that new news isn’t.
I am not grumbling at you the poster, just pointing out that the American public is fed this crap and it aint new, and probably not accurate, in the hopes that we “buy it”.
yuck yuck
Hey PB, check your email.
“….if America’s enemies are dead set on murdering the Constitution, common Americans should want that much more to preserve, protect, and enforce it. America’s enemies, after all, are no men’s fools. They know full well that if the Constitution is correctly construed and rigorously applied then they are finished. Which it why they have been undermining it for generations, and now want to eliminate it entirely, before too many Americans finally wake up and take action in their own and their country’s self-defense. Self-evidently, then, Americans need, not to give up on the Constitution, but instead to stand up for it—because that is what their enemies themselves admit, by their own actions, would be the most effective defense against them.”
~ Dr. Edwin Vieira
Got my spine tingling..
Where’s my pitchfork?
Forget the pitchfork. Bring your firearm back from Afghanistan with you. Guns were used in the last American revolution, so there’s no reason not to use them this time around.
Bring-backs are an old although illegal tradition. I’ve got a WWI 8mm Mauser short rifle that my grandfather smuggled back “duffle cut”. He said he picked it up from some German guy who looked like he didn’t need it anymore.
Still shoots great after all these years.
A Marine friend told me of smuggling back a wood crate full of AK-47s from Vietnam using a friendly Navy P3 as transport.
Had a mechanic try to smuggle in some panama red (back in the 80s when we still OWNED the Panama Canal) from Howard Airbase in the doppler radar antenna access bay (belly of the C-130).
Drug dog went nuts, Security Police had one of our mechanics pull the access plate and viola, garbage bag full of the red stuff is in there.
Way to go, reservist on title 10 active duty, subject to regular military court martial and lock up in Ft. Leavenworth.
Went to a halloween party and some guy there was wearing one of Uday Hussein’s robes.
The thing is, it isn’t outside countries that are “invading” us it is the congress/senate and lobbyists/world corporations that are dismantling the constitution. So we will be shoo ting elec ted off icials? Only have darts at the moment to start practicing for bulls eyes!!
Using lawn darts and put a face of some politician in middle of ring.. fun game.maryb ono has lots of holes in her forehead so far…
Hey Stpn,
If the pitchforks do come out, won’t the military and police be acting on behalf of politicians, corporations, and banks? Doesn’t that mean you will be on their side if you are still enlisted and you’ll be forced to shoot at Americans in their homeland?
Any other military folks on this site care to comment?
There are signs that people are thinking about that:
oathkeepers.org
More mobile home parks trying to become condos
(SFGate)
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Mobile home parks, still affordable to many people, have become the latest housing battlefield. A growing number of park operators want to convert the spaces those mobile homes occupy to condominium ownership - a move that some residents say would price them out of their homes.
Images
A bill being debated in the Legislature would give local governments and park residents more say in such conversions. It would allow municipalities to give more weight to surveys of community residents in deciding whether to approve condo conversions.
“We’re trying to make sure that people whose lives are going to be affected have a voice,” said Assemblyman Pedro Nava, D-Santa Barbara, the bill’s sponsor. “Mobile home parks are affordable housing. The notion that you could have the land sold out from under you is just abhorrent.”
The bill passed the Assembly in May on a 41-31 vote and is eligible for a vote on the Senate floor Aug. 17.
Traditionally, mobile home park owners rent out lots and maintain common areas such as roads, clubhouses or pools. Residents own their dwellings but pay rent for the lots where they sit.
When a park converts to condo-style ownership, which requires approval to subdivide from the municipality, the so-called air space the mobile homes occupy is offered for sale, often for prices of $100,000 to $200,000, eliminating rent.
Critics say park owners are exploiting a loophole in state law that lets them cash in big-time, circumvent local rent control and gentrify affordable housing.
Mobile home conversions is not new its just accelerating…
There’s a lot of mobilehome-park-to-subdivision conversions going on around Boise. A lot of these are in now-prime locations e.g. Harris Ranch or Eagle. Seniors who thought they were buying a mobilehome in a “safe” location years ago are now getting the boot. And they can’t even move them. To get a permit to move a mobilehome you have to bring them up current with building codes, which of course they don’t presently meet.
“the latest housing battlefield”
Whether we want to admit it or nor, ALL of us are on collision course w/ either individual sellers or a REIC’ster. It’s something I’ve grown to realize over the last few days.
One of the owners in our HOA wants to reserve the right to rent her unit out. I’ve already let everyone know -just- how I feel about ‘that’. Now it’s either going to put me on a collision course with the HOA Prez or if I pull up stakes.., a potential seller!
Out of curiousity, DinOR, why are you against someone in your community renting their house out? Are you afraid an HBBer might move into your neighborhood?
Will the rent be low? raise your hands everyone who wants to be neighbors with Dinor.
Hbbers advance…
desertdweller,
LOL! Right, while we’re talking about the Stones, Mick was once asked if ( you know.. ) if he’d ever stayed in the same hotel room as Keef, he said, “No, but I have tried to stay at the same HOTEL!”
drumminj,
No, actually we’re in condoze, and I’ve never heard ( overheard ) someone else’s arguments etc. It’s just that we went through a rough patch where 4 out of 5 units were rentals, including ME! The difference IS, “I” actually pitched in for the fall/spring clean-up and took the recycling out etc. Many renters there thought the “Recycling Fairy” took care of all ‘that’!
Well Citigroup is foreclosing on at least some of their notes in default.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-stregis-foreclose21-2009jul21,0,3851880.story
The seizure of the St. Regis Monarch Beach, where American International Group Inc. sponsored a luxury retreat just days after accepting a federal bailout, is the most dramatic sign yet of the deep troubles in the market for high-end hotels.
Citigroup Inc. took over the Dana Point hotel and golf course Monday after months of negotiations over a $70-million loan that was in default. A foreclosure auction slated for today was canceled after the lender realized there would be no serious bids for the property …
I guess the missed payments on $70Million loans much be large enough to leave a mark.
It amazes me that they are willing to ignore the aggregage effect of many many small loans in default, which must be larger in total scale. But the cost and hassle to foreclose on thousands of properties is obviously much higher than foreclosing on a single property.
So maybe the gov’t demanded AIG take a nice retreat there to save Citibank…
Morning all! My wife and I have finally departed the northern half of the PRC (people’s republic of Cali) and we are now residing on the lovely island of Cyprus
No, really, it’s horrible here!!!!
I’d like to inform the blog that there are thousands upon thousands of vacant villas, estates and apartments going for rents that wouldn’t cover 25% of the mortgage payment. 600,000 euro homes renting for 1000 euro ($1400) a month. They’ll furnish it, clean the pool, maintain the garden and throw up a satellite dish for free. Nope, no real estate crisis here. It’s unbelievable to look out over the ocean surrounded by newly built vacant and half built villas as far as the eye can see. The Cypriots were trying to lure in the “buy to let” crowd from the UK and the Russians but since the collapse of the world economy things are are jamming up like a Washington river at tree harvest time. Definitely not a good time to buy here (yet) but definitely a great time to rent! I’m finally getting a little bit of payback :>
What are you doing in Cyprus?
The only people I know who went to Cyprus were Middle Easterners who had to change planes there ’cause travelers from the States can’t fly direct to certain ME cities.
Thats not true. Cuba & North Korea are the only interdicted countries for US carriers. There are just not a lot of Middle East cities that warrant a direct flight to the US(having said that Etihad just started flying direct to JFK from Abu Dhabi).
Just going on what my Lebanese pals told me.
I don’t see Beirut as being too much of a tourist or business destination.
Cyprus has one of my favorite place names: Famagusta. Doesn’t that sound like the name of a large combo pizza?
Good for you, Mugsy! Sounds like the building mania may have ruined a bit of the charm, though.
I don’t know. Part of the charm when I visit somewhere is seeing if/how the RE bubble affected it. I also get loads of laughs seeing what people are asking for their properties.
ie - Who needs Disney when you can get hours of entertainment looking at all those alligators, for free?
Palm Beach County commissioners expected to give initial OK to a 14.8 percent increase in property taxes
By JENNIFER SORENTRUE
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Palm Beach County commissioners expected to give initial OK to a 14.8 percent increase in property taxes
Palm Beach County commissioners are expected to tentatively approve a 14.8 percent increase in the county’s property tax rate today.
Commissioners agreed last week that they would set the countywide tax rate at just over $4.34 for each $1,000 of taxable value, while they continue to look for ways to slash the county’s roughly $4 billion spending plan.
The tax rate vote is set for today. The tentative rate will be the maximum the county can charge when tax bills arrive in the mail later this year.
The number is used to calculate property owners’ preliminary tax bills.
The commission can decide to lower the rate before finalizing next year’s spending plan, which will take effect Oct. 1.
At least two commissioners, Shelley Vana and Steven Abrams, have said they would consider reducing the tax rate to $4.29 in the coming months.
At the $4.29 rate, commissioners would be forced to shave another $7 million from an already tight spending plan.
So the Property Appraiser puts a $300,000 value on your house. You get $50,000 in various exemptions (in Florida), County tax bill will be .00434 x $250,000 = $1085.
Doesn’t sound like a killer, but that is just general revenues. That won’t include what are likely a bunch of special district millages, the School Board & possibly city taxes.
Taxable value $414,691 Total tax $7,298 NOW ADD 14% TO $414,691
120 Jones Creek Dr. Jupiter Fl. 33458
Name: BANK OF NEW YORK TRUST CO NA TR
Mailing Address: 2780 LAKE VISTA DR
LEWISVILLE TX 75067 3884
Sales Information
Sales Date Book/Page Price Sale Type Owner
May-2009 23246/0241 $100 CERT OF TITLE BANK OF NEW YORK TRUST CO NA TR
Jun-2005 18734/0078 $589,900 WARRANTY DEED LAL RANDHIR A
Sep-1998 10641/1837 $268,900 WARRANTY DEED
Exemptions Regular Homestead: $25,000 Year of Exemption: 2008
Additional Homestead: $25,000
Total: $50,000
Total Market Value:
2008
$414,691
Property Information Number of Units: 1
*Total Square Feet: 2958
Acres: 0.2623
RESIDENTIAL
Assessed and Taxable ValuesTax Year:
Taxable Value:
2008
$414,691
Total Tax:
$7,298
This Op-ed piece brings to mind W’s announcement of the “end of major hostilities” in Iraq. The financial crisis is far too young to declare victory at this point.
* The Wall Street Journal
* OPINION
* JULY 21, 2009, 8:13 A.M. ET
The Fed’s Exit Strategy
OK - most of that was above my head, but - that seems to address most of the existing (recently new) liquidity; the main question though is - how to prevent *new* liquidity going forward. I’m not an economist, but I’m wondering how this problem will be solved going forward. If rates remain low, private lending will eventually rise and cause high inflation. If rates are raised it will prevent that - however now we have a new problem which is that national debt.
Volker had a huge advantage in that when he raised rates through the roof the national debt was only 32% of GDP. Well - now it’s 80% of GDP and rising *very* fast - when it comes time to raise rates there’s a good chance our federal debt will be 100% of GDP. Much of that debt is short-term, thus raising rates will have a huge impact itself on the federal budget, vis a vis servicing that massive debt (in the $ 12 - 15 Trillion range).
Rock and a hard place.
This episode in the history of executive compensation is likely to end badly.
* Wall Street Journal
* MANAGEMENT
* JULY 21, 2009
Pay of Top Earners Erodes Social Security
Fund Expected to Be Exhausted in 2037
BY ELLEN E. SCHULTZ
The nation’s wealth gap is widening amid an uproar about lofty pay packages in the financial world.
Executives and other highly compensated employees now receive more than one-third of all pay in the U.S., according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Social Security Administration data — without counting billions of dollars more in pay that remains off federal radar screens that measure wages and salaries.
…
Paul B. Farrell
Jul 20, 2009, 9:00 p.m. EST
Cheers for King Henry — world’s greatest nudger
Commentary: Goldman owes Paulson a $1 billion bonus
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
This is the first part in a two-part series.
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Welcome back King Henry! The same week Congress brutally grilled former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for strong-arming Bank of America into the Merrill Lynch deal last fall, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citi, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Hank’s old buddies at the Goldman Conspiracy were all wildly cheering him. His power play with TARP’s billions last fall saved Wall Street and the world’s banking system from a total collapse worse than the 1930s Great Depression.
Cheering? Yes, record second-quarter profits were cheers for King Henry. Wall Street banks know Hank is the world’s greatest nudger. You probably thought Obama gets credit as the first president to bring nudgers to Washington, specifically the two behavioral economists, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, co-authors of “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness.”
…
The B.I.B.L.E. has a few words to say about ill-gotten gains.
andtheyaintpretty
I guess we should thank the Greenspan/Bernanke Fed for delivering the greatest disparity in US household income and wealth since the 1920s. The recent evaporation of home equity and pension wealth coupled with double-digit unemployment aren’t helping matters.
Starting somewhere around the end of the last decade, the USA is now 3rd only to Mexico and Turkey has having the largest gap between the poor and the rich.
But we do have the largest prison population of any nation in the world. So we got that going for us…
(yes, you can google it from reputable sources)
Got the last (I think) Explanation of Benefits for my knee surgery. This was the bill from the hospital outpatient center. So, to recap everything….
Docs who did the cutting:
charge - $2570
insurance allowed amount - $862
I paid - $384 ($300 deductible and 15% of the rest)
Anesthesia:
charge - $1200
insurance allowed amount - $530
I paid - nothing
Hospital outpatient services:
charge - $10,300
insurance allowed amount - $1607
I paid - $241 (15% of allowed amount)
So, total charges for the surgery were just over $14K (excluding the initial visits, follow up visits and diagnostic tests). The insurance company has a contract with these providers so that the total they were willing to accept was only $3000. I paid $625 of that amount. The insurance company paid $2373.
And that is how the system works in the US. Having insurance is best, but you might be able to afford the little nicks and dings of life and getting older if you could just get an insurance company to negotiate the price on your behalf. That is where the big savings are.
And I’m still feeling better and better as the days go by. It has been just over a month now.
That’s what insurance is all about. I pay $140 per month (I’m 50 years old) and have a PPO. $5,000 deductible. I like the system the way it is and do not want it changed to more socialism. I practice preventative medicine (lots of leafy green vegetables, green teas, resistance training, and cardio fitness). Ain’t going to sit back and let this country dive into totalitarianism to pay for the cancer/heart disease of the potato chip eating land whales.
“I practice preventative medicine…”
Growing up around a lot of old foagies taught me a lot about the health care system at an early age. The soundest advice in dealing with the health care system is to avoid it.
Our culture has come to fetishize medicine, the same way it does houses and cars. Note the common thread in these fetishes: they all involve ceding individual independence and power to some type of authority.
Being a radical libertarian atheist from decades back, I know exactly what you mean about “ceding individual independence and power to some type of authority.”
Resist collectivism.
I’m a Canadian and I agree with you. I get OK medical care but it isn’t free.
Unless you wish to live in a pure anarchy, there is a need to cede individual rights, ie. the right to swing my fist ends where your face begins.
Unless you wish to live in a pure anarchy, there is a need to cede individual rights, ie. the right to swing my fist ends where your face begins.
Sorry, but assaulting someone was never an individual right to be ceded.
Privacy, freedom, pursuit of happiness, possession of property, etc. are rights. Theft, assault, murder, etc. are not. Don’t confuse the concepts.
“the right to swing my fist ends where your face begins”
So I can “fake punch” strangers as long as I don’t connect? And thus begins the slippery slope.
There are always cases where individual rights will conflict with others. Do I have a right to grow mushrooms on my property if the smell bothers everyone else? Why can’t I drive as fast as I want? How about playing loud music at late hours. Any of these could be part of my pursuit of hapiness, yet detrimental to others.
That’s the slippery slope.
The ’systems’ to avoid:
Medical
‘Legal’/Police
The only way to keep from rolling snake eyes is to not roll the dice!
Ditto.
You have to think of health care as a return on investment at the margins. Each investment increases life expectancy and/or quality of life a bit more. Looking at how you can have a high life expectancy/quality of life for the vast majority, you just need to do a few things:
1. Have high quality drinking water.
2. Eat relatively small amounts of nutritious food.
3. Have a good cardio program, including keeping your blood pressure moderated over a life time.
4. Don’t smoke. Do drugs/alcohol in moderation.
5. Get medical checkups once a year to catch problems early.
6. Focus fixing problems (broken bones, cancer)at the youngest ages possible.
7. Use antibiotics as necessary but judiciously.
So far, you’ve spent very modestly and received the vast majority of the benefit. After the above, costs go through the roof, but life expectancy just barely inches up.
THIS should be mandatory for every American citizen, and at no cost to those who cant afford it.
But we are not that smart anymore.
————————————————-
5. Get medical checkups once a year to catch problems early.
Unfortunately, there are quite a number of people who are uninsured or underinsured. Going to the doctor is sort of a roll of the dice for them. Will the doctor find something? And how much will that cost? Could it bankrupt you?
These are but a few of the reasons why uninsured and underinsured people avoid the annual checkup.
Man I went to an annual checkup. They drew blood (and lost it 2 times, had to keep going back after fasting) and she looked at my nads. I’m not sure I really trust them to catch much. They hinted not to come back unless I have a real problem, it seems.
1- Have high quality drinking water…
um…
No one seems to want to admit when American water isn’t safe to drink. Instead, they try to hide it.
For years, U.S. health officials have claimed that although the drinking water at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune is contaminated, it poses no danger to Marines or their families. This April, the government reversed itself, saying that its assessment of the water contained “omissions” and “inaccuracies,” and adding that a million people over the course of three decades may have been exposed to the carcinogen benzene in their water. Fifteen hundred former Lejeune Marines, some of whom are now afflicted with rare lymphomas, have filed lawsuits seeking more than $33 billion. Sadly, Lejeune is just one of the many recent poisoned-water cover-ups in American history. There are others going on all the time. Here are some more of the worst.
Location Brooklyn, New York
Years 1800s to 1950s
In the largest petroleum spill in American history—three times bigger than the one caused by the Exxon Valdez—between 17 and 30 million gallons of oil and waste were gradually dumped from Brooklyn’s once-bustling refineries into Newtown Creek, an estuary dividing Brooklyn from Queens. In the decades since, the spill has seeped into the groundwater and now gurgles under a 55-acre swath of the Greenpoint neighborhood. While the area’s drinking water comes from distant reservoirs, benzene-laced sludge is slowly making its way to the surface. The cleanup remains only half complete.
Location Niagara Falls, New York
Years 1950s to 1970s
Why would Hooker Chemical sell the charming Love Canal neighborhood to the city of Niagara Falls for just $1? Perhaps because Hooker had used the canal as a dumping site for 20,000 tons of its waste. When the city built low-income housing and a school on the buried canal and its surrounding land, it failed to warn citizens about the mountain of poison beneath them. Soon, children were coming home with chemical burns, women passed poison on to their children through breast milk, and neurological problems and cancer rates rose sharply. In 1979, the EPA called the town’s miscarriage rate “disturbingly high.” Eventually forced to intervene, the federal government relocated all 800 Love Canal families.
Location Woburn, Massachusetts
Years 1964 to 1979
In the mid-1970s, when children in East Woburn began dying of leukemia at unusually high rates, parents correctly feared tainted groundwater. Since the 1960s, workers at a W. R. Grace & Co. Cryovac food-packaging facility had been dumping waste trichloroethylene, a toxic solvent, onto the ground behind the plant. And Beatrice Foods, which owned a local tannery, was storing 55-gallon drums of waste near the Aberjona River. Seven families sued, and a notoriously loopy trial (documented in the book A Civil Action) saw Beatrice acquitted and Grace fined only $8 million, most of which went to legal fees.
Location Hinkley, California
Years 1970s to 1980s
A small town near natural-gas pipelines in the middle of the Mojave Desert, Hinkley was the perfect place for one of Pacific Gas and Electric’s compressor stations. The company began storing cooling-tower water in unlined ponds, assuring residents that the hexavalent chromium added to the water to prevent rust was safe for consumption. But when the chromium leached into the groundwater, Hinkley citizens began experiencing a number of ailments, including cancers and birth defects. In 1993, with the help of a legal clerk named Erin Brockovich, the townspeople sued and won $333 million in damages.
Location Washington, D.C.
Years 2001 to 2004
Washington’s Water and Sewage Authority became aware that dangerous amounts of lead had seeped into the city’s drinking water. The water authority hid its findings until a 2004 Washington Post article exposed the elevated lead levels. Along with many others, a father of twin boys exposed to the contaminated water is now suing the WASA for $200 million, alleging that problems associated with his sons’ lead poisoning costs his family upwards of $40,000 per year.
Pay attention people. This is about to happen to all New Yorkers both NYC and residents of the Southern Tier of NY State. There will be drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation via hydro fracking, a process that has been notoriously associated with benzene and other toxics finding their way into the water supply. The gas industry and the politicians who support it and seek the revenue for NY State tell us that the process will be closely monitored. Not possible for many reasons. . A beautiful pristine part of the country, the source of clean water for millions, is about to become the next superfund site. Check out http://www.un-natural gas for more info. Learn more and cry out
Benzene and arsenic are the most common impurities found in our water.
Another little known fact: for years, the EPA has been RAISING the “safe” level for all poisons, impurities and carcinogens.
Jon,
Do you really think people put off getting broken bones fixed?
I don’t get how my analysis of charged vs. negotiated vs. paid costs for a health problem devolved into this smug fest of how to be healthy. You can eat veggies and exercise all you want. Sometimes you fall down. Sometimes you get an inherited disease. Sometimes you get attacked by a bear.
I could have covered the $3000 that the organizations got for my surgery. Heck, I could have covered the $14K. But I know people who couldn’t pay $14K to fix a bum knee on a bet. They just don’t have it. And making the people without insurance pay $11K more for services than someone with high deductible insurance is not the right mechanism for rationing medical care in a society. It just isn’t.
Maybe medical care shouldn’t be rationed, it should be earned through hard work. In the end, doctors can choose to charge how they will. Old school family practice doctors would take poultry and produce as payment. People paying cash didn’t complain when doctors gave their services away cheaper to the poor. They recognized that it was the doctors choice to let them pay more and in effect subsidize the poor through their higher cost treatments… I’m fine with that too, just don’t put the government in charge of it who is notorious for robbing medical programs (medicare) anyway.
Doesn’t the hospital write off the $14k on (if not paid) on their taxes? Could they make more on this write off than if insurance paid?
I’ve put off having broken bones fixed. Admittedly it was only bones in my hands and feet, but I still couldn’t afford it.
Made my own splints and did my own physical therapy for it as well.
I’ve had MANY work related injuries that I couldn’t afford treatment for. So I treated my self. There was no other choice. Thank god for libraries and the Internet.
Bottom line: for anyone who makes less than +/-30K, medicine is unaffordable.
I want the health insurance that the military gets.
they aren’t any more skrooed than we are in getting md /surgery skroo ups. And it isn’t the gov that is ‘running’ the system for that or for medicare. It is done by other cos.
You don’t get to write off money that you charge and never get except in the sense that you never got it and so don’t include it in income. If they included it in income and later had to write it off as a bad debt, then they would deduct it, but they would have included it when they didn’t get any money, so it evens out.
Corporations pay taxes on their profits. Money they take in minus money they use to provide the goods or services (and a lot of modifications for things like amortization of durable goods and certain timing issues).
Actually, most hospitals in the US are non-profits and don’t pay income tax at all. However, I believe the hospital I used is for profit.
4. Don’t smoke. Do drugs/alcohol in moderation.
Shoots, I have to start doing drugs and alcohol if I want to be healthy? Maybe I can make it my New Year’s resolution, I dunno…
Lost,
Good Catch! Too funny - I read the list quickly and didn’t catch the #4 part two. I had imagined Jon as a holistic yoga instructor type. Now I’m envisioning a dope smoking, skinny guy with a beer in his hand that just doesn’t eat much.
Which is it Jon? I would imagine that if each of us made a list like Jon’s we would find a way to “hide” our own “acceptable vices” - in my case that list would be long, as I light a fresh smoke and crack a brew!
Docs who did the cutting: $2570
Anesthesia: $1200
Hospital outpatient services: $10,300
Not owning a house: priceless
Comerica Posts Lower Quarterly Net as More Loans Sour (Update2)
July 21 (Bloomberg) — Comerica Inc., the Dallas-based lender that took $2.25 billion from the U.S. bank rescue fund, posted lower second-quarter profit as more borrowers fell behind on payments. The stock fell as much as 8.6 percent.
Net income fell to $18 million from $56 million in last year’s second quarter, the bank said today in a statement. Comerica said it lost 10 cents a share on a fully diluted basis, compared with a profit of 37 cents. The average estimate of 22 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg was a loss of 36 cents a share.
Chief Executive Ralph W. Babb Jr., 60, has trimmed expenses as the lender braces for potential real-estate losses tied to shopping centers and residential construction. Comerica slashed its dividend this year to 5 cents from 33 cents and froze compensation for the top 20 percent of the staff.
“Results reflect the difficult economic environment, particularly the residential real estate development challenges,” Babb said in the statement. Commercial and industrial loan growth slowed in all markets, he said.
Comerica’s 15 percent gain this year through yesterday on the New York Stock Exchange was the third-best in the 24-company KBW Bank Index, behind State Street Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. The bank dropped $1.76, or 7.7 percent, $21.06 in 9:36 a.m. composite trading and fell as low as 20.86.
Credit-related charge-offs increased to $248 million from $157 million in the first quarter, the banks said. Provisions to cover future losses were $312 million, a 54 percent increase over the $203 million set aside in the first quarter. Reserves will continue to outpace losses, with write-offs expected to show improvement by the fourth quarter, the company said.
Even though they’re now based in Dallas I believe most of their exposure is still in the upper Midwest, particularly Michigan.
LAX parking lot becomes 2nd home for employees:
“Lancaster’s 2001 Tradewinds sits among 100 trailers and motor homes that form a colony of pilots, mechanics and other airline workers at LAX, the third-busiest airport in the nation. They are citizens of one of the most unusual communities in the United States.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lax-colony20-2009jul20,0,6714758,full.story
Page 2 is full of win.
Especially the part about the 60 year old hooker.
60 yr old hooker with high heels?
well, ya know some of those old pilots just gotta have it, they, like some men are not that discriminating.
Hey a girl has to earn a living..but I dont’ ever want to go that route, trailers and old poor pilots? ugh.
heh heh heh .
Lost in Utah or Oly have it right!
Lost in Utah or Oly & Ahansen have it right!
By that I mean, they have skootched out into the wilds to live like free smart women enjoying the beauty of nature, relying on their own resources.
Nice recovery, dd.
+1
Just got back from Bone Hill, what I call my fav place, no crooked politicians or bankers.
Just lots of honest rocks.
Thanks Blano, I was sweating that ‘ no more than one message per minute’ thingy !!!
Being a lady type and all, I knew I had to hustle for that ’save’.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lax-colony20-2009jul20,0,6714758,full.story
Lame Lax Colony?
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
-Albert Einstein
Just plain common sense.
Not common sense:
The economics profession does not understand the notion of irreversible processes nearly so well as do the physicists whose models economists like to steal.
I was a physics major once upon a time. My opinion is that the social sciences - including economics - have “physics envy”. Physics studies systems which are simple enough that the mathematical models are predictive. You solve Schrodinger’s equation for a hydrogen atom and get the energy levels accurately. Not so the social sciences. Any attempt to lay a math model on social systems inevitably includes some gross simplifications that render the models non-predictive.
“We can’t be in a recession - my model says that’s impossible.”
Not everything in physics can be accurately measured, at least not simultaneously. Check out the Wikipedia article on the “Heisenberg uncertainty principle.”
Reading the entire article will leave your head spinning.
My late grandfather-in-law, professor Emeritus at Cornell, specialized in Computational Biology.
Foundation Trilogy.
Tom
Ohhh, good books by Isaac Asimov.
“Physics studies systems which are simple enough that the mathematical models are predictive. ”
Hmmm.
If it reacts, it’s chemistry.
If it’s alive, it’s biology.
If it doesn’t work, it’s physics.
If it’s bankrupt, it’s economics.
The problem is that Economics includes elements of chaos theory, which simply can’t be modeled.
What’s the saying? Something to the effect of “Any attempt to create a foolproof system will cause the creation of bigger fools.”. That’s the best description of proper economic theory.
Fanously Ludwig Vom Mises (the most eminent member of the ‘Austrian’ school of economics) railed against the use of matematics and models in re economic theorizing.
Here is a quote from chapter 5 of his magnum opus ‘Human Action’:
============================
The problems of prices and costs have been treated also with mathematical methods. There have even been economists who held that the only appropriate method of dealing with economic problems is the mathematical method and who derided the logical economists as “literary” economists.
If this antagonism between the logical and the mathematical economists were merely a disagreement concerning the most adequate procedure to be applied in the study of economics, it would be superfluous to pay attention to it. The better method would prove its preeminence by bringing about better results. It may also be that different varieties of procedure are necessary for the solution of different problems and that for some of them one method is more useful than the other.
However, this is not a dispute about heuristic questions, but a controversy concerning the foundations of economics. The mathematical method must be rejected not only on account of its barrenness. It is an entirely vicious method, starting from false assumptions and leading to fallacious inferences. Its syllogisms are not only sterile; they divert the mind from the study of the real problems and distort the relations between the various phenomena.
================================
Economics is pretty basic. It’s when they try to make it complicated it becomes a joke.
Especially when they leave out greed, stupidity and sheer psychopathology.
Who wants a house next to the Disney World? I do, I do!!! NOT.
WaPo
Utopia at a Discount
Housing Bust Puts Disney-Designed Suburb Within Reach
CELEBRATION, Fla -
Less than three miles from the organized bustle and cheer of Walt Disney World, the community of Celebration has been a glass figurine on a shelf — a place to be admired from afar but reserved for a rarefied few. The Disney-designed suburb, as quiet as the theme park is busy, is a perfect postcard of palm-tree-lined streets, 1990s architecture and 1950s family-friendly ambiance.
But if Disney World is the place where dreams come true, Celebration has been a distant fantasy for many would-be residents, a community where houses often sold for $1 million or more.
“It’s a little place where people come to get away from everything,” said Mike Pieper, an Osceola County sheriff’s deputy who patrols the streets here. “It’s a place you dream about living.”
Specifically, it’s a place he dreams about living. “Absolutely,” Pieper said, “if I wasn’t on a government salary.” In Celebration, he said, the biggest crime problems are parking violations and stolen bikes.
Now, for the first time, just maybe, he and others on modest incomes can live that dream.
The recession has closed many doors, but it has also cracked open the intangible gates surrounding desirable neighborhoods such as Celebration.
Falling house prices have allowed some families to buy into a quality of life they likely couldn’t have afforded otherwise, a community that offers Fourth of July fireworks and a Christmas supply of fake snow.
Real estate agents here tell stories of people who call every year, asking about housing availability and prices, hoping one day to afford a small piece of this utopian Zip code.
“If you would have asked us in the last five years, ‘What’s the least expensive home you have?,’ ” said Sonny Buoncervello, who owns Hometown Realty in Celebration, “our answer was always, ‘Our houses start at $400,000, they average $600,000 to $700,000 and you have some up into the millions.’ ”
“Today, I could take you to a single-family house selling for $270,000 or $280,000,” he added.
How long do they think fireworks and fake snow are going to last with the prices cratering? It’ll be just another ‘burb before too long.
It’s my understanding that Celebration has covenants and deed restrictions, and the enforcement thereof, that would make a Stalin-era apparatchik proud.
“The happiest place on earth… at gunpoint.”
The early years in Celebration are well described by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins in their book, “Celebration, U.S.A.: Living in Disney’s Brave New Town.”
There were huge problems - conflicts about the schools, really bad construction issues, you name it, they had it.
Actually worth a read. And the book was published in 1999, so this was pre or early bubble for most of the country, though I can’t speak for when that part of Florida started to get foamy.
There was a documentary I watched, but can’t remember the title. It had a segment about Celebration. The kids were playing in some kind of weird soap suds that were intended to simulate snow. It was sticking to their hair. Creepy. Why fake snow in Florida….lots of natural wonders in that state to enjoy. Humans are weird.
Anyone remember the film?
Why no green shoots for the hope building sector? Is the news that the Fed plans to keep inflation under control getting to them?
Will this be the end of blogging?
The recent Obama intended appointment of Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor, to the position of head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is the next nail in the coffin of the First Amendment. In this position Sunstein will have powers that are unprecedented and very far reaching; not merely mind-boggling but with explicit ability to use the courts to stifle free speech if it opposes Obama policies. In particular, Sunstein thinks that the bloggers have been “rampaging out of control” and that “new laws need to be written” to contain them. Advance copies of Sunstein’s new book, “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done,” have gone out to reviewers ahead of its September publication date, but considering the new position to which Sunstein is about to be appointed, the powers with which Sunstein will be endowed are very, very, troubling.
The Wall Street Journal reported that “the post wields outsize power. It oversees regulations throughout the government, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Obama aides have said the job will be crucial as the new administration overhauls financial-services regulations, attempts to pass universal health care and tries to forge a new approach to controlling emissions of greenhouse gases.”
As an indication of where Sunstein is coming from, his previous book, “Nudge,” suggests that government ought to “gently force people to be better human beings.” Sunstein reviews the way views get cemented when people are presented with persuasive evidence to the contrary in his “On Rumors.” He says he is concerned that we are headed for a future in which “people’s beliefs are a product of social networks working as echo chambers in which false rumors spread like wildfire.” He has written “We hardly need to imagine a world, however, in which people and institutions are being harmed by the rapid spread of damaging falsehoods via the Internet. We live in that world. What might be done to reduce the harm?
Sunstein will be another Obama “Czar” but will really be the chief regulator of what can or cannot appear on the internet.”
‘In particular, Sunstein thinks that the bloggers have been “rampaging out of control” and that “new laws need to be written” to contain them.’
Is this essentially a proposal to exempt the internet from First Amendment protections?
Kinda sounds like it.
Wouldn’t it be quite ironic if a constitutional law professor took a major step in the direction of eliminating constitutional protections? This is deeply disturbing.
Not at all actually. Makes perfect sense.
“Makes perfect sense.”
Shutting down the blogosphere should make it easier for Megabank, Inc to fleece people. That in turn should increase potential future campaign contributions for politicians who do what they can to shut down free exchange of information.
Yep — makes perfect sense.
Just like the $1.5 million from Pharma lobbyists to max baucus- who is going against health care reform.
Hmm
And many others to name.
Methinks there would be he ll to pay if this road was compromised for free speech on the internet, but I can see how “they” would want it compromised.
Bammy wants to censor the net because of the birth certificate controversy. Say what you want, but it has some major legs and he is NOT happy about it. Many wonder why he avoided Kenya on his little foray to Africa. You’d think he’d want to go there, but he couldn’t risk adding fuel to the fire. It was bad enough having that newspaper in Ghana with a headline trumpeting how he was “returning to the continent of his birthplace”. Now THERE was a moment. LMAO!
Make no mistake, Bammy’s skin is a whole lot thinner than people realize.
What birth certificate controversy?
BS palmy. pure BS.
Just recently became aware of the issue. Fascinating. I like a good conspiracy theory. Endless fun.
Crackpot crap.
Think for just one second: why didn’t the Repubs find this?
Sheesh.
“Crackpot crap.”
Stage 1: ridicule
Repubs couldn’t find a prostitute in a whorehouse. And besides, Bammy’s one of the best Republican prezzies ever!
I heared he was one o them space ay-lee-uns
Priceless! News of the World?
Why are CIC’s so fond of creating Czar positions?
I was watching The Lost City the other day, set during the Cuban revolution. It struck me that pretty much every revolution that results in a totalitarian regimes is preceded by an administration that greatly oversteps its bounds of authority, generally in combination with an economic downfall. Unfortunately it appears we are head down the same path.
Russia: Tsar Nicholas II -> revolution -> Lenin
Germany: Weimar Republic / Stresemann -> Hitler
Cuba: Batista -> revolution -> Castro
USA: Obama -> ???
Just sayin’
The whole “Czar” thing strikes me as amazingly ironic and stupid. Why would any president want to promote that image?
because the positions created are outside of the nomination process,outside of the normal bureaucracy, and sometimes outside of the Constitution
and it makes them look like they’re really DOING something. LOL
“…head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs…”
Why not just call the new post Minister of Propaganda?
“…that government ought to “gently force people to be better human beings.”
Question: Does this include nudging them into taking on more debt and being a good consumer?
PB even though you are non confrontational you are too smart and may be redflagged. better dumb down.
Regulatory Czar may target internet for “fairness”
July 20, 3:27 PM
What Orwellian world have we fallen into, where appointed Czars demand compliance with arbitrary regulations; and control seems to be the main objective of governmental policy? Barack Obama’s regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, is in support of a form of internet fairness doctrine. –Read: Censorship. This administration seems to be compulsively seeking more and more control of the private sector in venues ranging from financial industries, to information. Proposed as emergency initiatives, consider for a moment what level of control the current administration has over the American public: GM, financial sectors, executive pay, soon the energy industry, and soon even your healthcare. When examining and investigating the expanding nature of government in the last several years, it no longer seems implausible for the government to take control of your first amendment rights.
…
So where do we stand today? We stand on the sidelines watching government dismantle capitalism, freedom, and individual prosperity. Watch closely, and be prepared to stand up for your rights. Men like Sunstein despise the “limitless choices” one faces on the internet because it places within the citizenry the need for independent evaluation. With Limitless choice, it is quite possible people will find an oppositional point of view. With all freedom comes the responsibility to preserve it with diligence and knowledge. The internet is no different. Falsehoods, lies and misrepresentations exist all over the web, but the responsibility to evaluate the information obtained on the internet rests in the people. Placing confidence in the government to adequately, or without bias, ensure the accuracy of the internet is dangerous and in contradiction to our freedom as Americans.
What Orwellian world have we fallen into?
well,KIND EL book deleted 2 books recently, and a few more..
one was 1984, Orwell books..
Doesn’t sound like a scary guy to me. Check his wiki bio. He’s got a heck of a c.v. And this
archive.chicagotribune.com/2009/jan/23/business/chi-fri-burns-sunsteinjan23
It seems liberals fear he’s a stealth conservative. Neither the right nor the left trust him. Sounds like my kind of guy! His “gently nudging” ideas are a tiny part of a giant bibliography, and sound more along the lines of teaching nutrition in public schools rather than sending the cops to make sure you’re eating your greens. His overall philosophy seems a sort of “paternal-libertarianism” and involves encouraging smarter decisions while maintaining the freedom for people to make bad decisions.
Sunstein thinks that the bloggers have been “rampaging out of control” and that “new laws need to be written” to contain them.
Well, Benito Obama has been blogging his butt off, spreading his “truths” about his new sickness scheme. I would wonder if Czar Sunstein would like to apply his “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done,” power ON THE
Sunstein thinks that the bloggers have been “rampaging out of control” and that “new laws need to be written” to contain them.
Well, Benito Obama has been blogging his butt off, spreading his “truths” about his new sickness scheme. I wonder if Czar Sunstein would like to apply his “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done,” power on the D.C. lies and obfuscations? Doubt it, as anyone should know it’s about power and control.
….As an indication of where Sunstein is coming from, his previous book, “Nudge,” suggests that government ought to “gently force people to be better human beings.”…
gently force people.. gently force.
That’s certainly a lot nicer than being whipped bloody from the get-go..
I’m gonna follow this guys lead and, from now on, gently force people to do my bidding.
It might catch on and become a trend.. a fad. You want something? Gently force people people to give it too you. The world will be a better place, full of better human beings.
Pffftt, if you want to see people “rampaging out of control” all you need to do is read some of the HATE mail Michelle M@lkin gets w/ regularity.
But I take under this Czar’s direction, ‘that’ will be perfectly “acceptable” while anyone criticizing the admin. will be shut down? And prosecuted?
I’m tellin’ ya, she DOES seem to incite strong emotions, LOL!
U.S. Presses China on Censorship
Senior Officials Object to New Filter-Software Requirement
By Kim Hart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Senior U.S. officials are pressuring the Chinese government to shelve a proposed rule that would require all computers shipped in China to be equipped with Web-filtering software, citing concerns that the order may violate China’s commitments under the World Trade Organization.
U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke raised the objections, the most serious so far, in joint letters to two Chinese ministries yesterday.
“China is putting companies at an untenable position by requiring them, with virtually no public notice, to pre-install software that appears to have broad-based censorship implications and network security issues,” Locke said in a separate statement.
…
He says he is concerned that we are headed for a future in which “people’s beliefs are a product of social networks working as echo chambers in which false rumors spread like wildfire.”
Isn’t that how 0bama got elected?
pfffft
“Isn’t that how 0bama got elected?”
Perzackly.
Short of an ELE, they will never put the Internet genie, and it’s ability to to inform people outside of controlled channels, back in the bottle.
Charming custom if you live on a spread that has been and will be in the family for ages. But if you can’t pay your mortgage, I reeeaaaalllly don’t suggest burying grandpa in the back yard… unless you’ve got no problem with him being dug up when the new owners decide to put in a swimming pool.
Home Burials Offer an Intimate Alternative
“More people are inquiring about the lower-cost options, said Joshua Slocum, director of the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a nonprofit watchdog group. “Home funerals aren’t for everybody, but if there’s not enough money to pay the mortgage, there certainly isn’t enough money to pay for a funeral,” Mr. Slocum said.”
link: cnbc dot com/id/32026711
True story from up the street: Young couple bought a rundown property and set about fixing it up. Their landscaping work took an interesting detour when they dug up some cremains in the yard. Needless to say, they re-interred them in one big hurry.
Yes. This story confirms yet another side affect of the Depression …
============================================================
More bodies go unclaimed as families can’t afford funeral costs
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-unclaimed21-2009jul21,0,2534079.story
compost happens!
Am I reading this wrong? Is it a case of shooting the messenger?
http://www.reuters.com/article/gc06/idUSTRE56K4JH20090721
Alfred Korzybski (founder of General Semantics) came up with a slogan years ago that is apropos:
‘The map is not the territory’.
But Washington seems to think that if we just change the map that the underlying territory will be somehow magially altered.
He stole that quote from Wallace Stegner.
..and it’s a quote one ignores at their own mortal peril.
Though many do.
Commercial real estate falling fast.
Moody’s Investors Service, which keeps tabs on the commercial real estate sector by way of a traffic light color scheme, has very little in the way of good news about the market that many view as the second shoe of the credit crisis.
The rating agency reports that for the first time in six years, none of the seven property types tracked in its quarterly survey scored a green rating, or the strongest category, with full service and limited service hotel sectors still at rock bottom of its scoring system.
The overall commercial real estate market scored 34 (out of 100), putting it at the weakest shade of yellow. New York and Los Angeles, the two largest markets supporting commercial real mortgage-backed securities, saw double digit drops in their scores to just 36.
The “traffic light” reference reminds me of a shortcut i sometimes take to avoid a long wait at a traffic light.
The detour is a wide, L-shaped commercial road. The businesses are interdependent light industrial concerns.. like a welder here, a steel supplier there, a wholesale tool supplier, and other such things. The corner is the busiest part..
To provide more parking, around the corner of the “L” employee cars are parked side by side, pointed straight at the curb on both sides, and they extend into the roadway. This leaves less room to drive by.
You’ve got to slow to a crawl around that corner because traffic coming from the other direction also has to veer towards the center of the road. Plus workers are walking across the street, or are using golf carts.
I’ve driven this road on occasion for a couple decades.. But for the last few weeks, that corner is void of parked cars. I need to stop and ask around and see who’s gone out of business.
Huge Hollywood prop house closing after 40 years.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Hollywood’s second-largest prop house is going out of business with its owner saying he has fallen victim to film and TV production leaving California for other U.S. states that lure producers with tax incentives and fewer restrictions.
20th Century Props is closing its doors for good at the end of July and auctioning off a collection of 93,000 props from such films as “Cleopatra” and “Titanic”, as well as TV’s “The X Files” and “Golden Girls” and music videos from Michael Jackson, Britney Spears and Madonna.
“I ran out of money about three months ago. The Hollywood business is leaving town and going to various other states,” 20th Century’s owner, Harvey Schwartz, told Reuters.
“I’m broken hearted,” he said. “I’ve built this huge company that is a one-of-a-kind company that can fulfill Hollywood’s needs like no other.”
Schwartz has run 20th Century Props for 40 years, claiming to be the second-biggest prop house in the world and the largest under one roof, a 120,000 square foot (11,150 sq meter) warehouse in suburban North Hollywood near Universal Studios.
He said business been slowing down for years as productions left California for Canada and other states that offered tax credits and eased rules about filming.
“They are also offering really low prices on filming on the streets and filming permits, where California raised the prices last year,” he said.
Yes it disrupts traffic and creates noise and blinding lights.. but it is exciting to see all that is involved.
——————-
“They are also offering really low prices on filming on the streets and filming permits, where California raised the prices last year,” he said.
It was a wonderful place. I went there once to rent a costume for halloween, the cost was prohibitive, but the entire place was trippy.
Looking at all the bits of costumes.
Too bad the film crews like to film cheap.
Not unlike corporations offshoring and offshoring their hdq to avoid taxes.
You have 2 kinds of film crews: indies or studio.
The indies can’t afford it and the studios are cheap b*stards.
Time to adapt. Move the warehouse somewhere cheap, put the infos on the internets, and have trucks that can reach out to the locations with the goods at a low cost.
Kinda doesn’t work that way. VA. It makes sense, but when,oh letsay, Tommy Cr uise goes in for a fitting, they also stand around and pick up extra stuff that goes with the costume. Now, if they have John Wa yne type go in for same costume, they are two different sizes and they also have seamstresses on site to adjust.
Costume Designers and set designers have lots of stuff onsight for movies/shows. You get mydrift.
But hey, they prolly do have websites for their biz anyway.
Here’s an amusing description of Ron Paul, written by Kevin Depew on the Minyanville website. You may want to swallow anything you’re drinking before you read this:
The Federal Reserve Chairman is on Capitol Hill today for a two-day hoot & holler, mainly with Congressman Ron Paul, who wants to, one, abolish the Fed, and two, barring that, at least find out what in the hell they are doing over there all day.
This isn’t News, not in the traditional sense anyway, but it’s crucial in the gambling sense. There was a time when a smug Bernanke would have sneered derisively at Paul, who although well versed in the inevitable outcome of a central-bank engineered credit expansion is handicapped by the fact he bears a striking resemblance to a nutty uncle who sips Gin & Mountain Dew all day while tinkering over a boiling pot of squirrel-brain stew. He could also be armed. We just can’t be sure.
http://www.minyanville.com/articles/gold-Bernanke-dollar-Fed-minyanville-five/index/a/23651/from/yahoo
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed; second, it is violently opposed; and third, it is accepted as self-evident. ”
Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer states the obvious.. big deal. (I skipped the first two steps.)
It’s only obvious to those for whom it wasn’t written.
obviously…
But not all that is ridiculed and violently opposed is truth.
And from the article:
=============================
It only took about 10 minutes to get to the nut of Bernanke’s opposition to Paul’s audit bill today.
“Financial markets, in particular, likely would see a grant of review authority in these areas to the GAO (Government Accountability Office) as a serious weakening of monetary policy independence. Because GAO reviews may be initiated at the request of members of Congress, reviews or the threat of reviews in these areas could be seen as efforts to try to influence monetary policy decisions,” Bernanke said.
In order to understand why the Federal Reserve is so viciously opposed to real transparency, as opposed to its own twisted Nixonian version of it, you have to go back and consider what constitutes Fed Power in the first place. If a toothless meth head at the bus terminal offers to give you a piece of strange paper in exchange for your watch, it’s called Theft by Deception. But if someone in a fancy stone building gives 250 million people some strange paper and says it’s Okay to exchange it for watches and anything else people feel like parting with then it’s game on. Why would people do this? For the same reason otherwise smart and worldly people fall victim to confidence games thousands of times a day all over the world: we want to believe. And if a confluence of bizarre and unrelated factors unexpectedly come together and convince billions of people all over the world to accept this strange paper in exchange for goods and services, well, then you have the ingredients for what the experts call a Global Reserve Currency.
========================
Billions of people do accept this strange paper in exchange for goods and services. That acceptance is what gives the paper “value”.
Universal faith.. Acceptance… Trust is what backs the paper up. I know that I can exchange it for what i need.
You might say gold has “innate” or intrinsic value and is therefore worth more than paper dollars. But just like that strange paper, if people won’t accept gold for some reason, it’s value disappears.
We have unfounded trust in many things aside from dollars.. we believe the bridge will not collapse under our weight, although they sometimes do.. We believe the quart of milk is not poisonous… that our barber is not going to slit our throat.
Faith allows us to go about our business in comfort. Gold bugs may never find such peace..
It always worries me when I agree with joey….
Well, it’s much nicer than the Encyclopedia Dramatica page about Ron Paul and his supporters
Hollywood is not immune: NPR
“Annually, Beth Broderick says her annual income has gone from $300,000 to $500,000 down to $70,000 — and that’s for the same amount of work.”
“But over the past decade, the wages for the professional class have plummeted, Broderick says. She used to make $25,000 to $30,000 to guest star on an hourlong TV episode. Now she gets about $6,000, which comes out to $4,800 after commission.”
’spect there will be more houses on the mkt soon, then.
yikes.
all industries.
Back in the 70s, the war cry was that autoworkers made too much money. Much like today.
What everyone forgot was that our economy is 75% consumer driven and that if J6P were forced to make concession, then eventually so would his supervisor, and his boss, and the engineer and the CPA, etc.
But the professional class thought they were untouchable. They found out wrong.
Because what happens to a consumer driven economy were the very consumers have been forced to take pay cuts? And what idiots thought this was a good idea?
Race to the bottom.
Agora5 7-21-09
CIT Group, the new epicenter of systemic financial risk, got thrown a lifeline this week from its bondholders. As we reported Friday, the company needed $3 billion — fast — in order to stay afloat. It was rightfully denied a government bailout, but was able to strike a last-minute deal with holders of its debt. Of course, the market rejoiced… the S&P 500 rose 1.1% yesterday largely on the news.
But again, we’re calling the market’s bluff. Anybody read the fine print of this deal? The loan was secured by “substantially all unencumbered assets.” That lawyer talk means CIT will have no collateral left over for a similar deal in the future. What’s more, the company will have to pay 13% annually on the $3 billion loan… no small order.
But most importantly, the whole deal is an ugly microcosm of 2008-2009. No problem has actually been fixed at CIT. The business still finances loans to tens of thousands of small businesses by borrowing from the credit market. CIT’s business model is still broken. They are still massively in debt. All they’ve done is create another liability.
(Just as we were about to publish today, CIT filed a warning with the SEC, saying that their bondholder rescue might not keep them out of bankruptcy. Wouldn’t you know it – they’ve got more bills coming due! On August 17th they’ll have to cough up another $1 billion. And so the madness continues.…)
Nevertheless, coupled with the recent earnings surprises from JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Citi, “investors were encouraged to see that the financial sector can take care of itself, without government bailout funds,” as CNN put it. Heh… right.
“Anyone who takes this as evidence of a recovering economy should work for the government,” sneers Bill Bonner. “Only a government economist or a mental defective (excuse us for being redundant) could believe that genuine prosperity can be built on a foundation of speculating by large financial institutions. You can see why by asking a simple question: Whom were they trading against?
“The banks’ core business is actually getting worse! The core business of banking is lending to people who are capable of paying it back — out of earnings. If the borrower is counting on higher house prices… or higher stock prices… to allow him to refinance on better terms, the lender is asking for trouble. Prices may go up… or they may go down. And if they go down, down goes the lender’s collateral too… and his hope of getting repaid.
“The banks made big mistakes in the bubble years. And now they’re paying the price. But so far, they’ve only made the first installment payment. Subprime loans started going bad two years ago. Then, people began losing their jobs… and loans of all sorts were in trouble.
“There is no sign that this process is over. Instead, it is merely proceeding in good order… just as you’d expect.”
wmbz,
Wow - eye-opening sh#t! What is the source? My business/friend circle of sheeple are all ecstatic that the recession is finally over. PHREWWWW
I mostly keep my mouth shut as most of these over-financed otherwise bright folks don’t seem to want to hear what I have to say.
Financial Times
America is for now still blowing bubbles
By Richard Bernstein
Published: July 20 2009 19:30 | Last updated: July 20 2009 19:30
Although many market and economic observers quarrel over whether the Obama administration’s involvement in the private sector upholds the American principals of contract law, private investment and capitalism, this discussion misses the most important point for investors. The question is not whether there is a battle between socialism and capitalism, but whether the US economy is on a path to mimic Japan’s.
Financial history shows that bubbles create capacity, which is no longer needed once they deflate. An inevitable and intense period of consolidation follows. For example, the internet bubble gave rise to hundreds of publicly traded dot-com companies, many of which either merged with other technology companies or went out of business once the bubble deflated. Similarly, the gold rush of the 1800s led to construction of outposts that subsequently became ghost towns after that bubble subsided.
The global economy has experienced during this decade the biggest credit bubble in our lifetimes, and virtually every industry in every country benefited. In fact, all the growth stories of the past decade (such as China, emerging market infrastructure, residential housing, hedge funds, private equity and commodities) are capital intensive investments that benefited from easy access to cheap capital. The global credit bubble seems to have created a global economic bubble.
History would suggest, therefore, that there should now be massive overcapacity in the global economy. That is indeed the case. Global capacity utilisation was recently at generational lows.
Ignoring this history, the goal of Washington’s policies has been to stymie the inevitable consolidation, keeping companies operating – and employing voters – rather than managing the consolidation to maximise the economic benefit. History says that Washington’s is an unwise and ultimately fruitless strategy. Certainly, there may be short-term gains in an economy by keeping a bubble’s unnecessary capacity alive (this may explain the recent improvement in economic statistics), but the continued misallocation of capital significantly hinders longer-term growth.
…
..the goal of Washington’s policies has been to stymie the inevitable consolidation, keeping companies operating…
stymie consolidation.. i.e. to obstruct the bubble’s deflation… I agree, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that such is the government’s ultimate goal.
…there should now be massive overcapacity in the global economy…
Obviously, there is.
I give govt some credit. They are not complete morons. They know what must eventually will happen. They’re just tapping the brakes, so we might hit the wall at something less than full speed.
Ignoring this history, the goal of Washington’s policies has been to … keeping companies operating – and employing voters – rather than managing the consolidation to maximise the economic benefit.
There is no way to maximize “economic benefit”. There is no economic benefit to be had. Washington is attempting to minimize economic losses, of which there is plenty.
I’m dreaming dreams,
I’m scheming schemes.
I’m building castles high.
They’e born anew,
Their days are few
Just like a sweet butterfly.
And as the daylight is dawning,
They come again in the morning.
I’m forever blowing bubbles
Pretty bubbles in the air.
They fly so high,
Nearly touch the sky,
Then like my dreams
They fade and die.
Forune’s always hiding,
I’ve looked everywhere.
I’m forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air.
Tiny bubbles in the water, makes me feel happy, when skies are gray…
The tiny bubbles in my beer contributed to my numerous typos. (One of these days, I’m gonna get myself organisized.)
CHEERS!
Police given powers to enter homes and tear down anti-Olympics posters during 2012 Games.
By James Slack- Daily Mail UK
Last updated at 6:36 PM on 21st July 2009
Police have been given new powers to stop protesters during the London 2012 Olympics
Police have been handed ‘Chinese-style’ powers to enter private homes and seize political posters during the London 2012 Olympics.
Little-noticed measures passed by the Government will allow officers and Olympics officials to enter homes and shops near official venues to confiscate any protest material.
Breaking the rules could land offenders with a fine of up to £20,000.
Civil liberties groups compared the powers to those used by the Communist Chinese government to stop political protest during the 2008 Beijing Games.
Anita Coles, of Liberty, said: ‘Powers of entry should be for fighting crime, not policing poster displays. Didn’t we learn last time that the Olympics should not be about stifling free expression?’
The powers were introduced by the Olympics Act of 2006, passed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, supposedly to preserve the monopoly of official advertisers on the London 2012 site.
They would allow advertising posters or hoardings placed in shop or home to be removed.
But the law has been drawn so widely that it also includes ‘non-commercial material’ - which could extend its reach to include legitimate campaign literature.
England, London is really pretty damn skeery these days. There are cameras everywhere. Trafalgar Square, where once the criers would politic, you are rushed away by cops if you start making out loud statements.
1984 but worse.
England has no “bill of rights” and sometimes it shows.
I thought the English _invented_ the concept of natural law” rights.
My understanding is that the fact that such rights as “natural-born Englishmen” were not being extended to the citizens of the colonies in America was a major factor in the American Revolution.
True that. But they’re not codified anywhere. Leaving them open to interpretation….
That’s funny. We do have a bill of rights and plenty of times it doesn’t show.
The problem with British government is no separation of powers. The executive is a bunch of members of parliament who retain their seats. The supreme court is a panel of members of the House of Lords.
Guess how often the British supreme court holds an act of Parliament unconstitutional?
Can you imagine how screwed up things would be in the US if a panel of sitting Senators served as the Supreme Court?
Bad news: As goes England, so goes America.
Bernanke says Fed can take on supercop role…
WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke ran into skepticism Tuesday from lawmakers wary of expanding the Fed’s duties to police big financial companies. They argued that the Fed failed to spot problems that led to the financial crisis in the first place.
“The Fed has made some big mistakes,” said Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee.
An Obama administration proposal to make the Fed the supercop of globally interconnected financial companies would be “just inviting a false sense of security that inevitably will be shattered at the expense of the taxpayer,” Bachus warned.
Bernanke countered that the administration’s proposal would be a “modest reorientation” of the Fed’s powers, not a great expansion of them.
The Fed boss sought to assure investors and Congress that the central bank will be able to reel in its extraordinary economic stimulus and prevent a flare up of inflation once a recovery is firmly rooted. Still, any such steps will be far off in the future. The central bank’s focus remains “fostering economic recovery,” he said.
Bernanke also worked to beat back an administration proposal to create a new consumer protection regulator for financial services and strip some of those duties from the central bank. The House panel delayed a committee vote on that legislation until September.
Consumer groups and lawmakers have blamed the Fed for failing to crack down early on dubious mortgages practices that fed the housing boom and figured into its collapse. Later this week, the Fed will issue a proposal to boost disclosures on mortgages and home equity lines of credit. It also will include new rules governing the compensation of mortgage originators.
Bernanke also argued against congressional proposals to let the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm, audit the central bank. He feared that audits that delve into the Fed’s interest-rate decisions could compromise its independence in setting interest-rate policies.
“A perceived loss of monetary policy independence could raise fears about future inflation,” he warned.
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a frequent Fed critic, rejected that argument and said the Fed already makes political calculations.
“Just the fact that (the Fed) can issue a lot of loans and special privileges to banks and corporations,” Paul said. “That’s political.”
Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., who wants the Fed to be more open, argued that some people rightly say “you can find out more about the operations of the CIA, than the Fed. The public has the right to know.”
Bernanke says Fed can take on superfly role…
Financial Times
China to deploy forex reserves
By Jamil Anderlini in Beijing
Published: July 21 2009 19:09 | Last updated: July 21 2009 19:09
Beijing will use its foreign exchange reserves, the largest in the world, to support and accelerate overseas expansion and acquisitions by Chinese companies, Wen Jiabao, the country’s premier, said in comments published on Tuesday.
…
In an interview published in state-controlled media, the chairman of China Development Bank said Chinese outbound investment would accelerate but should focus on resource-rich developing economies.
“Everyone is saying we should go to the western markets to scoop up [underpriced assets],” said Chen Yuan. “I think we should not go to America’s Wall Street, but should look more to places with natural and energy resources.”
“Everyone is saying we should go to the western markets to scoop up [underpriced assets],” said Chen Yuan. “I think we should not go to America’s Wall Street, but should look more to places with natural and energy resources.”
heh.. he said “scoop up”
But this is serious.. What to buy.. what to buy. A $2 Trillion shopping spree.. in this environment. Good luck.
Bluff.
They have already squandered a bulk of their wealth on overbuilding capacity within the country. They have massive IOUs to ordinary people, whose savings have given them the cushion. Yet they need to continue to keep the dollar from collapsing, so the bottomless pit of buying USTs has to be fed. All this talk about buying hard assets - natural resources and energy - sounds good in theory but sitting on the world’s inventory is not very renumerative in this environment.
they got hold of a tar baby…a yankee-doodle tar bay
baby (dammit…how much beer do you have to drink to right write?)
Dang these firefighters sure know how to spike their pensions:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124804047828063059.html
One interpretation of last year’s emergency response to the Wall Street meltdown: It provided a convenient opportunity for HP to thin Goldman’s competition. The Wall Street banks that were left standing are bigger, more profitable and more systemically risky (aka bailout worthy) than ever.
Financial Times
BlackRock chief attacks Wall St earnings
By Henny Sender and Francesco Guerrera in New York
Published: July 22 2009 00:08 | Last updated: July 22 2009 00:08
Larry Fink, BlackRock’s founder and chief executive, on Tuesday took aim at the “luxurious” trading profits enjoyed by Wall Street banks, saying that they have taken advantage of reduced competition to charge their customers more for even basic trades.
“There are fewer players. There is very little capital being committed by these dealers,” Mr Fink said.
…
Helped by unusually large spreads between bid and offer, financial groups such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and even Citigroup, experienced record revenues in their investment banking businesses.
…
Anyone care to comment on this chart for NOD vs. sales activity in 93552 Palmdael, CA?
http://wwreader.com/img/93552nod3years.bmp
The 12 month trend line certainly seems to be nosing over. Has the fire consumed all the fuel available?