The Housing Bubble

What do recent slumping asset prices portend?

Gold has barely dropped so far today, and has only dropped a tiny bit all week.

Is it safe to assume the panic has passed?

Are terrorists normally successful when they demand for their victims to negotiate?

Do high levels of margin debt suggest another stock market crash is in the works, or is it different this time?

When is the dollar going to collapse?

‘Furloughed since Tuesday, Mekayla Coleman needs some fast cash. To make a few bucks, Coleman, who works in IT at the Department of Defense’s Defense Acquisition University, turned to Craigslist in hopes of selling some baby items she no longer needs.’

“Prices can be negotiable, but please serious offers only, I really need the money,” says the listing, which advertises about $300 worth of items.’

‘Coleman’s in a bind because she recently spent all her savings to get her house ready for sale and hadn’t saved up for the partial government shutdown. “It’s not looking good,” she said.’

‘The NSA is Making Us All Less Safe’

“Computers are everywhere. They are now something we put our whole bodies into—airplanes, cars—and something we put into our bodies—pacemakers, cochlear implants. They HAVE to be trustworthy.”

What’s wonderful about the educational system we have today is the finanacial part of it - the training and experience the student needs to receive in order for him to learn to properly handle his money (if he learns at all) - happens AFTER graduation (much to my delight).

An educational system that keeps on and on and on and on educating long, long, long after graduation. What system can beat that?

Run up the bills early on and then stuggle for years - decades - to pay them off. It builds character along theway (and makes me rich).

Do y’all think the Grand Old Party of Rich Old White Men may have trouble attracting young voters going forward (not to mention middle-aged and older voters)?

Shutdown hurts GOP efforts to woo younger voters
Aliyah Frumin and Suzy Khimm
4:01 AM on 10/05/2013
People listen to Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney speak during a campaign rally at Shawnee State University in Portsmouth, Ohio October 13, 2012. (Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

After the GOP got crushed at the polls in 2012, Republican Party leaders realized they needed to broaden their base, especially among younger voters.

The Republican National Committee even released an autopsy report declaring that the GOP had become an entity at which “young voters are increasingly rolling their eyes,” and admitting “we have lost our way with younger ones. We sound increasingly out of touch.”

A majority of 18- to 29-year-olds—60%–helped propel President Obama back into the White House in 2012, compared to just 37% for Mitt Romney.

Fast forward to today, and the RNC’s much ballyhooed autopsy report looks forgotten. Republicans are being blamed for a massively unpopular government shutdown, with many lawmakers refusing to pass a spending bill unless it includes defunding or delaying Obamacare. Some strategists and pollsters say the standoff could hurt the GOP’s attempt to make inroads with young voters.

According to a pre-shutdown survey by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, 56% of 18- to 29-year-olds said they believed that ensuring affordable access to healthcare is a bigger priority than reducing the deficit.

And according to an ABC-Washington Post poll, among 18- to 39-year-olds, 44% approve of how Obama is handling debt negotiations. Meanwhile, 39% approve of how Democrats in Congress are handling it, and only 30% support the GOP.

“There’s a real risk for Republicans that they’ll shoulder more of the blame with this section of the electorate,” said Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson.
…

Congressional term limits NOW

How do you “shortchange” people by NOT paying a BONUS pensions check at a time when a city is bankrupt???

By the title - even the MSM are getting it.

Public unions + long term democrat rule = bankruptcy and ruin

———————-

Detroit union wins victory worth ‘refund on deck of Titanic’
Yahoo - October 05, 2013 - Joseph Lichterman

Detroit’s largest public sector union scored a symbolic victory Friday when a Michigan administrative law judge reinstated an extra annual pension check for city workers and retirees, although the judge in the city’s bankruptcy case has prohibited enforcement of the ruling.

Earlier this year O’Connor read a verbal opinion supporting the case brought by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, claiming Detroit shortchanged its members beginning in November 2011 when the City Council stopped paying a bonus pension check.

That payment and others cost the pension fund $1.92 billion from 1985 to 2008, a 2011 report to city council said.

When Liberals Run Cities
Townhall.com | October 5, 2013 | John C. Goodman

Have you ever noticed how often cities where there are very few Republicans elect Republican mayors anyway? Or if they don’t elect a Republican, they elect a Democrat who acts like a Republican.

New York City is known for being a bastion of liberalism. But the city hasn’t had a real liberal mayor for almost 40 years. When Jersey City, New Jersey, elected Republican Bret Schundler as mayor, there probably weren’t more than five Republicans living in the whole city. Democrats have outnumbered Republicans in Dallas County, where I live, for quite some time. Yet Dallas has never really had a liberal mayor.

On the other hand, consider the coming mayoral election in New York City. The Democratic nominee, Bill de Blasio, is unapologetically liberal/progressive. His two main issues are clamping down on the New York Police Department’s “stop and frisk” policy and raising taxes on wealthy New Yorkers to pay for universal pre-K education.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Vincent Cannato reminds us all of what liberal governance looked like in years past:

Under Mayor John Lindsay, who embodied the promise and then the tragedy of Great Society liberalism, the city suffered through a tumultuous 1960s and early ’70s. While Lindsay was in office (1966-73), crime continued its dramatic rise, public-sector labor unions turned New York into “Strike City,” welfare rolls increased even amid an economic boom, swaths of the city were hollowed out by arson and abandonment, the city’s infrastructure began to deteriorate, graffiti proliferated, and the middle class continued its flight to the suburbs…

After years of chaos and tumult, New York no longer looked like a good investment. It nearly went bankrupt, and its finances were taken over by an Emergency Financial Control Board.

What happened in New York 40 years ago is not all that dissimilar to what has been happening in Detroit. As that city inched toward its own fiscal cliff, city services deteriorated, taxes rose and taxpayers fled. Now we learn that while all that was going on millions of dollars were being looted from city workers’ pension funds. As reported in The New York Times:

The payments, which were not publicly disclosed, included bonuses to retirees, supplements to workers not yet retired and cash to the families of workers who died before becoming eligible to collect a pension…

Most of the trustees on Detroit’s two pension boards represent organized labor, and for years they could outvote anyone who challenged the payments.

Why do some cities fall into this trap while other cites avoid it? And what does any of this have to do with liberalism as a political philosophy?

Absent a counter force, Detroit’s experience is almost inevitable. As taxpayers escape to other jurisdictions, the political imbalance grows leading to higher taxes, deteriorating services and more taxpayer migration. The ultimate end is a formal or informal bankruptcy, in which the city falls under the control of a judge or some other non-democratic entity. This result is in no one’s interest. But no single group is in a position to stop it. If all the interest groups could get together and agree to show restraint (by asking less from the system and taking less), the demise could be avoided. But there is no mechanism that allows this to happen.

WARNING: A cash out refi may hasten blindness.

“It was predatory, calculated to strip my equity and set me up for failure.”

What they should have done was given her a loan that added equity to her home and set her up for success.

Wells Fargo foreclosure fighters: They’re baaaack!

04.23.13 -

In attendance at this afternoon’s San Francisco rally will be Bernetta Adolf, a cancer survivor in her late 60s who has also struggled with blindness, a particularly challenging disability that forced her to retire from her city job as a Muni driver.

Adolf is locked in a battle with Wells Fargo over the foreclosure of her home in San Francisco’s Oceanview-Merced-Ingleside neighborhood. The trouble started when she borrowed against the home she’s lived in 20 years, to fund her son’s college education.

“It turns out the loan to provide for my son’s future was designed to ruin my own,” Adolf wrote in an online statement. “It was predatory, calculated to strip my equity and set me up for failure. When I tried to work with Wells to fix the loan, they offered a modification so small it didn’t make any difference. Then they started trying to take my house. The stress hastened my blindness and continues to aggravate my health problems.”

http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2013/04/23/wells-fargo-foreclosure-fighters-they%E2%80%99re-baaaack - 94k -

“Housing is a depreciating asset, ALWAYS.”

Exactly. No different than a car, refrigerator or lawn mower.

We we be better off as separate countries instead of one big unhappy family? (Not to suggest that California hasn’t already effectively separated, or anything…)

McClellan: I blame Robert E. Lee
October 04, 2013 12:15 am • By Bill McClellan

Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in an 1864 image by Julian Vannerson. Library of Congress image.
…
Even the most disastrous things have been done with good intentions. Like Iraq. Hardly anybody this side of Dick Cheney thinks our invasion of that country was worth the price in blood and money, but at the time, most people thought it was a good idea. Truth is, most people thought it was a good idea because they figured it would be relatively easy. We are, after all, a Superpower.

If we were several countries, we wouldn’t be. Illinois would not have invaded Iraq. Not even if it were combined with Minnesota and Wisconsin as the country of Illminnonsin.

Of course, our various countries could still come together as a coalition for really big things. I like to think we wouldn’t have sat out World War II.

But we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq. We wouldn’t be drawing lines in the sand in Syria. Nobody else is doing that. Only us. Why? Because we figure we have to be policeman for the world.

That’s one reason we’re broke. Even when we’re not fighting wars, we’ve got troops all over the world.

If we weren’t broke, it would be easy to overlook the fact that we’re ungovernable. Who would care? If you’re going to be a dysfunctional family, be a rich dysfunctional family. Be the Kardashians. They’re famous for being famous, and being famous pays well. People read about them to get their minds off the fact that we’re broke and ungovernable.

At the moment, our government is shut down. Partially shut down. I have not paid close attention, but I know it has to do with a political squabble about the Affordable Care Act. As bad as the current situation is, we are supposed to be facing an even worse situation later this month when Congress is confronted with raising the debt ceiling.

That could be catastrophic, people say.

But that is the way things go these days. We bounce from crisis to crisis. All solutions are temporary, and as bad as the current crisis is, the next one always promises to be worse. No wonder many of us care so deeply about the Kardashians!

Sadly, I see no hope for the future, either. There is little common ground, and the loudest voices come from the fringes.

It didn’t have to be this way. If Lee had listened to Longstreet, we wouldn’t be one big, unhappy country. We’d be a number of smaller countries. Smaller and happier. Maybe the Kardashians wouldn’t even be famous.

As Ashe Schow of the Washington Examiner observed, “while hundreds of thousands of Americans are furloughed for being ‘non-essential,’ the White House has found asking for their stories to be ‘essential.’” Fortunately, a #ShutdownSobStories hashtag has popped up to make these tragic tales easy to find. Check them out, if your heart can take it.

I have no idea what the panda at the National Zoo is doing. #shutdownsobstories3:39 PM - 4 Oct 2013

#shutdownsobstories I have no idea when to drink water or when to move3:54 PM - 4 Oct 2013

#ShutdownSobStories Wildlife in closed National parks are starving due to the lack of picnics.

#ShutDownSobStories Just who is gonna pick up all these dead bodies on my street?

ShutDownSobStories Feeling unsafe without the NSA watching over me.

Harry Reid hurt his finger while pushing his own elevator button.

#ShutdownSobStories

It snowed today and I had to shovel it. #shutdownsobstories5:30 PM - 4 Oct 2013

ShutDownSobStories Obama has to hold his own umbrella. #OrParasol5:23 PM - 4 Oct 2013

#ShutdownSobStories the White House will only host 2 concerts per month

#shutdownsobstories Moochelle couldn’t get dressed today, the 24 who help her dress are on furlough

#ShutDownSobStories First Dog Bo’s V-22 grounded, has to start riding in AF1 cargo hold. http://shar.es/KBSBk via @sharethis

WWII vets now need to travel with wire cutters. #shutdownsobstories5:37 PM - 4 Oct 2013

ShutDownSobStories Michelle hasn’t had a vacation for 3days

#ShutDownSobStories Kybosh on anymore IRS Star Trek videos.5:28 PM - 4 Oct 2013

ft dot com
Last updated: October 4, 2013 8:55 pm
Shutdown puts trade talks on ice
By Geoff Dyer and James Politi in Washington and Shawn Donnan in London

A worker operates a forklift among containers at a shipping terminal in Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, on Monday, June 17, 2013. Japan has posted a surplus in its current account, the broadest measure of international trade, every year since at least 1985, Ministry of Finance data show, helping the nation to finance its government deficits without being dependent on foreign capital.©Bloomberg

US efforts to conclude trade deals with the European Union and 12 Pacific Rim nations suffered a big blow as a result of its government shutdown, with US trade officials cancelling next week’s round of talks in Brussels and Barack Obama scrapping a trip to meet Asian leaders.

Mike Froman, US trade representative, called Karel De Gucht, EU trade commissioner, on Friday to tell him that the shutdown would “prevent” his office from “proceeding” with the second round of talks.

“He noted that financial and staffing constraints related to the shutdown make it impossible to send a full team of negotiators; USTR will work with the [European] Commission to craft an alternative work plan that can begin once the US government shutdown ends,” a USTR spokeswoman said.

Mr Froman emphasised that the deal remained “a major economic priority for the US, with the potential to enhance the world’s largest economic relationship and support jobs on both sides of the Atlantic when an agreement can be completed”.

João Vale de Almeida, the EU ambassador to Washington, tweeted on Friday afternoon that “unfortunately” the round of talks had been axed and added: “The EU is ready when you are!”.

In a statement , Mr DE Gucht said: “The cancellation of next week’s negotiation round in Brussels is clearly unfortunate but let me underline that it in no way distracts us from our overall aim of achieving an ambitious trade and investment deal between Europe and the US which will bring real economic benefit to people on both sides of the Atlantic.”
…

ft dot com
October 4, 2013 6:37 pm
US policy makers fear flying blind
By Robin Harding in Washington
People check the jobs board at a Denver Workforce Center, part of the Denver Office of Economic Development, in Denver, Colorado©Bloomberg

A lengthy government shutdown could paralyse US Federal Reserve policy making – including a crucial decision on when to slow its asset purchases – and create ripple effects that make economic data less useful for months or even years to come.

US policy makers fear a continued government shutdown could seriously degrade the quality of economic data and leave them without reliable information until January.

The Fed will rely heavily on government figures to assess when to taper its monetary stimulus from $85bn-a-month so the loss of data could have big effects on global markets.

Although the first impact of the shutdown was a delay in jobs numbers for September, which were due for release on Friday, policy makers are more concerned about the integrity of October’s data.

Several officials said their greatest fear was that the government would not reopen by October 14, the survey week for the monthly jobs report. The government will release September’s number when it eventually reopens but the October data could be lost forever.

Without a prior month for comparison, November data would be hard to compile and interpret, so December data – released in January – would be the next clear reading on how the economy is performing.

“It’s a loss of clarity at a critical time,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago. “It’s like flying blind.”
…

Making housing more affordable in Traverse City Michigan area
Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said Traverse City and northern Michigan could significantly benefit from a change in the federal tax code, which she is advocating, to help fund more affordable housing projects.

Crowley was in Traverse City Wednesday to discuss the National Housing Trust Fund that was established by Congress in 2008 as part of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act. The fund was meant to create an alternative funding source for affordable housing, but financing never materialized after the housing crash.

Crowley and her organization now advocate for funding through modifications to the mortgage interest deduction. The group wants to lower the cap on the amount of interest that can be deducted on mortgages from $500,000 to $1 million and convert deductions into a non-refundable 15 percent tax credit.

The National Association of Realtors opposes any change to the mortgage interest deduction. Officials with the national agency said the mortgage interest rate deduction is a critical part of promoting home ownership.

Affordable housing remains in strong demand in northern Michigan and particularly in Traverse City. The 2012 Grand Traverse County Housing Inventory and Strategy found regional families increasingly spend huge chunks of their budgets on housing. Nearly half of all rental households pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing. For households earning $20,000 or less, the percentage is nearly 80 percent.

“We in Traverse City are mentally deficient very challenged,” Traverse City Commissioner Jim Carruthers said. “We live in a resort community flooded by retirees and second homeowners willing and able to spend extravagant sums on housing with high-income properties, and housing that costs too damn much homelessness issues and affordable housing is always going to be a problem for us.”

During the eighties recession(s) it was commonplace to see cars for sale with “Take Over Payments” rather than a price; not so these days. I’ve been waiting for the desperation sales with some of that “down payment, sweet equity” buried in the deal, but it isn’t happening…yet. Have cash.

These are really funny.

Inexplicably bad property photographs.

http://terriblerealestateagentphotos.com/

‘The shutdown of the government is impacting many home buyers and sellers who face uncertainty about when mortgages can be approved and their sales closed. ‘Every single move on their part I think is a farce and it’s shameful. It’s a completely shameful way to behave,’ said Alex Schroeder Futures Design.’

‘Schroeder buys and sells homes for a living. He’s what’s popularly known as a ‘flipper,’ which means he buys distressed homes, rehabilitates them and then sells them for a profit. He made his latest sale just last week, but now the government shutdown has put it in doubt.’

‘It puts it in uncertainty which is pretty serious because that’s my source of income,’ said Schroeder. One lender at Alain Pinel we talked to estimated that one out of four loans in California are government backed by the Veterans Administration or Federal Housing Administration. Those loans are now in limbo due to the shutdown. With each passing day of the shutdown, Alex is feeling more pressure.’

‘We need this sale to go through. We need it go through quickly. The money is tied up. We want it to roll into the next project as soon as possible,’ said Schroeder.’

‘Downtown Minneapolis is ground zero for the apartment-building boom, with the most projects in the pipeline, and the majority of those apartments priced at the upper end of the market. Call them “luxury,” “upscale,” “high-end,” or just expensive. Veteran developer Jim Stanton is building Stonebridge Lofts, a brand-new 164-unit condo building in downtown Minneapolis near the Guthrie Theater. At press time, he said he had 89 presales and seven reservations; the building is set to open in spring 2014.’

‘Did Stanton ever consider apartments at his site? “Not too seriously,” he says. ““My read is, [with] the apartments, we might be approaching a bubble. We have an awful lot of them coming on in a short period of time,” Stanton says of the current rental market. “I decided to go where the competition ain’t.”

‘Job growth and apartment development are inextricably linked. Nationally, Washington, D.C., is being watched closely as a market at risk for a glut of new apartments. Jay Denton, vice president of research for Dallas-based Axiometrics, Inc., an apartment market research firm, thinks it is not creating enough new jobs to support the volume of apartments in the pipeline.’

“[Developers and investors] look at Washington, D.C., and they get scared,” he says; worry about rising vacancies, lower investment returns, and a slowdown in future development. “It’s the one market where oversupply is really feared.”

Chuck Barris

Luckily, since as many of our astute posters here have pointed out, the housing market doesn’t depend much on mortgage lending these days, thanks to the all-cash investor brigade, there should be no worries if mortgage approvals are on hold until when and if the government shutdown ends.

Shutdown will stall home loans for thousands

Courtesy of Matthew Green/Courtesy of Matthew Green - The shutdown at USDA’s rural development loan program has cost Matthew and Natali Green the starter house they’ve been waiting to buy since last April.

By Lisa Rein, Published: October 4 E-mail the writer

Beginning next week, thousands of home buyers will be unable to get approvals for their mortgages because of the government shutdown, potentially undercutting the nation’s resurgent housing market.

Without paperwork from the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration and in many cases the Federal Housing Administration, banks and other mortgage lenders will be less willing to make loans, if they can make them at all. For instance, lenders rely on the IRS to confirm borrowers’ income and on Social Security to confirm their identity.

Every day that government offices remain shuttered will delay an ever-larger fraction of mortgage closings, industry leaders say, jeopardizing mortgage and interest-rate approvals and spooking sellers. About 15,000 new home mortgages and 18,000 refinancings on average are completed across the country each day.

On Friday, House Republicans continued to insist on changes to President Obama’s health-care program as a condition for funding the government. But with attention on Capitol Hill shifting to an Oct. 17 debt-ceiling deadline, there was no end in sight to the government shutdown, nor relief for prospective home buyers.

“Most people don’t really think about, ‘Well my loan is going to be underwritten by a federal agency,’ ” said Marj Rosner, vice president and sales manager at Long & Foster, a real estate firm. “But the government has a huge imprint here.”
…

Bill, just South of Irvine, CA wrote, “- no use getting married if you don’t want kids.”

I disagree with that.
But, YMMV I guess.

shendi asked, “What’s up with people with dogs that do not clean up after their dogs?”

Oh mang, what’s up with people carrying plastic bags while following their pets around? That’s gross And creepy.
It’s as if the pets are walking the owner.

Hey, it’s a lot like a house?

Yeesh, and the birds & the squirrels get a free pass, what’s up with that?

Myself, I will pray for Alpha, and the other commie, the one in Brazil. And the single guy, or woman, I hope they find someone.

Free range pets rock! …Unless they’re the illegitimate child of Oboma, then their mom gets whacked and nobody notices the offspring.

And so it goes, just another day in Bizarro World.

I can’t wait for page two.

Here’s the link that draws the conclusions about that woman being Obama’s mistress:

http://mindbodypolitic.com/2013/10/05/miriam-carey-tragedy-intel-operation-at-work/

I suspect that in certain quarters it will blow up and distract people from thinking about a housing bubble.

…But what do I know, it just seems like a familiar story in, ‘any town, America’.

Like I said, I can’t wait for page two.

Don’t hold your breath on that QE3 taper.

ft dot com
On Wall Street
October 4, 2013 10:12 am
Washington impasse will delay Fed taper
By Michael Mackenzie in New York
Shutdown to stifle growth, business and consumer sentiment

The 10-year Treasury note is the linchpin of the global financial system and judging by its meagre yield of 2.6 per cent, the message from the bond market this week was clear: the US is not going to default on its obligations.

That was not enough to stop the temperature from rising in some markets after the US government was shut down for the first time since 1995.

In a weary echo of 2011, the focus of investors has turned to whether the $16.7tn debt ceiling can be raised by October 17, thereby preventing a possible delay in debt payments by the US Treasury, which would rank as a technical default.

Yields on Treasury bills that mature later this month have risen sharply this week as some money market funds decided prudence was the correct course of action. The cost of insuring against a US default in the thinly traded realm of sovereign credit derivatives also rose sharply, while equity investors headed for the exit as the shutdown was set to continue into next week and a showdown over the debt ceiling loomed.

With Washington gridlocked, the US Treasury sounded the alarm: “If market participants were to lose confidence in the United States’ willingness to repay its debts, the adverse effects seen in 2011 could reappear, and even push up yields on Treasury securities. Such a rise in Treasury yields would also raise the cost of financing the government’s debt and worsen the fiscal position of the government.”

Beyond nervous short-term positioning across markets ahead of a likely last-minute debt ceiling deal as we saw in August of 2011, the much bigger story is what the latest bout of Washington intransigence means for the US economy and in turn the Federal Reserve’s policy outlook.

A month ago, the 10-year Treasury touched 3 per cent and the market was firmly in the grasp of the bears. Prospects for the economy were being talked up and investors prepared for a dilution of the Fed’s hefty $85bn of monthly bond purchases.

Now, it appears the central bank was very prescient last month in deciding against a taper, and not just because of the current fiscal stand-off.
…

Is the Government Shutdown Roadblocking U.S. Housing Recovery?
Posted: 10/04/2013 5:15 pm

If you’re considering buying or refinancing a home and you need a VA, USDA or FHA mortgage, the government shutdown might seem like a detour on your path to home financing. Headlines are touting that borrowers won’t be able to get government loans during the shutdown, sending the housing recovery into a downward spiral. Even reputable outlets have missed the mark on explaining the shutdown’s impact on housing because of the complexities involved.
…

To protect and to serve?

If only this attack had not happened in Mayor Bloomberg’s Utopia perhaps the beating victim could have thwarted the attackers by throwing a Big Gulp at them.

FIVE off-duty NYPD officers were among the bikers involved in SUV attack but not one of them intervened to help father as he was viciously beaten in revenge for running one of them over

By Daily Mail Reporter and Ryan Gorman
PUBLISHED: 18:59 EST, 4 October 2013 |
UPDATED: 10:24 EST, 5 October 2013

At least five off-duty New York Police Department officers have admitted being present at the savage revenge beating last weekend on the Henry Hudson Parkway, according to reports.

Among the off duty cops were at least two detectives and three other officers, all who witnessed the attack and did little to stop it. One of the detectives, an undercover narcotics officer, watched as the violence broke out and chose not to break it up for fear of ruining his cover.

The five officers were not the only ones present, WABC is reporting that the NYPD is investigating whether several off-duty corrections officers were also there. Police who saw the violent attack did not begin coming forward until Wednesday - four days later.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2445011/5-duty-NYPD-officers-bikers-involved-Edwin-Mieses-Jr-SUV-attack.html -

I wonder if the undocumented worker who was behind the wheel of the hit and run on my parked F-250 a couple of months ago was at the rally?

“She said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is deporting more than 1,000 people a day.”

Well you had 100 right there that ICE didn’t touch despite “the law of the land”. How long has it been since the Feds got to decide which “law of the land” they will enforce and which “law of the land” they will not enforce anyway?

Posted: 8:11 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5, 2013

Undocumented workers rally for immigration reform in Lake Worth

By Jeff Ostrowski

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

LAKE WORTH —
Doris, an immigrant from Honduras, fears a 6 a.m. visit from federal officials like the one that ended in her son’s deportation.

Jorge, who has lived in America for 18 years, dreams of a legal status that would let him apply for a driver license and travel between his home in Lake Worth and his family in Mexico.

The two undocumented workers were among a crowd of about 100 who gathered in Lake Worth on Saturday to urge the federal government to end deportations and to adopt immigration reform. They were part of a nationwide series of nearly 200 protests calling for “dignity and respect” for undocumented immigrants.

Isabel Vinent, deputy director of the Florida Immigration Coalition, led chants of, “Obama, escucha, estamos en la lucha.” (“Obama, listen, we’re in the fight.”)

She said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is deporting more than 1,000 people a day.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/undocumented-workers-rally-for-immigration-reform-/nbGrs/ - 90k

This is a couple of weeks old:

http://www.vvdailypress.com/articles/prices-42425-valley-apple.html

‘A limited supply of available homes drove U.S. home prices up 12.4 percent in July compared to a year ago, and local realtors have seen a similar trend in the High Desert. Month-over-month price gains shrank in 15 cities in July compared with the previous month, indicating prices may be peaking. And the month-over-month gains in the 20-city price index have slowed for three straight months, the AP said.’

“The homes priced to sell are going quickly,” said Karen Sanchez, a broker associate with Real Living Hamilton Landon. “But the average standard home is priced 10 percent above the average, which means the homes are receiving multiple offers and staying on the market longer.”

From the comments:

‘Wish my house would sell for what I want to and what the county has it accessed for , but all the offers on it have been $15 to $20 thousand below market value. :).’

‘And Christmas is now in August. BS! Within a 1 mile radius of anyones home, there will be a minimum of 3 bank owned properties. The exceptions being some of the rural areas in AV, Lucerne Valley and Phelan. You may not notice these homes driving down the street because banks are more or less being made to maintain them so that they don’t become neighborhood eye-sores. Also, they are not listed for sale because the banks want to be able to control market values by limiting the available REO inventory.’

‘I am getting ready to put my house on the market and get out of California but I do not think I am going to get what I have into my place. If I do not get what I want I wont sell it , I have a beautiful place up here and a 50 x 60 ft shop for my hubby’s man cave , gardens, greenhouse name it even grass it is beautiful but I need to get out of this state and this Desert.’

Here’s an offer for joe, if he can make it out to Santa Monica:

http://www.smmirror.com/articles/News/New-West-Symphony-Offers-Free-Tickets-To-Government-Shutdown-Workers/38557

‘As the government shutdown continues, New West Symphony will offer 100 complimentary tickets to its concerts this weekend to those government workers who have been furloughed or otherwise impacted by the shutdown.’

“While politics divide, music unites and it is the job of cultural institutions to do our part in reaching out to those in need,” said Executive Director Natalia Staneva. “Music has soothing qualities that can help those impacted escape reality for an evening. It is our way to give back.”

These little newspapers on the coast in California seem to have lots of local ads for plastic surgery.

WHAT THE BANKERS KNEW (working paper at Tuck School of Business)
When it comes to buying and selling their own homes, traders at the heart of the housing bubble did worse than most, says Tuck finance professor Ing-Haw Cheng.

As the United States still struggles to recover from the financial crisis of 2008, a lot of blame has been passed around for the proximate causes of the event. Some point to the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall law as the watershed moment, as it allowed banks to re-couple their deposit and investment functions, creating the opportunity for conflicts of interest. But deregulation is an amorphous enemy, so the public has been quick to blame investment bankers themselves. Many find it hard to imagine that bankers missed seeing large-scale problems in housing markets before others. Among the worst fears are that bankers knew they were creating toxic mortgage-backed securities but did so anyway because they stood to make a lot of money in fees and bonuses.

To assess whether those most involved in the market were aware that real estate prices were about to go over a cliff, Ing-Haw Cheng, an assistant professor of business administration at Tuck, decided to examine something the traders should have protected most vigilantly: their own pocketbooks. Along with Sahil Raina of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and Wei Xiong of Princeton University, Cheng researched the personal real estate transactions of hundreds of mid-level mortgage securities traders between 2003 and 2006, the period during which the real estate bubble was inflating.

They hypothesized that given the traders’ inside knowledge, they should have been less likely to buy new homes during the run-up in prices, or more likely to divest or downsize any existing homes. This approach allowed the researchers to examine traders’ beliefs, independent of any poorly-designed job incentives. They then compared the results with the real estate transactions of plausibly uninformed control groups consisting of lawyers and Wall Street stock analysts over the same time period.

Cheng and his co-authors found that those who dealt in mortgage-backed securities did worse in timing their own real estate transactions than those in the control groups. Those working in securitization were more likely to buy second houses or move into more expensive homes during the 2003-2006 price run-up than the average equity analyst or lawyer. Several of those homes were also subsequently sold at low prices during the bust.

One important nuance, Cheng offers, is that bankers may have been aware of problems with subprime mortgage-backed securities, but still blind to the impending collapse of the broader real estate market. And this is despite their active participation in that broader market. “It was surprising to find that those working in the mortgage-backed securities industry showed a lack of cautiousness in their own real estate transactions, particularly since their human capital is tied to the health of the housing market,” says Cheng. “They seemingly took extra money from bonuses and raises and put it into homes, without regard for the fact that house prices were high and that many would lose their jobs if housing markets cooled off. Needless to say, housing markets collapsed, and these bankers didn’t make out too well.”

The research also suggests that certain subgroups of those in the mortgage-backed securities industry may have been overly optimistic in their home purchases. For instance, those who lived in the fizziest real estate markets, who purchased second homes particularly aggressively, may have been influenced by the sentiment in those areas. Meanwhile, those who worked on the sell side, and at firms with particularly high exposure to the housing market, had poor performance in their home portfolios. These groups may have been influenced by group think—where the desire to minimize conflict within the group leads to support for incorrect decisions or inaccurate observations.

“Much of the discussion these days revolves around whether bankers knowingly deceived people,” says Cheng. “There’s little evidence that these bankers anticipated the broad crash in housing. Instead, we should be asking if bankers themselves got caught up in the hype of the bubble, blinding them to any warning signs they might have been able to see otherwise.”

Cheng’s work demonstrates financial firms’ misguided incentives are only part of the story behind the trading in mortgage-backed securities during the run-up to the financial crisis. Those most heavily involved in the market showed their belief in the unsustainable pace of home price increases through their personal real estate transactions—and lost, just like everyone else.

I.H. Cheng, S. Raina, and W. Xiong, “Wall Street and the Housing Bubble,” working paper. Sahil Raina is a Ph.D. candidate at the Ross School of Business. Wei Xiong is a professor of economics at Princeton University.

My boss, the CEO of a small company, is a proponent of Obamacare, even though he has under 50 employees. All of us have all our insurance paid for. It really depends on what the company gets out of the employees. He is a California liberal. Most liberals are generous with other people’s money. He’s generous with his own money…so far.

This does not make me a leftist statist. When the 20 million illegals get amnesty, the Democrats will work on including them in ObamaScare. This will cause premiums to go sky high.

I was paying $100 per month for my health insurance most of the last 13 years.

“If you pay current massively inflated prices for a depreciating house, you’ll be so indebted that you’ll be fetching coffee for the boss at 65 years old.”

No thanks. I’ll pass on being a Donkey in my 60’s.

“Housing is a money pit.”/b> Bill in CA, 10/5/2013

Max Baer, Jr.

Grandpa Jones

Let’s see, social security deduction —–> about 15% less money my employer could pay me if they had to.

ObamaCare————> ?

Hmmm, hmmm, hmmmm……

I imagine the Roth IRA is cannon fodder down the road eventually.

Just thinking out loud.

I see debt, people.

I thought raising the debt ceiling had been removed from the Republican side of the table as a bargaining chip, but apparently not. Did the RNC decide to stress test the Fed’s ability to use QE3 to keep Treasury bond yields low?

Consequently, tomorrow could be a very exciting trading day on Wall Street. Got extortion?

House Speaker John Boehner demands cuts for debt limit increase
By Matt Smith, CNN
updated 7:18 PM EDT, Sun October 6, 2013
Watch this video
Boehner: This fight was coming
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
* Default? “That’s the path we’re on,” House speaker tells ABC
* Republicans are “playing with fire” on debt limit, Treasury chief tells CNN
* Cruz: GOP should demand big structural cuts before raising borrowing limit

(CNN) — House Republicans won’t support raising the federal government’s borrowing limit without new spending cuts from the Obama administration, and the White House risks an unprecedented U.S. default by refusing, House Speaker John Boehner said Sunday.

Speaking six days into a partial government shutdown and 11 days before the Treasury Department expects to hit its statutory debt ceiling, Boehner told ABC’s “This Week” that he wants “a serious conversation” about spending, but no tax increases. Asked if the United States would default on debt payments unless President Barack Obama makes concessions, Boehner said, “That’s the path we’re on.”

“The votes are not in the House to pass a clean debt limit” — one with no conditions attached — “and the president is risking default by not having a conversation with us,” said Boehner, R-Ohio.

But speaking on CNN’s State of the Union, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Congress is “playing with fire” by threatening to leave the U.S. government unable to pay its creditors — a risk he called “unthinkable.”

“We’ve never gotten to the point where the United States government has operated without the ability to borrow,” Lew said. “It’s very dangerous. It’s reckless, because the reality is, there are no good choices if we run out of borrowing capacity and we run out of cash.”
…

This weekends heroine is Daisy Luther.
Have you all seen her bit about, “Bring It On: I Will Not Comply with Obamacare”?

Ya, I see debt, people. too.