Bits Bucket for May 12, 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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Heard a crazy story today…that people are bidding up home rentals in the mid-Peninsula.
In other words, people offering more per month in rent than is being asked in order to “get” the home.
scdave, have you heard anything like this?
Am slightly worried that they will try to counter or do a bid war for the townhouse I have paperwork in for here in Northern Virginia. There are townhouses and houses as far as the eye can see, but prices vary quite a bit widely and not a ton of them up for rent. The good thing is the place I went after was on craigslist not MLS.
Good luck, Ethan!
HBB was wondering about inventory. At least in MD, inventory depends on location and type of housing. Inventory is very easy to find if you want a pricey new-build McMansion or McTowhouse in the outer burbs, or a pricey new-build mixed-use condo near a Metro station. But if you want a modest SFH + yard in the inner ring burbs near the ring of the Beltway, inventory is tight. The few houses for sale are either a fixer upper or a bidding war.
Are you seeing the same in NoVa?
im seeing that its fairly tight on mctownhouses and mcmansions as well. A number of the listings are stale plugging up the zillow. Traffic patterns are important depending on where you work.
Looks like rents are cheaper in December.
Have not heard this around me but my son told me it was happening around San Francisco some time ago…
Heard a crazy story today…that people are bidding up home rentals in the mid-Peninsula.
So that’s why Google buses their employees to the office. The Bay Area salary premium is more than eaten up by the higher cost of living.
Why is that crazy? It’s not like they will be stuck with a loss of a couple hundred grand or more or will have to declare bankruptcy from a few hundie more a month in rent.
Plus who cares? If a silly shill shills in the woods and no one hears him are they still a shill?
Who cares?
It’s another indication of WAY too little housing for the people who want to live here.
People aren’t bidding up rents because of the Fed policies. They are bidding them up because they need somewhere to live, and there are too many people vying for too few homes.
With 4.4 million excess empty houses in CA, I don’t there there is an issue with “way too little housing”.
Objection, assumes facts not in evidence. Try again.
And there is even more optimism considering housing demand is collapsing in CA.
“It’s another indication of WAY too little housing for the people who want to live here.”
You better hurry up and buy more rentals. Ruuunnnnnn!!!!!
No. That ship has sailed…as I’ve said before.
In any event, it NEVER made sense on the mid-Peninsula…prices never corrected enough for buying rentals to make any sense.
My point is simple.
When you measure number of housing units in CA compared to people who want to live in them, there is not enough supply of housing in CA.
And that has been a significant source of the boom/bust cycles that have been playing themselves out in CA over the years.
With 4.4 million excess empty houses in CA, I don’t think you need to worry about not having enough supply.
No. That ship has sailed…as I’ve said before.
Your brain has sailed to fraud land. First you say there is too little supply. Then you say you shouldn’t buy them as an investment. Seems like you’d want to buy something in short supply when there was such a huge demand still.
Shill.
The lack of supply creates the boom/bust cycles here. The way to a healthy market–stable prices (of anything) is not to have ultra-low supply…you end up with booms (buyers rush in, driving the mania, and then producers create supply with the belief that demand is infinite at those high prices).
Eventually prices stop going up as supply created with expectation of high sales prices runs into problems with demand, and then prices reverse.
They don’t go up forever.
There is no lack of supply with 4.4 million excess empty houses in CA.
America on the Move Becomes Stay-Home Nation for Young
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-12/america-on-the-move-becomes-stay-at-home-nation-for-millennials.html
Tampa, FL Housing Prices Turn Negative; Inventory Balloons 50%
http://www.movoto.com/tampa-fl/market-trends/
Palm Beach, FL Housing Prices Tank 8% YoY; Price Reductions Skyrocket
http://www.movoto.com/palm-beach-fl/market-trends/
25 MILLION excess, empty and defaulted houses CHECK
Housing demand at 14 year lows and falling CHECK
Housing prices inflated by 250% CHECK
Household formation at multi decade lows CHECK
Rampant housing fraud CHECK
Public denial formed and supported by a corrupt media CHECK
Population growth the lowest in US history CHECK
Immigration flat to slightly negative CHECK
Oh my word……
Sarasota, FL Housing Prices Plunge 8% YoY; Price Reductions Skyrocket 56%
http://www.movoto.com/sarasota-fl/market-trends/
Who needs small businesses anyways?
More government free cheese and more printing of money will save us ALL!
Even though this has ended in disaster every other time it is tried in history - it will work for America this time.
————————-
The vanishing entrepreneur, crushed by red tape and regulations
Washington Times | May 9, 2014
It’s not the wealth gap to worry about, but the growth gap
President Obama focuses on the “wealth gap” as if that were the nation’s pressing economic issue. So long as there’s a disparity of ability, determination and luck, some people will be better off than others. The alarm to raise is not about the good fortune of some, but the bad fortune of the vanishing entrepreneur.
He’s rarely seen these days as hope for economic rebound fades. The bitter facts lie in the findings of a survey by the Brookings Institution that the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit is dying. The vision of Sam Walton, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and their kind has been punished to the point of extinction.
Strangled by endless spools of red tape and beaten down by taxes and government fees, businessmen are losing their zeal to convert an idea into a startup business or expansion of one already operating. It’s too much work and risk, to get approvals and comply with laws written by bureaucrats with no spirit or vision. Such rewards as there may be are consumed by taxes. That’s why there are fewer jobs to feed growth.
The Commerce Department had to borrow a microscope to see the minuscule 0.1 percent “expansion” in the economy in the first quarter. The Labor Department reported a productivity decline of 1.7 percent in the same period, meaning factories are less efficient, while unit labor costs rose 4 percent. Taken together, this means many businesses will continue to struggle to stay alive.
The blame for the situation falls squarely on Washington, where federal policies stifle innovation. Some 18,000 new federal regulations were imposed between 2008 and 2012, and many more are under consideration. Each one adds to the cost of doing business. Many firms have had no choice but to hire compliance experts to avoid running afoul of the increasingly complex maze of rules and requirements.
The tax system is oppressive and complicated. No other developed nation has a corporate-tax rate as high as America’s, and the global tax policy encourages companies to leave the United States for a friendlier tax climate, taking their profits with them.
So long as there’s a disparity of ability, determination and luck, some people will be better off than others
At least this guy admits that luck plays a role.
The vision of Sam Walton, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and their kind has been punished to the point of extinction.
Once again, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs accumulated their fortunes in an industry that was built on corporate welfare.
Also, how does this guy know that people like Gates and Jobs have been driven to extinction? There were probably right-wing writers writing the same thing back in the late 70s when they Gates and Jobs were starting their businesses.
Obama has absolutely nothing to do with local government regulations on small businesses. You’re gonna have to pick a new boogeyman, bananaboy.
Wonder if they can re-finance these homes for $200,000 and then we can read how they are victims when the bank comes to foreclose…
————–
Tiny houses a way off the streets for Wisconsin homeless
Brendan O’Brien - news.yahoo.com - May 10, 2014
MADISON, Wisconsin (Reuters) - After surviving two long, cold Wisconsin winters on the streets, Betty Ybarra traded freezing park benches and tents for a tiny house made of recycled wood she helped build herself.
Her 99-square-foot home, which boasts flower window boxes, was built by volunteers of the Occupy Madison group, as part of about a half dozen similar projects around the United States, including in New York and Texas, to shelter the homeless.
“We can check on our flowers and we can now try to live a normal life,” said Ybarra, 49, who shares her new home with her friend Chris Derrick, 55, who had also been homeless.
In Newfield, New York, organizers plan 14 to 18 tiny houses on private land with private donations. In Austin, Texas, the plan is to build a village of tiny houses and small shelters for 200 people on 27 acres.
“The village will bring dignity. We will have a fence and we will have community,” organizer Trina Clemente said.
The house Ybarra and Derrick moved into on Christmas Eve was the first and volunteers are finishing two more. All have a sink and a composting toilet, and are heated using propane and solar panels.
“It means shelter and security. Living in a tiny house is life changing,” said Ybarra, who explained she ended up on the streets after fleeing an abusive relationship.
The Madison group has received more than $85,000 in donations, partly through crowd-sourcing for the houses, which cost $5,000 each in materials. It hopes eventually to build a village of 30 tiny houses.
$5000/99 = $50.51/sq ft
HA, is that you?
FWIW, cheap shelters for the homeless has been a common archutecture student design project for years. Meh. What I would like to see is public policy students designing a “community” that won’t be trashed or abandoned, as The Projects were in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
‘Her 99-square-foot home’
Not much more space than an Appalachian Trail shelter. Roof over ones head against rain and a place to crash. Only if all of life was always like some nomadic pastoral scene these tiny homes conjure up.
Unexpected!
—————-
Mortgage rates defy forecasts
L. A. Times | May 9, 2014, 6:30 PM | E. Scott Reckard
As 2014 arrived, experts were confident that the 30-year mortgage rate would rise to at least 5% this year as the Federal Reserve cut back a bond-buying program, which had depressed the rates to unheard-of lows in 2013..
So much for the experts. The Fed has reduced purchases to $20 billion a month in mortgage bonds, down from $40 billion when the program began in September 2012. Yet lenders this week were offering 30-year fixed home loans at an average of 4.2%, the lowest rate in six months, according to home finance giant Freddie Mac.
…
Freddie Mac chief economist Frank Nothaft’s forecast is similar: a rise to 4.6% or 4.7% by year-end, reaching 5% in mid-2015 instead of the end of 2014 as Nothaft had expected. A sluggish first-quarter economy, due in part to a harsh winter, slowed down the housing market and reined in borrowing costs, Nothaft said.
He, Zandi and Joel Kan, director of forecasting at the Mortgage Bankers Assn., all said international concerns, especially worries over Russia’s aggressive stance in the Ukraine, had also helped drive down rates as investors sought a secure place for their funds.
“A lot of money flowed out of emerging markets,” Zandi said. “It went back into the developed countries — the U.S. and Europe. They just didn’t want to be in Turkish bonds or Brazil bonds.”
Corollary: Once the Ukraine tensions die down, long-term bonds are toast.
You mean US treasuries? Why? US bonds are the cleanest shirt in the laundry, and there are more dirty shirts than just Ukraine. Like, weren’t the bonds supposed to collapse (rates skyrocket) when the tensions settled down in Greece? Or Libya? Or Egypt?
All long-term bonds.
glenn greenwald appearing live and taking viewer calls about nsa surveillance on c-span’s washington journal at 7:00 edt
9:00 edt
9:00 EDT on Wednesday 5/14. Oops
BTW, enjoyed the Nomi Prins clip.
GOON. COULD… GO… ALLTHEWAY.
FUMBLEROOOSKI!!!
Geithner on GMA doing damage control w/George Stephanopolos.
too late.
Good to see you Carrie! How have things been?
Paging Mr. Banker…
—————–
The Solution To The Declining Middle Class: Destroy Fixed Costs And Debt
Zerohedge - Tyler Durden - 05/12/2014
Last week I covered the structural dynamics causing the decline of the middle class. In general, the costs of untradable services (healthcare, higher education, government) and the rot of financialization have increased while wages have stagnated. The Federal Reserve’s “solution” was to make everyone who owned a house a speculator who could only keep even with rising costs by riding the asset bubbles higher and then extracting the “free money” generated by these bubbles before they popped.
Let’s take two representative households to understand the decline of the middle class and the solution. Let’s say both households earn $81,000 annually, virtually all from wages and salaries. This puts the family at around the 70% mark of U.S. households, just within the top 30%. (For context, the 2011 median household income was $50,054.)
This income is solidly middle class: not low enough to qualify for much in the way of government subsidies but not high enough to avoid prioritizing and trade-offs.
Household A has a big mortgage on a house they bought near the top of the market with a minimal down payment, student loans, two auto loans and credit card balances. After making the loan payments and paying for utilities, transportation, groceries, employees’ share of healthcare costs, eating out, mobile phone/broadband/TV service plans, there is little money left to save for emergencies, travel, college for the kids, home maintenance, etc.
How do we describe this family: middle class or debt-serfs? Actually, they’re both:measured by what they superficially own (home, two vehicles, communication and entertainment devices, college degrees, etc.), this household is solidly middle class. But measured by how much income is spent servicing debt, how much is left to accumulate or invest, the family’s net worth (their assets’ market value minus debt) and generational wealth, this household is mired in debt-serfdom: their debts will never be paid off.
The mortgage will never be paid off, and by the time the parents’ student loan debt is reduced, the next generation’s student loans are piling up. The auto loans may eventually be paid off, but it will look cheaper to buy a new vehicle with a modest monthly payment than to pay costly auto maintenance with scarce cash.
Debt anchors this household’s fealty to the state and financial sector as securely as any medieval peasant household’s bond to the noble’s manor house. This is the basis of my characterization of the U.S. economy as a neofeudal arrangement based on debt.
Household B shares the family home that is owned free and clear (mortgage has been paid off) with other family members, owns debt-free vehicles and maintains the cars themselves, rarely eats out, has no student loans (either paid cash for college, used scholarships and grants or paid their loans off), buys cheap catastrophic medical insurance and invests money in staying healthy/preventative care, i.e. eating and preparing real food and enjoying regular fitness, lives close to work, invests some of the ample family savings in enrichment (lessons for the kids, etc.), occasional frugal travel and income-producing assets and retains the rest for emergencies such as vehicle breakdown, medical emergency, etc.
If this scenario seems “impossible,” recall that 1/3 of all homes (roughly 26 million houses) in the U.S. are owned free and clear, i.e. there is no mortgage.
How do we describe this family: middle class or wealthy? Actually, they’re both:this household has a solidly middle class income, but because they’ve eradicated fixed costs (most importantly, debt, costly “gold-plated” healthcare insurance, etc.) and discretionary luxuries such as eating out, costly entertainment plans, etc., but measured by their values, behaviors and net income saved and invested, this household is upper-middle class or wealthy, having achieved a level of prosperity that eludes free-spending households with double their annual income.
Clone Household A, exterminate Household B.
Do it for the children.
“…buys cheap catastrophic medical insurance and invests money in staying healthy/preventative care…”
I like that concept, but don’t think my workplace offers such an option.
Don’t be a debt donkey
And Bill in Los Angeles = WIN
And cash is king. Sell stocks on the peaks.
My mattress is kind of low in the corner. I needed to stuff another $3,000 under that side.
With all that excess cash you might want to consider sourcing mattress shells and filling them yourself.
“Household B…”
That would be my family and our lifestyle except that we pay mightily for healthcare insurance.
Accessories for Mz. Craterton.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mizmo/7804763380/
The liberals/democrat vision of “affordable housing”
Drive the costs of ALL housing into the sky with bigger and bigger government, more and more regulations and higher and higher taxes…
Create another $41 billion government program to build “affordable housing” for the chosen people of the free sh*t army - as long as they vote the right way.
Wash and repeat - over and over.
——————————
De Blasio Announces Affordable Housing Plan
Wall Street Journal - May 05, 2014
Mayor Bill de Blasio detailed a wide-ranging plan to build 200,000 new affordable housing units in New York City in 10 years, calling it a “fundamental plan to reduce income inequality.”
Those who benefit from the plan “won’t be living doubled up with friends…they won’t be living in homeless shelters,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood. The plan would provide housing to service more than 500,000 New Yorkers, he said.
He called the $41 billion program “the largest ever initiated in the history of this city.”
More profitable contracts for his developer buddies.
Yeah, building homes for the poor makes their incomes more equaler. Wha?
I presume you are referring to this article, though it appears the WSJ has since changed the wording.
I feel like we’re back in 2007/2008 when newspaper-types would say that poor folks couldn’t “afford” their mortgage payments anymore because the value of their homes had dropped.
Homeownership in Sacramento County has plunged to its lowest level in more than 40 years
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/05/12/6396844/homeownership-in-sacramento-plummets.html#storylink=cpy
Because they’re all renting from Jingle Fraud’s empire of rental properties?
LOLZ
J. Fraud lost his shirt. Lola lost his pants. If you happen to spot either one of these perps, call the authorities.
Because they’re all renting from Jingle Fraud’s empire of rental properties?
Well, they gotta rent from someone.
Not surprising, not too far from me so I’ve followed local stories and from what I’ve read many there had the same experience as me…tried to buy after 2008 but it was hopeless competing with 100% cash flippers and specuvestors, said to hell with it and continued renting as Bubble 2.0 inflated. Interesting that the paper mentioned that this is not so good for neighborhoods (lotsa greedy absentee landlords, high turnover, etc) , usually local papers in northern Calif. like elsewhere breathlessly report how wonderful for all it is that property “values” are rising and the market has “recovered”.
“As an English friend of mine, who is a London real estate broker, says - Even the Arabs can not afford English real estate these days.”
(meaning - The Chinese are bidding up the prices).
———————
Bank of England warns housing market boom may turn to crash
Guardian UK | 1 May 2014 | Larry Elliott
Toughest warning yet from Bank about rising property prices, as one in 15 London homes now sell for £1m or more ___ Britain’s booming housing market could be heading for a fresh crash, the Bank of England said in its toughest warning yet about the dangers of the return of rapidly rising property prices.
Sir Jon Cunliffe, Threadneedle Street’s deputy governor for financial stability, said it would be dangerous to ignore the momentum apparent across the country and dropped strong hints of new measures to slow down the market in the months ahead.
On a day when it emerged that one in 15 London homes are now selling for £1m or more, Cunliffe said Britain had a history of booms turning to bust. “This is a movie that has been seen more than once in the UK.”
The Bank’s deputy governor said that there were always risks to financial stability “blinking on the dashboard” but made clear his concern about the possibility that borrowers taking on large mortgages could find themselves in trouble when interest rates inevitably rose.
Warmists not gonna warm (WTF?)
Washington Post - Climate change: We have no solution yet
“It’s useful for environmental groups to have global warming “deniers” (and, of course, behind them the sinister oil companies) as foils. The subliminal message is that once the views of these Neanderthals are swept away, we can adopt sensible policies to “do something” about global warming.
The reality is otherwise. The central truth for public policy is: We have no solution.”
Happy Monday and enjoy the die-off kidz
The reality is otherwise. The central truth for public policy is: We have no solution.”
Hasn’t this been the common knowledge for some time?
That’s exactly what I have been (correctly) saying all along.
Dan and Rio can have another hundred post thread arguing about it, but the unquestionable truth is that infinite growth is not possible in a finite ecosystem.
Humanoids are *the* problem. Humanoids are *not* God’s pets.
infinite growth is not possible in a finite ecosystem.
I have not disputed that statement. However, that does not mean that some growth is not possible in the present ecosystem or through technological innovation we cannot expand our ecosystem beyond the Earth.
Elon Musk is working on it. Not in my lifetime, but eventually people will leave this mudball for other planets. That is the solution.
Correction: eventually the 0.01% will leave this mudball for other planets.
And for the ten, fifteen, twenty billion left behind, resource wars, disease, starvation and death.
I don’t care what the Book of Sky Wizard says, humanoids are not God’s pets. Just another species on its way out…
…. meanwhile back on planet earth.
And for the ten, fifteen, twenty billion left behind, resource wars, disease, starvation and death.
And that is different than the last 100,000 years of human history how?
“I don’t care what the Book of Sky Wizard says…”
+1 LOL!
“And that is different from the last 100,000 years of human history how?”
Because we’re all so educated and enlightened now, right. And we’re the undisputed alpha predator of the global ecosystem. The same brilliant minds that brought us Twitter and Candy Crush will surely stave off total ecological collapse.
“And for the ten, fifteen, twenty billion left behind, resource wars, disease, starvation and death.”
There’s already a mediocre sci-fi film for that. Yessir!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/
The same brilliant minds that brought us Twitter and Candy Crush will surely stave off total ecological collapse.
If we adopted eugenics they would but first we will probably have some type of collapse. However, the ecological system will snap back because we are just fleas on a camel compared to Earth in total.
“If we adopted eugenics”
Is this some committee you’re a part of or something?
All right everybody, please be seated. Today’s speaker is Dan. He’ll be discussing poor people and hip hop fans, and what we can do to prevent them from breeding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_Singapore
Of course we can pretend that the eugenics program and the economic results are not related:
http://www.indexmundi.com/singapore/gdp_per_capita_(ppp).html
Two links coming at you but the fact remains that we either do what we are presently doing which is to encourage people that cannot take care of themselves to breed by incentives built in welfare programs or we adopt programs to discourage dependent people from breeding. We need to be honest and make the decision in a deliberate manner and not make the decision by default. Nature has its own form of eugenics and eventually man will have to mimic natural selection to advance as a species and to avoid the collapse that Goon is talking about.
The GOP, the Russian government, the Chinese government, the Koch Bros, and eugenics. The plot thickens!
Certainly, I can see why you would be against eugenics.
Elon Musk is working on it. Not in my lifetime, but eventually people will leave this mudball for other planets. That is the solution.
That assumes that faster than light travel is possible and if it is, that it’s feasible.
Arthur C Clarke refuse to use FTL in his stories. In his opinion it will never come to pass.
All Elon is working on are cheap boosters for launching payloads into orbit.
That assumes that faster than light travel is possible and if it is, that it’s feasible.
We do not need FTL to exploit the resources within our own solar system.
Humanoids are *the* problem. Humanoids are *not* God’s pets.
All the more reason to accelerate the pace of global authoritarianism (fascism/communism/national socialism/marxism)…then let the killings begin.
There is ALWAYS a solution for EVERY problem:
Bigger and bigger government, more and more regulations and higher and higher taxes.
And if things get really bad - we can always ban something.
Especially for the children.
My carbon footprint is bigger than 2Brony’s carbon footprint.
I ate a bald eagle for lunch cooked over a coal fire pit…
Spring storm drops foot of snow on Colorado, Wyoming
Portland Press Herald | 5/12/14 | Thomas Peipart
Denver officials plan to deploy as many as 70 snowplows to prepare for the Monday commute.
A powerful spring storm dropped more than a foot of sloppy, wet snow in parts of Colorado and Wyoming on Mother’s Day, causing crashes and leading to road closures, and forecasters warned that conditions could get worse as temperatures plummeted overnight.
Holy Drudge links Batman!
Here’s a pic of some of the global warming I had to scrape off my car this morning:
http://www.picpaste.com/IMG_20140512_093136_357-d1Jewd4u.jpg
Because warmists gonna warm…
One tech advance that would really be useful is a drone snow plow.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/10/melting-by-2035-hardly-new-study-shows-most-himalayan-glaciers-are-stable-and-in-a-steady-state/
Fact:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/12/antarctic-sea-ice-at-record-levels/#more-109023
But yahoo would rather concentrate on a theory of what might happen two centuries from now:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/12/5710314/an-unstoppable-cataclysmic-glacier-meltdown-is-already-underway
How do you spot a bubble? We’ve gone over this again and again, but the academic eggheads just can’t quite seem to ever catch on.
Bulletin Dow Jones Industrial Average sets intraday record »
May 12, 2014, 7:31 a.m. EDT
Four ways to spot an investing bubble
A study of one of history’s first bubbles offers some valuable lessons
By Brett Arends
Some people will tell you the financial markets are efficient, prices are always “correct,” and the crowd is “wise.”
Others will tell you the market is madness, prices are frequently ridiculous, and the crowd is usually downright foolish.
With stocks, junk bonds and other asset classes flying high these days, the topic of “bubbles” is very much of the moment. Many people will tell you high prices reflect high future returns, and to just invest your money and go with the flow. The market knows what it is doing, they say. The market is wise.
Others tell you to duck.
Who is correct?
The people telling you about the wisdom of crowds can typically marshal a lot of theory, mathematical models and Greek letters — “alpha,” “beta,” and so on — to support their point of view. The most impressive have been able to produce superb charts and mathematical models to show that Wall Street wasn’t overvalued even in 1929, and that there was no housing bubble in Miami or Las Vegas back in 2006.
The people telling you about the folly of crowds typically go easy on the theory and mathematical fireworks. They just point to history.
A lot of history.
Anyone who wants a basic primer should direct their Internet browser to the free website Gutenberg.org and download a copy of Charles Mackay’s “Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24518). It was written in the Victorian era, it is free, and it’s still current. It contains a classic account of the Dutch Tulipmania, and of the sheer insanity of the stock-market bubble that gripped London in 1720.
That was the occasion known forevermore as the South Sea Bubble. (It’s where we get the word “bubble.”) But the mania wasn’t just about the stock of the South Sea Company, which skyrocketed about eightfold in the first half of the year and then plunged more than 80% afterward. It was echoed in a mania for all sorts of other stocks — including, most infamously of all, in stock for a new company “For carrying-on an undertaking of great advantage but no-one to know what it is.” This was, according to Mackay’s account, perhaps the first pure pump-and-dump IPO. The promoter raised a large sum from subscribers to the new company, and then vanished.
Where bubbles come from
What causes bubbles? How do they come about, and how can we recognize them? There is probably no definitive guide, but fascinating new research into the mechanics of the South Sea Bubble has uncovered more information about how it happened.
…
How do they come about, and how can we recognize them? There is probably no definitive guide.
BS.
We know exactly how they form and take off:
[1] Cheap credit flowing into asset class.
[2] Asset class held as collateral to obtain more credit.
[3] Credit pumped back into asset class - see step [1].
It goes on until no more credit can be extended or some lender decides it’s “too much”.
The asset classes vary.
It explains everything from the classic Tulip bubble to the South Sea Bubble to the Israeli Diamond Bubble.
Do people even read any more? It’s clearly laid out in Galbraith’s various books.
(An economist whom I disagree with mostly but on this he definitely nailed it to a T.)
Galbraith is right on most things dealing with economics, where he fails it is his because of his naïve understanding of political science and human nature. The concept that voters will reduce government during prosperity and will save by reducing debt ignores the fact that people that grow dependent on a government program will never vote for that program to be reduced even if the need for the program is no longer critical. Once voters get a taste of more government than they are paying for, they never want to go back to balanced budget. Moreover, once they understand that government can redistribute wealth, they want government to always redistribute wealth even when the long term impact of such redistribution is to massively reduce wealth creation.
And when I mean redistribution of wealth I do not just mean from the rich to the poor. Open borders is an example of policy that redistributes wealth from workers to corporations. Also crony capitalism is actively redistributing wealth to billionaires. The middle class in this country is general and in California specifically is having their wealth redistributed to the Tesla corporation and Tesla car owners to the $7500 credit and the pollution tax credits.
Yup! Nailed it.
Naïve about the nature of politics and the nature of human beings. He believes that characters like the Macbeths simply don’t exist and they would never use money to manipulate the political process which is a shockingly naïve world-view from someone so intelligent.
Nobody has ever voted against anything that benefits themselves disproportionately. I know I wouldn’t.
Yes, here are there, truly altruistic people exist but they are in the minority and they tend to be naïve and idealistic but if they want to effect change then they better learn how the world of real-politik behaves.
Once voters get a taste of more government than they are paying for, they never want to go back to balanced budget.”
Even if voters did want to cut back the government programs that benefit from certain “temporary” taxs the same government would make sure voters understand they can’t survive without them.
1/2 cent sales tax increase in Ca after the San Francisco earthquake , its permanent and curiously the vote came after a very bad wildfire. hmmm
“The sales tax increase would take effect Dec. 1 and expire automatically on New Year’s Eve, 1990.
All California consumers will pay the higher tax, even though the funds will largely benefit only the earthquake-stricken San Francisco Bay Area and adjacent Santa Cruz-Hollister regions. But Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) noted that the entire state helped pay for earthquake relief in Whittier and the San Fernando Valley after those areas were rocked by temblors in 1987 and 1971, respectively.”
Right before Election Day, devastating fires broke out around Southern California.
during a special election, a half-cent state sales tax that was about to expire was put on the ballot to be made permanent,
And they fell for it and voted it in couldn’t believe it..
California Proposition 172 was on the November 2, 1993 general election ballot in California as a legislatively-referred constitutional amendment, where it was approved.
Proposition 172 put a one-half percent state sales tax rate in the Section 35, Article XIII of the California Constitution, effective January 1, 1994. According to Prop 172, all revenues from the additional one-half percent sales tax can be used only for local public safety activities, to include police and sheriffs’ departments, fire protection, county district attorneys, county probation, and county jail operations.
Proposition 172 has the distinction of being the only tax increase approved in a special election by California’s voters in the 30 years from 1980-2010.[1]
According to Joel Fox, “Outside events can influence the outcome of elections. In 1993, during a special election, a half-cent state sales tax that was about to expire was put on the ballot to be made permanent, if the voters agreed. The tax was dedicated to local public safety, including fire protection. Right before Election Day, devastating fires broke out around Southern California. The blazes consumed over 1,000 structures. Laguna Beach was hit hard as was Sierra Madre and Malibu. Ten days went by from the start of the first fire until the last one was extinguished – a period that extended beyond Election Day. While seven measures were on the 1993 special election ballot, only two passed, including the tax measure with nearly 58% of the vote.”[2]
In California, Many Police and Firefighters Get $100,000 Pensions”
When I retire I will be taking my FAT 401k out of state
I’ll let the Chinese RE investors pay for the fat pensions in CA
The golden state
UnionWatch.org reports that the average firefighter in Orange County, California pulls in total pay and benefits of $234,000 per year, making them among the best-paid public employees - and, for that matter, among the best-paid of any kind of employees - in the country. But is this true? No. But yes.
UnionWatch relies on compensation data provided by Orange County itself, which appears to buttress their claims. Average salaries for firefighters top $91,000, on top of which they typically receive another $65,000 in overtime and other supplementary pay. Firefighters then receive an employer pension employer contribution of around $61,000 and health insurance benefits of about $15,000, for a total of over $234,000.
wheeeee http://www.aei.org/article/economics/dos-the-average-orange-county-firefighter-make-234000-per-year-no-and-thats-the-bad-news/
The real question that hasn’t been answered and I await a future Galbraith to do so is why complete idiots highjack a perfectly intellectual and logical thread with long and irrelevant whining about their own personal situations.
Man up. Grow a pair. Nobody cares.
We know plenty of examples otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to abstract out the general principle in the first place. Something that clearly escapes you.
UnionWatch.org reports that the average firefighter in Orange County, California pulls in total pay and benefits of $234,000 per year, making them among the best-paid public employees
I’ll bet all those googleheads wished they were firefighters. Get paid 200K+ to keep the fire engine shiny. Nice work if you can get it.
May 12, 2014, 1:06 a.m. EDT
China housing apocalypse: Could it happen?
By Michael Kitchen, MarketWatch
Reuters
People eat lunch in front of their makeshift homes near newly constructed residential apartments in Fuzhou, China.
LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) — The possibility of a collapse in China’s bubbly housing market has long been a threat hanging over the nation’s markets and economy. But exactly what would happen if the bubble bursts in a messy way?
Barclays sent a note out Friday looking at a trio of scenarios: a base case in which housing prices continue their slow-but-steady path lower, a “downside risk” case in which prices drop by 10% or so, and a “hard landing” situation in which a housing crash tanks the economy.
“Is China’s property bubble at the bursting point? Our answer is not yet. Our base case remains for a gradual deflating of the bubble over 2014-15,” writes Barclays economist Jian Chang.
“But self-fulfilling expectations of falling house prices, financial difficulties among developers on the back of a highly leveraged economy with huge local-government debt, and a fragile financial system with a large shadow-banking sector, suggest the risks of a disorderly adjustment are real and rising,” she writes.
In the base case, a gradual drop in prices and slower property sales would “weigh on overall investment and limit 2014 GDP growth to around 7.2%,” which is also the bank’s current forecast for China’s gross domestic product expansion.
In the “downside risk” scenario, which Jian Chang assigns a 25% probability, “consumption growth would slow by more than in our baseline scenario but remain resilient, given the mild price correction,” while GDP growth would slow to between 6% and 6.5% this year and next.
As for the worst case, housing prices would tumble by more 30% nationwide, leading to “widespread defaults, insolvencies and bankruptcies,” as well as a liquidity crisis and GDP growth falling below 5% “for a couple of quarters.”
…
Even the worse scenario is an apocalypse?
http://www.chinamining.org/News/2014-05-12/1399856794d67595.html
China and copper imports. Well that bust did not last long.
THis wouldn’t be the first time Turbo-tax Timmy lied about taxes.
Romney adviser Hubbard says Geithner is lying, and more must-reads
May 12, 2014, 7:46 AM ET
Glenn Hubbard, the top economic adviser to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, accused former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner of “lying” about a private discussion on tax increases they had, as laid out in Geithner’s forthcoming memoir. Politico reports Hubbard said Geithner fabricated a claim in the book that Hubbard endorsed raising taxes in a conversation the two men had in early 2012 at an Economic Club of New York dinner. “He’s going to go out and say what he wants,” Hubbard told Politico. “It just happens to be a lie.” Hubbard is now dean of Columbia Business School.
…
Early 2012, eh?
Why didn’t he just use his iPhone (or Android) to record it?
It’s hardly hard these days.
On what basis is this assertion being made?
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-millennials-are-hurting-the-real-estate-recovery-2014-05-12?siteid=yhoof2
Related article discusses how millennials are a generation of life’s loosers:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-12/america-on-the-move-becomes-stay-at-home-nation-for-millennials.html
” younger renters [those between the ages of 18 and 39]”
Glad to see I’m among the first to be seated at the chit-sandwich table. Re-upping my lease for another year any day now (small rent 1% increase, first in four years).
On the flipside, I am on the lookout for a combination bubble-sitter/midlife crisis toy; my current thinking is a waverunner or small, flats boat.
“bubble-sitter/midlife crisis toy”
My stack of Bill in Los Angeles renter cash was growing so big it was starting to block out the sun. So I had to peel a few wads of bills from it and get 12 days of lift-served resort skiing this year. I also bought a new avalanche beacon and crampons for my ski boots.
It really, really sucks having all this money to throw away. I would be much better off paying $250 a square foot for a hundred year old rotting shack, and spending my weekends up to my elbows in mulch. Maybe a Realtor can help…
“crampons”
Whoa, easy there.
Save that talk for the After 9pm / Joe crowd.
Pull your mind out of the gutter. Here, crampons in action last weekend:
http://awilbur77.blogspot.com/2014/05/tickling-little-bear.html
Two questions:
[1] Why did y’all not exchange positions so poor Uwe could also have his picture taken?
[2] Where’s the harpsichord?
and one comment:
Great stuff!
12 whole days huh? I thought you lived near the mountain.
I got in 10+ days in 2011-2012 and I live in Dallas.
That does not include backcountry days. Interstate 70 from Denver to the mountain resorts on ski season weekends is a traffic nightmare, and not worth the drive.
All the Colorado resorts except Arapahoe Basin (I’ll be there this Saturday) are now closed, and it should be prime backcountry couloir skiing season for at least another month.
http://exploretherockies.org/2014/05/07/spring-on-hagar-and-citadel/
I-70 sounds like I-80 in CA from Sacramento to Tahoe, not worth the hassle on big weekends. My bro got skunked this year in CA, bought a season pass and only got one weekend in due to lack of snow. I was in CA in March but conditions didn’t cooperate, so 0 days for me.
Sounds like I-70 is like I-80 in CA between Sacto and Tahoe, not worth the hassle on big weekends. My bro got skunked this year, bought a season pass but only got one weekend in due to no snow. I was in CA in March but conditions did not cooperate so 0 days for me.
My bro got skunked this year in CA, bought a season pass and only got one weekend in due to lack of snow.
He’s gonna be even more skunked this summer when he can’t flush the toilet without exceeding his water ration.
Amy Hoax piece actually tells the truth for once instead of fluffing the NAR:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-millennials-are-hurting-the-real-estate-recovery-2014-05-12
Because millennials are Broke Azz Loosers. Who won’t be “snapping up” any $500,000 starter homes. There is no “pent up demand” from these Bachelor of Arts baristas.
“…these Bachelor of Arts baristas.”
I really enjoy your crisp, clear, bare-knuckle perspective.
Except logic doesn’t seem to be her strong suit.
Must be a bachelor in Underwater Womens’ Studies — sorry, make that Underwater Wimmins’ Studies.
So who exactly are all these Boomers going to sell houses to and at what prices?
Logic? — it’s optional when you’re an underwater wimmin who needs a paycheck writing any trash that the hoi polloi might read.
“…her strong suit.”
Didn’t realize goon squad was a woman.
Actually I am surprised at the number of folks who are able to blog throughout the day; not working or cozy job.
Talking about Amy Hoax, dude!
Keep up with the context.
“Actually I am surprised at the number of folks who are able to blog throughout the day”
FWIW, I was home with my son today, because he is sick. I usually don’t get to HBB until late evening.
Goon, on the other hand, is a contractor, so he gets to kill whoever and post whenever he wants. Same with Bill.
“Talking about Amy Hoax, dude!”
Oops, too busy hurrying.
Goon really reads between the lines; sharp wit.
Have to admit that, like Amy, I do prefer ownership over renting, which forced a move to fly-over country. I have tools and toyz that are a serious hassle to move on short notice, and I like having a garage/shop to perform light mechanical work. I wanted to buy a place with a real shop, but I wasn’t willing to spend that much; kids too close to college.
“So who exactly are all these Boomers going to sell houses to and at what prices?”
Well that’s obvious: They are gonna sell them to the all-cash buyers from East Jeebus.
All-Cash Home Sales Soar in First Quarter
By Paul Ausick May 8, 2014 9:45 am EDT
The percentage of U.S. homes purchased in all-cash transactions rose to 42.7% in the first quarter of 2014, up from 37.8% in the prior quarter and 19.1% in the first quarter of 2013. Institutional investors — buyers that purchase at least 10 properties in a calendar year — accounted for just 11% of the all-cash purchases and only 5.6% of all home purchases in the quarter.
Among major metropolitan areas, all-cash sales were highest five Florida cities: Cape Coral-Fort Meyers (73.6%), Miami (67%), Sarasota (65.1%); Palm Bay (64.1%) and Lakeland (61.8%). Other major metro areas with more than 50% all-cash sales included New York (57%); Columbia, S.C. (56.1%); Memphis (54.9%); Detroit (53.5%); Atlanta (53.2%); and Las Vegas (52.2%). The data were collected and reported by real-estate services firm RealtyTrac.
…
Over 5 years, about 62 months - the market is long in the tooth. Today the stocks are going up gangbusters. Good time to sell another batch of my former staffing stock, and I did that while waiting for my cup of burnt coffee at Star yucks.
Irrational exuberance is going on.
Sell Sell Sell! Cash is King!
LONDON (AP) — A new study of the super-rich finds that London has become the capital of the world’s wealthiest, with more billionaires than any other city.
The Sunday Times, which published the list, says London has 72 residents whose fortunes exceed 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion). That’s well ahead of Moscow, at 48, New York, at 43, San Francisco at 42, Los Angeles at 38 or Hong Kong at 34.
The newspaper reports that Britain also has more billionaires per head than any other country, with one in billionaire for every 607,000 Britons versus one for every 1 million or so Americans.
I wonder what threshold of net worth makes you free of the state? IOL of the $ billion I strongly doubt the entire amount is within British jurisdiction. Half would be in Switzerland perhaps.
Most likely it’s spread across the globe and kept in “safe haven” countries.
I do wonder about the billionaire fascination with London. It has its charms, that is for sure, but certainly not the weather.
I think a net worth of $10 million is enough to get you in the club of real free people. I know of a wealthy multimillionaire anarchist in Singapore. He has dual citizenship. Also John Rogers too.
I think it’s 3 million for a person with no kids or wife who can live in a lower cost area. 10 million is closer to eff you money.
“The ugliest home on Oakwood Avenue is swaddled in ratty tarp, its sludge-green swimming pool a Club Med for mosquitoes, its back yard spiked with rusty nails.
Last year, a falling oak smashed through the roof. The ragged hole still yawns open, exposing a family den soaked with filth. Neighbors whisper of squatters, and who knows what else: A neighbor’s cat recently brought her a long-tailed rat.
Another abandoned foreclosed home? Not quite. This one has a rich owner: Invitation Homes, an investment giant that has spent more than $7 billion buying houses under its parent company, Blackstone, the largest real estate private-equity firm in the world.”
http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/realestate/one-year-after-blackstone-house-declared-unsafe-little-done-to-fix-the/2176928
Not to worry.
QE has already purchased the loan and has guaranteed Blackstone a healthy profit.
This is the new obama economy.
I thought Blackstone was paying cash for the shacks.
Nope. All borrowed money and losing money by the day.
Permanent democrat Super majority
It would be great karma if they lived only next to obama supporters.
——————————–
Feds released hundreds of immigrant murderers, drunk drivers, sex-crimes convicts
Washington Times | May 12, 2014 | Stephen Dinan
Immigration officials knowingly released dozens of murderers back into the U.S. in 2013, according to Obama administration statistics detailing all of the criminal convictions of the more than 36,000 immigrants released from custody last year.
The numbers show that the criminals released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had amassed more than 15,000 drunken-driving convictions, 1,317 domestic violence convictions, 727 sex crimes convictions and even four that the statistics listed as “treason, sabotage.”
The immigrants were in deportation proceedings, meaning ICE was trying to remove them from the country and could have held them in detention, but released them anyway,
Imagine 30-180 days of a near country wide black-out.
Would the free sh*t army be happy?
I think “Diversity is our strength” and multiculturalism would save us in that situation.
—————–
Forget Climate Change: EMP Attack On Power Grid Could Kill 9-In-10
Investor’s Business Daily | May 12, 2014 | IBD EDITORIALS
Vulnerability: Expert testimony before Congress on Thursday warned that an electromagnetic pulse attack on our power grid and electronic infrastructure could leave most Americans dead and the U.S. in another century.
That dire warning came from Peter Vincent Pry, a member of the Congressional EMP Commission and executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security.
He testified in front of the House Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection and Security Technologies that an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event could wipe out 90% of America’s population.
“Natural EMP from a geomagnetic superstorm, like the 1859 Carrington Event or 1921 Railroad Storm, and nuclear EMP attack from terrorists or rogue states, as practiced by North Korea during the nuclear crisis of 2013, are both existential threats that could kill 9-of-10 Americans through starvation, disease and societal collapse,” the Washington Free Beacon quoted Pry as saying.
As we reported early last year, Pry, a former CIA nuclear weapons analyst, believes that North Korea’s recent seemingly low-yield nuclear tests and launch of a low-orbit satellite may in fact be preparations for a future electromagnetic pulse attack.
Both China and Russia have hardened their grids and are immune, largely, from either a natural or electromagnetic pulse attack.
What? What does diversity and multiculturalism have to do with EMP?
Because public labor unions and food stamps are bankrupting this country?
2Brony is on a roll today. Don’t be all harshing his mellow…
Public labor unions will bankrupt California.
haters going hate
Isn’t the elecrical grid owned by private utilities? If they get hit with EMP and don’t serve the customer, they *horrors* might get a bad reputation and go out of business. That should be plenty of incentive for them to harden the grid voluntarily.
Private utilities are heavily regulated by government and cannot earn a return on any investment unless approved by government. Despite this some private utilities are hardening their system. It should have been done as part of the stimulus but Obama’s stimulus was poorly designed and consisted mostly of pork barrel projects and money to protect government workers from layoffs.
heavily regulated
dude you missed the sarcasm.
I thought the sarcasm was that they were concerned about their reputation.
The numbers show that the criminals released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had amassed more than 15,000 drunken-driving convictions, 1,317 domestic violence convictions, 727 sex crimes convictions and even four that the statistics listed as “treason, sabotage.”
And Obama wants to reduce deportations? The longer we avoid amnesty the better chance we have that a real screening process is occurring and we can avoid the worse of the illegals from obtaining citizenship.
If the Chamber of Commerce wants more cheap labor, they’ll get it.
Almost bought a house in Williams but refused to get into a bidding war in 2005 and the water situation was a minor factor in not getting into that war. However, the house went up a lot before crashing back down, the better strategy would have been to buy and then sell but timing bubbles is not part of my investment strategy.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_WATER_SHORTAGE_ARIZONA?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-05-12-02-25-08
Hope and Change
Best Economic Recovery ever
Yes we did
———————–
Fed Chair: ‘Deficits Will Rise to Unsustainable Levels’
CNS News | May 7, 2014 | Terence P. Jeffrey
Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen, referencing the Congressional Budget Office’s long-term budget projections, told the Joint Economic Committee of Congress today that under current policies the federal government’s deficits “will rise to unsustainable levels.”
In the 10-year budget projections it released in April, the CBO estimated that the federal government will run $7.618 trillion in deficits from 2015 through 2024. At the same time, the CBO projected that the federal government’s debt held by the public would rise from $11.983 trillion at the end of fiscal 2013 to $20.947 trillion by the end of 2024.
The debt held by the public is the part of the U.S. government debt that is not held by the federal government itself. It primarily consists of marketable Treasury securities, including bills, notes and bonds. It does not include what the government calls “intragovernmental debt,” which is the money the Treasury has borrowed out of the Social Security Trust Fund and other government trust funds to pay current expenses.
I “hope” I can “change” my 401K dollars into gold prior to the U.S. dollar turning into toilet paper due to the results of Obama’s deficit and money printing policies.
Just found out my share of employee-paid health insurance premiums is going up by 17%.
Thanks, Obama.
Shouldn’t have bought those crampons.
Actually, no, because I’ll be buying less lift tickets next year and skiing more backcountry. When you “earn the turns” all it costs is the gas to get there.
I’m just ribbing you.
One of the last items on my shopping list:
http://www.backcountryaccess.com/products/avalanche-safety/float-airbags/
Note these things used to cost at least $1,000 only a few years ago. Video link on the product pages shows the airbag in action, as the skier gets sucked into the slide but floats on top and stands up to walk away from it.
Renters who can afford the airbag get to live and ski another day.
Broke-azz mortgage slave loanowners who dare to venture into the backcountry will find themselves buried with an estimated 45 minutes or less to suffocate and die if not rescued
Hey. They may die but at least they got to write the house off on their taxes!
Can’t believe you don’t have your priorities straight.
Get with the program, Mr.
TamponCrampon!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVO52Cks-z0&list=PL116AD21591B378F1
Excellent look, too!
I can see Andre 3000 deploying one of those at the next Outkast concert.
Just remember it is the weather that is slowing down the economy not Obamacare.
Every dollar of that increase will be matched by decreased consumption.
My Bill in Los Angeles savings rate will remain unchanged.
And Obamacare is not the end of it:
https://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/why-americans-dont-want-start-114753697.html
“Taxation. Death and taxes have always been inevitable, but the tax policies of recent years have taken a direct aim at American entrepreneurs. Take the “tax the rich” approach. Since so many small businesses are set up in a way where company profits are taxed as individual income, many hard-working people fell into tax hikes meant to target the country’s wealthy “elite.”"
You see a lot of sneering about people that have a lot of money here on the HBB, I would say no fewer than ten regulars here sneer about “rich” people. That’s so …francais.
Since so many small businesses are set up in a way where company profits are taxed as individual income, many hard-working people fell into tax hikes meant to target the country’s wealthy “elite.””
I don’t think so. Taxes that only kick in above a certain income were simply meant to affect income above that level.
May 12 (Reuters) - U.S. employers are having trouble finding workers with the needed skills in science, technology, engineering and math, a top Federal Reserve official said on Monday.
“We are seeing a mismatch of skills in the workforce and the jobs that are being created,” Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser said of the so-called STEM-trained workers who are in high demand.
“Sadly, we are not doing an adequate job of preparing our workforce for these jobs,” he said in remarks prepared for delivery to a conference on reinventing older communities, hosted by his branch of the U.S. central bank.
Plosser did not comment directly on monetary policy or the economic outlook.
He repeated, however, that the labor force participation rate can drop, as it has, for demographic reasons such as the mass retirement of the baby boomer generation.
This is a buncha cr@p and has been a buncha cr@p for 30+ years.
Now the Federal Reserve is an expert in STEM employment too?
Not just monetary policy?
There is absolutely no lack of good candidates at any price level from the superstars to the rank-and-file.
Just another excuse to push immigration at a time of high unemployment.
Never attribute malice when simple incompetence will do.
They don’t want to talk about X so they talk about Y and they roll out these clichés which are plainly false if you look at the data.
Except that journalists who are g_d’s gift to rocket surgery swallow it hook, line and sinker and bring absolutely no critical thought to it.
Did anyone ask him: On what basis are you making this claim?
“Just another excuse to push immigration at a time of high unemployment.”
Close Dan
When the hiring managers are all Chinese and Indian do you really think they will hire talk back know it all Americans like pussy cat even if she was was very good ? The answer is no.
So they complain to the Government that Americans can’t do the job need more H1B.
My good buddy, I would also ask you the same question: On what basis are you making that assertion?
http://mises.org/daily/6747/Gun-Control-in-Nazi-Germany
C’mon Dannyboy, why such a buzzkill on a beautiful Monday?
One of my favorite statist hypocracies is how they tell us they’re going to register all 100+ million guns in the USA, but are unable to track down, arrest, and deport the 12+ million criminal illegal aliens in this country.
Because statists gonna state yo…
Professional whining?
Man up. Grow a pair, etc.
This is getting repetitive.
“In her first public speech, new Fed Chair Janet Yellen said one of the benefits to keeping interest rates low is to “make homes more affordable and revive the housing market.”
A very good move by Janet! If she decided instead to direct her energies toward making houses more affordable by doing something REALLY STUPID such as (gasp, choke, gag) LOWERING THE PRICES of those nifty interest-and-fee-generating-machines then she would at the same time be LOWERING THE VALUES, and lowering the values of these houses lowers the values of the MORTGAGES BACKED BY THESE HOUSES.
Which means my bank would be officially hosed (it may already be hosed but it is not yet officially hosed).
Go Janet!
Killing the Internet: A Blizzard of New Taxes in the Wings
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
May 12, 2014
For years revenue-hungry states and local municipalities have salivated over the prospect of taxing the life out of the internet. Now a move by a small but dedicated minority in Congress may result in the scraping of the Internet Tax Freedom Act and usher in a new era of exorbitant taxation, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In a few months, the newspaper reports, “customers may begin receiving notices from their Internet providers that new taxes are on the way. Even though nearly everyone in Congress opposes slapping all of America’s heavy traditional telephone taxes on Internet access, a renewal of this successful policy is being held hostage by lobbyists for giant retailers.”
So persuasive is this minority, it has managed to convince both Democrats and Republicans that an extension of the Internet Tax Freedom Act – that has forbidden bit taxes, bandwidth taxes, and email taxes since 1998 – should be loosened up to allow 9,600 governments to shape rules for ecommerce. Specifically, states want additional authority to reach beyond their respective borders to collect sales taxes on items purchased online or they will pressure Congress to punish all Americans with new prohibitive taxes on all internet communication.
The Supreme Court decided in Quill v. North Dakota back in 1992 it is too great a burden to force a mail order merchant to collect taxes in states where it has no physical presence. Retailers interested in undercutting smaller and more agile competitors and their allies in state government want to skirt the decision and write new rules for interstate commerce.
A brave new world of taxation threatened destruction of small online business when the Marketplace Fairness Act was proposed. It will force online retailers to collect taxes for state and local government across the board. Considering the huge number of state, local and tribal governments in the United States, the burden imposed for the collection of taxes would be, to say the least, significant. As of April 24, the bill was pending in the House Judiciary Committee.
It now appears the internet will ultimately be burdened with taxation, an imposition that will undoubtedly result, as does all taxation, in squelching innovation, discouraging prosperity and narrowing consumer choice. As the economy continues its slow motion collapse, federal, state and local governments will desperately seek new venues for taxation and wealth confiscation. The internet, so far unmolested, and thus allowed the freedom to innovate and grow, appears to be the next juicy target for the statists.
The internet, so far unmolested, and thus allowed the freedom to innovate and grow, appears to be the next juicy target for the statists.”
Don’t run we come in peace
Keepin it real in tha 80210:
http://www.picpaste.com/pics/IMG_20140512_173745_548-ibYMYOb2.1399942948.jpg
C Ya Later, playa haterz!
Can you dig it like Georgie would?
Why isn’t Europe squealing right now?????
I haven’t purchased any PBR lately. That is Petroleo
Brasiliero, and it has a compelling story. They have
the best oil finds in the world right now until the Arctic goes online.
Just imagine the global warming story when public opinion crumbles
sufficiently to not attack drilling in the Arctic.
That is my prediction for the end of mankind. A war will be fought over arctic drilling rights and it will lead directly to nuclear Winter.
What a cheerful thought.
Cheers.
Brazil and Lola are disasters.
Is this time different in China’s property market?
ft dot com
May 12, 2014 6:58 pm
This time China’s property bubble really could burst
By George Magnus
Beijing’s reluctance to enact stimulus programmes is unlikely to hold,
Chinese property is the most important sector in the global economy. It has been pivotal in the country’s economic development, provided lucrative business for industrial commodity producers from Perth to Peru, and been the backbone of the surge in world exports to China. In the past few years, predictions that the sector was about to implode at any moment have not been borne out – but now is the time for the world to pay attention. Property activity indicators have been trending lower since mid-2013, and the downturn in the sector now threatens to turn into a bust. At best, China is entering a deflationary phase at a time of global fragility.
The default risks in the weakly regulated shadow banking sector – and the rapid rise in local government debt – are real, and property-related. Yet the government and the central bank have tools to limit the short-term consequences; they have already deployed debt rollovers, bank bailouts and recapitalisations.
The greater risk to China lies in the pervasive consequences of any property bust. Property investment has grown to account for about 13 per cent of gross domestic product, roughly double the US share at the height of the bubble in 2007. Add related sectors, such as steel, cement and other construction materials, and the figure is closer to 16 per cent. The broadly defined property sector accounts for about a third of fixed-asset investment, which Beijing is supposed to be subordinating to the target of economic rebalancing in favour of household consumption. It accounts for about a fifth of commercial bank loans but is used as collateral in at least two-fifths of total lending. The booming property market, moreover, has produced bounteous revenues from land sales, which fuel much local and provincial government infrastructure spending.
The reason things look different today is the realisation of chronic oversupply. As the property slowdown has kicked in, housing starts, completions and sales have turned markedly lower, especially outside the principal cities. Inventories of unsold homes in Beijing are reported to have risen from seven to 12 months’ supply in the year to April. But when it comes to homes under construction and total sales, the bulk is in “tier two” cities, where the overhang of unsold homes has risen to about 15 months; and in tier three and four cities, where it is about 24 months.
The anti-corruption crackdown, often targeting individuals who have built up ostentatious property wealth, has poured cold water over the market, in which, according to a recent investment bank report, the richest 1 per cent of households is estimated to own about a third of residential property. Elsewhere, the tightening of credit terms, including funding costs for property developers, especially in the shadow banking sector, is taking its toll. Rates of return on commercial property and infrastructure, and cash flows for developers and local government, have been deteriorating.
The crunch in the property market, and for the economy, will come when land and property prices fall more broadly across the country. Official data still show that property prices in 70 cities were 8 per cent higher in March than a year ago – but prices have actually fallen since the end of 2013.
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