Bits Bucket for August 29, 2012
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
About Me
Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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Voters Are Vegetables®
That’s a bit unfair. Vegetables are healthy, nutritious, and good for the environment.
“That’s a bit unfair. Vegetables are healthy, nutritious, and good for the environment.”
Raccoon - the Other Dark Meat
The meat isn’t USDA inspected either. Neither is Deer for that matter. There are no laws to prevent trappers from selling their meat. When you think of “green”, Raccoon has no additives, steroids, growth hormones, or antibiotics. It is truly an organic “green” form of meat.
http://voices.yahoo.com/raccoon-other-dark-meat-2499160.html - 36k
I ate 6 servings of voters yesterday.
I like my voters charred over a hickory smoked grill…..nice and tender and quite flavorful!
Ron Paul won. The author has good advice. Romney and the RNC are cheaters, dopers.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-koerner/ron-paul-republican-convention_b_1838617.html
Could you explain exactly what happened, what they wanted to happen and why it didn’t work? I’ve found that the MSM coverage explains that something happened, but not exactly what. They mostly are saying that in the future, the people who go to the national convention will actually have to vote for the person they are assigned to from the primary or caucus, even if the state convention has a different result. I’m sure that is not everything.
I really can’t improve on what Koerner and the NYT wrote, but I think Ben actually has more insight into the actual mechanics, having been through the process.
Here’s is one summary:
‘On Friday, Republican officials associated with the Romney campaign strong-armed two rule changes into the draft platform. The first rule would have effectively allowed future presidential candidates — and not states — to choose the delegates that represent them. In what appears to be a compromise, the text of the rule has been changed to allow states to still select delegates.’
‘Of more concern, though, is Rule 12, and the compromise on selecting delegates will be moot if Rule 12 remains in place.’
‘Rule 12 would allow the RNC to change the rules between conventions if 75% of committee members agree to do so. Since committee members usually agree to what the RNC chair wants, this effectively is a rubber stamp that allows the RNC to amend the rules whenever it wants.’
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/08/28/Palin-Conservatives-Urge-RNC-Delegates-To-Reject-Rule-Changes-Establishment-Power-Grab
So people like Sarah Palin are finding out what the Paul delegates have been going through, one, and these rule changes will make the GOP nominating process more like a Politburo. Paul should have been on the ballot; they changed the rules after the fact, and presto, he’s not. They unseated countless delegates from several states. If this stands, in the future there will be no challenge at all to the RNC picking the presidential candidate. And as that person can pick his/her own delegates, there will be zero dissent at the conventions, state or national.
I hope that Palin and crowd can stop this. We’ve been fighting this machine for months and most in the party were fine with it. Now it’s turned on them. We’ll see who wins, but it’s definitely a dire situation for grass roots democracy.
I would rather have about 5 or 6 different parties, then we wouldn’t have to put up with crap like this.
My relative from Germany said that they have this many parties and it’s always a fight to collect and maintain a coalition of parties. If we had that, the Old Republican guards would go the way of the Whigs, or maybe they would form a coalition with the Dems.
“I would rather have about 5 or 6 different parties, then we wouldn’t have to put up with crap like this.”
But then how would TBTF financial institutions maintain their death grip on American politics?
I think the GOP shot itself in the gut by marginalizing the Paul delegates yesterday, and it will come back to haunt them in the next nominating process. In a rather distraught communique last night campaign director John Tate told us that the
“…Properly elected Ron Paul delegates were stripped from us. And when a motion was made to amend the Credentials Committee Report, it was ignored.
Morton Blackwell, a longtime conservative activist and RNC Rules Committee expert, found himself indefinitely detained – along with the rest of the Virginia delegation.
The RNC’s bus driver responsible for transporting delegates somehow “got lost” for well over an hour until a critical Rules Committee meeting adjourned.
Blackwell and the Virginia delegation were heading up the efforts to defeat new RNC rules proposed by Washington, D.C.-based insider attorneys….”
Our country needs a dynamic electoral process, not a plebiscite. (Actually, we don’t even have that, as there is no provision for “no confidence” on our ballots. ) Weighted elections will give the whole electorate a voice — and a proportionate one at that.
The bus driver is the weak link. He can tell someone what the instructions were. Unless he (or she) was a person deeply loyal to someone on the committee, that is the place to start asking questions. Did no one on the bus have a GPS or a smart phone with a navigation ap? I have no sense of direction and even I can’t get lost for an hour these days.
The delegates must have all been men. A woman would have stopped to ask for directions.
+1 Oxy
Guilty as charged -
A mortgage is a high stakes bet on nothing ever changing. Now it is a bet against what is already happening.
What made sense during yesterday’s Great Expansion makes less sense - or it makes no sense at all - during this Great Contraction.
What does make sense now is cash and cash-flow.
“A mortgage is a high stakes bet on nothing ever changing.”
“What made sense during yesterday’s Great Expansion makes less sense - or it makes no sense at all - during this Great Contraction.”
Combine the two and a better analysis is that mortgages are extremely risky when interest rates are low, and no worry when interest rates are high.
In the late 70s my parents had a 16% mortgage on ye olde family home. Lets say prices fluctuate 10% that year. “what me worry?” Capital gain/loss don’t matter much compared to the interest rate cost.
Fast forward to the 3% (or whatever) modern era. Low interest rates mean houses cost 20x annual gross income. Suddenly 10% price fluctuation means “OMG” instead of “what me worry?” because 10% of house price is something like two years of gross income rather than a mere 9 months of house payment.
“Combine the two and a better analysis is that mortgages are extremely risky when interest rates are low, and no worry when interest rates are high.”
Same goes for long-term Treasury bonds, though even more so, because
1) the Fed is openly working to prevent deflation, the scenario which works best for owning bonds;
2) interest rates are almost as low as they have ever been and bound to someday revert to higher levels more in line with historic norms;
3) rising interest rates generate immediate capital losses on Treasurys;
4) inflation, which often goes hand-in-hand with higher interest rates, steadily erodes the value of future coupon payments, not to mention the lump-sum return of principle at the end of the term.
None of these issues is of concern, so long as the Fed is able to keep a lid on inflation and long-term interest rates indefinitely. Perhaps Treasury bond investors will turn out as lucky as Japanese bond market investors did over the past two decades — time will tell.
It’s also worth noting that a fixed income pension (aka life annuity) is very similar to a Treasury bond as a financial instrument, except that payments are made until death of the beneficiary, with no lump sum payment at the end of the term unless there is an additional survivor benefit.
So, for instance, if inflation and interest rates eventually picked up again, the massive overhang of pension liability that threatens to crush municipalities around the U.S. would quickly shrink back down to size. Hence there really is no urgent need to hammer future public sector union pensioners into penury, as many ignorami in the MSM, and certain HBB posters, frequently suggest; simply pray for higher future inflation.
So, let me understand…it’s bad to be a lender because rates are low and will mean revert and inflation will erode the future value of the money, and it’s bad to be a borrower because when rates mean revert, the asset on which you have borrowed will be immune to the effects of inflation, and you WON’T be paying back the debt with cheaper dollars?
Both can’t be true.
If inflation is the most politically palatable option for dealing with these issues, inflation it will be.
“So, for instance, if inflation and interest rates eventually picked up again, the massive overhang of pension liability that threatens to crush municipalities around the U.S. would quickly shrink back down to size. Hence ”
When interest rates increase, the value of the bonds you already hold drops. So, if those pension funds are holding bonds, increasing interest rates would CRUSH them as the price of their holdings crashes.
Much of the debt has been refi’ed into long-term, low interest rate bonds. It would likely take 10-15, maybe 20-30 years for the majority of the debt to see the actual interest rate increases.
So, in the face of rising interest rates, those pension plans that are holding bonds would be faced with the choice of selling the existing bonds at lower prices, or holding them and continuing to collect today’s low interest rates for the next couple decades.
AND
Even if there was an immediate increase in the rates on all the existing debt, as you seem to think there would be, ability to actually collect is still dependent on the ability of those in debt to actually pay. Double interest rates today, and most of the debt defaults and gets wiped out in bankruptcy. I’m not sure how it helps the pension funds to have the bonds they hold suddenly take on the value of toilet paper.
We’ve increased each household’s share of total debt from 2.8x median household income to 6.5x. We’ve done that by lowering interest rates to the point that they can afford that higher debt level. Return to the interest rates of the 50s, 60s, 80s, and the debt can not be supported and will collapse.
You can’t get blood from a turnip regardless of how much blood the turnip has promised to pay.
I think you see that the voodoo economics that was implied here was that the “pensions” are all holding cash (which they can’t because they NEED income), and that the “cash” could be converted to higher paying bonds, thereby getting higher returns on income flows.
The fact is, there simply isn’t enough cash and almost ALL the promises were based on 8 to 10% returns on investment in perpetuity.
It was a STUPID assumption.
I recently saw a “Suze Orman” show. She was doing a mea culpa about how she given “bad” financial advice about getting your credit score up, going into debt and buying a house, all during the housing boom.
I always thought she was an idiot, but she was spouting her way to financial success for years. It was a total failure.
NOW, it’s all changed, and nobody really understood what was going to happen when millions of people with no money promised to pay 100’s of thousands of dollars on mortgages with $30k to $40k jobs.
I think many of us here could see it. We just couldn’t understand where all the “wealth” was coming from to buy 4 or 5 houses. we thought we were missing out.
Now we know. It was Federal Government and FED Reserve promotion of fantasies aided and abetted by crooks on Wallstreet and Scamster Banksters, none of whom have been prosecuted for the greatest robbery of all time. (thank you Obama and Eric Holder).
” none of whom have been prosecuted for the greatest robbery of all time. (thank you Obama and Eric Holder).”
So, when Romney wins, and I think he will and hope he does, we’ll see a skyrocketing in prosecutions?
Another list of fails that are being attributed to Obama that I’ll be sure to heap upon the Republicans if it does not change under Romney.
It’s going to be a massive list!
Republicans want to be in charge during this time? Be careful what you ask for.
“So, if those pension funds are holding bonds, increasing interest rates would CRUSH them as the price of their holdings crashes.”
Are you suggesting that pension funds are loading up on long-term bonds at this point, when they are near their highest relative prices in the history of U.S. asset markets?
I hope that is not the case, though nothing would surprise me.
“The fact is, there simply isn’t enough cash and almost ALL the promises were based on 8 to 10% returns on investment in perpetuity.
It was a STUPID assumption.”
But it was an assumption that held up well for decades of U.S. economic history, enabling corporations to recruit and retain workers on the basis of pension promises while chronically underfunding their pension plans.
Another issue that is being overlooked is TAXES. The Defenders of “public sector” pensions and benefits think the taxpayers are cash cows.
Property Taxes in many places have been reduced to some extent, but nowhere near the loss of value of the property. Governments always are looking for “revenue enhancement”.
I talked to a friend yesterday in Jacksonville. The local mayor wants to raise property taxes, especially along the beach areas, where the rich folks are, to “enhance” revenues due to some millions of dollars in shortfalls this year. Naturally, all the welfare recipients that attend council meetings while the rest of you working folks go out and make the money to support them, all raised their hands in support of the mayor’s position. (I’d give you a racial breakdown, but this would be no real news).
The local paper said the “citizens” at the meeting overwhelmingly supported the mayor’s position. what a surprise.
Anywhere, here is a summary from Spengler’s column last week in the Asian Times:
The home price collapse wiped out nearly half the median family’s wealth during 2007-2010, but the tax burden middle-class homeowners continued to rise.
Exhibit 1: State and Local Property Tax Receipts (12 Month Rolling Sum) vs. Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index
Source: Census Bureau, S&P
As I argued in late last year (see The Economics of Polarization, Asia Times Online, November 1, 2011), the cost of supporting bloated payrolls and pension schemes for government unions at the state and local level forced these governments to squeeze more out of floundering homeowners.
Homeowners now pay in aggregate almost as much in taxes as in mortgage interest. Taxes used to be a third of mortgage interest. The increased tax burden has kept home prices low.
The distress of the American middle class is unlike anything observed in the post-war period. Home equity rose at least in nominal terms during every five-year interval since World War II, except the most recent.
End of quoted article.
I broke out the paragraph I thought was KEY.
Homeowners TAX burdens are about equal to mortgage interest. That will keep a drain on home price increases, when people ask about the “tax consequences” of buying.
It is funny how the Republicans say that we can’t lift us all up by tearing a few down. They then spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get the masses to tear down the pay and benefits of the unioned public employees.
Me thinks this has a lot to do with the amount of money those unions provide to the Democratic Party.
Rather than tearing down the last vestiges of the old system that helped get the average buy a good deal, I’d like to see us end free trade, bring back manufacturing jobs to the USA, revert to a 1950s tax code, and return the power to Main Street instead of Wall Street and D.C.
I know, I’m a freakin’ liberal nutjob that just doesn’t understand that the economy exists to make the the rich ever richer.
Wall Street thinks money exists so they can accumulate ever more of it. I think money should exist to ensure the efficient distribution of goods to consumers based on subjective value of labor and produced goods and services…. I’m obviously a kook.
No. You’re just a nutjob who probably has or had a government job with great benefits and pension plans based on 8 to 10% return on stock investments and a HUGE tax revenue increase during the housing bubble. All local governments did.
Probably a “Retire at 50 with 30″ Plan.
YOU constantly defend PUBLIC union retirement plans, no matter how many incidences of gross overpayment are supplied.
There is no injustice in working class people being taxed out of their houses, so long as the government can force them to “honor their contract”.
People like me, who had to save for their own retirement in IRA’s and 401k’s, yes, the MAJORITY of America, have seen ALL our incomes, accounts and savings eaten alive.
We didn’t get a “guaranteed government payment plan”.
And since your plans are “underfunded”, you think you should take it out of ours.
Thanks a lot Or,
Blame it ALL on the RICH. And go vote for Obama, the saviour of Union workers, while paying off bankers and using average working taxpayer dollars to support every boondoggle his crony capitalist government can buy.
“Homeowners now pay in aggregate almost as much in taxes as in mortgage interest. Taxes used to be a third of mortgage interest. The increased tax burden has kept home prices low…
Homeowners TAX burdens are about equal to mortgage interest. That will keep a drain on home price increases, when people ask about the “tax consequences” of buying.”
I agree that rising property taxes are a problem. It was particularly horrific when elderly people in states like FL were forced out of their homes during the height of the bubble because they had to pay taxes on the “value” of the home with no inflation/bubble protection offered.
However, my last loan (2000) was at 8.2% and that was a great rate. My new loan is at 3.99% and that is only a good rate. Part of the reasons taxes are so much higher is that the amount of interest paid is so much lower. And of course, because people are buying by payment instead of multiples of income and lower interest rates allow them to buy more home for the same price. (And yes, they are double screwed on total debt and taxes for the white elephant they can’t sell when interest rise. But the value will be falling and I’m sure county assessors will do their best to give a fair tax value to the home in a declining market each year. Snark.)
“No. You’re just a nutjob who probably has or had a government job with great benefits and pension plans based on 8 to 10% return on stock investments and a HUGE tax revenue increase during the housing bubble. All local governments did.”
You could not be more wrong.
I worked at McDonalds, Robert’s Silks (uncle’s, brother-in-law’s silk flower wholesale business), Sizzlers, Dominoes Pizza, Pizza Hut, US Navy (pension, but I didn’t stay for 20 years so I get nothing, nor was there a “fund”), MCI, WorldCom, Data Dimensions, Compuware, JDA Software, Initiate, and since IBM purchased Initiate, IBM.
Other than the US Navy, I’ve never worked for the government. Other than a couple years at MCI before being bought by WorldCom, I’ve never been promised a pension. That tiny bit of pensions went away when WorldCom went under.
I just realize that the path to prosperity for all does not go through everyone being poor.
You can’t make the poor rich by making the rich poor. You can’t bring up the standard of living of the middle class by systematically destroying the last vestiges of the middle class.
Darrell,
Isn’t it a bit of a logical blunder to say that the last of the middle class is government workers. Doesn’t this imply that the rest of the middle class is already destroyed? If so, why should the working poor be supporting a middle class of government workers? Me thinks you can’t have it both ways.
Low interest rates mean houses cost 20x annual gross income.
Maybe for some, and I agree that to buy a house that is 10 or 20X your gross income is insanity, no matter how low the interest rate is.
But I still want to know what are the new & improved HBB “suggestions” on when is the right time to buy.
There was consensus here that it is ok to buy when:
1. PITI is less than rent
2. Cost of house is less than 2-3 times gross income
3. You plan on staying in the same house for at least 8-10 years.
4. You could cover your costs (and then some) if you had to rent out your house and move somewhere else.
Did I miss something? Maybe there’s a memo I didn’t get?
Not trying to be snide. I’ve been on this blog for a while now (05? 06, I don’t remember) and I’ve been learning a lot (see above).
But the don’t-buy-no-matter what and even thinking aloud about buying makes you a “pimp” or a “liar” doesn’t makes sense to me.
“But the don’t-buy-no-matter what and even thinking aloud about buying makes you a “pimp” or a “liar” doesn’t make sense to me.”
I think most here still *generally* go with that list of conditions you gave. The one that doesn’t is just more “vocal”. He or PB would probably agree that if your job is really that secure, and you don’t plan on moving, then it’s a reasonable decision to buy at 2.5 times gross, especially if PITI is less than rent by enough to cover maintenance costs.
But far be it for me to speak for them.
I agree with them that the future doesn’t look pretty, but imo if you meet those four conditions, and you and your spouse won’t have to move in order to stay employed with your present incomes, then I wouldn’t understand the objection to buying.
A mortgage is a high stakes bet that the nearly-flat part of this linked graph, to the right of the thick gray band at a level around 140, will continue along its recent upward trajectory, rather than resuming its terrifying plunge back down towards a level of 100 or lower.
My God that graph is stunning. Nothing but air under the right side of it. Air.
It’s also worth reflecting on how many different costly interventions were used to stop the affordability improvements in their tracks. Will propping up housing prices on a permanently-high plateau remain a political priority going forward against the other pressing financial issues facing the U.S.? I guess time will tell.
The high prices are limited to a select few markets.
Adjusting the Case-Shiller for wage increases, then 120 would be equivalent to 2000’s 100. Of the 20 cities in the C-S, 9 are at or below that level, and 4 more are within 10-15% of that level, which could easily be explained by low rates.
The markets that are still significantly elevated above 2000, wage adjusted level are:
D.C., Boston, San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami and New York. What do these places all have in common? Right, large coastal cities with little room to build within an hour of downtown.
These 6 markets are holding the 20 city composite at it’s still overpriced level. If you are looking to buy in one of these places, sorry. Do not attempt to use those 6 cities to make generalities about the nation as a whole.
“Do not attempt to use those 6 cities to make generalities about the nation as a whole.”
I didn’t — you did.
I merely posted a graph and commented on its features.
It looks quite different if you adjust for inflation even using the government numbers:
http://www.jparsons.net/housingbubble/
That’s a pretty catchy spin! It must be time for another multi-decade credit expansion. First I’d like to see house prices plotted against household net worth and income.
Net worth would be ugly. Median income is not too bad, being 5% below CPI, the inflation level used in the chart.
Ahh… the old Jparsons site.
Every realtor pimping housing on the net posts that link.
Remember that the index is not inflation adjusted. For prices to fall back to 100 would mean that houses are selling for exactly the same price they were in 2000, Nominal, not REAL!
We all talk about how wages are down over the last decade, but that IS inflation adjusted.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/
Median household income in the USA was $42K in 2000 and $49.5 in 2010. So, nominal household income was up 18% over that decade.
Inflate the $42K to 2010 CPI, it should be $53.8K. So, wages are down inflation adjusted, but up non-inflation adjusted.
So, since the Case-Shiller is not inflation adjusted, a full half of that 100 - 140 move is fully explained just by median household income increase since 2000.
The rest is explained by 1) low interest rates and 2) some areas not having crashed back to fundamental level.
Just because the national average is still above wage inflation adjusted fundamental level does not mean that all markets are.
For example, Phoenix went from 100 to 225, back under 100. Assuming 18% wage increase, that put prices well under the price/income ratio of 2000 (not saying 2000 was a good level, just that we were below that). With Phoenix back to 114, we’re still below wage adjusted level of the starting point.
On the flip side, you have places like D.C. at 190, San Fran at 140, and San Diego at 155. These markets were, in my opinion, overpriced in 2000, and are even more overpriced today. Those markets are holding the Case Shiller index above the wage inflation adjusted level.
Even better, scroll down at A-dan’s link. House price and owner-equivalent rent are now equal.
Gotta love the “what do you think your house would rent for” statistic.
Housing prices were already grossly inflated by 2000.
Nice try Darryl.
“Remember that the index is not inflation adjusted. For prices to fall back to 100 would mean that houses are selling for exactly the same price they were in 2000, Nominal, not REAL!”
I definitely think prices will fall back to the same price as 2000. Do you really think there is more economic activity on the bottom 99% than there was in 2000? How many people with jobs in 2000 have none now. How many are making significantly more? Not many. (Again, excluding the 1% who I do believe plan to buy up all the real estate and turn us into Pottersville.) How many are employed but making less? How many are making more but it’s being eaten up y higher food and energy prices? A lot I’d guess.
I thought prices should be at 2000 levels (inflation-adjusted) in 2008, then the downturn left even most of us bears breathless. Now? I leave out the inflation adjusted part and 1990 prices (or 1997 since ‘97 prices were lower than 1990 prices in a lot of So. CA) prices would not surprise me.
Until we have a real economy again, where we make things and implement policies that allow us to compete more fairly, I think we are very screwed and none of us know where this is going to end.
In the meaning time have a cookie.
“On the flip side, you have places like D.C. at 190, San Fran at 140, and San Diego at 155. These markets were, in my opinion, overpriced in 2000, and are even more overpriced today.”
A fellow I work with moved to San Diego around the year 2000. His dad, a Realtor™ in another state, advised him against buying a home, because the San Diego market was overvalued and due for a correction.
Guess what? After twelve years, the guy is still renting…
So he would have been a lot better off ignoring his dad and buying in 2000?
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm
This is fun, plug in $1 at the year 2000.
It spits out $1.33.
The graph is NOMINAL, not adjusted for inflation.
It is not a bet against what is already happening. It is a bet that what is happening cannot continue and that is a safe bet. You cannot continue to run deficits around 7.5% of GDP and print unlimited amounts of fiat currency and not have inflation.
Actually, you can. As long as all that money ends up in the hands of the few that already have more money than they can spend, then the extra money is not chasing goods and services… no inflation.
Government borrows money into existence and spends it. It flows through the economy into the hands of foreign trade partners and through corporate profits into the hands of the rich that hold most stocks.
Rather than spending that money, they use it to buy more government debt. Repeat.
This can go on for a VERY long time without creating any inflation.
Darrell, when it takes more dollars to buy the same return on investment, what is that called?
Blue Skye …. “……what is already happening.”
Update from the Sacramento foothills:
The foreclosure reports I follow are down 50% from their highs in 2009. The MLS listings are down more than 50% from their highs in 2009. Available properties in MLS listings are down 75% from 2009. Available properties are typically under contract within 7 days of being listed for sale. Prices are up at least 10%. Population growth has been steady at 1.8%/year since 2009. Housing production has been nill since 2009. Homebuilders are now buying land, manufacturing lots and builiding homes to meet pent up demand…..and they are selling houses…profitably.
This is “what is already happening” in my part of the world.
California added over 300,000 jobs last month…#2 in the U.S., behind North Dakota (27,000 jobs, but higher on a pro rata basis).
I know many on this blog don’t believe there will be a recovery, but is it just as likely there will be (and is) a recovery as it WAS likely the housing bubble would burst in 2007. Again, I am not saying everything is rosey and wonderful, I am just saying it will really serve a lot of people well who visit this blog if they will open their minds to this possibilty.
Whether it will serve remains to be seen. Extrapolating the statistics of a short time frame and small area over the long term and whole economy can be dangerous.
Economic recovery can be due to innovation or borrowing frenzy. You got some kind of innovation in the Sacramento foothills that you would like to share with the rest of us? Any chance you are borrowing to get your piece of this bonanza?
Any chance you are borrowing to get your piece of this bonanza?
I thought he already admitted he was borrowing. The name of the RE investing game was, until the recent mania, cash flow or rather, borrowing at a proper rate/payment that ensures cash flow after covering for PITI, maintenance, property management, etc, and trying to keep costs as fixed as possible so that your tenants pay the property’s mortgage over time.
The wildcards that would make me not confident about cash flow are taxes (big one given the current state of affairs), insurance, and maintenance.
Of course there will be a recovery. A recovery is dramatically lower prices by definition. Prices continue to fall.
“A mortgage is a high stakes bet on nothing ever changing.”
For the average, broke, in debt to their eyeballs, American, taking out an FHA loan with 3% down, your statement could not be more wrong.
For the average American, taking on a mortgage is a low stakes bet, leveraging the possibility that the government will use inflation to avoid cascade debt default.
That’s it right there: The solution for the average in debt to their eyeballs person is to borrow more……
Absolutely right. When you have nothing to lose, your best move is to leverage some OPM and hope the market moves in your favor. Heads, you win. Tails, the government eats the loss.
Why should it be any different for Joe Schmoe than Jamie Diamond or John Corzine?
And why do we allow this?
$600B a year flows out of the country to our foreign trade partners, and $700-800B a year flows through corporate profits into the hands of those that already have mroe money than they spend. To keep this trade imbalance plagued economy afloat, we need to create $1.3+T in new debt/money every year.
Shall I again provide the link to the z.1 showing total debt explode from $4T to $38T over the last 32 years?
Borrowing OPM and gambling with it, with the government covering the losses IS our economy. Main Street is just playing Wall Street’s game.
You are way out on a brittle limb.
The Government just needs to keep people working hard for a “money” it controls and costs almost nothing to make
lose that and they lose everything
“For the average American, taking on a mortgage is a low stakes bet, leveraging the possibility that the government will use inflation to avoid cascade debt default.”
And if the 3% down FHA loan goes into personal default, there is always the chance that some kind of foreclosure rescue program might somehow make them whole.
GDP inflation adjusted or not?
BEA news release this morning “Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 1.7 percent in the second quarter of 2012″
In the olden days (but not too olden days) inflation was around zero so that represents healthy “real” growth of a percent or so. Now that even fake reported inflation is far higher than 1.7, this means we’re basically getting sicker not better as an economy.
“Now that even fake reported inflation is far higher than 1.7″
Oh really? Tell us about this “inflation”.
Tell us about this “inflation”
Food
Gasoline
Health insurance
College tuition
Labor costs.
Oh, wait.
What “olden days?”
Right after the golden days.
“Take America back”
“Restore our future”
“I like Ike”
“Keep cool with Coolidge”
“Return to normalcy”
et cetera
That’s an inflation-adjusted figure.
Frankly, getting that kind of growth without massive federal deficits is about the best scenario I can think of for the U.S. going forward, given our debt overhang and slower labor force growth.
It is a official government inflation number adjusted figure and the government underestimates inflation. 1.7 is the best you can have under Obama but if you are growing at 1.7 and have a deficit over 7.5% of the GDP, you go broke like Greece. We need to replace him.
It’s probably just me, but if you replace the top LEGO, will that change how the whole machine works?
Exactly Blue Skye.
Niether candidate will really make much of a difference in the economy and the rate of our recovery.
We are most likely to just continue slogging along, slowly improving until we finally get back to a more normal situation in 4 or 5 years.
We are slowing improving? If you continue to pile up debt faster than you are growing you are not improving. If we were growing 1.7% with no deficit, I would be Obama’s greatest supporter but we are not. Does the leader matter? Of course, both Reagan and Clinton were able to get things done while the other party had control of the Congress.
My problem with Romney is the same as I had with Clinton, I am not sure that he will reign in the Fed or deal with illegal immigration. Of course, since it is a sure thing that Obama will not, even Romney is an improvement.
in 4 or 5 years
After Hillary is elected, yes.
“even Romney is an improvement.”
I don’t think so. In fact, I think he’d be a downgrade. He’s a farking contemptuous cheater, liar and doper.
From the article I posted above:
“As the New York Times wrote yesterday,
Delegates from Nevada tried to nominate Mr. Paul from the floor, submitting petitions from their own state as well as Minnesota, Maine, Iowa, Oregon, Alaska and the Virgin Islands. That should have done the trick: Rules require signatures from just five states. But the party changed the rules on the spot. Henceforth, delegates must gather petitions from eight states.”
“When Mr. Romney and the RNC cheat so blatantly, they make the game no longer about politics: they make themselves ineligible for the vote of anyone who cares about his own morality, his own honesty or his own integrity — regardless of his politics. And from a purely practical standpoint, they invite Americans to ask if they want to live in a nation governed with the same contempt for those who don’t toe the party line as has been displayed both in Tampa and throughout the primary process.”
ED ZACHARY! And if I get any live calls from the RNC or the Romney campaign, I’m gonna tell them I sh*t on the RNC, Mitt Romney and the person who calls me.
And this tells me everything I need to know about Mitt Romney and how he got wealthy and how he got where he is today, which is basically nowhere, when you think about it. A snivelling, parasitic, cheating creep.
YOU didn’t build that, Mitt, and you know it. Other people did, and you just glommed on and sucked off the hard work of others.
Oh, did I mentioned that Romney is also a piece of filth?
YOU didn’t build that, Mitt, and you know it. Other people did, and you just glommed on and sucked off the hard work of others.
It amazes me that so many people will vote for a Gordon Gekko clone, especially when there was a much better choice: Ron Paul.
piece of filth
There’s a SUV we see around the neighborhood with a sticker with a picture of an outhouse captioned “be right back, I’m taking an Obama”
My problem with Romney is the same as I had with Clinton
At least Bubba had a balanced budget for a while. I hold no delusions of that happening under a Romney administration.
“But the party changed the rules on the spot. Henceforth, delegates must gather petitions from eight states.”
Wow. How… typical.
if that doesn’t tell you all you need to know about the GOP, then you’re hopeless.
“It amazes me that so many people will vote for a Gordon Gekko clone,”
Doncha get it? Those people are so delusional they think they actually have a chance to be a Mitt Romney or other similar turd one day. I know it’s unbelievable, but they do, they really do think that. Even while they’re sad sack losers getting screwed about 12 ways to Sunday without a snowball’s chance in hell, they think they’re gonna be rich, rich, rich! That’s why we had a housing bubble! Every man a king!
And so they’ll vote for Guy Smiley, because he’ll protect the interests of all these future billionaires!
“if that doesn’t tell you all you need to know about the GOP,”
Yeah, I saw Rubio pull a similar move in the Florida house when he was Speaker.
But the Dems have a bogus pres, so what’s the diff?
I was pretty cruel about that Peggy Joseph lady who said Obama was going to pay for her food and housing. But when you think about it, she’s no different from the sad sacks that think a Mitt Romney symbolizes their shot at becoming a billionaire.
“Hey, if he can do it, so can I, yuk-yuk! And he’ll protect my billions from all those goobermint and welfare leeches!
OK, lemme have a quick-pick on the Powerball, willya? And a sixpack of Bud.”
The NYT article you quote is BLAMING Romney for the manuevering of the Republic Party machine.
Of course they would, they are an extension of the Democratic party and always write good things about Obama and look for ways to cut down the opposition. I get it.
But you are buying into the idea that ROMNEY put the Party up to this maneuver. I don’t think that’s supportable. I think the MAJORITY in the party wanted to see Romney on the ticket and worked to suppress any other candidates.
I don’t agree with what was done, especially since I was a RON PAUL supporter, but I don’t think Romney was the “ringleader”. He may not have even known what the maneuver was until he read it in the NYT this morning.
Don’t be silly, Dio. Once someone becomes the “presumptive” nominee, their campaign gets to set the agenda for the convention. If the Romney people had wanted a floor fight (not likely, but I can think of a few reasons why they might) they would have let it go forward at least to some extent. As near as I can tell, the current polical campaign wisdom is that the convention is for looking united, so that is what they arrange to have.
And the candidate may not have paid attention to it, but his people did. It is their campaign, and this is their week.
But you are buying into the idea that ROMNEY put the Party up to this maneuver. I don’t think that’s supportable.
I think you’re right, but in the same way that I complain about the Ds, the problem is the party baggage that comes with the person you elect. Even if I decide that Mitt’s the greatest guy on the planet, the party baggage just got a lot heavier, IMO.
“But the party changed the rules on the spot. Henceforth, delegates must gather petitions from eight states”
By the way, please note that the number needed was raised only a little over the number they had. If 9 states being petitions the next time (for whoever), they will raise it to 10 or 11. This is a long term strategy in case someone manages to do it again.
I’m thinking the Log Cabin Republican vote is going to Obama in this election?
Ann Romney: Mitt and I have a “real marriage”
August 28, 2012 9:15 PM
While speaking at the GOP National Convention, Ann Romney takes on claims that she and Mitt have had an easy marriage saying “a storybook marriage? No, not at all. What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage.”
Log Cabin Republicans are the very epitome of “confused about their orientation”.
It’s almost as bad as being a gay Mormon.
I’ve watched two of Ann Stepford Romney’s “love and joy and family and joy and marriage and love and Mitt and family” speeches now and am struck by nothing so much as her body language when she’s actually with the man.
She leans away from him in interviews, shields her face from his sight with her ring hand, pulls back from his staged hugs and arm-around-the-shoulder embraces during photo ops. That woman doesn’t want the Mittster NEAR her.
Not to mention the fact that she has MS. You’d think that she’d be reaching out for husband-ly support right and left.
Hate much?
No confusion that the married, closeted ones love to be glory hole Republicans
‘confused about their orientation’
So you are saying a gay person must be ‘leftist’, or ‘liberal’? What this turn of events signifies to me is a darkening of the political atmosphere.
‘A coalition of advocates from women’s rights and gay rights organizations urged the Republican Party platform committee to bring an inclusive and moderate document to the convention. Reports this week indicate that the proposed platform will reflect the influence of the Christian right and contain a call for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and a vigorous defense of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act.’
‘The call came from officials with Republicans for Choice, Catholics for Choice, the Log Cabin Republicans and the National Council of Jewish Women. Republicans for Choice released data on Aug. 22 showing that views on access to reproductive health care including contraception and abortion are not at all universal for those aligned with the Republican Party.’
‘In a broad poll, when asked “Regardless of your personal view on abortion, who do you think should make the decision on whether or not to have an abortion, a woman or her government?” nearly 80 percent of those who identified as Republicans agreed strongly that the decision should be made by a woman.’
http://www.wisconsingazette.com/breaking-news/republicans-for-gay-equality-choice-urge-an-inclusive-gop-platform.html
I’m having a hard time understanding the glee liberals take in this sort of thing. This isn’t good, for anybody. Like it or not, the two party system is an institution; one that represents all of us. When forces move to shut down political opinion and participation, anywhere in this country, we all lose.
Some of us are trying to shake up this system, and I can tell you it’s difficult. But many of my views aren’t accepted in either party. So what are people like me to do? Sit on the sidelines? Fill up a bunker with guns and canned food? That doesn’t solve anything.
Speaking freely is no longer accepted in many places, even here on this blog. And before you ‘liberals’ get started, I’ve noticed you tend to shout down those you oppose as much or more than any group here.
I don’t know what the solutions are. But the disconnect between citizens and government is larger than ever, IMO, and I feel restrictions on freedom of expression and belief is part of that trend.
a hard time understanding the glee liberals take in this sort of thing.
Speaking for my liberal self, I take no glee from the GOP’s leap back into the Dark Ages. It just makes me that much more concerned about them gaining power. I would love to see them return to being the party of Eisenhower conservatism. I might even vote for them if they did.
party of Eisenhower conservatism
The one who warned about the military industrial complex? That’s a joke.
The path to prosperity lies through creating government contractor jobs.
Goon, I’m beginning to think you and I are the only who gets this.
It’s what makes me laugh in derision at the naivety of someone saying we should get government out of business.
Agreed. If we get the government “out of business” (specifically the “defense” business) our country would come to a complete economic standstill, as would the collective economies of much of the rest of the planet.
What is your interest in controlling the lives of others people? Is it jealousy, resentment or just a need to have others live the life you think they should?
What is your interest in controlling the lives of others people?
If you’re speaking to me, you seem to lack reading comprehension. I was saying that I would possibly support a conservative who actually did stay out of people’s private lives. Today’s so-called conservatives want to be our bedroom monitors and prayer leaders.
I think it is not about any specific political issue, because we are are in the breaking down phase of a huge national (international) mania. The last resort is to blame our dysfunction on our personal behaviors. The first and least effective resort is to become angry at others, and to try to bring them under our control. It’s a nasty process.
But the disconnect between citizens and government is larger than ever
The citizens that work for the government behave as though they are the enemy of the citizen unless said citizen is totally compliant.
Improvement comes with downsizing the govt.
‘Improvement comes with downsizing the govt’
Here’s part of the problem as I see it; we don’t have honest discussions in politics. For instance, this ‘fiscal cliff’ we hear so much about. Did you know it is only a cut in baseline increases?
We’re so baffled by BS and non-issues in this country, we don’t know which way is up. And to my earlier point; it’s long been my opinion that the PTB use divisive issues to keep us arguing amongst ourselves, while they go about doing what they please.
Notice they swing into full ‘compromise’ on stuff like TARP, Patriot Act or the NDAA.
“Disaster Capitalism”
“Confusion” is the basic tool.
“We’re so baffled by BS and non-issues in this country,”
Exactly.
And it’s been that way for so long that when real, life affecting issues get any airplay, everyone seems to miss them. And not just life impacting stuff for you and me. For others too. The steering of public sentiment by PR creeps representing the entrenched power structures is insidious and nearly invisible…. but it’s there…. every day…. everywhere. Repetitive.
I talked with my Denver residing sister, a communist is what the jackasses of the world would call her. she said;
“Lingus, I just cannot bring myself to vote for either of these cretins. I’m sick of all this abortion talk. Have you ever heard of Gary Johnson? Will I be able to vote for him? Otherwise I’m just not going to vote. I’ve always voted in every election since I was old enough to vote.”
So there you have it. A dyed in the wool 59 year old liberal(and a very cool person too), who clearly understands that there is something very wrong. Very very wrong.
She knows a vote for the duopoly merely serves to keep the duopoly and GovCorp(Fed reserve, The Housing Crime Syndicate, “Defense” contractors, investment banks, insurance) in power.
You know it too.
that the PTB use divisive issues to keep us arguing amongst ourselves, while they go about doing what they please ??
Spot on Ben….
Nope I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is the GOP is more than forthright about their hatred of gays.
Nobody in their right mind joins a group that hates them. Thus the confusion.
Gay Democrats can come out and nobody cares. Gay Republicans have to stay in the closet and get their jollies in airport restrooms.
Because nothing says “Family Values” like tickling and groping teenage male Congressional Pages
Gay Republicans have to stay in the closet and get their jollies in airport restrooms.
To the contrary. I was represented by a gay Republican for many years. Name’s Jim Kolbe. He retired from the House of Representatives in 2006. Gabrielle Giffords succeeded him.
“…So what are people like me to do? Sit on the sidelines? Fill up a bunker with guns and canned food? That doesn’t solve anything….”
You’re doing the very best thing possible, Ben. You’re hosting an inclusive, far-reaching, and often very lively public forum where anyone can discuss these issues in a thoughtful, civilized manner and inform their vote and public actions accordingly. I can’t think of anything more patriotic than that.
Exactly. The Internet IS the revolution. It’s just we’re so close to it and immersed it in it, we can’t see it yet.
The Internet has created more EGALITARIAN communication between everyone on the planet than ANY device before, including the telephone.
“Exactly. The Internet IS the revolution. It’s just we’re so close to it and immersed it in it, we can’t see it yet.The Internet has created more EGALITARIAN communication between everyone on the planet than ANY device before, including the telephone.”
Well stated TL
Trust me Ben I’m not gleeful I’m weeping and fearful. This problem in the GOP has been building for a long time. The GOP has been morphing into the borg from my perspective sinceTom Delay grover norquist and Karl Rove. Dissent has been utterly crushed and they vote as a single block. This of course attracts large amounts of money and furthers the interests of the elite. Now don’t get me wrong there many if not most of the Dems are bought and paid for but there is less of the top down control. I think politics has always been controlled by the rich and corporations but with perpetual consolidation and globalization corporations have become more powerful and worse they have developed a more unified voice. Before you might have small banks fighting big banks fighting insurance companies fighting investment houses now these things are so connected that the most powerful entities speak with a single voice. What’s going on in the GOP is going to occur on a national level as well, my feeling is the GOP is just further along this transformation and my guess is they will accelerate the process nationally. The US is rapidly becoming more fascist by the day. A gov of by and for the corporate elite with less and less regard for the bottom 99.99%. There are two ways to reverse the trend.
1. Retake gov for the people - Doesn’t look promising seeing what happened to Ron Paul.
2. Collapse of gov - With the money and power they have they will maintain control. Technology has given the elite more and more power to control the masses with fewer and fewer mercenaries.
the bottom 99.99%
I like what you did there. While “the 1%” is a better sound bite than “the .01%” that’s where Occupy got the message wrong in my opinion. A lot of people were alienated by being included in with the true problem group.
Or, is she playing the Mormon angle? In other words she’s saying, we are like you, M.I.T.T. does not have multiple wives.
I think she was just pointing out that being rich didn’t mean they didn’t have to face any challenges in life. She still got sick. Five kids is still a lot to manage.
She is a great woman, no doubt.
But I see great political potential for the message to get confused with the Mormon church’s stance against gay marriage.
Only people who have 200 million in the bank can have a real marriage ( in terms of money to buy what they want ) All the rest of the people struggle in ways that are to “real’ to mention . Money buys you a ticket into the IVORY TOWER .These people running for President aren’t great people just because they managed to get a bunch of money in the bank based on a rigged system .
But I see great political potential for the message to get confused with the Mormon church’s stance against gay marriage.
The pro same sex marriage crowd are going to vote for Obama anyway.
IIRC, the LDS have their marriages sealed for eternity (no ‘until death do us part’ for them). Maybe that’s what she meant by a “real marriage”
To me it just sounds like she’s saying that they’ve had challenges just like everybody else.
To me it just sounds like she’s saying that they’ve had challenges just like everybody else.
Yeah, I’m sure Mitt got laid off after his job was offshored by a corporate raider and his kids were starting college.
Only people who have 200 million in the bank can have a real marriage
That kind of dough can smoothen over most of life’s “challenges”.
You can choose to believe the message that her speech was assigned by the professional campaign staff or not, but the relatable message was what the speech writers who wrote her speech were going for.
I didn’t watch. I probably won’t watch any of it. A few minutes of re-cap the next morning is more than enough for me. I don’t expect to watch much (if any) of the DNC one either. I don’t like politcal rallies. Not in person and not on TV. They are mostly boring. I also don’t need to be excited to vote. I just do it. Being a 2 minute walk from my polling place makes it easier than it used to be.
“IIRC, the LDS have their marriages sealed for eternity (no ‘until death do us part’ for them).”
For all eternity? I don’t… I don’t know, I thought maybe when I died I’d be single again!?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsQpWHEYEMU
People who are worth millions of dollar do NOT have challenges. Only neurosis, bad planning or inconveniences. (with few exceptions for cases of illness)
“People who are worth millions of dollar do NOT have challenges.”
I’d rather be middle class and healthy than face life-threatening illnesses with millions to cope with treatment; but perhaps that is just me…
If only our choice were that simple. Unfortunately, thousands get to be middle class and get the life threatening illness AND then bankrupt.
Do you know how many thousands of people die just because they are broke? It’s easily found on google. Just use those very words and pick one of the more “respectable” news agencies.
“People who are worth millions of dollar do NOT have challenges.”
I’d rather be middle class and healthy than face life-threatening illnesses with millions to cope with treatment; but perhaps that is just me…
I agree. Also, I think from the context she was talking about marital challenges. While I’d bet there was no cheating, he may not be a particularly fun guy to be married to? Lots of things can make a marriage challenging.
I’m just saying, I don’t think she meant it the way some people are choosing to take it.
“he may not be a particularly fun guy to be married to”
Money may not make you perfectly healthy, but it is very good at providing fun in life.
Uh-huh, and the lesbian couple up the street has a fake marriage. BTW, Mitt and Ann, they got married in Canada and one of them has been president of my neighborhood association for a long time.
It’s so fun the last time around. Let’s do it again.
China - Not Wall Street - Caused 2008 Crisis: Study
Thought the global financial crisis in 2008 was caused by subprime bonds, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and other Wall Street engineering? Think again.
According to a new study, China, not Wall Street bankers, was responsible for the global crisis and the ensuing recession.
The study from the Erasmus Research Institute of Management says the saving frenzy of the Chinese created the cheap money, which fuelled the U.S. housing bubble and its collapse.
Heleen Mees, writer of the study and assistant economics professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, says that exotic mortgage products could hardly have been the cause of the U.S. housing market bubble and the its ultimate collapse.
According to the study, mortgages with those special features - like mortgage-backed securities and CDOs - accounted for less than five percent of the total number of new mortgages from 2000 to 2006.
Mees, author of three books and contributor for Foreign Policy magazine, says it was the “loose” monetary policy of the Federal Reserve at the beginning of the decade which sparked a refinancing boom in the U.S. in 2003 and 2004 and a growth in personal spending. This U.S. spending binge fuelled economic growth in China and in turn boosted total savings in that country.
The study, which compared financial market responses to U.S., Chinese and German quarterly GDP from 2006 through 2009, shows that the Chinese have been saving more than half of their GDP during that time. Those savings were heavily skewed towards fixed income assets like government bonds and depressed interest rates worldwide from 2004 on.
This allowed for interest rates around the world to fall, and sparked a boom in the U.S. housing market due to the availability of cheap money.
The study also argues that Ben Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, set the world up for the Great Recession by providing the “intellectual backing for the aggressive rate cuts in the early 2000s.”
With so many books out on the financial crisis, Mees recommends people read Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labor by Arthur Lewis and she says people should avoid one of the blockbusters on the crisis, The Big Short by Michael Lewis.
‘According to a new study, China, not Wall Street bankers, was responsible for the global crisis and the ensuing recession. …The study also argues that Ben Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, set the world up for the Great Recession by providing the “intellectual backing for the aggressive rate cuts in the early 2000s.’
There is something odd about this study’s conclusions. Wasn’t Bernanke’s idea that overly aggressive savers in other nations were to blame for the U.S. housing boom? It seems like Bernanke already nailed this study’s conclusions more than seven years ago.
The Global Savings Glut
By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
We are all taught that saving is good — indeed, Americans are often chided for spending too much and saving too little. But what if the problem of today’s global economy is that people elsewhere — in Europe, Asia and Latin America — are saving too much and spending too little? Former Princeton University economist Ben Bernanke argues that this is precisely the case. He calls it “the global savings glut.”
…
Disinformation.
Making bad loans drove up house prices. Packaging and selling those loans to unsuspecting end buyers looking for a safe and reliable high interest income stream, made it profitable.
Separating lenders from repayment risk was at the core of it all. If that one thing were changed - forcing lenders to retain repayment risk - we wouldn’t have debauched lending.
Everything else is “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
More like “signifying CYA at the Fed.”
“This allowed for interest rates around the world to fall, and sparked a boom in the U.S. housing market due to the availability of cheap money.”
So, by this logic, bring back cheap money and you’ll bring back the boom?
Lol.
Why is it that they always have to blame anything but the real reasons for the debt bomb economy and world wide housing mania ? The greed got out of hand and the lending became fraudulent in the create bubbles and create leverage mentality of Wall Street . Taking away the seperation of Commerical Banks with Investment Firms by repeal of Glass -Stegall created the set up for passing the risk of bad paper to securities . Lending and credit became decoupled from abiltiy to pay by viable jobs .The housing crash brought on the real state of the economy that was masked by the faulty credit that was based on the underlying asset of real estate or air . It exposed the real state of Globalism screwing the Majority in America ,while the tranfer of wealth to the Monopoly Corporations and one percent continues .
I agree with all the conclusions of this book and in fact I have made these very arguments on this board for years.
O’ Lord give me chastity just not today. Saint Augustine. O’ Lord give me an economy based on savings and investment not debt, just not today. Robert J. Samuelson
At least you’re consistently wrong.
Turkey. hat is a matter of opinion not fact. But what is fact is that I said the Obama stimulus would not result in what he promised such as unemployment not going over 8% and his growth numbers never being reached. If deficit spending or printing money could result in prosperity there would be no poverty in the world since governments are good at them.
But they don’t that is why Obama is a turkey.
No, it’s a matter of fact.
That’s why you’re always wrong. You can’t tell the difference between facts and opinion and probably never will.
If you are the saver (lender) it is useful for you to recognize that you have facilitated the spendthrift. If you are the spendthrift, blaming your overwhelming debt situation on the facilitator only leads you to destruction.
China can’t be blamed for what happens next. We need another order of magnitude of borrowing to keep this party going, and China cannot supply that.
“We need another order of magnitude of borrowing to keep this party going, and China cannot supply that.”
Then they’d better get ready to close a lot of factories.
Then they’d better get ready to close a lot of factories.
If the consumption is the name of the game, Chinese will find a way to consume everything themselves.
If that is the case, what are they waiting for?
One child policy makes that very difficult. How do convince people to consume now when they only have one kid and that kid only has one kid and there is no government safety net?
Your child and spouse will have 4 parents to take care of while raising their one child.
4 parents and 8 grandparents…
But, why did we have the loose money policies? Because we have to create $1.3T a year new debt/money to replace the money that flows out of circulation due to our free trade and too flat tax policies.
I agree but that is not possible without a federal reserve bank creating money and without that creation of money we could not run large deficits in either the budget of in trade. It all goes back to an out-of-control fed which began with Greenspan and is even worse under BB, who was reappointed by Obama. So he needs to go just like Bush II.
No, it all goes back to the trade imbalances…. the 1970s sucked BECAUSE of the trade imbalances. The out of whack Fed was a misguided attempt to eat our cake and have it too.
The credit expansion is a result of embracing trade imbalance.
If we didn’t have the trade imbalances draining $1.3T a year from circulation, then there would be no need for the whacked out Fed.
What came first? Hint: First we embraced free trade and a flatter tax. Then we got the 1970s. We then got the whacked out Fed as a way of pretending that trade imbalances do not matter.
If you just get rid of the whacked out Fed, without first addressing the underlying trade imbalances, then you get something that makes the GD look like boom times.
‘According to a new study, China, not Wall Street bankers, was responsible for the global crisis and the ensuing recession. …”
What utter, total BULLCRAP!
I guess blaming the poor isn’t working any more.
Aug. 29, 2012, 7:31 a.m. EDT
Bernanke might not take the plunge
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By Greg Robb, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Ahead of a crucial speech, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke may not be ready to take the plunge into a large-scale asset purchase program the central bank has admitted is under consideration.
That’s because he has yet to forge consensus of fellow policy makers that more purchases make sense.
“He doesn’t have the mandate to unveil or drop huge hints about quantitative easing,” said Scott Anderson, chief economist at Bank of the West in San Francisco.
For the past month, the Fed has been “like a diver eyeing the pool from the edge of the diving board, but can’t seem to get themselves to move,” Anderson said.
The market’s expectations about Fed policy has veered in recent weeks.
Prior to the central bank’s last meeting on July 31-Aug. 1, economists thought the Fed would ease.
But Bernanke & Co. took no action other than to say they were “closely monitoring” the economy.
As incoming data seemed more upbeat in the days following the decision, many Fed watchers said they thought the Fed would hold off from further easing in September. Better data raise doubts of quick Fed easing move.
But then last week, the minutes of the Fed’s meeting showed that “many” Fed officials were poised to ease. Read Fed minutes show active discussion of QE3.
Fed officials have been “all over the place” about monetary policy, said James Glassman, economist with J.P. Morgan Chase.
In light of the confusion, all eyes are on Bernanke’s remarks at 10 a.m. Eastern on Friday morning from the Fed’s summer retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
“Our sense is that too many people are going in expecting too much from this speech,” said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist at RBC Capital Markets.
…
Wall Street was charged with the responsibility of allocation of capital to correct and lawful investments . Wall Street failed and instead they brought on a Bubble Ponzi Leverage Scheme using
real estate as the underlying asset.Than WS went further and
leveraged those faulty lending bets by 40x’s in some cases in the shadow world of casino beting with default swaps and derivatives .
Real estate became decoupled from wages and qualifying for a big loan was just based on fraud . Greenspan didn’t raise interest rate soon enough either to stop the mania sooner . All regulators closed their eyes to the schemes and there was no transparency in the markets and rating
agencies just stamped the AAA stamp on high risk F paper that was based on real estate going up ,not on the underyling loans being
sound with people qualifying . It was a lending crime spree and a failure to rate risk according to it’s real risk .These clowns couldn’t regulate themselves ,and its a lesson in why the money changers have to be highly regulated . They left the financial markets and the real estate markets in ruins while they expected to be bailed out on their faulty bets that they created to begin with . Nobody went to jail on the biggest financial crime spree in American History .
That’s a pretty good summary. And, of course in didn’t start to unravel till 2008.
That was the election year.
Everybody saw what happened and the crook from the Treasury, Hank Paulsen, came up with a plan.
Give him 800 Billion dollars to do whatever he wanted and he would save the world from impending financial collapse.
Most of the Public saw it for what it was. a scam.
And yet, the CONGRESS voted for huge Bailouts in the form of TARP, HAMP, HARP, etc. etc.
All against the wishes of the general public.
Remember Democrats controlled the Congress.
So, the public voted for CHANGE.
What did Obama do? Nothing. Worked on getting socialized medicine for 2 years, while the crisis loomed and the passed the DODD_FRANK phoney financial “reform” bill to try and placate the public, without going after the crooks, all of whom wrote campaign contributions to Obama.
Outraged, the Public voted the Democratic Congress OUT in 2010. We wanted the bullshit stopped and it was stopped. so, now, the press blames the Republicans for “blocking” legislation, although NONE of the many bills passed by the HOUSE have ever been allowed on the FLOOR of the Senate. No. Dead on arrival.
the election will be interesting. The press will shill for Obama till the November elections, but I suspect there is still a lot of resentment that OBAMA did nothing for Mainstreet, except fingerpoint. The propaganda is immense as they have “ROMNEYVILLES” in Tampa for homeless camps.
Isn’t OBAMA the President? Romney’s contribution to homelessness is immeasurable compared to BHO’s, but it’s a good strategy to blame the other party.
We will see which side really gets support. I don’t believe any of the polls. They didn’t show republicans taking back the house, as i recall.
Just more shuck and jive. (bet you guys haven’t heard that ONE is a while)
If you EVER think you will know what the PTB inside game is (beside rob us all blind), I have a bridge for YOU!
Top coat, top hat
But he can`t tell you where his payments at
Black shades, white gloves
Gettin’ HARP and lookin’ for love
They come runnin’ just as fast as they can
‘Cause every girl crazy ’bout a Deadbeat man
Oh man, I played that song a lot of times in the mid 80s.
We rip on the dead beats a lot, but mathematically speaking, the ONLY way that a person in debt can get money to repay that debt is if the people with money spend it.
Before the people with debt can pay it down, the people with money have to not have it any more.
Is it just my imagination, or has the Chinese stock market recently been steadily dropping at the rate of 1% per day or so?
Wall Street traders should thank their lucky stars that the U.S. economy is decoupled from China’s.
Aug. 29, 2012, 6:00 a.m. EDT
Asian stocks soften, but Japan looks up
By Sarah Turner and Chris Oliver, MarketWatch
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Asian shares ended modestly lower on Wednesday, with weaker steel makers a drag on Shanghai, while Japanese stocks were supported by deal speculation.
Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average rose 0.2%, while South Korea’s Kospi edged up 0.6%, and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 0.1%.
Also weaker, the Shanghai Composite Index declined 1% to close at a three-and-a-half-year low, while the Shenzhen Composite was off 0.6%. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index ended slightly down for the day, off 0.1%.
The Asia Dow was down 0.04%.
…
Which one is the main Chinese stock market?
The Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) (simplified Chinese: 上海证券交易所; traditional Chinese: 上海證券交易所; pinyin: Shànghǎi Zhèngquàn Jiāoyìsuǒ), abbreviated as 上证所/上證所 or 上交所, is a stock exchange that is based in the city of Shanghai, China. It is one of the two stock exchanges operating independently in the People’s Republic of China, the other is the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Shanghai Stock Exchange is the world’s 5th largest stock market by market capitalization at US$2.3 trillion as of Dec 2011.[1] Unlike the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the Shanghai Stock Exchange is still not entirely open to foreign investors [2] due to tight capital account controls exercised by the Chinese mainland authorities.[3]
——————————————————————————-
The Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) (Chinese: 深圳证券交易所) is one of the People’s Republic of China’s two stock exchanges, alongside the Shanghai Stock Exchange. It is based in Shenzhen, China. The market capitalization of its listed companies was about US$ 1 trillion in 2011.
Thanks. I can now check Google market graphs.
Shanghai Stock Exchange definitely trending down over YTD.
Shenzen did not easily show up on Google markets graphs. Hmmm…
the simplified and traditional look like the same damn thing (above)
Eurozone crisis faces crunch month
Europe’s leaders cannot win the battle to save the euro in September – but they can certainly lose it
Graeme Wearden
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 August 2012 14.33 EDT
The eurozone is entering one of the most nail-biting weeks since the debt crisis began almost three years ago.
In Athens, Frankfurt and Paris, political and economic battles are looming that will help determine the future of the single currency. In the Netherlands, the euro will dominate a general election campaign that could see another incumbent leader unseated. And in Karlsruhe, Germany’s top judges will rule on whether Europe’s new bailout mechanism, a key plank in the region’s response to the crisis, is legal.
Europe’s leaders cannot win the battle to save the euro in September, but they can certainly lose it.
…
Deposit flight from Spanish banks hits 15-year high as bailout rumours grow
Bank of Spain data showing sudden drop in amount on deposit comes as recession revealed to be deeper than thought
Giles Tremlett in Madrid
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 August 2012 14.34 EDT
Spanish banks lost €1 out of every €20 deposited with them in July, making it the worst month for deposit flight in 15 years as rumours grew that the country is edging closer to a full bailout.
News that banks were losing deposits came as Spain’s statistics institute revealed the current recession is worse than thought, with the economy shrinking at an annual rate of 1.3% in the second quarter.
“The downturn in the Spanish economy is deeper than previously thought and accelerating,” warned Robert O’Daly of the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Against this background, European Council president Herman Van Rompuy said it was up to Spain to decide whether to seek eurozone help, after meeting prime minister Mariano Rajoy in Madrid. Rajoy repeated that he needed more details from the European Central Bank to help him decide.
Tuesday’s revised figures showed recession started three months earlier than previously indicated. “The data shows the recession started in the third quarter of last year,” secretary for state for the economy, Fernando Jiménez admitted.
…
Eurozone crisis live: Mario Draghi cancels US appearance; Catalonia seeks bailout
• ECB president will not appear at Jackson Hole
• Spanish recession deepens
• Economist: worse times ahead for Spain
• Japan cuts global economic outlook
Graeme Wearden, Julia Kollewe and Nick Fletcher
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 August 2012 03.38 EDT
…
“We need to take this country back!”
Back to where? When? Why?
And how will hammering school teacher and public safety worker unions fix the gaping hole in the federal budget, which is largely due to huge military and looming entitlement expenditures? This notion is nothing but a steaming pile of propaganda.
Aug. 28, 2012, 11:06 p.m. EDT
Republican speakers toe economic hard line
Speakers drive home budget-cutting message, put unions on notice
By Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch
TAMPA, Fla. (MarketWatch) — Republican Party A-listers on Tuesday night sought to frame November’s election as a choice about the size and scope of government as they introduced Mitt Romney to a national audience.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a GOP hero for taking on labor unions and then beating back a recall effort in June, told assembled delegates and a national TV audience that Romney understands that “people, not government, create jobs.” It was a direct slap at Barack Obama, whose policies Republicans say are to blame for unemployment above 8%.
“We need someone to turn things around in America,” Walker, whose speech drew some of the loudest cheers all evening, said.
…
I say we just keep $1 Trillion deficits/year FOREVER!
Like what could go wrong?
I think the greeks said the same thing…
When will I see a dime of that so called trillion dollar deficit….just like where are the jobs.
its a club and i’m not in it!
You won’t see ANY of it.
But you will PAY FOR IT.
“When will I see a dime of that so called trillion dollar deficit…”
Start a green energy company, join a community organization, own a wall street bank or become a public employee.
Psst … I gotta a little secret for you … your guy won’t put a dent in the deficit either. In fact, it’ll probably grow under his watch, after he lowers taxes on the rich even more.
Lockheed, Raytheon, etc are ALL hiring government contractors.
We eagerly await Obamney’s (re)election and the windfall to come
Lockheed, Raytheon, etc. have all be laying off employees for the last few years…
It is easy to get rid of government contractors. You just don’t renew their contract.
Government employees, however, you are stuck with FOREVER. In fact, even longer than forever because you have to pay for their insane pensions and free medical care for life when they retire at age 50.
“It is easy to get rid of government contractors. You just don’t renew their contract.”
Assuming you can get not renewing the contract through congress. Here’s a hint. You can’t.
And federal government employees can’t retire at 50.
Polly thank you for schooling 2fruity on this matter.
And while they may have laid people off in weapons systems or elsewhere, in the (to remain unspecified) area of our contracted services, yes they are hiring
Federal EMPLOYEES Can retire at age 50 with 20 years service.
I listed all the various programs, but I think the link failed and I am not going to retype it again.
There are many typical retirees at 55 with 30 years “service”.
Just “google” Federal Retirement eligibility and you can see all the programs for under 55 retirement.
The best retirement is to get a doctor to say you are “disabled”. Full retirement at ANY AGE with 5 years of “service”. A cornucopia of fraud in this area.
I don’t know if there are different rules for people with guns and badges. Not my scene. But no one here can retire at 55. And once you are vested how many years you have doesn’t impact when you can retire. It only impacts what you get when you retire. So, imagine a person who starts in the Fed gov at the median age (mid to late 30’s so lets call it 35) and retires at 55 and makes, $80K a year. You get 1 percent per year of service, so $80K * 20% = $16K a year or $1333 a month. Overtime is not considered (if you could get it anyway). Cash out of vacation time is not considered. Nothing else except the salary you draw goes into the base and that is an average of high three, not just the last year. By the way, that one percent per year of service? Capped at 40. You can never get more than 40% of the average of the high three.
For 2fruity:
http://oi46.tinypic.com/sb0nkx.jpg
Sorry, no one here can retire at 50. I know a few people who plan to at 55 and take their puny pensions to cheap, rural places to take care of elderly relatives. A few more who are in their early 60s who are retiring soon because the kids are grown and launched and the house is nearly paid off and they are sick of the commute. And some who have been here over 40 years who don’t retire because they like the job and being around younger folks.
Also, people who are under the old retirement system get 2% per year of service, but they don’t get Social Security. Also capped at 40 years, so their max is 80%. There are fewer and fewer of those around.
I think he means disability retirement. I know someone who did that around age 50 at the USFS and yeah the pension is puny all right. Not positive what age she was at the time though.
Logic of democrats.
Our guy sucks. He sucks really bad. In fact - he is a total loser.
However, there is no way we are going to take a chance on a new guy. Even if he is saying the right things.
So we are going to keep out guy.
Cause that is HOPE AND CHANGE.
I’m a conservative, and it’s obvious to me that the ‘new guy’ stinks on ice. Unless you’re talking about Ron Paul.
Romney is a turd with an elephant pin.
However, there is no way we are going to take a chance on a new guy.
Take a chance? There’s no chance taking involved. We know he’s gonna screw the middle class.
I’m voting for Ron Paul, and I don’t care what any neo-con or tea party hack says about me throwing my vote away.
I don’t care what any neo-con or tea party hack says about me throwing my vote away.
I know what you mean here, but I do care what the hacks think. It’s fun to shove hypocrisy in the face of those being hypocritical, especially with stakes this high.
They were the most vocal about spending, bailouts, and handouts and they have thrown support behind the guy whose puppet strings are controlled by the all-star roster from the FIRE industry.
See the roster here:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres12/contrib.php?id=N00000286&cycle=2012
Completely indefensible, and I’ve been spending my time within my circle calling them out on it.
It’s a good time to reflect on actions George W. Bush took to get us to where we are today:
1) Passed a major tax cut.
2) Started a couple of wars.
3) Added fuel to the housing bubble through American Dream Act downpayment assistance.
4) Oversaw the onset of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s.
Probably a few more items I’m forgetting to mention.
But I’m sure the fair-and-balanced RNC speakers will take all of the above into account when they figure out how much to blame Obama versus Bush.
Average defects of ONLY $250 billion
Gas around $1.70/gallon…
Unemployment at around 5%…
Ahhhhhh - the good old days.
And at the end of Romney’s first term we will have:
Average deficits of $1+ trillion
Gas around $3.75+/gallon
Unemployment at around 8%
You’ll see
And it was ever better under Clinton. What’s your point?
“And at the end of Romney’s first term we will have:
Average deficits of $1+ trillion
Gas around $3.75+/gallon
Unemployment at around 8%
You’ll see”
that’s very depressing….
Average defects of ONLY $250 billion
Bush kept the wars off the books. Obama put them on the books- at the same time he was inheriting the worst economy in over half a century. To compare their deficits is apples to oranges.
Obama is the adult cleaning up W’s mess.
“Obama is the adult cleaning up W’s mess.”
Bush was the guy in the circus riding on the back of the elephant. Obama is the guy who gets to go around with the shovel and pail, cleaning up all the elephant poop wherever it landed.
But that won’t stop the RNC conventioneers from reciting their mantra:
1) All of America’s current problems are Obama’s fault.
2) Anything Obama says to the contrary shows he is failing to take responsibility for all of the problems he caused.
3) If there had been a Republican in the White House over the past four years, none of this would have happened.
4) Either elect Romney in 2012, or else face a continued downhill slide under Obama.
5) The economy will never recover unless Romney is elected (never mind that the recession ended in 2009 and the economy has steadily, if slowly, recovered ever since; never mind this year’s torrid stock market advances).
6) Romney is going to cut your taxes, increase military spending and fix the deficit (albeit they didn’t exactly say all those things at the same time).
7) We’re gonna take this country back!
I gleaned all of this in 15 minutes of radio time on the way home from work today. Did I miss anything important?
“Did I miss anything important?”
Nope; just a bunch of propaganda.
The other band of idiots will be doing the same thing next week.
“The other band of idiots will be doing the same thing next week.”
Of that I am certain!
But I’m sure the fair-and-balanced RNC speakers will take all of the above into account when they figure out how much to blame Obama versus Bush.
Naw. They and their followers are always quick to point out that the meltdown (the effect) occurred only after the Dems took control of Congress (the cause…in their minds).
If Obama wins more government contractor jobs will be created.
If Romney wins more government contractor jobs will be created.
Fasten your seat belt. I’ve been paying for your spot for quite a while. Not going to for much longer……
Oh, the tales we could tell were it not for confidentiality agreements!
* posted from non government contractor network
Fasten your seat belt. I’ve been paying for your spot for quite a while. Not going to for much longer……
Do you think that the little people even have a choice in this matter?
the little people
We Care About the Small People!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th3LtLx0IEM
The Game Plan
Continue with the silly talk about solutions until all major systems collaspe because they aren’t sustainable under the
mantra that transfering wealth to the 1% and Monopoly Corporations and having bizarre trade balances and GLobalism isn’t going to work for anybody but the Elite to the destruction of the Majory population in USA >
“We Care About the Small People!”
WE CARE A LOT.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLfGBKO8vOc
(I can’t believe this song is approaching 30 years old.)
Wizard, we greatly Enjoy your Capitalization of selected Words in all of your Posts. Are you a fan of Ben Franklin?
Did Ben Franklin do that ?
I just let my mind do whatever it does . I admit it was a long sentence .
Good luck with that Blue Skye.
They are right. We have no choice and short of a very radical change, we never will within our lifetimes. And you can forget the radical change. We’ll lucky to ever get our rights back and decent jobs.
The FIRE sector, MIC (military industrial complex) and gov are about as inbred as any historic European monarchy ever was.
We recently switched contractors and are now trying to get some referral bonus gravy for poaching ex-coworkers from the old contractor.
Just the private sector, bootstrapping, for profit, John Galt, invisible hand of the free market at work here, paid for by Uncle Sugar
I don’t mean I’m starting a revolution, though it would be interesting. I mean I’m going to stop pulling for a paycheck soon, as in less earning.
Is that good or bad? I sincerely hope it means you are getting a well earned retirement and one you can enjoy.
If so, good for you!
LOL, it is good. As for “earned” I really did squander the bulk of what I earned. Luckily I don’t need much to enjoy life. I’ll be as wild as possible for as long as the machinery keeps working.
Also because we got rid of our tariffs.
The post-GDP-release bounce didn’t last long. Maybe it is dawning on Wall Street traders that a strengthening recovery diminishes the chances the Fed will invoke QE3?
Aug. 29, 2012, 9:57 a.m. EDT
U.S. stocks rise after GDP data
By Kate Gibson, MarketWatch
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — U.S. stocks opened higher Wednesday after the government hiked its estimate of how the economy performed and investors looked to Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke’s speech.
…
Here is more exciting news on the housing recovery! It’s very hard to imagine the Fed pushing through QE3 in the face of so many burgeoning green shoots of recovery.
Aug. 29, 2012, 10:00 a.m. EDT
Pending home sales hit more than 2-year peak
By Steve Goldstein
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Pending home sales climbed 2.4% in July to the highest level since April 2010, when a home-buyer tax credit was set to expire. The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday its pending-home-sales index rose to 101.7 in July from 99.3 in June, which is 12.4% above July 2011 levels. The data reflect contracts but not closings. “While the month-to-month movement has been uneven, more importantly we now have 15 consecutive months of year-over-year gains in contract activity,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the NAR. Existing-home sales are projected to rise 8% to 9% in 2012, followed by another 7% to 8% gain in 2013, the NAR forecasts. Home prices are expected to increase 10% cumulatively over the next two years.
NAR…. lmao
y r houses so xpensive?
Who would have thunk it? A bigger and bigger government that takes more and more in taxes forces people/businesses to move away?
Shhh…don’t tell the democrats.
————————————-
U.S. Firms Move Abroad
John D. McKinnon | The Wall Street Journal – August 29th, 2012
More big U.S. companies are reincorporating abroad despite a 2004 federal law that sought to curb the practice. One big reason: Taxes.
Companies cite various reasons for moving, including expanding their operations and their geographic reach. But tax bills remain a primary concern. A few cite worries that U.S. taxes will rise in the future, especially if Washington revamps the tax code next year to shrink the federal budget deficit.
Eaton’s chief executive, Alexander Cutler, has been a vocal critic of the corporate tax code. “We have too high a domestic rate and we have a thoroughly uncompetitive international tax regime,” Mr. Cutler said on CNBC in January. “Let’s not wait for the next presidential election” to change the rules.
Lawmakers of both parties have said the U.S. corporate tax code needs a rewrite and they are aiming to try next year. One shared source of concern is the top corporate tax rate of 35%—the highest among developed economies. By comparison, Ireland’s rate is 12.5%.
Critics of the tax code also say it puts U.S. companies at a disadvantage because it taxes their profits earned abroad. Most developed countries tax only domestic earnings.
U.S. multinationals often pay far less than 35% because of various breaks, including the option of deferring the payment of U.S. taxes on foreign earnings until they are brought to the U.S. Those companies could pay higher taxes under Obama administration proposals to limit the benefits of deferral. Rowan cited that potential change in announcing its move.
Obama administration officials play down the significance of the recent company moves and say their proposals would encourage companies to stay in the U.S.
“Critics of the tax code also say it puts U.S. companies at a disadvantage because it taxes their profits earned abroad. Most developed countries tax only domestic earnings.”
Of course, all they have to do to avoid that is incorporate a subsidiary overseas and keep the money in that sub (or transfer to another foreign sub), using it to grow their business in that country. Oh, wait, they already do that.
Of course, all they have to do to avoid that is incorporate a subsidiary overseas and keep the money in that sub (or transfer to another foreign sub), using it to grow their business in that country. Oh, wait, they already do that.
And if they wait long enough, they’ll get a “tax holiday” when they can repatriate that money, tax free.
Then there’s the fact that half of the Fortune 500 pays no federal income tax at all, even though profits are at all time highs.
It’s good to be the King.
Great tax code we have? No?
Highest corporate rate in the industrialized world.
So instead of collecting some taxes we collect none.
Liberals can not seem to understand this logic. To them - Higher taxes means more revenue collected for the government which means more money we can spend!!!
No - you can’t TAX or SPEND or BORROW your way to prosperity…
Then there’s the fact that half of the Fortune 500 pays no federal income tax at all, even though profits are at all time highs.
We could lower those taxes and get rid of exemptions but that would make too much sense.
“Highest corporate rate in the industrialized world.”
While the effective rate is among the lowest, with half of the Fortune 500 paying no income tax at all.
“Conservatives” cannot seem to understand this logic.
We could lower those taxes and get rid of exemptions but that would make too much sense.
Wanna bet that the “exemptions” that get eliminated won’t be the ones that help Corporate America? They’re gonna come out of your hide, my friend.
“Highest corporate rate in the industrialized world.”
Liars lie.
Our 27% effective tax rate is significantly below that of Japan’s 39%.
The problem with doing the Republican’s plan of lowering the rate and broadening the base, even if revenue neutral, simply encourages corporations to become ever larger drains of money from circulation.
Corporations exist to make the rich ever richer. Unfortunately, that is only possible as long as everyone else is going ever further into debt.
We need to think beyond step 1, to the unintended consequences.
I’d like to see the entire tax code rewritten. Cut the number of brackets down to 3 and cut all exemptions. Same tax rates apply to companies as to individuals. You could do your taxes in 5 minutes. Unfortunately simple solutions are beyond DC’s comprehension.
Businesses are taxed on profits. People are taxed on income (except for capital gains in which “income” has to subtract the basis). It is hard enough to define income succinctly, never mind profits. And the number of brackets is completely unrelated to complexity. Most people read their taxes off a chart.
I put together a really long list of deductions/exemptions and whatever and posted it yesterday. When you think about the people who benefit from them, you can see how hard it is to get rid of any subset of them. Mostly individual, but I included a few business ones that provide for accelerating deductions.
I’ll repost it on Friday if people want to talk about them over the weekend.
This is exactly why we need to tax money as it leaves the county. GO ahead and move your corporation off shore. And if you make revenue off US consumers, then use that money to pay foreign workers, then we’re going to tax the snot out of you when you try to move that money out of the country.
The root of all our ills are our trade imbalances, international and domestic, and we can not begin to address the other issues, that are just symptoms of this underlying condition, without first attacking and reversing the underlying balances.
I agree with your take on taxing money that leaves the Country .
The whole idea is that jobs and income and cash flow going or staying in a Country is what makes all boats float .
All hail Darell (not yll)!!
From yesterday-a reply
Rental Watch
Thanks for the advice and insight. Here’s an update. The inspection report & pics (general contractor) came in last night. Some surprises were pricey. Have any idea what it costs to replace a chimney Flue? (That one nobody seems to know & we use our FP.)
We are penciling out the cost of repairs this morning, trying to questimate the costs, since using real numbers would take a week, there are so many issues. Then we’ll go back w/ a major counter. No horsing around here. If we don’t get a substantial discount, we’re gone.
Our gut says it’s a dead deal.
I put in a wood stove with a new stainless steel chimney flue.
Cost for the installation and parts of the flue was about $900.
Awaiting, remember, you live in the land of crazy requirements. I would definitely ask a local mason with respect to such repairs. There could be some nutty extra requirements when working on an existing fireplace in CA (spark arrester requirement with new flue, etc.)
The best thing to do, IMHO is to do your homework, and come up with a number that you are not afraid to walk from, and would be happy to accept, even if it meant spending a lot more time on the fix-up.
Also consider that lots of the contractors will give you a bid meant to encourage you to work with them (ie. bid at the low end of a range)…work in a healthy contingency (10-20%?). Also, with renovation work, you never know about problems that you can’t see on the surface. If the house has been neglected, invariably you will find more work as you get into the project.
“There could be some nutty extra requirements when working on an existing fireplace in CA (spark arrester requirement with new flue, etc.)”
Yeah… because rain caps are really nutty huh….
lol. You’ve never done any work in CA, have you?
My partner had the city once deny him the ability to plant some trees because “he had too many already”.
No woodburning fireplaces allowed in my city (unless it’s grandfathered in).
OMG
This post pertains to real estate, rather than politics or economics, which I enjoy equally.
SF Renter asked a serious question about 90 posts ago. In response to a fellow blogger about the largest single decision in his/her life, I have to agree with your enumerated guidelines for buying a home.
If all apply, go for it! All.
Get a 30-year loan for maximum flexibility should you or a significant other, if you have one, have health problems or lose a job.
Pay it off, like I did in 17 years, by paying an extra full month’s payment to principal at the beginning of each billing year.
Seriously.
Even before your first payment is due.
Watching the principle-to-interest ratio change over the years is magical and instructive.
I did it. You can, too!!
I’m just a high school graduate (with an MBA). -
Robin-We’re a cash & close. No mortgage, since my other half has Glaucoma as a life vicissitude. Sold a McMansion (a long time ago) and downsizing to a real size home.
Rental Watch, Lip, 2banana, and Housing Market Is Toxic, thank you for your feedback and advice. You are all very helpful and appreciated. We were in the dark about flues and Fps until you guys/gals chimed in. Thank you.
Awaiting,
PBS’s “This Old House Hour” (available in archive online) had a segment on replacing a chimney flue that was most instructive, and will give you an idea of what is involved. Depending on zoning requirements and modifications to the original structure (specifically masonry) it could be anywhere from nanners’ 1K prefab wood stove to skyward+.
Also ask yourself if you really need a fireplace. In southern CA, you don’t really, but you might be able to get a significant reduction on the price of the house if you can do without it.
ahansen
Thank you. Morning treadmill viewing this AM.
Awaiting,
Good luck, as it’s hard to know exactly how to deal with these things.
Is it a masonry chimney? Is it possible to buy a fire place insert and then run a metal vent pipe up the old chimney?
Years ago while living in Iowa I had a wood burning fireplace insert that really generated a lot of heat. Chopping the wood was also a great form of exercise.
Is it possible to buy a fire place insert and then run a metal vent pipe up the old chimney?
That’s the route I would take. If you can get a wood stove insert, they’re far more efficient than a normal fireplace- which are usually net heat losers.
I have no idea where Frum is getting these numbers, but if true, it is a significant data point. If true.
It’s the youngest and poorest who have the most to worry about. Families headed by people under 35 are almost 70 percent poorer today, adjusting for inflation, than they were in 1984. The causes: lower wages, more expen-sive housing, and student debt.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/08/05/david-frum-on-high-anxiety-america.html
Expensive Housing - DIRECTLY the result of the US government. We could fix this TOMORROW.
Student Debt - DIRECTLY the result of the US government. We could fix this TOMORROW.
Lower Wages - Partially the result of the US government - complex fix.
The causes: lower wages, more expen-sive housing, and student debt.
Student Debt - DIRECTLY the result of the US government. We could fix this TOMORROW.
Unless you’re willing to forgive $1T in student loans, I don’t see how this could be fixed overnight. Sure, getting ridding of the loans will gradually force colleges to bring runaway costs under control, but that will take time. A lot of schools are up to their eyeballs in debt, after building luxury dorms, student centers, gyms, etc., all in the name of attracting customers … I mean students.
As for fixing expensive housing, it is easy to get prices to crater, heck just get Fannie and Freddie out of the mortgage biz. But it will come at a price (a lot more bankster bailouts)
Lower Wages - Partially the result of the US government - complex fix.
More like globalization is to blame. Heck, even if there were no taxes or regulations at all, labor is still WAAAAY cheaper in the sweatshop nations.
Please explain.
How do we fix high house prices tomorrow, and what would be the side-effect of that?
How do we fix high education costs, and what would be the side effect of that?
How do we fix low wages?
I’d LOVE to hear your explanations on how you’d fix these issues.
Student debt - Get the US COMPLETELY OUT of the student loan market. Make student loans forgivable in bankruptcy. Within 5 years there would be a plethora of affordable colleges…
Housing - Get the US COMPLETELY OUT of the housing market. Stop all guarantees to freddie and fannie. Make banks and wall street eat their non-performing loans. With 5 years there would a plethora of affording housing in all markets.
Low Wages - Much more complex. Think about if you were starting or expanding a business - where would you move and why? My guess it would NOT be California or Chicago, USA. Why?
Make student loans forgivable in bankruptcy.
And who picks up the tab for all those federally insured loans that are forgiven?
Within 5 years there would be a plethora of affordable colleges…
That sounds more reasonable than your earlier claim of “TOMORROW”
Unfortunately, the political will to do this just isn’t there.
Think about if you were starting or expanding a business - where would you move and why? My guess it would NOT be California or Chicago, USA. Why?
And yet Silicon Valley is crawling with high paying jobs. If it was all about cost alone, Silly Valley would relocate to Alabama. Not only are they not moving, Silicon Valley is growing.
You have done an excellent job of documenting the intended consequences. I specifically asked about side-effects. You know, the unintended.
Let me get you started.
Half of all college students use federally insured loans, averaging $7100 per. What % of those would not be able to attend college without those loans? How many fewer students, and how many fewer teacher’s jobs lost? How much does GDP drop when you subtract at least $100B in new loans, and then the echo effects. What is the effect on the national budget when million of teachers are collecting unemployment instead of paying taxes? When those teachers are spending less, how many other businesses have to lay off?
Universities that pay the best, and offer the best benefits will fold, leaving their pensioners without a pension, so they’d be spending less also.
Yes, students being unable to pay, will eventually bring down prices, but at what side effect.
I get it. You care about one thing, and that is the Republican party gaining power. Since teacher’s unions give money to the Democratic party, teachers and their unions must be broken like the proverbial camel’s back.
However, are you sure you are not cutting off your nose to spite your face? How many high tech companies are screaming that they can’t find enough educated workers? Would ending government guarantees for student loans not just make that much worse?
As for making discharge via bankruptcy legal, you’d basically be transferring a huge chunk of the current $1T loans onto the national debt, and making it virtually impossible for anyone to get a student loan, even private sector.
As for ending federal government manipulation of the housing market, I’m pretty sure you know what hints I’ll give you there. Total dollars in existence is $38T, equally offset by $38T in debt. $13T of that debt is collateralizesd by real estate.
Target tier 1 capital in the banking system is 6%. Even a 10-20% loss on total mortgage debt, and the banking system is wiped out.
What would the loss on housing be if we withdrew all government manipulation? The unintended side-effects of that on the banking system?
And why do companies go to states with weak union laws? So they can pay people less. So, to get wages higher, we have to pay people less? Fewer benefits? We can’t all be rich until we’re all broke first?
Republicans are so full of crud that it isn’t really that much work to point out just how full of crud they are.
How?
Shutting down Liars like YOU at every opportunity is a good first step.
“How do we fix high house prices tomorrow, and what would be the side-effect of that?”
Global financial Armageddon.
You say it mockingly. I say 2008 was just a taste!
We were on the way there, but delayed it with $1.2T a year govt deficits and other massive intervention including telling the financial industry to bold faced lie about the value of the assets on balance sheets.
Which of the above “We could fix this TOMORROW” measures are part of either party’s platform this election season?
Lower wages - Directly the result of the US Congress failing in its duty to regulate international trade, preferring instead to defer to the WTO and NAFTA. We could fix this tomorrow by charging tariffs against countries that do not participate in the free market.
the youngest and poorest
The future belongs to Lucky Ducky
Or should we say that Lucky Ducky belongs to the elite?
“It’s the youngest and poorest who have the most to worry about.”
Bullcrap. Just the poorest, of which there are MILLIONS of ALL ages.
Nomination for comment of the year:
Comment by Cantankerous Intellectual Bomb Thrower©
2012-08-28 08:23:11
The problem also seems to be a misguided belief that a manipulated recovery is just as sustainable as a fundamentals-based one.
2nd the nomination
The manipulated economy doesn’t have to be sustained forever; it only has to be sustained long enough to make up for the rent I’m not paying.
As for fundamentals… This country hasn’t been based on fundamentals since the day that Jack Welch took over GE.
The economy has not been fundamentally sound since the 1960s when we embraced a flattening tax structure and free trade.
Cantankerous, do you think the economy was sound from 1980 to 2000 when we increase total debt from $4T to $18T?
When do you think the economy stop being fundamentally sound and become manipulated?
Economy started going off the wall in 1985 ,no maybe it was
1980 ,but more like 1982, or actually the seeds of destruction were cast in 1913 .
I second the 1913 date when the Fed was established. Set the stage for the Roaring 20’s and the Great Crash of 1929.
I wonder how we would then explain the long depression, or the 4 other depressions and half a dozen major recession of the 1800s.
I’m going to go with 1723 and the founding father Ben Franklin convincing people that debt/money was a good idea.
http://www.philadelphiafed.org/publications/economic-education/ben-franklin-and-paper-money-economy.pdf
“I wonder how we would then explain the long depression, or the 4 other depressions and half a dozen major recession of the 1800s.”
Growing pains during the greatest period of expansion in wealth and territory in American history?
At any rate, America was a free country back then, in the interval between when we declared independence from the British monarchy and when the monopoly banksters took full control in the 20th century.
At any rate, America was a free country back then,
If you were a white male.
Noticed that too, did you?
Jack the “Slasha!”
Dumb question of the day: Are FOMC members sufficiently clueless to believe there is no difference, or do they just play dumb for political reasons?
Silicon Valley Boom Creates Shortage of $1 Million Homes
ahh the future coming to a town near you
Another big force behind demand is China. Realtors say waves of wealthy Chinese buyers are pouring into the Valley and buying up multi-million-dollar properties. They say the buyers are increasingly nervous about the Chinese government and economy and are looking for a safe haven.
While some Chinese investors are buying properties to rent, many are buying homes for their families and children, brokers say. Almost all of the deals are cash, they say.
Robert Gerlach of Alain Pinel’s Palo Alto office, said he recently sold a home that was priced at $1.495 million. The house attracted eight bidders — seven of whom were Chinese. He said the home sold for more than $1.7 million.
“The Chinese buyers are telling me that this is a safe place to put their money and a good place for their kids, given the quality of the schools,” he said. (Read more: The Mass Migration of the Super-Rich)
“The Chinese buyers are telling me that this is a safe place to put their money and a good place for their kids, given the quality of the schools”
Are they talking about K-12 or University?
I googled for the article, but all I found was a cnbc article that didn’t have any of the quotes mentioned above.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/silicon-valley-boom-creates-shortage-143214121.html
Chinese buyers with money from where?
‘Naked’ officials lay bare China’s graft
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/NG12Cb02.html
“Realtors say”
That’s all you need to know.
In the meantime, prices continue to fall while the pile of excess empty houses grows by the day.
There is a newly discovered computer security issue with Java. “They” recommend you disable it on your browser until a fix is released. Issue is with version 1.7.
Saw this last week. Too bad thousands of companies need it just to do everyday business.
Did I say thousands? Disable it and see how many websites, like your bank, credit card, work, etc, need it to function.
Just manually make sure your Java is updated and so are is your AV and you should be fine.
DO IT TODAY.
I run Secunia PSI to check for updates. The notice specifically said that the problem is with the newest version, so keeping up to date doesn’t help if Oracle doesn’t have a fix out yet.
Oracle has stated in the recent past they are going to a 6 month update cycle.
My bet is they will scramble to fix this.
JAVA runs FAR too many things.
“Internet Explorer has stopped working”
Internet Explorer sucks. I mean really, REALLY, sucks.
IE is, was and always will be a POS.
MS, like Apple, refuses to conform to W3C standards.
It’s one of the biggest reason HTML 5 hasn’t been ratified and locked down.
FF or Chrome are the only way to go these days. I prefer FF. More secure and easier to make even more secure, block ads, kill cross scripting and generally tell advertisers to stick up their bums, allowing you to pick and choose the ones you want to see, like Ben’s.
Keeps the Chinese and Russian script-kiddies frustrated as well.
Unfortunately many of the companies I work with require IE. Horrible shame and makes it hard to work outside of the office with no laptop.
That’s my situation. I use FF for just about everything, except for a few applications that require IE9.
They sure made a mess out of Word.
I always thought that WordPerfect was better. Too bad that it didn’t make a good transition to Windows.
I was quite happy to never again have to look at that cheatsheet matrix of colors and keys to try to figure out how to do some simple task. Word and Excel (and a healthy dose of crushing the competition) made Microsoft the monopoly that it became. Open Office is now “good enough”, though. So I think they’re just coasting on momentum now…as soon as their critical app will run in Ubuntu that will be it for most people the next time they need to pony up for an MS product.
I actually like the Word ribbon, where they pre-dropped all the drop-down menus.
On the other hand, Excel is in dire need of a science/engineering expansion pak of some kind. And a major graphing update. Who the F came up the yellow, hot pink, and blue default color scheme???
Yeah but they pay a reliable dividend.
Violent and Property Crime Rates in County Rose in First Half of 2012
Story Published: Aug 29, 2012 at 11:01 AM PDT
Story Updated: Aug 29, 2012 at 11:01 AM PDT
SAN DIEGO (CNS) - Violent and property crime rates in San Diego County rose in the first half of 2012 compared to the first six months of 2011, the San Diego Association of Governments announced Wednesday.
The region’s mid-year violent crime rate rose 8 percent, while the property rate climbed 7 percent in the year-over-year comparison, according to the regional planning agency.
Though higher than last year’s mid-year crimes rates, this year’s tallies are lower than any year between 2003 and 2010.
It’s too early to tell if this year’s uptick is temporary or if it’s the beginning of a trend, according to Cynthia Burke, director of criminal justice research for SANDAG.
“We have enjoyed historic lows in crime rates over the past decade, so it’s not entirely surprising that the numbers are now going up,” Burke said in a statement.
…
Houses are still too expensive here.
But they are cheap in some places.
Cheap in Detroit. But have no fear, they’re going to get a whole lot cheaper everywhere over the coming years and decades.
Oh my word…. check out the west coast foreclosure rates.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/dserwer.png
If you plan on selling your house in CA, you better get selling and do it NOW.
Cali’s foreclosure rate seems a lot lower than many others on that link.
A Liar AND A THEIF
Which Realtor/HHB blog poster are you talking about Turkey?
It Takes a Thief (1968 TV series)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the action/adventure series.
No. of seasons 3
No. of episodes 66
Original channel ABC
Original run January 9, 1968 – March 24, 1970
It Takes a Thief is an American action-adventure television series that aired on ABC for two and a half seasons between January 9, 1968, and March 24, 1970. It starred veteran movie actor Robert Wagner in his television debut as sophisticated thief Alexander Mundy, who works for the U.S. government in return for his release from prison. For most of the series, Malachi Throne played Noah Bain, Mundy’s boss.
It was among the last of the 1960s spy television genre, although Mission: Impossible continued for several years. It Takes A Thief was inspired by, though not based upon, the 1955 Cary Grant motion picture To Catch a Thief, directed by Alfred Hitchcock; both of their titles stem from the English proverb “It takes a thief to catch a thief.”
The series opened with its pilot episode, a ninety-minute (with commercials) special premiere titled “A Thief is a Thief is a Thief,”
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-federal-bailout-that-saved-mitt-romney-20120829
Behind great wealth is a thief in one way or another (few exceptions ).
What might the exceptions be?
Exception is people who got lucky .
The housing market is toxic. Radioactive. Beware.
Who doesn’t like a good bidding war on an overpriced shack? Where is you sense of adventure?
A bit of good news from the Slim Circle of Friends: One of my local business buddies had been spiraling down into depression while she was living here. She recently moved out of state.
Good news is that her nieces did an intervention and got her into treatment. Turns out that her depression is pretty severe, so she’s in therapy and on medication. In her case, it’s exactly what she needs.
And she is getting better! Woo-hoo!
Ben is wrong. It’s time to go to the bunkers. The only thing that will fix this fooked up country is bullets and death camps. The only thing that will cause the overthrow of the Banana Republicans/Corporate Democrats is a breakdown of the electrical grid, causing the wretched refuse to miss their sports and reality shows.
Want to totally waste a few days of your life? Try to get something like a life raft or fire extinguisher labeled “Hazmat” shipped……by anybody.
I’ve been to Fedex Hazmat School. Used to be I could do the hazmat forms, take it out and drop it off whenever I had a shipment, less than 10 boxes/year. Still wasted a day filling out all the forms, but at least I could eventually get it done.
Now? You have to be an “approved” shipper, with entails spending a couple of thousand dollars to pass their “inspection” and “approval” process. To ship, in my case, 3-4 boxes a year.
It’s an Equal-Opportunity Charlie-Foxtrot. Shipping companies are implementing ridiculous/price-gouging/stupid policies at the behest of the Feds. Why? Because the General Public is even dumber. I’ve been working on shipping this crap for 3 damn days, and the stuff is STILL sitting in the shop, waiting on someone who will actually take it.
Of course, once I do find a shipper, the ream job will just get started. Like $500 to ship a 12×12x12 box that weighs about 10 pounds ….times five. Literally, the shipping is going to cost twice as much than the service work I need to have done.
Nobody in this country seems to know how to run a business anymore, at any level. Too many people over promising and under-delivering. Too many business trying to screw their customers out of every dime they can justify. Had a guy out here this afternoon, need to get this shipment out ASAP. Said “Yeah, we can cover that”, said he would call me back to let me know, one way or the other. It’s now past 5pm local time……Of course, no call. Another day pissed away. This has happened four days in a row.
This is in Red-State American, supposedly populated with “good”/can-do people. Looks like I’m going to have to drive 4 hours (on what was supposed to be my first day off in three weeks), and burn some more of my ever-dwindling supply of “brownie points” to get this done. I’ll probably cap this fiasco off by getting a ticket for expired tags, because the (Republican purchased) “new/improved” car registration system has dropped me off the rolls, I didn’t get my renewals, and I don’t have a day to waste in the Tag office.
I’m done working on anything to do with anything remotely labeled hazmat. From now on, the aircraft owner can just pay the bloated $35K quote from the monopolists.
Or they can just not declare them “Hazmat”, put them in plain, unidentified boxes, and risk getting nailed for the $1.25 million fine ($250K per item).
Sounds like a business opportunity!
What the hell is a “Log Cabin Republican”?
I’ve got a terribly inappropriate answer, but discretion insists that I not use it.
I think the orgies happen only in the log cabin. Kind of like down lo for the homeboys.
Log Cabin Republicans is a group of male homosexuals that consider themselves Republicans based on their economic principles, though they disagree with their “traditional family values” planks of the Republican platform.
I believe the Log Cabin refers to that famous president, Mr. Lincoln, who, it is claimed, was economically conservative but socially liberal, and who was born in a log cabin.
And was gay.
San Diego Gay & Lesbian News
Young Conservatives, Log Cabin Republicans host brunch for freedom to marry at RNC
SDGLN Staff
August 29th, 2012
Young Conservatives, Log Cabin Republicans host brunch for freedom to marry at RNC
TAMPA, Fla. — Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry co-hosted a brunch with Log Cabin Republicans today at the Republican National Convention in Tampa.
Conservative commentator and political strategist Margaret Hoover spoke at the event, and notable attendees included former Congressman Jim Kolbe, Maryland state Sen. Allan Kittleman, and Andrew Langer, president of the Institute for Liberty, who also spoke at the event.
“There are tectonic shifts happening just beneath the surface within the Republican Party on marriage that are starting to percolate up to the national dialogue,”said Hoover, also a member of the Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry leadership committee. “That’s why we’re here at the Republican National Convention – to continue to drive this very important conversation forward. Our group can help people see that supporting marriage for same-sex couples is absolutely consistent with the party’s legacy of individual freedom and limited government. It is a profoundly conservative value.”
“The goal of Log Cabin Republicans has always been to work from within the party to expand and protect freedoms for all Americans. The presence of a successful, widely-attended event in support of the freedom to marry at the 2012 Republican National Convention is a watershed moment for the cause of marriage equality,” said R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans. “Today’s event included GOP delegates, elected officials, and committed grassroots Republicans all united around the core idea that freedom means freedom for everyone. We’re proud to have been a part of this important event, and look forward to continuing the conversation within the GOP alongside the Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry.”
In addition to Hoover, two other members of the Young Conservatives leadership committee spoke at the event: Sarah Longwell, vice president at Berman and Company and member of the Log Cabin Republicans board of directors, and Torrey Shearer, a public affairs advisor at Holland & Knight.
In addition to the brunch, Log Cabin and the Young Conservatives ran a full-page ad in today’s Tampa Tribune, asking for the GOP to include gay and lesbian families in its vision for the critical role of marriage and families in our society. The Young Conservative leaders sent a letter to the Platform Committee earlier this month asking it to resist adding language opposing the freedom of same-sex couples to marry, and Log Cabin Republicans members and staff were active in the platform committee process.
Despite these efforts and debates in committee, the GOP chose instead to take an extreme stance on marriage in its platform, supporting a federal constitutional amendment banning the freedom to marry for same-sex couples. The platform language on marriage was written by Tony Perkins, the president of the anti-gay Family Research Council.
Nationally, several polls show that younger conservatives are increasingly for marriage, and 197 Republican state legislators across the nation have stood up for the freedom to marry to date.
Please marry…lots of you and hurry….Dj’s and lawyers need the work!
Posted: 5:33 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012
Florida homeowners receive more than $1.7 billion in mortgage relief from national settlement
By Kimberly Miller
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Florida homeowners have had more than $187 million in mortgage debt wiped out in the first phase of the multi-billion settlement between the nation’s five largest banks and state attorneys general.
An initial progress report on the landmark agreement reached in February was released Wednesday, offering the first comprehensive details on how banks are meeting requirements that include offering $25 billion in mortgage relief nationwide.
Between March 1 and June 30, a total of $1.7 billion in loan help was distributed in Florida through mortgage principal reductions, refinances, short sale approvals and other activities such as moving assistance for people who can’t stay in their homes.
About 23,110 Florida homeowners have so far benefited from the settlement, with an average relief per borrower of $74,240.
Nationally, $10.5 billion in mortgage relief, including $1.3 billion in debt reduction, was meted out by banks, according to Wednesday’s report issued by the Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight and independent monitor Joseph Smith.
“The preliminary information we’ve gotten is encouraging, to me at least, but it’s just that — preliminary,” said Smith, a former North Carolina banking commissioner. “Victory is not declared yet.”
The banks included in the settlement are JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America and Ally Financial, formerly GMAC. Loans held by federal mortgage backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not included.
Florida’s share of the settlement — $8.4 billion in cash and mortgage relief — is second only to California.
Banks receive different credits in meeting their obligation depending on what kind of assistance they provide. For example, banks get a dollar for dollar match on principal reductions, but just five cents on the dollar for a forbearance that may reduce payments but lengthen the life of the loan.
While thousands of Florida homeowners have benefited from the settlement, the state also has the second highest number of consumer complaints — 115. California had 315 consumer complaints.
Lake Worth resident Marshall Fleury wrote to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi after he was denied a lower interest rate on his loan.
Fleury’s mortgage is underwater, but he’s current on his payments. He estimates he could save as much as $600 a month if his 6.4 percent interest rate was reduced to 4 percent.
“What they ought to say to you is, if you’ve never missed a payment and are a good customer, is that they want to help,” Fleury said. “I got a letter Aug. 19 basically saying I wasn’t eligible for any program.”
Boynton Beach resident Brian Dublynn, who is also current on his payments, had a different experience. He found success refinancing his Chase interest-only loan to a fixed rate with no closing costs.
“We said, ‘Things like this just don’t happen’,” he said. “But we’ve got the letter of approval.”
Lenders have until Feb. 28, 2015 to meet the settlement requirements.
Dan Frahm, a Bank of America spokesman, said many of his company’s contributions are not included in the report because programs ramped up after the June 30 cutoff date.
Not counted are 526 Florida homeowners who have received $73 million in debt forgiveness, or 70 homeowners who have saved $18 million by refinancing.
“We believe we will reach or exceed all program agreements,” he said. “In the past five to six weeks there has been a lot of momentum.”
For more information on the settlement, go to nationalmortgagesettlement.com.
——————————————————————————–
Florida mortgage relief: March 1 – June 30
$115.3 million in primary mortgage debt forgiveness
$37.3 million in previous mortgage forbearance that is now forgiven
$31.7 million in second mortgage debt forgiveness
$1.5 million in completed short sales
$42.4 million in other activity, including moving assistance and deficiency waivers
$14.7 million in consumer savings from refinancing to a lower interest rate
23,110 homeowners affected, with an average savings of $74,240 per borrower
Source: Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight
If, as Rand Paul tells us, “success in America is built on merit,” can someone please tell me why Mitt Romney is running for President?
I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive.
I didn’t see Rand Paul’s speech. I’m assuming he pussied out and didn’t take anyone to task over the treatment of his father.
Nice.
“If, as Rand Paul tells us, “success in America is built on merit,” can someone please tell me why Mitt Romney is running for President?”
Good question. I am sure that same line of reasoning would compel you to ask this question: How was Obama even taken seriously as a presidential candidate and ultimately elected President? Was it media packaging, an ignorant electorate, voter fraud or just dumb luck?
Obama - Merit??? Really??? If that’s true, I guess anyone is qualified to be President of the United States.
Why yes, nick, “Really”. Isn’t is curious how a majority of the American electorate was able to discern that but you were not? More to the point, that a majority of university professors, scientists, jurists, creative thinkers, writers, journalists, and our country’s considered intelligentsia also shared that conviction?
But then, we’re all ignorant “anti-Americans” so what do you expect?
Looks like the anti-trade voices in America may soon get their wish. But as the old saying goes, “Watch out what you wish for.”
Aug. 29, 2012, 9:06 p.m. EDT
Beware, Asia: ‘Lost Decade’ of trade coming
By Chris Oliver, MarketWatch
Reuters
Port facilities in Tokyo.
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Growing interest among Western companies in manufacturing closer to their home markets could be bad news for some of Asia’s biggest shipping lines, with some analysts now warning of flat or even declining trade volumes for years to come.
In research released earlier this week, Australian investment bank Macquarie warned of a “lost decade” for the shipping firms servicing the major trade routes linking Asia with markets in the U.S. and Europe.
The current soft patch for container rates, now into its fifth year, could be part of a structural trend, as surging labor rates and other rising costs mean Asia’s manufacturing hubs are no longer the great bargains they once were.
The tilt by U.S. and European companies toward “in-sourcing” — locating manufacturing closer to home markets — may even be more widespread than commonly thought, Macquarie said.
And at very least, Macquarie analysts wrote in the report, “the outsourcing of production to Asia from Europe and North America, respectively, has now matured.”
The research house said trends even point to a coming “inflection point” that could mark a renaissance in Western manufacturing, though it was also careful say it didn’t see a sudden, large-scale stampede out of Asian manufacturing in the foreseeable future.
Other Asia experts agreed that inflating costs were a influencing factor, especially in China, where surging labor costs so far show few signs of cooling.
China’s biggest bulldozer-maker plans more acquisitions and partnerships in Europe and the U.S. Shandong Heavy Industry is now trying to make its mark overseas with luxury companies.
“There are an increasing number of anecdotes, for example of U.S. companies, where a larger portion of them saying they want to move their operations back to the U.S.,” Société Générale economist Yao Wei said in Hong Kong.
…
Moving jobs from China to Mexico and Brazil. How does that reduce the trade deficit?
Oh, also… from what I see there is no slowdown in moving brain jobs to China and India. A guy in our Silicon Valley lab left the team. Replaced by two new QA people in the China lab.
I’d be happy if either candidate stepped up to put a stop to US stupidity, but so far I am still waiting for a shard of evidence to suggest it might happen.
ft dot com
August 29, 2012 7:27 pm
Republicans can end 15 years of US stupidity
By Conrad Black
It is an abiding mystery why the US, after leading the west to the greatest strategic victory in the history of the nation state in the cold war and the triumph of democracy in most of the world, has been for about 15 years, in public policy terms, an almost unrelievedly stupid country. America’s enemies could scarcely have devised a more suicidal programme than the one that was followed: outsourcing nearly 50m jobs while admitting 20m unskilled aliens; throwing American lives and $2tn after nation-building in the Middle East; and inundating the world with trillions of dollars of worthless real estate-backed debt, certified as investment-grade by the palsied lions of Wall Street. In comparison, even the hare-brained miscues that have endangered the eurozone seem Solomonic.
Americans realise their country has been mismanaged by both parties in all branches and levels of government and are frustrated that sweeping out the incumbents has not produced better politicians. This race is between a president most Americans think has done a poor job and a challenger most Americans think is not up to the great office he seeks. The Obama administration has generated almost $20,000 of increased deficit for every man, woman and child in the country, while net employment has declined in the absence of a real economic recovery.
Mr Obama retains some popularity in the world, mainly from those who like American leaders who rail against American capitalism and unilateralism, and don’t mind having America’s pockets picked by foreigners. This fits in with the usual eurohysteria that says all Republicans are knuckle-dragging robber barons and religious zealots. The Republican party is angry but it is generally sensible.
Unfortunately, Mitt Romney has faced in all four directions on almost every major issue and has behaved like a consultant whose answer to everything is to assess the data, assemble the experts, deluge the public with platitudes and decide later. To be fair to WMR (Willard Mitt Romney – the initials haven’t caught on like FDR, JFK or LBJ but I have a cultural problem with the possible heir to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln being called Mitt), to succeed in Massachusetts he had to move well to the left of most Republicans (as Nelson Rockefeller did in New York a generation previously). But he has been steadily cutting and trimming his positions as the polls advised him of where his fellow Republicans stood. Unlike the president, he has an impressive CV: governor of an important state, a successful businessman and director of a winter Olympiad that was in difficulties when he took it over.
In the terrible year of 1968, with 200 to 400 draftees coming back in body bags from Vietnam every week, race and anti-war riots all the time and traumatising assassinations, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Robert Kennedy, Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon all ran for president, and they were all more plausible candidates than the duo on offer this year. The most capable Republicans, Jeb Bush, Mitch Daniels, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, didn’t seek the nomination; those who did were a ludicrous sequence of imposters, apart from the nominee. A truly dismal election was in prospect until last week.
Until he chose Paul Ryan, chairman of the House budget committee and author of a serious plan to reform entitlements and roll back the deficit, as vice-presidential nominee, Mr Romney was being sabotaged by the Obama campaign’s assault on him as an outsourcing, tax-evading, asset stripper; and by the Democrats’ endless production of “wedge” issues: soak the rich; force the Roman Catholic Church to pay for the contraceptive, abortion-inducing and sterilisation needs of employees and students of Catholic institutions; gay marriage. It was a smokescreen to avoid the real issues: national solvency, uncompetitive education, a very costly and uneven healthcare system, incoherent energy and foreign policies and a rancid, unaffordable and unjust legal system.
…
Obama retains some popularity among those who like American leaders who rail against American capitalism and unilateralism, and don’t mind having America’s pockets picked by foreigners… The Republican party is angry but it is generally sensible.
LOL. He loses all credibility with those two doozies.
The trouble with what the Republicans say about Obama’s economic record is that it ignores that we are in a recovery already, less than four years after George W. Bush left Obama with the most wretched economic situation since the 1930s. Even the housing market is recovering and the stock market has rocketed up this year, for chrissake!
Another huge question is that of what, exactly, would the Republicans have done differently than Obama? It’s pretty easy to armchair quarterback, explaining why a pass play would have scored a touchdown when a run failed. It’s quite another matter to have to huddle with your teammates and call every play throughout the game. Quarterbacking is hard; armchair quarterbacking is a cinch by comparison, especially when all you ever do is blame the quarterback instead of convincingly explaining what you would have done that would have worked better.
Finally maybe you can win an election by pandering to stupid people. At least the Republicans are doing their best to prove it!
ft dot com
Last updated: August 30, 2012 5:28 am
Ryan launches caustic attack on Obama
By Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Tampa
Vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan with his family at the Republican National Convention
Paul Ryan launched a withering attack on Barack Obama in his first major address as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, charging the US president with abdicating responsibility for the economy and taking the nation on an “adventureless journey from one entitlement to the next . . . where everything is free but us.”
Mr Ryan presented himself as a boy from small town America who felt humbled by the opportunity to save the nation from the brink of certain collapse.
“I accept the duty to lead our nation out of a jobs crisis and back to prosperity,” he said in his opening lines. But he also emerged as perhaps the most aggressive attack dog against Mr Obama in Mitt Romney’s campaign.
Shedding his reputation – at least for the night – as a wonky Washington insider, Mr Ryan eviscerated a president who, he said had been handed an admittedly tough economic crisis upon entering the Oval Office, but let down a once hopeful nation.
He signalled that the Romney campaign would not shrink away from a debate over the future of Medicare, the government health insurance programme for the elderly that has become a flashpoint for both campaigns because of Mr Ryan’s support for an overhaul of the programme. He criticised Mr Obama for cutting $716bn in Medicare to fund his 2010 healthcare law.
“Mitt Romney and I know the difference between protecting a programme, and raiding it. Ladies and gentlemen, our nation needs this debate. We want this debate. We will win this debate. “
He also attacked Mr Obama’s re-election effort.
“I have never seen opponents so silent about their record and so desperate to keep their power. With all their attack ads, the president is just throwing away money, and he’s pretty experienced at that.”
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Apparently the RNC is doing the best possible job to prove the GOP is intellectually bankrupt, and living in a fantasy world of their own invention.
I’m convinced already, and it’s only day two of the convention!
And by the way, according to Samantha Bee, about 32,000 rapes a year result in a pregnancy, and I believe she means “legitimate” rapes.
RNC Night One: ‘We Built It’ … And Built It, And Built It, And Built It
TPM In Tampa
Benjy Sarlin August 28, 2012, 9:18 PM 4927
TAMPA, Fla. — The quote may be taken out of context, distorted and misleadingly edited to absurd extremes, but the Republican convention’s Tuesday night proceedings could not reference “You didn’t build that” enough.
The official theme of the day’s convention proceedings are “We Built It,” and that line was driven home endlessly and in every format imaginable: it was captured in song; speakers repeated it; and videos played up the line to maximum effect, each adding their own twist along the way.
Actress Janine Turner took the spiritual route: “President Obama, I’m here to tell ya, the government didn’t build it — God and the American people built it!”
Country singer Lane Turner took the musical route, playing his surprisingly catchy protest song “I Built It” to the crowd’s roaring delight. Sample lyric: “I built it with my own hardworking hands / I built it, no help from Uncle Sam.”
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It’s all up to Ben Bernanke to announce QE3 this Friday. Otherwise global financial markets will crash.
Does that mean it will be Bernanke’s fault if markets crash because of no QE3 announcement in his speech?
P.S. I keep thinking Japan’s stock market has finally bottomed out, but there it is again down another 1%.
Aug. 30, 2012, 1:26 a.m. EDT
Asia stocks fall on data, commodities, earnings
By Sarah Turner, MarketWatch
SYDNEY (MarketWatch) — Asian stocks traded sharply lower Thursday, as weak data, declining commodity prices and poorly received earnings put pressure on major markets a day ahead of a much-awaited speech from U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average fell 1.2%, South Korea’s Kospi lost 1.3%, and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index fell 0.9%.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index dropped 1.2%, while the Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.3% after closing at a fresh three-and-a-half year low on Wednesday.
The losses contrasted with mild gains for Wall Street stocks Wednesday after the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book reported gradual U.S. economic expansion. Read more on Beige Book.
At the same time, data showed U.S. gross domestic product rose at a 1.7% annual rate in April-June, an upward revision of a prior estimate of 1.5%. Read more on GDP.
But strategists said that Bernanke’s speech on Friday at an annual gathering of central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyo., remains the main focus for investors this week.
As China’s interest in wine has soared in recent years, mainland Chinese investors have snapped up several French vineyards. But the sale of a small Burgundy property to a Chinese millionaire is causing a storm in France.
“Investors are clearly waiting for Chairman Bernanke’s talk at the Jackson Hole Summit.,” said Matthew Sherwood, strategist at Perpetual.
However, Sherwood believes investors may be disappointed by Bernanke’s speech.
“It is unlikely that the Fed Chairman will announce anything in his talk, and with the U.S. fiscal cliff approaching, it would probably be wiser to hold onto whatever policy ammunition he has left, for when the growth battle arrives, instead of firing your weapon before the enemy has arrived,” he said.
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