The Housing Bubble

“EXography: 19 U.S. cities have proportionately bigger workforces than bankrupted Detroit”

http://washingtonexaminer.com/exography-19-u.s.-cities-have-proportionately-bigger-workforces-than-bankrupted-detroit/article/2533338

Are we there yet?

Bad Real-Estate Deals Return to Haunt Detroit’s Pensions

By Martin Z. Braun & Chris Christoff -
Jul 22, 2013 11:06 PM ET .

In 2006, businessman Robert Shumake asked trustees of Detroit’s two pensions to hand him $27 million to invest in real estate.

Shumake, whose real-estate broker’s license had expired four years earlier, became embroiled in a federal case that led to indictments of a former city treasurer and pension officials on charges of bribery, extortion and kickbacks that cost the systems more than $84 million, the U.S. Justice Department said.

A litany of such deals gone wrong shows how a municipal retirement system for 30,000 employees and retirees — propped up by $1.4 billion in borrowed money — became a cash cow for a select few. Now, these bad investments are coming back to haunt workers and pensioners as the city proposed slashing their benefits in its filing last week of the biggest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Property Losses

The city’s $2 billion General Retirement System lost $16 million in fiscal 2011 when it wrote off a housing development near Sarasota, Florida, that collapsed after the real-estate bubble burst, according to pension fund records. The $3.1 billion Police and Fire Retirement System lost about $15 million on 1,100 vacant acres 30 miles east of Dallas that was to be sold to homebuilders.

A 2006 loan guarantee for a Westin hotel and condos in downtown Detroit cost the funds $14 million.

That was just in real estate. The funds lost more than $20 million investing in a telecommunications company started by a Detroit businessman, $30 million on a cargo airline and almost $70 million on collateralized debt obligations — derivative securities backed by a pool of bonds, loans and other assets.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-23/bad-real-estate-deals-return-to-haunt-detroit-s-pensions.html - 172k

If you take on mortgage debt at current massively inflated housing prices, you’ll enslave yourself for the rest of your life.

“Debt is bondage.”~ Suze Orman, May 11, 2013

Don’t Be A Debt Donkey®

Hope and change

Can a food stamp country afford to buy houses?

——————-

For Every Job Created by Obama, 2 Americans Enroll in Food Stamps
Townhall.com | July 24, 2013 | Heather Ginsberg

In his press conference on Monday, Jay Carney said the Obama administration has pulled the nation out of the “Great Recession” with the creation of 7.2 million private sector jobs. But there are a few things that Mr. Carney forgot to mention along with this statistic.

Since February of 2009, the first full month of Obama’s presidency, 9.5 million Americans have dropped out of the labor force. Nearly 90 million Americans are not working today!

That means that 1.3 Americans have dropped out of the labor force for every one job the administration claims to have created.

There are 15 million more Americans on food stamps today than when Obama assumed office.

At the end of January 2009, 32,204,859 Americans received aid from the Supplemental Nutrition

Assistance Program. As of April 2013, there were 47,548,694 Americans on food stamps.

That means that more than two Americans have been added to the food stamp rolls for every one job the administration says it has created.

Some FB complaints about Nationstar Mortgage:

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/nationstar_mortgage.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0Yar9rlU_w

Only bigger and bigger government can save us and rebuild America and create jobs…

—————

How Detroit Almost Killed My Business
American Thinker | July 25, 2013 | Don Wilkie

Of all the depressing facts about the once great City of Detroit, this to me is the most upsetting: In 1950, there were about 296,000 manufacturing jobs in Detroit. Today, there are less than 27,000.

Government — federal, state, and local — made this happen. I know this from experience. Government corrupted the Detroit work force. That corruption drove away my company too.

Until 1984, I was a business owner in the city, employing about 20. I moved my business 60 miles away. I didn’t want to leave, but I was, in effect, forced to.

Many think that crime spurred the exodus of business out of Detroit. Not in my case. To combat crime we would build a stronger “fort.” We called it “fort building” because if my neighbor put heavy wire screen on his windows, the thieves would break into my shop. If I bricked up my windows in response, my neighbor might be broken into. This escalated to the point where many businesses eventually put fencing topped with barbed wire around their buildings. Still, although “fort building” was expensive, it was far cheaper than moving.

Detroit’s abysmal educational system did not drive me away either. As it happens, my particular business did not require highly educated people. So I could hire high school graduates not literate enough to fill out an application form.

What really killed Detroit and what drove me away was the government deciding it knew how the market should operate better than the market did. The market operates on a simple concept, “An honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.” If an employee doesn’t think he is being paid enough, he can leave. If an employer is unhappy with an employee’s performance he can fire him.

Well-meaning government programs such as Unemployment Insurance, Workman’s Compensation and Wrongful Discharge (i.e. age discrimination, sex discrimination, racial discrimination etc.), that were meant to help and protect employees turned this market concept on its head. In Detroit, hiring someone became the worst thing an employer could do, and being fired became one of the best days in an employee’s life. Allow me to explain.

As mentioned earlier, when I left Detroit I had 20 employees. But, 10 years earlier I had 5 employees. As the business grew I had to hire more people. As it turned out, to get one good employee, I had to hire about 8. So to get an additional 15 people, I had to hire over ten years approximately 120 people. This is when doing business in Detroit really started to get expensive.

When an employee left my employ, whether by quitting or being fired, they immediately went to the Unemployment Office where they were given unemployment payments. Employers such as me went to great lengths to make sure that if someone was fired it was for a good documentable reason, in an effort to avoid having to pay for unemployment. In practice, that didn’t matter too much. The likelihood that the State would grant benefits was extremely high, maybe 80%. If you protested you had to appear before a state “referee,” who was, unsurprisingly, very biased in favor of the claimant.

In the financial reports I was mandated to send to the State, it was all too obvious I had not paid nearly enough to cover the costs of the benefits the State paid out. In its wisdom, the State then hit me with a surcharge to cover the costs of the benefits paid to people who the State should never have allowed to get benefits in the first place. My unemployment costs soared.

But as bad as unemployment costs got, they were nothing compared to Workman’s Compensation. Here is the way the game was played: If you were on unemployment it was understood that you were “ready, willing and able” to work. If you were on Workman’s Compensation it meant you were injured and could not work. So, an employee always went for Unemployment benefits first and when they ran out, suddenly discovered that he was injured, usually with a bad back. In Detroit, an employer almost never won a Comp case.

After a period of time, my insurance company put me in what was called the “Assigned Risk” pool. What that meant in practice was that my Workman’s Compensation insurance costs doubled overnight. Every new employee hired became a huge financial burden not in terms of wages but in terms of Unemployment and Workman’s Comp costs.

But perhaps the scariest thing that could happen to an employer was being summoned in front of the Civil Rights Commission, to face charges of “Wrongful Discharge.” Here you had to prove a negative, that you did not violate someone’s rights. This happened to me three times. If the Commission determined you were guilty, which were two out of three for me, the remedy was to pay all of an employee’s wages from the time he was separated from your employ to the time of the Commission’s finding. Since the system moved very slowly, an employer could be faced with paying as much as two years’ salary.

This was enough to get me and hundreds like me out of Detroit. I could build a stronger “fort,” but I couldn’t beat the system. That, however, wasn’t the end of what our government did to Detroit.

The final nail in the coffin came from the Environmental Protection Agency. It happened sometime in the late 1980’s. This was when by EPA decree, almost everyone associated with manufacturing in the City of Detroit, became a criminal. People who had worked honestly for years to pay for their building and property woke up one morning to find that because of the EPA, their property was worthless, or worse. Is it any wonder there are so many abandoned factories?

Mr. Smithers, I didn’t see your response to this question regarding your post about doctors in the senate and house:

Comment by MightyMike
2013-07-24 16:01:23

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_McDermott

Some obvious differences, but I wonder if Al and Jesse would have jumped on this if the roles were reversed?

The Black George Zimmerman the Media Doesn’t Want You to Know About

lastresistance.com
July 24, 2013

Did you notice during the George Zimmerman trial how the media kept repeating the salacious question “What if Trayvon Martin had been white?” They acted as if this question was the perfect response to Zimmerman defenders. They pretended that this was a question without a “safe” answer, but in reality, the question had already been answered.

In April of 2009 Mr. Roderick Scott awoke at 3am to the sounds of three young men breaking into cars on his street. He called the police and went down to the street to make sure the young men did not flee before the police arrived. He shouted at the three to “freeze” and told them that the police were coming soon. The three boys stood before the big man obviously considering what they should do.

That’s when Christopher Cervini (17) rushed at Mr. Scott uttering “I’ll get you” or “I’ll get him.” Roderick Scott fired twice, killing the teenager. The trial that followed was again a case of prosecutorial overreach, as they tried to charge Mr. Scott with manslaughter. Fortunately for Mr. Scott, a jury of his peers agreed with him that he did only what was needed to protect himself.

Afterwards the prosecutor opined, “I just hope it’s not a message to this community… that you have the right to shoot an unarmed 17-year-old kid for breaking into a car.” The problem is that Mr. Scott did not shoot young Christopher Cervini for breaking into his car, but for attacking him. While the Cervini family may now be in much pain over the loss of their son, he brought himself to his tragic end through a series of terrible choices. Roderick Scott had every right to protect himself; he did what he should have… and a jury of his peers agreed.

Oh, and Roderick Scott was a 42 year old black man about the size of an NFL linebacker. Christopher Cervini was a skinny, 17 year old white kid with a little bit of marijuana in his system. Scott was justified in the killing of the younger man not because of the crime that Cervini had committed, but because Scott rightfully feared for his own safety.

There was no “white uproar” over the shooting of a young white man at the hands of a black man with a “hero-complex.” The NAACP didn’t show up to argue that the shooter should be jailed, or that the Justice Department should pursue charges of civil rights violations against the man for killing Cervini. Jesse Jackson, Al Shartpon, and all of the other race hate baiters stayed home for the trial. The trial was treated as a tragic situation that a young man brought on himself by turning to violence.

Which is exactly how the George Zimmerman case should have been treated. The next time someone tells you, “What if…?” You can tell them it already happened, and the outcome was exactly the same… minus the racial tension.

http://www.infowars.com/say-hello-to-roderick-scott-the-anti-george-zimmerman/ - 66k -

Updated 12/18/2009 10:41 PM
Jury Finds Roderick Scott Not Guilty
By: Mike Hedeen

Jury Finds Roderick Scott Not Guilty - Rochester
http://rochester.ynn.com/content/top_stories/490926/jury-finds-roderick-scott-not-guilty/ - 73k - Cached - Similar pages
Dec 18, 2009 …

hope and change

‘cleveland was hit especially hard by the foreclosure crisis, and its legacy of abandoned homes has frayed neighborhoods, leaving behind those who cannot afford to get out, while providing shelter to people on the social margins. areas with many vacant and abandoned homes are breeding grounds for crime, local officials said.

cleveland and surrounding cuyahoga county receive nearly 20 percent of the population leaving state prisons, with many returning to neighborhoods on the east side’

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/07/25/us/in-cleveland-killings-show-social-costs-of-deterioration.html

Denver Rental Rates Sink 3% and Falling

http://picpaste.com/pics/04e3b6264d441fa63f8c34fbccf4a5b8.1374757898.png

Oh dear.

“With 25 million excess, empty and defaulted houses and another 35 million houses to be vacated as boomers die off, what do you think is going to happen to housing prices?”

We have a pretty good notion.

California Foreclosures Skyrocket 38%

http://www.ksby.com/news/california-foreclosures-rise-in-2nd-quarter/#_

West Palm Beach real estate company marketing $18.3 million bulk sale

July 10th, 2013 by Kim Miller

Real Estate Asset Disposition Corp. is marketing a bulk auction of South Florida single-family homes worth a total of $18.3 million including dozens of Palm Beach County properties.

The company, which has its main office based in West Palm Beach, announced the sale Tuesday with registration beginning immediately at the company’s website, http://www.READCorpBulk.com.

A total of 123 homes are up for sale in seven different pools. Three of the pools are in Palm Beach County with homes in West Palm Beach, Palm Beach Gardens and Riviera Beach. Other areas include Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale and Miami. Asking prices range from $1.9 million to more than $4 million.

The homes are bank-owned or previously purchased by investors and are marketed as rent-ready, meaning they’ve undergone “quality renovations and will generate immediate predictable cash flow.”

The majority of the homes are currently rented, including by Section 8 tenants who offer guaranteed government payments.

Company owner Jim Banford turned to bulk sales last year when the inventory of repossessed homes began to dry up.

Although the pool of bank-owned homes for sale might increase as lenders move properties through the foreclosure process, Banford said last year that he couldn’t stand by idly waiting for that to happen.

“This is looking at a new twist to keep things going,” he said

“The median sale price of all co-ops, condominiums and single-family homes in Hoboken … jumped almost 11 percent in the year through June to $516,000 … That surpassed the $510,000 median in June 2006, near the peak of the U.S. housing market.

“It isn’t a bubble, this is true demand,” said (Lori) Turoff, who works for Coldwell Banker. “Hoboken is a wonderful community to raise a family, and young people are willing to pay for it. It’s still a great deal compared to New York City.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-25/hoboken-moms-replace-maxwell-s-rock-fans-in-housing-boom.html

“There are potential buyers out there who can’t get a mortgage, so they’re being left out,” Sambrotto said. “But housing is still a good investment, so those with cash are taking advantage of it.”

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?
p=2&tc=pg&AID=2013130729802

One of the nations big investors bought a house on my street two months ago, the lawn is now two feet high and the pool looks like a swamp!

“A fledgling movement for better pay for fast-food and other poorly paid employees is hoping for a major boost next week when thousands of low-wage workers are expected to walk off their jobs in seven cities across the country.

On Monday, workers are planning to stage one-day strikes at some of the nation’s best known and most profitable fast-food restaurants, including KFC, Wendy’s, Burger King and McDonalds.

The protesters are demanding a living wage of $15 an hour.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/fast-food-workers-planning-to-expand-protests-in-7-cities/2013/07/24/b02031d8-f488-11e2-9434-60440856fadf_story.html

POWER PRICES CLIMB 59 PERCENT
San Onofre shutdown largely to blame locally, but wholesale rates up across country in first half of 2013
By Morgan Lee
12:01 a.m. July 24, 2013 Updated
5:16 p.m. July 23, 2013

The nuclear shutdown at San Onofre is partially to blame for a 59 percent increase in wholesale electricity prices for California in the first half of the year, the Energy Information Administration said Tuesday.

The statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy found that wholesale electricity prices rose across the country during the first six months of 2013 over the same period last year.

Prices in New England were the highest, largely because of pipeline constraints that limited the delivery of natural gas.

In California, the “increase was largely the result of the continued outage of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station,” according to the agency’s Today in Energy briefing. “This factor also caused a large and unusual separation in power prices between the northern and southern parts of the state’s electric system.”
…

Mortgage Debt Jubilee ideas again being floated. Watch Michael Keen discuss how it would be done at 23 minutes in. He mentions if you’re debt-free you get a “cash injection” instead. It kind of falls apart when the interviewer brings up moral hazard and bank oversight. Obviously he never noticed we’re in this mess because we totally lost control of oversight and repercussions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahvQWDBqJ6k#at=1621

Forward

“The pessimism that has seized the nation is not a new development. For the overwhelming majority of the past 20 years, most Americans have expressed the belief that the country is on the wrong track.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/07/25/the-only-constant-in-todays-politics-pessimism/

Are you missing out on the stock market boom?

Bond Investors Turn to Cash
Investors are cashing out of bonds but remain hesitant to plunge into stocks
By CHRIS DIETERICH
CONNECT

Investors are cashing out of bonds but remain hesitant to plunge into stocks, preferring instead to buy money-market mutual funds despite their low returns. The surprise move highlights persistent investor anxiety with equities even as stock indexes reach new highs.

Investors withdrew an estimated $43 billion from taxable bond mutual funds last month, the largest-ever monthly outflow, according to the Investment Company Institute. The debt-market swoon was fueled by worries that the Federal Reserve was softening its commitment to keeping interest rates low. Rising interest rates mean lower bond prices.

Many observers expected to see those flows turn to funds tracking U.S. stocks. But in a twist, the main beneficiary of the rush out of bonds has been money-market funds, which are cash-like investments that appeal to safety-minded investors.

Assets in these portfolios increased for the fourth week in a row in the week ended July 17, rising $8.5 billion to $2.6 trillion, ICI data show. That left money-market funds, which pay barely more than simply holding dollars, with the most cash since early April.

The shift highlights the uncertain investing outlook at a time of near record-low interest rates and tepid economic growth, along with the risk aversion that has sent money into bond funds following the stock-market plunge of 2008.

“I suspect that most bond money isn’t ready to accept the fact that they are better off in equities,” said Julius Ridgway, investment adviser at Medley Brown, an investment-advisory firm in Jackson, Miss.

Mr. Ridgway said that his clients still talk about sharp losses suffered in stocks in the throes of the financial crisis.

“Bond investors are much less tolerant of the potential for negative returns, and there’s still the memory of a 30% decline [in stocks] in a year,” he said.

To be sure, many investors expect to see the funds head into the stock market eventually, as those with large cash holdings seek out better returns. These people say the move to cash is merely a pause before investors help push the Dow Jones Industrial Average further into record territory.
…
Related
Investors Develop a Fear of Heights
Asian Shares Fall

Aside from a dearth of jobs and $1 trillion in student loan debt, what keeps Generation Y out of the housing market?

July 25, 2013, 7:30 a.m. EDT
The kids aren’t buying homes
Generation Y may be holding back the housing recovery
By Quentin Fottrell

Millions of young Americans are unemployed or underemployed, living with roommates or at home with Mom and Dad — instead of buying homes of their own, a new study found. And it isn’t just the economy that is holding them back, experts say: Many were also spooked by the property crash of 2008.

The number of “missing households” — that is, Americans who would be owning or renting a home now if prerecession economic trends had continued — hit 2.4 million as of March, according to an analysis of raw monthly government data by real-estate marketplace Trulia. That is down slightly from its peak of 2.6 million in 2011, but up 100,000 from the year prior. And 18- to 34-year-olds account for more than half of the missing households, according to the data. “Household formation is the most important indicator of the housing recovery that isn’t making great strides,” says Trulia chief economist Jed Kolko, who did the analysis.

Parents and their young-adult kids are closer in their tastes and habits these days, but what’s increasingly lost are the traditional milestones of adulthood.

Before the Great Recession, about 1.1 million new households were added annually in the U.S., Kolko says. However, from the first quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2011, only 450,000 new households per year were created. That, he says, contributed to lower demand for homes, and annual construction starts dropped during this period from a norm of 1.4 million to below 600,000. The 18- to 34-year-olds are a key age group for housing demand, he says: “They’ll always make up a significant share of buyers, even though they’re now less likely to be buying, renting, or living on their own than they were before the recession.”
…
Also see: Why Generation Y fears the stock market

KEEEEEEEEEEEEEYRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!!!

What was that?!

You know that house you made the mistake of buying? Well the value of it just fell through the floor leaving a smoldering moon-crater.

Beware reading public. Don’t be a sucker like the debt-junkies that attempt to rationalize their horrible decision. Beware.

http://farm1.staticflickr.com/31/45883637_4bf23fbe53_z.jpg

“Falling housing prices to dramatically lower and more affordable levels is bullish optimism and good for the economy.”

“The 93-year-old woman who police said was beaten and raped in her own home earlier this week has died.

Sergio Perez, 19, who faces charges in connection with the crime, is being held without bond in Douglas County jail.

Prosecutors said Perez, who doesn’t speak English, beat and sexually assaulted the woman in her home Sunday.

Prosecutors said Perez is not a legal resident of the United States. The victim’s family said a detective told them he has been in the country for about four months.”

http://www.ketv.com/news/local-news/93-year-old-woman-dies-after-attack-sexual-assault-in-home/-/9674510/21142340/-/uyf3k4/-/index.html

“The Housing Market Recovery Is ‘A Complete Hoax’”

http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/the_housing_shell_game_20130503/

Afterall, a “housing recovery” is dramatically lower prices by definition.

How quickly they forget….

American Banker

Americans Gambling on Rates with Most ARMs Since ‘08

“In the second year of the U.S. housing recovery, the loans that helped trigger the housing bust are making a comeback. Applications in late June rose to the highest level since 2008 after the Federal Reserve sent fixed rates surging by signaling it may curtail bond buying credited with pushing borrowing costs to the cheapest on record. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage jumped 1.2 percentage points in mid-July from May to the highest level in two years, adding about $200 a month to payments on a $300,000 mortgage.”

http://www.americanbanker.com/syndication/americans-gambling-on-rates-with-most-arms-since-2008-1060842-1.html?CMP=OTC-RSS

Also in the RT video I linked to earlier, they talk about someone who worked in the subprime banking sector simply going private and continuing to offer interest only loans again. I miss our hard money lender who used to post here. He let us know how things were going in his sector which sounded like mostly mobile home park buyers.

Weiner won’t pull out

Weiner Refuses To Pull Out Of Mayoral Race In Admission Sexting Continued After Resignation

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/23/2013 18:37 -0400

New York CityRealityWhite House

Typically we wouldn’t note such tabloid gutter trash as the pilot episode to the upcoming reality show “In The Carlos Danger Zone with the Weiners”, but since what is going on in the farce that is NYC’s mayoral race is just another analogy for America’s broken market, broken politics, broken morals and, ultimately, broken society, this deserves at least a few words, so here they are. Anthony Weiner resigned from Congress after being exposed for having a “sexting problem.” As it turns out the Democratic mayoral candidate’s sexting problem never went away, and continued well after said resignation with at least one young female, with whom he used the alias “Carlos Danger” and likely more. We learn all this because despite simple logic, Weiner decided to not only run for mayor but following today’s revelations, will continue his run for mayor as he announced at a just concluded press conference. And the most inexplicable twist in all this: his wife was there beside him, supporting him and urging him on in the mayoral race.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-23/weiner-refuses-pull-out-mayoral-race-admission-sexting-continued-after-resignation - 118k

Ol’ Fabrice Tourre, who gave us some insight into “financial innovation” and how Wall Street actually works, is facing the SEC. The trial should be a brief farce.

Ex-Goldman Sachs trader, SEC spar in civil trial over 2007 mortgage deal
By Dina El Boghdady, Published: July 24
Washington Post

NEW YORK — At 28, Fabrice Tourre was the “deal captain” at Goldman Sachs who helped cobble together and market a complex mortgage product that raked in $1 billion for a prominent hedge fund client.

But other investors lost about that much on the 2007 deal, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, in one of its highest-profile court cases emanating from the financial crisis, alleges that Tourre is partly to blame because he lured those investors into an arrangement that was secretly designed to fail.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/ex-goldman-sachs-trader-sec-spar-in-civil-trial-over-2007-mortgage-deal/2013/07/24/326c1f9e-f4ac-11e2-9434-60440856fadf_story.html?wprss=rss_business

Yemeni president pardons reporter Obama wanted kept in jail

By Adam Baron | McClatchy Foreign Staff
By Adam Baron
SANAA, Yemen — Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye, whom President Barack Obama once personally lobbied to have remain in jail, has been pardoned and released, fulfilling a months-old pledge from Yemen’s president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

I have to say… some of the FIRE sector strategists are absolutely brilliant. Seriously. Hats off.

But these FIRE sector strategists are brilliant chess players.

‘Consumer Mortgage Choice Act’ Takes Away Consumers’ Choices
Maxine Waters and Elizabeth Warren
JUL 22, 2013 12:30pm ET
American Banker

The latest danger is H.R. 1077 and its companion bill, S. 949. Deceptively entitled the “Consumer Mortgage Choice Act,” the bills seek to undermine Dodd-Frank’s ability-to repay provision. This provision, one of the most direct and important responses to the mortgage crisis, requires lenders to determine whether a borrower can afford a mortgage before they extend a loan. The rule was adopted to prohibit loans that were “designed to fail,” a practice that was central to the origination model that brought on the financial crisis.

Under the new rule, if lenders offer loans that meet the qualified mortgage standards provided by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau , they are presumed to have proven the borrower’s ability to repay and are therefore protected from litigation.

http://www.americanbanker.com/bankthink/consumer-mortgage-choice-act-takes-away-consumers-choices-1060763-1.html

“….pretty soon, you are executing people for letting their dog piss on your lawn……” Harry Callahan, 1973

Well, the guy that got shot wasn’t doing the pissing it was his buddy, not a dog……and it was on a gravel bar in the (publicly owned) river, not on his lawn……. So it’s apples and oranges.

“Missouri man charged with slaying float trip participant for urinating on a gravel bar”

http://tinyurl.com/kictkjn

In the meantime, over at Casa de Spirit……a new batch of guys get to take involuntary early retirement, or try to make a go as a 1099. Or diversify their skill set, and become waiters and bartenders.

“Spirit AeroSystems lays off 360 workers”

http://tinyurl.com/jvh723y

“About 200 of the laid-off employees are engineers and professional and technical workers…. It’s not any one particular program…..There’s a lot of veteran employees there.”

“Employees were given two week layoff notices with two weeks of pay, then walked out the door”.

NSA projects = infrastructure spending. Right?

http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2013/07/nsas-big-dig/67406/

Jesus, these are massive buildings/server farms…

the “how much a month” economy is destroying this country. some 26 year old admininstrative assistant i work with just told me he considered a 96 month car loan.

Notes form high school interview trenches:
Two applicants for a soc. studies position with JDs (one also with MBA).

DaleC • a day ago
−+
I heard George Zimmerman is going to change his name to Ben Gozzi, that way no one in the Administration will investigate him.

LPS came out with their “first look” today at the most recent delinquency rates.

http://www.lpsvcs.com/LPSCorporateInformation/NewsRoom/Pages/20130725.aspx#.UfG4-Y3ql8E

Delinquency rate up 10% month on month, down 6.5% year on year.

Could anyone who thinks they get the cachet of the brony phenomenon kindly explain? Why do teenage boys think it’s cool to watch My Little Pony?

Whatever happened to Three Stooges reruns?

P.S. As a long-time viewer of chick flicks and teevee shows, I guess I basically agree with the concept.

Are the U.S. and Asian stock markets decoupled again?

July 26, 2013, 2:23 a.m. EDT
Japan stocks slide on firm yen; Australia higher
By V. Phani Kumar, MarketWatch

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Japanese stocks tumbled Friday to snap a five-week winning streak as exporters skidded on the yen’s strength, while Australian shares climbed following overnight gains on Wall Street.

Nissan Motor Co. and Advantest Corp. lost ground in Tokyo after posting their quarterly results, while shares of Chinese railway construction firms gave back some of the gains recorded in the previous session.

Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average ended the day 3% lower to end the week with a loss tally of 3.2%, and China’s Shanghai Composite lost 0.7%. Both benchmarks had also declined in the previous two sessions.
…