The Housing Bubble

Feb. 21, 2013, 3:04 p.m. EST
Fed’s Bullard eyes tightening next year
Fed could adjust asset purchases based on data
By Greg Robb, MarketWatch

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — The U.S. economy is on the mend, and the jobless rate could fall to the level where the Federal Reserve may consider raising interest rates by June 2014, a voting member of the central bank said Thursday.

James Bullard, the president of the St. Louis Fed, said in a speech at New York University’s School of Business that his bank forecasts the unemployment rate will fall below 6.5% in June 2014.

Fed officials have said that it will not raise short term rates as long as the unemployment rate his higher than 6.5%.

Bullard admitted that his forecast is more optimistic than many of his colleagues on the Fed.

Turning to the status of the Fed’s $85 billion per month asset purchase plan, Bullard repeated his position that the Fed should consider adjusting the pace of purchases each meeting based on the data.

Raising or lowering the amount of asset purchases by about $10 or $15 billion would be equivalent to a move in the Fed’s target federal funds rate, he said.

“It would help get rid of this [idea] that there is some foggy period in the future where you are just going to cut things off completely,” Bullard said.

Bullard said that the asset purchases could now continue now “for awhile.”

He said the Fed had room to maneuver given low inflation and the size of the balance sheet.

“Inflation is pretty low right now and inflation expectations seem to be contained,” Bullard said to reporters after a speech at New York University.

Several officials said the Fed might have to slow or stop asset purchases before reaching the goal of a substantial improvement in the labor market.

But other officials warned about the risk of cutting the purchases off too early.

In a separate speech, John Williams, the president of the San Francisco Fed, said quantitative easing, is providing a “much needed boost” to the economy and will be required well into the second half of the year.

“We need powerful and continuing monetary accommodation,” Williams said. “Unemployment is far too high and inflation is too low,” he said.

The latest money news from Adrienne Mitchell including comments by Dallas Fed chief on eventual end of quantitative easing.

And Richard Fisher of the Dallas Fed said in an interview that the central bank would not go “cold turkey” in halting purchases.

Vince Reinhart, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, said in an interview with MarketWatch that the Fed is divided into two camps on quantitative easing.

“There are those who think it can make a difference and those who think it is a pact with the devil,” Reinhart said.
…

What dark force stops asset price corrections in their tracks?

Feb. 21, 2013, 11:50 a.m. EST
The 5 biggest lies on Wall Street
Commentary: These market myths are doing the rounds — again
By Brett Arends

The Dow popped back above 14,000 this week. The market’s been booming all year. Small cap stocks just hit a new all-time high, and Mom and Pop have been jumping back into the market.

Don’t mind me. I’m sitting in the back of the theater, throwing popcorn at the screen and shouting, “Boring! We’ve seen this already!” Maybe I’ve just been to too many movies.

Like this one.

Maybe the Dow will double from here. Maybe the good times will roll.

But don’t spin me. Here are five myths about the stock market that are doing the rounds, yet again. They just don’t seem to die.

Stocks will do well because U.S. corporations are in great shape.

Well, some of them have a lot of cash in the bank. So what? They have a lot of debt, too. According to the Federal Reserve, the total liabilities of U.S. nonfinancial companies just hit a new, all-time high of $13.9 trillion. That’s up 40% from a decade ago.

In other words, they owe about the same amount as the federal government. They’ve borrowed more than a trillion in the past three years alone.

What? You hadn’t heard that? Surprise.
…

Can money stay easy forever if the Fed wills it?

Feb. 21, 2013, 12:01 p.m. EST
Sequester, QE debates show U.S. systems are broken
Commentary: Both the policy and the process are failing us
By Darrell Delamaide

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — And we thought brinksmanship was bad. As Congress enjoys an ill-timed recess and lets the nation rush into the sequester spending cuts, a little late-night crisis compromise starts to look pretty good.

It may still come to that in the game of chicken between the White House and congressional Republicans, but prudent investors are counting on the automatic cuts kicking in as of March 1.

With Congress in a permanent stalemate, we learn too that the Federal Reserve will discuss next month whether its program of bond purchases — also known as quantitative easing or QE — can continue to provide any effective support for our sluggish economy.

Increasing the amount of central bank money, it seems, can reach its limits if the credit creation mechanism in our banking system remains severely impaired with the legacy of toxic assets that brought on the virtual financial collapse in 2008.

It is becoming increasingly clear, in short, that both our political and financial systems are close to being broken. The government’s policy levers, fiscal and monetary, have more or less ceased to function, at least in any constructive manner.

In Washington, meanwhile, the rats are leaving the sinking ship. Whereas in the past, senators would cling to office as long as they could totter to the floor, a growing number are heading for the exits. It’s just not much fun to be a lawmaker in a dysfunctional Congress.
…

Ending long break, White House and Republicans renew budget talks

U.S. President Barack Obama discusses the automatic budget cuts scheduled to take effect next week, while in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House complex in Washington February 19, 2013. REUTERS/Larry Downing

By Mark Felsenthal

WASHINGTON | Thu Feb 21, 2013 7:04pm EST

(Reuters) - After weeks without talks on the U.S. budget crisis, President Barack Obama called Republican leaders on Thursday to discuss the harsh “sequestration” cuts to government spending due to begin in just over a week.

In what might be just the start of long negotiations to prevent the $85 billion in cuts, Obama spoke to House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The conversations were “good,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said, but he declined to provide details.

A McConnell spokesman said it was the first outreach from Obama since the New Year’s Eve “fiscal cliff” deal.

Unlike that impasse, which produced drama in Congress and stormy meetings at the White House, both sides have so far not engaged in high-profile negotiations on how to avoid the government cuts, which few in Washington favor.

The reductions are due to begin on March 1, but their immediate effects are unlikely to be severe because they will be phased in gradually over seven months.

That lag could give politicians at least a few weeks to reach a solution before another budget trigger date - a deadline for funding the government - comes up at the end of March.

Republicans want to replace the across-the-board sequester cuts by finding other more-targeted spending reductions.

But congressional Democrats have put forward a $110 billion plan that includes not only spending cuts but also tax increases, which are opposed by Republicans.

Obama has expressed doubt a deal can be struck by March 1.

“At this point, we continue to reach out to Republicans and say this is not going to be good for the economy, it’s not going to be good for ordinary people,” the president told radio talk show host Al Sharpton.

“But I don’t know if they’re going to move and that’s what we’re going to have to keep pushing over the next seven, eight days,” he told Sharpton.
…

No winners in this game
By Eugene Robinson, Published: February 21

The standoff over the package of budget cuts known as “the sequester” is the dumbest, most self-defeating fight between President Obama and Republicans in Congress since . . . let’s see, since the last dumb, self-defeating fight less than two months ago.

Obama is winning this showdown but only in a relative sense. The truth is that everybody loses — Republicans a little more, Democrats a little less. And the American people, who have a right to expect adult behavior from their elected officials, will inevitably be the biggest losers of all.

It’s hard to believe, but this is the way the richest and most powerful nation on Earth runs its affairs these days, lurching from artificial crisis to artificial crisis amid threats of self-inflicted harm. The enemy, truly, is us.

On Jan. 1, you will recall, the nation was about to leap from a fiscal precipice of dizzying height. Taxes were going to soar, and federal spending was going to plunge; the impact, surely, would have been to send the economy back into recession. Disaster was averted only by a last-second deal that guaranteed two brief months of fiscal sanity.

Now we face $85 billion in across-the-board sequester budget cuts, scheduled for March 1, that both Obama and the GOP leadership say would be disastrous. I’m guessing that two questions occur to you: Why, then, did the president and Congress agree to impose these cuts in the first place, if they’re such a terrible idea? And why don’t they just call them off? Sorry, but there are no answers that make sense.

Even more absurd is the fact that there are unnecessary crises yet to come. In another month, the federal government faces a shutdown unless Congress keeps it running by passing a continuing resolution. And not far down the road, there will be another fight over preventing default by raising the debt ceiling.
…

Spain and Italy: The Euro Crisis Gnaws at Europe’s Underbelly
By SPIEGEL ONLINE Staff

The euro crisis may have dropped out of the headlines recently, but Spain and Italy would seem to be doing their best to bring it back. Real estate giant Reyal Urbis’ bankrupcy has raised fresh concerns about Spanish banks and many fear that a Berlusconi election victory could drive Rome to seek emergency aid.

It had become a trend among top European politicians to forecast that the worst of the euro crisis had passed. A pledge by the European Central Bank to buy up unlimited quantities of sovereign bonds as needed, promising numbers from Greece indicating that the country was finally getting its budget deficit under control and a reform-minded government in Rome — 2012 seemed set to go down in history as the year the crisis lost its bite.

This week, the outlook is looking less rosy. And much of the pessimism is focused on the two countries long seen as potentially the most dangerous should the euro crisis grow: Spain and Italy.

The situation looks especially bleak in Madrid, with real estate giant Reyal Urbis filing for insolvency on Tuesday. With debts of €3.6 billion, the bankruptcy would be the second largest in Spain’s history after real-estate company Martinsa-Fadesa filed in July 2008 with debts of €7.2 billion. Reyal Urbis has until Saturday to ward off insolvency by reaching a deal with its creditors.

The demise of Reyal Urbis isn’t just a problem for Spain. Several German banks are also among the company’s creditors. Furthermore, the firm’s list of Spanish debt holders reads like a who’s who of the country’s already wobbly financial industry, including Santander (which holds €550 million in Reyal Urbis debt), Banco Popular (€220 million) and BBVA (€120 million).

Tops on the list, however, is Bankia which is owed at least €460 million by the real estate firm, with Reuters reporting that number could be as high as €785 million. Bankia was placed under government control in 2012 and received bailout aid from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Furthermore, Spain’s “bad bank” SAREB — set up last year to help absorb a raft of bad real-estate debt from the books of Spanish financial institutions — is also involved.

Extremely Shaky

Still, the insolvency has not come as a surprise. The Spanish real estate market has shown no signs of improvement in recent months and prices continue to fall — with property in the country having lost 40 percent of its value since 2007. It is a development which has hit construction giants like Reyal Urbis hard and is largely responsible for the troubled state of Spain’s banks. Even worse, experts do not expect things to improve any time soon.
…

February 20, 2013, 11:20 AM
Housing-Market Cooldown Continues
By David George-Cosh

Canadian house prices are still coming down.

The Teranet-National Bank Composite House Price Index fell 0.3% in January from December—its fifth straight monthly decline. On a year-over-year basis, the index–a weighted composite of house prices in 11 major Canadian markets–was up 2.7%, but that gain was the smallest year-over-year since November 2009.

Canada’s housing market has seen steady declines since last summer when the Canadian government tightened mortgage rules for the fourth time in as many years to put the brakes on what it believed was an overheating sector.

Since the implementation of those rules, Canadian home sales have fallen by 5.8% before rising somewhat in January, said Marc Pinsonneault, senior economist at National Bank of Canada, which along with land-registration firm Teranet puts out the index.

Canadian home prices fell 1.6% over the last five months of 2012, Mr. Pinsonneault said in a report. The economist believes home prices are on track to decline by another 5% this year.

Prices in most Canadian markets saw declines in January, including Canada’s three biggest cities—Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal—and in the two biggest cities in the oil-rich province of Alberta. Quebec City, Halifax and Ottawa were among the markets which had modest gains.

A Canadian home-price correction could be more pronounced when the Bank of Canada decides to tighten monetary policy, said Mazen Issa, Canada macro strategist at TD Securities, in a research note. Most economists expect to see the central bank start hiking interest rates in early 2014.

“In the interim, the housing market is expected to stabilize as the backdrop of very low interest rates will help to buffer some of the recent weakness,” Mr. Issa said.
…

China Housing Slaves Helping Property Rebound: Mortgages
By Bloomberg News - Feb 19, 2013 6:41 PM PT

Sherry Sheng, a 29-year-old Shanghai policewoman, bought herself a 4,000 yuan ($642) black fur jacket, splurging for the last time before she starts paying off the mortgage on her first home.

Sheng is part of a generation of middle class that Chinese media has dubbed “fang nu,” or housing slaves, a reference to the lifetime of work needed to pay off their debts. They’re taking on mortgages even as the government maintains property curbs to damp prices that have almost tripled since China embarked in 1998 on a drive to increase private home ownership.

“It’s a treat for myself because I could never afford such a luxury after I start repaying my housing loans next month,” said Sheng, who paid 1.1 million yuan for the one-bedroom apartment on the city’s western outskirts and will be using about 70 percent of her salary to service her mortgage.
…

Wal-Mart Outlook Gives Glimpse Of Economy
by The Associated Press
February 21, 2013 6:29 PM

NEW YORK (AP) — As the fortunes of many Americans go, so goes Wal-Mart, so goes the economy.

Even as the world’s largest retailer on Thursday reported an 8.6 percent rise in fourth quarter profit during the busy holiday shopping season, it offered a weaker forecast for the coming months. The problem? The poor and middle-class Americans Wal-Mart caters to — and who are big drivers of spending in the U.S. — are struggling with rising gas prices, delayed income tax refunds and higher payroll taxes.

Melanie M. Burkhardt, a mother of two teenagers who shops at Wal-Mart, is one of those people. Burkhardt, a Waycross, Ga., resident, said she’s been hit with a double whammy: the payroll tax hike, which has cut her household monthly income by $260, and higher gas prices.

“We had to do a flip on our budget,” said Burkhardt, a legal assistant who plans to cut back on her trips to Wal-Mart. “This is money we used for things like going to a movie or splurging at Olive Garden. Not anymore.”
…

What’s really going on in California

California imposed a new law on banks innocuously called “Homeowners Bill of Rights” which forces banks to switch over to a judicial foreclosure process, which they can opt to do on their own, but takes a year or more to renegotiate contracts and compensation structures for the foreclosure law firms who do all the leg work for the banks. And while those changes are being made… it makes it appear that foreclosures have slowed down dramatically in the state.

The reality?

Defaults (undeclared) are spiraling upward that yet have to pass through the foreclosure pipeline.

The truth?

California is still the highest foreclosure state in sheer volume and percentage.

The low-down?

Resale housing is still massively overpriced as a result of unprecedented interference by individual states and the federal government. The market distortions will be removed and the down draft will continue allowing the market to correct.

If you play with fire, you will get burned.

Word is, there’s a 99% chance of sequester. The bosses in our little section of government have been conducting budget exercises to figure out how to deal with it, and yes, it involves cutting contracting.

Also, there’s a possibility of a government shutdown because the continuing resolution hasn’t been renewed, and a budget hasn’t been passed.

It’s a little surprising that both the media and congress have been relatively quiet, compared to the coverage of the fiscal cliff. I guess pay cuts and job losses aren’t as important as taxes on the rich.

Vets Receiving Letters Telling Them to Disarm

Veterans Receive Letters from Dept. of Vet. Affairs Prohibiting Possession of Firearms or Ammunition.

February 21, 2013

http://planet.infowars.com/guns/vets-receiving-letters-telling-them-to-disarm -

Zombie foreclosures: Borrowers hit with debts that won’t die

By Les Christie @CNNMoney February 20, 2013: 2:22 PM ET

Even though Christopher Warner’s mortgage debt was extinguished upon his foreclosure, debt collectors are still seeking $120,000.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/02/20/real_estate/zombie-foreclosures/index.html - 69k -

JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!

“Vestas Wind Systems — which operates four factories in Colorado employing 1,100 people — is cutting about 110 jobs from its blade factories in Windsor and Brighton.

The move comes in response to a drop in orders as the federal production-tax credit, or PTC, extension, would result in a significant reduction in 2013 installations, the company said.”

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22636848/vestas-cuts-110-jobs-at-brighton-windsor-blade

Nothing is stopping this recover!

——

Inventory is extremely low, experts and agents say, and buyers who don’t act quickly will lose out.

The local market featured 2.5 months of supply in January 2013, the lowest inventory figure seen in the Austin area in the past decade.

“I’m busier than I’ve been in four years,” Bills said. “It’s become a seller’s market because the inventory just isn’t there.” She said it has become common for three-bedroom homes in Central Austin that are priced below $500,000 to receive multiple offers and sell quickly, she said.

Bills said the demand is being driven by families relocating to Austin from California, New York and Chicago, among other cities. “They’re in the health care industry, gaming and high-tech, and it’s frustrating because they have a decent amount of money and they can’t find anything,” she said.

In a part of South Austin that includes the Westgate and Cherry Creek areas, only 28 homes are for sale in the $200,000 to $400,000 price range; in Travis Heights, 23 homes are on the market ranging in price from $315,000 to $950,000, “the lowest number of actives that I’ve seen since 2007,” Dillard said. In Hyde Park, north of UT, there are 34 listings ranging from $199,000 to $869,000.

On the road today servicing a client 150-miles away. Windshield time!

Let them eat i-pads:

“Four-year-old children in low-income families who receive free milk, fruit and vegetables through a U.S. government nutrition program might be turned away within weeks if federal spending cuts take effect March 1.

Administrators with the Women, Infants and Children program say they would have to trim their caseloads by 600,000 applicants or participants across the country because of the spending cuts. Four and five year olds would probably be affected before infants and toddlers, said Douglas Greenaway, president of the National WIC Association, a Washington nonprofit group.

Programs serving low-income women and children will be squeezed if President Barack Obama and Congress don’t reach agreement soon to avert the automatic spending cuts. Early childhood education, home heating assistance, housing vouchers, domestic violence prevention, nutrition and child-care programs would all be affected.”

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-22/impoverished-4-year-olds-put-human-face-on-budget-cuts.html

Jimmy Carter: President Obama thanked my grandson for ‘47 percent’ tape
By KEVIN CIRILLI | 2/21/13 7:29 PM EST

Former President Jimmy Carter said Thursday that President Barack Obama thanked his grandson James Carter IV last week for being involved in the public release of the video tape of Mitt Romney making his infamous comments about “47 percent” of Americans.

“When James went to meet President Obama, President Obama ran across the room, embraced him and thanked him profusely for his time, by the way,” Carter told CNN’s Piers Morgan in an interview.

Carter added: “I don’t think he said ‘winning the election’ but thank you for helping me with the election. I don’t know exactly what the words were.”

The former president told Morgan that Romney was not able to distance himself from the comments, in which he said at private Florida fundraiser last May that “47 percent” of Americans were “dependent” on the government and would vote for Obama no matter what.
…

Another one for the COEXIST koolaid drinkers, because “our differences only make us stronger™.”

6 Sought in Anti-Gay Subway Attack:

http://m.nbcnewyork.com/nbcnewyork/pm_107633/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=ENCrBH1L

This house is the whopper of the year in my opinion. Look at the taxes alone $28,455. The liar kept on saying the bank wants to get rid of if it and will take a very low offer. (Hinted 200K) Then you can take the town to a SMALL CLAIMS COURT and get your taxes lowered as he had seen it happen before.

I think at some point the local tax officials should be ashamed of themselves. Lake front properties are fairly common around here and land in Tully NY is no more than $1000 an acre. Trust me when I say this there are no jobs in Tully NY and is 30 miles from Syracuse NY

http://www.cnyhomes.com/Listing/Search/info.cgi?mlnum=S285866

In our town they demolished the Carrier building, now they are demolishing Bristol Myers building and my wifey left McQuay as an HR director 2 years ago. The closing was announced back then that if the production numbers were not improving the plant would shut down. The people working in this company are country bumpkins who did not take the warnings seriously. Some of the top managers in the company were high school graduates with online BS degrees and they had also hired their high school friends.

http://auburnpub.com/news/local/daikin-mcquay-plant-in-auburn-closing-in/article_6e0d90a8-c4b0-5d24-a1fb-9a7740a0badc.html

Kevin Kelly on the Red Couch.

One of the most brilliant thinkers alive. Author of What Technology Wants. This short interview will really make you think.

http://inside.flipboard.com/2013/02/21/on-the-red-couch-with-tech-thinker-kevin-kelly-2/

Bio: co-founder of Wired Magazine, publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog, TED speaker and Long Now Foundation.

Things that worry Kevin;
The internet is the most powerful thing we have ever invented, can be and will be abused to great harm.

Watch out for replication. Technology is just getting started with cloning and self-replicating devices.

This is cool.

County tax assessor succeeds in fleecing property owners

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Before she left office in December, former Bernalillo County Assessor Karen Montoya bungled hundreds of tax assessments and illegally fleeced property owners out of what could top a million dollars.

Now, the vast majority of those property owners have no recourse to get their money back and are stuck with the exorbitant tax bills for good, according to a four-month investigation by News 13’s Larry Barker. Just two of the 1,400 taxpayers hit with illegal property tax bills protested them in court. In both cases, the judges ruled that Montoya had failed to follow the law and ordered her to roll back the taxes to the three percent limit on the two properties in question.

And while Montoya obeyed the judges’ orders, she ignored the rest of the properties she illegally raised taxes on, and left those owners with massively higher tax assessments.

“She should have rolled everybody back,” said Demesia Padilla, secretary of the New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department. “That would have treated everybody equitably. That would have said, ‘I am agreeing with the courts that what I did was wrong. So let me roll everybody back.’ When she just picked and chose who she rolled back – that’s wrong.”

And those property owners who didn’t protest the new property assessments are now stuck with those tax bills for good. Moreover, the law doesn’t allow for refunds.

“Our statutes have a process for someone to protest their property values,” Padilla said. “And if they don’t do that, they are going to get hurt. Do I like that? I don’t like that that happens. But we have rules that have to be followed.”

The writer suggests that these owners will be forced to pay their assessments indefinitely into the future, but I doubt that’s the case.

If the WWE has turned on the GOP, it’s all over.

WWE Invents Odious Tea Party Character As Part of Publicity Stunt, Suckers Glenn Beck

Over the weekend, the WWE introduced a new wrestler/manager character, “Zeb Coulter,” who used his time at the mic to commemorate President’s Day and attack illegal immigrants. This enranged the Internet, as obvious attempts to enrage the Internet seem to do. Alex Jones lept on it first. Then Glenn Beck…

Beck’s… attack warrants an invitation “to appear live this Monday on Raw,” and a patronizing explanation.

Similar to other television shows and feature films, WWE is in the entertainment business, creating fictional characters that serve as protagonists or antagonists. To create compelling and relevant content for our audience, it is important to incorporate current events into our storylines. WWE is creating a rivalry centered on a topical subject that has varying points of view. This storyline was developed to build the Mexican American character Del Rio into a hero given WWE’s large Latino base, which represents 20% of our audience.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/02/22/wwe_invents_odious_tea_party_character_as_part_of_publicity_stunt_suckers.html

Posted: 3:38 p.m. Friday, Feb. 22, 2013

Palm Beach County foreclosure cases put on fast forward
By Kimberly Miller
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

WEST PALM BEACH —
Palm Beach County’s idling foreclosure cases are about to get a kick-start as judges begin setting trial dates for dawdling banks and stalling homeowners.

An administrative order issued Thursday by Palm Beach County Chief Judge Peter Blanc requires bank attorneys to identify all of their foreclosures filed before July 1, 2010, and outline the status of each case. For foreclosures pending 36 months or more, the court will schedule blocks of trial time, pushing both sides to present their case in what some fear is a return of the “rocket docket.”

About 9,500 _ 30 percent _ of Palm Beach County’s foreclosure cases are three years old or older, Blanc said.

“For cases to be sitting there that long, I think neither side is making an effort to move them,” Blanc said. “We had to do something to get these back before the court.”

A swifter trial could push banks that don’t want more foreclosures on their books to settle with homeowners, negotiating a loan modification, short sale or deed in lieu of foreclosure, some defense attorneys said.

But a speedy judiciary can also be a clumsy one, and they worry homeowners with legitimate defenses will be harmed if corners are cut.

“If the cases are undefended, they should go to trial and be disposed of quickly,” said Royal Palm Beach-based attorney Tom Ice. “But if you set 70 cases for trial in one morning, it’s prejudicial to homeowners defending their case because in five minutes you’re either not going to get a fair trial or it’s not going to happen that day.”

Despite a $4 million stipend awarded last year to Florida’s circuit courts to help clear a stubborn foreclosures backlog, there remain 371,119 cases pending statewide, just 6,588 fewer than when the money became available in July.

That’s because nearly as quickly as a case is cleared, new foreclosures are being filed. There were 105,020 cases disposed between July and December. In the same six-month period, 98,432 new cases hit the system.

Palm Beach County has 31,678 pending foreclosure cases, 1,300 fewer than in July.

Blanc said in December he was disappointed in the lack of progress being made processing cases and was looking at ways to move them more quickly.

Miami-Dade County judges began setting trial dates for lagging foreclosure cases in the fall. Attorneys complain the trials are cattle calls and could result in voided judgments if homeowners challenge that the cases were tried without proper orders. If a trial is forced when there are still unanswered pleadings it could be rolled back.

“There are legitimate hardships that should be considered, but I do think this will cause them to clean things up,” said suburban West Palm Beach homeowner Cathy Hogan, who is a member of the Somerset Homeowners Association.

She said neighborhoods suffering with blighted and abandoned homes that the banks have been slow to repossess could benefit from a faster foreclosure system.

“I would say this is more good than bad if the courts and judges are understanding,” she said.

There is a safeguard in Blanc’s order for homeowners. Requests for more time, to reschedule the trial, or to strike a trial date, will be heard by the chief judge or his designate “in an effort to promote consistence and improve the administration of justice.”

Malcolm Harrison, a Wellington-based foreclosure defense attorney, said a Palm Beach County judge told him that the court is hoping to eliminate about 6,000 cases filed before 2009 by the end of summer.

“The banks are actively filing new cases all the time so when you have these aging cases in the system, you are facing a situation where the courts are going to break down,” Harrison said.

Harrison’s office is handling about 150 cases filed before July 2010. He said Thursday’s order puts homeowners on notice that they should redouble efforts to reach an agreement with their banks.

“Because if you don’t, the courts are going to push these cases to trial and, honestly, the typical outcome of a trial is that a sale date is set and the home is sold,” Harrison said.

State estimates show 220,000 new foreclosures are expected to be filed during the fiscal year that began July 1. An additional 239,000 are estimated for the 2013-14 fiscal year. Florida’s courts will get a $5 million boost to help process foreclosures from the state’s share of the National Mortgage Settlement.

“In 2008, a Palm Beach County single-family home was on the market for a median of 140 days.”

“In January, it was down to 85.”

In the article above by the same writer it states….

“For foreclosures pending 36 months or more, the court will schedule blocks of trial time,”

“About 9,500 _ 30 percent _ of Palm Beach County’s foreclosure cases are three years old or older,”

Posted: 5:43 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013

January Palm Beach County home sales gain in price and volume

By Kimberly Miller

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

It was a quick trip from list date to sale date for the troubled Key West-style house in West Palm Beach’s south end.

Just 99 days from start to finish, paid for in cash, and the once mangy foreclosure with broken windows and dead grass off El Prado and South Dixie Highway has new owners, a green lawn and, on Thursday, was cocooned in a pest control tent — a telltale sign of a deal.

In 2008, a Palm Beach County single-family home was on the market for a median of 140 days.

In January, it was down to 85.

The El Prado sale, which closed for $6,200 more than the foreclosure auction price, is indicative of Palm Beach County’s real estate market in recent months as traditional homebuyers and investors clamor for scant properties.

Last month, Palm Beach County single-family home sales jumped 19 percent from the same time in 2012, while sale prices increased 21 percent to a median of $218,000, according to a report released Thursday by the Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches.

Inventory stood at a 5.9 months’ supply, down 47 percent from January 2012.

“It looks like real stabilization,” said Kevin Kent, a broker-associate with Platinum Properties in Palm Beach County. “Nationwide, there is confidence building in the economy and people feel more free to go out and make the purchases they’ve wanted to make.”

Statewide, sales of single-family homes totaled 13,679 in January, up 11.7 percent from the previous year, while median sales prices jumped 12.4 percent to $145,000. The Florida Realtors group, which issued a statewide sales report Thursday, said January marked the 13th consecutive month for price gains for single-family homes and condominiums.

The median condo price was $112,000, an 18 percent increase.

The number of homes sold nationally jumped 9 percent in January from the previous year to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.92 million. The median sales price was $173,600, up 12 percent.

The national report spurred declarations from some economists that the real estate market has tipped to favor the seller. Even Wells Fargo analysts sounded giddy, declaring that the spring home-buying season could “surprise on the upside,” as long as there’s no federal fiscal crisis.

“Buyer traffic is continuing to pick up, while seller traffic is holding steady,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors, which issued a nationwide sales report Thursday. “In fact, buyer traffic is 40 percent above a year ago, so there is plenty of demand but insufficient inventory to improve sales more strongly.”

Higher sale prices also buoyed home values. About 70,484 South Florida homeowners regained equity in their homes during the fourth quarter of 2012, according to a new report from Zillow. That still left 39.6 percent of homes with mortgages in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties underwater, meaning the homeowner owes more on the loan than the home is worth. But that’s down from 41 percent during the third quarter of last year.

Thursday’s rosy home sales news is balanced by darker forces in the market, such as the 371,119 pending foreclosures in Florida’s court system as of December. Many of those homes will go up for sale at distressed prices after bank repossession.

Part of Palm Beach County’s rising prices are a result of fewer distressed sales. In January, foreclosure sales were down 37 percent from the previous year. Short sales were down 8 percent.

Also not revealed in the reports is the stress felt by some traditional buyers searching for the perfect home in a market full of investors, complex deals and tightened lending standards.

“Why does it take so long for a bank to do a short sale?” asked Ray Luisi, who closed on his Delray Beach home in December after wrangling with the bank for three months. “It just seems like the banks don’t want to communicate.”

Luisi put 20 percent down and easily earned financing.

Kent said more brokers are telling him about traditional loans that require just 5 percent down, but “you have to have sparkling credit.”

As for the Key West-style home, its ride was swift, but not without bumps. Repossessed by the bank in May, it was initially under contract within a month of going on the market in November. That fell through, the price dropped a little, it went under contract again, and the price dropped a little more. It closed earlier this month for $83,000, $11,000 less than its original list price.

Do the state workers have to click their heels together and salute Andrew Cuomo with a straight right arm?

NYS worker forced to retire after talking to media

February 20, 2013

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. (AP) — A 30-year state Department of Transportation employee said he was forced to retire rather than possibly be fired for speaking to a newspaper reporter without approval from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration.

Mike Fayette said he was threatened with termination for talking to the Adirondack Daily Enterprise for a story in which he praised the DOT’s handling of the remnants of Hurricane Irene.

Cuomo’s administration has earned a reputation for tightly controlling information and access to departmental public information officers.

Fayette was ordered to Albany on Sept. 12 for “a disciplinary interrogation” at which, he said, he was shown an Aug. 28 email from Breen instructing him not to speak so that DOT Commissioner Joan McDonald could talk to the paper. The email came the day after Fayette talked to the paper.

DOT’s News Media Contact policy says approval of the agency’s public affairs office in Albany is required before talking to the press.

Fayette could have contested the charges at a disciplinary hearing, but on Dec. 3, the state said he could accept a demotion and transfer to Albany. He turned it down and retired effective Feb. 8.

Fayette told the AP that he had always planned on retiring at 62, after 37-plus years with the department and at 75 percent of his salary. Instead, he’s out at 55 and will earn 60 percent of his salary, a difference of about $15,000 a year.

“I’m a civil engineer. I don’t do this other (political) stuff,” Fayette said Wednesday. “I love working for the DOT; 99.9 percent of the people I’ve met in the DOT are fine men and women, truly dedicated.”

Now, Fayette is seeking reinstatement.

“I also want my vacation time back that they forced me to burn up for something I didn’t do,” he said. “It certainly would be nice to have a letter of apology for putting me through this. I’m just looking for things wrong to me to be made right.”

The state said it will not consider reinstatement.

Fayette doesn’t know what steps will come next. He may take legal action, though he acknowledged that his options would be limited.

“Hopefully cooler heads will prevail. Bring everybody into the room to talk about it,” he said. “I don’t want to have to hire a lawyer over something that shouldn’t have happened.”

http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/NYS-worker-forced-to-retire-after-talking-to-media-4293612.php - 75k -

The Feds Want Your Retirement Accounts
By John White

Quietly, behind the scenes, the groundwork is being laid for federal government confiscation of tax-deferred retirement accounts such as IRAs. Slowly, the cat is being let out of the bag.
Last January 18th, in a little noticed interview of Richard Cordray, acting head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Bloomberg reported “[t]he U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [CFPB] is weighing whether it should take on a role in helping Americans manage the $19.4 trillion they have put into retirement savings, a move that would be the agency’s first foray into consumer investments.” That thought generates some skepticism, as aptly expressed by the Richard Terrell cartoon published by American Thinker.
Days later On January 24th President Obama renominated Cordray as CFPB director even though his recess appointment was not due to expire until the end of 2013.
One day later, in the first significant resistance to President Obama’s concentration of presidential power, a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington DC unanimously said that Obama’s Recess Appointments to the National Labor Relations Board are unconstitutional. Similar litigation testing the Cordray appointment to the CFPB is in the pipeline.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) created by the 2,319 page Dodd-Frank legislation is a new and little known bureau with wide-ranging powers. Placed within the Federal Reserve, a corporation privately owned by member banks, the CFPB is insulated from oversight by either the President or Congress, its budget not subject to legislative control. It is not even clear that a new President can replace the CFPB director on taking office.
Unusual legal and political environments have a significant impact on the CFPB. With Cordray’s recess appointment in doubt several questions remain unanswered.
1) What will become of the CFPB when Cordray’s appointment is found invalid? An indicator comes from the NRLB, which operated unconstitutionally for years without a quorum. In 2007 the Senate threatened no NLRB nominations reported out of committee.
The NLRB continued operating with two members. Then a Supreme Court ruling in June of 2010 invalidated the NLRB decisions for lack of a quorum. Fisher & Phillips give the details about what was done next.
But recovery from the Supreme Court’s sting was quick, with Liebman and Schaumber still on the Board and with two new Members confirmed, … the suddenly full-strength Board simply added a new Member to the “rump panel” of the original decisions and managed to rubber-stamp many of the disputed Orders - at a record-setting pace - with the same result…
This may explain why President Obama renominated Cordray a year early. Once confirmed Cordray can rubber-stamp decisions made while he was unconstitutionally appointed. Otherwise those decisions will be invalidated.
2) What will the CFPB do with your money? The CFPB incursion into individual personal savings, in order to control how you invest your money, isn’t a new idea. Current proposals grew from a policy analysis as disclosed by Roger Hedgecock.
On Nov. 20, 2007, Theresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, presented a paper proposing that the feds eliminate the tax deferral for private retirement accounts, confiscate the balance of those accounts, give each worker a $600 annual “contribution,” assess a mandatory savings tax on every worker and guarantee a 3 percent rate of return on the newly titled “Guaranteed Retirement Accounts,” or GRAs.
How would that be accomplished? The Carolina Journal reported Ghilarducci’s 2008 testimony to Nancy Pelosi’s House.
Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts “including 401(k)s and IRAs” and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration.
Your Government universal GRA investment savings account is an annuity managed by Social Security. Hedgecock noted ‘[m]ake no mistake here: Obama is after your retirement money. The “annuities” will “invest” not in the familiar packages of bond and stock mutual funds but in the Treasury debt!’
By 2010 Bloomberg published an article titled “US Government Takes Two More Steps Toward Nationalization of Private Retirement Account Assets.” In that article Patrick Heller observed that, with Democrat control of Congress and the Presidency:
[I]n mid-September 2010 the Departments of Labor and Treasury held hearings on the next step toward achieving Ghilarducci’s goals. The stated purpose was to require all private plans to offer retirees an option to elect an annuity. The “behind-the-scenes” purpose for this step was to get people used to the idea that the retirement assets they had accumulated would no longer be part of their estate when they died.
So the Government would get the money, not the estate or family of the people who saved the money during a lifetime of work. That’s a one hundred percent death tax on savings. Worse, the most responsible and poorest families will be penalized.
Democrats had a blueprint for diverting people’s savings from private investment to government debt. Then in 2010 the Tea Party won the house…
3) Why should the Government intervene in people’s savings decisions? The justifications for Government intervention in private financial decisions are varied. Panic over the economy, Wall Street, mandating savings equity, eliminating investment risk, financial crisis losses, retirement security, much-needed oversight, your 401K becomes a 201K, shoddy financial products, and predatory investment bankers are just a few.
If the financial industry is so predatory, how is it possible that savers keep any money? More importantly, we have all those government agencies, FDIC, FINRA, SEC, Labor Department, Treasury Department, NCUA, Office of Thrift Supervision, FHFA, NCUSIF, Comptroller of the Currency, Office of Foreign Assets Control, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, hundreds of criminal penalties, and state level regulators. Are we admitting the Government is incapable of policing criminal and predatory behavior? Do we have invincible predators plundering the people, or do politicians Cry Wolf?
And about that crisis in the economy. Former Congressman Barney Frank, one of the authors of Dodd-Frank, admitted to Larry Kudlow that Government was to blame for the housing crisis.
Professor Ghilarducci said “humans often lack the foresight, discipline, and investing skills required to sustain a savings plan.” Professor Ghilarducci tells us that people are flawed, no argument there.
Her solution, substitute Government decisions for the judgment of the millions of people who actually earned and saved the money. She fails to mention the government bureaucrats wielding the power to compel you to comply are themselves imperfect. Which is preferable, one faulty Government solution or millions of individual free choices?
4) Are there other forces pushing Government to confiscate people’s savings? With $16 trillion in debt the short answer is yes. When governments embark on a path of spending money they don’t have, they resort to financial repression. According to Wikipedia:
Financial repression is any of the measures that governments employ to channel funds to themselves, that, in a deregulated market, would go elsewhere. Financial repression can be particularly effective at liquidating debt.
Do we have any evidence that the US Government is pursuing financial repression? Yes we do. Jeff Cox at CNBC. “US and European regulators are essentially forcing banks to buy up their own government’s debt-a move that could end up making the debt crisis even worse, a Citigroup analysis says.”
An Investors Business Daily article, Banks Pressured to Buy Government Debts, notes that “[b]anks can’t say no. They fear the political fallout. So they meekly submit to the government’s dictates.”
Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal reports that “[i]n 2011, the Fed purchased a stunning 61% of Treasury issuance.” Then a CNS News article revealed that “[s]o far this calendar year [2013], the Federal Reserve has bought up more U.S. government debt than the U.S. Treasury has issued.”
5) Is the health of Social Security (SS) a factor? There are several potential measures of when Social Security retirement goes broke. One measure is when FICA tax income doesn’t cover the cost of retirement checks. We have passed that point already. Others say that SS is fine until the lock box runs out of special issue bonds (IOUs).
Even though the SS bonds in the lock box cannot be sold on the open market, the Treasury Department remains under political pressure to honor that obligation by borrowing real cash to redeem the IOUs. At least until the IOUs in the lock box are gone. How long is that? Based on a credible source, Bruce Krasting at Zerohedge suggests not long.
SS consists of two different pieces. The Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability Insurance (DI). Both entities have their own Trust Funds (TF). OASI has a big TF that will, in theory, allow for SS retirement benefits to be paid for another 15+ years. On the other hand, the DI fund will run completely dry during the 1stQ of 2016.
So Krasting expects the President and Congress will soon be forced to choose between 4 solutions:
1 Increase Income Taxes
2 Increase Payroll Taxes
3 Cut disability benefits by 30%
4 Kick the can down the road and raid the retirement fund to pay for disability shortfalls.
Krasting predicts Congress and Obama will be behind door number four. His credible source is the Congressional Budget Office report Social Security Trust Fund–February 2013 Baseline. In the footnotes it projects a $1 Trillion drain on the retirement fund which currently holds $2.8 Trillion. That’s a loss of approximately one third of the retirement IOUs.
Krasting however omits another possible solution, politicians can raid private retirement savings to put more IOUs in the lock boxes and more real money in the Treasury. Other people’s money is a temptation and $19.4 Trillion is a very large temptation.
Social Security is the largest entitlement program with a trust fund of $2.8 Trillion IOUs, soon to be reduced by another $1 Trillion. Can any politician, addicted to spending, resist that temptation of $19.4 Trillion? That’s real people’s real money that will be spent by Government in exchange for IOUs given to the SS lock box.
Meanwhile newly minted Senator Elizabeth Warren has entered the debate. Conservatives and Republicans have challenged the CFPB in the wake of the unconstitutional recess appointment. Bloomberg speculates that Warren might agree to trim the CFPB powers in a compromise. Bloomberg reported:
“A strong independent consumer agency is good for families and lenders that follow the rules and good for the economy as a whole,” Warren said yesterday in an interview. “I will keep fighting for that.” [snip]
Some observers have suggested that Warren’s original support for a commission-led bureau might mean she would be amenable to compromise on that issue. Warren spokesman Dan Geldon said such speculation is mistaken.
“Senator Warren thinks the single director structure makes sense and that CFPB should continue to be able to operate, like every other banking regulator, without relying on appropriations for its funding,” Geldon said.
Bloomberg also notes that soon “the Senate will have to decide whether to vote to confirm director Richard Cordray in his post, which would make a legal challenge pointless.”
Conservatives and Republicans challenge the surrender of legislative power to the bureau, the concentrated power of a single director, the unconstitutional recess appointments, and the violation of constitutional separation of powers. The Republican position is the constitutional questions and litigation presently underway should be resolved prior to approving a director of CFPB.
The constitutional issues surrounding Dodd — Frank and the CFPB are beyond the space for this article. For those interested in the legal issues, a good synopsis can be found at the Mark Levin Radio Show podcast for February 18th. Mark is an attorney and his Landmark Legal Foundation has argued many cases before the Supreme Court. He can explain complex legal issues in straightforward language.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/the_feds_want_your_retirement_accounts.html#ixzz2Lg4VxsqO
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Home sales are slowly climbing back, thanks to investor demand, improving consumer confidence in housing, and the surprising return of former homeowners who once walked away from their commitments.

These so-called, “strategic defaulters,” some of them investors and some owner-occupants, are coming back to the market, despite damaged credit, and apparently the market is welcoming them back.

A new survey of past clients by YouWalkAway.com, a website that assists borrowers in the legal pitfalls of strategic default, found that nearly 80 percent expressed a desire to buy a home again within the next twelve months. It also cites data by Moody’s analytics, showing that the number of eligible home buyers who have had a previous foreclosure will be 1.5 million by the first quarter of 2014.

Crashing home prices and sketchy mortgage products caused millions of Americans to default on their loans and eventually lose their homes. For some, it was a tragic fight to the end to keep their single largest investment; for others it was a conscious decision to walk away from their mortgage commitments, given the real fact that they would likely not see home equity again for many years to come.

Some saw this as morally reprehensible, others as a sensible business decision.

Why Your boss is dumping your wife:

By denying coverage to spouses, employers not only save the annual premiums, but also the new fees that went into effect as part of the Affordable Care Act. This year, companies have to pay $1 or $2 “per life” covered on their plans, a sum that jumps to $65 in 2014. And health law guidelines proposed recently mandate coverage of employees’ dependent children (up to age 26), but husbands and wives are optional. “The question about whether it’s obligatory to cover the family of the employee is being thought through more than ever before,” says Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health. See: When your boss doesn’t trust your doctor

While surcharges for spousal coverage are more common, last year, 6% of large employers excluded spouses, up from 5% in 2010, as did 4% of huge companies with at least 20,000 employees, twice as many as in 2010, according to human resources firm Mercer. These “spousal carve-outs,” or “working spouse provisions,” generally prohibit only people who could get coverage through their own job from enrolling in their spouse’s plan.

Such exclusions barely existed three years ago, but experts expect an increasing number of employers to adopt them: “That’s the next step,” Darling says. HMS, a company that audits plans for employers, estimates that nearly a third of companies might have such policies now. Holdouts say they feel under pressure to follow suit. “We’re the last domino,” says Duke Bennett, mayor of Terre Haute, Ind., which is instituting a spousal carve-out for the city’s health plan, effective July 2013, after nearly all major employers in the area dropped spouses.

But when employers drop spouses, they often lose more than just the one individual, when couples choose instead to seek coverage together under the other partner’s employer. Terre Haute, which pays $6 million annually to insure nearly 1,200 people including employees and their family members, received more than 20 new plan members when a local university, bank and county government stopped insuring spouses, according to Bennett. “We have a great plan, so they want to be on ours. All we’re trying to do is level the playing field here,” he says.

While couples generally prefer to be on the same health plan, companies often find that spouses are more expensive to insure than their own employees. That’s because, say benefits experts, covered spouses tend to be women, who as a group not only spend more on health care, but also have more free time to go to the doctor if they don’t work. Indeed, JetBlue’s covered spouses cost 50% more than crewmembers themselves, according to the airline’s online Q&A about its health plan, which this year extended wellness incentives to spouses for the first time. See: Selling health insurance by the pound

Click to Play
Obama health law contraception opt-out proposed
Any change would be aimed at alleviating concerns of the Catholic church. WSJ’s Louise Radnofsky reports. Photo: AP

About a fifth of companies had policies to discourage spouses from joining their health plan in 2012, according to Mercer, though most just charged extra—$100 a month, on average—to cover spouses who could get insurance elsewhere, rather than deny coverage entirely. Indeed, large firms including generics maker Teva and supply chain manager Intermec have spousal surcharges costing $100 a month, or $1,200 annually, while Xerox charges $1,000 for the year. See: 10 things your office won’t say

But experts say more firms are likely to drop spouses altogether, whether they work or not—especially when the new federal health-care exchanges open in 2014, providing an alternative for spouses left out in the cold. “When there’s a place for people to go, employers won’t feel as beholden or compelled to cover the spouse,” says Joan Smyth, an employee benefits consultant with Mercer.

Firms that recently decided to drop spouses from their plans range from private insurance agencies to school systems and universities like Ball State, as well as large companies like pump and valve manufacturer Flowserve. Wisconsin-based furniture company KI carved out spouses this year when couples flocked to its plan for the first time during open enrollment. “Now, each employer is responsible for its own employee,” says Timothy Van Severen, corporate risk manager for KI, which insures about 1,700 employees in its health plan. “We were going to see a higher claim cost if we didn’t do that, because of the migration coming back to us.”

Some companies drive spouses away using other tactics, such as making spousal coverage prohibitively expensive through higher surcharges or by making reimbursement rates so low that spouses can’t afford the plans. The share of employers who allow spouses in their plan but don’t pay for any part of it rose from zero to 3% this year, according to human resources consulting firm Towers Watson. Northrop Grumman, the large security firm, will cover spouses who can get insurance through their own employers, but only if they first enroll in their own plan, and use Northrop’s as secondary coverage. (Some companies actually pay spouses an incentive if they enroll in their own plan, though insurance experts say the incentive is a waste of money—and that employers would do better by just cutting spouses off.) “You’re making it kind of a no-brainer for the other adult dependent to get on his or her own plan,” says Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health. “No one wants to be just a dependent magnet.”

But like any breakup, the separation of spouses into different health plans can be traumatic for families. Greg Fischer, a vice president in the employer solutions division at HMS, says demand has increased for the company’s dependent audits, which have revealed that 3% of spouses are ineligible for the health plans, either because of plan rules or divorce and legal marriage issues. The news can be upsetting to couples when one partner is forced to pay more for coverage or accept lesser benefits: One spouse may even have to stop seeing the family doctor if his or her new plan stipulates a different set of providers. “I think that’s where the pain point comes in for the employee—that their spouse may have to be covered under a different plan, or their benefits might be reduced,” Fischer says.

Couples then have to decide whether to stick together, even if it means losing benefits, or to split up so at least one spouse maintains coverage. If they separate, they may also have to choose which plan to insure the kids under, or whether to use different plans for each. “It certainly makes the family unit have to do some real soul-searching and figure out what works best for them,” says Karen McLeese, vice president of employee regulatory affairs for CBIZ Benefits & Insurance Services. The decision, she adds, will likely come down to dollars and cents.

For their part, employers say they try to educate employees on their options well in advance of the change, and health plans or insurance brokers sometimes step in to guide people through the transition and help them find doctors in their new network. In announcing its spousal carve-out, Ball State University, for one, warned employees to prepare “since this is a potentially life-changing event.” The university employee benefits staff worked with spouses and their employers to guide them through the transition onto their own plan, and have even allowed some spouses with “uncooperative” companies to stay on “until the conflict is resolved,” says Joan Todd, a spokeswoman for the university. “We wanted to be very careful that no spouse would lose coverage before they could be placed on their own employer’s plan.”

What Is The Truth ? All The News- Is a Lie? NDAA 2013 / H.R.5736 — The Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 Legalizes US Govt Domestic Propaganda

H.R.5736 (05/10/2012)

Smith–Mundt ActFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The US Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Public Law 80-402), popularly referred to as the Smith–Mundt Act, specifies the terms in which the United States government can engage global audiences, also known as public diplomacy.

The act was first introduced as the Bloom Bill in December 1945 in the 79th Congress and subsequently passed by the 80th Congress and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman on January 27, 1948.

ProvisionsThere are three key restrictions on the U.S. State Department in the Smith–Mundt Act.

The first and most well-known restriction was originally a prohibition on domestic dissemination of materials intended for foreign audiences by the State Department. The original intent was the Congress, the media and academia would be the filter to bring inside what the State Department said overseas. In 1967, the Advisory Commission on Information (later renamed the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy) recommended the de facto prohibition on domestic distribution be removed noting that there is “nothing in the statues specifically forbidding making USIA materials available to American audiences. Rather, what began as caution has hardened into policy.”[5] This changed in 1972 when Senator J. William Fulbright (D-AR) argued that America’s international broadcasting should take its “rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War relics” as he successfully amended the Act to read that any program material “shall not be disseminated” within the U.S. and that material shall be available “for examination only” to the media, academia, and Congress (P.L. 95-352 Sec. 204). In 1985, Senator Edward Zorinsky (D-NE) declared USIA would be no different than an organ of Soviet propaganda if its products were to be available domestically.[6] The Act was amended to read: “no program material prepared by the United States Information Agency shall be distributed within the United States” (P.L. 99-93). At least one court interpreted this language to mean USIA products were to be exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests. In response, the Act was amended again in 1990 to permit domestic distribution of program material “12 years after the initial dissemination” abroad (P.L. 101-246 Sec 202).

The second and third provisions were of greater interest to the Congress as they answered critical concerns about a deep-pocket government engaging domestic audiences. Added to the Bloom Bill, the predecessor to the Smith-Mundt Bill in June 1946 by Representative John M. Vorys (R-OH) “to remove the stigma of propaganda” and address the principal objections to the information activities the Congress intended to authorize. These provisions remain unamended and were the real prophylactic to address concerns the U.S. Government would create Nazi-style propaganda or resurrect President Wilson’s CPI-style activities. The amendment said the information activities should only be conducted if needed to supplement international information dissemination of private agencies; that the State Department was not to acquire a monopoly of broadcasting or any other information medium; and that private sector leaders should be invited to review and advise the State Department in this work.

Section 1437 of the Act requires the State Department to maximize its use of “private agencies.” Section 1462 requires “reducing Government information activities whenever corresponding private information dissemination is found to be adequate” and prohibits the State Department from having monopoly in any “medium of information” (a prescient phrase). Combined, these provide not only protection against government’s domination of domestic discourse, but interestingly a “sunset clause” for governmental activities that Rep. Karl Mundt (R-SD) and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs William Benton stated clearly: as private media stood up, government media would stand
———————————————————————————-

Summary: H.R.5736 [112th]

There is one summary of the bill.

Introduced in House (05/10/2012)

Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 - Amends the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 to authorize the Secretary of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to provide for the preparation and dissemination of information intended for foreign audiences abroad about the United States, including about its people, its history, and the federal government’s policies, through press, publications, radio, motion pictures, the Internet, and other information media, including social media, and through information centers and instructors. (Under current law such authority is restricted to information disseminated abroad, with a limited domestic exception.)

Authorizes the Secretary and the Board to make available in the United States motion pictures, films, video, audio, and other materials prepared for dissemination abroad or disseminated abroad pursuant to such Act, the United States International Broadcasting Act of 1994, the Radio Broadcasting to Cuba Act, or the Television Broadcasting to Cuba Act.

Amends the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 1986 and 1987 to prohibit funds for the Department of State or the Board from being used to influence public opinion or propagandizing in the United States. (Under current law such provision applies to the United States Information Agency [USIA].)

Applies such prohibition only to programs carried out pursuant to the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948, the United States International Broadcasting Act of 1994, the Radio Broadcasting to Cuba Act, and the Television Broadcasting to Cuba Act.

States that such provision shall: (1) not prohibit the Department or the Board from providing information about its operations, policies, programs, or program material, or making such information available to members of the media, public, or Congress; (2) not be construed to prohibit the Department from engaging in any medium of information on a presumption that a U.S. domestic audience may be exposed to program material; and (3) apply only to the Department and the Board and to no other federal department or agency.

H.R. 4310 (112th): National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013
112th Congress, 2011–2013. Text as of Dec 28, 2012 (Passed Congress/Enrolled Bill).

Status & Summary | PDF | Source: GPO

‘SEC. 208. CLARIFICATION ON DOMESTIC DISTRIBUTION OF PROGRAM MATERIAL.

‘(a) In General- No funds authorized to be appropriated to the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors shall be used to influence public opinion in the United States. This section shall apply only to programs carried out pursuant to the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (22 U.S.C. 1431 et seq.), the United States International Broadcasting Act of 1994 (22 U.S.C. 6201 et seq.), the Radio Broadcasting to Cuba Act (22 U.S.C. 1465 et seq.), and the Television Broadcasting to Cuba Act (22 U.S.C. 1465aa et seq.). This section shall not prohibit or delay the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors from providing information about its operations, policies, programs, or program material, or making such available, to the media, public, or Congress, in accordance with other applicable law.

‘(b) Rule of Construction- Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors from engaging in any medium or form of communication, either directly or indirectly, because a United States domestic audience is or may be thereby exposed to program material, or based on a presumption of such exposure. Such material may be made available within the United States and disseminated, when appropriate, pursuant to sections 502 and 1005 of the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (22 U.S.C. 1462 and 1437), except that nothing in this section may be construed to authorize the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors to disseminate within the United States any program material prepared for dissemination abroad on or before the effective date of section 1078 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013.

‘(c) Application- The provisions of this section shall apply only to the Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors and to no other department or agency of the Federal Government.’.

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