The Housing Bubble

U.S. Home Sales, Construction Probably Rose (Bloomberg)

Home sales and construction in the U.S. probably rose in June from depressed levels as the industry struggled to gain traction in the face of foreclosures, falling prices and rising unemployment, economists said before reports this week.

Purchases of previously owned homes climbed 2.9 percent from May’s six-month low to a 4.95 million annual rate, according to the median projection of 55 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before a National Association of Realtors’ report on July 20. Housing starts rose 2.7 percent to a 575,000 pace, economists forecast another release will show a day earlier.

Declining home values and delays in processing foreclosures mean it may take years to clear the market of distressed properties, a sign sustained gains in sales and construction will be slow to develop. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke last week said housing remains “depressed” due in part to a lack of job and income growth, which is restraining the broader economy.

A housing recovery “is very difficult until we work off some of the enormous supply,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez Inc. in New York. “We’re talking about levels that are absolutely abysmal.”

Purchases of existing homes reached a record 7.08 million in 2005, during the housing boom, and slumped to a 13-year low of 4.91 million in 2010.
Cash Purchases

Sales of existing homes in recent months have been driven by investor cash purchases of distressed properties. At the same time, unemployment above 9 percent and strict lending standards make it harder for most Americans to take advantage of mortgage rates that are close to a record low.

“Stabilization and recovery will continue to be a slow and rocky process,” Stuart Miller, chief executive officer of Lennar Corp. (LEN), said on a June 23 conference call. Miami-based Lennar is the third-largest U.S. homebuilder by revenue.

“Our reading of history shows that governments don’t stop borrowing and spending until they have to. And the sooner they have to – that is, the sooner the markets tell the politicians to ‘Drop Dead’ – the better off they are.

“But that is not likely to happen. Congress has raised the debt ceiling 93 times in the last 94 years. Our guess is that it will strike a deal and do so again. That way, Congress, the White House and the vast bureaucracy can get back to doing what they do best – wrecking the economy.” ~

~ Empires Crumble ~ B.Bonner

Florida fraud report key to New York foreclosure case

By Kimberly Miller Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 5:35 p.m. Saturday, July 16, 2011

A foreclosure fraud report compiled by two ousted Florida investigators was instrumental this month in winning a New York homeowner her case.

The report by former state assistant attorneys general June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards is a step-by-step account of how some lenders allegedly sidestepped foreclosure laws using flawed and possibly fraudulent paperwork. The report, which cites Ocwen Financial Corp., a loan servicer that has workers in West Palm Beach, was first reported in The Palm Beach Post.

New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Schack in his July 1 ruling against HSBC Bank questions variations in signatures of Ocwen employees, who serviced the home loan for HSBC. He also ruled that HSBC had no standing to file the foreclosure because of a faulty assignment of mortgage.

Schack read about the report by Edwards and Clarkson titled “Unfair, Deceptive and Unconscionable Acts in Foreclosure Cases” in a Palm Beach Post article published in January. The article included information in the report on signatures of alleged Ocwen robo-signer Scott Anderson.

17 COMMENTS (first 2)

These people are in default and some for a couple of years, living in these homes for free, yet they consider themselves victims. They are parasites and I don’t blame the lenders for using any means to get them out.

Alan
6:10 PM, 7/16/2011
———————————————————————-

Alan you want some chees with that WINE…
Waaa….

These Banks gave out Predatory Loans and you would know that if you researched it.

The Attorney Generals Office needs to be investigated by the FBI.
They are obviously Covering for Banks.

Attorney General Investigation
7:06 PM, 7/16/2011

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/foreclosures/florida-fraud-report-key-to-new-york-foreclosure-1615262.html - -

The Collapse of Paper Money and the Vertical Move of Gold
by Darryl Robert Schoon - Survive the Crisis
Published : July 14th, 2011

Money in capitalist economies is an IOU, an IOU that can’t be repaid

Paper money, invented by the Chinese, first appeared in the West in the 13th century. Brought back from China by Marco Polo and his uncles, author Ralph Foster describes the West’s reaction to the hitherto unseen phenomena of money as a piece of paper.

Upon returning to Italy, Polo showed off some Chinese currency notes and explained how they were used…An article by Will Willbond in the November 1995 issue of ‘The Bank Note Reporter’ describes the Venetian reaction:

The Emperor of China (who we call Kubalai Khan) gave the Polos a camel loaded with 1,000 cash paper notes as a gift from their sovereign. The doge (chief magistrate of Venice) and the cardinal (the Pope’s cousin) looked at these…notes in awe and dismay.

The hen-scratched writing was not in Latin or Greek but in a secret language, most likely the language of the Devil. They proceeded to burn these notes and accused Polo of heresy.

pg 38, Ralph Foster, Fiat Paper Money: the History and Evolution of our Currency, 2nd ed.

In retrospect, the disturbed reaction of the Venetians was not without cause. For when paper money was later issued in the West, it was to assume a far more sinister guise—no longer was money a savings-based instrument of exchange as it had been throughout human history. In the West, paper money was to become an integral part of a scheme to profit by the spread of debt, i.e. usury.

http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-gold-silver-the-collapse-of-paper-money-and-the-vertical-move-of-gold.aspx?article=3569443794G10020&redirect=false&contributor=Darryl+Robert+Schoon

Wonder if girth had anything to do with their health problems and inability to work.

Meet Europe’s record-breaking (and cute!) lottery winners.

Meet Colin and Christine Weir, Europe’s largest lottery winners. They live in a Scottish seaside town. They have been married for 30 years, and they have two kids, plus a three-bedroom house, and now, 161 million pounds (about $260 million).

The two Scots both suffer from health problems and are no longer able to work. The winnings mean they now rank just below the Beckhams (as in Victoria and David Beckham) on the U.K.’s Sunday Times Rich List.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013655/Were-rich-Beckhams–161m-winners-join-jet-set-promise-fun.html

Jul 15, 11:17 AM EDT

Police in Ga. shut down girls’ lemonade stand

MIDWAY, Ga. (AP) — Police in Georgia have shut down a lemonade stand run by three girls trying to save up for a trip to a water park, saying they didn’t have a business license or the required permits.

Midway Police Chief Kelly Morningstar says police also didn’t know how the lemonade was made, who made it or what was in it.

The girls had been operating for one day when Morningstar and another officer cruised by.

The girls needed a business license, peddler’s permit and food permit to operate, even on residential property. The permits cost $50 a day or $180 per year.

One girl, 14-year-old Casity Dixon, says the three had to listen to police and shut down.

The girls are now doing chores and yard work to make money.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2011-07-15-lemonade-stand-shut-down_n.htm - 43k -

200 Superior Court employees to be laid off

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KGO) — Budget cuts and layoffs are coming to San Francisco Superior Court, which means everything from divorces to lawsuits could drag on for years. They are drastic cuts to close a $14 million budget deficit.

The Superior Court handles more than 30,000 civil cases every year. On Monday, layoff notices will be sent to 200 workers who keep the wheels of justice turning.

On Friday, employees left work at San Francisco’s Superior Court building and headed home for an unsettled weekend.

“Everybody’s future is up in the air. So I’m trying not to think about it until I know what’s actually going to happen,” said Jennifer Pasinosky, a court employee.

What’s going to happen is a drastic reduction in the number of employees and courtrooms. The layoff notices will target court reporters and clerks, administrative staff members will lose their jobs, and that’s on top of the 11 court commissioners who were let go this week. Twenty-five out of the 63 courtrooms will close. Civil cases will take the brunt.

“You can still file a civil case, but it’s going to sit on a shelf with hundreds of papers, stacks of papers, and it won’t see a courtroom for at least five years. It could take at least a year and a half to get a divorce. It could take months to get copies of court records. It could take you a full day of standing in line to get your traffic ticket paid in our criminal division,” said Superior Court spokesperson Ann Donlan.

San Francisco Superior Court blew through a $10 million reserve hoping to avoid layoffs. Then, lawmakers cut $200 million in March and another $150 million last month. Court officials say unless there’s a miracle, October 3 will be “D-Day” for the cutbacks to take effect.

“Apparently the governor and legislature have not put the courts at the top of their priority lists. In fact, we appear to be at the bottom and there’s going to be really severe impacts for the public as a result,” said Donlan.

5 community programs closing
Public Opinion Online - Chambersburg,PA. 07/17/2011

The South Central Community Action Program is closing five programs and will lay off 12 employees.

The cuts will impact hundreds of families who could use help with budgeting or finding direction in their lives as well as assisting fixed-income seniors with home repairs.

More cuts are expected before the end of the year.

“This was so incredibly hard,” SCAAP executive director Megan Shreve said. “These are good vital programs with exceptional and caring staff. We are desperately hoping that programs like the homeless shelters, food pantries, child care, WIC, weatherization and employment services receive better support in the upcoming federal budget negotiations. I hate to think about what will happen in the community if more vital services close.”

SCAAP between February and May laid off 12 staff to deal with funding cuts.

“We had begun the planning in December,” SCCAP President William Hanne said. “We created contingency plans that we hoped we would never have to use but we wanted to make sure that we were as strategic in the process as we could be. We don’t take this lightly. These are all important programs meeting important needs in our community.”

SCCAP suffered the first barrage of cuts in April when the federal fiscal 2011 budget passed seven months late. The Community Services Block Grant was cut by 10 percent, and other programs got smaller cuts.

It’s still an empty lockbox

March 18, 2011|By Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post Writers Group

WASHINGTON — Last week, President Obama’s budget chief, Jack Lew, took to his White House blog to repeat his claim that the Social Security trust fund is solvent through 2037. And to chide me for suggesting otherwise. I had argued in my last column that the trust fund is empty, indeed fictional.

Lew acknowledges that the Social Security surpluses of the last decades were siphoned off to the Treasury Department and spent. He also agrees that Treasury then deposited corresponding IOUs — called “special issue” bonds — in the Social Security trust fund. These have real value, claims Lew. After all, “these Treasury bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government in the same way that all other U.S. Treasury bonds are.”

Really? If these trust fund bonds represent anything real, why is it that in calculating national indebtedness they are not even included? We measure national solvency by debt/GDP ratio. As calculated by everyone from the OMB to the CIA, from the Simpson-Bowles to the Domenici-Rivlin commissions, the debt/GDP ratio counts only publicly held debt. This means bonds held by China, Saudi Arabia, you and me. The debt ratio completely ignores the kind of intragovernmental bonds that Lew insists are the equivalent of publicly held bonds.

Why? Because the intragovernmental bond is nothing more than a bookkeeping device that records how much one part of the U.S. government (Treasury) owes another part of the same government (the Social Security Administration). In judging the creditworthiness of the United States, the world doesn’t care what the left hand owes the right. It’s all one entity. It cares only what that one entity owes the world.

That’s why publicly held bonds are so radically different from intragovernmental bonds. If we default on Chinese-held debt, decades of AAA creditworthiness is destroyed, the world stops lending to us, the dollar collapses, the economy goes into a spiral and we become Argentina. That’s why such a default is inconceivable.

On the other hand, what would happen to financial markets if the Treasury stopped honoring the “special issue” bonds in the Social Security trust fund? A lot of angry grumbling at home for sure. But externally? Nothing.

This “default” would simply be the Treasury telling the Social Security Administration that henceforth it would have to fend for itself in covering its annual shortfall. How? By means-testing (cutting the benefits to the rich), changing the inflation formula, raising the retirement age and, if necessary, hiking the cap on income subject to the payroll tax.

You can plug in whatever combination of numbers you prefer for the definition of “rich,” for the slope of the sliding scale of benefit reduction, for the rate of the retirement-age increase, or for any other variable. Whatever the formula, we will ironically have been forced to adopt the very reforms needed to keep Social Security in balance for years to come — the kind President Obama’s own deficit commission recommended. Arguably, that would add to U.S. creditworthiness by finally demonstrating to the world our seriousness about bringing our unsustainable pension liabilities under control.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2011-03-18/news/os-ed-charles-krauthammer-031811-20110318-8_1_treasury-bonds-trust-fund-ious/2 - 29k -

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/8642120/Rome-accused-of-fiddling-while-Italian-economy-burns.html

Reminder to bankster-subservient politicians and bureaucrats: Italy was the birthplace of fascism. It is frightening to reflect on how history could repeat itself given the current global financial crisis. Almost all European revolutionary or extremist movements of the Left or Right were formed and led by bright, frustrated middle class university graduates who found no jobs or societal prospects corresponding to their talents and training. These EU politicos better stop toadying to the bankers and start paying more attention to the anger that’s growing out on the streets. Unlike their docile, stupified US counterparts, European youth in particular have a long history of turning to violent unrest when their aspirations go unmet.

I believe that Romney will end up getting the nod from the republicant’s. There is no way in my opinion that R.Paul can do it. So we get the same old song,dance and bull$hit from both parties as usual, because…Voters are smart!

Romney raises $18M in race for the Republican nomination
But Bachmann and Paul attract donations fast
- The Washington Times

Relying overwhelmingly on people making the maximum allowable contributions, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney amassed an $18 million campaign war chest that dwarfs that of other Republican presidential candidates, financial disclosures released late Friday show.

Yet two firebrands mounted last-minute campaigns that seemed to effortlessly raise funds in small increments in weeks while requiring little spending, leaving significant amounts stored away as candidates prepare for the Iowa straw poll next month.

Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican from Texas, raised $4.5 million and has $3 million on hand. Rep. Michele Bachmann, his second-term colleague in the House, focusing all resources in a newly created presidential campaign rather than her House vehicle, was in a similar position.

Though former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s haul of $4.5 million beat that of Mrs. Bachmann, also from that state, he seemed to burn up most of the take as soon as it landed in his bank account, leaving him with less money heading into the third quarter.

History strongly favors politicians with recent executive experience over legislators from the lower chamber; the only House member who has ever leapt to the presidency was James A. Garfield in 1880.

And early financial measures of support for other official Republican candidates were not bright.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum had a poor showing of $580,000 raised and $230,000 in the bank. Wealthy businessman Herman Cain raised $2 million, but spent nearly all of it, and loaned his campaign half a million dollars in personal funds in order to have cash on hand.

The flailing campaign of onetime House speaker Newt Gingrich raised $2 million, but spent nearly all of it, and closes the quarter with more than $1 million in debt. In the last three months, the campaign, which underwent an exodus of key staffers last month, racked up unpaid debts of $100,000 in legal fees and $90,000 in communications services.

http://news.yahoo.com/iowa-congressman-family-safe-home-invasion-131923099.html

I suspect that this is one Democrat politician who, unlike most of his DNC colleagues, isn’t going to be coddling dangerous felons while striving to disarm law-abiding citizens.

Realtors Are Liars

Wow, wonder why they did this.

Banks, Regulators Stopped Tougher Stress Tests, Telegraph Says

National regulators and lenders stopped the European Banking Authority from setting tougher stress tests by making it difficult to obtain accurate data, the EBA told analysts, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

EBA Chairman Andrea Enria outlined the difficulties and the regulator said it would have liked to make the tests on 91 of the region’s banks more strenuous, the newspaper reported.

Florida banking picture even uglier than it seems, research firm Invictus says

July 13th, 2011 by Jeff Ostrowski

More than a quarter of Florida banks are undercapitalized, but New York research firm Invictus Group says that number could soar to more than 50 percent.

Invictus ran thousands of U.S. banks through a stress test that aims to predict how institutions’ loan portfolios will weather a tough economy. In a report released today, it says 51.8 percent of Florida-based banks would be undercapitalized, which it defines as a Tier 1 capital ratio of less than 8 percent.

Only Puerto Rico (57.1 percent) and Arizona (52.8 percent) had higher shares of potentially undercapitalized banks.

Invictus CEO Kamal Mustafa sees a rough road for undercapitalized banks. Regulators are cracking down on lending by those banks, which means they’ll be unlikely to make new loans as existing borrowers pay off their loans.

As a result, Mustafa said, “They’re going to have a tremendous decline in earnings.”

http://blogs.palmbeachpost.com/realtime/ - 70k -

French Socialists Harden Deficit Pledge
(Bloomberg)

French Socialist Party leaders are hardening their commitment to cut the nation’s budget deficit as Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis creeps into the campaign for next year’s presidential elections.

“We have to balance the public accounts without delay” and cut the deficit to 3 percent of gross domestic product by 2013, Francois Hollande, the leading contender to become the Socialist candidate for president, said in an interview with today’s Le Monde newspaper. “Debt is the enemy of the left and of France.”

Martine Aubry, who’s also seeking her party’s nomination, echoed that view. “It’s a question of sovereignty,” she said today, also promising to meet the 3 percent goal. “Nothing would be worse than becoming president in 2012 and being attacked by financial markets,” she said on Europe 1 radio from Avignon, France.

The remarks suggest a shift from April, when the Socialist Party laid out its campaign platform for the 2012 election and avoided a firm commitment on the deficit. Since then, concern about the ability of euro-area nations to repay their debts has increased, with borrowing costs surging last week for Italy, the region’s third-largest economy.

Good lord, what a horrible way to go.

Feet first into the meat grinder: Gruesome death for sausage factory worker chewed up in front of his horrified colleagues
By Daily Mail Reporter

A 26-year-old sausage factory worker suffered a grisly end when he slipped and fell feet first into a meat grinder which chewed off his legs and killed him.

Father-of-four Michael Raper was trapped from the waist down for two excruciating hours after he become entangled in the huge auger at the Bar S Foods plant in Lawton, Oklahoma.

Amid gruesome scenes co-workers watched in horror before frantic emergency workers managed to cut the machine in half and free him.

The aunt of Mr Raper’s fiancee, who he was due to marry in February, told KFOR-TV: ‘He slipped and went into the machine. He was still conscious at the time so I can imagine the agony he was in, and he lost both of his legs.’

Lawton Fire Department Lt Steve Thornton spoke of the terrible sight that greeted his team when they arrived.
Horrfiying: Mr Raper was trapped in the grinder for two excruciating hours

He said they found Mr Raper, who was in charge of cleaning the machine, trapped and added that it took a further hour and 45 minutes to free him.

‘His legs were caught in an auger,’ Lt Thornton told OKNEWS.

‘They used a forklift to stabilise the auger while cutting it in two, lifted up the auger and pulled him from the machinery.
Agony: Diane Ferris, the aunt of Mr Raper’s fiancee, said he was still conscious at the time.

‘It was basically disentanglement because the gentleman was trapped.’

An air ambulance was requested but Mr Raper was taken to hospital by land after the tragedy on Tuesday night.

He was treated at the Comanche County Memorial Hospital where he died on Wednesday from ’severe injuries’.

The Greeks just need to gone on and default, get it over with already. In other words sit down and “eat your peas”!

48 HOURS TO SAVE THE EURO AS GREECE DEAL STALLS
~ Express.com UK

EXPERTS last night warned Europe has only 48 hours to save the single currency amid concern over the failure to seal a new rescue plan for debt-laden Greece.

The inability of politicians to agree a solution to the financial crisis threatening Europe sparked market jitters as continued uncertainty threatened to undermine the eurozone. One City executive said: “We need to come in on Monday morning and see something happening, otherwise I fear the worst.”

There are concerns that Italy and Spain could follow Greece, Portugal and Ireland in going broke and needing bailouts from richer countries to keep afloat.

But many in Britain believe further handouts would be ludicrous when it is clear the originals have not worked. Conservative MP Douglas Carswell said: “Many member states have been living beyond their means for years, if not decades, and there is nothing central bankers or politicians can do to make two and two equal five.

“Somehow maintaining the single currency union is not the answer and the longer we go on being told by the political elite in Europe and in the UK that somehow the answer is to save the euro, the worse the problem will get.”

There are concerns that Italy and Spain could follow Greece, Portugal and Ireland in going broke

He believed the only solution was for crisis-ridden countries to carry out the “three Ds”: Devalue their currencies by decoupling from the euro, default on their debts and downsize their public sector.

Mr Carswell added: “The wellbeing of millions of Europeans is being sacrificed by an out-of-touch, self-serving political elite, and what’s shocking is that our politicians are going along with it. We should speak the truth to our neighbours, that we have to come out of this monetary union.

“We have made a banking crisis into a sovereign default crisis, we’ve piled bailout on bailout. Something has to give. It’s time for a drastically different approach.”

I see this as a good thing…

~ Bonnie Faulkner ~ Guns and Butter

“When I was in Norway one of the Norwegian politicians sat next to me at a dinner and said, “You know, there’s one good thing that President Obama has done that we never anticipated in Europe. He’s shown the Europeans that we can never depend upon America again. There’s no president, no matter how good he sounds, no matter what he promises, we’re never again going to believe the patter talk of an American President. Mr. Obama has cured us. He has turned out to be our nightmare. Our problem is what to do about the American people that don’t realize this nightmare that they’ve created, this smooth-talking American Tony Blair in the White House.”

I posted this yesterday late, but I’ll try it again. Interesting to me is the fact that BAC changed the servicing of my wife’s loan. Also, hers is among the 700 Bofa auctions in central OR scheduled this fall. About 200 homes are sold per month in this market. I wonder if the market can handle this influx of REO, or if Bofa will resume massively rescheduling the auctions like before. It’s a given that our dire local unemployment rate of 15% does not help.

Will Bofa postpone some of these as they did before or will they be more successful executing their scheduled agenda this time around.

Many of the unpaid debts will be validated by default by BAC changing to the its new servicer, Bank of America N.A. In the small print it says that the debt will be considered valid unless the borrower makes a claim otherwise. Making all these debts good debts unless they are disputed, that should help them move things along; since so much correspondance from lenders just goes into the circular files of delinquent borrowers.

And with the important information buried on page three of their seemingly innocuous change of servicers from BAC to Bank of America, N.A.; this seems to be a tricky way of putting robosigning behind them-change the servicer and hide the fact that without explicit action by the borrower the debt is acknowleged as being valid. Robo-SOLVED!

There is also a crop of homes piling up to make the repo list anew, as they have not had a trustee sale in a year, so they must be wanting these homes to move along as quickly as possible.

She has already asked for the original note; it is on the way from the bank; and she will be disputing the debt from the “new” servicer(i.e. in name only apparently to clarify who owes them money legitimately). This is an attempt on her part to get more time in our free-for-now home. And to try to take the bank to task regarding following proper procedure. 8.5 billion settlement from Bofa to Countrywide investors must be admitting that many of these crap loans were suspect in quality; I assume for many reasons.

After all it was originated it was re-sold several times without proper procedures being followed, ripping off the state by ignoring laws regarding recording of new mortgage arrangements. And it was shoddily originated; with no income info required, it sure seemed to be dodgy; then that company was sold to Countrywide and that was then sold to BofA. Given BofA’s 8.5 billion dollar settlement with investors regarding crappily made mortgages maybe there is something wrong with wife’s mortgage and its subsequent allonges-reassignments that at the least circumvented state law.

After all; why else would BofA change the servicer from BAC to Bank of America, N.A.; then say that bit about not disputing the debt makes it a valid debt? Must mean that they fear those disputing it may point to some INvalidities? I mean, changing servicers from BAC to Bank of America, N.A. must have cost something so why did they do it? to get around OR judges ire over the robosigning and circumventing of state recording laws

Why not dispute it? If it was recorded incorrectly in any of its designations, some judges take issue with that. Maybe it just buys her some more time in the home?

Oh yeah, lots of homes in our hood are either being sold short or foreclosing as values have halved from 400k to 200K(or 150!). They are largely for sale; also largely vacant except for summer. A few are being enjoyed by their owners as we are on a golf resort. New owners next door just bought theirs for 200k and are loving life thus far. Too bad my wife paid double. Not something a few more shifts at the grocery store will solve; or even a raise at her lunch lady job!

RI tackles red tape in the name of job creation

ERIKA NIEDOWSKI
Associated Press
Posted on Sun, Jul. 17, 2011 12:09 PM

If Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns are anything, they are fiercely independent - right down to the point where each and every one has its own rules for setting up party tents.

That can make life - and business - difficult for William Corcoran, who owns a tent company. Half of the 2,000 events he does a year are in Rhode Island, where he might be sent from a building department to a police department to a fire department and back again to get the proper permit.

Not long ago, he was told it was necessary to appear before the planning board in Warwick to get the green light to erect a tent - for three days - for a dog show.

“A lot of my time is spent not putting up tents but dealing with the regulatory process,” said Corcoran, whose firm, Newport Tent Co., has been in business for 40 years. “It’s bad enough we have to fight the wind and the rain. We don’t have to fight City Hall.”

For small business owners, the backbone of the economy in Rhode Island and in states across the country, red tape means more than just frustration. Figuring out complex rules, much less complying with them, costs time, and time costs money. The Small Business Administration estimates that federal regulations cost the economy $1.75 trillion a year - which says nothing of those that states impose themselves.

Last year, the General Assembly approved a package of bills aimed at making it easier for firms to do business here. And former Gov. Donald Carcieri signed an executive order establishing an office whose aim is to improve regulatory procedures - and help businesses navigate them.

http://www.kansascity.com/2011/07/17/3019059/ri-tackles-red-tape-in-the-name.html - -

Felix Zulauf - Collapse Will Cause Governments to Change Rules
King World News

With gold nearing $1,600, silver making its way back towards the $40 level, Europe in turmoil and serious concerns about the United States, today King World News interviewed one of the greats, Felix Zulauf of Zulauf Asset Management. When asked if he was surprised about gold breaking out to new highs during the summer period Zulauf stated, “Well it was a little bit surprising because the technicals were pointing to some further correction and the correction was essentially a sideways affair, but the fundamentals are still very bullish.

I mean we have negative real interest rates in virtually all of the major currencies and that is historically a very bullish underpinning of the gold market and that’s why it is not so surprising. It’s just that it didn’t really react to the overextended technicals leading to some downside reaction, it was more a sideways affair and this really shows you how strong the (gold) market really is.”

When asked about where the financial world is headed Zulauf had this to say, “I really don’t know because we have never seen, me in my lifetime I have never seen anything like this, and I think not even in the last 100 years has anything like this happened. We have had several countries that were indebted and went down the drain in the emerging world, and those emerging economies and governments, they have always eventually done the right thing.

They have let market participants go bankrupt, they have reformed the currency, they have cut the debt down to a new operational level, but it was very, very painful and a lot of people lost all of their money. Because they did that, they have always come back strongly. For instance Brazil today is a very strong economy, but fifteen years ago it was bankrupt. It (Brazil) cut out the debt, it created a new currency and started all over again.

Now the industrialized world is just trying to prevent that. They cannot do that and by trying to prevent it, it will happen anyway. But they just postpone and postpone and postpone, and by doing that they make the problem much, much bigger and the risk is that we will eventually have a collapse. Usually collapse of systems work through the currency, the currency goes down the drain. And I am not sure we can then expect free capital flows anymore.

So the risk is that we move into a situation where one big guy starts to collapse, and then it’s over with free capital flows and then we enter a new world that is highly dirigiste (economic planning and control by the state).
“They (governments) change the rules, they change the law, etc., etc., and we will be a totally different world that has more resemblance of what was the case in the old communist block. That’s my big fear.

It won’t happen that you see a meltdown in the so-called free market or Western world and they will let it happen, that won’t happen. I think the governments will interfere, they will change the rules and you will have a highly government dominated economy with very little freedom for the individual and it won’t be a very pleasant world, that’s for sure.”

What in the hell is wrong with these crazy people? Just raise the fares and for Pete’s sake raise taxes, to save the ferry.

~ Cuts Would Ground Ferries

ROCKY HILL, Conn. (AP) A round of budget cuts in Connecticut is forcing the nation’s oldest operating ferry to close.
Historical archives say the Rocky Hill Ferry has been crossing the Connecticut River between the towns of Rocky Hill and Glastonbury continuously since 1655.

It is among two historic ferries that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s administration has put on the chopping block to close a $1.6 billion budget gap.

Historical documents say the ferry began with pole-operated boats run by families from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The state took over its operation in 1915 and Connecticut archivists say it has been in service longer than any other ferry in the United States.

Residents are sad to see the ferry go, saying it’s a favorite summertime destination for locals and tourists.

Cyclists In Burbank Beat JetBlue To Long Beach!

LONG BEACH (CBS) — Bike vs. Plane? It should be obvious to anyone who would win that contest.

Well, not so fast!

Some bloggers, hearing about JetBlue’s $4 fare from Burbank to Long Beach decided to lay down a challenge and see if some bike riders could beat the airline in a cross town race.

A cycle group knows as the Wolfpack Hustle set off just before 11 a.m. Saturday.

A blogger also left his home, in Burbank, about the same time.

Using the bike path along the LA River for most of their trip, the cyclists made their destination in a little more than an hour and 30 minutes.

Even though the flight time was about 20 minutes, the blogger had to leave his house, check in, board and deplane. Not to mention arriving an hour before his flight even left.

By the time the plane took off, the cyclists were already in Long Beach.

The cycle group said the challenge was meant to show how easy it is to get around the Southland by bike…and how much more convenient it is.