Bits Bucket for March 21, 2015
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The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Name:Ben Jones
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Costa Mesa, CA List Prices Dive 9%; Inventory Balloons As Foreclosures Skyrocket
http://www.zillow.com/costa-mesa-ca-92627/home-values/
Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Is being a mortgage debt slave really the best you can do?
Sad, sad, sad…
If you paid your mortgage off, it means you probably did not manage your funds efficiently over the years. It’s as if you had 500,000 dollar bills stuffed in your mattress.
It depends on how much you like to work for nothing but a roof over your head. 5 years or 35 years, it’s your choice.
Living below your means is the real answer.
#Freedom
The trouble is even if you live below your means the country is not: The GAAP calculated debt of every taxpayer is almost 812,000 dollars but some on this board claim the country is not bankrupt. In all senses of the word, but the most technical this country is bankrupt:
http://www.usdebtclock.org/index.html
In all senses of the word, but the most technical this country is bankrupt:
USA is not even close to being “bankrupt”. How can USA be bankrupt when the borrowed money can be created by the Fed on a laptop at Starbucks?
And it’s all relative. How can USA be bankrupt where most major countries in the world have similar debt/gdp levels?
Like if most the debt vanished the world and progress would stop? I don’t think so.
The bankers got some of you guys brainwashed so you pay them back real money that someone created on a laptop at Starbucks.
The right-wing is bullsh!tting us about being bankrupt so they can cut SocSec/Medicare to put more money in the rich’s pocket.
You’re bankrupt Lola.
The U.S. had experience with just printing money, the continental dollar became worthless. Your economics are the economics of Zimbabwe and we can see how that worked out.
Your economics are the economics of Zimbabwe
Only a village idiot or someone who thinks we’re all dumb would attempt to compare Zimbabwe’s currency with the world’s reserve currency-the US dollar.
The USA is not even close to going bankrupt and if we were, it would mean the whole world was going bankrupt which would render being bankrupt essentially meaningless because the world owes the “money” to the same world.
Warning:
The right-wing is con-jobbing us about USA being bankrupt so they can cut SocSec/Medicare to put more money in the .1%’s pocket.
‘The right-wing is con-jobbing us about USA being bankrupt so they can cut SocSec/Medicare’
These are two unrelated things. Either the US government has too many obligations to fulfill or they don’t. Similarly, I could say, ‘the only people who say the US is bankrupt are Islamic extremists’.
‘if we were, it would mean the whole world was going bankrupt which would render being bankrupt essentially meaningless because the world owes the “money” to the same world.’
Tell us how smart you are again.
Lola’s smart?
Tell us how smart you are again.
I think not as smart as the guy who wrote this:
–Cruz, Boehner admit the federal “debt” is meaningless
http://beforeitsnews.com/economics-and-politics/2013/10/cruz-boehner-admit-the-federal-debt-is-meaningless-2457136.html
“The federal debt is a phony bogeyman, the sole purpose of which today is to convince the American people that spending on social benefits should be limited.
It does nothing more or less than widen the gap between the rich and the rest — exactly what Congress and the President have been paid to do.”
….2. The federal government is not like you and me. It is Monetarily Sovereign. It creates dollars at will. Debt is not a burden. What erroneously is called “debt,” is nothing more than the total of private deposits in T-security accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank.
Do we dare ask the American people to think about this question: If the nation’s primary debt hawks are prepared to raise the federal “debt” as a political bargaining tool, how real is that debt?
The answer: The federal, so-called, “debt” is not like any other debt. The “debt” is, in fact, bank deposits. The federal debt, being the total of T-security deposits at the Federal Reserve Bank, essentially is identical to deposits in bank savings accounts.
How does the federal government “pay off” its debt? The same way a bank “pays off” its savings accounts. It transfers dollars from a depositor’s savings account to the depositor’s checking account.
Period. Done.
The very fact that the Republicans, and indeed both parties, wish to continue raising the debt ceiling, is proof positive that the so-called “debt” is not a threat, but is necessary for economic growth.
The federal debt is a phony bogeyman, the sole purpose of which today is to convince the American people that spending on social benefits should be limited.
It does nothing more or less than widen the gap between the rich and the rest — exactly what Congress and the President have been paid to do.
Yeah, those of us in the reality based community are incapable of understanding the high finance of the money printing wizards. These people in DC, man they aren’t mere mortals. They and the bankers walk on clouds solving the misery of mankind as easily as one makes coffee in the morning.
Wait a minute. If this were true, why is there any misery? Why aren’t limitless amounts of money available to the government? To any government that creates money ‘at will’? Because if there is a limit, that would suggest a downside lurks somewhere in this fairy tale. And why are they so worried about deflation all the time?
I don’t doubt that there are people in powerful places who believe is such things. That wealth can be created out of nothing and no one and nothing can stop them. I’ll say this; that only reinforces the idea that they are bat-sh*t crazy and recklessly so. And instead of aiding “society”, they are spreading war, destruction and poverty around the world.
that only reinforces the idea that they are bat-sh*t crazy and recklessly so. And instead of aiding “society”, they are spreading war, destruction and poverty around the world.
Most of them are selfish economic sociopaths imo. Much of my talking about gross wealth and income inequality is connected to your quote above.
Maybe the guy who wrote that article is smarter than you, but the article does not support that idea. When the government issues new claims on the wealth of the country and its future production out of thin air, it is not meaningless and it does not cancel itself out. Everyone is on the losing end of this, rich and poor, except for the parasites living in the stream of said issues.
I don’t doubt that there are people in powerful places who believe is such things. That wealth can be created out of nothing and no one and nothing can stop them. I’ll say this; that only reinforces the idea that they are bat-sh*t crazy and recklessly so.
It is why they think they can invade other countries and not even pay for it by exploiting their resources like the Roman Empire did. Just print money, reckless spending on entitlements or war is just the opposite sides of the same coin and in the short term they both do promote growth, as Pelosi said all spending is stimulus.
When the government issues new claims on the wealth of the country and its future production out of thin air, it is not meaningless and it does not cancel itself out. Everyone is on the losing end
Many would say economically a country is on the winning end if most of that money is spent on items that promote future economic growth ie jobs, infrastructure, educations as opposed to wars and tax-breaks for the rich.
Warning:
The right-wing is con-jobbing us about USA being bankrupt so they can cut SocSec/Medicare to put more money in the .1%’s pocket.
This.
‘tax-breaks for the rich’
If government debt is infinite, why are there taxes at all? How do you spend money by not taxing someone? If you mean an otherwise higher amount of borrowing, you already said debt doesn’t matter.
No matter where you go with it, pretty quick this ‘debt doesn’t matter’ reasoning unravels.
I think you are all right.
Your (USA) Debt doesn’t matter until you have issued too much fiat currency, your dollar loses the world’s confidence, and then are no longer the world currency.
Then Your (USA) Debt does matter.
Anybody that can only add 20 or so pounds to their bench press in 5 years is a genius.
We now have seen the US central bank creating money to buy US debt, and then giving the interest it earns back to the US government. As one poster said, the more you borrow the more you earn.
Anybody that can only add 20 or so pounds to their bench press in 5 years is a genius.
lol. But I am a “genius” in that case because I didn’t go under the knife. I have rotator cuff tears in both shoulders and other stuff going on in one shoulder that “required” surgery 3 years ago that I did not do.
Instead, I have both under control by a series of exercises and physical therapy. That I can even bench press at all makes me happy. Adding about 25lbs to my bench-press, while losing 27lbs while getting 7 years older while managing serious injuries without surgery ROCKS.
Next insult?
I count like 6 excuses in there. You should be a realtor.
Whatever yu say Shillowpicker. You should join the military.
Lola,
How long do you think it will be before the owner puts you back in your cage?
A brief story to demonstrate what money is:
In a barter economy, Person A has a potato, Person B has a cow, Person C has a house. Person A wants to trade the potato for the cow or the house. No one will do the deal because the potato has less value than the cow or the house.
Along comes currency to identify value in a more granular way. Demand for the currency is strong because it accurately reflects value, whatever that means.
I think modern theorists poo-poo the concept of ‘value’ considering it only a phantasm of the human mind, and that it is endlessly variable (see the 2013 econ Nobel Laureate who said that bubbles don’t exist (Fama)).
People do value currency - the slips of paper or the digital representations of it - because it can accurately describe value.
Prices remain stable when the supply of money accurately reflects the value which is in the economy. More and more money describing the same pool of value increases prices.
In Japan, the government prints money, yet they have deflation. The money goes into savings, not into circulation, so prices remain stable.
In the US, there is a tremendous amount of private debt so we do have inflation thanks to the money printing, but again it doesn’t affect prices as much due to being pulled out circulation to pay down debt, which funnels it back into vast holding pools.
The right (or left) may have nefarious plans. But to say that printing money and debt is meaningless, a separate topic, is wrong IMO.
“Along comes currency to identify value in a more granular way. Demand for the currency is strong because it accurately reflects value, whatever that means.”
Along comes currency to eliminate the high costs of trading through barter, including the search and delivery costs entailed by the double-coincidence-of-wants (if I only have cows to trade and want to buy a house, I need to locate and deliver my cows to a homebuilder who needs cows).
How long are you planning to work at your current job? There’s only so long of a resumé gap that hiring managers will tolerate. Or were you planning to tout your current employment?
At least some things do not require a resume.
“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
Then what was yesterday?
Here’s a gentle reminder of current economic conditions:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2V/
More than a few people must have lumpy mattresses.
More than a few people must have lumpy mattresses.
Yup!
And bitcoin paper wallets full ‘o BTCs.
And plastic coin containers full o’ shiny rare metals.
Interesting: By how Investopedia defines “Hard Currency,” the USD fits the criteria:
“currency that is not likely to depreciate suddenly or to fluctuate greatly in value.”
Compared to, say, the Argentine Peso, the USD is hard.
Then the Euro…
Something is going to give very soon
http://tinyurl.com/pjjpd4d
Is this the time to overweight foreign equities? The USD has been on a tear… how long can it continue?
It will last as long as other central banks are pumping more than our central bank.
Think back to the QE years when the dollar was weakened by the pumping relative to other currencies, and the rest of the world experienced our export of inflation?
This is just the other side of that coin.
Funny how an increased USD forces itself upward by requiring more local currency to repay US based debt.
Then because it is going up foreign investors flock to it for safety.
You’re running low on oatmeal, Bill.
We’re on the same wavelength. I just bought a new box of Quaker Steel Cut oats this morning from the supermarket!
Just ate a delicious bowl of steel cut oatmeal, laced with vanilla extract, cinnamon, salt, pine nuts, dates, raisins and cocoanut flakes. Highly-recommended combination!
“laced with vanilla extract, cinnamon, salt, pine nuts, dates, raisins and cocoanut flakes.”
And that’s exactly what you need to do to drown the cork n’ sawdust flavor and texture of (ugh) steel cut oats.
I usually add unsweetened apple sauce, cinnamon, raisins, raw sunflower seeds, and (sometimes) peanut butter to oatmeal.
Other times I’ll cook the oatmeal with coffee instead of water and add cocoa and sweet & low for a more chocolatey oatmeal.
“laced with vanilla extract, cinnamon, salt, pine nuts, dates, raisins and cocoanut flakes.”…I’ll cook the oatmeal with coffee instead of water and add cocoa…and (sometimes) peanut butter to oatmeal
Thanks for the tips! I like oatmeal and I missed peanut butter here a long time. The peanut butter I could find came in very small jars, wasn’t very good and at about 4 times the price as in The USA.
Now I found it at this bulk type store for way cheaper and way better. Now if I could only find buttermilk, sour cream and decent dill pickles.
http://www.casaspedro.com.br/produtos.html
Palmy, you just gotta get used to it. Texture is adjustable via cook time. When you get used to it you move to the next level. You eat a red grapefruit for breakfast too. Caveat is that if you are on certain prescriptions like a statin, you cannot eat grapefruit. But if you are lucky to not be on such prescriptions a combination of red grapefruit, steel cut oatmeal for breakfast and at least 40 minutes of a cardio workout lowers the LDL quite a bit.
Update the time range to “Max” for some real perspective on the present situation.
But that is their own propaganda…
Yup, declining money velocity is a symptom of supply side economics taken to an excess. When tax codes and economic policies favor the 1%, a portion of the marginal dollars sit in their accounts unspent (zero velocity). OTOH, get that marginal dollar in the hands of the middle class or lower, and it is rapidly spent — resulting a higher velocity and turnover in the economy.
Nonsense. Collapsing velocity is a direct result of grossly inflated prices.
Smarten up.
Grossly inflated prices relative to income
Food,fuel,medical, housing, education
How much is left to spend on other things for the middle class. Not much.
Now if middle class incomes had been rising this wouldn’t be the case. Supporting WPA’s point.
Prices my friend. Prices.
Cheaper steaks for the 4th of July is not looking likely:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2015-03/20/content_19864522.htm
What about Easter ham?
Home ownership is a religious cult. So is statism.
Nobody will ever lie on their deathbed and think about the time they had to replace the water heater.
Buy a house and make a banker a lot richer.
–American dream
“Buy a house and make a banker a lot richer.”
And refinance it as often as possible and you will make a banker richer still.
Don’t do it for the banker, do it for God.
Also for the children…
“Also for the children…”
Ah, yes, the children.
No Child Left Behind.
Bahahahaha … dumb ‘em down, and profit.
Nobody will ever lie on their deathbed and think about the time they had to replace the water heater.
He will if he is on his deathbed due to an explosion caused by his faulty installation of the water heater.
My dad’s water heater caught fire once when he was living alone. The dog basically helped out in warning my dad - my dad was blind. He got out okay, FD put out the flames and he had to make repairs to the bedroom and basement right below the bedroom. Water heater was against an exterior wall by the bedroom.
Odd analogy Goon brought up!
Aging parents trying to maintain aging homes with aging appliances is a scary scenario, indeed!
A friend had her water heater catch fire too, it was in a small closet on the side of the house. She happened to be outside doing yard work, saw the fire when it was small and put it out herself…but it easily could have burned a good bit of the house down by the time the FD arrived otherwise. Anyway, was not aware of water heater fires until then, don’t know how common they are.
My electric service panel once caught on fire when I flipped a tripped circuit breaker back to the “on” position. Looked like something out of Star Wars. Good thing I was there to reach through the glowing smoke and shut off the main circuit breaker.
AFAICT, the cause was arcing through where the circuit breaker’s contact clamped onto the aluminum buss bar, whole area showed a lot of aluminum corrosion material, this was hidden under the circuit break & not easy to see without pulling the breaker off the buss bar. Once the evaporated metal formed a cloud, the arcing expanded rapidly, just took a couple of seconds.
A couple of electricians I talked to said this occasionally causes house fires. It’s much less likely to happen with copper buss bars.
When France is showing more principle and courage than the U.S., this country needs new leadership:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/european-leaders-discuss-iran-nuclear-talks-1426845251
It will take a mushroom cloud to scare people enough this time.
It will take a mushroom cloud to scare people enough this time.
Says another American bellicose Lazy-Boy warrior.
But it might be happening. Happy weekend!
Iran nuclear talks made genuine progress, John Kerry says
CBC.ca-4 hours ago
Will a deal with Iran be struck this weekend?
American Thinker (blog)-8 hours ago
US says nuke talks advance
Al-Arabiya-4 hours ago
Meanwhile Abdul Khan still enjoys his freedom to wander about unfettered. Why would France get worked-up when we didn’t do jack-chit to abduct this nuclear criminal, yet continue forking over $billions to Pakistan’s ruling class?
from Bloomberg business
“Brazilians are feeling the economic pinch as inflation erodes purchasing power and the unemployment rate surges. More than 1 million people demonstrated in cities throughout Brazil Sunday…”
They are probably marching in the streets just because they feel more “alive”.
what always happens when the OPM runs out in the socialist paradises.
the socialist paradises.
Says the Pimp for Communist China.
You can’t make this stuff up. Here we have a Pimp for a Communist country China (that dislikes us) taking cheap pot-shots at a South American democracy Brazil. (that likes us)
Direction matters, China is poor because it was socialist, it is rapidly becoming wealthier because it is moving toward capitalism. Brazil made great strides because it moved towards capitalism, as I predicted when it moved back toward socialism it has collapsed. When the emphasis is on growing the pie everyone gains when the emphasis is on dividing the pie, in the long term everyone loses, it is as simple as that.
China is poor because it was socialist, it is rapidly becoming wealthier because it is moving toward capitalism
This is another symptom of your economic sociopathism. The only thing you value is money and growth at any cost. You place no values on freedoms, people and democracy.
when (Brazil moved back toward socialism it has collapsed.
You don’t know much about Brazil’s history. You just spout nonsense. “Back towards socialism”? Brazil was quasi-fascist till the 80s did not go back “towards socialism” where it never really was and this is Brazil’s first downturn (not caused by the 08 global financial crisis) since 1998-99. And Brazil’s greatest growth lately came under Lula who’d you’d label an outright Commie. (Which he was not of course.)
You just spout nonsense and take pot-shots at Brazil because a much smarter dude than you lives there.
Irony is amusing.
So are stopped-clock predictions that are subject to periodic revisions.
You just spout nonsense and take pot-shots at Brazil because a much smarter dude than you lives there.
A smarter dude may live there but it certainly is not you. I point on that Brazil is in a recession because I have said for years that would happen and it was not China but Brazil that was close to collapse, you were not smart enough to see Brazil’s collapse, I was. They went from having China’s growth rate to have a growth rate over the last three years of about 1/7 of China’s despite China’s slowdown.
This round goes to Rio.
you were not smart enough to see Brazil’s collapse, I was.
I’ve said for years Brazil was due for a recession, would be good in the long term and it was part of the capitalistic cycle. You didn’t see anything that I didn’t see. Every country has ups and downs.
And what? You’re now a prophet because you predicted a country that has not had a domestic induced recession since 1998-99 was going to have a recession someday? Gosh. Wow. You’re good.
Brazil is not “collapsing”. It’s having a recession - maybe a bad one. What would really hurt Brazil is if Oil stays low but you said that won’t happen so if Brazil collapses you will have been dead wrong on oil.
So you can’t “win” on this one Adan. You will be wrong one way or another. Checkmate.
Ups and downs? It was a BRIC superstar now it is an economy sinking like a brick, it has performed like people predicted for China a genuine collapse not a decline to just a slower rate of growth. Do I care about Democracy, of course but in the same way as the founding fathers, which people never have the right to vote to take away someone’s wealth just to redistribute it, that is no different from a dictator. People like you cannot see that but really intelligent people like Jefferson could see it. Mobacracy is just a dictatorship of many, it is as much a threat to my freedom as the Chinese government is to their people. However, I am happy they are gaining more economic freedom and history suggests that economic freedom leads to political freedom and the vice versa is true the lack of economic freedom leads to the lost of political freedom and I see that in the U.S. Whether it is the banning of bullets or mandatory voting it is the lost of political freedom.
I care about Democracy…in the same way as the founding fathers, which people never have the right to vote to take away someone’s wealth just to redistribute it…(Thomas) Jefferson could see it…….
I don’t think you know your founding fathers and the American concept very well Adan.
The founding fathers knew USA was special because there was no real great wealth-inequality, no royalty-and no centuries of landed-gentry dominance. They wrote of such things. And even in the light of a much more egalitarian society, Jefferson himself was totally for progressive taxation.
If Jefferson saw today’s numbers on wealth inequality I think he might raise top marginal rates to 92% as we had in the 50s under Republican Eisenhower.
“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometric progression as they rise”
~Thomas Jefferson (3rd President of the United States)
Speaking of former BRIC superstars fading fast, statist centrally-controlled Russia is starting to see big problems:
Vladimir Putin’s Russia is treading water in a sea of red ink
Reuters
Neither the domestic consumer nor the foreign investor are about to come riding to the rescue of the Russian economy. But in trying to preserve his system of state capitalism and central control, Putin is busy spending the country’s hard currency reserves, which have decreased from $490 billion to $360 billion over the past year.
And new demands keep pouring in: $50 billion has been allocated from the emergency reserve fund to plug Russia’s 2015 budget deficit, with additional payments likely required in 2016; Rosneft, the major oil producer, wants $21 billion, and Gazprom, Russia’s natural gas production company, just asked for $3.2 billion. The entire banking sector also remains fragile.
Meanwhile, Crimea requires significant resources. And no one has yet volunteered to pay the considerable debts of Russia’s regional governments, largely ignored in the Kremlin’s anti-crisis planning.
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/03/18/vladimir-putins-russia-is-treading-water-in-a-sea-of-red-ink/
Ups and downs? It was a BRIC superstar now it is an economy sinking
Yes ups and downs plus something else. It’s the Brazilian business cycle after a very long run and now affected by external factors. (China faltering, oil dropping, commodity bust etc.) The average lengths between recessions is around 9 years and Brazil has not had a domestic induced recession going on 17 years.
You “predicted” a recession that was “in the bag” and was not caused because Brazil went “back towards socialism” where it never really was.
It’s not the “business cycle”. It is a credit bubble popping.
Brazil is not different.
It’s not the “business cycle”. It is a credit bubble popping. Brazil is not different.
Why have you no intellectual interest in contemplating Brazil’s difference? Because of me? A big part of this blog is about examining causes effects, numbers and comparisons of economic events.
Now, I do think a credit bubble popping is big part of it too. And I wouldn’t discount your credit-bubble theory just because I didn’t like you. But if the credit-bubble aspect is true, than that makes Brazil even more different as far as housing. Because Brazil’s mortgage debt to GDP is around 7% compared to USA’s around 70% I recall.
So is not a 7% rate compared to 70% hugely “different”? How can it not be?
That above is mainly what I mean by Brazil being “different”. But you refuse to recognize real economic differences because you don’t like me? And if so, do you also refuse to recognize certain aspects of climate-change because you don’t like “liberals”?
“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometric progression as they rise”
~Thomas Jefferson (3rd President of the United States)
You ignore that he would only support taxation to fund the limited government outlined in the constitution which did not include transferring money from one person to another, such use of government is why the Roman and Greece democracies fell and he was against that happening again. You also ignore that the Federal Reserve has helped concentrate wealth and Obama’s policies of using the federal reserve has concentrated wealth. Finally, you ignore that he would not have supported a 92% federal income tax rate since an income tax was an unconstitutional tax under the federal constitution, he helped draft. It took a constitutional amendment to change that and would not have been necessary if we stayed with the limited government outlined within the constitution.
Jefferson’s view of big government, debt and taxation are so different from yours Lola it is laughable you would quote him:
http://federalbudget.com/biggov.html
(Thomas Jefferson) would not have supported a 92% federal income tax rate since an income tax was an unconstitutional tax under the federal constitution, he helped draft.
It’s not 1787. Of course Thomas Jefferson would be for progressive income tax today because the world has changed. Look at his intent and writings. Thomas Jefferson was for steeply progressive taxes. Thomas Jefferson was for a much more equal playing field. He would be for whatever it would take to lessen gross wealth-inequality in a changing world- thus the amendment processes he helped write allowing income tax in a modern age.
“The farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of this country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.”
Thomas Jefferson on Tariffs (The taxes of that time)
And here from the man who wrote the book on capitalism:
“The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.“
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.
A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have. Thomas Jefferson
USA’s government gives us “everything we want”? Where? Oh yea, for only the .o1% Jefferson would be rolling over in his grave.
Rio,
You were pretty full of Brazil won’t crash because it is so conservative and we really do not have a credit bubble because, blah, blah, blah. This went on for a long time. Now it is clear Brazil did have a credit bubble, and was swept up in the commodities bubble and all sorts of corruption, and the piper must be paid.
It doesn’t matter if I like you. You did not see this coming.
You did not see this coming.
Of course I did. I just didn’t care. That’s what you can’t figure out.
You were pretty full of Brazil won’t crash because it is so conservative and we really do not have a credit bubble because, bla
Sorry. You just hear what you want to hear. I’ve posted stuff from 2009 showing it.
I have more btw.
(Reuters) - China’s economy is likely to grow around 7 percent this year and 6.9 percent in 2016 as the government pushes reforms on interest rates and the currency and pursues slower but higher-quality growth, the OECD said on Friday.
China can avoid an abrupt slowdown as long as the government ensures an orderly unwinding of economic imbalances, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said in its latest survey on the world’s second-largest economy.
OECD Secretary-general Angel Gurria said he also expected domestic demand will be strong enough to prevent deflation.
“I think 7 percent (economic growth) is more sustainable, 7 percent avoids bubbles and 7 percent is attainable,” he told Reuters in an interview.
Wages have stopped growing in China, factories are cutting back, building has slowed, sales and prices are dropping and loans are defaulting.
It’s long since time to get your money out of the Double Golden Happy Idiot fund.
Show me just one article that shows that wages have stopped growing in China. As far as the rest, yes in every country there are some defaults and some factories cutting back, it is a normal part of every economy. However, the country as a whole is growing by about 7% per year both China and outside western entities actually agree on that number. Now, whether it is 7.4% or 7% reasonable minds can and do disagree.
“Show me just one article that shows that wages have stopped growing in China.”
Go here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2014/12/17/as-chinas-economy-slows-so-too-does-growth-in-workers-wages/
Combo slowing of wage growth is not the end to wage growth:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/20/business/as-growth-slows-china-pins-hopes-on-consumer-spending.html?_r=0
How can you possibly believe that an article that shows that minimum wage growth has slowed from a 17% growth rate to a 13% wage growth rate, supports your contention that wage growth has stopped? Come on Combo you are smarter than that, I know it.
An excerpt:
“A slowdown in China’s economy and its manufacturing sector, combined with a lengthy squeeze on credit, means that “many low-paid workers have seen next to no increase in take-home pay this year,” China Labor Bulletin said.”
Big picture Combo big picture, in the aggregate 10% wage growth for all workers in 2014 and probably 6-7% in 2015 with inflation within a percentage point of our inflation rate.
China’s wages slowing? Maybe India’s too (not sure)?
Good. That means I might get a raise in 5 years when I’m in my early 60s. It would be my first raise since 2009…
“Wage growth” is just a representation of central command minimum wage targets, not something real like household earnings. The same for their GPD numbers, targets for state owned enterprise production is all they are, not measures of the actual economy.
Consumer spending is collapsing in China, just as industrial output is collapsing along with new investment. The spectacular housing construction peaked and is collapsing. All their new debt is going to service old debt, the economy has stopped growing and money is leaking out of the country at $1 Tr/yr. Rising wages on the whole is quite unpossible.
Here is Anne Stevenson-Yang;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=C2SStFt-k_A
Start at 8 minutes.
and money is leaking out of the country at $1 Tr/yr
Which is always a sure fire sign that feces are about to hit the fan. Big time.
It’s being facilitated by the Chinese government and ours. Both have upped the legal amounts and widened the asset categories this cash can go toward.
CIB issuance: massive contraction and diverse risk
“The CIB issuance has went into downturn in the second half of last year. It was in the first half of last year when the highest monthly circulation of CIB reached more than 100 billion yuan, but after July, the monthly circulation has almost been halved.”
“Thus the liquidity risk of city investment enterprises will greatly increase under current circumstance of financing channels for city investment enterprises tightened and the maturing debts in 2015 being huge. If city investment enterprises cannot borrow new debts to repay the old ones or if they have no enough money to keep it up, the possibility of occurring credit risk events will be great.”
http://en.ce.cn/Insight/201503/20/t20150320_4883621.shtml
Massive Contraction, Huge and Great Risk. Sounds like something is broken.
“If city investment enterprises cannot borrow new debts to repay the old ones …”
(chuckle)
“… or if they have not enough money to keep it up …”
Yes, yes, go on …
“… the possibility of occurring credit risk events will be great.”
Bahahahahahahaha … as if they are not already there!
I may have posted this previously — if so, many apologies!
The global financial system stands on the brink of second credit crisis
The world financial system stands on the brink of a second credit crisis as interbank lending shows increasing risk
Weather: record 110,000 lightning bolts strike during ’superstorms’
The second credit crisis is already unfolding in China
Photo: ALAMY
By John Ficenec
6:57AM GMT 09 Feb 2015
The world economy stands on the brink of a second credit crisis as the vital transmission systems for lending between banks begin to seize up and the debt markets fall over. The latest round of quantitative easing from the European Central Bank will buy some time but it looks like too little too late.
It was the collapse of US house prices back in 2007 that resulted in the seizure of the credit markets and banking crisis of 2008. And it would be easy to lay the blame for the 2008 financial crisis at the doorstep of American home owners, easy but wrong. The collapse of the US housing market was not the cause of the crisis, it was merely a symptom of the more insidious ills of cheap credit, low risk and the promise of another bailout round the corner.
The Keynesian pump priming that has taken place on a colossal scale across the world is failing. The Chinese economy was growing at 12pc in 2010, but that slowed to 7.7pc in 2013 and 7.4pc last year — its weakest in 24 years. Economists expect Chinese growth to slow to 7pc this year. It is the once booming property sector that has turned into a bust, and is now dragging down the wider economy as the bubble deflates.
The second global credit crisis is now already unfolding in China some 6,800 miles away from the epicentre of the first in the US. The bonds of Chinese real estate companies are now falling like dominoes. Kaisa, a Shenzhen-based, Hong Kong-listed developer that raised $2.5bn on international markets had to be bailed out by rival group Sunac last week after it defaulted onits debts. The bonds of other Chinese real estate groups such as Glorious Property and Fantasia have also sold off heavily as the contagion spreads.
Chinese authorities have responded to try and contain the situation. The People’s Bank of China introduced a surprise 50-point cut in the Reserve Requirement Ratio (RRR) from 20pc to 19.5pc. But this misses the point, the credit system in China is completely unsustainable unless new money is printed every year to refinance the old, simply tinkering to ease liquidity won’t cut it.
The strain in its banking system is highlighted by the elevated levels of the Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate (SHIBOR), which shows Chinese banks are worried about lending to each other.
There is no schadenfreude in watching China unravel. The idea that this is an isolated incident is laughable, remember the very same was said of US subprime. The problem is that banks such as Standard Chartered and HSBC have both rapidly increased their lending operations in Asia since 2008.
Loans are very easy to make, it is getting the money back that is tricky.
…
Kaisa, a Shenzhen-based, Hong Kong-listed developer that raised $2.5bn on international markets had to be bailed out by rival group Sunac last week after it defaulted onits debts.
That is an interesting concept: “bailed out by a rival group”
Under a capitalist system, one’s incentive would instead be to let your competitor fail (nay, celebrate it!), compete to acquire their market share, buy up their productive assets that get liquidated, etc.
I would be fascinated to know more about this “bailout”.
Companies in every industry loaned each other money, backed each others loans, and made their profits by paying each other high interest on those loans. And the banks abetted the ponzi economy with billions of dollars of shadow loans. The unravelling of these loans, and the increasing number of defaults, will be only the beginning of the bad news that will be coming out of China.
Comment by Bring Back the WPA
2015-03-20 08:48:03
“You want bearish real estate news? There you have it. If you own property at 11 feet above sea level or lower, your property will be TOAST.”
——————————————————————————
For those of you alarmists running for the high ground you better look out for Global Made Man Choking / Climate Change.
Regardless, this is the most honest author of a study I have seen yet.
“There may not be, but there probably will be. Of course, we don’t know when,” Farrell said.
When will Yellowstone blow? Supervolcano threatens to wipe out much of North America
By Kevin Maimann, Edmonton Sun
First posted: Sunday, March 09, 2014 12:00 AM EST
EDMONTON — Imagine a thick fog closing in on much of Western Canada.
As you step outside under the blotted sun, you’re covered in sharp, grey particles that blanket the streets.
Scientists have discovered Yellowstone National Park supervolcano is two-and-a-half times larger than previously thought, and it could erupt with 2,000 times the force of Mount St. Helens — a blast that would devastate North America and dump more than 10 cm of ash on Western Canada alone.
The national park and surrounding communities would be annihilated, while plants and entire farms hundreds of kilometres away would be wiped out. Escape would be futile — ash damages commercial aircraft engines, making flight hazardous.
Sulfur entering the upper atmosphere would turn to sulfur dioxide, circle the globe and drop temperatures. Worldwide famine would likely ensue.
“There’s not a whole lot you could do,” said Jamie Farrell with the department of geology and geophysics at the University of Utah.
“Once this thing revs up, there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
Farrell is the lead author of a study presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco in December that determined the magma chamber beneath the Yellowstone caldera is 88 km long and 29 km wide, reaching depths up to 15 km. That makes it the largest imaged magma reservoir in the world.
But is an eruption in the cards? No one really knows.
“There may not be, but there probably will be. Of course, we don’t know when,” Farrell said.
http://www.torontosun.com/…-blow-supervolcano-threatens-to-wipe-out-much-of-north-america - 235k -
If you own property at 11 feet above sea level or lower, your property will be TOAST.”
Of course , it will sometime is the next few hundreds of thousands of years a normal warming, not having anything with man, would warm the climate enough to flood it. But even before that a normal hurricane will probably destroy it. Owning a property just 11 feet above sea level was never wise. It is why for centuries people use to have cheap cabins by the sea but would build their permanent structures higher up. I was in New Orleans once during a tropical storm, the older structures kept dry but newer structures had to deal with minor flooding. Of course, the older structures were built in the higher areas of the city.
Look on the bright side: it would probably reverse immigration, both legal and illegal.
OTOH, I just don’t understand why they don’t start using Yellowstone for geothermal energy. It would bleed all that pressure building up and I’ve read it could power much of the US cheaply. I guess that would make too much sense, though.
“It would bleed all that pressure building up …”
Would Old Faithful then become unfaithful?
A meteor strike would wreak havoc, but it would more likely bring on an ice age than warming.
A meteor strike would wreak havoc
I have been hoping for a large meteor strike on a Joint Session of Congress hearing the President deliver an in-person address, but have been cruelly disappointed.
What does “bearish” mean. Anyone?
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2015/03/20/why-i-am-climate-change-skeptic
The Heartland Institute! Perfect illustration of my point:
“In the 1990s, the [Heartland Institute] worked with the tobacco company Philip Morris to question serious cancer risks to secondhand smoke, and to lobby against government public-health reforms. Starting in 2008, the Institute has organized conferences to discuss and criticize the scientific opinion of global warming.”
“Oil and gas companies have contributed to the Heartland Institute, including over $600,000 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2005.[79] Greenpeace reported that Heartland received almost $800,000 from ExxonMobil.[29] ”
-wikipedia-
Scientists for hire. They used to deny the dangers of tobacco for money, now they deny climate change for money.
Scientists for hire. They used to deny the dangers of tobacco for money, now they deny climate change for money.
Nice work if you can get it.
Are Grexit worries keeping you up at night?
Europe
Bond Markets Bet on Grexit
Mar 20, 2015 12:52 PM EDT
By Mark Gilbert
Two taboos about Greece’s future as a member of the euro club were broken this week when the German finance minister all but invited Greece to return to the drachma and the Dutch finance minister floated a temporary ban on Greeks’ taking their money out of the country.
Suggestions that some German officials are less than enthusiastic about Greece remaining in the euro and that capital controls are possible aren’t all that surprising. Nevertheless, the openness with which they were discussed shows the lack of progress the newly elected government has made in reaching agreement with the nation’s creditors. Greece’s financial future looks increasingly perilous.
Capital Controls
The bond vigilantes are giving Greece a huge vote of no confidence, doubling the country’s 10-year yield in the past six months and driving its three-year borrowing cost to a frankly unsustainable 23 percent. At that level, investors are signaling genuine concern that the country won’t be able to pay its debts and can’t retain its membership in the single-currency club:
Mr. Market Punishes Greece
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble expects Greece to leave the euro, according to Friday’s edition of Bild. The German newspaper, which didn’t cite its sources, said Schaeuble “is internally anticipating: the Greeks are going to leave the euro. But German Chancellor Merkel reportedly wants to keep the Greeks in the euro — for political reasons.” While Angela Merkel has the bigger say in what happens to Greece, it’s not clever to rile the finance minister of your biggest national creditor, as Greece has consistently done this year.
Last week’s revelation of a now infamous video of Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis raising his middle finger to Germany at a 2013 conference won’t have done anything to temper Schaeuble’s obvious mistrust of his counterpart. On Monday, he accused the Greek administration of “lying to the public” in its pledges to undo economic austerity measures. On Wednesday, he said “time is running out for Greece.” Last week, he suggested Varoufakis wasn’t up to speed on the terms of his country’s bailout: “I’m willing to lend him my copy,” was Schaeuble’s barbed comment. That prompted Greece’s ambassador in Berlin to formally complain that his government had been insulted.
…
Pure Kabuki theater. A Grexit would bring down the Eurozone’s financial house of cards, and Frau Merkel & Co. know it. They will find a way to extend and pretend using the ECB’s printing press until the Ponzi can no longer be sustained.
It seems like the new Greek leaders fully understand this.
ft dot com
March 20, 2015 7:31 pm
Greek bailout summit ends in disarray
Peter Spiegel in Brussels
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras arrives for a statement during an European Council summit on March 20, 2015 at the Council of the European Union (EU) Justus Lipsius building in Brussels. European leaders meet for a two-day summit likely to be dominated by Greece’s cash crunch.
AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYS©AFP
Greece’s prime minister and fellow eurozone leaders emerged from a meeting early on Friday morning touting a breakthrough agreement to unlock much-needed bailout funds for Athens — only to fall into disagreement hours later about what it all meant.
Two days of intensive and occasionally heated negotiations at an EU summit in Brussels amounted to little more than a repeat of talks a month ago between eurozone finance ministers that officials then also hailed as the definitive agreement to get the final bailout review under way.
So similar were the two deals that, much like the one finalised last month, leaders involved in the talks could not agree on what was agreed within 12 hours after a late-night meeting aimed at resolving all differences.
Athens is facing a severe cash crunch. It needs fresh sources of financing to pay wages and pensions at the end of this month following a €1bn revenue shortfall in the first two months of the year, according to Athens bankers.
At the centre of the dispute is what reforms Athens must undertake to access €7.2bn in rescue aid, and how eurozone lenders can verify that Greece’s radical anti-austerity government is actually implementing them.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, made clear at a post-summit news conference that the starting point for Alexis Tsipras, Greek prime minister, was a December 10 inventory of incomplete reforms promised by the previous Greek government. “The Greek government has the opportunity to pick individual reforms that are still outstanding as of 10 December and replace them with other reforms if they . . . have the same effect,” Ms Merkel said.
It is a potentially incendiary demand since the document Ms Merkel referred to — a letter written by Greece’s then centre-right prime minister Antonis Samaras and his finance minister Gikas Hardouvelis — was the focus of particular scorn for Mr Tsipras’s far-left Syriza party on the campaign trail.
Mr Tsipras insisted at his own press conference that Ms Merkel was mistaken. “Forget the commitment of the former government. There are no austerity measures. There is no letter of Hardouvelis,” Mr Tsipras argued. “I asked [the other leaders]: do you expect me to . . . go through this evaluation and implement measures that Mr Samaras was not able to implement? The answer was no.”
…
Will the Fed’s rate hike postponement save oil prices from collapse?
Can the Fed get the BRICs to step up and mortgage another decade of their future away?
The Fed in action:
https://www.google.com/search?q=kick+the+can&biw=1813&bih=857&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=ioINVbrXKdLhoASguIGADw&sqi=2&ved=0CD4QsAQ&dpr=0.75
No, because renewables like solar and wind are, and will continue, to erode fossil fuel’s market share. China and India are going big on solar — 100 GW in India alone by 2022.
Solar and wind are piss in the ocean compared to the combined contribution of fossil fuels to world energy consumption.
I’ve peed in the Atlantic, but never in the Pacific.
I’m not sure if I’ve peed in the Gulf of Mexico. It was summertime, and the water temperature was close to 90.
I’ve peed in both the Atlantic and the Pacific at the same time. And I wasn’t even near the coast.
Oddfellow, you are one incredibly BSD if you can do that.
I’ve peed in both the Atlantic and the Pacific at the same time
Sling Blade Pee Joke:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUfMgc-b9zw
I’ve peed in both the Atlantic and the Pacific at the same time. And I wasn’t even near the coast.
You were on the continental divide?
It is Ironic that solar and wind can reduce fossil fuel share while at the same time increasing fossil fuel consumption. It simply takes more energy to build out that alternative stuff than it pays back. Math is hard, even when it’s that simple.
“…while at the same time increasing fossil fuel consumption.”
My personal favorite ‘fossil fuel substitute’ is not solar or wind, but ethanol, which is derived from corn.
Of course the corn was grown using mechanized farm implements that burn fossil fuel, was cultivated using fossil-fuel based fertilizers and pesticides, and was delivered to the ethanol production facility using fossil-fuel powered transportation. The math question here is whether the fossil fuel consumption of using a gallon of ethanol is more or less than that for using a gallon of gasoline.
The math question here is whether the fossil fuel consumption of using a gallon of ethanol is more or less than that for using a gallon of gasoline.
And the next question is how the math changes if the farm implement and the delivery trucks are burning a biofuel instead of fossil-fuel. They could be. Today, they burn diesel—but they could just as easily be burning biodiesel, e.g. vegetable oil.
Does the biofuel production suddenly look better on paper?
“…burning a biofuel instead of fossil-fuel.”
Wouldn’t that create a sort-of multiplier effect on fossil fuel inputs to biofuel production?
Corn is also a terrible source of ethanol, requiring far more fertilizer and water to grow than other potential plant sources of ethanol. It was chosen by us as our source of ethanol only because of the power of big agribusiness, and Iowa’s early primaries.
One should never use corn as ‘proof’ ethanol doesn’t make sense. It was choosing corn as our source of ethanol that doesn’t make sense.
No, it was the brain-dead 95% of the electorate voting for crony capitalism election after election that makes no sense.
“It was choosing corn as our source of ethanol that doesn’t make sense.”
Seems like it made great sense for Big Oil.
It made great sense for big Ag moreso. Yes it increased oil consumption, but to benefit the corn field.
Blue, can you point to real data to substantiate your claim? In other words, research not funded by the Petroleum Institute…
Prime, maybe I could piece it together with links, maybe not, but it would be quite the effort, and I am more interested in a date this afternoon with a little girl of mine that wants to see the movie Cinderella.
I will say that I know this from being an insider for a decade and worked with the guys who designed and built the machinery to make solar cells. At that level it was common knowledge that the whole industry was a sophisticated draw on public subsidy, which made no economic sense otherwise.
It would be very easy to research what a big lie and government sponsored wealth transfer in the name of the planet ethanol in gas is. I’ve seen many write-ups on that, some lately even from the EPA.
The very fact that it is exploding even in countries that don’t subsidize solar power suggests you don’t know what you are talking about.
Wikipedia Return on energy invested for
Hydro 100
Coal 80
Wind 18
Nat gas 10
solar is 6.8
This is a quote from scientific America
Solar (PV): There are a wide variety of estimates of solar PV’s EROI as well—in part because the technologies and production techniques are improving fast, a major reason for the large price reductions over the past decade. I used the most recent peer-reviewed study I could find (Raugei et al., 2012, cited above). Solar PV’s EROI is almost certainly rising (Raugei et al., 2012; personal communication, Michael Dale of Stanford University). The latest data in Raugei’s study was at least a couple of years old, so the EROI today is most likely higher than 6, the number cited in my article.
You’re ignoring the fact that the Chinese-made panels are being sold at unsustainable prices. And let’s not even mention the environmental destruction and lack of worker health & safety protections in that country.
Plus, low-grade cells may peter out in far less than their advertised life (much like the CFLs did and have).
There is no free lunch.
“personal communication…”
Well you have her’s and you have mine. Solar is on the rise in China, where most of the overcapacity is. You call that market unsubsidized. LOL. Do not confuse falling prices with rising return on energy. People might conclude that you do not know what you are talking about.
Like they care who gets covered, who doesn’t or what it costs. The Gooberment took over Healthcare and that’s all it ever was about.
CBO: Obamacare to Hit Only 65 Percent of 2015 Coverage Target
7:23 AM, Mar 20, 2015 • By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON
Given that Obamacare’s supporters like to take the Congressional Budget Office’s overly optimistic scoring of the president’s signature legislation as gospel, it’s fun to look at how poorly Obamacare is actually doing in relation to earlier CBO projections. When the Democrats rammed Obamacare through Congress in 2010 without a single Republican vote, the CBO said that the unpopular overhaul would lead to a net increase of 26 million people with health insurance by 2015 (15 million through Medicaid plus 13 million through the Obamacare exchanges minus 2 million who would otherwise have had private insurance but wouldn’t because of Obamacare).
Fast-forwarding five years, the CBO now says that Obamacare’s tally for 2015 will actually be a net increase of just 17 million people (10 million through Medicaid plus 11 million through the Obamacare exchanges minus 4 million who would otherwise have had private insurance but won’t, or don’t, because of Obamacare).
In other words, Obamacare is now slated to hit only 65 percent of the CBO’s original coverage projection for 2015.
Obamacare’s under-publicized failure on this key point is attributable to a variety of factors, including but not limited to the following: People aren’t thrilled with Obamacare-compliant insurance’s high cost and limited doctor networks, and some would even rather pay a fine for refusing to buy such insurance than pay its premiums; the Supreme Court ruled that part of Obamacare was unconstitutional, thereby giving states more freedom not to help expand it; and HealthCare.gov has been more reminiscent of DMV.org than of Expedia.com.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/cbo-obamacare-hit-only-65-percent-2015-coverage-target_893012.html
Obamacare ended up insuring fewer people than a strong recovery would have insured. Ranks of the uninsured naturally rise with rising unemployment and fall during periods of low unemployment. Obama by pursing policies that have caused the slowest post war recovery has actually caused more people to be uninsured.
The Gooberment took over Healthcare and that’s all it ever was about.
“Took over”? ObamaCare covers only about 5% of the population and most of them through private insurance. Explain mathematically or in any other logical way how providing a system for 5% of the population to mostly get private insurance is a governmental takeover of health-care.
Like they care who gets covered,
So now Repubs act like they care more are not covered?
Obamacare’s under-publicized failure
Part of the reason “less people are covered” is that 22 Repub states refused to expand Medicaid leaving many Americans to literally die. In 2010 during the CBO projections, no one had any idea that could happen. See SCOTUS 2012 decision.
The other reason could be is that many more people got coverage through new jobs.
“Took over”? ObamaCare covers only about 5% of the population and most of them through private insurance. Explain mathematically or in any other logical way how providing a system for 5% of the population to mostly get private insurance is a governmental takeover of health-care.”
—————————————————————————
Covers only about 5% of the population but rules over %100 of the population.
—————————————————————–
“I have been making this speech for twelve years and people would come up to me and say, ‘but wait a second you’re going to tax my heath insurance?’ And I’d say no, no, no! We’re going to tax subsidies on your health insurance. And they’d go ‘you’re going to tax my heath insurance?’ And you just can’t get through its politically impossible. So despite the fact we thought we might get this as part of the law it was going to be dead.”
“Until a second Massachusetts hero arose, John Kerry. John Kerry said no-no we’re not going to tax your heath insurance, we’re going to tax those evil insurance companies. We’re going to impose a tax that if they sell health insurance that’s too expensive we’re going to tax them. And conveniently the tax rate will happen to be the marginal tax rate on the income tax code. So basically it’s the same thing – we just tax insurance companies, they pass on higher prices, that offsets the tax break we get into being the same thing. It’s a very clever basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.”
Jonathan Gruber
———————————————————————–
Katie Pavlich | Dec 09, 2014
Before Obamacare was passed and when it was in the process of being written, Gruber visited the White House 21 times and met directly with President Obama in the Oval Office. He was praised by a number of Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid as the expert media should talk to about the legislation. He’s known as “the man” on the Obamacare. Back in 2007 during a Brooking’s Institute event, then Senator Obama said he “liberally steals ideas” from Gruber.
———————————————————————–
URI removes video of controversial MIT economist Jonathan Gruber
The University of Rhode Island has removed from its website a video of MIT economist Jonathan Gruber after he made headlines for statements about crafting the Affordable Care Act.
By Lynn Arditi
Posted Nov. 19, 2014 @ 10:10 pm
The University of Rhode Island has removed from its website a video of MIT economist Jonathan Gruber after he made headlines for statements about exploiting the “stupidity of the American voter” in crafting the Affordable Care Act.
Gruber, considered an architect of the law known as Obamacare, said in one video from a lecture last year at the University of Pennsylvania that the bill was deliberately written so it was difficult to understand.
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” a story that ran in The Boston Globe on Nov. 13 quoted Gruber as saying in the video. “And, basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get anything to pass.”
http://www.providencejournal.com/…ideo-of-controversial-mit-economist-jonathan-gruber.ece - 78k
Covers only about 5% of the population but rules over %100 of the population.
That makes no sense. 95% of Americans are not on the ACA. Certain taxes and regulations here and there to help insure our fellow Americans who could not get covered before is not ruling over 100% of the population.
USA is a country, a people and a society-not a sociopathic winner-take-all free-for-all.
Covers only about 5% of the population but rules over %100 of the population.
He means that ACA “regulates” other non ACA provided insurance plans, by making it illegal to not cover previous conditions, or allowing you to keep your adult kids on your plan until they turn 26, or mandating preventive care be covered without copays or deductibles.
The thing is, private insurance has been regulated for decades.
CBS NewsOctober 30, 2013, 9:46 PM
Obamacare: More than 2 million people getting booted from existing health insurance plans
http://www.cbsnews.com/…/ - 167k -
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Most individual health insurance isn’t good enough for Obamacare
Apr 3, 2013
“Now, they buy a policy and when they get sick, they may go broke anyway because the policy leaves them with so much to pay,” she said, noting that deductibles of $10,000 are not uncommon.
money.cnn.com/2013/04/03/news/economy/health-insurance-exchanges/ - 96k -
——————————————————————
Feds give 2-year grace period for non-Obamacare plans
Dan Mangan
Wednesday, 5 Mar 2014 | 4:15 PM ET
The Obama administration will let people with health insurance plans that don’t comply with Affordable Care Act standards keep them through October 2017 if their states allow it, officials said Wednesday in announcing a series of final Obamacare rules.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101469265 - 262k -
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Most individual health insurance isn’t good enough for Obamacare
Given that Obamacare “Bronze” coverage is an effing joke, I can’t even begin to imagine how crappy those 2 million policies that didn’t meet Obamacare standards were.
“And, basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get anything to pass.”
Gruber is by no means the only corporate statist counting on the stupidity of the American voter to pass something that is so obviously inimical to the latters’ own interests.
ACA sucks. The premiums are too high and the insurance companies are just middlemen who make money off of sick people and doctors. Medicare For All is a much simpler solution. Single Payer!
When it comes to medical care, I bet every medical practitioner has committed insurance fraud to some degree.
When you ask a doctor how much a procedure costs and they can’t give you a straight answer, then that’s a pretty good indicator that the charge will be the maximum amount they can get out of your insurance carrier.
I hope something like that evolves eventually…in the meantime I’m fortunate to be covered by a combined insurer/provider (Kaiser Foundation FWIW) and won’t move out of their coverage area…am getting old and have read waaay too many horror stories about insurance co. battles, getting billed for six figures by doctors you have never met (who evidently made a brief appearance in the operating room), etc.
“Photographs from inside the terminal Friday showed White laying on the floor with a machete not far from him. Another showed a woman in a TSA uniform being stretchered away.”
Yet another miracle!
The attacker was shot in the chest, thigh and face yet is photographed handcuffed and laying face down on the floor without so much as a speck of blood anywhere.
I guess when they are done with common sense gun laws we will be moving on to common sense machete laws.
Man, 63, wielding machete and wasp spray attacks female TSA worker and is shot three times by police at New Orleans airport
By Kieran Corcoran For Dailymail.com and Associated Press
Published: 21:12 EST, 20 March 2015 | Updated: 07:52 EST, 21 March 2015
A machete-wielding man was shot at New Orleans airport Friday night after attacking three TSA officials.
Richard White, 63, attacked two security officials with wasp spray then cut a guard with his machete at a security checkpoint in Louis Armstrong International Airport.
He slashed a female TSA officials, wounding her right arm. During the attack he was shot in the chest, the thigh and the face, before being taken to hospital.
The female TSA worker was also taken to hospital, but her injuries are not thought to be serious.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3005139/At-one-injured-shooting-New-Orleans-airport-man-drew-machete.html#ixzz3V2DRQxzk
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Richard White, 63, attacked two security officials with wasp spray
They must not have been WASPs because it didn’t work.
This one is interesting on a similar line (man carrying gun into airport) with a different outcome.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2014/11/22/open-carry-sky-harbor-airport/19344603/
What is interesting is that this stuff (machete attacks in airports) doesn’t even happen in places like Mexico. Only here.
Being American is a mental disorder.
When people get shot in Mexico do they bleed?
Just the same as unarmed Americans do when American cops pump them full of lead.
Well that hatchet dude got shot 3 times and he didn’t spill a drop.
Here is an old, though interesting, article which shows how bad housing policy can cause social cancer to metastasize.
It’s about the home town of the WH incumbent and the presumptive future one.
Chiraq—How Chicago Became The Deadliest City In America
By Jessica Ruane on November 20, 2013 · Crime
Chicago is the third most populated city in the United States and has long been seen as a bustling, international hub for some of the world’s largest industries including finance, communications, and transportation. Chicago has the fourth-largest gross domestic product (GDP) among metropolitan areas in the world and is a veritable melting pot of different races, cultures, and beliefs. The tourist brochures boast cultural attractions, scenic views, and a “close-knit” community. But the realities of some of Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods might make you think twice before booking a ticket to the Windy City.
So, with all that Chicago has going for it, why was one of America’s greatest cities recently dubbed “Chiraq” a nickname that parallels the iconic city to a violent war zone?
The name Chiraq first emerged after it was widely reported that more people had been murdered in Chicago in the last decade than the number of American troops killed in Afghanistan since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. According to WND news, “Between 2003 and 2011, 4,265 people were murdered in the city of Chicago. In 2012 alone, 512 people were murdered in the city.” The death toll has continued to climb in 2013, as Chicago officially became the murder capital of the United States. Compare that to, “Operation Enduring Freedom, the name for the war in Afghanistan, which started Oct. 7, 2001, has seen a total of 2,166 killed.” These numbers generated many headlines proclaiming that Chicago was officially more deadly than an active war zone. . . hence the disturbing new nickname, Chiraq.
What Happened?
While most cities in America have become safer over the last decade, Chicago is the exception to the rule. In the early 2000s, Chicago demolished its inner city project housing, hoping to break up the gangs that ruled them, and scattered its residents throughout the city. While the towering buildings of the projects were certainly a horrific place to call home, and were ruled entirely by the gangs that lived there, they were actually serving as a kind of dysfunctional insulator for gang activity, shielding the majority of the city from the violence within.
After the projects were demolished, the residents that lived there were given Section 8 housing and relocated. Suddenly, hundreds of warring gang members were uprooted from their homes and placed in the middle of rival, unfamiliar territories. That’s when the violence began.
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I’m back into steady easier work on weekdays as my company assigned me to work offsite elsewhere in Orange County. Commute is about 45 minutes each way but sometimes have to go to L.A. and that is a 90 minute commute each way. it’s all stuff I’m an expert on. Takes me away from my anonymity software I do work on. Made a great deal of progress on the anonymity software.
People should not kid themselves. Work is not fun all the time. Work is work. When you create new useful products that most first world people would pay to have, that is fun work. When you create products that you don’t give a rat’s a$$ about, it’s just…work. Being on top of the game most of the time is very rare for all of us.
This is why you live below your means and invest. So that later you can work maybe 2 months out of the year on something you really enjoy and and complete it. Then wait ten months or so (whatever it takes) when you find some other cool project that the world wants. It’s being your own boss.
Never stop working does not mean only do boring work. “Retirement” is basically the transition to no longer doing some work that does not interest you.
“Work is not fun all the time. Work is work.”
Learn that simple lesson, and learn to cope with the ‘not fun’ aspects of whatever job you happen to have, and you can thrive throughout your working years!
Another important insight: Work that is not ‘fun all the time’ creates opportunity for those with the skills and psychological resilience to handle it. And the folks who either are not sufficiently skilled or psychologically resilient for such challenges will be happy to have you around.
What’s fun is working at a company that has adopted all the wonders offered up by Six Sigma.
Working at such a company is like working at Comedy Central.
Never a dull day.
Indeed. SSS - Six Sigma Sux
People should not kid themselves. Work is not fun all the time. Work is work. When you create new useful products that most first world people would pay to have, that is fun work. When you create products that you don’t give a rat’s a$$ about, it’s just…work.
In other words, making toys is fun, but working on the infrastructure (OS, BIOS, networks, generic HW, etc.) that the toys rely on to work, not so much.
Oh I cannot stand computer games. I am old school for sure but games and game programming are boring. I mean software to make personal computers more spy proof.
How is your fracking junk holding up these days?
Markets More: AFP Oil Junk Bonds High Yield
Cash-strapped oil companies have two options: high-interest debt or bankruptcy
John Biers, AFP
Mar. 21, 2015, 8:05 AM
Workers unload oil barrels from a ship at a jetty in Yangon on March 16, 2015
© AFP/File Soe Than Win
New York (AFP) - The oil price crash is taking a growing financial toll on companies throughout the industry, forcing some into bankruptcy and others to issue expensive junk bonds to stay afloat.
On Tuesday, shale producer Quicksilver Resources filed for bankruptcy protection for its US operations after missing a bond payment.
Earlier bankruptcies include a March 3 filing by Cal Dive International, which installs offshore pipelines and platforms.
And energy firms are now the top issuers, by a wide margin, of junk bonds, which require them to pay much higher yields than conventional bonds.
On March 5, US Gulf Coast producer Energy XXI issued $1.45 billion in bonds that pay a steep 11 percent, planning to use the money in part to pay other lenders.
Energy XXI had previously warned it would not be able to make payments if commodity prices stay low.
The par value of high-yield energy company bonds on the market surged by about $30 billion in the first two months of the year, representing both new issues and downgrades.
That was far more than any other sector, according to Fitch Ratings.
The rise in junk bonds and bankruptcies are the latest sign of stress in the petroleum sector as US crude prices linger around $45 a barrel, down nearly 60 percent since June.
Low prices depress profits and pinch balance sheets, especially for smaller companies, which can be heavily leveraged.
That is forcing more and more of them to go to capital markets to stay afloat.
“It is definitely a challenging environment all around for a smaller (lower-rated) name to get a deal done,” said Mark Sadeghian, a senior director for energy at Fitch.
“They definitely have to pay up quite a bit.”
…
Norway’s Domestic Pension Fund Says Oil Bonds Now Pay for Risk
by Jonas Cho Walsgard
4:01 PM PDT
March 19, 2015
North Sea Oil Field
Gases burn from a flare stack on the Oseberg A offshore gas platform operated by Statoil ASA in the Oseberg North Sea oil field 140kms from Bergen, Norway. A 50 percent plunge in North Sea crude prices is weighing on the economy of western Europe’s largest oil producer. Photographer: Kristian Helgesen/Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) — Government Pension Fund Norway, the domestic counterpart to the country’s $850 billion wealth fund, said bonds issued by oil-related companies now provide compensation for the risk of credit losses.
The bonds, which are mostly high-yield, have been pummeled as oil prices slumped last year, driving the yield spread investors demand versus benchmarks wider. Now, some investors are coming back, and the DNB High Yield Norway Total Return Index has risen 5 percent from a 15-month low in February.
Oil-related debt spreads are three to four times wider than six to nine months ago “and then you get a completely different compensation for taking that risk,” Lars Tronsgaard, deputy managing director of Folketrygdfondet, said in an interview on March 11. “When we see dramatic changes in the pricing of risk we need to reassess.”
A 50 percent plunge in North Sea crude prices is weighing on the economy of western Europe’s largest oil producer. Norway is Scandinavia’s largest junk-bond market as investors sought higher returns from riskier debt of mainly energy companies, a market that has now ground to halt.
The high-yield segment accounted for 63 percent of all corporate bonds sold in Norway last year, rising 4 percent to 65 billion kroner ($8.6 billion), according to data from DNB.
Not Concerned
Folketrygdfondet has more ability than most investors to take on risk. The 185.7 billion-krone fund is a closed fund with no pay-outs for now. At the end of 2014, 83 percent of the fund was invested in Norway and the rest in Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Its bond portfolio gained 9.8 percent last year and has returned 7.1 percent a year over the past five years, with an excess return of 1 percent.
“We’re not concerned by market risk,” said Tronsgaard, who manages the fund’s 77.8 billion-krone ($9.4 billion) bond portfolio. “If the risk premium more than covers the credit risk, we can live with the market adjusting the price.”
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Have worries about the dry bulk shipping industry passed at this point?
March 2015 BIMCO Shipping Market Overview and Outlook Report: Dry Bulk Shipping
Demand
How bad can a market be? Extremely bad if you look at the dry bulk shipping market since early December 2014. The fourth quarter of 2014 was hugely disappointing, ending in complete despair, with Capesize rates diving below US$5000 per day in mid-December. On 18 February, the BDI hit an all-time low of 509; Supramax freight rates were the only ones above US$5000 at US$5002 per day.
The development of the dry bulk market is closely tied with that of China’s appetite for commodities; this goes for the good times in the past as well as the current challenging times. Despite the fact that GDP growth is still running high in China at 7.4%, the need for imported commodities was somewhat weak last year. Iron ore imports were a strong support once again, growing by 112.6 million t (13.7%) helped along by a large drop in price, but coal was a devastating story in spite of a drop in prices too. Thermal coal imports were down from 192 million t in 2013 to 165.5 million t in 2014, with the trend likely to continue if hydropower generation hits another strong year. Moreover, the new Chinese import regulations on coal quality (sulfur and ash content) contributed further to the decline in imports in January when total volumes (including coking coal and lignite) were at their lowest monthly level since May 2011 according to SSY.
Despite Chinese steel production surging to a new all-time high of 822.7 million t in 2014 (+0.9%), coking coal imports were down by 14.6 million t to 60.8 million t in 2014 (-31.6%). With falling domestic demand for steel, tax rebates assisted a surge in exports to neighbouring Asian customers. 2015 could see these rebates changed or removed, which would in turn reduce the incentive for steel mills to keep up production.
US coal exports were also a sad story in 2014 as their biggest export market, Europe, lowered its demand throughout the year. The US is primarily a coking coal exporter, but export demand is driven by price on the global market. As the US is the most distant of all exporters, high prices and tight supply are needed to keep up volumes; neither was present in 2014. Thermal coal exports dropped by 34% to 28.9 million t.
…
The troubles in the freight markets have for once also been seen in the order book where interest for new contracts has been subdued. The overall order book dropped to 158.2 million DWT from 168.6 three months ago.
It remains an imperative for a sustainable freight market recovery that new contracts remain scarce for an extended amount of time. Fortunately, the new-building prices offered by the shipyards are still 10 – 15% above the lowest of 2012 – 2013 and are not seen as very attractive.
Written by Peter Sand, BIMCO Chief Shipping Analyst. This is an extract from the latest BIMCO Shipping Market Overview and Outlook Report. It has been adapted to meet World Cement’s house style.
More shipping market analysis can be found at http://www.bimco.org.
Published on 19/03/2015
Suppose the global economy was artificially propped up by a tsunami tide of monetary stimulus. Any thoughts on what would happen when the tide washed back out to sea?
“Suppose the global economy was artificially propped up by a tsunami tide of monetary stimulus.”
“Suppose”.
Okay, I just now slipped into my suppose mode.
“Any thoughts on what would happen when the tide washed back out to sea?”
(Thoughts? Thoughts of … of Bodie? Why did I just now have thoughts of Bodie?)
https://www.google.com/search?q=bodie&biw=1813&bih=857&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=3qENVdyIH9ewogSGhIKoAg&ved=0CDwQsAQ&dpr=0.75
Liquidity crisis could spark the next financial crash
Traders warn of a global credit ‘meltdown’ if corporate bond markets don’t improve
Traders, such as those at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, could face turmoil if the US Federal Reserve makes its first rate hike since 2006, triggering a mass of orders to sell bonds
By Ben Martin
3:05PM GMT 21 Mar 2015
For Norval Loftus, chief investment officer at Allegra Asset Management, trading corporate bonds is not as easy as it used to be.
“It’s like night and day compared with six or seven years ago,” the bond market veteran says. “There’s no comparison. It’s even tougher than it was six or seven months ago. It’s getting more and more difficult all the time.”
He is not alone. Investors across corporate bond markets are finding it harder to buy and sell company debt. And some investors are beginning to fear that the lack of liquidity will be the spark that ignites the next crisis in financial markets.
Liquidity is generally taken to mean the ease with which an investor can quickly buy or sell a security without moving its price. As regulation of banks tightens, the liquidity, particularly of European and US credit markets, has evaporated, prompting a host of regulators and central banks to sound warnings about the difficult trading environment.
A rate hike by the US Federal Reserve, which would be the first since 2006, could trigger turmoil. Given the bond market is much larger than the equity market, and investors have piled into fixed income in recent years, fears are growing that when credit investors attempt to sell bonds en masse, the illiquidity in the market has the potential to cause a crisis of a similar magnitude to the credit crunch.
Last week, the Bank for International Settlements cautioned that liquidity was concentrating in the most readily traded securities and that “conditions are deteriorating in the less liquid ones”. A week earlier, Edwin Schooling-Latter, the Financial Conduct Authority’s head of market infrastructure, said that the scant liquidity in corporate bond markets warranted “careful regulatory monitoring”.
Perhaps the most arresting warning came last November, when the International Capital Market Association (ICMA) surveyed investors, analysts and traders of European corporate bonds and concluded that the common fear was that a “meltdown” of global credit markets had become unavoidable.
…
“Investors across corporate bond markets are finding it harder to buy and sell company debt.”
I suspect there is a message contained in there somewhere.
“And some investors are beginning to fear that the lack of liquidity will be the spark that ignites the next crisis in financial markets.”
And there too.
(Psssst. Caaaaash. Go to cash.)
Why do I not expect the Fed to hike rates in 2015, and for them to postpone rate hikes for as long as possible, all the while leading traders to believe a rate hike is imminent?
Mark Carney warns of liquidity storm as global currency system turns upside down
Governor tells audience at Davos that monetary tightening from the Federal Reserve will “test the resilience of the financial system”
Mark Carney at Davos 2015
Divergences in monetary policy could bring a new wave of global instability, warned Mr Carney Photo: Reuters
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, and Szu Ping Chan, in Davos
5:50PM GMT 24 Jan 2015
The Governor of the Bank of England has warned markets to brace for possible trouble in 2015 as the US Federal Reserve tightens monetary policy and liquidity evaporates, fearing that the new financial order has yet to face its first real test.
Mark Carney said diverging monetary policies in the US, Britain, Europe, and Japan may set off further currency turbulence and “test capital flows across the global economy, including to emerging markets.”
It is the latest sign that officials at Threadneedle Street are worried about the global fall-out from the rising dollar, which poses a mounting threat to companies in the developing world that have borrowed up to $9 trillion in US dollars.
Mr Carney said regulators have cleaned up the banks and tried to prepare for the tectonic shift taking place in the international currency structure but major risks remain.
“This will test the resilience of that new financial system. It has a potential feedback and we have to be aware of that,” he told an elite group of central bankers at the World Economic Forum.
“We are particularly concerned about an illusion of liquidity that has existed in a number of financial markets. I would say that illusion of liquidity is gradually being disabused,” he said, adding that the so-called ‘flash crash’ in the US Treasury market last October was a wake-up call even if the “bouts of losses” have been small so far.
Mr Carney said the global authorities have clamped down on excess leverage and the sort of behaviour by banks that caused the financial crisis seven years ago, but new worries have emerged.
“The big question for us now is about liquidity cycles that come from fund managers that don’t have leverage. It’s $35 trillion of mutual funds that invest in relatively illiquid securities,” he said.
Global watchdogs say the scale is so large — and subject to “clustering” and crowd psychology - that these funds may all rush for the exits at the same time in a crisis and amplify the effects.
…
Party at the Fed.
Credit Markets Rejoice on Fed Signal Low Rates Will Last Longer
by Cordell Eddings
Sridhar Natarajan
4:36 PM PDT
March 18, 2015
Federal Reserve
The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve building stands at sunrise in Washington, D.C. The Fed has held benchmark rates near zero since 2008 to boost growth, fueling demand for relatively higher-yielding corporate debt.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
(Bloomberg) — Credit markets are getting a second wind, thanks to a Federal Reserve that’s suddenly not as confident the economy is strong enough to weather a steady rise in interest rates.
Policy makers said on Wednesday they now expect the federal funds rate to end the year at 0.625 percent, down from their 1.125 percent forecast in December. The outlook for next year dropped to 1.875 percent from 2.5 percent. Bonds soared, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, a benchmark for everything from corporate debt to mortgages, plunging below 2 percent in its biggest decline in more than two months.
“The party is still on,” said Timothy Doubek, who helps manage $26 billion in company bonds as senior portfolio manager at Columbia Management Advisers in Minneapolis. “Credit markets are catching a wind because of the Fed, which will keep companies coming to market.”
After starting the year strong, corporate bond returns have wilted since the end of the January, with the Bank of America Merrill Lynch U.S. Corporate and High Yield Index losing 0.42 percent through Tuesday. Prospects that the Fed may not be as aggressive as anticipated in raising rates may encourage investors to step back into the market.
‘Rising Tide’
That’s good news for corporate borrowers, who issued an unprecedented $1.65 trillion in bonds last year in the U.S. at record low rates, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Despite a recent fall off, sales this year are already up 12 percent over the same period of 2014 to $437.9 billion
“Lower interest rates are a rising tide that continues to lift all bond boats, encouraging a flight to higher-yielding assets, including corporates,” said Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC in Philadelphia, which manages $61 billion in assets.
…
Must…keep…Ponzi…going….
Why I am a Climate Change Skeptic
Patrick Moore
March 20, 2015
He is a founding member of Greenpeace and served for nine years as president of Greenpeace Canada and seven years as a director of Greenpeace International.
Political Powerhouse
Climate change has become a powerful political force for many reasons. First, it is universal; we are told everything on Earth is threatened. Second, it invokes the two most powerful human motivators: fear and guilt. We fear driving our car will kill our grandchildren, and we feel guilty for doing it.
Third, there is a powerful convergence of interests among key elites that support the climate “narrative.” Environmentalists spread fear and raise donations; politicians appear to be saving the Earth from doom; the media has a field day with sensation and conflict; science institutions raise billions in grants, create whole new departments, and stoke a feeding frenzy of scary scenarios; business wants to look green, and get huge public subsidies for projects that would otherwise be economic losers, such as wind farms and solar arrays. Fourth, the Left sees climate change as a perfect means to redistribute wealth from industrial countries to the developing world and the UN bureaucracy.
So we are told carbon dioxide is a “toxic” “pollutant” that must be curtailed, when in fact it is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, gas and the most important food for life on earth. Without carbon dioxide above 150 parts per million, all plants would die.
news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2015/03/20/why-i-am-climate-change-skeptic - 70k -
That is a well-written article, mirroring many of my own thoughts on the AGM theory and movement.
That means you are anti science.
And where are these repeatable experiments that should exist if the scientific method were actually being followed?
Patrick Moore: Why I am a Climate Change Skeptic
He is a founding member of Greenpeace and served for nine years as president of Greenpeace Canada
If he touts his Greenpeace connection we should at least know what Greenpeace has to say about him I think.
Greenpeace Statement On Patrick Moore
Media release - October 10, 2008
Patrick Moore often misrepresents himself in the media as an environmental “expert” or even an “environmentalist,” while offering anti-environmental opinions on a wide range of issues and taking a distinctly anti-environmental stance. He also exploits long-gone ties with Greenpeace to sell himself as a speaker and pro-corporate spokesperson, usually taking positions that Greenpeace opposes.
While it is true that Patrick Moore was a member of Greenpeace in the 1970s, in 1986 he abruptly turned his back on the very issues he once passionately defended. He claims he “saw the light” but what Moore really saw was an opportunity for financial gain. Since then he has gone from defender of the planet to a paid representative of corporate polluters.
Patrick Moore promotes such anti-environmental positions as clearcut logging, nuclear power, farmed salmon, PVC (vinyl) production, genetically engineered crops, and mining. Clients for his consulting services are a veritable Who’s Who of companies that Greenpeace has exposed for environmental misdeeds, including Monsanto, Weyerhaeuser, and BHP Minerals.
Moore’s claims run from the exaggerated to the outrageous to the downright false, including that “clear-cutting is good for forests” and Three Mile Island was actually “a success story” because the radiation from the partially melted core was contained. That is akin to saying “my car crash was a success because I only cracked my skull and didn’t die.”
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/media-center/news-releases/greenpeace-statement-on-patric/
Yes, I too used to take solace in the simplistic idea that increased CO2 would be absorbed by more rapid plant growth. Unfortunately, nature’s ecosystems are rather complex:
Climate change surprise: High carbon dioxide levels can retard plant growth, study reveals
“The prevailing view among scientists is that global climate change may prove beneficial to many farmers and foresters — at least in the short term. The logic is straightforward: Plants need atmospheric carbon dioxide to produce food, and by emitting more CO2 into the air, our cars and factories create new sources of plant nutrition that will cause some crops and trees to grow bigger and faster.”
http://news.stanford.edu/pr/02/jasperplots124.html
“But an unprecedented three-year experiment conducted at Stanford University is raising questions about that long-held assumption. Writing in the journal Science, researchers concluded that elevated atmospheric CO2 actually reduces plant growth when combined with other likely consequences of climate change — namely, higher temperatures, increased precipitation or increased nitrogen deposits in the soil.”
Would it be accurate to say that China’s real-estate dependent economy is in snowball mode?
Economy
Record Fall In Property Prices Brings More Bad News For China’s Slumping Real Estate Market
By Duncan Hewitt on March 18 2015 4:53 AM EDT
A Chinese national flag flutters at a construction site for a new residence complex in Beijing Nov. 4, 2013.
REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
SHANGHAI — Property prices fell again in most major Chinese cities in February, amid continuing anxiety about the state of the country’s real estate sector. New house prices declined in 66 of 70 large- and medium-sized cities surveyed, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Prices fell an average of 0.4 percent on the previous month, ending 5.7 percent lower than a year earlier, according to Reuters. It is the biggest year-on-year fall since the national survey began in 2011.
The only major cities that did not see a drop were the southern special economic zone of Shenzhen, where prices rose 0.2 percent, and the central industrial city of Wuhan, which saw no change. Prices for the secondary market also fell in 61 cities, though there were rises in five cities. The bureau blamed the sharp fall partly on February’s week-long Chinese New Year vacation, and predicted that prices would rebound this month. That did not stop the figures attracting widespread attention, however: one Chinese-language news website blared the headline: “Hangzhou house prices back to their level of five years ago?”
Such headlines are a reminder of China’s obsession with real estate prices: while falling prices could be seen as good news for the many citizens who feel that property in the country’s cities has become unaffordably expensive, the slowdown in the market has also raised widespread anxiety. A decade-long boom in the real estate sector, until the past few years, led many families to invest an unusually high proportion of their savings in property, leaving them vulnerable to a drop in prices.
The property sector is also thought to account for some 15 percent of China’s economic output, while land sales are estimated to amount to at least 40 percent of Chinese local governments’ revenues. The NBS also said on Wednesday that new land purchases by developers fell 31.7 percent year-on-year in the first two months of 2015.
Li-gang Liu, chief economist for Greater China at ANZ Bank, said in a note on Wednesday that weak property sales in the first months of the year have played a part in dragging down consumer confidence in China. The bank’s ANZ-Roy Morgan China Consumer Confidence Index fell to a record low in March, he said, though almost two-thirds of respondents still expected China’s economy to experience ‘good times’ next year. Liu noted that “the effect of recent monetary easing has been limited,” and said the government ought to take “more aggressive” measures to arrest economic slowdown.
Nervousness over the real estate market has been fueled by several recent developments: two of the best-known developers in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese boomtown across the border from Hong Kong, are reported to be under investigation for connections to an official detained in anti-corruption investigations. One of them, Kaisa Group, recently narrowly avoided defaulting on its dollar loans, but has continued to seek concessions from creditors, according to the Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, Evergrande Real Estate, one of China’s largest developers, headed by prominent tycoon Xu Jiayin, revealed earlier this week that it had taken out an extra $16 billion in loans to help it cope with falling sales.
With total property sales in China down 7.6 percent last year, real estate companies have tried a number of measures to improve sales, including discounting and Internet marketing. And some analysts predict the government may take further steps to boost the market, including lowering the down payment needed for purchases, as it seeks to achieve a growth target of about 7 percent for the year.
Yet while the government has eased some restrictions in many cities, including rules preventing cheap housing loans for a second property, it has been unwilling to do the same in the biggest cities — Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. One former adviser to China’s central bank said late last year that this was out of fear of stoking a further bubble in prices.
…
A country with a 40% savings rate like China can deflate a real estate bubble and continue to have rapid growth, a country like Canada with massive consumer debt is toast when they burst. China has to work through the affordability issue on housing but with large wage increases and reasonable declines in housing, houses will become affordable. Since land is scarce in China housing will never be cheap compared to incomes but it will be affordable again in not too many years.
“A country with a 40% savings rate like China can deflate a real estate bubble and continue to have rapid growth,…”
Is that gross or net of their massive borrowing binge?
Wonkblog
Is China’s 1929 moment coming?
By Matt O’Brien
March 5, 2015
(Photo by ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)
It’s weird to worry about China when it’s still growing more than 7 percent a year, but it’s a little less so when you consider how mammoth its credit bubble has gotten.
The numbers are historic. China’s total debt has sprouted from 153 percent of gross domestic product in 2008 to 282 percent today. That, according to Goldman Sachs, makes China’s borrowing binge bigger than 96 percent of all others on record. The problem is that, despite all this debt, growth is slowing and profits are falling, which makes it harder for companies to pay back what they owe.
…
Is China’s 1929 moment coming?
I’m not rooting for a Chinese collapse. I hope they pull out of it. For their sake, Brazil’s sake, their region’s sake and the world’s sake.
Posting an article is not tantamount to “rooting for a Chinese collapse.”
Posting an article is not tantamount to “rooting for a Chinese collapse.”
I know that. I’m just not rooting for a Chinese collapse as Adan is rooting for a Brazilian collapse. And he’s creepy about that imo.
There’s going to be a false Brazilian collapse. A false Brazilian that posts frequently will collapse from drink later tonight, if not already.
Right Shillowpicker.
Anyone you don’t like smokes pot, drinks or does smack.
You just can’t argue the points.
There’s going to be a false Brazilian collapse. A false Brazilian that posts frequently will collapse from drink later tonight, if not already.
Yesterday, he left his cardboard box home and took a swim in a sewage lagoon, it was just like Brazil.
Because of China’s high savings rate its external debt is 6% of GDP. The United States is at 98%. China’s debt is financed internally. It is running a current account surplus of 213.8 billion dollars per year, while the United States is running a deficit of 388.1 billion. The latter sentence is from the Economist magazine, the former can be found here under the world tab:
http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html
The mighty dollar
Feeling green
Debt-ridden emerging markets are heading for a nasty dollar hangover
Mar 21st 2015 | From the print edition
Timekeeper
IN THE world of economics, one policymaker towers above all others. The head of America’s central bank, Janet Yellen, presides over a $17 trillion economy. The empire of her nearest competitor, Mario Draghi, amounts to a relatively puny $10 trillion. On top of this, the dollar’s global role means Ms Yellen has a huge impact abroad, influencing more than $9 trillion in borrowing in dollars by non-financial companies outside America—more than enough to buy all the firms listed on the stock exchanges of Shanghai and Tokyo (see chart 1). As the dollar strengthens both in response to healthier growth in America and in the expectation that the Federal Reserve is getting ready to raise rates, this burden is becoming harder to bear.
Dollar borrowing is everywhere, but the biggest growth has been in emerging markets. Between 2009 and 2014 the dollar-denominated debts of the developing world, in the form of both bank loans and bonds, more than doubled, from around $2 trillion to some $4.5 trillion, according to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Places like Brazil, South Africa and Turkey, whose exports fall far short of imports, finance their current-account gaps by building up debts to foreigners.
…
Yet there are still two reasons to worry. First, the outlook for China is a puzzle. The country holds $1.2 trillion in Treasury bills, many of which are sitting in its sovereign-wealth fund. When the dollar rises, the fund gets richer. But even in a dollar-rich country, there can be pockets of pain. China’s firms have built up a nasty currency mismatch. Almost 25% of corporate debt is dollar-denominated, but only 8.5% of corporate earnings are. Worse, this debt is concentrated, according to Morgan Stanley, with 5% of firms holding 50% of it.
Chinese property developers are the most obviously vulnerable. Companies like Evergrande, China Vanke and Wanda build and sell offices and houses, so most of their earnings are in yuan. Banned from borrowing directly from banks, they have been active issuers of dollar bonds. They have also borrowed from trust companies, according to Fitch, a rating agency. The trusts are themselves highly leveraged and have borrowed dollars via subsidiaries in Hong Kong. This arrangement will amplify the economic pain if property prices in China continue to decline, as they have been doing for several months.
The second problem is that whole economies, rather than just the corporate sector, look short of dollars. In Brazil and Russia, for instance, bail-outs of firms lacking greenbacks are blurring the lines between the state, banks and big companies. The general scramble for dollars has contributed to the plunge of the real and the rouble. Others could follow this path. Turkey’s dollar borrowing has grown rapidly since 2009: in addition to the debts Turkish firms have taken on, the state’s external debt has grown to almost 50% of GDP, far above the average for middle-income countries (23%). South Africa looks worrying too: its current-account deficit is the widest of any big emerging market, and the government’s external debt is 40% of GDP.
…
Citi Sees Slower Commodities Demand Growth as China Recedes
by Jasmine Ng
11:43 PM PDT
March 16, 2015
(Bloomberg) — Global commodity markets will see slower and less synchronized demand growth from across the world as China’s dominance fades, according to Citigroup Inc.
Global demand expansion, which centered on the rise of China in the 2000s, will slow in the next decade and be driven increasingly by India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa, the New York-based bank said in a report e-mailed Tuesday. While demand will increase from these regions, dubbed the “Emerging 5”, it won’t be enough to offset the impact of slower growth from China, Citigroup said.
Commodities tumbled to a 12-year low on Monday, with crude oil in New York slumping 18 percent in 2015. Inventories are rising after a decade-long bull market spurred farmers, miners and drillers to increase production just as economic growth slowed in China. The world’s biggest metals and energy consumer grew at the slowest pace since 1990 last year.
“China’s economic transition and the inability of other emerging markets to pick up the slack are driving slower demand growth across the commodities complex,” analysts including Ivan Szpakowski and Ed Morse wrote in the report. “The extent of slowdown is likely to vary by commodity.”
The Bloomberg Commodity Index, which tracks 22 raw materials, was at 97.4738 on Tuesday, down 6.6 percent this year. The gauge slumped to 96.4714 on Monday, the lowest level since June 2002.
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“Commodities tumbled to a 12-year low on Monday, with crude oil in New York slumping 18 percent in 2015. Inventories are rising after a decade-long bull market spurred farmers, miners and drillers to increase production …”
… by using lots and lots of borrowed money …
“… just as economic growth slowed in China.”
This is GOOD news if you are a consumer of these commodities (and your job is a bit isolated from the effects of the price declines).
The news is NOT SO GOOD if you find yourself at the wrong end of the enormous amount of debt that financed much of this growth.
What the expansion doeth giveth the contraction will doeth taketh away.
And this reminds me of something I read about many years ago:
Right after the Crash of 1929 there were a lot of smug people, smug working class people, who were gloating at all the losses stock speculators were enduring UNTIL they themselves suffered some losses of their own - losses in the form of losing their jobs.
The run up in the Twenties was nuts but even so there was a lot of economic activity generated by this nuttiness and much of the economy grew to depend on this nuttiness either directly or indirectly. And one didn’t really fully appreciate just how their jobs depended on the nuttiness of Wall Street UNTIL the nuttiness stopped (or, rather, was yanked away) and was replaced by a New Reality.
And this New Reality translated into the closing of lots of businesses that never would have existed in the first place if there wasn’t a lot of nuttiness around to make them seem to be viable.
Something to think about.
Isn’t that what we experienced in 2008-09, and I think over the years we have talked about how people that did not realize they were benefitting from the housing bubble ended up losing their jobs when it burst.
“… how people that did not realize they were benefitting from the housing bubble ended up losing their jobs when it burst.”
And so now we are back to talking about China.
Does anyone on this board recall the early days, when the MSM never, ever acknowledged the possible existence of financial bubbles?
Judging from the number of recent MSM articles expressing bubble concerns, we’ve come a long way in one decade!
Results of a Google search on “financial bubble”:
About 8,810,000 results (0.38 seconds)
An economic bubble (sometimes referred to as a speculative bubble, a market bubble, a price bubble, a financial bubble, a speculative mania or a balloon) is “trade in high volumes at prices that are considerably at variance with intrinsic values”.
Economic bubble - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mike Patton Contributor
Advisor Network 2/24/2015 @ 7:31PM
The Coming Financial Bubble: Why It May Be The Worst Of All - Part I
Intro
Asset bubbles have become a regular occurrence in modern history. From the first recorded bubble to the most recent, these destructive forces always leave a trail of misery in their wake. Is another bubble forming? I believe it is and will fully explain why in the next two articles. In this writing, we’ll discuss the earliest known bubble, the tech bubble of 2000, and the recent housing bubble which nearly destroyed the entire global financial system.
The Anatomy of a Bubble
Bubbles occur when the price of an asset or group of assets rises to an extreme level, far beyond its fair market value. What causes an asset’s price to rise to such heights? One reason is a glut of excess cash in the system. Another is extremely strong demand. Let’s turn our attention to the first recorded bubble in history.
Tulip Mania
The first recorded bubble occurred in the Netherlands during the early 1600s and involved tulips. To condense a long but interesting story, tulips became so popular that their price soared, even to the point where some bulbs allegedly cost more than 10 times the annual wage of a skilled worker. Speculation was rampant. Fortunes were made overnight and lost just as fast. In short, the excitement surrounding tulips prompted people to acquire them by any means necessary. Many were blinded by the prospect of becoming rich overnight. However, in February 1637, the tulip bubble began to burst. By May of that year, prices had plummeted. The collapse in tulip prices produced so much pain that it decimated a large segment of the Dutch population. Let’s fast forward almost 400 years to the tech bubble of 2000.
Tech Bubble (2000)
The tech bubble, a.k.a. the dot-com bubble, was a period of time when the price of technology stocks soared, despite the fact that many companies were operating in the red. Driven largely by money from venture capitalists, many new technology companies emerged, offering their services for free. The expectation was that these start-up companies would be able to charge a fee in the future, which ironically, was fine with investors. Rampant speculation pushed the stock price of technology companies to record heights. The following chart provides a good visual of just how far and fast prices soared and declined during the tech bubble.
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Economy
Richard Fisher, Often Wrong but Seldom Boring, Leaves the Fed
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUMMARCH 20, 2015
Richard W. Fisher, who stepped down on Thursday after a decade as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, is best known not so much for what he said as for the way he said it. Credit Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times
DALLAS — In a decade as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Richard W. Fisher was frequently mistaken in his economic predictions but seldom boring.
The departure of Mr. Fisher, who stepped down on Thursday, means that the Fed is losing one of the most outspoken internal opponents of its stimulus campaign just as it is winding down. Mr. Fisher argued right up to his retirement that the central bank was increasing economic inequality, destabilizing financial markets and might yet unleash higher inflation. But he is best known not so much for what he said as for the way he said it.
He spoke more often and more colorfully than any of his colleagues at the Federal Reserve, larding his speeches with quotes, anecdotes and metaphors. Among the most memorable was his 2012 description of his breeding bull, Too Big to Fail, as full of liquidity but unable to reach the pretty cows on the other side of the fence.
“His speeches have regularly been the most eloquent — a true joy to read his somewhat excessive Texas exuberance in explaining both the successes and the possible excesses of monetary policy,” the former Fed chairman Paul A. Volcker, a mentor to Mr. Fisher, said in a recent introduction.
Noting that Mr. Fisher was the rare non-economist among senior Fed officials, Mr. Volcker continued: “In an era in which economists claim a natural right to central banking leadership, Dick has brought a healthy sense of reality, sound judgment, business background and leadership.”
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The New American Order
Posted on Mar 19, 2015
By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
Have you ever undertaken some task you felt less than qualified for, but knew that someone needed to do? Consider this piece my version of that, and let me put what I do understand about it in a nutshell: based on developments in our post-9/11 world, we could be watching the birth of a new American political system and way of governing for which, as yet, we have no name.
And here’s what I find strange: the evidence of this, however inchoate, is all around us and yet it’s as if we can’t bear to take it in or make sense of it or even say that it might be so.
Let me make my case, however minimally, based on five areas in which at least the faint outlines of that new system seem to be emerging: political campaigns and elections; the privatization of Washington through the marriage of the corporation and the state; the de-legitimization of our traditional system of governance; the empowerment of the national security state as an untouchable fourth branch of government; and the demobilization of “we the people.”
Read more
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_new_american_order_20150319 - 118k -
“our post-9/11 world”
I’m not sure about that. I have a friend who works in the credit card industry and claims big data started in the late 80’s and really kicked in in the 90’s. It seems to have gone plaid in the 00’s, but it wasn’t born then.
Hey Amigos! I’ll give the HBB a big wave from this Rio Cam at about 7:45-8pm EST. In about 20 min!
Have a good weekend!
http://vejoaovivo.com.br/rj/rio-de-janeiro/rua-bolivar-42-copacabana.html
Camera is offline
That’s a busy place!
Anklepants is at it again.
phony scandals
Its funny, back around 2006 I started thinking hey there might be a bubble in the housing market. I started googling and ended up at this website back in 2006. This website predicted the housing bubble before it happened. I thought it might be a bubble again in real estate so I started googling the real estate bubble again. Low and behold here I am back at this website. Its like deja vu all over again. We are officially in a bubble.