Bits Bucket for September 16, 2011
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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Is the foreclosure crisis mostly behind us by now?
August Foreclosure Data Released
By Dave Rice | Posted September 15, 2011, 2:29 p.m.
Updated stats for August were released on Tuesday by mortgage default trackers ForeclosureRadar. It’s mostly bad news across the board.
Properties entering foreclosure for the first time are up in every state in the union, primarily driven by increased foreclosure activity by Wells Fargo, US Bank, and particularly Bank of America, whose new foreclosure filings jumped 116% between July and August. In California, new foreclosure filings are up 69.5%. The spike in San Diego County over last month was only 65%, with 2,235 Notices of Default being filed.
…
Good.
They will finally move through the blockage.
The most interesting thing in the most recent mortgage monitor from LPS was that only 25% of new delinquencies are first time delinquencies (which has been trending down). So, there are fewer and fewer delinquencies overall, and a smaller and smaller percentage of those delinquencies are new problems. All the rest are redefaults, or serial problems.
Increasing the pace of foreclosing is vital to draining the bad loans through the system…
Foreclosure crisis not behind us, but the amount of shadow inventory to blow through appears to be more and more definable.
“They will finally move through the blockage.”
Constipation is never much fun, though its elimination can get even more unpleasant.
“Florida ranks high on student loan defaults, new report shows
Jeanne Tholl, 47, of Lake Worth, said she is on the verge of defaulting on her $11,000 student loan. She graduated from MedVance Institute in Palm Springs in 2009 with a massage therapy degree. But she hasn’t found work in her new field and she lost her job at Albertson’s after the grocery chain closed its Palm Beach County stores.”
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/education/highered/fl-student-loan-default-20110916,0,7510231.story
47 years old
$11,000 in student loans (that can NOT be discharged in bankruptcy and will follow her the rest of her life)
From a “for profit college” that is really probably a storefront in a strip shopping center
In a massage therapy degree program
Ok - who can spot anything wrong with this plan???
Make no mistake, those “schools” can be as predatory as any real estate agent!
During the 1990-1 recession unable to find a gig in my field (I had just completed my A&P program) and working at a grocery store, I was looking to return for more schooling. One day my eyes spotted an ad for an “aviation engineering” school downtown. I’d never heard of such a thing so I went down one day out of curiosity during an enrollment session.
What a sham! It was a hokey classroom in an old office building. Amongst the decor were broken model airplanes that looked as if a third grader put them together. Some shabbily dressed “instructor” dude who reeked of alcohol immediately lauched into a hard sell and shoved financial aid docs in my face. Excusing myself to go to the washroom, I escaped.
There were plenty of 20-25 yo guys there though, and many were signing the docs. Later, upon obtaining employment in that field and seeing what it really required, I found myself wondering whatever happened to those guys who enrolled - or to the school for that matter - which simply stopped advertising after only a few months.
A few blocks away from the Arizona Slim Ranch is a vacant building. It’s been vacant for many years.
Last occupant was a bricklaying school. Yup, that’s right. A place where you could learn the masonry trade.
Being the curious sort that I am, I stopped in for a look-see. That was back in 2005. I was interested in evening or weekend courses like the community college offers.
Well, a guy gave me a very poorly designed brochure and told me that the curriculum was for full-time students only. I looked around the place and noticed very few students.
Well, I enrolled in the community college construction courses during the summer of ‘05. Before I finished my last class in the summer of ‘96, I noticed that the bricklaying school had closed.
What happened? I asked one of the lead instructors at the community college. He told me that the bricklaying school was nothing more than a scam to get federal financial aid dollars and that the owner of said school was in jail.
Oh, I should mention that this sham school was located less than a mile north of the community college.
Oops! My bad. I finished my community college courses in the summer of 2006, not 1996.
‘Scuse the inadvertent time travel.
$11K to learn how to do backrubs? Where do I sign up?
I know someone who paid around $1,000 for the classes through the state exam. She is working for a Chiropractor making $35K working on Fibromyalgia patients. Great “mom” job.
Massage therapy is physically demanding job.
I have a friend who is one, she has to limit how many she does and spends the rest of her time doing medical billing / office management.
If she was a hot 20-year-old she’d have better prospects as a massage therapist.
On Craigslist.
No, I’m talking about the legitimate market.
Realtors Are Liars®
America [AA+] Day: # 42
Hope and change boyz
$1 Trillion in Stimulus pissed away - and we are stuck with the debt
Pass this bill now so we can piss away another $500 billion
Glad to see the major obama supporters taken care of…
——————————————–
Solyndra’s woes worried White House, emails show
cbs | 9/16/2011 | ap
White House officials discussed the political ramifications of a possible default by a troubled solar energy company that received more than $500 million in federal loans, newly released emails show.
Emails released Thursday night show the Obama administration privately worried about the effect of a default by Solyndra Inc. on the president’s re-election campaign.
“The optics of a Solyndra default will be bad,” an official from the Office of Management and Budget wrote in a Jan. 31 email to a senior OMB official. “The timing will likely coincide with the 2012 campaign season heating up.”
That message has turned out to be a fairly accurate prophecy of Solyndra’s failure haunting President Obama’s 2012 campaign, even before the end of 2011.
In remarks on the Senate floor Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., argued that Solyndra’s bankruptcy this month was just another reason to fight against the president’s jobs plan, reports CBSNews.com’s Lucy Madison.
“This place was supposed to be the poster child of how the original stimulus would create jobs. Now it’s bankrupt and most of its 1,100 employees are out of work,” McConnell said.
Wake me up when AIG pays back the money it got under the table.
Obama saved a lot more jobs than he cost, just from mom-flag-apple-pie GM alone.
If you don’t like the GM example, what about the 100,000 military people + stuff Obama brought home from Iraq + more every day, even 5K month Afgh? Surely that saved a few dollars.
Rush will bang the Solyndra drum for another year, but his dittoheads weren’t going to vote for Obama anyway.
Original stimulus had a lot of tax cuts. How come THEY didn’t work, O worshippers of tax cuts?
Original stimulus had a lot of tax cuts. How come THEY didn’t work, O worshippers of tax cuts?
Because most of the “tax cuts” was really increasing things like the EIC - really just more welfare.
So you’re saying 2b that if we just targeted those tax cuts to the top 0.1% that the economy would be flying high now?
:crickets:
So why are GE and other Fortune 500 companies still offshoring when they effectively pays no federal income tax? Because some impoverished people are getting EIC?
EIC is our biggest payday. $8,000!! plus $3,000 for SNAP peas What washes it out is our private health insurance premiums is $10,000. Medications they don’t cover are $4,000. Benefits are not making us rich; is it some kind of scandalous ripoff that my wife works as a lunch lady at our kids’ school, and also checks at a grocery; and I substitute teach? And when I am not working I am volunteering at the boys and girls club. Does being in the $500 week club make us less than human? That’s the feeling I get from some here. Certainly someone needs to feed the kids and someone has to fill in when a teacher is sick. Those someones happen to be us and we will do it proudly with our heads held high.
we are busy but cant keep up.
Rich for a decade(thanks bubble); poor for a decade. We are scouring for jobs w/ bennies; we have only had SNAP for 3 months even though we have qualified for quite some time.
Also, our kids have had two stay home parents and score honor role and benefit the school w/ their high test scores. But that will help cuz they will have to figure out college funding on their own; they have about 6k each thus far!
I can empathize, Mike in Bend, as our family was about where you are while I was in graduate school. We were working our behinds off, but your home production as a parent produces negative income, in the form of hungry mouths to feed, schedules to keep, carpools to drive for, bodies to clothe, etc. Then your kids are likely to move out and never send a dime of your investment of child rearing effort back to you. We felt very poor during those years.
Like one of my professors asked me when I was holding my infant daughter at a picnic for my grad school department , “Why would anyone want to have children?”
Keeping the then current tax cuts of Bush in place is not a tax cut.
Adding to those former cuts with new incentives is a cut. Also
keeping the current system of “Base Line” budgeting in place where
a so called cut in the rate of spending is a real cut is a falsehood.
“Adding to those former cuts with new incentives is a cut. ”
GE paid NO taxes last year. How do you cut taxes on zero taxes? Does GE want EIC too?
I guess if you were Jeff Imelt and were pals with the messiah
you could have payed nothing either.
How do you cut taxes of zero taxes?
Refunds. They got $3 MILLION in refunds!
Have tax cuts ever solved any crisis? I honestly don’t know.
They’ve certainly created plenty of crises.
THe deficits began to balloon when St. Ronnie began cutting taxes for the rich.
Sorry to say that revenues to the govt. also increased
substantially under Reagan. You should check all the facts.
This was after the tax cuts. Its the dems that never passed
the spending cuts that were agreed to.
So theoretically “Tax Cuts” are the key to a wealthy economy for all. Then Congress should reduce all tax rates to zero and the economy will boom. Let’s Roll!
Reagan raised taxes 11 times after his deficit ballooning tax cut. You have to raise revenue somehow.
Reagan also increased government spending big time. Increased spending increases tax revenues. If you spend $40k on a new civil servant, he’ll pay income taxes of $8k. Yes that increases the deficit, but the Reagan apologists always ignore the spending piece of the puzzle.
Don’t know about solving any crises, but they have served to drive the U.S. wealth distribution to levels of inequality last seen in the 1920s.
Published: Friday, September 16, 2011
Our nation’s moving toward a plutocracy
By James McCusker, Herald Columnist
The U.S. Census Bureau news release on “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010″ is just four pages long, but that’s enough. The full report, at 95 pages, is just too depressing.
In some ways there are no surprises in the report, but clearly we’ve got a lot of work to do.
According to the bureau, median household income declined again, losing another 2.9 percent compared with 2009. This puts us back to just about where we were in 1996.
The number of Americans living in poverty in 2010 was 46.2 million, the largest number in the 52-year history of compiling this measure of our economy’s performance. And in 2010 we added 900,000 people to the number of residents without health insurance, bringing the total to 49.9 million.
There are different definitions of poverty in active use not only by academics but also by various government agencies. The Census Bureau, and this report, uses a set of income thresholds or minimums that define the poverty level in terms of the necessary income needed for the number of adults and dependent children sharing the family income.
Statistics paint a picture for us and this one isn’t pretty. The numbers certainly do not depict a robust U.S. economy.
The question is: What do we do about it? In large part that is what the political campaigns and the 2012 elections are all about, but politics and economics, while related, are not the same thing.
They do tend to overlap, though, when it comes to things like attitude and confidence. Americans are used to progress, each year being better than the one before.
From a long-term or global economic perspective, for example, 1996 wasn’t a bad year. But most of us are downright uncomfortable with the idea of moving backward. We aren’t good at retreating. And don’t want to be.
How this attitude will be translated into economics isn’t certain by a long shot, but we do know some problems will have to be solved if we are to move forward. Without long-term economic growth there can be no real job growth. And for the most part the jobs solutions being proposed are temporary and essentially defensive — keeping things from getting worse. They do nothing for long-term economic growth.
One thing that we must address, for example, is the skewed income distribution in our economy. The disparity between haves and have-nots in our country, and in most free market economies, has been growing steadily for years, through good times and bad — and we do not fully understand why.
…
I’m of the impression that “saving GM” did not save a single job. Maybe the exception would be union boss jobs. If GM were to have gone BK, those xGM people would still be making cars. The brand would have been changed. The wages would be less. Maybe more people would be employed.
Solyndra was not Obama’s sole fault, but it was the worst of the worst possible investments in the Green Scam spectrum. I believe I wrote here back when the DOE gave these loan guarantees that Solyndra’s technology was really extraordinarily stupid. It was a con job that the whole country fell for.
Boehner, in Washington Speech, Reaffirms No-Tax-Increase Position
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
Speaker John A. Boehner, at the Economic Club of Washington on Thursday, said: “Tax increases destroy jobs. And the joint committee is a jobs committee.”
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and EMMARIE HUETTEMAN
Published: September 15, 2011
WASHINGTON — Speaker John A. Boehner on Thursday rejected tax increases as part of a sweeping effort to reduce the nation’s debt, delivering his prescription for a Congressional deficit-cutting committee ahead of a competing presentation by President Obama early next week.
The latest on President Obama, the new Congress and other news from Washington and around the nation. Join the discussion.
Mr. Boehner urged the new bipartisan committee to focus on cuts in federal spending and entitlement programs as a way of slowing the growth of government. He said tax increases should be “off the table” as the committee works toward a late-November deadline.
“It’s a very simple equation,” Mr. Boehner said in a speech to the Economic Club of Washington. “Tax increases destroy jobs. And the joint committee is a jobs committee. Its mission is to reduce the deficit that is threatening job creation in our country.”
…
So is he counting the elimination of the mortgage interest deduction as a “tax increase?”
Hope and change boyz …verses… No Hope & No Change
Cut it! or Shut it! sayeth the Disciples of the $uffering $o’s.
1) John Boehner wants the supercommittee deal to be all spending cuts, report Paul Kane and Rosalind Helderman: “House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) on Thursday reaffirmed GOP opposition to any tax increases to solve the nation’s deficit problem, signaling a swift return to the trench warfare that characterized the debt and spending debate of early summer. Boehner said that the special committee seeking long-term debt reduction should achieve its mandated $1.5 trillion in savings entirely by cutting federal agency spending and shrinking entitlement programs. ‘When it comes to producing savings to reach its $1.5 trillion deficit-reduction target, the joint select committee has only one option: spending cuts and entitlement reform,’ Boehner said in a speech to the Economic Club of Washington…Boehner’s speech established that there has been little change in the fundamental positions that gridlocked Washington during the past few months.”
They’re the $uffering $o’s. Cinder$ & Ashe$, Agonie$ & Pain$… Help ‘em!
“…if you tax them less, they can hire more people.”
I so love it when we call things exactly what they are not.
$1.5Tr cut = $150B/yr in forecast reduction in the Increase.
Why are we talking about ten years from now instead of today? I think because we don’t plan on doing anything tangible. It would hurt too much.
“John Boehner wants the supercommittee deal to be all spending cuts.”
Nice try, Johnny. You had some leverage when you were passing budget resolutions two weeks at a time. You had some leverage when you could hang the deficit ceiling over our heads. What leverage do you have today? Lock up the sooper dooper committee and all you do is trigger cuts to your pet military-industiral complex. Go ahead, I dare you.
John Boner, the new “Tan Man”. This guy is a joke; if he and “Triple-Chin” McConnell wanted tp pass a balanced budget, they had six years under Bush with big (R) majorities to do it. Maybe this weepy turd should spend more time on the nation’s business than on the gold course.
Gold course — I like that one!
Gold up 25% this year; golf courses are dying. Shouldn’t more boomers bode well for golf courses?
I would love to see the economy crash hard starting May 2012 in to Aug-Jul like 2007 did and lets see how a Republican Admin. handles a minus 5% GDP starting in 2013. Think of it as a stress test for supply side economic theory.
Well here ya go…
Boehner said today that tax increases “are off the table.”
GOP jobs plan: Cut regulations and debt, reform taxes
September 15th, 2011, by Mary Ann Milbourn / OC Register
Peter Navarro, a UC-Irvine economist, said both the Democrats and Republicans are completely off-track with their proposals.
“It’s really, really stupid,” he said. “It’s reached the point of felony dumb.”
He said neither plan addresses the underlying structural problem with the economy, which he believes is the trade deficit with China.
Navarro said the deficit has shaved 1% off U.S. gross domestic product growth every year since 2001, when China joined the World Trade Organization, and cost the country well over 10 million jobs.
“The trade deficit is the reason people are unemployed,” he said.
it was only a matter of time for this realization to come forward. Tariffs can take care of the trade deficit, and it will reduce our standard of living. Our standard of living is going down anyway, might as well get something in return.
The nice thing about tariffs is that they are usually really high on luxury items! The entitlement crowd can take solace in this while they get used to shorter rations.
Umm, so who’s gonna finally break it to Americans that that crazy decade or two we just had were anomolies and they ain’t coming back.
Something that pre-election I’d hoped Obamie might actually do?
You can see it in his face. He just can’t speak it.
Who is going to break it to American that everything since WWII was an anomaly and isn’t coming back?
….unless we win another war where all the other major markets have their industrial bases wiped out by bombing runs.
Sigh…I guess you’re right. Lightening couldn’t strike twice.
Tax cuts for sending jobs offshore are the reason people are unemployed.
Nice huh? You lose the tax revenue from the company and then you lose the tax revenue AND consumer spending from the paychecks.
Pure genius!
Not.
Interesting. I had this very discussion with a colleague last night.
Oh, to have a large middle class to buy your products, ensure your long-term survival, and pay off national debt…
Paging Mr darrell_in_phx. Mr D. I. Phoenix….
So that’s the last card they have to play. They’ve taken everything else from the American worker in search of profit. Next up: regulations. Never mind that unregulated utilites brought us Enron, unregulated banks got us into the current mess, and deregulation of other industries will remove worker protections.
I for one actually like regulations. I like cars that don’t blow up and nuclear plants that have to be designed for earthquakes and loss of power.
Oxide. I strongly agree. There are always unprofitable externalities where no profit incentive exists. Some regs. painfully, or otherwise, needed.
Wanna buy a Pinto?
I, for one, like air you can breath, water you can drink or swim in, and soil in which you can plant your crops without worrying about toxic sludge creeping into the leafs of the plant you will soon put on your dinner table.
Obviously, I am not an anti-regulation Retardican.
“I would love to see the economy crash hard starting May 2012 in to Aug-Jul like 2007 did and lets see how a Republican Admin. handles a minus 5% GDP starting in 2013.”
John Boehner could supply the tears.
I know that house prices “need to come down” in my area, but I’m not going to put too much stock in this magical shadow inventory; more likely this inventory is rotting away as we speak. I suspect that there will be “housing disparity” the same way there is income disparity. Yes the “average” price will come down, but the average will be the average of a bimodal. The bad houses will continually drop in price until This Old House shows up to save it or the city shows up to bulldoze it. The good houses will have a quality $$ premium attached to them and won’t come down at all. There will be very little middle-of-the-road housing.
Even if government cuts bring the crash to my area, the clock will start now instead of three years ago. If I wait, say, three years for all of this to shake out, that’s well over $60K in rent money. Are houses going to drop $60K? Maybe, but they’ll probably incur another $20K in needed repairs too.
Today’s house:
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2015-Evansdale-Dr-Adelphi-MD-20783/37562826_zpid/#{scid=hdp-site-map-list-address}
1962 “4″/3 rambler. There’s room for a bedroom downstairs. Probably not a great neighborhood, but not a ‘hood. Commute is not a long distance, but it would take time. Floor plan: terrible. Bathroom: pink. Kitchen: yikes. Power: out. Hardwood floors: saving grace.
Dec 1976: Sold $57K
Sep 2005: Sold $312K
Aug 2002: Zestimate $209K
Aug 2011: Listed $259K
Sep 2011: Listed $190K.
We go through similar mental fluctuations on our resolve. Here’s what keeps any purchase at bay: The tax and cost of living hikes haven’t really started yet.
Before I sign any document swearing I’m gonna to be responsible for things I want to have the big picture in front of me. If my husband’s employer decides to ditch insurance for their employees and we have to go out and get our own, if they restructure their pay program which they’ve already done recently and the contractual bonus component disappears next, if they eliminate the supplied work vehicle and we have to go out and buy a new car, if the cost of energy spikes when the dollar collapses, if property taxes have to go up 20%+ as some places are proposing that house that looks like it’s easily affordable right now could quickly put us underwater.
What good does it do to have a home for 5 years but lose it anyway in the end? I’d rather wait to get on the other side of the collapse and know what I’m getting into. But that’s just us. Maybe we jump too much at shadows. I’m a firm believer that we all live w/our own decisions so we’ve got to shake out our own best path. At this point it’s a crap shoot anyway.
CarrieAnn…
You and your husband have much the same outlook as the RAL family. The forecast is vague(for all of us) so all of our commitments are going to be low cost ones. Get housing prices down to what I characterize as cheap($40k-80K) and we will commit to buying a house now. If prices linger at the $200k level, we’ll delay until the forecast clears.
I’m amazed that the front door opens directly into the living room rather than having a small area to remove one’s boots and wet trench coat; it snows in MD, right?
Well, $168-sqft is better than yesterday’s two places, but still too high, IHMO.
Where have you been? 90% of the small houses built before 1970 open directly into the living room. You want a hallway or a closet, get ready to pay over $350K.
$168/sq ft is cheap for DC.
Most of the little 70’s ranches I seen have about a four foot square of tile just by the front door and the rest is carpeted, so you have a small area to drip snow and rain on…
“Most of the little 70’s ranches I seen have about a four foot square of tile just by the front door and the rest is carpeted, so you have a small area to drip snow and rain on…”
We have one of those in our spec-house, but it’s large enough for a bench seat and coat drying rack. I’d prefer an isolated, ventilated room with power for the Peet boot dryers if I were having a place built.
“front door opens directly into the living room rather than having a small area …”
In a small home, I like the idea of no entryway. What a waste of space.
The one thing I didn’t appreciate about my McMansion was they made a grand entrance area, which cut the living sq ft. The piano had to go in the family room.
Oxide,
This is what we are hearing, a bifurcation of the market.
From a broker who is tasked with selling GSE REO…the gist:
In 2009/early 2010, of the homes he was selling, there might be 5 in a newer subdivision, selling for rock bottom prices for homes <10 years old. Now, in that same kind of subdivision (newer homes), there might be 0, or 1.
The majority of what he is seeing now is bad housing (bad school districts, homes with lots of repairs needed, older homes, less good neighborhoods, etc.). There are still a few good homes at low prices, mind you, but they are the minority now.
Interest rates are down so do you buy? As for me I think not!!
I have a married friend living in Monterey renting a 3/2 from an elderly couple since 2003. Their rent is $1800/mo. They are in their 60’s, no kids at home, good retirement, money saved to buy a home, and a monthly after tax income of $8K+. They aren’t in any hurry to buy. As they say “no maintenance, no property taxes, freedom to move at any time, in case of disaster they can just walk away, they are free to take trips, can pay for auto repairs, etc and still bank $3K/month.” I only relate this story because it goes against the grain for both young and old that I see in this area when they are so ready to plop down $300K or more without considering loss of job, health, house maintenance, emergency bills, or freedom to enjoy life while not being tied to a house.
But if they want to paint the bathrooms pink what will they do???
Paint it pink.
What’s the worst than can happen?
Have to paint it back to the original color?
Or lose your deposit.
Landlords I’ve had were cool with painting, but would deduct from the deposit if it took more than one coat of paint to go back to “landlord white”.
“landlord white”
Ours too.
I asked my landlord about painting…he said “your living there, go for it”.
He didn’t charge me for painting after I left.
As a 24-year landlord, I have never rejected a tent’s request to repaint. As long as they did/pay for labor and materials. Interior or exterior.
My current tenant just had her (our) guest unit’s roof painted bright white state-of-the -art reflective coating.
Aesthetically repulsive but drops the inside temp by at least 10 degrees. Won’t be doing it on the main house because of built-in efficiency and respect for aesthetics.
Word-of-mouth usual source for new tenants.
$8K a month after taxes — in retirement — pays for a lot of paint.
Seriously, I can’t compete with that.
Tweedy Bird: “He a Baaaaaad puddycat! Oh, Grannnnnnny get your frying pan!”
Ohio man charged with defrauding Amish investors:
By THOMAS J. SHEERAN - Associated Press | AP
Nearly 2,700 people and entities, including an Amish community loan fund, lost about $16.8 million since 2006, the indictment said.
Beachy routinely mailed false investor statements, it said.
Beachy routinely mailed false investor statements, it said.
Beachy routinely mailed false investor statements, it said.
Mail fraud is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
The 77-year-old Beachy said by phone Thursday that he was unaware of the indictment and had no comment.
Old Taoist saying: “Give as much care to the ending as to the beginning”
Damn those overpaid government workers and union goons costing this country money!
Oh wait.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Europe must take immediate and decisive action to safeguard its banking system, while the U.S. economy is at stall speed and needs a dose of fiscal stimulus, top bankers and investors said on Thursday.
The troubles on both sides of the Atlantic have cast a pall over the prospects for global growth in recent weeks and have undermined confidence among investors, business and consumers.
No Reuters - Not nameless faceless troubles - Theft by bankers and central bankers is destroying consumers and the belief that the system is honest and fair. This destroys business confidence.
It’s not called theft if it’s done with a fiat money liquidity pump.
Are you sure it’s not union goons that are destroying societies? Even though they didn’t get TRILLIONS in bailouts, the word on the street is that it’s all their fault!
Remember it’s public union goons. Private union goons are just fine.
I just finished writing another mortgage principal check this morning. One more check next month, and that’s it folks.
Congrats…
rms - I’m jazzed for you. Taking the wife out to celebrate next month?
Cafe Costco is my husband’s favorite cafe. Come to think of it, he wasn’t this cheap when I met him. LOL
“Taking the wife out to celebrate next month?”
Nah, buying the office a pizza lunch, and I’ll have that final check there too, and then it goes into the mail before close of business.
Next month I have a $1152 property tax bill due, I’ve still got $2100 remaining on my credit card for my son’s braces, and I want that zeroed out by Christmas. Then I’ll be debt free.
My relationship with processed food is the next battle.
My relationship with processed food is the next battle.
Excellent move!
Nice work!
Congrats!
Too bad you can never pay off Uncle Sam.
Too bad you can never pay off Uncle Sam.
I don’t think any component of property taxes is federal, is it? It’s all state/city/school district.
That is so awesome. Congrats to you for doing it the right way!
http://market-ticker.org/
Capital flight, US-style.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2037285/Amish-men-jailed-orange-triangle-row-refusing-display-safety-signs-buggies.html
While the Wall Street grifters continue to defraud with impunity, and Bernanke merrily debases the coin of the realm, we can all breathe easier now that these menaces to society have been put away.
The last time I checked, gold was at 1776. A few kids think something significant happened that year in the U.S., but since they don’t teach that in school anymore, most kids today don’t know exactly what!
Isn’t that the year they invented basketball in Philadelphia?
…and signed Air Jordan?
Any plan this succinct, simple and sensible has little chance of passing in Congress.
Metro Atlanta / State News 6:07 a.m. Thursday, September 15, 2011
Johnson, Moran: Kill federal debt ceiling
By Daniel Malloy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson has a simple solution for people upset with the summer standoff over the nation’s borrowing limit: Kill the debt ceiling.
The DeKalb Democrat joined Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., on Wednesday to introduce a two-page bill to eliminate the congressionally imposed borrowing cap. It’s nothing more than a message, as Johnson admitted at a news conference, “I don’t expect the House Republicans to allow the bill to see the light of day.”
According to the Congressional Research Service, the debt limit was instituted in 1917 to allow the Treasury to borrow long-term to finance the United States’ entry into World War I. Two years later, the ceiling was raised to $43.5 billion, which would buy you less than a month of Social Security checks now.
…
It’s not the debt that is a problem. It’s that we argue. Got it.
To the moon, Alice!
Debt is just fine and dandy, so long as it is wracked up during a Retardican president’s term. Otherwise, we dig in our heels and try our best to wreck the economy in the process.
Got it.
My bad if this was posted earlier this week. I didn’t see it:
Bank of America to pay fired whistleblower $930,000
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Bank of America Corp must reinstate a Countrywide whistle-blower fired shortly after the two companies merged in 2008 and pay the employee $930,000, the Labor Department said on Wednesday.
The employee, whose name was not given, led internal investigations that found widespread fraud involving Countrywide employees. Reporting fraud to Countrywide’s Employee Relations Department led to retaliation, the employee told the Labor Department.
“It’s clear from our investigation that Bank of America used illegal retaliatory tactics against this employee,” Occupational Safety and Health Administration Assistant Secretary David Michaels said in a statement.”
Neener-neener, took ya to the cleaners!
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bank.
By now I’m sure that no HBBer still has an account with BOFA. Right?
We cancelled ours over a decade ago, after they initiated their anti-small-consumer banking policies.
OSHA covers fairness now? Wow.
MLR (medical loss ratio) under obamacare means for ever $1.00 received in premium dollars, they must spend $.80 on actual care. No more turning down claims and instead getting bonuses and jacking up stocks, etc…
Wendell Potter article.
http://wendellpotter.com/2011/09/cynical-attempts-to-undo-health-care-reform/
Disclosure:I’m a reformed Republican, now a Political Atheist. I didn’t join the other side.
Right now, I’m reading Dean Baker’s new book, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive. His health care reform proposals? Here goes:
1. Let Americans buy into the national health insurance programs of other countries like the UK and Canada. Much cheaper premiums and health care bills than what we pay.
2. And how about enabling U.S. health insurers to cover “medical tourism” to other countries? Boy, would that be a cost-crusher.
3. Not to mention making it easier for more foreign doctors to come to the United States to practice. Right now, there are quite a few U.S. medical profession-placed hoops in the way. Gotta keep those cheaper Indian doctors out of here, even though hospitals have no qualms about hiring cheaper Filipino nurses.
These three things would drop U.S. health care costs like a hot rock. Of course, there’d be a lot of whining from U.S. doctors who are no longer making big bucks from providing so-so care.
But Baker likens this process of cost-crushing to what the U.S. auto industry experienced. For years, the Big Three could get away with selling overpriced, mediocre cars in this country because they had no real competition. Then came the Japanese. The Koreans. And so forth. And so on.
3. Not to mention making it easier for more foreign doctors to come to the United States to practice.
If we need more doctors I would really prefer they make it easier for Americans to get into medical school.
Baker was putting forth the above ideas as part of a thought experiment in how applying the same free trade rules (that have so devastated American manufacturing) to the professions could lead to some huge price decreases in the health care sector — and trigger some major howling. These cries of protests would be coming from well-paid doctors and lawyers who’ve been protected from foreign competition.
Making medical school easier for Americans to get into would be another way of weakening the American medical cartel. Which has quite a bit of lobbying power in place.
Beware of what you wish for.
“”I had to threaten to call 999 in order to get her to understand that I needed to see one of the doctors urgently.”
Jan Middleton was in hospital recovering from brain surgery in 2009, and was woken up in the middle of the night by an eruption of infected fluids coming from her face.
She said the nurse on duty had poor English.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14921565
Thanks Slim. I’ll put it on my list.
Oh, and “Wheat Belly”- Dr. William Davs MD-Cardiologist) book will be #5 on the NYT’s best seller list Sept. 18th. His Blog changed my life (no more pain), so I picked up his book.
Available for free as an e-book. It is on my Nook.
Oh, and for our fellow HBBers who abhore limited corporate liability, that is one of the things he goes after as a policy that helps the rich and hurts everyone else but is so entrenched that not one really looks at it.
Slim
Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield own a medical tourism firm. I don’t recall the name off hand.
“Blue Cross took the lead in medical offshoring when its Companion Global Healthcare subsidiary formed its first partnership, with Bumrungrad Hospital”
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_12/b4076036777780.htm
It would appear that outsourcing patients has been going on for some time.
Free market. Yay!
In Europe the solution seems to be increase taxes
“Spain today became the latest European country to hike taxes on the wealthy, with a new asset-based tax targeting the country’s richest people.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/sep/16/spain-raises-tax-on-rich
Helle Thorning-Schmidt to be Danish PM after poll win
Ms Thorning-Schmidt campaigned on a platform of tax rises and increased public spending.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14928312
With the signature of President Giorgio Napolitano, which was put on the law on September 15, the budget is already in force. With the target of balancing the Italian fiscal deficit by 2013, its effect on Italy’s fiscal deficit will reach EUR54.2bn (USD74.3bn) in 2013, with tax increases now accounting for some 65% of the package.
http://www.tax-news.com/news/Italy_Passes_AntiCrisis_Budget____51484.html
Greeks fume over property tax demanded by EU, IMF
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hYiaA8VDZdEOdbl22-K0wXTHeGkg?docId=CNG.845572e84348f2e5c01e7818573012ea.a1
Unbelievable, my BIL was arrested in the middle of last night for failure to comply because he skipped out on a driving without a seat belt ticket a few months ago.
I wish they’d go after deadbeat mortgage owners like that.
Man that’s extreme. Right in his house or was he in the Free Fire Zone (ie. public property)? If it was at home he’s lucky they didn’t invite themselves in and ‘find’ something even worse to charge him with.
That’s what’s f’ed up: 1:30a.m. at the house, and this was for a misdemeanor! I mean, yes, the dude is a screwball and doesn’t have his act together, but something doesn’t add up.
I have three working theories:
1. They hit him up inconveniently during the night because this is a “rich” neighborhood. (But he’s broke, but he’s living with grandma.)
2. They hit him up conveniently during the night because they run warrants all day, and probably spend daylight in really bad ‘hoods. This was a safe door knock.
3. Agencies share information, and perhaps he’s made it on to a list, and they conveniently noticed he skipped his seat belt ticket (he’s a pothead and it wouldn’t surprise me to learn he’s dealing).
It’s crazy. Even my wife was like, “are you kidding me?” Stop paying your car loan, and see how long it sits in your driveway. Meanwhile, we have the entire housing industrial complex running massive game, and we’re kicking down pothead’s doors in the middle of the night.
Again, not excusing his behavior, but it’s odd.
Bloomberg Warns High US Unemployment Could Lead to Riots
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned today that public frustration over joblessness in the U.S. is in danger of boiling over and could lead to riots in the streets if the government fails to create more jobs.
“You have a lot of kids graduating college who can’t find jobs. That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here,” Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show, referencing the riots in Egypt that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
The protests in Madrid that he spoke of were sparked when the Spanish government spent millions to welcome Pope Benedict despite the country’s widespread unemployment.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/bloomberg-warns-high-us-unemployment-could-lead-to-riots/
Check out the comments in this article if you have a moment (they stop just short of cannibalism):
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/economicdevelopment/tampa-bays-economic-recovery-among-weakest-in-the-country/1191562
That was pretty insightful. A good many of them seem to have a good idea what’s going on. Heck, I thought the original article gave more indepth info than anything we see released around Syracuse. I was curious if people have face to face conversations on that subject matter yet. I only seem to be able to allude to it briefly. No one really getting into it among my circle like its impolite or too negative.
Proposed remedy: Have the Fed print up some money and use it to send unemployed American youths over to London or to Athens for a very, very long, all-expenses-paid vacation.
Southern California low interest rates, home sales on rise
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/consumer&id=8355309
Burbank- bragging real-turd listed for $417K sold for $433K. Let me guess, a FHA 3.5% newbie being coached by their real-turd. I hate these self serving infomercials on MSM.