Bits Bucket for September 6, 2011
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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Are there enough pitch forks on the planet to arm the world’s farmers to take action against 17 Megabanks?
Time will tell…
State lawsuit names banks in federal complaints
SCOTT SONNER, Associated Press
Updated 03:42 p.m., Monday, September 5, 2011
RENO, Nev. (AP) — Nevada’s attorney general says the latest lawsuits filed by the federal government against the nation’s largest banks attack the kind of deceptive loan practices that prompted an “explosion of delinquencies and unauthorized and unnecessary foreclosures” in the state.
Bank of America Corp., which now owns Countrywide Financial Corp., was among the 17 plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed Friday by the Federal Housing Finance Agency in New York state. Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto named both in an updated complaint filed Aug. 30 in U.S. District Court in Reno.
“Their misconduct cut across virtually every aspect of defendants’ operations — from originating to servicing and, all too often, to foreclosing on the loans and homes of Nevada consumers,” Masto said.
The federal lawsuits accused Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs and others of selling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac billions of dollars’ worth of mortgage-backed securities that turned toxic when the housing market collapsed. The suits said the securities had been sold with registration statements and prospectuses that “contained materially false or misleading statements and omissions.”
The federal agency said the banks and mortgage lenders falsely represented that the mortgage loans in the securities complied with underwriting guidelines and standards. They also included representations “that significantly overstated the ability of the borrower to repay their mortgage loans.”
In the Nevada lawsuit, Masto said Countrywide misrepresented the nature and terms of their mortgage loans, “ensnaring Nevada consumers in loans that they did not understand and could not repay.”
…
isn’t the whole point of this lawsuit so they can settle out of cort for some redonkulously low “fine”…never to be charged for any crime related to the housing bubble again?
it’s just a song and a dance.
Probably…
Corporations are persons. Persons with fat wallets full of potential campaign contributions. Bad persons of low character.
There have been some fascinating studies done on group dynamics, where as a group people will act far worse than they would as individuals.
They are acting like this is a civil lawsuit issue when it’s actually a big time criminal issue on a very big scale .
The crime spree was so big that it had the power to alter real estate values to such a artificial degree and leverage without proper reserves creates to big to fail .
This set up a situation of past the risk ,without proper insurance ,without proper reserves ,without proper ratings , with leverage with no real backing for that level of leverage . And than they set up a situation where they want to make bets on the crash of these bogus instruments .
The chain all the way down to the loan officers and real estate agents were commiting loan crimes without blinking a eye . The borrowers were at fault for going along with it
and not objecting . It’s amazing how borrowers didn’t object until later ,meaning they were willing to go along with this lending scam .
This was a major criminal enterprise and lending crime spree . The creation of wealth by a Ponzi=scheme . No different than Madoff .
The fact that these lawsuits were filed right before the deadline for filing is actually an indication that they are pretty serious about them.
If you just want to make a show of a lawsuit and take an absurdly low settlement offer, you could bring the action earlier, when everyone was yelling and screaming about it. My understanding is that unlike most plaintiffs, Fannie and Freddie have additional rights to review internal docs before a lawsuit is brought (normally that level of review would have to wait for the discovery process), so the amount of time spent on the investigation before bringing it to court is a good sign.
In a lot of other situations, waiting till the last minute might be a sign that they are just bringing the case to avoid being criticized for not bringing it. With Fannie and Freddie, the timing issues are different.
Thank you for the clarification, polly. It’s very encouraging and stops the knee-jerk reaction. It is good that we on the HBB have you as a resource.
Seconded.
Very welcome. It was a small detail that I read in a much longer article, but to an attorney it screams out of the page. I expect most people wouldn’t even have noticed it. It doesn’t seem like it should matter, but I think it does.
Judges like it when you show up to court already prepared to prove as much of your case as you can. And, as I point out below, this case is going to depend on judges not hating you. Rulings matter.
This is the sort of cool insider factoid that keeps bringing me back to this forum. Where else can one learn so much across such a broad spectrum of personal knowledge and experience?
Thanks, Polly. You are a treasure!
Thank you for your insights, polly!
We are very fortunate to have you here on the HBB.
That pesky bear that occasionally roams Wall Street is back with a vengeance.
Sept. 5, 2011, 10:56 a.m. EDT
U.S. stock-index futures decline sharply
By Kate Gibson
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — U.S. stock-index futures on Monday fell along with European shares, hit by a report late last week showing flat hiring by U.S. companies in August and on renewed worries about Europe’s debt crisis. With the U.S. stock market closed for the Labor Day holiday, the September futures contract for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJ1U -1.01%) declined 225 points at 10,983. Futures for the Standard & Poor’s 500 (SP1U -1.39%) declined 25.5 points to 1,143.80. Futures for the Nasdaq 100 (ND1U -1.25%) fell 46.50 points to 2,118.25.
…
PPT is currently in a WalMart-stlye pep rally.
The PPT seems to have quietly shuttered its operation as of late…
and consequently, risk premiums in stock prices are coming back with a vengeance.
No, I think what we are witnessing is a drop WITH the best efforts of the PPT to soften the effect. Imagine what the market would look like without THEM?
I find it hard to beleve that “We didn’t see it coming “, and
everybody else was doing it will be a defense against fraud and Ponzi schemes and mis-ratings ,and hiding information .
Just because you had a bunch of fraudulent loan packages that looked good ,doesn’t mean that they were . They are acting like they had no responsibility to pass good product .
The thing about market value is that the values become false with faulty lending ,therefore you can’t say that the faulty lending wasn’t a falsehood in itself in its ability to
raise real estate prices artifically without it being based on ttrue qualified deamnd .
isn’t that a falsehood ,to raise values artifically by fraud in lending . Isn’t that the real problem ,fake values by fraud lending crashing ?
And the insurance that was covering this junk wasn’t backed by insurance companies that could pay ,what a racket that is . It was all smoke and mirrors ,all based on
real estate going up . And the leverage and other side bets that were going on were a additional crime .
Hank Pualson talked about Good Bank/Bad Bank as if the Bad Bank could be separated from the Good Bank . As if the Bad Bank actions didn’t created a entirely false inflated value in real estate .
Wall Street just needed something they could use to create wealth to play with and real estate became the vehicle . It could of been anything ,but real estate would get the majority involved . They decoupled this scheme from wages and qualifying and that is a Ponzi-scheme .
“They are acting like they had no responsibility to pass good product . ”
They don’t. Their only responsibility is to make as much money in profit and fees as fast as possible. What are you going to do, shame them? Oh the horror.
What do they care? They’ll bow their heads in shame, take their $6M bonus, and go at it again the next day.
Dow has recovered 2/3rds of its losses…. PPT to the rescue.
What could it possibly mean when not only U.S. Treasurys but also German bund yields are cowering towards the zero percent floor?
Sept. 5, 2011, 11:14 a.m. EDT
German 10-year bund yield hits record low
By William L. Watts
FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) — The prices of German government bonds continued to rise Monday as investors sought safe havens amid heavy pressure on equities and ongoing uncertainty about the sustainability of the global economic recovery and the euro-zone sovereign debt crisis. The yield on 10-year German bonds, or bunds DE:10YR_GER +2.84% extended the recent move below the 2% level to fall as low as 1.83%, an all-time low, and were seen at 1.84% in recent action, according to FactSet Research data.
…
“What could it possibly mean when not only U.S. Treasurys but also German bund yields are cowering towards the zero percent floor?”
That the bond vigilantes aren’t as worried about our deficits as the KochTeaPuss and the Fox would have us believe? It’s all much ado about nothing?
Or it’s all much ado about hiding money under the mattress and sitting out the next leg down in global stock markets.
I’d say this is the same thing as there are no bond vigilantes. We are in a deflationary spiral the middle class is dead and stocks are going to go down, so where do I park money that is safe. Not worried about return on investment they are worried about return of investment.
If people thought growth was on the horizon you can be dam sure they’d be investing and driving up the interest rates on treasuries.
The vote of confidence that shows a lack of confidence.
Comment by measton
2011-09-06 09:48:14
I’d say this is the same thing as there are no bond vigilantes. We are in a deflationary spiral the middle class is dead and stocks are going to go down, so where do I park money that is safe. Not worried about return on investment they are worried about return of investment.
If people thought growth was on the horizon you can be dam sure they’d be investing and driving up the interest rates on treasuries.
Exactly!
Here is an example of where owning gold has a big advantage over owning fiat currencies. Anyone long in Swiss francs just got creamed:
Sept. 6, 2011, 5:26 a.m. EDT
Franc plunges as Swiss set euro-franc floor
SNB vows to buy ‘unlimited quantities’ of euros to defend rate
By William L. Watts, MarketWatch
FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) — The Swiss franc plunged dramatically versus the euro and other major rivals Tuesday after the Swiss National Bank took the extraordinary step of setting a floor for the euro/Swiss franc exchange rate at 1.20 francs and vowed to buy “unlimited quantities” of euros to defend it.
In a breakneck swing, the euro (EURCHF +8.47%) traded at $1.2019 versus the Swiss franc, a rise of 8.8%, as traders stampeded out of short euro/Swiss franc bets. Other currencies also rose versus the franc, with the U.S. dollar (USDCHF +7.79%) jumping 8.1% to trade at 84.90 centimes. There are 100 centimes in a franc.
…
Will this set off a chain reaction? Perhaps even in some entirely unexpected places?
Perhaps even in some entirely unexpected places?
Thats my fear…Over used I know, but watch out for the Black Swan…These “pirates” on wall street have all known & anticipated events factored in already…Its the unknown “event” that would torpedo the market in a really big way given the fragility of the global markets…
“to buy “unlimited quantities” of euros to defend it.”
Remember, currency manipulation is BAD, except when it’s done by a 1st-world central bank.
Financial Crime
SFO joins US inquiry into bank practices
The Serious Fraud Office has stepped into the US investigation of banking activity that led up to the sub-prime mortgage crisis and credit crunch.
The lawsuits are looking at allegations banks failed to conduct proper due diligence in the sale of mortgage securities to the US mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
By Jonathan Russell, Harry Wilson and Richard Blackden
6:45AM BST 03 Sep 2011
The Daily Telegraph understands the crime-fighting agency is actively investigating billions of pounds of complex mortgage-backed securities, including Goldman Sachs’s notorious “Timberwolf” transaction.
The $1bn package of mortgages sold by Goldman in 2007 has already led to a number of lawsuits and investigations in the US.
The action by the SFO comes as details of potential lawsuits against major banks on both sides of the Atlantic emerged.
In the US, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank are all being targeted by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) over the sale of mortgage-backed securities.
In the UK, Barclays, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland are expected to be named in US legal papers.
…
Serious Fraud Office. Does that mean there’s also a Trivial Fraud Office?
Only the Brits could come up with such a humorous qualifier on the name of an official office.
Sounds like Monty Python, dunnit?
“Sounds like Monty Python, dunnit?”
This skit comes to mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqhlQfXUk7w
Exactly my thought…”I’m not debt yet.”
Alpha, which skit is that. I can’t get youtube here.
I was reminded of Silly Walks.
“I was reminded of Silly Walks.”
That was it. The Ministry of Silly Walks.
Lt. Kaffee: “Was it serious fraud?”
Col. Jessep: “Is there any other kind?”
I love how Obama is going to be giving a “major” speech on jobs. Kind of the same thing.
Refresh my memory: When will that speech be? I’m awfully busy this week, and am not sure I could work an Obama speech into my schedule.
Cue the serious fraud department.
A plague on all their houses
5 September 2011 | By Vanessa Drucker
On Friday afternoon, as Wall Street beetled off for a three-day holiday weekend, the government filed suit against 17 major banks, just in time to cast one more shadow at the beach.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, (“Frannie”) accuses the banks of misrepresenting the caliber of the loans they packaged during the go-go years and sold on to the housing agencies.
Financial sector stocks swooned on Friday. Exacerbated by a dismal employment report, Bank of America’s stock price fell 8.3%, JPMorgan’s 4.6% and Goldman Sachs dived 4.5%. Some questioned the timing of this latest legal salvo, after the banks’ near death experience in 2008.
The timing is inconvenient, as markets reel and the world appears to lurch toward recession, but the wheels of justice grind slowly and methodically. It is the official duty of the FHFA to represent Frannie; 64 subpoenas had already been issued against the banks over a year ago; and a statute of limitations may have prompted Friday’s timing.
…
The timing is perfect. It doesn’t do any good to sue someone right after they reqired a massive bailout. Three years later, when they have been rolling in cash and vacuuming it all up as quickly as possible, you can sue them.
This *is* the clawback, everyone. It is on some of the profits created by the bailout, not executive bonuses, but executive pay is an issue for the shareholders, not the government. This is it, folks.
The problem of course is that the CEO’s will still walk with a big payday. It’s the retail investor slob who will pay for their misdeeds.
The retail investor slob who willingly owns shares in these evil fraudsters deserves to get his heads handed to him.
True, but it would be nice for a change to hold accountable those at the top of the pyramid. Why are they so untouchable?
I remember those shadowy articles where F&F were hiring forensic accountants to look for liar loans that the banks sold them. Is this what this is about? You sold us a liar loan, now pay up and oh by the way that’s fraud?
How long do you think it would take to prove all this and actually see some money? This alone is enough to vote for a wimpified Obama… to keep these lawsuits going.
psstsupremecourtpsst
It is going to take a very, very long time. The first thing you have to get past is whether F&F have to prove misstatements for every loan individually, or whether they can take a batch of, say, 10,000 that they purchased with assurances that 98% of them had specified characteristics (documented income, income properly stated, loan to income ratio of Z or less, downpayment of at least x%, whaterver else) and do a random sampling and say that since only 40% of the sample met the criteria, and therefore the bank has to buy back the whole lot.
The banks will claim that F&F are sophisticated investors and should have known they were being lied to because everyone knew that the generally accepted standards on mortgage loans had changed or should have checked every loan ahead of time or whatever else. And they will also claim that only the specific loans where the actual non-compliance with the rules can be proved - find the borrower and get all their financial docs and prove that the information on the application was wrong at the time the loan was made - should be repurchased. Actually, they will probably demand that F&F provide info on every loan in every pool they are questioning in order to show that they did not meet the 98% (or whatever the real number is) threshold for comliance and then they should only have to buy back the bad ones that can be proved.
I have no idea if the court will allow a sampling to prove the pools did not meet their contractual obligations. I think that courts have made similar allowances in the past, though I don’t remember the particular circumstances. Just bringing this case required the years of work they already put in. If the courts go bank friendly on the rulings, it will take another decade or more.
Unfortunately our legal system is lethargic and politically corrupt, so these fraudulent loans couldn’t be prevented during the run-up despite the early evidence.
Of course they could have been prevented. Back then Fannie and Freddie were private companies with only an implicit government backing and their executives made millions of dollar salaries. If they had been willing to sacrifice profits to properly review a percentage of the mortgages purchased and, if any irregularities were found, refuse to purchase any more loans from that originator, those originators would have toed the line better - at least with the loans they sold to Fannie and Freddie.
The private pools are a different matter. I don’t know if there were any hard and fast rules about the loans that got put into those securitization pools, though I expect the disclosure was inadequate. Fraud is way harder to prove than failure to fulfill prenegotiated contract terms. Way harder.
Don’t let the banksters off the hook without retaining the right to sue. They wouldn’t care so much if they didn’t know of a lot more legal exposure than the robo-signing tip of the iceberg that is plainly visible.
September 6, 2011 3:49 am
Wave of lawsuits engulfs troubled lenders
By Tom Braithwaite and Kara Scannell in New York
The US mortgage crisis has entered a new stage. US banks are still flailing in the toxic sludge of bad assets that heralded the financial crisis. But now they are having to deal with a barrage of litigation that will determine how big their losses will be. The optimists say settlements are being reached, banks are adequately reserved and many of the claims have dubious merit. Sceptics say many more lawsuits are on the way.
The supposedly sophisticated practice of securitisation – packaging mortgages into bonds – was, it turns out, not only flawed but built on a foundation of paper. When homeowners began to default en masse in 2006, under-resourced mortgage servicing divisions cut corners on the process to seize back the properties. In so-called robo signing, a bank employee’s signature was placed on court papers even if the employee had no knowledge of the individual mortgage. The emergence of these issues froze foreclosures in parts of the country and kicked off a multi-pronged investigation by federal and state agencies that is supposed to punish banks and reform the system.
● Impact: Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally Financial are the biggest servicers, in order of size, and account for more than 60 per cent of the market. Protracted settlement talks led by state attorneys-general with the banks are designed to get servicers to pay a total of about $20bn in financial penalties, including writing down outstanding mortgage debt, in return for a release from legal liability. The scope of that release is now the biggest sticking point, with New York and California in particular warning their fellow states that the right to sue the industry must be preserved.
Despite the pricetag and the public relations risk attached to improper procedures in evicting delinquent borrowers from their homes, banks say that this is the easiest bucket and that resolution could help house prices find a floor.
“If it’s done well this could really help with the housing market,” says one person involved in the talks. “Accelerating foreclosures, coming up with solutions to let people stay in their homes – it’s both.”
Parties involved have described the settlement as “two weeks away” for most of 2011 but most still expect resolution by the end of the year.
…
We got all this nice housing inventory, see? And it’s starting to go downhill, if ya knows whats we means. So if yous try to drag this out, that precious inventory will never see the light of day, capiche? So just do this up with a minor penalty, why don’t ya, and we can settle this easy and quick-like.
“banks say that this is the easiest bucket ”
I’m not sure what that means. Easiest problem to solve? We’ll see.
There’s a bucket of robosigners where they had the paper but didn’t spend time looking at it. The “fraud” is where they signed an affidavit that they were familiar with the facts of the case, without really being familiar with the facts of the case. That bucket is easy to solve: they just go back, familiarize with the fact of the case, and re-sign. End of fraud.
Now, the MERS stuff where there is no good paper trail — watch out.
That’s fraud, and forgery. Which in non-kleptocracies and non-banana republics is treated as a criminal offense.
The forgoing comments are the reason why these Power Players should have no power at all ,they should of been stripped of their power a long time ago when it was apparent that a Ponzi=scheme had imploded .
This idea of bail outs and obstruction of Justice and avoiding standing law when the scheme was apparent hasn’t accompolished anything in 5 years . A bunch of money went toward propping up a falase market .
How do these criminals get to rate uninsured paper ( meaning
the insurance didn’t have enough reserves to be considered
really insured ) and call it AAA paper .
This has always been about hiding the crimes, and passing the loss to parties other than the true culprits ,and the liability to
parties other than the true Culprits .
And what about the borrowers crimes also ,do they get off the hook also .
I said this from day one 5 years ago ,no bail outs ,take them out and bail out some of the true victims and shore up FDIC and
thats about all you can do in a situation like this .
Everything has been a slow and gradual taking from the Majority ,the taxpayer and the government for the benefit of these Culprits that blew it .
Corruption is just that ,it’s needs to be killed ,not given power and kept alive .
Amen, Wiz.
U.S. banks offered deal over lawsuits: report
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/06/us-banks-deal-idUSTRE7850MK20110906
Summer ends on sour note for jobless teens
By Paul Davidson, USA TODAY
The unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-olds ticked up to 25.4% in August from 25% the previous month, the Labor Department said last week. For black teens, unemployment leaped to 46.5% from 39.2% in July. The nation’s jobless rate was unchanged at 9.1%.
Equally disconcerting: the jobless rate for teens of all races has hovered around 25% all summer each of the past three years, marking the worst such stretch on records back to 1948.
Summer teenage unemployment averaged 13% in 2000 and 15.8% as recently as 2007.
The prolonged slump has serious implications for America’s future adult workers. Summer jobs are critical for teaching youths “soft skills,” such as how to deal with customers and managers, says Michael Saltsman, research fellow at the Employment Policies Institute.
A 1995 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found high school seniors who worked 20 hours a week can expect to earn 21% more in annual salary and 11% higher hourly wages six to nine years later.
Yet just 29.6% of all teens worked this summer, tying last year’s all time low. In 2000, more than half of teens worked.
In a report last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics cites several reasons for the long-term trend, including many teens in summer school and more high school graduates enrolling in college.
Also, jobs traditionally held by teens, such as grocery cashiers and retail sales associates have been replaced by technology, Saltsman says. The recession accelerated the trend, with many teens losing out to laid-off workers with more experience in the hunt for low-level jobs.
To help working youths, Saltsman says the federal government should give employers more flexiblity to pay them as much as $3 below the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. Now, such a “training wage” can only be paid for 90 days.
Saltsman cites a study by Miami and Trinity universities showing the increase in the minimum hourly wage to $7.25 from $5.15 from 2007 to 2009 reduced teen-age employment nationwide by 2.5%, or 114,000 workers.
To help working youths, Saltsman says the federal government should give employers more flexiblity to pay them as much as $3 below the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. ” [says Michael Saltsman, research fellow at the Employment Policies Institute.]
Oh boy oh boy oh BOY, another unknown policy think tank!! Let’s look them up, shall we?
sourcewatch dot org:
———
“The Employment Policies Institute (EPI) is one of several front groups created by Berman & Co., a Washington, DC public affairs firm owned by Rick Berman, who lobbies for the restaurant, hotel, alcoholic beverage and tobacco industries….Rick Berman created EPI in 1991 to “argue the importance of minimum wage jobs for the poor and uneducated….
The group’s 2000 IRS return stated that the group received $1,163,248 in income for the year, most of which ($940,593) came from 17 anonymous donors. Of that amount, $717,812 went to Berman & Co. for “management services,” and another $165,766 in salary and benefits went personally to Rick Berman…
According to the Right Guide, funders of EPI have included the John M. Olin Foundation and the Claude R. Lamb Charitable Foundation.”
————-
Okay, let’s go a level deeper into the funders:
John M. Olin Fundation: gives to other think tanks like Heritage, Hoover, and Project for a New American Century <— PNAC is Kristol and Kagan’s attack-iraq thinktank. [Sourcewatch again]
Claude R. Lamb: “In 1980 Charles G. Koch established the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and in 1981 he inherited control of the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation when he was left in charge of Claude Lambe’s estate.” [wikipedia under Koch]
THANK YOU, that tells me all I need to know. Paid shills passed off as news for the masses. I give up.
Fascinating info, oxide. The layers of funding among these institutes and foundations are like an onion, equally stinky and loads more toxic.
Oxide - Thank you for sharing your research.
Edwards Bernays (Freud’s nephew) was an evil genuis, for sure. He created the “onion”.(Elanor-great term).
Think Tank…Institute… Foundation… The wall between the agenda (corporate money ) and the masses. All Bernays “Engineering Of Consent”.
Next they will advocate for indentured servitude.
Look these teens are hungry, they can get a meal and a shed to live in if they just sign their life away for the next 20 years and consent to 18 hours a day 7 days a week no vaca and one flogging a day. They will also be forced to sleep with the master if commanded to do so.
What are you talking about? We already have an economic draft.
Think tanks = Whores in everything but name
“Now, such a “training wage” can only be paid for 90 days.”
How long is summer vacation?
So basically, employers can hire teens for summer jobs, and pay them much less than the current minimum wage,but they are still choosing not to do it.
So much for the minimum wage as a job-killer idea. Maybe there aren’t many jobs because most people don’t make enough to buy anything but essentials.
Or because they were lawn-mowing jobs that are taken by undocumented, or low-level retail taken by 55-year-olds desperate for any income, or because companies are employing the teens as interns for free.
Also, does the employer get that 90-day freebie once? If the same teen comes back next summer — so he’s already trained — do they have to pay him full minimum?
I’ll let my kid sit at home all summer playing video games, before I let her work for $4.00/hour. That doesn’t even cover costs to get her back and forth to work.
These dumbasses think that skilled labor should be working for $5/hour. But they want to keep their pay/prices at 2006 levels.
It’s going to be one of two things. Start paying J6P more for his labor, or watch for deflation in all asset classes.
Self-enlightenment or selfish, grotesque stupidity.
I’m betting on stupidity.
I told my kids that while they were in school, classes were their main job. Part-time and summer were optiional. Of course they were all on the advanced acadewmic track. College paid off for them. I might have felt differently if they had not cared about an education or were not competent in their classes.
Hey teens! The goons are recruiting
we want YOU!
“…..the increase in minimum wage…….reduced teenage employment nation wide…..”
Thanks for clearing that up for me. I thought it was the imploding economy that caused the increase in teenage unemployment.
So, a 40% increase in the minimum wage only increased unemployment by 2.5%? (114,000? that’s a rounding error)
Watta you say we increase it another 40% (to 10.15/hr)? Those 114,000 jobs are going to disappear anyway, so why not?
Obama Mulls Tax Cuts Beyond Republican Plans
- Bloomberg
President Barack Obama may press Congress for tax cuts that would exceed his past proposals as well as some of the offerings from House Republicans to strengthen his hand in talks on measures to boost the U.S. economy, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
With Obama set to lay out his plans in a Sept. 8 address to Congress, the administration is focusing on cuts targeted at middle-income Americans to spur consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
In a speech to a union crowd in Detroit yesterday, Obama said he would challenge Republicans on taxes.
“You say you’re the party of tax cuts?” Obama said before the annual Metro Detroit Central Labor Council rally. “Well then, prove you’ll fight just as hard for tax cuts for middle- class families as you do for oil companies and the most affluent Americans.”
Obama will unveil his new economic agenda as unemployment remains at 9.1 percent more than two years after the recession’s official end. The jobless rate and the sluggish recovery from the worst recession since the Great Depression will be central issues as Obama runs for re-election next year. Republicans, who control the U.S. House, have signaled resistance to new spending that would add to the federal budget deficit.
Stalled on Jobs
Without new measures to boost hiring, Obama’s budget office forecast last week that the unemployment rate would be little changed in 2012, averaging 9 percent.
“With the unemployment rate stuck at such a high level, the economy desperately needs help,” said Peter Orszag, former director of Obama’s Office of Management Budget.
Whatever plan Obama settles on “will probably have to lean heavily on tax cuts if it’s going to have a serious chance of being enacted,” Orszag, vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup Inc., said in an e-mail. “They should be coupled with credible deficit reduction that is enacted now but doesn’t take effect for some time.”
70% consumer spending. Is it going to be 70% all the way down?
Unless the dollar devalues enough to boost exports it very well might be. Businesses react to drops in consumer spending by reducing their own spending to retain profit margins. Unless we can sell to other countries, where else is the GDP supposed to come from?
Note all other countries are doing the same thing, and unless those printed dollars get into the hands of consumers in a way that makes them feel confident and able to afford manufactured goods you can expect more unemployment.
I’ve been on a financial book reading tear of late. One of my recent reads (for freelancers like me) advised saving 30% of everything that comes in. Reason: We need to set money aside for emergencies, taxes, and long-term savings (which could imply retirement — or a sabbatical).
Then there was another book, more geared toward employees, that advised saving 20% of after-tax money.
These scenarios don’t bode well for a debt-fueled, consumer spending-based economy.
of course no one in the media will ask, what good is tax cuts when you don’t pay taxes?
Middle class families don’t pay taxes? News to me.
Gee, if these guys are still so obsessed with the hyper-consumers you’d think they’d be in the advanced stages of implementing a VAT to get in on some of that spending action.
implementing a VAT ??
I think that’s exactly what we are going to get along with many other tax code changes…
Realtors Are Liars®
Good morning HBB!
To whose goon squad do you belong, may I ask?
And more importantly, are you a good goon, or a bad goon?
Or Alice The Goon?
http://tinyurl.com/2f6u7pk
Is it the silent goon squad?
“To whose goon squad do you belong…”
For whom do you goon?
Ask not for whom the commenter goons. The commenter goons for you!
Ask not for whom he goons. He goons for thee.
Hire today, goon tomorrow.
LOL…
Teamsters President Jim Hoffa almost leaked the goons’ plans in Detroit yesterday.
The goons will “take these son of b***** out and give America back to an America where we belong” when the time is right.
I love Hoffa Jr.
Sounds like Germany in 1933…
Why do you hate $10/hr working people? Why?
Becuase they aren’t “producers…”
Have you noticed he cannot nor has he ever answered a simple question like this one? (laughing)
I love working people, I don’t care much for communist union leadership.
That union is the only thing between the working people that you “love” and the working conditions of the Gilded Age.
“love” I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
If that’s love, his version of hate must be be a real doozy.
You didn’t really address my point regarding communist union leadership. There has also been associations between unions and organized crime. Please tell me how the communists and the mafia help the workers? Regardless of the good unions have done, you have to see the present state and wonder to yourself if they have become nothing more than extortion enterprises.
Our “present state” — where workers are being raped by the capitalist class — is due to the fact that unions have LOST so much power.
I’m at the point now where I truly understand why unions have had to be “goons” in the past. Sometimes, you are given no other option.
Answer the question.
Why do you hate $10/hr working people? Why?
“The goons will “take these son of b***** out and give America back to an America where we belong” when the time is right.”
You know, I think this type of rhetoric was responsible for the sh00tings in Reno Nevada today. You can’t stand in front of a bunch of Union enforcers and shout out that kind of bile and those direct orders without consequences. Where is the outrage?
Crickets.
2b or not 2b, that is the question.
2b anana mous?
Shoot! A for sale sign just went up in front of a house around the corner that we’ve been eyeing for the 7+ years we’ve lived in our rental (longer than I’ve ever lived in any other house in my life!). I went over and talked to the lady whose mom just passed, and she showed me around the house. It’s exactly what we’ve been waiting for all these years.
Around here, it’s not just a matter of price, but of inventory. Houses like this (single-story, 4 bedroom, large yard with pool, no HOA or Mello-Roos, etc.) very rarely come on the market around here, and if they do, they’re “snapped up” by other buyers who are desperately searching for this type of housing stock.
Anyway, I got all emotional because it’s the perfect house for us, and we already know all the neighbors, get to go on our same walks, are only a few houses away from where we’ve raised our kids so far…and I verbally offered list price, which is barely below peak levels.
Prices around here have barely budged since we moved here in 2004, and in the meantime, we’ve spent almost $200K in rent. Quite frankly, it’s a wash for us (equity drop if we had bought when we first started renting vs. rent spent while waiting — actually, we would have had less of a “loss” if we had bought), and it’s really grating on us because Mr. CA Renter really wants to find a house so we can raise our kids in our “permanent” family home.
I feel totally dejected, as if this was all in vain. Over the years, I kept thinking that the BIG “financial crisis” was about to hit and make everything okay, but it just isn’t happening. Now, we have the FHFA conspiring with private specuvestors in an attempt to keep housing prices artificially high and homes off the market, again. (Don’t even get me started on the potential for fraud and corruption in these public-private partnerships…I despise them.)
In the meantime, we’ve been sitting around with 0% interest rates on our savings.
Sorry…just had to vent. Thank you all for being here over the years, as you’re the only ones who understand what we’re going through.
Will post details of whatever happens. I’m hoping the appraisal will come in low and give me some additional negotiating room.
and I verbally offered list price, which is barely below peak levels.
Should be a way of at least getting 3% back to you depending on how you structured the offer to the RE agent.
You gotta do what you gotta do. Our experience has been one of waiting while more value hits the market(better houses at lower prices). It’s been a waiting game and now time is on our side. We’ll strike when the value is there. Not until.
We’ve been anxious to return to San Luis Obispo, CA, but the time is not right given my age and financial situation. Eventually the government will run out of QE money, and we’ll see a return to an economic equilibrium where effort and savings retake the high ground. Fingers crossed.
“Eventually the government will run out of QE money,…”
There is more where that came from…
We’ve been anxious to return to San Luis Obispo, CA ??
Thats where I happen to be sitting right now..:) Just a few steps from the Beach…Pismo Beach in fact…Cooking some steak & eggs in about 30 minutes and then taking the dogs over to Avila Beach for a good run…
I hope it works out for you!
The great unwinding will go on for a long, long time. Due in large part to our nanny gubmint gumming up the works with bound to fail programs. You can’t wait forever, so if this house works for you and yours then good.
Thanks, wmbz.
Falling in love sure does change how math works. Good luck CARenter in finding your happiness. Lots of us thought this process would be further along by now. Life does march on.
The house, it’s more than the $250K that would begin to make sense, right?
So now we’re “falling in love” with a house simply because it’s not trashed? Wow, our standards have fallen. I see the same in the DC area: passable housing stock is simply very rare, or priced $100K too high. Zillow shows only the dregs, that’s for sure. I’m resigned to the idea that I will never find a move-in-ready house. Maybe I’ll be able to low-ball a house in livable but shabby condition, and use the savings to fix the place up. I’ll be happy to have a house the way that others are happy to have a job.
I know HBB loves renters, but how many years can you rent before you realize you could have bought half a house during that time frame? Especially in regions Where the Jobs Are, both houses and rent are very high.
I know HBB loves renters, but how many years can you rent before you realize you could have bought half a house during that time frame? Especially in regions Where the Jobs Are, both houses and rent are very high.
That’s true, but it’s still a lot more expensive to buy than rent here. So another year passes in the trailer park. Gotta do one more year to hang onto my 4k worth of tax credit anyway :-).
Note when the GSE’s sell that pile of houses to WS and they start renting expect another leg down in rent and house prices.
Carl,
You have no idea how much I envy your situation. When you first mentioned buying a mobile home in which to wait this out, my dad had just passed away, leaving us with his mobile home. Unfortunately, it was in a senior park, so we couldn’t live there. Around here, pretty much all of the mobile parks are senior parks, so we weren’t able to do what you did.
You made a very smart move there!
Thanks. Time will tell, but no regrets so far. Luckily it’s a pretty nice neighborhood (considering).
now we’re “falling in love”….
Of course. The decision to buy a particular house is usually overwhelmingly emotional. This is why the buyer is (usually) his/her own worst enemy.
That’s why I haven’t gone house hunting with my wife for over six years. She falls in love with houses; I just view them as places to live in.
I suspect that I won’t fall in love either — too many years on HBB. I view owning a house as a way to avoid another ^#%&*! rent hike.
Simple solution: Don’t buy until it is cheaper to own than to rent.
In my neck of the woods, it is already cheaper to own than to rent. If I’m willing to put a little $$ in the house and learn Spanish by immersion, then I can buy this for a little over HALF my rent. That includes taxes and insurance.
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1600-Oakview-Dr-Silver-Spring-MD-20903/37129455_zpid/#{scid=hdp-site-map-list-address}
1949 3/1.5 small colonial on 0.2 acre. Looks kinda nice, clean yard, BUT the pix don’t snow the inside. Red flag…
May 1997: Sold $151K
Sep 2005: Sold $409K
May 2006: Sold $470K
Aug 2011: Listed $225K.
A lot depends on how flesible you want to be and if you enjoy yard work and maintance. I hate maintance. It never ends.
It never ends ??
Yep, unless you buy something new then you may get a 10 year reprieve if your lucky…
lets not underestimate the damage of neighborhoods being destroyed by trashed foreclosures ,even if you have one that isn’t trashed .
Anybody that thinks you can determine value by not looking at the market of the entire neighborhood is crazy .
Appraisals are based on Market value .so you can’t just pull a house out that surrounded by 5 forclosures and say that house is worth 200 thousand more .
This situation just destroyed the ability to have a market
where prices can be determined and it just gets to the point where you get another leg down after you get a wave of borrowers catching a falling knife .
Not for everyone, Oxide. Even for a condo with comparable space to my current apartment. just the property taxes/HOA would be 75% of my current rent. Never mind the PII on a giant mortgage. For a place with a longer commute and not in a walkable neighborhood.
Not everyone gets to commute to the suburbs.
My situation is very different from yours, Polly. If I worked downtown I’m not sure what I would do. The only hope is to get a roommate and find a fixer-upper in an up-and-coming neighborhood, maybe Brookland.
Single people are definitely screwed. Housing is for marrieds. The only reason I could get away with it is because I would be buying a working-class house on a professional income.
I know HBB loves renters, but how many years can you rent before you realize you could have bought half a house during that time frame? Especially in regions Where the Jobs Are, both houses and rent are very high.
—————
This is exactly our problem. This area is “where the jobs are,” apparently, so rents have gone up rather dramatically since we’ve moved here. Prices have dropped, but not nearly enough.
We are just going to have to bite the bullet. How much longer are we all supposed to wait? This is why I was so worried about the potential bailouts…even before the bubble burst. I just knew they were going to come up with enough crazy ideas to make EVERYONE lose.
There are not many $250K 4br homes available San Diego County, except in pockets you wouldn’t want to live. I was first going to say “no 4br homes” but was surprised in a quick search on Redfin to notice there were 283 currently listed at $250K or less — something you never would have seen during the peak bubble years.
Of course, the picture could change if shadow inventory started coming on to the market at a quicker pace…
I feel totally dejected, as if this was all in vain.
Well I am regularly jumped on for expressing similar sentiments so I don’t know how you feel about my commiserating w/you but I know exactly how you feel.
Our rent is $500 a month more than my last mortgage (piti) was. At the time I could have had this place which was once nice but has been an unattended beaten up rental for way too long or moved 40 min away to rent a home where we drove through some pretty scary streets to get home and where I was pretty sure the owner was only waiting until the market came back before he kicked us out and put it back on the market. Or perhaps he’d let it go to default. Those were our 2 options for safely located, rental homes where we didn’t have to dump our pets before we had to vacate our last temporary rental.
At this point the homes will have to drop quite a bit before we could ever break even. But the local market is not that far above 3x median income and what I’ve seen is if it’s a nice house, people will compete. If it wasn’t for the outrageous taxes we’d have bought a long time ago I’m sure.
Not only rent…
You should also take a close look at property taxes, insurance and repair bills. Have property taxes been rising recently? Many desperate municipalities jack up rates when assesments fall. Like Miami increased the millage rate 14.4% last year to counter falling appraisals.
How much is insurance for the house you plan to purchase?
Beware of maintainance bills, they tend to come in $10K increments.
Personally I wouldn’t buy a house now. Prices are still declining and you want to stay mobile these days to be in a position to take advantage of opportunities elsewhere.
Homeownership is overhyped, all you do is renting from the local taxing authority.
I have to disagree with you, Mike. Everyone’s situation is different.
Beware of maintainance bills ??
The most overlooked and underestimated Item…
CarrieAnn,
You’ll never hear me jump on you for saying what you’ve said. As a matter of fact, I’ve supported you whenever some oddball posters get on you for being truthful (if I get the chance to see it in time). I have no idea where the vitriol comes from. Many of us have commented on the same things you have.
Thanks for your sympathy. I hope things work out for you and your family, as well.
Being a bubble-sitter has not been easy, that’s for sure!
“…we’ve been sitting around with 0% interest rates on our savings.”
Looking on the bright side, at least you have some savings to sit on.
I’m afraid it seems you’ve been priced-out forever. All those Realtors were right, I guess.
“In the meantime, we’ve been sitting around with 0% interest rates on our savings.”
I’m not saying this is right for everyone, but.. If you have substatial amounts of savings; you may want to look at bonds (munis; in particular, have been good to me over the years). You can get baskets (ETFs) that are paying 4-7% pretty easily (and relatively low risk, IMHO) right now, and, of course, no tax on the interest either.
Not trying to sell anyone anything, just providing my personal experience and perhaps another avenue to explore.
“…and I verbally offered list price, which is barely below peak levels.”
At the risk of being too inquisitive how much per square foot?
About $350/sf.
Yeah, it hurts. Unfortunately, this is what houses are going for around here. This is a smaller house, so the price/sf is higher than the larger homes.
“This is a smaller house, so the price/sf is higher than the larger homes.”
That does not compute.
That does not compute.
well, the lot/yard factors in, no? That value/price is amortized across the square footage of the house. Lower square footage means higher per sf price/cost of land.
“…well, the lot/yard factors in, no?…”
OK, but you are just conjecturing when you assume there is or isn’t a proportional relationship between square footage of the house and lot size. For instance, back in the day, larger homes tended to be associated with proportionally larger lot sizes. In the McMansion tract home era, they started taking up more and more of the lot with square footage, implying negative correlation between square footage of floor space and lot size. So it just depends…
PB,
Since the most expensive part of the house is the kitchen and bathroom, a 3/2 that is 2,000 sf will usually cost less per sf than a 3/2 that is 1,500 sf.
Lot size does matter (and this lot is very large for the neighborhood), but the price/sf declines as the house gets bigger. It’s not unusual to see a 4,000 sf house going for $150/sf, while a 1,500 sf house goes for $225/sf, or more.
Go for it Ca Renter…. You’ve done your homework and appear prepared to handle the cost…Nothing better than having your own home to raise your family…Wish you the best…
Or wait until next year or maybe the year after that and save a year’s worth of take-home pay in the purchase price…your call!
Thank you, scdave!
PB,
Not sure if we’ll end up saving any money, especially when you consider what we’re paying in rent. Believe me, this is not an easy decision, and I’m fully convinced we are going to lose a lot of money on it. OTOH, a lot of our money came from selling properties at or near the peak, and we do not plan on leaving this house until we’re brought out on stretchers. I’m desperately trying to just shrug my shoulders and say, “easy come, easy go.”
CA renter
God, I hope this deal works for you. We have similar situations in so many ways. Sounds to me you found “home”. I know what you mean about the $200K in rent waiting for a FMV. Crossing my fingers for you. Best of luck.
I resorted to going door to door with flyers. All the vacant homes are 3 bdrms so far. I’ve met some truly good people, that invite me for a looksie and water, but no deal yet. I have only blisters for my efforts so far.
I resorted to going door to door with flyers ??
I have mentioned this in the past…Instead of flyers, which may not ever end up in the hands of the decision maker try this;
Define your location (3 square blocks, 6 square blocks etc.)…Through a data base or at the county records office find every legal owner of each property…Send them a letter telling them you are a qualified buyer, ready to act “now”, are willing to pay fair market value, are seeking a home in this location and give them the reasons why…
If your area is reasonable large enough, my experience is you have at least a 50/50 chance of having a owner respond to your letter…Sometimes it may be from their intended Realtor or sometimes it may be from them directly…
Lots of owners are sitting on the fence for one reason or another..A direct contact letter from what appears to be a qualified buyer, with specific interest in a certain area sometimes moves the owner off the fence…
It has worked for me many times…
One thing I’ve learned since buying a house: not only get a home inspector out there, but an arborist to look at any trees. Most will come out for free if they’re associated with a tree removal company.
Great advice, thank you scdave. I wanted to walk the neighborhoods, I found would work on Zillow (I researched tracts we liked), and targeted certain floor plans. I also wanted to get a feel for the flavor of the neighborhood. But your advice is stellar, and I will get to work on it this week. You’re the best. Thank you.
what would work on Zillow- brain/typing clich
Thanks, Awaiting. If you ever make it down this way, you’ll have to stop by for dinner. As you know, we’re both from the same area (SFV natives).
Hope you guys find your final house soon, too! It’s truly frustrating to be living during these tumultuous times!
CA–
It’s been pretty obvious since the bubble popped that our government was going to go to great lengths to let the air out as gradually as possible in an attempt to save the system and its major players. At times such as we’re facing, America treads a fine line between endemic disgruntlement and civil war. Anyone who remembers the 1960’s knows how easily and quickly that line can be crossed….
If you care to wait until 2020, the chances are you’ll be able to pick up a house at the 1970’s prices we all hope for– but that’s a long time to wait if your aim is to establish a family home while you’re still young enough to put your considerable energies into it. As you’ve noted, although inevitable, that wait is both expensive and heartbreaking, and barring anything cataclysmic, a long-term proposition.
Chances are, a major inflation is coming, in which case you’ll be sitting pretty with a low-interest mortgage. And if it’s deflation instead, you’ll be able to use the herd mentality to renegotiate associated ownership costs downwards– especially if the property is seller financed. Key consideration is your income stability– although even that may not be as much a concern in your area if, as you say, the houses in the neighborhood are historically in high demand.
At this point, I think it’s a 50/50 consideration as to the financial benefits of renting vs owning, and the key mitigating factor SHOULD be the emotional one.
If you love the neighborhood, feel a good “energy” from the house, have the savings just sitting there doing nothing useful and don’t care whether the property values increase or fall, I’d say go with your heart and let the fates take care of the details. You know the pitfalls and the caveats, but it’s sort of like deciding to get married or have a child. Sometimes you just have to take a deep breath and trust the process.
It sounds to me like this is your defining moment, and I say, “Go for it!”
It happens to the best of us….
Good luck, CA. I truly hope this works out for you guys!
If you care to wait until 2020, the chances are you’ll be able to pick up a house at the 1970’s prices we all hope for– but that’s a long time to wait if your aim is to establish a family home while you’re still young enough to put your considerable energies into it.
Realistically, I should probably forget about a house at that point. Empty nesting will begin around that time and despite the well earned dislike of HOAs around here I’d probably be happier with a nice townhome with a garage.
Thanks so much, ahansen!
You guys are all so great. Crazy as this may sound, I trust you all more than just about anyone else.
ahansens post makes a lot of sense to me .
@ahansen:
I’m trying to reconcile the following statements:
“If you care to wait until 2020, the chances are you’ll be able to pick up a house at the 1970’s prices we all hope for”
with
“Chances are, a major inflation is coming”
Do you mean inflation adjusted home prices? And that home prices will be roughly flat to down while everything else goes up (including labor, materials costs and rent)? In the face of needing to house more and more people how do you reconcile increasing costs of creating more housing with an overall view that home prices will be flat to down at the same time?
Or do you expect the inflation to come after 2020 (which is when I would hope that we have gone through our inflation bout and are coming back to normal)?
Good luck to you. Truly. Knowing the neighborhood definitely makes you a logical buyer. While lots of sellers will only look at price, definitely play up your intangibles (know the neighborhood, don’t need to conduct due diligence on schools, no sale contingency, down payment+ in the bank, etc.). Certainty of close is a strong consideration for many sellers.
We were in the same boat…rented for 7 years watching, and found the right house for ourselves. Made a strong offer, with the emphasis on the lack of a need to sell our existing home, and ability to act. Ultimately, the thing that got us the home was the ability for us to give the seller free rent for a time while they moved out (less than a month).
One thing that you may want to play up is an ability to give them a free-rent period…if the seller just lost a parent, they may welcome the additional time. I don’t know if the house has been cleared out and cleaned up, but if they have lots of things to go through (stashed in the garage, etc.), they might appreciate the time.
And the person who is managing the sale will be better able to choose you as a buyer gets a faster close with a rent-back, as opposed to a longer escrow.
Good luck.
Thank you RW!
Glad you found a home for yourselves as well!
We did tell the seller that they could stay as long as they needed to, and that we would work with them in any way possible. She had seen our kids playing outside before, so knew who we were and where we lived. I think that helped. Now, I just hope to get the price discounted a bit. We’ll see how it goes.
You and the others have made me feel much better about this. It’s such a difficult time to be making these big financial decisions. Like ahansen said, it’s a 50/50 deal as to whether or not inflation/deflation takes hold. We know deflation is the primary undercurrent, but the Fed/govt seems hell-bent on propping things up indefinitely. We all know they just LOVE inflation, so that definitely has me worried.
I heard Chuck Schwab say something that struck a chord with me:
“The Fed is trying like hell to create inflation and eventually they will be successful.”
Both Bernanke and Dudley (NY Fed) are doves, and Dudley even thinks that the Fed should publicly telegraph a higher than usual inflation target for a few years (to make up for lost ground).
I just hope we get our deficits under control…this will help keep the wage/price spiral in check to some extent while we get our fiscal house in order. I’m hoping that the austerity measures that all states are undertaking will help with the psychology and push the Feds in the fiscally conservative direction. Said another way, even state employees will start getting angry with the Feds if the state employees needed to cut back, but the Feds forever expand government.
We shall see…
Costal CA is in high demand for many reasons
I still rent and for way more than my old mortgage was for but I rent a bigger home ( duplex verus townhome ).
If you want to live in high demand areas I guess you have to pay up? The good thing is it will probably hold its value better than flyover country.
Lets hope a 35 year old firefighter doesn’t outbid you on the home
( just kidding )
“If you want to live in high demand areas I guess you have to pay up? ?The good thing is it will probably hold its value better than flyover country.”
Japan is a high-demand area, but its value didn’t hold up very well. I guess California housing is different?
From Wikipedia:
“Prices were highest in Tokyo’s Ginza district in 1989, with choice properties fetching over 100 million yen (approximately $1 million US dollars) per square meter ($93,000 per square foot). Prices were only marginally less in other large business districts of Tokyo. By 2004, prime “A” property in Tokyo’s financial districts had slumped to less than 1 percent of its peak, and Tokyo’s residential homes were less than a tenth of their peak, but still managed to be listed as the most expensive in the world until being surpassed in the late 2000s by Moscow and other cities.”
After falling 90%, Japanese home prices were still among the most expensive in the world…and the Japanese population growth was slowing already in the 90’s (growth of 0.33% per year in 1990), and turned negative in 2007. Japan is a fairly insular society, where the US still draws wealthy immigrants from all over the world to NYC, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, etc.
A nice home in Atherton, CA (home to the very wealthy in CA) is currently about $1,000 per square foot on an acre of property (if not less if you believe Zillow), or about 1% of the peak values in Tokyo. I’m guessing even if you looked at highest end properties in NYC, you would see values today at less than 10% of the Tokyo peak.
US incomes are ~50% higher than those in Japan.
A 90%+ fall from the peak?! Does anyone here think that a $7,500,000, 5,000 square foot house (I added more than enough from today’s values to reflect the peak) on an acre of property in Atherton is going to fall to less than $700,000?
That said…
Different in CA? No. What matters in CA is the same thing that matters everywhere, price to incomes (affordability), and supply/demand, not some arbitrary measure of value decreases from the peak. In terms of affordability, CA is as affordable as it has been on record. In terms of supply/demand, CA has been very bad at building housing for the past 20 years as compared to its population growth (population still growing at roughly 1% per year).
Japan is Japan. California is California. They are different.
On yesterday’s subject about the Bank’s troubles .Still believe a lot of it is due to the local banks farming out the house loan . The loan may change hands over and over , each time creating lots of fees for the pudgy grubby bankers . The value of the house itself has little to do with the loan that takes on a life of it’s own .
Jail’em all , I say ,and torch the banks while we are at it .
The business of making mortgages and then selling them over and over was the root of the problem. Just led to a tremendous bubble that as it pops, wipes out sectors of the economy. Not all banks did this so if we let half of them fail, we would still have thousands of banks left.
So let the banks fail. Not sure what public good a jail term will do. Torching the banks causes alot of air polution.
Now the politicians who causes this are starting to blame democracy itself. As if our voting causes them to be corrupt. Things are approaching the last stages and then perhaps a renewal of integrity can occur.
The type of thing that happens when you meddle with markets:
Its what we’re having. The “wealthy” entreprenuers have been bascially made whole by market tampering by the government including $Trillions of stimulus and government guarantees as well as a multitude of other various price-fixing schemes. They see the bleak business future that is reality and have determined that they can comfortably downsize or even terminate operations altogether and do just fine by riding out the future on their profits from the past. The rest of humanity meanwhile realizes that they have to keep working for a living and that is becoming harder by the day. Price increases in food and energy are further making that challenge a living nightmare.
Had the markets been left to themselves, the “sitting pretty” rich (the ones who have previously been the movers and shakers who were really responsible for the hiring of most of the work force) would have found themselves in more of a position where they would be realizing that they need to keep working or even start over to survive. That would have been a challenge for them certainly, but nothing they couldn’t figure out. After all, these people were the ones who made it happen the first time and have the know-how to be successful again. By meddling with the markets, these guys have been effectively removed from the business environment. That is why we are not seeing any new jobs.
It might be too late to fix things. Once again the history books will be pointing out what was done wrong and by whom and when. I am farily certain that too much tampering with markets will be one of the main culprits this time.
“Once again the history books will be pointing out what was done wrong and by whom and when.”
Historians can and will speculate, but you can never really what works and what doesn’t in the grand laboratory of macroeconomic policy. For starters, you can’t draw valid inference from a sample of size one, especially since you can’t turn back the clock and see how other approaches would have worked.
really know what works
I thought it was “tell”.
Who knows at 5:30a?
Ha-Ha, history is written by the victors. Check out the recently discovered and translated Gospels of Judas Iscariot written about 200 C.E. and compare them with the four original books of the New Testament. Whoa! Big difference in the story line and even the meaning of the crucifixion itself. Kind of like the myth of “Keynesian” in the Supply Side economic debate.
Yep we could have taken the
1-2 trillion on wars
several trillion in Bernanke bucks
700 billion in bailout money
The tax breaks for the elite
and used it to put people to work so
the country could ride out the storm.
Instead we handed most of this money to the elite and they are sitting on it as the rest of the country swirls round the toilet bowl. They will of course come in and buy up everything for pennies on the dollar and cement their control of our gov with their winnings.
We could have changed our trade policy and added a VAT tax and cut the payroll tax which would have hurt the elite and helped the middle class and thus in my view the economy and democracy in general.
Instead we appear headed for the banana republic
Great post, measton.
“I’m talking about a jobs program of a trillion dollars or more. We’ve got to put Americans to work. That’s the only way to revitalize this economy. When people work they earn money, they spend that money, and that’s what gets the economy up and going.” ~Rep. Maxine Waters.
- From the mouth of a clueless loon!
Putting Americans to work is not clueless. Working on what and on whose payroll is the question. It’s pretty clear the corporations are not going to hire. They are holding those jobs hostage until somebody pays ransom: more tax breaks, allowing accounting tricks, fewer regulations, break the unions.
If stockholders — many of them already rich — would consent to 6% profit, we could have a happy country back. But NO, they can’t be having any of THAT.
We are all forgetting that a business operates most profitably with kids laboring in fog of smog and wastes dumped into the local body of water. If the slave gets sick, fire him and get a new slave from the street. All to feed the bottomless stockholder maw.
If stockholders — many of them already rich — would consent to 6% profit, we could have a happy country back. But NO, they can’t be having any of THAT.
If GOVERNMENT — many of them already rich — would consent to only taxing me 40% (local/state/fed/SS/etc.), we could have a happy country back. But NO, they can’t be having any of THAT.
How are you paying 40% in taxes? Really, I’m curious.
And silly me, I thought “government” was consenting to “47% of Americans are paying no tax at all.” Rush says that a lot so it must be right.
Indeed. We paid about 20% state and federal income tax last year on about 130K gross. And about 27% when you factor in the payroll tax.
I don’t know how he gets to 40% but here are a few possibilities:
1) inlcudes both his and employers half of FICA in the calculations
2) pretends highest marginal rate is actual “rate” of federal income tax when it is only the rate on the last thousands of dollars
3) didn’t properly take into account exclusions, deductions and credits or other excluded income (giving amount based on “taxable income” not “gross income”)
4) lives in high income tax state/county/city or is including other types of taxes like sales tax, gas tax, property tax, etc.
5) bad at math
think marginal tax rate. My wife and I occassionally pick up some small consulting jobs….(we’re just reaching the 25% fed marg tax rate)…..
Fed income tax: 25%
SS tax: 15%
State income tax: 6%
local city income tax: 2%
So as you can see, for each additional dollar I earn, 48% goes to direct income taxes. (yes, I get to deduct part of the SS tax as a business expense, so the overal % comes down a little.)
Overall I pay much less than 48%, but the governments tax me at 48% for any additional consulting work I take on.
No wonder consultants have to charge a high hourly fee.
Overall I pay much less than 48%, but the governments tax me at 48% for any additional consulting work I take on.
Now add in:
Property Taxes
Sales Taxes
Gasoline Taxes
Phome usage taxes
etc.
etc.
etc.
How much of your paycheck do really get to keep or spend as your own?
Maybe 35%
for each additional dollar I earn, 48% goes to direct income taxes ??
And what about the additional taxes that you pay when you spend the remaining 52% ??
And how much do you get for that??
Still how about those top 0.1% commanding 15% effective tax rates. It’s good to be king.
Are you really paying 15% SS tax if those consulting jobs put you over the $106K upper limit for SS tax?
Not 15% if you are over the $106K. After that it is just the Medicare part. My possibilities were not meant to be all at the same time, though you might need more than one to get to 40%.
The other option is to be really wealthy but with nearly 100% of income on salary - almost no income from investments.
The roll of government was NEVER intended to be that of a jobs “creator”. It’s all there in the Constitution, it’s not that complicated.
…promote the general welfare…
“promote” is not the same as “provide.”
‘Providing’ would be socialism, no?
‘Promoting’ would be more along the lines of infrastructure building and maintenance, scientific research and development, ensuring fair treatment of labor, regulating the powerful, ensuring a basic living standard for all citizens, ensuring access for all to affordable health care, education, etc.
You don’t have to believe that the country needs the economic stimulus to be in favor of a large public works program at this time.
The reason for it is as simple as certain items have been left to be done by the government (bridges, major roads, means of energy distribution, sewers, water, and a few others) or monopolies strictly regulated by the government. Keeping this infrastructure in good working condition is necessary for business to function. Right now, the cost of fixing and expanding this infrastructure is cheap because there is much less competition from private business for the labor and materials. Since the work *has* to be done (soon, much of it is overdue) why would you wait until private business actually has a use for the labor and supplies to do it? It will cost taxpayers more and it will be a drag on business profits to wait. You do it now for the same reason that you buy Christmas cards in early January - you know you need it and it is on sale.
Seriously. It isn’t even hard to understand. It has to be done. The federal government can borrow money at 2%. It is cheaper to do it now than to wait. Oh,and you might get some people working and spending money and paying taxes and developing skills that would be useful for private businesses to hire eventually. In the mean time, you don’t have water pipes exploding every time the weather gets cold or the electricty going out every time the wind blows or people having to route trucks miles out of their way to avoid unsafe bridges and stuff like that.
Please note, that I left out schools for a reason. First of all the housing bubble means that populations have not settled into places where they will actually be long term and empty schools deteriorate very quickly. Second, kids are more resiliant that people think and can learn in a lot of different settings and graffiti on the desks isn’t really that damaging. Third, school administrators get too excited by money and start buying ipads when a new boiler would be a better use of the money. Fourth, it doesn’t pass my “it isn’t the best use of infrastructure money” test of not being a good place for a ribbon cutting ceremony.
I agree with your thinking, but does all that work need to be financed by the Federal Government?
Ohio has spent the last decade replacing most if its bridges, widening all kinds of roads, repaving & rebuilding roads, etc. A major chunk of this has been paid by the citizens of Ohio via a 6-cent/gallon tax increase on gasoline implemented 6 years ago. Sure, the Federal government has kicked in some of the financing, but the State has picked up an unusually large percentage of it.
So why can’t other states decide to fund a large percentage of their infrastructure themselves via a tax on their own citizens?
(ports and major airports would probably still need significant contributions from the Federal government.)
There isn’t any reason it HAS to be federal, except that the states, in general, aren’t doing it.
Please note that I’m not arguing that this is politically easy or even politically possible. It is just necessary that the work get done and given the unemployment rate and lack of demand, now is when doing it is on sale.
As for the fairness? Well, it isn’t going to happen, so I’m not sure that fairness matters that much. But as you pointed out, Ohio may be OK on roads, but there are other things that need doing.
1. States borrowing costs are higher and their finances are likely worse.
2. A gas tax hits the middle class who is already hurting, why shouldn’t a progressive tax be levied on the elite who were bailed out by the FED and Treasury??
3. Obviously the people who think the 10-20% unemployed should just starve, have rose colored candy crapin unicorn seeing glasses on when it comes to the risk mass poverty has on not just the country but their own property safety and that of their family members.
The roll of government was NEVER intended to be that of a jobs “creator” ??
Starting with the military…Biggest jobs program in the country…
Working on what and on whose payroll is the question.
Indeed. Even if corporations were not taxed at all, a $10/hr American is much more expensive than a $1/hr Asian.
Either American multinationals accept that the have a duty to provide living wage jobs to their American customers (and sacrifice some profitability in the process) or eventually nearly all productive jobs will be offshored (and the multinationals will lose their best customers)
Saw another article today about car sales, which are stuck in 12m range. It quoted analysts who are predicting that sales will soon bounce back to 15m and even 17m once the economy is healthy again. No one wants to admit that 12m is probably as good as it’s gonna get, and that sales could fall even more.
This of course affects automakers, both foreign and domestic, who are counting on Americans to purchase high margin, $40K+ vehicles. Sure, they’ll sell some $5K cars in the third world, but they’ll be lucky to make a few hundred dollars profit per car (as opposed to many thousands).
If I were CEO, I would realize that losing my best customers is 5 years into the future, but profit is NOW. When the biofuel hits the wind turbine, I’ll be parachuting to a lifetime of mai-tais on beach in the Carribean.
They better bring a military security detail.
Just like the rest of the economy, the “middle class” of cars is disappearing.
The Masters of the Universe drive Audis, BMWs, M-Bs, Lexus stuff priced around/over $75,000.
The middle class (Olds, Pontiac, Mercury) is disappearing.
The 80%ers/bottom feeders get to buy bottom feeders(Hyundai, Kia, imported Chevys and Fords, whatever crap ends up being exported from China).
The Masters of the Universe drive Audis, BMWs, M-Bs, Lexus stuff priced around/over $75,000.
And those must still be selling because there are decent deals on used ones out there. Unlike the cheaper stuff. Unfortunately for me luxury cars make crappy hotrods. Even the high performance ones. The aftermarket support just isn’t there in most cases, and the exceptions to that are exorbitantly priced.
Around here, at least, the “rich are different than you and me”
They buy new (need to have the latest and greatest for appearances sake, you know), then trade when the car is going out of warranty. Or they lease (thru their businesses), which is essentially the same thing.
You can do worse than buy a 5 year old high end car. Back in 2007, bought a Seville STS ($55K new) with 51K miles from the Caddy dealer for $12K. Still have it. For one thing, the paint and interior seems to be holding up a lot better than most of the other cars I’ve owned.
And other than the infamous “Northstar head gaskets”, haven’t had to spend much money on it, other than tires and brakes.
Lately, I’ve been looking at 2000-ish Jag XK-8 coupes. Or an mid 90s BMW 840-50, if I can find the “right one”.
And my wife has a Mercedes now for all the reasons we’re talking about. I just don’t want one for myself. I prefer less gadgets and more horsepower. I seriously considering modifying a BMW 335xi for a while, but the level of aftermarket support I want just isn’t there and I don’t want to be fighting traction control that can’t be permanently disabled.
The last 5 years has just been a exercise in propping up the Corrupted and greedy and enpowering faulty systems and
Governemnt bail outs that just gave power to systems that don’t benefit the majoirty . You get the PR machine that is trying to convince the Majority that they need to suffer while the 15 % remains whole . Transfer of the pain to the majority or the Governemnt (taxpayers ) .
She is still hoping for change she can believe in. Just waiting for it to kick in…
Rep. Maxine Waters fit perfectly with:
“Socialism works until you run out of other people’s money…”
Wow…The Ultra Wealthy just love all the little brainwashed peasants speaking up for them.
Capitalism works until you bankrupt the workers who are also your customers.
You just make them shop at the company store … and get laws changed so their kids inherit their debt when they die.
That is terrifying on so many levels, Colorado, that I don’t know how to respond. Just wanted to let you know that I noticed. And I was scared.
As for the making you responsible for your parents debts, there is a long history in the common law of that not being allowed, but I can imagine ways of forcing it on people (Mom and Dad can’t have a credit card after age X unless kids agree to be part of a trust that pays the card or something like that) that are just terrifying.
One of the things that fueled the Mexican Revolution was the “Tienda de Raya” (The company store). Debts were passed down to the children (as a condition of their employment).
Slavery goes by many names.
Actually capitalism works beyond that. Once capitalists bankrupt the customers who are your workers, they move on to the next set of customers — the ones in China and India. Wait until those capitalists find out that China and India have very little SS/medicare safety net to speak of. You won’t get a 70% consumer society out of them, nosirree.
Not to mention that most spend 50% of their paycheck on food and fuel. Not much left for consuming manufactured goods.
In the new world you will have global poverty and a small # of elite’s holding financial noose (food fuel) around the workers necks which they will tighten any time the workers save some money or ask for more rights.
“…a small # of elite’s holding financial noose (food fuel) around the workers necks…”
Sounds vaguely familiar. Luckily volatile food and energy are not counted towards consumer price inflation, according to the Fed.
of a clueless loon! ??
Boy you got that right…She is a real piece of work…Every time she open’s her mouth its about “where is my cheese”…
That’s Nacho Cheese man.
Sales Set to Slip to Seven-Year Low as Issuers Curb Spending: Muni Credit
By Michelle Kaske - Sep 6, 2011 - Bloomberg
Municipal bond sales this week and last are set to be the lowest for the period around Labor Day in seven years as issuers curb borrowing for infrastructure work.
States and cities will sell a combined $5 billion of long- term tax-exempt debt in the nine market days of Aug. 29 through Sept. 9, the least in the period since 2004, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Local and state governments have reduced payrolls by 671,000 positions since August 2008, and the U.S. failed to add any jobs in August, discouraging officials from borrowing for roads, bridges and other projects, said Matt Fabian, a managing director at Municipal Market Advisors, a research company in Concord, Massachusetts.
“When you have that kind of job loss, you have to assume that construction spending is not on the front burner,” Fabian said in a telephone interview. “It underscores the issuers’ austerity trends and the scarcity of new-issuance trends that we’ll be seeing for awhile.”
Shrinking revenue prompted 69 percent of U.S. cities to delay or cancel infrastructure spending in 2010, according to a National League of Cities survey of local finance officers.
Cities also lowered spending with personnel cuts, service reductions, changes to health-care benefits and public-safety curbs, the October report showed. Eighty percent of finance officers forecast their cities will be less able to meet needs in 2011 than in 2010, the survey said.
In response to one of the posts way above maybe this is why it can’t be the states.
Federal Infrastructure Spending: How About This Boondoggle?
Posted by Chris Edwards - Cato Institute
President Obama is planning to deliver a big speech on jobs and the economy. His wish list for Congress will likely include more government infrastructure spending.
So that citizens know what the president is talking about, they should review the success of the government’s past infrastructure projects. Here’s one to consider:
It’s the Yuma Desalting Plant in Arizona, built by the federal Bureau of Reclamation at a taxpayer cost of $245 million. After completing the plant in 1993, Uncle Sam said: “Whoops, we don’t need it after all.” The plant has sat idle for almost two decades, and taxpayers are getting hit for $6 million a year to maintain it.
It gets worse. The purpose of the Yuma plant is to reverse some of the environmental damage done by government-subsidized irrigation farming. As irrigation waters reflow back into Western rivers, they boost saline levels and can make the water useless for downstream users. The Yuma plant was supposed to desalinate some of the irrigation flow into the Colorado River, but the government spent more money to build a separate 73-mile canal to drain water straight to the ocean.
I imagine that irrigation farming makes economic sense in many places. The problem is that the federal government has vastly subsidized dams and irrigation infrastructure in the West without regard to economics or sound environmental practices. Check out the costly environmental mess created by federal irrigation subsidies in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Or consider the environmental problems in the Florida Everglades caused by federal sugar subsidies and Corps of Engineers infrastructure, which, once again, taxpayers are helping to pay to clean up.
Billions of dollars of infrastructure spending by the Bureau of Reclamation has gone into white elephant projects. Imagining that more federal infrastructure will be a panacea for the economy is a liberal fairy tale, detached from the actual experience of most federal agencies over the last century.
We are going to ride white elephants to prosperity.
Economic Hannibals, eh?
Wow wmbz - Plenty of cases where US spending has stimulated the economy, but now all spending is bad because of your one case. As it comes from the Cato institute I suspect there is more to the story.
From the LA times
In the 1960s the Mexican government began complaining that agricultural runoff into the river near Yuma was making the water too salty.
An amendment was added to the treaty setting salt limits on the Colorado River as it reaches Mexico. Congress authorized building the desalting plant. By some accounts, the major mover behind the project was then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as part of his diplomatic overture to Mexico.
By the time the plant was completed in 1992, a 73-mile diversion canal had also been built to keep the farm water runoff out of the Colorado River and take it south to a marshy area in Mexico known as the Cienega de Santa Clara. Also, the early 1990s were exceptionally rainy, diluting the salt from the runoff.
Suddenly the Colorado River water was within the salt limits even without the plant. Critics blasted the desalting plant as not needed, a boondoggle.
So apparently not being able to predict the rain fall during the decade makes it a boondoggle.
But it looks like it is being used now. With the water starved southwest looking for any source of water.
Darn those facts.
All this infrastructure spending will be boondoggles for someone’s brother orcousin. If they spend the money it should be CCC stuff, not handouts to unionized construction workers. With so many needing work there’s no reason to pay union wages other than as a giveaway
I see they are starting to air 9/11 specials in anticipation of the 10 year mark. Watched about 3 hours of documentaries last night with my almost 11yo son so that he’d understand a little better about what people have been talking about all these years.
Besides all the standard food for thought, I still can’t help but be frustrated with what we’ve done to air travel in response to 9/11. I feel bad that my son won’t know what it’s like to park just outside the doors and meet people at the gate. Won’t know what it’s like to fly without having to worry about throwing stuff away at security. Without having everything you want/need at your destination (pocket knives). I still remember it like it’s yesterday. I think it’s good that we are looking more closely for explosives but other than that I don’t feel a bit safer. It’s not like they will ever be able to pull another operation like that off again even if they could get box cutters onto the plane. Anybody that tries will be washed off the interior walls with a high pressure hose after landing. It was a one time shot that took advantage of previous assumptions about hijackings.
That’s my rant for the week…
I still want a few minutes alone with that Shoe-bomber. That one SOB is soley responsible for the most ridiculous part of air travel.
Pass on the shoe bomber and go directly to the underwear bomber.
The U.S. is the only country (that I know of) where passengers routinely have to remove their footwear during security checks. I don’t believe they even do that at Heathrow, where the Shoe bomber boarded his flight.
I’ve heard a term for this kind of thing — Security Theatre. Expensive, highly visible security efforts that isn’t very effective– at least to an intelligently planned attack. We have a lot of this at work. Random, but half-hearted searches of personnel (empty pockets, but they never search bags of any sort), vehicles (look in backseat and open trunk), that are easily circumvented by anyone who put any thought into an attack. One-way spike strips that guard the exit lane from unauthorized entrance, but only a wooden drop gate protecting the entrance– this to a smallish and very busy parking lot. I chuckle at the efforts, and it looks impressive, but I don’t want to know what it costs the company to put on this show.
I feel much safer knowing Big Sis is looking for the boogieman.
+1 Carl. I saw a news snippet that the only useful preventitives that came out of 9/11 were 1) hardening the cockpit door 2) passenger knowledge and initiative.
Sounds about right. But I’ve seen the demonstrations of what a few ounces of top quality explosives can do in a plane…so I think measures to prevent that also make sense. I don’t think there’s any point to feeling people up, though. Some kind of sniffers (organic or robotic) are probably required. Hopefully if it’s been inserted into the body (even surgically) the residue will still be detected.
On one hand, I am so glad that I will be out of contact with the media hype leading up to the 9/11 anniversary. If all goes as planned, the husband and I will be hiking in Glacier NP by then. We leave on Thursday and I can hardly wait!
On the other hand, we have to fly all the way to Seattle and then fly back east to Kalispell to get there. Sometimes I wish we had booked on Amtrak for this trip. Flying absolutely sucks anymore.
If I remember correctly you were getting some uncomfortable medical treatment w/in the last year. If I recalled correctly it’s so nice to hear you’re up to a nice aggressive hike like that. Good for you, Elanor!
That was REHobbyist, CarrieAnn. Haven’t seen her around here lately. I hope she is enjoying her retirement.
Certainly I am not in top condition for strenuous hiking, but that’s my own fault. Good thing my husband stops about every 50 yards to take photos.
Elanor
LOL. You’re funny! I treadmill for 45 minutes every single morning, and I’m not up to a strenuous hike either. I’m over the hill, and off the pill!
Have a great trip, Elanor!
“….my son won’t know what it’s like……”
He just needs to grow up to be a 1%er…..or even a 5%er. They fly just like it was done in the old days. At worst, you might have to taxi over to the Customs Office on the airport, and let the agent check IDs/Passports against faces.
(An aircraft sales guy I know looks for pizzed off people wearing suits when he travels by airline, and gives them his business card……First Class business passengers abandoned the airlines 10 years ago)
The TSA is for the wretched refuse. They had to find SOMETHING to do with all the Little Hitlers who were looking for jobs.
And, they know that as long as J6P continues to put up with the TSA, they can screw with people any way they want. After all, a society that allows anal probes of 6 year old to look for turd bombs will put up with anything.
The main problem is the TSA keeps the “aggravation” threshold just below the “how much do i want to inconvenience myself to prove I’m right” threshold.
And the real kicker is that any terrorist with an IQ over 80 can figure out a way to cause a mass casualty event on an airport/airliner, without coming close to dealing with the TSA. Especially if he/she is willing to become a martyr.
“….my son won’t know what it’s like……”
He just needs to grow up to be a 1%er…..or even a 5%er. They fly just like it was done in the old days.
Oh, I know “they” do, but I’m pretty sure “they” are less than 1%. If he’s going to join that club he’s going to need a bigger boost than I can give him.
X-GSfixr- Great post and insight. Thank you.
It feels like something is about to snap in the global financial system… can’t say exactly what at this point.
Sept. 6, 2011, 8:30 a.m. EDT
Treasurys up; 10-year yields hit record low
By Deborah Levine
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Treasury prices rose, pushing 10-year yields to a record low, as U.S. stock futures pointed to a much lower opening and investors seeking safety got flushed out of the Swiss franc after officials there set a floor for the currency against the euro. The main economic report of the day is the ISM’s index on the services sector, due at 10 a.m. Eastern time. Yields on 10-year notes (10_YEAR -2.36%), which move inversely to prices, fell 4 basis points to 1.94%, after touching an all-time low of 1.90%. Thirty-year yields (30_YEAR -2.24%) also fell for a third day.
…
Rough day so far on The Street; I can’t recall the last time Rule 48 was invoked. To be honest with you, folks, I didn’t even realize there WAS a Rule 48!
Could anyone who what Rule 48 does and why kindly explain?
Sept. 6, 2011, 9:37 a.m. EDT
U.S. stocks open sharply lower; Rule 48 invoked
By Kate Gibson
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - U.S. stocks fell sharply Tuesday as worries about European debt and the U.S. economy intensified. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA -2.41%) fell 275.26 points to 10,965.00. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX -2.46%) shed 29.60 points to 1,144.37. The Nasdaq Composite Index (COMP -2.12%) declined 56.61 points to 2,423.72. Following a sharp drop in stock-index futures ahead of Wall Street’s start, the New York Stock Exchange and NYSE Amex Cash Markets invoked Rule 48 for the open, lifting a requirement calling for price indications that help determine the floor price at the start to smooth trade.
…
The NHL explains Rule 48:
Rule 48 - Illegal Check to the Head
48.1 Illegal Check to the Head – A lateral or blind side hit to an opponent where the head is targeted and/or the principal point of contact is not permitted.
48.2 Minor Penalty - There is no provision for a minor penalty for this rule.
48.3 Major Penalty - For a violation of this rule, a major penalty shall be assessed (see 48.4).
Sounds like a means for the Market Makers to stay ahead of (front run) a volatile market:
Exactly what is rule 48
MarketBeat
WSJ
By Matt Phillips
If you’re interested. Here’s the text of “Rule 48,” which the NYSE invoked to smooth the open today. Here’s the Cliffs Notes version:
(a) In the event that extremely high market volatility is likely to have a Floor-wide impact on the ability of [Designated Market Makers] to arrange for the fair and orderly opening, reopening following a market-wide halt of trading at the Exchange, or closing of trading at the Exchange and that absent relief, the operation of the Exchange is likely to be impaired, a qualified Exchange officer may declare an extreme market volatility condition with respect to trading on or through the facilities of the Exchange.
(b) In the event that an extreme market volatility condition is declared with respect to trading on or through the facilities of the Exchange, a qualified Exchange officer shall be empowered to temporarily suspend at the opening of trading or reopening of trading following a market-wide trading halt: (i) the need for prior Floor Official or prior NYSE Floor operations approval to open or reopen a security at the Exchange (Rules 123D(1) and 79A.30); and/or (ii) applicable requirements to make pre-opening indications in a security (Rules 15 and 123D(1)).
Dow Jones’ Kristina Peterson explained it pretty well in a story earlier this month. She writes that basically it means the designated market makers “will not have to disseminate price indications before the bell, making it easier and faster to open stocks. The rule was approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission on Dec. 6, 2007 and has been used rarely since then.”
Sounds like a means for the Market Makers to stay ahead of (front run) a volatile market:
Imagine if you could reliably front run the PPT.
I thought these were the folks that worshipped the “free” market?
I think “free” market must mean different things to different people. Or maybe even the same people at different times. As a result I can’t trust them even when I agree with them.
“can’t say exactly what at this point”
How about the silence? Heard anyone say that “it” is all contained lately?
Nope. Haven’t heard much about green shoots of recovery, either.
(m s n b c . c o m)
Obama says Congress must pass jobs program
DETROIT — President Barack Obama said Monday that congressional Republicans must put their country ahead of their party and vote to create new jobs as he used a boisterous rally to aim a partisan barb at the opposition.
…Citing massive federal budget deficits, Republicans have expressed opposition to spending vast new sums on jobs programs. But Obama said that with widespread suffering, “the time for Washington games is over” and lawmakers must move quickly to create jobs.
…”But we’re not going wait for them,” he said. “We’re going to see if we’ve got some straight shooters in Congress. We’re going to see if congressional Republicans will put country before party.”
————
OKAY, THAT’S IT. Mr. Obama, are you truly that stupid? The time for games is over? We’re looking for straight shooters? They “must” pass this bill?
We’ve already seen — REPEATEDLY — that R’s are NOT going to put country before party, that R’s are NOT going to pass anything, and that R’s are NOT going to stop with the Washington games. I mean, come on, R’s were willing to pass federal budgets for two weeks at a time, shut down the FAA, hold the unemployed hostage, put things in a healthcare bill only the vote against the bill, endure a debt downgrade to make a point… need I go on?
The only thing I want to hear from Obama is “OK, R’s had their chance, they F’d up, now I’m going to do X by executive order.” Anything short of that will be bunch of pretty-please but nothing done. And 2/3 of the country knows it.
What bill MUST they pass? What’s the HR or S number? BTW, where was The One’s focus on jobs before now?
This is just another attempt at a “got’cha” moment, as Washington’s games continue to be played by both sides.
The only thing I want to hear from Obama is “OK, R’s had their chance, they F’d up, now I’m going to do X by executive order.”
I am always amazed at what liberals want NOW and never for a moment do they think their ideas (if enacted) would EVER be used by a conservative Republican president at some time in the future.
I think the Republican should pass a bunch of bills but not allow anyone to review them until AFTER they are made law. Kinda like ObamaCare with Nancy “We have to pass it to see what is in it” Pelosi…
Obama knows the economy is screwed. His supporters believe that all he needs is more authoritarian power. He’s been spending more and more time in his bunker, eating ice cream cones. It’s a good time to know where your life jacket is.
That is the thing. Voters, whether R or D, expect their guy or gal to wave a magic wand and undo 40+ years of damage in just a few months.
He’s been spending more and more time in his bunker, eating ice cream cones.
ISTR reading that Obama doesn’t really care for ice cream.
But, for a photo op with the family and you’re the President, well, you tough it out and eat that darned ice cream.
Liberals don’t want stuff NOW. R’s have been blocking things for 2.5 years. We can blame Obama all we want, but he no way to get around this blockage, except by begging, which Obama has already done. Thursday night looks like more begging.
I think the Republican should pass a bunch of bills but not allow anyone to review them until AFTER they are made law. Kinda like ObamaCare with Nancy “We have to pass it to see what is in it” Pelosi…
I seem to recall that that bill — all 1200 pages of it — was online for MONTHS while it was being debated. How else could every pudit print it out and slam it down as a prop and say “Did you even read the bill?” Maybe Nancy meant that you needed full implementation to realize the benefits of it? Really, it’s not much of a mental chasm to jump.
—–iberals don’t want stuff NOW. R’s have been blocking things for 2.5 years. We can blame Obama all we want, but he no way to get around this blockage, except by begging, which Obama has already done. —-
He owned both Houses of Congress and had supermajority in Senate and he didn’t accomplish good things. He lacks diplomacy with his opposition, engaging instead in snark and in sanctioning violent rhetoric from his followers (Hoffa, yesterday, etc) while condescending to the Right. He has… made his own bed.
Pelosi, “You’ll have to pass the bill to see what’s in it”
I think he was referring the the medicare prescription drug plan where the accountant was threatened if he let congress know the true cost.
Oh wait that was the prior president.
Weird that those on the Left would take away prescription benefits for old folk, just because it wasn’t their guy what implemented it.
??? Who wants to do that? The so-called ‘Left’ just wants the gov’t to negotiate a good price rather than paying top dollar to Big Pharma.
—DETROIT — President Barack Obama said Monday that congressional Republicans must put their country ahead of their party and vote to create new jobs as he used a boisterous rally to aim a partisan barb at the opposition. —-
Cannot help wondering why– in the face of so many of his failures— he continues to act as if he believes antagonizing his opposition- currently the majority of the House- will help him see his legislation pass. Momentary snark, trivial political gain amongst his Believers trumps diplomacy for him. Great Leader. Sure.
Great Leader. Sure. ??
Damm…I knew I should have voted for Palin…Hindsight is always 20/20…
—scdave
2011-09-06 09:21:29
Great Leader. Sure. ??
Damm…I knew I should have voted for Palin…Hindsight is always 20/20…
—-
Snark is easy, but McCain/Palin likely would have (yeah, “could have should have would have) left us in better position today. The derangement response to Palin from the Left perhaps being evidence enough.
However, worry about Palin in your post really is a Straw Man
I wrote, “Cannot help wondering why– in the face of so many of his failures— he continues to act as if he believes antagonizing his opposition- currently the majority of the House- will help him see his legislation pass. Momentary snark, trivial political gain amongst his Believers trumps diplomacy for him. Great Leader. Sure.”
Whether McCain would or would not have done better is irrelevant to this. I comment about active failings, repeatedly embraced. Palin/McCain hypotheticals don’t alter that. Now, if one wishes to argue that the continuation of momentary snark for trivial political gain amongst his true Believers is a path to victory? Well, I might disagree with you, but at least your comments will be on-topic.
Latest Yahoo on Obama:
Public pessimism about the direction of the country has jumped to its highest level in nearly three years, erasing the sense of hope that followed President Obama’s inauguration and pushing his approval ratings to a record low, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
More than 60 percent of those surveyed say they disapprove of the way the president is handling the economy and, what has become issue No. 1, the stagnant jobs situation. Just 43 percent now approve of the job he is doing overall, a new career low; 53 percent disapprove, a new high.
As part of a reinvigorated effort to regain momentum as he heads toward the 2012 election year, Obama traveled to Detroit on Monday for a Labor Day appearance that served as a prelude to his speech Thursday to a joint session of Congress in which he will unveil new proposals to create jobs.
The urgency for Obama to act is driven not just by the most recent unemployment report, which on Friday showed no job growth in August and the unemployment rate stuck at 9.1 percent, but also by the depth of the political hole in which the president finds himself. Even more than two-thirds of those who voted for Obama say things are badly off course.
By this time in their presidencies, approval ratings for both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — who also suffered serious midterm setbacks during their first term — had settled safely above the 50 percent mark. Both then stayed in positive territory throughout their reelection campaigns.
When ratings for George W. Bush slipped into the low 40s during his second term in office, they remained there or lower for the remainder of his presidency.
When it comes to head-to-head match-ups on big economic issues, the public is deeply — and evenly — divided between Obama and congressional Republicans. Four in 10 side with both Obama and the GOP on jobs. There are similarly even splits on the economy generally and on the deficit. In all three areas, the percentages of Americans trusting “neither” are at new highs.
Nonetheless, current trends are highly unfavorable for the president. By 2 to 1, more Americans now say the administration’s economic policies are making the economy worse rather than better. The number who say those policies have helped has been chopped in half since the start of the year. The percentage of Americans disapproving of how Obama is doing when it comes to creating jobs spiked 10 percentage points higher since July.
Of the more than six in 10 who now disapprove of Obama’s work on jobs and the economy, nearly half of all Americans “strongly” disapprove.
On the deficit, which was at the heart of the pitched battle over the debt ceiling earlier this summer, Obama has reaped no dividends for trying to produce a compromise agreement with Republicans. Six in 10 disapprove of Obama’s work on the federal budget deficit, a percentage that is relatively unmoved in recent surveys and basically where it was a year ago.
Similarly, there has been little change in the widespread public perception that Obama favors a bigger federal government that offers more services.
That highlights a major disconnect between Obama and the public. Only 38 percent of those polled say they favor a larger government with more services, while 56 percent say they favor a smaller government with fewer services.
Things are also bad for Obama when Americans are asked a version of the famous “are you better off today” question that Reagan used to bludgeon Jimmy Carter on his way to defeating Carter in 1980. By better than 2 to 1, more say they are not as well off financially as they were at the start of Obama’s term.
If Obama alienates the R’s in congress, nothing passes, but he scores points with his base.
If Obama does not alienate the R’s in congress, nothing passes, but the base thinks he’s a wimp.
What would you do?
If Obama alienates the R’s in congress, nothing passes, but he scores points with his base.
If Obama does not alienate the R’s in congress, nothing passes, but the base thinks he’s a wimp.
What would you do?
A legit question. You might not like the answer. Think… Kobayashi Maru
What would you do?
Act like a LEADER?
Make HARD decisions?
TAKE responsibly?
LEAD by example?
Unfortunately - you don’t learn these things as a community organizer…
Just think how much you’ll like him after re-election.
I don’t understand why adults need all this symbolic garbage from politicians. What does “act like a leader” mean? “Lead by example”? Don’t get that one either. Why do you need some sort of posturing or empathy or anything from the president?
He can’t do that much by executive order since money has to come from Congress. Proposing massive cuts to federal spending will make things much much worse in at least the short term and possibly the long term as well. Well, what else is he supposed to do?
Belgium has the best growth rate in Europe right now because political divisions mean they don’t have a actual government (majority coalition) in parliament. Means they haven’t instituted austerity measures like the rest of Europe so they have better growth than all the rest of them.
—-by Realtors Are Liars®
2011-09-06 10:15:22
Just think how much you’ll like him after re-election.
——
Whether loses or wins, I- for one- will like him neither more nor less. But, if he loses, I will be happy. If he wins, I will be sad. So it goes…
You don’t like him….. no reason to tapdance. Be a man about it.
if he loses, I will be happy. If he wins, I will be sad ??
And how will you feel if Perry wins ?? Just wondering…
Polly: I don’t understand why adults need all this symbolic garbage from politicians. What does “act like a leader” mean? “Lead by example”? Don’t get that one either. Why do you need some sort of posturing or empathy or anything from the president?
I would think it is obvious, though I will shed light obliquely on the answer. Why do people take (or are sent by management) multi-thousand dollar leadership training seminars? Why don’t we just have the Ultimate Computer or Divinity appoint the best man for the job? Why have elections? Why have motivational speech? Why should morale matter in the military or for a sports team.
People are people. The USA employs elections for most leadership positions. Yes, one can look competent but be a fool. One can speak well but be an empty suit. One can be a sociopath but sound engaging. But… we have mearly the record of accomplishment and of prior achievement (or lack of it), and our interpersonal interface with a candidate to pick course of action.
“Posturing” seems negative. “Leading/Understanding/Connecting/Getting-It”… more positive.
Polly:He can’t do that much by executive order since money has to come from Congress.
In that case, the folks who bought symbolic garbage, posturing and empathy (as you call it) including “hope and change”, “yes we can”, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”, “in a ditch”, “shovel ready”… are in for a wee bit of disappointment it seems, since apparently he who promised that cannot do any of it by himself. Strangely enough, those things perhaps can be accomplished by an executive with actual executive experience, connection to Congress, leadership demeanor and so forth, bringing us rather full circle
Polly: Proposing massive cuts to federal spending will make things much much worse in at least the short term and possibly the long term as well. Well, what else is he supposed to do?
This is your assumption. Whether true or not, perhaps the thing for mature- if fatalistic- folks to consider is that “much worse” is inevitable, and is common in history to empires that have a population that can vote itself largesse (entitlements, anyone) and which is overextended internationally. Debt kills countries. After the peak, each generation wonders why things are worse and how to improve “things”, failing to realize that only a Major Reset allows improvement, and- really- most of us don’t want to live through a Major Reset.
banana you are a real piece of work??? You must be a politician or work for one. Seriously
What would you do?
Act like a LEADER?
Make HARD decisions?
TAKE responsibly?
LEAD by example?
You just said a whole lot of nuthin.
Realtors Are Liars®
2011-09-06 10:51:37
You don’t like him….. no reason to tapdance. Be a man about it.
You are speaking to yourself, it seems.
Independent of my choice for ideal candidate, I will be markedly happier if Perry wins he election than Obama. Time will tell if we are given that choice and then whether a majority of voting Americans (in a distribution to allow Electoral Collage success) concurs.
“And how will you feel if Perry wins ??”
Awful. Just awful. That truly will be the end of the country. I can’t even believe Rick Perry is an option. Ruck Fick Perry. Seriously. GWB on steroids. A truly scary individual.
You would think that with all the money we’ve given the bankers, they would give us some candidates that we would love to hug. Tough times.
Act like a LEADER?
— he can’t pass bills by himself.
Make HARD decisions?
— he made some VERY hard decisions on health care. Like alienating most of his base so that big pharma didn’t block him. Did I mention extending the Bush tax cuts?
TAKE responsibly?
— I recall him doing that more than once. And if he didn’t, the media has done a very good job of it for him.
LEAD by example?
— He showed stellar process in compromise. Too bad the R’s thought that the middle of the compromise tug-of-war was halfway down the R line.
————
Maybe you could ask him to use his “bully pulpit” and “twist arms” and “rise up” too.
Nor did Obama ever have a supermajority in the Senate. There were 180 days of 60 Senators in the Dem Caucus, but one of them was in the “Connecticut for Lieberman” party, who capaigned for McCain, remember?
As for, would the country be better of with McCain? Hmm… if you didn’t like Libya, what do you think of bom bom bom, bom bom Iran?
“What does “act like a leader” mean?”
my brother went to West Point and all I can tell you is their is a distinction…and it can be taught.
does obama/pailin/perry/bachman or others posses that “leadership” quality?
i’ll let other’s decide.
*there
Michael,
Leadership in a situation where the people you are leading have to follow your orders or risk prison is a very different thing. I uderstand the subtlties of good leaders in the military doing it in a way that people give their best effort instead of their minimum effort, but that isn’t even remotely what we are talking about here. In a split government situation, most of what people call strong leadership is demagoguery.
And evildocs, giant spending cuts causing more harm at least short term isn’t even remotely my opinion. It is basic economics. I personally would not be much harmed by a deflationary spiral, but a lot of people would. Long term things are a little less clear, but the best way to fix our long term problems is to cut spending on healthcare - a lot - and the military. Getting rid of some of the really distorting tax deductions and credits would help too.
—Polly: Giant spending cuts causing more harm at least short term isn’t even remotely my opinion. It is basic economics.—-</
Very much here is open to debate, and if most of these things were “basic” economics, the debate would be less heady. I see at least that you have modified your post from the prior, as follows…
—-Polly: Proposing massive cuts to federal spending will make things much much worse in at least the short term and possibly the long term as well. Well, what else is he supposed to do? —
Keynsian models have failed in being mapped onto our real world. Cutting spending at time of Depression would be bad by that model, which asserts that gov’ts save assiduously in good times in order to spend in bad. We didn’t do that. We have nothing to spend. Indeed we have less than nothing to spend. The outcome will be bad. So, the question, making this process of economics far from “basic”, is what to do when our troubles are created largely by ludicrous debt, and an asserted solution (spending in times of Depression) will worsen the ludicrous debt that created the Depression.
The expression, “screwed” comes to mind. This indeed, relates back to my point in prior post that societies tend to come to an end, or hit the euphemistic “Major Reset” at times such as these.
That said, this situation again remains non “basic” in that worsening our cataclysmic debt with more spending because Keynes might have felt spending-in-a-Depression was good *after* that society built a big surplus before the deppression, is not clearly a good idea.
I personally favor spending cuts, gradual onset trade protectionism. Wanna build that Macbook Air in China? Fine. Pay extra $1000 per machine to bring into USA. Suddenly China not so competitive. That said, my last 2 sentences could serve as fodder for hundreds of pages of blogging, so let’s maybe not go there now.
We cannot spend out of this, because we do not have the money to do so. Half the country gets food stamps. I work 12 hour night shifts 14 straight nights per month, and half my pay– everything I earn from Jan 1- June 30 goes to taxes to spend on folks who have less. Good? Bad? Just? Dunno. How much more of my earnings should be taken from me? Show evidence that increasing largesse will solve the core problem- our failed economy.
boo hoo hoo…
How many RNC party hacks are posting here these days? Fess up, boyz…
I stumbled upon an interesting website yesterday and I’ve co-opted and linked it to my username. Is accurately characterizes “reaItor”.
http://www.sleazyrealtors.com
country ahead of their party
What a joke? Didn’t the R’s use the same kind of rhetoric before the Iraq war? Ah, the players change, the playbook remains the same…..
If party can be ahead of the law, then how can anything be ahead of party? Just saying…
Didn’t the R’s use the same kind of rhetoric before the Iraq war?
Both the house and senate (to include the MAJORITY of democrats) voted to authorize the Iraqi war…
Compare/contrast to:
Libya
The $1 trillion stimulus
ObamaCare
Etc.
I seem to recall that the R’s “compromised” on Obamacare and that some voted for it. Ditto with the stimulus.
Libya, while much smaller than the presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, is disappointing. Then again, it was about one thing and one thing alone: oil. So we all know who was really behind it.
Vote Results: House Passes Obamacare
Benjamin Domenech –
The final vote tally for the Senate version of President Obama’s health care reform legislation in the House was 219-212, with 34 Democrats joining all Republicans in opposition .
The key takeaway for opposition groups is that Speaker Pelosi needed to make a last-day deal with Rep. Bart Stupak and his small group of pro-life Democrats in order to achieve passage. That deal came in the form of an executive order from the White House, which we explained here. Democrats who opposed were:
I thought that one lone R in Louisiana voted for the main Obamacare bill, and was nearly skewered right there on the Floor. (?) In the Senate, Harry Reid barely got the 60 votes needed for cloture.
The all-Dem vote must have been for the second, smaller part of Obamacare, which the Senate passed by under-60 reconciliation.
Some freely cribbed information via the internet:
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (HR 3590) and The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (HR 4872) and the debate continues on whether to repeal or fix it. As the timeline rolls out for compliance over the next few years it will become increasingly clear that there are quite a few mandates thrown in that our representatives will deny having any knowledge of, since they did not read it!
—–
H R 3590 RECORDED VOTE 21-Mar-2010 10:49 PM
QUESTION: On Motion to Concur in Senate Amendments
BILL TITLE: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
Ayes Noes PRES NV
Democratic 219 34
Republican 178
Independent
TOTALS 219 212
——-
he Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA)[1][2] is a United States federal statute that was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. The law (along with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010) is a product of the health care reform agenda of the 111th United States Congress and the Obama administration. The PPACA reforms certain aspects of the private health insurance industry and public health insurance programs, including increasing insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions and expanding access to insurance to over 30 million Americans,[3][4] while mandating an increase in total national medical expenditures.[5][6]
The PPACA passed the Senate on December 24, 2009, by a filibuster-proof vote of 60–39 with all Democrats and two Independents voting for, and all Republicans voting against. It passed the House of Representatives on March 21, 2010, by a vote of 219–212, with all 178 Republicans and 34 Democrats voting against the bill.[7]
Didn’t the R’s use the same kind of rhetoric before the Iraq war ??
Yeah…”We Gotta Fight Them Over There So We Don’t Have To Fight Them Over Here”….
As per above: Both the house and senate (to include the MAJORITY of democrats) voted to authorize the Iraqi war…
Compare/contrast to:
Libya
The $1 trillion stimulus
ObamaCare
Etc.
They can have ‘em. They can have these houses.
Give me a good car to drive and some good scotch to drink and a good girl to court and a bad girl to have fun with and anybody can have these houses.
“ The International Monetary Fund opposes European plans to force Greece to put up collateral in its second rescue, said four people with direct knowledge of the matter.
The use of collateral, a concession to win Finland’s backing for 109 billion euros ($155 billion) of loans pledged by euro leaders in July, would deny the IMF priority creditor status and violate Greek bondholders’ rights, said the people, who declined to be named because the talks are in progress.
“IMF objections threaten to snag Europe’s crisis-management effort after aid of 256 billion euros for Greece, Ireland and Portugal failed to restore order.”
Source - Bloomberg
Hoffa Threatens GOP At Obama Event: “Take These Son Of Bitches Out”
Real Clear Politics
Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa had some profane, combative words for Republicans while warming up the crowd for President Obama in Detroit, Michigan on Monday.
“We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner. It’s going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We’re going to win that war,” Jimmy Hoffa said to a heavily union crowd.
“President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong,” Hoffa added.
Obama addressed the crowd shortly after Hoffa.
Obama Says He Is “Proud” Of Hoffa After Union Leader’s Remarks
That’s my goon
Go goons go!
You cut out the part where he said let’s VOTE them out. But if someone in the media wanted to see some blood spilled I guess that’s what they are going to get eh? Go goons!
I didn’t cut anything out, that’s how it was in their page.
Sorry I shot the messenger there, you were just promoting it to get a reaction and stir up anger. All the same it was misleading and a taint on you for not doing a little research before adding to the huge amount of BS we have to wade through here. The best posters on here tend to dig for straight analysis stories. Most of your posts are really pretty good that but please resist the urge to throw gas on the fire.
Take it easy wmbz.
Didn’t the Prez opine against harsh and violent rhetoric? Hmmm… only it seems when that is a cudgel against his opposition.
Is that the same as putting a target on their pictre, I’d say not take them out can mean many things.
As was done by the DNC for republicans?
Hey, it’s the Left who *whined* about harsh rhetoric. So, they have a higher standard to maintain, not the lower standard they have maintained. The hypocrisy thing, n’ all.
Dude — you working here for the RNC? Because your posts sure do seem to suggest it…
I take an intellectual approach to dissecting notions put out by others, and to you that makes me a member of some committee? That is a tad presumptuous of you.
Anyone who pushes back on the liberal self echoes must be working for the RNC.
Anyone who constantly labels others ‘liberal’ probably works for the RNC, or at least listens to Rush and prides himself in dittoheadhood.
Tucson shootings: Let us heal together, Obama says at memorial event
Thursday, January 13, 2011; 11:22 AM
TUCSON - President Obama comforted a community suffused with grief and summoned the nation to recommit to a more civil public discourse as he delivered a eulogy Wednesday evening urging Americans to talk with each other “in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.”
(“We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They’ve got a war, they got a war with us and there’s only going to be one winner.
“President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong,”)
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 13, 2011; 11:22 AM
“Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together,” Obama told 14,000 people at the University of Arizona’s McKale Memorial Center.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/12/AR2011011206134.html - -
I was there. And yes he did say the above.
But what I found disappointing was that after the speech, Obama flew off into the night and that was that. Where was his follow-up speech on gun violence? Where was his major policy initiative on creating a better mental health care system that would include research into the causes of and cures for schizophrenia?
Slim, Have you noticed that the government has insisted that Jared Loughner stay drugged 100% up of the time while his defense attorney has tried time and time again to stop the treatments? What would he say in front of a microphone if he was off the meds for a few days?
Implementing policy (heck, defining policy) is difficult, but the Prez doesn’t seem to get to that step. He postures. Sound bites for the moment. Where was his simple condemnation of harsh rhetoric yesterday by Hoffa, whom he thanked for the nice words, right after Hoffa introduced him with,
“Take These Son Of Bitches Out”
Someone has caught on to the fact that if younger generations are made worse off than older generations, then older generations can’t expect to sell them stocks at high prices.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-the-young-jobless-will-ruin-your-portfolio-2011-09-06
“The younger end of the work force is stalled — in numbers that suggest that even those who have jobs aren’t optimistic.”
“This should be raising alarm bells in Washington and on Wall Street, too. It’s not only a matter of national policy; it’s an economic one. The leading edge of the Baby Boom is retiring this year. That means the primary holders of stocks and bonds and other securities will need to sell those securities for income.”
“Without a flourishing younger America, those securities aren’t going to have willing buyers. It’s a death spiral of market economics.”
That’s the stock market. What about the housing market.
Housing market — same thing. You can’t buy Dad’s McMansion on McMinimum wage.
+1…
That means the primary holders of stocks and bonds and other securities will need to sell those securities for income.”
sort of a deflationary problem we got here.
Ford At Greater Risk of Strike After Avoiding Bailout Money
By Doug McKelway| FoxNews.com
It may seem a cruel irony that the one U.S. automaker that took no bailout money is now at greater risk of a national strike as it continues labor negotiations with union leaders.
Based upon initial tallies last week, rank and file Ford United Auto Worker members were leaning overwhelmingly toward a national strike authorization against their employer. With the current national labor contracts set to expire September 14 at General Motors, Chrysler and Ford, local union representatives at Ford were reporting 97 percent of their membership was voting to authorize a strike, if necessary.
“I don’t want to see any more concessions,” said Gary Farris, a Kentucky-based Ford plant employee since 1993. “I’d like to get a raise we haven’t had a raise for a long time.”
Farris says he has two kids in college and would like to see Ford again provide the same college assistance that it took away just as his kids were starting college.
Ford is the only one of the Big Three domestic automakers where, legally, workers can strike. Both GM and Chrysler and their union workers agreed in accepting the federal government’s auto bailout in 2009 to resolve contract issues through binding arbitration.
But as ominous as the strike authorization sounds, some auto analysts believe it is merely a negotiating tool and that the prospect of a strike against Ford is unlikely.
“This is a pro forma kind of a thing. It’s something the union has to do as part of its governing regulations, and they go to the membership and ask are we willing to strike,” said Kristin Dziczek of the Center for Automotive Research. “In the contract it was one of the union’s weapons. They’ve got another arrow in the quiver.”
Further, the mood among the UAW rank and file is not ripe for a strike, believes Dr. Arthur Schwartz of Labor and Economics Associates, who is also a former labor negotiator for GM.
“I think they’re going to be able to get an agreement. I think there’s room to reward the workers for the success of the company while still not adding to the fixed costs in the future of the company,” he said. “There’s a settlement out there, and to not get it, I think, would really be a tragedy. I don’t think Bob King and the UAW leadership is really thinking about that.”
I’m sure those $14/hr jobs at GM and Chrysler are looming hard in the collective minds of Ford workers and many are counting their blessings even if they haven’t had a pay raise or overtime in years.
OTOH, they got a lot of extra business from the “I’m not buying a car from Government Motors” crowd.
The PPT needs to get busy! We can’t have a close below 11,000 it will bruise wall street moral.
Looks to me like they have it contained; no 4%+ post-Labor Day selloff will be allowed to happen on this side of the pond!
Wonder how well Americans will swallow “austerity” here? I know that it can never happen here, but what if.
ITEM: Italian, Spanish unions mobilise against cuts
AFP - Unions mounted a general strike in Italy and organised mass protests in Spain on Tuesday as they battled government efforts to tackle the debt crisis in two of the eurozone’s most beleaguered economies.
Parts of Italy’s public transport network ground to a halt and major attractions such as the Colosseum in Rome were closed by the strike as tens of thousands of workers took to the streets across the country.
“This is a plan the country doesn’t deserve,” said Susanna Camusso, head of the largest CGIL union, as she led a march through Rome hours before Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s austerity package was to go before the Senate.
And in Spain, whose jobless rate is the highest in the industrialised world at nearly 21 percent, unions were taking to the streets in a show of force against a constitutional amendment to ensure that budgets are balanced.
The protests came a day after Europe’s stock markets saw sharp falls in share prices, including by more than three percent in Italy and Spain, amid growing fears of recession. There was a slight rally on Tuesday.
Euro-goons are on the move
Go goons go!
Berlusconi appears to be part feline, and has used his nine lives most usefully for the PTB - earlier with the WOT and now with this.
“Wonder how well Americans will swallow “austerity” here?”
SInce we’re anti union in the USA we’ll probably bend over and say “please sir, may I have more?”
Anti union? Don’t you mean anti goon?
The amount of goonism in America and on the HBB is unbelievable. Goonists trot out the same tired stories about bloated, unsustainable pensions and try to paint all goons with the same brush.
Got a 5 day workweek? Thank a goon.
Got safe workplace conditions? Thank a goon.
Got living wages? Thank a goon.
Or, in my case, I’ll have to thank a goon for my college education. That was paid for in part by my mother’s public school teacher’s salary.
Greeting from our new ‘hood in Grover Beach, CA in San Luis Obispo County, week two. We have temporary housing for 4 months giving us time to find a good neighborhood to live in. Thank goodness, because this isn’t it: sidewalks that are not contiguous down the block coupled with the tremendous width of the streets along with the number of cars makes walking a daunting prospect. And from the look of this Whiskey Tango crowd, most of them could use some exercise. Yet everyone has a huge truck and ATVs. Perhaps these were still the vacationers, so we’ll see how it is since the last real summer weekend is over.
Sold in 04, do you know any hidden spots that are within 15 miles to SLO, bike-friendly and at least three miles from the beach? We have been socked in for days except yesterday and that’s a no-go for my better half. Seems as though once you go up any of the canyon from the beach it gets sunny and we’d like to grow some food. Thanks!
MrBubble
Hey, I am right down the street from you MrBubble…The first three or four block’s from the Beach is where the moderate weather is…If you go 3 miles west from the Beach, add 10-15 degrees…
Thanks SCDave. I have been watching the temps between SLO and the beaches and it’s been 8 or so degrees every day for the last two weeks. Not as good for me, but better for the veggies and the wife. Rents seem a little bit better than Marin, so we’re hoping to rent a free-standing house with a bit of land somewhere.
I’m hoping that the college-geared rentals will go in this month and we won’t have to deal with that type of housing stock where we start looking.
hoping that the college-geared rentals will go in this month ??
They are already gone…All the students have secured their housing by now so I would not expect any competition from them…
Look a little south of downtown…Close enough to town but away from the students..Not sure how much stuff you want to grow but there are some nice neighborhoods around there…If you want more land, continue farther South/West…Its going to be hotter though that’s why the grapes do so well out there…
Thanks again for the info. As I was writing, I thought that the college students may have already moved in, but didn’t know the school schedule. Glad that we won’t be competing, since mum and baby like the quiet.
She’s working South and West of SLO, so it would be great to get a place there. I’ll melt, but I’ll live!
my favorite place is Avila Hot Springs ( not the hotel) $10 to soak in mineral water. Bob jones bike trail in unbeatable Grover Beach is the armpit of SLO. Arroyo Grande would ne a better place to rent. SLO county had a huge run-up in the bubble years,prices will come down much further.My Pismo beach strategy has been rent the best beach house u can find..i have an full ocean view and pay $ 2000 a month.
“Grover Beach is the armpit of SLO. Arroyo Grande would ne a better place to rent. SLO county had a huge run-up in the bubble years,prices will come down much further.”
+1 Avoid both Nipomo and Grover Beach.
South of SLO airport is the Edna Valley along 227, which is prime farming soil, but prices are still fantasy high.
Yet everyone has a huge truck and ATVs. Perhaps these were still the vacationers, so we’ll see how it is since the last real summer weekend is over.
”
yes thats what it is they come from inland to drive on the dunes
More restaurants are targeting customers who use food stamps
By Jonathan Ellis and Megan Luther, USA TODAY
The number of businesses approved to accept food stamps grew by a third from 2005 to 2010, U.S. Department of Agriculture records show, as vendors from convenience and dollar discount stores to gas stations and pharmacies increasingly joined the growing entitlement program.
Now, restaurants, which typically have not participated in the program, are lobbying for a piece of the action.
Louisville-based Yum! Brands, whose restaurants include Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silver’s and Pizza Hut, is trying to get restaurants more involved, federal lobbying records show.
That’s a prospect that anti-hunger advocates welcome, but one that worries some current food stamp vendors and public health advocates.
Federal rules generally prohibit food stamp benefits, which are distributed under the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), from being exchanged for prepared foods. Yet a provision dating to the 1970s allows states to allow restaurants to serve disabled, elderly and homeless people, USDA spokeswoman Jean Daniel said.
Between 2005 and 2010, the number of businesses certified in the SNAP program went from about 156,000 to nearly 209,000, according to USDA data.
There is big money at stake. USDA records show food stamp benefits swelled from $28.5 billion to $64.7billion in that period.
Four states accept restaurants, with Florida the most recent to begin a program.
“It makes perfect sense to expand a program that’s working well in California, Arizona and Michigan, enabling the homeless, elderly and disabled to purchase prepared meals with SNAP benefits in a restaurant environment,” Yum! spokesman Jonathan Blum said.
The National Restaurant Association supports Yum!, said spokeswoman Katie Laning Niebaum, but the National Association of Convenience Stores does not.
“If the pie’s only so big, nobody’s going to want to see the pie sliced thinner,” said Convenience Stores spokesman Jeff Lenard. “I’m not sure that’s in the best interest of public health.”
Kelly Brownell, director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, says encouraging more fast-food consumption is not good for people’s health. “It’s preposterous that a company like Yum! Brands would even be considered for inclusion in a program meant for supplemental nutrition.”
“They think going hungry is better?” counters Edward Cooney of the Congressional Hunger Center. “I’m solidly behind what Yum! is doing.”
I seem to recall someone here a few years ago predicting that the poor would wind up living off the dollar menu at fast food places.
On the other hand i really don’t see how the typical SNAP benefit ($400 per month) could feed a family for a month at Taco Bell or any fast food place. Bologna sandwiches and mac-n-cheese are much cheaper.
“Bologna sandwiches and mac-n-cheese are much cheaper.”
But that would take away TV time. Sorry, almost getting killed on my bike by a junked-up SVU racing to the Jack-In-The-Box drive-thru has soured my mood.
I guess it depends on your definition of “feed” and “family”. It’s pretty amazing how many calories per dollar you can get when eating cheap Mexican.
400 $1 tacos / 30 days = 13.33 tacos per day. For a family of 4 (which qualifies for $400 SnapBucks per month) That’s a taco for breakfast, one taco for lunch and one taco for dinner with 1.33 tacos left to share at the end of the day.
Doesn’t sound like a plan to me.
It’s enough calories to live. Not that I’d volunteer for it or ask anybody else to do it. But I’m certain somebody will try it, or is trying it as we type.
In 2006, I experimented for one month to see if I could live on $100 a month food stamps. Verdict: it’s almost doable, but you really have to work at it. If you look for the ultra-generic* for staples like 5-pound bags of carrots or big cans of spaghetti sauce or boxes of cereal, and go for bulk frozen veggies and bags of rice, you can easily get enough calories. But it’s too hard to get the good protein.** It’s a little easier if you have a family and can make big dishes like lasagna. I ate well, but I spent $119, and I needed a menu plan and a spreadsheet to do it.
—————-
*my store has a “Guaranteed Value” brand. It’s there if you look for it.
** I fully understand the old expression of “Chicken every Sunday.” The poor could afford good protein like chicken only once a week.
You might be able to do even better than the box cereal with bulk oats. Making our own muesli (and baby food) have been cost savers so far.
It is called supplemental nutrition for a reason. You aren’t supposed to use just snap to eat. You are supposed to use it to supplement your regular food budget.
When my uncle’s family got WIC (foster kids get it) they could not have fed event the kids on just the food they got in the program (except when the boys were babies and just getting formula - I think they got all the formula they needed). They still had to buy bread and fruit and vegetables and stuff. It was a nice supplement, but you have to buy food too.
You might be able to do even better than the box cereal with bulk oats. Making our own muesli (and baby food) have been cost savers so far.
Do you have a muesli recipe on your blog?
BTW, I made peanut sauce over the weekend. Oh, is that stuff rich! And tasty!
I don’t think that we do. When I make granola, I use the Alton Brown recipe, but with muesli, we just toast a ton of oats, sliver almonds in the processor and toast them, toast sesame seeds and add all of those to sunflower seeds, raisins, and cut apricots. I don’t think that I’ve forgotten anything.
I am going to put up a new fennel crumble recipe soon though!
they could not have fed event the kids on just the food they got in the program ”
that’s why they get free lunches at school
And breakfast too
Lean Cuisine is $2.00 on sale.
I’m all for food stamps, but this is insane. I still like the idea of the government food store, one that looks a little like Aldi’s. Cash and food stamps only. It would be no trouble for the store to stock Lean Cuisines or other frozen meals or a soup bar, and provide a small seating area with a microwave. People who lack kitchen facilities could sit there to eat. The only problem would be removing the homeless who try to hang out in the dining area all day.
The unions will need to get their goons fired up!
Report: Quinn weighing thousands of layoffs
Illinois News
September 6, 2011 (CHICAGO) (WLS) — Gov. Pat Quinn is considering drastic steps to trim the state’s budget, according to a published report.
The Chicago Tribune reports the governor plans to issue layoff notices to thousands of state workers this week, as he deals with a budget shortfall in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The governor was scheduled to appear Tuesday on Chicago’s North Side to welcome public school students back to classes. He also will likely face questions about his reported plan to lay off workers.
Democratic Governor Quinn maintains that lawmakers did not provide enough money to keep the state operating for a full year, and at least a dozen agencies may run out of funds by the spring.
If the governor moves ahead with the layoffs plan, he will be in for a fight from the state’s largest government employee union. Union members are expected to cite a no-layoff agreement they struck with the governor last year.
Governor Quinn kept a low profile on Labor Day, and his reported move could be a way to put pressure on the state legislature to free up more money when they return to Springfield for the fall session next month.
The goons are fired up! In Detroit, in Illinois, wherever the goons are needed
go goons go!
Is Fezzik on the squad?
Our Rent-A-Mob is ready and able. Just say when and where and we send in the goons
go goons go!
Unions love layoffs. A 10 percent decline in the workforce leads to a 20 percent decline in services and (due to retirees and higher seniority pay) a 5 percent decline in costs. And those laid off don’t vote in union elections anymore.
“We’re waist deep in the Big Muddy, and the Big Fool (Bernanke) says to push on.” (My apologies to Pete Seeger)
Trade imbalances do not persist long term. They create exess debt in the nation wih the trade deficit. We either attack and reverse the trade imbalance so the debt can be repaid, or we watch the debt collapse into depression.
Don’t buy stuff that you cannot afford.
What if that stuff if food and a way to work?? Or clothing or medical care for your kids??
What? You want to be able to afford food, shelter and clothing? What do you think this is? A first world country?
If this is a real life question, more details would be needed to assist with practical solutions. Otherwise, it seems far removed from the reality of the typical debtor profile.
Trust me, those folks at the pay day loan stores are not getting loans to buy toys. For the upper 50% a $500 loan seems trivial, but for the bottom half it’s a lifeline.
I get that. Times are tough, but those unfortunate souls who have been crushed by hardship are not the model for why the USA is a debt junkie.
In a way they are, they’re just on the bottom of the food chain. We’ve become debt junkies because incomes have stagnated and even fallen.
Incomes have fallen for quite a while in real terms, yet we borrowed to keep up. Had we feared debt, what is about to break would have been more gently unwound decades ago.
Then corporations that are shipping jobs overseas won’t be able to make profits. So, they get government to keep lowering interest rates and loosening lending standards until enough people finally break and start buying.
Money is debt. If no one is borrowing and spending, then no one else can be making money.
Good news! Ford is creating 5,000 new jobs! Oh wait, they are in India.
ITEM: Ford building $1bn manufacturing complex in India.
AFP - US auto giant Ford has started construction on a $1 billion manufacturing and engineering complex in India as it bets on the country to help drive global growth, a company statement said on Tuesday.
The new manufacturing facilities in Sanand in the western state of Gujarat will create 5,000 jobs, and will be able initially to produce 240,000 vehicles and 270,000 engines a year, Ford said.
The first vehicles and engines are due to come off the line in 2014.
The complex highlights the automaker’s plan “to aggressively grow the Ford brand in India,” said Ford India president Michael Boneham.
The new manufacturing facilities are targeted at helping Ford reach its goal of increasing worldwide sales by nearly 50 percent by the middle of the decade to eight million vehicles a year.
“We are aggressively expanding in markets around the world that have the most growth potential,” said Joe Hinrichs, president of Ford Asia Pacific and Africa.
How much you wanna bet Ford is doing this because of protectionism? Otherwise, why not import the cars from China?
Funny how it’s OK for everyone else to be protectionist, but if we do it’s “bad”.
Yep. I work in the software insudtry. Try selling computer software into China or India, and what you will be told is, we only buy from companies that have x% of their workforce in our country.
It used to be enough that you were inporting their citizens with H1B visas. Not any more. They want those jobs actually in country.
And we still have shills who insist that exporting our high paying jobs is “good for Americans”.
And we still have shills who insist that exporting our high paying jobs is “good for Americans”.
those would be our CEO’s paid shills good for profits maybe
and when it all goes bad and we can’t make anything , when we find ourselves in a desperate war, can we hang the CEOs who outsourced everything? and what good whould that do anyway
when I was in Poway I worked for a defense company and they were having a hard time finding electronics that were not made over seas. I think most semi conductors are fabricated in Tawain for example.
Good news! Ford is creating 5,000 new jobs! Oh wait, they are in India.
And yet - the UAW still wants to strike at Ford later this month…
Don’t kid yourself, even if the UAW was paid $1/hr the Indians would have insisted that Ford set up shop in India if they wanted to sell locally.
Cutting off your nose to spite your face….
Go ahead and crush the wages of Americna workers. What you will get is less demand for goods and massive debt poofage.
The race to the bottom leads to depression.
Who do corporations think they are going to sell their goods and services too when they have lowered the American wage to 3rd world slum levels?
Cutting off your nose to spite your face….
Did you ever wonder WHY did all those FOREIGN automobile companies that built massive auto plants in the United States for the last 20 years built nearly ALL OF THEM in Right to Work states???
Have you ever worked in militant union plant in a closed shop?
I have.
The most unproductive and most entitlement minded people I have ever met (except for public union but that is another story). It is something to behold. And it is not about wages.
I am amazed that there is still some manufacturing left in closed shop states.
Is there any wage that is too low for you 2b
any working condition that should get workers to demand more?
NOte those automakers in right to work states will be shedding jobs as well. It’s a race to the bottom and natural resource limits will prevent any rise of a middle class anywere. ie there is more labor than there is demand.
Correct. My brother lives in “right to work” North Carolina and all those non union $9/hr factory jobs have been going ‘poof’.
Non union jobs are great if you have enlightened management (like HP used to have). Once the enlightened leaders are replaced by the “increase profit no matter what” types, then its the race to the bottom, where a non union textile worker earning $9/hr is “overpaid” and the jobs flee to low wage Asia.
Did you ever wonder WHY did all those FOREIGN automobile companies that built massive auto plants in the United States for the last 20 years built nearly ALL OF THEM in Right to Work states???
For the same reason they will move offshore: The Race to the Bottom. Mexico’s auto industry has swollen for a reason. A lot of “American” , “Japanese” and “German” cars sold in the USA are built in Mexico. Minimum wage in Mexico is under $5 USD/day. Mexican autoworkers (who are union BTW) get paid $2-4 per hour. Of course they ride the bus to work as a Mexican VW worker could never afford a VW Golf.
Meanwhile Corporate America can continue wringing its hands over stagnant and slumping sales. They fired their customers.
Correct. Only the managerial class will have a middle class lifestyle. Individual contributors will become serfs. That’s the way it works in 3rd world countries.
“The most unproductive and most entitlement minded people I have ever met (except for public union but that is another story). ”
Then you need to meet some people that work on Wall Street. Talk about unproductive and entitiled…
Whah, whah… repeal Dodd-Frank because we can’t make millions a year bonuses unless we can mkae risky loans and dump them on unsuspecting fools.
Whhhhaaaaa… Stocks are falling again, so we need more QE… They have no idea how bad it is out there. No idea. Really? Try being one of those poeple whose job you shipped overseas and see how tough it is out there.
Whaaaaa… our effective corporate tax rate is in line with the reat of the world but we’ll only focus on top marginal rate being the highest, then demand they cut corporate tax rates wihtout removing deductions.. what’s the point of revenue neutral tax reform.. we must have tax reduction tax reform or we’ll hold our breath until we turn blue.
Whaaaa…. taxes are too high on the rich. How are we supposed to create another Ponzi bubble with all these taxes and regulations.. waaaaa…
Are unions perfect? Is government acting in ways that would make life better without unions? HECK NO!
Yeah, and I was on both sides of management/bargaining unit divide in a “Right to Work”, Red state.
90% of the problems between the bargaining unit and the management were because of the “My way, or the highway” managers who didn’t think the terms of the contract applied to them.
Summary terminations on flimsy grounds. Keeping their “buddies” on the payroll, when caught dead to rights on “no leeway” rules (like carrying concealed weapons). Bypassing qualified and more senior people, to give their hunting buddies promotions. Crapping on people, just because they don’t like them, or don’t kiss ass. Promoting the hot 20 year old over the 40 year old single-mom, because he’s banging (or think he has a chance to bang) the 20 year old.
These are just a few of the cases I’ve personally been involved with.
As I’ve often said, unions wouldn’t exist, if management wasn’t so crappy.
See, cutting taxes on the rich does create jobs. However, those jobs aren’t in America.
And globalism helps create jobs for American companies. But those jobs aren’t in America either.
United States of Europe????
The fact that it is even being talked about shows how desperate they are for a solution, any solution.
The Euro was created to persist trade imbalances. FAIL!
Trade imbalances do not persist long-term. They result in excess debt, interest on that debt just widens the imbalances, and unless the imbalances reverse, the debt can’t be repaid and will collapse into mass money poofage.
1.975%
unbefrackinbelievable.
No doubt. It makes me wonder if the floor is under 1.
100% mortgages make a comeback: Three years after the crunch, bank lures buyers. By Becky Barrow - UK Daily Mail - 6th September 2011
Mortgages that cover the entire cost of a home return this week.
Three years after being scrapped in the credit crunch, a bank is bringing back the super-size loans that allow first-time buyers to get on the housing ladder without saving a penny.
Such 100 per cent mortgages were axed after lenders were criticised for making irresponsible loans – but the move caused major problems for young people who had relied on them to buy without having a deposit.
Window of opportunity: The offer could entice more young people into the housing market
Window of opportunity: The offer could entice more young people into the housing market
And it forced soaring numbers to rent at a time when the cost of tenancies has reached an all-time high.
Yesterday, however, a lender called Aldermore said it will become the first bank since 2008 to offer a ‘deposit-free’ deal.
Set up in 2009, the bank promises ‘a fresh perspective’ on mortgages. If successful, its pilot scheme launched this week could be copied by rivals.
But the offer comes with a significant catch. Buyers need generous parents ready to put their own home on the line to help their offspring.
For, if disaster strikes, and the home is repossessed, the guarantors also face losing the roof over their heads.
Charles Haresnape, managing director of residential mortgages at Aldermore, said: ‘First-time buyers have become disenfranchised from the housing market because of the large deposit demanded by most lenders.
‘This is the single biggest issue facing first-time buyers. It needs to be addressed head on if the UK’s housing market is to have a chance of recovery.’
Young buyers can borrow up to 100 per cent of the property’s value, with a maximum loan of £250,000, without a deposit.
But their parents have to guarantee up to 25 per cent of the property’s value by putting up the family home as collateral.
“100% mortgages make a comeback: Three years after the crunch”
Cut me Mick..You don’t wanna do it kid!
Mick Cut me.
“There’s a fly in the ointment folks… the ointment being the bailouts of Greece, Ireland, & Portugal … A German court is going to rule on the constitutionality or legality of Germany’s participation in the bailouts, and this ruling is expected tomorrow, Sept. 7th!
This like here in the U.S. where we just circumvent the Constitution, and it takes a ruling by the Supreme Court to overrule something that should never have started… Well… apparently, Germany’s participation in the bailouts is considered to be against the law of the land… Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has tried to sneak the sun past the rooster here, and now, we’ll see if the German Court will look the other way or not…
If they declare the actions illegal, you can only imagine the problems for Greece, Ireland and Portugal… And if they declare the actions illegal you can only imagine the euro getting taken to the woodshed for sure! I talked briefly about this on Friday, and it’s where I was supposed to paste this discussion that was all queued up… But, the euro has problems… the currency is only worth more than the dollar because the dollar’s problems are worse… But, they will get to a more even playing field should the German Court declare the actions illegal… The ruling can always be appealed, and daisy chain this thing out for months… But, I wanted to bring this to your attention now”…
- Chuck Butler
Looks like everyone in the know is going to cash
NEW YORK/BANGALORE (Reuters) - Carlyle Group filed for an IPO on Tuesday, a long-awaited move to catch up with rivals Blackstone, KKR and Apollo, but the volatility of global markets means an IPO is unlikely to happen until the first half of 2012.
I wonder if Romney has seen the movie Inside Job, which prominently features a most interesting interview with Glenn Hubbard, one of the many prominent economists who couldn’t see it coming back in Fall 2008.
Romney draws on past for economic advice
September 6, 2011, 12:41 PM
Mitt Romney’s choice of top economic advisers harkens back to his failed presidential run in 2008 and clearly identifies him as the mainstream candidate in the Republican primary.
The former businessman and Massachusetts governor on Tuesday named Glenn Hubbard and Gregory Mankiw, two well respected economists who also served in the Bush administration. Romney unveiled his choices just hours before delivering a campaign speech on how create jobs and turn around the U.S. economy.
Hubbard, now the dean of Columbia’s business school, headed the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003. He is largely credited – or blamed – for designing the so-called Bush tax cuts of 2003. Republicans claim the tax cuts spurred growth; Democrats say it worsened deficits.
Hubbard was also an adviser to Romney in his unsuccessful 2008 run for the Republican nomination.
…
Eventually “Well Respected Economist” will join the growing group of oxymorons, like “military intelligence” and “jumbo shrimp”
There was a time when I could have been convinced to vote for him, but this sort of thing just makes it impossible.
“Brace for profit forecasts to be reeled in”
http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/06/markets/corporate_earnings/index.htm?iid=HP_LN
Corporate America’s strong earnings have been pushing stocks higher for more than two years now, but there are early signs that the momentum many companies have had in this miserable economy is beginning to fade away.
So, Corporate America, what happened to all those rising 3rd world “consumers” who were going to pick up the slack for the millions of first world employees you fired?
Greece is getting really close to the edge now. Italy has a toxic debt stew about to boil over also. One small town there has started printing their own currency and said screw the euro.
Here’s a good one I found:
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/wcarton11225.html
“Deuda” means “debt”.
What would McCain/Palin do? And how would this differ than what Obama has done
-Still in Iraq/Afghanistan? Check
-Designed a “health care bill” that insures that their insurance and pharma friends continue their monopoly? Check
-Baled out Wall Street Banksters? Double check
-Supported Global Wage Arbitrage? Check
-Cut taxes on rich people? Check
-Raised taxes/”user fees” on middle class and poor people? Check
So…….why are Republicans so pizzed at Obama? Because he calls them names? Appears to me that he’s a Republican in everything but name.
It’s fun to listen to liberals whine on “Yeah - our guy is bad but yours would have been worse because here is the stuff I think he would have done…”
They never see the plank in their own eyes.
Political plank, nice!
I’m not a liberal. I’ve been as registered Republican for the past 35 years.
Eventually, you have to decide what kind of country you want to live in. Where the Republicans have brought us, and want to go is a disaster, IMO.
Republicans have been pushing the “Rising tide lifts all boats/trickle down” dogma since 1980. I’ve watched (up close) how the rich get richer, and everybody else I know lose ground financially.
Since 1980, the Republicans have held the White House 21 out of 31 years. They’ve held one or both houses of Congress over half that time. All of the policy changes that have caused the financial meltdown had a lot of Republican help.
I figure the “blame split” is about 65% Republican, 35% Democratic.
“I figure the “blame split” is about 65% Republican, 35% Democratic.”
Yes, 100% politician.
100% politician and 100% us dupes.
RNC troll alert
Postal job cuts would weigh on minorities, vets
September 6, 2011
WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — Should the Postal Service get its way on laying off thousands of workers, the cuts would weigh heavily on two segments of the population hard hit in recent years: minorities and veterans.
The U.S. Postal Service, teetering toward default, wants the power to cut 120,000 jobs by voiding labor protections for currently protected workers.
Layoffs can’t happen unless Congress steps in — and could, in fact, violate the Constitution. But the timing of the layoff talk couldn’t be worse. The odds of a double-dip recession are increasing and the nation added no new jobs last month.
The Postal Service is one of the largest employers of all minorities, led by African-Americans, who make up 21% of workers. Last year, Black Enterprise magazine praised the service as one of the top 40 companies for diversity.
“Historically, the post office has been the largest employer of African Americans, and from 1970 to 2000, blacks were at least twice as likely to work for the post office as whites,” wrote Philip Rubio, a former mail carrier and an assistant professor at North Carolina A&T State University, in an opinion piece published in several newspapers in July.
The unemployment rate for African-American men hit a 25-year-record-high of 16.7% last week.
Clock ticking on Postal Service budget crisis
In addition, the Postal Service is the single largest employer of veterans — 130,000, or 22% of its ranks, according to a 2010 report on postal operations. Of those veterans, 49,000 — nearly a third — are disabled.
In a memo discussing potential layoffs, the Postal Service proposes giving veterans preference in layoffs. But unions insist veterans’ jobs would be at stake.
“Whenever the Postal Service closes a whole plant, as they have said they want to do, all the employees in that plant, including veterans, would be subject to being laid off,” said Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union, in a prepared statement.
Layoffs aren’t merely controversial, they may just be unconstitutional, according to an independent research arm of Congress.
Existing union contracts with one of seven different unions for post office workers prohibit layoffs of employees with more than six years of service.
But the Congressional Research Service said in a July note to lawmakers that if Congress passes a law possibly allowing layoffs of Postal Service workers with labor contracts, those workers could challenge the move in court — and stand a good chance of winning.
The possibility of future lawsuits hasn’t stopped Congress before, but it could bolster opponents of tweaking union contracts to allow layoffs.
Other moves under consideration by the Postal Service to save money are the closure of some 3,700 post offices and an end to Saturday mail delivery.
when I moved to Poway from Phoenix a few years ago (2009)
the first rental I wanted I lost to a postal worker couple because ” postal workers thats a government job very steady. engineers ( what I am ) not very steady work”
haha maybe the old landlord will have to change his scoreing system. I also heard that the house I didn’t get with the postal workers needed constant repairs while I repaired all the stuff at my rental I heard this from the neighbor who worked as a handy man for the landlord.
eventually I will be compelled by the shear arrogence of CA RE to move back to AZ I just know it
FWIW, engineering is not steady work. Lots of layoffs.
“Manageable” is the new “contained”….
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44411981
“US Banks’ Exposure to Europe Is ‘Manageable’: Bernanke”
“While a recent report showed that U.S. financial companies have nearly $200 billion in net exposure to Greece, Ireland, and Portugal, the amount is ‘manageable relative to their capital,’ according to a July 14 letter Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wrote to members of Congress.”
What about Italy and Spain?
“US Banks’ Exposure to Europe Is ‘Manageable’: Bernanke”
This from a fellow who lies under oath! Yea I believe what BB sez…Not!
Oh no, it’s all contained. Again.
More Bad News on Jobs: Stores Trim Holiday Hiring
Tuesday, 6 Sep 2011 | By: Christina Cheddar Berk
News Editor
Don’t expect a big boost in hiring from the retail sector during the holiday season, according to the results of a survey released Tuesday.
The vast majority of retailers — some 68 percent — plan on keeping holiday hiring at roughly the same level as last year, a survey from the Hay Group said.
Although the vast majority of retailers — some 68 percent — plan on keeping holiday hiring at roughly the same level as last year, a quarter expect to trim hiring plans for seasonal workers, according to an annual hiring survey conducted by the Hay Group, a global management consultancy.
That’s a greater number than last year, when 17 percent of the retailers Hay surveyed said they would scale back hiring.
“Three months ago… people were extremely optimistic about the holidays, but that mood has shifted to one that is cautiously optimistic,” said Maryam Morse, the national retail rewards practice leader at Hay Group.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Consumers have been in a funk as they watch unemployment remain stubbornly high and lawmakers bicker over what to do about the economy and the country’s soaring debt. But they have been spending, which is encouraging.
About 68 percent—slightly more than last year—are expecting holiday sales to be higher this year than they were last year, the survey found.
Roubini: Slowdown Brings Forward New Crisis
By Scott Hamilton - Sep 6, 2011 - Bloomberg
“I thought a few months ago that the perfect storm would be 2013,” Roubini said in an interview in London today. “But now, the economic weakness in the U.S., euro zone and the U.K. is front loaded. So we’re going to double dip earlier. The climax of it could be 2013, or it could be already earlier. It depends on what policy tools are available.”
Three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., financial shares in Europe are under assault and the cost of insuring bank debt is at records as the global recovery falters and the euro-region crisis weighs on the economy. There’s a 60 percent probability that most advanced economies will fall into a recession, while authorities are running out of options to provide emergency support, said Roubini, also a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business.
“You need to restore economic growth, not five years from now, you need to restore it today,” Roubini said. “In the short term, we need to do massive stimulus, otherwise there’s going to be another Great Depression. Things are getting worse and the big difference between now and a few years ago is that this time around we’re running out of policy bullets.”
The economist said another financial crisis “is already manifesting itself” in developed economies.
Cash Holdings
Roubini said if he had large amounts of money to invest, he would “mostly keep it in cash,” especially in dollars, as the U.S. currency tends to strengthen during financial crises. He said he would also favor government bonds of countries with small budget deficits and low public debt, such as Canada and Australia, and avoid stocks and commodities.
“If we see a nasty global recession, then risky assets, starting with equities, are going to hurt and going to hurt big time,” Roubini said.
“In the short term, we need to do massive stimulus, otherwise there’s going to be another Great Depression.”
And yet, all of the Republicans are talking deficit reduction in the short term. If they succeed in winning the White House in 2012, will they change their tune?
very dire indeed…
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php/20308-Illusion-of-Recovery--Part-I-Print-and-pray-has-officially-failed-Eric-Janszen?p=207877
Florida receives nearly $500,000 in federal grants to help fight mortgage modification scams
By Kimberly Miller
Posted: 12:11 p.m.
Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is dedicating $10 million nationally, including $463,462 for Florida, to help residents avoid foreclosure with legitimate loan modification assistance and housing counseling.
The money will be doled out to regional and local counseling agencies. Florida received the most money from the local allocation, with California earning the second highest amount at $367,433.
“The funding announced today is specifically earmarked to provide counseling assistance relating to mortgage modification, avoiding potential mortgage scams, and assisting victims of scams,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. “It is crucial that we support these agencies in helping struggling families do whatever is possible to avoid foreclosure without being victimized by so-called mortgage ‘rescue’ companies.”
In Florida, 21 agencies will be share the money, including three in Palm Beach County _ Housing Partnership, Inc., in Riviera Beach, Credit Card Management Services, Inc., in West Palm Beach, and Consumer Credit Management Services, Inc., in Delray Beach.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/foreclosures/florida-receives-nearly-500-000-in-federal-grants-1822814.html - -
Chris Whalen: Bank Of America Should Declare Bankruptcy
Linette Lopez | Sep. 6, 2011 (BI)
Bank of America has over $100 billion in mortgage liabilities, says Chris Whalen Co-founder of Institutional Risk Analytics.
On a web broadcast published on KingWorldNews, he advocates “the classical American way of dealing with this problem”– complete and total restructuring through Chapter 11. Before its too late.
He says, “The only sane way of fixing this and I mean fix it so that Bank of America comes out of the process restructured, ready to support growth, support leverage, is a classic chapter 11…”
His point: Countrywide’s bond trusts are worthless, were never properly constructed, and don’t protect investors at all. Bank of America is on the hook for all of that, and while its subsidiaries are well capitalized, the parent company is bust. The only thing to do to fix this problem is to unmake $100s of billions worth of bond contracts.
Bank of America can’t take that strain as is because it can’t touch any subsidiary money to settle its legal claims, so equity holders are going to get wiped out, and bond holders are going to have to take serious haircut.
At least, says Whalen, if the bank files for bankruptcy, it can be saved.
“…we’re not going to take the bank down. Bank of America is not going to close. I have all my money in Bank of America, my company, my personal accounts are all at Bank of America, and I have no concern because I know the folks at the FDIC will take care of it if they have to. But I don’t think we have to go there.”
Because of Countrywide, the biggest mortgage lender in the U.S. and thus the originator of most of the bad loans, Bank of America has the worst fate of the U.S. banks. But other major banks face some degree of pain depending on what comes out of FHFA’s lawsuits.
Aside from the “moribund larger banks”, Whalen specifically mentioned Allied Bank and Wells Fargo as companies in the danger zone. The rest of the banking sector is free of these massive legacy issues, though, and can continue as is.
So how do we fix the problems at big banks?
1. Repeal the Bank Holding Company Act so that the Federal Reserve isn’t on the hook for their debt.
Then we should…
“…allow commercial companies to control depositories. They would be separated (depositories and companies) but I think having new capital, better management, more innovative management, would help the U.S. tremendously. You know, banks aren’t special. They aren’t supposed to be special…I want to let the private sector take on risk and not put these artificial limits up so that the Fed protects big banks.”
You see, to Whalen, the entire point of quantitative easing was to buy time so that banks could restructure. But the big boys haven’t been doing it. Instead they, and Washington, have been “treading water” until they’re forced to do something (or, in Washington’s case, until after election season).
It’s a game called “extend and pretend.” But increasingly, its looking like the game is now over.
This house thing is getting old. What, 7 years and counting. What stage is this supposed to be? Anger, rage, a do over for everybody that bought a house or loaned the money for one while prices were in Never, Never Land? I don`t know how much more I can take. All I can say is….
Cut me Mick..You don’t wanna do it kid!
Mick Cut me.
“What stage is this supposed to be? Anger, rage, a do over for everybody…”
It’s the cryonic suspension stage. Don’t buy until the thaw is well underway.
Media Bias?
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44409176
CNBC asks CEOs how do we create more jobs…
1) CEO of International Paper, told CNBC “to create jobs what we need is demand. This economy is 70 percent consumer driven, so we need consumers spending some of their discretionary income if we’re going to have demand that’s gong to lead to more jobs.”
(I think he misses the point that consumers don’t have descritionary income. They were using debt to replace lost incomes, but have hit the debt wall.)
2) Indra Nooya, chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, noted that “anything that’s done to address unemployment in terms of massive stimulus spending is going to exacerbate deficits. And anything that’s done to address deficits in the short-term is going to exacerbate unemployment.”
“”a bit of a policy box and it’s going to require us being willing to give up one of the two,”
3) “John Schiller, chairman and CEO of Energy XXI, said “if the government would get out of the way, from a regulation standpoint, and let us do what we do good you’ll see us continue to hire and grow this economy.”
(Polluting? Lowering wages of workers? Lieing to shareholders Enron style? Exactly which regulations sir?)
Anyway, what is the title of this story? “CEO says denad is the problem”? “CEO says we’re trapped between jobs and deficits”? Nope and nope.
“CEOs to Obama: ‘Get Out of the Way’ ”
Not much spin in that headline is there?
“Comment by Arizona Slim
2011-09-06 13:04:18
I’ve been on a financial book reading tear of late. One of my recent reads (for freelancers like me) advised saving 30% of everything that comes in. Reason: We need to set money aside for emergencies, taxes, and long-term savings (which could imply retirement — or a sabbatical).
Then there was another book, more geared toward employees, that advised saving 20% of after-tax money.
These scenarios don’t bode well for a debt-fueled, consumer spending-based economy.”
Do these experts not realize that it is fundamentally inpossible for everyone to be spending less than they earn?
One person’s income is someone else expenses. For one person to be selling more than they buy, then someone else HAS to be buying more than they sell.
Money is the creation of trade imbalances. Money is an IOU borrowed into existance by someone that wants to buy more than they sell, and ends up in the hands of someone that sells more than they buy. I no one is in debt, then no money to be made by anyone.
The money only has value because the person that borrowed it into existance eventually needs to get it to pay back their debt. This requires a reversal of the trade imbalance.
If the trade imbalance does not reverse, the person with debt can’t pay it back, defaults, the debt goes poofage, and the money goes poofage along with it.
Systems don’t work if everybody does the exact same thing at the exact same time .
“James Selvey, president of the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors, notes that it typically costs a bank $35,000 to $40,000 to take title to a property.
“So consequently they’re not taking ownership, (the houses) are just sitting there,” he says. “As the inventory dries up, it does cause demand and prices to rise and then the banks will shove a few more homes into the market.”
In Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough, just 974 of nearly 20,000 active residential listings are bank-owned. Samuels, the liquidation specialist, says the number in mid and south Pinellas dropped from as many as 350 in December to 120 or so now.
“It’s a good thing when short sales and foreclosed properties are in shorter supply,” says Ann Guiberson, president of the Pinellas Realtor Organization. “It does force the market back into looking at non-distressed property.”
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/realestate/balky-banks-gum-up-foreclosure-courts-benefiting-some-owners/1190094
This article pisses me off, btw.
TIME TÖ FÖCLÖSE!
Lol…
Fäil!
How do you pronounce your name — is it something like Moogy?
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=193641
EU, like the US before it, looks ready to accept mark-to-fantasy accounting to keep its banksters afloat.
Jeffrey Sica, Contributor
9/05/2011 @ 10:12PM |12,379 views
Empire Of Dirt - “Let Them Fail” Why Failing Banks Should Fail
Bank of America is one of many banks sued in federal court by the Federal Housing Finance Agency on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
On September 3, 2011 Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM), Citigroup (NYSE:C), Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) and 17 other banks were sued in federal court by the Federal Housing Finance Agency on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in an attempt to recover $196 billion dollars. At the core of this massive lawsuit is the FHFA accusing said banks of misleading Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac about the soundness of the mortgages underlying the securities. In other words, they are accusing the biggest banks in the country of lying to the United States Government.
THE CREDIBILITY OF THE FHFA
The FHFA, the regulator and conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, lost almost all credibility when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac imploded in 2008. They were largely responsible for causing one of the worst financial crisis’ in our nation’s history. Fannie and Freddie are still in receivership today and will be for years to come. The FHFA lost credibility because they took the word of banks who claimed that subprime mortgages were safe, supported by the fact that all the ratings agencies had given these securities the coveted AAA rating.
In another legal action against these same banks they have been accused of paying off the ratings agencies for these AAA ratings. How can a regulator who has the responsibility to protect consumers and investors be trusted when they have allowed themselves to be so misguided as to put our nation’s economic stability at such peril?
Why Has the FHFA decided to file this lawsuit years after their catastrophic mistake in 2008?
First, after giving failing financial institutions over 1 trillion dollars through programs like TARP in which the U.S. Government assumed responsibility for the bad debts and made them a liability of the tax payer, they have come to the realization that the economy hasn’t improved at all as a result. They are recognizing that “banks survived and the rest of the economy is still suffering”.
Secondly, it has become evident in recent months, due to the onset of the European debt crisis, that the interdependence of U.S. and European banks is way beyond what they initially believed. A condition has evolved in which European banks have leveraged their portfolios off of bad debt from sovereign entities and our banks in turn have leveraged our debt off of those same entities. The likely result will be a contagion which we do not have the wherewithal to contain. In other words, the FHFA and the federal government are realizing that the “too big to fail” policy may have to extend to banks all over the world due to this interdependence.
…