The Housing Bubble

Its early, Let the fraud begin for the day. There are bonuses to “earn”.

Wells Fargo erred in thousands of foreclosures

WASHINGTON — Wells Fargo admitted Wednesday it made mistakes in the paperwork for thousands of foreclosure cases and promised to fix them.

The San Francisco-based bank said it plans to refile documents in 55,000 of the cases by mid-November. The company said not all those cases included errors but didn’t say how many thousands did.

Wells Fargo described the mistakes as technical and said it has no plans to halt the foreclosure process, though filing new paperwork will cause some delays.

“We don’t believe that there are instances in which the foreclosures would not have occurred otherwise,” said Teri Schrettenbrunner, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman. The documents are being refiled in the 23 states where a judge’s approval is needed to complete a foreclosure.

Banks May Face $97 Billion Loss From Mortgage Mess
CNBC

Banks and other mortgage lenders could be on the hook for at least $97 billion because of the poor and possibly illegal handling of mortgages that surfaced during the current foreclosure mess, according to mortgage securities specialists.

The specialists—representatives from law firms and mortgage backed securities traders—told a gathering of prominent hedge funds in New York Wednesday that a wave of so-called putbacks was coming from these problematic home loans.

Putbacks occur when investors in mortgage-backed securities return individual home loans whose nature or handling violated their original terms to the companies who issued them—forcing those issuers to repurchase the loans at par.

Foreclosure activity up across most US metro areas
Report: Most large US metro areas saw rise in foreclosure warnings between July-September

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The foreclosure crisis intensified across a majority of large U.S. metropolitan areas this summer, with Chicago and Seattle — cities outside of the states that have shouldered the worst of the housing downturn — seeing a sharp increase in foreclosure warnings.

California, Nevada, Florida and Arizona remain the nation’s foreclosure hotbeds, accounting for 19 of the top 20 metropolitan areas with the highest foreclosure rates between July and September, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.

Those states saw housing values surge during the housing boom years. When the boom ended, values collapsed and foreclosures soared.

“Fiat money in the US is in an advanced stage of decomposition, and when money rots the whole social, economic and political structure of the nation rots with it. A return to sound money is urgent.”

~Hugo S. Price

Mortgage Mess Could Hit Banks, Housing
By Don Bauder | Published Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010

more bank woes and another housing dip may be inevitable.

So what is Washington doing? Trying to create another bubble — this one in the stock market. The logic seems to be that giddiness caused the calamity so more giddiness will straighten it out.

The Obama administration has done wonders for Wall Street in the short term at the expense of the nation for the longer term. There is nothing like flooding the market with money to get stock prices up.” Long term, inflation is a worry.

More banking and housing misery is probably coming, and one reason is that people are getting smart about foreclosures. Taking advantage of mortgages’ legal limbo, those who owe more on their home than it is worth are not making their mortgage payments. “If you are upside down on your home and delinquent on your mortgage, why would you pay?” says Davis. “Just ride it out rent-free for as long as possible.”

Says Lipper, “The lawyers are going to have a long feast, and banks will take significant losses.” As legal and administrative costs pile up, “sooner or later, the banks will have to sell [bank-owned] homes at much lower prices. It is inevitable that residential property values will decline significantly, and that will put increased pressures on states and municipalities that depend on real estate as a tax base.”

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2010/oct/27/city-light-mortgage-banks-housing/ - -

From Columbia,S.C. Stores around here already have their cheap plastic blow up X-Mas decorations up. They are chalk full of pure crap from China. I know in our area the rubes will line up and fight for some must have junk toy at the last minute. Never fails, they are very well trained.

Holiday sales off to slow start - The State

Shoppers aren’t likely to spend enough money this holiday season to raise the economy from the dead. Halloween sales - an early indicator of holiday shopping trends - so far have been about even with last year, according to Midlands retailers.

And forecasts show holiday spending will increase only slightly, revealing shaky consumer confidence as the nation struggles to recover from the Great Recession.

Customers at three Halloween Express stores in Columbia are spending an average of $40 per purchase this year, about the same as last year, manager Jamie Frasier said. But they have waited longer to buy in hopes of getting a deal.

“Sales were down in the beginning, but now they are catching up” as Halloween approaches Sunday, Frasier said. “They’re waiting until the last minute to see if sales hit.”

Local market comment:

I have tracked wishing prices in one Palmdale zip code for the last 5 years. In the past year the shear number of listings dwindled nearly to numbers not last seen since the halcyon days of the bubble top. I am now seeing lash back on that, with listing numbers up 150-200% YOY.

Supply/demand curve is also starting to hold true, with a new record low (in my records) median wishing price. We may be getting past the “savvy cash investor” effect and now that those greatest of fools have gone by the board we can see how low it will go.

Good Morning HBB

Good news we bought a 13,000 sq.ft building. The purchase price was 180K cash. This building was built in 1975 with high ceilings, overhead doors and a loading dock. It has 6000 sq.ft of offices, 4 bathrooms, 7 000 sq.ft of warehouse space. The main office has a marble gas fire place, European shower with a Sauna and a new kitchen. This building was painted and carpeted about 4 years ago and the flat rubber roof is only 4 years old. It has three heating and air conditioning systems. The purchase price came to 13.84 per sq.ft. We will be able to run 2 or 3 of our small production lines at this location.

The reason for the European showers sauna and a kitchen, the previous owner is from Denmark and he was commuting from Thousand Islands and would stay in the building during the week.There are indeed great financial opportunities coming our way.

Thank you Ben and The Hbb gang for giving me the wisdom when not to buy but also the courage to snag deals when they come along.

It’s great to be a financial HBB-smartista

Say it ain’t so, these sterling representatives of the banking world would never cheat, would they?

HSBC, JPMorgan Accused in Suit of Placing ‘Spoof’ Silver Orders

(Bloomberg) — HSBC Holdings Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were accused in an investor’s lawsuit of placing “spoof” trading orders to manipulate silver futures and options prices in violation of U.S. antitrust law.

The investor, Peter Laskaris, alleges that starting in March 2008, the banks colluded to suppress silver futures so that call options, or the right to buy, would decline, and put options for the right to sell would increase, according to the complaint filed yesterday in federal court in Manhattan. The collusion was also intended to maintain prices at levels at which some options would expire as worthless, Laskaris claims.

The banks placed so-called spoof trading orders, or the “submission of a large order which is not executed but influences prices and is then withdrawn before it reasonably can be executed,” according to the complaint.

This morning’s Yahoo Finance headline: “Futures, Stocks Mostly Rise As Earnings Eclipse Fed Doubts”.

Translation: It’s time to suck some more money into the casino.

In our downtown area people just buy a $3000.00 golf cart add head and rear lights and they are street legal. It it rains or gets cold just put on the enclosure.

All that hype won’t sell electric cars.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — If you thought electric cars were about to take over the world’s highways, a new report by auto analysts at J.D. Power Associates says, “Not so fast.”

By 2020, the vast majority of new cars sold around the world will run on gasoline, not electricity, according to the report “Drive Green 2020: More Hope Than Reality.” In ten years, just 7.3% of passenger vehicles sold globally will be hybrids or plug-in cars of some kind, the study predicts.

Percentages for the U.S. will be higher — about 14% of the total new car market — but the vast majority of those will be “conventional” non-plug-in hybrids like the Toyota Prius or Ford Fusion Hybrid, said Mike Omotoso, director of powertrain forecasting for J.D. Power.

Plug-in hybrids and full-electric cars will represent only 1% to 2% of new car sales in the U.S. by 2020, he said.

Poll: Jerry Brown widens lead over Meg Whitman
By Jack Chang
The Sacramento Bee

With less than a week left before Election Day, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown has opened a 10-percentage-point lead over Republican Meg Whitman on the strength of growing support from Latinos, women and independent voters, according to the latest Field Poll released Wednesday.

The nonpartisan survey also found Whitman’s window for catching Brown is closing, as more than a fifth of likely voters already have mailed in their ballots.

Brown’s surge broke a statistical deadlock that has gripped the two candidates since March, when Whitman appeared to be winning over more Latino and female voters than Republicans usually do.

That support washed away over the past month, however, as voters received an unvarnished view of the candidates in three televised debates, at Tuesday’s women’s conference and in their handling of surprise campaign controversies.

Whitman, the billionaire former CEO of online auction firm eBay, ended the month as the loser, with 51 percent of likely voters holding an unfavorable view of her in the new poll, compared to just 12 percent who felt that way in March 2009.

AP survey: Painfully slow economic gains into 2011- AP

The job market and the economy will improve only slightly next year, according to an Associated Press survey of leading economists whose outlook for 2011 has dimmed over the past three months.

Regarding the US dollar:
John Embry, Chief Investment Strategist for Sprott Asset Management.

“What it’s really going to collapse against is hard assets…I really don’t think people have any idea the extent to which the standard of living can fall in North America, particularly in the United States. I mean when a currency collapses against everything else, basically that is saying that the standard of living is going to fall.

In fact, it could fall by 30, 40 or 50% just to pick some wild numbers, is not out of the question. Things have been pretty good for the last 60, 70 years in North America, and they think they’ll be good forever. It isn’t going to happen that way.”

When did Carl Case start giving advise on when to buy? I thought he was an academic. Is he now part of NAR or something?

Jobs data “better than expected” a few days before the election. Things that make you go “hmmm.”

College tuition costs climbing again this fall

College tuition costs shot up again this fall, and students and their families are leaning more on the federal government to make higher education more affordable in tough economic times, according to two reports issued Thursday.

At public four-year schools, many of them ravaged by state budget cuts, average in-state tuition and fees this fall rose 7.9 percent, or $555, to $7,605, according to the College Board’s “Trends in College Pricing.” The average sticker price at private nonprofit colleges increased 4.5 percent, or $1,164, to $27,293.

Massive government subsidies and aid from schools helped keep in check the actual price many students pay. But experts caution that federal aid can only do so much and that even higher tuition is likely unless state appropriations rebound or colleges drastically cut costs.

“Just when Americans need college the most, many are finding it increasingly difficult to afford,” said Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education.

Another reason to question whether QE2 is necessary. Affordable housing would be useful, though — at least in places where jobs are starting to return.

Unemployment claims drop to 434,000, lowest since July

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fewer people applied for unemployment benefits last week, the second drop in a row and a hopeful sign the job market could be improving.

The Labor Department says initial claims for jobless benefits dropped 21,000 to a seasonally adjusted 434,000 in the week that ended Oct. 23. That’s the smallest number of claims since early July. Wall Street analysts had expected a tiny increase.
…

Forever blowing bubbles

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.

Unemployment Claims Drop Unexpectedly- AP

Fewer people applied for unemployment benefits last week, the second drop in a row and a hopeful sign the job market could be improving.

market pulse
Oct. 28, 2010, 8:35 a.m. EDT
Treasury yields, dollar down after jobless claims

Related stories
* Treasurys fall on hopes Fed wont buy so much (Oct. 27)
* U.S. futures gain on busy earnings day (8:36a)
* Treasury yields rise to highest since Fed meeting (Oct. 26)
* Dollar at highest in a week on hopes of less QE (Oct. 27)

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Treasury prices pared a gain and the dollar extended a decline Thursday after the U.S. Labor Department said first-time jobless claims declined by 21,000 in the latest week to 434,000, a bigger drop than some economists had forecast.

News Hub: What Would Milton Friedman Do Now?
Oct. 27, 2010

David Wessel looks at what would Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago champion of monetary discipline, do now? Would he approve of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s move to buy more U.S. Treasury bonds to put more money into the economy?

Laughing as we sink…

World Collapse Explained in 3 Minutes

youtube com/watch?v=NOzR3UAyXao&feature=player_embedded

This is how twisted this guys brain is, perhaps the plugs were buried a little to deep. Or he’s been swimming in the D.C. cesspool to long.

“Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive,” he said. “In the middle of the Civil War you had a guy named Lincoln paying people $16,000 for every 40 miles of track they laid across the continental United States. … No private enterprise would have done that for another 35 years.”

~ Joe Biden

China boasts world’s fastest supercomputer

BEIJING (AFP) – China is set to trump the US to take the number one spot for the fastest supercomputer ever made in a survey of the world’s zippiest machines, it was reported Thursday.

Tianhe-1, meaning Milky Way, has a sustained computing speed of 2,507 trillion calculations per second, making it the fastest computer in China on a list published Thursday.

But it is also 1.4 times faster that the world’s current fastest ranked supercomputer in the US, housed at a national laboratory in Tennessee, according to the New York Times.

Tianhe-1 does its warp-speed “thinking” at the National Center for Supercomputing in the northern port city of Tianjin — using mostly chips designed by US companies.

Public employee unions funnel public money to Dems
Washington Examiner:

Who is the largest single political contributor in the 2010 campaign cycle? You can be pardoned if you answer, erroneously, that it’s some new conservative group organized by Karl Rove. That’s campaign spin by the Obama Democrats, obediently relayed by certain elements of the so-called mainstream media.

The real answer is AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The union’s president, Gerald McEntee, reports proudly that AFSCME will be contributing $87.5 million in this cycle, entirely or almost entirely to Democrats. “We’re spending big,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “And we’re damn happy it’s big.”

What would all his bankster buddies do if old slobbering Barney took it in the rear? No pun intended!

(Reuters) - Representative Barney Frank, the outspoken, witty Democrat closely tied to the 2008 U.S. bank bailout, faces a tough re-election battle after 15 terms in office at a time when incumbency itself is a liability.

Challenging the Massachusetts liberal is Republican Sean Bielat, an Iraq war veteran, and opinion polls suggest Frank has an uncomfortably narrow lead over a political unknown.

In the run-up to Tuesday’s congressional elections, Frank has faced a torrent of negative ads and mailings, much of it from groups outside the state who support candidates from the conservative Tea Party movement.

Last week, Frank borrowed $200,000 from his personal savings to prop up his campaign, saying he needed “to defend against outside attacks.”

Of course not.

GREENWICH, Conn. — Democratic Rep. Jim Himes says he isn’t afraid of the Tea Party. Specifically, the Connecticut freshman doesn’t worry about the anti-bailout fervor endangering his Democratic colleagues.

“There’s a 50-mile radius around New York City,” Himes, a former Goldman Sachs banker, tells me, “where ‘everything-is-Wall-Street’s-fault’ doesn’t fly like it does in Iowa.”

Read more at the Washington Examiner.

Factoid: According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the U.S. national debt is rapidly closing in on 14 trillion dollars and will climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015.

Even the United States of America cannot endlessly borrow to sustain itself any more than a hapless citizen can spend more each year than he brings in. The enormity of the public debt guarantees future lower living standards. We’re experiencing them already and it’s not fun.

This pressure accounts in large part for the fiercely contentious political campaigns. This election cycle is different, says political commentator Roger Simon. “More desperate. More depressing. More draining. More filled with despair than hope.”

Laurence Vance offers 5 reasons he won’t vote:

1. I don’t live in Ron Paul’s district.
2. I have a greater chance of slipping in the bathtub and cracking my skull than my vote counting.
3. The Republicans are not the lesser of two evils.
4. The lesser of two evils is still evil.
5. “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.” (Bible)

< A friend once declared “If more people turned out to vote we’d be a better nation.”

What he meant was “If more people who think like I do would show up at the polls this country would be greatly improved.”

“It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue for the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower rates.”
~Andrew Mellon, 1920s Treasury Secretary.

Yet the liberal drumbeat is constant….”Gotta tax the rich more.”

But look at the ’20s. “Between 1921 and 1929, tax rates in the top brackets were cut from 73 percent to 24 percent. In other words, these were what the left likes to call ‘tax cuts for the rich,’ ” explains Dr. Thomas Sowell.

“What happened to federal revenues from income taxes over this same span of time? Income tax revenues rose by more than 30 percent. What happened to the economy? Jobs increased, output rose, the unemployment rate fell and incomes rose.”

Even the most ardent liberal cannot change the historical record. Raising tax rates does not result in a windfall for the government. Just the opposite. High taxes are a drag on the economy.

~ Fallacy

little help

i am here in phoenix..bidding on foreclosures..anybody have title company that will check liens and titles cheap? gary_given at yahoo

thx

The end of the line:

Ironically the title of a really well made recent documentary on overfishing. I got laid off yesterday (by circumstance). I am a wholesale seafood dealer and the government just passed a new law making an “area closure” for the fist time off our coast. The closure makes no sense at all because overfishing is not even close to being an issue due to a paring down of the commercial fleet as new regulation after new regulation has passed in recent years and reduced the amount of fishermen that are left to practically nothing. The area closed is where 98% of all local fish is caught. I have been selling local fish for the last 20 years. The new law goes into effect in one month and that will be the end of my career in this business. Every other fishing-related business along the coast will suffer heavily if not be shut down outright. I don’t know what I am going to do.

Best Cities to Move to in America

http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/best-cities-to-move-to-in-america.html

Don’t really know what to say about this story, except read the comments section - someone makes a really good point about the possinble motivation of the Realtor:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mummy-20101028,0,5871551.story

Home Builders Slash 2010 Construction Forecast

The National Association of Home Builders Wednesday slashed its 2010 forecast for single-family home construction, but said activity will accelerate the following two years as the economy improves.

Single-family housing starts are set to grow 8.4% this year to 479,000 before construction hits 655,000 new houses in 2011 and 970,000 in 2012, the association said.

“Single-family starts will revive, slowly,” chief economist David Crowe said in presentation slides ahead of the group’s construction forecast seminar.

In May, the group had forecast 552,000 single-family starts in 2010. That would have been a 24.9% jump from last year’s 442,000, the lowest annual output since the government began collecting the data in 1959.

“I had earlier this year expected a much better increase,” Crowe said.

If Megabank, Inc does not plan to seek emergency loans in the future, perhaps they will better avoid throwing away money on too-big-to-repay loans in the present.

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.

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.
…

Rich Americans feel better off, still wary: Merrill

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wealthy U.S. investors feel better about their financial matters than they did a year ago, yet Americans also say they also expect to work much longer than they had once hoped, brokerage giant Merrill Lynch said, citing its latest investor survey.

Some 41 percent of Americans with at least $250,000 of investable assets say their finances are in better shape than last year, with 37 percent reporting no change. Three out of four of the 1,000 people surveyed said they were confident their finances would improve in the coming year.

The usual suspects led the list of top cities for foreclosure filings during the last three months.

Cities in four states — California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona — accounted for the 13 hardest hit areas, according to foreclosure marketer RealtyTrac, which released its third quarter report on Thursday.

Las Vegas was far and away the hardest hit metro area. One out of every 25 housing units — more than 32,000 homes — attracted some kind of foreclosure filing, including notices of default, auction notices and repossessions.

Cape Coral, Fla., had the second highest foreclosure rate, with one in 35 homes getting hit with a filing. It was trailed by three Central Valley California cities: Modesto (one in 36), Stockton (one in 39) and Merced (one in 40).

The main causes of foreclosure are high unemployment, underemployment, toxic loans and negative equity, and “these historically high foreclosure rates will continue until those problems are resolved,” said James Saccacio, RealtyTrac’s CEO.

Miami had a total of nearly 59,000 properties with filings, more than any other metro area. Los Angeles had nearly 49,000.

Several metro areas experienced significant increases in already substantial foreclosure numbers. Filings almost doubled in the Riverside-San Bernardino area compared with three months earlier, to nearly 36,000 properties.

Vallejo, Calif., filings jumped 45%, quarter to quarter; Tampa, Fla., rang up a 58% increase; and San Diego recorded a 62% increase.

As Foreclosures Keep Coming, Renters Are Threatened Once Again

It’s one of those stories that sounds appalling, that you might hope the media is playing up just for its shock value: responsible and conscientious tenants who suddenly find themselves evicted and out of a home — because the property they are renting is under foreclosure.

At the start of the recession, reports of renters being blindsided by foreclosure notices were not unusual. The problem prompted President Obama to sign the federal Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act in 2009. It requires tenants receive a 90-day notice if they are being evicted due to foreclosure — and that most existing leases for renters be honored up to the end of their term.

Foreclosures Rising

Some long-time observers of the housing market believe the federal law and an improving economy have reduced the number of tenants caught up in foreclosure. “There’s more bark than bite right now in what we’re seeing, with . . . tenants getting stuck,” says Scott Lukes, president of Denver-based Echo Summit Property Management. “However, property management is a hugely fragmented industry, with a lot of smaller players. Individual landlords, people who own one, two, three properties [or] real estate investors that are trying to squeeze blood out of the turnip — those are the areas where there’s a lot more risks for renters.”

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/d4y612

Well there you go, it really is in their blood…

Researchers Find the ‘Liberal Gene’
Don’t hold liberals responsible for their opinion — they can’t help themselves.

A new study has concluded that ideology is not just a social thing, it’s built into the DNA, borne along by a gene called DRD4. Tagged “the liberal gene,” DRD4 is the first specific bit of human DNA that predisposes people to certain political views, the study’s authors claim.

“We hypothesize that individuals with a genetic predisposition toward seeking out new experiences will tend to be more liberal, but only if they are embedded in a social context that provides them with multiple points of view,” wrote lead researcher James H. Fowler — a professor of medical genetics and political science at the University of California, San Diego.

The paper, which appears in the latest edition of The Journal of Politics, focused on 2,000 subjects from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. By matching genetic information with maps of each individual’s social network, the researchers were able to show that people with a specific variant of the DRD4 gene were more likely to be liberal as adults — although only if they had an active adolescent social life.

There has been a lot of discussion regarding the number of billions of dollars the fed will print. The estimates range from 500 billion to 4 trillion. I don’t think the quantity matters to the fed as much as the outcome.

I suspect they’ll put the printing presses in perpetual printing mode. The fed will print 80 to 120 billion (maybe more) a month for as long as it takes to get real interest rates negative. They’ll announce 6 months of printing with option to review. And after review, if the outcome isn’t achieved, they’ll print some more.

They’ll print until the tech, housing, and commodities bubbles are reflated. They’ll print until cash hoarder succumb. They’ll make it very painful to save but very attractive to borrow. To perpetuity!

Utah remains among highest in foreclosures
Published: Wednesday, Oct. 27, 2010 10:07 p.m. MDT
By Jasen Lee, Deseret News

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah and its largest metropolitan areas are again among the nation’s highest foreclosure rates, according to a new report.

RealtyTrac — an Irvine, Calif.-based market research firm — released its Q3 2010 Metropolitan Foreclosure Market Report, which ranked Provo-Orem at No. 30, Salt Lake City at No. 31 and Ogden-Clearfield at No. 58 all in the top foreclosure rates for the third quarter among metropolitan areas with a population of at least 200,000 people.
…
With one in every 36 housing units receiving a foreclosure filing during the third quarter, Modesto, Calif., posted the third-highest metro foreclosure rate despite an 18 percent decrease in foreclosure activity from the third quarter of 2009, the release stated.

The report showed that cities in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona accounted for all top 10 foreclosure rates in the third quarter. California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona cities also accounted for 19 of the top 20 metro foreclosure rates. The only exception was Boise City-Nampa, Idaho. At No. 14, it was also one of only five metro areas ranking in the top 20 to post a year-over-year increase in foreclosure activity.

“The underlying problems that are causing homeowners to miss their mortgage payments — high unemployment, underemployment, toxic loans and negative equity — are continuing to plague most local housing markets,” said James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “And these historically high foreclosure rates will continue until those problems are resolved.“

Hair-of-the-dog hangover cure fails; tremendous headache becomes noticeably painful:

Vacancies up, rates down, construction minimal

Next year offers very little in new construction as builders and developers await an improved job and economic picture

By Roger Showley

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 at 5:09 p.m.

New homes are still being built in the county, but 2010 is ending up to be the second worst since World War II, and 2011 is shaping up to be better, but not at boomtime levels. Nonresidential construction also is expected to be below the pace of recent years.

San Diego County’s economy not only feels like it’s stuck in neutral, but it also looks that way when you search in vain for that one key visual indicator of growth and development — construction cranes.

Except for a few government and institutional projects, there’s not much under way in any of the major building sectors: housing, offices, industrial parks or retail centers.

Just this week, the Construction Industry Research Board reported that permit activity year to date was valued at $1.2 billion, up 7.7 percent from year-ago levels but less than half of what was going on three years ago. The valuation for the same period in 2007 was nearly $2.6 billion.

San Diego isn’t the only place that’s suffering a prolonged construction hangover from the go-go years at the beginning of the century. Unlike past slumps, real estate is not poised to drag the economy out of a recessionary funk.

“We really don’t need much new of anything,” said one interviewee in the annual Emerging Trends report, issued by the Urban Land Institute, a Washington think tank.
…

heading to the jon stewart thingy this weekend. got my Che Guevara t-shirt washed and ironed.

but i may wear my “debt equals wealth” t-shirt instead.

When you have a tax shortfall, don’t you just raise taxes?

Tax Shortfalls Spur New Fear on Europe’s Recovery
The New York Times

The mathematics of austerity are getting harder. With economic conditions weaker than expected, tax revenue is coming up short of projections in parts of Europe.

As a result, countries struggling with high deficits are now confronting the prospect that they will miss the budget deficit targets forced upon them this year by impatient bond investors.

Greece, for one, looks as if it will run a budget deficit for 2010 greater than the 8.1 percent of gross domestic product it agreed to as part of a rescue package from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union that amounted to more than $150 billion, according to a person briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak about it.

Top real-estate firm closing ~ 28 Oct 2010
McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Five area Coldwell Banker Wachholz and Co. Real Estate offices in Northwest Montana will close their doors Nov. 5.

Ryon Brewer, Coldwell Banker chief operating officer and managing broker, announced the closures Wednesday. The offices are in leased buildings in Kalispell, Whitefish, Lakeside, Eureka and Plains.

The 40 brokers and sales associates affiliated with the agency all are independent contractors, Brewer said. Most are expected to move to other area agencies “and their listings and customers will go with them.”

“Our exceptional agents will continue to provide the same level of service they are known for,” he said.

People who endorse the survival of the rotten corrupt financial systems
are people that like the concept of being able to cheat . If financial systems are based on “catch us if you can ” without enough cops on the beat ,than people just want to get rich quick at the expense of the Majority . Making money the good old fashion way isn’t good enough for for the Ponzi-schemers .

Idaho officials poised to cut $8 million in Medicaid services to mentally ill and disabled.

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare is poised to make more than $8 million in cuts to Medicaid programs and services for low-income adults with severe mental illness and children with autism and other developmental disabilities.

The agency has drafted a new set of rules that authorize cuts in services or elimination of some programs designed to trim about $1.6 million from its current fiscal year budget. Those cuts, however, would also trigger the loss of another $6.5 million in federal Medicaid matching funds used to reimburse care providers.

“I know nobody wants to see a further reduction in services,” said Leslie Clement, the department’s Medicaid administrator. “But we have to move forward. I think we’ve been pretty careful about the changes we’re making.”

Paterson: 898 state workers to be laid off by year’s end

Gov. David Paterson said 898 public employees will be laid off this year in an effort to reduce the state work force by 2,000.

Paterson had earlier predicted that a majority of the total job cuts would be accomplished by layoffs.

Paterson said public employee unions that rebuffed his requests for a lag pay period or a furlough are to blame.

“I thought that the majority would be layoffs. We’re pleased to say that only 40 percent of them will be, but that’s still a lot of jobs, and I feel very sorry doing it, but I feel I was forced into it,” Paterson said.

Now we’re talking, flush the whole damn cesspool!

65% Favor Getting Rid of Entire Congress and Starting Over
Thursday, October 28, 2010

Let’s face it: Most Americans don’t have much use for either of the major political parties and think it would be better to dump the entire Congress on Election Day.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 65% of Likely U.S. Voters say if they had the option next week, they would vote to get rid of the entire Congress and start all over again. Only 20% would opt to keep the entire Congress instead. Fifteen percent (15%) aren’t sure.

007’s Aston Martin fetches $4.1M at auction (AP)

The Aston Martin DB5 used by Sean Connery’s James Bond was auctioned off Wednesday for $4.1 million. The winning bidder is an American classic cars collector who has a small private museum in Ohio.…

Wouldn’t the natural path to “success” by the Gross definition be for the Fed to simply stop using its monetary policy hammer to pound down long-term interest rates?

Treasury 10-Year Yields May Signify Fed’s Success, Gross Says: Tom Keene
By Susanne Walker and Tom Keene - Oct 28, 2010 10:42 AM PT

Bill Gross, manager of the world’s largest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said a rise in 10-year Treasury note yields would signify success by the Federal Reserve in reviving inflation and economic growth.

“If it does work, here’s why the 10-year goes down in yield then back in yield, it’s because the out years, five, six, seven, eight, nine and 10 are vulnerable to inflation and higher policy rates in those particular years,” Gross said in an interview today on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Tom Keene.
…

Yet another Presidential Dollar!

The Lincoln dollar coin is to be issued in mid-November. Like the others in the series it’s ugly, but it’s the real thing and if the Bureau of Engraving and Printing would stop producing $1.00 bills the dollar coins will come into circulation and we’ll get used to them.

Big point: The dollar bill is legally as well as physically distinct from the dollar coin. It requires signatures from the Treasurer of the U.S. and the Secretary of the Treasury, plus serial numbers. The coins don’t. Moreover, the Federal Reserve can buy dollar bills from the printer for a few cents each. However, the Fed must get its dollar coins from the U.S. Mint….at face value.

Teachers Spent $9M On Cosmetic Surgery in 2009
28 Oct 2010

BUFFALO, N.Y. - The state-appointed authority overseeing Buffalo public school finances says taxpayer-covered cosmetic surgery rung up by the city’s teachers totaled nearly $9 million in 2009.

The Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority reports that last year’s costs for such elective procedures as chemical peels and other skin treatments are up $8 million over the 2004 tab for cosmetic surgery provided under the teachers’ union contract.

School district officials say teachers or their dependents accounted for 90 percent of the approximately 500 people who received cosmetic surgery last year. About 10,000 district employees are eligible for the benefit.

The president of the teachers’ union says the union has agreed to give up the benefit in the next contract.

Halliburton knew weeks before the blast on a BP rig in the Gulf of Mexico that the cement mixture it planned to use to seal the well was unstable, a commission found.They should send them all to jail!!!! instead more govt contacts on the way

BP, Halliburton and TransAmerica all should be fined right out of business. The degree of deception and lies perpetrated from the inception of their awards of the right to lease and drill are so egregious that a most severe penalty shoud be imposed. They lied about their ability to control a blowout, they disregarded coast guard orders to stop using Corexit. Tens of thousands of people along the Gulf are now ill with symptoms of ailiments linked to exposure of crude oil and corexit along with benzine and other chemical compounds, a deadly mix.
The eleven lives lost, uncouted marine mammals killed, this whole disaster is dissapearing from the front pages yet people suffer still in many ways.
And the end of oil is upon us, we had better get our act together the worldwide decline in production is here. They’re just not telling you

It’s a rough time in the real estate market — at every price point.

Behold Vendovi Island in Washington state’s San Juan Islands. 216 acres, six beaches, a protected harbor and a four-bedroom house. Accessible only by boat or floatplane. Yours for just…

Well, that’s the problem. Islands aren’t selling well these days. “A lot of clients today wait and get everything for half the price,” says Farhad Vladi, owner of an island brokerage with offices in Canada and Germany.

When auctioned a month ago, the lone bid came from a preservation trust that could scrape together only $3.3 million — ahem, rather less than the confidential reserve set by owner David Fluke, whose family bought the spread for $225,000 in 1967.

“At this moment it is wait and see,” the broker tells the Seattle Times. But the competition is stiff — experts in the field say Vendovi is one of 100 “quality” islands for sale worldwide.

~ 5 Min. Forecast

Light House closing after 32-year run
The lights are going out on another store in Cape Coral.

A one-of-a-kind staple in this city since 1978, the Cape Light House on Southeast 46th Lane will be closing its doors Nov. 20.

“It was a very difficult decision,” said Russ Miller, who, along with his wife Teena, owns the business. “We’ve had some employees for more than 17 years.”

The choice to close came after a three-year struggle with the housing market collapse, he said. They tried waiting for the economy to improve, but it got to be too much, he said. The store’s customer base is mostly homebuilders and new residents, Miller said.

“It doesn’t seem like there is any light at the end of the tunnel in this market,” he said.

Inventory train wreck dead ahead — and not only in housing!

MarketWatch First Take

Oct. 28, 2010, 3:47 p.m. EDT
Too much stuff
Commentary: Bulging inventories raise fourth-quarter concerns
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Where did the consumers go?

While this week’s flood of third-quarter earnings has been generally upbeat, behind the headlines lurks a growing mountain of unsold goods. The trend is perhaps easiest to spot in the apparel business.
…

I was a robo-signer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — It only took him a second to sign each foreclosure document.

That’s how good Tam Doan got at his job in Bank of America’s pre-sale foreclosure department in Southern California.

Of course, he didn’t have time to actually read the paperwork he was signing, he said, and in some cases, he didn’t even know what documents he was putting his pen to.

“I had no idea what I was signing,” said Doan. “Either you were in or you were out.”

The recent revelation that loan servicers had employees sign thousands of documents a month without verifying the information has thrown the foreclosure system into chaos. Judges are increasingly questioning whether the servicers have their paperwork in order.

7 Tips For Staying Off the Chopping Block

In today’s uncertain economy, the unemployed aren’t the only people stressed out about work. Even those with jobs are worried, as businesses make drastic staff reductions to stay afloat. To have the best chance of avoiding the dreaded layoff, it is critical to know how to save yourself from your boss’ scorn.

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/111150/tips-for-staying-off-the-chopping-block?mod=career-worklife_balance

Rick Sharga was interviewed on Bloomberg today. His points that I heard in the few minutes I listened;

-Foreclosures will continue to accelerate through 2012

-It will take 2-3 years to deal with foreclosures once the foreclosure rate flatlines

Better time to buy new than used, and leave the foreclosure investing to the professionals?

The Financial Times
New home sales jump 6.6% in September
By Alan Rappeport in New York
Published: October 27 2010 14:27 | Last updated: October 27 2010 17:09

Sales of new homes rebounded from a record low in September, but purchases remained depressed as the real estate market faces continued pressure from a weak labour market, government figures showed on Wednesday.

A separate report showed that soaring demand for civilian aircraft provided a boost to US durable goods orders in September, but appetite for other items remained weak.

New home sales rose by 6.6 per cent to an adjusted annual rate of 307,000, according to the commerce department. That left sales off 13.3 per cent from the same month a year ago, when buyers were rushing to capitalise on the first-time homebuyer tax credit.

Last month sales were fuelled by a 60.6 per cent jump in the midwest, followed by modest gains in the northeast and south and a 9.9 per cent decline in the west.

“For the US over the longer term, the most important factor for the labour market is employment,” said Brian Levitt, economist at Oppenheimer Funds.

The US unemployment rate currently sits near 10 per cent, making mobility and household formation difficult for idle workers. Economists at Capital Economics note that new home sales have rebounded by 9 per cent since the expiration of the first-time homebuyer tax credit but still remain 25 per cent below their peak.

“The recent foreclosure crisis may even shift demand from existing homes to new homes,” said Paul Dales, senior US economist at Capital Economics.
…

Gold vs Bonds

http://tinyurl.com/34qxglv

Bond holders will be decimated…the nouveau bagholders.

Wide swaths of wealth redistribution as All the investment advisers gaining the ears of the sheeple demand that “safe” bonds be bought in times of woe. Of course a nice commish is attached to the bonds and no commish for gold/silver.

San Diego’s economic index slips slightly
Index drops for first time in 18 months as homebuilding stalls

By Dean Calbreath

Originally published October 28, 2010 at 10:38 a.m., updated October 28, 2010 at 1:06 p.m.

For the first time since March 2009, San Diego’s index of leading economic indicators slid downward in September, dragged down by a sharp decline in residential construction.

Although four of the six components in the index were positive last month, the drop in home building and a slight rise in unemployment claims were enough to bring a halt to the 18-month rise of the monthly index, which was released yesterday by the Burnham-Moores Real Estate Institute at the University of San Diego.

USD Alan Gin, who compiles the index, described the decline as “a little worrisome,” but he added that it is not necessarily a signal that a downturn in the local economy is imminent, since economists usually look for three consecutive moves in the same direction to signal a turning point in an economy.

“One positive sign is that a majority of the components in the Index were up during the month; the problem was that they were not up by very much,” Gin said. “This may be an indication that any growth in the local economy has slowed to the point where it has stalled. It remains to be seen whether this is just a temporary bump in an upward trend or the beginning of the dreaded ‘double-dip’ recession.”
…

Wow I have a chance to change my moniker to “Bill in Florida” in a few weeks. I have a phone interview being set up next week. It’s the same line of work I’m in now. I have nine years of experience in this specialty. That’s almost half my career.

Would prefer to stay in LA, but my supervisor asked me a couple days ago if I can go to a different job shop. I cannot do that. I also know that if he forces me out, he’s going to get a lot of flak for it. It won’t alone get him demoted. But he’s accumulated a lot of bad marks since he became manager. This may be the last straw.

If the hourly rate is reasonable, I will snag it. Flights to/from Phoenix are at reasonable times. I will rent a furnished apartment if I get the gig.

Hoping that the prospective client will not ask me to start until January. I’m good in LA though December and my apartment lease expires in January.

My debts are paid off, I’ve been selling off my excess gold and platinum (down to a 10% allocation), and I have a lot of cash.

* ROI
* OCTOBER 28, 2010, 12:40 P.M. ET

Warning: Retirement Disaster Ahead

* By BRETT ARENDS

Don’t let the rally in the stock and bond markets fool you. Many Americans are still hurtling towards a retirement disaster. Few realize it. Even many of those running the big pension funds don’t know.

That’s the conclusion of John West and Rob Arnott at Research Affiliates, an investment management firm, in Newport Beach, Calif. In their latest report, “Hope Is Not A Strategy,” they have some numbers to back it up.

“I worry a lot about people reaching their golden years and discovering, ‘Oh, I should’ve saved more,’ and ‘Oh, I don’t qualify for Social Security any more because it’s means tested’,” says Mr. Arnott, a widely respected market strategist. “We’re headed for a retirement train wreck,” he adds, “and it’s going to get really ugly over the next 15 years.”

Alarmist? Perhaps. But follow the math.

The returns you will get from your stock funds can only come from four things, they note: Dividends, earnings growth, inflation and changes in valuation.

Right now the dividend yield on U.S. stocks is about 2.2%, they note. Historically, earnings have only grown by a surprisingly low 1% a year in real, inflation-adjusted terms. Mr. Arnott tells me the average since 1900 is only about 1.2%, and in the last half century just 0.6%. Will we get more in the future? With the U.S. population ageing and heavily in debt? It’s hard to imagine.

Throw in a 2% inflation forecast–more on this later–and Research Affiliates forecasts a long-term return of 5.2%.

What about changes in valuation? Some generations are lucky. They invest in the stock market when it’s depressed and shares are cheap in relation to earnings. This was the case in the 1930s and the 1970s. Then they retire and cash out when the market is booming and shares are expensive in relation to earnings–such as in the 1960s and 1990s.

People today are not so lucky. The stock market’s latest rally has lifted shares already to pretty high levels in relation to average cyclically-adjusted earnings. This so-called “Shiller PE” (named after Yale professor Robert Shiller, who popularized the notion) has been an excellent indicator of market value. Right now it’s at about 22–well above its historic average of 16. The only time the market has boomed from these levels, was in the late 1990s bubble–an atypical moment unlikely to be repeated any time soon.

Now look at bonds. Thanks to the recent boom, the picture for investors here looks even worse. And there is less room for ambiguity, because bond coupons and the repayment of principal are fixed.

Based on the yields of prices across all investment grade bonds, Mr. West and Mr. Arnott calculate likely long-term bond returns from here of about 2.5%.

So an investor with 60% of his portfolio in stocks and 40% in bonds, a standard, if conservative, allocation, can expect a weighted average return from here of only about 4.1%.

To put this in context, they notice that the typical big pension fund is still expecting to earn about 7% to 8% a year.

When you strip out 2% inflation, that means pension fund managers are expecting 5-6% percent a year in real, inflation-adjusted terms.

But by Mr. West and Mr. Arnott’s numbers, investors can only expect about 2.1%.

Gulp.
…

* WEEKEND INVESTOR
* OCTOBER 23, 2010

What Does the ‘Foreclosure Crisis’ Mean for You?
The Recent Fracas May Not Hit You Where You Live— But the Fallout Could Affect You in Surprising Ways

By M.P. MCQUEEN, MARY PILON and JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG

For the vast majority of homeowners, new questions about the state of foreclosures appear to be irrelevant. Few people seem to have been wrongly thrown out of their homes, and those who have been are generally months or years behind on their mortgage payments.

But the fallout from the crisis is beginning to be felt in real-estate markets across the country, particularly in places dominated by vacation homes and investment properties. Some of the worst-hit areas could be Western ski towns, because fall is the busiest time of the year for sales.

Real-estate salespeople in some of those places are worried. “September and October are usually the height of the selling-season for us,” says Rich Armstrong, who owns the brokerage Rare Properties in Jackson Hole, Wyo. “Now we are seeing a number of what we call ‘fence sitters,’ people who would have leapt in even a month ago, but now are waiting on the sidelines.”
…

I’m guessing that even if foreclosures slow in CA, the pace of defaults will not; in fact, casually glancing through our local weekly tonight, the Rancho Bernardo News Journal, I counted 15 notices of default — the first step in the foreclosure process, and something I never saw previously. These generally involve properties in Poway, an upscale community contiguous but just to the east of North County San Diego, and the properties appear to have all been mortgaged over the period from 2003-2007.

My guess is that once the paperwork issues are straightened out, CA foreclosures will have to go into overdrive to get caught up with mortgage debtors in default.

Foreclosure Freeze Cuts Sales, Supply in Hardest-Hit U.S. States
By John Gittelsohn - Oct 28, 2010 9:01 PM PT

Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) — Rick Sharga, senior vice president for marketing at RealtyTrac Inc., talks with Bloomberg’s Lisa Murphy about U.S. home foreclosures and the outlook for the housing market. (Source: Bloomberg)

U.S. home foreclosure sales are slowing in the states hardest-hit by the real estate crash as banks review their practices and delay seizures.

In Arizona, California and Nevada, foreclosure auctions on courthouse steps, known as trustee sales, are down 42 percent since Sept. 20, according to ForeclosureRadar, a real estate tracking service in Discovery Bay, California. In Florida’s Miami-Dade and Broward counties, fewer foreclosures have led to 18 percent declines this month in the number of repossessed homes listed for sale, said Ron Shuffield of Esslinger, Wooten, Maxwell Inc., a realty firm based in Coral Gables, Florida.

In a real estate market where as many as 7 million homes face foreclosure or have already been seized by lenders, according to Zillow Inc., a clog in the pipeline may delay a housing recovery, which won’t occur until home prices stop falling. That could in turn postpone a U.S. economic recovery. Distressed properties accounted for 31 percent of all U.S. home sales last month, RealtyTrac Inc. said Oct. 14.

“If what’s a hiatus turns into a moratorium, that’s quite problematic,” Stan Humphries, chief economist for Zillow, a Seattle-based real estate data provider, said in an interview. “It will delay the ultimate bottoming process in the market.”
…