The Housing Bubble

Got cratering oil?

Tacoma, WA Sale Prices Turn Negative 2% YoY; Plunge 15% QoQ As Housing Demand Craters

http://www.zillow.com/tacoma-wa-98406/home-values/

Region VIII can’t breathe

2008 redux as China’s bubbleicious stock market crashed 5% on record volume while you slept. Cue liquidity crunch in 3-2-1….

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-09/china-crashes-shanghai-composite-plunges-54-amid-record-trading-biggest-tumble-2009

From yesterday:

—————-
Comment by Avocado
2014-12-08 13:53:00
What if you bought in 1984?
—————-

Then your house has depreciated and it’s worth nothing. Because housing depreciates always. Always. You better believe it. geeze get with the hbb program.

More extend & pretend in the Eurozone.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11281248/Greece-to-be-given-bailout-extension-as-troika-studies-budget-gap.html

Oh, the humanity! Coming soon to a central bank-blown asset bubble near you.

http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/SHCOMP:IND

Greece unfixed as stock market crashes. Is this the beginning of the long-awaited implosion of the global Ponzi markets?

http://www.businessinsider.com/snap-election-fears-are-tanking-the-greek-stock-market-2014-12

Rut-roh…someone get AB Dan on the phone.

http://www.businessinsider.com/shanghai-stocks-just-went-through-the-floor-with-a-major-sell-off-2014-12

Meanwhile, Ebola hasn’t gone away despite its disappearance from the headlines.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/dec/09/-sp-ebola-reports-of-people-disappearing-forest-die

North Texas home prices jump 12% in November as inventories fall

http://www.dallasnews.com/business/residential-real-estate/20141208-north-texas-home-prices-jump-12-in-november-as-inventories-fall.ece

“What is it about falling prices of everything to dramatically lower and more affordable levels that sends liars into such a tizzy?”

Remember… falling prices to dramatically lower and more affordable levels is positively bullish and good for the economy.

You guys will love this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXieGSAdj4s#t=12

Because all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others

“Drafts of the so-called nationality bills would remove Arabic as an official language alongside Hebrew, increase the influence of Jewish law, reduce the power of the Supreme Court, and entrench the automatic citizenship of Jews worldwide and Jewish symbols of the state. The proposals, put off until the outcome of the parliamentary elections next year, do not mention the word “equality” or provide rights for non-Jews”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/world/middleeast/israels-nationality-bill-stirs-debate-over-religious-and-democratic-identity.html

And all you Christian Zionists, don’t forget to buy that Rapture insurance for your pets

Los Angeles Times - Journalists struck by police at Berkeley protests

“Journalists reported that they were struck with police batons, even though they were clearly displaying their credentials”

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-journalists-struck-by-police-during-protests-20141208-story.html

New York Times - Unrest Over Race Is Testing Obama’s Legacy

“Half the respondents in a Pew Research Center survey conducted Wednesday to Sunday disapproved of the president’s handling of race relations, compared with 40 percent who approved — a reversal from August, when 48 percent approved and 42 percent disapproved”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/us/politics/unrest-over-race-is-testing-obamas-legacy-.html

A nation of broke *AND* fat@ss loosers

“Dining out is the No. 1 thing Americans say they blew their budget on in 2014. Eating out is followed closely by spending on food/groceries, with 18% of American workers saying they blew their budget on food/groceries.”

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-why-americans-are-overweight-and-broke-2014-12-09

Years from now in Calgary, they’ll point to this as the tipping point of the mania.

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/05/mahogany-island-calgary-homes_n_6278494.html?ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000067

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-04/law-puts-us-all-in-same-danger-as-eric-garner

Over 70% of all adults have committed a crime or crimes that could put them in jail.

and note the very last sentence below too.

On the opening day of law school, I always counsel my first-year students never to support a law they are not willing to kill to enforce. Usually they greet this advice with something between skepticism and puzzlement, until I remind them that the police go armed to enforce the will of the state, and if you resist, they might kill you.

I wish this caution were only theoretical. It isn’t. Whatever your view on the refusal of a New York City grand jury to indict the police officer whose chokehold apparently led to the death of Eric Garner, it’s useful to remember the crime that Garner is alleged to have committed: He was selling individual cigarettes, or loosies, in violation of New York law.

The obvious racial dynamics of the case — the police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, is white; Garner was black — have sparked understandable outrage. But, at least among libertarians, so has the law that was being enforced. Wrote Nick Gillespie in the Daily Beast, “Clearly something has gone horribly wrong when a man lies dead after being confronted for selling cigarettes to willing buyers.” Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, appearing on MSNBC, also blamed the statute: “Some politician put a tax of $5.85 on a pack of cigarettes, so they’ve driven cigarettes underground by making them so expensive.”

The problem is actually broader. It’s not just cigarette tax laws that can lead to the death of those the police seek to arrest. It’s every law. Libertarians argue that we have far too many laws, and the Garner case offers evidence that they’re right. I often tell my students that there will never be a perfect technology of law enforcement, and therefore it is unavoidable that there will be situations where police err on the side of too much violence rather than too little. Better training won’t lead to perfection. But fewer laws would mean fewer opportunities for official violence to get out of hand.

The legal scholar Douglas Husak, in his excellent 2009 book “Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law,” points out that federal law alone includes more than 3,000 crimes, fewer than half of which found in the Federal Criminal Code. The rest are scattered through other statutes. A citizen who wants to abide by the law has no quick and easy way to find out what the law actually is — a violation of the traditional principle that the state cannot punish without fair notice.

In addition to these statutes, he writes, an astonishing 300,000 or more federal regulations may be enforceable through criminal punishment in the discretion of an administrative agency. Nobody knows the number for sure.

Husak cites estimates that more than 70 percent of American adults have committed a crime that could lead to imprisonment. He quotes the legal scholar William Stuntz to the effect that we are moving toward “a world in which the law on the books makes everyone a felon.” Does this seem too dramatic? Husak points to studies suggesting that more than half of young people download music illegally from the Internet. That’s been a federal crime for almost 20 years. These kids, in theory, could all go to prison.

Many criminal laws hardly pass the giggle test. Husak takes us on a tour through bizarre statutes, including the Alabama law making it a crime to maim oneself for the purpose of gaining sympathy, the Florida law prohibiting displays of deformed animals, the Illinois law against “damaging anhydrous ammonia equipment.” And then there’s the wondrous federal crime of disturbing mud in a cave on federal land. (Be careful where you run to get out of the rain.) Whether or not these laws are frequently enforced, Husak’s concern is that they exist — and potentially make felons of us all.

Part of the problem, Husak suggests, is the growing tendency of legislatures — including Congress — to toss in a criminal sanction at the end of countless bills on countless subjects. It’s as though making an offense criminal shows how much we care about it.

Well, maybe so. But making an offense criminal also means that the police will go armed to enforce it. Overcriminalization matters, Husak says, because the costs of facing criminal sanction are so high and because the criminal law can no longer sort out the law-abiding from the non-law-abiding. True enough. But it also matters because — as the Garner case reminds us — the police might kill you.

I don’t mean this as a criticism of cops, whose job after all is to carry out the legislative will. The criticism is of a political system that takes such bizarre delight in creating new crimes for the cops to enforce. It’s unlikely that the New York legislature, in creating the crime of selling untaxed cigarettes, imagined that anyone would die for violating it. But a wise legislator would give the matter some thought before creating a crime. Officials who fail to take into account the obvious fact that the laws they’re so eager to pass will be enforced at the point of a gun cannot fairly be described as public servants.

Husak suggests as one solution interpreting the Constitution to include a right not to be punished. This in turn would mean that before a legislature could criminalize a particular behavior, it would have to show a public interest significantly higher than for most forms of legislation.

He offers the example of a legislature that decides “to prohibit — on pain of criminal liability — the consumption of designated unhealthy foods such as doughnuts.” The “rational basis test” usually applied by courts when statutes face constitutional challenge would be easily met. In short, under existing doctrine, the statute would be a permissible exercise of the police power. But if there existed a constitutional right not to be punished, the statute would have to face a higher level of judicial scrutiny, and might well be struck down — not because of a right to eat unhealthy foods, but because of a right not to be criminally punished by the state except in matters of great importance.

Of course, activists on the right and the left tend to believe that all of their causes are of great importance. Whatever they want to ban or require, they seem unalterably persuaded that the use of state power is appropriate.

That’s too bad. Every new law requires enforcement; every act of enforcement includes the possibility of violence. There are many painful lessons to be drawn from the Garner tragedy, but one of them, sadly, is the same as the advice I give my students on the first day of classes: Don’t ever fight to make something illegal unless you’re willing to risk the lives of your fellow citizens to get your way.

Don’t laugh. When I was in high school, I visited a night court session in a small New Jersey town, and witnessed a defendant being fined for eating in public.

I think there is an important difference between the UK and the US, in the UK cops tend to be without firearms. In a physical struggle British cops do not have to worry about a person using their weapon against them. Many US police are killed by an unarmed person killing them with their own weapon. This is the reason why prison guards that interact with prisoners are unarmed or at least limited to mace, night stick etc. Armed guards are prepared to take out any prisoner with a shank but they are not near the prisoners. Thus, US police are taught to subdue with force, quickly, to avoid their weapons from being taken.

working poors, now make them wait an hour.

WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday handed a victory to employers over worker compensation, ruling that companies do not have to pay employees for the time they spend undergoing security checks at the end of their shifts in a case involving an Amazon.com Inc warehousing contractor.

On a 9-0 vote, the court decided that employees of Integrity Staffing Solutions facilities in Nevada, where merchandise is processed and shipped, cannot claim compensation for the time they spend going through security screening - up to half an hour a day - aimed at protecting against theft.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote on behalf of the court in the important employment law case that the screening process is not a “principal activity” of the workers’ jobs under a law called the Fair Labor Standards Act and therefore is not subject to compensation.

Breaking news:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/09/cia-torture-report-released

And remember, “they attacked us on 9/11 because they hate our freedoms”

“We tortured some folks”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-intelligence-committee-cia-torture-report.html

And an article for all the badge lickers and uniform fetishists

http://www.infowars.com/rand-paul-slams-stupid-militarization-of-police/

“F*** tha police” — N.W.A.

I have decided:

If you think falling oil prices are bullish, you’re stuck in 1977.
If you think falling oil prices are bearish, congrats, you’re a forward-thinking 2014 person.

Back in ‘77, the US economy was far more dependent on oil and the US was an oil consumer, dependent on foreign oil. A cut in gas prices was a lot more important to you when you were driving that 12 mpg Pontiac V8. Today a cut in gas prices isn’t as important when you fill up your 35 mpg Toyota. And now that the US is the world’s #1 oil producer a cut in prices is bearish for the economy not only to the US, also for emerging nations that produce oil. Derivatives tied to oil will take a hit, which is not a good thing for the US-EU-Japan axis teetering near deflation.

Attkisson: I’ve Been On Receiving End Of Obama Official’s Profanity-Laced Tirades

8:56 PM 12/08/2014
Al Weaver
Reporter

Appearing on “The Steve Malzberg Show” Monday afternoon, author Sharyl Attkisson responded to former ABC News correspondent Ann Compton’s claim that President Barack Obama and his officials routinely direct profanity-laced tirades at reporters.

Attkisson told Malzberg she has been on the receiving end of those conversations in the past, and others, specifically The Associated Press, have been subject to scorn at the hands of Obama officials.

“Maybe this is just me or a personal opinion that a profanity-laced conversation with professionals in the press by the president of the U.S. is probably inappropriate,” said Attkisson.

“That’s not surprising to me,” the former CBS investigative reporter told Malzberg. “There have been profanity-laced discussions on their part with members of the Obama administration that they’ve talked to me about similar things, thinking that a cover story…was not warranted or fair.”

“They haven’t just done this with me, but with reporters at The Associated Press and other colleagues,” said Attkisson. “This is a tactic and a strategy.”

“I don’t know if it’s heartfelt or sometimes it’s just to create the kind of pushback that leads to a self-censorship, because you’re so beaten down…by what they say, by the social media campaigns and the blog campaigns that they launch,” Attkisson added.

Attkisson recently authored “Stonewalled,” which recounts her troubles getting her stories on the air at CBS that were perceived to be critical of the Obama administration.

More DC Lies on Debts and Spending

December 8, 2014
Mark Brandly

Tags Big GovernmentU.S. Economy

”Recently, the Treasury Department secretary asserted that “The President’s policies and a strengthening U.S. economy have resulted in a reduction of the U.S. budget deficit of approximately two-thirds — the fastest sustained deficit reduction since World War II.” And, “the deficit in FY 20141 fell to $483 billion.”

Many people fell for this claim, including Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman. “So you heard it here first: while you weren’t looking, and the deficit scolds were doing their scolding, the deficit problem (such as it was) was being mostly solved.”

Federal Borrowing Continues

Apparently Krugman failed to read the rest of the Treasury report. Page one of this same report clarifies the issue, saying “the increase in borrowing included $483 billion in borrowing to finance the deficit and $314 billion in borrowing related to other transactions.” “Total federal borrowing from the public increased by $798 billion.” The Treasury Department’s own numbers tell us that widely reported deficit number is a lie.

This $798 billion deficit is a more accurate deficit number for FY 2014. According to the Treasury Department’s report on Public Debt to the Penny, the fiscal year 2014 debt increased $1,085.9 billion. This, however, includes the increase in intragovernmental debt of $277.2 billion. So the annual debt to the public increased by $808.7 billion. While there is a minor difference in these numbers, we can agree that the annual deficit was about $800 billion, not $483 billion.

mises.org/library/more-dc-lies-debts-and-spending - 114k - Cached - Similar pages
10 hours ago ..

Cambridge, MA Sale Prices Dive 4% YoY; Plummet 12% MoM and 16% QoQ

http://www.zillow.com/cambridge-ma/home-values/

More hope ‘n change from the Imperial President.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2866299/President-Obama-charges-taxpayers-1-7-MILLION-one-night-hotel-stay-G20-summit-Australia.html

‘Nut Rage”

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30390724

A Korean Air executive who delayed a plane because she was angry with the way she had been served nuts by an air steward has resigned, the airline says.

Heather Cho, a vice-president of the airline and daughter of its chairman, had demanded the crew member be removed from a flight last Friday for failing to serve the nuts on a plate.

The Incheon-bound flight had to taxi back to the terminal in New York.

The airline has apologised, but said she had had the support of the pilot.

Everyone Must Check In

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. Call it the stupidity of the American voter, or whatever,”

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2014/12/09/beijing-weve-got-a-problem/

The Chinese stock market hit a four year high today at 3,020. This is up 53% since the middle of 2013 low and up 48% in the last six months. I guess this must mean the Chinese economy is operating on all cylinders. If you think so, you’d be wrong. Barron’s interviewed a no-nonsense woman who has lived, worked and analyzed China from within since 1985. Anne Stevenson-Yang has spent the bulk of her professional life there working as a journalist, magazine publisher, and software executive, with stints in between heading up the U.S. Information Technology office and the China operations of the U.S.-China Business Council. She’s now research director of J Capital, an outfit that works for foreign investors in China doing fundamental research on local companies and tracking macroeconomic developments.

This lady is about as blunt as you can get about Chinese fraud, lies, mal-investment, and data manipulation. The entire Chinese economic miracle is a fraud. The reforms are false. The leaders are corrupt and as evil as ever. The entire edifice is built upon a Himalayan mountain of bad debt.
The slave labor manufacturer for the world’s mal-investments since 2008 make Japan look like pikers.

Bank of America sees $50 for a bbl of oil - how cool would that be? Buh-bye, junk bond bubble. Hello, sanity.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/oilprices/11283875/Bank-of-America-sees-50-oil-as-Opec-dies.html

Hey pimps, liars and shills…. Are you enjoying falling housing and fuel prices?

Looks like the no-justice no peace mobs just got more fuel for the fire.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/unarmed-black-man-in-stolen-car-shot-by-orlando-police-officer-9913605.html

MIT professor apologizes for ‘glib’ Obamacare comments

Author: By Ashley Killough CNN

Calling the plan a “clever” and “basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” Gruber hailed how the measure passed “because the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.”

While Gruber has previously described himself as an “architect” of Obamacare, he sharply denied the label on Tuesday, arguing that his role in the legislation has been inflated in the past.

Still, he helped create the health care law in Massachusetts under then Gov. Mitt Romney, and went on to play a key role in crafting the idea behind the series of exchanges, subsidies and taxes that form the federal law’s centerpiece.

At one point, Rep. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming referenced her recently deceased husband to issue a sharp warning to Gruber.

Her husband, she said, was having chest pains, but due to confusion over whether the couple was covered by Obamacare, he didn’t have all the tests the doctor recommended.

He died from a heart attack in his sleep Oct. 24.

“The so-called glibness that has been referenced today have direct consequences for real American people, so get over your damn glibness,” Lummis said.

While he regretted his initial comments, Gruber did not deny the substance of the arguments he was making about the legislation.

http://www.click2houston.com/…/Politics/gruber-i-am-embarrassed-and-i-am-sorry/30133138 - 112k -

This article is another well-written one. It’s late on the east coast so I will try to remember to repost it tomorrow in BB:

http://tucker.liberty.me/2014/06/14/the-war-is-on-you/

After 25 years of war on Iraq, the U.S. has what to show for it? A handful of dust. And at what cost in lives and property? It boggles the mind to consider the breadth and depth of the suffering.

Iraq was the great experiment following the Cold War for how the U.S. military machine could be used to make the world more free from tyranny — or so we were told.

Today, watching the crumbling of the house of cards, we see that the stated intentions of the world’s largest and most pervasive military empire has been brought down. And how? Solely by the aspirations of a diverse people united only by their determination to throw off the foreign yoke.

Does this mean that the Iraq mission has failed? Judging by the stated aims of four successive presidents, countless military commanders, and legions of wartime pundits, the answer is absolutely yes. But what this answer doesn’t consider is the advantages that war gains for the domestic government.

In times of unrest, instability, and impending upheaval, the ostentatious display of war is designed to remind the people who is boss. Nothing is more important to the state.

This was the whole reason that this Iraq disaster began. Recall that in 1989, the Cold War had ended very inconveniently, almost without warning. For forty years, Americans were told about their dangerous and implacable foe, the country and system that threatened all we hold dear. One morning we woke up and it was gone, revealing not ominous threats but burned out governments and demoralized populations.

And there was more going on. The world was celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall, the liberation of the outer reaches of the Soviet empire, and the inspiring sight of Eastern Europe finally entering the modern world. The images of brave protesters in China lifted hearts and minds all over the world to the possible dawning of a new model of freedom, peace, and prosperity for the world. Technology was connecting the world as never before.

At home, meanwhile, things began to get testy. If they can have freedom, why can’t we? The left was demanding a “peace dividend,” a sharp diversion of public monies away from building bombs to building schools — not an entirely unreasonable view. The right was rethinking its long-held attachment to the war model too, revisiting its past to discover that it too had a pro-peace tradition buried way back in history.

The consensus for retaining the warfare state was melting.

It was in the midst of this that President George Bush the first saw his chance. There was a complicated dispute over some oil properties on the border of Iraq and Kuwait. After getting a green light from the U.S. ambassador in Iraq (“we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait”), Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait to settle some contractual disputes on drilling rights.

In normal times, this event would have been notable but not a concern for the U.S.. But in this case, all the necessary factors for a real war lined up. There were oil interests at stake. The president in office was unsure of his legacy. A presidential election loomed in the not-distant future. The military-industrial-congressional complex was worried for its future, seeking some new ideological template to rule the world.

Of all the problems that the ruling elite faced at the end of the Cold War, the most pressing was that the American people were dreaming of peace and normalcy, and increasingly intolerant of the overweening cost of being the world’s last superpower.

That was when the bombing began. We watched as people far away were fire bombed and murdered, how a mighty government was brought to its knees, how all the weapons built at our expense for decades could be used to subjugate a whole nation.

The U.S. drove Iraq out of Kuwait. It was seen as a victory, an impressive display of what the U.S. can accomplish through war. As for the tens of thousands of dead, among them many hundreds of innocents that were slaughtered through aerial bombings, the U.S. government said nothing more than: mistakes happen.

That was an ominous display.

I recall so well sitting on the lawn of the mall in Washington, D.C., during some patriotic display with tanks rolling around, bands playing, and fireworks shooting into the sky. Political pilgrims from all over the country, cameras hanging around their necks, were enthralled and swelling with pride for the glory of the American nation.

For me personally, that was it. The scales completely fell from my eyes. The elites in power had actually done in real life what seemed only possible in fiction. With one war, it had repurposed history’s largest and most deadly military empire away from fighting communism to fighting whomever it wanted anywhere in the world and for whatever reason it wanted to invent at the time.

It was suddenly very obvious to me that the whole thing was a ruse.

There was still another message that came from the beginning of this war. It signaled to the American people that democracy only goes so far. It’s one thing to vote for the candidate of your choice, to write your congressmen, to enjoy the spectacle of wrangling in the House and Senate. But when it comes to the real business of government, and especially its most extreme form in its right to unleash mass death anytime it wants, you have no say. Your insurrectionist impulses have limits.

The Gulf War of 1991 was said to have sent a message to the world against aggression (it’s hard to type those words without being overwhelmed at the irony). Its real message was scripted to hit closer to home. It was designed for us. The message was that there will be no reform, no peace, no real change, no end to empire, and there is nothing you can do about it.

What followed was ten more years of bombing and cruel sanctions, leading to another trumped up frenzy over non-existent weapons of mass destruction, followed by another invasion and the killing of Saddam, followed by another ten years of an attempt to set up a puppet government and train its military to maintain power in absence of a large U.S. troop presence.

A quarter of a century has gone by since the U.S. government set out to remake a foreign land under the slogans of freedom and democracy. That land is now wrecked completely, and in the midst of what seems like a 6-way civil war. The U.S. does have one good option of doing nothing, walking away and letting Iraq become the many different countries it probably ought to be. But that’s not what will happen.

Is there any consolation here for those of us who love liberty? There is this. Not even the world’s largest and most dangerous empire can control a country, not finally. No more is there such a thing as victory. The events in Iraq now are proof of that, and surely there is no one who can really believe that dropping more bombs is going to be the final ticket to bringing peace and stability to Iraq.

What, then, would be the purpose of yet another war on Iraq? The same purpose that war always has. It sends us a signal of who is in charge. It’s a war on you.