Bits Bucket for January 8, 2013
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The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Name:Ben Jones
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WSJ - Apartment Rents Continue to Rise As Vacancies Fall:
“Apartment landlords continued to impose hefty rent increases as 2012 drew to a close, although there are some early indications they could be losing their leverage with tenants.
The average nationwide monthly apartment rent was $1,048 in the fourth quarter, up 0.6% from the third quarter and up 3.8% from a year earlier, according to a report set to be released Tuesday by real-estate research firm Reis Inc. The year-over-year increase was the largest since 2007 and a sign that landlords still have the upper hand they regained in 2010.
The nation’s apartment vacancy rate, which has declined since hitting 8%in the aftermath of the financial crisis, fell to 4.5% from 4.7% in the third quarter. The rate is the lowest since 2001’s third quarter.
New York City’s performance offered perhaps one of the report’s biggest surprises. The city continues to have the lowest vacancy rate among the cities tracked by Reis, at 2.1%, and effective rent levels were up 3.9% for the year. But in the fourth quarter, average rent levels in New York declined 0.2% to an average of $2,985.
Rent levels in New York are already the highest in the nation and observers say some renters may be resistant to paying anything higher. “Three thousand dollars is a very expensive threshold,” said Ryan Severino, a Reis senior economist. Rents “certainly can’t keep going up forever.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323706704578228051186952518.html
Rents “certainly can’t keep going up forever.”
Sure; and the stock market cannot keep going up forever and Federal spending cannot keep going up forever. If these two pillars of the US economy should falter, then renters will become more “resistant”.
“The city continues to have the lowest vacancy rate among the cities tracked by Reis, at 2.1%, and effective rent levels were up 3.9% for the year. But in the fourth quarter, average rent levels in New York declined 0.2% to an average of $2,985.”
Why would rents fall in the city with the lowest vacancy rate? It is a very interesting outlier, to be sure!
And that $6 a month is really, really, really important. It means everything. It is the only number that you have to consider when you think about what will happen in the future. Really. Because someone said so and posted it on the internet.
It’s an average. I assume you realize that a drop in an average means a lot more than a drop in an individual’s monthly by the same amount?
The new trend in the past few years is to no longer offer the first-and-last month free or other incentives. Instead, they charge lower starter rent for all 12 months to sucker new renters into thinking the complex has the cheapest rent. Then on that first renewal, they slam you good, raising rent both in market rates and adding in that “extra” free month.
So when LL’s report rental rates, are they reporting the starter low rent, or what people really pay after they’ve been there a while? All the books I’ve seen report the starter rent. All you need is a few LL’s to switch from free-month to starter rent to bring down the average.
So, CIBT, you are incapable of detecting sarcasm as well, huh? Though I think you must agree that mine was dripping a little more than all your previous attempts.
Sorry if I mistook sarcasm for statistical ignorance.
The usual guideline for NYC rentals is that you must have X40/month in income ($3000 x 40 =$120000)
Is there any seasonality involved with rents in NYC?
Is there any seasonality involved with rents in NYC?
Personal experience from the nation’s fourth largest city (usually touted as very affordable): my rent has increased 15% over the last year. And that’s at the longest lease term. Shorter lease terms are even more. Month-to-month has increased $200. And this is a nearly 30 year old property! Criminey!
Which city?
WSJ - Demand for Office Space Still Sluggish:
“U.S. businesses took on new office space at a sluggish pace in the fourth quarter, as employers remained cautious about adding jobs (haven’t we been hearing that phrase for over three years now?).
The amount of occupied office space grew by 3.7 million square feet in the quarter, nudging down the vacancy rate 0.1 percentage point to end the year at 17.1%, according to real-estate research firm Reis Inc. Asking rents rose to an average $28.46 per square foot, up 0.8% for the quarter and 1.8% for the year, said Reis, which surveys 79 metropolitan areas.
The office market has been growing slowly ever since the start of 2011, when employers ended three years of shedding space and started to add more of it. But the pace of expansion has been tepid compared with what the office sector typically sees in a healthy economy.
The amount of occupied space grew by just 17.2 million square feet in 2012, well below the 66.7 million square feet of expansion in 2005. Last year’s growth left the vacancy rate just 0.5 percentage point below the 17.6% postrecession high that was hit in the fall of 2010 and well above the 12.5% at the market’s peak in the fall of 2007.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323689604578222192171334314.html
Maybe they could convert it into living space. Saw a documentary a few years ago about single Japanese Lucky Duckies, who rented what were basically converted cubicles, with higher partitions, to live in.
I wonder, how do you say “Lucky Duckie” in Japanese?
“Rucky Ducky” -
Awful—yet funny.
Bloomberg - U.S. Set for Biggest State-Local Jobs Boost Since 2007:
“State and local governments are in their best financial shape since the recession, giving them leeway to cushion the U.S. economy from federal budget cuts with spending and hiring of their own.
After slashing their workforces by about half a million in the past five years, state and local authorities will add employees in 2013, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics Inc. in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Their payrolls in the fourth quarter will be 220,000 larger than in the same period for 2012, he projects.
Their expenditures and investment also will be higher, rising by 1.8 percent, triple the increase last year, according to projections by St. Louis-based Macroeconomic Advisers.
“The bloodletting on the state- and local-government level has finally passed through,” said Jim Diffley, chief U.S. regional economist for IHS Global Insight in Philadelphia. “They’re no longer subtracting from growth.”
The shift will help the U.S. weather the blow from federal tax increases and spending cuts, keeping the expansion on course, Zandi said. He forecasts that gross domestic product will climb 2.1 percent this year after rising 2.3 percent in 2012, with the expansion getting stronger as the year progresses.
States and municipalities, which accounted for 12 percent of GDP in 2011, won’t be a drag on growth this year for the first time since 2009, said Ben Herzon, a senior economist at Macroeconomic Advisers. The economic rebound means they’re collecting more taxes, reducing the need for more spending cuts.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-08/u-s-set-for-biggest-state-local-jobs-boost-since-2007.html
“The economic rebound means they’re collecting more taxes, reducing the need for more spending cuts.”
But, but, but… they were collecting more taxes because of the tax cuts enacted after the 2008 fiasco which allowed the krill to spend more of their money. Now that the tax cuts are eliminated the spending by the krill should drop off, and if the krill’s spending drops off then the states an municipalities will be right back where they were before.
Yes, the krill that vote more on what they feel than what they think, thought that the economy was better than it was, since they had an extra 2% in the paycheck. Now that it is gone spending will fall.
Bloomberg - Defense Budget Cuts of $45 Billion Seen by Pentagon:
“The Pentagon faces a reduction of as much as $45 billion this fiscal year if automatic spending cuts take effect March 1, its comptroller said.
That level would be 27 percent less than the $62 billion in reductions the Pentagon would have confronted if the automatic cuts known as sequestration had begun last week as scheduled, Robert Hale told an audience at the Brookings Institution in Washington today.
President Barack Obama signed a last-minute budget deal on Jan. 2 that averted tax increases for most U.S. workers and delayed for two months the across-the-board spending cuts in defense and other programs. Hale said today that the legislation also eased some terms of the defense cuts for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.
“These legal changes are quite complex, but it looks like about $45 billion,” Hale said of the potential cuts, adding that analysts are continuing to study the legislation. “They reduced the size of the sequestration in the negotiations.”
About $149 billion in military personnel funds for fiscal 2013 are exempt from the automatic cuts, shifting the spending reductions to civilian employees, contractors, operations and maintenance costs and weapons programs.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-07/defense-budget-cuts-of-45-billion-seen-by-pentagon.html
Washington Post - Weapons makers try health care amid defense cuts:
“Top weapons makers Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics are pursuing and winning health-care projects as the Pentagon weighs hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts.
Lockheed Martin, the top federal contractor, won $472 million in awards from the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Health and Human Services in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, about five times more than in 2002. General Dynamics, the No. 3 U.S. vendor, won almost nine times as much work, or $398 million, from the two health-focused agencies last year compared with 2002.
“It’s where the money is,” said Bill Loomis, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore. “We’re seeing defense spending and overall spending coming down, and companies are investing where there is growth.”
http://m.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/weapons-makers-try-health-care-amid-defense-cuts/2013/01/06/fe45b728-550c-11e2-8b9e-dd8773594efc_story.html
Liberal commie opinion piece on military industrial complex:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/07/the-sacred-cow-of-american-defense-spending/
So $47 billion is what we spend in Iraq & Afghanistan every month…
Wow — that even exceeds what the Fed pumps into the MBS market each month!
Asia Times Online - Silicon Valley spark fades:
“All major industries go through an innovation life cycle. They provide a fundamentally new product or service when they first appear, then as their use becomes more widespread their changes to the world become even more fundamental. Later on however, while capital flows to them in vast profusion, their innovations become more marginal, although there is still money to be made.
Finally, generally after a monumental shakeout with many bankruptcies and much capital destroyed, they settle into maturity, in which innovations are minor, their products commoditized and they grow only in line with the global economy, while innovation shifts to some other sector. Silicon Valley, the source of growth and inspiration for the last four decades, is about to shift into this last phase. The transition will be painful.
The period from 1974 until the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000 brought Silicon Valley’s maximum impact on the global economy, in areas from modern finance to retailing. The Internet itself, which burst to prominence in a very short period around 1995, was the most important information technology advance in terms of its effect on life as a whole, but the personal computer and the cellphone were not far behind.
In retrospect, the dot-com crash was similar to the Railway Crash of 1846 and the stock market crash of 1929; it punctured the balloon of valuations and killed off some of the sillier uses of capital, but it did not kill the industry, nor significantly slow its rate of innovation. Just as 1846 was not the end of steam’s innovation and dominance and 1929 did not mark the end of the automobile’s efflorescence, so tech sector innovation continued after 2000.
Generally, however it seems likely that Silicon Valley is about to enter the automotive 1960s, with a consumer reaction against its design excesses, a series of very boring economy-based products, and congressional hearings at which some new young cyber-Ralph Nader will succeed in making the industry look greedy and misguided.
Careers in tech will no longer be fashionable, just as the best and brightest of my 1970 generation no longer sought careers in the automobile industry.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/OA09Dj01.html
huh. The PC predated the internet. so did cell phones but not as widely used
Meanwhile, Silly Valley housing prices keep always going up again.
January 04, 2013 13:00 ET
Silicon Valley Doubling Down on Small Spaces: San Jose Homes Post Stellar Gains in Condo and Townhome Market
SUNNYVALE, CA–(Marketwire - January 04, 2013) - Four years after the crash, housing’s “new normal” is anything but. With double-digit price increases and multiple competing offers the talk of the Bay Area single-family home market, Northern California’s Multiple Listing Service (MLS), MLSListings Inc, took a look at San Jose homes in the townhome/condo market over the past year, as well as all of Santa Clara County.
“It’s clear that the condo/townhome market is keeping pace with what we’re seeing in single family homes across Silicon Valley and greater Bay Area, with low inventory and rising prices,” said James Harrison, president and CEO of MLSListings Inc. “Our especially tight rental environment and historically low mortgage rates continue to entice buyers in the condo and townhome sector.”
…
We really need to shutdown FHA and the GSEs, end this nonsense.
FWIW, a lot of what is done in Silly Valley is your basic meat and potatoes tech. It doesn’t get the news coverage that more glamorous corporations like Facebook or Google receive. But those other companies design chips, update operating systems, release new versions of database, ERP, and all sorts of software. Companies like Oracle make bank selling stuff that most hip Smartphone users have never heard of (like Solaris, Sparc servers, database software, ZFS Storage Systems, etc.)
The virtuous cycle of technical innovation is far from dead. Mobile is the new frontier, what the web was through the 90’s and early 2000’s tech boom. The ubiquitous nature of the mobile phone means the global audience is far larger than that of the web. It also means the audience is available almost constantly… as even when the laptop is powered down or we’re away from the desktop, our mobile or tablet is with us.
For what it’s worth, the same “infrastructure” that drove the web is driving the mobile space… as In Colorado said, microchips, databases, server OS’s, storage systems all continue to be in high demand. Or do people think that all that storage that Dropbox and Gmail provides just magically appears. Or that Facebook “likes” and Twitter “tweets” and Farmville virtual tractors don’t represent bits and bytes somewhere on someone’s servers?
Those are all fast becoming commodities.
Much like your alternator on you car.
Alternators a commodity, you say?
You mean you don’t sweat bullets over < $100 alternators for Hondas?
No, but I really don’t have a clue what company built the alternator in my car.
Thanks, my point exactly.
Only a schmoe would whine over the cost of an OEM part for a Honda. I don’t want to get into what people consider cheap (it obviously depends how much money you have) but it was pretty LOL-able to hear some moron talk about his unreliable VW and then tell me that replacement parts on Hondas are expensive. I had a few snickers about that to myself this past weekend.
Yes and no. Linux boxes are a commodity. Sparc servers running Solaris are not, because they can do things Linux servers cannot, and Oracle is making a fortune selling them.
That’s great because SUN lost money selling them.
Because Sun Management was incompetent. Ellison is making money hand over fist with Solaris and Sparc.
A real “Galt’s Gulch” will dwarf Silicon Valley. Where? When? Dunno. Jerry Brown Rot guarantees the dying gasp of entrepreneurship in Taxifornia.
Asia Times Online - Climate change won’t wait for Obama:
“Change usually happens very slowly, even once all the serious people have decided there’s a problem. That’s because, in a country as big as the United States, public opinion moves in slow currents. Since change by definition requires going up against powerful established interests, it can take decades for those currents to erode the foundations of our special-interest fortresses.
And that’s always been the difficulty with climate change - the greatest problem we’ve ever faced. It’s not a fight, like education reform or abortion or gay marriage, between conflicting groups with conflicting opinions. It couldn’t be more different at a fundamental level.
We’re talking about a fight between human beings and physics. And physics is entirely uninterested in human timetables. Physics couldn’t care less if precipitous action raises gas prices, or damages the coal industry in swing states. It could care less whether putting a price on carbon slowed the pace of development in China, or made agribusiness less profitable.
Physics doesn’t understand that rapid action on climate change threatens the most lucrative business on Earth, the fossil fuel industry. It’s implacable. It takes the carbon dioxide we produce and translates it into heat, which means into melting ice and rising oceans and gathering storms. And unlike other problems, the less you do, the worse it gets. Do nothing and you soon have a nightmare on your hands.
We could postpone healthcare reform a decade, and the cost would be terrible - all the suffering not responded to over those 10 years. But when we returned to it, the problem would be about the same size. With climate change, unless we act fairly soon in response to the timetable set by physics, there’s not much reason to act at all.
Unless you understand these distinctions you don’t understand climate change - and it’s not at all clear that President Barack Obama understands them.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/OA09Dj02.html
And to solve it we need even BIGGER and BIGGER government regulating the last remaining vestiges of America’s economy to oblivion.
China, India, etc. will be exempt from all such silliness.
Which helps substantiate my claim that “Collectivist” China is going to be higher in ranking than the U.S. in the Heritage Foundations index of free economies.
Rio and Oxide and Alpha Slob are happy the U.S. is going further into serfdom.
Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of commie rag The Nation:
“2012 was the hottest year on record. Artic sea ice is melting. Sea levels are rising faster than projected. And extreme weather events — droughts, storms, heat waves — are increasing in number and intensity, disproportionately harming the world’s most vulnerable population.
But forget trying to pass climate-change legislation before the next storm. Republicans in Congress can barely bring themselves to help out the victims of the last storm.”
http://m.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-a-climate-change-apocalypse/2013/01/07/f440d704-58e4-11e2-9fa9-5fbdc9530eb9_story.html
“2012 was the hottest year on record
No, not on a global basis not even as warm as 1998. Talk about cherry picking data, they will use the continental U.S. to make that claim. Is Alaska not part of the U.S.? But if you use Alaska which was much cooler than usual, it is very unremarkable year. Sorry AGW, means you have GW and we are not seeing it.
Quirky,
Think really, really hard about what happens when arctic ice melts, okay? It cools the water, right? Which cools the air around it, right? Which results in temporarily cooler temperatures in the immediate surroundings, right?
It’s a bit more complicated than that; there are cyclic fluctuations correlated with thermohaline inversion from all that melting ice. Real scientists have a term for this, it’s called The Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Alaska is currently in a cooling phase irrespective of climactic changes overall. Here’s a pretty graph to help you grasp the concept: http://jisao.washington.edu/pdo/
You’re looking for answers in the back of the closet when the truth is literally in the bright sunshine all around you. Free your mind, dude! You’re on the Loosing side of the science, if not history.
I am absolutely unable to find the source, but I read a study a few months ago that showed global warming as one of the most positive influences that could possibly happen to better humanity. Supposedly the vast swaths of land in high latitude Russia and Canada suddenly become much more hospitable to life, and increased global and sea temperatures cause an increase in rainfall, giving the world more fresh water and irrigation to more places for growing food.
Apparently larger storms push deeper into the deserts, reclaiming wasteland in some kind of virtuous cycle…
It turns out the leading cause of death worldwide is due to lack of clean freshwater…
Hansen, I first talked about the PDO on this board many years ago. It is the primary reason we warmed from the late 1970’s until 2000 and now is the reason we have not warmed since 1998. My mind is very free and five years ahead of yours.
until about 2000
Here is just one example from the past:
Comment by albuquerquedan
2011-03-04 16:38:17
This belongs up above but it just want post there. PDO is much more responsible for the period of global warming than PDO.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/29/don-easterbrooks-agu-paper-on-potential-global-cooling/
” Supposedly the vast swaths of land in high latitude Russia and Canada suddenly become much more hospitable to life, and increased global and sea temperatures cause an increase in rainfall,”
Very possible, as well as opening up the Northwest Passage for much cheaper shipping. But as for agriculture, climate change includes more weather exremes (stronger tornados, hurricanes, even freezes) that crops really don’t like. Just more volatile in general. I don’t doubt though, that certain areas could become more habitable and farmable.
“I am absolutely unable to find the source, but I read a study a few months ago that showed global warming as one of the most positive influences that could possibly happen to better humanity.”
Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn’t Worry about Global Warming [Paperback]
Thomas Gale Moore (Author)
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“No, not on a global basis not even as warm as 1998.”
From today’s Washington Post article on the report:
“The mainland United States is a mere 2 percent of the Earth’s surface, so it doesn’t always line up with global warming trends. Note that 2012 is “only” expected to be the eighth-hottest year on record globally, although that won’t be official until next week.”
Just you vs NOAA, eh, Dan?
“Last year was the hottest on record for the contiguous United States, shattering the previous mark set in 1998 by a wide margin, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday.
The average temperature was 55.3 degrees, 1 degree above the previous record and 3.2 degrees more than the 20th-century average.”
Yet no one can explain how you can put more and more co2 in the air for over 15 years without any global warming, if co2 was the primary reason for global warming.
searching Drudge Report talking point database…
Environmentalism is for sissies.
Global warming is a hoax Al Gore made up to sell more movie tickets.
Toyota Prius is for socialist and homosexual.
“Real American” rugged individualists drive F-350 and make loud vroom-vroomy noise with plastic testicles on trailer hitch and magnetic ribbons.
Al Gore didn’t make anything up, he just saw it as a great opportunity to make money off the easily duped.
Yet no one can explain how you can put more and more co2 in the air for over 15 years without any global warming, if co2 was the primary reason for global warming.
I can splain it lucy. for 30 years now we have been greening the planet with the increase of CO2 plus a world wide change from burning firewood. The result is a demonstrably greener planet and excess CO2 being consumed by more vegetation. A greener planet stays a bit cooler.
Sorry the amount of co2 has increased in atmosphere so it is not being fully absorbed, the ppm have been steadly increasing.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
I wasn’t saying that it has been fully absorbed.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-greening-of-the-planet.aspx
But a lot has not been absorbed without any warming. It also leads to another point, the rebound from global cooling in the mini-ice age has been very beneficial as has the increased C02. Ice ages are much harder on man and animals and if we just happen to avoid one by man-made emissions all the better.
Speaking of ice ages: http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/forget-global-warming-alaska-headed-ice-age
Now, I am sure that the AGW crowd said the closer were to the poles the more you could see the warming. Now, we are seeing just the opposite and right on my schedule.
You were=were.
It also shows why the cherry pickers were ignoring Alaska and concentrating on the lower 48 states. Just look at the 420,000 year climate history and you will see that the climate is acting very normal. Climate change means nothing the climate changes all the time. The AGW crowd promised rising temperatures with rising co2. It is not happening.
U.N. Agency Says 2012 Ranks Among Hottest Years
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE
Published: November 28, 2012
NYTimes
GENEVA — This year has ranked among the nine warmest since records began more than 160 years ago, continuing a trend for the planet that is increasing the dangers of extreme weather events, according to United Nations meteorologists.
Ninth warmest is not as warm as 1998. I said a month ago that is how they would try to spin the failure to exceed 1998 once again, that it was within the top ten.
Yes, we are on a temperature mesa but the new big move is down not up. BTW, we are still 1-3 degrees cooler than the typical peak in an interglacial period. For the last few hundred years we have been recovering from a mini ice age so yesthe temperature has increased. Stop cherry picking and look at the record over 420,000 years that I have provided numerous times.
Shut yer commie talk mouth.
Drudge had links every day last summer of record low temps being set.
And who gives a sh*t what the UN says? They’re all a bunch of one-worlders who are gonna use their lackeys Bloomberg and Obama to take all our guns away.
Just find someone from the AGW crowd that predicted that we would not be any warmer now than 1998. For those that want to learn instead of making snarky remarks check out Climate4you.com and look at the Earth’s temperature history for the last 420,000 years.
“Just find someone from the AGW crowd that predicted that we would not be any warmer now than 1998.”
Wasn’t 1998 a record year? If you’re using it as a marker, it may be a meaningless one if it was an extreme outlier. And I don’t think climate scientists assume that it’s going to get warmer every year, they just predict a long term trend. And long-term is not 1998-2012.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/bad_astronomy/2012/12/10/climatedenierspapers.jpg/_jcr_content/renditions/original&imgrefurl=http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2012/12/11/climate_change_denial_why_don_t_they_publish_scientific_papers.html&h=525&w=553&sz=34&tbnid=nWXqay3guqThSM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=95&zoom=1&usg=__bApMSdSiz2gNljuDT84E3_x4tME=&docid=hhFV01WyuFw_LM&sa=X&ei=cj7sUMLpDs6o0AHOi4GwDw&ved=0CEgQ9QEwAg&dur=8820
(Longest link ever?)
Oh, that’s a pie chart you’ll be looking at.
Those PhD (piled high & deep, LOLZ) peer reviews are just one big liberal circle jerk fest. How about some data on the political affiliation of those sissy scientists? Bet the ones from USA are 99.999% Democrat party. And the European envirohomos are all a bunch of green/socialist/marxist third party freaks.
The way they define global warming, I would be considered a believer since I believe that 1/7 of the warming is manmade. However, if you define being a sceptic as believing that man is the minor contributor, I personally have seen far more studies doubting AGW than they are claiming. You cannot warm 5-7 degrees C in a hundred years until you start warming again. I just want to see a non-el nino year .1c above 1998. Your crowd is getting pretty desperate since there is no sign that is going to happen.
BTW since it is cherry picking day from Bloomberg try convincing the Chinese now about global warming:
The coldest winter in 28 years in China, the world’s largest wheat producer, may hamper the developing winter crop, according the official China National Grain and Oils Information Center.
Southern China will be hit by a new cold front this week, with temperatures dropping to as low as minus 5 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) on Jan. 11 and 12, the China Meteorological Administration said in a statement today. Guizhou and Hunan provinces may experience snowstorms, it said.
Widespread snowfall and lower temperatures since Jan. 2 have affected crops in southern growing regions and along the Huai River, CNGOIC said in an e-mailed report, without giving an estimate on crop damage. Winter wheat usually accounts for about 90 percent of the country’s output, according to Ma Wenfeng, a grains analyst at Beijing Orient Agribusiness Consultant Ltd.
“So far the general growing condition in the winter-wheat areas remains good and snowfalls are usually beneficial for wheat,” Masaid by phone today. “But a drought coupled with low temperatures will hamper growth.”
Two people died and 770,000 people have been affected by record-low temperatures and snow in Inner Mongolia in northern China, Xinhua said yesterday, citing the local government. More than 260,000 people are in need of emergency aid and about 180,000 head of livestock have died, according to the report
The way they define global warming, I would be considered a believer since I believe that 1/7 of the warming is manmade.
Slate is peer reviewed? Saying something does not make it so. I am using the hard data and there has been no warming in over 15 years and you just cannot get around that fact.
Of course some have:
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?lite
All I know is that it’s definitely warmer in Montana than 30 years ago.
Does not answer the question of natural or manmade. Even James Lovelock admits he was wrong from an April 2012 MSNBC story:
It will also reflect his new opinion that global warming has not occurred as he had expected.
“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.
“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.
“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising — carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.
He pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future.
Slate is peer reviewed?
Of course not, it was just an article with a link to a study.
But you knew that, you’re just trying to blow smoke to disguise the weakness of your position.
Texas has been in a drought for three years now.
BTW since it is cherry picking day from Bloomberg try convincing the Chinese now about global warming
Do you really think for a moment, that the ChiComs, who have been more than happy to turn their nation into an apocalyptic environmental nightmare to make a buck, will give a rat’s tail about climate change?
Scientists from the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology said their survey of mainland China and South China Sea reefs showed alarming degradation.
“We found that coral abundance has declined by at least 80 percent over the past 30 years on coastal fringing reefs along the Chinese mainland and adjoining Hainan Island.”
http://news.discovery.com/earth/china-boom-savages-coral-reefs-121228.html
What seems to be destroying China’s ecosystem is unbridled capitalism, not communism. Modern day capitalism needs to adopt a conscience. What’s the downside?
Does not answer the question of natural or manmade.
Of course not. I just wish we’d go back to those months below zero again. Keeps out the riffraff.
We say the same thing in Vermont. I do not think you have long to wait. I happen to be in the mountains of New Mexico today and just dodged, with a car, an elk with a great rack. It leaped over a barbed wire fence in front of my car. But as I have always believed a bad day in the field beats a good day in the office.
” I just want to see a non-el nino year .1c above 1998. ”
Why on earth (pun intended) would you demand that the new record be set in a non-el nino year? 1998 was an extremely strong el nino year. Extremely. You are demanding to see temps in excess of an extreme el nino year in a year entirely without an el nino? Nonsensical from a scientific perspective. What was the impact on the measured temps from the 1998 el nino. Subtract that from the 1998 measurements. If you exceed THAT number in a non-el nino year, then you have warming based off that one year that (despite it being a statistical outlier because of the very strong el nino) is your preferred baseline.
If you are claiming that global warming is primarily man-made and will lead to a 5-7 C increase within one hyndred years it should be very easy to do. The temperature increase has to be significant and not just natural variation.
Besides as I stated earlier we are still 1-3 degrees C below the normal interglacial warming periods so natural cycles should get you well past that number even without any man-made contribution.
“…large swaths of European and Asian arctic tundra are quickly turning into forests. …what’s worse is that the trend could significantly accelerate global warming should it spread across the entire tundra…scientists fear that the potential impact of forestation could increase Arctic warming by another 1-2 degrees Celsius by the late 21st Century. It’s believed that the change from shrubs to forests will alter the Earth’s albedo effect….”
http://io9.com/forestation/
(Don’t forget that one of the by-products of photosynthesis is heat.)
(Don’t forget that one of the by-products of photosynthesis is heat.)
Less heat than contained in the sunlight that was absorbed by the plant.
Otherwise, you would have a perpetual-motion machine. The law of conservation of energy will not be denied…
The biosphere of the last 20,000 years was pretty stable but it’s not stable anymore and there are 7 billion people wanting to live at the American/European standard of living that will only add to the instability. I think the oceans have been soaking up a lot of the emissions, not just CO2 but a whole range of airborne gases. Global average temperature is maybe a third order derivative of what is happening. I think it is a mistake to focus on temperatures. CO2 has a very long half life in the atmosphere, at least 100+ years. Humans are still adding more at a 2-3% compounding rate.
The ppm in the atomosphere has been increasing and we have not seen any resulting temperature increases. Sorry in 1998, people like you were saying that the year “proved” global warming. If you can’t point to a temperature increase you have nothing, your computer models are wrong and it is time the AGW crowd admit they were wrong.
“Global Warming” is so passe. Due to feedback (both positive and negative) global climate change is the correct terminology. I predict as time passes you and your demographic will become increasingly irrelevant.
Wait. So in response to a statement about 1998 having the highest recorded average, you say he is being politically incorrect and that this data and those who talk about it are irrelevant?
What am I missing here?
You are missing the point that global atmospheric temperature is only one of dozens of proxies that scientists are using to define global climate change. And being in a shrinking demographic (older white people) has much to do with their entrenched ideology which rejects almost anything that has uses the words ‘change’, ‘progress’ or social responsibility.
Here is a test, go find a trade magazine, research paper or periodical that covers agriculture where a rancher, farmer or fisherman claims that global climate change is a hoax.
For you, Dan, Nick and 2banana it seems they will never accept the idea that 7 billion people could decimate the biosphere and I think it will.
You ignore the fact that it was older white people that came up with the theory. Saw an article the other day about how this generation has such a high opinion of themselves despite the objective data showing that they are the least prepared generation
Like Christie and Bloomberg, Dan won’t shift his thinking until Albuquerque experiences a super storm or its equivalent.
No Albuquerquedan will not shift his position until there is hard date showing that the globe has warmed .1C above 1998 not in an El Nino year within the next twenty years. Since all the alarmists are calling for .5C per decade that should have happened long ago but it has not. Super storms happen all the time when you are at the peak of the 30 year cooling and warming cycles and near the top of the interglacial warming. We are heading into what should be a cooling period so if significant clearly none natural (El Nino, sunspot peak) warming occurred it would change my mind. Sorry I believe in evidence not GW as a religion.
New Ice age? The link is coming soon:
That’s a “large value for a decade,” the Alaska Climate Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks said in “The First Decade of the New Century: A Cooling Trend for Most of Alaska.”
The cooling is widespread — holding true for 19 of the 20 National Weather Service stations sprinkled from one corner of Alaska to the other, the paper notes. It’s most significant in Western Alaska, where King Salmon on the Alaska Peninsula saw temperatures drop most sharply, a significant 4.5 degrees for the decade, the report says.
The new nippiness began with a vengeance in 2005, after more than a century that saw temperatures generally veer warmer in Alaska, the report says. With lots of ice to lose, the state had heated up about twice as fast as the rest of the planet, in line with rising global greenhouse gas emissions, note the Alaska Climate Center researchers, Gerd Wendler, L. Chen and Blake Moore. After a “sudden temperature increase” in Alaska starting in 1977, the warmest decade on record occurred in the 1980s, followed by another jump in the 1990s, they note. The third warmest decade was the 1920s, by the way.
1977 to 2005 warming just about 30 years and then cooling, the third warmest decade in the 1920’s of course for the continental U.S. it was the 1930’s which is the record we are just going to break by a few hundreds of a point C probably. If the natural pattern holds there appears to be ten year lag time so we should see notice the cooling around 2015 in the lower 48, seems about right.
The third warmest decade was the 1920s, by the way.
Perhaps it’s actually the Federal Reserve that creates GW rather than CO2?
Dan, If I take your temperature and it reads 98.6 (+/- 1 degree) can I assume you are in good health? I’m going to ignore your weight, blood pressure, white blood cell count, blood in your stools and all other signs of your general health. I can see where the environmentalist got it wrong with the over emphasis on global temperature but some saw it as a way to reign in the fossil fuel industry who have a history of creating the worlds worst environmental disasters.
That appears to be a party admission that GW is just an excuse for other policies. I believe that we should impose a tax on Chinese goods for the pollution they send to the West Coast including the mercury from their coal plants. However, I do not support a carbon tax to support the U.N. based on a fiction. I will not support that you lie to your citizens to get policies you want. Make your case on real pollution and don’t confuse a beneficial gas with pollution.
I was a little unclear, up to this year the 1930’s were the warmest period in the lower 48. I think a period in the 1950’s had similar heat and drought. But since we are talking about temperatures within a few tenths or even hundreds of degree C we are splitting hairs anyway.The key is the PDO moves in about a thirty year cycle and moves the globe with it. The Atlantic follows its own cycle and is presently in a warm phase which melts the floating ice. Greenland has volcanic activity melting its ice.
Arguing with an Aspie is like arguing with a broken record. Nothing can alter the skip until you physically pick up the arm, flick off the little dust ball, and reset the needle into the groove. Not facts, not logic, and certainly not critical analysis will deter the ceaseless tracking of the same excerpt over and over again…again…again…again…again…
Meanwhile the record spins ’til the quirk becomes its reality.
“…Don’t leave your records in the su-u-un, they’ll warp and they won’t be good for anyone….”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3EPib5LWFo
Sorry, I am presenting facts you are just engaging in personal attacks. You know I think I have figured why you hate Bush II so much. You are so much like him. He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple and you were born on second base and think you hit a double.
figured out
If global warming is, indeed, a reality (especially on the Right Coast of the US, won’t the use of heating oil and other fossil fuels decline?
End result of lessened global warming? Economics 101. A natural tendency toward equilibrium.
won’t the use of heating oil and other fossil fuels decline?
Not if the Chindians decide they like heat, ac, cars,and electric appliances too.
You can present isolated facts until you’re blue in the face, but drawing accurate conclusions from them requires higher academic rigor than you’ve demonstrated thus far. (See: fallacy of incomplete evidence.) If you had a credible thesis, no, let me amend that, if you had an even VAGUELY credible thesis, you would be able to defend it in more accredited arenas than an internet housing blog. But you cannot; you’d be hooted out of the lecture hall faster than Dinesh d’Souza at a Richard Dawkins debate.
Punditry is not science any more than being in charge of the “outflow” valve at a sanitation facility qualifies one as a climatologist. You’re treading perilously close to charlatanry here, which is a shame, because it colors what thoughtful observations you DO have to share — on the housing market.
Global Warming is the manufactured excuse the Liberals have for turning us into their serfs.
My understanding is that CO2 is actually a pretty weak greenhouse gas. Much stronger is methane…one of the concerns is that as the permafrost melts (even with relatively minor warming) it will release a lot of methane into the atmosphere…accelerating any warming.
Other feedback loops, including capacity for the oceans to absorb excess CO2/vegetative growth with higher CO2 contents, etc. to my understanding are generally less well understood. In other words, we are still trying to figure out how the earth deals with higher concentrations of CO2.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OceanCarbon/
All this reminds me of a friend’s brother who did a presentation, the subject of which was how the scientific community would have fewer “conclusions” about global warming if they followed the scientific method with the same rigor as other areas of science…the argument against using the same rigor is that 1) it is nearly impossible to test theories in the lab, since the earth is such a large complex system, and 2) we really can’t afford to be wrong…
Housing Demand is at 1997 levels and falling.
How come prices and high-end sales are going up, then?
Prices are falling despite the 15% increase in purchase power as a result of interest rates falling 30% over the past year.
What makes you think those low rates aren’t here to stay, as BB often suggests they may be?
Massive direct stimulus doesn’t appear to be helping does it?
All the more reason to keep rates low forever…
Yes…. A good analogy would be, “if it’s not broke, fix it until you break it.”
How come prices and high-end sales are going up, then?
Feeding the trolls with facts just makes them yap louder.
Source, please?
Greenacres votes to support reforms for police, firefighter pensions
Posted: 8:00 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013
By Willie Howard
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
GREENACRES —
The city council Monday night approved a resolution supporting pension reform in Tallahassee, citing a need to reduce the cost of police and firefighter pensions that have escalated in Greenacres in recent years.
“Police and firefighter pension mandates imposed on municipalities by lawmakers have driven taxpayer costs up, making the current taxpayer-funded pension structure unstable, unsustainable and unreliable for future police officers and firefighters,” City Manager Wadie Atallah wrote in a memo to the council.
The city expects to pay $1.4 million to fund police and firefighter pensions this year — nearly triple the amount the city spent to fund the same pensions five years ago.
Takes off sunglasses dramatically.
“I guess Greenacres…is no longer the place to be”
YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
“I guess Greenacres…is no longer the place to be”
Posted: 3:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013
Greenacres painter accused of stealing $50,000 earrings from Palm Beach home
By Toni-Ann Miller
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
A Greenacres man is facing theft charges after police say he took a pair of earrings worth $50,000 from a bathroom drawer in a Palm Beach house he was supposed to paint and pawned it.
Joseph Eastwood, 50, was arrested by Palm Beach Police Monday morning. He faces fraud and larceny charges.
Police were led to Eastwood’s trail after a Palm Beach woman reported Dec. 11 that someone had stolen her earrings, worth $50,000. She said she had worn them a day or two earlier and had put them in a drawer near the sink in her bathroom, the police report says.
On Dec. 31, police found that Eastwood sold a set of earrings to a pawn shop in suburban Lake Worth on Dec. 11. He received $3,500 in exchange for the jewelry after he provided his driver’s license as proof of identification.
The owner of the pawn shop was able to identify the earrings from the picture the woman drew for police. He provided a picture on Jan. 2, which the woman identified as her earrings.
Eastwood was booked into the Palm Beach County Jail, but he was released Monday evening on $10,000 bond.
I’d like to continue a discussion from yesterday about how much public employees make in different parts of the country.
In response to my post yesterday about the big increases in pension withholdings for faculty of colleges in Ohio, Diogenes wrote
” PUBLIC “employees” should not have a union, at all. They work for us and should not be allowed to unionize to blackmail us with their demands. How’s that for Freedom of the rest of us.
As for your “pensions”, boo-hoo. The real world doesn’t have pensions anymore and the model is a failure.
Teachers, and especially University staff are very well compensated, not including benefits. ”
While I agree that public employees shouldn’t have a union, the college professors in Ohio basically do not. (for those campuses that do, the unios are so weak as to be useless).
University faculty in Ohio in non-technical fields often start well under $50k/yr, and go up slowly from there. I know a professor with 20 years experience who makes $65k/yr plus a little bit for extra for teaching summers. My best friend is a county sheriff’s deputy with 21 years experience. He makes about $65k plus overtime. Yes, both of these public employees had inexpensive health care - until recently. That’s all changing now. In fact, the University will no longer cover a working spouse on a family health plan - the couple must both carry health insurance.
I don’t think $65k/yr for experienced public employees is all that wonderful a salary, especially when the healthcare is rapidly moving to align with private sector.
(note - we had friends joined community colleges in CA and had 50% salary increases with a reduced work load, so maybe Ohio just has crappy salaries.)
Are Ohio compensation scales for public employees in line with other states?
We were a graduate research assistant for 15 months in grad school (which is a term position with tuition reimbursement and a miniscule stipend, not relevant to the question). The tenured faculty in the business college are paid very well. The department admin where we were a GA has been in that position for over 10 years, with 10 years of other admin experience in the private sector before that. She gets 25 days of PTO, 10 holidays, 75% employer paid health insurance, is enrolled in the Public Employees Retirement System, and is paid a whopping $38,000 a year. This is a public state university in northern Ohio.
My brother helped organize the graduate assistant union at Michigan State back in the day. They were public employees of the state of Michigan, teaching a lot of lower level undergraduate classes. Their health insurance was so bad that one of his friends was denied coverage for an ambulance ride to the hospital when she had a compound fracture of the femur. Yes, her thigh bone was snapped in half and at least one end was poking out the skin and into the air, and the insurance company decided that she wasn’t injured enough to need help to get to the hospital.
That is the sort of incident that inspires public employees to unionize. How odd that they consider it reasonable that they should be able to get together to negotiate for better working conditions than insurance that thinks you can drive a car to the emergency room with part of your leg sticking out through your thigh.
That is the sort of incident that inspires
public employeesworkers to unionize.Or maybe we should all just shut up and be grateful to have a job at all.
Thank you, Mr. Job Creator Man, may I have another?
Well corrected. Thank you.
The funny thing was, all the wanted was the chance to BUY into the regular employee policy (not the student one). The overall impact of their participation was going to lower the average premium because the grad assistants were, as a group, young and pretty healthy compared to the other employees in the risk pool. And the U of Michigan grad assistants already had it. The state just refused to let the Michigan State ones do it until they formed a union and got to collectively bargain for their benefits.
While I’m from Ohio, and living back here now, I spent time in Syracuse, NY, where I attended grad school myself. One business prof, who was tenored track and had been there about 5 years, indicated he earned a bit under $100k/yr, but that the real money was in the consulting he did.
From my contact at Miami Univeristy (Ohio), it seems tenored track profs in the social sciences (history, english) start in the mid $40ks at the branch campuses, a little more at main campus. Salaries have been pretty much frozen at both main and branch campuses for the last couple of years.
These must not be the highly paid public employees many of you talk about.
The only public employee retirees I see who are fairly well off are those in their late 70s, who bought houses in the ’60s and rode the inflation wave of the ’70s to disposable income nurvana and asaved/invested that money. But that applies to most of the private-sector retirees around here as well.
Maybe I need to move to another state to see what many of you are talking about.
My wife works at the local public library. No pension, just a 403(b) plan.
“While I agree that public employees shouldn’t have a union,…”
Does Diogenes make the laws now?
If he did, restoring the Fugitive Slave Act would be at the top of his legislative priorities
I thought Obama was going to bring it back and apply it to taxpayers fleeing California?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfGLB8LO1aM
like forcing someone to join a untion against their will?
That practice *should* be illegal…
LOLZ!!!
My assistant walked in right after I read this. I was laughing out loud at the time. It was mortifying, as I’m in the middle of triple checking a GAO filing and was worried the partner on the matter was dropping by (he usually emails or calls, since he is 4 floors above me).
Regardless, this was the best comment I’ve seen in a while!
We came for the bubble discussion, we stayed for the LOLZ.
LOL, goonie.
I think covering a spouse after you retire should come out of your pension check and not paid for by the city.
After all it is retirement…you are not working….
Yes, both of these public employees had inexpensive health care - until recently. That’s all changing now. In fact, the University will no longer cover a working spouse on a family health plan - the couple must both carry health insurance.
I’m referring to employees who are still working. It’s something new they instituted a couple of years ago. If they hire a fresh PhD (or if a faculty member has been working there for 10 years) and the person has a working spouse, the spouse is excluded on the family coverage. Family coverage would only cover the employee and any children, but not a working spouse.
Now if the working spouse looses his/her job, retires, etc, then the spouse is covered on the family plan for no additional cost.
Just another cost cutting activity.
Sounds like a shortage in Ph.d’s…we need to bring in more from overseas.
The folks who write this stuff must know better than me that the U.S. economy is not on the same trajectory Japan’s was twenty years ago.
Why capital appreciation bonds aren’t as bad as they sound
Matthew DeBord | December 17th, 2012, 4:17pm
School Bonds - 13
Maya Sugarman/KPCC
A playground for kindergarten students under construction. It’s being build in part with capital appreciation bonds.
Capital Appreciation Bonds. CABs for short. They’re getting a very, very bad name and have invited some very, very bad press over the past few months. My KPCC colleague Vanessa Romo is the latest reporter to take a dive into these financial instruments, which school districts in California and other states have been using to borrow money.
Why the bad name? In exchange for making no payments on principal or interest for, in some cases, decades, school districts trying to build facilities borrow tens of millions today and can end up paying six times that when the bill comes due, well into the future, after the interest has “accreted,” in the lingo of finance.
The cost of present-day, voter-approved borrowing is passed on to a completely different generation of taxpaying voters.
School districts do this when property taxes aren’t adequate to fund projects and when raising taxes is politically unpalatable.
This practice — California’s State Treasurer Bill Lockyer described it to KPCC’s Romo as ” imprudent, unreasonable and irresponsible” — has drawn the ire of numerous financial observers.
The Financial Times’ Gillian Tett calls CABs “a dangerous cocktail of innovation and debt.”
“[A] costly and risky form of financing that has saddled [school districts] with staggering debt,” said the L.A. Times.
“[P]erfectly exemplifies the parasitic, ponzi and entirely unsustainably criminal carcass of an economy,” said the Liberty Blitzkrieg blog.
“Get thee behind me, CABs!” you might hear everyone in California shouting at this point.
But as with many things, the rage that the dramatic headlines provokes is only responding…well, to the headlines. Paying $6 for every $1 borrowed to build classrooms and playgrounds sounds appalling. But as Romo reported, CABs are often part of an overall financing package with aggregate terms that are far less dramatic.
And then there’s the argument that CABs are justified, given the length of time that the assets they’ll help pay to build will be around for many, many years.
Shawn O’Leary, an analyst at Nuveen Asset Management, issued a breakdown of CABs back in August that focused on the role that “intergenerational equity” plays in choosing this type of debt:
O’Leary deconstructs this in terms of the Poway Unified School District in San Diego; it issued $105 million in CABs that will cost the district $981.5 million at maturity in 2051. He argues that if Poway residents were to pay off the 2051 bill today, the tab would represent only 0.9 percent of the district’s median income (Poway is affluent, and O’Leary does note that CABs can make sense for high-income areas).
That’s a payoff today. One assumes that Poway median incomes will be substantially higher in 40 years.
Then there’s inflation. Even with those big payoffs in the distant future, inflation will do its inevitable work, reducing the cost of the debt over time. Even at a $1-to-$6 ratio, that $6 is calculated based on 2012 dollars, not 2051 dollars.
…
$105 million to $1 billion. Let me guess, Goldman Sachs brokered that deal, right?
Still hunting for the information on who is really behind the deal.
I’m guessing that it will turn out, like subprime lending did, to be Megabank, Inc.
Fiscal cliff deal includes at least $67.9 billion for special interests
By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News
• Tax breaks for Hollywood producers who shoot their movies and TV shows in the U.S., at a cost of about $430 million through 2014.
• A program that sends most federal taxes collected on rum produced in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands back to those territories to subsidize domestic production. Bar tab: $222 million over two years.
• A tax break worth about $15 million a year for asparagus growers hit hard by cheap asparagus imported from Peru.
• $4 million in tax breaks over the next two years for people who buy “2- or 3-wheeled plug-in electric vehicles” — in other words, electric scooters, Segways and the like.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16334798-fiscal-cliff-deal-includes-at-least-679-billion-for-special-interests?lite - 67k -
The One delivering “gifts” to his special interest supporters like Santa.
$4 million in tax breaks over the next two years for people who buy “2- or 3-wheeled plug-in electric vehicles” — in other words, electric scooters, Segways and the like.
Wah-wah-waaaah! I want a tax break for buying a new bicycle!
And I’ll take one of those American-made bicycles that runs on Arizona Slim’s caloric output, TYVM.
Funny how politicos on both sides of the aisle were OK with all this pork.
Of course, even the most aggressive deficit hawks are beholden to special interests.
NASCAR gets nice accelerated depreciation as well…I’m afraid this pork is both Red and Blue…
Business
1/07/2013 @ 12:21PM
How The New Higher Tax Rates Will Affect Luxury Housing
The Bel Air mansion Elon Musk purchased for $17 million in the final days of 2012 in a discounted deal reportedly agreed to by the seller to avoid 2013 tax hikes. (Photo Credit: John Schoenfeld)
Luxury real estate surged in 2012. Nationally, the number of home sales priced at $1 million or more hit a four-year high in the first nine months of 2012, according to DataQuick MDA, and jumbo mortgages are up about 23%, according to the Wall Street Journal. Billionaires in particular plunked down record amounts for real estate.
Now taxes are rising for the wealthy Americans who could afford to buy and sell those million-dollar-plus homes. Under the new fiscal cliff deal, households earning upwards of $450,000 (or individuals earning $400,000) will pay a higher 39.6% rate (up from 35%) on income tax and a 20% capital gains tax (up from 15%). That’s in addition to a higher payroll tax and new taxes affiliated with ObamaCare including a 3.8% net investment income tax. With more money owed to Uncle Sam, how will this affect luxury housing?
For starters, it could mean less big-ticket sales in the short term. “Sales were at elevated levels at the end of the year because of tax avoidance behavior, plus falling inventory,” says Jonathan Miller, chief executive of Miller Samuel, a New York-based real estate appraisal firm. “Some of this excess year-end activity is essentially poaching from the first quarter.”
This may be particularly true of Manhattan, where sellers scrambled to offload homes before January 1, 2013, when tax cuts were set to expire with the looming fiscal cliff. In a fourth quarter market report compiled with real estate brokerage Douglas Elliman, Miller found that the number of sales in the final three months of 2012 jumped 29% compared with a year earlier to a record 2,598 sales. A traditionally slow time for housing, the unseasonal buying frenzy represented the highest number of fourth quarter Manhattan sales in at least 25 years. But that pace was artificially elevated, pulling activity forward from the early months of 2013. In other words, the first quarter may clock atypically sluggish sales numbers.
The same dynamic is playing out in Greenwich, Conn., where the large Wall Street demographic has earned it the nickname ‘hedge fund capital of the world’. Sales activity in December 2012 was a staggering 89% higher than December 2011. “We had twice as many houses sell in 2012 than in 2011 because lots of people were looking to avoid the fiscal cliff,” echoes Mark Pruner, a broker with Prudential Connecticut Realty in Greenwich. “I expect we are actually going to see a bust in January because of it.”
Many of America’s priciest enclaves experienced sale surges in the final two quarters of 2012. Luxury home sellers threw in incentives to get deals done in many of America’s most expensive ZIP codes from Silicon Valley to South Florida to the Hamptons in New York. Those incentives most commonly materialized as price discounts. Such was the case for Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who purchased a Los Angeles mansion overlooking the ritzy Bel-Air Country Club in the final week of 2012. Originally listed for $27 million in 2008, the estate’s seller reportedly agreed to a $17 million sale price on the condition that Musk, who also founded SpaceX, close on it in 2012.
…
BelAir prices fell a whopping 40% even during the tax credit fiasco. And they’re still falling.
Its a long way down for sellers pricing in excess of $200k. A very long way down.
“Such was the case for Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who purchased a Los Angeles mansion overlooking the ritzy Bel-Air Country Club in the final week of 2012. Originally listed for $27 million in 2008, the estate’s seller reportedly agreed to a $17 million sale price on the condition that Musk, who also founded SpaceX, close on it in 2012.”
I like this guy’s style. Saved himself $10MM by closing quickly.
As an aside, I would refer to him as a PayPal billionaire, not a Tesla billionaire. Although Teslas are awesome and I want one
Looks like the owner wanted to make sure he closed in 2012 so that he wouldn’t be levied tax on the debt forgiven in the short sale. That tax break was set to expire with the fiscal cliff. The owner was probably kicking himself when the fiscal cliff deal renewed the tax break.
Flipping channels last night during Bama`s beat down of ND and I stopped on the 80s movie Valley Girl trying to figure out if I was looking at a young Nicolas Cage. By the time I figured out that it was him there was band playing a song that made me wonder if you would be allowed to have this song in a movie today?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ2X2_ts5Kw - 219k -
This might be a problem today also.
Genesis - Illegal Alien (1983) - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_61hzuGGJX0 - 215k -
At the time of this video, “the girl,” Annabella Lwin, was 15. Definitely jail bait
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMICD3aMZpw
Let alone Joan jett cherrie curry im your Cherry Bomb
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMDn6V7ZLhE
It’s was quite popular amongst the gay crowd when it came out.
Pete Shelley “Homosapien” (1981)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HwmO_GZfzI
Valley Girl trailer (1983)
Thanks in part to this development, your children may some day also enjoy the pleasure of bailing out the Wall Street Fockers.
Jan. 8, 2013, 6:01 a.m. EST
The great banking swindle of 2013
Commentary: Weak capital rules expose financial system to panic
By David Weidner, MarketWatch
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — How can something designed to make the financial system safer actually make it more dangerous?
Well, that’s what happened this week when the global financial industry won surprisingly huge concessions from regulators.
Bankers don’t like higher capital requirements because they squeeze profits. Tighter ratios limit the amount of lending (or risk) banks can take, therefore reining in gains. Bankers argue that capital cushions only matter in panics, and panics are rare.
But that’s exactly what happened a few years ago.
During the financial crisis of 2008, we learned that the world’s biggest banks were not prepared to head off even a slow rush to the exits. Without enough capital to refund their customers money, they needed taxpayer bailouts. Everyone, including the CEOs of the biggest banks, agreed that bigger capital cushions were needed.
So, the world’s banking regulators set down new capital rules. The rules came out in 2010. The Bank for International Settlements ultimately asked banks for more, and higher quality, capital — either cash or highly rated and liquid securities (Treasuries etc).
There are a lot of moving parts to the new rules, but basically, BIS wanted banks to meet the new requirements in two stages. By 2015, they were supposed to have a 4.5% common equity ratio and 6% tier 1 capital ratio. By 2019, the numbers would rise to 7% and 8.5% respectively.
Think of it this way. When banks make a $100 loan today, they’re supposed to have roughly $5 in the vault to back it up. Regulators wanted that number to be closer to $8.50.
Of course, the banks howled. When the rules were introduced, the head of Citigroup Inc. said the rules would raise “the cost of credit precisely when credit is needed the most.” Read text of Vikram Pandit’s speech at 2010 Buttonwood Conference .
Jamie Dimon, the head of J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which took a $10 billion bailout, issued debt with government guarantees and acquired two rivals in deals subsidized or arranged by regulators, said the new rules would be time consuming for bankers. Dimon added that the rules would “exacerbate” a credit crisis. He called some of the rules “un-American.” Read report on Dimon’s remarks.
Well, they may be based in Switzerland, but the regulators apparently didn’t want to have their patriotism called into question. Monday’s revisions effectively gutted the new rules — not by changing the timetable or minimum ratios in a meaningful way — but by redefining what qualifies as “capital.”
Under the new rules almost anything short of junk bonds counts toward the final ratio. Now, corporate debt securities rated A+ to BBB– count. Also good: residential mortgage-backed securities rated AA or higher.
That said, regulators did draw a hard line on baseball cards, coupons for the Piggly Wiggly and lottery tickets.
…
It’s GOOD to be the Banksta!
Commie talk.
Why do you hate invisible hand of free market?
they get what they vote for…you want the status quo? you get the status quo.
Wall Street PIGS again set their sights on Social Security:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/08/when-wall-street-pulls-the-strings/
George Carlin foretold this. Interesting how comedians are often a better source of truth than those who are supposed to provide us with information.
Interesting how comedians are often a better source of truth than those who are supposed to provide us with information.
————————-
Unfortunately, if you wake up late, you might miss em because By the time I discovered Patrice O’Neal, he was already dead.
(((shakin my head)))
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVNh1RIXKvY
stopped reading at climate change.
Buried head. Fortunes are won on verified information vs. rumor. Too late? Buy the rumor, sell on the news?
Some of those baseball cards are worth more than some of those mortgages.
It’s GOOD to be the Banksta!
Speaking of which:
AIG to sue US Gov. over bailout
http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveschaefer/2013/01/08/aig-thank-you-america-but-we-may-sue-you/
Feds to AIG: “So, sue me!”
Time to start minting those $1 trillion coins with Obama’s face on them (FYI did you know the highest denomination bill ever printed in USA, the $100,000 bill, has Woodrow Wilson on them, under whose administration the Federal Reserve System was created).
http://m.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/01/07/this-is-what-would-happen-if-we-breach-the-debt-ceiling/
was watching something on the ID channel this morning discussing the criminal mind and the effects of cult leaders (jones, manson et. al.)
apparently every statement the brain comprehends is deemed to be the truth…until the brain refutes it.
i’m not even a scientist and i could figure that out just from reading this blog.
That’s true!
Hey, wait a minute…no it’s not.
Research supports that view. Sometimes it takes years before a amputee stops feeling a missing limb. In the absence of input (feeling) the brain defaults to the memory of feelings. Some amputees have been able to use a mirror box to teach the brain (with sight) to override (forget) the old neural circuits and build new ones.
Obama nominates Corzine Treasury Secretary.
Why the hell not. No more ridiculous headline than “real” ones circulating currently.
Because he couldn’t get confirmed by the Senate so he would never be nominated at all.
Try a little harder when you want to rile people up with straw-men. Just making it up is boring.
krugman!
“Try a little harder when you want to rile people up with straw-men. Just making it up is boring.”
Oh, puh-leeeeeeeeze. It was a joke, and a good one, because it’s one of those over-the-top statements that’s almost believable. In fact, I nearly spit my drink on the keyboard.
What’s boring is lack of a sense of humor.
i think he should nominate barney frank!
That’s actually not a bad idea. A militant populist in the Old Boy’s Klub might make for some EXCELLENT news cycles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax-2i71bqGw
If you want to be swindled, borrow a pile of money for grossly overpriced house and lose even more money as it depreciates like ALL houses do.
Just don’t make the payments and live rent free for years. Hide the money somewhere and spend it later, maybe even buy a house for cash.
What’s not to like?
Ahh but Grasshopper…. you will owe that money…. plus interest.
So? If it’s a non recourse loan, you’re off Scott free. Sure, your credit will get dinged, but as we all know in just three years you’ll be fine.
But you have to live in a non-recourse state and there are only 12 of them. Otherwise, you’ll owe…. plus interest.
There’s always BK
but wate a second…i thought housing prices always went up?
Hi everyone
We’re purging stuff like no tomorow. Charities are getting the nice stuff and the landfill is getting the rest. We’re done buying to fill voids.
(Retrospect of habits and my Shopping Ctr Mgmt training talking.)
We gave Goodwill a pile of electronics parts.(Hubby EE) Goodwill melts down and sells the gold.)Electronics is hard to get rid of. A win/win.
Assoc for Retarded Citizens got the best of the best to sell.
We’re done on the interior. It’s lovely, modest, and finally feels like home.
It’s lovely, modest,
…. and depreciating rapidly.
Do you want to explain why a couple who bought for cash and needed to get settled in a final home so that the husband could get comfortable moving around in his space before he goes blind should care what the value of their house is? Can you guarantee that the price decrease that you think will happen in the exact neighborhood (not a region, just a few streets) where they want to live will happen before he loses his sight and he loses the chance to learn his living space with his eyes?
No, of course you can’t.
And since they paid cash and can’t do any harm to anyone by not paying on a loan, why don’t you just leave her alone.
Not everyone is a damned developer. Your point of view is only relevant to someone who doesn’t care much about location and doesn’t care at all about timing.
It helps to think of him as a taunt-bot. Makes him easier to ignore.
Do you care to explain why someone would post their personal play-by-play action of financial suicide?
And this has nothing to do with “point of view”. Housing prices are grossly inflated and falling. Housing inventory is massive and growing. It’s not a point of view. It’s reality.
Do you care to explain why someone would post their personal play-by-play action of financial suicide?
If she’s going to live to regret it, wouldn’t you want to hear about it and revel in the schadenfreude?
Inventory isn’t massive in the exact neighborhood where they wanted to live. If you care about a particular neighborhood, there can be large inventory, low inventory or no inventory. It depends. And when time is essential because of a medical problem, you can’t count on inventory getting larger just because it would be convenient for you.
And why someone would post their play-by-play life on the internet? It is called sharing with a community. Now, I wouldn’t do as much of it as she did in this community because there are too many jerks like you and a few others hanging around here. I’ve picked a very few people from here to have a closer friendship with and they know who they are. But that is my personal choice. A lot of people are more trusting than I am.
Absolutely inventory is massive.
Pretty good hand at pandering you have.
How many houses are for sale within 5 blocks of their former rental? That was the area they were targeting. Not the town. Not the county. The neighborhood. How many? You claim to know. So, tell us. And they were looking for a particular floor plan as well. How many had that floor plan?
You don’t have any idea.
And why do I care? I don’t like liars. Even when they are just taunt-bots.
“…Not everyone is a damned developer. Your point of view is only relevant to someone who doesn’t care much about location and doesn’t care at all about timing….”
Or quality.
Quality?
Nothing can be as lovely as the taunt-bot’s rent-free room in his parent’s basement.
Yes I’m living rent-free indeed. But it’s in your skull and it’s quite spacious in here.
Polly
Thank you fo rational thought on our situation.
Pimp Watch
You are truly clueless. Be more concerned about your own $ and not OPM. Our bills to live are minimal. More important, we’re finally happy. No motgage is a relief.
Glaucoma testing tomorrow. Crossing fingers and toes no more surgeries fo a while.
fo=for my keyboard is dying\ “r” is a hard hit
fo=for my keyboard is dying\ “r” is a hard hit
IBM Model M Clicky Keyboard <—eBay
“Be more concerned about your own $ and not OPM.”
Nice strawman but it failed.
You paid too much for a rapidly depreciating asset.
Do you feel tears of joy?
It seems that electronic items are a real nightmare to get rid of. Most of it is toxic and the half life of the materials is decades. I just retired a old CRT TV from 1990 that was still working perfectly (with a digital converter box). What a great deal that turned out to be, 23 years and never a problem. The converter box just died after less than 4 years of use and replacements are hard to find so I decided to scrap the old TV. I have yet to see a LED/Plasma TV last more than 5-6 years and it costs more to fix than to replace them.
I tried to give my 33″ Sony CRT away and had no takers.
I’ve watched basically every friend family member give away old CRT TVs (some of them large and formerly “top of the line”). No one wants them. Most of them even offer the to lucky duckies, poor people (on craigslist’s listings for free items) or charity.
No one wants them, not even for free, not even when they still work perfectly. It’s kind of funny.
I actually prefer the picture on the old CRT TVs. I own both, but usually will watch the CRT if I’m going to be watching for a while.
I’ve got an old Quasar console TV in my pool/laundry room. Works great. It’s my fave for watching ball games.
Hmm, I can see if you grew up with them how you might want to keep one around. The lesson I take away from seeing all these perfectly-good CRT TV’s unwanted is that all technology eventually becomes obsolete, so if there’s something you think is a “must have”, wait 6 months or a year and you can either get something better or get the same thing for 1/2 the price.
I also agree with the proposition that the content itself is more important than the specs of the screen.
I’ve got an old Quasar console TV in my pool/laundry room. Works great. It’s my fave for watching ball games.
———–
Oh hell yeah, one of them wood grained joents?
Too heavy for ______s to steal and they stop bullets too!
Oh hell yeah, one of them wood grained joents?
Too heavy for ______s to steal and they stop bullets too!
Yep. It’s on rollers, so it’s easy to move around, but that sucker will probably never leave my basement by being carried up the steps.
Besides, it keeps my old Servel beer fridge company.
http://www.storyofstuff.org/movies-all/story-of-electronics/
“I tried to give my 33″ Sony CRT away and had no takers.”
How much did it weigh?
“Assoc for Retarded Citizens got the best of the best to sell.”
That’s very kind of you, but Congress really doesn’t need the help.
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
very funny. LOL
Don’t dis the mentally retarded. Congress is evil and brain dead by design.
Reminds me of the three old hard drives we have taking up valuable space in the basement. Our house could use a good ruthless purging of useless junk. Glad you are enjoying your new home!
MiddleCoaster: The household junk purge is an ongoing process. Resources that can help:
1. Craiglist
2. Freecycle
Here in Tucson, we have both of the above. We also have a monthly “bring and take free stuff” thing called the Really, Really Free Market. Third Saturday morning of the month at Himmel Park.
The problem with old computers is the need to wipe or destroy the hard drive. That is the entire reason for our procrastination to date on the electronics purge. Well, that and the fact that my husband tends to say “but I might use it again someday!” when confronted with the reality of getting rid of stuff. I am far less sentimental and far more inclined to toss stuff.
Goodwill took 8 boxes of parts, plus 3 old Epson photo printers, an HP Laser workhourse printer, an Alps printer, 3 old lap tops, and a bunch of other electronic lab stuff. 5 car loads.
I called the local landfill and I got the advice- Goodwill.
I sent 9 boxes of books to the Library. Textbooks were rejected by everyone.
I can’t wait to re-learn the piano. I found all my music stuff.
http://www.amazon.com/Not-Buying-Year-Without-Shopping/dp/0743269365
Great read, good writing.
The amazon comments are dreadful. Maybe borrow from the library and not “shop” for it?
That’s precisely what I’m going to do. The library is my “try before I buy” store.
Maybe borrow from the library and not “shop” for it?
Good one, Polly. Yep!
I go into bookstores and take pictures of the covers of books I want to read, then put them on hold at the public library.
I am a great supporter of local, independent bookstores, but my bookshelves at home are full…
I have read a few books on my ipad and actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
PIMCO’s Gross says $1 trillion coin ‘unlikely,’ but 100 $10 billion coins ‘could be done’
January 8, 2013, 1:23 PM
Pimco’s Bill Gross has weighed in on the $1 trillion coin debate.
The bond manager tweeted Tuesday that “1 Trillion dollar coin unlikely but 100 ten Billion dollar coins could be done.”
…
Or 105 ten billion dollar coins… maybe 115. Why not 120?
So what’s the difference? Is it easier to make change for a $10 billion dollar coin?
It doesn’t sound so crazy.
”No it’s not a trillion dollar coin. It’s just a ten billion dollar coin…and we’ve got a hundred of them.”
Plus, they may not need an exact trillion.
“It doesn’t sound so crazy.”
“Plus, they may not need an exact trillion.”
Priceless. We need some 12 step deprogramming groups in this country.
CA - Communist Anonymous
GPA - Global Progressive Anonymous
SA - Statist Anonymous
KA - Keynesian Anonymous
PIICAHSA - Progressive Indoctrination In College and High School Anonymous
etc.
It’s bloodletting season on Wall Street.
S&P 500 pullback likely: why a selloff is necessary
Commentary: The action of the stock market, as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, over the past couple of weeks has been volatile, to say the least, writes Lawrence G. McMillan.
.After Newtown, Pelosi Presses Obama on Guns
By CARL HULSE 11:42 AM ET
Representative Nancy Pelosi said if Congress balks at new measures, the president should take his case to the people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/us/politics/after-newtown-congress-must-act-pelosi-says.html
—————————————-
You mean to tell me; disarming white people is the albotross thats gonna get hung around black peoples necks?
Decades of white presidents and as soon as we get a black one, THIS is the assignment he gets?
and its going on our permanent record?
Mannnnnn… this is the worst motel I ever stayed in.
(((shakin my head)))
http://www.obamasrealfather.com/frank-marshall-davis/
A collection of juicy real estate-related links from Tucson:
More avoid foreclosures locally; short sales are key
Comments after this one are a bit dull. Needs some of that HBB salsa.
The Case of Liberty Cove: Finger-pointing and anger replace dreams of high returns and idyllic retirement on the Sonoran coast
Much comment merriment. Such as this gem: “Whether a scam or not, the plan was ludicrous from the start. Anyone who has been out there knows how remote the place is. It’s certainly not somewhere a normal U.S. investor would feel comfortable going. It’s harder to find a more remote place without good road access in the southwest.”
High-rise dorms loom large in Tucson skyline: Density along modern streetcar line is desirable, but massive towers aren’t the answer, critics say
Was walking and talking with a couple of friends yesterday eve. Like me, they’re wondering where the students with the bucks to afford these places will come from.
So does this story commenter: “Good article, except that it omitted the more basic question. Are the UA’s student projections way too high? With more students going to community colleges for their first two years, more classes on-line, population growth leveling off in Arizona, higher tuition shutting many students out of a university education, and high drop-out rates, do we really need all this new housing? The impact on the surrounding community should be considered too - both existing apartments as well as homes in the surrounding neighborhoods where more empty houses and apartment complexes will lead to urban blight. Even the new District complex has not been able to rent all its rooms…”
The District is right across the street from where I’m going to acting school. On the side of the building that faces the school, I see plenty of empty units.
BRUSSELS - Record unemployment and fraying social welfare systems in southern Europe risk creating a new divide in the continent, the EU warned Tuesday, when figures showed joblessness across the 17 EU countries that use the euro hit a new high.
Eurozone unemployment rose to 11.8 per cent in November, the highest since the euro currency was founded in 1999, according to the statistical agency Eurostat. The rate was up from 11.7 per cent in October and 10.6 per cent a year earlier.
In the wider 27-nation European Union, the world’s largest economic bloc with 500 million people, unemployment broke the 26 million mark for the first time.
But the trend is not uniform. Unemployment is increasing mainly in those countries, mostly in southern Europe, where market concerns over excessive public debt have pushed governments to make the toughest savings, pushing the economies into recession.
http://www.timescolonist.com/business/eu-warns-dramatic-rise-in-unemployment-in-some-countries-may-create-new-north-south-divide-1.42060
Check out the situation in the Europanese countries:
January 8, 2013 7:29 pm
Companies: The rise of the zombie
By Michael Stothard
When the construction sector slumped three years ago, Mike, the shaggy-haired owner of a British commercial landscaping company, was left struggling to meet his overbearing debt payments.
Salvation came in the form of a cheap bank loan backed by the UK government, which helped him refinance his old debt at much lower interest rates. His company was saved from bankruptcy. But the blessing, as it turned out, has been a mixed one.
“All our money goes to servicing this new loan, so while we are still here we are in a kind of financial limbo with slim hope of a turnround,” he says. “Our equipment gets more tattered every day and our employees are demoralised.”
Mike’s problems go to the heart of a growing debate about the number of “zombie” companies in Europe. They are alive – but barely – thanks to government help, ultra-loose monetary policy and, often, the reluctance of lenders to write down bad loans since the crisis.
The concern is that these companies – which spend so much of their cash servicing interest payments that they are unable to invest in new equipment or future growth areas – could be at least partly to blame for the weak recovery in Europe, hogging resources that could go to more productive areas.
In the US, where the philosophy of “creative destruction” holds more sway, there has been a swift increase in insolvency rates since the crisis. But this has been far less the case in Europe, where policy makers have been more focused on protecting jobs than on boosting efficiency.
The growing fear is that the continent could be following the path of Japan, where low interest rates, looser government policy and the failure of the big banks to foreclose on unprofitable and highly indebted companies is thought to have contributed to two decades of weak growth.
“The fundamental tenet of capitalism, which holds that some bad companies need to fail to make way for new and better ones, is being rewritten,” says Alan Bloom, global head of restructuring at Ernst & Young. “Many European companies are just declining slowly and have an urgent need for new management, a revised capital structure or at worst to be allowed to fail,” he adds.
Zombie companies are always filed on the “nightmare” shelf in public policy, as authorities struggle to calibrate the right level of corporate liquidation.
Set policy – particularly interest rates – too loose and you will keep alive companies that should go bust or be restructured to use resources more efficiently. But set policy too tight and you will kill companies that are temporarily in trouble, exacerbating a downturn and destroying valuable economic resources
Figures from R3, the insolvency industry trade body, shows that one in 10 companies in the UK is able to pay only the interest on their debts but not reduce the debt itself, a common characteristic of zombie companies. This is up 10 per cent in the past five months to 160,000 groups, with 70,000 groups struggling to pay their interest payments.
In some parts of the continent the problem appears even more severe. The lowest rates of insolvency in 2011 were from Greece, Spain and Italy, the three countries whose economies have struggled most. Fewer than 30 in every 10,000 companies fail in these countries – this at a time when nearly one in three groups is loss-making, according to Creditreform, a risk management group.
And the issue looks far more severe than in previous recessions. In the economic slump of the 1990s, when EU gross domestic product shrunk by less than 1 per cent, the default rate for debt rated subinvestment grade by Standard & Poor’s hit 67 per cent, albeit with a small sample size. Today, after a fall of 4 per cent in economic activity in 2009 alone, the default rate has not gone above 9 per cent and now stands at 2.3 per cent.
…
Source: ft dot com
Posted: 5:05 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013
US consumer debt rises on more car, school loans
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON —
U.S. consumers took on more debt in November to buy cars and attend school, but stayed cautious with their credit cards.
The Federal Reserve said Tuesday that consumers increased their borrowing in November by $16 billion from October to a seasonally adjusted record of $2.77 trillion.
Borrowing that covers autos and student loans increased $15.2 billion. A category that measures credit card debt rose just $817 million.
The sharp difference in the borrowing gains illustrates a broader trend that began during the Great Recession. Four years ago, Americans carried $1.03 trillion in credit card debt, an all-time high. In November, that figure was 16.5 percent lower.
At the same time, student loan debt has increased dramatically. The category that includes auto and student loans is 22.8 percent higher than in July 2008. Many Americans who have lost jobs have gone back to school to get training for new careers.
The November increase also reflected further gains in auto sales, which grew 13.4 percent in 2012 to top 14 million units for the first time in five years. The need to replace vehicles destroyed by Superstorm Sandy may have also contributed to the gain.
Analysts expect the trends in borrowing to stay the same this year. They predict small increases in credit card debt and stronger gains in auto and student loans.
Analysts expect the trends in borrowing to stay the same this year. They predict small increases in credit card debt and stronger gains in auto and student loans.
Stronger gains. Hmmmm. Why am I reminded of that song, “I Owe My Soul to the Company Store”?
“Hmmmm. Why am I reminded of that song, “I Owe My Soul to the Company Store”?”
Very good Miss Slim
Also very true
And very sad
Family Can’t Move Into Their Home After Squatters File for Bankruptcy
By SUSANNA KIM (@skimm)
Aug. 1, 2012
Dayna Donovan and her family have been unable to occupy their home after two strangers squatting in her Littleton, Colo., home for eight months have filed for bankruptcy, preventing an eviction from the sheriff’s department.
On July 12, a judge in Arapahoe County ruled that Veronica Fernandez-Beleta and Jose Rafael Leyva-Caraveo, the two people who were living in the home, had to move out in 48 hours.
Troy Donovan, 45, filed for a forced eviction with the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s office on July 16.
However, Fernandez-Beleta filed for bankruptcy on July 20, which the Donovans learned about just hours before the scheduled eviction was to take place last week.
“The sheriff’s office will not proceed with an eviction if there is a bankruptcy in question,” Arapahoe County Undersheriff David Walcher told a local CBS television station.
“It’s frustrating. It’s just one thing after another, after another,” Donovan told ABC News. “We’ve lost two months’ time. It has been an absolute living nightmare and an emotional roller coaster.”
The Donovans and their two young daughters have been staying in the basement of a relative’s house in Greeley, about 65 miles away. They say they can’t afford an attorney and have struggled to come up with $500 in court filing fees and gas for driving to the clerk’s office throughout the legal process.
Donovan said she delayed starting working a temporary job near her home in Littleton just because of the complications from the delayed eviction. She and her husband have struggled to find jobs in the small town where they are staying temporarily. They are also dealing with their mortgage company, because they are about $20,000 behind on their house payments, the last of which was made in June 2011.
Donovan’s brother in law set up a website asking for donations to allow them to move into a temporary home.
She has been contacting lawyers with the Colorado Legal Services who have so far said they are unfamiliar with this area of the law.
Fernandez-Beleta and Levya-Caraveo could not be reached for comment. Their attorney, Douglas Romero, of the Colorado Christian Defense Counsel, couldn’t be reached for comment.
It all started last August when the Donovans moved to Indiana with their two children. Both were unemployed at the time and two months behind on their mortgage payments. They decided to relocate because Troy had a temporary job with a race team. Donovan said she left their home of more than 13 years locked and ready for the cold Colorado winter.
In March, Donovan said she had a “premonition” something was wrong with the home. She and her husband called a neighbor and learned someone had been living there since the winter.
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/colorado-family-unable-move-home-squatters-file-bankruptcy/story?id=16896984 - -
That’s messed up. What prevents them, as the owners of record, from just moving back in? I mean, other than the door locks which were presumably changed. Wait for the Beletas to leave. Move in.
“When the couple called the police to check up on the home, the two occupiers showed paperwork from the Arapahoe County Clerk and Recorder with an affidavit of “adverse possession,” their names and the Donovan’s address written on it. The two claimed they bought the home from a real estate agent for $5,000.”
Wow, another professional NAR member doing god’s work?
The fracking “A”…
ft dot com
January 8, 2013 11:50 pm
US oil imports to fall to lowest in 25 years
By Ed Crooks in New York and Anna Fifield in Washington
US oil imports will fall to their lowest level for more than 25 years next year, as production booms while demand grows only slowly, according to a government forecast.
The US Energy Information Administration predicted that net imports of liquid fuels, including crude oil and petroleum products, would fall to about 6m barrels per day in 2014, their lowest level since 1987 and only about half their peak levels of more than 12m during 2004-07.
The figures reflect the spectacular growth of US production thanks to the unlocking of “tight oil” reserves using hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling in states led by North Dakota and Texas.
Jack Gerard, head of the American Petroleum Institute, the industry lobby group, said the US was at “a great turning point in our nation’s history”, that would “realign the energy axis toward the west and into our own control”.
The declining US dependence on imports will still bring benefits, including increased resilience to crude price shocks and job creation in the oil industry.
The EIA also said it expected increased US production to put downward pressure on oil prices. It forecast that internationally traded Brent crude would drop from an average of $112 per barrel last year to $99 in 2014, while US West Texas Intermediate dropped from $94 to $91.
US crude production hit a low point of 5m b/d in 2008, but rebounded to 6.43m last year and is expected by the EIA to rise to almost 8m in 2014.
At the same time, consumption has been falling, from 20.7m b/d, for all liquid fuels, in 2007, to 18.7m last year. The EIA expects it to rise very slightly over the next couple of years, but expects that the US will still use less oil in 2014 than in 2011.
The surge in production in the US has led some forecasters, including the International Energy Agency, the rich countries’ think-tank, to predict that it will overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the world’s largest oil producer by the end of the decade.
…
U.S. may remove all troops from Afghanistan after 2014
By Mike Mount, CNN
January 9, 2013 — Updated 0038 GMT (0838 HKT)
US Marines from Kilo Company of the 3rd Battalion 8th Marines Regiment head out on patrol in Garmser, Helmand Province, last June.
Washington (CNN) — The Obama administration is considering the possibility of removing all U.S. troops in Afghanistan after the NATO combat mission officially finishes at the end of 2014, White House officials said Tuesday.
The comments by Ben Rhodes, the White House’s deputy national security adviser, come as the Pentagon and White House mull over the number of troops that could be left in Afghanistan after 2014 to fight insurgents and train Afghan security forces.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and President Obama are scheduled to meet on Friday in Washington.
…
Why not the end of 2013? Or 2012? Or 2011? Not that my vote ultimately mattered, but had he done so earlier I might’ve even voted for him.
Gotta keep the heroin flowing
Welfare recipients take out cash at strip clubs, liquor stores and X-rated shops
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/poor_some_ugar_on_me_0Hq1d3iPnvj2RwpsEDS7MN
Wouldn’t you know the town where my SIL rents is a gun nut haven? Rumor has it there is no shortage of crazy people there, either.
Spring City Councilman Wants to Require Every Home To Have a Gun
(KUTV) A city councilman in Spring City, Utah is proposing to have a gun in every home – however not every resident is in agreement with the proposal.
Neil Sorensen initially wanted to require all 340 homes in Spring City to have a gun – but his proposal was met with disagreement from the community.
Many residents of the rural town of 1,000 residents said they had never had a problem with crime, but many, including the San Pete County Sheriff said they were concerned about many people, including the mentally ill, getting a gun in their hands.
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