The Housing Bubble

It is starting to feel like change is coming. If housing turns down steeply, we will know soon. SuperBowl Sunday is here again. There will be much less institutional selling into the market in the next 5 years than there was in ‘08-’12. Real estate markets are sticky and move in slow motion….

Crude extends slide to trade close to 6-year low
By Sara Sjolin
Published: Jan 29, 2015 4:09 a.m. ET
Bloomberg

LONDON (MarketWatch) — Oil traded around its lowest level in almost six years on Thursday, continuing its prior-day slide, when a larger-than-expected increase in U.S. crude supplies sent futures plunging.

Crude oil for March delivery fell 14 cents, or 0.3%, to $44.31 a barrel, touching the lowest level since March 2009. The loss built on a 3.9% slide from Wednesday, which was triggered by poor inventory data. The U.S. Energy Information Administration said U.S. oil supplies rose by 8.9 million barrels in the week ended Jan. 23, higher than the increase of around 3.5 million barrels expected by analysts polled by Platts. At 406.7 million barrels, U.S. inventories are at their highest since 1924.
…

Here is why India will keep growing faster than China
By Bloomberg | 29 Jan, 2015, 12.30PM IST

NEW YORK: The economic growth race between India and China started in the late 1940s, around the time India gained independence and adopted democracy and China turned to communism. Given the sheer size of their populations, each has the potential to dominate the global economy but until recently, it’s been no contest: In 2013, China’s per capita gross domestic product was 4.5 times larger than India’s.

The latest forecast suggests that the tide may be turning in India’s favour, possibly for good. The World Bank anticipates that, by 2017, India will be growing faster than China.
…
If India keeps it up, the World Bank expects its economy to grow 7 per cent in 2017, up from 5.5 per cent in 2014. Meanwhile, the forecast calls for growth in China to slow as its government reduces spending, tightens credit, and unwinds its housing bubble. The bank expects China’s growth to fall from 7.4 per cent in 2014 to a modest 6.9 per cent in 2017.
…

Oil near six-year lows after U.S. stockpiles hit record high
Henning Gloystein
SINGAPORE — Reuters
Published Thursday, Jan. 29 2015, 5:39 AM EST
Last updated Thursday, Jan. 29 2015, 5:41 AM EST

Oil remained weak in Asia on Thursday after data showing record U.S. stockpiles sent prices tumbling to the lowest level in nearly six years in the previous session and analysts said a global glut would continue to keep the market under pressure.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said domestic crude oil stocks rose by almost 9 million barrels last week to reach nearly 407 million, the highest level since the government began keeping records in 1982.

“The market expects stockpiles to keep rising, pushing front-month prices further down as refineries enter maintenance season and are likely run at lower utilization rates,” ANZ said in a note.

Prices on Thursday stuck close to the previous settlement levels. Brent was trading at $48.50 a barrel at 0741 GMT, virtually flat with its last settlement, while U.S. crude was at $44.41, versus the low of $44.08 hit on Wednesday, the weakest since April 2009.

Analysts said the outlook remained weak, especially with demand slowing in China.

“The Chinese government is moving away from the post-2008 investment binge and gradually moving towards a more moderate but sustainable consumption-led economic growth,” Wood Mackenzie said on Thursday.
…

Oil to stay lower for longer; Chinese demand growth to slow - Goldman
By David Sheppard
LONDON Tue Jan 27, 2015 11:33am EST

(Reuters) - Oil prices will stay lower for longer after more than halving since June, Goldman Sachs’ (GS.N) chief commodity analyst said, arguing in his latest research note that demand growth in China and other emerging economies is set to slow.

Goldman’s Jeff Currie, who rose to prominence forecasting oil’s spike above $100 a barrel last decade, said the rise of U.S. shale output had realigned energy markets, making China a bigger and more important consumer than the United States.

“For the first time since the 1940s, the U.S. is no longer the world’s largest (oil) importer,” Currie wrote in the note dated Jan. 26, which is part of the bank’s ‘Top of Mind’ research series on macroeconomic trends.

“It has ceded that dubious position to China, which with other emerging markets is now forced to pay up for the last barrel of oil it needs from the rest of the world. As a result, gone are the days of surging EM (emerging market) oil demand.”

The bank, which is arguably the most influential in commodity markets, had already slashed its energy forecasts two weeks ago to predict Brent crude may fall below $40 a barrel and average just over $50 this year.

He said in this week’s note that the oil crash may be the most “startling and far-reaching market development” since the financial crisis, adding that even if oil prices recover from their recent lows they were unlikely to rebound back to levels at the start of this decade.

Brent hit an all-time high above $147 a barrel in 2008. It averaged around $110 a barrel between 2011 and 2013 as supply disruptions helped mask the impact of the U.S. shale boom.

“A new equilibrium price will ultimately be found, which will likely be much lower than the price over the past decade,” Currie wrote.

Brent has fallen from above $115 a barrel in June to a near six-year low of $45.19 on Jan. 16, as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries as declined to cut output despite the price slide as it focuses on preserving market share.
…

Greek PM Tsipras freezes privatisations, markets tumble
By Lefteris Papadimas and Renee Maltezou
ATHENS Wed Jan 28, 2015 5:44pm EST

(Reuters) - Leftist Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras threw down an open challenge to international creditors on Wednesday by halting privatisation plans agreed under the country’s bailout deal, prompting a third day of heavy losses on financial markets.

A swift series of announcements signalled the newly installed government would stand by its anti-austerity pledges, setting it on a collision course with European partners, led by Germany, which has said it will not renegotiate the aid package needed to help Greece pay its huge debts.

Tsipras, who was congratulated by U.S. President Barack Obama in a phone call for his decisive election victory on Sunday, told the first meeting of his cabinet members that they could not afford to disappoint voters battered by a plunge in living standards under austerity.

After announcing a halt to the privatisation of the port of Piraeus on Tuesday, for which China’s Cosco Group and four others had been short-listed, the government indicated it would put the whole programme on hold.

It said it would stop the sale of stakes in the Public Power Corporation of Greece, Greece’s biggest utility, and refiner Hellenic Petroleum, and put other planned asset sales of motorways, airports and the power grid on ice.

The government also plans to reinstate public sector employees judged to have been laid off unfairly, including a group of finance ministry cleaners whose case attracted publicity last year, and announced rises in pensions for retired people on low incomes.
…

One in five kidz on food stamps in the Obama recovery

Article notes that “27 percent were living in single parent homes last year, tripling the 9 percent in 1960″

http://www.infowars.com/one-in-five-u-s-children-now-rely-on-food-stamps-census-data/

My liberal betters inform that kidz don’t need fathers when they’ve got Big Daddy Government

50+ years of Marxist feminism and this is what you get, keep telling yourself you can “have it all” and “lean in” and “smash the patriarchy” as long as there are enough taxpayer dollars to pay for your lifestyle choices, and for your kidz’ heightened probability of incarceration

And now that you’ve had your Koch, have a steaming serving of Soros

http://www.infowars.com/george-soros-linked-to-elites-panic-over-social-uprising/

Is it “go time” yet?

If oil goes to $42, striking distance to $40, there is going to be a panic like you’ve never seen. Perhaps perfectly timed for that lull period after the Superbawl.

And many more articles showing it ain’t just Texas and North Dakota exposed.

Wall Street Journal reports that “The U.S. government estimates as many as six million households may have to pay a penalty for not having had health-insurance coverage last year as required under the Affordable Care Act”

And remember kidz, it’s a “penalty” and not a tax, LOLZ

Wall Street Journal article confirms everything I predicted about the Lucky Ducky future

“The emergence of a two-tiered U.S. economy, with wealthy households advancing while middle- and lower-income Americans struggle, is reshaping markets for everything from housing to clothing to groceries to beer.

Since 2009, average per household spending among the top 5% of U.S. income earners — adjusting for inflation — climbed 12% through 2012, the most recent year available. Over the same period, spending by all others fell 1% per household”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-a-two-tier-economy-is-reshaping-the-u-s-marketplace-1422502201

Comment by Blue Skye

2015-01-28 16:34:00

I find this letter to the German people very interesting.

http://syriza.net.gr/index.php/en/pressroom/253-open-letter-to-the-german-readers-that-which-you-were-never-told-about-greece

Reply to this comment

Comment by Ben Jones

2015-01-28 17:00:59

‘In 2010, the Greek state ceased to be able to service its debt. Unfortunately, European officials decided to pretend that this problem could be overcome by means of the largest loan in history on condition of fiscal austerity that would, with mathematical precision, shrink the national income from which both new and old loans must be paid. An insolvency problem was thus dealt with as if it were a case of illiquidity.’

‘In other words, Europe adopted the tactics of the least reputable bankers who refuse to acknowledge bad loans, preferring to grant new ones to the insolvent entity so as to pretend that the original loan is performing while extending the bankruptcy into the future. Nothing more than common sense was required to see that the application of the ‘extend and pretend’ tactic would lead my country to a tragic state.’

‘Indeed, even before a full year had gone by, from 2011 onwards, our predictions were confirmed. The combination of gigantic new loans and stringent government spending cuts that depressed incomes not only failed to rein the debt in but, also, punished the weakest of citizens turning people who had hitherto been living a measured, modest life into paupers and beggars, denying them above all else their dignity. The collapse of incomes pushed thousands of firms into bankruptcy boosting the oligopolistic power of surviving large firms. Thus, prices have been falling but more slowly than wages and salaries, pushing down overall demand for goods and services and crushing nominal incomes while debts continue their inexorable rise. In this setting, the deficit of hope accelerated uncontrollably and, before we knew it, the ’serpent’s egg’ hatched – the result being neo-Nazis patrolling our neighbourhoods, spreading their message of hatred.

Despite the evident failure of the ‘extend and pretend’ logic, it is still being implemented to this day. The second Greek ‘bailout’, enacted in the Spring of 2012, added another huge loan on the weakened shoulders of the Greek taxpayers, “haircut” our social security funds, and financed a ruthless new cleptocracy.’

‘Respected commentators have been referring of recent to Greece’s stabilization, even of signs of growth. Alas, ‘Greek-covery’ is but a mirage which we must put to rest as soon as possible. The recent modest rise of real GDP, to the tune of 0.7%, signals not the end of recession (as has been proclaimed) but, rather, its continuation. Think about it: The same official sources report, for the same quarter, an inflation rate of -1.80%, i.e. deflation. Which means that the 0.7% rise in real GDP was due to a negative growth rate of nominal GDP! In other words, all that happened is that prices declined faster than nominal national income.’

‘So, let me be frank: Greece’s debt is currently unsustainable and will never be serviced, especially while Greece is being subjected to continuous fiscal waterboarding.’

This gets to your question earlier, how does it end? One way is the debts become insurmountable. Look at the surprise of the technocrats that millennial’s aren’t buying houses. Here, borrow a ton of money to go to college. Credit cards, cars. What do you mean you don’t want more debt?

For all the talk by central bankers about helicopter dropping money, they never do it. They make cheap loans to their banker buddies who then use arbitrage and carry trades and bonds to skim the cream of the top, QE runs all over the globe creating bubbles. Meanwhile, people with cash have been robbed by some accounts of $ 1 trillion in the US alone. Free money indeed. This weekends post from Hodges is right on; you have to be able to repay the principle. These low rates and thin-air liquidity have only made everything worse.

Real journalists ask can House Democrats retake the House?

With 34 million more Free Sh*t Army they will, LOLZ

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-democrats-retake-the-house-its-a-long-shot-but-theyre-getting-ready-to-try/2015/01/28/ae2f8068-a639-11e4-a7c2-03d37af98440_story.html

Permanent Democrat Supermajority

This has GOT to be the ultimate FB/Debt Donkey immigrant story. And in Prince George’s County, too, one of the major meltdown areas during the last bubble. Talk about wash, rinse, repeat. Last time it was Hispanic immigrants, this time African immigrants.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/01/26/distressed-family-swamped-by-an-underwater-home/?hpid=z3

Drudge Report link from some rando website says “Iran Targets Netanyahu Children For Assassination”

If anything should whip the knuckle dragging, mouth breathing, Earth is 6,000 years old crowd into a frenzy, targeting the children of the governor of Amerikwa’s 51st state sure will

The only solution to this is another trillion dollar war

See also:

http://creationmuseum.org/

Can I has Rapture plz?

Jonathan Gruber at the University of Pennsylvania in October, 2013.

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the ’stupidity of the American voter’ or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass.”
——————————————————————————–

We Must Act Now to Protect Our Winters

2015 January 28
Gina McCarthy

2014 was the hottest year on record, and each of the last three decades has been hotter than the last.

If we fail to act, Aspen’s climate could be a lot like that of Amarillo, TX, by 2100. Amarillo is a great town, but it’s a lousy place to ski.

We Must Act Now to Protect Our Winters | EPA Connect - blog
blog.epa.gov/epaconnect/2015/01/we-must-act-now/ - 27k - Cached - Similar pages
21 hours ago …

PBS Drops Another Bombshell: Wall Street Is Gobbling Up Two-Thirds of Your 401(k)

By Pam Martens: April 25, 2013

If you work for 50 years and receive the typical long-term return of 7 percent on your 401(k) plan and your fees are 2 percent, almost two-thirds of your account will go to Wall Street. This was the bombshell dropped by Frontline’s Martin Smith in this Tuesday evening’s PBS program, The Retirement Gamble.

This is not so much a gamble as a certainty: under a 2 percent 401(k) fee structure, almost two-thirds of your working life will go toward paying obscene compensation to Wall Street; a little over one-third will benefit your family – and that’s before paying taxes on withdrawals to Uncle Sam.

To put it another way – you work for Wall Street. You are their slave, their lackey and as long as their toadies dominate in Congress, nothing is going to change on the legislative front to stop the looting. Wall Street seized millions of homes through illegal foreclosures and stripped the equity from the owners. They got away with it. Some Wall Street firms further enriched themselves making bets that the housing market would collapse, using their inside knowledge of the bogus loans they had made. They got away with that also. Now Wall Street is busy asset stripping the retirement plans of the working class in America while President Obama proposes to cut Social Security benefits through a discredited calculation called Chained CPI – conveniently causing people to save more in their 401(k) plans to make up for the potential loss. But the more you save, the more Wall Street asset strips.

wallstreetonparade.com/…/ - 85k -

“We are all Americans — north and south in this hemisphere”

“This is a community, with a border going through it.”

Nancy Pelosi
———————————————————————————

Soros Group Advocates North American – Not U.S. – Passports

by Jerome Corsi | WND | January 29, 2015

A Soros-funded group arguing to replace the U.S. passport with a North American passport appears ready to take up the mantle of championing the concept of a European Union-style regional government to supersede the sovereignty of the United States, Mexico and Canada, fulfilling the dream of the late American University professor Robert Pastor.

The future of the U.S. lies in North America, not in the United States as a sovereign nation, contends the New America Foundation, a Washington-based leftist think-tank with ties to Jonathan Soros, son of famed leftist billionaire George Soros.

Appropriately named “New America,” the foundation believes the U.S. passport should soon become obsolete and replaced with a European Union-style passport issued for all citizens of the U.S., Mexico and Canada. Citizens would be redefined by their regional identity as “North Americans,” echoing President Obama’s claim in Spanish in his Dec. 17, 2014, announcement of his executive actions to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba, “Todos Somos Americanos,” or, “We are all Americans.

“The United States, Canada and Mexico are bound by a shared economic, environmental, demographic and cultural destiny. How we move forward together is key to our success,” wrote André Martinez, an editor with New America and a professor at the Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University; and Daniel Kurtz-Phelan, a fellow at New America and a former adviser on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s policy planning staff, in an article titled “Why we need a North American Passport,” published by CNN.com.

Govt tells agents to ID which immigrants not to deport

Jan 28, 3:15 AM (ET)

By ALICIA A. CALDWELL

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration has ordered immigration agents to ask immigrants they encounter living in the country illegally whether they might qualify under President Barack Obama’s plans to avoid deporting them, according to internal training materials obtained by The Associated Press.

Agents also have been told to review government files to identify any jailed immigrants they might be able to release under the program.

The directives from the Homeland Security Department mark an unusual change for U.S. immigration enforcement, placing the obligation on the government for identifying immigrants who might qualify for lenient treatment. Previously, it was the responsibility of immigrants or their lawyers to assert that they might qualify under rules that could keep them out of jail and inside the United States.

It’s akin to the Internal Revenue Service calling taxpayers to recommend they should have used certain exemptions or deductions.

http://www.richmond.com/…/ap/article_061b696d-32e3-593a-bdc7-7b0190d25843.html -

Article about legal weed (nobody I know actually pays money for weed, there is so much of it everywhere it’s essentially free, and the only time I’ll spend money is for manufactured edible products)

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/01/26/legal-marijuana-sales-grow-74-percent-in-2014/

Colorado will be issuing TABOR taxpayer refund checks next year

And LOLZ to all the Deep South states spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars a year per inmate to incarcerate poor blacks and poor browns for marijuana possession, because it’s “for the children”

‘Sarah Palin’s odd, rambling speech last weekend before an audience of committed conservative activists in Des Moines has many influential voices on the right saying that the time has come to acknowledge that the romance has gone cold and the marriage is dead.’

‘Weekly Standard editor William Kristol was an early booster of Palin, all the way back to 2007, when she was a new governor little known outside of Alaska. Less than a year ago, he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that Palin “might be kind of formidable in a Republican primary.”

“Did I say it that recently?” Kristol said Wednesday when reminded of that comment in an interview. “The name Sarah Palin hasn’t come up in the past three to six months. . . . Maybe the speech Saturday was just a confirmation of her no longer being a major player, at least in these circles.”

Now Bill, those with any memory at all know that you hand picked Palin while on a cruise in Alaska. You visited her office and saw she had a framed Israeli flag on the wall. That was all it took, and next you were trying to push this reality show kook into the White House. And notice how the neocon WP turns to Kristol, when he’s about as “conservative” as Trotsky, who is his god. Politics are so screwed up in this country.

Better Call Saul

“Real estate agent fined over meth property”

“David Sharma, who works for Real Estate Out West in Auckland, marketed a property as suitable for families and children, despite being aware the house had methamphetamine levels above recommended health levels”

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11393196

I guess we get to keep our death panels now…

——————-

50 die under secret 999 policy
The Telegraph | 1/13/15 | Laura Donnelly

More than 50 patients have died after an NHS trust introduced a secret policy to downgrade 999 calls and not to send ambulances to terminally ill patients.

Managers at East of England ambulance trust were accused of “the most cruel form of rationing imaginable” after admitting that 8,000 patients had been affected by the changes. An internal NHS report discloses that 57 patients died after their calls were downgraded following a decision not to send ambulances to the terminally ill and to those who had given instructions not to resuscitate.

However, details of the practice have only now emerged in an internal NHS document. It discloses that 21 types of call were downgraded.

“Remember… a stock can go to zero but losses on a depreciating assets like houses go negative.”

Good point.

‘Monday’s guilty verdict in the trial of former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling on espionage charges — for talking to a newspaper reporter — is the latest milepost on the dark and dismal path Barack Obama has traveled since his inaugural promises to usher in a “new era of openness.”

‘Far from rejecting the authoritarian bent of his presidential predecessor, Obama has simply adjusted it, adding his own personal touches, most notably an enthusiasm for criminally prosecuting the kinds of leaks that are essential to a free press.’

‘The Sterling case – especially in light of Obama’s complicity in the cover-up of torture during the Bush administration – sends a clear message to people in government service: You won’t get in trouble as long as you do what you’re told (even torture people). But if you talk to a reporter and tell him something we want kept secret, we will spare no effort to destroy you.’

‘There’s really no sign any more of the former community organizer who joyously declared on his first full day in office that “there’s been too much secrecy in this city… Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information but those who seek to make it known.”

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/27/torture-must-circumstances-call-new-york-times/

anybody buy any inflated assets today hoping to pass them on to the greater fool?

Region IV

a little music levity tonight

http://safeshare.tv/w/eUqDmyBbir

Tune in to the HBB tomorrow for reports on substantial declines in list prices.

Cya then.

phony scandals