The Housing Bubble

Pondering, I share your pain and outrage. Fair is fair and nothing about any of this seems fair. Somehow, I believe everyone will get what they deserve.

“I fully expect to see a broken nation with Depression-level unemployment, and the lines for food and bread will stretch past crumbling ruins of condozes and McMansions that are still “worth” their 2005 price.”

Care to put a time frame on your prediction? Given enough time, any prediction will eventually come true.

2012? 2015? 2020? 2525 (if man is still alive)?

2525 (if man is still alive)?

If woman can survive…

I don’t pretend to know what is going to happen, but I don’t see any difficult decisions being made to address the fundamental problems which brought us to where we are at this moment in time. Thus, I expect a further deterioration in wealth, employment, standard of living, and overall happiness in this country- except for the truly wealthy who benefit from the current failed policies.

‘I fully expect to see a broken nation with Depression-level unemployment, and the lines for food and bread will stretch past crumbling ruins of condozes and McMansions that are still “worth” their 2005 price.’

The Fed pretty much ‘has’ to make sure that McMansions remain ‘worth’ their 2005 price, doesn’t it? Otherwise, banks would have to report massive losses on their devalued REO inventory and housing would suddenly become much more affordable, which would be bad for banks.

Keep on printing! Nothing bad EVER happened by printing lots of money and handing it out to crooks!

Well, there was that one nasty, genocidal dictator and his regime that emerged from the hyperinflation and economic collapse of the Weimar Republic, but yeah, other than that, what could go wrong? Helicopter money for everyone!

The Fed pretty much ‘has’ to make sure that McMansions remain ‘worth’ their 2005 price, doesn’t it? Otherwise, banks would have to report massive losses on their devalued REO inventory and housing would suddenly become much more affordable, which would be bad for banks.

And Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner, both bank bank presidents know that banks are the cornerstone of the economy. So, anything to help the banks.

These companies that have imposed massive costs on society should be shut down as quickly as criminal enterprises, which are also shut down because of the net costs they impose on society. And it’s surreal we’re bargaining with the executives about bonuses when we should be bargaining with them about jail time. Bank robbers go to jail for long times for taking small fractions of what these financial companies have extracted.

In the year twentyfive
twentyfive if man is still alive

If woman can survive they may find.
In the year thirtyfive thirtyfive
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth tell no lies

Ev’rything you think do and say is in the pill you took today.
In the year fortyfive fortyfive
You ain’t gonna need your teeth won’t need your eyes

You won’t find a thing to chew
nobody’s gonna look at you.
In the year fiftyfive fiftyfive your arms are hangin’ limp at you side

Your legs got nothin’ to do
some machines doin’ that for you.
In the year sixtyfive sixtyfive
Ain’t gonna need no husband won’t need no wife

You’ll pick your son
pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube.
In the year seventyfiveten
If God’s a-coming he oughta make it by then

Maybe he’ll look around himself and say:
Guess it’s time for the judgement day.
In the year eightyfiveten God is gonna shake his mighty head

He’ll either say I’m pleased where man has been
Or tear it down and start again.
In the year ninetyfive ninetyfive
I’m kind a wond’rin’ if man is gonna be alive

He’s taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain’t put back nothin’.
Now it’s been tenthousand years
man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew - now man’s reign is through.
But through eternal night the twinkling of starlight
So very far away - maybe it’s only yesterday.

“And Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner, both bank bank presidents know that banks are the cornerstone of the economy.”

It really goes much farther than that, when you think about it: The banks make the sun rise in the morning and set at night, they make the wind blow, and they power the moon’s orbit around the earth, which in turn makes the tides which ebb and recede along the earth’s beaches. Without banks, the earth would stop spinning, would become dislodged from its orbital path around the sun and would slowly drift off into outer space.

Now do you understand why those bankster bailouts were so important?

.. hmm… you saying that a loan mod can never make the loan affordable?

..seems to me that if the monthly is somehow reduced to where it’s affordable.. well… it’s affordable.

I agree that currently, the lip service coming from politicians is not about modifying loans. But there will come a time when lenders want to keep the fish on the hook and that’s when they lay out some slack, and mods will come into play.

“That why FBs are PROMISED modifications but DON’T GET them. As long as FBs believe they will be saved they will keep up with the payments.”

Loan mod cargo cultists…

Well, statistics I saw just yesterday said that 25% of people can’t even keep up with a “trial modification” for three months.

From Business Week yesterday:

“Modifying the first mortgage doesn’t necessarily get the homeowner to good shape,” Scott Simon, head of mortgage-bond investing at Pimco, manager of the world’s biggest fixed-income fund, said in a telephone interview.

Rosner said overvalued home-equity debt prevents residents from getting the aid likeliest to keep them in their homes: principal forgiveness.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-01-19/treasury-delay-on-bank-home-equity-debt-imperils-housing-pickup.html

Prinicipal forgiveness keeps people in ‘their’ homes? More like it allows people to buy the bank’s home with a tax-free gift from We, the Taxpayers.

Bingo.

Why default now and start hoarding your cash for a future purchase when instead you can hold out hope for a modificaiton and in the meantime send in every spare penny to try and get the elusive modification?

Mortgage modifications are essentially the latest state run lottery: the government sells dreams to those bad at math, publishes a few stories about winners, and ignores the devistation caused by the government approved program.

(Note: I’m all for state-run lotteries, as long as we’re honest about the true costs and effects…)

Lenders aren’t modifying loans at this time because there’s NO money in it.

FB’s are still draining their savings and cutting back on expenses so they can pay the mortage. Some are raiding their retirement accounts..
—-
Lots of FB’s had stars in their eyes, dreaming about the huge profits they had coming to them. These are amateur gamblers… and bad gamblers commonly don’t give up ’till they are broke.

Additionally, this has cost them lots of time and money but the losses are NOT realized until they walk away.
Live in a home for a couple years and you’re rooted there.. job.. schools.. Walking is not as easy as it seems.
—–

Why should lenders actually modify their loans before they are ready to walk? I mean ready to walk. Not just thinking about it. Ready in the sense that they cannot afford even one more payment.
At that time the bank has to see a profitable advantage in modifying things, and so keep the FB hooked a little longer.

I’m not talking about the FB-investors that are walking. Nothing can stop them. Loan mods won’t stop them.. and that’s why THEY don’t get a modification. It would be pointless to give them one..

And what will happen when all that shadow cash is finally gone?

Rather than force a bank into a program, why not simply change the law to make mortgage debt partially dischargable in BK? There’s a cramdown if you want it, but you really have to want it.

What happens when the cash is gone? Here’s how I figure this.

They reach a point where they don’t have the raw income to pay any longer. Savings are toast..
Lender says I’ll restructure your loan and reduce your payments significantly so you can afford to keep paying me something, and stay in your home.

Something is better than nothing. It is much better than a default and watching a big chunk of money go down the toilet.

… given enough time, they may pay the loan off completely. And if so, due to the restructuring, the lender probably makes more profit than with the original loan.
—–

Bankruptcy sux for everyone involved. I wouldn’t do anything that would encourage more of it than already exists. Someone pays for that “discharged” debt.. and looking at the big picture it seems to always come out of our (the consumer’s) pockets.

I’m guessing a key motive behind principal reduction is to avoid letting the true comparable value of homes get averaged into official sale price statistics like those produced by DataQuick, NARscum, Case-Shiller/S&P and RadarLogic? It is important to keep the wool pulled over the sheeples’ eyes; how else would the REIC be able to continue scamming the sheeple?

“I just want to know one day how much of the loss in the final analysis did the thieves actually absorb ,verses the taxpayers .”

The action of the Fed’s secret money press would make that very hard to sort out. For instance, how much of current Wall Street bonuses are funded out of lost future value of fixed-income pensions, versus foreign creditors, versus anyone else owed dollar obligations, versus those whose jobs recently vanished? And how much of any of the above should be attributed to all manner of recent bailouts, versus acts of God?

The nice thing about macroeconomics is that there is really no way to ever conclusively link cause and effect.

We can consider everything that has happened as “Acts of God”, as i have been told the Goldman-Suchs is doing “God’s work”.
I didn’t know that until recently. I thought they were just thieving profiteers with a rigged system to guarantee their continued syphoning of money from the American people.
Now I know the truth. God is directing their efforts at enriching themselves.

PB …right . The bail outs costs are not totally measurable but they have been huge . I can see how much they have cost me in in the last 4 years that will never be measured . The thing that really gets my goat is that in spite of these bail-outs that are
not totally measurable as to how bad they really are and how much they cost Main Street, these Entities are demanding and blackmailing and still greedy . Talk about moral hazard playing out in a big way because of these bail outs .

“I just want to know one day how much of the loss in the final analysis did the thieves actually absorb ,verses the taxpayers .”

They not only took no losses, but had their debts paid for several times over, with the extra money going to bonuses and market rigging to create the next Bubble and inflation.

Oh, but we won’t be seeing any affordable housing coming on-line after all this - they’ll just sit on the “assets” and keep asking for bailouts!

You can probably sell sacks of crap.

Not probably. You can. When I was little we went to the Toronto Zoo, and the gift shop sold bags of exotic animal manure for your garden. Our tomotoes thrived on the rhinoceros poop.

Amen. I used to have to program in ABAP (SAP’s foundation language). Didn’t make $150K at it, though.

SAP, PeopleSoft and all of the big ERP software providers did a very smart thing. They made the software so complex that the implementation in all but the most simple of environments was virtually impossble without massive amounts of consultant time. My experience with these implementations is the consultant fees are several times the cost of the software itself. They are not shy about telling you this up front and a company that dismisses this does so at its own peril.

Here in Tucson, there’s a major uproar about cutting the city budget. Seems that the Ole Pueblo’s in the red to the tune of $32 million.

Well, a brand, spankin’ new member of the City Council just went through the budget and said he could easily find that amount in savings.

Among other things, he found that the city was paying $10 million to outside consultants. A bit too much, he thought. And a lot of us out in Tucson Taxpayer Land agree.

But, but, Bush and Cheney said that privatizing government functions is always cheaper than getting government workers to do it.

Bush and Cheney? Try Reagan and his acolytes.

My company works with consultants (sometimes) when bidding on govt contracts and they usually just get in the way IMO. And you always wonder if they’ve rigged things for their favorite vendor pal.

Being in the IT field, I would say, just do something that can’t be done remotely….
As the old saying goes, if you can do it remotely, it can be done in bangalore!

Slim here.

I’ve sent the programming to India on exactly one website job that I’ve done. Never again. To put it mildly, communication was difficult. (It was obvious that their first language was not English.)

I also discovered that the Indians didn’t have the same sense of time urgency that we Americans do. It took days to get relatively simple tasks accomplished.

Hey Stpn,

My uncle went through OCS in the Air Force. Worked for SAC as a navigator.

“…I also discovered that the Indians didn’t have the same sense of time urgency that we Americans do.”

I must offer another POV Slim, they have a very keen sense of urgency, if they are promoting to you a QuickBook’s upgrade…

I read the story of that upgrade, Hwy. Very amusing.

OTOH, if you used MYOB for your accounting, you’d have a much more reliable software package.

Disclaimer: Yours truly has been using MYOB for five years. Once I got past the training period, it’s been smooth sailing. And no software problems.

“Just because you know how to network a printer doesnt command 70K a year.”

Hahaha..ain’t it the truth. But you must be a GENIUS if you can do that, and anyway they don’t want to have to think about that computer stuff.

But it is annoying and exacting work (the troubleshooting part) and not everyone is cut out for it either.

Stepn2me,

You can make some serious coin if you have a security clearance, working for a defense contractor, and have prior military experience. Northrop Grumman, Lockheed, CSC, and a host of others. Check out their websites. Also check out Dice.com’s and its sister site for cleared jobs.

—and whirrs when it sits still?

DEBT = Wealth.
There’s an idiot here in Tampa who is a local guest on a talk show. He gives financial advice. He wrote a book “Spend your way to wealth”.
Not advice i want. works in bubble economies but always fails long-term. You cannot create wealth by going deeper into debt.

But you CAN sometimes purchase assets that generate returns greater than the interest paid on the debt to purchase them. The problem with owner occupied housing as an asset class is that you consume the dividend (Owner equivalent rent) in its entirty. If you spend more on housing, you spend more on housing. But in a market awash with credit, asset prices rise to unsustainable heights on speculative hope of further asset price rise.

At least the election ends here today. I figure both candidates are so off the mark I’m going with the Independent (actually a Libertarian running on an Independent ticket for ballot access reasons).

I heard or read or something someone describing Coakley (D)’s campaign equal to “watching the Hindenburg crash into the Titanic”

The only candidate the GnoP can run is a washed up gay porn actor?

So so typical of the family values crowd.

we lost because she sucked…not becuase our polices sucked.

No, you lost because she sucks and your policies suck. The country doesnt want a total socialist state or anything like it, which is where your president and congress is trying to take us. Too many taxes, too many nanny state issues and not listening to all the people…

That is why you are about to lose…

How do the policies suck?

Their problem is that they are frustrating the base because they can’t get 60 cloture votes when 5 of their own Senators are bought and paid for.

The country doesnt want a total socialist state or anything like it,

That’s true but everything is not as it seems to some. For example:

Polls show the country supports a “socialistic” public option.

Polls show the country supports a “socialistic” Military, Social Security and Medicare as we have now.

Polls show American’s do not support socializing losses as we have done now.

We already live in a socialistic country but a very strange form of it where public money is spent to support the very rich.

Those that cry “that’s “socialism!” for a large part are conditioned not to acknowledge the perverted form of socialism that we already practice.

How many old folks would like to give up their socialized Medicare? Dang few, with deference to Dick Armey.

In fact, those of us who can remember the mid 60’s, should remember well the mantra that Medicare was “socialized medicine”. The mantra worked to defeat the national health care plan advocated by Harry Truman in the 40’s, but was not successful in defeating that legislative genius, LBJ.

My father, a raving anti-Democrat, railed long and loud against Medicare as an in road of the Commies. He didn’t live long enough to ever use it, but it served my mother very well for almost 20 years.

It would be interesting to see what the medical care industry would look like today had Medicare not been implemented. It would be a very different animal.

The country doesnt want a total socialist state or anything like it, which is where your president and congress is trying to take us.

A.) Aren’t they your president and Congress, too?

B.) We have all sorts of “socialist” programs that are extremely popular with a majority of citizens; e.g., Social Security, Medicare, WIC programs, benefits for disabled veterans. Most people don’t think of them as “socialist,” however, nor do they need to — unless they are easily swayed by talk-radio fearmongering.

I’m also quite fond of our country’s socialist road system. Not to mention our socialist public libraries. And our parks and other public spaces. I really like them too.

How many old folks would like to give up their socialized Medicare? Dang few, with deference to Dick Armey.

I very much would.

The problem is that the question is always phrased as such - “giving up Medicare”. The implication is that the benefit is going away, without the costs being refunded.

If it were presented that way instead, e.g.:

“Would you give up Medicare and accept a refund - with interest - of all the money you’ve put into it, would you?”

I’ll bet you a heck of a lot more people would say “Yes”.

Stpn,

Does that mean you would be willing to give up all your Veteran benefits? I mean you wouldn’t want to be accused of being hypocrite now would you?

Pack, I don’t think a Medicare opt-out/refund will work. You’ll immediately have millions of people opt-out just because they want the cash for debt or toys.

Then, when the folks see the price of private health insurance for the over-65 ,* they’ll have to fly without insurance. When they do get sick they’ll whine that the gov won’t take of them, and vote accordingly, and Medicare will come back anyway. Or alternatively, you’ll have hordes of sick overwhelming the ER’s, which will probably cost more than Medicare.

I don’t think the gov has that med refund money lying around; there would be a run on the Treasury.

———
*assuming they can get insurance at all. Isn’t that why they started Medicare in the first place, because no private company will insure the old?

Well, I didn’t attempt to answer the question “will it work”, I only attempted to address “do people want it”.

A wind-down of any entitlement/insurance program could be made to work if it were done in a timely and prorated manner. However proposal of such would indeed be political suicide - not because it’s the wrong thing to do, but because people are stupid and greedy, and have been mislead to believe that they’re getting more than what they’re paying for.

A wind-down could work if it were exposed as the the ponzi scheme it is. But there is no one in power to do such a thing.

Mine was a rhetorical question, because we all know that very few seniors would give up Medicare simply because they could not. I would venture to say that a very low percentage of persons over the age of 65 have a medical history clean enough to find individual market health coverage at any price, much less at a price they could afford.

Would the 3.3% of earnings directed to Medicare during Packmans’ (or any Senior’s) working life cover the actuarially determined cost of medical care that will be incurred in the 25 years of so that one can expect to be on Medicare? Unlikely, which is precisely why Medicare is going broke, it is actuarially unsound.

I’m also quite fond of our country’s socialist road system. Not to mention our socialist public libraries. And our parks and other public spaces. I really like them too.

IMO the big distinction is whether or the thing in question is a common good or service. Roads, parks, military, etc. are. As such, IMO such things aren’t really considered socialist.

Health care, retirement, education, etc. are not common services - they are given out to individuals specifically. Ceasing provision of such a service to one individual does not reduce the benefits to other individuals. Thus provision of these by the government are socialist.

A very important distinction, IMO.

Let’s just recap the “socialist takeover” the Ditto-heads are crying so much about.

-The Wall Street Banks, Fannie and Freddie bailouts were orchestrated by the Ditto-head’s hero, George W.

-The automaker’s “bailout” was done to keep some 10 million US workers off the unemployment line, and the attendant collapse of a big portion of our industrial base.

-The health care bill came about because the self serving medical-insurer financial complex was cherry-picking customers, and didn’t feel the need to insure people who might actually need health insurance.

I’m also quite fond of our country’s socialist road system.

You must not have to drive very much– at least not in New Jersey.

A very important distinction, except that it makes no sense.

How is a park, to which all have access but only a few use at any time, any different than universal health care, to which all would have access but only a few would use at any time?

I think the distinction is only in your head.

How is a park, to which all have access but only a few use at any time, any different than universal health care, to which all would have access but only a few would use at any time?

Seems obvious to me.

A park is available to all. In order for me to ruin Yosemite for instance - I’d have to do something like dynamite the mountains, damn the valley (like Hetch Hetchy) or the like. This would ruin it for all people, and more or less be unfixable. Any given person couldn’t do anything to see a “good” Yosemite - it’s been ruined for all.

However if health care is not provided for all - it’s not ruined for all. Any given can still work and buy good health care, or have it paid for them by charity.

See the distinction?

Likewise for roads. It’s not feasible for a single person to buy a nice interstate highway to take a driving trip from NYC to LA. In order for even one person to take such a trip society as a whole has to pool resources to build the highway. This is not true for health care. If I want good health care, I’m not dependent upon pooled resources from society - I can earn money and buy it for myself single-handedly.

I’m generally Libertarian, but I do believe in the principle of the Tragedy of the Commons, and of its positive inverse (not sure if it has a name - maybe Benefit of the Commons). I believe that certain things require common finances and/or restrictions for their very existence. However that only applies to commonly-used resources - land for parks, fish in the ocean, the atmosphere, etc. Health care is not a commonly-used resource.

We also have to discuss the argument in terms of current reality and the distortions caused by and encouraged by our CURRENT failed system.

However if health care is not provided for all - it’s not ruined for all.

It is on many levels. Not providing for all ruins it for many and potentially for all because you can be dumped or denied for pre-existing conditions. It is also ruined for all because the current system grossly inflates costs beyond the ability for most to pay. It ruins it for all because we spend twice the amount of other countries for worse results. Kind of like housing. That is a huge unnecessary tax we all pay.

A single-payer or universal system would ENCOURAGE capitalism because there are many people afraid to change jobs or start a business because of losing health insurance. If we were not afraid of losing insurance, there would be much more risk taking and more job creation in small businesses.

I see roads, parks, education, health-care and the military as having many common-good aspects. Roads, parks, military, education and health care should be invested in with public money because it’s in our national interest to do so.

Packman

You seem to think universal health care somehow ‘ruins’ health care, a leap of logic that I don’t follow. People outlive us in very many universal health care countries, so it doesn’t seem to have ruined health care there.

I guess you mean it ruins one’s ability to opt out of the system? Well, I can’t opt out of the system that buys and maintains parks. (Nor would I want to.) And does the existence of parks ‘ruin’ private property?

I’m still not seeing the distinction.

I wasn’t speaking at all about ruination of health care at all. I was making the distinction between a service that’s universal because it has to be, otherwise it simply won’t exist, vs. a service that’s universal because we choose to make it so. The latter to me defines a socialistic service; the former not so.

Parks are universal because they *have* to be (generally anyhow). It’s not really feasible to have privately-owned parks. The same is true to a certain extent for roads. There are some roads that are privately-owned and paid for, but they are few and far between. The cost/logistics of trying to manage all roads as private is too great, and outweighs any benefits of competition. Parks and roads are services that by their nature are a shared entity, and they pretty much have to be. Parks are such because in private hands it’s been shown that they are stripped of their benefit (logged, hoteled, etc. to death). Roads are such because there is too much overhead in collecting payment - i.e. tolls for each usage of every road would add huge infrastructure costs and also cause privacy issues.

This is not the case for health care. Mismanaging health care for one person doesn’t cause it to also be mismanaged for another. And the logistics of collecting payment aren’t overwhelming.

So therefore the only benefit to universal health care is to spread the costs across the general populace. I.e. socialistic reasons.

P.S. I say “only” benefit - in reality our health care system has become so convoluted that the overhead of dealing with cost issues (complicated copay/coinsurance/etc. schemes) actually *has* become significant. I do think that in a purely single-payer socialized health care system there would be some savings in this respect. However I believe such savings would be vastly outweighed by other forms of government inefficiency/bureaucracy. So in the end - the only “benefit” of universal health care is socialism - i.e. wealth redistribution.

Parks are universal because they *have* to be

But there don’t *have* to be parks. They’re just something we’ve decided we like. One could say that about universal health care as well.

Roads are such because there is too much overhead in collecting payment - i.e. tolls for each usage of every road would add huge infrastructure costs and also cause privacy issues.

One could say the exact same thing about our present health care system.

The cost/logistics of trying to manage all roads as private is too great, and outweighs any benefits of competition.

Again, one could say the same thing about health care.

I’m not trying to make this a debate about health care, it’s just a convenient example.. My main point is I think you’re just saying all gov ’socialism’ that you like and/or find reasonable is legitimate, and all you don’t like is illegitimate (ie ‘real’ socialism). But I think the difference is in the eye of the beholder, because I, at least, still can’t perceive it.

Cripes man - then sorry you’re just blind.

When the government spends $100 of my taxes for roads, that $100 say goes to pave 10 feet of roadway - that 10 feet of roadway is used by the general public - anywhere from hundreds to millions of people in a given year. The people who use that 10 feet of roadway generally don’t have an option to pay on a per-use basis for that road. It’s a common resource, used by multitudes of people, and benefiting them all. It’s simply not close to feasible for each person to individually buy their own chunks of roadway in $100 increments.

When the government spends $100 of my taxes for health care, that health care generally will go to one person, for say one doctor visit. That person does have an option to pay on a per-use basis for that visit. It’s not a common resource used by multiple people - that visit is a single one-time resource that benefits only that one person. It is very feasible for each person to individually buy their health care in increments (per-visit). Thus there is no “benefit of the commons” with healthcare that exists with other things like roads, parks, etc.

That’s about as far as I can take it. If you still don’t see it, then I just can’t help you.

One of us is blind, agreed. Let’s look at your latest explanation:

Roads can be and are privately owned all over the world. One of the major effects of the interstate highway system was to greatly lessen the wealth and power of the privately-owned railways. At the time people screamed ’socialism’, now you accept them as a self-evident non-socialist benefit. Why? They squeezed out private business and put great power in the hands of government. But that’s not socialism because? Oh anyone can use them (like universal health care)?

Then you again make a leap of logic that says health care dollars are used by individuals alone. A questionable premise. What if the money is spent on an x-ray machine or the like that is used by many? Or what if someone who has TB is quarantined with our health care dollars. Does that benefit the rest of us? I’d say quite directly.

I still think it’s your arguments that are confusing, illogical, and full of non sequiturs. There’s just no qualitative difference that you can point to that separates the socialism you find acceptable and that which you don’t.

You’re really just saying that some socialism works, and some doesn’t. On that I think we agree.

Don’t they have early balloting in MA? Here in AZ, you can get on the permanent early voters list via your county recorder’s office.

I seem to recall getting something in the mail that asked if I wanted to sign up for this list. I did. And I really like to lounge on the couch while filling out my ballot.

Brown won. Gridlock is in store for us starting in January 2011. Reid will be ousted and so will Dodd. I predict after January 2011 Obama will not be able to raise taxes by one dime. Nor will there be any spending increases.

How do you spell Main street happiness?

G-R-I-D-L-O-C-K

Like Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd - Ex-Klansman?

Yes, with the focus on Ex.

I still get my hair cut at the plaza where George Wallace was shot.

As Jon Stewart said, the demos glued their balls to the side of their thighs … More of a majority than Bush had and yet they can’t get what needs to be done, done.

Saw it. It was very funny, and neatly encapsulates the root of the problem (IMO).

Leadership may be nebulous, but we know it when we see it — and Sen. Harry Reid ain’t very good at it.

Lieberman can and should’ve been an outcast, stripped of all his chairmanships and seniority. It was a leadership decision to give him so much influence.

gotta have balls first.

I don’t have those on me. But I don’t have the slightest problem using ball valves.

Here’s a picture of what I’m talking about.

I would argue that the transfer of debt from the private sector to the public and the resulting concentration of wealth and power of corporations has increased and could be considered as a shift to the right.

The fact that you (and many others) view this as being “a shift to the right” puts a finger on one root of the problem - a gross misunderstanding of exactly what “the right” is (or at least what it’s supposed to be).

Apparently what isn’t needed isn’t so much a shift to the right, as just a new right itself.

You are correct. I’m using labels that do not describe what is happening. My apologies to my fellow citizens be they right/middle/left. We are all but grist for the mill.

You should consider doing PR work for the banksters, Joey. I think you have a real knack for it.

Great minds…

The accuracy of my inequalities could be improved with editing, but the flavor of the relationship is generally correct.

Here goes:

P(hamburger) > V(hamburger) > P(hamburger)/(1+r),

where r = Wimpey’s subjective discount rate between today and Tuesday

I’d be inclined to agree. My un-expert take is that there’s a lot of back-pressure trying to push the Ren up but the dollar’s holding it down - likewise the Ren is actually applying upward pressure to the dollar. If they become unpegged it’ll slam the dollar. At least that’s my take.

Problem is that’ll slam China’s holding of U.S. treasuries - they’ll be cashing them in at a loss. I believe this is the reason they’ve been cutting back on buying them, and also switching more to short-term. It’ll be interesting to continue watching it over the next few months.

P.S. in that respect - it’s worth noting that China has been a net seller of U.S. treasuries for 6 months now - held $801.5B in May, $789.6B in November (latest data available), for a net sale of about $12B.