Bits Bucket for November 23, 2013
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Only Janet Yellin can save us, all your base are belong to Federal Reserve
I have a feeling she would be sort of a non-entity. I don’t think people would pay as much attention to her as they did Greenspan or even Bernanke, probably not even close.
And wouldn’t that be a good thing? Having the FR go defunct as being irrelevant?
And isn’t it sort of interesting that the Senate appears to be giving Bitcoin a pass, recognizing it as a more or less legit medium of exchange?
In physical terms (not the way it is regulated) what is the difference between Bitcoin and QE3 dollars on the Fed’s balance sheet?
Bitcoins can be traced as they are spent.
The PTB will push anything but gold since that is the only money that poses a present threat to fiat currency.
the feds don’t like bitcoin. they don’t want any competition.
I agree but they are too busy with gold to be concerned with bitcoin right now and to the degree someone would invest in bitcoin instead of gold they are happy with that right now. They have to dry up the demand for physical gold quickly before we run out and they have to cover all the paper gold they created.
They have to dry up the demand for physical gold quickly
i’m sure they’d love to do this Dan, but how?
With India, the investment banks were able to pressure them to place restrictions on gold which are now, of course, failing due to smuggling. Additionally,China is just thanking us for our stupidity and buying up the gold:
Reuters)
Updated: 2013-11-21 09:55
Counter:14
China, set to pass India this year as the world’s top gold consumer, has imported nearly a fifth more bullion than data from its traditional conduit Hong Kong shows as it brings in the metal via other routes.
Gold shipped from Hong Kong to the mainland, used as a proxy for Chinese demand as bullion imports are a state secret, nearly tripled to 855 tonnes in the year to September.
But a surge in China’s gold purchases as prices slumped by a quarter this year has also seen at least 133 tonnes shipped directly, according to Reuters calculations based on data from Global Trade Information Services (GTIS).
governments think they can manipulate (fix) prices without bad consequences. they can’t.
Sell what China buys. The tide is changing.
“Sell what China buys. The tide is changing.”
So you must also think now is a good time to put all your money in U.S. stocks and sell gold!
LOL!
Interesting that a lot of moneyed Chinese are buying up properties in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, and Singapore. What the Chinese are doing different from the Japanese is they are diversifying their assets in many cases. Which other asset class is best is debatable. But whether they build up a lot of yuan or precious metals or some of each is beside the point. The point is diversification. They saw the Japanese arrogance of the late 80s come back to haunt the Japanese themselves for decades.
If the Asians can be admired for one thing, it is for their high savings rate relative to the Americans. This has gone for decades and is precisely why China is essentially top dog and the U.S. is floundering.
‘What the Chinese are doing different from the Japanese’
Money laundering.
Money laundering.
i don’t blame them. they sound desperate to get out of the dollar.
Chinese are disparate to get out of China before everything goes kapoooey!
When I think of China I think of 65 million empty apartments. That is absolutely staggering.
Not really. empty housing units per capita in the US is far higher.
“Sell what China buys. The tide is changing.”
I think that is good advice just not in the way you meant it.
While China certainly lies about its growth rates and has some bubbles within the country ,it is still growing at a rapid rate. Over the last 10 years its economy has probably doubled. So 7% growth now has the same impact on natural resources as 14% did then. So selling what China buys is a good strategy since they are going to demand even more of it going forward.
Agreed. There are almost 1.4 billion Chinese and many want better housing. They still are no where near being as over housed as America.
What they want and what they will get may have a gap. There is a hard landing coming, and it could just as well start in China. They’ve had a massive credit expansion and were at the head of the table in commodities speculation. Yes, being overly invested in gold, beyond what’s insurance for chaos, might be poor timing just now. We will see.
The best investment possible is to get out of debt, and to simplify your base cash flow requirements. Pretty much everything else is speculation.
“I have a feeling she would be sort of a non-entity.”
As the first female in the most powerful non-elected position in the free world? Hmmmmm…
… who apparantly has no fear of debt.
During a global currency war, in a country with an employment crisis, would you want to have the strongest currency and watch your exports dry up? It’s either partake in the devaluation of one’s currency, or die.
would you want to have the strongest currency
yes, because a currency war is self defeating for the participants. the winner of a currency war loses. the winner destroys his currency.
and watch your exports dry up?
your exports don’t have to ‘dry up’. if your currency gains in value, you can afford to drop your prices. plus, all your raw materials will become cheaper with a strengthening currency.
It’s either partake in the devaluation of one’s currency, or die.
so you want your dollar to buy you less at the grocery store and the gas station? you want to pay more for everything and you believe we’ll be better off?
I haven’t told you anything “I want” so don’t put words in my mouth. I’m playing devil’s advocate here. What “I want” is a strong currency and tariffs, and an end to global wage arbitrage.
I haven’t told you anything “I want” so don’t put words in my mouth.
your words here “would you want to have the strongest currency and watch your exports dry up?” imply you want a weak currency to keep your exports from ‘drying up’.
What “I want” is a strong currency
the why did you say this? “It’s either partake in the devaluation of one’s currency, or die.”
I’m playing devil’s advocate here.
i just looked back to make sure and you never said you were playing devil’s advocate, so how is anyone supposed to know?
He was defending Obama? Or is Obama just the anti-Christ?
Take a fawkin’ Xanax tj, and step away from the computer for a bit. You’re frothing at the mouth lately. I responded to Combotechie from Yellen’s perspective. That’s how I believe she and her cronies are looking at things. To them, they need to be in front of the currency war.
I responded to Combotechie from Yellen’s perspective.
then you should have been clear you were being devil’s advocate. there was no way to know from your original post.
To them, they need to be in front of the currency war.
i know. they’re keynesians. i’d expect no less.
“Take a fawkin’ Xanax tj, and step away from the computer for a bit. You’re frothing at the mouth lately.”
Rabid poster on the loose!
Rabid poster on the loose!
there’s a rabbit on the loose?
First female head of an entity that has lost all credibility. Da boys are setting her up.
I think you are right. She is certainly dangerous but the credibility of the institution have eroded so much under berspan, she will be less influential and eventually a non-entity.
Dream on.
It already is a nonentity. They pretend to be deciding things, but take their orders from the real rulers. Who? As is now obvious to most everybody, the same people it has always been. The moneyed interests. The head of the is a pissboy holding the bucket. That is why it is traditionally male.
The internet’s dispersion of information is the most socially I stabilizing force in a century.
It’s good to be da King.
Why do you want her to be powerful and influential? Haven’t you had enough?
“Why do you want her to be powerful and influential?”
I’ve noticed a substantial number of posters here who routinely misrepresent objective remarks into political positions. I assume they must either be politicians, attorneys, or both.
Though you may find this difficult to grasp, not every statement contains a hidden agenda.
I’ve noticed a substantial number of posters here who routinely misrepresent objective remarks into political positions.”
I see this happening to you a lot here. I think it is an interesting phenomenon that happens in part due to the limits of just text, no emoticons or sarc tags, and because articles you post are often preceded by a short comment.
I also think that from the observer or reader’s perspective you can often (or think you can) discern a point of view simply from the particular articles or subjects chosen.
“I see this happening to you a lot here.”
Glad it’s not my imagination. I find it odd when statements such as ‘The sky is blue today’ get twisted by retards into ‘Why do you want the sky to be so blue?’
Ah, to perceive ourselves as others perceive us. Would it be a blessing or a curse.
Quantitative easing does not lead to bubbles…
or so I have been told on good authority.
All this new equity tastes great when washed down with a 59 ounce “half gallon” of orange juice.
Fed Deja Vu? Yellen Doesn’t See A Bubble
By Dunstan Prial
Published November 20, 2013
FOXBusiness
If a group of Senators, some of them Republicans who have strongly opposed the Federal Reserve’s long-running easy-money policies, didn’t question Janet Yellen’s fitness to run the Fed, I won’t either.
During two hours of testimony last week before the Senate Banking Committee, Yellen’s qualifications to replace current chairman Ben Bernanke when his term ends on Jan. 31 never came up.
What did come up – repeatedly – were questions related to the wisdom of maintaining those aforementioned easy-money policies if the economy doesn’t show significant signs of perking up in the near future.
Yellen’s response was hardly surprising; as Fed chair she will continue, or even boost, the policies introduced under Bernanke – the bond purchases known as quantitative easing and near-zero interest rates – if economic conditions justify such measures.
No breaking news there. Yellen is a monetary policy dove, a key supporter of Bernanke’s unprecedented initiatives since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis.
The only aspect of her answer that surprised me – and many others eyeing the hearings – was Yellen’s conviction that Fed policies aren’t yet contributing to the inflation of asset bubbles, notably in U.S. stock markets.
In response to a direct question from Republican Senator Dean Heller, Yellen acknowledged that stock prices have risen “robustly.” However, fancy measures used by the Fed such as price-to-equity ratios and equity risk premiums indicate that stock prices aren’t “in territory that suggests bubble-like conditions,” according to Yellen.
Huh?
“It’s Crazy”
My immediate thought upon hearing her answer was that Yellen, also a noted academic economist in addition to her career within the Federal Reserve system, hasn’t spoken to anyone on a Wall Street trading desk in a while.
I wasn’t the only person thinking that.
“It’s crazy,” said Mark Williams, a former Fed examiner who now teaches banking at Boston University.
…
My take on the bubble/no-bubble debate is that it is definitional.
To the extent I understand the Fed’s logic (and perhaps I don’t), asset prices are not considered to be a bubble if they are behaving according to fundamental, rational rules which govern price relationships between different asset classes. Since the Fed considers the interest rates they set by regulating the money supply to be a fundamental, and their policies have pushed rates down to levels which make the return on low-risk savings vehicles (passbook savings accounts, bank CDs, money-market funds, short-term Treasurys and savings bonds) extremely unattractive, the flood of money into risky stock and real estate investments is perfectly rational, hence not a bubble.
Others, perhaps even some on this board, might note that the Fed doesn’t actually control interest rates over the long run, and that pushing the QE3 pedal to the metal for too long and hard could have endogenous fundamental consequences for the Fed’s future ability to steer asset prices the direction they prefer them go (up).
Does that about capture it?
“Does that about capture it?”
Yep.
Thanks.
And by the way, I always enjoy your early morning posts.
Thank you. And I enjoy your non-stop 24 hour posts.
For hundreds of years there has been a bubble in human achievement. From the horse and buggy to the Space Shuttle. It’s not even a zero sum game. If it were, we’d still be living in caves.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
“And I enjoy your non-stop 24 hour posts.”
Engaging in this fascinating background conversation goes a long way towards fending off terminal boredom…
Engaging in this fascinating background conversation goes a long way towards fending off terminal boredom…
at nearly everyone else’s expense.. but spoken like someone truly without a life.
“… but spoken like someone truly without a life.”
Have a look in the mirror, then get back to us with another nonsensical post.
compare my number of posts with yours, and then YOU look in the mirror.
Most posts here contribute to the conversation; I’m sorry to say that yours are largely short on content and long on personal attack.
you’re largely delusional.
You’re largely what all your ad hominem attacks say others are.
says the master serial ad hominem 24 hour a day poster.
IMHO it went something like this:
During the boom eras a good return was easy to get and this easy-to-get-good-return offered to the unwashed masses an incentive to jump into the midst of the good return era so as they can get theirs, but they did not personally know how to cash in so they sought out middle men who did know (or thought they knew) how they could cash in on the behalf of these unwashed. These middle men got a cut but that was ok because due to the good return that everyone was getting there was a lot left over for the unwashed after the middle men’s cut was extracted.
Life was good; Good for the unwashed and good for the middle men. Then … something happened.
What happened was these good return eras morphed into an era of very low returns, and these low returns left both the unwashed and the middle men in dire straights; The unwashed were in dire straights because the return they were used to getting went to zero after the middle men extracted their fees, and the middle men were in dire straights for the same reason - the return to the unwashed went to zero and this hosed the middle men because getting a zero return wasn’t something the unwashed needed a middle man for, a zero return was something they could get on their own.
So, what to do? The unwashed need a high return and so did the middle men.
Answer: Extend the risk out a bit (acutally, quite a bit). The middle man’s job was now to take the unwashes’ money (also know as a pile of OPM) and expose this pile of OPM to some very risky ventures in the hope (a word that always springs eternal) that a good return would be forthcoming, and they did this because THEY HAD NO OTHER CHOICE.
And while the Fed hopes this now-subject-to-high-risk money would somehow be converted into lots of jobs it instead was converted into lots of hefty price increases of assets that otherwise would not enjoy hefty price increases because the risk of not putting money to work pumping up prices of assets was greater than the risk on NOT pumping up prices of assets.
And, so here we are.
The Fed seems to operate under a misguided dogma that it can always steer assets to an ever-higher plateau through behind-the-scenes manipulation of prices and quantities (e.g. MBS purchases).
Wall Street knows better, but it is all good for them, as modern finance has delivered all the requisite tools to make money off periods of low volatility, high volatility, asset price increase, or asset price decline.
Mom and Pop 401(K) plan investor on Main Street are the marks, as they generally depend on traditional interest, dividend and capital gains to make any return on their investments. They are the ones the Fed beats off the fence into the path of Wall Street’s Panzer fleet, which is prepared to mow them down with massive losses, as happened from Fall 2008 through Spring 2009, even as the Fed bails out too-big-to-fail investment banks and hedge funds with low-interest loans that enable them to snap up devalued assets at fire sale prices. Plus those aforementioned tools of modern finance offer the potential to rake in the big bucks on asset price declines, even as Mom and Pop are dumping their stock market portfolios in order to keep their kids in shoes.
Small wonder the U.S. wealth distribution has recently achieved the greatest disparity since the 1920s, no?
Pres. E Warren, the first female version of Hitler. Countdown 3 years and two months. Prep for that.
She even lied about having Native American heritage to advance in academia. However, I think that Obamacare may have soured enough people with the left that she could not be elected, she will sound too much like Obama.
What’s left? Progressive Republican. President Romney with RomneyCare, which is a slightly weaker form of ObamaScare. Extension of ” Patriot Act.” and so on. It will be the start of the sixteenth year of George W Bush policies.
What’s left is the working man. We need a reeform candidate.
Groups of people like LGBTQ, Blacks, Hispanics etc need to ask themselves one question:
How will consistently voting for Authoritarian Marxists ultimately lead to the betterment of my race/group?
Because the rhetoric makes them feel good. Dedistribute the earnings from the straight white males at gunpoint.
Bill, now I have to disagree with you. The gang bangers have no problem with taking money from the gay white guys either. When it comes to robbery they do not discriminate based on gender.
Warren is Hitler?
And this is coming from a guy that worships his guns and gold?
My guns and gold are my defense against Hitlerism.
Why are you afraid of women?
I am not afraid of women. I am afraid of marriage.
“I am afraid of marriage.”
As I believe most men are.
see? now this guy sounds like my lost comrade.
“Hitler”
Whatever floats your boat.
you think he’s hitler?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
MightyMike. Please read the link. I know very much what Godwin’s law is and what it is not. What Godwin’s is not: a reference to a politician enacting fascist economics. what Godwin’s law is: it is the culmination of a long exchange between two or more people, most often on some Internet site when one participant accuses another participant of being like Hitler.
E. Warren is not a participant on these threads. E. Warren is a politician. E. Warren is very pro statist and a protege of the “progressive” establishment.
Therefore my statement is NOT an example of Godwin’s law.
Godwin’s Law is stupid.
Well, Adolf Hitler, like most people, was many things. He was a veteran of the first world war. He was also a vegetarian who was fond of dogs. Before he got into politics his ambition was to become a painter.
When you compare Elizabeth Warren to Hitler, I assume that it has nothing to do with any of those aspects of his life. I assume that you must be thinking of his actions that are more widely known. Those would be his launching of a world war which killed millions of people and his additional programs which slaughtered millions of other people due to their religion, race or disability.
Unless you can provide some evidence showing that Senator Warren would like to start a world war or kill large numbers of civilians in cold blood, it would be unreasonable to compare her to Hitler.
Unless you can provide some evidence showing that Senator Warren would like to start a world war or kill large numbers of civilians in cold blood, it would be unreasonable to compare her to Hitler.
senator ‘tonto’ warren doesn’t want to start a war. she just doesn’t understand that the policies she likes inevitably lead to it. i think he means she’s like hitler because she’s a fascist. she just doesn’t understand that she’s a fascist. she’ll deny it. she wants to ‘do good’. but she can’t. forcing your will on innocents is always destructive and evil, no matter how good one’s intentions are.
i think he means she’s like hitler because she’s a fascist.
So you’re not sure what Bill’s trying to say either. Elizabeth Warren is something of a rising star in the Democratic Party. If Bill wants to criticize her in a way that would make a meaningful contribution to the conversation that occurs on this blog, it would be best to write about the policies that she proposes and why he doesn’t like them. It would good to be specific and not rely on words then end in -ism or -ist.
TJ you are exactly right. MightyMike you don’t see the words “fascist economics” when you read them.
There is a high correlation between big government and mass murder.
E Warren may smile and be a woman, but there have been women in history who turned out to be “witches.”
Bureaucracy has a strange antiseptic way of disguising mass murder. There are lists out on internet about the deaths Bill Clinton ordered. No less than ten, some of them members of his own cabinet, like the guy who was head of chamber of commerce. But the progressive media arm of the state painted rosy pictures and so on about these things so most Americans scoffed.
Things like that happen and will happen in the future.
“you think he’s hitler?”
No. But your posts do remind me of Paul Joseph Goebbels.
If you want to talk about mass murder under Bill Clinton, there are better examples. For example, out armed forces have been involved with Iraq for over 20 years now. During the Clinton administration, we enforced sanctions and a no-fly zone in Iraq, which made it difficult for them to recover from the first war. There was UN report that estimated that hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children died as a result.
Another example was in Turkey. During the 1990s, the Turkish government was carrying out a campaign of suppressing the Kurdish separatist movement. Many thousands of people were killed, including non-combatants, people were tortured, thousands of villages were destroyed and over a million became refugees. In 1997 Clinton massively increased military aid to Turkey, in effect endorsing their crimes against humanity.
No. But your posts do remind me of Paul Joseph Goebbels.
oh.. why?
‘If you want to talk about mass murder under Bill Clinton’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright
‘On May 12, 1996, Albright defended UN sanctions against Iraq on a 60 Minutes segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” and Albright replied “we think the price is worth it.”
Yeah, half million dead is worth it. This is your interventionist policy at work.
“oh.. why?”
Do you even OWN a mirror?
Do you even OWN a mirror?
so you can’t tell me why i remind you of geobbels?
This is your interventionist policy at work.
I didn’t introduce that atrocity into the discussion because I approved of it. I happen to think that killing large numbers of children is not a good idea.
Was the Fed pretty much responsible for every major U.S. economic crisis of the 20th century?
Not to mention the movement of the stars, the moon and the sun? (The latter question is based on their own attitude regarding their self-importance to the successful operation of the U.S. economy…)
November 22, 2013
Janet Yellen and the Fed’s Boom-and-Bust Problem
Posted by Kirk Kardashian
The Senate Banking Committee voted 14–8 on Thursday to send Janet Yellen’s nomination for Federal Reserve chair to the full Senate, putting Yellen much closer to becoming the leader of the most powerful central bank in the world.
Last week, Yellen was asked at her confirmation hearing if the Fed’s unprecedented run of accommodative monetary policies—an interest rate for banks close to zero per cent, and a monthly purchase of eighty-five billion dollars’ worth of mortgage bonds and Treasury securities—might be leading to a bubble in asset prices.
“The objective here is to assure a strong and robust recovery so that we get back to full employment,” Yellen said. “Stock prices have risen pretty robustly,” she allowed, but she didn’t “see stock prices in territory that suggests bubble-like conditions.” (She also said that it is important for the Fed to try to detect asset bubbles, and that if she saw one, she would work to address it.) Wall Street expressed its approval by sending the stock market higher as the confirmation hearing went on.
The news about Yellen comes as a well-timed film about the Fed has been making the rounds. “Money For Nothing: Inside the Federal Reserve,” a documentary written, directed, and produced by Jim Bruce, examines the Fed since its creation in 1913 through interviews with financial historians, economists, investors, and current and former Fed personnel, and largely blames the Fed for the 2008 financial crisis. Bruce, thirty-nine years old, is an L.A.-based filmmaker who played professional hockey in Europe. During the tech bubble of the late nineties, he invested his savings, about ten thousand dollars, in stocks; the value rose five-fold, then the bubble burst, and he walked away with barely more than his initial investment. When the next bull market came around, in 2007, he shorted stocks of firms in the banking and real-estate industries. The profits he made from those investments covered most of the budget for “Money For Nothing.”
“My motivation for making the film is that I felt the Fed did not learn the correct lessons from the 2008 financial crisis,” Bruce said. “I think they thought too much about the crisis being the problem. A different way of thinking about it is all the behaviors leading up to the crisis were the problems.”
Indeed, the film blames the Fed not only for ineffectively responding to crises but for helping to cause some of them in the first place—arguing, for instance, that ahead of the 1929 stock-market crash the Fed kept interest rates too low for too long. In the late nineteen-sixties, as government spending on the Vietnam War and Great Society programs helped fuel massive inflation, the Fed should have raised rates sooner, the film argues, but failed to do so, helping to lead to stagflation in the seventies, when unemployment and inflation rose at the same time.
Bruce also joins the chorus of Fed critics who argue that the institution helped create the current economic crisis. Alan Greenspan, an advocate of free markets, had been appointed to his first term as Fed chair in August of 1987. When the market crashed two months later, Greenspan lowered rates and probably prevented a larger collapse. The dot-com bubble popped in 2000, and Greenspan again softened the crash with aggressive interest-rate cuts. All of this, the film suggests, may have helped fuel the subprime-mortgage crisis. When Lehman Brothers failed in 2008 and threatened to sink the financial system, the job of cleaning up the mess went to Greenspan’s successor, Ben Bernanke. Since interest rates were already low, the Fed in 2008 began its series of quantitative-easing interventions—a practice that continues today.
Few would deny that the Fed has made mistakes; “Money For Nothing,” however, goes too far by suggesting that the Fed not only responded inadequately to economic crises but, in fact, almost single-handedly caused most of the big crises of the past century. As David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal put it, “The Depression? The Fed’s fault. The Internet stock bubble? The Fed’s doing. The housing boom and bust? You guess it. The Fed’s fault. The Fed played a big role, for sure, but there were a few other things going on at the same time.” What about the role of banks? Government regulators? Consumers? (Indeed, with montages of advertisements for glistening Rolex watches and shiny Bentley convertibles, the film critiques the ravenous American consumer culture that has pushed consumption to a level that represents nearly seventy per cent of G.D.P., in addition to the U.S. government, which has incurred more debt relative to the size of the economy than it has since the Second World War.)
…
The higher ed bubble is popping:
“A growing number of colleges nationwide are scrambling to fill classes, a trend analysts say is driven by a decline in the number of students graduating from high school and widespread concern among families about the price of higher education.
The admissions upheaval at schools ranging from lower-tier colleges to esteemed regional ones, including St. Mary’s College of Maryland, contrasts with the extraordinary demand for the most elite colleges and universities.
Demographics pose a major hurdle for many colleges that market primarily to high school students. The number of new high school graduates peaked in 2011, after 17 years of growth, and is not projected to reach a new high until 2024, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. Analysts and educators expect that a rising share of incoming students will need major financial aid.
The economic recovery is also hurting enrollment because fewer people go to college when jobs are available. According to state data released this week, Maryland colleges have 2.8 percent fewer students this fall, the second straight year of decline and the sharpest annual drop in 30 years.
Nationwide, college enrollment fell about 2 percent this past school year.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/st-marys-college-of-maryland-joins-troubling-trend-too-many-empty-freshman-seats/2013/11/22/2fd1f8c0-489a-11e3-b6f8-3782ff6cb769_story.html
“The higher ed bubble is popping:”
The demographic trend which was already developing with the aging wave of Baby Boomers, exacerbated by century-low birth rates in the wake of the Great Recession, have pretty much baked that into the cake.
One data point: My 16-year-old (HS junior) son reports that he regularly receives unsolicited recruitment emails from colleges and universities all across the country.
Two data points. We get the same from colleges we have never heard of. I think the colleges get a mailing list of all the high school kids writing the SAT
It’s hard to tell whether you are looking at the effects of desperation or those of cheap advertising costs.
That’s nothing new. I got stuff like that when I was in high school. Of course, in those days it was snail mail.
Glad to see they are slashing prices to help them fill those seats.
Methinks that more than a few, 30K+ per year, second tier private schools will fold. How anyone can afford them is beyond me. Heck, the 9K State U’s charge is more than most can affords.
When I was a kid, I remember teens mowing neighbors’ lawns to “Save for college”. Today, assuming they could get $10 for mowing a lawn, they’d have to mow 1000 lawns to pay for one year’s tuition at state.
Here’s the ideal smart college-age “kid” I would be proud to be a father of: 1) Work part time jobs as a teen to save for college; 2) Attended 2 years of a community college for general education courses; 3) Obtained an engineering degree at a state university the last two years; and after college 4) rent a room in a city where the job is and close to work and 5) start saving in stock index funds as much as possible in the early 20s. Very little debt. The books the major expense.
Life in your 20s sux doesn’t it? No aches and pains, full head of hair that is not silver or white, ability to recover quickly from lots of beers with the friends, and high metabolism.
I wish I was the ideal smart college-age “kid” that I would be proud to be a father of. Well I did go to a state university for my BA and my MS. Used the same math books and computer science books the Ivy league students used but without the stupid tuition.The dumbest thing I ever did was buy a house in 1990 but I learned from it. I should have rented a room the first eleven years of my career. My roommate after I moved 11 years into my career told me he never paid more than $100 per month rent where he lived. And he had lots of money. Smart money guy.
I don’t buy their thesis that few people are going to college because of the job recovery.
I think all of the kids that have been hiding out in college since 2008 are having to leave.
I’m still confused about the act of printing dollar bills saving the economy.
Think about it for a minute. These dollar bills really cost nothing to create and they are only paper. In reality they don’t do much printing at all but credit accounts on computers. Somehow the act of creating more dollar bills is suppose to lead us to prosperity.
So how does this act of creating all these dollar bills create wealth?
If someone personally created paper currency backed by nothing and wanted to trade it to you for goods or services you would laugh at them. You would not trade something of value for something somebody just made on a piece of paper.
So if you had a 100,000.00 in gold that you mined out of the ground with your own labor and equipment would you trade it for 100,000.00 in dollar bills directly with the FED who just created the money?
Are they really dollar bills, or just the fiat money equivalent of Bitcoin, though without the fantastic story about the cyber elves who mine it at a carefully controlled rate so that not too much can ever go into circulation?
If I sold my house to a penniless millennial with a government guarantee wouldn’t the money enter the economy with my wine, women and skydiving purchases?
chance are that the loan was put together from depositors money, so when it’s spent into the economy it’s net neutral. same amount goes out that went it.
went ‘in’ it.
But the fed.gov [is] the mortgage market, IIRC.
“So if you had 100,000.00 in gold that you mined out of the ground with your own labor and equipment would you trade it for 100,000.00 in dollar bills directly with the FED who just created the money?”
This is done every day, but not exactly done the way you described it - the gold isn’t traded for dollars specifically from the FED, but the gold ends up being traded for dollars anyway. And this is because places of commerce are set up with cash registers and not gold registers.
If the medium of exchange are dollars then dollars are what you will end up using for an exchange. Go to another country and the medium of exchange would probably be in the form of some other currency, and this currency would most likely be printed up just as dollars are printed up.
I tell you one thing though. I don’t hear a lot of people at work complaining about their 401k portfolio. May be that was the goal.
“So if you had a 100,000.00 in gold that you mined out of the ground with your own labor and equipment would you trade it for 100,000.00 in dollar bills directly with the FED who just created the money?”
Probably not, as apparently $100,000.00 in dollar bills are far more liquid than their equivalent in gold. For instance, I doubt you could even carry out your proposed trade in real terms; you’d have to sell the gold to a dealer.
I agree only in the sense that I would prefer that gold to be in the form of tenth ounce or quarter ounce eagles.
I am able to stuff 41 quarter ounce gold eagles into my pill bottle. On Monday I can drive into L.A. to my favorite dealer with that pill bottle and walk out with $12,997.
Or I can do that today at the dealers I know in Orange County or San Diego that are open Saturdays.
I am not impressed with Bitcoin - yet. I think there will be a better alternative electronic currency at some point. I would like to see a good garden variety of competing electronic currencies with pure anonymous cash capability before I participate. By anonymous cash, it would be a way to get paid for labor without your address information being known. That would be the end of the income tax.
I have a question about bitcoin that maybe the board can answered. As I understand bitcoin is created by solving a problem and because it takes computing power to solve the problem, there is some value in the bit coin. While it is better than just printing money, since computing power is dropping in cost would not bitcoin drop in price over the long term? My second problem is bitcoin only seems to have value due to the cost of creating it. Gold on the other hand has intrinsic value since it does have both industrial and consumer demand outside its role as money. The final problem I have with bitcoin is it does not seem that it would be too hard to devise a computer program to destroy bitcoin or at least track it which is much harder to do with physical gold.
As I understand bitcoin is created by solving a problem and because it takes computing power to solve the problem, there is some value in the bit coin.
things don’t have value for the sole reason that there is labor involved. if you dug a hole for months for the exercise, would the hole have value because you labored for it?
The final problem I have with bitcoin is it does not seem that it would be too hard to devise a computer program to destroy bitcoin or at least track it which is much harder to do with physical gold.
bitcoin has nothing behind it. the labor to create it is useless. there is no country backing it. there is no commodity backing it. there is no money backing it. the only value it has is as a speculation. and when the speculation fails..
1) There is a finite amount of Bitcoins that can be mined
2) Regular computers are worthless in mining Bitcoins now as they use more electricity than they produce.
3) ASICs are now used and they can be pricey.
http://www.bitcoinx.com/bitcoin-mining-hardware/
As with gold miners, it is easier to make money selling hardware to Bitcoin miners.
As you can tell TJ I agree with your post. You would have to whac(ked) not to agree.
1) There is a finite amount of Bitcoins that can be mined
2) Regular computers are worthless in mining Bitcoins now as they use more electricity than they produce.
3) ASICs are now used and they can be pricey.
none of this means that bitcoins should have any value.
the time will come when bitcoin miners will be stomping their feet shouting “it cost us lots of electricity to get these!”.. no one will care.
As for asteroid mining, it is decades off. And once they start mining there are a lot of other issues to work with. There are approximately 1500 asteroids in the inner belt and over 9000 in the belt itself. Are humans going to be out there mining? Big labor costs and insurance costs. Robots? Well that itself takes high tech that does not exist. The first thing they will do is extract water from the asteroids. The gold, platinum, and silver mining will be more years away.
The Chinese and Indians are smart to use gold as insurance and a store of wealth. Physical gold trades are virtually untraceable. Sometime in the future some wine enthusiast will trade a tenth oz coin for one of my mid-priced Bordeaux wines. I will prefer the gold over bitcoin.
Bitcoins are as useful gold.
Bitcoins are as useful gold.
not quite, comrade. can you use bitcoins as electronic contacts in space. can you fill your teeth with them?
Why do people trade gold for pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents on them?
It’s all insanity!
Why do people trade gold for pieces of paper with pictures of dead presidents on them?
because dollars are created with value. did you know that nickels, dimes, quarters and pennies are all fiat currency also?
I think nickels are worth in raw materials more than 5 cents, so nickels are not fiat currency.
I think nickels are worth in raw materials more than 5 cents
so are pennies and 20 gold eagles. they are all fiat currencies.
so nickels are not fiat currency.
yes, they are. fiat currencies have nothing to do with their intrinsic value.
20 ‘dollar’ gold eagles.
So how does this act of creating all these dollar bills create wealth?
our dollars aren’t created like you think they are.
The HBB’s resident philosopher provides yet another useless non-answer.
and HBB’s resident serial ad hominem poster posts another.
I’ll never surpass your masterful propaganda skills at ducking, weaving, lying or misrepresenting whatever the topic is.
another masterful lie by the propaganda bloviating, serial ad hominem poster boy.
Did you hold the mirror up to your face yet? I didn’t think so.
you never do.
When you use the words “100,000.00 in gold” that assumes that the gold is worth $100,000. IOW, the amount of gold in question is worth a thousand pieces of paper with Ben Franklin’s picture on them.
realtors are liars
23 November 2013 Last updated at 05:59 ET
China establishes ‘air-defence zone’ over East China Sea
Islands in the East China Sea, called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese The Senkaku/Diaoyu islands have been a source of tension between China and Japan for decades
China has demarcated an “air-defence identification zone” over an area of the East China Sea, covering islands that are also claimed by Japan.
China’s Defence Ministry said aircraft entering the zone must obey its rules or face “emergency defensive measures”.
The islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, are a source of rising tension between the countries.
Japan lodged a strong protest over what it said was an “escalation”.
The confrontation between China and Japan in the East China Sea has been building for more than a year and neither side shows any sign of backing down. China’s declaration of an air-defence identification zone threatens to expand what has largely been a maritime contest into the air.
In recent weeks, China has flown bombers and a drone close to Japanese territory, prompting Japan to scramble fighter jets. Beijing is now warning that it too could send up fighters if Japanese planes enter the disputed area.
Both sides have been careful to avoid clashes in the area and the contest has so far been largely confined to rhetoric and games of cat and mouse between coastguard vessels. But China’s tactic of persistently challenging Japanese sovereignty in the area has proved counter productive as Japan moves to bolster its own military posture.
“Setting up such airspace unilaterally escalates the situations surrounding Senkaku islands and has danger of leading to an unexpected situation,” Japan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
…
Linked from Drudge:
“The price of electricity hit a record for the month of October, according to data released Wednesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That made October the eleventh straight month when the average price of electricity hit or matched the record level for that month.
The average price of electricity in October was 13.2 cents per kilowatt hour (KWH), up from 12.8 cents per KWH in October 2012—and up from 9.3 cents per KWH in October 2003.
Americans now pay 42 percent more for electricity than they did a decade ago.”
Hey Goonmeister, just curious, how much are you paying in Denver? I’m paying 8.6 cents in the “Sweetheart City”. We were paying 5.7 cents 10 years ago.
Interesting question, because I never actually look at the .pdf of the bill. I just did so for the last month and it was a total of $25.76 for 166 kwh, so $0.155 per kwh.
My highest bills in the summer when I’m running the A/C 24/7 are close to $70.
Interesting. I wonder why it’s so much cheaper in Loveland.
That’s the total bill including taxes and all the other junk. I don’t know what the actual rate for the juice is.
There’s usually a flat fee around $10 or $20 per month that is added to the charge that is based on the total kWh. If you divide the bill amount by amount of electricity used, it has a big effect on those who live in small places and don’t use much power.
it has a big effect on those who live in small places and don’t use much power.
exactly Mike. it punishes the small user that tries to save power. they ’say’ they want you to save power, and then they punish you for doing it.
Yet the service is increasingly unreliable.
Why the hell do I have to pay $30/mth for zero use when I can’t rely on it?
We’re ratepayers…. not customers.
Yet the service is increasingly unreliable.
when i was living in mexico, their power was more than twice as reliable as the USA. i couldn’t believe it, but it’s true.
The idea is that there are certain costs involved in serving customers that are not related to the amount of power used by the customer. These are things like reading your meter, printing and mailing out your bill, and providing customer service people to answer your calls. Those costs are the essentially the same for a single person living in small apartment as they are for a family of six living in a McMansion.
So, in a certain sense, it could be considered to be reasonable. On the other hand, it does reduce the incentive quite a bit for some people to conserve energy.
BULLSH*T.
Thats what the monthly “fee” is for. reliability. There is no defense for this. NONE.
I should have noted that the hell these utilities in New England are putting everyone through. Outages far more frequent, outage durations are over the top…. weeks at a time.
Here’s a deal for you. I’ll drop my personal vendetta and campaign against electric utilities if you and they pool $2500 and send to me for reimbursement for the genset I had to buy because their service is so friggin’ unreliable anymore.
when i was living in mexico, their power was more than twice as reliable as the USA. i couldn’t believe it, but it’s true.
We were looking at a project in Madawaska, ME…. directly across from Edmunston, New Brunswick. Kicked around both cities for a few hours. Madawaska was dreary….. people looked run down as did the entire city. Went across the bridge to the edmunston to review the other part of the project for the same client(proposed piping systems traversing the river to a proposed co-gen plant) and what a world of difference. Streets are clean…. people well dressed..
the USA is slowly turning into a socialist hellhole. i don’t think we can stop it. i think the socialists are going to win. which means in the end that we all lose..
I am paying 9.7 cents / kw for wind and solar in Dallas.
I was stuck with a provider that charged .15 cents / kwh for a while.
Luckily for the electric providers, Texas moved to a “free market” 13 years ago and now leads the nation in electricity prices.
I’m paying $0.037/kw-hr up here by the Columbia river.
It is great to have abundant cheap hydro but Texas does not have that resource. It does have wind but wind power is not cheap power, at least for now:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump Wind power in Texas consists of many wind farms with a total installed nameplate capacity of 12,212 MW[1] from over 40 different projects. Texas produces the most wind power of any U.S. state.[1] The wind boom in Texas was assisted by expansion of the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard, use of designated Competitive Renewable Energy Zones, expedited transmission construction, and the necessary Public Utility Commission rule-making.[2]
Wind power accounted for 9.2% of the electricity generated in Texas during 2012.[3]
Going green takes the green. However to be fair green power is getting closer to being competitive.
More Drudge:
“There have been seven so-called “knockout” or “polar bear” assaults in the Crown Heights and Midwood sections of Brooklyn since October, Kelly said Wednesday. The alternate name “polar bearing” comes from the fact that the victims are white.
Councilman David Greenfield said the attacks have targeted Jewish people, with victims ranging from a 12-year-old boy to a 78-year-old woman.
“These are anti-Semitic knockout attacks and it’s not a game,” said Councilman David Greenfield, who is calling on the men arrested early Friday morning to face gang assault charges.”
Even “real journalists” from the New York Times reporting on this trend now:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/nyregion/knockout-game-a-spreading-menace-or-a-myth.html
Giving All Americans a Basic Income Would End Poverty
Yup. I am expecting Yellin to make a monthly direct deposit on my checking account starting next year.
You must be a home owner.
With BenYellin in charge I wish I was. Although I would have sold my house few months ago if I had owned one. This sucker is going down.
Does ‘Basic Income’ mean a job with pay, or just the pay?
“Does ‘Basic Income’ mean a job with pay, or just the pay?”
Just the pay.
Google ‘Basic Income’ and tell me what you think.
I was just clarifying what you meant by “Income,” as some people oddly enough associate that term with working.
Yeah, I know what it should mean.
“No work, no eat, no welfare, no retirement. I would run everyone and everything for my own survival. And if other countries didn’t do what I say, I’d blow it all up and start over. Reseed the earth with zoos. Give the world back to the bugs.” Charles Manson.
“I would run everyone and everything for my own survival.”
As much as I admire Charles Manson for his ability to influence others to do his dirty work for him I still think he is stuck in Old School thinking. The idea of doing whatever, to do some extracting for one’s own survival isn’t the Old School part; The Old School part is the idea that one needs to “run everyone and everything” in order to to this extracting, to do some extracting for one’s own survival.
If one is to profit the most while at the same time expending the least amount of energy while doing this profiting then he needs to leave the concept of “running everyone and everything” to somebody else, to somebody that enjoys all of this running of everybody and everything (and, believe me, there is no shortage of these type of people in the world).
The way to profit the most is not to think of running things - to run everyone and everything in order to create wealth. Instead the way to profit the most is to extract wealth after it has already been created - after it has already been created by somebody else, somebody else who likes to run everyone and everything.
They create, you extract a chunk of what they create.
It’s as simple as that.
In California we have something called General Relief (GR) which supplies to the indigent a basic income.
Google it.
Which leads to the thought that crossed my mind, which was, “If you want a Basic Income, move to California.”
They came, they saw, they conquered.
Where’s Riotard?
He’s a lib and I expect him to want his wealth redistributed to the street urchins outside his “hacienda”
Copping tricks just out of sight of the streetcam.
How do we know that phony scandals is not Rio, who is too ashamed to post after his beat down, using his other screen name?
How do we know that phony scandals is not Rio
because mr. scandals political view is not anywhere near rio’s. i’m sure mr. scandals would be insulted to think anyone thought he was rio.
“i’m sure mr. scandals would be insulted to think anyone thought he was rio.”
Nah, I don’t get insulted very easy. Besides I like Rio, he knows The Unknown Comic.
Besides I like Rio, he knows The Unknown Comic.
not enough of a redemption for me.
jiminy cripps….. you got your character mixed up ABQdan.
ehhh… ya know…. Liberace seems to get his characters cross-wired too.
Sure hope you are not confusing me with Liberace. I was away from the blog for months so I have not read enough of phony’s posts to know his or her ideology but if he/she is not in to cross dressing he or she is not Rio.
No no….
I was commenting on the fact that you got Phony Scandals confused with the cross-dressing Lola.
Carry on brother.
“so I have not read enough of phony’s posts to know his or her ideology but if he/she is not in to cross dressing he or she is not Rio.”
I am a lesbian trapped in a man’s body.
Actually, most straight men are at least some times.
It occurred to me that the “Rio” part doesn’t refer to Rio de Janeiro but to the Rio Grande. I think s/he’s very ant-immigration. Closing the gate behind him/her? He really tried to bait someone into a racial discussion the other day calling dan or tj a bigot I think.
Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand
Just like that river twisting through a dusty land
Currently 8:30 pm Rio time, will soon be soused and posting with abandon.
I think he might be vacationing in Vancouver:
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/11/22/Public-Masturbation-on-the-Rise-in-Vancouver
“Giving All Americans a Basic Income Would End Poverty”
Giving All Americans a Basic Income Would End the need to work and make the nation poorer.
This is the problem we face now, not poverty. We have a ridiculously high standard of living even the poorest. The not working part will be our demise. Anyone who shows up on time and is reliable can get a job and advance somewhat. But that is a skill. And it isn’t taught by anyone but parents.
Even the skill of showing up for work has been greatly eroded by the handout mentality of the nanny state socialists.
The tremendous work ethic of many illegal immigrants is why I am so conflicted on the issue of immigration. If we could deal with the benefits for both citizens and everyone else, the illegals would eat many American’s lunch.
If we could deal with the benefits for both citizens and everyone else, the illegals would eat many American’s lunch.
i know how you feel. if we ended all government handouts and subsidies, and returned to those ‘evil’ free markets, the wealth of the country would grow so fast that it would be easy to be generous with those that for various reasons can’t work. it’s how we used to be. but the wealth is starting to disappear. everyone is going to worry about protecting their own wealth. little for generosity will be available. it’s going to be a bitter spiral down.
Anyone who shows up on time and is reliable can get a job and advance somewhat
There is plenty of evidence that contradicts that statement.
Walmart opens temporary hiring center in Ontario
ONTARIO >> Walmart has opened a temporary hiring center to handle the influx of applications it will be receiving for the more than 300 job openings for its future supercenter store in the northwest part of town.
Officials have already received 1,400 applications in the first two months that online filing has been available. Since the hiring center has been in operation, the number has been climbing each day, said Mario Guajardo, Ontario Walmart store manager.
And if other Walmart store openings can serve as indicators, officials expect the number to grow.
In San Diego, Walmart received 4,000 applications for only 65 openings, he said.
http://www.dailybulletin.com/general-news/20130807/walmart-opens-temporary-hiring-center-in-ontario
That’s the same old lieberal mantra. I just don’t buy it and I have no doubt that of those applications many are sent in just to comply with some benefit scheme requirement. So applications don’t equal people who want a job, particularly not for online filed applications where every person waning a job can fill out 50 applications. Many others are from people who are not ones who will show up on time and are reliable. And that is why they do not get hired. Judging by the employees at most any Walmart I’ve seen, someone who is willing to show up and is reliable would be in the top 10 percent. I’ve worked many menial jobs and those two qualities would always get you a job.
But maybe I left one thing out, or should be more explicit, that they also are able to pass a drug test and have no criminal record. I considered that part of being reliable.
They don’t want jobs, they want benefits.
They might but their children lack the work ethic their parents had but still have the low IQ. This makes them very different from the Cubans that fled Castro and the Vietnamese that fled their communist government. They worked menial positions but their children were professionals. These immigrants work hard at menial jobs but their children turn to crime and/or at least government handouts.
What do you mean by “these immigrants”?
“Giving All Americans a Basic Income Would End Poverty”
Big Macs would double or triple in price, and poverty would still exist.
poverty would still exist.
exactly.
“giving all Americans a basic income would end poverty.”
It is ended. The poorest Americans are wealthier than middle class people in many nations. Also “giving” requires taking. And the inevitable outcome of altruism is taking by gunpoint. Most people call that taxation, and we’ve had this since 1913. Yawn.
Saturday, 19 October 2013 06:06
The US is no longer Paramount Economic Power
Capitalism has entered a terminal stage of acute and escalating crises and the Lords of Capital (the “markets”) are pure gamblers who have transformed the global financial marketplace into a machinery of perpetual uncertainty, in which all the wealth of the world is bet many times over by people who don’t actually own it, in a casino whose operators scheme against each other as well as their patrons, most of whom are not even aware that they are in the game. The artificial and highly inflated value of the US dollar – which in fact, has for decades had no real backing, other than the world’s belief in America’s strength. But by now, most of the world realizes that the only strength that Washington can stand for is brute military force. Its economy depends on wars and conflicts around the world. The US economy is indeed based on destruction – not construction. Accounting for all associated industries and services, way more than 50% of the US GDP consists of the American military industrial and security complex. The rest is consumption of goods made abroad, many of them in the BRICS countries, and of values of services blown out of proportion. Derivatives are valued at six times more than the total accumulated wealth of the world.
The size of the US financial markets (esp. financial derivatives markets) is in the hundreds of trillions of dollars dwarfing the US gross national product. There is no way to avert a collapse if the BRICS pull the rug from under the US market. The mere sight of the BRICS’ actions should have a liberating effect on the mindset of national leaders who grew accustomed to the idea that American economic hegemony is eternal and invulnerable. In this scenario, the Eurozone breakup becomes almost inevitable because the mechanisms of economic coercion employed by the European Commission will be “jammed” by the ensuing crisis. Without firing a single shot, the BRICS and their allies can start a chain reaction of financial liberation in Europe and around the world.
http://english.irib.ir/programs/item/165688-the-us-is-no-longer-paramount-economic-power - 45k
One debt based financial economy is taken over other debt based financial economies…..we all know how that ends.
All your base are belong to NSA:
“Officials at the National Security Agency, intent on maintaining its dominance in intelligence collection, pledged last year to push to expand its surveillance powers, according to a top-secret strategy document.
In a February 2012 paper laying out the four-year strategy for the N.S.A.’s signals intelligence operations, which include the agency’s eavesdropping and communications data collection around the world, agency officials set an objective to “aggressively pursue legal authorities and a policy framework mapped more fully to the information age.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/us/politics/nsa-report-outlined-goals-for-more-power.html?pagewanted=all
From the article:
“Intent on unlocking the secrets of adversaries, the paper underscores the agency’s long-term goal of being able to collect virtually everything available in the digital world. To achieve that objective, the paper suggests that the N.S.A. plans to gain greater access, in a variety of ways, to the infrastructure of the world’s telecommunications networks.”
They haven’t quite intimidated the American populace into a post-First Amendment hush just yet, but they are making great strides in that direction.
Once a few of those captured phone calls are leaked it will.
“aggressive pursue legal authorities”
Which is easy to do if you get to listen in on these legal authorities and learn where the bodies are buried.
I have no doubt that Obama and other senior politicians are fully aware of that.
/still waiting for Obama’s “conversation” about the NSA spying.
‘Manias, Panics and ObamaCare Crashes
A reader’s guide to the coming Affordable Care Act traumas.’
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304439804579206290376860788
Boy, have all the HBB Sad Panda’s fled or gone quiet on this debacle. It brings to mind one constant; socialism sounds great. It does! We all throw our money into a big pot, Uncle Sam hands it out, and we’re all the better for it. Think about what we’ve been told here. We’ll all live better lives. Our corporations will be more competitive and profitable. Contentment will spread across the land, because we have surrendered to the beneficent State.
Funny how it never works out that way.
Obamacare is not socialism. Obamacare is corporate welfare for insurance companies.
And Canada is still a capitalist economy, last I checked.
‘corporate welfare for insurance companies’
Read the article. Insurance companies will be losing money, and they wrote the darn thing!
Here’s something to think about. The Chamber of Commerce is the most socialist bunch of teat suckers you’ll ever meet. When I went to business school in college, all they taught was socialist crap. Yesterday, posters here were discussing central bank printing. Will it slow? What to do? When I studied economics, there is nothing but some version of Keynesian economics taught. Heck, they don’t even mention any other school of economics, in the business schools!
We are so far down the road of government dominance, we don’t even consider that giant government versus mega-giant government isn’t really a choice. Now you can say, corporations! Just who is it that protects a bunch of billionaires, that own the Fed, print money at will, in secret? No audits, no scrutiny. Who’s protecting that racket? It ain’t the people out here in the fields.
I think the insurance companies went overboard on crafting the policies people can buy thru Obamacare.
They are really really bad. It could be only people who know they need a costly procedure are signing up for them.
Corporate welfare is nothing other than fascism, technically. It’s Fascism without the death camps (…so far).
Agreed. Obama by extending the deadline for insurance companies to set their rates has just made a party admission that rates are going to be much higher next year.
Isn’t it the complete opposite of Fascism?
Under Fascism, the government controls the companies. Under Crony Capitalism, the companies control the government.
How can you tell when Corzine was a Senator was he the government controlling business or vice versa?
Under Fascism, the government controls the companies.
under tyrannies like fascism/socialism/communism, government is always in control. even when they are bought off, they are still in control.
Under Crony Capitalism, the companies control the government.
read about ‘capture theory’ on the internet.
crony capitalism is only possible because government has grown beyond constitutional limitations.
Under Crony Capitalism, elected government officials work for the Corporations and receive their salaries in campaign contributions.
Under Crony Capitalism, elected government officials work for the Corporations and receive their salaries in campaign contributions.
how does that change anything about the ‘capture theory’ comrade?
why have you changed your name?
You have to be a complete sociopath like their leader to come out and defend the debacle. It’s heartwarming to see that most sad pandas in this blog still have a heart.
Obamacare is corporate welfare for insurance companies.
which is totally impossible without a powerful big government writing regulations for them.
‘Officials were adamant that they have no plans to extend the ultimate deadline of March 31, 2014, the date when people without insurance must enroll in a plan or face a tax penalty.’
‘But with the first enrollment period barely off the ground, the Obama administration also has decided to delay enrollment for the second year of the program to give insurance companies more time to calculate rates, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.’
‘The delay will mean consumers will start shopping for insurance for Year Two of Obamacare on November 15, 2014 - more than a week after voters go to the polls for midterm elections, when congressional Democrats are expected to face tough questions about the policy they supported.’
http://news.yahoo.com/u-scrambles-boost-obamacare-enrollment-deadlines-loom-000836887–sector.html
there are a couple ways to defend yourself. the hardest is to live outside the country. if you’re retired that could be an option.
the other one is far easier.. but it might get taken away if enough people use it.
just declare yourself a christian. i don’t know what criteria they use, but being a christian gets you out of it.
Or Amish.
I will be the first atheist Christian
Actually there have been many just not at the same time.
So you still have time to become a Saint.
It is socialism’s 9/11.
I particularly relish the role of for-profit, private-sector, government contractors in all of this debacle. See also Washington Post piece in yesterday’s bits noting that contractors cost taxpayers over $500 billion a year.
just forbid the government from doing anything but defense that requires a private contractor.
better yet, get them out of doing anything except protecting citizens and their rights and property.
Interesting word “defense”, the way it is used.
If we had a War Department (which is what we used to have) then there would be a reason for a big outcry because who in their right mind wants to support a policy of war?
But since we have a Defense Department a policy of war can end up finding a lot of support because the actions taken by the Defense Department can be presented not as actions of war but instead they can be presented as actions of defense.
Kill them over there and we won’t have to kill them over here, or something like that.
“…just forbid the government from doing anything but defense that requires a private contractor.”
It’s amazing to see defense industry lobbyists posting right here on the HBB.
it’s amazing how much you think you know that you don’t.
tj sounds like another government contractor that posts on this board…hmmm….
tj sounds like another government contractor that posts on this board…hmmm….
how would you know that comrade? maybe you’ve posted here before? hmmm?
‘President Obama on Tuesday dismissed critics who call him a “socialist,” suggesting they meet some real socialists if they think he’s one.’
“People call me a socialist sometimes,” he said at the Wall Street Journal CEO Summit, addressing 100 top business leaders.’
“But, no, you gotta meet real socialists. You’ll have a sense of what a socialist is,” he said to laughter from the crowd.’
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2013/11/obama-scoffs-at-people-who-call-him-a-socialist-you-177886.html?ml=bp
“addressing 100 top business leaders…’you gotta meet real socialists’”
They’re standing there in front of you.
Re: The story about WalMart donation to employee boxes.
They had similar “donation boxes” for cash, at one of my former jobs. Nobody there was getting paid poverty wages.
The typical recipient was someone who had pissed away all his vacation and sick leave time, then actually got sick/hurt.
Send him to me, perhaps I can be of some help.
(BTW, what’s his blood type?)
I saw something a few days ago about donations for college aid for veterans. What happened to the G.I. bill?
There are more and more voluntary donation charities that do the job that gunpoint welfare does. We may as well abolish gunpoint welfare.
What used to be done by coercion is now done by persuasion.
What used to be done by coercion is now done by persuasion.
It is amazing how persuasive a M-4 can be.
I like my M4. It is in Arizona where I pay Arizona income taxes on all my California income and have a CCW. Take that, nanny state California!
My job allows me to donate sick leave and I have given a week away at a time. It is amazing how quickly some people can use leave.
To be fair the ladies exhaust their leave faster due to sick children.
That was meant to post under jetfix’s comment.
Brand new dishwasher installed now in my OC apartment. The price is right. Price of labor is right too. It is fun to be a renter and use my iPad to check the performance of my Vanguard funds while I get this installed. And listening to songs by The Eagles!
Owning sux don’t it?
As much as paying income tax to the state of California does.
True. But I have over $500,000 in my 401k and will be out of state no longer earning California income when I start distributions. And that is at the earliest five years and one week.
IOW California won’t be able to collect income taxes off my distributions.
More propaganda from Beacon Economics
“SLO County’s strong economic recovery expected to continue”
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2013/11/22/2798864/slo-countys-strong-economic-recovery.html
Commenter: “This can’t possibly be true, especially according to all the conservative naysayers out there! Prop. 30 raised taxes which they said would tank the economy, so these FACTS aren’t possibly true, right?”
An expectation regarding the future is not a fact.
First peanut butter and jelly and now this.
English school threatens to label kids racist for YEARS unless they attend Islam field trip
10:40 PM 11/22/2013
The headmistress at a primary school in a small town in England tried to order parents to send their children to a Nov. 27 workshop focused on Islam or else have the kids permanently labeled as racists for the rest of their academic careers.
On Wednesday, parents of children aged 8 to 11 received the stark warning in the form of a letter from Lynn Small, the headmistress at Littleton Green Community School in Huntington, Staffordshire — just over 20 miles from Birmingham.
The letter describes the field trip as part of a “statutory requirement” for kids “to learn about different cultures.”
“The workshop is at Staffordshire University and will give your child the opportunity to explore other religions,” Small pedantically explains. “Children will be looking at religious artefacts, similar to those that would be on display in a museum. They will not be partaking in any religious practices.”
Small then lays down the hammer for any parents who might be reticent about exposing their own kids to “other religions.”
“Refusal to allow your child to attend this trip will result in a Racial Discrimination note being attached to your child’s education record, which will remain on this file throughout their career.”
The headmistress also promises to investigate any absences closely “for their credibility.” She warns that anyone who skips the field trip had better produce a doctors’ note if they don’t want their kids tarred as racists for the next decade or so.
On top of all that, parents must pony up £5 (about $8) per kid for the Explore Islam trip.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/11/22/english-school-threatens-to-label-kids-racist-for-years-unless-they-attend-islam-field-trip/ -
Hey empty pocket LIEberals……
Screw you.
Have you sold your bonds yet?
Current Yield | SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2013
Waiting for Godot—and the Fed
By MICHAEL ANEIRO
The Treasury market twitches as Fed watchers read the runes of the last FOMC meeting.
We may have finally reached a point where the Federal Reserve has absolutely nothing new to tell us about its bond-buying program, short of ending it. Yet financial markets continue to hang on the Fed’s every word.
The one thing everybody’s waiting to hear, of course, is exactly when the Fed will start dialing back its $85 billion monthly Treasury and mortgage-bond purchases. Such specificity will arrive only when the Fed finally concludes a near-future policy committee meeting by stating that tapering will start now, instead of sometime soonish. Until then, we don’t really know that much more about the Fed’s plans than we did six months ago.
Bond markets aren’t letting that stop them from trying to glean something incrementally new from each Fed communiqué. Parsing Fed publications last week achieved levels previously reserved for Talmudic interpretation, when most market participants agreed that the minutes from the Fed’s October policy-committee meeting, released Wednesday, said almost nothing that we haven’t all heard before. Still, bonds sold off as markets saw hints that the Fed might—just might—be more prepared to taper at its next two-day meeting, which starts Dec. 17, if and only if incoming economic data between now and then warrant it.
The 10-year Treasury yield rose to a two-month high before settling at 2.76% on Friday from 2.71% a week earlier, per Tradeweb data, while the 30-year bond got hit even harder, with its yield a 27-month high before settling at 3.84%.
YOU’D THINK WE hadn’t gone through this drill before, when interest rates soared over the summer on expectations that the Fed would curtail its bond buys, only to retreat when the Fed surprised everyone by not tapering in September. Yet here we go again, with jittery markets pivoting on the slightest shift in expectations, even with the Fed’s next get-together still weeks away.
“Despite a very active communications policy, it seems that some market participants continue to be surprised by Fed stimulus plans,” was the simple observation of Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott.
…
China May Cut Back on Purchases of US Treasurys
Friday, 22 Nov 2013 07:45 AM
By Dan Weil
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has indicated it may curb its dollar buying, which could also mean a reduction in Chinese purchases of U.S. Treasurys.
China represents the largest foreign holder of Treasurys, with $1.29 trillion as of September, according to data from the Treasury Department.
Chinese authorities have bought dollars in the past to restrain the yuan’s appreciation and then used those dollars to buy Treasurys.
But, “it’s no longer in China’s favor to accumulate foreign-exchange reserves,” Yi Gang, a deputy governor of the PBOC, said in a speech Tuesday, Bloomberg reports.
Treasurys could suffer if the Chinese curb their buying of them, which totaled $25.7 billion in September.
“If they are looking to reduce these purchases going forward, then you’d have to look at who the marginal buyer would be,” Richard McGuire, a senior rate strategist at Rabobank, tells CNBC.
“Together, with the Federal Reserve tapering its bond purchases, it has the potential to add to the bearish long-term outlook on U.S. Treasurys.”
Chinese buying has likely subtracted 40 basis points from Treasury yields in recent years, Kit Juckes, head of foreign exchange strategy at Societe Generale, tells CNBC.
If China diminishes its Treasury acquisitions, “yields won’t shoot up, the curve is too steep for that,” he explains. “But the chances of seeing 3 percent 10-year [Treasury] yields by Christmas have increased.” The 10-year yield stood at 2.78 percent Thursday.
…
Ten year yields of 3% is a good start. I have some 5% ten year notes, and those are great! Ironically the yield on new ten year notes when these mature might be 5% again!
Until then I will “throw away” $13,000 per year on T-bills. I might be at the point of having $91,000 in t-bills before ten year notes are 4% yielding. But at that point I will shift to two year notes.
What about the effect of tapering combined with China reducing treasuries?
Won’t that Use up more of that “precious” revenue the eternal robbery service takes in? It would put pressure on other government programs to downsize or pressure government to confiscate our 401ks. when has our government downsized? Probably only during the 1930s.
I like the idea of being a creditor to the thugernment, as well as stacking movable, hidable bullion.
If the thugernment confiscates my electronic treasuries, and those of other people, that is tantamount to defaulting. And no, by golly, the government sure cannot default…
So I am thinking electronic treasuries are less likely to be confiscated than 401ks.
“Chinese authorities have bought dollars in the past…”
Sure, by exporting crappy goods to the US. Now their perpetual motion machine is hitting a speed bump. The shock wave will be a blow to our house of cards.
The shock wave will be a blow to our house of cards.
Maybe not.
What’s bad for China may be good for us. They may consume more American goods perhaps, if it ends up that American goods will be cheaper.
Differing economies do not always go lockstep.
Here’s the California scene according to Beacon Economics:
“In the last few years, the U.S. real estate market has turned the corner. Home prices, sales, construction, and home equity, to name a few measures, are all moving in the right direction. California’s real estate market, in particular, has been improving since 2010, evolving from one of the hardest-hit state markets during the housing crash to one of the leading markets in the nation. The root of this improvement is economic growth in various industries and regions, such as bio-tech in San Diego and Orange counties, computers and electronics throughout the Bay Area, and agriculture and tourism throughout the state. Another driver of this recovery is the fact that home prices have fallen to levels that line up with fundamentals again. Housing affordability has improved as home prices have dropped—home-buyers can purchase homes by drawing on more manageable shares of their incomes. Moreover, interest rates are near historical lows, and households have deleveraged in the wake of the Great Recession, which has brought the financial obligations ratio (the percentage of current income needed to finance current obligations) back into healthy territory as well. Nevertheless, one factor in the real estate market has remained a concern for many policymakers—foreclosures. In efforts to solve this problem, the state passed a series of bills known as the California Homeowner Bill of Rights (CHBR) in July 2012. The CHBR, which became effective in January 2013, was passed to protect homeowners who were struggling to pay their mortgages, with the goal of keeping them from losing their homes. However, 2012 marked the lowest number of foreclosures in the state in five years. The real estate market, and the en Ore economy for that ma?er, has made significant gains, which will translate into a lower number of foreclosures in the next two years—a scenario that was expected to unfold regardless of any new policy intervention. As the real estate market continues to improve, or, more specifically, as homes continue to appreciate, homeowners with underwater mortgages will reap the benefits. However, national policies stemming from the federal Dodd-Frank Act may temper growth as the changing standards for what defines a conventional mortgage will make qualifying more difficult. These standards may serve a greater purpose in the long term, but their short-term effects are currently Huron potential home-buyers. Because many of the specific details have not yet been determined, banks and other mortgage lenders remain uncertain about what these new rules will look like and what the implications will be for their businesses.”
“…and households have deleveraged in the wake of the Great Recession, which has brought the financial obligations ratio (the percentage of current income needed to finance current obligations) back into healthy territory as well.”
Households have deleveraged, or households filed bankruptcy?
Beacon Economics editors are propaganda masters of the written word. Anything negative has positive “spin” applied, or it is not mentioned.
California is ground zero for the housing collapse just getting underway.
Worse yet, it’s a corrupt hellhole rife with illegal immigration.
Drove around my neighborhood for a haircut and Chipotle tacos. I have to admit it all looks so green and well kept houses. But I have just the space I want at $1350 per month while dual incomes are needed for maintaining and payi paying for space that covers mostly dust collectors. And they think they have it so good.
I am loving every day at work being different from the others. I overheard colleagues discuss “who is next to get married.” They acted as if I don’t exist. There are only 16 employees It is either they hate to have me remind them of the freedom they are losing or they drank the kool aid. They also know I can run circles around them technically. I do cringe, but listen intently when this talk of marriage and RE and kids flare up.
Paragraphs can be your friend.
Furthermore, asking prices of resale housing in CA is 275% over replacement costs(lot, labor, materials, profit).
In many cases, it’s 300-500% over replacement costs.
Maybe that explains why housing demand is collapsing in California.
housing is booming in CA thx to bernake. Get on the gravy train before its to late.
http://www.movoto.com/statistics/ca/napa.htm#city=&time=1Y&metric=Median%20%24%2Fsqft&type=0
“From October to November there were a total of 3 price increases and 50 price decreases.”
How about Palo Alto?
http://www.movoto.com/statistics/ca/palo-alto.htm#city=&time=1Y&metric=Median%20%24%2Fsqft&type=0
Oh my word.
That link shows that prices fell a full $100k in 6 months in NapaValley.
What a corrupt hell hole.
“That link shows that prices fell a full $100k in 6 months in NapaValley.”
It’s fire and it crashing! . . . This is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world! Oh, it’s crashing . . . oh, four or five hundred dollars of debt, and it’s a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. There’s smoke, and there’s flames, now, and the equity is crashing to the ground, not quite to the Case-Shiller median. Oh, the humanity, and all the f**ked buyers screaming around here!
“Equity” is a fallacy.
“Equity” is a fallacy.
Didn’t like my Herbert Morrison (Hindenburg disaster) edit?
My sarcasm detector doesn’t work.
Subcontractor working on Obamacare site
Finally, some good news.
What?
What do you mean I didn’t read the whole headline!
Subcontractor working on Obamacare site under FBI investigation
Michael Volpe
10:33 PM 11/22/2013
One of the subcontractors working on the Obamacare website is currently under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Client Network Services Incorporated (CNSI) became a sub-contractor on the Obamacare website in 2012, working hand in hand with QSSI, according to its website. QSSI was one of several contractors hauled before Congress to address the sites troubled rollout in October.
According to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “war room” notes released in October, CNSI was responsible for assisting with electronic data interchange (EDI) — defined as a system to transfer data between computer systems without human interaction.
Among the plethora of problems with the website rollout, insurance companies have complained that data received on their computers has often been inaccurate, suggesting a problem with the EDI.
CNSI is currently under investigation by the FBI, which has alleged that then-Louisiana Health and Hospitals Secretary Bruce Greenstein, a former CNSI employee, exerted undue influence in steering the Medicaid contract to Louisiana.
According to a story in the New Orleans Times Picayne, the FBI also acccused CNSI of witness tampering in another case.
“According to the FBI report in this Court’s possession, one of CNSI’s owners, in front of the other three owners, said if the employee ‘ever disclosed the misconduct at the company they would have him killed.’”
In 2011, the State of South Dakota accused CNSI of overbilling for a state Medicaid website, according to a story by the Aberdeen News:
The South Dakota Department of Social Services has paid $49.7 million so far for a new Medicaid processing system that at this point remains inoperable.
The original contract was for $62.7 million, but the new system is now expected to cost far in excess of $80 million to complete and will take two to three more years to get running, according to court documents filed as part of a lawsuit between the contractor and the department.
The company that eventually won the contract, Client Network Services Inc. of Maryland, submitted a proposal in 2007, later participated in another final-and-best offer round, and was awarded the contract in June 2008.
The cost of the Obamacare website — which has reportedly run “north of $600 million” — has also become a scandalous issue.
In Michigan, The Southeast Michigan Health Care Exchange — which set up a state Obamacare exchange — pursued a suit initially valued at $7 million for breach of contract involving services provided by CNSI for IT services with that website.
In 2006, CNSI was the subject of a lengthy expose in the IT trade journal, CIO Magazine, which detailed allegations that CNSI produced a low ball bid in order to win a contract, only to have the final cost balloon exponentially.
In August 2013, Fox News ran a story detailing how CNSI was involved in a scheme to subvert the normal contractual process in Illinois in another IT contract involving the States of Michigan and Illinois:
A company from Gaithersburg, Maryland, Client Network Services Incorporated or CNSI, already has a contract in Michigan to perform similar services.
By forming an alliance with Michigan, Illinois was able to bypass a drawn-out, expensive bidding process because the state procurement code says HFS doesn’t need one if there is an intergovernmental agreement.
According to the war room notes, CNSI was in constant communications with staffers at HHS on the Obamacare website.
“CNSI is working on items to be able to provide to us management reports. It probably won’t be a daily email update; it will likely be a portal log-in to view the information, which would be cumulative and provide trending analysis.”
CNSI, QSSI, HHS and CMS did not return TheDC’s requests for comment
Willie Nelson’s band members injured when tour bus crashes in storm
By Michael Martinez and Anne Claire Stapleton, CNN
Sat November 23, 2013
(CNN) — A tour bus transporting Willie Nelson’s band spun out of control in a storm and crashed into a Texas bridge pillar before dawn Saturday, injuring three of five band members, according to police and the band.
Willie Nelson wasn’t on the bus, the musician’s website said.
The three band members were hospitalized, and Willie Nelson and Family postponed the tour’s four remaining dates in November and will resume the tour as scheduled in December, the website said.
“No one suffered serious injuries. Paul English injured his ankle, Billy English suffered a bruised hip and crew member Tom Hawkins has a cracked rib. The other family members on the bus are sore but everyone is expected to recover fully,” Nelson’s website said.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/23/showbiz/willie-nelson-band-bus-crash/ - -
Off the road again
Damn bus just went off the road again
The life I love is makin’ music with my friends
But the damn bus just went off the road again
Off the road again
Goin’ places that I’ve never been
Hittin’ bridges I may never see again,
Damn bus just went off the road again.
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/bullard-taper-on-the-table-for-next-fed-meeting-LybC0jPER3Gl7A_yzox9~Q.html
I listened to this earlier today. I thought one of the more interesting things was the comment about decreasing the interest rate that they are paying banks for leaving excess reserves at the Fed (and thus chasing $ that they are creating out into the economy).
The Fed is currently paying 0.25% on excess reserves. Bullard was talking about dropping this to 0%, or even making it negative, to encourage/force banks to lend.
The whole reason this was greater than 0% to begin with was to help sanitize QE (keeping it from causing inflation right away).
Seems like the longer they wait to drop this rate to 0%, the more QE fuel has been added to the potential fire once they force banks to lend their excess reserves.
Seems like the longer they wait to drop this rate to 0%, the more QE fuel has been added to the potential fire once they force banks to lend their excess reserves.
I’ve been thinking the same think, RW; if they were to drop that rate to 0%, wouldn’t all of that inflation-producing potential that they had temporarily semi-sanitized then proceed to rush out into the world, creating the inflation that they had tried to avoid?
I understand that they want a little… But that sounds like a large uncontrolled blast, as opposed to the small monthly controlled bursts they would have had if they had not chosen to prop up the banks with this subsidy, under the guise of sanitizing QE.