Bits Bucket For January 29, 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.
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Name:Ben Jones
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There will be more foreclosures in 2010 than 2009. How do you stop a rising tide? You don’t, but that won’t stop the meddlers from trying.
Obama Housing Rescue Threatened by Foreclosures, Unemployment
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama’s efforts to bolster the U.S. housing market, the trigger of the worst recession since the 1930s, may be undone by record unemployment and repossessions by lenders.
Foreclosures probably will reach 3 million this year, surpassing the record of 2.82 million in 2009, according to Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc. That would more than offset an estimated 448,000-unit rise in home sales, based on the average forecast of the National Association of Realtors, the Mortgage Bankers Association and Fannie Mae.
The housing industry remains a challenge for Obama as he enters his second year of office and government assistance programs near expiration. Data this week showed home sales tumbled after the expected end of an $8,000 tax credit for first-time buyers boosted transactions the prior month.
3 million in 2009.. another 3 in 2010..
that’s funny.. i remember us estimating how many foreclosures might result from the bobble a few years ago.
One million.. maybe two? Even that seemed incredible bordering on impossible at the time..
ok.. so out of these 6 or 10 or 12 million distressed sales somewhere down the line, what are the chances of me NOT finding exactly what I want and getting it for real cheap?
Depends on how much of a handyman you are. If this situation goes on long enough, somebody will have to take depreciation of the asset itself into consideration. Those banks were smart to pass the rotting money AND the rotting homes on to the government.
Depends on how much of a handyman you are.
Preach it, oxide!
I have personal experience with the handyman/woman side of a foreclosure purchase. My former landlady bought a foreclosed property with two houses on it. Her boyfriend and I helped with some of the trashing out and a wee bit of the renovation.
Even though LL was quite handy, those houses really tested her skills. And it took years for her to get them back up to snuff.
Exactly what I’m seeing here in Maryland.
You have choices of: unaffordable decent homes or affordable (or semi-affordable) old, worn-out junk. I’ve seen totally gutted dumps selling for well over $100,000 in old, blue-collar towns, countless others sold “as is” with the Realtor cleverly trying to take interior photos that don’t reveal the holes in the ceiling and walls, the missing fixtures and appliances (stoves, etc.), and so on. Yeah, thanks but no thanks. I’m not about to overpay and then dump tens of thousands of dollars more into some dump to bring it up to code/habitable level!
“Fortunately” the banksters no doubt have all of these “assets” still valued at their peak prices on their books and the Prophet of Change and his buddies will do whatever it takes to keep this crud overpriced.
There used to be the concept of the “Money Pit”. It was a Tom Hanks movie from back in the 80s. During the bubble, some people were happy to pay any price (i.e. lenders were willing to give the most irresponsible tremendous sums of money, money that the rest of us are paying now, and our progeny will pay well into the future) for any dump it seemed.
Now, there’s marginally more talk of post-purchase costs, a concept utterly drowned out during the mania.
I remember BB assuring that “subprime will be contained to $200 bn” circa August 2007. How’d that “economic forecast” turn out so far?
None of the senators reminded him about it either.
The only way to contain subprime is if employers all banded together and agreed not to hire the houseflipper / specuvestor / home defaulter!
Make sure that the 10% unemployment is “contained” only to those folks who bought houses they couldn’t possibly afford and thought the magic equity fairy would somehow dig them out.
Of course, this will never happen, but it’s the only fair way to deal with this mess.
Subprime has been not so much contained as renamed as “FHA”.
+1
“…what are the chances of me NOT finding exactly what I want and getting it for real cheap?”
It seems to depend heavily on the ability of the PTB to make sure that real prices always keep going up from here (and I refer you to the details of the state of the union speech if you need a reference to the plan).
Why would anyone with a lick of economic sense believe the PTB have the ability to make sure prices go up forever?
..or did that question answer itself. If so, disregard it.
The PTB can rewrite current mortgages, but they can’t make new buyers incomes afford the prices, so unless we have a return to the funny money, house prices have to keep falling.
I have faith that the Prophet of Change and his buddies (of both parties, if one can really consider them 2 parties) will be able to delay the day of reckoning (affordable housing) long enough for either the homes to rot away or for some economic disaster to hit and make owning a home the least of our worries.
I think all underwater mortgages should be converted to Option ARMs whereby FBs have the option of not paying on their mortgages if it suits them. This will benifit the economy in two ways:
First, there will be more money circulating in the economy than there is now. Right now money going into the banks in the form of house payments stays in the banks rather than emerging from the banks in the form of new loans. Options ARMs for FBs will stop this from happening; Option Arms for FBs will remove the “F” from “FB”.
To insure the success of Option ARMs for FBs severe penalities should be levied against those unpatriotic FBs who insist on continuing to make their mortgage payments.
Money not going to bank payments means more money going to spending, not a small matter considering ours is a seventy-percent consumer-based economy.
Second, Option Arms for FBs will save the banks. Currently if a loan does not carry a payment option then the loan can be counted as non-performing if the FB is behind on his payment. Declaring all underwater mortgages as Options ARMs solves this problem.
Not only do all mortgages suddenly become above water, Option ARMs for FBs actually serve to increase the loans’s principle as well as booking income that would otherwise not be booked. Option ARMs for FBs increases the banks reported earnings, increases the value of the bank’s loan portfolio, makes an insolvent bank solvent once again.
A solvent bank with an increasing loan portfolio and increasing earnings will become attractive to investors looking for a safe, secure place to invest their money. Hence Option ARMs for FB will make the bank’s stock price go up and will allow the bank to sell to the public more if its shares.
See, it’s all good.
Combo,
I read this five minutes ago, went and got my
second cup of coffee, and am still laughing at your post. I nominate your post as “Post of the
month”.
I second the nomination.
This isn’t even funny. This is the actual plan.
I never like the Plan from day one because it was the Wall Street Plan . Had the American people been given a choice of what Plan they wanted based on the options I’m sure they wouldn’t of chosen this Plan . Some of the fatal flaws of the Wall Street Plan are .
(1) You can’t make a bad loan good after the fact or make it perform when it doesn’t .
(2) You can’t re-inflate housing values after a fake rise in value .
(3) You can’t allow looting of the coffers of Trillions and Trillions of dollars
repeatedly to pay for black hole bad loan losses ,while they go back to Casino games and pretend they are solvent .
(4)You can’t have a entire Society revolve around the welfare of
a small percentage Fat Cats and their Casino games .
(5)You can’t hide it forever that jobs were outsourced and manufacturing was loss to foreign competition and it destroyed the job base of America along with creating monopolies .
(6)You can’t hide that Globalism fails when all the players are playing with different sets of rules putting some of the players at a disadvantage ,or it comes out of the hide of Main Street America .
(7)They can’t hide forever that the government cannot afford to supplement business to the degree it has and business has to be productive in and of itself .
(8)They can’t hide forever that loan loss from casino games are simply a black hole of loss and a overhaul is in order which only BK could of brought about .
(9) Fighting to keep corrupt systems alive will only increase the potential for crashes again or new bubbles as we are observing
now .
(10) Risk has to be priced correctly ,not just throw on the taxpayers to deal with down the road .
(11) The moral hazard of the Wall Street Plan will have its dire
consequences in that Justice will not prevail and the rule of law will be seen as a joke and something that will be changed retroactive in the name of saving Wall Street or some other self interest group . Contract law will be a joke and the Nation will fall more and more into it’s survival to game the system ,just like the Fat Cats of Wall street do .
(12) The Wall Street Plan puts a high priority on the health of American Corporations ,even if that health doesn’t help American Citizens .
I could go on and on ,but the Wall Street Plan in large part was
to prevent “Discovery” of just how corrupt the financial systems
had become in the name of greater profits for one faction of
the population . Watching Wall Street take there bonuses was the picture that told the American people, who are jobless and financially clobbered by the systems ,that something is wrong .
#13 You can’t have a productive and functioning society when more people work
for the government than in the secular
work place. Right now there are 4 mm
more workers working on our dime.
#13.b.)
You can’t have a productive and functioning society when more people make money by speculating instead of working.
The entire FIRE industry is based on speculation. There’s not a single ounce of “productivity” in there…and these industries now comprise a record ~40% of our economy, IIRC.
Brilliant, great post
Seriously, it sounds like the financial “wizardry” that got us here. They got “quants” to whip up incomprehensible and nonsensical equations to support the schemes and questioned the intellect of anyone who questioned the nonsense. A textbook example of The Emperor’s New Clothes. Finally the weather got cold and the guffaws and shrinkage forced everyone to realize that the emperor was in fact, naked.
Normally I would not care about a-sclowns lending money to a-sclowns. But I and my progeny are forced to foot the bills, immediately through zero interest rates on savings, then later through inflation (and the de facto inflation that is not tracked - the inflation in housing, medical, energy, food, education - the important stuff that doesn’t seem to be tracked in any index).
Amen, neuromance!
And another great post, Wiz.
Obama’s State of the Union Speech:
“…That’s why we’re working to lift the value of a family’s single largest investment – their home. The steps we took last year to shore up the housing market have allowed millions of Americans to take out new loans and save an average of $1,500 on mortgage payments….”
Hmm, let me see…take out new loans (HELOC) and low mortage rates. Yes, a quick look into recent history reveals that this is a recipe for economic disaster. I mean is this guy retarded or is he purposely trying to destroy what’s left of the economy? I really don’t know what to think of him.
Yes, because the Constitution explicitly directs the government to manipulate every sector of the economy, especially the housing market. Oh wait, no, it doesn’t. But Ron Paul is the only member of Congress who seems to be pointing that out.
Article I section 8 authorizes the congress to make any law affecting interstate commerce. Depression era Supreme Court opinion (willard v Fillburn) decided that a farmer growing wheat for his own animals affected interstate commerce.
Sooo..lying inthe backyard getting a tan probably affects interstate commerce, and might be an activity subject to federal regulation
combotechie,
I thought it was pretty funny too, but the truth is, and we’ve talked about this at length, is that when… 69.999% of our economy is consumer driven, each $ housing is over priced by ( DTI ) takes them out of circulation and directly into the coffers of MegaBank.
It was all fun and games when you could take -right- back out again ( MEW/ATM ) and make your random/lifestyle consumption Tax Free..? But that has come to an end.
each $ housing is over priced by ( DTI ) takes them out of circulation and directly into the coffers of MegaBank.
What about the money that goes to the seller of the house? That money isn’t going to MegaBank, right?
Please that’s Wickard v. Filburn 317 US 111.
Thanks for the cite.
Dennis , whatr was the 1880’s decision that recognized corporations as “persons”?
THat might help the discussion about the recent Supreme court ruling.
Here’s your case reference:
Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 118 U.S. 394
drumminj,
NFL! ( Not For Long )
The MEW-Based Consumption Model mandated the seller ‘in turn’ yield unto Ceaser that which is Ceaser’s by ( paying off all THEIR credit cards/Stanley Johnson debt ) and… coming in w/ just enough cash to close the deal on their NEW incredible McTyvek* abortion!
*Hat tip to Exeter
JD/CT,
Notice that nowhere in the 1st Amd. does the word “person” appear.
Who or what other entity existed in 1787 could “speak”? Chartered companies?
i’m too ignorant to know if MAss Bay Colony or the East Indain Company had public press releases.
Are we entering the East India Tea Company phase of American history?
But Ron Paul is the only member of Congress who seems to be pointing that out.
Apparently you haven’t been paying attention.
See Kucinich, Dennis and Feingold, Russ — there are probably others as well. St. Paul is not the Second Coming, despite what many True Believers® seem to think. He is only a man.
Bernie Sanders, too!
He said it in the speech. He believes Americans want short term fixes and false hope, and damn it, he is going to give the American people what they want. I dont have much faith in the masses, but hell, even they are seeing he is the real threat to this Country’s future. There is no doubt his policies will result in increased unemployment and longer pain.
Natalie,
Probably true, but why be ‘bitter’ about it? ( From The Onion )
“America needs New Bubble to pin false hopes on”
“America needs New Bubble to pin false hopes on”
Well, for 4 years I’ve repeatedly asked Mr. Bear what “Financial Innovation” is going to allow MILLIONS of Americans to “suddenly” get vectors of wealth in $75,000 / $100,000 / $200,000 /$300,000 “Chunks” ?
With out the National “mechanism” I’m think “a good portion” of Americans will be stuck with:
Repair the car to last 15 years, fly to relatives x1 every 5 years, budget the kids to x1 item at x1 vacation museum, saving (if possible) some earnings,…and last but not least…quit bichin’ cryin’ piss’in & moanin’ and try to stay employed for “most of the time” over a 25 year period.
Run Hwy, …run!
Repair the car to last 15 years, fly to relatives x1 every 5 years, budget the kids to x1 item at x1 vacation museum, saving (if possible) some earnings,…and last but not least…quit bichin’ cryin’ piss’in & moanin’ and try to stay employed for “most of the time” over a 25 year period.
This sounds a lot like my childhood. And, for some odd reason, I lived to tell the tale.
My truck is a 2001 F-150, and I can’t help always thinking of it as the “new truck”.
I’ve done all the work on it myself. It’s only been at the dealers once: to replace an EGR vaccuum switch under a “silent recall”.
“…the real threat to this Country’s future.”
Wouldn’t that be falling home prices? I thought there was a plan to fix that problem…
Oh, I’m not going to beat The President up over that comment/stance any more.
What we have him say if ‘we’ were his handlers? “It’s hopeless, your home is TOAST! Sell now or be priced in forever”.
I guess we could always delegate to the 1st Lady and let HER take the heat now couldn’t we?!?
The funny part is that it wouldn’t be that hard to spin declining home prices as a good thing. Just say something like, “While the recent decline in prices has brought on economic concerns, the problem was the toxic loans that allows people to buy houses they couldn’t afford. With lower prices, Americans will finally be able to truly afford their homes and with lower mortgage payements, they can spend their money on other luxuries. This will help restart the economic engine of America.”
Hey, they managed to convince the sheep that overpaying for a house was a good thing, so convince them of the truth shouldn’t be that hard since sheep do what they are told (reality be durned.) But, lower housing prices means greater economic freedom for citizens and lower profits for Megabank, so it must be prevented.
The funny part is that it wouldn’t be that hard to spin declining home prices as a good thing. Just say something like, “While the recent decline in prices has brought on economic concerns, the problem was the toxic loans that allows people to buy houses they couldn’t afford. With lower prices, Americans will finally be able to truly afford their homes and with lower mortgage payements, they can spend their money on other luxuries. This will help restart the economic engine of America.”
Well - the hard part would be later - finding a security agency good enough to defend you from assassination by people hired by the extensive FIRE economy interests.
Pondering,
You’re Hired!!!
Sigh. I wish.
Well, at least I got 1 vote!
Second vote, right here!
I think the British leader of the conservative party announced that they would have to push BACK the reirement age. His poll ratings went UP.
The politicians here who suggest the obvious still get painted as whack-jobs.
My 85-year-old father never retired. Right now, he’s doing research on carbon sequestration and advising students in a university course in chemical process design.
His father stopped working a few months before he died. Reason: He was too sick to keep on working. (Grandpa had terminal cancer.)
My father’s uncle (my great uncle) died at age 81. He’d been managing the business side of the dental practice in which he’d once worked as a dentist. (Uncle Hutch was wise enough to step aside from practice when he realized his dexterity wasn’t what it once was.)
Hutch went into the office for Saturday morning hours, then came home to take a nap before heading out to the golf course. He died in his sleep.
As you can probably guess by now, I’m not exactly planning to retire.
“…That’s why we’re working to lift the value of a family’s single largest investment – their home. The steps we took last year to shore up the housing market have allowed millions of Americans to take out new loans and save an average of $1,500 on mortgage payments….”
I was struck by the reaction to that part of Obama’s speech. It was greeted with a rousing round of…
…silence.
If $1,500 is how much your saving, what was your total payment to begin with? I may be off a bit, but $1,500 is the mtg payment on a $250,000 loan. The avg price of a home is $175,000.
Does this seem fishy to anyone?
When you refinance, don’t you typically skip a month of mortgage payments? There’s your $1500.
I was wonding if he ment $1500/year. Or perhaps, $1500 per life of 30 year mortgage.
It didn’t make sense to me, either.
Oh ,I really want to buy a house when the President said in a speech in essence that the government has to push up the values
of real estate . Use to be that house price rise was based on supply and demand and wages rising and the general inflation of the economy .
I guess I’m not a family because my “single largest investment” isn’t my [house]. It’s not even the most expensive single purchase I’ve ever made. (Of course, Barack H. Obama has already made it quite clear I’m not a family with his support for CA Proposition 8, his ditching of pro-Marriage Jerimiah Wright for anti-Marriage Rick Warren, etc.)
Ignoring the fact that it’s not an investment, I never intended or planned on it being the basket in which I place all my eggs.
In fact, even following traditional investment advice, one’s savings for retirement over a lifetime should easily exceed any imagined value in one’s home.
In my calculations, the only value a house has is the imputed income from the difference in what you pay each month in mortgage/upkeep/taxes and what the minimum acceptable housing rent for you would be. For most people, that puts the value of a house in the negative territory, at least until it’s paid up. Then it becomes a _slight_ advantage.
While I do believe he and the others running the show ARE trying to destroy the economy (since people having jobs and savings = people with a degree of freedom from the government, so that is bad), this is just more of the usual stupidity that “expensive houses are good.” That being said, the longer this drags on, the more I fear that they will succeed in keeping housing unaffordable, or at least keep prices high enough for the extra houses to rot away before they are put on sale for a reasonable price.
Listening to idiot speechs like this makes me think of the way some group of clowns wanted to “improve” a crime-ridden dump in Baltimore. They were going to do this by buying up land and putting in expensive houses; that would magically fix the area because the houses are expensive. No improvement in infrastructure, no elimination of crime, no jobs… nope, just randomly placed expensive houses. Based on that “logic” if we doubled the price of all houses, everyone’s standard of living would double?!
Dad and I recently went through Baltimore on the train. Before we reached the station, we passed by what appeared to be miles of boarded up houses. Sad thing was, they looked like solid brick structures. But, unfortunately, I couldn’t think of any future for them other than teardown.
That’s why I sometimes jokingly call Baltimore the “City of the Dead.” Not only is it a good description of a violence filled ghetto with bullets flying around, but the endless, empty rowhomes all blend together like countless, gaping-mawed tombs.
A very depressing place: one couldn’t pay me to move there!
Not to mention insourcing via HIBs and L1s, etc. In Health Care for example, there are plenty of US applicants for these positions despite the hype, but unfortunately importing cheaper workers continues.
Jobs and stocks, one of the best performing stock sectors has been outsourcing companies. These companies which provide cheaper labor and thats the only thing they do, which has and will continue to cause deflation in the markets they serve. I would like Obama to find a way to tax that practice otherwise he may mot see a second term.
http://stockcharts.com/charts/gallery.html?s=infy
http://stockcharts.com/charts/gallery.html?s=wit
For comparison here is a chart of Apple.
http://stockcharts.com/charts/gallery.html?s=aapl
Even Satyam whose ex-CEO stole billion dollars from company did Okay:
http://stockcharts.com/charts/gallery.html?s=say
Wow! wipro looks loke it might make a round trip backt $5 ashare!!
Empty feeling: 28% of Orlando-area housing units vacant.
But housing pain is renters’ gain as apartments dangle enticements.
~Orlando Sentinel
Orlando had more vacant houses, condos and apartments than any other major U.S. city during the third quarter, driving down rents and sparking landlord concessions just five years after finding an apartment was virtually impossible.
The four-county metro area had a vacancy rate of 28 percent for all housing in the late summer months of 2009, according to the newest U.S. census information. Orlando’s vacancies surpassed those of any of the other top 75 metropolitan areas in the country.
The information, drawn from a sampling with a 7 percent margin of error, is yet another indicator of the magnitude of the housing slump in this market. The Orando area has the nation’s 11th-highest foreclosure rate and what may be the country’s largest drop in condo prices.
Renting is getting better and better! Stocks are peaking, sell to raise more cash for more months’ expenses!
But everybody kept telling me that I was throwing my money away on rent. Could they really have been wrong?
We are nearing our next lease renewal. I will settle for an 8 percent decrease. Anything less and it is “adios”. There are too many good deals and too many people not paying to be held hostage by a landlord. Good tenants are regaining the power they should have never lost.
“and too many people NOT paying to be held hostage” ( Emphasis mine )
Right absolutely. I’m applying that mindset in my commercial lease as well. Day 3 of the Men’s room being backed up.
We are nearing our next lease renewal. I will settle for an 8 percent decrease. Anything less and it is “adios”.
I fully expect a decrease when my lease expires in July.
So much for the theory advanced by many that rents would RISE due to all the people being foreclosed. I guess they didn’t take into account that people tend to move to cheaper parts of the country and/or move in with relatives when they suffer that sort of setback. They do NOT tend to move into expensive apartments.
Stocks are peaking, sell to raise more cash for more months’ expenses!
BilLA, is that you? I thought we were supposed to be DCA’ing into stocks?
I’m so confused :/
Is that a personal attack?
Oh I apply that principle to my tax deferral stuff. Outside that, my trailing stops are being hit. I need the cash to pay for my conversions to Roths! Ulterior motive: To be able to retire in Taxifornia without my stocks in Roths being taxable.
oooh, good plan, but how do you get around the $5K limit? $5k per year won’t help much with retirement.
“how do you get around the $5K limit”
This year only you can convert your IRA to a ROTH and spread the the resulting taxes over the next two years.
Aren’t you going to have to pay the CA tax when you do the Roth converion? California (and most states) tax all income earned in the state as well income earned by people who are residents. I’m aware you claim to be an AZ resident despite spending nearly all your time in CA.
Yes, Polly. But it’s a one time tax. Actually you divide the tax over two years.
Compared to umpteen years where you can hold and rebalance in stock mutual funds.
I’ll gladly take the tax hit in 2011 and 2012 in exchange for not having to take a distribution by 70 and a half. that’s 20 years from now.
Roths are also very sensible for parents who can manage to make deposits in kid’s name. Also helps if there is a family business/part-time employment to make it possible.
Bill,
I have to laugh. Everyone is soo into the idea tat you don’t have to take a distribution from a Roth… What is the deal tho, do you think you can spend your money when you are dead? Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of being able to take the distribution at my *free* direction instead of at the government’s mandate, but really, you’ll gladly pay taxes today so that you can *not* spend your money in the future??? Seems kind of screwy…
Keep laughing, it will keep you from thinking it through.
I don’t have to start tapping into the Roth’s in 20 years. I could start in 21 years instead. Or 30 years.
I have to start on the distributions of my traditional 401ks by just a tad under 20 years when I’m 70 and a half. No sooner than when I’m 50.
I don’t understand why you don’t see that I can leave money in Roths far longer and let them continue growing, compared to traditional tax deferred investment.
I don’t believe in going 100% any direction, so I keep about 50% in traditional tax deferred stuff. I like to diversify my tax avoidance strategies.
Bill,
Again, not laughing because you want to be free of the more restrictive IRA and 401k rules. Just laughing because at 70 years old it seems like your retirement strategy should already be baked, and that is the time you *should* be pulling money out. I agree that the less restriction, the more valuable.. it’s the paying tax *today* part that knock me onto my heels.
Traditional IRA’s and 401k’s have tax deferral status *today* . It’s money you don’t give to the gov’t now. On top of that, they operate under the assumption that your income tax rate will be lower during your years of retirement, because you will only have residual income in the lower bracket rates, and not primary income.
The main scenario where you pay higher rates is where you’ve saved so much money that your residual income is higher from forced distributions than your primary income is *today*. If that’s the case, it just seems like a person would want to loosen up a bit and have a little fun while you are still young and your body works. In any other case, you’re just paying a higher tax rate on a higher income bracket when you do the conversion.
The one exception to this that I know of is if you are unemployed or under-employed in a given year and your tax bracket drops way down, it can make sense to convert at a low rate that you have locked in today.
I am poking a little fun, but not too much. Seriously tho, saving is good, but i hope you are living a little
“I am poking a little fun, but not too much. Seriously tho, saving is good, but i hope you are living a little.”
Thanks, but all the same, this is the biggest economic downturn since back in 1982 when I was in college. Also, I have to save for four people, including myself. My older sisters did not save a dime. Two are divorced and one is single.
I cannot live it up.
Shhh…mathguy. The more taxes Bill pays now, the better off the rest of us are. Let him.
MathGuy,
I think you did not see that I will be partly in traditional tax deferral schemes.
I am hedging my tax deferral schemes. Do the math. Suppose taxes go way up in 18 years and stay high for 30 more after that? My Roth’s would be a good idea. Suppose taxes will drop substantially, perhaps to 0, when I turn 70. My traditional part of my tax deferred plans will be a steal. But then my Roths will still be untaxxed. So being partly into Roths is a great idea.
There must be lots of available parking in those apartment/condo complexes.
28%!! look to your left look to your right and one is empty. Ben Had a piece a couple of weeks ago. The one i remember was the girl at the university who got $100 off her rent. That seems like a tiny reduction given the amplitude of the problem.
I wonder how many of those vacant houses and condos were DisneyWorld rentals or vacation homes? Not owned by Disney, but rather by “investors” who figured they could rent them out (on a daily or weekly basis) and have money left over after they paid the monthly nut. We all know everybody has $5000+ to burn on a DisneyWorld vacation.
Has anyone seen the ads where, if you do a day of work with a charity you get a free day pass to Disney? Interesting way to fill the hotels.
It’s not costing Disney that much to offer the free day. The daily ticket cost difference on a multi-day pass is only a few bucks per day AFTER the 4-day mark. Most people stay for at least 4 days.
“Has anyone seen the ads where, if you do a day of work with a charity you get a free day pass to Disney? Interesting way to fill the hotels.”
I did my volunteer work last weekend and got my free voucher yesterday. Lots of So. Cal. people are taking advantage of this and will drive there for the day or stay with friends (which is what I’m doing.) So there’s some loss. But I would not have gone this year without the free ticket and I will be buying food once there so they’ll make some money. I tend to buy a pass every few years and go several times in a year. But I did want to see how they’ve updated the submarine ride so I am looking forward to going and finding hidden Mickeys.
Anyone else going?
When I was in Disney World in May, the parks themselves were busy. However, driving to/from the airport, just about every off-site hotel parking lot was completely empty. My guess was that Disney’s value resorts lowered their prices so much that it poached most of the business from the non-Disney hotels; folks who would have stayed off-site found themselves able to stay at one of Disney’s value hotels for the same price.
I don’t expect much has changed.
Yeah, there is some heavy discounting going on for those on property “resorts”: free meals, discounted nightly rates, etc. Plus free admission on your birthday.
“and have money left over after they paid the monthly nut”
If only that was the plan! In Portland the ‘plan’ was to buy a loft/condo in The Pearl District, have your kid live in it while they go to college, then sell for a huuuge profit that fully covers -all- edu. expenses.
Makes your marks look ’sensible’ in comparison?
We had a lot of this going on in Tucson from about 2002 to 2007.
Moms and/or Dads were buying houses for the kiddie(s) to live in while attending the University of Arizona.
Unfortunately, as those kids graduated, the housing market cratered. And, as we all know, after a few years of college student habitation, a house will need some major repairs. Which the (now underwater) parents can no longer afford.
I have a front-row seat at one such trainwreck. It’s happening right across the street.
Years ago, I can remember a neighbor kid whose family took her to Disneyland. Which she absolutely loved.
However, this kid was a victim of child abuse, no two ways about it. Her mother had a way with words that was absolutely chilling. Matter of fact, with me over for a visit one day, Cindy and I stood dumbstruck in the kitchen as her mother described, in depth, how she planned to murder Cindy.
It was going to be a slow and gruesome death, and I recall going home and telling my mother what I’d heard. Mom and Dad forbade me from going into that house again.
I can’t help thinking that the Disneyland trip was some sort of consolation for all the abuse Cindy was going through. IIRC, her father paid for the trip.
Az Slim-
I just turned in a child abuser, who is Donna Reed in front of her husband and in public. When he is gone, and she’s alone with the 3 boys, turns the house into a theatre of hell.
I don’t know if my parents reported this neighbor to the authorities. It was the early 1960s, after all.
But I do know that Mom and Dad forbade me from setting foot in Cindy’s house again. And, knowing my mother, she probably warned the other mothers to keep their kids out of Cindy’s house.
I’m not really a religious person, but I truly hope there is a special hell somewhere for those people.
Not very Christian of me, but I’m guessing my level of hell will be quite a bit cooler.
awaiting wipeout,
You are a good person.
SanFranciscoBayAreaGal
Why thank you, madame. I appreciate that. “Screamzilla” has a hole in her soul, or is just missing one. There is no excuse.
Rental Watch-
I don’t like organized religion (retailer), but I think God (wholesaler) will hold us all accountable.
“We all know everybody has $5000+ to burn on a DisneyWorld vacation.”
I know a very nice family that saves probably that amount for their annual trip to DisneyLand. They rent and have virtually no other significant savings. Again, they are as nice as anybody you’ll ever meet. They just don’t have much financial sense.
This type of thinking goes against mine in every way. I just don’t understand it. And there are many more that share their $ philosophy than mine.
When did going on vacation become a god given right?
Anybody that’s over 45 can remember these:
Flying was considered a luxury (People would dress up)
Long distance phone calls (Hurry up and say hi to grandma)
And anymore examples you can think of. I guess my point is back then you knew it was a luxury. I remember my parents doing without in order to get ahead. I don’t see much of that attitude anymore.
Flying was considered a luxury (People would dress up)
Long distance phone calls (Hurry up and say hi to grandma)
I can remember taking my first plane ride during grade school. I was ordered, in no uncertain terms, to dress up and be on my best behavior.
Long distance calls? Oh, man. If we got one of those, wetalkedlikethis. Didn’t want to run up the caller’s bill.
If you want to see a real eye opener, visit a website called laughingplace dot com
Its a Disney fan site with emphasis on the themeparks. There is a discussion section with subsections for discussing planning Disneyland and Disneyworld vacations. It’s amazing how many middle class folks won’t bat an eyelash when paying $400+ per night for a deluxe resort room (say the Grand Californian), insisting that its “worth it”.
Just like your friends, many will scrimp and save to pay for that $5000 vacation.
SV guy,
I know what you’re talking about (even though I’m only in my mid thirties.) I enjoy going out for dinner once or twice a month. It’s a treat that way.
Also, the stress relief from a week away at a vacation spot is muuuuuch less than the stress avoided by knowing there is a 6 month buffer in the bank. All about perspective.
Al,
I remember as a kid I thought going to MickeyD’s was special. It was a very infrequent happening in our household.
You’re also right about stress relief. I’ve said many times that there is no sounder sleep than that of someone who is debt free (I guess you could argue the homeless angle).
-Going out to a Mexican or Chinese restaurant en famille was a luxury. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we “ate out” during my childhood. “Grabbing a hamburger” did not exist in my world.
-Any meat source besides frozen ground turkey from the freezer was a luxury.
-Any snack food was a luxury. In fact, chips, candy, soft drinks did not enter our house unless “company” was coming.
-Buying a school lunch was a “special treat.”
-Having the bathwater to ourself was a luxury. (This in Palos Verdes!) As was using the dishwasher.
-A shower was a luxury for us girls. (Only the males got showers.)
-Being driven to school (2.4 miles) was a luxury. (Only when it rained.)
-Sleeping past 6 AM was a luxury. Especially on weekends.
-Non hand-me-down clothing was a luxury. Being the smallest in the family, I wore my younger sisters’ hand-me-ups.
My parents were both doctors; children of the GD1. I think it made an impression on them.
Today they are comfortably retired and have, over the past 55 years together, visited every continent and well over 100 countries. My father has an extensive wine cave on property, and my mother still has an entire room full of jars, used wrapping paper, and shopping bags. Just in case….
ahansen,
Most of your experiences mirror mine.
I suspect that we will have a generation of people that share your parents values, more or less, when this whole ‘thing’ gets sorted out.
Sitting at the dinner table, no one did a thing
until Mother sat and took a bite, and after
dinner, you asked to be excused.
Many things that were luxuries became the norm over time…
Running water, color TV, electricity, etc., etc., etc.
I’m not saying that everyone should be entitled to a $5,000 vacation, but they certainly will become more common over time. When I was a kid, flying anywhere was unheard of, I seem to recall some of the first flights I took were to visit colleges. We packed up the van and drove all over the place. Disneyland? Perhaps once or twice, and we lived in CA. We drove, slept on the floor of a friend’s house, packed a picnic lunch and went for one day. And we were thrilled–that was the greatest thing ever.
When I was a kid, $5,000 was about half the price of a HOUSE….in Palo Alto too!
Rental,
You’re absolutely right about former luxuries becoming the norm. My point was more of the entitlement mindset. Maybe entitlement doesn’t correctly describe what I’m trying to convey. I guess more the amazement of a basic lack of fiscal discipline. One more example of this mindset. A very casual friend of my wife’s had some minor plastic surgery done. Her mother payed half the tab. Then the friends car battery failed a few days later. You probably guessed it, not enough $ for a new battery. Unf**kingbelieveable.
28%, that’s absolutely amazing. Just a couple of years ago “everybody” was supposedly moving to Florida. Now it has Michigan-level vacancy rates.
Happy days are here againg.
Q4 2009 GDP came in at 5.6%. More false hope for those who believe that housing has hit bottom. I have a bulletin for them…….. The housing collapse has just begun.
I’ll take the 200 point dow rally today though.
5.6%! What a load! I guess our chocolate ration will increase as well!
I love Victory Gin but I prefer Jack Daniels.
“I love Victory Gin but I prefer Jack Daniels”
In moderation, old Jack D has always been a friend to me.
We’re currently running at a CPI rate of 4.8%, quarter-over-quarter, when you adjust for seasonality, by my calculations. So 5.6% GDP isn’t that surprising to me, given all the new stimulus money being pumped in. Real GDP rise is less than 1%.
For some reason, I thought the reported GDP is inflation adjusted?
It’s in nominal terms ($XXX per year), so no.
Which is why it is not hard to imagine a situation with runaway unemployment and GDP as the later just measures inflation via massive dollar devaluation while the real economy withers and dies.
oh there will be a morning rally, bit the shelf life will be about 45 minutes…Real kiss of death for this market “good news” (some earnings, some econ. indicators) and it stiill tanks.
Asian markets have been down 8 days in row, first time sine 2004, and Japan got shellacked last night.
wonder if the Greek banks will stay open today
I’ll have to check an intraday chart but did the high of the day occur at 45 minutes after the opening bell?
Nice call,JD! I thought that the markets would soar on the GDP news. But it looks like traders are actually looking ahead to future interest rate hikes (I hope.)
Look at the dollar,too.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dollar-adds-to-gains-after-gpd-rises-2010-01-29-83940
I’m impressed, Sir!
Please, keep posting– preferably the night before.
It appears Wall Street bonus checks are now a substantial component of GDP. So the 5.6% actually makes sense.
So I guess there is no need for stimulus/low Fed rates anymore. With growth like that, its time to put on the brakes. Time for an “emergency” rate hike by the FED like all of those that were done to lower rates. Think we’ll see that?
press,
Don’t make me laugh! Yeah, there may be REIC’sters that are touting this as an end to the death spiral for home prices, but the rest of us really shouldn’t care.
They need to realize ( as the “MEW Dads” found out ) that even ever-rising home prices and cash-out re-fi’s can’t sustain you indefinitely! At some point, you need a job.
Not if T-bill yields have negative returns.
For some though, “strong” economic numbres really mean that the free money is about to be taken away.
Can’t believe that that will happen for “a few more quarters” (i.e. 2015)
“Time for an “emergency” rate hike by the FED…”
Yup. Gotta stop the jobless recovery from ‘overheating.’
I assume that sort of thinking is what really put a lid on the WS rally (currently down 2 points). I wonder if Bernake really will stop buying the MBS’s? Despite Prof Bear’s admitted reasonable assumptions, I don’t think that Fannie and Freddie are really set up to take over all of the purchases yet. Could we actually have a spike in mortgage rates?
5.7% 4Q GDP (est.) = 0.0-0.25% FFR?
Shoot they just met (literally) a couple hours ago too! Maybe they’ll take their cue from Beijing - 8% or die!
It seems that even the stock market knows the numbers are BS: Dow down 53 points at the close.
Anybody see Matt laur on NBC’s Today show..
I was hoping to hear the words “strategic default”…nut no “walking waya” was the description.
The princesss of all the realt- whores, Barbara Corcoran, was the guest.
There was a feeble admission that it happened, and a sort of unstated implicationthat it made financial sense.
Then there was 2 1/2 minutes bout : yoour contract (promise) to pay, the hurt you cause your neighbors, and the possibility that you could have your wages garnished- although there was a recognition that it almost never happens.
I’m giving the report a “D-”. They brought up the subject, at least.
Yeah, that’s why I should keep paying on my home when it’s down 50% from what I paid for it: I don’t want to break my “promise” to my bankster, or worse, cause any pain to my neighbors.
After all, both of these groups will be there to put my kids through college, food on my table, gas in my auto - well, you get the hint.
It really is time for bunker mentality to take over because we’re still only in the early innings of this meltdown.
Why identify with the FB?
Why not with his neighbors, owners AND renters, who will suffer due to the abandoned [crack] houses scattered around the neighborhood?
Gee joey don’t you think people should make logical choices about waht is best for them.
This includes holding off on buying a new car,going on vacation et cetera.
But if you are so far in the hole that you will never see daylight, you would be crazy not to walk away.
You can still be a good neighbor at your new residence.
Maybe RE values drop, but there really is societal value in making a housing affordable.
Bragging about it might be a little inconsiderate, but doing it- why not?
Please compare the conduct of the homeowner to the Tishmans.
Goose meet gander.
…don’t you think people should make logical choices about what is best for them…
Yes. All people should make choices that are best for them. We should all act in our own best interests.
And to follow through with that line of reasoning, when what is good for others and what’s good for you are opposed, you should encourage them to do what benefits you.
Sure, it may be to their benefit to walk away. But when it impacts me negatively, why on earth would I encourage it? Encouraging them to walk is a bad choice… an illogical choice on MY part.
Encourage FBs to stay, pay, and take care of their homes. That is what’s best for you, me and everyone else.
….Maybe RE values drop, but there really is societal value in making a housing affordable…
..certainly agree with that..
I suppose I have to add the following:
Efforts to maintain prices are wasted. FBs struggling to keep paying their mortgages, the government offering rebates, bailing out banks and businesses.. all that has been and will be done is futile.
However, those efforts are beneficial in a couple ways.
Efforts to support housing and the economy in general will slow the decline and soften the landing, and we may avoid massive business failure.
If so, the recovery can come more quickly and easily, simply because less is destroyed and less need be recovered.. lots of economic pain can be avoided.
But property prices? They are doomed..
I can’t believe Lauer didn’t say “Tishman just walked away from the Stuyvesant Town’s $5.6 billion loan why shouldn’t the jones’ walk away from $400 k loan?”
Doesnt babrbara corcoran seem slimy to you guys?
When it comes to sliminess, she’s right down there with the eels.
Babs looks like she can eat an apple through a picket fence….. with little effort.
Am I the only one who couldn’t care less about people being underwater? Geezus, the writing was CLEARLY on the wall. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - if I could see it, anyone could see it. That so many CHOSE not to see it does not qualify them for pity. Send the keys back and go rent for 5-7 years. I don’t care. And certainly not the end of their world to have to do that. It’s a very expensive life lesson. Get over it.
Every day that this is dragged out and the life support is continued is one more day that I (and all other responsible folk) can’t get a house. Enough already.
I like your anger!
Ahem.
I like your indignation!
We other bloggers saw it too eastcoaster! We’re with you!
eastcoaster
You’re singing my song, lady friend. We’re not going to get this lost time back. Release the darn REO’s at a reasonable price, and let us nest already.
No doubt, your son would love his treehouse, and a backyard, and you would love to give it to him. I miss my piano (in storage).
In terms of keeping advertising dollars, Matt Lauer probably earned an A.
Wall St: “Don’t do as I do…Do as I say!”
Main St: “We default, we’re financial sluts”
“financial slut”
still thinking about that one
Bankers trying to get inside the mind of “Homemoaners”:
“They’ll do anything if we offer them: 0% down and pick-your-payment!”
“Should we give it a go?”
did you see Corcoran’s article in the AARP mag. She encouraged buyers to jump at the abundance of good deals .” It’s a perfect time to snatch a bargain or an upgrade” Said that the market is fast to recover and that we’ll make up most of the last four years losses with 18 months.
Is she Leslie Simpleton’s first cousin?
Yep. Just read it. Made me want to attack her with forks.
“Snatch” indeed.
An important word about the 2010 Census
Every ten years a census of the U.S. population is made - mandated by the U.S. Constitution of 1789. No big deal. A nose count makes sense in order to allocate seats in Congress according to population.. But in addition to the census comes an additional inquiry by the federal government called the American Community Survey. It requires personal information that isn’t the government’s business. The thinking American might be tempted to ignore it.
“You may not have heard of the American Community Survey, but you will,” says Rep. Ron Paul. ” The national census, which historically is taken every ten years, has expanded to quench the federal bureaucracy’s ever-growing thirst to govern every aspect of American life. The new survey, unlike the traditional census, is taken each and every year at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. And it’s not brief. It contains 24 pages of intrusive questions concerning matters that simply are none of the government’s business, including your job, your income, your physical and emotional heath, your family status, your dwelling, and your intimate personal habits.”
wmbz
I posted something about this 6 weeks ago, but thank you for the refresher. My elderly mother had the knocks on her front door, and phone calls at all hours because she didn’t answer all those noyb questions. The ACS is ruthless. We’re not speaking, so I don’t know the resolutuion.There are horror stories on a website I found.
Rumor has it, they even ask intimate questions, but even I refuse to believe they stoop that low.
I read the end user includes commerce.
In Massachusetts, each town (there are no “unincorporated” areas that I am aware of in the Clowinwealth) does a “census” every year. In bold, all-caps lettering at the top are the words “IF YOU FAIL TO COMPLETE AND RETURN THIS FORM YOU WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE VOTER ROLLS”
So I call the Dept. of Elections…turns out it is just a ploy to get people to return the stupid census (you even have to supply your own postage). The towns know this, the Dept. of Elections knows this…everyone winks and nods and accepts the fact that the local governments issue a form with an empty (and illegal) threat, and life goes on….
So I’ve ignored it every year….and never been removed from the voter registration rolls.
But I’m getting really tired of NIMBY types trying to not only plant themselves in my back yard but to look in my windows.
Wow. Thanks for that info.
It is now known as The 2010 Censlus (TM)…
It’s a taxpayer subsidy for advertisers and marketing companies, that’s what it is. In school I worked with the data - you can make all kinds of fun maps with it. But when you step back a bit, what seemed fun at first reveals a very sinister side. In the very least, the data is invaluable to the aforementioned groups and we should only expect the questions to become more intrusive - unless the consumer economy implodes as one can only hope.
It is also used to “speak truth to power” if you will. You should watch congress critters shut up when confronted with actual data. Congress, by its very nature, thrives on annecdotes. Well, get a little organized and you will find that people with a “plays well in a speech” problem can get a lot of attention from congress. Agencies use the census data to do studies that show that the speechworthy problem is so rare that it makes no sense to do anything about it, or at least nothing expensive. Think or it as a regulatory version of “hard cases make bad law.”
I have been on teams that accessed census data for this purpose. We’ve also used data from other sources, but the census has info that you just can’t get elsewhere.
It may be intrusive. I certainly would prefer to get the short form, not the long one. But if it comes, I’ll fill it out.
As the economy crashes, they will only grow more intrusive; with nothing better to do, they will try to control everything even as real power slips away from them.
I read the end user includes commerce.
Do you have a source for this? And, do you mean the Commerce Department, or private companies trolling for market research?
Glenn Beck is all over this issue as well.
Madison Ave and other forms of data munchers. There are numerous articles/website references online.
We don’t own a TV (15 yrs), but I am happy to hear Glenn Beck is waking up the sleeping masses.
Careful what you wish for. Glenn Beck is an unstable, idiot mountebank with no credentials or expertise on any subject. Anyone “woken” by him may be abby-normal.
He is, but he may have a good point on this one.
“Mountebank” is a word that should be used more often, especially in these times.
I got this sucker on Wednesday and I was appalled by the questions. Not sure what I’ll do but I sure don’t feel any of its their business other than a head count. Options other than just grin and bear it invite the government even further into one’s life.
What were some of the questions?
I’ll answer this when I get home tonight, but there are all kinds of questions about health and finances.
Once I went to a govt. funded clinic for a yearly exam, the personnel asked me really nosy questions about my personal life. I started laughing thinking it was a joke. When I realized it was part of the usual intake procedure, I put a bunch of nonsense on the form.
Still I was uncomfortable that these yo-yos even had my name on the document, so as I was leaving I told them I wanted that form back. They got their manager to come and explain to me why it wasn’t my property. I played along and asked for it back to correct something I’d written, and when she handed it to me I tore it into shreds. Anyone who thinks that government health care is a beautiful thing, be advised it comes with strings attached.
Perhaps a BLS style of reporting the ‘facts’ should be used while filling it out?
Some of the questions (summarized):
1. How much land
2. Got a fridge, toilet, phone, hot water…?
3. How do you heat your house
4. How many rooms
5. How many bedrooms
6. How many vehicles less than 1-ton are kept there
7. How much are your electric, gas, sewer, etc. bills?
8. How much is your mortgage/rent, etc.
9. What’d'ya think your house/apt/mobile would sell for
10. What are your insurance costs
11. Got a second mortgage
12. What’s your total annual costs
13. What’s your schooling, what languages do you speak and how well.
14. What’s your health insurance plan and what’s it cost
15. Deaf, blind, physically, mentally impaired?
16. Probe, probe if you have physical or mental issues
17. Married? how many times, when did you last marry
18. Tell me all about your children
19. Tell me all about your job, how much money you make, where you work; how long have you worked there
20. Tell me all about your income, tips, dividends
And more. WTF? I mean really? WTFF?
Aside from the number of people in the house, it might be fun to answer any which way just to F#*#! them up
Based on what I’ve gathered from reading online, the heaviest penalties are reserved for people who answer fraudulently.
Can you refuse to answer and plead the 5th Amd.?
A simple solution would be to choose random answers.
The contract for my apartment ends at the end of February… I just got the terms for the next period if I wanna stay at my place. (I live in Austin, TX)
Rent increases by $50 dollars (from $1350 to $1400).
Parking went from free to $50 a month.
When I moved in, the specials were 1 month free and free parking. The current special for new residents is the same.
I’ve never understood apartments… why do apartments raise rent/fees on current residents while giving out goodies to new ones?
If I leave, they will lose money putting back the place together for the new resident and spend time/money finding a new tenant.
I don’t get them… I would think they would try to do anything to get the current residents to stay.
Oh yeah… they added a new fee to my bill without telling me. Each month, I get a bill from the apartment management with some utilities (water, trash, etc) since it’s divided equally among all residents… anyways, the bill has a new $4 consolidation fee.. what in the world is that? I am paying my apartment complex $50 bucks a year for them to send me a single bill each month.
the new lease is just a proposal.
Draw a heavy black line through anything you don’t like, change any numbers you don’t like, and send it back.
They tried to do the same thing to me. I asked to speak to the head person and charge, told that person that i paid rent on time every month and if they wont beat what they give a stranger off the street during a period of 10% vacancy and high defaults I am walking and they have no financial sense at all. After originally threatening to raise my rent 10%, we settled for a 10% reduction.
I’ll try to negotiate at least the parking… 50 bucks a month… other buildings near by charge 100 a month in parking
Rent increases by $50 dollars (from $1350 to $1400).
Brett, where in Austin do you live that you’re paying that much? Is it a one-bedroom?
I haven’t rented in Austin in 5 years, but I was paying $660/month at my last place at Duval and MoPac. Boy I’d have a ton of cash in the bank if I had stuck with that place rather than buying a house
I live downtown (2nd and Colorado).
1 bd / 1 br - 870 sq ft loft
“I’ve never understood apartments… why do apartments raise rent/fees on current residents while giving out goodies to new ones?”
Well, I suppose if renter’s wardrobe would fit in a duffel bag and their bed was a backpacking foam pad…the LL might not be able to “utilize” this “bias” tactic to their financial advantage.
Exactly. They are counting on your unwillingness to move. Well, I called my old landlords on it, though they had already offered no increase at all. Now I have a much larger place, in a better neighborhood, in a building with much better amenities, and at least 20 minutes closer to work and downtown DC for $9 a month more than the old building. Did moving cost me? Yeah, it did. Worth it? Oh yeah, well worth it.
Ya done good Polly…(Hwy using his best John Wayne voice)
In the Packaging of Loans, a Bust With Precedent. ~ NYT
Real estate securitization was one of the great innovations in finance in the last quarter-century. In an unprecedented way, it allowed vast sums of money to go into the real estate market from people who traditionally did not take part in it.
But the people making the loans did not need to worry if they would be repaid, and in the end the entire edifice collapsed.
Now, with the securitization market nearly dead, getting that market going again is vital to providing Americans with mortgage loans. Securitization may need to be reformed a little, but it remains critically important to a well-functioning economy.
That is the conventional wisdom now, at least among many bankers and economists.
Most of it is right, except that “unprecedented” part. Although few people now remember it, another wave of private securitizations once altered the real estate landscape, particularly in New York but also in Chicago and some other American cities.
That wave ended pretty much like this one did.
That fact should raise questions about whether the securitization machine should be patched up and back in business to operate without government guarantees.
This was the money quote in WMBZ’s post
“That is the conventional wisdom now, at least among many bankers and economists”
Yes I’m sure bankers would like to revive a system that allows them to skim money from and dump losses on Conservative investors and investing institutions and of course the federal gov.
If the Lenders are not going to bother underwriting loans because they pass them off to the system of securities ,as what happened
in this last lending cycle that went bust ,than you can’t have
securities that are rated anything but F paper . How are you going to insure that the ratings are proper on risk . The lenders blew it ,who is going to trust them now . What system can you put in place that
screens the loans before they are bundled up and passed off .
I have been reading this blog for years and it’s pretty clear that
the front line REIC/loan agents are still as corrupt as they have always been in packaging a fake loan .
It’s easy to see why GDP is up 5.6%. Fewer employed people doing more work.
I have no idea where this number came from, totally bogus as usual.More people are losing thier jobs every week.Jobless claims are up.At some point people fall off the unemplyment rolls and go to shadow inventory of workers.Unemployment is really at least 20% IMO.
arizonadude
I betcha the BLS U6 employment stat is at least 20%. I read somewhere that once you’re put on a Federal UI Extention, you fall off the U2 stat, and go into a different category.
“I betcha the BLS U6 employment stat is at least 20%”.
I wouldn’t doubt 20% a bit.
I often wonder how many self-employed are out of work. They can’t get unemployment so they are completely out of the count.
Part of the self-employment game is the looking for new gigs. Even when you’re swimming in work to do with your current gigs.
You have to keep fishing for new business. All the time.
U6 = 17.3% currently.
Problem is - even U6 doesn’t account for people who have totally given up, i.e. exited the labor force altogether. The current duration of unemployment, along with the still-rapidly-shrinking labor force indicates that this is a very high number of people, and that even U6 doesn’t accurately measure what’s going on.
“Problem is - even U6 doesn’t account for people who…”
… now reside in this US Territory: “Misfit Island”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SH1j1luFOw&feature=related
Pack,
Nice graph. I find it interesting that if you go back to 1970, similar reductions in the labor force didn’t happen with prior recessions.
I wonder how much of the labor force reduction is because of the severity of the recession and how much of the reduction is due to demographic factors? The front wave of the baby boom generation is turning 64 this year…to my understanding there are far more people turning 62 than turning 22–the natural effect of which would be a sluggishly growing work force at best.
With 78 million Baby Boomers (Born 1946-1964), the prospect for a new job isn’t looking to good, should a Boomer lose theirs. I would venture to say there will be a high unemployment issue until my generation dies off.
The GDP will be quietly revised down in a month or two - probably to the 2-3% range. Those downward revisions never make any kind of headlines.
More disinformation from the Central Planning Committee, happily disseminated by Pravda.
At least tractor production is up, and so is the chocolate ration!
Just expropriate the rations from the Kulaks.
Well at least they get reported.
“Fewer employed people doing more work.”
That is the standard recipe for productivity growth at the tail end of a recession. Either work your behind off, or join the unemployment line: Your choice (unless you are unlucky).
Working 60 hours per week didn’t save me. I guess I should have worked weekends too.
GDP Arbiter = “Box Index”
The one Sir Greenisspent often referred to…anyone know it’s “whereabouts”?
GDP is up because of Wall Street magic, restocking, and a modest boost from Gov that is not sustainable.
GDP isn’t up. Accounting shenanagains are what is up. I don’t believe the number for one second. Has about as much credibility as an Fitch or Standard and Poors rating on a CDO. At what point does lack of credibiltiy matter? Example: My posts lack credibility yet occasionally someone reads one.
Accounting shenanagains = Wall Street Magic
Wages and benefits rise weak 1.5 percent in 2009
Wages and benefits rise in 2009 by smallest amount on records going back 27 years ~ January 29, 2010
WASHINGTON (AP) — Wages and benefits paid to U.S. workers posted a modest gain in the fourth quarter, ending a year in which recession-battered workers saw their compensation rise by the smallest amount on records going back more than a quarter-century.
The anemic gains have raised concerns about the durability of the economic recovery. The fear is that consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic activity, could falter if households don’t have the income growth to support their spending.
The Labor Department said Friday that wages and benefits rose by 0.5 percent in the three months ending in December. For the entire year, wages and benefits were up 1.5 percent, the weakest showing on records that go back to 1982.
Really, really dumb comment, basically admitting I’m too tired of all this to properly think through it…
Wages and benefits grew at 1.5% last year.
Fourth quarter GDP came in at a growth rate of 5.7%.
Consumer discretionary spending came in at a growth rate of 2.0%.
Am I the only person that sees the 5.7% GDP growth rate as utterly unsustainable given that consumer spending is a whopping 70% of GDP and yet wage growth remained essentially flat?
Or is it the fact that the Federal debt rose by approximately 5%?
Am I the only person that sees the 5.7% GDP growth rate as utterly unsustainable given that consumer spending is a whopping 70% of GDP and yet wage growth remained essentially flat?
Unless we are to believe that exports to foreign countries picked up the slack, ha ha.
Government spending (not to mention government calculation of the statistics) is no doubt the cause for this “growth.”
“Wages and benefits were up 1.5%”.
My guess: wages down 0.5%, health care insurance up 10%.
The incomes down/health insurance up just happened to my mom. Her state teachers retirement system pension and social security income went down. Health insurance went up. Mom’s not happy about this.
Well, that isn’t going to do much for her discretionary consumer spending….
Mom doesn’t do a lot of that. She and my dad are both quite frugal.
We received an email at work last week telling us there would be no raises this year.
Hard work is its own reward.
What my first boss told me when I was making I think $186 a week.
Arbeit macht frei.
Funds flee Greece as Germany warns of “fatal” eurozone crisis.
UK Telegraph ~ Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Germany has triggered a near-panic flight from southern European debt markets by warning that there will be no EU bail-outs, even though it fears the region’s economic crisis has turned dangerous and could prove “fatal” for the entire eurozone.
The yield on 10-year Greek bonds blasted upwards by over 40 basis points to 7.15pc in a day of wild trading. Spreads over German Bunds reached almost four percentage points, by far the highest since Greece joined the euro, and close to levels that risk a self-feeding spiral. Contagion hit Portuguese, Spanish, Irish, and Italian bonds.
What? Germany doesn’t want to bail out their fiscally liberal neighbors? Have they lost their minds? Every Big Spender deserves a bailout or two. What kind nazi methods are that? LOL
Seriously, all a bailout would do is:
a. postpone the inevitable by a couple of years
b. put Germany in a tight spot
c. breed moral hazard as the PIIGS would continue to spend as usual knowing there is a sucker that will pick up the tap.
I hope Germany and France follow through not bailing out those subprime borrowers.
I think the Germans of the former West Germany learned a valuable lesson not too long ago about costly bailouts can be. Perhaps that’s why they aren’t too keen on another one.
I just talked with a lady who’s from Germany. Seems that the old East Germany now has a lot of fancy new infrastructure. That the former West Germany doesn’t have. There’s a bit of a kerfuffle going on over this.
If you are referring to the unification, I don’t think the (West) Germans regret the price they paid for it.
I don’t think they do either and I didn’t mean to imply they did. I meant it was a lot more costly and presented a lot more problems than they expected and they were surprised by that. Maybe what they learned from that experience makes them not so interested in helping Greece.
Winston’s market machinations are hitting the wall in Greece. More from AEP:
Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas, said Greece will face “great trouble” if it has to pay 7pc rates for long. Athens must raise €53bn this year, mostly in the first half. It has a been relying on cheap short-term debt to fund the budget deficit of 13pc of GDP, but this raises “roll-over risk”.
Tim Congdon, from International Monetary Research, said the danger is that wealthy Greeks may shift money to bank accounts abroad if they lose confidence (akin to Mexico’s Tequila Crisis in 1994-1995). This would set off a banking crisis and become self-fulfilling.
Greece has been financing current account deficits – 15pc of GDP in 2008 – through its banks, which have built up €110bn foreign liabilities. “If foreign creditors want their money back, defaults and/or a macroeconomic catastrophe appear inevitable,” Mr Congdon said.
“The yield on 10-year Greek bonds blasted upwards by over 40 basis points to 7.15pc[...]”
It blows my mind that a country likely to default only has to pay a hair over 7% on its bonds. Wow.
As Mark Twain once said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Statistically the recession most likely ended then in the second or third quarter of 2009.
Massive stimulation like our country has never seen, the decline of inventory draw down and increased very high end compensation finally got some traction in the realm of numbers.
However we’re not going to see much difference in American’s reality until real, high paying jobs are created. I don’t see any evidence that this is even being addressed.
I thought Benjamin Disraeli said that? (I guess the story is more complicated than I realized…)
I do see evidence that this is being repressed.
However we’re not going to see much difference in American’s reality until real, high paying jobs are created. I don’t see any evidence that this is even being addressed.
Thanks to globalization, wage arbitration and our fanatical devotion to “free trade” it is no longer possible to create good paying jobs for the average joe. To remain in the American middle class will now require one of the following:
1) An advanced degree in a specialized field
2) A federal gov’t job
3) A union job (longshoreman, etc.)
4) Be a cop or a firefighter (see #3)
5) Be a really good salesman
6) ?
And don’t forget that those are a necessary but not a sufficient qualification for remain in the middle class.
#6 should be “be a celebrity”. Always the choice for those not smart enough for other duties.
Trump says he’ll jump at StuyTown takeover ~ January 29, 2010
If Donald Trump has his way, orphaned Manhattan apartment complex Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village could one day be called TrumpTown.
The Post has learned that the real estate mogul and TV personality has thrown his hat into the ring to either buy or manage the massive apartment complex, whose fate was cast into doubt this week when owners Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock said they would hand over the keys to the 11,000-unit property to creditors after defaulting on a loan payment earlier this month.
“People have asked us if we would get involved in running it or buying it,” Trump said in a telephone interview. “We are looking at it right now very seriously.”No one has a better track record running properties,” he added.
maybe he will run this place into the ground and file for bankruptcy as usual.
“No one has a better track record running properties (into the ground),” he added.
You are correct… I fixed his comment, we know what he meant!
I thought his Modus Operandi was: It’s a sTRUMP development! (in name only)
Please note the “very fine” print regarding return of deposits…it might affect your “long term” financial disposition.
I thought a sTrumpet was a woman who did it for money.
TrumpTown…sounds like bombed out inner city projects. And that’s probably what the place will become.
TrumpTown. Pottersville. It’s all the same.
Trump is too-big-to-fail.
”No one has a better track record running properties,” he added.
For once I agree with Trump: I’d much rather have no one running a property than have him running it!
Banks — involved with insider trading?
It couldn’t happen here: This is America!
It seems like we might need a powerful bank regulatory agency independent of the Fed just to make sure, though…somebody to look out for the little guy on Main Street to make sure that Megabank, Inc does not screw him and steal his money.
Amotz Asa-El’s View from Jerusalem
Jan. 29, 2010, 9:10 a.m. EST
Obama’s bank reform was tested in Israel - successfully
Commentary: Precursor to plan to limit banks worked after Israel’s 1980s crisis
Keep government away from newspapers
By Amotz Asa-El
JERUSALEM (MarketWatch) — A banker, said Mark Twain, will lend you an umbrella when the sun is out and then demand it back the minute it starts raining.
That is, of course, unfounded - bankers, like anyone else, simply demand what they are owed - yet Twain’s insight is valid in the sense that bankers are only that smart, and can in fact do some very stupid things. What sets them apart is that their merchandise is our money, which means that when they make mistakes — everyone pays.
That is what President Barack Obama and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker had in mind last week when they presented outlines for a banking reform aimed at constraining America’s banks.
They believe that in the recent meltdown the banks were part of the problem rather than part of the solution, and few people now disagree. That is why they want to shrink U.S. banks — their assets or their market shares — and at the same time raise regulatory walls between commercial and investment banking.
In Israel this rhetoric has generated a sense of déjà vu, as the local banks’ travails since 1983 seemed surprisingly similar to what America is now about to experiment with.
The Big Bang in Israeli banking came in fall 1983, when a stock-market crash left the big banks on their knees and their directors indicted for - and eventually convicted of -insider trading.
The crash was caused by four of the country’s five main commercial banks, which had coordinated among themselves daily purchases and sales of their own shares in a way that kept the public buying bank shares.
The public was compelled to do that because at a time of triple-digit inflation, it was the simplest way for a household to maintain its money’s value.
Financial sorcery
While patently illegal, this financial sorcery worked until rumors began to circulate and everyone ran to sell their bank shares. The consequent crash was so thunderous that the government swiftly nationalized the four banks.
Twelve years later, after the rest of the economy had undergone some serious surgery, the Treasury recommended, much the way Obama just did, forcing the banks to focus on banking and then restore them to private ownership.
This meant detaching the commercial banks from the rest of the economy, where they were deeply involved as shareholders in a plethora of conglomerates, holding companies and almost any significant business entity.
The largest bank of the time, Bank Hapoalim, had an 8.2% share of the entire economy’s business product in 1995, as opposed to GM’s 1% share in the U.S. economy that year, Mitsubishi’s 1.4% in Japan, and Deutsche Bank’s 2.8% in Germany.
The bank’s overall shares in the blue-chip companies that were trading at the time in the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange equaled one-third of all the blue chips’ combined market capitalization. The next three banks held among them a further 25% of the blue chips.
The banks, in short, ran the economy. And that, said the regulators, was no way to run an economy eager to undo the structure that had previously condemned the country to economic ossification, manipulation and near collapse.
…
I’ve heard some people say that corralito was a successful US government experiment as well.
Interesting. Thanks for the link.
From the link:
“It is generally agreed that the banks had a share of the blame for the situation that led to the corralito.[8] In mid-2001, it was probably clear to bank owners and high-ranking officials that Argentina’s banking system was going to crash, and some in fact may have spurred this outcome by letting their highest deposit holders know this news. These, mostly large companies, quickly moved their deposits abroad. Meanwhile, they continued to recommend their middle-class customers to enter deposits.”
“…Meanwhile, they continued to recommend their middle-class customers to enter deposits.”
Throughout history this phenomena is known as:
“TrueBeliever’s™ / TrueDeceiver’s ™”
“…At the time, the average Argentinian did not employ the banking system for daily uses; many did not have a personal bank account, and dealt only with cash. Debit cards were not popular and many businesses did not have the equipment to accept them.”
How does the above relate to the “average” US Citizen?
Tentative conclusion: Putting too much control of the economy in the hands of greedy, thieving banksters results in a race towards third-world nation status.
Dont the banks really control real estate prices too?If you cant get a loan nothing sells these days.Prices are way to high for the avg joe to pay cash.It is a totally leveraged game.With a 3.5% down payment on a typical 300k house that is about 28.5 times leverage.Wasn’t lehman using this amount of leverage?We are just going more into debt to justify a strong economy.How far can you stretcha dollar.When the govt is paying you to buy cars and homes you know things have run amuck.
“Dont the banks really control real estate prices too?”
The POTUS addressed real estate price control during his state of the union speech.
Didja hear the crickets?
“Amotz Asa-El’s View from Jerusalem”
“The consequent crash was so thunderous that the government swiftly nationalized the four banks.”
That might make a good eCONomic “trivial pursuit” question:
? …What does Israel & Hugo Chavez have in common?
Any sector of life that is “too big to fail” should be nationalized. Or broken up. Or both.
Nationalization doesn’t always mean a government monopoly - the sector can certainly be open to private competition as well (but as it usually turns out, the private competitor and government backed agencies have somewhat different business goals and consumer segments).
Banks — involved with insider trading?
It couldn’t happen here: This is America!
Didn’t a certain FED official buy a crap load of Goldman Sachs stock knowing they were going to get bailed out no matter what.
I don’t believe that would have been possible, as the Fed has rules prohibiting purchase of securities whose value might be affected by Fed policy actions.
But please correct me if I am mistaken…
Detroit’s government-run auto show
Less than 3 percent of auto sales are gas-electric hybrids, yet the “green future” dominated Cobo Convention Center.
When asked by a reporter to assess Ford’s success without begging the taxpayer, Pelosi glowered. “They have been very appropriate in recognizing their responsibility, but also recognizing what our responsibility was,” she said, unable to muster a compliment for Ford’s determined effort to avoid public dependency. “They recognize the responsibility the federal government has to the auto industry. It’s not about companies, it’s about an industry.”
In the middle of Electric Avenue, Sen. Debbie Stabenow and Rep. Gary Peters, both Democrats of Michigan, held a news conference to announce an additional $3 billion in federal grants for electric and battery-powered vehicles.
The grants come on top of $25 billion in loans Washington is already giving to automakers, both foreign and domestic, to upgrade U.S. plants to produce battery-powered vehicles.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Detroit_s-government-run-auto-show-82795567.html
As for me, I’ll take a 2011 Ford Mustang GT 5.0, black on black.
I just can’t think about how the US Govnt is going to screw up GM and does anyone think the recall at Toyota has anything to do with them owning GM?
Well, the recall is getting awful lots of MSM attention that’s for sure and the timing would be, let’s say - convenient, but other than that the only thing that is certain is that this is the last thing the Japanese need right now.
Toyota’s former CEO is on record admitting that Toyota’s commitment to quality dropped off during their aggressive expansion. From 2004 to 2007, Toyota recalled 9.3 million vehicles — they’ve had issues for a long while, and have succumbed to the same bloat that GM made famous.
TINFOIL HAT TIME?
Honda recalls Fit/Jazz cars over window fault
http://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCATRE60S27120100129
GM Takes Advantage of Toyota Recall With Incentive Program
http://adage.com/article?article_id=141782
So tell me how a Chicago Dem politician would handle operating a business (such as GM). Would you improve your products? Or would you seek to destroy your competitors using any means possible?
IMO this is all too convenient.
“…So tell me how a Chicago Dem politician would handle operating a business (such as GM).”
Ha, easy:
The same way Shelby’s Corker McConnell does:
JAPAMERCAN automobil’s with parts supplied from China
American Graffiti 2010:
KIAHONDATOYOTANISSANHYUNDIA
(Shot on location in Kentucky/Alabama/Tennessee/Mississippi/SouthCarolina )
“I just can’t think about how the US Govnt is going to screw up GM and does anyone think the recall at Toyota has anything to do with them owning GM?”
My friend has a year old (approx.) Camry Hybrid and the accelerator has become stuck at least three times. Nothing to do with the floor mats. He told his Toyota dealerships about it and they told him it was all in his mind. Now there are documented deaths due to this problem.
Toyota sat on the problem, and they knew about it, until they had no choice. Like the Pinto it was simply more cost efficient to pay a few wrongful death claims than fix the problem with every car.
Thank God corporations have more rights than I do. Their moral codes will keep us all safe!
I like this guy’s thinking very much! It’s high time to flush the banksters! America’s collective future prosperity hangs in the balance here, folks.
Do we want Gollum Sacks and its ilk to continue marching our country down the road to serfdom, or would you prefer to tear off the shackles of debt bondage they have fastened around the ankles of the Main Street American citizenry? The choice is yours and mine, not the Fed’s, the Treasury’s nor that of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. It’s time for the American people to reclaim their country from the clutches of the systemic theft operation on Wall Street.
Bloomberg
Obama’s Plan to Be Judged by a Goldman Breakup
- Simon Johnson
January 21, 2010, 09:06 AM EST
More From Businessweek
Commentary by Simon Johnson
Jan. 22 (Bloomberg) — At the broad level, there was much to applaud in yesterday’s announcement from the White House regarding potential new constraints on the scale and scope of our largest banks.
After more than a year of tough argument, Paul Volcker has finally persuaded top aides to President Barack Obama that the unconditional bailouts of 2008-2009 planted the seeds for another major economic crisis. Unfortunately, in their scramble to announce this major policy shift ahead of Wall Street’s bonus season, the administration didn’t line up all relevant details.
In particular, the White House background briefing yesterday morning — while somewhat ambiguous — gave listeners the strong impression that these new proposals would freeze the size of our largest banks “as is.” This makes no sense. Why would anyone regard 20 years of reckless expansion, a massive global crisis, and the most-generous bailout in recorded history as the recipe for creating right-sized banks?
There is no evidence, for example, that the increase in bank size since the mid-1990s has brought anything other than huge social costs in terms of direct financial rescues, the fiscal stimulus needed to prevent another Great Depression, and millions of lost jobs.
The administration has most evidently not done a great deal of other preparatory work. How will off-balance-sheet activities be treated? Should some hedge funds also be regarded as too big to fail? And why would merely controlling proprietary trading be enough to de-risk out-of-control behemoths, such as Citigroup?
Still, we should treat the next few weeks as the public- comment phase for potentially serious principles and an opportunity to press for workable details.
Pushing Back
The big banks, naturally, are already hard at work pushing in the other direction. This is actually good and exactly what we need. The banks have hidden behind their lobbyists and disinformation managers for too long. The administration has decided to take the fight to them, face-to-face, with the full backing of a president at last willing to press for change. The goal should be to flush both the big bankers and their Republican — and Democratic — backers into the open.
…
Suppose the flushing of bankers’ Republican and Democratic backers reveals an inconvenient truth: The banker men own the U.S. political system.
What then? Has all of America turned into a company town? It sure looks that way from the perspective of Enron by the Sea.
The banker men own the U.S. political system.
Which is something Thomas Paine author of “Common Sense” and “The Rights of Man” would not have agreed with.
And today Jan 29th is Thomas Paine Day. So hey, happy Thomas Paine Day!
Thomas Paine Day (Freethinkers Day) honors Thomas Paine’s role in the tradition of freethinking, or using reason and rejecting arbitrary authority. It’s celebrated on January 29, the day of his birth. Thomas Paine was a philosopher, politician, and a soldier during the American Revolutionary War.
His works were a major contribution to Enlightenment thinking. He encouraged the separation of church and state, and believed that all religions were benign as long as they were not mixed with politics. He advocated an end to slavery and the establishment of human rights worldwide. Because of the inspiration he provided through his words, some have credited him with having contributed as much to the positive outcome of the American Revolutionary War as George Washington.
He was instrumental in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, and many of his principles were incorporated into the United States Constitution. During his later life he was ostracized for his views advocating equal rights for all citizens, including women and blacks. Such views were considered radical in his day. In recent times he has sometimes been referred to as “the English Voltaire.” Thomas Paine Day is a great day to learn more about one of the most forward thinking U.S. patriots.
i went ot grade school with one of his descendants, Tina Payne.
Didn’t he end up ostacized and forgotten at the end of his life?
All the more reason he’s a hero for me.
Well Mr. Bear, if you’re proposing to dis-assemble the MegaAircraft Carrier USS GoldenmanSucks in to a “right-size” weapon of mass destruction and use the remaining “metal” to assemble a fleet of smaller “destroyers” & “cruisers”…the first think you’ll have to accomplish is: putting the MegaAircraft Carrier USS GoldenmanSucks into DRY DOCK, is there a “facility” in NYC that can “handle” this type of “reCONfiguration”?
Yo Ho Yo Ho …a “pirates” life for US!
That was just too good… bravo Hwy!
Banks on the run, banks on the run
And the jailer man and sailor Sam
Were searching everyone
For the banks on the run, banks on the run
Banks on the run, banks on the run
Geithner faces fresh fire over AIG deal
By Tom Braithwaite in Washington
Published: January 27 2010 15:38 | Last updated: January 28 2010 01:03
Democrats and Republicans joined in a rare show of bipartisanship to attack a weakened Tim Geithner on Wednesday, accusing the Treasury secretary of putting the interests of Wall Street ahead of taxpayers in the 2008 bail-out of AIG.
But in a sometimes fiery hearing of the House oversight committee, Mr Geithner avoided fatal blows and painted a picture of “catastrophic” consequences had the insurance group failed.
With politicians of both parties seeking to tap into popular discontent with the government, pressure has increased on the Treasury secretary to explain why AIG’s trading counterparties received $27.1bn in public money and were not asked to take a discount on their positions.
Republicans also questioned Mr Geithner on whether he participated in the decision to withhold information about the payments made when he was president of the New York Federal Reserve. The recipients included banks such as Goldman Sachs.
…
Why’s he taking the “beating”? Knowing his “corner” (the Non-Hawaiian) forgot to bring a “white” towel to toss in the ring with the Wall St. logo painted on it. It’s not he couldn’t find employment …”elsewhere” right? (He does have “options”: he could collect unemployment and use the time in between his Rolodex Company logo flips, to write a “tell all” book, maybe, perhaps, possibly.
I think we now know why TTT hasn’t been trying too hard to sell his house. He’ll be back in it soon enough.
Not only that, but now that the POTUS’s plan to make sure real estate always goes up again is in place, the value of TTT’s home will only go up from now on.
Indeed, the Prophet of Change has spoken. Infinite Housing Bubble for all!
ummm…… kind of sick of the use of the “prophet of change” moniker for Obama.
Seems like he’s the same as the old boss. even in a sarchastic tone it still rings hollow.
Actually, it is a triple insult to him: He’s no prophet, he brings no change, and it is a reference to the Prophets in the Halo series: Truth, Mercy, and Regret, each of which embodied the opposite of their title.
Hey, I tried to be creative!
whatever his shortcomings……I’d rather have Felix the Cat as President than Palin as Vice-president
He still should try to sell it though. He’ll likely get a posting to an embassy as a means to sequester him away from the public eye. Where he goes should be telling, with regards to how in/out of favour he really is.
TTT needs to do a “strategic default”, and then lie about it. Nothing less is expected of him.
i saw AIG drew down heavily on their loan facility- $2.4 bill.
Bloomberg
Obama Housing Rescue Threatened by Foreclosures, Unemployment
January 29, 2010, 10:09 AM EST
More From Businessweek
By Kathleen Howley
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama’s efforts to bolster the U.S. housing market, the trigger of the worst recession since the 1930s, may be undone by record unemployment and repossessions by lenders.
Foreclosures probably will reach 3 million this year, surpassing the record of 2.82 million in 2009, according to Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc. That would more than offset an estimated 448,000-unit rise in home sales, based on the average forecast of the National Association of Realtors, the Mortgage Bankers Association and Fannie Mae.
The housing industry remains a challenge for Obama as he enters his second year of office and government assistance programs near expiration. Data this week showed home sales tumbled after the expected end of an $8,000 tax credit for first-time buyers boosted transactions the prior month.
…
Employers have cut more than 7 million jobs in the last two years, the biggest employment loss since the Great Depression. The U.S. jobless rate probably will average 10 percent in 2010, according to the median estimate of 59 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. That would be the highest yearly rate in government records dating to 1948. Unemployment was 9.3 percent in 2009, the most in 26 years.
…
Why does the name Randy Duke Cunningham suddenly spring to mind?
The Rezko Connection: Obama’s Achilles Heel?
Obama’s Connection With an Accused Political Fixer Raises Questions
By BRIAN ROSS and RHONDA SCHWARTZ
Jan. 10, 2008
In sharp contrast to his tough talk about ethics reform in government, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., approached a well-known Illinois political fixer under active federal investigation, Antoin “Tony” Rezko, for “advice” as he sought to find a way to buy a house shortly after being elected to the United States Senate.
The parcel included an adjacent lot which Obama told the Chicago Tribune he could not afford because “it was already a stretch to buy the house.”
On the same day Obama closed on his house, Rezko’s wife bought the adjacent empty lot, meeting the condition of the seller who wanted to sell both properties at the same time.
Rezko had been widely reported to be under investigation by the U.S. attorney and the FBI at the time Obama contacted him and has since been indicted on corruption charges by a federal grand jury in a case that prosecutors say involves bribes, kickbacks and “efforts to illegally obtain millions of dollars.”
This week, a federal judge in Chicago ordered the Rezko trial to begin Feb. 25.
Obama maintains his relationship with Rezko was “above board and legal” but has admitted bad judgment, calling his decision to involve Rezko “a bone-headed mistake.”
Rezko’s behind-the-scenes connection in the Obama house deal became public as Rezko revealed personal financial details as he sought to post bail.
While Rezko’s wife paid the full asking price for the land, Obama paid $300,000 under the asking price for the house. The house sold for $1,650,000 and the price Rezko’s wife paid for the land was $625,000.
…
I can’t help thinking that the Obamas are going to sell that Chicago house and move to Hawaii after his presidential days are over.
The Rezko deal has been worked inside-out for years by both the local and national media, with no smoking gun to be found. It’ll be interesting to see if anything new crops up during the trial, however …
“..but has admitted bad judgment, “a bone-headed mistake.”
When was the last time a “Non-Hawaiian” US President ever admitted something like that?
Clinton: “…it depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is”
Shrub: “Mission Accomplished!”
Skiers Buy Vacation Homes as Prices Fall
Kevin Moloney for The New York Times
SKI IN, SKI OUT Snowmass, Colo., is one of the resorts with a buyers’ market for slopeside condominiums.
By IRENE RAWLINGS
Published: January 28, 2010
DENVER
Kevin Moloney for The New York Times
HIGH TIMES WITH LOW COSTS John and Amelia Eldridge of Fayetteville, Ark., at a condominium in Snowmass, Colo.
OVER the holiday season all was snowy and bright at ski areas across the country, with a festive jingle in the air. It wasn’t sleigh bells — it was the sound of money. Vacation-home seekers who saw recessionary opportunities were looking to buy.
Many were ready to pay in cash, and they wanted great deals, like a $900,000 slope-side condominium for $500,000 or a studio in town for half the asking price. They were getting what they wanted because it is the best buyers’ market in 20 years, real estate agents said, with inventory at levels not seen since 2001.
John Eldridge, 59, a lawyer, and his wife, Amelia, 58, of Fayetteville, Ark., have a lot of affection for Snowmass, Colo. They learned to ski there with their families in the 1970s. They were married there and bought a small condo so they could visit often. Two children and several grandchildren later, they are looking to move up to a three-bedroom condo. After looking at more than 10 units during their annual holiday visit to Snowmass in December, they decided to wait until January to make an offer of $700,000 on a three-bedroom ski-in, ski-out condo that was listed at more than $1 million just last year.
“We’re seeing a number of price reductions as sellers get more realistic,” said Ms. Eldridge, who has been a real estate agent for 30 years and is well acquainted with the vagaries of the market. “Time has caused some sellers to accept offers that they may have rejected before.”
As an example of those low prices Andrew Ernemann, a broker at B. J. Adams & Company, which has offices in Aspen and Snowmass, said there was a studio just a few blocks from the Aspen gondola listed at $275,000. Just a few years ago the asking price would have been upward of $350,000.
If prices are flat or still falling, the number of sales seems to be increasing, real estate offices across the West said. Patti Brave, a broker in the Cordillera office of Slifer, Smith & Frampton in the Vail Valley in Colorado, said that the first seven months of 2009 were dismal, but that the rising stock market had helped drive up sales, though prices at Vail and Beaver Creek are still off by 10 percent or more in the last three years.
…
One of my best friends did this, bought a foreclosed property that had been stripped, he hopes to rent out his older ski property. Won’t listen to me.
“Won’t listen to me.”
Ask ‘em if he’s heard of the phrase: “Snow Job” rhymes with …BJ
very interesting
we’ll have to watch the prices of those high end vacation homes
Maybe I’m weird, but I can’t imagine wanting to feel compelled to vacation in the same place every year.
Don’t trust anything these Machiavellian operators and their PR consultants say.
Bloomberg
Wall Street Firms Don’t Want to Wage War on Obama (Correct)
January 27, 2010, 11:35 AM EST
More From Businessweek
* Obama Proposal to Curb Banks Dominates, Divides Davos Debates
* The Pelosi Fed Is the Dollar’s Worst Nightmare: Caroline Baum
(Corrects 11th paragraph to add Paul Volcker’s first name.)
By Robert Schmidt
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) — When Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner and White House adviser Valerie Jarrett hosted a private dinner with the leaders of six banks to discuss financial regulation on Jan. 20, the bankers soon changed the subject. The president needed to stop demonizing Wall Street, they told Jarrett, according to three people familiar with the meeting.
What the executives, including Brian Moynihan, the chief executive officer of Bank of America Corp., and Robert Kelly, the chief executive of Bank of New York Mellon Corp., didn’t know was that President Barack Obama, who had proposed a new tax on the biggest banks six days earlier, was about to strike again.
After leaving the meeting around 9 p.m., the executives learned that Obama would ask Congress the next day to ban commercial banks from running proprietary trading operations, owning hedge funds, and rapidly increasing market share. In his remarks, Obama indicated his willingness to go to the mat with the industry: “So if these folks want a fight, it’s a fight I’m ready to have.”
Industry officials said they were stunned. “We did not know it was coming, that’s for sure,” said Scott Talbott, a lobbyist for the Financial Services Roundtable, which represents large banks and insurance companies and whose chairman, Richard Davis, the CEO of U.S. Bancorp, also attended the dinner.
‘Don’t Want to Fight’
Now the firms and their chiefs, confronting a wave of public anger against their bonuses awarded in the wake of the financial industry bailout, are trying to devise a strategy to fight both the proposed new limits on banks’ size and activities as well as the bank tax. While they are still plotting tactics, one thing has become clear: The banks don’t want to go to war with the commander-in-chief.
“We don’t want to fight the administration,” said Rob Nichols, whose trade group, the Financial Services Forum, represents the chief executive officers of the largest financial companies. “We just want to sit at the table and have a productive conversation about the kinds of reforms needed to address the real causes of the recent crisis.”
…
“Don’t want to fight ”
Good don’t fight ,just stick out your hands and go peacefully to jail .
“We just want to sit at the table and have a productive conversation about the kinds of reforms needed to address the real VILLAIN’s of the MOST recent crisis.”
Well, that would certainly be more comfortable, than say… a “brown bag” lunch with matching orange jumpsuits.
BO can’t win a fight with banks. I just don’t believe any politician can. But the general public can easily clean their clocks by not paying them fees and minimizing interest.
And, if you’re not happy with the big bank you’re currently with, you can move your money to a local bank or credit union.
MegaBank Boycott!
MegaBank Boycott!
MegaBank Boycott!
MegaBank Boycott!
MegaBank Boycott!
MegaBank Boycott!
Now the firms and their chiefs, confronting a wave of public anger against their bonuses awarded in the wake of the financial industry bailout, are trying to devise a strategy to fight both the proposed new limits on banks’ size and activities as well as the bank tax. While they are still plotting tactics, one thing has become clear: The banks don’t want to go to war with the commander-in-chief.
Well good for them the Supreme court says sky’s the limit when it comes to campaign contributioins. Given that mainstreet is broke this should really increase their political power.
Jan. 28, 2010, 1:40 p.m. EST · Recommend (3) · Post:
Highest foreclosure rate last year? Las Vegas
Foreclosures expected to peak in 2010: RealtyTrac
By Amy Hoak, MarketWatch
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — The Las Vegas metropolitan area suffered a foreclosure rate that was five times the national average and the highest rate in the country in 2009, according to a report on Thursday by RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure marketplace.
The 20 cities with the highest rates of foreclosure notices were all in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona — states with markets that got extremely hot during the real-estate boom, according to RealtyTrac’s year-end report.
More than 12% of housing units in the Las Vegas metropolitan area received a foreclosure notice in 2009. Overall, 2.21% of housing units nationwide received a foreclosure filing, according to the data.
But the trouble isn’t over yet, said James J. Saccacio, chief executive of RealtyTrac.
“While it was expected that cities from states with the highest levels of foreclosure activity would top the charts, there is evidence that we’re entering a new wave of foreclosures, driven more by unemployment and economic hardship than what we’ve seen over the past few years,” Saccacio said in a news release.
“Areas like Provo, Utah, Fayetteville, Ark., Portland, Ore., and Rockford, Ill., all posted foreclosure rates above the U.S. average in 2009. And markets like Honolulu, Minneapolis and Seattle saw foreclosure activity increase at more than twice the national pace over the past 12 months — although all three of those markets still had 2009 foreclosure rates that were at or below the U.S. average,” he said.
…
More than 12% of housing units in the Las Vegas metropolitan area received a foreclosure notice in 2009.
That’s an absolutely amazing statistic. I’m about as bearish as they come with regard to Las Vegas real estate, but I never would have predicted TWELVE PERCENT in one year!
The number is even more damning if “housing units” includes rentals and non-mortgaged properties, as it would seem to do.
Let me just suggest in case nobody else makes the connection that Wall Street’s failed and collapsed mortgage securitization scheme was a primary enabler of the housing bubble and collapse. Anyone who thought bundling high risk mortgages into securities and selling them to greater fools was a good way to run the mortgage lending system is either a fool, a liar or both.
P.S. The fees and the free bailout insurance were good while they lasted.
Are you calling Frank, Dodd, Paulson, Greenspan, Bernanke, Geithner, Mozillo, Blankfein, Mack, Lewis, Pandit, Thain, Buffet, Fannie, Freddie, AIG milk-mustache kids(remember them?), Cramer, Larry Kudlowe, and those dancing “lower-my-mortgage” characters liars? What are you… some kind of conspiracy theorist?
.025 % Federal Funds Rate… is not a conspiracy… it’s simply am eCONomic FACT!
The tin-foil-hat producer for this blog died under mystereous circumstances last October if you will recall, after bad-mouthing all those worthies……
The last 20 years in Financial America,… illustrated by A 30 second video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPrYulad8W4
It’s really that simple.
Grimsson’s Jan. 5 rejection of the bill has sent credit default swaps on the island’s debt to the highest level since May, signaling a perceived increase in the risk of default. The CDS spread on five-year debt rose 37 basis points today to 702, the highest since May 29, according to CMA DataVision prices.
Even so, a referendum on the legislation is necessary, Grimsson said today.
‘Pinnacle of Democracy’
“For an entire nation to vote on to what extent they are willing to shoulder this burden is to me a pinnacle of democracy,” he told Bloomberg Television at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. “If you are arguing that they should not take part in this decision, then you are establishing a system where bankers in the future can continue to be irresponsible and fail, and be greedy and experimental outside their own country and if they collapse they just send the bill to the tax payers back home.”
It would have been great if we had been allowed to vote on TARP.
I think AIG is gonna need another bailout!
It would have been great if we had been allowed to vote on TARP.
Yes, I’ve been saying for some time now that acts of Congress should have to be approved by a popular referendum before becoming law. See, for example,
www dot thehousingbubbleblog dot com/?p=5550#comment-1651927
(To the comment above, however, alpha-sloth replied that there had been some kind of problems with referendums in California, so clearly the PTB would know better what to do than mere voters/taxpayers.)
Voters are not a problem that a multi-million advertising campaign funded by Wall Street can’t tackle.
Nothing but ‘net’ when you get ‘free’ money!
American Express Says Chenault to Receive $2 Million Salary, up 60%.
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) — Kenneth I. Chenault, chairman and chief executive officer of American Express Co., received a 60 percent salary increase after the credit-card issuer was the top gainer last year in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
$339 million foreclosure in the Fort Myers area. I used to rent in one of the developments until the owner decided to try to short sell the place. It’s still for sale six months later after two price drops. He’s technically in default on the mortgage. I guess you could say it’s part of the “shadow inventory” here.
http://www.news-press.com/article/20100129/RE/100128075/1076/Fort-Myers-based-developer-faces–339.6-million-in-foreclosure-lawsuits
Happy Tu Bishvat!
Thank you!
And thanks for the reminder.
What are you supposed to eat for the tree’s new year? Fruit one presumes but is it a particular fruit? Isn’t it carob or something like that?
Where’s the monkey? I thought with the better than “expected” GDP the DOW would jump way the hell up.
Wait ’til the GDP gets corrected downward in a few months.
Are people beginning not to expect the expected unexpected that they originally expected to be more/less than expected? I suspect. Expect more of the same…
I believe I’ve read that 80% of trades are computer driven and have nothing to do with what the individual on the street thinks, except that Wall Street may program how they believe main street will react ??.
Everyone realizes that in such an extreme stimulation-induced environment, GDP growth is meaningless as a measure of economic health.
Kind of like how an encounter with a naked Selma Hayek wouldn’t really be a very accurate measure of a man’s libido. A true measure would be what happens with Frances McDormand or the like.
(with apologies to Frances - she’s a heck of an actress)
“GDP growth is meaningless as a measure of economic health.”
Hwy’ old “throw-back” remedy:
Feed a “Cold”…Stave a “Fever”
It’s all downhill from here.
I noticed volume steadily increased this week as well and it’s been spiking on the down days most of January.
Well it rose into bad news, so it’ll fall into good news, oh well.
tsk! tsk! wmbz
lots to learn about equities
(hint: the uptrend is broken)
Something tells me that Justin has never shopped at Wal-Fart, maybe he lives in Ely, NV…the city with the farthest drive to a Wal-Fart.
By Patrick McGreevy January 29, 2010 LA Times
State lawmakers take aim at free parking:
“When a store provides free parking, the cost to maintain, clean, insure, secure and light the parking lot is passed on to shoppers in higher prices for goods, said Justin Horner, an analyst with the NRDC.”
How much unexpected could a FED chairman expect if a chairman could expect unexpected?
Had the lovely&gracious progressive Maxine Waters been able to nationalize the oil bitness these lay offs would not be necessary damn it!
Shell May Cut More Jobs as Energy Demand Recovery Remains Muted
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s second-largest oil company, may need to cut more jobs this year to control operating costs as a recovery in energy demand waits until the second half.
“It’s normal in any business that you have to go further and you have to operate your operating expenditure in a very tough way,” Chief Executive Officer Peter Voser said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Davos, Switzerland. “As part of that, it may also mean that some more people have to go.”
Voser took over from Jeroen van der Veer in July and complained that Shell’s operations had become “too complex.” Voser merged units and cut about 5,000 jobs, including senior management posts. About 15 percent of Shell’s refining capacity was placed under review, while the company is also scaling back expansion in production from Canadian tar sands.
Surge in Loans Unlikely From Small Business Plan ~January 29~ WSJ
President Barack Obama’s plan to divert $30 billion of federal bailout funds into new small-business loans will prop up thousands of struggling entrepreneurs but is unlikely to break the lending logjam.
“This is a good start. But it’s a small start,” said G. Michael Moebs, chief executive of Moebs Services Inc., a Lake Bluff, Ill., research firm specializing in U.S. banks.
The $30 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program funds targeted by Mr. Obama represent about 4.3% of the $700 billion in small-business loans held by U.S. banks and savings institutions, according to the Treasury Department. As of November, the 22 largest banks that got capital infusions through TARP had $257 billion in small-business loans, the Treasury said.
Gene Sperling, a counselor to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, said, “The president’s plan will mean $30 billion in capital for smaller banks, which has the potential to leverage a far higher amount of actual new small-business lending.”
Many details of the plan remain unclear. In one scenario being considered, the U.S. government would let banks get an amount equal to 3% to 5% of their assets. Required dividend payments by the banks would be reduced if they substantially increase their business lending.
I just attended an SBA small business seminar hosted by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. I heard that, for every seven SBA loan applications, only one gets accepted.
So, looks like there are some loans that you still have to jump through hoops to get.
Maybe they ought to create mSBA loans.
m = micro
For the BIG Boys M+BA loans:
M+ = MEGA
House I lost last week back on market already. Either inspection issue or financing one. My hunch is inspection. There was no seller disclosure as it was an estate sale. My realtor’s trying to find out why that last deal fell through. Not sure I’ll make another offer. If I do, it will be my original one (I had upped it at the last minute…I know, I know) if not less.
The only “upping” I would do is when I told the sellers, “up yours”.
Some friends looked recently at a (vacant) house that had 2 contracts fall through to date. I wonder - has this house has been counted twice as “sold” in the NAR stats? It’s still vacant.
…had 2 contracts fall through to date. I wonder - has this house has been counted twice as “sold” in the NAR stats?
Interesting question given the discussion the other date about new home sales. If a new home goes under contract, it is counted in sales figures. What if that new house goes under contract, falls through, then again - is that considered 2 sales in the stats for new homes?
I’ve mentioned this idea before, but you should give out the info on the house here on the HBB. A few folks can throw out some real low ball offers to get seller freaked out. Then you come in as the white knight with your 25% below asking to save the day….
good one Al!
Something similar happened to me today… a REO I was looking at came back on the market. The original agent was kind of squirlley… not only was his office was an hour away from the house but when my agent reported the lockbox broken, it took him over three weeks to fix it. The same day he reported it was fixed, HE got a contract on the house. Now its back on the market with another agent and priced to sit with a new list price $100K over previous ask.
It could be a half-arsed flip… too soon to tell as the public records often take a month to get updated.
“Not sure I’ll make another offer. If I do, it will be my original one (I had upped it at the last minute…I know, I know) if not less.”
You came in with a real offer and they didn’t want it. Your next offer should be 5-10% less than your original offer. If you lose it again, have you really “lost” anything?
I like the idea about getting other HBBers in the area to lowball it. But I’m not sure that’s legal, although the bank is simply welcome to say no.
Good luck, but with 3 million more foreclosures coming this year, don’t be in a huge hurry!
“Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”
~George Orwell
Not important, but interesting….”The New England Historic Genealogical Society said President Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and new Massachusetts senator Scott Brown’s mother, Judith Ann Rugg, both descend from Richard Singletary of Haverhill, Mass”.
That makes Obama and Brown COUSINS, about ten times removed.
Fear the semi-black “Non-Hawaiian” lil’ Opie… he will be the cause of the destruction of America!”
Ann Dunham, Ph.D.
Mother of Barack Obama born in 1942, died in 1995. Born Stanley Ann Dunham, she was an American anthropologist who specialized in economic anthropology and rural development. She earned her Ph.D from the University of Hawaii and worked with the United States Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, and Women’s World Banking, championing microcredit for the world’s poor. Obama referred to his mother as the dominant figure in his formative years. “The values she taught me continue to be my touchstone when it comes to how I go about the world of politics.”
How Un-American!:
“…Obama’s maternal heritage consists mostly of English ancestry, with much smaller amounts of German, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Swiss, and French ancestry.”
frickin WASPS are going to ruin the country
Sh!t runs down hill.
Delphi salaried workers’ pensions to be cut
Judge OKs reduction for salaried retirees while suit continues
Detroit News Washington Bureau 1-29-10
Washington — More than 500 of auto supplier Delphi Corp.’s salaried retirees will start receiving reduced pension checks starting Monday.
Delphi’s 21,000 salaried retirees and plan participants, thousands of whom live in Michigan, filed a class-action lawsuit seeking to block the company’s decision to abandon its pension plans and hand them to the government’s insurer, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
But a federal judge in Detroit this week declined to stop the cutbacks by the government pension insurer while he’s considering the merits of the lawsuit.
Some younger retirees will lose up to 70 percent of their pensions and the PBGC will be saddled with a $6.7 billion debt.
Wait until CalPERS pulls that stunt. PBGC will be blowing steam out of its ears when States and Counties go under. Pretty soon, pensioners will be bailing out their own pensions– as taxpayers.
Assuming they can get jobs. Cause the three cents a month they get from PBGC aren’t going to be enough to put them into the taxpayer bracket. And PGC will need a bailout just to provide those three cents.
“Delphi’s 21,000 salaried retirees and plan participants…”
Which column do they get put in:
13-P: “Potential home buyers”
86-V: “Potential 2nd home buyers”
99-X: “Potential wait staff”
Question for the other HBB business owner/self-employed types:
Are you noticing an increase in “desperation prospecting”? As in, the businesses you may have traded with years ago, then never heard from, are now in your e-mailbox every week with this, that, or the other special?
Or the phone prospectors who’ve been given the order to call other local businesses. “Doesn’t matter what business they’re in — just call ‘em if they’re on this list,” says the boss. And so, Tommy Telephone dutifully dials through the calls.
I just got one of these calls from a local package delivery service. And, to be honest, I need local package delivery about as often as there is a presidential election. Methinks that if the service had done better targeting, say, with law offices, they might be on to something.
“Or the phone prospectors who’ve been given the order to call other local businesses. “Doesn’t matter what business they’re in — just call ‘em if they’re on this list,” says the boss. And so, Tommy Telephone dutifully dials through the calls.”
I think this is one of the most common type of “employment opportunities” these days:
seeing if you can get blood out of turnips over the phone. Next - It’s not the boss’s fault if you don’t have what it takes to be successful. A lot of people aren’t cut out for sales. When you saw the ad saying you could make $3000 a week from home, that meant, if you were ‘good’ at it.
Doesn’t look like you made your quota again so you’re gonna need to come up with some cash to stay in the ‘leads’ program.
I like the calls.. they break the monotony.
I usually listen for a minute and then steer the conversation to their powerful and convincing selling technique. Then ask why they are phone soliciting for peanuts when they could be out there selling used houses for big bucks..
What really bops me over the head:
1. How poorly targeted the calling lists are. I mean, jeez Louise. Do your homework, people. Who’s more likely to need ’round town package delivery? Me? A seldom-ventures-out-of-the-cave graphic designer who sends digital things hither and yon? (Watch out for low-flying URLs and PDFs, people!) Or a law firm that needs things delivered here, there, and everywhere around town?
2. How lousy the calling scripts are. Too many words. And the words they use tend to be of the come-on variety. Like yesterday’s call from an e-mail marketing company I’ve never heard of. They were offering a “revenue sharing opportunity.” Ummm, sweetheart, how much of my revenue do you want first? This much? Okay. Then how much is shared with me? That much? And that much is less than this much? Ummm, I’ll pass.
Soverign debt in question ?
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks retreated to near breakeven in choppy trade on Friday, paring earlier strong gains as worries about fiscal troubles buffeting Europe offset reassuring reports on the economy.
Traders said investors were fretting about the impact of fiscal risks swirling around Europe where Greece, Portugal and Spain’s fiscal positions are under intense scrutiny.
“There’s a lot of concerns going on as far as the sovereign debt is concerned in a lot of the nations, specifically in the euro zone,” said David Lutz, managing director of trading at Stifel Nicolaus Capital Markets in Baltimore. “But even the U.S. credit default swaps have hit a seven-month high overnight.”
Governments traded bad banking debt for treasuries , bunds, etc. to keep the banks from failing and now governments and everyone else will suffer.
Dollar looks like a safe haven again as deflation part 2 begins.
I guess in a true crisis Central bankers can wipe out some of their debt I have no idea what that will cause though ?
Hyper inflation probably as no one will trust paper money as a store of value anymore.
Would you folks in California just pony up some more tax bucks voluntarily, so this fellow won’t have to keep issuing “stern” warnings.
California controller: State will run out of cash before April.
SACRAMENTO — State Controller John Chiang issued a stern warning Friday about California’s cash reserves, telling legislative leaders and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger they must act on nearly $9 billion in budget cuts the governor is seeking by March — or the state will run out of cash to pay its bills.
Without making those cuts — which Chiang says will pump $1.3 billion into the state’s checking account — California would be broke by April 1, no fooling.
The state wouldn’t climb back to what’s considered a safe level of cash on hand, $2.5 billion, until later that month, when tax revenues are expected to begin flowing into Sacramento.
“While our current cash condition is marginally better than it was one year ago,” Chiang wrote to leaders, “it is still precarious.”
Even with the budget cuts, the state’s cash reserve would still be far below that cushion in March and April.
To that end, Chiang is calling for an additional $2 billion in cash-flow “solutions.” Looking at previous cash crunches, that could mean some payments, like income tax refunds, would be delayed for a few weeks to keep the cushion intact.
Which is in worse shape
California
Greece
or Iceland
Make your bets.
We need comparison base: throw in either Somalia or Sudan…or both.
Geez, nothing a “Bridge” loan to nowhere from GoldenmanSucks can’t provide to stave off disaster, but maybe, there’s a limit to how much $$$$$$$$$$$$ they can get their hands on to fund such a loan…
California: America’s First Failed State
In the latest Intelligence Squared US debate, the audience agreed that the Golden State has lost its luster.
PHOTOS
The Meltdown, In Words
Soundbites of folly, fury and warning in the financial crisis
The Greediest People of All Time
By Jerry Adler | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jan 26, 2010
Sometime last summer—around the time California’s budget crisis led it to begin paying state workers in scrip—a meme took off in the media, that of California as a “failed state.” Of course, it is nothing like the textbook definition of a failed state, a nation whose central government does not possess a monopoly on military force within its borders. But it was a humbling comedown for the Golden State to bear the stigma of the lowest credit rating in the nation, with a government virtually immobilized by its experiment with direct democracy, staggering under the incompatible demands of decades of citizen ballot initiatives.
The latest Intelligence Squared US debate at New York University focused on the proposition: “California Is the First Failed State.” Arguing for the proposition were Andreas Kluth, the California correspondent for The Economist; Bobby Shriver, a Santa Monica city councilman, activist and brother-in-law of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger; and Sharon Waxman, journalist and founder of TheWrap.com. On the other side were former California Gov. Gray Davis, who lost his job in a recall referendum in 2003; Van Jones, a human-rights and environmental activist; and Lawrence O’Donnell Jr., a television writer and producer and MSNBC senior political analyst. The moderator was ABC correspondent John Donvan.
…
We may be the first, but we won’t be the last failed state. Plenty of them out there right now hanging by their finger nails.
Kick ‘em when they’re UP
Kick ‘em when they’re DOWN
Kickin’ their azzes all over town:
Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) — When John King stopped making payments on his home in Coral Gables, Florida, two years ago, he assumed the foreclosure ended his mortgage contract, he said. Last month, a Miami-Dade County court gave collectors permission to pursue him for $44,000 stemming from the default.
King is among a rising number of borrowers who are learning that they can be on the hook for years after losing their homes. Amid a crisis that stripped $6.4 trillion, or 28 percent, from the value of U.S. residential real estate since the 2006 peak, lenders are exercising their rights to pursue unpaid mortgage balances. To get their money, they can seize wages, tap bank accounts and put liens on other assets held by debtors.
“The big dogs get a bailout, and the little man gets no mercy,” said King, 39, referring to the U.S. government’s rescue of banks and other financial institutions.
While there are no statistics on the number of deficiency judgments approved by courts, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. tracks the amount banks collect after defaulted loans were written off.
These mortgage recoveries rose 48 percent to a record $1.01 billion in the first nine months of last year compared with the year-earlier period, according to the Washington-based regulator. Recoveries on defaulted home-equity loans almost doubled to $392 million, the FDIC data shows.
The figures don’t include money retrieved by trusts overseeing mortgage-backed securities, such as the one that holds the loan on King’s former home, or efforts by distressed- asset funds and companies that buy bad loans to profit from collection rights. Judgments such as the one levied against King usually tack on court fees, fines and interest.
‘Next Big Crisis’
Deficiency judgments were rare in the 15 years since the last real estate slump, said Ben Hillard, a former investment banker who now is a real estate and corporate attorney at Hillard & Rogers in Largo, Florida.
“The banks have been too underwater with foreclosures to spend much time on deficiency judgments, but that’s beginning to change,” Hillard said in an interview. “This is going to be the next big crisis.”
I guess recourse isn’t a myth after all!
I have to admit, I may have pegged the old moonbat incorrectly. It’s not the botox and face lifts that make her bug-eyed and blinking all the time. She’s hammered much of the time! Nothing wrong with that! I just think she and her crew should whip out her black card to pay the tab!
Taxpayers pay $101,000 for Pelosi’s in-flight ‘food, booze’
Speaker’s trips ‘are more about partying than anything else’
January 29, 2010
It reads like a dream order for a wild frat party: Maker’s Mark whiskey, Courvoisier cognac, Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey’s Irish Crème, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewars scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey … and Corona beer.
But that single receipt makes up just part of the more than $101,000 taxpayers paid for “in-flight services” – including food and liquor, for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trips on Air Force jets over the last two years. That’s almost $1,000 per week.
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Judicial Watch, which investigates and prosecutes government corruption, show Pelosi incurred expenses of some $2.1 million for her use of Air Force jets for travel over that time.
“Speaker Pelosi has a history of wasting taxpayer funds with her boorish demands for military travel,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said today. “And these documents suggest the Speaker’s congressional delegations are more about partying than anything else.”
Pelosi, D-Calif., recently joined President Obama on a Judicial Watch list of Top 10 corrupt politicians because of her “sense of entitlement,” the group said.
Tankxs wmbz, I was kinda hankerin’ for something to drink right about now!
Anyone know if George Thurgood is a Democrapt or a Repubican?
(Hwy inserts Music: “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer”
by John Lee Hooker recording of 1977, performed by George Thurgood
Gonna get high man listen to me,
one drink ain’t enough Jack you better make it three
I wanna get drunk I’m gonna make it real clear,
I want one bourbon, one scotch and one beer)
“…It reads like a dream order for a wild frat party: Maker’s Mark whiskey, Courvoisier cognac, Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey’s Irish Crème, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewars scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey … and Corona beer.
2 Years?:
“But that single receipt makes up just part of the more than $101,000 taxpayers paid for “in-flight services” – including food and liquor, for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trips on Air Force jets over the last two years. That’s almost $1,000 per week.”
Cheney on his way to Iraq aboard Air Force 1: “Never touch the stuff, besides damn it… I’m in the middle of fighting a foreign War that I helped design!” …how long is the flight to Afghanistan?
Geez, this political bias stuff is kinda a slam dunk don’t think wmbz?
Keep at it, as I remember correctly, besides being behind the wrong side of history, they was runnin’ out of ammunition first too!
Green jobs…
Obama Said to Seek $54 Billion in Nuclear-Power Loans (Update2)
January 29, 2010
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama, acting on a pledge to support nuclear power, will propose tripling U.S. loan guarantees for new reactors to more than $54 billion, an administration official said.
The additional loan guarantees in Obama’s budget, which will be released Feb. 1, are part of an effort to bolster nuclear-power production after the president called for doing so in his State of the Union address Jan. 27. In a conference call with reporters, Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced a panel to find a solution to storing the waste generated by nuclear plants.
“To create more of these clean-energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives,” Obama said in his speech. “That means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear-power plants in this country.”
Bravo - At least with this kind of stimulus America gets something other than rich spoiled undeserving bankers. Maybe we could force the bank CEO’s to relocate to the core.
I too am for nuclear power plants.
“…..for nuclear power plants.”
…….until they start outsourcing the powerplant operations jobs to India.
Or buy reactor components from China, and accept their QC certificates.
There hasn’t been a looting of a nation’s manufacturing base, since the Soviets looted Germany at the end of World War 2. The Soviets had a few good reasons to do so. The Wall Streeters/US Business leaders did it solely to put more bucks in their pocket.
I say this, as I contemplate the macroeconomics of a set of rubber vacuum caps, the kind you put on the un-used vacuum ports of an aftermarket carburator (an Edelbrock, made in USA).
These caps were made in China, but used to be made here. The quality is not as good as they used to be, and the price is the same.
It must cost next to nothing to make these things there, to justify hauling them halfway around the world to sell here. And someone, somewhere is pocketing the difference.
Thirty years ago, it was state/regional wage arbitrage……next came NAFTA,……..Most Favored Nation status to China……..the Internet (partially paid for/developed using J6P/taxpayer funding).
Good thing they are cutting NASA’s budget. Wall Street would pull some strings to have mission priorities re-arranged, to find planets filled with billions of eight-armed humanoids with an IQ 0f 75, on a planet with a 72 hour day, so they can move their factories to undercut “those lazy Chinese”.
I just had one of these cheesy chinese rubber caps fail on my motorcyle at the track and darn near ruined the engine. cost-cutting chinese b@stards.
X-GSfixer,
Ever see Blade Runner?
“Wall Street would pull some strings to have mission priorities re-arranged, to find planets filled with billions of eight-armed humanoids with an IQ 0f 75, on a planet with a 72 hour day, so they can move their factories to undercut “those lazy Chinese”.
Lil Opie, typical actions any GOP Muslim “Non-Hawaiian” would be proud to associated with. I think we should revisit George Stephanolopous & Charlie Gibson’s repeated questions about his not wearing an American lapel pin.
Yet another bailed-out industry.
THE HAGUE (AFP) – Senior Dutch, Icelandic and British officials on Friday discussed a disputed compensation deal to cover the collapse of Icesave bank but failed to reach any agreement, a statement said.
***
“The parties concerned will consider the issues separately after the meeting. At this moment, no further meetings are planned.”
****
Ahead of the talks, Bos had said that Iceland must compensate clients of failed bank Icesave “no matter how.”
“I will listen to what Iceland has to say but the borrowed money has to be paid back, no matter how,” Bos said, according to a finance ministry spokesman.
Iceland’s parliament narrowly approved on December 31 the terms of a payout to London and The Hague after they compensated more than 320,000 British and Dutch savers who lost money in the collapse of the Icelandic bank.
But Iceland’s president refused to sign the bill, citing public opposition to the 3.8-billion-euro (5.4-billion-dollar) deal, leaving it to a national referendum.
Bankers can buy off a few politicians, much more difficult to buy off the entire voting public. They will use threats. Of course people will still buy Icelands fish, and aluminum, and if the currency collapses maybe tourism will heat up. I think Iceland should say FU to the central banks.
I want to know how the people of Iceland agreed to guarantee foreigners that invested in their banks. If they did not vote on this guarantee or have any debate on the matter then they should not be forced into servitude (taxes to pay off debty) by the worlds central banks.
I want to know how the people of Iceland agreed to guarantee foreigners that invested in their banks. If they did not vote on this guarantee or have any debate on the matter then they should not be forced into servitude (taxes to pay off debty) by the worlds central banks.
It would be awesome if we Americans could apply this logic to the money borrowed to finance Bush’s wars and Bush/Obama’s bailouts.
Good thing this could never happen here, we’re to smart for that!
Japan’s Housing Starts Slump to Lowest Since 1964 Olympics
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) — Japan’s housing starts fell to the lowest level since the nation celebrated its postwar recovery by hosting the Olympics in 1964, as builders were hobbled by dwindling household incomes and sustained deflation.
Construction companies broke ground on 788,410 homes last year, 27.9 percent fewer than in 2008, the Land Ministry said today in Tokyo. That was the lowest since 751,429 recorded in 1964. The pace of decrease eased in the past four months.
Construction companies broke ground on 788,410 homes last year, 27.9 percent fewer than in 2008, the Land Ministry said today in Tokyo. That was the lowest since 751,429 recorded in 1964. The pace of decrease eased in the past four months.
Wow - I had no idea Japan built so many homes. Their “record low” is quite a bit higher than our “record low” (just above 500k last year I think).
Some figures, and a thought. (I have a spreadsheet, and I know how to use it).
Average CPI over the last 10 years: 2.53%
Each quarter’s average:
Q1: 6.15%
Q2: 4.32%
Q3: 1.94%
Q4: -2.31%
2009 Q4 CPI change: -0.04%; i.e. 2.27% above average
2009 Q4 CPI change, seasonally adjusted: 4.81%
If 2010 Q1’s CPI change also ends up being 2.27% above average, that would put the nominal inflation rate (the typical headline rate) at 8.42%.
If that happens - think Bernanke will go into hiding? Being that he was just confirmed this week, therefore his confirmation no longer rests on his ability to keep inflation at bay - might this be a possible, or even likely, scenario?
We are truly fortunate he was reappointed, as it is a given that Wall Street pundits otherwise would be attributing a second straight day of headline stock market index declines to a failure to reappoint him.
Of course, one could always make the argument that the stock market selloff would be much worse if reappointment had failed. It is very hard to run history two different ways for comparison purposes; hence we have to rely on the ‘experts’ to inform us about what would have happened if things had played out otherwise.
Well, some housing bubble bad habits still linger. Electrician was supposed to be here a half an hour ago. No call to say he was going to be late or anything like that.
Oh, well, it’s not like the work is urgent. I just like people to show up on time.
When he finally shows up make sure you’re not at home.
Q: What’s the story with the open-sided freight cars that appear to stretch from McCoy Road to Olin Avenue?
A: The freight cars, which are made to move lumber, stretch from the city and town of Madison south to Fitchburg. They have been still for about six months due to the economic downturn.
Ken Lucht, director of public affairs for Wisconsin and Southern Railroad, said the cars will stay on the railroad until the construction industry picks up and they are needed for service.
“We don’t have any plans at this time to take them out of there,” he said. “It depends on when the economy rebounds. Right now, there’s just no demand for them.”
He added the railroad industry has no yards or lots to park the cars in, so they are stored in rural areas where impact on the quality of life is less of an issue than in more populated areas.
Lucht said most railroads across the country are administered through a central computer system, which alerts companies when lumber is needed. At that point, his company, which leased the track from Union Pacific to operate throughout Dane County, would move them.
Lucht said there is no state, federal or local ordinance the company is violating by leaving the cars on the track.
A set of coal cars also stationed in Dane County stretches about 10 miles between Mazomanie and Sauk City, Lucht said.
I saw this while driving through Idaho this summer.
Those lumber cars are the exact same string I posted seeing over the July 4th weekend last summer. So, they’ve been there longer than six months now. A lot of them were new looking too - probably ordered during better times.
Attention Deflationistas:
WED. jan. 27 wall street journal
Proctor and gamble will permanently change 8 and 16 battery packs to 10 and 20 respectively, without a price change.
“more value conscious consumers”
‘Bout time. I’ve seen way too many packages shrink without the price doing likewise.
I’m still refusing to buy the abbreviated ice cream portions.
Lots of fanfare when they give up more product for the money, no fanfare at all when they take it back.
I notice a lot of engineered indentations in the bottoms of my plastic bottles of V8. These dents sneakily intrude into the bottle’s volume thus limiting its capacity. Anything to keep the profit margins up.
This will work until it won’t; That’s when customers will begin to balk and the sales will begin to drop off. That’s when the fanfare will return, along with bottles without the dents.
I found a few things online about Oly that people may appreciate reading. Apparently, she had run for Thurston County commissioner this past fall. While she didn’t win, she did earn the respect of the woman who did.
“Here is a message from Commissioner Valenzuela regarding Gayle’s death:
Fellow Dems: News like this is never easy, but I got a message today from Gayle Broadbent’s sister Rachel Broadbent that Gayle died last night in an accident. So shocking to those of us who just saw her Monday evening at our monthly TCD meeting, hanging out in the back in her usual mood of good cheer and friendship toward us all. She gave me the knowing thumbs-up from across the room with that million-dollar smile of hers, no doubt about the hard-run campaign of this year drawing to a close. I meant to get over to her to congratulate her for her wickedly funny letter to the editor published in The Olympian earlier this week –vintage Gayle. This is an especially big loss right at this moment: we all remember that Gayle was the sparkling jewel candidate in the County Commissioner appointment process earlier this year, responding to the hard questions from Dem voters in the audience with wit, wisdom, practical experience, and vision. She was brilliant!She and I agreed the day of the candidates forum to vote for each other and support whichever of us moved on in the process. She’s been a keen supporter since, coming to my swearing-in, working hard on the County’s Agricultural Committee spreading that wondrous vision all around, and keeping me in touch with the concerns of her active neighborhood association. I’m sorry I didn’t make it over to her side of the room Monday evening after all, and I’m sorry she won’t be watching election returns with us Tuesday evening. I know she cared deeply about the outcome of this election in particular.
We’ve sent Rachel our condolences, and will wait to hear about Gayle’s memorial from her.
Karen Valenzuela
Thurston County Commissioner”
http://thurstondemocrats.org/node/1210
Here’s another fun piece to read for those who enjoyed Oly’s writings (**WARNING-PDF**):
http://www.thurstondemocrats.org/applications/Gayle%20Broadbent%20Responses.pdf
From the piece:
“I am a Democrat. I didn’t start out one. You see, I was raised in a very small, rural, fundamentalist town in Utah by devout Mormon parents. It was and still is probably about the most Republican, conservative, fundamentalist location to be found on the planet.
Fortunately that is not the end of the story. My great-grandfather George B. Russell was elected to the Utah State House of Representatives in 1962, as a Democrat. He was the only one I knew existed, as a child. When anyone in my family spoke of him it was with the hushed, mournful tones people usually reserve for someone who has been eaten by wolves or abducted by aliens. Naturally this made me fascinated with the fellow. One day we made the long trip up to visit him and great-grandma in Ogden and there was a giant bronze bear in the driveway, majestic and alarming, with its arms out and with great glowing red glass eyes. It was wondrous! Sadly, I don’t recall great-grandpa at all, but I remember every detail of the bear. In fact, for many years I assumed that this was the mark of a Democrat; having a giant exciting bronze bear. (And now I am a Democrat. So where’s my giant bronze bear? *)”
When anyone in my family spoke of him it was with the hushed, mournful tones people usually reserve for someone who has been eaten by wolves or abducted by aliens. Naturally this made me fascinated with the fellow.
Classic Oly. And, dang, I miss her calling me “Slimmy.”
Thank you Grizzly for finding this.
Sound familiar?
Letters to the Editor for Oct. 24
GAYLE BROADBENT BLUE PEETZ; Olympia Olympia | • Published October 24, 2009
Campaign theatrics are too much:
“I experienced deliciously mingled horror and excitement when I read the recent Olympian article about brutally treated campaign signs and the unseemly activities of the candidates for the office of mayor of Lacey. I could hardly sit still on the couch! I felt like leaping up and making buttery popcorn and grabbing the remote, I was so completely thrilled and eager for the next episode.
What?! No way! The mayor of Lacey and his only contender are reduced to kicking each other’s campaign signs over? What is this: Immature Public Candidates Reality Television Part I?
Change the channel, please.
You know what? If I ever go drive up and kick my opponent’s signs over, I’ll hopefully be smart enough to notice the lurking code enforcement office there in his pickup truck before I do this. And you know what else? I hopefully also won’t be such a well-coiffed and hair-sprayed Olympia Master Builder sock puppet – and we know who I mean here – that a simple citizen of Lacey feels compelled to drive up and kick over my campaign signs, either. What do those signs cost, anyway?
Ahhh, who cares.
I just want the Lacey-Racey to be over with, before the Hollywood cameras and paparazzi descend to disturb my peace even more.
Look, Laceyites. You need to stand up and field a REAL candidate for your mayor. You know, one who actually cares about where we end up here in Thurston County.
Anyone? Anyone?
It’s not just the waterfront views
In response to the recent Olympia City Council endorsements by The Olympian, a clear message was sent to those who don’t align with their opinions: We are “one-issue” voters. As someone frustrated with the decisions and process of current city leadership, to dismiss these feelings as something narrow-minded is disrespectful. I grew up in Olympia, I put my heart and soul to the betterment of our community every day, and I strive to be an informed voter. My frustration stems from something much deeper than waterfront views.
Subjective sidewalk and noise ordinances have made little difference to the quality of our downtown. We face an operating budget that shrinks every year, yet our council advocated for a new fire station without regard to how it will be sustained. Downtown housing is indeed needed, yet our council prioritizes energy on an area where there is significant opposition and with a developer whose track record of following though on environmental commitments is lacking.
I am exhausted of leadership that further polarizes differing views and contributes to an “us vs. them” culture. I’m looking for change. I’m looking for candidates who stand for an inclusive community and safe public process. I’m voting for Stephen Buxbaum, a candidate experienced with real public projects as well as meaningful community work – as evidenced by his efforts with the Dispute Resolution Center and in securing a permanent home for GRuB.”
Here’s Oly’s letter to the editor published in the Olympian which the Thurston County Commissioner was referring to:
“I experienced deliciously mingled horror and excitement when I read the recent Olympian article about brutally treated campaign signs and the unseemly activities of the candidates for the office of mayor of Lacey. I could hardly sit still on the couch! I felt like leaping up and making buttery popcorn and grabbing the remote, I was so completely thrilled and eager for the next episode.
What?! No way! The mayor of Lacey and his only contender are reduced to kicking each other’s campaign signs over? What is this: Immature Public Candidates Reality Television Part I?
Change the channel, please.
You know what? If I ever go drive up and kick my opponent’s signs over, I’ll hopefully be smart enough to notice the lurking code enforcement office there in his pickup truck before I do this. And you know what else? I hopefully also won’t be such a well-coiffed and hair-sprayed Olympia Master Builder sock puppet – and we know who I mean here – that a simple citizen of Lacey feels compelled to drive up and kick over my campaign signs, either. What do those signs cost, anyway?
Ahhh, who cares.
I just want the Lacey-Racey to be over with, before the Hollywood cameras and paparazzi descend to disturb my peace even more.
Look, Laceyites. You need to stand up and field a REAL candidate for your mayor. You know, one who actually cares about where we end up here in Thurston County.
Anyone? Anyone?
It’s not just the waterfront views
In response to the recent Olympia City Council endorsements by The Olympian, a clear message was sent to those who don’t align with their opinions: We are “one-issue” voters. As someone frustrated with the decisions and process of current city leadership, to dismiss these feelings as something narrow-minded is disrespectful. I grew up in Olympia, I put my heart and soul to the betterment of our community every day, and I strive to be an informed voter. My frustration stems from something much deeper than waterfront views.
Subjective sidewalk and noise ordinances have made little difference to the quality of our downtown. We face an operating budget that shrinks every year, yet our council advocated for a new fire station without regard to how it will be sustained. Downtown housing is indeed needed, yet our council prioritizes energy on an area where there is significant opposition and with a developer whose track record of following though on environmental commitments is lacking.
I am exhausted of leadership that further polarizes differing views and contributes to an “us vs. them” culture. I’m looking for change. I’m looking for candidates who stand for an inclusive community and safe public process. I’m voting for Stephen Buxbaum, a candidate experienced with real public projects as well as meaningful community work – as evidenced by his efforts with the Dispute Resolution Center and in securing a permanent home for GRuB.”
http://www.theolympian.com/109/story/1013089.html
I’ll bet that her letters to the editor had a fan club.
BTW, Stephen Buxbaum won the seat.
This turd has been worm dirt for years, his merry band trot out some BS message every once and a while.
Bin Laden blasts US for climate change ~ Jan 29, 7:46 AM (ET)
CAIRO (AP) - Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming, according to a new audiotape released Friday.
In the tape, broadcast in part on Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden warned of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt.
He blamed Western industrialized nations for hunger, desertification and floods across the globe, and called for “drastic solutions” to global warming, and “not solutions that partially reduce the effect of climate change.”
He was on kidney dialysis over a decade ago. Tough to keep that up camping in primative caves and the like without power.
Umm didn’t the oil flowing out of Saudi Arabia contribute, just get Saudi Arabia to stop pumping and poof CO2 levels will fall rapidly.
Well, THIS can’t be fun:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20603037&sid=aIf_vUQZFt.s
A suggestion: Pay the deficiency judgment off with pennies. Now, THAT would be fun.
Florida is a non-recourse state. How is that possible?
Surely the Big Apple can 4300 jobs and not even notice they are gone. No need to make a production out of it, most are probably redundant “shovel leaning” jobs anyway. Next!
Bloomberg says 4,300 jobs must be cut to balance budget.
January 29, 2010
Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled a harsh city budget proposal Thursday that would help close a projected $4.1 billion hole at the cost of 4,300 jobs and a reduction in pay raises for teachers.
“While we will revisit these decisions as the budget process unfolds in months ahead, I will say that at this point they appear unavoidable,” Bloomberg said, noting that all but 1,000 of these job cuts will come through attrition.
The projected cuts are slated to save the city $1.6 billion, with the remainder of the deficit filled by a $2.9 billion surplus from the current fiscal year, Bloomberg said. The City Council has until June to reach an agreement on the final budget.
The mayor’s proposal also included eliminating the fifth firefighter from shifts at 60 firehouses throughout the city and ending one shift at four firehouses.
Its late and its Friday. I think my comment from yesterday stands. Basically they (Congress, POTUS and REIC) are still in the mindset that things were going good while the bubble was inflating. Hence they are just looking at how to return to the days of rapidly increasing prices. For them, no other answer will suffice.
So PB, this explains the presidents speach, the REIC not understanding about prices returning to affordability. This means the REIC and banks are stilled tied to the go go days of the bubble. They are going to keep proposing things that would try to make those days to return. Really hard to reinflate the bubble with all that non-liquidating debt sitting there. Along with inventory overhang. Who the hell is looking at additonal housing needs? We are “suddenly” seeing a huge inventory overhang. No jobs to support those kind of house prices or use for houses that large.
You have been mentioning why doesn’t the REIC understand a return to affordability appeal to them? Well, those guys are hopped up on option ARMs and were depending on growth of their investments along with additional income from really high turn over and even higher prices.
Dreams die hard sometimes.
I think this is the last year… then the carnage in the REIC system will make them a non-factor.
Regulators shut down banks in 5 states
WASHINGTON – Regulators shut down a big bank in California on Friday, along with two banks in Georgia and one each in Florida, Minnesota and Washington. That brought to 15 the number of bank failures so far in 2010 atop the 140 shuttered last year in the punishing economic climate.
The failure of Los Angeles-based First Regional Bank, with nearly $2.2 billion in assets and $1.9 billion in deposits, is expected to cost the federal deposit insurance fund $825.5 million.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over the bank as well as the others: First National Bank of Georgia, based in Carrollton, Ga., with $832.6 million in assets and $757.9 million in deposits and Community Bank and Trust of Cornelia, Ga., with $1.2 billion in assets and $1.1 billion in deposits; Florida Community Bank of Immokalee, Fla., with $875.5 million in assets and $795.5 million in deposits; Marshall Bank of Hallock, Minn., with $59.9 million in assets and $54.7 million in deposits; and American Marine Bank of Bainbridge Island, Wash., with $373.2 million in assets and $308.5 million in deposits.