Bits Bucket For May 9, 2010
Post off-topic ideas, links and Craigslist finds here. The DC meetup link at the forum is here. Click here for the shadow inventory thread.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
About Me
Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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I wonder if we are going to have anymore fat fingers next week?
Maybe.
Roidy
What does “roidy” mean? I could not find it on google. Personal figure of speech?
I take it the term refers to a condition you would prefer to avoid?
I always assumed Roidy was his name, a nickname, a personal touch to his posts.
That’s what happened to him the last time he met a “fat finger”.
Maybe he’s robot-like, thus an’droidy.
Typical PTB SOP, blame anything out of the ordinary on a stand alone event or individual. No matter what, the system/status quo must never come into question - ever.
As FPSS aptly pointed out yesterday, that was not a finger. Brings to mind the first dirty joke I ever heard as a youngun — something about, “Do you mind if I put my finger in your belly button?”
tee hee, that is not my belly button…..
Foreclosures plague Massachusetts housing market
By Steve Adams
The Patriot Ledger
While the real estate market has been revitalized in recent months, one barometer – rising foreclosures – shows lingering trouble for housing.
Massachusetts residential foreclosures in March hit their highest level since May 2008. Since the start of the year, foreclosures are running 25 percent ahead of 2009.
Foreclosure petitions – the first step in the process – hit their highest levels in eight months in March, according to The Warren Group, a Boston-based real estate information service. And there’s been little improvement since then, said a foreclosure counselor who reports calls from homeowners seeking assistance spiked in early April.
“Most of it is (caused by) job loss that I’m receiving right now,” said Marguerite Pujalte, coordinator of the housing consumer education program at South Shore Housing Development Corp.
The Kingston non-profit group provides housing assistance to people in Plymouth and Bristol Counties.
In 2009, the Obama administration set up “Making Home Affordable,” a $75 billion program designed to avert foreclosures. The program offers a $1,000 incentive to loan servicers for each mortgage they modify.
The program aims to bring payments more in line with homeowners’ income, setting a target maximum payment of 31 percent of borrowers’ pretax income.
In one significant benefit to struggling homeowners, more banks and mortgage services are accepting unemployment income as income when calculating payment modification plans, Pujalte said.
As of the end of March, the program had resulted in permanent modification of 230,000 homeowners’ mortgages, including 5,635 in Massachusetts, according to the federal government, but many more homeowners remain at risk.
Foreclosure auction announcements – which are generally published a month before the event – surged 140 percent in the first quarter to 8,062 statewide.
Quincy real estate auctioneer Daniel Flynn said banks’ tighter credit standards are making it difficult for homeowners to negotiate more favorable terms.
“Because the pendulum swung so far from a very loose credit environment, right now banks are being unbelievably scrupulously with borrowers,” said Flynn, CEO of Daniel J. Flynn & Co.
Lingering high unemployment is the single biggest factor driving foreclosures, real estate experts say. After hitting 9.5 percent in January, the Massachusetts unemployment rate settled to 9.3 percent in March.
“Unemployment is really the leading economic factor, combined with underemployment,” Flynn said.
While the real estate market has been revitalized in recent months, one barometer – rising foreclosures – shows lingering trouble for housing.
Why is it that every MSM “story” on real estate always starts with this same propaganda theme? Any bad news is always “lingering trouble” rather than indications of a new wave of foreclosures and walkaways that was temporarily forestalled by the massive infusion of over $1.3 trillion in created-out-of-thin-air Fed dollars - which just debased every dollar in the sheeple’s wallets, bank accounts, and 401(k).
“Lingering trouble”? Try telling the truth and saying “Tsunami headed our way.”
Maybe if they tagged it as “lingering stupidity” it’d be more palatable.
Don’t hold your breath, tho.
And how often have we heard “we’re not ______(fill blank with FL, CA, HI, etc) here in the northeast? Years ago here on this blog I stated the collapse will be asynchronous and that is precisely how it is playing out. In New England, housing prices tripled or more in the presence of flat or falling wages, declining population and increasing housing inventory. Yet not one pathetic braindead New Englander could see or was willing to look at that. At best, shrugged shoulders and something completely moronic like “free markets” would fall out of their mouths.
In the absence of Fraud Financing during the bubble years, prices would have fallen like the did all those years since 1980’s. Nevertheless, this article is good news. Very good news. Thank you for posting it.
Its Bawney Fwanks fawlt.
Michael Imperioli joins the ‘Foreclosure’
Adnan Tezer May 6, 2010
Michael Imperioli (”The Sopranos”) will star in the indie horror-thriller “Foreclosure.”
He joins a cast that includes Wendell Pierce (”Treme,” “The Wire”), Bill Raymond, Jeff Burchfield, Meital Dohan, Brandon Gill, Spencer List, Tristan Laurence Perez, William Stone Mahoney and Roger Robinson.
According to Variety, writer-director Richard Ledes begins shooting next week in Queens, New York.
The ghost-themed film, inspired by the mortgage crisis, is set on a neighborhood block in which almost every house sits empty and bank-owned.
“Foreclosure” is produced by Ged Dickersin (”City Island”) and co-produced by Lila Yomtoob.
Imperioli recently appeared in Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones.”
Mortgage fraud flourishes
By Al Heavens
Inquirer Real Estate Columnist
With fewer loans being made, you’d think mortgage fraud would be virtually nonexistent.
Yet recent data from the Lexis-Nexis Mortgage Asset Research Institute in Chicago show that the incidence of fraud in 2009 increased 7 percentage points over 2008’s levels. In 2008, fraud reports rose 26 percentage points from the previous year.
The institute collects and provides data - suspicious-activities reports, or SARS - to subscribers, including mortgage lenders. If you want to compare numbers, there were 67,190 such reports collected in 2009, compared with 63,713 in 2008, and 46,717 in 2007.
The 2009 increase was small, but officials say they believe a lot of scam artists are going high-tech.
“Technology has provided fraudsters with the ability to access information, conduct criminal activities and remain anonymous via the Internet, and manipulate processes that rely on the need for expediency,” said the institute’s Jennifer Butts.
“Although technology is an enabler of fraud perpetration, for the scammer there must be a system to beat and/or a victim to manipulate,” she said.
Scammers operate “ahead of the fraud curve,” she said, meaning that agencies with mandates to root them out may not even be aware of the activities.
I’ve stopped counting the number of people I’ve written about who have tried to extricate themselves from financial trouble via “help” found on the Internet.
It’s enough to say that this is an indicator of how desperate people are in these tough economic times.
Farah Jiminez, executive director of Mount Airy USA, the counseling agency in Northwest Philadelphia, has a client who, while trying to avert foreclosure, paid more than $5,000 to not just one out-of-state scam artist, but two.
The client is being “counseled by us at a cost of $450 - a fee we charge, not to the client, but against a state and federal grant,” Jiminez said. “I wish we were getting paid what these scammers earn. We’d be able to add staff and serve a lot more victims.”
The government has been stepping in, albeit belatedly, to try to make lenders and everyone else more accountable for their practices.
The most proactive group appears to be investors in mortgage-backed securities, who are requiring full disclosure from lenders on the loans in the packages they are buying, as well as requiring any losses through foreclosures to be, at the least, shared.
In light of the unprecedented level of foreclosures, it should come as no surprise that appraisal fraud was on the increase last year, too.
“The effects are compounded in declining markets,” said Darius Bozorgi, president of Veros Software Inc., of Santa Ana, Calif., which tracks such data.
What he means is that states such as Florida and California or those in the Midwest, where values have plummeted, have a higher incidence of appraisal fraud than other areas do.
Butts, of the Mortgage Asset Research Institute, said the most prevalent types of appraisal fraud and misrepresentation for loans originated in 2009 involved incorrect or fabricated comparables, omitted information, and value inflation.
Does this surprise anyone?
“Not at all,” said Mayfair real estate broker Christopher J. Artur. “I have seen some high sale prices even in this market, which will lead to even more defaults.”
Fraud and misrepresentation in the mortgage industry helped facilitate the economic crisis, and there are “new forms of collusion and opportunistic scamming” today, Butts said.
The solution is “back to basics,” she said. “Don’t just trust, verify. If information results in uncertainty, trust your instincts and stop. Pay attention.”
Happy Mother’s Day to all HBB moms!
In the kitchen…makin’ breakfast…
I’m cooking dinner today.
put another log on the fire
Dear Mum, wife, lady of the day, the lady who my children call Mama and will probably bury me. Love ya!
Now don’t I let you wash the car on Sunday?
Don’t I warn you when you’re gettin fat?
Ain’t I a-gonna take you fishin’ with me someday?
Well, a man can’t love a woman more than that.
Ain’t I always nice to your kid sister?
Don’t I take her driving every night?
So, sit here at my feet ‘cos I like you when you’re sweet,
And you know it ain’t feminine to fight.
Here’s a version of the song on youtube:
youtube dot com/watch?v=1KHsdam6Z4o
It turned out well. Even the kids ate it…
Happy Mother’s Day to all HBB moms!
Yah! Have a good day. Hope you get to sleep in.
Thanks - erm the kids got up early to surprise me - about an hour ago
My wife: “Stop that — let me sleep!”
Little did I know that my mother’s habits would teach me some of life’s greatest lessons and by mostlhy following them would be solvent today.
My mother to this day is still very frugal saving a bit of money no matter how little comes in. Growing up (I am now 44), her favorite word was no - I am not spending XXX amount on “whatever I wanted at the time”. My parents never had any kind of payment other than a very modest mortgage of $80 a month on a 20 year loan thanks to my mother’s insistence (Oh the horror of us kids having to “share” bedrooms!!). Never heard of a HELOC. No credit card -let alone credit card debt. No eating out other than a rare treat of McDonald’s, no fancy leather bastketball shoes, no fancy clothes (Sears was good enough), no car payments and no borrowing for vacations. Vacation for us was visiting family or a National Park. But me and my siblings didn’t know any better and we were as happy as the next kid.
My dad, on the other hand, taught me life’s lesson’s the hard way. He and his brother’s farmed right up until the bank took it back. Excessive debt on the land and buying new, expensive machinery along with a couple of drought years left them exposed and down she went. My Dad never had any retirement just social security. My mother’s hard work of tending other people’s kids, left her the money. As a result, she controlled all the finances and dictated how it would be spent. My dad lost all power as a decision maker in the relationship and is at my mom’s mercy as to what is going to happen - not how I want to end up. It is my mother’r revenge on him to make it as miserable as possible since he wouldn’t listen to her. Of course she “didn’t know what she was talking about” when she told him he shouldn’t be taking on the big debts of farming.
So thank you mom and happy mother’s day to you and all else out there that has taught your kids to live well below their means.
“Of course she “didn’t know what she was talking about” when she told him he shouldn’t be taking on the big debts of farming.”
Farmers were way ahead of their time when it came to second mortgages. Only instead of an SUV it was a new combine.
In Montana,
They bought 3 brand new IH “rotary” combines along with leasing a big John Deere 8850 tractor. Funny how things go south on you when you by 3 combines for 360,000 with nothing down and 2 years later they are worth $120,000.
This all happened late 80’s on the other side of the mountains from you.
The renters are to blame????
More Valley homeowners walk out on mortgages
Saturday, May. 08, 2010
By Tim Sheehan/The Fresno Bee Buzz up!
A generation ago, a house was more than a house.
It was part of the “American dream.” And foreclosure was a horrifying but unlikely prospect for families who plunked down their savings and took out mortgages to become homeowners.
But a two-year recession has driven foreclosures to a record pace. For many families whose homes are worth far less than what they owe, financial and emotional stress is changing the “stay-at-all-costs” mindset.
In areas hardest hit by plunging real-estate values — including the San Joaquin Valley — some people who can afford their mortgage are opting to walk away from their loan and let their bank repossess the house.
“It’s very stressful to get to that point,” said James Graham, a 48-year-old power-plant worker who walked away from his home in Bakersfield last fall. “You’re raised up to do the right thing and pay your mortgage, pay your bills.”
“But when you get to that point where it’s time to walk, it’s time.”
It’s called “strategic default,” and experts say it stems from frustration with home values that have plummeted since buyers bought or refinanced at the peak of the real-estate boom, and banks dragging their heels on loan-modification requests.
“If you’ve got a mortgage that’s $400,000 and the homes around you are selling for $150,000 … it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out there’s a compelling reason to walk,” said Robin Kane of RCK Organization, a Fresno property broker. “Especially when you find out the guy across the street is renting for $1,200 a month and your mortgage payment is $3,600 a month.”
There’s no definitive figures on how many mortgage defaults are by choice versus crisis. But a recent survey by the University of Chicago suggests that about one-third of U.S. home mortgage defaults are strategic.
“Foreclosure is no longer the ‘F-word,’ ” said Jon Maddux, CEO of YouWalkAway.com, a San Diego company that charges a fee to coach homeowners through the foreclosure process. “There’s much less stigma attached to it now.”
With foreclosure and mortgage delinquency rates in the Valley among the highest in the country — and uncertainty over how long it will take home values to recover — experts believe strategic defaults in this region will increase.
“. . . foreclosure was a horrifying but unlikely prospect for families who plunked down their savings and took out mortgages to become homeowners.” The problem was too many ppl didn’t plunk down enough. Why people were allowed to put down less than 20% in a non-recourse state will always be a mystery to me. If the bank is saying you keep all the gain, but I’ll take all the risk, which is what in effect they were doing, even I might be tempted to speculate. I note the author never mentioned that home prices were over-valued to begin with well before the recession, which made the recession inevitable. Those that don’t understand the issues shouldn’t be writing about them.
“Why people were allowed to put down less than 20% in a non-recourse state will always be a mystery to me.”
Natalie, I’m sure you only mean that as a figure of speech, but I’ll answer anyway for others who might not find it quite as obvious.
The only reason that people in non-recourse states are able to put so little down is because all of the federal programs are dramatically distorting the market for mortgages. Fannie/Freddie do not distinguish between states in their rates, and FHA is the low-bidder in the down-payment market with 3.5%.
Like water flowing downhill, nearly 100% of the business in the mortgage market has flowed to the lowest-standard operators.
Well, I guess that BP Rube Goldberg contraption didn’t work out. No surprise there.
Too bad these energy companies really suck when it comes to remedial technology. Why is that, do you suppose? Profit? That’s why I was against expanded drilling in the Gulf, sooner or later something like this was bound to happen. And that’s why nuclear gives me the willies, too. Can you say Chernobyl?
But the real question is, why can’t companies utilize technologies that have minimal potential for damage? Why does Tampa Bay, for example, have to be a polluted sh*thole? Industry and humanity should be able to co-exist peacefully, for the benefit of each other. I should be able to swim or fish in a sparkling clean bay while ships ply their trade, while power plants do their thing, while shoreline businesses flourish without polluting. It is possible. Anything is possible. Even good stuff.
“Spill Baby Spill”
Too bad these energy companies really suck when it comes to remedial technology. Why is that, do you suppose? Profit?
Profit … and hubris.
They think they have everything under control, every scenario mapped out — until they don’t. NASA tries to triple-check everything, build in redundancies at every turn, plan for catastrophic events, etc., but even that level of planning can fail spectacularly. BP and other most corporations have nowhere near that level of foresight.
The problem is that when a government agency tries to triple-check and build in redundancies, the people get all impatient that government workers are “lazy” and slow, not to mention all the accusations of government “waste.” Meanwhile private companies are “nimble.” Yes well, this is nimbleness gets you.
The government is feeling the pressure to be as nimble as the private companies. This is why the Challenger exploded in 1986. Engineers knew those O-rings were too cold, but they gave a lousy presentation to management and management overrode them. On a side note, ditto for Chernobyl. Chernobyl wasn’t an “accident.” The plant operators were told by management in no uncertain terms to get the plant running — and you don’t want to go against the Soviet government. Therefore they removed every safety system to please the bosses, and paid for it dearly. Fannie and Freddie as well. They chased profits and went belly up.
Face it, redundancy and safety take time and money. Of course those yahoos on Wall Street don’t want that. The a#%&hole brokers think that that safety money is “rightly” theirs, because they are the “producers” of the world. And they want that profit instantaneously, because they obviously have nothing better to do than sip their Starbucks while the engineers — who as usual do all the work — try to hurry up and make a profit for the greedy bottomless maw of the likes of Lloyd “Satan’s work” Blankfein.
I tell you, watching that smarmy Santelli rant on the Floor of the stock exchange while the arrogant traders around him cheered…I almost put a brick through my screen.
okay sorry end rant.
Twas funny long ago. Now it is like ‘Idiocracy’. Satire dangling on a thread:
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/78/78ppepsi.phtml
Why was the polluter allowed to write the Remedial Action Plan? Who reviewed its viability? Why aren’t firms with strong remediation experienced involved like URS, CH2MHill, Sevenson, etc? I wager there will be some serious criminal consequences for professional misconduct handed down as the debacle grows.
Only question that needs to be asked:
Why did BP sink the burning rig?
From what I understand, it wasn’t BP’s rig. It was leased from Transocean IIRC.
About freakin’ time. Less bureaucracy is always a good thing. Too many chiefs, anyway. Fewer chiefs, hopefully a lot less spending on military crap that isn’t needed, anyway. Not to mention their statistics suck.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/08/AR2010050802495.html
When I was small rowdy kid, my Mom told me to be nice to girls after my older brother and I terrorized her Brownie troop, my little sister and her friends. Although my brother flat-out refused, I asked what’s in this deal for me. She said if I was nice to girls when I was small, they might bake me cookies when I was old. Humm, I thought, a long term investment strategy. Against my brother’s advise, I signed a world-wide truce with the evil Brownies and Girl Scouts.
$3.50 a box of cookies Mom…$3.50 for every freakin’ tiny box of cookies is what your little Brownie and Girl Scouts friends charged me yesterday!! No discount.
Womanhood is a total racket and conspiracy and you girls are all in on it together.
(Your annual card and and bribe…oops, present is in the mail. No oatmeal or peanut butter cookies please…just send the chocolate chips ones.)
Well, they are $4.00 per box in “The O.C.”
But hey, they do have a nice headquarters building in “The Irvine Spectrum” 
Perhaps the Irvine Co. gave them a “charitable” lease. 
There’s no chance they turned the Scouts into a CORPORATION do ya think?
I have wondered that about the Girl Scouts. They are very different fom BSA (besides the obvious differences). These days BSA is getting its chops busted left and right, while the GIrls, who seem to have no other purpose than to hawk cookies, get a pass. I guess the girls fit in better into the new model of corporate Amerika.
Sexist.
“…while the GIrls, who seem to have no other purpose than to hawk cookies, get a pass.”
A pass ?…you let 1 small Brownie or GS infiltrate your house and they’ll turn it into a full blown coven in 30 seconds or less.
Brownie/girl scouts = cult
Governments, religions, environmental groups, service organizations, large corporations, central banks, various and sundry other human coalitions found all over the planet earth = CULTS
Another “Harry Browne” kind of poster! Although I am both an engineer and shareholder in a corp with enough stock in that one to vote. I just do not trust any group-think mentality. Sooner or later the USA will go through what Greece is going through, and there will be no one bailing us out. Gold is a “hold.”
Future Larouche youth??
They’re all tiny mobsters Hwy but I’m not saying anything else because I don’t want to end up, upsidedown inside of a barrel of water holding my breath.
It’s modern cultural transference:
They are continuing an ancient theme:
The way to a man’s heart is through his belly…
Cookies were $4 here too. Is it still Girl Scout Cookie season in your neck of the woods? Ours was over back in March.
Yes kim…but my local Brownies said they just sold all the Mint cookies 30 minutes before I got there. I had to settle for shortbread and crunchy-fudge coated treat whatevers.
I’m positive those little kids were hoarding all the mint cookies under the table. I know how these tiny people work.
1. Defend it from what? Insane government spending? Insane levels of borrowing? No, I don’t think that is what they are thinking…
2. This plan - like every other one before it - will fail. And the half life on these plans keeps getting shorter and shorter…
————————–
EU Prepares Euro Fund to Fight ‘Wolfpack,’ Halt Debt Crisis
Bloomberg
By James G. Neuger and Meera Louis
May 9 (Bloomberg) — European Union finance ministers pledged to stop a sovereign debt crisis from shattering confidence in the euro as they held an emergency summit to hammer out a lending mechanism for deficit-stricken nations.
Jolted into action by last week’s slide in the currency to a 14-month low and soaring bond yields in Portugal and Spain, leaders of the 16 euro nations agreed on the backstop yesterday and told ministers to get it ready before Asian markets open.
“We are going to defend the euro,” Spanish Economy Minister Elena Salgado told reporters as she arrived to chair today’s Brussels meeting. “We think we have a duty for more stability for our currency. We will do whatever is necessary.”
“We will do whatever is necessary.”
Lol. We’ll see.
Sit back and watch the spectacle of government/central bankers shaking their fists at the laws of economics.
And bring lots of popcorn.
Politicians and bankers versus mathematics.
Quite the entertaining “fight”.
The thing about it is, while the politicians and bankers end up being systematically squashed into the sidewalk like cockroaches, they always talk about how recovery is just around the corner. As if that were important somehow.
Me, all I’d want to talk about is how bad it feels being squashed like a bug.
Guess I’m not cut out for political or banking work.
I’ll probably just stick with rocket science.
How the heck did we get from ” must feed the squirrels” to this stage of civilization’s capitulation?
Fixing too-big-to-fail by breaking up Megabank, Inc into competitive sized, non-systemically-risky pieces or, better yet, legally excluding them from the mortgage lending business entirely so they can focus on the areas in which they excel, such as automotive manufacturing and commercial real estate lending, would obviate the need for the kind of housing bubble prevention tax this fool recommends.
Economics focus
Home improvements
Policymakers are experimenting with ways to stop a property boom
May 6th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
IN AMERICA policymakers are too busy coping with the aftermath of the last housing bubble to worry about preventing the next one. But elsewhere in the world, things are different. In China’s cities, house prices rose by 11.7% in the year to March, according to official estimates, and by much more, according to unofficial ones. That is one reason why the central bank raised reserve requirements (the share of deposits banks must keep in their vaults) on May 2nd for the third time this year. In Canada, the Canadian Real Estate Association calculates that homes were worth 17.6% more in March than a year earlier, taking them well above their pre-crisis peak. And down under home values only seem to go up, rising by 20% in Australia’s eight state capitals in the first three months of this year, compared with a year earlier.
How should policymakers respond? In a December speech, Adam Posen, an economist who sits on the Bank of England’s rate-setting committee, complained that policymakers need a bigger toolkit. Before the crisis many central bankers believed that all they needed was a “hammer” (interest rates) to strike a “monetary nail” (consumer-price inflation). But not every problem is a nail. Policymakers also need a full set of “macroprudential” tools, from wrenches to duct tape.
To fix housing bubbles, Mr Posen suggests, policymakers should consider a tax on real estate that varies over the cycle, rising in property booms and falling in busts. His suggestion echoes an idea proposed a year earlier by Olivier Jeanne of Johns Hopkins University. According to Mr Jeanne, debt, including mortgage debt, is like pollution. It imposes costs on others that the borrower fails to take into account. The right response to an externality of this kind is to tax it—to make the polluter pay.
…
“policymakers should consider a tax on real estate that varies over the cycle, rising in property booms and falling in busts.”
What an idiot.
The problem is not the RE transactions that occur; the problem is the DEBT associated with the transactions.
How about a tax on debt that varies over the cycle? Now that’s an idea I could get behind.
The buyers of RE who are paying cash are not imposing any costs/risk on others; I see no externalities in that case.
How about a tax on politicians and policy makers?
For every bit of legislation that doesn’t lead to increased solvency or prosperity within the general public, they themselves are taxed.
“How about a tax on debt that varies over the cycle?”
How about a tax on central bankers every time they make crazed suggestions or propaganda statements in the MSM?
Removing some hot air from the main stream media circus might significantly mitigate global warming.
Ignore the scare mongers who are trying to make everyone believe the Panic of 2008 has returned. This Green Shoots recovery has legs, and anyone who does not take the opportunity to buy stock today is going to be priced out of the market forever before they know it. The global economy is decoupled; what happens in Europe stays in Europe and will not derail the U.S. recovery.
============================================================
Market Snapshot
May 8, 2010, 10:33 a.m. EDT
Looking for firmer footing
Events in Europe likely to weigh heavily on U.S. markets
U.S. stocks drop in brutal start to May
By Kate Gibson, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — The U.S. stock market will try to find its footing in the coming week after a return to the volatility that accompanied the financial crisis in 2008.
Stocks have been socked for two weeks running as concern escalated that Europe was not doing enough to keep the continent’s most debt-ridden countries from defaulting.
In recent days the turmoil pushed the euro to a 14-month low against the dollar and propelled the cost of borrowing dollars between banks for three months in London to their highest level since August.
“The short-term funding tools are starting to suggest panic in Europe, and that is being felt around the globe. If there is a liquidity crisis in one country it impacts all,” said Justin Golden, strategist for Macro Risk Advisors.
“Next week it’ll all depend on what the ECB (European Central Bank) says tonight or over the weekend,” said Golden on Friday.
…
Iceland is going to face some major lawsuits if they don’t turn that volcano off.
I just wish that every banking system collapse were closely followed by a major volcanic eruption somewhere in close proximity to the banks where the bad loans originated. Perhaps if we all just prayed hard enough, God would grant our collective wish. It would be a great opportunity for God to drum moral hazard out of the banking system which is due to ongoing TBTF bailout rescue plans, as our policy makers don’t appear to be up to the task.
The notion that TBTF has been permanently outlawed by this bullsh!t “anti-bailout” legislation, without provisions for rightsizing and properly regulating Megabank, Inc, is about as plausible as the notion that you now can safely build a housing development on the slope of a dormant volcano because you passed a law against future eruptions. So far as I am aware, there was no prior legal basis for the Fall 2008 (and subsequent) bailout measures; rather, there was a financial earthquake that struck a Wall Street banking system dominated by TBTF banks, whose imminent threat of collapse led policy makers to pass the TARP bailout at the height of panic.
Further, the TARP appears to have failed to serve the purpose for which it was intended, at least according to occasional news stories that bubble up regarding the toxic loans that Megabank, Inc keeps hidden off balance sheet by Enronesque accounting techniques, waiting to erupt any day in a cloud of sh!tty assets that would rival any ash cloud that Eyjafjallajokull could ever produce.
Thanks to our Congress’s failure to pass legislation which addresses the root cause of TBTF — too many systemically risky financial institutions with too much oligopolistic market power to be able to regulate them or to contain their high-risk, “heads-we-win, tails-you-lose” casino gambling activities — a systemic risk event is sure to happen again in a future banking crisis, at which point our children will get to enjoy the involuntary pleasure of bailing out a future generation of Wall Street traders from their bad gambling debt.
Perhaps I am getting out ahead of myself here worrying about future banking crises, as the one at hand is far from over at this point?
I agree CIB. It’s the casinos the Middlemen get to risk in ,some being regulated some not being regulated, that create the TBTF. When the Middle men wanted full ability to go to any casino game mixing the regulated with the unregulated ,combined with leverage without reserves is when they created TBTF.
The notion that TBTF has been permanently outlawed by this bullsh!t “anti-bailout” legislation, without provisions for rightsizing and properly regulating Megabank, Inc, is about as plausible as the notion that you now can safely build a housing development on the slope of a dormant volcano because you passed a law against future eruptions.
I think it’s more like:
The notion that the government can “properly regulate” an entity that it chartered, and to which it has essentially granted exemption from the entire legal system via limited liability provisions, is about as plausible as the notion that BP can “regulate” the oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico to make sure it doesn’t do too much environment damage.
Halliburton had something to do with too?
It was Hammer Industries that made the volcano erupt.
I think that modern Iceland just pissed off the old Norse Gods, Cod and Herring, and hence they’re raining debt and ash down upon them.
They need to return to the old ways and sacrific a few virgins in appeasement.
Hummm…
Okay Iceland, plan “B”…
I warned ‘em.. you keep tapping into all that geothermal power and something’s gonna blow..
warned ‘em.. you keep tapping into all that geothermal power and something’s gonna blow..but, would they listen? No-oo-oo.
Now think how bad they feel!
Hater
Filed under: “You citizen’s don’t need to see no stinkin’ public data…”
Judge weighs compromise in OCERS pension data dispute:
May 6th, 2010, posted by Tony Saavedra, OC Register investigative reporter
“The battle over whether taxpayers should be allowed to see Orange County public pension data finally landed today in Superior Court.”
“…While Superior Court judges in Contra Costa and Stanislaus counties have ruled that the pension data is clearly public — akin to public employee salaries–and must be released, no one has taken the case to appellate court, where a judgment would become precedent.”
“Attorney David Lantzer, representing the Orange County Employees Retirement System, said the citizen-watchdog group could look into any irregularities in the pension payments by using the identifiers instead of names.
Maybe.
But it appears to The Watchdog that without names, there would be no way for journalists (or citizens) to search out retirees double-dipping by working other county jobs. Or retirees charged with job-related crimes, as The Register found when it dug through the CalPERS data.”
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/feds_probing_jpmorgan_trades_in_gZzMvWBqOJpB55M7Rh9vwM
For years goldbugs like GATA have charged that JP Morgan, in collusion with the Fed, has been manipulating/suppressing precious metals through the use of naked shorts. Now after years of turning a blind eye it appears regulators may actually be launching a long-overdue criminal probe of JP Morgan. I’m assuming this is going to be a standard whitewash, but if by some miracle they assign investigators to the case who take their jobs seriously and have any professional integrity, this could have huge ramifications for both the Fed and JP Morgan. It could also cause the price of precious metals to explode upwards, if it causes investors who have purchased paper gold and silver on the COMEX to start demanding physical delivery of metals instead of electronic IOUs for gold and silver that DOESN’T EXIST. JP Morgan has been accused of having bet massively against precious metals with their shorts and derivatives - if this is true, and is about to be exposed, the whole 600 TRILLION dollar derivatives time bomb could finally explode.
Is potential collusion between the Fed and Megabank, Inc a possible topic for Congressional auditors to address, or does collusion have some hard-to-detect connection to monetary policy which would make it impossible to ask questions about any such activities?
http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/audit-the-federal-reserve-hr-1207/
There is a reason the Fed and their stooges in the Administration, House and Senate are fighting so desperately to derail Ron Paul’s Audit the Fed bill. I would strongly urge each and every HBB reader to educate yourselves on this issue and contact your Senators and Representatives to ask them to get behind this bill.
Markets were manipulated? I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you!
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/funny_money_flood_6q5wCBF0TyAgllZXNOEv1J
High-quality counterfeit $50 and $100 dollar bills flooding NYC. The Fed hates competition when it comes to creating worthless printing press currency.
The Fed probably encourages such activity.
I’ve got a good story on that which I am willing to share with any of you whom I ever meet in person.
How’s Globalism threating you lately ?
The Problem is a world money supply that moves from one location to another without regard to true sustainable demand .It’s all about
creating markets rather than a viable need . How many markets were depending on the speculators ,or the second home demand, or the rich
retiring Baby Boomers, or the snowbirds from Canada,or a flipper in the United States ? How about Spain where they were building second homes for God knows who .
Bankers that control the money supply that have the power to create
markets by Ponzi-scheme and faulty lending are at the heart of the problem . Remember how the equity locust were going all over the United States looking for the next great place to invest and flip . The
flippers who were given money so easy would move into a location ,raise the prices by the demand ,than sell to a new flipper and the greater fool that got caught in the crash and was left holding the bag. People buying for short term investment periods with the how do we lose because real estate always goes up were shattered when they couldn’t sell at a profit .
This was a who is the greater fool that gets left holding the bag when it crashes . In this case because of bail outs we the people get a good portion of the loss transfered to us .
As I see it there is great responsibility in lending dollars being doled out correctly and prudently . Does the Greed Machine of Wall Street middled men care about the leverage games they play and lure the sheep into playing ? Lending is a local function where you limit speculation and at the very least require huge down payments for speculators with the rents matching the investment dollars .
Giving home loans with the idea that with rising prices one could refinance or sell to afford the home is a faulty model but the Money Changers couldn’t see that being a absurd model . Not preventing fraud
either was the new age lending model ? So just what function did the Lenders serve if they breached all duty to make prudent loans ? Their duty was to make money and pass the mis-rated risk to the sucker . The Wall Street Money Changers say there was big demand for these CDO’s ,but does’n't that have something to do with their mis-ratings and taking a analysis of the market in the early stages of a Ponzi -scheme where you can claim a low default rate ?
Ponzi-schemes and faulty lending are Wall Street Middle mens game ,so that job should be taken away from them because they will always abuse it in their greed base commission motive and tendency to not risk rate correctly . It’s no risk to them ,it’s not their money.
If these con men of Wall Street could create this sort of fake inflation of property World wide ,than they can’t be Lenders . I don’t accept their BS PR campaign that markets always crash because this is just a excuse for their faulty off the charts historic Ponzi-scheme that crashed . Markets were pretty stable for 60 years with minor corrections that certainly weren’t a Nation-wide crash . You might get hit in a area because a industry closed down, but that would be limited to that area and down payments and prudent refinances would limit the loss.
The faulty low down lending got us in such a bind that they can’t even
get away from it and it continues as the Government being the insurer of loans right now .
If you make these TBTF smaller ,but in combination they could still
create a fake market and crash everything ,in part because of the regulated mixed with the unregulated ,than breaking them up will not
stop the casino games and potential risk of TBTF crashes . IMHO
The SEC needs some real teeth and EVERY financial scam, er, instrument, should be regulated WITHOUT EXCEPTION.
This is the pickup line my junior high school chum used to sing as part of his attempts to win over unsuspecting fourteen-year-old girls’ hearts and trust:
“If you want it, here it is, come and get it, but you better hurry ’cause it’s going fast. If you want it, here it is, come and get it, but you better hurry ’cause it may not last.”
California homebuyer tax credit going, going
By Eve Mitchell
Oakland Tribune
Posted: 05/05/2010 04:15:18 PM PDT
Updated: 05/07/2010 05:48:43 AM PDT
The popular state homebuyer tax credit returned Saturday after running out of money last year in just four months. But if you’re interested in obtaining the tax break to help reduce the cost of buying a home, you better act fast.
Funding for the credit could be used up within three weeks, said Michael Tessaro, a Realtor with East Bay brokerage J. Rockcliff Realtors and a director with the California Association of Realtors.
Association economists are projecting that funding set aside for the tax credit will be used up quickly, thanks to an expected flood of delayed closings by homeowners who hope to qualify for both the state and federal credits.
“(The state credit) is expected to run out of money in two to three weeks “… based on the number of closings in the pipeline. It’s going to be done and over with very quickly,” Tessaro said.
The federal homebuying credits, which provide up to $8,000 for first-time buyers and up to $6,500 for qualified repeat buyers, have a June 30 deadline for closing escrow in cases in which buyers signed a binding purchase contract by April 30.
The state credit, worth up to $10,000 over a three-year period, became effective May 1 and can be used by two groups of taxpayers: First-time and repeat buyers of new homes and first-time buyers of existing homes.
To claim the credit, first-time buyers of existing homes have until Dec. 31 to close escrow, or until program funding runs out.
…
Did I hear you say
That there must be a catch
Would you walk away
From a fool and his money?
Honey!
(actual lyrics)
ELIAS: Once left for dead, Poizner makes it a race
RACE FOR GOVERNOR: REPUBLICANS DUEL
By THOMAS D. ELIAS | Posted: May 9, 2010 12:01 am
…
For almost a month, public polls and private surveys by both Republican and Democratic politicians have shown Poizner narrowing a gap that once had him as far as 50 percentage points behind Whitman, the former eBay chief executive who has spent more than $60 million so far, barraging Californians with seemingly ubiquitous radio and television commercials for the last eight months.
Poizner, by contrast, chose to husband his money and didn’t begin his own ad campaign until mid-March. Six weeks into that effort, he had shaved between 20 and 30 percentage points off Whitman’s lead, causing her to stop talking much about her putative fall campaign against Brown and revert to earlier attacks on Poizner.
“We’re running as if we were 20 points behind,” Whitman press secretary Sarah Pompei said. “We are taking nothing for granted.”
That’s a switch for Whitman, who told some audiences in March the Republican primary race was over.
This doesn’t surprise Poizner, who said all along that Whitman’s support might have been wide, but was also paper-thin and would drop away when he went after her. His latest and most biting ads, which rip Whitman’s decade-long close ties to the scandal-ridden investment banking house of Goldman Sachs, do not even figure into the latest polling results. Nor does the pair’s May 2 debate, where Whitman turned plaintively to the camera and said to viewers, “I ask you not to judge me on the mistakes I’ve made, but on my ideas.” Translation: Please watch what I say, not what I do.
…
“I ask you not to judge me on the mistakes I’ve made, but on my ideas.”
Translation: “Foolish herd creatures, fall once again for meaningless platitudes and meaningless promises. Give me the slim majority I need to get into office, where I can open up the henhouse to my Wall Street predator pals and facilitate their asset-stripping and unbridled corporatist looting until the next election or my recall, whichever comes first.”
Whoh, I could apply that translation to…
do ya think I would like to have a beer with Meg Whitman?
“I ask you not to judge me on the mistakes I’ve made, but on my ideas.”
Ideas are a dime a dozen.
Possible Whitman campaign slogan:
“What’s good for Gollum is good for California.”
I am just keeping my mouth shut on this bit of news:
May 9, 2010, 6:00 a.m. EDT
Single women outpace single men in real-estate market
By Eleanor Goldberg, Medill News Service
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — For Mother’s Day, flowers and chocolate are nice, but watching your single daughter take the lead in the real-estate market may be even nicer.
Unmarried women accounted for 21% of home purchases in 2009, while unwed males were 10% of the buyers, according to a National Association of Realtors report in November. It’s a dramatic shift from 1981, the first year the numbers were tracked, when single women and men each accounted for 10% of home sales.
…
A lot of these young single women are going to be reaching “understandings” with paunchy but financially secure dudes with comb-overs and halitosis so they can avoid ending up on the street.
Single childless males don’t fit in SFH neighborhoods. Lots of neighbors look upon them with suspicion even though they are not registered offenders. The cultures are very different. Been there, done that, prefer multiple unit dwellings.
LOL, Bill. I remember when we moved to Santa Monica for a year when I was doing a fellowship and my husband was home with the kids. He volunteered to help in my son’s second grade class and the Santa Monica housewives looked at him like he was a molester and ostracized him. It’s hard to be a man in a woman’s world. Almost as hard as being a woman in the much larger man’s world.
Seems like reverse sexism, ageism and racism are all the rage these days.
It just proves how bad of a situation for younger males is. Women are getting ahead in most areas and while men are lagging behind everywhere.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100509/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_germany_election_5
German voters punishing globalist Angel Merkel for pushing through a futile bailout of Greece.
New York Times on Freddie and Fannie:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/business/09gret.html?ref=business
“IF you blinked, you might have missed the ugly first-quarter report last week from Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giant that, along with its sister Fannie Mae, soldiers on as one of the financial world’s biggest wards of the state. Freddie — already propped up with $52 billion in taxpayer funds used to rescue the company from its own mistakes — recorded a loss of $6.7 billion and said it would require an additional $10.6 billion from taxpayers to shore up its financial position.”
“I don’t understand why people are not talking about it,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, referring to Freddie’s losses. “It seems to me the most fundamental question is, have they on an ongoing basis been paying too much for loans even since they went into conservatorship?”
“I don’t understand why people are not talking about it,”
-who would listen?
+1
“It seems to me the most fundamental question is, have they on an ongoing basis been paying too much for loans even since they went into conservatorship?”
Well d’oh…
Goldman want lesser charge plea, according to Telegraph:
The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that the US investment bank has already opened an informal negotiating channel with the SEC over the charges which focus on a sub-prime mortgage financial vehicle called Abacus.
As part of the move on negligence, Goldman will insist that there will be no admission of wrong-doing but that it will be willing to pay a financial penalty for poor processes, for example.
…
A senior figure close to the bank said that Goldman would never “win a battle” against the regulator and so the bank had to find a resolution. The source also revealed that Tim Geithner, the Treasury Secretary, and the Federal Reserve also wanted to see a solution to the dispute. The bank has seen millions of dollars wiped off its value following the charges after investors became concerned about the impact of a drawn out criminal process.
The slap on the wrist we all predicted. The incestuous relationship between regulators, Wall Street, and the Administration continues.
I will be happy with whatever legal outcome is reached for Gollum, provided any crooks involved serve time in prison.
serve time? nah.. it was a simple matter of extortion from the get-go.
Now BO and friends’ only concern is how much they will have to party with. Not gonna be anywhere near the cost of his inauguration, but it should be a nice little chunk of change..
“…it was a simple matter of extortion from the get-go.”
Be that as it may, these sort of events have a way of taking on a life of their own. What started out as simple extortion could easily morph into a serious demand by the American public to extract retributive justice from the bankers in the form of pounds of flesh.
The vampire squid takes solace in its knowledge that ripping it from the face of America would be fatal to the host. A mere slap on the tentacle it will have to be.
“…ripping it from the face of America would be fatal to the host.”
Why do you buy into Gollum’s propaganda? I can imagine many of the pre-1776 colonists making similar remarks about England.
“As part of the move on negligence, Goldman will insist that there will be no admission of wrong-doing but that it will be willing to pay a financial penalty for poor processes, for example.”
Screw that BS…”Get a rope boys !!”
“….insist that there will be no admission of wrong-doing but that it will be willing to pay a financial penalty…”
In the real world, we know you’re guilty as sin.
One day this legal fiction will be outlawed.
Strange thought for the day: if the Fed takes massive losses on the toxic MBS crap that they took off the bank’s balance sheets, will we ever even know it?
I know that they report their assets; presumably as the MBSes are retired, their balance-sheet reporting will show that.
But will they even have to report the losses? Or can they just sweep it under the rug of other “earnings”?
If a tree fell in the woods and nobody was within shouting distance, would there be a sound?
If a capitalist society fell would anyone make a sound? Not much noise so far.
Again, this is why it’s so important to audit the Fed. And why they are panicked about the idea of being exposed to scrutiny.
Bernie Sanders just sold out Ron Paul. The Fed and its creatures are really turning up the heat.
Reid rejects Wall St money during reform battle
Fri May 7, 2010 4:48pm EDT
* Democrat already has $1.5 million from financial sector
* Reform portrayed as fight against Wall St lobbyists
WASHINGTON, May 7 (Reuters) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has decided to stop accepting campaign money from Wall Street firms while the financial reform battle continues in the Senate, his office said on Friday.
“We … thought it would be appropriate to not accept contributions from Wall Street firms during the time Senator Reid is fighting big banking special interests,” said a statement issued by Reid’s office.
“In fact, some Wall Street PACs have tried to donate and we have sent their checks back to them,” it added.
The move is unlikely to mean much for the Nevada Democrat’s 2010 campaign war chest. Reid, facing a tough re-election contest in November, already raised $1.5 million from the financial, insurance and real estate sector before the floor debate began on April 29, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.
Reid and other Democrats including President Barack Obama have tried to portray their efforts to secure the biggest U.S. financial overhaul since the Great Depression as a fight against Wall Street lobbyists.
The lawmaker suspended contributions from Wall Street political action committees when it became clear that Senate Republicans would allow a floor debate on Democratic reform proposals, a Reid aide said.
The debate could last for much of May. But neither Reid’s aide nor the statement said when the Democratic leader expected to resume collecting Wall Street PAC money.
Corporate PAC money consists mainly of donations from employees. But PAC spending is often directed by executives keenly aware of their companies’ political interests.
Reid has received more than $660,000 from securities and investment firms and associated individuals since the 2010 election cycle began on JaAn. 1, 2009. That makes him the industry’s second biggest beneficiary after Democrat Charles Schumer of New York, who has received $1.6 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
The Senate majority leader has also raised money from other industries with stakes in the reform debate’s outcome, including $131,400 from insurance interests, $35,700 from the commercial bank industry and $330,426 from real estate companies and related individuals. (Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Peter Cooney)
…
My wife said Reid can make these kind of remarks because “he is a convert” to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
P.S. That name doesn’t quite pass the Occum’s Razor test, does it?
May 6, 2010
Reid says Republicans ‘making love to Wall Street’
Posted: May 6th, 2010 04:23 AM ET
From CNN’s Charles Riley
Washington (CNN) - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lobbed an unusual accusation at his Republicans colleagues Wednesday, saying they are looking for a way to “continue making love to Wall Street.”
“Republicans are having difficulty determining how they are going to continue making love to Wall Street,” Reid said at a news conference, before adding that “It’s obvious that they don’t want to put any decent restrictions on what Wall Street has done or are doing.”
While Democrats and Republicans have accused each other of being to cozy with Wall Street, Reid’s remarks went a step too far for the GOP.
“Considering Nevada’s unemployment stands at 13%, Senator Reid would be well-advised to get his mind off sex and onto getting America’s economy back on track,” National Republican Senatorial Committee Communications Director Brian Walsh said in a statement to CNN.
Reid, though, is standing by his comment. When asked by CNN about the remark, Reid spokesman Jim Manley replied, “What can I say? It’s true.”
…
Indeed it is true.
When asked by CNN about the remark, Reid spokesman Jim Manley replied, “What can I say? It’s true.”
The dimwit could have said “Walsh has a filthy mind. There’s a big difference between “making love” and “having sex”.”
..immediately ingratiating himself with the female half of the population.
YO Blood Boiling time:
An illegal immigrant with a long rap sheet got a $145,000 parting gift from New York City taxpayers before he was deported, after a federal judge ruled his civil rights had been violated when he was held too long on Rikers Island.
Federal rules allow local law enforcement to detain suspected illegal immigrants for 48 hours after their criminal cases are resolved, to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement a chance to pick them up and move them to federal facilities.
Former Brooklyn resident Cecil Harvey, 55 — backed by an immigration-rights advocacy group — argued that his rights were violated when he spent more than a month in a Rikers holding pen before being transferred to ICE.
Harvey was shipped to his native Barbados in October 2007; the city settled his civil suit late last year.
The landmark settlement has prompted the Correction Department to dump scores of illegal immigrants on the streets, since federal officials often fail to pick them up within the required two-day window.
Federal immigration agents have office space on Rikers Island, and the city allows them to interview roughly 4,000 inmates each year. They put a hold, or “detainer,” on 3,200 of those inmates who they discover are illegals.
But ICE often fails to transfer those detainees within the required 48 hours of their criminal cases being resolved, multiple jail sources said.
“We just release them now,” one high-ranking jail supervisor said. “It’s ICE’s problem to go find these guys.”
Harvey, a 55-year-old father of three, with three prior arrests, spent 35 days on Rikers, when he should have been moved to ICE.
On Dec. 2, 2003, cops busted him in Bedford-Stuyvesant shortly after midnight for drinking a bottle of Bacardi in public. Police said they found “crack cocaine residue” in his pocket.
He pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor drug charge and the judge ordered him released on his own recognizance, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.
He was eventually delivered to ICE, but released pending an appeal of his status. After he was arrested again on a warrant for missing his court date on his drug case while in federal custody, Harvey was held on Rikers for another month before being transferred to an ICE center in Alabama.
” I cannot speak for Rikers as to why he was not released to us within 48 hours,” said ICE spokesman Harold Ort. “ICE lodges a detainer on removable aliens and the jail then contacts us when the alien is ready to be picked up by ICE.”
A city Law Department representative called the Harvey case an “unfortunate occurrence,” but maintained it was an isolated mistake.
“The Department of Correction has tightened its procedures to prevent a reoccurrence,” said Muriel Goode-Trufant, head of the city’s federal litigation division.
rblau@nypost.com
FUBAR on every level.
This is circulating the internet. I cut and paste, so sorry for the all caps. We’re so skrewed up.
LET ME SEE IF I GOT THIS RIGHT
IF YOU CROSS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET 12 YEARS HARD LABOR.
IF YOU CROSS THE IRANIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU ARE DETAINED INDEFINITELY.
IF YOU CROSS THE AFGHAN BORDER ILLEGALLY, YOU GET SHOT.
IF YOU CROSS THE SAUDI ARABIAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE JAILED.
IF YOU CROSS THE CHINESE BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU MAY NEVER BE HEARD FROM AGAIN.
IF YOU CROSS THE VENEZUELAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE BRANDED A SPY AND YOUR FATE WILL BE SEALED.
IF YOU CROSS THE CUBAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE THROWN INTO POLITICAL PRISON TO ROT.
IF YOU CROSS THE U.S. BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET…
A JOB,
DRIVERS LICENSE,
SOCIAL SECURITY CARD,
WELFARE,
FOOD STAMPS,
CREDIT CARDS,
SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE,
FREE EDUCATION,
FREE HEALTH CARE,
A LOBBYIST IN WASHINGTON
BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PRINTED IN YOUR LANGUAGE
THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR COUNTRY’S FLAG WHILE YOU PROTEST THAT YOU DON’T GET ENOUGH RESPECT
AND, IN MANY INSTANCES, YOU CAN VOTE.
I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE I HAD A FIRM GRASP ON THE SITUATION
Few people have the courage to cut all ties, leave everything behind and take that first step into the unknown. The USA recognizes the great potential that sort of person offers to the country, and makes an effort to attract them.
To try to get in illegally requires additional qualities.. you have to be clever.. stealthy.. and willing to brave being arrested or worse.
Our ancestors were of this rare breed, but how few of us are?
Cut all ties…except the ones between Western Union and Mexico, and between Verizon and Mexico. Oh, and the ties between you and the rest of your “family” that you sponsored because you absolutely MUSt have them with you here. Not to mention the very close ties between you and your wife — winkwink nudgenudge say-no-more — which is where the welfare comes from.
Another additional quality is to work for less than minimum wage in unsafe conditions.
Kim
With all the entitlements you listed, you also get the right:
*To break laws
*Make noise at any hour w/ no consideration for others
*Bad mouth Americans
*Leave trash all over the ground
*Shop lift and teach your offspring to do the same
*Not follow common sanitation habits, like washing your hands after using the bathroom, and before serving food to the public
*Leave public bathrooms filthy
I could go on, but I’m a lady….
It’s a cultural thing. Americans, in general, aren’t primitive, while some cultures are.
EU has secured their own version on TARP…nothing left to see here. Move along (and forget all about that little unexplained plunge last week).
$1 Trillion.
U.S. appears to be on the hook for about $50 billion of it, via the IMF.
Nice.
link
EU Approves €750 Billion Bailout
BRUSSELS—The European Union agreed an audacious €750 billion bailout plan in an effort to stanch a burgeoning sovereign debt crisis that began in Greece but now threatens the stability of financial markets world-wide.
The money would be available to rescue euro-zone economies that get into financial troubles, the diplomats said. The plan would consist of €440 billion of loans from euro-zone governments, €60 billion from an EU emergency fund, and €250 billion from the International Monetary Fund.
Based on Obama’s comments from the other day (this loan can be considered as assets from the U.S.’s standpoint), I wonder if there’s an intent to handle this differently than the TARP - i.e. “off the books”? I wonder if it’ll come from the Treasury or directly from the Fed. Probably the latter, via more QE.
Bernanke’s helicopter crosses national borders and vast oceans. Got gold?
“WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve late Sunday opened a program to ship U.S. dollars to Europe in a move to head off a broader financial crisis on the continent.
Other central banks, including the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Japan also are involved in the dollar swap effort.
The move comes after the European Union and International Monetary Fund pledged a nearly $1 trillion defense package for the embattled euro, hoping to calm jittery markets and halt attacks on the eurozone’s weakest members. The ECB also jumped into the bond market Sunday night, saying it is ready to buy eurozone bonds to shore up liquidity in “dysfunctional” markets.”
Boy, late to the blog as usual. Too bad, this is a goodie.
Exeter, this one’s for you!
Hartford Courant, May 9th - by Don Stacom
Connecticut Summer Could be Gloomy for Taxpayers
After dodging and weaving through financial threats for years, officials in many Connecticut municipalities predict that this summer is when taxpayers will have to face an unpopular new reality: It’s time to pay more and get less.
Expenses are up, income is plunging and the quick, one-time fixes have been used already. The reserves are spent, the surplus land is gone, the debt restructurings are played out.
That means an unwelcome flip of the standard budget scenario this summer. Usually, small tax increases are enough to allow significant extra spending on schools and municipal services. But this summer many towns and cities will extend hiring freezes, postpone road repairs, cut popular services and possibly lay off more workers — but still levy significant tax increases just to balance the books.
Mid-size cities are getting hit especially hard, according to preliminary budget proposals. Bristol wants to bump up spending by $439,000, but taxpayers will have to put up an extra $6.4 million. New Britain is considering a 2.5 percent spending increase, but proposes to raise taxes by 7 percent.
Middletown’s situation is particularly difficult. Schools and city services are costing $129.7 million this year, and Mayor Sebastian Giuliano is proposing to cut that by $200,000 for the new fiscal year that starts July 1. Even so, the city will have to hit property owners with a hefty 7 percent tax increase.
“You tell citizens ‘We’re spending less,’ and they expect everything will stay the same. They think ‘Why would taxes go up?’” Giuliano said.
Windsor Locks and Groton also plan to raise taxes even though they’ll spend less next year than this year.
What’s gone wrong?
The ongoing financial crisis is the most immediate answer. City managers have been warning that the impact of frozen economic development and beaten-down pension funds would hit local governments hardest from 2010 through 2012, or longer.
The recession damaged nearly every source of revenue that fuels government. Construction stalled, eating into fees for permits. The housing market plunged, cutting conveyance tax receipts. Tax bases stopped expanding, and in many communities actually shrank. Investment income evaporated. Connecticut sank into a multibillion-dollar deficit and shut off the flow of new school aid to towns and cities.
“Revenue streams such as interest income, building fees and conveyance charges remain stagnant,” said Ann Harter, Newington’s finance director. “The grand list growth is minimal and there is a threat of state cuts to funding municipal aid which could be severe.”
There’s more. The comments are especially fetching.
BWAAAHAAAAAHAAAAHAAAAA! (FPSS tm)
60 Minutes had a segment on strategic defaults. And, surprisingly, it was well balanced:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6470184n
For a basic report, it was reasonablly well done.
I was taken with the change in attitude - the homeowners were taking an ‘option’ in the contract to ‘walk away’ in non-recourse states. If that catches - watch out in states like Arizona and CA.
neuromance
Thank you for the link. I watched it with objectively, and the only homemoaner I had any respect for was the $1.2M guy. He understood his obligation to a contract (for now). He seemed to be the only one to really have no sense of entitlement. I can see the business decision side too.
The housing market in So Ca is still an over priced mess.
Not that well balanced. For example, they didn’t say that, if the Government were to force the banks to give cram downs, then these people will get tax free income worth hundreds of thousands of dollars! (The forgiven debt.)
I thought the two deadbeat couples they interviewed had an interesting contrast.
One of them said, correctly, that’s it’s simply a business decision. The contract allowed for it. This person is moral.
The second, amoral couple–the ones with the young kid–said they weren’t going to do it UNTIL they were “mistreated” by the bank! (Imagine that! They want their money back.) These people wouldn’t know right from wrong if it bit them in their arse.
Reuven
Good analysis. That “yuppie” looking couple with their kid really were scum, imho. The reason I respect the $1.2M homeowner, is he climbed the ladder of success and still had a sense of right and wrong. In my world, your word is your honor, let alone a contract is a legal binding document. Now it’s become “who cares”.
Sounds like the Eurozone has imported the Fed’s as-yet inconclusively tested electroshock therapy treatment for schizophrenic credit markets. I guess with enough hair-of-the-dog, the hung over drunkard becomes too pickled to feel the pain any longer?
Message of ‘shock and awe’ sent to markets
By Tony Barber and Ben Hall in Brussels
Published: May 9 2010 23:58 | Last updated: May 10 2010 02:57
Germany, France and the eurozone’s 14 other countries early Monday morning delivered the “shock and awe” message to financial markets that had eluded them ever since the Greek debt crisis exploded last October.
In an initiative that far exceeded any measure announced by European governments over the past seven months, eurozone finance ministers committed their nations to a €500bn ($644bn, £436bn) emergency facility to protect the euro area from potential disaster. With the aid of a further €220bn from the International Monetary Fund, the total rescue package hit a massive €720bn.
The emergency measures consist of a €440bn programme of government-backed loan guarantees for any eurozone country facing serious debt difficulties, and a €60bn increase in a balance of payment facility. Only eurozone governments will contribute to the first element of the plan. All 27 European Union states will contribute to the second element.
The rescue operation was unveiled in an attempt to persuade markets once and for all that governments would do whatever it took to save their monetary union, a foundation stone of European integration.
“The idea is to send the markets the message that this facility is in place and will be used if needed,” one EU diplomat said.
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EDITOR’S CHOICE
EU and IMF agree €720bn boost for rescue plan - May-10
Editorial Comment: Time for Athens to join Europe - May-09
Wolfgang Münchau: Eurozone responsibility - May-09
Lex: Reality bites - May-09
Speculators extend record bets against euro - May-09
Trichet resists political interference amid crisis - May-09
I guess one way to maintain your nation’s reserve currency status is to bail out other nations from their sovereign debt crises.
Natural question to ponder: Was Thursday’s “fat finger” due to a leak of plans for the Fed’s Shock and Awe campaign? If so, who was the leaker, who was the leakee, and was insider trading involved?
Seems like there may be lots of non-monetary-policy ground for a Congressional audit of the Fed to cover.
Fed Intervenes in European Debt Crisis
By SEWELL CHAN
Published: May 10, 2010
WASHINGTON — After months of quietly watching from the sidelines, the United States finally intervened in the European debt crisis on Sunday night.
The Federal Reserve announced that it would open currency swap lines with the European Central Bank — in essence, printing dollars and exchanging them for euros to provide some liquidity for European money markets and banks.
The step came after a hectic week in which Washington began to fear that the sovereign debt crisis threatened to infect the American economy and hamper its recovery, according to several United States officials.
The Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s policy-making arm, approved the swap lines in a vote taken by videoconference on Sunday morning. The European Central Bank’s president, Jean-Claude Trichet, asked for the Fed’s help in a telephone call on Saturday with the Fed’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke.
The intervention, which also involves the central banks of England, Switzerland, Canada and Japan, is part of a colossal package intended to quell the restive credit markets with a show of force and resolve that American policymakers had quietly believed was lacking. The package has two other elements: about $950 billion in loan guarantees from the European Union, and a decision by the European Central Bank to intervene in the bond markets through a series of refinancing operations.
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Did insider trading trigger Thursday’s stock market tornado?
Bloomberg
Stocks ‘Tornado’ Pressures SEC to Regulate Electronic Trading
May 10, 2010, 12:16 AM EDT
More From Businessweek
By Jesse Westbrook and David Scheer
May 10 (Bloomberg) — U.S. regulators face pressure to show they have a grip on stock markets that are increasingly fragmented and dominated by computers after last week’s plunge fueled lawmaker concerns about electronic trading.