Bits Bucket for September 14, 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.
About Me
Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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U.S. lawmakers debate housing finance reform
Tue Sep 13, 2011 1:18pm EDT
* Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac drawn $170 bln in taxpayer funds
* Many Republicans want to end federal backstop in housing
* Conforming loan limits on gov’t mortgages expire Oct. 1
…
Tonight’s forecast dark, followed by widely scattered light in the morning.
“I am concerned about the unintended consequences for our
housing market and economy that could result if a government
role is eliminated completely,” Senate Banking Committee
Chairman Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat, said during the
panel’s tenth hearing on housing finance reform.
He said that record low mortgage rates, which currently
hover around 4 percent, would likely jump across the country if
the government backstop is diminished.
Three years after taking control of Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac, the government now backs nearly nine in 10 new mortgages.
Why does he consider this an “unintended” consequence? Removing the backstop isn’t explicitly trying to increase mortgage rates, but it is an easily anticipated, analyzed and contemplated secondary consequence. Unintended should be a bit more of a surprize than that.
What Representative Johnson is trying to say is that his top contributors:
http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00010084&cycle=2012
would not be pleased. Because eliminating the backstop for housing will reduce profit for Wall Street and force them to change the business model of writing junk loans and having the US taxpayer ultimately pay for it.
Many Republicans want to end federal backstop in housing
I never thought I’d say this, but I find myself agreeing with the Republicans.
IMHO, F&F are too far gone to be kept alive. Sell off the good parts and shut down the bad. Which is what was done after the S&Ls went blew-ie back in the 1980s.
“I never thought I’d say this, but I find myself agreeing with the Republicans.”
I have no problem agreeing with them when their policies make sense. It’s the Retardicans who give me problems.
American Idiots: How Washington is destroying the economy
By Allan Sloan, senior editor-at-large
August 18, 2011: 5:00 AM ET
What’s ailing us? It’s not just unemployment. It’s not just Europe’s debt woes. And, no, it’s not Wall Street this time. It’s the takeover of the economic debate by fanatics who are up to no good. Fix that — and maybe you fix the economy.
FORTUNE — What the hell is going on?
Standard & Poor’s, the bond-rating agency, downgrades the U.S., and the world trembles. The markets here go nuts on the first trading day after the downgrade, losing $1 trillion in value. European Union finance chiefs are playing Whac-a-Mole with members’ debt problems (see the story by my colleague Shawn Tully). And England … England was literally burning.
Only three short years ago we were all terrified when our financial system was on the brink of disaster after Lehman Brothers went broke in September of 2008. Those scary times seemed to have disappeared in the spring of 2009. But now those fears are back — and things are even scarier, the stock market’s “green” days notwithstanding.
Our current mess is different from the Lehman-related horror because it stems primarily from politics, not economics. The previous fear-fest came about because Lehman’s bankruptcy disrupted financial markets in unanticipated ways. Today’s crisis was completely avoidable. You can blame it directly on the fools who brought our country to the brink of defaulting on its debts in the name of saving us from … I’m not sure what. Yes, the Tea Party types bear primary responsibility — but they couldn’t have done it without the cowardice and incompetence of the Obama administration, which let things get way out of hand. This whole fiasco just enrages me. And it ought to enrage anyone who wants the U.S. to act like a real country rather than some third-rate failed state run by fanatical factions that hate one another.
…
International alarm over euro zone crisis grows
Alarm grows over euro zone woes
People walk past a pizza shop with a sign of a euro coin which was crossed out in central Madrid, September 13, 2011. REUTERS/Paul Hanna
By Noah Barkin and Stefano Bernabei
BERLIN/ROME | Tue Sep 13, 2011 7:30pm EDT
(Reuters) - International alarm over Europe’s debt crisis hit new heights on Tuesday, with President Barack Obama pressing the bloc’s big countries to show leadership as talk of a Greek default escalated and markets heaped pressure on Italy.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel sought to quash talk of an imminent Greek default or exit from the euro zone, but confusion over whether she would issue a joint statement on Greece with French President Sarkozy sent markets gyrating up and then down.
Confidence in the 17-nation currency area was further dented when Italy was forced to pay the highest interest rates since joining the euro in 1999 to sell 5-year bonds.
“I think there is a possibility, if the wrong steps are taken, that the system goes off the rails,” Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of Italian carmaker Fiat, told reporters in Frankfurt when asked if the euro’s survival was at risk.
…
Related News
Snapshot: U.S. alarmed about euro zone, Greek default talk grows
Tue, Sep 13 2011
Geithner to urge bigger EFSF, rapid action: sources
Tue, Sep 13 2011
Q&A: Can euro bonds solve Europe’s debt crisis?
Tue, Sep 13 2011
Portugal hit by euro periphery concerns: IMF
Tue, Sep 13 2011
Greek PM, Merkel, Sarkozy to hold Wednesday conference call
Tue, Sep 13 2011
IMF urges cuts in wasteful spending in Portugal
Tue, Sep 13 2011
Schaeuble sees help for Greece only if criteria met
Tue, Sep 13 2011
Italy austerity nears approval as pressure mounts
Tue, Sep 13 2011
BRICS weigh buying euro-denominated debt: source
Tue, Sep 13 2011
Wow, that’s a lot of pressure for mere mortals to be under.
It’s starting to appear the fix is in; got bail?
MARKETS
SEPTEMBER 15, 2011
Greece’s Future Is With Euro Zone, Say Merkel and Sarkozy
BY BERND RADOWITZ IN BERLIN AND GABRIELE PARUSSINI IN PARIS
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are convinced that Greece’s future is within the euro zone, Mrs. Merkel’s spokesman said after the two leaders held a three-way conference call with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou.
But Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy also stressed during the call the need for Greece to put into practice in a strict and effective way the already-agreed measures of its austerity program under a current bailout package, the spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said.
…
Housing agency kicks banks when they are down
Published: Monday, Sept. 12, 2011 11:03 p.m. MDT
By Kirby Brown, For the Deseret News
The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s decision to sue 17 banks for losses related to subprime residential mortgages will hurt investors and individual’s retirement plans.
On Sept. 2, the FHFA sued some of the largest U.S. and international banks. The suit seeks to recover as much as $30 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, due to losses these two government housing entities incurred by owning subprime residential mortgages purchased from these 17 banks.
Freddie and Fannie are two of the largest holders of residential mortgages. As institutional buyers and sellers of residential mortgages, Freddie and Fannie have immense resources at their disposal to evaluate and research the mortgages they purchase and own.
This situation could be compared to a car owner trading in a vehicle at a dealership. While the car owner is expected to be upfront about the status of the potential trade in, it is assumed the dealer will conduct the appropriate review of the vehicle before taking in the trade. Certainly, the dealer is presumed to be the auto expert and sufficiently sophisticated to conduct the appropriate diagnostics.
While suing large banks sounds like an easy and popular thing to do, the effects of this lawsuit could be far-reaching and detrimental to the U.S. housing market. Losses of up to $30 billion would be severely damaging to the financial health of these 17 banks. At a time when many banks are struggling to rebuild their capital base, pulling billions of dollars out of these banks to settle a lawsuit would likely result in even more conservative lending practices. Homeowners seeking to refinance existing home loans or take out new mortgages to purchase a home are already finding tighter lending standards at many banks. The availability of funds to be lent will only decrease as a result of FHFA’s lawsuit. If this lawsuit is successful, it will embolden the FHFA to sue other banks that originated residential mortgages and sold them to Freddie and Fannie.
…
And if it had punched them when they were up, (like it was supposed to) they might not be down.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s decision to sue 17 banks for losses related to subprime residential mortgages will hurt investors and individual’s retirement plans.
As if investors haven’t been smacked down already. Not to mention all of those people who got their 401ks reduced to 201ks. Yup, no hurt at all there.
Which investors? Because others who bought those fraudy bonds may be helped. It’s investors in the banks that were creating and selling that poo that will be hurt. Since when did potential losses for the owners of a corporation committing fraud constitute a reason not to sue?
Editorial Board Opinion
Payback time for mortgage investors
By Editorial, Published: September 12
IT’S A TRUISM that the U.S. economy cannot fully recover as long as millions of homeowners continue to owe more money on their houses than the property is worth. But if the past three years have proven anything, it is the difficulty of designing a housing rescue with benefits that outweigh the costs.
Nevertheless, in his address last week to a joint session of Congress, President Obama pledged to give it another try: “To help responsible homeowners,” he declared, “we’re going to work with federal housing agencies to help more people refinance their mortgages at interest rates that are now near 4 percent. That’s a step . . . that can put more than $2,000 a year in a family’s pocket and give a lift to an economy still burdened by the drop in housing prices.”
Would this push for government-backed refis succeed where others have failed? Mr. Obama offered few details, in part because the concept is still being hashed out between his administration and skeptical regulators at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which controls the two bailed-out mortgage agencies — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But he does not seem to be contemplating the wholesale, multibillion-dollar refinancing effort that some economists have recommended.
…
They are about two years behind the power curve on this one.
Might have made a difference in 2009. Now? The whole economy is in a deflationary flat spin.
And nobody wants to admit that encouraging/subsidizing the export of our $20-30-40/hr manufacturing/value added economy, and replacing it with a $8-10/hour, “Wan’t-to-make-that-a-combo?” economy might make it hard to sell stuff, or get tax revenues from the already squeezed, middle class turnips.
The whole economy is in a deflationary flat spin.
You really think prices are going down/the value of a dollar is going up?
Greece Should ‘Default Big,’ Says Man Who Managed Argentina’s 2001 Crisis. (Bloomberg)
Mario Blejer, who managed Argentina’s central bank in the aftermath of the world’s biggest sovereign default, said Greece should halt payments on its debt to stop a deterioration of the economy that threatens the European Union.
“This debt is unpayable,” Blejer, who was also an adviser to Bank of England Governor Mervyn King from 2003 to 2008, said in an interview in Buenos Aires. “Greece should default, and default big. A small default is worse than a big default and also worse than no default.”
World Bank and International Monetary Fund officials will meet in Washington Sept. 23-25 as European Union officials work to keep the currency union from unraveling and the Greek crisis worsens. Europe is facing “a full-blown banking crisis” said Mohamed El-Erian, chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co., in an interview yesterday.
Rescue programs backed by the IMF and European Central Bank are “recession-creating” efforts that will leave Greece saddled with more debt relative to the size of its economy in coming years and stifle growth, Blejer said. A Greek default would push Portugal to do the same and would put Ireland “under tremendous pressure to at least symbolically default” on some of its debt, he added.
‘Totally Ridiculous’
“It’s totally ridiculous what is going on,” Blejer, 63, said. “If you assume that these countries do everything that is in the program, they do all these adjustments and privatizations, at the end of 2012 debt-to-GDP will be bigger than this year.”
The statements by Blejer, who ran Argentina’s central bank in the months after its default on $95 billion in debt, put him at odds with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said the risks of contagion from a Greek default are too big and that an “uncontrolled insolvency” would further agitate turbulent global markets.
“This debt is unpayable,”
So go for it, Greece. Please put the “global” economy out of its misery.
Besides, I’m tired of watching the market trade the same 500 points (give or take) up and down.
“Besides, I’m tired of watching the market trade the same 500 points (give or take) up and down.”
But range trading is such easy money.
+1
As long as Golden Sacks can make a few pennies on transactions that travel at the speed of light, they are more than willing to allow the pensions and 401K’s suffer.
Goldenman$ucks: “Anything you can do,…we can do
betterfa$ter!”My Big Fat Greek Default….
LOL……
+1
“This debt is unpayable,”
And WHERE were the credit rating agencies on this one? From what I have seen they have made bad calls since the beginning of the bubble.
Why do you think US taxpayers bailed out AIG?
And WHERE were the
credit rating agencies[“True$erialEnabler$!™”] on this one?World Must Cut Deficits, Not Rely on China: Wen
By Bloomberg News - Sep 14, 2011
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, facing calls to widen support for indebted European countries, signaled that developed nations should cut deficits and open markets rather than rely on China to bail out the world economy.
“Countries must first put their own houses in order,” Wen said today at the World Economic Forum in the Chinese city of Dalian. “Developed countries must take responsible fiscal and monetary policies. What is most important now is to prevent the further spread of the sovereign debt crisis in Europe.”
China can best contribute to the global economic recovery by ensuring steady growth at home, Wen said, calling on the European Union and U.S. to allow more Chinese investment in return. Stocks dropped in Asia as the comments damped optimism that China would help stabilize the euro region, after Italy this month followed Spain, Portugal and Greece in seeking investment from the world’s fastest-growing major economy.
“What he is basically saying is China wants to help, they want to invest, but we can’t help you take the proper measures to control the debt crisis, you’ve got to do that on your own,” said William Rhodes, a senior adviser to Citigroup Inc. who was at Wen’s speech.
“Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, facing calls to widen support for indebted European countries, signaled that developed nations should cut deficits and open markets rather than rely on China to bail out the world economy.”
While I agree with old Wenny-boy that no one should rely on China for anything, and I agree countries should get their houses in order, part of that exercise would be letting China pretty much go its own way and not do business there.
What does he mean, “open markets”? I think the US has pretty much opened its markets to China. Not working out for us. Close ‘em now! Besides, I’m tired of looking at “Made in China” labels.
“calling on the European Union and U.S. to allow more Chinese investment in return.”
Does anyone else see this as ominous? I’m sure the Chinese would love to “invest in,” say, the state of Michigan. Lots of water, good soil, great place to settle…
screw your worthless paper…we want hard assets!
Isn’t “Red Dawn II” supposed to feature Chinese invaders? Once we stiff them on a couple trillion in dollar-denominated bonds they would certainly have the motivation to collect on their debt.
have the chinese invented teleportation?
I suspect the Chinese are not as stupid as we make them out to be when it comes to loans to the US. It would not surprise me if massive swaths of US BLM land have not been pledged as collateral.
Now if the Chinese could enforce those agreements is another question.
Now if the Chinese
couldneed to hire U$ based lawyer$ to enforce those agreements that is another expen$ive question.If the Chinese want Michigan, couldn’t they just buy it one house and farm at a time? They could have a large chunk of Detroit right now, if they so choose. And apparently they don’t choose.
The Chinese are much more interested in land grabs in their own ‘hood- especially the oil-rich South China Sea. If they get hungrier and crazier in the future, Siberia should start sweating, since it’s sparsely populated, resource- and water-rich, and also in China’s ‘hood.
The Province of Australia.
China was once a British colony. Payback is a bitch.
Not three years ago some Aussie business leaders proclaimed they’d rather deal with China than us. Gotta keep those mineral resource prices up - lest the wonder from down under implode too.
and water-rich ??
And that is what China likely needs the most…
China has sufficient water; if they’d put some serious environmental restrictions in place, perhaps it wouldn’t be so polluted.
perhaps it wouldn’t be so polluted ??
Thats the point…The water they have is polluted… Their eyes are on Siberia…
Plus while the water is abundant in some places, it is quite short in others close to Siberia and Siberia has many other resources they need. However, I think because Putin’s Russia has sufficient nuclear weapons that they would never try such an invasion. Remember the line in Red Dawn that talked about the post nuclear population of China?
Great link on water shortages in China: http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=390&catid=10&subcatid=66
They could have a large chunk of Detroit right now
That’s actually not a bad idea. And they even like Buicks. If they bought up enough of it they could transform it into whatever they wanted and they’d have a great location. All it would take is money (check) and firm law enforcement (I bet they could figure something out).
It’s a capital idea. The Chinese could only improve it…maybe make it a separate country, a province of the PRC. LOL that would make a good novel.
Has anyone written that one yet?
I’d expect to see a Chinese invasion of Siberia, before an invasion of Taiwan. An invasion by sea is a lot tougher to do than an invasion by land. Especially if you can buy off the Russian kleptocrats in Moscow. Just call it a partnership.
You would have no experience with it, and you’d be doing it via OJT. And, other than bragging rights and settling scores, what do you really get by invading Taiwan?
Wouldn’t surprise me if the Chinese bankrolled the illegal alien invasion. Every opponent we’ve had for the past 100 years has tried it thru our “soft underbelly”………
Mexican diplomat to Chinese diplomat:
“So let me get this straight…….you want to pay us to ship/encourage our wretched refuse to do a back door invasion of the USA? We get cash, and a chance to get rid of all our “underperformers”, while you get a means of undermining the finances of the US government?……..Where do we sign up?”
Wouldn’t surprise me if the Chinese bankrolled the
illegalalienCon$umer Good$ Production inva$ionAssembled in Mexico, …$upplies from China.
Y’all don’t understand. China DOES control significant parts of the US– most of our commercial ports, and increasingly our real estate. They also have a HUGE business presence in Mexico and Central America, as well as up and down the western coast of the Americas and Canada.
Our two economies are intrinsically tied, and not simply because of their financial holdings.
But the racism and xenophobia is mutual.
Does he realize the deficits that we need to cut are our trade deificts?
Lawsuit accuses Chase of ‘nationalized fraud’
By Kimberly Miller Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 7:23 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2011
A California-based foreclosure defense attorney is going after the banks in unusual fashion, filing a Florida RICO lawsuit against J.P. Morgan Chase in Palm Beach County with a Boca Raton resident as lead plaintiff.
Attorney Jeff Barnes, who maintains an office in Boca Raton, lists 35 homeowners from several states in the legal action.
The Florida Civil Remedies for Criminal Practices Act - the civil version of Florida Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act - is used in instances where the defendant has shown a pattern of misconduct.
Barnes claims in the suit that Chase committed “nationalized fraud” by using false and fraudulent documents to foreclose on homes and in claiming it has the right to foreclose on loans made by the now defunct Washington Mutual Bank. Chase took over Washington Mutual in 2008.
“I was duped from the very beginning,” said Boca Raton resident and lead plaintiff Linda Zimmerman, who said the note originally presented as proof of ownership of her loan was never endorsed. “We’re facing losing our homes, and we want to go down letting the whole world know what’s going on.”
Zimmerman said a second note submitted in her foreclosure file contained an endorsement but was not signed.
Barnes said he’s received hundreds of inquiries about the suit after the Aug. 25 filing and may add plaintiffs. He is not, however, advertising for plaintiffs or sending out mailers to potential clients about the lawsuit - a practice that got another California attorney in trouble last month.
Although Barnes wouldn’t disclose how much it costs to join the lawsuit, he did say he is not operating on a contingency payment.
“The case is in its early stages, and we anticipate it will grow,” he said. “We are receiving an enormous amount of information about the conduct of J.P. Morgan Chase nationally. It’s been overwhelming.”
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/foreclosures/lawsuit-accuses-chase-of-nationalized-fraud-1856294.html - -
“I was duped from the very beginning,”
Type: MTG
Date/Time: 1/8/2008 12:14:50
CFN: 20080008636
Book Type: O
Book/Page: 22369/1002
Pages: 23
Consideration: $482,400.00
Party 1: ZIMMERMAN LINDA PATRICIA
ELHASSAN LINDA
BRITTAIN KATHERINE G
BRITTAIN JOSEPH
Party 2: WASHINGTON MUTUAL BANK FA
Legal: BOCA RATON SQ U-16 B73 L8 BL
Type: LP
Date/Time: 2/13/2009 13:23:15
CFN: 20090051073
Book Type: O
Book/Page: 23080/603
Pages: 2
Consideration: $0.00
Party 1: JPMORGAN CHASE BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
Party 2: ZIMMERMAN LINDA PATRICIA
BRITTAIN KATHERINE G
BRITTAIN JOSEPH
ELHASSAN LINDA
Legal: BOCA RATON SQ U-16 B73 L8 BL
Type: JUD
Date/Time: 8/19/2010 10:55:48
CFN: 20100308549
Book Type: O
Book/Page: 24021/529
Pages: 4
Consideration: $0.00
Party 1: JPMORGAN CHASE BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
Party 2: ZIMMERMAN LINDA PATRICIA
BRITTAIN KATHERINE
BRITTAIN JOSEPH
ELHASSAN LINDA
Legal: BOCA RATON SQ U-16 B73 L8 BL
What happened B4 LINDA got a $482,400.00 loan and then got duped? She is a dupor not a dupee. In fact she is a super duper!
Legal Description: BOCA RATON SQUARE NO 16 LT 8 BLK 73
Sales Date Book/Page Price Sale Type Owner
Jul-2007 21979/0511 $10 QUIT CLAIM ZIMMERMAN LINDA &
Jul-2007 21910/0649 $10 WARRANTY DEED ELHASSAN LINDA &
Dec-2006 21193/1669 $0 QUIT CLAIM ZIMMERMAN LINDA PATRICIA
Do the actions of the FB mean JP Morgan Chase should be let off the hook?
In many of these cases it appears all parties are at fault.
Personally I would take a good look at any default and see if the debtor lied on their loan docs, particularly regarding income.
So you have fraud on both ends ,so wouldn’t that make the whole contract voidable ? This thing where someone is going for a free house doesn’t ring right and it doesn’t ring right that someone can forclose without real right .
The truth is the whole market was nothing but a fake market with all the parties resorting to fraud to get into the Big Housing Boom Mania of false wealth and ill-gotten gains from commissions and middle men fees.
As long as the fake wealth generator ( the housing market )
didn’t crash the sins would be covered up .
our rights are enforced by often rather unsavory parties…just the way it is.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=194108
Relief rally on hope China will aid the EU? An illusury hope. China is no friend of ours or Europe.
Amen, brothah! The China of today is but a paper tiger. When that bubble bursts, it will truly be a disaster. I say we start to ease our way out of that entanglement.
There is one thing China fears, and that is Japan, even with its problems, Japan is China’s worst nightmare.
“Japan is China’s worst nightmare.”
how so?
See the movie “The Last Emperor”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War
michael, I’m not ignoring you, I’ve posted a link on the historial relationship between the two countries, just hasn’t shown up yet. If you prefer, you can google “Japanese conquest of China”. Japan really tried, and almost succeeded, in dominating most of Asia. Indeed, for a brief moment in time, it did. You might say that Japan was to Asia what Rome was to Europe.
thanks…will check it out later.
China made its mistake long ago by teaching the Japanese how to do base 10 math.
The China of today is but a paper tiger.
Perhaps, but now they have x1 retro-fitted Soviet Carrier, …more on the way!
Realtors Are Liars®
America [AA+] Day: #40
More Americans Are Doubling-Up.
By Phil Izzo
September 13, 2011, 2:00 PM ET.
More people are living with family amid high unemployment rates and a slow economy, but while the phenomenon is keeping the poverty rate lower, it has wider negative economic consequences.
In a presentation as part of its wider report on income, poverty and health insurance, the Census Bureau noted a big jump in the number of individuals and families doubling up. Census says 69.2 million, or 30%, were doubled-up in 2011, up from 61.7 million adults, or 27.7%, in 2007. “Doubled-up” households include at least one person 18 or older who isn’t enrolled in school and isn’t the householder, spouse or cohabiting partner of the householder.
Much of the increase comes from young people, ages 25-34, living with their parents. Some 5.9 million, or 14.2% of 25-to-34 year olds, lived with their parents in 2011, up from 4.7 million before the recession.
“These young adults who lived with their parents had an official poverty rate of only 8.4%, since the income of their entire family is compared with the poverty threshold,” David Johnson chief of the Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division at the U.S. Census Bureau said. “If their poverty status were determined by their own income, 45.3% would have had income falling below the poverty threshold for a single person under age 65.”
Fewer households means fewer consumers for businesses desperate for demand. (You don’t need to buy a new TV if you can just use mom and dad’s.) At the same time, it continues to drag on a housing market that needs to burn off excess supply.
http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2011/09/13/more-americans-are-doubling-up/ - -
Another HBB prediction coming true.
Expect to see more of this.
Use migrant labor as an example of how far this can go, ie one family to each bedroom and one in the garage.
Not just HBB, but Robert Toll. “Kids will live with their parents until they are 40.” Toll thought it was because of housing, kids know it’s because of students loans and minimum wage, parents are worried to let kids leave the house because they won’t have health insurance older than 26.
ie one family to each bedroom and one in the garage ??
Yep…Nothing new though…The new immigrants into my area have been doing this for the past 30 years…
More like 150 years. Everyone from the Yellow Menace to No Irish Need Apply.
Shadow households…
2 TSA officers at PBIA charged in drug trafficking case
By Alexandra Seltzer Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 7:01 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2011
Over the past year, two Transportation Security Administration officers helped drug traffickers move tens of thousands of oxycodone pills through Palm Beach International Airport, receiving money and gift cards in return, federal officials said Tuesday.
Christopher Allen, 45, of Palm Beach Gardens, and John Best, 30, of Port. St. Lucie, are among 20 charged in an alleged conspiracy to distribute oxycodone, a highly-addicitive prescription narcotic.
“This investigation not only uncovered the trafficking of diverted pain medications but also exposed the alleged corrupt activities of two law enforcement officers and employees of the Transportation Security Administration,” said DEA Special Agent in Charge Steven Derr.
According to federal court documents and information released at the press conference, officials with the DEA Bridgeport High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area Task Force received a tip in April that someone was traveling from West Palm Beach to Stamford, Conn. to sell large amounts of oxycodone.
The group’s leader was arrested at a hotel in Stamford, where he was found with 6,000 oxycodone pills, and soon became a cooperating witness, according to a federal affidavit. The man told officials that over the past year he “regularly purchased” oxycodone from suppliers in Florida and took them to Connecticut by plane or car.
The narcotic could be sold for more in Connecticut than what he paid for it in Florida, the document said.
Several times a week, carrying up to 8,000 pills each trip, the man would walk through PBIA, nodding to Allen or Best as they let him board planes while carrying the drugs, the affidavit said.
In dealings that began last December, the man would give Best gift cards or $500 to ensure he could walk through security without a problem.
In a recorded conversation between Best and the man in May, Best tells him, “If I’m in a lane and I see you I know I say automatically I’ll come over and try and help you out,” according to the affidavit.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/crime/2-tsa-officers-at-pbia-charged-in-drug-1856264.html - -
I saw a news story yesterday about 500 drugs on short supply. Maybe if they didn’t divert so much production in to hillbilly heroin and hard-on pills there might be more of the stuff we really need.
It’s not a manufacturing shortage. Companies are not making the drugs because they aren’t profitable. They’re blaming FDA regs for the costs. I’d be interested in knowing if they are truly a loss leader, or if they are profitable, but just not profitable enough to satisfy the Bottomless Stockholder Maw.
This could be another hostage-taking money-grab: “Either you relax the FDA regs or subsidize these drugs, or we quit making them and the cancer patients bite it.” This is always a risk in the Needs Industries.
This is pure BS. Corporate America at its finest.
They can manufacture these drugs for almost nothing and sell even generics for 100’s to 1000’s of dollars a bottler.
My belief is that these are engineered shortages ie manipulating the price. I read an article the other day about a generic cancer drug that hospitals have only been able to get from small specialty pharmacies. These are drugs that have been around for ever. The manufacturers have full knowledge of how much they need to produce. My guess is that these specialty pharmacies are fronts for GS and hedgefunds. They rapidly buy up supply then slowly start selling their supply at inflated prices. My guess is that there has been no giant increase in demand for this drug in terms of cancer patients thus the shortage is engineered.
The unregulated free market at work when giant players can manipulate price.
these are engineered shortages ie manipulating the price ??
Yeah…Kind of like oil…Like they don’t make enough already…
My back woods NY dentist office has changed while I was out cruising for the summer. Destaffed. Apparently NY State decided to cut medicare payments 20%. Dentist friend says his GP margin was only 5% on medicare patients before the cut, so he stopped treating medicare patients immediately.
This is why HillaryCare (back in the day) made it a crime punishable by jail for doctors to take on private patients…
What are talking about?
What are you talking about?
Unless he can replace those with other patients he’s worse off. The dentist has plenty of fixed costs that won’t go away just because he’s dropped his medicare patients. So he won’t make his former hourly rate. Boo hoo.
Why is it OK for the rest of us to “do more wih less” but dentists have to have guaranteed income stream levels?
Because he provides a good or service others want. In a free country (I believe we are still somewhat free), the service provider chooses who he services; the .gov doesn’t mandate that, especially if they aren’t going to pay for it.
You also forget that a big piece of those fixed costs are dedicated to chasing down medicare payments. Ask around, it’s the same thing in every hospital and medical office; lots of billing people chasing the government for money the owe.
“lots of billing people chasing the government for money they owe.”
Which is why it’s a blatant lie that “Medicare is far more efficient than private insurance”.
Can’t make that comparison without adding in all the clerks, coders, and consultants that doctors and hospitals have to hire to stay compliant with Medicare’s byzantine billing rules.
“In a free country (I believe we are still somewhat free), the service provider chooses who he services; the .gov doesn’t mandate that, especially if they aren’t going to pay for it.”
Then don’t accept Medicaid or Medicare. That’s your funeral.
Today’s news:
“If you’re uninsured and on the brink of death, that’s apparently a laughing matter to some audience members at last night’s tea party Republican presidential debate.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a doctor, was asked a hypothetical question by CNN host Wolf Blitzer about how society should respond if a healthy 30-year-old man who decided against buying health insurance suddenly goes into a coma and requires intensive care for six months. Paul–a fierce limited-government advocate– said it shouldn’t be the government’s responsibility. “That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks,” Paul said and was drowned out by audience applause as he added, “this whole idea that you have to prepare to take care of everybody …”
“Are you saying that society should just let him die?” Blitzer pressed Paul. And that’s when the audience got involved.
Several loud cheers of “yeah!” followed by laughter could be heard in the Expo Hall at the Florida State Fairgrounds in response to Blitzer’s question.”
The cheering CNN / Tea Party debate audience was discussed at length in yesterday’s bits bucket.
“…cheering CNN / Tea Party debate audience…”
Definitely a goon squad!
“You also forget that a big piece of those fixed costs are dedicated to chasing down medicare payments.”
If it goes away because he’s not seeing medicaid patients then it’s not a fixed cost. What I’m saying is that the dentist’s practice has costs (rent, utilitities, amortized cost of equipment, insurance, etc.) that don’t decrease simply because there isn’t a patient in the chair. Some costs aren’t fixed: he can fire some of his staff, supplies. etc.
And while he might not have been making as much off his medicaid patients as he would have liked, they were contributing to covering his fixed costs, whereas an empty chair does not.
No more than they do chasing down payments from any other insurer. In fact, you might say the Medicare payments cover the overhead for that paper chase.
No more than they do chasing down payments from any other insurer. In fact, you might say the Medicare payments cover the overhead for that paper chase.
ISTR reading REHobbyist’s comments about Medicare. She was in some sort of medical specialty and I’m sorry I don’t recall which one.
But, compared to dealing with the private insurers, she said that Medicare was a breeze.
“Guaranteed income stream levels” has nothing to do with it.
If I get $55 from the government to do something for which my incremental cost plus the value I put on my time is $60, I have no obligation to continue doing it.
The federal and state governments only have the chutzpah to do this in the health care arena.
Suppose they tried to replace the food stamp program with direct government payment.
“The Federal Food Care program will reimburse grocery stores $1.38 for every pound of hamburger given to a beneficiary. Stores will have to make up the loss by charging more to their other customers.”
How well do ya think that would fly??
It isn’t the incremental that is the problem if his analysis was of GP (gross profits). Gross profits take into account an allocated amount of fixed costs. If you have large fixed costs (loan payments on equipment is big for dentists) it is better to have something coming in for that hour than to sit idle.
My mother did Medicaid and regular insurance billing for our family dentist in MA a number of years ago. She didn’t see much difference between the two. Medicaid seemed to randomly reject claims and then approve them on resubmission despite not having made any changes in the request on occasion. It frustrated her and caused the payment to be delayed, but didn’t take up that much of her time. But the private insurance companies were constantly changing procedures and codes so that the subnission that was correct this month would be wrong next month. And it happened all the time. I think she actually preferred the Medicaid billing since the procedures and codes were fairly stable.
Now, the Medicaid patients were often no-shows or late for appointments. One missed bus or a car problem and they had no way to get there on time or at all. That was a mess. And it would affect gross profits.
In the end the market will take care of dental costs.
I’m already seeing it with the rise of discount chain dental practices (like Comfort Dental and others) that charge much less (and accept Medicaid patitents) than the 7 series BMW driving Dr. Priceys who will soon find themselves as lonely as the proverbial Maytag repairman.
Yup. In the spirit of austere living we’ve been giving Comfort Dental a try since our long time dental care office changed owners and there was no longer a social reason to stick with them. The CD building is spartan, but the care has been acceptable. They did make one mistake on a root canal that my wife did that had to be re-finished by a specialist. Might have happened at the expensive dentist, might not have. But the prices are much lower if you don’t need a fancy building. We continue to go there…
If Comfort Dental comes to Tucson, I’ll be at their office with bells on.
“Why is it OK for the rest of us to “do more wih less” but dentists have to have guaranteed income stream levels?”
Several dentists in our area have sent notices to their patients that their dental insurance may not cover the entire bill, so many people are driving to the next town, which is over an hour away. The cost of the extended trip is more than the extra due if depreciation is added, but they choose to drive anyway. FWIW, we pay cash because the family dental plan is too expensive.
Doctors/Dentist have gotten fat on gaming the current Medicare/Medicaid/Private insurance system.
Redesign/build new offices, to see as may patients per hour as possible. Hire RNs and nursing assistants to do the grunt work for $20/hour, but bill their time out at $400/hour. Arrange it so the doc spends a maximum of 2-3 minutes with any patient.
(Local dentist has 20 plus chairs in his office. Typical half hour appointment has a $15/20 hour hygenist clean teeth, then a 45 second look-see by the doc. About $100 per appointment.
Near as I can tell, he’s generating $4000/hour (gross)….times eight hours/day. Times four days a week Plus whatever he’s making on the braces/procedures on the fifth day, which are several thousand bucks, and aren’t usually covered by any insurance.
OTOH, there are some docs that get it. Had to have a minor procedure done on one of the daughters last year. No insurance, so asked him what the price was, cash up front. $300, nitrous included. I can live with that.
(Local dentist has 20 plus chairs in his office. Typical half hour appointment has a $15/20 hour hygenist clean teeth, then a 45 second look-see by the doc. About $100 per appointment.
That’s precisely what caused me to stop going to Dr. Pricey. And, BTW, I’ve gotten much better care from the local dental hygiene training program.
Medicaid, not Medicare.
Out in the backwoods, they are in favor of cutting Medicaid, because they associate it with New York City.
Most states do not cover dental care at all in their Medicaid programs, on the grounds that teeth are over-rated. They also have lower taxes than New York.
Thanks for the correction on which program. Pretty soon, I’ll know these things only too well.
Medicare doesn’t cover dental care at all. Try again.
No kidding. Plenty of people covered by Medicare don’t seem to know the difference, and don’t like being corrected. Makes communication very difficult, when you’re trying to help people through the hurdles.
Gibson Guitar Wails on Federal Raid Over Wood
By JAMES R. HAGERTY and KRIS MAHER
SEPTEMBER 1, 2011
Federal agents first raided Gibson factories in November 2009 and were back again Aug. 24, seizing guitars, wood and electronic records. Gene Nix, a wood product engineer at Gibson, was questioned by agents after the first raid and told he could face five years in jail.
“Can you imagine a federal agent saying, ‘You’re going to jail for five years’ and what you do is sort wood in the factory?” said Mr. Juszkiewicz, recounting the incident. “I think that’s way over the top.” Gibson employees, he said, are being “treated like drug criminals.”
Federal agents with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service shut down the Gibson Guitar factory in Memphis Aug. 24 to serve search warrants.
Henry Juszkiewicz, chief executive officer of the closely held company, said in an interview that a broker probably made a mistake in labeling the goods but that the sale was legal and approved by Indian authorities.
The law ensnaring Gibson is the Lacey Act of 1900, originally passed to regulate trade in bird feathers used for hats and amended in 2008 to cover wood and other plant products. It requires companies to make detailed disclosures about wood imports and bars the purchase of goods exported in violation of a foreign country’s laws.
Leonard Krause, a consultant in Eugene, Ore., who advises companies on complying with the Lacey Act, is telling clients they should hire lawyers in countries where they obtain products. “How many people know the statutes in India?” Mr. Krause said. “The net effect is that it raises everybody’s cost of doing business.”
Federal agents first raided Gibson factories in November 2009 and were back again Aug. 24, seizing guitars, wood and electronic records. Gene Nix, a wood product engineer at Gibson, was questioned by agents after the first raid and told he could face five years in jail.
Gibson says the government is trying to “second guess” the Madagascar government. “The U.S. government’s startling position smacks of something from an Orwell novel,” Gibson said in a July 15 court filing in federal district court in Nashville.
After the 2009 raid, Gibson stopped buying wood from Madagascar. Gibson continued to use suppliers in India for ebony and rosewood.
As for last week’s raid, the government said it had evidence that Indian ebony was “fraudulently” labeled in an attempt to evade an Indian ban on exports of unfinished wood.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903895904576542942027859286.html - 190k -
This is truly disgusting.
Yeah, you go, Eric Holder! Trafficking guns to Mexican cartels and raiding Gibson Guitar. Now that’s what I call justice!
i still cannot for the life of understand why eric holder and tim geithner are still there.
absolute jokes…the both of them.
“i still cannot for the life of understand why eric holder and tim geithner are still there.”
Maybe because the boss is too insecure to have better-qualified people as subordinates.
BTW, were there elections somewhere in the U.S. yesterday?
who was that famous CEO that rated himself a B minus…but he said he hired all A plusses?
I didn’t know that Eric Holder was the AG in November 2009.
I don`t know why I can`t find this in any major media outlet.
26 Armed Federal Agents From Obama Justice Dept. Raid Gibson …
6 days ago … 26 Armed Federal Agents From Obama Justice Dept. Raid Gibson Guitar - Dave Wooten Radio Show. dbwooten1 …. 21:23. Add to. War on Dissent Michael German former FBI agent …by robkall504 views. Loading more …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdGVh5zwkXA - 81k - Cached - Similar pages
Maybe you run on a different calendar
From wikipedia:
“On December 1, 2008, Obama announced that Holder would be his nominee for Attorney General.[35][36] He was formally nominated on January 20, 2009 and approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 28.[37][38] Following his confirmation by the full Senate on February 2, 2009, he became the first African-American Attorney General of the United States. His installation took place on March 27, 2009 at the Lisner Auditorium of the George Washington University.”
It was covered in The Economist last week; Gibson is still trying to recover the wood taken in the previous raid.
Oh shoot, Dave is right.
“After the 2009 raid, Gibson stopped buying wood from Madagascar”
“6 days ago … 26 Armed Federal Agents From Obama Justice Dept. Raid Gibson Guitar”
I think they should let Gibson sell guitars so they can help pay the $535 million loan that taxpayers are on the hook for that was made to Solyndra whose biggest investor was Tulsa billionaire and Obama fundraiser George Kaiser. Although he has been a frequent White House visitor, Kaiser has said he did not use political influence to win approval of the loan.
“Maybe you run on a different calendar”
oxide finally broke her back from carrying all that water.
“TrueDeception™” often follows “TrueIncandescentbulbAnger!™”
i am hoping for “TrueReflection” to follow.
If an Indian textile mill was manufacturing carpets adorned with bald eagle feathers, you don’t suppose there would be raids and arrests?
ummm…we kill cows and eat them…no raids or arrest.
so to answer your question…probably not. there would be hell to pay by the U.S. company that exported those bald eagle feathers though.
(not sure if killing a cow in india is a criminal offense)
You miss my point, m. American Bald eagles are protected by international treaty and national umbrage.
So is Madagascar/Brazilian rosewood.
My favorite part of this is that imports of finished products are not subject to the law, only raw wood.
So….all Gibson has to do to make the DOJ happy is ….outsource their labor to Madagascar and India !!
Maybe Gibson Guitar needs to donate to a different political party.
Solyndra loan: White House pressed on review of solar company now under investigation
EXCLUSIVE | The Obama White House tried to rush federal reviewers for a decision on a nearly half-billion-dollar loan to the solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra so Vice President Biden could announce the approval at a September 2009 groundbreaking for the company’s factory, newly obtained e-mails show.
The Silicon Valley company, a centerpiece in President Obama’s initiative to develop clean energy technologies, had been tentatively approved for the loan by the Energy Department but was awaiting a final financial review by the Office of Management and Budget.
The August 2009 e-mails, released exclusively to The Washington Post, show White House officials repeatedly asking OMB reviewers when they would be able to decide on the federal loan and noting a looming press event at which they planned to announce the deal. In response, OMB officials expressed concern that they were being rushed to approve the company’s project without adequate time to assess the risk to taxpayers, according to information provided by Republican congressional investigators.
Solyndra collapsed two weeks ago, leaving taxpayers liable for the $535 million loan.
One e-mail from an OMB official referred to “the time pressure we are under to sign-off on Solyndra.” Another complained, “There isn’t time to negotiate.”
The e-mail exchanges could intensify questions about whether the administration was playing favorites and made costly errors while choosing the first recipient of a loan guarantee under its stimulus program. Solyndra’s biggest investors were funds operated on behalf of the family foundation of Tulsa billionaire and Obama fundraiser George Kaiser. Although he has been a frequent White House visitor, Kaiser has said he did not use political influence to win approval of the loan.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-pushed-500-million-loan-to-solar-company-now-under-investigation/2011/09/13/gIQAr3WbQK_story.html - -
Protected species are protected for a reason. This is attributed to the vintage guitar craze. Guitar *collectors* seek vintage axes constructed with woods that are either no longer available or protected in order to drive up prices. An example is Brazilian rosewood for fretboards was used for years until it they overharvested and thus protected. Collectors are idiots because most of them don’t know how to play yet players and guitarists know that the brazilian rosewood and any other rosewood is a distinction without a difference. Gibson is catering to the collector crowd because they have money… alot of it. And those at the top of the collector syndicate create artificial shortages by creating false demand for this type of stuff. Mandolin Bros. in Staten Island has been doing this for years.
And those at the top of the collector syndicate create artificial shortages by creating …Hologram Logo’$ in their Diamond$
Most musicians couldn’t begin to afford vintage equipment. That’s why their instruments are of more recent manufacture.
“players and guitarists know that the brazilian rosewood and any other rosewood is a distinction without a difference.”
they’re also not as interested in overpriced “replicas”.
they want that 1960 Fender.
But it’s that 1960 Fender/Gibson/Martin that has the outlawed brazilian rosewood(or whatever protected species du’jour). Look at independent luthiers who claim to find a “hidden stash” of some unavailable or protected species of wood. They name their price and suckers line up. Gibson is no different.
Gibson isn’t the only one using the wood from Madagascar, but they’re the only one targeted by Obama/Holder.
Maybe Gibson should have sold those guitars only to drug cartels in Mexico, then they’d be ok?
Maybe Gibson should have sold those guitars only to drug cartels in Mexico, then they’d be ok?
Especially if we could blame it on red staters at guitar shows :-).
“Gibson isn’t the only one using the wood from Madagascar”
Then who is? Name them and cite it.
IMO, responsibility to stop export of protected material should happen at the source. These laws would push more jobs overseas to safe manufacturing havens and out of America where the risk is too high.
Methinks that Gibson doth protest too much.
And I also see quite an opportunity for the music industry — and for musicians. Call it Sustainable Music or something like that. You’ll soon be hearing it concerts.
I saw this posted in NYT blog
Prior to Inauguration Day 2009, the Congressional Budget Office estimated FY2009 outlays under then-current law as signed by George Dubya Bush at $3,543 billion.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9957/01-07-Outlook.pdf Table 5 on pg 16.
Actual outlays in FY2009 were $3,520 billion
http://www.fms.treas.gov/annualreport/cs2010/outlay.pdf
So you can see that President Obama did not go on any big spending spree in 2009.
And as you can see in that same source, 2010 outlays declined from 2009, from $3,520 billion to $3,456 billion. Yes, this means that in the first budget bearing his signature, Barack Hussein Obama spent less than George Dubya Bush did in the last budget bearing his signature.
And George Dubya Bush had a budget deficit $125 billion higher in the last budget he signed that Barack Hussein Obama had in the first budget he signed.
http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=1457
GWB’s FY2009 deficit $1,416 billion.
BHO’s FY2010 deficit $1,291 billion.
I think this cuts through some of the propaganda about
1. The massive spending by Obama
2. The arguement that Keynsian spending doesn’t help the economy in the short run. When one factors in the cuts to state and local gov local spending there has been no significant stimulus.
None of that will save nobowma come 2012. Bush as the boogey man will not get him elected a second time. I think the last few special elections and recall votes prove that. Not to mention Gunwalker, high unemployment, record food-stamp use, obamascare, high gas prices , vactions and golf, etc. Stick a fork in him.
Maybe Perry/Bachman/Palin as the Bible thumping, war mongering, I’m gonna take away your Medicare and SS bogeyman might.
As we speak the GOP is re-drawing congressional districts so it will be mathematically impossible to elect democrats. They just did it here in Tarrant Co. TX. They are now beginning phase II which will allocate electoral collage votes based on these new districts and prevent the winner-take-all system that has been in effect since the early 1800’s. This will pretty assure a iron grip on our political system for decades. As I watch this happen I’m feeling like Malcolm McDowell in the film Clockwork Orange in the scene where he is strapped in a chair with his eye lids pinned open.
Welcome to hell.
Does anyone else have a sort of sick hope that the Republicans take over completely just out of curiosity to see what will happen?
Somewhat tempting to watch their fantasies collide with reality, but the Supreme Court justices would sink us for a generation (unless you’re a corporation).
+1 Alpha…Spot On…Thats the big Enchilada for the neo-cons/AKA Tea Party…Thats the goal line for them…
History tells us what will happen
See Chavez rise to power in Venezuela.
Eventually the rising numbers of poor people get pissed and see through the BS, the formerly wealthy small business class who have no customers and get squeezed by a corporate controlled gov get pissed. Unfortunately they may elect someone equally as destructive.
Maybe if we’re lucky, they R’s, after carefully crafting the country to their liking, will go all Highlander on each other until there is Only One dictator. Then there will be an American Spring in about 2070.
I wouldn’t change my vote or fail to vote or anything like that to do it (not that it matters much in Maryland), but I agree that it would be kind of fascinating to watch in a train wreck sort of way.
Especially if Elizabeth Warren were in the Senate to call everyone out on their garbage.
Especially if Elizabeth Warren were in the Senate to call everyone out on their garbage.
She’ll have quite a friend from one of the neighboring states to the north of MA. I’m talking about Bernie Sanders from VT. Boy, will those two stir up some dust!
me…i think it would be amusing.
i do realize we are damned if we do…damned if we don’t though.
KInd of like hoping for global climate disaster so we can say, “I told you so?”, to all the deniers?
Does anyone else have a sort of sick hope that the Republicans take over completely just out of curiosity to see what will happen?
“Remember the first rule of global warming. The way it unfolds is really “global weirding.” The weather gets weird: the hots get hotter; the wets wetter; and the dries get drier. This is not a hoax. This is high school physics, as Katharine Hayhoe, a climatologist in Texas, explained on Joe Romm’s invaluable Climateprogress.org blog: “As our atmosphere becomes warmer, it can hold more water vapor. Atmospheric circulation patterns shift, bringing more rain to some places and less to others. For example, when a storm comes, in many cases there is more water available in the atmosphere and rainfall is heavier. When a drought comes, often temperatures are already higher than they would have been 50 years ago, and so the effects of the drought are magnified by higher evaporation rates.”
I am expecting that Barry will be defeated next year. Also expecting that the government cheese for renewable energy jobs will end.
1. The point wasn’t to bash Bush (He did a fine job of that on his own) it was to show that those crying about how much Obama is spending are either liars or ignorant.
2. Obama will only get my vote only if the GOP puts up a nut job like Perry Bachman or Palin, and for none of the reasons you list.
Rusty is in for a major disappointment.
“TrueEvangelicalistia’s™” …it’ll do their body politic good.
Not to mention
Cheney-$hrub $hadow Legacie$ lives on!
(heheheeheeeheee)
War on Terror’s financial cost: Trillions
September 12th, 2011,by Teri Sforza, Register staff writer
* The low-end estimate comes from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which put the tab at $1.3 trillion in a March analysis.
* A report by the Joint Economic Committee pegs costs at $3.5 trillion through 2017.
* Stiglitz and Harvard University professor Linda Bilmes pegged the total at $3 trillion back in 2008 in their book, “The Three Trillion Dollar War” — and now put the tab at somewhere between $4.1 trillion to $4.4 trillion.
* Pointing out that the war has been financed almost entirely by borrowing, Neta C. Crawford (professor of political science at Boston University) and Catherine Lutz (professor of anthropology and international studies at Brown University) put the price tag between $3.2 trillion and $4 trillion. Their Costs of War project expects it all to top out at $4.5 trillion.
“In 2004, when he was arguably still capable of initiating another devastating attack on the United States, Osama bin Laden released a video gloating about his plan of ‘bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy,’” the New York Times reported in its review of cost estimates. “As usual, Bin Laden’s vow was overblown — but, as it turned out, not entirely crazed.”
But vait, there’s more:
Pentagon to drastically cut spending on Afghan forces:
Under pressure from the White House for steep reductions, the Pentagon agrees to a no-frills approach for Afghanistan’s army and police. Expenditures will be cut by more than half by 2014.
By David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times / September 12, 2011
The push to cut expenses is the latest point of tension between the White House and some in the military over Afghan policy. The split emerged this year when President Obama ordered the withdrawal of 100,000 troops at a faster rate than commanders had recommended.
By all accounts, Obama appears more comfortable with a military strategy that relies heavily on drone aircraft strikes in neighboring Pakistan and nightly raids by special operations forces against Afghan militants, while trimming the American military presence and budget to politically acceptable levels.
O will win if the GOP only gives the choices we have seen so far.
Ron Paul is their smartest candidate, but the Tea Party doesn’t understand him. O will eat Perry or Romney alive in the debates.
I dont want O in there any more either, he is Bush’s third term.
“When one factors in the cuts to state and local gov local spending there has been no significant stimulus.”
The daisy chain is busted.
There was no stimulus. There was just economic catastrophe mitigation. Obama should never have allowed it to be called such.
We’re screwed for a generation. His economic team just does not want to accept or understand this.
And save his bankster buddies from the pitchforks and bonfires, if/when/ever the public wakes up to the facts.
As explained numerous times on this blog the deficit numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt because of the way TARP was calculated. When the loans were made they were counted as an expenditure but when they were paid back they counted as revenue to the government. Since the TARP money was paid back under Obama, it cut his deficits. However, we all know now that the money was only paid back because the Federal Reserve was essentially given banks 0% money so they were guaranteed to make money.
given=giving. BTW, I don’t know the exact amount but hundreds of billions does need to be taken from the Bush deficit and added to the Obama deficit to really reflect the reality of what occurred. Not a defense of Bush, in fact, the best thing I can say about Perry is that the Bush family dislikes him. However, I think he is Romney lite for the PTB, he is someone they trust not to upset their endgame: A Fascist world government working for the multinational corporations with crony capitalism enriching the political class.
Romney/Perry or Perry/Romney. Physically interchangeable if not idealogically interchangeable as well.
Both got that great ’salt ‘n pepper’ thing workin’ - )
“The people want to be deceived…let them be deceived.”
~Carlo Caraffa (16th century.)
Cheney-$hrub was Fear! Fear! Fear! Trillion dollar war deception$.
Preacher Perry & Disciple Palin are about “TrueEvangelicalistia’s™” $alvation! babeeeeee…
Solyndra collapsed two weeks ago, leaving taxpayers liable for the $535 million loan.
One e-mail from an OMB official referred to “the time pressure we are under to sign-off on Solyndra.” Another complained, “There isn’t time to negotiate.”
The e-mail exchanges could intensify questions about whether the administration was playing favorites and made costly errors while choosing the first recipient of a loan guarantee under its stimulus program. Solyndra’s biggest investors were funds operated on behalf of the family foundation of Tulsa billionaire and Obama fundraiser George Kaiser. Although he has been a frequent White House visitor, Kaiser has said he did not use political influence to win approval of the loan.
$535 million is just the tip of the iceberg. Tee-hee-hee…
Spot on Hwy…
Big blow to domestic alternative energy. Reminds me of mortgage brokers : - (
Pessimism Rises as 72% See U.S. Economy on Wrong Course
By Mike Dorning - Sep 14, 2011 - Bloomberg
Americans’ pessimism about the economy has deepened and confidence in both political parties has fallen with only 20 percent saying the country is on the right course even as they remain divided over solutions.
Just 9 percent of people say they are confident the economy won’t slide back into recession, in a Bloomberg National Poll. A majority says it will take at least six more years for home values in their community to recover to pre-recession levels.
“This country is going downhill,” says Glenn Davis, 53, a political independent and a factory worker from Lafayette, Indiana. “For regular people like me, it’s hard to get ahead.”
Americans are sending mixed signals on the path forward, according to the poll, conducted Sept. 9-12 by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, Iowa. While they embrace the need for tough prescriptions to cut the federal deficit, including scaling back entitlement programs such as Social Security and increasing taxes on the wealthy, they balk at many specific spending cuts.
Still, the public is re-examining opposition to once- politically explosive ideas such as eliminating the home mortgage interest deduction in the income tax code and raising the Social Security retirement age. Pluralities now support both after a resounding rejection only nine months ago.
The broad message of Republicans is resonating, with 57 percent of the country saying the best way to create jobs is to cut taxes and government spending. That hasn’t stopped the party’s brand from deteriorating, and the public rejects many specific Republican policy prescriptions.
“Still, the public is re-examining opposition to once- politically explosive ideas such as eliminating the home mortgage interest deduction in the income tax code and raising the Social Security retirement age. Pluralities now support both after a resounding rejection only nine months ago.
The broad message of Republicans is resonating, with 57 percent of the country saying the best way to create jobs is to cut taxes and government spending.”
So do these “pluralities” want to cut or raise taxes? It seems like they can’t make up their minds. Eliminating the MID is a tax increase. Or maybe they are talking about only cutting taxes for the super rich?
They are confused, because the messages coming from their primary sources of information (Big 3 networks, CNN, Faux News, major newspapers) can’t/won’t explain it to them, either because they want to be “fair and balanced”, or they are just as confused as their readers.
Or they don’t want to pi$$ off the only people that still have the money to write a paycheck.
Retail sales flat in August, auto demand declined- AP
Consumers spent less on autos, clothing and furniture, leaving retail sales unchanged in August. The lack of growth in retail sales during a month of wild stock market fluctuations may increase recession fears.
Less on clothing during back-to-school time? My, my.
All my back-to-school funds were counted in the July numbers this year. I decided to make use of the school’s hand-me-down uniform swap and spent less than $100 this year.
Halloween displays went up around here on Labor Day weekend.
Yeah, keep pulling those sales forward.
Who would have thought that raising prices would cut demand?
Mr. Rock and Mr. Hardplace keep moving closer together. Not much room left.
Today’s houses: New Home Edition
It’s a dirty job, but someone had to look these up. These two are taken from the same “master planned community” of Arora Hills, at least a 45 minute drive from the inner suburbs. I’ve posted these before, but thought they deserved to be mocked again.
House 1: Michener II single-family
http://www.zillow.com/community/clarksburg-village-neotraditional-singles/2125843114_zpid/#{scid=hdp-site-map-list-address}
New 2500 sq ft 5/2.5. Standard center hall colonial. Look how close the next house is.
2011 Zestimate: $335K
2011 Listed: $455K and up
“A morning room and an upgraded kitchen can also be added.” You don’t even get granite for your $455K.
Houses 2: The ‘Aspen” and the “Vail” Stacked Townhomes
http://www.beazer.com/new-homes-for-sale/Maryland-DC-MD-Arora-Hills-2-2-Condos-new_home-Vail-137495.aspx
A stacked townhome is a four-floor townhome, with a two-car garage on Floor 1. The Aspen is a two-bed home on floors 1 and 2, and the Vail is a three-bed home on floors 3 and 4.
If you live in the Aspen, your Vail neighbor will park his car next to yours and tramp on your ceiling. For this privilege, you pay $265K + HOA fees for the community.
If you live in the Vail, you have to carry groceries two flights of stairs to your kitchen, and climb another flight of stairs to your bedroom. For this privilege you pay $296K + HOA fees.
I think I’d rather pay $60K less and learn Spanish by Immersion.
My next door neighbors’ houses are about 10 feet from mine. I don’t really care that much as they’ve never complained about my music in the morning.
Though different strokes for different strokes. You look at houses with large lots, and in my opinion, my front yard is too big, at about 30X60 or something. That’s a lot of landscaping, weed eating, and mowing. I’d choose a smaller front yard if I ever moved.
My parents had 1.5 acres as a kid. Man that sucked to mow.
As for that particular house, I normally like that style, but there is something off about it (besides the price and location)– like it needs a fireplace or more attractive porch or something…
I also have neighbors very close to my house.
One of the things I quickly learned is to not let the louts among these neighbors push me around. I guess they figured that since I’m a woman living alone, they could pull out the bully card. Cue up the barking dogs, boom cars, loud parties, illegal businesses, etc.
Boy, were they wrong.
After numerous calls to the cops, reports to various federal, county, and city agencies, and the threat of a lawsuit against one set of neighbors, they’ve realized that annoying Slim is a very bad idea. And it’s very nice and peaceful around here.
Hence, the reason for “suburban sprawl”.
Everybody sucks.
Sprawl is what happens when people try to put as much room between them and their neighbors as they can afford.
Only trouble with sprawl is that you can also encounter louts out in the suburbs. Not to mention the country. There are louts way out in the country too.
Sprawl is what happens when people try to put as much room between them and their neighbors as they can afford.
…while still driving to where the job is.
If you don’t need a job it’s cheap to put LOTS of space between you and “them”…and there’s so few of you that it doesn’t even look like sprawl.
“I think I’d rather pay $60K less and learn Spanish by Immersion.”
+1 YES!! Now, is it off to Panama or Argentina?
Washington (CNN) - Former Obama administration official and consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren will announce her candidacy for the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, opening a race between Warren and Republican Sen. Scott Brown.
Kyle Sullivan, a Warren campaign adviser, confirmed the announcement to CNN.
“The pressures on middle class families are worse than ever, but it is the big corporations that get their way in Washington,” said Warren. “I want to change that. I will work my heart out to earn the trust of the people of Massachusetts.”
Well Elizabeth call Russ Feingold to find out what happens when you don’t do corporate America’s bidding.
Isn’t Feingold going to run for office again next year?
Geithner says Europe ready to do more to help euro
Before joining eurozone meeting, Geithner claims Europe ready to do more to help euro
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner insisted Wednesday that European leaders are ready to do more to support the euro from the debt crisis that is crippling Greece and shaking global markets.
Ahead of a teleconference between the leaders of Greece, France and Germany on Wednesday evening, Geithner sought to convince markets that European governments understood the severity of the crisis and that more would need to be done.
Geithner, who is to join eurozone finance ministers this weekend in a meeting in Poland, stressed that European governments have to make it clear they “stand behind” the financial system so that it can fund and finance the economic recovery.
“I think they recognize that they’re going to have to do more to earn the confidence of the world,” Geithner said in an interview with American news channel on CNBC.
As Treasury chief and previously in his role as head of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner has been central in the U.S. response to the financial crisis that flared up after the collapse of Lehman Brothers investment bank in 2008.
He said Europe’s leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, know they’ve “been behind the curve” and have the financial capacity “to do what it takes to hold this thing together.” He dismissed suggestions Europe was about to have its own Lehman moment.
“The leaders of the Eurozone have just got to do a better job with their lying”…”they can do more”. Says Geithner.
“Geithner has been central in the U.S. response to the financial crisis that flared up after the collapse of Lehman Brothers investment bank in 2008.”
Kinda like that little fire that flared up in Chicago.
The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned from Sunday, October 8, to early Tuesday, October 10, 1871.
Now conflagration is a good word. Why can`t that be used in any of this?
Geithner has been central in the U.S. response to the financial conflagration that flared up after the collapse of Lehman Brothers investment bank in 2008.
Noun
conflagration
1.A large fire extending to many objects, or over a large space; a general burning.
It took sixty firefighters to put out the conflagration, but luckily they all retired the next year at the age of 43 with a $100k pension for life.
“…..earn the confidence…..”
I’m confident that, whatever happens, the banksters/oligarchs will walk away with all the cash, and dumbazz J6P/taxpayer will be stuck with the bill.
See, it’s not a confidence problem. It a “too many criminals” problem.
Little Ant-nee Weenies seat went to a repub…
Turner Beats Weprin For Weiner’s Seat
Wednesday, 14 Sep 2011
NEW YORK - Democrats suffered a significant setback early Wednesday with the party losing a New York district it had held for almost a century — in an upset result seen as a rebuke of President Barack Obama’s policies ahead of the 2012 election.
Republican Bob Turner was called as the winner of the special election for the 9th Congressional District, held to replace disgraced former Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who resigned in June after admitting he sent sexually-charged messages to women he met online.
Democrats have held the seat since March 1923 — and Turner’s challenger David Weprin was early Wednesday refusing to concede.
With 86 percent of precincts reporting, Turner had 54 percent of the vote and Weprin 46 percent, with about 4700 votes separating the pair, WNYC reported.
For those of you who don’t know this area, it is home to a lot of DINOs (Democrats in name only) who are in the Democratic Party solely to get a share of patronage. Remember, NYC has elected a Republican Mayor five times in a row.
Many in this district are Orthodox Jews. There were more Israeli flags than American ones at Turner’s headquarters. The Democrats tried to counter this by running an Orthodox Jew, but it didnt’ work. And former Mayor Koch said that people should vote Republican to punish Obama for bringing up the Israeli settlements.
So this was no upset, and had little to do with the economy.
kudos to the population there. They voted their interests, not simply for ethnic kin. Too bad other demographics in USA don’t do the same.
Nice spin.
This seat has not been held by a republican for 80 years
3-1 advantage of dems to reps in this district
They elected one of the most LIBERAL dems in the house in the last election (Weiner)
It was a TOTAL rebuke of obama and his policies.
Somehow I do not think obama will get the message.
Landslide in 2012 boys…
“This seat has not been held by a republican for 80 years”
That`s only because they didn`t have Twitter 80 years ago.
WTE gets the spin award for the day. Seat held by a Dem since 1923 and it was no upset? LOL!
JJ do yo` antler spin.
That is BULLCRAP. It has everything to do with the economy. Stop
lying to yourself. Obammy and the flunkies are doing everything
they can to wreck the country.
If only McSame and Palin had one, non of this would have happened.
If the Tea Party balanced budget dreams come true, you’ll really see the economy circle the drain.
~ Sounds like the union goons across the pond are going to get cranked up this winter. Go Goons!
ITEM: Unions plot a winter of discontent as they ballot more than a million workers for biggest general strike since 1926.- UK Daily Mail
Millions of workers including police, firefighters, health workers, teachers and prison officers could strike over bitter pension row.
Unions describe potential walk-out as ‘unprecedented’ in scale and ‘the biggest fight of our lives’
Unison says they will be ‘vilified’ for striking but urges members to ’stay strong’
A ‘winter of discontent’ looks imminent as Unison, the country’s biggest public sector workers’ union, gave formal notice today that its 1.1 million members will be balloted for industrial action in the bitter row over pensions.
The Government face the threat of the biggest outbreak of industrial action since the 1926 General Strike after unions served notice of ballots over the row which will see workers pay an extra 3.2 per cent in pension contributions.
Unison’s general secretary, Dave Prentis, said 9,000 separate employer groups would be involved in the action, describing the ballot as ‘unprecedented’ in scale.
He blamed the Government for the ballot decision, which could see workers in school, hospitals, police and voluntary sectors, join the move.
He said: ‘A ballot unprecedented in scale will cover over a million workers in health, local government, schools, further education, police, the voluntary sector and the environment and private sector.
‘It’s a decision we don’t take lightly and the stakes are high, higher than ever before, but now is the time to make our stand.
‘It will be hard, we’ll be vilified, attacked, set against each other, but we must stay strong and united.’
Yep workers should just stay quite while they are being raped with inflation and taxes and wage and pension cuts all used to bail out the elite.
Those damn $10/hr dirt shoveling goons destroyed the global economy.
Yeah, workers’ rights are so last century.
Because the future belongs to Foxconn City
And Kochtopi Industries
Big difference between public union goons and private union goons…
It’s going to require a cambodian style re-education camp to deprogram DoubleBanana.
De-program? Not gonna happen…
The 20% unemployed think those workers are the elite.
What is the “voluntary” sector?
Who says there are no jobs, for those willing to do what they have to do?
http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/12/7730301-lawyer-turns-topless-dancer-to-pay-the-bills
“When Carla graduated 10 years ago, she thought her law degree would be a permanent ticket to a high-paying job. But instead of selling her mind, Carla is selling her body. After student loans, debt, a layoff and unemployment battered her bank account, she now finds herself in an almost unbelievable position – dancing in a topless bar.”
“Did I ever think I’d be taking my top off for rent money? No. I was in my mid-30s and had never danced before,” said Carla, who asked that we use her stage name and withhold her identity and some personal details. “As a little girl, I never thought to myself, ‘I just want to grow up and be a stripper,’ or, ‘All I ever wanted to do in life is climb in the lap of sweaty stranger and take my top off.’”
“But, with our economy the way it is, especially in smaller cities … you strip or you starve,” she said.”
You’ll get better tips in China, India, Brazil or Russia Carla. Perhaps, however, with more degrading expectations. Just be sure and send some tax money back to the U.S. to pay for those entitlements — but only for those 55 and over, not for you.
You’ll get better tips in China, India, Brazil or Russia Carla.
Perhaps, but she also might succumb to foreign disappearitis. :-/
Mid 30s, dancer body, willing to be a stripper but not married to a sugar daddy. Something about this story just doesn’t add up…
———————-
After graduation, she worked for nine years putting her degree to use, but she had entered the crowded legal profession at the wrong time.
——————–
Can you really say you ‘entered a profession at the wrong time’ after you have worked for 9 years at it? She’s not a buggywhip designer. Maybe she just wasn’t very good at her job.
We’ve all entered our professions at the wrong time.
“Maybe she just wasn’t very good at her job.”
Maybe her job got outsourced to India.
“Mid 30s, dancer body, willing to be a stripper but not married to a sugar daddy. Something about this story just doesn’t add up… “
There’s lots of flaky guys who haven’t grown up yet, and most of the rest are predators of some degree. She likely has children, and it’s a huge deal to find a guy who is willing to accept, and support, another man’s children. It’s also risky being under the same roof with another person’s children. When you strip away the spec-home, car, television and iPhone life hasn’t changed much from Crichton’s depiction of Victorian London in the Great Train Robbery.
“You’ll get better tips in China, India, Brazil or Russia…”
That’s what I was thinking. Our good ol’ boys are having trouble keeping the F-350 fueled, so how many singles do they have left for Carla? No, boys, Carla doesn’t take the change from your kids’ piggybanks.
Q: What do you call a lawyer dancing topless…
A; A good start
Why I’m skeptical of the stock market.
In the high-speed world of automated financial trading, milliseconds matter. So much so, in fact, that a saving of just six milliseconds in transmission time is all that is required to justify the laying of the first transatlantic communications cable for 10 years at a cost of more than $300m.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8753784/The-300m-cable-that-will-save-traders-milliseconds.html
I get the distinct impression that it’s highly manipulated both officially and unofficially.
When you start with “X”,…….”X” stays the same, but changes hands continuously, each time generating a commission.
Pretty soon “X” is tuned into “.001X”, and you are laying transatlantic cables to insure that you still get the commission on what’s left of “X”.
It’s okay, they’ll make it up on volume.
I guess this makes sense to someone.
The Wall Street - WalMart economy?
A post-industrial bust: Harold Meyerson
Published: Friday, September 09, 2011, 3:00 AM
Of all the lies that the American people have been told the past four decades, the biggest one may be this: We’ll all come out ahead in the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial society. Yes, we were counseled, there will be major dislocations, as there were during the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy, but the America that will emerge from this transformation, like the America that emerged 100 years ago, will be one whose citizens are ultimately more prosperous and secure than their industrial-era forebears.
What a crock.
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2011/09/a_post-industrial_bust_harold.html
Excellent find. Drive down Carnegie, Euclid, Chester between downtown Cleveland and University Circle to see what post-industrial looks like.
I don’t know about you, but I kinda like having MRI machines, antibiotics, freeways, computers, jet airlines, surfboards, snowboards, hang gliders, high tech climbing ropes, and weekends to enjoy them all.
The problem is that 33% of high schoolers drop out before high school graduation. A stunning number: citation:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0610/Graduation-rate-for-US-high-schoolers-falls-for-second-straight-year
We can look at the unskilled and/or poorly educated and say eff them, but they are the canary in the coal mine. The jobs in this country resemble a pyramind. And the bottom of the pyramid, retail, moving boxes, other unskilled, is getting hammered. And the rot is creeping upward. Engineering, programming is getting offshored.
Once it reaches a group that has a heavy lobbying influence, I think it’ll stop there because an industrial policy will be put in place to protect their jobs.
If these people are left to rot, they’ll cause problems for the rest of us.
Finally, all this stimulus money that gets injected almost seems like injecting water into a bucket with lots of holes. It creates jobs, for sure - but not in the US, as the unemployment rate attests.
Those niceties that the American middle class takes for granted will soon be only for the elite.
Sometimes I feel like I’m living in one of those dystopic sci fi movies.
Elizabeth Warren launches Senate bid. It will be the height of payback if she gets in. She simply wanted to be an agency chief, and instead, she might settle for senator.
“I grew up on the ragged edge of the middle class, and I know it’s hard out there,” Ms. Warren, the daughter of a janitor, said in the video. “Middle-class families have been chipped at, hacked at, squeezed and hammered for a generation now, and I don’t think Washington gets it.
“Washington is rigged for big corporations that hire armies of lobbyists. A big company like GE pays nothing in taxes, and we’re asking college students to take on even more debt to get a education. We’re telling seniors they may have to learn to live on less,” Ms. Warren said in the video announcement. “It isn’t right, and it’s the reason I’m running for the United States Senate.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904060604576570492151601966.html
“Washington is rigged for big corporations that hire armies of lobbyists. A big company like GE pays nothing in taxes, and we’re asking college students to take on even more debt to get a education. We’re telling seniors they may have to learn to live on less,” Ms. Warren said in the video announcement. “It isn’t right, and it’s the reason I’m running for the United States Senate.”
Does Elizabeth Warren know that the CEO of GE is a major policy maker (and major cash donor) in the obama administration?
If she is elected and I hope she is, just because she can stir the pot and piss-off & on a few turds in the cesspool. However as for making any headway against big bidness, isn’t going to happen, period. They own their lackey turds.
Yeah…….so by running against them, she can’t be accused of being a Obama flunkie.
But since she is running against what GE stands for, I guess she will soon be labeled a “socialist”.
I would like to see what GE paid in taxes during the glorious Clinton years and the Bush lost years vs. now.
I’d vote for her in a heartbeat. In fact, where do I send my campaign donation — er, I mean, express my Constitutionally-protected Freedom of Speech?
Rah Rah Elizabeth Warren .
When all else fails start mentioning that a war could erupt! Good way to get people all wee-wee’d up.
ITEM: Eurozone crisis could rip EU apart: officials
AFP - The eurozone crisis could wreck the European Union, top EU officials warned on Wednesday as the leaders of Germany and France held talks with Greece to avoid a default and widespread chaos.
The pressure rose on all fronts with United States again expressing great concern, with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner saying European states “now recognise they are going to have to do more” to resolve to the crisis.
Highlighting the threat to the global economy, Geithner is to exceptionally attend talks between European Union finance ministers and central bankers in Poland on Friday.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou were to hold a teleconference late Wednesday as markets price in a default by the government in Athens, and credit rating giant Moody’s downgraded two major French banks given their exposure to Greek debt.
“Europe is in danger,” Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski, whose country currently chairs EU meetings, told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
“If the eurozone breaks up, the European Union will not be able to survive,” he added.
At his most dramatic, Rostowski even warned that “war” could return to Europe if the crisis fatally weakens the EU, founded amid the rubble of World War II.
His underlying message was backed up by European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, who described the crisis as “the most serious challenge of a generation.”
Barroso stressed: “This is a fight… for the economic and political future of Europe.”
Well I`m shocked, Sheriff Ric and the Fire Dept. won.
Palm Beach County commissioners vote to increase property tax rate
By Jennifer Sorentrue Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 11:04 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2011
WEST PALM BEACH — Palm Beach County commissioners voted by their narrowest margin late Tuesday night to increase the countywide property tax rate by less than 1 percent.
After more than five hours, the commission voted 4-3 to set the countywide property tax rate at $4.79 for every $1,000 of taxable value, up from this year’s rate of $4.75. Commissioners Karen Marcus, Steven Abrams and Paulette Burdick voted against the increase.
Earlier in the evening, the commission had twice failed to agree on a tax rate. Both times the board voted against a rate of $4.80.
Commissioners told County Administrator Bob Weisman that they did not want to do away with a series of programs and services that had been proposed for elimination, including the closure of nature centers and pools.
The commission also agreed to give Sheriff Ric Bradshaw his entire budget request of $464 million.
So,that would be 4 thousand seven hundred and ninety dollar per
years ,plus other add ons for a 100 thousand dollar house .
Thats a pretty high property tax .
This is the house I am currently renting in Tequesta Fl.
Year Built 1979
Total Area Under Air : 1910
Total Square Footage : 2642
POOL - IN-GROUND
Total Market Value $216,077
Total Tax: 2011
$5,199
Here is one 3 minutes from here on the water.
Market Value: $1,418,805
Exempt Amnt: $50,000
Taxable: $1,368,805
Total Tax: $27,821.68
Hey nyDJ, there is a line in this one you’ll enjoy!!
ITEM: SAT reading scores fall to lowest level on record
By JUSTIN POPE, AP Education Writer
SAT reading scores for the high school class of 2011 were the lowest on record, and combined reading and math scores fell to their lowest point since 1995.
The College Board, which released the scores Wednesday, said the results reflect the record size and diversity of the pool of test-takers. As more students aim for college and take the exam, it tends to drag down average scores.
Meanwhile, other tests taken by more representative groups of high school students have shown reading skills holding steadier. And in the context of the 800-point test, the three-point decline in reading scores to 497 may seem little more than a blip.
Still, it’s just the second time in the last two decades reading scores have fallen as much in a single year. And reading scores are now notably lower than as recently as 2005, when the average was 508.
Average math scores for the class of 2011 fell one point to 514 and scores on the critical reading section fell two points to 489.
College Board officials pointed to a range of indicators that the test-taking pool has expanded, particularly among Hispanics, which is a good sign that more students are aspiring to college. For instance, roughly 27 percent of the 1.65 million test-takers last year came from a home where English was not the only language, up from 19 percent just a decade ago.
But the increasingly diverse group of test-takers is clearly having more trouble with reading and writing than with math. Wayne Camara, College Board vice president of research, said recent curriculum reforms that pushed math instruction may be coming at the expense of reading and writing — especially in an era when students are reading less and less at home.
“We’re looking and wondering if (more) efforts in English and reading and writing would benefit” students, Camara said.
It’s because they are falling asleep in English classes, after studying all night for math tests
Sure they are. They’re probably up late running the streets.
GenY is a generation of children of illegals.
We turned a blind eye to illegal immigration as a way of fighting the baby bust. The result is the number of births are back near 1950s highs… but a large proporation of those babies are children of illegals.
Thanks…same ol same ol….we will think about it.
I only hope ( there is that Hope again)… big OH’s legacy will be to finally kill Political Correctness so these nitwits can say those dammmEbonics kids really screwed up the numbers……
Poor mans cancer cure
Some guy on the internet is saying he cured his stage 4 bone cancer by mixing i tablespoon of molassas with 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda and 8 ounces of water ,all stired up , and he would drink it .
Apparently by the time he went to the Doctor his prostate cancer
had moved into bone cancer and they didn’t give him very long to live . He said in essence that the doctors were amazed because the condition kept on slowly reversing . I think his name was Vern Johnson .
What is interesting is that lately I have been hearing some conventional Doctors say on some radio shows that this thing with the baking soda and the PH balance of the body is true .
I don’t know ,check it out for yourself .
Spontanious remession….
Your body is constantly looking for and killing mutated DNA. Some times it misses a chunk and it becomres cancer.
Rarely, but often enough to cause magic thinking, the cancer re-mutates, the body picks it up, and the immune system goes crazy killing the cancer as it is evolved to do.
For some reason, ‘The Andromeda Strain’ and Tom Cruise’s ‘War of the Worlds’ come to mind.
Manufacturers lobby against deeper defense cuts
Coalition of manufacturers lobbies ’super-committee’ to spare military spending. September 14, 2011
WASHINGTON (AP) — A coalition of manufacturers is lobbying a special deficit-reduction committee to spare the military from deeper cuts, arguing that defense has been “cut to the bone.”
The Aerospace Industries Association and top executives from companies such as Boeing and Pratt & Whitney told a news conference reductions beyond the $350 billion planned in this summer’s debt accord would put hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk.
They said they met with Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, two members of the deficit “supercommittee”. They said they would press other panelists also working for at least $1.5 trillion in spending cuts.
Defense spending has nearly doubled since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. That doesn’t include more than $1 trillion spent on two wars.
It’s only a matter of time before these wasteful industries vulnerable to deep cuts (the military being the foremost example) resort to fear tactics when in jeopardy. Fear sells.
arguing that defense has been “cut to the bone.”
Ho ho, hah hah, hehehehehehe, BwaHaHaAhHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! (Cantankerous Intellectual Bomb-thrower™)
The truth is that all of the proposed government cuts are going to affect some industry.
Cut Medicare and the medical device industry will take a hit.
Cut Medicare and the [Chinese] imported medical device industry will take a hit.
There’s a massive advertising campaign against the National Labor Relations Board underway on DC news radio. Very interesting, I wonder that’s all about. The ads are funded by the US Chamber of Commerce, and various business lobbys.
Google Boeing, South Carolina, Union goons and obama
Something about the NLRB getting its back up about Boeing’s plans to move manufacturing to non-union South Carolina?
The NLRB agreed with the Machinist’s Union, who said Boeing is starting a second 787 production line in right-to-work South Carolina, to use as leverage against the Machinist’s union members in Washington.
A Boeing Co. exec even said so, on the record. Kinda makes it hard for the NLRB to do anything else.
The so-called business leadership in this country, however, thinks that cutting the pay of high skill employees from $30-40/hr to $10 hour is progress. So they call in their Chamber of Commerce lap dogs.
Here’s the deal. Business thinks they can only be competitive by cutting worker pay. A 20% cut won’t due. They need the new worker to work for peanuts, to justify all of the expense they are going to incur in training, scrappage, screw ups, accidents, injuries, etc., while the $10 hour guy eventually gets up to speed. Of course, by then, you’ve turned that $10 hour guy into a guy that can command $40-50/hour in a genuine open market.
So the trick is to sell him a house he can’t get out from under. Or devise a health care system that is not transferable, so he stuck in a job because of pre-existing conditions.
Do you really believe that the US government should pick and choose where a business can build a manufacturing plant in America???
Because it might upset big union who are the largest contributors to obama and the dems?
Comrade???
The next plant Boeing is going to build will be in China.
And I would not blame them.
It would end up there anyway as after a while the $12/hr serfs in South Carolina would be deem “too expensive”.
Would you fly on a Chinese built airliner? I wouldn’t set foot in one. But since I’m going to be too poor to fly in an airliner my statement is academic.
It would end up there anyway as after a while the $12/hr serfs in South Carolina would be deem “too expensive”.
maybe it would, maybe it wouldn’t. You don’t know for sure and that’s not a very solid basis for an argument.
PC manufacturing relocated to China. Textiles moved overseas from the right-to-work South.
History points to “move overseas anyway”. Why do you think they will stay?
Oh, I see. That makes sense.
Seems like how the financial regulators would likely be attacked.
No one shall get in the way of the race to the bottom. $3 an hour wage for everyone!
Exactly.
Just who are going to be the customers who will fly in these jets anyway?
From The Daily Ticker
- Famous forecaster Gerald Celente of Trends Research says the world’s in the midst of another depression and that we’re headed for another crash.
Celente won’t get specific about what he means by “crash,” at least with respect to the stock market, but he’s convinced that the world is going to the dogs.
We’ll have riots, he says. And wars. And society as we know it will continue to break down.
Unlike other doomsayers, Celente doesn’t lay the blame for this ghastly situation on one political party or the other. He ridicules both of them, along with our government in general.
And could the right policies save us from this crash?
Yes, says Celente. If we cut our spending and debts and returned to a government by the people and for the people, we’d eventually be fine. But that’s not going to happen. In the meantime, consumers are tapped out, inequality is increasing, and the people are getting restless and angry with a government that is now run by lobbyists.
” If we cut our spending and debts and returned to a government by the people and for the people, we’d eventually be fine.”
How long until we get to eventually? If we don’t cut our spending and debts do we get there sooner?
Palm Beach County superintendent hopes for nearly $100M from jobs bill for school construction
By Allison Ross Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 11:38 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011
The Palm Beach County School District stands to gain $98.4 million for construction and capital projects under President Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act, the district learned Tuesday.
The bill, sent from the White House to Congress on Monday, is estimated to cost the U.S. Treasury $447 billion and is meant to jump-start the economy and create jobs. The bill proposes to allot $25 billion for K-12 school infrastructure, including $1.28 billion in Florida schools - and Palm Beach County is slated to get a piece of that pie.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/ - 95k -
Post investigation: Did stimulus money create jobs in Palm Beach County?
By Charles Elmore Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 9:33 a.m. Sunday, July 24, 2011
The largest stimulus-fueled road projects in Palm Beach County have created less than 20 percent of the jobs once promised, a Palm Beach Post analysis based on federal job-creation standards shows.
Though the Obama administration pitched stimulus projects as “shovel-ready,” only half of Palm Beach County’s 12 road projects were complete entering July, more than two years after Congress’ approval in February 2009. And the region’s biggest project, the Indian Street Bridge in Martin County, has barely begun.
Local officials forecast nearly 600 jobs at five of Palm Beach County’s largest projects in early 2009. At least that many people got paychecks. But the hours worked amount to slightly more than 100 “full-time equivalent” jobs, based on 40-hour work weeks.
Several city officials said there wasn’t much guidance on how to estimate jobs in the scramble of early 2009 and it’s not really fair to compare the numbers now.
The Indian Street Bridge, once expected to create 3,500 jobs but delayed by a legal challenge, employed 105 workers in its June jobs report. The latest completion date, summer 2013, lags a year behind earlier forecasts.
“The joke of something being shovel-ready is not funny if you’ve been unemployed for two years or more,” said Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Competitiveness. “I think the judgment of the stimulus package is it didn’t live up to its billing.”
60 jobs become 17
Take Royal Palm Beach, where a main boulevard bearing the village’s name attracted $2.6 million in federal money to add bike lanes, curbs and landscaping. The village told county planners it expected the work to create 60 jobs in 2009.
Work began in May 2010 and was scheduled for completion in about a year, though village officials say it may be September before it’s done.
About 150 workers have put in about 35,000 hours, according to a consultant who does federal reporting for the project.
But not all are working continuously, or at the same time. If measured in 40-hour workweeks, those 35,000 hours translate to about 17 full-time workers in a year. A December 2009 memo from the federal Office of Management and Budget advises the use of such “full-time equivalent” numbers.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/post-investigation-did-stimulus-money-create-jobs-in-1644774.html - 103k -
Another reason why politicians are out of touch.
Road/infrastructure projects don’t generate a lot of jobs for untrained/unskilled people. Mainly it’s done with specialized equipment, with specialized operators.
35,000/150 = 23 hour of O/T/ per man.
A couple of Saturdays, in other words. Since May 2010.
233 no 23
Hot Damn! DOW heading for a 300 point up day, a lot of very good news out there in the world, all worries are over! Print BB print! You can save the world, screw China!
– Stocks Rally 2% on Hopes for Progress on Greece’s Debt- AP
Stock indexes jumped more than 2% in another day of bumpy trading Wednesday after European leaders renewed pledges to help Greece avoid defaulting on its debts.
The United Parcel Service sucks.
Been waiting all day for an AOG part from Honeywell. Checked it’s status around 1am. Says they tried to deliver it, but business was “closed” WTF?? I’ve been here all fricking day, waiting on this POS.
Called the call center, waded thru the menu. They say they will try to deliver again @ 5:30pm. Great. The whole day pizzed away.
My fault. Should have told them to ship it Fedex only when I ordered it. If you have a “gotta have shipment” that you want screwed up, send it UPS.
Only thing worse is shipping “counter-to counter” by airline, when the package has to change airlines, or change planes. My personal track record on those over the past 20 years is about 100% get lost/miss flights.
I seldom use UPS. But, when I have, I find myself wishing I’d called Fedex. Or just gotten on the bike and taken a trip to the post office.
Funny how NO ONE even thinks about the US Post Office to do these kind of things…
After experiencing more than a few UPS fiascoes of my own, the post office is the first place I head to. (Sorry, Fedex, but Express Mail is all my budget can handle these days.)
Wrong. 2 > NO ONE.
And if I go to an independent shipper, I always have them quote the USPS price.
Nassau County, NY exec wants to slash 1,000 jobs
14 Sep 2011 | CNBC
MINEOLA, N.Y. - A Long Island government official wants to close a projected $310 million budget shortfall by cutting more than 1,000 jobs from the Nassau County work force.
County Executive Edward Mangano says if he doesn’t cut the payroll, county property taxes could rise by 39 percent. Nassau property taxes are already among the highest in the country.
The county, just east of New York City, has been struggling for a number of years to trim growing deficits. Earlier this year, a state fiscal watchdog created a decade ago by the state legislature took control of overseeing Nassau’s finances. That agency, the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, did not immediately comment.
Mangano’s plan would leave 7,400 employees on the payroll. He also wants employees to start paying 25 percent of their health insurance.
Obama’s job plan sucks.
For the amount of money that could be reasonably be spent with a GOP House, and with the constraints on the ability to spend with deficits, you can’t manufacture jobs. The only thing you can do is encourage people who are on the cusp of needing to hire more people anyway, to do so now rather than later. A one-year payroll tax benefit isn’t enough to do that.
If however, a permanent reduction in payroll taxes was given to any net new employee hired before June 30, 2012, we might get some traction. This of course would need to be limited to avoid games, like requiring that the total number of discounted employees doesn’t exceed the difference between the then current US headcount of the company and the US headcount in June 2011 (ie. you can’t fire everyone and rehire them over time to permanently reduce your payroll tax).
Something like this would tend to bring employers’ hiring decisions forward in time. We’ve heard it over and over again in private industry. Those who hire waited until they absolutely couldn’t work their employees any harder. If that kind of company is out there today (and I suspect that there are a few), knowing that it might take a little while to find the perfect employee, they would start looking now…because hiring them before June 2012 has a long-lasting benefit as compared to after July 2012.
There should be NO limit on size of the company (why should we care if GE is the one who adds the jobs?).
To make up for the hit to Social Security, they should implement some of the long term plans that were proposed in Simpson Bowles anyway (delay benefits for younger workers, etc.). The reduction/delay in benefits are equivalent to taxes on folks compared to the status quo, but if they are happening 15, 20, 30 years out, no one will change their immediate consumption decisions significantly (especially if the change is a delay in benefits, as opposed to a reduction).
To try to entice long term decisions from employers with small short term benefits to the employers, and then increasing taxes (reducing the employer’s take home in the case of small business owners) on the other side of the equation is stupid.
How about replacing the payroll tax with a VAT?
Today work done in the U.S. is taxed, but for the most part only on income under $105,000 (or whatever it is). But imports are tax free!
With a VAT, spending is taxed whether the work is done at home or abroad. A VAT is regressive, and hits the poor and middle class more than the rich, which is why the Republicans want it to replace the progressive income tax. But the payroll tax is also regressive, so that makes replacing one with the other neutral with regard to the distribution of the tax burden.
With a VAT, moreover, the retired can pay back some of the debts they ran up — they are exempt from the payroll tax. The rich would pay VAT on all their spending; they pay payroll tax on a small portion of their income (or when they disguise work earnings as capital gains not at all).
I’d be game for that as well. It wouldn’t encourage businesses to make any near-term hiring decisions (except perhaps accountants), but longer term it would be a positive for jobs.
The other benefit of the VAT is that unless you are living in a cave, it is impossible to avoid. Anyone skirting taxes would be brought into the fold to some extent.
As an economist, I’m sure you realize that if you tax an activity, you generally get less of it.
If you tax value, you get less value.
Is that your objective?
NAR sucks.
I will be changing my name to Lefty jeff B4 Hwy & Company turn me into AttackWatch.com Didn`t this happen in Germany a few years back?
Obama Launches ‘Misinformation’ Website
September 14, 2011
By Daniel Strauss, The Hill
The Obama campaign is launching a new website to handle misinformation against President Obama.
In an email, Obama’s reelection campaign manager, Jim Messina, announced the formation of AttackWatch.com.
“Forming the first line of defense against a barrage of misinformation won’t be easy,” Messina wrote in a fundraising email to campaign supporters. “Our success will depend on a team of researchers and writers to stay on the lookout for false claims about the President and his record, bring you the facts, and hold our opposition accountable.”
http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2011/09/13/obama-launches-attackwatchcom - 35k -
Get the facts. Fight the smears. — AttackWatch.com
The smears didn’t end with the 2008 election. President Obama’s opponents are still making false claims against him and his record in an attempt to derail our …
http://attackwatch.com/ - 15k - Cached - Similar pages
Guns are bad.
Unions are good.
Opponents are using smears to undermine the success of President Obama’s auto rescue. Those b@stards. They had to be rescued or the beer companies would have gone under too!
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Even though I changed my name to Lefty jeff and showed my support for unions I have this funny feeling I need to find a house with a big attic and a fake door. You don`t think they will make me wear an arm band with an R on it do you?
They’ll be busier than a 1 legged man in an a$$ kicking contest just redacting half the posts on this blog alone - making them “truthier” for their orwellian purposes I guess.
Solyndra
Gun walker
Geithner tax cheat
Wonder how long this post lasts in its original form!
I am afraid I am going to have to turn in Hillary to AttackWatch.com
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Senate speech (10 October 2002
I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, “We are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration!”
Can I do it anonymously? I would love to sic the FEDs on people I don’t like and right/left don’t matter to me just as long as it really pisses them off. Viva La Revolution!
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“right/left don’t matter to me”
Bzzzzzzz Wrong answer.
Now lets see that`s BlueStar with misinformation and a possible smear.
Really Jeff, Isn’t this fun watching the country go bat chit crazy? Does anything surprise you anymore. They (the government) already can record and track every thing we do. Do they really need someone to snitch or are they really luring stupid people in so they will turn over the info to the homeland security people. It will make a great hit list for the new president so he can crush the resistance when the next regime takes over. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
BlueStar
I am not going to be turning anyone in for anything and as far as “Does anything surprise you anymore.” That was the reason for this post and very little does from AttackWatch.com to 4% refis to “responsible homeowners” to bailouts for Wall Street to 9 out of 10 new mortgages coming from the government to a guy who said he didn`t understand Turbo Tax insisting that European leaders are ready to do more to support the euro from the debt crisis that is crippling Greece and shaking global markets.
Now I did click on AttackWatch.com a couple of times but I am sure I was already on a list somewhere.
My wife forwarded me TWO articles today about housing. I think she finally gets it.
It’s a great day.
What does pushing on a string have to do with mass destruction?
HEARD ON THE STREET
SEPTEMBER 14, 2011
Fed’s Weapons of Mass Distraction
By DAVID REILLY
As the Federal Reserve weighs yet again how to try and stimulate the economy, one option seems like a no-brainer: stop paying interest on about $1.6 trillion in excess reserves that banks keep with the Fed.
The idea is that if banks stop receiving 0.25 percentage point on the reserves, they will lend more. After all, the alternative is getting even-more paltry returns on things like short-term Treasury securities.
Trouble is, when it comes to this, or any of the unconventional options the Fed is considering, nothing is as easy or straightforward as it looks. Halting the payment of interest on excess reserves might actually disrupt markets.
The Fed started paying interest on excess reserves—those that exceed the funds banks must hold with the Fed against deposits—during the financial crisis as a way to offset the expansion of its own balance sheet. This was meant to discourage excessive credit creation and help prevent an inflationary spiral. It also allowed for flexibility. As New York Fed President William Dudley said in a speech in July 2009, the Fed could raise the rate to prevent inflation, but could also reduce it “if the demand for credit is insufficient to push the economy to full employment.”
…
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/09/sat-reading-scores-hit-record-low-for-class-of-2011/1?csp=34
It’s official: Americans are dumber than a bag of hammers. Not that we needed more proof of that after the 2008 Presidential elections, but 2011 SAT reading scores are the lowest on record. Meaning the cabbages who fell for hope ‘n change and the turnips who voted for the McCrazy/Palin ticket in ‘08 will be joined by an even more brain-dead herd in Nov 2012. We are so screwed.
It’s official: Americans are dumber than a bag of hammers.”
LMAO
He hit the nail on the head!
Stupidity is something that needs to be exhausted. Don’t ask me how I know.
Sept. 15, 2011, 12:01 a.m. EDT
Foreclosure filings jump 7% in August from July
Foreclosures fall over the year, but monthly figures signal trouble ahead
By Andrea Coombes, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — The number of default notices mailed to homeowners who were late on their mortgages soared in August to a nine-month high — the largest month-to-month increase in four years — and that helped push the rate of overall foreclosure filings higher last month, according to data released by RealtyTrac Inc. on Thursday.
Foreclosure filings, which include those late-payment notices plus auction announcements and bank repossessions, rose 7% in August compared with July, hitting a total of 228,098 U.S. properties. But the filing rate fell 33% from a year earlier.
And while the number of those first-time default notices sent rose 33% in August versus July, to a total of 78,880 properties, they fell 18% compared with a year ago, and they’re 44% lower than the monthly peak in April 2009.
That is, the year-over-year data looks relatively positive, but the monthly data appears to be cause for worry — or, perhaps, relief, depending on your point of view.
The numbers sound bad, “but it actually is a necessary dose of medicine for the housing market,” said Rick Sharga, senior vice president of RealtyTrac, an online marketplace of foreclosure properties.
“Until they get processed, [those properties] can’t be resold to new home buyers,” he said. “We might be seeing the beginning of a return to more realistic levels of foreclosure activity.”
…
Shoeshine boy moment noted for gold: Ms. Rodriguez sells the family heirlooms for their melt value to raise the cash needed to pay bills. This is the point where gold’s recent parabolic price rise becomes a self-destructive force, as new sources of previously-untapped supply, such as Ms. Rodriguez’s molten earrings, suddenly flood the market. Trust me — you will be reading stories about how this works within a few months after the incipient gold bubble collapse.
And I will laugh heartily and say “I told you so” over and over when this bubble blows to smithereens!
MARKETS
SEPTEMBER 15, 2011
Gold’s Luster a Bright Spot in Tough Economy
By LIAM PLEVEN
“Times are hard,” said Virginia Rodriguez, a hospital technician and mother of two, explaining why she has used earrings, rings and a gold cross and chain bequeathed by her grandfather in exchange for loans of nearly $1,000.
The jewelry has been pledged as collateral to Provident Loan Society of New York, which operates from an austere limestone structure on Manhattan’s Park Avenue South. Created amid the Panic of 1893 by tycoons such as J.P. Morgan and Cornelius Vanderbilt, business has surged during the most recent climb in gold prices.
On Wednesday, gold settled at $1,823.50 per troy ounce. Prices are up 28% so far this year, at a time when other coveted commodities such as crude oil and copper have fallen in 2011 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped 2.8%.
For hedge funds and hordes of individual investors, gold’s climb is a chance to profit from the declining U.S. dollar and fears about the European financial crisis.
Developer Donald Trump said this week that he would accept a security deposit in gold at his new tower in Manhattan’s Financial District.
But some people like Ms. Rodriguez regard gold as less of a safe haven than a last resort, shedding heirlooms and treasured keepsakes in order to pay basic bills. Ms. Rodriguez has used the loans she’s taken out from Provident in recent years, which carry a 13% interest rate over six months, to pay for rent, cable television and a cell phone, all examples of “what you need every single day,” Ms. Rodriguez said.
…
“Ms. Rodriguez has used the loans she’s taken out from Provident in recent years, which carry a 13% interest rate over six months, to pay for rent, cable television and a cell phone, all examples of “what you need every single day,” Ms. Rodriguez said.”
Stupid is as stupid does. Paying a 13% interest rate to keep the _cable_ turned on? Really???
Just cancel the freakin cable already!!!
If you can’t pay for it today, can you really pay even more for it in six months?
Which part of “what you need every single day” don’t you understand?