Bits Bucket for July 19, 2012
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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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Oops. Aren’t economies one of those “man made” thingy’s?
Comment by Diogenes (Tampa, Fl)
2012-07-18 08:41:56
“…all economies recover when LEFT ALONE….”
Now, here’s a topic we can tear into. I contend that “left alone”, “all economies” will eventually revert to monopoly, then dictatorship, then tribalism, then chaos. Economies cannot even exist without regulation. How, for instance, would you go about standardizing the medium of exchange to facilitate commerce? What happens when one warlord ends up with all the money? Or decides it’s time for a nice bonus?
I’d be interested to know of a tanking economy that recovered when it was “left alone”, because I just spent a good hour trying to think of one and came up with, well, nada….
i agree and who thinks an economy should be left alone?
People who win by lying and cheating do.
Bloomberg News
Libor Reported as Rigged in ’08 Proving 2012’s Revelation
By John Detrixhe on July 19, 2012
Barclays Plc’s admission that it rigged the London interbank offered rate shows regulators, central bankers and politicians weren’t paying attention when everyone from Citigroup Inc. to the Bank for International Settlements indicated that the measure was being manipulated.
The BIS signaled in March 2008 that the benchmark was being misstated. A month later, analysts at Citigroup suggested the same. In May of that year, one of Barclays’s own strategists said the numbers reported by banks “were a lie.”
Barclays’s acknowledgement that it submitted false rates during the height of the credit crisis cost Chief Executive Officer Robert Diamond and other top managers their jobs and cut the bank’s market value by about 4.4 billion pounds ($6.9 billion). In the U.K. and abroad, at least a dozen banks are being investigated for manipulating Libor. Mervyn King, the Bank of England Governor since 2003, said this week that he only recently became aware of wrongdoing in the rate published by the British Bankers’ Association.
“The basic underpinning in credit is confidence and trust,” John Lonski, chief economist at Moody’s Capital Markets Group in New York, said in a July 18 telephone interview. “There has to be this trust in other parties if credit is going to work.”
…
liars and cheaters want to be allowed to lie and cheat.
surprising.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/banking/story/2012-07-18/capital-one-credit-card-refund/56304418/1
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration’s consumer watchdog agency flexed its enforcement muscles for the first time Wednesday and ordered Capital One Bank to repay millions of credit card customers allegedly tricked into buying costly add-on services.
Oh the delicious irony of it all.
Capital One hires Alec Baldwin as a spokesman.
Alec Baldwin is a big supporter of OWS and Obama.
Capital One is fined by Obama’s henchmen.
Ya think Alec will give back the millions he took for Capital One?
And I’m still waiting for Alec to leave the US as he promised to do if eeeevil GWB won re-election.
PS: I have a Capital One card and I love it. I’ve purchased several last minute flights with my points that would have cost a ton of money to buy.
PPS: It would be interesting to see who is on the board of Capital One. I’d bet big money that none of the central players gave money to Barry.
they are crooked as the come. alec baldwin must be hurting.
“Ya think Alec will give back the millions he took for Capital One?
And I’m still waiting for Alec to leave the US as he promised to do if eeeevil GWB won re-election.”
Fee-fie-foe-fum
I smell another Repugnican strawman creation!
Yawn.
Mr. Burns keep you up late last night, Smithers?
Sorry, but I really don’t care what actors do.
According to Jane, Smithers must work for the Gov’t. He wastes a lot of taxpayer money reading and posting.
“According to Jane, Smithers must work for the Gov’t. He wastes a lot of taxpayer money reading and posting.”
No, I don’t. I work for myself. I can waste 24 hours a day if I want, since I don’t get paid by tax dollars. See the difference?
“Sorry, but I really don’t care what actors do.”
But you care what the eeeeevil Koch brothers do.
Capital One is the slimiest company I have ever dealt with.
I had an online savings account with them. I opened it because they gave me $125 to do so and ta the time the interest rate was fairly competitive. I set it up to do an automatic once a month $500. debit from my regular checking account (just an easy way to put money aside for our once a year east coast excursion).
Last October I transferred all the money out in advance of closing the account. I couldn’t close the account online, I had to call and talk to a service representative to close the account.
I close the account, no problem. October, November, all good.
Come December, I see a $500 debit from my regular checking account into the closed Cap one account. WTF? I try to log in and see “account closed” with the $500.00 in it that I can’t withdraw.
MANY many hours later, many many phone calls, and 4 WEEKS later, problem still somehow cannot be resolved, and they deduct another $500.: by now Cap One is holding $1,000 of my money completely and totally hostage.
When I finally do get my money back (after insisting they wire it into my checking account) I get dinged with a $15. incoming wire fee.
Hate them hate them hate them.
Capital One is the slimiest company I have ever dealt with.
Most banks are and I would also say most businesses are. You have to watch your bank statements and bills carefully each month, you never know what they are charging you. More so, if you have automatic payments/withdrawals. Can’t trust anyone. Welcome to AmeriKa! Either it’s negligence/incompetence or downright malice, I do not know.
“Sorry, but I really don’t care what actors do.”
But you care what the eeeeevil Koch brothers do.
– The Koch brothers aren’t actors . . . see the difference?
–
It is usually a bad idea to let an organization set up an automatic “pull” from your bank account, even if it is another bank. It is OK to tell your bank to “push” the money to another account. Then all you have to do is cancel the pushing transaction and you are done.
I have allowed this only for two insurance policy payments I have. They never change. I know I will want them to continue for decades. All other payments I dothe pushing from a bank that I do trust and that has one of the top reputations in the industry for customer service.
One other exception might be for student loans since I understand that some places reduce your interest rate substantially for allowing it, but even then, I would try to set it up as a push, not a pull.
So polly do you set up a separate dedicated account for this purpose, then push from your checking to that acct?
business as usual. Banksters have bonus quotas to meet.
MS had a great quarter.
I wonder how long the CSU and UC system can keep raising tuition at will? They assume people will continue to pay up because you have to have a degree to get a good job supposedly.
Don’t they get paid tuition up front? Whether the student loans ever get repaid are somebody else’s problem.
debt slave for life with student loans.
I wonder how long the CSU and UC system can keep raising tuition at will?
Probably as long as they are still cheaper than private colleges, and right now they are WAY cheaper.
But they aren’t the bargains they used to be.
Reeeally glad that I have just one year left of paying UCLA tuition. And the nickel-and-dime-you-to-death fees.
and right now they are WAY cheaper ??
Question is, for how long….November elections will tell the story going forward…See if the california voter is fed-up with Sacramento and even in the face of Browns threat to cut K-12 will the tax-payers finally push back like they did with Prop-13…
Exclusive: Banks in Libor probe consider group settlement - sources
By Katharina Bart and Diane Bartz
ZURICH/WASHINGTON | Thu Jul 19, 2012 8:14pm EDT
(Reuters) - A group of banks being investigated in an interest rate rigging scandal are looking to pursue a group settlement with regulators rather than face a Barclays-style backlash by going it alone, people familiar with the banks’ thinking said.
Such discussions are preliminary, and it is unclear if regulators will enter these talks, aimed at resolving allegations that banks attempted to manipulate the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, a benchmark that underpins hundreds of trillions of dollars in contracts.
Still, there are powerful incentives for the banks to enter joint negotiations.
Barclays Plc was the first to settle with U.S. and British regulators, paying a $453 million penalty and admitting to its role in a deal announced June 27. Its chief executive, Bob Diamond, abruptly quit the next week, bowing to public pressure and erosion of the bank’s reputation.
The sources told Reuters that none of the banks involved now want to be second in line for fear that they will get similarly hostile treatment from politicians and the public. Bank discussions about a group settlement initially took place before the Barclays agreement, and picked back up in the aftermath.
It is unclear which banks are involved in the potential settlement talks. The banks being investigated include Citigroup, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase. They all declined to comment.
A group agreement would appeal to financial watchdogs because they would be able to announce a headline-grabbing figure, showing that they were dealing firmly with the banking industry’s misdemeanors, a banker told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Earlier this year, five top U.S. banks negotiated a $25 billion settlement with the U.S. Justice Department and other federal and state agencies to resolve allegations of mortgage services abuses.
The key regulators involved in the Libor case include the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Britain’s Financial Services Authority. The CFTC was not available for comment and the FSA declined to comment.
The main obstacle facing such a group settlement is a hesitancy on the part of the investment banks to work together in the fevered atmosphere surrounding the Libor investigations. Negotiations and haggling could drag on for some time and a resolution was far from certain, the banker said.
The fact that each bank possibly had to settle with a different group of regulators, and that the charges were different in each case also made the chances of success of such a settlement small, a source at one of the banks being probed said.
…
I think it should be left alone once the rules are established just as I think a chess game should be left alone after the rules are established.
Allow me to play a game of chess whereby I get to change the rules as the game progresses and I will be sure to win. Even against Grand Masters I will win.
how about this rule.
no business should be allowed a mark-up of more than (hold on…reaching inside my ass) say 10%?
is that a good rule to play by?
Shouldn’t that be progressive as well?
“no business should be allowed a mark-up of more than (hold on…reaching inside my ass) say 10%?
is that a good rule to play by?”
How about this rule?
Govt allows businesses to set their own prices. Consumers decide if they will pay those prices or not.
Too radical?
How’s this for gaming the system; wall street firms pay millions to lobby for reduced budgets to the SEC and CFTC.
“Govt allows businesses to set their own prices.”
Do you advocate illegal price fixing?
Price fixing
CNBC | Aired on July 18, 2012
Rep. Neugebauer: Was Libor Price-Fixing?
Rep. Randy Neugebauer wants to know if Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke thinks the Libor scandal was akin to price-fixing.
Allow me to play a game of chess whereby I get to change the rules as the game progresses and I will be sure to win.
But static rules can’t keep up with all the financial ‘innovation’. Or are you saying there should be no innovation? In which case you may be on to something.
Your premises are all wrong:
0. Law enforcements will always be behind new and original crimes. Let’s just accept it.
1. First of all you believe we are capable of coming with “good” laws from the bunch that don’t even read what they pass.
2. Paid and bought politicians
3. Ideologue politicians
4. Loopholes and lawyers.
5. Motivation of a regulator to enforce said laws.
6. So on and so on.
Instead, let’s just add something like this below in constitution.
“Gamble as you please, but there will be no bailout, no protection and no handout from taxpayers for any private activities. If you make money, that’s yours to keep and if you lose money, that’s yours to lose as well. If your counter parties, clients and customers notice that you have been lying, cheating and stealing, you will be prosecuted and if convicted punishment will range from caning your bare a$$ in public to firing squad a la Mao’s China.”
And I think the game should be refereed by the regulators, but not rigged by them. Imagine going to a football game, only to learn afterwards that the referees moved the goalposts and changed the marking of the lines to make it easier to score points. The fans would feel cheated!
So you all want to give your guns to a group of thugs calling itself government and tell them “protect us!”
That sums it up.
i agree and who thinks an economy should be left alone?
What are you, a bunch of friggin’ commies?
Yes. They are.
You go from “left alone” (ie - meaning passing no NEW laws) to anarchy to NO regulation or laws.
I know of no economist or politician from the left or right who has ever advocated this position.
How about we we STOP trying to pump trillions of borrowed money into the economy through TARP, HAMP, the stimulus, etc.?
How about we go back to the insane debt levels of George W Bush Era?
How about we go back to the already insane regulations of the Reagan Era?
How about government only takes in taxes as percent of GDP of the Eisenhower Era?
How about we NEVER pass a law to see WHAT IS IN IT ever AGAIN?
“You go from “left alone” (ie - meaning passing no NEW laws) to anarchy to NO regulation or laws.”
Yep. You say I don’t want govt run health care, to a liberal that is translated to “I want to kill poor people”.
You say I want low taxes the English to liberal translator GT-2000 spews out “You don’t want any roads or sewer systems”.
You say education should be reformed so that a teacher doesn’t retire at 52 with a $70K a year pension, the liberal brain processes it as “you hate books”.
Oh, cool! The banana man vs. the slithers!
Food fight!
You say education should be reformed so that a teacher doesn’t retire at 52 with a $70K a year pension, the liberal brain processes it as “you hate books”.
You are COMPLETELY WRONG on the that one.
You say education should be reformed so that a teacher doesn’t retire at 52 with a $70K a year pension, the liberal brain processes it as “you hate CHILDREN”.
What if I DO hate children? Am I to be singled out for my lifestyle choice?
I am conservative. According to libs, I hate children, books, women, minorities, old people, kittens and puppies, clean water, trees.
Fairness, justice, mercy, opportunity, democracy, etc.
“Free market’ means free to eff you up the bum without consequence.
Never forget this.
‘a topic we can tear into’
Yeah, start with a false premise and go from there.
How about we define it as, should one be forced into transactions or should they be voluntary. And once a voluntary transaction is made, those engaged bear the responsibility.
Govt is nothing but force. A perfect example is the new health care law.
But to play along, let’s look at housing. Where were the regulators when the crazy bubble loans were being made? I fully documented that the ratings agencies gave explicit comfort to bond markets that the govt would back the GSE’s should the loans fail. This provided the liquidity to make a big problem into a disaster.
Where was the SEC when securitization went berserk? Where was the FBI when mortgage fraud was occurring all over the country? What did congress do when thousands of appraisers sent a petition to them demanding action in 2005?
How about greed? When individual greed ran so fevered, that millions of people refinanced houses again and again, never expecting to pay a penny back. Bought a dozen houses sight unseen, or flipped non-existent condos multiple times. Who was regulating that greed? Or who should? Please identify or propose a dept. I can point to for these things.
Or is this just scapegoating and grandstanding.
Then it blows up. Who got bailed out, and who did the bailing, despite the public being against it? Note that lots of companies didn’t get bailed out, meaning they bore the responsibility of their voluntary transactions. Many of the subprime companies, the trusts. Why did some get billions and others got nothing? And who decided?
Then comes the monopoly. After so many regulatory failures, look who is making 90% of housing loans today. And guess what? They force all of us to take the risk.
Along the way, the same govt now monitors the internet and telecommunications. Can shut this blog down in an instant. Can lock anyone up and torture them or kill them, with no trial. They reserve the power to bomb any country they dislike. They run a rigged election system so nothing will change.
So yeah, let’s all worry about mean old mister ‘free trade’. But don’t buy that cup of coffee this morning without checking with the regulators. Otherwise you might be involved in creating a dictatorship.
Govt is nothing but force.
Law is nothing but force.
There will always be forced applied. Better an elected government than a self appointed warlord. It’s getting a little blurry right now which we have.
“There will always be forced applied. Better an elected government than a self appointed warlord. It’s getting a little blurry right now which we have.”
Obama just enforces the laws he likes and ignores the ones he doesn’t. See AZ immigration law as Exhibit A.
What amazes me is that the two dominant parties are private organizations, just like any private club. Yet they use public resources to further their private ends, and actively squelch other parties from forming and getting access to the marketplace.
That sounds like monopolistic behavior. And using public resources to enforce it.
The political parties are not enshrined in the Constitution.
Corporations can and do the same things, yet they are answerable to nobody… but the government. Barely.
As for the government, we have the one we deserve. After all, we elected them.
There is an elected government and there’s an even more powerful unelected bureaucracy which answers to nobody.
Ben
Neat summary. Mr Case on tv this morning said he was worried about when F&F’s insurance business went into private hands how the cost would probably reflect reality with the resulting mortgaging costs increasing.
I bet if private insurers would have been in place from the beginning almost none of this mess would have happened considering that F&F insure over 90% of all US mortgages.
Thanks, Ben. You rest my case. Who do you think owns DC?
“Corporations can and do the same things, yet they are answerable to nobody… but the government. Barely.”
Well nobody except
- shareholders
- board of directors
Corporations are people.
‘Who do you think owns DC?’
And then how do more regulations help? It’s just more power for DC. Isn’t regulatory failure a crime when used to protect criminals?
“…Isn’t regulatory failure a crime when used to protect criminals…?”
Sure is. Which is why we’re pushing for a more open and accountable government here. More isn’t always better– especially when “more” is used to obfuscate, parse, or single out for special consideration.
But changing scenarios and technologies call for changing rules of play– theoretically for a more democratic system with a level playing field for all. The trick is in keeping the balance so as to avoid fisticuffs– and making certain no one’s bribed the referees.
But there is more to it than that Ben.
Government promulgates the law… the same government enforces the law(selectively) and the same government(and its’ proxies) violate the very law they impose on everyone else.
That was before Bernanke. He has studied the Great Depression and knows his $hit. We just need to let him do whatever he says needs to be done and everything will be fine.
does he have a hotline to goldman and jamie?
1. The taking of risk needs to be allowed, and financially rewarded when good outcomes occur. Said another way, investing capital into new ideas/entrepreneurs should be allowed AND encouraged, and when successful (because so often they are not), result in big financial rewards to the risk takers.
Little known factoid…the 10-years following the Google IPO (and before the Facebook IPO), the OVERALL return in the venture capital industry was NEGATIVE, ie. a money loser. Furthermore, whether you had a piece of Google or Facebook over the prior 15 years has a lot to do with whether you were a “successful” venture capital investor over that timeframe.
2. When the risks being taken are so large (ie. concentrated many, many billions of dollars with leverage, and not individual investments of equity measured in the hundreds of thousands up to the tens of millions–occasionally hundred million or more) that they threaten to topple the whole system with a negative outcome, they need to be dramatically reigned in.
IMHO, the GOP understands #1 better than the Democrats (as Romney rightly said, the more government intervenes into a specific industry, the less private investors are going to want to participate in that industry).
IMHO, the Democrats understand #2 better than the GOP, but both are equally gutless when doing what needs to be done in order to really reduce systemic risk (too much banker money in their pockets), which would require policies that break up the largest financial institutions.
Dodd Frank is a disaster and won’t do the job–it damages #1 risk-taking behavior without reigning in #2 risk taking behavior enough. They should have simply brought back Glass-Steagall.
For all the potential risks (primarily to the unsophisticated), the more recent JOBS Act will actually help risk-taking activities #1. I hope that a few bad investment outcomes allowed by the JOBS Act won’t halt the effort, but instead increase scrutiny of investment opportunities by investors in the market.
It’s a little disingenious to characterize “leaving an economy alone” as removing law and order. It seems pretty clear that the “leaving an economy alone” being referred to is specifically pointed at the quantitative easing and other “monetary policy” interventions that are taking place. I don’t think anyone is advocating legalization of fraud. In fact it kid of seems like this whole “not leaving the economy alone” is actually something along the lines of selectively enforcing the laws that we are all supposed to be following, specifically, not prosecuting any of the banks (and executives) that broke leverage laws. Not prosecuting brokers and loan officers who fraudulently underwrote “liar loans”, bailing out banks instead of forcing them to remedy their bad loans through civil restitution from the debtors that defrauded them.
I agree ahansen; this should be a country of law and order. We should get those ducks in a row before we go trying to “improve” the situation.
I am sorry I wasn’t on-line earlier to dig into some of this, but it’s late here in florida and I am getting ready to fix supper. Nonetheless, I think the ANARCHY diatribe based on my comments that the government should get out of the way is definitely way overboard, and I am glad a number of you re-directed the discussion from “government interference” to total Chaos.
Actually, I could think of LOTS of times the government did not get involved with massive spending and intervention programs. Go look at the NBER charts for “recessions” in the US. The tend to happen pretty regularly.
They are mostly the result of FED money policies and expansions of credit. BOOM, then Bust. It’s just lately they’ve extended the cycles by pumping up the money supply and dropping the interest rates, whenever a down market was underway. It’s like they can kick the can down the road indefinitely.
Japan has been kicking the can for going on 30 years. the result is a continuing declining in housing and markets.
But, back to my point.
It was OBAMA and his cronies in the media that proclaimed this was the worst “depression” since the Big depression of 1929 and needed massive “help”. their interference has prolonged this downturn and made businesses wary of expanding in any direction because they don’t know what next to expect from the CZARs that run America.
There have been a bunch of recessions in which nothing extraordinary was done, and the recovery came just as they usually do. Life goes on.
In Europe, I believe it was Latvia or the Czech republic that was doing quite well by NOT playing EU banker games. They were allowed to “fail” and are now growing.
DEBT is killing most nations of the world, and all the Banksters propose is MORE DEBT. we don’t need it. we shouldn’t want it.
Leave the markets to unwind. Kill off the Bad investors (Goldman Sachs, JPM, Bank of A, and all the other BIG 10 parasites) and re-shuffle their accounts.
That’s the only regulation we needed. PAIN for failure.
Screw the Dodd Frank bill. It was always a favor to the Banksters.
Bring back the Wall of separation between investment/commercial banks (after taking the Goldman into recievership). >>>>>>>Claw back ALL the bonus money as unearned income (stealing). yes, I agree, we need government.
We just need government to not FAVOR their paid political cronies on Wall street.
If the market was LEFT ALONE, all the Banks would already be in receivership, and the financial regulation bill would only be about how to smoothly take over any company, like goldman, that made big bets on derivative, CDS, MBS, and all the financial schemes they dreamed up to skim the public.
Instead, the government intervened to save them, and destroyed the savings of the average
American.
OBAMA rails against them, then goes to have dinner with them and supports the very people (even in his cabinet) that created the financial “crisis”.
Left alone means NO more bailout. No more handouts. and NO more schemes to “save homeowners”. Free exchange between buyers and sellers will eventually sort all this out. Faster than most would believe possible. KILL off the ZOMBIES. Let the rest of the people go about their business.
Much better. Thank you.
“their interference has prolonged this downturn”
Evidence? This seems to me like an opinion that is based in ideology and not in fact. Note: I have no evidence to support the opposite contention.
If it has been prolonged, how long and how deep would it have been if other actions had been taken and what should those actions have been?
If no action had been taken, how long and how deep would it have been?
Were the actions that the Bush administration took in September and October 2008 sufficient? Laying the blame solely at the feet of the Obama administration is disingenuous.
It is entirely possible that we would have fallen to a much lower level than where we are now. And that we would be recovering at a faster rate, but still be at a lower level of economic activity now than if nothing had been done by the Obama administration.
It is also possible that we would still be in decline.
“Japan has been kicking the can for going on 30 years”
Japan has other problems, like lack of energy resources. In a world of expensive energy, they will struggle.
“Bring back the Wall of separation between investment/commercial banks”
Agreed. This was a key piece of the bubble and crash.
“Claw back ALL the bonus money as unearned income (stealing).”
Agreed. It may be difficult and it may be impossible to get all of it. But the threat of clawbacks would keep others from repeating the egregious mistakes of the bubble.
“We just need government to not FAVOR their paid political cronies on Wall street.”
Agreed.
“If the market was LEFT ALONE, all the Banks would already be in receivership”
They deserved to fail. I wonder how much angst there would be on talk radio about a government takeover of the banking system. And we might still be trying to unwind all of the derivatives and hedges.
“NO more bailout. No more handouts. and NO more schemes to “save homeowners”. “
Maybe. We could see house prices go into free fall. Do we let all of the states and municipalities fail when property tax revenues fall? I think the runup in prices was counter-productive to our ability to compete in the global economy. But a too rapid decrease could be bad, too.
Some regulations are needed and perfectly acceptable, my problem is progressives want a command and control system, the majority of Americans including myself do not. Our constitution prevents such a system, that is why the constitution is public enemy number one to the progressives.
Why don’t you progressives just tell us where the regulation ends? Cut to the chase, tell us your true intentions, how much of everyone’s life do you want to control? Bloomberg style? USSR style? Red Chinese style? Castro style?
Do you like America? Do you want to see us grow and prosper? Or do you think we grow and prosper at the expense of the rest of the world?
Progressives say we should follow the European Socialist model, but I will bet if we had everything in those systems today, progressives would be asking for more…They always want more.
As I have stated before, they spread their twisted politics anti-human destruction like a pandemic virus. They want a revolution of thought and a world without the United States of America and Israel.
“-progressives want a command and control system,
-the constitution is public enemy number one to the progressives.
-how much of everyone’s life do you want to control
-They always want more.
-they spread their twisted politics anti-human destruction
-a world without the United States of America and Israel.”
If they gave you an enema we could fit what was left of you in a matchbox.
Nice insult, I must have struck a nerve.
I don’t speak jive, go ahead and dispute one of my points. You and I both know it’s all true. The so called progressives have been outed and it’s just killing you.
Darn, I forgot to include the point about the global progressives aligning with radical islam, now there’s a match made in Allah’s heaven.
“Some regulations are needed and perfectly acceptable”
I am glad to hear it.
As you define progressives, I think you will find that there are no posters on this board that qualify.
Hey Dumminj….JT 2.0.1 doesn’t seem to work on firefox 14.0.1 thanks!!
OH what a storm the hail was quite bad surprised my car windows didn’t crack….i have full glass anyway.
Hey Dumminj….JT 2.0.1 doesn’t seem to work on firefox 14.0.1 thanks!!
Try this one
joshuatree_2_1.xpi
Obama Campaign Detectives Hunt for Foreclosed Florida Voters
By Hans Nichols - Jul 18, 2012 - Bloomberg
By day, Lynnette Acosta, a 34-year- old mother of two, is an information-technology manager in Orlando, Florida. By night, she’s a sleuth for President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, scouring for potential voters.
In central Florida, that means knocking on doors in Hispanic neighborhoods with foreclosure rates as high as 30 percent, where once-registered Democrats have been evicted, their homes now owned by the bank. Volunteers walk house-to- house to determine the number of empty homes per precinct, then look for contact information for voters who once lived in them.
As Obama confronts a housing crisis that he’s acknowledged underestimating, his campaign is facing a different kind of foreclosure problem on the streets of Florida and other battleground states, where evictions have left holes in its voter lists. Volunteers like Acosta are central to the campaign’s effort to populate its databases with current addresses and working phone numbers to get out the vote.
While Obama’s campaign works to find voters who have been forced from their homes, his administration has struggled to help homeowners who remain in theirs. A year ago, he said that his administration has “had to revamp our housing program several times.”
When Obama unveiled his first plan for the housing crisis at the outset of his presidency, about one in five borrowers owed more on their mortgages than their homes were worth. That number is essentially unchanged, with 24 percent of borrowers underwater in the first quarter of 2012, according to the real estate data firm CoreLogic Inc.
Home Construction
On Trotters Circle in Kissimmee, a block with boarded-up homes at each end, Obama needs the ballots of renters like Loida Montalvo to replace the Democrats who have lost their homes. Ten houses down from her four-bedroom, $1,000-a-month rambler, Bank of America has initiated foreclosure proceedings on a house that was registered to a Democratic primary voter, according to county records.
First, Obama organizers have to knock on her door. Then register her.
“My papers to vote haven’t come yet,” said the Cuba-born Montalvo, a 25-year-old student who became a citizen last July and said she’s unfamiliar with American voting procedures. “We are still waiting.”
While Obama’s campaign works to find voters who have been forced from their homes, his administration has struggled to help homeowners who remain in theirs. A year ago, he said that his administration has “had to revamp our housing program several times.”
I’m hearing through the grapevine that people aren’t flocking to these programs because they don’t trust them. Something about widespread publicity about banks repeatedly losing paperwork. Or asking for re-faxing of information that had previously been sent.
So much for the “free sh*t army”
Obama Campaign Detectives Hunt for Foreclosed Florida Voters
LOL. Talk about bottom feeders!
They hunt for foreclosed “victims”. When they find out the “victims” no longer live there, they note the names and addresses down. Then on election day, they substitute someone else to go vote straight “D”. Since there is no Vote ID requirement, anyone can pretend to be Joe “Foreclosed” Shmoe and vote.
Not unless they can forge the unknown “victim’s” signature (which is checked and cross checked before the vote is counted as valid) and the “victim” hasn’t registered to vote in another precinct, they can’t.
Do you ever let up with the blather?
You’re right. It’s impossible to forge a signature.
And it’s also impossible to request an absentee ballot using a forged signature. In fact there’s no voter fraud at all.
And the 82 year old precinct volunteer who checks signatures will undoubtedly check for 100% matches between signatures.
My bad, this is all above board for Obama and Co.
Let’s set aside the logistics and pure absurdity of anyone going to all the trouble to research and successfully forge someone else’s ballot, and ignore the fact that actual voter identity fraud is minimal-tonegligible (google it yourself) and consider the following:
It’s rather difficult to forge a signature of someone who’s signature you’ve never seen.
You can request all the absentee ballots you want, but they’re still going to be checked and cross checked against the county recorder’s records before a vote is counted as valid. Increasingly, the final determination is subjected to computer recognition ID and is still subject to individual challenge.
And yes, the 82-year-old volunteer county precinct worker (my mother, for example) does indeed perform one of the checks (in an open room with numerous witnesses who each have the option of challenging another’s determination). She takes her civic responsibility very seriously indeed– as do I.
Now, manipulation after the precinct tallies is another animal altogether. (See Diebold, Ohio Presidential tally of 2008, Florida, 2004, for recent egregious election fraud.) And yes, Kennedy was a cheater, too and bla bla bla)
Try volunteering yourself for the November election, Smithers. You’ll learn something. Contact the League of Women Voters for more information.
I’m gonna take Smither’s (aka Eddie’s) response as a “NO”…
Florida does have voter ID requirements. I’ve always had to present photo ID at the precincts where I vote. I don’t know if there have been enough lawsuits of late here to allow the “poor” greater “access” (meaning illegal alien fraud) to mandate ID-free registrations.
I know that the “latino” groups tend to get a pass on most law enforcement initiatives here, but I don’t think it’s hit the polling places, yet.
It will hit the polling places this year, I guarantee. Obama does not stand a chance without manufacturing votes, why else would Holder sue states requiring voters show ID?
That’s alot of goons…
————————
Unions Gain Under Citizens United Decision They Seek to Overturn
By William McQuillen - Jul 17, 2012 - Bloomberg
U.S. labor-union leaders are taking advantage of a Supreme Court ruling they are fighting to overturn in their drive to elect Democrats this year.
The AFL-CIO, the largest U.S. labor federation, will send more than 400,000 volunteers to campaign for President Barack Obama, aided by a decision known as Citizens United that removed limits on independent spending by corporations and unions.
Those unions are almost all public employees now. The executive class gained power. The political/union class gained power. The serfs lost.
Dude, your “goon” rhetoric is getting old. Real old.
He mixes it up for variety, on his 03:15:12 post they are “thugs”
So are you also a member of the “thug squad”?
When you mix a goon and a thug you get a gooth — a whole gooth, and nothing but a gooth. (And a silly one at that.)
The bendsquaud sayeth, “Forsooth”
How much of this was from taking out home equity loans and “liberating” that money…?
———————————
Housing Crisis Sees 1.5 Million Older Americans Lose Their Homes
By Neil Callanan - Jul 19, 2012 - Bloomberg
More than 1.5 million Americans aged 50 or more have lost their homes since the collapse of the housing market in 2007 as delinquency rates and foreclosures soar, according to advocacy group AARP.
About 3.5 million loans, or one in six to people in the age group, had balances that were higher than the value of the property being purchased as of December, according to a report by Lori Trawinksi for the Washington-based lobby.
“More older Americans are carrying mortgage debt than in the past, and the amount of that debt is also increasing,” Debra Whitman, AARP’s executive vice president for policy, said in a statement. “Their economic situation is worsening.”
…and how much of this is pensions being slashed and 401ks that got hammered and medical expenses?
I’d day most of them.
Unless you are a public union goon - you do not get to retire in your 50s.
And you can’t take out money from your 401k (without penalty) until age 59 1/2.
Medical expenses may have been a problem for some - but most people in their 50s have not hit the wall of health issues.
So all you silly liberal talking points (without any kind of sources or facts) are just that - silly.
Now let me talk about my serial refinancing neighbor - trips to Europe, new cars every 2-3 years, the best clothing, going to great restaurants 2-3 times a week and a gourmet kitchen (that they never use). All paid for by home equity loans.
They are in debt up to their eyeballs.
All those who live within their means are just fools.
Unless you are a public union goon - you do not get to retire in your 50s.
My mother was a public union goon. Of the school teacher variety. Matter of fact, she’s still a public union member. Of the retired status. And she retired at age 67, sweetie.
So, you wanna go to my mother and say to her what you just said here? I’m sure that will be a very interesting conversation.
They finally managed to kick my 2nd grade reading teacher out the door when she was in her 70’s. We were all terrified of her. And having to read a marginally age appropriate translation of The Odyssey didn’t help. I had nightmares of someone coming and poking my eyes out with a stick hardened in a fire (never understood how that really worked) for months.
Forget it Slim, for a reason unknown to us he has a chip on his shoulder. He’ll continue to froth at the mouth about “union goons” no matter what.
Pointing out real world facts to him won’t work, just like you can’t convince a Protestant Fundy that the world is more than 6000 years old.
They know the “truth” and any facts that contradict the “truth’ will be damned. In his make believe world all teachers make 100K and retire at 50 with 70K pensions. It doesn’t matter that stats show that teachers on average are lower paid than he claims and retire at a higher age. It doesn’t matter how many charts or tables you present to him demonstrating that his “truth” isn’t. He will either ignore them or simply say that they are lies, just like Fundies challenge the fossil records.
It’s best to deal with him they way we deal with the crazy aunt or uncle most of us know when they froth at the mouth: ignore him.
NOT defending the ‘goon’ label here, but my college roommate retired from teaching at age 52. I don’t know what her pension is. Her husband, also a teacher, had to wait until he was 61 to retire, because he started teaching later than she did.
Some unions are better than others. In our school district our new hires don’t even get pensions. Considering the sorry state PERA (our state employee retirement system) is in, they might be better off with the 403(b)s. PERA is estimate to be completely wiped out by around 2025.
My sister is a teacher. She makes about 40K and also doesn’t have a pension, just a 403(b).
In any case, anecdotes don’t make for a good argument, which is why we have to go by stats. Are there districts out there that pay teachers handsomely and retire them young? I’m sure there are. But the stats show that they aren’t the norm.
Well I know one teacher who retired as soon as she could, 51 or 55 whatever. And she was at a “good” school, too, but I think it was something about the Title I madness that is driving teachers away.
“Her husband, also a teacher, had to wait until he was 61 to retire, because he started teaching later than she did.”
Oh the poor dear.
Smithers, for once you and I are in agreement on something!
I see less of a problem with teachers and more of a problem with school administrators… they are the ones drawing down six figure salaries and receiving public employee benefits/pensions.
Same goes for police and fire. I have much respect for the fire department, not quite as much for the police. But, in my parents little town of 13,000, they are supporting the retirement of 4 fire chiefs, each of which is drawing down six figure pensions, not to mention multiple Police chiefs. Rarely does a police or fire union member stay working much past 50. Seems the way to go is put your 20 years in, then retire to collect a pension and move on to other things.
Sorry, but public service and duty are not and should not be the path to riches. Seems the public employee unions have become that path to riches, at least when it comes to “public safety” and “first responder” jobs.
Man. My non-union best friend gets to retire next year at 38 with full pension and health care for life.
But military is different?
That’s socialism for you.
My question is: How long did the fire chiefs need to serve as fire chief to get the pension of a fire chief?
I suspect much less time than we would think is reasonable.
One major flaw in Calpers (and I suspect other formulas) is that the pension is based on the last three years of service, not sum total of service.
So, you can be a minimum wage bottle washer for 27 years, and then be promoted to fire chief for the last three years of your career, and your pension is based on your three years as fire chief, and not at all on the bulk of your service and pay.
So all you silly liberal talking points (without any kind of sources or facts) are just that - silly.
Now let me talk about my serial refinancing neighbor…
LOL
Just gets better and better doesn’t it?
My inlaws were both govt “workers”.
Both retired at 58.
And now they complain that their govt provided health insurance costs too much. How much is too much? $175/month for both of them. Try getting a policy for under $1075 a month for 2 people in their early 60s, one of whom has chronic high blood pressure and the other one had skin cancer.
$175/month for both of them.
So wrong. Nobody should have affordable health care. $2-3K a month for everyone is way more fair.
Nobody should have affordable health care. $2-3K a month for everyone is way more fair.
It _would_ be way more fair if there were not such a huge disparity between what health coverage and health care (not the same thing) cost different people.
With those pre-existing conditions, no one should ever insure those two.
With those pre-existing conditions, no one should ever insure those two.
Yeah, who cares, let ‘em die.
Equity liberation seems to have led to lots of liberation of homeowners from the financial burden of homeownership.
Yes, it’s true. But after they “liberated” all that equity and spent it on consumer items (thereby stimulating the economy), they thought the house would continue to “pay them” for owning it.
When the payments stopped, they became victims.
They want to have their cake and eat it, too.
And the government panderers want to “help”.
Unfortunately for people like me, all my money is “tied up” in the house. It wants out, but I’ve got it under restraints.
Freedom! Freedom! cries the money in the house!!
We must be spent!……Let us get FREEEEEEE>>>>>>>>
Lesson for all homeowners in public union thug areas.
They will raise your taxes to cover the insane public union contracts.
They will not cut one penny of spending.
And in the end - they will go bankrupt anyways.
————————————————–
City of Compton may declare bankruptcy by September: officials
Ronald Grover and Jim Christie | Reuters - Jul 18, 2012
The City of Compton, a city of 93,000 people located on the outskirts of Los Angeles, must decide by September 1 whether to seek bankruptcy, according to its two most senior financial officials.
Compton, which has an accumulated $43 million deficit and has depleted what had been a $22 million reserve, will run out of cash to make its payroll on September 1 at its current cash consumption rate, city comptroller Steven Ajobiewe told the city council during a July 17 meeting.
Unlike San Bernardino, which has a large unfunded liability to pay its employees’ pensions, Compton years ago increased its property tax to fund its workers’ pension obligations, said Perrodin, and the retirement program is fully funded.
“Those other cities that went bankrupt all had huge pension liabilities that they couldn’t meet,” said the mayor. “Even so, we’re in pretty dire straits.”
If only those union thugs paid taxes as well!
Oh wait…
“Even so we are in pretty dire straits.”
That’s because you are Compton. The name “compton”, in jive, translates to “dire straits”.
A solution to the problems of Compton is to simply change the name a bit. A large chunk of Compton is now calling itself “East Rancho Dominguez”. Compton Blvd becomes Somerset Blvd as soon as it leaves Compton and enters the city of Paramount.
Compton, Carson, Hawthorne, Lomita, Maywood, Huntington Park, Cudahy, Dominguez, et al, the graffiti’s on the wall for consolidation. All these little gangster fiefdoms have sucked themselves dry, and their tax base has all-but collapsed.
As California goes bankrupt, township by township, it should be fascinating to see how it reassembles itself and where the new alliances conjoin. The State is like pre-Renaissance Italy these days….
To be more honest, government whores gave “benefits” to a small group of people that grossly over-consumed the incomes from their taxbase.
Additionally, for liberal California, they didn’t work to stop the flow of illegals into their state, so the working residents decided to vamanos.
That’s the result of government at work. Helping parasites take over their Cities and Towns, those awaiting their FREE Medical Care, housing, food, transportation, and whatever so-called “rights” they think they can conjure out of thin air.
The resolution will be warfare. Chaos. Governmental collapse.
Just as you predicted. Not from Leaving business alone, but from “managing” the decline of civilization….or more like managing the invasion..
Wonder what percentage of housing units are owned vs. leased or rented?
Dio,
Small neighborhoods and cities are a microcosm of our national political process. Folks with a grievance get together and form an influence group and choose someone to represent them. Power struggles ensue, elections are held, and one side wins and gets control of the spoils. Take it several orders of magnitude out and you end up with a national government.
Constantly readjusting the mix keeps the cronyism to a minimum. As does a well-educated electorate. That’s what’s happening now. California is readjusting its political mix and makeup to reflect a changing demographic.
Regulation is democracy in action.
“Regulation is democracy in action.”
We do not live in a Democracy.
Compton, which has an accumulated $43 million deficit and has depleted what had been a $22 million reserve, will run out of cash to make its payroll on September 1 at its current cash consumption rate, city comptroller Steven Ajobiewe told the city council during a July 17 meeting.
I thought Rodney King bequeathed Compton in his will?
I’ll bet he was down to the last dollar from his settlement.
He was on several tv shows of late.
Pool was pretty green -:)
“He was on several tv shows of late.”
It must have been gruesome shows. Rodney King died June 17, 2012.
If you buy a house today, you’ll be underwater tomorrow.
Prices are falling.
should We buy facebook instead?
Yes. Stocks and Houses are always a buy. They always go up.
A new twist on feed the squirrels.
Elle Zober describes herself as “scorned” and “slightly bitter.” And the recently divorced Oregon woman hopes those feelings of resentment will help her sell a house.
Local Fox affiliate KPTV reports that the For Sale sign in Zober’s front yard reads, “Husband left us for a 22-year-old. House for sale by scorned, slightly bitter, newly single owner.”
Zober even created a website for the house titled Great Family Home.
However, Zober is practicing some discretion in screening potential buyers; as the sign points out, “Adulterers need not apply.”
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/ex-wife-uses-story-cheating-former-husband-sell-221218162.html
“Local Fox affiliate KPTV reports that the For Sale sign in Zober’s front yard reads, “Husband left us for a 22-year-old. House for sale by scorned, slightly bitter, newly single owner.”
Oh Elle get over it. Don’t you get it! You just like a car and a house have what are called depreciating assets.
Not to Benjamin Franklin. Check out the “Old Mistress Apologue”.
I am sure the ex-hubby will be handed his balls back to him within a few years….probably on a silver platter delivered with a petition of dissolution from the 22 y.o. who will soon suffer from extreme disillusionment.
What goes around has a way of coming around. I have seen so many older men think with their little head and later….they get their big one decapitated.
Bill Lockyer (former State of CA Treasurer) is the lasted….
nice gimick. Now try lowering the price.
Ring-ring-ring
Hello
(Wah-wa-wah-wa)
What did you say?
(Wah-wa-wah-wa)
You are forgiving my principal?
(Wah-wa-wah-wa)
Did you say you wanted me to pay my mortgage? I`m sorry I didn`t hear that.
(Wah-wa-wah-wa)
You want me to move? I didn`t hear that either.
A comment about depreciation. The items in a house that have moving parts - furnace, sink handles, toilet guts - do depreciate, just like a car. The rest of the house, if well maintained, should hold up. There are plenty of 200 yr old houses to attest to this. The older lumber holds up better than the new stuff and can take a bit of abuse. OSB can’t - so maintenance is much more important on the new housing stock.
A car is nothing but moving parts. That’s why you see few over 30 years old unless they have caught the eye of a collector.
What you are calling depreciation in the high cost areas is simply the bubble deflating. Consider a house that cost $150K in flyover country and 600K in California. You probably have an extra 50K in permit costs, maybe an extra 10-30K in labor, the materials should cost the same but we’ll throw in an extra 10K for the suppliers overhead cost. Land cost? You’ll have to help me with this - an extra 50K?
So we are talking about 300K that is pure speculation.
So the houses in the high cost areas aren’t depreciating faster than the rest of the country - just the air is being let out of the bubble.
As for the rest of us - economic policies (inflation) may cause parts of a house to appreciate enough to offset the depriciation of parts that wear out. The rest of the formula is maintenance. Often times the decision whether to buy or not rests on how much you pay for maintenace. Can you do it yourself? Hire someone cheap? Pay through the nose? That is the variable in buy vs rent that isn’t discussed.
Nobody suggested geography has anything to do with depreciation. Manufactured materials depreciate regardless.
But there are many centuries-old houses.
…. and????
Just for the sake of clarity:
decay = house slowly turning to dust.
depreciation = is either the drop in value of something or the accounting process to expense a capital good over time
http://propex.com/C_g_cost.htm
Physical Depreciation
Wear and tear on the improvements - includes deferred maintenance (items needing immediate repair), short-lived components (furnaces, hot water heaters, roof, carpet, etc.), and long-lived components.
ALL houses depreciate like ALL manmade items.
Hmmm, I believe that I have seen many a perfectly preserved gold artifact in museums, every bit as bright as the day they were hand made, and now worth far, far more than the artisans who crafted them could have imagined.
It’s generally wise to avoid sweeping generalizations when trying to make a point.
Hmmm,
I believe I can cherrypick .00000000001% of all gold on the planet and make the case that it’s worth more than $1600/oz.
See how that works my flailing friend?
Oh, I see, all right. Just not what you want.
Okay, so you’ve established that when you say depreciation, you mean physical depreciation. Why then when someone is talking price do you respond with depreciation?
As previously noted, RAL et al has an uncanny knack of parsing generalizations and generalizing parsings without subjecting his own parsings and generalizations to the same scrutiny.
Semantic arguments applied selectively for the sake of ego. No point trying to engage him in any substantive discussions when he’s like this.
Again… flailing away at natural law will never change natural law. Ever. Whether you agree with it or not, natural law prevails.
See what I mean?
This is why we define our parameters in our initial arguments. Some actually take the time to digest them before jumping to a knee-jerk response.
Again Alena…. you’re not going to beat physical deterioration of any man made item. How many times and in how many ways must this be explained to you?
It really isn’t worth responding to any of his posts as he doesn’t make any effort to understand what others are saying. Thanks for the wake up call.
Nobody is interested in your realtor-esque twisting of the truth.
You know damn well all man made items depreciate. And we’ll be here daily to remind you.
See, some of us have backgrounds in finance and know that physical deterioration is different than depreciation. I can’t recall anyone saying that physical deterioration was a fallacy though a few pointed out that some building materials need less upkeep than others.
Your original rants that all man made things depreciate (that is a financial term) was refuted many times.
I’m glad you are starting to use the proper words to get your point across, but it would have worked better if you had gotten them right when you started.
Now Polly…. not one have you have refuted anything. To do so would be to disprove the 2nd law of thermodynamics. You can choose whatever word you like for depreciation but it’s not going to detract from the fact that ALL manmade and manufactured items depreciate ALWAYS.
As I recall, you have a physics background. You should should know better.
This thread has been particularly amusing to me inasmuch as I spent years as a research physicist (CIT-Keck) specializing in alternative propulsions. Keep digging that hole, boys, and flogging your assumptions here for the record.
In the physical realm as well as the metaphoric, false pride always good for some cheap laffs.
…. as well as you.
Nobody suggested geography has anything to do with depreciation
Talk to anyone who has a house close to the beach in San Francisco and they will disagree. The salt air and the fog corrode everything from cars to bicycles to windows and roofs.
Quit squealin’ and get your checkbook out and start writing..
Leased a house on the waterfront in Newport Beach in the ’80s.
Put up a 50′ TV antenna and rotor that allowed reception from San Diego to LA.
First two years felt like a King of Technology; Fifteen-minute storm in the third year rendered it a twisted pretzel.
Salt air aided in the decomposition, yet the wind at the time probably reached 50 to 70 mph.
“The rest of the house, if well maintained, should hold up. There are plenty of 200 yr old houses to attest to this.”
200 yr old houses contain no Chinese drywall. And the only way to keep a house ‘well maintained’ is to fork out the buckaroos to cover the cost of maintenance.
There still is no such thing as a free lunch, especially as regards maintaining an overvalued money pit.
200 yr old houses contain no Chinese drywall.
That was his point about older houses being sturdier. Having lived in 200-year-old housing, I can attest to this.
It depends on the house.
The only reason we think that houses from 200 years ago were well-built is because we only see the ones that are still standing. Anything NOT well built has already fallen down.
Darn that selection bias.
Don’t kid yourselves about old houses. Those things rot just as well as new ones.
So if you buy an old house, you’re benefiting from that process of selection. There are no poorly built 200 year old houses left standing. But there are plenty of POS new ones. Pretty much all of them, matter of fact.
“That was his point about older houses being sturdier.”
There is selectivity bias in the data. The houses built today which still exist 200 years from now will prove sturdier as well.
200-year-old houses contain no drywall at all. Reflecting why they’re 200-year-old houses.
Then strip the gypboard out of your house so it will help it endure 200 years of depreciation.
” Often times the decision whether to buy or not rests on how much you pay for maintenace. Can you do it yourself? Hire someone cheap? Pay through the nose? That is the variable in buy vs rent that isn’t discussed.”
For me, after you add up all these variables of cost the final decision comes down to life style. Some like Polly are happiest in the city surrounded by lots of people while I was happy as a kid growing up in Ridgecrest (in the Mojave desert) free to roam and ride horses and mc’s. I love and need space. Others prefer to travel, go to musical events, sporting events while my traveling would be hiking high in the sierras. Only two of the fifty states I haven’t visited yet (SDak/Alaska).
Land cost? You’ll have to help me with this - an extra 50K?”
Way more than that. Consider a city that is built out no more permits to build.
In Ventura Co. they have SOAR voters vote on any new building if it impacts farm land.
usually they vote no as in we got ours so pay up or move along
if there is a new development it gets taxed with mello Roos and every other tax City managers can think of.
I think rich people live in high cost areas maybe even CEO’s of big building companies and they know how to protect their own turf while over building the s^&t out of Phoenix and other lower cost areas. At the same time deriding any low growth ideas as un- American and government interference.
Land cost depends entirely on where you are. In places like CA, the difference between land cost along the coast and inland varies widely, and you are correct, in Ventura, the public needing to vote in order to change zoning is a HUGE impediment to adding new supply to the market. Combined with the fact that it’s a pretty nice place to live, this drives up the price of land entitled for more housing there considerably.
Take locales farther inland, with fewer restrictions on growth…today, land is still virtually free.
And the hypocrisy of NIMBYism drives me nuts. People frequently complain about the high cost of everything along the coasts (which in part is driven by difficulty in finding cheap labor, since inexpensive housing is a rarity, and gas is expensive). However, they don’t see the connection between that and their City Council (who they support) continually voting down 140 unit apartment complexes, in favor of 28 unit luxury condominium projects. You end up with more wealthy people living in nice areas, and fewer people able to live there who provide the services.
On a partially related note, there was an article in the local Palo Alto rag outlining the ticking time bomb that is the Palo Alto pension costs. Here is the link…http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=26088.
No one is safe when you have assumed 7.75% returns on pension funds, in a 4-5% return world.
Take locales farther inland, with fewer restrictions on growth…today, land is still virtually free.
It’s good to see you being honest about something.
It’s good to see you being honest about something.
Wow, you two agreed on something???
Yet where we disagree is where land values are likely going. While the restrictions on land development in inland CA are less than the coasts, they are still more significant than other states, and as such, I don’t believe that land entitled for residential construction will remain virtually free even in inland California. This will make it difficult for builders to add cheap supply regardless of low construction costs (I also agree with RAL that the hard costs to build basic new homes is in the ~$40 per square foot range on top of a site ready to build–it’s the land, sitework and permitting costs that drive costs higher).
In Inland CA, going back to 1984, land values today are at ~60% or more below the next lowest NOMINAL low (per the Lincoln Land Institute numbers from Sacramento and San Bernardino regions).
People talk about housing values back to 2002 or 2003 levels on a nominal basis as a good start.
Land values in these two regions are significantly (more than 60%) below 1984 levels on a nominal basis.
It was the same story in Phoenix, where restrictions on growth are even lesser than Inland California (with likewise, land values reaching far below nominal lows going back to 1984, when the Lincoln Institute data begins). According to the Lincoln Institute, land values in Phoenix roughly doubled from Q4 2011 to Q1 2012, and are still less than half of the prior NOMINAL low.
Again, I’m talking about NOMINAL figures here. If you adjust any of this for inflation, it makes today’s land values look low in an almost absurd way, like 78% below the next-most LOWEST inflation adjusted land value going back to 1984 in the case of the Sacramento Region, and 82% below the next-most LOWEST inflation adjusted land value going back to 1984 in the case of the San Bernardino Region.
Land values are cyclical, and being anywhere close to 80% below prior cycle lows is remarkable. Even a tiny partial reversion to the mean will be a huge move in land prices.
P.S. Now RAL can call me a liar, so we can set things back right with the world. LOL.
“Yet where we disagree is where land values are likely going.”
“Likely” going? What a way obfuscate.
Land prices are inflated and falling. They’re “likely” to be lower when they’re falling.
Ah there we go.
What obfuscation?
I shared a data source that goes back 25+ years that show that land values are, by any measure, VERY low in Inland California. You seemed to agree with me that in Inland locations, land is “virtually free” today. The data supports this.
For items with utility (ie. not tulip bulbs):
Prices that are historically very low tend to rise;
Prices that are historically very high tend to fall.
The data shows that values are historically very low. Therefore, I believe that prices are likely (ie. a high probability) to rise from current levels over the next few years.
What I presented is not confusing. If you disagree with me? Fine. Then you must believe that “it’s different this time” with respect to land prices in Inland California. It’s certainly not a bet that I would make. Not by a long shot.
Who cares about “land values”. Land prices are $500/acre because that’s all its worth. They’re not “very low”. That’s your opinion.
Here we go again.
Anyone who cares about home prices SHOULD care about land prices. If you don’t (care about land prices), then you don’t understand housing economics.
My statement of FACT is that land values are VERY low relative to the past 25+ years of history, according to the data compiled by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.
You can dispute Lincoln’s data and methodologies, and try to debunk the numbers, but you cannot dispute the FACT that $18,584 (their NOMINAL value estimate for a lot in the Sacramento Region in Q1 2012) is less than $46,625 (their NOMINAL value estimate for a lot in the Sacramento Region in Q4 1984–the lowest number in their 25+ year history for that region until the most recent downturn).
http://www.lincolninst.edu/subcenters/land-values/metro-area-land-prices.asp
Nobody cares that YOU think they’re low. The FACT is they were never worth the inflated prices in the first place or they’ve would have fallen.
And if you think they’re low now, you’re going to be stunned over the coming years and decades.
We sold a 50’s model home on the coast in 2004. A rat infested, moldy, root ridden, roof needing, termite bitten, flea infested roach motel. Of course that is sugar coating it. Hey someone wanted it for 860k so we braised over these issues, even tented it, and shot pesticides into the foundation through the floor and paid 10k for haz mat to rid a few areas from toxic mold. The new owners spruced it up a bit to the tune of 300k, if our old neighbor is to be believed. New driveway, fences, roof, landscaping. did not affect the value one bit as appraisors just tell you what the price per square foot is for the area, not based so much on the condition of the home. It resold for 860k and is likely “worth” 500k now.
I see one on the same street for 383k. Still $300/sq foot. Still 3x overpriced and it has been on the market a year. Over 4600 page views on Trulia. But at least it is not a foreclosure….yet.
SO many foreclosures if you look on Trulia in Goleta, CA. Not everyone got the memo to liquidate in 2005, I guess. The whole industry is corrupt and true price discovery is a long way off, IMO.
The whole industry is as shady as ever and I doubt fair market value is a myth. When we bought the CA house in 1995 the owners had panelled a wall to hide the water wicking up the wall. the inspectors missed that and so did we; but we aren’t mad simply because we were not left holding the bag; a greater fool bought it. Had we known the truth we would not have bought it and missed out on an opportunity of a lifetime.
Sure it is worth a premium to live on the coast; but not everyone can afford a POS money pit near the sand. But at least it does not still cost a cool million to buy anywhere in CA 2 miles from the beach.
I am happy I moved to OR and people fleeing CA and its unaffordability issues should keep our market propped up; not too many places that seem liveable where a 100k house sounds cheap. Locals say we have been Californicated. I resemble that statement but yet others are sure to follow.
Living on the beach– as I’m sure you’ll agree, mikey– is vastly overrated. Unless you’re on a private cove with natural barriers to the mean high tide line, you get tourists — and with them their noise, crime, and mounds of trash in your front yard every Monday morning. The damp sea air ruins your plantings, your paintings, molds all your leather shoes, books, furniture, harness work, and wreaks havoc on any musical instruments you may keep in the house. Those expensive floor-to-ceiling windows you always see in the architectural ads take on a permanent patina of salt and are soon pitted and clouded by blowing sand. Ditto your deck furniture.
Then there is the relentless noise and shaking from the pounding surf. It’s vaguely soothing for the first few years, then at some point it just becomes maddening. Oh, and just try pulling a permit to get your seawall repaired along the California Coastal Commission’s jurisdiction.
Sand erodes with the tides. Nice HOA assessments to truck in more to replace it, and gods help you if you need to dredge the bay. Best of all is when it rains and well, the city’s sewage containment issues take on a whole new dimension.
Hey, but at least it’s obscenely expensive….
Sounds like it’s time to someone else who will find it soothing for a few years.
That life is long gone, Carl.
I always figure you should look at housing on a dark and stormy night before making a final decision. Even if you don’t live on the shore, do you really want to be driving that dark, rural road in the rain when your night vision declines?
A typical modern house built with stucco and tile on the roof will cost less than $1500/year to maintain. I typically invest about $200/year for the ones I own, strictly materials, since I do all the labor myself.
Considering we clear about $250/mon in cash flow/house, and pay down about $250/mon in principal reduction, I can tell you the maintenance factor is no big deal.
In the next 10-years, for our 10 houses, I will have invest about $20,000, maybe, $30,000 in maintenance (exclusive of re-tenanting costs, which run about $350/turnover). In the meantime, I will have collected over $300,000 in cash flow (exclusive on any rent increases) and my principal balance will have been reduced by another $300,000 (actually $480,000, considering amortization and increased principal payments).
This example does not provide for any appreciation in value, even though last month, Zillow said 8 of the houses increased by a total of $50,000.
All this talk about “depreciation” and the “second law of thermodynamics” is just a bunch of hot air moving toward a cooler mass (definition of the law).
Housing can be a stellar investment. It is working very well for me.
Since I sold the old shack to let someone else catch up on maintaining it, I purchased a 117k new shack. Only maintainance in 2 years was a $100 for a furnace switch and $400 one time landscaping fee (tenant maintains own yard quite nicely. But I paid voluntarily for edging, backflow testing, fertilization, aeration, etc this year) and $100 for wood chips. So 1k or 1/2% per year; Plus $3500 in prop taxes plus 1k in fire ins. $ 5500 out/20k in.
15k net profit on 117k investment thus far over two years.
6.5% return, yay. The money was in a CD earning 1/10th of that
Tenant screening is key, though. Students suck but will tolerate quite icky surroundings. Made money slumlording until selling just had to happen. Never likely to buy in CA ever again.
Here in OR I have a tenant that does not ever want to leave; and wants to buy the place next year if it works out we may do it.
“Only maintainance in 2 years was a $100 for a furnace switch”
Did you set aside 10% of the price of a new boiler or furnace that depreciated during the year? How about 5% the cost of a new roof that depreciated this year? Or 10% of the cost of new asphalt that depreciated this year? Or maybe 10% of the cost of new interior finish systems that depreciated this year?
Set aside, no, but I could swing a pricy fix. But only because I have three paid for vehicles and could sell one without missing it. Also could tap $20k unused credit that is set at 0% for 12 months. Your point is valid. I am too poor to own a house outright.
We will likely sell next year, and almost did this year. Leaving maintaining the big stuff to other folk. As we are…house rich cash poor. But if it was built in 2006, the roof should be good for awhile yet. And the hot water heater, albeit not as long as the roof.Thanks for the reminder that repairs are costly and strike in an order not of my choosing.
Right now the competition for our home is a 1000sq ft 1978 vintage home priced at $134,000. And our house is not located next to the cement plant, it is in a nice manicured subdivision.
At least we only own one home and screening tenants is not something I need to do often. 10 homes I would go crazy trying to collect rent/screen tenants, and through sheer numbers jingle will get hit by one of the doozies soon to be sure.
I do not have a mortgage; planning on selling using clear title as leverage against the scum competition. Some buyers may like to make an offer where the decision is not contingent directly on the cooperation of the bank. And offer a quick close, no hassles buying experience.
People are sick and tired competing for starter homes; and the amazing lack of expediency on the bank’s part selling as-is junk. Or people under water that can not sell unless they see some appreciation. I’ll be having some competive advantage IMO.
Hey Jinglemale,
Glad to hear you are landlording ‘professionally’ and are cash flow positive. The biggest challenge is to get a realistic view on what your expenses are and not depending on the phantom appreciation to bail you out from under an alligator.
May i ask if you are using a management service to handle the tenant screening and maintenance calls or do the tenants have your direct number on speed dial. Seems like managing 10 properties will be a full time job in itself.
Any time a resident needs anything, they call me direct. No management company. I get about 6 calls a year. The average occupuancy is 99.55% over the last 5 years (yes, no house has been vacant longer than 6 days) and the average stay for existing residents is over 2.5 years and growing (some houses I have not owned that long.)
I don’t run credit reports. I show up on short notice at the prospects house (”Hey, I am in the area, do you mind if I stop by with the draft lease?”). I sit at their kitchen table, call all their references, meet their children, spouses, pets and in-laws. If they pass muster, I give them the lease.
If you get good people into the properties and serve them well, they like to stay and problems are minimal. I never raise rents on people in place.
Landlording is easier when markets are relatively tight and you have a quality asset.
When my wife and I were renting, I reminded her that given the demand in the area (a quick walk to a nice small downtown), the landlord didn’t NEED to rent to us if we were a pain in the *ss. To rent the house in the first place, we answered the Craigslist ad the same day, by 10:00am, and were still 2nd in line.
Ultimately, the approach we took was to be a painless tenant, and it paid off…he raised our rent only apologetically a cumulative total of 10% over a 7 year period. When we moved out, he raised the rent by 30%, and the house rented in a day.
RW, this is the perfect example of a cooperative spirit. That is the first thing I look for in a prospective resident. I have one couple who have rented from me since 1993. They property is out of town and they do everything. The rent is 8% above where it started in about 40% below market. I am quite pleased with the situation and so are they.
Jingle,
You seem quite happy with your situation and I wish you the best of luck with your plan, but there is a certain uncharacteristic Pollyannaism to your crowing of late. What are your contingency plans for the inevitable glitches in the machinery? (Outside the obvious likelihood that housing values in your area will tank when CalPERS goes down.)
Over that ten year period have you accounted for the cost of:
Re-carpeting 10 houses
Repainting ten interiors
Re-landscaping 10 exteriors/replacing watering systems
Ten new refrigerators and water heaters
A reasonable chance one of your ten houses will suffer:
-major pet/child/angry spouse damage to interior walls and flooring
-water damage to interior from appliance malfunction/unexpected freezing
-plumbing and/or electrical failure
-broken windows
-major liability incident
-major assessments in the HOA where they’re located
etc.
What happens if you’re laid up and can’t do the repairs yourself?
And I hope you aren’t counting on your insurance company fully indemnify you if:
-Levees break and you have no water for six months.
-Earthquake damage leaves you with $50,000 deductible/house
-Fire damage (notoriously not fully covered for replacement costs)
For starters….
That said, I’m thinking you’ve a much better chance of making this happen than most of us– me certainly! Seems like it would be similar to having ten kids running around underfoot all the time, but I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on landlording as you go about it.
Hi AHansen, yes there are risks and you have outlined many.
A wrecked house is the most likely and we had one a few years ago. It happened to be my wife’s home from before we were married and when I took her thru the mess, she cried hysterically for 30 minutes. We invested 5 weekends and a month of weeknights working to clean it up. When it was done, she was quite happy, as the place looked better than when she lived there. It cost $3500 in materials. We kept the $2500 deposit, so for a 3-year tenant, it cost $1000 (excluding my labor). We started working on the place 15 days before the lease was up and finished 15 days on the other side, just in time for “Monk” type resident to move in. We raised the rent by $150/mon.
Let see, what else did you mention:
I buy refriderators for $450 or less, w split doors & icemakers on CL.
I have no advertising costs…thank you Craig!
I have replaced two water heaters at $200 each. I buy washer dryer combos for $250 or so if the resident wants them. If they bring their own, I re-sell the set on CL.
My nephew is an electricion. My sister is a plumber.
Most of my houses are brand new, purchased by flippers, and never lived in from 2006-2009 until I bought then on a short sale, auction or from the bank.
All my houses have equity, cash flow and have fixed rate 30-year mortgages. I don’t have a pension, so this is what I will use to support myself in retirement (5-10 years from now).
If I get laid up, I will have to go to management and maintenance, which changes the game a bit. However, I can sell a single house any time I want and raise money. And I purchased most of these homes at below replacement cost. The value of 2 homes is below what I paid by $100,000 (late 2007), but the value on others is up by $100,000. If values go up great, but in the meantime, I am paying off principle at a big whack each month.
I wanted to execute this very game plan in 1996, the last time it made sense, but I was an FB, having bought at the top in 1990 and had no money.
This time, I was prepared and with the help of this blog and others like it, I saw it coming. I saved for 5 years to make this happen.
Who knows if it will work out. But I am well diversified with other assets and these rentals are something I can directly influence. Not true with the stock market or government. People always need a place to live.
I will continue to post from time to time. As you know, I always tell it like it is and if it gets painful, I will let you know that too. I am a bit concerned with the latest economic news, but if any of the houses turn over, rents will increase by about $200/house above the 2009-10 rents. That will help.
“And I purchased most of these homes at below replacement cost.”
Really? And what is “replacement cost”?
You freely admit you’re being bled dry by maintenance costs yet depreciation is a hot air?
It’ doesn’t get any more clueless than that.
Enjoy your “stellar” investment. lmao.
I don’t know what you are laughing about. The man was honest and presented a scenario that seems pretty good. He is willing and able to work on his houses and has a good chance of doing well with his investment.
Fecaltime!
Good call Fecal. RAL has to laugh his ass off, because that is all he has…..his own ass.
On yesterday’s farmland discussion: Yeah, I’m probably ignorant about the tax laws, but I was not trying to confiscate farmland from family farmers. Polly and I were bouncing around ideas as to how to arrange the estate tax laws to save that land for small farming. Maybe the $5M exclusion is not enough. Maybe small small farmland could have a different formula for valuation. There are a variety of ways to do it.
The problem is basing the special treatment on what land USED to be used for before the owner died. IF you decide to give special treatment to family farmers (and I don’t see any reason to do that for a family farmer growing GMO corn and soybeans), it should be based on what they are doing with the land right now. There are a variety of ways to do that with respect to the estate tax (holding it in abeyance or only requiring a small portion to be paid each year as long as the preferred activity is actually taking place are examples) but you have zero way to get that preferred activity going forward when you base your decision on previous behavior.
You know, like giving banks a bailout based on previous behavior and then expecting them to voluntarily stop doing overly risky things going forward.
I received some pro-farm comments late yesterday and I was trying to clarify.
I was just clarifying the incentives I considered appropriate. I was at a concert last night and didn’t re-read the bits bucket when I got home.
You can’t buy a working farm and make a living wage/profit for less than $5 million?
There is a lot of BS flying around about “preserving farmland” and around here it’s mainly about keeping hay fields from being developed by getting the owners to grant a conservation easement. It guess it’s a good deal, but I don’t understand what happens if the heirs don’t want to keep it in hay. What if they want to dump the property? The next owner would be bound by the easement, and it would reduce the value.
I suspect most our longtime farm families expect to sell to subdividers at some point and may borrow against the land with that in the back of their mind.
That’s gotta be on the back of the minds of anybody living on 40k/yr trying to farm on land that could be sold for millions. I think farm families just don’t like being told they have to liquidate in the same year they’re mourning the loss of the parent(s). But that doesn’t mean the generations coming up aren’t looking forward to eventually cashing out.
Unforgettable Lyrics Nat King Cole
Unfinanceable
That’s what you are,
Unfinanceable
They repoed your car.
Like the Bubble that you couldn`t see,
Not one house but you bought two or three.
Never before
Has someone been more…
Unfinanceable
In every way,
And forever more
That’s how you’ll stay.
That’s why, Deadbeat, it’s incredible
That someone so Unfinanceable
Thinks that I am
Unfinanceable , too.
[interlude]
Unfinanceable
In every way,
And forever more
That’s how you’ll stay.
That’s why, Deadbeat, it’s incredible
That someone so Unfinanceable
Thinks that I am
Unfinanceable , too.
Okay, now that’s just too awesome right there!
That’s sweet. Back in the day I enjoyed playing that tune in a backup orchestra for Natalie Cole.
OMG. I just choked on my ice water. That’s so clean….
This sounds awesome!
Bloomberg News
Libor Could Unleash Wall St. Feeding Frenzy
By Donal Griffin on July 19, 2012
Wall Street, grappling with mounting regulatory probes and investor claims over alleged interest-rate manipulation, may face yet another formidable foe: Itself.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley are among financial firms that may bring lawsuits against their biggest rivals as regulators on three continents examine whether other banks manipulated the London interbank offered rate, known as Libor, said Bradley Hintz, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Even if Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley forgo claims on their own behalf, they oversee money-market funds that may be required to pursue restitution for injured clients, he said.
Because Libor is based on submissions from only some of the world’s largest banks, the probes threaten to pit firms uninvolved in setting the rate against any implicated in its manipulation, Hintz said. Libor serves as a benchmark for at least $360 trillion in securities.
“This will be a feeding frenzy of sharks,” said Hintz, who has served as treasurer of Morgan Stanley and chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. “We’re going to have Wall Street suing Wall Street.”
…
Sweet!
What would sound “awesome” is the CEOs of these companies in jail for fraud, market manipulation and collusion.
But jail is for the “little people”
“This will be a feeding frenzy of sharks,” said Hintz, who has served as treasurer of Morgan Stanley and chief financial officer of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. “We’re going to have Wall Street suing Wall Street.”
A grinning Slim is at the mixing board. She cues up the “Jaws” theme on CD channel 2…
“We’re going to have Wall Street suing Wall Street.”
Palmy kneels and prays to the heavens with outstretched hands. “Oh, please, oh, please, OH PLEASE!!!!!!!!”
Lawyer full empoyment scandal - maybe my friend can get some work out of it and manage to make mortgage payments for a while longer.
“Lawyer full empoyment scandal”
That would be awesome! Ride that pony until it collapses. Might there be some tasty class action stuff here?
I think most of the stuff with class action potential goes in the other direction - keeping interest rates down helped people with mortgages or credit card debt tied to LIBOR. A lot of the people earning interest tied to LIBOR are customers of places that will sue on their behalf as indicated in the article - “Even if Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley forgo claims on their own behalf, they oversee money-market funds that may be required to pursue restitution for injured clients, he said.”
There might be some who earned intrest at lower ratesand aren’t covered by other suit and a class action might come together for them, but, my guess is it won’t happen mostly in class actions.
Wall St. suing Wall St.?
That’s even better than the day Wells-Fargo sued Wells-Fargo a few years back in Florida!
Florida. Why does the weird stuff always happen in frekin’ Flor i da. To be honest, when I visited the Keys a couple years back I was deathly afraid that I would be hit with a natural disaster, or worse, or media circus.
I could only wish they were real sharks and they were tearing flesh loose on all the Banksters. A real feeding frenzy could only be a good thing.
Obvious solution to this problem: Break up Megabank, Inc into small, non systemically-risky pieces to limit potential collusion by banking whales, then prosecute the hell out of anyone caught committing fraud.
Deutsche Bank, HSBC Traders Investigated in Libor Probe
By Lindsay Fortado and Joshua Gallu - Jul 19, 2012 4:51 AM PT
Traders at Deutsche Bank AG (DBK), HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Societe Generale SA (GLE) and Credit Agricole SA (ACA) are under investigation for interest-rate manipulation in a global probe that led to a record fine for Barclays Plc (BARC) last month, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
Regulators are examining the possible roles of Michael Zrihen at Credit Agricole, Didier Sander at HSBC and Christian Bittar at Deutsche Bank, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the probe is continuing. Investigators are focusing on their links to Philippe Moryoussef, an ex-trader at Barclays, which was fined $451 million for rigging the euro and London interbank offered rates, the person said.
Barclays employees tried to manipulate Euribor and Libor for profit, while managers instructed rate-setters to make artificially low submissions to avoid the perception the lender was under stress amid turmoil in credit markets in 2007 and 2008. At least a dozen banks are being probed by regulators worldwide for rigging the rate, and regulators from Stockholm to Seoul are re-examining how benchmark rates are set amid concern they are just as vulnerable to manipulation as Libor.
“We are starting to see a whole heap of ‘me too’ style investigations and possible reappraisals of how indexes of all sorts are set,” said Bob Penn, partner at law firm Allen & Overy LLP in London. “Wherever there’s a market that’s not sufficiently liquid and not sufficiently transparent for daily pricing to be observable, you have this problem.”
…
HSBC? No way!
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2012/0719/HSBC-money-laundering-Bank-vows-fixes.-Senators-doubtful
“Wherever there’s a market that’s not sufficiently liquid and not sufficiently transparent for daily pricing to be observable, you have this problem.”
That’s unpossible! The free market is supposed to police itself with the invisible hand of something or other!
(I have yet to figure out something invisible is supposed to help anything. it seems to be an oxymoron)
who hasnt been investigated in the libor probe? Is this another distraction?
“Obvious solution to this problem: Break up Megabank, Inc into small, non systemically-risky pieces to limit potential collusion by banking whales, then prosecute the hell out of anyone caught committing fraud.”
though this will never happen, since it would end the stealing game that currently goes on with the bankster class, it is exactly what should have happened when the were writing the DODD- FRANK bill.
Based on the sponsors of the bill, we knew it would be one of those….we need to “pass the bill so you can know what is in the bill”>
Just a couple of days back a Canadian newspaper article appeared here comparing average 2011 net worths in U.S. and Canadian households, suggesting both to be somewhere north of $300K.
How do those figures square with the information in the article posted below?
Are Millennials the Screwed Generation?
Jul 16, 2012 1:00 AM EDT
‘Boomer America’ never had it so good. As a result, today’s young Americans have never had it so bad.
…
How has this generation been screwed? Let’s count the ways, starting with the economy. No generation has suffered more from the Great Recession than the young. Median net worth of people under 35, according to the U.S. Census, fell 37 percent between 2005 and 2010; those over 65 took only a 13 percent hit.
The wealth gap today between younger and older Americans now stands as the widest on record. The median net worth of households headed by someone 65 or older is $170,494, 42 percent higher than in 1984, while the median net worth for younger-age households is $3,662, down 68 percent from a quarter century ago, according to an analysis by the Pew Research Center.
…
The “full faith” clause mean they just got stuck with the bill from out of control government spending and insane public unions.
———————————————
The screwed generation also enters adulthood loaded down by a mountain of boomer- and senior-incurred debt—debt that spirals ever more out of control. The public debt constitutes a toxic legacy handed over to offspring who will have to pay it off in at least three ways: through higher taxes, less infrastructure and social spending, and, fatefully, the prospect of painfully slow growth for the foreseeable future.
In the United States, the boomers’ bill has risen to about $50,000 a person. In Japan, the red ink for the next generation comes in at more than $95,000 a person. One nasty solution to pay for this growing debt is to tax workers and consumers. Both Germany and Japan, which appears about to double its VAT rate, have been exploring new taxes to pay for the pensions of the boomers.
The huge public-employee pensions now driving many states and cities—most recently Stockton, Calif.—toward the netherworld of bankruptcy represent an extreme case of intergenerational transfer from young to old. It’s a thoroughly rigged boomer game, providing guaranteed generous benefits to older public workers while handing the financial upper echelon a “Wall Street boondoggle” (to quote analyst Walter Russell Mead).
Ask a 25 year old today when the last meal they cooked at home was (if ever). Wellyou eat out every night, spend $6 on a cup of coffee every day and buy a new $700 iPad every year, it’s hard to accumulate much wealth.
Because it’s you:
I just asked seven of them via Facebook (aged 24-28, m&f) and every one of them said “last night” or “does oatmeal count?” Only three even drink coffee and the couple grinds grocery store beans at home and makes it in a cheap Mr. Coffee. The other drinks the free cafeteria bilge at the hospital where he’s interning. All have laptops but only one has an iPad. Five of seven have smart phones, none new. The other two have what one described as a “special” phone. (IE: It’s not smart.) Interestingly, none has a landline in their name.
None is currently accumulating wealth, although two are modestly invested in securities. They’re all acutely aware of their dwindling financial options and only one has what I would call an extravagant lifestyle (he spends his workman’s wages on nightclubs and lives off his meager writing royalties– when he gets them.)
YMMV, but this is my anecdotal offering to your strawman insinuations.
“YMMV, but this is my anecdotal offering to your strawman insinuations.”
I thought his point was valid, people do spend too much at
Starbucks, IHOP, or wherever they get their food and coffee. Your anecdotal evidence is no doubt real, but I can offer observations to counter them. One of them being my first wife. You don’t have to be a good cook to eat well (and very cheaply) at home. I guess if you’re single and trying to impress someone, then you might need to spend some money about town a bit. As luck would have it, I actually impressed my former girlfriend, present-day wife, with how cheap I am. No joke. But she has started to complain that we don’t go out enough. Guess I’ll have to bite the bullet every now and then.
You are obviously a good husband. Take her out! Once a month whether you need “it” or not.
Yesterday’s bullish news on U.S. housing suddenly seems like a fading memory.
July 19, 2012, 10:00 a.m. EDT
June existing-home sales drop 5.4% to 4.37 million
By Steve Goldstein
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Sales of existing homes in June fell 5.4%, a decline that goes against the grain of more positive indicators from the housing market and one a trade group on Thursday blamed on foreclosure delays and tough mortgage availability. The National Association of Realtors said June sales were at a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 4.37 million, vs. an upwardly revised 4.62 million in May. Economists polled by MarketWatch had anticipated a 4.65 million annual rate. Year-over-year, sales rose 4.5%, the 12th straight year-on-year gain. The NAR initially reported a 4.55 million rate for May. Inventories fell 3.2% to 2.39 million units. That corresponds to 6.6 months of supply at current sales rate, up from 6.4 months in May. Median prices jumped for a third month, rising 7.9% from year-ago levels to $189,400. This is due to the mix of homes being sold, rather than re-sale price. CoreLogic, for instance, reported that re-sale prices were up 2% year-on-year.
…
Most homes are still getting multiple offers in my neck of the woods, NW Phoenix. I know because I’m watching daily. Anything worth looking at get’s snapped up right away.
I guess people are in a hurry to catch a falling knife.
Low inventory…makes the weak go into panic mode. Sucks to be them.
Real Estate
Oops! Existing Home Sales Fall
By Peter Coy on July 19, 2012
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, a fin appears offshore. The National Association of Realtors reported Thursday that sales of previously owned homes fell 5.4 percent in June to an eight-month low, interrupting a string of favorable reports on the housing market.
It’s bad news, all right, and does somewhat undermine the case for a housing recovery. But it does not mean that all the positive reports on housing, detailed by my colleague Matthew Phillips in a story called “Is Housing Back from the Dead?,” are wrong.
Two things to keep in mind: Existing-home sales numbers are volatile, so it’s risky to read too much into one data point. For example, one reason the June number was down so much is that the May number against which it was compared was revised upward.
Second, the drop is partly a function of lack of supply rather than weak demand from buyers. The National Association of Realtors says there was a big drop in the number of units put on the market via foreclosures and short sales. “Buyer interest remains solid,” the agents’ group says in a news release. The problem, it says, is that “inventory continues to shrink and that is limiting buying opportunities.”
Lawrence Yun, the Realtors’ chief economist, predicted that “the distressed portion of the market will further diminish because the number of seriously delinquent mortgages has been falling.” The Mortgage Bankers Association said in May that the delinquency rate fell in the first quarter from the last quarter of 2011. To be specific, total inventories of homes for sale were down 24 percent in June from a year ago, notes High Frequency Economics’ chief U.S. economist, Jim O’Sullivan.
Still, the 5.4 percent seasonally adjusted drop from May was a big miss. Economists had been expecting sales to increase around 1.5 percent.
…
It’s like the hokey cokey; it’s up it’s down it’s shake it all about
Spain’s benchmark 10-year bond yields climbed above the 7 per cent mark once more as Madrid’s borrowing costs surged at a poorly covered €3bn bond auction, exacerbating concerns that the country may be forced to seek more help from its eurozone neighbours.
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the hokey cokey
Hmmm, that gives me an idea.
Don’t look now, but crude oil has snapped back from $78 per barrel, to almost $92 per barrel. WOOOOHOOOOOOOOO!!!
thats impossible we are in a deflation
$14 … 42 gallons to a barrel equals 33.3333333cents gas a full tank today
Food inflation coming soon to a grocery store near you:
Published: July 17, 2012
http://m.npr.org/news/front/156894107
With about 55 percent of the continental U.S. suffering from “moderate to extreme drought” conditions the nation is withering under conditions that haven’t been this bad since 1956, according to a new report from National Climatic Data Center.
And this “worst-in-a-generation drought from Indiana to Arkansas to California is damaging crops and rural economies and threatening to drive food prices to record levels,” Bloomberg News warns.
That’s bad news for a U.S. economy still struggling to gain strength. As Bloomberg notes, agriculture has been “one of the most resilient industries in the past three years.” But now, that sector is facing an awful time. Already, the U.S. Agriculture Department has designated 1,016 counties in 26 states as natural disaster areas — meaning hard-hit farmers in those areas can apply for low-interest emergency loans from USDA. According to Bloomberg, that’s “the biggest such declaration ever.”
What’s more, “the drought could get a lot worse before it gets better,” says Joe Glauber, chief economist at the Agriculture Department, in this morning’s Washington Post. There’s no relief likely this week.
We harvested 11 pounds of quinoa last week and I’m set on enjoying a cup for lunch — inflation be damned.
Luckily for us, there was a freak rain early this morning. Not enough to fill much of the rainwater colletor but enough to dampen the soil to last until Saturday’s irrigation.
The ancient grain of the incas! Only grain I know of that is a complete protein(my fancy french brother in law told me that last week, I really know not of what I speak, only know I sold lots of it working at a health food store); ie rice and beans are combined not just for flavor but because they complement each other nutrition wise.
It’s got lysine (one of the essential amino acids) and other grains (even though it’s technically not a grain) don’t! Mmmm… lysine…
State of Montana’s budget…saved!
“The program, called (drumroll please) the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program,” Loud crashing cymbals!
This is the song that never…. Oh wait, I did that about yesterdays new government program.
“the expanded program, which requires that buyers agree not to resell for three years at least half of the homes they buy.”
Let`s see 5000 x 3 = 15,000 divided 2 = 7,500 + 6,500 former deadbeat homeloaners turned rent-to-loan deadbeat victims and their sob stories about why they can`t pay rent x 3 years = 4,000 bulldozed hoods in the year 2017 + interest. Right?
Tampa targeted in expanded federal sale of defaulted loans
by Kim Miller
The Federal Housing Administration announced this morning that investors can start applying to purchase distressed home loans with concentrations of properties in Tampa, Phoenix, Chicago and Newark, N.J.
Beginning in September, defaulted loans insured by the FHA will be sold in discounted pools to private investors, who have more flexibility in negotiating lower mortgage payments, reducing loan amounts, or offering other options such as rent-to-own deals.
The program, called the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, was announced last month and was originally expected to target about 5,000 loans nationwide. This morning, Acting FHA Commissioner Carol Galante said that has increased to 9,000 loans.
“Given the strong interest in this program and the shadow inventory, we are actually talking now close to 9,000 loans,” she said. “At its most basic level, this program creates the opportunity for everyone to come out a winner.”
Florida has about 366,650 loans insured by the FHA, according to a first-quarter report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. Of those, 15 percent — about 55,000 — are in foreclosure or 90 days or more late on payments.
Nationwide, FHA insures about 6.7 million loans, 9 percent of which are in foreclosure or seriously delinquent.
About 5,000 defaulted mortgages are expected to be sold every quarter under the expanded program, which requires that buyers agree not to resell for three years at least half of the homes they buy.
For more informaiton on the program, go to http://www.hud.gov/fhaloansales.
Under the program, loans are sold competitively at a market-determined price generally below the outstanding principal balance. FHA then processes an insurance claim, removes the FHA insurance and transfers the loan to the investor. Once the note is purchased, foreclosure is delayed for a minimum of six additional months, giving the new servicer time to work through alternatives with the borrower, possibly finding an affordable solution to allow the borrower to remain in their home.
Because the loans are generally sold for less than what the borrower currently owes, the purchaser has the ability to reduce or modify the loan terms while still making a return on the initial investment.
If no viable alternatives exist, the purchaser may be able to help the borrower sell the property through a short sale and avoid the costs of foreclosure.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 18th, 2012 at 8:53 am and is filed under Banking, Foreclosures, Housing affordability, Mortgages, Real estate bust. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
PS- Anybody thinking higher domestic oil production is going to lower prices for American consumers has a fawking hole in their head. Those companies don’t owe you chit! They’ll sell it at $100 per barrel to other countries before they give you a break. Drill, baby, drill!!!
Yeah, but at least our workers will be doing the work, supporting their families and buying stuff.
Not sure if you’re serious or sarcastic. Assuming you’re serious, no, it won’t be “our workers” doing the work if they can help it. It will be cheap immigrant labor, undercutting “our” workers, where possible.
Palmetto,
No I am totally serious. My territory includes New Mexico where the petroleum industry has natural gas fields and petroluem fields.
Right now in southeast NM (and west TX) you can get a job if you can tie your shoe laces and if you have a valid drivers license. They aren’t picky, they need workers now.
They do not care about the color of your skin.
wow I need to tell my stepson! I think he can tie his shoelaces and everything!
The money for the oil stays in this country and has a multiplier. Also, the difference in WTI and Brent shows that there is some reduction in price for US consumers due to the local production. Canada enjoys an even greater differential due to the glut of oil sands oil. But yes that advantage will never exceed the cost of transportation. However, drill baby drill does make a lot of sense when you have $100 a barrel oil.
“Canada enjoys an even greater differential due to the glut of oil sands oil. But yes that advantage will never exceed the cost of transportation. ”
Canadian oil is sold on average to the USA at about 85% of the price of West Texas.
Yes there is a current glut of stranded future oil sands production but it is expected to be taken up by (1) Keystone (2) A pipeline to Kitimat (3) improved pipeline to Vancouver (4) reversal of pipelines in the USA (5) reversal of Canadian east coast line starting as early as this December. It is possible that not more than three million barrels daily will go to the USA (currently three million) and the remainder to other new markets because of Keystone being stopped.
If Keystone goes in North Dakota oil will also use it, but will probably find it’s market as crude oil delivered to Europe. Unless the government changes it’s policies.
Grizzly is exactly right.
A pretty good “friend” of mine is a Realtor (ok, hes kind of a dick) and has recently lost quite a bit of his net worth as he is heavily invested in Florida dirt. He HELOCed his house to the hilt during the run-up to buy investment properties (paid too much for most) and even took multiple lavish cruises and bought toys such as a motorhome and Jeep. He is waaaay underwater on his house and hasn’t made a mortgage payment in two years. He mentioned how his HELOC loan docs are all in the name of his business and he thinks he can walk with no repurcussions.
The other day I asked him how he can rationalize spending all the money and walking away from the debt and the arrogant fool actually said that the banks who orchestrated the bubble were not forthright with victims such as himself and are getting what they deserve. WTF? I shook my head and could not summon a response. I worry that his mindset is the norm on a massive demographic which does not bode well for humanity.
“A pretty good “friend” of mine is a Realtor (ok, hes kind of a dick)”
Usually I just say “Richard”. When I meet someone like you described I always say… You said your name was Richard right? They think I didn`t remember their name but anyone who knows me well and is standing close by bursts out laughing.
I’ll have to try that some time.
The free sh*t army is everywhere.
And they are all victims.
And they wear suits.
I don’t blame the guy for gaming the system. I blame the system for allowing and encouraging it.
The current system encourages the generation of debt, debt and more debt. And the current system puts the taxpayer on the hook for paying the lenders off when it goes bad. It’s tax money going to FIRE sector profits.
This entire system is a Rube Goldbergian contraption to allow lenders to avoid retaining repayment risk. The reason the system is so convoluted is to allow for the misdirection of casual observers. How many times during the final phase of the housing bubble did Wall Street point to pages of abstruse mathematics and say, “You’re not smart enough to understand.” They hid their shenanigans behind complexity, as they try to do once again.
Make the lenders hang onto the debt and all of these outrages vanish pretty much in a week.
Allow the lenders to keep pawning the bad debt off onto the taxpayer and the current surreal system will continue.
That sounds a lot like the old argument “Don’t hate the playas, hate the game” to which I always replied, “Without the playas, there ain’t no game.”
The “system” would not exist without people running it.
So yes, making the lenders stand behind and suffer the consequences as well as reap the rewards of their actions would indeed, solve most of the problems.
I guess my point is, if one sets up a system which can be gamed, it’s going to get gamed. And the fact that our current financial system is eminently gameable is not a secret.
In that piece I posted a while ago, the 9 minute interview with Roubini, he says there’s been no serious reform in the four years since the Financial Crisis. That’s because politicians and their big donors profit from it.
There has been nothing but legalized gaming for the last 30 years.
It was called “deregulation” and “modernization” and it was done in the name of smaller government and “free market”. This isn’t opinion. I lived through it and those to memes were hammered home every day.
Agree Neuro.
One can criticize Romney about his low tax rate, but I have yet to see anyone say that he has broken the law.
The more complex the laws, the more loopholes there are.
I admit I don’t know enough to know how the line games at Lucky Lil’s work, but I know enough to not go there.
Here’s the deal with Romney’s tax returns.
If (as everyone suspects) he used the law to minimize/dodge taxes, that’s may be legal. Along with his right to lobby for policies that minimize his taxes, and shift them onto J6P.
Doesn’t make it “right”. And advocating expansion of those policies means he shouldn’t be the President.
He’ll puke them up. Right before the election, so there won’t be time to analyse them.
I think the deal with his tax returns also has to do with his (former) partners at Bain. Lots of these guys talk among themselves as to how they structure their financial worlds, as such, what one guy is doing is often an indicator of what another guy is doing.
They don’t want all this stuff brought to light, for fear of the backlash that will close all the loopholes.
Part of Romney’s resistance I’m confident is self-serving. Another part I’m guessing is loyalty to his partners who don’t want any light (however indirect) shined on their financial lives.
The masses follow the behaviors of elites. Expect this to continue until the collapse.
Exactly. As I try to explain to “they’re all just lazy slackers who wants the frees stuff” crowd, “Hey, it worked for Wall St., didn’t it?”
And not once, but TWICE in my lifetime.
Don’t even get me started on everyday corporate fraud.
I worry that his mindset is the norm on a massive demographic which does not bode well for humanity.
Yes, doing what is legal and benefits you, but is also immoral and socially destructive, should be the preserve of the 1%.
July 19, 2012, 10:11 a.m. EDT
Leading economic index declines in June
‘The U.S. economy is growing very slowly,’ economist says
By Jeffry Bartash, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The index of leading economic indicators fell 0.3% in June to 95.6, mostly reversing the increase in May, the Conference Board reported Thursday.
Weakness in business orders, consumer confidence and building permits contributed to the decline, the board said.
The settlement with Visa, MasterCard and bank credit-card issuers opens the way for retailers, doctors, restaurants and other businesses to impose surcharges of 2.5% or 3% on payments with plastic.
“The U.S. economy is growing very slowly. The CEI basically reflects this steady but soft pace of overall economic activity,” said Ken Goldstein, an economist at the Conference Board.
Six of the Conference Board’s 10 indicators fell. Four indicators rose in June: the interest-rate spread, weekly manufacturing hours, credit and new manufacturing orders for consumer goods and materials.
…
nothing is growing around here besides more debt.
‘The U.S. economy is growing very slowly,’
Kind of like the Titanic sitting low in the water…
I haven’t posted in a long time, but the ridiculous housing situation in Austin, TX drove me back here after several months.
The housing market in Austin Texas is crazy!
A friend who is a realtor and his post on Facebook was the following:
“I love when a listing sells only with a Coming Soon sign”
That pretty much summarizes what is happening.
A friend just closed for a condo in downtown Austin. He paid $335k for 770sq ft. The same unit sold for $265k in Apr 2010. A whopping 26% price increase in a little over two years. He made an offer on the spot the day it was listed at full asking price!!! But he wasn’t the only one… Several offers were submitted the same day!
Inventory is non-existent in central Austin, prices are increasing with every listing, there are multiple offers in some cases over asking prize offers.
———
Austin-area home sales jump 25 percent in May; median home prices up 10 percent
Vanessa Nunez, an agent with Goldwasser Real Estate, knows how competitive it is. She has investor clients who are buying a home at 2107 E. 10th St. that they plan to renovate then resell.
Nunez’s clients — Kati Stevens; her fiancé, Chris Epps; and Stevens’ father Thom Heinzeroth — were the first to submit an offer, less than 24 hours after the home hit the market. Theirs was one of 12 offers, Nunez said. Her buyers made a cash offer at the $195,000 asking price.
That offer beat out one from another investor, who made a $205,000 noncash offer after Nunez’s buyers upped their offer to $200,000 at the seller’s request. Multiple offers are increasingly common for area homes, Nunez said.
“Even for investors, it’s more competitive,” she said.
Charles Heimsath, a local real estate consultant who tracks the housing market, agreed that the consistent theme of increases in sales, prices and pending sales, combined with falling inventory, points to “the beginning of a seller’s market.”
“I am also impressed by the persistence of these trends over the last few months,” he said. “This is a clear indication that, at least in Austin, the single-family market is back.”
http://m.statesman.com/statesman/pm_21990/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=XJM78No7
350K for a 770sqft condo is not what I would call “real smart”.
I will never understand how people who can afford to spend that much money, spend it so badly and how they have jobs that pay that much when they show such poor judgment.
Oh well, that’s life.
Fools will always be fools. When you are competing with Joneses, rationality goes out the door. 6 months from now, buyers remorse. 3 years from now, a new victim. Life is so predictable.
Those prices are ‘cheap’ for downtown Austin.
Check out MLS 2304437
268k for 565 sq ft or $475/sq ft
Brett, what’s going on with rental rates?
Rents have gone through the roof!
There has been a large influx of people from all over the country trying to find jobs in Texas.
After the housing market crashed, construction of condos and apartments stopped in Austin.
More people + no new housing = high prices
My personal experience paying rent for a one bedroom unit in downtown Austin is:
2009 - $1350
2012 - $1785
The house mentioned on 2107 E. 10th St. that went for 200K is 1794 sf, which is $111 per sf. For Austin, that sounds pretty good. Of course, it was also built in 1928, so who knows what’s up with the innards of that thing.
Good to see you, again, Brett. Missed our Austin updates.
Yesterday: Treasury Secretary Geithner: We have ‘an excellent’ budget plan for the next 25 years.
And here’s what the Congressional Budget Office says about the “excellent” path we’re on over the next decade and next 25 years in its most recent long-term budget outlook:
1. The CBO report states that “Growing debt also would increase the probability of a sudden fiscal crisis, during which investors would lose confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget and the government would thereby lose its ability to borrow at affordable rates.”
2. Obamacare didn’t bend the curve. Mandatory federal spending on health care will increase by 93% from 5.4% of GDP today to 10.4% of GDP over the next 25 years.
3. Government spending as a share of the economy will increase by more than 50% between now and 2037.
4. Federal spending on health care entitlements, Social Security, and interest on the national debt will consume 100% of total revenues by 2025.
5. The federal government’s interest payments alone are projected to consume 9.5% of our entire economy by 2037, up from about 1.4% today.
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/07/treasury-secretary-geithner-we-have-an-excellent-budget-plan-for-the-next-25-years/
So, what specifically is the Republican plan? And don’t give me the “Ryan Plan” as it is all smoke and mirrors and debt/GDP continues to increase for the next 35 years until most of the boomers die off.
The best plan is Simpson Bowles, which Obama ignored, and the GOP in running from because it was produced by a bipartisan commission put together by Obama’s White House.
Vote everyone out of office, or we’re all screwed. Sometimes you gotta wipe the slate clean and start for scratch.
Ohbewannas old apt for rent:
http://www.citi-habitats.com/viewlisting.php?adID=770813&scroll=1
Actually doesn’t look too bad.
For comparison, here is Mitt Romney’s house in Park City.
http://www.luxist.com/2009/02/17/mitt-romney-in-utah-estate-of-the-day/
And WHY did they have to post a pic of the shower. ..
Darrell,
Get the government out of the way, put people back to work and cut spending.
http://www.mittromney.com/jobs
Anyone that says Romney doesn’t have a plan isn’t listening (to the right news networks)
“Requires spending cuts of approximately $500 billion per year in 2016 assuming robust economic recovery with 4% annual growth, and reversal of irresponsible Obama-era defense cuts”
We get specifics in the next section…
$95B from repeal of Obamacare.
$100B by screwing the states via block grants of Medicaid… I guess he has a magic wand that will suddenly make healthcare costs rise no faster than inflation. Savings $100B.
Cut federal workers pay and benefits. Savings $40B
Waive a magic wand and reduce fraud by 50%, Savings $60B.
Assuming the magic wand of making half of fraud go away and the magic wand of stopping healthcare costs from increasing aster than inflation, we’ve only got details on half of his $500B in cuts.
The real, fully documented, able to be implemented cuts amount to … repeal of Obamacare… About 1/5th of his proposed cuts.
Where is the other $400B Mitt?
And even $500B just reduces the deficit from $1.3T to $800B, assuming no negative economic impact or falling revenues from the $500B in cuts.
Oh, but wait… there is more. He wants to cut taxes.
Mitt’s “PLAN” is mostly smoke and mirrors and lots of rhetoric that can be summed up as “More of the same that brought us to the widest wealth disparity in US history, and put us on the brink of economic collapse”.
How about a plan that is not all rhetoric and missing specifics?
Take a gander at his proposal for “Regulations”
Basically a wish list for the so called “Job producer” class.
I especially like “Provide multi-year lead times before companies must come into compliance…….”
IOW, give them a few years to let their paid shills/lobbyists work their magic.
Yeah, lets go back to Dubya’s plan of non-regulation. Trouble is, the “job producers” weren’t producing too many jobs back then, either. Unless you think replacing manufacturing jobs with FIRE, Mickey Dees and Wal Mart type jobs is “producing”.
Darrell,
I am not shocked that you don’t like his plan (nor agree with it)and I know that there is nothing I could ever say to convince you, so why bother.
Our “whole” political class is spending our kid’s, kid’s money and our kids are the ones that are going to be paying for it.
So let’s act like Geithner, declare that all is well and go along the highest deficit spending that this country has ever experienced.
The less bad of two bad options is not a good option.
It isn’t that I do not like his plan. I see no plan.
$500B in cuts? From where?
Oh, $95B from repealing Obamacare.
Block grants to states for Medicare that just keep up with inflation, magically, somehow, magic wand, healthcare costs are going to stop going up faster than inflation. Just saying we’re going to lock Medicare to inflation is NOT a plan to make it happen.
Magically waiving a wand and half of government fraud goes away. Really, because study after study that I’ve seen says that we’re at the point now of diminishing returns on enforcement. It would cost more than $1 in investigators and enforcement to to stop $1 in fraud. Again, saying we’re going to cut fraud in half is not a plan. How are you going to do that?
And he doesn’t even attempt to explain the other $300B in cuts, or where they are coming from.
Nor does he explain why $.8T deficit has “fixed the problem” but $1.3T a year in deficits is a disaster. Nor does he attempt to explain how we will maintain current tax receipts, while slowing the economy from $500B in spending cuts, AND lowering tax rates on the rich.
Before you I can form an opinion on the plan, first I’d have to know what the plan is… and it can’t involve waiving a magic wand and suddenly $60B in fraud disappears.
What is his PLAN? What are the details of his proposed cuts? How is he going to cut fraud in half? How is he going to stop healthcare costs increasing faster than inflation? How is he going to stimulate the economy while slashing $500B from government spending? How is he going to increase tax receipts while cutting tax rates?
How is he going to make it possible for households and businesses to return to spending 110% of our income, without ever having to pay on or for any of the debt?
Don’t even try to convince me the plan is good, until you have first given me the details of what the plan is!
“Block grants to states for Medicare that just keep up with inflation, magically, somehow, magic wand, healthcare costs are going to stop going up faster than inflation.”
I don’t think they expect health care cost increases to be brought down to the level of inflation. They probably expect states to implement restrictions on Medicare - which would be odd since it is a federal program now. Unless you really mean Medicaid, in which case the definitely expect the states to start eliminating eligibility for and services provide by Medicaid.
He says that he will make up for the tax rate cuts by broadening the base (and allegedly keeping progressivity). No one who has looked at it thinks it can be done.
You could keep progressivity by making capital gains (including carried interest) and dividends taxed at the same rates as regular income. That is off the table. The other big money possibilities are eliminating mortgage interest deduction, but you would have to really do it, not grandfather in the old ones. Politically impossible. You could tax employer paid portion of medical insurance as income but that is highly regressive. The only other thing is to vastly cut the earned income tax credit (hey, Reagan would be too liberal for this Republican Party) and increase income tax rates on the lucky duckies. They don’t make much, but there are a whole heck of a lot of them, so the income to the government would be more than trivial. Obviously regressive compared to now.
Nothing else makes a dent. You can eliminate various learning tax credits and the deductibility of interest on student loans. Also regressive.
But he hasn’t specified anything. Simply says broaden the base and refuses to give details.
LIP “I know that there is nothing I could ever say to convince you, so why bother.”
Wow
Is it laziness or is it that somewhere deep in your heart you know you are wrong?
LIP “Anyone that says Romney doesn’t have a plan isn’t listening”
When an imaginary tree falls in the woods does it make a sound?
“Our “whole” political class is spending our kid’s, kid’s money and our kids are the ones that are going to be paying for it.”
Progressives always want more, give them an inc and they take a mile.
inch.
I was an adult when Bain Capital was created and remember the days of Bain Capital. Bain defined “corporate raider”. (that’s not a compliment)
They caused the layoffs of THOUSANDS of people. Layoffs do NOT mean “putting people back to work.”
Don’t even get me started about Clear Channel and how it destroyed FM radio.
Ooh ooh but now you have I heart radio on your cell phone….lots of jobs there.
Do people really use their i phone to listen to radio?
Hard to tell what people are using to listen to anything, these days, but yes, most people under 35 are using their phones as portable entertainment centers.
As for radio itself, listen to what? 45 minutes of commercials and 15 min of entertainment or news? What a waste.
Do people really use their i phone to listen to radio?
I’m no young ‘un but yes, I podcast many radio shows and listen to them later on my iphone or ipod.
Also, we listen to Pandora in the car, using the iphone, all the time.
“Also, we listen to Pandora in the car, using the iphone, all the time.”
Me too. I really can’t recall the last time I listened to broadcast radio, AM or FM. Everything you want be it music, sports, talk, news is available online usually commercial free. The days of AM/FM are all but over. And it’s all Romney’s fault!!
ok Guyz what do you see in pandora anyway?
ok Guyz what do you see in pandora anyway?
I find new bands all the time from Pandora. The idea behind it is interesting:
Pandora is based on the Music Genome Project, the most sophisticated taxonomy of musical information ever collected. It represents over ten years of analysis by our trained team of musicologists, and spans everything from this past Tuesday’s new releases all the way back to the Renaissance and Classical music.
Each song in the Music Genome Project is analyzed using up to 450 distinct musical characteristics by a trained music analyst. These attributes capture not only the musical identity of a song, but also the many significant qualities that are relevant to understanding the musical preferences of listeners. The typical music analyst working on the Music Genome Project has a four-year degree in music theory, composition or performance, has passed through a selective screening process and has completed intensive training in the Music Genome’s rigorous and precise methodology. To qualify for the work, analysts must have a firm grounding in music theory, including familiarity with a wide range of styles and sounds.
The Music Genome Project’s database is built using a methodology that includes the use of precisely defined terminology, a consistent frame of reference, redundant analysis, and ongoing quality control to ensure that data integrity remains reliably high. Pandora does not use machine-listening or other forms of automated data extraction.
“They caused the layoffs of THOUSANDS of people. Layoffs do NOT mean “putting people back to work.”
Don’t even get me started about Clear Channel and how it destroyed FM radio.”
Totally! Just like those darn cars out thousands of horse and buggy industry people out of work. Technology is awful.
I graduated from college in 1996. Since then every job I have had, including being self employed, did not exist 25 years ago. Most companies I have worked for or with did not exist 25 years ago. Most industries I have worked in did not exist 25 years ago.
And yes millions of people who used to work in factories no longer have those jobs. That’s a good thing. Because they’ve been replaced with millions of information workers. It’s called creative destruction and no matter how much you whine about it, it happens every day and will continue to happen every day.
“…..graduated from college in 1996……”
Well, that explains a lot.
“……replaced with millions of information workers….”
In China, India, etc.
And try flying that “information worker” to Europe, or driving him to Grandma’s for Christmas.
““…..graduated from college in 1996……”
Well, that explains a lot.”"
The lack of wisdom, at the very least..
“I graduated from college in 1996.”
So you observed 1 business cycle and it was grossly distorted. Now I better understand you.
Watch what happens to your creative destruction when we get one good solar pulse and your entire life’s work goes down the toilet for half a generation. Oops….
Of those 3, Romney will only accomplish the first one.
From Romney’s website, on trade:
“Open markets have helped make America powerful and prosperous. Indeed, they have been one of the keys to our economic success since the country was founded. Approximately 95 percent of the world’s consumers live beyond our borders, and selling our world-class products and services to them is the next great frontier for economic growth. The fewer the barriers to cross-border commerce, the more economic growth we enjoy and the greater the number of American jobs brought into being.
Of course, opening markets must be a two-way street. For America truly to benefit in global commerce, we need to ensure that our entrepreneurs can sell their high-quality products and services around the world. This means that agreements must create a level playing field for competition.”
He seems to imply that the barriers to our exports of our own creation.
Agreements to level the playing field? Our trading partners are not interested.
Everyone else protects their markets. If you want to sell there, you have to make them there (China’s auto industry is a great example of this). The Chinese love GM cars, as long as they’re built in China. Imported from the USA? No way! They understand that you don’t create jobs by importing stuff you can make at home. EVERYONE understands this but us.
The oil and gas markets are recovering nicely today in a long-awaited rebound, stopping a damaging slide in energy prices. Industry is working closely with government to encourage further strength in the oil and gas markets. Growth in the oil and gas industries are essential to a broad based economic recovery.
Oil rises above $91 for first time since May; US pump prices now up 11 cents in July
Via Washington Post
By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, July 19, 9:32 AM
NEW YORK — Oil prices rose above $91 a barrel for the first time since late May on signs of increased demand in the U.S. and amid rising tensions in the Middle East.
Early in New York, benchmark crude was up $1.56 at $91.43 a barrel. The price has risen about $14 per barrel since oil hit its low for the year three weeks ago.
U.S. drivers are seeing a corresponding increase at the pump. A gallon of regular gas now costs an average of $3.44, up 11 cents from July 1.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/rise-in-us-oil-demand-lifts-prices-above-90-a-barrel-for-the-first-time-since-may/2012/07/19/gJQA4tTyuW_story.html
Rising gas prices should be good, right? I mean, if rising house prices are good, then rising gas prices should be even better, as renters use gasoline too.
Another recession, coming up (if it isn’t already here).
As if the last recession ever ended.
Exactly right! Milk prices went up today too, which is more great news of a market rebound! A strong dairy market is essential to a broad based recovery so this is clearly something we all should be cheering as well, in addition to high house and energy
Each $0.10 increase in gas prices leads to a few more dissatisfied Hope N Changers. I’ll gladly pay an extra $1/gallon from now until election day if it means Obama’s out. Come on $110 oil.
Soon to be followed by $150/barrel oil, when the Romster Plan is full implemented.
“Soon to be followed by $150/barrel oil, when the Romster Plan is full implemented.”
Romney never said he wanted higher oil price. Here is what Obama DID say in 2008.
“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.
“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
Wow, can’t damn him for his honesty. I remember when Nader said in 2000, “I want gas to go to $5 a gallon!” (so that we would focus on developing other forms of energy) He was lambasted in the media and normal folk alike.
Heck, I’d pay an extra $10/gallon from now until election day if it means Obama’s out and Rmoney is not in. Then we can deal with the ding-dongs in Congress.
Love the looks that I get when stopping in to a gas station on my bike to refill my water bottle and asking a fellow cyclist, “Hey, how many miles per burrito do you get on that thing?” Everything from light-bulbs going on to death stares.
Damaging slide in energy prices? Big oil has been making record profits for years. For them, there never really was any recession.
If increasing housing prices are to be encouraged by the government and cheered by the media, then we should also be cheering increasing medical, energy, food and clothing prices as well.
I was silly before to think that lower prices in these arenas would be good for the consumer and raise his standard of living. The driver of economic recovery is higher prices in all these areas, and government should be partnering with industry to make it so. Just like they do with housing.
Would you be happier if Big Oil made record losses instead?
Didn’t pay billions in taxes?
And fired tens of thousands of employees?
Why do liberals hate success so much?
I’d be happier if Big Oil made profits after taking into account their externalizing of environmental issue for which taxpayers must currently (spills) and eventually (pollution, climate change, etc.) foot the bill.
I’d be happier if Big Oil paid what they owe (as determined by the poeople — not “corporations are people” people) and not received taxpayer subsidies.
I’d be happier with these people working in fields that don’t involve an underlying “technology” that is more than 100 years old.
I don’t think liberals hate success, just success from the uncompensated trodding-upon the backs of others, uneven playing fields and a poorly defined measure of “success”. That whole question id akin to the whole “why do conservatives still beat their wives?” logical fallacy.
“Why do liberals hate success so much?”
Smithers, if you’re going to continue to regurgitate talking points (which isn’t even slightly amusing anymore), could you at least re-word them so that it sounds like something you actually thought up yourself.
Rising gas prices should be good, right?
In a market economy, rising prices benefits one group at the expense of another. While the consumer may pay a higher price for milk, the producer and/or distributor of the milk most likely made more profit. When everyone here cheers for lower prices on everything, you are cheering for your wallet, which is at odds with the producers of our economy.
Same goes for housing prices. Developers, land owners, contractors, realtors, and current owners all benefit from higher prices, as do the local communities which tax based on assessed values. The only people who benefit from lower home prices are renters who may want to buy. A small segment of our population voting their wallet.
Given the above, as far as our current economic system goes, higher prices are preferred over lower prices. Add in the fact that Real Estate serves as collateral on debt, and the deflationary argument as a good thing gets even thinner.
Actually, high house only benefit the following:
1) Realtors
2) Lenders
3) Builders
4) People who are underwater relative to a high purchase price
5) Politicians
For current owners who may have bought low, if they sell high, and they wish to buy again, they will have to plow those profits right back into the house, offsetting any gains.
For current owners, high prices just mean more taxes. I don’t see how current owners benefit from higher prices.
Everyone wants their own house to be high priced, but others to be low priced.
I think renters would just be happy to have a broken lending system fixed. The broken lending system created vast amounts of bad debts and derivatives, drove the bubble, benefiting realtors and lenders and politicians but ultimately saddling them and future generations with paying back those debts.
If one sector of the economy is extracting large amounts of wealth from the economy, it’s not beneficial for the society at large. A heterogeneous economy offers the most opportunities for the most people and is the most resistant to downturns in any one sector.
Story of a condo unit.
Bought in 2005 for 200k Yay!
Sold it in 2006 for 350k Yay!
Bought another identical unit in 2007 for 390k Boo
2011 Lost that unit to the bank BOO
2012 Bank sold it for 177k
What’s next?
The core of the American debt crisis, and the cause of the housing bubble, was the ability of lenders to make mortgage loans and sell them off via securitization. This allowed them to avoid retaining any repayment risk, and thus allowed them to stop caring about loan quality. They made money on selling the loans, not collecting interest. Forcing lenders to retain repayment risk would stop the generation of bad loans, and the subsequent funneling of taxpayer money to Wall Street to make good on that bad debt.
Of course, the FIRE sector was going to resist all of this, and as a result of politicians’ fecklessness and venality plus the FIRE sector’s massive lobbying presence, they, even today, mostly have been able to thwart any reform in this area.
Currently, there is a debate about “Qualified Residential Mortgages.” If a loan is deemed a Qualified Residential Mortgage, the lender does not retain any repayment risk. If it is not a QRM, the lender retains some minor repayment risk. So, of course, the goal is to define QRM in the broadest terms possible.
Secondly, the provisions being considered are if a loan is declared a QRM, then it will shield lenders from any litigation if it goes into foreclosure. This is called “Safe Harbor”. The position that lenders could be subject to litigation in the event of a foreclosure is called “rebuttable presumption.” Naturally the FIRE sector wants the “Safe Harbor” rule.
Instead of the serious approach in which lenders would always be forced to retain most or all repayment risk, attempts to regulate have been all but thwarted. The current debate is nattering at the margins, discussing which loans would be QM/QRM and in case of loan default, whether the lender can be subject to litigation.
Don’t have any doubt about this - rules which allow the FIRE sector to generate bad debt and have the government pay it off is nothing more than tax money being funneled to the FIRE sector. There’s about to be a big show in which both sides declare victory, but the real loser is the average citizen.
FYI, Some links:
From the Congressional Research Service, posted by the Federation of American Scientists:
http://swemgovdocs.blogs.wm.edu/2012/06/07/ability-to-repay-risk-retention-standards-and-mortgage-credit-access/
Direct link (NOTE: PDF): http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42056.pdf
Realtors(R) Testify Broad Qualified Mortgage Is Critical to Bringing Certainty to Housing Finance System
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/realtorsr-testify-broad-qualified-mortgage-is-critical-to-bringing-certainty-to-housing-finance-system-2012-07-11
Yes, Qualified Mortgage Rules are a BIG Deal for the Lending and Real Estate Industry
http://www.mortgagenewsdaily.com/channels/pipelinepress/07192012-qualified-mortgage-rules.aspx
A broad QRM definition plus Safe Harbor effectively shuts down private purchases of mortgages. Because you know there’s going to be a vast amount of toxic waste in there. The government will be the only buyer.
Getting back to yesterday, and the rent/own debate…….
I’m in agreement with whoever said that rents and buy prices are BOTH artificially inflated.
Which blows “free market” rhetoric out of the water.
You will never have a free market, if a market can be manipulated, and somebody can increase his profits in a manipulated market.
Currently, we are in a position where a true “free market” in housing would finish trashing the net worth of what’s left of the middle class homeowner, and with it State and local government’s tax base. We can’t have that.
So the shadow inventory will be allowed to crumble quietly, written off the banksters books over the next 20 years.
There shouldn’t be a single new house under construction right now, but keeping existing housing artificially high gives the builders the chance to undercut prices with new construction. Which, of course, helps with the unemployment problem.
Cheap/practically free houses can be found, and will continue to be available for the next 20 years. Mostly in places with no jobs, way out in BFE, or both.
The US Medico/Narco/Insurance Cartel will continue to sink it’s fangs into the US economy, because too many people are making too much money from the status quo. It will collapse when the (premature) deaths of the baby boomers kicks into high gear.
Oil prices will continue to be subject to speculation/price fixing. In fact, every necessity will become targets of monopoly/price fixing. Because, as they say, “that’s where the money is”
I’m going to do my part to help straighten things out, by not buying a damn thing other than food and renting minimal housing, and by dying early and quickly via stroke or heart attack.
And pray for the Republicans to take over, so there won’t be an opposition party to blame when the descent of the USA into the “North American Banana Republic (sans bananas)” is complete.
The trend is not our friend.
The good news that comes from living in crap housing is that the stuff you have stolen from you benefits “your” community directly, instead of having it’s value skimmed by the bankster 1%er class.
You’re welcome.
Will?
Where have you been for the last 30 years?
You know it. I know it.
The Republicans/Tea Partiers/Galtians continue to pimp the fairy tail.
I’m in agreement with whoever said that rents and buy prices are BOTH artificially inflated.
I also agree. And who knows how long this can go on? Months? years? decades?
Long enough to make a “correction” meaningless to me.
We’ll never see it in my lifetime. Very possibly in my kid’s lifetime.
“The trend is not our friend.”
I propose we be optimistic here.
Government market manipulation, coupled with a piling on effect of foreign investors, Fed manipulation of interest rates to unsustainably low levels, and FHA, Fannie & Freddie qualification of untold numbers of subprime buyers, has knocked the market so top-heavy to the upside that fundamentals are eventually bound to overshoot the other direction. Perpetually fighting free market forces only works for so long until fails completely.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is, “Beware the Black Swan.”
It’s out there. And it appears at the most inopportune times.
How can “rent and house prices be artificially high” if the standard by which prices are measured is totally arbitrary unit of other peoples’ debt?
Artificially high compared to incomes? Median household income is $55K and median house price is right about $180K. That is pretty much in line. With interest rates running 3-4% depending on loan type, you could argue that affordability is better than historical average, on average, across the USA.
Yes, the government and bankers have worked together to avoid the worst of what could have been massive over correction to the down side.
I can understand why you are unhappy if you are sitting around with a massive chunk of change waiting for prices to fall to 25% or less of historical norm in a massive crash/over-correction. Well, are you really shocked that those that acted together to inflate the bubble, are acting together to prevent a massive overcorrection.
And, if you live in one of the true demand markets, like San Fran or coastal SoCal or New York City or… Well, supply and demand. Prices are not coming down until enough of you decide to leave to create a situation where there are more houses than people. As long as there are more people wanting to live there, then houses for those people to live in, prices will remain high.
That is not artificially high. That is fundamental value, high.
+1 Darrell
Artificially high housing (renting and owning) looks like middle class duel income families renting out their extra bedroom to foreign exchange students, creating a studio apts. in the garage without permits to help them pay for their mortgage, young people not able to buy a house and having to rent a bed (not a room!) for $600 month.
Well, at least that’s what it looks like here. Or in NYC.
And as someone who has lived in both places, I can tell you it hasn’t always been this way. Young people have always flocked to places like NY or SF, and you could make your way and find a cheap rental on a low-paying job. These days, not so much.
Well, are you really shocked that those that acted together to inflate the bubble, are acting together to prevent a massive overcorrection.
No. But I’m surprised that they were successfully able to make us pay for it.
As long as the US taxpayer doesn’t have to pay for the bad loans which are given to people, I’ll call it fair.
Allowing the FIRE sector to generate bad loans, then having the US taxpayer pay off that bad debt is just funneling tax money to Wall Street profits. Tax money should only be going to public goods, not Wall Street profits.
I don’t want the government micromanaging the economy. That’s horribly inefficient and unfair. But I don’t want the government (taxpayers) paying off bad loans Wall Street creates in order to keep house prices high. Because that’s also horribly inefficient and unfair.
Boatloads of REO in Goleta, a high demand area.
Gotta push prices down soon.
Hang in there sfrenter.
Hope you find the happy home and keep up doing good work in life. I know you are a teacher, and went part time to have more time with your kids. some may say get a job. I say spend more time with your kids, hopefully in the water too.
P.S. Are you male or female.
I thought you were male but I have heard a couple of peeps referring to you as a gal. Just curious
Currently, we are in a position where a true “free market” in housing would finish trashing the net worth of what’s left of the middle class homeowner, and with it State and local government’s tax base. We can’t have that.
And make the banks insolvent. And we REALLY can’t have that.
This is what I have been saying. Banks being insolvent is another consequence.
Quit squealin’ and get your checkbook out and start writing..
Yeah, with my BIG FAT public school teacher paycheck.
You’re not getting it, obviously. If I could just whip out my checkbook and buy a house I would have done it a long time ago. Duh.
Then quit yer squealin’.
You shut up. No, you shut up. You go first. No, you.
That’s some fine blogging right there.
Your squealin’ and whining is your best attribute.
Your squealin’ and whining is your best attribute.
Dude, give it a rest. You’re tiresome.
You expect people to be civil? on the internet?
Seems reasonable to me too.
Anti bullying campaigns are all well and good, but human nature is not always pretty but usually petty. Internet has made it inescapable, though, and that is pretty sad…
And kids will rib each other mercilessly, I hate it and won’t tolerate much of it from my kids. They behave better than most. Not to say they don’t call each other retard or other mean name. Luckily they have enough self esteem to take the ribbing. Not all kids are lucky enough to have good council at home.
happens within all classes and since when have whole civilizations that got along?
Reposting late response from yesterday:
Comment by Prime_Is_Contained
2012-07-18 23:06:02
We declined and stopped paying on what we considered to be a worthless loan.
jeff, I appreciate you sharing your experience here.
But one thing confused me: you indicated that it was a “worthless loan”, and Elena was also effectively insolvent so there would be no “phantom income” from the 1099 for forgiven debt.
How does that square with your opening paragraph:
If you have income and assets, Wells Fargo will come after you and cost you tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and unimaginable heartache.
It sounds like if you both were effectively insolvent, that you might have been able to BOTH do the Ch13. Why didn’t you do it that way?
Looking back, do you wish that you had? If not, why not?
Thanks again!
There’s more than one way to prop up housing……but it usually does always involve OPM, or Other People’s Money. Notice the taxpayers again take the hit when a property that used to generate $20k/year is taken off the tax roles.
LeMoyne College will not have to pay any property taxes on the $575,500 DeWitt home it purchased for its president and his family.
The property at 5016 Worthington Way is considered tax exempt from town, county and school taxes because LeMoyne is a non-profit educational institution, said Town of DeWitt Assessor Jean Rayfield said.
The tax bills for the previous owners totaled $20,061 in 2011, according to the Onondaga County Real Property Tax website. The home was assessed at $548,000 at the time.
The home is just under four miles from the Le Moyne campus.
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2012/07/lemoyne_college_doesnt_have_to.html
There is so much money available in DC, Obama has decided to start giving food stamps to Mexicans too.
I guess things have changed. Used to be immigrants had to prove they could take care of themselves and not be a burden to society. Now not only do they not have to prove it, the govt will actively seek them out to give them welfare.
What a country!
_____
The Mexican government has been working with the United States Department of Agriculture to increase participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or food stamps. USDA has an agreement with Mexico to promote American food assistance programs, including food stamps, among Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals and migrant communities in America.
“USDA and the government of Mexico have entered into a partnership to help educate eligible Mexican nationals living in the United States about available nutrition assistance,” the USDA explains in a brief paragraph on their “Reaching Low-Income Hispanics With Nutrition Assistance” web page. “Mexico will help disseminate this information through its embassy and network of approximately 50 consular offices.”
The partnership — which was signed by former USDA Secretary Ann M. Veneman and Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Luis Ernesto Derbez Bautista in 2004 — sees to it that the Mexican Embassy and Mexican consulates in America provide USDA nutrition assistance program information to Mexican Americans, Mexican nationals working in America and migrant communities in America. The information is specifically focused on eligibility criteria and access.
It’s like they define success by the number of people using food stamps.
You do know that American agribusiness has a HUGE presence in Mexico, don’t you?
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,”
Did that change somewhere along the way… i must not have gotten the memo Mr. Smithers.
I must have missed the second part of that…
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free and we shall give them free health care, free education and free food. I guess it was somewhere in the fine print?
yeah, its called sharing.. every 1st grader knows about it.
Only to a kool-aid drinking liberal is “sharing” defined as the following:
taking money from someone at the POINT OF A GUN and giving that money away (after taking a hefty cut) as a bureaucrat sees fit.
+10
Seems zee wants his share of your hard work…
War On Women. Fail.
Making fun of his wife for riding horses to help with MS. Fail.
Bain Attacks. Another fail.
“Republican challenger Mitt Romney wipes out President Barack Obama’s lead in Virginia and the two candidates are deadlocked 44 – 44 percent in the race for the Old Dominion’s 13 electoral votes, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.
This compares to a 50 – 42 percent lead for President Obama in a March 20 survey by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University and a 47 – 42 percent Obama lead June 7.”
44% for an incumbent with 16% undecided = almost certain defeat as undecideds break for the challenger. There’s still lots of time until election day of course. But the trend as they say is not Obama’s friend right now, at least not in VA.
Oops. 12%, not 16%.
“Bain Attacks. Another fail.”
Wrong. People actually take this pretty seriously. And will do so even more if he finally coughs up his tax returns.
(I know, I know - I totally hate America/am a communist/ am jealous of evil bankers/ am a welfare queen/ etc. for even criticizing Romney! )
He’s not gonna, even though his dad initiated the practice. Gives the Obama team a huge opening to conjure up straw men.
Why won’t Romney release more tax returns?
By Edward D. Kleinbard and Peter C. Canellos, Special to CNN
updated 12:50 PM EDT, Wed July 18, 2012
(CNN) — By announcing that he will release no further tax returns beyond his 2010 and 2011 returns, Mitt Romney appears to have exempted himself from the proud bipartisan tradition of presidential nominees displaying genuine financial candor with the electorate.
What is more, his disclosure to date is in the wrong direction: It is the release of Romney’s past returns, not his current ones, that matters.
Since George Romney inaugurated the practice more than 40 years ago by releasing 12 years of tax returns in his bid for the Republican Party nomination, presidential nominees have been transparent with voters about their personal finances. For this reason, we have not suffered a significant tax scandal involving a nominee or sitting president since President Richard Nixon’s abuse of the tax code.
Either Romney has an unresolved father figure issue, or he has some special reason not to follow a tradition established by his father.
…
Yeah. I am a commie/lib/progressive/socialist etc etc etc (insert whatever name or insult Smithers or 2banana, who are most likely one and the same person — F’em both, may care to hurl at me) too.
But above all, I am highly suspicious of any politician who hides his past.
Tax Professionals Scrutinize Mitt Romney’s Returns
by Scott Horsley
Morning Edition
[4 min 33 sec]
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks at a campaign rally in Bowling Green, Ohio, on Wednesday.
July 19, 2012
President Obama’s campaign continues to hammer presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney over the GOP challenger’s refusal to release more of his tax returns. Romney has provided one year’s record and promised a second year’s worth of returns. But even some of his fellow Republicans now say that’s not enough.
Obama’s campaign launched a new TV ad this week, shining a spotlight on what is and isn’t known about Romney’s taxes, asking, “What is Mitt Romney hiding?”
So far, Romney and his family trusts have released their 2010 tax returns, which fill hundreds of pages. He got an extension for his 2011 return and has promised to release that as soon as it’s ready, no later than mid-October.
Romney says that should be enough.
“People always want to get more. We’re putting out what’s required, plus more,” he said last week on CNN. “Those are the two years that people will have, and that’s all that’s necessary for people to understand something about my finances.”
…
“…am jealous of evil bankers…”
What do you have against self-made producers / job creators / well-deserving rich people?
“Why won’t Romney release more tax returns?”
Because he’s a lying, sneaking scumbag?
My biggest fear about a Romney presidency: He will turn out to be an even more forceful protector of Megabank, Inc’s license to steal than Obama turned out to be.
Mitt’s Other Secret: Time to Disclose Romney’s Campaign Bundlers
by Peter Schweizer Jul 19, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
The pressure on Romney to release his tax returns continues to mount. But he is also failing to disclose all of his bundlers. Peter Schweizer on what the public is missing.
On Tuesday, Mitt Romney sounded a clarion call for renewed economic freedom and an end to the kind of Washington cronyism that funnels taxpayer money to friends and donors. The speech, which was delivered in Irwin, Pa., is being hailed as one of his best of this campaign.
But slowing down the velocity of Romney’s message is the fact that his team has refused to release the names of all of his bundlers—those valued fundraisers who round up the maximum allowable contributions from individuals ($2,500) and can bring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a campaign. Indeed, on Monday, Romney senior campaign adviser Ed Gillespie said they have no plans to ever reveal the names of the candidate’s bundlers.
The reason this matters is because big-money bundlers don’t just receive invitations to White House social events or even the occasional ambassadorship. They also use that access to leverage lucrative government contracts and loans.
Consider, for example, the company of one of President Obama’s biggest donors: DreamWorks. CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg’s studio, along with several others, is now under investigaton by the Securities Exchange Commission on allegations of possible illegal payments to help persuade Chinese officials to open up film and movie markets. Helping arrange the high-level meeting with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping was Vice President Joe Biden. (Dreamworks, along with the other studios under investigation, has declined public comment on the matter thus far).
It’s not just meetings; big-money donors can also bag billions in government-backed loans. Indeed, $16.4 billion of the Department of Energy’s $20.5 billion loan program went to companies either run by or primarily owned by Obama financial backers—individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.
The only reason we know any of these crony connections is because then-candidate Obama, under pressure from his 2008 primary challenger Hillary Clinton, agreed to release the names of his bundlers and has continued the practice this cycle as well. This type of transparency is vital, because big-money campaign donors get far more than White House trinkets and photo ops—they often haul in boatloads of taxpayer dollars for their companies and investors.
While we don’t know all of Romney’s big-dollar fundraisers, we do know some of them through news reports and because election laws require lobbyists who fundraise to publicly disclose their activities. For example, Robert Diamond is a Romney bundler. Diamond, who is the former CEO of Barclays, resigned earlier this month amid the growing LIBOR scandal and has since pulled out of a July 28 London fundraising event he was to co-host.
If Romney released all of the names of his bundlers, voters and watchdog groups would gain a clearer picture of where the candidate’s alliances lie and which corporate interests feel they have something to gain from a Romney presidency.
Another event to be hosted in London involves Romney bundler Patrick Durkin, a registered lobbyist for Barclays. Durkin, who has raised $1.1 million for the Romney campaign, is one of 13 co-chairs for the dinner, which includes a $25,000 to $75,000 private dinner with Romney.
Presently, we know that 34 of Romney’s bundlers are lobbyists and that collectively they have raised more than $5.2 million. If Romney released all of the names of his bundlers, voters and watchdog groups would gain a clearer picture of where the candidate’s alliances lie and which corporate interests feel they have something to gain from a Romney presidency. Furthermore, if he is elected, knowing who his bundlers are would allow journalists and others to track down instances of cronyism or misallocation of taxpayer dollars to politically connected insiders.
If Romney wants the transparency and anti-cronyism themes to catch fire, he needs to do the right thing and release the names of his bundlers.
…
Think hard, people. Romney most likely isn’t releasing his 2009 tax returns because they will show that he paid minimal if any federal taxes for 2009.
What the French happened to inscribe on the Statue of Liberty was never officially stated US policy. We had a lot of empty land that we wanted to fill up and put to productive use.
Not so much anymore.
Now we just want to keep the population growing to ensure there are ever more consumers and tax payers to maintain the economic growth at all costs needed to fund ever increasing Wall Street profits.
We have laws regarding legal immigration. Seems some would rather ignore the legal process, break the law, and let the rest of us pay for it…
Another week, another one of my wife’s friends posting “HOMEOWNERS!” on facebook.
Like bath salts through the nostrils, these are the days of our lives.
Like delusions from the lips of braindead specu-debtors, so these are the days of our lives.
Wall Street job losses have a way of trickling down to the masses.
ft dot com
July 19, 2012 10:53 pm
Big banks swing axe to slash 5,350 jobs
By Patrick Jenkins in London and Tom Braithwaite in New York
Three of the world’s biggest banks are preparing to shed a combined 5,350 investment bankers, as the industry struggles to adapt itself to continuing economic woes and the advent of new regulation.
Morgan Stanley is cutting a further 4,000 jobs, Deutsche Bank is set to lay off about 1,000 of its investment banking staff, equivalent to about 10 per cent of the unit’s workforce, while Citigroup is shedding 350 bankers.
Deutsche’s cuts, likely to be announced with quarterly earnings in a fortnight’s time, bring the German group more into line with European peers such as Credit Suisse, UBS and Barclays, which have taken a more aggressive stance on cost cuts over the past year.
Deutsche announced it was cutting 500 jobs last autumn, a process that the bank said a few months ago was largely complete.
The new job losses are likely to be mainly outside Germany, with most at the group’s principal investment banking bases in London and New York.
At Citi, the additional job losses, which will be focused mainly on traders, compared with a 17,000-strong securities and banking division. The US bank cut 900 jobs in December.
Credit Suisse and UBS are both pressing ahead with implementing job cuts announced late last year.
Analysts believe investment banks will remain under severe pressure to cut more costs over the coming months, as the cyclical effects of difficult trading conditions and a bleak economic outlook add to the longer-term challenges that come from tougher regulation of the industry.
“The eurozone crisis and the global macroeconomic environment have made for a cyclically weaker revenue environment,” said Kinner Lahkani, Citi analyst, pointing to a possible 10 per cent fall in the overall revenue pool across the industry in the area of fixed income, currencies and commodities.
“But the whole industry also faces structural change. The impact of over-the-counter derivatives reform, Volcker and Basel III could lead to a 15-20 per cent headwind on revenues over the next two to three years.”
…
What Might Be Hiding in Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns
July 19, 2012
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks in Houston, Texas.
Nature abhors a vacuum, so Mitt Romney’s refusal to release tax returns for any year prior to 2010 has freed people like me to speculate about what he might be hiding.
As many suspect, it could be that Romney’s pre-2010 returns entail even more Swiss accounts, offshore havens and other artful tax dodges that might be unbecoming for a presidential candidate. But maybe we don’t know Mitt Romney as well as we think.
…
2012 campaign
What’s Romney Hiding in His Tax Returns?
Posted by: Joshua Green on July 17, 2012
1 percent
2012 election
Mitt Romney
offshore accounts
Presidential Campaign
tax haven
Tax
As George Will and many others have noted, there must be something truly damaging in Romney’s pre-2010 tax returns for him to willingly endure the criticism and scrutiny that has accompanied his refusal to release them—a refusal he reiterated on Friday, even as the issue, and the matter of his departure date from Bain Capital, has engulfed the campaign. “The cost of not releasing the returns are clear,” Will said on ABC’s This Week on Sunday. “Therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”
So what could it be that Romney is so determined not to disclose?
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Many HBB posters have suggested there is no difference between presidential candidates. I humbly disagree.
We have Obama, whose human virtues and foibles have been on full display, day-in, day-out as he endured four years in office during one of the most trying times in the Nation’s history.
On the other side is Romney, who enjoys the armchair quarterback luxury of throwing stones at Obama’s performance while insinuating at every turn that he would have done a better job. For instance, I suppose if Romney had been in office, George W. Bush would never have been allowed to start off the 2008 Presidential term with GD2.
Romney is the relative unknown in this race. You’d think he would go out of the way to assure American voters about who he is and what he might do better than Obama. So far as I am concerned, Obama is a known known, while what Mitt might do different or better in the WH than Obama is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, right along side his pre-2010 tax returns. Better the devil you know…
Are regulations strangling the economy, or do they prevent the economy from getting taken over by crooks and thieves who destroy it? I’m sure there is truth in both points of view, and striking the balance between regulations that keep the crooks from ruling the world and which prevent it from running is a tricky proposition.
Letter: Great Depression history repeated
Published: July 18, 2012 6:16 PM
Regarding “History teaches better stimulus idea” [Letters, July 15], the writer deserves congratulations for a piece of ironic writing almost worthy of comparison to Jonathan Swift.
The letter points to the lesson of economic growth during the 1920s, when taxes were reduced and regulation relaxed. It took about eight years for the economic system to collapse into the Great Depression.
Now in the 21st century, we find that after the tax reductions and the loosening of business regulations by the Bush administration, it took about eight years for the economy to collapse into what has been called the greatest depression since the Great Depression.
The writer asks if further reducing taxes and loosening regulation might have led to a more rapid exit from our latest depression. He wrote, “Who is to say? Nobody knows.”
I think we do know. I think we can say.
David Zipkin, Bay Shore
Why does Romney keep blaming the bad economic situation on Obama, when the sucker went down on GWB’s watch?
Bain Capital started with help of offshore investors
Mitt Romney’s firm raised more than a third of its first investment fund from wealthy foreigners — who mostly used companies in Panama, then known for tax advantages and banking secrecy.
By Joseph Tanfani, Melanie Mason and Matea Gold
July 19, 2012, 3:00 a.m.
Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — When Mitt Romney launched Bain Capital in 1984, he struggled at first to raise enough money for the untested venture. Old-money families like the Rothschilds turned down the young Boston consultant.
So he and his partners tapped an eclectic roster of investors, raising more than a third of their first $37-million investment fund from wealthy foreigners.
Most of the foreign investors’ money came through corporations registered in Panama, then known for tax advantages and unusual banking secrecy.
Previously unreported details, documented in Massachusetts corporate filings and other public records, show that Bain Capital was enmeshed in the largely opaque world of international high finance from its very inception.
The documents don’t indicate any wrongdoing, and experts say that such financial vehicles are common for wealthy foreign investors. But the new details come as President Obama has criticized Romney for profiting from Bain Capital’s own offshore investment entities, which are unavailable to most Americans.
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EUROPE NEWS
Updated July 18, 2012, 5:48 p.m. ET
Spain Economy Shows More Strains
Latest housing, banking data indicate deepening slump; choosing between ‘bad and even worse’
By MATTHEW WALTER And CHRISTOPHER BJORK
Spain’s housing and banking sectors deteriorated further, government data showed Wednesday, in the latest indication that the country’s economy is in a protracted recession.
Spanish banks saw a further reduction in their pool of deposits in May. According to new data, total deposits from the private sector shrank by 5.75% from a year earlier, to 1.327 trillion euros ($1.629 trillion). WSJ’s Santiago Perez reports. Photo: Reuters
House prices in the second quarter declined at the fastest pace since the start of the European debt crisis, the public-works ministry said. Bank deposits declined sharply in May from a year earlier, and bad loans increased for a 14th month in a row, the Bank of Spain reported.
The weakening economy is increasing pressure on Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government to shore up confidence in the country’s public finances.
But Mr. Rajoy acknowledged in a speech to Parliament that the government’s prescription of spending cuts and higher taxes probably won’t produce benefits in the short term.
“This government can’t decide between a good and a bad choice,” Mr. Rajoy said. “This government has to choose between the bad and the even worse.”
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Even though U.S. interest rates are approaching their lowest levels on record, my colleague at work cannot sell the family home, after having already slashed the asking price by $100Ks.
TREASURIES-US 10-year notes edge up; markets on edge about Spain
TOKYO, July 20 | Fri Jul 20, 2012 12:19pm IST
(Reuters) - U.S. 10-year Treasuries edged higher in Asian trading on Friday after a volatile overnight session, with demand for safe-haven U.S. government debt on the rise as Spain’s fiscal woes kept markets on edge.
* Ten-year Treasuries inched up around 4/32 in price to yield 1.4958 percent. The yield came off the Thursday high of 1.5230.
* Weak demand at a bond auction pushed Spain’s 10-year bond yield above 7 percent on Thursday for the first time in more than a week, intensifying doubts over whether Madrid can avoid a full-blown bailout.
* On top of that, shrinking factory activity in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region and more evidence of sluggish job growth in the world’s largest economy has kept investors wary about the impact of the data on corporate earnings.
* The 10-year Treasury yield matched a historic low of 1.442 percent earlier this week as worries about both slowing U.S. growth and the euro zone crisis bolstered demand for safe haven Treasuries.
* Investors are now waiting for further clues on the health of the economy and whether it will weaken enough to push the Federal Reserve into launching a new round of bond-buying, known as quantitative easing, analysts said.
* The Treasury will sell a combined $99 billion in two-year, five-year and seven-year notes next week, starting on Tuesday.
I also want to know how Romney will govern differently than GWB. Will he take us into another war?
Slim’s Radio Alert: I’ll be returning to the airwaves on Tucson’s community radio, KXCI-FM 91.3, on Sunday, July 22 at 5 p.m. Get ready for one hour of Rock -n- Roll Women!
Note: If you’re not near a radio, you can listen to KXCI online.