The Housing Bubble

http://blogs.marketwatch.com/encore/2014/09/15/how-your-home-can-pay-for-your-retirement/

Your link shows prices UP over 4%!

You can say that again….

But 6% of what they say is the truth.

no one cares

Colorado School of Mines in Golden graduates average some of the highest starting salaries in the country. But there are no womyn students there, because math and science are misogynistic (and probably racis).

LOL, it’s good to be number 1! That hasn’t changed in the last four decades.

In the real world, more money is to be made by abandoning the actual work and going into technical sales.

Ceo’s earn $1 million + but there isnt much demand for them nor will the average $35k/year worker become a Ceo or an engineer.

“[real] Journalism gets recent grads about $35,000 a year.”

Journalism 101 - follow the money!

I keep trying to point this out to Amy! Nothing you’ll ever do with a house feels as goog as having a real job.

10.Electrical engineering - $60,000

Right out of college with a 4 year only.

Below are the top-paying majors and the median amounts they earn…Petroleum engineering ……Mining and mineral engineering -
…Metallurgical engineering….etc

They might make some money but that list sounds like one seriously boring and tunnel-visioned BBQ party. (A Liberal-Arts party would be more interesting and fun.)

‘I’ve said before’

I know. Yet somehow they caught the inventory surge and price drops before everybody. And it’s a crowded field now.

Movoto isn’t very good on small markets. Are any of them? You’ve been told that before too.

You just don’t like what the data shows my friend.

Movoto uses the MLS.

What’s five thirty eight have to say about November?

You need figures for prison guards, CHP, and firemen in the state of CA. Not just base pay but the average with overtime and what their average retirement pays.

173. Library Science: 22,000

If a Library Science major can actually land a job as a librarian, s/he will do better than that (my wife makes $20/hr as a Librarian level 1). I suspect that few do land a librarian job straight out of school and they probably start out working as shelvers and clerks for $8-9/hr at the library, hoping to work their way up to Librarian.

“Court reporting, food science, public policy” …

Those are three things that all belong in the same category.

Lightning and Flooding to Parts of SoCal; Possible Funnel Cloud Spotted
Posted 3:40 PM, September 16, 2014, by Melissa Pamer, Steve Kuzj, Tracy Bloom and Kacey Montoya, Updated at 12:57am, September 17, 2014
A funnel cloud moved over the Big Bear area about 4:30 p.m. on Sept. 16, 2014. (Credit: Ryan Whitcher)
…
A staff member described the frightening moments of being caught up in the storm, likening it to a movie.

“It was insane. It was like that scene in ‘Twister’ where everything is flying around. I was waiting to see the cow to go by,” said Shannon Atkins, a staff member at the school. “We couldn’t get to safety, we were just right there holed up and there was nothing we could do.

“There was lightning right over the top of us, and winds blowing sideways. We had hail…just pelting us. It was just, the girls were crying,” she said.
…

SoCal heat wave: Where temperatures have tied, broken records
The setting suns sets clouds aglow as they pass over the Los Angeles skyline.
By Amy Hubbard
September 16, 2014
The Southern California heat wave is breaking temperature records across the region

September’s heat wave has affected almost every corner of Southern California in recent days, but the map below shows some of the hardest-hit hot spots.

On Monday, Thermal lived up to its name but failed to break its record for the date, set in 2000. Meanwhile, heat champ Woodland Hills broke a 25-year-old record by 1 degree. Sandberg, at 96, topped its record from 1995. Camarillo tied a record of 90 from 2012. Newport Beach beat its record for the day from 1997, but its September average is 72, so that comfortable coastal temperature is par for the course.
…

record breaking cold in the midwest and the NE…

To include blizzards.

Repost from yesterday, this is a very nice article

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/china-the-climate-and-the-fate-of-the-planet-20140915

Thunderstorms in San diego, I bet everyone freaked out. Hurricanes are so rare down there. I forget when the last one made landfall near SD, but it was a long time ago. The waters too cold.

Arctic Shipping Set for Record as Sea Ice Melts

Financial Times

“Is global warming finally real”

No. It’s still just another global progressive movement designed to overthrow capitalism. Nothing more, nothing less.

Is global warming finally real, or is this just a record-breaking heat wave?

I don’t think it works like that but here’s a climate change/real estate story. Follow the money.

“Climate change has become a focal point in real estate discussions”

Climate change concerns weigh on Cape home-buying decisions

http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/real-estate/2014/09/13/climate-change-concerns-weigh-cape-home-buying-decisions/SnTafe2lwWiOsLt5AtezHK/story.html

TRURO — About five years ago, Neil Leifer and Ellen Carno decided to build a vacation home on Cape Cod and wanted a place within biking distance of the fast ferry from Boston to avoid summer traffic.

Provincetown was too busy, they said, so they narrowed their search to the Truro area.

Friends told them to stay away from the ocean side of the Cape, saying the bay side is less prone to storm damage and erosion. The Newton couple had met people who were forced to move their ocean-side homes farther back from the shore because of the eroding sand.

“Not something we wanted to get into,” Carno said.

They spotted a home on the water along Cape Cod Bay in Truro that seemed to tick off all of their boxes.

Having just sold their condo in New Hampshire’s Waterville Valley, they were not in a hurry and let a few months pass before returning to Truro. Those few months were winter ones that included strong storms.

“When we came back. . . . The house was twice as close to the water as it had been,” Carno said. “We decided then and there [that] we wanted to be on the second row back from the water.”

‘You do it for the romance of it, for the beauty of it, the sheer love of living on Cape Cod.’

Climate change has become a focal point in real estate discussions like this on Cape Cod.

China Joins ECB in Adding Stimulus as Fed Scales Back
By Bloomberg News Sep 17, 2014 2:15 AM PT
Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) –- Bloomberg’ Stephen Engle reports on China’s central bank providing liquidity to the top five banks to bolster loan growth and shore up the economy. He speaks to Angie Lau on “First Up.” (Source: Bloomberg)

China’s central bank joined its European counterpart in boosting liquidity to address weakening growth, underscoring a divergence in direction among the world’s biggest economies as the U.S. reduces stimulus.

The People’s Bank of China is injecting 500 billion yuan ($81 billion) into the nation’s largest banks, according to a government official familiar with the matter, signaling the deepest concern yet with an economic slowdown. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen will announce another $10 billion cut to its monthly bond purchases after this week’s meeting, economists forecast, as she steers toward gradual interest-rate increases.

China’s credit expansion builds on targeted measures to shore up growth while stopping short of broad-based stimulus seen in the U.S. in the wake of the global financial crisis and still being pushed in Europe and Japan. By attaching a three-month term to its injection, China is taking a step down that path while maintaining control of a process designed to fuel demand for credit in an already debt-laden economy.

“It’s like quantitative easing with Chinese characteristics,” said Louis Kuijs, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc’s chief Greater China economist in Hong Kong, who formerly worked at the World Bank. “The threat is that growth is slowing down below the comfort level of policy makers and that will then also warrant further easing steps.”
…

China housing a “bubble on eve of destruction”
Posted by Houses and Holes in China Economy at 12:12am on September 17, 2014

Below is an op-ed by Gu Jun, a professor of sociology at Shanghai University, talking about the empty residential buildings all over the Chinese coast as a metaphor for the failure of central planning. He closes by tying it to Premier Li Keqiang’s reform efforts. This op-ed was the top headline in the real estate section of iFeng’s website on Sunday.

The title can roughly be translated as “this bubble is on the even of destruction.”

This bubble is not in Wenzhou, Ordos or Yulin, but on the shore. It is in Dalian , Yingkou, Qinhuangdao, Yantai, Weihai, Qingdao on the Shandong Peninsula, in Huizhou, Sanya and Beihai in the south, where the “ocean view apartment” is on the eve of destruction. Many rushed in to buy homes, but when night falls there are dark, empty buildings. In 2008, in Weihai, Shandong, homes were bought for more than ￥500,000; today they sell for ￥200,000, but there is little interest. There is a price, but no market.

When insiders describe the chaotic development of the coastline, they give three reasons. The first is that the timing wasn’t right, and they “over drafted” the coastline’s resources. The second is a lack of good planning; the developers moved as a herd and destructive development followed. Third, there was no core industry support, without a healthy ecosystem it could not continue growing. Valuable coastal ecosystems were destroyed, plans for scenic development fell through, now there is only a concrete and rebar forest, in the still of the night there are only a few lonely lights for comfort in this sad and lonely place.

This so called “coordinated” development, where government makes the decisions instead of independent actors, has turned into uncoordinated confusion. The BATs fly overseas (Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent), there is fake packaging scandals and shoreline destruction. Yet people still believe the government can implement the highest reason, they have a superstitious belief in planning, that government will somehow deliver long-term planning for the good of all society. Government is just another interest group though, and in the race to get promoted, officials pushed development to get ahead.

From the official’s standpoint, coastal ecology has nothing to do with me; fishermen, farmers and city residents need for a supply chain has nothing to do with me; scenic development needs what type of development and continuous promotion, has nothing to do with me; if the home buyers can even see the ocean, has nothing to do with me. It is the same with the losses in high speed rail, the world’s fastest M2 growth, and the investigation of the “tigers” and “houseflies.”

With this background, go back and understand Li Keqiang’s statement, “Whatever the market or society can do, will be left to the market or society” and the State Council’s powerful push to eliminate administrative approval, it is not hard to understand the meaning. Government and planning are the same as human reason, they are imperfect and flawed, waiting for the spontaneous action of countless individuals to correct.

Bloomberg News
Property Trusts Pull Support as Mounting Debt Due: China Credit
By Bloomberg News September 16, 2014
Cranes operate at a residential construction site in Beijing, China. “Given the bad housing sales, fewer trust companies are willing to help property companies raise money,” said a bond analyst in Shanghai at Haitong Securities Co.
Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg

Property trusts are funneling the least amount of money into Chinese developers in almost five years as maturing debt balloons, escalating default concerns.

Issuance of trusts for real-estate projects, which target wealthy individuals, slid to 30 billion yuan ($4.9 billion) this quarter from 67.8 billion yuan in the three months to June 30, the least since the start of 2010, data from research firm Use Trust show. Borrowing costs are rising as developers face $9.1 billion in bonds and loans maturing by year-end. Hubei Fuxin Science & Technology Co. sold AA rated securities with a 9.2 percent coupon Aug. 26, above the 6.38 percent average yield for similar-rated notes.

Cash from operations are also facing a squeeze as home sales fell 10.9 percent in the first eight months of the year in the world’s second-largest economy, which is forecast by the government to expand at the slowest pace in 24 years. Standard & Poor’s sees a risk that a developer may default in the coming 12 months, highlighting weak earnings at Renhe Commercial Holdings Co. and Glorious Property Holdings Ltd.

“Given the bad housing sales, fewer trust companies are willing to help property companies raise money,” said Li Ning, a bond analyst in Shanghai at Haitong Securities Co., the nation’s second-biggest brokerage. “Default risks are rising rapidly before so much debt is due next quarter.”
…

China
China May Soon Go the Way of Japan, Says Merrill Lynch
By Peter Coy September 10, 2014
A Chinese investor looks at prices of shares at a stock brokerage house in Fuyang city, east China’s Zhejiang province on Aug. 28 Zhejiang province on Aug. 28
Photograph by Imaginechina via AP Photo

China is weaker than it appears and “may be entering into an asset-deflation phase” like Japan’s, says a report today by two analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAC). China has vaulted ahead of Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy after the U.S. But like Japan, says the Merrill Lynch report, China is marked by “imbalanced growth, government stimulus, overcapacity, an overwrought housing market, and a severely under-capitalized financial system.”

The report, called “Will China Repeat Japan’s Experience?” is by Naoki Kamiyama, an equity analyst in Japan, and David Cui, a strategist in Singapore. They say that the China of 2014 resembles the Japan of 1992, when a historic real estate bubble was beginning to deflate. “In general, it appears to us that the problem facing China today may be more serious than Japan’s in the late 1980s and early 1990s,” they write.

Japan’s lost decade of the 1990s came about when the Bank of Japan began raising interest rates in 1989 to prick a real-estate bubble. Higher interest rates coupled with a global economic downturn caused real estate values to plummet. Properties became worth less than the loans on them. Lenders, not wanting to acknowledge losses, kept extending fresh credit to property owners so they could pay interest on old loans. The economy slumped.
…

India
Role Reversal: India’s Growth May Surpass China’s by 2016
By Bruce Einhorn September 16, 2014
Electronic ticker boards at the National Stock Exchange in Mumbai, India
Photograph by Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg

China’s President Xi Jinping is due to arrive in India tomorrow, and for a change he’s the one with an economy heading in the wrong direction, not Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After several dismal years, growth in India is rebounding, and the stock prices of companies selling to Indian consumers are benefiting from the surge in optimism that accompanied Modi’s landslide election victory in May. Britannia Industries (BRIT:IN), the Kolkata-based maker of cookies and other food products, is up 55 percent so far this year and today hit a 52-week high. “The Indian consumption story is back,” Credit Suisse analysts Neelkanth Mishra and Ravi Shankar wrote in a report published today.

Meanwhile, China is struggling as the troubled banking system and property markets put a damper on the economy. Hit by a slump in the property market, the Chinese economy expanded at an annual rate of 6.3 percent in August, a dramatic slowdown from the 7.4 percent growth in July and nowhere close to the government’s target of 7.5 percent. So far this year, the area of new property under development has declined 14.4 percent. The data from last month “made depressing reading,” Bloomberg economist Tom Orlik wrote in a report published yesterday.

The role reversal could lead to a world-turned-upside-down moment as early as 2016. That’s when India, always the laggard, may pull ahead of China and became the fastest-growing of Asia’s giants. India is likely to enjoy 7.2 percent growth in 2016, says Rajeev Malik, senior economist in Singapore with CLSA, compared with China’s 7.1 percent. Given the structural problems Xi faces and the slack Modi inherited, “China has to slow down, and India can do much better,” he says.
…

Wherever he may be these days, I hope former HBB poster AlbuquerqueDan is thoroughly enjoying his barbecued crow dinner.

World Affairs 9/14/2014 @ 12:18PM
IMF Formula: China GDP Grew 2.2% In 2013

“Ten to 15 years ago, to create 1 million jobs, China needed 1.4% GDP growth,” said Markus Rodlauer, the chief of the IMF’s China mission, in an interview with the official Xinhua News Agency released Friday. “Five to 10 years ago, it needed 1%. Now it only needed 0.8% GDP growth.”

According to China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the country added 2.73 million jobs in 2013. If the IMF formula is correct, China grew 2.2% last year.

So what did the IMF forecast for Chinese growth for 2013? On October 8 of that year, the organization issued a prediction of 7.5%.

Obviously something is wrong at the IMF as it is not possible to reconcile 7.5%, the forecast, with 2.2%, the result of applying Rodlauer’s formula. And to make matters worse, the IMF cannot argue that the 2.73 million figure is an anomaly. Low job creation is not a new phenomenon in China: the Human Resources Ministry reported that the number of jobs created in 2012 was 2.84 million.

What is going on? China, like many countries, supplies data on a confidential basis to the IMF so that it can conduct what are known as Article IV Consultations. The data China supplied to that organization may not have been the same as the figures the National Bureau of Statistics released to the public. If so, it means the IMF had been staying silent as Beijing issued different—and undoubtedly inaccurate—statistics to the public.

Some justify the IMF’s silence on the commonsense belief that Chinese officials would not work with the organization if it were to release Beijing’s real numbers. Yet whether the IMF is right or wrong to receive numbers under such conditions—I believe it is almost always wrong for multilateral organizations to not challenge member states for deception—Rodlauer’s formula has exposed an impossible-to-explain discrepancy.

So how fast is China growing? The IMF formula, despite its stark result, is not out of line with others of its type. Premier Li Keqiang, for example, last year said that each percentage point of GDP growth created 1.4 million jobs. That means China grew 2.0% in 2013. The Morgan Stanley formula—1.6 million to 1.7 million jobs for each point of growth—suggests growth of 1.7% or 1.6%.
…

Economy
China Industrial Production Growth Slumps to Six-Year Low
China’s Industrial Production Growth Slowed to Lowest Level Since 2008 Global Financial Crisis
Updated Sept. 13, 2014 5:52 a.m. ET

China’s industrial production rose 6.9% in August compared with a year earlier. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

BEIJING—China’s economic engine sputtered in August as industrial production growth slowed to its lowest level since the 2008 global financial crisis, according to data released Saturday, increasing the chance that Beijing will step up stimulus measures to bolster the world’s second-largest economy.

Economists said the sharp deceleration in industrial output, along with weaker fixed-asset investment, retail and real estate sales data, is likely to rattle regional stock markets Monday as Beijing struggles to reach its annual 7.5% economic-growth target in a nation where hitting benchmarks remains important.

“This figure is a bit shocking,” said ANZ economist Liu Li-Gang. “If we have another month of low IP growth, the third-quarter GDP figure could be at most 7%.”
…

With all the gloomy economic news emanating from China these days, it is a great stroke of luck that the rest of the global economy is fully decoupled from China’s.

Party on, Wall Street bulls!

Is it a given that China will use stimulus to keep its highly-touted 7.5% GDP growth rate intact?

I guess they can build more ghost cities and sell the flats to flipper groups, who will then resell them to other groups of flippers, and so on.

Fed Seen Doubling Reverse Repos to Raise Interest Rates
By Matthew Boesler
Sep 16, 2014 8:50 AM PT

The Federal Reserve will have to double its borrowing through overnight reverse repurchase agreements in order to raise its benchmark interest rate from near zero, according to economists surveyed by Bloomberg.

Some 61 percent of 43 economists in the survey said the Fed would have to borrow more than $250 billion per day on average through its overnight reverse repo facility to sustain a floor under the federal funds rate at liftoff, more than double the $120.3 billion daily average logged in 2014 as the central bank has tested the facility. The survey was conducted Sept. 11-15.
…
In an overnight reverse repo, the Fed borrows cash from counterparties using securities as collateral. The next day, it returns the cash plus interest to the lender and gets the securities back.

Excess Reserves

The Fed’s need for a tool to influence repo rates directly arose after almost six years of bond buying to stimulate economic growth flooded the banking system with $2.68 trillion of excess reserves. That means banks no longer need to borrow reserves in the once-vibrant fed funds market, so the fed funds rate no longer represents the true cost of overnight credit.

In order to raise bank borrowing costs and ensure that the fed funds rate doesn’t trade below the FOMC’s target range when it begins tightening policy, the Fed will have to absorb cash from money funds that would otherwise be lent to banks through repos.

“Once you start seeing credit picking up more meaningfully and the Fed starts exerting the effort to tighten policy, then I would think that the level of liquidity absorption would rise,” said Millan Mulraine, deputy head of U.S. research and strategy at TD Securities USA LLC in New York. “For the Fed to be able to engineer policy tightening, it would probably have to absorb a significant portion” of the excess reserves created by the central bank’s bond purchases.
…

“Moments ago FedEx reported first quarter earnings ended August 31, which blew expectations out of the water, because instead of the consensus EPS print of $1.96, EPS reported a whopping $2.10 for Q1, a massive 14 cent beat, and up 37% from last year’s $1.53 reported EPS.

Wow: it must be a great operating environment, with logistics and global trade humming for FDX to beat so impressively, right? Wrong.

Here’s how it happened, from the company’s own press release:

During the quarter, the company acquired 5.3 million shares of FedEx common stock. As of August 31, 2014, no shares remained under the existing share repurchase authorizations. Share repurchases benefited earnings in the quarter by $0.15 per diluted share.”

Looks like a scam to me.

Does the decision depend somewhat on the level of consumer inflation?

“Any bets on how long until the Fed raises short-term rates to normalcy?”

The big brains at the FED are “low-rating” the middle class and the consumer economy right into a deep depression…But the super rich seem to be doing well.

One…two…three: Cue up the NAR shills to insist it ain’t so and it’s different this time.

‘Your pension money’….funny.

There’s alot more Free Sh*t Army than there are of you, and they vote

Permanent Democrat Supermajority

Deficits don’t matter. Who was it that said that, Krugman?

The people are doing fine, heck, from a materialist standpoint better than ever. iPads, IPhones, big screen TVs, 200 channels, plus Netflix, plus Amazon Prime, plus Youtube. You never have to be bored. You can learn anything on Youtube for free. Best food in the world, cheap super cheap, Chipotle, Five Guys, Papa Johns. Books can be bought or borrowed from a library in an instant and immediately downloaded.

And now that prices are going to collapse again, everything will be wonderful. C’mon in boys, the water is fine.

-The U.S. national debt has increased by more than 7 trillion dollars since Barack Obama has been in the White House.”

Probably why governments hate deflation.

I though buying bonds is what the US has done?

No tar and feathers here ?

How is not paying your mortgage “playing by the rules”?

The increase, which wasn’t statistically significant, leaves incomes around 8% below their level of 2007, when the recession officially started.”

It’s very noticeable at the local chain restaurants. There’s never a waiting list anymore. And we can make a tenderloin dinner at home for less than going out for burgers to a place like CrappleBee’s, so we rarely eat out anymore. If we do, it’s because we’re on the go, and we usually just grab something at Chipotle or Panera.

I think Rio speaks Spanish.

How do you say free sh*t army in Mexican?

Soy Democrat…

How do you say Free Sh*t Army in Mexican?

El Ejercito del estiercol gratuito.

That is of course the literal translation. In Mexico freeloaders are called “gorrones”, so it would probably be “El Ejercito de los Gorrones”

“How do you say Free Sh*t Army in Mexican?”

I say it like this: “Eff you to all the college indoctrinated hipster drones who developed the communist insurgency know as multiculturalism and open borders. May you and your families be the first to succumb to the monster you created.”

Sorry, my spanish is a bit rusty.

Fat is voluntary. One of the simplest of problems facing society today. Simple problem, simple solution. But it keeps getting worse.

Meh. My wife was a size 2 in college. At 40, she is still a size 2. Me, BMI never tells the real story because it doesn’t take into account muscle mass. Having said that, I’ve lost almost 10lbs in the last month by cutting back calories and increasing cardio. It really is about self-discipline, exercise, and consuming less. Too bad the average american today is a sloth with no self-discipline and a penchant for instant gratification.

Until it goes bust which it will.

most people would rather be on food stamps than freeze their ass off n n dakota.

That article was not written by real journalists

If you need a job or a new career, you can find it in ND.

That number of available jobs there is probably much less than 1% of the total number of people who need a job.

There are plenty of jobs, but apartment rents are $2700. In other words, don’t uproot yourself.

B-Hawk - Thanks for the feet on the street report! Always interesting!

The last on the list is a statement about the future, not a lie. The Post is lame, whether or not you call it real.

Hickenlooper enraged Colorado gun owners by passing a raft of Bloomberg-funded gun control measures after that Joker lunatic shot up an Aurora theater. Grassroots gun owners responded and recalled worthless POS lib-dems like John Morse and others - it’s “Hick’s” turn next election. He got his thirty pieces of silver from Bloomberg, now his sorry ass is going to have to deal with Colorado Second Amendment supporters.

Meanwhile, millennial womyn got some first world problems

http://www.businessinsider.com/will-the-iphone-6-plus-fit-into-womens-jeans-pockets-2014-9

I love the term Social Justice Warrior. I prefer just SJW for short. But their kryptonite is the simple question “how do you pay your bills?” It’s usually someone else’s money, even if they have something of a job to keep up appearances.

Let the real journalists script your narrative, boy

To a progressive

The world does end if even the most inefficient and ineffective government program takes just a 1% cut.

Except, of course, the military as some of them do not vote democrat…

All your base are belong to Dianne Feinstein

“Civilization as we know it today would be in jeopardy if the Republicans win the Senate.”

And that would be bad … because?

Unfortunately, her statement is a lie. Nothing significant would change if the GOP won.

Bulletin Dow industrials atop all-time closing high as Wall Street awaits Fed

Home-builder confidence highest in almost nine years
Published: Sept 17, 2014 10:45 a.m. ET
By Ruth Mantell
Economics reporter

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — A gauge of confidence among home builders rose in September to the highest level in almost nine years, as builders’ views on present and coming sales rose, according to data released Wednesday.

The overall gauge of builder sentiment rose 4 points to 59 in September, the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo said. Readings above 50 signal that builders, generally, are optimistic about sales trends, and September marks the third consecutive month of above-50 readings.

A strengthening jobs market is perking up builders, though there are still major headwinds from strict credit standards, among other factors.

Confidence among home builders is running higher than levels historically seen at recent building rates for new homes. On Thursday, the government will report on new home construction, and economists polled by MarketWatch expect to find out that the pace slowed down in August.

Economists are forecasting faster sales and construction of new homes as the economy adds jobs at a healthy rate. Also, mortgage rates remain relatively low, making financing relatively affordable. However, not all borrowers are able to take advantage of cheap mortgages. Years after the financial meltdown lenders’ loan standards are still so high that some creditworthy borrowers haven’t been able to get a mortgage. Also, quickly rising house prices over the past year narrowed the pool of borrowers who can afford a new home.

Data details from Wednesday’s report showed that NAHB’s gauge of builders’ views on coming sales of single-family homes rose 2 points to 67 in September, while a barometer of builders’ views on present sales rose 5 points to 63, and a gauge of prospective-buyer traffic increased 5 points to 47.

“The data continue to suggest that the housing recovery is back on track,” said Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics.
…

One day, maybe, Peter Schiff will be right.

Consumer prices are down.

crater

cwater

shareholders are peons. They are the last to be paid in a bankruptcy and the executives steal all the equity.

I went in to kmart the other day and the place was dead as usual and they had a ton of employees running around bullsh@tting. They must be losing money hand over fist.

As long as the business is in operation the executives can bleed off value.

They will milk this for another few years and file, wiping out shareholders.

I have so much money left after “throwing money away on rent” every month that I don’t know where to throw it

warmists gonna warm

When ice melts, it absorbs heat. There are a few things about CO2, heat, forests, fire, water, and currents that you should read up on.

Scientists now believe that global warming is to blame for extreme cold snaps in North America during the winter months…..You just can’t make this stuff up

It amazes me how Americans think USA is the entire world. Let’s think this through.

Question: What percentage of the globe’s surface area does North America take up?

Answer:: Less than 5%
North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers (9,540,000 square miles), about 4.8% of the planet’s surface wiki

Question: Where is most heat stored on earth? Answer: The oceans.

Question: Is global sea level rising or falling? Answer: Rising. Why?

A recent review of the literature [3] suggests that 30% of the sea level rise since 1993 is due to thermal expansion and 55% due to continental ice melt, both resulting from warming global temperatures. In another study,[4] results estimate the heat content of the ocean in the upper 700 meters has increased significantly from 1955-2010. wiki

Question: What percentage of global warming is going into the oceans as opposed to land?

Answer: 93.4% Source IPCC

Question: Can ocean warming possible affect the puny 4.8% of North American landmass?

Answer: Yes, always has, always will

People who behead other people with hand-held knives are psychopaths.

Delusional people are drawn to “important” things that they see going on around them. Schizophrenics and psychopaths both have a tendency to see themselves as the center of something very important. Remember the string of alien abductions that happened in like the 80s or 90s or whenever? I really think that terrorism is similar. The more press it gets, the more crazy people are drawn to it. Now you have white people beheading folks in the name of freaking Islam.

You neocons started the whole thing. Haven’t you done enough? Oh, lets give the neocons and the Saudi 9/11 backers everything they want after turning the region into a hellhole. What could go wrong? Get your head out of your ass, you so called progressive. This sort of trolling proves ever more what a paid shill you are. I’m thinking it’s ban time. What do you know neocon hack? You’re banned!

So long Lola. You did it again. Without help from me this time.

What hissy fit?

Gold is looking better and better?

Suppose house prices dropped 8% in a month. Wouldn’t you be happy?

Gold buyers like me are happy. Keep dropping!

More on the all-too-rare arrest of a Russian oligarch.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/sep/17/oligarch-yevtushenkov-arrest-deepens-fears-russian-economy

Why would it ever? Houses depreciate.

Why Bend?

Why not near Shasta or Redding? Quit following the trendy.

After predicting a China bubble collapse approximately forever, it is quite amazing to see it taking place right before our very eyes.