Bits Bucket For January 14, 2010
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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.
January 14, 2010
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Obama’s budget attack on bonuses stirs worry
By MARK DeCAMBRE and JOSH KOSMAN
Last Updated: 6:33 AM, January 12, 2010
Posted: 2:24 AM, January 12, 2010
Rage among some execs on Wall Street is starting to boil over as highly paid bankers face the possibility of the White House slapping banks with fees or taxes in an attempt to close the budget gap.
Sources tell The Post that top brass at major banks were caught off guard by news the Obama administration is looking to them to help reduce the deficit. Among the ideas being bandied about are taxes on bonuses or levying fees on bank profits.
Such proposals have stoked ire among many bankers who feel as if they’re being penalized even though many firms that received federal bailout cash have since paid it back.
The Post’s story Saturday revealing that President Obama is seriously considering taking aim at bonus bigwigs
on Wall Street is making headlines across the country.
In addition, execs at the likes of JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs are further miffed because they feel they have done a lot already to quell public outrage over outsize bonuses.
What’s more, bankers warn that any fees or taxes imposed by Uncle Sam would likely be passed on to consumers. “If you charge us more for the hamburger, we’re just going to charge more for the soda,” said one Street insider.
…
So that is the system; they extract a pound of flesh and in return give us a little sugar tit.
“What’s more, bankers warn that any fees or taxes imposed by Uncle Sam would likely be passed on to consumers.”
It’s clear to me that the banks have been holding back on imposing fees, out of the goodness of their hearts.
Well if the big banks pass along the fees people can always go to the smaller banks.
These are the same Banks that already raised credit card interest and fees on stuck debtors and these are the same banks that have been making hay with the 0% interest Fed rate
. These are the same banks that have been relieved of
CDO’s or actual bad loans on their books or have been given incentives that helped relieve them of bad or unsaleable paper .
These are the same Banks and Investment firms that got direct 100% pay offs from CDF’s from AIG instead of penny’s on the dollar they would of got had Bail Out’s not occurred . These are the same entities that have the benefit of the Gov. buying a huge percentage of the loan originations in a time when the private market wouldn’t because of the low yields and risk .
These are the same Banks and Investment firms that aren’t paying homeowners associations or maintaining property owned .
These are the same entities that are allowed to delay accounting of loss on their books thus creating all sorts of
advantages not deserved .
The prior acts of the Investment Firms/Banks penalized Main Street for years now and will in the future yet they object when there is any talk of taking away their Casinos or
taxing their ill-gotten gains when they deserved BK and lawsuits .And is there any wonder that they will say that they will penalize Main Street if they get charged for their rescue . Take you money out of those firms so they can’t pass the penalty on to you . Those bastard have a lot of nerve ,moral hazard coming back to haunt everyone because of rescuing them to begin with .
These are the same Banks …………
How do you really feel about banks and bankers? Are you saying these banks are insolvent?
Are these banks truly so arrogant that they don’t even know they’re skating on thin ice?
And how are bankers going to pass on the cost to consumers?
Threaten more fees on checking accounts? Consumers will walk to small local banks (many already have, including moi).
Hike fees on CC accounts? They’ve already sucked that turnip dry.
Hike fees on mortgages? FB’s will just default faster and make toxic assets more toxic.
Refuse to lend? Banks already sucked that turnip dry too.
Buy off more Senators? Sorry, that works best in secret, and the secret’s out to J6P, and J6P is livid.
Sit and wait for another bailout? Obama just put his hand on the spigot.
That is just it. The PEOPLE actually have the banks by the b@lls right now - the only thing standing in our way is the stupid government with all of the bailout nonsense. The banks gave this power to the borrower the day the amount of debt they issued to “us” outstripped the value of the collateral (RE). They did it to themselves and will get what they deserve.
Frankly, I don’t understand why more people in non-recourse states (like California, for instance) with home loans underwater to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars don’t just walk away from their mortgages in droves. Why does any American citizen feel they owe the banks moral obligation to repay debt, when the banks possess and freely exercise a license to steal from the American electorate?
Wouldn’t it be a painful thing? Load up what you can to a storage bin and walk from your pride and joy. The things borrowed against are all most of them have. The borrowing itself the way of life. Start from scratch with nothing and no credit. Loose status, friends and maybe even job. Become a looser!
“Wouldn’t it be a painful thing?”
To pay, or not to pay: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous default,
Or to take arms against a sea of mortgage payments,
And by repayment end them? To walk away: to vacate;
No more; and by a short sale to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That home ownership is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d.
Et tu’, Timmay?
Beautiful. The Poem of the FB.
Moving is hard. I just did it and I was only moving one person from a one bedroom apartment to another one bedroom apartment. Now, I have a lot of stuff for a one bedroom apartment, but the stuff is mostly books and while heavy, they are not very breakable. In the end, I paid to get help with the move, but you have to have money to be able to do that. Being broke and having to move 4 or more people from a multi-bedroom home full of stuff, a lot of it breakable? It must really seem overwhelming. Beyond overwhelming, even. And if you are moving to a smaller place? Even worse, because beyond just the moving, you have to make decisions about what to get rid of as you do it.
So losing your house and losing your stuff and the dream of having your house finance your retirement and college for the kids all at the same time? I am not surprised people put it off as long as possible, which of course makes it worse for them, because having a bit of cash makes moving much easier.
Their dreams are already gone… they just don’t realize it yet.
Unless they live in Maryland, where most people still won’t admit that there even was (or still is) a Real Estate Bubble!
To pay, or not to pay: that is the question:
Beauty.
Moving could be painful, yes. Treat it like a job that pays a couple hundred grand. You wouldn’t move for $200k?
Pressboard,
Well, if you look at it logically, of course it makes sense. It made sense for me, so I dealt with the stress and not getting to go visit with people over the holidays and got it over with. But with the hope of a modification hanging out there? Americans are trained to live on hope. Not being an optimist is ridiculed all over the place, including work. And then people get all hyped up about the sunk costs, too.
They are not protecting their own interests by not walking in the non-recourse states where the contract was merely pay or give the bank/bond holders the house. But I get why they keep putting it off.
Now the Government is trying to get the people to point the pitchforks at the banks and away from Washington bureaucrats, Congress and the Executive. This will fuel the fire of the FB’s and recently Unemployed, redirecting the anger away from the real criminals behind the curtain.
Letting the investment banks fail would have been the justice they deserved. Bailing them out and then turning to Hugo Chavez style rabble-rousing will prove to be more destructive.
Smoke & mirrors.
The PEOPLE actually have the banks by the b@lls right now
Woo-hoo!
“So losing your house and losing your stuff and the dream of having your house finance your retirement and college for the kids all at the same time? I am not surprised people put it off as long as possible, which of course makes it worse for them, because having a bit of cash makes moving much easier.”
I agree that the extra stress of moving (combined with the other circumstances) is a factor. I have a cousin who understands that she is hopelessly underwater in non-recourse Arizona, but the final admission of defeat and the accompanying move are keeping her in place. Loss of her current job would make it an easy choice (actually that would be a non-choice situation). Even with reduced hours, it is still the highest paying job of her life (still insufficient to comfortably pay the house note). Her employed daughter and infant granddaughter reside in the house as well.
I will run the numbers with her in a couple of months when her trial loan modification becomes finalized (or not). Honestly, I think that walking away and renting would reduce overall stress substantially. She could rent for $900 an equivalent house to her current one (literally equivalent: same subdivision, same model if she likes the area). Her loan payment costs are around $1450 PITI. If modified down a few hundred dollars, it would be less egregious on a monthly basis but six-figure underwater status would remain for a decade in all likelihood.
Sufficient rental deposit and a cash cushion would be available, considering that it is normally at least three months before a Trustee Sale Notice is recorded in Arizona (often several months longer than that) and then there is three months required from that point to the Trustee Sale. $1,450 times 6 equals $8,700.
It seems a heck of a lot better to walk away than to service a hopelessly underwater loan indefinitely. Depleting reserves and retirement to avoid renting a moving truck and moving a few blocks away really seems unwise. I doubt that social pressures are a significant factor considering that foreclosures are abundant in her area and modification/walkaway experience discussions are common in her workplace.
That is just it. The PEOPLE actually have the banks by the b@lls right now - the only thing standing in our way is the stupid government with all of the bailout nonsense.
The PEOPLE are the same dumbasses who voted in the “stupid government” that is beholden to the banksters -who fund their campaigns - not the yahoos on Main Street. The PEOPLE don’t have anybody by the cojones and will continue to be screwed coming and going, yet they continue to vote for more of the same. Despite Obama’s rhetoric, bankster arrogance indicates they know what the PEOPLE are too dumb to figure out: Wall Street is pulling the strings on this administration and every bought-and-paid-for Republicrat Congress-critter.
I agree with you Sammy. The people are to dumb to act with prudence or even organize in any intelligent way - the last election is proof enough of that. I think a nationwide “mortgage strike” would get the attention of the government and certainly the banks. Are we smart enough to organize/follow through with it? NO WAY! American Idol is on and there is a death toll in Haiti to monitor and Tiger Woods might… Have you watched “Idiocracy”?
“Refuse to lend?”
There’s a laugh! Yeah, I think you’ve nailed that one oxide. I say let the Brain Drain begin!
When I worked for FleetBoston we had Regional Reps stepping all over one another to get in the Bonus Pool. That’s where the ‘real’ money was.
Banks can raise money indirectly. They might raise lending rates on the commercial side.
Raw material producers, manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers and the rest then pass the higher cost of doing business onto the consumer.
If they can’t pass the cost on, they absorb it and shrink, and lay workers off.
Anyone still think now is the right time to put the screws to the bankers?
If it’s a small business, the small business can borrow money from a smaller bank. It’s a humungi business, then they can afford the fees. Or just not borrow for a while. Or go overseas. Or cobble their money from several smaller banks.
If a big bank lays off workers, then small banks will expand to fill the demand and hire those workers. And yes I know that there are a lot of smaller peons in banking, but if the rest of the country sees bankers being laid off, you think they’re going to say “oh the poor banks?” Heck no, they’re going to say “About damn time.” And face it, the banks have been flush for the past 10 years. If even the peons were too dumb to take advantage of it to sock a little away for tougher times, then they were too dumb to be in banking and deserve to be laid off. Might even need to take a little of that “entitlement” unemployment/foodstamps that they love to complain about.
Talked to four banks and two mortgage brokers yesterday. Commercial paper now requires
35% down and variable interest starting at 7%,
depending on credit & the property, with a cap
at 13%. One bank specifically said that they
are not lending at all on anything commercial.
We will probably be selling our repo’d office on LC due to that very thing. That’s okay, we have a possible buyer whom we do business with, and/or a very aggressive realtor and my sister who is giving us architectural re-do advice on what kind of carpet to put in for commercial, etc., and it’s been going pretty well. We hope to have the building turned around for resale in 2-3 weeks.
Now is always a good time to put the screws to the bankers; this becomes more apparent after one realizes that the bankers exist to leech all the wealth out of the system. They won’t stop until they own EVERYTHING.
“…Anyone still think now is the right time to put the screws to the bankers?”
Yes.
Joey, your argument is like that of an abusive spouse. “If you leave me, I’ll just beat you more.”
Workers are going to be laid off no matter what.
Yes, now is the time before our country is completely destroyed.
Yes.
Does the possibility hit your wallet joey?
It’s time to shut down their Mafia-esque racket. They have imposed trillions in costs on the society, directly caused the loss of millions of jobs, yet they are still rewarding themselves handsomely, and saying they need to retain the services of the top talent who are able to engineer this wealth extraction legally.
It’s time to cut out the rot. They’ve stolen enough money.
I’m not going to suffer from Stockholm syndrome - I am not going to protect the welfare of the person holding me hostage. The financial industry held the country hostage, so that’s why they’re getting paid off. Time to take their gun away and put it to their head.
Time to put the executives in jail. Not allow them to extract yet more wealth and destroy more jobs and wealth, and give themselves massive bonuses in the process.
With one statement, President Obama cause the stock prices of all the banks to fall, punishing millions of Americans who have bank stocks as part of a mutual fund portfolio.
Between that, and the fact that the banks will recoup this money somehow, it’s just another way that Obama can appear to be “tough on banks” while still socking it to the Americans who actually are doing productive work and are saving money.
I cancelled my Chase card the day before Jamie Dimon decided he had to stand up to all the outrage. I did tell them I was sick of funding record bonuses.
I have paid the entire balance for over 2 years straight. Late once at Christmas (cuz I thought I mailed it but had only shoved it in the corner) cost me $90. That was the last $90 they were going to get out of me.
Hmmm. They may be rich, they may be powerful, they cannot withstand 300 million angry, frustrated people. I present the recent problems with Iran, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demise of the USSR as obvious examples. I really believe when people have had enough, they will have had enough.
So, I say take the soda and put a 100 multiple on it. That would work out just fine.
Roidy
We’re so far broke extracting $100 billion dollars (or whatever it is) annually out of the banks won’t do a thing for reducing the national debt.
I’d go so far as to say 100% of the politicians that are calling for this additional tax/fee structure to reduce the debt will turn around and call for a budget increase next year based upon the increased revenue.
Or some other tax brake for big banks.
That’s the problem: there’s no willpower left to break the bankers, and nearly all of our “leaders” are bought off anyway.
“If you charge us more for the hamburger, we’re just going to charge more for the soda,” said one Street insider.
Getting closer and closer to ‘let them eat cake’. Careful not to tie your own nooses, big boyz.
Once fooled, twice shy.
The next “episode” should be interesting.
Don’t worry, they’ve already moved the guillotine factory to China. Knitting needles too.
Closer alpha-sloth? We’ve been there for 30 years.
Wall Street people, with comments and attitudes like these, should NOT be tolerated, when 35 million Main Street Americans are on Food Stamps.
Maybe those 35 million should work a little harder and stop leeching off the govt.
Now I KNOW you’re faking it, Edster. C’mon, and fess up. You got laid off from the bus dispatch office last summer, right?
Comments like this bother me. Wall Street people “should NOT be tolerated”? What the hell does that mean, exactly?
If you don’t like what the banks are doing, move your money. If you don’t like bailouts, then punish your so-called “elected representatives” who voted for them by supporting candidates who are opposed to such blatant rip-offs. Also write to your Senators and Congress-critters to express your strong opposition. Actively support the few indepedent candidates who are bucking the corrupt, entrenched DNC and GOP leadership and apparatchiks. Tear up your credit cards. Refuse to buy stock in “to big to fail” financial institutions and refuse to invest in mutual funds that include them (only retards invest in mutual funds, anyway). But do NOT spout meaningless drek like “Wall Street people should not be tolerated.”
Wall Street people should not be tolerated. I hope they are subjected to violence. I will laugh.
Didn’t the Treasury just give Citi a 37 billion dollar tax break? Didn’t home-builders recently get a 40 billion tax break? Didn’t Wells get some kind of favorable tax treatment way back when?
ROTFLMAO!!
“Obama’s budget attack on bonuses stirs worry”
Another “dog-n-pony” show. I like the photo of Obama and crew. And Lawrence Summers, the Jewish enforcer, is right there making sure Obama obeys.
Exactly.
Seems to me that the easiest way to tax excessive bonus payments is to make amounts above some level non-tax deductable. The IRC already as a clause that for an expense to be deductable it must be “reasonable and necessary”. I’m not sure $10Million bonuses would ever meed the reasonable man test of “reasonable”.
Heck the code only allows 50% of the cost of a business lunch to be deducted.
The banking sector went from full-blown Armageddon to record pay in what certainly must also be a record time!
* JANUARY 14, 2010, 7:36 P.M. ET
Banks Set for Record Pay
Top 38 Firms on Pace to Award $145 Billion for ‘09, Up 18%, WSJ Study Finds
By STEPHEN GROCER
Major U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their people about $145 billion for 2009, a record sum that indicates how compensation is climbing despite fury over Wall Street’s pay culture.
An analysis by The Wall Street Journal shows that executives, traders, investment bankers, money managers and others at 38 top financial companies can expect to earn nearly 18% more than they did last year—and slightly more than in the record year of 2007. The conclusions are based on an examination of securities filings for the first nine months of 2009 and revenue estimates through year-end.
The rapid comeback of pay on Wall Street, which will be on display as companies report fourth-quarter results starting with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. on Friday, has exposed the industry to a broadening mix of proposed crackdowns, including a 10-year, $90 billion bank tax described for the first time Thursday by President Barack Obama
In detailing the tax, Mr. Obama aimed some sharp words at bankers. “I’d urge you to cover the costs of the [financial] rescue not by sticking it to your shareholders or your customers or fellow citizens with the bill, but by rolling back bonuses for top earners.”
…
“Banks Set for Record Pay
Top 38 Firms on Pace to Award $145 Billion for ‘09, Up 18%, WSJ Study Finds”
I showed my lovely wife that article.
She shook her head in disgust and said, “It makes me sick.”
Unlike Eddie or Joey, her sense of decency is deeply and sincerely offended by the daylight robbery which Wall Street bankers have perpetrated against the American people.
The notions that everyone only cares about making as much money by whatever means are available (JoeyInCa) or that everyone is a prostitute (Eddie) is simply hogwash. But if they work in the banking sector (which I must assume by the nature of their posts), then it logically follows that most of the people in their circles hold these values; otherwise why would they incorrectly attribute them to everyone else on the planet?
FYI, some of you are still trying to post entire articles. Please use just a bit and a link.
If you are going to use curse words regularly, I have to read every post you try and that may be later or never. And if you want to really get blocked, throw in a personal attack and I may not let you post at all.
Profanity displays a lack of vocabulary.
i don’t know some people can:
“He worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay. It was his true medium; a master.”
OH THE PROFANITY!
“What the cus?”
Profanity displays a lack of vocabulary.
I think that depends on how creative you get with your curse words
“…creative…”
Like, for instance, how religious types invented terms like
d_mndarn,sh!tshucks andf**kingfrickin’?Sorry, Ben, I have used a few curse words in the past but will try to refrain from using them in the future. You have put enough time into this blog without your having to be tied up editing us for acting like 7th graders….
Thanks for all of your efforts.
PB,
“Like, for instance, how religious types invented terms like d_mn darn, sh!t shucks and f**king frickin’?”
Don’t you mean fracking? That has become my favorite cuss word.
“Don’t you mean fracking?”
I’m not very religious, but so far as I am aware, I made that one up myself. (Let me know if you find evidence someone made the word up before I did…)
Gen Patton said that when you want to get your point across, give it to em down and dirty..
Great. Then how is Eddie ever going to know how anyone here feels about him?
Ben said nothing about using terms like dweeb, twit, sucker fluffer or lending industry prostitute…
Lending industry prostitute….beats a paper shuffling, cube dwelling, 9-5 $60K a year job. I’ve said this numerous times. I don’t make judgments about how the system works. I work within the system and try to get my share.
Don’t kid yourself either. Everyone’s whoring for someone. I just happen to do it for a well paying outfit.
Ah, advocating immorality based upon the notion that “everyone’s doing it” and so long as it pays well, it’s all good.
Yeah, that’ll end well for our nation.
Come on Ben. Just how do you expect us to respond to a post like this without the benefit of profanity or a personal attack? Be reasonable!
Dear Eddie,
I am not whoring for anyone. JFYI.
“Everyone’s whoring for someone.”
That is a gross generalization* which says volumes about the poster who said it.
Look for a similar gross generalization from JoeyInCalifornia in today’s bits buckets, regarding his opinion that everyone else on the planet is just as greedy as Wall Street bankers are.
*Double entendre fully intended…
Warning: Watching the following YouTube clip may result in your brain becoming permanently infected with the “Leave it to Beaver” jingle:
Eddie’s Girl
“That boy is so polite it’s almost un-American.”
I guess the HBB Eddie doesn’t quite serve as a perfect double for the Leave-it-to-Beaver Eddie…
I actually like it when people curse.
I’ve discovered — at least in person –that if you’re swearing, you’re probably not lying. It’s similar to when sombody lets off a blue streak and we say “tell us how you really feel.” Well, it IS how you really feel.
“And if you want to really get blocked, throw in a personal attack and I may not let you post at all.”
Does this include Eddie?
Ben, I applaud your efforts on this blog. Can we all be more civil here?
Maybe it’s my imagination, but there sure seems to be a lot of piling on when it comes to Eddie.
So no cussin’, and no personal attacks (except on the designated whipping boy).
As I said the other day, I thought the entire point of this blog was to apply critical thinking in a civil forum. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but no one is entitled to their own facts. Sadly, many opinions are presented as facts, and some unpopular opinions and facts are attacked in an ad hominem manner.
I expect I deserve a fair amount of profanity directed my way. IS this a children friendly sight.
I am from New Jersey. If we can’t use profanity we don’t know how to express ourselves.
Oh boy. Seem what happens when I hold back. I get all discombublated.
Site. Sight. It’s amazing when you look at the typos and mistakes in your posts. My english teacher is probably doing a backflip in her grave.
How do they teach the alphabet in Jersey?
Effin’-a
Effin’-b
Effin’-c
Effin’ right (mutha-humpa)!
We even say “effin’ A” as a matter of course. Why, I don’t know.
I think that comes from the movie, “The Deer Hunter”, circa 1979.
This is this…
http://www dot youtube dot com/watch?v=4onhv63jom8
When a man uses profanity to support an argument, it indicates that either the man or the argument is weak - probably both.
“When a man uses profanity to support an argument, it indicates that either the man or the argument is weak - probably both.”
BWAHAHAHicHAHAHicHAHAHAHAHicHAHAHic* (DennisN™)
(Hwy is beginning to think that “Haskell” isn’t an “American” of any type)
Haskell here let me give you an example American style:
John Wayne: (Graps shotgun from man who was poking him in the chest x6 times…turns shotgun on him…)
“Now listen hear you (Fu%#king… implied not spoken) pilgrim…(pokes’em in the chest with the shotgun)…I’ll tell ya how it’s gonna be…(pokes’em again)…you’re gonna take your sorry arse outta here…(pokes’em again)…NOW!…(pokes’em yet again)…before I do something YOU are really gonna regret…(pokes’em again to make sure he got the message)…you… (Fu%#king… implied not spoken) Pilgrim”
Or they have a Hip Hop lifestyle….
Do bankers deserve the public flogging they are currently enjoying on the Hill? Of course not.
This Wall-Street-funded writer pimps the fantasy that the Fed’s ongoing ability to use its printing press to extract wealth from the rest of the country (and the world) and land it squarely in the Wall Street bankers’ bonus pool is an indication the financial system has been restored to health.
* OPINION: BUSINESS WORLD
* JANUARY 13, 2010
Bashing Bankers Is a Political Duty
* By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.
If you would know why bankers are enjoying a large and controversial deluge of annual bonuses, look no further than the monthly report of the New York State Comptroller’s Office. The economy may be in the dumps, but Wall Street enjoyed record profits of $50 billion in the first nine months of last year—”nearly two and a half times the previous annual peak in 2000.”
“Profitability,” adds the state of New York, “has soared because revenues rose while the costs of doing business—particularly interest costs—declined” (in other words, thank you Federal Reserve).
… look at it this way: The $90 billion that will be distributed to employees is but a sliver of the massive capital Wall Street is sitting on. One firm, Goldman, cares for $880 billion, Citi another $1.9 trillion, JP Morgan another $2 trillion. Much of the nation’s paper wealth rebounded sharply last year from depressed values after (choose your reason) Americans overbet on housing or the federal government briefly fumbled public trust in its ability to protect the financial system.
Do bankers deserve it? Of course not. Do you deserve your good looks, good health or good luck in choice of parents and/or country you were born in?
…
None of these bankers or politicos grasp the years of tax slavery suffered by the worker bees to support their entitlements.
Actually, I think they DO understand it - and enjoy it.
After all, they LIKE being on top, and what’s the point of being wealthy if there are no peasants to run over in your limo?
Being on top “proves” that they are smarter than the rest of us and better know how to work the system. Nevermind that most of them were born into wealth and that they are confusing shameless immorality and soul-crushing greed with “smarts!”
I don’t know whether Holman Jenkins is “Wall-Street-funded” or not, but he certainly has been a disappointment in recent years. I used to love his columns back in the ’90s, when he was full of original and iconoclastic ideas, but lately he’s just been an apologist for the statist quo.
Do bankers deserve it? Of course not. Do you deserve your good looks, good health or good luck in choice of parents and/or country you were born in?
Uh, Mr. J, the point is that my good looks
good luck, etc. Do not come at taxpayer expense, require bailouts, and act as a drag on the economy.
Nobody entrusted with public welfare gave me the good looks, good health, or good luck. That’s the difference.
*****************
Do bankers deserve it? Of course not. Do you deserve your good looks, good health or good luck in choice of parents and/or country you were born in?
The problem is, MAIN STREET is just as crooked as WALL STREET.
There’s MASSIVE fraud with the $8000 first-time home-buyers tax credit.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aAGF6QYV3qdk
And the banks may have been operating within the law, but “Main Street” wasn’t.
So the question is: Why not pull the tax give-aways from Main Street to try to recoup our budget deficit?
The problem is, MAIN STREET is just as crooked as WALL STREET.
That’s the dirty little secret of the housing and credit bubble meltdowns.
Small time Main Street crooks are more easily contained than Wall Street crooks who make large campaign contributions.
The financial industry is like a Mafia racket. It’s cost the society trillions of dollars. Bank robbers get put in jail for a long time for making off with tiny fractions of those sums. Yet finance executives receive bonuses and retain “top talent” for doing much, much worse.
The society shuts down Mafia rackets because they impose a net cost on society. The society should be shutting down the rot that has imposed trillions more in damage in the finance industry, and the executives who engineered the “wealth transfer” should be taken away in chains.
It’s good to understand the true purpose of the banksters’ public floggings. They are a sort of political Kabuki dance designed to defuse public anger over undeserved bonus payments. Don’t expect much by way of changing bonus practices — what is made on Wall Street, stays on Wall Street (and plenty of what is not made there, as well).
Will Hearings Alter Big Bank Bonuses? Pay Experts Say, “No.”
By Terri Cullen
January 13, 2010
NEW YORK (Reuters) — The public flogging Wall Street’s elite are taking over their fat bonuses at Wednesday’s Senate banking hearings may shame them into a show of remorse, but will it convince them to slash their pay?
Most pay experts say, “No.”
Compensation consultants agree that in many ways big banks have their hands tied when it comes to executive pay.
Big banks have to compete for talent with private-equity firms and hedge funds, which are allowed to treat a large chunk of their pay as capital gains because it’s based on the performance of the fund, said Paul Dorf, managing director of Compensation Resources Inc. So, for example, a big portion of their salary is taxed at the 15 percent capital-gains rate, rather than the ordinary income-tax rate of 35 percent.
“Before any change in compensation can be made there needs to be some mechanism that levels the playing field between financial-service companies and hedge funds,” he said.
…
The lawyers have already been mobilized and the loopholes are forthcoming. The congressional clowns cannot possibly write new legislation that can keep up with the banker men. Of course they did have old legislation, that had it been enforced, would have been enough - but there’s no lobbyist money involved in keeping old laws (that work) on the books too long.
“America your Government has screwed you”
:)…again
Bankers get million dollar bonuses while savers get zilch.
Heckuva job, Bernanke. High five.
Wall Street/Banks have the same reaction to the call for reforms of the systems such as bringing back Glass-Steagall Law . Corporations /Wall Street/Lenders/Insurance Companies want the right to this unfair playing field that has made the Government nothing more than a conspirator in their unfair advantage to rape Main Street America of their money and jobs .
Its no different than a gas station taking advantage of a emergency like a hurricane and charging 5 dollars for a bottle of water or 10 dollars for a gallon of gas ,except these entities caused the hurricane
yet they want to gouge in the aftermath while they flaunt their pay and threaten to gouge the public if any tolls are charged them.
Surely you aren’t implying that we live in the most corrupt country the world has ever seen?
Someone check with Pat Robertson and see if we’ve made any deals with the devil. The REAL Lucifer, not the Wall Street variety.
I also think one of the things this system is buying for us is increased outsourcing.
Why? Everytime a new innovate business starts up it get purchased by “the big boys” who take out the intellectual assets. Then production gets shipped off to China.
So, a good portion of the buyout mania financed by easy credit bites us in the ass in another way.
If you compare the sitautions, it is obvious a smaller business opperation isn’t going to use it’s resources to go overseas. The big guys… they are established there.
Along with all the bogus patents and lawsuits they use to pound small companies… along with China stealing intellectual property… along with overseas businesses oppearting with 95% pirated hardware.
Oh these have been fun times for us American workers.
Not sure what China has to do to get off the most favored trading partner. Probably nuke a costal city. They nuke a flyover country city and it will probably just be a slap on the wrist.
* The Wall Street Journal
* JANUARY 12, 2010, 3:36 P.M. ET
REPEAT:Bonuses Loom For Wall St And NYC Residential Markets
By Dawn Wotapka
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–The Fairchild condominium project opened for sale in December of 2008, just after Lehman Brothers’ collapse rippled across the financial sector and paralyzed the Big Apple’s real estate market.
“We couldn’t have picked a worse time to open,” jokes Gerard Longo, principal of Atlantic Walk Vestry, which developed the 21 units in North Tribeca. Months passed with minimal activity. Prices saw double-digit slashings.
But these days, Mr. Longo is upbeat, cheered by the return of shoppers looking to spend their Wall Street bonuses. “We’ve certainly seen an uptick,” he says. “They’re more aggressively looking and now we’re starting to see the offers come in.”
While public outrage looms over Wall Street’s 2009 bonuses– potentially record payouts are expected in coming weeks–New York’s real estate community is outright giddy. Local brokers say the money will help stabilize the nation’s quirkiest sales market by boosting sales–particularly in the $2 million to $5 million range–and restoring confidence.
While it is early, there are indications of a pickup. Brokers say visits to their Web sites are spiking, and traffic is up at open houses. To prepare, some agents are even re-hiring assistants laid off during the downturn. Marketing is being ramped up, though it is more subdued than the boom’s lavish parties. Name-brand singers and caviar are out, replaced by panels discussing market conditions and direct mail to financial employees.
Still, caution continues. Credit remains tough to secure, particularly at higher price points. While inventory has fallen since peaking in mid-May, it could climb again should would-be sellers flood an improving market with new listings. Some sellers, meanwhile, are declining purchase offers–holding out for higher offers from bonus recipients–leaving sellers at risk should a flurry of deals not materialize.
Indeed, how the bonuses will be paid remains unclear–thought it’s unlikely to be the cash bonanza of past years. Some payments could come via stock, limiting buyers’ purchasing power.
Plus, there’s no guarantee bonus recipients will pour their money into real estate. Many would-be buyers remain unconvinced that the worst real-estate downturn in decades is over, and luxury units can be rented for below a monthly mortgage payment.
“I wouldn’t assume that these large bonuses are going directly back into real estate. That was an assumption that was made in a previous era,” said Sofia Song, vice president of research for real-estate Web site StreetEasy dot com.
“This is a new economy and people are thinking differently and valuing things differently.”
…
“some agents are even re-hiring assistants laid off during the downturn”
Isn’t it just incredible how much $’s the Big Apple needs just to send a ripple through the economy? I keep wondering the same thing about Vegas.
As some of our single posters have pointed out, at the height of the boom, “bottle service” in excess of $200 was the ‘norm’ along w/ people with their hands outstretched every 30′ or so looking to get the palms greased and fees and charges for the slightest service.
Where did all these dollars ‘go’? Not feeling ‘giddy’ here.
Sanders: San Diego Is a Model Government
Mayor Jerry Sanders’ 2010 State of the City Address
Posted: Thursday, January 14, 2010 12:00 am | Updated: 12:28 am, Thu Jan 14, 2010.
By LIAM DILLON
The city of San Diego’s financial crisis has been the albatross that’s saddled Mayor Jerry Sanders since he entered office in late 2005. It again weighed upon the mayor Wednesday night at his annual State of the City address delivered at downtown’s Balboa Theater.
“This structural deficit — the imbalance between the public’s expectations of their city and the revenues that sustain it — was allowed to grow for decades,” Sanders said. “It has deep roots.”
Those roots have grown deeper due to a national economic recession and money grabs by the state government. On Wednesday night, Sanders promised to offer a plan to solve those problems once and for all, offered up his most extensive comments yet on the new Chargers stadium plan and said he plans on using his office to spur job and economic growth.
He delivered little in the way of new budget fixes, though his message was a marked change from those earlier in his tenure — in the past San Diego’s city government was the problem, now it’s the solution.
In his speech, Sanders acknowledged the persistence of San Diego’s fatal flaw: The city collects less money than it spends. But he argued the city government’s role has turned from a national embarrassment in failure to a nationwide leader in fiscal change.
…
Still, Sanders rejected calls for the most drastic sort of fiscal reform. Arguments for municipal bankruptcy, he said, were “extremist” and “simplistic.”
“This isn’t a job for salesmen or sloganeers,” Sanders said. “It isn’t glamorous. It’s work.”
After the speech, Councilman Todd Gloria said he hoped the mayor would have offered more budget specifics. Everyone, Gloria said, knows that the solution will be a combination of outsourcing, more efficiencies, service reductions and new revenues.
“We just need to give it to the people sooner rather than later,” Gloria said. “We don’t have a great deal of time and my general sense is people are really tired of the continual story line of San Diego being out of money.”
Throughout Sanders tenure, he has harkened back to the failures of past administrations to speak honestly about fiscal problems. He did so again Wednesday, digging up the infamous New York Times “Enron-by-the-Sea” headline to contrast with the city’s current approach to finances.
But Wednesday, state government and other municipalities wore more of a bull’s eye than past city leaders. Both the state and other governments haven’t acted to fix their fiscal crises, and San Diego is “a model.”
“We are beginning 2010 on a strong footing,” Sanders said.
In an interview after the speech, he said while he was unaware if other governments were using San Diego as a model, they should.
…
“The city collects less money than it spends.”
It’s 100% gauranteed that other cities are following this model - 100%.
LMFAO — You nailed it!
FWIW, I’ve tried to get our rinky-dinky OR town of 10,000 to take a look at some of the expenses they deem ‘necessary’ w/ very little traction.
You have to remember, these types really ‘do’ feel they are “doing good work here!” That the pet projects and sweetheart deal really ‘do’ somehow benefit the avg. citizen.
It’s the LIE they have to keep telling themselves over and over each and every day just so they can live w/ themselves!
Can you give us examples of the pet projects?
In our town of 36k in southern Oregon, the city wants to pass a new master Park plan
with a 20 year budget of 22 million. The problem is that the city lies because the true
cost is an estimated 94 million. Now that works out to about 4 1/2 million a year and our current budget for parks is 1 1/2 mm
per year and we can’t even fund that. It is
pie in the sky and the city is trying to slide
this one through without it coming to a vote by the citizens. Total corruption.
They want to turn our town into another
Eugene, a super liberal college town without
the college.
gawd these people are everywhere aren’t they..I feel sorry for the natives because it seems like most these initiatives, and the elected officials, came here from somewhere else with their grand ideas.
oxide,
At the risk of going off on a rant!?
More or less the same “beautification” projects Rancher describes ( only on a much smaller scale ) That and “Perks for Builders” when we -already- have a fluffy inventory of unsold homes.
And like every small town, there’s a spanking NEW City Hall/Complex and Police Station on their agenda. Why? Are criminals breaking out of the City Jail? “Well it’s just ‘dated’ and we really could use some more room” type justification. They count on it being so boring..! ( no one will bother )
“Well it’s just ‘dated’ and we really could use some more room”
They must have HGTV on the monitors at the PO-lice. And Suzanne as a realtor.
The city just finished building what we locals call “our Taj Mahal”, a $9mm fire house/
police substation on a piece of river property
that the city could have sold for a couple of
mil. But oh no, they had to have this God
awful monstrosity right on the river with all
the goodies that money could buy plus enough
room to house all the antique fire engines that
they don’t use. Leather chairs, huge wide
screen TV’s, a tax payers nightmare.
The city council, with the budget committee,
put $65k aside for an audit of a couple of
city departments. When asked about the
audit, the city said they decided not to have one and raided the set aside funds to use
on one of their pet projects. Arrrrrrgh!
Who said we couldn’t swear? Please, just
once, Ben?
In my august city of Tucson, neighborhood activists are getting quite honked off about the city’s budget-driven decision to stop mailing notices of neighborhood meetings.
Now, people, you know me as being more than a bit of a neighborhood activist, but on this one, I say, “Yay, city!”
Why? I’m of the belief that if a neighborhood association wants to have a meeting, then it’s the association’s responsibility to let the neighbors know. As in, send out a notice to everyone on the neighborhood e-mailing list. Or do a phone tree. Or, gasp, go door to door and pass out flyers. Good way to get to know your neighbors.
My $.02 worth…
No, they aren’t NOT doing this for the benefit of the citizens. It’s all about make work for their brother in law and buddies.
You start throwing millions around on a construction project and graft and skimming are guaranteed.
About four years ago, a group of developers, realtors and assorted big shot wannabees cobbled together an off year election to incorporate approximately half the citizenery of the previously unincorporated Spokane County. Instantly, a whole new layer of government was formed. The county government, of course, has not shrunk. The last time I looked the new city’s payroll was around $110,000,000/year whichincludes a $160K/year city manager and a $120K/year bean counter. Most of the essential services, police, fire, road maintenance etc is still contracted for through the county, so those payroll items are not included in this number.
The new city PTB’s have never seen a consultant they did not like, and have spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants to help them find and develop a “city center”. Now, they want to build a $34 million city hall because they have outgrown thier rental offices, and need room to expand.
But we do have our own planning department (not much planning going on these days), parks and recreation, and other money sinks.
A couple of disincorporation efforts have failed, but we still have hope.
Don’t forget FEES. The Oregon supreme court
ruled that “fees” are not taxes, thus not subject to voter approval. So you can expect
to see an additional $20 tacked on your bill
as a fee to pay for the park beautification program and the new weather proof bus
waiting area in front of the court house.
Time to buy some more ammo.
Slim,
Those notices serve the public well when one neighbor is trying to pull a fast one on the rest. Closing off easements? Sneaking in a new development w/o paying for permits? Tax exemptions and funds diverted to brothers-in law? It’s amazing how easily those flyers get lost and antagonists get left off the phone trees….
So…. they collect less money than they spend and are considered a model city?
I would argue that this is true: failure IS a model for modern America!
“This structural deficit — the imbalance between the public’s expectations of their city and the revenues that sustain it — was allowed to grow for decades,”
Pssst, Mr. Sanders, there’s a group of people over there who would like a word with you Sir, something about being “unappreciated…”:
Police Union
Fireman’s Union
Education Union
City Workers
County Workers
Public Works
It’s been discussed here before, but if lenders do start principal balance reductions, that is bound to create “unintended” consequences. Plus unraveling who the actual mortgage owners/holders are may prove to be a daunting task, at best!
U.S. 2009 foreclosures shatter record despite aid. ~ Jan 14, 2010
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. foreclosure actions shattered all records in 2009 and will do so again this year, with unemployment and wage cuts overcoming programs to remedy failing home loans, RealtyTrac said on Thursday.
A record 2.8 million properties with a mortgage got a foreclosure notice last year, jumping 21 percent from 2008 and 120 percent from 2007, the Irvine, California-based real estate data company found.
The loan failure rate — and thus the fallout for home prices and the economy — would have been even worse without foreclosure prevention programs and loan processing delays caused by sheer volume, the company said.
In many cases loan fixes don’t stick, however, and so a new record of at least 3 million properties getting a filing is seen in 2010. Filings include notice of default, auction sale or bank repossession.
State, federal and private efforts to modify loan terms for at-risk borrowers either don’t go far enough or are expanding too late to help many struggling homeowners on a permanent basis, many industry experts and economists agree.
“Until the lenders start to get into principal balance reduction you’re going to continue to see high redefault rates,” Rick Sharga, senior vice president at RealtyTrac, said in an interview.
“We haven’t seen any appetite for that on the part of the lenders yet,” he added.
”Principle reductions” were used by the grain Farmers in the late 80’s and early 90’s . Many had their principles slashed by half or more . It was only a temporary fix , because almost all the farmers dunked back under the debt pool . It’s not hardly a fair comparison to today’s real estate situation , Because up to half the Farmer’s income . even today , is from government ”make up ” payments . Once Government money flows , common sense is scarce .
“Filings include notice of default, auction sale or bank repossession.”
Is it 3 million houses got “foreclosed” or 1 million houses went through three steps of the foreclosure process?
“A record 2.8 million properties with a mortgage got a foreclosure notice last year, jumping 21 percent from 2008 and 120 percent from 2007, the Irvine, California-based real estate data company found.”
What a joke! RealtyTrac shows 2 foreclosures in Jupiter Landings where I am still renting, the HOA says 23% of the 160 houses are in foreclosure. If these numbers multiply out over even SE Florida, WOW.
Yet many of the higher priced homes are hidden from view, while banks wait for markets to improve.
Fresno County has 2,913 bank-owned properties, according to RealtyTrac, and another 2,107 in default. Among the 162 bank-owned properties where bids are actively solicited on RT, none of them have a transfer value of more than $379,500, RT says. These are the ones given the name of “hot properties.”
Over at the M L S, not the Internet version, Fresno County today has 1,845 properties that are REO and on the market. These properties include farms, multi-family, commercial and the rest.
So it seems there are 1,068 bank-owned properties in the county that are gathering dust. Not surprisingly, the “nicer” an REO house is, the less likely it is that it will be marketed.
Which rankles me, because we have been sniffing around for a new house (would like some more room, and away from a noisy road) for quite a while.
So it goes.
Digest
Business Digest: California’s rating cut to ‘A-’ by S&P
Thursday, January 14, 2010
DEBT RATING
Standard & Poor’s cut California’s main debt rating Wednesday by one notch, saying the government of the most populous U.S. state could nearly run out of cash in March — and that another rating cut might follow.
The nearly $20 billion budget shortfall over the next year and a half has left the state in a precarious situation, needing to cut costs or raise taxes, and either of those solutions could slow down the incipient economic recovery, the agency said.
“If economic or revenue trends substantially falter, we could lower the state rating during the next six to 12 months,” S&P said after cutting the rating on general obligation debt to A- from A. The new level is four notches above ‘junk’ status, a level at which many investors refuse to buy debt.
California already had the lowest debt rating of any U.S. state before the downgrade.
– Associated Press
That doesnt seem to be much of a downgrade to me.I think the rating agencies are just trying to act like they are all of a sudden doing their jobs.
Like leaving the canary and his cage on a hilltop outside the coal mine.
Rating agencies have always been doing their job.
That is convincing concervative investors that dogcrap is gold, thus allowing their masters to sell dogcrap.
Please note that for “conservative investors” please substitute huge pools of money that are under either a statutory or contractual obligation to invest a large part of their portfolios into AAA rated bonds - pools of money such as pension funds, bank reserves, etc.
That was the real reason for the push to securitization - the ability to change 99.9% of Joe Schmoe’s mortgage, credit card receivables, etc. into bonds that could be called triple A.
BINGO -
Come on polly! We all KNOW it was them po’ folks who bought more house than they could afford that singlehandedly caused this mess!
I think Measton is slightly off here.
I think the state of California isn’t in bed with the ratings agencies and this is the flip side of the problem. I believe they rate agressivly against a very unlikely to default situation, like California while very loosely interpreting things from their bankster paymasters. Also forcing the bonds to go at higher rates and giving more freebies to the banksters.
Hence high interest rates and crappy ratings for taxpayers in Cali.
High predicited yield and low rates from total crap MBS/bank BS.
When you complain about this, it is likely the rating agencies will say “See, you guys won’t let us rate things the way we NEED to”.
Sweet.
I might also add about our “crisis”.
We are talking about 30 billion dollars. So, we raise taxes by 1000$ per person and we are out of the hole completely.
It really isn’t that big of a hole. A combination of spending cuts, service reductions and small adjustment to tax structure and we are fine.
I bet if we did that it would show the ratings agencies are just fu#*ing with us. We would show we don’t really have a default problem and could pay down the debt. We would, in an ideal world, cause them to increase our credit rating thus allowing our debt to be rolled over at lower interest.
Badabing badaboom our costs go down and the debt spiral starts to end. Work at it for a mere three year period and the state is in good shape to lower taxes and make long term commitments to bringing jobs back.
A lot of this could be predicated on making a deal with Washington on refinancing California’s debt with some small tax increases combined with spending cuts. Perhaps a little bit of work on pension reforms for the major abuses.
Or am I just totally nuts here?
Get the facts.
California’s CAFR.
http://www.sco.ca.gov/ard_state_cafr.html
Bloomberg
California Creditors Dread IOUs With Aid Plea Failing (Update3)
January 13, 2010, 06:46 PM EST
More From Businessweek
(Adds credit rating downgrade in third, 11th paragraphs.)
By Edwin Chen, John McCormick and Michael Marois
Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) — California’s hopes are fading for federal help in closing a projected $19.9 billion deficit that has caused the lowest-rated state’s borrowing costs to rise 24 percent since September.
“We recognize they have enormous problems,” David Axelrod, senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said in an interview. “But we can’t solve all of those problems from Washington.”
Investors are growing more concerned that California, whose debt rating was cut today by Standard & Poor’s, will repeat last year’s fiscal crisis that forced it to use IOUs to pay bills. With Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger seeking $6.9 billion in federal assistance to narrow the deficit, the extra yield paid on the state’s 10-year bonds over AAA-rated municipal securities rose to 1.31 percentage points yesterday from 1.06 points on Sept. 11, according to Bloomberg fair market value index data.
Schwarzenegger’s plea for help for California, the world’s eighth-largest economy, may become a test case for Obama, who last year called the Republican governor “an outstanding partner with our administration.” Dozens of states face budget shortfalls amid the worst recession since the Great Depression, and at least 36 have already reduced fiscal 2010 expenditures, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers.
…
California is too big to fail. Financial help will eventually arrive when things get truly nasty, but it will likely arrive wrapped in a revised state constitution.
As I have said all along…
but don’t be surprised if the bailout does not happen until after there is a Democratic governor in the state house.
I don’t think so. The problem is that as essential as it is for California not to fail, if they bail out California, they have to bail out everyone. And by everyone, I mean every state except Alaska and Wyoming (revenue from oil leases). You can’t bail out California and tell Michigan tough luck. And I think that it is really possible that all the others could go under if the real estate values fall too quickly. Which is why so many people in DC are working like mad to keep the prices from falling quickly. That *is* the state bailout - they just haven’t figured it out and started cutting expense enough to take advantage of the bailout they are getting. They still think they are going to get the bailout they want (direct aid, or, better yet, a brand new bubble).
You can’t always get what you want….
Having spent some of my youth in Michigan, I can tell you what would happen if DC told the Great Lake State to drop dead. You’ve probably read some allusions to, ahem, bad words in today’s Bucket. Well, how about a bunch of angry Michiganders, descending on DC to deliver them in person?
Financial help will eventually arrive when things get truly nasty, but it will likely arrive wrapped in a revised state constitution.
I can’t wait to score some of that great CA weed with a state tax stamp on it!
How can Washington spare $20 billion for California, when it will have to spend at least that much on aid to Haiti?
Arnold just dreaming if he expects manna from D.C.
By thomas d. elias
Posted: 01/12/2010 09:04:38 PM PST
Updated: 01/12/2010 09:04:39 PM PST
It’s always music to the ears of Californians when their governor’s gripe is about the obvious inequity between what citizens of this state pay to the federal government and what they get back.
The likes of Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown, George Deukmejian, Pete Wilson and Gray Davis all argued that California should get more. In recent years, the state has seen 78 cents spent here for every dollar California taxpayers put in, although Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein say federal stimulus and recovery spending have lately pushed that figure up.
But no one has ever made this kind of whining a major theme of an annual State of the State speech until Arnold Schwarzenegger tried it last week.
His talk was full of unrealistic goals, some lofty and some not. There was the concept of a constitutional amendment to ensure the state always spends more on four-year colleges and universities than it does on prisons. There was the idea of privatizing much of the state prison system.
But nothing in the Schwarzenegger vision was less realistic than his demand that the federal government give back far more to this state than it now does.
…
The lame, oft-repeated “talent flight” argument shows why an internationally coordinated effort is needed to whack the banksters’ ill-gotten bonuses.
Bloomberg
RBS Needs Bonus Leeway to ‘Play in a Global World,’ Myners Says
January 13, 2010, 11:48 AM EST
More From Businessweek
By Gonzalo Vina
Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) — Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc needs to be able to keep staff by paying them enough, Treasury Minister Paul Myners said in his most conciliatory comments since the U.K. government blocked the bank’s 2009 bonus plans.
While RBS bonuses are unlikely to match those of other investment banks, Myners said today that the Edinburgh-based lender should be allowed to award enough compensation to retain staff. He said its investment bank division is “very profitable” and that the government doesn’t want to harm it.
“Major banks have paid very high bonuses and if we want RBS to play in a global world, it has to equip itself appropriately to do that,” Myners told lawmakers in London.
The government has refused RBS proposals to increase bonuses by 50 percent to 1.5 billion pounds ($2.4 billion) to encourage staff to stay. RBS CEO Stephen Hester said yesterday that “we are losing talent that I wish we weren’t” because employees are worried about the bank.
…
“investment bank division is “very profitable”
Isn’t that banker speak for “We’re making a killing on commodities speculation and currency trades”?
The “talent” of the Royal Bank of Scotland and others, got us into this mess.
Dump them and hire the kids from the local Mikey D’s.
At least they appear to KNOW how to balance the books and close up shop after the last burger has been sold at night or they’re history.
“RBS bonuses are unlikely to match those of other investment banks”
Just don’t seem fittin’ that RBS is an investment bank.
He’s lying through his teeth. There is NOWHERE for that “talent” to go except to start their own businesses, which is exactly what they are doing.
This means competition. And all BS and lip service aside, the big corps HATE competition.
And they aren’t “…worried about the bank” they’re worried about being ASSOCIATED with the bank.
The Associated Press
January 12, 2010, 5:34AM ET
French bonus tax to raise $523 million
France will raise about euro360 million ($523 million) from its tax on bankers’ bonuses, the finance minister said in an interview published Tuesday.
The 50 percent bonus tax that France is putting in place this year will hit about 2,500 bankers, traders and other finance professionals, Christine Lagarde said in an interview with Le Figaro daily.
Lagarde justified the tax by saying it is the billions of euros in state aid that France provided its banks at the height of the global financial crisis which allowed the banks to resume making profits in recent months.
“In these conditions, it is justified that the French get a share of these results,” Lagarde said.
The tax is also meant to “send a signal to the banks, to prompt them to finance the economy, to use the capital they have to make loans, and not to pay out extravagant compensation,” Lagarde said.
…
1. Government lends money to banks to help banks recover.
2. Banks recover.
3. Government then penalizes banks for recovering.
That seems so… governmental.
1. Banks infiltrate government to financially engineer the largest lump sum tax payment from U.S. Main Street to Wall Street in history.
2. Bankers use bailout money that was supposed to eliminate the toxic asset problem to pay ginormous bonuses.
3. Government claws back a pittance to appease electorate.
That seems so…kleptocratic.
I’ll go with the Professor on this one.
Me too.
heh.. That tiny amount of TARP money loaned to banks didn’t scratch the surface as far as “eliminating the toxic asset problem”, nor was it intended to, nor did anyone familiar with the problem imagine it would.
The intention was simply to stabilize the financial markets. Stable financial markets can, if given several years, eliminate all the toxic assets.
However, government along that “electorate” you speak of are as greedy as anyone else, and when they see someone making money while they are not, they must find some way to get their hands on that money.
So, the cry is to raise taxes on whoever has money to spare… and that’s just so.. governmental. Don’t you think?
“However, government along that “electorate” you speak of are as greedy as anyone else,…”
I sincerely believe the average member of the American electorate is far less of a greed pig compared to the average banker, but perhaps you have better information?
“…when they see someone making money while they are not, they must find some way to get their hands on that money.”
Oh yeah, right — like the way every time your average American citizen hears a story about a bank robbery, they feel a sense of remorse that they were not there participating, in order to share the loot…
joey,
I just don’t understand why -all- bonuses weren’t suspended until the toxic assets were cleared entirely?
The topic of bonuses isn’t new to ‘me’. Every year I worked for a bank or brokerage house, those at the top were given ‘ginormous’ bonuses and those at the bottom got a sleeve of golf balls.
Every-freakin’-year.
“Stable financial markets can, if given several years, eliminate all the toxic assets.”
If they so choose. But by all reasonable measures, that’s not what is happening. They still pretend the assets aren’t really toxic.
When I see bank executives working for $1/year until they’ve cleared their books, as Lee Iacocca did when Chrysler got their original bailout 30 years ago, I’ll cut them some slack. And don’t give me this crap about “losing talent”. It takes a mid level accountant to oversee a bunch of debt unwinding; an individual like that would likely even do a better job of it.
“…if given several years…”
IMHO this is the most important point of all. It’s all about time. Gov’t can buy them time…for a time, but ultimately it will be up to Main St. to again pay the banks fees and interest at levels necessary to repair the damage.
Is Main St. up to this challenge? That’s the $64 question in this race against time.
“That tiny amount of TARP money loaned to banks didn’t scratch the surface as far as “eliminating the toxic asset problem”, …”
Many of the toxic assets are nicely squirrelled away on the Fed Res’s balance sheet. Say about $1.25 trillion worth. That was the real bailout; the TARP was a sideshow.
heh.. That tiny amount of TARP money loaned to banks didn’t scratch the surface as far as “eliminating the toxic asset problem”, nor was it intended to, nor did anyone familiar with the problem imagine it would.
Uh maybe you should look at the FED balance sheet and the GSE’s when assessing the size of the lump payment made to banks. The Only reason banks have made money is because of the gov bailout.
The cry is that bankers bonuses should be taxed because they didn’t really earn them did they. They were provided curtosy of uncle sam. I still say the gov should have nationalized these institutions that failed then resold them on the open market. Bond holders and CEO’s and stock holders should have felt serious pain and lost jobs.
“but perhaps you have better information”
Well, slamming WS here is like asking the bar if your buying ‘another’ round sounds like a good idea but.., isn’t it time we again revisit WHY we’re here?
Bailout necessitated by collapse of Credit Default Swaps.
CDS required in an effort to mitigate shaky/shady r-e-s-i-d-e-n-t-i-a-l home loans.
Home Equity loans passed around like “X” at a Rave party.
MEW-extraction allows “the average member of the American electorate” to spend borrowed dollars on all kinds of toys.
Am I missing something here?
“Many of the toxic assets are nicely squirrelled away on the Fed Res’s balance sheet. Say about $1.25 trillion worth.”
Yep. The Fed went right ahead and summarily executed the bailout without getting Congressional approval. Good topic for the Congressional auditors to take up…
Just as I predicted many moons ago. They went right around Congress. Paulson and Bernanke.
And sorry, I don’t buy Greedspan’s sudden coming to Jesus either. Give back your millions, sir, and go work at MCD’s, and then I’ll believe you.
Yep ,Tarp was a drop in the bucket compared to the other Bail-outs . I think the actual amount of Bail outs is more like 4 or 5 trillion or more if you add up everything . Look at all the tax right offs ,look at the low Fed costs for loans for these Entities
that they turned around and made money on it,look at all the incentives that only improved these Entities balance sheets .Look at the transfer of bad paper to F&F .Look at the fees banks have made on the Government lending money and buying the loan paper at below market rates when the private sector wouldn’t of done it . The AIG direct pay out on Credit Default Swaps was a undeserved Bail out whereby the Entities got 100% on the dollar on bad paper . I could go on and on .
Hey Bear,
Remember those loans on the Fed balance sheet can be cashed in. They have every right and the ability to force the banks to buy those back up.
I would expect that BOJ has the same thing with lots of toxic assets. It probably tires to roll them on to the banks every once in a while. The banks then claim insolvency, likely true, and it gets stuffed back in the mattress.
If you look at the banking system today, I believe the best yield on investment is on the verge on insolvency. Zero reserves for losses. Hence the banks are always on the edge. Any attempt to force them to eat losses brings that to the surface. Japan has lived with this deflationary effect for decades. Will to bet their banksters get huge bonuses as well?
Anyhow, we have to fix the fractional reserve system, sweeps and such. Not that I see anything like that happening.
1 TRILLION DOLLARS?
“Tiny?”
Thanks for letting us know who you are, joey.
eco,
I believe joey and eddie are the same person or twins.
“…the same person or twins.”
Let’s hope so.
“That seems so…kleptocratic.”
Now Mr. Bear, you do a disservice to Klepto’s by suggesting they have traits resembling MegaBankers.
Kleptomania is distinguished from shoplifting or ordinary theft, as shoplifters and thieves generally steal for monetary value, or associated gains and usually display intent or premeditation, while Kleptomaniacs are not necessarily contemplating the value of the items they steal or even the theft until they are compelled. Of all reported shoplifting, less than 5% are actually committed by kleptomaniacs.
This disorder usually manifests during puberty and, in some cases, may never stop and lasts throughout the MegaBankers life.
1. Banks infiltrate government to financially engineer the largest lump sum tax payment from U.S. Main Street to Wall Street in history.
This implies some sort of covert subversion. Actually, it was pretty blatant. Just check the campaign finance disclosures of your Republicrat representative and see who wrote the checks. Wall Street financial services firms donated $4 million to Obama’s Presidential campaign. Goldman Sachs was his second-largest donor. Look at where his “economic advisors” came from.
The Banksters aren’t running the show from behind the scenes. They ARE the show.
I think I’d add the banksters cash in on the public money and tax breaks before leaving when it is “discovered” the banks still haven’t recovered.
Nothing leads me to believe the banks are nothing but shells that exist to enrich some insiders.
Last weeks wall st journal, print edition, mentioned the banks were loaning to hedge funds at leverage levels similar to levels seen before the 2007 crisis.
So, expect this to repeat again with “blame” thrown at Obama for trying to reign in banks. Not sure when the coordinated attack occurs but should be sometime before the election this fall.
While I’m conservative and would like a more balanced house, I still deplore this kind of BS.
Developments
Real estate news and analysis from The Wall Street Journal
* Are Bargains at the St. Regis Cause for Optimism?
* RealtyTrac’s Latest Foreclosure Data: ‘No End In Sight’
* January 13, 2010, 5:21 PM ET
Bonus Bashers Pile on Fannie, Freddie
By Nick Timiraos
The Treasury’s Christmas Eve approval of multimillion dollar compensation agreements for the CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is getting flak from both sides of the aisle in Congress.
Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, on Wednesday said he thought the compensation agreements, which will allow the chief executives of both companies to take home payments of up to $6 million annually in cash, were “too high.”
Republicans have stepped up their criticism of the government’s oversight of Fannie and Freddie in recent days. Rep. Frank’s Republican counterpart on the committee, Alabama Republican Spencer Bachus, said in a statement Wednesday that next week’s hearing on bank bonuses must include an examination of the recently approved pay deals for the senior executives at Fannie and Freddie.
“The Committee must explore how these compensation arrangements can be justified in light of the companies’ abject failure to meet their stated performance goals, which include ‘being a recognized leader in the housing recovery’ and ‘protecting taxpayers,’” Rep. Bachus said in his statement.
…
Really, I mean the GSE’s have been given a mandate to buy anything the banks give them and profit is not job 1, so why should they make the big bucks.
A grocery market Bag Boy could do the job of running Fannie or Freddie. Why should those turds who run the GSEs get more than minimum wage. Hell, I’ll go do the job for free, just give me the perks and the hot secretary.
Sorry pressboardbox, but you’re just not “Bushwood” material.
(bonus points to whoever knows that reference)
caddyshack, duh. and I resemble that remark!
Developments
Real estate news and analysis from The Wall Street Journal
* January 13, 2010, 5:24 PM ET
RealtyTrac’s Latest Foreclosure Data: ‘No End In Sight’
By Dawn Wotapka
It’s been a brutal year for foreclosure activity and there’s “no end in sight,” says Rick Sharga, senior vice president of RealtyTrac, which is set to release its (undoubtedly grim) year-end report at midnight on Thursday.
“We’re setting new records almost every day,” Mr. Sharga says. Even worse: “Everybody keeps looking for a quick fix to this. There really isn’t one.”
I was very surprised that he didn’t mention foreclosures in CA when he went through his litany of states that were still having major issues. I seem to recall he mentioned FL, NV, AZ, OH and MI. No CA.
Did I just miss that?
“Everybody keeps looking for a quick fix to this. There really isn’t one.”
Mr. Sharga meet eddie
eddie …Mr. Sharga
When did I say there is an easy fix? What are you even referring to?
Here is a succinct description of the view from the top of the world’s tallest phallic symbol:
Developments
Real estate news and analysis from The Wall Street Journal
* January 4, 2010, 10:25 AM ET
The View from the Top of Burj Dubai, the World’s Tallest Skyscraper
By WSJ Staff
From WSJ’s Speakeasy blog:
From “At the Top,” the name given to the observatory on the Burj Dubai, you can see the faint outline of the Middle East’s pariah-state Iran on the other side of the Persian Gulf. But at the media opening of the skydeck close to the top of the world’s tallest skyscraper Monday, you could just make out the undeveloped islands that make up the offshore Dubai World project that is synonymous with the sheikdom’s collapsing real estate industry.
After taking the brief ride to the 124th floor in one of the smoothest elevators I’ve ever travelled in, visitors are met with a bird’s eye view of the sprawling city - patches of desert, skyscrapers that appear tiny from such a height, unfinished buildings, the city’s Sheik Zayed road and interchanges - and perhaps the most impressive view of all - the Burj’s own shadow stretching out to the sea. “It’s like a huge sundial,” I heard one reporter say.
…
Who is going to christen the new building by jumping from the roof? Bank officers and developers are probably shouldering eachother out of the way.
When thinking of the UAE, and the tower in particularly, I am reminded of the end of the poem Ozymandias:
“OZYMANDIAS
“I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
“The lone and level sands stretch far away”
Not that it would have done old Ozymandias any good back then, but these days when you “pound sand” in UAE you get Oil. Oil is needed for real estate & food…but you gotta be able to keep others hands off it, that requires oil as well.
Oh, brother, Pondering. I was thinking of that poem too.
The silver lining: With 1 in 45 U.S. housing units receiving foreclosure notices, there is a natural safety-in-numbers effect for delinquent loan owners.
Squatter’s rights rule: “Possession is 90 percent of the law.”
Jan. 14, 2010, 12:01 a.m. EST
2009 foreclosures hit record high
No relief in sight as delinquent loans continue to pile up
By Steve Kerch, MarketWatch
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — The number of U.S. residential properties receiving at least one foreclosure filing jumped 21% in 2009 to a record 2.82 million, RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure marketplace, reported Thursday.
The report also showed that 2.21% of all U.S. housing units (1 in 45) received at least one foreclosure filing during the year, up from 1.84% in 2008, 1.03% in 2007 and 0.58% in 2006.
More foreclosure trouble ahead
The foreclosure crisis is far from over, according to RealtyTrac’s Rick Sharga. The company will release its year-end report on Thursday showing foreclosures rose 20% over the previous year. He talks with Dawn Wotapka about some trouble spots and the outlook for 2010.
“As bad as the 2009 numbers are, they probably would have been worse if not for legislative and industry-related delays in processing delinquent loans,” said James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac.
Saccacio said that monthly foreclosure filings peaked in July at 361,000, then declined for four months before rebounding in December. He said short-term factors, including trial loan modifications, state legislation extending the foreclosure process and an overwhelming volume of inventory clogging the foreclosure pipeline contributed to the second-half declines.
But “in the long term, a massive supply of delinquent loans continues to loom over the housing market, and many of those delinquencies will end up in the foreclosure process in 2010 and beyond, as lenders gradually work their way through the backlog,” he said.
…
Hey just wait till february 22 when the new credit card rules regarding universal deault kick in.People who have been trying to preserve their credit will take advantage of this new law.so if they default on a 2nd the other creditors cannot raise their rates.I think this is going to be pretty huge.
“BREAKING
NEWSRetail sales fell 0.3% in December, surprising analysts; number of filers for first-time jobless benefits rose last week to 444,000.”
The only qualification you need these days to be an “analyst” is to be constantly surprised. That’s a surprising low qualification.
Is “anal” the root of “analyst”?
If I’m not surprised, am I over or under qualified?
You will be fine, so long as all economic news turns out “worse than expected” compared to your rosy view.
If the adverb “unexpectedly” was removed from the lexicon then AP, UPI and Reuters wouldn’t be able to write one economic story.
They could simply substitute an emoticon with a surprised look.
LOL! So, this is worse - worse, not less - worse then?
I don’t get it. For the last week the MSM had been reporting retail sales had gone up, and CNBC was crowing “we’re in the money.” I guess they had to inflate some stocks for their WS pals.
They were lying. Surprised?
UE is too high and wage cuts too prevalent for retail to do anything except pray.
PB 14 - WBMZ 1
WMBZ is out with the flu. PB is filling in…
Why don’t members of the American electorate have the right to know what the Fed did with the People’s Money?
Fed Trying to Protect Bailout Secrecy
Written by Steven Yates
Wednesday, 13 January 2010 15:45
Federal ReserveLast summer, a federal judge ruled that the Federal Reserve must disclose the identities of firms that received any portions of the over-$2 trillion in bailout money back in 2008. This week, the Fed is preparing to go to court to protect its secrets.
…
Bloomberg LP (parent organization of Bloomberg.com) originally filed its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit last April following the Fed’s refusal to name the financial firms it lent to, disclose the specific amounts lent to each, or identify the assets used as collateral. The Fed has defended its actions as necessary to prevent a complete meltdown of the country’s financial and banking system in the wake of the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Congress had approved $700 billion to bolster banks (the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP), and the total amount lent out by the federal government in this effort had reached $12.8 trillion as of March 31, 2009, according to Bloomberg. This total includes the $2.14 trillion on the Fed’s balance sheet that remains unaccounted for.
Such amounts are unprecedented; the effort itself has been called “an unprecedented and highly controversial use of public money.” No previous bailouts have even come close to such amounts, which are virtually unimaginable to ordinary people. Count back a billion seconds, and you will be back to slightly over 30 years ago. Count back a trillion seconds, and you will be well before the beginning of recorded history.
…
And 2010 is going to be even worse…
Record 3 million households hit with foreclosure in 2009 (21% more than 2008 and double from 2007)
CNN | 1/14/2010 | Les Christie
Almost 3 million homeowners received at least one foreclosure filing during 2009, setting a new record for the number of people falling behind on their mortgage payments.
RealtyTrac, the online marketer of foreclosed homes, reported that one in 45 households — or 2,824,674 properties nationwide — were in default last year. That’s 21% more than in 2008, and more than double 2007’s total.
A brief comment on the idea of moving your money from the WS big banks to local banks, S&L’s, and other local to your area institutions.
It has been commented on HBB that CRE may not be the problem of the WS criminals, but instead may be the issue of the local banks that are not TBTF. This is because the locals have more exposure to CRE.
Our deposits are insured to $250k in FDIC institutions. Do I trust Linda Blair in this matter? Yes, for now.
That being said, I now bank locally and have a local bank credit card with a very low balance.
For more info on this look to http://www.moveyourmoney.info.
HBBr’s, I recommend caution and prudence when considering this move. In other words, just be yourselves!
My $0.2. I’m not recommending this move; this is what I have done.
Roidy
P.S. I’m out of WS all together. I’m so tired of being their chump. If I invest on WS, I lose. If I don’t invest I lose, I just seem to lose less. Heck, I’ve even gotten to the point where I actually seem to be conservative. This is a real change for me.
Yes I to am disgusted with this wall street casino.It will be a cold day in hell before I risk my retirement with these crooks.I am done with the bullsh@t.Though real estate can be very volitile I would rather have something tangible instead of a piece of paper from a corrupt company.The last investors paid when a company goes bankrupt are the common shareholders.
AZdude,
Good point that I have been thinking about. Something tangible like land, a custom classic car or truck, etc. The trick is to find something that’s going to hold the most value while not getting taxed to high heaven.
Lip
Uh oh, is Sarah Palin starting to look attractive to you?
Hmm, the conservatives have Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin although Ann Coulter … ? They also have Rush, O’Rielly, and Glenn Beck, none of which have ever been elected to anything (except Sarah.) All of which are idiots (including Sarah.)
Yes, I’ve looked up Palin’s pix on the web. She’s hot.
Also, I’m an atheist, pro-choice, moderately pro-business, low-taxes, small government, no bailouts, accept global warming, pro-nuclear, and anti-globalization. I think the best, most important thing anyone can do is to get an education. I think the windmill electricity farms are silly. I think fossil fuels are silly, too. I buy American whenever I can. This Chinese stuff is crap.
I realize I’m not a conservative nor a liberal. I’m mostly confused, I guess.
Roidy
It’s no wonder you’re confused. It’s a tough life in this country for moderates.
I consider myself do be a conservative, but I do not want to live in a country that would elect Sarah Palin as President. Ann Coulter is a neurotic rabble-rouser.
Hmm, the conservatives have Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin although Ann Coulter … ? They also have Rush, O’Rielly, and Glenn Beck, none of which have ever been elected to anything (except Sarah.) All of which are idiots (including Sarah.)
Yes, I’ve looked up Palin’s pix on the web. She’s hot.
Yes, she is hot, and also an idiot. Ann Coulter, on the other hand, is as scary looking as she is politically scary. I’m not sure which is worse, actually.
Yep
It has been commented on HBB that CRE may not be the problem of the WS criminals, but instead may be the issue of the local banks that are not TBTF. This is because the locals have more exposure to CRE.
While I was Back East, the Slim household got word of the parental units’ bank being sold to another. Seems that the parental units’ bank, to which they have been loyal since I was a wee little Slim, had some problem loans.
Collectively, the Slim family was quite worried, because the local media was, shall we say, lacking in detail on exactly what the problem loans were. I even sat Mom down at the computer and showed her how to use the info at:
http://banktracker.investigativereportingworkshop.org/banks/
From the Bank Tracker, we saw the bank’s fortunes turning sharply negative in 2008. Mom said that was when it bought out another bank. Shades of Wachovia buying Golden West, I conjectured.
Our deposits are insured to $250k in FDIC institutions. Do I trust Linda Blair in this matter? Yes, for now.
Ok, but watch out when her head starts to spin around!
A couple of points for those who are reflixivly against ANY kind of government intervention in the economy: the “Let them all fail, and we’ll be the better for it” crowd. An economy is a large dynamic system. There can be many different, stable points. In an economy with the rule of law, where people can be reasonably sure of getting their loans repaid, companies can expand, and capital can efficiently flow to those who can effectively use it; one where long term investment makes sense. Or we can have an economy dominated by speculative bubbles where “get in and get out” is the name of the game. But the MOST stable economies are places like Hati, or most of sub-saharan Africa. A complete clusterf##k where nobody trusts anybody else is a VERY stable economy, just one we don’t want to live in.
I think most of us agree that the government SHOUD have tried to impede the growth of the ginormous credit bubble. Because huge speculative credit bubble invariably end in big busts. This bust is wholely a result of the bubble that preceeded it and it isn’t over yet. I think that most of us agree that the government has spent too much time and effort trying to maintain RE prices at unsupportable levels. But house prices and credit availability certainly HAVE been at supportable, reasonably stable levels before. I would argue that we REALLY don’t want prices to fall so much that “everybody can pay cash” for their houses, because that will literally NEVER be true. Those WITH money will buy up most of the housing stock and be cashflowing landlords long before we reach that point.
I don’t know. I’m still holding out for a twenty-dollar house.
Have you been to Detroit lately?
But the MOST stable economies are places like Hati, or most of sub-saharan Africa. A complete clusterf##k where nobody trusts anybody else is a VERY stable economy, just one we don’t want to live in.
“Stability” is often the governmentists’ euphemism for repression and stagnation. The real goal should be freedom, not “stability”.
I think most of us agree that the government SHOUD have tried to impede the growth of the ginormous credit bubble.
No, the government should not have CAUSED the ginormous credit bubble in the first place.
I would argue that we REALLY don’t want prices to fall so much that “everybody can pay cash” for their houses, because that will literally NEVER be true.
You don’t want something to happen, because it will never happen? Your logic is a little faulty, I think.
Nobody’s talking about buying a house for cash. How about prices falling to within 3x your income? Generally incomes range from ~$30K to ~$150K or so. Housing should range from ~80K to $500K. If you make less than $30K, you should be renting, or living in a (decent) shack.
“Although the power of positive thinking may help in many ways, it’s of zero use if you continue living above your means and making stupid decisions.”
~Doug Casey
Las Vegas Monorail files for Ch. 11 bankruptcy
LAS VEGAS(AP)—The Las Vegas Monorail has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in hopes of restructuring its debt.
Las Vegas Monorail CEO Curtis Myles said in a statement released late Wednesday that the transit system had enough revenue to pay its operating costs and some of its debt. He said the monorail’s hours will not be affected.
Myles says the company needs to get through bankruptcy before it can expand its system to the airport and other points along the Las Vegas Strip.
Myles says the monorail has been hurt by a 30 percent drop in convention visitors to Las Vegas.
The Las Vegas Monorail is run without public funding.
Though it bears some faint resemblances, Las Vegas decidedly is not Disneyland.
I’m going tomorrow for the first time since those heady days of 2005 when Ivana and hair club had dueling projects. I expect it to be interesting.
Check out the half-completed construction projects on the Strip. Many of these look as though a neutron bomb was dropped in the area at the point when they were half-finished.
I can’t be the only person reminded of The Simpsons:
Lyle Lanley: Well, sir, there’s nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail!
What’d I say?
Ned Flanders: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What’s it called?
Patty+Selma: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: That’s right! Monorail!
[crowd chants `Monorail' softly and rhythmically]
Miss Hoover: I hear those things are awfully loud…
Lyle Lanley: It glides as softly as a cloud.
Apu: Is there a chance the track could bend?
Lyle Lanley: Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
Barney: What about us brain-dead slobs?
Lyle Lanley: You’ll be given cushy jobs.
Abe: Were you sent here by the devil?
Lyle Lanley: No, good sir, I’m on the level.
Wiggum: The ring came off my pudding can.
Lyle Lanley: Take my pen knife, my good man.
I swear it’s Springfield’s only choice…
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What’s it called?
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: Once again…
All: Monorail!
Marge: But Main Street’s still all cracked and broken…
Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!
All: Monorail!
Monorail!
Monorail!
[big finish]
Monorail!
Homer: Mono… D’oh!
In conclusion:
Mono=One
Rail=Rail
I was singing it in my head before I scrolled down to your reply.
I didn’t even know about the Monorail project.. but LV would be an ideal place for one, the way the place is laid out.
Having been to vegas, you really need a monorail. Walking from the front door of one huge casino to the front door of another huge casino means a good 20-minute walk in blistering heat.
Just got an email, Luxor rooms for $40 per night. Things are definitely bad in LV
Mr.Blankfein take your analogy of the economic crisis to a hurricane and shove it. Goldman Sachs was a big part of the economic crisis and played a role in Lehman Bros. going under and taking retiree pensions and savings with it. You, Larry Summers and Dick Grasso (to name a few) are constant reminders of the dark under belly of capitalism.
Megabank, Inc was the hurricane machine.
I apologize. I only got a D in Analogy class. My grades were better in Scamming and Stealing, Manipulating Governments, and Performing God’s Work 101. -L. Blankfein
Is there any chance Goldman Sachs employees could be prohibited from future employment at the Treasury Department? That would seem to be a simple first step towards eliminating the systemic risk problem.
Jan. 14, 2010, 12:02 a.m. EST
Panel: Treasury has no metric to meet its TARP goals
Congressional panel worries about implicit guarantees big banks still have
By Ronald D. Orol, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Treasury Department can use its broad principles to justify almost any decision it makes when unwinding the government’s stake in the $700 billion bank bailout package, according to a congressional oversight panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
“The panel is concerned that, although Treasury has been consistent in articulating its principles, the principles as announced are so broad that they provide Treasury with a means of justifying almost any decision,” the Congressional Oversight Panel wrote in its latest report entitled “Exiting TARP and unwinding its impact on the Financial Markets.”
…
I like the idea that too big to fail banks can’t have any former employee working at the FED or treasury. Or maybe a 10 year hiatus from one to the other. I may write my congressman.
For Carl Morris, who wanted to live in a small dwelling but with houselike characterstics:
Small cottage and bungalow house plans are coming back into style, and they don’t design only or the wackos who want to live in 200 sq ft. Google for “Katrina Cottage” or “Ross Chapin Pocket Neighborhood” for small housies. “Peek Design Group” designs Craftsman. Or go to any house plan site (coolhouseplans is good) and sort by square footage to bring up the smaller plans. Log-cabin companies also have small stuff. For a little fun, check out storybookhomes dot com.
Or buy a boat.
Thanks for thinking of me, but I’m fine with the doublewide until I can get some visibility into what the next iteration of the economy is going to look like. I actually like nice houses, my dream house would probably be 2000ft^2 or so. I’m just not going to sell myself into slavery for one. In the meantime walking to work is nice.
Carl:
Why isn’t this a solution for all the FB who walk away from their “homes”
—————————
but I’m fine with the doublewide
Good news (for now) in regards to cap&tax. Also, imagine fraud in carbon trades. Who could have seen that coming?
The Climate is Changing ~ WSJ ~ 1-14-10
When I say the climate is changing, I do not mean, as many people do, that man-made global warming is destroying Planet Earth. I mean that the politics of climate change is changing rapidly all over the globe. Al Gore’s moment has come and gone.
In the United States, Democrats, nervously facing midterm elections, are calling on President Obama to jettison the cap-and-trade bills before the Senate. In Canada, the emissions-trading scheme—another term for cap-and-trade—is stalled in legislative limbo. In Britain, Tories are coming out against David Cameron’s green stance. In the European Union, cap-and-trade has been the victim of fraudulent traders and the carbon price has more than halved to $18.50 per ton. In France, the Constitutional Council has blocked President Nicolas Sarkozy’s tax on carbon emissions that was set to take effect in the New Year.
In Copenhagen, meanwhile, the United Nations’ climate-change summit went up in smoke. And in Mexico City later this year hopes for any verifiable, enforceable and legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gases—and to bring in developing nations such as China and India that were, insanely, omitted from the Kyoto protocol in 1997—are a chimera.
Rattled Dems fret over health of Senate seat
“The race to replace Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate has come down to one issue, and it’s not Sen. Ted Kennedy’s “legacy.” It’s the misshapen health-care bills that have scared the bejesus out of an ever-growing majority of American voters, even in this bluest of states.”
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1225447
Like I said in an earlier post this week. When a good percentage of the Dems don’t like the HC bill and then the Dens to have to fight to keep a Senate seat in MA, THINGS HAVE CHANGED. Now if we could get “anyone” to step up for fiscal constraints, we might be able to turn the corner on this recession/depression. Unfortunately I don’t trust the Repubs much more than the Dems in this matter.
Maybe a good old fashioned drinking and womanizing contest…
How about an old fashioned drinking and manizing contest?
I don’t think Ted K was into dudes? But if that is what you want…
They don’t call it the Democrat-ick Party for nothing.
BTW, lest you be wondering, I also have some choice nicknames for the Elephant Party.
It’s not helping Coakley’s cause that she dissed Fenway Park. (Major faux pas in Beantown). Must not take name of the Big Green Monster in vain.
Bloody Sock Shilling laid her out for it.
Hahahaha!
Awww… gee…. suddenly Tax and Trade isn’t such a great idea when one has to pay the taxes! Durr… I bet our banker masters will be disappointed since Carbon Credits would have been the ultimate Bubble, even better than housing. Carbon Credits would have been basically been a new currancy printed on demand and totally controlled by the elite with no way at all for the common folks to “store” its value.
One word: ClimateGate. That’s all it took..
Probably not climategate. It’s mostly because we had a cool 2009, people were expecting a “day after tomorrow” scenario (not realizing mama nature is far slower than our timescale), and because of the bad economy. Environmentalism is — face it — a luxury, something you do only after the bills are paid.
Climategate just showed the lack of critical thinking of J6P. A few emails isn’t enough to cancel out a preponderance of data.
Of course, years of manipulation of data, along with controling what gets peer reviewed to make the perponderance of data doesn’t matter either?
You could also go look out there and find some articles mentioning that depending on how you set up the solar driving functions, all of the recent global warming might be indicative of solar fluctuations. Or it could be responsible for nothing at all.
Again. Worthy of study.
I wonder how much urban heat island effects are changing with decreased energy use of fossil fuels and better efficiency from electronics/lighting/appliances/houses exc. Not to mention other conservation efforts.
The warming trend has certainly broken though. I think three years of temperatures returning to normal is some kind of trendet. Anyhow, clearly the models from a mere decade ago didn’t predict this. You can see them on Wikipedia pulled from the IPCC reports.
Not sure that global temperature number means anything either. Too simplified of a view point. Could be Anarctica gets 10 degrees F warmer. While that would indicate a major warming trend for the planet it means just about nothing for the rest of the planet.
I think Climategate will do a lot of good for the science in the end. An open questioning and exploring enviroment should be welcomed rather than a political fighting ground.
Bad news for R&B lovers -
Teddy Pendergrass passed away yesterday at age 59.
His distinctive voice and emotive delivery exemplified the Philly sound. R.I.P. Teddy, we are so sad you had to
Leave Us This Way.
Thanks for that post,…another beautiful voice…gone…
Yes. He continued recording and making appearances after the accident that left him paralyzed. Teddy was a lion of a man, and Philadelphia is in mourning today.
Retail sales unexpectedly fall, jobless claims upJanuary 14, 2010 9:55 AM ET
All Thomson Reuters newsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sales at U.S. retailers unexpectedly fell in December and applications for jobless benefits rose last week, raising concerns about the durability of the economy’s recovery.
The Commerce Department said on Thursday retail sales fell 0.3 percent last month, the first decline in three months, as consumers spent less on vehicles and an array of other goods during the holiday shopping month.
Sales had increased 1.8 percent in November. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast retail sales gaining 0.5 percent last month.
A separate report from the Labor Department showed initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 11,000 to 444,000 last week, higher than the 437,000 claims that analysts surveyed by Reuters had forecast.
“Will consumers be able to take over from the government and replace demand that has come so far from government spending. If the consumer is unable to do that, it’s going to pose some significant risks to the global recovery story,” said Boris Schlossberg, director of research at GFT Forex in New York.
My guess is that much of the holiday shopping was stocking up on personal goods so that the remainder of the year is going to see further declines in retail sales.
For clothes, nearly everyone can “shop in their closet”, only the most sheep like trend followers “must have” some new thing. I think there is a limit to how long some entry level white collar worker will eat ramen so that they can have a $1000 handbag (and pay of credit card debt for same).
And instead of being impoverished, you can “spin” frugality into a new trendy lifestyle: eco-friendly/recycling, locavores, DIY, vintage/thrift shopping, etc. (We’re NOT poor! We’re sensitive and creative!)
Even if you bought TV or a gaming system or some other “luxury” type item, it can be rationalized as “economical” in the context of staying at home for your entertainment, instead of going out.
I walk past a Louis Vuitton on the way to the Metro now. They had a new handbag display in the window that showed the bags floating in the middle of gold colored (guilded) cages. It was hysterical.
I can see that this new walk past the very high end retailers is going to be amusing as all get out. I sure hope so. I’m certainly not going to be shopping there.
Oops. Gilded cages. Brain fart. Been dealing with some sensitive stuff at work.
At least they’re not gelded.
Hiya, alena! How are you feeling?
Polly, I on the other hand walk by a bunch of small poor businesses that offer us cheap pizza. Keep us updated on what new trends you see in Blingville.
Hey, oxide.
Hanging in there, thanks for asking. It’s been quite the month. Hope to be reasonably un-fuddled soon.
It’s getting harder and harder to spin this recoveryless recovery.
Anybody see the recent ikea furniture promotional flyers? They’re now advertising the deflation in their prices for home goods… Every item listed has two prices on it: “last year’s price” and this year’s “New Lower Price”. Not sure if it is just a sales gimmick, or a genuine measure of deflation in these types of housing-related goods.
Do they show “Next Year’s Craigslist Price”?
Actually yes they do. Didn’t you see the little blank space at the bottom of the flyer?
btw, IKEA does have a few stylish pieces, with actual curves and bevels. And guess what, those pieces cost upwards of $400. so much for low price; you may as well go to Ethan Allen. I tell my friends: at IKEA you get what you pay for. You get EXACTLY what you pay for.
$400 at ethan allan gets you a plant holder, maybe.
I dig Ikea. It’s not super cheap but it’s OK for what you get. I bought 2 new kitchen chairs for $49 each. Look OK, will last a couple of years with regular use.
You expect Ikea furniture to be around next year?
I have all the Ikea bookcases I have ever bought and most of them have been in service for over a decade. They aren’t beautiful, but they hold up the books - which is what they were meant to do when I bought them.
Retailers are so crooked.They all use these shady sales techniques.They show these huge 75% off prices which mean nothing.Walk into jc penny and all these signs say 75% off.they jack up the price and then say 75% off.It is a total gimmic.the bottom line is what does the item cost not a wish price then discounted to make you feel like you are getting a deal.
Kohl’s always has the same signs, but also sends out cards for an additional 15-30% off. I’ve noticed that they increase the price of a lot of goods when I show up with one of those cards.
Stores like Kohl’s, JCP, Macy’s plan for their merchandise to sell at discounts, so profit margins are calculated on the lower prices. % of cost of goods is a lot lower than most people realize.
Don’t tell me you just discovered this recently. Next thing you know the carpet store that;s been going out of business for 23 years isn’t really going out of business.
Back in New Jersey growing up, there was the Oriental Rug Gallery. They were literally “going out of business” all the time for well over a decade. What a joke!
Somewhat OT, but…
I stopped into an oriental carpet store that was going out of business a few years ago to see if I could find a cheap little something. I was surprised to see armed guards at the door of this cheesy little strip mall store. Then I looked down at one of the rugs and saw that it was $30K. And these things were PILED on top of each other - probably at least 100 of them in this little retail space. Gulp. (Didn’t buy anything to throw in the back of the SUV that day.)
Buy them on Craigslist for about ten cents on the dollar.
Holy cow! What happened to Ikea?
Years ago they actually had some decent stuff at decent prices. (yes, really) Now the low price stuff is total crap and the nice stuff is totally overpriced.
I guess they either figured out that American consumers are stupid or they hired a NA executive who showed them how to fleece the customer.
Genesee & Wyoming Dec. traffic drops 11%
LONDON (MarketWatch) — Railroad operator Genesee & Wyoming December carload traffic fell 11% to 61,917, with fourth-quarter traffic down 15%. Coal, coke and ores traffic fell on lower shipments from its Illinois and New York/Ohio/Pennsylvania Regions, and farm & food products traffic decreased on temporary shipment delays for the 2009-2010 South Australian grain harvest.
Pickens Shelves Texas Wind Project.
T. Boone Pickens, the oilman and clean-energy booster, shelved his massive wind-power project in Texas even as he stepped up his push to increase the use of natural gas for transportation.
Cheap natural gas, the lack of electricity-transmission lines and the lingering credit crunch have combined to take the shine off large-scale renewable-energy projects, and those factors led Mr. Pickens to halve his $2 billion wind-turbine order with General Electric Co., said a spokesman for Mr. Pickens’s Mesa Power LP.
Mr. Pickens in May 2008 announced plans for the biggest wind farm in the U.S., by amount of installed megawatts, to be located in the Texas panhandle. But Tuesday he said he would cut his order with GE to 333 turbines from 667 machines and use them for wind farms in Canada and Minnesota.
That means the Pampa Wind Farm slated for north Texas—and postponed last summer until at least 2013—won’t happen under current conditions.
Ding ding ding. Greenwashing at its finest. What else do you expect from an oilman.
Had he been able to con the government into putting up the money he would have done it. He should stick to OSU football.
“…to be located in the Texas panhandle. But Tuesday he said he would cut his order with GE to 333 turbines from 667 machines and use them for wind farms in Canada and Minnesota.”
It never occurred to me that there was more “wind” in Minnesota than in Texas”
The blocking of building the transmission lines by environmentalists was the biggest problem with the project.
I’m all for environmental awareness and smart use, but the environmentalists have gone from a useful nuisance to fanatical morons.
From The Onion:
Dubai Debt Crisis Halts Building Of World’s Largest Indoor Mountain Range
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/dubai_debt_crisis_halts_building
“With only seven of the planned 19 peaks completed and the artificial glaciers only partially frozen, the real estate firm Nakheel now says the landmark Alps Dubai development will miss its planned April 2011 opening date, and with it, the controlled volcanic eruption that would have commemorated the event.”
“Everything had been progressing right on schedule,” said project manager Zayed Kemaar. “The plate tectonics were almost in place, we were getting good vulcanism, and we had helicopter-loads of marble and schist arriving every day from Switzerland. We even had herds of pure-white albino bighorn rams standing on five of the peaks. Then, of course, the bottom fell out, and now we barely have the money to keep the air conditioning on.”
“Added Kemaar, “It just goes to show you that, when the economy is down, vital infrastructure projects like this are always the first to suffer.”
Only slightly more removed from reality than some of the projects that were actually under development in Dubai.
You know if they hadn’t gone belly up, they may just try and do it!
What will Mother Earth do without an indoor mountain range in Dubai ? The mind reels…
And what would we do without the Onion? The mouth reeks…
“…vital infrastructure projects like this are always the first to suffer.”
Define “Vital” Zayed…is something like this: “Oil revenue is “vital” to UAE & it’s necessary development for it’s people, not to mention the “vital” need to feed the herds of pure-white albino bighorn rams we’re now responsible to nourish & maintain without the ability to provide them with food from their natural non-sand dune environment.”
What do you know holiday spending was up nationwide. Yet another sign (along with increased home sales, booming stock market, increased auto sales) of this fantasy recession you people are living in.
Enjoy the 0.0015% yield on your money.
Yeah, all those rising layoffs, unemployment claims, long term unemployement, worst auto sales in 30 years, rising foreclosures, etc. are just fantasies.
Huh?
From the AP today:
“For the year, sales fell 6.2 percent, the biggest decline on government records that go back to 1992. The only other year that annual sales fell was in 2008, when they slipped by 0.5 percent.”
And unemployment is up.
And the debt is up.
And the economy is so fragile that the Fed has to leave rates at 0% and print piles of money to keep the economy in a stable crash.
Look, Eddie, I have no idea why you are so vested in “proving” that this Recession is not over. The only way you could possibly believe that is if you really think manipulated market numbers (the DOW, etc.) and tiny upward movements in data literally ARE the economy.
Oh I see markets are manipulated. Was it manipulated on the way down too? Or is it only manipulated on the way up? I never understand how these manipulators allow a 50% drop. Or is that just to make it seem like they’re not manipulating? So confusing.
Hey, even the PPT isn’t almighty. It did take them almost a year to prop the market back up.
Every once in a while, the manipulators lose control (the machine breaks) and the market tanks. Isn’t it great! Never had a car break down on ya Eddie? It happens.
I am seeing a recovery in my business unit. Sales in January so far are up probably 50% from the 4Q09 timeframe, which was down about 90% from the year before. Thank God we made it through this little rough spot!
A lot of people do not see this as an adequate recovery unfortunately, like one of my key customers who let 1/3 of their work force go this morning.
booming stock market
I know, just 200 more points and the DOW will be right back at the levels of 2001.
Enjoy the less than 0.0015% yield on your money You wish. LOL
Ryo,
Sure back to 2001 and 100% higher than 2009 levels. If you bought in 2001, sucks for you. If you bought in 2009, well….
Context my man, context. You don’t make money looking back on what happened 9 years ago.
Are you talking about making money or the end of the recession? Money can be make in downturns.
You don’t make money looking back on what happened 9 years ago.
It can help but it’s complicated, however one can easily evaluate the underlying strength of an economy looking at a decade of market action in combination with other factors.
Like when one web searches: minneapolis fed recession comparison, and it has many charts and graphs saying this is the WORST RECESSION SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION, even though you called it a “garden variety” recession. It makes me wonder what kind of garden was being referred to.
And like the dozens of recent stories that say rents are falling even though you said they were rising. Gosh…..
Oh yea…and yesterday you called Americans “slackers” even though we have been the hardest workers in the world. (Back when we had jobs that is)
U.N.: U.S. workers are world’s most productive
Americans also work longer…
The average U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other countries
AP Sept. 3, 2007
Strike Three.
Some Americans work hard. Most Americans are slackers. Teh average reflects that with a majority of lazy Americans benefiting from the hard working minority.
Strike 4
“TrueHaskell™” = “But, but, but…” = eddie “The Great”
Strike 5
“You don’t make money looking back on what happened 9 years ago”
Really Haskell?
(Hwy thinks it cute that Haskell has such a big mouth, I only wonder what size both his feet are?)
2001
Shares of Ford fell 6.3 percent yesterday to $15.29
2009
Shares of Ford fell 6.3 percent yesterday to $1.53
Motley Fool:
“The trouble with Ford’s stock is that it may be very tempting to some investors who look at the $1.94 price tag and think that it’s a nice, cheap price for a great American car maker. Even those who aren’t fooled by the company’s share price may fall prey to its tantalizingly low equity value. Is the iconic Ford Motor Company really worth less than $5 billion? After all, the company is still doing over $160 billion in revenue”
Hwy was “fooled” for 30,000 coconuts @ $1.53
From Yahoo Financial today.
“…The Commerce Department said Thursday that retail sales declined 0.3 percent in December compared with November, much weaker than the 0.5 percent rise that economists had been expecting.”
Wow Eddie. Seriously?
I wouldn’t hire you to walk my dog.
My only question is just who’s tool you are.
I put all my savings in stock, because I heard from my broker that the stock market always goes up.
Mortgage Rates on 30-Year U.S. Loans Fall to 5.06% (Update2)
Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) — Mortgage rates in the U.S. fell for the second consecutive week, lowering borrowing costs for consumers and making homes more affordable.
The rate for 30-year fixed U.S. home loans dropped to 5.06 percent for the week ended today from 5.09 percent, mortgage finance company Freddie Mac said in a statement today. Rates reached a record low of 4.71 percent last month. This week’s average 15-year rate was 4.45 percent, the McLean, Virginia- based company said.
Falling mortgage rates may help the nation’s housing market as it becomes less expensive for consumers to borrow. A Federal Reserve program to purchase as much as $1.25 trillion in securities backed by home loans helped cut mortgage rates last year. The program is set to end this quarter. Other government plans to stimulate demand and support the home market, including a tax credit for first-time homebuyers, have also boosted housing.
“What they’ve achieved is a housing market going sideways,” Donald Rissmiller, chief economist at New York-based Strategas Research Partners LLC, said of the government programs. “Sideways is certainly better than straight down.”
Retail sales fall unexpectedly; jobless claims up.
Retail sales drop 0.3 pct in December, plunge for year; new jobless claims rise. January 14, 2010
WASHINGTON (AP) — Retail sales unexpectedly fell in December, leaving 2009 with the biggest yearly drop on record and highlighting the formidable hurdles facing the economy as it struggles to recover from the deepest recession in seven decades.
In another disappointing economic report, the number of newly laid-off workers requesting unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week as jobs remain scarce.
Still, many economists, puzzled by the retail sales decline that follow reporters from retailers of brighter holidays, cautioned that the December figures don’t necessarily signal a big consumer pullback and could be a blip.
Taking November and December figures together provides a picture of modestly positive spending, they said, but the monthly drop undercores how tentative the economic recovery remains, given all the headwinds facing consumers.
“Consumer spending is growing very weakly, but the key thing is that it’s growing,” said Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics at Moody’s Economy.com. “The consumer is very weak. Confidence is exceptionally low.” He added he expects tepid sales growth into the summer.
Ooops, already posted by, jeff saturday.
There’s that “unexpectedly” word again…
“Still, many economists, puzzled by the retail sales decline that follow reporters from retailers of brighter holidays, cautioned that the December figures don’t necessarily signal a big consumer pullback and could be a blip.”
Maybe. But since December is a month that consumers would usually spend more and didn’t, or more likely weren’t able to spend more, is telling.
“Many economists, puzzled that with record unemployment, sales were down…”
There. Fixed it.
congressional commission examining the causes of the financial crisis was drawing fire even before its first public hearing got under way Wednesday, with business interests complaining that some panel members’ ties to a major plaintiffs law firm could aid litigants seeking to sue financial firms.
The panel, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, was created by Congress last year and also includes several members with ties to the banking industry. It will begin taking sworn testimony Wednesday from the chief executives of several big Wall Street banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and J. P. Morgan Chase & Co.
OK so banks have several people on the commission and they complain that there are people who might side with the public?? Later in the article it suggested 1 person who was a consultant to a law firm not actually a partner.
Apparently they’re not satisfied to have it mostly stacked in their favor?
From Yahoo Business tech Ticker
As many Americans begin to realize that it will be many years (if not decades) before their houses are worth what they owe on them, the idea of walking away from your mortgage is going mainstream.
Not surprisingly, the mortgage industry is doing everything it can to prevent this, including telling homeowners that they have a “moral obligation” to pay.
But do they?
Is it okay to walk away from your mortgage for no other reason that it doesn’t make financial sense to keep throwing your hard-earned money away?
There’s no universal answer here, but in most cases, the answer is “Yes, it’s okay to walk away.” Importantly, the reason is not that “Wall Street deserves it” or “We’ve got to teach the banks a lesson” or any of the other retribution logic being thrown around these days. The reason is that you and your lender engaged in an arms-length transaction in which both parties balanced competing interests and spelled out their obligations in a clear, signed contract. And unless that contract states that you have a “moral obligation to pay,” you don’t have a moral obligation to pay.
“Not surprisingly, the mortgage industry is doing everything it can to prevent this, including telling homeowners that they have a “moral obligation” to pay.”
But apparently, lenders have no “moral obligation” to not lend money that has little chance of repayment but can do great financial harm to the borrowers and others?
As for the borrowers, there’s the legal obligation to either pay or return the property to the lender. Why should the borrower be any more moral than the lender.
But apparently, lenders have no “moral obligation” to not lend money that has little chance of repayment but can do great financial harm to the borrowers and others?
As for the borrowers, there’s the legal obligation to either pay or return the property to the lender. Why should the borrower be any more moral than the lender.
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!
Hey Team Barry, Quick question, slap some new ‘fees’ on the banksters and what do you think they will do in response? Simple question, and simple answer.They will pass the costs right on down the line, and who’s down the line?
Obama to banks: `We want our money back’
Obama slaps banks, proposed new fee to recover all remaining cost of bailout effort.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Declaring “We want our money back,” President Barack Obama wants to slap a tax on banks to recoup the money that the American public spent on bailing out large financial institutions on the brink of collapse.
The president said Thursday his goal is not to punish banks, but rather to prevent them from a behavior of excess, including new employee bonuses he called “obscene.”
In brief comments at the White House, Obama took a deeply populist tone. He said: “My commitment is to the taxpayer.”
The president said big banks had shown irresponsibility, engaged in reckless risk for short-term profits, and had gotten themselves into a crisis of their own making. Some firms would have to pay the fee even though many did not accept any taxpayer assistance.
Poor lil Opie, he’s just re-inventing the wheel, he should just copy the Cheney-Shrub Method: “Do-Nothing”
“slap a tax on banks…..He said: “My commitment is to the taxpayer.”
He sure sounds confused.
I wonder how long until he starts to stutter.
On Election Night 2008, our beloved local community radio station, KXCI-FM, had a political music/spoken word special. The music included classics I hadn’t heard since the Nixon years. (Say what you want about Nixon, but he did inspire some great satire.)
The segment that really had me howling was Obama in one of the debates with McCain: “Huh… Umm, uh…” Then he recovered and started speaking in sentences, no sentence fragments, no, wait, make that random phrases.
It was hilarious.
No I disagree that they will pass the fees down. They will charge what the market will bear, and believe me they are charging as much as they possibly can. If their costs increase, well they will have to swallow it (or most of it). That’s the way pricing works. Remember this tax/fee won’t affect all banks, just those that got bailed out. So given a situation where your bank just raised rates, you would be better off shopping around and maybe switching to a local bank or credit union that is more competitive.
Rule: Price is not cost. Price is what you think you can extract for what you are selling. Cost is what it take to produce what you are selling.
ONly the large banks get taxed. If they pass on the fees people can always bank at a smaller bank. This may cut down on too big to fail.
Sorry I know that gets in the way of the ranting.
“ONly the large banks get taxed”.
Nope, not from what I am reading, “all” banks/institutions that accepted TARP funds, not just the big ones. There are many small and smaller banks that got funds and they will be “taxed” or charged.
Not a rant.
From the NYT
The proposed tax on bank, thrift and insurance giants with more than $50 billion in assets would start after June 30 and raise an estimated $90 billion over 10 years, according to the White House.
But the levy would remain in force longer if all losses to the bailout fund, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, were not recovered after a decade. The Treasury projects that the losses from the $700 billion loan program created in October 2008 could reach $117 billion, which is about a third of the losses that the government projected last summer —
Here’s some street-level info from Brooklyn, where there aren’t as many HELOCs and foreclosures so owners can hold out for wishing prices.
http://www.brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2010/01/brooklyn_sales_42.php
The Windsor Terrace house is one of many near identical onces around the ‘hood. The peak price on the best street was $1.35 million, so that’s what was asked in August ‘08.
But before and after, many have sold for $999,000. So the owner held out for that price, re-listing twice, and found a knife catcher in October 2009.
It is fair to assume that all the houses around here either need substantial work or have been renovated 1950s style, with all the original details lost. I certainly had to put money into mine.
Someone pays $1 million for residential property that needs renovation?
That’s just stupid.
We’re so doomed.
You know I’ve been wondering…how does this balance out in a teeter-totter fashion?
Homes for sale in America @ $1,000,000+
Incomes looking to buy @ $1,000,000+
Banks qualifying buyers for @ $1,000,000+
Wait that’s 3 things… that can’t work, …unless it’s x2 fools & x1 fat arse Banker right?
Wash Post has an article about a major development project in Prince Gearge’s County (east and NE of DC). The project was to have been at the end of Penn Ave past Andrews AFB. Well the developer is in default to Wells Fargo for $47 million. No significant work has taken place. The project is now in foreclosure. The county had approved 5,000 housing units, 6 million SF of CRE, and 3 hotels on the site.
Taxing Banks May Cause Double Dip: Risk Manager
Thursday, 14 Jan 2010 ~ CNBC ~
Taxing the banks in Europe and the United States may cause a double-dip recession because there will not be enough money to finance the recovery, Robert Sloan, author of “Don’t Blame the Shorts” told CNBC Thursday.
“My personal opinion is that we will (have a double dip in the US). We don’t seem to understand that the money comes from the same pool. You put a tax on banks and you want them to lend,” Sloan, who is also a managing partner of prime brokerage risk manager S3 Partners, said.
Banks faced public wrath all over the world in the wake of the financial meltdown that has brought on the worse post-war recession.
The UK imposed a 50 percent top rate of tax due to come into force in April, and many bankers and analysts said financials institutions will leave London, undermining the city’s competitiveness on the global markets.
On Thursday, President Barack Obama will unveil new measures to tax big banks to cover expected losses from the taxpayer-funded bank bailout known as TARP.
The tax is likely to raise up to $120 billion from major banks but bankers have already voiced their concerns.
California posts nation’s largest foreclosure total in 2009
San Jose Business Journal
A total of 632,573 California properties received a foreclosure filing in 2009, the nation’s largest state foreclosure activity total and an increase of nearly 21 percent from 2008, according to a report released Thursday.
Irvine-based RealtyTrac Inc. reported that after four straight month-over-month declines, California foreclosure activity in December increased nearly 9 percent from the previous month, but the state’s fourth quarter foreclosure activity was still down 17 percent from the previous quarter.
Salem plant lays off 46 of its workers ~WDBJ~ W.Virginia 1-14-10
A plant in Salem laid off 46 of its workers Thursday.
New Millennium Building Systems made cuts at all three of its locations including Florida and Indiana.
The company makes steel joists and is a subsidiary of Steel Dynamics.
The location in Salem had 160 employees before the layoffs.
The general manager says employees had been working limited hours to make up for the decreased demand.
But the layoffs were the next step to get at least some of the workers back to full-time employment in this economy.
WTH? You can’t make this stuff up! We love fried chicken and collard greens down here in Dixie.
DPS menu for MLK birthday hard for some to digest. ~ The Denver Post
Denver Public Schools apologized Tuesday for what it called a “well-intentioned but highly insensitive” attempt to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Friday’s DPS lunch menu, headlined “In Honor Of M.L. King,” offered students “Southern Style” chicken and collard greens — a meal that some say is an offensive caricature of black culture.
In a statement issued Tuesday night and posted on the school district’s website, DPS spokesman Michael Vaughn said the meal was “highly insensitive in light of certain hurtful cultural stereotypes still harbored in parts of our society.”
Sometimes, things in the past get a little FUZZY:
Zoeller is often jokingly critical of his colleagues on the golf course, for instance, asking “Where are the windmills and animals?” on a newly designed golf course, or heckling Craig Stadler, saying, “Nice clods, Stadler. Did you get those at a Buster Brown fire sale?”[1] For much of his career, Zoeller was most famous for waving a white towel in mock surrender from the fairway of the 72nd hole of the 1984 U.S. Open, after Greg Norman holed a long putt on the 72nd green to tie Zoeller for the tournament lead. At the end of the 18-hole playoff the next day between Norman and Zoeller (which Zoeller won by a whopping 8 strokes), Norman waved a white towel himself, returning the joke.
But at the 1997 Masters tournament, Zoeller made an off-hand remark regarding Tiger Woods. After finishing tied for 34th place with a score of 78, Zoeller, referring to the following year’s Masters Champions Dinner, for which the defending champion selects the menu, said, “He’s doing quite well, pretty impressive. That little boy is driving well and he’s putting well. He’s doing everything it takes to win. So, you know what you guys do when he gets in here? You pat him on the back and say congratulations and enjoy it and tell him not to serve fried chicken next year. Got it.” Zoeller then smiled, snapped his fingers, and walked away before turning and adding, “or collard greens or whatever the hell they serve.”[2] K-Mart and Dunlop ceased sponsoring Zoeller after the incident.[3][4]
“I know Fuzzy, and it was obvious to me that he was attempting to be funny,” number-one ranked golf pro Tom Lehman said. “He probably would have said the same thing to Tiger’s face and they both would have yukked it up…[But] it wasn’t the best timing, and it wasn’t in good taste. It’s not appropriate.”
“I’ve been on the tour for 23 years and anybody who knows me knows that I am a jokester,” Zoeller said. “It’s too bad that something I said in jest was turned into something it’s not. But I didn’t mean anything by it and I’m sorry if I offend anybody. If Tiger is offended by it, I apologize to him, too. I have nothing but the utmost respect for Tiger as a person and an athlete.”
Zoeller later offered an apology directly to Woods, which Woods accepted.
So Fuzzy Zoeller runs his SUV into a tree…
When FL detectives arrive they find evidence lying on the ground:
x2 Breasts
x2 Thighs
x2 legs
+ x1 discount coupon from KFC & a mini-skirt…
The detectives gather their notes and concluded that this is what might have happened:
1. Elin spelled backwards is nile
2. The mini-skirt was not manufactured anywhere around the Nile
3. Kentucky is really not considered to be “Southern” …by those who are truly “Southern”
4. KFC is really not considered to be “Southern” …by those who are truly “Southern”
5. Fuzzy is from Indiana, what the heck was he doing in Florida?
6. It was good that Fuzzy apologized to Tiger, such a gesture set a precedence for “further-down-the-line” activities regarding the golf Industry
7. Elin has never been to Indiana
8. Fuzzy has never been to Sweden
9. This story will be updated as more information becomes available…
And to think that I have greens growing in my garden. Love ‘em.
As long as it’s light skinned southern fried chicken, Harry Reid approves.
I didn’t get the outrage over this either. How is a normal meal considered offensive? It’s not like they’re handing out grape soda and KOOL filter kings to all the kiddies.
Now THAT would be effed up.
I’m of Italian descent, I’d certainly take offense if my school cafeteria served up braciole on Tony Soprano’s national holiday.
(well, maybe not if it was a nice braciole)
I live in the south and it’s no “caricature” nor sterotype, but everyday fact.
Somebody had an axe to grind.
“well-intentioned but highly insensitive”
Brazil would not understand the concept nor the story. Southern cooking is loved and respected all over America.
Would problems have been avoided had they served:
French Copper Pot Boiled Highland Haggis complimented by Mango, Kiwi or Big Sur Olallieberry Chutney?
NEW YORK – A town house dubbed New York City’s skinniest house has sold for $2.1 million.
The red, 9 1/2 foot wide, 42 foot long brick building in Greenwich Village was built in 1873 on land used as an alley between homes. The town house was listed for sale last August at $2.7 million. The two bedroom, two bath home last sold in 2000 for $1.6 million.
A plaque on the narrow Bedford Street home notes poet Edna St. Vincent Millay once lived there; so did anthropologist Margaret Mead.
The newly-sold building was listed on real estate Web sites Wednesday as a rental available for $10,000 a month.
What a bargain
That’s just silly. For $10K a month you can rent a nice brownstone.
Brownstone? Bor-ing.
Imagine going to a cocktail party and bragging that you live in THE Skinniest house in NYC. And all the Master of the Universe say: “oooooo… wish *I* could say I have the ‘[anything]-EST [something] in NYC.’” And the Society Wives ask to the blob of plastic hanging off your arm: “oooh, my how ever did you decorate?’
That’s how you network, see. Hence the premium on anything EST.
The original owner was probably a seamstress or freed slave, back when this was considered a modest affordable home.
This is very close to the size of a standard shipping container. Must be fun living in the same volume that ordinary people’s furniture & stuff occupies.
Jobless rate to stay above 8 percent until 2012: CBO
January 14, 2010
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. unemployment rate, currently at 10 percent, is unlikely to drop below 8 percent before 2012 unless Congress takes further steps to boost the economy in the short term, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Thursday.
The estimate is likely to give increased urgency to Democratic lawmakers’ efforts to create jobs before they face voters in November. The House of Representatives passed a $155 billion jobs bill in December and the Senate is expected to act in coming weeks.
President Barack Obama was scheduled to address House Democrats later on Thursday as they huddle to consider other ways to boost the economy.
Great news. $800B porkulus = 3 million lost jobs. All we have to do is increase that to $1.5T porkulus and unemployment will be back down to 4% ASAP.
At least things are bad as those awful days of the Bush economy. 5% unemployment, booming housing market, Dow pushing 15K, no foreclosures to speak of, GM selling millions of cars and trucks coming from full capacity assembly lines.
Good thing the Dems were swept into power starting in 2006 and brought that nightmare to an end.
“…porkulus…”
Hey Haskell, the last I saw that word used was from a “skinny” high school graduate named Rash Limpbaughs, Limpbaugh’s birthdate was ranked as 152 in the Vietnam War draft lottery. No one was drafted above 125. He was classified as “1-Y” (later reclassified “4-F”) due to either a football knee injury or a diagnosis of Pilonidal disease.
“A pilonidal cyst, also referred to as a pilonidal abscess, pilonidal sinus or sacrococcygeal fistula, is a cyst or abscess near or on the natal cleft of the buttocks that often contains hair and skin debris.”
“TrueHaskell™” = “But, but, but…” = eddie “The Great”
The key to good trolling is subtlety. Proofread what you write first to make sure it at least sounds like a plausible opinion.
“subtlety”
HBB word puzzle of the day!:
Add a “r” to this word to make two words…reverse this word arrangement:
You will have two words that, read out loud describe a incurable moronic condition known as:
“Haskellitis”
US regulator apologizes for letting public down.
One of the United States’ leading financial watchdogs has admitted that regulators failed to protect the American public from the horrors of the global financial crisis. ~~ US Business Editor GMT 14 Jan 2010
Sheila Bair - US regulator apologises for letting public down
“Not only did market discipline fail to prevent the excesses of the last few years, but the regulatory system also failed in its responsibilities,” Ms Bair said, adding that record profits across the banking sector also served to limit “second-guessing” among the regulatory community.
Ms Bair told the FCIC, set up by the US Congress to look into the causes of the crisis, that supervision of what she called the “shadow banking system” of firms such as hedge funds that are involved in some of the riskiest activities should be increased.
The 10-man commission also heard from Mary Schapiro, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has come under considerable criticism for its failings in detecting systemic problems across the industry as well as specific problems, such as Bernard Madoff’s $65bn (£40bn) Ponzi scheme fraud.
After 9/11 the White House ordered the FBI to move the bulk of its resources to assist the Der Fatherland Security agency, despite warnings from the agency that massive domestic financial fraud taking place.
And kept it that way.
You can google it.
I guessed it was Sheila after reading the headline even before I saw the rest of the post. She’s the only one with any sense of integrity.
She’s the only one with any sense of integrity.
Mid-West girl
Bair is a native of Independence, Kansas. Her father, Albert, was a surgeon. Her mother, Clara, was a nurse and a homemaker. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas, and worked as a bank teller for a brief period, before receiving a J.D. from the University of Kansas School of Law in 1978. wiki
“Mid-West girl”
Wow, so was the “non-Hawaiian’s” lil Opie’s college educated mother!
After 9/11, the White House ordered the FBI to move the majority of its resource to assist Der Fatherland Security, even though the FBI had pointed out the rising amount of domestic financial fraud at all levels.
And kept it that way.
You can google it.
*Sigh*
My posts are coming. I think.
Mo’ Money ~~ Gonna need to raise the debt ceiling fairly soon.
Current U.S. Debt~ 1-13-10 Source ~ Treasurydirect
Debt Held by the Public Intragovernmental Holdings
$7,781,208,589,623.65 $4,501,065,422,048.54
Total Public Debt Outstanding
$12,282,274,011,672.19
Yes, but he was just doing God’s work, somebody had to do it. What a POS!
WASHINGTON — Goldman Sachs’ chief acknowledged Wednesday that the investment bank engaged in “improper” behavior in 2006 and 2007 when it made huge bets on a housing downturn while peddling as safe more than $40 billion in securities backed by risky U.S. home loans.
Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman’s chairman and chief executive, made the surprising concession at the opening hearing of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a 10-member panel that Congress created to investigate and lay out for the public the causes of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
“…He attended Harvard University, where he lived in Winthrop House, and earned his B.A in 1975, graduating with fellow Winthrop House student and future Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke.”
“He is the Gala Chairman of the Rockefeller family’s Asia Society in New York. He serves on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization seeking to alleviate poverty…”
“…Blankfein said that lessons from the global financial crisis included the need to “apply basic standards to how we compensate people in our industry”.
“In November, 2009, he declared in an interview that, as a banker, he was doing “God’s work”
Hwy’s never been good at connecting the …………..’s
Tragic situation these people are in. We(the U.S.) have pledged $100 million dollars, as usual more than anyone else on the planet. Sadly little of the money/support will get to those that need it the most. We have poured billions into Haiti through the years to no avail.
Who’s running Haiti? No one, say the people
14 Jan 2010 21:14:09 GMT
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Desperate Haitians turned rubble-strewn streets and parks into makeshift hospitals and refugee camps on Thursday in the absence of any noticeable response from authorities in Haiti after Tuesday’s earthquake.
With the 7.0 magnitude earthquake collapsing the presidential palace, a string of ministries and the headquarters of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the country, Haiti faces a dangerous vacuum in security and government.
The Caribbean nation of 9 million people, the poorest in the western hemisphere, has a turbulent history of conflict, social turmoil, dictatorship, fragile institutions and devastating natural catastrophes.
Ever known any Haitians who’ve come to this country? Man, what a hard working, motivated bunch! And talk about sweet people. They’re truly a pleasure to be around.
‘Ever known any Haitians who’ve come to this country? Man, what a hard working, motivated bunch”!
Yes! In my 4 years of living in Ft. Lauderdale I ran across many folks from Haiti. They are very hard workers. Sadly their impoverished home country is nothing more than a re-run of one low-life crook after another. Baby Doc was a real prize, as was his father. We’ll just keep pouring money down the drain there as we do in so many countries.
“We(the U.S.) have pledged $100 million dollars…”
What?,… no x39 follow up posts of adding to the “gubbermint” deficit $$$$$$$$ from the “non-Hawaiian” Commander-in-Chief who never wears a US pin on his lapel”?
This $160 million would be better off in Haiti.
By Kimberly Miller
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 2:01 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010
More than $160 million in new federal grants are being earmarked for South Florida to help buy and redevelop foreclosed and abandoned homes.
The grants, announced today by U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, are coming from the $2 billion Recovery Act stimulus package.
Just go back to counting posts, it’s what you do best! BTW what’s the count up to now?
Ask me @ 4:30 am tomorrow, I want today’s count to be accurate, because unlike a young republican, I wouldn’t want to “deceive” anyone.
http://wcbstv.com/national/haiti.earthquake.haiti.2.1427143.html
Haiti sinking into Lord-of-the-Flies anarchy as machete-wielding thugs take to looting and mayhem. Not that post-quake LA would be any different.
“…Not that post-quake LA would be any different.”
“Well, what I heard on NPR this morning were Haiti women solemnly singing…yeah, in LA… that would be women hysterically screaming…”
THE PROBABILITY OF A CRISIS WILL BUILD DURING 2010
So says the team of equity analysts at Barclays. Although policymakers helped avoid the second Great Depression, Barclays believes we have simply kicked the can down the road. As their head of U.S. equity strategy said in November, the likelihood of Japanese style de-leveraging stagnation remains very high.
Like TPC, the bank argues that 2010 will be a year of halves. While the first half is likely to be characterized by more of what we saw in 2010 (improvement in corporate profits and accommodative government actions) the second half is likely to be characterized by an increasing burden on the consumer as the baton is handed from the public sector to the private sector. Barclays says this passing of the baton has the potential for an even greater crisis as higher taxes, higher interest rates and lower government spending create increased risks.
Barclays remains more bearish than the consensus. Global economic growth is likely to disappoint as spare capacity fails to lead to a sharp rebound and unemployment remains high. They see the probability of a crisis increasing as 2010 goes on:
Ryo,
By the way how is it that Americans produced all that wealth in 2007? I thought the years 2001-2008 were the worst ever for the economy. So confusing trying to keep up with the contradicting arguments.
Yes Haskell, I can see how you would confuse Ponzi for Fonzi…by the way, did you finish you math problem from yesterday, no pressure… you still have 48 hours.
By the way how is it that Americans produced all that wealth in 2007?
You know the answer Eddy. It’s because we work very hard and even though you disrespectfully call us “slackers”, Americans are the most productive workers in the world. I cited proof. You never cite proof. Why?
The problem is that most of the production benefited a very small elite. That’s what we discuss here.
So confusing
You’re not confused. You just don’t like the conclusions and facts.
Facts like you were wrong about the depth of the recession, that rents were rising and Americans are “slackers”.
“…Facts like you were wrong about the depth of the recession, that rents were rising and Americans are “slackers”.”
“TrueBeliever’s™ / TrueDeceiver’s ™” “TrueInstigator ™” “TrueProvoker ™”
Couple more “™” & Haskell will be up in Cheney’s stratosphere.
Maybe he IS Cheney????
Let’s find out..Hey Haskell, ever been duck hunting with a friend?
That would be cool. But unless he is lying about living in Atlanta and California, that would not be possible. (And Dick never, ever lied…)
Granite countertops for your crack house.
$160 million in federal money to help buy, remodel foreclosed homes in South Florida
By Kimberly Miller
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 2:01 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010
More than $160 million in new federal grants are being earmarked for South Florida to help buy and redevelop foreclosed and abandoned homes.
The grants, announced today by U.S. Rep. Ron Klein, D-Boca Raton, are coming from the $2 billion Recovery Act stimulus package.
“This is a tangible, serious investment on a massive scale,” Klein said. “In our area, real estate is such an essential part of our economy, this investment will have a positive impact far beyond the housing market.”
The money falls under the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program, which works to spur economic development in hard-hit communities and create jobs. Of the total $2 billion available, Florida received $348 million, the most of any state in the country.
The Lake Worth Community Redevelopment Agency will receive $23.2 million, while Palm Beach County’s share is $50 million. The Fort Lauderdale-based Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida, Inc. is slated to receive $89.3 million.
“Through this new investment of Recovery Act dollars, these foreclosed properties will be revitalized and resold to families eager to move into the home, take good care of it, and pay the property taxes that are so essential to supporting our local governments and the services they provide.”
We are looking at homes this weekend and will start making offers. We were approved for 280k, we will be making 180k offers on houses in the 200-240k range.
I’m just sayin’…
—-> flame suit on
Happy Wife -> Happy Life. There is something to be said about making her happy, even if you take a hit in the wallet a few years down the road as a probability.
Good luck.
Thanks, man. I don’t think she’s being unreasonable. We’ve agreed to a “middle” house. All she wants is 3Br at about 1400+ sq. ft. It’s not like she’s putting a gun to my head over granite. And at current prices, we’re at or below renting in the same hoods + the 3Brs around here suck big time.
You’re good, provided the monthly is within your household budget limit and your employment is secure.
I apologize for the flack that I recently sent your way. Color me perpetually frustrated, living as we do in a zip code where fairly average thirty-year-old homes still sell for north of $500K long after the bubble popped, and where the median used home listing price is currently $1,100,000 (three of them listed at exactly that price, in fact — 4/3, 4/4, 3/4 — all priced to never sell at over $350/sq ft, sitting, sitting, sitting…).
The monthly is well within our limits — if one of us loses our job, we can get by. I would actually like to buy @150k so we can pay it down quickly. We’re eyeballing one that has an offer on it, but we’re expecting the offer to fall through. It’s an o.k. area, but we can navigate the school system and know the police well, so it would be a good “in the middle / medium term” thing, but o.k. if it goes long term.
I don’t blame you for being frustrated. It’s enough to drive even a moderately rational person insane. I have lost it a few times myself. I’m trying to balance being an FB against waiting 10 years. I just don’t have the time… it was the 2nd child that pushed us over the edge.
We’re still not opposed to renting, but we can’t stay in this place, and it’s not just the size; we’re on a road that is busier than we’d prefer (safety).
You should see the rentals in my area. They are really absurd. I think I mentioned this before, but one had a window smashed out and another had the front windows bolted shut. WTF. No thanks.
Remember, I am not calling bottom, just saying my time has come. It’s like when Lefty gets “called for” in Donnie Brasco…
“Color me perpetually frustrated, living as we do in a zip code…”
You’ll be more frustrated if you sign a 30 year mortgage only to find that on day 1 you now know the neighborhood: “Oh, so well… I could stumble home”
Geez Mr.Bear, where have you been? No worries, but Haskell’s running around naked with his bb gun…sayin’ things like: “But,but,but…”
Go ahead man buy da dam houze……then you can come here and talk about serious matters….LOL
Muggy,
You need to do what is going to make you, your wife and kids happy.
You know all the pros and cons to buying a house. Good luck in your quest.
Enjoy Muggy. It could be worse! I always say “It could be worse.”
I have concluded that a man really has little need for money directly. An occasional cigar or glass of nectar don’t really cost much. Women do though, and they need a house and children, and they need them before you have the money to buy them. The rest just follows. What else is the use of a man?
Why, if it weren’t for women, we’d all probably spend our lives at huntin camp or on a boat, thinking about finding a woman.
Is NYS going to be the next California?
GOVERNOR PATERSON’S 2010-11 EXECUTIVE BUDGET PROPOSES SIGNIFICANT SPENDING REDUCTIONS, KEY LONG-TERM REFORMS TO ELIMINATE $7.4 BILLION BUDGET GAP
Governor David A. Paterson today proposed a 2010-11 Executive Budget that makes significant spending reductions in order to eliminate a $7.4 billion deficit and institutes key reforms to put New York on the road to economic and fiscal recovery. The Executive Budget proposal includes spending reductions across every area of the budget; limits State spending to far below both the Governor’s proposed spending cap and the rate of inflation; implements the most significant public higher education reforms in a generation; and provides fiscal relief to local governments through an aggressive mandate reform agenda.
“Since the day I became governor, I have warned that New York is facing an inevitable fiscal reckoning,” Governor Paterson said. “There are no more easy answers. We cannot keep spending money that we do not have. Significant spending reductions are necessary if we want to emerge from this crisis and build a strong fiscal and economic recovery. Together, through shared sacrifice, we will move forward toward a more hopeful and optimistic future for New York.”
http://www.budget.state.ny.us/pubs/press/2010/pressRelease10_eBudget01.html