Bits Bucket For October 27, 2010
Post off-topic ideas, links and Craigslist finds here
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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Foreclosures push home prices down in many cities
Home prices projected to keep falling in many metro areas until foreclosure flood clears
WASHINGTON (AP) — Home prices are falling further, suggesting a bottom hasn’t been reached in many metro areas.
Millions of foreclosures are expected to pour onto the market in the coming years. That’s likely to force prices down and hurt even cities that had begun to rebound. Investigations into banks’ foreclosure paperwork could further deter buyers and weigh down prices.
The past few months have been the worst time in a decade for the housing market. Few people have bought homes, and among the small pool of buyers, many have purchased foreclosures and other distressed properties.
The impact was apparent Tuesday when Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller released its latest index for home prices in 20 major U.S metro areas. The average price for all markets fell 0.2 percent in August and 15 cities posted declines.
At this point, I think they need to just rip the band-aid off. We all know it’s coming.
Oh no, more affordable homes. I has hoping to spend half my income on housing and never be able to vacation or retire.
And I was hoping to be a Donald Trump!
Yawn…watching this market adjustment is even less fun, and far slower, than watching paint dry.
Home Prices Start Falling Again
Categories: Housing
10:26 am
October 26, 2010
by Jacob Goldstein
Case Shiller August
Alyson Hurt/NPR
After holding steady for several months, home prices have started falling again.
Prices around the country fell by 0.2 percent between July and August, according to the latest Case-Shiller numbers, which were released this morning.
That’s a small decline. But there’s probably more to come.
The market is glutted with houses. As of September, it would have taken 10 months to sell all of the homes on the market. (It takes about six months in a healthy market.)
On top of that, there are several million homes in or near foreclosure that are likely to come on the market in the next few years. The foreclosure mess may slow that process, but almost all of those houses will eventually come to market.
“Further declines are inevitable, and they will likely be bigger than in August,” Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics wrote in a note this morning.
…
Yawn…watching this market adjustment is even less fun, and far slower, than watching paint dry.
And that’s why we have the HBB. We amuse each other while the paint dries.
Home lending in the U.S. will fall below $1 trillion next year to the lowest level since 1996, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Originations will decline to $996 billion in 2011, from a projected total of $1.4 trillion this year, the trade group said today in a statement released during its annual conference in Atlanta. Lending reached a record $3.8 trillion in 2003 as refinancing soared, with new loans remaining elevated over the next few years as home prices and sales boomed.
Rates that are unlikely to go lower even if the Federal Reserve buys more U.S. debt will cause refinancing to dissipate by the second half of next year, Jay Brinkmann, the mortgage group’s chief economist, said. A rush by U.S. homeowners to refinance at near record-low interest rates has marked a rare bright spot for the mortgage industry, under attack for choking the economy with shoddy loans and botched foreclosures.
Since money is borrowed into existence it looks as if less money will be created than before, at least from the housing sector.
Add to this the dearth of borrowing for credit cards and for small businesses and it looks to me like less money will be available to slosh about in the economy.
The Fed doesn’t think this is such a good thing so they want to generate some inflation so as to coax money out of mattresses and into the economy so it can add to the sloshing.
Moderately rising prices are seen to be a good thing if you are an economist. But they are not such a good thing if you are one of those guys who have experienced a wage cut or are retired and depend on a fixed income. Alarm bells would go off within me if I were one of these guys, and the LAST thing I would want to do would be to SPEND MONEY; If anything I would tighten up on my spending even more.
Could it be stagflation? Dollars leave the U.S. and are then used overseas to buy and bid up commodities.
Bingo!
Dollars that flood into places such as China dilutes the dollar’s buying power IN CHINA because there are so many dollars going there.
But at the same time the dollars going to China causes a scarcity of dollars in the U.S. The more dollars that go there the less dollars that remain here.
It should be very noteworthy that ALL the U.S. dollars are not on their way to China, only a big chunk of the dollars THAT CIRCULATE will be going to China.
But it is the dollars THAT CIRCULATE in the U.S. that causes economic activity in the U.S. If the dollars that circulate in the U.S. end up in China then economic activity in the U.S. will slow because there will be in the U.S. a shortage of circulating dollars.
Isn’t the Yuan tied to the Dollar? How would any dilution occur?
This is a viscious cycle.
Central Banks print money and hand it to favored class that bid up the price of natural resources. Average citizen has to devote a larger and larger share of income to food and fuel. Thus there is less for manufactured goods. This increases the decline of manufacturing and jobs around the globe. This is why everyone wants China to depeg from the dollar.
It should be very noteworthy that ALL the U.S. dollars are not on their way to China, only a big chunk of the dollars THAT CIRCULATE will be going to China.
I’m reading a lot of that USA to China money is ending up in Brazil buying commodities as was just mentioned.
Could that mean that the US Fed’s monetary policy IS helping some home prices rise but………..not your house….nor my mom’s house but rather my house in Brazil?
But it is the dollars THAT CIRCULATE in the U.S. that causes economic activity in the U.S. If the dollars that circulate in the U.S. end up in China then economic activity in the U.S. will slow because there will be in the U.S. a shortage of circulating dollars
That reasoning sounds circular.
This is a viscious cycle.
Viciously viscous, circulating cycles should be avoided at all costs.
“Central Banks print money and hand it to favored class that bid up the price of natural resources. Average citizen has to devote a larger and larger share of income to food and fuel. Thus there is less for manufactured goods.”
Exactly what’s happening. The Fed is basically handing money to it’s oligarch buddies, and they are using it to make themselves even more fantastically wealthy than they already were, at the expense of ordinary people and the economy as a whole. As food and fuel eat up more and more of a persons wages (conveniently left out of the inflation figure), there is less discretionary income for other goods and services, and more and more businesses are forced to shut down, increasing unemployment, and creating a larger class of poverty stricken Americans. Ben Bernanke should be imprisoned. He is DESTROYING the country.
Isn’t the Yuan tied to the Dollar? How would any dilution occur?
There’s a significant amount of inflation occurring in China. I’m, thinking the inflation is being imported from the U.S. partially resulting in less dollars circulating here in the U.S. The housing ATM is offline and as a result consumers aren’t borrowing so the circulating dollars are shrinking even more as folks pay off debt.
In addition, the banks are hording money as reserves and perhaps bidding up commodities. Contributes to less dollars circulating in the consumer space.
Companies are hording money for acquisitions, uncertainties, etc. Again, contributes to less dollars circulating in the consumer space.
I see stagflation on steroids as the only possible outcome. Jobs outsourced overseas will get upward wage pressure as emerging economies flourish and their domestic demand picks up. This will provide the “smoking gun” for wage inflation that is necessary for serious inflation (hyperinflation) to occur. As US uneployment continues to climb, wages will hold at current levels at best but most likely will decline. Meanwhile food and consumable commodity prices will be pressured higher as that demand increases abroad. “Survival” costs are destined to increase for Americans while investments and superfluous crap such as iPads, etc will drop in price as demand wanes. The Fed will be powerless to affect the outcome with their only option being more fuel on the pyre. Its going to be a good time to be a cockroach.
Any wage inflation outside the US will have bad consequences on the US consumer. WalMart will have to get a new slogan.
Jobs outsourced overseas will get upward wage pressure as emerging economies flourish and their domestic demand picks up.
Two problems with this.
1. Wage inflation takes a while. Especially if you’re a country like China which still has half a billion poor people. If the new middle Chinese middle class get uppity, companies will just import new wage slaves from the countryside. The US will fail before wage inflation truly kicks in.
2. China/India aren’t the only countries. More likely, when the Chinese middle class gets uppity, companies will just move to a country one tier down. China –> Vietnam –> Bangladesh –> North Korea. Race to the bottom.
There will always be fresh wage slaves willing to live on one bowl of rice per day.
This is why instead of bailing out banks we should have created a massive jobs program to pump money into the middle class and inspire confidence. Instead you will see a more and more pessimistic middle class reigning in spending.
“There will always be fresh wage slaves willing to live on one bowl of rice per day.”
The only difference is this time they will be Americans.
This is the GIANT HOLE in the arguement that globilization would be good for the US. The rising tide theory. The problem of course is that natural resource prices put an upper limit on consumption and then you get a mad dash to the bottom for labor costs and a collapse in demand.
This is why instead of bailing out banks we should have created a massive jobs program to pump money into the middle class and inspire confidence.
Not implementing that massive jobs program might go down as the greatest public policy mistake since the public policy that necessitated it.
“There will always be fresh wage slaves willing to live on one bowl of rice per day.”
It’s a Holiday in Cambodia. Be sure to pack a wife!
Wages in China have been steadily climbing for the last 10 years.
I think you have my college record collection, Jimmy Jazz. (jay a zed zed, zee zee…) The classics!
I hope you are right combo on your deflation theory but I keep seeing the M1 and M2 keeps going up every year/day/minute. Do you expect this to end?
Don’t forget velocity; It’s not just the supply of money that counts, it’s also how fast money changes hands.
Here’s a chart that shows the velocity of M2 (along with the prices of stocks):
http://www.crystalbull.com/stock-market-timing/Velocity-Of-Money-chart/m2/
Yes, as the quantity of base money supply increases the velocity decreases by an equivalent amount. Hussman has an excellent article about QE and its implications.
In the meantime money desperate for yield will chase every bubble in sight, commodities, stocks and (junk) bonds. Housing is still out of favor but junk bonds and stocks are once again high on the list of bubble chasers. Junk bonds…wait a second, that didn’t end well in the 80s. How about stock market bubbles? If my memory doesn’t fail me that didn’t end well either.
All that can be achieved with QE2 is a further destabilization of the economy. A lack of money is not the constraint that’s keeping the economy from thriving. So increasing the amount of money will not remove any constraint on current economic conditions.
“A lack of money is not the constraint that’s keeping the economy from thriving.
I would say a lack of money, in the hands of ‘consumers’ , is what’s keeping the economy from thriving. Bernanke’s pushing on that old, limp string in trying to direct more money to the banks and investment firms. There’s not much in the US they see worth investing in.
Alpha:
I guess my $3000 reduction in credit card balances is not such a crazy idea anymore as it will be an immediate spending boost to the economy.
Which is a variation of the stim checks from years past. Apparently the PTB don’t want that, as most individuals, sucha as yourself would use it to pay down debt, which the banksters really don’t want. It hard to charge interest on CCs with zero balances.
While I DO think that the problem is that a smaller percentage of the money is in the hands of consumers, simply stealing money from the CC companies is bad on many levels. If you want debt forgiveness, go through bankruptcy. THAT IS WHAT IT IS FOR.
dj- I think mailing everybody a gift card would probably be a fairer and more effective short-term boost. But such an action is rife with moral hazard and the potential for political abuse.
I think stimulus money is better spent on projects that benefit America’s long-term interests (infrastructure, transportation, alternative energy). Let’s have something highly beneficial to us all, that will make it easier for us in the future to pay off the debts we incur now.
Let’s invest in ourselves long-term, not short-term.
alpha-sloth…+1000
Alpha:
That is plan B a $1000 gift card to be used for a computer…or a laptop and desktop…..get everyone up to speed in this digital age.
I’m with you alpha-sloth. If the federal government is going to borrow money to give to people, I’d rather get some infrastructure out of it and not just more cr@p from China.
I’m living in China now … and the scale of infrastructure funded by China’s stimulus is astounding. Both high speed rail (225mph+) and intercity rail (125mph+) are going up everywhere. Earlier this year it was Guangzhou to Wuhan. This month was Nanjing-Shanghai-Hangzhou. Before 2015 is up, most major cities will be linked up.
Imagine a 2 hour train ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles — almost like flying except you can skip the 2 extra hours at the airport. Or a 6 hour train ride from Los Angeles to Dallas. 21st century infrastructure funded by a stimulus and built by ordinary workers that can’t be outsourced.
What did we get instead? $30 extra per paycheck and bank bailouts.
Imagine a 2 hour train ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles — almost like flying except you can skip the 2 extra hours at the airport. Or a 6 hour train ride from Los Angeles to Dallas. 21st century infrastructure funded by a stimulus and built by ordinary workers that can’t be outsourced.
Attention, Obama Administration: Good ideas from the East!
Imagine a 2 hour train ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles
Alas…we will only be able to.
But I don’t know if high-speed rail would work in the USA. We are not a homogenious people, don’t like public transportation and are capitalistic.
“Imagine a 2 hour train ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles — almost like flying except you can skip the 2 extra hours at the airport. Or a 6 hour train ride from Los Angeles to Dallas. 21st century infrastructure funded by a stimulus and built by ordinary workers that can’t be outsourced.”
If we can’t stop the stimulus spending, I would rather see it spent on this type of infrastructure than see it handed over to unions, bankers and community agitators. We could have one hell of a high speed rail system for 800B.
If we can’t stop the stimulus spending, I would rather see it spent on this type of infrastructure than see it handed over to unions, bankers and community agitators.
Community agitator? Heck, I resemble that remark!
Now, where do I get MY stimulus funding?
Well, CA is trying to do the high speed rail on their own. I hope we are successful. Significant political hurdles have been overcome, but it’s not a done deal yet.
I imagine that if CA is successful in linking SF to San Diego, the next city that will want to jump on board (pardon the pun) would be Vegas, and then potentially Phoenix.
Check out - http://www dot cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/
We’ve been trying to get high speed rail in this country for 30 years that I know of. I knew some of the southern section investors.
Everybody and their brother wants to price gouge the right-of-ways. Every state wants to control their section their way and every high tech manufacturer wants the cars and control contracts and will no-holds-barred lobby for it and NOBODY wants to pay a decent wage to laborers.
Without the Feds throwing their weight into it and stepping on a lot of toes, it will never happen and we will eventually go back to being the second rate country we were in the first 100 years of our existence.
I imagine that if CA is successful in linking SF to San Diego, the next city that will want to jump on board (pardon the pun) would be Vegas, and then potentially Phoenix.
Oooo! Oooo! Tucson here, waving hand! Pick on us too! Pleeeeease?
I pray the high speed rail happens in my lifetime. But looking at the failure that is Amtrak, if it wasn’t for subsidies it would have gone bankrupt long ago. The US has too many NIMBYism to be successful in this endeavor, China dictates, here everyone sues.
I know Escondido residents are already circling their lawyers to stop high speed rail in their northern San Diego city.
Since the high speed rail would go through Murietta/Temecula it would really help out people who bought in the exurbs.
“But they are not such a good thing if you are one of those guys who have experienced a wage cut or are retired and depend on a fixed income.”
Economists have a bad habit of ignoring the redistributional consequences of distortionary policy interventions.
The view is different from the ivory tower.
“If anything I would tighten up on my spending even more.”
and that’s exactly what is going to happen.
“It’s almost worth the Great Depression to learn how little our big men know.”
- Will Rogers
“It’s almost worth the Great Depression to learn how little our big men know.”
…or how rich the Joneses weren’t after all.
That figure is new debt right? Not total mortgage debt or net new debt* ? Certainly the churn rate is decreased, but I’m not going to hold a pity party for all the fee-takers on the HELOC/REFI highway to hell.
*net new debt = new mortgages - paid off mortgages. ‘Cause REFI’s involve paying off the old mortgage and getting a new one.
Foreclosure Lawyers Go to Gardner’s Farm for Edge on Lenders
Consumer lawyers have been traveling to a remote 160-acre farm in the mountains of western North Carolina since 2006 to network, drink Scotch and prepare for legal combat in foreclosure and bankruptcy cases.
They arrive in groups of a dozen or so for a four-day boot camp where they learn how to protect their clients’ assets by exploiting the mistakes of creditors. Attendees these days are especially keen on strategies to fend off mortgage lenders and servicers seeking to seize their clients’ homes.
Their instructor is O. Max Gardner III, a 65-year-old bankruptcy litigator and grandson of a North Carolina governor, who was using flaws in mortgage servicing to stave off lenders years before cases involving shoddy paperwork spurred this month’s investigation of the industry by the attorneys general of all 50 states. He charges $7,775 for the program, which covers 3,000 pages of materials, lodging, food and unlimited wine, beer and single-malt Scotch.
I wonder if you get MCLE credit for that school.
They had me at ‘unlimited beer, wine, and single malt scotch’. I wonder if you have to be a lawyer to attend?
See ya there in ‘11, Dennis!
HBB road trip!!!!!!!!!!!
At $1,900 a day Gardner can afford to include unlimited adult beverages!
MCLE (minimal continuing legal education) is a scam requirement to keep up your law license. In CA you have to “score” something like 36 “one-hour credits” every three years. The whole thing is window dressing IMHO. All too often there are “events” you can attend and get the entire batch over a few days, normally at some resort in Hawaii or Vegas or on a cruise ship. Law firms send their guys there and deduct the charges as a business expense. The lawyers can sit in the back of the class and tune out the lesson or nurse their hangovers.
Small time or government lawyers have to scramble to collect their MCLE credits.
Huh. I guess that’s where all the other attys go. I’m always amazed at all the lawyers I know that I don’t see at the closest most convenient CLE’s.
Florida Foreclosure Auction Cancellations `Frustrating’ to Judge
The Miami judge managing a backlog of 80,000 foreclosures said it’s “frustrating” that lenders including Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. continue to cancel foreclosure auctions.
Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey in Miami-Dade County, which has the most foreclosures in Florida, recently set up a system to clear the logjam. She also chaired a state Supreme Court task force last year set up to address the volume of foreclosures in the state’s courts.
“It’s very frustrating to have put in this effort to design, plan and implement this system and when we finally get some forward momentum, we start slowing down again because of the banks,” she said yesterday in an interview.
Bailey said banks are canceling foreclosure sales every day. They canceled at least 20 yesterday in front of one judge, saying they had to review the affidavits used to seize homes.
The cancellations came as Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America and Detroit-based Ally Financial Inc.’s GMAC Mortgage unit said they were moving to complete pending foreclosures. They had suspended foreclosure sales and judgments after complaints that home seizures nationwide were based on faulty documentation.
Why don’t they start seizing homes for back taxes, and sell them on the courthouse steps? F**** the banks!
Sounds good to me- still force the banks to produce those mysterious notes, and follow the law like we have to, but get the houses on the market, anyway. Everyone’s happy (except the banks).
I like it!
“Why don’t they start seizing homes for back taxes, and sell them on the courthouse steps?”
I posted a reply early this AM (with a link) and its been stuck in the spam pile all day long.
Anyway, I’d be all for this idea too, except the problem is that in most cases, the local governments don’t actually take ownership of the houses. They sell the tax leins at auctions. Who is becoming a huge buyer of the tax leins? Megabanks.
Now that foreclosures aren’t going to be as easy for them going forward, I wonder if they’ll continue with that strategy.
Court Strikes Down Ariz. Law Requiring Voters to Prove They Are Citizens
PHOENIX (AP) — A federal appeals court has struck down a key part of Arizona’s law requiring voters to prove they are citizens before registering to vote or casting ballots.
Tuesday’s decision by a panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law requiring voters to prove their citizenship while registering is inconsistent with the National Voter Registration Act. That federal law allows voters to fill out a mail-in card and swear they are citizens under penalty of perjury, but doesn’t require them to show proof as Arizona’s law does.
If you are not required to show proof that you are a citizen of the United States to become president, why would anyone need to show proof they are citizens before registering to vote or casting ballots? And as far as “swear they are citizens under penalty of perjury” What penalty will Meg Whitman ’s former maid pay for her sworn statement? I am thinking none, unless you count the big house George Soros will buy her after this blows over.
While being an illegal alien is not a crime (it is a matter of administrative law), being a non-citizen and voting certainly is. If she ever gets the ability to apply for citizenship she has to admit the illegal vote, and won’t get it. If she does not admit the vote, and does get citizenship, she can have her naturalization undone at any point once it is determined that she lied in her application.
There are remarkably few illegal votes cast, and when it happens, it is very often Republicans doing it (eg., Anne Coulter). This is a bogus issue.
“While being an illegal alien is not a crime (it is a matter of administrative law),”
But a legal doing something illegal is a crime.
ILLEGAL (adjective)
Meaning:
1. prohibited by law or by official or accepted rules
Not paying your mortgage and being able to stay in your house for years because of a broken chain of title is legal, even if you are illegal.
What is legal?
What is illegal?
What is is?
What is what?
Is it legal for an illegal to do something illegal?
Or is that a matter of administrative law?
Just wondering.
Many illegal things are not crimes. One result of immigration being mainly administrative law is that people accused of being here illegally have very limited due process rights. It is much, much easier to deport someone when it is a matter of administrative law.
See also: FDIC; SEC; EPA; etc.
“There are remarkably few illegal votes cast..”
Where does this insight come from?
Reality. There are plenty of bogus registrations, sure. When a group like ACORN or the League of Women Voters hand out registration cards, some people fill them out falsely, or may already be registered, spell their names a bit differently, and so on. ACORN or LOWV is legally obliged to submit all forms to the registries, as otherwise all sorts of mischief can take place. Registry workers make some mistakes, and after a few cycles, lots of junk names are on the rolls.
But remarkably few people show up at the polls and claim to be Mickey Mouse or Hugh G. Rection, or so on. Very rarely happens - really.
If you watch Fox News or similar propaganda sources they go on and on about all the fraudulent registrations — but actual fraudulent voting is very rarely prosecuted, in spite of all the political pressure to do it.
I think that this article can shed some light on the main problem with fraudulent voter registration, which is paying people to obtain registrations. ACORN is the most prominent example, but any party or special interest group that pays an individual five or ten bucks per voter registration is going to produce lots of fraudulent registrations. In the article, a lady found out that she had been registered Republican even though she was a Democrat. She thought that someone obtained her information when she signed a voter petition. Fraud complaints are then sent to local district attorneys. Apparently this doesn’t translate into fraudulent votes. The day we pay people to vote will be when voter fraud begins.
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/10/15/3105831/fraudulent-voter-registration.html
You left out the Repubs and voter fraud.
Yes, you can google it.
she can have her naturalization undone at any point once it is determined that she lied in her application.
I had understood there is a statute of limitations on all but very specific instances of fraud in naturalization. Maybe lying about voting is one of them?
I may be wrong there… I don’t have the time to check the statutes. The general principle is that fraud relating to a criminal act that would have excluded you from citizenship would not have a SOL, but there may well be a wrinkle to this. The cases that tested this related to Nazis and Communists, though. I don’t know if there are any cases out there testing whether there must be a SOL for fraud arising from failing to notify the INS that you have criminally claimed and exercised rights that pertain to citizens only.
“While being an illegal alien is not a crime (it is a matter of administrative law)”
That’s almost funny. It’s a federal crime with numerous potential felony and misdemeanor charges (including first illegal entry) depending on the circumstances, with jail times up to ten years. 18 USC 1801, etc.
Jeff, although not born in the United States, John McCain is a citizen.
Steve
I know I am always wrong, I just didn`t understand the reason for this. I am sure you will tell me.
HONOLULU, Hawaii – Although the legitimacy of Sen. Barack Obama’s birth certificate has become a focus of intense speculation – and even several lawsuits – WND has learned that Hawaii’s Gov. Linda Lingle has placed the candidate’s birth certificate under seal and instructed the state’s Department of Health to make sure no one in the press obtains access to the original document under any circumstances.
The governor’s office officially declined a request made in writing by WND in Hawaii to obtain a copy of the hospital-generated original birth certificate of Barack Obama.
Because there are a lot of “press” who aren’t exactly fair&balanced, and would be paid — very highly — to destroy the document.
The president of DePauw University put Dan Quayle’s college records under lock and key when he was nominated to be Veep (also put a “gag order” on the faculty telling them not to talk to the press about his grades). Does that mean he didn’t graduate?
This information is from a relative who was a professor at the school at the time so it is reliable.
Texas lost GWB’ driving record when he ran for governor.
But how do you birthers explain Obama’s birth announcement in the Honolulu paper??
Its my understandin this was done because they finally got tired of all the requests to see it. I believe they complied until they got tired of it.
What’s your point?
Bigots and retards don’t have a legitimate point.
I just feel so ashamed of being an American these days. It seems everyday we get another Drudge headline proclaiming how dumb our leaders are, and the back up team is even worse.
I’m waiting for another fiasco the Cash 4 Clunkers, and how many of those cars will be repossessed due to not being able to afford full insurance on the new cars.
“I’m waiting for another fiasco the Cash 4 Clunkers”
What was the greatest benefit of the Cash for Clunkers program?
It got 90% of the Obama bumper stickers off the road.
Ta Da Da!
LOL
Don’t get your ‘news’ from Drudge.
“I just feel so ashamed of being an American these days.”
I’m still trying to come to terms with the embarassment of being a human. Nature is perfect. Along came the naked ape with his “powerful” brain and all of the problems that went with it.
People are smart.
A Welfare Check and a Voting Card
Published: August 9, 2010
In April, however, President Obama’s Justice Department sent the states a set of guidelines making it clear that it expected full compliance with the public-assistance office section of the law — the first time in the 15-year history of the motor-voter law that the Justice Department has explained what kinds of offices are covered and what procedures are to be used. The guidelines make it clear that people applying for benefits must not only be offered the chance to register but must be given help in filling out the forms if they ask. If states do not comply voluntarily, lawsuits are likely to follow.
The administration will undoubtedly be accused of acting in a self-serving political way by making it easier for more Democrats to vote. The effort may have that effect.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, better known as the motor-voter law, is well-known for making it possible to register to vote at state motor vehicle offices. However, the law also required states to allow registration at offices that administer food stamps, welfare, Medicaid, disability assistance and child health programs. States were enthusiastic about the motor-vehicle section of the law, and millions of new voters got on the rolls while getting a driver’s license. But registration at public assistance offices proved far less popular.
But the best reason to applaud the Justice Department’s new posture is that it will bring more voters into public life. When advocacy groups sued Ohio and Missouri to force their public assistance offices into complying, huge groups of new voters surged onto the rolls — more than 100,000 in Ohio, and more than 200,000 in Missouri. Nationwide enforcement by the Justice Department could add millions more. The more people who have access to the ballot, the better the country will be
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10tue1.html -
What exactly counts a proof of citizenship? Sure, if you’ve been naturalized you have proof, but for those of us who are native born, the only document that “proves” that we’re citizens is our birth certificate, which isn’t particularly secure, and really only documents that there was a person with that name, born on that day. It does NOTHING to show that the person holding it is indeed that person. Every other form of ID really just shows that you have been asserting that you are the person on the birth certificate when you were issued the ID.
Passport?
To GET a passport, you present a birth certificate and some other ID, most of it based on a birth certificate. Like I said, a passport really on proves that you have been making the assertion that you are the person represented by the birth certificate.
It would be easier if they put pictures on birth certificates.
now that is funny!
Hilarious!
What exactly counts a proof of citizenship?
My slave name does; thats why Im keeping it instead of changing it like some blk people have done.
In addition, thanks to my slave name, when ever somebody starts “mouthin off” about all the blk males who ain’t takin care of their blk children…
I can *retort” (did I use that word correctly?) by asking, “what about all the white men who ain’t takin care of THEIR blk children?”
Me and my big lips won’t be converting to Islam anytime soon.
“My slave name does”
…. You have a slave name???? F**k, you must be old.
I can *retort” (did I use that word correctly?)
You did but I think the word “chortle” would have been a better fit.
Sometimes in life, Spook, you have to move on. You can never right those wrongs, or make sense of the many horrors.
““what about all the white men who ain’t takin care of THEIR blk children?””
Now THAT’S FUNNY!
Whats funny about white men not taking care of their blk children?
Strom Thurmond’s blk daughter wrote a book about white men who do not take care of their blk children.
Do you think he’s the only one?
Most good comedy is based on reality. Your comedic timing was perfect. (honestly)
Do not belittle the power of comedic satire to make changes.
Certified birth certificate beats the hell out of “swear under the penalty of perjury”.
You could be native born, but a citizen of a reservation
You need more ID to buy a 6 pack or cash a check than to vote.
Wonder why Rome fell?
In our neighbor to the south they make you jump through hoops to register to vote (and yes, you have to prove you’re a Mexican citizen). They even take your picture and its in a book at the polling precinct.
I haven’t voted since 2004, and I now have confirmation it was a waste of time. At the mall one day, I heard translators at both the R&D booths, helping out sign-ups. That was my “I’m done!” moment. Our citizenship is worth TP.
Um. You are aware that Puerto Rico is in the US? And that Puerto Ricans can relocate anywhere in the US and vote legally? And that there are other Hispanophone communities dating back 200 years in other parts of the country?
Xenos
Get off your high horse and come see what’s happen to Los Angeles, now a 3rd world sewer. I didn’t mention ethnicity. Did you matriculate at one of UCLA’s “Me Degree” programs? My family is/was in the military. We shed blood for this once great nation. Nuff said.
(Sorry for this post HBBers, but that post deserved a reply.)
No need to apologize to me, wipeout, I live in Florida, so I see the third world sh*thole effect, up close and personal.
It’s a crime what’s been done to the military, but I suppose it always has been. With that said, who in their right mind would want to go into the military anymore? For what? To make the world safe for corporations, politicians, illegal immigrants and their anchor babies, political correctness? What’s the point?
With that said, who in their right mind would want to go into the military anymore?
Someone who wants to support a family or just get out of their podunk hometown and doesn’t know anybody that can get them in anywhere at any jobs above minimum wage?
Someone who wants to support a family or just get out of their podunk hometown and doesn’t know anybody that can get them in anywhere at any jobs above minimum wage?
Which is pretty much any kid who isn’t college bound these days. I know more than a few young college grads who are contemplating enlisting as their only other prospects are P/T jobs in retail.
I’ve said it before, the military is the new “factory job”. I wouldn’t object so much if the super rich, whose economic interests the US military protects around the world, would be willing to foot the bill, but that would be “socialism”.
My family wasn’t just front line, although my newly enlisted nephews are are in Afghanistan right now. My BIL went to Mortuary School through the military, another one served as a Pilot in the Air Force, and some others served as various levels. A few were/are Korean and Vietnam vets.
It is my sad and humbled opinion, that what’s left of this country is symbolisms and nostalgia. Nothing more.
(btw, what I meant by a “Me Degree” are degrees in Chicano, Asian or Middle Eastern Studies. That’s weekend reading, not a disipline imho.)
(btw, what I meant by a “Me Degree” are degrees in Chicano, Asian or Middle Eastern Studies. That’s weekend reading, not a disipline imho.)
Unless,
unless,
you are a white supremacist planning to invade and snatch the resources of these nonwhite people.
You think white people became the most powerful people by studying their belly buttons?
yep…that’s exactly why the translators were there…for displaced puerto ricans.
get your head out of the sand please.
Maybe his head is, um, somewhere else.
The only Puerto Rican I know of in Idaho is Raul Labrador.
And he’s the Republican Congressional candidate for my district.
“Our citizenship is worth TP.”
Not that much. TP is up 41%
“Florida Sues Toilet Paper Makers”
General Bob Butterworth, a Florida attorney, sued five of the nation’s leading toilet tissue manufacturers, alleging that they plotted together and raised toilet paper prices to the public. The attorney claims that the price of pulp has declined 18% since 1989, while the price of toilet paper has risen 41% for the mass consumers. “These price increases were made in virtual lock step, indicating the companies were working together to ensure prices to commercial consumers and larger, illegal profits for themselves,” Butterworth said. (The Augusta Chronicle Online)
jeff saturday
I must say sir, you have a knack for chilling things out. Thank you. News you use, maybe not, but it made me smile. For some reason, leaves just don’t work for me. I have lady hands, and nice long natural nails (if you get my drift).
For some reason, leaves just don’t work for me. I have lady hands, and nice long natural nails
Is that what “awaiting wipeout” refers to?
Not only that, but the rolls of TP are getting narrower! Just another example of decreasing product size while charging the same. Presto, stealth price increases!
Or not so stealthy. Jumbo pack prices for TP have skyrocketed at Sam’s Club. What used to cost $13 just a few years ago is now $17.
Where’s that damn deflation!?
Are the rolls getting narrower or is your rear getting wider? It’s an argument that jibes with all the news about how fat us Americans are getting…
Where’s that damn deflation!?
That’s what I keep wondering but some folks around here think I’m making it up. Which is the usual response I get went my facts don’t fit someone else’s preconceived world model.
Excuuuuse me, TangoU, I just read your comment and must respond. A) I have recently lost 10 lbs, have a BMI of 22, and no my rear is NOT getting wider. B) The rolls are definitely narrower, take a look at the amount of space a TP roll takes up on your TP holder. More empty space, narrower roll.
OK, so since you’ve decided not to vote, what is your plan? Emigrating?
I’ll admit to frustration at the whole process, but I’m a big believer in “if you don’t vote, don’t b!tch”.
Complaining (and doing the equivalent of taking your toys and going home) isn’t much of a solution.
Got any real ideas on how to make things better?
I *like* voting. I like the process. I consider it exciting. Maybe that is left over from my mother taking me with her when I was a little kid. Our town voted in the high school gym and it was the biggest room I had ever seen and it was where the big kids went to school. You went to this table and there was a giant list that had everyone’s name on it and they checked mom’s name off. Then you went into the giant room and mom did some stuff with a grey card and a little machine that made a thunking sound (no hanging chads for my mom). Then she put the card into a little folder thing and put it in a box. I wasn’t even allowed to touch it, it was so important. And there were police men and police cars to stare at. Oh, and grandma had to come to drive us over because my mother didn’t have a car until I was 7 or 8. Yup. It was an exciting day. Later on I got all the civic duty speeches and responsibility as a citizen, stuff, but nothing beats falling in love with something when you are three years old.
Although the mechanical click for each vote and the thunk from the big red lever with the old voting machines was satisfying, I’m glad those days are done. The big old voting machines were as much of an un-auditable black box the the modern electronic ones. More importantly they haden’t been made in decades which meant tha the lines to vote were very long in my district. If I voted after I got home from work, it took well over an hour. My personal favorite was the optically scanned paper ballots. Only one fancy machine was required per polling place, and the tallys are auditable, both on a random basis and a total recount basis. And there is a satisfaction in having an actual BALLOT.
We still use paper ballots and optical scanners in Montana.
Thanks polly! I have some of the same recollections. Brings back memories of my old elementary school (which became an old-folks home and then was bulldozed to put in….housing that isn’t selling, but I digress).
And I’m sure what you describe is the feeling that people in countries like Iraq are now experiencing…and serves as a reminder to not take this right for granted.
Oh, and InMontana brings up a good point, too. Now that I’m in Oregon, we have mail-in ballots. VERY convenient, but I do feel somewhat isolated from the feeling of the “event” that Election Day is. Sometimes I drive by the election office on Election Day just for what little effect it does give me!
I spent the morning doing my California absentee ballot. Spent quite a bit of time on the redistricting initiatives. A couple of years ago we voted for having a 14-member commission do the redistricting for state legislative districts. You can’t tell from the voter booklets or newspaper articles exactly how that commission is chosen. It turns out to be quite the process. Over 24,000 applications were received and reviewed by three state auditors to make sure that they adhered to the guidelines (can’t work for or be related to a legislator for the last five years, have to have voted in the last three elections.) Then the auditor panel interviewed the top 120 applicants and narrowed it down to 60 (20 Dem, 20 Repub, 20 Decline to state). Next step will be that legislators can remove a few of the names. Finally the remaining 48 will be selecting by a drawing. Check it out. It’s a lengthy, government-overseen process that costs money.
http://www.wedrawthelines.ca.gov/selection.html#after_60
On the current ballot there are two initiatives: one that will extend the redistricting commission’s job to drawing congressional districts, and one (sponsored by Democrats) to do away with the commission and go back to the old system where legislators draw districts.
Montana will be going to mail-in voting I’m fairly certain. The elections clerks have been getting people used to it by encouraging absentee voting so they don’t need so many poll workers. Municipal elections are mail-in. So, next step is statewide, and I agree it’s a loss. But I’ve worked the polls the last few elections and not that many people come there to vote anymore.
But I’ve worked the polls the last few elections and not that many people come there to vote anymore.
Same thing’s happening here in Tucson.
As for Yours Truly, I’ve started a little Absentee Ballot Tradition. I invite others to join in.
What I do is find a truly delightful place to sit down and fill out said ballot. My living room couch is such a place, but y’know what? Staying at home can get boring.
So, time for Absentee Voting in the Great Outdoors!
A few weeks ago, I pedaled over to the University of Arizona, perched on the wall surrounding the Joseph Wood Krutch desert garden and filled out my ballot. Nothing like voting beneath the shade of a sweet acacia tree.
Then I got back on the bike and pedaled the ballot over to the post office.
Seems like mail-in voting encourages vote buying. The problem with most vote-buying is you can give someone money and they can tell you that they’ll vote as you like, but once they’re behind the curtain you don’t know how they actually vote. With mail-in, you can watch as they write you in and mail it. You can even fill it out for them. Or am I missing something?
So, time for Absentee Voting in the Great Outdoors!
Sounds like a job for Bigfoot, maybe with a little help from a geoduck.
“Seems like mail-in voting encourages vote buying.”
The Christian man in fly-over country votes twice using his subordinate wife’s ballot.
but I’m a big believer in “if you don’t vote, don’t b!tch”.
You got it exactly opposite. If you VOTE then you have no right to b!tch because you enable and encourage the fraud of a system we have. Kind of like an accessory to a crime.
Emigrating? Yes, why not? I am seriously looking at Canada and Australia. I make a decent salary and been saving quite a bit now so I have no immidiate plans, but if the job falls thru I just might.
In Brazil, every citizen (under the age of 70 something) is required to vote.
And they vote on Sunday. This Sunday in fact.
And a woman, a former “marxist domestic terrorist”, the handpicked chosen successor of current President Lula, is expected to become the next president of Brazil.
“And they vote on Sunday.”
As they do in most countries around the world. I still don’t get why we vote on a Tuesday. I’m signed up for voting by mail, which I already did.
On a related note the amount of junk political mail I receive is astounding, and the content is more often than not pathetic. They practically well say that their opponents eat puppies and kick small children for the fun of it.
What is also of interest is the lack of real content, especially from the GOP mailers I receive. Whoever the candidate is, they do not enumerate how they propose to fix things, all they do is say “my opponent kills jobs and voted for Obamacare”.
Fine, so they don’t like “Obamacare”. Do they offer any ideas on how to fix our broken heath care system? No! Never mind that if we get 10 more years of 15% annual premium increases that a health plan that costs $1000 per month today will cost $4000 per month by 2020. What do they propose to do about that?
Of course neither side will respond, because there is only one answer: heathcare will have to be rationed. You might have to wait a year or two to get that knee or hip replaced.
But no one wants to hear that. So what will happen instead is that we will end up with Health plans with $10,000 dedictibles and no prescription card. Want that knee or hip replaced? Do you have $10,000?
In 1845, the United States was largely an agrarian society. Farmers often needed a full day to travel by horse-drawn vehicles to the county seat to vote. Tuesday was established as election day because it did not interfere with the Biblical Sabbath or with market day, which was on Wednesday in many towns.[7]
On voting…
The 1:30 mark specifically, but the whole rant is spot on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIraCchPDhk
“That federal law allows voters to fill out a mail-in card and swear they are citizens under penalty of perjury, but doesn’t require them to show proof as Arizona’s law does.”
Are we now to the point where the inmates are running the asylum? “swear under penalty of perjury”? WOW! That ought to stop the illegals from registering and voting. Common sense seems to have been stripped clean from our political system.
“A federal appeals court has struck down a key part of Arizona’s law requiring voters to prove they are citizens before registering to vote or casting ballots.”
C’mon…the courts will never agree to take away the ability of the progressives to steal elections. What fun would any election be without acorn registering dead people, dogs and non citizens.
You might want to google republican voter fraud before you get to indignant about leebruls.
RepubliCorp will stop at nothing in their efforts to suppress opposition voting and stuffing the box with their own.
It took little time for this story to “trickle up” to the NY Times (or is it “trickle down” — dunno…)
October 26, 2010, 3:01 pm
Children as a Campaign Tool
By LISA BELKIN
…
Whether children are a voting issue is also a question in the California Senate race, where Meg Whitman’s sons, Griff and Will Harsh, are causing their mother some embarrassment. Both sons attended Princeton (to which Whitman, also an alum, has donated $30 million), and while there, both reportedly got in disciplinary and legal trouble (Griff was accused once of rape and once of assault in separate incidents; in both cases the charges were dropped).
Whitman’s sons do not appear in any of her campaign literature. She does use them to explain the fact that she did not register to vote until she was 46, however, saying, “I was focused on raising a family, on my husband’s career; we moved many, many times.”
Is managing — or mismanaging — a family relevant to running a state? Are you more likely to vote for a candidate because of their family? On the flip side, are you less likely to vote for them because of family conflicts?
Politicians obviously think you care, which is why there are so many children gazing beatifically from campaign ads in Oklahoma but missing in California, no?
Meg is toast.
Indeed. I get all warm and fuzzy thinking about how she’s flushed a good chunk of her personal fortune down the toilet.
Cue in Joey to threaten to take away your pension…
Karma.
Don’t count Meg out yet, her only ace in the hole is saying she will post the National Gaurd on the border and start kicking out every illegal in the state and pull the plug on welfare. It’s a longshot but watch she’ll do it.
Sharron Angle did that from the get-go in Nevada and she’s gonna edge out Harry Reid, I think. Reid’s pitting his shants, crying “racism” over her new campaign ad. I saw it, I think it is a gem.
Her money provided jobs ,,,ha ha .
Meg is going to be on dancing with the stars next fall. They will use every available bit of makeup.
One of Meg’s ad was on the radio this morning while I was driving to work. The ad was touting prop. 13 and her insistence that nothing would change it. She absolutely doesn’t get it!
To renters and home owners — these are people who already have inherited a house (that possibly is paid for and if not, hopefully not much debt left on it) and they are bitching about paying their share of property taxes! Yet they still use the services that those taxes pay for!
The only good thing is that the majority of inheriters (so I’ve heard) turn round and sell the property, thus negating Prop. 13.
In the United States today, there are 5,057 janitors with Ph.D.’s, other doctorates, or professional degrees.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/why-did-17-million-students-go-to-college/27634
My count came to 5,019. Don’t believe the Chronicle’s numbers.
When did college become a job training institution?
It used to be a place for people to learn.
Job training used to be the realm of trade schools.
Now many colleges crank out “Computer Science” graduates who do not learn about data structures, boolean logic, algorithms, theory of programming languages, proofs, parsing and compiler theory, etc.
Instead they are trained in how to use Microsoft Visual Studio and how to do .NET programming. It’s now vocational education.
All the low level stuff is abstracted out, so as a programmer you can concentrate on your code logic instead of figuring out how to implement hash tables. That is bad?
Should drivers ed cover how to replace spark plugs and how to clean a carburetor?
Years ago, when I worked at the University of Pittsburgh, I was reamed out by a boss who thought that I should know computer programming at the hacker level.
Not that I was in a programming job. I was a managing editor in charge of producing an academic journal. And the production of said journal required the use of a computer.
What had my boss in such a dither was that I had learned how to use the computer by rote. Which, in my not so humble opinion, was adequate for the job of producing an academic journal.
It wasn’t as though I had to program the damn journal. I just had to output something on paper that we could send to a commercial printer.
Should drivers ed cover how to replace spark plugs and how to clean a carburetor?
Yes, I think they should. Mine did, and taught us other basic maintenance, and things like how to change a flat tire (a surprisingly rare skill), how to use jumper cables, and how to control a skid on ice (had us practice on a sheet of ice in the back of the parking lot. Those were all great skills to learn, and may have saved some lives.
It was also a great job for the ball coaches, which was who taught our classes. Kept them away from math and history- the traditional dumping ground of coaches. And one of the reasons Americans are so mediocre at the subjects.
All the low level stuff is abstracted out, so as a programmer you can concentrate on your code logic instead of figuring out how to implement hash tables. That is bad?
Not al all.
But if all you’re going to do is write .NET apps then maybe an associates degree in programming should be all that’s required. Why waste 4 years in an expensive college (Other than because employers demand it) if all you really need is a year’s worth of vocational training?
Why call it a degree in Computer Science if you aren’t learning Computer Science?
There is a big difference between learning to change spark plugs and learning how to control a skid. The later is a driving skill while the former is not. Though exactly how kids who take their practical driver ed classes over the summer are supposed to get access to a sheet of ice to practice on is another matter.
Now, if you want to demand that people pass a basic car repair class before getting a liscense, you can, but since you don’t even have to take the driver ed class to get the liscense, you are going to have an uphill battle on that one.
carburetor?
do they even make cars with those anymore?
Though exactly how kids who take their practical driver ed classes over the summer are supposed to get access to a sheet of ice to practice on is another matter.
Zamboni? Teach them yet another skill!
Seriously, I’m not saying car maintenance should be on the driver’s test, I’m just saying it was a good thing to learn in driver’s ed- which we took as a class in high school. The sheet of ice training was a luxury of those who took the class in the winter semester.
But in this day of busy, often single parents, I would think skills like tire-changing, jumping a battery, changing the oil, etc would be even more useful. And like I said, these coaches who taught us would have butchered a math or history textbook into oblivion, but they were pretty good at teaching how to parallel park, or control a skid.
But I think the days of driver’s ed as a school subject have gone the way of the carburetor. Gotta train all the kids to pass the almighty tests, like good little robots.
When did college become a job training institution?
When there got to be so many degrees floating around that employers decided it was a good way to screen the resumes.
ding ding ding. +1 on that observation.
My company specifies a BA for a receptionist job.
They’re not allowed to give IQ or aptitude tests now, are they? Or they can but are afraid of being sued for disparate impact.
Hence, screening for degrees.
And when college became so expensive that students woke up and said “there better be a damn JOB at the end of the $80K of nonsense.” Colleges got the hint and began competing to offer the most job-applicable classes and majors, especially community college. And that $80K was 20 years ago.
But please also note that it’s a totally different story with sci/eng. You can’t do anything out of high school in sci/eng.
Just a quick chime in. I thought I’d better get some real skills, like Accounting, if I was going to apply myself. I learned life skills I use everyday.
Exactly Carl. Just like they use your credit score to screen you as well.
The real question should be, why do they do this? The answer is because there are not as many jobs as they say there are, growth isn’t what they say it is, and UE is far higher than the official numbers.
But hey! Is that American Idle?
No surprise to Europeans. Generally, American education is not rated very highly, with some exceptions of course.
Who was it a couple of days back pushing a policy to reduce incentives for U.S. citizens to have children? I have news for the greenies in the virtual room:
No children, no military. No military, no defense. No defense, no national security. No national security, no country.
Columns
Smile, you’re in a recession
Happier people, more education, low gas prices and fewer babies are what make this recession great.
date 2010/10 /27
By Julian Switala
If you’ve read anything about the U.S. economy recently, chances are that it contained more doom and gloom prophesying than a Nostradamus manuscript. Economists foretell of a double-dip recession, conjuring up images of further economic turmoil and a classic Seinfeld episode.
However, instead of merely focusing on the negatives, the recession is bringing unseen advantages to Americans and the world, if you look at it from the right angles.
…
Finally, the birth rate in the U.S. has been sinking for two years due to the recession, setting the record for lowest birth rate in a century. People are simply less willing to have children when their financial future is uncertain. Consumption patterns show the U.S. consumes more resources per capita than any other country on earth, meaning that a lower birth rate can free up resources for non-Americans.
The recession isn’t cause for celebration, but there have been overlooked advantages, at home and across the globe. Looking at the bright side of the sagging economy may actually make it a blessing in disguise.
a lower birth rate can free up resources for non-Americans.
Huh? Low birth rate just confirms it’s 1933.
A low birth rate will hasten the collapse of the Ponzi scheme known as Social Security.
SS will collapse long before those non-existent kids would have turned 20.
I don’t think SS will “collapse”. I do think think it will pay out lower benefits than those being promised today. While a lot of people will be pissed, that’s not a “collapse”
A collapse is what will happen here in Colorado with the Public Employee Retirement plan. The pension fund will be depleted by around 2022, at which point benefits will become zero. And because of TABOR the state government won’t be able to pass new taxes to cover the pensions.
That’s a collapse.
No children, no military. No military, no defense. No defense, no national security. No national security, no country.
Demography is destiny.
Well, I’m sure the government will make sure that the draft is in effect when needed. All youngsters will be marched off to war. But they can look on the bright side — they’ll be able to have a beer then.
I am in favor of the draft…it would kill the rap hip hop market, because they would be forced to learn English to get a college deferment or be in Afghanni….
” People are simply less willing to have children when their financial future is uncertain.”
This has been my case since 2000. Contract engineering. Had I started contract engineering in 1985 right out of college, I probably would have been a millionaire and a father by 40.
October 27, 2010, 6:30 am
Obama to ‘Daily Show’ as Campaign Nears End
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR
MIDTERM ELECTIONS
President Obama will make the fusion of politics and comedy official tonight by becoming the first sitting president to appear on Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” just days before crucial midterm elections that could reshape his presidency.
Mr. Obama will sit down this afternoon with Jon Stewart, the comedian-turned-activist who hosts the show, in what White House officials concede is a blatant attempt to seek out young Democratic voters wherever they spend the most time.
…
The meeting of pathetics.
Wasn’t Nixon on Laugh In?
“Wasn’t Nixon on Laugh In?”
Yes! How did all that work out for him?
He got relected I believe.
He got relected I believe.
He was on Laugh-In during the 1968 campaign. I saw his “Sock it to me!” segment when I was 10 years old.
Laugh-In was off the air by the time he was re-elected in 1972.
He got relected I believe.
That’s an understatement: he won 49 of 50 states in 1972.
Laugh-in was one of my favorite shows as a 10 year old in 1969. Something about Goldie Hawn and Judy Carnes (is that her name?) in those bikinis with all those grafitti tattoos. And I didn’t know why I liked seeing them in their bikinis back then!
Yes, indeed-y. Nixon was on Laugh In. I remember seeing him say “Sock it to me!”
Spin off was The Flip Wilson Show. “Here comes the judge, here comes the judge, better watch out cuz here comes the judge!” Also one of my favorites. And his personna as Geraldine! Hilarious!
So a guy hosts one rally and suddenly he’s a comedian-turned-activist.
He’s an activist first and comedian second for quite a some time now.
i think hosting one rally qualifies you as a “turned activist”.
otherwise…why host a rally?
‘Daily Show’ host Jon Stewart announced Thursday that he’ll lead a rally on Washington that aims to encourage angry citizens on both sides of the aisle to take it down a notch…
Hmmm… I must be missing the specific political endorsement to qualify for “activist.”
Visited a friend from Texas this past weekend, and what he said scared me to death. He bought his house in 2005 or 2006. He makes a great salary and no where near to falling behind on his mortage - at all.
But he -is- considering walking away from his mortgage IF he can find a similar house for a great bargain. He figures: “why pay the rest of my mortgage when I can get a new one for half price or less?” I anticipate people underwater to do it, but somebody NOT underwater caught me by surprise.
Yes he would take a credit rating hit - he doesn’t care. He has as many cars as he’ll ever need, and his house would be paid off in time for his kids to go to college in 15 years. He’d end up saving thousands in interest, plus would be able to take advantage of any housing upturn in the future as well. I can’t say that I blame him for considering it.
If a regular JSP is thinking this these days, I feel we may be in a WORLD of hurt. If everybody in a current mortgage just downsized their mortgage on a whim, that would ruin a lot of banks and drive prices down even further with all the new ‘empties’ on the block.
If that became the new ‘norm’, where would it end?
I think that is already happening.Or peope arrange for relatives to buy thier home via short sale.Ever wonder why it is hard to land a short sale.That is why reo’s are the best way to go.At least you are dealing with a crooked realtor in a prearranged sale.
arizonadude
REO’s might have cloud on title issues going forward, and Title Insurance companies and Banks are starting to fight out liability issues. I’m watching this unfold.I’m not so sure about “That is why reo’s are the best way to go”. Just my reading and 2 Cents.
Is Texas a recourse or non-recourse state?
Any 2nd mortgages? Home loans?
Can his wages be garnished?
Will he ever need a clearance or work for the government?
Does his job check credit histories every once in a while?
Will the IRS count the unpaid mortgage as a gift subject to taxes?
Creditors will come after him. Tell him to be prepared. And go talk with an attorney.
Non-recourse, non-judicial foreclosures.
I haven’t heard of any areas in Texas that have crashed 60%. Except for some of those cool urban lofts and town homes. Heat be dreaming.
Even though technically Texas is a non-recourse state, it is possible under certain circumstances for a lender to persue a deficiency judgement there. He should get a lawyer if he is planning on using this strategy.
I don’t think he’ll pull the trigger any time soon. It just surprised me that HE was thinking about it. He is VERY grounded and taught me the ins and outs of buying a home. I figured he would be the last person to be touched by this mess. I assumed he would just ride out this place for the next 25 years and not give a darn about the rest. I was wrong. I don’t fault him at all for considering it, why not, everybody else is…
“I don’t fault him at all for considering it, why not, everybody else is…”
Rusty, I’ve struggled with that ethical dilemma myself, even though, thank heavens, I am not (or ever have been) in that position. Just this week I read about a family whose loan modification was turned down because they had a small amount of money in a retirement account. Well, I could understand if if was any other kind of asset, but to me, retirement accounts and my kid’s college fund are sacred (to bankruptcy courts as well). I’d let the bank have the house before I’d let it take either of those.
After pensions, benefits, shorter hours, and job security, it seems that 401K is the very last pocket of cash workers have left to raid.
Wage garnishing is not allowed in Texas except for taxes, federally-guaranteed student loans and child support. This means a judgement against a Texas resident is not worth the paper it’s printed if assets are in protected vehicles (home, car, guns, 401k, ira, annuities, life insurance, etc.). And Texas is very very very asset-friendly.
This makes the walkaway strategy extra effective in Texas. Why anybody would extend any credit to Texas residents with their laws, I have no idea. I guess all the crap is repackaged and sold off to clueless investors.
If that became the new ‘norm’, where would it end?”
It would make it pretty hard to borrow money to buy a house = lower house prices.
it’s all good let them all walk
“I anticipate people underwater to do it, but somebody NOT underwater caught me by surprise.”
This makes absolutely, positively ZERO sense. If he’s NOT underwater, that means he has equity. If he has equity, he can sell the house, pay off the note with some money in pocket, and buy another. My guess is he IS underwater, and that is why he is considering it. If he were not underwater, then he would NOT be able to find an equal or better house at a more affordable price.
That was my thought too. If he’s not underwater, the bank would just foreclose ASAP, and auction the house to get their money back.
All in favor of quick price realization say AYE!
On a related note, is a state wholly committed to being recourse or non-recourse? My recollection in Oregon is that we are considered non-judicial by practice but that it is up to the note holder to either file a lawsuit (judicial foreclosure) or go the non-judicial foreclosure route.
If I’m a note holder (and I can prove it - HA!), I might be tempted to go judicial if I suspected the borrower was walking but could afford the mortgage.
First off, J6P doesn’t make “a great salary.”
But yes, why shouldn’t they walk away?
As for the banks? The majority of American have NO sympathy for them and their criminal hypocrisy and their lying and cheating hidden fees and hoops.
Where is future demand for Toll’s McMansions going to come from if Americans stop having families? The bright side: No kids, no need for them to live in their parent’s basements.
Note: This information is a couple of months old, but is in response to someone who said a couple of days back that the U.S. needs to reduce the incentives for families to have children. It looks like the incentives have already been reduced!
Recession may have pushed U.S. birth rate to new low
Friday, August 27, 2010
BY MARILYNN MARCHIONE
The Record
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The U.S. birth rate has dropped for the second year in a row, and experts think the wrenching recession led many people to put off having children. The 2009 birth rate also set a record: lowest in a century.
Births fell 2.6 percent last year even as the population grew, numbers released Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics show.
“It’s a good-sized decline for one year. Every month is showing a decline from the year before,” said Stephanie Ventura, the demographer who oversaw the report.
The birth rate, which takes into account changes in the population, fell to 13.5 births for every 1,000 people last year. That’s down from 14.3 in 2007 and way down from 30 in 1909, when it was common for people to have big families.
“It doesn’t matter how you look at it — fertility has declined,” Ventura said.
…
“Births fell 2.6 percent last year even as the population grew”
Sooo, the birth rate is falling, but the population is growing. Gee, wonder how that comes about. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
1. It is not only the birth rate that matters, but the size of the U.S. subpopulation in the fertile age range (aka “breeding stock”).
2. Immigration.
“Sooo, the birth rate is falling, but the population is growing. Gee, wonder how that comes about?”
People living longer, maybe?
“People living longer, maybe?”
That cannot account for population growth, merely a slower rate of decline.
Not when you take ANY birth-rate into account.
“Sooo, the birth rate is falling, but the population is growing. Gee, wonder how that comes about?”
People living longer, maybe?
….. perhaps misplaced Puerto Ricans?
Sooo, the birth rate is falling, but the population is growing. Gee, wonder how that comes about. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Just because the rate is falling doesn’t mean it’s negative. As long as the birth rate exceeds the death rate, the population grows, period.
“The bright side: No kids, no need for them to live in their parent’s basements.”
What do boomerang kids do in basement free SoCal? I guess they move back into their old bedrooms, huh?
Didn’t Greg Brady and move into the attic? (antics ensued!)
His attic pad had those far-out beads in place of a door. Hence the term “Bead-in-Lieu”… Groovy foreclosure lingo.
A one-month decline of 0.6 percent occurs at an annualized rate of
((1-0.006)^12-1)*100 = -7 percent. ‘Tis a mere flesh wound.
San Diego’s 15-month home price rise stalls in August
Case-Shiller index signals a pause in housing recovery nationally
By Roger Showley
Tuesday, October 26, 2010 at 10:52 a.m.
San Diego County’s housing market, which led the country in price rises for 15 straight months, turned downward in August as the rest of the nation also seemed to stumble, a widely watched housing index reported Tuesday.
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index for San Diego dropped .6 percent from July to August, the first downturn since May 2009. The decline occurred against a backdrop of stable home prices in recent months — an indication analysts said of a bottoming in the market with little likelihood of much change in the immediate future.
“I think the market is simply reacting to withdrawal symptoms from the opiate of stimulus,” said Russ Valone, president of MarketPointe Realty Advisors, a San Diego housing consulting firm.
…
Brian Flock
* San Diego Real Estate Examiner
93% in San Diego County suffer foreclosure instead of short sale
* October 18th, 2010 12:27 pm PT
Denial, anger, and misunderstandings cause many to dig in their heels
Approximately 14,500 homes were in the process of foreclosure throughout San Diego County as of October 18, 2010. Yet of those foreclosures in process, only around 1,000 (7%) are listed for short sale whereby the owner settles the debt with their bank. This means that 93% of these San Diego homes will foreclose within the next few months and their owners may suffer the negative impacts for nearly 7 years.
The reasons why home owners choose foreclosure over a short sale are varied but can largely be grouped into three categories:
* Owners unaware of alternatives: The current housing market is complicated; and media, banks, and the Government are often confusing the details. This group of homeowners effectively throws up their hands, unable to make sense of the conflicting messages.
* Owners in denial: this group doesn’t open letters from their bank or simply waits for a (non-existent) safety net from the U.S. Government.
* Owners angry at their bank: tempers run high, especially from those who have attempted a lengthy modification or believe that their bank should simply lower their principle. They feel that the bank is unfair and choose to fight—yet there are no winners here.
…
or:
* couldn’t get somebody at the bank to approve or even talk about the possibility of a short sale or a workout.
* didn’t buy the hype that a short sale is a much more minor hit on their credit reccord than a foreclosure.
With their stock near an all-time high, IBM approves $10 billion for stock buybacks:
International Business Machines Corp. added $10 billion to a stock-buyback plan, signaling the world’s biggest computer-services provider will keep using cash to boost per-share earnings rather than on large acquisitions.
The move brings the amount authorized for repurchases by the board to $12.3 billion, Armonk, New York-based IBM said in a statement today. In April, it authorized $8 billion in buybacks.
Since taking over as chief executive officer in 2002, Sam Palmisano has spent more than $68 billion on buybacks, about 38 percent of IBM’s current market value. The company has said it plans to spend about $50 billion on buybacks in the next five years, compared with about $20 billion on acquisitions, as it aims to almost double operating earnings per share.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-26/ibm-s-board-authorizes-10-billion-for-company-s-stock-repurchase-program.html
$10 billion buy back when IBM stock is at 52 week highs?
I see this ending badly…
IBM must know something we don’t know about the inflationary effects of massive quantitative easing. The cash is burning a hole in IBMs pocket.
They have too much cash around and can’t think of anything better to do with it. Evidently hiring new people or investing in capital equipment looks like an even worse use for the money and they don’t see any attractive take over prospects.
Of course, they could pay out an actual dividend, but that is soooo 1960s.
I bet the top execs get a payout for hitting a certain number. Returning cash to the actual owners of the company does not.
That would be a little odd as generally the executives don’t allow anything to go in the goals they must hit to get their maximum bonus that could be subject to outside influence (like a general downturn in the market), but it is not at all impossible. I would not take the other side of that bet.
Does the average shareholder still believe they are a part owner of a comapny?
How… quaint.
I once read that many of these announced buybacks never occur. It’s just to give the stock price a short-term boost. What’s the exercise date for Palmisano’s next batch of stock options? Bet it’s very soon.
It must be CEO cash out time
Yup they buy back stock and the CEO sells on the open market and bingo number of outstanding shares stay the same.
That’s certainly how it worked at the home-builders a few years ago. Didn’t work out particularly well for the stock holders (as Steve J pointed out, the actual owners of the company) but it helped upper management maximize the returns on the stock that they were selling.
Do green shoots of burgeoning durable goods orders weaken the case for QE2? Or will stimulus fervor carry the day?
* U.S. NEWS
* OCTOBER 26, 2010
Fed Gears Up for Stimulus
Eyes Gradual Bond Buying of Several Hundred Billion Dollars; Doubts Linger
By JON HILSENRATH And JONATHAN CHENG
The Federal Reserve is close to embarking on another round of monetary stimulus next week, against the backdrop of a weak economy and low inflation—and despite doubts about the wisdom and efficacy of the policy among economists and some of the Fed’s own decision makers.
The Fed is close to embarking on a new round of monetary stimulus next week despite doubts among economists and some Fed decision makers. Jon Hilsenrath discusses. Also, John W. Miller discusses Europe’s tougher line on trade with China, as the EU focuses on China’s process for bidding on contracts.
The central bank is likely to unveil a program of U.S. Treasury bond purchases worth a few hundred billion dollars over several months, a measured approach in contrast to purchases of nearly $2 trillion it unveiled during the financial crisis. The announcement is expected to be made at the conclusion of a two-day meeting of its policy-making committee next Wednesday.
The Fed’s aim is to drive up the prices of long-term bonds, which in turn would push down long-term interest rates. It hopes that would spur more investment and spending and liven up the recovery. But officials want to avoid the “shock and awe” style used during the crisis in favor of an approach that allows them to adjust their policy, and possibly add to their purchases, over time as the recovery unfolds.
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s push to restart the bond-buying program—a form of monetary stimulus known as quantitative easing—has been greeted with deep skepticism among some of his colleagues.
…
“The Fed’s aim is to drive up the prices of long-term bonds, which in turn would push down long-term interest rates. It hopes that would spur more investment and spending and liven up the recovery.”
Isn’t that the same as mispricing risk? The tyrannical fed forces the market to misprice risk then when Joe Sheeple’s retirement portfolio blows up in his face the fed claims it had nothing to do with it.
“Isn’t that the same as mispricing risk?”
The conundrum has outlived the tenure of its architect.
As though they were not already out of bullets…
Forever Blowing Bubbles
Oct. 26, 2010
The Fed has been inflating asset prices as part of policy since at least the mid-1990s. The wealth effect is the primary mechanism, make people richer and they’ll spend more. So QE is there to goose asset markets. But this’ll end badly. And the next time the Fed won’t have any silver bullets left to kill recession.
How come they’ve been out of bullets for years now, but they’re able to continue shooting?
Depends on what kind of bullets you had in mind; I was thinking of the kind which kill recessions, not the kind that kill currencies.
Happy Halloween!
Jonathan Burton’s Life Savings
Oct. 26, 2010, 11:39 p.m. EDT
Fed zombies hungry for quantitative easing
GMO’s Grantham scripts ‘Night of the Living Fed’
By Jonathan Burton, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — The easy-money policies of Federal Reserve chairmen Ben Bernanke and Alan Greenspan have rarely impressed veteran fund manager Jeremy Grantham, but now the chief investment strategist at GMO, a Boston investment firm, is likening Fed actions to an economic horror show.
“Adhering to a policy of low rates, employing quantitative easing, deliberately stimulating asset prices, ignoring the consequences of bubbles breaking, and displaying a complete refusal to learn from experience has left Fed policy as a large net negative to the production of a healthy, stable economy with strong employment,” Grantham wrote in his latest quarterly commentary, “Night of the Living Fed.”
…
Game over on Treasuries???? PIMCO says yes on Oct 27, 2010…
—————–
Fed Easing Likely to Mark End of 30-Year Bull Market for Bonds, Gross Says
By Susanne Walker - Oct 27, 2010
Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) — Richard Clarida, global strategic adviser at Pacific Investment Management Co., discusses the potential impact of so-called quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve on the U.S. economy. Clarida, speaking with Deirdre Bolton and Erik Schatzker on Bloomberg Television’s “InsideTrack,” said the expansion of asset purchases will help lower interest rates but questions whether it can generate long-term economic growth.
Bill Gross, manager of the world’s largest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said a renewal of asset purchases by the Federal Reserve will likely signify the end of the 30-year bull market in bonds.
“Check writing in the trillions is not a bondholder’s friend,” Gross wrote in his monthly investment outlook posted on Newport Beach, California-based Pimco’s website today. “It is in fact inflationary, and, if truth be told, somewhat of a Ponzi scheme. It raises bond prices to create the illusion of high annual returns, but ultimately it reaches a dead end where those prices can no longer go up.”
After dumping his long Treasury positions, Bill Gross calls the tyrannical Fed’s actions inflationary and a Ponzi scheme??!!
Did he really say the fed is running a Ponzi scheme? No way!
Fed purchases raises bond prices to create the illusion of high annual returns? No kidding!
ROTFLMAO!!! Someone just got rolled, big time! Guess who?
“Having arrived at its destination, the market then offers near zero percent returns and a picking of the creditor’s pocket via inflation and negative real interest rates,” Gross wrote. “It will likely signify the end of a great 30-year bull market in bonds and the necessity for bond managers and, yes, equity managers to adjust to a new environment,” Gross wrote.
ROTFLMAO!!!! OMG! Too funny.
Does this suggest that Gross and like-minded bond vigilantes are dumping their holdings about now? If yes, what is keeping rates so low?
Think about the trade mechanics. You have to get in front of the fed. The fed will pay any price. The fed is ‘gaming’ some of the traders and some of the traders are ‘gaming’ the fed. Joe come lately has no clue about trade mechanics or what arrangements may have been made behind closed doors.
Some have been ‘redeeming’ treasuries and repatriating or moving dollars offshore — BRIC/Asia — Thai baht best performing currency. Why invest in a country determined to debauch its currency? It’s a lose-lose proposition. Look at the movement in commodities and other alternatives. It’s all unwinding now, however, ahead of the actual announcement — profit taking. Wait and see. Then, onto the next trade. If it’s too small, do X; if it’s too BIG, do Y….
It’s a chess game.
Sounds like, as usual, the smart money is handing off the overvalued assets to J6P-come-lately, just before pulling the plug?
So how does this affect bond funds? Aren’t they holding older paper usually, or do they constantly buy new also? Thinking your average bond fund like Vanguard total bond.
End of low mortgage rates:
Return to 5% mortgage rates in 2011. Refi now or be priced-out forever:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/record-low-mortgage-rates-will-be-gone-in-2011-2010-10-26
Just wanted to mention that one year ago today was Oly’s last post. I remember when people got a little annoyed that she posted so much on so many off topic things, but I sure miss it. Search on Olympiagal at http://inksex.com/ to get a dose of it.
I miss her stepping in between our political food fighters and calling them “Smartypants.”
I miss everything about her. She was a ‘ social lubricant’ around here- a master of defusing anger and finding humorous common ground.
Here’s to you Oly! I hoist a ginger ale now, but will hoist something more suitable at 5 (or maybe sooner
)
Cheers! (..sigh..)
To Oly.
x3 Cheers! (I keep a batch of headless Sunflower stalks as a memorial on my back patio) ;-(
ribet, rrrribet, rrrribet
Wow! A year already, time does indeed fly. She is missed.
I miss Olygal. What a rare spirit, and a unique writing voice.
I miss her too.
Every time I’m in Olympia, I’m reminded of her.
Dang. OlyGal was something else.
Chiming in late, but yeah, I sure do still miss her too… What an inimitable spirit.
Realtors are parrots with too much makeup.
Wonder how the bikini clad blond chick, billboard real-a-tor/tard is doing down in Fla. these days. Remember her?
Wonder how the bikini clad blond chick, billboard real-a-tor/tard is doing down in Fla. these days. Remember her?
Was that not in Long Beach CA or were there more than one?
You may be right!
I thought that there was one in Fla. and her office may have been around Destin. Anyway, the office she worked from was not to impressed with her billboard, if my fading memory is correct.
Robert Shiller: End of Tax Credit Could Mean Big Trouble for Housing … and Banks ~ Newsmakers, Banking, Housing
It is all about housing this week. And, so far the news is mixed. The good news came on Monday with a better-than-expected 10% jump in September’s existing-home sales. The not so good news out yesterday. Home prices fell 0.2% in August according the S&P Case-Shiller Index.
Yale Professor Robert Shiller, co-creator of the S&P Case Shiller Index is very curious to see where home prices go after the Homebuyers’ Tax Credit expires (It expired Sept. 30, but effects on the market won’t be seen for a few months). “The homebuyer tax credit did create an end – at least for the time being – of the decline in home prices,” Shiller tells Aaron at The Economist’s Buttonwood Gathering. “But it didn’t create a very strong recovery.”
Home prices are up year-over-year, but the positive gains are dissipating, up 1.7% in August vs. 3.2% in July. Foreclosure gate and the uncertainty of the midterm elections are not helping matters.
“Home prices are declining a little bit,” Shiller says. “It’s a worry that the support we’ve seen [via the tax credit] is not continuing and we’re going to resume the downtrend.”
In his estimation, we are stuck in a liquidity trap: Despite rock bottom interest rates, people are still not spending because they are concerned about the future.
Shiller says it is definitely not the time to be bullish on real estate, “I think it is a risky bet. If we have more stress, if house prices continue to go down, as they’ve started to do just a little smidgen…if they go down another 5% that is going to put a lot of stress on financial institutions.”
I am glad I searched it first I would have posted the same thing.
Professor Shiller, please get your head out of the bankers’ a**. The declining home prices is a GOOD thing. I am beginning to question his data and methods as well.
good for us renters with cash!! A very small minority
if they go down another 5% that is going to put a lot of stress on financial institutions.”
Prepare for a lot of stress on financial institutions.
Looks like there are a lot of new Mo’s running around across the pond.I know that’s what I would shorten it to, just call me Mo.
Mohammed is now the most popular name for newborn boys in England and Wales and more popular than names like Jack and Harry, it emerged today.
I was at Walgreens picking up a prescription yesterday and the pharmacist was wearing a bright red turban with the rest of his muslim gear. Being close to halloween I was wondering if any rednecks walk up to the window and say “Great terrorist costume, dude”. He was the nicest man in the world.
If he was wearing a turban, he was probably a Sikh. And Sikhs are not Muslims.
or an Arabian.
The Sikhs who own my local Indian restaurant serve both beef and pork- a rare thing in an Indian restaurant. They’re really nice guys too. (One is always bragging to me about how much he can drink, so it must be a pretty mellow religion, at least as they follow it.)
Employers in U.S. Start Bracing for Higher Tax Withholding ~ Bloomberg
Employers in the U.S. are starting to warn their workers to prepare for slimmer paychecks if Congress fails to vote on an extension of Bush-era tax cuts.
“I’ve been doing payroll for probably close to 30 years now, and never have we seen something like this where it gets that down to the wire,” said Dennis Danilewicz, who manages payroll services for about 14,000 employees at New York University’s Langone Medical Center. “That’s what’s got a lot of people nervous. All we can do is start preparing communications with a couple of different scenarios.”
Lawmakers won’t start debating whether to extend the cuts, which expire Dec. 31, until after the Nov. 2 elections. Because it takes weeks to prepare withholding schedules, the Internal Revenue Service will probably have to assume the cuts will expire and direct employers to increase payroll deductions starting Jan. 1, experts say.
“We’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Ron Moser, head of human resources for the school district of Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda, New York, which pays about 1,900 teachers, custodians and aides each month. In upstate New York, where winter heating costs are among the highest in the country, many school employees earn between $20,000 and $40,000 a year, he said, and losing $50 in a paycheck is “a significant dollar amount.”
many school employees earn between $20,000 and $40,000 a year, he said, and losing $50 in a paycheck is “a significant dollar amount
I make a lot more than that and I don’r recall getting even that big of a witholding break when those tax breaks kicked in.
This article is an outright lie. A few minutes on google will show that we are and will continue to pay lower taxes under the present administration.
http://tinyurl.com/y5swmup
Bruce Bartlett, a fiscal conservative and columnist for Forbes who worked in the George W Bush and Reagan administrations. Bartlett was executive director of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress and Deputy Assistant Secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Treasury Department. In March he wrote: “Federal taxes are very considerably lower by every measure since Obama became president…. and last year’s stimulus bill, enacted with no Republican support, reduced federal taxes by almost $100 billion in 2009 and another $222 billion this year.”
“Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually. It also would reduce the crime, violence and corruption associated with drug markets, and the violations of civil liberties and human rights that occur when large numbers of otherwise law-abiding citizens are subject to arrest. Police could focus on serious crime instead.”
~ George Soros
Do you think “420 George” likes to “burn-one” time to time as he rules the World from his evil power swivel-chair?
Y’know, this dream of regulating and taxing pot may be just that. After all, Mary Jane is very easy to grow. And harvest, dry, and seed-save.
As for the savings on enforcement costs, I can see that. After all, the current system is prosecuting people who possess very small amounts of the stuff.
Yeah and the police will still have jobs too..
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/10/27/2010-10-27_entire_police_force_in_los_ramones_mexico_quits_after_gunmen_attack_headquarters.html
exactly. too easy to grow. the cost of weed will plummet.
A very dear friend used marijuana to alleviate the nausea from his chemotherapy. Said that it worked better than anything that the doctors prescribed.
He and his wife grew the pot in beautiful clay pots on their back porch. The plants had a lovely view of Pusch Ridge, which is in the Santa Catalina range north of Tucson. I’m sure that aided their growth.
As for my friend, he died a couple of years ago. His grieving wife died less than a year after he died.
I miss them both.
Legalize everything.
To be consistent with that, you have to let addicts and their children suffer the consequences, up to and including death and deprivation.
Otherwise they make the decisions, and others bear the consequences. I’m not sure we’re prepared to do that.
Addicts children are already suffering.
I wasn’t entirely serious. But it will be hard to draw a bright line around pot, but keep hashish illegal.
Item: Insider Selling Volume at Highest Level Ever Tracked
The overwhelming volume of sell transactions relative to buy transactions by company insiders over the last six months in key leading sectors of the market is the worst Alan Newman, editor of the Crosscurrents newsletter, has ever seen since he began tracking the data.
Dips buying opportunity dead ahead?
We have to hit 12k first. At least intraday.
Just ask Eddie. He pumps, then it’s time to dump.
I would hate to be Eddies underwear during the next flash-crash.
Only a few short months of trading left to hit Eddie’s 12k. Unfortunately for him, the DOW is going to have to rise around 500 per month to get there. It’s NOT looking promising for his prediction, especially given economic realities. At this point, I’d bet on DOW 10k before I’d bet on DOW 12k.
At this point, I’d bet on DOW 10k before I’d bet on DOW 12k.
I’ve been making that bet all along, but so far Eddie’s been closer to right than I have :-).
I remember reading from Bloomberg back in May or June of 2009 that insider selling was at the highest level ever, after the market had already crashed and gained 20% or so. Of course, if you were an “insider” you missed a tremendous intermediate profit opportunity. I don’t put much stock into what insiders say; they are at least as clueless as the rest of us.
US Firms Hoard Almost $1 Trillion Cash: Moody’s ~ Reuters
US companies are hoarding almost $1 trillion in cash but are unlikely to spend on expanding their business and hiring new employees due to continuing uncertainty about the strength of the economy, Moody’s Investors Service said on Tuesday.
they spelled ‘whored’ wrong.
My theory is they are hoarding cash b/c they are not sure their banks are solvent and don’t want to be caught short of cash in case of another financial crisis. Their banks’ are hoarding cash b/c they know they are not solvent; optimistically cockeyed regulators/book-examiners are the only thing between them and BK court.
In honor of next Tuesday:
“It’s all Obama’s fault. He dared to say nasty things about executive pay, and passed a health care law. Their feelings are hurt so they won’t invest due to uncertainty.”
“It’s a right wing conspiracy to make Obama look bad. They’ve agreed not to invest until after the election”
The fact that our economy has been floating on a see of fetid debt has nothing to do with it.
“It was ALL these outside groups getting people all hyped up. Don’t these people know big government programs like Obamacare and ObamaMotors and massive stimulus programs are good for them? Such stupid people. Luckily, they have us smart overlords to look after them.”
“It’s a right wing conspiracy to make Obama look bad. They’ve agreed not to invest until after the election”
I wouldn’t be surprised if the market went down after the election, sort of a case of “buy the rumor, sell the news” type-situation. I’ve been staying clear of the market for weeks now, though, because its gotten too crazy.
My company has an unused $150K line of credit. Do they count that as “cash”?
Stocks fall amid questions about Fed plan- AP
Stocks slid Wednesday as concerns grew over whether the Federal Reserve’s plans to buy Treasury bonds might be smaller and slower than anticipated.
I saw the trailer of the Movie “Inside Job” and apparently it is a exposing
movie . I don’t know if it tell the whole untold story but it looks like a movie worth seeing .
Nothing compares to the reality that unfolds here at the HBB. You can’t make this stuff up. For example, who would have thunk WS bonuses (based largely on fraudulent accounting) would be above previous levels under current leadership? Who would have thunk BB would be given another opportunity to create a third bubble? Moreover, despite all the fraud, not one single fat cat banker has even been arraigned.
“For example, who would have thunk WS bonuses (based largely on fraudulent accounting) would be above previous levels under current leadership?”
me…i thunk it.
Where else would you expect TARP money with no strings attached to flow, if not into the bonus pool?
If so much money is getting yanked from the nation’s financial markets, what explains the big runup in share prices, from DJIA = 9600 to DJIA above 11,000, since the end of the first half of 2010? I guess that is where high-frequency trading comes in, but why?
What U.S. Markets Sorely Lack: Investors’ Faith
By CHARLES HUGH SMITH
Posted 6:30 AM 10/27/10 Economy, Investing, Real Estate
Have American investors lost faith in the nation’s financial markets? Statistics from mutual fund trade group Investment Company Institute suggest the answer is yes. Investors have been pulling their money out of U.S. equities for 24 straight weeks, last week withdrawing $623 million from U.S. stock funds and investing $1.45 billion in overseas equity funds instead.
Mutual funds that invest solely in U.S. stocks have reported a massive $92 billion outflow as Americans give up on the stock market, despite its huge run-up from the lows of March 2009. The numbers offer a more accurate indicator of investor sentiment than polls that survey a tiny percentage of investors. Institutional money managers and individual investors alike have been voting with their feet and abandoning the market both equity funds and mortgage-backed securities.
Twice Shy
With stocks and corporate profits rising, and pundits reporting that U.S. corporations have huge amounts of cash, why aren’t investors jumping into the bull market?
For one thing, U.S. stocks have crashed twice in less than nine years — between 2000 and 2002 and between 2008 and 2009 — handing investors 40% to 80% in losses. As the old adage goes: “Once bitten, twice shy.” Stock investors have been bitten twice.
On top of that history, investors may no longer trust the transparency of the nation’s financial markets. First of all, Wall Street has become dominated by short-term traders who can instantly react to news. As Peter Cohan recently reported on DailyFinance, 70% of the trades on U.S. exchanges are held for an average of only 11 seconds, and that makes long-term investors vulnerable.
See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/9T2rMl
All I can say is that it couldn’t happen to a nicer stock market.
No matter how big your ego or balance sheet, the fed’s bigger. Plus, it has tyrannical powers. It’s never been audited. Armies of traders do the fed’s bidding and take their profits when the time is right.
..70% of the trades on U.S. exchanges are held for an average of only 11 seconds, and that makes long-term investors vulnerable.
Why would long term investors care about day traders churning the market? And how does it make them vulnerable?
If a long term investor is unaware of it, and reacts to daily market swings by buying or selling, s/he is NOT a “long term” investor.
Please don’t feed the zombies.
Lisa Twaronite’s This Week in Japan
Oct. 27, 2010, 2:34 a.m. EDT
The original zombie-feeding manual
Commentary: Lessons for Fed in Bank of Japan’s easy policy
By Lisa Twaronite, MarketWatch
TOKYO (MarketWatch) — Japan didn’t invent the concepts of either deflation or zombie companies, but it achieved notoriety for having lots of both — and is now watching as they strike fear in hearts around the globe.
…
A very cautionary tale: How leaving finances to her husband left Laura £1m in debt and cost her home and her marriage
27th October 2010
Laura Stadler gives a succinct description of her ex-husband Michael, to whom she was happily married for 30 years. ‘He was Mr Reliable, really. I loved the fact that he was so utterly dependable. He was a wonderful provider; my rock.’
If she’d had even the slightest hint that the man she trusted unequivocally was harbouring an awful and escalating secret — if Michael’s behaviour had become odd, furtive or erratic — she might have been able to avert the crisis that destroyed her comfortable family life.
But Laura had no inkling, not even the smallest clue.
So when she discovered, bit by bit, that her husband had racked up a staggering £1million of debt over the course of a decade, her enormous sense of betrayal was matched by profound shock.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1324064/Laura-Stradler-left-family-finances-husband-left-1m-debt.html#ixzz13aCzYomo
when i was a little boy my father brought home a new set of pots and pans.
my mother drilled him over where he got them…for she just knew…there was no way we could afford new pots and pans.
Michael, always immaculately dressed, worked in the clothing industry; his petite and glamorous wife, who drove a BMW, was an accomplished homemaker and hostess.
The couple enjoyed annual trips to Royal Ascot, first-night theatre visits and regular holidays abroad to chic resorts such as St Moritz.
They were blessed, too, with a grown-up son and daughter. Nicole, a hedge-fund manager, and Anthony, a film editor, had progressed seamlessly from private prep schools to good secondary schools and then through university.
Today, however, she has far less to be thankful for. She has no home of her own, but shuttles between her daughter’s house in Barnet, Herts, and that of her elderly widower father nearby.
She has lost all the trappings of her prosperous middle-class life and stress has taken its toll on her health — recently, she developed diabetes. Michael subsists on state benefits and lives alone in a small, rented flat.
They lived WAY, WAY, WAY beyond their means. To do this they were in DEBT up to their eyeballs. This was NOT a middle class lifestyle. Why am I supposed to feel SORRY for them????
Sounds as though the major driver of the stock market is speculation on how much quantitative easing the Fed will do going forward? Fundamentals seem to matter little at this point, if at all.
* OCTOBER 27, 2010, 1:16 P.M. ET
US Stocks Down On Lower Expectations For Fed `Shock-and-Awe’
…
“The Fed will probably indicate that easing will be open-ended — they’ll want to see how that first round plays out,” said David Katz, principal at Weiser Capital Management, who says that any attempt at “shock and awe” by the Fed could spook the markets. “If there was a perception that the Fed needed to drop $2 trillion into the economy on day one, then perhaps things are a lot worse under the rug than we think they are.”
The concerns over the Fed came amid modestly positive data on durable-goods orders and the troubled housing market.
U.S. manufactured durable goods orders posted their biggest rise since January after a spike in orders for civilian aircraft and aircraft parts, an often volatile category. Overall, durable goods orders rose 3.3% in September to a seasonally adjusted $199.16 billion, more than the expected 2.5% rise.
Meanwhile, new-home sales in September continued their rise from a rock-bottom level, increasing 6.6% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 307,000, more than consensus estimates of a 4.2% increase.
“The durable goods number, if you strip out aircrafts, wasn’t a great number,” said Michael Shea, managing partner of Direct Access Partners, who added that the home data reflected a weak housing environment.
…
Seems like fundamentals haven’t mattered for over a year now and anybody who cares about them has been a sucker. Here’s to hoping that changes soon…
We should see what ex-gs-fixer has to say about that spike in aircraft.
Serial housing market bottom callers are at it again.
Economic Report
Oct. 27, 2010, 10:58 a.m. EDT
New-home sales climb 6.6% in September
By Steve Goldstein, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Sales of new homes climbed 6.6% in September, figures released by the federal government on Wednesday showed, representing the second straight month of gains, but still well below the pace when a tax credit existed.
Sales of new single-family homes rose 6.6% to a seasonally-adjusted annualized rate of 307,000, which is stronger than the 300,000 that economists expected in a MarketWatch-compiled poll.
On Monday, a report showed sales of existing homes also were stronger than expected, rising 10%, and the two reports lend support to some economists who believe housing demand hit a bottom in late summer.
“After dropping precipitously following the expiration of the first-time homebuyer tax credit, it looks as though new home sales have stabilized,” said Nicholas Tenev, an economist at Barclays Capital. “We expect a gradual recovery over the coming months.”
Still, the pace of new-home sales is 21.5% below the same level of last year.
…
And last year wasn’t so great either.
Most Americans worry about ability to pay mortgage or rent, poll finds
Washington Post October 27, 2010
A majority of Americans now say they are worried about making their mortgage or rent payments, underscoring the extent of economic anxiety in the country heading into midterm elections.
A new Washington Post poll shows that concerns about housing payments have spiked since 2008 despite some improvements in the overall economy. In all, 53 percent said they are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about having the money to make their monthly payment. Worries are the most intense among those with lower incomes and African Americans.
Sounds like they could use some cash, eh?
More like secure jobs with regular raises.
“Most Americans worry about ability to pay mortgage or rent”
And some Americans haven`t worried about that in years. This is an extreme case but I know 5 or 6 and know of many more people who have not paid their mortgage in 2 years or more.
In 2002, a Boca Raton (Fla.) accountant named Joseph Lents was accused of securities law violations by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Lents stopped making payments on his $1.5 million mortgage.
The loan servicer, Washington Mutual, tried to foreclose on his home in 2003 but was never able to produce Lents’ promissory note, If his mortgage holder couldn’t prove it held his mortgage, it couldn’t foreclose.
Eight years after defaulting, Lents still hasn’t made a payment or been forced out of his house. Lents’ debt has grown to about $2.5 million, including unpaid taxes, interest, and penalties.
Lents is irked when people accuse him of exploiting a loophole. “It’s not a loophole,” he says. “It’s the law.”
I would love to hear from the moron down in Fla. who planned on Barry paying her mortgage & gas if she helped him. Funny how the MSM never follow up on those stories.
I bet you Peggy is pissed. I can almost see the Sheriff evicting her as she cusses, I can`t go nowhere, I got no gas! I never thought this day would come!
I would love to hear from the moron down in Fla. who planned on Barry paying her mortgage & gas if she helped him. Funny how the MSM never follow up on those stories.
Because it’s not a story.
Please…she was speaking figuratively, as if he won, the economy would better, thus she would be able to pay those things on her own.
It’s a cheap shot taken often but wrongly.
“Most Americans worry about ability to pay mortgage or rent, poll finds”
Gee… sounds like housing isn’t all that “affordable” after all! Perhaps government should “do something” to make housing more affordable… like quit interfering with the market!
..Worries are the most intense among those with lower incomes and African Americans.
hmm… those with lower incomes.. and “all” African Americans? Even rich ones? Is that what the Washington [bleep] is trying to say?
hmm… those with lower incomes.. and “all” African Americans? Even rich ones? Is that what the Washington [bleep] is trying to say?
Was it? Or should you just shut your pie hole?
rio..
You and I might think it makes no sense to isolate blacks and ask them how anxious they are about paying the mortgage. Skin color should be irrelevant, and results should be the same as any other ethnicity or race.
But evidently, the Washington [bleep] has found a genetic connection between anxiety and skin color. This is an important scientific discovery and deserves further study, imo.
Cotton Prices Highest Since US Civil War
27 Oct 2010 | CNBC
There’s been so much talk about rising commodity prices that we decided to pick one that isn’t front-page news like oil and gold, yet could have a significant impact on the consumer and investors.
How about cotton.
It’s at pricing levels not seen since just after the Civil War, spiking about 80 percent since the early summer. Considering that just about everyone wears a lot of it every day, we traveled to the cotton heartland of Tennessee to get more insight.
“It’s really been amazing,” said Howell Moore, who runs a cotton-growing and gin operation in Sommerville, Tenn. “We haven’t seen anything like this. I have seen it take a couple of runs before in my life, but nothing like this. It doesn’t seem to have an end to it.”
Moore says most growers haven’t capitalized on the rally up to the $1.30-a-pound range, since most 2010 pricing was locked in well in advance. However, if prices remain high, that will change.
Nope. No inflation there.
But dang it, that bites! Cotton is all I can wear. Synthetics make my skin crawl.
Record-low mortgage rates will be gone in 2011: MBA
Average rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgage expected to jump above 5%
ATLANTA (MarketWatch) — Mortgage rates may be as low as they’ll get — rates are on course to rise, slowly moving toward 5% by the end of next year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s economic forecast, released Tuesday at the group’s annual convention here.
The group predicts rates on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage will average 4.4% in the fourth quarter of 2010, increasing to a 4.7% average in the first quarter of 2011, and climbing to 5.1% by the end of next year. That’s barring any “blockbuster” announcement from the Federal Reserve next month, said Jay Brinkmann, chief economist of the MBA.
Yeah, that that will put further downward pressure on home prices..
Kimberly-Clark rolls out tube-free Scott toilet paper
The toilet paper roll is about to undergo its biggest change in 100 years: going tubeless.
On Monday, Kimberly-Clark, one of the world’s biggest makers of household paper products, will begin testing Scott Naturals Tube-Free toilet paper at Walmart and Sam’s Club stores throughout the Northeast. If sales take off, it may introduce the line nationally and globally — and even consider adapting the technology into its paper towel brands.
No, the holes in the rolls aren’t perfectly round. But they do fit over TP spindles and come with this promise: Even the last piece of toilet paper will be usable — without glue stuck on it.
Ever seen those huge rolls that are used in public restrooms? They don’t have tubes either.
What will Cleetus and Brandine use now for their indoor plumbing needs?
who wants a bent up roll flopping around on it’s axle?
I foresee a market for “tube inserts”.
Joey, I love it when you talk that way.
LOL…..How much are they saving by taking out the tube ,I’m assuming its a cost saving measure .
The lawsuit trying to force the Federal Reserve to open its bailout books is headed to the Supreme Court.
Bloomberg News has been trying for nearly two years to find out which banks got emergency “discount window” loans. The Fed has fought it all the way, saying taxpayers’ right to know is trumped by the banks’ desire to preserve their reputations (such as they are).
Curiously, the Fed didn’t file the appeal. The Clearing House Association, a group comprising the biggest banks, is doing the Fed’s bidding from here.
This is shaping up to be one of those “landmark cases” the court typically decides in the last week of June. We have our calendars marked.
~ 5 Min Forecast
“Spreads on Greek sovereign debt blew out overnight on news that the country’s budget deficit will amount to more than 15% of GDP — just a wee bit more than the 3% projected a year ago. The credit default swap market now gives Greece better-than-even odds of default. That’s weakening the euro and strengthening the dollar — at a time the Fed and Treasury want to see the dollar weaken”.
~ 5 Min. Forecast
How cool is this…
Angle thanks Behar.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/44257.html
Does it get any better?
Smart move, pisses of a nobody who thinks they are a somebody, like Behar. Her voice alone is enough to drive you off a cliff.
“I’d like to see her do this ad in the South Bronx. Come here, bitch. Come to New York and do it,” Behar said. “I’m not praying for her. She’s going to hell. She’s going to hell, this bitch.”
Personally, I’d like to see both of these kooks in a boxing ring, tearing each other to pieces.
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!
Clicking on that link and looking at those pictures may have been the worst thing I ever did in my life!
Oh the fed will pump QE3,4,5,etc… It’s just the “market” wants a 4 trillion dollar junkie injection right now damn it! We loves us some free money, and screw the punk azz serfs.
Market Ends Mixed Amid Fed Stimulus Uncertainty- Reuters
U.S. stocks fell on Wednesday as investors concluded expectations about how aggressively the Federal Reserve would attempt to stimulate the economy were overly optimistic.
Recontrust delays trustees sales scheduled 11-1 to 11-14
in Oregon, as per their website. Yesterday they had sales scheduled for 11-1, now they don’t–poof! Next sale now is 11-15.
They supposedly are evaluating every two weeks. Is the guy who is scheduled for the auction block on 11-15 getting a fair shake(and who cares if he does)? This 11-1 thru 11-14 group gets a reprieve and he may or may not get the same treatment, as the order of scheduled sales gets rearranged. But they may reschedule the next block as well,(and so on) leaving us FBs on the edge of their seats.
“The full consequences of what I termed The Rot Within: Our Culture of Financial Fraud and the Anger of the Honest (October 15, 2010) are now unfolding: the well has been poisoned. One of my most astute correspondents made a critical observation that I’ve seen nowhere else: once a market has been poisoned by fraud which goes unpunished, then institutional players will avoid that market as untrustworthy”.
“Without institutional trust and participation, the market then withers on the vine– exactly what has happened to the U.S. mortgage securities market. The market for mortgage-backed securities has vanished, except for one player: the Federal Reserve, which has bought a staggering $1.2 trillion in the past 18 months to create the facsimile of an active market”.
“The well has been poisoned. The only mortgages being traded are those 100% guaranteed by the U.S. government: in effect, the risks intrinsic to a corrupted market have been shifted to the taxpayers, while the criminals who profited from the fraud and embezzlement got away scot-free”.
~ Charles Hugh Smith
…the risks intrinsic to a corrupted market have been shifted to the taxpayers..
Theoretically speaking, risk is one side of the coin, and reward (or return) is the other. You can’t have one without the other.
Question: What are the rewards?
Heads they win. Tails you lose.
i’m asking.. What are the rewards?
If you can’t see a reward.. if there is no potential gain to be had, you have to consider that Smith is mistaken and the premise is false, and that risks have NOT shifted to taxpayers.
But maybe the potential rewards are so small they are hard to see. In that case, the risk must be commensurately low.
Is my impression correct that a big risk-free bond market adjustment is in play?
Treasury 10-Year Note in Longest Slide Since 2008 on Fed Purchases
Outlook
By Daniel Kruger and Susanne Walker - Oct 27, 2010 2:03 PM PT
…
Pimco’s Gross, manager of the world’s largest bond fund, wrote that Fed “check-writing in the trillions is not a bondholder’s friend.”
“It is in fact inflationary, and, if truth be told, somewhat of a Ponzi scheme,” Gross wrote in his monthly investment outlook posted on Newport Beach, California-based Pimco’s website today. “It raises bond prices to create the illusion of high annual returns, but ultimately it reaches a dead end where those prices can no longer go up.”
…
Christopher Whalen
Triple threat: Fannie, Freddie, and the triumph of the corporate state
Oct 27, 2010 17:56 EDT
U.S. economy | US Politics
Below is an excerpt from the October 27, 2010 issue of The Institutional Risk Analyst, “Triple Down: Fannie, Freddie, and the Triumph of the Corporate State.” To read the entire article, click the link at the bottom of the excerpt:
“JOHN BULL can stand many things but he cannot stand two per cent.”
That aphorism, quoted by Walter Bagehot, a 19th-century editor of The Economist, expressed savers’ traditional distaste for very low interest rates. For the first three centuries of the Bank of England’s existence, 2% was indeed as low as the central bank was willing to let interest rates fall. Not even the Depression, nor the long Victorian period of stable prices, induced the bank to go any further. Some minimum return on capital was deemed to be required.
Buttonwood
The Economist
September 16, 2010
…
Some minimum return on capital was deemed to be required.
seems like a psychological thing…
If your savings earn 0% (nothing) in a deflationary era, $100 might have the buying power of perhaps $105 next month. So, you are earning an effective rate of 5% a month.
Similarly, if you borrow $100 @ 0%, and pay it back a month later, the loan cost you $105 worth of buying power, and you paid an effective rate of 5% a month for that loan.
Plus…
… because your 5% return was not paid to you in real money you aren’t taxed on it.
Everyone wonders if we really are experiencing deflation.
I have to believe we are, simply because people are averse to spending, and prefer saving. They “feel” it.
It’s an instinctive reaction which requires no deliberate calculations or conscious thought..
We’re a lot smarter than we think.
“Everyone wonders if we really are experiencing deflation.”
Everyone but me. I have no doubt deflation is what that thingy it is that we are experiencing.
And then there’s Ben Bernanke; He too apparantly feels that deflation is at hand and is doing everything imaginable to fend it off.
“We’re a lot smarter than we think.”
That’s as funny as, “People are smart.”
maybe smart was the wrong word…
We’re “a lot more perceptive” than we think. Social life has yet to erase our instinctive survival capabilities.
Most frequently-repeated economic commentator half-truth, ever:
“The TARP was a success, because without it, we would be in a second Great Depression.”
This is, at best, a half-truth for at least two reasons:
1) There is no way to compare to how things would have otherwise turned out without the TARP, although I am willing to conjecture that 2009 would not have been among the highest, ever bonus years for Megabank, Inc.
2) It is too early to tell if we are in a second Great Depression.
If TARP prevented mass panic and a run on the banks, it can’t be all bad.
A bank run (also known as a run on the bank) occurs when a large number of bank customers withdraw their deposits because they believe the bank is, or might become, insolvent. As a bank run progresses, it generates its own momentum, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy (or positive feedback): as more people withdraw their deposits, the likelihood of default increases, and this encourages further withdrawals….
A banking panic or bank panic is a financial crisis that occurs when many banks suffer runs at the same time. A systemic banking crisis is one where all or almost all of the banking capital in a country is wiped out.[2] The resulting chain of bankruptcies can cause a long economic recession.[3] Much of the Great Depression’s economic damage was caused directly by bank runs.[4]
“If TARP prevented mass panic and a run on the banks, it can’t be all bad.”
Unless of course a panic and run created healthy conditions.
Sort of like how an unhealthy American might respond to a doctor telling them to exercise or they will not recover.
Sort of like jumping off the roof, breaking every bone in your body, spending years in a body cast, going through physical therapy for another few years, and the result is ending up exactly like you were before you jumped.. except for a few new scars..
——-
Why do people assume that after suffering economic devastation and rebuilding, the economy will come out better than what we have now? What will change?
Will big money and political power no longer matter and lose influence?
And who exactly is to be put in charge of the rebuilding? Will we all work together in blissful harmony with a common goal?
“If TARP prevented mass panic and a run on the banks, it can’t be all bad.”
There was mass panic. Don’t you remember the DJIA dropping to 6K or so? That was just before the banksters made a killing on the rebound…
You witnessed the reaction to only one or two institutions failing. Pretty impressive, aint it.
If the investments were made in solid wealth producing industries we wouldn’t see such volatility, but everything has been over-priced to scam levels. Thus the panic.
..solid wealth producing industries..
I can’t see much of a relationship between that and investor panic.
RE is the most stable of industries, involves some of the least liquid of assets with the least volatile prices, and has a very long history of producing practical wealth.
“…but everything has been over-priced to scam levels.”
Also bad decisions were made by a few large and powerful banking institutions to go all in on real estate. This sort of malinvestment is a natural consequence of too much money concentrated into too few hands.
80 % of the sub-prime loans where made by Wall Street ,or non-regulated banks . I don’t think we had a obligation to bail out those entities and we didn’t have a obligation to bail out a insurance company like AIG on their credit default bets . And what do you think of a system that allows a Insurance Co to make Credit Default
Swap bets of 400 billion without any reserves to cover it .
This crazy form of insurance was suppose to be a replacement
for making good loans ….what a joke . AIG wouldn’t of had to pay off after it would of came out they were relying on AAA securities ratings ,and once they sampled the loan packages that were riddled with fraud than they really wouldn’t of had to pay .I think the whole thing was contrived anyway . What a joke that investment houses all of a sudden became banks so they could qualify for bailout .
These market makers and breakers think that people are stupid and the Politicians and regulators are easy to bribe or control .
The bail-outs created cover-ups for the rotten self-serving casinos
of the Bankers and Wall Street Middlemen gamblers with their stacked deck .FDIC would of covered the regulated banks . Who cares what
would of happened to the high rolling 40xleverage bogus players .
They would of been sued and there would of been jail time .
Government sponsored cluster fark:
* BUSINESS WORLD
* OCTOBER 27, 2010
House Afire
The elusive search for villains in the foreclosure crisis.
* By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.
Millions of Americans have stopped paying their mortgages, creating a giant paperwork snafu and legal crisis, and yet . . .
…
Every foreclosure is a different story, some painful to hear. But we had a housing bubble, and bubbles by definition occur because the incentives permit them to occur: The Fed kept interest rates low. Regulatory policy favored shoehorning more people into homes. Enormous tax inducements were dangled to encourage housing debt. Not outside the laws of human nature, an industry on the make—the subprime industry—emerged to exploit these conditions.
Ultimately, the government—in the form of Fannie, Freddie and the FDIC—is the party now most bogged down with hundreds of thousands of unsold, decaying and vandalized houses. Getting these houses back into the hands of responsible owners is fundamental to the solvency of the banking system, to the solvency of communities that depend on property taxes, to the solvency of millions of other families whose main asset is their home.
A final irony: TARP has become so toxic that there’s serious doubt the political system could respond to another crisis like the one that followed the failure of Lehman Brothers. Let us pray, then, that a breakdown in the ability of mortgage investors to reclaim the collateral behind failed loans doesn’t send us back to the Lehman precipice.
Remenber that Simi Valley deadbeat couple with 8-9 KIDS (mostly Foster) who had a prior BK, father didn’t hold a f/t job, mom p/t, that moved back into their already sold foreclosed home… well they got kick out again. These people are scum, imho. Check up today’s update
Victicrats… boo who…
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/video?id=7748186
If I were to write our financial bio, it would certainly look more frugal, debt lite, and responsible than the Earl family. Our former residence was in the same area of McMansions.
They claim they owe nothing on this house. Freakin egomanic nut cases, imho. Jail Time!
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2010/oct/12/simi-family-changes-locks-retakes-foreclosed/
Too big to jail
When banks make false statements on legal documents, isn’t that fraud?
Ted Rall | Oct 27, 2010
What would happen to you if you got caught forging a mortgage application? You’d go to jail. And rightly so.
In one case in Florida, an employee of GMAC Mortgage admitted under oath that he personally forged 10,000 foreclosure affidavits. This low-level schlub is the tip of the tip of a massive iceberg, one of countless “robo-signers” whom voracious banks including GMAC, Bank of America, Citibank and JPMorganChase hired in order to kick American families out of their homes as quickly as possible.
Ignoring state banking laws, which require bank officers to review each foreclosure document to make sure all the facts are correct, banks instead hired low-wage “Burger King kids,” as BofA execs called them, to sign thousands of foreclosures they never looked at. Many were signed under someone else’s name.
Hundreds of thousands of foreclosures–maybe millions–were processed illegally by these huge banks gone wild. “Behind the question of improper foreclosure documentation lies a more important issue of whether lenders even have legal standing to foreclose because they lack the original mortgage note as required by law,” reports the New York Times.
One guy got evicted from his house in Florida despite the fact that his mortgage had been completely paid off years earlier. Thousands of people who purchased illegally foreclosed properties may not have legal title.
Prosecutors in Ohio, Florida and at least 20 other states are investigating one of the biggest acts of wholesale fraud in the history of American business.
When the scandal broke on October 8th the banks declared a temporary moratorium on foreclosures. Two weeks later, they declared the whole fuss a simple matter of paperwork and resumed their happy work of reducing millions of jobless Americans to homelessness.
“There is not a single case where a foreclosure was made in error,” said Bank of America spokesman Dan Frahm (if that’s his real name). “The facts supporting the foreclosures are correct.”
Bank of America plans to evict 102,000 families next month alone.
Adam Levitin, an associate law professor at Georgetown University, expressed doubt that the same banks that effectively rejected 99 percent of loan-modification applications by intentionally “losing” paperwork had suddenly become efficient. “The banks have dragged their feet and taken forever to do loan modifications, yet within less than two weeks they have managed to review hundreds of thousands of foreclosure cases,” he said. “It is simply not credible.”
“These are banks going to court and committing fraud,” said Ira Rheingold of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. “For them to say this is a minor technical problem is mind-boggling.”
Meanwhile, Florida officials are looking into charges that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac foreclosed on 70,000 homes in the state during 2009 using forged court documents.
Enough is enough.
It is time to stop foreclosures.
Not for a few weeks. Not temporarily.
Forever.
…
These Banking entities have been getting away with fraud for so long that they don’t know any different .I guess they just know they have
the regulators and the Politicians in their corner ,and of course the
taxpayers to bail them out .
A Divine Image
Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secresy the human dress.
The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.
- William Blake -
* OPINION
* OCTOBER 28, 2010
Time for Bailout Transparency
Big banks don’t want you to know which of them went to the Fed for emergency help.
By MATTHEW WINKLER
Americans remain bitter about federal bailouts, even after every penny of the $309 billion rescue of banks and insurers was returned at a profit. Why? Because our government refuses to disclose all of the facts and, until it does, every poll will continue to show a lack of confidence in the government and in the companies that finance America.
More than a dozen books have been written about the collapse of the world’s biggest credit market and the government’s unprecedented steps to protect hundreds of banks from certain ruin. Yet we still don’t know: Who made the decisions? Under what circumstances? When and where was public money disbursed, and how was it allocated?
While the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index has recovered more than 60% since March 2009, for the first time in decades the individual investor isn’t participating in the stock market rally, even with the lowest bond yields since Eisenhower was in the White House. Without complete disclosure, is it no surprise Wall Street is perceived as mammon.
Now the Clearing House Association, which represents 20 of the country’s biggest commercial banks, is asking the Supreme Court to keep the bailout secret. The issue is the identities of financial firms that borrowed from Federal Reserve programs including the discount window, which had loans outstanding for as much as $111 billion in 2008.
Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, is suing under the Freedom of Information Act to force the Fed to name names. Bloomberg’s case prevailed in federal court and on appeal (at which point the Fed, though not the Clearing House Association, decided against further appeal).
Attorneys for the banks—Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo among them—are asking the high court to reverse those rulings. They argue that divulging details about borrowers will stigmatize the institutions, put them at a competitive disadvantage and make them less likely to seek emergency loans in the future.
There is no history that shows opacity is better for markets and the economy than transparency. Money flees secrecy. Unanswered questions engender suspicion, which undermines the financial system while giving some participants an unfair advantage.
…
(Professor Bear scratches his head): “Isn’t unfair advantage exactly the point?”
Monsanto seems to be a lot like Goldman Sachs, do you suppose this will pass?:
“This is not a “food safety” bill, as even a short overview of S 510 makes clear.
S 510 offers numerous ways for corporations to get rid of farmers and take their land. The astounding falsity of forcing farmers (or anyone with a farm animal) to sign onto a international contract in which they lose their rights to their property is transparent. Taking global coordinates of the size and shape of farmers’ land and feeding them into a corporate data bank, has nothing to do with tracing animal diseases. Farmers’ addresses are known…
The corporations, faced with public upset at ravages of industrial agriculture and the contaminated food coming out of it, are using fear of food, fear of minor animal diseases (including a faked H1N1 pandemic still promoted by government agencies), and lies and fraud to try to eliminate real farming in the US and to facilitate the theft of all US farmland. ”
http://yupfarming.blogspot.com/2010/10/leaked-trade-agreements-and-hidden.html
Nick Godt’s Market Medics
Oct. 28, 2010, 12:01 a.m. EDT
A treat for markets, a trick for the rest of us
Commentary: Absent of fiscal spending, Fed measures seem ghoulish
By Nick Godt, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — The most telling moments of the Buttonwood Gathering — a conference sponsored by The Economist to bring together some of the greatest, and some of the once-powerful, authorities on economics and finance — were predictably unscripted.
“Is this some kind of bad joke for Halloween?” a woman from the audience asked during the question-and-answer session following Monday’s first panel, which consisted of a simulated governmental response to the potential fiscal failure of New Jefferson, an imaginary U.S. state.
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Absent of a real economic recovery, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing measures seem to be yet another way for investment banks to obtain cheap dollars and fuel bubbles in asset prices and in some emerging markets, as noted by both Stiglitz and Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive of bond fund giant Pimco.
No one knows for sure whether the measures will work, but absent of any fiscal spending, they do make markets seem like liquidity-addicted creatures that are detached from reality: Maybe a popular costume at Halloween parties on Wall Street this year.
Wells Fargo admits to paperwork flaws
By Jia Lynn Yang
Thursday, October 28, 2010
NEW YORK - Wells Fargo, which has stood by its foreclosure paperwork for weeks as other major lenders discovered errors and halted sales, conceded Wednesday it had discovered some flaws in its documents as well.
The latest acknowledgement of problems from one of the nation’s biggest lenders points out that the failure to scrupulously check legal documents before foreclosing on delinquent homeowners has been widespread in the industry.
Wells Fargo said it is submitting additional affidavits for roughly 55,000 foreclosures pending in 23 states, but that it does not have any plans to halt foreclosure sales.
The bank does not “believe that any of these instances led to foreclosures which should not have otherwise occurred,” it said in a statement.
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My hunch:
- The rumor mill was primed today to expect less QE2 shock and awe than planned, just so that the actual QE2 will inspire more shock and awe;
- Hence the announced QE2 will seem “bigger than expected” than the same level otherwise would have seemed without the jawboning effort to deceive the gullible.
- You might want to assume the crash position next Wednesday, just in case my speculative conjecture proves wrong.
World economy: Some enchanted easing
By Robin Harding
Published: October 28 2010 00:16 | Last updated: October 28 2010 00:16
Quantitative easing is the ugly and much disputed name for an ugly and much disputed monetary tactic. Definitions differ, but a good one is that QE is the practice of expanding a central bank’s balance sheet by buying long-term assets in an attempt to drive down long-term interest rates, something that it only has reason to do once short-term interest rates are already at or close to zero.
At a meeting that concludes on Wednesday next week the Federal Reserve will ponder whether to do more of this on top of the $1,725bn of assets that it bought during the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. So enfeebled is the US recovery that its answer – although much disputed by hawks on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee – is likely to be yes.
The Fed continues to debate how large QE2 should eventually become but the most common market estimate is that it will initially involve about $500bn of asset purchases spread over about six months. Fed officials have done little to tell markets that they are wrong. The size that QE2 might eventually reach is still a subject of intense debate within the Fed.
The prospect of further quantitative easing by the US central bank – something that tends to drive down the dollar – is creating pressure for similar action around the world. The Bank of Japan has already adopted further easing measures.
Yet there remain a series of questions about QE2: whether it will work, whether its costs outweigh its benefits, and whether there is an alternative policy that could more easily stimulate the US economy.
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Why does she want this so badly? Whatever happened to the good old days when qualified candidates only accepted the call to higher office with great reluctance?
In Calif., GOP candidate on record spending spree
FILE - This Oct. 25, 2010 file photo shows California Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman at a campaign stop in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Whitman, conducting the most expensive campaign for governor in U.S. history _ nearly $172 million and counting _ is inundating California voters with an unprecedented array of TV and radio ads, glossy magazines, smartphone messages, Facebook videos, postcards and phone calls that will test how far a Republican dollar can go in a state Democrats call their own. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)
By MICHAEL R. BLOOD
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 28, 2010; 3:10 AM
PASADENA, Calif. — It’s hard to turn off Meg Whitman.
The most expensive campaign for governor in U.S. history - about $162 million and counting - is inundating California voters with an unprecedented array of TV and radio ads, glossy magazines, smartphone messages, Facebook videos, postcards and phone calls that will test how far a Republican dollar can go in a state Democrats often dominate.
A typical TV viewer in Los Angeles will see 23 of her commercials this week alone, many roughing up Democrat Jerry Brown, according to Democrats tracking her ad buys. The story of the Silicon Valley billionaire is being told in four languages - English, Spanish, Mandarin and Cantonese. There are book-like mailers, billboards and text messages reaching voters and supporters, all while she’s jetting to appearances across the state.
It costs about $3 million for a candidate to blanket California with TV ads for one week, but from October 10-17 her campaign spent $4.6 million, underscoring the urgency of the effort and pushing her message from Spanish-speaking households near Los Angeles to rural areas on the Oregon border.
Still, it might not be enough. Brown, after being outspent 6-1 through mid-October, opened up a slight edge in recent polls. Even Whitman appeared to concede last week that many voters in the economically battered state - unemployment is 12.4 percent - don’t know her.
“People need to see me. They see me on TV. They see me on the Internet. But they haven’t seen me in real life,” Whitman said in Los Angeles. “I want people to know I care.”
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Brown leads Whitman by 10 points, Field Poll says
Carla Marinucci, Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Political Writers
San Francisco Chronicle October 28, 2010 04:00 AM
Democrat Jerry Brown has amassed a 10-point lead in the California governor’s race over Republican Meg Whitman, whose negative ratings have reached record levels despite her spending $162 million in the largest self-funded campaign in American history, a new Field Poll shows.
With election day on Tuesday, Brown holds a 49 to 39 percent lead over the former eBay CEO in the race, with 5 percent of voters favoring other candidates and 7 percent undecided, the poll showed. The Field poll last month showed the two candidates in a virtual tie.
“I don’t think voters have warmed up to Meg Whitman,” said Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo.
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$162 million imagine how many scholarships that would have bought.
Or charter schools
or job training and subsidized jobs for welfare recipients to keep em out of jail……NYC is spending a measly $45 million a year on this…
Whitman California Governor Bid Imperiled by Eroding Latino Voter Support
By Dan Levy and Vivien Lou Chen - Oct 27, 2010 9:01 PM PT
Meg Whitman wanted to portray a new Republican face to Latino voters. Then controversy erupted over the undocumented maid she fired, marring her outreach in the California governor race.
Whitman, 54, EBay Inc.’s former chief executive officer, has faced $5 million in ad spending by labor allies of Democrat Jerry Brown, 72, in the final weeks before Nov. 2. A contest that had been too close to call shifted to a 48 percent to 42 percent lead for Brown, the attorney general and former two-term governor, a Rasmussen Reports poll released Oct. 23 showed.
“She tries to be tough on undocumented people, then all of the sudden she has a work relationship with an undocumented,” Henrik Rehbinder, editorial page editor of La Opinion, the largest Spanish-language U.S. newspaper, said in a telephone interview. “It could damage her with some Latino voters.”
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