Bits Bucket for October 6, 2011
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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BofA May Face Fraud Claims for Soured Loans
Bank of America Corp. (BAC) should face fraud proceedings after its Countrywide unit submitted faulty data to back up claims for reimbursement on federally insured mortgages, according to an audit by a U.S. watchdog.
Half of 14 loans reviewed had “material underwriting deficiencies” concerning borrowers that resulted in more than $720,000 in losses, according to a Sept. 30 report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general
“Countrywide did not properly verify, analyze, or support borrowers’ employment and income, source of funds to close, liabilities and credit information,” Kelly wrote in the audit. “This noncompliance occurred because Countrywide’s underwriters did not exercise due diligence in underwriting the loans.
No Duh….
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/BofA-May-Face-Fraud-Claims-bloomberg-448307093.html?x=0&sec=topStories&pos=2&asset=&ccode=
Denial of insurance claims due to fraud is a good first step. Write down of BoA assets is a logical second step. Criminal charges would be a welcome third step.
Of course “no-doc loans” = “liar loans” = “We TOLD you we just wrote down whatever crazy sh!t the borrower told us. YOU bought the loan anyway.” Because the idea that borrowers were willing to pay extra interest solely to avoid rounding up a couple of W2s for income verification was farcical on the face of it. People got those because they were idiots and/or liars. And neither category are particularly good credit risks.
They wrote a number (representing the value of the loan) on a piece of paper. Sold it. And got a commission based on that.
That was the core of the debt bubble.
Separating the lender from repayment risk almost immediately separated the number from any link to an ability to pay it.
The devil is in the fine print. I suspect that HUD has some very strict and specific guidelines as to what they buy, and that the liability for proper u nderwriting falls on the seller of the security, not on HUD.
Only 7? Only $720k in losses? I remember that strawberry picker in Oxnard with a $700k house. Seems the numbers should be a few orders of magnitude higher.
I suppose they’re just going after the slamdunk cases but still
Only 7? Only $720k in losses? ”
7 out of 14 thats 50% bad loans But who knows maybe it gets worse ?
7 out of 14 that they could prove were bad loans. It may be more than that actually were bad loans but the documentation doesn’t quite let them prove it. This is based on specific underwriting standards. If the standards were inadequate, then even the “good” loans could have been bad.
Note the key word in polly’s post: p-r-o-v-e.
If you can’t prove it, you don’t win your case.
There is a big lump under this rug.
Mozilo’s friends on the Hill
The Washington Times
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Angelo Mozilo has lots of friends. Or at least, he used to. The former chief executive of Countrywide Financial now faces a series of federal lawsuits, including one brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraud and insider trading. Suddenly, some of the most powerful Washington politicians are eschewing the shameful appellation “Friend of Angelo.”
In his aggressive pursuit of market dominance, Mr. Mozilo tried to make friends everywhere, especially among people who had a primary responsibility to craft legislation and oversee government enterprises with a stake in the U.S. housing market
Countrywide Financial and Angelo Mozilo clearly are at the nexus of the current economic crisis. It was Countrywide’s packaging of subprime mortgages that helped inflate the housing bubble, and it was Mr. Mozilo’s VIP program that sought to minimize congressional scrutiny and derail housing policy reforms that could have mitigated the crisis.
The documents that can lift the veil from Countrywide’s VIP program are readily available, however, and their custodians are prepared to provide them to Congress upon receipt of a subpoena.
Unfortunately, the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Edolphus Towns, New York Democrat, does not believe the Countrywide VIP program is worth the committee’s time. In a letter sent to oversight committee members on Sept. 30, Mr. Towns characterized the VIP program as “… enhanced customer service, in a manner similar to airline frequent flier programs or supermarket discount cards.”
But somewhere in Washington, Mr. Mozilo’s secrets are getting cover.
No subpoenas have been issued. No hearings have been scheduled, and the Justice Department appears to have shelved its criminal investigation.
The only reason the American people are not learning the whole truth about Countrywide, it seems, is that Angelo Mozilo still has a few friends left on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Darrell Issa of California is the ranking Republican of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/13/mozilos-friends-on-the-hill/?page=all - 54k
The orange man should be skewered!
“The orange man should be skewered!”
So should his friends on Capitol Hill, D and R.
…. and a big dump on the rug.
Is not Angelo Mazillo Greek?
Foreclosure backlog deepens
By Les Christie October 5, 2011: 1:15 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — As the foreclosure backlog continues to build up, delinquent borrowers are spending even more time in their homes without making mortgage payments.
Once borrowers start missing payments, they spend an average of a year and nine months, or 611 days, in foreclosure before banks repossess their homes, according to LPS Mortgage Monitor. That’s more than twice as long as three years ago, when the average was 251 days. Earlier his year, the average was 523 days.
“The number of defaults in the pipeline has been huge and we had more problem loans than ever before,” said Herb Belcher, who supervises analytics for Lender Processing Services (LPS), which provides mortgage industry information and analytics to big banks.
With so many bad loans, servicers have had to prioritize which ones they can deal with and which ones to push aside.
Squatter nation: five years with no mortgage payment
“It’s like your boat has all these holes in it and is taking in water. You have to plug up the worst holes first,” said Belcher.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/05/real_estate/foreclosure_backlog/ - -
“Squatter nation: five years with no mortgage payment”
Five, ten…what’s the difference? “Squatting” on debts until they can be sold for a profit is the official recovery plan.
They are merely acting as caretakers for the banks; unpaid but with free accommodation (they hope).
Realtors Are Liars®
A repost of your missed pizza recipe would be welcome for purposes of testing in the oven aboard the Blue Skye.
Check yesterdays Bucket.
Here it is!
Dough- Save yourself the grief and get dough at your favorite pizza joint, $3. You’ll never make a dough like a good pizza shop can. Someone stated it’s all in the dough and they’re right. Any pan will work but we make our best pizza on a well seasoned clay plate…. Important- *use cornmeal!* before you lay the dough into the pan. It actually pops during cooking and gives the crust a crisper texture and helps to brown. Obviously it must be thin. Don’t use a roller or it will be thick, doughy and won’t come out right. You have to pull the dough. Watch a guy make a pizza if you don’t know what I mean.
Sauce- This is a tough one as it is entirely personal preference but generally, sauce on a NY pizza is a slightly sweetened marinara. That’s it. You don’t add extra stuff. Straight marinara slightly sweetened with maybe a half teaspoon of sugar. It will taste too tart without the tiny bit of sugar.Too much sugar and it will taste like catsup.
Mozzarella- If you can find Grande, use it. Most NY pizza joints use it. Otherwise, get a low skim, low moisture cheese. About 8 oz for a full sized pie. Too much and you’ll ruin it.
Romano - This cheese is important. It’s a full flavor dry cheese that’s simply used for flavor in this case. Too much and it will overpower. Grind it fine and spread sparingly after the sauce but before the mozzarell. Once you develop a taste for romano, you’ll be mixing it in your coffee. j/k. Locatelli is a good romano. Avoid that sawdust $hit in a shaker can at all costs!!!
That’s it.. no more ingredients. Why everyone loads pizza with junk I don’t know but stuff like oregano doesn’t belong on pizza. You want the oven burners on full bore, bottom burner only. Get the pizza no more than say 4 in. away from burner. The trick is to get the dough to rise and then to brown.
Keep oven door open an inch or so or the ambient temp will brown the cheese and it will taste burnt. Baking should take no more than say 15 minutes max. Every 3 minutes or so, brush the crust with olive oil and shake on garlic salt. Monitor bottom of crust with flashlight. Pull it out once it turns begins to turn golden brown.
Voila…. NY pizza. Takes time and practice but it’s alot of fun getting there if you like to make good food. Once you master it, it will take longer to cool off than it will to put it together.
RAL’s Recipe Repository
Nearly Half of U.S. Lives in Household Receiving Government Benefit.
By Sara Murray - WSJ
Families were more dependent on government programs than ever last year.
Nearly half, 48.5%, of the population lived in a household that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010, according to Census data. Those numbers have risen since the middle of the recession when 44.4% lived households receiving benefits in the third quarter of 2008.
Means-tested programs, designed to help the needy, accounted for the largest share of recipients last year. Some 34.2% of Americans lived in a household that received benefits such as food stamps, subsidized housing, cash welfare or Medicaid (the federal-state health care program for the poor).
Another 14.5% lived in homes where someone was on Medicare (the health care program for the elderly). Nearly 16% lived in households receiving Social Security.
High unemployment and increased reliance on government programs has also shrunk the nation’s share of taxpayers. Some 46.4% of households will pay no federal income tax this year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. That’s up from 39.9% in 2007, the year the recession began.
Most of those households will still be hit by payroll taxes. Just 18.1% of households pay neither payroll nor federal income taxes and they are predominantly the nation’s elderly and poorest families.
The tandem rise in government-benefits recipients and fall in taxpayers has been cause for alarm among some policymakers and presidential hopefuls.
Benefits programs have come under closer scrutiny as policymakers attempt to tame the federal government’s budget deficit. President Barack Obama and members of Congress considered changes to Social Security and Medicare as part of a grand bargain (that ultimately fell apart) to raise the debt ceiling earlier this year. Cuts to such programs could emerge again from the so-called “super committee,” tasked with releasing a plan to rein in the deficit.
Republican presidential hopefuls, meanwhile, have latched onto the fact that nearly half of households pay no federal income tax, saying too many Americans aren’t paying their fair share.
How soon do we become Greece?
A few years ago.
California is Greece now, shhhhhhh!
48.5% receive benefits?
And the 1%ers receive the indirect benefit of a military to protect their corporate interests, a court system that administers slaps on the wrist for white collar crime, and a bought and paid for political system to keep the whole game of LIES going in their favor.
Plus they control the media.
What is termed news is really just managed information.
Exactly.
If they want the “parasites” who don’t pay taxes to start paying taxes again, perhaps they would support tax and trade policies that would bring our jobs back home. But that would cut into their profits, so don’t expect them to support anything crazy like that.
Perhaps they’d like to trade places with those who don’t pay taxes? Would they stop whining then?
How’s the house coming along, Ca renter?
Unions won’t let jobs come back. Plus nobody can afford to pay more than they are already paying for Chinese crap. Its the definition of a Catch-22. Fresh-printed, borrowed government cheese appears to be the only option sadly.
“Unions won’t let jobs come back. ”
Link?
The Republicans have a union?
I talked to a guy last night , sheetmetal worker, he says in CA bids go around 27 dollars and hour but in AZ a right to work state you get 15 per hour and there is nothing to be done about it
I only have a guess to what this means but probably something with unions ?
probably has nothing to do with this thread but I found it interesting that he was a renter who though buying a home in this day and age was a bad idea, I agreed.
An illegal will do it for 9 and undercut both.
‘And the 1%ers receive the indirect benefit of a military to protect their corporate interests’
I was reading this morning that the US is spending $12 million an hour in Afghanistan. From time to time, some guy at the DoD will tell the media the US will be there for at least another 10 years. This after a president was elected 3 years ago, partly on promising to end that war. The polls say over 60% of the population is against staying.
‘a court system that administers slaps on the wrist for white collar crime’
I seem to recall the govt actually gave these corporations billions.
‘and a bought and paid for political system to keep the whole game of LIES going in their favor.’
I ask you, what is the re-election rate of incumbents? Over 90%, isn’t it? So if, as you say, 99% of the people are not being served by the system, but 90% of the time, the system is validated and politicians returned to office, who is really to blame for things staying the way they are?
Thanks for replying to these specific points, and I don’t believe the solution to this can be achieved through our current political system.
No one with a (D) after their name stands up against this, with the exception of Dennis Kucinich, who will likely be pushed out of the House by redistricting next year.
‘I don’t believe the solution to this can be achieved through our current political system’
I don’t either. IMO the first step to progress is to understand how the system takes advantage of us. And if we can just stop letting the PTB divide us, and realize that we are the reason for govt to exist, we could overturn the whole sh#tcart.
The flash protestors seem to have a pretty good idea of 50 ways the system takes advantage of us. The 10% of the population that has slid below the poverty line should have a pretty good idea or two. In 2010 the “throw out the incumbant” wingnuts gained enough traction to do some sh*tcart spilling. The majority of people I meet when traveling think the cart needs to be upturned, and most of them do not even mention party politics.
“The 10% of the population that has slid below the poverty line ”
I like how you phrased that. This 10% are not the welfare queens who go to Wal-Mart at 11:59 pm just before their EBT is reloaded. These 10% were working folks who went from just getting by to not getting by.
I appreciate that the new Tea Partiers in Congress are upsetting the apple cart, but IMO they are upsetting the wrong apple carts, like debt ceilings and Vouchercare and no spending not even on infrastructure.
The REAL apple cart that needs to be upset is the supply-side economics and everything associated with it. Enough with the tilted tax field and a system that rewards short-term profit over long-term stability. Try a couple demand-side measures like bringing back jobs and increasing demand, and the rest will take care of itself.
Agreed by and large that supply side economics is a pie-in-the-sky theory that hasn’t worked and can’t work. Supply has never created demand, demand is what creates demand. Supply side economics has created a bunch of hotel maid jobs in Orlando without any understanding of what happens to those jobs when the quantity demanded of hotel rooms drops.
Just try and find someone who will pay for beach sand, the price is somewhere below zero because you can have as much of it as you want for free.
I do like a lot of what the tea party says, we need to reduce the barriers to entry for business, reduce the overall tax rate (which means an end to market distorting deductions), and focus on infrastructure and education.
“we need to reduce the barriers to entry for business”
I guess you could cut down on paperwork, but IMO the most cost-effective promoter of small business would be public option health care. But the tea party is against that. They even want to repeal those upcoming exchanges.
Business should not be providing health care. People should buy health care on exchanges, similar to the HSA high deductible plans. Removing the healthcare option would force companies to compete on wages.
I guess you could cut down on paperwork, but IMO the most cost-effective promoter of small business would be public option health care.
Which is why I keep saying that when such a thing happens, our National Anthem will be temporarily be replaced by “Take This Job and Shove It.” (I’m especially fond of the Johnny Paycheck version.)
We’ll see an outburst of entrepreneurship like this country has never experienced before. And we’ll be the better for it.
This after a president was elected 3 years ago, partly on promising to end that war.
Define: “Incremental”
Related to INCREMENTAL
Synonyms: gradual, phased, piecemeal, step-by-step
a small positive or negative change in a variable or function.
Example: “The US Troops are coming home from Afghanistan & Iraq to the US Soil & families, incrementally”
The above statement can be argued in a TRUE or FALSE orientation.
I’ve heard it said several places that the current President was artful at letting people hear what they wanted to hear, without actually making any specific promises. Nevertheless, I heard him promise to me that he would bring my boys home from both those wars. Not incrementally.
Not having military experience myself, I don’t want to second-guess the best way to retreat from a war. Wouldn’t you want to save your soldiers and your materiél and not create a power vacuum behind you?
That said, it must be difficult for Panetta and Obama to sort out the advice from the military advisors. When the generals say pull-out slow, is that because they want to save lives and materiél and not create a power vacuum, or because they want to milk the military industrial complex just a little more on the way out? The generals themselves may not even know. They were brewed in MIC tea since the day they showed up for basic.
I heard him promise to me that he would bring my boys home from both those wars. Not incrementally.
A re-write of your POV for one that Hwy’s prefers:
I heard him promise to
meus that he would bringmyour boys home from both those wars. Not incrementally.(When it comes to US troops serving in foreign countries representing “AMERICA the Nation”, I like to think in terms of inclusiveness.)
Nevertheless, show my eyes a direct text of spoken words of lil’ Opie as campaigner for “I’m -the-Decider” that categorically states his time-line for ending the conflicts initiated by Cheney-$hrub’s short lil’ “Nation Building” 7 year drama policy play, aka: “Mi$$ion Accompli$hed!”
I don’t want to second-guess the best way to retreat from a war ??
The best way to retreat ?? How about not getting into the fricken war to begin with…Problem solved…
That said, it must be difficult for Panetta and Obama to sort out the advice from the military advisors.
Unlike Cheney, lil’ Opie did not have fighting military experience. So, it looks like he have to grow brass balls as large as Jackie Robinson to go against an establi$hed Institution of limited “conflict” failures as the U$ Military Industrial Complex Admini$tration.
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.
“drone aircraft strikes in neighboring Pakistan and nightly raids by special operations forces against Afghan militants”
To be honest, after 9/11 this is what I thought the US was going to do in Afghanistan in the first place. And in Iraq. Not this full-scale war machine.
what did 9/11 have to do with Iraq?
Retreating from Vietnam did wonders for thier economy.
Avocado, I’m referring to the early days in the drum-up, back when the majority of people still trusted the military intelligence and the news.
I remember being almost swayed by the “report” that you-know-who A t t a met with you-know-who S a d d a m. I remember other people being swayed solely by Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN.
I was reading this morning that the US is spending $12 million an hour in Afghanistan. From time to time, some guy at the DoD will tell the media the US will be there for at least another 10 years.
Known as a “work-in-
progre$$Congress”Episode II:
“Audit-the-Pentagon!”
$equel to the “soon-to-be-finished-any-day-now!” Episode I:
“Audit-the-FedInc.!”
“Over 90%, isn’t it? So if, as you say, 99% of the people are not being served by the system, but 90% of the time, the system is validated and politicians returned to office, who is really to blame for things staying the way they are?”
That doesn’t mean we like the choices we make. If the incumbent is the better of the choices in the general election, that’s who will get my vote. Incumbents could be primaried or other parties could nominate viable candidates. Too often that doesn’t happen. Hence, a pragmatic vote that isn’t very satisfying.
We must break up the big companies that control our government and change the way we finance elections or nothing will change.
If we can reform the existing system, fine. But I pointed out recently that Obama is hoping to raise a billion $ for his re-election. Observers were shocked when Bush2 spent $400 million on a run. My point is, if we are gonna turn this around by voting, we better get a move on, because it’s going in the opposite direction right now.
if we are gonna turn this around by voting, we better get a move on, because it’s going in the opposite direction right now ??
I have come to the conclusion that our problems are not going to be solved in the voting booth “until” the system completely breaks down…
We are to polarized as a country and the booty has already been divided up…Whats left are crumbs for anyone who isn’t on government cheese of some sort or the wealthy…
I was listening to Michael Lewis yesterday speaking on his latest book “Boomerang”…He was discussing his chapter on California which has been published in Vanity Fair…It was pretty sobering…
His conclusion; Like an addict, you must crash and hit bottom before you can start to rebuild your life in a way that’s productive…
So it goes for California…So it will go for the Nation….
that Obama is hoping to raise a billion $ for his re-election
Sounds like lil’ Opie learned something from “Blazing Saddles”, smile and out draw yer opponent.
$COTUS = CorpInc.’s are people
Justices, 5-4, Reject Corporate Spending Limit:
By ADAM LIPTAK Published: January 21, 2010
WASHINGTON — Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.
The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy
a 2003 decision that upheld the part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that restricted campaign spending by corporations and unions.
The 2002 law, usually called McCain-Feingold, banned the broadcast, cable or satellite transmission of “electioneering communications” paid for by corporations or labor unions from their general funds in the 30 days before a presidential primary and in the 60 days before the general elections.
How about this idea?
Add a box to the ballot marked “None of the above”
If nobody gets 50% of the vote, a new group of candidates is put on the ballot, and another round of voting ensues.
(If it was up to me, anyone not getting 50% would be banned from running for public office for life, but I’m kinda medieval)
(Note to self……if above rule comes to pass, change name to “None of the Above”).
“My point is, if we are gonna turn this around by voting, we better get a move on, because it’s going in the opposite direction right now.”
That was the reason for my focus on the influence of money on the system. You need to change the influence of money, but that will require changes in voting. But changes in voting most likely won’t happen without changes in how campaigns are financed. I’m not sure what changes this situation.
We could throw out more incumbents, but without changes in the system will the outcome be much different?
‘We could throw out more incumbents, but without changes in the system will the outcome be much different?’
So you’re saying that via campaign reform, these people in DC are going to do the right things?
‘We could throw out more incumbents, but without changes in the system will the outcome be much different?’
after Ron Paul got dissmissed as a loony I am convinced most Americans vote for their government Cheese and vote for the other guy to pay for it
I think government is looking for a crisis to break this self interest and get all americans marching for the greater good so watch out for this ” greater good” homeland security or whatever they will call it.
“So you’re saying that via campaign reform, these people in DC are going to do the right things?”
That would be a stretch. You need an informed electorate which is difficult when they’re being fed a diet of propaganda from the M$M. That still goes back to the money issue. Campaign reform, itself, is a smaller part of the money issue.
There’s also the issue of the integrity of the elections themselves with some states making it more difficult for people to vote and with unverifiable results from electronic voting machines.
If one somehow cleans up the rest of the process, then there are still the motives of the voters themselves.
Even if a lot of the known problem areas are addressed, I’m not sure if one can take this troubled, ineffective system and get back to something more effective. The system is deeply broken. Is it going to have to completely collapse to have some possibility of real reform?
Ben
the real reason we are in afgahnny is Rare earth minerals and metal…and 97% are controlled by china today….we need to mine it badly….
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do not allow them to snap together with their full force or they may chip, break, and possibly send small pieces of metal flying on impact.”
yes they will I’ve broken a few of these magnets making isolators
the us could mine for rare earth
Yes cactus but those pesky enviormentalists are preventing it…..we have plenty of this stuff just in the wrong places and china has been cutting back its exports..
Just like the alaskan pipeline….if it was built on time, the arab oil boycott of 72 would mean nothing and we wouldnt have opec to deal with today….so those tree huggers are sometimes a lot more trouble then they are worth
Molycorp is reopening a mine in CA that will produce quite a bit of these rare-earth elements.
For the cost of being in Afghanistan, we could do a hell of a lot more exploration in the US to find even more within our own borders.
My understanding is that “rare earth elements” are not that rare, but exist in higher concentrations in certain locations that make them more efficiently extracted, and it can be an environmentally messy extraction process…if that’s the case, and you told mining companies that they had a subsidy of several billion dollars per year to make mining these minerals in locations with lower concentrations more cost effective and cleaner, mining of these things in the US would increase quickly.
In other words, I don’t think this is why we are in Afghanistan….there are easier and cheaper ways to get these materials.
but exist in higher concentrations in certain locations
certain “sensitive” locations and the Sierra club will fight you tooth and nail to keep those areas pristine while china gets us by the throat.
no need to stay in afghanistan if just for this mineral.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-28/rare-earths-fall-as-toyota-develops-alternatives-commodities.html
well supposedly we have plenty of these metals on federally protected lands….so how do we fight the sierra club?
Is it cheaper to have our troops killed then to fight the enviromentalists?
“48.5%, of the population LIVED IN A HOUSEHOLD that received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2010″…
So, should I assume that my Sister and BIL, who have my 90 year old (medicare and SS receiving) mother living with them are counted in this number?
It’s not like after medicare supplement insurance, co-payments, groceries, etc. that Mom has much disposable income for them to have go and a good time on.
Well yes. It IS important not confuse individuals and households. This is especially true when looking at incomes.
‘It’s not like…Mom has much disposable income’
Yeah, but will she vote for the person who promises to keep that money coming?
This is what I mean about dividing us. Why do so many people need the ’safety net’? Could it be because real incomes have fallen in the US since the 70’s? We are kept squabbling over crumbs and lose sight of the more serious issues.
Mom tends to vote Dem, for whatever that’s worth.
She has no income except (less than $900/mo) SS. And once the interest on her CD’s amounted to nothing, had to start spending her savings. Dwindling very fast.
‘Mom tends to vote Dem’
I have family members that vote strictly Republican and live on SS. They vote for people that promise to keep the checks coming.
I related a discussion I had here recently. I was talking with a guy who said he was drawing SS early because he wanted to ‘get it while it was still around.’ He also said he had saved all his life, invested and didn’t need the extra money. This man will knock Obama every chance he gets.
Republicans stand up for ‘fiscal constraint’ just as much as Democrats stand up for the ‘working people.’
To get dragged down into, “I paid in to this thing” or “society must have a safety net” is missing the more important issues. Why have our incomes gone down for 30+ years? Why do so many need SS, etc, to keep from starving? Where the hell did all the good paying jobs go, and why?
“Why have our incomes gone down for 30+ years? Why do so many need SS, etc, to keep from starving? Where the hell did all the good paying jobs go, and why?”
Partly I think that people forget (or are too young to remember) what inflation did to our sense of proportion…
When my dad retired (as a salaried manager in 1969) he was making less than $20,000 per year. That was enough for a single-earner household with a paid off house and putting two kids through college (with minimal school loan debt).
(not sure what the equivalent in inflation adjusted dollars would be… calculations anyone?)
Who can do that today?
When I first became aware of pay scales, middle class incomes I saw in Texas were around $35k/year before taxes, probably about the same as today.
Why do so many people need the ’safety net’? Could it be because real incomes have fallen in the US since the 70’s? We are kept squabbling over crumbs and lose sight of the more serious issues.
“$traighten up and fly right!”, is a motor-control motto for Corporation$ & People$ (batteries not included)
Seriously though, “America the Nation” has been since the mid 70’s living like Bill Murray once said to Johnny Carson:
Johnny: “So, how’s things been? How’s life treatin’ ya?”
Bill: Oh, geez, …hey, my life is like a bag of GravyTrain with biscuit wheel$.”
20k in 1969 is equivalent to 117k today.
A brand new corvette would run you $4,700 back then. By 1979, it was over $10k.
“And the 1%ers receive the indirect benefit of a military to protect their corporate interests,” Not to mention how much of their income is due to gaming the political system to their advantage. I’d guess that the receive more marginal benefit from military spending due to the ownership of stock in various military contractors than due to the additional protection that another f-35, littoral combat ship, or army tactical missile.
Well, that’s what happens when you offshore jobs wholesale and half the workforce earns less than $500 a week.
So let’s continue with the policies of the past 30+ years that got us to this point.
On the top you have the parasitic financial system, FED, Wall Street and their bought politicians that suck the country dry. On the lower end you have an ever increasing group of people that depend on handouts. Most enter this group initially through no fault of their own. After a while many become accustomed to regular gubermint cash injections (see video posted below for an example). I guess to keep the peace you have to either give them food and shelter or a job. The Jobs have been shipped overseas to maximize the profits for the parasitic financial class. In the middle you have the shrinking class of work mules that are supposed to pay for gubermint handouts and the parasites on top. At a deficit of 12% GDP and the class of worker bees steadily shrinking you don’t have to be a prophet or Nobel Laureate to see that this won’t end well. In the end the parasites will overwhelm the host. As a consequence both will die.
Same is happening in EURO-Land.
“On the top you have the parasitic financial system, FED, Wall Street and their bought politicians that suck the country dry. On the lower end you have an ever increasing group of people that depend on handouts.”
Charles Hugh Smith’s entire book…”Survival+” is about these two forces and how they struggle to maintain the status quo at the expense of the middle class…the forgotten man.
Yes, Charles Hugh Smith is one of the great thinkers of our time. Too bad people like that never make it into important positions. Instead we get charlatans like Larry Summers, Turbo Timmay or Christina Romer. I guess once the financial elites got a hold of a country’s politics and institutions they will never let go. Enough of the voting public can be managed to vote for one or the other “acceptable choice”, both of which serve the system. Choices outside the system are marginalized, ridiculed and called terrorists or extremists. Ron Paul, Ralph Nader, etc.
just like the tea party movement was corrupted by the mainstream republican party so is the occupy wall street crowd being corrupted by the mainstream democrat party…the irony is…both original movements were the same at their core.
Didn’t they kick Charles Rangle out? How have they been taken over?
I guess once the financial elites got a hold of a country’s politics and institutions they will never let go.
I guess once the
financial eliteshomeasinvestment/atm “TrueBeliever’s™” got a hold ofa country’s politics and institutionsthe “$ingle Depo$it Tran$action” they willneverhave a very, very, diffiCULT time letting it go…Marvin the Martian: “This insignificant planetoid has been found guilty of crimes against the universe.”
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/Ken-Walshs-Washington/2011/10/06/obama-democrats-plan-to-tie-gop-to-wall-street?s_cid=rss:Ken-Walshs-Washington:obama-democrats-plan-to-tie-gop-to-wall-street
measton,
link is not coming through…
google “Obama, Democrats Plan to Tie GOP to Wall Street”.
Just like in the 1930’s; “The Forgotten Man” by Amity Shlaes.
This comment should be up after michael at 06:02:14. oops
Its like an Oreo that has already had the middle scraped off by the teeth of the banksters and the poor. Nobody wants to eat it.
“Some 46.4% of households will pay no federal income tax this year…Most of those households will still be hit by payroll taxes.”
What’s the difference between federal income tax and payroll tax?
Social Security is a payroll tax. A wage earner could pay no Federal taxes or state taxes but will still be paying SS taxes.
Some other payroll taxes are Medicare and SDI.
“Social Security is a payroll tax.”
So, Social Security is a separate entity, and the tax money that goes into it is not just another part of the federal revenue stream?
I didn’t say that. What I said is Social Security is a payroll tax, a tax on earned income.
What is done with the SS tax revenue is a different issue.
Well that’s a classic “bounding problem.” Sometimes it’s useful to look at total federal receipts, including the SS program and other times, it’s useful to to look just at general revenues. Neither one is “right” or “wrong” for all possible purposes, but it is important not to confuse them. But when people say “payroll tax” they mean SS and medicare/medicaid, which the vast majority of wage earners people pay.
Of course the “blame it on the poor” crowd tend to use income taxes, (especially the pre-deduction marginal rate) which are progressive to make their point while ignoring payroll, medicare/medicaid, excise taxes, and capital gains. Conversely the “blame the rich” have a tendency to define “rich” as the fantabulousy rich, while any system of actually PAYING for the government programs that people seem to support will require increasing revenues (taxes) on the merely well off.
So Social Security is a tax on income by the federal government, but it’s not a federal income tax?
As Hwy would say, me cornfused.
All daiseys are flowers but not all flowers are daiseys.
“All daiseys are flowers but not all flowers are daiseys.”
Is that a fancy way of saying that the ‘46.4% don’t pay federal income tax’ meme is a crock of shiitake?
you got it.
Let me put this in PTB speak for you:
1. The revenue from the income tax funds all the school teachers, cops and roads (it really doesn’t but who cares).
2. The revenue from the payroll tax goes back to you when you retire.
“Social Security is a payroll tax”
And, if I remember correctly, only paid on income up to a certain limit and not levied on other (rich people) types of income?
The current wage/salary income limit is, ISTR, $106,800.
And, AFAIK, capital gains income is exempt. The wealthier classes tend to have more cap gains income than wage/salary income.
Our tax dollars at work:
http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=15915
But of course that’s small potatos, the banksters seem to need another trillion $$ bailout.
We can’t we as a society just cut of all parasites and let them die. The guy in the video as well as the banksters on Wall Street.
Taleb: World’s ’Problem’ Worse Than ’08
By Daryna Krasnolutska -
Oct 5, 2011 12:18 PM ET
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the best-selling book “The Black Swan,” said the current global market turmoil is worse than it was in 2008 because countries such as the U.S. have larger sovereign-debt loads.
“Definitely, we face a bigger problem now and we will pay a higher price,” Taleb, who is also a professor at New York University, said today at a news conference in Kiev, referring to the turmoil during the last global financial crisis. “The structure of the problem has still not been understood. We haven’t done anything constructive in three and a half years. Nobody wants to do anything drastic now.”
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke signaled yesterday he’ll push forward with further expansion of monetary stimulus if needed.
Taleb urged countries to keep their budgets balanced, criticizing President Barack Obama of “loading the U.S. with debt that our children will have to pay” and said that growth fuelled by government debt isn’t really growth.
“Someone made a mistake lending and someone made a mistake borrowing,” said Taleb. “It is a mistake to transform private problems into public debt.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-05/-black-swan-author-taleb-says-world-faces-bigger-problem-now-than-in-2008.html - -
“Definitely, we face a bigger problem now and we will pay a higher price,” Taleb, who is also a professor at New York University, said today at a news conference in Kiev, referring to the turmoil during the last global financial crisis. “The structure of the problem has still not been understood. We haven’t done anything constructive in three and a half years. Nobody wants to do anything drastic now.”
——————————-
And NOBODY could have seen this coming!
/sarcasm
“And NOBODY could have seen this coming!”
Not this guy.
I AM AN UNEMPLOYED PRINTER REPAIRMAN WITH $87,000 IN STUDENT LOANS.
I MAKE ENDS MEET BY CLEANING THE BATHROOMS AT RYAN’S STEAK HOUSE.
I WAS FORCED TO MOVE BACK INTO MY MOM’S BASEMENT, AND I CANNOT AFFORD TO FEED MY CATS BECAUSE THEY WON’T TAKE FOOD STAMPS FOR CAT FOOD.
I AM THE 99%.
OCCUPY WALL STREET
$87,000 to learn how to fix printers?
Probably one of those lovely for-profit “trade schools”?
Office Machine Technologist.
No, he probably went to school for something else, and fixing printers is all he could find.
Kids have got to learn to go to school for sci/eng/acct and ONLY sci/eng/acct. If you’re liberal artsy, you may as well live at home, do a two-year sting a community college in something hands on, and go to work at McD’s debt-free.
So once everyone has a sci/eng/acct degree will companies stop outsourcing jobs?
So once everyone has a sci/eng/acct degree will companies stop outsourcing jobs?
Nope, but it will still be so hard to find “qualified” applicants that it will be necessary to bring more in on H1B.
Sci/eng/acct is not quite so outsourceable. By “eng” I mean actual civil/mechanical/electrical/nuclear/biomedical engineering, NOT coding and programming. India hasn’t quite caught up with real engineering, and from what I can tell, the Chinese are better at reverse engineering than at innovation. Sci is tough because so much of that is R&D which has been discontinued, but scientists are very good thinkers and innovators. Accounting, well, grunt work is being outsourced, but not everything is going.
The real reason I cited sci/eng and probably med is because you really DO need the 4-5 years of college in those fields. College is actually useful. You can manage a shift at Applebees with no college degree, but you simply can’t engineer or do science or medicine without post-secondary training.
if you’re not at the top 40-20-10 pct of your peer (i do not have an exact number), it might do you more good to not even bother with a college education.
“I AM…”
Why are you shouting?
he was quoting a sign.
I AM, I cried,
I AM, said I,
And the chair didn’t care…
(or something like that)
OCCUPY WALL STREET
The squad will be donating a tent, food, and toiletries to the ‘residents’ of Occupy Denver at the corner of Broadway and Colfax in front of the state Capitol.
My schedule should lighten up soon and I might be interested in helping to support them. I’m connected to the Occupy Denver FB group, is there anything I else should be connected to in order to hear the latest news about what they might be needing?
Carl:
Reporter Danny Schecter at Amped Status has been on the front lines since Adbusters first floated the concept. His reportage and analysis is invaluable.
Occupy Wall Street Media is a good round-up and clearing house for information and coordinating efforts. They are accepting donations via Kickstarter.
I only spoke with them briefly on Tuesday, they said donations of water/beverages should be in large and not single serving containers to minimize the amount of waste created. They all have reusable containers for drinking.
GREAT article on the Occupy Wall Street movement from — where else — PBS:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/july-dec11/wallstreet_10-05.html
“PAUL SOLMAN: Nearly three weeks after the occupation began, a surprisingly clean, well-organized and well-stocked community has emerged with its own library of donated books, plentiful supplies of food — this one has been dubbed the “OccuPie” — even blankets and ponchos from well-wishers nationwide, and a housekeeping and security system that impressed even the New York City police, although, of course, only off-camera.”
———-
PBS (again) had a documentary on the Summer of Love in San Francisco and said by the end of the summer, the H-A district was very squalid. Free Luv don’t buy soap. Looks like Occupy is determined to keep this going. Hope they make it through winter.
I joined the Occupy Dallas today. I got to be interviewed by a Dallas news paper and told them I wanted to see a Financial Transaction Tax levied on all CDO, MBS and ALL synthetic financial Derivatives hedges including currencies/energy/raw materials etc. Very diverse group including a few white collar types. There were zero democrat promoters but I did spot a squad of Ron Paul troopers. In fact I’m pretty sure democrats are an endangered species in Texas and with ruthless gerrymandered districts and our new voter ID laws the Republicans aim to legally exterminate the rest of them ASAP.
I will support this movement.
Please stop shouting.
WE’RE NOT SHOUTING! (Pumpkin crop is bodacious BTW- I’m in the money;-)
And I’m always serious.
Pump shotgun vs. pumped-up pumpkin. Guess which wins?
Three eyes, two noses and a Dali-inspired face? No problema!
STOP BEING SERIOUS!!! (wink)
“loading the U.S. with debt that our children will have to pay”
Does anybody REALLY believe that our (grand) children will have to pay this back? With more retirees, less natural resources/energy, more people on the same sized planet? Sorry, I think that mathematically impossible. The debt will be defaulted on, one way or antoher. Either outright or via printing press. Debt that can’t be paid back won’t be paid back, it is as simple as that. So as a corollary for personal finance:
Don’t get caught holding other people’s debt when the time comes.
Loading the U.S. with debt that our children will have to default on.
‘Loading the U.S. with debt that our children will have to default on’
That’s a good point. Even if you believe like I do, that there is no mathematical way to repay the US debt, it doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences.
Yesterday on NPR I heard Robert Reich saying the US should borrow and spend on “crumbling” infrastructure to get out of the recession. (My entire life this infrastructure has been said to be “crumbling”, but anyway.)
This is Keynesian economics of course. What’s really at the root of it is this; we never have to pay this money back, we’ll just inflate it away.
But then he says that 10 year US bonds at under 2% prove the govt can borrow as much as it wants. IMO, 2% bonds indicate deflation. Which kinda messes up the “we’ll inflate the debt away” reasoning.
Keynesian economics isn’t just wrong, it’s dangerously wrong. We’ve been following these people for decades now. They tell us to borrow money to dig ditches, fill them back in, or how wonderful war is for the economy. Best of all, we never have to pay it back! But it’s just BS.
“They tell us to borrow money to dig ditches, fill them back in,…”
I just heard Obama say on the radio that the jobs bill will put unemployed construction workers back to work repairing bridges and roads. Given the shoddy state of bridges and roads in my neck of the woods, I have a hard time arguing against this part of the plan.
But then he says that 10 year US bonds at under 2% prove the govt can borrow as much as it wants. IMO, 2% bonds indicate deflation. Which kinda messes up the “we’ll inflate the debt away” reasoning.
It is deflation that doesn’t negate the Keynsian arguement. Your choices
1. Stop spending and create much greater deflation unemployment and fear which in itself will collapse revenue and drive up our debt or
2. Print and slow the descent. Then hopefully create inflation that is due to rising wages. (handing money to banks and speculators is the worst most unstable kind of inflation. )
Inflation is much less of a problem if wages rise to cover the differnce. In my view option one is extremely dangerous in terms of crime and political instabillity. I’m all for letting the elite and banks fail, but leaving a large percentage of the population without a job or means of affording food and shelter will lead to some very bad things, things that the US might never recover from. I’d much rather the gov print and borrow and keep them working. At the same time I’d advocate cutting war spending, and tax the elite and financial system and foreign trade.
“Given the shoddy state of bridges and roads in my neck of the woods, I have a hard time arguing against this part of the plan.”
We just had one interstate bridge over the Ohio River closed due to disrepair, and its closure is causing massive problems, and an identical bridge on I-75 (the heaviest-used interstate by trucking in the US) has the same problems, and is also woefully outdated for the amount of traffic it carries. This is in one small state.
There is no myth of crumbling infrastructure. It’s a fact. Take a trip anywhere and see. Our interstates are in terrible shape, as are our airports.
” Given the shoddy state of bridges and roads in my neck of the woods, I have a hard time arguing against this part of the plan.”
I wouldn`t either if I had not seen the waste of stimulus $ from round 1 be wasted at our local level.
Stimulus Spurs Road Projects, Big and Small
By MICHAEL COOPER
Published: March 3, 2009
There is nothing monumental in President Obama’s plan to revive the economy with a coast-to-coast building spree, no historic New Deal public works. The goal of the stimulus plan was to put people to work quickly, and so states across the country have begun to spend nearly $50 billion on thousands of smaller transportation projects that could employ up to 400,000 people, by the administration’s estimates.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/us/04states.html?pagewanted=all - -
‘1. Stop spending and create much greater deflation…2. Print and slow the descent.’
Oh yeah, our govt is on the verge of stopping spending any minute now, aren’t they? Remember the debt ceiling thing a while back? I understand they are facing another one already! How lean are things in DC when we have people munching $16 muffins and telling us we’ve got to spend $12 million per hour in Afghanistan for 10 more years?
The Fed isn’t printing money? Every time the Dow falls a hundred points, Bernanke rushes out a memo about how many billions he’ll hand out.
What Keynesians are saying is borrow a lot more now. A lot more. Because you can’t wipe away 10% unemployment with a few road improvements. I think that’s nuts. What we need are real, sustainable industries/jobs, not make-work projects.
‘There is no myth of crumbling infrastructure. It’s a fact.’
Maybe, but why didn’t we fix these things when the economy was roaring during the housing bubble? And why should we trust the same Dems/Reps that let it “crumble” in the first place?
I have a hard time arguing against this part of the plan.” ??
I don’t….I think its ridicules really (at least at this time)….You realize what those bridges cost to build or retrofit….The money spent per man hour is off the charts…
And why are jobs programs always putting Police, Fire & Teachers at the head of the line ?? Why not car mechanics ??
IMO, if you are going to do something you need to do it in a way that helps as many as possible…Spread it out…
I thought the last couple of stimulus bills allocated money to “rebuilding infrasructure” ? I remember signs on the side of the highway during constuction to that effect. I also remember US-1 getting re-paved during that time when it had just been paved a couple of years before. Was that just the “practice” jobs bill?
Maybe, but why didn’t we fix these things when the economy was roaring during the housing bubble? And why should we trust the same Dems/Reps that let it “crumble” in the first place?
Do you really have to ask? The FedGov was too busy cutting taxes on the rich. And no, the Dems did NOT vote for those tax cuts. The R’s only got it through by reconciliation.
As for state-local gov, they spent the boom money on hiring (imagine that) and giving in to a few more demands from the union goons.
As for why infrastructure is “crumbling,” that’s because when stuff was built 60 years ago, it had a design life (40 years is a comment design life). But there was a lot of safety margin built in*
—————
*they built in safety margins because they didn’t have enough computing power to figure exactly how much the yield strength was or exactly what an angle was, etc. So they rounded up on the side of safety, even though it cost more. Now, with more technologies and profit-minded managers, engineers are forced not only to build a bridge to hold a certain weight, but they have to build a bridge to barely hold a certain weight, and use high-speed computer models to shave off as much margin as possible. Anything more was outside the contract and cut into profit. That’s why new stuff falls down, but the Brooklyn Bridge is still standing.
‘why infrastructure is crumbling’
I pay a percentage of my gasoline bill to the feds for this sort of thing. And if they can’t manage to replace critical long term assets as they wear out, they have no business being in charge of such things.
What do you do? Stop spending at the gov level and watch the depression get worse or keep borrowing? Cant raise taxes, can lay off all those gov workers. Spending is good during a Depression, we just need it to be in the USA not Iraq.
I have yet to read about a solution.
What if technology and efficiency do not allow for full employment. Seriously what do we do with the excess people. The options are
1. Give them unemployment.
2. Create jobs that make everyones life better.
3. Let them starve or take up crime to support themselves.
PS you have no arguement with me that the gov is overspending on muffins and war. I’d rather see lower profit margins for companies that do business w the gov and higher wages or more people earning a wage for the employees. It’s just another way the rich steal from the gov.
“I have yet to read about a solution.”
it’s too late.
Now, with more technologies and profit-minded managers, engineers are forced not only to build a bridge to hold a certain weight, but they have to build a bridge to barely hold a certain weight, and use high-speed computer models to shave off as much margin as possible.”
and import the steel from China
“At a sprawling manufacturing complex here, hundreds of Chinese laborers are now completing work on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
Next month, the last four of more than two dozen giant steel modules — each with a roadbed segment about half the size of a football field — will be loaded onto a huge ship and transported 6,500 miles to Oakland. There, they will be assembled to fit into the eastern span of the new Bay Bridge. ”
NYT
The ‘crumbling infrastructure’ meme started with that bridge collapse in Minnesota. It was caused by incorrectly sized plates put on the bridge by the contractor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge#Investigation
Design or construction error. Not rusted away girders.
FYI.
Now, infrastructure maintenance is a great program, it helps the rest of the society function smoothly, but I think this was jumped on by ARTBA and magnified. Plus there were probably some political angles to it too.
Metro crumbled for 10 years while Congress fiddled. It took some serious serious delays and a fatal accident before they got serious about fixing Metro.
Jobs are NOT the problem..I get job offers weekly sometimes daily
The problem is there is NO paycheck associated with the “jobs”
90% of it is all interns when it was paid just a few years ago…
We need to solve that problem right away.
What if technology and efficiency do not allow for full employment. Seriously what do we do with the excess people. The options are
Sorry, dj, but if there is no salary involved, then it isn’t a job offer.
It used to be before our government tossed out wage and hour laws.
Now everything is for credit intern or 1099. and these companies some are/were on the NYSE.
I would like to ask the big OH, how do you survive if you don’t live with your mom or deal drugs? welfare EBT medicaid…and cash on the side?
What a glorious platform for them to run on.
DJ, I think you need to accept that Radio/TV/broadcast, etc. is wildly different than it was even 10 years ago; will never be the same; and is not going back to what you or I remember.
Nuero- If it’s all a myth, I wonder why these fools have closed the interstate bridge?
Sherman Minton Bridge closed indefinitely due to structural cracks
Courier-Journal
The Sherman Minton Bridge was closed late Friday afternoon and will remain shut down indefinitely after officials discovered cracks in the span.
Will Wingfield, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation, said officials “do not have an estimate” on how long it will take to repair and reopen the bridge, which carries Interstate 64 traffic across the Ohio River.
Wingfield said the cracks were found in two steel support beams below the lower deck closer to the Kentucky side.
The bridge, which links New Albany with Louisville, is maintained by Indiana, and it was closed by order of Gov. Mitch Daniels.
In New Albany, chaos ignited shortly after police shut down the approaches to the bridge after rush hour. Traffic was so snarled that police were dispatched to several intersections to keep order.
Again, we’re told the govt has to do things like this, because the private sector can’t be trusted with it. But if the infrastructure is ‘crumbling’, maybe they aren’t up to the job.
I drive a lot, sometimes 1000 miles a week. It could be better, but I could say that about anything. One of my biggest complaints is construction zones where no work is being done.
I agree muggy but it seems like just about everything else is a work for free deal…not a scam just they have no money to pay people.
Hand in the air….I know I know maybe I should sell Porn on ebay…lots of people giving away thier old vhs and mags on CL…uh discreetly of course….yeah my mom would like what her son became……….not
DJ, I think you need to accept that Radio/TV/broadcast, etc. is wildly different than it was even 10 years ago; will never be the same; and is not going back to what you or I remember.
They had a constrction zone on the bruckner in the bronx for years and I never saw anyone working there….
Also why do they shut of the lights…you cant see the road…
And i’ve seen repavements right here nice job.. but it takes weeks to get it painted and some serious accidents even a death, have occured because of it.
And with all the people out of work,why cant work be done 24/7?
The gas tax is the fairest tax in America..so what if we raise it 25 or 50 cents a gallon to you it would hurt (1000 mi wk) but for me eh? And its a business deduction for you not me.
If people were smart i try never to live more then 5 miles from a job. And if gas was $5 a gallon it would be cheaper to move closer then to drive 50 miles a day.
———-
One of my biggest complaints is construction zones where no work is being done.
i am disappointed with you Ben. I always thought you were one of the most widely contributor to your forum. spouting a few misinformed facts. oh well.
On the one hand, we never really paid off the huge debts we generated fighting WWII, despite prohibitively high tax rates. Rather the economy grew quickly enough that servicing the debt became much easier over time. But 2011 isn’t 1946. A significant percentage of the rest of the world has seen much greater rises in productivity than we have. We are unlikely to be able to return to the days of being a dominant exporter that we were in the 50’s NO MATTER WHAT POLICY we follow. We simply don’t have the productivity advantages that we did then because now a smaller percentage of the rest of the world’s economies are basket cases. And it was always folly to believe that we could base our economy on Wall Street titans and Wall Mart greeters.
“But 2011 isn’t 1946.”
One could argue that the entry of the BRICs etc into the modern (consuming) world dwarfs the market potential of a blown-up Europe and East Asia, even if we have to share the pie with more competitors.
Outgrow your debts: that worked for individuals over the same time period. Not so much now.
We don’t have to be a dominant exporter to have a sustainable economy. We need to be debt free though. Debt means grow or die.
“Debt means grow or die.”
Gulp
Well it’s just another example of the time value of money. With plenty more dollars floating around, current interest on the “debt that paid for WWII” isn’t significant compared to the “debt that Reagan charged,” or the Bush’s GWOT. So servicing existing debt may not mean “grow or die”, but adding new debt certainly does. And adding new debt at a rate faster than revenue growth is not supportable in any kind of medium or long term.
“Debt means grow or die.”
We’ve already got the debt, and we’re going to get more no matter what we do now- either through massive loss of tax revenue due to deflation from a ‘let it crash’ philosophy, or by borrowing to fund stimulus under a Keynesian philosophy, or by borrowing to flood the rich with cash under our current monetarist system.
Sounds like we better grow, since the debt is inevitable, and the dying option is worse. Seems like Keynesian stimulus- especially spending on infrastructure and investment in new industries, like solar, offer the best chance to grow our way out of the mess, for the buck.
you are not implying that we can only quickly grow through export, right? we have enough demand here to grow our economy, we just probably have to reduce filling up the demand with imports.
“Infrastructure jobs” consist of hugely inflated contracts performed by well-connected subs, employing four times too many marginally competent “builders” to re-do badly engineered public works— an army of $40-an-hour stop sign holders commanded by an equal number of $100-an-hour “administrators.” Surely there’s a better way to get things redesigned and fixed?
Contractors, developers, builders, real estate mavens, planners, engineers, public “servants” and the like — whom the jobs bill proposes to bail out– all had ample opportunity to gouge and exploit. Let’s give someone else a chance this time.
Maybe we should redirect those funds towards repudiating student debt by creating a new WPA for our young people? It will cost money to train and create volunteer-type jobs that will allow them to work off student debt in public service and building, but heavens know we could use some new blood in our corrupted old crony system. All that unemployed energy and talent is going to waste. As one WS protester put it, “I couldn’t find a job, but I found an occupation.”
Double your salary in the middle of nowhere, North Dakota
CNN | 9/28/11 | Blake Ellis
Believe it or not, a place exists where companies are hiring like crazy, and you can make $15 an hour serving tacos, $25 an hour waiting tables and $80,000 a year driving trucks.
You just have to move to North Dakota. Specifically, to one of the tiny towns surrounding the oil-rich Bakken formation, estimated to hold anywhere between 4 billion and 24 billion barrels of oil.
Oil companies have only recently discovered ways to tap this reserve. And along with the manpower needed to extract the oil, the town is now scrambling to find workers to support the new rush of labor.
Watford City is at the center of the Bakken formation. While it is home to less than 3,000 permanent residents, there are about 6,500 people there right now, as job hunters relocate to seek out high-paying jobs.
Aaron Pelton, the owner of Outlaws Bar & Grill in Watford, said his sales have been nearly doubling every year — and it’s only getting busier. Servers at his restaurant make about $25 an hour when tips are factored in, and kitchen staff employees make around $15 an hour.
It won’t be long before N Dakota is flooded with illegals and those high wages will simply vanish. I’m sure thay are already on their way.
I have a lot of friends in NC that were/are into the construction/sheet rock business. Back in 1987 they were making about $10-12/hr. Now, in 2011 they make about $8-10/hr. The Mexicans always will do it for $1 less.
To defend your wages you need a skill that is not that easily learned otherwise it’s just a matter of time until market forces catch up with you.
And the same now applies to most of us with more specialized skills.
There are thousands of young, hugry engineers from India ready to contract out the work that I do for $15/hr. I charge 5 to 6 times more. Fortunately for me, I don’t like being a cube jockey, and the part of my work that involves crawling around on dirty plant floors troubleshooting automated machinery can’t be done over the internet. (Although remote internet access to automation systems is quickly becoming the norm).
I can’t fault them for wanting to raise their standard of living. I just need to adapt and stay one step ahead. So far I’ve been able to, but there’s no guarantees.
Being a renter once again is a great insurance policy, though. I may end up needing to move to North Dakota or some place similar at some point to get work. It’s not that I’m living close to the edge (I’m not): I just can’t stand sitting around doing nothing.
Which gets to my oft-repeated point that many of our global competition problems aren’t due to the fact that we’re doing something wrong. Rather it’s that China, India, and others are doing something right. Sure the global economic pie IS growing. But their share is growing faster than the pie is. And this adjustment would proceed more easily if the Chinese weren’t artificially holding down their currency.
I’m agnostic on the whole currency manipulation thing, I don’t know enough to have a meaningful opinion on it.
My feeling is, in the end, no matter what political and monetary games are played, jobs are going to go where the the people and countries want them the most. Increasingly Americans aren’t willing to do what it takes, while the rest of the 5-6 billion people on this planet have figured out what we have in the way of prosperity and material goods, and they want that life for themselves. Government policy can only affect those social and cultural and economic forces at the margins IMO.
“the whole currency manipulation thing”
When I was a tourist in China in the early 90’s, tour guides and others preferred being tipped in dollars.
“…..doing something right…..”
From their perspective.
Our problem is that our government is getting “in the country’s best interest” and “in the Banksters/1%ers/Corporate USA’s” best interest” confused for 40 year now.
And any job that can be done on a PC will eventually be outsourced, too at the rate we are going.
To defend your wages you need a skill that is not that easily learned otherwise it’s just a matter of time until market forces catch up with you.
”
new skill = Politician. Because highly skilled engineers, programers, doctors who view films, etc are all being outsourced
Even with a skill “not easily learned” you have a problem.
It’s as if someone has decided “A guy doing that should be making “X”…..” (usually determined by the HR/consultants), and that’s what the pay scale is.
If they can’t find someone to work for whatever they are offering, the position goes unfilled, and the bitching about “Lazy Americans” and “can’t find qualified people” starts.
Talked with a Sales Rep with a major shop a few weeks ago……They have 200 plus open positions they “can’t fill”. Why? Because other shops are poaching their experienced help.
They won’t adjust their pay scales, because their numbers crunchers say they won’t be as profitable if they do that.
This is what passes for business planning in the USA.
This is what passes for business planning in the USA.
And I’d argue this should be allowed to happen, and the folks who suck at business planning will go out of business. The poachers who pay more will thrive as a result.
As a good friend of mine who was an IA used to say - “When you pay peanuts, you get monkeys” . They would rather hire 200 idiots that don’t care and do shoddy work and “train” them, than hire 50 well paid experts and have no problems with workmanship. Simply because the pay scale would be slightly out of the range anybody else pays, according to the bean counters!!!
There are a few obstacles for illegals in North Dakota. First is housing. Even for legal workers, trying to find a place to live up there is practically impossible, although companies are bringing in trailers and modulars as fast as they can. And even as they bring in the trailers, they’re not government subsidized. Teepees, anyone? (The Native Americans had the right idea.) Weather is another obstacle. Why leave Florryduh and the other sand states, where you can work AND get subsidies for housing and kids, etc.
We have tons of illegals here, and it gets cold in the winter.
As for housing, illegals are accustomed to sharing a rental.
They will come, especially for those wages.
But unlike Colorado, there’s no established network. And when I say there’s no housing, there’s NO housing there. People are living in motel rooms, on waiting lists for campers and trailers and modulars. Maybe the Mexicans will build igloos, I don’t know.
Nonetheless, you’re probably right. These people are a cancer and cancer has a tendency to spread, even with chemo and radiation and cutting it out. They are a cancer spiritually as well. Nothing is sadder to look at than formerly pleasant communities dragged into hell by illegal immigrant colonization. I know firsthand, I see it around here all the time, and have had first hand experience with the wreckage they cause.
The US will never recover from this, unless some pretty drastic and unpleasant action is taken. Because each time some of the citizen workers try to make a little more money, the cancer will be there to undercut them and drag them back down as soon as they try to get up.
Last week, there were TWO stories in the national media of Hispanic run construction outfits, one in New York and one in Houston, where people could not get hired unless they:
1) Were Hispanic. Anglos and Afros need not apply.
2) Paid the labor boss a weekly bribe (known in Mexico as “la mordida”, (the little bite) out of one’s pay to keep the job. Yessirree, real quality folks there.
They’ll build the network, plus I’m sure that there are already illegals in North Dakota. Its a question of time until the Mexodus heads out that way.
I’m still trying to figure out if they’re here. Certainly through the Mexican restaurants, and drug dealers, in small numbers. But there are no jobs here. Construction in the Flathead tanked, same in Bozeman. Still, the social workers send them here and there for “services” so I guess it can happen anywhere.
wonder how they hold up in 30 below and 50 below windchill??? i guess the furnace stays on 24/7…..plus heated blanket and oil dipstick for the car too???
shouldnt take too long to freeze to death if the heater craps out..
can you survive with just a electric blanket?
trailers and modulars
Good money but comes with big problems, chief of which is a severe housing shortgage.
Living in your tiny camper in the middle of winter is NOT a good idea.
$25/hr is pretty average for a server in Dallas.
Remembering Steve Jobs. His Legacy. Would Apple be ever be the same?
“Apple was incorporated January 3, 1977[7] without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800.”
That would be Ronald Wayne, one of the founders along with Wozniak and Jobs. Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.
Interesting how different people take the lead over time. Back in the day, Wozniak seemed to have a higher profile.
Anyway, RIP Steve Jobs. Thanks for everything.
“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” -Steve Jobs, 2005
RIP, Steve.
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
Steve Jobs, 2005 @ Stanford University
Bill in Carolina, thanks for the post.
Wozniak invented Apple. Steve was just the sales guy.
Hwy–
Also leaving us yesterday was Charles Napier, actor, activist, and raconteur. You saw him being steely and squared-jawed in everything from Silence of the Lambs, to Philadelphia, to The Critic, to Star Trek, to Earnest Goes To Jail, to Rambo, to….
Charlie was a rare wit in this addled little corner of the planet, and he was my friend.
He will be missed.
Ms. Hansen, re: Charles Napier
But it was in 1980’s Blues Brothers that Napier found the role that would make earn him recognition. The actor played Tucker McElroy in the movie, starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, and reportedly would get stopped by fans quoting his memorable line: “You’re gonna look pretty funny trying to eat corn on the cob with no f—ing teeth.”
And eventually sales and marketing always trump engineering.
Ain’t it da trute!
Posted late last night:
Steve Jobs = gui
Bill Gates = dos
Moral of the story:
POV’s do matter.
Tankxs for the “computers as Art” & “computers for Art” Mr. Jobs!
(Is it true that the design plan was to have no viewing windows for the first US astronauts in space?)
The chimps didn’t need them, why the would hairless apes?
Yosemite Sam: “All right! Don’t rush me. I’m a-thinking… and my head hurts.”
“Eating their own poop vs drinking their own piss”,… Evolution does work slow don’t it?
Not only no windows, but no inner latch to open the hatch, either.
Spam in a can.
In the famous words of one Chuck Yeager……
“Don’t forget to check for doo-doo in the capsule……”
Steve Jobs = gui
Actually its Xerox PARC == GUI, Jobs licensed it from them.
Xerox PARC
Thanks for the history lesson. Well, one on the things they say about R.I.P. Mr. Jobs is that he was a “Visionary”
“I see said the blind man as he picked up his
guihammer & saw”The GUI
Xerox has been heavily criticized (particularly by business historians) for failing to properly commercialize and profitably exploit PARC’s innovations. A favorite example is the GUI, initially developed at PARC for the Alto and then commercialized as the Xerox Star by the Xerox Systems Development Department. Although very significant in terms of its influence on future system design, it is deemed a failure because it only sold approximately 25,000 units. A small group from PARC led by David Liddle and Charles Irby formed Metaphor Computer Systems. They extended the Star desktop concept into an animated graphic and communicating office-automation model and sold the company to IBM.
Adoption by Apple
The first successful commercial GUI product was the Apple Macintosh, which was heavily inspired by PARC’s work; Xerox was allowed to buy pre-IPO stock from Apple, in exchange for engineer visits and an understanding that Apple would create a GUI product.
Moreover:
In April 1990 Jobs sold Pixar’s hardware division, including all proprietary hardware technology and imaging software, to Vicom Systems, and transferred 18 of Pixar’s approximate 100 employees. The same year Pixar moved from San Rafael to Richmond, California.[15] During this period, Pixar continued its relationship with Walt Disney Feature Animation, a studio whose corporate parent would ultimately become its most important partner. In 1991, after a tough start of the year when about 30 employees in the company’s computer department had to go (including the company’s president, Chuck Kolstad), which reduced the total number of employees to just 42, Pixar made a $26 million deal with Disney to produce three computer-animated feature films, the first of which was Toy Story. At that point, the software programmers, who were doing RenderMan and CAPS, and Lasseter’s animation department, who made television commercials and a few shorts for Sesame Street, was all that was left of Pixar.
Despite the total income of these products, the company was still losing money, and Jobs often considered selling it. Even as late as 1994, Jobs contemplated selling Pixar to other companies, among them Microsoft. Only after confirming that Disney would distribute Toy Story for the 1995 holiday season did he decide to give it another chance. The film went on to gross more than $350 million worldwide. Later that year, Pixar held its initial public offering on November 29, 1995, and the company’s stock was priced at US $22 per share.
Southwest Airlines was able to move on after the Herb Kelleher era. Apple? I’m not so sure. There was quite the Cult of Steve there.
Herb is still alive and on the BOD.
Does everybody still want to live here these days?
Berkeley’s Newspaper | The Daily Californian News
Young people more likely to retire in poverty, according to study
By Christopher Yee | Staff
cyee@dailycal.org
Monday, October 3, 2011 at 9:11 pm
Approximately half of California workers will retire in or near poverty, according to a study published Monday by the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.
The study details the fiscal consequences of the decline in secure retirement plans offered by California employers. In the past, many employers offered defined benefit pension plans, which guarantee monthly payments based on salary before retirement and length of time employed. Now, most California employers either offer 401K accounts, which force employees to invest for themselves, or do not offer any sort of retirement plan.
…
Is it, or will it be, any different in other states?
Similar in other states, but worse in CA…
Of course, if you’re going to be poor, might as well do it somewhere with nice weather.
yes sir, they are not poor, they are campers!
I made the mistake of living there for 20 years, and have very little to show for it. 9.5% income tax, 9.75% sales tax, unaffordable housing, low pay (everyone wants to live here, you’re lucky to have work), and high expenses in general made it impossible to get ahead there. I make good money too…3x the median. I don’t know how normal people survive at all.
I’ll be banking a minimum of 20k a year in what would have been California tax from now on. Should help out my financial situation tremendously, and someday soon I’ll be able to afford my own house with cash.
The coast is lovely, but there are places around the country that are just as lovely, where I won’t have to work myself to death just to stay even.
Were did you move too?
Why are young people retiring, anyhow??
Solution: Upon reaching retirement age, take 401k account, which may well not be ample to retire in California, to one of the other 49 states.
Approximately half of California workers will retire in or near poverty, according to a study published Monday by the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.
The study details the fiscal consequences of the decline in secure retirement plans offered by California employers. In the past, many employers offered defined benefit pension plans, which guarantee monthly payments based on salary before retirement and length of time employed. Now, most California employers either offer 401K accounts, which force employees to invest for themselves, or do not offer any sort of retirement plan.
…
really old news here
The stock market hasn’t run out of fear yet.
Retirement Guide 2012
‘Terrified’ of the stock market: What should I do?
By Walter Updegrave @Money October 6, 2011: 5:52 AM ET
(MONEY Magazine) —
With the global economy reeling and many analysts worried the stock market could sink into a bear market, you have a right to be concerned. The last thing you want on the eve of retirement is to watch your nest egg go into a death spiral.
But engaging in a guessing game about when to sell stocks and where to move your money isn’t the right way to address your apprehensions.
…
“I want to put my money in a safer place, but I don’t know where.”
Uh, go to cash, maybe.
Since cash is what people will need after they retire - or at any other time - why not just go there?
Fear of inflation?
Or the possibility of deflation……
Anyone planning to retire “in April” shouldn’t have much (maybe 30%?) of his retirement assets in the stock market anyway.
Try not to soak your shorts over stock market fears.
U.S. stocks’ massive “melt-up” fans investor fears
By Edward Krudy
NEW YORK | Wed Oct 5, 2011 4:13pm EDT
(Reuters) - In less than one hour on Tuesday, the U.S. stock market surged by 4 percent — for no apparent reason.
The last hour of trading was the most volatile final hour in two months — and it occurred at a speed that frightens many, from experienced hedge-fund managers to mom-and-pop investors.
The late-day “melt-up” that pushed the S&P 500 index .SPX out of bear-market territory might be construed as good news. But it brings back echoes of the “flash crash” that saw markets dive by several hundred points in a matter of minutes, and it’s a big reason many are staying away from the market.
“Everyone is scared in both ways — the shorts are scared, the longs are scared, everyone is scared. The high-net-worth investor is very, very scared,” said Stephen Solaka, managing partner at Belmont Capital Group in Los Angeles, which manages money for independent wealth advisers and family offices.
…
“The high-net-worth investor is very, very scared.”
One would think these people would live the life of ease, but in reality they live lives of desperation.
Strange. Lots of money is supposed to liberate a person but often what it does is imprison him.
I imagine that many high net worth investors have realized tha the system is rigged and unless you are at the very top you are likely to loose.
“The high-net-worth investor is very, very scared.” ??
Probably because they fear having to live a life of moderation…..
+10. They could all cash out and go on Oil City Plan tomorrow, but no-o-o-o-o…
Strange. Lots of money is supposed to liberate a person but often what it does is imprison him.
Agreed.
I’ve known some very wealthy people in my time. (Used to work at one of the largest nonprofit orgs in the state of Arizona.)
Very few of the very wealthy were what I would describe as happy.
Only the very rich and the very poor have the luxury of having their time to themselves- and the very rich still have employees and security personnel to contend with.
Unless you’re a total solipsist, money=responsibility. The more mon, the more dependents and the more demands.
No thanks.
I sleep, therefore I am -
From what I’ve seen, money magnifies who you are.
I’m shrinking!!!
It’s all related to living within one’s means. It’s possible at any level of income, but very few are willing to actually give it a serious try.
I still have concerns about how much of my FDIC insured cash I’ll actually be able to access when the time comes (and what it will buy me at that point), but that’s nothing compared to the average families’ burdens these days.
…every level of income above 18k per person.
Poverty is poverty and poor is poor.
I thought that that was the standard 3:00PM elevator up at first, than I realized how far up it went. Normally, I assume that the elevator is sales being put in at the COB,(or for the conspiracy minded, the PPT getting involved.)
Anyone know what the hell that was?
In less than one hour on Tuesday, the U.S. stock market surged by 4 percent — for no apparent reason.
And they say the PPT is a myth.
Nothing like a cash enema to brighten one’s outlook!
If a company is “accidentally” able to influence the market this way, do you think they’d not do it incrementally and intentionally?
Think of GS having this knowledge and power.
Inspired by demonstrators based in a small park in lower Manhattan –a group that has named itself “Occupy Deadbeat”
Occupy Deadbeat
My first sign…
ALRIGHT GET OUT
IT`S MY TURN TO LIVE FREE
FOR A FEW YEARS
I will be needing some more ideas for signs
By John Lantigua Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 3:41 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011
For those who wondered where the liberal response to the conservative tea party was in U.S. politics, the wait may be over.
Inspired by demonstrators based in a small park in lower Manhattan — a group that has named itself “Occupy Wall Street”– similar protest groups are springing up across the country, including South Florida. Their issues are Wall Street excesses that led to the economic crisis, failure of the government to reign in financial institutions, and the growing gap between the rich and everyone else in American society.
“The economic collapse in our country and globally was caused by deregulation of financial institutions and Wall Street schemes,” says Lisa Epstein, 46, of West Palm Beach, a local organizer in the “Occupy” movement and author of a blog on the foreclosure crisis. “People lost their jobs, their homes, their 401ks, their pensions, their security. Specific financial institutions and specific people in those institutions are to blame. We want people to know that.”
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/occupy-groups-emerge-on-south-floridas-political-left-1897449.html - -
And their specific demands are…
From what I read on the web and their manifestos - something akin to communism. Please point me to something different of you have it.
They need to translate into something akin to legislation/public policy.
And I like the public unions joining in.
On one side - a 20 something with $200,000 in loans, living in his dad’s basement with no job.
On the other side, public union goons with great salaries, insane benefits and $100,000+ spiked retirements.
Yeah - that team is going to last
From what I read on the web and their manifestos - something akin to communism.
If things get bad enough communism can actually start to look good to the masses. And as the wealth continues to concentrate at the top (which many Ayn Randians on this blog claim is inevitable) and poverty becomes more and more widespread we might get to that point sooner than many expect. I’d rather not have a Communist system, but unless the Richies are willing to stop hoarding all the wealth and income it might be the only outcome.
That’s a good point. What we’ve had for 40 years is an economy moving in the direction of the kind of capitalism that the Wall Street Journal recommends - an assault on private sector unions, a minimum wage that fails to keep up with inflation, tax cuts for the rich and student loan debt for the middle class.
It shouldn’t be a big surprise if a large number of Americans begin to look for alternatives to this sort of economy, including arrangements that some will call communism.
I wonder if we’re going to start hearing the word “communism” from the Fox News/Tea Party types in response to the attention that this movement in Manhattan is getting. They’ve been repeating the word “socialism” over and over for three years. I don’t think that it has had much effect. They may step it up and start calling people communists.
Why eyes myself was called a “commie” on this very blog just days ago! (Hwy glances at a wall photo of his Puerto Rico Aunt ;-))
What we’ve had for 40 years is an economy moving in the direction of the kind of capitalism that the Wall Street Journal recommends - an assault on private sector unions, a minimum wage that fails to keep up with inflation, tax cuts for the rich and student loan debt for the middle class.
(Somewhere Rio is smilin’)
The only communism I see is that of Wall St. and the big banks.
The right like 2b never understand how a Chavez comes to power. We are witnessing it right now and still they are not smart enough to see it.
Chavez comes to power.
Through a failed military coup, goon intimidation, shutting down the free press, confiscating political opponents assets, throwing dissenters in jail and then making yourself president for life?
The right like 2b FULLY understands…
and tell me did he not have the backing of the majority of the people.
and tell me did he not have the backing of the majority of the people.
53% in the first election.
There was not a free and fair election after that one.
Kinda reminds me of other socialist monsters that come to power through democracy and then change the rules so they stay in power forever…
One man’s “goon” is another man’s “freedom fighter”.
Seems like we are getting more goons and thugs around here all the time. That, or the definition of “goon” expands to cover more people.
Signed,
Former Republican (working toward Anarchist) Goon
Seems like we are getting more goons and thugs around here all the time.
(Psst,…SlipperyBanana has a black-hole in his pocket, goon/thug material emanating profusely, unionfied magnetic field attraction inescapable!)
If things get bad enough communism can actually start to look good to the masses.
20 million killed under Stalin
30 million killed under Mao
3 million killed under Pol Pot
Millions more killed under Castro, North Korea, etc., etc., etc.
The ones that survive? Live in absolute poverty (except for the ruling class).
Yeah - looks really good to me..love that track record.
Not everyone in the former USSR lives in poverty you know…
In the case of Stalin and Mao, it wouldn’t have mattered whether they were Communist or Druids. They were killing their political opposition.
You know, sorta like the current batch of U.S. oligarchs are, except they are being a little more sophisticated about it.
Whether by bullets or benign neglect, the results are the same.
…and not everyone in America is wealthy, either.
In fact, half the working population is… poor.
Does that make us Russian? :0
In fact, half the working population is… poor.
Wait until its 90%.
In the case of Stalin and Mao, it wouldn’t have mattered whether they were Communist or Druids. They were killing their political opposition.
Exactly. More to do with totalitarianism than the economic system. Let us not forget that the Fascists were Capitalists and not Commies.
And let’s not kid ourselves for even a moment that we live in the “Land of Free”. That the Patriot Act became law so easily while the Supremes yawned speaks volumes about our nation.
“IT`S MY TURN TO LIVE FREE
FOR A FEW YEARS”
“And their specific demands are…something akin to communism.”
I told you guys the Tea Party would counter-rally in favor of Wall Street.
I harbored no doubts that it would happen. I’m only surprised it took as long as it did.
“I harbored no doubts that it would happen. I’m only surprised it took as long as it did.”
I think it`s more like 49%
I AM AN UNEMPLOYED PRINTER REPAIRMAN WITH $87,000 IN STUDENT LOANS.
I MAKE ENDS MEET BY CLEANING THE BATHROOMS AT RYAN’S STEAK HOUSE.
I WAS FORCED TO MOVE BACK INTO MY MOM’S BASEMENT, AND I CANNOT AFFORD TO FEED MY CATS BECAUSE THEY WON’T TAKE FOOD STAMPS FOR CAT FOOD.
I AM THE 99%.
OCCUPY WALL STREET
Thanks alpha-sloth
I am changing my sign to…
1)
ALRIGHT GET OUT
I NEED AN AFFORDABLE HOUSE
FOR MY FAMILY
2)
I PAY MY LL
$1,700 A MONTH
HE KEEPS THE CASH
& STIFFS THE LENDER
How about:
WHY AREN’T THE BANKS MOVING THEIR INVENTORY?
or
NATIONALIZE THE BANKS
WE ALREADY PAY THEIR LOSSES
SQUAT IN AN APARTMENT
SEE HOW LONG YOU STAY
FEISTY DON’T PAY RENT
OCCUPY DEADBEAT
RENT
FEISTY DON’T PLAY THAT
I am a bit confused. Where exactly in this thread is there some reference that leads you to conclude anything about the Tea Party stance on the WS protest?
I attributed their position to their local supporters.
Do you perhaps know more abut the Tea Party’s stance on the WS protest?
“I told you guys the Tea Party would counter-rally in favor of Wall Street.”
I wrote this a long time ago on this blog.
THE WASHINGTON HILLBILLIES
Come and listen to my story bout a man named Dodd
refied his house but it seemed kinda odd
saved eighty grand but he said he didn`t know
law makers get a break cause they`re friends of Angelo
Mozillo that is , CountryWide , Bad loans
Well the first thing ya know Angelo is in some trouble
he say`s HEY DODD NOW THEY SAY I CAUSED A BUBBLE!
Dodd say`s fine I`ll just sponsor us a bill
tell em that they need it and I`ll sell it on the Hill
Well the moral of the story that you all should know
better vote em out if they`re friends of Angelo
or one day soon we`ll be shootin at our food
Bernankes got us lookin at two hundred dollar crude
Oil that is , black gold , OPEC tea
And now it`s time to say goodbye to you and all your kin
and Dodd would like to thank you all for kindly chippin in
you`re all invited back again to this localitee
to pay another trillion for their bogus LTV
Loan to value, that is
Kick your shoes off
Ya`ll come back now ya hear?!
Exceedingly brilliant!
You’ll never make it as a politician -
We learned a few years back that the housing market can have a nasty spillover effect into the stock market. Now that the stock market is in meltdown mode, will the spillover work the other direction going forward?
The interesting aspect of the situation is that the stock market adjusts at lightning speed (take the four percent meltup in the final hour of trading a couple of days back, for instance) while the housing market’s rate of adjustment is glacial. Hence we won’t have any available data to test my housing-stock market “coupling hypothesis” until some time in 2012.
Housing News Turns The Stock Market To Mush
by Glenn Setzer
Jul 27 2007, 7:00AM
It’s been a rough week for the housing market. Homebuilder confidence is in the gutter, existing home sales fell substantially and the bad news emanating from the subprime debacle continues top headlines. Now we have new home sales and builders reporting earnings.
Sales of new one-family homes in June, 2007 were even more disappointing than the report on sales of existing homes announced by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) earlier this week.
…
Message to Canadian homeowners: If you squint a bit, you just might notice the sight of millions and millions of underwater homeowners just beyond your southern border.
Personal Finance
Beware ‘the housing wealth effect’
Rob Carrick
From Thursday’s Globe and Mail
Posted on Wednesday, October 5, 2011 7:10PM EDT
Let’s hope the housing market holds up better than the stock market has.
If not, we really have problems.
Feeling bummed out about how your registered retirement savings plan or investment account is shrinking in value as stocks plunge? Just wait and see what happens if the housing market slumps.
Far more than stocks, a rising housing market makes us feel wealthy and sustains the economy. But the reverse is true, too.
“If you want to knock consumer confidence out from under people, just let their largest asset decline in value,” said Ben Rabidoux, who has been crunching data on Canada’s housing market on his blog, The Economic Analyst.
Consumer spending accounts for about 64 per cent of our economy, which is to say it’s crucial. And, it’s under pressure. The latest quarterly Consumerology report from ad agency Bensimon Byrne says half of Canadians feel worse off about their personal economic situation than they did a year ago, and they expect to feel worse in a year’s time. Overall confidence levels have fallen by levels not seen since the stock market crash of 2008, the survey found.
A reversal of fortune in housing would make things worse. While the risk of a real estate slump shouldn’t be exaggerated, it should be recognized – if only to provide perspective that may help people keep a level head.
Comments made about Canada’s housing market on Wednesday were typical of the lack of consensus on what’s ahead. The International Monetary Fund expressed concern about the hot housing market’s role in the build-up of consumer debt in Canada, while Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the market has cooled somewhat and shows no clear signs of a bubble in prices.
…
Are these “rent out all the vacant homes” ideas merely stealth bailout proposals? The “tax writeoff” idea sounds like a proposed raid on the U.S. Treasury to enrich Citigroup, which I guess is the main point.
U.S. Can Rent Its Way Toward a Housing Recovery: Peter Orszag
By Peter Orszag Oct 4, 2011 5:00 PM PT
Peter R. Orszag, vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup and an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, was President Obama’s director of the Office of Management and Budget.
After any financial collapse, housing plays a key role in the hard slog that typically follows: a weak housing market feeds into a weak economy, which then feeds back onto a weak housing market. So even if the European banking system somehow avoids a meltdown, economic recovery in the U.S. will continue to languish unless we act more aggressively on housing.
No matter what the government might try to do to break the housing-economy cycle, the deleveraging process will still be painful and take some time. But that’s not an argument against action; just because a headache can still hurt some even if you take aspirin doesn’t mean you should skip the aspirin. One thing the Obama administration could do now — probably with Republican support — would be to attack the oversupply of housing stock by allowing a tax write-off for investors who buy empty properties and rent them out.
…
“One thing the Obama administration could do now — probably with Republican support — would be to attack the oversupply of housing stock by allowing a tax write-off for investors who buy empty properties and rent them out.”
Subsidize rich people to overcharge renters. Instead let prices fall in line with wages and much of the oversupply will go away.
But what’s in your plan for politicians?
There’s a market clearing price for housing. But that path probably goes through default and foreclosure. Because many, many of those mortgages were “born stupid,” with continued appreciation the only what that they were going to be paid off. So there are idiots and or crooks on BOTH sides of those transactions. IMHO one of the real problems that we have is the PTBs insistence that both sides should be bailed out and shielded from the consequences of their stupidity. OTOH, punishing the lender with loss of principal and the borrower with bad credit seems like a good idea to me.
“There’s a market clearing price for housing.”
But can it ever be attained in the face of explicit intervention to prop up housing prices?
This is the guy who said the US should take some responsibilities away from congress and give them to special panels.
What he wants to do is allow the elite who have been sitting on their cash piles to get a tax break when they buy up all of the realestate.
The bottom line the elite got out at the top or were bailed out by the elite, then they let the system collapse and come back in and buy up everything for pennies on the dollar. Peter wants more he wants a tax break on top of it all.
He says
just because a headache can still hurt some even if you take aspirin doesn’t mean you should skip the aspirin
Peter the middle class just had bleeding in the brain after getting clubbed by the elite, and now you want to give them an aspirin which will make them bleed more.
vice chairman of global banking at Citigroup
It’s good to see that you were able to capitalize on your prostitution to WS when you worked for the gov and landed yourself a nice high paying job, will Geithner get the office next to you?
allowing a tax write-off for investors who buy empty properties and rent them out ??
Why the tax incentive ?? So the lender can achieve a higher price I would say….
The trouble with this plan is that it does nothing to reduce our country’s oversupply of houses. Moving a foreclosed family out of the house they owned into an empty rental is just a move, nothing more.
Furthermore, there are costs associated with getting empty houses back up to snuff so that renters can occupy them. Who’s going to pay for that? The investors? If they’re anything like the ones I’ve encountered, I doubt it.
Policy wonkin’ can only get you so far in life. Mr. Orszag needs to spend more time in the real world.
Umm…investors in rental properties get the following deductions:
interest cost
general maintanance - interior and exterior
cost of collecting rent
property taxes
and
depreciation (which is generally taken more quickly than the property actually depreciates)
What else is he proposing?
And - just to beat my “too hard to implement” drum one more time - please define “empty properties.” Go on. It is harder than it sounds. How long does it have to be empty? How do you determine that it was empty for that length of time? What if people are there, but they aren’t paying the mortgage? What if they are squatters that aren’t paying rent? What if the electricty was on, but you think no one was there? What if the house is still furnished, but there aren’t people as far as you can tell? What if….well, you get the idea.
Greece Housing Market Suffering
Published on: Wednesday, October 05, 2011
Written by: Global Property Guide
Greece’s economic crisis is sending shockwaves through every market sector of the country and residential real estate is not being spared. Real estate transactions have decreased in volume and value, with prices in every type of residence dropping. The biggest price falls are hitting the biggest cities hardest. Average home prices in Athens had dropped 6.71% by the end of the second quarter in 2011, and prices in the second-largest city of Thessaloniki fell 4.7%. The market is not being helped by the drastic austerity measures being enforced by the Greek government to qualify for help from other European Union nations that include tax increases and stifling economic reform. For more on this continue reading the following article from Global Property Guide.
Residential property prices in Greece continue to fall, with the Greek economy enduring one of its worst crises in its history.
The average price of apartments in Greece fell by 4.5% y-o-y to Q2 2011, according to the Bank of Greece. Over the same period, the price of old apartments (5 years or older) fell 5.5%, while prices of newer apartments fell 3%.
The bigger the city, the higher the price falls:
In Athens, average house prices fell 6.71% y-o-y to end-Q2 2011
In Thessaloniki (the second largest city) prices fell 4.7% over the same period
In “all other cities”, house prices dropped 3.5% y-o-y in Q2 2011
In “all other areas”, prices fell 1% over the same period
Residential real estate transactions fell in number, volume, and value. In the second quarter of 2011, residential real estate transactions were down 39.1% from a year earlier.
…
For a country that is about to default and whose economy is in a tailspin - their RE has held up amazingly well.
I see no problem here that prison time for CEOs who steal from their shareholders couldn’t solve.
The Great Debate
Bank CEOs and the infinite pile of cash
Oct 5, 2011 13:27 EDT
By Roger Martin
The views expressed are his own.
The three-week old, 60’s-style Occupy Wall Street protest raises once again the question that won’t go away: What on earth were those bankers doing in the period leading up to the 2008 financial meltdown? This street-level insurgency combines with last month’s smackdown-from-on-high administered by the U.S. Federal Housing Finance Authority’s (FHFA), which sued 17 leading global financial institutions for $196 billion, charging that they knowingly peddled shoddy mortgage-backed security products to unsuspecting customers. With the European financial system continuing to teeter on the brink due to the massive bank losses and bailouts, the U.S. economy stagnating and its equity markets close to free-fall, the answer of Chuck Prince, former Citigroup chair, that “we danced until the music stopped” has not mollified either Occupy Wall Street or the FHFA, or anybody else for that matter.
It is obvious that they did keep dancing. But it leaves unanswered the question: Why did it make sense to them to keep dancing? And also: When the music did finally stop, how did we manage to have asset-backed derivatives contracts outstanding with an estimated value of three times the size of global GDP?
The answer was that thanks to the structure of their compensation, major bank CEOs were obsessed with their stock price and trying to keep beating expectations until the music stopped. And the asset-based derivatives market was their clever device for beating expectations for much longer than could have happened before – because it was the world’s first market of infinite size. And it worked for them. When the music stopped and expectations came crashing down, they were by and large wildly rich.
…
“When the music stopped and expectations came crashing down, they were by and large wildly rich.”
B-b-but Food Stamps! Squatting nurses! That’s where we should direct our anger! Pay no attention to the guys who made hundreds of million$!
…and then made us taxpayers pay for their mistakes so they could stay rich while telling us we have to tighten our belts.
and then they have peter orztag stating that we should give them a tax break so they can deploy that wealth stolen from the rest of us to buy up all of the property and manufacturing and farming etc.
*snap* *snap* *snap* Look over there! Look over there! It’s the union janitors that caused this!
Keep your eyes on the ball people. Don’t get head-faked.
When the music stopped and expectations came crashing down, they were by and large wildly rich.
When the S&L music stopped:
1. We let them fail and sold their assets
2. Threw 1500 bankers in jail
Why did we not follow this same strategy this time?
The banksters were better prepared this time? (As in they greased the right palms in advance)
Yes.
House prices fell in September
Halifax survey shows a 0.5% monthly decline, continuing a mixed pattern of rises and falls
Hilary Osborne
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 October 2011 04.17 EDT
An aerial view of houses in Newcastle
House prices are following a pattern of minor rises and falls from month-to-month. Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA
House prices in the UK fell by 0.5% in September and the market is “lacking direction”, according to Halifax’s latest report on the property market. The fall follows a 1.1% drop in August, but price rises in June and July.
The bank said September’s decline continued a mixed pattern of rises and falls, which was “consistent with a market where prices are lacking genuine direction”.
…
This is a patently lame article, because the writer was apparently oblivious to the role of leverage in assessing the value of real estate gains. My hunch is that most 401(K) investors don’t use any leverage when they buy stocks; by contrast, a 247% gain on real estate with only 10% down is actually a 2470% gain.
Carefully note the date on this article before reading!
May 27, 2005
Home Improvement
Real Estate Vs. Stocks
Sara Clemence
NEW YORK - Where’s a better place to put your money: the stock market or real estate? These days the accepted wisdom (at least at cocktail parties) says to pick real estate. But is the accepted wisdom right?
It is–in the short term. U.S. real estate sale prices increased more than 56% from the beginning of 1999 to the end of 2004, as tracked by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The S&P 500 index dipped nearly 6% during that same period.
But if you take a longer view–say 25 years–you’ll find that the S&P 500 has actually stomped the real estate market, from Boston to Detroit to Dallas. From the start of 1980 to the end of 2004, home sale prices increased 247%. A pretty sweet deal, it would seem. Over the same period, however, the S&P 500 shot up more than 1,000%.
…
by contrast, a 247% gain on real estate with only 10% down is actually a 2470% gain.
Wouldn’t most of the principal have been paid off over the period 1980-2004?
The real lameness of the article is that it doesn’t take into account the carrying costs of real estate (interest, property tax, insurance, repairs) and probably also ignored dividends on the S&P. These factors make the comparison even more lopsided in favor of stocks during that period.
Here is a great question: Which market’s prices are more distorted by relentless government intervention — the stock market or the housing market?
At any rate, I guess the recent behavior of the U.S. stock market has helped solve one puzzle mentioned in this May 2011 article.
Felix Salmon
A slice of lime in the soda
The stocks-housing disconnect
May 31, 2011 13:21 EDT
The double dip in the housing market — with house prices nationally now back to their 2002 levels — stands in stark contrast to what’s going on in the stock market, and a lot of people, myself, included, are puzzling over why that might be.
A few charts would seem to be in order here. First of all, the Case-Shiller house-price index, the blue line on this chart:
It’s pretty clear from this chart that house prices are going down rather than up, and have been doing so for a good five years at this point.
Next there’s houses priced in stocks:
This is particularly interesting because it dates the big decline in housing as a worthwhile asset class all the way back to the early 1980s. You can see the housing bubble and bust in the spike at the end of the chart, but you can also see that this is a very volatile series, and that houses can and probably will become much cheaper still, relative to stocks.
Cullen Roche, looking at these charts, concludes:
I don’t agree here at all. The government has done much more to intervene in the housing market than it has in the equity market, to the point at which the government at this point guarantees the overwhelming majority of mortgages. There’s nothing natural about the housing market price discovery process, and there won’t be anything natural about it for the foreseeable future, unless and until banks start taking mortgage risk again. And the large number of houses which have been sitting on the market for well over a year now is proof that this market isn’t clearing and that a lot of homeowners are still pretty delusional when it comes to what they think their home is worth.
…
“The government has done much more to intervene in the housing market than it has in the equity market, to the point at which the government at this point guarantees the overwhelming majority of mortgages.”
But with the equity markets, government has allowed practices to continue that are decidedly harmful to smaller investors, people with funds in 401k’s, etc.
With housing, government tries to prop up prices. With equities, government allows a rigged market to continue.
The Donlin Company closing after 88 years in St. Cloud
A local company that has provided windows, doors and millwork to lumber dealers throughout Minnesota for 88 years, soon will cease its operation.
Tim Donlin, president of The Donlin Company, said Wednesday afternoon that the business that has been in his family since 1923, will close this week.
“There’s not much of a story,” Donlin said. “I’m just going to let it go at that for now.”
The Donlin Company sent a letter to customers informing them of the decision. According to Bonnie Moeller, executive director of the Central Minnesota Builders Association, the statement said Donlin’s “efforts to secure additional capital and alternative financing have proved unsuccessful,” and the company’s owners “hope to continue at some point under better circumstances.”
The Donlin Company has been a CMBA member since 1976 and was a major provider of wholesale lumber to retailers among CMBA membership.
“I was totally shocked by this news,” Moeller said. “Unfortunately, as a product supplier, it appears they were having issues with financing and it’s getting harder and harder for businesses like this to get the credit they need … You hope this isn’t the end, and that line about continuing leaves open the possibility that maybe there would be an ownership change. If not, it’s a real shame to see a company with that kind of history close its doors.”
If not, it’s a real shame to see a company with that kind of history close its doors.” ??
Exactly my point in my earlier post in this thread…We propose to build bridges, hire police & firefighters with a jobs bill while the rest of the country just fends for itself…
+1 scdave.
“Oh, the web we weave when first we create a CULT of protection!”
Operating a business on a credit line made sense during the credit expansion. How could you otherwise compete? The ones with the answer to that question will survive this credit contraction.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel Eliminating 400 City Hall Jobs
FOX Chicago News
Chicago - Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Monday he is cutting 400 city management jobs as he gets ready to announce his first city budget.
Of those cuts, 100 people will be laid off.
The other 300 positions are vacant, and Emanuel said he’s simply not going to fill them.
The cuts are expected to save about $25 million.
The city is $636 million in the red heading into 2012.
He’s been a busy beaver. Yesterday he slashed the city’s employee head tax in half. Last week private scavenger/recyclers began “competing” against city recycling crews.
No telling yet what effect all these initiatives will have for the taxpayers. Property tax bills came out on Monday and all indications are they weren’t pretty despite plunging house prices.
In all fairness, this guy is doing things that others only talked about and he’s acting with an obvious imperative. It will be interesting to see how far he goes.
Is there an #occupychicago??? I want to see someone take on Rick Santelli and those young gun traders on the Floor of the Merchantile Exchange?
Yes, there is. Yesterday someone in an office above their protest location taunted them by placing signs in the windows that read: “we are the 1%”.
Ya gotta love a sense of humor during times like these.
Marie Antoinette, the Czar, Batista, and others didn’t get it either.
It’s easy to believe you are almighty when you have all the money.
Only Rahm Emanuel can go to Chicago…
(apologizes to Star Trek fans…)
BA DUMP BA
i think 2016 and a few sucessful years of tough love under his belt….could be the next prez?
Oct. 6, 2011, 8:50 a.m. EDT
Weekly initial jobless claims up 6,000 to 401,000
By Greg Robb, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The number of people who applied for unemployment benefits rose slightly last week, only partially reversing a sharp decline two weeks ago, U.S. data showed Thursday.
Initial jobless claims in the week ended Oct. 1 increased by 6,000 to a seasonally adjusted 401,000, the Labor Department said.
…
400K, the new normal. In 10 years 500-600K will be the new normal.
Obama has cast a gauntlet for Republicans to vote against his jobs bill. It will be interesting which of his opponents do so, and how they justify their decisions.
I am having a hard time envisioning the Republicans fielding a viable opponent to Obama in the presidential race. Their best shot would be Romney, but the extremists won’t go for him because he is a Mormon.
Curiouser and curiouser…
Your asking the wrong question
WS would love a contest between Romney and Obama because they are the same person. WS wins either way.
Romney would clearly be more pro-WS than is Obama.
Which candidate would fight against WS?
Nader?
Given that WS is a primary source of campaign funding for any candidate who stands a chance of getting election, I doubt either will fight against WS. But Obama at least makes the occasional comment in favor of financial reform; all I expect out of Romney is the traditional Republican pledge to stand in the way of any and all tax increases.
But Obama at least makes the occasional comment in favor of financial reform;
But he doesn’t mean it. That’s Obama in a nutshell.
The best thing happened to WS after 2008 financial collapse was the Obma presidency. Obama was right when he said he was the only one standing between the WS and the pitchforks. Too bad, Obama and his minions went on protecting WS for so long. Had it been McCain, the left would have been out on the street long ago and would have accomplished some reforms. I truly believe that the left would have accomplished more this way than having their turkey as a president.
As you know very well the right would not come out aginst WS. The right’s message to WS was and still is do whatever and we will still bail you out at the end of the day. The left’s the only source left for a meaningful WS changes. But only when they are in oppistion.
“Which candidate would fight against WS?”
Obama with a House majority and a filibuster-proof Senate. Or, more accurately, the House majority and filibuster-proof Senate would fight against Wall Street and Obama would be afraid not to sign the stuff on his desk.
Another question: would Obama take WS campaign contributions to get re-elected, and then double-cross WS by going medieval on them? He’s got nothing to lose.
“Obama with a House majority and a filibuster-proof Senate.”
Your child-like faith in your heroes is precious some times. We had all but that, and look what we ended up with.
I think butters might be right about this. McCain is also a bit of a wild card with a temper to boot. He might just have had enough at some point, but we’ll never now.
Obama with a House majority and a filibuster-proof Senate. Or, more accurately, the House majority and filibuster-proof Senate would fight against Wall Street and Obama would be afraid not to sign the stuff on his desk.
BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
My gawd - stop with the kool-aid…
I wish I understood why campaign funding matters. It has been years since I watched a campaign ad. I hit mute whenever the TV switches to ads of any kind. I don’t hear them. I don’t see them. They have no effect. I always vote so the robo calls for Get Out the Vote are wasted on me. I know where my polling place is and don’t need help to get there. I know that some of the money is used for other things, but I don’t go to speeches or rallies (hate ‘em) and for a presidential election, there is no need to get mailings (though I will occasionally read those for local elections where I am unfamiliar with the candidates).
If some social scientist could prove that campaign commercials were ineffective, they would be doing this country a huge favor.
I hit mute whenever the TV switches to ads of any kind. I don’t hear them. I don’t see them. They have no effect. I always vote so the robo calls for Get Out the Vote are wasted on me. I know where my polling place is and don’t need help to get there.
x3 Cheers Ms. Polly!
The wisdom of rats
Excerpted from “Contested Ground,” by Charles Bowden, which appeared in the November/December 2009 issue of Orion.
As a child, I could not color within the lines. Nor interest myself in children’s books. I also had trouble with categories, and this I have never outgrown. I have trouble understanding the concept of eras, I question the line in our culture that separates organic and inorganic, I talk to trees but also speak to rocks, I distrust chunks of meaning called the Ancient World, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, the American Century. I falter around words like progress.
Time has also been a problem since I cannot keep the past in the past, cannot believe the present is pure and freestanding, and think the future is simply a place we imagine.
I cannot really fathom hierarchies and so I believe in evolution as a fact but not as a meaning. I understand that
the man is more complex than the pigeon but I do not feel this fact nor really believe it. My first crayon drawing
was of a worm thinking of a man.
I am certain there can be no comprehension of the present without the past, just as I am certain the past is not
past. And there can be no comprehension of the present without all the tribes, human, animal, floral, and stones, river and dry wash, at the table taking part in the talk.
Nor do the disciplines convince me. Science cannot be kept safe from poetry, the cyclotron must deal with St.Francis and his Little Flowers, and the wolf cannot escape the force of the lupines blue with spring.
Well, eyes stickin’ with lil Opie!
But iffin’ anything happens between now and the 2012 election, then eyes reckon’s eyes have to vote for this here fella:
Tom Laughlin / aka, “Billy Jack”
Politics
In recent years, Laughlin has turned his attention to politics. In 1992, as a protest he sought the Democratic Party nomination for President. He told the Milwaukee Sentinel, “I am the least qualified person I know to be President, except George Bush.”
However, he was seen by much of the press as a “fringe candidate”.
Laughlin later heavily protested being excluded from the primary ballot in his home state of Wisconsin at the same time former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke was included. After dropping out of the race, he worked as an advisor to the campaign of Ross Perot.
He ran for president again in 2004, this time as a Republican. Campaigning as an opponent of the Iraq war, he received 154 votes in the New Hampshire primary despite not being allowed to participate in the debates. He ran again in 2008 as a Democrat, getting 47 votes in the New Hampshire primary.
Laughlin has been an outspoken critic of the Iraq War and President George W. Bush.His website presents several writings calling the Iraq conflict worse than the Vietnam War, in addition to pieces on what he calls “realistic exit strategies”. He also devotes several pages of the Billy Jack website to reasons that he feels justify an impeachment of George W. Bush and has also repeatedly stated the need for a viable, mainstream third political party. In addition, he has criticized the Christian right, which he has called “false Evangelicals”, “false prophets”, and the “Christo-fascist movement”. He released several videos and writings during the 2008 election.
A notable incident occurred while he was filming in New York City, when he broke up a street fight on Manhattan’s West Side, threatening to rip a man’s arm off. Laughlin also gained notoriety at this time for making a citizen’s arrest of a man after an argument over Laughlin’s driving.
Laughlin has been seeking funding for a fifth Billy Jack film since at least 1996, and at one point Laughlin had plans to make a Billy Jack television series. In 2004 he announced that the film would be entitled Billy Jack’s Crusade to End the War in Iraq and Restore America to Its Moral Purpose; this was shortened to Billy Jack’s Moral Revolution in 2006
There are still a large number of people who DO watch political commercials… and beleive every word of them.
But the commercials are just decoration and diversion for the real campaigning… fund raising dinners, who’s real purpose isn’t raising money for more publicity (although that’s part of it), but instead, it’s a mechanism for introductions and patronage.
“We had all but that, and look what we ended up with.”
Which means we DIDN’T have “that.” And that “that” is what I was talking about. Try again.
The Financial Times
October 6, 2011 6:19 pm
Obama says protests born of ‘frustration’
By Richard McGregor and James Politi in Washington
The anti-Wall Street protests spreading across the US “express the frustration” of ordinary Americans angry that the bankers who caused the financial crisis are still fighting regulatory reforms, Barack Obama said.
In a press conference on Thursday, the US president also endorsed a proposal from Democrats in the Senate for a so-called millionaire’s tax to pay for his $447bn bills to promote jobs.
Mr Obama, who has been accused of being too conciliatory with Republicans in Congress, said he would keep pressure on them to explain why they would not support his jobs measures.
Combined with his renewed criticism of Wall Street and proposals to make the wealthy pay higher taxes, Mr Obama is adopting a far tougher approach to his opponents, and also one more likely to appeal to his Democratic base.
…
“…..fighting regulatory reforms, Barack Obama said”
Go home. You are part of the problem.
I’m thinking that the 2012 presidential election will be a repeat of the 1984 Reagan-Mondale contest.
Although Reagan was said to have won that election in a landslide against a weak Democratic opponent, the most telling statistic was the one about the pool of eligible voters vs. those who actually turned out. In the election of 1984, more than half the eligible electorate stayed home.
In the election of 1984, more than half the eligible electorate stayed home.
Which was typical in that time period.
Reagan winning 49 states to 1 was a landslide…
It had to do with the releasing of poll results before the voting ended in Mountain/Pacific time zones.
Networks no longer do that.
Why thankxs for the minor remembrance Steve J…x1 Cheers!
Maybe on the west coast. It’s not like the mountain states were ever going to go for Mondale.
Maybe on the west coast
CA = 30 million
But their electoral size isn’t nearly that much bigger. Reagan wasn’t going to lose that one regardless of what the media did on election day.
CA, WA, OR = 64
Mtn. States = Not popular at that time for Alaskan Lipstick, Spaghetti & Meatballs.
Mondale chose U.S. Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro of New York as his running mate making her the first woman nominated for that position by a major party, and the first Italian American on a major party ticket.
“In the election of 1984, more than half the eligible electorate stayed home.”
No ACORN taxi service in 1984?
Obama has cast a gauntlet for Republicans to vote against his jobs bill.
Even DEMOCRATS don’t want to vote for this bill.
Not ONE dem sponsor in the house
Harry Reid is the only sponsor in the Senate
Go “Hope and Change”
Thanks as always for sharing your RNC talking points with the HBB.
6 October 2011 Last updated at 13:50 ET
Obama lays down gauntlet to Senate on American Jobs Act
Obama: “People really need help right now, the economy really needs a jolt right now. This is not a game.”
US President Barack Obama has said his jobs act would insure the American economy against another downturn, even while the situation in Europe worsens.
…
A large part of leadership involves standing up for what you consider right in the face of opposition.
Obama’s Phony Fight For Housing
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2011/1024/opinions-steve-forbes-fact-comment-obama-phony-fight-housing.html
Talk about phony, try the low interest rates.
We wanted a pony. A Pony!
The sputtering U.S. housing market will result in more prime borrowers being pushed further underwater on their mortgages, according to Fitch Ratings.
http://www.alacrastore.com/blog/index.php/2011/10/05/half-of-us-prime-mortgage-borrowers-could-be-underwater/
A Town That Explains Housing’s Conundrum
http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2011/10/05/a-town-that-explains-housings-conundrum/?mod=WSJBlog
Across the street, a house sits vacant. The owner took out multiple lines of credit against the home—and then couldn’t pay them back, neighbors said. Now, they take turns mowing his lawn and hope the bank sells the house soon.
Yep
What’s stopping the bank from selling the house?
Romney Environment Push Is Fresh Target for His Rivals
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203388804576613293746516756.html?mod=WSJ_article_forsub
Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney, whose health-care record as governor of Massachusetts has left him struggling to win the support of conservative voters, now faces another point of vulnerability: his environmental record.
Just days after his 2002 election, Mr. Romney hired Douglas Foy, one of the state’s most prominent environmental activists, and put him in charge of supervising four state agencies.
Mr. Foy had initiated a lawsuit that led to the cleanup of Boston Harbor and had worked to protect fishing grounds and seashores. Once in the Romney administration, he served as the governor’s negotiator on a regional climate-change initiative
(The rest is sign-up for price tease, and this could be a PR piece for the undecided voter, but nevertheless interesting.)
Maybe Romney can schedule some photo ops where he’s dumping leaking barrels of toxic waste into Boston Harbor. That should appease the Tea Baggers.
4closurefraud.org back in the news. They show no MERSy.
Lake Worth attorney among 3 to plead guilty in lucrative real estate scheme in Wellington’s upscale Versailles community
By Jane Musgrave Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 6:25 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011
WEST PALM BEACH — A Lake Worth attorney who once railed against foreclosure fraud and two Miami businessmen have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud and money laundering in connection with a lucrative scheme in which they recruited straw buyers for mini-mansions in Wellington’s tony Versailles community.
Carol Asbury, 59, a title attorney who founded the Save My Home Law Group in late 2009, and Patrick Brinson, of Miami, pleaded guilty to the charges last month and face up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when they are sentenced on Nov. 18.
Carl Alexander, 46, who recruited phony buyers from the some of Miami-Dade County’s poorest neighborhoods, pleaded guilty to the same charges Wednesday. He will be sentenced on Jan. 6.
In exchange for their pleas, federal prosecutors agreed to drop 30 fraud charges against them. Charges also were dropped against Godfrey Myles, a former University of Florida and pro football player.
Another man prosecutors say was involved in the scheme, Parkland real estate agent David Lam, has not yet accepted a plea deal, according to court records.
The scheme, outlined in a 2009 series in The Palm Beach Post, involved paying straw buyers to pretend they were buying million-dollar homes in Versailles. The unidentified phony purchasers were paid between $700 and $15,000 to let their names be used on fraudulent loan documents. Those involved inflated the home prices and kept the difference, prosecutors said.
For instance, those involved made about $1.8 million on $4.9 million worth of loans from four homes in Versailles, prosecutors said. They made $488,000 on $2.5 million worth of loans for two other homes. The homes ended up in foreclosure when the mortgages weren’t paid.
In addition to her law practice, Asbury sponsored the popular blog 4closurefraud.org . Revelations on the blog have been credited with helping expose the robo-signing scandal that pushed banks to freeze home repossessions in the fall.
Hey, looks like America-the-Nation” is coming around to what $500,000 U$D represents. Maybe even what $250,000 U$D represents. Maybe even what $125,000 U$D represents. (eyes got chores to do, maybe best to stop there for now.)
PS:
(Anyone knows what happened to Mr. Rio of Brazil?)
Meanwhile, back in SD, in “America-the-Nation”:
Welfare mom creates million dollar biz: how she did it:
by Sarah B. Weir, Yahoo! blogger, on Mon Oct 3, 2011
[Yike$] = Hwy’s authorial intrusions
Trisha Waldron was 28 years old when she realized that the life she had drifted into was a dead end. She had gone from being a daughter to a wife to having her first baby at 22. Now single and barely surviving on food stamps in the Black Hills of South Dakota, she had no college degree, no work experience to speak of, and no clear idea of what to do with the rest of her life. She owned a tiny two-bedroom house from her divorce, and she had her two lovely little girls, ages four and six, but that was about it.
You can create your own life
One afternoon, volunteering at her daughters’ school, she heard a teacher tell the kids, “You can create your own life.” That sentence changed everything. As she puts it, “I knew I had to take responsibility for my own life. I had been running it according to others and things hadn’t worked out very well.”
She applied for a student loan [Yike$] and went back to school. The first year, she and her girls lived on welfare [Yike$], food stamps [Yike$], and odd jobs, but the second year, an opportunity presented itself and she grabbed it. An artist friend offered her a job assembling jewelry for a mail order catalogue in her spare time. She knew it wouldn’t be easy: she’d be in school all day, taking care of the kids in the evening, and then have to work late into the night at her kitchen table, but she’d be working for herself and be able to get off welfare.
Her first million
After only five years in business, she had made her first million. But, as Trisha remembers, “Getting there was incredibly challenging, I learned by trial and error, I cried a lot. But I lived simply and didn’t need much to survive. I was in a small town and hired my girlfriends to help me. My neighbors pitched in with the kids. My big break came in 1987 when the catalogue of the Smithsonian Institution started featuring my work.”
1. Times have changed. It was easier to get off the ground back then.
2. Trisha Waldron is lucky that her timing was good. Disposable incomes aren’t so disposable anymore, if they exist at all when the bills are paid, and food is put on the table. Costume jewlery isn’t a necessity and much more expensive then the Great Depression lipstick purchase.(Even with Chindia -my experience)
We had a small firm back then. We had a start up recently. Two different experiences.
Maybe a collection agency might do well right now, but no thanks to the stress and abuse.
Well, apparently she’s not bk,… yet:
Anywho, Hwy just purchased x2 of these, you know, Hwy’s peon $timulus support for fellow Americans.
Di$closure:
(not meant as a plug Mr. Ben, honestly eyes just discovered this today)
trishawaldrondesigns com
LOCIR - Copper Iridescent Cottonwood Leaf Ornament
LOBIR - Copper Iridescent Birch Leaf Ornament
LOFMIR - Copper Iridescent Full Moon Maple Leaf Ornament
From there Trisha Waldron has expanded to a thriving company consisting of close to thirty moms, wives, sisters, grandmas and friends. We are all dedicated to creating new jewelry designs for you. We incorporate gems, minerals, and beautiful castings, old and new beads from around the world, ancient coins, Swarovski crystal, fresh water pearls into beautiful, handcrafted pieces of jewelry.
You forgot the Smithsonian [Yike$].
Also notice that she had a house from the divorce, probably paid off, in a state with low living expenses. Yo, oil city.
O by the way, did she need that college degree to get that job ‘from an artist friend,” or could the press not resist that single-mom-in-college cliché?
She owned a tiny two-bedroom house
Believe it or Not!, places like this actually exist in South Dakota, and thankxs to recent modern lending $tandards, she was probably able to withdraw $375,000 in a “$ingle Deposit Tran$action!” and bribe someone in the purchasing dept. at the Smithsonian [Yike$]
BWAHAHAHicHAHAHicHAHAHAHAHicHAHAHic* (DennisN™)
I thought the single-mom-in-college cliché ment stripper?
Only if she’s moderately “hot” or better.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain on Wednesday called the Occupy Wall Street protesters anti-American and anti-capitalistic.
“Don’t be jealous, don’t be envious,” Cain said as he signed copies of his memoir. “I don’t have much patience for someone who does not want to achieve their American dream the old-fashioned way.”
That’s right the old fashion way.
Bribe regulators to let you sell worthless mbs to retired people and the gov, then ask the gov for a bialout. Not to mention market manipulation.
The old fashioned way steal it.
Herman Cain grew up in the segregated south and went on to become a multi-millionaire many times over by starting his own business…
I’ll take that over a “community organizer” all-day-long…
Herman Cain is talking about WS and says that these people who object to the WS rape of our gov and middle class are communists and anti American.
Should we all sit back and accept that it’s OK for WS to sell worthless MBS to the masses and then get gov bailouts???
“I don’t have much patience for someone who does not want to achieve their American dream the old-fashioned way.”
Ha, he’ll fit right in the ol’ boyz club then:
(For the HBB youngster’s):
SMITH BARNEY. “We make money the old fa$hioned way. We EARN IT!”
Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Campaigns
Ad Campaign Overview:
In the 1970s, Smith Barney was a small, obscure investment banking firm with a “white-glove” reputation. After deregulation in 1975, fixed-rate commissions were abolished for all transactions, including the large institutional fees with which Smith Barney made its money.
I don’t think he bacame a millionair by starting his own business. That’s not the point anyway.
The point is that he thinks people who protest wall streets theft and manipulation of government are communists and anit American. ie we should all just turn a blind eye and take what we get.
Cain never started a single business.
US Navy, Pillsbury, Burger King, Godfathers Pizza, Federal Reserve Bank.
All were mature businesses when he worked for them.
What do the facts have to do with it?
Well, Steve J, looks like you get to fill in for “Missing in Rio”
Pillsbury, Burger King, Godfathers Pizza,
Cain caught between Romney & Perry in the polls
Hwy sense’s a trend:
dough, bad pickles, dough, bad pickles,…
Hermain Cain is a very impressive fellow, but I’m starting to think he doesn’t have the temperament to be a politician.
Have the “$wift-boater$” validated his “birth certificate” & Navy record?
I don’t know. Obama grew up as a black kid in a white (and Indonesian) world without a father. That “community organizer” is also very wealthy and will only become more so as time goes on. Kind of a wash, if you ask me.
Well, except for the part where Obama became president. That trumps pretty much everything.
Well Slipperybanana, you’s forget to mention just how many [as in throngs] of the “TruePathtoPro$perity™” / “TrueReduceTheDeficitNow!! Today!™” / “TrueAnger™” / “TrueGridLok™” /“TrueEvangelistia’$™” weeParty tea toadlers & GOP $tallions dragged Mr. Cain to the podium so he could speak for them.
heheeeheeeheehaahaaahaaheeehaahaaa… (Hwy50™)
What can more ordinary in this America than a Godfather CEO of a Pizza “Bidne$$”???????
Sleeper agents in GOP Politics:
They acquire jobs and identities—ideally ones which will prove useful in the future—and attempt to blend into everyday life as normal citizens. Counter-espionage agencies in the target country cannot, in practice, closely watch all of those who might possibly have been recruited some time before.
In a sense, the best sleeper agents are those who do not need to be paid by the sponsor as they are able to earn enough money to finance themselves. This avoids any possibly traceable payments from abroad. In such cases, it is possible that the sleeper agent might be successful enough to become what is sometimes termed an ‘agent of influence’.
Those sleeper agents who have been discovered have often been natives of the target country who moved elsewhere in early life and been co-opted (perhaps for ideological or ethnic reasons) before returning to the target country. This is valuable to the sponsor as the sleeper’s language and other skills can be those of a ‘native’ and thus less likely to trigger suspicion.
Choosing and inserting sleeper agents has often posed difficulties as it is uncertain which target will be appropriate some years in the future. If the sponsor GOP (or its policies) change after the sleeper has been inserted, the sleeper might be found to have been planted in the wrong target.
His campaign is going to flame out even faster than Perry’s did…
His cast $hadow looks eerily like this fella: Thomas Sowell
Actually if Cain was smart, he would pick up Sowell as an economic adviser…
Hey, hang back up those QA “Brainstorming” & work place “Diversity” posters…
Sowell’s view on globalization don’t match mine. He isn’t opposed to it, nor outsourcing or insourcing. I read his econ book and vehemently disagreed with a lot of it. His Housing Boom or Bust book was by far, his best work.
Perry is going to win…
Not Perry, but Palin…
Eyes tore up my Palin/Jeb Shrub III, win/place/show ticket last night. :-/
Romney/Bachmann
My fear. Because they just might win.
Looking at a home that is our favorite floorplan tonight, but the property history looks fishy, and the lot isn’t ideal.
Why do they insist on trying to hide information to potential buyers, when we can do title and/or county searches. The tax roll info is public record, for Godsake. 199X is the last sale, but the taxes are high.(i.e. flip)
Perhaps Suzanne will research it for you.
AmazingRuss
I asked our broker to disclose the property history, and I have a title rep connection should he fail. For the dough our broker is making, he can do the work.
The one thing about Suzanne and her “types” is the selective disclosure. It drives me nuts.
I looked at the property tax information, and knew it wasn’t a long term owner situation.
RAL is right. Long live his reminders.
Suzanne has nice legs.
Fellow Homebuyers take note:
Redfin is a day behind the MLS. Realturd dot com has the listing before other websites. Direct feed off MLS.
The home of interest sold before we could see it. It was 2 DOM (realturd & MLS) and not 1 DOM (Redfin)
Man, this market is frantic if it’s not a SS or REO.
“Suzanne has nice legs.”
Did you see the size of her garage?
Caboose?
Yup matches the size of her headlights..
Did you see the size of her garage?
(Should Hwy email $arah Palin & Preacher Perry for their “TrueEvangelistia™” co
mmets?)Lucy: “Hwy50, you’re such a BLOCKHEAD!”
Space Rocks Like This One Probably Helped Deliver Earth’s Oceans:
By Rebecca Boyle / Posted 10.06.2011 / Popular Science
Earth’s oceans likely started out as space snowballs born far beyond the orbit of Pluto, a new study says. Water-rich comets collided with the young planet after hurtling through the nascent solar system, and probably delivered a significant amount of the water on this planet.
After its formation, Earth was too hot to hold on to its original water, yet 71 percent of the planet is oceans, meaning something else must have deposited it here. Comets contain much more water than asteroids, but all previously studied comets had the wrong water isotope ratios, so scientists figured only about 10 percent of Earth’s water was cometary in origin. Researchers thought meteorites, which may have also delivered our gold and other precious metals, must have brought Earth its water.
Good thing God had those comets showed up on the Second Day.
It would have been tough on the fish, if he got the Second and Fifth days switched.
Are those first days and adder to the “Original 7,000″?
Take it easy guys! Wild assumptions like this are the corner stones of modern science!
I’m not sure why you italicized the gold line. Isn’t it accepted that the conditions that form gold don’t occur here? (I’m being serious!)
I AM A BANKSTER
I LOANED PEOPLE MONEY TO BUY BUBBLE ASSETS, WHETHER THEY COULD AFFORD TO MAKE THE PAYMENTS OR NOT.
I TURNED CRAP SECURITIES INTO AAA GOLD, AND UNLOADED THEM ONTO PENSION FUNDS.
WHEN I RAN OUT OF ACTUAL CRAP TO SELL, I CREATED SYNTHETIC CRAP.
I DIDN’T FEEL LIKE PAYING ALL THAT MONEY TO PROCESS THE PAPERWORK CORRECTLY, SO I CREATED MERS
I LEVERED UP 40 TIMES
I GOT A CRAZY COMMISSION ON EVERY TRANSACTION, EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. IN CASH.
I BOUGHT INSURANCE FROM AIG, ANOTHER BUNCH OF IDIOTS WHO CAN’T DO BASIC MATH.
I BOUGHT OUT THE REGULATORS, AND MADE SURE THEY WOULD LOOK THE OTHER WAY.
I BOUGHT OUT THE POLITICIANS, TO LEGALIZE THE STUFF THAT EVEN THE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR REGULATORS COULDN’T IGNORE.
WHEN THIS STACK OF CRAP BLEW UP IN MY FACE, I WENT CRYING LIKE A LITTLE B##CH TO WASHINGTON, AND GOT/CONTINUE TO GET TAXPAYER BAILOUTS.
I AM THE 1%………BITE ME IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT
Their attitude in a nutshell
Beautiful X-er, (I found this on the cutting floor, musta fell out…)
I WAS EDUCATED IN THE BE$T UNIVER$ITIE$ IN AMERICA!
I wrote this a long time ago on this blog.
THE WASHINGTON HILLBILLIES
Come and listen to my story bout a man named Dodd
refied his house but it seemed kinda odd
saved eighty grand but he said he didn`t know
law makers get a break cause they`re friends of Angelo
Mozillo that is , CountryWide , Bad loans
Well the first thing ya know Angelo is in some trouble
he say`s HEY DODD NOW THEY SAY I CAUSED A BUBBLE!
Dodd say`s fine I`ll just sponsor us a bill
tell em that they need it and I`ll sell it on the Hill
Well the moral of the story that you all should know
better vote em out if they`re friends of Angelo
or one day soon we`ll be shootin at our food
Bernankes got us lookin at two hundred dollar crude
Oil that is , black gold , OPEC tea
And now it`s time to say goodbye to you and all your kin
and Dodd would like to thank you all for kindly chippin in
you`re all invited back again to this localitee
to pay another trillion for their bogus LTV
Loan to value, that is
Kick your shoes off
Ya`ll come back now ya hear?!
jeff
That was great. Paul Henning is smiling down from the heavens.
Federal Employees Seeing Increase in Revoked Security Clearances
By Ian Smith
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
“The Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently reported a 5 percent decline in the number of federal employees who held top secret clearance in the 2010 fiscal year as compared to the previous fiscal year.
The cause for the revocations often stems from problems found on financial screenings done for the security clearances. During the economic downturn, many federal employees have experienced financial hardships such as foreclosures that tarnish their credit reports and result in the loss of a security clearance, which can cause the employee to lose his or her job.”
Read more:
http://tinyurl.com/66c69gw
Very interesting. A reason not to intentionally default, a scenario I was recently pondering.
The Bankstas got us cornered!
many federal employees have experienced financial hardships such as foreclosures that…provide an oppoortunity for the AllChineseGov’t
stealObtainwithCa$hifnecessaryAquistionTeam to identify possible American & qua$i-American target$.(That’s creepy, eyes had a Ru$$ian cold-war fla$hback, naw, …musta been a Sylvester Stallone movie.)
Geez, from prime-time Tampon commercials to this,…”Parenting”, more than meets the
mindseye.9 things you didn’t know about the life of Steve Jobs:
By Taylor Hatmaker, Tecca | Today in Tech
8. Alternative lifestyle
In a few interviews, Jobs hinted at his early experience with the psychedelic drug LSD. Of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Jobs said: “I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”
The connection has enough weight that Albert Hofmann, the Swiss scientist who first synthesized (and took) LSD, appealed to Jobs for funding for research about the drug’s therapeutic use.
Also Steve Jobs was a Buddhist, which is a philosophy, not a religion. He essentially had no religion.
He had a net worth of $8 billion.
Those most admirable things about Steve Jobs.
Well there will obviously be wealth redistribution when his will is read. But I have a sneaking suspicion that most of his wealth is not going to go straight to the government to redistribute to anyone other than his heirs and a few charities.
Steve Jobs was the living Hank Rearden.
Good thing the government built the internet/railroad for him to use.
“He had a net worth of $8 billion.”
Presumably he was able to pay his bills.
“He essentially had no religion.”
But he had a country contrary to other hippies from the past like
Lennon.
Hats off to Mr. Jobs. Dabbling in psychadelia was certainly a life-enhancing experience for my, um, friends. I am sure that anyone that has ever participated would agree.
I’m from the youngest side of that era - 52 years old and I had hair that was longer than the 1976 picture of Steve Jobs.
Figure that his experiences influenced him to think (if you pardon) “outside of the box.”
But I never had any urge to take any drug…back in those days.
“I only smoked marijuana once and I didn’t inhale”
Bill Clinton-
Quantitative easing
Central banks increase the supply of money by “printing” more. In practice, this may mean purchasing government bonds or other categories of assets, using the new money. Rather than physically printing more notes, the new money is typically issued in the form of a deposit at the central bank. The idea is to add more money into the system, which depresses the value of the currency, and to push up the value of the assets being bought and to lower longer-term interest rates, which encourages more borrowing and investment. Some economists fear that quantitative easing can lead to very high inflation in the long term.
I read that the money supply globally has doubled since 2008. I do not think this is a stretch.
The JIT li$t is expanding…
JIT / HI = “Just-in-Time” / High Inflation
Oct. 5, 2011, 10:56 a.m. EDT
Consumer-credit delinquencies rise
By Ruth Mantell, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Delinquency rates for consumer loans rose in the second quarter, as employment weakness persisted and higher gas and food prices pressured family budgets, according to a report released Wednesday by the American Bankers Association.
According to ABA, delinquencies rose in nine of 11 loan categories, led by home-equity loans. The ABA’s composite ratio, which tracks delinquencies in eight closed-end installment loan categories, rose 17 basis points to 2.88% of all accounts in the second quarter, compared with 2.71% in the first quarter. In the second quarter of 2010, 3% of accounts were delinquent. Delinquencies are late payments that are at least 30 days overdue.
Wednesday morning’s ADP report shows figures higher than expected but still indicating weakness in the jobs market.
“Lackluster job creation, private sector uncertainty and public sector job cuts have stalled momentum and increased pressure on consumers as the economy struggles to find a way forward,” said James Chessen, ABA’s chief economist, in a statement.
“A significant increase in gasoline and food prices since the beginning of the year has further stretched family budgets, squeezing consumers and making it difficult for some people to make loan payments. Real estate prices continue to fall, and home loans face increased pressure as unemployment continues to take its toll on borrowers,” said Chessen.
Similar delinquency rates are expected in the third quarter, he added.
“It’s hard to envision significant improvements in delinquency rates this year given the sluggish economy and falling consumer sentiment,” Chessen said. “On the positive side, bank card delinquencies have shown encouraging trends as consumers work to reduce their debt obligations and build a better financial base.”
…
OCCUPY DEADBEAT
RENT ?
FEISTY DON’T PLAY DAT
Bank of America offers up to $20,000 short sale incentive to struggling homeowners
By Kimberly Miller Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 6:12 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 6, 2011
Bank of America, the nation’s largest mortgage servicer, is offering Florida homeowners up to $20,000 to short sale their homes rather than letting them linger in foreclosure.
The limited time offer has received little promotion from the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank, which sent emails to select Florida Realtors earlier this week outlining basic details of the plan.
Only homeowners whose short sales are submitted for approval to Bank of America before Nov. 30 will qualify. The homes must have no offers on them already and the closing must occur before Aug. 31 .
Realtors said the Bank of America plan, which has a minimum payout amount of $5,000, is a genuine incentive to struggling homeowners who may otherwise fall into Florida’s foreclosure abyss.
The current timeline to foreclosure in Florida is an average of 676 days - nearly two years - according to real estate analysis company RealtyTrac. The national average foreclosure timeline is 318 days.
“I think this is a positive sign that the bank is being creative to try and help homeowners and get things moving,” said Paul Baltrun, who works with real estate and mortgages at the Law Office of Paul A. Krasker in West Palm Beach. “With real estate attorneys handling these cases, you’re talking two, three, four years before there’s going to be a resolution in a foreclosure.”
Guy Cecala, chief executive officer and publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, called the short sale payout a “bribe.”
“You can call it a relocation fee, but it’s basically a bribe to make sure the borrower leaves the house in good condition and in an orderly fashion,” Cecala said. “It makes good business sense considering you may have to put $20,000 into a foreclosed home to fix it up.”
Homeowners, especially ones who feel cheated by the bank, have been known to steal appliances and other fixtures, or damage the home.
“This might be the banks finally waking up that they can have someone in there with an incentive not to damage the property,” said Realtor Shannon Brink, with Re/Max Prestige Realty in West Palm Beach. “Isn’t it better to have someone taking care of the pool and keeping the air conditioner on?”
A spokesman for Bank of America said the program is being tested in Florida, and if successful, could be expanded to other states.
Wells Fargo and J.P. Morgan Chase have similar short sale programs, sometimes called “cash for keys.”
Wells Fargo spokesman Jason Menke said his company offers up to $20,000 on eligible short sales that are left in “broom swept” condition. Although the program is not advertised, deals are mostly made on homes in states with lengthy foreclosure timelines, he said.
And caveats exist. The Wells Fargo short sale incentive is only good on first lien loans that it owns, which is about 20 percent of its total portfolio.
Bank of America’s plan excludes Ginnie Mae, Federal Housing Administration and VA loans.
Similar to the federal Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives program, or HAFA, which offers $3,000 in relocation assistance, the Bank of America program may also waive a homeowner’s deficiency judgment at closing.
A deficiency judgment in a short sale is basically the difference between what the house sells for and what is still owed on the loan.
HAFA, which began in April 2010, has seen limited success with just 15,531 short sales completed nationwide through August.
But Realtors said cash for keys programs can work.
Joe Kendall, a broker associate at Sandals Realty in Fort Myers, said he recently closed on a short sale where the seller got $25,000 from Chase.
“They realize people are struggling and this is another way to get the homes off the books,” he said.
This is easily the best thing I have seen in a LONG time.
*Explicit language*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mAUQYn6DjM
LOL. OMG that was funny. Thank you, Muggy.
La la da la ti da dah di do. Oh, hey!
“This is the most serious financial crisis we’ve seen, at least since the 1930s, if not ever.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8812260/World-facing-worst-financial-crisis-in-history-Bank-of-England-Governor-says.html
Could this Depression (oh sorry,”economic crisis”) be more like The Long Depression starting in 1870? I’m starting to reading up on it, and it started from easy money policies for a real estate bubble, and then when it popped…
One could argue that the dot com bubble was the first sign of our troubles trying to cover up our economic rot. But then came this epic housing bubble.
Can someone read me this bedtime story? (More like a Steven King novel. LOL)
“Financial experts said the committee’s actions would be a “Titanic” disaster for pensioners, savers and workers approaching retirement. Sir Mervyn suggested that was a price worth paying to save the economy from recession.”
And what sacrifice will you bear, Sir Mervyn?
How Occupy Wall Street has evolved
By Julianne Pepitone @CNNMoneyTech October 6, 2011: 5:47 AM ET
A scene from Day 19 of the continuing Occupy Wall Street protest.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — When Occupy Wall Street began on September 17, the protest consisted of a few hundred people speaking out about corporate greed and inequality. They practiced tai chi in a park near Wall Street, painted homemade signs and discussed what their demands should be.
Now, almost three weeks later, the once-haphazard movement is growing larger and more coordinated. Hundreds of people have been arrested. Large labor unions, including the AFL-CIO and SEIU, have joined in. When new arrivals turn out, volunteers swiftly equip them with donated sleeping bags and food. Dozens of cities nationwide have launched their own “occupy” protests in solidarity.
Like the “Arab Spring” uprisings that inspired its tactics, Occupy Wall Street is evolving.
…