Bits Bucket for August 5, 2011
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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Mortgage insurer PMI Group says main subsidiary may have to stop selling policies, could close.
NEW YORK (AP) — Mortgage insurer The PMI Group Inc. warned investors on Thursday that it may be unable to continue selling new policies and could shut down.
The news sent shares of the Walnut Creek, Calif.-based company plunging to their lowest point in more than two years.
On a day when the broader markets were battered by economic concerns, the stock closed down 47 cents, or 53.4 percent, at 41 cents. Shares were last that low in March 2009, and had changed hands as high as $4.68 in the past 52 weeks.
PMI shares topped $50 a share in 2007, before the housing bubble burst. But the company has posted more than $3.5 billion in losses since 2007 as it paid out claims on foreclosed homes.
That includes a loss of $134.8 million, or 83 cents a share, for the three months ended June 30, which the company reported on Thursday.
Now, the company’s main subsidiary, PMI Mortgage Insurance Co., or MIC, doesn’t have enough money on hand to meet the requirements of regulations in Arizona, where it is based. The company said the state’s insurance department may as a result move to stop it from selling new policies in all states and move to rehabilitate or liquidate the unit.
Am I missing something, or didn’t the sudden policy change to federally guarantee upwards of 90% of all new mortgages pretty much put them out of business?
Shhhhh. The government creates jobs. Got it?
Some government policies create them, and many others destroy them. Vapid one-size-fits-all statements are not very useful.
Obama sez top priority should be creating jobs.
Well Liz how about destroying 100-200,000 homes asap….that will create tons of jobs and some cash by recycling……
Either that or the heck with the ACLU and put the homeless or section 8 in these abandoned homes… Chinese drywall, a roof over your head and AC is better then living on the streets.
Obama sez top priority should be creating jobs.
And where in the eff has he been for the last two and a half years? Job growth should have been number one on his agenda, starting on January 20, 2009.
But just a few months after he became President, I heard him call unemployment a lagging indicator. And his tone of voice was quite condescending. ISTR that this was at a press conference, but I’m not entirely sure.
Anyone else remember him saying this?
“And where in the eff has he been for the last two and a half years?”
The first thing he attacked was unemployment, with the $700B over 2 years, stimulus. We lost 750K jobs the month before he took office, and that had slowed to a trickle within 6 months, and we’ve been adding jobs since 9 months after he took office.
We then got tangled up in a reform of healthcare, that had it been implimented as a full government take-over to slice out the profits and get some rationing, may have sliced hundreds of billions from our current deficits, and hundred trillion from our long-term unfunded mandates.
Unfortuantly, the Republicans fought a very skillful defensive campaign that ate up about a year. While that was going on, he spent the last of his capital getting Dodd-Frank passed. Which put us into campaign season.
You can’t get anything done during campaign season, and the Republicans were skillful at turning outrage of government bailouts against what they saw as bigger government taking even more from them. They won.
Since Republicans took the house, it has been pure gridlock.
Republicans have been very successful at convincing people that the stimulus didn’t create any jobs. So successful, that as the stimulus spending has ended and the job market has turned soft, they blame Obama for…..
For what? For not doing enough while doing too much? Oh.. right. For standing in the way of creating a new, larger bubble needed to paper over the losses of the last one. For standing in the way of that bubble that will make a few people richer, while wiping out the last of middle-class savings and incomes when it pops. A bubble that they will again try to dump the losses from, on government.
Obama is the most anti-business president because his Dodd-Frank law is preventing banks from cheating their customers, taking insanely risky bets, and inflating a new bubble that Wall Street so desperately needs.
Darrell, when did you join the vehement ranks the HBB sensible ranters?
(not that I’m complaining…
)
Can a guy get his welfare/UE check in Greek/Italian bonds?
and that had slowed to a trickle within 6 months
~400k jobs/week (or is it a month?) is a “trickle”????
5 trillion in new debt since he took office, not only no new jobs in the private sector but we still have crumbling infrastructure that could have been tended to with some of that Obama cash. To what black hole did he send all of that money? Why did he insist on pushing his social justice (still don’t know what that means) progressive fringe agenda through in his first two years at the expense of already fragile economy? He was billed to be the most dynamic and intelligent president we have ever seen…So far he has just been the most stubborn and ideological president we have ever seen.
“And where in the eff has he been for the last two and a half years? Job growth should have been number one on his agenda, starting on January 20, 2009.”
That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of politics. If he had done all his good work in his first year he would have had nothing left to impress voters with in year four, the election year.
5 trillion in new debt since he took office,….To what black hole did he send all of that money?
It went to feed the Black Hole of Bush’s policy changes of course. Check out the math and stuff. (And the pretty graphs) btw, the nyt did not come up with numbers they just report them. That’s how it works sometimes nick.
How the Deficit Got This Big
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24sun4.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
With President Obama and Republican leaders calling for cutting the budget by trillions over the next 10 years, it is worth asking how we got here — from healthy surpluses at the end of the Clinton era, and the promise of future surpluses, to nine straight years of deficits, including the $1.3 trillion shortfall in 2010. The answer is largely the Bush-era tax cuts, war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, and recessions.
….Mr. Obama’s policies, taken out to 2017, add to deficits, but not by nearly as much.
A few lessons can be drawn from the numbers. First, the Bush tax cuts have had a huge damaging effect. If all of them expired as scheduled at the end of 2012, future deficits would be cut by about half, to sustainable levels.
“….Mr. Obama’s policies, taken out to 2017, add to deficits, but not by nearly as much.”
And Obama was dealt a far worse hand (by Bush) than bush was dealt (by Clinton). In short, Obama’s policies have done less damage to deficits than W’s despite a worse economic situation Obama had to deal with.
Well, to be fair. If the government wasn’t guarantering loans, there would be less demand, prices would be even lower, and PMI’s losses would have already put them out of business.
They were guaranteeing the first 20% of the loss on an item that was selling for 100% above its fundimental value. They were toast no matter what.
“…there would be less demand…”
I am not clear what this means, but will offer my own interpretation (please disagree if I missed your point).
- Federal policy currently is aimed at supporting housing prices at a higher level than market forces would dictate.
- According to elementary economics, artificially inflated housing prices results in less quantity demanded.
- Less quantity of homes demanded results in fewer loans demanded, slower home sales, less jobs for used home sellers, furniture sellers and other supporting industries, and less movement of new college graduates to locations where labor market demand is high for skilled young workers at affordable pay levels.
High housing prices decrease the the u. s. competitiveness…sending even more jobs overseas.
Professor Bear, there are two factors to the housing demand situation. Want to buy at current price and can buy at current price.
Where I live, houses can’t be sold for 75% of the 100x rent rule of thumb. 5 years ago houses may have been 2x the fundamental value based on rent comparison, but now they are WELL UNDER historic norm price/rent ratio, and they still are not selling. I do not think it is an issue of want to buy, but rather a “can buy” constrained market.
We are “can buy” restrained with 3% down and 5% rate over 30 years.
Jack up the requirement to 20% down, increase rates to 8%, and make her pay it back over 10 or 15 years, and it becomes an even more “can buy” constrained market.
I am not saying that she SHOULD be allowed to buy for 3% down and get insanely low rates because the government is taking on the risk of the default.
I am simply saying that if those were the terms, there would be fewer people buying. Those that were would be paying much lower prices… Again, I’m not saying that is a bad thing either.
So, what am I saying?
That without government intervention holding up house prices by helping make it a slightly less “can buy” constrained market, PMI’s losses would be even larger than they already are.
One way or the other, PMI was toast way back when they were guaranteeing the first 20% of loss on houses that were 100% overvalued.
‘Jack up the requirement to 20% down, increase rates to 8%, and make her pay it back over 10 or 15 years, and it becomes an even more “can buy” constrained market.’
Only so in the short run. The two times in our lives as a married couple my wife and I owned homes, we put 20% down and managed to keep paying our mortgage, even through a spell of unemployment. If the requirement comes back, prices will adjust back to affordable levels where 20% down is doable, and the market will stabilize.
I wonder how PMI will be affected by the pending QRM-gold standard regulations (comments now closed). QRM sez: 20% down, or you only get to sell 95% of you loan.
As for Fannie/Freddie taking the place of PMI, I’m poking online to find whether Fannie/Freddie will buy non-QRM mortgages, and I don’t really know. Apparently, under current proposed rule, F?F are exempt (they will buy 100% of a non-QRM so PMI is moot). But there’s a bipartisan group in Congress, including Barney Frank, who want Fannie/Freddie to be under the same standard, ie F/F would only buy 95% of a non-QRM mortgage.
Full gobblygook: http://www.bingham.com/Media.aspx?MediaId=12273
‘Rent Is Too Damn High Party’ Founder Being Evicted From New York Apartment August 05, 2011| New York Post
New York – The man who ran for New York governor under the Rent Is Too Damn High Party banner claims he is being kicked out of his Manhattan apartment — because the rent is too damn low, the New York Post reported Friday.
Jimmy McMillan says he pays $872.96 for a rent-controlled ground-floor apartment on St. Marks Place in the East Village — which he’s had since the late-1970s, when the rent was around $275.
But the man who founded the tenants-rights party says his landlords are giving him the boot so they can pull in way more dough.
“I’ve been here since 1977, and they want more money!” McMillan said. “It’s about ‘My Rent is Too Damn Low.’”
well if they offer him $50-75,000 to move its could be a fair deal…..
I wonder if his ground floor apartment has an outside space with it? then it would be worth a lot more maybe $100K to get him to give up his lease.
Even if they offer him a big chunk of cash, he won’t be able to find a similar place to live anywhere near his current home without his rent doubling or tripling.
15 or 20 years ago there was an old lady who lived in a rent controlled apt in an old brownstone on 60th near Lexington, across the street from Bloomingdale’s. She was reportedly offered a high six figure amount to move, but refused and won. (Remember if you are rent controlled - as opposed to stabilized - you’ve lived there for decades.) The owners got all the other tenants to leave. One day she came home and they had demolished the back half of the building! Finally they built around her and she stayed until her death.
If you go to that corner you can see the remaining stub of the brownstone sticking out of the side of a high rise.
Can children inherit a rent controlled apartment?
Yes, under some circumstances.
http://realestateqa.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/seeking-to-inherit-rent-controlled-status/
But landlords will go to great lengths to determine if that is so, including hiring private investigators, etc.
Yes if they move in for usually 2 years before the parent dies moves to a nursing home or florrriaadh….
AND you have to make the apartment your permanent residence…you need to vote in the district your ID tax forms drivers license all has to have that address….and lets face it do you want to live with your parents at that age?
Its tough and you need a few thousand to defend against a landlord who will sue even if he has no case…. its a tax deduction for him.
Its amazing how many old people will move on just a 42 CENT stamp out of the apartment just because the landlord threatens to sue you for no good reason.
Reading the article, it seems that his son is really the one living in the apartment.
The Rent Is Too Damn High Party’s Jimmy McMillan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4o-TeMHys0
Jimmy McMillan was complaining that a rent of $872.96 was too high? In Manhattan? I think Jimmy McMillan is too damn high.
Ox:
Most OLD rent controlled apartments were never upgraded so he may have to choose between running an AC or a toaster on the same line because both will blow the fuses…yes fuses not circuit breakers…
He probably has to pay the super under the table to get anything fixed quickly…plus he cant do much without authorization, so pulling up a 30 year old carpet could be grounds for eviction if the landlord finds out about it.
So its tough living in an old apartment…even if its 1/3 the market rate…
This thread proves yet again that you have to be insane to live in NYC.
U.S. Jobs Gain Seen Too Small to Cut Jobless
(Bloomberg)
American employers probably failed to create enough jobs in July to reduce the jobless rate, showing anxiety over government debt deliberations and a slowdown in consumer spending have shaken confidence, economists said before a report today.
Payrolls climbed by 85,000 workers after an 18,000 increase in June that was the smallest this year, according to the median forecast of 88 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before a Labor Department report. The jobless rate held at 9.2 percent after rising in each of the previous three months.
Limited job gains and concern the economic recovery will be cut short led U.S. equities to their biggest slump since February 2009 yesterday. Slowing growth puts more pressure on Federal Reserve policy makers meeting next week to try to steer the world’s largest economy away from another recession at a time when inflation is also accelerating.
“The labor market is slowing towards stall speed,” said Patrick O’Keefe, chief economist at J.H. Cohn LLP in Roseland, New Jersey. “Employers were certainly seeing a decline, or leveling off, in demand for goods and services.”
The Labor Department’s data are due at 8:30 a.m. in Washington. Bloomberg payroll survey estimates range from no change to a 150,000 increase.
In the little I’ve seen about the recent debt compromise legislation, I read that we are throwing the unemployed under the bus. Great job DC!
Part one of the Tea Party plan, to crash the economy just before the 2012 elections, is working beautifully.
Part two seems questionable: Are American voters really dumb enough to fall for an attempt to blame the negative economic impact of hardline debt ceiling negotiations on Obama?
It’s all about O, is it? What do you think was in the mind of the voters who put some of these Tea Party guys in office? Hatred for O so deep that they would destroy the country to get him? Biden thinks so and so do you. What if their agenda is what they say it is?
“What if their agenda is what they say it is?”
I believe the average TeaKoch partier truly wants to cut government spending. They also, as polls have shown, want ‘their’ SS and medicare.
The problem is they’ve been fooled into believing gov waste and foreign aid are the problems. And they’ve been taught to powerfully oppose the very things that will correct our debt problems: universal health-care coverage and tax reform (ie the wealthy once again paying the same rate as the plebs).
“What do you think was in the mind of the voters who put some of these Tea Party guys in office?”
Very little, if anything.
Professor Bear. You are wrong. It isn’t that there is nothing in their head. There is 50 years of Republican propaganda.
They are blinded by dogmatic devotion to the idea that Welfare is the problem, that taxes are the problem, that government is the problem, that foreign aide is the problem…
That if we hadn’t taken all the money out of the SS trust fund back in (insert date here… sometimes it is the 60s, the 70s or the 80s) then SS would be solvant.
If you show them the actual numbers, that SS, MC/C, DoD, VA and interest are 70+% of this years budsget and more than 80% of the budget if stimulus is assumed to be short-term. Than the 70% increase in the number of 65+ over the next 10 years are projected to have SS abd MC costing more than the entire revenue of the federal government…. They fall into a pit of cognative dissonance and they just lash out in anger at the person presenting the bad news, instead of being angry at the politicians that have lied to them for 50 years.
They can not turn on the Republican party. It is engrained into every fiber of their being. It is a part of their personality. Hating the big government liberals and loving Reagan’s Revolution is as much a part of them as their arms and legs.
Show them that Reagan’s Revolution was based on deregulating banking and getting the debt flowing. Show them that our prosperity of the last 30 years has been based on debt increasing at 3x the sustainable rate and is therefore doomed to long-term collapse. Show them that their war of unions and love of free trade has resulted in the near destruction of the middle class as wages have not come close to keeping up with real inflation.
My father would not speak to me for 9 months after I did a particularly good job of painting his arguments into a corner with data.
It isn’t that their heads are empty. It is that their heads are full of lies, half-truths, and a massive amount of propaganda that has given them dogmatic devotion to false beliefs.
“It isn’t that there is nothing in their head. There is 50 years of Republican propaganda.”
Semantics: One man’s ‘nothing’ is another man’s ‘propaganda.’
Darrell,
I think you paint a particularly accurate picture of how the human can be closed to information. The only thing you left out is it happens on both sides of the aisle and it’s not limited to politics.
accurate picture of how the human can be closed to information. The only thing you left out is it happens on both sides of the aisle
Yes it happens on both sides of the aisle but it does not happen equally on both sides of the aisle.
The disregarding and ignoring of facts, figures and trends as Darrell_in_PHX described the tendency of the right does not happen nearly as often on the left.
A good illustration of this phenomena is that most scientists are liberal. Being a scientist requires scientific thinking which involves acknowledging facts, figures and trends.
“I think you paint a particularly accurate picture of how the human can be closed to information. The only thing you left out is it happens on both sides of the aisle and it’s not limited to politics.”
+100
We debate incessantly in the office here to do our best to see both sides, both on business, and politics.
A colleague and myself were commenting yesterday how his right-leaning father thinks that he is a raving lunatic, liberal freak, and my left-leaning liberal MIL thinks that I’m a right-wing conservative nutjob.
In fact, he is more conservative than I am…
“What if their agenda is what they say it is?”
As the resident TeaBagger, why don’t you tell us?
e sustainable rate and is therefore doomed to long-term collapse. Show them that their war of unions and love of free trade has resulted in the near destruction of the middle class as wages have not come close to keeping up with real inflation.
I think I am having a “political crisis”, as I see some good on both sides and a lot of bad on both sides. I used to consider myself a Republican. I loved Regan regardless of some of the things he did that I didn’t agree with and how some of the things he did seem to have started this mess. And I would never call myself a liberal, because regardless of what Rio said, IMHO they ignore more facts than even the Repubs.
I believe a lot of liberal ideals but with conservative twists:
I think it is stupid to not take care of the earth that we live on. But my belief is that the most correct way to fix it is population control.
I think that there should be a support system for families and people who need help, but I think that giving people money without any expectations or rules that will help them in the future is a total waste of taxpayer money.
I think that we should have national health care, and that it should be very cheap but also very limited and require preventative care and include dental. However, I don’t believe it would be right to do this until we get illegal immigration under control. Big pharma and insurance companies have way too much influence in Washington.
I don’t give a rats a@@ about gay marriage or gays in the military. I don’t want the government in my bedroom and I don’t think it should be in theirs.
I believe people should be allowed to carry guns as long as they have training and a permit.
I think drugs should be legalized and that people should get treatment instead of go to jail. And drug gang members should get very harsh sentences for gang related violence.
I think government should focus more on compromise and I think this is a major failing on both parties. All or nothing seems to be the new negotiation tactic and it stinks.
I hate hate hate the stupid religious nuts that seem to be so prevalent in the Republican Party now. I don’t care what it says in the bible, I don’t want your religion shoved down my throat any more than I want sharia law. It is so stupid to see them trying to use the threat of sharia law to justify shoving their own version into government. There is a reason we were protected from it and all they need to do to understand is look in the mirror.
Sorry for the long rant ..er post. I am just really upset with our government right now and I feel like there isn’t a single person in Washington who gives a damn about the country as a whole, it is all about what they can get in their pocket and power. And I think Wall Street is EXACTLY the same. They are strangling the golden goose and are too narcissistic and greedy to even realize it.
I have a saying: The problem with the Republicans is that they are too good at math and the problem with the Democrats is that they are too bad at it.
And I know you guys are all thinking people who are worth venting too. btw Arizona Slim, I am down in SV.
I would never call myself a liberal, because regardless of what Rio said, IMHO they ignore more facts than even the Repubs.
A lot of good ideas in your post and of course liberals ignore facts but not the big, grand ones that count in our current economic system and troubles. The big stuff.
Here’s important facts that Conservatives ignore twist or lie about. These have a direct effect on our economy. There is no such list for liberals.
Tax cuts for rich and corporations did not lead to economic prosperity. (We’ve had 30 years to prove it)
Tax cuts for the rich did not create jobs. ditto
We do not have “the best health-care in the world”.
Deregulating Banks is killing us.
Outsourcing is killing us.
Low wages are killing us.
The cost of wars are killing us
Bush tax cuts have caused massive wealth inequality
Wealth inequality leads to lower revenues and social instability, reduces demand and increases debt to make up for lost wealth and income.
There is more…..
And I know you guys are all thinking people who are worth venting too. btw Arizona Slim, I am down in SV.
And you’re coming to Tucson for that much-talked-about HBB Meetup, right?
Thank you DB… to be honest, you sound center-left.
The bleeding heart liberals are annoying, I admit. But if we had a way to kick out the illegals, bring most the jobs back, quit bleeding intellectual property for a short-term buck, and had national health care, then we wouldn’t NEED the bleeding-heart policies.
“It isn’t that there is nothing in their head. There is 50 years of Republican propaganda.”
The progressives actually have the gall to accuse others of spreading propaganda? Seriously?
“Arizona Slim: And you’re coming to Tucson for that much-talked-about HBB Meetup, right?”
I lurk here at least 4-5 days a week, but I don’t recall hearing about a Tucson meetup, when/where is it?
Since you said much talked about, I don’t know how I missed it, although I have been on a little less the past few weeks.
I lurk here at least 4-5 days a week, but I don’t recall hearing about a Tucson meetup, when/where is it?
Whenever we care to have it.
Matter of fact, there’s this very cool brewery opening up in a few weeks. It’s in Downtown Tucson.
Anyone up for a few Tucson brews?
Not much of a beer drinker (prefer vodka or wine :), but I would be happy to meet there, or anywhere sometime. My b/f and I don’t go up to Tucson very often, but I would enjoy meeting some HBBers for some drinks.
When I lived in Europe, I loved discussing politics with people, they never got wound up and respected that someone can have a different opinion than you and still be a decent human being. Most of the people on here are more like that than most Americans.
The empty skulls of TeaPartyBigots certainly are dumb enough.
empty skull; bigot; dumb
i learned 2 things on this blog
1) there was a housing bubble that has been deflating but the govt acts to prevent the correction.
2) you guys on the left are all about name calling and insults, you are really rude
I learned 2 things on this blog
1) Haters will always use any means to advance their hate.
2) You haters will always lay on the ground like victims, you really are phonies.
3. Obama’s economic policies are no different from bush’s yet they are good for the country.
4. The tarp bailout that kept the country from going into depression was bad. Enormous defecit spending to keep the country from going into depression is good.
5. Bush overspending to keep the country from going into a depression after the dot com bubble collapse was bad. Obama overspending to keep the country from going into a depression after the housing bubble collapse is good.
6. Arguing on the Housing Bubble Blog is like winning at the Special Olympics.
Or winning a pie eating contest where the reward is more pie.
7. “It’s different this time” is both a signal for the top and bottom.
“Arguing on the Housing Bubble Blog is like winning at the Special Olympics.”
More like: HBB- where right wing talking points come to die.
(But don’t worry, dittoheads- they’ll invent new ones tomorrow. You’re on the receiving end of a VERY well-funded propaganda machine. Funded by the rich guys you self-destructively identify with- as they laugh at you.)
Part 2 is when they use the debt ceiling to force Obama to put “entitlements” on the table, then blame obama for putting entitlements on the table. They have already posted this on the GOP website, complete with ready-to-email ammo quotes. And yes, it will work like a charm.
Yesterday there was a mention that a third-partier may come along to shake things up. Since the R’s have the tea-party right and Obama is courting the middle, the sweet spot for the third party is on the left. Any lefty will sound like a moonbat, and Obama can out-orate any lefty on lefty issues when he has to. I don’t think a third-party is going to fly this time.
IMO the run-the-country-like-a-business tactic won’t work either. All you need to point to are banks, oil companies, and GWB (MBA) as to what businessmen do, and point out that a real business would have “fired” the non-producing old and sick and disabled by refusing to give them SS and Med “paychecks.”
“American voters really dumb enough to fall for an attempt to blame the negative economic impact of hardline debt ceiling negotiations on Obama?” I think you are really missing the the point. Default was never a real threat, but downgrade was. Obama has been spending like crazy, and passed monumental legislation that hinders job growth and the ability to efficiently hedge and manage risk, while at the same time increasing big government. Of course Obama is responsible for making our problems much, much worse.
We can argue until the cows come home about whose fault the bad economic situation at hand is, without ever once mentioning the housing bubble collapse. But it seems quite apparent the false urgency of the Tea Party people to fix the U.S. debt problem was a political ploy to crash the economy and blame it on Obama.
Am I the only poster here who thinks this is completely obvious?
PB, as many of us on this board predicted at the beginning of the year the economy slowed down in June and July this was in the cards long before the budget debate. Sorry Obama’s policies and not the tea party are responsible for the mess. Also, as many on the board predicted the real problem is growing government debt and not whether the debt ceiling was raised. Once again we were right, debt ceiling raised and market tanks. All the tea party did was show that pretend and extend is not a good policy for government finances. Europe did not need a tea party to collapse and if one had formed earlier they might not be in as bad as shape as they are. One problem I have we the tea party, is that they do not seem to understand that the Laffer curve is a curve, not all tax decreases pay for themselves and not all tax increases lead to a lost in revenue. But since they real problem is that the U.S. budget usually balances when both government revenue and expenditures are about 20% and Obama raised spending to 26% spending needs to be brought under control ( to 20%)and then tax revenue needs to considered the tea party is not responsible for failed Zimbabwe type policies. Follow Zimbabwe policies get Zimbabwe results, who could have figured that out?
PB you are wrong on this point. The problem is the amount of our debt. The sht would have eventually hit the fan even if both parties raised the debt ceiling without blinking an eye. Did the manner in which it was done shine light on the problem? Yes. Did it cause it? No.
“Sorry Obama’s policies and not the tea party are responsible for the mess.”
OK — thanks for clarifying. Now I get it. I’m voting for Michele Bachmann in 2012 because the mess we are in is all Obama’s fault.
I just never realized how simple it all really is…
The problem is that our debt was run up by Reagan and Bush. The numbers that “Obama doubled the deficit in two years blah blah” is because he brought the wars onto the books — that is, “Obama’s” doubled deficit is actually Bush’s spending.
Obama’s stimulus package — a favorite Tea Party whipping boy — contained a LOT of tax cuts. And yet the stimulus “didn’t work” to create jobs. Does this mean that those magical “job-creating” tax cuts also don’t create jobs as advertised? Why yes, I think it does. Will R’s stuffed full of propaganda realize they contradict themselves every time they open their mouths? Why no, I don’t think they will.
I never told you who to vote for PB just that Obama’s policies made things worse, not better. Even the deficit numbers under state his damage due to how we calculated TARP. When Bush loaned money to the banks it was counted as an expenditure and counted in his last year’s deficit. However, when the loan was paid back with interest it was counted as revenue and has the lower the Obama’s deficits by hundreds of billions of dollars. Despite bad economic policies, including a stimulus program that was designed poorly, he might have survived has he not thrown Mubarak under the bus and intervened in Libya, both policies made oil soar. BTW, I advised against both policies and predicted the outcome. Finally, PB you do provide good information to this board but I just can’t understand why you cannot understand that printing money caused inflation and that is why gold is going up and the fact that Europe has now joined that band wagon is the reason why gold is going up. I think that this printing has been largely priced in but I still think that you will lose the bet you may with several on this board that gold will not be higher than it was I believe in May a year from then.
‘thrown Mubarak under the bus’
I suppose you think there was something the US govt could have done to keep this dictator in power? Shield your eyes then, cuz he’s in a cage in the courtroom now, and they are going to do a lot worse to him and his cronies than put them under a bus.
IMO, the days of the US, England and France using the mid-east (and those millions of peoples lives) like a private chessboard are pretty much over. You never know, we may see the King of Saudi Arabia in a little cage.
All the tea party did was show that pretend and extend is not a good policy for government finances.
Ho ho, hah hah, hehehehehehe, BwaHaHaAhHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! (Cantankerous Intellectual Bomb-thrower™)
“TrueReduceTheDeficitNow!! Today!™”
How come this WMD (Weapon$ of Ma$$ Deficit$) rallying type “TrueAnger™” mantra $uddenly (Jan 20th 2009 aka: “Black Tuesday) became an i$$ue?
Cheney-$hrub:
2001
“TrueReduceTheDeficitNow!! Today!™”
2002
“TrueReduceTheDeficitNow!! Today!™”
2003
“TrueReduceTheDeficitNow!! Today!™”
2004
“TrueReduceTheDeficitNow!! Today!™”
2005
“TrueReduceTheDeficitNow!! Today!™”
2006
“TrueReduceTheDeficitNow!! Today!™”
2007
“TrueReduceTheDeficitNow!! Today!™”
2008:
“this whole $ucker could go down, hurry!, hurry!, hurry, we need Trillion$…NOW!
Eyes reckon the “TrueKnowNothing$™ / “TrueHypocrite’$™” yelled/screamed & hollered so often that their absolute $ilence was the result of losing their voices, right?
Am I the only poster here who thinks this is completely obvious?
Bugs: “eh, listen Prof,… Major Daffy of the 3rd Cavalry is sneakin’ up behind ‘em…oh, and Foghorn stuck a barrel of ACME’s “Now!, Now! we’re Angry!” gun powder in Yosemite Sam’s pants. Ol’ Sam is sooooooooooo angry & popin’ off his “TrueAnger™” Heston six shooters, he’s takin to shootin’ everything in his sight$, Linda the Lavishly Living Lunch Lady & most of her family, even the (Non-Hawaiian) black Kenyan dish-washer pot-scrubber over at the $age $hrub Saloon!”
“TrueAnger™” + “TruePathtoPro$perity™”…they have a plan!
Job$! Job$! Job$!…coming soon!
“Obama has been spending like crazy”
No. The government has put in place laws that require it to spend like crazy over the past (and future) decades. The GOVERNMENT has been spending like crazy.
When there was an opportunity for real tax reform, and real spending cuts, BOTH parties avoided the hard decisions because it was politically expedient, and the world is still lending us money for 10-years at <3%.
Arguing over which Trillion to cut? Please. They need to cut far, far more to make a real difference.
They should all be fired for not doing their job (Obama, Reid, Boehner, and down the line).
Obama has been spending like crazy, ……Of course Obama is responsible for making our problems much, much worse. Natalie.
Sorry Obama’s policies and not the tea party are responsible for the mess. Albuquerquedan
Both of you are wrong. 80% of Obama’s debt increases were caused by the Bush policy changes- the tax cuts for the rich and the wars and these are recurring costs. In addition most of Obama’s 20% responsibility for the debt increase are non-recurring costs. Check out the chart here. It has math and colored bars and stuff.
The Bush Deficit
http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-cohn/92569/bush-obama-deficit-tax-cut-stimulus-health
Critics of President Obama never tire of blaming him for today’s high deficits. But if blame belongs with one president, it belongs with Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush. The chart above, which the New York Times created based upon figures from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, illustrates this point very clearly. But it’s worth reviewing the history here, because while it’s familiar to most of us who follow politics it doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention in the political debate.
When there was an opportunity for real tax reform, and real spending cuts, BOTH parties avoided the hard decisions because it was politically expedient, and the world is still lending us money for 10-years at <3%.
Arguing over which Trillion to cut? Please. They need to cut far, far more to make a real difference.
They should all be fired for not doing their job (Obama, Reid, Boehner, and down the line).
That’s how I see it. John Mauldin says they needed to cut $10 billion over 10 years or taxes will need to skyrocket. Do people believe this is only fear mongering and that John M is merely a Tea Partier? Where were the cuts here? All Congress came up with is more extend and pretend. Don’t listen to JM if you think he’s a tea partier. Instead listen to the reaction of our angry creditors. Watch the boards for investor reaction.
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/john-mauldin-u-must-cut-10-trillion-10-193254628.html
I suppose you think there was something the US govt could have done to keep this dictator in power? Shield your eyes then, cuz he’s in a cage in the courtroom now, and they are going to do a lot worse to him and his cronies than put them under a bus.
Ben, it is not like a true democracy is going to be formed in Egypt. Since his fall the Copts are being raped and killed with impunity and more and more the secular forces are realizing that their fate is going to be an Islamic dictatorship. Could we have kept him in power, yes, since we did it for decades all we had to do is look the other way. He is a a SOB but he is our SOB, I think TR said something like that.
Alb-DAN–>”Ben, it is not like a true democracy is going to be formed in Egypt. Since his fall the Copts are being raped and killed with impunity and more and more the secular forces are realizing that their fate is going to be an Islamic dictatorship”
Absolute garbage, you would have to be mentally challenged to believe that, it’s tough for everyone in Egypt, Copts are no more raped or killed then the average Egyptian, stop the retarded rumors.
After 60 years of secular dictatorship, I dont people will take kindly to any other (including islamic) dictatorships.
Hopefully the Tea Partiers will stop paying attention to politics.
Worked between the birth of Christ and January of 2009 when not one TPer was paying attention, hopefully they’ll do the same and not exist between November 2011 and beyond.
My take on the Tea Party.
The original concept was to greatly reduce the size of government which imo is long overdue. There is no easy way to achieve this.
The co-opted concept shows a bloated medicare receiving, disabled nascar fan who wants to eliminate all government benefits whilst suckling on this same teet.
The PTB will say and do anything and everything to maintain the status quo.
The co-opted concept shows a bloated medicare receiving, disabled nascar fan who wants to eliminate all government benefits whilst suckling on this same teet.
Or, as Matt Taibbi called them, “Medicare Motorized Scooter Conservatives.”
Well, we’re spending close to $140B on unemployment and we’re only trimming like $21B from 2012… we can’t be throwing the unemployed under that big of a bus.
Well, we’re spending close to $140B on unemployment and we’re only trimming like $21B from 2012… we can’t be throwing the unemployed under that big of a bus.
And the fedgov being involved in unemployment is a new thing, no? Part of the ARRA in 2008 I believe. Prior to that UI was a state-level thing.
No, it’s always been a joint federal-state program. There may have been some changes in the arrangements due to the severity of the recession.
No, it’s always been a joint federal-state program.
Got a link to info? Since the amount varies from state to state, and the funding came from employers (and was managed by states), I’m curious the role the fedgov played prior to the ARRA.
Here:
http://www.workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/unemploy/pdf/partnership.pdf
This is the beginning of the first sentence:
The federal-state unemployment compensation (UC) program, created by the Social Security Act
(SSA) of 1935,…
This is the first sentence of the third paragraph:
The UC program is a federal-state partnership based upon federal law, but administered by state
employees under state law.
As I mentioned previously, the current administration did change the way that the program operates, due to the fact that the states with the highest unemployment rates were in no position to extend benefits past 26 weeks.
i don’t have a link, but I’m pretty sure that the state covers the first 26 weeks. That’s been the standard for decades. It’s only since 2008 that the fed gov kicked money TO the states to pay for 52, then 71, then 99.
That’s been the standard for decades. It’s only since 2008 that the fed gov kicked money TO the states to pay for 52, then 71, then 99.
Right. So, even though it’s stated as a partnership, I’m curious what role the fedgov actually played prior to 2008. In my copious free time (hah) I’ll have to look into that out of curiousity….
I wonder how many jobs would be available if we cracked down on illegal aliens. This is why other countries have a tighter control over their labor markets. Why pay unemployment out to your citizens while protecting non-citizens’ right to keep that job. To make the problems worse, that income or at least a portion of it possibly gets sent outside of our economy to folks back home.
The estimates are about 7 million jobs, Carrie Ann. So said the head of NumbersUSA. Almost all of them are low-paying physical labor jobs, but jobs nonetheless.
I don’t know if that includes the better construction jobs.
Add in about a million well paying jobs taken by H1-B and L-1 visa holders.
The estimates are about 7 million jobs, Carrie Ann. So said the head of NumbersUSA. Almost all of them are low-paying physical labor jobs, but jobs nonetheless.
I don’t know if that includes the better construction jobs.
If by better construction jobs, you mean things like being a master plumber or a lead electrician, the illegals weren’t there. Instead, they did the lower-skilled things like drywall installation, framing carpentry, and pouring cement.
AZ, we’ve heard stories of even illegals making upwards of $60K during the building season.
The money being sent by illegals to their homeland is a trickle compared to what we spend abroad without a manufacturing base.
If by better construction jobs, you mean things like being a master plumber or a lead electrician, the illegals weren’t there.
===================
You made me laugh out loud!
“Add in about a million well paying jobs taken by H1-B and L-1 visa holders.”
I have mixed feelings about these visas. My job has the potential to be H1-Bed or outsourced. My children and my competitors may not be able to find a job because it has been given to an H1-B. On the other hand, reducing the number of visas does not necessarily keep the jobs here. If the jobs are outsourced instead, then taxes are paid to some other country.
I am all for an illegal immigrant crackdown. And, yes, that may free up millions of jobs that Americans currently won’t do, but I bet a lot of them would if we cut UI to 26 weeks and trimmed Food Stamps and other programs.
That said, I wonder what effect driving 10-15 million people out of the country would have on our already insanely out of balance housing market.
Make that 117k jobs added/ 9.1%
The World is Saved!
Only 14 MILLION more to go!
Is Real U.S. Debt Figure $211T — not $14.3T?
~ ABC News
With the U.S. debt dragon slain–at least temporarily–legislators in Washington and money managers around the world breathed a sigh of relief Monday, after Congress, in intense weekend negotiations, seemed finally to have agreed on a solution to the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling crisis.
But is their celebration premature? What if the nation’s attention had been focused all this time on the wrong number? What if U.S. debt isn’t $14.3 trillion, but bigger by a factor of 14? Time, maybe, to put the cork back in the champagne bottle.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek, in its current cover story “Why The Current Debt Crisis is Even Worse Than You Think”, argues the true measure of U.S. debt ought to be the so-called fiscal gap. That’s the present value of the difference between the nation’s total revenues and its total obligations. That comes to $211 trillion.
For Congress, as it tries to thread its way out of the nation’s debt crisis, to be focused on the smaller number, is like a driver “using a map of New York to try to drive around L.A.” So says Boston University economist Laurence J. Kotlikoff.
The two men, in an academic paper titled “On The General Relativity of Fiscal Language,” make a simple point: Debt is in the eye of the beholder; you can define it any way you want. Washington’s $14.3 trillion figure excludes things politicians find it inconvenient to call debt, such as the future obligations of the Social Security system. But just because those obligations aren’t called debt doesn’t mean they don’t have to be paid. The present value of these and all other U.S. obligations make up Kotlikoff and Green’s $211 trillion figure.
Not just the professors but the authoritative and impartial Congressional Budget Office regard the fiscal gap as providing a more meaningful, less subjective way of estimating total U.S. indebtedness. CBO, in its most recent “Long-Term Budget Outlook,” says that by any measurement the federal government faces “a daunting long-term budgetary shortfall.”
Universal health care coverage or bust.
We spend twice as much, per person, on healthcare, as ANY other country in the world.
If a government take-over of healthcare can bring our costs down to being in-line with the rest of the world, we could slice $375B out of this year’s federal budget deficit, help reduce state deficits drastically, and cut that $211B unfunded mandates by upto 35%.
Cut the SS checks of the elderly by 50%? Cut the profit out of healthcare and do some rationing? Pick your poison.
It’s not even the costs so much as the insurance system. At the moment, the young and healthy pay into the private corporate jet system, while the old and sick are foisted on the taxpayer. That’s by design, of course.
If the young and healthy paid into the same pool as the old and sick, then health insurance premiums would come down, as would the administrative costs.* Even if the prices of medical care itself didn’t change same, that’s a huge savings right there.
—–
*just saw a study yesterday that health insurance admin alone costs ~$83,000, per doctor, per year. In single-payer Canada it’s ~$22K.
They really shouldn’t even include SS in there, since as we see it really has no problems that couldn’t be cured with minor tweaking- like removing the income cap on its taxes, so the rich pay the same rate as everyone else for a change. All the ‘unpayable’ debt is from our screwed-up health care system in this country.
from the CBO report:
“Measured relative to GDP, almost all of the projected growth in federal spending other than interest payments on the debt comes from growth in spending on the three largest entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
By CBO’s estimates, the increase in spending for Medicare and Medicaid as a share of GDP will account for 80 percent of spending increases for the three entitlement programs between now and 2035 and 90 percent of spending growth between now and 2080.
Under current law, spending on Social Security is also projected to rise over time as a share of GDP, albeit much less dramatically. CBO projects that Social Security spending will increase from less than 5 percent of GDP today to about 6 percent in 2035 and then roughly stabilize at that level through 2080.”
And do not forget, the great Republican plan, the Ryan Plan, with its plans to protect those already over 55, has debt as % of GDP continuing to increase through 2049 even assuming 4-5% annual GDP growth.
Basically, his plan is to wait until after the Boomers die, then we will worry about the national debt. Yeah, that plan justifies lowering corporate taxes now.
“protect those already over 55″
When Bush first trotted out the 55 split, I was under the age cutoff. Now I am on the other side of the divide. If we wait another 10 years to enact their plan, all of the boomers will end up on the over-55 side.
“his plan is to wait until after the Boomers die”
This is why I thought his plan was so stupid. That and all of the optimistic projections of economic growth. And pretending that vouchers would buy seniors any meaningful coverage. And that inflation would remain under control (as if it is now) for the duration. And…
A lot of people are not going to get paid the money they believe they are owed, which means a lot of people are going to have to do without, are going to have to downsize their spending plans.
A lot of businesses are geared up to benifit from this owed money and when this expected money is not forthcoming then they too are going to have to do some downsizing.
This owing-but-not-paying is what deflation looks like - it’s not what inflation looks like or what stagflation looks like, it’s what deflation looks like.
These trillions of dollars that are supposed to be paid out are not there and they won’t be there, which means they won’t be paid out. If they are not there to be paid out then they will not be there to circulate, to pay for goods and services, to keep the economy lubricated.
This is not a rerun one of our daddy’s stagflationary recessions - an issue involving liquidity - this is a rerun our grandaddy’s depression, an issue involving solvency.
+1 combo.
“These trillions of dollars that are supposed to be paid out are not there and they won’t be there, which means they won’t be paid out.”
Unless the treasury prints up bonds, sells them to the Fed with money conjoured out of thin air, then spent into the economy.
We may have a depression, or we may just have severe stagflation as we Wiemier Republic ourselves out of debt.
I think the jury is out as to which way we will go.
Unless the treasury prints up bonds, sells them to the Fed with money conjoured out of thin air, then spent into the economy.”
then the dollar will fall so much it won’t pay for anything close to what was promised so in the end it will be the same or probably worse with dollar printing.
And the government will lose a greater part of its power - printing money that is valued.
We had tremendous inflation in RE I remember in 2005 my Townhome went up more in one year than my gross salary.
Inflation and rapid money supply expansion like that ends poorly.
The FED is tring to replace this bubble money not print even more ( I hope they can’t be that crazy), problem is the money flows like water through cracks and is doing little to support RE prices. Flows out to commodities and emerging economies, kind of like the yen flowing here in the 1990’s-2000 time period.
yen carry trade. hard to fight deflation.
If the FED is crazy enough to peg money printing to RE prices with money leaking all over the place then yea they will print inflation. longe before that happens the dollar will collaspe and the fed will follow shortly after. This is the GOLD bug theory.
Gold will step in to replace paper money
I don’t think the world will print like tin pot dictators. I think they will default on promises made to the people who have no power.
What difference does the actual debt balance make at this point? There is virtually no hope any of it will be paid back. Focusing on an actual number is really just an exercise in the art of denial. Denial is the entire basis of our global economy.
Without denial we have nothing (LITERALLY).
“There is virtually no hope any of this will be paid back.”
The term “paid back” suggests the money is borrowed. A lot of this money was not borrowed but instead it was promised.
But nevertheless promised money is owed money. And the people the promise was made to are under the illusion that these promises will be kept, are counting on these promises to be kept.
But there is not enough money to keep these promises which means many of those who are counting on these promises are going to get screwed.
Trillions of dollars that were promised will end up going to poofville instead of into the pockets of consumers. Not good when seventy-one percent of our consumer-based economy depends on consumers consuming.
The term “paid back” suggests the money is borrowed. A lot of this money was not borrowed but instead it was promised.
This is counter to your deflation argument, combo. So it’s not that money was lent that won’t be paid back. It’s that money that was promised to be either re-distributed or printed won’t be. I don’t see that as being deflationary. If anything, it’s neutral.
“This is counter to your deflation argument, combo.”
No it isn’t. If a person is owed money and he does not get it then he is out the money he is owed. And it doesn’t make any difference why he is owed the money.
If he is stiffed from a unfulfiled promise that was made to him then that counts just the same as being stiffed on a debt on borrowed money that is owed to him.
Money is money. A pension cut, a social security cut - any sort of cut of a promised allowance is a cut in one’s income. If one person suffers such a cut then life will more-or-less go one for everyone else. If millions have their incomes cut then life changes drastically for everyone else because everyone else’s lives are affected by the millions of cuts.
The global economy is based on the belief that new people will take on debt faster than the previous people pay it off. That the new people will buy assets faster than the previous people want to sell them.
The problem comes when there are fewer people not more, when those people don’t bother to pay back the debt they take on, and when those people can’t afford to buy the assets because there are not enough jobs for them.
Without denial
we have nothingthe “TrueReduceTheDeficitNow!! Today!™” + “TrueAnger™” look really, really guilty of Hypocrisy… (LITERALLY)ronnie Raygun: “now, …there you go again”
Prologue
Act I, Scene 2:
“Increasing America’s debt weakens us dome$tically and internationally…Instead, Washington’s Cheney-$hrub is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the back$ of our children and grandchildren”
A Country in Denial About Taxes:
Investing / Forbes / Jul. 12 2011 /Leonard Burman The Impertinent Economist
“Back in the olden days, we acknowledged that wars cost money and didn’t think that our children should pay the entire cost, with interest. (Imagine that!) There were huge tax increases to finance World War II and the Korean War, and fairly significant ones to pay for Vietnam.”
$1.5 Trillion$+ …$700 Billion$…per year!…$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Cheney-$hrubs 8 year Amex Charge$: Mi$$ion Accompli$hed!
What is the revenue side of this equation?
The easy bet is that the unemployment rate stays the same at 9.2%. To tell the truth would just continue the market smack down. There are bound to be some soothing words and glimmers of hope on the horizon in the report.
I have a hard time the gov would not fugde the numbers a little in this particular instance with so much at stake (THE ENTIRE PONZI SCHEME that is the Global Economy).
It is all seasonal adjustments and discouraged workers.
Ahh…Me first today.
So, after a taste of stocks falling yesterday, what do folks here predict:
–More QE like QE3.
–US going into double dip.
–The BRICs getting into slowdown
–Bubbles bursting in BRICs, Australia, Singapore and Canada
–Gold going back to $300
–Oil going back to $60
Eventually RE going back to 1995 levels.
I predict the PB will continue to bash the right for making draconian cuts even though:
- the proposed cuts represent represent cuts in the rate of growth of spending not actual cuts
- even with the cuts we are going trillions deeper in debt and destroying our way of life in the process
- the services that we provide are 57% paid for with money earned by other people and 43% paid for with debt that will never be paid back.
Isn’t it far more draconian to redistribute wealth earned by the minority to the majority? is it really draconian to provide wealth that doesn’t exist and has to be borrowed ( again without the ability to repay ) ?
the PB = that PB
represent represent = represent
to provide wealth = to provide a little less wealth
PBR = Good drinkin’ beer
Let’s say you are 70 and collecting a SS check. Now let’s say 10 years from now there will be 70% more people collecting SS checks but the “slow the rate of growth” has held inflation adjusted SS budget increase to only 20% instead of 70%.
Well, guess what. Your check is going to be 30% smaller, and that is going to feel like a cut to you, even if it was only a “slowing the rate of growth” from the budget prospective.
Tha Baby Boomers are coming, the Baby Boomers are… oh… they are here and they are doing a cop-knock on the door. 2011-1946 = 65.
Once again for the umpteenth time, the Gen X & Y population is FAR bigger than the boomers
Dissenters to the debt spiral agenda are traitors, terroritsts and sexual perverts. Does an armband come with that?
Yes, but don’t let the banks see you wearing it!
“…predict…bash the right…”
Don’t take my word for it; check out what national polls are saying.
Do you remember how the “Contract with America” concept blew up on the Republicans (and especially Newt Gingrich) after 1995? I predict something similar is in store for the Tea Party once they are handed their share of the blame for piling on to an already-worsening economic situation at the worst possible time.
Disapproval Rate for Congress at Record 82% After Debt Talks
Andrew Burton/Getty Images
Watching the House vote. A record 82 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job, a poll found.
By MICHAEL COOPER and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN
Published: August 4, 2011
The debate over raising the debt ceiling, which brought the nation to the brink of default, has sent disapproval of Congress to its highest level on record and left most Americans saying that creating jobs should now take priority over cutting spending, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
A record 82 percent of Americans now disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job — the most since The Times first began asking the question in 1977, and even more than after another political stalemate led to a shutdown of the federal government in 1995.
More than four out of five people surveyed said that the recent debt-ceiling debate was more about gaining political advantage than about doing what is best for the country. Nearly three-quarters said that the debate had harmed the image of the United States in the world.
Republicans in Congress shoulder more of the blame for the difficulties in reaching a debt-ceiling agreement than President Obama and the Democrats, the poll found.
The Republicans compromised too little, a majority of those polled said. All told, 72 percent disapproved of the way Republicans in Congress handled the negotiations, while 66 percent disapproved of the way Democrats in Congress handled negotiations.
…
“…predict…bash the right…”
Don’t take my word for it; check out what national polls are saying.
What other people are saying is irrelevant to what you will say. And CT was right - you’ve started off the day bashing the right.
“…bashing the right….”
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Poll Shows Negative View of Tea Party on the Rise
By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: August 5, 2011
Little more than a year ago, most Americans did not know enough about the Tea Party to have an opinion. Now, more people have opinions, and they are hardly positive.
The percentage of people with an unfavorable view of the Tea Party in a New York Times/CBS News Poll this week was higher than it has been since the first time the question was asked, in April 2010. Forty percent of those polled this week characterized their view as “not favorable,” compared with 18 percent in the first poll.
In the first poll, a plurality, 46 percent, said they had not heard enough about the Tea Party to have an opinion (an additional 14 percent were undecided). Now, just 21 percent said they had not heard enough.
The Tea Party may have benefited early on from people not really knowing exactly what it was.
While 18 percent of people in the April 2010 poll identified themselves as Tea Party supporters, just 4 percent of those polled had actually attended a meeting or given money to the movement.
Without any central organization or policy platforms, the Tea Party became a vehicle for all sorts of amorphous frustrations. Many people came to it more out of anxiety about the economy or anger toward Washington than for any specific policy position.
On Election Day, while 4 in 10 voters said they were Tea Party supporters, many might not have known what they were signing up for.
The debate over the debt ceiling gave people a more concrete picture: Tea Party groups and members of the Tea Party caucus in the House and Senate — many of them elected in the Republican sweep of 2010 — insisted that they would not raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances. Members of the American public, meanwhile, including Tea Party supporters, were telling pollsters that they wanted compromise, not inflexibility.
Tea Party groups and lawmakers made debt reduction their priority, but many Americans said creating jobs was more important. And while many Republicans, influenced by the Tea Party, insisted that they would not allow any increases in tax revenue, a majority of Americans said debt reduction had to include higher taxes as well as lower spending.
…
pb, i don’t take your word for it, and i’m not persuaded by your hand picked articles and polls
i am persuaded by last years election results. next years election results will be another poll that i will believe.
It all gets down to whether the average American voter is dumb enough to fall for the Tea Party plan to crash the economy then blame it on Obama.
Time will tell.
How will viable Republican presidential candidates keep a safe enough distance from the Tea Party to maintain a chance at getting elected? The next 15 months should be interesting.
Mitt Romney’s Tea Party Problem
Ben Adler
August 5, 2011
Mitt Romney is the Republican front runner in national polls and he has raised the most money, but he is lagging in support with an important Republican constituency, especially in the key early states: Tea Party activists. Tea Party leaders say Romney is not the leading candidate among their constituents, even in New Hampshire, which is considered a must-win for the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts. “I wouldn’t say Romney’s the favorite,” says Jane Aitken, coordinator for the New Hampshire Tea Party coalition. Aitken declined to say who is in the lead, as her group does not endorse candidates and even their member groups that do endorse have not yet decided who to support. But she says that from conversations with other Tea Party leaders, there is no clear favorite.
…
i am persuaded by last years election results..
…which happend when people didn’t know what they were voting for. Now that they know what they voted for, they won’t do it again. The is exactly what the poll was surveying, and it is explained quite clearly. Are you REALLY THIS STUPID!?????!!
By the way, people thought they were voting for the Jobs party. Where are the jobs?
The Tea Party is a Party of Dissent. This is a good thing, especially when the majority are so imbued with mainline party talking points that another point of view seems absolutely STOOPID. The mainline party stuff has brought us to a pretty bad spot. Dissent should be encouraged.
next years election results will be another poll that i will believe.
Preach that belief brother Perry! Palin’s in the pew…
Thoughtful dissent should be encouraged.
Remember the Weather Underground?
Too much regulation too quickly caused people to say “enough for now” (Healthcare and major Financial Reform).
I believe that more than voting FOR the Tea Party, people voted for gridlock, and Tea Party candidates happened to win the Republican primaries in many cases because they spoke more fervently to the far-right base.
The biggest problem for the R’s in 2012 is that the gridlock turned out to be too extreme for most to stomach. I for one expected reluctant compromise on NEEDED legislation, and no movement at all on UNNEEDED legislation/regulation. What we got was a game of Russian Roulette and a bad solution on NEEDED legislation, adding a different kind of uncertainty into the system. The gridlock vote was supposed to decrease uncertainty.
We now know that the rules of the game won’t be changed, but we don’t know if the linebacker brought a gun to the locker room. I’m not sure if we are better off with THIS divided government.
i am persuaded by last years election results.
The party that controls the White House usually loses seats in Congress in mid-term elections. When unemployment is very high, many seats are lost.
“Are you REALLY THIS STUPID!?????!!”
are you really this rude?
Taxed Enough Already its right in the name, the platform is and was clear.
Less taxes
Less govt
rely on the constitution
i don’t believe people were confused.
“Less taxes
Less govt
rely on the constitution
i don’t believe people were confused.”
But they expect ‘their’ medicare and social security to be paid in full. And they don’t want to cut defense spending. And they think they can save all the needed money by cutting government waste, welfare (but not ‘their’ SS or medicare!), and foreign aid, and without raising any taxes, when all the numbers show that is impossible.
So are you sure they aren’t confused? Just a little?
A growing population CANNOT have less government.
CAN. NOT.
Once again, you’ve been suckered into thinking DC is the problem when in reality, it’s your LOCAL government that is the most intrusive and costly and obsessed with petty fiefdoms at your expense.
“wealth earned by the minority ”
Earned?
Didn’t you know that being born the son of a rich dad was a way to “earn” wealth?
I guess you could say that Don Corleone earned his money too, without a rich daddy.
earned, yes. i know that can be a difficult concept when your all about redistribution.
CT- As one self-made rich man once said to me about “redistribution of wealth”:
“I must have missed the first distribution.”
earned, yes. i know that can be a difficult concept when
your all about redistribution.the rich have dismantled your means of production and shipped it overseas so they could redistribute your wealth to them.“the rich have dismantled your means of production and shipped it overseas so they could redistribute your wealth to them.”
But that’s just what the ’scorpions’ (those smart rich guys) do to the ‘frogs’ (everyone else). It’s natural, and therefore a-ok. We just have to learn how to put up with it, or better yet, join up with the scorpions!
Thus speaketh the scorpions’ apologists.
“earned, yes. i know that can be a difficult concept when your all about redistribution.”
You have no idea you just made their point for them, do you?
“Isn’t it far more draconian to redistribute wealth earned by the minority to the majority? is it really draconian to provide wealth that doesn’t exist and has to be borrowed ( again without the ability to repay ) ?”
Do not confuse money and wealth. Wealth is hard assets. Money is someone elses debt.
Money is not made in a vacuume.
Without the government guaranteeing deposits and backing Wall Street and the banking sector with the full faith and credit of the USA, we would not have been able to increase business and household debt at 3x the sustainable rate. Without that new debt, the money supply would not have exploded, and the rich would not have been able to scoop up 90% of that new money for themselves.
If the Fed had not been flooding money that it prints out of thin air, to the rich, every time the economy went flat, to get the debt flowing again, we would not have had the bubbles from which the rich made most of their money.
We could have just let it all collapse back in 2007-2008. We could have let the money just go away, massive default, worite offs, bankruptcies… a long series of Lehman’s and Bear Sterns. But, no. Governmetn stepped in with tax payer money, and changes to accounting rules that let the banks lie, and large stimulus, and Fed printong money out of thin air like never done before buying up the bad debts.
The rich seem not to care when the government steps in to make them richer. They seem to love it when the government steps in to keep them rich. They love it when the government creates bubbles from which they can get richer. They love it when the government creates inflation to force people to give their money to the rich to invest, in hopes of keeping up with inflation. The rich seem to not mind when the full faith and credit of the USA, which is based on the 300 million people, not the 3 million ubber-rich, to prop up the smoke-and-mirrors economy.
But, you suggest that the rich give some of that money back to the system that made it possible for them to get rich in the first place? Oh, can’t do that. I made all this money all on my own.
Marie Antoinette didn’t get it either.
Darrell,
There needs to be something in the middle. I, for one, believe two things about the current tax code:
1. The wealthy should pay some more (for the reasons you note above) to provide the benefits that most people believe civilized society should provide (care for the sick and poor). However, there is a risk to going overboard on this. The reason the founder of my company is here in the US is because his father brought his self-made wealth to this country after the tax rates went too high in their home country, “redistributing wealth”. We are not close to that level here, but to believe there is no risk to rates going too high is faulty; and
2. It is a very dangerous place to be when ~50% of the population pays little to nothing in tax. More need to pay something. It doesn’t need to be a lot, but it shouldn’t be limited to taxes that only show up as ink on their paystubs, and a big fat $0 on a tax return. People need to file tax returns and see a number greater than $0. Hell, I would even vote for a change in the IRS forms that make people note what they paid in payroll taxes–they just need to see how much they are spending on government, and the number not be $0.
More need to earn something, before they pay taxes on it.
I think the issue is that we have a lot more sick and poor than we have income to take care of. Obamacare will help a little bit, but without a public option, you will ALWAYS have this disconnect where the working class is double-dinged on health insurance: first they buy their own, then they buy it for their parents through taxes. This has got to stop.
Of course, but without credible deficit reduction, we have a weak dollar, and thus commodities and tradeable goods expensive in dollar terms, crushing the middle class and their domestic economic activity (investment and spending), hurting any potential for significant jobs recovery.
Marie Antoinette didn’t get it either.
*tip o’ the hat*
More need to pay something. It doesn’t need to be a lot, but it shouldn’t be limited to taxes that only show up as ink on their paystubs, and a big fat $0 on a tax return. People need to file tax returns and see a number greater than $0. Hell, I would even vote for a change in the IRS forms that make people note what they paid in payroll taxes–they just need to see how much they are spending on government, and the
I agree. I think they should have a “bailout tax” of 20% for the next 10 years or so for everyone who works at a company that received TARP funds and makes over a certain amount and they can’t avoid it by changing jobs. It is unconscionable to me that the government would bailout rich business men with taxpayer dollars and not even consider raising their taxes to recoup some of the costs.
I personally thought they should have let them crash and burn. We need to clear some of the big trees out of the forest to make room for some of the new saplings.
Or as my favorite Thomas Jefferson might say: “The tree of commerce must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of liars and thieves.” or something like that
Unfortunately, I think we are heading for something closer to his original version.
And I am normally fairly conservative regarding business, but if it makes sense to me for welfare recipients to have to do something (school, community work, etc.), I sure as heck don’t think that bankers should be any less responsible for paying for their benefit from the taxpayer.
I predict that PB will continue to make a disproportionate number of posts for the foreseeable future.
What’s the current over/under on the percentage of PB posts here? Is it 15%?
I expect a QE3, but that it will not help the economy. Like QE2, it will just push up oil and food, squeeze consumers, slow spending on other things.
If we force the rich out of bonds and they move to bank accounts, how much bigger do we need the bank accounts of the rich before they lend to people that can’t pay it back? Before they hire people that will reduce profitability? Before they are willing to pay higher taxes?
Paraphrasing from El-Arian this morning. QE2 raised asset prices, but that did not increase profits, encourage corporate hiring or feed back into higher wages. Now the market is correcting the gap between the higher asset prices and the fundamentals through lower asset prices.
QE2 may have helped Coach and Tiffany and Sacks. It didn’t seem to help 90% of the country.
And, the one thing that the debt ceiling debate showed is that there would not be a TARP 2.0, no matter how bad things got. And, with Dodd-Frank, we have the legal mechanism for the fed to step in and take over the TBTF mega banks and liquidate them, protecting customers but wiping out stock and bond holders.
Darell:
maybe my idea of paying down peoples credit cards is not such a wacky idea after all.
And screw the people who don’t have credit cards.
You” get debit cards….heck If benake is giving money to rich people why not a little for the bottom people
I ran into an acquaintance yesterday he teaches media training how to be effective speaker and he wants me to help him run his internet tv station….for NO PAY…yup even after writing 4 books being on hundreds of radio and tv interviews good credit, his bank of 25 years turned him down for a start-up loan….hence the CL ad needing Interns to build his station.
Yes
Yes
Mostly
Mostly
No
No
- QE3, money from helicopters. Since QE2 was a dismal failure they might get more agressive this time.
- more bailouts in EURO-land. Italy & Spain. ECB will buy sovereign bonds as buyer of last & only resort.
- Germany, Finland, Netherlands, Austria (one or more) possibly leaving the EURO
- another bailout for Wall Street (might be difficult this time with the Tea Party crowd). There is still plenty of bad debt ($500+billion) lingering of banks’ balance sheets.
- another moderate recession = higher deficits at federal & state level
- more municipal defaults including retirement packages
- energy prices dropping for now, peak oil will eventually drive prices back up. The natural decline rate is about 4.5% p.a. if no new investments in production are made. But that might take another 12 month or so depending on investment and demand.
- China bubble bursting
- Commodity producers (Australia, Brasil, Saudi) will be hit hard
- Possibly more turmoil in Middle East due to declining oil revenues
- hard assest
I think gold might correct but not crash. Where else are you going to put your savings? Real estate, sovereign bonds, Beanie Babies?
There’s only so much money that can flood into the Swiss Franc and AAA Corporate bonds. Those markets are relatively small. After being burned sufficiently often some people just tend to lose the appetite for paper assets.
- Unemployment will rise, wages will fall and prices stay about the same. Further reduction in the standard of living for the unwashed masses.
- rise in extremist political movements world wide.
With a another bailout, declining revenues and increased expenditures we might have the debt ceiling discussion again @ $17.1 trillion BEFORE the next election.
I say there will not be QE-3 as we know it. Check out interest rates and bond prices. Fed cannot risk commodity inflation with an upcoming election at stake. The risk of inflation would also put the Fed at risk for taking the heat of the next financial faux-pas. I could be underestimating the stupidity of the Fed…
The FED will do whatever the banksters need done. There’s no way stopping the FED shy of repealing the FED. It might come to that but just not yet.
yea all that stuff
Mortgage insurer PMI Group warns it may shut down
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Mortgage-insurer-PMI-Group-apf-2378822000.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=7&asset=&ccode=
NEW YORK (AP) — Mortgage insurer The PMI Group Inc. warned investors on Thursday that it may be unable to continue selling new policies and could shut down.
The news sent shares of the Walnut Creek, Calif.-based company plunging to their lowest point in more than two years.
Cramer must have been shouting “buy buy buy” on Wednesday.
I’ll agree to the double dip and bubble bursting in the name countries. However I don’t see gold below $500 and while oil may go down to 60.00 the oil companies will still charge over $3 a gallon for gas, they don’t want to lose that much profit.
Also I think that the housing prices are going to fall below 1995 prices at least in California. That’s when the last housing crash prices started picking up, there is still a long way to fall until we get back the sustainable 3x salary for a house.
Not sure where p[rices were in 1995 here in Glendale AZ. I can tell you that the house across the street from me sold for $133K in 2001, $260K in 2006, and was pulled off the market in 2011 after it wouldn’t sell at $77K.
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/14026-N-56th-Ave-Glendale-AZ-85306/7911281_zpid/#{scid=hdp-site-map-bubble-address}
That HAS to be below 1995, right?
AZ crashed hard I moved there in 2006 told everyone it would be worse in AZ than CA . nobody beleived that. I even made a bet with my boss, he never paid me, it was a soda, oh well he lost about 500K on an Ahwatukee big ass house near telegraph pass. Moved back to CA in 2009 after AZ company threatened us with layoffs one too many times. If you want to lay someone off just lay them off, if your house is losing min-vans of money per month don’t threaten to layoff your workers to spread your stress around.
AZ is down like 50% at least, CA maybe 30% at most
AZ overbuilt way overbuilt supply and demand besides CA pays better welfare
In the end I expect CA to catch up with AZ RE crash wise that is down 50% plus. but I’m not holding my breath
“Also I think that the housing prices are going to fall below 1995 prices at least in California.”
That sounds hopeful, at least for my kids, in case any of them decide to stay in California.
Do your predictions come with time horizons?
Probably within the next 3 years. I know the house I sold in 2006 is now below what I paid for it in 2001. I don’t see things improving that much in that time frame and housing will continue to drop unless they try and get people into mortgages they can’t afford long term.
Except for those of us located in Los Altos/Mountain View - the bubble continues - It’s different here - so I am told…..sigh……I guess we’ll keep renting till the kids leave school and then buy a nice inexpensive house in a bad school district.
“Also I think that the housing prices are going to fall below 1995 prices at least in California.”
That sounds hopeful, at least for my kids, in case any of them decide to stay in California.
Do your predictions come with time horizons?
”
Losing hope professor ? I gave up on N. San Diego after only 1 year in Poway , land of the over 65 year old entitled to my money because I was here first crowd. Even worse there than here in Ventura Co. but thats just my opinon after all I was pratically born in Thousand Oaks.
I think I’ll end up back in AZ don’t know when and don’t know how but unless you’re a state worker or really high paid private sector person ( or on welfare ) this state is just a little too pricy for what you get.
Isn’t there an Arlo Gutrie song about this ? don’t have the do re mi?
we’ll see it’s not over yet when the flippers stop and the realtors get real jobs then we can buy if we even want too by then? Eventually this state is going to be so broke we may not want even a free house if it comes with diminished public services and orneous taxes?
I grew up in Southern California, and it wasn’t a bad place to live in the 60-70s, it started going downhill in the 80s. I remember when Huntington Beach was a surfer place, with rundown motels, surf shops and liquor stores. I don’t even recognize it anymore.
We may have to go back to CA to live when our program here ends, which we don’t want to do. There is no way (even with the slight decrease in prices) we can afford to buy a decent house there. Plus I refuse to live in a homeowner association neighborhood, I cannot believe people would willingly give up so much freedom to their neighbors, and have to pay for the privilege. *gahhhh*
A few days ago I looked in the area we would want to live (near work in HB) and they are now making townhomes that they are calling SFHs, but they are fricking townhomes on tiny lots. If we go back (probably within the next 6 months), we will be renting.
Oh and back in 1999, I was working in Fullerton and I was looking for a small house to buy in the area, just for myself and even then I thought these people are crazy. They wanted almost $300k for a fixer upper 50 year old house that was 2/1 and less than 1,000 square feet. I was asking “how the heck are people affording a these prices?” back then. I made a decent amount of money, but there was no way in he!! I was going to pay that much for a house.
HBB trivia
Category - Selling your country house.
Chevy Chase says “Cue the deer.”
Name that movie!!!
(For those in need of a hint - search youtube for Cue The Deer. If you’re a realtor, fast forward to the 1 minute mark for that goose bump, tingly feeling, Suzanne researched this climactic moment….)
Chevvy Chase , funny farm.
My son just came back from ft. Myers FL . Condos there are listed from 28K and houses from 40K , just 2 blocks from the beach , in retiree areas. He is urging me to buy . Can’t help but note taxes are 2K on up, though . what will prices be like next year ,at this rate ?
Race to $0.
All the states that have actively recruited “rich Boomers” and other retirees are going to seriously regret that when SS get sliced and they start getting block Medicare grants that are half the size needed to pay for the AARP crowd’s healthcare bills.
“He is urging me to buy.” Fundamentally, housing prices are tied to income. Why is he expecting a bunch of new high paying jobs? Obama has done everything in his power to hinder job growth and to increase debt.
You’re declaring “I’m a moron” when you say stupid $hit like that.
Is your declaration accurate?
There is a kernel of truth in there. Nothing has been done to stem the tide of job loss except to throw money up into the private box seats. El Presidente had a nice JFK redo birthday bash and he’ll go on tour in a bus to talk about jobs (so we hear). Does he get it, or is his next gig, and talking points to get there, the main point. Judge by results.
“Nothing has been done to stem the tide of job loss except to throw money up into the private box seats.”
You’re right. In fact the job losses have been exacerbated by the opposition party by pulling existing funding and shooting down every single job making legislation.
“Judge by results”
I agree, but for the millions of voters that hung all their hopes on Obama, they just can not or will not grasp the fact that they were duped. It’s human nature, people hate to think they were wrong or were used. So they keep defending and refusing to believe what is in front of their face. So they take the easy way out, they simply blame “it” on someone else. For some reality will never set it, they will go to their graves believing that they were right.
The truly hard core take the grade school approach and resort to name calling, yelling and screaming, stomping their feet and in some cases violence. Just the way they are wired, sad but true.
Nothing has been done to stem the tide of job loss
Calling ecofeco. We need you NOW.
Oh heck, I’ll do it;
——-
http://www.opencongress.org/vote/2010/s/242
S.3816:
A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to create American jobs and to prevent the offshoring of such jobs overseas.
September 28, 2010
Roll call number 242 in the Senate
Question On the Cloture Motion
Ayes: 53 (Democrat: 52; Republican: 0; Other: 1) Nays: 45 (Democrat: 4; Republican: 40; Other: 1) Abstained: 2 (Democrat: 1; Republican: 1)
Required percentage of ‘Aye’ votes: 3/5 (60%)
Percentage of ‘aye’ votes: 53%
Result: Cloture Motion Rejected
—————
In other words, Dems tried to stem the tide of job loss, R’s filibustered. THAT’S why “nothing has been done.” The R’s aren’t letting anything be done, so that they can blame it on Obama. It’s a classic toddler tactic. Drop the glass yourself, and then point at baby sister.
quit whinin’.
I agree, but for the millions of voters that hung all their hopes on Obama, they just can not or will not grasp the fact that they were duped. … So they take the easy way out, they simply blame “it” on someone else.
Would this include the millions of voters who hung all their hopes on the Tea Party thinking they would get jobs, and when the jobs didn’t come, they could not grasp that they were duped by the big money behind the Tea Party, so they simply blamed “it” on Obama?
I find it unbelievable that as many times as I’ve posted a Congressional record of FACT that it’s the Repubs who have blocked job creation, Obama still gets the blame.
And we wonder what’s wrong with this country?
Michelle O did hire a full-time pet groomer…
link?
I read it in “the Examiner” dammit.
Fundamentally, housing prices are tied to income.
Didn’t HBB just spend the past five years explaining that housing prices are NOT tied to income?
Dang Obama,
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2010/02/a_very_revealing_chart.php?ref=fpblg
Took an accelerating rate of job losses, and turned it around. Job losses were up-up-up until the month he took office and pushed Stimulus… then down-down-down.
If by hinder job creation, you mean hinder the creatuion of yet another bubble like junk bonds, DotComs and housing… then I say GOOD. We can’t afford more job creation like that.
And remember: Take the household and business debt in 1980 from Fed Reserve Z1. Adjust to 2006 using 240% for inflation and 120% for increased population. Sustainable business and household debt growth would have put us at $8.3T in 2006. Actual debt was $24T.
Dang Obama! Making us max out on debt 2 years before he was elected president. Decoupling risk from reward, making lending standards so loose that fraud became the norm instead of the exception, driving up housing prices to insanely unaffordable levels and leaving 40% of households underwater on their mortgages….4 years before he was elected….
Dang Obama….
I guess in your view one has clean hands by exploiting an existing problem to get power, and then making it much worse. I judge Obama on his reaction to an existing problem, nothing more, nothing less.
“I judge Obama on his reaction to an existing problem, nothing more, nothing less.”
And you exhibit poor judgement and shortsightedness.
Why bother with exploiting an existing problem when you can create a new one?
Raising the debt ceiling was not a problem for upwards of 70 years until the Mooslim Kenyan came to town. Then all of a sudden, despite record low taxes, we had a “spending” problem. The poor were spending too much.
Much like the sharia law “problem”. Manufactured hobgoblins to feed their clueless constituents was invented by conservatives.
“Obama has done everything in his power to hinder job growth and to increase debt.”
i wouldn’t say he has hindered…he definately was “AFK” for the first two years.
he seems to be seriously concerned now…he should start by firing geithner…not letting him resign…but firing him.
he seems to be seriously concerned now…he should start by firing geithner…not letting him resign…but firing him.
I think that’s about to happen. Also think that Eric Holder’s days at Justice are numbered.
After that? Well, you know those federal suits we’ve been jonesing for? Like, say, United States v. Goldman Sachs? Look for ‘em in the next few months.
Why? Because Obama’s like any other career politician. He wants to stay in office.
Mark my words: You’re going to see a lot of things that we’ve been hankering for in the Going After Banksters Department. And those things will prove to be quite popular with the electorate.
who is eric holder?
jk - he is a disgrace too.
jk - he is a disgrace too.
Who’s JK? Jon Kyl? If so, I agree. He sucks at least as many rocks as our state’s other U.S. Senator, John McCain.
The fuss about Geithner and Holder sheds some light on the whole saga involving Elizabeth Warren. For some reason, it’s not enough for Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc. to only attack the president. They seem to prefer to have a whole cast of villains that they can rant and rave about. If Elizabeth Warren was actually confirmed to head that new agency, Obama would be able to have a person on his team who is wildly popular with the American people. This would interfere with the message of the right-wing media that he only appoints “socialists” who are out of touch with Middle America. So the Republicans in the Senate just had to block her nomination.
jk = just kidding.
Mighty Mike, the R’s don’t care who is going to head the agency. They want the agency GONE and they have beheaded it until they can water it down. At the moment, Obama has nominated Rich Cordray, who is unknown by the public. He will do everything Warren would have done except not generate publicity.
The libs suspect that this is a perfect case for a recess appointment. “Advise and consent” is one thing, but to blanket block anyone before even knowing who to block? Obama has every right to recess appoint. The question is , will he?
I thought I heard that Congress hasn’t recessed.
Yes, I should have been more clear. The main reason that the Republicans oppose Warren and her agency is their desire to protect their benefactors in the fnancial industry. Warren’s broad popularity is a less important issue.
Attention getting prices to be certain, but you do seem to be aware of the carrying costs, so that’s good.
As this unfolds, as muni and state services are cut and deficits mount, it is not unreasonable to expect that even buying at rock bottom prices won’t insulate one from rising property taxes and HOA. As communities struggle to stabilize new variables may be inserted into the ownership equation - in some locales more than others of course.
If state and muni services are cut why would property taxes increase at a high rate?
I think if you can buy a place for less than what you were going to pay for a car, you can’t go that wrong. Especially if you believe inflation will be increasing in the near future.
The variable is the intentions for the property, as a residence or as an investment? For use as a residence you’re right, but for use as an investment - the local changes may make it more illiquid than it already might be.
The variable is the intentions for the property, as a residence or as an investment? For use as a residence you’re right, but for use as an investment - the local changes may make it more illiquid than it already might be.
Here in Tucson, investment properties are taxed at a higher rate than residences. One of the favorite games of us neighborhood activists could be called “Name that Tax Evader.”
We play this game by noting properties that the county assessor records say are “residential owner occupied” but are really rentals.
Then we call the county recorder’s office and report them as being improperly listed on the assessor rolls. Up go the property taxes at said rentals. Neener-neener.
If state and muni services are cut why would property taxes increase at a high rate?
the cost of rolling over/servicing their debt going up
If you want to believe in Meredith Whitney at all, a lot of these institutions are already highly leverged.
Any Chinese drywall involved w/these specimens?
I’m in Fort Myers. Yes, there are condos and homes this cheap, but they are not anything you would want to buy. Most are condo conversions and in sketchy areas.
Realtors Are Liars®
==> The ISM manufacturing index is one of the benchmark reports we get every month. In July, it plunged to 50.9 from 55.3 in June. Not only did that miss the so-called “experts” forecasts by a country mile, it was also the worst reading in two years!
==> Personal income gained a paltry 0.1 percent in June, the worst reading since last September. Personal spending actually FELL 0.2 percent in June, the first decline in two years!
==> Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas said planned firings soared 59 percent from a year ago in July. Total job cuts surged to more than 66,400, the highest in 16 months!
==> Gross domestic product is the broadest measure of a country’s economic output. It grew a pathetic 1.3 percent in the second quarter here in the U.S. Worse, the number-crunchers in Washington slashed the first quarter figure all the way down to 0.4 percent from 1.7 percent.
~Clipped from: Mike Larson at Weiss
At least the reading was over 50, which is great compared to, say, the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, another “diffusion index” which has generally remained below a level of 20 over the years since the housing bubble collapsed with no sign of improvement on the horizon.
Battered US home builder sentiment creeps up
Published 3:25 AM, 19 Jul 2011 Last update 3:25 AM, 19 Jul 2011
NEW YORK - US home building firms were a little bit more optimistic in July but confidence levels remained near historic lows, the National Association of Home Builders said.
The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market index (HMI) rose to 15 in July after falling to a nine-month low of 13 in June, the group said in a statement.
Economists polled by Reuters had predicted the index would rise to 14. Readings below 50 mean more builders view market conditions as poor than favourable.
The rise does not indicate the beginning of a major upward shift, economists said. The index hit more than 70 in June of 2005, before the US housing market collapsed.
“Amid tepid housing market conditions, home builders remain relatively pessimistic about a recovery,” Lindsey Piegza, an economist at FTN Financial, said in a statement.
…
The Global Rout. Opinion- WSJ
The Keynesians have fired all their ammo and here we are.
“The economies of Europe and the United States have arrived at the moment when they no longer have any conceivable hope of being able to pay for the huge public commitments they’ve amassed the past 40 years. This year’s ‘debt crisis’ has been building for decades. European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet finished his public statement yesterday by calling on Europe, for the umpteenth time, to do ‘comprehensive structural reform.’
“… no longer have any conceivable hope of being able to pay for the huge public commitments they’ve amassed the past 40 years.”
The unpaid public commitments will also drag down the private sector.
It’s not as if one sector is isolated from the other.
Because we are not attacking the underlying root cause of the problem, off-shoring our industrial base, huge trade deficits, wage erosion of the middle-class.
Supply-side economics made debt available for the poor and middle class to borrow… and oh did we borrow, increasing household and business debt at 3x the sustainable rate, leading Wall Street to develop all maner of new means of loaning us even more debt.
Buy from China, borrow back, loan it to the poor so they can buy more, so China can loan it back again, with Wall Street taking a larger and larger cut each cycle, and using that cut to loan to people that can’t pay it back.
We can’t spend our way out, but what Europe is showing is that we can’t cut our way out either. Cut spending and raise taxes, and you go back into recession, tax receipts fall below projections (raising taxes increases receipts, just not on a straight % that matches the increase) and you still have the same deficit problems, but with less room to keep cutting spending and raising taxes.
We need to attack global trade imbalances, and just trying to devalue the currency isn’t going to do it because our trade partners peg their currencies to ours and there are some things that we have no choice but to import.
Couldn’t agree more. There are lots of different ways to do it, but somehow we have to start exporting more than we import. I’d like to increase taxes on imports to start. I know everyone points to that as a mistake made during the GD, but we were a net exporter then.
Also need to motivate people to get off their asses and improve their skill set. People need to make themselves more valuable. I see lots of people just sending out resumes and waiting to get hired instead of figuring out what skills people are hiring for and acquiring them.
Also need to motivate people to get off their asses and improve their skill set. People need to make themselves more valuable. I see lots of people just sending out resumes and waiting to get hired instead of figuring out what skills people are hiring for and acquiring them.
Right on, Max!
It was, oh, I think last year when I met a lady who’d moved to Tucson, bought a big place, and guess what, she was unemployed.
Oh, yes, she was looking for work in the computer programming field. I said that there were plenty of opportunities in the web biz for people who know languages like Ruby on Rails and PHP.
Heck, I’d love to know people here who can code in those languages, because I’d be hiring ‘em for this, that, and the other project as a subcontractor. (Right now, my subs are in non-AZ locations like CO, GA, and MA.)
Well, she said that she’d consider learning the two languages that I suggested. But she didn’t sound terribly enthused about it. (C’mon, you don’t want to work on projects with Arizona Slim? I pay lightning-quick and I’m more than happy to recommend your work to others.)
When I saw her a few months ago, she had indeed found a job. But it sounded like it was way far away from programming.
Oh, well. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
Keynesian theory calls for paying down debt in good times. R’s take every chance they can to NOT pay down debt in good times. We haven’t had Keynes theory since Volcker, but why let that get in the way of good advertising revenue for Murdoch’s “Foxified” WSJ?
Again, drop the glass and point and baby sister…
“R’s take every chance they can to NOT pay down debt…….”
Common sense says that government should have “rainy day” funds. When the economy takes a crap, they can buy stuff to keep the economy moving, and usually get things at a discount, because you always get a better deal on anything when sales are weak.
Republicans don’t like rainy day funds. They consider it “proof” that taxes are too high, and make hay on giving “people their money back”.
Washington state has burned through their rainy day fund. The downturn has been too long.
In all fairness, neither party seems to really like rainy day funds. We seem to run deficits every year regardless of who’s in charge.
The word “austerity” keeps popping up across the pond. Our handlers and MSM will probably not use the word over here, it paints to bleak a picture. Like it or not that’s exactly were we are headed, to more austere times, plan accordingly.
ITEM: EU leaders in crisis talks, ECB offers only limited help
BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The leaders of Germany, France and Spain will hold crisis talks about Europe’s spiraling debt crisis on Friday after China and Japan called for global policy cooperation following a market rout.
Despite demands for action, the European Central Bank offered only limited help and told Italy and Spain — now under heavy fire — to take tougher austerity measures before it will step in to buy their bonds.
The call from China and Japan, Washington’s two biggest foreign creditors, highlighted fears that Europe’s debt crisis could spin out of control and the U.S. economy may go into reverse, worries which have wiped $2.5 trillion off the value of world stocks this week.
Their comments were echoed by European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn.
“International policy coordination through the G7 and G20 is of critical importance,” he told a news conference, having broken off his vacation and returned to Brussels.
“Some of the reasons for these tensions relate to developments outside the euro area. Investor sentiment has been negatively affected by the impact of the debt ceiling negotiation in the United States and by recent data suggesting a softer patch in the global economy.”
Employment by the Canadian Federal Govt not so safe anymore, though probably still one of the better bets. A few cuts anounced, with more to follow.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/08/04/pol-environment-job-cuts.html
“The axe is falling at Environment Canada, and around 700 positions are on the chopping block.
Union representatives were advised about the coming cuts in writing Monday and given details about the federal government’s plans to eliminate the positions during a meeting Wednesday in Ottawa.
Meteorologists, chemists, biologists and other scientists are among those who will be receiving letters from the department notifying them that they will either lose their job or be placed on a list of employees deemed “surplus.”"
—-
The cuts announced this week are not part of the strategic and operating review that Ottawa is undertaking in order to balance its budget by 2014. Where exactly the government is going to find those savings within every department has yet to be announced. Sixty-seven government departments and agencies have been asked to identify savings of either five or 10 per cent of their budgets.
So the environmentalists are the first to fall?
No agenda here, on no precious.
“Meteorologists, chemists, biologists and other scientists are among those who will be receiving letters from the department notifying them that they will either lose their job or be placed on a list of employees deemed “surplus.””
So that hard science degree may not pay off after all.
But, but…. we all KNOW that higher education is the ticket to jobs!
How can this be?
… except that it DOES teach you to be observant and to require hard data prior to jumping on a bandwagon. IMHO, a gift that keeps on giving throughout life.
And the good scientists are WAY more than lab techs. They have imagination, think about how to disprove things, know how to think out of the box, and know how to set up a hypothesis testing experimental design. And to get enough of the right kind of data to analyze. And you can’t bamboozle ‘em away from the numbers when it’s done right.
Priceless.
Scare at State Fair: witnesses describe mobs, including some claiming racially-charged attacks.
WEST ALLIS, WI - Witnesses tell Newsradio 620 WTMJ and TODAY’S TMJ4 of a mob of young people attacking innocent fair-goers at the end of the opening night of State Fair, with some callers claiming a racially-charged scene.
Milwaukee Police confirmed there were assaults outside the fair.
Witnesses’ accounts claim everything from dozens to hundreds of young black people beating white people as they left State Fair Thursday night.
Authorities have not given official estimates of the number of people involved in the attacks.
“It looked like they were just going after white guys, white people,” said Norb Roffers of Wind Lake in an interview with Newsradio 620 WTMJ. He left the State Fair Entrance near the corner of South 84th Street and West Schlinger Avenue in West Allis.
“They were attacking everybody for no reason whatsoever.”
“It was 100% racial,” claimed Eric, an Iraq war veteran from St. Francis who says young people beat on his car.
“I had a black couple on my right side, and these black kids were running in between all the cars, and they were pounding on my doors and trying to open up doors on my car, and they didn’t do one thing to this black couple that was in this car next to us. They just kept walking right past their car. They were looking in everybody’s windshield as they were running by, seeing who was white and who was black. Guarantee it.”
Eric, a war veteran, said that the scene he saw Thursday outside State Fair compares to what he saw in combat.
“That rated right up there with it. When I saw the amount of kids coming down the road, all I kept thinking was, ‘There’s not enough cops to handle this.’ There’s no way. It would have taken the National Guard to control the number of kids that were coming off the road. They were knocking people off their motorcycles.”
My friend’s band played the WSF last night. He’s been texting me this morning that he has a story to tell.
Eric, a war veteran, said that the scene he saw Thursday outside State Fair compares to what he saw in combat.
================
I take it that Eric was in the Culinary Corps?
Why now? Recent corporate earnings were pretty good.
Why is the market crashing now? All the info was known for month. I would say 2 main reasons.
1. EURO land is in sorry shape due to years of overspending with no magic bullet to get the debt junky economies on track. It is really difficult to build a viable economy based on fraud, debt, subsidies, public employees and tax evasion. That can’t be turned around within a few years. Too late now. Its only recently that market participants realize that the EURO is past the point of no return.
2. The debt ceiling debate in the US had very few results. Hey, all budget items are up for discussion except tax increases, military spending, debt service, medicare/caid, social security, education and welfare. That’s somewhere near 90% of the budget, a budget that is covered by 60% from revenues and 40% from new debt.
So basically its business as usual minus the stimulus package. If there’s any question how that will end take a look at Greece minus a sugar daddy that will bail you out.
I think that’s what the market is reacting too. We’re dead set on holding an unsustainable course and the passengers are getting nervous watching the events in EURO-land.
I don’t know, am I missing something here? Why is the market crashing now? All that information has been out for month and the market did not care one bit.
Italy and Spain, economies that may be TBTBail, are now having their dire situations hitting the spotlight. Swiss and Japanese intervened in their currency this week. Dagong Rating agency downgraded our debt and Russia’s Putin is making speeches calling the US a parasite on the rest of the world.
Maybe it’s the deluge of negativity.
Also there were rumors of bank runs on deposits in Italy yesterday.
The market is reacting to the idea that the middle class is dead across Europe and the US and cutting state spending is going to make this worse.
Everything is being done to secure the elite but the middle class is being bled dry.
LOL! What a surprise!
July payrolls rise may soothe recession fears
Reuters – 9 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. job growth accelerated more than expected in July as private employers stepped up hiring, a development that could ease fears the economy was sliding into a fresh recession.
U.S. payrolls increased 117,000, the Labor Department said on Friday, above market expectations for an 85,000 gain. The unemployment rate dipped to 9.1 percent from 9.2 percent in June, but this was mostly the result of people leaving the labor force.
The payrolls count for May and June was revised to show 56,000 more jobs added than previously reported
The report was the first encouraging piece of economic data in some time.
“The unemployment rate dipped to 9.1 percent from 9.2 percent in June, but this was mostly the result of people leaving the labor force”.
“but this was mostly the result of people leaving the labor force.”
idleness is progress.
It was people giving up on finding a job.
More than a few of them are creating their own jobs. It’s sort of like making yourself into your own employer of last resort.
If by make your own job you mean braking and entering, mugging, drug dealer then you are right. Big increase in muggings locally.
And break ins.
Of course, the local cops won’t consider this serious crime until someone is killed.
IRS: 235,000 millionaires
By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 8/5/11 - POLITICO
President Barack Obama and many Democrats are talking about raising taxes on the wealthy, but few Americans actually fit that bill, data released this week by the Internal Revenue Service suggests.
People and households earning more than $1 million annually made up just 0.1 percent, or just over 235,000, of the 140 million tax returns filed in 2009, and just 8,274 returns were filed by people making $10 million or more.
Though the tax rate for Americans earning $1 million or more averaged 24.4 percent, up from 23.1 percent in 2008, that’s still lower than the 28.5 percent rate they paid in 2002 when President George W. Bush was in office.
And, the data shows, of the 235,413 taxpayers reporting incomes seven digits or more in 2009, 1,470 paid not a penny of income taxes. In 2007, 959 Americans earning $1 million or more paid no income taxes.
The returns filed in 2009 reflect income from 2008, the deepest depths of the recession and financial crisis, and, under that backdrop, incomes fell sharply.
The vast majority of tax return filers – more than 97 percent – reported incomes of less than $200,000. The average income was $54,283, a drop of more than $3,500, or 6 percent, from 2008. That put the average income at its lowest level since 1997.
At the same time, the average tax rate declined from 12.5 percent in 2008 to 11.4 percent in 2009.
The amount of unemployment benefits claimed on tax returns nearly doubled between 2008 and 2009, the IRS found.
Okay, lets put the magnitude of the Govenments’ spending into perspective:
Say the Dems were able to raise taxes on the $1 million-plus earners that all the debate is about. For the sake of this point lets say Obama was really victorious and was able to tax them at a ridiculous 100% tax-rate(!):
235,000 x 1,000,000 = 235,000,000,000.
The number looks enormous, right. The world is saved, right.
Wrong. $235 billion wouldn’t last our government two months.
We are hosed.
Lots of rich people earn less than $1 million.
Holders of tax free muni bonds, for example, may get millions in interest, but earn zero.
I’m sure some of those earning over $1 million actually earn over $1 million. So $235 billion is understated, but your point is valid. And taking 100% of all the high earner’s income is a dumb strategy anyway. I’d say roughly 100% of those people wouldn’t claim $1 million in income the following year.
“IRS: 235,000 millionaires”
Defined as someone earning over $1m/year? That is the first time I ever heard of that definition of millionaire; I thought it had something to do with net worth.
Pre-markets are loving the excellent jobs report. Gotta keep w street happy.
Does the “awesome” jobs report mean we don’t get QE3 now?
No!
The S.S. QE-3 is sitting on the gangway at the ship yard just waiting to ride the rails down to launching. Barry & BB will get to do the christening.
There sure have been enough trial balloons launched this week. I think we’ll have QEIII. It’s just a matter of timing the announcement for the maximum support from the peanut gallery.
Next week these labor numbers will be forgotten and Europe will be back in the spotlight.
There’s the rub. A downtick in unemployment to 9.1% reduces the political pressure for the Fed to enact QE3.
Today’s house, Northern Virginia edition:
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/7505-Fisher-Dr-Falls-Church-VA-22043/51779158_zpid/#{scid=hdp-site-map-list-address}
1953 3/1.5 rambler on nice flat 1/4 acre. This the Pimmit Hills area, a small Levittown-ish area just inside the Beltway, very close to Tyson’s corner mall. Horrible traffic.
But it needs work. “House inspection for information only” — I don’t know what that means but it sounds bad. I don’t think it’s got a basement, because the washer and dryer are the kitchen.*
04/03/2011 Listed for sale $309,000
09/05/2006 Sold $430,000
09/30/1991 Sold $145,000
$145k in 1991. That’s how high the prices are in NoVa. That’s the defense contractor premium. A similiar house in Montgomery country would carry a wishing price of about $230K, and short sell for $195K, in 2011.
————–
*That’s not a typo. The washer and dryer ARE the kitchen, that’s how dominant they are.
“Charming rambler in prime Falls Church location inside beltway”
Holy smokes! That looks like a ghetto/crack shack! In my neck of the woods it may go for 5k. I would live in a tent before I’d live there.
We have a lot of inventory like that around here. It’s just that they’re going for 1/2 the price. I still think they ask too much. When I see $100/sq foot and higher on something like this when the larger, nicely finished homes are going for that same price per sq foot, I can’t help but feel that the lower middle class is being particularly squeezed.
You couldn’t get $35k for that pos here in FL.
The roof looks like it has some major problems. And I’m not just talking about moss on the shingles.
Damn, the PPT must have blown a turbo this morning. Gonna have to hit the nitrous this afternoon.
Saving all the ammo for the last hour of the trading day.
Man Who Jumped White House Fence Speaks Out
WASHINGTON (WUSA) — The man who jumped a White House fence Tuesday night talked to us Wednesday after a court appearance.
James Dirk Crudup told 9NEWS the move was a cry for help because he can’t find a job in this economy. Crudup says he jumped the fence with partial hopes of being shot by police because he has six kids with two women and felt like a deadbeat dad.
“Any real man would want to provide for their children and in today’s economy it is so hard that especially when you have labors you can not make those achievements and the ridicule that I received and feel, you can’t imagine,” said Crudup.
He is living with a friend and looking for a job. He says he is a handyman and went to a technical school to learn about electrical work. He also got a real estate license.
The White House was put on lockdown for nearly 2 hours after Crudup climbed the north side fence around 7:35 p.m. Tuesday. He was taken into custody and the backpack he was wearing was examined by EOD personnel. No explosives were found — just books and personal papers.
The 41-year-old was charged with his second felony of contempt of court Wednesday afternoon in DC Superior Court. He said his first felony was for arson.
Crudup says he jumped the fence
Iffin’ he can jump that fence, he can pick peaches. Give ‘em a free Gov’t bus ride to Georgia.
My mother had a college friend who went on to run the Secret Service detail for the White House. Trust me, the Secret Service takes its job VERY seriously. I’m surprised that this guy is still alive.
Looks like he just secured 3 hots and a cot for the depression. This may become a parade of fench jumpers.
Armed robbery is too dangerous you might get shot. How best to get put in the pokey??
I’ve heard that, among Washington DC’s many tourist attractions, the White House is in a class by itself. That is, when it comes to the Kook Magnet category. It seems as though the kooks are drawn to the White House the way moths are drawn to porch lights.
The Secret Service uniformed force gets quite a bit of daily practice in dealing with kooky people. The suits who protect the President? Not so much because they’re usually not out at the fence and gates the way the uniformed guys and gals are.
DC seems to attract the looniest people I’ve ever seen, outside of San Francisco.
Least painless way is to get in the pokey is to *ahem* go on frequent dates with Mary Jane. Don’t they generally put you in the non-violent low-security no-poke pokey?
are U insinUatin U know this as a Fact?
Just some observations from Bend Oregon.
the lower end; 100k-150k, is so active if you don’t have an offer in in hours you will lose. Rents are climbing; and my mom is trying to buy a low end home for us to go to after my wife’s home gets auctioned.
bofa looks like it will actually sell some homes after a year of no sales. They are publishing opening bids and are poised to put 690 homes back into their own hands this year. I wonder if this will crash prices; if they will go thru with so much more inventory; and if this will affect rents(lower them; any home that is livable is $1000 per month, due to the dearth of solid landlords). We would be happy to move to a rental; but they are more expensive than occupying the house my mom wants to buy; assuming she is successful.
Our own home that I own I am thinking about liquidating seeing how active the market is, I could get out for what I paid. But I like the return on investment; having bought it a year ago for 118k; and renting it out for 11k per year it beats the CD. But the idea of having to liquidate it after a fall in value; plus our meager incomes, makes me think selling now could be the call, especially if adding BofA ends up adding 800 props and if that crashes the market. Either rental or resale.
Thoughts? Other than run run run? The PNW has had no heat wave this summer. It sure is nice. And being a teacher I can at least work as a sub here in Central Oregon; and my wife has a chance at benefits at her retail job; if she wants to be a manager, and give up lunch lady job (kids would be sad, so she may keep on serving food just to be close ot the younguns). Being busy with kids, it sures help us from dwelling on the day to day atrocities we see on the financial front. I am volunteering my time at the coast; playing with kids, all day every day. All the kids are loving it at a boys and girls club–while I wait for school to start. And I am not paid but in hugs and smiles; plus keeping my resume from falling out of date and hoping the non-profit turns into a charter school and I can teach there. It is funny seeing how the main helper lives in section 8, food stamps, food from the non-profit, and Oregon health plan. she is stable financially working part time thanks to uncle Sam. We just qualified for food stamps; it’s a SNAP!
Some very deep thoughts from Lurch, on MSNBC.
SEN. JOHN KERRY: “And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it’s exercising today. The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual.”
“It doesn’t deserve the same credit as a legitimate idea about what you do. And the problem is everything is put into this tit-for-tat equal battle and America is losing any sense of what’s real, of who’s accountable, of who is not accountable, of who’s real, who isn’t, who’s serious, who isn’t?”
Perhaps not very deep, but not wrong. We do have situations in this country where you hear things like “teach the controversy” and “fair and balanced” and “meat is murder” or whatever, that are based on the utterances of a few wing nuts be they right or left. It almost seems as though if someone says something, irrespective of its veracity or the expertise of the speaker, people have to give the utterance as much creedence as any other. This is not a good idea.
Some people’s opinions are worth less than others. I don’t look over X-GSF’s shoulder and tell him how to fix a plane just because I have seen the movie Airplane, I don’t tell Blue Skye how to pilot his boat just because I enjoy Mark Twain and I don’t tell AZ Slim how to take a photo just because I like Cartier-Bresson. So when people who work at a hot-dog stand tell me how to run my SQL Servers because they own an iPod or a corporate lawyer tells me that climate change is a hoax because he watches the Weather Channel, it is upsetting.
But it’s not upsetting to me because they might be right. They are not. It’s upsetting to me because other people might think that their opinions are valid and when they aren’t and weight them equally when they shouldn’t. That’s the danger of given every kid a trophy just for showing up.
MrBubble
(It’s a similar idea with people who utter things like, “You know what the problem is…”, which I saw while perusing the board earlier this morning. That statement is almost a guarantee that they have so idea what the problems are.)
I’m not sure what your point is Mr. B. People have opinions about stuff even though they are not experts on everything. The expert ought to be able to explain some points in simple terms, though not all can. On how the country is run, one thing is clear; those being paid to run it are not necessarily expert.
I was talking less about how the country is being run than addressing the over-arching sentiment in the quote, which I tend to agree with as much as I don’t like Lurch. That is: all opinions are not created equal, thus teaching a “controversy”, which in reality is a worthless (i.e. lacking any currency) opinion, is damaging to the understanding of the laity.
And some complex issues are difficult to boil down into a sound bite. For every E=mc^2, there’s a Standard Model. And just because something doesn’t explain everything, doesn’t make it worthless.
Just take me sailing and you will understand the value of my non-expert opinions on sea-craft. My opnions in that field are less valid than yours, an experienced sea-captain (argh!) Similarly, your opinion on the tonal quality of the SP versus the Shubb bar as a Dobro slide would be not a valid as mine. It’s not an insult, nor is it meant to be. That’s just the way it is.
MrEdmundFitzgerald
Was hoping he was going to say that the media should actually investigate rather than just reporting what other people say. Darn.
If BB had any hair left he’d be pulling it out now. His “models” won’t work this go round, but that won’t slow them down any.
ITEM: Bernanke Models Prove Faulty as Fed Forecasts Succumb to Downward Revision (Bloomberg)
Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his Federal Reserve colleagues are preparing to meet next week as two-year Treasury yields at a record low signal a U.S. economy on the knife’s edge between growth and contraction.
Guiding their assessment of the outlook for the world’s largest economy will be forecasts contained in the so-called Teal Book, a confidential staff report with a blue-green cover. Policy makers’ confidence in those forecasts may be tempered as the course of the expansion has confounded their expectations.
Of 12 Fed staff forecasts since the beginning of 2010, seven have been downward revisions to the near-term outlook, according to minutes of Federal Open Market Committee meetings. This year, the outlook was raised in January and lowered three times since as a stream of data on weakness in employment and consumer spending signaled threats to a recovery from the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
“We haven’t had any historical event that really would allow us to reliably statistically calibrate an event like the one we’ve had,” David Stockton, director of the Fed’s Division of Research and Statistics, who has overseen forecasting for a decade, said in an interview at the end of June. “There isn’t going to be a simple story here.”
Uncertainty can cause central bankers to keep their hands off the levers of monetary policy and wait for more information, said Antulio Bomfim, senior managing director at Macroeconomic Advisers LLC in Washington. When risks to growth stack up, as is the case now, Fed officials have to be mindful of more severe scenarios rather than just their baseline outlook, he said.
One of Canada’s biggest economic engines - tar sands - will start scaling down if the price of oil goes below $80, which looks likely.
Our housing is overpriced and has entered the slow sales season. Everyone here pretty much recognizes this - but it is still high !
The loonie (our dollar) is too high a premium and is shutting down our manufacturing sales / profitabily.
Refinancings are the biggest income earners for most of our lawyers.
Our stock market is dropping like a stone in mid air.
And we are the strongest economy on the planet ! ! ! !
Well the good thing for you is all you have to do is look at us (U.S.) to see your future if Canada stays on the same course we are on.
Good Luck!
Canada instituted a nationalized healthcare program long ago, and tamed the run away costs that were causing mass deficits. They balanced their budgets and even paid down thier national debt. They have a relatively small population compared to their vast resources.
And best of all for them, they have had a big spending neighbor willing to buy pretty much anything they wanted to sell.
All these articles about how others did it. Sure, you can default in Iceland and then reestablish markets pretty quickly, if you still have the US and Europe spending and loaning like mad men. Brazil can spur exports to China, with China desperate to get rid of dollars before they become worth less.
Take out the USA and Europe, I don’t think the rest of the world is going to have such an easy time finding markets for their exports.
One of Canada’s biggest economic engines - tar sands - will start scaling down if the price of oil goes below $80, which looks likely.
ISTR that the oil shale-rich regions of the U.S. experienced quite a downturn after oil prices went down in the 1980s.
Daryl
“Canada instituted a nationalized healthcare program long ago, and tamed the run away costs that were causing mass deficits. They balanced their budgets and even paid down thier national debt. They have a relatively small population compared to their vast resources.”
I think this is why it is hard for us to see why it is such a problem to do the same thing in the States. I am definitely very very long on the economic future of the USA. There is just this puddle that we either have to wade or attack across. Either way we will win because we will loyally stand beside one another; one with massive resources and the other with the ability to use them. Combined, we have the largest GDP in the world - we have what everyone wants - and we are still running at at least 80% production levels. Buy North American.
Arizona Slim
” the U.S. experienced quite a downturn after oil prices went down in the 1980s.”
A lot of your oil shale technology is being adapted from the tar sands which is jump starting your massive shale recovery abilities. I don’t understand why fracking is causing such a problem in the States though. Hundreds of thousands of wells in North America have had tertiary recovery methods applied without problems.
With mature oil shale, tar sand, heavy oil, and Pacific deep water drilling along with your huge natural gas deposits it is possible to see CanUsa being energy self sufficient some day within the next twenty years. When we are I hope we learn how to manage our oil/gas resources better - and to remember who are real friends are.
America’s 10 Sickest Housing Markets
by 24/7 Wall St. Staff
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
By Charles B. Stockdale, Douglas A. McIntyre and Michael B. Sauter
For three years, the real estate market has been going in one direction — primarily down. Some areas, however, have begun to recover. Recent S&P/Case-Shiller data show that among the top 20 housing markets in the U.S., 18 had very modest improvements in sales prices during May. Others, like Washington and Boston, have began to at least stabilize from a year ago.
Few markets, however, can match Washington and Boston. Robert Shiller has been stating that home prices could fall another 10% in the next year. Inventories in some major metropolitan areas would take years of sales to get back to 2005 levels. Then, the normal inventory of homes for sale was replaced on average every six months and it was unusual for a house to be on the market for a year. Foreclosure rates remain high and only the robo-signing scandal has slowed the process. Once this is resolved, economists fear the market will be flooded with even more vacant, unsold homes.
24/7 Wall St. has taken a new look at the housing market to find the very weakest cities by identifying those with the highest homeowner vacancy rates and rental vacancy rates. These are markets where demand has clearly collapsed. These are cities where the requirement for living space has dropped well below the national average. Further, vacancy rates of many cities were stable during the recession, but accelerated sharply higher in the last year. Similarly, housing prices in several of these markets have decreased at a faster rate in the last three quarters than during the recession. These cities, like Detroit, St. Louis, Dayton, and Atlanta, also tend to be larger and older among the top 75 metropolitan areas. Their economies were damaged long before the recession.
Methodology: 24/7 Wall St. pulled Census data on the 75 largest U.S. metropolitan areas and ranked the cities with the highest overall vacancy rates for both homeowner vacancy and rental vacancy for the second quarter of 2011. We picked the cities with the worst rates in each of the two categories to create meta-data ranks. We then removed the cities that had either improved homeowner vacancy rate in either the last twelve months or the last quarter. We believed that any sign of improvement in homeowner vacancies, the more telling of the vacancy rates, should disqualify a city. To improve our analysis, we also looked at unemployment rates for these cities provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We also used historical median home prices, as provided by the National Association of Realtors.
The analysis shows that some cities have home vacancy rates over 5% and rental vacancy rates over 10%. Obviously, these levels of unused inventory have the effect of driving down both home and rental prices month after month. It also means that there is comparatively little demand for the purchase of new or existing homes. These ten markets are essentially dead as far as real estate prices and sales activity are concerned.
These are America’s ten sickest housing markets.
1. Tucson, AZ
Homeowner vacancy rates: 6.8% (1st)
Rental vacancy rates: 15.9% (6th)
Total housing units: 440,909
Unemployment: 7.8%
Tucson’s homeowner vacancy rate was 3.2% one year ago. It is now over double that. The city had a booming residential housing market before the crash. Since then, demand is so low that median home prices have dropped 18% in the past year and 33% since 2008. In addition, the city has among the highest rate of foreclosures in the country.
2. Indianapolis, IN
Homeowner vacancy rates: 5.2% (5th)
Rental vacancy rates: 13.5% (10th)
Total housing units: 757,441
Unemployment: 7.8%
The average home price has dropped by $20,000, or 15.3%, between the second quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of this year. Indianapolis’s home vacancy rate of 5.2% is the fifth-highest in the country. Its rental vacancy of 13.5% of units is the tenth highest in the country. In 2009, while vacancy had not even reached its worst point, the mayor’s office of Indianapolis recognized the serious problem the city faced. The city’s plan to help solve the abandoned home issue states: “Indianapolis, like many communities, faces a significant challenge in dealing with vacant and abandoned properties. This challenge is exacerbated both by weaknesses in the local and regional housing markets — including an oversupply of housing relative to demand — and by the high and growing rate of foreclosures.”
3. Memphis, TN
Homeowner vacancy rates: 4% (9th)
Rental vacancy rates: 13.5% (11th)
Total housing units: 550,896
Unemployment: 10.1%
Memphis’s slow economic recovery has kept vacancy rates high. The metropolitan area’s homeowner vacancy rate has increased from 2.5% in 2010 to 4% in the second quarter of 2011. In the city’s defense, its rental vacancy rate has decreased from a staggering 21.2% in 2010 to 13.5%. This is still among the highest in the country, but it is an improvement. The unemployment rate remains at 10.1%, which is significantly higher than the national average of 9.2%.
4. Atlanta, GA
Homeowner vacancy rates: 5.4% (4th)
Rental vacancy rates: 11.8% (17th)
Total housing units: 2,165,495
Unemployment: 9.7%
Atlanta’s homeowner vacancy rate of 5.4% is the fourth highest among major U.S. cities. The city, which had a significant influx of new residents, particularly from the northeast, has been hit hard. Atlanta’s unemployment rate of 9.7% is well above the national average of 9.2%. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the city had lost nearly 25,000 jobs between June of 2010 and June of this year. Between 2008 and the first quarter of this year, homes have lost more than a third of their value, dropping in price by nearly $50,000.
5. Baton Rouge, LA
Homeowner vacancy rates: 3.9% (11th)
Rental vacancy rates: 13% (12th)
Total housing units: 329,729
Unemployment: 8.4%
Baton Rouge did not emerge from the recession unscathed, but it did perform better than many other cities in the U.S., in part because it is the state’s capital city and in part because of the money brought in through Hurricane Katrina recovery work. However, according to one local news station, the area has built more housing structures than it could fill following Katrina. The city has not been able to break free of this situation, as both homeowner vacancy rates and rental vacancy rates have increased not only since last year, but since the last quarter as well.
6. Dayton, OH
Homeowner vacancy rates: 4.7% (7th)
Rental vacancy rates: 10.7% (23rd)
Total housing units: 385,160
Unemployment: 9.3%
Dayton’s home vacancy rate of 4.7% is the seventh-highest in the country among major cities. At one time, Dayton was a much larger city and an economic powerhouse. The Ohio city, which was a major manufacturing center, was at one point awarded more patents each year than any other place in the U.S. The city has a particularly bad unemployment rate of 9.3%. Median housing price, which stood at $109,000 in 2008, has fallen by 29%, or $27,000, between 2008 and the first quarter of this year.
7. Detroit, MI (Tied for 8th)
Homeowner vacancy rates: 2.4% (32nd)
Rental vacancy rates: 17.2% (3rd)
Total housing units: 1,886,537
Unemployment: 11.6%
The recession hasn’t been kind to Detroit. Part of the Detroit-Warren-Livonia metropolitan area, it has been among the hardest hit cities in the country. Since 2005, the metropolitan area has lost approximately 323,400 jobs. Unemployment in the Motor City almost reached 30% in 2009. According to one estimate, the city had 90,000 abandoned or vacant lots or residential homes in 2010. One of the reasons the city is not at the top of this list is that the city had so many vacant properties that a huge portion of them were demolished. Regardless, at 17.2%, the rate of rental vacancy is still the third highest rate in the nation.
8. Kansas City, MO (Tied for 8th)
Homeowner vacancy rates: 3.7% (13th)
Rental vacancy rates: 11% (22nd)
Total housing units: 883,099
Unemployment: 8.4%
Kansas City’s rental vacancy rate of 11% is the 22nd highest of any major city in the country, while its homeowner vacancy rate of 3.7% is the 13th highest. The city has a relatively high rate of unemployment, at 8.4%. While it’s below the national average of 9.2%, it is well above the state average of 6.6%. The median home price in the city is down by $19,000, or more than 13%, since 2008. Most of that decline came in the last year. Between the second quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of this year, prices dropped by more than $25,000.
9. St. Louis, MO
Homeowner vacancy rates: 3.3% (19th)
Rental vacancy rates: 11.4% (18th)
Total housing units: 1,236,222
Unemployment: 8.6%
In 2008 and 2009, the St. Louis area has shed more than 82,000 jobs. This loss had a negative impact on the city’s real estate market. Vacancy rates have continued to rise, increasing from under 2% one year ago to 3.3% in the recent quarter. The rise in vacancy rates has occurred while the median sales price for single family homes has fallen more than 19% since 2008. While rental vacancy rate, which is currently at 11.4%, has decreased slightly since the last quarter, it is still 1.6 percentage points higher than it was last year. St. Louis office vacancy rate is at 12.6%, according to real estate information company CoStar Group.
10. Oklahoma City, OK
Homeowner vacancy rates: 5.2% (6th)
Rental vacancy rates: 9.6% (34th)
Total housing units: 539,077
Unemployment: 4.9%
Oklahoma City had the sixth highest homeowner vacancy rate in the country as of the second quarter of this year. The city’s unemployment rate is just 5.3%, but this low rate has not helped improve high home and rental vacancy. From last year, home sales in Oklahoma state dropped by 7.7%, according to the state’s newspaper NewsOK. In the city, sales were flat from last year. Between the first quarter of 2010 and the first quarter of 2011, the median home price in the city dropped by more than 8%.
Do these stats include the whole metro areas or just the city limits?
For older “land locked” cities with a legacy of white flight and “searching for a better school district refugees”, the suburbs may be different. (Not necessarily better, just different.)
I believe them to be metro areas. Many of the markets in the Census surveys reference multiple cities for the metro area.
The Tucson take on our lofty ranking is quite interesting. Second daily fishwrap story in two days:
Yahoo article cites jobless rate, homeowner and rental vacancies
Tucson top of sick list for housing markets
Story comments are all over the map. More than a few REIC-sters weighing in. Then there’s this closet HBB-er, Ricardo:
The article said: “Tucson has roughly four months of housing inventory, based on unit sales and active listings. A balanced market generally has six months of inventory, according to Long Realty’s housing report.”
Tucson Assoc of Realtors MLS Monthly Statistics for June 2011 says there were 7,729 listings that included 2,163 with some status of to be closed sale status. That report says there were 1,312 sales during the month the report covers. Divide those sales into the listings = 5.89 months of supply overall, NOT four months.
Furthermore, to have more applicability to each individual property owner / buyer, supply in various price ranges, in different geographic areas of Tucson Metro and in the total number of bedrooms, as well as other characteristics, have be looked at, not just the overall totals.
For example: 26 houses priced from $400,000 to $499,999 sold during the report month. There were 352 listings. That’s a 13.5 months’ supply in that price range and suggests declining prices due to oversupply.
Another example is zip code 85749, where there were 156 listings and 14 sales for an 11+ months supply.
The totals in MLS certainly improved during the past year, but that could very well be due to sellers holding their properties out of MLS or off the market completely due to poor market conditions. There could be a significant amount of inventory that will come on the market during the upcoming 12 to 24 months.
Sadly, local and national real estate professional organizations have said: “We’re at the bottom. Now is the time to buy.” for the past several years, when in fact prices continued to decline precipitously.
The statistics truly are better than in the past, but the data would not make me go ahead with a purchase right now, when I can easily rent a house. Tucson’s house prices are not likely to increase soon. They are more apt to continue declining.
Another example is zip code 85749, where there were 156 listings and 14 sales for an 11+ months supply.
Slim here. Commenting on Ricardo’s news story comment:
The 85749 zip code is one of our metro area’s most affluent. And, as you can see, houses aren’t exactly selling like hotcakes out there.
Obama says we’re going to have to work together to fix things. He says “we are going to get there, and we are going to get there together.”
Does he mean that the section 8 welfare drug dealer guy is going to be eating shrimp at the same party as the megayacht-owning criminally corrupt politician/bankster in the near future. What exactly is the man saying?
What I think he’s saying is that there will be plenty of section 8 housing for everyone. Expect the super rich of course, but the good news is that once you finish busing tables at the Yacht Club, and have collected all the dinner scraps you can carry. You can be secure in the knowledge that your very own gubmint subsidize home will be there waiting for you in all it’s glory.
at least until the banks can sell it for a profit. Then you will be back out on the streets. No scraps for you.
White House Confident Geithner Will Stay
(Bloomberg)
President Barack Obama’s senior advisers are confident Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner will remain in his job even though he hasn’t made his intentions public, an administration official said.
Geithner met recently with Vice President Joe Biden and laid out his reasons for wanting to leave the post. Biden outlined why it was vital that Geithner remain, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no announcement has been made.
A departure by Geithner would represent another blow to an administration that confronts a weak economy, a declining stock market and uncertainty over how it will resolve controversy over the deficit.
As soon as media reports cite White House confidence in some high official’s continuation in their current position, he/she is already stockpiling boxes for the office clean-out.
Buh-bye, Timmy.
I think you just hit the hail squarely on it’s head!
Maybe he doesn’t want to be in charge during the next “significant leg down”.
that would be exactly the reason.
Average Length Of Unemployment Surges To New All Time Record 40.4 Weeks - Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/05/2011
Unemployment:
We already learned that the one biggest red flag in unemployment data had been raised when we found that the labor force participation rate was the lowest since 1984. Now we find that the other critical data point: average length of unemployment, just hit a new all time high of 40.4 weeks in July, up from the previous record of 39.9 in June. Someone should tell the average American who is rapidly approaching one year in average unemployment that the stock market soared on good payroll news. They will be delighted.
The “Not A Depression Recession” beat goes on!
Wow! Talk about clueless…
“The actions that [Congress] can take could create more jobs right now, if it passed the patent reform, if it passed the free trade agreements.”
~ Jay Carney
I’m the offspring of a guy who has dozens of patents. Just because a patent is issued doesn’t mean that it’s a job creator. You have to have companies willing to license your invention, and those companies have to see enough demand in order to hire new people.
When he says patent reform he means that corporations can steal ideas without paying for them. There can be no competition.
Why don’t they just declare slavery legal and get on with it. This slow decent into slavery is demoralizing. More Free Trade.
<”When he says patent reform he means that corporations can steal ideas without paying for them. There can be no competition. “
Exactly.
Angst in military over Pentagon cuts
Associated Press - August 5, 2011
WASHINGTON — From the helicopters they fly to the base housing where their children sleep at night, U.S troops and their families are directly affected by the prospect of deep cuts in the Pentagon’s budget, which surely will shrink over the coming decade as the military closes out two wars, trims its ranks and possibly chops some budget-busting weapons systems.
And the troops’ concerns don’t end when they take off the uniform: Many retirees are dependent on the military’s health insurance. With Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s blunt acknowledgment this week that the Pentagon “has to do its part” to meet the public clamor for deficit reduction, there’s much angst among the uniformed services.
Reflecting the widespread demand for more fiscal responsibility in Washington, the compromise debt deal that President Barack Obama reached with Congress and signed Tuesday will slice $350 billion from projected military spending over the next 10 years. And it leaves open the possibility of up to $500 billion in additional reductions.
In his first Pentagon news conference Thursday, Panetta described a reduction of nearly $1 trillion as a “doomsday” scenario that would mean “dangerous across-the-board defense cuts that would do real damage to our security, our troops and their families and our ability to protect the nation.” Panetta, who was White House budget chief in the Clinton administration, called the cuts “completely unacceptable” and vowed to fight them.
Time to end those 6 wars we have going in.
There, I just saved $1 trillion.
…and destroy our only export?
come on now.
We have the capability of taking out the infrastructure and leadership of any country on the planet within 48 hours.
I’m beginning to wonder if maybe we should reduce that capability, because our politicos sure like using it.
De$truction / monie$ / profit$ aka: prophet$
Who is that you work for again?
You can bet the soldier will take the brunt of the cuts, the corporate class get’s what the corporate class wants.
Maybe that won’t be such a bad thing.
The truth is the US military has way too much “tail” compared to “teeth”. Many military jobs aren’t significantly different that their civilian market counterparts. As someone one noted, he knew a guy who spent 25 years in the Air Force, and never left Texas.
And even the “teeth” have it a lot better than the guys in WWII or Korea did. We had approx 416,000 KIA (and approx 3X wounded) between mid 1941 and 1945, compared to approx 6000 KIA (currently) in the GWoT. (But the WIA have gone up to a 5X ratio or thereabouts).
Buddy of mine works in a VA hospital. Says 30-40% of his patients are there due to drug/alcohol abuse issues. Most of them have always been drinkers/dopers, but somewhere along the line, they managed to get in 3-4 years of military duty somewhere, so now they get “lifetime healthcare benefits”, thanks to Uncle Sugar. A lot of the Pentagon’s health care budget is spent taking care of people that had issues before they ever joined the military.
Maybe I’m too cynical once again, but maybe we need to reconsider giving lifetime “Veteran’s Benefits” to guys who spend 3 years stocking shelves in the base exchange in San Antonio, or 20 years doing data processing in Reston, Virginia.
Go ahead, blast away……..
This is insane. Just put everybody on the same damn health care! Then you wouldn’t need a patchwork like American Indian Health Care, VA, Medicaid, etc.
Meanwhile, bring most of the boys home and put them on the Mexico border and do live-fire training. Next up, assign some of them to run border-crossing checkpoints in the desert — they already have lots of practice in that department. Then send some to root out the smuggling at the ports. Send some more to rebuild New Orleans properly instead of relying on a public-private partnership and fraudy cash cards. Send more to put out the fires in the West and cut down the intermediate trees that don’t belong there. You get the idea. Soldiers will be overjoyed to do this work.
During the Iraq war, there was some news story that several aircraft were able to take off in the US, travel, drop whatever bombs, and return in 34 hours. They were crowing about their technology, but i was thinking, If that’s the case, then why do we need bases overseas?
Because we only have 20 bombers capable of flying that mission.
Of which, 4-5 are down for routine maintenance, or crew training.
Those were the B-2 bombers stationed at Whiteman AFB in MO.
It requires 120 hours of maintenance per flight hour.
So each of those 24 hr missions ended needing 3,000 hrs or 1 full man year of labor.
To bomb guys with 50 year old kalashnikov rifles and wedding celebrations.
So, really we need to cut veterans medical to achieve military savings.
Yeah…..it makes perfect sense to me, too.
Although I’d take that 120 maintenance hour/flight hour number with a grain of salt. Lots of leeway on what is considered “maintenance hours”, depending on if you are trying to make the airplane look good or bad.
Figures don’t lie, but liars figure…….
X GS:
Ok to the uninitiated…why do you need to do so much maintenance on a jet fighter per hour of flight time? Sounds very wasteful Like racing tires you need to change every what 100 miles in a 500 mile race?
The proper way to rebuild New Orleans is to turn the pumps off and call it good.
For once we agree! Keep the historic districts on the high ground, keep the pumps on for the tourist attractions and a few hotels, move everyone else, and give it back to Momma Nature.
How much of that 9th Ward was on welfare? I’m not saying take them off welfare, but if they’re on welfare, then they don’t need to be in NO. Can’t they be on welfare anywhere?
I doubt they will rebuild the 9th ward….there is no money and a lot of those peeps were shipped out to Houston and other places….
Yet they had to import 15,000 mostly Illegals to do the cleanup…where was loudmouth Sharpton and Jackson demanding jobs be given to those locals first?
There was no march for Jobs…..they knew the peeps in the 9th ward would not work
Yet they had to import 15,000 mostly Illegals to do the cleanup…where was loudmouth Sharpton and Jackson demanding jobs be given to those locals first?
Ahem. A lot of the cleanup was done by volunteers. I know a fellow who spent several weeks mucking out houses in New Orleans. And I did it in MS.
Slim they were begging for Spanish speaking people to work in fast foods supermarkets….so where did all the Spanish people come from…..not from NO.
We talk about the entitlement culture and it was evident in NO….I saw nothing about black people fixing up their hoods.
In this country if you had even 1 crew of 50 blacks going house to house fixing up the hood It would be headlines on Drudge because it would be so rare as to be big news.
New Orleans is major international port at the headwaters of the Mississippi that provides access to the very heart of this nation.
I know it’s hard to believe that craphole is a major strategic element, but it is.
Looks like the stock market figured out the jobs report was a pant load.
“WASHINGTON - Mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae said it would ask for an additional $5.1 billion from taxpayers as a weaker housing market causes continued losses on loans made prior to 2009.”
http://news.yahoo.com/fannie-mae-seeks-5-1-billion-more-taxpayers-121029211.html
Hot Damn! The PPT is in the house! Firing on all 12 cylinders!
Could be this headline on CNBC:
“Italy, EU Have Agreed to Reform Measures; Italy Will Introduce Balanced Budget Rule in Constitution: Dow Jones (click for more)”
No real article yet…
“Italy Will Introduce Balanced Budget Rule in Constitution”:
Yea I’m sure that will weight very heavily on the “budgeters”
Global Hot Potato Game With Bad Paper Goes into Triple Overtime. -the headline within the headline.
We went through that Kabuki with Greece.
Inside the jobs number….
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44033486
“According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics breakdown, there were 139,296,000 people working in July, compared to 139,334,000 the month before, or a drop of 38,000.”
“This [discouraged workers] is where the numbers showed a really big spike—up from 982,000 to 1.119 million, a difference of 137,000 or a 14 percent increase.”
“The vaunted birth-death model, a byzantine approximation of business creation and failure, actually subtracted 18,000 from the total job creation after a five-month run where it added a total of 741,000 positions to the count.”
“But how good or bad the unemployment picture really may not come into view until next month, because of distortions from seasonal adjustments.
Including teachers and others who experience seasonal unemployment, total joblessness actually rose 1.23 million.”
But they have a new “Hire Veterans” plan.
Of course, a cynic like me will point out that the last thing the leaders of our kleptocracy want, is a bunch of unemployed ex-soldiers running around, with recent insurgency experience.
Helping the unemployed? Attempt at self-preservation? You be the judge.
Of course, a cynic like me will point out that the last thing the leaders of our kleptocracy want, is a bunch of unemployed ex-soldiers running around, with recent insurgency experience.
I think they also don’t want a repeat of the Bonus Army camp’s bust-up. That sure didn’t help Herbert Hoover’s popularity going into the 1932 election.
Not to mentioned that a current replay of the “Bonus Army” would show up with more booze, and with more guns.
No problem, we just “created” a few new trillion. USPS can grab some from uncle sugar.
USPS posts $3.1 billion loss in Q3, warns of default
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Postal Service posted a net loss of $3.1 billion in its third quarter and warned again it would default on payments to the federal government if Congress did not step in.
Total mail volume for the quarter that ended June 30 fell to 39.8 billion pieces, a 2.6 percent drop from the same period a year earlier, as consumers turn to email and pay bills online.
The mail carrier, which does not get taxpayer funds, has struggled to overhaul its business as mail volumes fall. It has said personnel costs weigh heavily and is facing a massive retiree health benefit prepayment next month.
“We are experiencing a severe cash crisis and are unable to continue to maintain the aggressive prepayment schedule,” Joseph Corbett, the agency’s chief financial officer, said in a statement.
“Without changes in the law, the Postal Service will be unable to make the $5.5 billion mandated prepayment due in September.”
Congress, which last week ended a vitriolic debate about the U.S. government’s debt levels and budget deficit, is now in recess until early September.
USPS cut work hours during the quarter by 3.1 percent compared to the previous year, when quarterly net losses were $3.5 billion.
Time to declare bankruptcy and renegotiate those retirement benefits.
Anyone on the HBB heading over to Harvey’s crib for some burgers,beer and a little face time?
ITEM: Harvey hosts O money meal
Washington Post
A high-powered, intimate, $71,600-a-couple fund-raiser for President Obama hosted by Anna Wintour and Harvey Weinstein will be held at the movie mogul’s New York home next week.
The expensive affair — billed on an invitation obtained by Page Six as a “small dinner and discussion” — is planned to bring together heavy-hitters from the worlds of fashion, movies and finance at the West Village home of Weinstein and his fashion designer wife, Georgina Chapman, on Thursday. It had been scheduled for July 18 but was postponed because of the debt ceiling debate.
A source told Page Six the exclusive event has been sold out and raised over $2 million. Among those confirmed to attend are Gwyneth Paltrow, Chris Martin, Lyor Cohen, Tory Burch, Alicia Keys and Quentin Tarantino.
Madonna was also invited, but won’t make it Thursday due to “a personal commitment,” said her rep.
Last summer, Wintour threw an Obama fund-raiser at her Greenwich Village home for 50 guests, at $30,400 per head, which drew Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Diane von Furstenberg, Andrew Rosen and Andre Balazs. The Vogue editor-in-chief is expected to draw some of the same crowd.
“Anna calls, they come running,” said a source. “The fashion people have to contribute” — which they apparently did despite the market being in free fall this week.
The sad thing about it is, Obama will get sober in the morning and talk crap about the same people he partied with last night.
That reminds me of a college friend……
Given how thin Obama is, it won’t take too many drinks for him to get crocked off his arse. Good thing he’s got a ride home with the Secret Service.
Ralph Nader, the consumer advocate and perennial third-party presidential candidate, announced last month that he would work to find a Democrat to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012.
Nader now says that a primary challenge is a near certainty.
“What [Obama] did this week is just going to energize that effort,” Nader promised in an interview with The Daily Caller. “I would guess that the chances of there being a challenge to Obama in the primary are almost 100 percent.”
The only question, he said, is the stature of that opponent and whether it will be either “an ex-senator or an ex-governor” or “an intellectual leader or an environmental leader.”
In approximately a week and a half there will be “another chapter of this effort,” Nader predicted.
I railed against Nader when he ran last, that won’t happen again. Dem and GOP establishment are both bought and paid for.
Ralph Nader. Now there’s a name that brings back memories.
I was a photographer at a press conference that he held in Ann Arbor back in 1979. Got those looking up at the dignitary photos that you see in places like congressional hearings.
From the photographer’s perspective, they mean that you plant your butt on the hard floor, fix your camera-stare on the subject, and shoot, shoot, shoot. You don’t dare say a word, even if your subject is spouting utter BS. You’re the photographer, not the story. So, run your camera, not your mouth.
Now if our Tea-publican friends want to see what a REAL “socialist” looks like, they need to go see our old buddy Ralph.
First, Republicans were against the “Commies”……then the “Socialist”…….next, who?
Those damn “moderates”?
Those aren’t moderates, they’re Marxist/socialeest/commies!
Nadir: “True1ofmanyMediaborewhore$™”
Yeah, that’s the ticket: “Old Coot!”
(Did he sneeze, or was that a: “awwlookatme!” …uh-uh…”awwlookatme!”)
Confidence in the “System”:
World governments buy worthless bonds with their own worthless (printed) paper. You might get the impression that the whole thing is just a game…
I think Faber is correct, sell the bounces, cause the market is going down. The fed props won’t be enough, to stem the slid.
Faber: Brace for a Global ‘Reboot’ and a War
Friday, 5 Aug 2011 | CNBC.com
Markets could rebound after Thursday’s global market sell-off, but investors should see any bounce as a selling opportunity, as the world economy rolls towards total collapse, Mark Faber, editor and publisher of the Boom, Doom and Gloom Report, told CNBC Friday.
A mooted third round of quantitative easing [cnbc explains] (QE3) in the U.S. and more money printing elsewhere is merely deferring a crisis that will be bigger and could end in war, Faber said.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average [.DJIA 11497.28 113.60 (+1%) ] suffered its worst losses in three years Thursday, shedding more than 500 points.
“My view is that the market has experienced everywhere huge technical damage,” Faber said. “As of today, all markets are extremely oversold, so a rebound is going to happen (Friday) or on Monday, but the damage technically is so great that the rebound, no matter whether QE3 happens right here, it’s unlikely to lift markets above the May 2 high of the (S&P 500)[.SPX 1209.85 9.78 (+0.81%) ] at 1370.”
Faber thinks that by the end of the fall, the S&P 500 will have slid to around 1150, and investors will be hoping that further round of monetary easing will stabilize markets.
“In general, I would be using rebounds as a selling opportunity,” Faber said.
Buying Treasurys as a safe haven is no longer a smart play, he added.
“I think Treasurys are perceived still as a safe haven because everybody knows the U.S. has an endless ability to print money. The interest will be paid,” he said. “The trouble is that governments can default in two ways. Either they just stop paying the interest and there is a debt restructuring, like Argentina went through; or they just pay the interest and the principle eventually, in a worthless currency. That’s the way the U.S. will likely do it.”
Can’t wait for the insider trading numbers on today to be released.
Yet most of these “dissatisfied consumers” will vote the same way next time. It is something that has long puzzled me, I guess it’s the old, well even though the person I voted for sucks, at least I know what I’ve got. Besides the next one may be worse. It’s past time for an entire crop rotation!
ITEM: Poll: 82 percent disapprove of Congress
By Michael O’Brien - 08/05/11 - The Hill
A record number of Americans said they disapprove of Congress in the wake of this week’s move by lawmakers to approve compromise legislation to raise the nation’s debt ceiling.
Eighty-two percent of Americans disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll released Friday. Lawmakers’ approval rating stands at 14 percent, matching the low point at which Americans rated Congress in March of 2010, in the midst of the healthcare battle.
The figures suggest a deep dissatisfaction with Congress in the wake of the protracted fight over spending cuts related to the debt limit that has dominated political discussion in Washington over the past few months.
Just 14 percent of registered voters said that most members of Congress deserve reelection; 74 percent said that lawmakers don’t deserve another term.
President Obama is also pummeled in the poll, though he fares better than Congress.
My guy is great. It is all those other bums we have to get rid of.
Yeah, if we could get all those other idiots in all those other congressional districts to throw their bums out, we’d be in business.
Just got a flyer from my local Teapublican Congressional Representative.
Says things were just peachy before Obama showed up, so it’s all his fault.
It’s in print, so it must be true.
On The Job Hunt: Small Businesses Across the Country Say, ‘We’re Not Hiring’ By Adam Housley August 05, 2011| FoxNews.com
At a wholesale pizza factory just outside Los Angeles, Calif., 25 men and women pound out the dough.
But like many small businesses in America dealing with a struggling economy, the owners aren’t necessarily rolling in it.
“I love what I do, I love my employees. I have people that have been here over 20 years working for me. I don’t want to do anything else, but it’s frightening out there,” says Patty Phillips, the owner of Patty’s Pizza in Marina Del Rey. “My bottom line hasn’t changed in two years, but my cost of business has changed significantly.”
Recent polls show that small businesses are firing more than they’re hiring.
According to a survey released this week from the National Federation of Independent Business, or NFIB, 14 percent of more than 1,800 small businesses across the country polled said they cut staff, while only 12 percent said they made new hires. Also, overall small business optimism is dropping, and the NFIB’s optimism index is down for the fourth consecutive month.
John Kabateck, NFIB’s California executive director says he doesn’t expect things to get better in the near future amid the current business climate. “Well what we hear from small businesses everyday is that they’re overtaxed, they’re over regulated, and they’re overwhelmed by a government that keeps getting in the way of their ability to grow,” Kabateck says.
Phillips agrees. “You watch our government spend money they don’t have and then their solution is we are going to tax you more. So what business wants to expand and create jobs with that environment?”
Here we see a perfect example of what small business is ACTUALLY saying, and what the flapping heads on the payroll of Wall Street are CLAIMING they are saying.
“My bottom line hasn’t changed in two years, but my cost of business has changed significantly.”
He can’t raise prices or get more customers. Probably becuase those customers don’t have MONEY!!!!!!
But, the people that claim to be speaking for him are not focused on customers having more money. They are playing Wall Streets tune that we need lower taxes and less regulation so they can inflate yet another bubble.
Someone posted a link of a town hall where the candidate was asked what she was going to do to get the economy rolling, and it was tax cuts this tax cuts that, and at one point someone stood up and said I don’t need any dam tax cuts, I need customers.
The small business people in this country like all of the upper middle class are about to find out that they are krill just like the rest.
The middle class is dead and all those that feed on the middle class will die and be eaten by larger fish.
“My bottom line hasn’t changed in two years, but my cost of business has changed significantly.”
Doesn’t this mean that she has been able to pass her increased costs on to her customers. In other words, her situation is about the same that it was two years ago, no better and no worse.
Or does she have a different meaning of the term “bottom line” than the conventional one?
“My bottom line hasn’t changed in two years, but my cost of business has changed significantly.”
If the bottom line hasn’t changed and expenses have gone up doesn’t that mean that revenues have gone up as well?
If the bottom line hasn’t changed and expenses have gone up doesn’t that mean that revenues have gone up as well?
That sure is the case on my P&L statements!
How is this possible? Everyone is deleveraging.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44037605
“U.S. consumer credit shot up in June by $15.53 billion, according to a Federal Reserve report on Friday that showed consumers were willing to keep borrowing robustly in a tight job market. “
Yes, everyone is deleveraging, except for those too impoverished to practice prudence. I personally know two people who have recently started charging groceries on their credit cards — and carrying a balance thereon.
Better yet……….the number of people who put their Chinese made 4th of July fireworks on their Visa.
What fireworks? For most of flyover country, fireworks were banned this year because of the drought.
Like they have a choice?
The U.S. in now in a reverse roll, “we” are getting lectured to. Wonder what kind of ‘model’ BB will come up with to counter common sense?
China says debt financing unlikely ‘to save’ US, EU
AFP - China said Friday that debt deals in the United States and in Europe would not be enough to save their economies and “concrete steps” must be taken to rebalance the global economy.
“The only way the Americans have come up with to improve economic growth has been to take on new loans to repay the old ones,” a blistering commentary published on the official Xinhua news agency said.
“To eat May’s grain in April, however, will never be a permanent solution to a problem,” the report said.
China warned on Wednesday that Washington’s efforts to raise the US limit on borrowing had failed to defuse America’s “debt bomb” and signalled that Beijing would further diversify its holdings away from the dollar.
After months of bitter negotiations with his Republican rivals, US President Barack Obama finally signed an emergency bill on Tuesday that averted what would have been a disastrous debt default for the world’s biggest economy.
Beijing’s latest comments rounded on Thursday’s 500-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial index, noting that it had exposed “the plight of western economies and their deep structural defects.”
“The United States has long been maintaining economic growth and excessive consumption by means of debt financing, hence masses of economic bubbles, which eventually triggered the financial crisis,” the commentary said.
“‘concrete steps’ must be taken to rebalance the global economy.”
So, China is saying that we must respond to the trade war that they have been fighting against us, while we just rolled over and took it, for the last 40 years?
Wow, I totally agree with them.
How about the first concrete step being that we add tariffs on every import equal to how much their average wage is below ours? Their average worker makes $3 and ours makes $15? Okay. 500% tariff. More of a tariff if they refuse to sufficiently enforce violations of US copyrights and patents.
The second concrete step would be a $100 a barrel tax on imported oil.
Third would be to pull our troops home unless the countries where they are stationed want to pay for the protection we provide.
Fourth would be that drug companies have to be willing to sell thier drugs here for the same price they negotiate with other first world countries like Canada and Europe.
I could think of few other “concrete steps”, but that should give a general idea.
“pay for the protection we provide”
What a racket. How many of them will decide to kick us out instead?
China didn’t create that trade war, our very own corporations did.
Why even have a limit on the length of time one can be on? It is completely useless, the limit is just extended. Just make it forever until death and get it over with.
Obama: Extending Unemployment Benefits Will “Create Jobs Right Now”
PRESIDENT: “So, when Congress gets back in September I want to move quickly on things that will help the economy create jobs right now. Extending the payroll tax credit to put a thousand dollars in the pocket of the average American worker. Extending unemployment insurance to help people get back on their feet. Putting construction workers back to work rebuilding America.
“Those are all steps we can take right now that will make a difference and there is no contradiction between us taking some steps to put people to work right now and getting our long-term fiscal house in order. In fact, the more we grow the easier it will be to reduce our deficits.”
Can someone tell me if the TEA party only supports the Constitution, or the Constitution and 200+ years of interpretation. Thanks
Just the Constitution. All the interpritation is simply an assault.
Their interpretation.
They are all convinced that they would not only survive, but thrive, if we were only to turn back the clock to, say, 1885. Some of them might be right. Most people overestimate their ability to even survive in such an environment.
The good news is that 75 year old retirees will become few and far between, if left to fend for themselves. Which fixes the Social Security and Medicare issues.
They are against “regulation”. Whatever that means. Laws against stealing are “regulation”. Laws against using substandard materials are “regulation”. Laws against dumping nerve gas into the local water supply are “regulation”. Laws against illegal immigration are “regulation”……..oh, I get it, you are against “regulation” that you don’t like.
Whats say you guys make a list, and get back with us? Make sure you send your list to all the media outlets.
“oh, I get it, you are against “regulation” that you don’t like’.
And “they” are different from you how? If you don’t agree with something, it’s wrong? Right?
He’s not the one repeating the “regulation is bad” meme.
“overtaxed, over regulated…..government that keeps getting in the way…..”
What a bunch of whiners. Nothing like continuing to run their talking points.
Compared to the regulations in Europe, business people in the US live in the “Wild West”. But that doesn’t seem to be hurting business too much over there.
Maybe business is bad because her customers don’t have jobs? Or they are making 30% less than they were three years ago?
Naaah, can’t be that. Doesn’t jibe with what FauxNews says.
(As she lays off the last of her illegal alien work force, shuts down her Chinese-made pizza machines, and gets in the Lexus to drive home…….)
They want to create a new bubble, but Obama won’t let them.
He has Dodd-Frank bill he won’t back off on, that he’s trying to get enforced. Dang consumer protection laws. Don’t forget his DoJ running around actually prosecuting people who are doing insider trading. They went after Goldman for stuffing known toxic loans into MBS, jsut so they could short it?
Seriosuly… How is Wall Street supposed to make any money if Obama won’t let them lie, cheat and steal?
Maybe we have our history wrong.
Maybe it was the USA, and not Australia, that was supposed to be the “penal colony”.
Swindling and thievery is an inherited trait, evidently.
Maybe it was the USA, and not Australia, that was supposed to be the “penal colony”.
Georgia was originally a penal colony, wasn’t it?
As for the Australian penal colony, it’s now a point of pride to be a descendant of those bad boyz and girlz.
Or maybe we’ve forgotten our history.
The FIRST slaves in this country were indentured folks from Europe.
In other words, white people.
Some to escape the poverty and oppression, others because of crimes
There is no “maybe” about it.
Market declines rarely end with days like Thursday’s 513-point drop for the Dow.
So even if you think that we’re just suffering a mere correction within an ongoing bull market, you still should be prepared for lower prices in coming sessions.
That at least is the conclusion that emerged from my analysis of past bear market bottoms. The days on which those bear markets actually registered their final lows typically were rather uneventful — nothing like what we saw on Thursday.”
I wonder lots of damage has been done this last month
you still should be prepared for lower prices in coming sessions
Finally! Deflation I can believe in!
There really is always a fly in the ointment, isn’t there?
When Good News is Bad: Unemployment Rate Drops as Workers Bolt Labor Force
By Sharon Kehnemui
Published August 05, 2011| FoxNews.com
With the unemployment rate hovering at 9.1. percent, down one-tenth of a percent from June, the report showed 13.9 million unemployed people, 6.2 million who have been out of work for more than six months.
Also telling is the 63.9 percent of the civilian labor force — or 153.2 million people — that is working. That’s the lowest ratio of employed-to-unemployed civilians since January 1984. The employment-to-population ratio hit 58.1 percent, the lowest percentage since July 1983.
“The participation rate going down makes the unemployment rate look better than it is, but it doesn’t really say anything for the recovery,” said Peter Morici, a professor at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland School.
…
The great American consumer/voter is getting exactly what they wanted, so they should not be complaining/whining. The majority rules and even though it’s not the way I want to see things going in this country, it’s apparent that’s want the majority want. So I simply adjust myself to take advantage of the situation the best that I can. The general population has become an extremely easy read, the internet has opened up that world.
The U.S. empire is collapsing under it’s own weight, yet the majority want to feed it more. I say go for full tilt, full throttle! 1,2,3, + years from now the same folks that keep screwing themselves over&over will be asking the same question, what happen? I don’t understand, and that is correct because they never did understand. Oh well to each their own, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
wmbz,
It seems everyone wants government.
Wall Street enjoys TARP and FDIC and the sense of trust (probably more than a little misplaced) in SEC filings because we throw people in jail when they lie. Wall Street enjoys having the Fed and a fiat currency so they can ensure there is always enough inflation to force us to give them our money instead of hiding it in the mattress or using it to stock up on canned foods and dried beans. Look at Wall Street haul for QE3 as soon as it looks like their asset prices may crash.
Everyone wants safe food, wants drugs tested, likes that the CDC is there to fight pandemics, likes that the power comes on when you flip the light switch. We like clean air and water. We enjoy planes not crashing together, we complain about intrusive searches but wouldn’t be flying if there was a daily terrorist bombing of airlines. We like that the government enforces hunting and fishing quotas to keep the wilds and deep from being emptied.
Everyone wants the police or fire or ambulence or all the above to come if they have an emergency. We enjoy hopping on the freeway and driving across the country on (mostly) nice roads.
We like reasonible 40 hour work weeks, an employer that pays us in cash instead of company store script. Most are happy there is a minimum wage, but regret that it is not sufficient to be above poverty.
If you have kids, you are happy there are free schools. If you run a business, then you should be happy that there are workers available that were trained in those schools and that there are potential customers that have money and jobs becuase they were trained in those schools. If you need a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer odds are at least some of their education was funded with government guaranteed loans or perhaps even Pell grants.
Even though it is losing money, most people are really happy that for $.39, they can mail a letter anywhere in the country.
There is much room for debate as to what government should and should not be doing.
Should they try to be a retirement plan, providing income and healthcare to the elderly to keep them in thier own homes instead of having to move in with their children? Well, SS has played several very important roles. 1) It forced people to buy government bonds, allowing the 1937 government spending cuts to be smaller than they otherwise would have been. 2) The trust in Social Security got more people to spend more and save less, which has been key in our economic growth. 3) Got a lot of politicians reelected…
Should government provide healthcare, and if so, for whom? Does it make more sense to pay for a pacemaker for a 90 year-old, or a 9 year old. Well, the 9 year old should have parents that can pay for it. I’m sorry, but someone has to be the person pushing the broom and cleaning the toilets, and unless we want to pay that person enough to be able to afford a $50K medical procedure, personally, I think it is smarter to provide the care to the 9 year-old than the 90 year-old. Besides, if we can argue the 9 year-old’s parent should be able to pay, why would we not argue than the 90 year-old’s children, grand children or great-grand-children should be able to pay?
Should we do away with silly regulation generating government organizations like OSHA, EPA, EEOC? Sure would be a lot easier to make a profit if we could chain kids to sewing machines, pour toxic waste into open pits, or use bribes to decide who gets what job, like they do in much of the world.
We may not like a government that forces us to year a helmet when riding a motorcycle, but we like knowing that should we need it, a state mandated standard of care will be waiting fur us should we crash.
Should we be extending unemployment for 2 years? I think not. Many are using it as a hammock. Should we have 1/7th of the population on food stamps? Of course not.
Now, think about this. I have been saying this a lot lately. We can’t be rich until we’re all poor.
Think about that. Corporations could be so much more profitable if they could just lower wages of thier employees. Oh really? If the wages are lowered for all the people that would be buying stuff from the corporation, then how are the corporations suppsoed to make money when no one has money to buy their products?
What is they could get rid of half of their employees and just work the current employees 12 hours a dab 7 days a week like they did in the late 1800s? If they paid them the same amount for twice the work, then had half as many employees, just think how profitable they would be… when their customers had half as much money so couldn’t buy thier goods.
Seriously, the last 30 years have been a golden era for corporations. They could cut wages, off-shore jobs, cut costs, but they could still sell thier goods, because their customers could borrow whatever money they needed to buy from the corporations. Corporations could easily expand by borrowing at cheap rates. New debt enough for everyone… as debt grew at 3x the sustainable rate.
And since debt is money, the people doing all the loaning, the servicing of all the loans, the leveraging of all the debt, all made trillions of dollars in profit, just skimming off tiny fractions of our now $24T in business and household debt.
And how did all that debt get generated? Because governemnt was there for all, to give implicit and sometimes explicit guarantee that the debt would not collapse in a steaming pile of uncollectable default, so those with access to big money would keep loaning it and keep skimming thier cut off of it.
Now that the elite few have generated all this money, which is really owed to them by others, they demand that government let them keep it. After all, they made it themselves, quickly ignoring that without the full faith and credit of the USA backing up markets, the conditions necessary for them to have made that money would not have existed. Yet, when it looks like they will not get paid back, they demand government step in and reliquify markets and bailout the people that owe them.
One could argue for anarchism. No laws. Everything belongs to those with the strength and ability to take it…oh, but we’ll all practice self restraint and not take more than our fair share.. yeah, right. Or, one could argue a medeaval style feudalism with absolute power in the hands of a king who hands out that power to his land-owning lords with the majority being slave-like serfs who toil with little reward for the greater power of the king and the lords (wait, that sounds a lot like what we are wuickly moving to).
Personally, I’d prefer to argue for something inbetween.
Can we afford to continue to be the world’s police force? Not if we continue to off-shore our best jobs and lower average wages. Can we afford to provide everyone a 20-30 year vacation after they have put 40-50 years in the workforce? Not with the Baby Bust generation being only .8 the size of the Boomers before us. Sould we be providing 2 years of unemployment? Probably not. But what effect would cutting it back to 26 weeks have on wages, on consumer spending, on the economy, on peoples’ ability to pay back all that money they owe the rich?
There is room for reasonible people to reasonibly disagree. Unfortuantly, we’ve been so polaraized politically, I guess as far back as the Vietnam War that perhaps it is impossible. No, it probably goes back further than that as the politics leading up to and then in the GD were just as bad. And, then you’d have to go all the way back before the Civil War. Hmmmm… I wonder when was the last time people could sit down and talk reasonibly.
Politicians have fed people propaganda, lies, hate, anger, fear. Their own political views become so engrained that it becomes a part of their personality. They can’t change their opinions based on changing data, because it would mean changing the very essence of who they are.
And, unfortuantly, almost everyone forms the opinion that best serves thier personal gain. I am sure that I am no exception. Already giving 15% of my income to SS/MC and another 15% to income taxes, 3% to state… this is effective, not marginal. Marginal, 25% + 6% +15% +10% sales on the half they let me keep after income and payroll taxes.
Personally, I am not devoted enough to either political party to ever put a candidates sicker on the bumper of my car. I am not Republican or Democrat as I do not want to be wrong half the time.
What I try to focus on is the data. Being the devil’s advocate and pointing out the other side of evey issue.
Only by being forced to prove our beliefs, defend our positions, and then changing them when we can not, are we to come to better beliefs. It is true in science, and it should be true in politics.
Unfortuantly, too many are locked into their political beliefs just as dogmatically as they are locked into their religious beleifs. They are unable to look at the last 30 years and see what Reaganomics has wrought and think… hmmmm… maybe all this debt and all these bubbles and off-shoring and falling wages and union bustind and…. perhaps it hasn’t all been the best thing for the country and the majority of the people.
Unless of course, you are one of those lords in charge of the serfs that toils all day for your glory and seek to hold onto that economic power as a master of the universe… then you probably think the last 30 years were pretty keen.
Unfortunately, too many are locked into their political belief$ just as dogmatically as they are locked into their religious belief$.
Eric Hoffer wrote a book that illuminates such Richard Bach “cling-on’s”:
“TrueBeliever’s™ / TrueDeceiver’s™”
un-regulated free-market solve$ everything groupie$: “TruePatriotCEO™”
“TruePathtoPro$perity™” + “TrueReduceTheDeficitNow!! Today!™” = “TrueAnger™” “TrueGridLok™” weeParty tea toadlers
“Bidne$$ is Bidne$$ advocate$ have their hero$ as well: “True$erialLiquiditi$t™” / “TrueFinancialInnovation$™” / “TrueProphet$™”
Was it the monie$ changers or the whore$ that Jesus-of-Oaxaca got really, really, di$-pleased with?
Right for the most part Darrel, except that Gen X & Y is far larger than the boomers.
As long as people keep believing that SS is trouble, the ONLY place that SS is going is to Wall St. Which IS the long term plan.
Mark my words.
The cesspool must love this…The great American consumer is really just this stupid!
‘Jersey Shore’ Scores Most-Watched Season Premiere Ever
Last night’s season opener drew 8.8 million total viewers.
8/5/2011 by Philiana Ng
Jersey Shore just keeps growing and growing.
Last night’s season premiere of the MTV reality series was the cable network’s most-watched opener to date, drawing 8.8 million total viewers, improving 4 percent over the third season opener earlier this year. Jersey Shore also beat broadcast’s top program, CBS’ Big Brother, in total viewers (8.8 million vs. 7.3 million).
Though last night’s episode was a premiere high, a Jan. 20, 2011 telecast delivered a series best in total tune-in, averaging 8.9 million. That episode showed Snooki being released from jail and Deena meeting a Ronnie look-alike.
The premiere episode, set in Italy, was also Jersey Shore’s third most-watched telecast to date, behind two Season 3 episodes. In the persons 12-34 demographic, the Jersey Shore premiere scored a 8.2 rating, or 6.5 million viewers.
State files suit against Bank of America unit in foreclosure mess
By Christine Harvey
Seattle Times business reporter
Washington state has taken on a subsidiary of the Bank of America, charging it with illegally foreclosing on thousands of homeowners in the last three years.
The state alleges in the lawsuit filed in King County Superior Court on Thursday that the bank’s ReconTrust unit failed to act as a neutral third party in every foreclosure it has conducted since at least June 2008. The state estimates Recon has handled 10,000 foreclosures in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties since then.
The complaint also outlined that ReconTrust concealed or misrepresented the actual owner of the debt when conducting foreclosures.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2015832055_reconlawsuit06.html
I can’t help thinking that Bank of America isn’t long for this world. Just read that its market cap is less than 50% of its book value.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.
Little known fact: BofA was one of the MAJOR leaders in offshoring IT and customer service jobs.
A PERFECT example of destroying your customer base by taking away their jobs.
How’s that for poetic justice?
S&P just downgraded U.S. debt
That wasn`t very nice.
S&P downgrades US credit rating from AAA
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER The Associated Press
Posted: 8:41 p.m. Friday, Aug. 5, 2011
WASHINGTON — Credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s says it has downgraded the United States’ credit rating for the first time in the history of the ratings.
The credit rating agency says that it is cutting the country’s top AAA rating by one notch to AA-plus. The credit agency said late Friday that it is making the move because the deficit reduction plan passed by Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough to stabilize the country’s debt situation.
A source familiar with the discussions said that the Obama administration believes S&P’s analysis contained “deep and fundamental flaws.”
The same S&P that rated MBS shhhhhhhhh…
…it
as gold?
Yeah, we should really listen to them.
I`m looking at a house tomorow, I guess I will make my offer a little more insulting.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/05/washington-post-profits-dive
Washington Post profits plunge by 50%. Apparently that’s what happens when even the dumbest of the sheeple start to ask why they’re paying for statist propaganda and DNC talking points.
“They’ve handled themselves very poorly. And they’ve shown a stunning lack of knowledge about the basic U.S. fiscal budget math,” Geithner said in his first public comments about the credit rating decision.
-Says a guy who claims he was completly symied by the complexities of Turbo-Tax.