The Housing Bubble

Living in a rental will never feel like a real home.

This being the Bits Bucket, I thought I’d share that I’m posting while the wife is asleep; yep, I said “wife”—I’m posting from my honeymoon!

For those who don’t recall, I was nominally single but in a long-term relationship until recently, and decided to take the plunge and make it official. Bill may shake his head, thinking that I am giving up my mobility, but I know that if mobility were ever important (and it hasn’t seemed so in the last 17yrs of my career), she would support me in moving wherever needed. At least I don’t have an underwater mortgage anchoring me down!

Judicial Watch Smoking Gun Busts Open IRS Scandal, Again - Breitbart

Now according to a release from House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, Lerner had a database of tax exempt organizations sent to the FBI just before the 2010 midterm elections. That database included legally protected taxpayer information. Emails show Lerner and DOJ Election Crimes Branch official Richard Pilger discussing what format the FBI prefers when it comes to receiving information for their investigation.

“Thanks Lois – FBI says Raw format is best because they can put it into their systems like excel,” Pilger wrote in an October 6, 2010 email to Lerner.

This revelation that the IRS sent 1.1 million pages of nonprofit tax-return data — including confidential taxpayer information — to the FBI confirms suspicions that the IRS worked with the Justice Department to facilitate the potential investigation of nonprofit groups engaged in lawful political speech.”

“[T]his revelation likely means that the IRS — including possibly Lois Lerner — violated federal tax law by transmitting this information to the Justice Department in 2010.”

More lawlessness by the team in power. This thing, the actual abuse of power by the Admin, will be far worse than anything Nixon did. The MSM is slowly coming around to the fact that they’ve allowed it to happen and I wonder how long it’ll take for them to start asking some tough questions.

how many more trillions will be printed for stock holders? Why are these folks so entitled?

I ran across this article touting American Homes 4 Rent and thought I would share:

“Home Prices Are Going Up: Here’s How to Profit With American Homes 4 Rent and Silver Bay Realty

“By Reuben Brewer, June 13, 2014

“The opportunity to buy in the single-family home market is going away.

“That doesn’t mean that there aren’t undervalued assets floating around ripe for the picking, however. For example, American Homes 4 Rent (NYSE: AMH ) is offering dividend-paying, exchange-traded securities that give you a piece of the future price appreciation of homes it owns.”

“Dividend-paying”: It’s interesting that since there are no earnings but instead there are lots of losses these dividends must be coming from somewhere else, and since the company has borrowed a lot of money and has sold a lot of shares in itself it’s a good guess where this somewhere-else place is located.

“Silver Bay and competitors like American Homes 4 Rent have been aggressively building their portfolios by buying up properties. Silver Bay, for example, started life with around 2,500 properties. A little over a year later, the portfolio held over 5,700 homes.”

Gee, maybe this may help explain the reasoning behind the statement above that states “Home Prices Are Going Up”. A more accurate statement would have been “Home Prices Have Gone Up”, and the reason they have gone up is because investment companies such as American Homes 4 Rent PUSHED them up.

And they pushed them up by their process of bidding them up and they did this bidding up by using Other People’s Money. However, they have slowed down a bit in their buying and hence it is reasonable to assume that the bidding up of prices will be slowing and (the horror) may even go into reverse and even end up DECLINING!

Plus, it is interesting that while the company touts the idea that it is going to be profitable due to renting out its properties this article suggests that they way for the company to best make its money is to sell off its holdings. It’s either the one or its the other since you can’t rent out what you have sold out.

Which is another way of saying that if you are thinking in terms of a going concern of a company - a company that pays dividends, which is part of what the article touts - then you will have to keep the properties as rentals which means that if you are going to keep them as rentals then you won’t be making any money by selling them.

Here is a good article on work and any of you that think I am a LibAll, I fully support what is suggested;

http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/QJTXP3/PFUCGI/TVL0Q4/RNTNKJH/C4HJNF/UP/h

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2014-06-06 10:28
Counter:20

China is likely to release a national plan for the development of the petrochemical industry as early as this month, Shanghai Securities News reported on Thursday.

The plan will come after the State Council pledged safe and green development of the petrochemical industry at an executive meeting chaired by Premier Li Keqiang on Wednesday.

Citing anonymous sources, the newspaper said the plan will lay down rules mainly for oil refining and production of ethylene and aromatic hydrocarbon.

The petrochemical industry is one of the pillars of China’s economy and affects people’s daily lives. But there is a shortfall in domestic supply and China relies on imports for a large portion of the high-end petrochemical products it needs.

At the same time, the domestic industry is under high pressure amid rising public awareness of environmental protection.

A number of petrochemical projects, most typically para-xylene plants, have encountered violent rejections over pollution concerns in Chinese cities in recent years.

To address public concerns, Wednesday’s executive meeting stressed that petrochemical projects must be safe and environmentally friendly.

New projects must go through strict environmental impact assessment and their locations must be chosen in a scientific way, according to a statement issued after the meeting.

In addition to petrochemistry, Shanghai Securities News reported that the upcoming plan will also support the development of coal chemistry in West China.

Sources said that modern coal-based chemical production including coal-to-olefins and coal-to-aromatic hydrocarbon will be supported as the cost of coal chemistry is lower than that of petrochemistry

RAL, your thoughts on these new apartments in a gritty Manhattan neighborhood?

http://www.cityrealty.com/nyc/chelsea/abington-house-500-west-30th-street/apartment-21C/uLYHkfPxKbM

Shades of Battlestar Galactica… Looks like robots will be replacing human security officers.

Remember, when surveillance becomes cheap, it will become more and more widespread and invasive. And when it becomes an even more profitable industry, expect private sector, invisible-hand-of-the-free-market companies to make sure these things are seen as “needed”.

Privacy isn’t always privacy from the gov’t or from police officers. That’s what I mean when I say that our Constitution/Bill of Rights are not going to protect us from this stuff. We’d actually need some limits laid down by Congress, but LOL if anyone expects that to happen.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2659036/Meet-Bob-Britains-ROBOTIC-security-guard-Droid-roams-offices-looking-suspicious-behaviour-calls-backup.html

——————————-

Meet Bob, Britain’s first ROBOTIC security guard: Droid roams offices looking for suspicious behaviour - and calls for backup

-Bob rolls from room to room at G4S offices in Gloucestershire
-If something looks suspicous, Bob analyses it and informs human security

-Bob is on a three-week trial with scientists assessing his performance
-The machine is part of a £7.2 million ($12.2 million) project by the University of Birmingham to get droids into offices worldwide

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/crude-oil-pushes-toward-107-after-iraq-refinery-attacked-2014-06-18

This excerpt is from Real Journalist a May 2, 2011 New Yorker article when they were trying to do a puff piece on the President and his role in the Arab Spring, it is important for people to understand that Obama has acted against his military and many foreign policy experts that told him that stability in the Middle East was more important than promoting the Arab Spring, we are reaping the results of his ignoring their advice at the pump and in the poor showing of the economy in general:

In 2009 and early 2010, Obama was sometimes criticized for not acting at all. He was cautious during Iran’s Green Revolution and deferential to his generals during the review of Afghanistan strategy. But his response to the Arab Spring has been bolder. He broke with Mubarak at a point when some of the older establishment advised against it. In Libya, he overruled Gates and his military advisers and pushed our allies to adopt a broad and risky intervention. It is too early to know the consequences of these decisions. Libya appears to be entering a protracted civil war; American policy toward Mubarak frightened—and irritated—Saudi Arabia, where instability could send oil prices soaring. The U.S. keeps getting stuck in the Middle East.

No one ever seems to consider how, just like DNA, the electric cloud you now live in protects you also. There is a flipside to the privacy issue. If they can pry into the things you are doing, then you can also show that you aren’t doing something you are falsely accused of.

Maybe I will write in John Quincy Adams on the ballot if I cannot vote for Rand or Cruz:
From the same article

One reaction among liberals to the Bush years and to Iraq was to retreat from “idealism” toward “realism,” in which the United States would act cautiously and, above all, according to national interests rather than moral imperatives. The debate is rooted in the country’s early history. America, John Quincy Adams argued, “does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all,” but the “champion and vindicator only of her own.”

In 1966, Adams’s words were repeated by George Kennan, perhaps the most articulate realist of the twentieth century, in opposing the Vietnam War. To Kennan and his intellectual followers, foreign-policy problems are always more complicated than Americans, in their native idealism, usually allow. The use of force to stop human-rights abuses or to promote democracy, they argue, usually ends poorly. In the fall of 2002, six months before the invasion of Iraq, Kennan said, “Today, if we went into Iraq, as the President would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.”

A nation of broke azz loosers:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/americans-are-getting-into-debt-just-to-get-by-2014-06-18

Don’t be a debt donkey

Can the U.S. stock market run up forever on hot air and inertia?

I’m guessing this news may not do much for keeping oil prices contained?

June 18, 2014, 5:14 a.m. EDT
Iraq’s main oil refinery on fire after militant attack
Rebels gain partial control of Baiji facility in overnight raid
By Ali A. Nabhan

BAGHDAD — Parts of Iraq’s main oil refinery were in flames Wednesday as government forces fought to repel militants who gained partial control of the oil facility, Iraqi security officials said.

Sunni militant fighters behind a week-old offensive that has claimed several major cities and towns in northern Iraq attacked the refinery in the northern city of Baiji overnight and seized part of the installation, an oil ministry official in the country’s north said.

The official said employees fled the refinery as it came under attack, the latest in a weeklong siege of the oil hub.
…

Political correctness has reached record levels.

—————

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/redskins-trademarks-canceled

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has cancelled six of the Washington Redskins’ trademark registrations, because they “were disparaging to Native Americans at the respective times they were registered.”

The agency ruled Wednesday in a case brought by five Native Americans, who sought cancellation of the team’s registrations by arguing that the trademarks violated the prohibition of the “registration of marks that may disparage persons or bring them into contempt or disrepute,” as the agency wrote in its ruling.

“We decide, based on the evidence properly before us, that these registrations must be cancelled because they were disparaging to Native Americans at the respective times they were registered,” the agency wrote.

In statements to The Washington Post, the plaintiffs’ attorneys lauded the ruling as “historic.”

“We are extraordinarily gratified to have prevailed in this case,” attorney Alfred Putnam Jr. said. “The dedication and professionalism of our attorneys and the determination of our clients have resulted in a milestone victory that will serve as an historic precedent.”

Jesse Witten, the plaintiff’s lead attorney, said the ruling was “a long time coming and reflects the hard work of many attorneys at our firm.”

US Patent Office Rules Redskins Name Is Offensive, Cancels Trademarks

All over the news today. I scrolled through the ruling but couldn’t figure out if it was only the Redskins words, or the actual image, which was cancelled. (I think the image was cancelled too.)

The comments on Yahoo are pretty funny. They think it’s all an Obama plot to take away our free speech. Heh. If anything, speech is freer than it was before. Now everybody has the right to use the “disparaging” words and imagery, not just Dan Snyder.

Good on the Natives who filed this suit. They aimed at ol’ Danny where it would hurt him the most. Couldn’t happen to nicer NFL owner.

Another clickbait, slide show (to maximize page load ad views) from MarketWatch, one that surprisingly tells the truth that home remodeling projects are guaranteed money loosers:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/are-these-7-home-remodeling-projects-worth-the-money-2014-06-17

Along with bidding wars and “snatching up properties”, which are hallmarks of a mania, I wonder how many people could once again afford the houses they’re living in?

U.S. Border Patrol Paying To Ship Illegals Deep Into U.S. - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEEXGInmVZ8 - 133k - Cached - Similar pages
9 hours ago … U.S. Border Patrol Paying To Ship Illegals Deep Into U.S. … Paying To Ship Illegals Deep Into U.S.

The Dog Ate My E-Mails

Ice Cube - What They Hittin’ Foe?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaLacfdA-wI

Not even a smidgeon of those E-Mails can be found.

Self-driving cars and peer-to-peer ride-shares? I’d love it if I could find a road to safely ride my bicycle. I am underwhelmed by technology.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/uber-isnt-worth-17-billion/

Fed tapering again. Last year they were buying $85 billion in bonds a month. And now it’s down to $35 billion or $45 billion.

When will that translate into higher rates for T bills? So far the T bill rates have gone down over the year.

The Duke student-cum-porn-actress wrote a piece in Time magazine about why education is so expensive. And why she went into porn to pay for that education. She says something which rings true - when government wades into an industry to make the product cheaper/affordable, or they move to protect an industry, the prices in that industry skyrocket. Be it medicine, education, or housing.

‘Duke Porn Star’: I Lost My Financial Aid
by Miriam Weeks
June 16, 2014
Time Magazine

Instead of focusing on my decision to perform in porn to pay my tuition, let’s start paying attention to what got me here: artificially inflated demand for college that pushes tuitions sky high

But my porn work pays the exorbitant tab for one simple reason: Demand for porn actresses, especially extremely young ones like myself, far exceeds supply. How interesting that the same basic principle explains why my tuition bill is so high in the first place.

Sheldon Richman, vice president of the Future of Freedom Foundation and author of Separating School: Liberating America’s Families agrees:

‘What drives the inflation of tuitions are the various forms of government financing. This is basic economics. If the government stimulates demand through grants and loans, other things equal, prices (tuitions) will rise. It’s supply and demand. It is unsurprising that much of the money goes to administrative bloat. That’s how bureaucracies usually behave.’

I’m hardly the only student who’s struggling with these sky-high bills. Experts predict a massive student loan default on the horizon, on par with the last major mortgage crisis. And, like the mortgage crisis, it’s likely the banks and lenders will be bailed out, while the students will be saddled with wage garnishments and ruined credit.

Government must stop the flow of money to schools in order to get tuition rates under control again.

http://time.com/2873280/duke-porn-star-belle-knox-college-cost/

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