The Housing Bubble

Where is Sandy?

“We have nothing to fear but Ebola itself.”

Who’s the douche-nozzle that selected “EbolaLOL” as a handle?

That’s beyond contemptible.

Hold your dollars tight and stay out of debt. You’ll be glad you did.

Head on over to treasury dot gov and take a look at the yield curve.

As of 10/17/2014 graph shows the 1 month treasury rate as 0.03% (3 bps) and the 30 year treasury rate as 2.98%.

As long as the powers that be can keep the short term rates close to zero they will do so.

Forgive me if this is a re-post, but I’d love to hear everyone’s take on this. I know Krugman is a local fave.

Secret Deficit Lovers
Paul Krugman, NYTimes

“What if they balanced the budget and nobody knew or cared?

“O.K., the federal budget hasn’t actually been balanced. But the Congressional Budget Office has tallied up the totals for fiscal 2014, which ran through the end of September, and reports that the deficit plunge of the past several years continues. You still hear politicians ranting about “trillion dollar deficits,” but last year’s deficit was less than half-a-trillion dollars — or, a more meaningful number, just 2.8 percent of G.D.P. — and it’s still falling.

“But what about people who pay a lot of attention to the budget, the self-proclaimed deficit hawks? (Some of us prefer to call them deficit scolds.) They’ve spent the past few years telling us that budget shortfalls are the most important issue facing the nation, that terrible things will happen unless we act to stem the flow of red ink. Are they expressing satisfaction over the fading of that threat?

“Not a chance. Far from celebrating the deficit’s decline, the usual suspects — fiscal-scold think tanks, inside-the-Beltway pundits — seem annoyed by the news. It’s a “false victory,” they declare. “Trillion dollar deficits are coming back,” they warn. And they’re furious with President Obama for saying that it’s time to get past “mindless austerity” and “manufactured crises.” He’s declaring mission accomplished, they say, when he should be making another push for entitlement reform.

“All of which demonstrates a truth that has been apparent for a while, if you have been paying close attention: Deficit scolds actually love big budget deficits, and hate it when those deficits get smaller. Why? Because fears of a fiscal crisis — fears that they feed assiduously — are their best hope of getting what they really want: big cuts in social programs.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/10/opinion/paul-krugman-secret-deficit-lovers.html?src=twr&_r=0

That debt clock page….so pretty!

Did you check out the bottom row of “clocks”? Total US unfunded liabilities at $115T.

Those without insurance at 44M+ Ditto with Food stamps. 158M receiving some sort of aid (roughly 49% of the total population, which stands at 319M).

Clearly, if you’re not on the take, you are a fool.

“This is a serious disease, but we can’t give in to hysteria or fear.”

We can’t?

Since when?

Seems to me that The Messiah had his own hysterical reaction when he called the Secret Service to the mat, did he not?

Anyone else here notice how fast the Secret Service was held accountable? How fast their “negligence” was dealt with?

And how the IRS is not being held accountable?

Why is that?

Could it be the former is assigned the duty of protecting government, whereas the latter is assigned the duty of redistributing wealth at detriment of the people? (Yet for the benefit of the government, of course.)

Perhaps Krugman ought to take on THAT topic instead.

Moral of the story: Don’t invest your loanable funds in outfits with ditzy names like Wonga.

“…it was “too easy” to be accepted.”

+1 Lots-o-cusion in that high interest rate!

His heloc on the White House must have maxed out.

It’s been an interesting week on all things oil.

Lots of glee expressed by those who hate Big Oil.

Those same people must hate Green Energy, too, for with dropping oil prices, so does need and demand for energy-efficient vehicles and the like.

When energy prices drop, it isn’t just Corporate Evil that takes it on the chin…be careful what you wish for.

Frankie

The increased price of the USD has more of an impact on oil than fracking - much more.

Look at the bright side, she may have contracted Ebola if she could have afforded to go to the hospital for this year’s brain scan.

See, Obolacare saves lives.

“She is skipping this year’s brain scan and hoping for the best.”

“To spend thousands of dollars just making sure it hasn’t grown?” said Ms. Wanderlich, 61. “I don’t have that money.”

This is racis.

She’s already had one brain hemorrhage that put her in the ICU for several weeks, and she has a second brain aneurysm that’s being monitored. What would her rates and deductible have been without Obamacare? She wouldn’t have had any insurance at all.

The Ebola Panic Panic
Can they quarantine Jeanne Shaheen?
By James Taranto
October 17, 2014

As if Ebola weren’t bad enough, “psychologists are increasingly concerned about another kind of contagion, whose symptoms range from heightened anxiety to avoidance of public places to full-blown hysteria,” the New York Times reports.

There’s a third problem as well. Anxiety over anxiety over Ebola is growing, and in some quarters it has developed into an honest-to-God Ebola panic panic.

Consider a pair of op-ed columns that both appeared this Wednesday. “If you are worried about contracting Ebola, I have two suggestions,” wrote the Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus. “First, stop. Second, get a flu shot.” The suggestion was echoed by the Times’s Frank Bruni: “Do me a favor. Turn away from the ceaseless media coverage of Ebola . . . and answer this: Have you had your flu shot? Are you planning on one?”

No doubt getting a flu shot is a good idea, but have you ever seen an op-ed columnist in a major newspaper—much less two on the same day—devote his space to such banal health advice? Next maybe Charles Krauthammer will advise his readers to brush twice a day or Paul Krugman will pen a jeremiad against those who fail to look both ways before crossing the street.

But of course Marcus’s and Bruni’s advice wasn’t the point, it was the counterpoint. Anxious at the possibility that people were anxious about Ebola, they invoked the flu in an effort to soothe their readers—and themselves.

“You could feel a shiver of panic coursing through the American body politic this week,” writes the Post’s David Ignatius. “President Obama tried to speak calmly to a rattled nation on Wednesday. . . . Listening to the president, you couldn’t help but wonder if he was straining to keep a polarized, fearful country from losing its cool.” Ignatius is employing the rhetorical device known as the “editorial you”—you know, like this.

Ignatius concludes: “The best advice for now is what [Fox News’s Shepard] Smith offered viewers: Don’t panic. And get a flu shot.”

How close is America to an Ebola panic? No closer than it is to an Ebola epidemic, as that Times story makes clear in the second paragraph: “So far, emergency rooms have not been overwhelmed with people afraid that they have caught the Ebola virus, and no one is hiding in the basement and hoarding food. But there is little doubt that the events of the past week have left the public increasingly worried.” To be sure, the claim that “no one is hiding in the basement” is too good to check. But it is quite possibly true or nearly so.

But Salon’s Joan Walsh is afraid. She cites an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that finds, in her interpretation, “more good news than bad for the forces of calm and reason”:

Some 56 percent of Americans say the government is prepared to handle Ebola, including 61 percent of Democrats. But that number is flipped on its head when you ask Tea Party voters: 57 percent of them say the government is not prepared, as do 54 percent of rural voters…

The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent makes the excellent point that one big political benefit of Ebola to the GOP is that it gives them a theme with which to nationalize the election and make it about the perceived failures of President Obola—I mean Obama.

…

Carnival quarantine

21 days is too long for the American people to pay attention. We need a quicker Ebola. One for the Facebook generation.

Who knew Ebola can be cured by moar money printing?

Only in amerika…..

Cramer: 10 Things That Can Stem the Global Panic From Ebola to ISIS
BY Jim Cramer
Oct 14, 2014 | 12:22 PM EDT

NEW YORK (Real Money) — What does it take to form a bottom? Is this the real deal?

We know that ever since the top formed when Alibaba (BABA) came public, pretty much everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. We have had the Ebola scare, the continual advance of ISIS, the collapse in oil, the accentuated slowdown in China, the end of an accommodative policy from the Fed and the recession from Europe, care of German tightfistedness and the sanction war with Russia.

First, I reiterate this is a treacherous market. When we could not hold after the Fed indicated that there is no hurry to raise rates this very weekend, we got a good China export number for September and we even heard peace rumblings in Ukraine. That was the sign that we have more work to do on the downside. And it is work, believe me. We have a genuine sense of panic as some want to get out ahead of others and an overall feeling that something lurks out there we don’t know about.

So, rather than join the panic, let me tell you what can stem it. Unfortunately for many investors, it’s a tough scenario to play out.

First, Ebola must be brought under control. When the lead story in the Wall Street Journal is “Ebola Case Puts Focus on Safeguards,” and the upper right hand corner of the New York Times says “Dallas Nurse Contracts Ebola Virus, Elevating Response and Anxiety,” then we are not going to get any sort of bottom. These stories, from the get-go, read as if we do not know what we are doing as a nation. The fear is so palpable that we have to expect a SARS-like cutback in travel. SARS was contracted airborne, much easier than Ebola. The epicenter of that pandemic was Asia, responsible for 18% of air traffic back then and international volume fell 40%, according to an excellent comparison piece out this morning from Wells Fargo research. The airline stocks fell 25%.
…

Playlist Ebola
NOW 10/16/14
Is stock market drop really Ebola-related?
Alex Wagner is joined by CNBC’s Tyler Mathisen, who calls the Ebola crisis an “unquantifiable influence” on the stock market.

Jim Cramer says the #1 issue in the stock market is Ebola

Jim Cramer says every time we try to get traction and get a rally going, there’s an Ebola story. He says it’s the number one issue to the stock market because it has to do with confidence - confidence in the government and others. Newslook

Ebola, Wall Street stock slide deepen ‘14 gloom for Dems
By Mike Lillis and Kevin Cirilli - 10/17/14 06:00 AM EDT

The Democrats’ midterm prospects took a beating this week as concerns over the Ebola virus and a jittery economy churned up countless grim headlines and darkened an already dissatisfied national mood.

Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have long charged the administration with mismanaging crises, have been quick to pounce on the Ebola issue, saying President Obama’s team has not been aggressive enough in the face of the threat.

Meanwhile, a plummeting stock market has hit the half of the adult population that owns shares directly, or through retirement accounts and other investment vehicles. The stock slide also undercuts the White House’s preferred narrative of an economy that is slowly but surely becoming stronger.

Democrats have defended the White House with vigor, asserting that the Republicans’ strategy has always been to blame Obama for any ill the country suffers during his tenure.

Still, the current spate of high-profile troubles reverberate ominously for the man in the White House and for his party colleagues in competitive midterm races — a dynamic even some Democrats will reluctantly concede.

“It’s a truism that when things go your way, you sometimes get undeserved credit. And when things go against you, you oftentimes can get undeserved blame,” Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said Thursday. “So there will be an emotional and psychological attachment of blame for the stock market, Ebola, influenza, wild weather.

“It’s politics,” Welch added. “There will be folks who make the argument.”
…

Link:

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-calls-end-ebola-hysteria-110006011.html

Obama = Contradiction

Solid but Juicy like a liquid….

Watchdog: Obama to bring non-American Ebola victims to U.S. for treatment

The president is “actively formulating plans” to admit Ebola-infected non-citizens just to be treated

by Paul Bedard | Washington Examiner | October 18, 2014

While the bipartisan voice grows to ban Ebola victims from entering the United States, a new report claims that President Obama is considering a plan to bring the world’s Ebola patients to the United States to be treated.

Judicial Watch, the conservative public watchdog group, says in a shocking report that the president is “actively formulating plans” to admit Ebola-infected non-citizens just to be treated.

“Specifically, the goal of the administration is to bring Ebola patients into the United States for treatment within the first days of diagnosis,” said the group.

Such a plan would likely cause a political outcry throughout the nation, on edge over the spread of the virus.

Judicial Watch, which probes federal spending and uses federal and administration sources to root out corruption, said it is unclear who would pay for transporting and treating non-Americans.

Trying to seal off an entire region of the world — if that were even possible ??

If this contagion hits China, Russia, Pakistan or India one of them will “seal it off” alright…At the end of the day, particularly China, are not the bleeding heart types…When it comes down to “their” national security, one of them will end it real quick…

An even better way to stick it to the “man” is to not take these loans at all. Don’t go into debt. Live within your means.

It would collapse the system.

We have met the enemy and they are us…

So Salon.com once again encourages people to not hold up their end of the bargain. No surprise there.

Does Salon.Com also advocate that everyone stop paying income taxes?

I thought not.

Traders Added to Pain by Adding Shorts Before Bond Rally
By Daniel Kruger Oct 17, 2014 1:42 PM PT

Bearish traders contributed to their own misery this week, adding to wagers in the futures market for a decline in 10-year Treasury notes just before prices surged and yields tumbled.

Hedge-fund managers and other large speculators increased what’s known as net-short positions to the most since May, according to data through Oct. 14 that was released today by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Yields on 10-year notes tumbled as much as 34 basis points to 1.86 percent the next day as investors pushed out expectations for U.S. interest-rate increases until the end of this year.

The number of net-short positions reached 123,168 contracts as of Oct. 14, an increase of 30,839 from the week before, according to the CFTC’s Commitments of Traders report.

As traders rushed to remove bets against Treasuries on Oct. 15, trading volume in the securities through ICAP Plc, the world’s largest interdealer broker, surged that day to the highest on record, with $945.9 billion in U.S. government debt changing hands.
…

Treasuries Surge Is Most Volatile Since 2013 on Fed Rate Bets
By Susanne Walker Oct 17, 2014 9:00 PM PT

Treasuries surged, with volatility climbing the most since the “taper tantrum” of 2013, as speculation that slowing global growth may restrain the U.S. economy led traders to raise bets the Federal Reserve will delay interest-rate increases.

Volume climbed to a record high while global yields plunged to all-time lows and the Bank of America Merrill Lynch MOVE index, a gauge of Treasuries volatility, rose by the most since June 2013 when former Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke signaled policy makers would begin slowing bond purchases. Benchmark 10-year note yields reversed the largest one-day drop since 2009 after a report that Fed Chair Janet Yellen expressed confidence in the U.S. recovery. A government index next week is forecast to show inflation remains below the central bank’s target.

“The fragility of these risk markets have been revealed to the Fed, and that alone would make them more cautious about their hiking cycle,” said David Ader, head of U.S. government bond strategy at CRT Capital Group LLC in Stamford, Connecticut. “For all the accommodation, global growth is not accelerating.”

U.S. 10-year yields fell nine basis points, or 0.09 percentage point, to 2.20 percent this week in New York, according to Bloomberg Bond Trader prices. The 2.375 percent note due in August 2024 added 3/4, or $7.50 per $1,000 face amount, to 101 18/32.
…

Treasurys Rally Biggest Since 2009 Amid Fed Capitulation Trade
Wednesday, 15 Oct 2014 03:01 PM

Treasurys surged, with benchmark 10-year yields falling the most since March 2009, as a decline in retail sales prompted traders to reduce wagers the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in 2015.

Rates on federal fund futures show traders betting that the Fed will raise interest rates in December 2015, with chances of an increase in September fading to 32 percent from 46 percent yesterday and 67 percent two months ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The benchmark 10-year yield traded below 2 percent for the first time since June 2013 even as the Fed is forecast to end its quantitative easing this month. A market gauge of inflation expectations fell to the lowest in 15 months while crude oil tumbled in a bear market.

“Everybody is finding something to worry about,” said Robert Tipp, chief investment strategist in Newark, New Jersey for Prudential Financial Inc.’s fixed-income division, which oversees $533 billion in bonds. “People who were concerned an end of QE would lead to a correction of the risk markets are getting their validation.”
…

“Stop stuffing billions in wall streets pockets you freaking hypocrites! Stop hoarding houses and robbing savers!”

I’m guessing if you could interview them, FOMC members would fervently deny any connection between Fed policy and the consequences you mention.

The interesting question to me is whether they would believe their own denials…

Just like the housing, inequality will rise further. Guaranteed.

If they really wanted affordable housing, they’d seize tens of millions of middle-, upper-middle- and upper-class houses via eminent domain and then re-distribute.

Smarmy over educated fools. Their hypocrisy is stunning. They own these disastrous outcomes.

“hey, don’t you guys fly around in private jets all the time? Did you ride over to this Hollywood gala in a Prius? Doesn’t sortie after sortie of jet-bombers burn a little fuel? What about these global warming confabs you hold every so often? Do you ever do anything? Or do you meet in your expensive suits and wag your finger at everybody, then shuffle off to your 12 course dinner?”

Well they’re the “Betters”.

They just know better.

Leonardo DiCaprio Taking “A Long, Long Break”

by The Deadline Team
January 19, 2013 1:30pm

DiCaprio says he plans to use the time to travel and promote environmental awareness. “I would like to improve the world a bit. I will fly around the world doing good for the environment”.

deadline.com/2013/01/leonardo-dicaprio-taking-a-long-long-break-408325/ - 275k -

I liked Tom Cruise’s ‘War of the Worlds’ re-make better. In the future, who has time to check in with Hollywood about destiny? They suffer the same fate as everyone.

All i can say Ben is that I ignore the politics of climate change and follow the science of it closely. The science is undeniable: the natural CO2 level is 250ppm and in less than 100 years mankind has cranked that up to 400ppm. There is no escaping the physics. More CO2 causes heat retention globally and it shifts weather patterns and ocean currents. Evidence of rapid climate shifts are mounting and in 5 to 10 years the change will be so obvious that denying CC will have little or no credibility. 2014 is on track to be the hottest year ever and when it is in the books the so-called “warming pause” will be over.

I’m sure the right-wing biased Daily Caller will never admit that Tesla paid back its Dept of Energy loan 9 years early. Tesla has been a huge success and it shows that DoE subsidies and loans do have a place in the clean energy marketplace. The success of Tesla has helped the economy more than Solyndra hurt it.

Version 2.3.2 is now uploaded to mozilla.org, so should be available later today or tomorrow:

Joshua Tree Extension on mozilla.org

Thank you; it’s indispensable.

Obama has a “kinship with Africa” “somehow” wink, wink

I don’t give a darn about any country.