The Housing Bubble

The local builder and the realtor (sorry pimp, liar realtor - wife) are advertising $62 per square feet for this house. Syracuse is beginning to show strong signs of price declines.

The only question I have is?

Should I wait to get a good deal?
Should I wait to get a great deal?
Or should I wait to get a deal of a life time.

What to do with my cash? Hmmmmm

http://www.cnyhomes.com/Listing/Search/info.cgi?mlnum=S284839

From the remark section

YOU CAN NOT BUILD FOR THIS PRICE WORKS OUT TO ROUGHLY 62 DOLLARS A SQUARE FT.

Music to my ears

“90 Percent of REO’s Are Withheld From Sale”

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/19/theres-still-a-foreclosure-crisis/

If you’re looking to buy a house, sit tight as there are an estimated 25 MILLION foreclosures coming to the market. If you buy now you’ll lose alot of money. ALOT of money.

Beware.

Telling description..scheme.

The U.K.’s newly announced “right to buy” scheme will not fuel a potentially dangerous housing bubble similar to that seen in the subprime mortgage crisis in the U.S., the U.K.’s Finance Minster George Osborne told CNBC on Thursday.

One of the most eye-catching measures announced in Wednesday’s budget was a 3.5 billion pound ($5.3 billion) mortgage scheme for struggling buyers, which will effectively buy a stake in a home of up to 20 percent if the buyer raises the other 5 percent of the deposit. The government is also set to guarantee 130 billion pounds ($195 billion) of mortgages for three years, allowing banks to provide more loans to people that can’t afford the large deposits.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/osborne-defends-5-3-billion-101213698.html

Canadian man to sell house for Bitcoin virtual currency
BBCNews
Canadian man is hoping to be the first person to sell his house for virtual currency Bitcoins.

Entrepreneur Taylor More listed his two-bedroom Alberta bungalow, asking 405,000 Canadian dollars (£261,000; $395,000) - or the equivalent in Bitcoins.

He says the first reaction of his family was that of a shock.

Bitcoins are now a widely used alternative payments system and one Bitcoin is currently worth about £37.

“Bitcoins are really hard to get your hands on if you want to get them in large quantities,” Mr More told the BBC.

Unlike other currencies, Bitcoins are not issued by a central bank or other centralised authority.

People generate or “mine” Bitcoins by participating in that network - for instance, by solving a complicated mathematical problem using their computer.

A growing number of web stores and online firms accept Bitcoins as payment.

Bitcoins can be exchanged for “real” money, and they can be used to make transactions that are difficult to trace, offering privacy to their users.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21863593

WRITING ON THE WALL
Updated March 21, 2013, 5:16 a.m. ET
Cyprus Is Drowning in an EU Spoon
By DAVID WEIDNER

U.S. bank bailouts have taken a beating. They were criticized for their excess, uneven distribution and preservation of a status quo that shortchanges the little guy in favor of “stability of the financial system” or, put another way, private gains and socialized losses.

And the bailouts do look pretty awful—until you compare them with what’s happening in Europe.

To say the euro zone has bungled the crisis in Cyprus is an insult to bungling.

Cyprian banks are undercapitalized, so central bankers and politicians want to respond by taxing depositors. Isn’t this something like fixing a car by taking away the tires? Even if you can get the engine to start, your chances of getting somewhere aren’t too good.

Moreover, the so-called “bailout” of banks in Cyprus has most Europeans, fearing they might be next, checking Google Maps for the fastest route to their own bank branch.

There’s a Greek saying, roughly translated, that goes like this: “You drown in a spoon of water.” The deeper translation, or at least the way some people understand it, is: “You make a simple job difficult.”

That’s the European Union.

In a few short days, the EU and to some degree the International Monetary Fund have completely unraveled the confidence stitched during the last four years. To go back to our car analogy, the EU is the only shop in town. And now everyone knows the sort of shoddy work it does.
…

Beware of coiled springs.

HEARD ON THE STREET
March 20, 2013, 6:25 p.m. ET

Fed May Face Coiled Spring
By JUSTIN LAHART

The economy looks better now than it did a couple of months ago. But you would be hard-pressed to tell that from what the Federal Reserve had to say Wednesday.

The statement the Fed put out following its two-day policy meeting wasn’t all that different from the one it released after its late January meeting. While acknowledging that the economy had moved beyond the weather-related pause it experienced late last year, the central bank’s rate-setting committee also noted that fiscal policy has, thanks to the sequester, become more restrictive and said it “continues to see downside risks to the economic outlook.”

But though it is true that fiscal belt-tightening will likely be a drag on the economy this year, the economy is also advancing at a faster clip as those budget cuts start to hit than many forecasters expected when Fed policy makers got together in January.
…

For how long is the Cyprus bank holiday scheduled to last?

SACRAMENTO — After six years of waiting on the sidelines, newly eager home buyers across the country are discovering that there are not enough houses for sale to accommodate the recent flush of demand.

NY Times today…..

“You see a home go for sale and within a couple days there are three, four, six offers,” said Carrie Miskawi, a mother of three young children who has been looking for a new home for the last six months with Mr. Colgan’s help. She and her husband have decided not to put their current home on the market because they fear it will be snatched up before they have a chance to bid successfully on a new one.

“It’s kind of a Catch-22,” Mr. Colgan said. As long as large numbers of people are hesitant to put their own homes on the market because so few other homes are available, he said, there won’t be many homes available.

Across the country, the raw number of homes for sale is at its lowest level since 1999, according to the National Association of Realtors. In the Sacramento metro area, home listings were down 60 percent in January from a year earlier, compared with 23 percent for the country over all, according to Zillow.

Latest article on hard hit Sacramento housing market;

http://cl.exct.net/?ju=fe551379706403797613&ls=fe1b1d777d6c017e741275&m=fefc1172766306&l=fed1157376640678&s=fe35157277640d7d711074&jb=ffcf14&t=

Bloomberg piece chock full ‘o stats. Some article nuggets:

“In the 95 wartime years since 1749, wholesale price increases averaged 5.7 percent. In the 168 peacetime years, they fell 1.2 percent annually on average.

(the Lucky Ducky future) real median net worth fell 39 percent from 2007 to 2010 … yet income polarization caused the mean to fall just 20 percent. In 1989, mean consumer net worth was four times the median. It jumped to 6.5 times the median in 2010.

For a third of those who find jobs after being unemployed six months or more, the new position pays less than the last job held.

In the past year, private-sector employees in right-to-work states earned 9.8 percent less than workers in other states. Manufacturing jobs pay 7.4 percent less in right-to-work states.”

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-20/why-global-economies-face-an-age-of-deflation.html

Cyprus, European data rattle shares and euro
By Richard Hubbard
LONDON | Thu Mar 21, 2013 8:40am EDT

(Reuters) - Signs the euro zone’s economic downturn is deepening and worries over a possible financial meltdown in Cyprus sent world shares, oil and the single currency lower on Thursday.

The falls could have been greater but for earlier data showing a pick-up in Chinese factory activity and the commitment by U.S. Federal Reserve on Tuesday to stick with its ultra-loose monetary policy stance.

But the euro and European shares moved decisively lower, with the single currency briefly dipping below $1.29 to the dollar, following weak readings of the March Purchasing Manager’s Indexes (PMIs), which showed activity across the 17-nation currency bloc slowing from already weak levels.

The data revealed that German growth was starting to suffer from the euro zone’s renewed problems and again highlighted a widening chasm with France, the region’s second largest economy.

“It (PMI data) does not look good,” Antonio Garcia Pascual, chief southern European economist at Barclays. “Maybe we were expecting it in France but the weakness in Germany was a surprise.
…

All Cyprus plan Bs look dreadful
By Hugo Dixon
March 20, 2013

The Cypriots have an expression: eninboro allo. It means: I cannot take any more of it.

There was jubilation last night outside the small Mediterranean island’s parliament when every single MP either voted against a plan to tax depositors or abstained. The message was that people of Cyprus had had enough and weren’t going to let the big bullies, led by Germany, boss them around.

The plan to tax insured deposits was a dreadful mistake – I have described it as legalised bank robbery. But the deposit tax was part of an unpalatable but available 10 billion euro bailout, agreed with the euro zone. That plan A is now at risk. As Cypriots contemplate possible plan Bs, their jubilation may start to fade: all of them are also dreadful.
…

Loan sharks in pinstripes:

“Some of the nation’s largest banks are providing short-term loans with interest rates of up to 300 percent, driving borrowers into a cycle of debt, according to a new report from the Center for Responsible Lending.

The study, due out Thursday, gives an updated look at the perils of advance-deposit loans offered by Wells Fargo, U.S. Bancorp, Regions Bank, Fifth Third Bank, Guaranty Bank and Bank of Oklahoma. Banks bristle at comparisons to storefront payday lenders, but researchers say their products carry the same abusive high-interest rates and balloon payments.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/big-banks-engaging-in-payday-lending-report-says/2013/03/20/26e777ce-919f-11e2-9abd-e4c5c9dc5e90_story.html

Already Gone

March 21, 2013, 6:15 a.m. EDT
Cypriots prefer euro-zone exit over EU tax: report
By Sara Sjolin

LONDON (MarketWatch) — An overwhelming majority of the citizens in Cyprus would rather leave the euro zone than accept an unprecedented levy on bank deposits as part of bailout package, Greek daily Ekathimerini reported on Thursday, citing a survey by Prime Consulting. The survey found that 91% of the Cypriots back the government’s decision to reject the proposed bank-deposit tax, while 67% preferred a euro-zone exit along with stronger ties to Russia. Former Cypriot Foreign Minister Giorgos Lillikas said the international lenders’ suggested bank levy would destroy the country’s banking system, and a Cyprus exit could lead to a collapse of the euro zone, the report said. Cypriot lawmakers were scheduled to resume crisis talks on Thursday to come up with a plan to save the country from bankruptcy. The European Central Bank said it would suspend emergency help for Cyprus after Monday March 25, unless the struggling nation reaches a bailout agreement with the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

Rapidly-spiraling prices on ever-shrinking volume…haven’t we seen this movie before?

Some local news, coastal elitist, libtard bedwetters move to Colorado, bringing their nanny-state ideologies, elect Feinstein fascists, and destroy jobs:

“Ammunition magazine manufacturer Magpul Industries said it plans to begin leaving Colorado “almost immediately,” and other firms may follow suit in the wake of a new law that limits ammunition magazine capacities.

“Our moving efforts are underway,” Magpul chief operating officer Doug Smith said Wednesday. “Within the next 30 days we will manufacture our first magazine outside the state of Colorado.”

Erie-based Magpul, with about 200 workers, is the largest Colorado company that potentially would be affected by the bill.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/big-banks-engaging-in-payday-lending-report-says/2013/03/20/26e777ce-919f-11e2-9abd-e4c5c9dc5e90_story.html

Fed Keeps Easing, Not Worried About Stock Bubble

Published: Wednesday, 20 Mar 2013 | 2:33 PM ET

By: Jeff Cox
CNBC.com Senior Writer

Cyprus does not pose a threat to the U.S. economy or financial system and there are no signs of stock market bubble, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said on Tuesday.

The Fed chief told reporters that the central bank was monitoring the situation in Cyprus. “At this point, we’re not seeing a major risk to the U.S. financial system or the U.S. economy,” he said.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100574063 - -

Greenspan: No irrational exuberance, stocks undervalued

By Chris Isidore @CNNMoneyInvest March 15, 2013: 11:43 AM ET

Greenspan said the current stock run is due to reduced fears that the European sovereign debt crisis would crash economies around the world. He also seemed to dismiss the idea that the Federal Reserve’s asset purchase program is responsible for driving stocks higher.

During the run up in housing prices that would eventually be blamed for the 2008 global financial meltdown, Greenspan denied there were any signs of a housing bubble, saying that home values were only “frothy.” He later conceded that he was “shocked” when the financial system “broke down” that year.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/15/investing/greenspan-irrational-exuberance/index.html - 63k -

Why Is The World Economy Doomed? The Global Financial Pyramid Scheme By The Numbers

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Michael Snyder—No Comments ↓

Why is the global economy in so much trouble? How can so many people be so absolutely certain that the world financial system is going to crash? Well, the truth is that when you take a look at the cold, hard numbers it is not difficult to see why the global financial pyramid scheme is destined to fail. In the United States today, there is approximately 56 trillion dollars of total debt in our financial system, but there is only about 9 trillion dollars in our bank accounts. So you could take every single penny out of the banks, multiply it by six, and you still would not have enough money to pay off all of our debts. Overall, there is about 190 trillion dollars of total debt on the planet. But global GDP is only about 70 trillion dollars. And the total notional value of all derivatives around the globe is somewhere between 600 trillion and 1500 trillion dollars. So we have a gigantic problem on our hands. The global financial system is a very shaky house of cards that has been constructed on a foundation of debt, leverage and incredibly risky derivatives. We are living in the greatest financial bubble in world history, and it isn’t going to take much to topple the entire thing. And when it falls, it is going to be the largest financial disaster in the history of the planet.

The global financial system is more interconnected today than ever before, and a crisis at one major bank or in one area of the world can spread at lightning speed. As I wrote about yesterday, the entire European banking system is leveraged 26 to 1 at this point. A decline in asset values of just 4 percent would totally wipe out the equity of many of those banks, and once a financial panic begins we could potentially see major financial institutions start to go down like dominoes.

We got a small taste of what that is like back in 2008, and it is inevitable that it will happen again.

Anyone that would tell you that the current global financial system is sustainable does not know what they are talking about. Just look at the numbers that I have posted below.

The following is the global financial pyramid scheme by the numbers…

-$9,283,000,000,000 - The total amount of all bank deposits in the United States. The FDIC has just 25 billion dollars in the deposit insurance fund that is supposed to “guarantee” those deposits. In other words, the ratio of total bank deposits to insurance fund money is more than 371 to 1.

-$10,012,800,000,000 - The total amount of mortgage debt in the United States. As you can see, you could take every penny out of every bank account in America and it still would not cover it.

-$10,409,500,000,000 - The M2 money supply in the United States. This is probably the most commonly used measure of the total amount of money in the U.S. economy.

-$15,094,000,000,000 - U.S. GDP. It is a measure of all economic activity in the United States for a single year.

-$16,749,269,587,407.53 - The size of the U.S. national debt. It has grown by more than 10 trillion dollars over the past ten years.

-$32,000,000,000,000 - The total amount of money that the global elite have stashed in offshore banks (that we know about).

-$50,230,844,000,000 - The total amount of government debt in the world.

-$56,280,790,000,000 - The total amount of debt (government, corporate, consumer, etc.) in the U.S. financial system.

-$61,000,000,000,000 - The combined total assets of the 50 largest banks in the world.

-$70,000,000,000,000 - The approximate size of total world GDP.

-$190,000,000,000,000 - The approximate size of the total amount of debt in the entire world. It has nearly doubled in size over the past decade.

-$212,525,587,000,000 - According to the U.S. government, this is the notional value of the derivatives that are being held by the top 25 banks in the United States. But those banks only have total assets of about 8.9 trillion dollars combined. In other words, the exposure of our largest banks to derivatives outweighs their total assets by a ratio of about 24 to 1.

-$600,000,000,000,000 to $1,500,000,000,000,000 - The estimates of the total notional value of all global derivatives generally fall within this range. At the high end of the range, the ratio of derivatives to global GDP is more than 21 to 1.

Are you starting to get the picture?

Every single day, the total amount of debt will continue to grow faster than the total amount of money until the day that this bubble bursts.

What we witnessed back in 2008 was just a little “hiccup” in the system. It caused the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, but global financial authorities were able to get things stabilized.

Next time it won’t be so easy.

The next wave of the economic collapse is quickly approaching. A full-blown economic depression has already started in southern Europe. Unemployment is at record highs and economic activity is contracting rapidly.

The major offshore banking centers in Cyprus are on the verge of collapsing. It was just announced that they will now be closed until Tuesday, but nobody really knows for sure when they will be allowed to reopen. And there is already talk that when they do reopen that there will be strict limits on how much money people can take out.

And now the IMF is warning that the three biggest banks in Slovenia are failing and that a billion euros will be needed to bail them out.

The dominoes are starting to tumble, and the United States won’t be immune. In fact, the greatest financial problems that the United States has ever seen are on the horizon.

But you can just have faith that Ben Bernanke, Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress know exactly what they are doing and will be able to save us from the coming financial collapse if you want.

The mainstream media will provide you with all of the positive economic news that you could possibly want. They are giddy about the fact that the Dow keeps hitting all-time highs and they would have us all believe that we are in the midst of a robust economic recovery. You can listen to them if you want to.

But when you are tempted to believe that everything is going to be “okay” somehow, just go back and look at the numbers there were posted above one more time.

There is no way that the global financial pyramid scheme is going to be able to hold up for too much longer. At some point it is going to totally collapse. When that happens, will you be ready?

Breaking News: My IRA is up three thousand dollars since 2008!
There really is a new recovery!

Bubble forming or new normal ?

SACRAMENTO — After six years of waiting on the sidelines, newly eager home buyers across the country are discovering that there are not enough houses for sale to accommodate the recent flush of demand.

“In my 27 years I’ve never seen inventories this low,” said Kurt K. Colgan, a broker with Lyon Real Estate in the Sacramento metropolitan area, where the share of homes on the market has plummeted by one of the largest amounts in the nation. “I’ve also never seen a market turn so quickly.”

The housing turnaround seems to have caught almost everyone in the business by surprise. As desirable as the long-awaited improvement may be, the unusually low level of homes for sale is creating widespread problems for buyers and sellers alike, leading to bidding wars and bubblelike price jumps in places that not long ago were suffering from major declines. In the Sacramento area, where the housing bust took an especially heavy toll, the median sales price has surged 15 percent over the last year, according to Zillow.

Idiocracy ahead.

From today’s NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/business/economy/as-men-lose-economic-ground-clues-in-the-family.html?src=me&ref=general

“In this telling, the economic struggles of male workers are both a cause and an effect of the breakdown of traditional households. Men who are less successful are less attractive as partners, so some women are choosing to raise children by themselves, in turn often producing sons who are less successful and attractive as partners.

“A vicious cycle may ensue,” wrote Professor Autor and his co-author, Melanie Wasserman, a graduate student, “with the poor economic prospects of less educated males creating differentially large disadvantages for their sons, thus potentially reinforcing the development of the gender gap in the next generation.”

The fall of men in the workplace is widely regarded by economists as one of the nation’s most important and puzzling trends. While men, on average, still earn more than women, the gap between them has narrowed considerably, particularly among more recent entrants to the labor force. “

Another plan to build thousands of homes on the North east side of Morrpark CA 93021.

Presently open land with oil drilling and cattle ranching with a large dump to the east.

I even got a questionare in the mail asking me ” as a new homeowner” all kinds of questions about homes. They even gave me a whole dollar to fill it out.

They are planning to build again. They will have to get voter approval Ventura County has SOAR in place. At least they needed voter apprval last time ~2006 it was voted down.

Last plan had a man made lake with multi million dollar homes and a few 300K condos for ” affordale housing “

New York State becomes the first state to offer cash rewards for turning in illegal gun owners via a designated Hotline.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/21/new-york-state-offers-500-reward-for-reporting-illegal-gun-owners/?test=latestnews#ixzz2OArnmmTl

It won’t be long before other states follow, probably every northeastern state within the next few years. Look for Maryland, Massachusetts, and Connecticut to follow in short order.

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.

With millions of excess empty houses and housing demand at 17 year lows, housing prices have a long way to fall. A very long way to fall.

Why boomer debt has soared since 2000
March 21, 2013, 12:44 PM
By Matthew Heimer

The Census Bureau released a new study today that measures changes in U.S. household debt between 2000 and 2011, and the numbers offer some insight into the financial pressures that baby boomers face as they transition into retirement. Among the potentially discomfiting figures in the report: Average household debt for people age 55 and over increased faster than for any other age group, while the 65-and-over group was the only category in which the percentage of people holding debt has increased since 2000.

The report identifies some broader trends about the debt that Americans are juggling. Overall, fewer households carried debt in 2011 (69%) than in 2000 (74%). We’re much less likely to hold credit-card debt than we used to be: The percentage of households carrying a balance fell from 51% in 2000 to 38% in 2011. On the other hand, what the Census labels as “other unsecured debt,” a category that includes medical bills and student loans, is up sharply, with 19% of households now holding it, up from 11% in 2000.

That unsecured debt is a big burden for younger households—particularly student debt, which has raced ahead far faster than wages and salaries have. The medical elements of that category, meanwhile, are part of what’s weighing down retirees. The median amount of “other debt” held by people over 65 has more than doubled since 2000, to $4,000 today. Overall, 44% of 65-plus household hold at least some debt, and the average household owes $26,000 – also more than double its 2000 level.

The biggest debt factor for most households, including those older ones, remains mortgages and home-equity debt, which accounts for about 78% of all household debt. In part as a legacy of the price inflation and overspending that came with the real estate bubble, Americans are now much more likely than they used to be to carry mortgage debt when they retire. That’s undoubtedly part of the burden for those baby boomers in the age 55-to-64 category: The average household in that age group now carries $70,000 in debt, up 64% from 2000.
…

“90% of Foreclosed Properties Held Off the Market”

http://realestate.aol.com/blog/2012/07/13/shadow-reo-as-much-as-90-percent-of-foreclosed-properties-are-h/

If you’re looking to by a house, beware. Sit tight and let prices continue to fall.

I was wondering if somebody would bring up this connection.

ft dot com
March 21, 2013 5:54 pm
Icelandic lessons for Cyprus
By Richard Milne, Nordic Correspondent

Ever since it became one of the first and biggest victims of the global financial crisis in 2008, one small European island has stood out for its approach to its banking crisis. Iceland allowed creditors rather than taxpayers to take the strain – in stark contrast to a country such as Ireland where creditors were protected and the government spent billions propping up the banking system.

Could Cyprus look to Iceland for inspiration and make creditors pay?

Unlike Iceland where the banks had issued lots of bonds, Cypriot lenders are almost entirely funded by deposits. The initial plan to put a levy on deposits was a way to make creditors pay, but one that many found inequitable.

What did Iceland do next?

Three large banks – Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir – had assets about 10 times the size of Iceland’s economy in 2008. Cyprus’s banks are about eight times the size of its GDP.

But many of the Icelandic banks’ loans were abroad. Equally, Icelandic banks had plenty of overseas deposits, with Icesave being the most infamous example in the UK and the Netherlands.

Domestic assets and liabilities, such as Icelanders’ deposits and loans, were transferred from the old banks to three new lenders. But the foreign bondholders and depositors were left in the old banks, which were allowed to collapse.

That meant Icesave depositors in the UK and Netherlands received nothing from Iceland. Instead, they were compensated by their own governments.

What happened to domestic deposit-holders?

The domestic Icelandic banking and payments system carried on uninterrupted. Instead of banking with Kaupthing, Landsbanki or Glitnir, Icelanders found they had accounts with Arion Bank, Landsbankinn and Islandsbanki respectively.

But the new banks were not exactly healthy – the authorities made the split on domestic-foreign lines rather than a traditional good bank/bad bank model. For instance, 51 per cent of Arion’s loans were in default or close to default at the end of 2010. Some 18 per cent were still non-performing at the end of last September.

What about the foreign bondholders?

They have got nothing so far. This is largely because of Iceland’s continued use of capital controls, designed to restrict the flow of currency in and out of the country.

But they still have claims over a lot. Again using Arion as an example, the 25,000 or so creditors of Kaupthing – most of whom are foreign – own 87 per cent of the new bank. And while Arion is the biggest asset of the Kaupthing estate it only represents about 15 per cent of the total.
…

Is there any chance Larry Ellison might step up and buy Cyprus, the way he did the Hawaiian island of Lanai?

Perhaps some investor could fashion a leveraged buyout, using natural gas reserves as collateral?

How much would you pay for Cyprus?
March 21, 2013, 3:49 PM

A satirical German website has posted a faux listing for Cyprus, saying the auction runs through Monday and already has drawn bids of 1,252.21 euros.

A mock article accompanying the “listing” predicts that the price could go much higher as soon as Russia and Turkey get into the auction.

In the event Russia wins the auction, the island will be renamed “Zyprom,” according to the piece.

Cyprus is called Zypern in German.
…

DHS plan calls for more scanning of private Web traffic, email
Advertise | AdChoices

The U.S. government is expanding a cybersecurity program that scans Internet traffic headed into and out of defense contractors to include far more of the country’s private, civilian-run infrastructure.

As a result, more private sector employees than ever before, including those at big banks, utilities and key transportation companies, will have their emails and Web surfing scanned as a precaution against cyber attacks.

Under last month’s White House executive order on cybersecurity, the scans will be driven by classified information provided by U.S. intelligence agencies — including data from the National Security Agency (NSA) — on new or especially serious espionage threats and other hacking attempts. U.S. spy chiefs said on March 12 that cyber attacks have supplanted terrorism as the top threat to the country.

The Department of Homeland Security will gather the secret data and pass it to a small group of telecommunication companies and cyber security providers that have employees holding security clearances, government and industry officials said. Those companies will then offer to process email and other Internet transmissions for critical infrastructure customers that choose to participate in the program.

DHS as the middleman
By using DHS as the middleman, the Obama administration hopes to bring the formidable overseas intelligence-gathering of the NSA closer to ordinary U.S. residents without triggering an outcry from privacy advocates who have long been leery of the spy agency’s eavesdropping.

The telecom companies will not report back to the government on what they see, except in aggregate statistics, a senior DHS official said in an interview granted on condition he not be identified.

“That allows us to provide more sensitive information,” the official said. “We will provide the information to the security service providers that they need to perform this function.” Procedures are to be established within six months of the order.

The administration is separately seeking legislation that would give incentives to private companies, including communications carriers, to disclose more to the government. NSA Director General Keith Alexander said last week that NSA did not want personal data but Internet service providers could inform the government about malicious software they find and the Internet Protocol addresses they were sent to and from.

“There is a way to do this that ensures civil liberties and privacy and does ensure the protection of the country,” Alexander told a congressional hearing.

Fears grow of destructive attack
In the past, Internet traffic-scanning efforts were mainly limited to government networks and Defense Department contractors, which have long been targets of foreign espionage.

But as fears grow of a destructive cyber attack on core, non-military assets, and more sweeping security legislation remained stalled, the Obama administration opted to widen the program.

Last month’s presidential order calls for commercial providers of “enhanced cybersecurity services” to extend their offerings to critical infrastructure companies. What constitutes critical infrastructure is still being refined, but it would include utilities, banks and transportation such as trains and highways.

Under the program, critical infrastructure companies will pay the providers, which will use the classified information to block attacks before they reach the customers. The classified information involves suspect Web addresses, strings of characters, email sender names and the like.

Not all the cybersecurity providers will be telecom companies, though AT&T is one. Raytheon said this month it had agreed with DHS to become a provider, and a spokesman said that customers could route their traffic to Raytheon after receiving it from their communications company.

As the new set-up takes shape, DHS officials and industry executives said some security equipment makers were working on hardware that could take classified rules about blocking traffic and act on them without the operator being able to reverse-engineer the codes. That way, people wouldn’t need a security clearance to use the equipment.

Civil liberties implications
The issue of scanning everything headed to a utility or a bank still has civil liberties implications, even if each company is a voluntary participant.

Lee Tien, a senior staff attorney with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that the executive order did not weaken existing privacy laws, but any time a machine acting on classified information is processing private communications, it raises questions about the possibility of secret extra functions that are unlikely to be answered definitively.

“You have to wonder what else that box does,” Tien said.

One technique for examining email and other electronic packets en route, called deep packet inspection, has stirred controversy for years, and some cybersecurity providers said they would not be using that. In deep packet inspection, communication companies or others with network access can examine all the elements of a transmission, including the content of emails.

“The signatures provided by DHS do not require deep packet inspection,” said Steve Hawkins, vice president at Raytheon’s Intelligence and Information Systems division, referring further questions to DHS.

The DHS official said the government is still in conversations with the telecom operators on the issue.

The official said the government had no plans to roll out any such form of government-guided close examination of Internet traffic into the communications companies serving the general public.

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.

WND EXCLUSIVE
OBAMA QUOTES ALINSKY IN SPEECH TO YOUNG ISRAELIS
Channels theme of ‘Rules for Radicals’ book dedicated to Lucifer
Published: 5 hours ago
by AARON KLEIN Email | Archive

Aaron Klein is WND’s senior staff reporter and Jerusalem bureau chief. He also hosts “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s WABC Radio. Follow Aaron on Twitter and Facebook.

Next big U.S. bankruptcy?You’ll never guess who’s likely to go bankrupt next in America. http://www.YouTube.com

JERUSALEM – In his address in Jerusalem today, President Obama channeled Saul Alinsky, citing the radical community organizer’s defining mantra as he urged young Israelis to “create change” to nudge their leadership to act.

Obama told a crowd of college students at Jerusalem’s main convention center that Israel “has the wisdom to see the world as it is, but also the courage to see the world as it should be.”

One of Alinsky’s major themes was working with the world as it “is” to turn it into the world as “it should be.”

In his defining work, “Rules for Radicals,” which he dedicated to “the first rebel,” Lucifer, Alinsky used those words to lay out his main agenda. He asserted radical change must be brought about by working within a system instead of attacking it from the outside.

“It is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system,” wrote Alinsky.

Obama related his Alinsky quote to a suggestion that “peace” begins with the people and not just the leadership – a statement some may relate to community organizing.

He further suggested Israelis do an end-run around the country’s leadership and “create the change that you want to see.”

The president said: “That is where peace begins – not just in the plans of leaders, but in the hearts of people; not just in a carefully designed process, but in the daily connections that take place among those who live together in this land, and in this sacred city of Jerusalem.”

He continued: “Speaking as a politician, I can promise you this: Political leaders will not take risks if the people do not demand that they do. You must create the change that you want to see.”

It’s not the first time Obama used the Alinsky phraseology of the world as it “is” versus how it “should be.”|

In a May 2011 speech, Obama stated: “There must be no doubt that the United States of America welcomes change that advances self-determination and opportunity. Yes, there will be perils that accompany this moment of promise. But after decades of accepting the world as it is in the region, we have a chance to pursue the world as it should be.”

In an April 2009 talk to a London girl’s school, first lady Michelle Obama recalled that on her first date with Barack Obama, he took her to a “community meeting” and taught her about the world “as it is” and “as it should be.”

“As he talked to the residents in that community center, he talked about two concepts,” she stated. “He talked about ‘the world as it is’ and ‘the world as it should be.’ And I talked about this throughout the entire campaign.”

Alinsky’s ideology is not foreign to Obama. The politician started his career as an Alinsky-style community organizer in Chicago and taught the radical’s tactics at the University of Chicago.

WND was first to report the executive director of an activist organization that taught Alinsky’s tactics of direct action, confrontation and intimidation was part of the team that developed volunteers for President Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Jackie Kendall, executive director of the Midwest Academy, was on the team that developed Camp Obama, a two-to-four day intensive course run in conjunction with Obama’s campaign. It trained volunteers to become activists to help Obama win the presidential election.

WND also reported the Woods Fund, a nonprofit for which Obama served as a paid board director from 1999 to December 2002, provided capital to the Midwest Academy.

Obama sat on the Woods Fund board alongside William Ayers, founder of the Weather Underground domestic terrorist organization.

Also, in 1998, Obama participated in a panel discussion praising Alinsky alongside Midwest Academy’s founder Heather Booth, an organizer and dedicated disciple of Alinsky.

The panel discussion following the opening performance in Chicago of the play “The Love Song of Saul Alinsky,” a work described by the Chicago Sun-Times as “bringing to life one of America’s greatest community organizers.”

Obama participated in the discussion alongside other Alinskyites, including Booth, political analyst Aaron Freeman, Don Turner of the Chicago Federation of Labor and Northwestern University history professor Charles Paine.

“Alinsky had so much fire burning within,” stated local actor Gary Houston, who portrayed Alinsky in the play. “There was a lot of complexity to him. Yet he was a really cool character.”

In a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, Alinsky’s son praised Obama for stirring up the masses at the 2008 Democratic National Convention “Saul Alinsky style,” saying, “Obama learned his lesson well.”

The letter, signed L. David Alinsky, closed with, “I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully.”

‘Communist fellow traveler’

Former 1960s radical and FrontPage Magazine Editor David Horowitz describes Alinsky as the “communist/Marxist fellow-traveler who helped establish the dual political tactics of confrontation and infiltration that characterized the 1960s and have remained central to all subsequent revolutionary movements in the United States.”

Horowitz writes in his 2009 pamphlet “Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution. The Alinsky Model”: “The strategy of working within the system until you can accumulate enough power to destroy it was what ’60s radicals called ‘boring from within.’ … Like termites, they set about to eat away at the foundations of the building in expectation that one day they could cause it to collapse.”

From the moment I fell down that rabbit hole I’ve been told where I must go and who I must be. I’ve been shrunk, stretched, scratched, and stuffed into a teapot.

– Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

March 21, 2013, 11:02 p.m. EDT
Japan stocks fall on yen; earnings hurt Hong Kong
By Sarah Turner and V. Phani Kumar, MarketWatch

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Japanese stocks tumbled Friday as the yen firmed up a day after the new Bank of Japan governor offered few new details on future policy, while Hong Kong shares fell after weak results from PetroChina Co. and several other blue-chip firms.

Many Asia markets suffered from heightened worries over Cyprus after the European Central Bank (ECB) issued a deadline to its parliament for meeting the terms of a proposed bailout, an issue which also hurt stocks on Wall Street overnight.

Perpetual Investments head of investment research Matthew Sherwood said that if the ECB withdrew its funding, and “no new capital sources could be identified, the Cypriot banking sector would collapse, and it would be forced out of the euro zone.”
…

‘Tis a mere flesh wound.

He can only speak to unions and college kids! Oh and hollyweirdos! He wants us all to believe in him, I do not! Why should I change so his agenda works? I’ve done enough soul searching and I like being a capitalist piglet!