Bits Bucket for September 4, 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
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The Great Recession and Government Failure; Wall St Journal thru Real Clear Politics
“Although definitive studies are not yet available about the stimulus package’s overall effects on the American economy, most everyone agrees that it was badly designed and executed. What the stimulus did produce is a sizable expansion of the federal deficit and debt. ”
So, Obama is going to tell us we should double down (triple down?) on what we know doesn’t work?
We have a spending problem not tax problem. The debt and the unfunded liabilities (est $115 Trillion) are so large we could never confiscate enough money to pay for it yet certain politicians (both sides) want to keep spending like these’s no problem.
At what point will Keynesian economics be put to rest? It just doesn’t work.
So what are you suggesting would work then? Or are you just ranting? (Not that there is anything wrong with that…)
Whatever was done with the last “stimulus” didnt do much here in bell weather Northern Ohio. The heads up I gave you last month seems to have been on the money. This month might be worse. Case in point: work orders at the plant have fallen drastically ( say, 30+ percent) in the last week or so. Top brass seems to be focusing on servicing one large customer (oilfield goods) and of the remaining customers, not one is marked “past due payments”. Meaning? Seems like anyone not paying in the 30 days stamped on the work order is being cut off from any additional service until all past due moneys are coughed up. New York banks dont want to lend money to carry on your business? Tough. Lay off a few dozen more serfs in order to cover your bills. Get out the popcorn!
At my new job we just cut off all service and support (including warranty work) to a major customer who owes us 7 figures and won’t pay. And we’re not a big company so it’s a lot of money to us. We assume this is temporary but it’s hard to believe it’s come to this.
This was OHHHH’s huge mistake we should have bailed out CIT not AIG.
We have to keep small businesses cash flow running…..am I smart or what?
“At my new job we just cut off all service and support (including warranty work) to a major customer who owes us 7 figures and won’t pay.”
Back in the seventies economy I worked a two different companies that received their goods COD. The UPS guy collected a business check, and it dare not bounce lest your air supply would be severed — nobody trusted anybody with credit. Prices climbed weekly too; I remember the UPS driver bringing new price sheets for the books with almost every order. The gold standard was out, and inflation was in, and energy prices were soaring!
We have a trade imbalance problem.
When it could be funded by provate secotr debt increasing at 3x the supportable rate, we didn’t see a problem. We yelled from on-high, “Stop spending more than you make” without realizing that is a pre-requisite to trade imbalance (international and domestic).
Once private sector debt hit the wall and could no longer expand, we were forced to choose between debt collapse into depression or federal governmetn stepping up as borrower of last resort to pump new money into our trade imbalance plagued economy.
The idea of plugging the trade imbalances is simply “off the table”.
We can stop pushing Kaynesian economics, but that means $40T in debt collapses into depression.
The US is like Butler PA in the 80s. Lots of unemployed people after the Pullman factory closed, used to $50/hr cushy union jobs, who wouldn’t take a $15/hr job which required them to actually work.
Eventually they did. Lifestyles changed.
Personal debt is rather sticky. Public debt is extremely sticky. Corporate debt is easy to vaporize.
We are already in a depression. The only question is when we stop pretending and put the credit card away, take the lower paying jobs and begin to chip away at the pile of foolish debt.
I remember speaking at the Armstrong ceiling plant in Butler PA in the late 80’s. While travelling to the plant I recall very clearly hundreds of homes for sale. Butler PA real estate was devastated. I was shocked.
Detroit
“take the lower paying jobs and begin to chip away at the pile of foolish debt.”
Not gonna happen until prices fall to levels commensurate with the lower paying jobs.
Also not going to happen (IMO) at the new lower pay rate. Some method of bankruptcy to wipe out the debt will be required. It can not be chipped away at while living on the new salary.
I agree it won’t happen w/the new salary and the current cost of living.
Is there any way to chip away at those costs that make it impossible to accept a lower salary: housing, insurance, energy (heating/transportation), medical and big pharma? Well the only other idea is to actually let non-union workers below executive level take home the pay ratios they used to when the country was growing.
I won’t be holding my breath.
Blue”
Taking the lower paying job is not the problem
Its getting them to offer it to you in the first place …..
Absolutely. The post someone made last week about the thousands of applicants for only a few jobs in Florida says it all.
We can stop pushing Kaynesian economics, but that means $40T in debt collapses into depression.
or we can keep pushing keynesian economics and the dollar will go to zero. i think i’ll take the depression.
“At what point will Keynesian economics be put to rest? It just doesn’t work”.
The system has to collapse, and it will at some point. Meddlers, meddle
and people want “something” done. Although the vast majority are totally clueless as to what is really happening. The long decay of a cancerous monetary system. The good news is that “they” are accelerating the process. I hope to see the fed really turn on the pumps to the tune of trillions more, and they will. The dupes will stand on the sidelines cheering their own demise.
There is now about an 80% chance the Greeks will default on their UN-payable debt. Watch how that plays out!
How ’bout if we postpone the collapse you propose until after November 2012? Otherwise we will suspect you are cheerleading for near-term collapse that can be blamed on Obama…
Blame is the tool of incompetence. It doesn’t matter who gets the blame.
Funny how R’s love to blame everything on Community Reinvestment Act or Obama or tree higging hippies, but when somebody proves (yes, proves, over and over), that it was the R’s own fault, they put their noses in the air and whiff that “We are above that. We do not play the blame game.”
Read this book before you decide for yourself whether CRA had a negative effect on the housing market:
The Housing Boom and Bust
Thomas Sowell on how government policies made the housing crisis possible
Brian Doherty | May 20, 2009
Thomas Sowell, prolific public intellectual and the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is one of America’s greatest economic thinkers and educators. He’s taught the fundamentals through such books as Economic Facts and Fallacies and Basic Economics and chronicled economic history through such scholarly works as Marxism: Philosophy and Economics and On Classical Economics. In his classic work Knowledge and Decisions, he espoused a sophisticated, largely Hayekian approach, revealing how the efficient spread of relevant knowledge is shaped by our social institutions, and often warped and misshapen by government.
Now, in The Housing Boom and Bust (Basic Books), Sowell contemplates the greatest expansion of government power in a generation, which was itself occasioned by the greatest economic crisis in as long. A quick but thorough guide to the causes of the crises, Sowell’s book shows how government policies led to a huge increase in highly risky housing loans. As he notes, the immense local variability in housing prices and failed loans reveals that the government mistook a set of local problems for a national one, and then imposed a single troublesome national solution. Sowell argues that while foolish decisions to indulge in complicated investment vehicles affected the specifics of how the financial contagion spread, at its root the housing problem is one of bad mortgages. And those came from bad decisions by government and by borrowers themselves.
Senior Editor Brian Doherty interviewed Sowell earlier this week about the book, the crisis, and the government’s unfortunate response.
reason: Is the economic downturn caused by the housing boom and bust the worst economic circumstance of your lifetime?
Thomas Sowell: Since I was born in 1930 the economic crisis with the most impact of my lifetime was the Great Depression. As to whether this will match that, it’s too early to tell. Right now it certainly is nothing comparable to the Great Depression, but the Great Depression began as nothing comparable to the Great Depression. For the first 12 months after the stock market crash [of 1929], unemployment never reached double digits but the solution turned out to create more disasters than the problem they were trying to solve.
…
Thanks for the label, one feels so naked without that. Not above blame, but it dows seem stuck there. Like you.
The Housing Boom & Bust is/was available at the Dollar Tree for a buck. BTW, his Basic Economics book was pro-outsourcing. Nice guy, when I emailed him. We agreed to disagree.
Most academic economists are generally against labor market protectionism; it’s a tenant of faith that freer trade makes nations collectively wealthier (including labor market mobility).
“it’s a tenant of faith that freer trade makes nations collectively wealthier”
Exactly, even though all eidence points to the contrary these secular fundamentalists will not be shaken from their faith, just as the end times/rapture fundamentalists never lose faith even though their “prophets” are always wrong about when the world will end.
his Basic Economics book was pro-outsourcing.
LOL - from Forbes:
Take the story of Dell Computer and its Taiwanese electronics manufacturer. The story is told in the brilliant book by Clayton Christensen, Jerome Grossman and Jason Hwang, The Innovator’s Prescription:
ASUSTeK started out making the simple circuit boards within a Dell computer. Then ASUSTeK came to Dell with an interesting value proposition: ‘We’ve been doing a good job making these little boards. Why don’t you let us make the motherboard for you? Circuit manufacturing isn’t your core competence anyway and we could do it for 20% less.’
Dell accepted the proposal because from a perspective of making money, it made sense: Dell’s revenues were unaffected and its profits improved significantly. On successive occasions, ASUSTeK came back and took over the motherboard, the assembly of the computer, the management of the supply chain and the design of the computer.
In each case Dell accepted the proposal because from a perspective of making money, it made sense: Dell’s revenues were unaffected and its profits improved significantly. However the next time, ASUSTeK came back, it wasn’t to talk to Dell. It was to talk to Best Buy and other retailers to tell them that they could offer them their own brand or any brand PC for 20% lower cost.
Just like fishing. To a fish a cheap easy meal looks like a no brainer. Why would somebody just give me food or money for free? Why ask why? Just enjoy the easy profits…
Who cares, your Obama will most likely be re-elected as you sit, still trying to figure out what and why we are headed in the direction we are. It is not complicated, but has surely been made so by so many.
Don’t worry, you will continue to get what you vote for, and you’ll get it good and hard. So maintain your position it is working very well so far.
As bad as that might be, it looks better than the crop of biblical loons the GOP is presenting as an alternative
“So maintain your position it is working very well so far.”
Don’t know what position you are talking about, but I’m sure whatever you imagine it to be is far preferable to electing a Bible-quoting whack job.
“…your position…”
I suppose in the minds of the Republican party-centered ‘We Hate Obama’ club members who regularly post here, a failure to join in your anti-Obama rants constitutes taking a position? But anyone who pays attention to my posts probably realizes by now that I am not much of a fan of partisan politics.
That won’t stop me from pointing out that I see no Republican candidates on the horizon whom I can imagine would run the country any better than Obama has so far in the face of an overhang of domestic and international crises left behind by his predecessor. Who is the Great White Hope in whom you guys place your faith? Please share, so next time you tell us how Obama is a goner come next November, we will know who is going to make it all good again.
Republican’t Crickets: “Chirp…chirp…
“As bad as that might be, it looks better than the crop of biblical loons the GOP is presenting as an alternative”
DING DING DING…. WE GOT A WINNER!!!!
Now the old mantra of interjecting morals into the discourse to demonize the opposition has come back to haunt the very clowns who began using it 30 years ago.
You OWN IT. You cultivated the theological extremists, they are yours, every last one of them.
“preferable to electing a Bible-quoting whack job”
The irony is that many Bible believing people shed their blood so that you would be free to spill out such bigotry.
Enjoy!
“The irony is that many Bible believing people shed their blood so that you would be free to spill out such bigotry.”
Oh, I see — so it was only the Bible believing people who made America what it is; this guy had nothing to do with it?
Save your religious propaganda for your fellow church members.
Thomas Paine
Born February 9, 1737[1]
Thetford, Norfolk, England, Great Britain
Died June 8, 1809 (aged 72)
New York City
Era 18th-century philosophy
Region Western philosophy
School Enlightenment, Liberalism, Radicalism, Republicanism
Main interests Religion, Ethics, Politics
Thomas “Tom” Paine (February 9, 1737 [O.S. January 29, 1736[1]] – June 8, 1809) was an author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.[2][3] He has been called “a corsetmaker by trade, a journalist by profession, and a propagandist by inclination.”[4]
Born in Thetford, in the English county of Norfolk, Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 in time to participate in the American Revolution. His principal contributions were the powerful, widely read pamphlet Common Sense (1776), the all-time best-selling American book that advocated colonial America’s independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, and The American Crisis (1776–1783), a pro-revolutionary pamphlet series. His writing of “Common Sense” was so influential that John Adams reportedly said, “Without the pen of the author of ‘Common Sense,’ the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain.”[5]
…
Paine remained in France during the early Napoleonic era, but condemned Napoleon’s dictatorship, calling him “the completest charlatan that ever existed”.[6] In 1802, at President Jefferson’s invitation, he returned to America where he died on June 8, 1809. Only six people attended his funeral as he had been ostracized due to his criticism and ridicule of Christianity.
Come to think of it, it is hard to say how much non-Christian blood was shed to establish American freedoms. So far as I am aware, they were no longer burning heretics at the stake by the time of the American Revolution, but given how badly Thomas Paine was treated for openly criticizing Christianity, one has to conjecture that many non-Christians pretended to have a Christian faith, just so that they could fit in with the herd.
I didn’t say everybody was a Christian, only that they defend your right to be an absolute bigot.
I didn’t say you were a Christian, just that you were using a Christian propaganda technique to claim I was a bigot.
“The irony is that many Bible believing people shed their blood so that you would be free to spill out such bigotry.”
The true irony is that you know so little about the faith that you suggest believers “shed blood”.
Enjoy!
I am a Christian, and I defend your right to bigotry. That’s not propaganda, and that doesn’t make your hatred more savory.
“I defend your right to bigotry.”
And I defend your right to be a bigoted Christian, who summarily labels anyone who doesn’t kowtow to his faith a ‘hater.’ This is part of your American constitutional rights, along with Freedom of Religion.
Enjoy!
“…preferable to electing a Bible-quoting whack job…”
P.S. Perhaps you consider me a bigot because you misconstrued my statement to mean that I consider all Christians to be Bible-quoting whack jobs. For clarification, I was mainly referring to most of the current crop of non-Mormon Republican presidential candidates. By contrast, apparently Romney and Huntsman have the good judgment to refrain from Bible thumping on the campaign trail.
“I am a Christian”
You’re no more a follower of Jesus than I a belly dancer. Your own words convict you.
I do get the impression, over and over, that a person’s faith or reference to the Bible is in itself reason to make you really angry. It’s unpleasant to read. I presume you were injured as a child by folks wielding Bibles as weapons of abuse. It wasn’t me. That’s all!
“As bad as that might be, it looks better than the crop of biblical loons the GOP is presenting as an alternative”
Not so sure about God and King huh?
“…God and King…”
I thought that was what the Founding Fathers were trying to get rid of back in 1776, but apparently, old habits die hard.
“I presume you were injured as a child by folks wielding Bibles as weapons of abuse.”
I confess I did attend a Christian parochial school. It wasn’t as bad as the Catholic school my BIL attended in Brooklyn, where the Sisters routinely struck the children.
Exeter, you really have a tack up your ass.
“I am a Christian”
“You’re no more a follower of Jesus than I a belly dancer.”
That logic left me scratching my head. Are you suggesting that anyone who claims to be a belly dancer in writing does not actually belly dance?
;).
You know how labels and buzzwords work.
When you cannot refute the facts, throw tacks.
The sooner our current system gets relegated to the dustbin of history the better.
And what exactly are you proposing to replace it?
If enough people wake up, our current system could work as it was intended to work, in the interests of the nation as a whole instead of the “monied interests” T. Jefferson warned of.
The founding fathers laid the foundation for the greatest society ever known.
It’s time for the reset TJ spoke of long ago.
tj? me?
“The sooner our current system gets relegated to the dustbin of history the better.”
This is why I wouldn’t even mind seeing some Bachman/Palin, Perry/Bachman, or Romney/Palin governmental abortion. We might as well hurry up the process of the well-connected taking every last penny from the bottom 90%. Then, we can get on with the more important stuff- like chopping off the heads of Lloyd Blankfein, Angelo Mozillo, Dick Fuld, etc., and taking all the money back.
“Then, we can get on with the more important stuff- like chopping off the heads of Lloyd Blankfein, Angelo Mozillo, Dick Fuld, etc., and taking all the money back.”
I’d volunteer to run the guillotine.
Grizzly,
I often agree with that line of thinking just so we can all get on with life. The downside is the level of human suffering associated doing something like that wouldn’t be a true injustice.
The “system” is corrupted. Rather than reject the system, and all of the freedoms and responsibilities that were part of it, I would like to see the corruption uprooted.
Why is it that every one who criticizes Keynesian economics seems to forget about the part where you raise revenue when the economy grows and pay down prior debts and build a rainy day fund. But Noooo, Milton Friedman’s Supply Side economics preaches the opposite. Slash taxes when times are good and slash even more when things go bad. Want to have a trillion dollar preemptive war, expand social programs for your coveted demographics(60+ voters), no problem. There is only one song and one verse in the GOP hymnal: Cut, cut, cut taxes.
If the example of concentration of wealth of the last 30 years is the conservative economic model then I would give then an A+ because it worked great.
“Why is it that every one who criticizes Keynesian economics seems to forget about the part…”
Because most people have been taught to think of Friedman-style monetarism as Keynesian economics, because the overlords want their sheeple confused, and unaware of the true alternatives to our current looting-by-the-elite economic system. You see it here every day. There are regular posters who constantly refer to the current monetarist economic system as ‘Keynesian’ (which of course it isn’t), because that’s how they’ve been taught to think of it. They’ll post about the housing bubble and economics every day, but they’ll never bother to learn for themselves what the words they use really mean.
Who is Milton Friedman?
“He served as a member of President Reagan’s Economic Policy Advisory Board during 1981. During 1988, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the National Medal of Science. He said that he was a libertarian philosophically, but a member of the U.S. Republican Party for the sake of “expediency” (”I am a libertarian with a small ‘l’ and a Republican with a capital ‘R.’ And I am a Republican with a capital ‘R’ on grounds of expediency, not on principle.”)
“Friedman’s claim that monetary policy could have prevented the Great Depression was an attempt to refute the analysis of Keynes, who argued that monetary policy is ineffective during depression conditions…
“In a speech on Milton Friedman’s ninetieth birthday (November 8, 2002), Bernanke said, “Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve. I would like to say to Milton and Anna [Schwartz, Friedman's coauthor]: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”[45] Bernanke has cited Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz in his decision to lower interest rates to zero.”
wikipedia
___
So you see, pumping money into the financial system is a _Friedman/monetarist_ thing to do, which Keynes said would be ineffective during a depression (he used the expression ‘pushing on a string’). Gee- he sounds just like one of us, no? But our overlords have convinced a large number that the pro-business, pro-elite, cash giveaway was the product of Keynesian theory- when in fact the opposite is true. It’s the result of Reagan and the right’s and Bernanke’s favorite economist, Milton ‘Flood em with cash’ Friedman. Keynes preached just the opposite.
Cognitive dissonance anybody?
Why is it that every one who criticizes Keynesian economics seems to forget about the part where you raise revenue when the economy grows and pay down prior debts and build a rainy day fund.
no one knows about when an economy grows or contracts until after the fact. if they knew such things, they would be rich beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.
looking back on charts, it’s easy to believe that one could see a massive expansion and the beginning. but it’s never so. when one is actually there, the tea leaves haven’t been laid out yet. all the way during the rise it is easy to believe that the downturn is about to begin. and when the downturn starts, it’s easy to believe that it’s almost over and about to reverse. that’s the origins of saying that “the market can remain remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”
“At what point will Keynesian economics be put to rest? It just doesn’t work.”
I call BS. We don’t know whether Keynesian economics works or doesn’t work, because nobody has ever TRIED Keynesian economics, not all of it. As far as I can tell, the government (all of them) have only tried to fun half of Keynes, the spending part. That part about putting away for a rainy day when times were good? Oh, that was conveniently forgotten by everyone except Clinton. As soon as Clinton was gone, it was back to spendy economics.
In a similar vein, at what point will tax-cuts be put to rest? Its just doesn’t work. We know, because WE TRIED IT.
+1
We had the same thought at the same time.
The stuff that does not work is government policies. Period.
Free up the system.
We are already the least regulated industrial nation in the world. So far it hasn’t worked out all that great. The Germans are far more regulated than we are and they are an exporting power house.
You conveniently forgot about the Chinese. They are supposedly communists, but I betcha they have far fewer regulations than the U.S.
Yeah, and in China, a little flat in a skyscraper costs 50X income, the air is unbreatheable, the water undrinkable. Oh, and this blog would probably get us all executed.
They have one very important regulation; they don’t let you move manufacturing plants from China and they don’t let you control the factories that are there. Very happy for you to move your manufacturing industry to China though.
“…in China, … this blog would probably get us all executed.”
Lack of free speech will make their housing bubble collapse all the more spectacular when it happens.
but I betcha they have far fewer regulations than the U.S
So Foxconn City is your ideal?
OX:
with a billon people it would be the end of thier country if they had 100 millon live to be 100 ……so shortening the lifespan is a boon to them.
————
the air is unbreatheable, the water undrinkable.
“At what point will Keynesian economics be put to rest? It just doesn’t work”.
The Second Death of John Maynard Keynes
http://www.thenation.com/article/163065/second-death-john-maynard-keynes
At what point will Keynesian economics be put to rest? It just doesn’t work.
At the same time supply side economics and “tax cuts create jobs” will be put to rest?
You are free to write a check to the US Treasury if you are for more taxes.
It won’t do any good if its just me.
yes it will. You obviously are in love with the level of government we have and you obviously think you get more services than you pay for. So put up.
This is seriously the most retarded argument against tax policy. Are you really THAT stupid that you can’t distinguish the not-so-subtle differences between voluntary donations and public policy? Give it a break already!
“We have a spending problem not tax problem.”
The official talking point of the Kochtopus. Pay no attention to the fact that the wealthy are paying the lowest tax rates in modern history. You, the little people, are required to accept all cuts- and pay higher taxes, but the rich are above such things. Why? Because we have a spending problem not a tax problem! No logic allowed! It’s time to get serious, and we do that by ignoring half the problem! And repeating talking points again and again until the easily fooled are fooled.
If the Tea Party candidates thump the Bible loudly and often enough, perhaps the masses will collectively ignore substantive underlying problems.
the wealthy are paying the lowest tax rates in modern history on incomes that are at the highest ratio of executive to lower level employees since before the Great Depression.
The basic flaw in Keynesian thinking is that the government will ever reduce its deficit spending under normal circumstances. According to this chart, government has never reduced the debt one penny (Look at column 4, increase debt in billions of $):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms#Gross_federal_debt
It is true that under Clinton, the debt to GDP ratio went down. And did have a surplus. But the debt still increased during his term
Politicians gain their power from the money they spend and their voting power. Reducing money spent reduces their power and their chances of being re-elected. Surplus money is money left on the table.
“Politicians gain their power from the money they spend and their voting power. Reducing money spent reduces their power and their chances of being re-elected. ”
Following your logic, not just Keynes’, but no system will ever reduce spending in a democracy.
Refinancing Mortgages Won’t Fix Housing Market
By Edward Glaeser
Aug 29, 2011 5:00 PM PT
Edward Glaeser, a professor of economics at Harvard, is the author of “Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier and Happier.”
The New York Times reported last week that the Obama administration was considering a proposal to “allow millions of homeowners with government-backed mortgages to refinance them at today’s lower interest rates, about 4 percent.”
…
The most extreme proposal now being floated involves refinancing at current low rates all the mortgages insured by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. One of the big appeals is that it seems like free stimulus. As the Times reported, “proponents say the plan carries little risk because the mortgages are already guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”
Cost Billions
But even supporters of the plan, including my fellow Bloomberg View columnist Ezra Klein, emphasize that refinancing would mean that “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac eat billions by giving up their ability to challenge these reps and warrants” given by mortgage issuers in the first place.
While forgoing the right to make banks bear the burden of carelessly vetted mortgages is a real cost, the largest price tag of any refinancing program is the direct one: Mortgages now paying investors 6 percent would pay only 4 percent. Someone would lose those interest payments, which Klein suggests may amount to as much as $85 billion annually.
My quick calculation based on the Times’s interest-rate graphic came to about $35 billion per year over many years. If the program works, agency-insured mortgages would be paid off early and bondholders would take losses essentially equal to the benefits gained by borrowers.
…
If we were to force the banks to pay for their poorly vetted mortgages, they’d all be insolvant and we’d have to bail them out anyway, or at a minimum, eat the losses through FDIC insurance.
Any way you slice it, unless we are able to recover the profits generated by the people that originated, packaged and resold the loans, then the government has to eat the loss. And, of course, we can’t recover that profit as it has already been spent or hidden.
“If we were to force the banks to pay for their poorly vetted mortgages, they’d all be insolvant and we’d have to bail them out anyway, or at a minimum, eat the losses through FDIC insurance.”
We were in the same situation at the end of the S&L crisis, weren’t we? Seems like someone in Washington figured out how to issue RTC bonds and get on with life as we know it…
“We were in the same situation at the end of the S&L crisis, weren’t we? Seems like someone in Washington figured out how to issue RTC bonds and get on with life as we know it…”
And this is what drives me completely batty, we have a precedent for this in recent history and a solution that was workable. Why don’t we have an RTC now?
Jeebus, it’s like abandoning the usual, workable solutions and procedures for taking care of a broken leg. Guy’s lying there with his leg in pieces and instead of setting the leg and putting on a cast, which has worked for eons, everyone’s standing around scratching their heads and pulling their puds and “let’s try this, or that” instead of doing what is known to work.
Tee hee hee…
We were in the same situation at the end of the S&L crisis, weren’t we? Seems like someone in Washington figured out how to issue RTC bonds and get on with life as we know it…
Yep
1500 bank executives in jail
Claw backs on their pay and bonuses
Allowed 100’s of banks to fail or merge
Sold off the inventory as quick as possible
THAT is how you end this crisis…
Painful - but if this had started in 2006 - WE WOULD HAVE BEEN OVER BY NOW.
Instead – we are another $4 Trillion in debt with nothing to show for it.
“Instead – we are another $4 Trillion in debt with nothing to show for it.”
Oh we certainly do have something to show for it.
Higher prices in most everything you need.
“Oh we certainly do have something to show for it.”
Don’t forget the U.S. credit downgrade. Of course, that may have been as much due to political gridlock as to the size of the debt burden…
Might be an issue of scale. Lots more loss, and this time it’s international.
But never mind the money … we don’t have enough prisons to house all the bank execs.
Jeez… banana hits a home run?
+ one banana. Forgot half of Congress and half of Senate in jail with the 1500 bankster inmates and the other serial rapists.
You are so wrong about the RTC. The final total of losses from the S&L crises was over 90 billion and it most of it went on the national debt. The notable difference was people did go to jail in large numbers. This time only a handful of underlings were charged and even fewer served any time. I have read that up to 70% of the repo’ed real-estate ended up in the hands of private investment groups at a cost of 10-15 cents on the dollar. If history repeats then some already insanely rich investors are waiting to swoop in and do it again.
“If history repeats then some already insanely rich investors are waiting to swoop in and do it again.”
The Fed already doled out trillions in low-interest loans. I would have to guess lots of that is parked under mattresses for the time being, until real estate prices reach fire-sale levels, at which point savvy investment bankers will begin snapping it up again.
Maybe or maybe not. Smart investors might just skip investing in US fixed assets because of the unstable political environment. Rule of Law and secure property rights are on shaky ground right now so I might look for somewhere else a bit more stable like Asia and the Pacific basin.
“…Asia and the Pacific basin…”
They will definitely seem more stable, right up until the very moment when China’s real estate bubble pops…
Mr. Bomb, If you had a few billion depreciating dollars what part of the world would treat your money best? I’m torn between Asia, Russia and maybe South America. I shy away from nations that are too dependent on trade with the US so Canada and Mexico are off my list as is most of Europe.
“If you had a few billion depreciating dollars what part of the world would treat your money best?”
Given that everyone from Al Gore on down knows that global warming is real, I would check out:
1) Arctic Ocean oil exploration
2) Greenland real estate investing
P.S. I flew over Greenland once when the sun was shining down on it. You could see from the parts that are not buried under glaciers that there is a beautiful country below the frozen surface.
Which country in the Pacific Basin has as carefully a constructed justice system that the USA has? Certainly our court system is now falling apart, but the original charters are there. The original intent is burned into the American heritage.
Those other places you talk about are far less objective than the court systems in the USA.
“Mortgages now paying investors 6 percent would pay only 4 percent. Someone would lose those interest payments, which Klein suggests may amount to as much as $85 billion annually.”
Poof.
A lot of people thought they were going to have a lot of money coming to them. They thought wrong. Now they will have to cope.
Coping means cutting their spending. Cutting spending in a consumer-based economy leads to Interesting Times.
“Mortgages now paying investors 6 percent would pay only 4 percent. Someone would lose those interest payments, which Klein suggests may amount to as much as $85 billion annually.”
Bagholder identification process continues…
IMO this 6 percent to 4 percent payout reduction is just the beginning.
We used to live in an eight-percent return world and financial commitments were based upon financial entities getting this eight-percent return.
But now these eight-percent returns are history, but the commitments based on these returns are still there. Which means something has got to give.
And this something that gives is going to hose a lot of people.
“And this something that gives is going to hose a lot of people.”
Especially hard on retirees who used to be able to generate a lot of income by purchasing FDIC-guaranteed CDs. Now they are stuck with all the other household financial gamblers, trying to decide whether to keep their money safely tucked away under a mattress but earning next to nothing, to buy gold and hope it keeps going up forever, or to gamble in a stock market which some times moves up and down with the violence of a Japanese earthquake.
“Especially hard on retirees …”
And hard on those who depend on retirees spending money.
A big chunk of Americans will be retiring in the coming years and there have been entire industries built up in expection that these retirees will be letting loose into the economy a lot of money. But if the money is not available for these retirees to spend then it looks as if these industries - along with the retirees - will have to learn to do without.
“bondholders would take losses essentially equal to the benefits gained by borrowers.”
BILLY PRESTON and BRUCE FISHER did that math in the 70`s. Untouched lyrics.
“Nothing From Nothing”
BILLY PRESTON
BRUCE FISHER
Nothing from nothing leaves nothing
You gotta have something if you wanna be with me
Nothing from nothing leaves nothing
You gotta have something if you wanna be with me
I’m not tryin’ to be your hero
‘Cause that zero, is too cold for me
I’m not tryin’ to be your highness
‘Cause than minus is too low for me.
Nothing from nothing leaves nothing
And I’m not stuffin’, believe you me
Don’t you remember I told ya, I’m a soldier
In the war on poverty, yeah
How did this make it past the corporate censors?
Go read:
http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2011/09/04/20110904middle-class-politics.html
The R representitives sound like they hate the middle class. If you’re middle class because you’re union, that’s bad. And it’s those pesky middle class that are stopping us from “reforming” entitlements. WAHHHHH!
“Middle-class benefits could be at risk as the committee targets its cuts. Tax deductions for home-mortgage interest and charitable contributions, which can help middle-class taxpayers who file itemized returns, face reform.”
There is nothing wrong with reforming the MID. Here’s my suggestion:
1. Applicable to primary home only.
2. Applicable only up to first $417K of mortgage.
3. Effective immediately for new mortgages, effective in five years for existing mortgages (if they don’t like it, they have five years to sell.)
DONE.
1st. thing, the MID is just bad economic policy because it distorts home prices but if we do keep it I would keep the deduction to only the first 150K and limit it to only people making less than 125k annual income.
Some here might not remember but all consumer interest, not just mortgages, used to be deductible. It was phased out on a percentage basis over about four years. Year 1: add up your total interest paid, multiply by 0.8, put that number in Schedule A. Year 2 it was 0.6, then 0.4 then 0.2, then nada. No reason why we can’t phase out the MID the same way.
Maybe because corporate censors are uncommon.
The unions failed miserably in their mission to provide the high wage employers with professional employees. Making employers pay for the employees drug rehabilitation, related excessive medical problems, etc., cost the unions their prominence in American life. They only have themselves to blame, IMHO.
Sorry if this is a repost. Regardless, it seems worth further discussion as one of the few outside-the-box views on how to resurrect the moribund housing market.
P.S. 37% + 34% = 71% of 2.2 million loans “in foreclosure” is 1.56 million homes whose owner-occupants have not made a monthly rent or mortgage payment in over a year. That is a lot of foregone income to whomever owns those loans.
How to rescue the housing market: Foreclosures!
By Tami Luhby
August 31, 2011: 4:03 PM ET
Delaying foreclosures is hurting the housing market, experts said.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — If the Obama administration really wants to save the housing market, it should speed up the foreclosure process — not prolong the inevitable, experts say.
Four years into the housing crisis, the real estate market is still teetering on the edge. The Obama administration has tried one program after another to stem the tide of foreclosures with limited success. And it is continuing to look for ways “to ease the burden on struggling homeowners,” though no new initiative is imminent, the White House said this week.
But some housing experts argue that the administration should go in a different direction than it has in the past. Instead, they say it’s time to focus on pushing many of those delinquent borrowers through the foreclosure process and putting foreclosed properties back into use.
While some of the 2.2 million loans in foreclosure can still be saved, many are too far gone, they say. Some 37% have not made a payment in more than two years, while another 34% have not made a payment in 12 to 23 months, according to Lender Processing Services.
“Loans enter into foreclosure, but never come out,” said Thomas Lawler, founder of Lawler Economic & Housing Consulting. “If this keeps going on, you have a continual overhang that never goes away.”
…
The housing crisis is really a supply and demand problem.
Too much supply caused by overbuilding. That can’t be fixed by rushing through foreclosures.
Too little demand because of lack of jobs and falling wages. This also can’t be fixed through rushing through foreclsoures.
Rushing through foreclosures would simply cause house prices to enter a deflationary spiral that would force banks into insolvancy, cause trillions of dollars of debt to poofage, and plunge us into depression.
Of course, delay is ONLY effective if there is something being done on the supply/demand imbalance. What is being done to create high paying, perminant jobs with wages high enough to support house prices?
“That can’t be fixed by rushing through foreclosures.”
Certainly there is a middle way between ‘rushing through foreclosures’ and allowing millions of supposed-home owners to live for years without making a mortgage payment.
“Rushing through foreclosures would simply cause house prices to enter a deflationary spiral that would force banks into insolvancy, cause trillions of dollars of debt to poofage, and plunge us into depression.”
I’m not buying it. Right now there are too few home sales transactions, due to home prices that are propped up by fiat at prices which are too high for prospective buyers to afford. I realize it sux to own a house whose value has fallen, or to own the MBS comprised of loans whose collateral consists of houses whose values have fallen. But more home sales would result from lower prices, and that would be stimulative, not depressive like the current near-absence of housing market liquidity.
“I’m not buying it.”
+1 Ditto. Let the foreclosures hit the market.
The granite we now have and cannot afford cannot simply be traded for the formica we really need.
(its a metaphor.)
I have been a landlord for 20+ years and my experience is the physical depreciation of a vacant house is 7% per year without constant maintenance and repairs. To put it another way, in 10 years your house will be worth slightly less than the raw land values. Do you see the banks making all those repairs year in, year out? Looking at the economic data since the crash there is little evidence that construction workers or manufacturer’s are seeing that business. The longer this goes on the better the bulldozer option looks. Actually this might be the next big thing! Recycling the raw materials from 150,000 demolished houses and selling the scrap to China and India.
“The longer this goes on the better the bulldozer option looks. Actually this might be the next big thing!”
The Broken Window Fallacy rears its head time and time again. Those homes are worth real dollars in their present state of repair, but if left vacant long enough, they will deteriorate into a state of ruin, just as you suggest. The sooner they are turned over to end-user buyers at prices said end-users can afford, the sooner we can start digging out of this real estate hole we are in. Destroying the product of years’ worth of labor to save the market value of other homes is about as smart as dropping bombs on cities to stimulate the economy.
There are simply not enough end user buyers.
Doesn’t matter if the houses are $200K or $200. There are atleast 4 million too many houses… More if illegals are leaving as I suspect.
Sure, let houses prices crash to $200 and rent $20 a month… Let $10T in mortgage debt implode. All the banks, big or small cease to exist. Pension funds are wiped out, bond funds are wiped out, households are wiped out….
Really? That is the solution?
“There are simply not enough end user buyers.”
Not so long as prices are artificially propped up on a temporarily high plateau. Take away those price supports, and the free market will find a way to equilibrate supply and demand.
Sure, let houses prices crash to $200 and rent $20 a month… Let $10T in mortgage debt implode. All the banks, big or small cease to exist. Pension funds are wiped out, bond funds are wiped out, households are wiped out….
Before this is over that may look good compared to what we’ve chosen instead.
“Before this is over that may look good compared to what we’ve chosen instead.”
Sure, but are their options other than hyper deflation or hyper inflation… like maybe attacking the trade imbalances that are the root problem.
No wonder my “Viking Fund” foreign currency CD failed to outperform! I should have listened to the gold bugs.
P.S. This has to describe one of the dumbest ever “housing rescue” programs! The Prime Minister should heed his bankers’ warnings in this case.
Danish Housing Rescue Faces Bank Opposition as Market Freezes
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) — Denmark’s banks signaled they will resist a government plan to have Danes buy new homes before they sell their existing properties, arguing the proposal adds risk to an economy already stressed by a bank crisis and recession.
The minority coalition of Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen this week unveiled the plan in an effort to breathe life into the housing market after the number of properties for sale soared to a record last month. Banks representing more than 80 percent of the country’s home loan market are warning that the government’s approach will leave households more indebted and impede a balanced recovery.
At Copenhagen-based Danske Bank A/S, the country’s biggest lender, home loans are always based on “an individual assessment, but as a rule of thumb the first property needs to have been sold,” said Martin Sandau, chief consultant at Danske, in an e-mailed reply to questions. “Before the housing market ground to a halt, the practice of buying before selling was more widespread, but the current market is too uncertain.”
A housing slump and banking crisis have turned Denmark into Scandinavia’s worst-performing economy. Rasmussen, who faces an election no later than November, wants to spend 10.8 billion kroner ($2.1 billion) through 2013 in measures to jumpstart growth as he competes with opposition proposals to spend even more. The stimulus won’t help Denmark escape an adjustment that may be “long and perhaps painful,” according to Jes Asmussen, Svenska Handelsbanken AB’s chief economist in Copenhagen.
…
I guess $3-billion in Fed-funded bailout money was a big deal back in 1980? (You will have to scroll down to the right to find the article I am posting; further below you will find news of the falling stock market at the time.)
St. Petersburg Times - Apr 18, 1980
Small business, farmers get Fed financing help
By BAILEY MORRIS
Washington Star
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve Board took action Thursday to increase the money supply available to small businesses and farmers hard hit by high interest rates during the spring planting season.
Vice Chairman Fred Schultz announced at a Small Business Subcommittee hearing Thursday that immediately, up to $3-billion will be made available to approximately 6,000 banks for the special, lower-interest-rate loans.
…
Wow, mortgages of up to $60K could be subsidized in high-cost areas! When did it get cranked all the way up to $417K?
BREAKING NEWS FROM CNBC’S DIANA OLICK: WELLS FARGO CHANGING CONFORMING LOAN LIMITS AHEAD OF GSE REVISION IN OCTOBER
Published: Wednesday, 17 Aug 2011 | 5:59 PM ET
By: Jennifer Dauble
WHEN: TODAY, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17TH WHERE: CNBC’S “STREET SIGNS” Following is the unofficial transcript of breaking news from CNBC’s Diana Olick. All references must be sourced to CNBC.
DIANA OLICK: HIGHER CONFORMING LOAN LIMITS SET TO EXPIRE OCTOBER 1ST FOR FANNIE, FREDDIE AND THE FHA HAVE EFFECTIVELY ALREADY EXPIRED. WELLS FARGO IS CONFIRMING TO CNBC THAT AUGUST 15TH, THAT WAS MONDAY, WAS THE DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS AND RATE LOCKS FOR FHA AND CONVENTIONAL CONFORMING LOANS WITH BALANCES ABOVE THE LIMITS THEY EXPECT TO BE IN PLACE AFTER SEPTEMBER 30TH. REMEMBER THE OLD IS $729K WILL DROP TO $625,500 IN THE HIGHEST PRICED MARKETS. CURRENTLY WELLS HAS A 30-YEAR FIXED AT 4.25% JUMBO AT 4.625%, THAT IS GOING BACK DOWN. EVEN THOUGH THE RULE GOES INTO EFFECT OCTOBER 1ST, ALL LOANS HAVE TO BE FUNDED, SOLD AND SHIPPED TO THE GSEs BY THEN. REFI VOLUME HAS BEEN SO HIGH LATELY, THAT CAN TAKE UP TO 45 DAYS, SO THE LENDERS ARE CUTTING OFF NOW IN TIME TO GET THOSE LOANS INTO THE PROCESS. YOU REMEMBER THEY WERE RAISED BY CONGRESS FROM 417,000 IN 2008 TO HELP BRING MUCH NEEDED LIQUIDITY TO THE MORTGAGE MARKET AFTER THE CRASH. THERE HAS BEEN HEAVY LOBBYING TO EXTEND THE LIMITS, SO FAR NO AVAIL.
“The government is not an insurer of its citizens against the hazards of the elements.” Pres. Calvin Coolidge, 1927
To bad there are no more Coolidge’s around anymore.
It only exists to protect the interests of the super rich … duh!
I’m feeling very nostalgic this morning for the heady days when a band of “tinfoil-hat wearing” bloggers turned out to be right about the incipient housing bubble collapse, while leading politicians and the pundits who advise them were blindsided by a financial tsunami wave which “nobody could have seen coming.”
Stock sell-off greets housing rescue plan
MARKETS / FROM OUR BLOGS
July 29, 2008|Tom Petruno | Times Staff Writer
Wall Street’s way of thanking Congress for the new housing rescue bill: another stock market dive, led by the companies the bill is supposed to help the most.
A heavy sell-off in financial and builder shares pulled the market broadly lower Monday, a sign that investors see little hope for a turnaround soon in the housing bust despite the government’s latest efforts.
The Dow Jones industrials slid 239.61 points, or 2.1%, to 11,131.08. That wiped out another chunk of the rally that had lifted the index 670 points, or 6.1%, in six sessions after it hit a two-year low July 15.
Another 170 points off the Dow and we’ll be at a new bear-market low.
Broader indexes lost a little less than the Dow on Monday, but it was a dismal session across the board.
Bank, brokerage and builder stocks were down sharply for a third day in a row. Bank of America slid $1.52, or 5.1%, to $28.06; Citigroup fell $1.42, or 7.5%, to $17.43; and Merrill Lynch dropped $3.19, or 12%, to a new 10-year closing low of $24.33. After the market closed Merrill announced a $5.7-billion write-off tied to its toxic CDOs, or collateralized debt obligations.
A Standard & Poor’s index of 15 major builder stocks slumped almost 5% for the day.
The housing rescue bill, shepherded by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and passed by Congress over the weekend, is supposed to help stem the worst effects of the bust. One provision could help an estimated 400,000 homeowners avoid foreclosure by refinancing into mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration.
But lenders that participate in that program will have to share the pain by writing down some of the principal. How many will be willing to do that, as opposed to trying to arrange a loan workout on their own, remains to be seen.
Another provision in the bill authorizes the Treasury to rescue mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if they are in danger of running out of capital because of rising loan losses.
Shares of Fannie and Freddie fell for a third straight session, with Fannie off $1.24, or 11%, to $10.31 and Freddie down 55 cents, or 6.6%, to $7.72. The downturn could mean Wall Street figures the Treasury will inevitably have to bail out the companies — presumably leading to a total loss for shareholders.
…
Not sure why you’d be feeling nostalgic. The tinfoil hat bloggers (the reputable ones) are still sounding the alarm, while Wall Street shills masquerading as economists are repeating the same “recovery is just around the corner” mantra they were in 2007. Same as it ever was….
You have a point. I had no inkling this topic would remain so fascinating for this long, but the tremendous intellectual potential energy in the gap between underlying economic reality and the MSM-supported porcine beauticians’ economic fantasy land is ongoing and riveting.
Do We Even Want A Housing Recovery?
September 4, 2011
The Obama administration is considering, and the Central Bank appears to support, a plan to help struggling borrowers refinance their underwater mortgages at current low interest rates. This would cut monthly payments and free up cash for other spending, hopefully boosting overall business activity.
Dick Bove, the well regarded banking analyst, said this about the rumored efforts to fix the housing crisis:
…
‘Currently, housing prices are back at pre-bubble 2003 levels, and affordability is the best it’s been in 40 years. ‘
Bzzz, wrong answer.
No kidding. If houses are now so damn affordable why aren’t they selling?
I think we need to back up more than one bubble. Go back one housing bubble, two stock market and commodites bubbles, maybe another housing bubble, and we might be close.
This year somebody already won the lottery and got their house out of foreclosure.
“The Obama administration is considering, and the Central Bank appears to support, a plan to help struggling borrowers refinance their underwater mortgages at current low interest rates. This would cut monthly payments and free up cash for other spending, hopefully boosting overall business activity.”
Housing Bubble Predictions For 2011
Comment by jeff saturday
2010-12-31 12:49:14
1) A stain in the likeness of Jesus will be found on the carpet of a foreclosed house in Phoenix Arizona.
2) A man in Miami who sold his food stamps for 30 cents on the dollar will win the lottery and buy a condo on the beach.
3) Angelo Mozilo will die from skin cancer.
4) The government will announce the new CAMP program.(can`t make your payment, don`t worry about it nobody can)
5) The FHA will come out with their new (Don`t ask don`t tell) loan application for their new 120% LTV mortgage program.
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=6315 - 510k -
Columbia Man Escapes Foreclosure with $400,000 Lottery Win
2/9/2011 2:45:40 PM
COLUMBIA, SC (February 9, 2011) – A Columbia man two months away from foreclosure on his home has won $400,000 playing the Lottery. His first act will be to pay off his mortgage.
“This is the best I’ve felt in a long time,” the winner told lottery officials when he arrived with the winning ticket.
He shared he moved to South Carolina from New Jersey six years ago in search of a peaceful, easy life. Life hasn’t been easy. Unemployed for over a year and a half, the winner has been looking for work and trying to stay optimistic.
“Unemployed for over a year and a half …”
And he is buying lottery tickets?
Combo, saw on C-SPAN this week where betting on lotteries has been rising since 2008 and almost all of it from the poorest segments of society. It’s a great way for government to drain off any excess money the “poors” might have so they don’t go spending it on weapons and get some crazy ideas about economic & social justice. Texas started their lottery by promising that 100% of the proceeds would go to the state school fund. Guess what! The funds were diverted to the general fund about 5 years ago and now Texas is slashing the education budget. Another Rick Perry Texas miracle!
It’s about as good an idea as alcohol.
If you have absolutely no prospects, what are your choices?
It’s a tax upon the unintelligent to be sure and a total scam, of course, but it’s human nature.
Sad.
The lottery is a tax on stupidity.
“It’s about as good an idea as alcohol.”
Alcohol is a depressant. I’d say buying a $1 of hope may be a better anti-depressant than alcohol.
I’d call it a tax on the desperate. And it may be a better gamble than the stock market for someone with not much money and a short time horizon.
I question the wisdom of paying off the mortgage with it, when he has no job.
Texas started their lottery by promising that 100% of the proceeds would go to the state school fund.
That was never explicitly promised(however often repeated by George W Bush). However, at the time of the vote to allow a lottery, school funding comprised almost 70% of the Texas state budget.
School funding will still be almost 60% of the 2012-2013 Texas state budget.
Manifestation of Christ on Everyday Objects a Recurring Event
Jul 25, 2011
When Jacob Simmons and his finance Gentry Lee Sutherland found a Wal-Mart receipt on the floor of their home, they were stunned to find that the receipt had the resemblance of Jesus Christ on it.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/8260311/manifestation_of_christ_on_everyday.html - 30k -
Dude, it’s a depression.
Get sweet baby-Jeebus on your tortilla, and you might have a few bucks flowing your way.
This is entirely predictable. In tough times, not only does religion see a rise (”oh save me, baby Jeebus from those evil bankers”) but also a rise from those trying to profit from this rise (”pay me to pray to baby Jeebus and some magic money will come your way”.)
GAH, this is so entirely predictable, it’s kinda boring.
”oh save me, baby Jeebus from
those evil bankersObama”Jeebus Pussycat it`s a joke, kinda like the Predictions. Sorry I touched the holy nerve.
Touched a holy nerve? LOL
You’ve gotta be kidding. I’m about as atheistic as they come.
I sh*t upon this stuff on general principle but I have a solid sociological grasp on it.
“those evil bankers Obama”
Apparently the format does not copy.
It’s a Monsanto thing. We only plant genetically modified presidents now, special banker’s gene spliced in.
“You’ve gotta be kidding. I’m about as atheistic as they come.”
That was my point.
“A stain in the likeness of Jesus”
SInce no one knows what Jesus looked like, how would they know it was him?
God tells them directly.
“SInce no one knows what Jesus looked like, how would they know it was him?”
This is what gets me about the Muslim outrage over cartoons of Mohammed. Likenesses were forbidden, so who is to say that it is Mohammed the founder of Islam or Mohammed the dishwasher at the Greek restaurant in Copenhagen. If someone put a turban on a bearded Alfred E. Neumann and called him Mohammed, would they still get upset?
Similarly, people who claim that God told them to do something. How do they know it was God and not the devil?
“How do they know it was God and not the devil?”
More importantly, how does a voter know if a politician is really led by God or is actually led by the Devil, and is just pulling the wool over the eyes of an abysmally ignorant flock of disciples?
How is Angelo feeling?
Dumb logic:
1) The economy cannot recover without a housing recovery.
2) Anything that stands in the way of a housing recovery will therefore prevent the economy from recovering.
Guess what: Housing isn’t coming back any time soon — we are talking about years, not “the end of next year.” You better figure out a better way out of the economic malaise than counting on housing to pull the rest of the economy out of the crater.
Opinion
Mortgage Suits May Seal Obama’s Election Doom
By Philip van Doorn 09/03/11 - 07:10 AM EDT
NEW YORK (TheStreet) –The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s lawsuits seeking $196 billion in mortgage-backed securities putbacks from 17 banks could end any hope for President Obama to broker a quick global settlement of the mortgage mess between the states, the federal regulators and the banks.
And that will prevent a bottoming of the housing market, thus delaying an eventual start to a housing recovery. Meanwhile any plans for the large banks to increase their lending, or offer significant balance reductions to spur mortgage loan refinancing at low rates, are also likely to be stifled.
This leaves the president with little hope for any positive economic news in time for the November 2012 election.
…
This leaves the president with little hope for any positive economic news in time for the November 2012 election.
Obama had no hope with his current agenda and what he has accomplished.
And he had a massive majority in the house and a filibuster proof senate for his first two years in office.
He could have nearly done ANYTHING.
What did he give America?
Obamacare
The $1 Trillion Dollar Stimulus
$4 Trillion dollars more in debt
Another war
He is done. And he deserves to be thrown out in a landslide.
I don’t necessarily see that. Which Christian fundamentalist Tea Party candidate do you consider electable?
“I don’t necessarily see that. Which Christian fundamentalist Tea Party candidate do you consider electable?”
Ben`s cat.
I don’t believe Ben’s cat even owns a bible, much less quotes from it while making campaign speeches.
You are probably right, but maybe Ben`s cat could say something like….
The journey will be difficult. The road will be long. I face this challenge with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals. Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
Text of Democrat Barack Obama’s prepared remarks for a rally on Tuesday in St. Paul, Minn., as released by his campaign:
“good jobs to the jobless”?
What don’t you like about providing good jobs to the jobless?
“You are probably right, but maybe Ben`s cat could say something like….”
Ben’s cat for president!
“What don’t you like about providing good jobs to the jobless?”
Nothing. Why, you know someone who can do that?
“What don’t you like about providing good jobs to the jobless?”
Comment by Cantankerous Intellectual Bomb Thrower©
2011-09-04 09:23:52
BIL has been out of work in the SLC area for a couple of months already — one of my smartest and most talented relatives, and he has no current prospects to show for it.
Reply to this comment
Comment by Sammy Schadenfreude
2011-09-04 10:49:46
That’s what’s scary, the number of smart, talented, highly competent people I know who simply can’t find work.
Reply to this comment
Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.
“You are probably right, but maybe Ben`s cat could say something like….”
Ben’s cat for president!
If Ben`s cat says that, Ben`s cat has my vote.
“What don’t you like about providing good jobs to the jobless?”
Unemployed face tough competition: underemployed
By CHRISTOPHER LEONARD - AP Business Writers,PAUL WISEMAN - AP Business Writers | AP – 52 mins ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The job market is even worse than the 9.1 percent unemployment rate suggests.
America’s 14 million unemployed aren’t competing just with each other. They must also contend with 8.8 million other people not counted as unemployed — part-timers who want full-time work.
When consumer demand picks up, companies will likely boost the hours of their part-timers before they add jobs, economists say. It means they have room to expand without hiring.
And the unemployed will face another source of competition once the economy improves: Roughly 2.6 million people who aren’t counted as unemployed because they’ve stopped looking for work. Once they start looking again, they’ll be classified as unemployed. And the unemployment rate could rise.
Combined, the 14 million officially unemployed; the “underemployed” part-timers who want full-time work; and “discouraged” people who have stopped looking make up 16.2 percent of working-age Americans.
http://news.yahoo.com/unemployed-face-tough-competition-underemployed-160244144.html -
I have a Tea Party member story to share with you, my fellow HBB’ers …
A former co-worker was a hard core Tea Party Fundamentalist. She was always bitching about Obamacare, runaway gov’t spending, deficits, taxes, “union goons”, etc. It was like she was banana boy’s long lost sister.
Then one day she resigns. Her new job … drumroll … was with the Federal Government. Funny how all her principles went flying out the window once she landed a good paying government job with a pension. And of course now that she’s part of the club the pay and bennies are 100% justified.
Anyway, this reinforces what I believe is the real reason why people like banana boy hate gov’t workers (even when it plainly demonstrable that it is the super rich who are really giving us the shaft): envy. They are simply jealous that these folks have a better job than they do.
Come on Colorado, your playing like Betty White out there.
Who’s Betty White?
I had a similar experience with a guy who is a union firefighter in Ohio. It wasn’t until Kasich threatened to cut HIM off that he was suddenly okay with union/gov’t jobs.
You are supposed to say “That`s not what your girlfriend said”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA7-31Cxc2I - 98k -
Senate GOP Leader awards huge, retroactive pay raises to staff
“Plunderbund has learned that GOP Senate President Tom Niehaus, leader of the brain trust behind a bill to strip benefits from rank and file public employees, and champion of a budget that makes painful cuts to nearly every program in the state, has now committed the ultimate act of hypocrisy.”
.
.
“…after passing SB5 which eliminates automatic 3% pay increases for state workers, the Senate handed their own staff raises ranging from 12 to 37%.”
.
.
“One last irony to note. While Republicans champion “merit pay” for other public workers, apparently it’s not good enough for them. Raises were given exclusively to Republican staffers; not a single member of the minority caucus staff received an increase. Sounds like politics, not merit, was behind the move.”
“a filibuster proof senate for his first two years in office”
A blatant lie.
http://politicalexpositor.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/the-myth-of-the-democratic-filibuster-proof-senate/
“On June 30, 2009, the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the election results confirming Al Franken as the winner in his Senate election race. He was sworn in to office on July 7, 2009. His addition did bring the Democratic caucus to 60 members – 185 days into the current session of congress.”
…
“Paul Kirk was appointed to fill Senator Kennedy’s vacant seat on September 24, 2009, and he was sworn in on September 25, bringing the Democratic caucus back to 60 members. Democrats would enjoy this position through the end of the year. They would use this time to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on December 24, 2009, with all Senate Republicans voting against the measure.
181 Days Total
On January 19, 2010, Republican candidate Scott Brown won the special election to fill Senator Kennedy’s vacated seat. After he was sworn in on February 4, 2010, Democrats in the Senate have never again enjoyed a filibuster proof position of power. Their total, disjointed reign lasted 181 days, or half of one year.”
Pesky facts.
I’m just happy somebody admits there were 181 days where there was nobody else to blame.
From the same link, it also included a Republican turncoat.
“On April 28, 2009 Senator Arlen Specter, then a Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, switched his party designation from Republican to Democrat.”
And 2 independents.
The conclusion
“Clearly this is a far cry from two years of unrestricted control that was squandered away as many pundits will have you believe. Certainly Democrats missed many opportunities to push forward their agenda, largely because of moderate liberals’ objections, but they absolutely did not have two years to do so.”
“Pesky facts.”
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
34th president of US 1953-1961 (1890 - 1969)
Opinion
Great Housing Depression of 2008-20??
By Gary Weiss 08/30/11 - 07:25 AM EDT
…
We’re in the middle of a real-estate depression, folks, and it’s not getting any better. Perhaps it’s good news that the financial markets have gotten used to the bad news out of the housing market, because the bad news keeps coming strong. But if the housing-market woes are an indication of the direction of the economy, we’re in sorry shape. And as with a number of questions I’ve explored recently, it comes down to this: What, if anything, is the Obama administration going to do about it?
Yesterday, it was reported that foreclosures comprised 31% of housing sales in the second quarter, less than the 37% recorded at the peak two years ago, but still six times what you see in a healthy housing market, according to foreclosure-tracking firm RealtyTrac. The silver lining, if you can call it that, is that the percentage declined a bit from the previous quarter.
But, meanwhile, another bad housing number got worse. The percentage of “short sales” — homes sold for less than what’s owed on them — climbed to 12% in the second quarter. And Bloomberg reported the other day that a third of the country’s 800,000 foreclosed properties are owned by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration. In other words, Uncle Sam is now the biggest owner of misery-bedecked real state in the nation.
All these numbers have a kind of numbing effect on people. It’s a bit like what motorists were seeing in upstate New York yesterday, as hundreds of miles of the New York State Thruway were closed because of not-quite-Hurricane Irene. You curse, and then you get out a map and plot out a detour, and then pull out your map again when the detour is blocked by downed power lines and flooding.
This dude seems to have some idea but neglects to even make mention of the mammoth shadow inventory that is on robo-signing hold and being held in other states of manipulation limbo by the banks.
Top-of-the-morning to ya, Old Bubba!
And the rest of the day to you.
You’re a good sport. Sorry if you don’t like my posts.
My apologies if my tone was too harsh yesterday.
It’s not that I don’t like your posts. Many (even most) of them have substance. I just think there are too many of them to the point that they drown out the diversity of opinions.
You do contribute a lot, I’m not disputing that. When I look at a topic and see that your posts comprise anywhere from 10% to 50% of the entries… geez.
If this blog took place in a live round table setting I don’t think I’d be the only one in the room thinking thoughts such as “this guy loves the sound of his own voice” or “does that guy ever shut up” or “he always has to get the last word.”
My point is that when one person in a forum monopolizes the dialog then at some point the forum ceases to become a place where ideas are exchanged.
The beauty of this forum is that it is impossible to monopolize the dialogue, as there is (effectively) no limit on the daily number of posts.
And there is also the Joshua Tree Extension available for anyone who wishes to personally taze anyone else’s posts they don’t like.
For the record, I throw out lots of ideas here, but don’t necessarily have some kind of deep-seated religious conviction that I am spouting superior or absolute truth. Rather, I believe free exchange of ideas gives rise to an evolutionary process which give birth to great ideas. By contrast, backroom Groupthink discussion, even among PhD-educated academics, is where stagnant old ideas are frequently recycled, often crowding out better new ones.
Thanks to Ben for supporting this open discussion forum.
The news that the next generation of potential U.S. workers is not getting the early work experience necessary to start their careers should be cause for good cheer among geezers who will have to keep working beyond retirement age to make up for negative housing market and stock market wealth effects on their retirement savings.
Labor Day 2011: Unemployment costly for young adults
Groups across the age spectrum have suffered high unemployment rates, currently 9.1 percent nationally, in recent years.
But the exceptionally high rate among young people — 17.4 percent for those 16 to 24 who are seeking jobs — bears significance because it reflects the loss of foundation-setting work years for many more high school and college graduates, labor experts said.
Employment for all individuals between 16 and 24 plummeted to 48.8 percent this summer, a record low during a typically busy season for that age demographic, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Young blacks and Latinos have been hit especially hard in the current job market.
“This has been another summer of lost opportunities for our nation’s young people,” said Michael Saltsman, a research fellow at the Employment Policies Institute. “As a result, the next generation is missing out on the life lessons that come from an entry-level job.”
It is not surprising that teens and young adults traditionally have jobless rates higher than those of, say, professionals in their 30s or 40s. Even in a robust economy, employers know these applicants typically have fewer skills and less career experience.
Labor specialists are alarmed, though, by how high the unemployment rate has risen for that age bracket — and remained so for the third year in a row.
“You are not building up the skills that the people in your cohort are building up. You are then one or two steps behind others,” said Alec Levenson, senior research scientist with the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.
Many teens looking to acquire entry-level experience — making french fries, answering phone calls, stocking shelves, wearing a uniform — have been locked out, not only due to companies trimming staff since the Great Recession but also by greater competition from older applicants willing to take low-paying positions and by technological changes that have automated some jobs.
…
“… greater competition from older applicants willing to take low-paying positions …”
I know of several of these geezers who are destined to fill the ranks of “applicants willing to take low-paying positions” a few years from now. These are the guys who go to retirement seminars are are promised ten-percent-plus returns on all their retirement money if they will just turn all their money over to the advisors for handling and safekeeping.
They emerge from thee seminars with stars and dollar signs in their eyes and have the look of those who have just had profound religious experiences.
Churn ‘em and burn ‘em.
Note that 02.09.2011 is a September date across the pond.
Real Estate | 02.09.2011
Post-housing bubble Britain still too pricey for first-time buyers
Ideal Properties, a realtor in Dunstable, UK
Far fewer first-time buyers are able to afford houses in the UK
At its peak more than 70 percent of British people owned their own home. But, as the economy struggles to return to pre-2008 levels, buying is no longer an affordable option for the so-called “generation rent.”
Two recent reports have highlighted how the British dream of home-ownership is going into reverse.
A survey of more than 14,000 potential house buyers by UK property website Rightmove shows that the number of “first-timers,” mostly younger people, has fallen dramatically.
A second report by Oxford Economics reveals that home ownership has been on the decline for several years and predicts that by 2020, figures will fall back to levels last seen 30 years ago.
The British love affair with owning a home took hold in the 1980s. The then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher set the tone by calling for the creation of a “property owning democracy.” Her Conservative government set policies in place to deregulate mortgage financing and allow social housing tenants to buy their own homes.
A for sale sign in Dunstable, EnglandHousing prices remain prohibitively high
Over the next 30 years, the price of the average British house doubled in value three times during successive economic booms. This inflation in residential property prices helped create an asset-rich class of baby boomers. But their children have been less fortunate.
…
Post-housing bubble Britain still too pricey for first-time buyers
Perhaps it’s premature for people to say “post”-housing bubble. Must not be over yet.
I suspect coastal California housing values will drop by a lot once the Chines Housing Bubble eventually collapses. California real estate investing is to Chinese speculators what Idaho real estate investing once was to California speculators. I look forward to future MSM articles explaining how the collapse of the Chinese bubble left many California real estate investors naked on the beach after the tide went out.
Chinese Real Estate: A Housing Bubble to End All Housing Bubbles?
Posted in Mortgage Rates
September 2, 2011
The U.S. economy is still reeling from the effects of the 2007-2008 collapse of the housing market. European economies, including those of Spain and the UK, were also hard hit from the same housing bubble syndrome. Back in the early nineties, Japan’s economy, then the fastest growing major economy in the world, suffered a similar collapse, one from which it has yet to completely recover.
Chinese real estate is the latest housing bubble candidate some prominent international investors have been warning, the bursting of which would dwarf all those that occurred previously. Will excessive debt creation, leverage and rampant real estate development and speculation derail the Chinese economic miracle?
How the Chinese Housing Market Became a Bubble
Growing at double digit rates since the late eighties, China has emerged as global economic power. While manufactured exports have been the engine for China amassing over $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, Chinese real estate and property development and investment have been the principal outlets for the savings of increasingly affluent, predominantly urban, Chinese.
Yet despite spectacular growth in housing supply, owning their own home remains increasingly out of reach for the vast majority of Chinese. Rampant real estate development and speculation have led to the building of entire “ghost cities” that are nearly, if not completely, vacant. As many as 64 million Chinese apartments are vacant, according to some estimates.
…
Data, poll results show Utah’s middle class under siege
By Paul Beebe and Lesley Mitchell
The Salt Lake Tribune
First published Sep 03 2011 07:24AM
Updated Sep 4, 2011 12:28AM
As bad as the recession and feeble recovery have been to Utah’s psyche, the biggest meltdown since the 1930s has laid bare a more sinister plight — our middle class is slipping backward.
It may be hard to see. The counties along the Wasatch Front, home to three of every four Utahns, look the same as they did during the boom years, when the stock market and housing bubble fueled the impression that most families were doing well in spite of incomes that barely budged.
In hindsight, the impression may have been an illusion. Empirical evidence and Utahns’ responses to a Salt Lake Tribune opinion poll in which most described themselves as middle class show that their financial foundations are eroding, the rich-poor gap is widening and most believe that their elected officials lack the ability to fix the economy.
According to the recent survey conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research Inc:
• Utahns feel stuck in their tracks. One in three has lost ground in the past five years — a fact certified by the Census Bureau. Adjusted for inflation, median Utah household incomes fell to $58,491 in 2009 from $59,226 a decade earlier.
• Incomes have fallen in one-third of respondent households, even though two-thirds (63 percent) have at least two wage earners contributing income.
• Close to one in three of the respondents said someone in their household has lost a job in the past five years, while similar percentages of Utahns are struggling with debt or fear they won’t have enough savings to retire comfortably.
“I feel a sense of hopelessness, and I’m the most optimistic person I know,” said Marcia Timmins, a Herriman business owner whose income has fallen almost by half since 2008. “Middle-class security is long gone. People are depressed. It’s like Russia in the winter of 1916.”
…
BIL has been out of work in the SLC area for a couple of months already — one of my smartest and most talented relatives, and he has no current prospects to show for it.
That’s what’s scary, the number of smart, talented, highly competent people I know who simply can’t find work.
Been there, done that… but I have to say that I discovered something interesting (back in the early 1990s), which is that if you have a decent education and are willing to quickly morph from corporate dronedom into doggedly determined entrepreneur, you can find opportunities to earn self-employment income. The problem for a reasonably capable and determined individual is to figure out how to make enough to survive, not making money per se.
Smartphone app development could bring in a lot of $ if you have a great app in mind.
I’m learning to use a SDK whether or not my app idea has merit because knowledge of smartphone app development is more useful in where I’m working. It’s the buzz all over the cubicle farm.
Bill, which SDK are you toying with?
I’m working on Android apps. So I’m using the Android SDK.
Check out http://developer.android.com
I just got my first Droid smartphone nine days ago. My LG phone’s contract was up so I upgraded. For months I was considering an iPhone or a Droid. But since I have an iPad already I decided to go with Droid.
Yesterday I had a difficult time of installing my SDK. It’s still not perfect, but I was able to create my first app. I have a super duper App in mind from an Idea I had first thought of twelve years ago, but today’s technology and this global economic crisis expanded that idea quite a bit. If I get booted off my contract and could not find another contract gig for awhile, I will be certainly working on this app from my Phoenix place. The work for it is quite a lot, more than I alone can handle and I might have to hire a couple of people if this idea gets legs.
Thanks for the info. Look me up some day if you’re hiring people
Ha Ha! Will do. Since you are part of HBB, you already have a good BS detector. That’s what software writing is all about!
“Adjusted for inflation, median Utah household incomes fell to $58,491 in 2009 from $59,226 a decade earlier.”
When adjusted for real inflation (as opposed to the gov’ts make believe numbers) the picture is far worse. Small wonder cars and other durables aren’t selling.
Timber industry struggling after burst housing bubble
by Tom Robertson, Minnesota Public Radio
September 1, 2011
Bemidji, Minn. — A few years ago, the Norbord Minnesota plant west of Bemidji was one of four plants in northern Minnesota making a plywood-like product called oriented strand board. Now Norbord is the only plant still running.
Since new home construction started to tank in 2007, the company has tried to keep its doors open and maintain jobs for about 140 employees, and provide work for loggers and haulers, said Jack Wallingford, the plant’s general manager.
“We’ve been successful in that regard,” he said. “Past that, it’s been a rough stretch.”
…
U.S. NEWS
AUGUST 17, 2011
Linkage in Income, Home Prices Shifts
By NICK TIMIRAOS
WSJ’s Nick Timiraos has details of a new report indicating more and more homes across the country are falling to values levels not seen since before the housing boom started in 2000. Photo: MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images
Home prices in some of the nation’s hardest-hit metro areas have fallen far below pre-bubble levels, stirring concerns that properties in those markets are undervalued.
In a recent analysis, real-estate firm Zillow Inc. studied the correlation between home prices and annual incomes over the 15-year period that ended in 2000, before home prices began to surge.
For decades, price-to-income levels have moved in tandem, with a specific housing market’s prices rising or falling in line with local residents’ incomes. Many economists say that makes the price-to-income ratio a good gauge for determining whether housing is undervalued or overvalued for a given market.
Zillow found property prices in one-third of nearly 130 housing markets across the nation were undervalued, when compared with residents’ current income and the pre-bubble trend.
“At a broad level, it is helpful to understand that if people in certain markets paid three times their average income in housing before the bubble, those markets are probably going to get back to that level,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist at Zillow.
The analysis underscores a broader point: While the nation’s housing markets largely fell and rose together during the housing boom and bust, they aren’t likely to hit bottom and begin recovery at the same time or pace. The Zillow analysis shows that many markets still appear to be overvalued.
…
“stirring concerns that properties in those markets are undervalued”
Yeah … right. If they were undervalued they would be selling fast.
Actually, the visible part of data is somewhat misleading, at least around San Diego County. If you look below the surface of a dearth of MLS listings at prices where homes sit on the market for months if not years without selling, you realize that what is missing are the homes which sold quickly because they were priced at sufficiently low levels current housing demand will bear. When you look at those astronomically priced homes that have sat on the MLS for years already with zero offers, you are looking at the self-selected subsample of homes priced to never sell.
Case in point — this home had already been on the market for 1481 days (4+ years) the last time I checked on Redfin, several months ago:
For Sale (MLS-listed)
$61,000,000
929 Border Ave Del Mar, CA 92014
Beds: 9
Baths: 6
Sq. Ft.: 10,164
$/Sq. Ft.: $6,002
Lot Size: 5.5 Acres
Property Type: Residential, Detached
Style: Other
Stories: 2
View: Ocean, Panoramic
Year Built: 1937
Community: Del Mar Bluff
County: San Diego
MLS#: 071064797
Source: SANDICOR
Status: Active
On Redfin: 1481 days
New tenant has trashed property my mother offered to buy 3 months ago. At the time of her offer, there was a consciencious tenant in place that kept the place sale-able. But BofA did not answer her offer in a timely fashion and now the place is trashed.
BofA finally got back to my mother(even grovelling a bit, saying how she would be the perfect new owner,etc) but the new tenant trashed the place to the point that she has no interest at this point. And is running from this deal; quick as the cats that are using the home as their personal litter box!
So BofA could have sold it for 100k; but since they sat on their hands and the offer; now it is not worth 80k; thanks to the rapid trashing. And the homeowner is collecting rent, not keeping up the property, and not paying the mortgage. Good deal for him while it lasts; it’s not like he did not try to get out with a short sale; the bank just scared the buyer off.
Now the owner has almost no choice given the bank’s slow response on the short sale attempt, and will continue renting to the piggish tenants. Rent it out, pocket the money until foreclosure comes in another year or whenever. So the short sale game is not being run very slickly quite yet and the accidental landlords are just pocketing the rents without regard for keeping the property up. I suppose Jeff S. is familiar with this story.
Meanwhile, my wife’s unit’s trustee sale has been postponed yet again to October this time. Maybe it is because we are ordering the note. They keep changing servicers and we keep asking them to tell us the lending history (beyond who was the original lender which they have given us). But she’s asking them to outline the who-is-the-lender history; how the note travelled thru CW, BofA, etc, and who serviced it along the way.
They may not owe her this information; but the courts are probably going to want to see examples of what was done to the notes via MERS and the securitization games that were played. And banks are supposedly mulling over the idea of judicial foreclosures in some 26,000 pending cases in our state(according to the Oregonian). Typically this is a non-judicial state, but since the bank has messed up on procedural things, by not following certain rules, they may have jeopardized their opportunity to proceed with their non-judicial trustee’s sales.
Our state judges have stopped BofA in some cases due to their business practices, and federal prosecutors now are also filing suit, grilling of BofA in court will likely ensue; we will continue to try and stall the final outcome for my wife and our family home. Don’t want a free house; we want to stay here as long as we can though. We are treating this home better than the short sale gone awry’s owner and tenant BTW; so who are we hurting by staying?
This house is actually 10,000 sq.ft It was listed for 599K + and now the price is lowered to 359K. The median income for this county is a 6 pack of beer whenever someone can find a job. Btw it is the builders own home and he is getting divorced from his realtor wife.
http://www.cnyhomes.com/Listing/Search/info.cgi?mlnum=S257864
11K per year property tax on a 350K house. I pay 2K per year and my house is assessed at 330K. Even in California it would only be $3.5K per year.
East coast property taxes are mind boggling.
But can you buy a house like this for $35 per sq ft. I have a feeling this house will sell for the price of lumber. Oh btw it comes with 40 acres.
“East coast property taxes are mind boggling.”
Property taxes were outrages B4 the bubble.
“I pay 2K per year and my house is assessed at 330K.”
I pay $2,268 per year on $181,330 assessed value in eastern Washington state, but no income taxes here.
$11k per year for taxes but how much to heat that monstrosity?
And I’m gonna guess Constantia is too far off the beaten track for a b&b.
There’s another builder’s megahome on the local market although he’s no longer part of the deal because his ex got it in the divorce a while ago. I think she’s had it on the market for almost 2 years ago. Guess anyone who can afford a 6k sq footer would rather build new. Go figure.
Ok I am sorta hungover and I’m just going to apologize ahead of time for all my poorly edited posts today. : P
PS- I wouldn’t accept that place if it were given to me…… and I can write a check for it.
is this house 10 miles away from the nearest gas station?
10 miles away from $5/gallon gasoline.
Even better than that, it’s in the snow belt.
is this house 10 miles away from the nearest gas station?
There’s too much doom and gloom here. Time for a cheery blast from the past:
BWAAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Gloom is the new black!
Inslovent banks own everyone. Imagine the power if they had actual money?
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=193493
JP Morgan being sued for violations of Florida’s RICO act.
Is there a silver lining to our failed Solar Energy policy?
Comment for home owners only:
I just saw a quote that an average price of a 2000kwh solar roof system (with batteries), installed is now only $14,300. The industry cost dropped dropped 5 cents per watt in just the last month alone. This is mostly due to our unprotected domestic markets but also includes a huge drop in silicone prices and softening world markets in general due to economic stress in developed markets like Europe. In the last few months alone the US production capacity has been slashed by the loss of 3 large scale solar manufacturing companies. So will this trend continue? Will technology keep squeezing input costs so my local unregulated power company will someday stop raising prices because of ‘cheap solar’?
Right now my average bill is $220 and I use between 800 to 1400kwh a month seasonally. Here’s the question: so based on current electric prices in your area when would it break even for you. Be sure to check for state tax breaks and other gimmicks so I can compare apples to apples.
PS: I’m sitting on top of billions of cubic feet of Nat. gas here in Texas. Why can’t I have a residential fuel cell that runs on dirt cheap gas? Wonder why the ‘private industry’ didn’t jump on that deal? Maybe they look at this solar flop (they aren’t stupid) and are just waiting for a government funded project to cover the start-up costs.
Forgot to include a link to solar prices:
http://solarbuzz.com/facts-and-figures/retail-price-environment/solar-electricity-prices
Bluestar, aren’t there generators that run on natural gas? I’m not sure if that would be cheaper. Natural gas is great for heating, but not in Texas.
I found a better estimate for solar power: http://www.findsolar.com/index.php?page=rightforme
You plug in your zipcode, your power company,and either your KwH or your electric bill, and how much offset you want, and it calculates everything for you, including sun hours and tax breaks.
To offset me 100% would take $26,000 of solar panels.
And that’s just electic. I have a gas furnace and gas drying and gas range and I’m judicious with the A/C; that is ~$60 per month e-. WHERE are you getting half the price for four times the electricity????
Thanks for that link! I have been jumping from one provider to another for several years and just singed up for a 12 month fixed @ 8.7 cents per kwh but the average base rate in this area is between 12.8 and 13.4 cents per kilowatt hour. Due to rock bottom natural gas prices my current price is almost 7% cheaper than last year because there were more providers that use a bigger % of natural gas in their fuel mix. That natural gas linkage works both ways though because in 2005-2006 gas was $14 mcf and my lowest price then was .14 because I switched to a provider that had less gas in their fuel mix and more coal/nuclear.
Seems to be a big difference in those two web sites. Your link is a solar trade association while my link is by an industry tracking group. One want’s to give me full retail MSRP while the other surveys thousands of solar installers to collect actual market prices.
Here are a couple of “Jupiter men” that come from the large section of Jupiter`s illegal population that frequent the grocery store and use the SNAP program. Although I know I make all of this up. To be clear, I am not saying they are all rapist but they do weigh heavily on govt. programs.
Bond denied for two Jupiter men charged with kidnapping, rape
By Christine Stapleton Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 12:09 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 4, 2011
Two Jupiter men were charged with kidnapping and raping a 21-year-old woman early Saturday.
According to a police report, the woman approached Pascual Marroquin-Perechu, 22, and Maximo Waldemar Perez, 23, outside a house on Jupiter Street and asked for a beer. The men gave her one and asked if she wanted to have sex. When she refused, the men dragged her to a grassy area near a dumpster, where they raped her for about 45 minutes, the woman told police.
Shortly after police arrived, the woman identified Perez walking nearby. Perez was staggering, smelled of alcohol and was sweating profusely, according to police. Marroquin-Perechu was arrested at his home later. Both men confessed to the rape, according to the police report.
Palm Beach County Judge Janis Brustares Keyser refused to set bond for both men during a hearing this morning at the Palm Beach County Detention Center.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/crime/bond-denied-for-two-jupiter-men-charged-with-1819318.html - -
“and use the SNAP program.”
pitiful
They get free food either way if they are convicted or not.
Trifecta. Mortgages, Houses and Flood Insurance Program all Under Water
Updated: 1:40 AM Aug 31, 2011
Irene Sends Floundering Flood Insurance Program Further Under Water
The only thing worse than getting flooded out of your home once is getting flooded out of it twice. Or, for that matter, over and over again.
Margaret Wert bought her Wayne, N.J., house in 1999, relying on assurances from her real estate agent that any occasional flooding would only amount to an inch or two of water. A week after closing, Hurricane Floyd put four feet of water in her basement.
Earlier this year, Wert, 45, got flooded again and received a pay-out of $5,000 on her government flood insurance, which costs her $1,200 a year. It wasn’t enough to cover her bills, but it helped with the new stove, refrigerator and boiler.
But all of Margaret Wert’s new appliances and much of her house are now ruined, after Hurricane Irene flooded broad swaths of New Jersey. This time, though, she has a message for the government insurance program.
“If they don’t buy me out and give me what I want, I am going to walk away, and they can keep it. I will tell the insurance company ‘give the check to the bank.’ You can do the repairs. You can live there in mold, you can live there in smell, I am done.”
In the United States, uniquely in the developed world, insuring homeowners against flood damage is the sole province of the federal government. The National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is virtually the only place to get protection against the disasters of flood and storm surge.
The problem is that the NFIP is a disaster itself, hanging on by a series of hard-fought annual extensions and the subject of a stalled reform bill in Congress. Only six years ago, taxpayers had to bail out the program after losses from Hurricane Katrina proved too much to handle.
http://www.witn.com/news/headlines/Irene_Sends_Floundering_Flood_Insurance_Program_Further_Under_Water__128726303.html - 99k -
“We were in the same situation at the end of the S&L crisis, weren’t we? Seems like someone in Washington figured out how to issue RTC bonds and get on with life as we know it…”
Losses from S&L was $87 billion, or about $200B inflated to today.
Chump change compared to the $5T minimum bad dabt this time. Could be $10-15T that needs written off.
If $700B TARP would have been enough, we’d be out of this already. Unfortunatly, $700B TARP was an order of magnitude off.
How Much Does Michelle Obama Spend on Vacations With Taxpayer Money?
September 2nd, 2011
DailyMail.co.uk
The Obamas’ summer break on Martha’s Vineyard has already been branded a PR disaster after the couple arrived four hours apart on separate government jets.
But according to new reports, this is the least of their extravagances.
White House sources today claimed that the First Lady has spent $10million of U.S. taxpayers’ money on vacations alone in the past year.
Branding her ‘disgusting’ and ‘a vacation junkie’, they say the 47-year-old mother-of-two has been indulging in five-star hotels, where she splashes out on expensive massages and alcohol.
The ‘top source’ told the National Enquirer: ‘It’s disgusting. Michelle is taking advantage of her privileged position while the most hardworking Americans can barely afford a week or two off work.
‘When it’s all added up, she’s spent more than $10million in taxpayers’ money on her vacations.’
The First Lady is believed to have taken 42 days of holiday in the past year, including a $375,000 break in Spain and a four-day ski trip to Vail, Colorado, where she spent $2,000 a night on a suite at the Sebastian hotel.
And the first family’s nine-day stay in Martha’s Vineyard is also proving costly, with rental of the Blue Heron Farm property alone costing an estimated $50,000 a week.
The source continued: ‘Michelle also enjoys drinking expensive booze during her trips. She favours martinis with top-shelf vodka and has a taste for rich sparking wines.
‘The vacations are totally Michelle’s idea. She’s like a junkie. She can’t schedule enough getaways, and she lives from one to the next – all the while sticking it to hardworking Americans.’
While the President and his wife do pay for some of their personal expenses from their own pocket, the website whitehousedossier.com says that the amount paid by the couple is ‘dwarfed by the overall cost to the public’.
The magazine also reported that Mrs Obama, whose fashion choices are widely followed, had been going on ‘wild shopping sprees’, much to the distress of her husband, who, its sources reveal, is ‘absolutely furious’ at his wife’s ‘out-of-control spending’.
The President has already come under fire this week over his decision to take a family vacation while millions of Americans are out of work and countless more are financially strapped.
But the situation sparked further anger after he and his wife elected to fly separately to the Massachusetts retreat – despite travelling on the same day.
Mr Obama left the White House aboard Marine One on his way to Andrews Air Force base to hitch a lift aboard Air Force One – along with First Dog Bo.
After landing at Cape Cod Coast Guard Air Station, he then took a final helicopter to his holiday destination to complete the remarkable 500-mile journey.
His wife and daughters, who arrived just four hours earlier, were also travelling from Washington, but took a specially designed military aircraft.
They would also have had their own motorcade from the airport to the vacation residence.
http://www.ktradionetwork.com/government/how-much-does-michelle-obama-spend-on-vacations-with-taxpayer-money/ - 54k -
You know what’s weird? I’m a pretty conservative guy and I don’t care. Republican wives can spend a lot of money and nobody cares. If people want to convince me to hate Obama I need better reasons.
I really only don’t like him because he’s a lying piece of crap.
Your headstone shall say: He lived in my head rent free, 2008-2016.
Any worse than the others? People who hate him seem to think it’s way worse than with previous presidents and I’m not seeing that…
No worse than others, but his teleprompter lies with the best.
Really Jeff, at this point the right-wingers are just being masochist. Do you like to pull the wings off butterflies too?
The DailyMail? And National Enquirer? Snap out of it.
The Republicans are in a state of disarray, as their former front runner doesn’t pass muster with the Tea Party fringe. Romney should stake out his own identity as a candidate while distancing his campaign from these people, as unless their handlers can figure out how to repackage them or the RNC can figure out how to rig an election, they will prove too far out there for the median American voter.
Romney’s Tea Party Outreach Met With Skepticism
Published September 04, 2011 | FoxNews.com
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney meets with campaign staffers and supporters as he tours his new Florida campaign headquarters in Tampa, Fla., Sept. 2.
Mitt Romney’s debut on a major Tea Party stage has gotten off to a rocky start, as local and national activists protest what they claim is the presidential candidate’s half-hearted attempt to court their members.
The former Massachusetts governor is in New Hampshire Sunday to headline a Tea Party Express rally. From there, he’ll attend a forum Monday in South Carolina set up by Tea Party-aligned Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.
But some Tea Party groups say the candidate until now has been unresponsive to their appeals. The Tea Party-tied FreedomWorks organized a counter-demonstration Sunday ahead of Romney’s speech to hammer his record and perish the thought that the ex-governor is one of them.
…
Interview on NPR this week…(and I paraphrase)
Interviewer: “Why do you support Governor Perry over Mitt Romney?”
Interviewee: “I like that Perry’s not a career politician.”
Romney
70th Governor of Massachusetts: 2003-2007
Perry
Texas House of Representatives: 1985–1991
9th Commissioner of Agriculture of Texas: 1991-1999
39th Lieutenant Governor of Texas: 1999-2000
47th Governor of Texas: 2000-
26 years vs Romney’s 4 (who didn’t seek re-election).
Perception is reality…
They’re trying to come up with facts to justify their position, but it’s all about religion. Otherwise they would line up behind him without a second thought.
I just don’t see the republican party nominating someone that deosn’t accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior.. and I mean the one and only Jesus from 2000 years ago.
Before you go off on me about religionism, I’m an atheist. It is the evangelical Republicans that are religionists.
If you’re an atheist is there a reason you assume that the anti-mormon definition of the godhead is any more valid than the mormon definition? They both think they accept the guy from 2000 years ago as their personal lord and savior…they just have slightly different ideas about who he was talking about when he would refer to his father. Which results in some saying it can’t be the same guy.
“Which results in some saying it can’t be the same guy.”
‘My Jesus is better than your Jesus.’
A national random Lotto-stlye selection for the next POTUS would give a better result than the current election system. Give me Joe average or some homeless guy and I would feel better represented than when presented with the choices on election day. At least you might end up with a human.
I think we should draft a farmer, just yank him off his tractor. Not an air conditioned tractor though.
“I like that Perry’s not a career politician.”
Is this a typical Perry supporter? They guess they aren’t making Republican’t voters any smarter these days.
If Bomb Thrower is back, I need to bring the umlaut back — gotta toughen up and steel my balls for the next leg down.
Bring it on.
Warum möchten Sie das umlaut?
I don’t speak German, but my realtor and property manager do (the irony)!
My wife speaks Dutch, she’s asleep. Do you think she can figure this out?
The next leg down is looking really ugly, as many major industrialized nations’ real economies are slowing down at the same time. Got gold?
Market Pulse Archives
Sept. 4, 2011, 11:01 p.m. EDT
Hong Kong PMI points to contraction
By Chris Oliver
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Hong Kong’s Purchasing Managers’ Index eased to 47.8 in August compared to a 51.4 print for the headline reading in July. The result was below the 50 level which divides contraction from expansion, marking the first time Hong Kong’s private-sector economy has deteriorated in more than two years. Employment conditions for the month showed the first contraction since Dec. 2010, while output declined at a moderate pace, and new orders also showed a constaction, reversing from a slight rise in June. The PMI marked the worst deterioration in overall operating conditions in Hong Kong for 26 months, accoring to HSBC. “Mainland demand for Hong Kong goods and services is still holding firm, but weakening Western demand is adversely weighing on business conditions and hiring activities,” said Mark McCombe, chief executive of HSBC in Hong Kong.
…
CAC down 4.73% and DAX down 5.13%. What will tomorrow’s open be like and will we see any action from the Fed Reserve/Bernanke/Obama trying to blunt the impact?
Test
Just what the Gulf Coast does not exactly need at the moment: Houses that are literally underwater to complement figuratively underwater houses.
Sept. 4, 2011, 3:18 p.m. EDT
Storms pound U.S., Japan
Tropical Storm Lee comes ashore in Louisiana; widespread flooding
By Matt Andrejczak and Robert Daniel, MarketWatch
Rick Porche walks through his flooded yard Sunday in Lafitte, La.
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) – Tropical Storm Lee made landfall Sunday, flooding parts of the U.S. Gulf Coast, while Typhoon Talas wreaked havoc in western Japan and Hurricane Katia gained strength in the Atlantic Ocean.
Lee’s storm surge left towns along the Gulf Coast under several feet of water as its center moved slowly across southern Louisiana. New Orleans, still recovering from the 2005 devastation of Hurricane Katrina, was under a flash-flood alert.
…
An upside-down house has built-in flood insurance. You just walk away…
I’ve been wondering…..if Europe melts down w/in the next 12 mos will we see our decision makers abandon their attempts to reinflate housing as they busy themselves fighting the flames of contagion.