Bits Bucket for December 24, 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.
About Me
Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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Merry Christmas Hwy, Colorado and the rest of my HBB friends who look at the world from a different angle than I do.
“Little Drummer Boy”
House, they sold me
Boy, we, sure, are, dumb
A neg-am loan it was
Boy, we, sure, are, dumb
They pumped the prices up
Boy, we, sure, are, dumb
There was no down payment
Boy, we, sure, are, dumb
The bankster sold this loan
Boy, we, sure, are, dumb
He took huge bonuses
Boy, we, sure, are, dumb
Financial markets crashed
Boy, we, sure, are, dumb
We, sure, are dumb
We, sure, are dumb
So to honor him
Boy, we, sure, are, dumb
We print more cash for him
Boy, we, sure, are, dumb
More bonuses for him
Boy, we, sure, are, dumb
We, sure, are dumb
Then we bought back these loans
Boy, we, sure, are, dumb
They still service these loans
Boy, we, sure, are, dumb
The banksters livin large
Boy, we, sure, are, dumb
I don`t get it
I guess, I am, dumb
The Fed don`t sweat it
I guess, I am, dumb
Bankers are skum
Bankers are skum
When I saw this after it posted I saw the word “skum” and thought… That was supposed to be scum, I screwed that up. But then I looked up skum and I said…. Maybe I didn`t screw it up after all.
A skum resembles an ugly, black/dark green fish-humanoid, with muscular limbs, hands and feet which are both webbed and clawed, very veiny and tight-packed flesh, a tail, and fins protruding from the head, tail and underarms.
The skum lives in watery grottoes and caves in broods of 2 to 5 individuals or packs of 6 to 15. As its name suggests, it is a rather scummy creature, and could be described almost as an underwater equivalent of an ogre or minotaur. They speak Aquan, and are lawful evil in alignment.
That description reminds me of Oly’s (RIP) geoducks.
I was thinking about Oly this morning, as it is Jeebus’ Birthday and all.
Watched Carlin do his religion and 10 Commandment dialogues last night on youtube.
Merry Christmas everyone. And Jeff, thanks for the Christmas music. Perfect lyrics.
I was thinking of her too last week and I’m glad that she’s still remembered on the board. Happy Holidays from Down Under. Had Christmas Eve outside last night. Bizarre.
They sure are dumb. They’re many other things too but just let it be…… dumb. You’re right. They are dumb.
It was as close as I could get to…..
Pa rum pum pum pum
The one thing that is universal is Christmas music is beautiful. I’ve been listening to a Philharmonic for days, along with Christmas saxophone with piano, and so enjoy it.
Ho ho ho…Realtors are hos…
the rest of my HBB friends who look at the world from a different angle than I do.
Awe$ome! and Merry X-mas to you & yours Mr. Jeff!
And to everyone and all, from Hwy50 & all his “Bidne$$” advi$ors:
http://tinyurl.com/6tkl2fb
http://tinyurl.com/7qwfpbk
http://tinyurl.com/7o6eyz2
http://tinyurl.com/6vnba7g
AND a $pecial Tanks to Mr. Ben Jones & Family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Merry Christmas everyone…Special thanks to you Ben for keeping it going…
I’ll second that.
Great lyrics, jeff!
One of my favorite parts was how the background bass-line in my head shifted to:
Dumb, du- du- du- dumb, du- du- du- dumb…
as I was reading it…
Santa’s list of congresscritters
Naughty:
Nancy Pelosi
Eric Cantor
Paul Ryan
Jean Schmidt
Harry Reid
Barney Frank
John Boehner
Michele Bachmann
Charles Rangel
Chuck Schumer
Nice:
Dennis Kucinich
Ron Paul
Bernie Sanders
3 out of 535? Get the rope vendor lined up and a laydown area set up for the reels.
Fear is powerful.
Geez, being day before X-mas, couldn’t you of at least tossed in a quasi-Democrat woman?:
Nice:
Olympia Snowe
You mean dumb. Did you read her comment that using smartphone apps to compare prices when shopping was non-competitive?
Retailers Fight Back Against Price Apps – WSJ.com: The use of such apps recently sparked a furor. After Amazon.com Inc. launched a promotion on Dec. 8 on its Price Check shopping app that gave customers 5%, or up to $5, on up to three qualifying items on its site if they checked the prices of those goods while browsing at a physical store, retail groups and politicians denounced the offer. Sen. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine) called the promotion “anti-competitive” and “an attack on Main Street businesses that employ workers in our communities.”
http://www.pretenseofknowledge.com/2011/12/24/yup-they-really-said-it-sen-olympia-snowe-on-competition/
As I say, Marie Antoinette didn’t get it either.
Correct eco. Small stores should not be protected against the predations of stores like Wal-Mart and Amazon. NFIB has obviously bought and paid for Sen. Snowe.
eyes did read it and posted as well me owns & her POV, yours seems to be the MEGAInc. SNAFU POV, but hey it’s a country of freedumb & Libertie$
(I’m with her, now go on out and support MegaMartInc. it’s the AmericanWaltonInc. “not-made-in-the-USA!” thing to do.)
“Boycott’$ ‘em!” + “No-Repeat-Customer$!”
“Amazon’s promotion — paying consumers to visit small businesses and leave empty-handed — is an attack on Main Street businesses that employ workers in our communities,” Snowe, a Maine Republican, said in a statement yesterday. “Small businesses are fighting everyday to compete with giant retailers, such as Amazon, and incentivizing consumers to spy on local shops is a bridge too far.”
Amazon Price-Check App Is Attack on Small Stores, Snowe Says
Danielle Kucera, 2011 Bloomberg News
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Frankly, I think it’s a silly idea for Amazon to do, but it is competition in the purest form of the word.
Consumers should have all information at their fingertips, and then choose based on price, service, ability to have today, etc.
Last I check the small mom-n-pop stores also sell stuff made in China.
Yous have to work at it…
http://www.lehmans.com/
Until Amazon is collecting sales tax, or the retailers aren’t, the competition is unfair.
Law exempts forgiven foreclosure debt from income on tax return
By Liz Weston
Posted: 3:32 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011
Dear Liz: Several years ago, we were talked into getting what I believe was a predatory loan - a negatively amortizing mortgage for 100 percent of the purchase price of our home. The loan broker assured us we could refinance the following year to a more traditional mortgage.
We paid the minimum monthly payment required, which didn’t cover all the interest owed, so that amount was added to our mortgage balance. Like others, we have experienced the nightmare of the current housing market, and with the negative amortization adding on even more debt, we are severely underwater.
We’ve worked with two companies trying to get a workable loan modification but to no avail. The bank is not cooperating at all.
A lawyer I consulted is advising us not to pay at all going forward, saying that the upside-down home isn’t worth saving or worth the grief. She told us to put our payment amounts into savings so that we have something to live on after we have to leave the home, which I so far have been able to do. But I’m worried about the potential fallout.
Would we be required to pay taxes on the remaining balance we owe after a foreclosure? If we can’t afford to pay the taxes on $200,000 of untaxed income (that we really didn’t earn), what do we do then? Does bankruptcy help with that?
Answer: When a lender cancels or “forgives” debt, it typically sends you a Form 1099 for the amount of forgiven debt. This amount usually must be included as income on your tax return. But there’s a big exception when it comes to mortgage debt secured by your primary residence.
The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 generally allows you to exclude from your income the debt that’s left over after a foreclosure. The law applies for the calendar years 2007 through 2012.
You can find more information about the act in IRS Publication 4681, Canceled Debts, Foreclosures, Repossessions, and Abandonments, as well as in IRS news release IR-2008-17.
In some cases, lenders aren’t content to write off the excess debt and instead decide to pursue homeowners after foreclosure for the remaining balance owed. You may be protected by state law from such a lawsuit (as homeowners in California typically are), but you’ll want to discuss this possibility with your attorney. If you are hit with such a lawsuit, you may need to consider filing for bankruptcy.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/money/foreclosures/law-exempts-forgiven-foreclosure-debt-from-income-on-2048844.html - 75k
“The law applies for the calendar years 2007 through 2012.”
Which means that, unless the law is extended, you have to get the foreclosure done and over and the excess debt forgiven before the end of next year. Good luck with that. Maybe if you aggressively pursue a short sale and can get that approved there is time to get through all the paperwork, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Take care all. I’m going to brave Rockville Pike this Christmas Eve. Baby needs a new computer.
Good luck Polly. Rockville Pike can be a nightmare just about any Saturday. Today should be a doozy.
I believe this tax break will be extended. We have to help the poor, poor people who were taken for a ride. (sarcasm)
I’m still waiting for the law that says any foreclosure should be not considered in FICO score calcuations.
Just a note to the above statement, this exception to tax reporting is only for the principal residence and not for any investment property or rental property. See IRS Publication 4681.
Yeah, how is this enforced? If it’s anything like the enforcement of investors declaring investment properties as primary residences, I bet the IRS is getting the short stick.
You mean you don’t trust bureaucracies? Especially the Feds? Come on. Just because thousands of IRS employees claimed the $5K first time buyers credit without auctually buying is not reason to doubt is it?
http://thisainthell.us/blog/?p=23567
from the link:
“The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration, in several reports over the past few years, has identified a total of 128 IRS employees ” who claimed the credit but who also made other claims that showed they either weren’t first-time buyers or bought their homes outside the eligibility period for the credit…
Thousands?
Getting caught in inspector general investigations (lots of departments/agencies have them) can get you fired. Very, very fired.
Consumer purchases rose less than forecast in November as a drop in wages encouraged Americans to seek discounted merchandise at the start of the holiday shopping season.
Personal spending climbed 0.1 percent for a second month, while wages and salaries fell 0.1 percent from October, Commerce Department data showed today in Washington. Durable goods orders jumped 3.8 percent in November as a surge in aircraft bookings masked a drop in demand for business equipment.
Bloomberg
Anyone have a calculator, how long can spending rise while incomes fall? You can bet that some of that increase was on food and fuel which is more expensive. What happened in terms of spending on manufactured goods and services??
Europe’s economy is taking a toll on the U.K. services industry. Output in the services that account for about 75 percent of the economy fell 0.7 percent in October, the Office for National Statistics said in London today.
In Asia, Singapore’s industrial production unexpectedly decreased in November for the first time in six months, adding to evidence of a weakening Asian outlook. Manufacturing, which accounts for more than 20 percent of the Singapore economy, dropped 9.6 percent from a year earlier, the Economic Development Board said today.
Bloomberg
Rather coincidental that the UK has the weakest social safety nets and labor laws in all of Europe.
<i.”Anyone have a calculator, how long can spending rise while incomes fall?”
Until about 4 years ago. (yes, it’s already been that long)
Wages have been stagnate or falling for the last 30 years. Wealth extraction without added value was legalized by deregulation back in the 1980s.
Interesting small town New England police log. History repeating…
“The following is the first in a two-part series that looks at illegal activities recorded in the town of Medfield from the late 1800’s to the first half of the 20th century ”
http://medfield.patch.com/articles/crime-in-medfield-th-early-years-of-the-town-s-police-logs
“In 1898, Richard Keen was arrested for failure to support his family. His wife and children were found in a destitute condition without suitable clothing or food. “
Hmmm, I though that back in the day neighbors and churches provided.
“In 1920, a strike at the brickyard on West Street took place. Italian workers receiving 50 cents per hour went on strike. Police officer Cornelius McKeown was called to quell the disturbance that resulted. “
From David Traxel’s “1898 The Birth Of The American Century” :
By 1898 , nature’s nation, as it had always prided itself, appeared to have become a paragon of technological innovation and commercial power.
During the same few decades its population changed in composition from chiefly Protestant Anglo-Saxon people to a polyglot amalgamation of all the world’s races and creeds, while the gap between rich and poor widened alarmingly. Independence and individuality, qualities highly prized by Americans came under attack from giant corporations beginning to dominate the economy, enterprises that seemed only interested in turning citizens in to consumers.
‘ “In 1898, Richard Keen was arrested for failure to support his family. His wife and children were found in a destitute condition without suitable clothing or food. “
‘ Hmmm, I though that back in the day neighbors and churches provided. ‘
Is it progress that today such a man has no responsibility, but can lay it all off on his neighbors (taxpayers)?
It speaks volumes that back then, such a failure was considered detestable enough to warrant arrest. Now such an individual would have the undying gratitude of the Democrat Party for swelling the ever-growing votes-for-entitlements rolls.
You’re confused:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68R40I20100928
Senate Repubicans blocked a Democraptic bill on Tuesday to end tax deductions enjoyed by companies that close their U.S. plants and move overseas.
You’re confused
He’s not confused, he’s propagandizing:
“an essay Rothbard wrote for the January 1992Rothbard-Rockwell Report, titled “Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement.” Lamenting that mainstream intellectuals and opinion leaders were too invested in the status quo to be brought around to a libertarian view, Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an “Outreach to the Rednecks,” which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes. (Duke, a former Klansman, was discussed in strikingly similar terms in a 1990 Ron Paul Political Report.) These groups could be mobilized to oppose an expansive state, Rothbard posited, by exposing an “unholy alliance of ‘corporate liberal’ Big Business and media elites, who, through big government, have privileged and caused to rise up a parasitic Underclass, who, among them all, are looting and oppressing the bulk of the middle and working classes in America”
You’re confused
He’s not confused, he’s propagandizing:
“an essay Rothbard wrote for the January 1992Rothbard-Rockwell Report, titled “Right-Wing Populism: A Strategy for the Paleo Movement.” Lamenting that mainstream intellectuals and opinion leaders were too invested in the status quo to be brought around to a libertarian view, Rothbard pointed to David Duke and Joseph McCarthy as models for an “Outreach to the Rednecks,” which would fashion a broad libertarian/paleoconservative coalition by targeting the disaffected working and middle classes. (Duke, a former Klansman, was discussed in strikingly similar terms in a 1990 Ron Paul Political Report.) These groups could be mobilized to oppose an expansive state, Rothbard posited, by exposing an “unholy alliance of ‘corporate liberal’ Big Business and media elites, who, through big government, have privileged and caused to rise up a parasitic Underclass, who, among them all, are looting and oppressing the bulk of the middle and working classes in America.”
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2011/12/20/the_secret_origin_of_ron_paul_s_newsletters.html
Realtors Are Liars®
From……A Charlie Brown Christmas
MERRY CHRISTMAS Realtors Are Liars®!
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing , Realtors lie bout` everything.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Hv9YmhGpw - 129k -
(I still love the way the dirt falls off of Pig-Pen when he sings)
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing , Realtors lie bout` everything.
Love it!
Likewise POB Jethro. Enjoy some Christmas cheer for me brother.
Or, Happy Festivus!
A little more from way way back…
Looking back at the country’s largest pre-Civil War strike
An uprising by Natick’s cobblers 150 years ago this month led to the largest pre-Civil War strike in the United States, eventually spreading to 25 towns and about 20,000 workers.
The economy during the late 1850s was similar to what Americans face today, Holmes said., as the country was in an economic downturn, known as the Panic of 1857.
“Like now, people made poor investments, risky investments and had no credit, it’s the whole darn thing,” Holmes said. “What do employers do? Cut employees and cut wages.”
Natick’s shoe manufacturers decided to drop the price of shoes from 20 cents to 18 cents, in part because of the overproduction of shoes after the introduction of sewing machines, according to reports at the time in the Natick Observer newspaper.
A Holliston shoe manufacturer, John Batchelder, pointed the finger at the flood of cheap shoes, known as “12-day shoes” because they had a short useful life, as the reason for the slump.
Whatever the reason, the manufacturers chose to cut shoemakers wages anywhere from one-third to one-half.
By Feb. 7, 1860, the shoemakers reached the breaking point, Holmes said. More than 500 shoemakers gathered at the Universalist vestry and voted to strike.
The manufacturers never recognized the union, and in the March 24 issue of The Natick Observer, 23 shoe manufacturers wrote a letter saying it was invasion of the manufacturers’ rights for the workers to dictate prices or hiring policies, according to Gross. The letter’s signees included “prominent citizens like Lowell Coolidge, E.C. Morse, J. Cotton, N. Dowse, and Richard Hayes,” Gross wrote
File under “corporations are people” .
http://www.wickedlocal.com/natick/highlight/x723436634/Looking-back-at-the-country-s-largest-pre-Civil-War-strike#axzz1hSYX5YMF
Hmmm, was that downturn still around in April, 1861?
+2 extra credit to the first poster who points out the significance of that month.
+2 extra credit to the first poster who points out the significance of that month.
The beginning of The War of Southern Immorality?
Merry X-mas to you & yours Mr. Rio!
Merry X-mas to you & yours Mr. Rio!
Thank you Hwy and you and yours too! Merry Christmas to Ben and all the HBB!
ft sumter bombardment
From my time in South Carolina:
The War of Northern Agression
An aggressive Immorality stitch in time, saves
x9the Union.Sarasota-area condos are selling but prices continue to fall. Mostly cash buyers according to the article.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20111223/ARTICLE/312239998/2107/BUSINESS?Title=Condos-selling-but-prices-continue-to-fall
Mostly crash buyers.
Cash flow analysis gets a lot easier when Uncle Ben is destroying your cash savings and the stock market is destroying your investments, putting $150k into a condo that might throw off 10-12k a year doesn’t sound like a bad deal. The yield there is around 7%, which was what we were getting on money market accounts 11 years ago, and at least half of that amount at no risk in 2006.
This does not sound right will a $150K condo rent for $1000 per month? What about taxes, insurance, condo fees, maintenace, vacancies?
Shhhhhhh! Don’t mention those things. They don’t exist except in the minds of the infestors.
Assume that taxes, insurance, condo fees, maintenance, and vacancies are all deductible for a landlord.
Correct?
P.S. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!!
Depends on the location. I would suspect a nice Sarasota location would rent for $2000/mo furnished in high season (Nov-March). So figuring 6 months a year, 12k. Minus expenses should be 7-8k cash per year. Not a huge haul and could very well be a poor long term investment. Where the numbers don’t work at all is with a mortgage. Which is why I believe many investors buying with mortgages are losing money in the long run, even if they have made up numbers that show profits. Cash purchasing makes it a real “opportunity cost” transaction.
$2K per month Dec-Mar is about right. And that’s for condos well away from the beaches. Siesta Key beachfront condos rent for $1K per WEEK and up in the high season.
We’re looking forward to our annual trip there later this winter, although this winter has so far been considerably milder than the last two. All the daffodils have pushed up through the mulch, with one cluster as tall as three inches. Of course they’re still just pointy spikes and they won’t bloom for at least another three or four weeks.
Parents have their house on Siesta Key. They live there in the Winter and used to rent it out in the Summer. Such a hassle with things being broken, etc. by renters for so little $$ that it lays dormant in the off-season. Not worth the hassle.
Christmas there next year instead of Perth, or else MrBubble surely will get popped. Time to open prezzies!
RAL - This is a response for our discussion yesterday about Muggy’s post on the Redington Beach, FL house.
The entire Pinellas county coastline turns into a slum about 1/2 to 1 mile inland. Not sure exactly why that is the case, but especially in central Pinellas county it’s rough. Lots of shacks built in the 1950s that are largely obsolescent today, typically the single car garages have been bricked in to provide an extra room, on postage style lots, etc. This home appears to be one of them. Amazingly, 7 years ago people were buying 2 or 3 of these homes, tearing them down, and combining the lots to build one nice, modern home. The problem is that now there is one nice home dispersed among a number of crummy homes.
The lack of zoning is what ruined me on Pinellas county. And the fact that most of the industry in the area is centered around the westshore business district in Tampa, which is a 45 minute drive away without traffic.
Good luck to the seller, they will need it.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2011/12/20111224125139773285.html
Meanwhile, the cretin quotient grows larger every year, as decades of votes-for-entitlements programs swells our population of riffraff and parasites. What happens when the free $hit spigot gets turned off as Wall Street demands brutal austerity so the banksters’ gambling debts and bonuses will be covered?
Wall St. got $16 TRILLION in bailouts and J6P is STILL getting crumbs.
Gee, and here I am figuring that it was perennially high unemployment and the wholesale offshoring of entire industries that caused the swelling of the so called army of “riffraff and parasites”.
What happens when the free $hit spigot gets turned off as Wall Street demands brutal austerity so the banksters’ gambling debts and bonuses will be covered?
Hard to say, I suppose it depends on how hungry and desperate our heavily armed populace becomes.
FWIW, the 100B we spend each year on food stamps and free school lunches is but a tiny portion of the Federal Budget. I could see Medicaid getting the ax, as the uninsured middle class has already demonstrated that Americans are OK with not having access to healthcare.
Keep ‘em fed and no one gets hurt.
the cretin quotient grows larger every year
Are you inferring that Wall $t. “hole-in-the-deficit” gang is going to have even more & larger bonuse$?
Roasting chestnuts by an open fire…
Americans love to be first at stuff, so folks will be pleased to learn that the United States ranked as the most generous nation on the planet in a global survey on giving.
Americans are most generous in the world, survey finds
December 24th, 2011, by Teri Sforza / OC Register
The new “World Giving Index 2011” is based on more than 150,000 Gallup polling interviews with people in 153 countries. You can see the full report — and some good tips on wise giving — at www CAFAmerica org
Yikes!!
I updated my version of Firefox and now I am completely unable to recover my Joshua Tree Extension!!!
I have:
-tried downgrading to version 3.5 of firefox
-running system restore to back whne it worked
-variations of above
no luck
Thoughts anyone?
What version did you upgrade to? I’m on 8.0 and the most recent release of JT is working fine. If you’re on something newer 8.x you’ll probably need a new one from drumminj. I’ve always wondered what would happen if I tried to go backwards.
235 years ago a today. Christmas Eve.
A rag tag bunch of citizen soldiers/militia were given the order to march.
In a raging snowstorm. To cross a swollen ice choked river.
Most of their enlistments were ending in a few days. They were freezing, tired, hungry, frost-bitten and had lost every battle they had fought in for the last year.
They were about to attack some of the finest and well supplied soldiers on the continent.
And yet they marched.
Merry Christmas.
Sounds like…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Crossing_the_Delaware
Unfortunately, I have little confidence we (as Americans) could ever endure these hardships now. What in the world would the masses do without American Idol and macaroni and cheese?
I am very thankful for our military forces, both past and present.
As I recall the wealthier southern farmers and certainly the British didn’t think much of the rag tag New England farmers and merchants that basically started the Revolution. Most of them were considered undisciplined, uneducated and incapable of complex concepts. They fought w/o shoes, they fought w/o food rations (as happened in Valley Forge). And yet despite all those initial losses here we are.
After reading 1776 by David McCullough one wonders how the heck we ever won.
one wonders how the heck we ever won.
King George & Jefferson Davis:
“If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone: Died of a theory.”
“As I recall the wealthier southern farmers…didn’t think much of the rag tag New England farmers and merchants that basically started the Revolution”
Wealthy southern farmers like George Washington?
Why, they would just switch to Dancing with the Stars and pizza, silly!
I have little confidence we (as Americans) could ever endure these hardships now.
Really?, So, just how old are you exactly Moman?
WWII: the “men” went into combat at 19 years old, but the average age of the division including all the officers was 21.
In Vietnam it was 19.
Total all US in WW2 = 16 Million
Total dead from WW2 =310,979
Hwy cue 19:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3LdMAqUMnM
Powerful. Merry Christmas.
We’ve made through another year of rough times and the Long Recession.
Merry Christmas to us and thoughts and prayers to the millions who have been adversely affected by the recession. May we see the end of this soon.
Amen, eco.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family. Thank you for all your thoughtful and insightful posts!
“Audit-the-Pentagon!” …$700 Billion$…per year!
Across the country, doctors like Sullivan are facing a spike in psychiatric emergencies - attempted suicide, severe depression, psychosis - as states slash mental health services and the country’s worst economic crisis since the Great Depression takes its toll.
Mentally ill flood ER as states cut services
By Julie Steenhuysen and Jilian Mincer | Reuters – 4 hrs ago
“These are people without a previous psychiatric history who are coming in and telling us they’ve lost their jobs, they’ve lost sometimes their homes, they can’t provide for their families, and they are becoming severely depressed,” said Dr. Felicia Smith, director of the acute psychiatric service at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - On a recent shift at a Chicago emergency department, Dr. William Sullivan treated a newly homeless patient who was threatening to kill himself.
“He had been homeless for about two weeks. He hadn’t showered or eaten a lot. He asked if we had a meal tray,” said Sullivan, a physician at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago and a past president of the Illinois College of Emergency Physicians.
The full Monti.
‘Monti Effect’ Fizzles Before $574 Billion New Year
By Chiara Vasarri and Lorenzo Totaro - Dec 23, 2011 4:19 AM ET
Prime Minister Mario Monti’s market honeymoon is ending as Italian bond yields approaching 7 percent signal mounting concern his government may struggle to sell 440 billion euros ($574 billion) of debt next year.
Monti took just five weeks in office to push through a 30 billion-euro emergency budget package aimed at taming surging borrowing costs. Investors reacted to the plan’s final approval by the Senate yesterday by driving up the yield on Italy’s 10- year benchmark bond by 12 basis points to 6.91 percent, close to the 7 percent level that prompted Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek bailouts. It was at 6.94 percent at 10:13 a.m. in Rome.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-23/-monti-effect-fizzles-before-574-billion-new-year-euro-credit.html
Archival bubble videos:
Real financial genius heroes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxylHPnoloI
Flipper Nation carol:
oops:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPN-LmEdBuA
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your family Ben.
And also to all on the HBB ie Polly, RAL, Rio, Jeff, Eco, Bill, the boater.
Special thoughts to all those who are experiencing a rougher Christmas than usual.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry have failed to qualify for Virginia’s March 6 Republican primary, a setback in their bids for the Republican presidential nomination.
The Republican Party of Virginia announced the developments Friday and early Saturday, saying that the two have failed to submit the required 10,000 signatures to get on the ballot.
That Gingrich and Perry failed to get on the ballot in this state that votes on Super Tuesday underscored the difficulty that first-time national candidates — many with smaller campaign operations and less money — have in preparing for the long haul of the campaign.
It also illustrates the advantage held by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. He’s essentially been running for president for five years, and his team, smaller than in 2008 but larger than most of his 2012 opponents, has paid close attention to filing requirements in each state. He will appear on the Virginia ballot, along with Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who also has run a national campaign before.
Ironically, Gingrich had a slight lead over Romney, with others farther back, in a Quinnipiac poll of Virginia Republicans released earlier in the week.
I have a hard time believing this was a mistake. Has anyone ever heard of this happening before. The tin foil hat in me suspects the PTB want to slide the election to Romney. How was Ron Paul polling in the state?
I suspect Gingrich and Perry Voters are less likely to be Ron Paul voters as a second choice.