Bits Bucket for December 21, 2010
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
About Me
Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
To donate by mail, or to otherwise contact this blogger, please send emails to: thehousingbubble@gmail.com
PayPal is a secure online payment method which accepts ALL major credit cards.
Links
-
January 2025 M T W T F S S « Sep 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Photo Submission: hbbphotos@gmail.com
View the HBB Photo Gallery *updated 4/13/2008
First poster of the day, could it be? 12:12 AM
The Shortest Day
by Susan Cooper
And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Beautiful poem. June is my favorite month, at this latitude and in this hemisphere at least. Once we get to late November I cannot wait to get the winter solstice behind me.
May, June July are the trifecta. Even by August you note the evening twilight coming earlier and earlier.
Some astronomical trivia: Due to the tilt of the earth’s axis and the slight ellipticity of its orbit around the sun, the earliest winter sunset occurs around December 6th, and the latest winter sunrise occurs around January 5th.
In the summer, the earliest sunrise is June 6th, and the latest sunset is July 4th or 5th. They have to wait quite a while before it’s dark enough to set off the Independence Day fireworks.
That orbital ellipticity works in the northern hemisphere’s favor. The earth is farthest from the sun (94.5 million miles) in July, and closest to the sun (91.5 million miles) in January.
oops, got so excited I forgot to actually post something.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/world/europe/21ireland.html?hp
Theses stories are truly sad. I had read something about this happening in the states as well.
“What is certain is that the boom years brought a rapid growth in breeding, and that tens of thousands of people who could not previously afford a horse or pony entered the market, many of them keeping their animals in gardens, on fenced-off building sites or on common land like the Dunsink tip”.
Yes it is sad that these animals are paying the price for simple human greed. The strong will survive, the weak will parish, but the banksters will live on and on and on.
There are a huge number of wild horses in the American west. BLM has taken it on themselves to create an adoption program.
http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/wild_horse_and_burro.html
There’s a BLM wild horse adoption corral only about 4 miles from me here in Boise. It’s next door to the state prison where they keep the feral humans.
They should open an “adopt a felon” program too. Or a “adopt a horse, get a felon free” program.
That desert area south of Boise is full of unintentional humor. The mens’ prison is right across the road from the womens’ prison. Hardly out of sight out of mind for those incarcerated. Then there’s the BLM horse corral. Finally the Boise Gun Club has a skeet range just south of the prison, where you shoot in the direction of the prison at about a half mile range. Nobody runs south from the prison if there’s ever a prison break!
All this stuff is on the ironically-named “Pleasant Valley Road”.
Or maybe grind up the horses & feed them to the felons? Better yet, do it the other way around.
Be careful, if the horses catch Mad Felon Disease they’ll go on a Bonnie and Clydesdale style crime spree!
“They should open an “adopt a felon” program too.’
It’s going to be interesting to see who is going to adopt Timmy G.!
If a boat is a hole in the water that you fill with money, than a horse is a manure machine that you feed money to.
Years ago, I rented a guesthouse from a couple in midtown Tucson. The Converter is what the husband called his wife’s horse. As in, it converted money into shhh…
A buddy told me once that owning a horse is like adopting a kid that doesn’t move out after high school/college.
X-GSfixr’s found out he was an American Saddlebred owner two weeks after the fact, when he opened the checkbook to pay end of month bills.
Which is one of the reasons why there is an ex-Mrs.ExGSfixr.
She couldn’t settle for a puppy?
We had a puppy……and three cats……and a rat……and gerbils…….and Geckos. And cockatiels. And a Senegal Parrot.
Maybe I didn’t show them enough affection, and they channeled it into wanting to own one of everything they saw on Animal Planet.
We had a puppy……and three cats……and a rat……and gerbils…….and Geckos. And cockatiels. And a Senegal Parrot.
I think I’d get a divorce just to get away from the racket!
I think I’d get a divorce just to get away from the racket!
Or start charging admission at the very least!
… a horse is a manure machine that you feed money to.
You remind me of a favorite financial crisis cartoon, which depicts Dr Bernanke’s experiment. It shows him cramming money down the throats of a herd of pigs; the caption reads something like, “If we feed these bankers enough, something good is bound to come out the other end.”
It sounds like something I’d like to frame on my wall. That’s perfect.
This has been happening all over the US, but really ramped up a few years ago as the price of hay skyrocketed. In WA, people were setting their horses free all over the place because they couldn’t afford to feed them, and nobody would even take them for free. I had to call Animal Control a few times because I drove by pastures where horses were starving to death. In rural areas, you see people who have a giant assortment of animals they cannot afford to feed.
It’s happened in my state many times. Owners fall upon hard times and can’t sell horses or the owners become suddenly very ill and have no one who can help them.
Very sad.
Just got back from watching the first half of the eclipse with the family through the giant sunroof of the wife’s Mercedes. Pretty cool. But now they get to sleep in tomorrow and I have to go to work :-).
Lunar eclipse? Ho-hum. Solar eclipse? Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.
+1
not that i’m dissing Carl…spending time in the middle of the night with your kids to watch a lunar eclipse will be a cherished memory of theirs…i just thought Bill’s comment was funny.
Yeah it’s not like watching a solar eclipse. But by definition it’s in the middle of the night with a full moon, when kids don’t usually get to stay up. So it was pretty exciting for him. Plus no burned retinas :-).
Hale-Bopp was pretty awesome. Especially for those of us out in the sticks, who didn’t have to deal with city lights.
Hale-Bopp was pretty awesome. Especially for those of us out in the sticks, who didn’t have to deal with city lights.
Hale-Bopp? That smudgeball?
No way, dude. Comet Hyakutake ruled the skies!
I was out in the sticks when Haley’s went by back in the 80s. Not impressed with the naked eye…and too focused on the naked girlfriend to care much.
One of the coldest nights of my life was when a bunch of us went to point lookout to see Haley’s on its trip back out.
Overcast here. Set my alarm for nothing.
same here.
Quite overcast here in Tucson. Looks like the Rain-ifornia is coming our way tomorrow.
7.25 inches in my rain bucket since friday not bad
Water bill will still go up I’m sure. One thing about Phoenix the water was nasty but cheap
We had patches of clouds blowing by pretty quickly. My wife and I sat outside. She was wrapped in a huge comforter nursing the baby when the eclipse went full. Definitely a sweet moment.
Looks like Wells Fargo is settling with AG Brown about modifications to pick-a-pay ARMS in California.
“Customers were offered adjustable-rate loans with payments that mushroomed to amounts that ultimately thousands of borrowers could not afford,” said Attorney General and Gov.-elect Jerry Brown in a statement. “Recognizing the harm caused by these loans, Wells Fargo accepted responsibility and entered into this settlement with my office.”
In fact, the agreement is not a settlement in the common meaning of the term. No lawsuit was filed against Wells, and bank representatives on Monday said they approached Brown’s office shortly after they acquired the risky loans from failing banks in 2008. The bank sought assurances that it would not be sued if it agreed to help out distressed homeowners.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/20/BUT21GT95H.DTL
Wells Fargo is doing modifications without being sued or forced? Something’s fishy. I would guess that those old Golden West loans are option-ARM based on fraudulant liar-income statements, even Fannie/Freddie wouldn’t buy them,* the 3-5 year grace period ran out (timing is about right), and FB’s are planning massive jingle mail in non-recourse California. Perhaps Wells modifing the loans because they would rather keep the FB in the house making a modified payment, than foreclose on the house and lose money on the fire sale.
————
*Sometime back there was an article about Fannie/Freddie searching among their MBS paper for fraudulant liar loans and shoving those loans back down the throats of the lenders. Maybe this is one case of that?
I think it’s because they still own the loans and couldn’t even sell them to Fannie/Freddie.
Since “The bank sought assurances that it would not be sued if it agreed to help out distressed homeowners” it’s probably cheaper in the long run and certainly better PR.
And it remains to be seen if any of the modifications work out.
Is this how this all ends?Attorney generals sue the banks and then the banks settle and modify loans for everyone who was supposedly scammed.
what grounds do the ag’s have to sue these banks?If the loans they were giving were illegal where were they 8 years ago?
all this stuff seems strange to me.Leave it to the attorneys to screw this up further.
A couple of tapes talking about the Biggest Fraud in History ,with
a tape on how Hank Paulson got Congress to pass Tarp .
usawatchdog.com/securitized-debt-mess/
http://www.infowars.com/should-hank-paulson-be-in-jail/
there are so many people that belong in jail…meanwhile…Holder dithers away…he is a joke.
Holder dithers away…he is a joke.
I agree. This was a bad appointment, especially when you consider how many of our state AGs would have absolutely kicked butt in the federal AG job.
This was a bad appointment, especially when you consider how many of our state AGs would have absolutely kicked butt in the federal AG job.
Doesn’t that depend in this Banking crime stuff? I think AG’s do what their bosses tell them to do.
Unless Holder is waiting for airtight cases instead of rattling his sabre. I, for one, am REALLY hoping to see some kind of anti-trust action against Monsanto.
That was my thought too Oxide. Spitzer would have then all in jail already.
Monsanto is safe. One of their in-house lawyers is now on the US Supreme Court.
I, for one, am REALLY hoping to see some kind of anti-trust action against Monsanto
“TrueOrganicEdiblePesticides™”
“Mmmm, carbaryl!”
This was a bad appointment, especially when you consider how many of our state AGs would have absolutely kicked butt in the federal AG job.
Dream on. Most state AGs are corrupt grandstanders. Look how fast they’re settling with the robo-signers and other Wall Street fraudsters. Grab headlines, shake them down for a pittance of a fine, then let them off for pennies on the dollar for what they stole.
The Idaho legislature is poised to debate whether and how to convert the state employees’ retirement plans over from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution plan.
House Majority Caucus Chairman Ken Roberts, R-Donnelly, said there’s been “a lot of discussion” about this issue, in part because of the potential liability facing taxpayers if the Public Employee Retirement System of Idaho doesn’t meet its investment goals.
“It’s something we’ll probably be working on,” Roberts said.
The part-time Idaho legislature only meets from January through March.
How long should I hold my breath waiting for California to do the same thing?
http://www.idahostatesman.com/2010/12/21/1462750/changes-coming-to-persi.html
Cali will have to declare BK for the same thing to happen.
So we need to wait one or two months. Sweet!
This is PRECISELY what needs to happen to all government unions, especially the 80%ers. And it needs to be retroactive.
As stated here many times, outside of certain areas of the east and west coast, your avg government employee is NOT making fat bank.
Recession forces rise in low-wage families, report says
Washington Post
The Great Recession, responsible for boosting unemployment to its highest levels in a generation, has sharply increased the percentage of working people who earn wages so paltry that they are struggling to survive, according to a new report.
The share of working families earning less than double the official poverty threshold - $43,512 for a family of four - increased from 28 to 30 percent between 2007 and 2009, according to a report released Tuesday by the Working Families Project, a nonprofit group that advocates on behalf of the working poor.
Overall, the report said, the number of people living in low-income working families increased by 1.7 million to 45 million between 2008 and 2009. In November, the jobless rate rose to 9.8 percent, and has hovered near 10 percent for more than a year.
“Clearly, we are going in the wrong direction,” said Brandon Roberts, a co-author of the report, derived from an analysis of Census Bureau data. “We are not making sufficient investments to help working families get ahead. Unfortunately, the constraints on the budget are going to make this even more difficult going forward.”
“We are not making sufficient investments to help working families get ahead.”
They are however making more than sufficient investments to keep the biggest monthly nut for working families (a place to live) artificially high. Except for the working families that are being allowed to live in their houses for free, of which I know more than a few. Keeping housing and rent at artificially high prices is helping working families and low wage earners how? It is already obvious where I live that the $8k Home buyer tax bait has doomed many working families that paid $200k a year ago for houses that can be bought for $140k now and headed for the $80k they sold for in the mid 90`s.
Yup. There is no gov’t program, no interest rate, no nothing - that would make my place more affordable than a return to 1997 prices. Heck this place would be a downright easy lift with a 14% mortgage and a late nineties price.
“Keeping housing and rent at artificially high prices is helping working families and low wage earners how?”
Actually, if you think about it a little, artificially high housing and rent for some working families (those with relatively higher incomes) is perfectly compatible with helping other working families and low wage earners (those enjoying housing subsidies or even payment-free housing), through the magic of cross-subsidization.
By contrast, if all the folks currently living in homes they nominally own, but on which they have stopped making payments, suddenly were evicted and their homes came back on the market, lower housing prices and rents would result for new entrants to the housing market (e.g. recent college graduates lucky enough to be employed) who wish to get on the property ladder.
There is a basic economic principle at work here, which is sometimes summarized as, ‘There is no such thing as a free lunch.’
Of course, that doesn’t stop our politicians from endlessly pretending that free lunches will be enjoyed by everyone so long as they remain in office.
Of course, that doesn’t stop our politicians from endlessly pretending that free lunches will be enjoyed by everyone so long as they remain in office. But why do voter keep believing it?
Rule number 1 of American politics:
Never underestimate the stupidity of the American voter.
Exactly.
In Sept, the Repubs successfully voted down a bill to repeal tax breaks for offshoring jobs.
In Nov, voters gave them more power because… they needed jobs.
How could the Repubs vote anything down? The Dems held overwhelming majorities in both House and Senate plus - the guy from Kenya in the white house with the veto pen !
Yeah, and in the face of this we still have serial bottom callers spouting off about house prices. What’s the consensus of the moment? Summer 2011, just like it was spring 2010, fall 2009, fall 2008…
Around DC, people are waiting for house prices to return to “normal,” normal being 2006. When they bought when house prices were jumping 15% a year — totally out of step with the past 80 years, and they congratulated themselves for being smart. But when prices fall, do they admit they overpaid? Heck no…it’s the appraiser’s fault, or the Kenyan’s fault, just not them.
Those damn kenyan hobgoblins ruin all the fun!
Serial bottom callers = taxpayers friends.
The more money from lemmings that flow into the banks the less taxpayer money will have to foot the bill.
Long live the illusion!
Keep hope alive!
The housing bottom is always scheduled for next year, right up until it actually happens.
2011 looks to be promising
The Home Front
12/15/2010 9:55 PM
…
According to Freddie Mac, the following features will likely characterize the 2011 housing and mortgage markets:
Low mortgage rates. While some rise in fixed-rates is expected, 30-year fixed-rate loans are likely to remain below 5 percent throughout the year, and initial rates on 5/1 hybrid ARMs will likely remain below 4 percent in 2011.
“In November of 2010, fixed-rate mortgage rates had drifted down to their lowest level since the early 1950s,” Nothaft said. “This laid the foundation for a substantial refinance boom, with refinance accounting for four out of every five single-family home loan applications.”
With Federal Reserve observers expecting the central bank to keep the federal funds rate at its current target range of zero percent to 0.25 percent for most or all of 2011, relatively low mortgage rates will be a feature of next year’s mortgage market, according to Freddie Mac.
House-price recovery. Home prices nationwide are close to hitting bottom. “Most experts look for single-family U.S. indexes to bottom out in the first half of 2011, with a gradual but sustained recovery after that,” Nothaft said. Prices are expected to rise by an average of about 1 percent over 2011, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
…
The recession is to blame for a lot of things. Evidently, its now responsible for low teen births.
Yet NOT ONE WORD of the Repubs voting down the bill that would have ended tax breaks for offshoring jobs.
Looks like the Brits beat us hands down in rationalizing higher education. It ain’t for everybody. This is the first time I have seen an axe taken to that shibboleth.
From UK Independent:
http://tinyurl.com/22qslpv
University cuts ‘a kick in the teeth’
By Richard Garner, Education Editor
Monday, 20 December 2010
Ministers announced plans to reduce student numbers today as part of the most swingeing public spending cuts in higher education for a generation.
Universities will have to grapple cuts of nearly £700 million in their budgets next year, Business Secretary Vince Cable said.
The funding cut, which comes into effect before they can expect any increased revenue from rises in tuition fees, was described as “a Christmas kick in the teeth” by lecturers’ leaders.
Under it, student numbers will be frozen this year – but funding for an extra 10,000 places agreed by the Coalition Government for this September will be withdrawn the following year.
The announcement comes as universities face an unprecedented demand for student places next September.
That’s fine as long as they get trained in some skill, otherwise they’ll just end up on the dole.
They won’t, and they will.
I bet when they get the new and higher tuition bill that extra demand will melt away.
We may see a return to the old model of testing kids when they’re 12 and placing them in a track which matches their talents (or lack thereof). I don’t see why not, as long as there is some opportunity for kids to prove themselves into a higher track. I don’t like the idea of locking a kid when he’s 12. Kids are different.
Huh. I had more idea of where I was going at 12 than at 14. I never again was so clear-headed.
High school, puberty are pretty bad influences.
Huh. I had more idea of where I was going at 12 than at 14. I never again was so clear-headed.
When I was that age, I wanted to be a commercial artist. I don’t recall that the term “graphic designer” existed back then. I also wanted to be a rock star, but what teenager in the early seventies didn’t want to do that?
Oh, and when I was 16 or so, I picked up an SLR camera and added “photographer” to my career wish list.
Fast-forward to the present: I’m 53 years old. And I’m a graphic designer and photographer. After hours, I volunteer at a community radio station, where I occasionally get to deal with rock stars.
So, here’s a kid who figured out what she wanted to do early in life. And now I’m doing it.
My closest friend is a graphic artist for the army. Once I told him “Dude, you draw tanks for a living. That’s the average third graders dream job.”
My closest friend is a graphic artist for the army. Once I told him “Dude, you draw tanks for a living. That’s the average third graders dream job.”
And, here in Tucson, one of my acquaintances is an illustrator. Before she got married and went into Mom-mode, she did the illustrations for Tom Clancy’s books.
While doing research for one of the books, she went on patrol with a submarine crew. Very interesting experience, she said.
My wife’s favorite boat is the USS Ronald Reagan with her 6,000 male crew…laughing
Dos Gringos “I want to take off from a Carrier”
“…..but I dont want to land
Allow me to explain, and you’ll understand
‘Cause it ain’t about the landing
Why would I care?
You never have a crosswind, and you never have to flare.
You got four f##king wires, how could you miss?
I can’t think of anything that’s easier than this.
But once you’re on the deck my friend, you’ll never be the same……..
e
u
……because you are stuck on a boat.
In the middle of nowhere…..
With five thousand other men…..
Join the Navy?
I don’t think so.
Livin’ on a boat?
I don’t think so.
Hot bunking?
I don’t think so.
Doing night traps?
F##k that!, I don’t think so.
(Sorry, can’t type today….)
Yeah, high school isn’t a great predictor of future trajectory. I don’t remember large chunks of it, other than hazy recollections of passing out next to the keg like a good soldier struck down while holding his position.
University cuts ‘a kick in the teeth’
Considering your average limey doesn’t have teeth work keeping, this could be an blessing in disguise.
Ouch!
Actually that’s no longer the case. I have relatives in the UK and they all have nice teeth.
Factoid…..
The Central Identification Lab in Hawaii uses dental X-rays from WWII to help in identifying WWII MIAs
Before DNA the lack of dental care during the Great Depression, extractions were much more common. Which makes individual identification of WWII MIAs easier, especially in the days before DNA.
And while on that subject.
JPAC/CIL needs DNA samples from family members of MIAs, especially Korean War MIAs.
Seems that our buddies the North Koreans recover remains without worrying about the forensics, and basically jumble the remains together. Because of that, the CIL has 400 plus sets of Korean War era remains that may never be identified, especially if they don’t have DNA samples.
Those are bubble teeth. In a decade we’ll get to see how they/we look with austerity teeth.
The condition of people’s teeth is one of the top indicators of how the economy is doing. I’ve noticed a significant increase in crooked teeth, and that more and more dentists are starting to advertise in the local papers.
As a Brit, so not true. Europeans mock your fascination with white teeth!
And of course we won’t even discuss the Appalachians, will we?
Back at you. We mock you and fart in your general direction.
Yet without a degree, the only jobs available are sub-living wage ones or ones that leave you permanently physically broken by the time you’re 50.
Hardly.
My cousins’ kid is 27 years old. He fixes cars in Wisconsin. He has cleared $70K in income every year since 2006.
He barely graduated high school.
And he should be earning half that according to your selfish ideology.
Richard Suttmeier’s 2011 Outlook: Pain in the Banks as Housing Falls Another 15-30%
Posted Dec 20, 2010 10:53am EST
by Peter Gorenstein
More than 2 years after the financial crisis, a weak residential and commercial real estate market remains the biggest threat to the economy, according to ValuEngine’s Richard Suttmeier.
Looking out into 2011, Suttmeier warns residential housing could fall another 15-30%. “The housing market is still overpriced relative to where we began the new millennium,” he tells Aaron in this segment. “Prices are still about 50% higher than where we were at the end of 1999.”
That is guaranteed bad news community banks. What’s worse is the amount of commercial real estate loans these community banks still have on their books: $1.43 trillion by Suttmeier’s estimation. “My analysis shows 2,485 or 32% of all banks overexposed to Commercial Real Estate loans,” he writes. “This stress needs to be addressed before jobs can be created on Main Street USA as housing and construction drive local economies.”
The situation is likely to lead to considerable consolidation among banks. For example, Bank of Montreal bought the troubled Midwestern bank Marshall & Ilsey for $4.1 billion on Friday. The good news, Suttmeier says if we see more of these types of deals, “you might relieve some of the structural problems in the banking system.”
Meanwhile, the ‘too big to fail’ banks face their own troubles. These banks have not delevered, Suttmeier notes. In fact, the notional amount of derivative contracts has risen from $71.6 trillion at the end of 2007 to $236.4 trillion at the end of the third quarter. Suttmeier warns this could be another ticking time-bomb.
Suttmeier notes. “In fact, the notional amount of derivative contracts has risen from $71.6 trillion at the end of 2007 to $236.4 trillion at the end of the third quarter. Suttmeier warns this could be another ticking time-bomb”.
No kidding! But we won’t pay that any attention, we have a great big broom and can sweep that under the oriental rug.
Now let’s get back to consuming!
“In fact, the notional amount of derivative contracts has risen from $71.6 trillion at the end of 2007 to $236.4 trillion at the end of the third quarter.” Either this guy is a complete moron or he is trying to mislead people. Most derivative contracts are interest rate swaps (others are currency swaps which do nothing more than hedge foreign currency risk). Interest rate swaps do nothing more than synthetically switch the interest rate on the notional amount from fixed to floating or vice versa. They are not loans and the notional amount is never due. How exactly is fixing the interest rate on your existing variable rate debt a major concern, which is what the vast majority of these contracts do? I could make the argument that fixing variable rate debt now is actually a very positive thing. Capitalism - a Love Story, had similar logic flaws and its complete lack of understanding of how financial products work made me turn it off before it ended. If someone does not clearly understand the different between interest rate swaps, credit default swaps, currency swaps, and other swaps, they do not have the right to speak about derivative contracts. They are not qualified.
“they do not have the right to speak about derivative contracts. They are not qualified.”
I’m not sure that the people who create/handle this stuff are that qualified either.
As greedy (and possibly evil) as some of the perpetrators in our mess are/were, I doubt if they wanted the scale of consequences we are facing, since it brought a little rain on their parade and the inconvenience of having what they are up to being noticed.
Think they probably thought they were smart enough to keep the game going, rake in the money and not attract the disapproving attention of the sheeple.
“they do not have the right to speak about derivative contracts. They are not qualified.”
I’m not sure that the people who create/handle this stuff are that qualified either.
I agree. Of course the banker losers weren’t “qualified”. The bankers that made up this stuff couldn’t qualify themselves out of a paper bag. They failed. They are dumb. We bailed them out because they failed because they are dumb. And because they failed because they are dumb and we bailed out those sociopath, narcissistic, dumb losers we all DO “have the right to speak about derivative contracts.”
Why? Because we all own them now.
We bailed them out because they failed because…
Charles Foster Kane : “Rosebud”
Wall St: “TBTF”
“How exactly is fixing the interest rate on your existing variable rate debt a major concern, which is what the vast majority of these contracts do?”
It is a concern if the people who have bought the contracts and believe their interest rates are now fixed later discover that their counterparties cannot hold up their end of the contract. They are not merely dependent on their own counterparties, but the counterparties of their counterparties and so on and so on.
The huge increase in the notional amount likely indicates that these risks have been passed around many times (a lot of “reinsurance” as it were). To me, that looks like people not wanting to hold the wonderball when the low interest rate environment turns. And we don’t know who will hold it when the song is over. If we don’t know that, we don’t know if they will be able to pay. Which means that people who thought they were well hedged may not be unless the government does another bail out. If that leaves you shrugging your shoulder with a “so, what?” be my guest.
Googling “systemic risk” is an exercise left to the reader. Insurance is only as good as the insurer. At some level, we may well get to a point where government reaches the end of it’s ability/inclination/political will to be the “insurer of last resort.” At that point the game of “bagholder, bagholder, who’s the bagholder?” ceases to be a diverting exercise in speculation and turns very intense.
“Insurance is only as good as the insurer.”
I guess you never heard that it’s ‘turtles all the way down‘?
“It is a concern if the people who have bought the contracts and believe their interest rates are now fixed later discover that their counterparties cannot hold up their end of the contract.”
I would not let anyone I represent enter into a swap contract without ratings downgrade triggers and a Credit Support Annex with appropriate Exposure definitions. You simply break and retrade if your counterparty does not post collateral when required or gets downgraded. Case in point, I represented dozens of entities that had swaps with Lehman. Total notional amount: over a billions. Loss to my clients as a result of their bankruptcy: ZERO.
billions = billion. Point being the high notional amount is actually more indicative of low interest rates and currency fluctuations. Notional amount is not conclusive as to actual Exposure. As Polly pointed out, banks are hedged on the backside as well. Note that I am not talking about credit default swaps, which I refuse to do because of the systemic risk. The same is simply not true for many other types of swaps. Credit default swaps are a small fish in the derivative pool, but many people act as if a swap is a swap or a derivative is a derivative. It’s akin to saying we must kill all bacteria because some are lethal. Makes no sense if you understand the industry.
Delighted to know that your clients are properly covered. I doubt that is the case with everyone else’s clients. Did anyone lose money on swaps when Lehman went under? If so, then there is reason for some level of concern.
With respect interest rate swaps, the only real way people could have lost money is if they failed to terminate and retrade while Lehman was going down and also failed to arrange a retrade on the same terms on the early termination date resulting from the bankruptcy. Theoretically, a problem could happen if the non-Lehman counterparty was also having monetary problems so it could not do a retrade (i.e., its credit is at the point that no-one will enter into a new swap with them). This is a risk we disclose early on, and is not really different than the risk of acceleration of a loan in the case of financial covenant default. I agree you should not be entering into a swap if do not have swap counsel that can fully explain the transaction to you, and would never do a credit default swap (which we all can agree is a risk shell game).
Either this guy is a complete moron or he is trying to mislead people. Most derivative contracts are interest rate swaps (others are currency swaps which do nothing more than hedge foreign currency risk).”
interesting
There’s going to be a lot of pain in 2011.
Millions will see the UE benfits expire.
Millions will lose their jobs as the stim money runs out
Energy prices will continue to rise
Healthcare will be out of reach for more and more people
Cities across the country will go bankrupt, states will be unable to meet their obligations and will spend less on education and public assistance. My sister tells me that there’s talk of eliminating ESL programs altogether in the North Carolina K-12 system (not necessarily a bad thing, but it goes to show that even the sacred cows are nor exempt)
Healthcare will be out of reach for more and more people
Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I see a lot of opportunity in the low-cost health care sphere. Take, for example, the stories that we’ve posted here:
One of our longtime HBB-ers, In Colorado, has mentioned firing his family’s pricey dentist in favor of an outfit called Comfort Dental.
And you’ve read about my ditching the expensive doctors in favor of physician assistant-run clinic that doesn’t look down on people who don’t have much money. Ditto for my dumping my expensive dentist for a community college dental clinic.
Okay, that’s the “stories of HBB-ers” perspective. Now, for the macro perspective.
Imagine what could happen if a company like Southwest Airlines or GEICO, which are known for watching costs like a hawk, met health care. Or Wal-Mart, which already runs in-store pharmacies and optical shops.
Or Minute-clinic in CVS, for people who know what they have, but just need the illegible writing on the little pad.
I have glaucoma. I swear! Now give me some illegible writing on a little pad, man!
sfbubblebuyer
So does my husband. Are you aware of the new surgery called Canaloplasty?
He hasn’t had it, but we are aware of it, although it’s not quite mainstream yet. What an advancement!
He had a left eye Trabeculoplasty and a right eye Laser, but when those fail…
Actually, I don’t. It’s what Californians claim to have when they want a medical marijuana card. I’m sorry to hear about your husband. My grandma is losing her sight to glaucoma and, well, old age. At 99 they’re not going to be shooting any lasers or cutting on her at all.
sfbubblebuyer
Thanks for the clarification. I got worried for you. My husband’s “smok’in” and “special” chocolate chip cookie days are way behind him. He’s doing well, but thanks for the well wishes. Now, if they can just make his EE analytical mind relax a bit…
Both my wife and I have terrible eyes thanks to our coke-bottle glassed parents, so I keep an eye (har har) on how things are going with our parents’ vision to know what to watch out for in us. My father-in-law had a detached retina a few years back, and that wasn’t fun for anybody involved.
“Now, if they can just make his EE analytical mind relax a bit…”
Seems like those chocolate-chip cookies you mentioned would likely do a better job than any amount of well-wishing!
As health care premiums soar (this is just the beginning-wait until 2014), I see the future of Medical Bankruptcy reaching new heights. It’s not the office visits that will break everyone, it’s the catastrophic events. You can control many risk factors, but not all.
I was told by an Insurance Broker this morning that our 12% Kaiser increase is below the 25% of the industry. Oy Vey, who can afford an individual plan?
Last night’s Newshour covered the court cases about the individual mandate. They interviewed one of Obama’s health care people, who could only insist that a mandate to make people buy health insurance was Ok because it was “different” from making people buy other things. Not impressed. Then they interviewed the wingnut Virginia AG. He was clearly high off the recent judge’s ruling of unconstitutional. But even he slipped a couple times and said that individuals shouldn’t be forced to buy a “private” product.
“Private” product? Does that mean the forcing people to buy a “public” product is not unconstitutional? If the private mandate is unconstitutional and Dems control Congress in 2012 and 2014, and private companies continue to raise rates 25% each year…there may be hope yet for that public option.
“Private” product? Does that mean the forcing people to buy a “public” product is not unconstitutional? If the private mandate is unconstitutional and Dems control Congress in 2012 and 2014, and private companies continue to raise rates 25% each year…there may be hope yet for that public option.
I sure hope that the public option comes soon. Because I can’t afford to carry private, individual, doesn’t cover ssshhh! insurance much longer.
oxide
Interesting post, thank you.
Yeah, let’s see. I am now underemployed making squat compared to 3 years ago, and my husband is making 1/4 of his employed salary, as a solo guy. We’re paying out of pocket for an individual plan, barely surviving, and the govt is going to mandate we buy health insurance? Fook them!
The public option was part of the puzzle.
“Obama’s Deal” Online PBS Frontline, is all about the nefarious bill. Both parties have no answers, and the Lobbyists have won, was my take away.
Thanks for the one up on the Newshour show. I’ll watch the segment online tonight. I need some chocolate, I’m stressed. (Not to worry, I treadmill 45 minutes each night.)
Az Slim,
We’re in the same boat, and my husband has Glaucoma. He’s got most of the surgeries and treatments behind him, but they aren’t perm. His eye drops are expensive even with insurance, at $105 for just one eye drop, and there are mutiple.
Yet, criminal invaders are covered here in California for 100% free.
“I was told by an Insurance Broker this morning that our 12% Kaiser increase is below the 25% of the industry. Oy Vey, who can afford an individual plan?”
And I remember when Kaiser was considered “bargain basement healthcare”
“Does that mean the forcing people to buy a “public” product is not unconstitutional?”
Of course you can be forced to buy a “public” product; that is what we commonly refer to as “taxes”.
“Of course you can be forced to buy a “public” product; that is what we commonly refer to as “taxes”.”
This is true even with very specific products, like Social Security, and Medicare, etc.
I would gladly sign over my rights social security, and pay for my own disability insurance if it meant I could eliminate that 6.2% tax for good.
I would need to do the math on Medicare, but I would suspect that I would like to keep that one for the money I’m paying in (which is exactly why it will go bankrupt…the taxes projected to pay for it is not enough for the benefit).
Those on the right are declaring victory by taking out the mandate for people to buy insurance…does that mean they are in favor of a public option?
The way I see it is pretty simple:
If you believe that a civilized society should take care of its sick (I’m willing to bet a supermajority of Americans believe this), then the two questions are:
1. How do you get healthcare to the sick (insurance/doctors, or public plan/doctors)?; and
2. Who pays?
Under the Obama plan, the answers were:
1. Insurance/doctors with some new potential competitors/competition methods thrown in the mix;
2. Those who can afford it are responsible for their own insurance, and those who can’t get theirs paid by the wealthy through various taxing mechanisms.
Integral to that plan is forcing people who have the means to buy their own insurance.
Does the legal ruling mean that the only option therefore, if you believe we should take care of our sick, is a public option?
I wonder how the right feels about this…or are they going to come out and just say that we shouldn’t take care of our sick?
Awaiting:
The are NOT covered for free, and they most certainly do NOT get $100/drop eyedrops for free, unless they are samples. (And believe me I know from 100 freaking dollar per drop eyedrops.) You simply MUST come off this nonsensical meme, because it’s just plain silly.
HOWEVER, have you tried RxHope or any of the other sliding scale programs the pharma companies offer for the financially strapped? I’ve found them to be most generous to those who need help paying for expensive non-formulary drugs. You’ll need to fill out some paperwork and get your participating physician’s prescription, but several have been godsends to me over the last two years. Especially the eyedrop ones.
Good luck.
I don’t he’s talking about those people, Slim, but the ones who are already doing budget cash medicine or have barebones insurance.
Which there are already 10s of millions.
They will be forced out altogether.
And the less people who have access to medicine, the higher the chance of deadly epidemics.
Phoenix, AZ Metro Home Prices: “Double Dipping”
Metro Phoenix home prices are headed for a new low, if they haven’t already hit it.
Median prices for the sale of existing homes have been falling since June, when a federal homebuyer tax credit expired and an increase in foreclosures helped drive down prices that had been steady for nearly a year.
A new low would create a double dip in a market that has already been on a harrowing ride.
Prices rose to about $250,000 during the boom of 2004-06 and then collapsed amid a mortgage crisis and an economic recession. They bottomed out at $119,900 in April 2009, according to the Information Market, a real-estate research firm.
Home prices ticked up after that, and the median hovered around $130,000 until last summer. Then, they fell again.
At the end of November, Phoenix’s median resale-home price hit $121,500, the lowest it has been since April 2009. The median price measures single-family home sales as well as condominiums.
A median price below $119,900, the previous low, would constitute what observers call a double dip, and some measures of home prices signal that is already here:
- The Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service, a database run for real-estate agents showing homes for sale and the prices they sell for, analyzes pending purchase agreements scheduled to close in a given month and creates an index predicting future sales prices. That index shows the median home price falling to $115,000 in December.
- Housing analyst Mike Orr, publisher of the “Cromford Report,” tracks Phoenix-area home sales by price per square foot. His analysis showed the median per-square-foot price for a home sold in the region fell to $82.10 in October, the same level it was in April 2009. The price has been bumping along at $82 to $83 since then.
Orr says this dip won’t be nearly as dramatic as the previous decline.
“The sharp relapse (of home prices) fueled by the end of the tax credit is now over,” Orr said. “I expect a long, slow recovery in 2011.”
Metro Phoenix home prices are headed for a new low, if they haven’t already hit it.
Ain’t it a shame that real estate loans aren’t subject to margin calls, being that supposedly Kiyosaki “owns” 3,500 “properties” in the Phoenix area.
I visited a friend in Peoria, AZ a couple of months ago. (Peoria is just to the northwest of Phoenix.) She lives in a nice, quiet middle class neighborhood near the 101 freeway.
Even so, I was shocked by the number of see-through houses in her nabe. A few had foreclosure notices on their front doors, but a lot hadn’t gotten to that point yet.
A 3/2 spec in a nice neighborhood around Phoenix is still way over-priced.
Yes, and most of the “affordable” homes are junk.
Or attached product.
Really? The median price of a house in Phoenix is approx $120k now. Even if someone financed the whole thing, that’s less than $650 a month. With taxes and insurance you’re looking at maybe $800 a month. Median income is around $40k so that’s less than 25% of gross income.
I have to ask, if that’s not affordable then what is? Or maybe your definition of a “nice neighborhood” is significantly nicer than the median neighborhood?
Phoenix is back to late nineties pricing without adjusting for inflation. And interest rates are almost half of what they were then. Prices may drop further, but it’s hard to argue that Phoenix isn’t affordable at current levels.
Here in Tucson, we still have quite a few overpriced properties on the market. Take this one, for example. It’s a 580 square foot tool shed on steroids near the University of Arizona. Current asking price? $112k. And the sign has a “price reduced” rider on it.
BTW, our median house price is still about $20k over the median income x3 metric. The most recent census figures show that our local median income is around $37,600.
“lot size: 0.03 acres.”
At least there’s no yard to take care of…
“Phoenix is back to late nineties pricing without adjusting for inflation.”
Depends on the Neighborhood. I agree if you are speaking of Maricopa, Queen Creek, Buckeye, Surprise, etc. Nicer neighborhoods closer in still have pricing issues, but things are moving in the right direction.
“Prices may drop further, but it’s hard to argue that Phoenix isn’t affordable at current levels.”
Affordable is relative, in a pure sense of the word you may be correct if you are speaking of homes 40 miles out. Now you have to add in the price of Gas, the cost of maintenance, and the cost of utilities. How affordable does the home seem after calculating those costs especially if your job is less secure?
I could move 20 miles from work to a place like Maricopa and buy a 3500sf two story five bedroom home for 95k. Sounds great until you remember that you still live in the desert and those $600 electric bills and the $300 per month increase in fuel spending kind of take the fun out of the $650 mortgage payment.
Are you a Realtor?
If you’re waiting until the median income can afford a home in Paradise Valley, you’re going to be disappointed. Extreme examples work both ways.
And I have no idea what you’re doing to generate $600 electric bills, but I’ve lived in 2 houses over 3500 sf and never had an electric bill over $400. Total cost for heating and cooling runs closer to an average of $250 a month. More in the summer and less in the winter.
To generate an additional $300 a month in fuel spending you’d have to drive a 25 mpg car an additional 2,700 miles per month. Assuming 21 business days in a month, that’s an additional 130 miles a day. I guess that’s possible if you’re commuting from north Tucson to Phoenix.
I still see a lot of downward pressure on pricing in Phoenix, but that’s a different argument entirely. I stated that housing is currently affordable in Phoenix and you don’t have to go to Maricopa, Queen Creek or Buckeye to find it. I stand by that statement, but am certainly open to debate. The numbers in your examples are grossly exaggerated.
And no, I’m not a realtor. In fact I believe housing in Phoenix has further to fall. I know that’s the standard question for anyone who doesn’t think the price of housing should be zero, but I felt obliged to answer anyway.
AOL snaps up About.me four days after launch.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Just four days after it threw its doors open to the public, hot personal-dashboard start-up About.me is already off the market.
AOL (AOL) on Monday announced that it has scooped up the barely launched venture. Financial terms of the deal were undisclosed.
About.me enables users to create an online profile linking together their various social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. It’s like an online business card — with a built-in an analytics dashboard for tracking your social-networking interactions and influence.
In a blog post titled, “Booyah!,” cofounder Tony Conrad wrote that he’s thrilled to be joining AOL at an “opportune” time: “Aol is doing what great, sustainable business do every so often — they’re reinventing themselves.”
If only people spent as much time keeping track of their checkbook as they spend keeping track of their social networking…
Not necessary. Plenty of assets and getting little interest in both accounts!
For my friends in the peanut gallery:
http://www.match.com/profile/showprofile.aspx?ortp=1&TP=U&uid=ZUasnxHgrmLGfMo9e0oBgw==&lid=21
Agreed. I’ve been kinda-sorta hanging out on LinkedIn for about a year. It’s something I do when I have a spare minute here or a few moments there.
I’m always amazed by the number of people who appear to be spending their lives on LinkedIn. Quite a few of them are jobhunters. I can’t help but wonder if they’d be better off if they’d just start pounding the pavements and knocking on the doors of potential employers than spending their days, evenings, and weekends online.
The current “wisdom” for job hunters is to “network, network, network.”
When I was briefly unemployed last year my LinkedIn network (200 strong) proved to be pretty worthless. All I ever heard was “we’re not hiring” or “I also got laid off”.
I found my job out of sheer dumb luck. I had a “rare” skill that someone happened to need at the time, which pulled my resume to the top of the heap. This was a job from Monster.com. Of the nearly 100 jobs I applied for in that 5 week period it was the ONLY ONE for which I received a reply.
The time to network is while you’re still employed. Do good work, go to meetings and show off your good work, get your face out there and say something clever to prove you’re not an idiot. That’s the only reason I’m employed now.
A few years ago, the “wisdom” for jobhunters was to interview for information. As in, chat up people at companies where you hoped to work in hopes that they’d drop some job nuggets in your path.
This was the approach popularized in Richard Nelson Bolles’ book, What Color is Your Parachute? And it got done to death.
Case in point: A few years ago, I got a call from a local job retraining center. They wanted to send people out to my workplace to interview me for information. I told the caller that I didn’t have any employees or plans to hire any. Believe me, that call ended in a New York minute.
Ditto oxide’s comment. Almost all the professional jobs I got were through my network.
Now my network consists of guys who like to play golf or tennis or both.
Slim, one would think so, but this here world is not like it WAS when a good number of us started out. Back then, companies had a physical presence that was more…umm …palpable. You COULD, if you were inclined, ride up and down the elevator all day to observe the pattern of people getting off and coming on at each floor. You could network your way in through the proverbial elevator conversation.
No more. Unless you are somebody’s buddy, and they hand your resume in to the hiring manager WHILE you simultaneously put their name in as a referral source on the ubiquitous online submission, you are buffeted about, in Brownian motion, around the canyons of virtual hell.
Once during this online era, I actually did crack the code to find the PERSON behind the sixteen digit gobbledy-gook on the online posting. It took scores of phone calls, all of them valley flying, over a period of days. Social engineering. Once I tracked down the person, I got to go in for an interview. Once I came in for the interview, I got the job. Believe it or not, that posting was on Monster, and was available for viewing for a total of FOUR hours. It was with one of the top three management consulting firms (another shibboleth dismantled), +100K bank, ten years ago. I subsequently asked about the four hour phenomenon, and found out that the hapless guy whose code I cracked received over 1000 responses over the course of that four hours.
I’m with NYCDJ. The screeners are there to screen you OUT. And if the screening is done using software with paper shuffling outsourced to Chindia, you are cooked.
I wonder how many have actually scored The Precious using LinkedIn etc? At this age, having grown into cynicism, I simply do not believe that your peers have any good reason to link you up. Of course, I’m a Luddite, therefore inclined to take this position. I just don’t WANT to be identified, cited, friended, tracked or found. Would put a lot of energy into eliminating my electronic footprint if I thought it could be done.
Thankfully, working in what my handlers would like to believe is a secure environment, embracing a low profile is not a detriment. I’d be like a deer in the headlights if I ever had to make believe I was an extravert again.
“If only people spent as much time keeping track of their checkbook as they spend keeping track of their social networking… “
Among other thing.
I’m announcing an IPO, and the HBBers get to get in on the ground floor.
I’m developing software that links together your About.me accounts, with a built in analytics dashboard to track how much time you waste on social networking.
I figure that this idea is worth a couple of million bucks. So buy now. Buy often.
Foreclosures in Most States Bypass Judges, Easing Evictions. (Bloomberg)
All 50 U.S. states are investigating whether banks and loan servicers used false documents and signatures to justify hundreds of thousands of foreclosures.
Two years before dementia forced her to move into a nursing care facility, Dorothy Halstien obtained a $73,000 loan from Washington Mutual Inc. secured by her house on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle.
In 2007, a year after she moved, the bank hired a trustee, Quality Loan Service Corp. of Washington, to foreclose. Halstien’s home was sold off for $83,000, even though her guardian had arranged a sale for about $150,000 more. The party that bought the house out of foreclosure later sold it for $235,000, according to a suit filed in state court in Seattle.
More than two-thirds of foreclosures occur in the 27 states where there’s no mandatory court supervision, according to Christopher Dodd, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.
Actually, considering just how amazingly cr@ppy the Mortgage Infestrial Complex has been with the paperwork, the truly sad thing is that in the vast majority of foreclosure cases, the FB simply hasn’t been making the payments agreed to. Sadly, despite a few shocking and well publicized examples very few people have been foreclosed upon in error.
•The population in Onondaga County has dropped by roughly 3,500 people since the year 2000
•Average household income is $50,000
•66 percent of the population owns their home
•Average commute to work is about 19 minutes
•17,000 more women live in the County than men.
source link to come
I wish we could get the income numbers w/o the city figures. There are obviously huge pockets of abject poverty that really skew the income numbers. I know the greater Syracuse population alone was supposed to be about 100k people so for all the online gripers saying they’re leaving, I don’t think 3500 less people in the whole county over the course of a decade is a huge loss.
Most important: 66% own their own home even with the poverty in the city. It might not be everyone’s dream home but they own something. Part of that is probably because there are not that many livable rentals available here especially in the burbs where you hear the opinion that they bring down the area. Another reason: it’s my opinion that the burbs are heavy on the retirees and pre-retiree ages who entered the housing market prior to the credit bubble run-ups.
“I wish we could get the income numbers w/o the city figures.”
New York State reports the state’s unemployment rate and job growth excluding New York City every month. The idea being that as long as the rest of the state is OK, no worries.
The unemployment rate in the rest of the state is typically well below the U.S. average.
WT Eco,
You’re not counting the chronically underemployed/underemployed. Your assertion that unemployment in upstate is lower than the US avg is plain old false.
Carrie, upstate has been depopulating for decades now.
WT, these figures are Onondaga County. What I’m looking for is total countywide numbers minus the city of Syracuse where there are pretty high numbers of people in what I”d call severe poverty. In other words, I dont’ think $50k median income represents whats going on in the burbs. Past numbers put the burbs inthe $70ks but that was pre 2008. Plus I think people in the burbs have very good tax accountants if you get my drift.
Exeter, my point is 3500 people lost over a decade isn’t a big deal for this county. But then again I suppose it really boils down to the taxable base that just walked out the door vs who came in.
Like I”ve posted before I’ve been meeting a lot of people who are here w/the energy sector. They get paid quite well and dont’ expect to be hurt in a downturn. They’ve got job confidence. I’ve been meeting people who recently sold private companies to the big guys and well…..just don’t have to worry about working period. I suppose the medical staff that just got hired in the two expansions probably feel their jobs are safe too. So they came in while the blue collars left for the south. I’d be interested in looking at income tax receipts from the burb zips and see which direction they’re heading.
I did at some point pull up numbers of jobs in various sectors from the state web sites but can’t remember how granular the data were but those numbers paint a clearer picture.
Well Carrie I like you and all that but you’re wearing fantasy spectacles.
US population growth was 10% for 2000-2010 and Onondaga County population fell by almost 1%. That 11% spread speaks for itself. The secular post industrial decline of NY continues. I can choose to rub shoulders with whatever class I want but when I cherrypick the minority group of “business owners”, etc, I’d be misrepresenting reality.
Where I live has been a magnet for NE migration, and especially from New York, for decades and their stories are always the same: it’s dying there.
Most important: 66% own their own home even with the poverty in the city
However, how many of the 66% have “equity” loans? What’s is the sit-u-ation of a person holding a “lost-job” income salary & a “put-equity-to-work” loan?
Geithner states that a government program kept housing prices up. How is manipulating asset prices anything other than central planning? I realize the stock market is manipulated, both by the government and (see the “flash crash”) by bigger players. It seems outrageous to prevent the real estate market from un-warping, keeping prices high through use of tax money.
Geithner Says U.S. Plan Helped Prevent Foreclosures
By Ian Katz - Dec 16, 2010 1:38 PM ET
The Treasury’s Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, “has helped catalyze the market to provide millions of loan modifications,” Geithner said today in testimony to the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP. Obama administration policies “helped put a floor under housing prices” even if the real estate market “remains weak,” he said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-16/geithner-says-foreclosure-prevention-plan-spurred-loan-market.html
Obama administration policies “helped put a floor under housing prices” even if the real estate market “remains weak,” he said.
Unfortunately, that floor has some major problems with the joists beneath it. In a word or two, those joists are rotting away. Something called Mr. Market has been gnawing on them.
Filed under: Focus & prioritized
“TALF/LALF/GALF/BALF/etc = $12,000,000,000,000
$12t/$700bn = 120/7 = 17 times as much bailout money directly sourced from the Fed compared to from Congress (TARP)”
Previously:
“QE2 is largely a waste of time.”
Federal Reserve Inc. (aka, SCOTUS “person”) = “TrueWizardCorporation™”
Dec 2010 score:
Bungee-cord Theory = 2
Rope-around-the-Throat = 0
That’s just the way it’s gonna be
Mr. Bear/Cantankerous-Bomb-Thrower/withered Green Shoots/MegaBank mortgage kudzu/Federal Reserve Corporation muckrakerAZ Slim…;-)“has helped catalyze the market to provide millions of loan modifications,”
Show me the money!
It’s slowly dawning on me why this fellow has such a hard time getting his taxes right.
“…has helped catalyze the market to provide millions of loan modifications,…”
…
“It now looks, the report says, as though HAMP will prevent only 700,000 to 800,000 foreclosures, far below the Administration’s target of 3 to 4 million and a far cry from preventing the 8 to 13 million foreclosures expected by the end of 2012.”
“…has helped catalyze the market to provide millions of loan modifications,…”
My father has worked in the catalytic branch of chemical engineering for almost 60 years. If his stuff worked as poorly as that HAMP market catalytic process, he’d be out of work.
I am under the impression that it is illegal to lie on your tax return, but maybe there is no law against grossly distorting statistics when standing on a bully pulpit and speaking into a MSM megaphone?
Let¹s say that I¹m in my twilight years and thanks to a lifetime of hardwork and good investing I end up with $10 million. If I go to Las Vegas and blow it all on gambling, women and booze, the government will leave me alone. But if I decide to give it to my children, the government wants 45% off the top. Apparently this makes complete sense [to government bureaucrats] but it makes absolutely no sense to me.
Let’s say that Rockefeller, through investment, inheritence, and sitting on dozens of company boards winds up with 10 billion. If he donates it all to charity, the government leaves him alone. If he wants to give it to his children so they can turn it into 100 billion, and their children into 1 trillion, the government wants 45%.
Massive wealth is a different beast than what one person can achieve through a lifetime of hard work. It can build and destroy businesses, affecting the lives of thousands. And it grows faster than inflation until it falls into the hands of somebody completely incompetent. Then it gets picked clean by… other large fortunes with more competent managers. It doesn’t go out to the little guys.
No estate tax could potentially lead to 99% of the wealth belonging to less than 1% of the population, destroying any semblance of economic opportunity.
My family will get hit by the estate tax at any exemption level currently proposed, and it’s a good thing.
I personally know two individuals here in OR that started with nothing and are worth over
20 million and 100 million. Both donate
heavily to local charities and the needy.
All of their children are in their businesses and have contributed to their success. Tell me why their children should be so penalized?
I just told you. The rule of law for all men, not just the rich, is what allows economic opportunity. If you allow massive wealth to concentrate into few hands, power follows, and you won’t have friends who go from nothing to millions. You’ll have serfs and a tiny landed gentry.
The estate tax is the price the rich pay to keep the rioters with pitchforks away from their gates.
And you cannot EVER convince me that the children of these millionaires having to inherit less inter-generational wealth is more of a penalty to the kids than the ones who are inheriting inter-generational poverty. The wealthy kids have massive head starts in education and operating capital.
If your friend’s kids were instrumental in those businesses, they have already been compensated for that work, and would presumably be partners and already own part of the business.
My grandfather was rags to riches, and it afforded my family a lot of advantages. I don’t feel ‘poorer’ because his estate was taxed at 55%, and I won’t feel poorer when my grandma goes and what’s left is taxed at whatever rate is set then.
This meme that “you are taxed when you die” needs to die itself.
If you blow that $10 million in Vegas, that $10 million isn’t “blown” into thin air. It is INCOME for the casinos/prostitutes, and the government takes taxes off the top, like any company revenue. Similarly, when you die, that $10 million doesn’t disappear into the grave. It becomes IMCOME for your children, and the government takes taxes off the top. Inheritances are INCOME, and should be taxed like any other income.
As to the kids working to make you successful, how would that be different from *my* working for you and making you successful? If I do equal work as the kids in your company, why should I penalized with taxes and they go scot-free, just because they were lucky with who their parents were?
And it grows faster than inflation until it falls into the hands of somebody completely incompetent.
Sorry, I disagree. While your argument in
theory is correct, in real life it doesn’t work.
I’ve know several people who have inherited
vast fortunes, read 5 mil+after taxes, and
they’ve lost it due to their own hubris and
lack of financial acumen.
The vast Kennedy trust that enable the family to do so much charity work is diluted through numbers with each generation. Their net is decreasing while the trust might actually be
gaining.
Well you have to admit that the Kennedys can do numbers.
“Windfall.”
Dictionary. Find one. Use it.
Yes I know that it’s technically an “inheritance,” but a beneficial inheritance is also considered a “windfall.”
And you cannot EVER convince me that the children of these millionaires having to inherit less inter-generational wealth is more of a penalty to the kids than the ones who are inheriting inter-generational poverty. The wealthy kids have massive head starts in education and operating capital.
If your friend’s kids were instrumental in those businesses, they have already been compensated for that work, and would presumably be partners and already own part of the business.
Now that whole argument was well put.
At what point did lying to the American people become fashionable? I remember from my childhood how shocked and appalled the American people were over Nixon’s lies. Even Bill (”I did not have sex with that woman”) Clinton’s lies were generally viewed as repugnant. But somehow, the Million Mortgage Modification March lies go ignored by the MSM. Go figure.
Dumb question of the day:
Do First Amendment Rights include the right to lie to the American people?
Disception & dissembling have become as American as apple pie. There are millions of mortgage applications to prove it.
“At what point did lying to the American people become fashionable?”
Since the beginning.
While Ben Franklin had many admirable accomplishments, he is also known as the father of “yellow journalism.”
Filed under: “MORE! MORE! MORE!” …and yes we have do have family members serving in the front trenches! In fact, some are even now lost somewhere in Manhattan
“A 2006 report by Public Citizen and United for a Fair Economy — both nonprofits opposed to concentrated wealth — identified 18 families financing a coordinated campaign to repeal the estate tax altogether. Among the leading names behind that push: the Gallos (E&J Gallo Winery), the Kochs (Koch Industries), the Mars’ (Mars Inc.), the Waltons (Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500)), and the Wegmans (Wegmans Food Markets). At the time, the report estimated the families’ collected net worth to be at least $185 billion, roughly equal to the market cap of Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) today.
Several of the families organized their efforts through an association called the Policy and Taxation Group. Lobbying disclosure laws don’t require the group to list its members, and as such, it hasn’t disclosed any of them since 1999. But disclosures show the group itself remains active, with two hired-gun lobbying firms on its payroll this year.”
The Kochs, eh? Surprise, surprise. Look for the Tea Party to take up the inheritance tax issue with a vengeance. And I bet ‘Reason’ magazine will come out with some ‘reasonable’ arguments against inheritance taxes, too. The Kochtopus demands a return on its investments.
Bond Sales Freeze as Mutual Fund Outflows Jump to Record: New Issue Alert
Corporate bond sales froze yesterday after investors withdrew the largest dollar amount on record from investment-grade U.S. bond mutual funds last week.
The outflows were $2.5 billion in the week ending Dec. 15 amid rising Treasury yields, according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report citing data from research firm EPFR Global. High-yield mutual funds had $222 million of inflows, following $533 million in the earlier period, according to the report.
“Negative net flows in high grade funds tend to follow large sell-offs in rates, which has occurred since the beginning of this month,” analysts Oleg Melentyev and Mike Cho wrote in the Dec. 16 report.
This has the potential to be huge, gigantic, enormous. Thanks for finding it.
Could you explain why, Polly? This isn’t my area.
It is only a hint, but the business world works on easy access to cash though investment rated corporate bonds. You may recall hearing people talk about how there is tons of money sloshing around the corporate world right now? Companies have been issuing bonds in this low interest rate environment and getting cash to sit on. Well, selling the bonds, doesn’t effect the rate the corporations are paying on the bonds they have already issued, but it does indicate what they will have to pay to borrow more in the future.
A lot of the rosey forcasts for corporations are based on the idea that they will be able to borrow money at rock bottom prices forever. This is an indication that the low interest rates (almost no risk premium over sovereign debt) won’t last forever. Or even that their ability to borrow this low was a bubble after a fashion (if you bought bonds when they were paying 7% and now they are paying 5%, your 7% bonds are worth a lot more on the secondary market). If people have decided it is time to cash out their profits on these bonds, then the low interest rate environment for corporations may be coming to an end.
Since they have a lot of cash in reserve, a change in the interest rates won’t have an immediate effect on the actual companies, but this is the stuff that analysts adore. Small information which may predict big changes down the road. No one wants to miss the signal, so they all tend to over interpret it. Fun times.
Thank you polly, I think? It’s still a bit confusing, but i gather that this is a hint that interest rates are going to go up, despite QEII etc. This is a good thing for savers.
Many of us here look around at our profligate contempories and conclude that “good for savers,” equals “good for us.” Certainly with something like 5 times my annual income in combined savings and 401K balance I have more to gain than most of my friends. But that is NOTHING compared to the truly wealthy. I’m sometimes concerned that I’m like those want a repeal of the inheritance tax because they might just have enough saved to hit the bottom end of the exemption, while never realizing just how much the really rich would benefit from a repeal.
ps: Thanks for the explanation polly.
All this is why I wish I understood currency trading better, polly.
Companies are not restricted to U.S. funding, as you well know.
I also wonder the extent to which companies are using their cash to play the commodities game - as a means of hedging against currency, bonds and interest rates.
Thank you very much for the explanation!
I feel like a member of the herd. I dumped my good grade corporate bond ETFs last week, and put some of the proceeds into a junk bond ETF instead. Who would have thought that so many would read the news and come to the same conclutions?
I feel like a member of the herd.
On the dairy farm, we call that a “crowd gate” it’s used for,…oh, never mind.
I dumped my good grade corporate bond ETFs last week, and put some of the proceeds into a junk bond ETF instead”
A bet the economy is recovering looks like many folks are betting this way
Good on you, DennisN! That ole electrical engineering acumen at play! (Personally, I believe that the electrical engineers are the ones who see through the BS and understand the metadata. Belief is grounded in the experience of working with many of them over the years. They could always think through the garbage floating around).
No offense to anybody of other persuasions. There’s something very clear about the thinking of people who have followed the lure of the electromagnetic spectrum, IMHO.
“Corporate bond sales froze yesterday after investors withdrew the largest dollar amount on record from investment-grade U.S. bond mutual funds last week.”
Isn’t this exactly where the buyer of last resort steps in with QE2 funding to pinch hit for sidelined private investors?
Futures Rise on Deals, Positive Upward Momentum- AP
Positive momentum is driving stocks higher amid another spate of corporate deal-making.
They could also title it
Low volume holiday trading allows for more manipulation.
If they keep expanding the program, I may qualify for a food stamp credit card soon.
Food stamp use spikes: One in seven rely on them. cnnmoney
The use of food stamps has increased dramatically in the U.S., as the federal government ramps up basic assistance to meet the demands of an increasingly desperate population.
The number of food stamp recipients increased 16% over last year. This means that 14% of the population is now living on food stamps. That’s about 43 million people, or about one out of every seven Americans.
In some states, like Tennessee, Mississippi, New Mexico and Oregon, one in five people are receiving food stamps. Washington, D.C. leads the nation, with 21.5% of the population on food stamps.
“The high unemployment rate caused the high participation rate,” said Dottie Rosenbaum from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank.
But it’s not just the nation’s stubbornly high unemployment rate of 9.8% that’s driving the increase in food stamp use. Some states are expanding their definitions of poverty to include more people.
I just looked at the requirements in Colorado. If you are single your monthly income must be less than $900 per month. A family of 4: $2000 per month.
Sound to me like you have to be poor to get food stamps (or be a cheater).
Maybe, just maybe, more people are applying for them because more people are poor?
Quick calc: You could have a McJob full time (21 day x 8 hr x $7.15) and still make $1200 a month, and not qualify for food stamps.
(you know, that sounds almost doable. If you lived in a cheap apartment with a roommate and worked 3/4 time at McD’s within walking distance and applied for food stamps, you could almost live comfortably in flyover country…just don’t get sick.)
That is what medicaid is for……get sick your income drops and WALLA you’re qualified!
just don’t get sick.)
Viola.
Oh, my dyslexic fingers just mocked me for mocking aNYCdj! Hoist by my own petard!
Viola is from Twelfth Night, not Hamlet.
Viola is from Twelfth Night, not Hamlet.
Damn that Yorick for telling me otherwise! He’s got a real empty head!
The closer you get to the threshold, the fewer foodstamps you get.
My mom once briefly qualified for foodstamps when her work hours were reduced. She received the princely sum of $40 per month (this was just a few years ago).
Been thinking about your comment since this AM, In Colorado.
I think it would be a really interesting exercise to see how far $40/mo would go. I’m contemplating trying it after the holidays, though I’m not sure my gf would go for it.
Beans and potatoes are both pretty darn cheap, though. Would I end up with deficiencies? It would be interesting to know.
I would probably lose some weight, but that would also be good for me.
Hmmm….
I did a similar experiment a couple years ago. If I looked for sales and was VERY careful, I could almost eat well on $105 a month. I depended heavily on canned soup, Lean Cuisine, and one home-cooked meal a day with protein and fresh vegetables. The main problem was lack of protein and fresh vegetables. Of course, the poor would probably not be as scrupulous as I was.
If you went the Dollar Menu route, it would very easy to eat on $100 a month but you’d literally make yourself sick, as we saw in Supersize Me.
$40 won’t go far, but the idea is that you’re making enough money that you should be able to put in $60 yourself.
For reference, my daily berry fruit smoothie (250 calories, packed with nutrition) costs $1.50 to $2 each, depending on whether I use organic yogurt, the whey powder with stevia, and u-pick berries.
“The number of food stamp recipients increased 16% over last year. This means that 14% of the population is now living on food stamps. That’s about 43 million people, or about one out of every seven Americans.”
They need to compare them against an iPhone list.
They need to compare them against a
iPhoneGoldenmanSucks “X-mas Bonus” list.We have a winner.
Homes at Risk, and No Help From Lawyers ~ nytimes
In California, where foreclosures are more abundant than in any other state, homeowners trying to win a loan modification have always had a tough time.
Now they face yet another obstacle: hiring a lawyer.
Sharon Bell, a retiree who lives in Laguna Niguel, southeast of Los Angeles, needs a modification to keep her home. She says she is scared of her bank and its plentiful resources, so much so that she cannot even open its certified letters inquiring where her mortgage payments may be. Yet the half-dozen lawyers she has called have refused to represent her.
“They said they couldn’t help,” said Ms. Bell, 63. “But I’ve got to find help, because I’m dying every day.”
Lawyers throughout California say they have no choice but to reject clients like Ms. Bell because of a new state law that sharply restricts how they can be paid. Under the measure, passed overwhelmingly by the State Legislature and backed by the state bar association, lawyers who work on loan modifications cannot receive any money until the work is complete. The bar association says that under the law, clients cannot put retainers in trust accounts.
“Sharon Bell, a retiree who lives in Laguna Niguel, southeast of Los angeles, needs a modification to keep her home.”
Let’s take a look at this statement for a bit, shall we?
Does she needs a modification because the market price of her home has declined or does she need a modification because she cannot meet the payments?
The decline of market price has really nothing to do with her being able to make her payments or not; Her income is the deciding factor of whether she can make her payments or not.
But she is retired. But how sensible is it to be retired when one has a big house payment that they cannot make?
This person is presented as a victim, but is she really a victim or is she just stupid?
Or does she needs one because of medical problems or some other emergency in her family?
But I would have to agree that her best recourse is jingle mail.
Combo, she could stupidly have allowed herself to get canned during this structural dislocation we have come to call the Great Recession. Stupid, stupid woman. And then, noting that she had not been able to replace her income whilst looking for a job over the run of her UE income, decided that NOW was the time to retire and collect SS.
The math works. Let go in 2007, let’s say towards the end of the year (at 60). You remember there was great uncertainty: UE and Baltic Dry Index (among others) were showing creepy trends. H.R.6867 - Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2008 signed by Prez on November 20th, so maybe our friend only had a couple of months of babysitting jobs and can collecting. She is 61 at the end of 2008.
UE extensions pass through the end of 2009, at which point she is 62. She has gone through 20 months of UE (86 weeks).
In 2010 she has thirteen weeks of UE left, and takes it till April, at which point it is clear to her that the CA economy is not going her way on the job hunt. She has now gone two years without medical insurance. She can’t go on Medicaid / Medical because of the house. Maybe she decides that to get some food on the table she’d better take SS at the reduced rate.
Whoopsie. SS is less than UE. She starts looking for a mod before the summer. And is unsuccessful.
I’m not saying your conjecture is wrong, Combo. But we all know that her generation was raised to be a Mommy first, and to work for pin money. Therefore, if all she got was the house, in any divorce settlement - in her generation, wimmin didn’t up and buy houses on their own - and she didn’t sell it during the bubble, her options have been closed off. She’s got no savings - been working for peanuts for only part of her life because she was not brought up to be paranoid, and determined to be an economic survivor, as I was. She is now destitute, with an underwater white elephant. Perhaps due to nothing more than the tide of fortune, and having bought the Betty Crocker image she grew up with post-WWII. Hopefully her ex was at least a steady earner, and that they were married for more than five years (or is it ten?)
Combo, not all of us are above average.
I’m tellin’ ya, if I had not been raised to be economically self sufficient, with a touch of paranoia, I would be looking at myself here, in a decade. I have a feeling that quite a few trophy wives are feeling a tad uncomfortable about now, depending on their vintage. Most self respecting men will not be chained by fear.
Why wouldn’t a lawyer take on a case where they aren’t paid until the end? Don’t the ambulance chasers do this all the time? Maybe the lawyer knows that the FB won’t be granted a modification and will therefore have no money at the end to pay the lawyer.
“Why wouldn’t a lawyer take on a case where they aren’t paid until the end? ”
Even they have to have some assets/cash flow to keep their office open and the lights on, especially if they take a lot of cases on contingency.
Tort lawyers who take cases on a contingency-fee basis generally only accept cases where there’s a high probability of winning. Then then take maybe 30% of the large settlement.
Lawyers who help with mortgage modifications have no expectation of a big payday. All they will get is a few hours work at their hourly rate.
Sounds about right. Because “screwing up on the paperwork,” /= “FBs should get their house for free.” There’s a close to zero chance that the borrower will get the house in the end. Rather the bank gets punished by allowing the borrower to live an additional 6-12 months without a mortgage. That doesn’t equal a great payday for the attourney’s representing them.
Contrary to popular belief, most lawyers will NOT work on contingency.
Ever.
This is why Ms. Bell, a retiree, thinks she needs a mortgage restructuring….
That group includes Ms. Bell, who owned two properties free and clear and then gave in to a friend’s urging to “put your money to work.” That friend was an agent, and soon Ms. Bell owned two more properties and was making unsecured loans.
The loans went bad, the investments went bust, and Ms. Bell is trying to salvage her home.
The real problem for lawyers…
The problem for lawyers is that even a simple modification, in which the loan is restructured so the borrower can afford the monthly payments, is a marathon, putting off their payday for months if not years. If the bank refuses to come to terms, the client may file for bankruptcy. Then the lawyer will never be paid.
IIUC bankruptcy lawyer’s fees are senior to most other secured creditors, so they get paid. Maybe that new statute should have been written with something like that in mind.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/business/21foreclosure.html
Notice the story never discussed where her “friend” the realtor is now….
That group includes Ms. Bell, who owned two properties free and clear and then gave in to a friend’s urging to “put your money to work.” That friend was an agent, and soon Ms. Bell owned two more properties and was making unsecured loans.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but if the person has the word “agent” in his/her job title, it’s unlikely that he/she will be a friend of mine.
a retiree who lives in Laguna Niguel,
southeast of Los Angeles,in “THE O.C.”“Location! location! location!”
Basically this mother of an SOB got greedy and leveraged herself up the yin yang.
She then went bust.
Since her own home’s mortgage is not a purchase-money mortgage, the banks may chose a judicial foreclosure and go after her for the deficiency.
No wonder no lawyer will touch her case.
Too bad the NY Times isn’t smart enough to understand what’s going on here.
Too bad the NY Times isn’t smart enough to understand what’s going on here.
Speaking as someone who worked on a college newspaper with people who are now in high positions at various papers, including the Times, I’m not surprised. When it comes to things involving numbers, reporters and their editors often miss the boat.
It won’t get any better. All the special little snowflakes know they shouldn’t have to strain their brain juices over math and finance when they don’t even LIKE it and it isn’t what they want to DO with their lives…
I have two relatives who are both J-school graduates from San Jose State. I once asked one exactly what was the curriculum requirements for graduation. I expected it to be heavy in history, politics, and economics. Instead it was mostly touchy-feely creative writing classes.
When I was a physics major at UC, there were about 25 required courses in math and physics required for graduation. No party school for this guy.
There was an article in the Washington Post which confused the Jet Stream and the Gulf Stream. I forwarded it to my friend in NOAA with the note “no science courses required for a journalism degree.”
That article which confused the Gulf/Jet stream was in the NY Times. I personally sent a prompt email to the author, who quickly caused a correction to appear in the online NY Times. He thanked me by return email. But the paper never noted that the story contained a correction.
Maybe the WaPo posted the earlier version.
Well the one I was referring to was a few years ago. And the WaPo is the only dead tree edition on MY porch in the morning.
Yeah this was some time ago - has it been a couple of years ago? How time flies when you are broke.
Staffing Industry Hiring Revenue Surges as Jobs Remain Scarce
By Steve Matthews and Anthony Feld (bloomibergi)
“Waste Management Inc. turned to a staffing company, Seaton Corp., to recruit 5,500 permanent employees this year, cutting annual hiring expenses for the trash hauler by $1.9 million.
Using Seaton has been “much more scalable and flexible for me than to have to find recruiters and get them on board, which may take weeks, if not months,” said Brent McCombs, Waste Management’s vice president of talent. It’s a “relatively risk- free way” to expand.
While U.S. hiring by private companies last month was the weakest since January at 50,000, the staffing industry is experiencing a boom in demand as employers retool their workforces to be more flexible and reduce expenses.”
————-
Rather than hire HR to do the hiring, I guess companies are contracting out to a hiring company to do the hiring…
And the hiring company can have a pool of temporary part-time laborers on hand - many, many more than they need, of course, so as to make sure the laborers remain hungry for work.
And regarding the cost of the paying the temps company benifits…
It’s a “relatively risk- free way” to expand.
And I would assume, a relatively risk free way to contract.
In the end, everyone will be either a corporate executive or a self-employed, 1099-paid (mostly part-time) worker.
Maybe Waste Management can just hire another trash hauler to collect the garbage. That’ll get the headcount down.
In my burg we have 3 trash haulers:
The City (the lion’s share)
Waste Management (they most collect outside of city limits)
Gallegos (a local firm)
I was reading in Seattle, WA trash collectors were paid $125K / YR for their services in total compensation.
Our guys get about $20/hr. This is flyover country.
Do they have health insurance?
Maybe it’s time for a career change.
The 125K included the value of insurance and retirement contributions, but hell I cannot make that writing software and I had to go to College!
I doubt even phrenologists could pull down that kind of bling!
It’s a bumpy road for phrenologists these days.
“Do they have health insurance?”
Yup. No pension though, just a 401K (Pensions are for Cops and Firefighters out here).
Here is an intersting req here in my neck of the woods:
Job Title: Journey Meter Technician
Closing Date/Time: Fri. 01/07/11 11:59 PM Mountain Time
Salary: $23.74 - $35.62 Hourly
$49,389.00 - $74,083.00 Annually
Job Type: Full-time
Location: Service Center, 200 N. Wilson Ave, Loveland, Colorado
“The incumbent in this position performs installing, testing, programming and repairing of various types of electrical meters including power revenue and research meters on residential, commercial and industrial installations. Reviews metering installation requirements and specifies all associated equipment. Installs all associated current transformers, voltage transformers, meters, remote communication equipment and wiring; checking and monitoring customers’ voltages and loads, and extracting, deciphering and analyzing the recorded information.”
“Four (4) year minimum apprenticeship program related to Journey Meter training and certification for journey status, recognized by the United States Department of Labor. Satisfactory completion of an accredited Journey Meter Apprentice program. Successful completion of Journey Meter Test.
Minimum four (4) years of work experience in the electrical metering field; one year journey level experience preferred. Must possess a valid driver’s license.”
There were many, many stories of this nature circa 1991-2. Fresh out of school, I remember them very well. Then came the Internet and the subsequent booms/bubbles.
By 1997, when hiring on with a large airline, my peers were again back to thinking that thirty year jobs were “in the bag”. Only a few of the older guys, the ones that got caught up in the big airline BKs, shook their heads when a new hire pulled up in a brand new pick up a week into the job.
So here we are again? What will play the cavalry this time? When will it arrive? We already know that for many it’s already too late.
as employers retool their workforces to be more flexible and reduce expenses.
Billion dollar personal family wealth Wal-Tart copy cat strategy
retool = machine
re-utilize = human
If you demand that the worker behaves like a machine than I reckon “retool” is the “wright”word in this sentence.
Brought to you by the people who took the “person” out of personnel and gave us the “human resources” department.
While U.S. hiring by private companies last month was the weakest since January at 50,000, the staffing industry is experiencing a boom in demand as employers retool their workforces to be more flexible and reduce expenses.”
And, at the same time, employers of this flexible workforce are baffled as to why their employees have no loyalty.
And, at the same time, employers of this flexible workforce are baffled as to why their employees have no loyalty.
Not baffled so much as just annoyed that it keeps getting harder and harder to sucker them into giving up a hamburger today for some money on or around…or at least soon after Tuesday.
Speaking of which, stock options for the lower ranks have been done away with and now we get RSUs. I haven’t figured out which method of screwing that these will enhance, but I notice that if you no longer work there you immediately lose them. I think vested options had at least some value to the terminated employee even if they were underwater…I think?
The RSU’s should vest as well, like options. You shouldn’t lose your vested RSU’s. Our company just switched over to it, and it’s usually done because a company can only have so much stuck floating around for employee comps, and you can give fewer RSUs than Options for the same amount of ‘bonus’. Unfortunately, vesting an RSU is a taxable event, unlike options which only cause tax events when you exercise (and afterwards, sell) them.
What are “RSUs”?
Restricted Stock Units.
Basically, the company gives you, say, 400 RSU’s that vest over 4 years. What that means is that at year 1, you get 100 shares of stock free and clear, then pay taxes on it. If the price of the stock is 10 bucks, you’re getting 1000 bucks of stock, and so pay taxes like you got a 1000 bonus. There’s no ‘underwater’ on RSUs. If you keep working there, you vest the rest of the shares, paying taxes each time, but being able to sell or keep the shares.
So…you get taxed at the current value the moment they vest, and then later when you do finally sell them do you get some tax money back if you end up selling for less? I know I know…stock always goes up :-).
No, you never get money back! Them taxes is GONE!
It’s the same way with options. If you exercise your right to buy, you pay taxes on the difference between the grant and the current price. If it drops before you sell, tough! That’s why so many people exercise and immediately dump the stock wholesale. Other people will dump just enough to cover the taxes, that way the remainder is ‘free and clear’.
No, the remainder get taxed when you sell them down the road. but usuallyat capital gain, not ordinary income, rates.
Example. Your options were valued at $10 a share at issue, and $20 a share when you vest. You exercise all 1,000 vested shares at that price but only sell 200 of them to cover the taxes. You pay ordinary income tax on the gain of the 200 shares. After a year or more you sell the 800 shares at $30. You get taxed on a capital gain of $(30-20) x 800.
Of course those remaining shares might be worth less than $20 for the remainder of that company’s life, until they spiral into BK.
Rather than hire HR to do the hiring, I guess companies are contracting out to a hiring company to do the hiring…
This has been the trend for decades and especially prevalent in the more physical labor industries.
Where have you been?
“Assange said he had enough material ready to destroy the bosses of one of the world’s biggest banks.”
http://www.news.com.au/features/wikileaks/wikileaks-boss-julian-assange-turns-on-friends-and-foes/story-fn79cf6x-1225974366476
Let if fly, dude!! It’ll be a Christmas miracle!
i betcha Neil has a special imported expensive brand of popcorn ready for this.
whatever happened to Neil?
i betcha Neil has a special imported expensive brand of popcorn
nix,nix,nix…popcorn for the “TrueJulianleaks™” hotair popper can be readily found at Target.
Call me skeptical, but what could Assange possibly add that would get the job done, given all that the bankster bosses have already done to destroy themselves, while somehow failing to do so?
A videotape of Ken Lewis clubbing baby seals.
Or Jamie Dimon in flagrante delictio with Tim Geithner.
A videotape of Ken Lewis clubbing baby seals…while screaming the “N” word.
that would just about do it.
I doubt it.
This is what he should have released to begin with. Something that matters!
Yeah really Julian, quit crowing about it and release it already. What is he waiting, hush money? But I doubt he’ll “destroy” anybody. IIUC, what the banks did was low, but legal. The CEO’s will just fly to Zurich and live quietly off their gains. Sure, a CEO name may be scorned by the public, but money talks. CEO’s have been preparing for this very day for years.
maybe he has something on Paulson forcing or bribing Lewis
Or else the bankers talking in plain language about the political fools they have to deal with and buy off (uhhh, political contributions.)
The bankers live in their own world. We know two in NY and they literally have no idea what the
real world is, because their world is the only world to them, and the world we live in does not
exist for them. Literally.
These guys own huge estates in CN and fly !st class, when they don’t go corporate, and only
hob-nob with similar people.
Do they care? Hell no! Why should they, we don’t exist for them. This is not science fiction yet
there are several alternate universes that actually
co-exist on our lonely planet.
Exactly and unless you’ve actually met people like that, it’s hard to imagine their level of deadly apathy.
“… what the banks did was low, but legal.”
Of course it was “legal”. The make the laws, they own Congress. If I made the laws everything I’d would be legal as well.
It’s hard to explain to some people that just because something is legal, that still doesn’t make it right.
It’s always been the best time to buy!!
Dec 16, 2009 … Low Interest Rates Make Now the Best Time to Buy!
Feb 8, 2010 … Molina, Flynna S. “Cheap Prices and Low Interest Rates - Now is the Best Time to Buy a House
Aug 6, 2010 … Or buy that next house with today’s low prices and set in a low rate … Home Prices + Historically Low Mortgage Rates = BEST Time to Buy!
I say we start an HBB thread of quotes like this. Sort of like what we’ve done with that string of Bernanke quotes that have turned out to be very wrong.
We could do a similar quote string for the subspecies of porcine beauticians known as serial bottom callers.
2011 looks to be promising
The Home Front
12/15/2010 9:55 PM
DON DeBAT
Gazing into their crystal balls, economic experts see a better housing and mortgage market coming in 2011.
…
House-price recovery. Home prices nationwide are close to hitting bottom. “Most experts look for single-family U.S. indexes to bottom out in the first half of 2011, with a gradual but sustained recovery after that,” Nothaft said.
…
I wanna be an economist when I grow up… I can lie and bullshit all I want, and all I have to do is report ‘unexpected’ results!
It stopped snowing (for 1 day) storm total 15 1/2 feet of snow if 4 days
Location please….Snowed in?
Mammoth Lakes, recent storm up to 15 1/2 feet in 5 days
Looks like Mr. Ben is gonna have a “white” X-mas!
What had been looking like a week of rain leading up to a brown Christmas in Flagstaff has been changed to up to 10 inches of snow.
“We’re looking at a white Christmas — if it doesn’t melt by Saturday,” said Darren McCullum, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Bellemont.
The Weather Service has issued a winter weather watch for between 4 and 10 inches of snow in Flagstaff starting midday Wednesday and ending Thursday morning. Snow accumulations above 7,500 feet could range up to 16 inches.
Jeez Louise! Keep a journal, wouldja? Take some pix. That will be something for the annals of family history!
I’ll have a
BlueVoodoo Christmas without you…Last night I was walking home and admiring the Nativity scene in front of our local Catholic church and 20 feet away on the street curb was a couple of those little Macumba (Brazil’s version of Voodoo) settings of a half of a bottle of Rum, some cigs, a cigar maybe some chicken feathers and one of them even had a full order of onion rings covered with sausage.
I don’t know too much about that stuff, don’t want to and I don’t hang around too long looking at them but I’m sure none of those little Macumba “shrines” are there to make anyone’s house go back up in value.
BTW, There has been no baby Jesus in that nativity scene for 2 weeks. I’ll bet they are waiting for the 24th to put him in it. Right now it looks like the Three Kings are all staring at a dime on the floor or something.
“I’ll bet they are waiting for the 24th to put him in it.”
Correct, that’s how its done in “culturally Catholic” countries. Only in the US do we put up our trees, lights and slap baby Jesus into to the manger on
Macy’sThanksgiving Day.A few years ago I caught on old pre WW2 movie on AMC or TMC. I forget the title, but David Niven was playing some sort of clergyman. Anyway, the scene that stuck in my mind was that it was Christmas Eve and people were out BUYING their trees that night. I guess it used to be that way before it “changed”.
May Macy’s bless us all!
Thanksgiving day?
These days they slap baby Jesus into the manger with a pumpkin the day after Halloween. There’s a black cat next to the sheep.
It was a tradition with the ‘rough’ kids in the town that I grew up in to put inappropriate things in place of the baby Jeebus before the 24th. Usually it was a weird stuffed animal or particularly ugly doll, but other popular ones included older brother/dad’s porn magazines, empty bottles of booze, condoms/etc. The funniest one I saw was He-Man, master of the universe, standing in the manger with his sword held high.
I hope you mean an actual sword…
And now I can’t get that image out of my head. Thanks oxide!
There was an old Dave Barry story about a nativity scene. It started a few days before Christmas - the youngest child had a pet goat that had frozen to death the night before. The parents didn’t want the child to find this since the child would be distraught, and that would ruin Christmas. So they went about trying to find a place that would take the frozen goat. Being that it was so close to Christmas, they had no luck really until they happened upon a nativity scene, and voila - problem solved. At least until the spring thaw.
Dave Barry’s first post-college job was writing for The Daily Local News in West Chester, PA.
In addition to reporting the news, he also had a column on the editorial page. It was hysterical. Mandatory reading in the Slim household.
So, when it comes to Dave Barry, I can remember when he was just getting started.
“Anyway, the scene that stuck in my mind was that it was Christmas Eve and people were out BUYING their trees that night.”
My family always celebrated that way; it was an annual tradition to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve… Not sure whether it started due to that being common before there was a name for “Black Friday”, or if it just developed because my family was made up of procrastinators and deadline-schedulers.
“The Bishops Wife” - 1947
Also starred Cary Grant as an angel in disguise and Loretta Young as the very attractive bishops’s wife… whom Niven thinks is having an affair with Cary Grant.
Classic.
Buy now, or get priced out forever!
* DECEMBER 6, 2010, 10:46 A.M. ET
US Housing Market To Rebound In 2011 -Freddie Mac Economist
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)–Macroeconomic factors suggest the U.S. housing market will improve in 2011, Freddie Mac’s chief economist said in a note Monday.
Accelerating economic recovery, low mortgage rates, a bottoming of home prices and increased affordability of homes at current low prices will be behind the improvement, said Frank Nothaft, the chief economist at the mortgage finance company.
“These forces will support a gradual recovery in the housing and mortgage markets,” he said.
…
Where do these nuts get their information? Are they really this closed off and isolated? What about the 40% of Americans who now have bad credit and cannot buy? What about the 20% out of work? What about the millions of foreclosures which remain in the pipeline?
Sorry I forgot “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”. Why do I keep forgetting that?
You’re also forgetting who his employer is.
“No. Wait. Really. Next year we will be profitable and you won’t have to dissolve us! Serious this time!”
MarketWatch has a propaganda clip on this guy’s forecast, and I shared a choice comment in response:
“Freddie Mac guru sees home price bottom in 2011”
- Serial bottom callers *always* see a bottom ‘next year,’ for as many years as necessary for their stopped-clock predictions to turn out.
- I personally see a bottoming in transactions volume next year, but with 8 to 13 million foreclosures on the way by 2012, it seems premature to predict a price bottom. Maybe by 2015 or so, once the market has a chance to digest all that foreclosure-to-REO inventory?
- Never trust porcine beauticians whom the MSM cites as ‘gurus.’
————————————————————————
Congressional Oversight Panel Blasts HAMP
by Jann Swanson on Dec 14, 2010
…
It now looks, the report says, as though HAMP will prevent only 700,000 to 800,000 foreclosures, far below the Administration’s target of 3 to 4 million and a far cry from preventing the 8 to 13 million foreclosures expected by the end of 2012.
…
I told my wife back in 2007 that I thought 2012 would be the bottom. It’s looking more and more like I jumped the gun and it’ll be closer to 2015 than 2012.
2012 would have been feasible were it not for extend-and-pretend, foreclosure moratoriums, HAMP, $8K first-time-buyer credit, Fed-sponsored super-douper-ultra-low mortgage rates, etc etc etc.
All these market distorting interventions have collectively served to postpone the bottom by years.
Yep. I was expecting a faster crash. Got stuck buying too early no matter what time line you look at, but it’s made the wife happy.
“…but it’s made the wife happy.”
That’s worth a fortune in and of itself.
No trust for Social Security
Allan Sloan, senior editor-at-large ~ fortune.cnn
December 21, 2010
The trust fund is nothing more than a trap and a fantasy for those who think it’s a solid foundation for Social Security.
I used to joke about the government “solving” Social Security’s long-term problems by creating Treasury IOUs out of thin air and sticking them in the program’s trust fund. My point, of course, was to show that no matter how many Treasury securities there are in the trust fund — currently, around $2.6 trillion — the fund is merely an accounting fiction that has no economic value when it comes to protecting Social Security beneficiaries.
Now, with last week’s passage of the much-ballyhooed tax deal between President Obama and Republican lawmakers, my sarcastic joke has become public policy. It all has to do with the provision cutting payroll taxes in 2011.
Let me show you how this works. Next year, as you probably know, workers subject to Social Security taxes will pay only 4.2% of their “covered wages” — wages up to $106,800 — rather than the normal 6.2%. This will reduce Social Security’s cash proceeds by $112 billion, according to Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation.
What impact will this cash shortfall have on the Social Security trust fund? None. Zero. Zip.
How can a $112 billion cut in Social Security revenues not affect the trust fund? Because the Treasury will give the trust fund the same amount of bonds it would have gotten if the two-percentage-point tax holiday didn’t exist.
In other words, the Treasury isn’t selling bonds to Social Security, it’s creating bonds out of thin air and putting them into the trust fund. The missing cash? Uncle Sam will just borrow $112 billion from somewhere.
“In other words, the Treasury isn’t selling bonds to Social Security, it’s creating bonds out of thin air and putting them into the trust fund.”
Isn’t this reflective of the general principle which underlies the operation of fiat money systems?
There is no way Generation Greed is going to allow those who are not “at or over 55″ to receive decent benefits in old age if it can keep grabbing more for itself.
Don’t need to create new IOUs, just change the interest on the current ones. Since the
governmenttaxpayer is on both sides of the transaction, they can simply raise the rates on the money in the trust fund. I’d guess that something like CPI + 20% would mean that the trust fund never runs out of money.“In other words, the Treasury isn’t selling bonds to Social Security, it’s creating bonds out of thin air”
Uh, isn’t that how all bonds are created? You print them and sell them, in this case to the SSA “trust fund”?
In this case, they are not _selling_ them to the trust fund; they are simply depositing them in the trust account, in excess of the payroll tax dollars that they are taking out.
It is new and different.
That sounds like “selling” to me.
Not that I’m sayings that those bonds are worth anything.
But when the same party is on both sides of the transaction, it certainly isn’t an arms length transaction.
That “trust fund” set-up has saved its bacon from plundering by the GOP many times over the decades. (I grew up hearing it was going to be bankrupt by the 1980s and “it was obsolete anyhow so it should be dismantled.”)
Everyone who has railed against the SS system is invariably a tool of the GOP, whether knowingly or not, who are just itching to use that money for the FIRE sector and believe it rightfully theirs by divine decree to do so.
So if you like the current situation and crave it “super-sized”… then by all means, support dismantling SS.
Filed under: “Pay the rent, or your outta here!” …x12 and counting…
Fresca’s closes another O.C. taco shop:
December 7th, 2010, by Nancy Luna, Staff Writer / OC Register
Locally based taco chain, Fresca’s Mexican Grill, closed another Orange County fast-food unit.
Owner Tom Ryder said sales were good at the Lake Forest location, but he was forced to close it because he was unable to negotiate a fair lease.
“They (the landlords) weren’t willing to lower rents to reflect today’s (economic) environment,” said Ryder, who maintains there are at least 12 empty spaces in the Lake Forest shopping center.
A representative for the landlord could not be reached for comment.
Makes me wonder why they won’t allow something like a “month to month” rental until they can (supposedly) find a new tenant…
Is there some angle (tax or otherwise) that can make empty store spaces somehow better than continuing to get a bit of rent? Or is there some advantage for the shopkeeper to bail?
No tax angle. Owners of commercial property can be just as dumb as owners of residential property.
A local grocery chain I worked for a few years back just closed a 90,000 square foot store because it could not negotiate a reasonable renewal lease with the owner of the property when the original lease expired. The owner of the property paid $3.8 million for the property in 2007 with the existing lease having only 3 years to run. Now that’s not smart in any one’s book.
Empty box stores sit for a long, long time in Spokane then wind up getting converted to mega churches.
Many small business are run out of business by constant raises in lease prices. (another cause of inflation)
CRE landlords are often their own worst enemy.
We haven’t run out of “For Lease” signs just yet on SD CRE properties!
In fact, the number of “For Lease” signs seems (most astonishingly) to only have increased as of late.
‘Giving a convenient shot in the arm to the on-again, off-again efforts to pass a “food safety bill,” the Department of Homeland Security is said to be looking into a plot by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to poison all you can eat buffets and salad bars.’
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/12/20/dhs-terrorists-might-poison-buffets/
‘(CNN) — The U.N. Security Council was evacuated Tuesday after officials noticed a “suspicious odor.” Authorities are investigating the possibility of a combination of sulfur and methane, said U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice after speaking with fire officials.’
And this just in; DHS ordered full body scans and vigorous pat-downs for the UN cafeteria personnel. The staff objected, and noted that it was Enchilada Tuesday.
Wasn’t there some fringe group that did that with salmonella at election time out in Oregon? The Rajneeshee’s?
Yes, they hit the city Dalles on the Columbia.
Ahem. It’s THE Dalles. In fact, there is even a West The Dalles, which is even more unusual to say.
Ya mean the “TrueBeliever’s™ / TrueDeceiver’s ™” eye’s got me x101 Rolls Royce “TrueGuru™” automobiles Cult…
Authorities are investigating the possibility of a combination of sulfur and methane, said U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice after speaking with fire officials.
All right, who ate beans for lunch? Come on, ‘fess up. Because we smell it all over the building.
There’s a chance that Ernst & Young may follow in the footsteps of Arthur Anderson, now that Cuomo has E&Y in the dock.
“E&Y substantially assisted Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., now bankrupt, to engage in a massive accounting fraud, involving the surreptitious removal of tens of billions of dollars of securities from Lehman’s balance sheet in order to create a false impression of Lehman’s liquidity, thereby defrauding the investing public,” said the complaint.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/12/21/cuomo-sues-ernst-young-over-lehman/?hp
Many years ago, I worked for a non-profit org that had Ernst and Young as its accountant. Every year, a bunch of sweet young things would take over a conference room and settle in for the duration of The Audit.
We were advised in no uncertain terms not to open the break room door that went between this conference room and the accounting office for our organization. Why not? Because we might disturb The Audit.
Well, it didn’t take too long for the office rumor mill to kick into high gear. And, truth be told, our rumor mill was pretty good when it came to sifting the truth out of the BS that management was so eager to spout.
The mill quickly concluded that the E&Y people would sign off on just about anything that was given to them, and that The Audit was worth about as much as the paper it was printed on.
i had a thought once…if i could start a larger accounting firm.
- the firm would only do audits…no tax or any other consulting activities.
- the firm’s employees would wear only black suits and really cool dark sunglasses outside.
- the firm insignia would be a triangle…which i think was the symbol for Sparta.
- the firm’s employees and partners would NEVER fraternize with the client.
- the firm would have an extremely intensive training program. the staff would learn and know as much as most partners’ of other firms.
- the firm would spend all it’s efforts to develop a reputation as a badass audit firm.
- any partner of the firm that left to join a client would be executed…publicly.
the only thing is…would the firms reputation be enough to ever get any engagements. i know if i was a bank or investor…that’s the kind of audit firm i would want.
Good story Slim. Reminds of the few times I came across “The Audit” in progress.
Everyone acted like they were doing top secret rocket surgery on aliens of some kind instead of just using freaking calculators and paper and pushing numbers around.
(not saying it’s easy, but most people have to do their jobs with interruptions every fricken’ day)
“Every year, a bunch of sweet young things would take over a conference room and settle in for the duration of The Audit.”
Robo-Auditors…
BwahaHAhahahahahHAHhahahahhaaaaaaaaaaaahahahAAAAA!!!
“…E&Y people would sign off on just about anything that was given to them…”
Easy accounting virtue: The ‘pleasure’ of ‘doing’ your business will get you everywhere…
The Big 3 maybe?
My thought, exactly. Back when I worked in financial services (late 1980’s), it was the “Big Eight.” Apparently, shaky accounting practices have been quite deleterious to top firms in their industry over the past quarter century. You’d think someone would get a clue, and try “innovating” honest accounting practices. Who knows — maybe honesty could actually become profitable at some point in the future, if the Wall Street sewer gets properly cleaned.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating allegations that U.S. firms and individuals have joined with partners in China to steal billions of dollars from American investors through stock fraud, according to people familiar with the probe.
Individuals with direct knowledge of the investigation say the SEC is focusing on stock promoters, investment bankers, auditors and law firms that have been active in recruiting Chinese companies to U.S. stock exchanges and raising capital for those companies by selling new shares.
Just yesterday, the SEC made an example of an auditing firm that it said had failed to protect U.S. investors from overstatement of revenues by a Chinese company called China Energy Savings Technology. The commission said it had reached a settlement with the firm — Moore Stephens Wurth Frazer & Torbet — and with Kelly Dean Yamagata, a partner. As part of the settlement, the firm will be temporarily barred from accepting new auditing assignments in China and will pay $129,500.
Shocker?
Wow 129,500 dollar penalty, that will teach them??
“The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating allegations that U.S. firms and individuals have joined with partners in China to steal billions of dollars from American investors through stock fraud, according to people familiar with the probe.”
I love it. I will be very interested to learn more about our partnership with Red China. Will they investigate Henry Paulson, former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs CEO, who made numerous mysterious visits to China?
What. A. Surprise.
Still, the final rules came as a disappointment to public interest groups. Even Genachowski’s two Democratic colleagues on the five-member FCC were disappointed, though they still voted to adopt the rules after concluding some safeguards are better than none.
They warn that the new regulations may not be strong enough to prevent broadband companies from picking winners and losers on the Internet, particularly on wireless systems, which will have more limited protections. They also worry that the rules don’t do enough to ensure that broadband providers cannot favor their own traffic or the traffic of business partners that can pay for priority — resulting in a two-tiered Internet.
“Today’s action could — and should — have gone further,” said Michael Copps, one of the other two Democrats on the commission. But, he added, the regulations do represent some progress “to put consumers — not Big Phone or Big Cable — in control of their online experiences.”
Doublespeak for the cableization of the internet. We are moving away from free choice and open competiion and toward monopoly of content.
Does anyone here know any stats on Prescott, AZ?
Housing prices? declines? Any help would be
appreciated.
Thanks.
There’s a lot of foreclosures in the Prescott area. They have just about every bubble problem there is; overbuilding, mcmansions everywhere, speculation. Foreclosures are selling as low as half off the rest of the market.
“Foreclosures are selling as low as half off the rest of the market.”
I assume the headline housing price indexes fully reflect those in their averaging methods?
Several years ago, a city council member running for re-election in Tucson lost in a rather close, but contentious election. The highlight of the election was this council member’s lawsuit against a group of (you’ll love this) teachers.
Seems that the teachers were involved in an opposition mailing that this council member didn’t like.
Well, her lawsuit against the teachers was likened to kicking a nun. And, as I mentioned before, she lost the election.
In her famous final farewell, in which the new council members were sworn in, she stomped off the stage without saying a thing. OTOH, the other defeated council member made a very gracious speech, which included his lighting up a “Hooray! I’m no longer a council member!” cigar. That gesture brought down the house.
Any-hoo, a year after the election, former council lady and her husband sold their Tucson house and moved to Prescott. Where he relocated his mortgage business. And she re-invented herself as a real estate agent.
All I can say is, poor Prescott.
I looked at Prescott (pres-kitt) in 2003. One person told me it had the three R’s. Rednecks, Retirees, and Republicans, that did it for me and I mover to Santa Fe, NM. Glad I did!! Prescott has water problems and no jobs.
Prescott has water problems and no jobs
Charitable interpretation?
Prescott has under-water problems and no jobs.
Population growth slowest since 1940, census shows
Biggest increases in South, West and that should be boon for Republicans
updated 2 hours 3 minutes ago 2010-12-21 T16:49:16
WASHINGTON — After knocking on 50 million doors and handling tens of millions of surveys, the Census Bureau on Tuesday announced that the official population of the United States is now 308,745,538.
The 2010 census also shows America’s once-torrid population growth dropping to its lowest level in seven decades.
The new number, based on the surveys taken on April 1, 2010, is a 9.7 percent increase over the last census, 281.4 million residents in 2000.
But that’s slower than the 13.2 percent increase from 1990 to 2000. And it’s the slowest rate of increase since the 1940 census. That is the decade in which the Great Depression slashed the population growth rate by more than half, to 7.3 percent.
…
Today’s birth dearth will translate into tomorrow’s housing demand drought. Rational exspectators, take heed.
Don’t count out the hordes of illegal immigrants
who all want MacMansions.
And won’t mind living seven families to a house in order to afford the sky-high prices!
The 2010 census also shows America’s once-torrid population growth dropping to its lowest level in seven decades.
“Bidness” technology best catch up apace in short order so that them thar strawberry / peach pickers / slaughter house knife wielders and other such peon jobs can be quickly discarded with,…on accounts of it looks like MegaBusiness Inc. ain’t gonna have all them “drug-carrying-non-citizens” to help keep their low-wage profit model intact.
Baby bust warning to Toll Brothers and other home builders:
Your potential future customers have thrown in the towel. Good thing your stock price gets such great plunge protection, or you might have to throw in the towel as well.
Teen birthrate at lowest point in seven decades
The National Center for Health Statistics says the teen birthrate fell to 39.1 births per 1,000 teenagers ages 15 to 19 in 2009. That’s a 6% drop from 2008. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
By Shari Roan, Los Angeles Times
December 21, 2010, 1:24 p.m.
Teenagers are giving birth at the lowest rates noted in seven decades of record-keeping, according to statistics from the federal government released Tuesday.
The report doesn’t speculate on why the birthrate has fallen, but two decades of public-health initiatives to curb teenage pregnancy may be paying dividends. The National Center for Health Statistics report shows that the teen birthrate fell to 39.1 births per 1,000 teenagers ages 15 to 19 in 2009. That’s a 6% drop from 2008 and the lowest rate since 1940. In 1991, in contrast, the rate was 61.8 per 1,000.
Birthrates fell for groups that have had the highest rates, including Hispanics, whose rate fell 10% but still stands at 70.1 births per 1,000.
Other birth data:
The overall birthrate for all U.S. women fell for the second straight year. The decline appears to be continuing, based on data for the first half of 2010.
* About 41% of births were to unmarried mothers in 2009, up from 40.6% in 2008.
* The birthrate for women in their early 20s fell 7% and now stands at the lowest rate since 1973.
…
LMAO! How would they know? That place stinks to high heaven with the stench of corruption. Perhaps a pleasant odor happened along and they were unfamiliar with it.
Item: UN evacuated over ’suspicious odor’
The UN Security Council and General Assembly were evacuated Tuesday because of a “suspicious odor,” a spokesman said.
In case you thougt bankers were the only criminals
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Waste and fraud in U.S. efforts to rebuild Afghanistan while fighting al Qaeda and the Taliban may have cost taxpayers billions of dollars, a special investigator said on Monday.
Arnold Fields, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, said the cost of U.S. assistance funding diverted or squandered since 2002 could reach “well into the millions, if not billions, of dollars.”
“There are no controls in place sufficient enough to ensure taxpayers’ money is used for the (intended) purpose,” said Fields, whose independent office was created in 2008 to energize oversight of what U.S. auditors have described as a giant, poorly coordinated aid effort that has sunk some $56 billion into Afghanistan since 2002.
Of that sum, some $29 billion has gone to building up Afghanistan’s nascent security forces, many of whose members cannot read and are just learning to shoot.
Another $16 billion has gone to trying to develop this poor country, where life expectancy is just 45 years and only 28 percent of people are literate, and to strengthening governance, said Fields, a retired Marine Corps major general.
My guess is 10’s of billions have been stolen in Afghanastan and even more in Iraq. I’d love to see a brake down of that 29 billion for building Afghan security force. I’ll bet less than 5% of it went to Afghan soldiers that actually exist. Another 5% went for guns that they actually use. The rest went to US and afghan thieves/contractors. If we could audit middle eastern banks I suspect you would find some very prominent US citizens with very large accounts.
Sadly, like the atrocities, the waste is not at all surprising.
Information and education has never been more accessible in human history than it was during this past decade, yet still the myth of a cheap and clean war persists. What’s the point in sending so many to college if this kind of stuff is going to keep happening?
What’s the point in sending them to college?
So they can get a high school education?
“My guess is 10’s of billions have been stolen in Afghanastan and even more in Iraq.”
That would be a very good guess and maybe even an underestimate.
War is good for fraud. Just ask Haliburton.
“One of the biggest obstacles to economic recovery is that politicians and the media are both focused on how government can MAKE the economy recover, rather than on how it can LET the economy recover”
~Thomas Sowell.
“…rather than on how it can LET the economy recover.”
“Yo, US Federal Gov’t,… quit those US Billion dollar $$$$$$$$$$ farm subsidies, no needs for those expensive $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ taxpayer funded Navy Carrier groups hangin’ round the Persian Gulf either, us “TruePatriot™” / “TrueIndustrialist™” / “TrueSCOTUScorp”People”™” can provide for the American citizen in a fair & costly manner, just keep the outta our way why don’t ya!”
Keep ‘em comin’ wmbz, keep ‘em comin’…
What does history tell us about how energy prices affect the economy? (and Food):
EIA / DOE
“Looking from the 1970s forward, there are observable, and dramatic changes in GDP growth as the world oil price has undergone dramatic change. The price shocks of 1973-74, the late 1970s/early 1980s, and early 1990’s were all followed by recessions, which have then been followed by a rebound in economic growth. The pressure of energy prices on aggregate prices in the economy created adjustment problems for the economy as a whole.”
Sowell doesn’t seem to grasp that monetary policy happens in the margin between how markets are supposed to behave and how they actually behave when gamed by hedge fund management conducted with the aid of a printing press technology.
One of the biggest obstacles is not having enough jobs, let alone decent jobs, to re-prime our consumer driven economy.
And that hasn’t been helped by the Repubs voting against ending tax breaks for offshoring jobs.
Watch the video and you will see why the Irish are angry
http://www.rte.ie/player/#v=1087511
For what followed in journalist Rita O’Reilly’s hour-long investigation was a glimpse of the gilded life some developers are still living, as if the financial crisis had never happened.
nama (national management agency in ireland )
NAMA was set up about a year ago to secure the future of five Irish banks, by cleansing their books of all the property and development loans – good, bad or indifferent.
Yesterday it confirmed it was now in control of over 11,000 loans with a nominal value of more than €72bn.
Right now, the public doesn’t really know a lot about NAMA or how it is going to reduce the burgeoning tax bill every individual in the country is facing in the wake of the banking crisis.
what of the builders top 30 who created the mess
40 percent of the nama portfoilio (national management agency)
ITEM: Researchers at Simon Fraser University in Canada, found non-Christians feel less self-assured and have fewer positive feelings if a Christmas tree was in the room. The scientists conducted the study using 77 Christians and 57 non-believers, including Buddhists and Sikhs. The participants did not know the survey was about Christmas, and were asked to fill in questions about themselves both when a 12-inch Christmas tree was in the room and when it was not. “Non-celebrators” reported fewer positive feelings and less self-assurance in the Christmas room. Christians were mostly cheered by the tree.
~ This wins the Stupid-Waste-of-Time prize today!! The researchers have concluded that a little 12-inch Christmas tree makes non-Christians feel badly about themselves. This assumes, supposedly, that a little fir tree is a religious symbol of some sort.
What about the Yule log? Does it cause gloominess among non-Christians?
Yesterday evening, I went to the Sonic Solstice party at our community radio station, KXCI. No Christmas tree there, but, quite frankly, there really wasn’t room for one.
What we did have was a big whiteboard for sharing our greetings. Which, so far, has:
Happy Festivus
Feliz Navidad
And there’s still plenty of space for additional cheer. Knowing KXCI, there will be some very clever greetings.
And what got the biggest response? Well, you had to, ahem, use the facilities to see it. Up on the wall of our first floor restroom is a large poster that asks the following question:
Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?
This is an actual ad for Scot Tissue towels. It was widely used during the 1930s.
I always feel about 5 pounds lighter after dropping the yule log. Those christmas eve dinners are FILLING!
For your relatives’ sakes, I hope you don’t burn the yule log.
No, but burning a yule match afterwards is always good form.
sfbubblebuyer
LOL (and I’m a lady.)
I’d like the same study done, but instead of the tree, a cooler of beer!
Attorneys still not showing up for foreclosure auctions in former Stern cases
by Kim Miller
Nearly two weeks ago The Post reported that homes foreclosed on by banks using the Law Offices of David J. Stern were going to auction with no legal representation. The result was people unwittingly bought homes for a few hundred dollars that they will likely never be able to get title for.
Tuesday’s online foreclosure auction showed former Stern cases are still going to auction unrepresented and likely unadvertised, as is required for a buyer to take legal title.
According to the results of Tuesday’s auction, about 50 percent of the sales were canceled before the auction even got started. Of those that went forward, at least five were sold to third-party bidders in cases where the bank didn’t even make an offer for the home. That usually happens when there is no attorney there to put in a bid for the bank.
Attorneys have reported statewide that the transfer of cases from Stern’s office to other firms has caused delays. For Frank and Brenda Stevens, who think they bought a Boynton Beach condo Tuesday for $500, it’s likely going to lead to an unhappy and unsuccessful trip to the clerk’s office to collect title.
And the hits just keep on coming…
Thanks to climate change and global warming, California drought conditions continue unabated. Don’t let a little rain fool you.
California Braces for More Record Rains
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: December 21, 2010
LA CAÑADA FLINTRIDGE, Calif. — Southern Californians on Tuesday braced for the latest in a cycle of powerful storms that has inundated the region with as much as 14 inches of rain, flooding freeways, causing power outages and forcing evacuations.
In northeastern Los Angeles County, an area ravaged by a wildfire last year and flooding from rainstorms in February, emergency officials on Tuesday prepared for the possibility of flash floods and mudslides from denuded foothills.
Under a light rain, officials in La Cañada-Flintridge said that storm drains had so far been able to contain the record rains of the past several days.
At 8 a.m. Tuesday, Sgt. Tracy Stewart of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department pointed to a large drainage basin that had nearly overflowed during the rainstorms in February, and noted that there were no signs of trouble from the current storm.
“Maybe well get lucky this time,” Sergeant Stewart said before going on patrol. “So far, we’re much better off than we were then. But it can get really wet really fast.”
The brunt of the storm is expected to strike Southern California late Tuesday night, according to Stuart Seto, a National Weather Service specialist in Oxnard, Calif.
…
Bad as it is, I think a continuation of the drought would have been worse.
Have to agree, especially on a personal level. Given a choice between Santa Ana-driven San Diego firestorms and LA mountain debris flows, I have to chose the latter.
Unless the rain is enough to bring the water table up to norm, the drought isn’t over.
uhhhh… so?
I think we are good. It has been a wet fall, and we (as in most of California) have enjoyed record rainfalls the past couple of days. I suspect this wet pattern may linger through the next several months, effectively ending the California drought.
What are the climate change Cassandras going to seize on next of the California drought comes to a wet termination this winter?
THat would make them climate-change chicken littles, not cassandras.
Chicken little trumpeted doom but was wrong.
Cassandra trumped doom but was right… but not believed until too late.
Have Wall Street bears been listed yet as endangered species?
No Emerging-Market Bears Unsettles Investors Shunning Conformity
By Michael Patterson - Dec 15, 2010 8:00 AM PT
Individual investors are pouring money into emerging-market stocks at the fastest pace since 2007 as the biggest rally in 16 years spurs three of the world’s largest banks to predict shares will hit record highs next year.
The last time investors were this bullish, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index sank 11 percent in three months, data compiled by EPFR Global and Bloomberg show. The gauge trades for 2 times net assets, within 4 percent of the most expensive level on record versus the MSCI World Index of developed-nation shares, according to MSCI Inc.
“After all this money has flooded in, with everyone in love with them and all the euphoria surrounding them, it’s hard to find fundamental value,” said Harris Associates LP’s David Herro, who was named international stock fund manager of the decade this year by Morningstar Inc. “Growth in emerging markets is greatly helping the world, but you can overpay for it and that’s what’s happening.”
…
Bubblicious!
“Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men — the other 999 follow women.”
– Groucho Marx –
Hawker Beechcraft officials have reached agreement with the state of Kansas, Wichita and Sedgwick County on an $45 million incentive package to keep the company in Wichita.
Read more: http://www.kansas.com/2010/12/21/1642451/hawker-beechcraft-to-announce.html#ixzz18lRFBFvV
Nope. No welfare for the rich there. No siree.
Maybe it would be better if they floated a bond issue and built a …drum roll pleaase..FOOTBALL STADIUM.
“Maybe it would be better if they floated a bond issue and built a …drum roll pleaase..FOOTBALL STADIUM.”
Only if the stadium is built on land acquired via eminent domain.
That’s corporate welfare J6P clearly believes in and supports. He might never set foot in that stadium, but dammit the really should have a cool stadium.
Then they’d have to have somebody buy a football team for them.
I feel so happy, thanks to the rising stock market. Merry Christmas. God bless us, everyone!
U.S. Stocks Erasing Loss Since Lehman Failure Fuels 2011 Bulls
By Nikolaj Gammeltoft and Inyoung Hwang - Dec 21, 2010 9:04 PM PT
Dec. 21 (Bloomberg) — Bloomberg’s Courtney Donohoe reports on the performance of the U.S. equity market today. Stocks rose, completing the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index’s recovery from the plunge that followed Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s collapse in 2008, after Adobe Systems Inc.’s forecast added to speculation that the fastest profit growth in 22 years makes equities a bargain. Bloomberg’s Pimm Fox also speaks. (Source: Bloomberg)
The advance that lifted the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index above its level before the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in September 2008 is an encouraging sign for bulls, technical analysts said.
The benchmark gauge for American stocks rose 0.6 percent to 1,254.6 yesterday, surpassing its closing level of 1,251.70 on Sept. 12, 2008, the last trading session before Lehman Brothers filed the world’s biggest bankruptcy. After closing within 1 percent of the milestone on five of the six previous days, the index may now have room to rise, according to analysts who base forecasts on price charts.
“It’s a psychological and technical victory for the market,” said Christopher Verrone, lead technical analyst at New York-based Strategas Research Partners. “It strengthens the case that 2011 might be better than a lot of people expect.”
…
Cool video — sux to own property where a mud slide happens…
La Jolla is situated on Mt Soledad, a geologically unstable formation. Uniformiatarian considerations suggest sporadic earth movements will happen.
Rain causes mudslide in La Jolla
Posted: Dec 21, 2010 12:12 PM PST Updated: Dec 21, 2010 12:25 PM PST