The Housing Bubble

So who should be the next Prez? Seems like no shortage of flawed people - rand, ryan, the fake indian chick - warren - couldnt remember her name there for a second. Me, I think Palin more often than not hits the nail on the head but a lot of people HATE her. They might agree with most of what she says, but they hate her. Not sure why - maybe jealousy/envy?

Who’s left? Snowden? Dude’s past is shadowy but no doubt he’s smart. Be funny as hell to see him win by write in but remain out of the country for fear of imprisonment. Be kind of fitting for the country at this point in time.

For Whac:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2014-07/14/content_17767832.htm

MBA and NAR hate this blog.

Is it safe to assume scare stories about U.S. stock market declines are a hoax?

GLOBALIST THINK TANK: NORTH AMERICAN COMMUNITY “WILL BE FORGED IN THE HEAT OF CONFLICT”

Globalist think tanks have eagerly awaited an event like this for many years

by DANIEL TAYLOR | OLD THINKER NEWS | JULY 14, 2014

The current influx of illegal immigrants into the United States has caught many by surprise, but globalist think tanks have eagerly awaited an event like this for many years.

On June 11, 2002 a conference on North American integration was held by theWoodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The center, which influences policy making in Washington, is funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, TheGates Foundation and George Soros. During the 2002 meeting, shocking revelations were made regarding the elite’s plans to create a North American Union between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. In order to accomplish this, representatives from various think tanks agreed that a campaign of social engineering needed to re-shape beliefs about national sovereignty and identity.

The “Toward a North American Community” conference focused on the social and ideological aspects of the creation of a North American Community. Presentations were given by representatives from Mexico, Canada, and the United States respectively. The task of each was to present the political and social atmosphere of each country in relation to “North American integration.”Stephanie R. Golob of Baruch College and member of the Council on Foreign Relations represented the United States.

Golob indicated that the United States was “the greatest obstacle to this process” of integration into a globalized system. She stated that due to this resistance, integration will have to come “from the top-down” through directives from the United States President and his “inner circle.”

Bruce Stokes, Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow, National Journal columnist and Chatham House member told the conference that a true “North American Community” would only be born out of the heat of conflict.

Stokes said, “For those of you, who like me, believe that one of the biggest challenges we face as a society is coming to terms with globalization… then we must embrace the rough spots” like illegal immigration. Stokes stated that we need to “…use these as teaching experiences… to create a public dialogue about the meaning of becoming a true North American Community.”

Stokes continued, “This is how we will create a North American consciousness and a true North American Community. It will be forged in the heat of conflict, not through a rational discussion, as painful as that may be. It really cannot happen any other way.”

The spectacle of tens of thousands of “unaccompanied minors” is a “teaching experience” that globalist run media is using to manipulate public opinion. Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi recently stated in response to the current crisis that the United States and Mexico is “a community with a border going through it.” Pelosi then said that the establishment must view the crisis as an “opportunity.”

In addition to social engineering society to accept globalization, University of California Professor Darrell Y. Hamamoto told infowars.com that illegal immigration is about creating a subservient underclass in America. Hamamoto said that the plan is “…to exclude the American middle class from a UC education and create a new demographic of largely immigrant or foreign national undergraduate population that can be re-educated from the ground up and controlled much more readily.”

A message to the NAR: there is no “pent-up” demand for housing

Washington Post - Americans are spending more money this summer, but not on fun stuff

“People are opening their wallets more this summer — but that extra cash isn’t going to margaritas and beach excursions.

It’s being eaten up by bills and basic things that people need to survive, like food, electricity and health care, according to a recent Gallup survey. Fifty-nine percent of people reported spending more on groceries this summer than they did last year, compared to only 10 percent who said they are saving on food.

Other sobering figures: 58 percent of people are spending more on gas, 45 percent are paying more for utilities and 42 percent are forking over more health care, according to the survey.”

THE HEAD OF ‘THE CENTRAL BANK OF THE WORLD’ WARNS THAT ANOTHER GREAT FINANCIAL CRISIS MAY BE COMING

Most people have never heard of Jaime Caruana even though he is the head of an immensely powerful organization

The Head Of ‘The Central Bank Of The World’ Warns That Another Great Financial Crisis May Be Coming

by MICHAEL SNYDER | ECONOMIC COLLAPSE | JULY 14, 2014

Most people have never heard of Jaime Caruana even though he is the head of an immensely powerful organization. He has been serving as the General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements since 2009, and he will continue in that role until 2017. The Bank for International Settlements is a rather boring name, and very few people realize that it is at the very core of our centrally-planned global financial system. So when Jaime Caruana speaks, people should listen. And the fact that he recently warned that the global financial system is currently “more fragile” in many ways than it was just prior to the collapse of Lehman Brothers should set off all sorts of alarm bells. Speaking of the financial markets, Caruana ominously declared that “it is hard to avoid the sense of a puzzling disconnect between the markets’ buoyancy and underlying economic developments globally” and he noted that “markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”. In other words, he is saying what I have been saying for so long. The behavior of the financial markets has become completely divorced from economic reality, and at some point there is going to be a massive correction.

So why would the head of ‘the central bank of the world’ choose this moment to issue such a chilling warning?

Does he know something that the rest of us do not?

According to a recent article in the Telegraph by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Caruana is extremely concerned about rising debt levels and the current level of euphoria in the financial markets…

The world economy is just as vulnerable to a financial crisis as it was in 2007, with the added danger that debt ratios are now far higher and emerging markets have been drawn into the fire as well, the Bank for International Settlements has warned.

Jaime Caruana, head of the Swiss-based financial watchdog, said investors were ignoring the risk of monetary tightening in their voracious hunt for yield.

“Markets seem to be considering only a very narrow spectrum of potential outcomes. They have become convinced that monetary conditions will remain easy for a very long time, and may be taking more assurance than central banks wish to give,” he toldThe Telegraph.

Mr Caruana said the international system is in many ways more fragile than it was in the build-up to the Lehman crisis. Debt ratios in the developed economies have risen by 20 percentage points to 275pc of GDP since then…

The dinner discussions on money and economics are more than academic. At the table are the chiefs of the world’s biggest central banks, representing countries that annually produce more than $51 trillion of gross domestic product, three-quarters of the world’s economic output.
So how do you feel about the fact that the central bankers of the world regularly gather to plot their next moves for the global economy?

Should an unelected group of central bankers that has no accountability to any national government really have so much power?

I seem to recall, a few weeks back, one of the posters here remarking on seeing many “misshapen people” out and about in his/her area.

Yesterday, I ran into exactly this phenomenon and it was very, very creepy. Did a little run from a burger joint to a thrift store to Big Lots and to the gas station. What I saw in the general population reminded me of a cross between the 1932 Todd Browning movie “Freaks” and the sort of downtrodden medieval populace portrayed in a British costume drama movie. You know, the sort of people who avidly attend hangings and stonings and that sort of thing.

I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but I’m not and my buddy who was with me was even more freaked out than me.

This was really disturbing, more than just the usual grotesquely overweight and tattooed citizenry. This was a manifestation that seemed to cut across all ethnicities equally, and included misshapen limbs, heads, mental retardation, oddly distributed fat, shuffling hunchback types, etc. And plenty of vacant-eyed blubbery mouth breathers.

It looked like a regression to the that sort of deformed population that Europe is said to have had during the Dark Ages.

Because racists gonna race

http://www.picpaste.com/tmp_sdrft7777-meme-generator-only-racists-oppose-my-dictatorship-c9194c-1-1697723188-rAPs6aTk.jpg

http://nation.foxnews.com/2014/07/14/holder-disagreeing-obama-racist

Quite a picture.

Mexicans blame Americans for ‘Death Train’

Jerome R. Corsi
7/13/2014

Complaint filed against U.S. owners of ‘Beast’ hauling illegals

The infamous Mexican “Death Train” – also called “La Bestia” ["The Beast'] – on which tens of thousands of illegal alien children from Central America are traveling through Mexico to the United States – is being targeted by criminal complaints from Mexican authorities for allegedly violating the civil rights of passengers.

The Beast is owned and run by a Mexican wholly owned subsidiary of Kansas City Southern, a U.S. train company that acquired the Mexican equipment and routes in 2005 to create a “NAFTA Railroad” that was intended to fit into a multi-modal transportation technology so Chinese companies could deliver products into the heartland of the United States as an alternative to utilizing the West Coast ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

a4cgr.wordpress.com/ - 174k -

Holder: ‘Homegrown Violent Extremists … Keep Me Up at Night’

10:47 AM, JUL 13, 2014 • BY DANIEL HALPER

Attorney General Eric Holder has a “lot of sleepless nights,” reported ABC News this morning. Chief among his concerns? The threat of “homegrown violent extremists.”

Watch here:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/…der-homegrown-violent-extremists-keep-me-night_796475.html - 79k -

The 5th Dimension - (Last Night) I Didn’t Get to Sleep Lyrics

Last night I didn’t get to sleep at all, no, no
I lay awake and watched until the mornin’ light
Washed away the darkness of the lonely night, lonely night

Oh, and last night I got to thinkin’ maybe I, I, I
Should call you up and just forget my foolish pride
I heard your number ringin’, I went cold inside
And last night I didn’t get to sleep at all

I know it’s not my fault, I did my best
God knows this heart of mine could use a rest
But more and more I find the dreams I left behind
Are somehow too real to replace, replace

Oh, last night I didn’t get to sleep at all, no, no
The sleepin’ pill I took was just a waste of time
I couldn’t close my eyes ’cause you were on my mind
And last night I didn’t get to sleep, didn’t get to sleep
No, I didn’t get to sleep at all

Peter Morici: Why stocks can keep on rising

BY PETER MORICI / CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Published: July 11, 2014 Updated: 6:17 p.m.

…

Investors are fearful that when the Federal Reserve ends purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities in October and tries to push up the rates banks pay for overnight loans in 2015, interest rates on bonds and CDs will zoom, causing investors to flee stocks.

As the Fed acts, those rates may rise a bit but not nearly as much as investors fear, because sound businesses are not so hungry to borrow in the digital era as they were in the industrial era to finance expansion.

And with Mideast turmoil, European banks and governments still troubled and China hardly a secure place to invest in securities, the United States remains the safe haven for investors.

The Standard and Poor’s 500 Index, which encompasses about four-fifths of U.S. publicly traded equities and America’s biggest companies, was trading at about 1,965, with a price-earnings ratio of about 19.50. Over the past 25 years, its P/E ratio has averaged 18.90, and when the index first crossed the 1,000 threshold in 1998, the P/E was about 25.

Simply, measured against company profits and history, stocks are not overvalued, and given how efficiently the digital economy can create wealth out of investors’ cash, stocks are likely much undervalued.

A P/E ratio approaching 25, which would be consistent with somewhat higher interest rates as the Fed tightens monetary policy, would put the S&P index at about 2,500.

…

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/investors-628607-stocks-cash.html

unless the government steps in.”

sounds familiar

bring your skatebaord - surfs up in the ghost cities

An empty skull leads to empty pockets.

“The only strange part of the equation is that the “mainstream” press at times almost treats these paid opinion bloggers as if they are objective media watchdogs.”

Exclusive: an interview with investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson

by Jon Rappoport
April 25, 2014

Before her recent resignation from CBS, Sharyl Attkisson was a mainstream news star. Multiple Emmys. CNN anchor, CBS anchor on stories about space exploration. Host of CBS’ News Up to the Minute. PBS host for Health Week. Investigative reporter for CBS.

Attkisson dug deep into Fast&Furious, Benghazi, and the ill-effects of vaccines. Too deep. Her bosses shut her down and didn’t air key stories.

In an interview with Real Clear Politics, you suggested that the website, Media Matters, has been targeting and attacking you. Why have they gone after you? Because of your work on the Fast&Furious story? Do these people just reflexively react whenever a reporter writes something that casts a negative light on the Obama White House?

I didn’t interview with Real Clear Politics but maybe they quoted my interview with CNN. MediaMatters is well known to be a left wing propaganda group that acts as a pro-Obama surrogate to attack journalists that threaten the agenda. It works in concert with federal officials who withhold public information from the press and the public but then share it with MediaMatters so that the “talking points” of the day can be controlled and manipulated. (One example: http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/18/emails-reveal-justice-dept-regularly-enlists-media-matters-to-spin-press/) The group works with other surrogates such as Talking Points Memo to controversialize and harass reporters to intimidate them and try to stop their damaging coverage. None of that is surprising or unexpected. They are simply using a media campaign to try to squelch the journalists who they believe could damage the interests of those they serve. The only strange part of the equation is that the “mainstream” press at times almost treats these paid opinion bloggers as if they are objective media watchdogs. I don’t see these news organizations respond to the right wing counterparts with the same deference. They news media typically doesn’t quote conservative media ‘watchdogs’ or question journalists about the conservative watchdogs’ criticisms and observations. Just the liberal ‘watchdogs.’

At this moment in time, because you’re not employed by a major news network, are you viewed by the media establishment as a loose cannon? Are you being painted as an outsider, a weirdo, a chronic dissenter with an axe to grind?

All of the above, I suppose, but I don’t pay attention that. It’s expected. I have heard from many colleagues at various networks who are happy that I’m in a position to speak freely of things that they, too have experienced and observed but cannot say publicly.

jonrappoport.wordpress.com/…/ - 95k -

Paying a 150% premium for the privilege of making payments and taking a massive loss doesn’t make much sense now does it……

Citigroup to pay $7B in subprime mortgages investigation
http://abc7.com/business/citigroup-to-pay-7b-in-subprime-mortgages-probe/183671/

‘Trulia reported on Thursday that in June, U.S. home prices were up 8.1 percent year-over-year, and 2.6 percent quarter-over-quarter, both of which reflect a slowdown in average price increases. But despite this national slowing in price gains, price increases continue to be widespread, with 97 of 100 metros posting year-over-year price gains—the most since the recovery began. Also, asking prices in June rose at their highest month-over-month rate (1.2 percent) in 16 months.’

‘The price slowdown has been particularly sharp in the boom-and-bust markets of California and the Southwest, where the recession was severe, the recovery was dramatic, and the slowdown is now most pronounced, the company noted. For instance, in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Sacramento, and Orange County, price gains have ground to a stop or gone into reverse in the past quarter after posting gains of more than 20 percent year-over-year in June 2013. Although these four housing markets all still experienced average or above-average annual price increases in June 2014, their slowdowns or reversals in the most recent quarter foreshadow a continued deceleration.’

Just returned from a week in Oregon staying with a friend in Sisters. Sisters was beautiful but Bend and Redmond were nothing to speak of. You can put CA down all you want, but I’ll take it over Oregon any day.

http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/800-Degree-Heat-From-Solar-Mirrors-Frying-Birds-Mid-Air.html

Chinese managers now make what lucky ducky’s make in the U.S. and wages still are rising fast, even with the slowdown in China, the truth is China is now a bigger market for Chinese companies than the U.S. since Chinese actually have money to spend:
http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/China-s-local-governments-recommending-smaller-pay-hikes

Link will come through soon, but can you imagine the horror of only getting an 8% pay raise this year. (BTW, Chinese inflation rate 2.3% this year to about 1.9% for the U.S. according to the Economist Magazine).
In the Jinzhou New District, a newly-developed area in Dalian, Liaoning Province, the local federation of trade unions customarily announces its own guideline every year. It has set the baseline for 2014 at 8%, significantly lower than the 15% in 2011 and 12% in 2012 and 2013.

A person responsible for the guideline at the federation said that the baseline was lowered to 8% because it would be more feasible for struggling Japanese businesses. Many Japanese firms, the largest foreign business force in the district, have been suffering due to the weaker yen.

An official at Canon, one of the biggest players in the district, said the company would negotiate wages with employees using the federation’s guideline as reference. The Japanese PC printer maker is slated to launch annual labor-management talks in August.

Meanwhile, an official at Japanese firm Ryobi said its pay raise for 2014 would be lower than last year’s 13-14%, in line with the recommendation from the federation. Sales of die-cast automotive products are robust at the company.

China’s central government has set a goal to double per capita income by 2020 compared to the level in 2010. The goal is based on the premise that wages will be hiked every year. However, local governments outside of the capital may have difficulty achieving the goal.

Post-post-apocalyptic Detroit. Prospectors buying up the rubble and attempting to turn things around.

———————————-

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/magazine/the-post-post-apocalyptic-detroit.html?_r=0

(excerpt)

“But this means that property costs have dropped to the point that barriers to ownership — to a sort of mogulhood, even — are absurdly low. Some of the city’s competitive advantages remain, including a world-class transportation network of roads and rail and waterways, with almost half of U.S. imports from Canada passing through. Even Detroit’s bankruptcy filing in December (making it the largest American city ever to take such a step) has its upsides. For everyone other than the city’s 32,000 pensioners and 100,000 creditors, the default should make Detroit less dysfunctional and more attractive. And in downtown, at least, Gilbert’s campaign seems to be paying dividends: Occupancy in residential real estate has climbed to 99 percent, and office vacancies are at 11 percent, the lowest rate in decades.

The belief in Detroit’s imminent revival has spread far beyond Dan Gilbert and the skyscrapers of downtown. Out in the neighborhoods, there is a legion of mini-Gilberts, longtime Detroiters and recent transplants alike, who have united around a conviction that the city has fallen as far as it can go — that the time to buy in is at hand. Just a couple of years after Detroit slid into what the national news media incessantly called a “post-apocalyptic” collapse, the city now teems with a post-post-apocalyptic optimism. When I visited this spring, Quicken Loans had a new slogan emblazoning its downtown office towers and company shuttles, and everyone I spoke with outside the city center seemed to be uttering it like a mantra: OPPORTUNITY DETROIT.

Economists fret that Detroit, in the absence of the manufacturing economy that built it, no longer has any reason to be. And indeed, large chunks of the sprawling, 139-square-mile city have literally vanished: Of Detroit’s 380,000 properties, some 114,000 have been razed, with 80,000 more considered blighted and most likely in need of demolition. But the new prospectors have an abiding faith that cities, like markets, are necessarily cyclical, and that the cycle has finally come around. It is the same ethos that turned other urban disasters into capitalist boomtowns — New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or the cities of Western Europe after World War II. If the scale of Detroit’s failure is unprecedented, then so (the local reasoning goes) is the scale of its opportunity.”

Hope link will post soon but here is another excerpt:

The recommendations consist of three figures — ceiling, baseline and floor values. Pay raise rates should not be higher than the ceiling values, but should be higher than the floor values. Baseline values are recommended for companies with average performance.

For example, Beijing has set its wage increase ceiling at 16%, baseline at 12% and floor at 4.5%.

As of the end of June, the Shandong provincial government has lowered the baseline by three percentage points to 12%, while the Shanxi provincial government has set the rate at 13%, two percentage points lower than the previous year. Beijing kept the baseline at the same level as last year, but slashed both ceiling and floor values by 0.5 percentage point.

Lower level authorities are applying the guideline more flexibly, according to the performance of businesses in their jurisdictions.

Let’s see how the local NAR media will lie and polish this turd

Syracuse named one of top 10 U.S. cities with ‘the most abandoned homes’

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2014/07/syracuse_most_abandoned_homes_us_cities.html#incart_m-rpt-2

Ruh- Roh

Nancy Pelosi had better get her @ss to the Southside of Chicago and tell these people that the United States and Mexico are “a community with a border going through it and they must view this crisis as an “opportunity.”

MUST SEE VIDEO>>> Chicago Inner City Blacks GO OFF on Obama Over Illegal Immigration “Worst President Ever”

Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, July 12, 2014, 10:26 PM

So much for Hope and Change–
Chicago southside African-Americans GO OFF on President Obama.

“With the president setting aside all these funds for immigrants and forsaken African-American community and African-American families, I think that’s a disgrace. And Barack is from the heart of 55th in the City of Chicago… He will probably go down as the worst president ever elected. Bill Clinton was the African-American president.“

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/…/ - 80k -

Who the Fed works for - Main Street or Wall Street? - in one easy chart.

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2014/07/20140713_santelli1.jpg

The implosion draws near: The bubble’s last days.

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/the-implosion-is-near-signs-of-the-bubbles-last-days/

Oh the Humanity! Phoenix housing market plunges.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-14/phoenix-housing-market-hit-unprecedented-plunge-demand

IMF calling for - what else? - more QE.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jul/14/shire-abbvie-takeover-markets-portugal-banks-business-live

Well this has to be bullish for Nevado suburban tract housing.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/7/14/farmers-in-nevadalookwithlongingatwaterthatgoestolawnsnotcrops.html

Someone remind me again of exactly we “won” with our neocon-orchestrated invasion of Iraq.

http://www.businessinsider.com/zarqawi-foreshadowed-iraq-chaos-2014-7

Bwhahahahahaha! How’s that hope ‘n change working out for you, lemmings?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/14/obama-slammed-worst-president-ever-black-chicagoan/

July 2014 may go down in the history of Housing Bubble v2.0 as the worst time to buy a house in well over a century. Buy a house today, and your losses will be incalculable.

Citi settles, but still no bankster perp walks or true accountability.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jul/14/citigroup-settle-subprime-mortgage-investigation

Now the the retail muppets have largely withdrawn from Wall Streets rigged casino and the HFT algos have taken over to front-run the few remaining traders, trading volume is almost non-existent.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-14/boring-absolutely-dead-market-leaves-worlds-largest-trading-floor-virtually-empty

This country could do a lot worse than to elect Elizabeth Warren, if she walks the talk (which remains to be seen). She’s a damn sight better than Hillary or whatever GOP empty suit the corporate statists annoint.

Every time the naysayers say “Nay,” Wall Street stocks hit yet another record. Buy now or get priced out forever!