Bits Bucket for May 30, 2015
Post off-topic ideas, links, and Craigslist finds here.
The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
About Me
Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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“Global climate on verge of multi-decadal change.”
So, does this mean the earth is still doomed? Maybe not …
“A new study, by scientists from the University of Southampton and National Oceanography Centre (NOC), implies that the global climate is on the verge of broad-scale change that could last for a number of decades.
“The change to the new set of climatic conditions is associated with a cooling of the Atlantic …”
Cooling? A cooling of the Atlantic? Wow! This is different. Read on …
“… and is likely to bring drier summers in Britain and Ireland, accelerated sea-level rise along the northeast coast of the United States, and drought in the developing countries of the Sahel region. Since this new climatic phase could be half a degree cooler, it may well offer a brief reprise from the rise of global temperatures …”
“A brief reprise” - a brief reprise, in that it will last for decades.
“… as well as resulting in fewer hurricanes hitting the United States.
“The study, published in Nature, proves that ocean circulation is the link between weather and decadal scale climatic change. It is based on observational evidence of the link between ocean circulation and the decadal variability of sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean.”
What? No mention of CO2?
“Lead author Dr Gerard McCarthy, from the NOC, said: ‘Sea-surface temperatures in the Atlantic vary between warm and cold over time-scales of many decades. These variations have been shown to influence temperature, rainfall, drought and even the frequency of hurricanes in many regions of the world. This decadal variability, called the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO), is a notable feature of the Atlantic Ocean and the climate of the regions it influences.”
“These climatic phases, referred to as positive or negative AMO’s, are the result of the movement of heat northwards by a system of ocean currents. This movement of heat changes the temperature of the sea surface, which has a profound impact on climate on timescales of 20-30 years.”
“timescales of 20-30 years”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150527133932.htm
Warmists gonna warm
And why is HBB still so damn fixated on no down payment? That is NOT what blew up the bubble, not by itself. What really blew up the bubble was those I/O neg-am ARM loans. You don’t see those any more. Loans are now fully amortized from Day 1. That’s enough to stop every bank in its tracks even with no down payment.
Also from yesterday, prices shouldn’t be tied to Joe 6packs income.
Sounds like you are saying the government can exit the mortgage guarantee business?
Moral hazard is a big part of the issue with no down, the borrower is far more likely to walk away when times get rough if they are not losing a 20% down payment in the process…and of course the situation is the same for the banks when they can be reckless and not suffer the consequences.
Anyway Wikipedia has a good article on the topic…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
“No down” = immediately underwater upon purchase.
“And why is HBB still so damn fixated on no down payment? That is NOT what blew up the bubble, not by itself.”
Your lack of basic economics education is once again blinding you. Eliminating a downpayment requirement helps blow bubbles through multiple channels:
1) It creates adverse selection for prospective buyers who lack the means or self-discipline to save up for a down payment;
2) It creates moral hazard for owners with little or no skin in the game to default in case the market turns south or their household economic situation deteriorates;
3) By removing the linkage between a household’s available downpayment and the home purchase budget*, it eliminates one of the tethers between household incomes and home prices;
4) Relaxing or removing a downpayment requirement greatly increases the number of households who qualify for a home purchase at any price point, which translates into increased housing demand. Students in a first undergraduate economics course learn that an increase in demand is predicted to increase the price. Unfortunately, this new group of buyers added to the demand pool are greater credit risks for the aforementioned reasons.
This explains why middle class households with savings and good credit should avoid buying during a period of weakening lending standards, unless they wish to lose money over the long run by competing on price with prospective buyers who face a high probability of future default and foreclosure, but don’t care because they either are ignorant or have nothing to lose.
* For example, suppose a household has $10,000 saved up towards a downpayment. With a 20% downpayment requirement, they can afford at most a $50,000 home; with a 5% downpayment requirement, they can “afford” a $200,000 home; and with the FHA’s 3.5% downpayment requirement, the same household can “afford” to buy a home at a price of
$10,000 / 3.5% = $285,714.
“Also from yesterday, prices shouldn’t be tied to Joe 6packs income.”
When you say ’shouldn’t be’, do you mean the U.S. government should adopt policies which encourage prices to decouple from household incomes? Or is it that, in your opinion, there is no fundamental economic reason that home prices should align with household incomes? (In the latter case, hopefully my post above helps shed light on why this opinion is incorrect.)
“Also from yesterday, prices shouldn’t be tied to Joe 6packs income.”
House prices are directly tied to the size of the mortgage government housing agencies are willing to buy or insure.
If the government is willing to buy a 700,000 mortgage for an agricultural worker, that’s a lot of money being funneled to a lender for a promise to pay which isn’t worth very much at all.
Over the past seven years, the government has purchased nearly 97% of new mortgages (PDF - p.10). On top of that, the Fed simply prints money to take them off the hands of the government (QE).
It’s a backdoor money printing scheme, the recipients of which are the FIRE sector. So not tying a mortgage to income is certainly possible, provided the government wishes to do so.
According to Bloomberg, central banks have printed 5.7 trillion in the past “few” years.
In bad debt, money doesn’t go poof, it’s merely transferred from lender to borrower. Global net debt is zero.
Some of you may recall this story from back in 2007. Notice how it mentions “zero-down mortgage”.
This story is a perfect example of how relaxing or eliminating down payment requirements leads to a decoupling of housing prices from household incomes.
Minorities are the emerging face of the subprime crisis
By Carol Lloyd,
Special to SF Gate
Published 4:00 am, Friday, April 13, 2007
When Alberto and Rosa Ramirez began looking for a home, they never imagined that 18 months later they would personify a national real estate crisis. It’s not that they bought a house with walls crawling with toxic mold or inherited an insane neighbor next door or, even, God forbid, that they didn’t buy at all. They bought, and they love, their slice of the American Dream.
“It’s all very nice and beautiful,” Rosa tells me through a translator. “The neighborhood is very peaceful. The problem is not with the house at all. It’s the price of the house.”
Indeed, in a different era (when housing prices were lower), their story might have been one of those bootstrap tales about homeownership transforming immigrant lives. The husband and wife work as strawberry pickers in the fields around Watsonville, and each earns about $300 a week. They have three children. Not only did they dream the impossible dream, they managed to finance it.
It all began when they were talking to another family about escaping their subsidized apartments and getting a real house. The other couple — Jesus Martinez and his wife, who also have three children — work as mushroom farmers, earning about $500 a week each when there is work. The two couples decided to pool their resources and begin house-hunting. Given their total income, they estimated that they could afford payments of $3,000 a month. They spotted an ad in the local magazine La Ganga for Maria Avila of Rancho Grande Real Estate and called her.
“We wanted to live in Watsonville,” says Rosa. “But [the real estate agent] said the houses there were older and more expensive.” One of the first homes they were shown was a “new” four-bedroom, two-bath house in Hollister for $720,000. When the Ramirez’s heard the price, they worried that they couldn’t afford it.
But the couple says they were assured them it was possible. “The monthly payment was supposed to be $4,800, but then after we bought it, it went up to $5,378,” says Rosa, speaking of their zero-down mortgage with a one-month “teaser rate.” “Our agent told us that once we refinanced, we could get the payments down to $3,000 or less.” For a number of months Avila, who arranged for the loan with New Century Mortgage, paid the difference between what the buyers had said they could afford — $3,000 — and the actual loan payment. According to the buyers, this arrangement was supposed to carry them over until the group refinanced.
The money-saving refinance failed to materialize, and eventually, Avila stopped subsidizing their current mortgage. (According to my analysis of interest rates during the period, hitting the $3,000 number would have been virtually impossible under any circumstances. An interest-only $720,000 loan at a 5 percent interest rate [15-year fixed] yields a $3,000 mortgage, but such mortgage rates weren’t available to anyone, much less a laborer with low income, no down payment and no other assets. Plus, that doesn’t count another $750 a month in taxes and insurance.) The two families continued to make the payments, sometimes sacrificing basic necessities, other times borrowing more. “It was very difficult,” Rosa says. “Sometimes we would eat less, and we took out personal loans from Bank of America.”
…
‘Q: Are mortgages still becoming more available?
A: Apparently so. Mortgage credit availability increased in April, according to a report from the Mortgage Bankers Association.
“Mortgage credit availability increased on net in April,” said Mike Fratantoni, MBA’s chief economist. “The increase was driven by new offerings of FHA’s 203K home improvement program, new VA offerings, and new jumbo products. The increase was partially offset by some investors tightening underwriting criteria on conventional cash-out offerings.”
Q: To what extent are home prices increasing?
A: It depends on location. Stronger demand amid lagging inventory levels caused home prices to accelerate in many metro areas during the first quarter of 2015, and the number of areas experiencing double-digit price appreciation doubled compared to last quarter, according to the latest quarterly report by the National Association of Realtors.’
‘Fifty-one metro areas in the first quarter (29 percent) experienced double-digit increases, a sharp increase from the 24 metro areas in the fourth quarter of 2014. Thirty-seven metro areas (21 percent) experienced double-digit increases in the first quarter of 2014.’
http://siouxcityjournal.com/advertorial/siouxland_homes/why-potential-home-buyers-are-holding-off/article_443a8490-ec82-5397-a81b-0ac3ba9b9afa.html
Mel, Janet, heck of a job!
Is Sioux City, Iowa a bubble capital now? Who could have seen it coming?
“Sioux City, Iowa”
Home of Crash Landings.
“Also from yesterday, prices shouldn’t be tied to Joe 6packs income.”
So how do you propose actual repayment, Scent of a Mortgage?
You heard it about the AMO from me on this board three years ago and I talked about the impending cooling of the Atlantic when the press just wanted to talk about drought in the US especially Texas. BTW, just how does AGW cause floods in Texas when there has not been any GW in twenty years? And if GW caused the floods, then has it saved the US hundreds of billions of dollars due to the small number of hurricanes that have hit the US in the last nine years almost a historical low, or is AGW just responsible for bad weather not good weather>
“You heard it about the AMO from me on this board three years ago and I talked about the impending cooling of the Atlantic when the press just wanted to talk about drought in the US especially Texas.”
You da man, Dan!
All global warming theory is based on are increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, a GLOBAL rise in temperatures, and rising sea levels. There will always be local variability. Post again in 20 years to see how accurate the theory is.
The theory has already failed, there is nothing in the theory or the models to explain five years without a rise in global temperatures never mind twenty years. That is why the CAGW scientists did everything they could do to hide the data and we have their e-mails. We are not talking about local variability we are talking about global temperatures. It is the CAGW that is trying to use local variability to support CAGW by trying to blame every bad weather event in the world. So get back to us in twenty years if the globe has warmed.
It is 20 years later and here we are.
1978 ice age Time magazine
“Post again in 20 years to see how accurate the theory is.”
Great idea!
That will give a lot more people a chance to die or forget about the prediction before it is proven wrong.
5 years for the entire North Polar ice cap to be gone didn’t work out, if it had been 20 years you could still be throwing some government grant scientist’s $4 million study out here to prove it is still going to happen.
Al Gore’s global-warming rhetoric is put on ice
By Andrea Peyser
February 17, 2014
The Oscar-winning 2006 documentary that shows Gore giving a scary slide show, “An Inconvenient Truth,’’ catapulted him into winning the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which he shared with fellow climate hysterics of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The “entire North Polar ice cap will be gone in five years,’’ Gore, now 65, told a German TV audience in 2008. Wrong.
In fact, receding Arctic ice rebounded between 2012 and 2013, growing by 29 percent into an unbroken patch more than half the size of Europe and within 5 percent of what it was 30 years ago, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Last month near the South Pole, a Russian ship carrying scientists and tourists traveled to the bottom of the Earth so passengers might document global warming and shrinking ice caps. But the ship got stuck on ice that was thicker than at any time since records started being kept in 1978. The warming fans were airlifted to safety by helicopter, leaving behind confused penguins.
And — whoops! — climate scientists conceded last year that the Earth’s surface temperature stopped rising in 1997. (Or did temps take a temporary “pause,’’ as warmists say?) Too bad for makers of jet-skis and tank tops: We might see global cooling into the 2030s.
Warmists blamed Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012 on greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But the hurricane season that ended on Nov. 30, 2013, was among the quietest since 1960, according to an opinion piece by journalist and attorney Michael Fumento published in The Post.
Just two relatively meek Category 1 hurricanes (’canes go up to Category 5) formed in the Atlantic Ocean last year. Neither made landfall in the United States.
President Obama is down with warmists. His administration has proposed regulations to reduce carbon emissions from power plants. And in his proposed budget next month, he will ask Congress to set up a $1 billion “Climate Change Resilience Fund,’’ a waste of cash that would be used for research, helping communities prepare for climate change (by building more swimming pools?) and funding “breakthrough technologies and resilient infrastructure,’’ a White House spokesman told Politico.com.
nypost.com/2014/02/17/al-gores-global-warming-rhetoric-is-put-on-ice/ - 136k -
Here’s some more info about the AMO, from … from 2008:
“A 2008 study – ‘Oceanic Influences on Recent Continental Warming’, by Compo, G.P., and P.D. Sardeshmukh, (Climate Diagnostics Center, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, and Physical Sciences Division, Earth System Research Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), Climate Dynamics, 2008)
[http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/people/gilbert.p.compo/CompoSardeshmukh2007a.pdf] states:
“’Evidence is presented that the recent worldwide land warming has occurred largely in response to a worldwide warming of the oceans rather than as a direct response to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) over land.’”
Wow! That should have gotten him run out of town.
“‘Atmospheric model simulations of the last half-century with prescribed observed ocean temperature changes, but without prescribed GHG changes, account for most of the land warming. … Several recent studies suggest that the observed SST variability may be misrepresented in the coupled models used in preparing the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, with substantial errors on interannual and decadal scales. There is a hint of an underestimation of simulated decadal SST variability even in the published IPCC Report.’”
http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/amo.htm
Here’s a submitted paper by a scientific-type person that carries the title:
“Implications for climate models of their disagreement with observations”
Check out the projections of the various models and then compare these projections with what actually occurred. Then ask yourself the question that she asks, which is:
“How should we interpret the growing disagreement between observations and climate model projections in the first decades of the 21st century? What does this disagreement imply for the epistemology of climate models?”
http://judithcurry.com/2013/10/30/implications-for-climate-models-of-their-disagreement-with-observations/
“So, does this mean the earth is still doomed? Maybe not …”
A lot of excitement over a study that doesn’t even remotely show what the excited apparently think (or have been told) it shows. It must have gotten big play on the climate change denier web sites: ‘Share this headline, and hope no one reads the article!’
The article of course, and the study, talk of global warming as a given, like all non-industry funded science does, and in now way suggest that this new study somehow calls into question the theory of man-made global warming. But it has cold weather in the headline, so it ‘proves’ something to the gullible.
Why does climate change seem to be such an obsessive topic on a housing bubble blog?
The manipulation of climate data by government closely matches the manipulation of the housing market by the government. It has many of the same actors including the friendly controlled press. How many AGW articles do we see in the press day after day saying the same thing over and over, while we have a president trying to get us to give 100 billions of dollars a year to third world sh*t holes by signing a global warming treaty that commits us to that action.
The manipulation of climate data by government
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2001/2258345996_a5fe2f9ced.jpg
Because, as with housing, climate change is all about truth and it’s all about lies.
Here is how I think the relationship between government and housing has changed over the years. Government has always encouraged the housing sector since construction of housing supports the economy. However, up until about twenty years ago with the widespread use of HELOCs it did not care about the price of houses, if anything it really wanted them to be more affordable since more would be sold and built and more people would own their own homes. But now it wants high asset prices to encourage more home equity borrowing and spending in the economy. It is a fundamental shift in the thinking and the actions of government.
” it really wanted ”
I have a different take on what “it” wants. “It” survives on the skim from our transactions. It skims the purchase, it skims the debt service. It wants the milk and honey to flow for this, not for anything else.
“…if anything it really wanted them to be more affordable since more would be sold and built and more people would own their own homes. But now it wants high asset prices to encourage more home equity borrowing and spending in the economy. It is a fundamental shift in the thinking and the actions of government.”
That sounds right. Too bad the effort to blow bubbles in order to encourage spending always ends in tears when bubbles collapse, with many recent buyers finding themselves underwater and stuck with a home they can’t sell to cover the loan balance.
It’s because some people think if you don’t believe in climate change you are stupid and don’t understand science or watch MSNBC. I prefer understanding this however:
I swear, HBB can NOT seem to let go of this idea that the price of housing should be magically tied to Joe6pack incomes by some natural law. And that if only “government would get out of the way” prices will conveniently do exactly what you want them to do. This will not happen. The barrier to lower prices is not government regs. It’s investors with piles of cash who can outbid J6P every time.
It’s investors with piles of cash who can outbid J6P every time.
The money is from the Federal Reserve borrowed at .25%. End that and housing prices go down. So it is the government or the private/Government monster which is the federal reserve.
“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes it’s laws” — Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild …
“The barrier to lower prices is not government regs. It’s investors with piles of cash who can outbid J6P every time.”
The only reason these investors bought was because they caught wind of the government’s (e.g. the Fed’s) housing price reflation program and piled on to capture the QE3 subsidy gains.
What is going to get interesting is the evolution of the market as the recent fly-by-night buyers try to cash out their gains.
The flippers and speculators don’t need to actually outbid J6P on price to shut him out, the fact that they are paying cash and very often waiving all contingencies is enough in itself, I experienced this personally several times. If there is competition on offered price it was often between the flippers and speculators during the runup of the echo bubble, as a J6P I eventually learned that I was not even in the game when I was trying to buy a few years ago. This does however remove the restraining effect that appraisers and inspectors have on prices in a normal stable market when most are buying a house to live in and doing it with a mortgage. I bought once before in a normal market in 1997 and naively thought I could do that again after Bubble 2.0 popped, early 2011 was the bottom locally so my timing was good price wise but I had no clue that it would be virtually impossible to buy without 100% cash then…in retrospect I should have tried in 2009/2010 and might have had a chance then.
“I bought once before in a normal market in 1997…”
Shortly after we last bought, and the last chance to buy before the Housing Bubble drove CA prices towards their still-sky-high levels…
“… and naively thought I could do that again after Bubble 2.0 popped,…”
Who could have seen the Fed’s deliberate housing price reflation efforts coming?
“…early 2011 was the bottom locally so my timing was good price wise but I had no clue that it would be virtually impossible to buy without 100% cash then…in retrospect I should have tried in 2009/2010 and might have had a chance then.”
I have some colleagues at work who did well for themselves buying in the 2009/2010 window. Had dinner at one of their places recently; he intimated that ‘they wouldn’t be able to buy the same house’ at current price levels.
@Hessel — Climate change definitely belongs on a housing discussion board. Nothing will ruin your home’s value like a foot of sea water on your new faux hardwood. Or when you turn on the faucet and sand comes out.
“Nothing will ruin your home’s value like a foot of sea water on your new faux hardwood.”
Acid, you forgot the word acid. Here, I’ll fix it for you:
“Nothing will ruin your home’s value like a foot of highly acidic sea water dissolving your new faux hardwood.”
Ya know, they really should hire a Blind Squirrel to do a Climate Change study because at least a Blind Squirrel would find an acorn every once in a while.
Maybe a Blind Squirrel would have changed Obama’s BS statement from south Florida to Texas back in April.
CBS’s LaPook Helps Obama Advance Narrative Climate Change Is Harmful to Personal Health
By Curtis Houck | April 8, 2015 | 9:00 PM EDT
LAPOOK: Did that bring it home for you with Malia, this is affecting my daughter? I have to do something about it.
OBAMA: You know, there’s no doubt about it. In the same way I think there are families right now in south Florida who see two feet of water coming into their house every time it rains and start thinking, you know what? Rising temperatures and rising ocean levels are going to affect my property. Part of what I’m trying to communicate here is that there is a cost to inaction.
- See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/curtis-houck/2015/04/08/cbss-dr-jon-lapook-frets-climate-change-legislation-has-stalled#sthash.8H5cD4DG.dpuf
Nothing will ruin your home’s value like a foot of sea water on your new faux hardwood.
Really is that why Obama bought oceanfront property in Hawaii?
“Nothing will ruin your home’s value like a foot of sea water on your new faux hardwood.”
That’s just so silly, especially if you live more than a couple of miles inland in California. For instance, we live less than 20 minutes’ drive of the coast if there is no traffic, but the ocean would need to rise to a level it hasn’t seen in millions of years to get anywhere near our doorstep, as the California shore generally features a steep gradient with hundreds of feet in elevation gain within a couple of miles of the coast.
Meanwhile, houses within walking distance of the beach are no more underwater now than when the whole politically-driven global warming scare mongering efforts began decades ago.
@Bear — i was referring to Florida, where the rising sea water problem due to climate change is the most immediate. For California, http://cal-adapt.org has interactive mapping you can explore for forecasted seawater inundation. It is significant in the Bay Area and the Huntington Beach areas.
“… i was referring to Florida, where the rising sea water problem due to climate change is the most immediate.”
Or a storm surge, where the rising sea water problem due to a storm surge is the most immediate. Go here for some info about storm surges, including pictures:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hurricane/resources/surge_intro.pdf
So, yeah, Florida is subject to flooding by rising sea levels. But the flooding due to rising sea levels isn’t due to anything new on the scene any more than a hurricane is something that is new on the scene.
“Why does climate change seem to be such an obsessive topic on a housing bubble blog?”
They sure do post in waves, and their arguments and links to WattsUp and the like are clearly all prepared and ready.
” climate change is all about truth and it’s all about lies”
Exactly. Just like the dangers of smoking tobacco.
The industry was found to have decades of internal memos confirming in detail that tobacco (which contains nicotine) is both addictive and carcinogenic (cancer-causing).
wikipedia
Someday, we’ll learn the same about the oil companies.
”climate change is all about truth and it’s all about lies”
“In the same way I think there are families right now in south Florida who see two feet of water coming into their house every time it rains and start thinking, you know what? Rising temperatures and rising ocean levels are going to affect my property.”
“When astrologers speak of the planets being aligned (something which doesn’t really concern astronomers) they don’t mean that the planets will actually all lie on a straight line at some instant of time. One calculation of alignments within around thirty degrees (about as close as they can get) shows that the last such alignment was in 561 BC, and the next will be in 2854. All nine planets are somewhat aligned every 500 years, and are grouped within 30 degrees every 1 to 3 alignments.”
from cornell dot edu
We find ourselves at a rare alignment of manias. Such a thing does not happen very often.
It would be beautiful if the emergence of a global cooling trend muzzled the yaps of the global warming alarmists for the next several decades.
I’m hoping and praying…
Potential downside: A New Ice Age alarmist faction could enter the scene.
I remember the New Ice Age alarmists in 70s. I recall wanting a wooly mammoth.
Muzzle the yaps of the climate change deniers with their fifty posts, or the yaps of the science believers and their five posts?
By far the biggest loudmouths are in the denier camp. It’s almost like it’s their profession, they’re so on it.
Deny what? That “global warming is real”?
How can anyone take such BS political slogans for serious science?
Because it is?
It is BS political slogans?
Got it…
For a long time, climate change theory was just something scientists used to explain certain facts, and it still is. That’s what science is. At some point, a certain pair of brothers, who happen to be some of the biggest causes of global warming, if the theory is correct, noticed that the theory, if true, might lead to them being required to cut back on the toxins they dump into the atmosphere. That would cost them money, even though they have more than enough money to buy a whole political party. Nevertheless, a campaign was started to question the findings of the scientists involved in global warming theory. Not medical scientists, astronomers, geneticists, biologists, or any other science. Just those scientists who have a bad habit of pointing out the negative effects of dumping toxins in the atmosphere. The brothers spent a lot of money to have articles and politicians attack these scientists, and imply that it was actually them who had ulterior motives. Even people who don’t know jack squat about even the most basic facts of environmental science were made to believe that they were qualified to disprove their findings, just by quoting articles the brothers paid for. The moral is, things go better with Koch.
“Even people who don’t know jack squat about even the most basic facts of environmental science were made to believe that they were qualified to disprove their findings, just by quoting articles the brothers paid for.”
Nailed it.
Weather trends are no problem for us renters. We couldn’t care less if our current digs become far colder or far hotter. We will merely pull up stakes and go elsewhere.
Senate showdown in less than 36 hours!
Repeal the Patriot Act and abolish the NSA
Who watches the watchmen ?
Barack Obama, John McCain, and Lindsey Graham
You also have William Kristol on the TeeVee calling Rand Paul a Democrat, because that’s how the spy state apologist, warmonger Republican party rallies the base. No “smaller government” or “lower taxes” happening here, just more spying on American citizens, more trillion dollar wars, and more governing by fear. I hope you’re happy with what you voted for
This is all just silly base rallying all the whining over the Patriot Act. It doesn’t matter if they renew or not. The President has more than enough power to continue all this stuff via classified executive order.
Do you really think they are going to stop?
Exactly, just theatre to get people to let their guard down.
“Do you really think they are going to stop?”
How would you know? How would you know if they really stopped or not?
And when would you know? I follow the ten year rule when it comes to government secrecy and shadiness. If we know about it now, it’s been around for 10 years at least without us knowing about it.
The Preacher that yells the loudest agin’ Sin is almost always living a double life , enjoying what he rails against…So why do we expect more ,or better from politicians?
Here’s a petition:
“On May 31, the surveillance statists have only 8 hours to continue illegal spying, so please sign your “I Object!” Citizen’s Objection to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and your U.S. Senators urging them to Stand with Rand and oppose any extension of the illegal “Patriot” Act provisions.”
http://chooseliberty.org/pa-s.aspx?pid=dwts
Done. Sign it turds.
Good for Paul doing a filibuster.
Done.
The preacher that yells the loudest ….
Does this mean Rand Paul is spying on me?
Rand Paul/Bernie Sanders national reconciliation ticket 2016.
“If you have to finance it for 15 or 30 years, it’s not affordable nor can you afford it.”
“There are no minus signs in Realtor math.”
Can u afford to do anything since you lost over 100k by not making a move?
U will never admit you were wrong will you?
Where did you come up with that number?
Data Poet. Stick with the data.
Denver, CO Housing Prices Fall 9%
http://www.movoto.com/denver-co/market-trends/
u have to pay the bankers a cut to be in the game!
Poet….. remember… don’t borrow, liquidate assets and raise cash. You’ll thank me later.
Speaking of bankers at least investment bankers, they may have put nets under the big banks:
http://www.examiner.com/article/investment-banker-jumps-29-y-o-jumps-to-his-death-nyc-witnesses-horrified
The appropriate place for nets would seem to be NYC high-rise luxury condos.
I wonder if China’s high-rise housing faces similar issues?
Not a suicide, but it does point to the risks of living in high rise towers with shoddy construction…
Couple Fall Out of Window to Their Death While Making Love
March 15, 2015
By Elysia McMahan
How does a couple fall out of a window while having sex in their home?
According to The Sun, a Chinese couple recently did just that, falling out of their apartment window to their deaths while making love.
The unstable window they were having sex against allegedly broke, causing them to plummet to the ground in central China. Witnesses say that as they fell from their apartment, they were seen holding tight to one another.
…
Confucius say: Man who bang wife against high Chinese window, in for big letdown.
“holding tight to one another.”
Is that what they’re calling it these days?
Seller’s housing market ‘on fire’: Redfin CEO
New home sales surged in April, pending sales of existing properties are up, and so are home prices.
In other words, the real estate market is “really hot” right now, according to the CEO of online real estate search and brokerage firm Redfin.
“It’s a very strong seller’s market. We’ve got homes selling in 45 minutes in places like Omaha and Atlanta,” Glenn Kelman said in an interview with ” Power Lunch ” earlier this week.
The whole country “has been on fire in the past few months.
It’s just a really hot market.
A slew of positive economic data was released this week, suggesting the housing market recovery was gaining traction.
Pending sales of existing homes for April rose 3.4 percent from March, to the highest level in nine years, according to figures released Thursday by the National Association of Realtors. Pending sales are now up 14 percent from a year ago.
New home sales are also on the rise, jumping 6.8 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 517,000 units, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. That spike was higher than analysts had expected.
Meanwhile, the closely-watched S&P/Case-Shiller Index showed housing prices in 20 cities climbed 5 percent year-over-year in March.
Supply is still tight, and buyers are flooding into the market trying to beat mortgage rate increases, Kelman noted. Many market watchers expect the Federal Reserve to begin raising interest rates in September, which will push up mortgage rates.
“Most of the buyers we talk to are really frustrated because they’re getting into bidding wars, not just with two or three other buyers but with 5, 10 ,15 buyers,” he said.
“Some of our markets are saying this is crazier than we ever saw in 2007, 2006 so really we’re going to see stronger price increases over the next two or three months than we saw previously,” Kelman added.
Despite soaring prices, most economists are not yet convinced the housing market is in bubble territory. That’s most likely because they’re starting from such a low base: in the wake of the 2008 crisis, housing fell into depression territory, as prices swooned by more than 30 percent from peak to trough.
https://homes.yahoo.com/news/sellers-housing-market-fire-redfin-150000096.html
If you’re a landlord king, why did you post an article that was clearly written to push people into buying a house? Wouldn’t it be better for you if people rented instead?
Data my friends data…
Encinitas, CA Housing Prices Fall 6%
http://www.movoto.com/encinitas-ca/market-trends/
Oil prices were up almost five percent yesterday. The oil companies are fracking wells that have already been drilled but not drilling new wells because the price is still too low. A drilled well has 30% of the costs of the new well already as sunk costs. However, you cannot keep fracking wells faster than you are drilling them and that is what we are doing. The market realize that yesterday and shot up in price.
http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/138839/Chinese_Teapots_Provide_Edge_Over_US_for_Worlds_Top_Oil_Buyer/?all=HG2
Key excerpt, but wait $80 oil by December where did I hear that before:
China’s record purchases are adding to signs of increasing demand that will create a global shortfall of 1.5 million barrels a day in the fourth quarter, Bernstein said in a May 27 report. That’ll drive up Brent crude prices to $80 a barrel, the researcher predicts. The European benchmark oil closed at $62.58 on the London-based ICE Futures Europe Exchange on Thursday. - See more at: http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/138839/Chinese_Teapots_Provide_Edge_Over_US_for_Worlds_Top_Oil_Buyer#sthash.e3LkqCAm.dpuf
Or its just the usual summer rise in gas prices.
We are talking oil not gasoline. BTW, more evidence that you cannot trust government statistics under the Obama administration whether it is NASA or the EIA, the Chinese are very accurate compared to this administration. You need lower unemployment just before an election poof millions of jobs are created only to disappear after the election and now this:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/eia-reports-bizarre-increase-u-190254094.html
demand is collapsing cause the economy is in the tanks.
That’s right Poet. The economy, all of us, need lower prices.
Remember… Falling prices makes a fat wallet.
“up almost five percent yesterday…”
We’ll see what happens day trader. What drives this is credit based construction, and that didn’t go up 5% yesterday.
The spreading sectarian warfare in the “Shia Crescent” - especially if it erupts in Saudi Arabia - seems likely to produce a lot more turmoil that could adversely affect energy infrastructure and oil production.
http://news.yahoo.com/islamic-states-saudi-branch-calls-clearing-arabian-peninsula-130850559.html
More on how the rise of ISIS in OPEC countries could disrupt oil production and exports.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/11638709/Opec-under-siege-as-Isil-threatens-worlds-oil-lifeline.html
And here’s another. All the “unintended consequences” of the neo-con’s military fiasco in Iraq are starting to add up.
http://www.businessinsider.com/isis-is-making-the-biggest-threat-to-oil-prices-even-worse-2015-5
ISIS is more an example of our Libyan intervention. Fighters and weapons from there poured into Syria and then ISIS once established in Syria destabilized Iraq which is what I predicted in December of 2013. Successful predictions are one of the reasons I am still using the same name on this blog.
‘A newly revealed classified document uncovered by Judicial Watch gives us a glimpse into how this effort was inextricably intertwined with the real history and origins of the Islamic State (formerly known as ISIS).’
‘A Defense Intelligence Agency analysis of the Syrian civil war, dated August 12, 2012, starts out by drawing the battle lines, noting that the “major forces driving the insurgency” are “the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq]” and are being supported by “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.” Russia, Iran, and China are said to support the Assad regime. The war won’t unseat Assad, but will develop, predicts the memo, into a “proxy war.” In order for the West to win that war, the author recommends setting up “safe havens under international sheltering, similar to what transpired in Libya when Benghazi was chosen as the command center for the temporary government.”
‘It seems Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) wasn’t too far off the mark when he asked then Secretary of State Clinton what she knew about arms shipments from Benghazi to the Syrian rebels. Here’s the exchange:
“PAUL: My question is, is the U.S. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling, anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?
CLINTON: To Turkey? I will have to take that question for the record no one has ever asked me.
PAUL: It has been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and they might have weapons. What I would like to know, is the annex that was close by [in Benghazi]. Were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons, and were any of these weapons being transferred to other countries – to any countries, Turkey included.
CLINTON: Senator, you’ll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. I will see what information is available. I do not know. I do not have information on that.”
‘Sen. Paul was righter than he knew: not only were the arms shipments going to Turkey, and then on to the rebels, but, as Judicial Watch discovered, they were also going directly to Syria.’
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/05/26/isis-an-inside-job/
CLINTON: “I do not know. I do not have information on that.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfhBM_Yay6w - 182k -
CLINTON: “I did not have…
It depends on what the definition of is is.”
‘Images and video footage allegedly showing trucks belonging to Turkey’s state intelligence service carrying weapons to rebels in Syria were published Friday in a Turkish daily.’
‘The Turkish government has vehemently denied claims that it is arming rebels fighting in Syria and accused dozens of prosecutors, soldiers and security officers involved in searching the trucks of attempting to bring it down by suggesting it is doing so. ‘
‘Earlier this month, Turkey arrested four prosecutors who ordered the search of the vehicles near the Syrian border in January 2014 and they are now in prison pending trial. More than 30 security officers involved in the interception also face charges including military espionage and attempting to overthrow the government.’
‘The footage published on the opposition Cumhuriyet daily’s website on Friday shows inspectors searching a metallic container watched by security officers, a prosecutor and sniffer dogs. The officials first open cardboard boxes marked as “fragile” and full of antibiotics. But under those boxes they find dozens of mortar shells, the video, shot by an anonymous bystander, appears to show.’
http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/180421
Update: Crude Oil Plummets 40%; Global Supply Balloons
http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/future/crude%20oil%20-%20electronic
“Crude Oil Price Falls Amid Ample US Supply, Output Gain”
http://www.ttnews.com/articles/basetemplate.aspx?storyid=38373
Remember…. falling prices of all items to dramatically lower and more affordable levels is what the economy needs.
“OPEC Basket Price Falls”
http://www.azernews.az/oil_and_gas/82624.html
“Coking Coal Price Hits 10-Year Low As Demand Falls”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/coking-coal-price-hits-10-year-low-as-demand-falls/story-e6frg9df-1227373476048
WHAT R YOUR LOSSES?
Poet…. Remember… falling prices are exactly what this economy needs.
Oxnard, CA Housing Prices Fall 14%
http://www.movoto.com/oxnard-ca/market-trends/
The $265 Billion Wave That’s About to Crush Homeowners
Credit.com By Christine DiGangi
May 29, 2015 9:00 AM
Millions of consumers will have to absorb a major hit to their household budget in the coming months. About $265 billion in home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) will enter the repayment period in the next few years, according to a study from Experian, and consumers may see their monthly payments spike — in some cases, triple or quadruple what they previously paid.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/265-billion-wave-thats-crush-130038955.html
“… consumers may see their monthly payments spike — in some cases, triple or quadruple what they previously paid.”
It’s called the game of Gotcha!
Suck ‘em in ’till the’re way, way over their head then you get to yell out “GOTCHA!”
Bahahahahahahahaha … dumb ‘em down, and profit. They work, you reap.
Millennials, who are getting their just desserts for being duped into voting for hope ‘n change, won’t be entering the housing market anytime soon.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-29/most-confusing-reason-why-millennials-arent-buying-houses
Now a word from Bill Nye the paid off guy.
Bill Nye Wants to ‘Remind Voters’ — Do Not Support Climate Change Deniers
“I just want everybody to keep this in mind.”
by Truth Revolt | Trey Sanchez | May 30, 2015
Nye appeared on CNN Friday and used the opportunity to compel voters to support only those candidates who believe man-made global warming is worsening natural disasters around the world.
And so I just want everybody to keep this in mind, that it’s very reasonable that the floods in Texas, the strengthening storms… these things are a result of human activity making things worse.
Nye indicated, as he has in the past, that he desires the U.S. to be the leader in the fight against climate change, which will include “new technologies and new regulations.” When speaking with President Obama on climate change, he said pursuing the science behind it is his “constitutional duty.”
However, Nye denies ever politicizing the topic. But at the beginning of the segment, Costello reminded Nye that he tweets about climate change after extreme weather events “all the time.” His most recent was one reason he appeared on the program:
+1 for Bill Nye. Somebody has to speak against the fossil fuel paid “scientists” that push their pseudo-science on non-academic B-grade websites.
The government paid ho scientists cannot refute the true scientists data so they just engage in ad hominem attacks and they will not even debate them since they know they will lose. People with facts and evidence on their sides do not run from a debate. Key facts: 1. No warming in twenty years 2. 2 degrees Celsius cooler than a normal interglacial period.
If co2 was the main driver of climate we would have warmed significantly over the last twenty years due to the unprecedented amount of c02 emissions. The people that wanted to manipulate normal climate change were counting on a continued warming from the little Ice Age, too bad reduced sunspot activity and the oceans destroyed their scam.
1. No warming in twenty years
Not true. 2014 was the earth’s warmest year on record, and 2015 is on track to break that record. Nearly all of the temperature records have been set in the last 20 years.
2 degrees Celsius cooler than a normal interglacial period.
Debunked here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-past.htm
no your numbers are not true, satellite data refutes it and we are in el nino years. Even if you accept your numbers as accurate they are meaningless, a few hundreds of a degree is meaningless and within the margin of error. You are typical CAGW distorter. Skeptical Science hasn’t refuted anything, it has just proved it is a mouth piece for the globalists. Go to Climate4U and you can see the actual data.
I just clinked on your link, I am talking about Ice Ages over the last four hundred thousand years, your link is about weather 400 million plus years ago. Are you stupid or are you deliberately trying to mislead the blog? Once again go to Climate4U and look at the record over the last 400,000 plus years which includes Ice Ages and Interglacial periods, we are two degrees Celsius cooler than a normal Interglacial period.
Climate Change: Is the Carbon Tax the Death of Democracy?
By Kate Johnston
Global Research, July 23, 2012
The Carbon Tax and Emissions Trading Scheme
The initial step of the Carbon Tax in the move towards a Carbon Economy is underway. If left unchallenged, the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) will be introduced in 2015 paving the way for the new Global Carbon Economy. This integrated global economic system is based on trading and control of carbon emissions. This is how it works; companies are designated with an amount of carbon credits in line with the government’s cap of carbon emissions that they’re allowed to emit. Companies that emit less are left with carbon credits which can be sold for a profit. Alternatively, if they use all their credits they purchase more carbon credits from companies around the world on the carbon exchange market. The idea is to give an economic incentive to polluters to reduce their carbon footprint. As the world moves closer to their goal of reducing emissions as outlined at the United Nations Kyoto protocol, we are told that we are helping the environment by limiting pollution. But again, the incentive for polluters only occurs if it is profitable. There is much criticism about the effectiveness of this system where it is currently implemented in Europe and has nothing short of failed. Fraud and corruption are rife and emissions have not yet been reduced – and even if they were it wouldn’t actually have any effect on the climate change anyway!
Eventually the Emissions Trading Scheme and carbon credits will be transferred to individuals in the form of a carbon card, much like a credit card we use today only it is for our energy consumption. Individuals will be designated with an annual carbon allowance to meet their energy, fuel and travel needs. The concept remains the same as the Emissions Trading Scheme, only the individual is designated carbon credits to be exchanged on the Carbon Stock Exchange markets. Plans in the UK for the carbon trading credit cards are well underway and will follow around the world soon enough. As nations attempt to meet their emission reduction goals, individual carbon allowances will also be capped and decrease over time.
This system of carbon trading and carbon economy is in the hands of the major banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan. Personally, I don’t feel too good about handing over the reigns of control of many aspects of my life to be regulated by the banks and governments. How do you feel about that?
Social Transformation
http://www.globalresearch.ca/…/32024 -
Is carbon trading the death of democracy?!! Phony, does your Koch Industries health plan include dental?
“Phony, does your Koch Industries health plan include dental?”
I had to give up my health insurance during the first 4 years of the Obama administration but I’m sure it wasn’t as good as your Soros plan anyway.
George Soros Says He Feels No Remorse For Collaborating With Nazis During WWII to Send His Fellow Jews to the Death Camps, Steal Their Property
January 28th, 2011 | Author: professor1
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson
George Schwartz was born in Hungary in 1930 — not the luckiest time and place to be born a Jew.
George’s father Theodore tried to change the family’s fortunes by changing their name to something less Jewish-sounding. It didn’t help. And soon war came.
When the Nazis took total control of Hungary in 1944, the Holocaust followed. In two months, 440,000 Hungarian Jews were deported to death camps.
To survive, George, then a teenager, collaborated with the Nazis.
First he worked for the Judenrat. That was the Jewish council set up by the Nazis to do their dirty work for them. Instead of the Nazis rounding up Jews every day for the trains, they delegated that murderous task to Jews who were willing to do it to survive another day at the expense of their neighbours.
Theodore hatched a better plan for his son. He bribed a non-Jewish official at the agriculture ministry to let George live with him. George helped the official confiscate property from Jews.
By collaborating with the Nazis, George survived the Holocaust. He turned on other Jews to spare himself.
George moved to London after the war and then to New York, where he became a stockbroker. He’s rich now. Forbes magazine says he’s the 35th richest man in the world. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He goes by the name his father invented: George Soros.
How does Soros feel about what he did as a teenager? Has it kept him up at night?
Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes asked him that. Was it difficult? “Not at all,” Soros answered.
“No feeling of guilt?” asked Kroft. “No,” said Soros. “There was no sense that I shouldn’t be there. If I wasn’t doing it, somebody else would be taking it away anyhow. Whether I was there or not. So I had no sense of guilt.”
A Nazi would steal the Jews’ property anyways. So why not him?
That moral hollowness has shaped Soros’ life. He’s a rabid critic of capitalism, but in 1992 when he saw a chance, he speculated against the British pound, causing it to crash, devastating retirement savings for millions of Britons. Soros pocketed $1.1 billion for himself. If he didn’t do it, someone else would, right?
In 2002, Soros was convicted of insider trading in France, and fined millions of dollars. He admitted buying the shares, but denied it was a crime.
Last year, when he made $3.3 billion off the banking collapse, he called the world’s financial crisis “the culmination of my life’s work.”
This is a man who boasted he offered to help his mother commit suicide. Apparently he didn’t see enough death in Hungary.
Soros is a sociopath. But he’s a sociopath with $14 billion, and he likes to spend it on politics.
Sometimes his gifts are large, like the $24 million he spent in 2004, trying to defeat George W. Bush. Sometimes they’re small, like $20,000 to a woman convicted of helping terrorists.
“By collaborating with the Nazis, George survived the Holocaust.”
Soros is of the livers?
If you like your crony capitalism, you can keep your crony capitalism….
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/05/29/three-former-sec-officials-write-letter-to-sec-chief-mary-jo-white-asking-her-to-stop-protecting-corporate-cronyism/
The CEOs should’ve sent a copy of their letter to Faux News, Breetfart, and the charlatan Ted Cruz:
“A group of more than 120 CEOs and other institutional investors who manage more than $12 trillion in assets sent an open letter to seven of the world’s wealthiest countries on Tuesday, asking them to make bold commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during the U.N. climate talks later this year. The reason, the letter said, was because of the uncertainty surrounding how bad climate change would be and how it would affect their businesses.”
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how the Republican Party will finally acknowledge and accept climate change. Big business will lead the way and the GOP, not wanting to miss out on lobbying money, will follow.
No, this is example how the globalist business interests are using the scam of global warming to promote their agendas. Including more taxes on the middle class under the guise of protecting the environment to fund world government and the massive transfer of wealth from the developed world to the undeveloped world.
There are riches to be had off of the fight against global warming. There is little money to be made off of conservation.
If we moved toward sustainability, rampant expansion of manufacturing, construction and debt would stop, the money centers would whither and governments would shrink. This is not their agenda, and it is not your’s either water boy.
“Michael Jackson’s beloved Neverland ranch is now on the open market for a cool $100 million.”
LOL, maybe Dennis Hastert will buy it? Seems like the ideal place for Gentle Grandpa to entertain his young guests.
He was just showing them some wrestling holds, darn it!
BTW- If Hastert were a Democrat, how many posts would phony, banana, and Dan have about him by now? I’m guessing about 40, between all of them. But he’s a Republican, so…radio silence from our shepherds.
We think a former Speaker is a non-issue, it may explain how the PTB controlled him so he would not take a stand on issues as border security but he never was liked by conservatives so we do not feel a need to defend or attack him.
But you have to admit, if he were a Democrat, you guys would be posting like mad about it.
If only he had a Clinton type charity to launder millions - he would have never been caught or need to try to circumvent banking spying laws.
So far - there is no report on what he has done except take out money from his bank in less than $10,000 increments.
Maybe to pay off a blackmailer about sex. But who knows?
The Clintons are laughing about what they get away with…
And the double standard of the MSM and fellow democrats
I wonder if we have one?
Russia’s online trolling campaign is now in overdrive
Known as “Kremlin trolls,” the men and women work 12-hour shifts around the clock, flooding the Internet with propaganda aimed at stamping President Vladimir Putin’s world vision on Russia, and the world.
Lyuda Savchuk, a single mother with two children, worked in the St. Petersburg “troll factory” until mid-March.
She described how the trolls manage several social media accounts under different nicknames. Those in her department had to bash out 160 blog posts during a 12-hour shift.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/russias-online-trolling-campaign-is-now-in-overdrive-2015-5#ixzz3bdZ95fKc
That’s a page right out of the Koch Industries playbook.
I’m sure the Kochs look at Putin as someone they’d like to emulate.
Or vice versa.
12:21 pm ET
May 29, 2015
Asia
Stocks in China: Still Too Hot to Handle?
By Jason Zweig
CONNECT
If this past week’s stumble in Chinese stocks has you thinking about buying, think twice.
On Thursday, the Shanghai Composite Index fell 6.5%, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange Composite Index lost 5.5% and the Hang Seng Index of Hong Kong-listed stocks dropped 2.2%. They changed little on Friday.
Speculative frenzies don’t become safe just because there’s a momentary pause in the proceedings. U.S. investors should shop carefully in China—if at all.
Even after the selloff, the Shanghai index is up 42.6% in 2015 and Shenzhen 97.4%; neither figure includes dividends.
Stocks in Shenzhen are trading at an average of 61.4 times earnings, according to the exchange—nearly twice their level at the end of 2014 and almost 25% higher than where they stood on April 30. By price/earnings ratio, the Shenzhen market is more than three times as expensive as the MSCI EAFE index of international stocks; the U.S. is at about 22 times earnings.
The Shanghai and Shenzhen markets for so-called A shares are dominated by local amateur traders, using borrowed money, who have whipped up prices.
A year ago, the turnover rate—a measure of how fast investors are buying and selling, calculated by dividing total trading by the value of all listed stocks—was 98% on the Shanghai exchange and 204% in Shenzhen, according to the World Federation of Exchanges. By the end of April, turnover had risen to 600% in Shanghai and 706% in Shenzhen, meaning that local “investors” were holding the typical stock for less than two months at a time. This past week, daily turnover in Shenzhen hit 7%, implying that the average stock was changing hands every 14 days.
By contrast, the estimated turnover in the U.S. was recently about 300%, indicating that the average stock would change hands every four months or so.
With the real-estate market slowing, the Chinese government has made a bull market in stocks part of its agenda for economic stimulus, says Cheah Cheng Hye, chairman of Hong Kong-based Value Partners, one of Asia’s largest investment managers, with $17 billion in assets. That includes a forthcoming stock-trading link between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, which will complement the link between Shanghai and Hong Kong established last year.
“If you bet against Chinese stocks, you’re betting against what Beijing wants,” Mr. Cheah says.
…
I have to wonder whether weak consumption demand in the U.S. and the eurozone may be taking a toll on demand for China’s exports?
If China’s economy stumbles, the world falls
The shape and future direction of the global economy is being determined by China
A Chinese man walks past a billboard showing collage of Chinese Yuan and US dollars in Beijing Photo: AP
By Liam Halligan
4:00PM BST 30 May 2015
I’m as interested in the Queen’s Speech as the next political obsessive. All that proposed legislation, and the window it provides on the soul of the new government, should be pondered by anyone interested in the trajectory of British policy-making over the next five years.
Last week’s Queen’s Speech committed the first majority Conservative administration in almost two decades to a referendum by the end of 2017 on European Union membership. Measures to freeze income tax and extend childcare are also on the agenda. We’ll almost certainly see more devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, along with “English votes for English laws” at Westminster.
While legislation is what it’s all about, the elaborate procedures associated with the State Opening of Parliament — of which Her Majesty’s “humble address” is the centerpiece — are also important. It’s easy to dismiss the ebony black rod, the ostentatious door-thumping and the “searching of the cellars” as outdated nonsense. But these rituals serve as crucial reminders of the struggles involved in establishing democracy and the supremacy of our elected Parliament.
Dismiss them as feathered flummery if you want to, but we forget such principles at our peril.
All that said, while the Queen’s Speech rightly received much media exposure, I saw little coverage regarding important events related to China. With US GDP having contracted during the first quarter of 2015, and maybe this quarter too, it’s hard to overstate the importance of the People’s Republic to the global economy. Having grown by 9.8pc a year since the late 1970s, the Chinese economy is now bigger than America on a purchasing power parity basis (adjusting for living standards).
While growth was 7.4pc in 2014, the slowest expansion for 24 years, and could drop below 7pc in 2015, with America yet to stage a convincing recovery China is now the world’s growth locomotive. If this Eastern giant stalls, the UK’s nascent recovery could easily reverse — which would, of course, upend British politics.
While still spectacular by Western standards, China’s economic performance is now raising some eyebrows. The prospect of Chinese markets crashing also ranks among the calamities that now threaten the world economy.
…
walmart and big lots are full of chinese exports.
The dollar stores are loaded up to. cheap disposable stuff.
The main american products in walmart are food.
US economy contracts thanks to strong dollar and poor weather -as it happened
US GDP shrank by an annualised rate of 0.7% in the last quarter, new data shows
Latest: US GDP falls by 0.7%
But analysts aren’t worried
Summary: Greece in recession as bank deposits fall
Schauble: Greece has until 30 June….
1d ago 13:33
European markets fall back
The continuing uncertainty over Greece as talks to resolve its financial crisis continue over the weekend has pushed shares sharply lower once more. The usual conflicting comments from various parties unsettled investors, with an increasing number of insiders now talking about a possible Greek exit from the eurozone. Added to the downbeat mood were US figures showing GDP contracted by 0.7% in the first quarter. The final scores showed:
The FTSE 100 fell 56.49 points or 0.8% at 6984.43
Germany’s Dax dropped 2.26% to 11,413.82
France’s Cac closed 2.53% lower at 5007.89
The Athens market lost 1.44% to 825.38
On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently down 54 points or 0.3%.
…
10 to 1
“If you’ve bought in the last two years you will be underwater sleeping with the fishes like Luca Brasi in the not too distant future.”
Another Housing Collapse Looms Over Horizon
Rigged 37% price increase has priced millions of people out of the market
by Jim Quinn | The Burning Platform | May 30, 2015
It’s always interesting to see a long term chart that reflects your real life experiences.
We know for a fact that real median household income is still 7% below 2007 levels and sits at the same level as 1989. We know for a fact that wages have been stagnant since 2007. We know for a fact GDP has barely broken 2% since 2009. We know for a fact the price of healthcare, food, energy, tuition, rent, and a myriad of other daily living expenses are dramatically higher since 2009. We know mortgage originations are at 1997 levels. We know housing starts are 60% below the 2005 highs and at levels seen during the 1991 and 1981 recessions. Existing home sales are 30% below the 2005 high, only up 10% from 2012 levels, and sitting at levels reached in 1999 before the boom.
A critical thinking person might wonder how median single family home prices could possibly skyrocket by 37% in the last three years when household incomes are falling, living expenses rising, and the number of houses being sold are at recessionary levels. The stinking rotting fish again sits in the hallways of the Eccles Building in Washington D.C. Janet “Yellowfish” Yellen has inherited the bubble blowing machine from Ben “Blowfish” Bernanke and has continued to inflate a new housing bubble, because one housing bubble just isn’t enough.
There is nothing free market about the 37% increase in home prices. It has absolutely nothing to do with supply and demand. It has nothing to do with normal families looking for a home. It has everything to do with the Federal Reserve’s 0% interest rates, the $3.5 trillion of QE injected into the economic gambling system, Wall Street banks withholding foreclosures from the market, hedge funds buying up tens of thousands of foreclosed homes and renting them out to the former middle class, Fannie and Freddie guaranteeing 70% of all sales, the government encouraging 3.5% subprime loans again, Chinese and Russian billionaires parking their ill gotten wealth in US real estate, and flippers reappearing in the same old places (Las Vegas, Phoenix, Florida, California).
The Federal Reserve created the last housing bubble and they’ve created the new housing bubble, along with stock and bond bubbles, with their easy money policies designed to enrich their Wall Street owners and the parasites who feed off the financial industry. Their entire plan smells to high heaven. They have thrown young people and most of the middle class overboard, while the bankers, billionaires, politicians, and connected cronies party like it was 2005 on their $250 million yachts.
Now what? The Fed says they are going to raise rates. The QE spigot has been turned off. The hedge funds are selling their buy and rent hovel investments, cash buyers are dwindling, the flippers who appeared in 2005 are back, Boomers are looking to sell and downsize, young people are already in debt up to their eyeballs thanks to the government doling out student loans like candy, the number of full-time good paying jobs continue to dwindle, and the rigged 37% price increase has priced millions of people out of the market.
The good news is the Wall Street banks have inflated their balance sheets and celebrated by giving themselves $20 billion in bonuses for a job well done. If mortgage rates rise to 4% or God forbid 5%, the entire housing complex would implode faster than a blowfish out of water. If you’ve bought in the last two years you will be underwater sleeping with the fishes like Luca Brasi in the not too distant future.
“Another Housing Collapse Looms Over Horizon
Rigged 37% price increase has priced millions of people out of the market”
Not to worry. Oxide assured us just yesterday that housing prices are henceforth permanently decoupled from household incomes.
Did the weather hammer the U.S. economy yet again this past winter?
Economy
U.S. Recovery Stumbles Yet Again
GDP shrinks for the third time in 6 years as tough winter knocks the economy off course
The U.S. economy faltered in the first quarter of 2015, the third time since the recession ended that first-quarter numbers have gone into reverse. WSJ’s Joshua Mitchell reports. Photo: Getty
By Josh Mitchell
Updated May 29, 2015 6:59 p.m. ET
The U.S. economy shrank during the first quarter as another brutal winter highlighted the fragility of the nearly six-year-old expansion, a historically choppy stretch during which the nation has struggled to thrive in an uneven global environment.
Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the U.S., contracted at a 0.7% annual rate during the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Friday.
That was far worse than the agency’s initial estimate that showed 0.2% growth, marking an abrupt reversal from the prior nine months when growth surged and the economy appeared on the verge of a long-delayed breakout.
The economy has now contracted in three separate quarters since the recession ended in mid-2009, a series of disappointments unmatched since the expansions of the 1950s.
Harsh weather, a strong dollar and a labor dispute at West Coast ports appeared to be the biggest culprits this time, all sapping demand for American goods at home and abroad.
…
there was no winter in ca. This excuse is getting old.
You know there is something fishy about a story that blames the slowdown on bad winter weather but features a photo of the Los Angeles port complex. So far as I know, it never snows in Long Beach, CA.
There were no hard winters before so you can’t blame economists.
Just like…
There were no droughts, floods, hurricanes or tornadoes before the global warming hysteria so you can’t blame government environmentalists…
How are your bitcoin investments holding up?
It’s not too late to get into Bitcoin, insists Bitcoin Jesus
Cryptocurrencies
29 May 15
by Katie Collins
There is a myth in certain circles that it is too late to get into Bitcoin — that if you didn’t buy in early then you missed the boat. Not so, says Roger Ver. You might expect him to say that, though: he is also known as Bitcoin Jesus, after all.
It feels like a lot has happened to Bitcoin during its short lifetime, but the reality is that it is still early days for the cryptocurrency.
It is, however, changing fast.
“Just this year we’re seeing major financial institutions get involved in Bitcoin,” says Ver, speaking on stage at Pioneers Festival in Vienna. Big banks like Goldman Sachs are getting involved — it’s hitting mainstream Wall Street. “A couple of years ago this would have been unimaginable,” he says.
There are more and more ATM machines where you can put cash in and Ver thinks that this year there’s a chance we’ll see traditional ATM integrate Bitcoin too. “This is heading towards worldwide adoption.”
One company that Ver thinks has a lot of potential to benefit from Bitcoin is Amazon, which endures an annual struggle to turn a profit, and spends around $2.6 billion a year on credit card processing fees. Ver asserts that if Amazon switched to using Bitcoin, it could cancel out that spending and in doing so, double its annual profit.
“I want to point out to you that if Amazon adopts Bitcoin, it won’t just be Amazon,” he adds. “If the entire world adopts Bitcoin each Bitcoin will be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
There are somewhere between 5 and 10 billion Bitcoin users in the world — because of anonymity, the exact number is unclear, but one thing Ver is sure of is that it is going to grow. People will be using it for everything, from gambling, to sending money to foreign workers, to grocery shopping. “More and more people are going to start using it, there’s absolutely no doubt in my mind,” he says.
…
Bitcoin might collapse when the Chinese stack market does. Just sayin.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Michael Hickins Oracle
Tech 5/28/2015 @ 1:30PM
Is The Price Of Bitcoin Going To Bounce Back?
This question originally appeared on Quora: Is the price of Bitcoin going to bounce back?
Answer by Henry Berg, Engineer, on Quora
All of us who are interested in bitcoin follow the price in one way or another. It is, after all, a very clean and simple indicator of how bitcoin is doing. But given that the price of bitcoin is determined solely by supply and demand, and that the supply of new bitcoins is predetermined, with new coins being issued steadily at a rate that drops sharply in the future, the only variable of interest is demand. And the demand for bitcoin is determined by how useful bitcoins are to people. So if you want to know whether the price of bitcoins will go up in the future, you have to ask yourself how useful you think bitcoins are going to be. Bitcoins are an almost pure example of an ideal online currency, with almost flawless fungibility, divisibility, portability, scarcity, durability and un-consumability. But to somebody who already has access to modern financial tools like bank accounts and credit cards, there are very few new things bitcoin has to offer. The compelling uses for bitcoin so far are to serve as a vehicle for speculation, i.e., a ticket for the roller-coaster ride of the last few years, and as a method of gambling and making purchases on the dark markets. For traditional purchases, the merchants pay all of the fees and bear all of the risks of credit cards, so a modern consumer has no incentive to use bitcoin for such purchases. That may change, but until merchants find some way of offering a discount for the use of bitcoin, bitcoin demand is dependent on the discovery of new uses.
…
Bitcoin Usage Low Due To Disinterest From Consumers (Op-Ed)
By Bitcoinist.net
May 29, 2015 5:00 PM EDT
Earlier today, I had the chance to speak with several merchants accepting Bitcoin payments for a while now. My main concern was whether or Bitcoin is being used by customers on a regular basis, and if so, whether or not there were any noticeable trends occurring. I did learn one thing though, Bitcoin is fine in terms of supporting merchants but needs to convince everyday users to work with digital currency.
When we talk about Bitcoin use cases, we actively refer to places where you can spend Bitcoin. Granted, if there was no place to spend Bitcoin, it wouldn’t be much of a currency to begin with. And luckily for us, there is a boom in terms of merchants starting to accept BTC payments, both online and in physical locations as well.
It’s not like the types of merchants are disappointing either, as there is almost nothing you can not buy with Bitcoin these days (depending on your location.) Common use cases such as ordering food online, topping up mobile credit or doing all of your shopping on Amazon can all be completed by using Bitcoin, if you know where to look.
And the merchants themselves are benefiting from this, as they can increase their profit margins due to paying little to no transaction fees. On top of that, they can expand their customer base worldwide, as Bitcoin is a decentralized payment method that works across borders without any issues. Plus, it can be converted into a ton of different local fiat currencies if needed.
Accepting Bitcoin is free of charge for nearly all merchants, depending on which payment processor you decide to work with. Companies such as BitPay or BitKassa won’t even charge you a fee per transaction either, and they will even go as far as converting the Bitcoin to local fiat currency the next business day. While we all want merchants to keep a small portion of each transaction in Bitcoin, that is not always possible.
So why is it that Bitcoin is being used by so little people outside of the “bitcoin community” these days? There are plenty of places to spend Bitcoin, and some of those might even be places where you already go shopping right now. But what is the incentive for consumers to start using Bitcoin over traditional currency? That, dear reader, is where the problem lies.
…
“But what is the incentive for consumers to start using Bitcoin over traditional currency?”
Inflation, I would think. They should act as a store of value compared to the expanding fiat money supply.
However, we’re deflating. And probably will be for a while. Maybe better off in long-term bonds? [ducks and runs]
“They should act as a store of value compared to the expanding fiat money supply.”
How does that work over a period when the dollar-bitcoin exchange rate slides from $1150 to under $200 over less than two years time?
Because its price would rise in an inflationary period. You’re looking at it during a deflationary period.
“a store of value…”
Odd, I’ve heard that expression used before. Back before mere humans had computers. The thing it referred to was the complete opposite of bitcoins. Ironic.
So why is it that Bitcoin is being used by so little people outside of the “bitcoin community” these days?
Because they don’t understand it and are afraid of having their “wallet” hacked and emptied.
Sunday, May 24, 2015 07:00 AM PST
“We are up to something big”: Silk Road discovers Bitcoin
Drugs were the easy part for Silk Road — finding a way to sell them online was harder. Enter Bitcoin
Nathaniel Popper
Excerpted from Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money
The possibilities for using Bitcoin in the real world had not progressed much since NewLibertyStandard’s offer of SpongeBob SquarePants stickers. Mark Karpeles was still taking Bitcoin for his web-hosting services and a farmer in Massachusetts was selling alpaca socks. But the range of products available for Bitcoin expanded in a dramatic way a few days before the price of Bitcoin shot from around 50 cents to above $1 for the first time, when an unassuming post on the Bitcoin forum heralded the next wave of Bitcoin commerce.
“Has anyone seen Silk Road yet? It’s kind of like an anonymous amazon.com. I don’t think they have heroin on there, but they are selling other stuff.”
The posting was made by someone who went by the screenname altoid. In real life, he was Ross Ulbricht, a 6-foot-2 surfer-cum-scientist who had been planning Silk Road for months when he put his innocent-sounding post on the forum.
For Ross, a fun-loving, well-educated twenty-six-year-old, the creation of Silk Road had begun in earnest in July 2010 when he had sold a cheap house in Pennsylvania that he’d acquired while he was a graduate student there. With the $30,000 from the sale, Ross rented a cabin about an hour from his home in Austin, Texas. He also purchased petri dishes, humidifiers, and thermometers, along with peat, verm, gypsum, and a copy of The Construction and Operation of Clandestine Drug Laboratories, by Jack B. Nimble.
The psychedelic mushroom lab he set up in the cabin was not created with the intent of enabling Ross to become a petty drug dealer. He had much grander visions of his life than that. From the time he sold the house in Pennsylvania, he knew he wanted to set up a new kind of online market, where people could buy all the things that aren’t available on ordinary online markets.
…
The story has a very sad ending.
Ross Ulbricht, Creator of Silk Road Website, Is Sentenced to Life in Prison
By BENJAMIN WEISERMAY 29, 2015
Lyn Ulbricht spoke on Friday after her son, Ross, who created the online marketplace Silk Road, was sentenced to life in prison. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
Ross W. Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, a notorious online marketplace for the sale of heroin, cocaine, LSD and other illegal drugs, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
Mr. Ulbricht, 31, was sentenced by the judge, Katherine B. Forrest, for his role as what prosecutors described as “the kingpin of a worldwide digital drug-trafficking enterprise.”
…
Quote from NY Times article about to post:
I can’t wait to read what guys like this say after Fed liftoff in rates hammers bitcoin prices into the turf.
Why Has Bitcoin Price Not Been Moving?
Venzen Khaosan
29/05/2015
Bitcoin Analysis, Bitcoin Price, News
BTC-China was leading a decline of today’s price wave to the downside. The decline reversed at $235.02 (Bitfinex) and 1460 CNY (BTC-Cina). Technical analysis looks at the prospects for the coming days, and we examine the lull in Bitcoin price movement during the past few weeks.
…
On the contrary, when the Fed lifts rates the biggest bond holders will dump the longer bonds and the stocks like hot potatos. And real estate. What is left? cash under the mattress, precious metals, crypto currency. The $230 price of Bitcoin? Where were you a couple months ago when it was $150? Didn’t you pronounce its death? It has been trading in the channel between $220 and $240 for most of the last five months and I suppose you did not mention its spike above $300 within the last three months. But it dropped $6.83 in a week? My god it is doomed!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ah, the traditional flight from bonds into nothingness. Why crawl away with losses when you can just jump into the abyss?
Bitcoin Price Drops To $230
Venzen Khaosan
30/05/2015
Bitcoin price headed lower today in a $8 sell-off (Bitfinex) catalyzed by the news that Silk Road’s Lars Ulbricht had been sentenced to life imprisonment & OKCoin was dealt another PR blow.
…
“How are your Bitcoin investments holding up?”
Investments? I do not invest in Bitcoin. I do not invest in precious metals. I do regard crypto currency and precious metals as movable and hidable wealth, however. Excellent insurance.
Either you were lying then or you are lying now.
Nope. “Invest in” is not necessarily equivalent to “own. ” do you invest in your car?
No, but I often speculate in the probability that it will make the destination.
Point taken.
I’m learning that searching out articleas regarding such things as climate change and global warming and such can be a lot of fun. For example, there’s this:
“Spy Satellite Data Reveal Antarctic Ice Vulnerability”
Woah, now there’s an eye-catcher of a headline. Let’s dig a bit into the body of the article and see what we can learn:
“Declassified spy satellite imagery of Antarctica dating back to the 1960s has revealed that the world’s largest ice sheet may be more susceptible to climate change than once thought.”
The words “declassified” and “spy satellite imagery” and “revealed” are hints that we readers are about to FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME are to be going to be presented with something that is very … very interesting.
“We’ve shown for the first time that these glaciers are in concert with climate,” Chris Stokes, a professor of geography at Durham University and an author of the paper, told LiveScience. “So the concern would be that if it does start to get warmer, then we would expect to see the glacier retreat.”
“Glaciers are in concert with climate”. Sounds logical. Maybe I should write this down.
Moving on …
“While the researchers did note periods of growth and retreat, they did not detect a notable net change in the size of the ice sheet during the study period.”
Say, what?
However …
“Future warming could, however, push the region into a more significant retreat phase that could potentially cause net reduction in ice thickness in the region, Stokes said.”
Well, yeah, future warming will do that. But the headline wasn’t talking about future warming, it was talking about past warming - or the lack of past warming.
But … whatever.
http://www.livescience.com/39259-east-antarctica-vulnerable.html
If your read the entire article instead of cherry-picking sentences out of it, it’s perfectly logical. The area discussed was once thought to be so cold that the ice there was unaffected by world temperature changes. This study has shown that the ice cap there is indeed affected by world temperature changes, shrinking and expanding as temperatures rise and fall, and therefore the ice there could potentially melt and drastically raise sea levels if it continues getting warmer.
You Can’t Read the TPP, But These Huge Corporations Can
By Alleen Brown
5/12/2015
So who can read the text of the TPP? Not you, it’s classified. Even members of Congress can only look at it one section at a time in the Capitol’s basement, without most of their staff or the ability to keep notes.
But there’s an exception: if you’re part of one of 28 U.S. government-appointed trade advisory committees providing advice to the U.S. negotiators. The committees with the most access to what’s going on in the negotiations are 16 “Industry Trade Advisory Committees,” whose members include AT&T, General Electric, Apple, Dow Chemical, Nike, Walmart and the American Petroleum Institute.
firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/12/cant-read-tpp-heres-huge-corporations-can/ - 38k -
So let’s pass it so we can find out what’s in it.
“The committees with the most access to what’s going on in the negotiations are 16 “Industry Trade Advisory Committees,” whose members include AT&T, General Electric, Apple, Dow Chemical, Nike, Walmart and the American Petroleum Institute.”
Relying on those companies for trade advice is like relying on fossil fuel companies for climate change advice.
AGW
earth is a chicken on a spit, turning slowly to keep both side warm!
And until the fire gets hotter, or cooler, nothing will change
Except the financial situation of people who want to change the system to make money!
Here is a famous metaphor from cosmology which underpins the logic behind the too-big-to-fail bailout policy favored by the global central banking cartel:
Depreciation CraterJack…. depreciation.
• It’s a live chicken (has a hot center).
• And it’s developed a fuzzy fungus on its feathers that increases their insulation properties (CO2 in the atmosphere).
• And it’s under a heat lamp.
All it takes is retaining a little extra energy from the heat lamp to increase its surface temperature few degrees to make it very, very uncomfortable.
CO2 doesn’t increase it insulation properties it increases its radiative properties.
Really? I thought it trapped X watts per meter.
The CO2 molecule will absorb a photon of infrared light and then it will immediately reemit a photon of infrared light.
It will absorb an infrared photon coming to it from any direction and then it will immediately reemit a photon in any direction.
If the photon that is absorbed is coming into the molecule from below then there is a chance the direction it emits a photon will be in the same direction - the direction that is below it.
Since most all infrared photons the are absorbed by a CO2 molecule are reflected photons coming into from below and some of these photons are reemitted in the same direction they came from then the molecule will IN EFFECT be reflecting a photon (it is not actually reflecting a photon it is actually reemitting a photon but the effect is the same as if it were reflecting a photon).
Since infrared is located on the heat end of the white light spectrum it is a heat photon that gets reemitted which means it is heat that gets radiated downward - downward toward the direction the photon came from - and it is this feature that makes CO2 and H2O and other multi-molecule gasses greenhouse gasses.
That’s one of the features; another feature is these greenhouse gasses are transparent to light with shorter wavelengths, such as visible light. This means the molecules allow photons from the sun to shine through them.
So, to sum up: Shortwave light from the sun travels through the molecule on its way to the earth’s surface but after it is absorbed at the surface (and part of its energy is converted into kinetic energy or chemical energy or whatever) the light energy that is left over is sent back upwards as energy-depleted infrared. And if this infrared photon meets up with a greenhouse gas molecule the there is a possibility that the photon will be reflected back down to where it came from. Hence the greenhouse effect.
“And it’s developed a fuzzy fungus on its feathers that increases their insulation properties (CO2 in the atmosphere).”
Insulation properties have more to do with conduction and convection of heat. The properties of CO2 have to do with the radiation of heat.
Have discriminatory (anti-male) hiring practices turned males into the weaker sex?
And will the situation get better or worse after President Clinton takes office?
Social change
The weaker sex
Blue-collar men in rich countries are in trouble. They must learn to adapt
May 30th 2015 | From the print edition
Timekeeper
AT FIRST glance the patriarchy appears to be thriving. More than 90% of presidents and prime ministers are male, as are nearly all big corporate bosses. Men dominate finance, technology, films, sports, music and even stand-up comedy. In much of the world they still enjoy social and legal privileges simply because they have a Y chromosome. So it might seem odd to worry about the plight of men.
Yet there is plenty of cause for concern. Men cluster at the bottom as well as the top. They are far more likely than women to be jailed, estranged from their children, or to kill themselves. They earn fewer university degrees than women. Boys in the developed world are 50% more likely to flunk basic maths, reading and science entirely.
One group in particular is suffering (see article). Poorly educated men in rich countries have had difficulty coping with the enormous changes in the labour market and the home over the past half-century. As technology and trade have devalued brawn, less-educated men have struggled to find a role in the workplace. Women, on the other hand, are surging into expanding sectors such as health care and education, helped by their superior skills. As education has become more important, boys have also fallen behind girls in school (except at the very top). Men who lose jobs in manufacturing often never work again. And men without work find it hard to attract a permanent mate. The result, for low-skilled men, is a poisonous combination of no job, no family and no prospects.
…
Blue-collar men in rich countries are in trouble.
Every tradesman I know, whether he fixes cars, is a plumber, electrician, HVAC , etc. seems to be doing just fine.
Methinks that by “blue collar” they mean factory workers. But a lot of those are women too, and their jobs are also being offshrored.
“Men who lose jobs in manufacturing often never work again. And men without work find it hard to attract a permanent mate. The result, for low-skilled men, is a poisonous combination of no job, no family and no prospects.”
Plenty of young men and women today diddly-squat about wrenching on anything mechanical, e.g., don’t know whether to use a pair of channel-lock pliers or a box-end wrench to tighten a fastener. The lack of muscle-mass doesn’t help either.
Saving Our Young Men
By Marty Nemko
- This year, almost twice as many women as men will earn bachelor’s degrees.
- For the same work, women typically earn at least as much as men.
- Yet society continues to do more for girls and women, usually at men’s expense.
By Marty Nemko
Twenty years ago, when I began career counseling, my male and female clients were equally upbeat about their future. Today, for the most part, the girls and women are confident, feeling the world is their oyster, while the boys and men more often are despondent, scared, or angry. The phrase that best defines my male clients is “beaten down.”
What happened? Most of the guys can’t put their finger on the cause, but having had 2,800 clients over 20 years, I believe I’ve pieced it together.
Starting in elementary school, boys are made to feel inferior. Take Your Daughter to Work Day implied to boys that they count less. Endless lessons highlighting the contributions of women (from Pocahontas to Rosa Parks to Hillary Clinton) and the evils of men (from Hannibal to Hitler to McCarthy) make boys feel inferior. That inferiority is reinforced when they come home from school and see TV shows and movies with Doofus Dads or Scuzzball Sams being put in their place by Wise Women. In the effort to boost girls’ self-esteem, boys’ are destroyed.
When boys start to look into college, the very first thing they see are the colleges’ brochures and websites, with far more pictures of women and minorities; the subliminal message: we don’t care about white males. Application essays often ask students to describe a hardship they overcame. “Hardship” is often code for “overcoming the disadvantage of being a woman or a minority.” Many white males, if only unconsciously, feel this is just one more thing discouraging them from applying.
…
Boy, the ladies are going to have a hard time marrying up. And if lower paid hubby nukes the marriage because he’s “unhappy”, she might have to cough up some cash to “keep him in the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed.”
Nah! They will go to the sperm bank and become single mothers without any male role model in the picture and perpetuate the inferiority in their own male offspring.
Russian aircraft head off American destroyer in Black Sea
U.S. destroyer Ross was moving along the edge of Russia’s territorial waters
by Reuters | May 30, 2015
Russian military aircraft were scrambled to head off a U.S. warship that was acting “aggressively” in the Black Sea, state news agency RIA reported on Saturday, citing an anonymous source in Russia’s armed forces in Crimea.
The source was quoted as saying that the U.S. destroyer Ross was moving along the edge of Russia’s territorial waters and heading in their direction.
“The crew of the ship acted provocatively and aggressively, which concerned the operators of monitoring stations and ships of the Black Sea Fleet,” RIA quoted the source as saying.
KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH!
wtf was that?!
That was the sound of collapsing housing prices and collapsing demand in Oakton, VA.
Oakton, VA(DC metro) Housing Prices Collapse 29%
http://www.movoto.com/oakton-va/market-trends/
You missed the bull run again, sorry.
Poet… remember..
I can ask $50k for my run down 12 year old Chevy pickup but where is the buyer at that price?
So it is with housing.
US Housing Demand Plunges To 20 Year Low
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fqSztKilps8/VFlPKlr52JI/AAAAAAAAhKU/v5oS41S-y0s/s1600/MBANov52014.PNG
rich people make money watching their investments go up in value.
sorry u will be working a J O B the rest of your life.
Houses depreciate rapidly Poet.
Coppell, TX Housing Prices Fall 10%
http://www.movoto.com/coppell-tx/market-trends/
So, most people on this blog (including myself), subscribe to the view that the Fed has been keeping interest rates artificially low.
Today, I listened to one of the more recent “Econ Talk” podcasts…the guest was Scott Sumner. They discussed interest rates (among other things).
Mr. Sumner has a different perspective. He basically said that if a Fed keeps rates artificially high or low for too long, either inflation or deflation should rear it’s head. He argues that since the Fed keeping rates so low for so long without inflation coming about, perhaps the real reason rates are low is because there is weak demand for investment capital, and NOT because of Fed intervention.
I’m not sure I’m convinced…the Fed stance could influence investment appetite at a minimum.
That said, I think we were all surprised when the Fed tapered their buying of bonds (QE), and it pretty much had no effect on rates.
It will be really interesting to see what happens to longer maturing bond rates when the Fed increases the FF Rate. Will they go up? Or not? If the Fed’s actions shift up the entire yield curve, then I think it argues that the Fed has been keeping all rates artificially low.
HOWEVER, if the Fed increases short term rates, and long term rates don’t really move (ie. a flattening of the yield curve), then Mr. Sumner might have a point.
And if he’s right, then it has all sorts of implications that candidly, I haven’t really given much thought to (since I’ve been assuming rates go up when the Fed increases rates).
Anyway, it was an interesting listen if folks have an hour to spare.
frrrrrrrrrrrrraud
Talked to my financial advisor in Phoenix yesterday (my day off from work). In recent weeks he was trying to get me interested in variable annuities. I respect that of course he is trying to make a sale. He knows I am a DIY investor. I tell him I do not understand the investment, I do not invest in it. So I put my cards on the table. I only want safety and not interested in stocks (my IRAs and 401ks are reserved for mostly stock funds). My money outside is mostly in savings bonds, municipal bonds, cash and gold. The return after expenses on my municipal bond funds is 3.25%. The return on my zero expense savings bonds is close to 3%. The VA has a guaranteed annual gain of 5%, even with conservative allocation. And a conservative allocation was the only one I would consider. I sat back and asked. Okay what are the expenses? He said slightly over 2% annually.
I said no. First the obvious, there would be little or no advantage to switch from my government securities to their VA.
But second, my switch requires taxes on at least $50,000 gains. I will be taxed at the federal level regardless on my bond gains if I sell them all now or in five years.
But if I hold for five years and then move to A state with no capital gain taxes, I will not be taxed at the state level on those gains. I did not think that reason until after I left his office.
Stay the course!
“Talked to my financial advisor in Phoenix yesterday (my day off from work). In recent weeks he was trying to get me interested in variable annuities.”
Oh? And just why is he doing this?
“I sat back and asked. Okay what are the expenses? He said slightly over 2% annually.”
He should do stand up.
Let’s see: He gets two percent - two percent of the amount of money he manages, the amount of YOUR money he manages.
Your money, his fees. Collected right off the top.
His predecessor kept trying to sell me various insurance products too. It is likely the same one will sell me something else in five years to replace the VAs and pocket additional fees. Yeah he is a family man trying to feed his family. But I donate enough to charity.
“His predecessor kept trying to sell me various insurance products too.”
There’s a message there somewhere.
FWIW Vanguard offers a way for an individual to buy various annuities through them.
Go here:
https://investor.vanguard.com/annuity/
Thanks. In the craw of my mind I knew I would mostly be doing my FA a favor of buying $500k in annuities from him when I would sooner trust the products of investor-owned Vanguard funds. I did look at the ones from Vanguard but could not understand them. So if I could not understand the advantage of Vanguard VAs, I certainly should steer away from products by my own insurance salesman/FA.
I have known people where I work who retired and took a pension buyout from the company instead of a pension annuity, and then they immediately turned their buyout proceeds over to a financial advisor who then put the proceeds into an annuity.
Invariably what they ended up getting from the financial advisor’s annuity was much less than what they would have gotten if they stuck with the company’s pension annuity.
Go figure.
I’ve had people at work tell me something on the order of “Every financial advisor I have ever gone to has told me I should take the pension cash out (and then turn the money over to him for handling) instead of taking the pension annuity”.
Gee, I wonder why that should be?
+1 Combo
Another disillusioned Obama Zombie recognizes his mistake and the national misfortune.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-30/creator-infamous-hope-poster-lashes-out-obama-calls-americans-ignorant-and-lazy
Biden family
I’m sorry for your loss
Biden announces death of son, Beau, of brain cancer
Updated 10:00 pm, Saturday, May 30, 2015
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Joe Biden has announced that his son, Beau, has died of brain cancer.
The younger Biden was a lawyer, member of the Delaware National Guard and former Delaware attorney general. He was 46.
Beau Biden was hospitalized earlier this month at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. At the time the vice president’s office declined to say why he was being treated.
Beau Biden suffered a mild stroke in 2010 and underwent surgery at a Texas cancer center in 2013 to remove what was described as a small lesion.
He announced last year that he would not seek a third term as attorney general and instead planned to run for governor in 2016.
Markets
Banks Prep Defense for Anti-Wall Street Campaigns
Senior executives from seven banks met on March 31 to discuss options
Top executives from the biggest U.S. banks, concerned about anti-Wall Street rhetoric already bubbling up on the 2016 campaign trail, are working to push back against the prevailing narrative that banks are bad. Victoria McGrane reports. Photo: Getty
By Victoria McGrane
May 11, 2015 5:30 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON—Top executives from the biggest U.S. banks, concerned about anti-Wall Street rhetoric already bubbling up on the 2016 campaign trail, are working to push back against the prevailing narrative that banks are bad.
Senior executives from seven of the biggest U.S. banks gathered or dialed into a March 31 meeting on the 51st floor of the Bank of America Tower in New York to discuss the upcoming election cycle and how the firms can counteract what they view as false and damaging statements about large banks, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the meeting.
The effort underscores the degree to which Wall Street remains a political punching bag and a source of anger among lawmakers and the public nearly seven years after the financial crisis. Already, several presidential candidates have lobbed criticism at Wall Street and directly attacked big banks and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass) continues to exert pressure, warning about big banks’ efforts to roll back financial regulations.
The banks aren’t launching a new ad campaign or lobbying blitz, people familiar with the discussions said. And many bank officials are skeptical they can do much to counteract critics without triggering more damaging backlash.
The lunchtime gathering in March, organized by John Rogers, an executive vice president at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and James Mahoney, Bank of America Corp.’s head of corporate communications and public policy, focused on what various candidates have said on the campaign trail, which statements were troubling and how in the course of their regular communications and outreach work bank officials could set the record straight, according to one participant.
The discussion centered on finding ways to emphasize the positive role banks play in the economy and the changes big firms have made since the 2008 crisis, particularly outside the Beltway by engaging with local media, elected officials and community leaders, the participant said.
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It is unclear if the banks will continue to meet on the issue, though further discussions were likely, said people familiar with the matter.
Those participating included officials from J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc., Bank of New York Mellon Corp. and State Street Corp. The Wells Fargo & Co. official invited was on vacation. Messrs. Rogers and Mahoney briefed chief executives of the banks and other large financial firms the following week during a gathering in Washington hosted by the Financial Services Forum, a trade group that represents the CEOs of 18 of the nation’s largest financial institutions.
The banks directed requests for comment to the Financial Services Forum.
“Large financial institutions are putting new rules in place, and they are less complex, less risky, and smaller than before the crisis,” Financial Services Forum spokeswoman Laena Fallon said.
Bank officials contend the criticism from candidates and others is unwarranted. The biggest banks have sold off businesses and retreated from riskier activities penalized by post-crisis rules and boosted capital cushions to historic levels. The 2010 Dodd-Frank law also put in place numerous safeguards against future bailouts, they argue.
“There are always discussions that go on about the industry. Are we more risky than we were before the crisis? Have we gotten bigger? Are we trying to repeal the legislation that changed the terms under which we operate?” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who is the Forum’s current chairman, said Wednesday at the firm’s annual shareholder meeting. “Believe me, this isn’t the case.”
But Wall Street has struggled to get politicians of either party to embrace the message.
Attacks on Wall Street have been most pointed on the Democratic side of the still-young presidential race. The jabs have come mainly from challengers to front-runner Hillary Clinton, and in some cases seem aimed at highlighting her ties to Wall Street.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described independent socialist, followed up his recent entry into the race by introducing legislation to break up the largest financial firms whose failure would have catastrophic economic consequences. Former Gov. Martin O’Malley, a likely candidate, also endorses dismantling big banks and wants to reinstate Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era law that separated commercial and investment banking whose repeal was signed by President Bill Clinton.
More worrying still for Wall Street is the pressure being exerted on Mrs. Clinton by Ms. Warren and the many progressives who continue to press the Massachusetts senator to join the race.
Mrs. Clinton hasn’t gone after the banks directly but she has struck a strong populist tone since hitting the trail last month. “Elizabeth Warren never lets us forget that the work of taming Wall Street’s irresponsible risk taking and reforming our financial system is far from finished,” Mrs. Clinton wrote in a laudatory piece about the senator for Time Magazine’s list of the 100 Most Influential People.
‘I agree fully with Elizabeth Warren—crony capitalism is alive and well.’
—Carly Fiorina
Republican candidates have criticized the biggest banks as still too risky, as well. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, a top contender for the GOP presidential nomination and a former adviser to big banks like Lehman Brothers and Barclays, said during an April event at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire that Dodd-Frank has led to “the consolidation of assets in larger and larger banks,” and that the law probably made the financial system riskier, not safer.
The bigger banks face new regulations that are designed to mitigate systemic risk, “but it doesn’t look that way to me,” Mr. Bush said.
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1.8 percent annual gain over 25 years.
Today I looked at my house on zillow that I bought in 1990 and sold in 1996. It is up by 58% in 25 years. Annual gain of 1.8%.
I would be underwater with the interest amount I paid if I was still living there. Would be paid off in five years but I had an 8.5% interest rate. I would be paying roughly 200% more than my original price by the end of the interest payments. And I did not mention insurance, property taxes and maintenance.
T bills during those days would have been a better deal. Of course so would gold.
Mortgages are debt traps. I am glad in retrospect for moving out of that small community and the opportunities that renting gave me. Well worth renting.
Has the War on Police fomented a crime wave across America?