The Housing Bubble

Bernanke Defends Bond Purchases, Predicts Stronger Growth

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the central bank must focus on the U.S. rather than overseas economies when trying to spur the recovery by purchasing an additional $600 billion in Treasuries.

“Our first objective, the first goal that we have, is to meet our mandate to get price stability and maximum employment in the United States,” Bernanke said yesterday in response to questions from college students in Jacksonville, Florida. “A strong U.S. economy, a recovering economy, is critical not just for Americans but it’s also critical for the global recovery.”

Bernanke came under fire yesterday from officials in Germany, China, and Brazil, who said his plan to pump cash into the banking system may jar other economies and fail to fuel U.S. growth. Critics including Michael Burry, the former hedge-fund manager who predicted the housing market’s plunge, have said Fed policy is encouraging investors to take on too much risk and threatens to undermine the dollar.

“The true purpose of ‘Quantitative Easing” is to disguise the decreasing ability of the Treasury to finance its debts.” ~Peter Schiff

Calif borrows $40M a day to pay unemployment

With one in every eight workers unemployed and empty state coffers, California is borrowing billions of dollars from the federal government to pay unemployment insurance.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the state owes $8.6 billion already, and will have to come up with a $362-million payment to Washington by the end of next September.

The continued borrowing means federal unemployment insurance taxes are going to increase, upping the annual payroll costs $21 a year per worker.

California tops the list of 32 states that have borrowed a total of $41 billion to pay claims.

The state took out its first loan from the federal government early last year, to deal with rising payment of benefits and number of claims.

Taking on a Second Mortgage to Pay the Foreclosure LawyerBy DAVID STREITFELD
Published: November 6, 2010

For some Florida residents, the price of getting out of foreclosure will include taking on a second mortgage — payable this time to their lawyers.

The new mortgage, which takes effect only if the foreclosure is dismissed and the homeowner’s debt to the bank is reduced, is controversial among defense lawyers, some of whom call it “creepy” and “crass.” Yet even they acknowledge it offers a solution to a vexing question: How do they get paid?

“We thought, ‘Why don’t we use a bit of ingenuity to find an affordable way to represent them?’ ” said Peter Ticktin of the Ticktin Law Group in Deerfield Beach, Fla. “It’s a new model, a new paradigm.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/business/07lawyers.html

Ron Paul to revolutionize monetary policy. Wow, I really hope he’s able to accomplish something.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/40013227

Ohio GMAC Foreclosure Case May Set Anti-Wall Street Precedent

When James Renfro had to stop making payments on his two-story fixer-upper in Parma, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, he triggered events that were supposed to result in the forced sale of his home.

That Nov. 15 auction has been canceled because of defects in documents submitted by his loan servicer, Ally Financial Inc.’s GMAC Mortgage unit. Two affidavits about Renfro’s home were signed by Jeffrey Stephan, a GMAC employee who said in sworn depositions in Florida and Maine that he hadn’t read thousands of affidavits he’d signed.

Renfro’s case has created a showdown between GMAC and Ohio’s Attorney General Richard Cordray. Cordray has asked Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Nancy Russo not to let GMAC simply submit new documents to cure defects without consequences. He’s taken the same stand against Wells Fargo & Co., which has said it found defects in 55,000 foreclosures.

“This is just the first,” said Cordray, who has filed an amicus or friend-of-the-court brief in the Renfro case. The judge will consider Cordray’s views today in Cleveland. Cordray will ask Russo to punish GMAC, the fourth-largest U.S. mortgage lender, for its conduct, he said in an interview.

Zoellick seeks gold standard debate
By Alan Beattie, FT.com
November 7, 2010 8:07 p.m. EST
Robert Zoellick says the system of floating currencies has broken down.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

* Leading economies should consider readopting a modified global gold standard
* World Bank president made the comments in an op-ed written for the Financial Times
* This week’s G-20 meeting is likely to see yet more exchange rate conflict
* A U.S. plan for countries to sign up to current account targets has run into widespread opposition

(FT) — Leading economies should consider readopting a modified global gold standard to guide currency movements, argues the president of the World Bank.

Writing in the Financial Times, Robert Zoellick, the bank’s president since 2007, says a successor is needed to what he calls the “Bretton Woods II” system of floating currencies that has held since the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate regime broke down in 1971.

Mr Zoellick, a former US Treasury official, calls for a system that “is likely to need to involve the dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound and a renminbi that moves towards internationalisation and then an open capital account”. He adds: “The system should also consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values.”
…

Is law and order really on its way back in the banking industry, or is this just more lobbyist-regulator Grand Kabuki?

* BUSINESS
* NOVEMBER 8, 2010

Which Firms Need Tougher Oversight? Don’t Look at Me
By VICTORIA MCGRANE

WASHINGTON—Companies across the financial-services industry are aggressively seeking to avoid being subjected to tougher regulation—and to make sure their competitors are.

At issue is a new regulatory designation created by Congress’s overhaul of finance rules earlier this year, in which firms classified as “systemically important” would have to comply with additional rules and submit to oversight from the Federal Reserve.

Life insurers, hedge funds and asset managers are pelting regulators with arguments for being exempt. On the other side, outside groups as well as some from within the financial-services industry are lobbying to have these very firms and others subject to the new regime.
…

Does the Treasury’s foreclosure rescue plan, as offered and executed by Megabank, Inc, pretty much amount to a scam to trick people who were current on their mortgages into underpaying so they could be foreclosed?

Megabank, Inc = masters of financial tricks and cheats

Homeowners Say Loan Mods Led Them To Foreclosure
by The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES November 7, 2010, 03:08 pm ET

Grocery store owners William and Esperanza Casco were making enough money to stay current on their mortgage, but when JPMorgan Chase & Co. offered a plan that reduced their payments, they figured they could use the extra cash and signed up.

The Cascos say they never missed a subsequent payment, so they were horrified when the bank decided the smaller payments weren’t enough and foreclosed on their modest Long Beach home.

Their story is echoed across the country by people who claim — some in lawsuits — that banks didn’t live up to their end of the deal when they agreed to trial mortgage modifications.

The suits add to a feeling among many struggling homeowners that they’re getting little help from the part of the government’s $700 billion Wall Street rescue that aimed to help them directly.

Indeed, Treasury statistics show that only about one-third of the nearly 1.4 million homeowners accepted into the government’s payment reduction program over the past year have had their reductions made permanent.

“It is extremely unfair that someone like me and my wife who have owned our home for 17 years and never missed a payment could end up in foreclosure,” Casco, 47, said in Spanish through an interpreter.
…

Regulators flawed in foreclosure oversight

During the housing boom, millions of homeowners got easy access to mortgages. Now, some mortgage lenders and government officials are taking action after discovering that many mortgage documents were mishandled.

By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 8, 2010; 12:02 AM

As foreclosures began to mount across the country three years ago, a group of state bank regulators suspected that some borrowers might be losing their homes unnecessarily. So the state officials asked the biggest national banks for details about their foreclosure operations.

When two banks - J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo - declined to cooperate, the state officials asked the banks’ federal regulator for help, according to a letter they sent. But the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversees national banks, denied the states’ request, saying the firms should answer only to inquiries from federal officials. In a response to state officials, John Dugan, comptroller at the time, wrote that his agency was already planning to collect foreclosure information and that any additional monitoring risked “confusing matters.”

But even as it closed the door on state oversight, the OCC chose itself not to scrutinize the foreclosure operations of the largest national banks, forgoing any examination of their procedures and paperwork. Instead, the agency relied on the banks’ in-house assessments. These provided no hint of the problems to come until they had tripped the nation’s housing market, agency officials later acknowledged.

“Based on what we were seeing and what we were concerned about, it felt like a chronic underreaction at the federal level,” said John Ryan, a senior official with the Conference of State Bank Supervisors.
…

Number of the Week: $10.2 Trillion in Global Borrowing ~ WSJ

$10.2 trillion: The amount of money advanced-nation governments will need to borrow in 2011

As the debts of advanced countries rise to levels not seen since the aftermath of World War II, it’s hard to know how much is too much. But it’s easy to see that the risk of serious financial trouble is growing.

Next year, fifteen major developed-country governments, including the U.S., Japan, the U.K., Spain and Greece, will have to raise some $10.2 trillion to repay maturing bonds and finance their budget deficits, according to estimates from the International Monetary Fund. That’s up 7% from this year, and equals 27% of their combined annual economic output.

The age of the dollar is drawing to a close
Currency competition is the only way to fix the world economy, says Jeremy Warner.

Right from the start of the financial crisis, it was apparent that one of its biggest long-term casualties would be the mighty dollar, and with it, very possibly, American economic hegemony. The process would take time – possibly a decade or more – but the starting gun had been fired.

At next week’s meeting in Seoul of the G20’s leaders, there will be no last rites – this hopelessly unwieldy exercise in global government wouldn’t recognise a corpse if stood before it in a coffin – but it seems clear that this tragedy is already approaching its denouement.

To understand why, you have to go back to the origins of the credit crunch, which lay in the giant trade and capital imbalances that have long ruled the world economy. Over the past 20 years, the globe has become divided in highly dangerous ways into surplus and deficit nations: those that produced a surplus of goods and savings, and those that borrowed the savings to buy the goods.

California renters who are struggling to keep up on your monthly, and California homeowners who already lost your homes to foreclosure, eat your hearts out. You are not the kind of people the Obama administration considers worthy of assistance.

California expects mortgage-aid program to begin in weeks
By Dale Kasler
dkasler@sacbee.com
Published: Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010 - 12:00 am | Page 6B

Struggling California homeowners will have to wait several more weeks for the start of a $1.83 billion government aid program that will pay down loan balances and provide monthly cash assistance.

The “Keep Your Home California” program was supposed to begin Monday. But it’s been delayed because of logistical issues, according to officials with the California Housing Finance Agency.

The agency said the program will start on a limited basis in a few weeks and expand from there.

Diane Richardson, an agency official who’s running the program, said major technical hurdles arose because the program has been expanded since it was announced by the Obama administration in February.

“We’re pushing as hard as we can,” Richardson said. “The program has more than doubled – they’re very complicated programs.”
…

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-08/ohio-gmac-foreclosure-case-may-set-a-precedent-for-punishing-wall-street.html

Well looky here. The TBTF banks, having raped and pillaged the fly-over states with impunity thanks to their Republicrat top cover, are now encounterng push-back from local juries and politically ambitious AGs who are taking the opportunity for payback time. This is what happens when moral hazard and disdain for the rule of law infects a society from the top down.

These firms already slowly faded away (70 years or so was it up to Fall 2008?). My prediction: Now the conferred wisdom will be to make them fade away slowly; after the recovery, their status as recession-weary survivors will bolster the case for keeping them around.

Globe Editorial
The Boston Globe
Scale Fannie and Freddie down — but don’t do so just yet
November 8, 2010

FANNIE MAE and Freddie Mac make for sweeping campaign rhetoric but tough policy decisions. While the two government-guaranteed mortgage giants loomed as villains in the Fourth District challenger Sean Bielat’s unsuccessful bid to unseat longtime incumbent Barney Frank, what to do with them is among the most complicated questions facing the new Congress.

Over time, Fannie and Freddie should cease to exist, at least in their current form, but the trick is to make them fade away only slowly. The two entities are so deeply entrenched in the nation’s real estate market that abruptly privatizing them could help cast a slowly recovering economy back into recession.
…

Zoellick seeks gold standard debate

Leading economies should consider readopting a modified global gold standard to guide currency movements, argues the president of the World Bank.

Writing in the Financial Times, Robert Zoellick, the bank’s president since 2007, says a successor is needed to what he calls the “Bretton Woods II” system of floating currencies that has held since the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate regime broke down in 1971.

Mr Zoellick, a former US Treasury official, calls for a system that “is likely to need to involve the dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound and a renminbi that moves towards internationalisation and then an open capital account”. He adds: “The system should also consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values.”

NAR: Record share of first-time buyers
Survey finds most buyers applied for tax credits
By Inman News, Monday, November 8, 2010.

First-time homebuyers accounted for half of all home sales from July 2009 through June 2010, according to a National Association of Realtors survey of buyers and sellers.

That’s the highest share of first-time-buyer purchases in the history of the survey, which dates back to 1981. First-time buyers responding to the survey made up 47 percent of sales in 2009.
…

One of Las Vegas’s most affordable developments: the tunnels.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1326187/Las-Vegas-tunnel-people-How-1-000-people-live-shimmering-strip.html

The Next Wave Of The Irish Crisis: A Massive Mess Of Underwater Mortgages

Morgan Kelly offers a big picture look at the current state of the crisis, and argues what’s next:

The next act of the crisis will rehearse the same themes of bad loans and foreign debt, only this time as tragedy rather than farce. This time the bad loans will be mortgages, and the foreign creditor who cannot be repaid is the ECB. In consequence, the second act promises to be a good deal more traumatic than the first.

Where the first round of the banking crisis centred on a few dozen large developers, the next round will involve hundreds of thousands of families with mortgages. Between negotiated repayment reductions and defaults, at least 100,000 mortgages (one in eight) are already under water, and things have barely started.

Banks have been relying on two dams to block the torrent of defaults – house prices and social stigma – but both have started to crumble alarmingly.

Now For Some “Recent Turbulence in the Mortgage Industry”
Nov. 5 2010 - 6:46 pmBy AGUSTINO FONTEVECCHIA

With all heads turned towards the equity markets after Bernanke’s announcement of more quantitative easing, the foreclosure mess was the missing protagonist from the week’s headlines. Here’s a re-cap of some of the important things happening in the depths of foreclosure-land.
…

Ok, Ok, it involves jade and not GOLD! CASH! or audit the Fed…but it went good with Hwy’s not-yet-adjusted-post-daylightsaving-earlier-than-usual …coffee

The Rise of the Tao
By IAN JOHNSON / Published: November 5, 2010 / NY Times Magazine

“Taoism can save the world.”

Zhengzhou is one of China’s grittiest cities. An urban sprawl of 4.5 million, it owes its existence to the intersection of two railway lines and is now one of the country’s most important transport hubs. The south side is given over to furniture warehouses and markets for home furnishings and construction materials. One of the biggest markets is the five-story Phoenix City, with more than four million square feet of showrooms featuring real and knockoff Italian marble countertops, German faucets and American lawn furniture. Living in splendor on the roof of this mall like a hermit atop a mountain is one of China’s most dynamic and reclusive Taoist patrons, Zhu Tieyu

The articles 5 page ending…

“…with its millions of people racing toward modern China’s elusive goals — prosperity, wealth, happiness.”

(Ian Johnson is the author of “A Mosque in Munich” and “Wild Grass: Three Stories of Change in Modern China.” He is based in Beijing.

A version of this article appeared in print on November 7, 2010, on page MM52 of the Sunday Magazine.)

Faithful mortgage payments may hobble economy
By Don Lee McClatchy-Tribune
Posted: 11/04/2010 02:21:51 PM PDT

WASHINGTON — For almost two years, home foreclosures have swept the nation, spreading misery among once-buoyant families, spattering lenders with red ink and undermining efforts to restart the economy.

But a bigger problem may turn out to be the millions of Americans who are still faithfully paying their mortgages, but on houses worth far less than before the bubble burst. It’s not that these homeowners will stop making their payments. It’s just the opposite — that they will keep doing it.

How could that be a source of future trouble? Because, with home prices stagnant in much of the country, payments on mortgages that are underwater could absorb billions of dollars that might be used for other forms of

And the drag could persist for years.

Of the estimated 15 million homeowners underwater, about 7.8 million owed at least 25 percent more than their properties were worth in the first quarter of this year, according to Moody’s Analytics’ calculations of Equifax credit records and government data.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_16524856?source=most_viewed

Harley-Davidson to build bikes in India

Harley-Davidson, the iconic American motorcycle brand with a cult-like following, has announced it has chosen to build its second assembly plant ever outside the United States in India.

The “complete knock down” plant or CKD is expected to be up and running in the northern Indian state of Haryana in first half of 2011. Parts made in America will be put together for the Indian market in Haryana.

“What we are doing is made in USA, assembled in India, which will have a positive job effect back home which is why we are driving this investment as quickly as we are,” Anoop Prakash managing director for Harley Davidson India told CNN.

Regional report from the NY Fed Reserve:

Select reasons why the housing sector helped the New York-New Jersey region fare better than the nation during the recent downturn include:

The region’s housing sector is relatively mature. Housing construction and related jobs generally account for a smaller share of economic activity here than they do in regions with faster population growth;
Upstate New York added relatively few jobs in housing-related sectors (e.g. construction and sales of consumer durable goods) during the boom years;

Overall, the region had less penetration of nonprime loans into its housing market and therefore has lower mortgage delinquencies;
Fewer mortgages are “underwater”—whereby more is owed than the home is worth—lessening foreclosure risk and consequent accompanying distress and reduced consumption.
“During this recession, the housing sector contributed less volatility to the regional economy than it did in much of the nation,” Mr. Dudley added.

Other highlights from within the region:
Upstate New York: The housing boom and bust largely bypassed upstate New York where construction activity is a relatively small part of the overall economy. Home prices have generally stabilized across upstate New York, with some parts (Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse) even experiencing price increases over the past year.

************
I’m not being an arguing troll here but there is some exhaustion in waiting for prices to fall and watching them actually increase. Confusion sets in. And with a second announcement of QE I do wonder if the clock is ticking on the purchase window. Wtg for prices to even return to what we saw in 2008 has been like waiting for Godot and inventory in my niche has disappeared so no pressure there.

Hugo Chavez defends state takeovers of apartments

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Facing a wave of criticism from business leaders, President Hugo Chavez is defending his order for government officials to seize control of residential complexes.

Chavez promised Sunday to crack down on construction and real estate companies that he accused of unjustly boosting prices, which he labeled “housing fraud.”

The president, a self-proclaimed revolutionary who idolizes Cuba’s Fidel Castro and is currently on a visit to Havana, called his decision last week to order the expropriation of six residential complexes and “the temporary occupation” of eight gated communities in Caracas and other cities “an act of justice.”

Venezuela’s consumer protection agency and state prosecutors are investigating complaints that construction companies and real estate firms are illegally charging buyers high interest on unfinished apartments, even though the buyers settled on a price years ago and made down payments.

“We have decided to put an end to this type of organized crime,” Chavez wrote in his weekly newspaper column.

According to the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association, more than 10 million U.S. households will not be able to afford to heat their homes this winter without assistance, which would be a new all-time record.

< Especially tough for people heating with oil. Home heating oil runs to nearly $3.00 a gallon these days. Put on sweaters, set the thermostat at 62 degrees and hope for a mild winter!

~ The 10 million households which need assistance to pay the heating bills? They must turn to government (taxpayers, present and future) for a handout.

“It is not consistent when the Americans accuse the Chinese of exchange rate manipulation and then steer the dollar exchange rate artificially lower with the help of the printing press.”

~Wolfgang Schäuble,

GLOBAL ECONOMY-Obama returns fire after China slams Fed’s move

NEW DELHI, Nov 8 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama defended the Federal Reserve’s policy of printing dollars on Monday after China and Russia stepped up criticism ahead of this week’s Group of 20 meeting.

The G20 summit has been pitched as a chance for leaders of the countries that account for 85 percent of world output to prevent a currency row escalating into a rush to protectionism that could imperil the global recovery. [ID:nSGE6A703T]

But there is little sign of consensus.

The summit has been overshadowed by disagreements over the U.S. Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing (QE) policy under which it will print money to buy $600 billion of government bonds, a move that could depress the dollar and cause a potentially destabilising flow of money into emerging economies.

“I will say that the Fed’s mandate, my mandate, is to grow our economy. And that’s not just good for the United States, that’s good for the world as a whole,” Obama said during a trip to India.

“And the worst thing that could happen to the world economy, not just ours, is if we end up being stuck with no growth or very limited growth,” he said.

Over the weekend I spent time looking at TVs. I went to the usual places, Costco, Best Buy and one local high-end electronics place. I don’t know if I have ever seen Costco as it was Saturday. Craziness.

Next up Best Buy. Within about 20 seconds of showing interest in a TV, I was offered 24 months interest free financing. To me it’s always kind of weird thinking of financing for a $2500 item. But it’s there at 0% which explains how those $2500 TVs are flying off the shelves.

Then off to local high end place. Same thing with the financing there. Except they’re offering 36 months interest free. When I parked, there was a guy putting a 58″ Samsung in his van. When I left, there was a couple carrying out a 46″ LG to their car. Seems like the financing is working there as well.

I didn’t buy anything yet. So many options I was a little overwhelmed and need to digest everything I saw, read some more reviews online. But judging from these 3 stores, a) there is no shortage of credit out there b) despite the doom and gloom presented by the MSM and HBB, people are out these spending money, c) cash is king is BS. Anyone can walk into a BEst Buy with $0 in their pocket and walk out with a brand new TV.

PS: Yes, I know for most of you $2500 for a TV is crazy and you’re more than happy with the 19″ b&w you’ve owned since 1977. No need to tell me.

I don’t get it .
Ok ,America had long term systems in which health care ,taxes ,Social Security and future retirement were tied to America Jobs (long term jobs )

Ok ,so than all those long term financial systems get challenged by free
trade ,outsourcing ,losing USA manufacturing to other Countries by cheap
labor monopolies . The health care system increasingly burdens business by
the ever increasing price fixing monopoly that defies free market
capitalism because its a insurance monopoly . Now the Health care liability
is crushing business making American companies even more non-competitive. This is why Health care ties into the ever mounting American
business problems overall .

In return for these new Global systems ,apparently the USA gets the benefit of getting cheap foreign crap so people can go to Wal Mart and buy crap and industry can order cheap drywall from China and we can
have china take our steel and make inferior products . In the meantime
the middlemen and American Companies gain more profits ,and more
importantly other Countries gain jobs . So than America gets to gain wealth by selling overpriced real estate to each other ,than it crashes .

And nothing about this seems to have anything to do with the cost of living
in America or jobs that are needed for survival because the Global Market Makers bottom line is gross profits. So the markets disconnected from
the actual reality of all long term financial systems in America .Just like Wall Street and Banks disconnected from the fact that people needed to
afford the loans they took out . The disaster that Wall street and the Corporate machine has created in just a decade ,while they insist on bribing the Politicians to keep the casinos and faulty trade policies alive ,is
their fault and the fault of policymakers that can’t see the problems that
are created for main street ,the tax base, and the Social Security base .

The noble idea of allowing illegal immigration ,no doubt to supplement business ,ends up creating the problem of inheriting Mexico’s job problems
and welfare problems .But that’s OK, Ford and other American Companies
can just move their manufacturing base to Mexico and give the jobs to
the potential illegal immigrants ,such a easy solution the illegals don’t have to come here any more ,lets just move our manufacturing base to Mexico .
After all industry doesn’t have to give the Mexican worker health benefits,or the China worker .

Basically you had Corporate America ,Wall Street Middlemen ,Monopolies,
influencing and designing policy ,laws, and trade policies for a good 15 years now that has basically torn down anything that resembles something that would protect Main Street and the Majority of USA in terms of the long term systems in America and the job and manufacturing base .

And how is small local business going to compete with the big slave labor monopolies ,not likely in the long run .

If this is the brave new World, it’s actually a takeover from within . Add to that the bloated Union liabilities because of unsustainable promises ,especially in lite of the tax base being creamed, and you have a big rock with a American ship headed toward it .It’s correctable ,but not if the American people continue to get the same old PR BS . The Fat Cats are
now suggesting that it’s a simple matter of burning Americans on health care or promised benefits,after all the objective is to benefit Business ,as if Business operates outside the carnage of people .

When will it be apparent what has really happened here to the voting
population ,especially since the PR machine is alive and kicking with their bizarre solutions that won’t make a different with the real problems .

Realtors don’t want appraisers to consider foreclosure prices because “that kind of skews the market”.

Metro-east homeowners, banks are both suffering as foreclosures show no sign of slowing

http://www.bnd.com/2010/11/08/1465892/howeowners-and-banks-are-both.html#ixzz14hfG2Abv

(Southern Illinois) The ongoing spate of foreclosures shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon and is changing the way real estate sales are conducted.

The continuing mass foreclosures have dragged down some housing costs. Judy Doyle, a broker at Strano & Associates in Swansea, said the real estate market is saturated with an abundance of homes, but it has not dragged down all home values.

“I’ve asked appraisers if they use foreclosure prices, and they don’t necessarily use that because that kind of skews the market,” Doyle said. “It is not a true indication.”

The first wave (of foreclosures) was mostly centered around bad loans, and the current wave is the result of government action, such as delaying foreclosure processes …

“The unintended consequence of that is that it is still leaving many properties in the foreclosure process for a much longer period of time,” …”I would say the majority of cases they assist were delaying the inevitable, causing ever more uncertainty in the market as well.”

That has meant that the foreclosure process that once took 150 days is now taking twice as long…

“I think a lot of people have been dipping into their savings and retirement funds to stave off foreclosure,” … “The longer they continue to be out of work, the more pressing that becomes. Until the unemployment numbers bounce back to healthy levels, we will still see high levels of foreclosure.”

WSJ

Individual investors are wading back into the U.S. stock market. That ought to make über-bulls think twice.

Positive forces including strong corporate earnings, improving economic data and more bond buying by the Federal Reserve have fueled a 17% rally in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index since late August. The market has now punched through its prior 2010 highs, set in April, to reach levels last seen in 2008 before the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Predictably, that has also triggered a rebound in bullish sentiment and helped coax investors back into the market. The American Association of Individual Investors finds 48% of investors surveyed are bullish on stocks as of last week—the highest level since February 2007. Bearish sentiment, at 27%, is at its lowest since January 2006.

For now, this support could help the market extend its recent run. Yet it may also mean it is late in the rally game. Retail investors are usually a lagging indicator, reacting to past performance rather than predicting future gains. Their flows, says Harvard University lecturer Owen Lamont, can create “a short-term lift” but it rarely lasts beyond a few months. He and Andrea Frazzini of AQR Capital Management have written a series of papers together on this “dumb money” phenomenon.

Admittedly, the flow of money from individual investors back into the market has been more a trickle than a flood—from January 2009 through August, individuals pulled around $162 billion from equity funds.

Even so, a return of retail investors argues for caution. The prior high in sentiment this year came in late spring, just as the market was headed for a bruising selloff. It may not be wise to fight the Fed, but it can be just as ill-advised to follow the crowd.

Families “helping” family….

Housing-Market Bust Changes Buyer Behavior

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20101108-707082.html

At a time when many Americans are wondering how–and when–the housing market will recover, some people not only are encouraging first-time buyers to jump in to the market, they’re also helping them come up with a down payment.

Twenty-seven percent of first-time buyers who purchased a home between July 2009 and June 2010 received a gift from family or friends to help with the down payment,

That’s up from 22% a year earlier, and is the highest percentage in the more than 20 years…

Also, 9% of first-time buyers received a loan from a relative or friend in the most recent data, compared with 6% who said the same in the results released last year… It’s likely many parents were motivated to help their children take advantage of a now-expired home-buyer tax credit of up to $8,000, and other favorable conditions, including lower prices and mortgage rates, researchers said. Tougher lending criteria may have also been a factor playing into the trend,…

First-time home buyers made up a record 50% of all buyers during the period, up from 47% in last year’s figures…

Certainly, many potential buyers aren’t buying in today’s market because they’re worried about the economy; for instance, they may be concerned about the security of the job they currently have.

You guys ,investing in stocks is not the way Main Street America makes
a living . I guess thats how Americans are going to make a living without jobs
they will become day traders .

(But)…“it’s a great time to buy.”

Real estate agents’ ranks likely to shrink further, experts say

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-salesindustry_08bus.ART0.State.Edition1.3ca0535.html

As the residential sales industry struggles through its fourth year of declining sales, top executives are bracing for even more downsizing in the business.

The number of U.S. home sales agents and brokers has dropped by about a quarter since the industry’s salad days before the housing market crash.

But home sales have fallen even further – they’re down almost a third since 2005.

The gross commission total has plunged 50 percent in the last five years, estimates Lawrence Yun…

“The pie has gotten smaller,” he said over the weekend at the Realtors’ annual meeting, where about 20,000 members were expected. In 2007, more than 30,000 Realtors showed up…

“The truth is we have too much capacity,”…”There are way too many brokers in America.”

The National Association of Realtors, the industry’s biggest trade group, has about 1.1 million members. It had 800,000 a decade ago when home sales were at about current levels.

“We bubbled up to about 1.4 million members” in 2006, Peltier said. “We don’t need 1.4 million. We need probably 750,000 agents.”

The industry has been in survival mode the last few years, …

“Most brokers were consumed with right-sizing their business for the size of the market,” …”They were closing and consolidating offices and laying off staff. That’s not pretty when you have to do that.”

…home sales professionals have to ponder how they will prosper as they move ahead in a slower growth period….”There really is nothing on the horizon that would suggest this market is going to recover materially anytime soon,”…

Most agents who have hung on during the economic storm are making significantly less than they did a few years ago.

“They are working harder than they have ever worked in their lives for less money,” Perriello said. “Don’t get discouraged.

“Depending on what market you are in, this has been going on for four or five years – don’t give up.”

The National Association of Realtors is predicting only a modest increase in pre-owned home sales next year.

…as many as 25 percent of the home sales her nationwide company is seeing are to investors, many of whom are buying foreclosed homes.

“Distressed properties over the next few years are going to be a significant part of the business we do,” Kelly said. “One of the things we are pushing to get the public to realize is don’t sit on the sideline – it’s a great time to buy.”

Think about it ,people use to invest about 10% of their income into stocks ,CDs , bonds ,whatever . Usually these investments were set up for a long
term yield ,(the get rich quick or speculation stocks use to represent a small
percentage of the market) . Without jobs how are the people even going to invest that 10% . Is Wall Street going to get that capital from the rest of the World ?

Seriously another by product of Americans losing jobs to Globalism is that
less American dollars go into American investment . Talk about a tight money market where less funds will be available for even prudent investments .

Criminal barbering? Raids at Orange County shops lead to arrests, raise questions.

As many as 14 armed Orange County deputies, including narcotics agents, stormed Strictly Skillz barbershop during business hours on a Saturday in August, handcuffing barbers in front of customers during a busy back-to-school weekend.

It was just one of a series of unprecedented raid-style inspections the Orange County Sheriff’s Office recently conducted with a state regulating agency, targeting several predominantly black- and Hispanic-owned barbershops in the Pine Hills area.

In “sweeps” on Aug. 21 and Sept. 17 targeting at least nine shops, deputies arrested 37 people — the majority charged with “barbering without a license,” a misdemeanor that state records show only three other people have been jailed in Florida in the past 10 years.

The operations were conducted without warrants, under the authority of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation inspectors, who can enter salons at will. Deputies said they found evidence of illegal activity, including guns, drugs and gambling. However, records show that during the two sweeps, and a smaller one in October, just three people were charged with anything other than a licensing violation.

Ok ,Ok , I have talked until I’m blue in the face . Joey or Eddie have not been able to explain how this New World economy is going to sustain
the American Majority .We have a unemployment or underemployment
situation that is more like 20% or more now .How good is that for the tax base or the Social Security fund base ,or even funds for investment in future industry that might be the American base ?

And why is it that the cheap product is the highest ideal so the middle men can make more profit . Why is it we went for years in this country
having more expensive products while we watched other countries
produce junk ,and we didn’t have the ideal that we should shift to that .

I remember years ago I found out that whenever we shipped cheap oranges to Japan they charged tariffs and made sure the American
product didn’t consume their market resulting in our cheap oranges costing
5 bucks a orange over there . Now why would a Country be so protective ?

If you can’t see the big picture ,than just keep believing that Globalism
and rigged markets and low wage monopolies are going to save America
because the 25% we save at Wal Mart is groovy ,

The German secretary of finance:

Schäuble: The German export successes are not the result of some sort of currency manipulation, but of the increased competitiveness of companies. The American growth model, on the other hand, is in a deep crisis. The United States lived on borrowed money for too long, inflating its financial sector unnecessarily and neglecting its small and mid-sized industrial companies. There are many reasons for America’s problems, but they don’t include German export surpluses.
…
SPIEGEL: Last week, the US Federal Reserve Bank decided to flood the economy with $600 billion in new money. Will this stimulate the economy as hoped?

Schäuble: I seriously doubt that it makes sense to pump unlimited amounts of money into the markets. There is no lack of liquidity in the US economy, which is why I don’t recognize the economic argument behind this measure.

SPIEGEL: The US wants to depress the value of the dollar in this way, so that it can sell its products abroad more easily. In light of the ailing US economy, isn’t that a completely reasonable strategy?

Schäuble: No. The Fed’s decisions bring more uncertainty to the global economy. They make it more difficult to achieve a reasonable balance between industrialized and emerging economies, and they undermine the US’s credibility when it comes to fiscal policy. It’s inconsistent for the Americans to accuse the Chinese of manipulating exchange rates and then to artificially depress the dollar exchange rate by printing money.

The full interview is on spiegel dot de slash international slash world

‘I’m Going To Be Doing A Lot Of Investigating’…

“The most important thing my Committee can do is seek the truth. We’re the investigations committee, we’re the accountability committee, but Paul [Ryan] can’t be effective if the underlying facts and assumptions are not mutually agreed and it’s one of the problems we had in the previous two years was that we couldn’t agree on what the facts were therefore the conclusions that were different – each side blamed the other – that’s got to end,” Rep. Issa (R-CA) told “FOX News Sunday.”

If you had little labels next to your names I would know if you are for social justices or prefer capitalism. I always side with combo and wmbz but sure hate the fighting in here!
anyway, my mom is moving to a senior condo and we are selling her pasadena condo. so far it’s down 300k from the highs. question: sell as is or repaint and repair first?

Homeowners say loan mods led them to foreclosure

LOS ANGELES – Grocery store owners William and Esperanza Casco were making enough money to stay current on their mortgage, but when JPMorgan Chase & Co. offered a plan that reduced their payments, they figured they could use the extra cash and signed up.

The Cascos say they never missed a subsequent payment, so they were horrified when the bank decided the smaller payments weren’t enough and foreclosed on their modest Long Beach home.

Their story is echoed across the country by people who claim — some in lawsuits — that banks didn’t live up to their end of the deal when they agreed to trial mortgage modifications.

The suits add to a feeling among many struggling homeowners that they’re getting little help from the part of the government’s $700 billion Wall Street rescue that aimed to help them directly.

I took a drive from Santa Cruz to San Luis Obispo along the coast on Saturday, which was a beautiful drive. Monterey was crowded as usual, but we had a nice lunch there after visiting the skydiving center in Marina. Cursory observation: People along the coast [are] different from fly-over country, leaner, taller, more refined; lots of pretty women of proper height and weight with slender legs and bony ankles. In the Central Valley (Stockton, Modesto, Fresno) you see families with children when you are in a grocery store, but along the coast it’s uncommon; the cost of living has priced-out the family. RE prices are still extremely high even in unincorporated places like Los Osos. Not a chance I’d buy a falling knife around there despite my desire to return. I’ve been away for thirteen years now; I’ve done my penance. I’m uncertain my opportunity will ever arrive under desirable conditions. Tuesday I return to the cold and wind of fly-over country to sit out another “six month winter.”

This article is a year old…I found it during some surfing around the web. But it contains charts showing the residential vs. the commercial real estate bubble collapses. I hadn’t seen a good graph of CRE’s collapse before.

http://www.american.com/archive/2009/september/it-wasnt-a-bubble-it-was-a-double-bubble

The CRE bubble collapsed at a downward rate even faster than did the residential RE bubble.

So much for my friend who bought all that CRE with high leverage back in 2007.

I notice Au&Ag are enjoying all the good money pumping news. Go QE2,3,4,etc,etc…

Celebs beware! New Pandora’s box of ‘personal’ drones that could stalk anyone from Brangelina to your own child ~ Daily Mail

They could put your mind at ease - or do very much the opposite.

A new arms race is on and it could change everything from the way we parent to how we get our celebrity gossip.

For the technology currently being used by the CIA to ferret out terrorist leaders in the hills of Pakistan is set to arrive in a neighbourhood near you - and there’s nowhere to hide.
Coming to a sky near you?

Personal drones - smaller, private versions of the infamous Predator - are the next hot technology for people looking to track celebrities, cheating lovers, or even wildlife.

And it could be a dream tool for the paparazzi, named after the Iralian for buzzing mosquitoes.

Now the metaphor is coming to life. Several personal drones are scheduled for completion next year.

Already in the UK police are using drones to track thieves. In February, the Air Robot was deployed by Merseyside police after officers lost an alleged car thief who had escaped on foot in thick fog.

Using the device’s on-board camera and thermal-imaging technology, the operator was able to pick up the suspect through his body heat and direct foot patrols to his location.

It led officers to a 16-year-old youth, who was hiding in bushes alongside the Leeds-Liverpool canal, in Litherland, Merseyside.

The drone, which measures 3ft between the tips of its four carbon fibre rotor blades, uses unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) technology originally designed for military reconnaissance.

Americans’ debt slashing nears $1 trillion

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Americans have paid off nearly $1 trillion in debt over the past two years, although the pace of repayment has slowed, according to a regional Federal Reserve report released Monday.

Total consumer debt was $11.6 trillion as of Sept. 30; down 7.4%, or $922 billion, from the peak reached in the third quarter of 2008, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Consumer indebtedness fell another 0.3% in the third quarter, after a 3.3% decline in the prior quarter.

In addition, total household delinquency rates fell for the second consecutive quarter. The report said 11.1% of outstanding debt was in some stage of delinquency at the end of September — compared to 11.4% on June 30, and 11.6% a year earlier.

“If consumers can continue to repair their balance sheets, that bodes well for the sanity of the economy in the long term,” said economist John Canally of LPL Financial.

Looks like Ron Paul is trying to give people an opt out option on social security:

http://paul.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1794:reject-the-welfarewarfare-state&catid=31:texas-straight-talk

Sounds like the Brits “section 8″ housing system works like a charm.

Mother-of-two lives in Britain’s most expensive council house (valued at £2.5m) for two years… rent free ~ Daily Mail Reporter

Taxpayer-funded: Mother-of-two Ruth Ben-Adir leaves her £2.5m council house in North London, where she has been living rent-free

A mother-of-two who was moved to a £2.5million council property ’so she wouldn’t be disturbed by local building works’ has been living rent-free for more than two years.

Ruth Ben-Adir, 46, moved into the Grade II-listed Victorian lodge - thought to be Britain’s most expensive council house - with her two sons, Kingsley, 24, and Fab, in 2008.

The property - on the edge of a 29-acre estate in Highgate Village, north London - is neighboured by homes owned by celebrities such as George Michael and Sting.

It’s thought the house could fetch £100,000 rent per year if rented out on the private market.

The Ben-Adirs were moved there by Camden Council from nearby Kentish Town after officials decided the refurbishment of a leisure centre next to their home would disturb them.

But work on the centre finished in July - and the family is still living rent-free in the three-bedroom property in Waterlow Park.

The family isn’t paying rent on the house - nor on their original home, where Mrs Ben-Adir is the registered tenant.

Tory opposition leader Andrew Mennear told the Evening Standard: ‘This was a bizarre form of temporary accommodation and it has to come to an end. Did they just forget about them?’

New figures show the council is paying £720,000 a year in housing benefits to just 20 families, with one on £6,565 a month.

Changes to the housing benefits system mean that from April next year there will be caps of £400 a week for a four-bedroom property and £250 a week for a two-bedroom home, leaving up to 10,500 people in London at risk of losing their homes.

From the 5Min. Forecast…

President Obama faces a choice going into the G-20 meetings starting Thursday in Seoul: He can seek ways to avoid a currency and/or trade war with China… or he can purposely seek one out in a bid to stoke up anti-China fervor and boost his re-election chances.

He may be sincerely seeking the former… but this morning, he appears to be stumbling into the latter.

For starters, he stood next to India’s prime minister in New Delhi and declared he supports India getting permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council.

Of course, that’s guaranteed to anger Pakistan, India’s nuclear-armed archrival, whose support the president needs for his war in Afghanistan. But it’s also guaranteed to anger China — which has had a smoldering border dispute with India for some 50 years.

India has long been freaked out by China’s bases high up in Tibet, looming above India’s plains; decades ago, India’s leader Jawaharlal Nehru complained about it to Mao Zedong’s right-hand man, Chou Enlai.

“If I wanted to destroy India,” Chou was said to reply, “I would march 100 million Chinese to the edge of the Tibetan plateau and order them to piss downhill. We would wash you into the Indian Ocean.”

Old hatreds die hard; is anyone in the White House clued in to this?

Probably not, judging by other developments…

“We can’t continue situations,” declared the president, “where some countries maintain massive [trade] surpluses, other countries have massive deficits and never is there an adjustment with respect to currency that would lead to a more balanced growth pattern.”

So… that sounds as if Obama is going to make a full-court press at G-20 for Tim Geithner’s harebrained scheme to have everyone limit their trade surpluses and deficits to 4% of GDP — the scheme the Chinese dismissed last week as a relic of “planned economies.”

But even as the president spoke those words in New Delhi, Geithner was backing down in Tokyo. At a meeting of Asia-Pacific finance ministers, he said the concept is still sound, but “it’s not something that can reduce easily to a single number.”

Is it too much to ask that these guys get on the same page?

Great episode of This American Life - about buying and tracking down a “toxic asset”.

Worth a listen: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/418/toxie?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+talpodcast+%28This+American+Life+Podcast%29

The High Cost of ‘Free’ Trade: Obama “Doesn’t Understand Fundamental Reality” says Alan Tonelson of the U.S. Business & Industry Educational Foundation and author of The Race to the Bottom.

Obama’s comments (and actions) reflect conventional economic thinking that “everyone benefits” from free trade. But nothing could be further from the truth - at least judging by the “free trade” agreements of the past 20 years, says Alan Tonelson of the U.S. Business & Industry Educational Foundation and author of The Race to the Bottom.

“[President Obama] doesn’t seem to understand — or want to understand — the fundamental reality that doubling exports…does absolutely nothing to generate growth or employment in the U.S.,” Tonelson says. “These open trade policies have dug such a deep debt hole for this economy.”

Rx for ‘Draconian Measures’

Rather than pursuing more free trade agreements, the U.S. needs to make an abrupt about-face so that trade policy becomes an “engine of growth at home, not abroad,” Tonelson says. “On a net basis the U.S. economy has lost big time because higher and higher trade deficits mean lower and lower growth rates, higher and higher unemployment rates and more and more national debt.”

STD Test? There’s an App for That

British health officials are hard at work on a new app that will allow users to pee into their cell phones and find out within minutes if they have an STD.

Seriously, we could not make this stuff up if we tried.

According to The Guardian, 4 million pounds have been invested in the UK Clinical Research Collaboration, which is creating a smartphone app that will allow users, “to put urine or saliva on to a computer chip about the size of a USB chip, plug it into their phone or computer and receive a diagnosis within minutes.”

The techno-savvy approached is aimed at young brits, who apparently are too embarrased to visit the doctor face to face and have been experiencing rising rates of STD (or STI as they call them cross the pond).

CNN) — Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts.

For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.

His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most — not the nutritional value of the food.

The premise held up: On his “convenience store diet,” he shed 27 pounds in two months.

For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub’s pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.

His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.

But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.

Haub’s “bad” cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his “good” cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.

“That’s where the head scratching comes,” Haub said. “What does that mean? Does that mean I’m healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we’re missing something?”

Whoops, now Jesse Ventura is ringing the alarm about The Great Vampire Squid Conspiracy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wRfuAUubT0&feature=player_embedded#!

Kinda late, and kinda lurid to jazz up the complexities for his tv show, but some people won’t get the heads up any other way.

Full disclosure:
I hope Gary Johnson (former NM Gov & noted libertarian) & Jesse team up for a 2012 POTUS run as the Men of Iron, Balls of Steel tour!

Attention consumers your chance to load up on cheap crap from China is going to cost you less, good news!

Wal-Mart Fires Shot in Toy War
Retailer Cuts Prices After Learning Target’s Are Lower

The annual battle for the minds and wallets of toy-buying parents has gotten off to a particularly fierce start, with Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT - News) slashing prices in an effort to keep Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT - News) from being the low-cost leader this holiday-shopping season.

Toys are key to many retailers’ success at Christmas, because parents will buy stuff for their kids even when the economy is awful. But in recent years shoppers have tended to snap up the biggest toy bargains and ignore stores’ other offerings.

This year, with economic conditions somewhat improved, retailers are hopeful that if they can lure parents with a great price on electronic hamsters or Stinky the Garbage Truck, shoppers will make other purchases. But store chains continue to feel the need to stake their low-cost claims just days after Halloween.

“It will still be a very competitive season for toys,” said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail and consumer consulting firm. “The reason you are seeing so much early discounting is that retailers are trying to get an early share of the market.”

‘Arizona Style’ Immigration Law Proposed in Texas
conservative lawmaker files bill in first hour of filing period for 2011 session

Less than an hour after the period began for filing bills for consideration in the 2011 Legislative session, State Rep. Debbie Riddle (R-Tomball), a leader of the newly muscular conservatives in the Legislature, filed an ‘Arizona style’ measure that would crack down on illegal immigration, 1200 WOAI news reports.

Riddle says her measure is a response to what she says is the escalating violence caused by Mexican and Latin American gangs in Texas.

“It is absolutely out of control with the gang related crime, which is going through the roof, so, yes, we are addressing this, and quite frankly, I am not worried about political correctness,” Riddle told 1200 WOAI news.

Fed official raises doubts over new Fed program
Fed official with ties to Bernanke raises doubts over Fed’s $600 billion aid program

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Federal Reserve official with a close working relationship with Chairman Ben Bernanke is expressing skepticism over the Fed’s new $600 billion program to bolster the economy.

Kevin Warsh, a Fed governor, warns that there are “significant risks” associated with the Fed’s bond-buying program, including the potential for triggering inflation.

The Fed’s program, announced last week, is aimed getting Americans to spend more and invigorate the economy by making loans cheaper. But Warsh doubts the program will have “significant” or “durable benefits” for the economy. Despite his reservations, Warsh voted for the program.

During the 2008 financial crisis, Warsh worked closely with Bernanke to craft programs to get credit — the economy’s oxygen — to flow again.

Interesting new trend - open source textbooks.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2013373872_textbooks08m.html

“For a community-college student who pays about $3,000 a year in tuition, $1,000 in textbook expenses can make up one-quarter of the overall cost of a two-year degree. The Open Course Library “will fundamentally and significantly reduce the cost of going to college,” Green said.”

…

“College textbooks are a $10 billion-a-year market, Green said, and publishers are, not surprisingly, wary of Washington’s efforts. When work first started on the Open Source Library, Green said he met with textbook publishers and tried to secure their cooperation.

“I said, ‘This is not about putting you out of business,’ ” Green said. “We’d love to partner with you. … At first, they said, ‘You’re crazy.’ ”

But as publishers realized the state was planning to give away its general-education curriculum for two-year colleges, some began to cooperate, Green said. They began offering to sell electronic versions of texts that expire after a quarter for $30, or offering old versions of books for that price.”