The Housing Bubble

Welcome to Craterton, Canada:

“The flicker of optimism that sparked in Canada’s housing market when January sales outpaced December’s has died out, erased by a notable drop in February.

Last month’s declines were significant enough to prompt the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) to cut its sales outlook for 2013 on Friday for the third time since last summer.

The less-than-stellar February data come as Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is in the final stages of preparing the federal budget, to be released on Thursday. Mortgage brokers and other industry players are lobbying for new measures to spur first-time buyers back into the housing market.

But some economists cautioned Friday that the spring selling season, which is just starting, will be a key determinant of the state of the market and that sales might still surprise if low mortgage rates and pent-up demand push buyers back in.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/housing/clouds-gather-over-canadian-housing-market/article9812647/

The losses in Toronto will be incalculable:

“For anyone involved in Toronto’s real estate market, this spring seems particularly vexing.

“It’s so frustrating,” is a refrain heard repeatedly - from sellers, prospective buyers and real estate agents - if for different reasons.

I heard it this week from one house hunter who is searching for a typical, unpretentious bungalow in Long Branch, but can seldom find an open house – even as the spring market is supposed to be gearing up. Many sellers of desirable condominiums can’t get their asking price – even though buyers are willing to make an offer within 24 hours of the listing arriving on the market.

“There are the buyers out there to consume the listings,” says real estate agent Geoffrey Grace of ReMax Hallmark Realty Ltd., whose client was considering making an offer on that house but backed away when the eye-catching asking price created too much of a frenzy.

“That house is a total redo, top to bottom,” he says.

And while some buyers are not willing to spend months or years transforming a house, those who are willing to do so are getting better deals. They can also finance a renovation at low interest rates.

“Money’s cheap,” says Mr. Grace. “HGTV has grown a whole new crop of buyers that are willing to take on that sort of thing.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/home-and-garden/real-estate/one-word-to-describe-torontos-real-estate-market-it-starts-with-an-f/article9759374/

Not sure if this has been posted on HBB recently. This is an ongoing series of reader-submitted tales of woe, called “Unemployment Stories”, now up to volume 30. Discusses layoffs, declining living standards, impossible job searches, is extremely depressing to read

http://gawker.com/hello-from-the-underclass

Because Lucky Ducky can’t afford to drive to their three part-time jobs:

“Fuel economy of vehicles sold in the U.S. last year had the sharpest gains in almost four decades, as foreign automakers Honda Motor Co. Ltd. (7267), Volkswagen AG (VOW) and Mazda Motor Corp. (7261) had the most efficient fleets.

An annual report by the Environmental Protection Agency showed new cars and trucks had a 16 percent gain in fuel efficiency in the past five years, to 23.8 miles per gallon. Preliminary data shows an average increase of 1.4 mpg in 2012 from the previous year, which in part was attributed to the drop in Japanese vehicle production after the March 2011 tsunami, the EPA said.

“We are making strides toward saving families money at the pump, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and cleaning up the air we breathe,” Gina McCarthy, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the EPA, said in a statement on the report.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-15/vehicle-fuel-economy-has-biggest-u-s-gain-since-1975.html

The next generation of Lucky Ducky:

“For many Americans, the phrase “young single mother” conjures up a picture of a teenage high-school dropout. But that image is out of date. Teen pregnancy rates have been declining for two decades now. Today’s typical unmarried mother is a high-school graduate in her early 20s who may very well be living with her child’s father.

Despite her apparent advantages, however, she faces many of the same problems that we used to associate with her younger sisters. If 30 is the new 20, today’s unmarried 20-somethings are the new teen moms. And the tragic consequences are much the same: children raised in homes that often put them at an enormous disadvantage from the very start of life.

Thanks in part to TV shows like “Girls” and predecessors like “Friends,” we tend to think of today’s 20-something years as a kind of postadolescent transitional period: Young adults move in and out of jobs and careers, hang out at cafes and bars with friends, test drive romantic partners and just try to figure themselves out. This pop-cultural depiction is accurate enough for the third or so of Americans who have a four-year college degree, but it’s a long way from the reality of most 20-somethings. By the time they turn 30, about two-thirds of American women have had their first child, usually outside of marriage.

Indeed, 20-somethings are driving America’s all-time high level of nonmarital childbearing, which is now at 41% of all births, according to vital-statistics data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sixty percent of those births are to women in their 20s, while teens account for only one-fifth of nonmarital births. Between 1990 and 2008, the teen pregnancy rate has dropped by 42%, while the rate of nonmarital childbearing among 20-something women has risen by 27%.

The shift of unmarried parenthood from teens to 20-somethings is in part an unexpected consequence of delaying marriage. Over four decades, the age for tying the knot has risen steadily to a new high of nearly 27 for women and 29 for men, according to Census figures.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323826704578356494206134184.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLE_Video_Top

More Hope and Change from the Nobel Peace Prize president:

“Successive US presidents, including Barack Obama, have abused the system for handling classified information to expand their executive powers, the former senior official who oversaw state secrecy under George W Bush has claimed.

William Leonard, who was entrusted with ensuring proper treatment of state secrets by government agencies in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, said that over the past decade both the Obama and the previous Bush administrations had manipulated their classification authority to create new executive powers without congressional oversight or judicial review.

Leonard, the former head of the Information Security Oversight Office from 2002 to 2007, said that what was at stake was “the abuse of the very form of government we are operating under, as unilateral executive powers go unchallenged.”

He said: “Governments have decided under the cloak of secrecy to unleash the brutality of violence in our name and that of our fellow citizens. So extra judicial kidnapping becomes ‘rendition’, torture becomes ‘enhanced interrogation’, detainees are held on information that barely qualifies as hearsay, and assassination becomes ‘targeted killing’.”

Leonard told a high-level discussion group on secrecy and security convened by the Brennan Center for Justice in Washington that even language had suffered in this scramble for new powers. “It is as if Lewis Carroll, George Orwell and Franz Kafka were jointly conspiring to form official US policy.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/15/us-secrecy-policy-orwell-kafka-security-official

The future = there is no future:

“The Great Recession and its aftermath have been a financial nightmare for millions of us, and there’s no question that the economic debacle has put many baby boomers’ retirements in jeopardy. But while you may be having a tough time, chances are your adult kids and your younger neighbors are looking at a much rougher road than you are. A new report published today by the Urban Institute shows just how badly people who belong to generations X and Y – basically, anybody born after 1964 – has been set back by the economic trends of the last decade-plus. And it also shows how the financial advantages of being older have insulated baby boomers, as a group, from some of the worst effects of the economic slowdown.

Part of the older generation’s advantage is a matter of timing, as the study’s authors go on to explain. Older homeowners who’d bought their property well before the housing bubble, for example, were less likely to lose some or all of their equity when their houses lost value. Just as important, middle-aged investors who’d had time to build up a substantial retirement nest egg – and were able to avoid the temptation to bail out of the markets at their worst – had more assets on hand to benefit from the rebound that started in 2009. And people who’d already retired were more likely to be relying on annuities, Social Security and other income streams whose value wasn’t affected (or wasn’t affected much) by the crash.

Of course, there are other factors hampering younger adults. The unemployment rate has been higher for 25-to-34 year olds than for boomers for most of the last five years. Student debt, meanwhile, has become a huge obstacle to their efforts to save for the future: As MarketWatch has reported, over the past two decades the average college tuition has risen 20 times as fast as the average college grad’s wages. And those trends are intimately connected to the phenomenon of “boomerang” kids — college-grads, working or not, who can’t afford to live outside their parents’ homes.”

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/encore/2013/03/15/it-could-be-worse-you-could-be-under-40/

Chelsea Clinton to buy $10.5 million apartment on Madison Square Park (PHOTOS)

Chelsea Clinton and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, are in contract to buy a four-bedroom, 5,000-square-foot apartment in The Whitman, on the north end of Madison Square Park.

By Philip Caulfield / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Published: Thursday, March 14, 2013, 3:14 PM
Updated: Thursday, March 14, 2013, 3:14 PM

Chelsea Clinton and her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, are buying a sleek, $10.5 million apartment overlooking Madison Square Park, sources said.

The 5,000-square-foot pad, in The Whitman at 21 E. 26th St., is just a few blocks from the couple’s rented Gramercy Park loft. Sources said staying nearby was a top priority for the pair.

Last Sunday, Clinton, 33, and her husband, 35, planned to take a hush-hush tour of the New Georgian-style pre-war with her parents, former President Bill Clinton and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/real-estate/chelsea-clinton-buys-10-5-million-article-1.1288710 -

Greece’s “troika” of international lenders – the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF – have left the country amid a dispute over sacking 25,000 civil servants.

After extending their trip by several days, troika inspectors said they would return in April to finish their review.

Insiders confirmed that progress on an agreement to unlock the country’s next €2.8bn aid instalment, vital to public coffers, had been impeded by creditors’ demands to cut 25,000 civil servants from the state payroll by the end of the year.

Athens’s fragile government had hoped to convince lenders of the need to gradually transfer the employees into a special labour reserve by 2014, citing record levels of unemployment, anger with austerity and growing social unease. None of the mission chiefs was persuaded, however, given the reluctance of past administrations to shed staff who under the constitution enjoy jobs for life. Other disagreements included a relief plan for overindebted households and a controversial property tax levied through electricity bills.

Although both sides put on a brave face and played down the postponement - with the Greek finance minister Yannis Stournaras saying “there has been significant progress in the talks with the troika” - well-briefed sources did not share the same view. A member of one of the governing parties said there were “very real concerns” that further aid disbursements to Greece would be stopped. “The government is not going to axe civil servants. Full stop. There are very real concerns that come the summer the next loan disbursement [from the bailout] will not be made. Nothing is certain.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/14/eurozone-crisis-greece-job-cuts

Will this story never end!

rms

That Vince Foster makes for some interesting reading.

Gaggles I tell you! honk honk…

“Year-over-year prices have been increasing for months through a combination of market forces, including too few homes for sale and a gaggle of free-spending investors, many of them paying premium prices in cash. Investors include hedge funds, foreign buyers drawn to
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what are relatively low prices compared with real estate in their home countries, and mom-and-pop buyers of one or two homes for retirement income.”

“Move-up buyers are afraid to put their houses on the market without knowing where they’re going to go,” she said. “They’re afraid. What if they can’t get another house?”

Steve Wilner, a sales executive and client of Hatter’s, just sold a Pleasanton home with six offers, five of which were above asking price. “I wouldn’t want to be a buyer in this market,” he said. “As a seller, we held all the cards.”

“Everything that gets listed is going into contract very quickly,” said Bob Barrie of Keller Williams in Campbell. Barrie said the number of Santa Clara County homes and condos put up for sale has been growing this month, however.

“In a month or two, I think you’ll see sales explode,” he said.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/breaking-news/ci_22790010/bay-area-home-prices-hold-steady-february?source=most_emailed

can howmuchamonthharvey pull us out of recession? How much leverage do we need for a real recovery?

March 4, 2013
Charts key understanding of China bubble fears

Fears of a Chinese property bubble were brought to the market’s attention when China’s government took a series of steps to curb the market and as CBS’s popular news show “60 Minutes” aired a segment on the topic Sunday evening. View the ‘60 Minutes’ segment on the CBS News site.

— Steve Goldstein

Crisis bodes grim for Dutch housing markets
Souce: Xinhua Publish By Jane B. Hatcher
Updated 16/03/2013 4:57 am in Business
by Christien van den Brink

THE HAGUE, Mar. 15 — The happily married young couple Petra and Bert live in a suburban area of the fourth biggest city of the Netherlands, Utrecht.

Bert has just signed a long term contract at the ministry of Infrastructure, while Petra holds a part time job. They would be in the perfect position to buy their dream house, and yet, they rent it.

“Jobwise, it is really difficult to predict where we will be in 3, 4 years. We could be sent to other regions by our employers. Or we could even lose our job. This makes it hard to chose a location for our future house. We don’t want to commit to something until we are more financially stable,” Petra said.

Petra and Bert are not the only ones who have opted for renting in the Netherlands. According to figures published by CBS on Friday, 2.9 million dwellings of the 7.1 million households are rented apartments and houses.

Due to a growing incertainty at the job market, flexibility has become the main argument for renting. Renting offers the ability to pick up and leave if you have to take a job in an other region of the Netherlands.

“The reality is, sometimes renting makes more sense. If you do try to sell your home during an economic crisis, you’re at risk for losing money. Besides, when you rent, you don’t have to pay interest or property taxes to the bank,” said Brounen, a professor of real estate economy.
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Bursting real estate bubbles: China, Spain…Vancouver?
What would happen in Vancouver if China’s real-estate bubble were to burst? Would Vancouver’s bubble burst and would we ever see a squatter’s movement like that in Spain? (Image below by vikkies)
Jordan Yerman
Posted: Mar 6th, 2013

China and Spain have both seen ambitious increases in luxury housing developments. Both are now seeing those developments stand empty. What does this mean for Vancouver, currently experiencing a similar boom? Let’s find out. First stop: China.

This town is comin’ like a ghost town

China underwent the largest building boom in history, and now faces an equally large bubble-burst. The boom itself was driven by a rapacious development industry and heavy curbs on how China’s middle class can invest its newfound disposable income.

The video below explores the fallout from this boom: entire towns empty or nearly so, with fictional fast-food franchises and fictional neighbors enticing you to buy. Imagine the MAC scandal on an industrial scale.
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Buy a house today and your losses will be incalculable.

Spain’s housing crisis – readers’ panel

Guardian readers tell us how Spain’s housing and employment crisis has affected them and their community

Guardian readers and Carmen Fishwick
guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 March 2013 05.00 EDT

Barcelona-apartments

Apartments in Barcelona, Spain. The country’s social welfare cuts and global financial crisis has left many people unable to pay rents and mortgage repayments. Photograph: Martin Godwin

The global financial crash in 2008 left huge numbers unemployed. After cuts to social welfare, a high eviction rate struck Spain. Some victims of the crisis have been fighting back by setting up home in a network of vacant buildings.

Here Guardian readers living in Spain tell us their experiences of the crisis, and what they are doing to cope.

Elizabeth Brindley – has lived in Spain for 35 years

It’s impossible to talk about the housing crisis without delving into everything else that’s going on.

My husband had to accept early retirement - at least he got out early, with a decent package. Others won’t be so lucky. The savings bank he worked for became an ordinary bank and merged with several others. It needs rescuing and is laying off thousands of employees.

There are very few jobs out there and the majority of those are poorly paid and not permanent. The lack of permanence of so many things is affecting people. Personally, the situation hasn’t affected me too much yet but I do know people who have lost their jobs and are becoming quite desperate.
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EUROPE NEWS
Updated March 14, 2013, 3:19 p.m. ET

EU Court Rules Against Spanish Mortgage Laws
By ILAN BRAT in Madrid And GABRIELE STEINHAUSER in Brussels

A ruling from the European Union’s top court will force Spain to make it easier for mortgage holders to escape foreclosure by challenging onerous mortgage terms in court.

Thursday’s decision from the EU Court of Justice could open the door for thousands of Spaniards to renegotiate tough mortgages, but risks hurting Spain’s efforts to fix a broken banking sector. Madrid already has asked other euro-zone countries for some €40 billion ($51.8 billion) in loans to prop up local lenders that had bet big on real estate during a decadelong economic boom.

The Luxembourg-based court said Spanish laws, which restrict a judge’s ability to suspend eviction proceedings while deciding whether the terms of a loan are unfair, violate EU consumer-protection rules.

The ruling will require Spain to adapt its laws, just as its Parliament is in the middle of modifying the country’s century-old legislation governing housing foreclosures and evictions. But it also taps into a broader dilemma faced by a number of European governments: How to balance attempts to limit the human impact of house-price collapses with the need to shield banks from rising mortgage defaults.

The number of court-sanctioned evictions in Spain has increased sharply since 2008 when real-estate prices began plummeting. Rising unemployment, now at about 26%, is making it even more difficult for homeowners to meet mortgage payments.
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How much longer will it take the U.S. MSM to recognize that we have the same kind of housing market problems here that Spain faces?

I expect a Great Awakening at about the moment when a horde of all-cash foreign investors and hedge funds try to lock in their capital gains.

Spain’s house prices to fall another 30pc as glut keeps growing

Spain’s property slump will deepen for much of the next decade, and tracts of buildings along the Mediterannean coast will have to be demolished, the country’s top consultants have warned.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
5:50PM GMT 27 Dec 2012

RR de Acuña & Asociados expects home prices in Madrid, Barcelona and other major cities to fall a further 30pc in a relentless slide until 2018, but it may be even worse in sunbelt regions where 400,000 Britons either live or own homes.

Fresh losses could reach 50pc and drag on for 10 to 15 years in those places where construction ran wild during the bubble, bringing the total decline from peak to trough towards 75pc.

“The market is broken,” said Fernando Rodríguez de Acuña, the group’s vice-president. “We calculate that there are almost 2m properties waiting to be sold. We have made no progress at all over the past five years in clearing the stock,” he said.

“There are 800,000 used homes on the market. Developers are sitting on a further 700,00 completed units. Another 300,000 have been foreclosed and 150,000 are in foreclosure proceedings, and there are another 250,000 still under construction. It’s crazy.”

The overhang is vast for a country with 48m inhabitants and annual demand near 200,000. It is coupled with an outflow of workers and the start of an aging population crisis.
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European Economic News
Spain’s Public Debt At Record High
3/15/2013 8:18 AM ET

Spain’s public debt hit a record level at the end of 2012 due to higher requirements for funds both at federal and autonomous levels.

Public debt reached 84.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2012 compared to 69.3 percent a year earlier. This is well above the European Union’s ceiling of 60 percent.

Nonetheless, the public debt stayed slightly below the EU’s estimate of 88.4 percent in 2012. The European Commission projects it to rise further to 95.8 percent in 2013.

The economy is reeling under severe recession and it has one of the highest unemployment rate in the euro area, at around 26 percent.

by RTT Staff Writer

U.K. House-Price Index Declines as Demand Rebound Falls Short
By Scott Hamilton - Mar 11, 2013 5:01 PM PT

An index of U.K. house prices fell for a second month in February as interest from potential buyers failed to rebound fully from a slump in January, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

A gauge by London-based RICS declined to minus 6 from minus 4 in January, it said in an e-mailed report today, citing a monthly poll of property surveyors. While measures of new buyer inquiries and instructions from home sellers rose last month after heavy snow in January hit activity, they “disappointingly point to a leveling off” rather than a rebound, RICS said.

While the February price index declined, RICS said lower mortgage interest rates are helping to support confidence in the market, with surveyors more upbeat on the outlook for prices and sales. The Bank of England said last week that its Funding for Lending Scheme, intended to reduce banks’ funding costs, should continue to ease credit conditions.

“It’s encouraging to see that the housing market now appears to be picking up across most parts of the U.K. despite ongoing concerns about the health of the economy,” RICS director Peter Bolton King said. “However even with activity running at its best level since the middle of 2010, it is still well down on its pre-crisis norm.”
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I am not surprised by this. Guess I am surprised that economies just don’t work sometimes. Well, they work, but they fail too.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21797888

Of course they do.

John Stumpf, top executive at Wells Fargo & Co., took the reins as the nation’s highest paid banking official after receiving $22.9 million in total compensation in 2012.

Like most banks, Wells Fargo has two proposals — nicknamed “say on pay” — that would give shareholders the ability to make a nonbinding recommendation on the bank’s executive-compensation plan, and to recommend an annual review.

The several shareholder proposals include:

• giving shareholders the ability to cast an advisory vote on board of director compensation.

• requiring that Wells Fargo have an independent chair.

• requiring an independent review of the bank’s internal controls related to loan modifications, foreclosures and securitizations. A report would be issued by Sept. 30.

THE BANK RECOMMENDS AGAINST THE THREE PROPOSALS

http://www.news-record.com/home/latestnews/910255-132/wells-fargo-executive-is-nations

Obama DHS Purchases 2,700 Light-Armored Tanks to Go With Their 1.6 Billion Bullet Stockpile

Submitted by Bob-45 on Mon, 03/04/2013 - 11:58
in Peace / War

This is getting a little creepy.

According to one estimate, since last year the Department of Homeland Security has stockpiled more than 1.6 billion bullets, mainly .40 caliber and 9mm.

DHS also purchased 2,700 Mine Resistant Armor Protected Vehicles (MRAP).

http://www.dailypaul.com/276809/obama-dhs-purchases-2700-light-armored-tanks-to-go-with-their-16-billion-bullet-stockpile - 147k -

Obama DHS Purchases 2,700 Light-Armored Tanks to … - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1eIQilxVOo - 191k -

Hard to believe, but here it is:

Cyprus is introducing what the Eurogroup calls “an upfront one-off stability levy” on bank deposits (though I doubt those affected by it will be feeling too stable this weekend). The levy takes 6.75 percent of all deposits under €100,000 and 9.9 percent of all deposits above €100,000.
Cypriot banks are closed on Monday for a scheduled holiday but we will find out on Tuesday whether people are willing to keep their money in bank accounts in a country that occasionally imposes “one-off stability levies” – most things that people claim are one-off aren’t.

The more interesting question, however, is how will depositors react in the rest of the Eurozone. There will undoubtedly be promises that this is the only country in the euro area that will write down deposits but promises from European politicians don’t mean much. They insisted for ages that a default in Greece was “not an option” but it happened and Cyprus’s own finance minister dismissed the idea of a depositor haircut only a few days ago saying ”Really and categorically – and this doesn’t only apply in the case of Cyprus but for the world over and the euro zone there really couldn’t be a more stupid idea.” Well maybe but it’s a stupid idea whose time has come.

Now that people know that a depositor haircut is part of the European toolkit for dealing with banking problems, why would you sit around and wait for it to happen to you? This decision has the potential to trigger a full-scale bank run across the euro area.

Odd that this isn’t front page news.

I had a party at my apartment this week. Just a dessert get together for about 20 friends. As people arrived, they started to leave their coats in various little corners, which I didn’t notice as I was getting the food out. Now I had my bedroom door closed, and someone asked if they could start putting coats in my bedroom to get them out of the way. I said I wanted to keep the bedroom as a low traffic area since we had a 5 month old baby as a guest and her mother needed a place to nurse her with a little privacy. Then I suggested that the coats go in the coat closet, opened up the door and gestured to the empty space and available hangars. You might have thought that I had suggested that they store their coats in a convenient black hole I had. No one could believe that I had space in my coat closet for…well…coats, or at least other people’s coats. Eventually, I ended up explaining things to one friend by showing the other closet space (a linen closet near the bathroom and a small walk-in closet in the bedroom). The comment was always that there was so much space and that it was so organized.

Now, let me assure the blog that my closets are neither empty, nor perfectly organized. But they aren’t full to the brim and you can find the stuff you are looking for. Also, I am one person in an apartment that is clearly large enough for a couple.

Is it that unusual for people to be able to accommodate guest coats in a coat closet? Seriously, I know I don’t have as much stuff (other than books) as some, but I was dealing with well over a dozen adults and not a single one thought to look in the coat closet for a place to put their coats or even that it was OK to open the door. I don’t think it really occurred to me that I had to tell people to put coats in that closet. I thought they would try that first. Also note that a few people in this group had no problem looking in the kitchen for glasses so they didn’t have to use the plastic cups that I had put out for soft drinks, so general timidity wasn’t the issue.

the trend is your friend.

AMERICAN WINTER is a timely documentary that follows the personal stories of families struggling in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Filmed over the winter of 2011-12, the film presents an intimate snapshot of the state of the nation’s economy as it is playing out in the lives of many American families. It reveals the human consequences of cuts to social services, the decline of the middle class, and the fracturing of the American Dream.

AMERICAN WINTER is produced and directed by Emmy® Award-winning filmmakers Joe and Harry Gantz, creators of HBO’s Taxicab Confessions.

Sequestration NIMBYism Grips GOP
Brian Beutler March 15, 2013, 7:23 AM 33073

A strange sickness is afflicting congressional Republicans.

Unwilling to team up with Democrats to replace sequestration with a mix of spending cuts and tax increases, and unable to pass a cuts-only sequestration measure on their own, Republicans’ official position is that they’ve made their peace with enduring, across-the-board spending cuts in perpetuity.

But now that those cuts are creating real consequences, individual members are experiencing buyer’s remorse. The only problem is, until they change their underlying position on replacing sequestration, the only thing they can do about it is whine.

Call it sequestration NIMBYism.

“It seems difficult to say with a straight face that completely eliminating a source of revenue for the National Park Service is a smart, targeted cut,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD), a member of GOP leadership.

Thune says he thinks the National Park Service made a political decision to close revenue-generating campgrounds, including at Wind Cave National Park in his home state, to make the cuts more visible to the public.

“Instead of cuts that reduce wasteful and duplicative spending, the administration’s politically calculated cuts are targeting facilities like the campground that actually serve as a revenue source for the park,” Thune added. “It appears NPS is just another agency following the White House’s lead in trying to find the cuts that can trigger a press release before looking to internal cost-saving measures that are less newsworthy.”

Sequestration is intended to be indiscriminate. It requires federal agencies to reduce spending by a certain percentage on each of their programs and activities.

That means all House and Senate members are likely to see some consequences in their districts and states. But when those consequences materialize, Republicans either blame the administration or plead for special treatment.

“Our military trains at Griffiss [International Airport],” said Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY). Griffiss is one of nearly 200 towers the FAA wants to close. “The airport offers some of the most unique infrastructure in the Northeastern United States. And during Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Sandy, it was Griffiss International Airport that served as a staging area for relief efforts. It is short-sighted and unnecessary to close this control tower. And I implore the FAA to remove it from the closure list.”

The Obama administration has taken note of these complaints. And while Republicans and the media in Washington limit their focus to the fact that the White House canceled public tours, the administration hopes the problems sequestration is causing back home will create pressure on the GOP to support a balanced tax increase and spending cut measure to replace it.
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By Jake Miller / CBS News/ March 15, 2013, 2:27 PM
Romney: “I utterly reject pessimism” about future of GOP

Speaker after speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference dwelled on the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, but for a brief moment on Friday afternoon, an echo of Republicans’ past took the stage to account for his shortcomings.

2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, in his first public speech since losing November’s election to President Obama, told the audience that, “my mistakes” aside, “I utterly reject pessimism.”

Setbacks like the 2012 rout, Romney said, “prepare us for larger victories,” but moving forward, it is “up to us to make sure we learn from our mistakes, my mistakes” to “make sure that we take back the nation, take back the White House.”

“In the end,” he said, “We’ll win for the same reason we won before: because our cause is just and it is right.”
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Dogs can’t multitask.

Scott Walker opens up about White House ambitions
By JONATHAN MARTIN | 3/16/13 7:02 AM EDT

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker acknowledged in an interview Friday that he’s open to a presidential bid and pointedly declined to pledge to serve a full four-year term if he’s reelected next year.

Walker insisted he was visiting Iowa in May only because he was invited by Gov. Terry Branstad. But when pressed about his White House ambitions, the Wisconsin Republican said: “Would I ever be [interested]? Possibly. I guess the only thing I’d say is I’m not ruling it out.”

Perhaps even more notably, Walker wouldn’t commit to serving throughout a second four-year term. He said his focus is on substance, not longevity.

“For me, it’s really a measure of what I’ve accomplished and what more I could accomplish if I was in a different position,” Walker told POLITICO at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he spoke Saturday morning.
…

I’m considering relocating to D.C. (NOVA really) for a job. I have started looking at home prices, commuting (cost and time) as well as the generally higher cost of living than where I am used to (Orlando area). I am having a hard time coming up with a reason to really move to D.C., it just seems like an even more ridiculous rat race than I am used to already.

Can anyone who currently lives in the area recommend a website or provide some insight on living in the area?

Joe Biden says women need a shot gun not an ar15 this … - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e3KB5hWU6A - 208k -

For an interesting read Wiki-up “Latin American debt crisis”.

I knew a person during this period who invested (and lost) a lot of money in Mexico’ s high-paying debt instruments in spite of all the seemingly obvious warnings.

Bill Maher on California Income Taxes: ‘Liberals – You Could Actually Lose Me’

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Conservative Byte

Bill Maher made a comment Friday that his benefactor and hero Barack Obama should sit up and take notice of.

Speaking about the taxes the rich pay particularly in California, the host of HBO’s Real Time said, “Liberals – you could actually lose me” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

The panel discussion began with a conversation about the various budget proposals currently on the table in Washington.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow predictably slammed Congressman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wisc.) plan.

“The Ryan budget is a document that says the big problems in America right now are that rich people do not have enough money,” she mocked. “They need relief from confiscatory tax rates.”

“Well,” Maher unsuccessfully tried to interrupt as Maddow continued. When she was finally done, he surprisingly pushed back.

Pointing at Virginia’s former Republican Congressman Tom Davis, Maher said, “You know what? Rich people - I’m sure you’d agree with this - actually do pay the freight in this country.”

“I just saw these statistics,” he continued, “I mean, something like 70 percent. And here in California, I just want to say liberals - you could actually lose me. It’s outrageous what we’re paying - over 50 percent. I’m willing to pay my share, but yeah, it’s ridiculous.”

So it appears there is a point where Maher’s money becomes more important than his politics.

Consider that in California, millionaires on top of the 39.6 percent they’ll pay to the federal government in 2013, there’s an additional 14.63 percent that now goes to the state.

Add in payroll taxes, local taxes, and property taxes, and I’ve seen estimates that the total tax bite could exceed 60 percent here.

But the rich aren’t paying their “fair share.”

Regardless, it sure was nice to see a liberal - especially one that contributed to Obama’s reelection campaign! - complaining about his taxes.

http://conservativebyte.com/2013/03/bill-maher-on-california-income-taxes-liberals-you-could-actually-lose-me/ - - Cached - Similar pages
1 hour ago …

We need the money to pay for the Illegals healthcare…..edumakation ESL…whatever….it’s middle finger management… hurt the most people you can, well because you can!

Published: March 15, 2013 10:48 PM EST
Budget cuts lead LA county court to cut 511 jobs
The Associated Press

The Los Angeles County Superior Court said it will have to eliminate 511 jobs and close eight courthouses as part of a sweeping cost-cutting effort to close its $85 million budget deficit.

Reduced state funding over the last several years has pushed the court to dramatically restructure the way it conducts business in the next fiscal year beginning in July, Presiding Judge David Wesley said in a statement Thursday.

“This is our last-ditch effort to save access to justice in Los Angeles County,” Wesley said. “The impacts of years of draconian cuts in state court funding can no longer be delayed.”

The court said it has already reduced its annual spending by $110 million to date. The upcoming job cuts will bring the total reduction of the court’s workforce to 24 percent.

In addition, the court says it must close eight regional courthouses and eliminate its alternative dispute center, which provides arbitration, mediation and settlement conference as an option to litigation. Small claims, eviction, and personal injury cases will be heard in fewer courthouses.

“The result will be reduced services, long lines and travel distances that may well deter people from seeking and getting the justice they deserve,” Wesley said.

Elsewhere in the state, San Bernardino’s courthouses closures will require litigants to travel more than 130 miles to the nearest courthouse, while Fresno Superior Court has closed all courthouses outside the city of Fresno, officials said.

“If you buy a house today at these grossly inflated prices, you’re going to lose alot of money. ALOT of money.”

If lots of money is flowing into REITs and this money is pushing up REIT prices then this should be reflectd in the REIT’s dividend yields.

Here’s a chart of MLP yields for anyone who cares to take a look:

http://www.vectorgrader.com/indicators/mlp-dividend-yield

Why it’s become clear that Obama’s White House is open to the rich and closed to the poor
President Obama’s pledges to open up the White House are going in reverse, says Mark McKinnon

Access for the few - Obama’s White House Photo: REUTERS
American Way: Mark McKinnon

Once, only nobles were granted an audience with the King.
In America, we’ve prided ourselves on abandoning those privileges of class some 237 years ago, following that little uprising in the 13 colonies.
And we again congratulated ourselves at 12:01 pm Eastern Time on January 20, 2009, just moments after Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and as he committed to making his administration the most transparent and open in history.
But more than four years later it is time to ask questions. The most transparent administration ever? The most transparently political, yes. The most open government? If you have the money to buy access, yes.
Since last weekend, Mr and Mrs Regular Citizen have been denied the access people used to be granted to tour the White House, purportedly because of the clampdown on federal spending since the “sequester” that imposed cuts across the board.
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These tours, most recently guided by volunteers though monitored by paid Secret Service staff, have been an American tradition since John and Abigail Adams, the first White House residents, personally hosted receptions for the public.
And their cancellation is an austerity measure that saves a pittance, while more frivolous taxpayer funding for items like the White House dog walker continues.
Meanwhile, noble Americans can buy time with the president for a suggested donation of $500,000 to his new campaign group, Organising for Action.
Yes, the announcement offering access to the president for cold, hard cash was made openly and with total transparency. But it was also made without shame.
It’s the third version of Obama’s original monster campaign machine, Obama for America, which then morphed into a re-election campaign machine, Organising for America, on the third day of his first term.
It has now re-launched again as Organising for Action (OFA) - a non-profit, tax-exempt group headed by his former campaign advisers. Apparently no longer “for America”, the group might just as well be called Organising for Obama’s Agenda.
Its mission: to support the president in his attempt to achieve enactment of gun control, environmental policies and immigration reform.
At the two-day kick-off event last week for the new OFA’s founding summit, attended by 75 folks for the “bargain” rate of just $50,000, Obama at least acknowledged the concerns raised by others about the funding, purpose and influence of the organisation.
However, he brushed them aside. With greater humility than new Pope Francis, Obama said he prided himself on feeling no obligation in the past to the interests of the generous donors who made his election and re-election possible. Though paradoxically he also said he wanted “to make sure the voices of the people are actually heard in the debates that are going to be taking place”. So, he’ll take money to listen to the voices of the privileged, but not do their bidding?
May I humbly suggest he could hear more voices, more clearly if he mingled with the public he serves? Perhaps the White House could hold open tours for the public! Why has no one in his administration thought of that? And volunteers could manage those tours, to keep costs down!
But, of course, those are what have just been cancelled. Meanwhile, three calligraphers reportedly remain on staff. I suppose their services are needed for the special hand-lettered, gold-foiled invitations sent to the nobles who are willing to pay for an audience with the King.
OFA is a legal, tax-exempt advocacy organisation, established as a social welfare group under the rules of both the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Elections Commission. It can accept unlimited contributions, so long as it promotes the common good and does not primarily engage in electoral politics.
As it is not required to publicly disclose donors, OFA is actually one of those “shadowy” organisations Obama railed against as a candidate when he supported campaign finance reform.
In 2010 the Supreme Court made a controversial ruling known as Citizens United that allowed unlimited corporate and individual donations to so-called “super political action committees”, which at least have to disclose their donors, and to social welfare organisations, which do not.
At the time, Obama loudly criticised the decision, saying: “That’s one of the reasons I ran for president: because I believe so strongly that the voices of ordinary Americans were being drowned out by the clamour of a privileged few in Washington.”
But then he reversed course, giving his blessing to a super PAC supporting his 2012 re-election, and now to OFA. What has changed?
Obama is looking to his legacy. And his eye is on the 2014 Congressional elections. If he can maintain his appeal among the masses and help Democrats win back a majority in the House of Representatives, while maintaining control of the Senate, there will be no stopping his agenda.
He explained the “grassroots” purpose of OFA like this: “If you have a senator or a congressman in a swing district who is prepared to take a tough vote… I want to make sure they feel supported and they know there are constituencies of theirs that agree with them, even if they may be getting a lot of pushback in that district.”
Engaging voters is always a good thing. But the president should not charge for the privilege. If he will look out the Oval Office window beyond his own reflection, King Barack I will see the public he is meant to serve. He ought to invite them in.

Woonsocket’s new boom and bust cycle: SNAP card day

The economy of Woonsocket was about to stir to life. Delivery trucks were moving down river roads, and stores were extending their hours. The bus company was warning riders to anticipate “heavy traffic.” A community bank, soon to experience a surge in deposits, was rolling a message across its electronic marquee on the night of Feb. 28: “Happy shopping! Enjoy the 1st.”

In the heart of downtown, Miguel Pichardo, 53, watched three trucks jockey for position at the loading dock of his family-run International Meat Market. For most of the month, his business operated as a humble milk-and-eggs corner store, but now 3,000 pounds of product were scheduled for delivery in the next few hours. He wiped the front counter and smoothed the edges of a sign posted near his register. “Yes! We take Food Stamps, SNAP, EBT!”
At precisely one second after midnight, on March 1, Woonsocket would experience its monthly financial windfall — nearly $2 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps. Federal money would be electronically transferred to the broke residents of a nearly bankrupt town, where it would flow first into grocery stores and then on to food companies, employees and banks, beginning the monthly cycle that has helped Woonsocket survive.

Three years into an economic recovery, this is the lasting scar of collapse: a federal program that began as a last resort for a few million hungry people has grown into an economic lifeline for entire towns.

The local unemployment rate was 12 percent. The shuttered textile mills along the river had become Section 8 housing. The median income had dropped by $10,000 in the last decade.

Of the few jobs still available in Woonsocket, many were part-time positions at grocery stores like his, with hours clustered around the first of the month.

Rebecka and Jourie Ortiz usually ran out of milk first, after about three weeks. Next went juice, fresh produce, cereal, meat and eggs. By the 27th or 28th, Rebecka, 21, was often making a dish she referred to in front of the kids as “rice-a-roni,” even though she and Jourie called it “rice-a-whatever.”

For the past three years, the Ortizes’ lives had unfolded in a series of exhausting, fractional decisions.

Was it better to pay down the $600 they owed the landlord, or the $110 they owed for their cellphones, or the $75 they owed the tattoo parlor, or the $840 they owed the electric company?

They had been living together since Rebecka became pregnant during their senior year of high school, long enough to experience Woonsocket’s version of recession and recovery. Jourie had lost his job at a pharmacy late in 2010 because of downsizing, and Rebecka had lost hers in fast food for the same reason a few months later.

The first five customers came to International Meat Market at 7 a.m., 30 minutes before the store opened. They leaned on shopping carts and smoked cigarettes, passing around a yellow flier that advertised the market’s bulk deals for the 1st.

Rebecka went shopping early that afternoon. Jourie was still sleeping off his midnight shift, so she decided to take the girls by herself. She wanted to visit at least two stores to capitalize on the best deals. She packed snacks and diaper bags and loaded the girls into the car, a 2004 Mitsubishi Galant leased on 18 percent interest for $90 a week. They drove across town to Price Rite, the cheapest chain in Woonsocket, and the town’s epicenter of the SNAP economy.

Nearly 150 cars filled the lot, and stray shopping carts edged into the adjacent road. The sign in front of the store advertised “Impossibly, Incredibly, Inconceivably Low Prices.” A city bus had stopped at the entrance a few minutes earlier to drop off 30 shoppers before turning back to pick up 30 more. The residents of Woonsocket had petitioned for the route in 2011, but now buses suffered from overcrowding on the 1st and drivers enforced a limit of seven grocery bags per person on the way home. A line of opportunistic cab drivers had begun waiting outside Price Rite on the 1st, ready for customers with more than seven bags and with $4.75 for the fare.

[At Walmart] Rebecka paid $168 and returned to the parking lot. Sariah fell on the gravel and started to cry. “We’ll stop at Burger King,” Rebecka said, crying now, too, so tired she didn’t care what lunch would cost. They went to the drive-through and continued home. She left the groceries in the car, and Jourie hauled them up to the apartment. They wedged the boxes into the fridge. “I couldn’t get it all,” she told Jourie, explaining that she had made it only halfway through her list. She had spent about two weeks of SNAP money on groceries that would last seven or eight days.

See also WaPo from 3/15:
“JPMorgan bullied bank regulators, report says”

the interactions between Washington regulators and Wall Street [were] described in congressional testimonies Friday and a Senate report on a massive trading loss at JPMorgan.

The documents and testimonies show a dynamic: Executives at the nation’s largest bank at times bullied federal examiners. The examiners at times gave in.

In a six-hour hearing Friday, top officials at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates the biggest banks, came under fire from lawmakers for tolerating impudent behavior by JPMorgan executives.

Here’s a story about investors and the “housing recovery.”

http://www.ajc.com/news/business/big-scale-buyers-drive-housing-sales/nWtYg/

Corporate ownership of apartments makes some sense. The maintenance personnel can walk to every unit and management is on-site to prevent annoyances from becoming major problems. Corporate ownership of single-family homes scattered over the landscape makes no sense at all. Man, is this going to wreck out bad.

Programming school doesn’t charge its students until they get a programming job
Wired:
In a few months, another graduating class of college students will stumble out into an unforgiving job market weighed down by staggering debt. But one school in one of the hottest hiring markets in the country is flipping the script on student loans: until you get a job, you don’t pay.

App Academy in San Francisco (and now New York) offers a 9-week, 90-hours-a-week boot camp to turn programming novices into code jockeys. They just graduated their second class last Friday. Of the fifteen students to graduate from the first class, fourteen have found jobs.

New recruits signing up for App Academy promise to pay 15 percent of what they earn during their first year on the job, payable over the first six months after they start working. For the school, the math isn’t too shabby if they succeed at placing their students. If 15 students get jobs at $80,000 salaries, that works out to a $180,000 commission.

the only worry for App Academy is if students decide to squander the investment the school has made in them. For example, after all the intensive instruction they decide they don’t want to be programmers.

“The risk to us is students might want to go back to school or start their own business— or simply change their minds,” Patel says. “We’re actually very confident students can get jobs.”

To keep students on track, App Academy requires them to sign a good-faith agreement that they will pursue jobs as developers when they graduate. They also have to pony up a $3,000 refundable deposit to hold their spots and show they’re committed.

Admission to the school is competitive. Prospective students are asked to read an intro to coding and then take a timed coding test, as well as a live coding test during an admissions interview. The intent isn’t to show previous coding knowledge, but rather programmer potential. The admission rate is “sub-10 percent,” Patel says.

Though most students so far have been college graduates, they’re coming into the program with a range of life experience.

Fed’s Fisher at CPAC: Too-big-to-fail banks are “crony” capitalists

(Reuters) - The largest U.S. banks are “practitioners of crony capitalism,” need to be broken up to ensure they are no longer considered too big to fail, and continue to threaten financial stability, a top Federal Reserve official said on Saturday.

Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Fed, has been a critic of Wall Street’s disproportionate influence since the financial crisis. But he was now taking his message to an unusual audience for a central banker: a high-profile Republican political action committee.

Fisher said the existence of banks that are seen as likely to receive government bailouts if they fail gives them an unfair advantage, hurting economic competitiveness.

“These institutions operate under a privileged status that exacts an unfair tax upon the American people,” he said on the last day of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

“They represent not only a threat to financial stability but to fair and open competition … (and) are the practitioners of crony capitalism and not the agents of democratic capitalism that makes our country great.”

Slowly, slowly opinions are shifting.