The Housing Bubble

Yesterday there was a news story that Pres. Obama was encouraging loans to J6P because “it didn’t make sense for banks to lend.” I asked that, since banks had never really “lent,” but instead had sold all their risk on the secondary market during the bubble, why didn’t they sell on the secondary market now?

Comment by DaniW
2013-04-10 19:15:49
There is no more secondary market.

Dani, do you or anyone else have more information on this? What happened? Did Fannie and Freddie finally slam the barn door shut so they can deal with the existing toxic waste? If the secondary market has disappeared, then this would be huge. Most of HBB is in agreement that securitization fueled the bubble. If there is no selling up the food chain, then there will be no bubble. The only fuel we have now is foreign cash, hedge fund OPM, and a few responsible savers with 740 FICO’s and 10% cash down. Unlike *poof* money, there is a finite amount of all of this.

A year ago, I bought my house at ~35% off peak. The boomlet raised my house value to ~28% off peak (if Zillow is to be trusted). I don’t expect it to rise much more. ISTM, even if banks restrict inventory hoping to manipulate the comps upward, there simply isn’t enough cash or potential rental stream to blow the current boomlet back up to peak 2006 prices.

All those folks who bought or cashed out in 2006 can’t count on appreciation to get them above water. They will have to get above water the old fashioned way: by making actual payments on principle — on Lucky Duck wages. No wonder Pres. Obama is desperately trying to woo the banks again. And where does FHA come into this?

Hoarders:Buried Alive had an interesting variation last night. This family wanted to buy a larger house - the husband was… wait for it… real estate agent. They bought this house without looking at the inside! (I thought it was only the overseas investors that bought houses without looking at them).Then they found out the seller was a hoarder and it took 6 months to get her and her junk out. They ended up basically tearing the house down…

I have been following the recent ramblings of the hobbyist geneticists on here. My brother while working for Amnesty International married a woman from the Congo (IQ-68) and produced an offspring, the offspring will graduate with honors this spring from Amherst College. How does one account for the lack of Zairian taint? he sure looks dark to me.

I wonder where this is going?

Updated: Register this: Highway patrol gave feds Missouri weapon permits data on two occasions

Wednesday, April 10, 2013 19:16

The Missouri State Highway Patrol has twice turned over the entire list of Missouri concealed weapon permit holders to federal authorities, most recently in January, Sen. Kurt Schaefer said Wednesday.

Questioning in the Senate Appropriations Committee revealed that on two occasions, in November 2011 and again in January, the patrol asked for and received the full list from the state Division of Motor Vehicle and Driver Licensing. Schaefer later met in his office with Col. Ron Replogle, superintendent of the patrol.

http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2013/04/updated-register-this-highway-patrol-gave-feds-missouri-weapon-permits-data-on-two-occasions-2617302.html - -

“You’d have to have rocks in your head to buy a house at these prices.”

From a discussion from a few days ago.

The insanity of buying property in Baltimore.

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Toxic Government by Democrats: Baltimore
FrontPage Magazine | April 8, 2013 | John Perazzo

The city of Baltimore, Maryland, which in the 1950s was an employment mecca for a number of thriving industries, has been governed exclusively by Democratic mayors and city councils since 1967. William Donald Schaefer, who served as Baltimore’s mayor from 1971-87, helped set the stage for economic decline in his city by championing an ever-expanding public sector coupled with extensive government regulation of private business enterprises. Moreover, he relied heavily on federal grants and city bonds to finance a host of development projects throughout Baltimore. As the City Journal reports: “[W]hen those monies proved insufficient, [Schaefer] … created his own city bank to seed development: the Loan and Guarantee Fund. The fund financed itself by selling city property and then leasing it back to itself, and by selling bonds that would stick future taxpayers with much of the bill.”

In 1986 the Brookings Institution reported that “only projects that had been endorsed by [Schaefer] were funded, and only the neighborhoods that were most loyal to City Hall got community grants.” In dozens of cases, Schaefer’s administration took federal funds that had been earmarked for poor people and diverted them to other, more politically expedient, uses. As the Baltimore City Paper reveals: “Fifteen million dollars from a program to provide rent subsidies to low-income families was used to build housing for the elderly (a reliable voting bloc). Another $15 million earmarked for disadvantaged schoolchildren was spent on other items, including the salaries of [politically influential] school bureaucrats.”

In the 1970s, Schaefer’s deputy public works director was incarcerated for rigging bids on city contracts. And in the ’80s, the federal government shut down the city’s Urban Development Action Grants program due to its many abuses.

In 1987 Schaefer was succeeded as mayor by Kurt Schmoke, who continued his predecessor’s policy of extracting as much taxpayer money as possible from Annapolis and Washington, respectively. By 2001, such state and federal subsidies accounted for an incredible 40% of Baltimore’s operating budget.

Even as the nation flourished economically in the 1990s, Baltimore’s economy lost at least 58,000 jobs. The city’s unemployment rate was twice that of the rest of Maryland. Part of the problem was the fact that Baltimore’s property taxes were the highest in the state, causing many of the city’s leading private-sector firms to relocate in the more business-friendly suburbs.

While Baltimore’s industry and finance were in steep decline, crime was on the rise—thanks, in large measure, to Schmoke’s ineffective, soft-on-drugs policing strategy. By the end of the 1990s, the murder rate in Baltimore was six times higher than in New York (where a variety of proactive policing practices had reduced violent crime dramatically). Three-fourths of Baltimore’s homicides were drug-related—symptoms of an ongoing, brutal drug-turf war that was engulfing many nonwhite neighborhoods. Police, meanwhile, were frustrated by the fact that the drug dealers whom they arrested were routinely released a short time later, free to resume their criminal activities on the streets.

Baltimore’s economy also lagged under O’Malley. Between 2001 and 2004, the city lost nearly 5% of all its jobs, including a quarter of its manufacturing jobs, 15% of its banking and finance jobs, and 5% of its retail jobs.

In 2007 O’Malley was succeeded as mayor by Sheila Dixon, who resigned three years later when convicted of embezzlement and perjury charges. Replacing Dixon was city council president Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. By the start of 2013, Baltimore’s population stood at 619,000—a 35% dropoff from its peak of 950,000 six decades earlier, when it had been an economically and socially healthy city.

There is a clear pattern.

Long term democrat rule + public union goons + higher and higher taxes + bigger and bigger government = a bankrupt city in which people FLEE

But somehow the 47% think if we just did this on a nation scale - things would turn out fine.

Lord help you if you own a house or business in Chicago.

and PS - Chicago has a near complete gun ban.

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Toxic Government by Democrats: Chicago
FrontPage Magazine ^ | April 10, 2013 | John Perazzo

The city of Chicago, Illinois has been led exclusively by Democratic mayors since 1931. Under the “progressive” policies of such notables as Richard J. Daley, Michael Bilandic, Jane Byrne, and Harold Washington, the city’s economic and social fabric decayed markedly during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. These trends were accompanied by a steep decline in Chicago’s population, which fell from 3.62 million in 1950 to 2.78 million by 1990.

Fiscal mismanagement by the Daley administration began to manifest itself in Chicago’s economy, causing 7.1% of the city’s jobs to dry up and disappear—more than any other large metropolitan area.

Meanwhile, the city government was running an annual budget deficit of approximately $650 million. Contributing heavily to these shortfalls were ever-escalating expenditures on the lavish benefits of Chicago’s many public-sector union employees, whose pensions were, by mandate of the Illinois state constitution, permanently immune to cutbacks. By early 2012, each household in the city owed, on average, more than $63,000 in local government liabilities.

Chicago’s Democratic leaders sought to address the budget deficit by raising local property and sales taxes. This, coupled with Illinois’ already-high state-tax rates, became a recipe for severe financial hardship in the Windy City. According to a March 2013 Wall Street Journal report, the state and local taxes currently paid by Chicagoans are higher than those paid by their counterparts in all but four other American cities. This oppressive tax climate has dealt a painful blow to Chicago’s small businesses.

Another factor harming small businesses in Chicago is the system of “aldermanic privilege” that dominates the city’s politics and serves as a fertile breeding ground for corruption. As urban-affairs analyst Aaron Renn explains, Chicago’s aldermen—i.e., city council members—have “nearly dictatorial control over what happens in their wards, from zoning changes to sidewalk café permits.” “This,” says Renn, “dumps political risk onto the shoulders of every would-be entrepreneur, who knows that he must stay on the alderman’s good side to be in business. It’s also a recipe for sleaze: 31 aldermen have been convicted of corruption since 1970.” According to a University of Illinois report issued in 2012, Chicago is the most politically corrupt city in the United States, having averaged 51 public corruption convictions annually since 1976. In such a political climate, failure to adhere dutifully to the demands of the mayor and his power structure typically spells doom for any business enterprise.

Chicago’s fiscal woes are compounded by the poor economic conditions in Illinois generally, where egregious financial mismanagement have plunged a once-thriving state economy into virtual ruin. The state’s job-creation rate ranks a lowly 48th in the U.S., and its $9,624 public debt per capita is second only to New York’s. Largely as a consequence of this runaway debt, two of the nation’s major credit-rating corporations, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, currently give Illinois the lowest credit rating of any state in the Union.

Yet another reality that has had a major impact on life in Chicago is crime. Since the mid-1970s, the annual homicide tally within the city has ranged between 435 and 970, with the trends and fluctuations more-or-less mirroring those observable nationwide. Today Chicago ranks among the most dangerous cities in the U.S. Blacks, who constitute roughly 35% of Chicago’s population, commit 76% of all homicides in the city. By contrast, whites, who are 28% of the population, commit 4% of the homicides. Driving the trend of high crime rates in Chicago’s black community is a high incidence of single motherhood; between 75% and 80% of the city’s black children are born out-of-wedlock. Sociological research has demonstrated conclusively that growing up without a father is a far better forecaster of a boy’s future criminality than either race or poverty. As Heritage Foundation scholar Robert Rector notes, “Illegitimacy is a major factor in America’s crime problem. Lack of married parents, rather than race or poverty, is the principal factor in the crime rate.”

Martinez’s response is from the No sh#t Sherlock column.

By Michael Allen, Wed, April 10, 2013

Pro-gun advocates are furious at Austin City Council member Mike Martinez, who appeared at a gun control rally, ‘Texas Rally for Gun Sense,’ in Austin, Texas on April 7 (video below).

During Martinez’s speech, he spotted a protester who goes by the name of “Texas George” holding up a “Stop the Gun Ban” sign and called him out, reported KHOU-TV.

“First of all, to the gentleman who is dying for attention, someone needs to inform him that there is no gun ban currently, but because of the work we’re doing here today, we will make your sign legitimate shortly, so you hang on to that,” quipped Martinez.

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/guns/pro-gun-advocates-attack-austin-texas-city-council-member-mike-martinez-video - -

Can stocks ever go down again? Can the printing press prevent a crash?

because ‘it’s different here’

‘manhattan apartment rents jumped in march at the fastest pace in six months, sending rates to within about 2 percent of their peak, as limited inventory in the sales market fueled competition among tenants.

the median monthly rent climbed 6.7 percent from a year earlier to 3,195 … the vacancy rate for manhattan apartments fell to a two-year low of 1.46 percent in march, down from 1.69 percent the previous month and 1.89 percent a year earlier.’

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-11/manhattan-apartment-rents-near-peak-as-gains-accelerate.html

for the joshua tree extension users:

“Rudeness and throwing insults are cutting online friendships short with a survey on Wednesday showing people are getting ruder on social media and two in five users have ended contact after a virtual altercation.

As social media usage surges, the survey found so has incivility with 78 percent of 2,698 people reporting an increase in rudeness online … One in five people have reduced their face-to-face contact with someone they know in real life after an online run-in.”

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE9390TO20130410?irpc=932

Our current banner ad on HBB:

http://cougarlife.com/

I know Cabana Boy is a retard and never answers anything, but I’d love to see his thoughts on this:

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/04/sen-roy-blunt-monsantos-man-washington

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Which senator pushed the rider into the bill? At the time, no one stepped forward to claim credit. But since then, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) has revealed to Politico’s ace reporter David Rogers that he’s the responsible party. Blunt even told Rogers that he “worked with” GMO seed giant Monsanto to craft the rider.

The admission shines a light on Blunt’s ties to Monsanto, whose office is located in the senator’s home state. According to OpenSecrets, Monsanto first started contributing to Blunt back in 2008, when it handed him $10,000. At that point, Blunt was serving in the House of Representatives. In 2010, when Blunt successfully ran for the Senate, Monsanto upped its contribution to $44,250. And in 2012, the GMO seed/pesticide giant enriched Blunt’s campaign war chest by $64,250.

Blunt is also a magnet for PAC money from the agribusiness industry as a whole, OpenSecrets data shows. In 2012, agribiz PACs gave him $51,000—more than any other industry save for finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE). In 2010, the year of his Senate run, agribiz PACs handed him over $243,000, more than any other besides the FIRE and energy industries.

The senator’s blunt, so to speak, admission that he stuck a rider into an unrelated bill at the behest of a major campaign donor is consistent with the tenor of his political career. While serving as House whip under the famously lobbyist-friendly former House Majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) during the Bush II administration, Blunt built a formidable political machine by transforming lobbying cash into industry-accomodating legislation. In a blistering 2006 report, Public Citizen declared Blunt “a legislative leader who not only has surrendered his office to the imperative of moneyed interests, but who has also done so with disturbing zeal and efficiency.”

Rental Watch:

Comment by Rental Watch
2013-04-10 11:17:59

I think this theory was turned on its head with the BK of General Growth Properties.

BW, can you elaborate on what made the BK of General Growth Properties new/different? I must have missed that. Thanks…

April 11, 2013, 11:00 a.m. EDT
If you’re optimistic about 2013 your brain is numb
Commentary: 4 reasons you will be misled again by earnings
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Earning season is here. Are you still optimistic about 2013? In the fifth year of an aging bull? With Fed QE stalling? Cheap-money near ending? GDP falling to 2%? Commodities dropping? Political gridlock till 2016? No-new-taxes GOP? Tea Party’s demanding austerity? As unemployment rises? Euro zone near breakup? North Korea, Iran, Syria threatening? Market warnings, crash predicted, recession, cash out? How to factor all into your brain’s calculator?

You’re still an optimist? Knowing Wall Street will manipulate this old bull till it’s too late for you. Till they win, you lose. Again. Meanwhile, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is blind, thinks he’s saving-the-world. Obama’s on a battlefield of saboteurs. And you’re an optimist?

Can you trust their numbers? Stop. The real question is: Can you trust your own judgment about the numbers? University of Chicago behavioral-finance guru Richard Thaler once said: “Think of the human brain as a personal computer with a very slow processor and a memory system that is small and unreliable.” Thaler went on, “the PC I carry between my ears has more disk failures than I care to think about.”

Yes, your little PC is fighting a high-tech war with Wall Street’s army of supercomputers loaded with trillions in high-frequency algorithms, manned by special-ops traders playing a casino game using high-altitude weapons systems targeting Main Street 24/7.
…

There certainly is no risk of bears reaching endangered species status these days.

April 10, 2013, 1:23 p.m. EDT
Stocks at a ‘dangerous point,’ says Leclerc

The stock market is at a potentially “dangerous point,” says Marty Leclerc of Barrack Yard Advisors. Leclerc looks back at previous bear market peaks, and he thinks stocks have reached a similar ceiling that could determine whether stocks rise another 25-30%, or whether the next step is a 25% plunge.

Rental Watch: thank you for the insurance commissioner’s office information. they seem to take landlord fraud very seriously even though my property manager thinks it’s a trifle. will update soon!

I’ve noticed bailouts nearly always prove to be larger than initially advertised.

To put this into perspective, the population of Cyprus was 1,116,564 as of 2011 — about 1/3 the population of San Diego County, California. So a 23 billion euro bailout averages out to 20.6 thousand euros per man, woman and child — not hopelessly insurmountable, but plenty big, especially if you more realistically averaged it over working adults.

11 April 2013 Last updated at 10:47 ET
Cost of Cyprus bailout ‘rises to 23bn euros’
Protestors in Nicosia Cyprus must find even more money for its bailout

The cost of the bailout for Cyprus has increased to 23bn euros ($30bn; £19.5bn), according to a draft document prepared by the country’s creditors.

The original cost of the bailout was put at 17.5bn euros.

But the new total, disclosed in a document seen by news agencies, means Cyprus will have to find 13bn euros to secure 10bn euros from the European Union and the IMF.

Previously it was thought that Cyprus would have to raise 7.5bn euros.
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Two words: Bitcoin volatility.

Discuss.

Great new app….. beat a realturd with a stick….. and if the vile creature pops back up, give it your best left hook and call the cops.

http://tinyurl.com/coza6bu

Someone else is reading the Drudge Report.

What Odd Items Did DHS Try To Purchase (And Then Suddenly Cancel)?

Apr. 11, 2013 9:27am
Becket Adams

Well here’s a bit of a mystery.

The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday posted an online combined synopsis/solicitation for the following items:

LI 001: Carbon Bagpipe Drone Reed Set, 5, EA;
LI 002: Bagpipe Chanter Reeds-Easy, 12, EA;
LI 003: Bagpipe Chanter Reeds-Medium, 12, EA;
LI 004: Deluxe Bagpipe Bag Covers w/ Non-slip Grap Patch and Zipper, 5, EA;
LI 005: Drone Cords, 5, EA;
LI 006: Highland Bagpipe Tuner and Metronome with cases, 2, EA;
LI 007: Combination Tuner and Metronome, 6, EA;
LI 008: Black Polypenco Bagpipes w/ cases, 10, EA;
etc.

Not long after the Drudge Report linked to the DHS page, the listing was updated Thursday to show that it had been cancelled by the federal agency:

Still, two questions remain: What in the world does the DHS need with bagpipes and miscellaneous band equipment? Was it somehow for one of the military bands? If not, or even if so, how much would it have cost taxpayers?

We may not know for some time. A request for comment was not immediately returned by a DHS spokesperson.

Here’s the full posting:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/11/dhs-cancels-purchase-request-for-bagpipes-and-drums/ - -

So, now that Obama has declared $205k of retirement income as perfectly sufficient for everyone, will he cap state and federal pensions at the same level? Seems only “fair”…

Declared?

Link? Source? Context?

Why are real estate agents such damn liars?

I have been trying to rent a house. 3/2/2 type thing. First one I looked at was trashed on the inside. On the second, the owner was waffling on renting. The third I found that I liked and scheduled a showing, telling the agent I needed a place right away, and he mentioned everyone seems to be saying they are 2-3 months away from move in. This house has been vacant since early Feb. The next day the agent calls and says a family moving from out of state who looked at it a “month ago” called and says they’ll take it, but I can be the backup. I liked the house so I told the agent I’ll take it immediately and screw those other people. He has been waffling all week, and finally called today and said he never got the app back from the first family, he checked my credit, and I’m “golden” just like I told him it would be. So we get to the lease and I requested some standard verbiage be added in event of lease termination, as we had discussed on Monday he said that wouldn’t be a problem. Well today its a big problem and now they have a couple showings this weekend again. ( I have enough liquid funds to buy this house for cash). I told him if I don’t have a signed lease by EOD, I was making alternate arrangements and he can kiss the opportunity to help me buy in the future goodbye.

gosh I’m so darn frustrated with this process, makes me want to go to walmarts, buy a damn Coleman tent, and set up in the state park.

the Bernake was wrong it’s comming back to bite us

“Then there was earlier news that an investment fund backed by Qatar has bought London’s famed Park Lane Hotel for more than $475 million. The price marked a whopping 62 percent premium to the price asked for the hotel in December. In the first quarter alone, commercial property sales in London were up 71 percent compared to 2012. And two thirds of those sales were by foreign buyers.

Stocks, old letters and London hotels all reaching new highs. What’s the connection?

Global asset reflation. That may sound technical, but economists say that the somewhat baffling rise in U.S. stocks can be best explained by looking at asset values more broadly around the world. The river of money coursing around the globe is now approaching the flood stage, fed by a downpour of cash from the Federal Reserve and now from the Bank of Japan.

All that cash is searching for a home, and unlike water, cash tends to seek higher ground rather than the lowest. So all of the world’s cash is pouring into higher quality assets with little concern for underlying values or economic fundamentals.”

Everyone Must Check In

April 10, 2013, 11:37 a.m. EDT
As yen slides, 1998 stands as warning to markets
Commentary: How will China and other export nations respond?
By Michael Casey

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Foreign exchange dealers remember them as two of the craziest trading days in history.

Between the start and close of business on Oct. 7 and Oct. 8 in 1998, the dollar dropped against the yen by almost 15% from peak to trough as banks and hedge funds let loose an avalanche of buy orders for the Japanese currency.

Daily turnover in the dollar versus the highly liquid yen was in those days second only to the greenback versus the Deutschemark, yet bid-ask spreads — the difference between the price at which buyers will pay and that which sellers are offering — gapped out on those two days to an unprecedented one-yen difference. In a sign that dollar buyers were few and far between, some traders barked out orders in “big figure” numerals — “129 bid, 130 offered” — ignoring the suddenly irrelevant decimal points in between.
Japanese 10,000 yen.

The intensity of that market dislocation, and the sweeping global events that led to it, offer a warning about disruptions to the global financial system from the yen’s current downturn. The currency’s violent snapback 15 years ago, occurring at the height of the Asian financial crisis, was preceded by a three-year decline in the yen, not unlike that which yen bears forecast as the outcome from the Bank of Japan’s recent move to ramp up its monetary stimulus.

As with now, Japanese authorities believed strongly in 1995 that the yen was overvalued. With the dollar dropping as low as Y79.92 in April that year, Japan’s powerful export sector was suffocating while the economy strained under the costs of the Kobe earthquake. So the Bank of Japan boosted its routine “Rinban” bond-buying operations while Tokyo sought and received Washington’s blessing for a weaker yen. A massive reversal ensued. By August 1998, the dollar had almost doubled in value to a peak of Y147.62.

The yen-weakening policy kept Japanese exporters happy and pleased the U.S. Federal Reserve because it put a lid on inflation. But it also unraveled the “Asian miracle.” Businesses in Thailand, Korea, Indonesia and other “tiger” economies came under increasing pressure as Japan’s competitiveness improved. And as their external trade balances deteriorated, speculators targeted these countries’ pegged currencies, eventually triggering a domino collapse that would envelope the whole world.

Meanwhile, the short-selling bets that traders had placed against the falling yen were planting the seeds of their own destruction. With Japan’s struggling economy paying the lowest interest rates in the world, global investors had piled into the so-called yen carry trade. They borrowed cheaply in yen and invested the proceeds in higher-yielding currencies such as the Thai baht and Russian ruble. But when the crisis unfolded and investors closed out those positions, they had to buy back the yen to repay their loans. In October 1998, after Wall Street banks bailed out Long-Term Capital Management and unwound its global portfolio of risky bets, these periodic “short-covering” rallies morphed into one all-encompassing stampede.

Is Japan now setting up a similar global disruption? Its central bank is about to unleash an unprecedented wave of money into the global system and traders, anticipating its effect, have driven the yen down 22% since its peak in September.

Much is different this time. There are far fewer pegged currencies for speculators to target, and giant stockpiles of foreign reserves mean emerging market central banks are well-armed to protect themselves. Still, the lessons from the 1990s are compelling and in this case it’s more important that the advanced nations of Europe read them than developing countries.

No one can confuse the euro zone’s zombie-like economies for the booming Southeast Asian tigers of the 1990s. But there’s a risk of overvaluation building up in European bond markets that’s reminiscent of Asia’s artificially propped up currencies in the 1990s.

Despite Cyprus’s banking meltdown and a toxic mix of unemployment and social malaise that threatens to revive the euro zone’s financial crisis, bond yields for core European economies hit record lows this week as funds pivoted out of Japanese government bonds in search of higher yields. Everyone wanted to get ahead of the Bank of Japan’s forthcoming wall of money. Alongside the Federal Reserve’s monthly print run of $85 billion, the BOJ’s plan to purchase Y7 trillion ($70 billion) in bonds per month will have a profound effect on global asset valuations. The risk is that those valuations detach from reality and must eventually correct, as they did 15 years ago.

Then there’s the question of how China and other big exporting nations respond to the competitive threat of a sharply weaker yen. As with the Asian crisis, a potentially vicious cycle of “competitive depreciations” looms.
…

April 10, 2013, 10:27 a.m. EDT
David Stockman has blown some bubbles, too
Commentary: Is he a cranky old man or a visionary?
By Al Lewis

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — David Stockman, President Ronald Reagan’s former budget director, is getting plenty of blowback from his new book, “The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America,” and his Easter Sunday piece in the New York Times calling the U.S. “state wrecked.”

“I’m not a real author,” Stockman said last week during a panel discussion at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers Conference at George Washington University. “According to some, I do rants and screeds and gold-buggery.”

Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who is 60 years old himself, called Stockman, who is 66, “a cranky old man.”

Krugman also wrote, “The verdict among everyone who knows anything is that Stockman’s piece, mysteriously given star treatment, was pathetic and embarrassing. It’s full of big numbers that are scary because they’re big numbers.”

To Krugman and others who argue against Stockman, the U.S. economy is plenty big enough to manage its burgeoning debt load. Plus, interest rates are so low that the world is virtually paying the U.S. to take its money. So why not borrow trillions and trillions more until the economy recovers?
…

Gun control cleared the Senate. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/11/gun-bill-clears-senate-hurdle-as-filibuster-falls-short/

Is it go time yet?

Not yet.

Personally, Federal legislation doesn’t worry me nearly as much as the BS the states are pulling currently. Let the bill come up for a vote. We’ll get every RINO and Democrat gun-grabber on record regarding their support for 2A. There will be a price to pay come the next election cycle.

Do NOT buy a house in Florida while Rick Scott is Governor.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/banking/property-insurance-rates-could-go-through-roof-under-senate-bill/2114444

Check the comments

The stock market always goes up. Buy stocks now, or get priced out forever.

With people leaving California in droves, and a dismal economy to boot, where it the housing demand coming from these days to prop up prices at bubblelicious levels?

David Davenport, Contributor
Op/Ed
4/11/2013 @ 8:00AM
As Jerry Brown Touts California In China, Its Citizens Pack Their Bags
BEIJING, CHINA - APRIL 10: California Governor…

California Governor Jerry Brown (R) shakes hands with China Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng before a meeting at the Ministry of Commerce on April 10, 2013 in Beijing, China. Brown is in China in an effort to secure Chinese investment in his state of California. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

While Governor Jerry Brown is in China touting the state’s rebound and recovery, many Californians are busy packing their bags for a move to Texas, Nevada or Arizona. Why? Because it appears that the once-Golden State may finally be overpriced, underperforming and ungovernable.

Is it possible that one state has managed to top every 50-state category on the following shameful list?

* Highest taxes (gasoline, sales and top bracket of income taxes)
* Lowest bond rating
* Highest poverty rate (at 23.5%, the home of 1/3 of those in poverty in U.S.)
* Highest unemployment rate (tied with Mississippi and Nevada at 9.6%)
* Highest energy costs
* Worst state to do business (as judged by Chief Executive magazine 8 years running)
* Most cities going bankrupt
* Prison system so poorly run it has been taken over by a federal judge

And California has managed to do this during its rebound, its good years, according to Jerry Brown who, if not Governor Moonbeam in his second coming as the state’s leader, is clearly not in touch with life on Planet California.

Although there is argument about this, there shouldn’t be: people are leaving the state. The data shows that there has been a net out-migration from California to other states since 1990, balanced for awhile by immigration from other countries. But by 2005 that had eroded, too, with birth rates in the state also dropping at an incredible rate. Over the past two decades, a net 3.4 million people have left the state. And this is before the 2013 increase in income tax rates which prompted even liberal TV talker Bill Maher to complain that “it’s outrageous what we (millionaires) are paying” in taxes, “over 50%,” warning “liberals, you could actually lose me.”
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