The Housing Bubble

Listen up people; today is moving day for me. I’m leaving Flagstaff and it will be a few days before I get settled. Then I have to travel again this coming weekend. So you will have to put up with no posts from me and delays in moderating. Sorry, but there’s no getting around it.

home prices seem to have stabilized?

“When will this echo-bubble hit its peak, or has it already done so? Someone this past week posted a comment of ‘I’m calling top.’ But it made me wonder: are we really close to the top? Past the top? Still years from the top?”

Here is one SoCal data point: My cousin and his wife had planned to sell a condo in the OC by this spring. I believe there was some kind of tax consequence if no sale by then, due to a limited time between when you move out of a home as primary residents during which you can rent it out before an owner-occupancy tax break expires.

As of now the renters are still occupants and the home is not sold. Also, apparently they have had to lower their list price considerably from what they thought it would go for earlier this year. (Luckily they own the place free and clear!) They are hoping to sell by the end of the summer, but they still have the problem of persuading their renters to leave.

Remember, accidental landlords, possession is ninety percent of the law.

What tastes better: Dog, fox or donkey meat?

They are not finished here Long Island city mine and LL auto mechanic here 38 years just up and sold his business (and low balled his houses starting price sold in 3 days and really did have multiple bids ) on a high traffic corner for $1.2 million and they are going to build a few luxury kondozes…..I found an honest and reliable place but the land was worth far more then the bizness.

Does it seem like the poor people are having to pay for the bailout via inflated consumer prices?

Well at these high food prices people might lose some weight, maybe?

For the return of the weekday working shills who never seem to be around on weekends, let me say

Everyone here who wants to check in and prove their non-shill status please post these words:

NOW IS NOT A GOOD TIME TO BUY A HOUSE.

It is that simple.

“Imperial Image”, LOLZ

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/some-democrats-fear-clintons-wealth-and-imperial-image-could-be-damaging-in-2016/2014/06/22/526746e6-f7eb-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html

The most corrupt sports organization in the world is also the most PC, some how these seem to go together:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/06/23/324629058/some-mexico-fans-feel-unfairly-targeted-for-world-cup-chants?ft=1&f=1055

Is it because the gold is safe or the fact that the gold has all been leased out and cannot be replaced without driving gold to $5000:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-23/german-gold-stays-in-new-york-in-rebuff-to-euro-doubters.html

Remember….. Houses depreciate rapidly.

‘Whilst the instability in Iraq has connections to the Syrian conflict next door, and many individuals who fought for Isis in Syria are now present in Iraq, the Iraqi insurgency is more acutely focused on solving the problems of Iraq’s fractured polity than it is the goals of more radical Islamic groups.’

‘In a recent interview with the Daily Telegraph, member of the Batta tribe and leader of the Islamic Army of Iraq Sheikh Ahmad al Dabash stated: “All the Sunni tribes have come out against (Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri) Maliki.’

“There are parts of the military, Baathists from the time of Saddam Hussein, clerics, everyone (who) came out for the oppression that we have been suffering,” he added.’

‘To dismiss what is happening in Iraq as the product of the maniacal whims of a few radical fanatics is to ignore the very real social inequality that exists in Iraq.

Travelling around the country in recent days, I have been shocked at the levels of deprivation that some of Iraq’s citizens have endured.’

‘The grouping of fighters that has swept through Iraq to within 60km (40 miles) of the capital is not a nihilistic jihadist group hell bent on the establishment of an Islamic caliphate.’

‘It is a more general uprising by large groupings of disaffected communities throughout north-western Iraq and a product of years of social exclusion, poor governance and corruption by the Iraqi government.’

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27945954

So why is the media hellbent on portraying this as one small group?

All true. But it is consistent with the reports we received before the Bush invasion of Iraq. The NYTs convinced everyone and I include myself that Hussein was back producing weapons of mass destruction and thus could be a risk in the post 9/11 world. However, it is clear now that an Iranian plant was the source of all the Intel used by the world. Iran appears to me to be playing the world one more time with the help of our government and press.

Meeting is starting, signing off.

Hillary is done here. She’s persisting with her “ability to relate to people having a tough time” schtick. Huge opening for Romney if he wants to run again sans social issue pandering and putting his foot in his mouth constantly. He could upgrade his VP nominee and be competitive in purple states as well. And as a final bonus, he’s actually younger than Hilary by a few years.

Note: This doesn’t mean I’d vote for either of them, just that Clinton is done and Mittens should consider another go of it.

—————————

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hillary-unlike-truly-well-off

The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington asked Clinton how her financial status could impact her ability to discuss income inequality.

“But they don’t see me as part of the problem,” she responded in the interview published Sunday, “because we pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off, not to name names; and we’ve done it through dint of hard work.”

Bill DiBlasio trying to screw up Bloomberg’s NYC. Keep in mind, diversity has absolutely ruined CA public schools in all but the most expensive/elite areas. It’s one of the big differences between similarly well-off areas in the northeast vs CA. Northeast is big on magnet schools, esp for HS, which are merit-based (based on a test scores). Obviously, schools like this are not diverse and are nearly all white/Asian, so normal upper middle class but non-wealthy couples can send their kids to great schools without buying a $1 or 2 MM house.

Admission to NYC’s elite magnet schools is decided by a single exam and nothing else. Apparently its mandated by state law (at least for three of the magnet schools; other schools choose to use the test as the sole criterion anyway). He’s pushing the state legislature to change the law so he can introduce a more wholistic admissions standard and has made clear that he doesn’t think the schools are diverse enough.

I think a single exam with nothing else might not be the best way to handle admissions but I do not trust the clowns in City Government or Albany to get this right. Any change will be a shameless pander to certain groups. I can also imagine local pols using their influence to get their children and their friends’ children into the elite schools despite crappy numbers.

Good link:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-23/de-blasio-seeks-to-alter-entry-plan-for-nyc-elite-schools.html

I’ve been out, so I’m not sure this was posted, but if you look at nothing else related to Boomer housing effects, it should be the graph in this article.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-20/boomer-housing-bust-ain-t-happening-yet

Those born in 1946 haven’t turned 70 yet, and the largest cohort of Boomers is almost a decade younger, which is why I think the authors prognostication of 2025 for a boomer-related bust is perhaps a decade (or more) too early.

June 20, 2014 12:00 AM
Of the Bureaucrats, by the Bureaucrats, for the Bureaucrats

For understandable reasons, the IRS scandal has largely focused on the political question of whether the White House deliberately targeted its opponents. To date there’s no evidence that it did. That’s good for the president, but it may not be good for the country, because if the administration didn’t target opponents, that would mean the IRS has become corrupt all on its own.

http://m.nationalreview.com/article/380812/bureaucrats-bureaucrats-bureaucrats-jonah-goldberg

And that is a cause for concern. If the bureaucrats turn against a group, who do you fight? We need to curb the ever increasing size and scope of all levels of government. And who is organized to do this?

Taxed Enough Already!

Nearly Half Of Detroit Water Customers Can’t Pay Their Bill

June 23, 2014 7:33 AM

DETROIT (WWJ) – It’s a basic human right: water. But could the United Nations soon help the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department provide the service to struggling customers?
Water department spokeswoman Curtrise Garner says it’s a possibility — but for now, the water bills must be paid.

detroit.cbslocal.com/…/nearly-half-of-detroit-water-customers-cant-pay-their-bill/ - 91k -

The scandal of fiddled global warming data

The US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record

By Christopher Booker
4:04PM BST 21 Jun 2014

8562 Comments
When future generations try to understand how the world got carried away around the end of the 20th century by the panic over global warming, few things will amaze them more than the part played in stoking up the scare by the fiddling of official temperature data. There was already much evidence of this seven years ago, when I was writing my history of the scare, The Real Global Warming Disaster. But now another damning example has been uncovered by Steven Goddard’s US blog Real Science, showing how shamelessly manipulated has been one of the world’s most influential climate records, the graph of US surface temperature records published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Goddard shows how, in recent years, NOAA’s US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been “adjusting” its record by replacing real temperatures with data “fabricated” by computer models. The effect of this has been to downgrade earlier temperatures and to exaggerate those from recent decades, to give the impression that the Earth has been warming up much more than is justified by the actual data. In several posts headed “Data tampering at USHCN/GISS”, Goddard compares the currently published temperature graphs with those based only on temperatures measured at the time. These show that the US has actually been cooling since the Thirties, the hottest decade on record; whereas the latest graph, nearly half of it based on “fabricated” data, shows it to have been warming at a rate equivalent to more than 3 degrees centigrade per century.

When I first began examining the global-warming scare, I found nothing more puzzling than the way officially approved scientists kept on being shown to have finagled their data, as in that ludicrous “hockey stick” graph, pretending to prove that the world had suddenly become much hotter than at any time in 1,000 years. Any theory needing to rely so consistently on fudging the evidence, I concluded, must be looked on not as science at all, but as simply a rather alarming case study in the aberrations of group psychology.

EricStoner >Croaker • 11 minutes ago

And, it’s easier to fool a person than convince them they’ve been fooled. In this case I think it comes down to the money, the huge rip off of the public with the funds going to cronies of the government.

Michael Peter • 15 minutes ago

AGW always causes me to think back to Michael Crichton’s speech about it, where he, being an anthropologist, noted how religion is always the centerpiece of a culture; how humans’ brains are pre-wired to seek explanations for things we don’t understand.

If science is now the decider of truth (and I think it should be) and Christianity is falling out of fashion because of scientific conflict, then what will the new religion be?

Environmentalism has the same tenets as most religions. There once was a perfect balance in nature (garden of Eden). Then man came along and destroyed everything (the fruit of knowledge). Now we must repent for our sins (state authoritarianism, regulation).

Why else would they be calling people “deniers” when so much evidence suggest their science is way off base? Probably because they have faith in it. They believe in it despite the science, not because of it.

If progressives win the culture war, we’re headed right back to state-sponsored religion.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…/10916086/The-scandal-of-fiddled-global-warming-data.html

Alex Newman is NARJ

Dictators Worldwide Demand Aid, Empowered UN, Global Socialism

Written by Alex Newman
Sunday, 22 June 2014 17:20

Communist, socialist, and Islamist tyrants, as well as some elected governments from around the world, came together in Bolivia mid June to sign a massive declaration outlining their autocratic demands. Among them: Global government, planetary wealth redistribution from Western taxpayers to their governments, the United Nations “sustainable development” scheme known as Agenda 21, an “international climate regime,” and economy-crippling energy-rationing policies in the West, as well as much more power for their oftentimes brutal regimes in “global governance” institutions such as the UN and the IMF. UN boss Ban Ki-moon was there to cheer them along.

As The New American reported on June 20, the governments called for what they termed a “New World Order to Live Well.” This article will focus on their specific demands. The final declaration was signed by the so-called “Group of 77 plus China,” which despite the name now includes more than 130 governments and autocracies ruling over nations constituting some 60 percent of humanity — from North Korea and Cuba to Zimbabwe, China, and everywhere in between. The text of the agreement offers a great deal of insight into what their sought-after “New World Order” would look like: It bears striking resemblance to the new order outlined by Western globalists.

Much attention was focused on the UN’s so-called “post-2015 development agenda.” The G77 plus China regimes, echoing the UN, said it must be “global in nature and universally applicable to all.” As The New American reported in February, the UN already has big plans for its post-2015 “agenda,” much of it outlined in a radical report produced with the key assistance of Obama policy architect and extreme Big Government-monger John Podesta. Among other points, the official UN document calls for to planetary authorities to “profoundly and dramatically” alter the “worldview” and “behavior” of every person on Earth. All of it must be done under the guise of shackling humanity to the UN-managed “universal sustainable development agenda.”

Calling for the “reform process” over governance of Bretton Woods institutions to be finalized as soon as possible, the final agreement also demanded a “more ambitious” and “accelerated plan” to give dictators more power. They should be allowed to participate and vote in all discussions on “international monetary reform and in the operation of the new arrangements for special drawing rights in the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” the declaration said. “In this regard, we call on the General Assembly to launch a process to reform the international financial and monetary system.”

Currently, the global monetary system is dominated by the U.S. Federal Reserve and its U.S. dollar, which serves as the global reserve currency. If the G77 and their allies in the West get their way, however, that will soon change. “We affirm that the current world financial and economic crisis and its consequences for development have exposed the gaps and failures in global economic governance, including within the international financial institutions, and the urgent need for a global, universal and integrated response by the international community,” the declaration continued.

Demands for global currency printing followed. “Also the reform should encompass liquidity creation, including improvement in the special drawing rights for developing countries,” the declaration said. By “liquidity creation,” they mean printing fiat currency out of thin air like central banks. Special Drawing Rights, meanwhile, are the proto-global currency already issued by the IMF, with their value based on a basket of currencies. Of course, if the Fund is allowed to emit its own “liquidity,” or fiat currency, the world will officially have the planetary central bank that has long been sought by globalists everywhere. The implications are historic and monumental, as self-styled global authorities would be able to fund their machinations without the need for taxpayer funding now provided by national governments.

Dictators and Third World governments, though will not be enough, so Western nations with a semblance of freedom and self-government remaining must also get on board. “We urge developed countries to show real political will, so that in the process of reform of the United Nations, including the strengthening and revitalization of the General Assembly as an emblem of global sovereignty, it can improve its capabilities and capacities to fully implement its mandates and ensure the effective delivery of its programme in the social, environmental and economic development fields,” the declaration continued, claiming the UN has “unquestioned legitimacy.” It was not clear where populations were demanding a UN better able to enforce its “mandates,” but dictators and the Obama administration are fully on board.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/…ctators-worldwide-demand-aid-empowered-un-global-socialism - 59k -

Tony Abbott Reintroduces Carbon Tax Repeal Legislation

Abbott: “I expect this carbon tax, this toxic tax, to be gone.”
Image Credits: Electronic resistance.net

by Rosie Lewis | The Australian | June 23, 2014

TONY Abbott has challenged Labor to live up to an offer to terminate the carbon tax, after he reintroduced repeal legislation in parliament.

“This legislation will be considered by the Senate and soon members opposite will have to say where they stand,’’ the Prime Minister told parliament.

Mr Abbott says repeal of the carbon tax will be dealt with urgently in the new Senate, which sits next month.

“I expect this carbon tax, this toxic tax, to be gone,’’ he said.

Worthless, worthless housing.

Worth less and less every day…

Homeland Security Seeks Thousands Of Pairs Of Underwear For Detained Immigrants

June 24, 2014 10:05 AM

El Paso, Texas (CBS HOUSTON) – The Department of Homeland Security is looking to fulfill an order for thousands of pairs of men’s underwear – with hundreds of the requested men’s briefs in the 5X and 6X-large sizes.

A solicitation posted earlier this month by the Immigration & Customs Enforcement office seeks thousands of “White 100% Cotton Men’s Briefs” ranging from mediums to hundreds of 6X-large pairs of the underwear.

ICE facilities have seen a recent influx of detained immigrants awaiting deportation, during which time, the detention facilities require such basic items for the detained aliens, Breitbart reported. The ICE orders for the underwear are not unusual for the immigration detention facilities, according to ICE officials.

“This [request for quote] is a normal solicitation for routinely procured items needed at ICE-owned detention facilities around the country,” an ICE spokesperson explained to Breitbart News on Monday. “At ICE-owned detention facilities, the agency is required to provide basic necessities in order to feed and clothe detained aliens.”

The solicitation placed through Federal Business Opportunities cites that the large order – and large underwear – are bound for El Paso, Texas.

houston.cbslocal.com/…/ - 108k -