Bits Bucket for November 28, 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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Random renter info #1. A friends wife worked for a large multi building apartment complex in San Jose or somewhere around it. She was telling me about her duties and the odd things management had them do. They were on a first name basis with all of the competition, and weekly they shared all upcoming special offers and deals. She said they had a spreadsheet they filled out weekly after talking to everyone. The others did the same, and the management used the info for pricing.
Seems like collusion to me. I’d like to find some sources to see if this is common everywhere. I know when I had a storage at a place. I had one years before down the street. Owner at a place admitted he knew the lady at the other one, and they talk every week. They shared info, similarly.
“all of the competition, and weekly they shared all upcoming special offers and deals.”
“Seems like collusion to me.”
Craig’s List / apts-rentals / search
They share it before it’s public.
They were on a first name basis with all of the competition
freedom of association
Absolutely a fact. I managed multi-use (condo/apts included) and shopping centers, and yeah, we all did/do it. Collusion. U-San Diego R E/ICSC Mgmt School.
They may also be using MRI software for accounting and statistical analysis. I have experience both working with this and as a result of my very brief tenure in a corporate apartment complex after moving to Colorado.
At the end of my 5 month lease the renewal rate letter listed the monthly rents from a 2 month up to a 15 month renewal, as well as a much higher month to month rate. Their was no clear pattern in the range of rates, because it was based on projected vacancies in the complex due to expiring leases as well as prime moving times (May to September).
The squad now avoids all corporate apartments, and the freedom to move after 5 months is yet another of innumerable examples of why renting is always better.
squad now avoids all corporate apartments
It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep one’s business $$ away from the Corporate Maw. Even simple things like getting a haircut or an oil change for the car are increasingly provided by Corporate America.
The current squad rental is owned by a LLC that has maybe a dozen properties and 500 units across metro Denver. We have a live-in building manager who speaks English and is very responsive to resident maintenance requests.
The previous corporate complex (500+ units within the complex itself) had a leasing office staffed by NYCdj’s airhead chickypoos who’s only function was to sign leases (new leases, not jacked-up-rate renewal leases). I can’t remember ever hearing English spoken by the landscape and maintenance staff.
Wahl clippers and a bike. Maybe one of them is corporate, but I saved a lot of dough by losing my hair.
We rented a mo to mo, so I understand your desire goon. Little did we know, the three months we thought it would take to find another home, would turn into years. As we started our journey, home prices in Ca skyrocked. It was insanity.
In retrospect, we should have rented a home and enjoyed our furniture and piano. Can’t wait to write a check, and be done with the majority of a roof over your head cost. Plus, living with third worlders hasn’t been a picnic.
We can’t speak to your (or oxide’s) experience renting in coastal bubble markets as the squad’s experience has been limited to flyover locales hundreds of miles inland where they’re not making any more land does not apply.
Yes it may make more sense to buy now/soon there but until metro-Denver corrects from its current 4.5-5/1 price to income ratio it does not here. Also looking for new job so don’t the albatross interfering with possible relo for that.
They are free to keep records. Sharing that info with the competition IS collusion and price fixing.
Neither of which seems to be illegal anymore.
Isn’t communist capitalism great!
turkey lurkey
Oh boy, do I agree with you. And to make matters worse, the condition, features, and sometimes location isn’t factored in enough. We’re seeing the same thing happen as we shop for our final SFH. The realturds decided the price points of the lower end stuff (one story modest 4+2 and all of the homes we’re seeing are within $15K of each other. Pools/no pools, new roofs, etc…, it doesn’t matter.
Even our broker said the price point of $400K sells. All our target market should all be at that level. Really?
I would venture to say that came up at a local association meeting and prices were “set”. Just a hunch from attending those meeting in my past. God, those meeting raised my blood pressure.
Even our broker said the price point of $400K sells. All our target market should all be at that level. Really?
yes 400K is cheap around here and usually a wreck 450K is the going price I see
Are the homes you’re looking at built in the 1960’s ?
east simi is a earthquake damage area due to the high water table but I guess you know that . Old homes need to be braced at the garage door the weakest spot in the house
shear walls need to be nailed in at the garage door studs on the inside wall keep it from swaying and falling down. A Engineer I work with had that done to his central simi home when it was rebuilt.
cactus
Thanks for that info. I’m curious to know if all the Texas tract got hammered, or just the north end of it. Can you ask your fellow Engieering co-worker for us?
you can reply to:
awaitingwipeout@verizon.net
I have more experience with storage (apartments for stuff). I have not seen collusion there. If you want to get info on competitors, you need to blind shop the competition, or look at how they are pricing online.
The only place we have seen communication is with cross marketing in tighter markets, or with specialty product. That is usually done for a fee though in exchange for a referral.
Example: A tenant comes in looking for a 3bd, but you are full…you sent that tenant to a “friendly” competitor, who pays you a fee for the referral. A tenant comes in looking for a unit, but can’t qualify because they have incomes that are too low…they are sent to a “friendly competitor” who may have below market rate units available (section 42, etc.), where the person COULD qualify.
While I haven’t seen price fixing personally, but would be SHOCKED if it didn’t happen in at least some local markets. I don’t know if the San Jose example is one of those cases…or whether it is technically illegal.
Sorry for the non sequitur, but this needs to go up top:
Judge Blocks Citigroup Settlement With S.E.C.
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in New York on Monday threw out a settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup over a 2007 mortgage derivatives deal, saying that the S.E.C.’s policy of settling cases by allowing a company to neither admit nor deny the agency’s allegations did not satisfy the law.
The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of United States District Court in Manhattan, ruled that the S.E.C.’s $285 million settlement, announced last month, is “neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest” because it does not provide the court with evidence on which to judge the settlement.
The ruling could throw the S.E.C.’s enforcement efforts into chaos, because a majority of the fraud cases and other actions that the agency brings against Wall Street firms are settled out of court, most often with a condition that the defendant does not admit that it violated the law while also promising not to deny it.
That condition gives a company or individual an advantage in subsequent civil litigation for damages, because cases in which no facts are established cannot be used in evidence in other cases, like shareholder lawsuits seeking recovery of losses or damages.
The S.E.C.’s policy — “hallowed by history, but not by reason,” Judge Rakoff wrote — creates substantial potential for abuse, the judge said, because “it asks the court to employ its power and assert its authority when it does not know the facts.”
Judge Rakoff also refers at one point to Citigroup as “a recidivist,” or repeat offender, which has violated the antifraud provisions of the nation’s securities laws many times. The company knew that the S.E.C.’s proposed judgment – that it cease and desist from violating the antifraud laws – had not been enforced in at least 10 years, the judge wrote.
[there is more, but this is the most important part - I'll post a link, but it is right up top on the NY Times wbesite]
Actually there is not that much more to the article, but it should be read:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/business/judge-rejects-sec-accord-with-citi.html?hp
Oh, the decision is beautiful. It is all about not abusing judicial power by agreeing to something that requires the bank to modify its behavior in the future (with the court able to force them to comply) without having established facts. The judge is an artist.
“…The judge is an artist…”
Agreed. Thanks for posting this, Polly.
And thanks to cactus above for the brief tutorial in soil liquefaction and structural remediation.
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=198213
Here comes the judge! (Rakoff).
Random renter info #2. When I had a storage unit, I decided to measure it to see how it stacked up against the proposed size. It was about 1′ short on one side. When you’re talking 8′ x 10′ you have 80 square feet. But really the size of the unit was 70 square feet. That’s a pretty large percentage of product that isn’t really there especially given the price per square foot.
So don’t bother doing detailed price comparisons in that industry. The fine print says all sizes are estimated, and that is their scapegoat. Just another heads up.
Storage is the biggest scam there is…. they offer u cheap 1st month’s rent… only to have inertia set in once it’s auto-billed to your credit card.
I refuse to pay monthly to store stuff that is worthless. You’d be surprised to see what Americans pay to store junk!!
Wake up, people!!!
Hello???
I excerpted a few fun facts:
1. Fewer than 250 new self storage facilities came on line in the U.S. during 2010; the trend in new construction is down significantly the last four years
2. Total self storage rentable space in the US is now 2.22 billion square feet (as of Q4-2010) [approximately 210 million square meters]. That figure represents more than 78 square miles of rentable self storage space, under roof – or an area well more than 3 times the size of Manhattan Island (NY)
3. The distribution of U.S. self storage facilities (Q4-09) is as follows: 32% urban, 52% suburban and 16% rural
4. Nearly 1 in 10 US households (HH), or 10% (10.8 million of the 113.3 million US HH in 2007) currently rent a self storage unit; that has increased from 1 in 17 US HHs (6%) in 1995 – or an increase of approximately 65 percent in the last 15 years
5. At year-end 1984 there were 6,601 facilities with 289.7 million square feet (26.9 million square meters) of rentable self storage in the U.S. At year end 2010, there are approximately 46,500 “primary” self storage facilities representing 2.24 billion square feet
6. Nationally, at year-end 2010 all self storage facilities employed approximately 163,000 persons, or an average of 3.5 employees per facility
7. There is 7.0 sq.ft. of self storage space for every man, woman and child in the nation; thus, it is physically possible that every American could stand – all at the same time – under the total canopy of self storage roofing.
8. More than 700,000 self storage units nationwide are rented to military personnel (4% of all units);
9. It took the self storage industry more than 25 years to build its first billion square feet of space; it added the second billion square feet in just 8 years (1998-2005)
10. During the peak development years (2004-2005) 8,694 new self storage facilities (approximately 480 million square feet of space were added)
http://www.selfstorage.org/ssa/Content/NavigationMenu/AboutSSA/FactSheet/default.htm
What I find most shocking about these stats is the expansion of self-storage during the housing boom. Let’s see, people are having fewer kids AND moving into larger houses… so why do they need storage space on top of it? What the HELL did they buy?
oxide-I agree with you, but corporations, law and medical offices store documents in them. Even though the stuff is digital, they retain the hard copy. But, you’re spot on, it just doesn’t make sense.
Thank God the CPI is massaged down, or our rents for storage would have sky-rocketed. OTOH SS COLA”S are worthless.
Yin Yang
“Fewer than 250 new self storage facilities came on line in the U.S. during 2010; the trend in new construction is down significantly the last four years”
This is not unique to storage (or housing, for that matter).
On average, aggregate construction each year has averaged approximately 1.8% of total built stock (this is Office, Retail, Multifamily, Industrial, Lodging). This data is from Citi’s REIT report, and goes back to 1984.
With a population growing at about 1% per year, you need to build new. However, you also need to replace old buildings. If you assume buildings have a 100-year lifespan on average, and there was no economic and population growth, you would need to build 1% per year just to maintain what you have…and most buildings don’t last that long, so 1.8% when factoring in population growth doesn’t seem all that unreasonable.
From 2009 through 2011, the aggregate construction has been more like 0.5%.
The prior low in the 90’s was about 1%.
From about 2000-2008, the number ranged from about 1.7% to 2.4%, a bit above the average, but not wildly so, like the late 80s, which was from 2% to 3.5%.
There is a big source of missing jobs in the construction industry. As vacancy rates grind their way down (and it is a slow, painful grind), expect rents to rise and there to be more construction.
There are 3 storage places outside Big Bend National park in Terilingua Texas(pop 267).
I remember driving past one that was at least 20 miles away from a medium-sized city. For that size city, 20 miles away is pure Midwestern stix. Not the type of place where people lived in condos, or were badgered by HOAs. And judging from the doors, these were small storage units. Folks couldn’t put up a shed in the back yard?
“Folks couldn’t put up a shed in the back yard?”
Um, then they couldn’t spend time watching HGTV. What’s wrong with you?
And in Ca (at least), there is no right to surviviorship, should the person who signs the storage unit agreement dies, and of course no disclosure of this fact is told to the person signing up. The industry has caused numerous nightmares for people. Someone should sue the sobs. (They don’t take tenants in common, from what I know.)
We have units and they pretend I don’t exist. They only talk to the tenant on the agreement, and yet community property sits in the units. Caveat Emptor!
Sorry, I meant joint tenancy. It’s early.
“And in Ca (at least), there is no right to surviviorship, should the person who signs the storage unit agreement dies,”
So, you’re saying that you would have no access to your joint property in the event that your spouse had died?
What would it take to regain access—a court order?
Depends on what the contract says. You have to read the fine print. They could easily write it so that the storage company owns it, just so they don’t have any obligation to locate a person whose name isn’t on the contract.
Yikes!
Can you imagine the spit-storm it would be if banks were to try to get away with language like that?
Polly and Prime
That is what scares us as renters of storage units. The stuff goes into probate, even if its community property. It’s just wrong and morally bankrupt to do that to a couple. Ca is a community property state except for storage items.
And prime, I hear you loud and clear. There is some big shot attorney that tells the storage association how to write the rental agreements. The banks are drooling for this business model.
Check out Storage Wars.
I’ve used storage sparingly…it is shocking to see how quickly the cost of storage exceeds the value of what is stored.
Where storage can make sense is for businesses, where product or records need to be stored. Often, having off-site storage is far cheaper than paying for more space at your place of business.
Most storage use is for less than a year in any event, where a person is storing stuff during a move, renovation, etc.
Yea in my case I had a web hosting business thing and I nuked it, moving it to storage. I quickly sold and gave away equipment that wasn’t wanted (Cisco routers, Sun servers, SGI servers, x86 servers for the nerds.) I downsized quite a bit.
Now I’m ready to downsize again. I own a Cray “supercomputer” and it’s really heavy, there is no way to move it to my apartment. I probably should sell it, I’ve almost got it working. It’s so heavy. But there are only like 5 in the wild of my model that I know of.
Still have a large SGI system in storage, which I’ll give away soon.
I had hoped to have a place by now. I was hoping the market would crash faster.
I have it at our geek lab, which is undergoing some changes.
I’m thinking about contacting a REO realtor to get some auto leads or whatever. But really, my job is behind in pay to about $100K and my savings are trashed now. My house savings are gone now. They are working hard to make a comeback, some new business is coming in. We’ll see.
‘Most storage use is for less than a year in any event”
This doesn’t explain the explosion in new storage facilities — wouldn’t you just have people using the same units over and over again? There just seems to be more stuff overall.
“There just seems to be more stuff overall.”
But if I don’t have more stuff than you, how will I know that I’ve won? What is your major malfunction?? Get with the program. 26 more shopping days ’til Xmas!
I wasn’t trying to explain it, just trying to note that not all storage usage is a stupid waste of money.
The only two explanations for more storage usage are:
1. More efficient use of expensive space (people not paying office rents for what is storage of business material);
2. Good old American packratism.
But really, my job is behind in pay to about $100K
Be careful. Same thing happened to my brother - got about 6 months behind - trashed his savings and they never paid up. He finally wised up and left, sued the company, but I’m not sure he got any of that money in the end…
Exclusive: Lobbying Firm’s Memo Spells Out Plan to Undermine Occupy Wall Street (VIDEO)
A well-known Washington lobbying firm with links to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to take on Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests, according to a memo obtained by the MSNBC program “Up w/ Chris Hayes.”
The proposal was written on the letterhead of the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford and addressed to one of CLGC’s clients, the American Bankers Association.
CLGC’s memo proposes that the ABA pay CLGC $850,000 to conduct “opposition research” on Occupy Wall Street in order to construct “negative narratives” about the protests and allied politicians. The memo also asserts that Democratic victories in 2012 would be detrimental for Wall Street and targets specific races in which it says Wall Street would benefit by electing Republicans instead.
Two of the memo’s authors, partners Sam Geduldig and Jay Cranford, previously worked for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
The CLGC memo raises another issue that it says should be of concern to the financial industry — that OWS might find common cause with the Tea Party. “Well-known Wall Street companies stand at the nexus of where OWS protestors and the Tea Party overlap on angered populism,” the memo says
http://upwithchrishayes.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/11/19/8896362-exclusive-lobbying-firms-memo-spells-out-plan-to-undermine-occupy-wall-street-video
The demonization campaign has already started.
Although both OWS and the Tea Party suffer from the same problem: as a movement grows it attracts nuts, who are the only people the media chooses to quote, and self-interested operators, who try to take over.
The media can only discuss this in a context understandable to the Amerikan sheeple, which is through the <5th-grade reading level lens of the TeeVee.
Dirty hippies, police violence, drug use, unsanitary conditions all make for good TeeVee. Economic inequality resulting from the increased concentration of wealth by the super-rich and away from the middle class and working poor do not make good TeeVee.
Wonder why Barbara Ehrenreich’s books have never been made into a movie?
http://news.yahoo.com/swat-teams-shooting-marine-causes-outrage-184928360.html
Homeowners who attempt to defend their families against no-knock “dynamic entries,” not knowing if they’re dealing with police or home-invasion crews who often shout “police!” and sport law enforcement windbreakers and ball caps, can expect a summary death sentence. With no consequences or accountability for the killers.
RIP, 4th Ammendment.
Same story was just covered in a Tucson Weekly feature story. From my reading of the story, it sounded like the investigators didn’t have a strong case. The widow is now suing the county, and I hope she insists on a court trial, rather than accepting a settlement.
“What reasonable person comes to the front door and points a rifle at people?” he said. “It takes several milliseconds to flip the switch from safety to fire and take out a couple of SWAT officers. I’m firmly of the opinion that he was attempting to shoot at us.”
The officers laid down “suppressive” fire because one had tripped and fallen and the others thought he’d been shot.
“You point a gun at police, you’re going to get shot,” Kastigar said.
The question should be, what the hell do you expect when you kick down someone’s front door and violently invade his home? A lot of people own guns and a lot of people are going to grab those guns and use them to confront anyone who smashes their way into their house. Police blotters are full of accounts of home invasion crews who yell “police!” to confuse their victims. Homeowners have no way of verifying, in a few terrifying seconds, whether the home invaders are the police or criminals (although the distinction is starting to blur).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP0f00_JMak
SWAT video of the deadly raid as it went down. While the typical slack-jawed ‘Mercan is too brainwashed to see anything wrong here, anyone who still values the 4th Ammendment is deeply troubled at the increasing militarization of police and their proclivity for violent assault over a more sensible and restrained approach.
The question should be, what the hell do you expect when you kick down someone’s front door and violently invade his home?
If you are the militarized police, you expect them to surrender quickly and quietly. And if they kicked down the wrong door, tough beans. Don’t expect any indemnification for damages.
Food for thought: Many cops are ex military. Soldiers are not trained to respect the Bill of Rights, they are trained to obey orders which includes shoot to kill.
In our little burg an ex Marine teaches our “finest” the intricacies of military arts. I’ve met the guy. He has lots of “Semper Fi” stickers on his Suburban. I don’t recall seeing any regarding Bill of Rights.
I have a Brother in law in the UK who is a cop. While he doesn’t carry a firearm he makes no secret of his distaste for “civil liberties” as they make his job harder.
pretty famous case of law trying a land grab in Malibu
“Early on the morning of Oct. 2, 1992, 31 officers from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, Drug Enforcement Administration, Border Patrol, National Guard and Park Service came roaring down the narrow dirt road to Scott’s rustic 200-acre ranch. They planned to arrest Scott, the wealthy, eccentric, hard-drinking heir to a Europe-based chemicals fortune, for allegedly running a 4,000-plant marijuana plantation. When deputies broke down the door to Scott’s house, Scott’s wife would later tell reporters, she screamed, “Don’t shoot me. Don’t kill me.” That brought Scott staggering out of the bedroom, hung-over and bleary-eyed — he’d just had a cataract operation — holding a .38 caliber Colt snub-nosed revolver over his head. When he pointed it in the direction of the deputies, they killed him.
Later, the lead agent in the case, sheriff’s deputy Gary Spencer and his partner John Cater posed for photographs arm-in-am outside Scott’s cabin, smiling and triumphant, says Larry Longo, a former Los Angeles deputy district attorney who now represents Scott’s daughter, Susan.
“It was as if they were white hunters who had just shot the buffalo,” he said.
I’m all for giving cops tactical equipment and training. Who knows when they may come up against a heavily armed felon or madman. However, with great power comes great responsibility, and that’s where cops fall short. The whole concept of using the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve a situation seems lost on them. The mindset revealed in some of the comments from the cops involved in “taking down” the ex-Marine is disturbing and accountability is desperately needed. The use of “dynamic entry” needs to be extremely restricted as well to true life-or-death situations.
What happens when it turns out the guy was indeed involved with a drug operation.
If you read the background on him, ehh it starts to look a tiny bit different.
I’m assuming that he WAS involved in something dirty. This still could’ve been handled a lot more intelligently by law enforcement. Like knocking on the guys door and showing him a warrant. He had a wife and kid inside with him, remember?
The solution, of course, is even more government and more laws.
Did this kind of stuff happen 50+ years ago? Back then was there more government and more laws, or less/fewer?
Do you feel safer now that we have more government and more laws?
I was living close by the Trails End ranch up on Mulholland when all this was going down, (late 1980’s to early ’90’s) and was as horrified as the rest of the town by this massed (and totally bogus,) raid on Donald Scott’s property. It wasn’t the first time he been harassed– which was why he was armed.
You see, he owned a large and strategically-located property (200+ acres, as I recall, which for Malibu is huge,) wanted by the State of California and the National Park System for its holdings. They were in the middle of a major expansion to sanctify the Reagan Ranch, and he wasn’t about to give them his land because he hated the man with a passion.) He refused to sell. Each time they upped the ante he told them to go pound sand.
They tried to zone him out. They tried to get him on statutory rape charges (he liked much younger women.) They tried to hang him on drug charges. Nothing stuck.
This went on for several years and was duly reported in the Malibu Surf Times– almost as a public cat and mouse game. He’d write nasty letters reviling the sheriffs and the State, the Times would print them, the locals would egg him on. In the meantime he married a much-younger wife who shared his irascibility and dislike for the State’s heavy-handedness. She started writing, too. LA County Sheriffs Dept. began to take it personally.
The concocted story about the 4000 marijuana plants was just that, total bs. Scott was a drunk and liked his cocaine, but Francis wouldn’t let him smoke. Anything.
Finally, on a trumped-up warrant, he was raided by 14 government agencies– including the Air National Guard– who shot him dead when he came to the door with a revolver in hand.
It took his widow nearly ten years and 20 attorneys, (during which time she lived impoverished in a tipi on the property after the ranch house burned in the ‘96 fires,) but the County finally admitted culpability and paid her some half-arsed settlement.
Left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth for a long long time, but most have forgotten by now.
Here’s a pretty good account, it’s worth a read:
http://www.saveourguns.com/scott001.html
Although both OWS and the Tea Party suffer from the same problem: as a movement grows it attracts nuts, who are the only people the media chooses to quote, and self-interested operators, who try to take over.
Here in Tucson, the occupation camp is attracting quite a few homeless people who, shall we say, have mental issues. It also seems to have quite a freeloader problem. As in, a lot of people come to the camp, sit around, get the free meals, then sit around some more.
Being the amateur scholar of history that I am, I see that the Occupy movement is picking up where the 1960s communes left off. And, before them, the utopian communities like the Harmonists and Shakers of the 1800s. All had problems with the freeloaders who showed up for the peace, love, and good feelings, but weren’t interested in doing any work.
The Shakers had such a big problem that their freeloaders came to be known as Winter Shakers. Meaning that they’d come to stay for the winter, all the while professing a belief in the Shaker way of life. But, come spring, it was time to plow and plant the fields. And, for some strange reason, the Winter Shakers just weren’t into that. So, they’d be off to their next free crash somewhere else.
The freeloader problem is one that homeless shelters also deal with, and that’s why shelters have so many rules and regulations. The rules and regs are there to get people motivated to move up and out of the shelter. Because if the shelter was a nice place, no one would ever leave.
Methinks that our local occupiers are going to have to adopt a tough love approach. And that’s not going to be very well received by some of their campers.
The parasites and layabouts will eventually gravitate back to their natural home, the Democrat Party. The young people who are serious and sincere about standing up to crony capitalism will hopefully link up with the Ron Paul campaign.
Oh knock it off, Sammy. I know a whole lot of monied parasites and layabouts who support right-wing reactionaries, too.
This news made a splash last week. What I want to know is
1. This is a proposal. Is it an unsolicited proposal, or did someone issue and RFP? If so, who? I woud guess that it’s an unsolicited feeler. A full proposal ($850K is a lot of money) is usually much longer and includes a lot more boilerplate and resumés of the staff.
2. $850K? For a frugal couple $850K a comfortable retirement. For Wall Street, $850K is a power lunches or a .001% increase in fees. This contrast is what Occupy is all about.
I was most interested in their fear that the OWS and the Tea Party could find common ground. The Republicans’ worst nightmare: their base starts voting for its own economic interests, rather than those of their shepherds’.
“their base starts voting for its own economic interests, rather than those of their shepherds”.
An excellent sentence. That would be true of the Dem base as well. That OWS and the Tea Party exist is a good thing. The more, the merrier, when it comes to popular movements. Dems and Reps are just two sides of the same lousy coin. The Dems, however, are more skilled in the use of vaseline.
Agreed it would be true hell for both corrupt parties.
I love your sentiments, alpha, palmetto and RAL.
I still hear party loyalty out in public. The R’s want to take it back and fix it. wtf, did they not pay attention to Bush 43’s 8 years. (Shakes head as a recovered R.)
Comment from one of the websites (paraphrased):
They are afraid of the day that the people stop looking Left and Right and start looking Up and Down.
Oxy I just read that quote somewhere….. Was it HP?
DK.
Perhaps Wall Street should help the public employee unions capture OWS.
We’d be left with a Tea Party in favor of more government policies to redistribute income up, and an OWS in favor of richer pensions for those who already have the richest pensions paid for by public service cuts for everyone else.
Just like the Republicans and Democrats.
their own econ interests? that means keeping entitlements as is.
exactly
Many of the volume voters aren’t voting for their best interest. They keep voting for R’s, undwer the guise of god and guns. Yet, it’s been the Republicans who have tried to privitize those juicy entitlement funds. Exhibit A: trying to force Social Security into the stock market. Went bust. Exhibit B: Paul Ryan trying to force Medicare into privitized vouchercare.* Thank the Dems in the Senate for stopping that one. There were probably a few more insidious plans we don’t know about. Occupy is starting to crack the doublethink of the sheeple.
————–
*Now wait a minute, aren’t both of those examples taking moneys from my paycheck and forcing me to buy private stock or voucher health insurance? How is this different from the PPACA healthcare mandate, which R’s are so quick to call unconstitutional? Ryancare should be as unconstitutional as Obamacare, yet I didn’t hear a peep from the R’s on that point.
http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/the-future-of-the-obama-coalition/
Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is writing off the white working class vote. Sadly, the proles will probably vote for the Establishment GOP, which threw them under the bus years ago. If Obama gets a second term he’ll abandon all pretense of “serving” the productive middle class as well, though that wouldn’t stop the sheep from vote for him anyway.
Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is writing off the white working class vote.
Which is precisely the reason why I left the Democratic Party and became an Independent back in 1992. The working class write-off was well underway back then.
Maybe one of these days the sheeple who mindlessly vote for whatever Republicrat Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum is on the ballet will realize the Republicrats are helping the oligarchs rob them blind, and will leave BOTH parties.
“White working class?”
That can’t be more than 2% of the population anyway.
Sarc off
Both parties consider them disposable.
That can’t be more than 2% of the population anyway.
That’s a good point there. Politicians are always talking about the struggling middle class. The working class is rarely mentioned. It must have been sometime in the 1970s that all working class people were reclassified as middle class. Of course, that was the same period of time when it became a lot more difficult for people to move up from one class to another.
“Maybe one of these days the sheeple who mindlessly vote for whatever Republicrat Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum is on the ballet will realize the Republicrats are helping the oligarchs rob them blind”
I like the idea, but what worries me is that some “anti-Tweedle” third party fireball will come along who talks the talk and rallies the factions of our country behind the notion you detail above. And then he/she, once elected, proves just as corrupt/corruptible as those who came before. Or maybe is just plain inept. I know, it’s worth a shot, but a bad outcome might set the any positive movement back a hundred years.
And if that fireball doesn’t happen, nothing changes.
The Republicans’ worst nightmare: their base starts voting for its own economic interests, rather than those of their shepherds’.
Testify, brothah Alpha. Granted, the GOP base are retards, but how much longer can the sleazeballs of the kleptocracy’s political arm, the RNC, use fearmongering to mobilize the uni-brow vote?
“2. $850K? For a frugal couple $850K a comfortable retirement.”
$850K is a comfortable retirement?? I suppose that depends a long on what the cost of living is like where you live. That works out to $34K/yr on a 4% annuity-like return.
With SS, not living in an expensive area of the country, that sounds do-able. If SS ends up means-tested, inflation continues to be under-reported, or you live in an expensive area, not so much.
You can live for 17 years on a 50K per year budget from the principal alone.
If 50k isn’t enough money where you live, move.
“You can live for 17 years”
Running out of money during my non-earning years doesn’t strike me as an appealing option…
Just sayin….
…for most people, 50K a year is still a lot of money.
“…for most people, 50K a year is still a lot of money.”
Yeah, I totally get that.
I often wonder whether I should move somewhere cheaper if/when I retire. But I do love the PNW, and would enjoy it even more if I had more time off to do the things I love in it.
If you’re not tied to an office, you can live cheap anywhere in this country, as long as you’re 50 miles or so from the nearest downtown.
For reference, I lived on ~$25K a year by myself when I was unemployed. Rough breakdown:
Rent $700
Car payment $300
Health insurance $500 (COBRA)
Internet/phone $100
Utilities/gasoline $100
Food and incidentals $400
If I had had a paid-off house, paid-off car, and cheaper Medicare, I could have lived for ~$15K a year. For two, about $25K generously. Now mind you, that’s frugal, no traveling and not many goodies, plus doesn’t include a car that finally gives up the ghost, or house maintenance.
Looking on Zillow, I can always tell a house for sale where Great-grandma finally died, because there are no updates in the house, not even wallpaper. the elderly can live, but that’s about all they can do.
Health insurance $500 (COBRA)
Ouch! That is one nasty snake bite!
And, IMHO, there’s no reason why health insurance needs to cost that much. Methinks there’s a major amount of price gouging going on there.
You can live for 17 years on a 50K per year budget from the principal alone.”
If its a IRA you will pay taxes
You can live for 17 years on a 50K per year budget from the principal alone.
You haven’t factored Ben Bernanke’s deranged money-printing into the equation. By the time the Fed gets done with its endless “stimulus” and bailouts and money creation to pay off debts, $50K per year will probably be just enough to pay for the beans and rice you’ll be subsisting on.
Republicans are losing small donors, but still getting strong support from the 1%
Washington Post:
Democratic leaders raising money to be spent on the most competitive House races in next year’s elections are doing something remarkable: outraising their Republican counterparts, despite a historic drubbing a year ago that left Democrats in the minority.
The [National Republican Congressional Committee]’s problem appears to be in small- and medium-size donors. The party’s major donor program is healthy: donors giving more than $10,000 at a time have contributed more so far this cycle than in the start of the previous two combined.
What makes the Democratic surge in fundraising so unusual is that political money tends to flow to those in power and those with momentum.
Republican interest groups, including major “super PACs,” appear to have a big head start on their Democratic counterparts and will probably tip the balance in spending to the favor of Republicans.
“When Republicans consistently protect billionaires over Medicare, it’s hard to convince small donors to give a check,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D- N.Y.)…
Of course you conveniently did not mention Ron Paul’s contributions are mostly small.
I wouldn’t call Ron Paul a Republican, not in its current iteration. Paul is budget hacker, but he’s an equal opportunity budget hacker, and they can’t be having any of that.
I would consider Ron Paul the closet thing to a true Republican. The other GOP candidates are corporatist neo-con stooges.
Exactly. I mentioned several times that the element who hijacked the Republican Party in the late 70s are no fans of Barry Goldwater, the quintessential Republican. True conservative means to follow the constitution.
“…but still getting strong support from the 1%”
And check out the result:
11/04/2011 @ 3:04PM
Herman Cain: I’m A Koch Brother From Another Mother
WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 04
David Koch gives Cain the thumbs up from the audience. Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Update: Read about Friday night’s Occupy the Kochs protest here.
At a summit backed by conservative financiers the Koch brothers on Friday, Herman Cain sought to clarify his connection to the billionaire industrialists for the media. Cain didn’t distance himself from Charles and David Koch, America’s richest brothers — rather he reaffirmed his status as the Koch-approved Presidential candidate, saying, and repeating for emphasis: “I am the Koch brothers’ brother from another mother and proud of it.”
…
Don’t miss clicking on the Occupy the Kochs link in the above, if you enjoy scaring yourself. The Kochs are a menace to American society.
Trading Place$:
Koch & Koch = Duke & Duke
Plot:
Duke brothers Randolph (Ralph Bellamy) and Mortimer (Don Ameche) own Duke & Duke, a successful commodities brokerage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Holding opposing views on the issue of nature versus nurture, they make a $1.00 USD wager and agree to conduct an experiment,…
“Herman Cain: I’m A Koch Brother From Another Mother”
The Koch-Cain Connection
Funny how this was pretty much buried by the so called “Liberal Media”
The squad posted this quote on HBB weeks ago
I know, had it not been for you, I would never have found out. I’m pretty sure that most voters waving the “Cain for Prez” signs have no idea he said that.
Nice, alpha.
Koch Brothers is so last week (as is Cain, for that matter).
It’s Grover Norquist now! Haven’t y’all got the memo?
We’re not as well-regimented as the dittohead right-wing talking-point-of-the-day citizens’ patrol.
” political money tends to flow to those in power and those with momentum”
There is no such thing as momentum in politics. It is not physics. The idea of momentum in politics is an imaginary construct of the media and the pundits. If political momentum really existed, we wouldn’t get “reversals” so often. What they call momentum is either a big win in an election - that is back looking, not forward looking - and sometimes they ID it when circumstances cause people to rethink their previous assumptions and it is starting to show up in polls. That might be predictive of the future a little bit unless people stop thinking that way, in which case all that happened was a blip in the polls.
Money has its own rules. It follows fantasies, so an imaginary construct like political momentum is likely to influence it a lot. The question is whether the money actually accomplishes anything in an election. It is pretty obvious is has some effect on some politicians once they are in office, but I still have doubts as to whether political ads are as effective as their creators and purchasers think they are.
Not so sure about that, polly. If a politician gets traction, he can create curiosity and momentum from the volume voters, a sort of name recognition and/or popularity of the moment. If you time that with the election, it can make a difference. For example, it is widely thought that Hillary peaked too soon.
As did Palin.
‘If political momentum really existed, we wouldn’t get “reversals” so often.’
If political momentum did not exist, then every election would be a random draw, with every candidate who through in his hat equally likely to win.
Due to political momentum, today’s established candidates, who have name recognition and financial backing (if not incumbency status) are much more likely to win than noname candidates who have yet to enter the race.
Not even close. There is such a thing as a political advantage. It normally comes from having beliefs that more closely match the beliefs of the majority of people who participate in the election than your opponent. And it is possible for a politician to communicate their policies and or promises better than other ones. And it is possible for campaigns to implode because of bad communication or problems with the candidate’s behavior becoming known.
But none of this is momemtum. There aren’t any rules that can be derived from science. It is just politics.
BUBBA
Hey, Forest. Forest, why’d this
happen?
Forest
You bought a house in 2005 for $500k even though you only make $35k a year on the Shrimpin Boat and then you took another $150k in a cash out refi.
Forest (V.O.)
Then Bubba said something I won’t
ever forget.
BUBBA
I wanna free home.
Realtors Are Liars®
A friend of mine bought a house in Baltimore for $2500.00- thats right; two thousand five hundred dollars.
Its small (2 story) and has some “issues” but for $2500.00 its not as bad as I thought it would be.
Stay tuned for more details.
Are the issues interior, exterior, or on the sidewalk waiting for him to come out?
At a party last night the host told my son that America owes most of its debt to itself so everything is ok. Not sure if he picked that up on Faux News or at the local university where he’s studying for his business degree. All I know is I was so proud my usually loose-tongued 15 year old chose not to respond. I myself was so flabbergasted I let it go too.
I’d think that would be the last thing you’d hear on Faux News.
what part are you finding deplorable?
“owes most of its debt to itself” - true statement if most is greater than 60% or so.
“so everything is ok” - that’s the deplorable part.
I’m in the midst of massive political debates with my MIL (bad idea, I know).
She seems to think that all with Medicare would be solved if we just let the Bush tax cuts get rolled back, or the deficit wouldn’t be a problem at all if Bush didn’t get us into 2 unpaid for wars, or that Social Security is just fine.
I’m on an education mission with her…the problem is that I send her facts and she responds with emotion.
My favorite so far is that I told her that SS will only have enough to pay out 76% of promised benefits when I start to collect, so I need to plan to fill a hole of between 24% and 100% of SS (without a fix, they could simply borrow the money, or means test, or reduce benefits across the board).
She went into a rant about showing my sources, and that you can’t believe everything that you read, etc.
So I sent her the first page of my annual SS statement, which was my source of the data.
Social Security is easy to fix…I’ll really blow her mind (and she’ll blow a fuse) when I show her the data that gets the unfunded Medicare costs into the tens of Trillions, and the data that shows there aren’t enough rich people to tax to pay for all of it.
Careful — she’ll starting talking about single-payer health care, which has a much greater chance of fixing health care than any other system. Oh, and not eating corn.
I’m sure she’ll get there…that’ll make for a fun debate…
I’m not convinced the single payer is the way to go…I actually think that Romneybamacare has a decent chance of being a big help…if the Supreme Court lets it survive.
Outside Debt to GDP ratio is moving into the danger zone. Debt payments will soon be crowding out other programs in the budget. Currency issues completely disregarded.
My problem is that his statement shifts the spotlight similar to the “Keep moving along, folks. Nothing to see here” sentiment.
Are we near the top of the LCDTV bubble? Get one now or be priced-out forever.
Prices dropping like a stone. No inflation here!
OECD issues stark warning on global economy
November 28, 2011
AP
PARIS—The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Monday policy makers around the world must “be prepared to face the worst,” as the economic impact of Europe’s debt crisis threatens to spread around the developed world.
Potentially, the ECB has unlimited financial firepower through its ability to print money. However, Germany finds the idea of monetizing debts unappealing, warning that it lets the more profligate countries off the hook for their bad practices. In addition, it conjures up bad memories of hyperinflation in Germany in the 1920s.
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2011/11/28/oecd_issues_stark_warning_on_global_economy/
And U.S. stock investors respond by closing their eyes, plugging their ears, and singing “La la la-la-la la la la la-la” as loudly as they can.
Dow up over 300 points at 10 AM.
1. 50% of all capital gains accrue to the top 0.001%.
2. The huge swings in stock prices we have now have nothing to do with the average investor, they have to do with computer programs that move piles of money and a financial press system that manipulates stock owners.
Is a stock owner different from an investor?
How Occupy Wall Street Can Restore Clout of the 99%: Scott Turow
By Scott Turow
Nov 20, 2011 7:01 PM ET
Now that the Occupy Wall Street protesters have been driven from many of their encampments, I have an unusual suggestion for how they should next deploy their considerable energies: work across the nation for a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to regulate the expenditure of private money on elections.
The best antidote to this imbalance of income and influence would be to greatly reduce the role of private funding in our elections. Nothing is more empowering to the well-heeled — corporations, unions, lobbyists, political-action committees, trade associations and bundlers — than our political leaders’ need to come to them hat in hand for the money to get elected.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-21/how-occupy-wall-street-can-restore-clout-of-the-99-scott-turow.html - 133k
“requiring Congress to regulate ”
Good henhouse, lousy guardian.
They all ready regulate it. Mostly to their own pockets
This video is worth a look, heck of a right cross from a 73 year old.
Two 73 Year Old Pro Football Players In Brawl
Sunday, November 27, 2011
From the CBC: Time does not necessarily heal all wounds.
Former CFL legends Joe Kapp and Angelo Mosca became involved in a fight Friday during a CFL alumni luncheon in Vancouver. A video of the incident on YouTube showed Kapp attempting to give Mosca flowers as an apparent peace offering and Mosca rejecting the gesture with an expletive. Kapp, 73, a former B.C. Lions quarterback, then shoved the flowers in Mosca’s face, prompting the 74-year-old Mosca, a former Hamilton Tiger-Cats defensive lineman, to attempt to shove them away with his hands. Kapp then swatted Mosca with the flowers, and Mosca retaliated by swinging his cane and striking Kapp in the head. Kapp then landed a right hand to Mosca’s jaw, then a left that felled Mosca.”It was the most bizarre thing that’s happened to me in 31 years in the game,” said comedian Ron James, who was serving as the luncheon’s host.
http://lasvegasbadger.blogspot.com/2011/11/two-73-year-old-pro-football-players-in.html - -
Eyes witnessed a “cat” fight in a elevator towards the evenings end of a 20 year high school reunion. Awesome!
By the time the 50th rolls around, everyone is pretty mellowed out.
One of my neighbors is a former CFL player.
Guy’s in his mid-sixties and in very poor health. He helped with heavy yard work when I first moved into the nabe. He’s too ill to do that kind of work now.
Let’s just say that football was not kind to his body.
Football is getting more dangerous by the year. Grueling training and ‘roids aside, guys are breaking bones and ripping tendons on a daily basis. And yet when the NFL tried to induce some safety concerning hits that induce concussions, there were cries of wimp and flag football. That’s a game where you want to play one year and then take the money and run (unless you’re a kicker).
I was surprised those two geezers lived that long.
I knew a guy who just played for Utah State, never went pro, and he was a wreck, going to aqua therapy every day and limping around the office.
I know a guy who played for Colorado (a bench warmer). He still managed to ruin his knee.
My wife knows Joe Kapp’s daughter-in-law. Lives in Los Altos, Ca.
Iowa Electronic Markets
Latest Future Prices on the 2012 GOP Convention Market
Market Quotes: RCONV12.html
Quotes current as of 07:15:01 CST, Monday, November 28, 2011.
Symbol Bid Ask Last Low High Average
BACH_NOM 0.010 0.017 0.020 0.019 0.020 0.019
PAUL_NOM 0.024 0.030 0.027 0.027 0.031 0.029
PERR_NOM 0.041 0.047 0.048 0.047 0.048 0.047
ROMN_NOM 0.624 0.625 0.624 0.609 0.625 0.617
RROF_NOM 0.040 0.045 0.045 0.044 0.045 0.045
CAIN_NOM 0.011 0.012 0.011 0.011 0.011 0.011
GING_NOM 0.230 0.235 0.230 0.230 0.235 0.232
The source of these quotes is updated every 15 minutes. To refresh your screen, use the refresh button on your browser.
2012 Presidential election betting odds
Ladbrokes
Barack Obama 10/11
Mitt Romney 2/1
Newt Gingrich 6/1
Rick Perry 25/1
Ron Paul 25/1
Hillary Clinton 40/1
Jon Huntsman 40/1
Herman Cain 50/1
Michele Bachmann 66/1
Rick Santorum 100/1
Hey in case there’s a scratch, what the odds on say a write in candidate named: Olympia Snowe?
With those odds, I’d be taking the Hillary bet.
The IEM also prices the 2012 presidential election outcome. It’s close, though the graph currently suggests the GOP’s prospects are sliding. Perhaps the GOP vetted one too many “not Mitt Romney” candidates for their own good?
Pres12_WTA
2012 US Presidential Election Winner Takes All Market
not a “gambling” person so maybe the odds to my following question may be derived from the information you already provided…but…what are the odds against obama winning strait up?
You ought not scare the young repubican’s with such thoughts so early in the am!
(let ‘em have their white toast & corn flakes first.)
If only mutual fund prospectuses were written this transparently!
Prospectus: RCONV12 2012 Republican Nomination Winner-Takes-All Market
On Tuesday, August 30, 2011, at 11:30am CDT, the Iowa Electronic Market (IEM) will open trading in a market based on the Presidential nomination process of the 2012 Republican National Convention.
This document describes that market and should be viewed as a supplement to the Trader’s Manual. Except as specified in this prospectus, trading rules for this market are the same as those specified in the Trader’s Manual for the Iowa Electronic Market.
Contract liquidation values in this nomination market will be determined by the outcome of the 2012 Republican National Convention. At market open, there are five contracts in this market representing five possible unique outcomes. Other contracts may be added to this market according to the contract spin-off procedure described below. The liquidation value of the contract which represents the actual outcome of the 2012 Republican Convention will be $1.00. All other contracts will have a value of $0.00.
Contracts
The initial financial contracts traded in this market are:
Code Contract Description
BACH_NOM $1.00 if Michele Bachmann wins the nomination;
$0.00 otherwise
PAUL_NOM $1.00 if Ron Paul wins the nomination;
$0.00 otherwise
PERR_NOM $1.00 if Rick Perry wins the nomination;
$0.00 otherwise
ROMN_NOM $1.00 if Mitt Romney wins the nomination;
$0.00 otherwise
RROF_NOM $1.00 if another candidate wins the 2012 Republican Convention nomination;
$0.00 otherwise
RROF_NOM stands for Republican Convention Rest of Field and represents all candidates not separately listed in this market.
As the 2012 Presidential campaign progresses, new candidate-specific contracts may be introduced as spinoffs of the RROF_NOM contract as described below. The order in which contracts appear on the trading screen may also change. However, once a contract is listed it will remain active until after the convention when all contracts in the market are liquidated.
Determination of Liquidation Values
This is a Winner-Takes-All market. The contract that denotes the actual outcome of the 2012 Republican Convention will have a liquidation value of $1.00, all others will have values of $0.00.
The contract, BACH_NOM, will be liquidated for $1.00 after the 2012 Republican Convention if Michelle Bachmann is elected by the convention delegates as the official Republican nominee for the presidency. If she is not named as the Republican candidate, the liquidation value of the BACH_NOM contract will be $0.00. Similarly, other candidate-specific contracts will be liquidated for $1.00 or $0.00 depending upon whether or not the associated candidate becomes the Republican Presidential nominee. The contract RROF_NOM will have a liquidation value of $1.00 if some candidate not listed in this market is the Republican Convention nominee; its liquidation value will be $0.00 if one of the listed candidates is the nominee.
The New York Times website will be the official source for nomination results.
…
“RROF_NOM stands for Republican Convention Rest of Field and represents all candidates not separately listed in this market.”
Would this include Olympia Snowe (R) Maine as a write in candidate?
Yes. It would also include Barak Obama as a write in candidate, though I suspect he isn’t eligible under the rules of the convention. All other means all other.
The bailout is on, the eurozone collapse is cancelled, so buy some stocks and enjoy the rally!
Nov. 28, 2011, 7:49 a.m. EST
U.S. stock futures surge on Europe news, sales
By William L. Watts, MarketWatch
FRANKFURT (MarketWatch) — U.S. stock futures surged on Monday, boosted by a strong start to the holiday-shopping season and hopes for progress by European leaders in addressing the euro-zone debt crisis.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJ1Z +2.27%) rallied 238 points to 11,425. Standard & Poor’s 500 Index futures (SP1Z +2.90%) rose 31 points to 1,184.40, while Nasdaq 100 futures (ND1Z +2.49%) gained 50.75 points to 2,198.25.
But strategists warned that the rebounds were overdue from a technical perspective and may not point the way to a sustained bounce. The S&P 500 Index on Friday fell for a seventh session.
“It is a classic short-covering [rally] without much fundamentals behind it, except a sense that retail is gaining confidence,” wrote strategists at Societe Generale.
…
JIT/AS = “Just-in-Time” / Americans $hopping!
Anyone catch 60 Minutes last night? Specifically, the segment on homeless families in Florida. I did not know that ONE THIRD of all homeless families in the US reside in Florida. I figure it has something to do with the weather, as it is better to be homeless in warmer weather than freeze in the cold. Also the myth that there are jobs here.
“Anyone catch 60 Minutes last night?”
Yes, real victims. Not those with jobs living rent free enjoying the toys paid for with refied bubble money.
What struck me was that these were citizen families. Not faux citizen anchor baby families. I’m waiting for the Raza crowd to object that only blacks and whites were represented (at least from what I could see). Or maybe they’ll keep their traps shut, in the hopes that no one will notice that they’ve hoovered up all sorts of resources that should be going to these families.
Those families should be living in the USDA subsidized housing we have over here (complete with swimming pools, tot lots and jitney service, I’m not kidding you). And maybe someone needs to point out that Mr. Metzger maybe can’t get a construction job because he’s been shoved out by illegal mestizos.
“maybe can’t get a construction job because he’s been shoved out by illegal mestizos.”
Might be that actually, no American-Patriot-Citizen’s are profiting from such a $it-u-a-$hun. “Just-Bidne$$” = Ethical behavior$
(These same American-Patriot-Citizen’s act similarly when filing their citizen-duty of honestly filing yearly IRS “The whole-truth and nothings but the truth” personal-”Bidne$$” tax $tatements.)
Homeless Latinos are rare around here because they pack 6 adults into a 2 bm. 800sqf house. They actually look after their own a lot better than the other minorities do.
Blue
Case in point, most cities laxed the over crowding laws (2 per bedroom) and now as long as nobody sleeps in the bathroom or kitchen (fire laws) sardine living is OK.
We use to have 8-10 illegals above us. 24 hour noise and they didn’t care about others. A Hispanic Tenement is a wake-up call.
If they are asked not to use the plumbing until the issue is resolved they ignore the request. Our unit has been flooded more than once from their arrogance. Thank God our furniture is in storage. It would have been ruined. Their so called “culture” is a disgrace.
“What struck me was that these were citizen families.”
These citzens have a job.
UPDATE VIDEO: Defense Workers All-Out Party At WorkUpdate Video Defense Workers All Out Party At Work
4 days ago … Gov Defense Workers Drinking Beer Smoking Pot on Lunch Break. There’s a plant in Detroit called Tower Defense and Aerospace. ..
http://thecount.com/2011/11/23/update-video-defense-workers-all-out-party-at-work/ - 59k -
Must…change…subject….from homeless formerly middle class families…Hey! Look, everyone! Pot smoking government contract workers!
“Must…change…subject….from homeless formerly middle class families”
Not at all, I said real victims. Not those with jobs living rent free enjoying the toys paid for with refied bubble money.
Yeah, first you jumped in front of the parade, and then you tried to get it to take a right turn off Main Street and into a dead-end alley.
But I do enjoy a good Pot smoking, booze guzzling government contract workers lunch break video. Almost as much as enjoy a good Pot smoking, booze guzzling UAW lunch break video.
I love watching 3 road workers shoveling while 4 stand around like bumps on a pickle. Meanwhile, traffic is crawling a 2 mph, avoiding the bumps in the way.
(Happened last week.)
I bet most poster here are posting from work…
i`m working now and in between posts in the day while I`m at my desk, but I work for myself. If I was paying sommeone who was I would be pissed. But then again all my guys are in the field where I was after my ladt post yesterday until 8PM last night.
“And maybe someone needs to point out that Mr. Metzger maybe can’t get a construction job because he’s been shoved out by illegal mestizos.”
Um, how many jobs in construction are there these days?
60 minutes wouldn’t DARE show homeless illegals for fear of the outcry from both sides. The kids are probably legal anyway.
“Anyone catch 60 Minutes last night?”
If you missed it you can still get it off the web.
Google “60 minutes” and your’re there.
I presume you’re talking about the first report. It was disturbing beyond description. We’re well on our way to become a banana republic.
Pssst, we’re already there and have been since 1992.
1981.
I’ll go with that date as well.
I’ll take you to 1969 when Reagan “privatized” the California State Mental Health System. Rarely saw a homeless person except on big city skid rows. Suddenly they were everywhere– and not just amiable drunks, either.
The annual winter pilgrimage of homeless to Tucson is something that local human services agencies are dealing with right now. Nicer weather here than Minneapolis, if you get my drift.
Most interestingly, gold and stocks are rallying in tandem, now that the eurozone collapse scenario has been cancelled, or at least postponed. It seems that gold’s safe-haven status has been temporarily abandoned, as its price movements now parallel those of high-risk investments like stocks.
Gold - Electronic (COMEX) Dec 2011
CNS: GC1Z $1,720.60
Change +34.90 +2.07%
Volume 68,871
Nov 28, 2011 8:50 a.m.
Previous close $1,685.70
“It seems that gold’s safe-haven status has been temporarily abandoned, as its price movements now parallel those of high-risk investments like stocks.”
I would tend to take this more as a sign that the dollar weakened, after some of the reasons for flight-to-dollars temporarily easing.
Both went up priced in dollars, because the dollars are worth less.
Good point — sounds exactly right.
Rental equivalence?
A friend living not too far away in now prestigious (but once redlined) Park Slope Brooklyn told me two of his ex-neighbors have rented out their houses for around $12,000 per month!
In the case of the person he knew, and met on the street coming from another direction, the renters were a prominent actor married to a prominent actress. The rent is enough to cover the owner’s rent on a two-bedroom apartment further from Prospect Park, moving expenses, storage expenses for their stuff, and college tuition for their last child.
Madness! How many people can pay nearly $150,000 per year in rent, to live in Brooklyn rather than on Park Avenue in Manhattan or somewhere like it.
“Madness! How many people can pay nearly $150,000 per year in rent, to live in Brooklyn rather than on Park Avenue in Manhattan or somewhere like it.”
Maybe the fed has opened a section-8 window.
Evidently a prominent actor married to a prominent actress can. You only need one. And Park Slope is just fine for such a couple. They are much less likely to get hasseled by autograph hounds or paparazzi living out there. That can be a real problem in the places where they are expected to live. Plus having your own front door is nice for people who value their privacy.
And I don’t even want to speculate on what a single family house on the upper east or upper west side would rent for. I bet $12K a month sounded like a bargain.
Actor/actress may also want to live in Brooklyn for the street cred of not living among the hoity toity elites. They can still attend the parties in a limo.
Park Slope is not going to give you any street cred. Even in the early 90’s Park Slope wouldn’t give you street cred.
Beautiful sunrise this am in America/local.
Coffee / toast / vigorous curiositie$
Beautiful day here if you like rain.
Moody’s: Every European nation now at risk on debt
November 27, 2011 | 9:43 pm
Throwing more logs on the Eurozone fire, Moody’s Investors Service said early Monday that the continent’s debt crisis now is “threatening the credit standing of all European sovereigns.”
That’s a not-so-subtle warning that even Moody’s top-rung Aaa ratings of countries including Germany, France, Austria and the Netherlands could be in jeopardy.
In a report from London, Moody’s painted a despairing picture of the choices European governments face as investors have grown increasingly fearful of buying Eurozone countries’ bonds, thereby driving up market interest rates to prohibitive levels.
The firm said its “central scenario” remains that the euro area will be preserved without widespread bond defaults. But policy moves to keep the Eurozone intact “may only emerge after a series of shocks, which may lead to more countries losing access to market funding for a sustained period and requiring a support program,” Moody’s said.
“This would very likely cause those countries’ ratings to be moved into speculative grade,” meaning “junk” quality, it said.
Moody’s currently has junk ratings on bonds of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, all three of which have gotten European Union bailouts in the last 18 months.
In recent weeks, worries have mushroomed that Spain and Italy also will require Eurozone help to avoid defaulting on their debts.
…
“Moody’s currently has junk ratings on bonds of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, all three of which have gotten European Union bailouts in the last 18 months.”
How are those bailouts working out for them?
Again compare national debt/GDP
Greece 160
Japan 212
Italy 130
Spain 70
Germany and France over 80
This situation has been bad for a long time, Moody’s piles on at the end. Where were they 5 years ago??????? How do they rate Japan. This is all manipulation to force a change in leadership of these countries and force them into signing contracts that put them under the thumb of the EU. The same reason Merkle doesn’t want to do anything about it now.
“may only emerge after a series of shocks, which may lead to more countries losing access to market funding for a sustained period and requiring a support program,”
Somewhere youz needs to in$ert: Bungi-cord & JIT
(it’s sorta like a thumb puzzle.)
Isn’t pretty much everyone “at risk” when it comes to sovereign debt?
And there you have it.
Wall St. makes the same mistake most people do in this country. They think America can control the world.
The world, on the other hand, has a different idea…
Reallly I see GS has appointed the leaders of Greece and Italy after tossing out the democratically elected officials.
I hope my daughter returns from Spain before it happens there. It could get ugly.
What you a see is the beginnning of WW3 if things don’t change soon. (how many little wars are we involved in right now?)
Only it will be the US vs the rest of the (very) pissed off world.
http://www.debka.com/
The neo-cons have their marching orders.
Europe either blows apart (and the Euro with it), or their financial worlds are tied closer together.
Today people are betting on the latter, tomorrow the former.
See-saw, see-saw…
Question - does anyone know any employees working at the Amazon Warehouse in Phoenix? I would like to verify some information I over heard last weekend.
Tell us the information and we’ll tell you if we know anybody.
One of the girls I golf with has told me that they brough her on as a supervisor and all she does is walk around with a clip board “coaching” employees to work faster. I have a really hard time beliving that a 12 week temp employee would be give this job.
About their warehouses being un-climate controlled death traps with employees passing out from the heat and horrible working conditions? I’ve heard that too.
There are plenty of articles about this on google. Just search for Amazon sweatshop.
There is apparently no shortage of applicants for these jobs, which pay about $11/hr. Such is life for the Lucky Duckies. Foxconn City is here!
New Reports Warn of Escalating Dangers From Europe’s Debt Crisis
By LIZ ALDERMAN
Published: November 28, 2011
PARIS — Warnings that the crisis in Europe could endanger the global economy and cause credit to dry up in the global banking system multiplied Monday, despite fresh efforts by European leaders to prevent the euro monetary union from fracturing.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said the euro crisis remained “a key risk to the world economy.” The Paris-based research group sharply cut its forecasts for wealthy Western countries and cautioned that growth in Europe could come to a standstill.
Europe’s politicians have so far moved too slowly to prevent the crisis from spreading, the organization said in a report . It warned that the problems that started in Greece almost two years ago would start to infect even rich European countries thought to have relatively solid public finances if leaders dallied, a development that would “massively escalate economic disruption.”
“We are concerned that policy-makers fail to see the urgency of taking decisive action to tackle the real and growing risks to the global economy,” the O.E.C.D.’s chief economist Pier Carlo Padoan said.
The warning came just hours after Moody’s Investors Service issued its own bleak report on Europe’s rapidly escalating sovereign debt crisis.
The credit agency warning that the problems may lead multiple countries to default on their debts or exit the euro, which would threaten the credit standing of all 17 countries in the currency union.
It also said that while European politicians have expressed their commitment to holding the euro together and preventing defaults, their actions to address the crisis only seem to be taking place “after a series of shocks” force their hand. As a result, more countries may be shut out of borrowing in financial markets “for a sustained period,” Moody’s said, raising the specter of additional public bailouts on top of the multi-billion euro lifelines currently supporting Greece, Ireland and Portugal.
“The probability of multiple defaults by euro-area countries is no longer negligible,” Moody’s said. “A series of defaults would also increase the likelihood of one or more members not simply defaulting, but also leaving the euro area.”
…
Thanks to the Fed’s secret bailout, the largest U.S. banks grew much larger, a few bankers who already were richer than Croesus got still richer, and the planet once again was saved from financial Armageddon, something which happens every three years or so in the too-big-to-fail era.
Success!
Fed’s Secrecy During Crisis Limits Effort to Stop Another: View
November 28, 2011, 8:58 AM EST
By the Editors
Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) — Opposites in many ways, the Tea Party movement and Occupy Wall Street have this in common: Both have channeled the public’s not always well-informed anger over the behavior of banks and government during the financial crisis. As it turns out, they didn’t know the half of it, and neither did the rest of us, including Congress.
As a story in the January issue Bloomberg Markets magazine shows, between August 2007 and April 2010, the Federal Reserve secretly administered the largest bailout in U.S. history without approval or oversight from the legislative branch. To give a sense of the scale of this effort, as of March 2009, the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year, to the rescue.
Even as they were tapping the Fed for emergency loans at rates as low as 0.01 percent, the banks that were the biggest beneficiaries of the program were assuring investors that their firms were healthy. Moreover, these banks used money they had received in the bailout to lobby Congress against reforms aimed at preventing the next collapse.
By keeping the details of its activities under wraps, the Fed deprived lawmakers of the essential information they needed to draft those rules. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, for example, was debated and passed by Congress in 2010 without a full understanding of how deeply the banks had depended on the Fed for survival. Similarly, lawmakers approved the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program to rescue the banks without knowing the details of the far larger bailout being run by the Fed.
The central bank justified its approach by saying that disclosing the information would have signaled to the markets that the financial institutions that received help were in trouble. That, in turn, would make needy institutions reluctant to use the Fed as a lender of last resort in the next crisis.
Fed officials argue, with some justification, that the program helped avert a much bigger economic cataclysm and that all the loans have now been repaid.
Yet the opacity undoubtedly caused severe damage of its own by hiding the depth of the crisis faced by the banks, which were able to argue that the regulatory status quo worked just fine. Bloomberg Markets quotes some of the pivotal lawmakers responsible for devising the congressional response to the crisis as saying they were kept in the dark. “We didn’t know the specifics,” said Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, the former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and one of the co-authors of the 2010 regulatory overhaul.
The Fed’s program also enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger by allowing them to borrow from taxpayers at negligible rates. According to a calculation by Bloomberg, the 191 financial firms for which data were available may have produced additional revenue of $12.9 billion, thanks to their access to the Fed programs. The six biggest U.S. banks’ share of the estimated subsidy was $4.8 billion, or 23 percent of their combined net income during the periods they were borrowing from the central bank.
There is no question that the Fed and other central banks should have an independent status that allows them to conduct monetary policy free from political interference and public pressure. That independence should be accompanied by transparency and accountability to the taxpayers who would have been on the hook if the central bank’s gamble hadn’t worked out.
The Fed agreed to disclose this vital information in March, after a legal battle that lasted more than two years. Yet David Jones, who worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and has written four books on the central bank, says it would have been “totally appropriate” to disclose the data by mid-2009, when it could have informed the drafting of the regulatory legislation.
…
I read the article and there are two key points it got right:
1) TARP was one small part of the bailouts. Ongoing low interest rates and the taking on by the federal government of contingent liabilities (Fannie, Freddie, FHA) are the biggest part.
2) Wall Street was engineering amnesia about all this while fighting the regulators on the new regulations and paying themselves big bonuses, which is why they hate OWS.
What the article missed: the big reason Well Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America were in trouble and in need of bailouts is not because they screwed up in the housing bubble, but because they swallowed the organizations that did screw up in arranged marriages that were bailouts in and of themselves.
Bear Stearns. Countrywide. Wachovia, which had swallowed Golden West. Merrill Lynch. WaMu. These sorts of mergers have long been a preferred way for the government to deal with failed banks.
Moreover, those that saw the housing bubble coming hedged their exposure through deals with AIG, so the AIG bailout was done not to save AIG but to save the too big to fail.
“…because they swallowed the organizations that did screw up in arranged marriages that were bailouts in and of themselves.”
In retrospect, those would seem to have been poor decisions, if not for the bailouts. In an alternate state of the financial universe, firms like Countrywide, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and WaMu, and the financial interests which backed them, would have born the full brunt of their losses, rather than shifting them on to the U.S. Treasury.
Really poor decisions. But the U.S. Treasury would have taken a hit in any case, via the FDIC. And if the contagion spread to other banks, the hit could have been huge.
Perhaps they acted to spread it out. That’s what your 0.0% interest rate on savings is for.
In retrospect, those would seem to have been poor decisions, if not for the bailouts.
Recall that this blog was all abuzz about the stupidity of BAC buying Countrywide, Wachovia buying Golden West, and so forth. We HBB old-timers were quite aghast over these acquisitions.
So, if we could see it, why couldn’t those oh-so-talented 1%-ers?
Who says they didn’t?
“We HBB old-timers were quite aghast over these acquisitions.”
Not only were we aghast, but it made so little sense that we were speculating about whether the banksters were getting their arms twisted to force them to agree to the deals… In fact, I still wonder that.
As I recall the CEO of BOA was pressured/threatened? to buy Country Wide.
I suspect there was you buy this and we won’t throw you in jail, we will continue to give you insider info on when the FED will spike the market, adn we will buy the garbage on your books with tax payer money.
“As I recall the CEO of BOA was pressured/threatened? to buy Country Wide.”
Nobody put a gun to Lewis’s head.
“Nobody put a gun to Lewis’s head.”
Are you sure? Mozilo could easily play the part of a mafia don in any ganster movie.
“Mozilo could easily play the part of a mafia don in any ganster movie.”
Yes, clearly that sun kissed man and his mandarins hang out at the Tropicana…
A second chance for faulty food? FDA calls it ‘reconditioning’
msnbc
“…even as Food and Drug Administration officials prepare to re-inspect Snokist Growers of Yakima, Wash., to ensure that the applesauce maker keeps toxin-tainted fruit off store shelves, federal officials and industry experts acknowledge that Snokist is not alone in “reworking” faulty food…
It may be something benign, such as misshapen pieces of pasta that are re-ground into semolina, or something unexpected, like a batch of mislabeled blueberry ice cream mixed in with chocolate to avoid waste.
It might be something unappetizing, such as insect parts sifted out of cocoa beans or live bugs irradiated — and left behind — in dried fruits like dates and figs.
Or it could be something alarming, such as the salmonella Tennessee bacteria detected last year in huge lots of hydrolyzed vegetable protein, or HVP…
No question, FDA regulations do permit foods to be reconditioned, said William Correll, the agency’s acting director of compliance. That leeway can avoid both waste and expense, he explained.
That’s why chocolate ice cream becomes the catch-all when other flavors aren’t quite right, said Shelke. If a producer accidentally botches a batch of blueberry, small amounts of the mistaken treat can be mixed into future bins of chocolate, where the dark color and rich flavor mask any error. The key, however, is that the process must render the food safe for consumption.
That’s why Snokist Growers drew such a strong warning. In the case of the moldy applesauce, there are a couple of problems, Correll said. Mold is tricky because when contamination is extensive, it’s not enough to simply remove the obviously tainted parts and then zap the food with heat.
…Not that some food firms don’t try. It’s no secret that the FDA allows certain levels of expected contaminants to remain in foods, simply because a zero-tolerance standard would be impossible to meet, officials said.”
———-
Does anyone remember those tainted eggs from Iowa? I clearly remember the company mentioning that they would still use the eggs in “broken products.” Yep, they did:
Tainted Eggs may end up on your table:
By David Mercer / The Associated Press
August 26, 2010
“Millions of eggs from the Iowa farms at the heart of a massive salmonella recall are not destined for the garbage but for a table near you.
The recalled eggs that were already shipped to grocery stores and restaurants are being dumped by the truckload. But the eggs still being laid by potentially infected chickens will be pasteurized to kill any bacteria. Then they can be sold as liquid eggs or put in other products such as mayonnaise or ice cream.
Spokeswomen for the farms said their hens are still laying millions of eggs every day. Those eggs are being sent to facilities where their shells are broken and the contents pasteurized - a process that involves applying high heat without cooking the eggs. ”
——-
http://www.concordmonitor.com/article/tainted-eggs-may-end-up-on-your-table
And I thought I was taking a risk buying the discounted meat that was 3 days off from its use by date on a day when I had plenty of time to take it home and cook it within the hour. No stickers so it was the original date put on the package. I left the ones with random stickers covering printed information on the shelf.
Upton Sinclair gave a very vivid description of this back in the good-old-days before the FDA rudely interfered with the invisible hand of the free market in The Jungle
There’s an urban legend that Teddy Roosevelt was reading The Jungle at breakfast and we had a new FDA by lunchtime. It didn’t quite happen like that, but it’s not too far off.
The tinned ‘meat’ products eaten by the Spanish-American war soldiers and their digestive consequences may have influenced TR as well IIRC.
Here in CO, we have the town of Greeley (named for 19th century columnis Horace “go west young man” Greeley, where the Sons of Aztlan prepare today’s meat products under conditions marginally improved from back in the day
There’s an urban legend that Teddy Roosevelt was reading The Jungle at breakfast and we had a new FDA by lunchtime. It didn’t quite happen like that, but it’s not too far off.
Recall that Teddy was a major bookworm. While he was President, he read at least one book a day. And we’re talking books of substance, not dash-through books that you get at the supermarket checkout counter.
I saw a clip of a massive poultry farm years ago. One of the things that stuck in my mind was a pneumatic beak clipper that resembled a cigar cutter.
Chickens peck naturally, for bugs or territory. In CAFO’s, the density is so high and they are so sick and stressed that they are debeaked to prevent them from pecking each other.
I have neighbors with a flock of chickens. You’re darn tootin’ about the pecking. It’s about all this flock does when it’s let out of the coop.
Meanwhile, up above, the neighborhood hawks and owls are quite interested in this flock. To the point where my neighbors can’t let them out of the coop without keeping an eye on them.
The newest fashion is the movable coop,where the coop with the nesting boxes is raised on stilts, with a skirt of chicken wire around the space underneath. You drag the coop to a fresh part of the field and let the chickens out of the coop. They’re safe from predators, while bugs fly in an get ate-up. When that patch is exhausted and covered with manure, you drag the coop to the next field.
The newest fashion is the movable coop,where the coop with the nesting boxes is raised on stilts, with a skirt of chicken wire around the space underneath.
Isn’t this device called a Chicken Tractor?
I only buy meat that has been raised naturally and under humane conditions. And organic free-range eggs. Yes, it costs more, but I don’t want a dime of my $$$ going to agribusiness horror shows.
+1. Grow my own and/or barter with my neighbors.
Why is it that the invisible hand of the free market always ends up your rectum?
Rectum? Dang near killed ‘em!
Because the 1%ers suspect the middle class and working poor might have a few pennies and nickles stashed in there for them to steal
Feh. It’s just like Mom telling you to eat around the bruise, n’est-ce pas?
http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=198193
Fed Secrecy Slowly Falls (and the full magnitude of its rape of the taxpayers and connivance with banksters is finally beginning to emerge).
Chinese factories hit by strikes amid manufacturing slowdown
November 28, 2011 | 1:23 am
Already facing a sharp slowdown, factories in China’s manufacturing heartland are now experiencing a rash of labor strikes reminiscent of the worker unrest that swept the country last year.
Thousands of workers at a massive shoe factory in the southern city of Dongguan last week clashed with police as they marched to a local government office to protest the loss of overtime.
The strike at the plant owned by the Taiwanese Pou Chen Group came shortly after 18 managers were laid off because of declining orders, according to the Economic Observer, a Chinese newspaper.
Earlier in the week, 1,000 workers walked out of a plant in nearby Shenzhen that manufactured computer keyboards for leading brands such as Apple and IBM. Employees said they were being forced to work excessive hours on weekdays so that owners didn’t have to pay overtime on Saturdays, as required by law. The company acquiesced after three days.
“People had to work so late, they couldn’t concentrate any longer,” said Zhao Xiaobing, 38, a former employee. “They will have more strikes.”
A day before in Shenzhen, 400 workers went on strike in a pay dispute at an underwear factory. Employees reportedly were denied fair wages and forced to meet unachievable production quotas, according to China Labor Watch, a New York-based workers advocacy group.
Two other strikes took place in October, one at a Shenzhen factory owned by Japanese watchmaker Citizen Holdings Co., and one at a furniture plant in Dongguan where employees were left unpaid after their boss disappeared.
“There are more protests because of the economy,” said Li Qiang, director of China Labor Watch. “The management systems in factories are not suitable.”
…
Just like damn commies to demand decent working conditions and rights!
Thank god we live in a free country!
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/195579-rep-frank-wont-run-for-reelection
Bawney Fwank packing it in after an ignoble 32-year career whoring for the likes of Fannie Mae and the financial services sector. He’ll announce his plans at 1 PM EST. My bet is he’ll end up working for the Vampire Squid, and being handsomely rewarded for his sodomy of American taxpayers on behalf of the banksters.
And now, Bawney, don’t let the door hitya where the Good Lord (and others) splitya.
Bawney Fwank (like Clinton) had consensual relations with adult(s).
Unlike a Florida congressman with nearly underage pages.
And a Wyoming senator with strangers in airport restrooms.
And a Colorado preacher with meth and escorts.
The 3 latter of course all from the Family Values party
I don’t care who Barney sleeps with, although fixing his male prostitute boyfriend’s parking tickets and hook up another boyfriend with a job at Fannie Mae, which he “oversaw” and took big donations from, was bad form and possibly illegal (if the law applied to TPTB). It’s his sodomy of the American taxpayer that pisses me off.
“Bawney Fwank (like Clinton) had consensual relations with adult(s).”
If you don’t count that Congressional Page incident.
Unlike a Florida congressman with nearly underage pages.
Umm…”nearly underage” means adults, no? Are you showing your bias(likely) or am I missing something?
And a
WyomingIDAHO senator with strangers in airport restrooms.Karma’s a b!tch. I’m pretty sure Barney will get his in the end.
Oh no I didn’t….
God wants you to be rich. LOL!
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20111128/ARTICLE/311289999/2416/NEWS?Title=Megachurch-to-spread-prosperity-gospel-in-Lakewood-Ranch
I thought God wanted you to pick up your cross and carry it every day? Must have been the other Jesus who said that.
That sure was what I heard when I went to church. It was all about being generous with what you had. And helping the less fortunate.
That was the commie Marxist Jesus!
With all the affluent bible bangers in the world, you’d think it should not be possible to have all those starving people in Africa.
I guess they believe their God can’t see what’s going on.
U2/Crumbs from your table:
You speak of signs and wonders
I need something other
I would believe if I was able
But I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table
“I’ll pray for you” has to be the most trite and empty expression in the English language.
I dig the Jesus who picked up a whip and drove the money-changers from the temple.
Oh yes, the “Prosperity Gospel”
I am shocked, shocked! to learn that international banks are laundering Mexican drug cartel money. Then again, since Ben Bernanke is shoveling my tax dollars at any bankster who needs his gambling debts or other rackets covered, I guess I’m supporting the cartels as well.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-mexico-money-laundering-banks-20111128,0,430982.story
Reporting from Mexico City— Money launderers for ruthless Mexican drug gangs have long had a formidable ally: international banks.
Despite strict rules set by international regulatory bodies that require banks to “know their customer,” make inquiries about the source of large deposits of cash and report suspicious activity, they have failed to do so in a number of high-profile cases and instead have allowed billions in dirty money to be laundered.
And those who want to stop cartels from easily moving their money express concern that banks that are caught get off with a slap on the wrist.
Which is one of a number of reasons the FEDS have been moving against medical marijuana?? That and pharmaceutical and alcohol lobbiests.
I don’t do drugs (unless you consider moderate alcohol consumption a drug habit), but have been watching the debate over hemp with great interest. It has so many possible uses, i.e. rope or clothing, but also powerful vested interests that don’t want to see it competing with their pet products.
http://www.hemp.com/
True story: A now deceased friend had cancer for many years. He said that smoking pot did much more to alleviate his chemotherapy-induced nausea than any of the drugs he was prescribed.
Same here. An older couple I knew. The wife had lukemia & pot not only helped with the chemo nausea, but also restored her appetite. It’s senseless to make people suffer needlessly.
After full consultations with former Police Chief Bill Bratton and other mayors (Villaraigosa leads their national organization, our mayor, backed by the lovable lapdog Police Chief, has decided to stand for law-and-order for the the first time in his life. The encampment will be destroyed at 12:01 a.m. even though he supports everything they stand for. They will be removed kindly and without force unless some of them actually have the courage of their convictions.
Gandhi sat down on the railroad tracks and dared the British to run him and his followers down. They blinked and he changed the world.
Let us see how may of the thousand occupiers and the tens of thousands of their supporters dare to defy arrest, beatings, pepper spraying, tear gassing tonight and how many pull up stakes and move on to a place that is mostly out of sight and out of mind.
I see the same forces at work as the occupiers. They are the same forces at work as the Tea Party see from a very different set of values.
Our government institutions are corrupted to their core from Washington to Sacramento to our own City Hall by the bankers, corporations, unions and other special interests who are predictably looking after themselves.
It’s the politicians who are the problem for all of us. They are the ones who won’t engage in an honest dialogue about how we move together for the common good.
“It’s the politicians who are the problem for all of us.”
TESTIFY! OWS actually has the wrong target in Wall Street. Yeah, they’re bad, but they couldn’t do what they do without their running dogs in Washington.
When a dog is pooping on your lawn, it’s generally most effective to address the owner of the dog, unless you’re willing to shoot the dog.
If you vote Republican, you are part of the problem.
If you vote Democrat, you are part of the problem.
http://verydemotivational.memebase.com/2011/07/16/demotivational-posters-zombie-sheep/
banksters versus politicians…i think i am the only one that sees no distinction.
Politician = the monkey.
Bankster = the organ grinder.
When people say the problem is the gov I review the flow of money and net worth of the two.
Politicians
1. Putin 70 billion
2. Mubarek 70 billion
3. Kadahfi 200 billion
4. richest US presidents clinton and bush 10’s fo millions.
WS elite
10’s to 100+ billion
Seriously the top politicians outside of president whore themselves for 100’s of thousands or less see Gingrich. They are not the elite.
No, Occupy has it right. Their one main demand is to remove money from political campaigning. Of course the PTB can’t be having any of that, so they still repeat that OWS has no demands.
You’ll notice that as soon as OWS got behind calls for a Tobin Tax (on all stock transactions, which would kill HFT trading), people like Mayor Bloomberg suddenly ordered police to take a much harder line with them. Hmmm…..
Yup. It was not lost on OWS.
Someone commented (on DK) that OWS is the little dog that pulled back the curtain on the wizard, and I believe it. Go to MSNBC and the first HUGE headline is about people who go to Wal-Mart at midnight on the first of the month because that’s when food stamps recharge — and that story is just the write-up of Brian Williams report on TV. HBB found that months ago, but now the 99% have made it to the MSM, and they don’t look like welfare queens.
Now the sheeple are confused by what they’re told, they don’t know what to believe… this is only a good thing.
Judge Rakoff = Unsung Hero of American Justice
Judge Blocks Citigroup Settlement With S.E.C.
By EDWARD WYATT
Published: November 28, 2011
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in New York on Monday threw out a settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission and Citigroup over a 2007 mortgage derivatives deal, saying that the S.E.C.’s policy of settling cases by allowing a company to neither admit nor deny the agency’s allegations did not satisfy the law.
The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of United States District Court in Manhattan, ruled that the S.E.C.’s $285 million settlement, announced last month, is “neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest” because it does not provide the court with evidence on which to judge the settlement.
The ruling could throw the S.E.C.’s enforcement efforts into chaos, because a majority of the fraud cases and other actions that the agency brings against Wall Street firms are settled out of court, most often with a condition that the defendant does not admit that it violated the law while also promising not to deny it.
That condition gives a company or individual an advantage in subsequent civil litigation for damages, because cases in which no facts are established cannot be used in evidence in other cases, like shareholder lawsuits seeking recovery of losses or damages.
The S.E.C.’s policy — “hallowed by history, but not by reason,” Mr. Rakoff wrote — creates substantial potential for abuse, the judge said, because “it asks the court to employ its power and assert its authority when it does not know the facts.”
…
Judge Rakoff is a judge in the very finest sense of the word.
And, on a personal note, just getting to the federal bench isn’t easy. One of my mother’s closest college friends is now a federal judge, so I know of what I speak.
Mom met her friend back when she they were both young pups at the University of Michigan in the mid-1940s. Even then, it was obvious that Mom’s friend was really going places. She was stone cold freakin’ brilliant.
Well, Mom’s friend sailed through law school at a time when not too many women were going there. She even did a clerkship for a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice, and that’s not an easy thing for a law student to do.
She worked in a Philadelphia law firm, had kids, and set up a law office in her home. She went back to work part-time, and she was such a good attorney that her firm — in the hyper-competitive Philadelphia legal community — made her a partner. President Carter named her to the federal bench in 1978.
“…S.E.C.’s policy of settling cases by allowing a company to neither admit nor deny the agency’s allegations did not satisfy the law.”
One down, 50,000 more past cases to go.
And meanwhile, not a single banker or Wall Street swindler has gone to jail for massively defrauding shareholders or the US government.
Actually, that’s not true. Just not the main players.
Yes, you can google it.
OBAMA SAYS U.S. `READY TO DO OUR PART’ TO RESOLVE EURO CRISIS.
Just a headline for now, but if you pay taxes, grab your ankles for some more hope ‘n change.
You got to let go?
Nobody told me I could let go!
Lucky ducky!
“OBAMA SAYS U.S. `READY TO DO OUR PART’ TO RESOLVE EURO CRISIS.”
Why doesn`t China just give them the money and skip the middle man?
If the U.S. Congress can’t agree on how to solve its debt crisis concerns, why expect more from the eurozone leadership?
Euro split scenarios risk becoming self-fulfilling
By Alan Wheatley, Global Economics Correspondent
LONDON | Mon Nov 28, 2011 1:06pm EST
(Reuters) - Mobilising an army takes on such a momentum of its own that a point of no return is eventually reached. So it may be with the euro zone crisis: before long, the slide toward break-up of the single currency might prove impossible to reverse.
Even as global markets rallied on Monday on talk that a grand plan to save the euro was finally taking shape, more and more researchers are squarely broaching the alternative outcome of the currency’s disintegration.
Jean Pisani-Ferry, director of Bruegel, a respected Brussels think tank, noted that market participants and real businesses were increasingly pricing in such a break-up scenario.
“It is still hard to think the unthinkable, let alone to work out the details of it, but any rational player has to consider the possibility of it. If disaster expectations build up and a growing number of players start positioning themselves to protect themselves from it, the consequences could become overwhelming,” he said in a report.
German banks and exporters would lose out massively from a collapse in the euro, Pisani-Ferry argued.
To head off that risk, he said Germany should offer its euro-area partners a mutual guarantee over part of the bloc’s public debt in return for strict debt limits and veto authority for the euro area over a member’s draft budget.
“Only boldness will deliver,” he wrote.
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Congress did decide by not deciding. That’s the whole point. The elite wanted to make these cuts and this system was set up so the Dems could point a finger at the GOP and say if only they had compromised and the GOP can point a finger at the Dems and say if only they had compromised and the echo chambers and MSM can amplify this message and then the incombents can win the next election to keep that dam other party from screwing things up even more.
Seriously look at what’s going on in Europe. This is the final rape of the middle class in Europe and the US. Bailouts for the elite, taxes decreased services, cost shifting etc for the bottom 99.99%.
but hey it’s the unions that we need to fear??
November 28, 2011, 4:22 PM ET
Fitch Affirms US as AAA, But Cuts Outlook to Negative
By Mark Gongloff
Fitch has come out and affirmed the US credit rating as AAA, but moved the outlook down to “negative” from stable.”
That means there’s a slightly more than 50% chance the US will get downgraded in the next two years.
Congratulations again, Super Congress.
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Such is not the news as persistent stock market rallies are made on.
28 November 2011 Last updated at 10:50 ET
OECD warns of European recession
The OECD has warned that the eurozone and UK could be entering a recession, and has cut its global growth forecast.
The OECD said the eurozone would shrink in the fourth quarter by 1%, and by 0.4% in the first quarter of 2012.
For the UK, the OECD’s predictions are a 0.03% contraction this quarter, and a further 0.15% next.
Separately, Bank of England governor Mervyn King told a committee of MPs that growth would be “flat or close to zero” over the next six months.
He told the Treasury Select Committee that he had no yet read the OECD report, but warned: “The outlook for output growth in the near term is considerably weaker than even three months ago.”
The OECD’s report also revised down its forecast for global economic growth to 3.8% this year and 3.4% next year.
Events
A “negative event” in the eurozone, such as a default by Italy or Spain, could even cause a global contraction, the OECD said.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development represents wealthy countries such as those within the eurozone, the US and Japan.
“More than usual, world economic prospects depend on events,” it warned.
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28 November 2011 Last updated at 15:16 ET
Eurozone crisis: Debt fears loom at White House summit
Barack Obama: ”We’ve got a stake in their (Europe’s) success and will continue work in a constructive way to to try to resolve this issue”
US President Barack Obama has hosted European Union leaders in a wide-ranging summit overshadowed by the EU debt crisis.
He met Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso at the White House in a discussion that covered US-EU trade ties, foreign aid and cybersecurity.
Mr Obama said the US was “ready to do our part” to resolve the debt crisis.
The White House summit, the first with EU leaders since Mr Van Rompuy took office, came amid new recession fears.
Mr Obama said after the summit that the US has “a stake” in the EU’s success.
“If Europe is contracting, or if Europe is having difficulties, then it’s much more difficult for us to create good jobs here at home,” he said.
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So this is the segway into supporting the FED’s direct purchase of foreign bonds. IT’s coming there is no doubt about it, but only after they put the screws to European workers and Central Banks and Germany gain more control over the EU.
They are pushing for contracts to give the EU the power to control the purse of all these peripheral countries. They want a United States of Europe with more central control. They will soon make one large step in that direction.
“They want a United States of Europe with more central control.”
Logical endpoint of evolutionary governmental succession: ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT.
Who gets to be king?
How many old Clinton girlfriends had come out of the woodwork by a comparable point in his presidential bid? Exactly how many women out there are so afraid of a Cain presidency that they are willing to put their reputations on the line by lining up to lie about past affairs?
I can’t recall Clinton making any denials before Monicagate, but selective memory may have blocked them out.
Georgia Woman Claims 13-Year Affair With Cain, as Candidate Denies Latest Allegations
Published November 28, 2011 | FoxNews.com
ATLANTA — A new woman has come forward with allegations against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, this time claiming the two had a 13-year extramarital affair, but Cain and his advisers deny the claims, just as they have denied the sexual harassment claims that have set back his campaign.
Cain, in an apparent effort to get ahead of the story, appeared Monday afternoon in a cable news interview before the woman’s story broke and said she is “someone who I know, who is an acquaintance, who I thought was a friend,” though he denied an affair.
He later issued a statement suggesting the woman’s story was another example of “dirty politics and smear tactics” and evidence some people are “afraid of a Cain presidency.”
“My plan is to continue to spread my vision on how I would renew America and keep her safe,” he said. “I will not fight false claims, as it is not what America needs or wants.”
The woman, an Atlanta businesswoman named Ginger White, made the claims in an interview with the Fox affiliate in Atlanta that aired later Monday, details of which were released on the station’s website, MyFoxAtlanta.com, after Cain came forward.
“It was pretty simple,” White told the station. “It wasn’t complicated. I was aware that he was married. And I was also aware that I was involved in a very inappropriate situation, relationship.”
She said they met in the late 1990s when Cain, as president of the National Restaurant Association, was making a presentation in Louisville, Ky. He later would fly her to cities where he was speaking and give her gifts, she told the TV station.
“He made it very intriguing. It was fun,” White said. “It was something that took me away from my sort of humdrum life at the time, and it was exciting.”
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Frankly, I pretty much agree with those who would argue that Cain’s private life should have no bearing on the presidential race.
Except the GOP nearly hounded Clinton out of the WH over similar concerns. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
And then there is the integrity issue: Is it even conceivable that this many women (how many is it by now — five? — I have lost count) would risk lawsuits and destroying their personal reputations just to stop Cain from reaching the WH? In a word, NO.
I’m waiting for Cain’s campaign manager to say, “Drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park and you never know what you’ll find.”
Been lurking here since late 04. Registered Republican but voted for Obama because Palin is clearly a Psycho. Suggesting a rallying cry:
Hey Tea Party Hey OWS They Are Not Looking Out For Us!
The more I read about MF Global and Corzine and Europe
The more I think Corzine had some incomplete information, ie that Europe would be bailed out. He made huge bets and missed on the timing lost a ton of money and then had to raid the MF Global depositors piggy bank.
My other theory is that a lot of these Hedge Funds and bond funds and investment funds and Money Markets have been used by the PTB to prop up Europe to prevent a collapse, knowing that there would be hell to pay but that it would come after their massive bonuses. Just like GS Country Wide etc in regard to MBS. The Economist I read suggested that US money markets have loaned large piles to Europe but that the dollar amount has been declining recently.
“The more I think Corzine had some incomplete information, i.e. that Europe would be bailed out.”
Somewhere along the line, Merkel must have figured out the Wall Street banksters were planning to hold the German volk hostage in exchange for bailout money. Seems like Merkel turned the tables on the Wall Street banksters.
“The more I think Corzine had some incomplete information, ie that Europe would be bailed out. He made huge bets and missed on the timing lost a ton of money and then had to raid the MF Global depositors piggy bank. ”
Can you imagine the power of someone who could credibly inform him of that, and have him believe it enough to act on that information?
That would explain why he looked so confused/bemused in the photos I saw when MF was coming crashing down.
It would sure be nice if he would write a tell-all auto-biography some day…
Someone I work closely with is getting torched after 22 years of employment. I stopped by their office but the door was closed and the lights were out.
No tenure, huh?
We need a 1%’er to come out swinging… to say something, like, “I am worth $60 million dollars, and today I am going to spend $59 of it fighting corruption.
That would set the movement of FIRE.
C’mon, you know you’re out there. You can’t take it to the grave. Create the future, right now.
I, for one, will be starting off the revolution will some killer synth and a handlebar ’stache.
Why not overthrow with some style?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8IJnV4i5Vw&ob=av3e
A local listing that will make you laugh
he house, built on an approximately 1/2 acre lot, has solid foundation, hardwood floors, lath & plaster walls & ceilings, spacious rooms laid out to allow easy circulation of people. There’s a large 2 story foyer with circular staircase & crystal chandelier. All but two rooms have lake views & there’s a spacious deck. The windows, while maintaining the colonial design, have very thin pain dividers that minimize any loss of light or restriction of views. Exposed lower level with large bay window & convenient outside entrance door. Three wood burning fireplaces with exterior brick chimneys. The present owners are reluctant to leave; the need to downsize is the only reason they’re making this home available to you.
This has to be the dumbest realtor around, the client is both pretentious and yet desperate at the same time. The only reason they would think of selling this home to a lesser person like you is that they are broke and need the money.
Economics focus
House of horrors, part 2
The bursting of the global housing bubble is only halfway through
Nov 26th 2011 | from the print edition
MANY of the world’s financial and economic woes since 2008 began with the bursting of the biggest bubble in history. Never before had house prices risen so fast, for so long, in so many countries. Yet the bust has been much less widespread than the boom. Home prices tumbled by 34% in America from 2006 to their low point earlier this year; in Ireland they plunged by an even more painful 45% from their peak in 2007; and prices have fallen by around 15% in Spain and Denmark. But in most other countries they have dipped by less than 10%, as in Britain and Italy. In some countries, such as Australia, Canada and Sweden, prices wobbled but then surged to new highs. As a result, many property markets are still looking uncomfortably overvalued.
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This raises two questions. First, since American homes now look cheap, are prices set to rebound? Average house prices are 8% undervalued relative to rents, and 22% undervalued relative to income (see chart). Prices may have reached a floor, but this is no guarantee of an imminent bounce. In Britain and Sweden in the mid-1990s, prices undershot fair value by around 35%. Prices in Britain did not really start to rise for almost four years after they bottomed. Some 4m foreclosed homes could come onto America’s market, which may hold down prices.
The second question is whether home prices in markets that are still overvalued are likely to fall. Some economists reject our measures of overvaluation, arguing that lower interest rates justify higher prices because buyers can take out bigger mortgages. There is some truth in this, but interest rates will not always be so low. The recent jump in bond yields in some euro-area countries has raised mortgage rates for new borrowers.
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The Fed to Europe’s Rescue?
Written By Elizabeth MacDonald
Published November 28, 2011
FOXBusiness
Whether Germany’s Angela Merkel decides to be Germany’s new Iron Chancellor or Merkel in the Middle may be beside the point, as the bond markets continue to deliver a negative verdict on the Eurozone crisis, with EU yields sticking stubbornly high and borrowing costs soaring.
Because it could take months more for either Germany’s Merkel or France’s Nicolas Sarkozy to get the 17 members of the European Union to agree on measures to save the eurozone, as the markets now threaten a rapid loss of faith in Italy, Spain and France within the span of the next several weeks.
Another European summit could render a deal on December 9, the next scheduled meeting, but for the markets that may be “a day late, a euro short.”
Will the Federal Reserve step in once again, as it has done in the past, to help? Will it do so, along with a coalition of the willing — meaning other central banks — as has been suggested? Will it revive and increase a 2008 rescue measure, dollar liquidity swaps to the European Central Bank? That is, literally print money — which will make Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s head explode.
In fact, the Fed has kept open its dollar swap lines, renewing them in June until August 2012. The way it works is thus: the ECB, for example, sells a slug of its euros to the Federal Reserve in exchange for dollars — the foreign central bank then doles that money out to banks, and agrees to repurchase its own currency, with interest, on a specified future date.
The ECB in fact has drawn on the Fed’s dollar swap line since August, at least $1.8 billion since then, to lend to European banks. The ECB to date has not named the banks or institutions getting these dollars. At the height of the financial crisis, the Fed’s outstanding dollar swaps hit $586 billion by the end of 2008, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Or will the U.S. central bank simply buy European sovereign bonds, which Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has said he is leery about doing due to the deleterious effect on the dollar?
Already, central bankers around the world are in their “lenders of last resort” mode. The Bank of Japan, the Swiss National Bank, and the Bank of England are just the latest of central banks embarking on more quantitative easing, “with the Fed likely to follow in a few weeks,” forecasts Peter Boockvar of Miller Tabak.
JPMorgan Chase says the Bank of England, and the ECB, as well as nine other countries, have ginned up monetary stimulus in the past three months, the highest number of banks easing up on credit since the third quarter of 2009, when 15 central banks around the world slashed rates.
A half dozen more countries, including Mexico and Sweden, may cut benchmark rates by the end of the first quarter of 2012, JPMorgan Chase says.
All this means countries around the world will start piling up the currency sandbags, as devaluation sets in.
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