The Housing Bubble

Did you strike out this week in the stock market?

Obama has added more to the US government deficit than ALL the other administrations COMBINED and accounting for inflation.

I have a better idea. Why don’t we sh*tcan world socialism and let free markets thrive?

Where does IMF they think the funds come from for increased spending? Sure, you can simply run the printing presses and how do you think that is going to end? Or you can run a deficit and force the next generation to cope with it.

Or you can live within your means.

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With world economy stuttering, governments urged to open purse
GMA News / Reuters ^ | October 10, 2014 | Howard Schneider and Anna Yukhananov

World economic leaders are being urged to rally around a plan to let government do what it does best - spend money - in an effort to buoy a global economy that remains slack and slowing.

The effort comes as six years of crisis fighting have lapsed with little guarantee the world economy is on a stable footing. Germany is in danger of slipping into recession, China has slowed, and U.S. policymakers are concerned a fresh bout of global weakness will stymie the U.S. recovery as well.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde issued a blunt call on Thursday for the United States and Germany to open the taps and spend more on infrastructure, a stark reversal from the Fund’s recent fixation on holding down government debt and lifting economies through “structural reforms” that have proved politically difficult to implement.

“It is a question of doing it, not just talking about it,” Lagarde said….

The hypocrisy of liberals/democrats on display is this little article.

1. This is the REAL war on women.

2. Imagine, lefties, if you forced to join and forced to pay dues (as a condition of employment) and most of that money was used to support pro-gun, pro-traditional marriage, pro-life groups, Rush Limbaugh and the republicans. You would be outraged. You would call it unamerican and unconstitutional.

3. She has to SHOW ID and show up in person to quit the union. Isn’t that racist and discriminatory? Or - only when democrats want to propagate voter fraud you don’t need ID.

I have said it before. Conservatives are more than happy to live under the same laws/taxes they want for everyone else. Liberals/democrats/progressive expect to be exempted from the same laws/taxes they want for everyone else.

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Michigan truck driver files coercion charge against UAW union
Reuters (Yahoo News) - 10/10/2014

DETROIT (Reuters) - A truck driver in Michigan filed a charge of coercion against the United Auto Workers union for keeping her from exercising her right to quit the union and stop paying dues, according to the National Right to Work Foundation.

Michigan became the 24th so-called “right-to-work” U.S. state after a contentious battle in the state’s legislature in December 2012. This means means that workers cannot be required to join a union or be forced to pay union dues.

Kathleen Sulkowski, a driver for CEVA Logistics U.S., Inc, filed the charge on Wednesday at the Detroit office of the National Labor Relations Board, the right-to-work group said.

Sulkowski sent a letter in August to officials at the UAW Local 600 union in Dearborn, expressing her desire to quit the union. But in mid-September, a Local 600 official responded that to do so she would have to come to the union hall and provide identification in order to quit.

“UAW union officials’ latest tactic to show up in person and furnish photo identification is designed to dissuade or intimidate workers from exercising their rights to refrain from membership,” Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation, said in a statement issued on Friday.

Michigan auto workers at General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler Group, a unit of Fiat SpA, are not eligible to quit the unions voluntarily until their current contracts expire in September 2015.

San Diego, CA Sale Prices Plunge 6% YoY; Excess Housing Inventory Surges

http://www.zillow.com/san-diego-ca-92115/home-values/

California Realtor Charged With Bank Fraud And Money Laundering

http://www.contracostatimes.com/contra-costa-times/ci_26652986/danville-real-estate-agent-charged-bank-fraud-and

Step 1: Dumb ‘em down.
Step 2: Prosper.

Bahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-10-10/home-atm-back-helocs-surge-2008-levels

“It’s as if the lesson of the previous bubble was completely forgotten in a couple of years.”

“Are these people really that dumb?”

Thankfully, they are.

Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Inventory is exploding.

But where are the buyers?

Prices are falling.

Realtors are liars.

I was at a mixer yesterday evening for business types. A property manager told me that a big investor group that has about 1,400 houses here approached him to find buyers for their holdings. They are looking to sell in lots of 4 houses, so they don’t “flood the market”. Later I was talking with a mortgage broker. He said they are seeing lots of “seconds”, going on to say it was mostly HELOC’s and that people don’t have the concept of paying a house off anymore. That they will always have a mortgage payment. He said they often write 30 year loan applications for people in their 60′ to 70’s.

‘Mexico is helping some of its citizens apply for a controversial immigration program in the U.S. called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. Before applying for DACA, Tania Guzman was worried about revealing to the U.S. government that she left Mexico City and crossed the border illegally when she was 7 years old.’

‘Now 30, Guzman says she also worried about the cost, especially after she learned she would have to pay at least a couple of thousand dollars for immigration attorneys to help prepare her DACA application. “It was a big factor,” says Guzman, who works as a part-time personal assistant and baby sitter in Los Angeles. “It’s a lot of money, and I was struggling.”

‘She finally managed to apply last October after her lawyer from Public Counsel, a pro bono law firm based in California, told her she qualified for financial assistance from the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. Since 2012, that consulate has set aside $250,000 to help, so far, more than 260 Mexican citizens apply for DACA.’

‘Guzman, who was granted deferred action in May, says she paid $50. The rest of her attorney’s and application fees were covered by Mexico. “We are here [in the U.S.] basically not doing anything for our country, I will say. So it’s a great thing to know that even though you’re not in Mexico, you still get help from them,” Guzman says.’

‘The Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., does not keep track of how many DACA applications the consulates have funded nationwide, according to Julian Escutia, head of the embassy’s consular coordination and Hispanic affairs section. Paying for DACA applications, he added, is just one way Mexican consulates are trying to support Mexican citizens living in the U.S.’

“If it’s a program that helps youth to work in this country, well, that helps our nationals, and that helps us,” he said.’

‘When asked why Mexico is helping its citizens find ways to stay in the U.S., Escutia said that is not the Mexican government’s main objective.’

“Our main objective is the well-being of our nationals wherever they are,” he said. “So what we want for them is that they are successful and really continue contributing to this country [the U.S.].”

‘Mexico’s support for DACA applicants may seem counterintuitive, says Emily Edmonds-Poli, a professor who teaches Mexican politics at the University of San Diego, but she said it shows that the Mexican government is acknowledging a decades-long migration trend that led to 9 percent of people born in Mexico now living in the U.S.’

‘That has driven Mexico to build better relations with Mexicans abroad in hopes of maintaining remittance flows and other cross-border economic activity.’

“I think the message that it’s trying to send is that the Mexican government supports its population living in the U.S.,” Edmonds-Poli says. “I don’t think that that is the message that will be received in the U.S.”

Remember…. current grossly inflated asking prices of resale housing are 400% higher than construction cost(lot labor materials and profit).

Cypress, CA Sale Prices Sink 4% YoY; Sellers Slash Prices On Cratering Demand

http://www.zillow.com/cypress-ca/home-values/

“California Most Impoverish State In The US”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_poverty_rate

The price declines are accelerating.The anxiety levels are rising… the fear is seething… the enragement is surging. The HBB proves it.

From the “All Things Reach Their Logical Conclusion” department:

‘We have reached a point in our nation’s descent into psychotic tribalist fear where people of stature and apparent sobriety unabashedly use the expression “final solution” when discussing the existence of Muslims.’

‘For ISIS “and those similarly motivated,” insists retired Marine Lt. Col. James G. Zumwalt in an essay published by Family Security Matters, “a rational world should recognize but one `final solution’ exists – their extinction.”

‘For Zumwalt. “those similarly motivated” is an expansive category, which includes not only “al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, the mullahs of Iran, Somalia’s Shababb, [and the] Khorasan group,” but also their Muslim victims. On the basis of murkily sourced atrocity accounts and propaganda videos of dubious provenance, Zumwalt concludes that the victims of ISIS exhibit a “Muslim death wish” by supposedly allowing themselves to be killed without seeking “to overpower their captors.”

“The message to take from Muslim victims unwilling to save themselves to pursue their promised afterlife should be clear: their murderers will never be convinced to stop killing,” asserts Zumwalt. An unspoken but undeniable corollary of his view is that wholesale annihilation of Muslim populations is strategically necessary and morally justifiable, because Muslim victims of terrorism are infected with the same “ideology” as their captors.’

‘Zumwalt is a prominent a mouthpiece for the Military-Industrial Complex, and it’s not surprising that his views are echoed by other members of the Pentagon-aligned Commentariat. For example, Retired Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer claims that Syrians under siege by ISIS have pleaded, “Please bomb us! We’d rather be bombed and dead, than raped by ISIS.”

“Kill them all, for God will know his own,” recommended the religious adviser to the pious Crusaders laying siege to the castle at Beziers, setting their minds at ease over the prospect of killing orthodox Catholics along with Albigensian heretics. That mandate, adapted to a literary level suitable for “reality” television, was recently renewed by Duck Dynasty patriarch (and, therefore, theological heavyweight) Phil Robertson with application to Muslims: “In this case, you either have to convert them – which I think would be next to impossible … or kill them.”

The horror! Faux News is reporting that Harvard students are saying America is the bigger threat to world peace, compared to ISIS.

so why does that network keep bringing on Ron Paul and Judge Napolitano? Those guys should scold Faux.

faux is taking jabs at libertarians. Young people tend to be libertarian these days.

I have been noticing a lot of Chinese, Arabs, Indians, and Africans around Syracuse NY. They dress in their native clothing. Some of them carry items bought at a store in a basket on their heads like they do in third world countries. Syracuse in very cold and snowy area and there are not a lot of jobs in this area for the local population. I spoke to a veteran HR manager and she said that in her opinion no HR manager was going to hire them as these new immigrants had language barriers and no skills to offer a potential employer. In Syracuse NY about 35 percent of the population is on welfare, so who is going to support all these people who are here in large numbers. On top of this our local mayor as well as catholic charities wanted the South American children to come here despite the opposition from the local taxpayers.

Greedy selfish bastards are the local politicians and the charities/ Rant off

Is this happening in your city or town??

My Phoenix area is a libertarian renter’s dream. Mark Taylor Apartments being built, and they are higher tiered than my current apartment. Some Mark Taylor apartments have attached two car garages. Then there is a tactical gun range I did not know about. I went in and looked. Very impressive. it’s a place I can take my “scary looking” firearms and glock.

No place is perfect: California has high paying jobs, but Arizona has a lot of libertarians not afraid to exercise freedom.

Fed’s Tarullo: Banking scandals more than just a few bad apples
Published: Oct 11, 2014 11:56 a.m. ET
By Greg Robb
Senior economics reporter
Bloomberg /file 2013
Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch)—The plethora of banking scandals cannot be written off as just the work of a few bad actors, Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo said Saturday.

In remarks to the Institute of International Finance, Tarullo said that the average U.S. citizen reading the newspaper would be understandably upset after reading stories about bank mortgage fraud, and more recent scandals involving efforts to manipulate the Libor reference rate and allegations of manipulation of foreign exchange rates.

“The problem at this juncture is that there are so many problems,” Tarullo said. The institute is meeting on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund.

“You can’t just be telling yourself that there are a few apples. There is something about the structure of incentives and expectations within firms that needs to be addressed,” Tarullo said. “I think a lot of boards, and management, know it needs to be addressed.”

Tarullo is the Fed’s point man on bank regulation.

In other remarks, Tarullo said it was premature to declare that the problem of too-big-to-fail banks has been solved, noting that cross-border complications remain.

As the Fed puts higher liquidity and capital standards on the biggest banks, Tarullo said the central bank will be watching closely to see if any activities move into the shadow banking sector.

“That is something we are all going to need to keep a watch on and make sure risk is not building up in other places in the system.”
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5:29 pm ET
Oct 7, 2014
Economy
SAT Scores and Income Inequality: How Wealthier Kids Rank Higher
By Josh Zumbrun
CONNECT

SAT originally stood for Scholastic Aptitude Test. But parsing the results by income suggests it’s also a Student Affluence Test.

On average, students in 2014 in every income bracket outscored students in a lower bracket on every section of the test, according to calculations from the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (also known as FairTest), using data provided by the College Board, which administers the test.

Students from the wealthiest families outscored those from the poorest by just shy of 400 points. Given the widespread use of the SAT in college admissions, the implications are obvious: Not only are the wealthiest families best equipped to pay for college, their kids on average are more likely to post the sort of scores that make admissions easy.

Thus the SAT is just another area in American life where economic inequality results in much more than just disparate incomes. And making matters worse, some employers continue to ask for test scores years after graduation.

The gap is not new to this year’s results and the College Board is not oblivious to the gap. Earlier this year the College Board announced plans to revise the test to help reduce the economic gaps in the test. They also announced plans to provide free online tutoring.

It’s tempting to believe the disparity in results arises because wealthy parents can easily afford SAT prep courses to help students game the test by learning its tricks. But some research suggests test prep has a fairly limited effect on scores. One study found that testing boosts math scores by 14-15 points and reading scores by 6-8 points.
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Mobile homes: Many ‘hidden homeless’ Americans living in vehicles

October 10, 2014 5:30PM ET
by Dina Demetrius @DinaDemetrius & Michael Okwu @MichaelOkwu

Home is where the car is (part one) 4:21
America Tonight | October 9, 2014
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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – For four years, the only life Paula Corb and her two daughters have known is the one inside their 2000 Mazda minivan – stopping once in a while for take-out, groceries and gas.

Corb and the girls Alice and Emily are among 214,000 “unsheltered” homeless people in America, meaning they sleep in places not intended for human beings to sleep, like bus stations, abandoned buildings, parks or cars. For them, making a pit stop for gas is the equivalent of paying rent.

“We go on about a four-block radius,” Corb explained. “It’s $5 to $10 a day. You see, that’s $70 a week times four. I mean, that’s more than we really have got.”

The vast majority of the country’s 71,000 homeless families live in shelters, but almost 10,000 are living life like the Corbs.

For two decades, Paula Corb, her engineer ex-husband and two daughters lived in a four-bedroom house just outside of Santa Barbara. She described their life as a “fairy tale.” But after her eight-year divorce, Corb went broke. The money from selling the house – at the bottom of the housing market – went to her debts and her lawyers. And as a homemaker for more than 20 years, she’s had trouble finding work. The family packed up their stuff and moved into the van, where they live off of food stamps, gift cards for gas and food and Alice receives a Social Security disability check.

“It was scary. It was depressing,” said Alice Corb, 22, the older daughter, of the first night living in the van. “I just kept thinking, ‘How could this have possibly happened?’ And this mantra in my head just repeated over and over: ‘I want to go home.’ And I just kept avoiding this one thought in my head that says, ‘You don’t have a home to go back to.’”

Paula Corb gets maybe four hours of sleep before she’s awake and doing the family’s laundry in a church annex. To avoid the crowds, she’s started around 3 a.m. She uses a suitcase and microwave stacked on the passenger to stretch out her legs to sleep.
Doing a 180°

Home is where the car is (part two) 4:37
America Tonight | October 9, 2014
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In Santa Barbara, a city famous for its coastline and its moneyed, Mediterranean ease, it’s illegal for anyone to sleep in a vehicle parked on public roads. Being among the “hidden homeless” and getting through the day can be a serious struggle.

“The first concern is space,” said Emily Corb, 18. “A lot of the time [was] how I going to sleep? Where am I going to put my things? Where am I going to put my books so they’re safe? … Another big concern is bathrooms. Will the bathroom be taken? Will they be cleaned? Will we have gas to go to that bathroom? When will it close?”

But the Corbs have been able to find a semblance of stability through a Santa Barbara initiative that’s helped the hidden homeless for more than a decade. The “Safe Parking” program works with churches, businesses and other groups willing to host a small number of homeless in their vehicles overnight.

america.aljazeera.com/…bile-homes-manyhiddenhomelessamericanslivinginvehicles.html - 118k -

One of the things in Glenn Greenwald’s book I am having trouble (nightmares?) with is the middle part of the book where it is said that the intelligence data received on other nations and companies in other nations is fed to the U.S. dept of Commerce. Presumabley in turn that info is doled out to favored big businesses to get an economic advantage over foreign competitors.

As a stock investor I find it disturbing. It is true that other nations spy on us and do industrial espionage. But this does not mean we should do the same.

It was bad enough that big social media companies are complicit in giving all our info to the government. Once again here, if anyone wants to say they have nothing to hide, please provide your passwords in a reply to this post.

Federal Judge: Texas Voter ID Law Unconstitutional

“…has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans…”

by Ross Ramsey | Texas Tribune | October 11, 2014

Less than two weeks before the start of early voting, a federal judge ruled the state’s photo voter ID law unconstitutional late Thursday and ordered state officials to drop the new requirements.

“The Court holds that SB 14 creates an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote, has an impermissible discriminatory effect against Hispanics and African-Americans, and was imposed with an unconstitutional discriminatory purpose,” U.S. District Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos of Corpus Christi wrote in a 147-page opinion. “The Court further holds that SB 14 constitutes an unconstitutional poll tax.”

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Greg Abbott said the state would immediately file an appeal to the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The State of Texas will immediately appeal and will urge the Fifth Circuit to resolve this matter quickly to avoid voter confusion in the upcoming election,” Lauren Bean said in an emailed statement. “The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that voter ID laws are constitutional so we are confident the Texas law will be upheld on appeal.”

The voter ID law, enacted last year, requires most citizens (some, like the disabled, can be exempt) to show one of a handful of allowable photo identification cards before their votes can be counted. Acceptable forms of photo ID include a Texas driver’s license or state ID card that is not more than 60 days expired at the time of voting, a concealed handgun license, a U.S. passport, a military ID card or a U.S citizenship certificate with a photo.

School workers say they were fired because they weren’t Hispanic
Former workers say district is favoring Hispanic job candidates and employees

School workers say they were fired because they weren’t Hispanic

by Brian Amaral | NJ.com | October 11, 2014

Two former school district employees, including the one who oversaw its affirmative action policies, filed race discrimination suits in September, saying they were fired because they’re not Hispanic.

Bernice Marshall, the former human resources manager, and Edmund Treadway, the former transportation manager, argue in Superior Court filings that the Perth Amboy School District is favoring Hispanic job candidates and employees.

“No one’s paying attention to the kids,” said Marshall, who is African-American. “It’s about who’s getting hired, who needs to be hired. They’re paying attention to controlling the jobs in the district. They could care less about curriculum and instruction.”

School board members and officials dispute that the district discriminates against non-Hispanic candidates. Derlys Gutierrez, the school district’s lawyer, said that two recent lawsuits are “without merit.”

crater

Chinese Premier says economy will avoid hard landing
SHANGHAI Sun Oct 12, 2014 3:57am BST
China’s Premier Li Keqiang (L) and German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier laugh during a signing ceremony at ”The Hamburg Summit”, a Chinese-German business conference, at the chamber of commerce in Hamburg, October 11 2014.

(Reuters) - China will avoid a hard landing despite worries over a slowdown in the world’s number two economy and a flagging real-estate market, the country’s Premier Li Keqiang said in a speech in Germany on Saturday.

The comments, reported by state news agency Xinhua, echoed earlier ones he made in London in June.

“China’s economy will not suffer a ‘hard landing’ like some people fear, but will bring a positive impact to the global economy,” Li said during a speech in the city of Hamburg.

China’s third quarter growth is likely to be its weakest growth in more than five years as a property downturn weighed on demand, according to a Reuters poll of 20 economists released on Friday.

According to the poll, the economy may have expanded 7.3 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, the weakest reading since 6.6 percent growth in the first quarter of 2009.

Premier Li said that staying power will be more important to China’s economy than speed of growth.

“Economic development is not a sprint, but a long-distance race without end. You need a certain amount of speed, but even more important is endurance and stamina,” he said.
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The world’s biggest economies
China’s back
Oct 11th 2014 | From the print edition
Timekeeper

This week the International Monetary Fund updated its data on the world economy. For the first time it ranks China’s economy as the world’s biggest in purchasing-power-parity terms. Historians, though, point out that China is merely regaining a title that it has held for much of recorded history. In 1820 it probably produced one-third of global economic output. The brief interlude in which America overshadowed it is now over.
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ft dot com > reports >
World Economy
October 9, 2014 9:59 pm
Fears of housing crash in China raise global alarm
By Emily Cadman

Fears of a housing market crash are weighing on forecasts for global growth. But this time it is China, not the US, which is causing concern in a sign of the shift under way in the world economy.

Ask economists what factors could hamper global growth this year and the majority will reel off a list that includes a hard landing for the Chinese economy.

The alarm is caused by property, with Moody’s Investors Service warning in its latest outlook that a “steep housing downturn in China could derail the global recovery”.

Residential sales dropped 9.3 per cent year on year in the second quarter of this year, with sales registering the deepest contraction since late 2008. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed house prices in August fell in 68 of 70 major cities.

Moody’s estimates that, in a pessimistic but plausible scenario of a 10 per cent fall in both property transactions and prices, China’s GDP growth would be between 1.5 and 2 percentage points lower than currently forecast – falling to about 5 to 6 per cent.

Lower growth in China, it warns, would “dampen” world trade, hit confidence and “could lead to a significant negative impact on global growth”.

Laura Eaton, an economist at Fathom Consulting, says the risk of a hard landing in China has been “creeping up over the past few years”, adding: “There is not a full-blown banking crisis in China yet, but we are certainly in the foothills.”

But in the west, there is little sense that property markets present the same systemic risk to the world economy as they did before the subprime bubble burst in the US.

House prices are beginning to inch up around the world, with the International Monetary Fund global house-price index having increased for the past seven quarters in a row.

Over the past year, 33 out of the 51 countries in its index have shown rises. Adam Slater, a senior economist at Oxford Economics, a consultancy, says there are still “pockets of housing risk” and that in Australia and Canada prices look overvalued. But given substantial price drops in recent years in many key markets “the macroeconomic fallout from any further market correction should be less severe than in 2007”.

In the US, house prices have recovered since bottoming out in early 2012, but have still only recovered about half of the decline from the housing crash at a national level. Hui Shan, a US economist at Goldman Sachs, says as the wider economy and labour market recovers “we expect improvements in the housing market, although the pace is likely to be measured”.

Burnt by the contagion inflicted by the subprime crash, national regulators and international bodies are keen not to be seen as complacent.

In June, Min Zhu, deputy managing director at the IMF, warned that regulators needed to “guard against another unsustainable boom”, but that the tool kit to manage booms “is still under construction”.

One of the major factors in rising house prices around the world has been ultra-low interest rates and exceptionally loose monetary policy, which has both made borrowing money cheaper for people with mortgages and-depressed yields on other assets, leading many cash rich buyers to pile into real estate.
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