Bits Bucket for March 13, 2014
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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Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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http://www.propertyradar.com/trends/california
In January, people made a big deal about CA’s rate of NODs going up 50%+ year on year, without acknowledging that January 2013 was artificially low based that month being the very first month of its stupid new foreclosure law.
Property Radar has released its February 2014 data, and NODs are down by about 7% year on year in CA. I’m sure there will be no headlines written about it…it doesn’t have the same shock value.
By the way, you won’t hear me crowing about CA’s NODs being down more than 10%+ next month and the month after on a year on year basis. Just like January was artificially low, March and April 2013 probably overshot a “normal level” (rebounding from the artificial low nature of January and maybe even February) and from my read of the data, artificially high. The mid-year data will be a better measure of the actual year on year trends.
Bickering over the rising foreclosure rate is ignoring the elephant in the room which is 4.4 million excess, empty and defaulted houses in CA.
HA - where are you getting the 4.4 million figure from? It sounds a bit high to me, but at the same time wouldn’t surprise me. Can you post a link to some supporting information?
Thanks
CB, NAR, Corelogic, State of CA, etc.
Anyone….anyone……Buehler….Buehler….
We will love to hear your crowing once your tears start flowing. 2014 will be your albatross.
Molding, unattended, weed infested properties tell the whole story, brah.
Hey Pugsy, hit me up next time you’re in Chicago…
Aim, babe. Wrong site.
Molding, unattended, weed infested properties will need tens of thousands of dollars of rehabilitation, thus rendering ANY trends in sale prices moot.
Not really… not at all Mz. Craterton.
Remember those thousands of inspection tags stickered to doors with inspected by: fields on them?
Who’s going to pay to rehab if nobody can afford or is willing to buy one.
Puggs, such houses do sell, but not to the families who will live there. They sell at very low prices and are rehabbed for a profit. (I hesitate to say “flipped,” since these are genuine rehabs.) I simply don’t think that you can count these low prices as “real” prices. In the cases I’ve seen, a house will sell at a $50K discount only to need $40K of cash work plus some profit. In the end, the house sells like any market rate house.
And there is is a really high price floor and no price ceiling right Mz Craterton?
Remember…. Houses are depreciating assets that never pay you back.
“I have so much money left after “throwing money away on rent” every month that I don’t know where to throw it”
Also posted in other thread:
This time I’m even more confident of a looming crash. Even though they pulled out all stops to put in a floor last time. Those FHA limits dropping loan amounts wanna be FBs can get by a quarter to a third will certainly play out in the next several months.
Only an absolute fool would buy now.
and my response to it on the other thread.
“This time I’m even more confident of a looming crash.”
No question of another massive correction; it’s only a matter of when and what exogenous event gets it rolling. The difference this time will be one of magnitude. Clearly it’s going to be larger given the fact that all the previous debt that resulted in the previous collapse was rolled up and is now backstopped by empty promises an additional 4 to 5x. It’s all still there but double or triple the size.
One the fabric begins to tear, the backstops will fall like dominos. If you’re exposed(debt or holding real estate) as this thing unwinds, you’re going to wish you did things differently.
HB - I have taken to clipping your posts and taping them on the refrigerator for a bit of good cheer in the morning, along with the cupsa joe. Starts the day off just right.
Believe me when I tell you….. I’m clipping a few of my own.
“This time I’m even more confident of a looming crash”
A “looming” crash has existed since 2006. It keeps looming, and looming, and looming. I’m pretty confident of it myself, since it just keeps on looming.
The pile of cash under my mattress and the stack of gold bullion I saved by not owning a depreciating stucco box, combined with having zero debt tends to reduce my stress level.
How about Amy the Hoaxster’s stress level?
Writing for MarketWatch is just a dayjob.
My real creative focus is on my screenplay called “Fifty Shades of Amy”.
Don’t let the librarian glasses fool you, Billyboy, I’m a bad little girl :p
Don’t let the librarian glasses fool you, Billyboy, I’m a bad little girl :p
The ones with the librarian glasses usually are. If you are a masochist, she would like to sell you a house.
Do you wanna get a drink, or…
How are things looking these days for the folks who gambled on resurrection of the GSE mortgage-finance twins?
Politics and Policy
Plan for Mortgage Giants Takes Shape
Bipartisan Senate Proposal Envisions Home-Loan Market Without Fannie, Freddie; Firms’ Shares Fall
By Nick Timiraos
Updated March 11, 2014 8:38 p.m. ET
Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson, left, and GOP Sen. Mike Crapo plan to release a full draft of their mortgage-market overhaul within days.
Nearly six years after the government rescued Fannie Mae (FNMA -12.16%) and Freddie Mac, (FMCC -16.83%) top members in the Senate and the White House agreed on a framework to wind down the mortgage giants and overhaul the nation’s $10 trillion mortgage market.
The bipartisan proposal, coming just as the firms have begun to generate huge profits for the Treasury, complicates the picture for a host of deep-pocketed investors who had bet that Fannie and Freddie would be restructured.
After initially holding up on the news of the plan, Fannie shares fell 31% to $4.03 and Freddie stock slid 27% to $4.04. Certain classes of the firms’ preferred stock, a form of senior equity also held by big investors, saw only modest losses and remained near their highest levels since the firms were taken over.
The plan, by Senate Banking Committee leaders Tim Johnson (D., S.D) and Mike Crapo (R., Idaho), calls for replacing Fannie and Freddie with a new system of federally insured mortgage securities in which private insurers would be required to take initial losses before any government guarantee would be triggered.
The agreement, which faces a long road to approval, represents the most concrete step so far to resolve the last major piece of unfinished business from the 2008 financial collapse.
“It would be a huge step forward,” said Phillip Swagel, who was an assistant secretary for economic policy under Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who oversaw the government’s seizure of the firms in 2008.
Even though top Democrats and Republicans on the Senate panel have reached an agreement, a full Senate vote isn’t assured, and there is even less certainty that members in the House will go along. There is deep unease among House Republicans to maintaining a significant federal backstop for the U.S. mortgage market.
…
GSE=frauderal reserve failed anti-deflationary tool and cash cow for CongressCriminals.
If they’ve got the right connections, they’ll do just fine. It’s the world of “trickle-up economics.”
Constitutional protection for me, but not for thee:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/03/12/Issa-Rips-CIA-Over-Feinstein-Spying-Allegations-Treason
See also:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/edward-snowden-pulitzer-prize-washington-post-guardian-nsa-104608.html
Forget the Pulitzer, Snowden deserves the Nobel.
And Feinstein belongs in Guantanamo Bay.
“And Feinstein belongs in Guantanamo Bay.”
+1 Agreed.
Send all of congress to Gitmo
And bring back waterboarding while they are there.
That’s what’s wrong with Obama’s Executive Orders, he picks and chooses which laws are going to be enforced. Then somehow his political enemies get verbally attacked, investigated and indicted beyond normal measures.
Is Obama Walking the Trail Blazed by Nixon? by Victor Davis Hansen
Going after reporters? Obama regularly blames Fox News by name for its criticism. In 2008, he seemed to enter into a personal grudge match with Fox’s Sean Hannity.
Wiretaps? Well, aside from the electronic surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency, the Obama Justice Department secretly monitored Fox News reporter and sometime critic James Rosen.
The old watchdogs of civil liberties that took on Nixon — the America media of the Watergate era — are now silent. For them, Obama is not right-wing, easily caricatured, unappealing or an old anti-communist agitator, but an iconic liberal, charismatic, and in the past an experienced community organizer.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/03/13/is_obama_walking_the_trail_blazed_by_nixon_121910.html
http://www.picpaste.com/download-php-4xlnzttt.jpeg
That’s what’s wrong with Obama’s Executive Orders, he picks and chooses which laws are going to be enforced.
This has been the norm for a while now. W did it and so did Clinton.
I don’t remember W or Clinton passing laws (that they and their party designed), and then picking and choosing which parts of that very law is enforced.
Speaking of executive action. Obama just released 5 million barrels of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve. There is no emergency, he is using it to lower oil prices. Interestingly, I was just talking about how his QE policies had raised oil prices and it was hurting the economy. Now, he seems to want to use the SPR to lower oil prices instead of being there if we really have a national emergency. For cover, Obama’s administration is claiming it is to punish Russia. However, the lower the SPR is the more prone to blackmail we are from Russia, the world’s biggest oil producer and Saudi Arabia the second biggest producer. Like most of Obama’s policies short sighted and counterproductive in the long run. Just approve XL if you want to have a real impact on Russia and want to increase U.S. oil security.
Whether it is good for the country isn’t of concern.
What is of concern is whether it is good for the Party.
$7.99 for Hormel 1lb bacon package is not a cool price
Here is your answer NYCDJ, time to hunt to eat high on the hog, country boys can survive:
http://news.yahoo.com/giant-hog-boar-hunter-caught-500-pounds-133815315.html
DAT ONE FINE PIG….“That pig will provide food for me and my family for a good year.”
If the SPR release was designed to put the fear of God in the Russians, it has not worked from a Drudge link to NYT:
MOSCOW — Russia’s Defense Ministry announced new military operations in several regions near the Ukrainian border on Thursday, even as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany warned the Kremlin to abandon the politics of the 19th and 20th centuries or face diplomatic and economic retaliation from a united Europe.
In Moscow, the military acknowledged significant operations involving armored and airborne troops in the Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions abutting eastern Ukraine, where many ethnic Russians have protested against the new interim government in Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, and appealed to Moscow for protection.
A day after a deputy minister denied any military buildup on the border, the Defense Ministry released a series of statements beginning early Thursday that appeared to contradict that. They outlined what was described as intensive training of units involving artillery batteries, assault helicopters and at least 10,000 soldiers.
http://www.picpaste.com/397517_757029697663621_788435573_n-NKn4ikXc.jpg
I object to the disrespect shown to Putin. (just joking).
+1 Now dat b nasty.
The President doesn’t set QE policies. That’s entirely the purview of the Federal
CounterfeitingReserve Board. Privately controlled by design. If you want someone to blame, blame the greatcounterfeitersfree market capitalists that own and control the Federal reserve. Only problem: they refuse to release a list of who exactly are the shareholders - Ron Paul tried for years to get it and never did AFAIK.Obama’s popularity rating even lower than GWB’s lowest. Slightly higher than RMN’s (watergate prez). 38% According to Wayne Allen Root. Root theorizes it’s just the black voters who support Obama because of skin color. All but the criminal class Washington DC “progressives” and Hollywierd white “progressives” have abandoned Obamao.
I still like Obamao. He’s been the gun industry’s best salesman.
I think we’re on a trend. Whoever the next clown is, he or she will have even lower ratings as the nation will continue to sink. Voters want a “quick fix”, a painless rebound, but there is none, no magic wand to quickly right the ship. Jobs that were offshored won’t be coming back. Pay is going to remain low.
Voters want a “quick fix”
No, they just want their bennies to keep coming to them, as long as someone else pays the bill. They don’t want to “fix” anything.
By “quick fix” I didn’t mean a one time “hit”. I meant they want a pain free, instant solution to what ails the country. If it was just about “free cheese” everyone would love Obama.
The ones who will not see the pain already suffered a lot by saving and living below their means - if a big chunk of those savings is the most difficult for the FSA to confiscate. And there are certain savings vehicles that are very difficult for the masses to get and some that are extremely easy.
38% According to Wayne Allen Root. Root theorizes it’s just the black voters who support Obama because of skin color.
I’ve never heard of this Wayne Allen Root character, but his theory makes no sense. Ignore him in the future.
Obama’s popularity rating even lower than GWB’s lowest. Slightly higher than RMN’s (watergate prez). 38% According to Wayne Allen Root. Root theorizes it’s just the black voters who support Obama because of skin color.
38% of the electorate is black? That’s news to me.
No, but if he did not have high support among blacks, he would probably have overall support below 30%.
His support already is in the toilet, what difference does it make?
Which one of us wrote that “38% of the electorate is black?”
Certainly not me. And the article by Wayne Alan Root certainly did not say that either.
You wrote, “Root theorizes it’s just the black voters who support Obama because of skin color”. So if he has 38% support, 38% of the population must be black.
No because he could mean, and I believe he meant it as, his support is as high as 38% because of his continued high support from the black community. Throw in LGBT with about 6% of the population and blacks with 13% and you have about 20% giving him high support and most of the other groups giving him low support.
That sentence was worded a bit clumsily. It could have said something like “Obama has 38% support, which includes a stalwart group of black supporters”
Agreed.
It could be that he meant what you think the meant. Then he would just be a poor writer.
Mighty Mike, do you actually think only the people who voted for the office of POTUS both in 2007 and 2012 were surveyed?
Ya think not one black person who is 18 years of age now but was 16 years old in November 2012 was surveyed?
The point is all we know is Obamao has a popularity rating of 38%.
Among who? I know black people who vote race and not ideas. They worship their deity. It is safe to say 92% of all blacks and 96% of all black women approve of the “job” Obamao is doing. It is also safe to say no whites, save the Hollywierd stars and limousine socialists approve of their deity. It’s safe to say that an overwhelming majority of that 38% are non-whites. I don’t think Root had any exact figures and he could not give the exact figures.
Besides most likely some original black voters of Obamao have passed away so they could not be surveyed. There are new black eligible voters also who never cast a vote for Obamao.
All but the criminal class Washington DC “progressives” and Hollywierd white “progressives” have abandoned Obamao.
that’s like a girl abandoning her boyfriend after she’s pregnant.
Justice for Trayvon™, brought to you by the Media/Academia Race Hustlers Industrial Complex:
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/zimmerman-parents-sue-roseanne-barr-687432
Here’s some “justice” for you. A fat illegal immigrant pulled from Colorado flood waters is thinking of suing his rescuers. You can’t make this stuff up. And they have the nerve to call the POS a “Colorado” man.
http://foxnewsinsider.com/2014/03/12/gretchen-carlson-presses-attorney-man-suing-rescuers-he-undocumented
Eff his attorney. An even bigger POS.
The Super Bowl 2014 Coke commercial:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9MEsOzzunPQ
NFL, 3-2liter bottles of Coke, 3 super size bags of Cheetos and a couch.
Sounds like a great Sunday.
NFL, 3-2liter bottles of Coke, 3 super size bags of Cheetos and a couch.
Sounds like a great Sunday.
For cardiac arrest?
And a dozen Krispy Kremes.
What i think is extremely fantastic news is FB will keep dead peoples page up for memorials.
Imagine if Travyons page was kept up….there would have been very little reaction to zimmerman not being arrested because trayvon was a gansta thug and even had a gun….ohbewanna would not have make a jackazz statement by mentioning if he had a son….the whole race thing would have never happened and we would all be less racist…
If we could have seen trayon’s FB page instead of that cute boy which was long gone into gansta crap.
“Weed, fights, and guns” is how the herald describes his txt mesage record: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/23/3413343/weed-fights-and-guns-trayvon-text.html
Google can lead you to the “official” transcripts if you’re interested. I read them and reached the same conclusion. I don’t think he deserved to get shot, but the portrayal of him as an “innocent little angel” wasn’t exactly accurate. He doesn’t sound like he would back away from a fight, so I can see how a puss like Zimmerman might think his life was in danger if he got into one with him.
That said, I still don’t think he deserved to get killled, nor Zimmerman get off Scott free.
Speaking of which, did you ever wonder who this “Scott” was, and why is/was he so “free?”
Ritholtz opines the rash of suicides in the financial community is a statistical fluke and an artifact of selective perception.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-13/why-are-so-many-traders-literally-killing-themselves
This is an empirically testable question, if one had the data. For instance, how many FIRE sector workers are there each year in a large swath of developed nation economies and how many of them “do themselves in” over a period of, say, twenty years.
My hunch is that the suicide rate in FIRE-sector workers is much higher over the period since August 2007 than before.
Trader kills self in finance world’s latest suicide
By Michael Gray
March 12, 2014 | 5:45pm
Modal Trigger
A Long Island Rail Road train pulls into the Jamaica station. A Manhattan trader committed suicide by leaping in front of a different train near Syosset Tuesday. Photo: Riyad Hasan
A Manhattan trader was killed Tuesday morning by a speeding Long Island Rail Road commuter train, marking at least the seventh suicide of a financial professional this year.
Edmund (Eddie) Reilly, 47, a trader at Midtown’s Vertical Group, jumped in front of an LIRR train at 6 a.m. near the Syosset train station.
He was declared dead at the scene.
Reilly’s identity was confirmed by Salvatore Arena, an LIRR spokesperson, who said an investigation into the incident was continuing.
Passengers on the west-bound express train told MTA investigators they saw a man standing by the tracks before he jumped in front of the train, Arena said.
“Eddie was a great guy,” Rob Schaffer, a managing director at Vertical, told The Post in an email. “We are very upset and he will be deeply missed.”
The divorced father of three had rented a house around the corner from his ex-wife, Michelle Reilly, in East Norwich, NY.
One family friend, who said he spoke to the trader on Sunday, told The Post that Reilly “didn’t look good.”
Separately:
■ Autumn Radtke, the CEO of First Meta, a cyber-currency exchange firm, was found dead on Feb. 28 outside her Singapore apartment. The 28-year-old American, who worked for Apple and other Silicon Valley tech firms prior to founding First Meta, jumped from a 25-story building, authorities said.
■ On Feb. 18, a 33-year-old JPMorgan finance pro leaped to his death from the roof of the company’s 30-story Hong Kong office tower, authorities said. Li Junjie’s suicide marked the third mysterious death of a JPMorgan banker. So far, there is no known link between any of the deaths.
■ Gabriel Magee, 39, a vice president with JPMorgan’s corporate and investment bank technology arm in the UK, jumped to his death from the roof of the bank’s 33-story Canary Wharf tower in London on Jan. 28.
■ On Feb. 3, Ryan Henry Crane, 37, a JPM executive director who worked in New York, was found dead inside his Stamford, Conn., home. A cause of death in Crane’s case has yet to be determined as authorities await a toxicology report, a spokesperson for the Stamford Police Department said.
■ On Jan. 31, Mike Dueker, chief economist at Russell Investments and a former Federal Reserve bank economist, was found dead at the side of a road that leads to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state, according to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department. He was 50.
■ On Jan. 26, William Broeksmit, 58, a former senior risk manager at Deutsche Bank, was found hanged in a house in South Kensington, according to London police.
The divorced father of three had rented a house around the corner from his ex-wife, Michelle Reilly, in East Norwich, NY.
Hmmm ….
When the EZ money stops it’s divorce(s), repossession(s), etc., and the transition is probably worse for those lacking in practical skills.
There is some schadenfreude in watching those picture perfect households, with the his and hers luxocars, the slim, perky wife with the synthetic boobs, the pricey vacations, the NFL season tickets, the jetskis in the garage, etc., self destruct at the first sign of economic trouble.
American normalization = suicide.
American normalization = suicide.
Who’s gonna buy all the imported crap from the “world’s factory” if we live within our means?
Banking isn’t a wonderful life now as suicides sweep financial district
By Jonathon M. Trugman
March 9, 2014 | 5:51am
Modal Trigger
Banking isn’t a wonderful life now as suicides sweep financial district
JPMorgan’s headquarters in Hong Kong. Photo: Getty Images
In the last two months, there has been a rash of suicides and mysterious deaths sweeping the world of high finance.
JPMorgan has been hardest hit, with three untimely deaths in just the last few weeks, and last week Autumn Radtke (left), a 28-year-old CEO of First Meta, a small cyber-currency exchange, jumped to her death in Singapore.
Historically, suicide rates rise during times of financial stress and economic downturns. Now, though stocks are at or near all-time highs, for many Wall Street bankers these are times of setbacks and stress.
Today’s bankers are not a settled, comfortable bunch anymore. A day doesn’t go by where you don’t hear about more bank layoffs and branch closings.
Under Jamie Dimon’s leadership, JPMorgan has announced 17,000 job cuts through the end of this year, and that’s on top of all the cuts from the 2008-09 crisis.
If you’re a banker today, many who once looked up to you as a success now think you’re evil; maybe you’re even the type who caused the economy to crumble.
On top of that, you hear politicians from the president on down blaming “Wall Street and bankers” for the crisis, as if they were all the same, when in reality it was only five or six individuals very high up at places like Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros. who share responsibility.
Financially, many of today’s bankers, if not on unemployment, are making far less — as much as half or one-third less — than they did just four or five years ago. And that’s not easy for anyone, especially when you have a mortgage of your own, a family and a car or two.
For example, overall average compensation at JPMorgan was $122,653 in 2013. That amount is nothing to sneeze at, but it is still a lot less than the bankers were making before — often for a 60-to 80-hour work week.
…
For example, overall average compensation at JPMorgan was $122,653 in 2013. That amount is nothing to sneeze at, but it is still a lot less than the bankers were making before — often for a 60-to 80-hour work week.
The horror! When the lease expires on the BMW he might have to get a Chevy or a KIA!
I’ll bet that average is skewed by secretaries and other JPM lucky duckies
This is almost certain to get worse with the next financial crisis (whenever it happens).
Book review of “Enjoy The Decline: Accepting and Living with the Death of the United States”
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2013/04/24/book-review-enjoy-the-decline/
America isn’t a country, it’s a game.
Hunger games?
Not much hunger from what I see rolling around on scooters.
True dhat. We define hunger by people who respond to a poll that asks have you run out of food the last month and gone without food, with some of these land whales, they can never eat enough food and it is healthy for them to skip a meal.
America isn’t a country, it’s a game.
And you don’t get a consolation just for playing.
Actually we will live with the death of statism. Long live voluntaryism (in vonu).
More and more people will go off grid.
If the next President is a Republican, you can bet his policies will be “progressive” and he will also end up with a popularity rating of 38% like Obysmal’s current rating. Maybe lower.
The last really popular President was Reagan, and second to him was Clowntoon.
Actually, I agree with Bloomberg on this one, at least the e-verify part:
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-12/the-only-way-to-stop-illegal-immigration?cmpid=yhoo
How many anchor babies turn 18 every day?
Will these anchor babies and their amnestied parents assimilate into American culture and the economy, like the millions of immigrants from Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries did?
Why would a group who self-identify as La Raza (The Race) wish to assimilate?
And who gets to pay for all of it?
Grabber FAIL
What if they had a gun recall, but nobody showed up?
http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_25298264/sunnyvales-ammo-magazine-ban-is-effect-but-what
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/obamacare-affordable-care-act-david-jolly-alex-sink-florida-elections-2014-104603.html?hp=f1
Florida election defeat causing panic.
The Dumbocrats won’t have the voter turnout in 2014.
But from 2016 on, it’s game over for GOP. There’s more Free Sh*t Army than there are taxpayers.
Can you name any examples from history where a nation was headed down the path toward a Roman Empire type collapse, and it reversed course into solvency?
Has multiculturalism ever been the foundation of a successful nation?
The robots will outnumber the illegals. And they’ll get the vote also.
Who controls the diebold will win the election. Voting is meaningless….has been for a while.
The robots will outnumber the illegals. And they’ll get the vote also.
In a synthetic, vocoder like voice: By your command.
There are a number of things taking place from which no nation has ever really successfully recovered. Multiculturalism is just one of them. The only time I know of that it has ever worked was in the Andalucia region of Spain from about 700 to 1000AD. And the only reason why it worked was because of trade and prosperity. Today we have trade, but without the prosperity.
Multiculturalism today is just another term for the sacking of Rome by the Barbarians.
But that is not the only thing that leads to the collapse of a nation or any group, for that matter. There are other factors, and those factors are in play here. I don’t think we’re going to survive it. There would have to be a fast, sudden reversal and I don’t see that happening, but you never know.
Caution not from real journalists but multiculturalism apparently does not include whites:
http://www.infowars.com/college-group-bans-white-people-from-diversity-happy-hour/
The Dumbocrats won’t have the voter turnout in 2014.
But from 2016 on, it’s game over for GOP. There’s more Free Sh*t Army than there are taxpayers.
Will they really have the turn-out in 2016? I will give the devil his due, Obama really turned out the minority and youth vote. It is unprecedented to have young blacks to have a higher turn out rate than young whites on a national basis. Perhaps diebold helped, but I think it was genuine. However, will minorities and the young voters turn out for an old white woman in the same way as they did for a relatively young, “cool” black man? I have my doubts.
Exactly. If Republican Romney won’t win, it will be either another “progressive” RINO or a Democrat (by default “progressive”). The FSA has a lock.
Undeniable. This is why voting does not matter. It’s a big scam.
The best way to change government is to drop out and lower your own taxes. Set an example. At some point at cocktail parties more than half the people will admit they no longer vote nor care. The real outcome will be more civil disobedience when government violates our rights of property, life, and liberty and when government admits it has to CUT, CUT, CUT!
Has multiculturalism ever been the foundation of a successful nation?
America has been multicultural since it was founded.
With the difference being, many of those coming to our shores now have no desire to integrate into American culture; their aim is to transform America into what their home country was like.
This will not end well.
I live in a very ‘diverse’ (but upscale) neighborhood and it scares me to see how clueless most are about what makes (or used to make) this country special.
In our little northern Manhattan neighborhood, I used to say they’re not here to assimilate, they’re here to take over.
A happy people, with no worries, they kept us up all night long dancing outside the bodega, music blaring. It was only tough if you had to work in the morning.
in western queens nothing much has opened up here where the owners first language is English…
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/us-having-its-coldest-six-month-period-since-1912/
Clearly, this is a lie. Scientists from all over predicted we would have a warmer-than-normal winter in much of the United States.
They also predicted a greater than average number of hurricanes in 2013.
And a la Nina in 2012.
And thus it was so. (And on the seventh day, Obama was born). I digress.
But, let’s talk about realities here. The fact of the matter is that the exceptional cold many have experienced this winter season is very strongly correlated (>1.28) with mass delusion, brought on the incorrect and highly partisan belief that ObamaCare is a piece of crap.
So, there you have it. Any questions?
And a la Nina in 2012.
Actually, it is an El Nino they predicted and it is the that phenomena that causes a spike in global warming. But the rest of your article is spot on. BTW, we will probably have one this year and it could create a “record” by maybe .01 or .02 F., However, for the temperature to match the AGW computer models we would have to be a 50 to 100 times that number or 1 degree F.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/06/global-temperature-report-january-2014-upper-michigan-was-coldest-spot-on-the-globe-in-january/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/12/new-gallup-poll-shows-climate-change-near-the-bottom-of-things-worth-worrying-about/
It is the economy stupid, although health care also ranks high.
Owning your own home is a wonderful feeling!
Agree…..for the bankers and property tax collectors.
And for us here at Lion Realtors.
“Lion Realtors”
Why did that make me immediately think of the commercial for Stratton Oakmont?
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NRZujbaTspU
NY Times article on mobile home parks and “investors”.
———————
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/magazine/the-cold-hard-lessons-of-mobile-home-u.html?hpw&rref=magazine&_r=0
Rolfe is a tall, slouchy man with sad blue eyes and a mop of dark hair that has gone gray around the temples. He and his business partner, Dave Reynolds, started buying trailer parks together shortly after the subprime meltdown. Using their own money and millions more from outsider investors — including many who have been through Mobile Home University — they have been buying about two dozen parks a year. They now own 100 in 16 states (but none in California). By making what Rolfe calls a “contrarian bet on a poorer America,” they have posted an annual return of roughly 25 percent, a rate at which they and their investors are doubling their money about every four years. By catering to those living on the economic margins, their parks generated more than $30 million in revenue last year. More than half of that was profit.
But the most striking aspect of their business is how happy their tenants seem to be. A few months after completing Rolfe’s course, I traveled to St. Louis to spend some time in a couple of parks that he and Reynolds own. (They let me choose where I wanted to stay.) To a person, the residents I met declared themselves satisfied with their landlords. A few, like Linda Wright, a former Walmart employee who has lived in the Jeffco Estates trailer park in Arnold, Mo., for the past 47 years, gushed about their ownership. Wright, who was the park manager when Rolfe and Reynolds took over early last spring, said the rutted roads in the park flooded every time it rained. Drug use was rampant, as were fights; the flashing lights from police cars routinely lit up the nights. When Rolfe and Reynolds bought the park, they repaved the streets and fixed the drainage system. They removed the most dilapidated trailers. And despite Wright’s being a thorn in the side of the previous owners, the new owners kept her on as a manager, drawn, Rolfe said, by Wright’s my-way-or-the-highway aggressiveness. “You get with the program in my park,” Wright, a slight, white-haired woman, told me with her arms crossed. “Or you’re out.”
Can a business that’s trying to squeeze every dime out of the working poor still offer them a pretty good deal? “We can’t imagine wanting to live anywhere else,” said Wright, who scoffed when I pointed out she’s on the company payroll. “Trust me,” interjected her husband, John Wright, a retired auto porter. “If she was unhappy with something, she’d tell you.” To the extent that hers is a genuine and representative sentiment, the people involved with Mobile Home U. — instructors, enrollees, alumni investors — may represent the best thing going in affordable housing at a time when the nation’s need for low-cost places to live has never been greater.
Liberace!
It all boils down to crime and safety….the house type really doesn’t matter to a lot of people.
The New York Times reports on these novel new dwellings called “trailer parks” in a place somewhere west of the Hudson called “Missouri”, how quaint!
And the $hitlib snobs quote it.
If it’s not within 10 miles of an Interstate 95 exit, it doesn’t exist.
There are plenty of trailer parks within 10 miles of I-95, even in the BOSWASH corridor. Again, the article isn’t bashing trailer parks.
Don’t get your panties in a bunch (assuming you are wearing any panties)
Off stage Liberace wears chaps.
“At first I was like, ‘No way am I buying a freaking trailer park,’ ” said Lilly, a clean-cut, 46-year-old Ivy Leaguer who lives in San Francisco. But when he discovered the price of apartment buildings and compared them with the cost of trailer parks, he found himself reconsidering. What difference did it make, Lilly asked himself, whether he bought a trailer park or an apartment building when he wasn’t going to live in either one?”
^^ LOL
At first I was like,…
LOL indeed
You wouldn’t think that a 46 year-old Ivy League graduate would use the word like in that way. It sounds like something that would come out of the mouth of a 14 year-old who’s going to end up in community college.
They’re not bashing trailer parks, they’re talking about what the proliferation of trailer parks says about the fortunes of the eroding middle class, etc.
The guy who teaches the Trailer Park U is a Stanford grad who owns hundreds of trailer parks and finds the residents interesting/endearing. He owns 100+ trailer parks at this point (he has investors, it seems). There is a bit of south-bashing when the delinquency rates are discussed (shockingly, more deadbeats in the south). But he also avoids buying trailer parks in CA because CA is too renter-friendly. Overall there is not much bashing of anyone, though.
From an article in today’s mining.com:
A radioactive metal from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan, discovered Tuesday in Canada’s west coast, has sparked alarm about the long-term impact of radiation on people and the environment all over North America.
While the levels detected in the Cesium-134 fragment are said to be below the permissible limits for drinking water, the finding seems to confirm the radioactive stream of toxic fluids released during the accident has already hit this side of the globe, as predicted last year.
When the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was damaged three years ago, scientists began monitoring the ocean waters in the Pacific for the radioactive elements released by the plant — specifically the isotopes cesium-137 and cesium-134.
Cesium-137 is already present in seawater, left over from various nuclear weapon tests performed during the ’50s and ’60s, so detecting that isotope alone isn’t unusual. Cesium-134, the one found in British Columbia, has a half-life of two years, which means its radioactivity is reduced by half during that time.
It seems the main reason for uranium and the wonderful radio active waste we have was that a lot of thorium was on govt protected land thanks sierra club.
http://energyfromthorium.com/
Great post. It is interesting everyone wants to compare 50 year old nuclear technology to modern solar and wind power and not what we could be doing now.
http://www.mining.com/fukushima-nuclear-radiation-found-in-canadas-coast-raises-fears-17110/
Shepard Smith from Fox News is dating a 26 yr old employee at FNC. He was hiding it from Ailes (homophobe). Ailes now MAF.
http://gawker.com/shepard-smith-s-office-romance-a-26-year-old-fox-staff-1451438005
Beware of those “perfect” types….that’s how they get away with whats behind the curtain for so long then blow up,
Always knew he was a closet liberal by the way he reported. Had not figured this out but it does make sense why I think he was and is pro-Obama.
“he was and is pro-Obama”
Now why would you think that?
http://www.picpaste.com/josh-fb-RqGlkUXc.jpg
The presidential limo should be a pink Cadillac.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/u-s-overstates-efforts-to-prosecute-mortgage-fraud-watchdog-says/?ref=business
Way to go Holder!! (not)
Natural gas in shortage is getting very low:
http://ir.eia.gov/ngs/ngs.html
The very definition of red herring - true, mortgage fraud did underpin the financial crisis, but mortgage fraud would be self limiting if lenders had to retain repayment risk. Very self-limiting.
Going after mortgage fraud in the criminogenic environment created by securitization is ignoring the root cause of a problem and reporting on the success or failure of treating the symptoms.
Mortgage fraud low priority at Justice: New report
Diana Olick
CNBC
Specifically, the OIG found that the FBI ranked mortgage fraud as the lowest criminal threat in its lowest crime category. The FBI received $196 million in federal funds to investigate mortgage fraud activities from 2009 through 2011.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101491445
Mortgage fraud is a symptom created by the perverse incentives created by securitization. There’s big money in securitization, but the profit requires involuntary extraction of cash, by private parties, from the taxpayer.
“mortgage fraud would be self limiting if lenders had to retain repayment risk. Very self-limiting.”
+1,000
That’s why, as much as I would like to see ZERO government involvement in the mortgage industry, the recent proposal to have the lender take the first 10% hit is a pretty big deal.
If the losses the lenders take are less than the profits they make, then they will gladly take the losses.
It’s like these fees various financial firms have paid. Their illegal actions netted them 20Y, and they have to pay Y, well, they’re left with 19Y in profit still.
I’m not sure if there’s any incentive for any real reform. If the “privatize the profits, socialize the losses” business model keeps putting politicians in office, there’s no incentive to change and upset the big donors.
“When you financially screw others you’re only going to screw yourself worse”
-Karma Madoff
Decades of the high life, followed by country club prison. Thousands of life destroyed. So far there has not been sufficient pay back for his actions.
Opinion piece: ‘Rentiers’ are at root of 1 percent
The American public is catching on that almost all the benefits from the still-fragile U.S. recovery have gone to the top 1 percent of earners. One sign is that “inequality” has suddenly become a fighting word. Legendary venture capitalist Tom Perkins recently denounced the “demonization” of the rich — and was quickly forced to apologize for comparing it to Kristallnacht.
I can’t tell they’re catching on. The media and politicians (both groups are controlled by the 1%-ers) never mention the phenomenon of rent-seeking, since it is key to understanding the continuing economic crisis. Even the blog writer uses a term unlikely to be understood by the public, while the term “rent-seeking” is partly self-defining.
they are the beneficiaries of special privileges, like the web of congressional protections that protect sugar farmers from international competition. Or they have effective monopolies…
Rentiers profit [by] preserving [or enhancing] their privileges on the backs of the rest of us. John Maynard Keynes once mused that economic progress would require the “euthanasia of the rentiers.”
The special animosities felt toward the big banks stems from the feeling that they are rentiers — sitting athwart the sluice gates of global finance, dipping out bucketsful of glittering tolls from the passing stream.
There is a lot of evidence to support that view. The financial sector, for example, accounts for just under 10 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. But for much of the 2000s, it consistently captured between 30 percent to 40 percent of corporate profits.
Reckless finance drove up the price of houses, and supported a big increase in consumer credit. From 2001 through 2006, Americans borrowed $3.5 trillion against their houses, net of any mortgage paydowns.
Unproductive churning that benefits no one but the churner sucks the resilience out of an economy. The poster boy for financial churning, perhaps, is the old Merrill Lynch. From 2001 through 2007, it booked more than $100 billion in revenues. Consistent with contemporary practice, half was paid to employees, largely to the most senior levels. In 2008, Merrill was suddenly on the brink of insolvency. It agreed to a shotgun wedding with Bank of America. When the accountants had sifted through all the rotten paper on Merrill Lynch’s books and totted up the losses, it turned out that from 2001 through 2008, despite the terrific profits made during the financial boom, Merrill had earned a negative $21 billion.
This must be some sort of record in the annals of unproductiveness. Just before the deal with Bank of America closed, however, Merrill still paid out $3.6 billion in bonuses. Roughly 700 employees received payouts of more than $1 million each.
Such are the rewards of dead weight. Opposing the rentiers, in all their forms, is not the same as opposing wealth, honestly earned. It’s not envy, and it’s not sour grapes.
We need a well-functioning financial system. But not one that misallocates resources and generates crises and instability. The banks, however, are fighting a quiet, but grim, take-no-prisoners war in Congress and before the regulators to preserve their old privileges.
This is a battle the public cannot afford to lose. Rooting out the rentiers is essential for the future health of the country.
Not making this up.
My cousin’s husband (MBA, Duke, 1980-something) worked at Merrill in Chicago, he got a 7 figure bonus in 2007.
Why do you think that is unusual or unbelievable? In and around NYC and Boston, this is common knowledge and it’s been going on going back into the 1990’s. Just because it’s a private club and we’re denied entry doesn’t mean we don’t know what goes on inside the club.
Hint: There’s more to it than money too.
Hint: There’s more to it than money too.
They also got hookers and blow?
C’mon now…. $80k/yr skilled trades have that stuff.
As an employer provided fringe benefit?
That adds a new meaning to “open enrollment”
It’s not unbelievable, just makes me think I had all the wrong priorities in college
Hookers and blow?
Hookers and blow?
That would make you a real journalist.
Not making this up.
So you just make up the AGW crap? Sorry bud, you set yourself up for that one.
Dannyboy fancies himself a jokester, does he now?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/13/documentary-how-the-global-warming-scare-began/
My jokes about Lola are more funny that your jokes about Joe. Of course, he/she give me more to work with.
To paraphrase Richard Nixon (speaking to real journalists), Dannyboy won’t have real journalists to kick around anymore, our work is about done here.
We will miss Real Journalists. Going back to Goon Squad?
China seems to get it, fighting pollution and fighting carbon emissions are not the same thing:
http://www.chinamining.org/News/2014-03-13/1394676150d66525.html
Both dangerous and dumb take them all out of the gene pool:
http://news.yahoo.com/police-3-attacked-couple-went-wrong-home-182210201.html
Obamacare is going to be even less popular when people experience this:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/happens-don-t-health-insurance-183000855.html
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/03/13/mortgage-rates/6366167/
uninstalling java does wonders.
What’s Potsy gonna cook for dinner tonight? I have broccoli and asparagus.
Dump some orange powered cheese on it and enjoy.
‘I have broccoli and asparagus”
WTF is that Potsy?
I have 3 teevee dinners ready to heat up. Salsbury steak. I have a dozen krispy kremes for snack and a couple large bottles of coke…… and cheetos of course.
“I have broccoli and asparagus.”
I bet you have “broccoli.” Rocky mountain broccoli.
WINK WINK
Dang, this is getting really f-ing depressing.
For the THIRD time, an apartment I seriously considered buying to live in last year has been flipped and listed again on the market at a $200k+ markup. (All in Los Angeles, Westside, and all “flips” are basically new coats of paint) -
–
Apt #1, most recent:
Sold May 2013 for $430k
Listed March 2014 for $679k
–
Apt #2:
Sold May 2013 for $500k
Listed October 2014 $765k, SOLD Nov 2013 for $760k
–
Apt #3:
Sold July 11, 2012 for $425k
Listed January 2014 $779k, SOLD March 2014 for $770k
–
Have people gone insane?? WTF? And all this when I so clearly remember sitting at the kitchen table, penciling out the mortgage, maintenance and taxes for each apt and comparing it to local area incomes and target end-user demographics and determining that there was very little chance that prices would go up dramatically any time soon.
Total opportunity cost of me being EXTREMELY WRONG: $845k. (Not that I could have bought all three, and I certainly had no plans to flip, but still.)
And these crazy price run-ups were mostly in less than a year. I’m starting to wonder if our society’s ludicrous fixation with real estate will ever abate, especially when there is anecdotal evidence of crazy gains like those above floating around in people’s heads.
Someone PLEASE tell me that the crash is coming fast and soon, or I’m going to need a serious Prozac prescription.
I dont see why that is depressing. It’s actually a good thing. Transactions at those prices mean higher defaults within 24 months.
I understand completely. There are houses that I have been watching FOR YEARS that disappear and reappear on the MLS.
Here’s an example of one, and it’s only been three years.
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/389-Fountainview-Cir-Oldsmar-FL-34677/47071755_zpid/
It’s mind-blowing.
If I didn’t have a job that required public scrutiny, I would buy a house and immediately stop paying the mortgage, then live rent free for five years, then buy cash.
You know, that would probably work very well here in Las Vegas.
Do any of these people ever ask themselves what did the previous owner do to increase the price 200K?
They know good and well the previous owner did nothing. Which is why they want in on it so bad, too.
That’s what I’d like to know too - what are the new buyers thinking? Even if they could justify the $200k markup over the last 6 months, do they really expect similar appreciation for the NEXT 6 months?
I will admit though that once a new price paradigm has been established, it can really get in your head and cause massive short-term memory loss! Occasionally I will look at a listing and find myself thinking “wow, that’s a real bargain,” only to check the sales history and remember that the same property sold for considerably cheaper less than a year ago and that so-called bargain is massively over-priced.
It’s amazing how quickly low prices are forgotten when you have 30% inflation in a year!
That’s not inflation.
Stock market down 231 points today, but if you were in PM stocks you were up for the day. That is the purpose of PMs and their stocks to act like an insurance policy.
It is not just houses that the average family can no longer afford, now add automobiles to the list:
http://autos.yahoo.com/news/average-american-can-no-longer-afford-%E2%80%9Caverage-priced%E2%80%9D-new-car-or-truck–and-why-it-s-getting-worse-013001053.html
So just how big is Tesla’s hidden subsidy?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/12/analysis-tesla-may-have-made-over-100-million-off-the-carb-enabled-battery-swap-scheme/
Bummer, I was rootin’ for this guy too. Oh well, I will check back tomorrow, maybe they were wrong again.
Man Who Awakened Inside Body Bag Dies
LEXINGTON, Miss. March 13, 2014 (AP)
A 78-year-old Mississippi man has died two weeks after he woke up in a body bag at a funeral home after being mistakenly pronounced deceased, a coroner said.
Holmes County Coroner Dexter Howard said Walter Williams died at his home in Lexington around 1 a.m. Thursday. The cause was not released.
Williams’ story went viral after he was pronounced dead Feb. 26. Workers at Porter and Sons Funeral Home were getting ready to embalm him when Williams started to move.
The father of 11, grandfather of 15, and great-grandfather of six had gone into hospice in late February because of congestive heart failure. He was declared dead by a coroner the first time when neither the coroner nor others, including nurses, could find a pulse.
“After they got through checking him, the coroner, they pronounced him dead and put him in a plastic bag, zipped him up and took him, put him in the hearse and they left,” said Eddie Hester, Williams’ nephew.
“The mortician said something wasn’t right,” said Williams’ daughter, Martha A. Lewis. “His leg started moving.”
Williams was rushed to a hospital and released a few days later. Doctors say a mix of medicines may have caused his vital signs to appear unresponsive.
Family members also said Williams’ pacemaker may have stopped working and started again.
“God gave us a little more time with him, and we’re happy about that,” Mary Williams said after her father got home.
Howard, the coroner, called it a miracle at the time.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/weeks-waking-body-bag-miss-man-dies-22898990 - -
So they were not wrong just premature.
I bet if you cranked this up in that morgue he’d kick his way outa that body bag again and be good for another couple of weeks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioE_O7Lm0I4 - 150k -
some good news
http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/13/news/economy/jimi-hendrix-stamp/index.html?iid=HP_LN
Jimi Hendrix gets his own ‘Forever’ stamp
By Katie Lobosco @KatieLobosco
March 13, 2014: 2:51 PM ET
19 comments
Thomas Jefferson II • 4 hours ago
And when you lick the stamp, don’t have any plans for the next 12 hours or so!
Now that’s funny. We need that guy commenting on this blog.
Gun Parts Manufacturer Files Restraining Order Against ATF, Avoids Raid
Adan Salazar
Infowars.com
March 13, 2014
Ares Armor, a California gun parts manufacturer, has filed a temporary restraining order against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for fears the federal agency could soon bust down its doors.
For almost two years, the ATF has asked Ares Armor to turn over its customer list, but the company’s owner, Dimitrios Karras, has thus far respected the privacy of his clientele and refused to comply.
“They said either give us these 5,000 names or we’re coming in and we’re pretty much taking everything, which is a huge, huge privacy concern and something we are not willing to do,” Karras told KSWB.
The temporary injunction comes on the heels of last week’s ATF raid on EP Armory, which Karras says was carried out on spurious grounds.
According to Karras, the ATF’s main contention against EP Armory, as well as his company, was they were “making a firearm and then reverting back to the 80% stage by filling in the fire-control cavity,” a mistake the business owner says the bureau has been “appropriately informed of.”
Nevertheless, on Monday, the ATF threatened to obtain a warrant against Ares Armor prior to an inevitable raid on the facilities if the customer list wasn’t soon handed over.
“They were gonna search all of our facilities, they were gonna confiscate our computers. They were pretty much gonna shut our business down,” Karras said.
Shirt featuring 80% lower receiver sold at AresArmor.com.
The next day Karras was granted a Temporary Restraining Order against the ATF, after claiming he was “now in constant fear for the safety of my employees, my customers and myself.”
He explains the events that led to the legal action in a recent post on the Ares Armor site:
During a meeting with the BATFE around the end of 2012 that was unrelated to EP Armory’s product, the Agent that was present very strongly requested that I turn over Ares Armor’s customer list. He intimidated me with the possibility of criminal charges if he was not satisfied. This was the first attempt the BATFE made to intimidate Ares Armor into turning over private customer information.
“I have been unjustly threatened with raids and criminal charges in an attempt by the BATFE to obtain information that is private and protected,” Karras stated in his filed declaration. “The BATFE has expressed interest in obtaining Ares Armor’s customer list in the past and is now attempting to strong-arm us with undue threats based on information they know to be incorrect.”
“The government invades our privacy on a daily basis and everyone seems to think that it’s OK,” Karras said to KSWB, adding he hopes “the judicial system will come in and say, ‘You know this is private information, it’s protected, and no you’re not taking it from them.’”
“For the time we are SAFE!” Karras exclaims with a sigh of relief, but there’s no telling how close he and his workers came to staring down the barrels of ATF weapons.
This article was posted: Thursday, March 13, 2014 at 1:01 pm
Denver weather is 70 degrees. What the…? We have ice-glazed streets here and no sign of 70 degrees until who knows when.