Bits Bucket for October 18, 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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Slim Pickings Are Latest Headache for Home Sales
By NICK TIMIRAOS
OCTOBER 17, 2011
The housing market, which has struggled with an oversupply of homes for years, is facing a new problem: a lack of attractive inventory.
real-estate agents say, people are pulling their homes off the market rather than try to sell them at today’s discounted prices. At the same time, banks have been more slowly moving to take back properties through foreclosure ever since processing irregularities surfaced last fall, temporarily reducing the supply of foreclosed properties.
Yet there is still a substantial “shadow” supply of foreclosures and other distressed homes, estimated to be more than one million, that is likely to stream onto the market in the coming years. The pent-up supply is another constraint on any of the price gains that might normally occur when supply falls.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204774604576631381117760982.html - 210k
BINGO!!!!!!
Just need to point out I don’t care about the piles of inventory I don’t consider attractive. IMO they’re priced too high to rehab properly or to make up for their other myriad issues. (Flood zone/high water table area, bad location, postage stamp property, etc,etc) If anyone thinks the inventory here is so darn awesome you are welcome to come right in and “scoop it all up”.
I believe the proper terminology is “snap it up”?
Exactly, Carrie. The only inventory which is truly poised to drop are either crapshacks in the outer burbs, run-down houses where great-grandma finally passed away, or run-down houses where the family piled into the F-150 and went *ahem* to their home in the southern regions of the continent. Anything else is priced at 2004 levels, and sitting there for months on end. This is in Maryland. Northern Virginia is still partying like it’s 2005.
NoVa is not partying like it is 2005. My co-workers (married couple) have a one bedroom condo they bought as an investment near the Metro. I got several lecutures about what a great investment is was and the power of leverage in investing. I’m pretty sure they are losing $500 - $600 a month on this thing and they “can’t sell” because it hasn’t come back yet. At least it is rented.
Now, single family homes near Old Town in Alexandria might have retained their bubble prices, but I don’t think there has been that much loss of value in the higher end nabes of Bethesda and Chevy Chase either.
Thank you for warming my heart with a story of people renting their speculative bubble property purchase at a major loss each month.
I never thought I would see “shadow supply” uttered by the WSJ.
We’re almost to the bottom. (another year or 2 :lol:)
The process we are in is a negative feedback loop. The positive feedback loop that got us here on the back of the largest credit expansion in history took decades. Every effort is being made to keep the credit unwinding slower than the build period. Even if there is acceleration, a year or two to the bottom? Haha!
House prices here in Backwater NY are still 2-3x what they were a mere decade ago. That bottom thingy looks a long way off.
I was making a funny. The bottom does indeed, still look quite a ways off.
I AM still surprised at the WSJ, though. For them to acknowledge this is a milestone.
Not as much of a milestone as you think. The implication (admittedly not stated) is that if the attractive homes were released, the median price would probably be a little higher.
I would expect no less from the Waffle Street Journal.
Blue, as mentioned further downthread since NY seems to be the longest to foreclose state in the nation, I’m gonna guess that there’d be a lot more of those finer homes on our local MLS listings ifin our incredibly efficient court system (snark) would just let the unraveling begin and start moving on some of our local bad mortgages.
Prices continue to fall at break-neck speed, yet these bozotrons would have us believe that inventory is low.
Fannie and Freddie, Still the Socialites
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
Published: October 15, 2011
THE mortgage business is moribund. New loans are down. New foreclosures are up.
But why let a little sorry news get in the way of a good party? Last week, almost 3,000 people descended on the Hyatt Regency in Chicago for the 98th annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/business/fannie-mae-and-freddie-mac-still-the-socialites.html -
“They don’t act like companies that have had a huge infusion of taxpayer money,” he told me. “Why do they feel the need to go out and spend the money for networking when they have all of the mortgage market in its entirety?”
Reminds me of that movie, “Enemy at the Gates.” In Stalingrad the young Russian conscripts are being turned into ground-round by German belt-fed guns while nearby the wealthy enjoy a gala ball event, caviar and dancing.
An empty house, a shame
dark, decaying, with long grass
discarded in high-stakes game
Real Estate Recovery, my ass.
lmao…. more liz more.
You seem to have hit your stride with these- nice. You should compile them all into one big one, it might actually flow well.
Write, liz. WRITE IT!
This is great.
Comment by liz pendens
2011-10-12 07:35:39
The market is booming.
But where are all the buyers?
Shadow inventory is looming,
Realtors are Liars.
LOL- classic.
Get loan,
buy house
from drone
and louse.
Get rich,
real quick,
then ditch
that schtick.
Robo-signers and predator drones
Destroy by killing, or making bad loans.
ReaItor Charged with 34 Felony Counts of Fraud
http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/ci_18791706
I heard of a high profile sale (due to who the seller was - former lead singer of Bare Naked Ladies) was purchased by a realtor. He purchased the property after it had been on the market a month or two. He reportedly never lived in it and then turned around and put it back on the market 4 mos later. I do believe he was the realtor involved in the sale of the next home. I don’t think the price of the house currently for sale by that realtor was increased at all. I may be fuzzy. Someone shared this w/me weeks ago.
So since then I’ve tweaked my radar to notice how many listings seem to have a realtor owned property somewhere in the transaction chain. I’m not saying there’s any fraud involved but certain high profile ones sure seem able to go to great lengths to keep the ball rolling.
Foreclosure ruling irks banks
By Kimberly Miller Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Updated: 7:48 p.m. Monday, Oct. 17, 2011
Posted: 7:33 p.m. Monday, Oct. 17, 2011
WEST PALM BEACH — An appeals court ruling in favor of Wellington homeowners in foreclosure is causing “calamitous confusion,” according to bank attorneys who say it could snarl hundreds of thousands of pending foreclosure cases.
The bank is asking for a rehearing and clarification of the Sept. 7 decision by the 4th District Court of Appeal, which said a foreclosure affidavit submitted by a bank employee was hearsay because the person relied on computerized information and did not have personal knowledge of the case.
The lack of personal knowledge of foreclosure documents is the foundation of the robo-signing controversy that continues to delay foreclosure proceedings.
The bank is not challenging the court’s decision in Gary and Anita Glarum vs. LaSalle Bank, but it said the ruling has been misinterpreted to mean that the person relying on computerized records must be the one who actually entered them into the computer or the direct custodian of the records
Considering how often home loans changed hands during the real estate boom and subsequent collapse, finding people who personally input mortgage data could be impossible.
The ruling means the Glarums’ home, which has been in foreclosure since September 2008, can’t go to a foreclosure sale until the bank gets another summary judgment or goes to trial.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/foreclosures/foreclosure-ruling-irks-banks-1919670.html -
Original VPD (victim purchase date)
County Records
Jun-2004 17169/1558 $319,500 WARRANTY DEED GLARUM GARY &
Type: MTG
Date/Time: 6/25/2004 15:43:03
CFN: 20040370589
Book Type: O
Book/Page: 17169/1559
Pages: 20
Consideration: $255,600.00
Party 1: GLARUM GARY
GLARUM ANITA
Party 2: MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS INC
FIRST WESTERN FUNDING LLC
Legal: GREENVIEW SHRS 2 B37 L5 BL
Type: MTG
Date/Time: 6/25/2004 15:43:03
CFN: 20040370590
Book Type: O
Book/Page: 17169/1579
Pages: 12
Consideration: $63,900.00
Party 1: GLARUM GARY
GLARUM ANITA
Party 2: MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS INC
FIRST WESTERN FUNDING LLC
Legal: GREENVIEW SHRS 2 B37 L5 BL
Honey I`m a little short this month.
Type: MTG
Date/Time: 7/20/2005 11:55:07
CFN: 20050449987
Book Type: O
Book/Page: 18935/1125
Pages: 17
Consideration: $340,000.00
Party 1: GLARUM GARY
GLARUM ANITA
Party 2: FIRST FRANKLIN
Legal: GREENVIEW SHRS 2 B37 L5 BL
Type: MTG
Date/Time: 7/20/2005 11:55:07
CFN: 20050449988
Book Type: O
Book/Page: 18935/1142
Pages: 10
Consideration: $63,750.00
Party 1: GLARUM GARY
GLARUM ANITA
Party 2: FIRST FRANKLIN
Legal: GREENVIEW SHRS 2 B37 L5 BL
6/29/2007
Honey I`m a little short this month.
Well, use the refi money.
I can`t.
Why not?
We spent it.
Well, stop paying the mortgage.
Type: LP
Date/Time: 9/29/2008 11:47:12
CFN: 20080357258
Book Type: O
Book/Page: 22879/1902
Pages: 2
Consideration: $0.00
Party 1: LASALLE BANK NATIONAL ASSOCIATION TRUSTEE
Party 2: GLARUM GARY
GLARUM ANITA
ANITA GLARUM
FIRST WELLINGTON INC
WELLINGTON SHORES HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION
GREENVIEW SHORES NO 2 AT WELLINGTON HOMEOWNERS
FIRST FRANKLIN FINANCIAL CORPORATION
Legal: GREENVIEW SHRS 2 B37 L5 BL
Now with SAT they only got $84,259 out, but you throw that in with 5 years of no rent or mortgage payment and it`s a pretty nice haul.
Thank you FIRST FRANKLIN, thank you GARY and ANITA GLARUM thank you MORTGAGE ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION SYSTEMS INC thank you Bank attorneys thank you Victim attorneys.
You all snuck.
“An appeals court ruling in favor of Wellington homeowners in foreclosure is causing “calamitous confusion,” according to bank attorneys”
We’re confused. We can’t just say, ‘trust us, we own it’, and that’s enough? We’ve gotta prove we do?
But we’re the banksters- you know you can trust us!
I can’t prove who owns it either. But I can prove who doesn`t and that would be GLARUM GARY GLARUM ANITA. Deadbeats extraordinaire.
“Deadbeats extraordinaire.”
Yep. And able to take it to a whole new level because the banksters decided to deregulate themselves by circumventing the law with the MERS. And now, when the banksters want to use the law to foreclose, they find that their earlier circumventing of the law comes back to bite them in the arse. Kinda funny, innit?
Good point!
+1 Jeff…..
Actually, jeff’s point is incorrect. They may not have carried out their end of the contract that allows them to keep the house, but until the party that has the legal right to take it away comes forward and proves that they have that right, they do own it.
That is the way property rights work.
If you want to have the right to take away a house when someone fails to pay the mortgage, you have to follow the rules that allow for a foreclosure. Until you do, tough luck.
“Actually, jeff’s point is incorrect”
You are right polly. I live in this backwards fantasy bizzaro world that my father taught me. Where if you shake someone`s hand, give them your word or sign your name you hold up your end of the bargain no matter what. If you don`t your name, your handshake and your signature aren`t worth anything. So it`s only in this in this backwards fantasy bizzaro world that my father taught me about where if you don`t pay for something you bought that it doesn`t belong to you.
I live in this backwards fantasy bizzaro world that my father taught me. Where if you shake someone`s hand, give them your word or sign your name you hold up your end of the bargain no matter what.
Nice. Tell that to the banks.
That is the way property rights work.
thank you, polly.
Similarly, it irks me when landlords think they can run roughshod of their tenants, who actually do have right of possession.
jeff,
Doing something that is ethically wrong doesn’t always end your property rights. If our laws said “if it can be proved by any party that the mortgage securing a house has not been paid for [?] months, then the people who had the obligation to make those payments will lose their property rights in favor of a government administered trust until such time as the person who has the right to take ownership of the property can prove that claim” then you would be correct. But that isn’t the law we have. The law we have leaves ownership where it is until the new ownership claim is finalized.
Actually, jeff’s point is incorrect ??
Well, Jeff made two points and you provide the correct legal argument for the first one but there is “no doubt” about the 2nd one…
“Doing something that is ethically wrong doesn’t always end your property rights.”
I agree with you polly , I know that doing something that is ethically wrong doesn’t end your property rights. I am living through my second LL that doing something that is ethically wrong without losing their property rights. The first one kept their property rights through the collection of $60,000 + of tax free income on rent they collected while not paying their mortgage and then got a short sale at $150k on a house they owed $300k on of which $40k was a cah out refi. The second continues to collect rent on a house Mr. and Mrs. ethically challenged LL are once again not paying the mortgage on while retaining their property rights. I know this is the real world and the way it is and what the law is and what the banks and politicians are doing and what the Deadbeats are taking advantage of. The backwards fantasy bizzaro world is the one my father taught me. Where if you shake someone`s hand, give them your word or sign your name you hold up your end of the bargain no matter what. If you don`t your name, your handshake and your signature aren`t worth anything. That world does not exist on Wall Street, in Washington DC or in the homes of most of these Deadbeat victims and scumbag LLs. Oh well, there is no law that says I can`t call a Deadbeat a Deadbeat is there?
It confuses me too. If you have a controlled database, then the information is surely not hearsay. It’s just data, owned by the company. Sure, there can be a data entry error, but the homeowners could always provide copies of canceled checks or copies of contracts, etc to rectify that.
If databases are hearsay, then how can the electric company ever justify shutting off my power when I don’t pay the bill?
“because the person relied on computerized information and did not have personal knowledge of the case”
Good, that means we don’t need to rely on credit reports anymore, CRAs all snuck as well.
It’s a little ironic that the Glarums are most likely using the money that they’ve saved not paying the mortgage to pay the attorneys.
Money the banks aren’t getting is being used against them.
At least it’s circulating.
Reading about the Wall St. protests , for the life of me I cannot make sense of what it is all about . And that is the most dangerous type of protests , where the thing keeps growing without apparent roots.. If I was living off a big fat federal retirement Pension right now ,I would be worried , it is fixing to be taken down a notch or two or three.
Don’t worry about them Jess, it’s just the left trying to show the rest of us that they have a Tea Party too. With winter coming the folks will go back to their normal lives.
Hey lets not forget that in Feb. 2012 there will be approximately 2.1 million people will lose their last extension of unemployment checks.
From the Wall St. Journal:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/10/15/number-of-the-week-millions-cut-off-without-unemployment-extension/
“2,153,700: The number of jobless people currently receiving unemployment benefits who will lose them by Feb. 11, 2012 if an extension isn’t enacted by Congress by the end of the year.
While Republicans and Democrats continue to spar over the best way to inspire job creation, millions of recipients of unemployment benefits may get caught in the cross-fire.”
I think of those checks as morphine to keep these millions of people from revolting against the system. I would guess the 2.1 million is really more like 3% of the total population if you consider avg. family size per worker. The #OWS movement may just be getting started.
I’ve pulled up local coverage of some of these groups. The reality is there are a lot of working people. IE, one interviewed was a dentist, another a financial planner (ha, ha) that are sympathetic to this group and see them as fighting a fight that they are not able to because they work. But they do want to support them so they are contributing supplies and money. Don’t be fooled by the employed’s lack of body count. Consider them shadow backers of the movement who understand what’s been going on.
Coverage on an Australian OWS was trumpeting that the group was “collapsing” because they all had to go back to work on Monday. Gheesh, you’d think the global PTB could at least get their talking points straight.
But they do want to support them so they are contributing supplies and money.
Or as General Sherman knew: “people are the backers up of things” Shelby Foote
Hey lets not forget that in Feb. 2012 there will be approximately 2.1 million people will lose their last extension of unemployment checks.
Ignore those left wing, smelly hippie, latte sipping trust fund babies and marxists. Everything is hunky dory and they’re just a bunch of left wing puppets (nevermind that they sent Charrlie Rangel packing when he tried to get a photo op with them)
” some oppose the extension on grounds that it keeps the unemployment rate elevated.”
Let them drop off the statistics. That will make everything all better.
“Coverage on an Australian OWS was trumpeting that the group was “collapsing” because they all had to go back to work on Monday. ”
HBB said the exact same thing a month ago. Protests don’t last because they have to be at work on Monday. Perhaps not this time…
Unless we have a very, very mild winter February is not a good time to protest by camping out in places like NYC and DC. This is going to have to morph into something else long before we hit February.
I would imagine the Marines that have decided to take up that cause could withstand a little Wall Street winter. Heck they might even share their survival skills which could come in handy w/this group if they’re really as unemployed as the MSM implies.
Marines freeze in subfreezing weather too, just like everyone else.
Oh I forgot something. If cutting off their unemployment doesn’t work then how about just slowing starving them? Actually it’s a tactical mistake for the Tea Party to do this over 10 years. They should aim for doing this before 2016 so they can fully leverage our trillion dollar security apparatus to deal with these social malcontents. Anyway starting next year the Tea Party Republicans put their new budget plan into effect which contains the following:
http://www.hungercoalition.org/story/house-budget-threatens-nutrition-programs-kids
“SNAP (food stamps) and other federal nutrition programs face significant threats as Congress negotiates its budget for 2012. The House version of the budget slashes SNAP funding by $127 billion over the next 10 years. Pennsylvania alone would lose $4.11 billion in SNAP benefits.
While it’s unclear how the federal government would implement these cuts, such a reduction would drastically cut SNAP eligibility, reduce benefit levels for participants or both. If government cut SNAP eligibility, 10 million Americans could lose their SNAP benefits entirely. If cuts came in the form of benefit reductions, a family of four would see their benefits slashed by nearly $150 a month.
The proposal would also convert SNAP to a “block grant” structure, which would:
Prevent government from using SNAP to help residents in crisis situations, including economic downturns and natural disasters, in the effective and efficient manner that it has in recent years.
Shift policy decisions now made by the federal government to state administrations, enabling states to slash the program well beyond the severe cuts already mandated by the House plan.
Other food and nutrition programs face dramatic cuts. In June, the House passed an Agriculture Appropriations bill that:
Slashes $733 million from the Women, Infants and Children program (WIC) , which means that up to 700,000 mothers and children would lose the food vouchers and nutrition education they now receive through WIC. In Pennsylvania, 20,000 mothers and children would be cut from the program.
Cuts $38 million from the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which would take away food from 150,000 seniors living in poverty across the country. In Pennsylvania, nearly 8,000 low-income seniors would no longer receive the program’s “senior food boxes,” which provide each recipient with enough food for 12 meals a month.
Cuts $63 million from The Emergency Food Assistance Program, which provides food to food banks and other hunger-relief agencies throughout the country.”
The old “if you vote republican you will starve children and throw grandma in the street” argument…
Cause there is no waste or fraud in these programs.
And we have plenty of surplus money anyways.
And only a super huge all powerful government can really take care of everyone.
And a reduction in the planned increase is always a “cut.”
And cat food is cheaper than tuna.
And people got old because they’re lazy
And billionaires pay lower taxes because they create Chinese jobs
And it’s better to spend a trillion killing other people than to spend money on our people
+1 Rio…
The real problem with cutting these programs is that any method of doing so that does not just involve slashing amounts, requires government workers to implement it.
I do not know if SNAP requires both a low income and a low net worth. If it doesn’t, then you could, presumably lower the number of eligible recipients substantially by adding a low net worth requirement. But how do you check for low net worth? It doesn’t show up on a tax return. You have to review a form filled in by every applicant and every current benefit recipient. If you want to do it by computer, you have to set up that system and places for people without their own computers to apply. And you need to audit at least a reasonable percentage (preferably 100%) of the forms by checking if there is any record of bank accounts under the names/social security numbers of the people listed on the form. Same thing for car ownership and houses. To do a really good job, you should do a home visit to look for evidence of side businesses.
How many people are you willing to hire to that work? Once you do it, how much money are you going to have saved?
And it’s better to spend a trillion killing other people than to spend money on our people
American Family Values. Whenever some politico bloviates “God Bless America” I cringe. I can’t imagine the Big Guy being anything other than utterly displeased with the USA. It should be more like “God Forgive America”
American Family Values. Whenever some politico bloviates “God Bless America” I cringe.
Don’t be such a H8er
And adjust your flag lapel pin, it’s crooked…
“The old “if you vote republican you will starve children and throw grandma in the street” argument…
Cause there is no waste or fraud in these programs.”
Apparently the SNAP program is undersubscribed, as tens of millions are too proud to avail themselves of it even though they are eligible.
And yeah, there’s gonna be waste and fraud, and as Polly pointed out above it isn’t cost effective to weed it out.
As for starving children and throwing grandma into the street, it is the right that wishes to dismantle anti-poverty programs and SS. The GOP’s current poster child, The Reverend/CEO/Bankster Cain is definitely proposing eradicating SS by abolishing the payroll tax. So yeah, he wants to throw grandma out onto the street, and is even proud of it.
Instead of the $1140 a month max income they would lower it to say $1000 a month or about $250 a week…
Then the food pantries would be swamped…
They could implement no meat fish chicken pork product over $3.99lb. (or $3.49) would be paid for by food stamps….that would eliminate all the wild speculation and repub talk of buying rib eye and lobster on FS….
And amazingly some foods would come down in price to qualify…would that be a bad thing?
While it’s unclear how the federal government would implement these cuts, such a reduction would drastically cut SNAP eligibility
Lip:
You are just bitter because you wasted your life, and these people are actually expending energy on something important.
“If I were living off a big fat federal retirement Pension right now, I would be worried, it is fixing to be taken down a notch or two or three.”
As are most retirement pensions, federal or not, big and fat or not. The money is just not there.
The promises are still there but the money to back these promises is not. Which means something has to give.
Don’t worry….they’ve still got time. Cuts are only on the mentally ill, impoverished elderly, impoverished students and other groups w/weak voices right now. People mentioned above can still party on.
It’s really kind of brilliant don’t you think? As the weak get hit no one gives a rat’s patootie and as the cuts reach further up the food chain, they’ll be stunned that they share the same fate never seeing it coming.
I talked to 4 different people this week who are very sure they and their families’ income stream/wealth is untouchable. The I’ve got mine attitude points to the fact that a lot of people don’t want to shake the tree. What cracks me up is the teachers. Do they really think the middle class can slowly erode yet those pensions will still get miraculously paid into perpetuity. Yeah, keep dreaming.
I know a few FedGov/military employees and retirees who are like that. No worries about income.
I know a retired firefighter who thinks his pension is untouchable and supports a balanced budget amendment and privatizing Medicare and Social Security. He thinks his daughter will be able to save for her retirement and medical care.
“It’s really kind of brilliant don’t you think? As the weak get hit no one gives a rat’s patootie… ”
Because we’ve all been propagandized by the food stamp deadbeats drum bangers.
They are out in force in our local rag’s comment section. I swear some of them are paid propogandists and that’s a sentiment that people on there have even asked out loud it’s so blatant and constant.
Almost as bad as the Herman Cain oh wow lookie here coverage.
Because we’ve all been propagandized by the food stamp deadbeats drum bangers.
The middle income percentiles have been well programmed to HATE the Lucky Ducky food stamp recipients.
“The middle income percentiles have been well programmed to HATE the Lucky Ducky food stamp recipients.
While they remain unaware that the 1%’ers have set up the system so that they will eventually join the “Lucky Ducky Club”. Of course if Herman Cain has it his way they won’t be Lucky Duckies anymore as they will be paying 2 of those nice nines he keeps yammering about.
“As the weak get hit no one gives a rat’s patootie and as the cuts reach further up the food chain, they’ll be stunned that they share the same fate never seeing it coming.”
Isn’t this PRECISELY how it happened with the jobs too? Nobody paid attention to the outsourcing until it was the white-collar guys who lost their jobs.
67% of registered New York voters (+/- 3%) agree with the OWS movement. Your four people are just in your own little world. Kinda funny how you always manage to produce some people you know personally that represent some very tiny minority, or extremely unlikely event.
I thought you had cancer. Whatever happened to that?
“I thought you had cancer. Whatever happened to that?”
Oh Big V, what a delicate flower are thee.
That was low.
And it seems you completely missed the point. Carrie Ann said that these 4 people she talked to are out to lunch. And she didn’t say how many she talked to total.
Observing that some people may get screwed who think they are safe does not mean that she agrees with them or that she disagrees with the OWS folks. I don’t understand why you attack her.
!
Both unconscionable AND unhinged. Carrie Ann, I’m so sorry. This makes no sense whatsoever.
That should tell you all you need to know.
I talked to 4 different people this week who are very sure they and their families’ income stream/wealth is untouchable. The I’ve got mine attitude points to the fact that a lot of people don’t want to shake the tree. What cracks me up is the teachers.
What cracks me up are the business owners around the country, who some how think tax breaks are the cure despite massive cuts to pensions, jobs, and safe investment returns.
At least some get it, can’t remember who posted the townhall transcript where business leader said, look lady I don’t need tax cuts, I need customers.
NO kidding. I always wondered why the idea of “trickle up” economics wasn’t at least as valid as its opposite.
Thats because everyone makes fun of my proposal to pay down peoples credits cards by $3000 to give this idea a try.
Ok some idjits will spend it on lap dances instead of a laptop but most people would use the money wisely. Buying pants shoes get the engine light fixed you know basic maintenance maybe have a few bucks left over to take a class or two.
Which means something has to give ??
If you have not read it yet, read Michael Lewis Vanity Fair article on California Bust…The sections on Vallejo & San Jose are eye opening to say the least…
As are most retirement pensions, federal or not, big and fat or not. The money is just not there.
Here’s another form of an OWS grievance-another corporate rip-off and another tear in the social contract for the benefit of a few.
‘Retirement Heist’ compiles evidence of plundered pensions
http://www.usatoday.com/money/books/reviews/story/2011-10-14/retirement-heist-book/50795990/1?csp=ip
Sometimes the real crime consists of activities considered “legal,” despite the damage they cause. That adage has never been more apt than when applied to the termination of pension funds by U.S. employers large, midsize and small. Over and over, loyal, deserving employees with modest incomes have watched their planned retirement savings disappear because of corporate managers and pension industry consultants.
…Journalist Ellen Schultz has been writing about such shameful behavior for a long time, mostly in The Wall Street Journal. Now she has pulled together the copious, irrefutable evidence between the covers of a book. It is shocking, and demoralizing. But will members of Congress and federal agency regulators stop what Schultz calls “retirement heists”? Probably not, unless voters make it clear the incumbents will lose their jobs unless something changes. Unfortunately, voters are rarely if ever that organized, no matter how much they have been cheated by corporate chieftains.
And this is why so many seniors are completely dependent on Social Security.
for the life of me I cannot make sense of what it is all about
All you needs to do is read their label:
99% as in: 99% of the InGREEDients in MegaBank’$ / MegaMedical’$ / MegaMilitarie$ is about sustaining profit$ for those “$uffering So’s!” collectively know as: ” We, Thee 1%”
Income Disparity And The ‘Price Of Civilization’
by NPR Staff / October 18, 2011
The Occupy Wall Street movement has been criticized for lacking focus — but its main slogan seems to be resonating. That slogan, “We are the 99 percent,” highlights the issue of income disparity.
The top 1 percent of U.S. households now take about a quarter of all income, according to Sachs. And wages for the average American male peaked in 1973, he says.
“The precise point is that money and wealth is accumulated so much at the top that it’s time for the wealthiest, richest and most powerful people in this country to play their proper role, to have the civic virtues to support America’s recovery — to stop saying that everything is theirs, and the rest of society has to suffer.
“I want the people at the top to have responsibility once again. First, to follow the law, because this has been an era of corporate recklessness and scandal and illegality.
“So, part of civic virtue is being lawful once again. But another part … is sharing in the responsibility in our society. And I believe that the richest and most powerful people have done very well over the last 30 years — but they have not done right for the American people. And it’s time that they do.”
Correlation and coincidence. The masses have sold their souls to the company store over the past 30 years. The rich grew richer as the poor grew more indebted. It has some correlation to who pays interest and who receives it. Protest that.
The banks would have imploded when the masses could not sustain their borrowing spree, except for the unflagging determination of the FedGov to do their borrowing for them. More and more people sense this but still can’t do the math.
Blue you’ve got to admit the pay ratios got so out of whack the PTB introduced credit to fill the gap so the underlings didn’t notice what was going on for a little while longer.
Yeah, the underlings were stupid to keep spending under that situation but the stupidity doesn’t take away from the fact that the pay ratios were changing in the first place.
I simply cannot see how any of it would have been possible without hundreds of millions of us peons taking on huge debt and paying interests to the banks. We made them fat and now we’re pissed that there isn’t enough sunshine to go around.
I believe the banks would shrivel up and die if we stop borrowing (personal & government). It would be painful (don’t ask me how I know), but it is a better alternative than where we are headed.
I simply cannot see how any of it would have been possible without hundreds of millions of us peons taking on huge debt and paying interests to the banks.
Peon di$aster would not have happened @ 14+%,…end. of. $torytime.
We made (the banks) fat and now we’re pissed that there isn’t enough sunshine to go around.
You’re serious? How can you not get it? I think you kind of do.
There WAS enough “sunshine to go around”. There was, is and always WILL be enough sunshine to go around. Look around you at all the “sunshine”. Look at the trends in wealth and income figures and USA’s increasing productivity the past 30 years.
Both the people and the banks screwed up but the banks, Wall Street and the super-rich got ALL the sunshine after their screw up and the people got the shaft.
Is this really that confusing?
Not confusing at all. I’m exploring the cause. The cause isn’t banker’s greed. That is a constant across history. There’s theft involved, but the revenue stream is the interest on our debts, leveraged and compounded. No gun put to our heads, we borrowed ourselves into poverty. That’s what I’m reflecting on.
I’ve been protesting the banks for a decade, by not paying them interest, hell not even letting them play with much of my monies. Kind of frustrated with the FedGov intervention into my rebellion, but doesn’t change how we got here.
It’s a volunteered serfdom. Masters will always present themselves for volunteers. If we were to cut off their interest streams, it would be sudden death for them and we’d be fine. The only blood would be from window jumpers.
It’s not the loot. They don’t have the loot anymore.
I’m exploring the cause. The cause isn’t banker’s greed. That is a constant across history. There’s theft involved,
If, as you say, bankers greed is a constant across history then what changed since the 1930’s Human greed of the sheeple? No, that did not change either. Human greed is a constant across history as well
So given those 2 constants, what changed to allow the housing and credit bubbles to go ballistic from the mid 90’s until now?
Of course what changed was the deregulation of the banker’s and the people’s greed mainly through the deregulation of the financial sector.
This is the root cause to be explored.
If, as you say, bankers greed is a constant across history then what changed since the 1930’s??????? Human greed of the sheeple?
I forgot a question mark.
I could be wrong, and I see your point, but yes I would say that the greed of the sheeple is the root cause. Yes, that is constant and the restraints were removed. As to root cause, the removal of restraints or the greed is maybe a moot point, unless we are looking for the end of it that is within our control. Then the borrowing cause is more useful.
Case in point, lack of legal restraints did not prevent me from leaving the debt crowd, does not result in me gambling, or whoring. If I did, it wouldn’t be the hooker’s fault or the cop’s fault.
When folks who have enslaved themselves with debt point to the lender, it is denial and they won’t get better.
This is the root cause to be explored.
Eyes got lost in the eCONohmy! maze, darn iffin’ i ran plum into a dead-end wall, has a $ign on it:
.015% FedInc. rate / 3.97% 30 year fixed
****************** Welcome *******************
‘I simply cannot see how any of it would have been possible without hundreds of millions of us peons taking on huge debt and paying interests to the banks. I believe the banks would shrivel up and die if we stop borrowing (personal & government).’
I came across this while doing today’s post:
‘Occupy’ movement helps homeowner avoid foreclosure’
http://michiganmessenger.com/53275/%E2%80%98occupy%E2%80%99-movement-helps-homeowner-avoid-foreclosure
In the comments one said: theTrot ‘Occupy Detroit will march from Grand Circus Park to Bank of America’s downtown Detroit HQ to demand an immediate moratorium on all foreclosures.’
Then there was this reply:
‘Henry Waterville (to) theTrot, ‘Fortunately you will not need to come to my defense. I agree that banks are crooks, so I came up with a scheme to cheat them out of all the mortgage interest that they were hoping to collect from me. My wife and I scrimped and saved so we could pay off our mortgage 21 years early.’
As to root cause, the removal of restraints or the greed is maybe a moot point, unless we are looking for the end of it that is within our control. Then the borrowing cause is more useful.
unless we are looking for the end of it that is within our control ??
Are we not? As you said, there is theft involved and it is part of governments job is to prevent theft. Now if the government eliminates laws against theft which results in 10X more people stealing stuff then what was the root cause of the increase in theft?
Human greed? No, human greed is not the root cause of the increase in theft. Human greed is the root cause of the existence of theft but it is not responsible for the increase in theft. The root cause in the increase in theft was dismantling the laws against theft.
This analogy applies to the deregulation of the financial industry which was the root cause of the housing and credit bubbles. We eliminated controls that were designed to reduce fraud and wild speculation. And eliminating those controls was the root cause of the increase in fraud and speculation.
Yes, sheeple are stupid and greedy, including rich ones. That’s why we are supposed to have meaningful and fair laws that apply to everyone equally. It’s to prevent sheeple from toppling society, whether they are in the 99% sheeple group, or the 1% sheeple group.
Oh look we let the dog off his leash and he ate the neighbor’s pet rabbit.
Bad, bad dog. You should have known better. Now sit back and take your beating for behaving like a dog.
Carrie, who pays for the rabbit in your scenario?
“…we let the dog off his leash and he ate the neighbor’s pet rabbit.”
Who is the bankster and who is the FB in this fable?
The precise point is that money and wealth is accumulated so much at the top that it’s time for the wealthiest, richest and most powerful people in this country to play their proper role, to have the civic virtues to support America’s recovery — to stop saying that everything is theirs, and the rest of society has to suffer.
I think history has demonstrated that doesn’t happen. Ever.
The super rich are wired into wanting everything to be theirs.
wired into wanting everything to be theirs
And possessing as much self-control as Augustus Gloop in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory…
“…it’s time for the wealthiest, richest and most powerful people in this country to play their proper role…”
Would that role perhaps be foreclosing on the other 99% of America?
Would that role perhaps be foreclosing on the other 99% of America?
I thought 34% of Americans have no 1st mortgage note?
And the luckiest among us with no mortgage note have that other document called a LEASE
…swinging placidly from lamp posts.
“Don’t criticize what you can’t understand” - Bob Dylan
The OWS ‘movement’ started as a result of an editorial in Adbusters magazine calling for a day of action/protest in Wall Street on 9/17.
Few MSM sources even mention Adbusters magazine, which is published from Vancouver, BC. Adbusters advocates against the consumerist lifestyle, which is intolerable to the ad-revenue based business model of the corporate media.
This same ignorance about the tea party is displayed when its origin is attributed to Rick Santelli’s rant-gone-viral, when it actually started with a Ron Paul single day ‘money bomb’ fundraising event on 12/16/2007.
Do your homework people, don’t let the TeeVee do your thinking for you
I often site Rick Santelli but he obviously didn’t come up w/the Tea Party idea right in the middle of his rant that day. The place and date had already been determined. The concept had already been considered and disseminated yet it was RSs rant that accelerated knowledge of it in the mainstream.
When I write my commentary it is usually to say how much the Republican party changed the message of what the Tea Party stood for vs what we thought it was going to be when RSs rant fired us up that day.
Excellent piece from the Financial Times:
America must manage its decline
“What is not permissible, in mainstream debate, is to suggest that there may be no “coming back” –and that the decline of American power is neither a fad nor a choice but a fact.
Admittedly, America’s relative decline is likely to be much less abrupt than the falling-off experienced by Britain after 1945. The US is still the world’s largest economy and is easily its pre-eminent military and diplomatic power. However, the moment at which China becomes the world’s largest economy is coming into view –the end of the decade seems a likely passing point. Of course, it is true that China has its own grave political and economic problems. Yet the fact that there are roughly four times as many Chinese as Americans means that –even allowing for a sharp slowdown in Chinese growth –at some point, China will become “number one”.
Last week, Hillary Clinton insisted that America will remain a major power in Asia –with all the military expenditure that this implies. Very well. But what does that mean for spending at home? Few politicians are prepared to have that discussion. Instead, particularly among Republicans, they fall back on feel-good slogans about American “greatness”.
The failure to have a proper discussion of relative decline also risks leaving American public opinion unprepared for a new era. As a result, the public reaction to setbacks at home and abroad is less likely to be calm and determined and more likely to be angry and irrational –feeding what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called “the paranoid style in American politics”.
“…However, the moment at which China becomes the world’s largest economy is coming into view –the end of the decade seems a likely passing point. …”
Which reminds me, wasn’t this supposed to be the Japanese century? Whatever became of that prediction?
See also the book “The People’s Peace: Britain 1945-1989″ about another empire in decline.
Every time I start to make an arguement like the one in this article I end up erasing it because it eventually dawns on me again that planning the decline means including the masses w/in the circle of information.
When retail buying is 70% of your GDP, that spill the beans moment will in fact be like yelling fire in a crowded theater.
The chicks that refuse to stop getting their nails done will all of sudden realize how fun it is to invite your friends over to have a nail painting party, the family vacations will turn into weekly backyard barbecues, it will be once again ok to wear the same 3-4 sensible pair of shoes (ok some sexy heels will be hidden way in back of the closet), the sports cars will get sold at a loss to purchase gold, seeds and ammunition, men will decide hunting is manly and not just about killing some poor defenseless animal. When fewer people are working they’ll be no need for multiple cars/family. Neighborhood pick up games will replace teeny tike sports travel teams and all that expensive equipment and hotel stays never get purchased. Soon there’s been such a collapse in spending, your tax receipts are screwed & the austerity plans/tax the breathing plans are trotted out. Then we’re trapped in that downward credit collapse spiral.
Yup, it’s never going to happen.
Great reply, welcome to the New Normal
How many people in this country could continue life without much interruption if: their income immediately fell by 50% and/or the price of most needed goods (volatile food and energy) immediately doubled?
The squad is preparing for both possibilities…
No Carrie Anne, that is not how the power brokers have planned our decline. They have planned it so that every person who is born outside their circle is a slave who works for them from day one.
Yes, and that plan is much further along than people seem to think. The question right now appears to be how much effort to put into chasing the ones who might slip through the net.
Will there be runners like Logan’s Run that will hunt me down and take me to Carousel for oooooh, having no credit payments?
And all this time I thought I was the tin foil hat doomer.
When you look at the big picture I can’t see how to conclude anything other than that we’re slowly but surely being drawn into slavery and the entire planet will be one big plantation with nowhere to run. I’m not saying they’ll succeed…just that I have to conclude that’s the goal.
If you’re not a slave and you’re not a master, then you’re the equivalent of a wild animal running around the plantation until somebody decides to “harvest” you as payment for “their” resources that you’ve used.
“Last week, Hillary Clinton insisted that America will remain a major power in Asia –with all the military expenditure that this implies.”
Hillary CLinton can insist the moon is made of green cheese if she likes. This is diplomat speak. It doesn’t mean anything other than perhaps there is no plan currently in the works to withdraw all US military presense from Asia in the next 2 months. To draw any conclusions from the statement of a Secretary of State serving in the second half of a president’s admininstration is silly.
Of course, it is true that China has its own grave political and economic problems. Yet the fact that there are roughly four times as many Chinese as Americans means that –even allowing for a sharp slowdown in Chinese growth –at some point, China will become “number one”.
Filed under: “Eyes only know what eyes read on the internet” Will Rodgers
Outrage in China after toddler run over, ignored
By Haolan Hong and Steven Jiang, CNN
updated 12:09 PM EST, Tue October 18, 2011
Beijing (CNN) — Gruesome footage of a toddler falling victim to two successive hit-and-run accidents and then being ignored by many passers-by at the scene last week in southern China continued to galvanize the nation Monday, prompting a fierce debate on the state of morality in Chinese society.
A security camera captured the horrific incident last Thursday outside a hardware market in Foshan, Guangdong Province. Two-year-old Wang Yue was seen toddling in the middle of a narrow street and looking around, oblivious to a fast-approaching white van.
The disturbing video shows the van knocking the girl over. The driver briefly stops with the girl underneath the van, before continuing on, its rear tires slowly rolling over her small body. The girl is left barely moving in her own blood as several pedestrians and cyclists pass by.
Minutes later, another small truck drives over Wang without slowing down, the video shows. More passers-by walked, cycled or drove around her motionless body without stopping — until a woman carrying a sack appeared 10 minutes after the initial collision. Dropping her sack, she quickly moved the girl to safety and went to look for help.
Let’s have a discussion about what has caused this decline, and how to solve the problem. Good thing we have the OWS. Otherwise, guys like this would be the only ones with a voice.
Rick Santelli “started” the Tea Party movement the same way that Christopher Columbus “discovered” America.
In a boat?
The squad donated $100 to Ron Paul’s ‘money bomb’ fundraising event on 12/16/2007 (anniversary of the Boston Tea Party), this in an election cycle where he was invisible in the MSM. Raising $6 million in a single day, this was the then-largest single day fundraising amount by a presidential candidate, an amount later beaten by both Obama and Clinton.
Fast forward to the 2010 elections, the ‘tea party’ has become an unrecognizable parody of what Ron Paul ran on in 2007-2008.
Me too. Exactly $100 on the same day. I followed up with another $150 later but gave up after the GOP took over and put Palin on the ticket. Now I know different. Listen up citizens it’s a waste of time to vote at the ballot box. Now you vote with your feet, you vote by sabotaging the machine and if that fails then take a page from Sharon Angle’s playbook and use ‘other means’ to hack the system.
I will also point out there is a growing body of evidence that Obama rigged the elections:
INDIANAPOLIS (WXIN/CNN) - Indiana’s Republican Party is calling for a federal investigation into allegations of fraud in the state’s 2008 Democratic primary that allegedly helped both Pres. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
The state’s GOP Chairman, Eric Holcomb, sent a letter to the U.S. District Attorney in northern Indiana after a report by the South Bend Tribune found that the Obama campaign allegedly relied on more than 150 bogus signatures in St. Joseph County.
“To the extent of my knowledge, it’s hard to find another example of hundreds or a pattern of this magnitude every happening in the state of Indiana,” Holcomb said.
He said the problems also extended to the approval process which requires members of both parties to sign off on signatures gathered.
“The Republican was out of the office on bereavement leave and her stamp, in an unlocked drawer, was used to certify these bogus signatures,” Holcomb said. “This goes deeper than just duplicating pages and turning them in.”
Chairman of the Indiana Democratic Party, Dan Parker, released a statement saying that the party will “continue to fully support the investigation into this isolated incident in St. Joseph County. We want to know who committed this act, and we want that person held accountable.”
Holcomb does not believe the alleged fraud is itself an isolated event.
“This may be in fact the tip of the iceberg, and I’m sure we’ll learn more as the facts come into the light,” he said.
St. Joseph County resident here. Obama’s campaign did not direct the petition filing and did not “rig” the election. In fact, he lost the IN primary to Clinton. The article mentions that both Clinton and Obama’s petitions for the ‘08 primary contain signatures that appear to be forged. This is on the St. Joseph County Democratic party because the grandees dragged their feet in getting the petitions completed before the deadline, so it appears that they got some party hack to fill in party members’ names and signatures. Wrong? yes. Nefarious? Probably not. The party chaiman has resigned over this scandal, and he is under investigation by the prosecutor (one of the forged name is his).
Keep in mind that the Indiana primary was held in May, which places us at or near the end of the line. McCain had long since wrapped up the R nomintaion, and El Rushbo and his ilk were actively encouraging their sheeple to participate in “Operation Chaos”, i.e., urging Repubs to vote in the Demo primary in order to well, as the name suggests, create more chaos in the nominating process. Mind you, Indiana has a statute that requires everyone who votes in a primary to be “loyal” to the party in whose primary that voter has participated. I would gladly cheer if a few party hacks who filled in names and forged a few signatures were prosecuted so long as every Indiana Republican who picked up a Demo ballot in May ‘08 was also put on trial. For this reason, I suspect the IN republican Party is not going to make a hude deal out of this.
Thanks for the clarification. The goggle has 55 stories on this topic and of the 5 I looked at all implied the same thing. One would think there is a campaign to cast suspicion on the voting process? I was fooled and no doubt thousands more will be too.
and El Rushbo and his ilk were actively encouraging their sheeple to participate in “Operation Chaos”
Chad: “Worked in Florida & Ohio, ha.”
“If I was living off a big fat federal retirement Pension right now ,I would be worried , it is fixing to be taken down a notch or two or three.”
Remember the retired airline pilots getting their retirement contracts “adjusted” downward shortly after 9/11 drove the air travel industry into the ground? These pilots are like movie stars, rare people among the crowd. This should have been the wake-up call for everyone who believes in pension contracts and bankruptcy law.
These pilots are like
movie starsredundantly trained professionals, rare people among the ["I-can-drive-an accordion-city-bus-and-not-hit-your-grandmother-standing-on the-corner"] crowd.“We’re going to be in the Hudson…” Capt. Chesley Sully Sullenberger
“Reading about the Wall St. protests , for the life of me I cannot make sense of what it is all about.”
We now have have four years of college students with large student loan debts graduating into an economy shedding jobs and wages. Though the protesters don’t yet appear to be huge in numbers, they’re larger, smarter, and better organized than those that are supposedly leading us.
I don’t know where this movement is ultimately headed, but I don’t expect it to fizzle anytime soon.
The protesters have been more peaceful than the authorities so far. They’ve also shown they know where the worst of the one percenters live by protesting outside the houses of Jamie Dimon, Rupert Murdoch, David Koch, etc. If the authorities brutally crack down on the protesters, why couldn’t we have a French Revolution moment in the United States?
The squad expects that when this ‘movement’ becomes too threatening, undercover police dressed as black bloc anarchists will get violent, thus instigating their uniformed counterparts to crack down in a police riot an any and all OWS attendees in their path.
That’s what video cameras are for.
The pain in Spain
Stays mainly in the plain.
October 18, 2011, 8:47 AM GMT
Spain Feels the Housing Pain
By David Roman
Spain’s property bust is only getting worse. The wonder is that the country’s economy and banks are still this resilient.
The Spanish government said Tuesday that housing prices remained in free-fall in the third quarter, dropping 5.5% from a year earlier, the biggest decline since 2009.
This makes Spain, in many senses, the worst case of a property bust in the developed world—the country is already deep in its third consecutive year of falling prices, with no rebounds.
Last year, the pace of decline slowed significantly, signalling some light at the end of the tunnel, but another metaphor is called for instead: that last year’s respite was nothing more than a dead cat’s bounce.
The good news should be the overall amount of the decline, since Spain’s government says prices are only down 18%, in nominal terms, since their peak in early 2008.
But that doesn’t include the effect of Spain’s persistent inflation, one of the highest in the euro zone, which makes the real drop closer to 30%—Spain’s government didn’t provide real price data in today’s release.
After earlier predictions of a short-term correction have been smashed, some analysts now say prices may keep falling for the next two years, eroding Spain’s household wealth and banking balance sheets.
…
RealtyTrac says mortgage defaults rose in the 3rd quarter, pointing to more foreclosures ahead
By Associated Press, Published: October 12
LOS ANGELES — More U.S. homes are entering the foreclosure process, but they’re taking ever longer to get sold or repossessed by lenders.
The number of U.S. homes that received a first-time default notice during the July to September quarter increased 14 percent compared to the second quarter, RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.
…
“While foreclosure activity in September and the third quarter continued to register well below levels from a year ago, there is evidence that this temporary downward trend is about to change direction, with foreclosure activity slowly beginning to ramp back up,” Saccacio said.
Foreclosure activity began to slow last fall after problems surfaced with the way many lenders were handling foreclosure paperwork, namely shoddy mortgage paperwork comprising several shortcuts known collectively as robo-signing.
Many of the nation’s largest banks reacted by temporarily ceasing all foreclosures, re-filing previously filed foreclosure cases and revisiting pending cases to prevent errors.
Other factors have also worked to stall the pace of new foreclosures this year. The process has been held up by court delays in states where judges play a role in the foreclosure process, lenders’ reluctance to take back properties amid slowing home sales and a possible settlement of government probes into the industry’s mortgage-lending practices.
Those settlement talks, led by a group of state attorneys general, have been undermined in recent weeks after state officials in some states, including California and Massachusetts, have broken with the rest of the states.
While banks appear more willing to start the foreclosure countdown on borrowers, they haven’t put a dent in the overall length of the foreclosure process.
In the third quarter, it took an average of 336 days, or 11.2 months, for a U.S. home to go from receiving an initial notice of default to being foreclosed by a lender, RealtyTrac said.
That’s up from 318 days, or 10.6 months, in the second quarter and represents the largest average span of time for the foreclosure process since the first quarter of 2007, the firm said.
In some states, it’s even longer.
It took an average of 986 days, almost three years, for the foreclosure process to play out in New York in the third quarter — the longest stretch of time of any state, RealtyTrac said.
New Jersey was a close second at 974 days, while Florida was third at 749 days, or just over two years.
Not all states are seeing an increase in the time it takes for homes to move through the foreclosure process, however.
In Texas, homes made it through the foreclosure process in an average of 86 days during the third quarter, down from 92 days in the second quarter, RealtyTrac said.
In all, 195,878 properties received a default notice in the third quarter. Despite the sharp increase from the second quarter, the total was still down 27 percent versus the third quarter last year, RealtyTrac said.
Lenders took back 196,530 homes during the quarter, down 4 percent from the second quarter and down 32 percent from the same quarter last year.
Banks remain on track to repossess some 800,000 homes this year, down from more than 1 million last year, Saccacio said.
RealtyTrac had originally anticipated some 1.2 million homes would be repossessed by lenders this year.
…
View Photo Gallery — Flashback: Last year, some mortgage lenders and government officials took action after discovering that many mortgage documents were mishandled.
It took an average of 986 days, almost three years, for the foreclosure process to play out in New York in the third quarter — the longest stretch of time of any state, RealtyTrac said.
In Texas, homes made it through the foreclosure process in an average of 86 days during the third quarter, down from 92 days in the second quarter, RealtyTrac said.
Nice comparison - Wonder which state will stabilize first?
Spot on — it’s a no brainer!
Nice comparison - Wonder which state will stabilize first?
The process has been held up by court delays in states where judges play a role in the foreclosure process
In $ummation: Texas vs NY
(location! location! location!) + (# of $600.00 BK lawyers per square mile). = “The sagebrush looks dry this time of year dear,…don’t you think?”
Filed under: ‘This too will pass”
Dust storm roils through Texas South Plains
AP – 3 hrs ago
That was nothing compared to the 8,000-foot-high rolling dust cloud that moved through the city just before 6 p.m., dropping visibility to between zero and less than a quarter of a mile, Ziebell said.
North winds gusting as high as 74 mph had begun forming the dust cloud about 100 miles north of Lubbock around 4:30 p.m., he said.
“It went from light to dark, just like that,” said Lubbock convenience store clerk Alma Williams. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It really scared me.”
She said customers who went outside to watch the dirt cloud said they hadn’t seen anything like it, either,
Lubbock city spokesman Jeff McKito said he was driving home from work when the dust hit. “It was pretty spectacular. Everything just turned black,” he said.
No injuries were reported from the dust cloud reminiscent of those shown in Dust Bowl photos from the late 1930s.
The dust cloud was yet another byproduct of the persistent drought in West Texas, Ziebell said.
The U.S. Drought Monitor map released Oct. 11 showed much of Texas, including the South Plains, were still experiencing “exceptional drought” — the most severe category.
In an Oct. 6 statement, the National Weather Service in Lubbock reported that there was a “high likelihood” that 2011 could be the driest on record across the South Plains.
Not to be superstitious or anything, but weren’t there lots of dust storms during the Great Depression, just a little to the north of Texas?
Dust storm shrouds Texas city
An enormous cloud hits Lubbock, where residents compare it to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The ongoing drought helped produce the storm, an expert says.
Monday’s dust storm reduces visibility for drivers in Lubbock, Texas. (Walt Nett, Lubbock Avalanche-Journal / October 17, 2011)
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times
October 18, 2011, 9:35 p.m.
Reporting from Houston—
Even by Texas standards the dark, dense, 8,000-foot-high behemoth of a dust storm that enveloped Lubbock had folks making comparisons Tuesday to the great Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
It was “Steinbeck-ish in its arrival,” said 71-year-old Paul Beane, a Lubbock city councilman, who watched the storm roll in Monday evening from his front porch. “I expected at any moment to see a line of Model Ts coming through headed to California. It really did look like pictures I had seen of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.”
…
Nice post 2banana…Interesting statistic…
“The number of U.S. homes that received a first-time default notice during the July to September quarter increased 14 percent compared to the second quarter, RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.”
The house I rented in Jupiter Fl. from Oct. 2005 - Feb. 2010 that didn`t have a mortgage payment made for at least 3 years and the house I rent now which the owners have missed 16 of the last 21 mortgage payments never showed up on RealtyTrac. jeff saturday said Tuesday.
“It took an average of 986 days, almost three years, for the foreclosure process to play out in New York in the third quarter — the longest stretch of time of any state, RealtyTrac said.”
This no man’s land is reducing the inventory through default. I’ve seen Freddie and Fannie homes taken care of so they didn’t deteriorate while they sat empty for at least a year and just across town a house I wasn’t sure what the status was left to rot.
Both started out worth about $400k in a $200k median price area. The older one which was a much larger structure was taken care of & clearly marked w/Fannie Freddie notices. That was about 4 years ago. It finally sold I think for somewhere around $275K. The other structure was probably abandoned yet never actually foreclosed on. It wasn’t that old. It may have been abandoned as long as 2 years ago. I talked to someone about ripping it down to the studs and starting over and when they asked me the price of the property they started laughing hysterically saying don’t you dare. Maybe for $100k less. But then he thought about it and said no don’t even touch it for that. Walk away and walk away fast.
Anecdotally it seems more of the more recent listings have sported photos w/empty rooms. I hope they survive the winter intact.
The Boston Globe
Frank’s fingerprints are all over the financial fiasco
By Jeff Jacoby
Globe Columnist / September 28, 2008
‘THE PRIVATE SECTOR got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it.”
That’s Barney Frank’s story, and he’s sticking to it. As the Massachusetts Democrat has explained it in recent days, the current financial crisis is the spawn of the free market run amok, with the political class guilty only of failing to rein the capitalists in. The Wall Street meltdown was caused by “bad decisions that were made by people in the private sector,” Frank said; the country is in dire straits today “thanks to a conservative philosophy that says the market knows best.” And that philosophy goes “back to Ronald Reagan, when at his inauguration he said, ‘Government is not the answer to our problems; government is the problem.’ ”
In fact, that isn’t what Reagan said. His actual words were: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Were he president today, he would be saying much the same thing.
…
Barney Frank really thinks he had nothing to do with the present crisis and only bigger and bigger government can save us all. He even blames the voters for their poor decisions.
I blame the voters of MA who keep sending him back to congress year after year…
—————————————-
Barney Frank Unhappy With Occupy Wall Streeters Who ‘Blame Me For Consequence Of Their Not Voting’
Mediaite | 10/18/11 | Colby Hall
On Monday night Rachel Maddow explained how the Occupy Wall Street movement defied some traditional party lines, or in her words, protesters “aren’t exactly delighted with Democrats either.” She then introduced Rep. Barney Frank, who shared some frustrations with the protesters, saying “I’m unhappy when people didn’t vote last time blame me for the consequences of their not voting.” Frank echoed the thoughts made last week by former Gov. Ed Rendell who basically asked where were these folks during the last mid-term elections?
Frank has been himself a lightening rod for harsh criticism surrounding the loosening of regulations surrounding mortgages, which some feel led to the very mortgage-back security problems that led to a crashing of the U.S. economy back in fall of 2008. Many on the right have efforted to make him the poster-boy of Democratic ineptitude.
Yeah, well he only needed 50.1% to win. There were plenty of us MA residents suffering through his whole tenure.
Were they lazy? Or so disgusted by the choices they were given, that they chose to vote for “none of the above” by not voting at all?
“Many on the right have efforted to make him the poster-boy of Democratic ineptitude.”
You realize you’ve just made a case for you being a parrot, right?
Barney Frank deserves some of the blame but not all of it.
“In the real world, recent events were a devastating refutation of the free-market orthodoxy that has ruled American politics these past three decades. Above all, the long crusade against financial regulation, the successful effort to unravel the prudential rules established after the Great Depression on the grounds that they were unnecessary, ended up demonstrating — at immense cost to the nation — that those rules were necessary, after all.
But down the (GOP’s) rabbit hole, none of that happened. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because of runaway private lenders like Countrywide Financial. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because Wall Street pretended that slicing, dicing and rearranging bad loans could somehow create AAA assets — and private rating agencies played along. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers exploited gaps in financial regulation to create bank-type threats to the financial system without being subject to bank-type limits on risk-taking.
No, in the universe of the Republican Party we found ourselves in a crisis because Representative Barney Frank forced helpless bankers to lend money to the undeserving poor.
O.K., I’m exaggerating a bit — but not much. Mr. Frank’s name did come up repeatedly as a villain in the crisis, and not just in the context of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, which Republicans want to repeal. You have to marvel at his alleged influence given the fact that he’s a Democrat and the vast bulk of the bad loans now afflicting our economy were made while George W. Bush was president and Republicans controlled the House with an iron grip. But he’s their preferred villain all the same. PAUL KRUGMAN, NYT
(I know, I know, if you don’t agree with him, he’s a commie)
But down the (GOP’s [“TrueDeceiver’s™ / TrueHypocrite's™”] ) rabbit hole, none of that happened. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because of runaway private lenders ["TruePatriotCEO'$™"] like Countrywide Financial. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because Wall Street [“TrueFinancialCult™” ] pretended that slicing, dicing and rearranging bad loans could somehow create AAA assets [“TrueFinancialInnovation™”] — and private rating agencies [“TrueSeditionist$erialEnabler$™”] played along. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because “shadow banks”[“True$erialLiquiditist™”] like Lehman Brothers exploited
gaps[$EC cri$$y cox] in financial regulation to create bank-type threats to the financial system without being subject to [Philyi$ Graham] bank-type limits on risk-taking.Marvin the Martian: “Oh, that wasn’t a bit nice…You have made me very angry… very angry indeed!”
But why does the SOB still have the same job????
Well, why don’t you look up who has run against him in his district over the last few election cycles and let us know which of them you think is more appealing to the registered voters in his district. That is the only way a member of Congress loses his job.
only bigger and bigger government can save us all.
I call BS. Government was never “bigger and bigger.” Government was bigger for several generations, and — o by the way — during that time we had a stable country and a strong middle class.
It was during the Repub reign* when government got smaller and smaller. Tarriffs: gone. Guest worker programs: gone. Glass-Steagall: gone. Energy regulation: gone. Intellectual property: gone. Progressive taxes: gone. Debt safety nets: gone. Monopoly break-ups: gone.
When Frank wants government to be bigger, he means that he wants government to grow BACK to what it was, when –o by the way — we had a stable country and a strong middle class. NOT “bigger and bigger” and bigger.
————
*and yes, that includes Clinton. I think we were all caught up in the myth of the knowledge economy in the 90’s.
+1
It was during the Repub reign* when government got smaller and smaller. Tarriffs: gone. Guest worker programs: gone. Glass-Steagall: gone. Energy regulation: gone. Intellectual property: gone. Progressive taxes: gone. Debt safety nets: gone. Monopoly break-ups: gone.
Geez Oxyy, eyes like you POV.
(eyes always mostly saw it this away):
It was during the
Repub[MegaInc.'$] reign* when government gotsmallermore obedient andsmallermore obedient. Tarriffs: gone. Guest worker programs: gone. Glass-Steagall: gone. Energy regulation: gone. Intellectual property: gone. Progressive taxes: gone. Debt safety nets: gone. Monopoly break-ups: gone.Government spending HAS NEVER SHRUNK.
The size and scope of government HAS NEVER SHRUNK.
IT HAS NEVER GOTTEN SMALLER.
NOT ONE YEAR
Not under “Balanced Budget Peace Dividend The ear a big government is over” Clinton
Not under ‘Tax Cut” Reagan
Not since the 1902
Stop drinking the kool-aid.
www dot usgovernmentspending.com/past_spending
Government spending HAS NEVER SHRUNK
It shrunk on its regulatory programs mentioned or enforcement of those. Military? No it’s exploded.
And the government’s tax revenues compared to GDP have cratered, much of it caused by the recession and the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
That’s because the population keeps growing.
Can I have a hit of what ur smoking!!
Currently hailing from a State that consistently re-elects Feinstein and Boxer, I can relate.
This is how it happens, see? The politicians are beginning to separate themselves from their corporate donors. It is a good sign, but only the beginning. Let’s fire them!
Prospects for a near-term U.S. housing recovery seem to have recently been pushed out to 2015 or so, as yesteryear’s serial bottom callers have gone missing in action.
Foreclosure rates up 14 per cent amid fears home values will plummet again
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 6:45 PM on 14th October 2011
More foreclosure filings were reported this quarter because of a quick jump in the number of default notices, meaning bad news for the U.S. economy as home prices are expected to drop as a result.
…
Foreclosure filings began dropping off in September of last year as major lenders halted property seizures to ensure their paperwork was in order housing prices have begun to stabilize and shift higher in recent months.
The S&P Case-Shiller index of home values in 20 U.S. cities rose 0.9 per cent in July, its fourth straight monthly increase, as 17 of the cities posted gains. Despite the improvement, it remained 4.1 per cent below its year-ago level.
If a fresh flood of foreclosed properties hits the market, housing prices will likely take another leg down. Banks price foreclosed homes with an eye toward a quick sale.
‘Increased foreclosure filings will continue to erode house prices,’ said Ed Delgado, a former Wells Fargo senior vice president and CEO of the Five Star Institute, a mortgage-education provider.
‘The question is, at what point do you reach the bottom of the market?’ Mr Delgado asked.
Mr Delgado says he does not see any signs of recovery in the foreseeable future, and says things will get worse before they get better. He also worries the bottom might not be hit until the third quarter of next year.
RealtyTrac warns that as many as 1 million foreclosure actions that would have taken place this year will be pushed into 2012.
The firm also says they do no expect to see home price appreciation until the housing market works through the backlog of distressed assets, and the overall malaise in the sector could continue for the next three to four years.
Cantankerous Intellectual Bomb Thrower, you are posting propaganda made to scare home owners that they should drop their prices because there is all this shadow inventory.
At this very moment home builder stocks are up 8%-12% because they say demand for new homes is booming. Who is lying? You or Mr. stock market?
KBH 6.85 +0.56 +8.90%
HOV 1.27 +0.08 +6.72%
TOL 16.72 +1.58 +10.40%
DHI 10.37 +0.83 +8.70%
LEN 15.82 +1.25 +8.58%
BZH 1.92 +0.15 +8.47%
You are not trying to imply that the stock market is currently a reliable reflection of market fundamentals are you?
Depending on how far off the recovery is, and based on how far the homebuilder share prices have fallen since their mid-2000s peak, it is possible a housing recovery by 2015 and current recovery in builder shares are fully consistent. It is predictable the builder share prices will rise once it is clear the market is coming back; rational investors will try to position their portfolios to reflect this predictable recovery.
If it turns out the housing market is still in the tank by 2015, then all bets are off.
Occupy Wall Street: From a single hashtag, a protest circled the world
By Reuters
Published: October 18, 2011
An Occupy Wall Street campaign demonstrator holds a sign in Zuccotti Park, near Wall Street in New York October 17, 2011. PHOTO: Reuters
NEW YORK: It all started innocuously enough with a July 13 blog post urging people to “Occupy Wall Street“, as though such a thing (Twitter hashtag and all) were possible.
It turns out, with enough momentum and a keen sense of how to use social media, it actually is.
The Occupy movement, decentralized and leaderless, has mobilized thousands of people around the world almost exclusively via the Internet. To a large degree through Twitter, and also with platforms like Facebook and Meetup, crowds have connected and gathered.
As with any movement, a spark is needed to start word spreading. SocialFlow, a social media marketing company, did an analysis for Reuters of the history of the Occupy hashtag on Twitter and the ways it spread and took root.
…
From a guy named Redact on MW:
“A 30 year mortgage is 30 years of financial enslavement and geographic immobility. 30 years of being driven to work and earn money to pay the bank. 30 years of having a significant portion of your earning potential dedicated to one pre-determined, non-productive purpose (lol @ all the Boomers that actually thought their 3 bedroom 2 bath home was worth nearly 1 million dollars, now you know otherwise - housing is NOT an investment). 30 years of being unable to seek greener pastures elsewhere. 30 years of not being able to say, “take this job and shove it!”
That’s really the point - financial enslavement. To rob the people of their freedom and force them to work hard for their corporate and government masters (profits for the corps, taxes to the government). So I fully expect interest rates to go even lower to incentivize people into signing away their lives into 30 years of indentured servitude.”
Also 30 years of property taxes - where in some states now equals more than half the mortgage payment…
A house is a place to live.
If you are able to buy a place you like, that you can afford, with nice neighbors - it can be a pretty sweet deal.
And if you are LUCKY - the value of your house may keep pace with inflation.
Also 30 years of property taxes - where in some states now equals more than half the mortgage payment…
A house is a place to live.
If you are able to buy a place you like, that you can afford, with nice neighbors - it can be a pretty sweet deal.
And if you are LUCKY - the value of your house may keep pace with inflation.
(sorry if this is a double post)
Yet even at this late date it is not difficult to hear stories of families cajoling younger family members to take the plunge - and with gusto to boot!
Redact’s post reminded me of the last place I worked full time near Hingham MA. I left after 3 mos because I didn’t want to end up like them. My co-workers perpetually walked around looking like deer in the headlights. The ranchor was so thick in our dept. different groups had taken to sabotaging the work to get back at each other. There were stories of being physically threatened. Unfortunatley HR had its own serious issues w/illegal behavior so no one bothered consulting them. Besides the quality of the work really bumped the bottom.
Even back then in 1997 I felt it was my co-workers giant mortgages that kept them in such awful misery. Never felt so glad to be a renter. I just walked in and said I need to go. I really believe if I’d stayed there I would have gone mad. Certainly a good percentage of them were already conducting themselves in such a fashion.
30 years of having a significant portion of your earning potential dedicated to one pre-determined, non-productive purpose
EXCUSE ME??? After 30 years of dedicating your income to this pre-determined purpose, you OWN A HOUSE OUTRIGHT! That sounds like a pretty damn productive purpose to me.
Meanwhile, I rent. And I’ve been working hard to pay my corporate landlord just the same as any homeowner works for their corporate bank. And at the end of 30 years of the same corporate enslavement, I will own nothing.
Geograhic immobility? In a normal market, this is BS. If you buy at a decent price with an amortized mortgage, you can always sell and break even very easily — might even come out ahead — and you can still tell your boss to shove it.
Yeah you own it after 30 LONG YEARS.
The question is; At what cost?
And it’s not BS Oxide. It’s reality. All your if’s are meangingless because prices are GROSSLY INFLATED.
“At what cost?”
If I borrow $200k at 5% for 30 years, I will have paid $386k for that $200k house, assuming 100% LTV.
People don’t raise a fuss over this like they do credit cards, because of the 20-30 year paradigm of “housing only goes up!”
But that’s $386k, man! $200k of debt. And now we have a new paradigm.
you OWN A HOUSE OUTRIGHT!”
how long do modern homes last ? new roof, plumbing, windows when do they need replacment. what about termites?
probably need a second mortgage to fix all these items
property tax and HOA insurance I don’t know I guess you kinda of own it?
I rented a house in Poway CA 2 years ago, so old the electrical outlets could not hold a plug
I changed all the ones I needed
That was a old house
I’m with Oxy on this one. I’ll take owning over renting 99% of the time.
You’ll take buying a SFR over renting the SFR at half the cost?
No, but you and I both know there are many examples where it does make sense to buy.
And many examples where it doesn’t.
It’s even more fun than that. Yesterday as I was listening to the radio, I was reminded that lenders know that, on average, people move every 7 years. So, they stack mortgages against purchasers with that in mind.
All of which means, assuming you are following the amortization schedule to make payments, you are paying very little of the house off in the first 7-10 years. All of which means, the average “homeowner” is doing nothing more than….renting.
Could this “help” possibly be extended to households mired in student loan debt or credit card debt who are having trouble making their payments? Or how about if “help” were provided to 401(K) investors whose stock portfolios have lost, say, over $100K in value, in the form of a guaranteed higher interest on fixed income funds in their portfolios?
I am puzzled over the legal basis for defining underwater homeowners as a special class for receiving financial assistance?
BUSINESS
OCTOBER 18, 2011
New Mortgage Plan Floated
Underwater Borrowers Current on Payments Would Get Help
BY RUTH SIMON, NICK TIMIRAOS AND DAN FITZPATRICK
State and federal officials are pushing a plan that could help some “underwater” borrowers get refinancing assistance in the latest government bid to break a legal impasse with big banks over alleged foreclosure abuses and ease problems in the housing market.
The proposal was raised in a meeting last week between government negotiators and giant lenders as part of an effort to settle allegations of questionable foreclosure practices. Discussions are still fluid and any final outcome is uncertain. Talks between government officials and the banks are expected to continue this week.
…
I am puzzled over the legal basis for defining underwater homeowners as a special class for receiving financial assistance?
opposite tactic of thumb-suckers:
wheel + squeak = grea$e.
“bid to break a legal impasse with big banks over alleged foreclosure abuses”
Eyes thought that collectively we were long past: alleged?
Ummm, how does this idea square with the misguided attempts of some pols to ban the use of distressed sales as comps? Without distressed sales they might not even know they’re underwater!
“…attempts of some pols to ban the use of distressed sales as comps…”
Big fat lies and the lying Realtors™ who tell them…
Expect nothing less from reaItors. Realtors are liars.
Be puzzled not, my friend……
By showing their willingness to be voluntarily shackled to a house, and to act as hosts for various bloodsuckers (government and business), they are the backbone of America.
For the bloodsucking to continue, one of the parasites must give the host CPR.
homeowners as a special class for receiving financial assistance?”
write off interest on mortgage, write off property tax, get to keep 500K tax free in profit ( probably doesn’t apply often to present values) every 2 years when you sell.
seems special to me. how about other income? capital gains are lower than earned income, tax free bonds, inheritance, seems the only income not special is the kind you get a paycheck for?
why is that I wonder ?
Oct. 18, 2011, 12:20 a.m. EDT
Dead cat bounce?
By Irwin Kellner, MarketWatch
PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. (MarketWatch) — September’s 1.1% jump in retail sales by no means signifies that the worst is over for this economy.
It is true that sales were good. The increase was more than one-third better than the markets expected. Sales were also 7% above the same month last year – and that was a pretty good month as well.
Lots of goods moved were autos. They pushed total motor vehicle sales up by over 8% in the month, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 13.1 million.
But many other sectors showed gains as well, witness the gain of 0.6% with autos removed from the overall data.
If this lasts another month or two, it could encourage merchants to ramp up their payrolls (besides the additions to staff they usually make at this time of year).
As more people find work, they will have more money to spend, which, in turn could very well lead to even more hiring, thus breaking the vicious cycle that has hampered economic growth for the past couple of years.
As pleasant as it is to conjure up such a scenario, it is unlikely to unfold this way. The reason: the labor markets are weak – even weaker than they look.
…
Real UE is still WAY over 10%.
According to ShadowStats its about 23%
Move along - No inflation here.
The 0.0001% you make at the bank will keep up…
———————
SEPTEMBER PPI SURGES 0.8%, WAY HOTTER THAN ESTIMATES
TBI | 10-18-2011 | Joe Weisenthal
The number is out, and it’s HOT!
PPI hs jumped 0.8%, well above the 0.2% analysts had expected.
Core PPI, which excludes food and energy, was only up 0.2%, which is still above the 0.1% that analysts had expected.
The culprit? Blame food and energy.
Good thing I don’t have to eat.
The good news — the energy component doesn’t affect me as much because I live in a modest sized rowhouse, bike or take transit to work, and have solar panels on the roof providing 100% of our electrcity net over the year.
The bad news — PPI increases in food hit me harder than most U.S. consumers, because we mostly cook from scratch and don’t buy a lot of value-added, prepared food. Thus actual food is a higher share of our food budget.
100% solar?
Good for you!
100% of our electrcity net over the year.”
I think WT sells back surplus daytime power to pay for the night time electrical use?
I guess thats what “net” means
some power companies won’t let you sell back surplus power as a condition to get a transmission line to your property
Can someone tell me why a group of people who job is forecasting the economy can continually be “surprised” by “unexpected” events, and still have jobs?
Knowing the right people is the ONLY job requirement among the 1%.
In the biblical sense?
Kind of a nonsense rant. A 30 year mortgage doesn’t mean you can’t move, but you have the added risk of having to sell the house first. A mortgage doesn’t drive you to work any more than having to pay rent. I don’t see a mortgage as enslavement. It’s a choice and it’s reversible normally, all you have to do is sell the house. Housing is an investment that happens to resemble a bond; it has a ‘coupon’ (the rent you don’t have to pay) and balloon amount (how much you get when you sell). It just happens that housing was a bad investment for the last few years and will continue to be a bad investment for the forseeable future.
supposed to be a reply to:
Comment by Realtors Are Liars®
2011-10-18 05:57:03
From a guy named Redact on MW:
…..
WRONG.
It’s not “reversible” as you falsely assert at the current grossly inflated asking prices.
If you have to bring money to the table in order to sell, like when you’re selling at a loss and have to pay off the lender, then no, one just can’t flip the property and move to the next one.
It’s reversible for many people.
Those who aren’t underwater can sell. If they choose not to sell because they have an over inflated idea of what the price should be, that’s there choice. They’re chosing to stay put.
For people who don’t face recourse, they have an out as well. Once again, they may choose to stay, but they have the option of walking. I’d hardly call that financial enslavement.
Now of course currently there are a decent number of people who don’t fit the above scenarios who are effectively trapped. But the rant doesn’t even mention being underwater or recourse. It just says that 30 year mortgages lock you in place and make you a financial slave without any necessary qualifiers. It’s the opposite extreme of ‘houses are the best investment because they always go up.’
A strategic default. I asked about this recently. It dings the credit rating even in non-recourse states, does it not? And that can negatively impact job prospects, where now, as a matter of course, credit ratings are checked. And it can be a de facto disqualifier for security clearances, where financial problems are extremely important, as many espionage cases involve a desire to make money.
“A 30 year mortgage doesn’t mean you can’t move”
Unless
1) your house is “so special” that you can’t entertain the idea of dropping the price to current market value
2) you are so far underwater in mortgage (and other debt) and you can’t face the idea of really “rebooting” your life and think that somehow if you try to hang on the darned thing will come back.
As an aside…
Recently I’ve had two good friends tell me their parents have bought into Senior communities WITHOUT selling their previous residence… For one it’s been over a year with no nibbles and with a - get this - a balloon payment time bomb ticking on the retirement community mortgage! Scary, esp. as the kids have been hit hard in the last couple of years and are barely scraping by themselves and unable to help financially.
It just happens that housing was a bad investment for the last few years and will continue to be a bad investment for the forseeable future.
However, there are areas in fly-over country where buying with 20% down is cheaper per month than currently renting.
Flyover country? Try almost the entire country, including DC.
‘there are areas in fly-over country where buying with 20% down is cheaper per month than currently renting…Try almost the entire country’
I must live in the only town in the country where renting is half of what it costs to own via borrowing, no matter how much one puts down. Of course, almost nobody here has to put 20% down anyway, which may be part of the reason for the dislocation.
No BJ. I live in one of those towns too.
here renting is half of what it costs to own via borrowing, no matter how much one puts down.
It’s different in some places.
Kansas City Mo average rent 1 bedroom apt: $550 per month
rent dot com
Median KCMO home price $78,078 down 3.8% yoy
trulia dot com
78K house with 15.6K down payment monthly payment including taxes and insurance $394 dollars a month.
trulia dot com
KCMO 1 bedroom apt average $550 per month
KCMO median cost house to buy $394 per month
You forgot to include taxes, insurance, maintenance and heat to the house side.
You forgot to include taxes, insurance, maintenance and heat to the house side.
It does taxes and insurance according to the trulia calculator.
Heating a house??
Oh yea. I remember that about up there.
3%/yr maintenance. And the deluded buyer is likely going for 3.5% FHA, Phoney or Fraudie mortgage.
“I must live in the only town in the country where renting is half of what it costs to own via borrowing, no matter how much one puts down.”
Here in Portland, rents and monthly mortgage payments seem to be converging on a “middle” ground, with rents moving up faster than payments coming down.
Prices are still too high at 2004-2005 levels, but with rates much lower causing some affordability. But I want the ability to quickly pay down the mortgage, which is tough to do at high list prices.
I was recently married and my wife and I are in the final stages of renting from an FB, who bought in 2009 and moved due to her own marriage.
(And yes, the mortgage is up to date with no plans to sell.
)
“Median KCMO price $78,078.
You do realize you are talking KCMO, and not Johnson County, KS?
In KCMO, you need to include the cost of security bars, razor wire, AR-15s, German Sheperds, etc.
OTOH, you save money on transportation……if you drive a 15 year old POS to avoid breakins, theft and carjackings, instead of that nice new, expensive-to-feed new car.
And, with KCMO’s abundance of freeway off-ramps, it’s much easier to supplement your income by camping by the stop signs with a “Homeless and Hungry” sign.
“I must live in the only town in the country where renting is half of what it costs to own via borrowing, no matter how much one puts down.”
Yeah, I drive folks from Flagstaff who tell the same story. Reminds me of Davis, Ca, where I lived for 25 years. I just moved to Woodland, which is 8 miles north of Davis. Take two identical homes, one in each town. The one in Davis is easily double the price. Seems to be a university town thing. I expect a price difference between the two towns, but that’s a bit much. Before the bubble, Davis homes were 10-20% more. After the bubble, Woodland dropped 60%, Davis dropped about 20. In other words, it has not even come close to correcting. Regarding rent, it’s a little high in Davis, (for the Sacramento Valley area), but it’s a bargain compared to buying.
You do realize you are talking KCMO, and not Johnson County, KS?
Yes. The numbers run well in a lot of JOCo too. No?
However, there are areas in fly-over country where buying with 20% down is cheaper per month than currently renting.
I think its about the same in Moorpark CA 93021 esp. with super low interest rates
homes repairs is the big hidden cost selling at 5% commision is the big un-hidden cost
“However, there are areas in fly-over country where buying with 20% down is cheaper per month than currently renting.”
Especially when returns on any investment of said 20% downpayment money is likely to be in the neighborhood of 0% yield.
Mortgage finance
Greed and ambition
Why Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac need to diet
Oct 15th 2011 | from the print edition
Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. By Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner. Times Books; 331 pages; $30 and £19.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
Guaranteed to Fail: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance. By Viral Acharya, Matthew Richardson, Stijn van Nieuwerburgh and Lawrence White. Princeton University Press; 232 pages; $24.95 and £16.95. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk
“THE shapers of the American mortgage finance system hoped to achieve the security of government ownership, the integrity of local banking and the ingenuity of Wall Street. Instead they got the ingenuity of government, the security of local banking and the integrity of Wall Street,” David Frum, a former White House speechwriter, lamented in 2008. In “Reckless Endangerment”, Gretchen Morgenson, a veteran New York Times reporter, and Joshua Rosner, a consultant, provide the best account yet of how this system went off the rails. So successful have the pair been at ferreting out the details that the book is at the top of Amazon’s worldwide bestseller list (see article).
The authors join up the dots between Congress, interest groups, government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and Wall Street, including many that other books had failed to link. And they shine a light on powerful figures whose roles in causing the mess have gone unchronicled.
Chief among them is James Johnson, who, for most of the 1990s, ran Fannie Mae, the largest of the GSEs. Tall, charming and politically shrewd, Mr Johnson spotted a golden opportunity to use a popular cause—increasing home ownership—as a means of building Fannie’s power in Washington, and also feather his and his fellow executives’ nests along the way.
…
Countrywide’s Angelo Mozilo once described Mr Johnson as so slick that “he could cut off your balls and you’d still be wearing your pants.” Other mortgage lenders ensured Fannie a steady supply of raw material to grow its balance-sheet (which came increasingly to resemble that of a hedge fund), and helped to boost its profits, to which executive pay was increasingly linked. Mr Johnson alone extracted nearly $100m in his nine years at the helm. The final tab for bailing out Fannie could be several hundred times that.
…
It’s really scary when one shark compliments another.
World population to reach 7 Billion in a few days. Not a milestone to celebrate, given the state of the planet, IMO. Branson needs to get real busy and find another planet to terraform.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049451/World-population-reach-7-BILLION-days.html
Someone had better because the Chinese sure as hell are. (getting busy in space exploration that is)
(getting busy in space exploration that is) ??
Does getting busy exploring Iraq & Afghanistan count ??
I think you’ve made a typo. You meant “exploding”, right?
And, no, it doesn’t.
From Reuters:
Scarce resources, climate biggest threats to world health
“The Earth’s natural resources like food, water and forests are being depleted at an alarming speed, causing hunger, conflict, social unrest and species extinction, experts at a climate and health conference in London warned on Monday.”
And now back to your regularly scheduled episode of Dancing With The Stars
World population to reach 7 Billion in a few days. Not a milestone to celebrate, given the state of the planet,
It’s a self-correcting problem if it is a problem.
World population to reach 7 Billion in a few days.
Rio, you think “American Graffiti” type car cruising will ever go Global?
HBB word puzzle:
xcersa
Having grown up in a small town where this was popular, I don’t think that exact thing will go global. Yes, young men have a tendency to make everything into a testosterone contest including racing whatever vehicles they have access to. They already do this in most places, as far as I know.
But what made good old fashioned American cruising special is that you could cobble together a vehicle that performed better than the car owned by the richest guy in town. My guess is that was only possible due to conditions unique to a period of time in the USA (while the competition was recovering from being bombed out). I don’t think those exact conditions will ever be reproduced globally. No Indian kid is going to build up an old Tata or whatever into something that will outrun a Veyron.
think “American Graffiti” type car cruising will ever go Global?
you could cobble together a vehicle that performed better than the car owned by the richest guy in town.
And not just racing was a factor. Just cruising cars could be cheap. My first car at 15 was a 69 Mercury Comet 6 banger costing $200 with an added $60 Earl Schieb paint job on a rough body, new seat covers, “custom” new carpet, mag wheels (half bald and only on the rear) and a $20 old 8-track with 4 tapes. That thing rocked!
These kind of cheap costs are unavailable to South Americans and much of the world because of the car, licensing, insurance, gas, tires etc. And I can’t see anyone wanting to “cruise Rio” with its traffic.
I did own a 1969 Z-28 when I was 18. (It was faster than the Comet) But the fastest car in town was my best friend’s mint, 56, candy apple red Chevy with a 427 L-88, monster built motor. It never lost. Ever. But no one wanted to ride in the back seat because there was no back seat. We’d cruise in it and he’d smoke while playing Foghat’s “Slow Ride” at full blast about 10 times in a row. He died of cancer at 43. RIP buddy.
(It was faster than the Comet)
It should have been a LOT faster than the Comet :-).
We are reverting back to the 20’s, when only the rich could afford high performance cars, and J6P had to drive Model Ts.
Mustang GTs are pushing $35K now.
Mustang GTs are pushing $35K now.
Yeah, I think they’ve given up on being a cheap performance car. I notice that the performance has really stepped up now that they’re embracing being an expensive toy, though.
Why? Lots of open land on the planet.
You know it’s bad when even members of local media (Fox affiliate, no less) are pointing out that the rise in the price of food and other necessary commodities is being driven by traders. And not just pointing it out, but (gasp!) expressing their disapproval.
And that’s one of the reasons we have OWS. Criticize it all you want, they DO have a point.
If I remember correctly, 2/3 yrs ago my monthly groceries were $250 in average. Now it’s close to $400. I shop at the same places (Trader Joe’s and CostCo) and my eating habit hasn’t changed at all.
That’s because you insist on maintaining your level of nutrition. Hedonics suggests we should just shove a couple hoses into our orifices so as not to hamper the enlightened plans of our central bankers.
“…and my eating habit hasn’t changed at all.”
I listened to a couple of hotties yesterday at the coffee shop discussing possible cuts: Smart phone? No…Way!; VW turbo diesel? No way!; Clothes, hair styling, the latte(s), etc.? No way…I work 40-hrs/wk!
This standard of living fight is going to get ugly.
VW turbo diesel? No way!;
FWIW they aren’t that expensive (compared to other cars) and get good fuel economy.
So eyes been told
Current dinner discussion with male & female off-spring:
He: “I like “the new” style beetle”
She: “ugly, I like the “bug” style”
“ Most people are about as happy as they make up their mind to be. ”
— Abraham Lincoln
Oh, man marketing people know buyers too well. The new bug was designed to appeal more to men.
I’ve got to admit, the “NEW New Beetle” is cool (or “tight” as they say nowadays)
Looks like they let Boyd Coddington or Foose in the design studio for a little while
(Never liked street rods much, until I saw some of Boyd’s stuff)
Unfortunately, the Starbucks dress code and culture still affects how your bosses see you at work. In a layoff economy, the hair is almost a necessity. Especially if you’re a young hottie who works non-STEM job and can be easily replaced by some other young hottie who WILL spend the $$ on hair. And yes, it’s an ugly fight.
The young gals in the marketing, accounting and finance depts are always dolled up. Female engineers (a rare breed) not so much.
The young gals in the marketing, accounting and finance depts are always dolled up.
Pays for boardroom benefit$ beyond CorpInc. headquarters. Really.
(Same as it’s always been…)
Female engineers (a rare breed) not so much.
They actually have non-appearance-related skills that are somewhat difficult to replace.
rms:
Is that true? Somehow I doubt that two attractive young women started up a conversation about all the things they won’t stop buying for themselves with their own money while at the coffee shop. Besides, what were doing at a coffee shop, aren’t you against lattes?
Are you sure you aren’t just trying to insult your own country by attacking the very easy target of two young ladies who do not exist?
I enjoy my daily latte, V.
The conversation started out when one complained that her husband HAD to have a new horse trailer.
My take is that younger families are having their first taste of inflation having never experienced a recession.
Eat more fruits and vegetables, bill goes down.
It depends on where you live. In some places produce can be very pricey.
A semi-marginal orange goes for 75 cents/$1.00 around here. When they are available.
There are exceptions, but Avocado is essentially right–a healthy, fresh fruit and veggie-based diet is cheaper in most places. And in the long run will save on health costs. I’m no food nazi, I just changed my diet years ago to save money.
You can also save alot by eating the same thing every day. It helps if you like what you’re eating. I’ve had the same dinner every night now since 1999. Excepting holidays and stuff like that. My girlfriend at the time, who is now my wife, thought it was a little nutty, but she eventually got on a money-saving kick, and now she has had the same dinner every night for four years running.
For the adventurous, here’s a recipe you can try out. Costs less than a dollar, is healthy, and will fill you up. And tastes friggin’ amazing.
Ingredients:
1/2 cup fresh spinach
1/4 cup chopped broccoli
1/8 cup chopped onion (red the best)
1/8 cup chopped bell pepper
(These can be chopped together and added as a unit. Food processor works great for this)
Two large garlic cloves
1/2 of a Roma tomato
One large whole wheat tortilla
A boatload of mozzarella (about a cup)
1/8 cup X-virgin olive oil (approximately. To your preference)
Lightly toast the tortilla until golden. Grate the garlic cloves with a cheese grater, or use a press, and spread them around the toasted tortilla. Add half the mozzarella. Add the brocolli-spinach-onion-bell pepper mix and spread evenly. Add the rest of the mozzarella. Pour olive oil evenly over the whole thing. (If you can, do it from the bottle, because if you use a measuring cup, alot sticks to the cup and it ends up being wasted.)
Throw it all in a toaster oven at 400 degrees until cheese is melted. (Or stick in a microwave for under a minute. All microwaves are different). Take it out, add the cold chopped Roma tomato. These are put on separately because cooking ruins the taste of the tomato and makes everything soggy.
This has been my dinner for 12 years! Works great with pepperoni added, or some parmasian at the end.
“…my monthly groceries were $250 in average. Now it’s close to $400.”
I’ve noticed the regular prices going up on most food, but the sales have been bringing prices down close to where they were a few years ago. My grocery bill has certainly gone up, but timing the sales has minimized the damage so far.
But I thought there WAS no inflation and traders didn’t drive the retail costs?
/sarcasm
If you shout that the emperor has no clothes, and do it loudly and frequently enough, plus the emperor actually has no clothes, then even the royalists will have to acknowledge the truth eventually. Or risk seeming the fool.
… or arrest you.
Funny how the story never mentions what happens to the little boy, isn’t it?
Ode to the Deadbeat
We bought it in 2003
Great time to buy, she said to me
Up 90k by mid 04
Went to the home improvement store
Granite tops and a new pool!
If you don`t own then you`re a fool
We all knew that we were clever
Buy now or priced out forever
We took cash out back in 05
A brand new car for us to drive
And then again back in 06
Vacations, Flat screens, new golf sticks
Alas then came 2008
One whole year, the payment late
Now I don`t feel quite so clever
Prices don`t go up forever
Now what am I gonna do
Can`t blame me, so I`ll blame you!
Robo signing, that was it!
That is why my payments quit
Been 5 years since last I paid
Sure am glad, that I have stayed
I tell the story that I choose
Heads I win and tails you lose
LOL…Your damm good at this Jeff…
Awesome,…can you do something with tune:
“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick
Jacks Single-Deposit-Transaction
was recorded lickity-$plit”?
Nice.
Looks like a good entry for the local poetry slam. Or, maybe a trip to 8-Mile?
I was talking to a working class guy and he expressed concerns about the prospects for his young children.
I thought, How is it we can have such high productive capacity and yet have such financial stress?
There is plenty of food, shelter, clothing, goods, apparently high corporate profits and cash hoards, yet the people perceive they are in financial distress and the incomes for many are dropping.
What kind of problem is this? A distribution problem? A wealth transfer problem? Other?
I realize there needs to be money velocity in an economy. And policy makers encouraged that at all costs, especially with encouraging debt. Having money velocity plus individual reservoirs of wealth rather than money velocity and deep holes of individual wealth is the goal this society should be trying to reach.
A debt driven society is like having a tree with lots of sap flowing quickly, but the cells in the tree are always on the verge of dehydration, requiring continuous rain to support them. A slowdown in the rain and they dehydrate and die.
Housing cost
Education cost
Healthcare & Insurance cost
Taxation burdens
Inflating away of savings
It’s not what you make as much as what you have left after these parasites are done taking. I know there are people who feasted at the credit trough but what the cautious people fear is that their efforts will get overwhelmed anyway.
The reality is there is downward pressure on income with no planned controls in sight for these unavoidable expenditures. Maybe you can control secondary education spending but that doesn’t really help your income generation.
“It’s not what you make as much as what you have left after these parasites are done taking.”
+1 Exactly!
Yesterday’s Economist piece that Stucco posted regarding investors lack of choices was sobering — there are no good choices. Bonds, cash, equities, housing, pensions, etc., will all experience some form of erosion under the current fed policy, and the bright spot is that it will be vast; everyone from welfare recipients to the comfortably wealthy will suffer during the next dozen or so years.
Grow or Die!
If we had a mind to sustainability in this, we’d have to base it on a lot less debt.
As I am enjoying the debt free phase of my life, the best part is not hoping the check comes to me before the interest payment is due. There is no interest payment.
What kind of problem is this? A distribution problem? A wealth transfer problem?
Growing Income Gap May Leave U.S. Vulnerable
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-13/growing-income-divide-may-increase-u-s-vulnerability-to-financial-crises.html
A widening gap between rich and poor is reshaping the U.S. economy, leaving it more vulnerable to recurring financial crises and less likely to generate enduring expansions.
Left unchecked, the decades-long trend toward increasing inequality may condemn Wall Street to a generation of unimpressive returns and even shake social stability, economists and financial-industry executives say.
…In the 30-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only Turkey and Mexico have more unequal societies than the United States. In the U.S., the rich-poor gap widened by 20 percent since the mid-1980s, more than in most developed countries. “Nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States,” the OECD concluded in a 2008 study.
Economic gains in the U.S. have been spread less equally in recent years as a result of factors including globalization, technological change, the decline of labor unions, changing social norms, and government trade and tax policies, say economists such as the World Bank’s Milanovic.
Left unchecked, the decades-long trend toward increasing inequality may condemn Wall Street to a generation of unimpressive returns and even
shakeproduce $ocial in-$tabilityThe Sufferin’ So’s!,…they’ve fall down and can’t get up,…Help ‘em!
In the 30-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only Turkey and Mexico have more unequal societies than the United States.
Further proof that we are a 3rd world country.
Whenever I tell people that half the workforce earns less than $500 a week I get a LOT of surprised faces. This fact has been buried by the MSM and the people who remain in the middle class are aware of it.
“Nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States,” the OECD concluded in a 2008 study ??
What would a study conclude three recession years later ??
apparently high corporate profit$
“apparently”?
MegaInc.’$ x2 Trillion$ in U$ Dollar$ Ca$h (shhh, …off-$hore = no tax revenue to be wasted on American citizen’s infra-structure, that’s the Gov’t “Bidne$$” expen$e ;/ ) is apparently a modern day record.
“perceive that they are in financial distress”
Yep. Those student loan bills must be hallucinations.
“Yep. Those student loan bills must be hallucinations”
I wish they would ask them what degree they have after hearing them complain about their student loans.
I really have no sympathy for the 30K student loan debt “women’s” studies folks.
Sorry.
I studied accounting in college. Most of my friends were the long haired, musician, artsy fartsy types and I have always had an affection for those “punk rock” girls.
Anyhoo…my friends would make fun of me a lot about my major and I got laid a lot less than my band member friends…but 20 years later…I’m pretty squared away financially and have a degree and experience that is in high demand.
I lost my job and had a new one within a few weeks during the greatest economic downturn since the great depression.
Who’s laughing now?
my friends would make fun of me a lot about my major and I got laid a lot less than my band member friends…but 20 years later……Who’s laughing now?
Maybe they are because they got l@!d more?
sex is boring hippie bullshit.
; )
“…boring hippie bullshit…”
which leads to overpopulation of the planet…
I lost my job and had a new one within a few weeks during the greatest economic downturn since the great depression.
You still workin’ at Goldenman$ucksInc.? If so, does todays news effect xma$ bonuses “forward looking”?
Goldman Sachs loses $428 million in third quarter
Rough markets slam Goldman Sachs; firm loses $428 million in third quarter
AP News / Oct 18th 2011
Goldman also has a long history for standing when other banks fall. It safely weathered the financial crisis that crippled or killed many of its competitors, posting only one quarterly loss, at the end of 2008. Bank of America and Citigroup have each lost money in six quarters since the beginning of 2008.
Goldman has also churned out a number of senior government officials, including former Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and Robert Rubin and former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine.
“They’re the Gordon Gekkos of today,” Thomas said. “But that doesn’t mean they’re in any way diminished of their abilities.”
“What kind of problem is this? A distribution problem? A wealth transfer problem? Other?”
I see two things happening at the same time. Wealth is leaving the Western middle class to the ultra wealthy around the world. Wealth (via jobs) is leaving the Western middle class to the poor in other parts of the world. They are connected.
Ford vehicles will read you text messages while you drive:
Space Odyssey Hal’s voice: “I’m sorry Hwy, I can’t do that…”
By Sarah Kessler, Mashable
Tue October 18, 2011 | Filed under: Innovations
Using a Bluetooth connection, it syncs with phones and alerts users when they receive text messages, reads them out loud and allows users to respond with a selection of standard pre-written messages without taking their hands off the wheel.
Some Android phones also support the technology. iPhones do not.
*(Disclosure: current owner of x100 F
sharesas in Fishes , threw the others back last week…[waiting for $lipperybanana's union goons to kick management in the groin.])David DeGraw
ampedstatus.com
Loosely quoted: 99% have lost political representation…..With Trillions of dollars of fraudulent activity they’ve set our economic future on fire. Whether you are a Republican or a Democrat your economic future has been set on fire by these TBTF banks. We are here to represent the 99% in the absence of a government that will defend us.
Bill Black
Assoc Professor of Economics University of Missouri
“We put the Treausury Secretary up for auction and lately Goldman Sachs has been the highest bidder.” unnamed prominent local Republican in the Kansas City area.
This is a criminal racket that has paid off politicians since the Carter administrations and should be prosecuted through the RICO laws.
Loosely quoted:
Biggest victims of those frauds: homeowners and honest bankers that can’t compete w/those frauds.
Get rid of 20 biggest banks, the systemically dangerous institutions….They are way too big.
Fire Geithner, Holder and demand Bernanke’s resignation and replace them w/people who will make sure laws are enforced for the 99%.
FBI warned over 7 years ago that there was an epidemic of mortgage fraud and predicted it would cause an economic crisis… Federal Housing Finance Administration a month ago filed Civil fraud comlaints against the 17 largest banks in the world that said: There is a paper trail that demonstrates the fraudulent intent of these banks. Where is the justice dept?
Still wtg for the link that goes w/this to clear the filters. Or maybe it got eaten. It’s to a video of a Dylan Ratigan segment from MSNBC.com.
MarketWatch dot com
Republican presidential candidates head to foreclosure land
October 17, 2011, 4:18 PM
Will the Republican candidates -– finally — talk about housing in detail at Tuesday night’s debate?
They’ll probably have to. It’s in Las Vegas.
The latest verbal showdown among the GOP presidential hopefuls is taking place in the country’s No. 1 city for foreclosures, according to data from online foreclosed-property marketplace RealtyTrac. Statewide, the situation is also grim: the three-month average of housing starts in Nevada is nearly 90% below peak.
Housing has been largely absent from the Republicans’ campaigns so far, almost to the person. The candidates’ web sites make scant mention of the issue, and those who are most fired up about it — Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul — are heavy on diagnosing why housing went awry (blaming Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Community Reinvestment Act for the housing bubble) but light on policy prescriptions. Gingrich’s idea to break up Fannie and Freddie and take their successors off of government guarantees is about as specific as the candidates get.
Las Vegas would be a perfect place for a deeper dive on housing. In July, home prices in Sin City were about 60% below their peak. That’s double the 30% drop from the peak nationally, according to Case-Shiller data.
The real-estate industry is among the top five donors to four of the top five Republican contenders’ campaigns. Real estate is Mitt Romney’s No. 3 most-generous donor; Herman Cain’s and Rick Perry’s fourth most generous; and Gingrich’s No. 3 biggest donor, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Tuesday’s debate, co-sponsored by CNN and the Western Republican Leadership Conference, begins at 8 p.m. Eastern.
– Robert Schroeder
When J6P thinks of Vegas he thinks of gambling, shows and bling, I think most J6Ps have no clue about how the Vegas housing market has crashed.
Cheap Eats - Slots O Fun Dogs + (poetica commentary)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgDra2p-DaU
1/2 # Hot Dog = .99 cents
Promising development. Washington is the root of the problem. Wall Street is a symptom.
Poll: Washington to blame more than Wall Street for economy
By Rick Hampson, USA TODAY
Updated 20m ago
When asked whom they blame more for the poor economy, 64% of Americans name the federal government and 30% say big financial institutions.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-10-17/poll-wall-street-protests/50804978/1
Looks like the PTB’s distraction is working. The masses will vote in “the other guys” and it will be business as usual on Wall St. Mission Accomplished!
The individual politicians are in lust with their power.
If they get swept out, it’ll be an object lesson to the others on what not to do.
I agree it’s a case of Kang versus Kodos with regards to the two party system. But blowing out the entrenched pols and bringing in a new batch will advance advance the cause of putting a leash on the financial sector.
Politicians are like perishable foods. They quickly go bad. And this batch has been in the fridge for years.
If you sweep the current politicians out without changing the way campaigns are financed, without changing the way lobbiests influence polliticians, you will find that new gov is the exact same as the old. New puppets same old puppeteers.
Agreed. But there is a small possibility for reform if the current crop of politicians who created and are utterly beholden to the current system, are removed.
I’m not saying it’s a given. Or even likely. It’s a small possibility.
But I’ll take a small possibility over no possibility anytime.
Poll: Washington to blame more than Wall Street for economy
I think Washington is more to blame than “Wall Street” because it’s government’s job to regulate Wall Street.
From the article:
•78% say Wall Street bears a great deal or a fair amount of blame for the economy; 87% say the same about Washington.
Yep this is just a distraction the symptom is the poS POLLITICIANS WE HAVE. We all know that our gov has been taken over by the WS and CEO elite. Dem’s and GOP. The problem is the rules that have allowed corporate America to have a greater and greater say in how gov functions. They have harnessed gov to strip wealth from all other Americans.
Democratic pollster Doug Schoen did some Occu-polling in NYC, here’s some results. 98% support civil disobedience to achieve their goals and 1/3rd support violence to support their agenda.
These people want more gov’t! They are led by communists, community agitators and marxists. They are funded by Soros, SEIU, Acorn etc. The hang wiggling, mindless repeating, and “white men speak last” stuff is pure manipulation. This is Obama’s white base.
It’s clear that Obama (and a lot of other Dems) have fully embraced this slime. When the violence comes, they OWN it! Blacks are not participating in the movement if it is not specifically about them. However, they’ll jump in next spring to help burn cities down,loot and riot.
Suuuuuuure.
They are led by communists, community agitators and marxists. They are funded by Soros, SEIU, Acorn etc. The hang wiggling, mindless repeating, and “white men speak last” stuff is pure manipulation.
That “hang wiggling” stuff scares me the most.
Hand-wiggling and speaking in tongues? Sounds like Michele Bachmann’s fundy base
They are led by communists, community agitators and Mitt Romney supporters.
Occupy Wall Street financial backer also supports Mitt Romney
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8834523/Occupy-Wall-Street-financial-backer-also-supports-Mitt-Romney.html
The biggest financial backer of the Occupy Wall Street protests is a former “superstar” oil trader who earned up to $15 million (£9.5 million) a year and supports the Republican party, it has emerged.
“I made a lot of money, things just worked out for me,” said Mr Halper, 52, who until recently was once one of the world’s best paid traders. “There’s some issues where we’re all in it together.
“If there’s pain, it should be shared,” he told The New York Times. “The people who have money – they should pay something more, whether that’s in taxes or somewhere else.”
(Nothing worse than a rich-GOP commie)
This reads like it was cut and paste from the readers’ comments section of any Denver Post article about OWS and Occupy Denver
‘1/3rd support violence to support their agenda’
Yeah, and many more than a third of people in the US support govt violence to extract money for their agenda. If you don’t believe it, just stop paying your taxes and see what happens.
If you don’t believe it, just stop paying your taxes and see what happens ??
Or try disputing them…Penalties & interest far exceed the tax….In other words, even if you don’t owe it, pay it…After that, you can get into your two or three year pleading for a refund…
yeppers, sound advice/stratagem scdave.
You are crazy. All Americans believe in civil disobedience. That’s why we have a right to bear arms. The government is not supposed to have a monopoly on violence.
All Americans believe in civil disobedience.
Like the Boston Tea Party.
They’re the $uffering $o’s. Cinder$ & Ashe$, Agonie$ & Pain$… Help ‘em!
The Sufferin’ So’s!,…they’ve fall down and can’t get up,…Help ‘em!
“…if you tax them less, they can hire more people.”
Modern Economics Has Failed Us, Says Economist Graeme Maxton
By Peter Gorenstein | Daily Ticker – 4 hours ago
“The gap between rich and poor has gotten far bigger than it should have,” Maxton tells Aaron Task in the accompanying clip. “We’re not taxing the rich, as Adam Smith said we should, we’re underpricing the world’s resources, and we’re not intervening in markets when we should.”
Maxton says Smith was not solely about profits and gains. Smith was just as interested in morality. However, modern economists have ignored that notion and focused primarily on “this belief that the markets were self-correcting.”
The result: greater income inequality and instability that “will last for years to come,” says Maxton.
LoanOwners are knotheads.
(there’s a Goldenman$ucksInc. ad in front, called: 10000small business,…one clip show homes being bulldozed as recycling job.
)
Job$ choices [no-degree-required]:
http://money.cnn.com/video/smallbusiness/2011/10/17/smb_sbt_roper_partners.cnnmoney/?source=cnn_bin&hpt=hp_bn5
or
http://amazingdata.com/mediadata35/Image/hot_weird_funny_amazing_cool8_rednecks-ruled-world-19_200907302203419314.jpg
or the hangover.
I want to address a statement made the other day by Rental Watch. He said that if you don’t give extra influence to the wealthy, then the poor will take everything they have. He actually said that the bottom 60% would take everything from the top 40%. This is not true.
First of all, nothing like that has ever happened, so it’s silly to say it’s what we should expect. Secondly, we have a Bill of Rights that prevents the majority from taking advantage of the minority. Third, a system of fairness prevents people from doing things like that. If it seems possible that I or my family or friends might be able to make it into that top 1%, then I will not want to destroy that possibility.
The problem comes in when you can see laws that give preferential treatment to certain very rich folks, to the systemic detriment of the entire nation. These laws make it impossible for anyone who is not already preferred to ever make it. The system is biased in favor of the folks who need it least.
Besides, our Declaration of Independence already says that all men are created equal, so how did this even become a point of debate?
…..besides…. rental watch is a Housing Crime Syndicate apologist.
The system is biased in favor of the folks who need it least ??
You mean like the incompetence of congress to allow the inheritance tax go to zero in 2010 so George Steinbrener’s family could get everything tax free ??
Talk about takin’ one for the team!
The human population will reach 7 billion by the end of the month, according to United Nations, and that’s no milestone to celebrate, says Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of The Earth Institute.
Instead, we need to be concerned, he says. It’s been only 12 years since we welcomed the 6 billionth human, and Sachs predicts it’s likely only another 13 or 14 years before the population adds another billion people.
“This is a crowded planet,” says Sachs. “This is trouble, frankly, for the planet.” With this many people and counting, feeding, sheltering and protecting ourselves creates enormous environmental and economic challenges.
You know, come to think of it, they’re not making any more land…
lil Opie = Indonesian-Kenyan-non-Hawaiian-Muslim destroyer of America! Is that billboard still up?
October 18, 2011
U.S. deports nearly 400K in a year - a record
October 18, 2011 / CBS News
MIAMI - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director John Morton said Tuesday his agency deported nearly 400,000 individuals during the fiscal year 2011 that just ended in September.
Morton announced the numbers in Washington, saying they were the largest in the agency’s history.
ICE said about 55 percent of the 396,906 individuals deported had felony or misdemeanor convictions. Officials said the number of individuals convicted of crimes was up 89 percent from 2008.
Officials could not immediately say how many of those crimes related just to previous immigration violations. Individuals can be convicted of a felony just for returning to the U.S. or being found in the U.S. after the government orders them to leave.
Among those deported were more than 1,000 people convicted of homicide. Another 5,800 were sexual offenders, and about 80,000 people convicted of drug related crimes or driving under the influence.
’tain’t enuf.
I think the GOP is now against deportation. They will be for it in 2012 if Romney wins.
My brother is in the Border Patrol. Says that 40% of the guys they are catching have US warrants.
Mostly for Domestic Violence and DUI. (described to him by his Hispanic fellow agents familiar with the culture as being the “Mexican National Pasttimes”).
There was a shootout between the Federales and a van full of illegals trying to bum-rush the border a few months ago. Made the national news. He told us the only reason it made the news was because it happened around 2 in the afternoon. Mostly it goes unreported, because they usually try it at O-dark-thirty.
Car$, Oil, War$,…The $pinning planet & the sun.
At Bani Walid party, Libya fighters look to future
By Barry Malone / BANI WALID | Tue Oct 18, 2011
(Reuters) - “I used to drive a 1990 Mazda,” the young Libyan revolutionary says through child-like giggles, hurtling into the heart of battle at the wheel of a new 4-by-4 looted from slain soldiers of Muammar Gaddafi. “Look at me now.”
WORRYING AND WAITING
Ali, and others like him, will often talk openly about their experiences, the family and friends they’ve lost and the men — in some cases the many men — who they have killed.
Sometimes they laugh nervously as they tell the often horrible tales, sometimes they laugh genuinely and, at other times, they can darken suddenly.
“I worry about some of us. That we might get sick,” Ali said, tapping his head. “Psychologically.”
He sometimes erupted into laughter as he described battlefield incidents in which he had killed Gaddafi soldiers and snipers with RPG and anti-aircraft fire. But, “I don’t like the killing,” he said.
The spontaneous joy that deafened Bani Walid as anti-Gaddafi fighters surged into its square on Monday and Tuesday, was in part provoked by a hope that things will now be better for those young men.
But there is some bitterness as well as hope in their ranks, and some fighters have looted in pro-Gaddafi towns far from their own homes, though others have resisted.
“We never had anything but we were never afraid of Gaddafi. This generation had no fear,” 26-year-old Abdul shouted to Reuters over the noise of the celebrations.
“Maybe our fathers did, maybe my grandfather. But we were always going to throw him out. Always. Because we wanted more.”
The interim leaders have made promises to the men whose fighting put them in power, with plans to recruit some into the military, some into the police and to send others to colleges.
But, with the messy business of forming a government, some are already frustrated and worried that the older men at the top tables may soon forget about them.
As the inevitable jostling for power moves into full post-revolution flight, the fighters wait.
“It could take a long time to build a new country,” Ali said. “Maybe that is what our generation will do, for our children. For me, I don’t know. I might go to Canada. And come back when Libya is like that.”
Mustafa, a 26-year-old fighter, who had jumped from the back of a pick-up truck where he had been firing anti-aircraft volleys into the air, approached with a big grin.
“How is my English?” he asked. “Gaddafi wouldn’t let most Libyans learn. He didn’t want us to be educated or go out into the outside world. Now young Libyans want all of those things.”
Neighboring Tunisia’s standard of living is often mentioned with envy and a lot of the young men say they know well that, in a country with oil riches and just 6 million people, there is more to go around.
“But it’s not that. It’s more. Nobody wanted to fight but, in my town, it was for freedom,” Ali said, adjusting the touch-screen controls in the Gaddafi military car now owned by his brigade as he drove out of Bani Walid later.
“In the mountains, there were 20 of us fighting and only two of us made it home. This car? I would burn it and this whole world and everything I have in it to bring them back.”
“Don’t the crime if you can’t pick the pickle”…or…”we don’t need know stinkin’ immigrants!”
Prison guard: “Boss Warden, does the cotton-pickin duty come with over-time pay?”
Captive Labor on the Farm
Growers Rely on More Convicts to Harvest Crops as Pool of Field Hands Dries Up
WSJ / BUSINESS / OCTOBER 18, 2011
Despite high unemployment across the U.S., many farmers are struggling to find hands willing to labor in their fields. From Arizona to Alabama, states are cracking down on undocumented migrant labor with legislation that gets tough on employers. One result: some “illegal” farm hands are being replaced by criminal ones.
Convict labor has a dark history in America, notoriously in the post-Civil War South, when thousands of African-Americans endured what historians say was a kind of de facto enslavement as prisoners on chain gangs.
Today, federal laws restrict the capacity of states—and some counties—looking to deploy inmates with commercial enterprises. Wherever it is allowed, authorities have to certify no other labor is being displaced and that inmates receive prevailing wages. Most states further insist such convicts make some of their pay available to victims whom courts deem eligible for restitution for a prisoner’s offenses.
The trade-off hasn’t always gone smoothly. When Georgia faced a looming shortage of farmhands earlier this year in the wake of new employment rules, parolees were sent to fill some 11,000 vacant spots harvesting such things as cucumbers. Probation officers urged their charges to work on farms, and some did. But growers complained many parolees were ill-prepared and quit on them.
This month, Alabama got into the act. With strict new laws chasing many immigrant farm hands from the state, John McMillan, commissioner of Alabama’s Department of Agriculture and Industries, announced he would look to prison work-release programs to put workers in the fields.
There are other restrictions, too. Inmates have to earn, through good behavior, consideration for an outside job and often must be near the end of their sentence.
Idaho’s program has been in place more than a decade, but isn’t widely publicized, in part to avert criticism that prisoners are taking jobs from the unemployed or, alternatively, that inmates don’t deserve a chance to work outside prisons. None of the growers using inmates near here would talk about the practice, though their contracts are a matter of public record. SunGlo of Idaho Inc., Walters Produce Inc., High Country Potato Inc., and Floyd Wilcox & Sons Inc. all have long-term contracts with Idaho’s Department of Correction. Each declined to comment.
There are plenty of college kids and high school kids available, in addition to mentally disabled folks and people who have been convicted of crimes, served their time, and now need to pay rent. These farmers are just playing the victim card so they won’t have to treat their employees like humans. Boo hoo.
Exactly right, Big V. Could do wonders for obesity, too.
Anyway the ag interests have a real scam going. The problem with imported, illegal farm labor is that it is generally used as a way to get a toehold in the US, plus the USDA subsidized housing. Then, they quit for other jobs (landscaping, hospitality, domestic, construction, etc.) or they splat out a few kids and stay in the subsidized housing (nobody checks to see if you’ve still got your ag gig, it’s strictly don’t ask, don’t tell) and get the other goodies that come with having those kids. As a result, those workers sort of magically “disappear” from the fields, orchards and packing houses, but they’re still very much here.
So the ag interests scream about how they need more cheap labor. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Think about it. There’s what, 40 million illegals in the US, not including their anchor babies? Should be plenty of ag labor available. Right?
How did American farms work before the 1970’s???
Amazing we got fed at all…
“How did American farms work before the 1970’s???”
Well, uh, many of them did use African American slave labor before the War Between the States. And beyond, for that matter. I think later on it was mechanization and sharecroppers and regular American farm hands, plus family. I’m no expert. But, if you had to lay the problem of race and ethnic relations squarely on the shoulders of any one industry, it would be Big Ag, going back a coupla centuries. Big Ag is the root of racial problems in the US. Period. What we have paid and will pay societally for Big Ag’s cheap labor is far beyond any benefit seen in the prices of fruits and veggies.
I’ll give you that again: WE have been made responsible for the sins of Big AG.
Wineries on the central coast claim they cant find enough grape pickers at $10 an hr. Of course, no one has seen an ad placed.
“The most important thing we can do right now is those of us in leadership letting people know that we understand their struggles and we are on their side, and that we want to set up a system in which hard work, responsibility, doing what you’re supposed to do, is rewarded,” Obama tells ABC News. “And that people who are irresponsible, who are reckless, who don’t feel a sense of obligation to their communities and their companies and their workers that those folks aren’t rewarded.”
i’m your huckleberry mr. president…put forth a bill tommorow morning cutting off government funding of fannie and freddie….talk is cheap.
ethanol huckleberry’s = Mega-commoditie$
i’m your huckleberry
mr. presidentCongre$$…put forth a bill tommorow morning cutting off government funding offannie and freddiecorn, peaches, cotton, oil….talk is cheap.Francisco Ayala, UC Irvine Professor, Gives $10 Million to School
By Michelle Woo Tue., Oct. 18 2011
Francisco Ayala has announced he is donating $10 million to UC Irvine’s School of Biological Sciences, the largest gift ever by a faculty member at the university.
A renowned geneticist, the 77-year-old professor was once dubbed the ‘Renaissance man of evolutionary biology’ by The New York Times. He’s a vocal opponent of intelligent design and the intrusion of religion into science.
And no, the chunk of change is not coming from his professor’s salary. The gift will be funded with profits from the vineyards he owns in Central California, which supply grapes to major winemakers across the state.
“When you can do good things, you should do them,” Ayala told the university.
Q&A from a NY Times article:
Q. What ever prompted you to buy a vineyard in Northern California?
A. First, it’s an incredibly beautiful place, 400 acres at a high point on the Mokelumne River. I can write there, spend weekends there. And second, I thought it could be a wonderful business, which it has been.
Q. Do you use any of your scientific training in the grape business?
A. I use my scientific training to make decisions. For instance, when I bought the vineyard in 1981, I was told by very experienced wine producers that chardonnay grapes would not grow well in that region. I was not persuaded. I planted many acres with the usual grapes and four with chardonnay. And the chardonnay did very well. So I planted 163 more. Now, I use the 400 acres to make some wine for myself, and the rest I sell to Mondavi, Sebastiani, and one or two others.
Applied research funding for experimental validation at:
1.The Federal Reserve Inc.
2.The Pentagon Inc.
3.The Playboy Mansion
Seeing through walls
Researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Lab have developed new radar technology that provides real-time video of what’s going on behind solid walls.
Emily Finn, MIT News Office
The ability to see through walls is no longer the stuff of science fiction, thanks to new radar technology developed at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory.
Japan nuclear disaster update.
80,000 people were forced to leave their homes by the nuclear crisis. The owner of the plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co, has made temporary payments to some victims, it was only last month that it finally began accepting applications for compensation. So far just 7,100 individuals have applied to Tepco for compensation out of the 80,000 it send forms to. And of the 10,000 businesses in the Fukushima area, a mere 300 have submitted claims. The procedure is so complicated that it seems to just make things worse. After claimants have read a 160-page instruction manual, they then have to fill in a 60-page form and attach receipts for lodging, transportation and medical costs.
It must really suk have lived near Fukushima. I have seen some estimates it may take 50 years before anyone can live within 5 miles of the nuclear plant.
“And of the 10,000 businesses in the Fukushima area, a mere 300 have submitted claims. The procedure is so complicated that it seems to just make things worse. After claimants have read a 160-page instruction manual, they then have to fill in a 60-page form and attach receipts for lodging, transportation and medical costs.”
Sounds like Tokyo Electric Power Co has hired a New York law firm to handle their liabilities.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=196184
Is it time to close down Bank of America?
yes.
For 15 years I have believed that Adam Smith’s theory the Invisible Hand (which he never actually wrote) is wrong. What he described as capitalism only exists in textbooks. Darwin’s theory of natural selection fits the data, Adam Smith’s doesn’t.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-frank-darwin-economics-20111018,0,5949996.story
“Darwin also recognized that individual and group interests often conflict sharply and that, in those cases, individual interests generally trump group interests.”
I would add that Darwin’s theories map perfectly onto the era integrated circuits and even the explosive growth of the internet and the Dot Com boom/bust that it spawned.
National / World News 11:06 p.m. Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Romney says foreclosures should “hit the bottom”
By KASIE HUNT
The Associated Press
LAS VEGAS — Mitt Romney came to the state with the highest foreclosure rate in the nation and said he wants to allow home foreclosures to “hit the bottom” to help the housing industry recover.
Republican presidential candidate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks during a Republican presidential debate Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2011, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
In an interview published Tuesday ahead of presidential debate, Romney told Las Vegas Review Journal’s editorial board that solving the foreclosure crisis would require letting banks proceed against homeowners who have defaulted on their mortgages. New investors could then rent out the homes until markets adjusted.
“As to what to do for the housing industry specifically and are there things that you can do to encourage housing: One is, don’t try to stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom,” Romney said.
Romney elaborated during the presidential debate Tuesday night. “The idea of the federal government running around and saying, ‘We’re going to give you some money for trading in your old car…or we’re going to keep banks from foreclosing if you can’t make your payments,” Romney said, “The right course is to let markets work.”
Nevada, where seven of the presidential candidates are debating, has the country’s highest foreclosure rate and the nation’s highest unemployment rate.
Democrats immediately criticized Romney as out of touch with middle class Americans, many of whom are struggling to hold on to their homes amid high unemployment.
“Mitt Romney’s message to Nevada homeowners struggling to pay their mortgage bills is simple: You’re on your own, so step aside,” President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign spokesman, Ben LaBolt, said in a statement. “This is just one more indication that while he will bend over backwards to preserve tax breaks for large corporations and tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, Mitt Romney won’t lift a finger to restore economic security for the middle class.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada also went after Romney. “Nevada has the highest foreclosure rate in America, and it has for almost three years. And here’s what Mitt Romney said: He would just let them hit rock bottom,” Reid said during a press conference in the U.S. Capitol. “I don’t know what’s more graphic than that, in how we have different views of what the world should be like than our Republican friends.”
But the home foreclosure issue has been almost entirely absent from the GOP presidential race. While it was mentioned during the presidential debate Tuesday, and Romney addressed it as part of a larger answer, the candidates quickly started talking about bank bailouts instead.
…
“One of every 44 homes in Nevada has been hit by a foreclosure filing in the third quarter of this year…”
Long-time posters know I can’t resist the temptation to convert statistics to annualized rates. Annualized (recent) rate of foreclosure filings for Nevada homes:
One in 1/(1-(43/44)^4)*100 = 11.4
GOP candidates in foreclosure capital say government not the solution to crisis
Republican presidential candidates, from left, former Penn. Sen. Rick Santorum, Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, businessman Herman Cain, former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., before a Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas. Isaac Brekken/AP
Republican presidential aspirants say free market can fix foreclosure mess
By Ben Hallman and Michael Hudson
10 hours, 12 minutes ago Updated: 3 hours, 20 minutes ago
The Republican candidates debating in the nation’s No. 1 foreclosure state of Nevada Tuesday night offered no specific policy solutions for how to resolve a crisis that has bedeviled millions of homeowners.
Instead, the four candidates who answered a question about foreclosures—which came more than an hour into the debate—promised to grow the economy and let the markets sort the problem out.
“We need to get government out of the way,” said Herman Cain.
“The right course is to let the markets work,” said former Massachussetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota had the most impassioned response, describing the plight of women who through no fault of their own “are at the end of the rope” because “[President] Obama failed you on this issue of housing and foreclosures.”
But her answer otherwise followed suit: “We will turn the economy around,” she said. “We will create jobs. That’s how you hold onto your house.”
Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania used most of his response to accuse the other candidates of supporting the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which bailed out banks during the financial meltdown.
One of every 44 homes in Nevada has been hit by a foreclosure filing in the third quarter of this year, according to Realty Trac Inc. Nevada’s foreclosures are coming at twice the rate of California, the second-hardest hit state.
Even so, the candidates have not shown a great desire to be heard on the subject thus far in the campaign.
…
The Financial Times
October 18, 2011 7:57 pm
How to rebuild the flimsy foundations of Wall St
By Jerry Webman
If I walk outside my lower Manhattan office building, I very quickly hear the drum beat coming from the Occupy Wall Street protesters, who one month into their demonstration are still camped a few blocks away in Zuccotti Park. The political side of our festering financial and economic crisis has reached the sidewalks of New York and spread to cities around the world. From the beginning of the financial and economic slump, commentators and politicians have used our difficulties to advance causes that they probably held in more buoyant times. As the songwriter Steve Stills wrote about a mid-1960s street protest, they “mostly say ‘hooray for our side.’ ” So, what is their side?
The best characterisation that I’ve heard of the Occupy Wall Street movement’s diffuse goals came from an off-duty protester who had weathered the economic storms well enough to afford a neighbouring table at one of my favourite New York restaurants. He told me that he did not really know what should be done. He just believed that things were going from bad to worse and wanted to raise the temperature of debate in the hope that something good would boil up from the process.
At its core, finance is about linking people with savings to those that can put them to productive use. Performed correctly, it can fund retirement accounts, foster growth in emerging markets and support the technology companies that help protesters assemble in a flash. A well-functioning financial system is critical for economic growth. Investments that support worthwhile projects can build the human and physical capital that generates growth and raises standards of living around the world.
When this process is impaired, in particular when the financial system extracts more value than it channels to investors and entrepreneurs, projects go unfunded, innovation sputters and economies stall. Today this process has been compromised. We all have our favourite villains. The combination of misdirected regulation, easy money and a willing suspension of disbelief about over-valued securities allowed some financial institutions – not only along Wall Street – to grow very large on a flimsy foundation of expanding credit. But while purging this rottenness from the system may make for provocative protester placards, letting the banks fail was not an option in 2008 and it is still not an option today.
…
The Financial Times
Last updated: October 18, 2011 10:16 pm
French warning to euro summit
By Hugh Carnegy in Paris, Peter Spiegel in Brussels and David Oakley in London
France warned on Tuesday that European unity would be at risk if eurozone leaders failed to take bold action to tackle its sovereign debt crisis at a crucial summit this weekend.
In sharp contrast to signals from Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, playing down the chances of a breakthrough, President Nicolas Sarkozy said that “an unprecedented financial crisis will lead us to take important, very important decisions in the coming days”.
Raising the sense of urgency, the French president added: “Allowing the destruction of the euro is to take the risk of the destruction of Europe. Those who destroy Europe and the euro will bear responsiblity for resurgence of conflict and division on our continent.”
…
Oct. 19, 2011, 12:00 a.m. EDT
The IMF should pull the plug on the euro
Commentary: Why throw good money after bad?
By Matthew Lynn
LONDON (MarketWatch) — Every financial crisis in the end boils down to one very simple question. Who pays?
The euro debacle has now reached that point. After the G-20 summit in Paris last weekend, there is increasing talk of getting the rest of the world to help bail the single currency out of the mess it finds itself in.
More money should be poured into the International Monetary Fund to help with the rescues, we were told. China and Brazil should step up their purchases of trouble euro-zone bonds.
That is crazy.
In fact, the IMF should pull the plug on the single currency. This is a mess of Europe’s own making. There is no reason to expect the rest of the world to pay for it — and if it does, it will only prolong the agony.
Even by the low standards of “grand plans to save the euro,” the scheme cooked up by the G-20 summit in Paris last weekend seems painfully weak. After all the hype and promises of a final fix for the troubled currency, not much of substance emerged.
Something will be done to prop up Europe’s banks, although no one is saying precisely what. Greece should be allowed to default, even though no one quite knows when, or by how much. Something should be done to stop the crisis spreading to Italy or Spain — such as taking the children of bond traders’ hostage and threatening to boil them alive if they don’t stop selling Italian paper.
The one point of substance was that the IMF should contribute more. Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s new managing director, is already calling for an increase in its $390 billion of available funds to help it fund euro-zone bailouts. If that is agreed, every country in the IMF will have to chip in some more money.
Meanwhile, the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are being pressed to help as well. There are reports that the Chinese have become the most active buyers of Spanish and Italian debt, stopping those markets from collapsing. The Chinese are snapping up assets in the privatizations being pushed through by governments in the peripheral countries as they struggle to get their deficits down — offering to buy Athens airport for example. The Brazilians, led by Finance Minister Guido Mantega, have been actively pushing a coordinated global approach to fixing the euro crisis.
…
China on U.S. Treasurys: No Thanks
Oct. 18, 2011
DJ Newswires reporter Ian Talley makes a stop on Mean Street to discuss China’s decision to not buy U.S. Treasurys in August, as did many other foreign countries. AP Photo.