The Housing Bubble

Do you know what ticks me off?

If I had to pick just one though, this Saturday morning it would be HGTV. I think this is more responsible for ruining people’s lives through greed, covetousness and lies than any 10 bankers.

Watching HGTV is a sign of mental illness.

I second your angst on homemoaners. Many homes we offered hard earned money for, got sold to people who offered insane amounts, used a loan, and then defaulted, living free. We use to follow foreclosure radar and we would see the buyer was in the rears months after the coe.

Reminds me of our concern for taking out CEA EQ insurance. Will those luxury car owners who are relying on FEMA win their bet? Why have a deductible (they subtract it out of a large settlement) if FEMA will give you a grant.

The govt rewards the inverse of morals and doing the right thing. It sucks. I’m going over to the “dark side”, I swear. lol

I agree W-A-B.

I laugh at those dumb suckers. I haven’t heard of housing as an investment before the year 2000. But it obviously is a belief by most of the buyers since then. Even after the bubble burst in 2007 some of the same cities that suffered the most, like Phoenix, have had housing manias again. What a bunch of jackasses.

A lot of those people have since recovered in the equities bubble, I’d guess.

But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.

Having recently finished reading Les Miserables, I’m not buying it. Today’s .01% are different than the French royalty in a number of ways. For one, in many cases they have a legitimate claim to their wealth through having either run a company or produced some new idea that improved the lives of millions. Secondly, unlike the French royalty, which was the visible face of oppression, in many cases the .01% live quiet lives either out of view or inconspicuously in plain view of main stream society.

In short, the social tensions which gave rise to the French Revolution don’t seem apparent in the context of today’s societal wealth gap.

From the essay;

What a great idea. My suggestion to you is: Let’s do it all over again. We’ve got to try something. These idiotic trickle-down policies are destroying my customer base. And yours too.

Paging Rio………..

Concerning the money stock, Wikipedia says (in part):

“… if the velocity of money, i.e., the ratio between nominal GDP and money supply changes, an increase in the money supply could have either no effect, an exaggerated effect, or an unpredictable effect on the growth of nominal GDP.”

Which means even if the money stock is made to expand the effect of a contraction of the velocity of money can more than cancel out the effects of the expansion and instead of getting a growing GDP you will end up with a shrinking GDP.

So what you (your graph) are (is) saying is that for a given level of GDP, if the Fed creates massive electronic piles of new fiat at a historically unprecedented rate, then the velocity of the money stock will necessarily slow, as GDP = Stock * Velocity.

Is that your point?

She should be met with a bill for the cost of rounding them up as well as shipping them back. Instead she will stay at a 5 star hotel, and rub elbows with the American elites, while they ponder how to continue raping the serfs.

P.S. For a rough idea of how much I have invested, I could probably buy about five Detroit investment homes with the principle.

Another thing I like about the Vanguard REIT: It has lots of investments in health care real estate, which may go up in value due to the ACA.

Buy what DC buys.

I have less than $10k in my REIT, so I am in the investor’s shares version.

The advantages over home moanership are many:
1) I dollar cost average into the REIT. You cannot dollar cost average into a house.
2) My REIT will not be a slum. Your house is far more likely to go Detroit than the apartment properties, health care properties and commercial properties in a REIT.
3) My REIT does not hold me down geographically. I can take it whereever my job goes. And I move around southern California from job to job every three or four years.
4) If I put enough of my assets into my Vanguard REIT, the dividends can pay for my entire rent. But I already use my bond funds to pay my entire rent for my Phoenix apartment.
5) I don’t get a California renter’s tax credit. Years ago it was $60 per year. I’m not technically a Californian and the Franchise Tax Board does not know my rental address in California anyway ( it is fun being an anarchist in the nanny state). My dividends on my REIT amount to over $60 per year so far. I only have put $3800 into it since I started the fund last year. So yes I do have my deserved tax credit.

I love it. Get the minimum wage high enough and all the old retires with Obama care will take the jobs because of zero interest on savings and bonds. The illegals will be drawing welfare along with the recent graduates. Gee, back to square one. How about some real jobs.

Perhaps all this crap with immigration is about bringing cheap labor into the country and then the repatriation of American factories from Mexico and China.

“Pro-Business Latino Democrats Stopped Minimum Wage Hike”

It’s good to know that at least some Californians are worried about avoiding further decreases in the already-dismal labor force participation rate.

“There will be approximately 65,000 UAC in total: 25% local ground transport, 25% via ICE charter and 50% via commercial air.”

Feds advertised for escort services for unaccompanied alien children in January

Written by Michele Hickford, Editor-in-Chief on June 19, 2014

If you think this sudden flood of illegal immigrant children is spontaneous, think again.

According to a “help wanted” Request For Information (RFI) posted on FedBizOpps.gov, the feds were looking for vendors to help escort unaccompanied alien children (UAC) in JANUARY of this year.

The specific vendor requirements state:

ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is seeking the services of a responsible vendor that shares the philosophy of treating all UAC with dignity and respect, while adhering to standard operating procedures and policies that allow for an effective, efficient, and incident free transport. The Contractor shall provide unarmed escort staff, including management, supervision, manpower, training, certifications, licenses, drug testing, equipment, and supplies necessary to provide on-demand escort services for non-criminal/non-delinquent unaccompanied alien children ages infant to 17 years of age, seven (7) days a week, 365 days a year. Transport will be required for either category of UAC or individual juveniles, to include both male and female juveniles. There will be approximately 65,000 UAC in total: 25% local ground transport, 25% via ICE charter and 50% via commercial air.

You can view the full posting here.

I tried calling both of the contact names listed on the page to see if they’d found a vendor yet, but got voicemail.

The question is, how in January, did the U.S. government know up to 65,000 unaccompanied illegal alien children would be arriving?

Please send me evidence that this is not an orchestrated invasion, and I will remove my tinfoil hat.

Read more at http://allenbwest.com/2014/06/feds-advertised-escort-services-unaccompanied-alien-children-january/#J1xFRjqVA4cQwoqm.99

It makes my blood boil about our taxpayer money being used to fly criminals around the U.S.

All the more eager for me to keep working on ways to reduce my adjusted gross income from the taxman. Gotta get back into consulting. The tax advantage is far greater than the MID. By several times the amount.

From the article:

“I have never missed a payment or been in arrears, but I am struggling to make ends meet. My credit rating is excellent so I am not a high risk, but the company has treated me appallingly. I have been a customer for almost 10 years and yet no one will help me. I’m trapped on this deal because I’m currently studying, so I don’t meet other lenders’ affordability criteria.”

If you choose to play the bank’s game of Gotcha then you begin to play the game by signing a dotted line. If the game does not go the way you expected then this is the point where it may dawn on you just how the game got its name.

Remember: You absolutely cannot lose with the stuff I use.

I am skeptical about some wealthy libertarians encouraging American libertarians to escape out of “Amerikka.” First, those of us who have family ties here, even long passed-away family members, have some emotional tie to this place. Just like I have an emotional, but not intellectual, tie to California because I was born and raised here. Second, the IRS is the only agency of all nations that go outside its jurisdictions to chase after Americans, so you cannot escape that terror organization the IRS. Third, no other nation has the heritage of the bill of rights as well as the right to keep and bear arms. Switzerland does not have any bill of rights that I know of.

I found that one of the authors of “The Market for Liberty,” which is my favorite anarcho-capitalist book, lived a libertarian lifestyle, well below the radar of the taxman. She lived cheap and did not own much, but her liberty was the important thing for her. Another anarcho capitalist is a very wealthy man who moved to Singapore. It’s not really a civil liberty place, but far more capitalistic than the USA. But also it’s far from home.

I ignore posts from those who were not born in California and never were raised here - when they make remarks about Californians. I guess ALL OF US are nuts? Including the conservative Californians and libertarian Californians?

Subract out the government and the nanny state and you have the best place to live on earth.

“Argentina, which defaulted on a record $95 billion in debt in 2001, has said it would face a second default if forced to pay both classes of bondholders.”

One a minute.

There is no learning curve.

Is one of America’s premier investment banks morphing into a vulture fund?

First Published: Mon, Jun 23 2014. 11 59 AM
JPMorgan buys China’s larger developers as bubble deflates
Chinese real-estate firms accounted for six of the 10 best-performing Asian notes in the past three months

JPMorgan Asset Management and Invesco Asset Management say China’s cooling property market is an opportunity to boost dollar bond holdings as the government’s targeted stimulus benefits the largest developers. Chinese real-estate companies accounted for six of the 10 best-performing Asian notes in the past three months, according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch index. The yield on 2018 debt of China Overseas Land and Investments Ltd, the nation’s largest developer by market value, dropped to 3.35% last week, from a record 4.31% on 5 February while that on similar-maturity bonds of China Vanke Co. fell to 3.95%, from an all-time high of 5.07% on 20 March.

“We will pick the winners from these trends,” said Stephen Chang, head of Asian fixed income at JPMorgan Asset, which oversees $39 billion (about Rs.2.35 trillion) in emerging-market debt. “Although sales and prices are falling along with margins, we have identified the larger developers are gaining market share and executing well.” China’s Premier Li Keqiang has pledged to safeguard this year’s growth target of 7.5%, fuelling bets the government will encourage increased lending to selected projects and relax restrictions in the real-estate market.
…

Sorry if this amounts to a repost, but here is the Bloomberg version of this story:

JPMorgan Buys Larger Developers as Bubble Deflates: China Credit
By Fion Li Jun 22, 2014 9:00 AM PT

JPMorgan Asset Management and Invesco Asset Management say China’s cooling property market is an opportunity to boost dollar bond holdings as the government’s targeted stimulus benefits the largest developers.

Chinese real-estate companies accounted for six of the 10 best-performing Asian notes in the past three months, according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch index. The yield on 2018 debt of China Overseas Land & Investments Ltd., the nation’s largest developer by market value, dropped to 3.35 percent last week, from a record 4.31 percent on Feb. 5, while that on similar-maturity bonds of China Vanke Co. fell to 3.95 percent, from an all-time high of 5.07 percent on March 20.

“We will pick the winners from these trends,” said Stephen Chang, head of Asian fixed income at JPMorgan Asset, which oversees $39 billion in emerging-market debt. “Although sales and prices are falling along with margins, we have identified the larger developers are gaining market share and executing well.”
…

Finance China
How the China bubble could puncture U.S. banks
by Stephen Gandel
June 13, 2014, 4:46 PM EDT

China is doing the global carry trade, and that could pose major risks for U.S. banks.

The conventional wisdom is that China doesn’t hold much direct risk for U.S. banks. Sure, if China were to have a financial crisis, and if it were to fall into recession — a long way to go, considering its recent annual growth of 7% — that would do serious damage to the global economy. American banks and the U.S. economy would feel that. But in terms of direct exposure to China, U.S. banks don’t stand to lose a lot.

According to a report last week from debt rating agency Fitch, U.S. banks have a collective $83 billion in direct loan exposure to China. That isn’t very much in the scope of the U.S. banking sector. JPMorgan Chase (JPM 0.24%), alone, for instance, has over $700 billion in total loans. The entire U.S. banking sector has nearly $15 trillion in assets. For U.S. banks, China is still not that big of deal.

That appears to be changing, though. Fearing a credit bubble, a year ago, Chinese authorities sharply raised domestic interest rates to slow lending made by local banks. That opened up a huge gap between U.S. interest rates, which are around 0.50% for short-term interbank loans, and Chinese interest rates, which are 5% for short-term banks loans.

And so it appears there is easy money to be made borrowing money from the U.S. and Europe, and lending it in China. The trade’s been growing for a while, but it has attracted attention lately. And it’s a bit dicey, at least for the U.S. banks.

In the last week or so, a number of large banks have been trying to figure out if they were taken in a loan fraud scheme in which a Chinese commodities trading firm in the port of Qingdao pledged the same collateral to a number of lenders. The scheme has shed light on the fact that a large portion of the overseas lending that Chinese companies are doing to capture the interest rate spread has been with loans collateralized with commodities.

Goldman Sachs estimates that commodities-based lending has resulted in an inflow of $110 billion of foreign currency into the Chinese economy in the past four years, or about a third of all new short-term debt in China in that time.

Citigroup (C -0.19%) appears to be the only large U.S. bank that has fallen victim to the Qingdao fraud. But most large U.S. banks make commodities-based loans, and the practice has been growing recently. Last year, banks around the world lent $687 billion to commodities-based businesses, according to Bloomberg, though much of those loans were made directly to the companies and secured by raw materials. JPMorgan was the top U.S. lender worldwide, at $57 billion, followed by Wells Fargo (WFC 1.01%), which gave out $47 billion.

Many of these loans might not be factored in the estimates that Fitch and others have put together to calculate U.S. banks’ exposure to China. For instance, sometimes commodities loans are structured as derivatives or swaps. Fitch says its China loan estimates do not factor in derivatives or guarantees.

What’s more, when it comes to commodities, some banks might not even realize they are taking on China risk. The Citi loan that ended up sending money to China by way of the Qingdao port was made to Swiss commodities trading firm Mercuria. The commodities that Mercuria used to finance the loan were stored in Qingdao, on loan from a Chinese commodities company named Decheng Mining.

And unlike other types of lending, banks typically don’t break out just how much money they have lent out based on accounting. “I have never seen any bank balance sheet that has that information,” says Haoziang Zhu, an economics professor at MIT who has studied commodity-based lending. “It’s hard to track.”
…

Investing 6/19/2014 @ 10:01AM
No Violent Pop As China Housing Bubble Continues Deflating

You have to hand it to the Chinese government. They are quite good at managing controlled demolitions. The housing market, roaring for at least five years as both a result of rising wages, and speculation by Chinese investors, is cooling.

On Thursday, that 35 out of the 70 cities it tracks reported monthly price declines for new homes. That’s up from 8 declines in April. According to NBS, prices in 15 cities were flat but new home prices in 20 cities did see price growth from April. The figures exclude government-subsidized homes.

The average price of new houses in the 70 cities, including government-funded affordable housing, meanwhile, dipped 0.2 percent in May, the first month-on-month decrease since June 2012.

Shanghai remains the most expensive city on the mainland. Home prices there increased 11.3% from a year earlier, the most in the country. It was the seventh straight month the city led the nation.
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Emerging Markets
China’s Housing Bust Isn’t Done
A successful property IPO in Hong Kong stirs hopes that are unlikely to be realized. In the meantime, two opportunities to short the shares.
By Shuli Ren
June 28, 2014 12:03 a.m. ET

Shares of China’s largest developer, China Vanke, jumped 7% in its debut last Wednesday, after it moved its Shenzhen-listed B-shares to the more liquid Hong Kong bourse. The quick rise was a welcome change from the recent negative headlines about Chinese property stocks. Among them: New-home prices fell in May, and sales volume in the first half of June dipped to a 2½-year low.

So was Vanke’s (2202.Hong Kong) gain merely a benefit of tapping a bigger market or an early sign that hard-hit property stocks are ready to improve?

Value has started to emerge, but it seems premature to jump back in to a group that’s down 12% this year, versus the broader Hang Seng China Enterprises Index’s 4% drop. The declines mean property shares now trade at 5.8 times forward earnings, far below their five-year average of 10.75 times.

Wait for more news of housing price cuts before bargain-hunting the shares, suggests JPMorgan Chase. Right now sales are low because price-conscious buyers are waiting as developers hold on, hoping for a better second half. But the oversupplied market—especially in lower-tier cities—will deteriorate further in the next six to eight weeks, says the bank, and developers will have to cut prices to clear inventories. When sales volume, an important stock-price driver, picks up again, investors can start to assume China’s property stocks have bottomed.

Developers that are flexible on pricing tend to fare best—Vanke is a good example. It has already cut prices and reached 41% of its annual sales target five months into 2014, ahead of its peers’ 30% average. Its sales rose 16% from a year earlier, while the market fell 10%. Deutsche has a 13.39 yuan price target (HK$16.6 or US$2.14) on Vanke, implying a 19% upside. Analysts also like state-owned China Overseas Land & Investment (688.Hong Kong) for similar reasons.

THERE ARE OPPORTUNITIES for nimble investors to short stocks. One idea is to play a developer’s exposure to oversupplied tier-3 cities. China Resources Land (1109.Hong Kong), for instance, will by 2015 see over half of its property sales coming from tier-3 cities, up from 35% last year, estimates UBS. And since more price cuts are expected in these cities, China Resources Land’s profit margins will come under pressure. In addition, this developer only achieved 28% of its sales target by May, lagging behind the industry average. JPMorgan suggests a pair trade, going long China Overseas Land & Investment and shorting China Resources Land on a three-month basis.

A second possibility is to short developers with lot of debt, such as Evergrande (3333.Hong Kong) and Country Garden (2007.Hong Kong), which last year had net-debt-to-equity ratios of 74.9% and 67.3%, respectively. Apart from high gearing, corporate governance is an issue at Evergrande. It plans to spend 10 billion yuan on a peripheral bottled-water business, and its CEO has been selling the company’s shares. As for Country Garden, it expanded rapidly into lower-tier cities last year, making it vulnerable to a squeeze on margins.

To be sure, these trading ideas are based on the premise that China’s property market will follow a V-shape, rather than Japan’s extended decline. JPMorgan thinks the V will prevail. In the past, excess inventories cleared quickly when developers were willing to make 20% price concessions. “The worst in the physical market has not come yet, but when it comes, it will be quick and swift,” noted the bank. Investors should hope history repeats.
…

And it continues…when is Blackstone going to stop?

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-blackstone-group-20140629,0,6176596.story

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-blackstone-group-20140629,0,6176596.story

Still buying up Florida!

How bad is this housing market going to get? The average family can’t buy a decent house on either coast of South Florida.

Let them buy in OTown.

After port fraud, China’s vast warehouse sector under scrutiny
By Melanie Burton and Fayen Wong
SYDNEY/SHANGHAI Mon Jun 23, 2014 7:02am EDT
A worker pushes a cart filled with packages at a logistics hub in Fuzhou, Fujian province November 13, 2012. REUTERS/Stringer
Credit: Reuters/Stringer

(Reuters) - Shaken by a fraud investigation into metal financing in the world’s seventh-busiest port, banks and trading houses have been made painfully aware of the risks they face storing commodities in China’s sprawling warehouse sector.

The probe at Qingdao port centers around a private metals trading firm suspected of duplicating warehouse certificates in order to use a metal cargo multiple times to raise financing.

Some banks have asked clients to shift metal, used as collateral for loans, to more regulated London Metal Exchange (LME) warehouses outside China or those owned and operated by a single warehouse firm to limit their exposure.

“The banks still haven’t looked under the hood,” said an executive at a bank involved in commodity financing in China, referring to China’s warehousing sector.

At the heart of the issue is China’s roaring commodity financing business, which has helped drive up stockpiles of commodities at ports to record levels, stored in warehouses not always regulated to the same extent as elsewhere.

Though many global firms are involved in the warehouse industry in China, there has been outsourcing to local firms to cut overheads and avoid dealing with complex local regulations.

Using commodities as collateral in financing in China is common practice and not illegal, but issuing receipts to repeatedly mortgage an asset is fraud and could leave more than one creditor holding claims to the same collateral.

Illustrating how difficult it may be to unravel competing claims, China’s CITIC Resources Holding Ltd said that a court had been unable to secure more than 100,000 tonnes of alumina stored at Qingdao port.

Traders said there was a risk the metal could have been already claimed before part of Qingdao Port was sealed off, adding that at least two trading houses had moved metal out as soon as news of the scandal broke.

CITIC Resources said it would conduct its own investigation and was considering further legal action.

In Qingdao, sources with knowledge of the probe said authorities were looking at whether the firm under focus, Decheng Mining, had secured multiple warehouse receipts because an affiliate managed logistics at the port’s Dagang bonded zone.

Phone calls to Decheng Mining and its parent firm, Dezheng Resources, seeking comment were not answered. Officials at Qingdao port could also not be reached.

“Warehouse receipts are not title documents, they are documents of entitlement. But they are being used as title documents for sales and purchase and transfer of ownership,” said a person at a warehouse company with operations in Qingdao.

“Everywhere else outside of China, a warehouse receipt is cut for one party.”

A source at a Western bank with direct knowledge of Qingdao said warehouse firms should bear the brunt of responsibility, while a senior official at a warehouse firm at the port said responsibility “remains very much up in the air.”

A lawyer, who has previously been involved in litigation over fraudulent warehouse receipts, said banks primary recourse would be against whoever had forged receipts.

“But if the fraudster is gone, the bank may decide that it wants to go against the warehouse,” said the lawyer, who did not want to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
…

China’s Gold Bullion Imports Slump as $15bn of “Fake Deals” Alleged
Friday, 6/27/2014 08:38
Copper “trade financing” scam seen hitting gold, deterring investors and imports

GOLD BULLION imports to China halved in May from the same month last year, and could drop further say analysts as a “metal trade financing” scandal spreads from copper to include the precious metal.

Gold imports through Hong Kong – the primary route for bullion shipped into the world’s No.1 consumer nation – totaled 52 tonnes last month net of exports, new data showed Thursday.

The lowest since January 2013, those gold bullion imports were down by more than 20% month-on-month for the third time running.

China’s auditor general has meantime uncovered CNY 4.4 billion ($15.2bn) of what he calls “fictional” trades used to borrow money against gold bullion since 2012 – echoing trouble in copper, where the same underlying metal has been used multiple times as collateral for loans.

With an on-going investigation at Qingdao – the world’s 7th busiest port – now “trying to establish who has proper title to the pledged metal,” says a note from French investment and bullion bank Natixis, Chinese demand for copper imports dropped significantly.

“This pattern could be repeated in gold, where investors may be reluctant to engage in new financing deals until the situation is clear.”

“Any scaling back by banks of gold-backed financing deals,” agrees senior analyst Liu Xu at Capital Futures Co. in Beijing, quoted by Bloomberg, “might lead to a short-term reduction in Chinese imports and also spur some sales by companies looking to repay lenders.”
…

This story appears to offer a fantastic object lesson in experience’s dear school for fools on why one should not take economic statistics coming out of a communistic country at face value.

AZ Dan: “CRICKETS”

Private my azz. I’m sure they collect their paychecks and pensions from the taxpayers.

+1

U.S. News
Baby Boomers Hold On to Houses
Despite Empty Nests, Older People Stay Put
By Nick Timiraos
June 27, 2014 6:51 p.m. ET

The boomers are staying put—at least for now.

The going wisdom says the number of homes for sale should surge in coming years as baby boomers—those born between 1946 and 1964—trade in large, detached single-family homes for condos or attached homes in more urban areas. But two reports suggest such downsizing has yet to materialize and may not to the extent suggested by some commentators.

The downsizing theory is simple: As the kids of boomers graduate from college and move out, their parents will no longer “have a need for the abundant living space, quality schools and other amenities typically associated with single-family suburban residency,” said Patrick Simmons, an economist at mortgage-finance company Fannie Mae, (FNMA +1.53%) in a recent report.

Meanwhile, census data released this week showed population growth for Americans over age 69 has been the lowest in the most dense counties, the only age group in which that is happening, said Jed Kolko, chief economist at Trulia Inc., (TRLA +4.86%) the real estate website.

The Fannie analysis of Census Bureau data finds boomers are becoming empty-nesters “in droves.” The oldest half of all boomer households that were made up of a married couple with at least one child under age 18 declined to 3% in 2012 from 10% in 2006. The rate is dropping for younger boomer households, too.

Older workers also have been dropping out of the labor force. But while boomers are working less and their kids are moving out, the share of boomers living in detached single-family homes was roughly the same in 2012, the most recent year for which data were available, as in 2006, Fannie said.

Boomers may be slow to downsize for several reasons, wrote Mr. Simmons. For one, they may like their homes. A 2010 survey by the AARP, the seniors-advocacy group, found 84% of boomers said they would prefer to live in their current houses for as long as possible.

Meanwhile, the scars of the housing bust and the Great Recession have prevented some from moving because they don’t have enough equity in their homes or are unwilling to sell at prices that are still down from their peak of the past decade. Also, some homeowners who have locked in low mortgage rates in recent years by refinancing may be reluctant to move now that rates are a little higher.
…

U.S. fertility plummets to record low
Study finds fewer teen pregnancies and women waiting longer to
American fertility has reached a record low, driven by falling birthrates among teens and women in their early 20s, the federal government says in a new report being released Thursday.
By Cheryl Wetzstein
The Washington Times
Wednesday, May 28, 2014

American fertility has reached a record low, driven by falling birthrates among teens and women in their early 20s, the federal government says in a new report being released Thursday.

The number of teen births in 2013 — 274,641 — was the lowest number ever reported for the United States, researchers said in their report on preliminary birth data for 2013.

Overall, America’s total fertility rate fell to just 1.86 births per woman, the lowest since 1986 and a 1 percent decrease from 2012. That figure puts the U.S. on the same course with many Western European nations and Japan, where the birth rate has fallen below what demographers call the “replacement rate,” usually around 2.1 births per woman, needed to keep a country’s population from falling. The U.S. last had a total fertility rate of 2.1 births in 2007.

With its new figure of 1.86, the United States looks like it will lag behind Australia (1.92), France (2.01), Sweden (1.91) and the United Kingdom (1.90) but have higher fertility than Brazil (1.81), China (1.66), Japan (1.41) and Russia (1.59), according to 2012 data from the World Bank.

In many of those countries, the governments have adopted public policies deliberately designed to encourage women to have more children.

Researchers say the striking drop in teen birth rates is a main driver in the shifting population numbers.

“The fact that it’s another historical low just cannot be underscored enough it really has dropped precipitously,” said Brady E. Hamilton, a report author and researcher at the National Center for Health Statistics.

Taken as a whole, the number of births in the United States in 2013 ticked up slightly to 3,957,577, about 5,000 more births than in 2012.

The changes in the overall fertility rate reflect a profound shift in U.S. family patterns, due in part to the trend of more women choosing to have their first baby later in life.

That trend — which has been going on for “quite some time” — affects childbearing because if a woman postpones her first baby, it can diminish the chance that she will have a second, said Mr. Hamilton.
…

Unless you are wealthy, having kids is currently a foolish financial choice in the US, as there is negative support for young families starting out in extant Federal Reserve asset price support policies.

Heck, I am an atheist and i don’t have to believe in any spaghetti monster to be a noninterventionist.

How would Jesus have liked the Democrats’ taste for war?

Jeff, my sympathies. I stayed up most of the night with my old bowser buddy the night before we took him to the vet for the last time.

I just got back from the vet with my 14yo Lab. He has many ailments, and I asked if she could come to the house to euthanize him when the time comes (it most likely will be in the next couple of months.) She agreed and I am relieved. I will say a little prayer for you and Dozzer tomorrow.

It’s a sad time in a dog owner’s life when you have to put them down. Take care.

P.S. Try to get him to unload one more dump on some deadbeat’s lawn before tomorrow if at all possible.

Buh bye dozier, we will all miss you, ruff ruff!

Dang, phony Jeff,

Sorry to hear this. I remember you posting about him a month or so ago. A month ago we had to say goodbye to our best friend of 15 years. We had a traveling vet who was recommended by our vet do it in the comfort of home, so if not too late you might consider that approach. We bawled for two straight days afterward and were down for about a week. Very empty feeling in the house still.

Peace to you and Dozzer.

Sorry to hear about that Jeff.

We also had to put our Husky down this week. It’s hard.

It’s a tough thing, Saturday. Many of us have been there. Keep a calm and cheerful demeanor for your friend, as they are keenly aware of our emotional state. Walk with him as far as you can. Make a contribution to an animal charity in his name or make some other memorial. Best wishes for a smooth transition.

“The cat that only yesterday was a kitten is all too soon old and frail and sleeping in the sun. The young pup of boundless energy wakes up stiff and lame, the muzzle now gray. Deep down we somehow always knew this journey would end. We knew that if we gave our hearts they would be broken. But give them we must for it is all they ask in return. When the time comes, and the road curves ahead to a place we cannot see, we give one final gift and let them run on ahead — young and whole once more.

“Godspeed, good friend,” we say, until our journey comes full circle and our paths cross again.”

http://www.journeyforanimals.com/html/read-the-journey.html

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“Near this Spot
are deposited the Remains of one
who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
and all the virtues of Man without his Vices.

This praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
if inscribed over human Ashes,
is but a just tribute to the Memory of
Boatswain, a Dog
who was born in Newfoundland May 1803
and died at Newstead Nov. 18th, 1808″

- Epitaph to a Dog, by Lord Byron

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epitaph_to_a_Dog

Dog owners tend to get as attached to these pets as to the humans in their lives — some times even more! I recall a cellist I used to work with who had a large dog whom he preferred as company over his spouse…not that he didn’t like his spouse, but the dog never argued and gave steadfast, unconditional love.

I went through the ordeal of losing a dog twice when I was a kid; maybe that is one reason I have never pushed hard to have a dog since I had kids of my own. I wouldn’t want to wish that pain of loss on my own children.

Peace to Dozzer and healing to his grieving family.

So sorry to hear about your dog, PS.

Best wishes to you and your family as you deal with your loss. It is so difficult when you lose a pet.

Hey jeff, really sorry to hear about Dozzer. My condolences…

“This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog.

Napoleon Bonaparte, on finding a dog beside the body of his dead master, licking his face and howling, on a moonlit field after a battle. Napoleon was haunted by this scene until his own death.”

I will be sad to see this go, I have been coming back to this all week.

I was right, I miss him terribly.

Goodnight Dozzer, I miss you.