The Housing Bubble

Awaiting,

Just saw that you made an offer on a house in the October 9th Bits Bucket.

Congratulations!

When rates are so low for so long, buying a house is like earning money on your cash (the amount saved by not paying rent, minus insurance, taxes, maintenance, etc.). The Fed has put prospective buyers, especially those with cash, between a rock and a hard place…which was exactly their goal.

Still, since you intend to make this your toe-tag house, once you buy, you just have to stick your head in the sand and not look at housing prices anymore. Tough for an HBBer to do, but necessary to avoid the stress.

Please let us know how it all goes!

So happy for you!

Realtors Are Liars®

California Nears Automatic Spending Cuts With Revenue $705 Million Short ~ Bloomberg

California’s revenue for the fiscal year that began three months ago has fallen $705 million below what Governor Jerry Brown and Democrats projected, approaching a level that may trigger automatic university spending cuts and higher community college fees.

September revenue came in $301.6 million below estimates, Controller John Chiang, a Democrat, said in a report today. July was $538.8 million less than forecast, Chiang said Aug. 9. Revenue in August was $135 million more than expected.

The $86 billion general-fund spending plan Brown signed in June included a series of cuts activated if higher revenue doesn’t materialize. The first, if the shortfall is $1 billion, would trim University of California and California State University budgets each by $100 million and increase community- college fees by $10 million.

With a $2 billion gap, the contraction would mean a seven- day reduction in the public-school year to save $1.54 billion and an end to $248 million in home-to-school busing subsidies. Brown’s finance department will determine in December if the cuts are needed based on revenue projections for the remainder of the fiscal year.

“The potential for revenue shortfalls is precisely why the Governor and Legislature included trigger cuts in this year’s state spending plan,” Chiang said in a statement. “September’s revenues alone do not guarantee that triggers will be pulled. But as the largest revenue month before December, these numbers do not paint a hopeful picture.”

As crisis fades, silence on banking ethics
CHRISTINA REXRODE; McClatchy Newspapers
Published: 12/26/10 12:05 am

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – In a city built on faith and finance, there’s an unaddressed tension between the two.

Charlotte, the country’s second-largest banking center, is also a city where top bank executives teach Sunday school, serve as deacons and mention church at employee rallies. It’s the kind of place where Hugh McColl Jr. says he got inspired to buy BankAmerica, a decision that created Bank of America Corp., while singing a hymn at the early service.

And yet there’s rarely a public conversation about what is ethically right and wrong in the banking industry, and how that contributed to the financial meltdown still roiling national economies. Although bankers acknowledge that “mistakes” were made or there were “cognitive failures,” they are often loath to dwell on their industry’s ethical breaches.

It’s an uncomfortable conversation but a necessary one, many believe. Without it, they say, we will only find ourselves in another financial crisis.

Richard Boyce, the mayor of Belmont, N.C., and a Presbyterian minister who teaches seminary students in Charlotte, said he’s concerned that the city’s bankers haven’t clearly addressed the issues of right and wrong in their industry.

“We’ve all benefited from the success of the banks in Charlotte,” he said. “It’s not like any of our hands are clean. … What frustrates me is here in this banking center, we don’t seem to be talking to one another much about how we decide what is proper and improper in terms of banking practices today.”
…

So long as corporations are people, shouldn’t they be held to the same ethical standards as the rest of us Lilliputians?

Investment banks need ethics as well as a desire to make money
Each major investment bank has a Code of Ethics. These are in practical terms useless.
By John Reynolds
5:55AM BST 10 Oct 2011

Investment banks are required to train bankers in “compliance”, which ensures a literal obedience to laws, but put little or no emphasis on ethics. If investment banks don’t start changing the way they behave, though, regulation will increase and society will continue to suffer the consequence of bankers’ excesses.

Although investment banks have been – often rightly – criticised for their role in the financial crisis, their behaviour reflects ethical standards in business more widely. There is nothing intrinsically ethical or unethical about market capitalism or investment banking.

Investment banks have had major ethical failings, but retain a culture which can be valuable – cultivating qualities such as innovation and intellectual rigour. At the same time, qualities which investment banks list in their advertising – such as client service – often are not the same as qualities that are valued internally, such as a desire to make money.

At the start of the sub-prime crisis, Goldman Sachs developed a sub-prime mortgage product which led to fraud charges by the SEC, a $550m settlement, and a hard-hitting and very public investigation by a US senate committee in which the chairman, Senator Carl Levin, told Goldman boss Lloyd Blankfein: “I would not trust you.”
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GOP efforts to field a presidential candidate have become lost in the weeds of evangelical one-upmanship. Good luck to the RNC with pulling this campaign out of the depths of fire and brimstone!

Posted at 10:00 AM ET, 10/09/2011
Religious bigotry on display
By Jennifer Rubin

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex., who has a knack for stacking the crowd and the vote, won the Values Voter Summit this weekend with 37 percent of those casting ballots. Herman Cain (who delivered a stemwinder on Friday night) came in second. And third, with another surprise showing (he came in fourth in the Ames straw poll this summer), was Rick Santorum. Texas Gov. Rick Perry was down in the pack with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) at 8 percent. Perry, once again, was unsuccessful in garnering support from the segment of the GOP essential to his success in the primary race.

But the big news was not the vote itself. On Friday, the appearance of Pastor Robert Jeffress set off a chain of events that may be remembered long after the vote results are forgotten. Jeffress in his introduction of Perry voiced his previously known anti-Mormon views. Afterward, he doubled down in remarks to reporters.
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German push for Greek default risks EMU-wide ’snowball’
UK Telegraph

Germany is pushing behind the scenes for a “hard” default in Greece with losses of up to 60pc for banks and pension funds, risking a chain-reaction across southern Europe unless credible defences are established first.

“This could set off a snowball effect,” said Andrew Roberts, credit chief at RBS. “The markets will instantly switch attention to Portugal, where two-year yields are already 17pc”.

Although Greece’s 10-year bonds are trading at a 60pc discount on the open market, European banks do not have to write down losses so long as there is no formal default and the debt is held in their long-term loan book. The danger arises if banks are forced to “crystallize” the damage before raising their capital buffers.

Marchel Alexandrovich from Jefferies Fixed Income said Germany risks opening a “Pandora’s Box” by unpicking the Greek deal.

“It would be a complete disaster, a signal that sovereign debt is not safe. Investors would pull their deposits out of Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy and set off bank runs across Europe,” he said. “The French are against doing this and so is the European Central Bank. They know banks need more time to adjust. We don’t think Europe will pull the trigger.”

Mrs Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy vowed over the weekend to do “all that is necessary to guarantee bank recapitalisation”, promising a package for Greece and the eurozone by the end of the month. The pledge was vague.

It appears the European analogue to the U.S. debt ceiling increase, the creation of a euro zone version of the Fed, and the future of the Slovakian government all hinge on a single vote.

MARKETS
OCTOBER 11, 2011, 8:01 A.M. ET

Slovakia Poised to Block Bailout’s Expansion
By LEOS ROUSEK

BRATISLAVA—Slovakia’s parliament opened its session for a crucial vote on amendments to the euro zone’s rescue fund linked with a confidence vote in the right-of-center coalition cabinet, but lawmakers immediately agreed to take a short recess before the actual vote, the parliament speaker said.

The session is scheduled to re-start at 8:00 a.m. ET, Richard Sulik, the chairman of the Freedom and Solidarity party, told the parliament. Some 136 lawmakers out of a total of 150 registered for the meeting, enough to allow the parliament to vote on the approved program, Mr. Sulik said.

The government of Prime Minister Iveta Radicova is expected to lose the confidence vote and support for increasing the firepower of the European Financial Stability Facility.

Such an outcome, however, should allow room for talks to reshuffle the cabinet and hold a repeat vote on the EFSF at which the €440 billion ($600.34 billion) bailout fund is likely to be approved with the help of opposition lawmakers from the left-of-center Smer-Social Democracy, or Smer, party. The repeat vote on the EFSF is unlikely to take place Wednesday as more time for political talks will be needed.

Ms. Radicova linked the approval of the plan to a vote of confidence, putting her political life on the line to sway rebels in her four-party coalition to back the bailout fund.

But Mr. Sulik’s SaS party has insisted that it would reject the plan.

Slovakia is the last of 17 national parliamentary votes needed to ratify the beefed-up EFSF that was created to address the euro zone’s debt crisis.

“We are against the EFSF,” Mr. Sulik said in a statement on the party’s website ahead of the vote.

Mr. Sulik said 22 SaS lawmakers will abstain from the vote on the EFSF. Without SaS’s support, the government won’t have enough votes to secure approval of the legislation, while Ms. Radicova’s reform-minded right-of-center cabinet will collapse.

The euro-zone agreement struck in July expands the lending capacity of the €440 billion ($600.34 billion) EFSF and gives it new powers, including the right to buy sovereign debt on secondary markets and function as the lender of last resort for euro-zone banks.
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Arends: Wall Street is Scamming Mom and Pop–Again
10/10/2011 3:37:45 PM

MarketWatch columnist Brett Arends makes the claim that there aren’t enough people protesting Wall Street and that once again Mom and Pop-type small investors are being scammed.

Stock markets on knife-edge ahead of Slovakia vote: live

After Malta’s vote in favour of the enhanced European financial stability facility (EFSF), today our attention switches to Slovakia, the final piece in the jigsaw

• Roubini: We need a bazooka
• Today’s agenda
• Trichet: crisis has reached systemic dimension
• UK industrial and manufacturing production

Simon Goodley
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 11 October 2011 08.15 EDT
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Senate considers sanctioning China over currency
By JIM ABRAMS - Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate legislation penalizing China for promoting exports by keeping its currency undervalued is headed for a final vote in the Senate, putting the Beijing government on notice that U.S. lawmakers are fed up with Chinese trade policies that undercut American manufacturers and take away jobs.

A bipartisan majority that supports the legislation coming to a vote Tuesday evening says forcing China to appreciate its currency could put large numbers of Americans back to work.

The theme of crafting trade policy to create jobs will also be played out Tuesday and Wednesday as the House and Senate vote to approve free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. The trade deals have been pending since the last Bush presidency, but the Obama administration and a majority of Congress are now in accord that the deals, particularly with Korea, will be a boon both to American exports and job growth.

The currency bill “has the potential to create or save around 2 million jobs, without cost to taxpayers, because it is simply standing up for American companies and American workers,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, a chief sponsor of the currency measure.

Despite its popularity in the Senate, the bill faces an uncertain future: House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, opposes it and may never bring it to the House floor. President Barack Obama and the White House, while avoiding a position on the bill, have warned against unilateral action that might violate international trading rules. American companies doing business in China say it could spark a trade war.

But with the trade deficit with China hitting $273 billion last year and heading toward $300 billion this year, senators said it was time to get tough.

“If China continues its predatory practices, the future for our children and grandchildren in this country will not be bright,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who has tried numerous times in past years to slap sanctions on the Chinese.

Dexia agrees to Belgium bailout
Stanley Pignal
Brussels— Financial Times
Published Monday, Oct. 10, 2011 10:41AM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2011 7:08AM EDT

Belgium’s nationalization of the domestic operations of Dexia was formally agreed in the early hours of Monday by the bank’s board of directors and the Belgian government, along with state guarantees worth €90-billion ($120-billion U.S.) to finance the rest of the group.

Brussels will pay €4-billion to take over Dexia Bank Belgium, which includes a large retail bank in a group which is otherwise focused on lending to local governments. The forced divestment is the first step in the dismembering of the Franco-Belgian bank after it fell victim to a liquidity squeeze prompted by the euro zone debt crisis.
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In the “D’oh” column:

Is the global economy facing a global banking crisis?
Posted by Michael Schuman Tuesday, October 11, 2011 at 6:31 am

So it’s official. The French-Belgian specialty bank Dexia is the first financial institution to fall victim to Europe’s debt crisis. In a deal hammered out by the governments of France, Belgium and Luxembourg, Dexia will be dismantled, with the Belgian government nationalizing the local operations of the bank. Taxpayers are also on the hook for $120 billion in credit guarantees. I can’t imagine that Dexia will be the only bank in Europe to meet this fate as the euro crisis continues to boil. Banks across the region hold festering compost heaps of rotting sovereign debt, spoiling the strength of their balance sheets. Some have holdings bigger than their capital. Greek banks are so exposed to their faltering government that I can’t see how they dodge a bailout. French banks have been under pressure as financing has dried up. And with talk of a do-over for the proposed second bailout of Greece, as that nation’s financial position continues to deteriorate, banks across Europe could be facing larger losses on their holdings of Greece’s sovereign bonds.

And why stop there? Banks all over the world seem to be stumbling. Not only is the global economic recovery faltering under the weight of persistent unemployment, high commodity prices and debt crisis-induced austerity measures, but the global financial system, on which the global economy is built, is also too sick to help us out. And, even worse, the world’s banks could need a whole new round of repair.
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Squatting Goes (More) Mainstream:

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-foreclosure-squatting-20111010,0,3646079.story

Editorial
The Trouble With Greece
Published: October 6, 2011

Europe has been right to demand that, in exchange for bailout financing, Greece carry out painful structural reforms to make its economy more competitive and able to generate more revenue to pay down the country’s huge debts. Without that pressure, Athens would likely never be able to overcome fierce resistance from public-sector unions, professionals, the wealthy and all of the special interests determined to keep doing business as usual.

But Europe has been dead wrong to simultaneously demand that Greece impose steep new taxes and deep social spending cuts guaranteed to prolong and worsen an already severe recession. That will make it impossible for the country to earn its way out of debt.
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Emerging Stocks Rise 5th Day on Europe Pledge
By Ian C. Sayson and Jason Webb - Oct 11, 2011 3:35 AM PT

Emerging-market stocks advanced, driving the benchmark index to its steepest five-day gain since 2009, on speculation Europe will stem its debt crisis and as a Chinese state investment fund bought shares in four banks.

The MSCI Emerging Markets Index climbed 0.8 percent to 905.72 as of 11:04 a.m. in London, bringing the five-day jump to 9 percent. A rally in lenders helped the Hang Seng China Enterprise Index of Chinese companies traded in Hong Kong to a 4.4 percent gain. The Taiex Index surged 2.6 percent after a holiday in Taiwan yesterday, while The Micex Index slid 1.5 percent in Moscow after jumping 9.1 percent in the preceding three sessions.

MSCI’s developing-nation gauge is bound for the sharpest five-day gain since July 2009 after German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged over the weekend to deliver a plan to recapitalize Europe’s banks and address Greece’s debt crisis by Nov. 3. Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. (601288) led gains among the nation’s biggest lenders after Central Huijin Investment Ltd. started buying their shares.

“What we’re starting to see is a more coordinated response to this global problem,” Philip Poole, head of macro and investments strategy at HSBC Global Asset Management, said in an interview in Hong Kong. “Europeans finally have started to get their act together, the Fed and central banks provided dollar swap facilities, and the Chinese are helping with sentiment by addressing this issue in the banks.”
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Bail Out Bonanza
PFGBEST Tue, Oct 11 2011, 04:54 GMT
by Phil Flynn - PFGBEST

Another day, another bailout and yes, bailouts are bullish! Another plan to save Europe and rising expectations of the US economy has oil back on an upward track. Oil got an initial bounce off of a jobs report that seemed to suggest that we are not in a recession. Yet after a surprise downgrade of Italy and Spain, oil took a late drop. Holy Fitch! Yet over the weekend German Chancellor Angel Merkel said that Germany and Spain have a plan to bail out European banks. Well at the very least they have a plan to make a plan and the details will be forthcoming. Huh? Well no matter, enjoy the ride!

Plus there are reports that the French-Belgian bank Dexia agreed to the nationalization of its Belgian banking division and secured 90 billion euros or $121 billion dollars in state guarantees. Now it appears that other banks in Europe will be backed by the governments in an effort to forestall an economic collapse.

Bloomberg News reported that Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy turned their crisis-fighting focus to banks, promising a recapitalization blueprint this month that will overtake a 12-week-old rescue plan that has yet to be put into place. “We will recapitalize the banks,” the French president said in Berlin yesterday at a joint briefing with the German chancellor without providing details. “We’ll do it in complete agreement with our German friends because the economy needs it, to assure growth and financing.”
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UBS Says Worst of China Loans ‘Panic’ May Be Over as Wenzhou Takes Action
By Bloomberg News - Oct 10, 2011 10:00 PM PT

Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) — Jim Antos, an analyst at Mizuho Securities Co. in Hong Kong, talks about China’s banking industry and investment strategy. Antos speaks with Rishaad Salamat on Bloomberg Television’s “On the Move Asia.” (Source: Bloomberg)

The worst of the “panic and hysteria” over informal lending in China may be over as the city of Wenzhou works with businesses and the central government to stabilize credit, UBS AG said.

“The size of informal lending is relatively small and the concerns about the direct impact on the formal banking sector and the economy are exaggerated,” Hong Kong-based economist Wang Tao said in a note today. The “bigger risks are credit withdrawal in both the formal and informal lending market and contagion,” she said.

Media “hype” surrounding reports of Wenzhou factory owners fleeing after failing to pay their debts have unnerved investors concerned about Chinese banks’ asset quality and a slowdown in the property market, according to Wang. Lenders rallied today after state-run Central Huijin Investment Ltd. began buying shares of the biggest four banks to boost valuations that have fallen below levels reached during the global financial crisis.

Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. (601288) climbed 15 percent as of the noon break in trading in Hong Kong.

“Restructuring of businesses and debts will likely occur in the next few months in Wenzhou, with the help of bank liquidity and government involvement,” Wang said.
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Comment:

It seems the global financial playing field is suddenly once again awash in a tsunami tide of liquidity. Enjoy swimming or sinking!

HSBC restarts foreclosure activity
By Jonathan D. Epstein
NEWS BUSINESS REPORTER
Published:October 11, 2011, 8:11 AM
Updated: October 11, 2011, 8:11 AM

HSBC Bank USA and HSBC Finance Corp. have restarted some of their mortgage foreclosures in New York State and certain other markets, about 11 months after the bank suspended home seizures in the wake of national controversy industrywide over improper foreclosure paperwork.

Spokesman Neil Brazil said foreclosures have “resumed on a limited basis in certain geographies where we are satisfied that enhanced procedures are correctly in place.” He said those geographies included New York State but didn’t specify other areas of the country.

“HSBC has a strong commitment to home preservation and regards foreclosure as a last resort,” Brazil said.

HSBC last December had joined other major banks in the industry in halting foreclosures until it could correct problems in the foreclosure process.

Those problems stemmed largely from improper documents that were filed with courts in states like New York, which require judicial foreclosures through the court system.

The documents dealt largely with the issue of whether the bank or mortgage servicing company that was seeking to foreclose actually had possession of the loan, and therefore the right to foreclose. Also, major lenders had admitted a year ago that their staff had been signing thousands of documents at a time attesting to knowledge of a property they didn’t actually have, in what has been termed “robo-signing” for the robotic nature of the process.
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Banks May Still Face Fraud, Municipal Lawsuits After Foreclosure Agreement
By David McLaughlin and Margaret Cronin Fisk -
Oct 10, 2011 9:01 PM PT

U.S. banks may still face state securities-fraud claims and municipal lawsuits over unpaid mortgage fees under a settlement that is “getting closer,” the official leading talks for state attorneys general said.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said in an interview yesterday that any settlement wouldn’t prevent a growing number of municipalities from suing banks for allegedly cheating them out of millions of dollars in filing fees, or individual states from pursuing securities claims against banks.

“They won’t be released. They will go forward,” Miller said about securities claims brought by states. “There will be ongoing litigation” against the banks, he said.

State attorneys general and federal officials have been negotiating a settlement with the largest mortgage servicers, including Bank of America Corp. (BAC), based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Officials are seeking an agreement that would fund loan modifications for homeowners and set requirements for how the banks conduct foreclosures.

“We’re getting closer to resolving it,” Miller said. “We still have issues that could frustrate the agreement, but we’re getting closer.”
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The Wall Street Journal
BUSINESS
OCTOBER 11, 2011

China Props Up Bank Shares
Move Comes as Investors Fret Over Accounting of Chinese Companies, Bad Debts
BY DINNY MCMAHON AND JAMES T. AREDDY

BEIJING—China’s sovereign-wealth fund stepped in Monday to buy shares of the country’s battered banks, which have been caught in a selloff that analysts say reflects a broader loss of trust in the integrity of corporate earnings and government statistics.

The skepticism of investors comes as China has become increasingly exposed to global markets, largely through stock listings of its state-owned enterprises and other companies, but more recently through its currency and bonds, which are now traded in Hong Kong.

The market rout began among a group of small U.S.-listed companies accused by investors of misrepresentation and has quickly spread…

China’s Move to Prop Up Bank Shares Will Not Change Sentiment: Analysts
Published: Tuesday, 11 Oct 2011 | 1:16 AM ET
By: Rajeshni Naidu-Ghelani
Assistant Producer, CNBC Asia-Pacific

Shares of China’s “big four” banks rose sharply on Tuesday after a unit of the country’s $400 billion sovereign wealth fund — Central Huijin Investment — increased its stake in the lenders. However, analysts tell CNBC that while the intervention to boost investor confidence in China’s financial system is encouraging, the move will not change market sentiment.

Joseph Lau, Senior Asia Economist at Societe Generale, says Huijin’s buying of bank shares needs to be part of a bigger stimulus package for it to work and Chinese bank shares will continue to see further downside.

“It’s probably not going to be sufficient,” says Lau, adding that the scale and severity of the problem facing China’s financial system plus the belief that the banks’ share prices have not yet hit bottom, will reduce the impact of Huijin’s move.
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“A slow economy spurs the Federal Reserve to flood the world with more U.S. currency.” ~Bloomberg

~ The flood gates will be opening much wider soon, I suspect. What route will BB and his boyz take this time?

Oct. 11, 2011, 9:03 a.m. EDT
N.Y. faces 10,000 more Wall St. cuts through 2012
By Greg Morcroft

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — The securities industry in New York City faces a likely 10,000 more job cuts through 2012, according to a new report. State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli also said in the report that the industry’s bonuses are likely to shrink this year. “Since April 2011, the securities industry in New York City has lost 4,100 jobs. The Office of the State Comptroller forecasts that the City could lose nearly 10,000 additional jobs by the end of 2012, which would bring total job losses in the securities industry to 32,000 since January 2008.
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So Roubini thinks the best way to “fix” the system world wide is to flood the banks with more money.

ITEM: Double-Dip Recession a Foregone Conclusion: Roubini
Tuesday, 11 Oct 2011 |Deepanshu Bagchee - CNBC Asia

The world’s advanced economies are headed for a second recession, regardless of whether there is further chaos in Europe, Nouriel Roubini told CNBC on Tuesday. The economist who correctly predicted the 2008 financial crisis, but has got some other bearish calls wrong, said his reading of recent data suggested the U.S., euro zone and the UK are already on the verge of falling into a recession in the next quarter or two.

“The question is not whether or if there is going to be a double dip, but whether it’s going to be mild or severe with another financial crisis,” Roubini told CNBC on the sidelines of the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul. “The answer on that depends on the euro zone.”

According to Roubini, a disorderly situation in Europe caused by a sovereign debt default, a banking crisis or an exit of one of the members from the euro zone, would be a shock more severe than the collapse of Lehman Brothers. He added that Europe had to get its act together and “do the right thing” by the G20 meeting in Cannes in the first week of November.

Roubini believes that “the right thing” involves expanding the European Financial Stability Fund known as EFSF to around 2 trillion euros and creating a Europe-wide TARP program, which would help recapitalize the banks.

“You need an EFSF that is 4 times as large as the 440 (billion euros) to make sure that a bad equilibrium and a self fulfilling run on Italy and Spain doesn’t occur,” he said. “There’s no plan for that, because politically even the first EFSF has not yet been approved, let alone to triple it or quadruple it.”

In addition, Roubini said the European Central Bank needed to ease monetary policy to boost growth. The ECB last week kept interest rates unchanged at 1.5 percent even as it announced a program to buy 40 billion euros in covered bonds.

“The ECB made a mistake, they’ve not reversed it, they need a much weaker euro, that’s unlikely to occur,” Roubini said. “They need fiscal stimulus…If you have fiscal austerity in their periphery, all these things are necessary to restore economic growth.”

Madison area’s largest home builder, cut more than 40 percent of its staff

http://www.channel3000.com/houseandhome/29444566/detail.html

About 5-7 years ago this company also got rid of most of its sales staff and and exclusive agreements with a local real estate agency.

I guess the Madison area is not “bullet-proof” to pull a quote from a local agent. This builder also had lots of $1,000 down and you can move in specials for $250K+ townhomes and had the special equity calculator on their website so show how much your investment was increasing.

I also remember questioning the number of subdivisions in an area and stating this company was manipulating the market, but local agents said I was nuts.

Op-Ed Columnist
This Time, It Really Is Different
By JOE NOCERA
Published: October 10, 2011

The title of the white paper is, admittedly, a mouthful: “The Way Forward: Moving From the Post-Bubble, Post-Bust Economy to Renewed Growth and Competitiveness.” It was commissioned by the New America Foundation, which hoped that it might “re-center the political debate to better reflect the country’s deep economic problems,” according to Sherle Schwenninger, the director of the foundation’s Economic Growth Program. Its authors are Daniel Alpert, a managing partner of Westwood Capital; Robert Hockett, a professor of financial law at Cornell and a consultant to the New York Federal Reserve; and Nouriel Roubini, who is, well, Nouriel Roubini, whose consistently bearish views have been consistently right. It is scheduled to be released on Wednesday.

I don’t know that anything at this point could re-center the political debate, so unyielding are the two parties. But as Congress prepares to take steps, through the deliberations of the already deadlocked supercommittee, that will likely further wound our ailing economy, “The Way Forward” ought to at least give our politicians pause.

Its analysis of our problems is sobering. Its proposed solutions are far more ambitious than anything being talked about in Washington. And its prognosis, if we continue on the current path, is grim. “Unless we take dramatic steps, it will be Japan all over again,” says Alpert. “Continuous deflation, no economic growth, in and out of recessions. And high unemployment.” Adds Hockett: “It will be like the economic version of chronic fatigue syndrome. A low-grade fever all the time.”

The paper’s central premise is something I’ve been hearing from Alpert for more than a year now: this time, it really is different. What he and his co-authors mean by that is that the bursting of the debt bubble three years ago was not just a severe example of the ups and downs that are an inevitable part of American capitalism. Rather, it was the ultimate consequence of the modern global economy. Chief among the changes that have taken place is the integration of China, Russia, India and other countries into the global economic mainstream. The developed world once had maybe 500 million workers. Today, say the authors, we’ve added another two billion people to the global work force.
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Wall Street protests to target NYC millionaires
By Meghan Barr
Associated Press / October 11, 2011

NEW YORK—The national Occupy Wall Street movement has been heating up again — resulting in about 50 arrests in Boston early Tuesday and plans for a Manhattan “Millionaires March” to the homes of some of New York City’s wealthiest residents.

The protesters from the Occupy Boston movement were arrested after they ignored warnings to move from a downtown greenway near where they have been camped out for more than a week, police said.

Police spokesman Jamie Kenneally said the arrests began about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday and were mostly for trespassing. A conservancy group recently planted $150,000 worth of shrubs along the greenway and officials said they were concerned about damage.

Hundreds of college students marched through downtown Boston on Monday and gathered on Boston Common, holding signs that read “Fund education, not corporations.” The protesters are angry with an education system they say mimics “irresponsible, unaccountable, and unethical financial practices” of Wall Street.

During the York City march on Tuesday afternoon, protesters will bear oversize checks, intended to symbolize how much less the wealthy will pay when New York’s 2 percent “millionaires’ tax” expires in December.

The marchers plan to visit the homes of News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and oil tycoon David Koch, among others. They don’t have a permit, but will walk in a narrow column so they don’t block sidewalks, according to Doug Forand, a protest leader.
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Op-Ed Columnist
Panic of the Plutocrats
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 9, 2011

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

And this reaction tells you something important — namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called “economic royalists,” not the people camping in Zuccotti Park.

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.
…

This just might unlock that NYC pricing logjam:

New York Comptroller Sees 10,000 More Securities Jobs Lost by End 2012

New York City’s securities industry could lose nearly 10,000 jobs by the end of 2012, New York state’s comptroller predicted, a painful blow to the area’s economy and government budgets.

http://finance.yahoo.com/banking-budgeting/article/113648/wall-street-shrinkage-wsj?mod=bb-budgeting

Update on my friends’ house in short sale: they got an offer for $140K after well over a year on the market. Its a nice house in an exurban, bubble-era, cookie-cutter neighborhood (so less than ten years old). They owe $180K, paid something in the low-$200K’s. Now its up to the bank. Most banks won’t consider a short sale until the seller actually delinquent. Last I heard they were still making payments, so that could hurt their chances. Still, a $40K loss (on the bank’s part) is fairly mild considering a lot of the losses I’ve read and heard about.

New$ from,…”Thee O.C.!”

1,000 O.C. homes pulled off the market
October 11th, 2011, by Jon Lansner / OC Register

http://lansner.ocregister.com/2011/10/11/1000-o-c-homes-pulled-off-the-market/130873/

9 Worst Recession Ghost Towns in America
Ghost Towns, Demolition, Kittens
By BLAIRE BRIODY, The Fiscal Times
August 3, 2011

America has a new kind of ghost town, haunted by the spirits of the recession. Developers caught up in the runaway housing boom overbuilt and oversold lots, houses and condos, leaving neighborhoods barren with uninhabited model homes, eerily desolate luxury condos, and abandoned McMansions in the aftermath of the collapse.

Most of these recession ghost towns lie in heavily-hit regions of the housing crisis: South Florida, Arizona, California and Nevada. Some in metropolitan areas like Phoenix and Miami, have a better chance of surviving after the housing market recovers, but others are in remote desert developments where municipal services have long since left. “We saw a lot of overbuilding in areas where there isn’t going to be much buying activity,” says Rick Sharga of RealityTrac. “Those areas are going to take a long time to come back, if they ever do.”

There are currently 18,700,000 vacant units across the country, according to Census data, and vacancies rates in the homeowner market have grown 12 percent since the recession started. Vacancies are the highest in the southern and western regions of the country.
…

(Might make for a good DooDah Parade skit: “$tuff-A-MegaWankerBanker” statue pulled in a Radio-Flyer wagon by The Debt Zombie$, followed behind by a ca$trated bronze Wall $treet bull)

heheeeheeeheehaahaaahaaheeehaahaaa… (Hwy50™)

Dead mountain lion brings lawmakers together
October 11th, 2011 by Teri Sforza, OC Register staff writer

“I am signing SB 769 which allows for a dead mountain lion to be stuffed and displayed,” Gov. Jerry Brown said in his deliciously snarky approval message. “This presumably important bill earned overwhelming support by both Republicans and Democrats.

“If only that same energetic bipartisan spirit could be applied to creating clean energy jobs and ending tax laws that send jobs out of state.”

Or, maybe, restructuring the state’s finances? Just thinking out loud here.

So the new law will allow museums and nonprofits to stuff and display dead mountain lions — overturning a 1990 ballot measure mandating that dead animals be stored with the Department of Fish and Game. According to the Sacramento Bee, a Kern County museum can finally display the dead mountain lion that’s been in its freezer for years. Whew!

This one also earned a California Squirrel from the folks at the Orange County Business Council: ”SB 769’s purpose of allowing for the stuffing and displaying of dead mountain lions isn’t exactly going to be a jobs creator. Except for taxidermists,” it snarked.

“Thee O.C.!” Business Council also gave a Squirrel to the state’s new ban on banning circumcision (“In the flap over San Francisco’s proposed circumcision ban, the Legislature has inserted itself into the thick of things”).

So much frivolity, so little time.

Move to China for a job? Unemployed cope by leaving US
By Bob Sullivan - MSNBC

For years, American jobs have been exported overseas, to places like China or India. Now we’re exporting our people there, too.

“I just got tired of how the economy was going back home. I just figured things had to better somewhere else,” said Francine, a former real estate agent in Las Vegas who recently moved to Xi’an, in central China, for work.

She has two jobs, but says her standard of living is a little bit better than when she left Nevada. “It’s kind of ironic — the middle class in China is growing while the middle class in America is shrinking.”

Francine, who spoke with msnbc.com on condition of anonymity, had never been to China before making the decision to move there with her husband, and she doesn’t speak Chinese. But she’s found enough locals who speak her language, and “when I meet someone who doesn’t speak English, I play charades with them.” The couple moved into a small one-bedroom apartment where he works in the import/export business, and she works constantly as a freelance magazine writer and at a learning center. She said she was surprised by the difference she felt immediately in the way her new neighbors treated her.

“Being poor anywhere in the world is bad, (but) if you are broke in the U.S., people just do not treat you very well,” said Francine, who is 28 years old. “In China, people are still very polite and respectful regardless of your financial status and I like that.”

There’s no hard data on private-sector Americans working overseas. In 2004, the U.S. Census Bureau tried and abandoned an official count of the then-estimated 4 million Americans working outside the country. In 2009, the U.S. State Department said it believed there were 5.3 million Americans living overseas, but cautioned that the number was an out-of-date guess. That means there’s no way to know for sure how many Francines there are. But the response to our recent series on “Crazy things Americans are doing to cope with the recession,” and a collection of anecdotes from around the world, hints that many U.S. workers are performing the same analysis that multinational corporations have made — life overseas is cheaper, and in some ways easier, than in America. Reversing a trend that’s perhaps 400 years old, workers are leaving America to find opportunity elsewhere.

“After the market crashed, the only jobs that were available were temp jobs, or jobs with very high turnover. Either way, I knew that I could not get by like that or even dare to save money,” Francine said. “So, after a grueling two month debate with myself, I finally decided to sell what little I had left of my belongings and put the rest in a small storage unit…and armed with $300, I flew to China.”

To be sure, even people like Francine still believe success in America is sweeter than anywhere else on the planet — and she hopes to return to the U.S. when the economy recovers. (That’s why she requested anonymity; “I wouldn’t want a future employer to think I’m unpatriotic,” she said.). But she believes her best chance of riding out the current economic storm is far from her home port. And while she misses her laundry dryer, her car and being able to flush toilet paper down the toilet, living in China does offer some advantages.

“The cost of living is really cheap,” she said. “I can go and get massages and manicures every week and it only costs about $13 for both. You can’t get those prices back home. In fact, those were luxuries I cut out in order to save money.”

http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/10/10/8257389-move-to-china-for-a-job-unemployed-cope-by-leaving-us

Update on my search for a short term Phoenix rental:

I put an offer in and made a deposit on a rental that is in my price range and desired location. I consented to a credit check and paid the fee, which came back good (as expected). Yesterday I received a call from the credit check company (ACS) attempting to verify my employment. Since I own a company, they would have to verify it with me, which doesn’t appear kosher to them. ACS demanded business tax forms, W2, paycheck stubs, etc. I told them to go pound sand. I have enough cash in my checking account to pay the lease in full. Do these people obviously do not understand all of the vacant homes in the area? Thus, the search continues.

Occupy Poor Street!

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/08/opinion/sunday/20111008_McFadden_Cartoon.html?source=patrick.net

Did anyone see the WSJ article last week about the Canadian investment club that is buying 30 investment homes in the Phoenix area, hoping to resell in 5-7 years at a profit? Does anyone else feel this investment club will turn out to be a not-so-good investment? By my estimation, Phoenix has at least 30% more homes than are demanded by the population, there are no barriers to building more homes, and the area is likely to lose residents who return home to CA now that prices are cheaper there, relatively speaking.

The in$ignificant, peon, irrelevant’$,…Knot!

Blunt truth always worked for three lost recently

By MARK WHICKER /COLUMNIST /THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Telling the truth means you don’t have to remember anything.

When Mike Heimerdinger, Dave Hill and Pete Gent passed away in recent days, they left no equivocation behind.

For all three, belief was an instrument. Usually a blunt one. When they spoke they did not need approval. They also didn’t need translators.

It is unbearably hollow to say they died too early, but Heimerdinger was just 58.

He was in Mexico, chasing a remedy for the cancer that visited him last season when he was the Tennessee Titans offensive coordinator.

“You learn a lot about somebody when you live with them,” said Gene Murphy, who was Cal State Fullerton’s coach when he hired Heimerdinger to run the offense in 1988.

The year before, Heimerdinger coached at Florida, which beat the Titans, 65-0.

“We figured this was the ultimate punishment,” Murphy said at the time.

Heimerdinger moved in with Murphy while his family was getting re-situated. The next year he coached at Rice, and then at Duke, and finally got a job with the Denver Broncos, who were coached by his old Eastern Illinois roommate, Mike Shanahan.

He did two tours each with Denver and Tennessee. Along the way he coached Steve McNair, Jay Cutler and Vince Young.

When a Nashville writer observed that the Titans were absolving McNair of blame, Heimerdinger didn’t just simmer and stew. He invited the reporter for an hour-long film session and showed him, play-by-play, where his receivers or his linemen or Heimerdinger himself had failed McNair

Heimerdinger’s dad was a football coach, and Mike and his brother grew up playing on sandlots in DeKalb, Ill.

An acquaintance reminded him he had been a kicker on one of Heimerdinger’s teams. The coach replied, “Back where I come from, we don’t consider kickers football players.”

He did not complain, not when fellow assistant Mike Munchak became the head Tennessee coach and fired him, not when the cancer continued its march. He was trying experimental methods when he died on Sept. 30.

Last week Dave Hill died, at 74, from emphysema, caused by smoking, maybe caused in turn by too many defiant 4-footers.

Hill won 13 tour events, three in 1969, when he also won the Vardon Trophy for low stroke average. His shotmaking was pure; his personality was transparent.

Once he was fined $500 for something he said and he wrote out a $1,000 check. He explained, “I’m getting ready to say something else.”

He always said he was “about three strokes a week short” of winning a major. But Hill finished second at the U.S. Open in 1970, which was outright stunning considering what else he did that week.

Aghast at the barren Hazeltine course in Chaska, Minn., Hill said architect Robert Trent Jones had screwed up a good farm, should have imported some cows and must have had the blueprints upside down.

Fans mooed at Hill the rest of the week, and at one point Hill told them, “If I couldn’t moo better than that I’d send myself to the slaughterhouse.”

Later, Hazeltine tacitly validated Hill by ordering a re-do (by Jones’ son Rees) and has played host to a U.S. Open and two PGAs since then.

After a round, Hill would mix a drink and hold court in the clubhouse.

Asked why Lanny Wadkins was slumping, Hill said, “That’s what happens when you can’t get it up and down from the ballwasher anymore.”

And when Tom Weiskopf was shown on TV, Hill smiled and said, “If you put Jack Nicklaus’ head on his shoulders, you’d worry the world.”

•

Pete Gent, who was 69 when he died Sept. 30 of a pulmonary disease, worried the NFL’s world.

In 1973, he wrote “North Dallas Forty,” the “Ball Four” of football, a novel about Phil Elliott, a disaffected Cowboys wide receiver who got crushed by the NFL’s conformity machine.

That happens at the end of a week of drugs, booze, romping with the owner’s girlfriend and discovering a mysterious new love outside the stadium, where humanity lived.

Not coincidentally Gent was a Cowboys wide receiver, although he was a Michigan State basketball star who didn’t play football. As an outsider he was repelled by football’s pain-killing, soul-crushing essence but entranced by the rush of catching 40-yard post patterns.

“The one thing that makes a pro football player is intense and constant fear,” he wrote.

“North Dallas Forty” was educational and ruthlessly hilarious. Today, NFL players make far too much money to dwell on the contradictions that Gent found, and the national obsession with the NFL would drown out his misgivings. But those who read the book find it more vivid, even today, than the vast majority of Super Bowls.

At one point, the real Gent spied a Dallas rookie who was engrossed in the club’s playbook. “Don’t bother,” Gent told him. “Everybody gets killed in the end.”

When you tell the truth, everybody remembers.

Question for consideration:

Can governments and policy makers around the world actually ignore the Japanese policy response following the collapse of their asset bubble or the consequences of the US allowing Lehman to fail?

I think not, which makes it highly likely that:

1. The major European powers will make supporting their banks the #1 priority (even if it means paying Slovakia lots of money to buy their vote); and

2. Central Banks around the world will engage in round after round of QE until their efforts create the inflation that they seek?

I think it makes it even more likely when you see the opposite kinds of responses appearing to be better (TARP in the US), and that (except in rare circumstances) eventually inflation can be brought under control, while consistent deflation is very difficult to combat–and will potentially lead to inflation anyway (let’s see what happens to Japan).

This isn’t commentary about what is fair, appropriate, moral, etc. But instead the likely policy responses based upon some recent real-life examples. Thus QE by the US Fed, thus Dexia, thus the pending(?) recap of European banks, operation twist, QE in the UK, etc.

The longer we muddle through (and don’t fall back into recession or massive job losses), the stronger the inclination will be to bail out and print…

Does anyone see this differently?

Wall Street Protesters Show Staying Power
Protesters march to Civic Plaza during Occupy San Diego on Friday, October 7, 2011.
Photo by Andy Trimlett / KPBS

Above: Protesters march to Civic Plaza during Occupy San Diego on Friday, October 7, 2011.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Associated Press

The protests against Wall Street look like they’ll be lasting longer than first expected. New York’s mayor on Monday indicated that the demonstrators can stay where they are, and protesters in Washington took a four-month extension of their permit to camp out near the White House.

With the original New York protest entering its fourth week, demonstrators said they are staying in their improvised camp in a downtown park for the long haul.

“The bottom line is that people want to express themselves, and as long as they obey the laws, we allow them to,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg told reporters when asked about the protesters’ staying power. “If they break the laws, then we’re going to do what we’re supposed to do — enforce the laws.”

The protesters say they’re fighting for the “99 percent,” or the vast majority of Americans who do not fall into the wealthiest 1 percent of the population; their causes range from bringing down Wall Street to fighting global warming. The movement gained traction through social media, and protests have taken place in several other cities nationwide.

Rapper Kanye West and the Rev. Al Sharpton, a civil rights leader, made impromptu appearances at Zuccotti Park on Monday.

Several hundred protesters briefly marched through the Wall Street neighborhood Monday evening, honking horns and chanting.

“The banks got bailed out, we got sold out!” went one chant.

“All day, all week, occupy Wall Street,” went another.
…

The common thread that keeps emerging from many of these people who voted for Obama is that the higher educational establishment sold them a bill of goods. It made it too easy for them to rack up huge debt, while teaching them little to nothing about what the real economy needs and values in workers. The professors keep their tenure, the university presidents keep their lavish homes and manicured lawns, and the students who pay exorbitant fees to keep the bubble inflated get left unprepared for the real world, with little but a lifetime of debt to show for it.

Many of these protesters have legitimate beefs. They’re just misdirecting their anger, thanks both to the political rhetoric coming from the White House, and to the poor quality of the education their hard work has purchased

Nobelists: US history holds solution to eurozone crisis
(AFP) – 22 hours ago

PRINCETON, New Jersey — The American winners of this year’s Nobel prize in economics said Tuesday that the solutions to the eurozone crisis are clear, economically, and the issue is mainly political.

New York University’s Thomas Sargent, who with Princeton University colleague Christopher Sims captured the annual prize for economics, said the history of the founding of the United States shows what the issues and solutions are.

“There are no new issues in economic theory with Europe and the euro… the difficult thing is the politics,” Sargent told a news conference in Princeton.

“In the 1780s, the United States is a basket case,” he said, with 13 sovereign governments — the 13 original states — each of which could raise taxes and print money.

Meanwhile, he said, the new country had a very weak center, not having yet established a central bank or gained taxing power.

“Does this remind you of anything?… They (the states) all have debt, and the center has debt. Like eurobonds, they are going at deep discount.”

Sims said the crisis of the European Monetary Union, focused now on Greece’s inability to service its debts, and with two other members, Ireland and Portugal, in tough bailout programs, was predictable — and that he had predicted it.

“I wrote a paper a few years ago on the precarious fiscal foundations of the EMU,” Sims said hours after the Nobel announcement.

“The euro was founded with a central bank but no unified fiscal authority,” he said, which “raised questions about what would happen when the need for fiscal and monetary coordination arose.”

The eurozone nations “will have to work out a way to share fiscal burdens and connect fiscal authorities to the ECB,” the European Central Bank.

“Right now none of those connections are clear… and the prospects for the euro are dim.”

Sargent said the way the 13 states came together in 1787 to combine their debt under the new federal government and allow the federal government to levy taxes to be able to service the debt points the way for the eurozone.

But he said achieving that took a huge, complex and bold political decision.

“We were born with a determined solution to the problem that Europe is facing now. And it was a comprehensive solution,” he told journalists.

“It was all done simultaneously, through a process that looks like a miracle.”
…

Shaw plant closing will lay off 270 people
jamiejones@daltoncitizen.com

Shaw Industries will lay off about 270 workers when it closes a carpet manufacturing plant on Riverbend Drive in Dalton,GA “in the very near future,” company officials said Monday.

This is at least the fourth local plant Shaw has either closed or laid off workers at this year.

Shaw has closed a spun yarn plant in Chatsworth, and plants in Eton and Ringgold have restructured production schedules resulting in fewer shifts. About 670 total Shaw workers have been laid off, had their hours cut or switched jobs because of the changes.

The latest plant closing is another blow to an area already hard-hit by high unemployment. The unemployment rate in metro Dalton (Murray and Whitfield counties) was 12.1 percent in August, down from 12.4 percent in July, but still well above the state and national average.

News from: “The earth is flat! $ociety”

Average weekly jobless benefit [CA]: $294:
October 11th, 2011, by Mary Ann Milbourn / OC Register

Although the maximum jobless benefit in California is $450 a week, many of the 1.1 million people now collecting unemployment are getting less than that. A lot less.

The Employment Development Department reports that the average weekly unemployment check in August was $293.55. That was down from $299.23 a year ago and well off the peak benefit of $318.82 in June 2009.

Loree Levy, an EDD spokeswoman, said officials don’t know the precise reason for the decline in average weekly payouts. Part is due to the cutoff of the extra $25-a-week in benefits that was part of the economic stimulus program.

Also, there may have been more highly-paid white collar workers from the mortgage and finance sectors who lost their jobs in 2009. Unemployment is based on pay.

Levy suggested that more recently, the mix of unemployed may involve more people who were either lower-paid workers or employees who had their hours cutback before getting laid off, which would reduce their weekly jobless check.

Average weekly unemployment pay has always gone up and down with the economy, but the checks began a steady march higher after the state legislature approved a gradual increase in benefits from a maximum of $230 a week in 2001 to $450 in 2005.

The issue of unemployment benefits is heating up this week as Congress debates President Barack Obama’s jobs bill. Among his proposals is to continue the current 99 weeks of extended unemployment benefits for another year.

Critics argue extending benefits only encourages people to remain on unemployment rather than take any job that is offered.

Di$closure: (Hwy = no GPS, no $mart phone, not hip, ol’ throwbacker) besides, eyes currently just a land purveyor/surveyor whose adage is: “The map is not the territory”

A fool fer the tool, or a tool fer the fool?

O.C. Register launches free real estate app
October 11th, 2011, by Mary Ann Milbourn

People in the market for local real estate can get some help in their search for housing with a new free iPhone app for real estate listings launched Monday by The Orange County Register. The app provides comprehensive listings and customizable information for homes for rent or sale in Orange County. It also contains 100,000 listings throughout Southern California.

The app, which can be downloaded free from iTunes, can be customized for a variety of parameters including city, price, property type and number of bedrooms and bathrooms.

A “My Portfolio” tab allows users to add private notes or personal photos for homes that are of interest and set up alerts to be notified of open houses, new listings or price reductions. Listings can be shared by text or email.

Users also will be able to see photo galleries and community data like neighborhood demographics, school information, real estate tax, occupancy rates and a crime index.

“Peak NBA”, coming soon: “Peak Oil”

How much are the NBA’s highest-paid losing?

Wait’ll you see how many digits are in these paychecks.

By LANDON HALL / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

The first two weeks of the NBA season have now gone poof. That’s 100 games off the schedule that was supposed to open Nov. 1. If you work at a league arena parking cars or selling hot dogs, you’re out of work like so many other people.

But the real sympathy should be reserved for NBA owners and players, who won’t bring in any revenues from the insanely profitable league while the lockout is going on. The owners, of course, don’t tell us how much they make or lose on their teams, only that they can no longer make a go of it under the current system.

As for the players, their union has been warning them for three years that they should start squirreling away their money for just this occasion. Have they done it? Is Gilbert Arenas cutting back on the amount of chum he feeds his beloved sharks in his $1 million grotto?

We employed all the high-tech gadgetry at our disposal (OK, we only used the HoopsHype website and a Texas Instruments calculator) to figure out how much money the highest-paid players in the NBA stand to lose from just one paycheck. Teams only pay players when the season starts, so players won’t start to lose checks until November. We calculated the per-paycheck gross amount using their total season salary, divided by 12 pay periods (for a 24-week season ending in mid-April).

The first two weeks of the NBA season have been canceled, a total of 100 games. That’s one paycheck for an NBA player. Who’s losing the most money?

http://www.ocregister.com/sports/players-321404-nba-season.html

TEXT BY LANDON HALL, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER;, PHOTOS (FROM LEFT) BY MARK J. TERRILL, AP; RONALD MARTINEZ, GETTY IMAGES; LYNNE SLADKY, AP

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/8821094/Chinas-debt-spree-returns-to-haunt.html

Is the China bubble starting to implode?

Under $200k and I’m in:
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/15909-1st-St-E-Redington-Beach-FL-33708/46974928_zpid/

Deadbeat Poets Society

For five years he`s lived for free
Said the banks took advantage of me
But now that his daughter
Said she married a squatter
He`s just so pissed off he can`t see

No BS, look it up

The Squatter’s Daughter

Henry Lawson, 1889

This squatter had a lovely child,
An angel bright we thought her;
And all the stockmen rude and wild
Adored the squatter’s daughter.

But on a bright eventful morn,
A swell of northern nation,
A lordling, brought his languid yawn
And eyeglass to the station.

He coveted the squatter’s wealth;
He saw the squatter’s daughter:
And, what is more than heart or health,
His empty title bought her.

And “Yes”, the father made her say
In spite of tears and kissing;
But early on the wedding day
The station found her missing.

And madder still the squatter grew,
And madder still the lover;
When by-and-by a-missing too,
A stockman they discover.

Then on the squatter’s brow the frown
Went blacker still and blacker;
He sent a man to bring from town
A trooper and a tracker.

The dusty rascal saw the trail;
He never saw it plainer;
The reason why he came to fail
Will take a shrewd explainer.

A day and night the party lose;
The track the tracker parried;
And then a stockman brought the news,
“The runaways were married!”

The squatter swore that he’d forgive,
Perhaps, when he forgot her;
But he’d disown her while he’d live,
And while they called him squatter.

Slovakia rejects European bailout plan

By Anthony Faiola, Tuesday, October 11, 5:09 PM

LONDON — Tiny Slovakia on Tuesday defied its mightier neighbors and rejected an expanded rescue fund to save Europe’s ailing nations and troubled banks, effectively holding ransom the region’s plan to fend off a broader economic crisis.

The “no” vote after a marathon session of parliament in the sleepy Slovak capital of Bratislava threw up yet another stumbling block in Europe’s haphazard crusade to staunch a debt crisis that is threatening the global financial system. The Slovaks were scrambling late Tuesday to rearrange a new vote after the government there became the first to fall in Europe over opposition to bailouts.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/slovakia-rejects-european-bailout-plan/2011/10/11/gIQAvKaHdL_story.html?hpid=z1

Deadbeat Poets Society

He coveted the squatter’s wealth;
He saw the squatter’s daughter:
Two-Hundred-thousand upside down?
This place is underwater.

“Comment by oxide
2011-10-11 09:30:01
There’s a huge problem somewhere. Even if somebody created 5 million jobs tomorrow at $50K each, that would still bring in only 37 billion in tax money (I’ll assume that around 15% goes to fed tax). Yet the budget deficit is near a trillion. What up?”

15% is just the payroll taxes, buy yeah, even if we go with something closer to 30%:
5×10^6 * 5×10^4 = 25×10^10. $250 billion. 30% of that is $75B.

From 2007 to 2009, corporate income tax receipts fell from $350B to $150B while individual income taxes fell from $1160T to $950.

The net result was a drop in total receipts of about $400B.

Add in a $500B deficits pre-bust, $150B off budget war spending, along with $400B extra gopvernment spending on unemployment, stimulus, etc.

Like magic, poof…. $1.4T a year deficits.

So, when Reps talk about “cut, cap, and balance” and no revenue increases they are saying, 50% across the board spending cuts.

Do you think my parents and in-laws realize that “cut, cap, and balance” means 50% cut to Medicare and Social Security? Would they still vote Republican if they did?

I’m kind of hoping a Republican does win in 2012, because only after each party has taken a swing and a miss, will we admit it is structural and not cyclical.

From Jim Cramer’s website:

“Finally, Cramer said that U.S. banks, thanks to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s stress tests, are now some of the strongest banks in the world. He said there is still a mortgage mess in our country, but our banks are now strong enough to weather just about any storm.”

Expect US banks to fail within weeks.

OWS might be gaining traction, looks like the PTB is pumping some BS fake terror plot about Iran.

I hear the war drums beating.
Fire up the propaganda machine.