December 7, 2014

Bits Bucket for December 7, 2014

Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.




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129 Comments »

Comment by Blue Skye
2014-12-07 05:27:45

Anecdotal signal of the next leg down.

I was down in Pennsylvania last week for my employer’s yearly meeting and Christmas party. It couldn’t be more 2006 all over again. Record sales and record profits. The employee rolls have swelled out of proportion to revenue in preparation for another doubling of the business. 20% growth projected from here to the moon. Engineers are being hired to double out the current building and adjacent land is being purchased. The money is to be borrowed of course.

It was just so in 2006. We got the new building built right before we had a 35% layoff.

Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 07:40:05

West, central or East PA?

Comment by Blue Skye
2014-12-07 07:51:17

North of Philly.

Comment by Jingle Male
2014-12-07 08:29:58

What industry?

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Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 08:31:14

Jingle_Fraud.

Hows the liquidation of your empire of rotting underwater shacks going?

 
Comment by Blue Skye
2014-12-07 09:18:15

“industry?”

Math mostly.

 
Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 13:32:06

Give a shout the next time you’re headed in the Harrisburg direction.

 
Comment by Blue Skye
2014-12-07 14:39:24

Will do. I can always head home through Williamsport rather than Scranton.

 
 
 
 
Comment by MacBeth
2014-12-07 09:01:28

People are still throwing those awful Christmas parties where everyone dons their finest and behaves as no one ordinarily does?

I remember a harp player at one I had to attend! Hideous.

Comment by Blue Skye
2014-12-07 09:25:07

We had an amazingly talented group of string performers. The Lead Zeppelin done as Bluegrass was jaw dropping.

If one is very fortunate (diligent) in the choice of a company to work for, genuine and enduring friendships are formed, which can be celebrated at times like these. That’s the kind of people that I work with. Turnover is extremely low, except for the periodic failure to spot economic fiasco.

Comment by Selfish Hoarder
2014-12-07 10:07:55

I’d like to hear Led Zeppelins “The Ocean” done by a college marching band at a football game. I think it would make a good rally song.

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Comment by Hard Rain
2014-12-07 05:44:58

Nice to be in a police union.

“Heavy toll, light penalties for police who drive drunk

He was so groggy that when a state trooper asked him for his driver’s license, he handed over his Visa card instead.

But the Massachusetts State Police kept Simpkins, who earns roughly $130,000 a year, on paid administrative duty even after he lost his license for a year for refusing a breath test and couldn’t go out on patrol. And with no alcohol test results, a judge acquitted him of the criminal charges after tossing much of the other evidence on legal technicalities. Now, he’s back on patrol out of the Boston barracks.”

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/12/06/off-duty-police-face-drunken-driving-charges-and-lenient-treatment-with-surprising-frequency/KaH7EiTyoWx88dsLZpIaHM/story.html

Comment by scdave
2014-12-07 08:55:09

Laws & Justice for the cops & firefighters and then there are Laws & Justice for everyone else…

Comment by azdude
2014-12-07 09:25:41

“Ours, though, is that investors remain united in their faith in the central banks – if not for their ability to create growth, then at least in their ability to push up asset prices. And yet the limits of that faith are increasingly on display. Not only are there signs of trouble at individual corporates on the ground. There is also a growing realization that the central bankers themselves – be it the ECB today, or the past and present Chairs of the Fed – subscribe to different theologies. “

 
 
 
Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 07:05:59

“If you have to borrow for 15 or 30 years, it’s not affordable nor can you afford it.”

Exactly.

Comment by Mr. Banker
2014-12-07 07:30:11

Rong! You are rong!

 
Comment by Blue Skye
2014-12-07 07:30:21

That’s right, and if you are paying interest for 30 years, there will be a lot of other things that you cannot afford.

Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 07:37:27

Saw your comment regarding collapsing demand and every increasing supply. Excellent observation.

 
 
 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 07:27:19

It’s different in San Diego. Therefore real estate can only go up from here with zero chance of declines. Anyone who doesn’t buy ten houses in San Diego is missing out on an easy path to riches.

Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 07:35:36

Speaking of….

San Diego, CA Sale Prices Crater 16% YoY; Sellers Slash Prices As Housing Demand Plummets Nationally

http://www.zillow.com/san-diego-ca-92130/home-values/

Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 07:53:06

What is Jonathan smoking if even Zillow predicts price declines?

92130 Home Prices & Values
Zillow Home Value Index
$896,100
1.8% 1-year change
-1.0% 1-year forecast

 
 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 07:37:24

Housing market poised for steady gains
By Jonathan Horn
2:01 p.m. Dec. 4, 2014
Homes in Carmel Valley, San Diego on a recent Friday. Homes in Carmel Valley, San Diego on a recent Friday. — Hayne Palmour IV

San Diego County’s housing market should see stable price gains and increased demand as the economy continues to grow in 2015, according to a pair of real-estate forecasts released this week.

The forecasts, by Realtor.com and Trulia, indicate the days of investor-led fixing and flipping that led to double digit annual price gains during the recovery from the Great Recession are over and won’t return. Instead, wage growth, employment, supply and demand will continue to push the market forward, with annual gains in prices at about 4 percent, about double inflation, said Jonathan Smoke, chief economist for Realtor.com. A lack of affordability will remain an issue despite some wage increases, Smoke said, in part because he expects interest rates to rise about 0.5 percent.

San Diego falls into a short list of markets where I would say demonstrably already that demand outpaces supply,” Smoke said. “That very tight supply condition puts it in a market that has next to zero chance of seeing prices decline.”

Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 07:51:16

Do these guys ever study the data?

San Diego, CA Housing Demand Craters 13% YoY; Prices Sink

http://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public/City/City_Turnover_AllHomes.csv

Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 08:22:01

I suppose somebody has to write the real estate fluff pieces to lure in the unsuspecting greater fools to buy at a market top?

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Comment by Combotechie
2014-12-07 09:28:06

“I suppose somebody has to write the real estate fluff pieces to lure in the unsuspecting greater fools to buy at a market top?”

And lure in the money for the RE ads.

If you think of the real estate section of the newspaper you read as an ADVERTISMENT for the real estate industry instead of STRAIGHT NEWS then I think you will be far ahead of most everyone else who read the newspapers.

Twain again: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.”

 
Comment by Combotechie
2014-12-07 09:38:36

What’s really neat about the newspaper business is you get quoted a lot, and you get quoted a lot because what you get quoted on is what is printed in the newspaper.

IOW, it’s not necessarily WHAT you say that gains importance, that givers it credibility, it’s also WHERE it is said, it’s SOURCE, that gives it credibility.

A newspaper may have an excellent reputation for the straight news it presents in its news section but may have sold itself out in other sections (i.e. its real estate section) and so those who are into promotion can extract some selected quotes from the sold-out section and present them to marks and suckers as coming to them from the straight-news section.

 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 09:52:10

Combo — Spot on. It’s good to recognize the symbiosis between newspapers and the real estate fluffers when interpreting the articles that are published.

It’s also important to bear in mind that UT-San Diego is owned and published by a real estate developer.

 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 09:53:10

“WHERE it is said, it’s SOURCE, that gives it credibility.”

Dead tree papers: Where pigs fly high and often…

 
Comment by oxide
2014-12-07 15:36:23

Which leads to an interesting line of thought as to what will happen when dead tree news shifts entirely to online news. The real estate industry won’t be peppered with real estate ads; it will be covered with targeted ads based on whatever websites the viewer looked at before. Imagine the real estate sections being “paid for” by cars or sports teams or Dunkin Donuts. If nothing else, it will break the NAR stranglehold.

 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 19:12:10

“Which leads to an interesting line of thought as to what will happen when dead tree news shifts entirely to online news.”

More shills pimping real estate online?

Seems rather predictable…

 
 
 
Comment by Shillow
2014-12-07 08:03:55

If San Diego is sinking that is a real real bad sign for everywhere else. Many many shills to lose their borrowed shirts.

Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 08:13:02

Shills are nice folks. They’d give you the shirt off their backs. You’ll just go through hell getting it.

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Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 10:23:47

If only the GSEs could loosen overly-tight lending requirements, perhaps the housing market rally could continue!

Fannie Mae to tighten mortgage lending standards
By Dina ElBoghdady
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 26, 2009

Fannie Mae, the giant mortgage finance company that helps shape lending guidelines, plans next month to raise minimum credit score requirements and limit the amount of overall debt that borrowers can carry relative to their incomes.

The changes are the latest in a series of crackdowns by the mortgage industry and could surprise some prospective home buyers. The industry is rolling back loose lending standards that led to the mortgage meltdown and the subsequent economic crisis. But the fear is that if the industry becomes too restrictive, it will freeze out too many borrowers and impede an economic recovery.

Already, lending by U.S. banks plunged by 2.8 percent in the third quarter, the largest drop since at least 1984, according to federal data released this week. Some of that retrenchment is fostered by District-based Fannie Mae and McLean-based Freddie Mac, which refuse to buy loans that do not meet their rules, meaning lenders have to abide by their guidelines or else lose a key source of financing.

Starting Dec. 12, the automated system that Fannie Mae uses to approve loans will reject borrowers who have at least a 20 percent down payment but whose credit scores fall below 620 out of 850. Previously, the cut-off was 580.

Also, for borrowers with a 20 percent down payment, no more than 45 percent of their gross monthly income can go toward paying debts. Fannie declined to disclose the previous threshold, except to say that it was higher. The company will raise the level to 50 percent in cases with “strong compensating factors.”

Brian Faith, a Fannie Mae spokesman, said these limits reflect the company’s recent experience. Loans to people with credit scores below 620 fell seriously behind at a rate approximately nine times higher than other loans purchased in the same period, Faith said. Loans taken out by borrowers with lots of debt also suffer higher levels of serious delinquency, he said.

“It’s not enough to help borrowers buy a home — we must also ensure that they can stay in the home over the long term,” Faith said in a statement.

Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 10:50:56

Re-inflating the Housing Bubble
By Mitchell Johnson
November 12, 2014 12:51 pm

This year, the Mortgage Bankers Association chose an unintentionally revealing location for their annual conference — a Las Vegas casino. At the conference, US Representative Mel Watt, the new head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), announced plans to lower underwriting standards for mortgage lending. Specifically, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two semi-private firms regulated by the FHFA, will be subsidizing mortgages with down payments as low as 3 percent, a number not seen since before the financial collapse of 2008. Simply put, banks will be able, and encouraged, to sell more subprime mortgages. These looser regulations are designed to increase economic growth and free up credit for people who otherwise might not be able to own a home, but are dangerously similar to the Bush-era policies that were a component of the economic environment that prompted the global recession in 2008.

The collapse of the housing bubble in 2008 was the result of years of selling subprime mortgages (often with misleading information about the true amount payments would eventually cost for low-income families), which were then bundled into mortgage-backed securities and sold. Mortgage-backed securities were attractive to investment bankers because of their high returns, but they ultimately defaulted due to the borrowers’ inability to make payments over the long term.

The Obama administration’s policy regarding housing in recent years has been to promote equal access to home ownership, especially for young people buying their first home and people with credit damaged by the recession. The Justice Department is encouraged to reassure banks that the banks won’t face legal consequences for ‘risky’ subprime loans. Obama officials are also encouraging banks to offer refinancing deals, even to homeowners who owe more than their house is worth. In his State of the Union Address this year, President Obama outlined a noble plan for increased housing equality and economic growth. Making it easier for people to take out loans, especially those with credit damaged by the recession or young people looking to own their first home, would, he argued, have beneficial effects for the livelihoods of many families and for the economy as a whole. As he said in his speech: “Why would we be against that?”

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Comment by Oddfellow
2014-12-07 11:58:05

I wonder if the loans with down payments of 3% are under the same new debt-to-income rules as those with 20% down, referred to in the previous article? Or more stringent rules (as they should be), or less stringent rules?

 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 12:02:10

3% down is 3% down, regardless of how stringent the underwriting. If prices drop by 3% or even less (considering closing costs), new buyers will be underwater.

Of course, I’m probably out of line worrying about price declines, as real estate can only go up from now on.

 
Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 12:37:32

3% down payment is subprime by definition.

 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 14:13:43

I tried politely explaining that to one of my camping buddies a couple of nights ago, who used a low-downpayment loan to buy around the corner from us four years ago. Fuggetabout it!

In his case it doesn’t really matter, as they bought a fixer-upper from an elderly guy which required a large amount of sweat equity to make the place livable; hence I’m sure they are fine, 3% down notwithstanding.

 
 
Comment by Prime_Is_Contained
2014-12-07 11:02:54

Thursday, November 26, 2009

It is pretty sad that five short years later, they are undoing the few sensible changes that were made in response to the housing bubble popping.

What short memories we have… The carnage isn’t even cleaned up in many states yet!

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Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 11:06:33

It’s all part of the plan. Name one step of the way where investment bankers, hedge funds and all-cash foreign investors did not enjoy massive gains funded by Uncle Sam or the Fed and you win the prize!

 
 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 11:04:35

Quick rundown of recent GSE history:

Fall 2008 — GSEs collapse and are only able to survive due to a massive government-sponsored bailout.

Fall 2009 — GSEs nominally tighten lending standards, even while continuing, along with numerous other federally-funded government lending programs, to offer federally-guaranteed “affordable housing loans” in amounts exceeding $600,000.

January 2012 — Federal Reserve officially kicks off its QE3 housing market stimulus program, pumping $85 billion month in MBS purchases.

Fall 2014 — Federal Reserve officially ends QE3, while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac make plans to reloosen lending standards.

Possible consequences:
1. Investors and government-financed owner occupants were almost the only buyers in the 2009-2014 period.
2. Foreign investors and hedge funds were able to soak up the majority of distress home sales in the most recent half decade, especially as said investments reflated prices, since the tighter GSE lending standards largely kept recession-hammered American households on the sidelines. Hence a very large amount of Fed-funded housing market reflation gains were captured by investors lucky, wealthy or smart enough to buy in the 2008-2011 window.
3. Now that the Fed has ended its housing market reflation program and investors have reaped massive gains, it is high time to loosen lending standards in order to set up Mom and Pop Sixpack as the next generation of housing market bagholders.
4. Future plans: The low-income households currently getting re-qualified to enter the Ownership Society will serve as tomorrow’s victim class during the next foreclosure crisis, providing politicians with a deserving group of home owners to help when they can no longer afford to make their mortgage payments.
5. Investment banks, hedge funds, foreign investors and other middlemen reap massive profits at every stage of this Housing Bubble reflation effort.

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Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 12:36:03

Oops…my bad. MBS purchases were only $40/bn a month of total $85 bn QE3. Should have refreshed my memory before posting the above.

Plus there was a lag of nine months between the January 2012 Fed white paper supporting housing intervention and the QE3 MBS purchase program.

Details, details…

Fed Undertakes QE3 With $40 Billion Monthly MBS Purchases
By Joshua Zumbrun Sep 13, 2012 3:46 PM PT

The Federal Reserve said it will expand its holdings of long-term securities with open-ended purchases of $40 billion of mortgage debt a month in a third round of quantitative easing as it seeks to boost growth and reduce unemployment.

 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 12:39:51

Should have said $40 bn a month in MBS purchases, starting in Sept 09.

That said, $40 bn a month is $480 bn a year, or almost half a trillion dollars pumped into MBS purchases — unprecedented and nothing to sneeze at.

 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 12:41:14

Sept 2012, not Sept 2009 for MBS purchases; by contrast, QE3 stock market stimulus started in spring 2009. I’m having trouble keeping up with the real journalists these days. (The whole episode was so underreported, I can understand my own confusion…)

 
 
 
 
 
Comment by real journalists
2014-12-07 07:33:25

Region VIII

Comment by Prime_Is_Contained
2014-12-07 11:04:38

Region VIII, Region X; good day.

Comment by real journalists
2014-12-07 13:48:36

2,000 feet above Boulder

http://www.picpaste.com/IMG_20141207_114251_951-vmnThums.jpg

Downtown Denver obscured by brown cloud

http://www.picpaste.com/IMG_20141207_114231_623-AGRXLT0h.jpg

Region VIII

 
 
 
Comment by phony scandals
2014-12-07 07:42:39

“Resolution Copper has said its mining plan for the area has been filed with the National Forest Service and that it will comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that supposedly protects federal lands.”

Congress gives Native American lands to foreign mining company with new NDAA

Published time: December 04, 2014 18:00
Edited time: December 05, 2014 10:55

Reuters/Gary Cameron

Tags
History, Human rights, Law, Military, Politics, Resources, USA

Congress is poised to give a foreign mining company 2,400 acres of national forest in Arizona that is cherished ancestral homeland to Apache natives. Controversially, the measure is attached to annual legislation that funds the US Defense Department.

This week, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees quietly attached a provision to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would mandate the handover of a large tract of Tonto National Forest to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of the Australian-English mining company Rio Tinto, which co-owns with Iran a uranium mine in Africa and which is 10-percent-owned by China.

The “Carl Levin and Howard P. ‘Buck’ McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015” - named after the retiring chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services panels - includes the giveaway of Apache burial, medicinal, and ceremonial grounds currently within the bounds of Tonto. News of the land provision was kept under wraps until late Tuesday, when the bill was finally posted online.

The land proposed to be given to Resolution Copper, in exchange for other lands, includes prime territory Apaches have used for centuries to gather medicinal plants and acorns, and it is near a spot known as Apache Leap, a summit that Apaches jumped from to avoid being killed by settlers in the late 19th century.

Lands included in the plan will stop 1,500 feet short of Apache Leap and will not initially include an area known as Oak Flats, though, when it comes to the oaks, contradictory legal parameters are but a minor hurdle for a company like Resolution Copper to eventually drill there.

The House may vote on the NDAA as soon as this week with rules included that would bar the Senate from amending the legislation. On Wednesday night, a last-minute effort to strip the land provision from the NDAA failed in the House Rules Committee, which voted to give one hour for debate over the NDAA in the House.

Terry Rambler, chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, told The Huffington Post he was saddened by news of the proposal, yet not all that surprised.

Basically, NEPA will only protect lands that remain in federal hands. The rest is fair game, according to federal law.

“We would only have to do NEPA on any activity that would take place on remaining federal land,” said Arizona Bureau of Land Management official Carrie Templin.

The 2015 NDAA contains other land deals, including one that would subject 70,000 acres of Tongass National Forest in Alaska to logging and another provision that would give 1,600 acres from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State for purposes of industrial development, a plan that has spurred tribal protest.

rt.com/usa/211531-native-indian-lands-mining/ - 145k -

Comment by scdave
2014-12-07 08:12:45

Good essay on The Military Industrial Complex Eisenhower warned us about;

Still, a recent Government Accountability Office report made a valiant effort, concluding that the total budget overruns for current weapons systems stands at nearly $500 billion. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program alone is now around $160 billion over budget. In other words, the cost overruns on one weapons system are more than the total defense budgets of Britain and France combined. A new presidential helicopter fleet was scrapped after the cost for a single chopper neared that of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet. And on and on.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-a-pentagon-out-of-control/2014/12/04/270db314-7bf7-11e4-84d4-7c896b90abdc_story.html

 
Comment by Combotechie
2014-12-07 08:29:16

Picking apart these articles can be fun:

“Resolution Copper has said its mining plan for the area has been filed with the National Forest Service and that it will comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that supposedly protects federal lands.”

“… that supposedly protects federal lands’”

Okay, so far, so good.

“Congress gives Native American lands to foreign mining company with new NDAA.”

Ooops, so what happened to “so far, so good”? Let’s read on to find out:

“Congress is poised to give a foreign mining company 2,400 acres of national forest in Arizona that is cherished ancestral homeland to Apache natives. Controversially, the measure is attached to annual legislation that funds the US Defense Department.”

Congress is attaching this giving-away-Indian-land to … to … to legislation that funds the US Defense Department?

“This week, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees quietly attached a provision …”

Note the word “quietly”

“… to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would mandate the handover of a large tract of Tonto National Forest to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of the Australian-English mining company Rio Tinto, which co-owns with Iran a uranium mine in Africa and which is 10-percent-owned by China.”

So … we’ve got, in just one sentence, a connection between the National Defense Authorization Act, Tonto National Forest, Resolution Copper, an Australian-English mining company called Rio Tinto, Iran, Africa and China.

“The ‘Carl Levin and Howard P. ‘Buck’ McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015′ - named after the retiring chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services panels …”

Check out how heavily these Congress guys are stuck on themselves in that they even have legislation named after them.

“… - includes the giveaway of Apache burial, medicinal, and ceremonial grounds currently within the bounds of Tonto. News of the land provision was kept under wraps until late Tuesday, when the bill was finally posted online.”

“… kept under wraps until late Tuesday …”

Sneaky bastards!

“The House may vote on the NDAA as soon as this week with rules included that would bar the Senate from amending the legislation.”

“… rules that would bar the Senate from amending the legislation.”

So much for having three branches of government. I wonder how the members of the Senate feel about these rules?

“Terry Rambler, chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, told The Huffington Post he was saddened by news of the proposal, yet not all that surprised.”

Yeah? Well that makes two of us.

“Basically, NEPA will only protect lands that remain in federal hands. The rest is fair game, according to federal law.”

So the House wants to give the land away and because it will be given away the NEPA won’t have any control over it.

“We would only have to do NEPA on any activity that would take place on remaining federal land,” said Arizona Bureau of Land Management official Carrie Templin.”

It’s probably true that some of these people just cannot take a joke.

But … moving on a bit …

“The 2015 NDAA contains other land deals, including one that would subject 70,000 acres of Tongass National Forest in Alaska to logging and another provision that would give 1,600 acres from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State for purposes of industrial development, a plan that has spurred tribal protest.”

Comment by Combotechie
2014-12-07 08:40:56

“No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” - Mark Twain

Comment by scdave
2014-12-07 09:00:36

+1 Combo…Never heard that one before….

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Comment by Selfish Hoarder
2014-12-07 10:13:15

Mark Twain was one of the first libertarians. Lysander Spooner, Henry David Thoreau,Herbert Spencer all from that era. Then of course in the early 1900s HL Mencken was a big headache for statism.

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Comment by Shillow
2014-12-07 16:06:35

Sadly, Mark Twain died in 1910. Crikey , if he was complaining then what would he think of today!

 
 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 10:14:15

There is no native criminal class except Congress.

– Mark Twain

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Comment by phony scandals
2014-12-07 08:52:59

“This week, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees quietly attached a provision to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would mandate the handover of a large tract of Tonto National Forest to Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of the Australian-English mining company Rio Tinto,”

(could someone tell me this isn’t true, please.)

Who’s behind the world banking cartel? The Rothschild family!

To the Editor:

Though Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Carlos Slim are supposedly “the richest men in the world,” their combined wealth of $180 billion would qualify them as mere servants for the House of Rothschild.

Rothschild owns the Bank of England and the London gold bullion exchange where Rothschild sets the daily international market price for gold. Rothschild owns the gold and diamond mines of S. Africa and major extractive industries such as Rio Tinto and British Petroleum.

Rothschild owns major European Central Banks: England, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Belgium – central bank for the Euro. Rothschild partnered with the original seven American families who became the regional depository banks in the US Federal Reserve. The Bush family and J.P. Morgan are the political and financial dynasties evolved from their original ownership of the Federal Reserve. Political propaganda confuses American citizens into thinking the U.S. government owns and prints its own money. Not so. Bush, J.P. Morgan and five other banking family institutions own the Federal Reserve in partnership with Rothschild.

Rothschild owns Reuters News Service, which bought the Associated Press. Rothschild owns or virtually controls every major media outlet in America, Europe and Israel. Rothschild controls the message of who really owns $500 trillion of hidden untaxed wealth equal to half of annual world GDP.

http://www.athensnews.com/…ss-behind-the-world-banking-cartel-the-rothschild-family_.html - 104k -

Comment by Tarara Boomdea
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 11:08:30

It makes sense that the real owners of the world economy would not make it on to the “world’s richest” list.

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Comment by Shillow
2014-12-07 16:10:35

How’d the Rothschilds ever let the Internet get off the ground? Seems not so good for the stranglehold on power, or maybe they know it doesn’t really matter. Sheep can always be shorn. On some level they maybe like it.

Comment by redmondjp
2014-12-08 14:05:51

When they turn it off, citing a ‘national emergency’, everybody will quickly realize how utterly powerless we all are.

Right now, we’re still in the ‘creating dependency’ stage of the plan . . .

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Comment by Oddfellow
2014-12-07 10:28:04

“Congress gives Native American lands to foreign mining company with new NDAA”

This is what would happen to all those federal lands if the government sold them off, as many were arguing with me that they should. When people say they love the west, much of what actually they love is the huge amount of government land that is not developed, still in its natural state, and is often accessible to the average person. Sell it all off, and it would be full of Walmarts, trailer parks, industrial parks, fenced ranches, and all off-limits unless you were an owner, renter, employee, or customer. And much of it would be owned by wealthy Chinese or other nationals.

So, do we keep the land under government ownership, or sell it all off to private investors,many of whom would be foreign nationals, or foreign companies?

Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 10:42:58

Good point.

Maybe Uncle Sam should sell the land worth protecting from development to The Nature Conservancy? That way Uncle Sam could pay down some of the debt he has recently incurred, and the lands worthy of conservation protection could be saved for the enjoyment of future generations.

Comment by Oddfellow
2014-12-07 10:58:24

Sounds good to me. But do you think the ranchers, miners, and others who currently use the lands, and the legislators they control, are going to go for it?

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Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 11:11:39

Maybe TNC could outbid them all? One can hope!

 
Comment by Oddfellow
2014-12-07 11:46:21

I doubt if hope will outbid Rio Tinto. Perhaps I’m a pessimist.

 
Comment by MightyMike
2014-12-07 12:01:49

The Nature Conservancy would have to go out and raise many billions of dollars to accomplish that.

 
 
 
Comment by oxide
2014-12-07 15:43:41

Ben has been talking about this for some time, how the government lands in the West belong to the people and should be sold (or given?) to the people. Who would probably turn around and sell it to Resolution Copper anyway.

And yes, the Defense Authorization bills have always been the favorite coat tails for attaching pork. It’s the only way to get the stuff passed quick, because if you don’t pass the money for the military, you “hate America.”

Comment by Shillow
2014-12-07 16:13:14

Well, at least sell enough to ease the strain from protected u developable lands like the areas around Flagstaff, which benefits from there “not being enough land to build houses on.”

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Comment by Oddfellow
2014-12-07 17:52:15

Prices and rents are falling in Flagstaff, so why don’t we just wait for the bubble to deflate before we pave paradise and put up a condo block?

 
 
 
 
 
Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 07:44:48

San Marcos, CA Sale Price Gains Evaporate YoY; Prices Crack MoM and QoQ

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

Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 08:25:08

With 2015 San Diego home gains forecast in the -1.8% to 1.8% range, what would make anyone invest here now?

Comment by azdude
2014-12-07 08:50:15

there not making anymore land down there. Did you hear about this deal in utah where the state wants it land back from BLM?

Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 10:16:49

That’d be awesome, especially if it caught on nationwide! Why should land hoarders in DC control undeveloped land at the state level? It should be completely obvious from the Soviet Union’s disaster that central planning is a failed economic model.

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Comment by Bring Back the WPA
2014-12-07 10:37:30

Last poll I saw said that Westerners don’t want BLM land to be released to the states. People fear, and rightfully so, that beautiful wide open spaces in Utah, Nevada, etc. would be paved over and that beauty lost.

 
Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 11:42:33

I want a bushel basket full of $100’s too.

With a globe full of land where 95% of it goes undeveloped, I don’t think you have to worry about asphalt for ten lifetimes.

 
Comment by MightyMike
2014-12-07 19:50:33

That’d be awesome, especially if it caught on nationwide! Why should land hoarders in DC control undeveloped land at the state level? It should be completely obvious from the Soviet Union’s disaster that central planning is a failed economic model

I can’t tell if you’re sincerely expressing a sentiment or mocking right wingers.

 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 23:22:48

“It should be completely obvious from the Soviet Union’s disaster that central planning is a failed economic model.”

Does that somehow sound insincere?

 
 
Comment by MightyMike
2014-12-07 19:43:01

Did you hear about this deal in utah where the state wants it land back from BLM?

If it belonged to the state of Utah, how did it become Federal land? Did the Federal government buy it from the state?

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Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 08:33:59

North Bend, OR Sale Prices Plummet 18% YoY As The Housing Decline Gains Speed

http://www.zillow.com/north-bend-or/home-values/

 
Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 08:38:48

Coral Gables, FL Sale Prices Dive 6% YoY; Rising Inventory Looms

http://www.zillow.com/coral-gables-fl/home-values/

 
Comment by palmetto
2014-12-07 09:10:03

In a globalized society, life is truly cheap. Here’s a headline from the Philippines typhoon:

No major damage in Philippine typhoon; 3 dead

But Ebay’s call center is still standing, so that’s what matters.

http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/No-major-damage-as-Philippine-storm-weakens-5940915.php

 
Comment by Neuromance
2014-12-07 09:37:34

The rule of law is undermined by:

1) Legalized bribery for politicians and civil servants.
2) Regulators with conflicts of interest.
3) Judges with conflicts of interests.

For those currently benefiting from this breakdown of law, while it helps them consolidate power and increase wealth in the immediate term, in the longer term, it will cause increased instability and loss of wealth.

“When the tide goes out, you see who’s been swimming naked” - when the financial crisis occurred, the rot of the current system was exposed. There’s been no attempt to replace the beams, only an effort to cover it up with ad hoc immunity granted by top politicians and massive public spending, purportedly to help the public, but first and foremost to make certain companies profitable.

The saying used to be, “As goes GM, so goes the nation.” Today, we’re told, “As goes Wall Street, so goes the nation.”

Comment by palmetto
2014-12-07 09:50:24

+1

 
Comment by rms
2014-12-07 23:44:46

“The rule of law is undermined…”

+1 The rule of law is undermined without the middle-class layer of citizenry, which these days resembles an aberration of human history. The rich v. the poor masses are likely the natural order of things.

 
 
Comment by phony scandals
2014-12-07 09:48:55

Radar, built here, detected Pearl Harbor attack, but… FUTILE EARLY WARNING

November 29, 1991|By Jon Morgan | Jon Morgan,Evening Sun Staff

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came out of the blue, right?

Well, not exactly. There was abundant evidence 50 years ago of an imminent assault. Relations with the country were quickly souring. Intercepted Japanese communications hinted strongly — even giving the time — of a raid. And an imperial submarine was sunk near Pearl Harbor only hours before the attack on Dec. 7, 1941.

But of all the unheeded warnings, perhaps the most frustrating was that received by Joseph Lockard, then a 19-year-old Army private. He spent that fateful Sunday morning perched on a mountain top in Hawaii, manning a newfangled contraption built in Baltimore and dubbed Radio Detection and Ranging or “radar.”

It was the first U.S. military use of radar during wartime, and, despite the success of the Japanese attack, it proved the feasibility of a revolutionary technology now taken for granted. It also helped establish its manufacturer, Westinghouse Electric Corp., as a leader in a business that still employs thousands of Marylanders.

“At first I thought there might be something wrong with the equipment,” recalled Lockard, now retired and living near Harrisburg, Pa.

He and another soldier had camped the night before the attack on a point known as Opana, 530 feet above Kaweta Bay and 15 miles north of the Pearl Harbor base on Oahu island. Their mobile unit — a bulky collection of electronics hauled in four trucks — was one of a network of five recently installed to protect Oahu.

By 7 a.m., the sun was up and Lockard and his partner, Pvt. George Elliott, were completing a practice exercise that had begun at 4 a.m. The other units in the network had shut down, but the truck that was supposed to take Lockard and Elliott back to base for breakfast had not arrived. Elliott, who had recently transferred to the Signal Corps unit, was getting extra practice.

“Almost immediately we picked up this unusual display. The pulse went all the way to the top of the screen. It was the biggest thing I had ever seen on the thing,” said Lockard, now 69.

The round, 5-inch black and white screen was showing the first wave of bombers 136 miles away. Lockard and Elliott plotted their course. The graph showed the planes moving closer every minute.

When in operation, the radar units around the island were connected by telephone to an information center where reports of sightings could be compared against known air and sea traffic in the area. But the center had closed at 7 a.m., two minutes before Lockard and Elliott first detected the attack.

“We didn’t know what it was,” Lockard said. Although Washington was full of rumors and U.S. intelligence was fast coming to the conclusion an attack was imminent, none of this had filtered down to the men on the island who believed they had more to fear from sunburn than a military strike, Lockard said.

At Elliott’s insistence, they phoned the information center and persuaded the switchboard operator to find someone in authority. Soon Lockard was talking with Lt. Kermit A. Tyler of the Army Air Corps, forerunner of the U.S. Air Force.

The brief but fateful conversation — recalled many times before investigators and a congressional panel — represented one of the last opportunities to avert the bloodbath at Pearl Harbor, which left 2,403 Americans dead and 1,178 wounded.

“I told him what we saw on this equipment and how unusual it was and that it was coming from an unusual direction,” Lockard said. “I talked to him about as forcefully as I could as a private.”

The now-famous reply was short and simple: “He said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ “

 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 10:26:08

Silicon Valley executives are rolling in so much money that one has to wonder how they can even figure out how to spend it all?

Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 10:27:35

Attorney: Other Women Visited Google Exec’s Yacht
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Dec 6, 2014, 6:40 PM ET
Associated Press

An attorney for a Northern California prostitute charged with killing a Google executive with an overdose of heroin aboard his yacht says other women visited the man and may have consumed drugs with him before he died.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reported Saturday that a judge ordered prosecutors to turn over to Alix Tichelman’s public defender any evidence that shows other women visiting Forrest Hayes’ yacht before he was found dead on it in the Santa Cruz, California, harbor on Nov. 22, 2013.

Police say Tichelman injected Hayes with heroin and then left without seeking help when he passed out from an overdose. Tichelman has pleaded not guilty to charges of manslaughter, prostitution and transportation and sales of narcotics. She remains jailed in lieu of $1.5 million bond.

“We’ve always been curious in regard to Mr. Hayes’ receptiveness, if not welcoming purchase, of drugs,” public defender Jerry Christensen told the judge on Friday. “It would make a great deal of difference in regard to the drug crimes.”

Tichelman rolled her eyes at camera crews and reporters as she entered the courtroom dressed in orange jail garb.

Tichelman, 27, was arrested eight months later after a surveillance video at the harbor showed Tichelman gather her belongings, casually step over Hayes’ body and finish a glass of wine, clean up a counter, then lower a blind before leaving the yacht the night before Hayes’ body was discovered.

Christensen said the death of Hayes, 51, was an accident and was not malicious. “Everything about this video indicates accident and panic,” he said.

Christensen and Tichelman’s other attorneys want to review security video of the harbor for the five months before Hayes’ death.

“The evidence we’re missing is more related to Forrest Hayes, who he is, what’s his character, his habits, his compulsions,” Larry Biggam, one of Tichelman’s three attorneys, said to a throng of reporters outside of court. “I think that evidence is relevant to explain why he was on the boat, why there were drugs present and why he was shooting heroin with a young woman.”

Comment by Selfish Hoarder
2014-12-07 13:42:25

Quick wealth quickly corrupts. Slowly-built wealth takes years of discipline that would be too valuable to disrespect, and not likely be spent on drugs, booze, and boobs.

 
 
Comment by In Colorado
2014-12-07 10:43:36

Some buy Hawaiian Islands or billion dollar sports teams.

Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 10:48:34

Others rent hookers and shoot heroin. As the libertarians like to say, to each his own.

 
Comment by rms
2014-12-07 19:02:32

“…or billion dollar sports teams.”

Those fugg’n 49′ers let me down, again! :(

 
 
 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 10:34:03

This is incredible: An entire article talking around the role of the GSEs in blowing then blowing up the Housing Bubble which completely misses the Fed’s deliberate QE3 housing reflation efforts beginning in January 2012. How can MSM-favored real journalists be so utterly clueless?

Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 10:37:43

October 3, 2014 5:57 PM
Flaming Eggheads! Nobel-Winning Economist In Dustup Over Loose Lending
Harvard economist inadvertently demonstrates the Knowledge Problem at a Hayek event.
By Tim Cavanaugh

A Nobel Prize–winning economist got a smackdown on Thursday after calling for heavier regulation in finance while at the same time conceding he knew little of the role government and quasi-government agencies played in creating the housing bubble of the 1990s and 2000s.

“I don’t want to comment on Freddie and Fannie. I’m not a housing market expert and I don’t want to pretend to be one,” Eric Maskin, Adams University Professor at Harvard University, said during a panel of eggheads at George Mason University commemorating the 40th anniversary of Friedrich A. Hayek’s Nobel Prize in economics. “But I do want to make a general comment about regulation of financial markets. One thing that we learned from the financial disaster of six years ago was something that economic theorists had been talking about for years, which is that financial markets are riddled with externalities.”

Maskin was participating in a planned panel of Nobelists that included 2002 laureate Vernon Smith of Chapman University in California and 2008 laureate Edmund Phelps of Columbia University in New York City. However, in exactly the kind of unrelated event that makes mechanism design so deucedly difficult, Phelps was taken ill while traveling and was unable to participate.

In his email, Maskin allowed that the Hayek-happy crowd had given him a fair shake. “I do think I got a fair hearing,” Maskin told NRO. “A few questioners appeared to be skeptical of some of the things I said. But that is entirely appropriate in a forum whose purpose is to probe ideas.”

Nearly a decade after hyperinflated real-estate prices finally began their descent, the event was still dominated by the 2006–10 credit unwind and the lengthy economic stagnation that continues in its wake. In a press gaggle, Smith, whose Nobel was awarded for development of methods for laboratory experiments in economics and who recently co-authored the book Rethinking Housing Bubbles with Steven D. Gjerstad, expanded on his belief that the economic stagnation would have been less punishing and lengthy had the two seriously insolvent gigantibanks — Citigroup and Bank of America — been allowed to fail. Noting that nearly 500 banks did in fact go out of business, Smith compared the unraveling of these financial institutions to the unwinding of seriously distressed savings and loans in the 1980s. “The model was tested in the S&L crisis,” he said. “It’s a lot bigger scale, which makes it scary.”

National Review Online asked why real-estate prices have begun to reinflate even though, as a multiple of household income, house prices remain significantly higher than they were through most of postwar history. Smith noted that a third of those are cash sales.

American houses look cheap to the Chinese,” he said. “But it’s not sustainable, because usually increases in house prices are related to increases in income, but that’s not happening here.”

Comment by azdude
2014-12-07 10:48:53

We need to loosen lending again so they can print a bunch more cash when the next bubble bursts.You create a bubble which leads to a bust which is a great excuse to print some cash. The banks make a ton of cash giving out loans and collecting interest while times are good and then they get a fat bailout check when sh@t hits the fan.

Dont you feel how this is playn out again? How will they get a bailout check to folks who were duped by jim cramer when the bottom falls out of the stock market? do you remember all the lawsuits against analysts that promoted stocks on cnbc? If they aired a story on a company it would go up 25% intraday.

Who will be the fallguys in the stock bust this time around?

Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 11:15:26

It really is all about giving banks more ways to transfer other people’s wealth to their own balance sheets, isn’t it?

And I see no reason they can’t repeat what just happened a few years ago, with no mention of the serial financial folly in the press. After all, banks and real estate interests pretty much own the MSM, so they can conveniently ignore the obvious deliberate effort underway to replay the mistakes that led up to the last financial crisis. If a real journalist doesn’t report it, then it never happened.

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Comment by azdude
2014-12-07 13:17:24

Exactly you feel like the scheme could repeated again and it would be business as usual. Nothing has changed but more debt and speculation in assets.

I guess its a lot easier to manipulate asset prices than try and confront the structural problems in the economy.

Now we have this whole idea that printing cash can create jobs.

 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 14:15:59

“Now we have this whole idea that printing cash can create jobs.”

And since the Fed promulgates the idea 24/7, it has to be true.

 
Comment by iftheshoefits
2014-12-07 15:30:29

Along the the insane notion that inflation is good. I guess it has to be, considering that the Fed can only manipulate prices higher, else the whole over-leveraged house of cards collapses. So inflation must be good!

 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 19:17:08

“I guess it has to be, considering that the Fed can only manipulate prices higher, else the whole over-leveraged house of cards collapses.”

Trouble is, folks who know the Fed is going to inflate will tend to go crazy on the leverage. By contrast, if the risk of deflation were common knowledge, and everyone understood that loans actually have to be repaid, perhaps the subprime bomb would never have been lit out of fear that somebody might get hurt.

 
Comment by rms
2014-12-07 23:59:05

“Now we have this whole idea that printing cash can create jobs.”

Yep, and Jesus is returning too.

 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-08 00:19:25

“Yep, and Jesus is returning too.”

Right soon, with loads of cargo and helicopter drops of cash.

 
 
 
Comment by MightyMike
2014-12-07 12:07:41

I stopped reading when I came across the word eggheads.

Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 12:41:30

Don’t worry. You’ll never have the capacity to meet the entry criteria for eggheads… as much as you’d like to.

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Comment by MightyMike
2014-12-07 19:39:26

Your content-free insults add nothing to the conversation here.

 
Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 21:39:07

Your fraud-pimping doesn’t go unnoticed. Make no mistake about it.

 
 
 
Comment by Neuromance
2014-12-07 15:29:03

One thing that we learned from the financial disaster of six years ago was something that economic theorists had been talking about for years, which is that financial markets are riddled with externalities.”

“Privatizing the profits and socializing the losses” has been the goal of many a business over the years. For many reasons, Wall Street has been able to fully realize this goal of externalizing its losses.

“Financial pollution” is another term. Like a factory dumping effluent into a river, the factory keeps the profit but externalizes some of its costs, such as effluent management.

If a company is able to push all costs onto the public, but keep all profits, it is purely parasitic.

Comment by iftheshoefits
2014-12-07 15:34:22

TBTF banks are now effectively nothing more than government-backed utilities with guaranteed solvency, guaranteed dollar creation franchise, and few real bounds on what risky behaviors they can engage in. Unlike all other utilities of which I’m aware, however, they produce nothing of intrinsic value.

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Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 10:41:10

Have any illegal race baiting protests recently played out in your area?

Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 10:45:02

December 5, 2014 3:51 PM
Michael Brown Protesters Have Shut Down More Traffic Than Chris Christie
Where are the tearful kids and dying seniors caused by all these traffic jams?
By Tim Cavanaugh

While New Jersey governor Chris Christie has been apparently cleared by a Democratic investigation of the September 2013 closing of lanes on the George Washington Bridge, America’s white-line nightmare continues.

But, miraculously, the illegal closing of major highways and bridges by protesters from Southern California to New York City has so far failed to generate a rash of news stories about stalled ambulances, stranded seniors, and schoolchildren whose dreams of betterment were dashed by delayed school buses. If it weren’t for Tyree Landrum, the heroic San Diego County commuter widely described as “angry driver” in media reports after he objected to protesters who closed The 5 last week, you’d think the protests over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner are inconveniencing nobody.

In fact, Ferguson protesters continue to disrupt the free flow of private traffic. As of this writing, an airport terminal in Minneapolis is reportedly shut down by social-justice advocates, and the Twin Cities saw I-35 shut down yesterday.

Comment by azdude
2014-12-07 11:07:45

“My generation gave former tenured economics professors discretionary authority to fabricate money and to fix interest rates.

We put the cart of asset prices before the horse of enterprise.

We entertained the fantasy that high asset prices made for prosperity, rather than the other way around.

We actually worked to foster inflation, which we called ‘price stability’ (this was on the eve of the hyperinflation of 2017).

We seem to have miscalculated.”

Comment by rms
2014-12-08 00:09:13

–Jim Grant Sums It All Up In 2 Stunning Paragraphs

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Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 11:20:34

It’s pretty ironic when protestors against police violence turn violent on the police. This pretty much undercuts their message.

America
Protests Over Police Killings Turn Violent In Berkeley, Calif.
December 07, 2014 8:05 AM ET
Scott Neuman
A protester flees as police officers try to disperse a crowd comprised largely of student demonstrators during a protest against police violence in the U.S., in Berkeley, California early Sunday.
Noah Berger/Reuters/Landov

Police in Berkeley, Calif., used smoke, flares and rubber bullets against demonstrators who turned unruly overnight amid rallies to protest the police killings of unarmed black men in Missouri and New York.

“They fired rubber bullets and some smoke grenades,” Tawanda Kanhema, a video journalist who was on the street in front of Trader Joe’s, was quoted by The San Jose Mercury News. Kanhema estimated there were at least 1,500 protesters and 100 law enforcement personnel.

The Associated Press, quoting a Berkeley police spokeswoman, says two officers were injured.

One officer was hospitalized for a dislocated shoulder after being hit with a sandbag, while another sustained minor injuries, police spokeswoman Jenn Coats said, according to AP.

Comment by azdude
2014-12-07 13:23:48

“The global economy continues to face serious challenges. Despite a pickup in growth, it has not shaken off its dependence on monetary stimulus. Monetary policy is still struggling to normalise after so many years of extraordinary accommodation. Despite the euphoria in financial markets, investment remains weak. Instead of adding to productive capacity, large firms prefer to buy back shares or engage in mergers and acquisitions. And despite lacklustre long-term growth prospects, debt continues to rise. There is even talk of secular stagnation.”

 
Comment by rms
2014-12-08 00:23:24

Sproul Plaza hasn’t seen any protests over the use of armed drones; such is life at the “new UC Berkely.” No more Timothy Leary dropping LSD and spending the afternoon contemplating his navel. Today’s UC Berkeley grad is likely working on Wall street where the real money is made.

 
 
Comment by Selfish Hoarder
2014-12-07 13:45:19

I’ve seen a witty line the other day about Eric Garner’s murder.

Cops kill over a few cigarettes but fraudulent mortgage brokers have been given bonuses.

Comment by Prime_Is_Contained
2014-12-09 00:06:46

Eric Garner’s murder.

I think you meant ‘homicide’.

 
 
 
Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 12:44:12

Falling housing prices… falling falling housing prices… The more they depreciate, the further they fall.

 
Comment by Selfish Hoarder
 
Comment by azdude
2014-12-07 16:15:55

“According to Greenspan, the Fed expanded its balance sheet not to boost the economy or to keep inflation moving higher. It was because the Federal government had such large expenditures that it would have ‘crowded out’ private borrowers if the Fed had not increased the size of its balance sheet. Do you think that’s true? Is the Fed directing the economy? Or just reacting to the capital demands of the US government?”

Comment by MightyMike
2014-12-07 19:54:41

Isn’t this crowding out explanation just another way to say that the Fed acted to lower interest rates?

 
 
Comment by Bring Back the WPA
2014-12-07 17:06:39

If that quote is true then it reinforces my belief that Greenspan is mumbling mental midget who pales in comparison next to the quiet genius of Bernanke. Based on that quote I’m not sure Greenie understands how QE works.

Comment by azdude
2014-12-07 17:25:53

can you tell us what is incorrect about his quote?

Comment by Bring Back the WPA
2014-12-07 17:51:09

The idea that QE’s purpose was to keep the government from crowding out the private sector is backwards: that was exactly one of Bernanke’s intentions, to make bonds scarce to force private bond buyers to raise their bids and thereby lowering interest rates. At the same time QE converted bonds to cash to boost bank liquidity to keep them afloat. The theory was the increased liquidity at low rates would encourage corporations to make capital investments funded by cheap loans and boost the economy.

Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 19:32:20

“The theory was the increased liquidity at low rates would encourage corporations to make capital investments funded by cheap loans and boost the economy.”

How does that approach differ from what Japan used in the 1990s to get out of its slump? (The one they are still in two decades hence…)

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Comment by MightyMike
2014-12-07 19:59:27

There might be some differences if you looked into them. Japan, for example, has generally had a much higher savings rate than the US.

But the Fed policy of lowering interest rates to fight a recession has been practiced for many business cycles, generally without causing much controversy.

 
Comment by Housing Analyst
2014-12-07 21:37:24

Your pimping never ends.

 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 23:24:29

But the Fed policy of lowering interest rates to fight a recession has been practiced for many business cycles, generally without causing much controversy.

What are you talking about?

 
 
 
 
 
Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-12-07 19:30:45

This news should result in a rally in Japan’s stock market. Because bad news is good where central bank stimulus is the economic driver.

ft dot com
Economy
Japan’s recession: even deeper than expected
3 hours ago

Many analysts had hoped data revisions would show Japan had not entered a recession last quarter. Fact is, the slump was deeper than anticipated.

The Japanese economy contracted by 0.5 per cent in the third quarter, new revisions show, versus a 0.4 per cent fall in an an earlier estimate.

At an annualised pace, GDP fell by 1.9 per cent in the third quarter, versus an earlier estimate of -1.6 per cent. Estimates had assumed a -0.5 per cent fall.

So what changed? Business spending was worse than expected. Original estimates said business spending fell by 0.2 per cent last quarter; new data showed it fell 0.4 per cent. This is a big surprise, as economists had actually predicted an upward revision to growth of 0.9 per cent.

Personal consumption data was unchanged and still showed a gain of 0.4 per cent.

The data comes just ahead of snap elections this weekend, which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called to shore up support for a plan to continue his reform path and delay a consumption tax increase scheduled for next October.

The economy has been in a deep slump since a rise in Japan’s consumption tax in April. In the second quarter, GDP fell by an annualised -7.3 per cent (now revised to -6.7 per cent).

Comment by rms
2014-12-08 00:32:59

When is China going to get even with Japan for their WWII crimes?

 
 
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