Bits Bucket for March 26, 2013
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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What was it that Jane Wells tweeted?
Posted: 6:15 a.m. Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Spain’s central bank offers grim economic forecast
The Associated Press
MADRID —
Spain’s central bank is predicting a continuing recession and mounting unemployment for the rest of 2013 as the country struggles to free itself from a broad European slowdown and repair its finances.
The Bank of Spain said Tuesday it expects the country’s economy to shrink 1.5 percent this year, compared with 1.4 percent in 2012, and only return to growth in late 2014.
It forecast the jobless rate will rise to 27.1 percent this year, up from 26 percent last year. That also won’t start falling until 2014. The country’s budget deficit is expected to drop to 6 percent of its economy in 2013, down from 10 percent last year.
Spain’s economy is the fourth-biggest of the 17 European Union countries that use the euro after Germany, France and Italy.
Copyright The Associated Press
So long as the U.S. stock and housing market rallies continue to gather steam, the rain in Spain will mainly stay in Spain.
Eurozone economies slow as major industry activity declines
Figures fuel concern that austerity imposed by Brussels forcing countries to cut their debts will prolong the recession
Phillip Inman and agencies
The Guardian, Thursday 21 March 2013 18.09 EDT
The eurozone composite Purchasing Managers’ Index fell more than expected in March. Photograph: Ints Kalnins/Reuters
The economic malaise afflicting the eurozone deepened in March after figures for activity across all major industries declined, a survey showed on Thursday.
Ahead of what could be worse figures for April as fallout from the Cyprus situation begins to bite, Markit’s Flash eurozone composite Purchasing Managers’ Index, seen as a reliable economic growth indicator for the bloc, fell more than expected to 46.5 in March from 47.9 in February.
The figures will fuel concerns that austerity measures imposed by Brussels that force eurozone countries to cut their debts will prolong the recession. In contrast, manufacturing in the US and China improved, which will be important for overall global growth.
“The sharp decline in the flash composite PMI in March pours cold water on hopes of an imminent end to the eurozone recession,” said Martin van Vliet, economist at ING.
“If the situation surrounding Cyprus spirals out of control, the onset of recovery might well be delayed.”
…
I don’t understand why no one gets that, yes it may delay recovery, but 5 years form now, there will be no crisis remaining if the debt is under control. If you don’t face it now, 5 years from now we will continue to say it’s a problem and changing it will result in catastrophe… Pending doom for extended periods of time just seems to cause depression..
I don’t know why no one get’s that if your GDP falls due to austerity you may actually have a harder time paying off your debts and this is exactly what the article is talking about?
If it this simple, then the reverse must be true.
A government (US in particular) CAN just continuously increase borrowing and spending dramatically (which increases GDP) until Viola! we are no longer in debt!
Somehow I don’t think the rusult of applying either logic direction is going to be painless.
This is definitely bullish for crude oil.
I would love to hear your opinions on real estate in the boroughs of NYC where you can’t get a decent house for under a million in nicer areas, but houses are sitting forever.
If a million dollar house was sold for something less than a million dollars then it would no longer be a million dollar house. Neither would the comps remain as million dollar houses.
If you are a bank or some other lender who owns a lot of mortgages on million dollar houses then you have an interest in keeping the prices up. One way to do this is to restrict supply.
Think deBeers.
Price equal value is an illusion that is shared among buyers and sellers, but price equal value is definitely not an illusion for those who hold mortgages on those very same houses.
unless you have wall street money stay out of overpriced, fantasy land.
Another way to do this is to keep homes listed at prices north of one million dollars indefinitely, or until a buyer is forthcoming — whichever happens first.
Are you strictly talking single family houses? These are very expensive in any city. It doesn’t make sense to build sfr in nice areas, you can throw up a condo or townhouse dev and make much more as a developer. So yeah, supply is tight in good areas.
If you want to commute an hour or two from Manhattan, ral can build you a new house for cheap. It just won’t be in Douglaston or Jamaica estate (To use examples from Queens)
Joe all the houses Ive seen sold last year had the local toothless handyman fix up the basement or garage into a 3rd illegal apartment…its the only way to come close to covering the mortgage …
if course all utilities are included in the “rent” since Con Ed wont install a separate meter without a valid CO
Still way overpriced
“Houses sitting forever” is evidence that, unbeknownst to the owners, they have initiated sales by accidental Dutch auction.
In an English auction, the opening bid starts below market price and the auction participants bid up the price until the only the winning bidder is left — the one who is willing to pay the most. By contrast, a Dutch auction starts off with a price above market value, and the auctioneer (in our case, a home seller) drops the offer price until it reaches a level where a buyer is willing to pay it.
I have a colleague whose opening accidental dutch Auction price in a lovely ocean view San Diego home was $1.8m; only eighteen short months later and $500,000 lower, they found a buyer at a price around $1.3m.
I agree with your point about most sellers listening to dumba*s RE agents and therefore ending up being “behind” the market in times of falling prices. Greed and approval-seeking are powerful influences.
When did the colleague buy the house and what was their purchase price? I’m assuming their purchase price wasn’t during the bubble, otherwise they wouldn’t have the “luxury” of doing 500k in reductions.
They made out handsomely because of buying at well below $500K in the early 1990s. Nonetheless, it has to be quite painful to discover you are half a million less wealthy than you believed when you put your home on the market. And the part I don’t know about (and am afraid to ask about) regards how much they forked out to upgrade the property, which apparently was a big factor in their need to sell.
Interesting; in theory they should’ve done OK and have walked away with quite a bit at closing. In reality, they probably HELOC’d to do the “improvements” which probably crushed their cash out. And a house with refi/HELOC going on isn’t going to cash flow (rent) very well unless it’s in a truly premium location.
What did they do upon selling? Buy another? Rent?
but houses are sitting forever.
uhh yea…. That explains why housing demand is at 17 year lows.
It’s the price stupid.
Methinks supply must be at a a low point.
Yesterday afternoon, while I was reading this blog, a local real estate agent knocked on the door to ask if I wanted to sell our house or if I knew any neighbors thinking about selling.
She and her broker son had only a couple of recent listings, both short sales. Brokers canvassing door-to-door in a great neighborhood is good marketing, yet I last saw it 20-plus years ago.
Minimum wagers tossing flyers on your porch, yes. Press the flesh, no.
Interesting for the Left Coast OC to lack the stock. Rule of thumb used to be 6 months of supply. Now? No idea and shadow inventory distorts everything. Glad I’m not selling. Or buying. -
would there be any GDP growth without deficit spending?
no
stocks are way overpriced for an economy based on printing.
stocks are way overpriced for an economy based on printing ??
I would agree but the bottom line for corporate america is they are going to the bank big time…And thats very real….Just look at Apple’s bank account…
that’s like saying the economy is doing really well because warren buffet is getting richer.
i should have said “isn’t that like…?”
that’s like saying the economy is doing really well because warren buffet is getting richer.
Yes. That’s what has been happening for 30+ years. Most all the GDP growth has pooled into the hands of the rich.
Here it is in a 1948-2001 productivity/wage gains chart:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/files/2012/08/compensation_productivity.jpg
i think the enormous income disparity is a very serious problem that needs to be dealt with.
i do not think that dispairty begins with the $ 250,000 a year professional wage earning class.
i do not think that “taxing the rich” comes anywhere close to solving the problem. as the simplicsitc video i posted yesterday pointed out…that is no more than a distraction.
i think it’s a combination of globalization and the feds policies which are supported by this and the past administration that are causing the problem.
hopefully after the gay marriage debate is settled we can all focus on ending the fed.
i think the enormous income disparity is a very serious problem that needs to be dealt with.
You and I might think that, but the they people at the top don’t see any problem whatsoever with the status quo.
Thank you all for the wonderful conversation about me yesterday evening.
I have justified my decision to buy several times. I see no reason to do it again, except to say that the only “riches” I ever claimed was the promise of living nearly rent-free when the house is paid off.
Blue Skye: I admit it, your IQ and work ethic are multiples of mine. I know that this is true and just, as I have been well-trained by the American Capitalist Establishment that the digits on a paycheck are a precise and accurate directly proportional measure of a man’s ability as a producer and contributor to society. And in exchange for, and in direct proportion to, your hard work, there is a string of digits in a computer somewhere — probably several very long strings of digits in several computers — attached to your name.
Enjoy your strings of digits.
You are making the IQ and ethic thing up.
I do not envy your relentless debt service on a depreciating house.
Verizon forced a software upgrade on our Droid 4 that screwed up the keyboard settings and disabled us from using bold type when noting your incalculable losses.
In lieu of paying rent, you paid 2x for a depreciating asset.
So much for rent-free.
“In lieu of paying rent, you paid 2x for a depreciating asset”
Go learn what a depreciating asset is and get back to us will you ?
houses depreciate. ALWAYS. Like ALL manmade items.
Housing Anal Ist is a manmade item -
ALWAYS
Mo,
He thinks depreciate is a synonym for deteriorate. I tried to explain the difference a few months ago. He doesn’t understand or doesn’t choose to use the correct term. You can’t fix it.
Depreciation may be attributed to any cause, it is a reduction in value over time.
My house depreciated:
as the gooners took over the neighborhood.
as the credit bubble collapsed.
as interest rates went up.
when the color scheme fell out of fashion.
when the kitchen became dated.
as the whole deteriorated.
from the day I bought it, relentlessly.
If we’re talking in *relative* terms, any housing structure should depreciate over time, without maintenance and updating.
The nominal price paid for the house may increase and outpace inflation, but that is a different subject entirely.
Our favorite HCS operator is still hard at work with her misinformative posts.
Still don’t know what HCS is.
Still don’t know what HCS is.
Housing Crime Syndicate
Housing depreciates ALWAYS like ALL manmade items.
Housing Collapse Scenario
Does it really matter? at least she’s not buying to flip or bragging about “making” 100ks of paper money, unlike some others.
No, she isn’t a flipper, but the making 100s of Ks vs renting is exactly what the discussion is about…Rents and prices will always go up and rent is cash in the trash, ya know!
Your losses will be ungoogleable
I should clarify “shacking up.” I sorry if it sounded like cohabitating Friends with Benefits. I know that’s the common connotation. On HBB, I use ’shacking up’ to refer to taking in roommates to pay the rent.
I don’t have any derision for the people doing the shacking up (in either sense). My frustration is with the LL’s — or more accurately, the Bottomless Stockholder Maw who owns stock in rental corporations. They demand profit. LL’s have to get that profit from somewhere, and they do it by jacking up the rent the point that people are forced to shack up or take on roomies to afford it. Being a “good tenenat” no longer gets you a break.
If people are forced to “shack up” to meet rent expenses then there will be less of them dispersed to fill up vacant units.
“If people are forced to “shack up” to meet rent expenses then there will be less of them dispersed to fill up vacant units”
It seems like this is a way to provide some elasticity in supply and demand without the expense of builing extra units. Some people will pay extra to have a place by themselves - but the price won’t be as much as it would if some of their cohort weren’t willing to have roommates.
There is a long tradition in Washington, DC of “group houses” where young (and not so young) people share the rental on a single family home, generally in neighborhoods where you have to drive or ride the bus to get to a metro station. These houses can be rented out at a fairly steep rate with 4 or 5 people paying part of it and the young(ish) people don’t complain too much if the counters aren’t granite. They also recruit their own tennants, because as one person leaves the other 3 or 4 are very willing to work their butts off to find another person who is acceptable to the landlord so they don’t have to absorb the other rent and so they have a new housemate they can stand. The house never being entirely empty is another excuse to never upgrade the kitchen or bathrooms.
Whether this style of living will actually translate to the new apartment towers very close to the metro that are the focus of current development is up in the air. In the small houses, you could easily carve out 4 bedrooms, especially if one was in the basement and one was behind a curtain in most of the living room or one person took over the dining room as a bedroom (leases would say some combo of the roomies were sharing the legal bedrooms). That is hard to translate to a one bedroom apartment or studio.
I know of several California Congressmen who “shacked-up” in a DC condo for a couple of sessions rather than buy before they knew if they’d be reelected. When you’re traveling across the country and back every week, paying for two homes and trying to support a family, that 179K doesn’t go as far as one might imagine.
Dick Armey showered in the House gym and slept in his office. He was in DC for 20 years. LOL!
Just heard from a bubbleheaded CNN reporter: “Home prices are booming”! And, she added, “…as you know, all real estate is local.”
(first of all…let me just say…i think kudlow is an asshat)
but…i heard him on the radio this morning. he has been somewhat criticle of the bernanke in the past…but this morning…he has flipped and was prasing the wiz.
so…with that said…if you own stocks…SELL…SELL…SELL!!!
if you own stocks…SELL…SELL…SELL!!!
Did that a week ago.
The boom (but no bubble!) is back! Buy ten investment houses now, or get priced out forever!!
Home prices: Biggest rise since housing bubble
By Chris Isidore @CNNMoney
March 26, 2013: 9:08 AM ET
Home prices posted their biggest gain since 2006 in January.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Home prices continued their recovery, rising 8.1% in January from year-earlier levels, according to a reading released Tuesday.
The S&P Case-Shiller index, which tracks prices across the 20 largest markets in the nation, posted the biggest year-over-year gain in prices since June 2006.
“This marks the highest increase since the housing bubble burst,” said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices.
Related: Home shopping - should you buy new?
The report shows the recovery in home prices is widespread. All 20 markets posted a year-over-year gain in home values, and the pace of increase picked up in every market except Detroit.
Some of the markets hurt the most by the bursting of the housing bubble have enjoyed the biggest gains in the last year, led by a 23% rise in Phoenix. Prices were also up more than 10% in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Detroit, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Miami, all markets hit hard by foreclosures due to the skid in prices after the bubble popped or economic problems associated with the recession.
New York posted the smallest rise, up only 0.7%, but that was a reversal from a slight decline in the December reading.
But even with the recent rise in prices, the overall index is down 28.4% from the 2006 peak in prices.
Related: Big money betting big on housing
…
seems like we are back in 2004 talking about the same stuff over and over again. I think I’ve been watching this story for 10 years now.
after wall street made all its bets it was time to get the party started again.
A big part of the mantra is to talk about “the housing bubble” as though it is something from ancient history. Nobody in the MSM ever suggests that perhaps the bubble never really ended.
I was reading a story about homes having bidding wars on the local papers website this morning. there was an extreme amount of sarcasm in the comment section.
I was reading a story about homes having bidding wars on the local papers website this morning ??
Even in hard hit markets it appears;
http://cl.exct.net/?ju=fe5713797062057e7216&ls=fe1b1d777d6c017e741275&m=fefc1172766306&l=fed1157376640678&s=fe35157277640d7d711074&jb=ffcf14&t=
The drop in Sacramento housing supply is incalculable! (except when well-documented articles provide numbers that you are unable to process, Pimpster)! -
With 2,500 REO’s in the city of Sacramento alone, there’s plenty of excess housing inventory.
http://www.realtytrac.com/map/ca/sacramento-county/#cp=38.57638549804688;-121.49359130859375&lvl=13&sty=r&srange=3&page=1&sort=featured,asc&tabs=PreForeclosure,Auction,LiveAuction,OnlineAuction,BankOwned,REO,GovernmentOwned,Resale,FSBO
I see a big difference in this bubble. The 2004-2006 bubble was fueled by shaky J6Ps who loaded up on ARMs, I/O’s and other ninja loans with grace periods. When the 3-year grace period was up and millions of J6Ps had to sell, they found themselves competing with a paucity of buyers to sell to. [Canada is in this stage now.]
Today’s US buyers are cash based. They don’t have grace period loans, they don’t have to make payments, they don’t HAVE to sell. I don’t know this is going to pop, but the pop will happen within the banks, not in housing.
Nice try debtjunkie.
Previous bubble began in 1998…..
And ‘todays buyers” are few and far between. Remember. Housing demand is at 1997 levels… and falling.
When the 3-year grace period was up and millions of J6Ps had to sell,
Why did they have to sell again? Sure, teasers got some in trouble, but many with ARMs that we thought would explode actually saw their payments go _down_ as the Fed ticked rates down in response to the implosion.
I agree, cash buyers may have less of a need to sell; however, if they begin to see better returns available in other asset-classes, they may well be inclined to sell in a relatively short time-frame.
Sure, teasers got some in trouble,
p.s. Teasers definitely were not the only factor in the bust; for example, teasers DEFINITELY do not explain the abundance of first-payment defaults.
When the 3-year grace period was up and millions of J6Ps had to sell, they found themselves competing with a paucity of buyers to sell to.
And just when it was about to get good, instead they got to live there for free and were not forced to compete. They never had to sell. The question is whether they ever will…
Today’s US buyers are cash based.”
investors like Blackstone using cheap money
too much money chasing to few assets
I think this is a result of no real growth so we are getting artifical growth engineered by the FED and exploited by investors.
It really sucks
Dead cat bounce. And this is the first one since prices began falling.
So how many steps in this staircase?
So how many steps in this staircase?
I don’t know, but with the run artificially stretched out like this the rise seems like it could get a little scary if they stay in proportion to each other.
I don’t know, but with the run artificially stretched out like this the rise seems like it could get a little scary if they stay in proportion to each other.
nice
Shiller suggests this might be a mini bubble. Says real estate environment is totally artificial with massive government interventions. Notes that stock market had an echo bubble at the depth of the great depression, from 1933 to 1937.
(duration about 3 minutes) http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000156907
There has never been a better time to invest in real estate in order to capture the home equity wealth gains from rapidly increasing prices.
March 26, 2013, 9:12 a.m. EDT
U.S. home-price growth at six-year high
Phoenix prices up 23% over one year
By Steve Goldstein, MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — U.S. home prices edged up in January to make the year-on-year improvement the fastest in more than six years, according to data released Tuesday.
The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite index nudged up 0.1% to take the year-on-year gain to 8.1%. The level is the highest since Sept. 2010, and the growth rate is the strongest since June 2006.
Phoenix prices are up 23% year-on-year.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, prices rose by 1% in January, S&P added.
The news fits with other economic reports showing a rebound in the housing market since the bubble burst during the last recession. Sales and construction activity also have improved.
…
Incalculable without numbers! Oh right, there are numbers. Damn!
Maybe the wrong adjective?
Amazing? Unpredictable? Unsustainable?
Incalculable simply means you can’t count even when provided with robust figures. Sorry you were a math dropout.
“Robust” figures?
Demand at 1997 levels is hardly robust.
Buyer beware.
robin rocks
The real estate recovery happy talk on NPR is really getting on my nerves.
aww, don’t like being wrong ?
Dead cat bounce. And it’s only the first step down a very long stairwell.
Tea Partiers boycott ‘too liberal’ Fox News because that will show ‘em
1 day ago
A number of Tea Party activists are organizing a boycott of Fox News, claiming that the network “keeps turning to the left.” This is the second boycott organized for this reason. Protesters say that an earlier two-day boycott took down 20 percent of Fox’s regular viewership, which is impressive, even though it has yet to be proven. Kevin Avard, a New Hampshire man participating in the boycott, described his recent epiphany: “The more I looked at it, I have come to the conclusion that Fox is not as fair and balanced as I thought. They shade the truth also,” which is a statement with so many ironic layers of meaning it’s like a parfait.
…
The truth is/was, Fox news was never conservative to begin with. Murdoch saw a market in giving republican spin a chance. As republican party has done, fox news has morphed into a 24 hour neo-con propoganda channel since 2000.
Fox News is the anti Ron Paul and anti Rand Paul channel.
the girls are cute on fox.
“the girls are cute on fox.”
Think that’s happenstance?
if the ‘news’ starts to appear unbalanced, their plastic surgeons can adjust the amount of silicone in their implants to make them more balanced.
That sounds fair….
Ron Paul supporters chase Sean Hannity:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5rJI5e0jBU
Proving yet again you can never please the extremists.
Got to love the irony.
It takes one to know one.
I know you are, but what am I?
I know you are, but what am I?
A kool-aid guzzler.
I can’t wait for the 2016 GOP primaries. Based on TeaParty’s current trajectory, I predict that during one of the debates Michelle Bachmann will be booed off stage for being too damned liberal.
michelle bachmann is too liberal. her husband provides ‘therapy’ to turn gay people straight. they should push a stone wall on top of them like they do in afghanistan, that if anything will rally the base.
http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Persecution_of_Homosexuals_(Afghanistan)
Saw it on another board. I am paraphrasing here. I thought it was funny.
Will the supreme court allow anal arguments along with oral in the gay marriage case?
that’s not very coexist, now is it. sounds like you need more diversity training.
“I thought it was funny”
Human rights are always funny, right ?
Human rights are always funny, right ?
BS human right. I am for gay marriage and gay divorce and all that $hit. Don’t care and it should not be this big deal.
Not going to play your game here. What about my rights to marry 2 women at the same time? What say you? Where’s my human right?
What about my rights to marry 2 women at the same time? What say you? Where’s my human right?
I’m in favor of making that a human right as well.
Government should not be in the marriage business at all.
People are conflating “religious” marriage with rights, privileges and responsibilities under the constitution.
I say feel free to spiritually marry (or not) whomever your religion or philosophy says is acceptable. (What about religious gay people may find the need to marry to satisfy their conscience? )
We need a thorough NON-religious examination of what sort of civil rights, priviledges and contractual obligations are in the interest of running a civilized society.
“anal arguments “
I fart in your general direction.
What about my rights to marry 2 women at the same time? What say you? Where’s my human right?
—————————————————————–
Yeah, I like to tie women up; when do we march on Washington?
What about my rights to marry 2 women at the same time? What say you?
I say why not? I’m pretty sure every argument for gay marriage applies to polygamy. Why can’t I have multiple wives? As long as it’s consenting adults I have no idea why the government is involved.
Tax implications.
Tax implications.
There are tax implications with gay marriage, too.
Alexander Fraser Tytler
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee FRSE (15 October 1747 – 5 January 1813) was a Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian who served as Professor of Universal History, and Greek and Roman Antiquities, in the University of Edinburgh.[1]
Why democracies fail
The famous “why democracies fail” quotation is
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”
Its earliest confirmed use is on page 12A of the Daily Oklahoman on December 9, 1951, which attributed it to Tytler. Later references to the quote specify that it is from the book, The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic, by Alexander Fraser Tytler. No record of that book has been found, nor does any other work by Tytler have this passage in it.[12] It seems that most of Tytler’s work has been completely lost.[13]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Fraser_Tytler - 48k -
Thank god we live in a republic. A fascist ones these days, but a republic, nonetheless.
“A fascist ones these days”
Has your right to post your insane opinions been taken away yet ?
Do you even know what “fascist” means?
I think he’s posting drunk most of the time.
The fact that the bottom 95% are getting poorer and the top 0.01% are getting much richer pokes a lot of holes in that arguement.
Democracy isn’t working because the elite have consolidated control over who get’s to run, and the media, and campaign finance.
It used to be that there were many power bases and they would fight each other but now via consolidation of markets and vertical integration you have less and less of this
“The fact that the bottom 95% are getting poorer and the top 0.01% are getting much richer pokes a lot of holes in that arguement.”
Posted: 10:12 a.m. Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Berkshire amends warrant deal with Goldman Sachs
The Associated Press
OMAHA, Neb. —
Warren Buffett’s company says it’s changed its warrant agreement with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to allow it to be settled with stock, cementing its place as a long-term investor.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. received the right to buy 43.5 million Goldman shares as part of a $5 billion deal it made to bolster the New York-based investment bank during the financial crisis.
Originally, Berkshire could buy Goldman stock for $115 per share until this Oct. 1.
Now instead of Berkshire paying cash for all 43.5 million shares, Goldman will compensate Berkshire with stock for the difference between its stock price this fall and the exercise price.
The deal will likely make Berkshire one of Goldman’s top 10 biggest shareholders. Goldman shares are currently 27 percent higher than the exercise price.
Copyright The Associated Press
‘Fed put’ fade to help steer S&P 500 below 1,400: Wells Fargo’s Adams
March 25, 2013, 3:24 PM
With the average S&P 500 Index SPX -0.33% target in the upper 1,500s, where does an analyst come up with a forecast of below 1,400 by the end of the year? Simple: The “Fed put” that stocks have enjoyed for the past four years will fade in the second half of this year.
If the economy steadily improves, expect the Federal Reserve to be more hard pressed in justifying near-zero interest rates and easing efforts. Even though the Fed will stick to its guns, the chatter about the unwind in 2014 will be enough to weigh on stocks in the second half of 2013, said Gina Martin Adams, institutional equity strategist at Wells Fargo Securities, in a Monday note.
Adams has one of the most bearish forecasts on Wall Street. She sees the S&P 500 ending 2013 at 1,390, a little more than 10% below its current level. In 2012, her target of 1,360 was only off by 5%, with only three other analysts at major firms coming up with a more accurate prediction, according to Crain’s Pensions & Investments. She’s stuck by her 2013 forecast as some of her Wall Street rivals upgrade their views for stocks to rally even further.
In looking at past hikes in Fed rates, Adams saw the average decline in the S&P 500 was 8% in the six months preceding the hike. (See chart above). The average was nearly 13% when earnings growth was weak. Also, stocks come under considerable pressure when Fed bond buying programs end.
,,,
If it is powered by enrgizer battery, it can go on for a long time.
–Ben Gono
Sell in May and walk away…
Am I the only observer who is utterly amazed by how quickly the Cyprus crisis blew over? ‘Twas a tempest in a teapot.
Oops…spoke too soon.
Head of Cyprus’s Biggest Bank Resigns
Milos Bicanski/Getty Images
A customer at an ATM machine outside a Bank Of Cyprus branch this week in Limassol, Cyprus. The chairman of the bank, Andreas Artemis, has resigned.
By LIZ ALDERMAN and DAVID JOLLY
Published: March 26, 2013
NICOSIA — The chairman of Cyprus’s biggest bank, the Bank of Cyprus, resigned abruptly Tuesday following a showdown with the head of the central bank and the Finance Ministry.
Antreas Artemis complained that authorities rode roughshod over him and his board of directors by moving unilaterally to sell off units of the bank in Greece and planning to hit big depositors to pay for losses.
The changes at the Bank of Cyprus are part of the latest bailout deal negotiated between Cypriot officials and the so-called troika of international lenders: the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.
Mr. Artemis’s resignation, while not wholly unexpected following the controversial decision by international lenders to impose significant losses on the bank’s larger depositors, still caught the market by surprise and was a further reminder of how volatile and uncertain Cyprus’s financial system has become in recent days.
Bankers say that the fact that the board of the country’s largest bank had been left largely in the dark as its future was being discussed in Brussels and that an outside administrator had recently been named to oversee the bank in the coming months were factors likely to have contributed to his decision.
…
Seems like these problems in europe just distract us from our own. we all know there broke over there.
U need to go to some open houses this weekend and report back on the frenzyness in s cal. cruise up to carmel valley and rancho bernardo. Bring a video recorder.
The For Sale signs on North County San Diego lawns have come out of long-term storage this spring, including several posted on our street. And I heard last weekend from the son of a Realtor™ (and hairdresser!) we know that the market is still dead.
If listings continue to mushroom, with CNN-inflated price expectations dancing through would-be sellers heads and sequestration dampening the optimism of would-be buyers, it could be a very interesting spring sales season in San Diego.
My brother bought a townhouse in Oceanside near Camp Pendleton in ‘04. I would never think to ask if it’s “craaaatered”.
He only lived in the townhouse for about a yr, as well. Maybe less, depending on his deployments. He left Pendleton for good in ‘08 and has been stationed in Maryland and Hawaii since then, with another pair of deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan along the way.
He rents it out to officers via a local RE person. I wonder if that’s just going to end up being the long term plan, since he has a kid now and his wife’s family is a big homebuilder in North County. There’s no way he’s ever living in that townhouse again.
Don’t ask your brother; ask Zillow or Trulia. Zestimates say that 92058 has craaatered about 25%, back to late 2003 prices, and then leveled off. Sample townhouse (I think it’s a townhouse):
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/276-N-El-Camino-Real-SPC-228-Oceanside-CA-92058/2114795195_zpid/
Well part of the insanity is, I don’t even know the address. I sent maybe 1 or 2 letters there, ever. Like maybe a graduation announcement and a Christmas card. The fact that the military will help these guys buy houses when they’re moving every few years is crazy. My other brother did the same thing when stationed in Norfolk, but he sold in 2008 when his service commitment was up. What is the point of “helping” military personnel with housing, as opposed to just paying them a little more or providing reasonable housing on the base? When my dad was doing his service commitment we lived in very small houses that were owned by the military, probably 1000 sq ft or less. (This was when I was 1-3 yrs old so I don’t remember any of it, but from what my parents say, it wasn’t that bad.)
Oceanside has very few townhomes, from what I could tell.
Maybe a smaller house is actually better for a little kid than a larger house anyway. Imagine a toddler trying to navigate a grand staircase or a 12×13 bedroom or a soaring two-story great room.
I think you’re pretty close on the location with your zillow, I somewhat remember the layout of the roads in that area. I seem to remember purchase price being low-mid 200s, so falling under 200k is believable.
I don’t know. I bet the acoustics on banging pots together in a two story great room are pretty fantastic.
“…ask Zillow or Trulia…”
Why would you trust real estate pimp sites whose range estimates are wide enough to drive a truck through ‘em?
With or Without Bailout, Cypriots Lose Trust in Banks
Cyprus Losses, European Gains: An American University professor of international finance discusses how a deal to aid Cyprus will affect the global market.
By LIZ ALDERMAN and LANDON THOMAS Jr.
Published: March 25, 2013
NICOSIA, Cyprus — With her wedding day three months away, Despina Charalambous is desperate to gain access to her savings, which have been frozen at the Bank of Cyprus for more than a week. She plans to take out all her money once the banks reopen, even though the new bailout plan for her country supposedly guarantees the safety of her deposits.
“I have lost my trust in Bank of Cyprus and banks in general,” Ms. Charalambous, 33, a biologist, said. She was still bitter that just last week the country’s president was ready to skim money even from small savers like her to help secure a 10 billion euro, or $12.9 billion, lifeline to the nation’s outsize banking industry.
Multiply Ms. Charalambous’s concerns by tens of thousands of account holders in Cyprus, and it becomes apparent why many people here and abroad have a sneaking suspicion that European leaders, in scrambling to cobble together yet another solution on Sunday night to the Cyprus crisis, have come up with little more than a Band-Aid for what is likely to remain a gnawing wound.
Stocks were down broadly in Europe on Monday, after the head of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, suggested that the idea of skimming savers’ accounts to bail out banks could be considered a “template” for other countries. The borrowing costs of the financially shaky Spain and Italy surged upward as the markets digested the Cyprus news — and the broader implications for the euro currency union.
…
Despina Charalambous
Jeroen Dijsselbloem
Vasilis Zertalis
Nicos Anastasiades
Man, I’d hate to be the poor guy taking pizza orders over the phone in Cyprus.
You’d hate taking my pizza order too.
Supreme with extra cheese, olive, and mushroom. Add ham and pineapple, but take off pepperoni, sausage and beef.
Am I close? I’d add spinach if it were available.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem
He is dutch. The pizza takers hate him in Amsterdam not because of his last name but because he changes his mind quite often.
Banks are still closed. They extended through Thursday.
Not sure where you getting this crisis is over meme. Crisis has just started for the vast majority of cypress hill people.
Sorry — forgot to use those sarcasm tags again (but maybe you could tell from the articles I posted that I was being sarcastic?)…
Cyprus rescue marks “game-changer” for Europe’s banks
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/26/us-eurozone-banks-bailouts-idUSBRE92P0N520130326
…banks must hold more equity capital to reassure their creditors,” said Nick Anderson, analyst at Berenberg.
“The elephant in the room has been spotted at last.”
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers, said on Monday that in future, the currency bloc should first ask banks to recapitalize themselves, then look to shareholders and bondholders and then “if necessary” to uninsured deposit holders.
Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers, said on Monday that in future, the currency bloc should first ask banks to recapitalize themselves, then look to shareholders and bondholders and then “if necessary” to uninsured deposit holders.
+infinity.
The fact that depositors were being asked to take a hair-cut without it being clearly stated that all shareholders would be wiped out, and all bondholders would have equity substituted for their debt BLEW MY MIND.
The only way depositors should have a haircut is if all of the above occurred first, and the banks STILL were unable to raise new funds by floating bonds. And they would be, if the above occurred.
March 26, 2013, 5:56 a.m. EDT
Cyprus orders banks to remain shut until Thursday
By Barbara Kollmeyer
MADRID (MarketWatch) — Cyprus will keep its banks closed until Thursday amid fears those institutions will be overrun by customers trying to extract their money after a bailout deal reached Monday. The country’s stock markets will remain shuttered Wednesday as well. The announcement by the country’s central bank came suddenly as all but the nation’s two biggest banks had been preparing to re-open on Tuesday. Those banks have been closed since March 16.
Why will depositors decide to keep their money in the bank if the banks are closed for 2 more days?
Why will depositors decide to keep their money in the bank if the banks are closed for 2 more days?
Should a bank close completely, further ‘decisions’ of their depositors don’t matter at all.
World economy
With Cyprus deal done, bank run looks likely
By Michele Kambas and Karolina Tagaris
Reuters Tuesday March 26, 2013 7:12 AM
NICOSIA, Cyprus — The president of Cyprus assured his people that a bailout deal he struck with the European Union was in their best interest and would end anxiety, but he also announced “very temporary” capital controls to stem a run on the island’s banks.
Returning last night from overnight negotiations in Brussels, Nicos Anastasiades said the 10 billion euro ($13 billion) rescue plan agreed on there in the early hours of the morning was painful but essential to avert economic meltdown.
The conservative leader has agreed to close the second-largest bank, Cyprus Popular, and inflict heavy losses on big depositors, many of them Russian, after Cyprus’ outsize financial sector ran into trouble when its investments in neighboring Greece went sour.
“The agreement we reached is difficult but, under the circumstances, the best that we could achieve,” Anastasiades said in a TV address last night.
“We leave behind the uncertainty and anxiety that we all lived through over the last few months and we look forward now to the future with optimism,” he told compatriots who face an immediate deep recession and years of economic hardship.
Many Cypriots say they feel anything but reassured by the bailout deal, however, and are expected to besiege banks when they reopen after a weeklong shutdown.
The central bank said most would open their doors again today, while the top two local banks most affected by the bailout — Bank of Cyprus and Cyprus Popular Bank , known as Laiki — would remain closed until Thursday.
Little is known about the restrictions on transactions that Anastasiades said the central bank would impose, but he told Cypriots: “I want to assure you that this will be a very temporary measure that will gradually be relaxed.”
Capital controls, preventing people from moving funds out of the country, are at odds with the European Union’s ideals. But the government may fear an ebb tide of panic that would disrupt the economy even more.
Without an agreement by the end of yesterday, Cyprus had faced certain banking collapse and risked becoming the first country to be pushed out of the European single currency — a fate that Germany and other northern creditors seemed willing to inflict on a nation that accounts for just a tiny fraction of the euro economy and whose banks they believed had suffered fatal hubris.
…
If it’s all contained, why the extreme anxiety over a bank run?
Cyprus readies capital controls to avert bank run
By Michele Kambas and Costas Pitas
NICOSIA | Tue Mar 26, 2013 6:50pm EDT
(Reuters) - Cyprus is expected to complete capital control measures on Wednesday to prevent a run on the banks by depositors anxious about their savings after the country agreed a painful rescue package with international lenders.
Cypriots have taken to the streets of Nicosia in their thousands to protest at a bailout deal that they fear will push their country into an economic slump and cost many their jobs. European leaders said the deal averted a chaotic national bankruptcy that might have forced Cyprus out of the euro.
With banks due to reopen on Thursday, Finance Minister Michael Sarris said he expected the control measures to be ready by noon (5 a.m. EST) on Wednesday: “I think they will be within the realms of reason,” he said, without going into details.
“Banks will open on Thursday … We will look at the best way to limit the possibility of large sums of money leaving, and not imposing punitive conditions on the economy, businesses and individuals,” Sarris said in a Cyprus television interview.
The central bank governor said earlier that “loose” controls would apply temporarily to all banks. Earlier, the finance minister said they could be in place for weeks. Banks have been shut since final bailout talks got under way in mid-March.
Up to 3,000 high school students protested at parliament, the first major expression of popular anger after Cyprus agreed the 10-billion euro ($13-billion) rescue with the European Union, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank.
“They’ve just got rid of all our dreams, everything we’ve worked for, everything we’ve achieved up until now, what our parents have achieved,” said one student, named Thomas.
Outside the central bank, about 200 employees of the country’s biggest commercial lender, the Bank of Cyprus, demanded the resignation of the central bank governor, Panicos Demetriades, chanting “Hands off Cyprus” and “Disgrace”.
Dimos Dimosthenous, who has worked at the Bank of Cyprus for over 30 years, said: “The bank is being driven to closure.
“That will be the end. Our jobs, our rights, our welfare funds will be lost and Cyprus will be destroyed.”
…
Posted: 11:19 a.m. Monday, March 25, 2013
Stolen watch helped authorities tie 3 men to fatal shooting of Boca Raton bartender
By Ana M. Valdes
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
BOCA RATON —
A $20,000 watch stolen from Josephine Tribunella the night her boyfriend, a popular bartender, was killed during a robbery at her Boca Raton restaurant is what eventually led detectives to the man’s killers, police said Monday.
Authorities said they connected three Broward County men with the Jan. 4 death of bartender Rafael Rodriguez, partly through the stolen Chopard watch owned by Tribunella, owner of Josephine’s, on 5751 N. Federal Highway.
The men, identified as Adalberto Junior Montalvo, 29, of Pompano Beach, Quinton Redell Sylvestre, 26, of Fort Lauderdale, and Samuel Magic Walker, 28, of Lauderdale Lakes, all face first-degree murder and robbery charges. They are being held without bail. Police are still looking for a fourth suspect.
Police said Montalvo, Sylvestre and Walker were armed and masked when they robbed the restaurant that Friday night after the place closed about 10.
Rodriguez and a waiter had exited the back door when they were knocked to the ground and the waiter was pistol-whipped.
Tribunella, along with the restaurant’s singer and several other patrons, were forced to lie on the ground while the suspects removed the Chopard watch, wallets, phones, cash and other jewelry. As the robbers were leaving, Rodriguez exchanged words with one of the suspects. Police say Walker fired at Rodriguez, striking him once. He later died at Delray Medical Center.
A Boca Raton police officer asked local jewelers about Tribunella’s watch, and police eventually found out the watch had been sold to a local jewelry store.
Police tracked down the person who bought the watch and eventually recovered it. The sale of the watch was on the store’s surveillance video, and detectives were able to match the subjects on the video with the homicide suspects.
The robbery of the Northwest 35th Street home and the Josephine’s incident were the only arrests in Palm Beach County associated with the three suspects, records show. But Alexander described them as “career criminals.” All three have been arrested several times for burglary, robbery and vehicle theft.
“These are the types of folks that are preying on residents day in and day out,” he said, adding that law enforcement throughout the county is faced with the new challenge of “loosely affiliated” criminal groups that use GPS devices to input information about potential targets.
“These aren’t organized groups in the traditional sense … it’s something that is a big challenge for us,” Alexander added.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/crime-law/update-expected-today-in-case-of-boca-raton-barten/nW3pR/ - -
Ah, South Florida crime. The article should have had quotes from the shooters’ mothers telling us how they are “aspiring rappers” who were “turning their lives around”, isn’t that a meme required by the cultural relativists?
Doing time is good for a rap career. All is proceeding according to plan.
“Doing time is good for a rap career.”
+1 Even better if you were a fetus while mom was doing time.
the new challenge of “loosely affiliated” criminal groups that use GPS devices to input information about potential targets.
Just wait til everybody is wearing google glasses, which take pictures and video and record sound. On the one hand criminals could use them to target wealthy people and find out who they are. But non-criminals will have an immediate recording device attached to their heads. The first thing to do in an armed robbery would be to get everyone’s google glasses off, but it may still be too late.
It may end up like in New Orleans, where, according to my friend who lives there, so many people concealed carry that muggers now just cold-cock you from behind, then search your pockets as you lay unconscious.
Bartenders wear $20k watches?
I wore a $20 Timex at a time my aspiring barback bought a $600 Movado. I was blown away.
Man shot in head over double-parked car
By Peter Nickeas
Tribune reporter
9:08 p.m. CDT, March 24, 2013
A 30-year-old man was shot in the head Sunday morning after a confrontation over a car that was double-parked, police said.
The shooting happened about 3:30 a.m. in the 7100 block of South Maplewood Avenue in the Marquette Park neighborhood, police said, one of three shootings overnight that left three people wounded.
The parked car was partially blocking the street, the witness said, but there was enough room for the other car to get by.
According to the witness, a woman in the parked car exchanged words with the other car’s driver, and the man who eventually was shot told the two men, “Go ahead on now, we’re cool, we not on that.”
The second car’s driver moved past the parked car, stopped at the corner of 72nd and Maplewood, about 50 yards south. One of the two men got out of the vehicle, walked up close to the eventual victim, lifted a handgun and said “Talk that (expletive) now” before firing a single shot, the witness said.
Soon after the shooting on Maplewood, a 27-year-old woman was shot in the South Shore neighborhood, police said.
The woman was shot in the chest and leg in the 7500 block of South Coles Avenue about 3:37 a.m., said Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Michael Sullivan.
In the Belmont Central neighborhood on the Northwest Side, in the 2800 block of North Melvina Avenue, a 35-year-old man was shot in the leg about 1:35 a.m. It’s not clear where he has been hospitalized.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-chicago-gun-violence-shooting-marquette-park-parking-spot-20130324,0,5585307.story - 161k
That’s unpossible! Guns are ILLEGAL in Chicago.
Clearly these were bullet stabbings.
Incalculable!
http://nickbotner.com/2012/01/janes-scenic-drive-fakahatchee-strand-state-preserve-fl/
Awesome stuff at this link. I plan on visiting this area next fall. Two things:
1. Check out a cypress swamp during dry season. I had never seen that.
2. “Swampland in Florida.” If you check the google map, you can see the platted area that was never built — was going to be the largest subdivision on America. Was.
Cool stuff.
Thanks, that was amazing. Reminds me of why I love this state, even though I complain about it from time to time. I love reading books about old Florida.
Those photos are incredible. Carving out developments from swampland is nothing new, though. It’s still going on, just that they’re getting better with fill and other techniques. I could show you one right here in south Hillsborough that used to be waterfront marsh on Tampa Bay, now an “upscale” development. Eventually, and sooner rather than later if we get a major storm that goes up Tampa Bay, it will sink.
Seminole Wind, John Anderson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGoBQIhyFFM
Ever since the days of old,
Men would search for wealth untold.
They’d dig for silver and for gold,
And leave the empty holes.
And way down south in the Everglades,
Where the black water rolls and the saw grass sways.
The eagles fly and the otters play,
In the land of the Seminole.
So blow, blow Seminole wind,
Blow like you’re never gonna blow again.
I’m calling to you like a long lost friend,
But I know who you are.
And blow, blow from the Okeechobee,
All the way up to Micanopy.
Blow across the home of the Seminole,
The alligators and the gar.
Progress came and took it’s toll,
And in the name of flood control,
They made their plans and they drained the land,
Now the glades are going dry.
And the last time I walked in the swamp,
I sat upon a Cypress stump,
I listened close and I heard the ghost,
Of Osceola cry.
everybody loves this John Anderson song….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyGU4nzhirI
everybody loves this John Anderson song….
me too
“I plan on visiting this area next fall.”
Rent an airboat.
“Swampland in Florida.”
Also known as the Florida Everglades.
pick up a condo or two while your there.
What a wonderful link! Thanks for posting this gallery; I can almost smell the scumponds.
Because the future belongs to Lucky Ducky.
Welcome to the recoveryless recovery.
Wall Street Journal - College Grads May Be Stuck In Low-Skill Jobs:
“The recession left millions of college educated Americans working in coffee shops and retail stores. Now, new research suggests their job prospects may not improve much when the economy rebounds.
By some measures, nearly half of employed college graduates are in jobs that don’t tradionally require a college degree.”
colleAdeg
itrequ recol
http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/a/SB10001424127887323466204578382753004333838?mg=reno64-wsj
College grads are doing fine, relatively speaking, but many will be forced to grow-up and move to land that first job, and likely the second one too. Mobility.
which is why renting is always better. always.
the future belongs to bill in los angeles.
Bill got his security clearance at a time when any starting out computer programmer wanted to work for the new, shiny computer companies like Apple and Microsoft, not old boring government contractors who wanted to interview your parents’ friends to find out if you hung out with the trouble makers in high school.
Seriously, the NSA sent a recruiter to my college and he was wandering around the geek frats dropping off applications and trying to talk to anyone who would listen for a few minutes. These were for research jobs you could get without having to go to grad school. No one signed up for his actual interview spots. They couldn’t get kids with the brains they wanted to even apply.
They couldn’t get kids with the brains they wanted to even apply.
They wanted to be lawyers or work in wall street I presume?
Bill got his security clearance”
They are harder to get now. I got one ( again ) while in San Diego a few years back. I had to clear up a draft error from way back. Unexpected SSN error. The procedure its all online now pages and pages.
Expired again now that I’m not doing defense work.
I would expect they have trouble getting Engineers since most of the ones I work with now are not native born and probably not citizens ? Shoot most are Chinese buying up all our local RE while not working.
GD is in the same building as we are and eveytime they have a party all I see is older people with gray hair.
Or work for Apple and Microsoft. Or even HP.
Yes, plenty wanted to go to the investment banks. Some to commercial banking. A bunch went to the Proctor and Gamble management training program. There were a few other training programs that got some interest.
Teach for America didn’t exist yet.
“Yes, plenty wanted to go to the investment banks. Some to commercial banking. A bunch went to the Proctor and Gamble management training program. There were a few other training programs that got some interest.”
Those were classmates in general, not the computer people. They were mostly focussed on the interesting computer work. A few went to grad school in math. One went to grad school to eventually go into games development. But the primary thing is, no one who had any other choices wanted to do programming for government contractors.
Getting the clearance meant it would be months (or more) before you could start work. It was intrusive. It was an obnoxious level of restriction on future travel. They wanted to know if you knew anyone who had ever travelled to a number of places which included countries where our school had foreign study programs. The promise was that any of this sort of contact would make the clearance hard or impossible to get. You could accept a job offer and then be told months later that you couldn’t have it. No one wanted to deal with that.
Today? The clearance is a serious meal ticket. But back then? It was for people who couldn’t do any better.
I did not bother reading the drool from the school marm communist. Or the rest.
Yes the future belongs to me.
Yes the future belongs to me.
And your children……..
Smart man you are.
I’ll paraphrase for you:
Stop looking in the mirror so much, and wearing photocopies of cash.
more lucky duckling news.
here, the times asks: do millenials stand a chance in the real world?
(um, no. they don’t. the future belongs to lucky ducky)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/magazine/do-millennials-stand-a-chance-in-the-real-world.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
the future = there is no future.
wall street journal - the great recession has been followed by the grand illusion
‘the great recession is an apt name for america’s current stagnation, but the present phase might also be called the grand illusion — because the happy talk and statistics that go with it, especially regarding jobs, give a rosier picture than the facts justify.
the country isn’t really advancing. by comparison with earlier recessions, it is going backward.’
http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/a/SB10001424127887323393304578364670697613576?mg=reno64-wsj
asset appreciation is a cure all.
For those who hold the assets.
For those who hold the assets.”
are paper dollars assets ?
Not if the Fed has their way.
are paper dollars assets ?
Sort of—but it’s the only one that the Fed is actively working to reduce in value.
What happened at the WSJ? I haven’t seen this level of truth from them in a decades.
Compared to past recessions, it’s exactly the same. You see, for J6P, there was never advancement over the last 30 years and 5 recessions.
What happened at the WSJ? I haven’t seen this level of truth from them in a decades.
Really? I think they are the master of printing contradictory articles. Just wait, they will have another person write how things are never been better before. Smoke and mirror I think.
Another reason could be Obama. Since the editorial board dislikes Obama, no reason to pretend (unlike most of MSM) that things are good.
+1.
Or maybe Rupert is too busy hacking phones this week to micromanage the paper?
^The most likely reason.
Oh please….those 10 scantly clad attractive young women in his hot tub has nothing to do with it, right?
it’s gonna get worse, and then it’s gonna get more worse. and if you’re under 25, maybe you’ll live long enough to see it get more more worse.
It’s gonna get worse, and then it’s gonna get worster and if you’re under 25, maybe you’ll live long enough to see it get worstest.
it’s a struggle to find the vocabulary to even describe this.
how much worse it’s gonna get is incalculable.
It’s gonna get worse, and then it’s gonna get worster and if you’re under 25, maybe you’ll live long enough to see it get worstest.
Worstest???
Nah, it can continue to get even worse for the kids of those who are under 25 now.
“Nah, it can continue to get even worse for the kids of those who are under 25 now.”
That would be worstliest.
The lies are in the opinion section. The rest had been pretty good, although you always wonder now that they are in Murdoch’s empire.
In any event, The Economist on our choices in the wake of the debt binge: inflate, stagnate, default.
http://www.economist.com/comment/1944555#comment-1944555
Unless one of them is just going to happen, and policy makers and central backs don’t actually HAVE a choice.
FT for me.
the country isn’t really advancing. by comparison with earlier recessions, it is going backward.’
Monetarism is always a short-term solution. Long-term, you’ve got to get some money to the 99%.
schiff says the growth is a chirade, there is no growth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wj4TTc2TbA
Sure there is! For the 1%.
Schiff still enticing ridicule from other tv pundits like in 05/06?
yes they label him as some crazy guy but a lot of stuff he predicted happened regarding housing.
more lucky ducky news from the new york times. our favorite line from the article: “what’s really depressing about these studies is the lack of solutions and the likelihood that the problem will only get worse.”
depressing
getting worse
only happy news for the HBB
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/declining-wealth-rising-retirement-risk/
Posted: 10:12 a.m. Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Berkshire amends warrant deal with Goldman Sachs
The Associated Press
OMAHA, Neb. —
Warren Buffett’s company says it’s changed its warrant agreement with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to allow it to be settled with stock, cementing its place as a long-term investor.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. received the right to buy 43.5 million Goldman shares as part of a $5 billion deal it made to bolster the New York-based investment bank during the financial crisis.
Originally, Berkshire could buy Goldman stock for $115 per share until this Oct. 1.
Now instead of Berkshire paying cash for all 43.5 million shares, Goldman will compensate Berkshire with stock for the difference between its stock price this fall and the exercise price.
The deal will likely make Berkshire one of Goldman’s top 10 biggest shareholders. Goldman shares are currently 27 percent higher than the exercise price.
Copyright The Associated Press
It’s obvious that Berkshire got a good look at Goldman’s books, which is something a mom & pop investor will never get. Imagine some luddite Jim Cramer fan going into the conference room at Wachtell Lipton and pouring over the books. Marty Lipton would probably give them a “cooked” set of books anyway
Obama the Corporatist (not a Socialist)
So why does the right-wing media call Obama a socialist but not a corporatist? Why would NewsCorp (News Corporation) not label Obama a corporatist?
Socialism vs Corporatism by Ron Paul
http://www.ronpaul.com/2010-04-25/obama-is-a-corporatist/
…..a closer, honest examination of (Obama’s) policies and actions in office reveals that, much like the previous administration, he is very much a corporatist. This in many ways can be more insidious and worse than being an outright socialist.
Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses. Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government. In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers.
A careful examination of the policies pursued by the Obama administration and his allies in Congress shows that their agenda is corporatist. For example, the health care bill that recently passed does not establish a Canadian-style government-run single payer health care system. Instead, it relies on mandates forcing every American to purchase private health insurance…..
so his polices are not just bad…they are double plus bad.
so (Obama’s) polices are not just bad…they are double plus bad.
Some are. Some aren’t. And some are, but aren’t.
For example: Obamacare
The means are corporatistic.
The ends are near universal health-coverage.
I do not like the means however I like the ends. In this case, I think the ends justify the means especially since I think the means were the only means available at the time. Why? Because Dems are whores to the private insurance companies too but at least they cared more about uninsured sick people than the Repubs.
I also think the ends justified the means because even if the means collapses under their own weight, near universal health coverage is not a real debating point anymore. It is America’s new reality so even if the current corporatist system falls apart, the question will be how to fix our universal health coverage and not how to eliminate it.
So I think Obamacare was progress for America but using faulty means to achieve the progress.
obama was born in kenya, grew up in indonesia (eating dog meat), his real father is communist frank marshall davis, and he is going to force all of USA into sharia-law-gay-marriages.
If Frank Marshall had a son, the son he would not talk so much about change and work so hard to keep the status quo.
“obama was born in kenya, grew up in indonesia (eating dog meat), his real father is communist frank marshall davis, and he is going to force all of USA into sharia-law-gay-marriages.”
This is what teabaggers actually believe.
This is what teabaggers actually believe.
And that’s what you believe.
The most important takeaway is that these were the “issues” of elections 2008 and 2012.
Romney is a tool. When we participated (key word there, participation) in the 2012 Colorado Republican caucus last February, the caucus went for Romney, and 2nd place to Santorum.
We must live on a block full of freaks, because our precinct table was one of the only ones at the caucus that voted for Ron Paul.
The health care bill…..
Ron Paul is lying. He knows full well that the real Corporatists are the Republicans who filibustered any bill that wasn’t corporatist. Obamacare as such is the only thing that got through Congress. Or did Paul think that Obama enacted the law by executive fiat?
Lookie-lookie! Arizona’s economy is improving! Whoopee!
=
+
commie talk.
OU812
Hey, It’s different there too.
China’s Non-Bubble Housing Bubble
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/03/11/chinas-non-bubble-housing-bubble/
China has a housing problem. But it is much different than the problem we’ve had here in the U.S., or the one in the European Union.
For starters, when U.S. housing prices were rising, the government actively took part in inflating the real estate bubble by pushing rates lower and offering zero-down loans (subprime) to middle to low-income buyers.
Yes, who cares that you earn the median income of just $45,000 a year, you can get your $450,000 dream house in Sedona, Arizona.
By comparison, China’s housing bubble is a non-bubble. The government is actively trying to pop it. Housing prices are still rising, but not out of control. This is especially true in second and third tier cities, ie: not Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Beijing.
There’s also nothing close to a mortgage backed securities bubble and no sub-prime lending.
I often think art is beanie babies for the wealthy.
Cohen Buys Picasso’s ‘Le Reve’ From Wynn for $155 Million
By Richard Vines & Katya Kazakina - Mar 26, 2013 11:06 AM ET
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-26/cohen-buys-picasso-from-wynn-for-155-million-post-says.html
“Art” is ONLY a rich person’s game.
Did Wynn poke a hole in that one, too?
So uh… is there ever going to be a movement to have those who made bad bets and orchestrated financial frauds bear the costs? Or will governments and central banks keep transferring the costs to the public at large who had nothing to do with the schemes and scams?
Privatize profits, socialize losses is alive and well. Why? The same reason a dog licks its balls - because governments and central banks can.
Not in this life.
Got that right.
“So uh… is there ever going to be a movement to have those who made bad bets and orchestrated financial frauds bear the costs? Or will governments and central banks keep transferring the costs to the public at large who had nothing to do with the schemes and scams?”
Welcome to America 2.0, gentile.
It is over. The time was over when the first bailout didn’t require them to pay for it. Long past. That is why you never believe anyone in this town when they say something money related is an emergency and therefore has to be resolved quickly or the world will end.
Well, except for hitting the debt ceiling. That is the really nasty one.
“It is over.”
Rule of law? Haha.
You do realize that if you add the Iraq/Afghanistan war costs (including the lifetime medical care of the veterans) the latest estimates are up to over 4 trillion? How much have we paid back for the costs of the wars? It would be nice to see that itemized on the GAO web site.
This
“You do realize that if you add the Iraq/Afghanistan war costs (including the lifetime medical care of the veterans) the latest estimates are up to over 4 trillion?”
Know what, Paul Wolfowitz doesn’t give a chit.
You do realize that if you add the Iraq/Afghanistan war costs (including the lifetime medical care of the veterans) the latest estimates are up to over 4 trillion?
stop….you’re being real
I was just in Safeway grabbing coffee on sale, when walking out and passing the Suntrust branch inside the store. They had a table with balloons and bunches of pamphlets with a few laptops set up. I didn’t pay much attention until the lady stopped and asked me “Excuse me Sir, are you interested in a mortgage with Suntrust?”
It begins………
yeah I hear you. everytime I go to the bank and use the teller they are always trying to peddle loans. I try to use atm as much as possible.
anyone notice that they ask you for a safeway card at chevron now?
Giant Food and Shell started a “points” program years ago. Every $100 you spend at Giant gets you 10¢ off each gallon of gas at Shell. Points expire after 30 days. Only recently did Safeway copy it.
“Excuse me Sir, are you interested in a mortgage with Suntrust?”
It begins………
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEGpmsaj5b0
I would do the same thing if sales in my field were at 17 year lows… and falling.
How do you create demand for a product that nobody wants because they know it’s a rip-off?
We already know they are a bunch of drones, saying what their masters tell them to say, but here’s proof:
The economy and the Easter bunny
You can`t say Easter bunny anymore.
That would infringe on the rights of others because it`s racist or you can`t buy chocolate Easter bunnies with SNAP cards or the Easter bunny is against gay marriage or something.
March 26, 2013
School Bans the Word ‘Easter’
By Todd Starnes
Boys and girls at an Alabama elementary school will still get to hunt for eggs – but they can’t call them ‘Easter Eggs’ have the principal banished the word for the sake of religious diversity.
“We had in the past a parent to question us about some of the things we do here at school,” said Heritage Elementary School principal Lydia Davenport. “So we’re just trying to make sure we respect and honor everybody’s differences.”
Television station WHNT reported that teachers were informed that no activities related to or centered around any religious holiday would be allowed – in the interest of religious diversity.
“Kids love the bunny and we just make sure we don’t say ‘the Easter Bunny’ so that we don’t infringe on the rights of others because people relate the Easter bunny to religion,” she told the television station. “ A bunny is a bunny and a rabbit is a rabbit.”
http://nation.foxnews.com/easter/2013/03/26/school-bans-word-easter - -
no activities related to or centered around any religious holiday would be allowed – in the interest of religious diversity.
Websters should use this line as an example under their definition of the word “irony.” Wow.
School Bans the Word ‘Easter’
Well,, that is total BS.
no activities related to or centered around any religious holiday would be allowed – in the interest of religious diversity.
Idiots. America is historically a Christian country. Certain liberals are dumber than dirt to be hostile to that fact or to try to detract from that fact. I think it is only a few, but powerful dumb liberals that are moronic on this issue. Fools.
Very true, it was the Easter Bunny himself that rescued Jesus during the 40 days he was lost in the desert.
I asked a Hindu I know whether she celebrates Christmas. She said she celebrates all holidays. I really liked that answer.
I heard a crazy tidbit just yesterday from a guy that I work with. His wife is still a Realtor in Santa Barbara, though they just moved up to the PNW for him to take a different job (only a month ago or so).
He said that his wife sold only a single listing last year—and that single sale put her in the top 10% of agents. I asked him if it was a crazy-high multi-million dollar property or something, and he said no.
If this is true, there are ALOT of Realtors who are still feeling the lean times in certain markets, in spite of the low inventory and bidding wars.
I have a friend who’s a real estate agent in San Diego. She hasn’t been an agent for very long, but she’s already with a different agency.
Why? Because the first agency didn’t approve of her working on things other than selling real estate through them. Well, since she needs income, she went to a less restrictive agency.
Oh, in case anyone’s interested, she’s not too happy about the low inventory situation either.
There are only three houses in my neighborhood in town with for sale signs. Two of them have pending banners.
This sounds suspiciously like how the DOW is reacting. Aren’t they hitting record highs, but on low volume?
Surely the Dismal Science folks have found a way to use this statistic as an indicator for something.
I know a Realtor who lost her house and drained her entire savings account over the course of the past 5 years. She didn’t want to believe me back in 2005 when I told her what was coming. She is actually a very nice woman, my mother’s age, and I feel badly for her.
“Why buy a house when the entire market is near collapse? Buy later, after prices crater for 65% less.>/i>
A bit late out of the gate today?
I continue to be astonished that the people and institutions that bought, refied, flipped and loaned trillions of $ for houses at tremendously inflated prices world wide during the housing bubble continue to be bailed out and have for the most part escaped with all the skin on their knees and elbows. I must ask the question……
WHERE’S THE CARNAGE?
In case you haven’t noticed, there’s this walking corpse called the USA middle class.
But if you’re blinded by the wait lines at Applebee’s, you may not have noticed.
I don`t go to Applebee’s. I was more looking at the people I know still living in houses they stopped paying for 6 years ago and LLs who collected $100k+ before having a short sale or the Angelo Mozilos and Bankers who do not seem to have had much of a drop in lifestyle. None of them seem to have skinned knees.
Working for the public good has also worked well for one California county administrator’s bank account.
According to reports by several newspapers, Alameda County, in the San Francisco Bay Area, is paying its County Administrator Susan Muranishi, north of $400,000—for life. This includes a generous base salary of $301,000, plus taxpayer-funded deferred pension plans paid for by the county.
The pension accounts are set by a formula that multiplies years of service by 2 to 3 percent of the top salary to calculate the benefit, the San Jose Mercury News reports. With 38 years of service under her belt, the top Alameda official, along with two top county executives, benefit lavishly.
The publication notes, “Muranishi, for example, was the highest-paid county administrator in the Bay Area, with $422,268 in salary last year. In addition, she received $137,196 toward her pension and another $46,500 dumped into a pair of deferred compensation accounts.” Most pension plans require the employee to pay in—but not in this case.
Even without the extra pension plans, Muranishi’s base salary alone stands out. Her salary is more than the rate for similar positions in San Francisco ($153,000), Chicago ($128,000) and New York City ($152,000).
President Barack Obama’s base salary, by the way, is $400,000.
Pensions are determined by the board of supervisors, but officials sign up for the special accounts.
A column from the San Francisco Chronicle asserts that Muranishi’s salary includes “$24,000, plus change, in ‘equity pay’ to guarantee that she makes at least 10 percent more than anyone else in the county. About $54,000 a year in ‘longevity’ pay for having stayed with the county for more than 30 years; an annual performance bonus of $24,000; and another $9,000 a year for serving on the county’s three-member Surplus Property Authority, an ad hoc committee of the Board of Supervisors that oversees the sale of excess land.” She also gets a $8,292 yearly car allowance.
It’s not bad, considering that Alameda County is facing budget deficits and residents have a per capita income of $34,937, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Kris Vosburgh, executive director of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a government watchdog group, told the Mercury News the compensation plan is too much. “It borders on looting the public treasury. They don’t look at what they do as public service. They look at it as an opportunity for self-enrichment. This really hits the outrage factor.”
Outrage was evident on Twitter. One commenter, Du Crusoe @DuCrusoe, posted, “Alameda Co CA Administrator Susan Muranishi retires with wage of $423,664 a year = $35,500mo.?!?! ~~ disabled US vet gets $2,769.mo.” Another commenter, dr maxcua @MaxCUA, wrote, “#alameda county rewards “administrator” THIEF →susan muranishi $400k…for life + $300k sal.” And Ryan Winkler @Ryan_Winkler posted, “Alameda Cnty Admin Susan Muranishi will receive a pension of $423,664 a year. In WI, that was a scandal.”
The state recently weathered a scandal in the low-income town of Bell (pop. 37,000) in Southern California. Bell was exposed by the Los Angeles Times as paying its city manager close to $800,000 a year—twice the salary of the Los Angeles police chief and the New York City police commissioner.
…
Software salesman came by a few cubes down and loudly bragged about his RE investments
back to the future
Shades of early 2005.
You work with “Mo Money?”
Hello,
We own an auto dealership. Our sales have fallen to 1997 levels(roughly half our highest volume years). Plainly put, we don’t have very many buyers. In the meantime, we’ve decided to raise our prices by 8% in order to stimulate demand.
What do you think?
Sincerely,
Auto Dealer
You need to hire that car dealer rescue guy on Spike tv.
Maybe buyers can pay more because they are carpooling or they are driving their kids to work. Could be the owners want to get rid of a car with high energy cost and it is worth it to spend less on gas and less time pumping gas.
Maybe their old car got repo’d 3 years ago and they are tired of riding the bus.
But they’re not.
So what do you think?
Maybe the finance company was storing the repo’d cars and they got stripped of their wiring and hoses.
Maybe some of the inventory got flooded.
Maybe the water reservoir sprung a leak on some of the models and they couldn’t be driven.
Yes we’re flooded with inventory.
I bet you are in a county with low registration fees and low tag renewal. I heard the dealer in the county with very high licence plate fees only raised his prices .1%
yes…. and still sales are non-existent.
So what do you think?
“Kids love the bunny and we just make sure we don’t say ‘the Easter Bunny’ so that we don’t infringe on the rights of others because people relate the Easter bunny to religion,” she told the television station. “ A bunny is a bunny and a rabbit is a rabbit.”
They will probably set fire to that bunny cult in their compound and put the rabbits in the witness protection program.
LOL!
I’m sure an unprecedented binge of hair-of-the-dog quantitative easy money stimulus had nothing whatever to do with an epic deterioration in global credit quality available on fixed income investments.
Did it?
ft dot com
March 26, 2013 7:34 pm
Global pool of triple A status shrinks 60%
By Ralph Atkins and Keith Fray in London
The global pool of government bonds with triple A status from the three main rating agencies, the bedrock of the financial system, has shrunk more than 60 per cent since the financial crisis triggered a wave of downgrades across the advanced economies.
The expulsion of the US, the UK and France from the “nine-As” club has led to the contraction in the stock of government bonds deemed the safest by Fitch, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, from almost $11tn at the start of 2007 to just $4tn now, according to Financial Times analysis.
The shrinkage, largely a result of the US’s downgrade by S&P in August 2011, is part of a dramatic redrawing of the world credit ratings map, which is encouraging investment flows into emerging markets and forcing investors and financial regulators to rethink definitions of “safe” assets.
While US and European government downgrades have dominated headlines, the FT’s analysis highlights the series of upgrades across much of the rest of the world – especially in Latin America.
Topping the list in the scale of credit upgrades since January 2007 are Uruguay, Bolivia and Brazil. The biggest downgrades were in crisis-hit southern Europe, with Greece seeing the steepest drop.
The results highlight the geoeconomic changes wrought by the tensions in global financial markets since mid-2007 and the upending of previous assumptions about the stability of banking systems and public finances.
David Riley, global head of sovereign ratings at Fitch, said: “Five years ago, the world was a fairly predictable place. Banking crises were typically things that happened in emerging markets. Now we’re in a world where a lot of those assumptions have gone.”
…
Global pool of triple A status shrinks 60%
OMG. That’s horrible……………
(Until it’s re-evaluated on a relative basis.)
What a comedy.
Relative to what? (You’ve got me stumped on that comment…)
Relative to what?
I think every investment is judged relative to every other one. AAA, AAA+ bbb whatever.
If AAA shrinks 60% that does not mean another 60% has taken its place. That means we’ve entered a more risky environment which makes me yawn even more. It’s a side-show.
Like I’m going to waste much more time worrying about my money as I get older. I had enough “money” at one time. If it’s not enough, I’ll tell the world thanks for a GREAT time.
( And kiss my a$$)
Little Hope seen for millions priced out of health overhaul
By Tom Brown
MIAMI (Reuters) - Millions of Americans will be priced out of health insurance under President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul because of a glitch in the law that adversely affects people with modest incomes who cannot afford family coverage offered by their employers, a leading healthcare advocacy group said on Tuesday.
Tax credits are a key component of the law and the White House has said the credits, averaging about $4,000 apiece, will help about 18 million individuals and families pay for health insurance once the Affordable Care Act takes full effect, beginning in January 2014.
The tax credits are geared toward low and middle-income Americans who do not have access to affordable health insurance coverage through an employer. The law specifies that employer-sponsored insurance is affordable so long as a worker’s share of the premium does not exceed 9.5 percent of the worker’s household income.
In its rule making, or final interpretation of the law, the IRS said affordability should be based strictly on individual coverage costs, however.
That means that, even if family coverage through an employer-based plan far exceeds the 9.5 percent cutoff, workers would not be eligible for the tax credits to help buy insurance for children or non-working dependents.
“It’s an issue. It needs to be fixed,” Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, an influential healthcare advocacy group said on Tuesday, referring to what he called “the family glitch problem.”
He spoke on a teleconference calling attention to a report, released by his organization on Tuesday, that said more than 1.7 million Floridians will be eligible for the new premium tax credits next year.
‘TEA PARTY INFUSION’
“The tax credit subsidies are a game changer. They will help make health coverage affordable for huge numbers of uninsured families in Florida who would have been priced out of the health coverage and care they need,” Pollack said.
He had no estimate for the number of people in Florida affected by the affordability question and IRS policy. But he said there was little hope for a legislative fix in Congress, where the House is controlled by Republicans still bent on repealing Obamacare.
The problem comes on top of another more contentious healthcare issue in Florida, where the state legislature has opposed Republican Governor Rick Scott’s endorsement of an expansion of Medicaid. Without the expansion, envisioned under Obama’s 2010 reforms, Pollack said about 1.8 million Floridians would be left without healthcare coverage.
“It would mean that the poorest of the poor really would be left out in the cold,” he said.
Pollack was joined on the teleconference by Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a congressional champion of healthcare reform who also chairs the Democratic National Committee.
“I think one only has to look at the budget the Republicans crammed through the House last week, with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act attached to it, to know that the odds of adding coverage and improving coverage in Obamacare in this Tea Party-infused House of Representatives is very unlikely,” she said.
“The way to improve this law and to address concerns that have come up with it is not to repeal it, not to throw it out, but to simply make modifications to it. It would be wonderful if we had Republican colleagues in our chamber, on the other side of the aisle, who were willing to sit down and do that.”
Speaking after the call, Families USA health policy director Kathleen Stoll told Reuters recent studies showed that anywhere between 2 million and 4 million people across the United States would be adversely affected by the federal rule limiting aid and the IRS interpretation of whether an employer’s health plan is affordable.
“We’d like to see it fixed because it clearly doesn’t reflect what Congress intended,” Stoll said.
“It could mean the difference between being able to move in to purchasing private insurance and not purchasing private insurance. Hopefully within the next couple of years there will be room to fix it.”
(Reporting by Tom Brown. Editing by Andre Grenon)
Imagine there’s no crater,
Underneath your house,
No debt no negative equity,
It’s a magic money tree,
Imagine all the debt junkies, living in reality…
Imagine there’s no payments,
It’s easy if you try,
no threat of delinquency or foreclosure,
but your house is a big fat lie,
Imagine all the debtors, living in reality….
You, you may say I’m a doomer,
But I’m not the only one,
I hope some day you’ll face reailty,
And no longer will you be so dumb.
A++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
– Ben Bernanke
March 19, 2013, 8:02 a.m. EDT
‘What, me worry?’ says the Fed
Commentary: Fed cares too much about jobs, too little about prices
By Irwin Kellner, MarketWatch
PORT WASHINGTON, N.Y. (MarketWatch) — In its quest to reduce unemployment, the Federal Reserve is minimizing other problems created in the wake of its ultra-easy monetary policy.
This week, the central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee will meet and report to the public the result of its discussions on monetary policy and the economy. As usual, the financial markets will parse the Fed’s statement with a fine-tooth comb to see if there have been any changes from its last report.
I can save them the trouble. All signs point to steady as she goes — in other words, maintaining the status quo.
This means that the money mavens’ monetary policy will remain unbalanced. It will reflect more concern about jobs, less concern about inflation.
That said, maybe it’s time that the Fed should start to be at least a tad concerned about inflation. No mystery why: Real-world inflation is heating up. I am referring to such necessities as food, fuel, medical care, tolls, transit fares and local taxes.
Both the producer price index and the consumer price index are jumping. Last month, they each rose a thumping 0.7%! That’s an annual rate of nearly 8.5%, which, in case you did not notice, is not exactly chopped liver.
Now the question becomes who is being helped by this surge in prices and who is being hurt.
The way I see it, sellers are benefitting, while consumers are hurting. Corporate profits are at record highs while people’s buying power is flat.
Another group that’s not happy with inflation is savers, many of whom are seniors. Inflation is eroding the buying power of their stashes, while low interest rates have denied them the opportunity to earn some of this back.
Low rates are also creating bubbles in such markets as stocks, real estate and precious metals, to name three. It’s also leading to a heap of risk-taking in junk bonds as investors search for anything that produces a yield greater than inflation.
This should be of no surprise — all this liquidity that the central bank is pumping into the economy has to go somewhere. And you know where else this surfeit of dollars is going? I’ll tell you where: It’s going into the foreign-exchange markets.
…
Whatever became of constitutionally-defined states’ rights?
Were they overruled by executive decree?
On Prop. 8, Supreme Court gives few hints of sweeping gay marriage ruling
Supreme Court arguments on Prop. 8 were at times pointed, but the justices often seemed tentative, giving the impression that their decision in the gay marriage case might not be broad.
By Warren Richey, Staff writer / March 26, 2013
WASHINGTON
A sharply divided US Supreme Court heard oral argument on Tuesday in a potentially historic case examining the constitutionality of a 2008 statewide ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California.
…
In case you have any evidence that Dionne lost her shirt investing in real estate, please post.
P.S. I had the pleasure to play in a backup band for this pop diva a couple of times back in the day…
Soul singer Dionne Warwick files for bankruptcy
Singer Dionne Warwick owes nearly $10 million (£6.6m) in back taxes and has filed for bankruptcy.
1:53AM GMT 27 Mar 2013
In a petition filed this month in New Jersey, Warwick, 72, lists liabilities that include nearly $7 million owed to the Internal Revenue Service for the years 1991 to 1999 and more than $3 million in business taxes owed to the state of California.
The singer of classics such as “Walk On By,” “I Say a Little Prayer” and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” also lists about $21,000 in monthly income and about the same amount in monthly expenses. The petition said she had about $10 left at the end of each month after paying expenses.
Warwick’s publicist said the singer was victimized by bad financial management and that she has paid back the actual amount of the taxes, but penalties and interest have accumulated over the years.
Warwick, a cousin of the late singer Whitney Houston, has won five Grammys and ranks second, behind Aretha Franklin, as the most-charted female vocalist of all time, with 56 of her singles making the Billboard Hot 100.
…
I had the pleasure to play in a backup band for this pop diva a couple of times back in the day…
That’s awesome.