Bits Bucket For August 5, 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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Taint enough…
$26 billion for states passes key test vote.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The Senate overcame a key procedural hurdle Wednesday to send $26 billion more in federal aid to cash-strapped states.
The measure, which passed by a 61-38 vote, contains $16.1 billion in additional Medicaid money and $10 billion to prevent layoffs of teachers and first responders.
State officials have been desperately lobbying their representatives, saying they need the money to shore up their budgets. About 30 states had already included the additional Medicaid funds in their fiscal 2011 budgets, which began July 1, and would have to cut further if it doesn’t come through. The bill is expected to save 290,000 jobs, according to Senate Democrats.
President Obama also weighed in Monday, asking lawmakers to pass the additional assistance to the states, which has been kicking around Congress in various forms for months.
“Taint enough…”
Not even close. And then there’s next year, and the year after.
The fundamentals of the problems needs to be addressed.
Seems like the problem would first need to be honestly recognized and openly discussed before one could even begin to address fundamentals.
Or is continued dinial and pretending the preferred way forward?
“Seems like the problem would first need to be honestly recognized and openly discussed…”
It might help if the proper words were used. California says it wants to balance its budget in part by selling bonds. Selling bonds is just another way of borrowing money. The state doesn’t openly say “We want to balance our budget by borrowing money”, it uses other words to describe this borrowing. But borrowing money is why California is in the fix it is in now, borrowing and spending. Until this fact is recognized and dealt with the problem will never get solved.
It’s time for some fundamental changes to the way taxes are levied and paid. States’ rights movement would be a good start. ALL taxes (income and otherwise) paid to the states, they take the cut they need, and then remitted to the fedgov.
This would cut down on wars, sprawling spy agencies, ridiculous aid programs, etc.
The fedgov should be beggars to the states, not the other way around.
Such a system would also impose self-discipline on the states. If Indiana can do it, so can California, Michigan, Florida, New York, etc.
Such a system would do anything but impose self-discipline on the states. We may have fewer wars and less FBI, but think all the Parks & Rec the states would suddenly “need.”
I’d rather have parks and roads without potholes over wars.
“dinial”
The accidental sniglet: “din” + “denial” = “dinial”
Dude it’s just more of the spending our way to prosperity plan.
More non-productive government jobs, or minimally productive. (Perhaps teachers can be considered productive… not in any way that would help balance out the fiscal mess with trade goods.)
Meanwhile we have the democrats looking at tax increases and no discussion of effect on jobs of tax increases. No one is comparing our tax structure to other competitors either.
Stupid socialist governors are talking about making even higher taxes all over the place. Unionists are revving up to go after fiscally conservative candidates.
Somehow, the socialists don’t get that increasing govt employment isn’t going to help the economy in the near or short term. Just add lots of bureaucracy and “oversight”. They can’t seem to figure out we ought to be sending federal troops to secure the US border with Mexico.
Now it sounds like we are going to release a bunch of junkies from jail.
Oh and to further the progress to banana republic stage, we have a bunch of federal judges legislating from the bench to over turn the immigration laws and legalize gay marriage.
Meanwhile the government is busy “fixing” healthcare and GM.
Yeah. Things are going pretty well just about now. Time to make a careful move to the exits.
” Unionists are revving up to go after fiscally conservative candidates.”
I read “Unicornists”.
Meanwhile we have the democrats looking at tax increases
Just Democrats James? Nahh. Here’s Republican David Stockman, the director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan, “looking” at one too.
Four Deformations of the Apocalypse nyt 7/31/10 David Stockman
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=general&src=me
IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing.
It is…unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase
Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts…
But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.
This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.
In 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts, matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment.
(But) Soon, the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget — entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion.
The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector. Here, Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation.
The fourth destructive change has been the hollowing out of the larger American economy. Having lived beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore.
It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.
The day of national reckoning has arrived…it’s a pity that the modern Republican Party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism…
Ya know, my “TrueBeliever’s™” / “TruePurity™” siblings have been very very quite regarding the family Thanksgiving feast this year, kinda peaceful…darn, just when Hollywood is production with Captain America.
“It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.
The day of national reckoning has arrived…it’s a pity that the modern Republican Party offers the American people an irrelevant platform of recycled Keynesianism…”
Previously:
Shrub was all about limiting taxes on capital gains and dividends. Nice, if you understand what that means. He wanted to place nearly all taxation on paychecks, 80% of the average persons yearly income, 50% and lower for the wealthy. Incorporate the estate tax into the equation and you begin to get the picture.
Take your millions, invest it, inherit it, all free of taxation while the average American gets ripped off due to the complications of the tax code/emphasis on paycheck income.
“Stupid socialist governors are talking about making even higher taxes all over the place. Unionists are revving up to go after fiscally conservative candidates.”
I’m a card carrying pagan Druid(Socialist). I am a pagan Druid mainly to scare off Fanatical Christains and neocons.(This is cheaper in the long run that having my dog merely biting them)
Of couse I’m not a Socialist by choise but by their “If you’re NOT with us, you’re Aganst us” Association-Non Association clause in the local GOP Clue? Klutz Klan by-laws.
They don’t have anything to do or say except Socialist here and Socialist there and Socialist damned near..everywhere. Oh, that and a wink and a
The fact that they sling the word “socialist” around so much, tell me they haven’t seen a “real socialist” yet.
I find it humorous that I’ve morphed from “conservative” to “socialist” in10 years, and the only thing that has changed is my opinion that the financial industry need to pay (either with money, new regulation, or jail time, or better yet, all three) for this Charlie-Foxtrot they had a big hand in creating.
continued
…Sweetlips Caribuo Barbie.
I really like this other fellow Socialist guy Obama. He’s fun, gets the conservates really mad and he’s very entertaining scrambling around trying to clean up the past GOP disasters and trying to keep the entire ship from sinking. Damage Control AFTER the GOP is thankless work.
Unlike me, they like to call him a Socialist and stuff for different reasons. I think that it’s because he’s a black guy in case you hadn’t noticed.
The GOP is really in one hell of a political pickle because they can’t come out in the open and call him really bad and horrible black man names because the entire nation and the world would rip their racist hearts out and shred them into tiny little political pieces.
So, they call him a deadly, evil doer “Socialist” as well as everyone else that doesn’t believe in or agree with their lunacy.
Hello, my name is mikey and I think …I’m a “Socialist”, a liberal and an commie-type evil doer.
Charlie Foxtrot? The whole financial industry has been Tango Uniform for a while.
trying to clean up the past GOP disasters and trying to keep the entire ship from sinking.
Man, the kool-aid you drink must be real strong if you truly believe in nonsense like that. You get no defense of Bush and Neocons from me, but to suggest to that O and Democrats are trying to clean up the past mistakes is so laughable.
he’s a black guy in case you hadn’t noticed.
It’s so predictable, isn’t it? Sure play the race card every time you find yourself in deep hole…….
Ha ha..Points proven.
Now just don’t get mad, trip on your sheet and try to sue me.
If your only defense of Socialism or whatever Total Government “ism” you choose is to say Bush was worse, I think you lose the argument.
Bush is also a progressive. Progressives want Total Government. The only difference between a bush like progressive and an Obama like progressive is the speed at which they produce the desired result.
The reasons Total Government progressives did not like Bush are that he had an “R” behind his title, the Iraq war and that he talked about his faith. Otherwise he was taking progressives down the road they desire, just at a slower pace.
“The fundamentals of the problems needs to be addressed”
As in just exactly why do we need the thing called the Federal Reserve breaking every letter of its chartered written law everyday; even involved in our future?
Get rid of the Fed and you’re on your way to pulling the vampire squid out of your throat so you can actually live and prosper…
That’s what I call “fundamental”
“…the Federal Reserve breaking every letter of its chartered written law everyday…”
Would you consider offering a shard of evidence or two in support of your rather strongly worded claim?
Telling … no reply.
Much of the pain from the enhanced and underfunded pensions has been put off to FY 2012. That’s when all the federal aid is scheduled to expire. And it has been my deadline for state and local government collapse for some time.
Unless people keep lending them money, in which case the collapse will be greater and younger generations worse off, but the game could perhaps be kept going for a year or two.
With Federal money, the game could go on for some time, perhaps another decade. The really scary thing about it is that it will create a privileged government class paid with printed money, while the private sector continues to be taxed at ever greater rates to keep up with the bloat.
What people do not realize is that MORE money is not the answer for schools and local / state / federal governments. Here in California we give our schools around 50% of the total state budget, while rewarding parents who have ever more children with tax credits. The schools performance has dropped dramatically, wages have risen massively during this time, and the hordes of administrative staff has bloomed into a monster which cannot be fed enough. This seems to be true of all levels of government. An entitlement group with an unending appetite for MORE!
Seems to me like a multi-billion dollar federal rescue measure needs to pass every week from now on to keep the whole show going.
When will it ever end? Printing money out of thin air will become worthless.It’s now only a matter of time.
California, and especially San Diego, needs to get its public pension costs fixed.
They are floating a sales tax hike to fix that, NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
San Diego’s Attorney General makes $250,000 a yr, but the US AG Eric Holder makes $175,000 a yr. There is no reason a local AG should be paid more than the countries top lawyer.
California will soon take in less than it pays out in pensions and they have already cut services to the bone. The courts won’t let them over turn pensions without bankruptcy, even illegally granted ones like San Diego and the voters won’t let them raise taxes without supermajority. So California better figure out this pension mess because the Federal govt and other states tax payers can’t continue to bail them out.
Failures occur, and there has long been a remedy, it’s called foreclosure. Count on big nanny to keep stepping in and gumming up the works.The continued slow bleed.
$138 million OK’d for S.C. homeowners
Federal money could allow thousands of state residents in crisis to avoid foreclosure.~ The State ~ Aug. 05, 2010
As many as 15,000 South Carolina homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages after a job loss, death or divorce could get cash to save their homes from foreclosure under a new $138 million federally funded program.
“This program is different from anything that’s gone before,” said Clayton Ingram, spokesman for the S.C. State Housing Finance & Development Authority.
The money should be available starting this fall until it runs out. The authority, which created a nonprofit called the S.C. Housing Corp. to handle the program, predicts the money should help 11,000-15,000 homeowners.
“A lot of people are finding themselves out of work and unable to pay their mortgage,” Ingram said. “We’re hoping to target these funds toward individuals who find themselves in these circumstances through no fault of their own.”
Homeowners could get help with monthly payments for up to six months while they look for work, or money to pay for late payments and fees if they have found work but can’t get caught up.
“Sometimes it’s as little as a few thousand dollars that makes the difference,” he said. “Even though it may be small, it’s insurmountable for some (homeowners).”
Line up for your free money. $15,000 or so per FB, but only while supplies last.
Disgusting.
How soon will that woman’s belief indeed be true that “Obama’s going to pay my mortgage…”
No, My mortgage gets paid first!
No Jerry it’s
My Landlord gets paid First…..and my mortgage well we’ll see if i have anything left over
Seems like that woman that everybody made fun of had an inside track on the significance of electing the obominator. It’ll work for her. Meanwhile, here in N. Ohio, the 3rd shift of the local Alcoa plant is history; 71 more potential obamavoters.
Interesting, didn’t Alcoa just have a “great quarter”? So why are they laying more people off? Could it be so that they can have an even “greater quarter” next time?
I think I’ve seen this movie before… all the FBs in the state will make two more mortgage payments so they can “qualify”. Fewer than 3,000 people will be helped until the program “unexpectedly” runs out of funds. Two to six months later, those 3,000 that were helped will be in the weeds again.
Bingo. Peachy keen way of funneling yet more millions directly to the banks without actually helping any of the little people.
Now taxpayers are on the hook to pay the mortgage if someone dies or is divorced? “Honey, I love you but we need money. To get it I need to either divorce you or kill you, your choice.” It gets more ridiculous every day. What’s next, we have to bail out people who can’t make their mortgage payments because they blew it all on Cocaine, or in Vegas?
“or kill you, your choice” LOL!
( Can I ‘think’ on that for a moment? )
Local Portland story where FB claims… “He got laid off from his job over a ‘year’ ago”. Well pardon ME but… ( just how much ‘over’ a year we talkin’ here? )
Sorry but this is the same guy ( likely ) occupying a bar stool BRAGGING about how he’s been milking Unemployment for TWO years at least! So their length of UN varies widely, depending on ‘who’ they’re talking to?
DinOP
I am happy I have a below minimum wage job…at least i can show an employer the last 5 months I have been working
I knew it, I shoulda spent my student loans on hookers and blow.
What do you think we’re doing now?
Nearly EVERYONE who we’re bailing out has misused the money that was loaned to them. Either directly, in the form of second mortgages/HELOCs that were spend on Whores or Cocaine or SUVs or expensive BBQ Grills, OR simply to fuel their get-rich-quick dreams.
What do you think the # of responsible people, who didn’t overpay and over borrow, who had enough of an emergency fund saved up, etc, who now need a bailout? These folks are in a tiny minority of FBs.
Banking system on verge of new crisis, hedge fund Noster Capital warns.
UK Times
The banking system could be on the brink of another crisis, according to one hedge fund manager who has taken a series of short positions against some of Europe’s largest financial institutions.
However, he claims the biggest danger remains the US housing market, where he said there was the potential for a new shock as more Americans default on home loans as mortgages come up for refinancing.
Mr Noronha points to a new wave of low-quality “Alt-A” and “Option ARM” mortgages that face refinancing, which he warns could lead to a new fall in US real estate values, which could translate into a further series of losses for financial institutions still exposed to the US property market, which triggered the original crisis in 2007.
You , know, this is a point I had almost forgotten. Ther last time it was discussed in the MSM I believe it was blithely dismissed as an issue because interest rates are so low. Interest rates are even lower now. However, I do not recall if the Alt-A’s and even the primes had real teaser rates - the 2 or 3% ones. I’d think not, because the amount of time in which the initial rates applied were so much longer. A friend who got out from under her house at about break even had an adjustable rate mortgage that was fixed for the first 8 years - an 8/22 rather than a 2/28. Obviously option ARMs are more dangrous, especially if the borrower has been making payments less than the accrued interest.
I’d love to see some real numbers on this. And combined with an analysis of how many of these people will be able to refi with Fannie/Freddie/FHA. My understanding is that mortgages are still fairly easy to get in the governement programs, but real private money is somewhat tight.
If you actually had the right information, this could be really really interesting.
Norohna is going off the usual Credit Suisse graph. ~12 billion in Option-ARM’s at peak alone. Interest rates don’t matter if you have to start paying principle too.
http://dailyreckoning DOT COM /the-second-wave-of-mortgage-defaults/
My understanding is that the option ARMs are defaulting at a much faster rate than the graph would indicate (meaning that a lot of the pain may already have been felt). I’m assuming this is a pretty hefty source of strategic defaults.
From the T2 Partners presentation from 2/1/10, they note that the default rate on Option ARMs was at that time about 33%.
I’d like to see some statewide and national comparative breakdown stats on these folks…
the suicide loan by type + their HELOC exposure
the prime loan upside + their HELOC exposure
I could handle it, I’m a qualified HBB sadist.
Thanks, Mr Noronha, for bringing to light something Ivy Zelman pointed out years ago and pretending that you just now identified the problem for the first time. Maybe enough folks will be sufficiently clueless for this perception to stick?
Sleazer homes stopped building their junk, here is S.C. a couple of years ago. We looked at one of their developments, all I can say is good luck to those who bought them!
Beazer Homes posts loss for Q3
Homebuilder Beazer Homes posts loss in fiscal third quarter; new orders drop 33 percent.
ATLANTA (AP) — Beazer Homes USA Inc. posted a loss in its fiscal third quarter, as Americans rushed to buy homes as federal tax credits expired in April but held back in later months.
The company said Thursday it lost $27.8 million, or 41 cents per share in the three months ended June 30. That compares with a loss of $28 million, or 72 cents a share, in the prior-year period.
The period included several one-time items, including a $5.1 million inventory impairment charge, a $12.5 million impairment charge related to two joint ventures, a $9 million loss on debt extinguishment and a $28.4 million benefit from income taxes.
“a $9 million loss on debt extinguishment”
Cue combo in 5…4…3…2..
(snort)
The Chinese quality standard has infiltrated every industry. People just want things to LOOK fancy, shiny, impressive to neighbors/passers-by with little regard to things like structural integrity and durability. Future generations will not recognize quality if it bit them on their designer-clad behinds.
Sleazer threw together a few dumps and landfills in Delawares beach area. These $hitboxes are frightening beyond description.
You got that right! The ‘development’ we looked at was as poorly built as anything I have ever seen. Everything thing was the cheapest crap you can find. I admit I was amazed that anyone was buying them.
I think of this everytime I see that Kia or Hyundai commercial, where they put a hidden camera in the vehicle and the guy says to the girl (I feel like an idiot for spending so much on my Mercedes).
The difference, Mr. Consumer, is that you’ll get 200,000 plus miles out of that MB because they are quality vehicles. In 8 years that Hyundai will be worth 3k or will be sitting in a junkyard.
That was true in the past … i am not sure of the long-term quality even in name brands any more: MB, Audi …
They have all gone through ’supply chain optimization’
Watch ‘TopGear’ on BBC America. Jeremy Clarkson frequently bemoans the lack of quality in late model Benzes.
Bob,
I agree with you. I own a real Swedish Volvo (95), before Ford bought them. I have 300K on “Vixen”, and people who bought the newer ones, say they are cr@p.
I’ve also noticed BMZ has a really long free maintenance thing going. Our car doc says Audi is a nice looking car, but they aren’t life-ers, like my car. He said MBZ has slipped too, in his opinion.
The WSJ had an article in the 90’s about luxury car manufacturers (middle to upper middle class, not real luxury like Bently, RR, etc…) were targeting a broader market. You’re on target.
Asia nearly invented supply chain management. You couldn’t pay me to drive the junk with european badges. Pay for the massively huge, frequent repair bills I might take you up on it.
exeter
While I’ll agree with you on the current models of euro trash, some of the older cars were really well made. “Vixen” has really held up, but then again, we change her oil every 3K, and pay attention. As my husband says, “My favorite car is one that’s paid off”, (and still runs good.)
It’s snob appeal and nothing more. An older Vulva is more quirky than snobbish for sure. These morons thinking they’re going to get a real Mercedes for 30-40k are image concious bank slaves. Yet, Daimler knows there is a market for these losers and sells them the worst possible waste of metal, stick a MB label on it and the dumbos jump. This then creates a market for other all flash/no cash eurotrash like Audi(properly pronounced AW-DEE), BMW-trash, and now Vulvas are the latest real MB counterfeit going. And the suckers are lining up.
exeter
I agree with you 100%. I bought Vixen, because my mother’s went something like 400K+ with minimal cost. My 1995 was the last Sweden made model, iirc. Vixen is not sexy,or snobbish, and she’s built like a tank (and hers are real, not like mine:) I agree about the snob appeal.
Top Gear did a piece on the Toyota diesel HiLux pickup. They did their best to destroy it, but it refused to cooperate. It’s in their studio now I believe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWc_flGRT_o
It’s hard to see the future with monthly bills covering your eyes.
In eight years that Hyundai will still be under factory warranty, so I doubt it will be in the junkyard. Avis gave me a Genesis as a rental recently, and it was really nice.
Maybe. Maybe not. The Hyundai warranty only covers powertrain components. The rest of the car is 3/36. And the 10/100K powertrain warranty drops to 5/60K if you sell the car to someone else.
“The difference, Mr. Consumer, is that you’ll get 200,000 plus miles out of that MB because they are quality vehicles. In 8 years that Hyundai will be worth 3k or will be sitting in a junkyard.’
I got a used Certified 2007 Hyundai Azera Ultimate Limited with 30k, black leather, sunroof, Hyundai extended tranferable warrantee and ALL the toys for a song. It has ALL the speed, quality and comfort that I need and I really preferred it to a much more expensive used BMW that I drove with the same milage.
A MB, I don’t have either time or the money to waste worring making somebody else rich or worry about a projected trade 5 years from now. I could easily buy a brand new MB or BMW but who the hell would want to?
Hell, my g/f could strangle me and I could be DEAD …5 years from now.
I even have a selectable manual floorshift if i want pretend that I am bad. I freakin LOVE this Hyundia right down to it’s great paint job and I get a lot of compliments about it.
Adjustable steering wheel, gas pedal, memory seats. The thing was executive driven lease and it’s fantastic and I have everything except navigation.(I also have a Tom Tom that can give me orders and talk to me when my G/F isn’t giving me commands)
It looks just like this one but has the 2007 limited Ed package goodies. It’s just 4 wheels and transportation…in CHEAP comfort. Even my traffic ticket lawyer is very impressed with it as a sleeper fun car and he drives a new Lexis.
http://tinyurl.com/2cyne5f
Mikey,
We feel like “early adopters” as we have two ‘07 Hyundai models- the Santa Fe and the Azera. Love ‘em both.
On a “what you get for what you pay” analysis, Hyundai is hard to beat. In last weekend’s WSJ, the car columnist was reviewing the Chevy Cruze. GM provided a Toyota Corolla and a Honda Civic for him to compare, and he wrote that it was telling that they didn’t provide the real value leader in that price range- a Hyundai Sonata. He wrote, “maybe the local dealer was out of them.”
Mikey,
Would you ming letting us know what that “song” was?
I’m still thinking about my car situation….
Right Bill, my son is in Alaska and he loves his Santa Fe.
I’m glad you really like your vehicles.
Okay Polly,
I gave them my little 2000 Buick Regal LS in trade and 12,750k for the Hyundai Azera Ultimate Limited.
I could have easily bought a brand new basic Hyundai for near this price but I had been hunting for this particular year and model and had recently sold my truck. They had a $19k plus dream price on the window sticker.
I drove it alone for 3 hours( and I mean DROVE IT), then racked it with my mechanic, came back and said that I hated the color. I kept the dealership open and the Finance guy there until 10 pm. I already had a cashiers check in my pocket and knew what I would pay plus Premium Hyundai warranty. They didn’t realize I was paying cash until near the end…or that my little Buick had an expensive head gasket leak that was getting worse
As soon as we got my near my price, I dropped a cashiers check on him as soon as he completed my Hyundai Extended warranty paperwork. Then I bolted.
Because it was low miles and still has origional warranty, I bought the Hyundai Factory Premium extended warranty that covers the car as well as additional powertrain.
Oh, the executive that turned the leased car in left 2 $50 bills (Emergency Money?) hidden in one of the manuals. My G/F discovered that and took off shopping in my car before I could tackle her.
Note to self: ALWAYS…Read the Manual 1st Stupid!!
I over-paid for a 3 year old Azera but I’m very happy that I found this one.
I have a different way of looking at our cars. I expect to get one year for every $2000 I pay for a car, and then I feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth. I bought a used Mariner last year for $12,000, so I plan on driving it for 6 years. We bought an Escape 9 years ago for $20,000, so we have to drive it another year before we can replace it. My son has a 2003 Focus that we bought new for $13,000, so we’ve gotten our money’s worth.
That’s why I don’t buy expensive cars. I don’t want to have to drive them for 25 years!
My first new car was a 1983 Honda Civic. It was very inexpensive. Everyone called it Jap Crap. And indeed, Honda did not have much of a reputation at the time. But that was also on the cusp of quality improvements, and I drove that car for 14 years, until it got hit.
A friend just bought a Chevy (Kia?) Aveo. It is two years old, literally driven by a little old lady. My friend is a friend of the old lady’s family, and managed to buy it for $2000.
The trim level is pretty basic, but the quality is quite good, handling is nice and tight. It won’t win any races.
My point is some of those Korean brands that have a bad reputation, are making some serious quality improvements.
Oh, and another bit of useless trivia. Last I heard the highest speed recorded on a speed camera in the Phoenix area is 140mph - in a Hyundai!
“Oh, and another bit of useless trivia. Last I heard the highest speed recorded on a speed camera in the Phoenix area is 140mph - in a Hyundai!”
That wasn’t me…wasn’t me !
I was in probably in traffic court with my ticket fixer lawyer Joe THAT day.
(what color was the Hyundai in their so-called photo’s?)
MB is just now recovering from their Chrysler merger. They made some serious junk in the 2000’s (ML45 anyone) prior to that they were pricy to fix but well made, especially the diesels.
Hyundai since the last gen Sonota has made cars on par with Honda and Toyota, better warranties and cheaper prices. They really are the new Honda. In the past they were crap, like Kia is now or GM was in the 90’s/00’s.
Preach it, pressboardbox!
To your list, I’d like to add tolerances. As in, close tolerances. Have you noticed how rare those are becoming? And how they’re being replaced by sloppy machining and assembly?
Chinese bearings = more slop than a hog-farm. What about Chinese stainless steel? It is rust-resistant until you leave the store. I guess nickel is too expensive now to put a very big percentage into the steel - Chinese solution: Just make it look like stainless and the stupid American consumer will buy it anyway. They are so right.
Pressboard.
Correct.
Correct.
Correct.
Correct.
“more slop than a hog-farm” LOL!
Mind if I use that one? It’s not just cars and sinks by any means. Virtually all of the oldline guitar amp mfrs. have boarded up and moved to China as well.
Sure, they ‘look’ like a Marshall Amp but when you look at the quality, there’s no WAY they would stand up to the rigors of a touring band! If you want the ones “Made in England” they’re 3 grand. Yikes!
I related the story a few years ago, on how the nose landing gear overhaul on an airplane I was working on at the time took a year and a half. Why?
Steering rack was worn out. The OEM couldn’t find any steel billet that would pass QC to make a new one. Took over a year to locate some. Cheap Chinese steel has pretty much polluted the supply chain.
Rust resistance is provided more by chromium than by nickel.
I’d think someone named “oxide” would know! But I was under the impression that 400 series (Chromium only) stainless will rust, while 300 series (Chromium and Nickel) will not. And the most resistant (that I deal with, anyway) is 316, which has the highest Nickel content.
Try some 17-4ph stainless, as good as 440C.
Almost all the crap from China is 200 series,
The Chinese quality standard has infiltrated every industry
I’d say the short term CEO incentive pay structure has infiltrated every industry.
Future generations will not recognize quality if it bit them on their designer-clad behinds.
I hope you are wrong. I hope there will be a “return to quality” and that people will buy less, but they will buy well-made, local goods out of a desire for quality and as a thumb in the eye of the giant corporations.
At this rate, there aren’t going to BE any local goods. Economies of scale almost always trump a better mousetrap.
“The Chinese quality standard has infiltrated every industry.”
and the masses bought in hook, line, and sinker. God forbid consumers hang tough demanding something better and risk being seen w/o the latest “gotta have”.
Food stamp use hit record 40.8m in May
Bloomberg News / August 5, 2010
WASHINGTON — The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a record 40.8 million in May as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government reported yesterday.
Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 19 percent from a year earlier and increased 0.9 percent from April, the US Department of Agriculture said in a statement on its website.
Participation has set records for 18 straight months.
I wonder how affordable food would be without the massive issuance of all these stamps.
I would like to know how many of those on food stamps are the offspring born here of illegal immigrants. These are not “Americans”, or citizens of the US, despite the mis-interpretations of the 14th amendment. For example, Mexican law declares that anyone born anywhere to at least one Mexican citizen is in fact a Mexican citizen and subject to the jurisdiction of Mexico, which is why they have so many consulates in the US. To protect the interests of their citizens and assist them in ripping off the system.
Misinterpretations of the 14th ammendment:
——————-
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
——————-
I don’t see how declaring a Mexican mom’s baby born in the US is a US citizen is a misinterpretation of the 14th Ammendment. You may think it’s a dumb law, but that doesn’t mean the interpretation is wrong.
It’s a TWO part test. You are forgetting “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof” which the illegal alien isn’t.
If the Mexicans are subject to the jurisdiction of state and federal laws, then the AZ is a valid law.
Checking ID’s and deporting said family is legal.
Doesn’t violate their rights….now if the child wants to stay we can put them up for adoption and make them a ward of the stet….if there is no one who is a legal resident that would be willing to take on that financial responsiblity.
Wonder what Polly would Think?
Being located in the US will make you “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” unless there is a specific exception. Being considered the citizen of another country is not one of those exceptions. I believe being in the country because of being attached somehow to a foreign embassy is one of the exceptions, so the kid of an ambassador is not made a US citizen by being born here. At the time the amendment was passed there may also have been some issue with whether you were entirely subject to US jurisdiction on a sovreign Indian reservation, but I’m not sure about that. Certainly isn’t an issue today.
People get tenure on this sort of thing. My understanding of the legal arguments is that the current kerfuffle is interesting as rhetoric but absurd as a legal interpretation. Does kind of call into question the whole “activist judge” thing though. You can’t get more activist than abandoning decades of accepted legal interpretation because you don’t like the result.
Diplomatic personel have special status and therefore can’t be charged with most crimes in the US, such as parking and speeding tickets. This the city of NY has found out to their chagrin as lots of deadbeats at the UN have been skating on such things for decades.
Ordinary visitors on business, tourist, or student visas are certainly “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”. Accepting a visa is an implicit acceptance of such status. If they commit a crime, they do the time.
Illegal aliens may be deported instead of serving time. They have NO visa and hence have not accepted the status of being subject to the jurisidiction thereof.
Polly
Thanks..i guess the point i am trying to make if you are born in the USA you are a citizen, the child is…but not the illegal parents…so the child can stay but the parents have to be deported.
40.8 million….?
equals:
- 85% of the entire population of Spain.
or
- Netherlands, Greece, Belgium and Denmark combined.
or
- Illinois, Florida and Michigan combined.
or
- 90% of California.
That’s the problem with income-based eligibility programs. They become more expensive onces the bottom 80 percent of the population becomes poor.
It makes sense for younger people to barely make enough on-the-books income to get by, perhaps resorting to barter, and take advantage of programs like this. If they work and sacrifice, they’ll just be further exploited by the generations that didn’t.
That wasn’t entirely fair. Those generations now 55 and over did work, and were productive. But somehow they spent so much on themselves that they left us broke anyway.
A false economy. A false standard of living.
Not that I entirely disagree, but that’s actually quite omninous. Slackers could easily undo the system - most intentionally, and even some intentionally. If no one steps up and buys all these overpriced houses and other assets a lot of people’s dreams of retirement are trashed.
We need thousands of rich idiots, fast! What? We already used them last decade? What are we going to do now?
“If no one steps up and buys all these overpriced houses and other assets a lot of people’s dreams of retirement are trashed.”
Ding ding! And, these are the same people rewriting the “rules.” Party on.
IMO, this is one rarely discussed aspect of Japan’s twenty year malaise. The younger generation has largely opted for a lifestyle different from the trajectory that their parents were taking. They didn’t “step up” and keep their RE bubble going - perhaps mostly at first it was because they simply couldn’t, but there are voluntary elements to it too. This is somewhat true in Europe as well. There is even evidence of it around me, but it is in its infancy here.
Back in the 1980s, a friend went over to Japan as an English teacher. He’d majored in the subject at Arizona State, had done well, and went through training before he was turned loose in the Japanese classroom.
Now, if you know anything about Arizona State, you’ll know that it’s home to a lot of whining, over-entitled kids whose way through life is being paid by Mommy and Daddy. My friend didn’t fit that stereotype. He was a commuter student who rode the bus an hour each way.
Any-hoo, my friend thought he was ready for teaching in Japan. Boy, was he wrong. He’d give the kids assignments, then watch in horror as they threw themselves on the floor and had tantrums. He’d never seen such a thing before.
After he came back to the States, we got together. He told me that the kids did not want to work as hard as their parents, and those parents had rebuilt the country after WWII.
Instead, my friend said that we can sit here in the United States “and watch them fall.” I’ll never forget how he said the last three words in that sentence:
Watch
Them
Fall
Does the fact they make 1/3 what their father did make their lifestyle different, or does their lifestyle “choice” allow them to live happily on 1/3? My opinion is that it’s more of the 1st than the 2nd.
“There is even evidence of it around me, but it is in its infancy here.”
Edge, the other thing, too, is that I just realized pretty much EVERY generation does something different. I mean, it wasn’t that long ago that the norm was to work on the family farm.
Any-hoo, my friend thought he was ready for teaching in Japan. Boy, was he wrong. He’d give the kids assignments, then watch in horror as they threw themselves on the floor and had tantrums. He’d never seen such a thing before.
LOL. The manga generation at its best.
Watch
Them
Fall
Geez, they are sorta near China aren’t they…
As for their lifestyle choices - no doubt a lot of it was imposed - in no small part by the high cost of housing and living during their bubble. The question now for us is what will be the long term effects of our own bubbles on our own youth. What if under the current pressures they rethink the whole thing (debt/consumer lifestyle) and just say screw it?
This is Japan?
Aren’t these the ones who studied like made for two years straight and then committed suicide when they failed to be accepted into Tokyo University?
Aren’t these the ones who studied like made for two years straight and then committed suicide when they failed to be accepted into Tokyo University?
Apparently not everyone in Japan is an overachiever.
There is an amusing manga/anime story about a guy who tries to get into Tokyo University and keeps failing the entrance exam (until he doesn’t): Love Hina.
The intentional part comes from people who are so far underwater on their student loans that they decide to keep their official incomes low to avoid even having to start paying off the loans. They are forever in “hardship” deferment. Some could make the decision from the start. I’ve heard a co-worker describe an in-law that did it. Others could stumble into it by having a real hardship for a few years and then realizing that the accruing interest has simply made the debt impossible to pay even in a life time.
Whether that realization will extend to staying officially poor enough to always be eligible for SNAP or other programs is a lot harder to say. That is a lot of poverty to deal with to get a $150 a month for food. I’m not sure about the details of the program, but don’t they check for assets too? At least cash in the bank? So, you would have to go through life without a bank account? Not impossible, but tricky.
Can you spell “underground economy” boys and girls? In Italy it comprises around 17% of their GDP. In Greece it’s even higher. And those are the “official” estimates.
Some lives are easier to live in the underground economy than others. Sitting around a cafe drinking wine or coffee and talking with friends or playing chess? Easy to do on cash you earned with an off the books job and never put in a bank.
Getting HULU and Netflix and online gaming over a high speep internet connection on a good laptop? Harder to do with cash you earned with an off the books job and never put in a bank.
Not impossible. Just harder.
And it also pays to shack up…..being married you have to combine incomes and a lot wont qualify.
That’s the problem with income-based eligibility programs.
“Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food…”
SNAP. Just like snapping your fingers, and free food appears!
I’m still trying to get my sister to apply for food stamps in Michigan. She is unemployable (undiagnosed mental illness.) We pay for everything for her. Her son will go to college this fall and it would be great if she would apply, because I think that at least part of her food money goes for cigarettes. She is paranoid of the government.
I’m paranoid as hell, maybe I can qualify!
I am officially reserving this early AM east-coast box for DiNor to make an original post of his choice. The floor is now yours, sir…
pressboardbox!
Thanks! I was on the phone to Ohio most of the morn and missed my window! No, I realize what I shared yesterday was going to come off very Rodney King-esque.., but my fear has become that the closer we get to Nov. ( the more unrecognizable The HousingBubbleBlog may become? )
Time mag. ran a great article last week on just how overblown fears over the Gulf spill had become. In fact, we’d gotten hysterical over it. But that sure didn’t stop a lot of us from politicizing it to the MAX!
All I’m asking is that we weigh the pol. impacts -last- vice first, last & always?
Point well taken. We need to stick with bashing realtors, specuvestors, and mortgage brokers like in the good old days, I’m with ya’. Maybe at the next meet-up we could rent a dunking-tank and have someone dress up like a realtor who taunts everyone with popular phrases like: “you’ll be priced-out forever, you fools!”, “they are not making any more land!”, and stuff like that. That would be fun. I’ll even volunteer.
Wary shoppers giver retailers only modest gains- AP
Deep discounts on summer leftovers and hot weather drove shoppers into malls in July, but they remained choosy, resulting in only modest gains.
I picked up a side by side frigidaire for 340.00 yesterday.The same frig at lowes at least 1200.00.Owner said he paid 1500 in 2006.I am doing as much shopping on craigslist and ebay as I can.I guess I am screwing up the retail sales numbers.
It is amazing how wasteful this country has become.The throw away mentality has got to end.
He was probably selling all the appliances out of his house before it goes to Foreclosure
Most all of the DC/NoVA Foreclosures I see have had the appliances stripped out of them
Uh & yeah kids, we have them here too
arizonadude
Good find and smart move. The compressors don’t last as long as they use to (10 year life span now). Refrigerators are such an emotional buy.We’re thinking used too.
We just replaced our 17-year-old fridge with broken handle for a new energy-efficient model. Got a good deal on it. I’m pleased, but I felt a little guilty about putting that old fridge in the landfill.
“Refrigerators are such an emotional buy”
I just bought a huge bucket of good vanillia ice cream and a 6 pack of Dad’s Root Beer for my summer ice cream floats.
If my refridgerator so much as hickups or even thinks about dying now, I’m muscling it to my second story balcony, pushing it off, dragging it into coming traffic and shooting it.
Don’t mess with me now old Kenmore.
The date of manufacture of my microwave oven is April, 1986.
The date of manufacture of my television is June, 1988.
Same here. Lot’s of relatively cheap stuff out there. I just snagged a beautiful 8′ Olhausen pool table for $300. Guy that moved it said “Good thing you got this before I found it or I would have put in my shop and sold it for $1200 in a week”.
test
Imagine living in a spacious St. George home — for free. That’s what one family got away with for nine months. They were squatters illegally living in a bank-owned house, stealing utilities from neighbors.
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=11862066&hl=1
“Finally in April the Department of Child and Family Services, along with police, inspected the home and found that the basement was trashed and heroin paraphernalia was everywhere.
The couple, Boyd and Dawn Bundy, were arrested for the drug use and their children were taken away.”
Heroin in Utarrrrrrrrrrrrrr?
Well, looking at their mugs, they don’t look all that “saintly”
Had it not been for the heroin, would they have even been in trouble with the law? Just asking.
code testsomeone’s a little testy this morning.
testes….1…2…..3?!?!?
Was trying to figure out how to insert that blue quote box into my posts…
Should I suggest again that you use the JT extension?! You can even preview your posts so you don’t have to do test posts here…
Anyone out there do any work with Chrome or Safari extensions? I’ve been meaning to look into porting the JT Extension, but haven’t had the time…
I might be able to help you with the Chrome extension. It’s the browser I use and the only reason I don’t use the extension now. I’ve never written a Chrome extension but I do know most common programming languages as well as HTML/CSS. You can reach me at “hbb” at binkley.net.
Click on his name
Thanks — did it. Now to learn how to avoid the temptation to open up Eddie’s posts.
code tezt, bitchez!
FT Alphaville
Hitting the reset button on US mortgages…
Posted by Tracy Alloway on Aug 03 13:00.
Have you heard the Great Mortgage ReFi Rumour of August 2010?
Now that the US Treasury’s Hamp programme is widely recognised as a failure, attention is turning to new efforts to reinvigorate the lagging American housing market. To wit, recent whispers that the US government’s latest mortgage modification effort will take the shape of a mass refinancing.
Specifically, that US homeowners with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-sponsored loans are about to receive an offer to lower their mortgage rates below current market rates.
And you can kind of see the logic, given that former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan has recently and very publicly pronounced the latent US recovery depends on the direction of house prices.
But as blogger Bruce Krasting points out — in slightly more colourful language than allowed here on FT Alphaville — a mass refinancing would mean sticking it to non-GSE borrowers and mortgage investors.
As he puts it:
The “fairness” issue I thought was important, is in fact a non-issue. This is not a solution to the nation’s housing problems. Fairness is not the objective. It is a way to protect the GSEs. It is the equivalent of a CDS purchase by Treasury. They are paying the GSE borrowers not to default. From this perspective the Mega ReFi plan has better optics. It might even make some sense. But it is still a screwy idea. The fact that it is even being discussed (including some of the ulterior motives) is a measure of just how desperate the thinking has become.
But before we get too carried away with the US government’s determination to save US housing — here’s an alternative point of view, courtesy of Deutsche Bank’s Steven Abrahams.
As Abrahams notes, mass mortgage modification would benefit current borrowers, but it would come at a cost — both to the mortgage investors and future mortgage borrowers.
Here’s what he says:
The collapse of housing and the tightening of underwriting standards has led to strikingly low prepayments in the 2006–2008 vintages of agency MBS, and it is the rare portfolio that has underweighted those assets. But almost every investor raises the specter of some government effort—mass modification of loans, blanket principal forgiveness, sudden mandated easing of underwriting standards—that somehow brings it all to a quick and brutish end. The odds of disaster implied by manager allocations to these impaired vintages: vanishingly low. But at an average price on fixed-rate pass-throughs of $106–24, even small changes pose a threat.
Although incremental changes over time to underwriting look plausible, some systemic effort to hit the mortgage reset button faces two big hurdles: the cost today, and the cost tomorrow.
U.S. households have lost $6.4 trillion in real estate value since mid–2006, according to Fed data, so the cost today to fix that obstacle to refinancing is clearly high. The cost of repairing equity may be particularly high for a government newly sensitive to fiscal discipline, and probably too high to cover much beyond a small part of the problem. And then there’s the cost tomorrow. Although mass modification of mortgage note rates to current 30-year 4.50% levels would improve borrower cash flow and ease credit risk and be wildly popular with people that already have loans, the price would likely be paid afterwards by all prospective new mortgage borrowers. Few surviving MBS or loan portfolios would have an appetite to reinvest. And the market would need to reprice to reflect continual efficient callability.
But — never say never.
…
“…Fairness is not the objective. It is a way to protect the GSEs. It is the equivalent of a CDS purchase by Treasury. They are paying the GSE borrowers not to default.”
Clint Eastwood & Gene Hackman,…Unforgiven:
Little Bill Daggett: “I don’t deserve this… to die like this. I was building a house.”
Will Munny: “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”
[aims gun]
Little Bill Daggett: “I’ll see you in hell, William Munny.”
Will Munny: “Yeah.”
[fires]
U.S. households have lost $6.4 trillion in real estate value since mid–2006
Hwy holsters his 14+% Navy Colt…
I guess this is what my buddy was talking about. He lives in a home on which Fannie owns the mortgage. He is in default. He’s working with an attorney. Supposedly Fannie is going to foreclose and rent the place back to him at much less than he is paying now. So the story goes, anyway.
Or as i stated in the past…they will give him a ZERO percent loan and no principle reduction for 30 years…..and I’ll bet even then he will default….
I would be ok with that but to forgive hundreds of thousands of dollars just to keep people in their homes is just plain disgusting. They signed on the dotted line let em pay or move….just like me a lowly renter.
“…just like me a lowly renter.”
Sorry, no $100K+ bailouts for renters.
Sorry, no $100K+ bailouts for renters.
Then hows ’bout “given-us” at least .86% passbook savings rate!?
Stock futures fall after jump in jobless claims “unexpectedly”
By STEPHEN BERNARD The Associated Press
Updated: 8:40 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010
Posted: 6:50 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010
NEW YORK — Stock futures are falling after a report shows initial claims for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly last week.
Initial claims rose to 479,000 last week, indicating the jobs market remains weak and will likely slow economic growth. Economists had expected a small drop in claims to 455,000.
NEW YORK — Stock futures are falling after a report shows initial claims for unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly last week.
was this the revised number? I thought the “new” number was positive?
Thursday, Aug. 05, 2010
Housing limbo: Owners won’t pay, banks won’t evict
By SUE MCALLISTER AND EVE MITCHELL - San Jose Mercury News
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Millions of homeowners are trapped in a bizarre real estate limbo, living in houses but no longer paying for them, waiting and wondering if someone will help them - or throw them out.
Some are victims of their own economic circumstances, unable to afford their mortgage and expecting to lose their homes if they can’t get a break from their bank. Others are opportunists, choosing not to spend on a house worth less than they owe. Instead, they can live rent-free until their lender makes a move.
The limbo phenomenon is a radical departure from previous real estate crashes, when there were far fewer troubled loans and banks moved speedily on those who fell behind on payments. Now many lenders simply can’t keep up, and others appear reluctant to flood a weakened market with foreclosed homes.
…
Some homeowners say ignoring the mortgage is the only option they have.
“I stopped paying payments about 12 months ago,” said Jeff Dunkin, who has twice sought to modify the loan on his San Jose condo, and twice been denied. The 25-year-old construction worker has been employed only sporadically since early 2009, and the unemployment checks he’s collected are less than half what he used to make. He knows some people may think living mortgage-free sounds like a cushy deal. But that’s not how it feels to him.
“It’s a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress,” Dunkin said.
Dunkin has plenty of company. An estimated 40,283 homeowners across a seven-county region in the San Francisco Bay Area area were at least three months behind on their mortgages, but not yet in foreclosure, as of April, according to CoreLogic, which tracks mortgage performance data. That’s about 4.5 percent of total mortgages in that area, and a drastic increase from 0.25 percent in January 2007.
Nationwide, “roughly 3.5 million loans are in this limbo land, and are not proceeding through very quickly. It could take years,” said Sam Khater, an economist with CoreLogic, which tracks mortgage performance. “I have a feeling it’s going to follow the path of unemployment and have a long tail.”
“We have all these people who are really kind of on the edge,” said Kevin Stein, associate director of the California Reinvestment Coalition, which fights for homeowners seeking loan modifications. “They’re anxious because they know they’re behind, and they know all these foreclosures are happening, and they know they could be next.”
Dunkin, for example, bought his two-bedroom condo in September 2007 for $355,000. His fiancee and a roommate helped him pay the mortgage. But in early 2009 the relationship with his fiancee crumbled, and construction business in the valley plunged. As he scrimped to keep up with his $2,486 monthly mortgage payments, he let his homeowner association dues lapse, and the association sued him for the overdue amount. He spent months paying it, but let his mortgage slide.
Dunkin has yet to receive a notice of default, but he did receive letters this spring from his lender about the possibility of a short sale - selling the condo for less than he owes.
“I have not responded to that,” he said. For now, he’s sitting tight, saving money so he can rent a place after foreclosure, which he considers nearly inevitable.
Read more: http://www.thesunnews.com/2010/08/05/1621564/housing-limbo-owners-wont-pay.html#ixzz0vjcidYLI
Day 5 for us. Ex-Landlord said they will not evict and wished us luck. We are currently saving up for the move, waiting for the NOD to show up.
Hey Ebay has 100 free auctions…good time to start….
SELLER SPECIAL:
August 3 - September 7
FREE Insertion Fees for up to 100 Auction-style listings*
List even big ticket items–start the bidding where you want
Pay only if your item sells
We are eBaying now , lightening the load before we move. Plan on a garage sale as well. I always feel ‘rich’ when we sell on eBay until the paypal and eBay fees are due.
yes but you add a few lbs to the weight and then add $5 for the handling charge…boxes have gone up 50% at staples
haha, can’t do it. I even refunded a guy 3 bucks when I found that UPS charged less than I had anticipated.
These are all computer parts for the most part, so small boxes, and I shop enough on eBay that I have plenty. After this weekend the office is ‘move ready’ and I have to go to the home theater room and start culling there.
What makes you think a NOD is coming your way any time soon?
Well our landlords are taking up bankruptcy and letting the house go into foreclosure. We talked to them about squatting and they were cool with the idea. So we know eventually the bank will catch on and catch up. We hope to swing 3 months rent-free to cover the move expense. Anything past that is gravy.
You suggest an interesting rental strategy: Find a landlord who has stopped paying his mortgage and see if he will agree to let you live in his place rent free…
We lucked into it after paying rent for 2 years with them. Even better, we think the landlord paid the mortgage up until the end of our lease. So the pre-foreclosure hasn’t even been filed yet.
The part I am most excited about? Not having to schedule nad hire a maid and carpet cleaner for the final walk through.
Good thing this worked out for us, there is just nothing similar in the same price range available where we need it. This gives us time to look.
You’ve had to put up with a fair amount of stress, rusty, so more power to you. I prefer craigslist for selling stuff.
Day 5 from their first missed payment? Depending on the state, I think that you will have way more than three months to live there. But I guess that some sort of correspondence will start showing up after a couple of months. If it was PHX, I would not even stock up on moving boxes for a good long while. Keep us updated. Sort of a create your own “bailout” project.
my first ‘green-shoot’ in a long , long time!
“In Suzanne We Trust”
…and another one bites the Dust.
Why don’t folks get it. The govt isn’t interested in bailing out homemoaners. The bailouts are for the banks.
I learned about the Rule 157 a while back. What a sweet deal for the banks.
Kill Fannie and Freddie
The Financial Pages: What the leading financial papers’ leading editorials have to say.
As Congress is about to turn its attention to reforming the twin failed housing giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, The Journal wants to get some facts straight. Former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines, in a letter to Congress, recently claimed that Fannie and Fred’s biggest mistake was “chasing Wall Street’s credit standards downward at the end of the boom” and that now, Wall Street and the big banks have virtually “abandoned the mortgage market”. The Journal is, to put it lightly, unconvinced. At this point, Fannie and Freddie have cost more than they’ve ever saved; it’s time to let them go.
***
In a second editorial, The Journal complained that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s promise of “financial innovation”, especially in the application of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, doesn’t apply to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. “[W]hen it comes to the mortgage market, the innovation piece looks to be off the agenda,” the paper lamented.
…
They will let them go and sell all their assetts to GS JPM etc at pennies on the dollar.
1. Banks make $$$$$ selling crappy loans
2. As and after music stops they sell all the crapypy loans they couldn’t get rid of the GSE’s at full face value.
3. After market collapses they get congress to force the GSE’s to sell them the same crappy loans for pennies on the dollar.
It’s not hard to get rich with a scheme like this.
It sounds like financially engineered robbery from the U.S. Treasury, doesn’t it?
“Financial Innovation” means more new ways to extract yet more wealth from the populace, either by suckering them into massive debt, or when they can’t pay, extracting it from the taxpayer, as is being done now.
My father in law is excited for housing “to rebound,” and yet it doesn’t bother him that none of his children can afford a house.
+1 Denial.
I wouldn’t let my kids buy right now - not with the deals coming in a year or so !!
Your fil is in for a rude awakening.The party that should have never happened is over.
and yet it doesn’t bother him that none of his children can afford a house ??
It bothers the hell out of this Father…
Not me. I’m advising my oldest to avoid buying for the next five years, at least.
Never mind worrying about being a knife catcher. Everything I’m seeing with my own eyes says that Main Street is still flailing around in the water, looking for a life preserver. Until things settle out, and the winners and losers are sorted out, portability is your best “investment”.
The 80+ crowd is absolutely clueless. They can’t get passed the idea that housing has mostly gone up since they were children and can’t possibly step back and see this as a credit/currency crisis has no place to go but to reset.
Shame on him. But don’t worry - the rebound is at least a decade away.
Jobless Claims in U.S. Unexpectedly Climb to Three-Month High
Aug 5, 2010
More Americans than projected filed applications for unemployment insurance last week, indicating employers kept cutting staff as the recovery showed signs of slowing.
Initial jobless claims climbed by 19,000 to 479,000 in the week ended July 31, the most since April and exceeding the highest estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The number of people receiving unemployment benefits dropped, while those getting extended payments rose.
A cooling economy means employers will resist taking on more staff in coming months, raising the risk consumer spending will weaken further. The jobless rate rose last month as payroll increases weren’t large enough to keep up with gains in the labor force, economists forecast a government report tomorrow will show.
“Unexpectedly”, again?
I do not think that word means what they think it means.
Economic Report
Aug. 5, 2010, 8:39 a.m. EDT
Jobless claims rise 19,000 to 479,000
By Jeffry Bartash, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The number of people applying for initial unemployment benefits jumped by 19,000 to 479,000 in the latest week to the highest level since early April, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
After falling steadily last year, state jobless claims have flattened out. They have hovered above the 450,000 range through the first seven months of 2010, reflecting sluggish hiring trends in the U.S. Claims are 5.5% higher compared to the start of the year.
…
The previous week was revised (up) to 460k as well.
Weekly Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Surge:
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10828003/1/stock-market-story-aug-5.html?kval=dontmiss
See you at dow 12 hundred, Eddie.
pressboard, can I assume that you now have a very large short position in the market?
No, I’m currently short Eddie.
“See you at dow 12 hundred, Eddie”
Fast Eddie said he was thinking of going down to Florida to snap up some 25k investment condos from the “natives” for a few trinkets and beads. He’s a LL and and invester now.
That would be a spectacle 2nd only to a Nudist Night at Disneyworld or him wrestling a gang of hungry 12 footers in he local gater pit.
Even $25K will be too much very soon, when you cant find a good renter that will pay enough rent to cover the monthly bills…
—————————-
Florida to snap up some 25k investment condos
Or wait until the HOA assessments start piling in: new roofs, insurance skyrocketed, the pools shot. etc.
We went to check out a $25,000 condo in Sacramento in a gated “community”. Smelled like mold. HOA dues were $250/month. You are right, dj.
The scary thing is that as long as the Fortune 500 can sell trinkets in the 3rd World and make a profit the market could not possibly care less about the employment situation in the USA.
Read an interesting story once about how P&G and Unilever sell shampoo in tiny ketchup sized packets in the third word so Rajiv can wash his hair once a week. Sell enough of those and it more than makes up for slumping sales in the USA.
Surely you meant DOW 12 thousand?
For Fannie Stock, Even Betting Pennies Is a Risk
Associated Press
It is flotsam of the housing wreck, a stock no longer worthy of the Big Board. But penny by penny, the mortgage giant Fannie Mae is being salvaged in the stock market.
Nearly two years after it was effectively nationalized, Fannie Mae has become the nation’s hottest penny stock — and, perhaps, its most dangerous. Even though the shares are almost worthless, they are changing hands at a furious pace. Since June, about 31 million of them have been traded on a typical day, more than triple the average for Goldman Sachs shares.
All those Fannie Mae shares do not add up to much money. The stock closed at 40 cents Wednesday, about the cost of a first-class postage stamp. In mid-2007, before the housing market deflated, it fetched nearly $85.
Thereby proving that US equity markets have nothing whatsoever to do with actual investing. Online casino for imbeciles who watch Cramer.
A fool and his money are soon parted!
wmbz
Thanks for bringing up Fannie and Freddie.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/07/david-stern-djsp-foreclosure-fannie-freddie
It involved something called an “assignment of mortgage,” the document that certifies who owns the property and is thus entitled to foreclose on it. Especially these days, the assignment is key evidence in a foreclosure case: With so many loans having been bought, sold, securitized, and traded, establishing who owns the mortgage is hardly a trivial matter.
If you want to gamble, why not on a stock with a recent trading range of €0.16 to €1.47? Think how much dough those who used borrowed money to buy at the low end and sell at the high end must have made!
If a 40 cent stock changes hands 33 times (and a 3% commission to the broker is paid), how is it worth anything more than zero?
“Nothing to excess.”
~Inscription at Temple of
Apollo at Delphi
“Easy does it.”
- Alcoholics Anonymous
And a corollary: Easy does it. But do it.
“Hair of the dog is the best cure for a nasty hangover.”
- Debtoholics Unanimous
“Cheer up, they said, things could be worse……..Sure enough, I cheered up, and things got worse.”
X-GSfixr-That sounds like Groucho.
“The D.I.”
Not that it matters… Wonder when we hit the next ceiling and go for $15 trillion.
Still keeping an eye on the escalating public debt. As of Tuesday it had climbed to $13,301,637,817,150.95.
Congress is not worried. The debt ceiling is $14.3 trillion.
“Congress is not worried.”
That’s why I am.
I’m past worried, I’m scared.
I’m preparing.
Doing what?
The best I can.
Specifics? Cutting overhead and building diversified multi-tiered reserves. Began in earnest in 2003. Mind you, along the way there’s been treats - so long as they pass my test of not contributing to businesses, groups, or policies that I do not approve of to the greatest extent possible.
Our dollars are our votes and every day is election day.
I’m preparing by buying condoze and hummers and dumpster-loads of jet-skis as I wait for the recovery to kick in.
I kept my M1 Garand and Lee-Enfield, because I thought the problem was contained.
If it isn’t, maybe I need to trade up to a Springfield Armory M1A, or an FN-FAL.
I have an M1A (first generation SOCOM 16). I like it, but it’s not as reliable as I thought it would be. If I could only afford one rifle that absolutely positively MUST work, I would go with something else…possibly the FN.
“They” say that once I get the extractor replaced with a real USGI one THEN it will be as reliable as a real M14. We’ll see…
Origional stock M-14’s off the rack.
Center the windage, zero the elevation. Then add 12 clicks for elevation and you’re good to go at 200 yds quick and dirty battlefield sight. Will adjust…
In you’re a shooter, know how your holds and can fine tune your 7.62 groups, you’re like AT&T at 600 yds open sights. Go little Rainbow round.
“Reach out and touch some body.”
I like big guns, not these 5.56mm plastic thingies.
I must be compensating for something.
I’m on the fence on whether I should just sell the Garand and buy an M!A, or if I should just send out the Garand to a good gunsmith, and have it rebarreled to shoot 7.62 NATO. It shoots okay, but it ain’t no “Match rifle”.
I have several good 8mm Mausers - for when you REALLY want to reach out and touch somebody - with several thousand rounds of surplus Turkish ammo bought when it was really cheap. Plus misc. other “stuff”.
X-GSfixr, if you like SMLEs and want 7.62 NATO, check out the Ishapore 2A. Under $200. ‘Course you still gotta turn the crank by hand.
My M-1 got really expensive to feed, after all the Colombian Army surplus .30.06 got used up 10-15 years ago. I was buying that stuff for $5/box.
Almost as good as the 1942 vintage .30-06 M2 AP I bought a long time ago. I’ve been saving some of that for “emergencies”…..like if I have to knock holes in an engine block.
I’m past worried, I’m scared ??
Ditto here…
They will raise it again as soon as they figure out tax receipts are in the sh@tter.In the meantime they keep giving out stimulous money and lots of cash to foreign countries.
yup and nothing to us little guys……renters… trying to keep a roof over our heads
They chose the $14.3 Trillion number as they were pretty sure they wouldn’t have to raise it again until after the November elections.
That’s why CONgress isn’t worried.
$26 billion Tweet. Thank god it will “prevent the layoffs of about 100,000″ (union) “teachers.”
House Returns Next Week To Vote On Saving Teachers’ Jobs, Says Pelosi Tweet
03:55 pm
August 4, 2010
by Ken Rudin
The House of Representatives left town at the end of last week to start their summer recess, not to return until September 13.
Or so we thought.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced today, via Twitter, that she will summon them back to town, now that the Senate has voted 61-38 to begin debate on legislation that would prevent the layoffs of about 100,000 teachers. The $26 billion package includes additional monies in Medicaid payments to the states.
FWIW, being a teacher isn’t such a sweet gig. My sister’s been a bilingual tacher for almost 15 years now, and she makes something like 45K per year, and that includes summer work. She’s working on a Master’s just to get a 3-4K bump in pay (the district does pay the tuition).
My mother had the Master’s-plus credit pay hike thing down to a science. Every year, she’d scour the tri-state area (PA, NJ, DE) to find courses that offered enough credits to bump her up to the next pay level.
Teachers aren’t making huge money around here, either. It seems to me that the “overpaid teacher/administrator” phenomenon is a “big city” issue.
Makes you wonder if at some point, a city becomes too big to be effectively managed.
Makes you wonder if at some point, a city becomes too big to be effectively managed.
Exactly. Government doesn’t scale well. Same issue with governing at a federal government….we should rely more on keeping things local, and only leglislate/manage at a higher level when absolutely necessary (eg national defense)
‘Fun’ Question:
-If- someone was crazy enough to buy these days, would it better to put down as much as you can possibly afford to make the loan as small as possible? Or do you put down the least amount possible (least amount of risk), but pay a lot of interest over time?
Or do you split the difference, pay a larger than 20% down payment, but keep some cash in reserve and just make double payments? I know there may be a million scenarios and it depends on how long you want to stay at the place I guess.
Part of me says pay the least, so if it gets ugly we walk. Part of me says pay as much as possible, so no matter how ugly it gets, you never lose the place. You pay the least up front, then you pay in interest and higher monthly rate. You pay the most, you save a lot in the long run, payments are low, but you are ’stuck’.
We aren’t buying anytime soon ourselves, but the age old dilemma on how much debt to cash in hand plays out. I love being debt free and having a full bank acct. Once you are in the house-buying process you can’t exactly have both.
well if you pay cash…you monthly should be low enough so if both of you are on unemployment its should be enough to keep a roof over your head…….and especially if its the last place you will live in till the grim reaper comes.
we aren’t at toe-tag stage just yet, but I like that plan of unemployment covering the bill. God help us we get to the point where both are unemployed and can’t move to find work due to a house! Yikes.
rusty
Either are we. I have a good 13 years left, but I think the Baby Boomers are going to hold on to their McMansions too long, and all try and bail 10 years from now. We have already sold ours. We’re setting up early. We’ve never owned a ranch w/ a private backyard. Two story- HOA jungles suck. It’s like having a LL and living in a fish bowl. When everyone has a deck off their master, no one get backyard privacy. Yuck!
rusty-
We’re buying our “toe tag” home mortgage free, now shopping, as prices in So Ca are coming down.We need a place to live long term, and it will certainly reduce our monthly out go. It’s the best solution for us.
rusty-
Here’s our thinking. Right now, our rents are $29/yr. Let’s say we buy a one story rancher w/ pool for $400K. Property Tax over 15 years, let’s estimate it at $75K, ins. etc…In 15 years alone, we would have paid $535K for rents. $535K-$475K. Our savings might be only $60Kish, but our quality of life is raised substantially. This isn’t a dress rehearsal.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but why would anyone plan to retire in California? Aren’t you worried that they’re going to positively crush all homeowners to pay all those debts, all those California pensions? The government is not going to do without, and people with homes are sitting ducks. What if your property taxes go to $20,000 per year?
They would have to repeal prop 13 to do that, and prop 13 is the 3rd rail of California politics.
So where is the money going to come from? They’re going to get it somehow. They can’t get it from renters because they’ll just go to another state. They can’t get it from tourists because then they won’t come. That leaves homeowners.
“What if your property taxes go to $20,000 per year?”
Well by golly, if that were to happen, …ol Hwy thinks all 34 Million of them CA hippies, gays, elderly, democrapts, repubicans, “bidnessmen”, tire kickers, mothers of gang-bangers, wacko environmentalists, animal lovers, wine tasters, hells angels, illegals non-citizen’s, librarians, clergy-folk, movie-super-stars, skateboarders, grocery-baggers, 39 cent taco makers, wal-fart greeters, dentists, tanning saloon owners, gourmet dog biscuit makers, surfers, bell city workers, garbage collectors, urban cowboys, laker flag flyin’ bmw drivers, tattoo decorated pole-dancers, joe-the-plumber 6packers, would all start loading their 60 Million guns and begin looking for Arnie, Nancy, …he!! anyone with a briefcase & a “bidness” card that says: I’m CA gov’t lawmaker,… and they just happens to be walkin’ around the state capital building on the day that they vote to shed CA of proposition 13…
Got Neil’s All Natural Popcorn?
would all start loading their 60 Million guns and begin looking for Arnie, Nancy, …he!! anyone with a briefcase & a “bidness” card that says: I’m CA gov’t lawmaker,… and they just happens to be walkin’ around the state capital building on the day that they vote to shed CA of proposition 13…
Bingo, it will never happen.
Where will the money come from? From nowhere! The state will be bankrupt.
“That leaves homeowners…”
+
6 Million CA illegal non-citizen’s that would happily pay a cash-for-amnesty FEE with a PAYDAY loan
SFC
You’re right to question our sanity for buying our toe tag house in So Ca, no less (the illegal epicenter). We thought about that too. Thanks for reminding me to slow down and do my “T Account” (pro/con). Yikes.
Hwy-
LOL
I moved from San Jose to Boise in 2006….and found the differential in taxes and other cost of living items was so great that I didn’t even have to work anymore.
Plus I can buy much more interesting guns here.
There’s a possible court challenge to Prop 13. Propositions are supposed to be limited to a “single issue”. That was an important part of the pleadings of the case to overturn the anti-gay-marriage proposition. Prop 13 did both a cap on property taxes AND impose a 2/3 majority rule in the legislature to raise taxes. Can you imagine the CA Supreme Court ruling Prop 13 invalid? Would the S H T F?
“Can you imagine the CA Supreme Court ruling Prop 13 invalid? Would the S H T F?”
A new proposition would placed on the ballot and would pass overwhelmingly.
“tattoo decorated pole-dancers”
Come on Hwy…these creatures “stimulate” the economy.
Awaiting, I have no right to give advice. Fourteen years ago we bought a house in Palm Beach County FL, a place so corrupt we now have more county commissioners in jail than not! I’d bet that more than half of my property taxes are being stolen.
“tattoo decorated pole-dancers”
Come on Hwy…these creatures “stimulate” the economy.
Rash Limpbaughs: “That’s not stimulus…that’s spending!”
mikey…your both RIGHT!
SFC
Actually those of us who have some “opps, I fooked up” behind us, are the ones who advise others through our wisdom, imho. Was your crystal ball in the shop 14 years ago?
Things are getting interesting in Sacramento. Lots of inventory and lots of price reductions. You can find an affordable house in a decent neighborhood for less than $200,000. And prices seem to be falling further. And occasionally, really good deals pop up on the MLS. Yesterday we went to check out a little house in a very good neighborhood for $139K, a short sale. The offer was already accepted by the time we got there. Whoever gets that house will be two blocks away from a great elementary school. Good times.
REhobbyist
We’re in Ventura County, just north of L A County. There was a nice REO, really inexpensive in the MLS. I was curious about the neighborhood so I street viewed it on Google Maps. It was up against the fence to an elementary school on the right hand side. You’d have to be out of your freak’in mind. Noise, traffic, trash,lookie loo’s…. No thanks.
Same thing goes for parks- 2 blocks away from a home I’d be interested in. I’ll walk.
I had a repo hooked to the truck, and the debtor appeared on the scene. He turned out to be cordial, so I let him retrieve his belongings. While he was busy we chatted briefly. I mentioned the insanely high interest rate on the loan wondering how anyone could sign such a contract. He smiled confidently, and said that it doesn’t matter how high the interest rates are if you’re not going to pay for it.
The guy’s a fool. Now he’ll only be able to buy a GM car.
Nah, he’ll buy a Korean car, put a ‘Support the troops’ sticker made in Taiwan on the back, then go to Wal-Mart to load up on Chinese goods.
Then he will complain to his friends: “Im an American and Obama screwed me over. President Palin wouldn’t have done that to me!”
The “TruePurity™” Pattern Recognition Award goes to…
LOL
The guy’s a fool. Now he’ll only be able to buy a GM car.
I’m sure the othe rbrands will soon follow suit with their own subprime lending.
Who pays for anything anymore. We are all just vicims.
Press:
Nobody pays for you to WORK either…..unbelievable amount of “intern” jobs today, and maybe they will reimburse you for food and transportation….but minimum wage….damn you are asking for a lot.
When is walmart going to start selling cars made in china?
Hmmm… the could be a way for Geely to gain a foothold in the US. The tricky thing for Walmart will be hiring certified mechanics for the warranty dept at $10/hr. They’ll probably just bring in Geely factory techs from China on L1 visas.
Who needs mechanics? If it breaks, just throw it out and buy a new one.
I don’t think they’ll be that cheap
We’re not only a nation of deadbeats, we’re now a nation of self-assured deadbeats.
Really, true story?
Need advice. This was in PB POST yesterday, I posted a comment to the writer and she replied. Should I do it? I will check back tonight.
Federal foreclosure aid expected to arrive in Palm Beach County by end of year
By Kimberly Miller Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Updated: 6:45 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010
Posted: 4:52 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2010
Florida housing officials say it could be late December before the majority of struggling homeowners begin receiving $418 million in federal foreclosure prevention aid given to the state in February.
COMMENTS
Kimberly Miller
Why don`t you do some research on people who are collecting rent but not paying their mortgage. This is the second time it has happened to me in PBC at $1,700 a month since 2005 and I personally know of 9 other examples of this that are happening right now. Several of these people doing it were told to by realtors. Saw one advertised on craigslist. You are a good reporter, it shouldn`t be too hard for you. They are not all victims, not by a long shot.
jeff saturday
5:55 PM, 8/4/2010
Jeff Saturday, please give me a call with whatever information you have regarding the rentals. Sounds like a great story. 561-820-4435.
Kim Miller
8:38 AM, 8/5/2010
Jeff,
If you have the evidence to back up your claim, please follow up and call her and tell all.
Bill
The real story is that all levels of government want to keep the housing market propped for income. I don’t think anybody cares what’s behind the curtains so long as the cash flows.
Worse, in this scenario of the government cutting checks to the “needy,” it’s like asking the pothead how much weed he needs to get high.
“it’s like asking the pothead how much weed he needs to get high.”
Which, by the way, is always a little more than necessary.
“The real story is that all levels of government want to keep the housing market propped for income.”
The real issue is falling asset prices.
As home equity disappears more people who bought high are inclined to default of their mortgages too. Once they default it sets the stage for the next level of defaults, a cascading crash until median prices return true affordability. Think about the number of jumbo mortgages written along the coastal areas during the past ten years; scary!
Call her, Jeff! Let’s get this story out there.
Why does it matter? Th deadbeat LL will spin some “hardship’ story. Shoot, they’re just trying to live the American Dream and need a little compassion/OPM.
“Why does it matter?”
It would be good to get more of the story even if we never get all of the story. There are still a lot of questions that haven’t been asked, nor answered.
China:
So what’s the deal with these reports of 50% and 60% declines in RE prices over there this summer? Anyone see any good stories on the slightly more trustworthy international news sites? Sounds like a full fledged panic. How can one point whatever billion people financially freak out and all we get is the news that Bristol called if off again?
Tune into WBBR with Tom Keane and Pimm Fox.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie exeter, but I modified this a smilin’
with your RE posts in mind:
(Little Bill begins to viciously kick English Bob)
Little Bill Daggett: “I guess you think I’m kicking you, Bob. But it ain’t so. What I’m doing is talking, …you hear?”
(Kicks English Bob): “I’m talking… to all those realtors down there in Texas.”
(Kicks English Bob): I’m talking to all those realtors in Missouri.”
(Kicks English Bob):And all those villainious realtors down there in Arizona.
And what I’m saying is…there ain’t no whore’s gold. And even ifin’ there was, how they wouldn’t wants to come looking for it anyhow…
GM announces major investment in auto plant (in Mexico)
From the Wall Street Journal:
U.S. automobile giant General Motors Co. said Tuesday it plans to invest close to $500 million in its Ramos Arizpe plant in northern Mexico to produce a new line of engines as well as a new vehicle…
“We estimate that these technologies allow for a 9% improvement in fuel efficiency from current engines,” Lieblein said, adding that the investment will directly create 390 jobs in Coahuila state, where Ramos Arizpe is located.
Another $215 million will go toward upgrading the factory’s production lines to build a new vehicle for the domestic and international markets, she said, noting that the investment will be key to maintaining 400 jobs.
Assembly of the vehicle, which wasn’t named, is set to begin in the last quarter of 2011. GM plans for it to “give long-term viability to this plant by gradually substituting some production volumes.”
Lieblein said General Motors has invested $4.1 billion in Mexico over the last four years.
I wonder how much they budgeted to pay off the local drug mafia to leave them alone.
“Lieblein said General Motors has invested $4.1 billion in Mexico over the last four years.”
Hwy plays Lightfoot’s (Arizona’s) Carefree Highway:
“Turnin’ back the pages to the times I love best
I wonder if Detriot will ever do the same
Now the thing that I call livin’ is just bein’ satisfied
With knowin’ I got no one left to blame
Carefree highway, got ta see you my old flame
Carefree highway, you seen better days
The mornin’ after blues from my head down to my shoes
Carefree highway, let me slip away
Slip away on you…
I can’t wait to see how good these new Mexican engines are.
Lots of American and Japanese cars sold in the US are made in Mexico. There has been an auto industry in Mexico since before WW2.
Chances are your pickup (whether it be GM, Ford or Dodge) was made in Mexico.
So that’s why the inside of this thing always smelled like a burrito.
In the 80’s I bought a used Olds. I wanted to replace the engine with a new one and a mechanic told me to be sure to get an American made one as the Mexican made one’s only lasted 50K miles. My mechanic told me that I was full of S### as they were all made in America; an hour lated he called by and said he was sorry for the miss info and that an American one would cost me $100 more, which I gladly paid.
My first new car was a GM lemon. When you picked it up and turned it upside down it read Hecho en Mexico. I wish GM would move their entire production capacity to Mexico. The sooner they do this, the more difficult for the gubmint to keep bailing out a foreign manufacturer, with no union jobs left to bribe for their votes.
Does anyone remember the chevy vega?What a pos.GM sure has had some blunders.
“Does anyone remember the chevy vega? What a pos”
Yep sure do, x2 good high school buddies put chevy V-8’s in ‘em…that fixed the “problem”, However, it did’nt improve their DMV records.
Or the gas mileage…….
Signed,
Grumpy Jenkins
Hey Grumpy,
Yeah well, I had them beat there too.
Hwy’s 55 Studebaker with a Ca-dilly-ac 472 c.i.
472:
At introduction, the engine had a 4.30 in (109.2 mm) bore and a 4.06 in (103.1 mm) stroke for a displacement of 472 cu in (7.7 L). ] It delivered 375 hp (280 kW) at 4400 rpm and a massive 525 lb·ft (712 N·m) torque at just 3000 rpm.
I paid .35/gal for Regular leaded gasoline…I’m doomed, there’s never gonna be any redemption for that gluttony, if my children knew, I’d never see another Fathers Day card again…
If you are going to scare yourself, scare yourself good.
Try a Plymouth Duster with a 440. With drum brakes.
Does anyone remember the chevy vega
Vega memories:
My friend had one, crazy orange with black stripes. He used to put it in 3rd gear at a dead stop at idle and let out the clutch and let it “hop”. It would then lurch-hop around for as long as he wanted.
For some crazy reason it was able to get 2nd, 3rd AND 4th gear “scratch”.
One time I got in the car and it smelled like burning plastic and he points to the glove box and urgently says “look in there” and I burned my finger on the latch that he’d just removed his lighter from.
It burned so much oil that I’d give him my used oil from oil changes. He said that my dirty oil lasted longer.
How about the AMC gremlin?
http://oldcarandtruckpictures.com/AmericanMotors/AmericanMotors.html
Now I really feel old. My oldest sister (57 years old) had a 1974 Gremlin when she turned 21. It was a POS.
And what about the Pacer? Like driving in a bubble.
If the American public was smart they would force our gov to slash global trade, and tax our food exports and fuel imports. Then slash payroll and income taxes with the proceeds.
Now people will say that this is what we did prior to the GD and look what happened. Well back then we actually manufactured stuff so cutting global trade caused more unemployment. We’ve had a trade deficit dating back to the 60’s which has greatly accelerated.
It goes both ways. We are still #2 or #3 exporter in the world, no? Take out oil, we might as well be #1.
We still have a what? 800 Billion trade deficit?
“If the American public was smart…” -you were doomed from there.
“If unicorns cr@pped candy corns…”
My brother called last night. He has a buddy that works for BoA, working problem home loans. He says they had 600,000 call drop in two weeks, because people got tired of being on hold/waiting for someone to answer their call. They are buried under requests to refi.
One individual hasn’t made a payment in FOUR Years on a $900K+ mortgage. House is now worth approx $400K. Of course, the guy was looking for a refi/principle reduction.
They don’t have enough staff to process the requests. So, as usual, the department is being outsourced to India.
Yet BofA will $hit all over themselves and become a nuisance caller if they think they can ensnare a new customer. I know this for a fact.
Job opportunity! BAC muzak composer.
“…because people got tired of being on hold/waiting for someone to answer their call.”
But-but-but our calls are important to them!
I have a mortgage with BofA. ~5.5% fixed. ~50% equity, extra principal paid every month, no late payments, 800+ credit score, etc.
I’m getting ready to refinance to a lower rate. I called up BofA customer service, and asked them if they’d like to make 4.5% (above the current market rate) instead of zero.
They were quick to try and offer an expensive refinance. I explained that I wasn’t interested; that I was getting ready to dump their loan, and was only, as a courtesy, giving them an opportunity to keep my business through a rate reduction on my current loan.
I didn’t really expect a result- it was just somewhat entertaining to befuddle the hapless customer service reps.
In today’s U-T:
“When will home prices reach their peak?”
The headline makes me want to hurl.
“Ever wonder when, oh, when your home is going to be worth what it was back in the heady days of the housing bubble? Try 2024.”
“Back in March, Fiserv, which generates data for the widely watched Case-Shiller Housing Index, created a report to estimate long it would take 384 metro areas throughout the country to regain their peak home prices.”
“Some markets like Cheyenne, Wyo., Bowling Green, Ky., and Billings, Mont. were projected to get back to their peaks some time next year. Believe it or not, Anchorage, Alaska was slated to return to its peak later this year. Same with Fairbanks, another Alaskan metro market. Go figure.”
“Before you curse your bad luck for living here and not, ahem, Cheyenne, consider the Miami and Orlando markets. Fiserv expects them to regain the peak price sometime beyond 2039. Yes, you read that right. Some time after 2039.”
“In California , there were several markets bleaker than ours. Stockon and Sacramento weren’t expected to hit their previous highs until beyond the year 2039 either. For the Los Angeles metro area, it’s 2026. Still, Orange County is supposed to rebound a bit quicker, hitting its bubble numbers sometime in 2022. San Francisco is supposed to get there in the year 2017.”
Considering I don’t think housing prices have yet bottomed and that I think the condition of the nation’s economy in 2024 could well be worse than today (driven by energy issues), I’d say prices in 2024 are more likely to be lower than today than to have recovered to peak bubble values by 2024.
In general, I’d say there’s so much uncertainty in so many key areas (much more weighted toward the downside), that I’d consider a return to peak bubble values by 2024 rather optimistic (for those that consider higher housing prices a good thing - I don’t).
“When will home prices reach their peak?”
I am sure the U-T editors meant ‘peak affordability’? I would guess by 2015 or so…
I can’t speak for Bowling Green, but I strongly believe that Cheyenne and Billings only look good because they were just starting to come off their peak with the 8k stimulus hit. That held them close to the peak long enough to make it look like they’re not going to actually take a real fall. Even if the coasts start a real recovery I predict they will continue to fall for years…they’ve been on the trailing edge of the bubble every step of the way.
How long before prices in Detroit return to their peak?
Well, IMO, high energy costs in the future will mean cities are favorable. Combine with climate, education, and so forth and you get coastal parts of Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. And the eastern seaboard cities - NYC of course, Boston, and so on. So I figure those areas will recover in RE prices well before flyover country.
Little TTT sez…
Social Security: More going out than coming in.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — It’s official: Social Security will reach its tipping point this year.
For the first time in nearly 30 years, the system will pay out more benefits than it receives in payroll taxes both this year and next, the government officials who oversee Social Security said on Thursday.
And while Social Security cash flow will likely head back into the black for a few years after that, starting in 2015 it looks to stay in the red for the long haul, the trustees said in their annual report.
“The improving economy is expected to result in rough balance between Social Security taxes and expenditures for several years before the retirement of the baby boom generation swells the beneficiary population and causes deficits to grow rapidly,” Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said.
The real question is, where did the money go during the 27 years more was going in than going out?
I’d like to see someone ask Alan Greenspan about that one.
Simple SS has been borrowed from for many, many years, the money was replaced with IOU’s, it’s looong gone. No reason to ask Greenspan, ask congress over and over, you won’t get a straight answer.
I’m sure their solution will be to raise rates…
Postal Service losses widen ~ Washington Business Journal
The U.S. Postal Service saw wider losses and moved less mail in this latest quarter, warning that its liquidity problems will reach critical levels next year.
The Postal Service’s fiscal third-quarter net loss was $3.5 billion, compared with a net loss of $2.4 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. Third-quarter mail volume fell 1.7 percent from a year earlier.
The Postal Service is now processing 20 percent fewer pieces of mail than it did in 2007.
Its finance chief warns the Postal Service will not be able to meet mandated funding for retiree benefits.
I think there’s been talk of a rate increase.
I’m sure their solution will be to raise rates…
Well, that’s the downside of being mandated by law to deliver a letter anywhere in the US for a flat fee of 44 cents.
Still, with business down 20% they’re going to have to do something beyond raise rates.
I have definitely seen a decline in the volume of junk mail received. About the only thing that arrives in my mailbox besides junk mail are bills, most of which I pay online.
I have definitely seen a decline in the volume of junk mail received. About the only thing that arrives in my mailbox besides junk mail are bills, most of which I pay online.
A couple of years ago, I signed up for one of those junk mail stopping services. It was called Green Dimes and it worked pretty well. I don’t know what that outfit’s called now — I lost track.
Any-hoo, I’m also noticing a substantial decrease in my junque mail. Both at my street box and at the post office box.
And, on the business side of things, I think I told you about the postcard mailing I did earlier this year. Total flop. Only response I got was a very indignant call from a local solar installer. Her message to me (in a very sniffy tone of voice): “We don’t take postcards.”
It seems that my un-green form of marketing really laid an egg at that company. Which is another thing that businesses have to consider these days. If your marketing via direct mail, well, you’re just not very green, and that’s not very cool.
Does anyone now of a good place to lookup reasonably priced house rentals? I’m looking in Boca Raton, FL and there seems to be nothing for less than $1600/month, yet I always hear that rentals are cheap now. I tried Craigslist, but to no avail.
Any suggestions?
I just looked at CL for Boca Raton and got over a thousand hits, many of which were well below $1600, a mix of houses, condos, townhouses, and apartments. Granted some were not in the middle of Boca Raton, but many were within a 5-mile radius. I searched for a minimum of 2 bedrooms and 2 baths. I have to admit I don’t know the area at all, so I don’t know what percentage were likely to be crack houses.
Unfortunately, anything below 1600 is a townhouse or apartment. Many are misclassified. I’ve only seen 1 house under 1600 and the poster is not responding to inquiries.
Alcoa Cuts Shift, 71 Workers at Ohio Plant
CLEVELAND (AP) Alcoa Inc. says soft demand for some of its products is leading the company to drop the third shift at a Cleveland area plant and lay off 71 workers.
Alcoa spokeswoman Marian Lowes blames a “depressed economy” for the cutbacks at its Cuyahoga (ky-uh-HOH’-guh) Heights facility. She says the Pittsburgh-based manufacturing giant has seen reduced demand for aerospace products and forged specialty wheels.
Workers were informed on Wednesday about the layoffs, which take effect Monday.
What’s known as Alcoa’s Cleveland Works plant has about 700 employees and produces many types of wheels, as well as major components for military aircraft.
An August Surprise from Obama?
Aug 5, 2010 00:26
“Main Street may be about to get its own gigantic bailout. Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt of millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth. An estimated 15 million U.S. mortgages – one in five – are underwater with negative equity of some $800 billion. Recall that on Christmas Eve 2009, the Treasury Department waived a $400 billion limit on financial assistance to Fannie and Freddie, pledging unlimited help. The actual vehicle for the bailout could be the Bush-era Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, a sister program to Obama’s loan modification effort. HARP was just extended through June 30, 2011.
The move, if it happens, would be a stunning political and economic bombshell less than 100 days before a midterm election in which Democrats are currently expected to suffer massive, if not historic losses. The key date to watch is August 17. . .”
http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2010/08/05/an-august-surprise-from-obama/
Could this result in further driving down house prices? As people who get principal write downs can lower their asking prices to the point of the new principal owed.
1. Strategic defaults would plummet.
2. Regular defaults would plummet.
This would not drive down home prices. All else equal, there would be fewer foreclosures, fewer distressed sellers, and fewer sellers in any event.
Funny, but I spoke to a guy who worked for GE Pension probably about 2 years ago, and he said that if they wanted to clean up the mess quickly, they should do just what they are suggesting above, simply write off the debt.
An August Surprise from Obama?
Aug 5, 2010
Main Street may be about to get its own gigantic bailout. Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt of millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth. An estimated 15 million U.S. mortgages – one in five – are underwater with negative equity of some $800 billion. Recall that on Christmas Eve 2009, the Treasury Department waived a $400 billion limit on financial assistance to Fannie and Freddie, pledging unlimited help. The actual vehicle for the bailout could be the Bush-era Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, a sister program to Obama’s loan modification effort. HARP was just extended through June 30, 2011.
The move, if it happens, would be a stunning political and economic bombshell less than 100 days before a midterm election in which Democrats are currently expected to suffer massive, if not historic losses. The key date to watch is August 17 when the Treasury Department holds a much-hyped meeting on the future of Fannie and Freddie.
http://blogs.reuters.com/james-pethokoukis/2010/08/05/an-august-surprise-from-obama/
Personally, I think that a widespread writedown of mortgage balances wouldn’t be the end of the world. Yes, Joe Howmuchamonth will probably take the money he no longer has to shell out and use it on yet another stupid spending spree.
However, there are probably millions of other people who’d use the money in a responsible fashion. Heck, some of them might start businesses that provide something more useful than candles and pirate gear.
So, maybe 2010 will be our Jubilee Year.
Rumors are running wild…
BWAHAHAHicHAHAHicHAHAHAHAHicHAHAHic* (DennisN™)
Let’s check that the TruePatriot™” / Anti-Slavery / TrueIndustrialist™ / Anti-communist / Fiscal Conserative / Compassionate Conservative / TrueBeliever’s™ / TrueDeceiver’s ™ / TrueHypocrite™” / “TruePatriot™ / TruePurity™”
+
“TrueDoNothing™ / “TrueObstructionists™ / TrueGridLokers™”
+
“TrueAnger™” PeeParty tea toadlers
+
The “TrueRogue™” Sarah The Barracuda
…are staying on message for instantly re-creating Cheney-Shrubs “lost” 8 million jobs & the TOTAL restoration of $14.6 TRILLION Dollars $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ in “lost” RE EQUITY within 19 months of the Nov 2010 elections:
“The Message” for JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!:
1. Illegal non-citizen terrorist’s in AZ
2. Proposition 8 in CA / same-sex civil-marriage
3. Recall Obamacare / restore Insurance CORPORATION health-care control
4. Exxxxxxtend Shrubs tax DISCOUNTS for the top 1% wealthiest Americans
Hey drumminj, what if you don’t want to filter everything a person posts, just anything with “True*™” in it? Is there a way to make your program do that?
I don’t understand most of what Hwy writes, even when it’s clear.
Don’t even bother to try, the stylus is stuck in the same grove. For entertainment purposes only.
we all need a laugh over this disaster…so cut HWY some slack… heck its only a few posts a day plus its creative..
Must be too much Jack Daniels in his coffee.
From cankerbearstucco’s post further up the line:
“U.S. households have lost $6.4 trillion in real estate value since mid–2006, according to Fed data”
Things are really getting squirrely, that’s for sure.
IF, something like this does occur, I believe it will backfire in a big way. In that, there are millions of folks who have played by the rules paid their mortgages and are getting damn tired of this bailout crap.
However when an incumbent party panics and they are, anything is possible.
Kinda of fun watching these douche bags pee their little panties, problem is… we pay for it.
wmbz:
Its already happening to people like me who have to keep paying my rent today and eat raman newdles until i git me sum mo moneee.
Damn those disgusting pig jive honky homeowners
Can we sue the feds for this?
60-70 rooms at $2500.00 bucks a night…Sweet!
Material girl Michelle Obama is a modern-day Marie Antoinette on a glitzy Spanish vacation. ~ nydailynews.com
Sacrifice is something that many Americans are becoming all too familiar with during this economic downturn. It was a key theme in President Obama’s inaugural address to the nation, and he’s referenced it numerous times when lecturing the country on how to get back on its feet.
But while most of the country is pinching pennies and downsizing summer sojourns - or forgoing them altogether - the Obamas don’t seem to be heeding their own advice. While many of us are struggling, the First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her “closest friends.”
According to CNN, the group is expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms, more than a third of the lodgings at the 160-room resort. Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times.
One would think that a lot of American hotels could use that business this summer, perhaps say one of those on the Gulf coast?
“Buy American” must be for the little guy/girl. It is they that should shell out their hard earned cash for GM/Mopar junk.
John, have you ever been to the coast of Spain during the summer months? I lived in Valencia during one summer, and let me tell you, Hades would be a much cooler place. Oh, they have humidity there too.
In short, the Costa del Sol’s summer climate isn’t too different than coastal.
OTOH, I do agree with the notion of their spending the holiday along the Gulf Coast. It sure could use the business, and you’d be hard-pressed to find people who’d appreciate it more.
That’s my point. They’re free to vacay how they want, but meanwhile hubby was up here today beating the buy union/Buy American drum at the Torrence Ave. Ford plant.
More do as we say and not as we do - and by no means just from this couple. That whole moral marshland on the Potomac does this.
Boeing loses aircraft orders; DAE reduces orders.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Boeing Co. canceled 26 new commercial aircraft orders this week, according to the Chicago manufacturer’s Website on Thursday. Those cancellations included the loss of one 737 jetliner, 10 777 and 15 787 orders. Earlier media reports stated Dubai Aerospace Enterprise may be forced to cancel aircraft orders because of growing financial difficulties. Its orders for 15 787s are no longer on Boeing’s order book, though the company denied to comment. Further, its 18 777 orders has fallen to 8. No one was available at DAE to comment.
Interesting….
A guy I recently met was working contract maintenance in Dubai until just recently. Said they called them in on Thursday, and told them their contract was cancelled. They were on their way back to the USA the next day. Zero warning or notice.
That goes with the title - contractor. I’ve seen that happen and I anticipate it happening to me anytime.
Been with my job shop for 9 years and 48 weeks and five days . I anticipate on my ten year anniversary they may be as generous as giving me a nice coffee cup chock full of hard candy with the company name emblazened on the coffee cup. I got that the first year.
But again, I used the term “may be as generous.” I probably won’t get any recognition at all. Oh well. I negotiate my missing benefits into my hourly rate.
Disney parks raising ticket prices
(CNN) — It’s going to cost vacationers more to visit with Mickey Mouse starting Thursday, when Disney parks in California and Florida will raise ticket prices.
Disney posted an announcement about the price hikes Tuesday on its Disney Parks blog.
At Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, the base price for one-day, one-park passes will rise from $79 to $82 for ages 10 and up. Tickets for children ages 3 to 9 will go from $68 to $74. The additional fee for park-hopper tickets will jump by $2 for one-day access, to $54.
One-day, one-park tickets to Southern California’s Disneyland Resort will rise from $72 to $76 for ages 10 and up and from $62 to $68 for ages 3 to 9. Prices for one-day park-hopper tickets will go up by $4 for both age groups.
Increases will also apply to multi-day passes at both parks.
Prices for annual passes will rise by $10 to $18 at Disney World and by $20 for premium annual passes at Disneyland.
And to think that, back during the 1960s when I was a wee little Slim, my parents thought that a Disneyland trip would be too pricey.
And there is no shortage of people who will pay $400 a pop for a “Premium Annual Pass” in Anaheim. Cheaper Annual Passes, with varying numbers of “blocked” days can also be purchased. I read recently the Disney sells about 1 million APs for Anaheim parks every year.
Amazingly, the Anaheim parks are packed. Orlando not so much, and over in Florida Disney is constantly resorting to discounting and specials. It’s gotten to the point that if its not on sale all you have to do is wait awhile.
Meanwhile in nearby Universal Studios Florida its wall to wall people who are coming to see the “Wizarding World of Harry Potter.”
Crazy. Note, however, that not too many people are there for a single day.
Disney ticket pricing scales down on a per-day basis and is calculated to encourage people to stay for >3 days, at which time the incremental admission cost-per-day is about 5 bucks. This also acts as an incentive to encourage Mommy and Daddy to stay (and spend) on-property after day 3 instead of shelling out additional whopping big $$ per head to visit Universal, Sea World, the beach, etc.
Nevertheless, I think it won’t be too much longer before Disney will have to wake up to the fact that they’re pricing themselves out of the market.
However, I probably would be willing to fork over the $82 IF they merge “It’s a Small World” with the Frontierland Shootin’ Gallery.
The last time I went to Disney Land my employer bought the tickets. I still felt like I got ripped off.
Panel urges 30% workers’ comp rate hike
Sacramento Business Journal
The organization that advises California’s insurance commissioner on workers’ compensation base rates is mulling recommending an increase of around 30 percent.
The Governing Committee of the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California makes the recommendations to state regulators, and that committee won’t meet until Aug. 11.
But on Wednesday of this week, the Rating Bureau’s Actuarial Committee met to review the information that goes into the eventual proposal to the state. That committee said that a pure premium — or base rate — of about 30 percent appears warranted, Rating Bureau spokesman Jack Hannan said Thursday. Within a few days, that committee will determine its exact recommendation for the Governing Committee.
Of course no one will make a complete verification of all those workers who just might not be as disabled as they claim
hmmmmmaybe we can save $$$ there…ya think?
Record number of Illinois families on food stamps.
More Illinois families are receiving food stamps than ever before as a result of the deepest recession in decades, state officials said Monday.
More than 780,000 Illinois families got food stamps in June, up 11.9 percent from a year earlier, the Illinois Department of Human Services reported. Nationally, 40 million Americans — 18.7 million households — use food stamps.
In Illinois, the number of people applying for the program has increased even faster than those enrolled, and state and national officials expect demand to keep growing. Illinois applications were up by 27 percent in June, compared to a year ago.
I know this because half of them shop at my local grocery store.
Stamps buy the meat and potatoes, and a roll of cash covers the ciggies and beer. Hardly anyone seems to check out on one receipt anymore.
Freddie Mac: 15-year mortgages fall below 4%
New Mexico Business Weekly
Mortgage rates continued to ratchet lower, with the average rate on a 15-year fixed rate mortgage falling below 4 percent.
Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE), in its weekly report, said a 30-year fix-rate mortgage averaged 4.49 percent in the week ending Aug. 5, down from 4.54 percent last week. A 15-year fix fell to an average of 3.95 percent, down from 4 percent. Both are the lowest since Freddie Mac began keeping track.
The average rate on a one-year adjustable-rate mortgage fell to 3.55 percent, down from 3.64 percent last week.
“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” ~Mark Twain
And another:
“It is the foreign element that commits our crimes. There is no native criminal class except Congress.”
“…There is no native criminal class except Congress.”
When Mr. Twain was still kickin’, was the management at GoldenmanSucks all foreigners?
In DC, No Such Thing as Too Poor For Medical Pot.
WASHINGTON - There should be no such thing as too poor to buy pot if you live in D.C., at least if the marijuana is for a medical condition.
That’s part of the conclusion of a new law enacted in the nation’s capital earlier this year. The medical marijuana law allows people to legally obtain the drug for medical reasons. But the law also includes a provision different from the 14 other states with medical marijuana laws, requiring the drug to be provided at a discount to poor residents. Who will get the reduced-price marijuana and how much it will cost, however, is still being worked out.
City officials say they plan to publish their first draft of regulations implementing the law on Friday. Patients aren’t expected to be able to purchase medical marijuana in the city until 2011.
I am expecting an amazing expansion of the number of medical conditions amenable to marijuana therapy.
When it’s hangin’ next to the “gift cards” @ Wal-Fart…game-over!
What if we’re all too high to go house hunting?
Oh, for pete’s sake. In the summertime, DC is hot and humid enough so you can grow your own pot in a pot. Just grow enough to tide you over during the winter, or take your little garden inside.
sounds like slim has this down to a science……uh huh uh huh
Maybe they need to come up with a new program. Instead of HAMP, they would have HEMP. The idea being that a FB gets a big doobie as a consolation prize when they lose their house.
WASHINGTON – Federal regulators are abandoning efforts to negotiate a compromise on so-called “network neutrality” rules intended to ensure that phone and cable TV companies cannot discriminate against Internet traffic traveling over their broadband lines.
The announcement Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission ends weeks of FCC-brokered talks to reach an agreement on the thorny issue among a handful of big phone, cable TV and Internet companies. And it comes as two big companies that have been taking part in those talks — Verizon Communications Inc. and Google Inc. — try to hammer out their own separate proposal on how broadband providers should treat Internet traffic.
Verizon and Google expect to unveil their proposal within days and hope it will provide a framework for net neutrality legislation in Congress, said several people briefed on the negotiations between the companies. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were confidential.
But according to one person close to the FCC talks, the deal also undermined the discussions taking place at the FCC. This person said FCC officials fear that the proposal from Google and Verizon does not do enough to prevent phone and cable companies from using their control over broadband connections to become online gatekeepers. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is seeking to adopt rules that would require phone and cable companies to give equal treatment to all broadband traffic.
Big money want’s control of everything. The cable gatekeeper model is one of restricted options and high expense, that’s what they want for the internet as well.
Loan modification marathon scheduled for West Palm Beach postponed
By Kimberly Miller Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 5:06 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010
The Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America has postponed its South Florida visit, which was scheduled to begin Aug. 13.
The nonprofit Boston-based group, also known as NACA, holds 5-day, around-the-clock sessions for struggling homeowners where it helps modify loans with on-site bank representatives.
It had been in negotiations with the Palm Beach County Convention Center, where it held a loan modification event in late February and early March that attracted thousands of debt-plagued borrowers.
NACA spokesman Darren Duarte said as of today the group had not secured a South Florida venue and was pushing back its visit to a yet to be determined date.
1 COMMENT
I bet they did not pay the bill from last time at the Convention Center.
sal
5:53 PM, 8/5/2010
Fannie Mae asks for $1.5B in aid after 2Q loss
By ALAN ZIBEL The Associated Press
Posted: 5:06 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010
WASHINGTON — Fannie Mae is asking for less money from the government, a sign that the cost to taxpayers for bailing out the mortgage giant could be billions lower than once thought.
The government-controlled company said Thursday it has now set aside enough money to cover the majority of losses stemming from bad loans made from 2005 through 2008. It requested $1.5 billion in additional taxpayer aid after posting the best quarterly results since the company was put under federal control in September 2008.
Fannie Mae said Thursday that it lost $3.13 billion, or 55 cents per share, in the April-to-June period. The company’s losses take into account $1.9 billion in dividends paid to the Treasury Department. It compares with a loss of $15.2 billion, or $2.67 a share, in the quarter a year ago.
“Across our industry, we are seeing a more realistic approach to housing and lending that bodes well for the future,” Mike Williams, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement.
The government rescued Fannie Mae and sibling company Freddie Mac from the brink of failure nearly two years ago. The new request means they have needed $146.4 billion to stay afloat.
Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee about half of all U.S. mortgages, or nearly 31 million home loans worth more than $5 trillion. They buy home loans from lenders, package them into bonds with a guarantee against default and sell them to investors.
During the housing boom, Fannie and Freddie faced political pressure to expand homeownership and competitive pressure from Wall Street to back ever-riskier loans. When the market went bust, defaults and foreclosures piled up, and the government had to take them over.
There were some encouraging signs among Fannie Mae’s borrowers. As of the end of June, about 5 percent of the company’s borrowers had missed at least three months of mortgage payments. That’s down from 5.4 percent at the end of 2009 but still up from 3.9 percent at the end of last year.
Some analysts, however, doubt that company has turned a corner. Once mortgage modifications made under the federal government’s $75 billion homeowner assistance start to go bad, Fannie Mae will start to be hit with increased losses.
“They’re putting a rosy picture on it,” said Edward Pinto, a housing consultant who served as Fannie’s chief credit officer in the late 1980s. “Basically they’re kicking the can down the road on these modifications.”
Edward DeMarco, the government’s chief regulator of the two companies, said in interview last week that the total cost to taxpayers for rescuing Fannie and Freddie should be less than $400 billion. That’s under most economic scenarios, he said.
Over the next year, lawmakers plan to review the entire system for providing mortgages to Americans. That could include a dramatic overhaul of Fannie and Freddie, or ultimately their elimination.
The financial overhaul signed by President Barack Obama didn’t address that issue, despite protests from Republicans that it was incomplete without a such a plan. The administration is holding a public conference on Aug. 17 in Washington to discuss the mortgage system.
“The country need lawmakers to come to an agreement on this,” DeMarco said. The mortgage market, he said, can’t operate indefinitely with the government providing life support. “We’re going to have to figure out a solution.”
This just in: Romer To Leave White House
Slim’s prediction: She’ll be writing a “Get me outta DC!” book like Robert Reich’s Locked in the Cabinet. Or how about a barn-burner like Robert Kuttner’s new one, A Presidency in Peril? That one sure didn’t have too many nice things to say about the Obama administration’s performance so far.
And, if I may stride boldly out on a limb, I think that Geithner’s and Summers’ White House days are coming to an end. They’ll be ousted in a big, Obama-led shakeup.
Dick Morris certainly hasn’t had nice things to say about Bill Clinton since he left his employ. The same could be said about John Dean when he left the Nixon Whitehouse.
Do you think Barry will dump those two before the election, and try to blame the sour economy on them?
You mean buck stops with the other guy…..
She has had it, Larry Summers is the one who should get the hell out. Romer does not agree with Larry and his dumb ass has the presidents ear(boys club). I don’t blame her, but when she was appointed it was called an “historic” moment, so what will ‘they’ call her departure?
Jump a sinking ship, smart move on her part!
“so what will ‘they’ call her departure?”
Another “historic” moment?
P.S. If the midterm elections go poorly for the Dems, is there any chance either Geithner or Summers will get the shovola back to Wall Street and/or academia?
OTB to close 11 parlors ~ 08/05/2010
New York City’s Off-Track Betting Corp. has begun the shuttering of 11 betting parlors.
The cash-strapped agency has closed down one location on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn and one in the Bronx. Two more in Manhattan are expected to be shuttered next week, followed by the remaining seven in September.
New OTB President Greg Rayburn, who took over after previous President Sandy Frucher resigned in June, is set to announce a financial turnaround plan shortly to save the perpetually cash-strapped agency, which was $228 million in debt when it filed for bankruptcy last year.
In June, the state Senate passed a bill that if signed into law would create a new Franchise Oversight Board, which would oversee OTB’s policies, capital and operating plans, simulcasting and budget. The oversight board would have the authority to approve or disapprove many of OTB’s functions.
Funny, the punks that call some one a fuddy-duddy let their parents put them through school, live at home as long as they can, yet when they make a buck they are smarter than some “old” guy.
UPDATE 2-Google ordered to defend against age bias lawsuit
* California top court clears way for trial against Google
* Plaintiff, in mid-50s, says was called “old fuddy-duddy”
* Ex-Stanford professor had helped develop AltaVista
NEW YORK, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Google Inc (GOOG.O), which runs the world’s most popular Internet search engine, was ordered to defend itself against a lawsuit by a former manager who said he was fired for being too old, clearing the way for a trial.
The California Supreme Court unanimously agreed that a trial court erred in dismissing a complaint by Brian Reid, who was hired in 2002 as a director of operations and engineering, and fired less than two years later at age 54 after being told he was not a good “cultural fit.”
Thursday’s ruling upheld a state appeals court decision that the trial court erred in dismissing the lawsuit, and said the trial court should have considered “stray remarks” from Reid’s colleagues, including that he was an “old man” and “old fuddy-duddy,” that might be seen as evidence of bias.
If this case gets anywhere, look out. There are a lot of us old fuddy-duddy types who can still kick some serious @ss. And we know how to hire attorneys too.
Can I make my name shorter?
I hope the new bailout rumors are false. Lordy that would be aggravating.
Geithner and Treasury display significant oppositions to financial reform
August 5, 2010, 6:00 am
The Treasury’s Worrisome Position
By SIMON JOHNSON
Today’s Economist
Simon Johnson, the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, is the co-author of “13 Bankers.”
…
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made his view on these issues quite clear in a major speech at New York University on Monday, and it would be an understatement to say he is not in complete agreement with Volcker-Merkley-Levin. Mr. Geithner’s theme sounded reasonable enough – “maintaining a balance” between curtailing financial excess and benefiting from financial innovation. But if you look carefully at the details, you understand why so many pro-reform people behind the scenes are becoming increasingly frustrated with Mr. Geithner’s philosophy.
…
Mr. Geithner is insisting, as he did throughout the Congressional negotiations, that all the weight should be placed on increasing capital and improving its quality. This is not objectionable as one element of a reform strategy, but it still looks very much like putting all our eggs in one dubious basket — one that has failed us repeatedly before.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/the-treasurys-worrisome-position/
“Geithner”
He’s a banker’s banker, headed to a Wall Street career after he leaves his govt post.
Article seems a little shrill with the political angle, but the concept of “having the right enemies” struck a chord with me. I’m a strong supporter of Warren too. I saw her on I believe it was Frontline and we’re on the same page.
Wednesday, Jul 21, 2010 19:27 ET
How The World Works
Elizabeth Warren has all the right enemies
http://www.salon.com/news/bank_reform/?story=/tech/htww/2010/07/21/elizabeth_warren_has_all_the_right_enemies
US new dole claims in surprise rise as recovery ‘losing steam’
* From correspondents in Washington
* From: AFP
* August 06, 2010 7:34AM
NEW claims for US jobless benefits rose unexpectedly last week to the highest level since April, the government said overnight, underscoring concerns unemployment could scuttle the economic recovery.
Initial claims climbed 4.1 per cent to 479,000 in the week to July 31, the Labor Department said, baffling most analysts who had expected claims to fall to 455,000.
“The initial claims level was a clear disappointment,” analysts at Briefing.com wrote to clients.
It reflects “a recovery that is losing steam,” added economist Andrew Gledhill at Moody’s Economy.com.
Initial claims ended 2009 around 450,000 and have not improved since then even as the economy emerged in the middle of last year from a brutal recession.
“With limited hiring by the private sector, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the recovery to be sustained,” Gledhill said.
The previous week’s jobless insurance claims were revised up slightly to 460,000 from 457,000.
The four-week moving average for the claims, a less volatile indicator than the week-to-week figures, rose to 458,500 from the previous week’s revised average of 453,250.
Read more: http://www.news.com.au/business/breaking-news/us-new-dole-claims-in-surprise-rise-as-recovery-losing-steam/story-e6frfkur-1225901910425#ixzz0vosJN4Nw
This is one of these issues which convinces me beyond a doubt that I am not a Democrat, and can’t even begin to see the world through their eyes.
* DECLARATIONS
* AUGUST 6, 2010
Peggy Noonan: America Is at Risk of Boiling Over
And out-of-touch leaders don’t see the need to cool things off.
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In Washington they don’t seem to be looking around and thinking, Hmmm, this nation is in trouble, it needs help. They’re thinking something else. I’m not sure they understand the American Dream itself needs a boost, needs encouragement and protection. They don’t seem to know or have a sense of the mood of the country.
And so they make their moves, manipulate this issue and that, and keep things at a high boil. And this at a time when people are already in about as much hot water as they can take.
To take just one example from the past 10 days, the federal government continues its standoff with the state of Arizona over how to handle illegal immigration. The point of view of our thought leaders is, in general, that borders that are essentially open are good, or not so bad. The point of view of those on the ground who are anxious about our nation’s future, however, is different, more like: “We live in a welfare state and we’ve just expanded health care. Unemployment’s up. Could we sort of calm down, stop illegal immigration, and absorb what we’ve got?” No is, in essence, the answer.
An irony here is that if we stopped the illegal flow and removed the sense of emergency it generates, comprehensive reform would, in time, follow. Because we’re not going to send the estimated 10 million to 15 million illegals already here back. We’re not going to put sobbing children on a million buses. That would not be in our nature. (Do our leaders even know what’s in our nature?) As years passed, those here would be absorbed, and everyone in the country would come to see the benefit of integrating them fully into the tax system. So it’s ironic that our leaders don’t do what in the end would get them what they say they want, which is comprehensive reform.
When the adults of a great nation feel long-term pessimism, it only makes matters worse when those in authority take actions that reveal their detachment from the concerns—even from the essential nature—of their fellow citizens. And it makes those citizens feel powerless.
Inner pessimism and powerlessness: That is a dangerous combination.
Another massive price cut announcement on yet another high-end California home up for sale:
WSJ Blogs
Developments
Real estate news and analysis from The Wall Street Journal
* Real Estate News: Real-Estate Developer St. Joe Sues Halliburton
* Federal Officials: No Plans for Expanding Refinance Programs
* August 5, 2010, 10:39 AM ET
Michael Jackson Mansion Listed, $10 Million Price Cut
By Dawn Wotapka
MLS, Listing courtesy of Jerry Jolton, Coldwell Banker-BH South
The California mansion where pop-star Michael Jackson died more than a year ago is on the market for about $29 million–a whopping discount of nearly $10 million from its 2008 price tag.
Set in Hollywood’s exclusive Holmby Hills neighborhood and modeled after a French chateau, the house has seven bedrooms, 13 bathrooms and 12 fireplaces, according to the listing (which also features a photo slideshow). The 17,000-square-foot address also boasts an art studio, wine cellar, theater, elevator and spa.
Mr. Jackson’s rented the space for a reported $100,000 per month.
We’re sure that the singer’s fans are already plotting to pose as interested buyers for a sneak peek. But owner Hubert Guez - head of the Ed Hardy line - requires potential buyers to go through an extensive pre-qualifying check, TMZ reports. Before you try qualifying, know this is not Neverland Ranch, Mr. Jackson’s former estate in California.
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Was Darth Cheney somehow involved?
One can always hope…
* REAL ESTATE
* AUGUST 5, 2010
Property Firm That Lost Value Sues Halliburton
By ROBBIE WHELAN
St. Joe Co., a large Florida real-estate developer that owns resorts on the Gulf of Mexico, filed suit against oil-services company Halliburton Co., seeking more than $1 billion in damages related to the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion and subsequent oil spill.
In a complaint filed in state court in Delaware late Wednesday, St. Joe said that Halliburton, which provided key structural work on the oil well, “ignored multiple warning signs” that could have prevented the disaster.
St. Joe, which owns 577,000 acres of land in Florida mostly within 15 miles of the Gulf and is the biggest landholder in the Florida Panhandle, said the April disaster resulted in huge losses for the company when hundreds of tourists canceled vacation plans to stay at its resorts.
The company’s stock price fell by 40% in the weeks after the blowout, resulting in a $1 billion decline in market capitalization. The shares have remained depressed even since BP stopped the gushing oil on July 15.
Although Halliburton had workers aboard the rig the day of the explosion, it was not responsible for making most decisions on the well.
Halliburton, in a statement, said it has not seen the lawsuit yet, but from what it has seen in the media, “it appears to be without merit and we will vigorously defend it.”
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WSJ Blogs
Developments
Real estate news and analysis from The Wall Street Journal
* August 5, 2010, 2:23 PM ET
Federal Officials: No Plans for Expanding Refinance Programs
By Nick Timiraos
Obama administration officials knocked down rumors on Thursday about any plan for new programs–dubbed an “August Surprise” –to streamline refinancing or cut mortgage balances for homeowners in a bid to stimulate the economy without asking Congress for money ahead of the midterm elections.
Speculation has intensified over the past week as some economists have proposed that the government put cash in more Americans’ pockets by making it easier to refinance. A news report on Thursday suggested that such stimulus might also include a plan to lower mortgage balances for some homeowners.
These reports have worried mortgage investors, sending prices down. But elements of the so-called surprise programs already exist in far more modest forms and there are no plans expand them, administration officials said. The Obama administration said in March that it would create a pair of programs later this year that would allow mortgage servicers and investors to voluntarily reduce loans balances.
One of those programs—which hasn’t been finalized yet but will be soon—will allow mortgage investors to refinance current homeowners who are underwater, or owe more than their homes are worth, into loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration if investors are willing to take a haircut.
And it already has had for more than one year a separate program that allows some homeowners to refinance underwater loans. That initiative—called Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP—has fallen short of its initial goals.
Administration officials dismissed the idea that something bigger might be in the works. “The Administration is not considering a change in policy in this area,” said a Treasury Department spokesman.
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