Bits Bucket for November 3, 2013
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
About Me
Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
To donate by mail, or to otherwise contact this blogger, please send emails to: thehousingbubble@gmail.com
PayPal is a secure online payment method which accepts ALL major credit cards.
Links
-
April 2024 M T W T F S S « Sep 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
Photo Submission: hbbphotos@gmail.com
View the HBB Photo Gallery *updated 4/13/2008
Comment by Bill, just south of Irvine, CA
2013-11-01 21:15:11
But I am extremely skeptical that governments side-by-side with free market societies can do better than the free market societies.
The reason is …FORCE The involvement of force costs some amount of wealth and is drained and wasted. In societies without initiation of force or threat of force, the potential of technological advancement is far higher than otherwise.
Bill, i think you are extremely close but you could refine it further.
the start of evil is ‘first violent aggression’. some people will think that ‘violent’ and ‘aggression’ is redundant, but it is not. violence and aggression are completely separate.
how to stop evil? non-violent aggression.
By “non-violent aggression” do you mean by being very proactive in defense of your individual right to life, liberty, and property?
no, not proactive. reactive. non-violent aggression can only respond.
BINGO
This is easy, you have to get rid of the testosterone molecule.
What country you from?
Merica
But I am extremely skeptical that governments side-by-side with free market societies can do better than the free market societies.
Totally meaningless sentence. There is no such thing as “free market societies” absent government.
Name one country that ever was such in the history of the entire world. Name one. You can’t.
It’s like saying I am extremely skeptical that bodies side-by-side with a brain can to better than brains alone.
The reason is …
FORCEFARTING. The involvement of farting costs some amount of wealth and is drained and wasted. In brains without initiation of farting or threat of farting, the potential of technological advancement is far higher than otherwise.A child.
A child.
Drives u nuts. Woff Woff!
HA is the snow leopard and you are the heron.
Please explain with examples what you are trying to say. Is this going to be like currency and money are different? Is this some disruptive technique or just personal psychology.
Is this going to be like currency and money are different?
they are very different. 99% of the time when people say ‘money’ they really mean ‘currency’. and most don’t know what either one really are.
Is this some disruptive technique
disruptive? yes. using non-violent aggression. violence can be running away or even doing nothing at certain times.
or just personal psychology.
no
Please explain with examples what you are trying to say.
here’s an example..
you see a woman being raped. you can help her but you stand by and do nothing. you are then engaging in violence. you being violent towards her by doing nothing.
…. tip the scales.
That’s just goofy. You could just as easily say you are also being aggressive towards her.
vi·o·lent
adjective
1.
using or involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
“a violent confrontation with riot police”
synonyms: brutal, vicious, savage, rough, aggressive, abusive, physically abusive, threatening, fierce, physical, wild, ferocious;
using or involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
if the dictionary is good enough for you, then there’s no need to respond. dictionaries are often cursory, imprecise and inaccurate. if you want a deeper understanding, you have to go beyond dictionaries in many instances.
dictionaries are often cursory, imprecise and inaccurate when they rarely support your BS “theories”.
if you want a deeper understanding, you have to go beyond
dictionariesREALITY in many instances.beyond reality mr. closer??
do dictionaries ever change, comrade?
if they do, why? wasn’t their first definition ‘reality’ mr. closer?
Go easy on the liar.
do dictionaries ever change, comrade?
Of course dictionaries change—they do, because they define words in an ever-changing language.
Honestly, though, some of the distinctions you attempt to make between words strike me as an attempt to change the language.
Money vs currency? A distinction without a difference. A medium of exchange, or an officially-sanctioned medium of exchange. Whatever.
Money vs currency? A distinction without a difference.>/b>
your smugness means you’ll probably never know. and that means that you’ll have less chance to understand things that could help you. carry on..
and that means that you’ll have less chance to understand things that could help you.
I read the thread with interest, at first—but got turned off by your guessing games. How about you actually tell people what you think the difference is, instead of trying to make them guess?
Not sure I need your help, regardless—how are you doing on the path to financial freedom?
you being violent towards her by doing nothing.
That’s ridiculous.
Next thing you know, you’ll be saying that I am personally responsible for all of the violence occurring in Africa—after all, I know it is occurring, and I am doing nothing to stop it.
Next thing you know, you’ll be saying that I am personally responsible for all of the violence occurring in Africa—after all, I know it is occurring, and I am doing nothing to stop it.
thanks for proving you don’t know the difference.
thanks for proving you don’t know the difference.
Thanks for proving that you can’t recognize a “reductio ad absurdem” argument—nor understand what it is telling you.
Don’t expect propagandists to ever concede lost points in an argument.
Thanks for proving that you can’t recognize a “reductio ad absurdem” argument—nor understand what it is telling you.
except that it isn’t. it’s too subtle for you. go to your dictionaries and see if they can help you to understand. they can’t. stick with your mundane understanding.
“That’s ridiculous…”
Not always. Cowardice of silence, or hiding in the shadows can carry guilt. I thought about this a lot during Vietnam.
Violence is an affirmative action—I have to be _doing_ something.
Ignoring someone is not violence.
Not always. Cowardice of silence, or hiding in the shadows can carry guilt.
I fully agree with you on that, Blue; I didn’t say that by ignoring violence, I would feel good about myself, because doing nothing would not fit with my values.
I would feel a need to intervene—I just don’t believe that I would be the one performing the violence. I would not be.
“The reason is …FORCE The involvement of force costs some amount of wealth and is drained and wasted. In societies without initiation of force or threat of force, the potential of technological advancement is far higher than otherwise.”
I was also trying to say that government coercion is a damper on productivity and risk-taking. It’s a damper on wealth creation. In my own situation I have taken income cuts every year for the last four years. Well that means I do not invest as much money into stocks as before. Which means less capital available for businesses to expand, which means less jobs than the potential.
The taxman is the middle man. $500 hammers. Bailouts to inefficient corporations. I remember the $787 billion bailout and reading a year later that $78 billion (10 percent) was unaccounted for. This is typical. My point was the combination of government force and its natural disincentive to be efficient makes mixed economies inferior to the potential anarcho capitalist economy I have wanted us to have for (more than three decades)
I was also trying to say that government coercion is a damper on productivity and risk-taking. It’s a damper on wealth creation. In my own situation I have taken income cuts every year for the last four years. Well that means I do not invest as much money into stocks as before. Which means less capital available for businesses to expand, which means less jobs than the potential.
yes, you have learned some truth from experience.
My point was the combination of government force and its natural disincentive to be efficient makes mixed economies inferior to the potential anarcho capitalist economy I have wanted us to have for (more than three decades).
capitalism needs the rule of just law to thrive. the participants need protection from outside forces. black markets work. just not as well as free markets..
“In my own situation I have taken income cuts every year for the last four years.”
If I am not mistaken, you have taken cuts by choice. The income you have foregone did not necessarily disappear if it was paid to someone else instead to do your old job. If they had to hire two people to do your old job, the economy may be better off.
The income lost to the middle class due to stagnating wages in the last 30 years did not necessarily disappear. It went into the pockets of executives and shareholders and workers (some in other countries, some from other countries) who would do the same work for less.
“The income you have foregone did not necessarily disappear if it was paid to someone else instead to do your old job.”
FWIW, I’d argue that the foregone salary ALSO went into the pockets of the anointed. I seem to recall massive offshoring, as well as amateurish and narcissistic corporate actions, over during the same time period. Despite the company shrinking and losing market share, executive bonuses remained. The execs who were public laughingstocks were ‘de-partnered’ for form’s sake lest the company also become a public laughingstock. They left with obscene parachutes.
THAT is, IMHO, what sucked up the OP’s meager salary increases.
Mr Mysterious is back, hurling contumely at anyone who fails to properly entertain his bizarre philosophical musings.
LOL… Nicely put, PB.
Germany.
Maybe you’ve heard of them?
Sweden? Norway?
“Crumbling short term housing demand across what are normally high volume selling months combined with long term demand at 14 year lows tells us that housing prices have a very long way to fall.”
No question. The only thing holding housing prices at these grossly inflated levels is fraud.
Who, who, who is going to buy all of those houses going up in Southeast Phoenix? And the prices are HIGHER than the used house inventory that is already sitting, not selling, and being reduced in price.
There is no big influx of people moving there and there are no jobs to support people buying these. It ain’t the newly minted illegals turned citizens either, these are out of their range.
Someone yesterday asked what was this event 6-12 months from now being predicted as bad for the market. This is it. The inability to sell these houses hitting the numbers reported.
We are in the next leg down, even considering all the QE that has gone on, it is still going down.
Ah the good life Food stamps being cut no job training funds hamburger at $4 lb what more can people ask for?
Food stamp cut took place without a ripple. The media got the memo.
yeah were are all those my kids gonna starve stories?
Free breakfast and lunch programs take care of the kids while school is in session.
I never had a free breakfast or lunch in school….i was a deprived child.
We haven’t really seen the effect of the food stamp cut yet. That will probably not hit until Thanksgiving. Since cards are loaded on the 1st, there is plenty of money for food this week.
Again….
25 MILLION houses can’t be hidden that easily. It is inventory no matter how it’s obscured and its’ impact on prices cannot be delayed forever.
“The Fed’s Housing Empire is Crumbling - Pending Home Sales Plunge in September”
http://www.dailypaul.com/303864/the-feds-housing-empire-is-crumbling-pending-home-sales-plunge-in-september
Not that housing wasn’t crumbling before with housing demand at 14 lows… now the collapse is in full motion.
I wonder how much yellen will add to the Balance sheet in her term?
Does anyone know what interest rate is being paid on excess reserves at the FED?
I wonder what interest rates would be in a real market?
Home prices would have a lot of room to run if they bought enough treasuries to get yields down to 1%.
“…add to the Balance sheet…”
After generously bailing out the global financial system so often and on so many levels, is there any chance the Fed itself may eventually need a bailout?
Or can we safely assume that it’s still turtles all the way down, as they always could simply bail themselves out by printing more monies faster?
P.S. “critics warn”
Is anyone who points out obvious if inconvenient truths about the Fed’s current balance sheet situation automatically labeled a “critic” by their propaganda department?
As stimulus tab rises for Fed, worries grow it may require a bailout
The Fed’s bond-buying binge could put the central bank’s finances at risk if interest rates were to rise sharply, critics warn.
By Jim Puzzanghera
October 29, 2013, 5:00 a.m.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke has said any losses incurred by the central bank probably would be offset by more than $300 billion in interest the Fed has earned on its expanded holdings in recent years. Above, Bernanke at a Fed board meeting last week. (Mark Wilson, Getty Images / October 24, 2013)
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve has taken unprecedented steps to stimulate the economic recovery from the Great Recession, but the tab has risen to such tremendous proportions — fast approaching $4 trillion — that some worry the central bank ultimately could require its own taxpayer rescue.
The Fed’s total assets on its balance sheet have more than quadrupled to $3.8 trillion since 2008 amid a massive bond-buying effort. And there are few signs that the growth will stop any time soon.
That could put the finances of the world’s most powerful central bank at risk if historically low interest rates were to rise sharply — something top Fed officials said they do not expect but that critics warn is very possible.
It also could inhibit the ability of central bank officials to respond to future economic and financial crises.
“It’s really pretty cut-and-dried as far as the arithmetic goes: If you buy bonds and interest rates go up, you’re going to take a capital loss on those bonds,” said James D. Hamilton, an economics professor at UC San Diego. “The more they buy, the bigger their balance sheet, the bigger the loss they’re going to face.”
…
“When interest on reserves was first implemented, the Federal Reserve Board used a formula that set the rate paid on required reserves above the rate on excess reserve balances. However, in late 2008 the Board released a series of press releases (See Related Press Releases) announcing adjustments to this formula. Since January 2009, the monthly average interest rate on both required reserve and excess reserve balances has been 25 basis points, or 0.25% at an annual rate, in keeping with the federal funds target range of 0 to 25 basis points during this period (see Figure 2).15″
There is a lot on conflicting data out there as to what the interest rate really is.
One thing is for sure , a .25% annual interest rate would not keep any sane person happy.
This article refers to a .25% monthly rate. .25 * 12= 3% return
I can see 3% being enough to keep money parked but not .25%.
Do you think there is internal pressure from the FED not to allow these excess reserves to enter the system?
It’s called a transfusion. The Fed is there to keep the banks walking. Zombies = Banks these days in the USA.
“The Fed’s total assets on its balance sheet have more than quadrupled to $3.8 trillion since 2008 amid a massive bond-buying effort. And there are few signs that the growth will stop any time soon.”
Well, the stock market has nearly TRIPLED in four short years…and yet despite it being overvalued on a host of indicators, nothing says that it can’t keep going up. Same with housing…the government will stop at nothing to keep house prices artificially high, because that is what their masters (lobbyists and the ultra-wealthy) want. At this point, I think you’re deluding yourself if you think there will be some massive housing crash at this point…quite possibly a slow drift downward or stagnation for several decades. Just like the stock market, the people in control won’t let a crash happen again.
In short, both the housing and stock markets appear to have reached a permanently high plateau.
“In short, both the housing and stock markets appear to have reached a permanently high plateau.”
+1 That’s how Stevie Wonder sees it too.
I have the same feeling that the Masters, Overlords, Powrs That Be, etc. will pull out all stops to try. It really does make me wonder. They are certainly committed to being all in on QE.
But I keep coming back to those many many new houses being built that I keep seeing. There is absolutely no demand for them. No buyers at anywhere near the prices they are asking and without buyers at those prices, the economy in Phoenix tanks big time again. And soon. 6 months is all they have to sell them. That isn’t enough time for inflation to work.
Stone Soup does not work if no one has carrots or potatoes or meat to bring.
“It’s really pretty cut-and-dried as far as the arithmetic goes: If you buy bonds and interest rates go up, you’re going to take a capital loss on those bonds,” said James D. Hamilton, an economics professor at UC San Diego.
Spoken like a well-educated idiot.
The _market_ value of the bonds goes down if interest rates go up—but there is nothing that compels the Fed to sell a single bond, _ever_. You only take a capital loss on those bonds if you sell after rates rise.
The Fed will bear no losses on its bonds due to interest rates rising. Not a dime. They will merely hold them to maturity.
The Fed may bear some losses on the private-label MBS that they bought, and the cr@p they backed during the bailouts. However, if interest rates rise, that actually gives them an easy “out” on those losses: QE will generate correspondingly higher gains to use to white-wash those losses.
The only thing rising rates does vis-a-vis the Fed’s balance sheet is restrict their ability to shrink their balance sheet by selling debt on the open market. Holding to maturity is the expected path (at least from what I’ve read).
The only thing rising rates does vis-a-vis the Fed’s balance sheet is restrict their ability to shrink their balance sheet by selling debt on the open market. Holding
Precisely, RW.
Rising rates only foreclose an exit-strategy that they were never planning to exercise anyway; can you imagine the Fed actually _selling_ on the open market??? Insanity!
This is all about keeping the masses guessing. The FED wants to keep interest rates low but limit speculation. So they use the press to keep people guessing. If the FED sees more speculation than they want they put out a bunch of stories like this that make people think the faucet might get turned off or collapse at any moment. If they see there is not enough investment in certain areas they will use the press to put out stories about how the FED might change its purchases to support one segment or another.
If the FEDS goal is to double the DOW in 10 years and if everyone in America knew definitively that the FED was going to keep purchasing until the DOW doubled then the DOW would rise rapidly to this value. If everyone understood that the FED was going to taper then treasuries would collapse tomorrow. The FED has to keep the masses guessing. They can influence the direction of things by using the press and small purchases or sales much more effectively.
This is where understanding history and facts comes in handy. Take a look at how Japan handled things (this occurred when other countries were doing well so expect a much more prolonged situation now) Take a look at the ability of the average American family to make more money. It’s not happening. The average family has less and less discretionary income as they make less and pay more for insurance and education and via manipulation of markets (housing and natural resources) This means more unemployment and underemployment as does automation and outsourcing.
This is all about keeping the masses guessing. The FED wants to keep interest rates low but limit speculation. So they use the press to keep people guessing. If the FED sees more speculation than they want they put out a bunch of stories like this that make people think the faucet might get turned off or collapse at any moment. If they see there is not enough investment in certain areas they will use the press to put out stories about how the FED might change its purchases to support one segment or another.
If the FEDS goal is to double the DOW in 10 years and if everyone in America knew definitively that the FED was going to keep purchasing until the DOW doubled then the DOW would rise rapidly to this value. If everyone understood that the FED was going to taper then treasuries would collapse tomorrow. The FED has to keep the masses guessing. They can influence the direction of things by using the press and small purchases or sales much more effectively.
This is where understanding history and facts comes in handy. Take a look at how Japan handled things (this occurred when other countries were doing well so expect a much more prolonged situation now) Take a look at the ability of the average American family to make more money. It’s not happening. The average family has less and less discretionary income as they make less and pay more for insurance and education and via manipulation of markets (housing and natural resources) This means more unemployment and underemployment as does automation and outsourcing.
How can you have inflation in all goods if the middle class is collapsing across the globe? The answer is you can’t. The middle class will continue to shrink spending more on food fuel housing and health care they will purchase fewer adn fewer manufactured goods and services there by driving up unemployment and the elite will control more and more of the wealth and the levers of power. We are becoming China, Russia, Egypt etc.
Bingo.
October 31, 2013 by Tim Brown
Rand Paul Says He Will Block Nomination of Janet Yellen Unless Senate Votes to Audit the Federal Reserve
While Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is definitely not his father, he is following in his father’s footsteps in several areas, and one of those is to seek to push his father’s agenda of auditing the Federal Reserve. In an attempt to push that idea forward, Senator Paul wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in which he stated that he will move to block Janet Yellen’s nomination as the next Federal Reserve Chair, unless the Senate is allowed to vote on auditing the Fed.
“I am writing to convey my objection to floor consideration of the nomination of Dr. Janet Yellen to Chair the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve without also considering legislation to bring much-needed transparency to the Fed,” Paul said in a letter to Reid.
Paul requested that his bill, S. 209, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, be scheduled for an up or down vote.
“I will object to any unanimous consent agreement or waiver of any rule with respect to the nomination of Dr. Yellen without a vote on S. 209,” Paul continued. “I know you have been a supporter of similar legislation in the past, and I hope that we can work together to pass this important legislation.”
…
Theater.
Yeah, it’s not like the Fed shuts down without her.
Without a chairman, it carries on business as usual.
peter schiff claims yellen missed the housing bubble and potus says she sounded the alarm early about the housing bubble.
Who is telling the truth here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws7jY6mb1bI
peter schiff:
http://www.europac.net/media/video_blog/janet_yellen_exposed_the_truth_behind_myth
That is easy also. Anyone who called the housing bubble early would have many, many, many written audio and video records of this if they were in her position. Where are they?
I can go back through this blog and find mine, as could anyone here since the early days. Where is hers?
Then for all of our Libby LiaMessiah worshipers here, what does this mean? Another blatant lie?
Benghazi wasn’t Al Quaeda, you can keep your plan, she called the bubble. The check is in the mail.
I think we have a different definition of “early” than the rest of the world. By their definition you can still get in if you hurry…
The U.S. Economy and Monetary Policy
Presidents Speeches
Presentation to the members of Parliament at the Conference on US Monetary Policy convened by the European Economics and Financial Centre
London, England
By Janet L. Yellen, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
For delivery September 27, 2005, 9:00 AM Pacific, 12:00 noon Eastern, 5:00 PM London BST
…
I want to focus my remarks today on another longer-term issue, namely, the housing market, as this is a situation that has also been a concern in the U.K.
The share of residential investment in GDP is now at its highest level in decades, and this sector has been a key source of strength in the current expansion. The question is: will this source of strength reverse course and become instead a source of weakness? Put more bluntly: Is there a house-price “bubble” that might collapse, and if so, what would that mean for the U.S. economy? To answer this question, let me begin by clarifying what I mean by the term “bubble.” A bubble does not just mean that prices are rising rapidly—it’s more complicated than that. Instead, a bubble means that the price of an asset—in this case, housing—is significantly higher than its fundamental value.
One common way of thinking about housing’s fundamental value is to consider the ratio of housing prices to rents. The price-to-rent ratio is equivalent to the price-to-dividend ratio for stocks. In the case of housing, rents reflect the flow of benefits obtained from housing assets—either the monetary return from rental property, or the value of living in owner-occupied housing. Historically, the ratio for the U.S. has had many ups and downs, but over time it has tended to return to its long-run average. In other words, when the price-to-rent ratio is high, housing prices tend to grow more slowly or fall for a time, and when the ratio is low, prices tend to rise more rapidly. I want to emphasize, though, that this is a loose relationship that can be counted on only for rough guidance rather than a precise reading.
Currently, the ratio for the U.S. is higher than at any time since data became available in 1970—about 25 percent above its long-run average. Of course, the results vary widely from place to place in the U.S. and in different countries. For Los Angeles and San Francisco, the price-to-rent ratio is about 40 percent higher than the normal level, while for Cleveland the ratio is very near its historical average. For the U.K., the ratio is more than double its long-run average, whereas in Japan it’s only about three-quarters of its normal level.
Higher than normal ratios do not necessarily prove that there’s a house-price bubble. House prices could be high for some good, fundamental reasons. For example, in the U.S. recent changes in tax laws may be having an effect. In 1998, tax rates on capital gains were lowered and the exemption from capital gains taxation for housing was raised to $500,000. Both of these changes would reduce the potential tax bite from selling one home and buying another. Another development, which may be making housing more like an investment vehicle in the U.S., is that it’s now easier and cheaper to get at the equity—either through refinancing, which has become a less costly process, or through an equity line of credit. Both of these innovations in mortgage markets make the funds invested in houses more liquid.
Probably the most obvious candidate for a fundamental factor—in the U.S.and in the U.K. —is low mortgage interest rates. But in the U.S, this phenomenon raises some issues of its own because there is a controversy about just why the rates have stayed so low. As I’ve said, over the past year, the Fed has raised the federal funds rate significantly. Normally, long-term interest rates also rise with increases in the expected path for the federal funds rate. But, long-term rates—such as those on 30-year fixed rate mortgages—have actually fallen over the period. This is what Chairman Greenspan has labelled a conundrum because there seems to be no convincing explanation for it.
While the fundamentals I’ve mentioned do play a role, the consensus seems to be that much of the unusually high price-to-rent ratio for housing remains unexplained. Moreover, with controversy over exactly why long-term interest rates have remained so low, we can’t rule out the possibility that they would rise to a more normal relationship with short-term rates, and this obviously might take some of the “oomph” out of the housing market. So, while I’m certainly not predicting anything about future house price movements, I think it’s obvious that the housing sector represents a risk to the U.S. outlook.
This brings me to the debate about how monetary policy should react to unusually high prices of houses—or other assets, for that matter. I know you’re all familiar with the issues, as they have been in the public spotlight here in the United Kingdom for some time. But let me frame them briefly. As a starting point, the issue is not whether policy should react at all; I believe there is quite general agreement that policy should be calibrated to the wealth effects of house prices on output and inflation. The debate lies in determining when, if ever, policy should be focused on deflating the asset price bubble itself.
In my view, the weight of a decision to deflate an asset price bubble rests on positive answers to three questions. First, if the bubble were to collapse on its own, would the effect on the economy be exceedingly large? Second, is it unlikely that the Fed could mitigate the consequences? Third, is monetary policy the best tool to use to deflate a house-price bubble?
My answers to these questions in the shortest possible form are, “no,” “no,” and “no.” In the most thorough possible form, my answers might take a few hours, and would give full play to the many gray areas that are involved. Since the short answer is not satisfactory and the thorough one overwhelms our time limits, I will compromise and give just a brief explanation for my trio of “nos.”
…
What does Rand Paul expect to find from a Fed audit? Who does he expect to conduct the audit? And what is his plan of action if he does find wrongdoing?
“Who made this big mess!?“
Nov. 1, 2013, 6:22 a.m. EDT
The world according to Janet Yellen
Commentary: How did the Fed get into this mess? Can Yellen fix it?
By Howard Gold
In two weeks, Janet Yellen will face confirmation hearings before the Senate Banking Committee on her appointment as the new chairwoman of the Federal Reserve. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has vowed to hold up her nomination, but she will almost certainly be confirmed.
When she is, she will take office at a critical time. For the past quarter-century the Fed has accumulated more and more power. It has lowered interest rates to rescue plunging stock markets, and is now engaged in a vast experiment that’s adding $1 trillion to its balance sheet every year — with little to show for it.
Meanwhile, stock indexes keep hitting new highs on traders’ expectations that the Fed will keep doling out $85 billion a month in “quantitative easing,” which the Federal Open Market Committee voted to continue Wednesday.
[Read Gold’s take on why the coast is now clear for stocks.]
How did the Fed get into this mess? And can Janet Yellen fix it?
There are some hints in a new documentary film, currently touring the country. Called “Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve,” it was made by Jim Bruce, a Hollywood veteran (he was an editor on “The Incredible Hulk” and “X-Men: The Last Stand”) with an interest in finance that dates back to the waning days of the dot-com boom.
Yellen herself appears in the movie, along with a stellar group of current and former Fed officials including Charles Plosser, Jeffrey Lacker, Alan Blinder, Peter Fisher, Alice Rivlin, and the great Paul Volcker. (Prescient contrarians Jeremy Grantham, John Mauldin, Barry Ritholtz and Gary Shilling also have their say.) Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his predecessor Alan Greenspan both declined to be interviewed, Bruce told me.
Yellen’s comments were particularly notable. In the film, she made a bold statement: “It’s our job to guarantee that whatever happens to the federal deficit and debt…does not translate into inflation.”
Sounds good, although it appears to contradict what she said after President Obama announced her appointment. “I pledge to do my upmost… to promote maximum employment, stable prices, and a strong and stable financial system… The Federal Reserve can help… ensure that everyone has the opportunity to work hard and build a better life,” she declared. Spoken like a true Keynesian monetary dove.
But Bruce told me that while shooting the movie, Yellen was intent on establishing her inflation-fighting bona fides. “What’s interesting to me was she wanted to make that statement that she made.She wanted to go on the record saying ‘we don’t have to debase the currency to pay off the debt,’” he said in an interview.
Perhaps, but it might take years for the Fed to get back to normal, and Yellen may be in no hurry. She was noncommittal when Sen. Richard Shelby asked her when the Fed would unwind QE3.
“Janet Yellen doesn’t want asset bubbles. I don’t think she recognizes [one] already exists,” Bruce said.
…
Money for Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve
IN THEATERS FALL 2013
if they bought enough treasuries to get yields down to 1% ??
IMO, If that happens it will be in the face of deflation and negative or flatline GDP….What will happen then is anyones guess…Will there be a “next wave” of housing buyers feeling like they missed their opportunity to get some 3% long term money ??
how do you keep home prices up when jobs are disappearing and wages are going down?
how do you keep home prices up when jobs are disappearing and wages are going down ??
Its not about the house price necessarily its about how much a month….Its just how people act…Same thing happens with cars & boats….
Rising bond yields and associated mortgage rates can put a massive damper on how-much-a-month buyer demand in a heartbeat. Hopefully the all-cash speculators will be able to keep the market propped up on a permanently high plateau as How-much-a-month Howie leaves the building.
Treasury 10-Year Yields Highest in 3 Weeks After Factory Report
By Susanne Walker - Nov 1, 2013 2:17 PM PT
Treasury 10-year note yields (USGG10YR) rose to the highest levels in three weeks after a gauge of U.S. manufacturing expanded at a faster pace than forecast, weakening the case for the Federal Reserve to maintain stimulus.
The benchmark securities extended the first five-day drop in three weeks as Fed Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard said labor market gains in the past year could warrant a cut in the bond buying. Fed policy makers said Oct. 30 that the economy showed signs of “underlying strength” even as they maintained their $85 billion of monthly asset purchases.
“The Institute for Supply Management factory data was a little on the strong side, so it puts the tapering fear back into the market and we start to get higher yields,” said William Larkin, a fixed-income portfolio manager at Cabot Money Management in Salem, Massachusetts, in a telephone interview. “It’s become a Fed-centric environment.”
The 10-year yield rose seven basis points, or 0.07 percentage point, to 2.62 percent at 5 p.m. New York time, Bloomberg Bond Trader prices showed, after touching 2.63 percent, the highest since Oct. 17. The 2.5 percent note due August 2023 fell 1/2, or $5 per $1,000 face amount, to 98 31/32.
Yields have risen 11 basis points since Oct. 25 after dropping 18 basis points in the preceding two weeks.
Gross’s Advice
“Stay at the front end of the yield curve,” Bill Gross, co-founder of Pacific Investment Management Co. and manager of the world’s biggest bond mutual fund, wrote today in a comment on Twitter. “Taper may come but policy rate hike is another matter.”
…
Massive stimulus helps!
- QE3 MBS purchases to keep a lid on mortgage rates
- First Time Home Buyer Tax Credit to make new buyers think they are gonna get rich by purchasing an overpriced home
Etc.
Inflation.
“Inflation.”
Commodities maybe, but not wages. Stagflation.
Inflation cannot work soon enough to allow those new houses being built to be sold at a price where the company doesn’t go bust. They got about 6 months to sell them from here on out. That is too soon. If they don’t sell, people see that the new boom was false and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down again.
“Inflation.
WHAT inflation.
WHAT inflation.
What word do YOU use for the fact that the dollars in my pocket are worth less than they used to be in terms of purchasing power?
It’s called price fixing. Learn the difference.
Whowcome the Fed is so stressed out?
ft dot com
November 1, 2013 6:52 pm
Fed includes prime lending rate in bank stress tests
By Gina Chon in Washington
The Federal Reserve will include the prime lending rate as one of the factors banks must consider in crisis situations, in a move that addresses concerns rising rates need to be part of bank stress tests.
Mortgage interest rates have been rising since the spring as the US economy has improved, leading to an expectation that the Fed will taper its $85bn monthly bond buying programme.
…
The latest adverse scenario envisioned by the Fed includes a global aversion to long-term debt instruments, which results in a rise in long-term interest rates and steepening yield curves. But the scenario also envisions a moderate recession in the US. Last year the adverse scenario included a rise in inflation that resulted in a flatter yield curve.
Rising interest rates have hit mortgage volumes, with banks like JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and others seeing their mortgage banking income falling in earnings reported last month.
Mortgage rates have come down slightly from highs in September but are still above where they were in the spring. The average interest rate on a prime 30-year mortgage stood at 4.33 per cent for the week ended October 25, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
The severely adverse situation assumes substantial weakening in economic activity, a reversal of improvements in the US housing market and the eurozone, and a US unemployment rate that rises 4 percentage points from current levels.
The widening of US corporate borrowing spreads featured in two stress scenarios is meant to reflect increasing spreads across all corporate borrowing, particularly high-yield corporate bonds and leveraged loans, which currently have narrow spreads.
…
Central banks
Someone to lean on
Oct 30th 2013, 15:15 by G.I. | WASHINGTON, DC
“LENDER of last resort” has long been in the job description of central banks, as they rediscovered with a vengeance in recent years. But after heroically lending billions of newly created dollars, euros and pounds to banks to stave off collapse, they have remained ambivalent about the role. Their readiness to lend makes panics less damaging, but may also discourage banks from carrying enough liquidity of their own, thereby creating the conditions for future crises. This ambivalence was on display this past week as, in separate initiatives, the Bank of England enhanced its role as backstop to the banking system while America’s Federal Reserve sought to reduce its own.
On October 24th, the Bank of England said it would expand monthly long-term loans and widen the range of acceptable collateral, reduce fees on emergency loans from its “discount window”, keep borrowers anonymous for longer, and encourage banks to make its facilities an integral part of their liquidity plans. “We are open for business,” said Mark Carney, the bank’s governor. “Our facilities are not ornamental. They are there to be used.”
The same day the Federal Reserve signalled just the opposite. It announced that globally active American banks with assets of more than $10 billion would have to carry enough ultra-safe, liquid assets to cover the largest expected outflow of cash in a 30-day high-stress period. Though in line with Basel guidelines announced earlier this year, the Fed went further by ordering banks to comply two years sooner, by 2017, and barring some assets from the liquidity calculation that Basel permits, such as covered bonds.
The Fed wants both to minimise the risk of a crisis, and its own exposure in the event of one. Acting as lender of last resort “exposes us, the taxpayer, and also creates potential moral hazard,” said Jay Powell, a governor. The new liquidity rules “puts private sector liquidity in front of the lender of last resort and in front of the taxpayer.”
…
Sign me up!
“Newest type Of Bond Is Backed By Home rentals”
http://blogs.barrons.com/incomeinvesting/2013/11/01/newest-type-of-bond-is-backed-by-home-rentals/tab/print/
“The plan to sell the rental-backed securities underscores investors’ desire for bonds that generate more income at a time when yields on government bonds are near historic lows and stock are near record highs.”
Translation: Money managers have to reach out for higher yields in order to overcome the hefty charges they extract from their clients. The client will get what is left over (if anything is left over).
“Bond ratings firms have expressed concerns about the deals because there is no history to judge how they may fare. They have said they are worried that absentee corporate owners wouldn’t be effective at collecting rents or maintaining their properties.”
Nevertheless (I’m skipping down):
“Most of the deal will have triple-A ratings from Moody’s, Kroll and Morningstar, according to a term sheet.”
P.T. Barnum lives!
Back to this passage: “… they are worried that absentee corporate owners wouldn’t be effective at collecting rents or maintaining their properties.” There has been some excellent posting on this blog a week-or-so-ago about just how screwed some of the tenants are that are renting from these “absentee corporate owners” in that the places they are renting are pieces of sh1t that are falling apart and they are unable to get reach anyone to get anything fixed.
I still like the idea of REITS in apartment rentals. That way I can profit in on renting while being a renter. Who was it, Blue Star(?) who was snickering about being a landlord and sucking in money from us, the renters. Renters have far more power than landlords. Far more freedom too.
Only one time in my life I rented from a small landlord. I had maintenance issues that were severe and conveniently happened over weekends when the landlord was out of town.
I love renting in large apartment complex. Pretty much the same corporation that owns them is in my REIT, so I profit along.
I would like to calculate how much the average annual gain on a diversified REIT such as Vanguard’s shaves off money from my rent. In some economic cycles the yields of REITS can be double digit. So say you have $100,000 in a REIT. My rent in Phoenix is $1,000 per month. It all about would pay for itself wouldn’t it? I see its yield is currently 3.75% So it would cut off $300 per month from my rent, making my rent effectively $700 per month. A good deal and turns the tables on arrogant landlords.
“In some economic cycles the yields of REITs can be double digit.”
Which means you need to play the cycle if you are to make any money. And if the maxim “The price you pay determines your rate of return” holds true then you need to pay a low price, which means you need to buy at the bottom of the cycle.
So, where are we in this cycle? Think: If a lot of institutional money - a lot of OPM - has entered the market and this OPM has bid up the prices then just what is it that one should suppose to happen to the rate of return that results from these prices that have been bid up?
Couple this with adding into the mix the thousands of previously empty houses that have been bought up by this huge pile of OPM and have been fixed up and put on the market as rentals and you should expect to eventually see a decline in rents.
Higher prices for the rentals and lower rents received from the same rentals will produce a low rate of return - maybe (probably?) a negative rate of return.
“Newest type Of Bond Is Backed By Home rentals”
How much is that bailout gonna cost?
For goon
Hit it quick b4 it’s taken down.
Police chief… We practiced this for weeks and we played it out today as the 2 CIA dudes behind him go into shock and one puts his hands over his face in an OMG moment.
LAX Shooting Hoax - L.A. Police Cheif Patrick Gannon “We …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFtSaCw516g&list=PLKuRowC4yPJq53n8pPZjcH0bVOYA9MiPa - -
I would not doubt the CIA and NSA have a vested interest to assist the “progressives” in keeping government big and taking more power away from the American public, by generating sympathy for TSA and stirring up more sympathy for more security. This also plays well into Feinstein’s anti gun garbage.
That’s the sad end result of this. The State Security Sympathizer Syndicate will use it to rationalize more spying.
Someone has to keep an eye on the Pope and Vatican City. Those Swiss Guards carry pikes!
It’s got it all…
“carrying materials expressing anti-government sentiment”
“angry, rambling” texts venting about the government”
“the shooter used an “assault rifle,”
“equipped with three magazines for his weapon,”
Well done, well done. Golf clap.
FBI: 23-year-old L.A. man is suspect in airport shooting that kills TSA officer
By Greg Botelho and Michael Martinez, CNN
updated 10:50 PM EDT, Fri November 1, 2013
Los Angeles (CNN) — A man armed with what police say was an assault rifle and carrying materials expressing anti-government sentiment opened fire Friday morning at Los Angeles International Airport, killing one person before being chased down himself, authorities said.
He was identified later by the FBI as Paul Anthony Ciancia, a 23-year-old from Los Angeles. He graduated in 2008 from Salesianum School, an all-boys Catholic school in Wilmington, Delaware, according to school President Brendan P. Kennealey.
The intelligence source said Ciancia’s family became concerned in recent days after he sent his brother and father “angry, rambling” texts venting about the government, living in Los Angeles and his unhappiness generally.
TSA: Number of guns discovered in airports rising
The episode caused what airport police Chief Patrick Gannon, who had said the shooter used an “assault rifle,” described as a “large amount of chaos.” People ran for their lives and took shelter wherever they could as authorities pursued the gunman.
Suspect ‘pulled an assault rifle out … and began to open fire’
The suspect kept moving down Terminal 3, equipped with three magazines for his weapon, according to the intelligence source briefed by Los Angeles police, he began running down Terminal 3.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/01/us/lax-gunfire/ -
“anti-government sentiment” “angry, rambling” texts venting about the government” “assault rifle,”three magazines for his weapon,”
Sounds like a typical Northeasterner post talking about his weekend.
RioTard…. Realtors are liars.
One time I knew this girl who had a gun. I think her cop dad bought it for her.
One time I knew this girl who had a gun. I think her cop dad bought it for her.
The gun has killed…….bad juju. The cop dad worked for the military dictator regime. Like the right-wing fascist crap ideology that some on this blog support. Bad juju.
Heil!
the right-wing fascist crap ideology
‘In a capital accustomed to daily bloodshed, the man in charge of law enforcement is as feared as the criminals. Few dare speak his name above a whisper.’
‘Five-star Gen. Juan Carlos Bonilla was accused a decade ago of running death squads and today oversees a department suspected of beating, killing and “disappearing” its detainees. He is the top cop in the country that serves as a way station for most South American cocaine bound for the United States and beyond.’
‘Bonilla is also the U.S. government’s go-to man in Honduras for the war on drug trafficking.’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/ap-exclusive-top-cop-is-us-go-to-man-in-honduras-for-war-on-drugs-denies-death-squad-charge/2013/11/01/3507243c-432c-11e3-b028-de922d7a3f47_story.html
We were noticing how the television reporters were pointing out the use of the initials NWO, cautiously suggesting they might stand for term New World Order. Politicians and central bank reps the world over have been openly using that term for years with a suggestion that that goal will be the answer to all our prayers. Now all of a sudden the press acts like using that term is some sort of indicator of murky subversive activity.
The sleepy sheep will never notice. The PTB must laugh their *sses off with what they get away with.
I am thinking more often of the Charles Bronson movie “Telefon.” The difference is that in that movie the enemies of the US government trained the American murderers.
He said they practiced the scenario three weeks ago. A shooting scenario involving an officer. Next.
“We practiced the exact scenario that played out today, we played out today”
Actually, he says…We practiced for this.
as he says “we played out today” the dude over his right shoulder looks like he mouths the word “damn” and puts his puts his hand over his face.
Link to video?
Not that I don’t believe it. I just want it for future evidence.
Must like the FBI testimony that they were told to stand down when they first reported on the 911 hijackers.
DOH! Never mind. I see it now.,
I scrolled right past it.
Good find.
as the 2 CIA dudes behind him go into shock and one puts his hands over his face in an OMG moment.
Word. Look at the NSA guy in shock, picking his nose.
This is what happens when a society chooses to allow people with mental problems to roam the streets. All of the recent shootings come back to this. We do not want to institutionalize them like used to be the case. No one is doing a damn thing about it.
Yes we are! We make as many as we can into politicians!
Thanks for posting this. The goon was at high elevations and off the grid (being off the grid is suspicious, better have some of Dianne Feinstein’s “real journalists” look into that) all day today.
Ron Paul vs Michael Moore on Larry King CNN - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7myjtY13M8 - 128k - Cached - Similar pages
Aug 22, 2011
End Medicare? End Medicaid. Close down the VA?
Even hardcore Tea Partier Ted Cruz can’t support that.
Cut, cut cut! If we don’t cut, the Republic of China will be our masters.
$800 million has to be pocket change compared to the magnitude of losses generated by the Libor price fixing scandal. Why bother? Does this amount to more political Kabuki theater for the masses?
Fannie Mae Sues Big Banks
November 01, 2013 4:00 AM
Government-backed mortgage lender Fannie Mae sued nine of the world’s largest banks Thursday, including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. The lawsuit contends that by manipulating the interest rate banks use to lend money to each other, the banks caused Fannie Mae to lose about $800 million.
Has Megabank, Inc laid its legal problems to rest at this point?
Big banks undergoing greater scrutiny by government agencies
By Danielle Douglas, Published: November 1
Gianluca Colla/Bloomberg News - Pedestrians stand on the sidewalk outside a UBS bank branch in Lausanne, Switzerland. Recent government inquiries into JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup are part of a broader investigation that includes Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse.
Government authorities have expanded investigations into multiple business lines at some of the nation’s largest banks, a sign that the legal morass enveloping the industry has no clear end in sight.
Within the last year, big banks have disclosed a lengthy list of investigations, lawsuits and settlements that continue to grow. Federal prosecutors and regulators have been taking aggressive steps to hold Wall Street accountable for sins of the financial crisis and misconduct that has emerged in the aftermath.
…
LOL, the ants can’t investigate the Queen!
Posted: 6:27 p.m. Friday, Nov. 1, 2013
Family found living with decomposing body
The Associated Press
HOLLY HILL, Fla. —
Police say two adults face charges of child neglect after they and three children were found living in a Holly Hill home with a woman’s decomposing body.
They say the adults also admitted using the disability benefits of the woman, who is believed to have died of natural causes.
Volusia County jail records show 38-year-old Todd LaDuke and 31-year-old Nicole Scalise are charged with child neglect, unlawful disturbance of a body and drug possession. La Duke’s bond was set at $33,000 and Scalise’s at $14,000. Jail records don’t list an attorney.
Police say the children — ages 4, 6 and 11 — are with welfare officials. Police Chief Mark Barker calls it “the worst case of child endangered” he’s seen.
LaDuke is also charged with uttering forged bills.
Copyright The Associated Press
Dead Men Walking: Vampires March Against JPMorgan Chase
October 29, 2013
Story and video for The UpTake by Bill Sorem
A group of “vampires” marched to the Minneapolis U.S. Attorney’s office and the offices of JPMorgan Chase & Co., on Monday to demand a settlement that keeps people in their homes instead of just providing “blood money” by way of paltry settlement checks to people who wrongly lost their homes.
This action was part of #Not1MoreEviction national day of action, with actions in five cities.
As Halloween approaches, Occupy Homes MN said it had, “Marched on some of the scariest monsters of all, the blood-sucking vampires of the housing crisis, demanding a JPMorgan and Federal Housing Finance Agency settlement that will stop the bleeding of the housing crisis and keep Jaymie Kelly in her home.”
This week, as JPMorgan and the FHFA prepared to finalize a total $13 billion settlement with the Department of Justice, the fitm also filed a second eviction order for Jaymie Kelly, a Powderhorn homeowner who has lived in her house 30 years and paid for its value more than five times.
(Kelly also is running for Mayor of Minneapolis; watch the interview she gave The UpTake by clicking here).
“The first priority of the settlement should be to keep people in their homes,” said Kelly, who is now facing imminent eviction by JPMorgan Chase and Freddie Mac, which operates under the FHFA. “JPMorgan Chase refused to work with me after I fell behind on a predatory loan, even though I had paid for my home five times over. Now, even as they pay a record settlement for their actions, they still want to evict me from my home of 30 years. I am not interested in a settlement check. I want a negotiation with principal reduction to stay in my home. I am hopeful they will work together to keep homeowners facing unjust eviction, like me, in their homes. Until then I will continue fighting for my right to stay in my home.”
On Oct. 8, 150 community members blockaded Jaymie’s scheduled eviction. In response, Freddie Mac and JPMorgan Chase filed a second eviction order, which the sheriff must carry out by Nov. 22.
The “zombies” marched from the Government Center through the tunnels to the Federal Court building where cameras were not allowed. After the meeting at the U.S. Attorney’s office, Kelly reported that they were well received and the assistant that met them promised to set up a meeting with one of the U.S. Attorneys.
The “undead” then marched through the sky ways to the Capella Tower where the local offices of JPMorgan Chase are located. Security guards blocked the sky way entrance to the elevators so they performed their vampire skit in the sky way
http://www.theuptake.org/2013/10/29/dead-men-walking-vampires-march-against-jpmorgan-chase/ - 89k
“Homes for All Campaign”
And Boob jobs for all too! Do you know how many Low Income flat chested women there are out there who can’t afford a Boob job? Well I don’t either but I bet there’s a lot.
Oct. 28 - Not 1 More Eviction National Day of Action
Connected Issues: Economic Justice, Economic, Social & Cultural Rights, Right to Housing.
Homes for All Campaign
On October 28th, underwater homeowners across the nation will be taking action on mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In Atlanta, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Boston, and Seattle, residents will be demanding a moratorium on evictions. They are also advocating for Congressman Mel Watt’s nomination as the new Director of the Federal Housing and Finance Agency. This action is part of the larger movement to dump Ed DeMarco, acting director of the FHFA, and longtime critic of loan forgiveness for underwater homeowners. More than half of all American mortgages are managed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Their continued resistance to forgiving principal balances, and the intensification of militant eviction tactics in recent months stands in the face of alternative solutions to alleviate the debt of homeowners,and get the economy back on track. Residents demand that there is “not 1 more eviction” until Watt is up for the nomination in the Senate.
Homes For All is a national campaign with the goal of broadening the conversation of the housing crisis beyond foreclosure and putting forth a comprehensive housing agenda that also speaks to issues affecting public housing residents, homeless families, and the growing number of renters in American cities. Homes For All aims to protect, defend, and expand housing that is truly affordable and dignified for low-income and very low-income communities by engaging those most directly impacted by this crisis through local and national organizing, winning strong local policies that protect renters and homeowners, and shifting the national debate on housing. Right To the City (RTC) is working collaboratively across sectors to develop national housing policy that ensures that our communities and future generations have homes that are truly affordable, stable, and dignified. The campaign has grown to include 25 RTC member groups and a formal partnership with the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
http://www.ushrnetwork.org/take-action/oct-28-not-1-more-eviction-national-day-action - 40k - Cached - Similar pages
4 days ago
Utah common core standards causes commotion
By Danielle Sommer
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
All math textbooks are being removed from classrooms because there are no textbooks in compliance with the new secondary math courses.
The fact that math textbooks have been removed from the classroom has caused contention among some parents, who say they will no longer be able to help their child with math homework.
Trent Nielsen, a local math teacher, said he believes if students are struggling it should be in the classroom, where the teacher can help, not at home, where the parent will become frustrated.
“The reason why there are so many complaints is there is not a textbook for math,” he said. “It will take time, but eventually, a book will come. Students should turn to the teacher for questions.”
http://www.suunews.com/news/2013/oct/09/utah-common-core-standards-causes-commotion/ - 31k
Common Core causes confusion for Perry parents
Posted: Friday, November 1, 2013 12:00 pm
By Natalie Muster
Perry Superintendent Dr. William Stavisky said that he had been facing confusion from parents regarding the Common Core State Standards at the Oct. 28 board meeting.
Forty-five states, including New York, have adopted the Common Core State Standards, which focus on math and language arts, with the the goal of making students more prepared for college and the workforce.
States receive money from the federal government for the Common Core, with the stipulation that they must follow the test’s assessment.
As part of the assessment, students of similar backgrounds are being compared with data from each school district compiled by the state. Thus, parents can now see that their child is in a certain percentile relative to similar students. However, that percentile may not be the same score a child received on the test.
“When they report the results, you might say, compared to students like my child, my child is in the 98th percentile. Well that’s super good, but that doesn’t mean that 98 percent of the questions are correct,” Stavisky said. “There’s a little bit of a confusion about that.”
http://www.mywnynews.com/arcade_warsaw/news/local/article_89e68bf8-4243-11e3-9d28-0019bb2963f4.html - -
Brawndo, it’s what plants crave… and we have a lot of plants.
Ben, something just occurred to me: when this whole housing bubble thing is really, finally over and has played out (however long that may take—and my guess is it will still be quite a while), I want to buy your book. An autographed copy, of course.
This suckers going down as we speak and you don’t see it.
Warning: Humor attempt.
A realtor was chatting up a mark when he spotted a pre-teen headed his way.
“Check out just how stupid this kid is, he’s the stupidest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.”
The realtor puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other, then calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?” The boy takes the quarters and leaves.
“What did I tell you?” said the realtor. “That kid never learns!”
Later on the mark saw the boy coming out of the ice cream store. “Hey, son! May I ask you a question? Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?”
The boy licked his icream cone and replied, “Because the day I take the dollar, the game is over!”
“Warning: Humor attempt.”
+1 Enjoyed it!
Enjoying the collapse? You didn’t know it’s happening because you’re listening to the media.
http://bp3.blogger.com/_KMlHTyq8qsM/RqOVxNFaUdI/AAAAAAAAAO4/YGk2QP3wmwE/s1600-h/remax+sign.jpg
Just a reminder in the interest of the public.
Posted: 9:44 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 2, 2013
Sticker shock often follows insurance cancellation
The Associated Press
MIAMI —
Dean Griffin liked the health insurance he purchased for himself and his wife three years ago and thought he’d be able to keep the plan even after the federal Affordable Care Act took effect.
But the 64-year-old recently received a letter notifying him the plan was being canceled because it didn’t cover certain benefits required under the law.
The Griffins, who live near Philadelphia, pay $770 monthly for their soon-to-be-terminated health care plan with a $2,500 deductible. The cheapest plan they found on their state insurance exchange was a so-called bronze plan charging a $1,275 monthly premium with deductibles totaling $12,700. It covers only providers in Pennsylvania, so the couple, who live near Delaware, won’t be able to see doctors they’ve used for more than a decade.
“We’re buying insurance that we will never use and can’t possibly ever benefit from. We’re basically passing on a benefit to other people who are not otherwise able to buy basic insurance,” said Griffin, who is retired from running an information technology company.
The Griffins are among millions of people nationwide who buy individual insurance policies and are receiving notices that those policies are being discontinued because they don’t meet the higher benefit requirements of the new law.
When he turns 65, he’ll be eligible for Medicare. Part A is free. Part B is $110 per month. That will happen sometime in the next year. I wonder how old his wife is.
Crisis actors need to learn how to cry.
Please no. Their BS is dramatic and vomit inducing as it is.
‘How did they know?’ Jim Angle shares disturbing experience with Obamacare 800 number
Posted at 9:42 am on November 2, 2013 by Twitchy Staff | View Comments
Jim Angle @JimAngleFox I was calling from an unlisted number & gave personal cell as my phone. How did they know? I have no idea but he wouldn’t answer questions.5:53 PM - 1 Nov 2013
237 Retweets 53 favorites Reply
Jim Angle @JimAngleFox He told me a “an advanced resolution specialist” would call me in 2-5 business days. That will be interesting.5:54 PM - 1 Nov 2013
89 Retweets 20 favorites ReplyRetweet
Jim Angle @JimAngleFox
I call the http://healthcare.gov 800 #, give my name & address, then put on hold. The guy comes back & says you appear to be in the media.
http://twitchy.com/2013/11/02/jim-angle-shares-disturbing-experience-with-obamacare-800-number/ - 45k -
My bet is he is mistaken that he was calling from an unlisted number, and the number showed up on the caller ID as the news. People call me all the time and wonder how I know who it is.
Yep. Caller ID.
Jim is a dope.
Shock: Fox News Airs Bombshell Report On GMO Food
Mikael Thalen
Infowars.com
November 3, 2013
During Saturday’s “A Healthy You & Carol Alt,” a new half-hour Fox News show covering health and wellness, organic health commentator Max Goldberg joined the program to break down what may be one of the most hard-hitting GMO reports ever aired by the mainstream media.
“No long-term studies have ever been done on humans, but when you look at the studies that have been done on animals, it’s pretty appalling,” Goldberg said. “You’re talking about liver damage and kidney damage and when they fed it to hamsters, the third generation of hamsters weren’t able to produce babies, so there’s real safety issues.”
As mentioned, a 2007 study published in the journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Technology showed that rats fed Monsanto’s MON863 corn for more than 90 days began to show “signs of toxicity” in the liver and kidneys.
In 2010, Russian biologist Alexey V. Surov released the results of a study testing the effects of Monsanto’s genetically modified soy on hamsters. After monitoring three generations over a two year period, third generation hamsters not only lost the ability to reproduce, but even began growing hair inside their mouths.
“The real big issue in our country Carol, is that genetically modified food’s are not labeled, so people do not know that they are eating genetically modified foods. Over 60 countries around the world require GMOs to be labeled but the US does not,” Goldberg added. “And why is that? According to the Food & Water Watch, the Ag-Bio tech industry, which owns all these GMOs, has spent $572 million on campaign contributions and lobbying to make sure that they don’t get labeled.”
The report goes on to cover the nation’s 93 percent labeling approval rating, the biotech industry’s defeat of California’s labeling Proposition 37, as well as the current attempt to stop I-522 in Washington state, where a lawsuit by the state’s attorney general just revealed the 34 corporations laundering donation money to hide their opposition to GMO labeling from the public.
Coming from a network that once fired two journalists for attempting to report Canadian studies linking Monsanto’s rBGH-tainted milk to cancer, the move not only represents the public’s continued shift against GMOs, but the media’s desperate attempt to remain relevant to a public hungry for truthful information.
This post originally appeared at Story Leak
This article was posted: Sunday, November 3, 2013 at 6:36 am
Tags: gmo
Washington state has an initiative on the ballot this fall to label GMO foods. There is lots of money being thrown at the campaign to defeat it.
The moon is real estate, and it was kinda sold to us through the Apollo moon landings, so this comment isn’t really off topic.
Some people have raised questions about the “lunar soil” or regolith and its characteristics as presented by NASA as proof the event was faked.
Here are 3 examples:
1. The behavior of the “material” kicked up by the tires of the lunar rover; it doesn’t go very high? In 1/6th gravity shouldn’t the rooster tails of “dirt” be 20 or 30 feet high? In the available clips provided by NASA, they appear no different than a dune buggy at the beach on Earth?
2. Is there moisture in the lunar soil? If NOT, how is such detail in the “one small step for man” famous footprint on the moon by Neil Armstrong produced? We have all been to the beach and noticed our footprints only produce detail when we walk in the sand near the water. In the desert where the sand is bone dry, your footprints have no detail?
3. Why is there enough soil to make a footprint right under the ladder Armstrong steps off? wouldn’t the rocket engine from the lunar module blast away all the soil in the vicinity?
Once again, Im not saying a moon landing did NOT occur; Im questioning the accuracy of the historical record as presented by NASA?
2. Go walk in places where the dust is similar to dry talcum powder and you will discover that there doesn’t need to be moisture to make a detailed footprint, and this is what I understand the dust of the moon is like, which is dry talcum powder.
3. If the rocket blast blew away the dust, which is a reasonable assumption, then it’s also a reasonable assumption that the dust that was blown away settled back down.
Also, is the picture of the footprint that is so widely shown about the actual first footprint put on the moon or is it just a good picture of a footprint? The assumption is that it is the first footprint but this does not necessairly make it so. I haven’t followed the details of the landing to know one way or the other, perhaps you know the answer?
Adding a bit to 3:
A rocket blast occuring on earth would disturb a lot of air around the blast and this disturbed air would cause a lot of distruption of everything that happens to be around it - the surrounding air would apply a multiplying effect to the effects of the rocket blast .
But on the moon there is no surrounding air - there is no multiplying effect - so any disruption of dust would have to be accomlished solely by the rocket blast.
Plus, the most effective direction of the rocket blast is straight down and this is how the rocket blast was engineered.
So since the blast is straight down and there is no air available to add to the disturbance of this straght down blast the blowing-away-of-moon- dust effect would be minimized.
“So since the blast is straight down and there is no air available to add to the disturbance of this straght down blast the blowing-away-of-moon- dust effect would be minimized.”
FWIW, only the top half of the lunar lander launched back into a lunar orbit. Thus, the blast didn’t hit the soil.
But the blast from the top half of the lunar lander took place after the pictures were taken.
“But the blast from the top half of the lunar lander took place after the pictures were taken.”
Okay, I’m tracking with you now. Lacking an atmosphere the blast likely defuses rapidly; can’t say I’ve given it much thought.
Not sure about the rest, but on item number 1 there is no air on the moon so the jets didn’t disturb the space area around them as the module was landing. Air is mass. So no air, no mass and no molecules to bump against each other at all levels including along the surface. I would think there would be some disturbance directly underneath the rocket exhaust as soon as the flames would touch the lunar surface.
Hey Bill, I considered the difference between the behavior of rocket exhaust gases in a vacuum and in an atmosphere.
Rocket exhaust gas molecules have mass. Moon soil particles have mass. Therefore it is a case of mass acting on mass. In a vacuum the effect should be exaggerated; i.e, no loose moon soil particles in a very wide radius around the LM engine exhaust bell?; which means no “tracks” of any kind in the vicinity?
Indeed, without an atmosphere there would be no billowing effect from the exhaust or moon dust like a helicopter produces on Earth; soil particles and exhaust should move at right angles to the surface because there is no “air” to slow them down or force them upward.
This is kinda what we see in the NASA moon landing sequence. But based on the comments of Armstrong regarding his “walk” listen to the 1:40 mark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtwSgvstl8c
If the “soil” has the consistency of talcum power, dry plaster, or charcoal… why did it remain stationary despite a rocket exhaust only a few feet away?
In addition, shouldn’t a “powder” produce a different visual from the wheels of the lunar rover? looks more like moist sand to me?
In addition, Im aware an exhaust plume from a rocket is often not visible in a vacuum and that it becomes wider (more round/semi circle shaped)
Here is a video of all 165 photos taken with “camera magazine 40″ (whatever that is)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFbDH1Qsc7g
The 1st photo shown is the only one Ive ever seen that NASA claims to be of an astronaut inside the lunar module, while it is sitting on the moon. Did they make no video or film of themselves “high fivin” each other or exchanging “bro hugs” and “shoutin out” inside the LM after their moon walk?
Because that was key!
From that point on, even if they were killed, the mission was still a success and they would go down in history.
“If the “soil” has the consistency of talcum power, dry plaster, or charcoal… why did it remain stationary despite a rocket exhaust only a few feet away?”
I don’t know. I saw the video too. You do bring up some good questions. Also I thought I heard Armstrong say there is evidence of some spray from the landing, but not much.
If the landing was a hoax, why would they make it a hoax? I read some people say because all that money from taxpayers invested into this had to pay off. It was JFK’s goal to have men land on the moon in the 1960s. So yes they had to achieve that goal.
I read that a few years ago another moon mission to fly over and not land saw the flag and other artifacts from the Apollo 11 mission.
Comment by Bill, just South of Irvine, CA
If the landing was a hoax, why would they make it a hoax?
———————————————————————
Bill, Ive wrestled with this same question and the only answer I feel 100% sure of is it was NOT planned as a hoax back in 61 when Kennedy was mouthin off about a moon landing.
IF, IF, it was faked, here are the justifications Ive come up for it (in no particular order)
1. “Pressure”; Americans are impatient, we have a “fastfood” mentality I want it NOW! or give me my money back.
2. Fear of Soviet success: I consider this one the least likely. Why? Because it would be like losing a boxing match by decision to Mike Tyson; ain’t no shame in that. We both using Nazi technology anyway.
3. Money; This is the big one for me. Success means continued funding. Why take a chance with failure when failure may mean no 2nd chance? If you’re gonna fail, fail on your 3rd attempt, not your 1st. People forget that the money spent on the space program was spent right here on Earth. People raised families and sent children to college on those salaries. So even if it was faked, its no worse than Obama’s stimulus program
4. Distraction/government pep rally: The late 60s early 70s was a disturbing time for white middle class America; militant black people, angry women, communism, drugs, dead U.S soldiers arriving home in coffins at a rate of 200 per week, the ecology movement, the threat of nuclear war… the moon landings were one thing people could consider as proof of our ability to make progress and solve problems.
Think about it, you can’t have no race riot on the moon? You can’t have any of that Earth based nonsense. The space environment will not sustain all the “tudes” we grow up with and attempt to “manage” here on Earth.
Maybe thats why our efforts to date have been so niggardly.
BTW– I can find no evidence that any other mammals were sent into deep space (near/around the moon) before 3 humans were sent in 1968? Maybe it was done in secret?
Yes sir, I can see motivations for faking it. Wasn’t there even a movie in the late 70s or 80s that showed how the moon landing could be faked?
You know me from my posts - I’m a libertarian and distrust the group of people calling themselves “government.” I’m the most anti thug on this blog.
So again, what if it’s a hoax? What does that mean? It means $trillions of dollars on a jobs program wasted.
But like Strawberry picker said, there were too many people in the space program for this to be a hoax. And your point about Russia. Well it’s no longer the iron curtain. Certainly there are people in Russia alive today who lived in the 60s. They would know. There is no incentive for modern Russia, headed by ex KGB Putin, to keep its agreement with the U.S. if there ever was one. This world has so many people that know so much information. Compartmentalization of state secrets is very difficult and I don’t think that technicque was used in the 60s.
Just look at the pictures and videos. There would have to be many people out there who can prove the hoax.
Just look at the pictures and videos. There would have to be many people out there who can prove the hoax.
——————————————————————-
Bill, if people are told “in the interest of national security” we need you to __________________________________
What kind of person would say “NO”
?
It is my opinion that by the time a person becomes a person “they” need to ask, they have already been vetted 6 ways to Sunday.
Also, if a deed is evil enough, just being told about it is enough to be signed up; if you don’t
*people stare at you without saying anything*
Look at it this way Bill; evil is its own form of currency; and once you prove you can handle it by being a “good soldier”; you get a line of the “evil credit” that allows you to purchase things that money can’t buy.
Like what?
Like the confidence of other evil people.
Who you gonna tell Bill when anybody that counts might be “evil?”
Do you really wanna be remembered as a pedophile who killed himself as the cops were closing in?
If they can fake a moon landing…
You get the picture?
This ain’t no game, Its a beatdown n—a!
Here’s an article that shows a couple of interesting pictures:
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/home/F_Apollo_11.html
Notice the lack of lunar soil directly under the rocket’s nozzle and then notice the apparant abundant supply of soil next to the module. It appears the blast from the nozzle was focused straight down (which would make sense) and this limited the amount of soil disturbance in the surrounding area.
Also, note this famous photo of a footprint and note the description of this photo. It does not say this was the first footprint, it just says this was a footprint. On can conclude that this was the first footprint but this conslusion does not make it so.
Note the absence in the photo of any evidence this photo was taken next to the lunar module.
“Notice the lack of lunar soil directly under the rocket’s nozzle and then notice the apparant abundant supply of soil next to the module. It appears the blast from the nozzle was focused straight down (which would make sense) and this limited the amount of soil disturbance in the surrounding area.”
Yeah that is what I was thinking is the possible explanation. The blast from the nozzle(s) would go straight down and not much disturbance of soil in the surrounding area. Perhaps the debris from the “straight down” blast is what Armstrong sank his foot into. It would probably otherwise be half or a third as much soft soil where he stood next to the bottom of the steps.
The space program was a welfare program for engineers. Still is.
The best proof that it isn’t a hoax is the number of people necessary to pull it off. Then look at the post office, or the newest example of government incompetence: THE OBAMACARE WEBSITE!
Plus the Soviets would have called us on it.
Plus the Soviets would have called us on it.
————————————————————
People always bring this one up. But it seems to me that in a communist, totalitarian police state it would be much easier to “encourage” everyone to toe the party line. no matter how ridiculous.
If the Kremlin (knowing they could not make it) decided to sell the rights for a successful moon landing to the United States; what harm is really done?
They don’t hafta prove anything?
Just shut up and don’t challenge it.
And if the truth comes out later, you already got paid.
By the way, when the Soviet Union “collapsed”, did an entirely “new” set of people suddenly take over and become the “upper class?”
Or did all the top level party members just exchange their uniforms for business suits and stay in power?
*meet the new boss, same as the old boss*
The broader story here is that NASA will not hire and pay a person to do what
Bill
Strawberry picker
Combotechie
Colorado
RMS
Have just done for free.
FOR FREE.
If everyone has an explanation for why your wife is not cheating on you except your wife?
she’s probably cheating on you.
Spook said at the the opening of this thread:
“I’m not saying a moon landing did not occur.”
Then he offers up evidence that he believes shows why the moon landing did not occur.
Then he offers up evidence that he believes shows why the moon landing did not occur.
He probably also believes that the ISS is a fake.
The broader story here is that NASA will not hire and pay a person
Wrong. They have published pictures taken from lunar orbit showing the moon landing sites.
Of course, we know they’re fake. And we all know that the Earth is flat too.
Comment by In Colorado
2013-11-03 12:12:50
He probably also believes that the ISS is a fake.
——————————————————–
No, not at all.
The I$$ is a real functioning space station in orbit… that takes 2 days to reach (when it only took Apollo 11 three days to get to the moon)
But its not as impressive as it should be because most of its infrastructure is centered around keeping humans alive in space. Its not a supply depot for deep space missions, refueling, probe construction and launching… its a 100 billion dollar floating mens locker room, and I suspect it will meet the same fate as Skylab and Mir.
I thought a space station was supposed to be a means to something else like building one to orbit the moon and then building a moonbase where the weak gravity would making launching large vehicles easier? By now there should be about 1000 people living somewhere in space at any given minute; in Earth orbit, in giant underground cities on the moon.
The International Space Station is underwhelming.
You make a great point Strawberrypicker. This could not be kept a hoax with all the people involved.
2. Broad grain size distribution.
I’m less concerned about a moon landing conspiracy than with the HBB conspiracy to keep the word being spread that the whole housing thing is collapsing AGAIN.
There are clearly some here who are trying to discredit any bad news and divert so,e threads into irrelevancy. (I myself am guilty of the latter with The Child, which I couldn’t resist, sorry).
Ben should be able to tell if multiple alleged “different” posters are coming from the same IP, I think. Not that he necessarily cares to.
There’s a whole lot going on here.
Obama uses executive order in sweeping takeover of nation’s climate change policies
Perry Chiaramonte
Fox News
November 2, 2013
Through the stroke of a pen, President Obama on Friday used his executive powers to elevate and take control of climate change policies in an attempt to streamline sustainability initiatives – and potentially skirt legislative oversight and push a federal agenda on states.
The executive order establishes a task force of state and local officials to advise the administration on how to respond to severe storms, wildfires, droughts and other potential impacts of climate change. The task force includes governors of seven states — all Democrats — and the Republican governor of Guam, a U.S. territory. Fourteen mayors and two other local leaders also will serve on the task force.
All but three of those appointed are Democrats. The task force will look at federal money spent on roads, bridges, flood control and other projects. It ultimately will recommend how structures can be made more resilient to the effects of climate change, such as rising sea levels and warming temperatures.
“We’re going to need to get prepared. And that’s why this plan will also protect critical sectors of our economy and prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change that we cannot avoid,” Obama said last June, when he first launched a Climate Action Plan.
Full story here.
This article was posted: Saturday, November 2, 2013 at 5:39 am
Yeah, ok, first you get control of the borders. Then you deport, deport, deport.
And let’s not forget: the easiest way to stop global warming is put on a condom.
Or distribute GMO corn to the masses that will reduce the birth rate dramatically within 3 generations.
LAX SHOOTING DUMMY Proof of Hoax - LAX False Fla - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9kGs38UWFE - - Cached - Similar pages
15 hours ago …
It looks like CGI
‘Jim Stadler is one of the “5 percenters”—the 5% of Americans with health insurance policies they purchased on their own—who got notified recently that their carrier was canceling coverage because it didn’t meet the tougher new minimum requirements of the ACA. Under Stadler’s expiring policy, his premiums are $411 a month, for coverage that always seemed adequate to him. “It’s not a substandard policy,” he says. “I thought it was a great deal.” The premium for the new policy offered by his insurer will be $843 a month, with coverage that’s more or less the same as far as he’s concerned.’
“The thing that gets me,” says Stadler, who voted for Obama in the 2012 presidential election, “is I thought Barack Obama was the only guy I could trust in Washington. He ended up lying to me because he said, if I like my insurance, I could keep it.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/healthcare-shoppers-aren%E2%80%99t-as-dumb-as-obama-thinks-195824524.html
Squeal Jim. Squeal like a pig!
get ready to pay for all the poor people who cant afford health insurance. the money has got to come from somewhere.
Follow the money.
Benghazi, Obamacare, and Yellen. B-O-Y can he lie!
Far more egregious than just lies. The false attributions, drama and bait and switch is what blows my mind.
These guys (Ivy League Alumni) all work together and they know exactly what they’re doing. They write the history.
“These guys (Ivy League Alumni) all work together and they know exactly what they’re doing. They write the history.”
October 30, 2013 2:29 pm
Obama-Era Stock Market Gains Surpass Reagan Era
http://kuow.org/post/obama-era-stock-market-gains-surpass-reagan-era
“March 2009*, the market - the S&P 500 bottomed to levels it had not seen since 1997, and if you include inflation, levels not seen during the LBJ presidency. It was a true washout. Since that point, the S&P 500 has returned a total of 189 percent when you include dividends and everything else.”
*Note, one month later FASB suspended rule 157
Bluestar AKA Jack Smith
“Benghazi, Obamacare, and Yellen. B-O-Y can he lie!”
Give him a break, he’s just carrying out his New World Orders.
What will be the economic effect of millions paying so much more per month, all at the same time? Remember when the government sent out $600 checks? Imagine the reverse force happening every month.
Let me see if I understand this correctly:
If I am an employer and I have less that fifty full-time workers then I do not have to supply them with medical insurance. This means my part-time workers, if I have any, will have to buy their own medical insurance.
But if they are part-time workers then they will not make the big bucks that full-time forty-hour-a-week workers make which means they will be in a lessened position to buy insurance than the position full-time workers get to enjoy.
In a sense, because they make less money their living expenses will go up.
‘because they make less money their living expenses will go up’
Yes, this thing is regressive. It’s going to sock it to the middle class. Personally, I’m going Amish.
If they are part time, they may qualify for Medicaid, especially if they live in a state that accepted the Medicaid expansion.
“Squeal Jim. Squeal like a pig!”
+1 Deliverance, ACA style!
democrats want you to pay for their constituents healthcare.
Got dialexia?
P.S. Anyone who objects to this post on any level lacks deep understanding has his nose buried in the dictionary.
LOL… You’re on a roll today!
What does dialexia even mean?
dialexia
A portmanteau of a diaspora that has dislexia??
HeckifIknow.
“‘Shadow REO’: As Many as 90% of Foreclosed Properties Held Off the Market”
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11616596/1/shadow-reo-as-many-as-90-of-foreclosed-properties-held-off-the-market.html
Would it not be fair to say that it is greater than 90% given the rising default rates?
realtors are liars
“That’s because when a lender carries an REO on its books, it is allowed to value the home at the price that the foreclosed-on borrower originally paid for it. Once the lender sells the home, it must book a loss: the difference between the original purchase price and the current value. And since home values have fallen by nearly a third since the housing bust, that translates into huge losses for the bank.”
How do the share holders and Wall street assess these lenders if their assets are not currently valued? Two sets of books like RiteAid?
You have to understand the role of the FASB and how institutions and corporations are allowed to value debt. Remember there are two kinds of debt; normal debt and synthetic debt. Synthetic debt is mostly composed of collections of similar assets that represent individual loans or obligations.
“On April 9, 2009, FASB issued the official update to FAS 157[24] that eases the mark-to-market rules when the market is unsteady or inactive. Early adopters were allowed to apply the ruling as of March 15, 2009, and the rest as of June 15, 2009. It was anticipated that these changes could significantly increase banks’ statements of earnings and allow them to defer reporting losses.[25] The changes, however, affected accounting standards applicable to a broad range of derivatives, not just banks holding mortgage-backed securities.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark-to-market_accounting
Enjoy your life under Behavioral Economics!
Bluestar AKA Jack Smith
“House Hunters Has Been Selling You a Big Lie
http://jezebel.com/5917631/house-hunters-has-been-selling-you-a-big-lie
Lies, fraud, deliberate misrepresentations……
And you committed a lifetime of earnings knowing this? You need mental help.
That’s a new one, Ben: looks like the Nov 2 BB got renamed as the Nov 3 BB, rather than having a new one created… Was that intentional?
Is your name on a deed for a house?
Is your name on a deed for a house?
Nope—it’s on my lease, though!
It’s inflation!
Kudlow: Liberal entitlement-state dream is crumbling
Published: Friday, 1 Nov 2013 | 6:25 PM ET
By: Larry Kudlow
President Barack ObamaMay I ask this question? Why is it that Americans don’t have the freedom to choose their own health insurance? I just don’t get it. Why must the liberal nanny state make decisions for us? We can make them ourselves, thank you very much. It’s like choosing a car, buying a home or investing in a stock. We can handle it.
So why must the government tell me and everyone else what we can and cannot buy?
Charles Krauthammer and the Wall Street Journal’s Dan Henninger noted in excellent recent columns that this whole Obamacare business represents the greatest-ever expansion of the liberal entitlement-state dream. But I don’t want that dream. And you shouldn’t either.
Here’s what else I don’t want: As a 60-something, relatively healthy person, I don’t want lactation and maternity services, abortion services, speech therapy, mammograms, fertility treatments or Viagra. I don’t want it. So why should I have to tear up my existing health-care plan, and then buy a plan with far more expensive premiums and deductibles, and with services I don’t need or want?
Why? Because Team Obama says I have to. And that’s not much of a reason. It’s not freedom.
Fortunately, NBC News pulled the plug this past week on President Barack Obama’s promise that “if you like your own plan, you can keep it.” Ditto for keeping your own doctor. The plug was pulled because NBC learned that Team Obama knew—for three years—that stiff new regulations would prevent the grandfathering of existing health-care plans. And not just a few plans. But plans that could affect as many as 15 million individuals.
The day after that bombshell hit, the president tried to blame insurers rather than regulatory overkill for this Obamacare shortfall. Yet both the public and the mainstream media were having none of it. In what may turn out to be a landmark moment, Americans and the media at large have turned against the president and Obamacare.
Incidentally, equally punitive regulations will hit more than 90 million employer-sponsored health plans next year. It’s the same problem as the individual plan. Grandfathering won’t work. Moreover, replacing these plans with much more expensive products will constitute a major tax hike on the entire economy. This point shouldn’t be lost as Americans worry about being kicked from their plans. Obamacare is not only anti-freedom but anti-growth.
As for the grandfathering lie, Obama’s HHS staffers were the saboteurs. They undoubtedly acted with full knowledge of what they were doing, and thus trapped the president in three years of falsehoods that were essential to selling Obamacare.
And I just love it when they tell me that so many of these existing plans are substandard “bad apples.” Do the president and his people not know that insurance at the state level is one of the most regulated areas of the economy? They’re blaming insurance companies, not their own new regulations. The stupidity of that is hilarious. Do they really think salesmen are out selling these policies off the back of trucks?
Read more: Obama blames ‘bad apple’ insurers for dropped coverage)
No, this is federal coercion at its worst. And that’s why the public is turning against it. It’s not freedom.
Of course, there are other structural problems to Obamacare that are both unfair and unaffordable. Mainly, younger healthy people are not going to subsidize older sicker folks. We should take care of the latter with transparent government subsidies, and not by trying to redistribute resources (again) from the young to the old.
Or then there’s the Medicaid entitlement. It’s already out of control and close to bankruptcy. But in the early days of Obamacare, Medicaid sign-ups are exploding, all while sign-ups for private plans on the new exchanges are minuscule.
Between the president’s broken promises, the millions of policy cancellations, the continued website breakdowns and the unaffordable, unfair con game between the healthy young and the sicker old, this Obamacare monster is well on its way to collapsing of its own weight.
But here’s the bigger point: All this is the inevitable result of massive central-planning exercises to control the economy. That’s not freedom.
No amount of rescue legislation is going to change this. It’s the elections of 2014 and 2016 that will allow citizens to reject this Soviet-style planning. But I’ll reference my conservative colleagues in the media once again: Obamacare represents the greatest-ever expansion of the liberal entitlement-state dream. And you know what? That dream is crumbling and dissolving before our very eyes.
And that is freedom.
—By CNBC’s Larry Kudlow; Follow him on Twitter @larry_kudlow
(ACA) I don’t want it….That’s not freedom. to be deadbeat and have other’s pay for my healthcare.
They are trying to remove a turd baked into a pumpkin pie. When that doesn’t work, they will blame the other side for not helping them to “fix” it.
The diehard Libes here will claim that this is all part of the plan that will allow single payer to then be imposed. They forget about the true masters who run this economy.
The diehard Libes
Does not compute. Obama won twice with over 50% of the vote - very rare -very rare. I guess then the USA is majority “diehard libs”.
That would make “diehard libs” centrist by mathematical definition.
I thought you promised not to respond to me (because you think I am HA). Back to the basement welcher.
Go easy on the RioTard.
I thought you promised not to respond to me (because you think I am HA)
I don’t think you are HA.
So Ben, you let these clowns insult me, but now you censor me?
I probably delete 10 or more HA comments every day. He was banned for years. When you go too far, expect the same. Like I said the other day, I can go back to deleting 100 comments a day.
Strawberrypicker above lies about what I said, calls me a name I don’t deserve, Then HA calls me a retard but you post them but censor my response to them which was less offensive than their posts and included no lies.
Both of them are right-wing and I am center left.
” abortion services”
Abortion services are covered?
or years now the American press has waxed lyrical about a supposed revival in American manufacturing. “Reshoring,” they call it. A resurgent United States seemingly is winning back much manufacturing that had previously been considered lost to China and other export-hungry East Asian nations.
Stirring stuff – at least it would be if it were true.Unfortunately it is largely smoke and mirrors. Various American corporations, not least General Electric, Walmart, Whirlpool, United Technologies (Otis), and Peerless Manufacturing, have helped propagate the illusion
Even more reprehensible has been the role of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a consultancy that has been accused more than once of influencing American public opinion on behalf of mercantilist East Asian governments
They released a report in August 2011 entitled, “Made in America, Again: Why Manufacturing Will Return to the U.S.” The obvious political effect has been to provide Washington with yet another excuse to procrastinate as East Asian mercantilism undercuts the last vestiges of American economic leadership.
Certainly there is little evidence that the report’s predicted revival of American manufacturing has materialized. In fact America’s imports of manufactured products have continued to increase in the more than two years since the report was published.
What we are left with is that America has traded places. In the old days it exported small valuable things and left the bulky low value work to lesser nations. Now America specializes in assembling items so bulky that they are exorbitant to ship around the world. Meanwhile it imports virtually all the small high-value stuff.
The bottom line is that America’s current account deficits just continue to accumulate, and so, in lock-step, does its foreign indebtedness.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/eamonnfingleton/2013/11/03/reports-of-americas-manufacturing-renaissance-are-just-a-cruel-hoax/?partner=yahootix
Expect it all to continue until the foundation crumbles. Then even the elite will ask what have we done as China seizes their assets and steals even more of their intellectual properties and helps foreign governments take back their natural resource wealth and hand it to China.
The current “playas” of the world seem to forget that China once had a globe spanning empire.
Then the Mandarin took control and enforced the staus
The current “playas” of the world seem to forget that China once had a globe spanning empire.
Then the Mandarins took control and enforced the scientific and technological status quo (and thus commerce) to the point of implosion. It took them 3000 years to recover.
Today, we would call those Mandarins, “MBAs” and “Wall St.”
‘A new book covering the 2012 presidential campaign uncovers a series of scathing remarks from political figures, but one alleged comment has stirred controversy around President Barack Obama and his administration’s use of targeted drone strikes.’
‘Mark Halperin and John Heilemann’s book “Double Down: Game Change 2012” notes President Obama commenting on drone strikes, reportedly telling his aides that he’s “really good at killing people.”
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/11/03/book-alleges-obama-told-aides-about-drone-strikes-im-really-good-at-killing-people/
This man should not be president.
What a stunning indifference to life. I think this guy demonstrates the fact that “we’re an empire now”…. he’s proud of it.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama has been briefed on the reported shooting at Los Angeles International Airport.
The White House says the Los Angeles Police Department is leading the response and investigation into the shooting, and administration officials are in touch with federal and local partners.
The White House says it is urging people to listen to authorities and follow directions from first responders on site.
———————————————————————————
If you can not find any authorities or responders on site, try to flag one down as they push a wheelchair past the ambulances with a dummy in it.
PS
I think these first responders need to do a little road work. That dude pushing the chair was gassed and the SWAT dude leading the way just fell out. Also, I think we need to lose the wheelchairs for the next false flag and get some Gurneys in there.
LAX SHOOTING DUMMY - 100% Proof of Hoax - LAX False Flag …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAOZWeo6Geo&feature=youtu.be - - Cached - Similar pages
23 hours ago
Phony Scandals, have you considered that simulations and exercises are run and filmed so that when an actual event occurs, they have stock footage they can use to aim the event in any direction necessary?
In other words, how do you know what you are seeing on the “nooz” is the actual event, or part of the simulation they recorded earlier?
Nowadays, media are so desperate I suspect they would have no problem running simulation footage and adding their own voice over rather than having no footage at all and just having a talking head with some yellow police tape behind it.
“Phony Scandals, have you considered”
Yes. Take a look at all these National tragedies lately, there’s always a drill going on there or close. Usually the people at the podium have miraculously trained (rehearsed) for just such an event.
This is why part of a mans security clearance should be the ease with which he can pick up chicks. All these SIMPS, poindexters and captain save-a-hos are gonna get us killed as they try to get laid (for the first time)
Attractive women can open locked doors in the male-dominated IT industry. A parallel test with a fake male social media profile resulted in no useful connections. A majority of those who offered to help Emily Williams were men.
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2013/11/03/fake-femme-fatale-dupes-it-guys-at-us-government-agency/
I am not certain that any man is immune to this. See Bill Clinton, Wilt Chamberlain, or any one of a number of celebrities that experience no dearth of offers.
I am also not certain that women would be immune to it with a fake male profile.
It is because IT is male-dominated, that this fake female profile is so successful. Interestingly, only a majority of those who offered to help were male. So maybe women are more susceptible to women than to men. Or maybe there is a threshold of helpers that results in “useful connections” and male profiles never reach that threshold because of the male dominance in IT. If it is the latter, then a better defense might be to hire more women and gay men in IT so that the ratio is not so lopsided.