The Housing Bubble

Katy, TX List Prices Dive 6% YoY As Oil Bust Spreads

http://www.zillow.com/katy-tx/home-values/

The only thing the Easter Bunny brings to loanowners are heartaches, headaches, and a bottomless pile of bills

Loosers

“Falling land prices are hurting local businesses”

http://kimt.com/2015/04/01/falling-land-prices-are-hurting-local-businesses/

Falling prices helps everyone else.

“Dry Bulk Prices Keep Falling, But Buyers Remain Scarce”

http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/dry-bulk-prices-keep-falling-but-buyers-remain-scarce/

Falling prices are your wallets best friend and good for the economy.

Crushing.Housing.Losses.

You paid too much for a depreciating asset. Millions did.

“Bucks County Realtor Charged With $643K Fraud”

http://www.phillymag.com/news/2015/04/02/bucks-county-realtor-charged-with-643k-fraud/

CraterRage™ Photo Of The Day

http://goo.gl/hyOmaK

http://www.arabianbusiness.com/what-on-earth-is-happening-in-dubai-property-market–587748.html

you serfs need to support wall street and the bankers by buying into the recovery and buying stocks and homes. Don’t listen to paranoid bloggers who missed out on this major stock and home appreciation.

I was wondering about and searching out the reason how American Homes 4 Rent can get away with its off balance sheet transactions and I happened to run across this:

“Liabilities - Types Of Off-Balance-Sheet Financing

“Many economic transactions and events are not recognized in the financial statements because they do not qualify as accounting assets or transactions under GAAP standards. That said, these unreported assets and liabilities have real cash flow consequences. As a result, it is important to be able to identify and qualify these assets and liabilities.”

And one of these economic transactions is:

“The sale of accounts receivables - A company may sell its receivables to an unrelated third party to reduce its debt and improve its financial position. Most sales of receivables provide the buyer with a limited recourse to the seller. However, the recourse provision is generally well above the expected loss ratio on the receivables (allowance for doubtful accounts). The potential liability associated with the buyer-recourse provision is not displayed on the balance sheet.”

http://www.investopedia.com/exam-guide/cfa-level-1/liabilities/off-balance-sheet-financing-types.asp

And this is what AMH is doing, it is selling off its receivables - its future income from rents - to third parties by bundling them up and tranching them.

And this does not show up on the company’s balance sheet but it sure does show up on the cash flow statement.

Go here for a peek at AMH’s Cash Flow statement:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cf?s=AMH+Cash+Flow&annual

Allow your eyes to settle on the term “Other Cash Flows From Financing Activities”. Note the entry of $1,493,724. Add three zeros to this sum and you will end up with a sum of almost one-and-a-half billion dollars; This is the amount of money AMH received last year from three off balance sheet transactions and, IMO, these three transactions act to distort - greatly distort - the true picture of what is actually going on with this company, financial wise.

Something to think about: If I were to decide to put my money in a company that promised to pay me dividends out of future income - in this case future rental income - shouldn’t I be a bit concerned if somebody else gets first dibs and healthy portions of this future income?

Here’s why I avoid homeowner’s associations: even if the HOA has a set of reasonable officers, there can be a hyper busybody who uses lawsuits to get in your business and tell you what you can’t do with your own property.

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/eldorado-woman-in-chicken-fight-now-targeting-owners-of-ground/article_65519f9a-0321-51d0-9b95-d1ef9706588e.html

Thank you for flying Cloward-Piven Airline

1:40 of this 1:47 clip is great

“Uh the price tag? I don’t know. I don’t know!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2z1ElTSY68 - 207k -
18 hours ago

interesting pictures of homes surrounded by sand walls they might as well be in iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/us/california-drought-tests-history-of-endless-growth.html

Here is an excellent breakdown of Chinese debt, as you can see there are very few consumer debt donkeys. There is very little federal government debt or unsecured debt of any type. What China does have is massive state owned enterprise debt. This is essentially secured by the assets of the corporations and in a free market economy a lot of the debt would be wiped out by selling equity in the corporations. If you look at the private corporations the most productive part of the Chinese economy, they have very little debt. China is at a crossroads, it needs to privatize the SOEs. The Communist party is trying to avoid the truth because losing the SOEs means losing a lot of its power. However, China wants to become a superpower and that will require that it deploy capital more efficiently and it is, no surprise, the capitalist part of its economy that is performing well. Think of the past and present examples, East and West Germany, Pre-1979 China/Taiwan and present N and S Korea:

http://online.barrons.com/articles/SB51367578116875004693704580485093808626482

Private facility now holding immigration detainees in Bakersfield

By Carol Ferguson, Eyewitness News Published: Apr 3, 2015 at 6:13 PM PDT

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KBAK/KBFX) - Undocumented immigrants are now being housed in a long-closed private correctional facility in Bakersfield.

ICE says this is its only facility in the San Joaquin Valley, and it’s key to meeting some of the agency’s goals.

“This facility will be in compliance with the most rigorous performance-based standards that we impose on our facilities,” ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said. She says the newly-renovated facility will be good for the people held there. “They’ll have access to the best possible conditions, and we’re very pleased about that.”

“We prioritize the use of our detention bed for individuals who are deemed to be public safety threats, and individuals who are thought to be flight risks,” she said. “They may have fairly significant criminal convictions, but I’d like to emphasize that if they would have prior criminal convictions — they have already fulfilled any sentence imposed in these cases.”

Kice said ICE now has an intergovernmental service agreement with the City of McFarland to run Mesa Verde, and the city has a contract with the GEO Group to handle day-to-day operations. A company spokesman has said GEO put some $10 million into the renovations at the facility.

The remodeled site has dorm-style rooms, ICE says, and detainees will have access to an on-site law library, medical clinic and religious services. It also has visitation rooms and recreation areas. The agency says the average cost to house a detainee at Mesa Verde will be $107 a day.

http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/…olding-immigration-detainees-in-Bakersfield-298641591.html - 78k -

‘A Capitol Hill artist made five fake notices of proposed land use signs to place at popular Seattle locations on April Fools’ Day, to make a statement about the aggressive development he feels is changing the character of the city. John Tingley, who goes by the moniker “Tinglr,” said his installation art is called “The Joke’s On Us.”

‘Each sign declared a different project was underway. On a sign at Pike Place Market, he wrote that there would be a “mixed use condo/retail structure including the first of its kind subterranean Whole Foods/Trader Joe’s connected with the new SR-99 tunnel named Cash Hole Foods. With a little room left over for a Pike Place Farmers Market Museum!”

‘Tingley said he wanted to “make everybody think twice about how much development we’re approving in this city, how quickly it’s going up, and what it’s really doing to change the city of Seattle, the personality of Seattle, the heart and soul of Seattle.”

‘The words struck a chord with Nate Berendz. The sign he read described the new project as “another f—king concrete box. Maybe we’ll dress it up with some corrugated siding. What’s that ‘you say?’ ‘Not another boring eye-sore!’ That’s too bad. This is the most cost-effective way to build and you know we’re gonna get ours.”

‘Berendz said, “I feel like I see a sign, two weeks later I see a hole, two weeks later I see some new condos…I think it’s a statement that this neighborhood is being covered by concrete boxes.”

‘At Cal Anderson Park, a sign announced a project called “Entitlement Land,” with a Starbucks Frappuccino fountain and Tom Douglas restaurant called Serious Dogg. It would be protected by Amazon.com security drones. Jonathan Ross, who said he reads real land use action signs frequently, said, “You know you’d always see, like 54 units! No parking proposed.”

‘At the bottom of each sign, Tingley wrote that it doesn’t matter what anyone says. The builder will continue anyway.’

A) Debt limit topped out

B) Collapsing demand for all items

C) Unemployment at multi decade highs

D) Cracking and cratering prices

:shrug:

I have been watching the Florida Real Estate fraud here for two years since my Mother died and left me some money. It was a nice sum but not enough to buy a house and pay for my daughters college education so I have to be careful because it disqualifies us from college financial aid and I have been unable to develop sufficient income in this economy.

At the bottom, the SFH units in my development were tax appraised at $80,000. Some developers came in an bought up some of the units, one next door to me where one moved in. It had been empty for over a year and was in foreclosure. She was a realtor and had owned it. They were thugs and stacked their trash outside my front door in their narrow side yard so that their unit appeared to have a nice clean back yard and garage and they trespassed through my yard to access it. When I complained to the authorities, they vandalized my property and menaced me. It caused problems with my landlord and I am sure they intended to low ball her an offer if I moved out. It was a very bad time for me as I did not take my mothers passing very well. I did eventually get a “No Trespass” order on them and backed it up with video monitors.

The thugs got it out of foreclosure and sold it to an individual around tax appraisal price. They remained in the house and did some rehab. Then it was sold at an inflated price to a company and transferred multiple times to a company called SWAY 2014-1 Borrowers, LLC http://www.corporationwiki.com/p/2fuz53/sway-2014-1-borrower-llc

They have several other units in the development. There were also a couple of other sales to another company and one last high dollar sale of $175,000 to an individual last August 2014. And then not another sale. Now this is all in Boynton Beach with a 12% delinquency and 15% under water.

So far, the units they have appear to be rented but some have had multiple different tenants so I am wondering if they have discounted rates. The unit next to me was rehabed and sold in July 2014 and rented out in October 2014 to a young couple with 2 kids. I hope they have discounted rent.

I think I am going to take Harry Dent’s advice and hold off on buying anything right now, unless I can get someone to take me up on a lowball offer.

Report: Solar Energy Subsidies Cost $39 Billion Per Year

Solar makes up only 0.6 percent of total U.S. electricity generation

BY: Elizabeth Harrington
February 12, 2015 12:55 pm

“In spite of government’s best efforts to encourage innovation by solar energy companies and encourage Americans to rely more heavily on solar electricity, solar power continues to be a losing proposition,” the report said. “American taxpayers spent an average of $39 billion a year over the past 5 years financing grants, subsidizing tax credits, guaranteeing loans, bailing out failed solar energy boondoggles and otherwise underwriting every idea under the sun to make solar energy cheaper and more popular. But none of it has worked.”

“Congress needs to stop these massive subsidies that are siphoning $39 billion a year from taxpayers,” he said. “If solar is ever going to be a viable energy source and industry, they need to wean themselves off the public dole.”

“Solar energy’s day in the sun may yet come, but taxpayers should not be forced to foot the cost associated with turning the failing industry around,”

freebeacon.com/issues/report-solar-energy-subsidies-cost-39-billion-per-year/ - 92k -

Hey PB, are you out there? (Of course you are out there; You are always out there.)

A question: Yesterday you made a reference to Enron having a lot of off-balance sheet stuff, do you know if there was a lot of institutional money invested in Enron at that time?

The reason I am asking is because American Homes 4 Rent has a whole lot of institutional money riding on it and I’m just wondering if absolute stupidity is institutionalized.

But maybe if one thinks of Institutional money as OPM then maybe it makes sense. Makes sense not in there not being stupidity but makes sense in that the stupidity lies with the OPM folks and not with the institutions.

Happy Easter, every bunny. May you find dollar bills in your baskets of currency, and never watch them go down a rabbit hole to finance the mortgage on an overpriced debt shack that was a bad egg from the start.

Crater!

Really a shame that we don’t have national leaders who could deal with problems like these 2 kids.

“Nothing needs to be made out of it,” Kaminsky said.

Kentucky’s Andrew Harrison apologizes for obscenity, slur

4:27 p.m. Sunday, April 5, 2015

INDIANAPOLIS — Kentucky guard Andrew Harrison apologized Sunday for directing an obscenity and a racial slur at Wisconsin’s Frank Kaminsky during a postgame news conference at the Final Four.

Harrison muttered “F— that n—-” into a live microphone when another player was asked a question about Kaminsky after Kentucky lost 71-64 to the Badgers Saturday. The loss ruined the Wildcats’ undefeated season; they finished 38-1.

Harrison’s comment came as a reporter asked Kentucky’s Karl-Anthony Towns about defending the 7-foot Kaminsky. He muttered it with his hand in front of his mouth, but the mic picked up the comments.

Social media immediately lit up with tweets about what Harrison said along with video clips, and the program looked into the matter.

Harrison, who is black, didn’t explain why he made the comments about Kaminsky, who is white. But he said in a series of tweets his comments were a “poor choice of words used in jest towards a player I respect and know.”

“When I realized how this could be perceived I immediately called big frank to apologize and let him know I didn’t mean any disrespect,” he added.

He said the two of them had a “good conversation” and he wished him good luck in Monday’s championship game.

Kaminsky confirmed Sunday that Harrison reached out to him, and then the All-America forward quickly dismissed the topic.

“Nothing needs to be made out of it,” Kaminsky said.

http://www.ajc.com/…/top-news/kentucky-reviewing-andrew-harrisons-postgame-comme/nknCL/ - 255k -

The Outlook
Oil-Price Drop Offers Petro-States Chance to Curb Domestic Demand
Middle East’s voracious energy use, propped up by subsidies, is threatening exports; consumption is ‘out of control’
A fuel station in Saudi Arabia, which has seen an eye-popping, more-than-60-fold increase in domestic energy consumption in the past four decades. Photo: Fahad Shadeed/Reuters
By Bill Spindle
April 5, 2015 3:20 p.m. ET

The sharp drop in oil prices hasn’t been kind to the world’s petro-states, but it has provided an opening to address one of their most pressing economic problems: runaway domestic energy demand.

In the Middle East, the growth in demand is driven in part by expanding populations, as well as a deliberate move into energy-intensive industries such as aluminum and petrochemical production. But a big part stems from the region’s ubiquitous energy subsidies.

Voracious energy use in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Iran is threatening exports from the most oil-rich region in the world. Failing to restrain this galloping demand could leave global markets more volatile, pressure domestic budgets and eventually nudge prices back up.

The 12 members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries have increased domestic energy consumption tenfold in the past four decades, a period in which energy use in the rest of the world has a little more than doubled. Saudi Arabia has seen an eye-popping, more than 60-fold increase in consumption over that period.

As a group, OPEC members—mostly countries in the Middle East and Africa, plus Venezuela and Ecuador—now consume almost as much energy as China, with less than half its population. The Middle East, especially, is expected to account for a major chunk of future global demand growth. Saudi energy use is expected to grow at a 3.8% rate through 2020, according to the International Energy Agency. That’s slower than the country’s 5.7% annual average over the past six years, but well above the expected global average of 1.2%.

Consumption is “out of control,” said Steve Griffiths, an executive director at the Masdar Institute, an energy think tank in Abu Dhabi.

Nearly every country in the Middle East long ago embraced the notion that cheap fuel was essentially a birthright. As a result, energy is all but free in some places, such as Saudi Arabia, where a gallon of gasoline costs 45 cents. Governments pick up the rest of the tab, either paying for imports or forgoing income that could be earned by exporting domestic oil or gas rather than selling it for rock-bottom prices at home.

Most countries have realized that’s not sustainable. Some countries, such as Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela, have already hit that wall: They are unable to maintain their spending on imports to meet demand or balance their budgets without the export revenue they are forgoing to satiate consumers’ growing energy appetite. Iran has made some halting progress in raising prices closer to market levels; Nigeria and Venezuela haven’t.

Slashing subsidies is never easy, with the risk of social turbulence from an unhappy citizenry. The good news: Economists and policy makers point out that the steep drop in oil prices presents a historic opportunity to reel back price supports with minimal or even no immediate adjustment to what consumers pay.

Governments could take the time offered by the reprieve to design policies to construct a stronger social safety net, aiming support at those who need it when prices rise rather than an across-the-board subsidy.

Iran, facing runaway expenditures to import gasoline, has reduced subsidies (and thus raised prices at the pump) twice over the past five years, substituting direct cash payments to all consumers. Elsewhere, Indonesia and India have made similar moves more recently.

But there’s been little progress in other quarters of the Persian Gulf, particularly Saudi Arabia, where the problem is particularly acute. The cost of artificially low prices there has ballooned from $5 billion in 2004 to $32 billion last year. Continued growth in Saudi energy use could make the country, now among the world’s largest oil exporters, an importer by 2038, according to Chatham House, a U.K.-based think tank.

Long before that, Saudi Arabia’s ability to hold back on pumping some of its oil—known as “spare capacity”—would disappear as domestic demand grows. That capacity, which can be switched on or off at the country’s whim, is key to its role as king of the world’s oil markets, and has been critical to its ability to smooth out what would otherwise have been some huge market swings.

Ballooning Saudi demand is “going to take away their ability to be the swing producer, to go up or down in production,” according to Jim Krane, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

That might seem irrelevant today, when the globe is glutted with oil. But as demand catches up to supply—in no small part due to swelling demand growth among Middle Eastern petro-states—the global oil market could become significantly more volatile, he notes.

Some big energy importers—such as Egypt, Indonesia and India—have managed to cut subsidies significantly to head off fiscal disasters. But the major petro-states, beyond Iran and Venezuela, have no budget pressures to focus officials’ minds on overhauls.

Countries like Saudi Arabia, fearful of a social blowback, can tap huge reserves to maintain their subsidies and cover the loss of export revenues. They are focusing on improving energy efficiency and expanding their domestic energy supplies through nuclear power plants.

But that only means energy use will continue to rise—and well above the rate new supply can be added. “Saudi is not a small energy consumer,” said Laura El-Katiri, a research fellow with the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “What happens to demand there is important to the overall demand picture globally.”
…

Buffett not alone in failing to grasp Grexit dangers
If Mr Buffett seriously thinks that the euro would be strengthened by a Greek exit, which is what he said, then he needs his head examined.
By Jeremy Warner
7:30PM BST 04 Apr 2015

It is hard to think of a nicer and wiser capitalist than Warren Buffett, but every man has his day, and the time may finally have come for the Sage of Omaha to spend more time with his ukulele.

I say this because last week he demonstrably broke one of his first rules of investment, which is never get involved in things you don’t fully understand.

If Mr Buffett seriously thinks that the euro would be strengthened by a Greek exit, which is what he said, then he needs his head examined.

Leaving the euro may or may not be good for Greece in the long run.

Yet it will also surely leave European monetary union even more weakened, unstable and lacking in credibility than it already is, if that was indeed possible.

The moment it becomes possible for a country to leave the euro, the currency transmogrifies from a single monetary region into little more than a system of pegged national exchange rates, which countries can opt in and out of according to need. It is hard to see the point of such a construct, except as a recipe for chaos.

Mr Buffett is also deluding himself if he thinks there are now sufficient firewalls to prevent contagion.

It’s true that very little Greek public debt is now owned by private creditors, making a repeat of the chain reaction of threatened banking defaults that happened in the aftermath of the Lehman’s collapse quite unlikely.

Unfortunately, this has not really defused the problem, but merely transformed into something else. The vast bulk of Greek public debt is now owned either by other Eurozone states on a bilateral basis, or by other official sources — the IMF, the ECB and European Union bail-out funds.

Refusal to pay the €498m due to the IMF next week would mark the point of no return. Italy alone has €40bn out on loan to Greece. Portugal and Ireland, which have also been “programme” countries alongside Greece, have similarly been forced to shoulder their share of the Greek bailouts.

These already cash-strapped nations can ill afford such a loss. An exit/default is therefore likely to be a deeply traumatic event for all involved.

The geopolitical repercussions of an enforced exit threaten to be equally destabilising, with Greece likely to turn to Russia, China and even Iran for succour in the event of European ostracisation.

By the look of it, Greece’s Syriza-led government is fully prepared to take the nuclear option, and unilaterally default in the absence of meaningful concessions.

The European Union seems similarly unprepared to tolerate an alien, revolutionary, Latin American-style government in its midst, almost regardless of any concessions it might offer.
…

How are your emerging market investments holding up these days?

Baltic Dry Index down to 588 points
03.04.2015

On April 2, 2015, the Baltic Dry Index fell to 588 points, down 8 points (1.34%) against the level of April 1.

BDI is a number issued daily by the London-based Baltic Exchange. Not restricted to Baltic Sea countries, the index provides “an assessment of the price of moving the major raw materials by sea.

Taking in 23 shipping routes measured on a timecharter basis, the index covers Handysize, Supramax, Panamax, and Capesize dry bulk carriers carrying a range of commodities including coal, iron ore and grain. Because dry bulk primarily consists of materials that function as raw material inputs to the production of intermediate or finished goods, the index is also seen as an efficient economic indicator of future economic growth and production.
…

CR8R

Iron ore miners told Chinese steel growth forecasts too bullish
Date
April 4, 2015
Peter Ker
Resources reporter
Predictions that Chinese steel production will peak at 1 billion tonnes are unrealistic, BHP’s former iron ore boss has said. Photo: Louie Douvis

Australian iron ore miners need to accept their long-held forecasts for Chinese steel growth are likely to be too optimistic, according to the former iron ore president of BHP Billiton.

Speaking after the price of iron ore slumped again to just $US47.08 per tonne, Ian Ashby said he had not expected to see iron ore prices plumb these depths until after 2020.

“With the price in the $US40s I’m shocked, but I’m not shocked by the volatility because the market is trying to find itself,” he said. “If you go back and look at the cycles, whichever commodity they are in, generally the price will overshoot big time on the high side, and then it will fall off a cliff.”

Mr Ashby headed up BHP’s iron ore division during the absolute peak of iron ore prices between 2006 and 2012, and he said the slowdown in China had not been fully appreciated.

“The wall of supply has hit. My concern would be that I don’t think the slowdown in China has been fully analysed with respect to what it means for steel demand and I also think that there is going to have to be some ‘fessing up soon by certain companies that the demand they’ve projected into the future is not going to materialise,” he said.

Rio Tinto and BHP have long predicted that China’s steel industry would peak at 1 billion tonnes sometime between 2020 and 2030, and both companies have reaffirmed that view in recent months.

“You look at the top four companies and you will probably still see them all still saying it is going to be 1 billion tonnes somewhere around that time period, the evidence at the moment is that it’s flat or going backwards at about 900 million if not less, with an economy that has shifted and just pure demand falling away,” said Mr Ashby.

The comments echo the thoughts of China Iron and Steel Association deputy secretary Li Xinchuang, who in September warned that steel production in China would not reach 1 billion tonnes.

“Over the next 10 years, according to our studies, China’s steel production can be over 800 million tonnes for a long time, but it cannot go over 900 million tonnes,” he said in September during a visit to Melbourne.

He expanded on the comments last month, saying that Chinese steel production had officially peaked at 823 million tonnes in 2014, and would slip to 814 million tonnes in 2015.

Iron ore industry veteran Russell Tipper, the former chief executive of Brockman Mining, said Chinese steel would continue to grow, but at a more gradual pace.

Mr Tipper, who has worked for Aquila Resources, Rio Tinto and BHP in his career, said he was surprised that the price slide had not claimed more scalps in the Chinese mining industry. “The only thing I can’t reconcile is the lack of a supply response in the Chinese iron ore industry,” he said.

Earlier this decade, conventional wisdom in the Australian iron ore sector suggested that Chinese iron ore mines were losing money with iron ore at about $US110 per tonne, with the price expected to remain above that level in the longer term. The price slide over the past year appears to have disproved that theory.

“There can’t be many iron ore mines in China profitable at this price,” said Mr Tipper.

Most pundits believe that Rio Tinto and BHP are the only profitable iron ore miners in Australia at current prices, with the 14 per cent fall in the iron ore price over the past week likely to have pushed Fortescue into the red, where Atlas Iron and Mount Gibson have likely been for several months now.

Mr Ashby said Fortescue did a great job building its export business in such a short time, but it may have pushed its debt-funded growth strategy “one step too far”. Fortescue had net debt of $US7.47 billion at December 31, with the bulk due to be repaid in 2019.

Mr Ashby said if current market conditions were to persist, Fortescue would have no choice but to start selling assets.

“I think the capital markets are closed for them,” he said. “They are not going to survive without doing something and I don’t think they are going to get any debt relief, so I think they are going to have to sell some of their assets down.”

Mr Ashby said he expected Fortescue to sell down stakes in mines rather than its port and rail infrastructure.

“This is an infrastructure game, so the infrastructure has the value at the end because the predators will be out there, the BHP Billitons will be out there in ten years time,” he said. “So I don’t think they are going to sell down the infrastructure, if it were me I would be selling down the mineral resources.”

Iron ore prices have now fallen 34 per cent since January 1, and 60 per cent since they were $US119.82 per tonne in April 2014.

Both Mr Tipper and Mr Ashby dismissed suggestions there was an organised push within China to drive the price down, saying that the various steel mills and provincial governments had never been able to organise themselves into a united push.
…

Darrell Delamaide’s Political Capital
Opinion: Greek crisis nears a turning point
By Darrell Delamaide
Published: Mar 27, 2015 3:30 a.m. ET
Will Syriza stand up to Europe, or knuckle under?
AFP/Getty Images
Alexis Tsipras campaigned with passion. Now that he’s leading Greece, does he still have it?

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The simmering crisis in Greece has the potential to become one of those seemingly small events that leads to big consequences.

The election of a radical government by a public exhausted from five years of debilitating recession, the war of words conducted by that government in the face of the iron fist of establishment power in the European Union, and the expected resolution either in the form of a total retreat by the Greek government and its collapse or an exit from the euro — all this seems relatively small on the scale of global events.

But few expected the assassination of an Austrian royal heir to start World War I, or the shelling of a military depot in Gdansk by German forces in 1939 to lead to the conflagration of World War II, or, for that matter, the strike in 1980 by Polish trade union Solidarity in that same port city to lead to the unraveling of the Soviet empire.

Who thinks this can end well? Who knows what the consequences will be?

The Greek crisis could well become a similar turning point in history.
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phony scandals