The Housing Bubble

Of course, that is with the employee’s discount.

More like Evita Peron.

The adoring, Impovershed, masses.

Not playing well outside the beltway:

http://news.yahoo.com/americans-worry-illegal-migrants-threaten-way-life-economy-050336265.html

an image has formed in his mind of himself standing on a high balcony, making broad beneficient gestures

Word. Obama sees himself as some kind of imperial Ronald Reagan - the benevolent granter of amnesty to the brown masses.

A Reagan Legacy: Amnesty For Illegal Immigrants

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128303672

As the nation’s attention turns back to the fractured debate over immigration, it might be helpful to remember that in 1986, Ronald Reagan signed a sweeping immigration reform bill into law.

….the bill also made any immigrant who’d entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty — a word not usually associated with the father of modern conservatism.

…This time, however, Republicans know better than to tread near the politically toxic A-word.

…Nowadays, conservative commentators like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh often invoke the former president as a champion of the conservative agenda. Sean Hannity of Fox News even has a regular segment called “What Would Reagan Do?”

Simpson, however, sees a different person in the president he called a “dear friend.”

Reagan “knew that it was not right for people to be abused,” Simpson says. “Anybody who’s here illegally is going to be abused in some way, either financially [or] physically. They have no rights.”

Peter Robinson, a former Reagan speechwriter, agrees. “It was in Ronald Reagan’s bones — it was part of his understanding of America — that the country was fundamentally open to those who wanted to join us here.”

Reagan said as much himself in a televised debate with Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale in 1984.

“I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally,” he said.

NPR doing a fair story on Reagan, like that would happen. He was naïve to believe that Presidents would actually do their constitutional duty and actually enforce laws. Thus, his compromise was a mistake. However, he gave presidents the law to actually close our borders, now we just need to find one to enforce the law.

NPR doing a fair story on Reagan, like that would happen.

Besides again being a proven liar by slight-of hand in the 8/5/15 bits bucket PropagandaDan also engages in fallacies - an argument that uses poor reasoning. Strawman etc.
Here Adan is using the genetic fallacy - an illogical argument for or against an idea based on the origin of the idea.

PropagandaDan does not want to admit that Reagan granted sweeping amnesty so he disparages the source of the facts -NPR- to try to take our attention that Reagan granted sweeping an far-reaching amnesty to illegal aliens in the 80s.

8/5/15

8/5/15 = 8/5/14

It worse than that. He’s a domestic imperialist, whatever the heck that means.

It means propagandists who post here have no shortage of nonsensical ad hominem attacks in their verbal arsenals.

Maybe we should ask Goon if he was in the crowd>

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/more-than-100-people-gather-at-denver-mint-before-sunrise-to-buy-gold-jfk-coins

I can’t agree, MacBeth. You’re assuming that bankers make profit off of wages earned by labor, and when there are fewer jobs or when wages pay less, there is less total revenue for bankers.

But bankers do not make money from wages earned by labor. Bankers — and most of the wealthy class — make profit off of bets, trades, and perceptions of value and manipulations of money which is printed. And that’s why we have such a spiraling system. Money based on labor is limited to that amount of work that people can do. Money based on print is unlimited. We just pretend that it’s real because it could be based on, say, 50 or 100 years of labor instead of 30 years of labor.

Bankers will profit until money is reconnected and relimited to labor.

If you want to win, it isn’t wise to play amongst those who don’t have any.

There are only so many Titanic chairs to go around, oxide. Fewer chairs means fewer winners. Fewer bankers (no matter how you want to define “banker”), means fewer winners.

Wish I could agree, but I don’t see any sign that the printing is stopping. It’s like there’s a hole in the Titanic but the water isn’t coming in.

Funny, the Zillow article assumes 20% down. In DC? Who is ponying up $60K in cash? That’s what brought me to HBB in the first place in 2004-2005. Pretty young things buying $300K condoze straight outta college.

“Bankers will profit until money is reconnected and relimited to labor.”

Which, I hope you understand, will happen when debt donkeys have fainted. You brought on/sustained the credit bubble in a gamble to get rich spending money you didn’t have on a house. Just sayin.

If you have to mortgage yourself for 20 or 30 years to buy sticks and bricks, it isn’t even remotely connected to the labor you have done. It’s based on wispy dreams and promises.

This is a quotation mark: “. Please surround quotes with them.

Autie, you don’t understand. He has a smart phone. A

SMART.
PHONE.

Such gentry deserve special priviledges including grammatical leeway, typographical errors, business class cocktails, and rarified air.

But I gotta wonder, with so many posts, including multiple replies to a single post, would it not be more efficient to invest in a keyboard?

For HA: http://news.msn.com/offbeat/telegraph-the-zonkey-born-at-crimean-zoo

Women might not want to say that to males.

If you need to hear it from “Real Journalists”:

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/big-profits-at-alibaba-but-filing-has-gaps/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

It’s because you don’t understand where the debt is. Biggest pile of steaming debt and fraud on the planet. Fang nu nation.

You just do not seem to understand that does not mean China collapses the entire article talks about the strength of the Chinese economy. China falling below 7% would be very bad for countries such as Brazil not for China. It use to be said when the U.S. sneezes the rest of the world gets a cold. Now, it is China that determines the world’s growth.

You miss read that one sentence and ignore the key part which is dead on with my posts:

Newspaper reports on debt in China have been misleading. Public sector leverage is well below most other countries. China also happens to be one of the countries where the assets on the state balance sheet are enormous, including $3.5 trillion in reserves, 90% of the shares in state-owned enterprises, a lot of the country’s land, plus tax capacity. There are some concerns with corporate debt and with China’s version of the shadow banking system, which is a set of complicated and unregulated end runs around the state-owned banking sector. But they are busy getting their arms around that.

misread. BTW, since the article was written the Chinese economy has accelerated with the government achieving the correct amount of stimulus. The government deficit will be about 3% this year while the growth rate will be above 7%, meaning China’s already low debt to GDP ratio (1/5 of ours) will drop even further.

if they report that private sources outside of China will confirm that number is very close to the actual growth, like they always have in the past.

It’s much more credible when private sources outside of China report the numbers given to them by the Chinese government.

It’s much more credible when private sources outside of China report the numbers given to them by the Chinese government

You think that is what the Stanford professor was doing? What an idiot.

You think that is what the Stanford professor was doing?

AlbuquerquedanCherrypicking, You know darn well a lot of China’s numbers “private” and public are doctored and fudged. Those numbers affect private firms’ projections. Are you 12?

China to crack down on fake data ‘corruption’: statistics chief

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/12/us-china-economy-statistics-idUSBREA1B0H520140212

The accuracy of economic statistics in general in China has come under the spotlight in recent years as some growth-obsessed local governments published false economic data.

“In the area of statistics, falsification can be considered as the biggest form of corruption,” Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics told a meeting, in a reference to the Chinese government’s broader crackdown on corruption.

The comments were published on the same day as official figures showed a surge in exports in January far above expectations, prompting speculation about a return of the practice of disguising currency speculation as trade that had distorted trade figures last year.

The statistics bureau has previously vowed zero tolerance for fake data, and has admonished some local governments for falsifying economic data.

The most recent case was in December, when officials in Yanting county in the southwestern province of Sichuan were found to have had overstated almost fivefold the value of industrial output from local companies.

Part of the problem is a traditional system whereby local government officials seek to burnish their credentials and promotion prospects by exceeding government targets for economic growth

“including $3.5 trillion in reserves”

It’s because you don’t understand the liabilities that are associated with these reserves. They are not “money in the bank”.

And I predict that if they report that private sources outside of China will confirm that number is very close to the actual growth, like they always have in the past.

BTW, do you think the Stanford professor would not have been aware if Chinese numbers differed largely from the official numbers.

Hey Donk

Slowdown’s impact on Brazil:

Platts)
Updated: 2014-08-07 10:39
Counter:
Brazil’s total iron ore exports in July rose 5% to 31.1 million mt, from 29.6 million mt in the year-ago period, according to the latest Brazil Ministry of Foreign Trade data.

However, total revenue generated from iron ore exports dipped 18% year over year to $2.1 billion FOB from $2.6 billion FOB, with the average per-ton price also dropping to $70.10/mt FOB from $89.80/mt FOB.

Comparing July’s data to June’s results, shipments last month rose 5.5% from 29.5 million mt in June, while overall export sales fell at the same rate, from $2.3 billion FOB in exports in June.

July’s average iron ore price was down $8.10 from June’s $78.20/mt FOB.

Breaking down exports by companies — using consolidated June data from iron and base metals extraction industry group Sinferbase — Vale, Samarco and MMX combined shipped 28.7 million mt of iron ore products during the month, 8% above the 26.6 million mt shipped in June 2013.

Vale’s domestic shipments in June grew 5% year over year, to 1.8 million mt, while Samarco, the 50:50 joint venture between Vale and BHP Billiton, didn’t sell to the domestic market during the month.

Vale and its subsidiaries increased exports in June by 6%, to 23.9 million mt, while Samarco’s shipments jumped 50%, to 1.6 million mt.

MMX reduced its domestic shipments in June by more than 40% to 191,000 mt, from 321,000 mt in the year-ago period. A sharp reduction also occurred in the miner’s exports, which plunged 56% in June from 381,000 mt a year ago.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-04/brazil-s-swap-rates-drop-as-economists-cut-gdp-growth-forecast.html

Excerpt from link, this board is looking at the wrong country for housing bubble burst, it should be looking at the socialistic “paradise” of Brazil:

Brazil’s longer-term swap rates declined as economists cut growth forecasts for this year to the lowest level on record.

Swap rates on the contract maturing in January 2017, a gauge of expectations for interest-rate moves, declined four basis points, or 0.04 percentage point, to 11.59 percent. The real weakened less than 0.1 percent to 2.2584 per dollar.

Gross domestic product will expand 0.86 percent this year, down from the previous week’s median forecast of 0.9 percent, according to a central bank survey of about 100 analysts published today. That’s the lowest level since the central bank started compiling the data last year and the 10th straight week of cuts in growth projections for Latin America’s biggest economy.

“The survey shows one more time a decline in expectations for GDP growth this year,” Octavio de Barros, the chief economist at Banco Bradesco SA in Sao Paulo, wrote in an e-mailed report to clients. “The trading in interest rate futures is reacting to those changes.”

Brazil’s industrial production dropped 1.4 percent in June after contracting a revised 0.8 percent in May, the national statistics agency said on Aug. 1. Of the 24 industries surveyed by the statistics institute, output in 18 fell, including a 12.1 percent decline in cars and auto parts.

Economists in the central bank survey expect inflation of 6.39 percent at the end of this year and 6.24 percent in December, 2015. Those estimates compare to previous forecasts of 6.41 percent and 6.21 percent, respectively. Brazil’s central bank targets annual inflation at 4.5 percent, plus or minus two percentage points.

“Hey Donk”

Hey Pimp. How does it feel to be knocked off the top of Annoyance Mountain?

Just to the left posters and I am proud to be on top of that mountain. I can see the end of the Obama administration from my vista.

About Brazil and don’t wait for Lola to post since it is not in the D.C. papers:

http://gegwatch.com/2014/03/17/brazils-bolero-can-the-real-estate-bubble-be-tamed-without-a-real-economy-collapse/

With odds at 3:1, Brazil is favorites to win the World Championship in football this summer. Investors, on the other hand, will play Brazil cautiously this year, the Financial Times predicts. Why? The brief answer is that Brazil finds itself in a situation that is more than difficult. With economic growth close to zero, nagging problems with inflation and a prolonged bubble in housing prices, the big question is: can Brazil tame its real estate bubble, without causing an economy already on the brink of recession to grind to a halt?

If the Brazilian slowdown in growth was mainly a ‘natural’, and inevitable, response to low growth in the world economy, and the slowdown in the Chinese growth engine, there might be less reason for concern. But Brazil is edging closer to zero growth for domestic reasons too. Brazil’s growth model is “overly dependent on public spending and flagging consumption and credit” and suffers from a serious investment deficit; its investment rate is among the lowest in the region (at 18.4 %).

With such fundamental difficulties, why worry about taming a housing bubble? Is that not the lesser problem for Brazil, compared to the challenge of rebalancing its growth model and avoiding outright recession? At first glance perhaps, but in reality it makes little sense to address these problems separately. Indeed, failure to tame the real estate bubble may turn out to be what eventually pushes the Brazilian economy off the cliff. Just a few years ago, we witnessed how much a housing market turning sour can wreak havoc of an economy. Indeed, the parallels between Brazil today and the US in 2005 are deeply troubling.

Before we get to that, it may be worth noting that macroeconomic experience tells us that if there is anything we know about systemic risks it is that no risk exists greater than that of a housing bubble. Franklin Allen – Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, speaking at a Bundesbank symposium a few weeks ago – gave particular strong emphasis to this point. A number of studies, said Professor Allen, have “provided evidence that the most important source of systemic risk is the collapse of real estate prices”. If a real estate bubble bursts, other asset prices will likely fall too and there will be significant risk of a banking crisis with repercussions far beyond the financial sector, he stressed.

Strikingly, Franklin Allen singled out Brazil as a particularly troubling case, with real estate prices having tripled in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo since 2008. Indeed, data from the Bank of International Settlements shows that over the past five years “no market was hotter than Brazilian housing”.

In the past year, Brazil’s central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate no less than seven times, so that it now stands at 10.5 %, up from 7 % a year ago. And yet, inflation remains high – at almost 6 %, considerably above the 4.5 % target – and real estate prices show little signs of abating. The Brazilian central bank may consider further raising interest rates, to contain inflation in consumer and real estate prices, but the adverse side-effects could be considerable: a further slowdown of investment, along with an increase in already high debt-service-to-income ratios.

Brazil’s predicament calls for macroprudential policy, some would argue. A boom in real estate prices can be dampened, or contained, without raising interest rates by deploying macroprudential tools such as loan-to-value (LTV) and debt-service-to-income (DTI) ratios. There are, however, good reasons to question that such policies will do the job for Brazil.

First, one should note that Brazil has already received praise for its macroprudential policies, several years ago, by the IMF and others. If Brazil’s praiseworthy macroprudential policies have hitherto failed to contain the boom in Brazil’s real estate markets, why should we trust them to succeed in that respect, going forward? Although it may be too harsh to say that the policies have been ineffective, they surely have, so far, been inadequately effective, it would seem.

Second, to the extent that macroprudential policy can be effective in mitigating systemic risks it is likely to be so mainly as preventive medicine, dampening and containing a boom, not so much as damage control, once the fire is on. Though it remains disputed whether the large real estate price increases in Brazil in the past six years do in fact constitute a housing bubble, or simply reflects real economic growth and the fact that housing prices were largely stagnant for decades prior, it seems to me that pessimists have a stronger case than optimists.

Talking about the housing bubble during a recent trip to Brazil, Robert Schiller, the Nobel-prize winning Yale University Professor, noted that it felt like being in the US in 2005: “Interest groups develop that want to cheerlead the housing boom… it sounds like something I’ve seen before”. This is not the only troubling parallel that strikes observers. For instance, given that average debt servicing was 15 % of income just before the crisis in the US, it is worrying that in Brazil today it is even higher. Debt servicing in Brazil is “eating up an ever-increasing share of income”, recently reaching 20 per cent, according to David Rees, emerging markets economist at Capital Economics in London.

A few factors may play to the advantage of Brazil, as noted by the IMF. Its mortgage-loan-to-GDP ratio remains low (6.9%) by international standards, the ratio of its real estate loans that are non-performing is also “fairly low” around 2 %, and securitization in Brazil is “still incipient and not complex”. Add to this that the Brazilian banking sector is significantly better capitalized than is the case in most other countries around the world, and you have a case for some resilience to adverse events in the Brazilian housing market.

But will it be enough to avoid, first, a collapse in real estate prices and, second, a wider financial crisis?

Jakob Vestergaard, GEG Watch, 17 March 2014

ADan:

From my (Windows) Vista, I can see the end of your welcome on this board.

Trolls drool.

can Brazil tame its real estate bubble, without causing an economy already on the brink of recession to grind to a halt?

It’s different in Brazil. I don’t know if a collapsing housing market in Brazil would affect Brazil like it did America. The mortgage debt level is very low and no HELOCS.

With the above reality being different from USA I see a Brazilian recession affecting house prices more than crashing house prices affecting the economy. Thoughts anyone?

I find this interesting. When highly educated Brazil expert Gringos write well written articles about Brazil, there’s most often this sense of mystery about the push-pull and complexity on what’s going to happen and how things work down here. Like the same actions and policies don’t always play out the same way in Brazil as they do in other countries.

And it’s true. Brazil is not a greater country than USA by far, but it is a much more complicated country for us gringos. Why did Brazil avoid the global meltdown in 2008? Why did Brazil’s house prices explode in the absence of major credit? Why did a tropical mixture of supply-side/demand-side and populist programs bring 40 million Brazilians out of poverty the past 15 years? The answers are very complicated because Brazil is very complicated.

I remember know-it-all FPSS swearing that Brazil would be in Recession by 2012 and that 2013 would be a depression so great that there would be gnashing of teeth and housing would CRATER. Well golly, I must have missed all of that.

I think Brazil should veer to the right in the next election. The left did a good job but that was the time and place for them and for now, they’re out of ideas imo. One of the major candidates from the right was a childhood friend of my wife. I actually met him in the 90’s when he was “simply” a Congressman and sang karaoke at a rich-boy party we went to. “Johnny B. Goode”. I can’t vote but I think he’d be good for Brazil at this point.

The main point about Brazil it that you don’t always get what you expect because all of the underlying pieces of the puzzle are not exactly what you would expect because it is not Europe nor America but a mixture of both infused with the very complex nature of Brazil.

Same old bs. The demand side socialist country is failing and the supply side country is growing 7% or more each year. It is not that complicated.

Didn’t Brazil just recently have a run-of-the-mill crisis, attended by riots and fire and all that other globalist flimflam?

It is not that complicated

It is very complicated but recognizing complication in not your forte. That’s why so many see through your simplistic attempts to alter history and change facts.

And everything to you is a snap-shot in time with no backgrounds, culmination of great events and pattern’s effects.

A great example is how you don’t acknowledge the disastrous culmination of past policies and events that lead America to where it is today.

For you it’s just Obama, Obama, Obama but you’re wrong and overly simplistic. What has led America to where it is today?
Hint: It’s complicated.

Didn’t Brazil just recently have a run-of-the-mill crisis, attended by riots and fire and all that other globalist flimflam?

Last summer. It wasn’t globalist -more populist- better schools hospitals-less corruption- lower bus fairs etc.

The elite and media portrayed them as trouble makers and vandals and shut them down.

I was proud of them.

Whenever the left gets hit with facts they cannot explain they way they always say it is complicated. It goes as far back as when they had to explain why Stalin had signed a pact with Hitler. The Brazilian economy has been built on massive consumer debt and commodity exports. It has failed to invest in plant and equipment and is paying the price. Supply side economics favors plant and equipment and demand side favors consumer spending. China may have invested too much but that is a far easier problem to address. Thus, China’s slowdown is to 7% and Brazil will struggle to have 1% growth.

Whenever the left gets hit with facts they cannot explain they way they always say it is complicated.

Not true. I’ve been involved with Brazil since 1986. I live here. It’s complicated. What is true is that whenever you PropagandaDan get hit with facts, you lie, conjures illusions.

Here’s an example on HBB bits 8/5/14:

Comment by Albuquerquedan
2014-08-05 10:56:25

Look at the curve on this measurement of the money supply and without looking at the dates guess when Obama took over. Interesting article:

http://www.mining.com/web/us-dollar-fmq-carries-on-growing-despite-tapering/

Comment by RioAmericanInBrasil
comment-2363311 2014-08-05 12:16:57

Look at the curve on this measurement of the money supply and without looking at the dates guess when Obama took over

Fun game! But we don’t have to guess when the curve bent looking at Adans fuzzy graph. We can tell exactly when the money supply started exploding by holding our cursor over this St. Louis Fed interactive graph at the exact point of the parabolic rise. The money supply started exploding July 2008 - seven months before Obama. Notice the monetary base started deviating upward in about 1981 and we don’t even have to guess that was Reagan. No one can stop this TrickleDown train now. Try the graph. Real math and facts are fun!
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?s1id=AMBNS

Comment by Albuquerquedan
comment-2363317 2014-08-05 12:29:40

The explosion continued well past July 2008 and continues today. Obama is printing away like his “father” Mugabe and it will have the same result.

Comment by RioAmericanInBrasil
comment-2363334 2014-08-05 13:12:24

The explosion (of money) continued well past July 2008 and continues today.

No Adan. Too little too late.

8/5/2014
Ladies and gentleman of the HBB, I again offer proof that Albuquerquedan aka PropagandaDan, Adan etc…..is in fact a liar, a twister of facts, and a conjurer of illusion.

Proof:
1. Today, as he’s done before, Adan wants to lead you to believe that the money explosion began under Obama. He’s said this many times on this blog.

2. And as Adan has done before, he offers a “fuzzy” chart where it’s very hard to pinpoint the starting point of the explosion of money supply and one can easily looking at the chart think it started under Obama.

3. Then Albuquerquedan says at 2014-08-05 10:56:25 :
“Look at the curve on this measurement of the money supply and without looking at the dates guess when Obama took over………(without looking at the dates guess when Obama took over).”

4. This ladies and gentlemen of the HBB is indisputable proof that Adan is a conjurer of illusion, distorter of facts and is in fact a LIAR. Because I have shown you that the money supply actually started exploding a half a year before Obama took office under the Republican administration of George Bush/Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke.

5. Albuquerquedan KNEW this when he wanted to lead you to believe the money explosion began under Obama. He knew because Albuquerquedan and I have debated this issue before on the HBB where I showed him the same facts as I’ve shown you today. He knew the dates.

6. Albuquerquedan knew the facts. He knew but yet he still thought so low of our intelligence that he decided to conjure up an illusion that was in fact a lie.

7. On this day 8/5/2014, I have again proved (as have many) that the poster Albuquerquedan, aka PropagandaDan/Adan, is in fact a distributor of propaganda, a conjurer of illusion based on twisted facts, half-truths and slight of hand and in fact Albuquerquedan is a LIAR.

8/5/2014 I rest my case.

90% of the money supply growth under Obama, I rest my case. Anyone that looked at the graph could find Obama’s administration within a few months and that was my point. Try to make a mountain at of a molehill it will not make history any kinder for Obama. He is one of the worse presidents ever and may be the president that stuck a stake through the heart of democracy with his expansion of the national debt and the money supply.

Anyone that looked at the graph could find Obama’s administration within a few months and that was my point.

Riiiiigght AlbuquerqueWeasel, That was not your point and anyone looking at your “fuzzy” graph would have a hard time pinpointing Obama’s start. Your point was to again lead everyone to believe (through cheap tricks) the money explosion began under Obama - your typical lie. If anyone doubts it, click Adans chart. Then click my chart.

Try to make a mountain at of a molehill

Nice tap dance. Your compulsive lying is not a molehill. Your compulsive lying is a mountain. A pretty ugly, bald face mountain, but a your lying is a mountain nonetheless PropagandaDan.

90% of the money supply growth under Obama

I mean 90% of the graph times in increasing the feds balance sheet has occurred under Obama and the vast majority of the increase. His Fed did not decrease the balance sheet after the recession had “ended” in June 2009, instead he turned us into a banana republic by monetizing the debt.

I mean 90% of the graph times in increasing….

We know what you meant AlbuquerqueWeasel. You meant to lie, by conjuring illusion based on twisted facts, half-truths and slight of hand.

You know. Being an weasel.

You are the Saul Alinsky disciple trying desperately to make this about me and not the failed policies of Obama. Lie, attack, lie attack that is all you have.

You are the Saul Alinsky disciple

PropagandaDan Internet propaganda manual

Chapter 11 Emergency measures when being outed as a liar

Section 5.

If totally unable to lie your way out of it, call the outing party, call the outer a Saul Alinsky, leftist, Commie, Chicago style operator, Insult Obama.

If that does not seem to work, revert to racial or homophobic slurs.

Why did Brazil avoid the global meltdown in 2008?
China’s demand for its natural resources.

“Now, it is China that determines the world’s growth.”

http://morganguyton.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/troll-2.jpg

Whenever ADan gets slammed by the facts, he accuses his challenger of being a leftist, progressive, statist Obama minion in league with all others who ever slammed his posts with facts.

Why did Brazil avoid the global meltdown in 2008?
China’s demand for its natural resources.

Once China wakes up to the folly of constructing empty, unneeded real estate, that demand is going to evaporate.

MacBeth:

You have issues. You seem to hate just about everyone. You said a while back that your only memories of school were of being locked in a room. Did you go to school in a detention center?

MacBeth does not hate everyone or most everyone.

MacBeth does not hate everyone or most everyone.

Are you MacBeth? If not, how do you know his inner emotions?

I know. Pathetic, ain’t it?

BTW, how many imbeciles make the trek out to Rocky Mountain Natl Park only to screw around on their devices? Care to offer a guess? One out of 4? One out of 3?

I had to google what a “selfie stick” was. Did I escape the narcissism?

(Then again, I used “google” as a verb, so I guess it’s a wash.)

If you use summer as a verb, you belong to the .01%.

macbeth, one of the nice things about rmnp is that it is a contiguous chunk of land with no cell phone towers inside the park. unless you are within a mile or so of estes park or grand lake, there is no phone reception inside of the park.

people can take selfies and record douchebag videos of themselves wearing a gopro, but they can’t upload them to facebook or youtube until they exit the park. a sad, first lesson of delaying receipt of external validation for them.

Yeah, that’s a rather nice element of our national parks - very little connectivity.

I don’t understand people’s need for external validation. Everybody wants to be a star, apparently.

Seems a good many adults never left high school.

Exactly. And that is why we elected the “cool kid” instead of the competent kid as president.

“I had to google what a “selfie stick” was.”

+1 Same here, haha. Disturbing.

Actually, yesterday Facebook redeemed itself. I go on probably once a month and I found a friend request. It was from a classmate from college 35 years ago. She is a professor at U of Virginia. Kind of cool.

I get the news from one from one friend who lives for that stuff (like the song “You Talk Too Much”). Everybody who I want to hear from knows where I am.

One of the reasons I’m leery of all social media because I owned a local business (pub) for a very long time, a long time ago. People know who you are but you don’t know them. That little bit of recognition made me very uncomfortable. I don’t know why anyone would want to be famous.

$300k?

I hope you accidentally dropped that comment in the wrong place. Otherwise, it’s an extremely disturbing train of thought.

I did dude it was meant for your post starting with CNN touting below?