Weekend Topic Suggestions
Please post topic ideas here!
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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The whole world may go into a deflationary spiral soon. Look at Japan now. Probably GD2. Does US president election even matter anymore? Whoever is in the office cannot do much about it and in fact speed up the process of downfall by printing more and spending carelessly.
How about a topic on this.
Why not add the pitfalls of trade protectionism to the scope of discussion? The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which was intended to protect American jobs, was credited by many historians with worsening the severity of unemployment and production slowdown of the Great Depression, by reducing the international trade (X) component of aggregate demand (AD = C + G + I + X - M).
The pitfalls of free trade are deeper than the pitfalls of trade protectionism. I don’t recall multinationals sending career jobs overseas by the hundreds of thousands during the 1920’s. S-H may have made GD-1 worse, but sending those careers oversees was a large cause of the Great Recession. (which would be a GD if it weren’t for food stamps etc)
Your (non)-analysis focuses narrowly on the costs of free trade, not the benefits (e.g. American workers making stuff we send overseas, like graduate diplomas).
Interesting, Martin- I was going to suggest a topic on the the flip side of the deflation coin, inflation. There is an enormous amount of money being created.
My sense is that inflation is the path that the Fed will use to work out the crisis so the underwater and distressed loans will come closer to being paid off at their nominal balances. In real terms, not so much.
This mess is going to play out over a long period of time.
The only way for the loans to be paid off at their nominal balances is for there to be inflation in wages/taxable incomes. The Fed can make more money. It can’t force the money into wages.
even if it could…or did:
“Hmmm…pay down debt i can just walk away from after i live in the house for free for many months…or buy the new iphone 5.”
which do you think the merikan consumer will choose?
But they can raise the minimum wage, and significantly. What I observed in my years in Mexico was that a minimum wage that tracked high inflation (Mexico never quite reached true hyperinflation) forced higher paid jobs to increase their wages as well as minimum wage would catch up with them. Mexico had other gimmicks to put money into consumer’s hands: Mandatory year end bonuses (aguinaldo) which was 20 days pay (90 days pay if you worked for the government!) and mandatory profit sharing (8% of profit is shared with employees).
I’m not saying that that this would be good, but if the PTB wants wage inflation, it can be accomplished.
That would be Congress, not the Fed. I just can’t see that happening here. Can you?
So which is it inflation or deflation….or maybe BOTH
Defense cuts force Southern Air to file for bankruptcy
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/09/28/us-aircargo-bankruptcy-idINBRE88R09R20120928
HCA plans could create 2,000 jobs
Nashville-based HCA Holdings Inc. (NYSE: HCA) is creating more than 1,000 jobs as part of a major expansion in Davidson County, Tenn.
The Nashville Business Journal reports that the hospital giant’s expansion also will allow for construction to begin on the 900,000-square-foot West End Summit, one of Nashville’s highest-profile stalled commercial real estate projects, representing an investment of $200 million.
The journal reported in August that two organizations affiliated with HCA, Parallon Business Solutions and the Sarah Cannon Research Institute, were looking for about 400,000 square feet of new office space in the Nashville area.
Parallon will anchor one of the West End Summit’s twin 20-story towers, and the research institute will be the main tenant in the other, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean announced yesterday. Parallon will fill about 350,000 square feet in its tower, and Sarah Cannon will take about 150,000 square feet.
Combined, the expansion of the two HCA units represents 2,000 jobs over five years.
UP down and around….
Mohegan Sun Laying Off More Than 300 Workers And CEO
September 27, 2012|By Brian Hallenbeck, The Day
UNCASVILLE — Mohegan Sun is laying off more than 300 employees and replacing its chief executive officer, the Mohegan Tribe’s top casino official said Thursday.
Jeffrey Hartmann, a Mohegan Sun executive since 1996 and the casino’s CEO since 2011, left the casino Wednesday, said Mitchell Etess, CEO of the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority.
For the first eight months of 2012, Mohegan Sun’s slots win was down 6.7 percent over the same period in 2011. Comparing August 2012 to August 2007, the decline is 32.6 percent.
Now that infinite-lived QE3 is here, aren’t concerns about deflation overblown?
September 20, 2012, 3:14 PM
The Fed, Deflation, and the Candyman
By Paul Vigna
The Fed’s out on what feels like a full-court press defense of QE3, with five regional Fed presidents on the speaking circuit today.
QE3 is already working, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren said today. Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota said with inflation in check, the Fed should keep easing until unemployment hits 5.5%. That could be past even 2015.
It’s not really unusual for a spate of Fed speakers to hit the circuit on the same day, and there isn’t much chance they’re feeling any heat over QE3; the Fed’s few hawks, including Kansas City Fed President Esther George, have been marginalized. The stock market loves it.
Still, wasn’t the timing at least kind of curious?
…
Inflation deception in Argentina.
“On August 10th INDEC, the national statistics agency, declared that a family of four should be considered above the poverty line if its monthly food bill exceeded 688 pesos, equal to about six pesos per person per day.
The claim has stuck in the throats of ordinary Argentines, who have to spend far more than this to keep hunger at bay thanks to galloping inflation. Indignant citizens created mock advertisements featuring pizzas the size of finger nails. Hackers disabled the INDEC website, tweeting: “Now you’ll have to use your six little pesos to restore your page :)”.
It is not the first time that official reports have played down the cost of living. Since 2007 the government has published bogus inflation statistics to beguile voters and investors. In February, with independent estimates running more than twice as high as official ones, The Economist stopped publishing INDEC’s inflation figures.
http://www.economist.com/node/21562238
5.5%…
There is only a job for one out of every two people of working age in this country. In GD1 that’s how they counted unemployment, working age people who did not have a job. It was 25%. Counted that way it is now 50%. There are undoubtedly details that I am unaware of, but I am sure the unemployment numbers published by the Department of Truth are so bogus as to be irrelevant.
In NY btw, the extended UI benefits are over because of the improvement in the statistics.
I just found an excellent passage on Shmoop dot com (who are they?) about working attitudes in GD-1:
“In North Dakota, where ecological misfortune and market failure made it all but impossible for farmers to support themselves, Hickok encountered relief officials “inclined still to think there is something wrong with a man who cannot make a living. They talk so much about ‘the undeserving’ and ‘the bums.’” This attitude—ascribing macroeconomic failure to individual faults—was common not only among those giving out the dole, but also among those receiving it. In Texas, Hickok encountered a college-educated schoolteacher, left unemployed after her school district went bankrupt, who told her, “If, with all the advantages I’ve had, I can’t make a living, I’m just no good, I guess.”
Intellectually, plenty of Americans recognized that individuals’ inadequacies could hardly be blamed for the collective misery of the Great Depression. Reading Hickok’s reports back in Washington, Harry Hopkins remarked: “Three or four million heads of households don’t turn into tramps and cheats overnight, nor do they lose the habits and standards of a lifetime… They don’t drink any more than the rest of us, they don’t lie any more, they’re no lazier than the rest of us…. An eighth or a tenth of the earning population does not change its character which has been generations in the molding, or, if such a change actually occurs, we can scarcely charge it up to personal sin.”
But deeply held cultural attitudes die hard, and even if most Americans could accept the rationality of Hopkins’s argument, they still felt like Hickok’s Texas schoolteacher. And, needless to say, “I’m just no good, I guess” was not an attitude that lent itself to revolutionary action.
“
Cool find.
The scary thing about central banker policy today is that it’s not just one country engaging in money printing…it’s:
Japan
UK
US; and
All of Europe (”sterilized” for now)
These four areas represent about $41 Trillion of the world’s $70 Trillion of GDP. If you add China with their currency substantially pegged to the US dollar, it brings the total to $48 of $70 Trillion of the world’s economies engaging in money printing (68.5% of all the world’s economies).
There is a race to the bottom occurring right now for paper money. What will go up the most in value relative to paper money? Food? Energy? Materials? Precious Metals? Real Estate?
Frighteningly I would bet food and energy…
Frighteningly I would bet food and energy…
Which will ignite riots in the 3rd world. Only under crony capitalism could the world be awash in food while billions starve.
“Frighteningly I would bet food and energy…”
Luckily those are the ‘volatile’ sectors which are expunged from headline inflation numbers…
I still think they should use a rolling average to include these items, but taking out the volatility (if that’s what they’re truly worried about)…3 year rolling average would suffice…
This is where we differ. You seem to believe the objective is to accurately reflect the cost of living in the CPI, including the ‘volatile food and energy sector,’ whose prices have an overwhelming tendency to increase over time.
I believe they want to produce a downward-biased measure, for various political reasons:
1) Makes it look like the Fed is controlling inflation.
2) Reduces the amount of QE needed, if bond market vigilantes believe inflation is under control.
3) Keeps down the cost of programs such as Social Security which have COLAs tied to the CPI.
I tend to agree. You only have to look at the “Shadow Stats” website to see this effect.
However, if that’s the case (that for a while at least, they have been understating inflation), then why in the world do people hold up Case Shiller’s “inflation adjusted home price graph” as some sort of credible reason that home prices have NOT come down enough?
That graph is distorted by the biased measures of CPI.
Does austerity “work,” even in theory? How?
The situation in Southern Europe somehow brings to mind the old saying, “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Op-Ed Columnist
Europe’s Austerity Madness
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 27, 2012
So much for complacency. Just a few days ago, the conventional wisdom was that Europe finally had things under control. The European Central Bank, by promising to buy the bonds of troubled governments if necessary, had soothed markets. All that debtor nations had to do, the story went, was agree to more and deeper austerity — the condition for central bank loans — and all would be well.
But the purveyors of conventional wisdom forgot that people were involved. Suddenly, Spain and Greece are being racked by strikes and huge demonstrations. The public in these countries is, in effect, saying that it has reached its limit: With unemployment at Great Depression levels and with erstwhile middle-class workers reduced to picking through garbage in search of food, austerity has already gone too far. And this means that there may not be a deal after all.
Much commentary suggests that the citizens of Spain and Greece are just delaying the inevitable, protesting against sacrifices that must, in fact, be made. But the truth is that the protesters are right. More austerity serves no useful purpose; the truly irrational players here are the allegedly serious politicians and officials demanding ever more pain.
…
I have never been able to understand this austerity concept . Jobs and cash flow float all boats ,so why would people starving with
high unemployment rates be the answer . it seems like its just a set up to pay the Bankers for loans that were made under false market circumstances and every one else suffers so they can get their ill gotten bad faith contracts . Those Countries should just default like Iceland did ,but the Powers are forcing this austerity
BS . If Bankers and Investment Banks made these high risk loans than they should crash and burn . They are contorting entire economies for the purpose of making the investors and speculators
whole again . It boils down to picking and chosing who the winners and losers will be .The money changers /Wall Street casino players went to far this time and
making huge populations of people starve so they can recoup any of their loss isn’t Justice . They should lose in every way because they played a high risk leverage greed game with no regard to their unsustainable actions that would harm people while they took the money leaving people in ruins .
I have said it over and over again ,take the money from the beneficiaries of the Ponzi schemes and faulty fraudulent lending as a ill-gotten gain tax ( while you throw a bunch in jail ) .Instead ,
the Deal Makers are just picking and chosing who will win and who will lose .
Why let the Culprits pick the winners ,while obstruction of Justice and it’s moral hazard just destroys confidence and creates a set up for rebellion from the starving losers ,as we are seeing in these Countries .
You see the same playbook in the USA to transfer the loss to the
majority population ,while throwing millions into poverty by inflation ,along with a jobless recovery with lower wages that isn’t possible and a housing market that is beyond affordability ,and a tax structure that simply rewards the Global game players .
Blame it on the people ,not the real Culprits ,and keep the unsustainable systems going that enrich “few hands “.
Many think that Americans will never rise up and reject the GRAND PLAYBOOK .I don’t know if that is true or not .
Grand Playbook….
In November we get to choose between Wall Street’s Lackey or Wall Street’s Poster Boy. Not very many want Something Else.
They want it. They’ve just been made afraid to reach for it.
The Great Latvia success story:
http://www.markfiore.com/political-cartoons/watch-latvia-success-austerity-europe-union-euro-bailout-animated-video-mark-fiore-political+animation
Hey, it was a success for the banksters, right?
Why is it that a loan dissenting voice at the Fed, addressing high-level considerations regarding the conduct of monetary policy, is so upsetting to Mr Market?
September 27, 2012, 2:46 PM
Fed’s Plosser: ‘Monetary Policy Shouldn’t Be a Day Trader’
By Steven Russolillo
The hawk in the house isn’t pleased.
Philly Fed President Charles Plosser, a veteran central-bank official who has publicly opposed the Fed’s latest accommodative efforts, says many of his colleagues are too focused on how markets react in the short-term to Fed stimulus, as opposed to taking longer, more pragmatic views.
“Monetary policy shouldn’t be a day trader,” Plosser said Thursday morning in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. “I don’t think that’s a healthy focus for central banks…Policy making is too focused on short-term and not long-term views.”
In recent years, investors have been fixated on the Fed’s each and every move to kickstart economic growth and soothe jittery markets. From multiple rounds of quantitative easing, to Operation Twist and record low interest rates, stocks have generally responded favorably to all of the Fed’s moves.
But now, Plosser is “really dubious” that the Fed’s latest round of bond buying, known as QE3, is going to have a prolonged impact on economic growth. He said further monetary easing is unlikely to boost consumer spending or improve confidence. He isn’t a voting member on the FOMC policy-setting committee this year.
Plosser also touched on the so-called disconnect taking place between the economy and the stock market. With the Dow about 5% away from all-time highs, some investors worry that the market isn’t an accurate reflection of the actual economy, which continues to grapple with low growth and stubbornly high unemployment.
Global central-bank stimulus has been a major underpinning for the market’s huge surge off the March 2009 lows.
“I don’t want to be in the business of creating a wealth illusion,” Plosser said.
…
The winter winds of change are fast approaching. The ‘Feel Good Ship Lollypop’ has sailed while everyone sang in chorus ‘Kumbaya”, praised one world government, and proclaimed ‘Can’t we all get along’. The most powerful nation in the world elected boy wonder on ‘Hope and Change’. Well, the world got what it wanted, it hoped for change and it got it. The ship is under full power now asea without a captain, without charts, without a plan or direction. The only thing certain, like night and day, is that calamity lies ahead of it somewhere in the future. HBB’ers can spend time diverted with the election nonsense if they so choose while the biggest obstacle to their future survival lies in their understanding how to protect what wealth they currently have. From reading the postings here it is evident that many follow the thoughts of Robert Prechter’s wave theory and have read his book “Conquer the Crash”. The hostilities expressed toward some whom have recently purchased a house (just my opinion) seem like they could be based on sour grapes because they repositioned their wealth a while back and are ready to buy goods, like housing, at pennies on the dollars and their efforts have been thwarted by the Fed.
There are many an old saw that I’d like to quote here: ‘While playing poker, if you don’t know who the patsy is, it’s you’, ‘you got to pay to play’, ‘There’s safety in numbers’, and ‘the market can stay irrational longer that you can stay solvent’.
Well people, in the game of high finance being played we are the patsies. Our survival depends on our refusal to play. Our only goal should be to position our assets in a safe position and that position will be different for each of us. For some it will mean buying a house as an utilization expenditure vs investment expenditure. Some HBB’ers think that this is bad move. But contrast that with what’s been going on. Renter’s continually get the shaft; no tax break for them, stop paying rent and they are kicked to the curb, crappy LL’s who don’t fix things and raise the rent (I am not advocating not renting). On the other hand house owner’s have paid to play, they have skin in the game, and we have been shown by the Fed that ‘there is safety in numbers’; now I ask you if the numbers pan out is it not more prudent to buy now? Who is more at risk to lose their house in foreclosure going forward, the person who has little equity or the one who has 50% equity. If both can’t afford to pay for whatever life has thrown at them, the bank can easily foreclose and take over the house that has more equity and let the deadbeat live in the other house as they are doing now for free.
My question to all HBB’ers is what are you doing to position yourself? How many follow wave theory? How long can these financial markets stay solvent?
what are you doing to position yourself
Renting at 13% of gross monthly income
what are you doing to position yourself
I’m the the same position I’ve been in for about 5 years now, except for having bought a nice used car. I pay as little as possible for housing, I’ve got sufficient food and ammo to get by for quite a while if necessary, and I’m focusing on staying employable and employed for as long as possible. I don’t know what else to do…
“My question to all HBB’ers is what are you doing to position yourself?”
1) Renting at 23% of gross income.
2) Assuming the crash position in asset allocation.
A couple of more things:
1) We diversify at a level that greatly exceeds traditional notions. E.g. we buy big ticket items other than housing with savings outright, not bank-financed debt, including lots of infinitely-lived durables (violin family instruments and equipment).
2) We are heavily invested in human capital, including social ties, which are not taxable unless you sell goods and services made therewith.
“what are you doing to position yourself?”
Lowering and fixing as many costs as I can, and keeping my investments in things that are more “needs” based that have similar characteristics (high fixed cost of capital, low marginal costs of operation).
“…to position yourself?”
Staying out of debt. Considering myself undeservedly fortunate to have chosen this path during the boom.
Living unconventionally with a shelter overhead less than 5% of income.
Stocking the pantry as it were and not keeping all my eggs in one basket.
Focusing more and more on activities of living rather than those of profit.
Focusing more and more on activities of living rather than those of profit.
Same here.
Autumn breeze indeed. To some, those breezes are a refreshing change from the stifling heat of summer.
I’ve “positioned” myself by withdrawing as far as physically possible from the poker table, watching the game from the relative safety of the kitchen where I can gawk and jeer with impunity and stuff my face on the leftovers. No mortgage, I built a tight little house out of quality material on a sustainable site and planted gardens and orchards, farm a few animals for food, companionship, and security, and meet most of my (minimal) needs with my own resources. For everything else, there is the internet.
My income is nil, but my quality of life is extraordinary and the exigencies of The Real World don’t affect me one iota unless I choose to let them in. The trick, as T. E. Lawrence told us, is in “not minding” when it hurts. (Also having generous friends in many lovely cities with whom to reciprocate amenities.)
YMMV, obviously, but it’s worked for me for the last two decades, and I fully expect that some unfortunate hiker will come across my desiccated carcass in the decades hence.
My income is nil,
Allena, how do you pay your property taxes with a nil salary? Out of savings?
To add….
This father and grandfather looks forward to the day that our country can free itself from the grip of corrupt monied power brokers on our legislators and people. I watch for opportunities to edge things in that direction. I care about how my children will live.
“I care about how my children will live.”
That’s where I am. I am far beyond caring whether we ever own another home, provided I can avoid ever becoming a burden on my kids. They are going to have enough of a struggle as it is.
My question to all HBB’ers is what are you doing to position yourself? How many follow wave theory? How long can these financial markets stay solvent?
Bought a house
wave theory is interesting
A long time
Now that house pimping is the most sanctimonious I’ve seen. Ever.
Is the Chinese “slowdown” destined to turn out “worse than expected”?
ECONOMY
September 27, 2012, 8:31 p.m. ET
Chinese Slowdown Idles U.S. Coal Mines
By KRIS MAHER
WHARTON, W.Va.—Slowing growth in China is taking a brutal toll on Appalachian coal mines and coal towns.
Appalachia has one of the world’s richest deposits of high-grade coal used to make steel. Thanks to Chinese demand, the price for premium metallurgical coal, whose low-ash and low-sulfur content makes it ideal for steelmaking, hit a record $330 a metric ton in early 2011.
Now, the Chinese economy is slowing and so is its steel industry. That has sent the price of coal used for steelmaking down nearly 50% to $170 a metric ton. Those coal producers who counted on Chinese sales are reeling.
“When someone had coal to move, China was your big box store,” said Ernie Thrasher, chief executive of XCoal Energy & Resources, a major U.S. marketer of such coal to Asia. This year, “the switch went off.”
While many have blamed the downturn in the U.S. coal industry on cheap natural gas supplanting coal and tougher environmental regulations, the slide in metallurgical coal demand has been equally devastating. Coal companies were caught flat-footed after ramping up production last year with the expectation that steep prices would cover their rising costs, despite coal’s past cyclicality. Instead, demand in China began to falter just as Australian metallurgical coal production—interrupted by floods last year—surged back into the market.
In July, Patriot Coal Corp. of St. Louis filed for bankruptcy protection, shortly after it lost a contract for coal bound for an Asian steelmaker. Patriot’s stock slid 18% the day after it announced that news, taking other coal stocks down with it. Earlier this month, Patriot said it would temporarily idle metallurgical coal operations at three mining complexes in southern West Virginia and lay off 250 miners, in addition to 1,000 layoffs earlier this year. On top of that, Patriot has said it will need to reduce “unsustainable” pension and health benefits to 2,000 miners and some 20,000 retirees and surviving spouses.
…
Sept. 28, 2012, 10:23 a.m. EDT
Fitch cuts China, India growth forecasts
By Chris Oliver, MarketWatch
HONG KONG (MarketWatch) – Fitch Ratings on Friday lowered its 2012 growth forecasts for India and China, citing a deteriorating global growth outlook and a reduced appetite on the part of officials for additional stimulus.
Neither country’s policy makers appear as keen to reach for policy stimulus as they were in 2009, Fitch said in its September Global Economic Outlook.
The rating agency said it expects China to grow 7.8% this year, down from its estimate in June of 8%.
India is expected to grow 6% in the fiscal year ending March 2013, down from an earlier forecast of 6.5% growth.
Chances of a hard landing unfolding in China appear remote, Fitch said, noting that authorities can deploy fiscal and monetary policies to ward off a harsh downturn.
Still, conditions within China continue to deteriorate, the ratings agency said.
Slowing exports and China’s homegrown austerity policies intended to quash consumer and house price inflation, were two of the main reasons for the slowdown.
It also focused concern on the services sector, which has been among the bright spots during the recent downturn, helping suck up excess workers and keep unemployment in check.
“Weak corporate profitability poses downside risk for China’s economy. This could eventually incline firms to shed labor which would in turn affect consumption, currently a resilient part of the outlook,” Fitch said in the note.
Bank of America- Merrill Lynch said Friday that it expects China’s economy to drag along for the next few quarters before improving slightly in 2013.
The research house said the economy appeared to tracing out a “U-shaped” trajectory and warned that volatility in coming weeks could further distort the sharp of the recovery.
“We should keep in mind that China’s potential growth rate is trending down, and in our view it is unlikely Beijing would carry out any significant stimulus plan this time around,” Merrill analysts wrote in the note.
…
that’s got to be hurting Montana too, but I haven’t heard a word here.
The pace of house price rises in London stalled in August, although property values in the capital have still risen by 5% over the year.
The annual increase is still the highest of any region in England and Wales, according to the Land Registry
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19757836
Still I’m sure the flood of rich French people to London will help drive up prices
French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault has said that nine out of 10 citizens will not see their income taxes rise in the new budget.
He has confirmed that there is to be a new 75% tax rate for people earning more than 1m euros (£800,000; $1.3m) a year.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19754016
David Cameron and François Hollande have clashed over the effect of Mr Hollande’s plans to set a 75 per cent top rate of income tax , which Mr Cameron has said will drive French businesses to Britain.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/db5604fe-ca9a-11e1-89be-00144feabdc0.html#axzz27m2qza1N
The UK’s governments plan seems to be to become a European Tax Haven. It ain’t much of a plan, but it’s the only one they’ve got. This will end badly I fear.
Let’s talk some more about a subject you hit upon in yesterday’s blog: War Crimes.
I recall vividly how the left (Democrats) were going berserk with the Press constantly railing about the illegal and unjust war, and that, despite a the available knowledge base, that there were supposedly “weapons of mass destruction”, the war was a lie and it was time to IMPEACH BUSH (even though he had Congressional approval and went to the UN for a resolution on Iraq).
The cry of the left was “Bush lied and People died”.
Remember all that?
NPR, nightly, listed the names of all the soldiers killed that day. And though more have died now, under Obama, we don’t get the nightly cry about the horrible, unjust war. Where are all the war protesters?
Remember that woman, Sheehan?, who hounded Bush at his ranch and set up a campout and the PRESS, camped out with her to say he was a war criminal over the death of her son.
The Drone attacks by Obama, as far as I am concerned, are clearly a violation of any “legal” war as we might find under the Geneva Conventions.
Where is the outcry?
Where are the call for “impeachment”.
So far as i can see, the drone attacks pretty much amount to systematic murder.
Is the US that far gone that we have no moral compass. I am the racist here. I don’t want my civilization polluted with the 3rd world. I support separatism, not “integration”. However, I don’t condone Murder, which is what this is.
I’m not much of a survivalist but I’ve got a freezer full of produce from the garden. As long as the power doesn’t go out….. I’ve planted some more fruit trees and I’m being vigilant about harvesting from the pear tree I planted 30 years ago.
I’ve got a propane cook top in case i have to do emergency canning but I hope it doens’t come to that.
Who is planning to stay long in stocks during the very dangerous month of October?
Sold in May? That smarts
Summer strength isn’t unusual, but beware October
WEEKEND INVESTOR
Rally lands U.S. stock funds in the money
• Baby boomers consider next housing move
• More evidence of housing recovery
“Sell in May and go away” used to work like a charm, but the market has come roaring back and is now ahead of where it was at the end of April.
Is a glowing report from Goldman Sachs a bullish indicator, or more of a death eater’s kiss?
Sept. 18, 2012, 10:51 a.m. EDT
Home-builder optimism hits 6-year high
Goldman Sachs sees favorable recovery scenario for U.S. market
By Steve Goldstein, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Optimism among the nation’s home builders climbed in September for the fifth straight month to reach the highest level in more than six years, according to a closely followed index released Tuesday.
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo housing market index gained 3 points to a seasonally adjusted reading of 40, the highest the index has been since June 2006. Economists polled by MarketWatch had anticipated a reading of 38.
The index still isn’t at the 50 level indicating “good” conditions but has climbed back from as low as 8 during the recession. The index didn’t even break 20 until December 2011.
“The traffic through the model homes is increasing, but it’s also the quality of the traffic that is increasing. We’re moving from window shoppers to people who are real buyers, people who are ready to put down a deposit,” said NAHB senior economist Robert Denk to MarketWatch Radio.
…