Bits Bucket for June 7, 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.
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Name:Ben Jones
Location:Northern Arizona, United States
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Inventory is down about 15% YoY in Phoenix. Curious. I wonder what is driving the reduction?
According to who Jingle_Fraud?
Its real buyers who need a roof over their heads.
Yes my friend…
US Housing Demand Plunges To 20 Year Low
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fqSztKilps8/VFlPKlr52JI/AAAAAAAAhKU/v5oS41S-y0s/s1600/MBANov52014.PNG
These buyers have skin in the game!
There are no buyers at current prices. But there sure is a whole lot of housing inventory.
San Francisco, CA Housing Inventory Up 114%
http://www.movoto.com/san-francisco-ca/market-trends/
A house is the best meal ticket you can ever have. Its like one big windfall every year.
Remember Poet….. Housing is a depreciating asset that never pays you back.
Addition to my explanation (soon to post): Since U.S. housing is far less liquid than German bunds, qualitatively similar price dynamics will play out far more gradually for housing than recent bund price movements. Imagine a slow-motion train wreck and you will get the idea.
However, the boomerang mechanism in response to a policy-driven supply shortage is the same.
“These buyers have skin in the game!”
The circumcision will happen. Celebrate.
Since U.S. housing is far less liquid than German bunds, qualitatively similar price dynamics will play out far more gradually for housing than recent bund price movements
Don’t you think that a lot of people on the sidelines will actually rush to buy to avoid the higher mortgage rates? In the longer term it will certainly depress prices but in the long run we will all be dead. I love my timing on buying a house and refinancing.
“Don’t you think that a lot of people on the sidelines will actually rush to buy to avoid the higher mortgage rates?”
It could happen in the short run, before some bright light figures out that higher mortgage rates kill off demand and drive down home prices.
“In the longer term it will certainly depress prices but in the long run we will all be dead.”
True. The wild card is whether prices only go down in the longer term, or if it happens sooner (e.g. more like the surprise crash in German bunds last month that nobody foresaw, save perhaps Bill Gross or Jeffrey Gundlach).
“I love my timing on buying a house and refinancing.”
Did you somehow foresee the Fed’s QE3 housing market stimulus?
Alburquerquedan: Don’t you think that a lot of people on the sidelines will actually rush to buy to avoid the higher mortgage rates?
Is there a population-wide willingness or ability to take on significantly more debt?
“Don’t you think that a lot of people on the sidelines will actually rush to buy to avoid the higher mortgage rates?”
P.S. It’s also worth pointing out that this fear of higher future mortgage rates has already been used as a club to beat reluctant buyers off the fence for several years running now. I’m not sure how many fence-sitters are left at this point.
Did you somehow foresee the Fed’s QE3 housing market stimulus?
Yes, the Fed telegraphed that it would prevent housing prices from falling, did you miss that?
Dan,
Considering you paid 2x construction costs and doubled down on that loss by financing it, your timing is off by about 10 years.
“Yes, the Fed telegraphed that it would prevent housing prices from falling, did you miss that?”
No, but it didn’t make me want to buy a house, since I recognized that any related boost to prices would be temporary.
I parked some money in a Vanguard REIT and made a hefty short-term gain, though.
‘I love my timing on buying a house’
Yeah, the HBB didn’t have any posts on what Bernanke, Geithner and the rest of the mafia were doing. But what did you pay? Per square foot? And remember, you don’t know how well you did until you sell or someone like me hauls your junk to the dump.
“And remember, you don’t know how well you did until you sell or someone like me hauls your junk to the dump.”
That’s why I didn’t see the Fed’s housing price reflation program as a buy signal. There is a very good chance the price bump will morph into a sharp reversal. In retrospect, there may be a visible similarity between what happens to U.S. housing over the next couple of years to what recently played out with German bund prices. In both cases, quantitative easing created a bull stampede sparking a rate of asset purchases which quickly dessicated supply and drove prices skyward — what some of us regularly posters here term an “asset price bubble.”
Since bunds are so liquid, we’ve already seen the boomerang after effects crush prices. By contrast, given the illiquid nature of U.S. housing, it may take a few years for the aftermath to play out.
I’ve made hundreds of dump runs from the shanties of FB’s who probably patted themselves on the back. The standard dump trailer has an automatic dump feature. Every time I hit that button I say to myself, “15 years to accumulate, 30 seconds to get rid of.”
Depreciation Dan is my favorite FB’er.
“15 years to accumulate, 30 seconds to get rid of.”
Easy come, easily disposed…
This is from Shiller, so what is the board going to do wait until 2019 at which time prices might fall back to 2017 levels?
The futures market also shows home price ascents “fading a bit,” Shiller said. “But it’s predicting the increase won’t stop until after 2018. I think we still have time to go, but it might be weaker.”
Others agree with Shiller that the upward price trend will continue.
“There’s certainly room for home prices to continue rising in the coming year,” Dana Saporta, an economist at Credit Suisse, told Bloomberg.
Read Latest Breaking News from Newsmax.com http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/Personal-Finance/Shiller-housing-stocks-bubble/2013/12/31/id/544593/#ixzz3cPZrbAjP
Urgent: Rate Obama on His Job Performance. Vote Here Now!
I’m sure “the board” has lots of individuals that will do all sorts of things. Nobody knows exactly what will happen, but Shiller is kinda late to the bubble so he can’t really say, “it’s a bubble and it’s almost over” can he?
He also is late to the stock and bond bubble. Here’s the thing; commodities already blew up. (Oh, that’s right, you missed one that didn’t you?) Brazil is swirling the bowl. Any number of seriously mis-priced assets could go at any time. Timing is for bulls and bears. I’m a vulture.
Here’s the thing; commodities already blew up. (Oh, that’s right, you missed one that didn’t you?)
No, I protected myself by writing call options because I thought it would be of a short duration. So far so good.
They’re still imploding Dan. Now back to the topic.
What are your losses on housing?
“No, I protected myself by writing call options because I thought it would be of a short duration. So far so good.”
Of course you did, because you’ve never made a mistake. Seriously, have you ever listened to yourself? You are the most annoying person I’ve ever encountered.
I’ve made hundreds of dump runs from the shanties of FB’s
Ben, is any of it ever stuff worth saving? Do you take the “good stuff” to Goodwill to donate?
Its real buyers who need a roof over their heads.
People avoiding future rent increases. The Economist Magazine successfully called the housing bubble and then the recovery, it does not see any signs of a national bubble although a few markets appear overpriced. I think that I trust the magazine over a few broken clocks.
Robert Shiller came over this past week. The Fed’s Fischer sees bubbles over seas. Yun’s worried. A bit late, but.
“I think that I trust the magazine over a few broken clocks.”
I think you sound quite doubtful about your convictions, which by your own admission are based in someone else’s opinions.
My opinions are based on a lot of sources, but I find that historical income and rent ratios are the most reliable.
“The Fed’s Fischer sees bubbles over seas.”
It seems like the hardest bubbles for FOMC members to notice are the ones inflating right under their noses.
Opinions don’t much matter in consideration of;
1) Current asking prices of resale housing are 200-300% higher than long term trend.
2) Housing demand at 20 year lows(30 year lows in CA)
3) Falling prices showing up all over the map.
Thie widespread inventory shortage has been miscast in the MSM as a reflection of strong demand, when in fact it is a sign of abysmally low supply, thanks to the government programs which overrode the rules to enable everyone with a mortgage to refinance at generational low rates, regardless of how far underwater they were.
This super low used home inventory is likely to last so long as prices are bubbling up, but could eventually be subject to a dramatic boomerang reversal similar to what has played out over the past few weeks in the German bund market, where government intervention similarly desiccated supply.
“…in Phoenix.”
Believe it or not, Phoenix is hardly the only city with a dearth of for-sale inventory. The investor / central banker driven housing shortage is global in extent.
Vancouver’s tenants feeling the squeeze as rentals prices rise
Kerry Gold
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Jun. 05, 2015 5:47PM EDT
Last updated Saturday, Jun. 06, 2015 11:16PM EDT
There’s an old rental building on Main Street that is undergoing a major renovation to all its apartments. Once finished, the rent for a small two-bedroom that is probably 700 square feet will go from $850 to $2,500.
The residents, most of them younger renters, have relocated.
Half of Vancouver’s population rents, and a lot of those renters live in old apartment buildings along arterial roads such as Main Street, or big old houses, carved up into suites. Prior to Vancouver’s real estate mega-boom, a lot of those rental buildings were undesirable to investors. Now, investors are scooping them up either to tear them down and build anew, or renovate them so they’re almost new. And once they are re-built, those rental apartments at least double in price compared with what existed before at the same location. And yet, as house prices increase, residents are increasingly turning to rentals. If the rentals are going up in price as well, who will be able to afford to live here?
We’re seeing this out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new happening at Marine Gardens on SW Marine Drive, near Cambie, where the 70-unit townhouse village is going to be traded for condo towers that will include 70 units of market-rate rental. The rents in the new building will double. Of course, most people living at Marine Gardens can’t afford a rent hike. They were living at Marine Gardens, which is rundown, because the low rent fell well within their means.
“One of the mantras I’ve heard almost accusingly from city officials is that we have had ‘artificially’ low rents,” says one of the few remaining tenants at the Gardens, Jillian Skeet. “But if you take the median household income for Marpole from the city’s own Marpole Plan, it’s $48,000. And our rents meet the affordability definition that is one-third of income for rent.”
…
The “shortage” is hitting close to home as well.
North County sees tight rental market, higher rents
By Pat Maio
6 a.m. June 7, 2015
Doreen Weizel recently faced homelessness when a new management company came in to run her Oceanside apartment complex, and immediately raised rent by just $75. — Don Boomer
NORTH COUNTY — Vacancy rates for apartments in North County San Diego are tightening, pushing rental prices higher and causing a crisis for lower-income renters who can’t afford the increases.
Some observers say that if the trend continues unchecked, some renters will be left with few options, including moving in with relatives or leaving the region altogether.
“Some may say they can’t live in California any more,” said Debbie Fountain, Carlsbad’s director of housing and redevelopment. “(Or) they may have to take more than one job. This has a quality of life impact.”
Builders say part of the problem are the hurdles they must jump through to get projects approved for construction.
Carlsbad has languished for years without any new apartment building, but this past week the City Council approved plans for a 364-unit apartment complex in the Robertson Ranch area. It’s the first major apartment project in Carlsbad in at least a decade, Fountain said.
The market has led rents from studios to three-bedrooms in the city to spike 10.4 percent over the past year — among the highest of anywhere in North County, according to data provided to RealFacts, a Novato, Calif., research firm that tracks apartment housing trends.
In Carlsbad, the average rent for a one-bedroom jumped 11.1 percent in the past year, from $1,544 to $1,716; the price of the average studio edged higher by 4.8 percent to $1,342; and the rents for a two-bedroom climbed 8.6 percent to $1,711.
Meanwhile, vacancy rates in North County tightened to 2.9 percent as of March 30, from 5.5 percent two years ago, according to the RealFacts data. The region includes all major cities north of State Route 56, from Del Mar along the Pacific coastline to the Rancho Bernardo and Poway area along Interstate 15.
Doreen Weizel, 55, said she recently faced homelessness when a new management company came in to run her Oceanside apartment complex, and immediately raised rent by just $75. “I couldn’t pay it,” Weizel said. “My world came to an end. I had no vehicle to look for an apartment. It was hell,” she said. “I went onto the computer but couldn’t find anything.”
…
B…b…but the Fed said inflation is still way too low.
By some strange quirk in accounting practices, soaring home prices and rental rates, with many families reportedly paying over 50 percent of their incomes on housing, barely register a blip in headline consumer price inflation measures.
Report: Cost of rent soars across US
Posted: Jun 03, 2015 6:02 AM PST
Updated: Jun 03, 2015 6:07 AM PST
According to a Zillow report, rent is soaring across the United States outpacing home values. (Source: CNN)
(CNN) - The cost of rent has been soaring across the country, even outpacing home values - according to a recent Zillow report.
Some areas are facing a particularly harsh reality: in San Francisco, renters have seen a nearly 15 percent yearly increase.
And Denver tenants have faced an 11.6 percent rise.
Rents are also up in smaller cities.
A number of factors are creating pressure on the rental market.
Millennials are renting longer, housing inventory is tight, the housing crash has scared some would-be homeowners and baby boomers are downsizing.
There’s also been a shift in people wanting to live in more urban areas, where renting is more common.
And there aren’t enough “for rent” signs to keep up with the demand.
…
High housing costs driving more Californians into poverty
Apartment rents climbed six-tenths of a percent in Los Angeles in the first quarter, according to recent data. High rents are forcing some Californians to spend two-thirds of their income on housing. Above, apartments in Koreatown. (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)
* Report finds 1.5 million more affordable units needed to house poorest Californians
* Affordable housing advocates issue new report to highlight need for state funding
High rents are driving more Californians into poverty, said a report out Tuesday from an affordable housing group.
A new study by the California Housing Partnership found that the state’s lowest-income households spend two-thirds of their income on housing, leaving little money for food, healthcare, transportation and other needs.
And 1.5 million low-income households — half of them in Los Angeles and Orange counties and the Inland Empire — do not have access to housing they can afford.
Federal measures of poverty do not include housing costs, but when they are factored in, according to the housing group’s report, the share of people living below the poverty line in California climbs to 22%, from 16.2% in federal reports. In high-cost Orange County, including housing costs nearly doubles the poverty rate, to 24.3%.
The problem has grown worse in recent years as rents have climbed and incomes stagnated. The annual median rent in California has grown 21% since 2000, while median income for renter households has fallen 8%. Meanwhile, state and federal funding for affordable housing has dropped sharply in recent years with the end of redevelopment agencies in California and the exhaustion of state bond funds.
…
Comments
Just blame the dems. They are the cause of everything wrong.
jimjay43751
at 7:38 AM May 06, 2015
Henderson, NV Housing Prices Fall 11%
http://www.movoto.com/henderson-nv/market-trends/
Tucson, AZ Housing Prices Fall 6%
http://www.movoto.com/tucson-az/market-trends/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_idiot
The village idiot in strict terms is a person locally known for ignorance or stupidity,[1] but is also a common term for a stereotypically silly or nonsensical person. The term is also used as a stereotype of the mentally disabled.[2] It has also been applied as an epithet for an unrealistically optimistic or naive individual.[3]
The village idiot was long considered an acceptable social role, a unique individual who was dependent yet contributed to the social fabric of his community.[4] As early as Byzantine times, the “village idiot” was treated as an acceptable form of deranged individual compatible with then-prevailing normative conceptions of social order. The concept of a “village savant” or “village genius” is closely related, often tied to the concept of pre-industrial anti-intellectualism, as both figures are subjects of both pity and derision.[5] The social roles of the two are combined and applied, especially in the sociopolitical context, in the European medieval/Renaissance court jester.
‘The median listing price in Tucson went down from May to June. There were a total of 100 price increases and 1095 price decreases.’
‘The median listing price in Tucson went down from May to June. There were a total of 100 price increases and 1095 price decreases.’
Is Tucson crashing, but the MSM somehow completely missing it?
Data my friend…
Santa Monica, CA Housing Prices Fall 5%
http://www.movoto.com/santa-monica-ca/market-trends/
I’m sorta familiar with the Tucson area. I get some foreclosure listings from UHS down there. Here’s a zillow link to one I got today:
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2220-S-Winstel-Ave-Tucson-AZ-85713/8516900_zpid/
This says off market but the MLS I got is asking $67,100. “Single Family - Bedrooms:3 Total Baths:2 - Built in 1972 - Cooling: Evaporative - SqFt: 1,100″
The pics I got show some of the windows boarded up. Probably busted out; (crappy neighborhood). The MLS agent comments: ” Great opportunity for first time. This is a great buy. this 3 bedroom / 2 bathroom sits on a nice corner lot. Take advantage of the basketball and BBQ in the side yard. Investors this is also a great buy for you.”
There’s a lot of old houses in Tucson, and this one is typical. They were building boxes. The insides were functional enough, but real boxes. I wouldn’t want to live in it. As an “investment”? The rent zestimate is $800, probably high. Repairs, ongoing maintenance for a house this old, vacancies (which are high in Tucson anyway) for a bad neighborhood, likely dealing with low-income tenants. Where do I sign up?
Here’s the punchline from zillow: “Last sold: Sep 2006 for $55,000″
They’re asking $12,000 more than 2006! That’s a distressed sale? It’s certainly a distressed house. I wonder if in 2006 it came with all the windows?
Somewhere in the neighborhood of $20k. And that’s only if you really had to have it.
” BBQ in the side yard”
It looks like they built the rather large brick bbq grill, complete with turning spit, against the house, under the eaves. That seems kind of insane. And is that a drinking fountain next to it, complete with little brick steps for the kiddies? Maybe it was a neighborhood day care, and the kids took turns turning the spit.
I wonder if in 2006 it came with all the windows ??
LOL…..
The village idiot in strict terms is a person locally known for ignorance or stupidity ??
HA is not ignorant or stupid…What he is though is irritating to us which is what fuels him…Ignore him…
But don’t you find it humorous to watch irritated posters come back with “village idiot” characterizations?
Falling prices enrages the price pimps.
CraterRage Animation Of The Week
http://goo.gl/TRxMgR
The Firefox Joshua Tree extension makes this a very simple matter, was written by drumminj who posts here occasionally.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/joshua-tree-extension/
Auburn, WA Housing Demand Falls 19%
http://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public/State/State_Turnover_AllHomes.csv
Housing Demand Falls 20% In San Francisco County, CA
http://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public/County/County_Turnover_AllHomes.csv
Kings County(Brooklyn, NY) Housing Demand Falls 14%
http://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public/County/County_Turnover_AllHomes.csv
went to the lower east side last night to see our fav band http://www.thecatholicgirls.net/
checked google maps..cool municipal parking lot right across the street map was oct 2014…..we get there its all boarded up and a new high rise kondoze was being built…. a municipal parking lot i hope the city didn’t sell it without demanding 1 or 2 levels of cheap parking underground.
street parking now is $3.50 per hr but its only till 7pm…and all muni meters take debit credit cards so you dont need to always carry $10 of quarters in the car
In Greenwich Village?
Greenwich Village Sale Prices Plummet 14% YoY
http://www.zillow.com/new-york-ny-10014/home-values/
Netflix has the entire Miami Vice series collection, and I’ve been plowing through it, finally got through Season 1 (21 episodes: is it just me or did the teevee seasons used to be longer back in the day?) and watched the first episode of season 2 last night, much of which is set in New York. I was struck by how clean and attractive Manhattan looked, and what a contrast it was to rundown Miami in the 1980s.
Even though I was born in Manhattan and lived in the burbs outside of New York City up until the 1980s, I never much liked going into the city, except for a few occasions. It always gave me the creeps. I guess it had a brief resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s, but from what I’ve been reading, it’s been going down fast with the third world style rich-poor contrast taking hold in a big way. If I never see NYC again, it’ll be too soon.
Miami Vice and cocaine money remade Miami.
Maybe they can do a series about a couple of aging detectives in NY and bring back Crockett and Tubbs, going after the financial criminals. Opening shot would be the Twin Towers going down.
Michael Mann was a visionary. MV went downhill after Mann moved on and Dick Wolf took over. It took 3 years, but he buried it and then went on to do the putrid Law and Order franchise.
An interesting observation. The author talks of climate modeling but I think the same phenom applies to many areas (such as economics):
“First and foremost, computer models are deeply influenced by the assumptions of the software developer. Creating software is an artistic experience, it feels like embedding a piece of yourself into a machine. Your thoughts, your ideas, amplified by the power of a machine which is built to serve your needs – its a eerie sensation, feeling your intellectual reach unfold and expand with the help of a machine.
“But this act of creation is also a restriction – it is very difficult to create software which produces a completely unexpected result. More than anything, software is a mirror of the creator’s opinions. It might help you to fill in a few details, but unless you deliberately and very skilfully set out to create a machine which can genuinely innovate, computers rarely produce surprises. They do what you tell them to do.
“So when I see scientists or politicians claiming that their argument is valid because of the output of a computer model they created, it makes me cringe. To my expert ears, all they are saying is they embedded their opinion in a machine and it produced the answer they wanted it to produce. They might as well say they wrote their opinion into a MS Word document, and printed it – here is the proof see, its printed on a piece of paper…
“My second thought, is that it is very easy to be captured by the illusion, that a reflection of yourself means something more than it does.
“If people don’t understand the limitations of computers, if they don’t understand that what they are really seeing is a reflection of themselves, they can develop an inflated sense of the value the computer is adding to their efforts. I have seen this happen more than once in a corporate setting. The computer almost never disagrees with the researchers who create the software, or who commission someone else to write the software to the researcher’s specifications. If you always receive positive reinforcement for your views, its like being flattered – its very, very tempting to mistake flattery for genuine support. This is, in part, what I think has happened to climate researchers who rely on computers. The computers almost always tell them they are right – because they told the computers what to say. But its easy to forget, that all that positive reinforcement is just a reflection of their own opinions.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/07/an-it-experts-view-on-computer-modelling/
Our industry scientists have determined that cigarette smoking is actually beneficial to your health. The other 99% of the world’s scientists who disagree are unknowingly enthralled by their computers.
Oddflow
“Our industry scientists have determined that cigarette smoking is actually beneficial to your health”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss2hULhXf04 - 268k -
Yes, I too tend to doze off over our daily doses of WattsUpWithThat, the climate change denial site run by the college-dropout weatherman.
You hate it because you cannot refute the real science on the site. Do you think the sites you post are run by scientists? He certainly knows more about science than the people running the Guardian.
Sounds like a case of bitterness about not qualifying for club membership.
“You hate it because you cannot refute the real science on the site.”
The entire world of science refutes their version. The Russian scientists, the Chinese scientists, even the low IQ scientists in the West. They pretty much all refute it. Except for some few scientists with fossil fuel industry ties/sponsorship. Kinda like the tobacco smoking thing, back in the day.
One of the best Russian scientist is convinced that any warming is primarily caused by solar cycles not c02. You just post the propaganda but you cannot refute that all the AGW models have overstated the warming in their predictions and you have no answer why we are seeing flat temperatures on the satellites when manmade co2 omissions are far more than they were in the 1980s when we did have rapid warming. You are just trying to justify massive federal subsidies to your crony capitalism stocks.
Emissions, saw it just as I hit the send button.
A modern Leonardo De Vinci:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Chizhevsky
Modern disciples:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/29/russian-scientists-say-period-of-global-cooling-ahead-due-to-changes-in-the-sun/
“Except for some few scientists with fossil fuel industry ties/sponsorship.”
I wonder at times if some of the most ardent climate science skeptics on the HBB are paid by oil interests to post here.
If you can get me 6 figures I will swear that Climate Change sunk the Titanic.
Until then I have to look at the President Obama speaking at the Coast Guard graduation saying that climate change is a growing and “serious threat” to national security, tying severe weather to the rise of the extremist group Boko Haram in Nigeria and the civil war in Syria and then going on ABC and giving proof of Climate Change being 2 ft. of water in South Florida living rooms every time it rains which is just B.S.
The carbon credit crusaders are buying oceanfront property, paying huge sums of tax debtor money to organizations that have to screw with models that have a predetermined outcome?
Why?
” 2 ft. of water in South Florida living rooms every time it rains”
It’s amazing how much that statement has meant to you. It’s ‘proven’ so much to you.
“It’s ‘proven’ so much to you.”
Sure has.
Just lost a post. The land is sinking in Florida because they built on swamp land and pumped out the water. The science is not settled when you predict a 1 degree F temperature increase and you have a .04 F increase over twenty years and we are in an El Nino year so when it ends we will have natural cooling and thus we will have a decrease over twenty plus years.
Why the Hysteria About Climate Change? Follow the Money
Posted on September 8, 2014 by John Hinderaker
Global warming hysteria, as we wrote yesterday, is not science. The models on which it rests are known to be wrong, since they are refuted by observation. So why, then, does climate change hype persist?
Because a great deal of money depends on it. The purpose of global warming hysteria is to bamboozle voters into transferring vast amounts of wealth and power from the private sector to the government. This will be done via a carbon tax and regulations on, or prohibitions of, fossil fuels; but the scheme goes much deeper than that. Since virtually every human activity (including breathing) generates some quantity of carbon dioxide, global warming is an excuse to regulate pretty much everything, conferring unprecedented power on the federal government. Further, global warming justifies vast federal subsidies of “green” energy scams. The Democrats, in turn, are rewarded for those subsidies by enormous political contributions by the likes of Tom Steyer.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/…/why-the-hysteria-about-climate-change-follow-the-money.php - 333k -
—————————————————————–
U.N. Climate Chief Admits Goal Is Worldwide Redistribution Of Wealth
A high UN official has admitted the real reason for the climate hysteria: to transform the world economy, redistributing income from rich nations to poorer ones. Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), warned that the fight against climate change is a process and that the sought-after transformation of the world economy will not be decided at one conference or in one agreement.
At a press conference in Brussels, Figueres stated:
This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history.
This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP 15, 21, 40 — you choose the number. It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.
Read more at http://libertyalliance.com/u-n-climate-chief-admits-goal-of-regulation-is-worldwide-redistribution-of-wealth/
” The land is sinking in Florida because they built on swamp land and pumped out the water”
Oh, so there is actually 2 feet of water in some south Florida living rooms when it rains, but it’s because they built on swampland.
Did you hear that phony? It does happen. Now what? Your core belief has been refuted. You’re now spiritually adrift, seeking another sentence or two that will explain everything.
I hope you find it, bro. Maybe a Soros quote can replace it.
Oh, so there is actually 2 feet of water in some south Florida living rooms when it rains, but it’s because they built on swampland.
Yes, if you live in a water collection area because your area has sunk due to lower water tables you can have two feet of water in the basement. Still has nothing to due with AGW.
From Wikipedia, it has been going on for almost one hundred years, man caused but not AGW:
Immediately the effects of the Hoover Dike were seen. An extended drought occurred in the 1930s; with the wall preventing water from leaving Lake Okeechobee and canals and ditches removing other water, the Everglades became parched. Peat turned to dust. Salt ocean water intruded into Miami’s wells; when the city brought in an expert to explain why, he discovered that the water in the Everglades was the area’s groundwater—here, it appeared on the surface.[119] In 1939, a million acres (4,000 km²) of Everglades burned, and the black clouds of peat and sawgrass fires hung over Miami.[120] Scientists who took soil samples before draining did not take into account that the organic composition of peat and muck in the Everglades make it prone to soil subsidence when it becomes dry. Naturally occurring bacteria in Everglades peat and muck assist with the process of decomposition under water, which is generally very slow, partially due to the low levels of dissolved oxygen. When water levels became so low that peat and muck were at the surface, the bacteria interacted with much higher levels of oxygen in the air, rapidly breaking down the soil. In some places, homes had to be moved to stilts and 8 feet (2.4 m) of soil was lost.[36]
“Oh, so there is actually 2 feet of water in some south Florida living rooms”
Where?
Nowhere in Palm Beach, Martin, Broward or Dade counties that I have ever heard of.
There are also no basements for obvious reasons.
Take a look at a map of these counties.
Intense rain floods South Florida streets, neighborhoods
http://www.local10.com/weather/intense-rain-floods-south-florida-streets-neighborhoods/31549952
Oh, please, there’s always been flooding in certain parts of South Florida, and other parts of Florida as well. In South Tampa, the streets flood if a dog so much as takes a pizz in the road. Been that way for years. Is it getting worse? Yes. Because of over-development.
BTW, for the topographically challenged, Florida is a low lying state and parts of it are and always have been flood prone. It’s worse now because it has exceeded its carrying capacity in terms of population.
“Intense rain floods South Florida streets, neighborhoods”
Doesn’t intense days long rains cause flooding in most places?
It did in Greenwich Ct.
That’s a damn long cry from 2 ft. (which there was not anywhere in your video) in peoples living rooms “every time it rains”
Nice try to cover the lie.
I say:
“Oh, so there is actually 2 feet of water in some south Florida living rooms”
You respond:
Where?
Nowhere in Palm Beach, Martin, Broward or Dade counties that I have ever heard of.
But when confronted with news reels showing flooding in Broward county after a rain storm, you say:
Doesn’t intense days long rains cause flooding in most places?
Not in Palm Beach, Martin, Broward or Dade counties that you have ever heard of.
Or were you lying?
2 feet in a living room? Forget about “every time it rains”.
Bullsh#t
Save it for the circle jerk with your buddies.
At 1:04 of your video it shows your 2 ft.
I can only assume that you are vastly exaggerating another important measurement in your life.
Looks like when it rains hard enough, people have to shop vac it out of their living rooms, just like we see in the video. That’s the real nut of the issue. Whether or not 2 feet or water has “ever” been recorded in any south Florida living room after a rain, which is what you were denying in your response to me, is a ridiculous question. Of course it has.
And by your logic, that one example of off-the-cuff hyperbole, taints you forever.
Sorry to be the one to tell you, bro. But I rescind my offer of a hiding place in my garage for you. I can no longer trust anything about you. You said that there never was 2 feet of water in a south Florida living room after a rain. Ever.
“That’s the real nut of the issue. Whether or not 2 feet or water has “ever” been recorded in any south Florida living room after a rain, which is what you were denying in your response to me, is a ridiculous question. Of course it has.”
OBAMA: “there are families right now in south Florida who see two feet of water coming into their house every time it rains”
CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley
April 8, 2015
6:30 p.m. Eastern
PELLEY: President Obama says that climate change poses a serious threat to health. He spoke with our Dr. Jon LaPook who joins us right now. Jon. -
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.cxbAwxrM.dpuf
Comment by phony scandals
2015-06-07 10:41:49
[quoting me] “Oh, so there is actually 2 feet of water in some south Florida living rooms”
Where?
Nowhere in Palm Beach, Martin, Broward or Dade counties that I have ever heard of.
You said it never, ever happened! Right there! Busted.
We can never trust anything about you again. You are a proven liar. And therefore any cause you have ever defended is forever suspect, even proven wrong. Everything you stand for is now under a cloud of suspicion. You have tainted it all with your reckless comments about south Florida home floodings, and the ‘fact’ that they have never, ever happened after a rain event.
OBAMA:
April 8, 2015
“right now in south Florida who see two feet of water coming into their house every time it rains”
PS
The 1:04 part of your video is about 20 inches short of 24 inches.
My condolences to your wife.
Obviously, no poll (pole?) tax needs to be paid but he might owe a nuisance tax.
2 feet if water in a south Florida living room after a rain storm?
“Nowhere in Palm Beach, Martin, Broward or Dade counties that I have ever heard of.”
That’s what you said. And it’s a lie! And that changes everything.
“I wonder at times if some of the most ardent climate science skeptics on the HBB are paid by oil interests to post here.”
You know what’s interesting? They never seem to actually deny it. They’ll say something like:
“If you can get me 6 figures I will swear that Climate Change sunk the Titanic.”
Which is known as a non-denial denial.
Here’s a ship for ya Oddie
“we’re stuck in our own experiment.”
Frozen Out: 98% of Stories Ignore That Ice-bound Ship Was On Global Warming Mission
By Mike Ciandella | January 2, 2014 | 12:43 PM EST
A group of climate change scientists were rescued by helicopter Jan. 2, after being stranded in the ice since Christmas morning. But the majority of the broadcast networks’ reports about the ice-locked climate researchers never mentioned climate change.
Chris Turney, the expedition’s leader, is a professor of climate change at the University of New South Wales. According to Turney’s personal website, the purpose of the expedition is to “discover and communicate the environmental changes taking place in the south.” -
According to Fox News, Turney admitted “we’re stuck in our own experiment.” They reported on Dec. 30, that a statement from the Australasian Antarctic Expedition said, “Sea ice is disappearing due to climate change, but here ice is building up.”
There was only one news story out of 41 that mentioned climate change. That was CBS “This Morning” Dec. 30. “Despite being frozen at a standstill, the team’s research on climate change and Antarctic wildlife is moving forward,” CBS News Correspondent Don Dahler said. That night, all three evening news programs still failed to make any mention of the group’s climate change research.
- See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mike-ciandella/2014/01/02/frozen-out-98-stories-ignore-ice-bound-ship-was-global-warming-missi#sthash.Rx6u6EyS.dpuf
“Nowhere in Palm Beach, Martin, Broward or Dade counties that I have ever heard of.”
I watched your video and I have still never heard of or seen 2 feet of water in a south Florida living room after any much less every rain storm.
Once again
My condolences to your wife
You’re parsing your words like a lawyer, phony. Are you paid to post here?
He must have to bounce that one off legal. And of course they won’t be in and answering emails until 10 tomorrow.
i’ve always said we severely underestimated the cost of the non smoking campaigns will have on pensions.. those 20 25 30 years and out will bankrupt the system…..and it is.
those 20 25 30 years and out will bankrupt the system ??
Its likely already bankrupt…
the only solution i can think of is if you are fully retired with no other work income you get full pensions otherwise you wait till your at least 65
to work for 20 years and collect for 30+years would never happened if we still were smoking at the same rate in 1970
“the only solution i can think of is if you are fully retired with no other work income you get full pensions otherwise you wait till your at least 65″
Thank heavens you aren’t in charge of solving this pension crisis!
i’ve always said we severely underestimated the cost of the non smoking campaigns will have on pensions.. those 20 25 30 years and out will bankrupt the system…..and it is.
No worries, they’re all obese and will die young anyway. It’s all good.
not in nyc you really dont see many of them…..its hard for anyone say over 350lbs to get around only a handful of subway stops have an elevator to the street..most of the ones you see are lawyers..trying to button the neck a size too small big briefcases.
not in nyc you really dont see many of them
The stats don’t lie, Americans are fatter than ever. That doesn’t mean the distribution of land whales is even across the countries, but the numbers are rising everywhere, even in NYC.
Heck, when I see a Yankees game on TV I see plenty of fatsos in the stands.
they probably drive to yankee stadium..
i’ve always said we severely underestimated the cost of the non smoking campaigns will have on pensions
I’m fairly certain that actuaries have taken that into account. The problem has always been politicians promising more than they can deliver.
then why do we still have 20-25 30 years and out? it was fine when they died off from smoking now so so many live to be 80-90 and more…..and those 600lb whales most dont or can’t work…
Life expectancy hasn’t risen as much as you think it has, in the past 30 years or so it’s only gone up a few years. And the obesity epidemic is expected to bring it back down.
I don’t know where you get the idea that retirees are living 30 years after they retire. Sure, some do; but most do not.
Pasadena, CA Housing Prices Fall 4%
http://www.movoto.com/pasadena-ca/market-trends/
Fo shizzle, My nizzle!
Raise your hand if you want to be operated on by an AA surgeon!
————————
NY Teacher Exam Thrown Out For Being Discriminatory
Daily Caller | June 6, 2015 | Blake Neff
A federal judge in New York has struck down a test used by New York City to vet potential teachers, finding the test of knowledge illegally discriminated against racial minorities due to their lower scores.
At first glance, the city’s second Liberal Arts and Science Test (LAST-2) seems fairly innocuous. Unlike the unfair literacy tests of Jim Crow, LAST-2 was given to every teaching candidate in New York, and it was simply a test to make sure that teachers had a basic high school-level understanding of both the liberal arts and the sciences.
One sample question from the test asked prospective educators to identify the mathematical principle of a linear relationship when given four examples; another asked them to read four passages from the Constitution and identify which illustrated checks and balances. Besides factual knowledge, the test also checks basic academic skills, such as reading comprehension and the ability to read basic charts and graphs.
Nevertheless, this apparently neutral subject matter contained an insidious kernel of racism, because Hispanic and black applicants had a passage rate only 54 to 75 percent of the passage rate for whites.
Minorities who failed the exam (who number in the thousands) may be owed years of back pay totaling millions of dollars, and those who were relegated to substitute teaching jobs could be promoted to having their own classrooms.
Heh, I was operated on by an AA surgeon. I had been diagnosed with a hernia that turned out to be gas.
To be fair, it wasn’t entirely his fault. My primary made the original diagnosis and he just went along with it. His comment was “If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably IS a duck”. Horrible experience, though.
And the primary was a white woman stuck in the past glories of having diagnosed her husband’s hernia, so I guess I was just next in line.
Anyway, when the pain came roaring back shortly after the surgery recovery period, I found a new primary, a crusty old white male doc who asked me to describe the symptoms, laughed uproariously and told me to buy some Beano.
I had to threaten my mother’s doctor with a lawsuit to get her to treat my mother’s UTI properly. She is doing well now, I do not know what many people do when their son is not an attorney.
Heh, I was operated on by an AA surgeon. I had been diagnosed with a hernia that turned out to be gas.
But … but … we have the Greatest Healthcare System In the World ™. That kind of incompetence is only supposed to happen in those countries that have cheapo socialized healthcare.
…or in the VA or military medical systems (which are the ultimate socialized medical systems).
now they are claiming common core is racist because so may blacks fail and fail miserably….who would have guessed it
Shoot the messenger is the MO of the left, attack the tests, attack the sites that bring news they do not want to hear Drudge, Fox or WUWT but they never can refute the actual news or data.
Equality of outcomes, not opportunity, must be legislated! Forward, Soviet!
from last year..
This year a .500 team could win the World Series
http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2014/6/24/5838244/mlb-standings-500-team-wild-card-expanded-playoffs-parity-other-dirty-words
Under this system, maybe the Cubbies will have a chance?
“Equality of outcomes,…”
Looking forward to a load of that with respect to gender-equivalent pay, once President Clinton takes office…
Raise your hand if you want to buy a house in a long time democrat controlled city!
Thank you obama for being the great uniter!
——————–
‘White Lives Matter’: Philadelphia Residents Protest ‘Racial Attacks’ from Black Women
Mediaite | June 5, 2015 | Josh Feldman
Up to 200 South Philadelphia residents organized a large protest this week to take a stand against what they describe as “racial attacks” from four black women towards white residents.
Residents claim that these four women have been “terrorizing” the neighborhood. Speakers said things like “white lives matter” and held up signs saying things like “We know who you are!” and “White women’s lives matter.”
And they’re not just upset at these women, they’re outraged that the police haven’t taken any serious action against them. 911 calls were placed, but there were reportedly zero reports taken.
Anonymous individuals told WPVI they’ve either been attacked or witnessed attacks from the four women. One woman claimed they came up to her and were “spitting on me, pounding on my face.”
Local city councilman Mark Squilla was part of the protest, and it was reportedly thanks to his involvement that there’s now a report on the matter and an internal investigation into why it didn’t happen sooner.
Thank you obama for being the great uniter ??
And Bush for the great divider….
What does Obama have to do with this?
Obama was enough of a uniter to get the majority of voting Americans to elect him president. That’s all that matters.
Latest Chuck Reed pension plan would give voters a voice they deserve
By Daniel Borenstein
Contra Costa Times columnist
Posted: 06/05/2015 09:40:03 AM PDT
Former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed’s latest statewide pension reform initiative is smart policy and smart politics.
It poses one simple question: Should voters have a say before state and local officials grant retirement benefits to new public employees?
The answer is clearly yes. Now facing hundreds of billions of dollars of debt statewide for generous government-worker pension programs, Californians deserve a chance to sign off on future commitments, to determine whether the costs are reasonable.
It’s so bad that in a few Bay Area districts, retirement benefit payments have surpassed the price of salaries. In many communities, it’s largely responsible for reduced library hours, crumbling roads and police staffing shortages.
It’s going to get worse. CalPERS forecasts that state and local governments face pension rate increases of roughly 35 percent to 50 percent over the next six years.
Unions attacked Reed’s last effort as an attempt to take away benefits workers had already earned. That was false. The last measure would have simply ratcheted back the rate of benefit accruals for future labor. But even that could have been vulnerable to legal challenge under California’s decades-old, misguided string of Supreme Court rulings.
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_28258596/daniel-borenstein-latest-chuck-reed-pension-plan-would
And many, many of those pensions support communities far from where they were earned and by whom they are paid…#1 destination for retired law enforcement….Idaho…
Another reminder why I left my home state (CA)…
GENESIS LYRICS
“Illegal Alien”
Consideration for your fellow man
Would not hurt anybody, it sure fits in with my plan
Over the border, there lies the promised land
Where everything comes easy, you just hold out your hand
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/genesis/illegalalien.html -
Genesis - Illegal Alien (1983) - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_61hzuGGJX0 - 287k -
No matter what you think of Coulter, on this issue she’s right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU5EHG-UhLk
And is it just me, or was Ramos separated from Anderson Cooper at birth?
just make it illegal to have any interpreters at immigration hearings..if you cant read, write and speak English in front of the clerks and judges, then why are you still here?
“if you cant read, write and speak English in front of the clerks and judges, then why are you still here?”
Siento mucho el inconveniente causado.
( I’m extremely sorry for any inconvenience caused.)
Obama: ‘I’m Going to Keep Doing Everything I Can’ for Illegals
“I’m going to keep fighting for them… And it will make America stronger”
by Barbara Boland | Washington Examiner | June 7, 2015
After executive amnesty was blocked in the courts and in the House the last two days, President Obama used his weekly radio address to ridicule House Republicans for blocking a vote on immigration reform, while promising that he would keep up the fight for undocumented immigrants.
“I’m going to keep doing everything I can to make our immigration system more just and more fair,” Obama said. “Last fall, I took action to provide more resources for border security; focus enforcement on the real threats to our security; modernize the legal immigration system for workers, employers and students; and bring more undocumented immigrants out of the shadows so they can get right with the law.”
“Some folks are still fighting against these actions,” Obama said, without directly naming the legal hurdles his executive actions face. “I’m going to keep fighting for them. Because the law is on our side. It’s the right thing to do. And it will make America stronger.”
Pomona, CA Housing Prices Fall 6%
http://www.movoto.com/pomona-ca/market-trends/
your risk aversion has cost you dearly.
A house is a depreciating asset that results in crushing losses Poet.
Why is it that everyone I know who is buying a house (you know, that thing that is supposed to be building wealth for you) is living paycheck-to-paycheck? I rent and I run a surplus every month (and have for years and years). ???
Irony has a sweet side!
I wonder how many people are swimming naked in the the casino AKA stock market?
Some good Doomer porn for a Sunday morning.
http://bonnerandpartners.com/weekend-edition-literally-your-atm-wont-work/
Our current money system began in 1971.
It survived consumer price inflation of almost 14% a year in 1980. But Paul Volcker was already on the job, raising interest rates to bring inflation under control.
And it survived the “credit crunch” of 2008-09. Ben Bernanke dropped the price of credit to almost zero, by slashing short-term interest rates and buying trillions of dollars of government bonds.
But the next crisis could be very different…
Short-term interest rates are already close to zero in the U.S. (and less than zero in Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden). And according to a recent study by McKinsey, the world’s total debt (at least as officially recorded) now stands at $200 trillion – up $57 trillion since 2007. That’s 286% of global GDP… and far in excess of what the real economy can support.
At some point, a debt correction is inevitable. Debt expansions are always – always – followed by debt contractions. There is no other way. Debt cannot increase forever.
And when it happens, ZIRP and QE will not be enough to reverse the process, because they are already running at open throttle.
What then?
The value of debt drops sharply and fast. Creditors look to their borrowers… traders look at their counterparties… bankers look at each other…
…and suddenly, no one wants to part with a penny, for fear he may never see it again. Credit stops.
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/06/05/table-9/
It seems the mainstream media is giddy with excitement over the 280,000 jobs supposedly created in May. The markets aren’t so happy, as good news is actually bad news. What excuse will Yellen and her fellow Wall Street puppets at the Federal Reserve use to not increase interest rates from emergency levels of 0.25%? The ten year Treasury rate immediately skyrocketed to 2.43% in seconds. It was at 1.64% in February. That’s a 46% decline in price in four months. Do you still think bonds are a safe investment? Guess what is tied to the 10 Year Treasury rate? Mortgage rates. There goes the fake housing recovery. Artificially high prices, higher mortgage rates, and young people unable to buy sounds like a perfect recipe for collapse.
The MSM is cackling about the 280,000 new jobs, but you won’t hear them mentioning that the number of unemployed people went up by 125,000 as 208,000 people the BLS classified as not in the labor force last month decided they were in the labor force this month. What a crock. At least 20 million of the 93 million classified as not in the labor force can or will work, therefore they are unemployed.
I heard the other day that homicides are up 90% in Denver, this article does not cite that figure but it appears they are turning to aggressive policing:
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_28267706/denver-police-arrest-hundreds-part-crackdown-gangs?source=rss
Sunday funnies from TBP. Enjoy!
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2015/06/07/sunday-funnies-65/
What happens if the MERS outbreak in South Korea spreads into Hong Kong and China?
http://rt.com/news/265558-mers-korea-cellphones-virus/
What happens if the MERS outbreak in South Korea spreads into Hong Kong and China?
People will get sick in Hong Kong and China? In this modern age it is just as likely they will get on a jet and bring it to the U.S.
MERS???? Whatever happened to SARS?
Rubio’s real estate dealings often a drag on his finances
By NICHOLAS RICCARDI
Associated Press
June 6, 2015
“He’s like any normal American with four kids that has a mortgage,” said Bernie Navarro, a past president of the Miami-based Latin Builders Association, who has advised Rubio on his real estate transactions. “He goes through what any normal family goes through, living with a salary, and he has to make adjustments.”
Rubio made two in the past few weeks:
—he sold a home in Tallahassee, Florida, that he owned with a former colleague. That freed Rubio from a monthly payment on an interest-only loan and the cost of upkeep. But he lost money on the deal.
—he consolidated the debt on his primary residence in West Miami, Florida. The original mortgage required only payments of interest on the principal in its first decade. Rubio has only paid off about 4 percent of overall principal since buying the house.
Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/news/business/article23272767.html#storylink=cpy
I posted this in the weekend topic thread:
‘The home next to his in West Miami was foreclosed, which he says is part of the reason why the county has assessed the value of his current house at $400,000 — well below the price Rubio sought when he put it on the market in 2013. The asking price was $675,000, but it didn’t sell.’
“We wanted to see if we could get the right price,” Rubio said. “We had offers, but I’m not going to give it away.”
Truly a man of the people.
“I posted this in the weekend topic thread:”
Siento mucho el inconveniente causado.
( I’m extremely sorry for any inconvenience caused.)
“We wanted to see if we could get the right price,” Rubio said. “We had offers, but I’m not going to give it away.”
The house I rented from DBLL #1 had the same model in the same subdivision for sale in 2006 with an asking price of $405,000.00
They turned down an offer of $350,000.00 in 2007.
They sold in 2008 for $210,000.00
The house I was renting short sold for $160,000.00 in late 2009.
I’m no fan of Rubio’s, he’s such an obvious opportunist. He posed as a “Tea Party” candidate and sucked up to the retiree crowd in Florida to gain his Senate seat. He shed that Tea Party thing pretty quickly once it served its purpose and joined the Gangbanger 8. I don’t even contact his office regarding legislation, because I don’t consider that he is my senator in any way, shape or form.
However, I will say that it seems his opposition, whoever that may be, is going to great lengths to discredit him and all they can come up with is some traffic violations and moderate personal financial struggles. In other words, he’s just your normal schmuck with an inflated ego.
Like most of the Oligopoly-owned Republicrat neo-con candidates, he’s got his own billionaire patron to see him through.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GOP_2016_RUBIO_FINANCES?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-06-06-14-22-32
“The original mortgage required only payments of interest on the principal in its first decade.”
Marco “How much a month?” Rubio
Vanguard buying into the Chinese market the timing seems strange even to me but perhaps they do not see the market that overvalued:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2015-06/04/c_134298236.htm
“BEIJING, June 4 (Xinhua) — With bulging economic muscle and share prices that just keep rising, fund managers worldwide are gradually starting to take China’s stock market seriously: Everyone seems to want a piece of the action.
“China’s stock market is not just soaring skyward, it is the world’s second largest by capitalization. So it was not much of a surprise when Chinese A-shares were added to a 69 billion U.S. dollar emerging markets exchange-traded fund by Vanguard Group, the world’s largest provider of mutual funds.”
Translation: Share prices are rising therefore the market is attractive. Got it.
Only 20% to go and China will catch up to us:
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/business/finance/Consumption-figures-push-stocks-to-climb/shdaily.shtml
Even the dullest of the sheeple seem to be wising up to HillaryJeb.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/coming-democratic-panic_965001.html
It must be pretty scary since usually this far before an election the Democrats usually have a lead well into the double digits.
‘Ever since the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, reality itself has come to seem up for grabs. Karl Rove, a diabolically competent political infighter but of no discernible intellectual weight, may have been prescient when he told us to forget our pedestrian notions of reality—real live reality. Empires create their own, he said, and we’re an empire now.’
‘The Ukraine crisis reminds us that the pathology is not limited to the peculiar dreamers who made policy during the Bush II administration, whose idea of reality was idealist beyond all logic. It is a late-imperial phenomenon that extends across the board. “Unprecedented” is considered a dangerous word in journalism, but it may describe the Obama administration’s furious efforts to manufacture a Ukraine narrative and our media’s incessant reproduction of all its fallacies.’
‘At this point it is only sensible to turn everything that is said or shown in our media upside down and consider it a second time. Who could want to live in a world this much like Orwell’s or Huxley’s—the one obliterating reality by destroying language, the other by making historical reference a transgression?’
‘Language and history: As argued several times in this space, these are the weapons we are not supposed to have. Ukraine now gives us two fearsome examples of what I mean by inverted reason.’
‘One, it has been raining reports of Russia’s renewed military presence in eastern Ukraine lately. One puts them down and asks, What does Washington have on the story board now, an escalation of American military involvement? A covert op? Let us watch.’
‘Two, we hear ever-shriller charges that Moscow has mounted a dangerous, security-threatening propaganda campaign to destroy the truth—our truth, we can say. It is nothing short of “the weaponization of information,” we are provocatively warned. Let us be on notice: Our truth and our air are now as polluted with propaganda as during the Cold War decades, and the only apparent plan is to make it worse.’
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/03/we_are_the_propagandists_the_real_story_about_how_the_new_york_times_and_the_white_house_has_turned_truth_in_the_ukraine_on_its_head/
More neo-con adventurism that American taxpayers end up footing the bill for - unless it escalates to outright war, then the price in blood and treasure escalates dramatically.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/14/ukraine-the-truth/
IIRC, the NY Times was a major cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq. And look where upsetting THAT apple cart has got us…
Is the big move in German bunds over, or is there more excitement to come this week?
Maybe a related question is how much Greeks pulled out of the banking system since Friday, and if the pace of capital flight will accelerate in the week ahead.
Yes, probably related. I don’t claim to understand how. For instance, did the repeat claims that a Greek bailout deal was close light a fire under bund yields?
The unraveling of Greece fully vindicates those who correctly foresaw what a debacle the EU would end up becoming, with its internal contradictions and centrifugal forces. It takes a special kind of stupid for any middle class taxpayer to align themselves with Comrad Pelosi and the DNC’s votes-for-entitlements policies, since they can see first-hand what the end-game of that folly is going to look like.
http://nypost.com/2015/06/07/my-big-fat-greek-default-when-will-athens-realize-theres-no-free-lunch/
this greece bs has been going on for years. Nothing ever happens.
The greek financial losses are taken and grow every day Poet.
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/business/finance/Greece-and-EU-bicker-over-the-latest-demands-for-reforms/shdaily.shtml
If comrade Pelosi wants to raise taxes on the Koch Brothers and George Soros so I can retire a few years earlier, she’s alright in my book.
When the Fed finally loses control and these Ponzi markets implode, it’s going to be epic.
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/stay-out-of-harms-way-the-casino-is-fixing-to-blow/
Shock waves have been rumbling through the global bond market in the last few days. On April 17 the yield on the 10-year German bund pierced through the 5bps level, but yesterday it tagged 100bps. That amounted to a 20X move in 39 trading days.
It also amounted to total annihilation if you were front running Mario Draghi’s bond buying campaign on 95% repo leverage and didn’t hit the sell button fast enough. And there were a lot of sell buttons to hit. The Italian 10-year yield has soared from a low of 1.03% in late March to 2.21% last night, and the yield on the Spanish bond has doubled in a similar manner.
Needless to say, this is not by way of a lamentation in behalf of the euro-bond speculators who have had their heads handed to them in recent days. After harvesting hundreds of billions of windfall gains since Draghi’s mid-2012 “whatever it takes ukase” they were overdue to get slapped around good and hard.
Instead, what we have here is just one more striking demonstration that financial markets are utterly broken. The notion of honest price discovery might as well be relegated to the museum of financial history.
For how long now has David Stockman been predicting the casino blowup? (Not to suggest that he is wrong…rather that those who see things earliest often times wind up appearing as a stopped clock.)
About as long as you have been predicting another major leg down in housing prices. P.S. I do take Stockman seriously.
“About as long as you have been predicting another major leg down in housing prices.”
I realize we both seem like stopped clocks by now, and in my case I frankly don’t care. The bottom line is, while government intervention can throw numerous wrenches into the gears of the free market to shut down its normal operation for a long period of time, pent up market forces will eventually come back with a vengeance.
Stockman’s web site is like hundreds of others with their doom and gloom predictions. The predictions never have a date, so they’re not falsifiable. They search the news every day looking for something that they can’t point to as a sign of looming economic catastrophe. This past week it was interest rates in Europe.
If you know a trainwreck is coming but don’t know when, don’t buy a house next to the railroad tracks.
‘For all the hand-wringing over the recent selloff that wiped out about $1.2 trillion in value from the global bond market, the fixed-income market’s best and brightest have actually taken down their year-end estimates for Treasuries in four of the past five months.’
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bond-market-game-chicken-fed-230001230.html
$1.2 trillion. Sounds like a lot of money-poof.
Sounds like a good meal for vultures to enjoy, once the bond panic subsides.
It’ll be interesting to see whether the bond rout continues this week. Already it’s starting to ring alarm bells and concerns about whether this is a symptom of systemic fault lines in global markets.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/investors-start-to-panic-as-a-global-bond-market-crash-begins
Wall Street Journal writers have come around to share Bill Gross’s view that the long bull market in bonds is over.
Good night and good luck!
Markets Heard on the Street
Global Bonds Undergo Regime Change
The days of easy money generated by piggybacking on central-bank liquidity look to be over
The European Central Bank headquarters, right, in Frankfurt. Faith in central banks as a force for damping government-bond volatility has been severely challenged. Photo: Martin Leissl/Bloomberg News
By Richard Barley
June 7, 2015 4:01 p.m. ET
It is a brave new world for government-bond investors.
The violent moves in German bunds last week—which have seen 10-year yields move from under 0.5% on Monday to nearly 1% on Thursday, ending at 0.85% Friday—have dealt a blow to complacency among investors. Although less volatile, U.S. Treasury yields also lurched upward, rising by almost 0.3 percentage point on the week to about 2.4%.
The government-bond rally in the second half of May has turned out to be built on sand. Faith in central banks as a force for damping volatility has been severely challenged. And investors should be far more wary about entering momentum-driven trades on which everyone is betting heavily. From here, the twists and turns in economic data will be more important.
One consequence of the bund selloff is that global bond markets have lost their anchor. As long as German yields kept falling, driven by a single-minded focus on European Central Bank quantitative easing, or QE, that acted as a drag on yields elsewhere. Low German yields made Treasurys look attractive, but the gap between the two has narrowed.
Moreover, the focus could shift to the U.S. economy. With the ECB plowing on with QE, debate about Federal Reserve rate increases could become the biggest factor driving markets. Friday’s strong U.S. employment report supports that idea. So Treasurys might reclaim their traditional role as the financial center of gravity.
Greece remains a big risk to this picture. Higher yields might not persist if the market starts to worry seriously about a euro exit. Greece’s decision to delay Friday’s International Monetary Fund repayment might signal hope a deal is coming, but equally it could represent a step toward an exit from the euro. It isn’t clear that bond markets are pricing in the latter risk.
The bond selloff also could have consequences for other asset classes because it has driven up global risk-free rates. Perhaps for once, though, risky assets like corporate bonds and stocks are one step ahead. As the government-bond market became increasingly irrational, European stocks moved sideways, and credit spreads widened; investors in risk assets refused to chase government bonds down the rabbit hole.
Here, too, investors should pay more attention to fundamentals. For stocks it is the earnings component of price/earnings multiple that will now matter most; the big rerating driven by monetary loosening that allowed multiples to rise is probably over. Corporate-bond investors, meanwhile, should be watching closely for signs that companies are willing to take more risk.
The bond-market selloff isn’t all bad. A government-bond market that is less sure of itself may help temper financial risks, as long as volatility doesn’t spiral out of control. Likewise, if bond investors are more focused on economic fundamentals than positioning and momentum, they will be more aligned with policy makers like those at the Fed and Bank of England.
That said, it will be a big challenge for investors who have become comfy in the long bull market in bonds. Easy choices are a thing of the past.
…
NRA: Gun blogs, videos, web forums threatened by new Obama regulation
“Gunsmiths, manufacturers, reloaders, and do-it-yourselfers could all find themselves muzzled…”
by Paul Bedard | Washington Examiner | June 7, 2015
Commonly used and unregulated internet discussions and videos about guns and ammo could be closed down under rules proposed by the State Department, amounting to a “gag order on firearm-related speech,” the National Rifle Association is warning.
In updating regulations governing international arms sales, State is demanding that anyone who puts technical details about arms and ammo on the web first get the OK from the federal government — or face a fine of up to $1 million and 20 years in jail.
According to the NRA, that would include blogs and web forums discussing technical details of common guns and ammunition, the type of info gun owners and ammo reloaders trade all the time.
“Gunsmiths, manufacturers, reloaders, and do-it-yourselfers could all find themselves muzzled under the rule and unable to distribute or obtain the information they rely on to conduct these activities,” said the NRA in a blog posting.
“This latest regulatory assault, published in the June 3 issue of the Federal Register, is as much an affront to the First Amendment as it is to the Second,” warned the NRA’s lobbying shop. “Your action is urgently needed to ensure that online blogs, videos, and web forums devoted to the technical aspects of firearms and ammunition do not become subject to prior review by State Department bureaucrats before they can be published,” it added.
The NRA makes a ton of money riling up the gum-bahs with ever-iminent and diabolical “threats” which can only be averted by a donation RIGHT NOW so they can head off the gun-grabbers…until the next scheme rears its ugly head. Sometimes I think the NRA covertly funds Democrats to come up with idiotic gun-control measures as a fund-raising stratagem.
The NRA is basically just the lobby for gun manufacturers, whose customers are actually dumb enough to pay their lobbyist bills for them.
For a forestaste of what we’re in for when the Fed’s attempts to print away all government libailities and the gambling debts of their bankster accomplices goes awry, here’s an excellent read - “When Money Dies” - about the Weimar Republic’s hyperinflation resulting from a similar debasement of the currency.
http://www.goldonomic.com/When%20Money%20Dies.pdf
If hyperinflation or even high inflation hits, you are going to want to be sitting in a house with a thirty year fixed mortgage.
Ehhh….. No Dan.
Carrying debt in any environment is a financial death sentence.
And remember…… If you have to borrow for 15 or 30 years, you can’t afford it nor is it affordable.
your losses are incalcuable. At least DAN has some stones to take some risk. All you do is talk.
Let’s compare notes again after the next U.S. recession and real estate downturn.
Come now. Spit it out.
What are your losses on the depreciating house you financed?
Another Free Sh*tter jettisons his school loans onto the taxpayers, then waxes moralistic about it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/opinion/sunday/why-i-defaulted-on-my-student-loans.html?_r=2
K thru 12 education has always been available at no charge in this country. Just add 4 years and make it K thru 16 and get the government out of the student loan business.
“Just add 4 years and make it K thru 16 and get the government out of the student loan business.”
And into the student own business.
Bright idea. Then a 4 year degree will be so common to be worthless. You have to have a MS degree these days to set yourself apart from the others, plus several years of internship. Nice idea to destroy the best college system in the world through socialism.
I didn’t say every student gets a BA or BS, nor did I say every high school student gets admitted. Only that a college education should be available at no cost. In this global economy an educated nation outperforms an uneducated one.
OK, let’s let the free-market Creationist neanderthals run the school system. No more free K-12. Make parents pay or take out student loans. Then you’d be happy because government is shrinking, and as a bonus, so would the IQ of the nation as ignorance reigns supreme. Neanderthals would then kiss US competitiveness goodbye.
I didn’t say every student gets a BA or BS, nor did I say every high school student gets admitted. Only that a college education should be available at no cost. In this global economy an educated nation outperforms an uneducated one.
We will need to change the nature of higher ed in the USA to get the costs down. Go to other countries and this what you will see at their colleges.
Compact campuses
No dorms or dining halls
No student centers
No athletic departments
No tenured faculty
Low wages for faculty.
No frills facilities.
Few electives, if any. In many countries which classes you will take every semester for your major will be pre defined.
No general ed classes or minors.
No remedial classes.
“…so would the IQ of the nation as ignorance reigns supreme.”
The IQ of the nation has been shrinking for decades and ignorance does reign supreme.
We need a bifurcated educational system. When products of our NEA-destroyed “everyone’s a winner” educational system emerge with a meaningless diploma, they need to be given Comrad Pelosi’s Loyalty Test.
“Citizen! Can we count on your unswerving political correctness and blind adherence to the superior wisdom of The Party, aka the Republicrat Duopoly? Excellent! Here is a paid scholarship to one of our centers of higher indocrination, er, learning. No?” (Squinting at computer file.) “I’m told you once displayed a Ron Paul sticker on your car? Please proceed to Table 3 and pick out a rat cage sized for your face. Then our Security cadres will escort you to the railroad car that will take you to the Re-Education Camp.”
Yeah, let the Creationist free-market neanderthals run the school system. Taxpayers can save loads of money ‘cuz you can lay off the math and science teachers. Earth’s only 6,000 years old and that’s all you need to know.
Now, down there in Texas, where the NRA wants college kids to have concealed weapons: watch as everybody gets an A. No professor would dare give an F for fear of having a gun-packing frat boy whip out his 9mm and lay out the Prof, right there in front of the class.
What a pompous a**!!
Southern Europe is being flooded with migrants from Asia and Africa, with far-right and nationalist parties capitalising on the popular backlash. So…assuming this refugee tide continues or escalates, it would seem that anti-EU, anti-Establishment parties could sweep from power the current political class in the PIIGS who have been instrumental to imposing austerity on their populations while faciliating Draghi’s endless “stimulus” and banker bailouts. But what happens when when anti-EU parties refuse to have their taxpayers put on the hook for bankster bailouts? At that point it seems the long-deferred financial reckoning day the central bankers have held at bay with their limitless QE is finally going to impose itself, and the resultant crash in global Ponzi markets and asset bubbles is going to be epic.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/07/mediterranean-migrant-arrivals-italy-passes-50000
And then the Bitcoin news:
http://cointelegraph.com/news/114496/leaders-in-bitcoin-broadcasting-pandoras-box-is-open-and-theres-no-going-back
Forget the TPP: Wikileaks Releases Documents From The Equally Shady “Trade in Services Agreement”
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/06/2015
On Wednesday, WikiLeaks brought this agreement into the spotlight by releasing 17 key TiSA-related documents, including 11 full chapters under negotiation. Though the outline for this agreement has been in place for nearly a year, these documents were supposed to remain classified for five years after being signed, an example of the secrecy surrounding the agreement, which outstrips even the TPP.
TiSA has been negotiated since 2013, between the United States, the European Union, and 22 other nations, including Canada, Mexico, Australia, Israel, South Korea, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey, and others scattered across South America and Asia. Overall, 12 of the G20 nations are represented, and negotiations have carefully incorporated practically every advanced economy except for the “BRICS” coalition of emerging markets (which stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa).
That’s perhaps TiSA’s real goal—to pry open markets, deregulate and privatize services worldwide, even among emerging nations with no input into the agreement. U.S. corporations may benefit from such a structure, as the Chamber of Commerce suggests, but the impact on workers and citizens in America and across the globe is far less clear. Social, cultural, and even public health goals would be sidelined in favor of a regime that puts corporate profits first. It effectively nullifies the role of democratic governments to operate in the best interest of their constituents.
Basically, if you think the corporate-fascist state is overbearing and oppressive now, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-06/forget-tpp-wikileaks-releases-documents-equally-shady-%E2%80%9Ctrade-services-agreement
No if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor?
Top 20 Obama scandals: The list
Wednesday, July 03, 2013 by: J. D. Heyes
1. IRS targets Obama’s enemies: The IRS targeted conservative and pro-Israel groups prior to the 2012 election. Questions are being raised about why this occurred, who ordered it, whether there was any White House involvement and whether there was an initial effort to hide who knew about the targeting and when.
2. Benghazi: This is actually three scandals in one: The failure of administration to protect the Benghazi mission; the changes made to the talking points in order to suggest the attack was motivated by an anti-Muslim video; and the refusal of the White House to say what President Obama did the night of the attack.
3. Keeping an eye on The Associated Press: The Justice Department performed a massive cull of Associated Press reporters’ phone records as part of a leak investigation.
4. Rosengate: The Justice Department suggested that Fox News reporter James Rosen is a criminal for reporting about classified information and subsequently monitored his phones and emails.
5. Potential Holder perjury I: Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress he had never been associated with “potential prosecution” of a journalist for perjury when in fact he signed the affidavit that termed Rosen a potential criminal.
6. The ATF “Fast and Furious” scheme: Federal agencies allowed weapons from U.S. gun dealers to “walk” across the border into the hands of Mexican drug dealers. The ATF summarily lost track of scores of those weapons, many of which were used in crimes, including the December 2010 killing of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
7. Potential Holder perjury II: Holder told Congress in May 2011 that he had just recently heard about the Fast and Furious gun walking scheme when there is evidence he may have known much earlier.
8. Sebelius demands payment: HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius solicited donations from companies HHS might regulate. The money would be used to help her sign up uninsured Americans for Obamacare.
9. The Pigford scandal: An Agriculture Department effort that started as an attempt to compensate black farmers who had been discriminated against by the agency but evolved into a gravy train delivering several billion dollars in cash to thousands of additional minority and female farmers who probably didn’t face discrimination.
10. GSA gone wild: The General Services Administration in 2010 held an $823,000 training conference in Las Vegas, featuring a clown and a mind readers. Resulted in the resignation of the GSA administrator.
11. Veterans Affairs in Disney World: The agency wasted more than $6 million on two conferences in Orlando. An assistant secretary was fired.
12. Sebelius violates the Hatch Act: A U.S. special counsel determined that Sebelius violated the Hatch Act when she made “extemporaneous partisan remarks” during a speech in her official capacity last year. During the remarks, Sebelius called for the election of the Democratic candidate for governor of North Carolina.
13. Solyndra: Republicans charged the Obama Administration funded and promoted its poster boy for green energy despite warning signs the company was headed for bankruptcy. The administration also allegedly pressed Solyndra to delay layoff announcements until after the 2010 midterm elections.
14. AKA Lisa Jackson: Former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson used the name “Richard Windsor” when corresponding by email with other government officials, drawing charges she was trying to evade scrutiny.
15. The New Black Panthers: The Justice Department was accused of using a racial double standard in failing to pursue a voter intimidation case against Black Panthers who appeared to be menacing voters at a polling place in 2008 in Philadelphia.
16. Waging war all by myself: Obama may have violated the Constitution and both the letter and the spirit of the War Powers Resolution by attacking Libya without Congressional approval.
17. Biden bullies the press: Vice President Biden’s office has repeatedly interfered with coverage, including forcing a reporter to wait in a closet, making a reporter delete photos, and editing pool reports.
18. AKPD not A-OK: The administration paid millions to the former firm of then-White House adviser David Axelrod, AKPD Message and Media, to promote passage of Obamacare. Some questioned whether the firm was hired to help pay Axelrod $2 million AKPD owed him.
19. Sestak, we’ll take care of you: Former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used Bill Clinton as an intermediary to probe whether former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) would accept a prominent, unpaid White House advisory position in exchange for dropping out of the 2010 primary against former Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.).
20. I’ll pass my own laws: Obama has repeatedly been accused of making end runs around Congress by deciding which laws to enforce, including the decision not to deport illegal immigrants who may have been allowed to stay in the United States had Congress passed the “Dream Act.”
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/041056_Obama_scandals_Benghazi_Fast_and_Furious.html#ixzz3cPCwOn8L
No worries, we’ll get more of the same with the next administration, regardless of who gets elected.
Here’s a chart of NASA’s budget from its inception in 1958 until now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA#/media/File:NASA-Budget-Federal.svg
(Yeah? So what?)
Note the big boom and then the following bust. A lot of people I knew in high school got sucked into the boom and went of to college and became aerospace engineers and such but their livelihood in aerospace was cut short because the boom in aerospace was due to a PROJECT, and the name of this project was Landing A Man On The Moon. And soon after the project was concluded the boom was over - and hence, for many, their aerospace careers were over.
And there is a message here somewhere and this message has to do with separating projects - things that have imbedded within them beginnings and ends - from things that have lasting endurance.
These “things” include careers and they also include stocks.
Just my opinion and an observation, FWIW.
Plus … think of the wonders that finding a hint - just a hint- of life on another planet would do to NASA’s budget, and then pay close attention to how the search for life is coming along.
So far Mars has been a big fat bust. Now the search will continue on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Something tells me that too will find bupkis.
Sending a probe to planets out side the solar system will take decades, if not centuries. It will be interesting to see if the world’s space agencies can get government funding for that. Imagine that a 300 year unmanned mission is halfway there when the sponsoring government collapses and mission control is shut down. Sure, the probe would have to be 100% automated, but what if no one is listening to the signals being sent home?
The 18-year-old daugther of Timeshare mogul David Siegel has been found dead. No cause of death given, but in the children of the uber-wealthy die it seems like suicide or heroin overdoses are the most like culprits. Many of these oligarchs sold their souls to get to where they are, and money sure as hell can’t buy happiness.
http://www.businessinsider.com/victoria-siegel-dies-after-being-found-in-home-of-david-siegel-2015-6
money sure as hell can’t buy happiness
No, but a complete lack of money can cause misery. It is why I have created a comfortable middle class lifestyle for myself. I haven’t walked over people for money, I have some friends from the first grade but I don’t worry about my next meal either.
People who finance depreciating assets for 15 or 30 years don’t have money Dan.
I could pay off my mortgage tomorrow if I wanted to Ha, I see no reason to sell assets returning more that 7% to pay off around 3.5% debt when the interest is even tax deductible.
Explain how your house is putting 7% in your wallet.
Read my sentence. The house isn’t the other assets are, there is no reason to sell them to pay off the house.
And read mine. People with money don’t finance depreciating assets for 15 to 30 years.
“No, but a complete lack of money can cause misery. It is why I have created a comfortable middle class lifestyle for myself. I haven’t walked over people for money, I have some friends from the first grade but I don’t worry about my next meal either.”
Just don’t tell anyone you know, how much moolah you have. I had workers come into my place to fix that copper pipe but I had all my important papers locked away. I have to go away for a couple of weeks and of course they have no need to know.
Won’t be doing real estate sight seeing but I will be seeing some new scenery somewhere in the U.S.
I like the asset mixture I have: 58% stocks and stock funds, 36% bonds and cash, and 6% precious metals - though trying to build up more precious metals. And my strategy of selling the biggest gainers in the best performing class has worked well for me. Started doing that back in 2010. I sold precious metals in 2010 but hung onto stocks. Now I’m selling stocks and hanging onto precious metals (and buy more every few months). I think it’s a winner.
You simply cannot go wrong with real estate.
You sure did Poet. Your rapidly depreciating house has ravaged your wallet.
REITs are as far as I go into RE.
“REITs are as far as I go into RE.”
Same here. Unless there is an all-out fire sale in home prices when most other prospective buyers are sidelined, I see no financial advantage to making the highly-levereged, lumpy asset residential investment known as buying a house.
It would be nice to have $800,000 in Avalon Bay REIT and use its dividends to pay rent at an Avalon Bay community.
Some see wretched refugees…I see permanent Democrat Supermajority voters. Let’s resettle them in the red states!
http://news.yahoo.com/british-warship-launches-rescue-least-500-migrants-mediterranean-080658712.html
I’m wondering about the home around the block from us which most likely will no longer henceforth be occupied by its former owner, the guy who gunned down his wife yesterday afternoon.
Will it be up to the lender to take possession and sell the place? And will there be a stigma attached to the home due to the circumstances which led to the vacancy?
Is that the same dude who was selling Vacation Rentals?
Yes.
Damn!
This calls for Johnny Cash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq344ks1ieg - 211k -
Which occupation is worse: Drug dealing or vacation resort rental sales?
SDPD search for man suspected of murdering wife in Scripps Ranch
Posted: Jun 06, 2015 1:48 PM PST
Updated: Jun 07, 2015 10:00 AM PST
Video Report By Abbie Alford, Reporter
Police identified the shooting suspect as 40-year-old Jeremy Green.
SCRIPPS RANCH (CBS
- San Diego police are investigating a fatal shooting that happened Saturday afternoon in Scripps Ranch, leaving one woman dead.
Police responded to reports of shots fired at 2:11 p.m. at the 9600 block of Business Park Ave., located just east of the 15 freeway and south of Canyon Road. Investigators say Jeremy Green, 40, shot and killed his 37-year-old wife. Neighbors confirm the wife is Tressa Green.
Witnesses say that Green and the victim were in a verbal confrontation in a parking lot when Green pulled out a gun and shot the victim multiple times before driving off in his vehicle.
“He is very dangerous, he is armed, brazen and he has no problem killing someone in broad daylight in a public area,” said SDPD Homicide Lt. Paul Rorrison.
Green is described as white, 5 foot 8 inches and 185 pounds. Green drives a silver 2007 Chevrolet Corvette with a black top and license plate number 5YGE642.
Crime scene investigators and homicide detectives executed a search warrant at the couple’s Rancho Bernardo home around 10:00 p.m.
Online court records show Tressa filed for divorce on April 13, 2015. Records also show the couple filed for bankruptcy in 2014 and that Jeremy Green worked in sales Wyndham Vacation Rentals.
…
“Green is described as white, 5 foot 8 inches and 185 pounds. Green drives a silver 2007 Chevrolet Corvette with a black top and license plate number 5YGE642.”
It’s good to see that they are still giving the race of wanted criminals, at least if they are white. If that was a black or brown dude it would have read…
Green is described as 5 foot 8 inches and 185 pounds. Green drives a silver 2007 Chevrolet Corvette with a black top and license plate number 5YGE642.
“Green is described as 5 foot 8 inches and 185 pounds. Green drives a silver 2007 Chevrolet Corvette with a black top and license plate number 5YGE642.”
Also ‘unarmed’…
If gold is worth nothing, how come central banks keep buying gold?
http://www.kitco.com/news/2015-06-04/Russia-To-Boost-Gold-Foreign-Reserves-To-500-Billion-Over-Next-Few-Years.html
My Impression is that gold purchases and sales are used to help stabilize and implicitly peg the values of reserve currencies.
I also have the impression that gold is used on occasion as a circuit breaker for stock market crashes. Have you noticed the frequent days that start with a big drop in stocks but end with stocks back up near opening level and gold way down? (Just a personal observation here…no hard evidence to back it…)
I noticed things like that. But I also noticed in the crash of 2008 both gold and the stock market tanked. But gold recovered before the stock market did and overshot in 2011 at the $1900 peak.
Gold traders gathered their senses and figured after 2011 that the QE made stocks and bonds the better deal.
I think the stock market will reach new highs in 2016 and crash in 2017 and gold will trade between $1000 and $1200 until 2017. I think gold will reach new highs by 2020.
There is help for you debt problems and housing envy.
That’s what housing will get you Poet……. massive debt on a depreciating asset.
What are your losses on that shanty you’re financing?
Another leading indicator of a housing bubble: tanking down payments on houses.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-07/another-bubble-alert-home-down-payments-hit-three-year-low
“Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the perpetually insolvent, bailed-out GSEs that a whole host of BTFDers and a few disgruntled billionaires swear can become cash cows again if they are just allowed to escape the evil clutches of government — are now allowed to back home loans with down payments as low as 3%. The decision to lower the minimum from 5% to 3% came from the GSEs’ regulator FHFA and its Director, Melvin Watt.”
What in the world could happen next?
Illegal Cash-Back Deals Worsened The Housing Bubble, Drove Up Foreclosures: Report
The Huffington Post | By Alexander Eichler
Posted: 07/15/2011 9:10 am EDT
Ben-David examined more than 700,000 home sales in Cook County, spanning January 1995 to April 2008. He zeroed in on suggestive language in the real estate listings — like “Let’s talk about cash back at closing!!!”; “$10,000 back with full price”; and “Free car with full price” — that indicated price inflation was taking place.
What he found was that these deals represented between 2.9 and 4.4 percent of all the transactions in that 13-year period — although in the years between 2005 and 2008, they might have accounted for as many as 6.1 percent.
Residents of Arizona, Florida, and California, where cash-back deals were common during the height of the housing bubble, might not be surprised to learn how prevalent this practice was in Cook County. In 2007, a broker at a Phoenix realty company predicted to The Arizona Republic that cash-back deals “will hurt everyone in the industry and the housing market.”
The same year, San Diego Magazine reported on the increasing incidence of cash-back deals in California — and in the country at large. And a few months later, The Palm Beach Post reported that so-called “cash back at closing” deals were “going on in every neighborhood in Palm Beach County,” in the words of one local detective.
In Cook County, the deals didn’t work out so well for homeowners. Ben-David found that among highly leveraged borrowers — those who’d borrowed more than 80 percent of the home price — foreclosure rates were between 0.6 and 3.9 percent higher during the first year for borrowers who’d agreed to an inflated price.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/15/cash-back-housing_n_899352.html - 237k -
This is the most entertaining financial development since the JPMorgan London Whale incident.
Got popcorn?
Investors Start To Panic As A Global Bond Market Crash Begins
June 5th, 2015
Is the financial collapse that so many are expecting in the second half of 2015 already starting? Many have believed that we would see bonds crash before the stock market crashes, and that is precisely what is happening right now. Since mid-April, the yield on 10 year German bonds has shot up from 0.05 percent to 0.89 percent. But much of that jump has come this week. Just a couple of days ago, the yield on 10 year German bonds was sitting at just 0.54 percent. And it isn’t just Germany – bond yields are going crazy all over Europe. So far, it is being estimated that global investors have lost more than half a trillion dollars, and there is much more room for these bonds to fall. In the end, the overall losses could be well into the trillions even before the stock market collapses.
I know that for most average Americans, talk about “bond yields” is rather boring.
…
The widely - held misconception that central bankers can use quantitative easing to control long-term sovereign bond yields was shattered into a thousand pieces by the recent bund yield blowup.
The thin ice:
‘The shakeout also carries a message for corporate bond investors, who have snapped up a record level of new issuance this year, and are now seeing negative total returns in the secondary market for the first time this year.’
‘Doubeline Capital CIO Jeff Gundlach, in an interview on “Squawk on the Street,” said ultimately bond funds and ETFs that hold corporates are at risk. “I think they’re vulnerable particularly if interest rates rise, which is a nonconsensus point of view,” said Gundlach. “Most people think that corporate bonds particularly junk bonds, are somehow going to save you if interest rates are rising. I think that’s wrong.”
“I think people were hungry for yields, starvation for yields, and buying corporate bonds and junk bonds was one way to try to accomplish something in terms of yield land,” he said. “But if yields are rising then starvation for yield is actually abating. A bigger topic…is the corporate bond market, the junk bond market, in particular, has never experienced secularly rising interest rates.”
‘Gundlach also commented on total negative return and said investors could be blindsided. “I think investors, if what’s going on now continues, they’re going to be a little unpleasantly surprised when they open up their statements … for the end of June, if this yield rise continues, we’re going to be looking at negative returns for corporate bonds particularly long-duration corporate bonds with the steepening of the yield curve,” he said.’
‘Gundlach said high yield corporates could face as yet unforeseen problems in the future. “If interest rates rise this kind of systematically for the next three, four, five years there is going to be a very different context for junk bonds then anybody’s has experienced. There will be a wall of maturities that come in 2018 and 2019 and if interest rates are rising these companies will have to roll over the debt at higher interest rates, that’s something that has never happened in the history of the junk bond market,” he said.’
‘Gundlach said this could conceivably have implications for future corporate default rates, which average 4 percent.’
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102730551
Don’t worry Mike, just give your money to wall street cuz they trash talk the doomers.
“A bigger topic…is the corporate bond market, the junk bond market, in particular, has never experienced secularly rising interest rates.”
Was the junk bond market crash in 1987 that preceded the Black Monday stock market crash in October 1987 somehow ‘nonsecular’?
What does that even mean?
Suppose the punch bowl fell to the floor and shattered, spilling alcohol all over the floor, despite the absence of any action by central bankers to take the punch bowl away?
ANALYSIS
June 8, 2015 | Last updated 8 minutes ago
The great equity party may be drawing to a close
Rising bond yields signify that stocks could be reset to tread a downward path
Published: 06:13 June 8, 2015
Gulf News
By James Saft, Reuters
It may be more than bond market volatility that investors need to get used to; lower stock prices may also be a feature of the bond market reset.
Bond prices were spectacularly volatile on Thursday. Yields on German 10-year Bunds spiked by 10 basis points to 0.988 per cent, with prices, as always, moving in the other direction, before a highly unusual call by the International Monetary Fund for the Federal Reserve to wait until next year to raise interest rates helped the market to reverse course. The bund rallied all the way down to a yield of 83 basis points, three bps below where it began the day.
In the absence of some momentous event, and no, Greece does not qualify, this is a heck of a day for a developed sovereign bond market. But bond markets, particularly in Europe, have been having a succession of trying days.
Though in absolute terms it may look small, the more than 50 per cent rise in Bund yields in four trading days so far in June is extraordinary. The 10 per cent move in US 10-year Treasury yields, to 2.31 per cent, is less so, but still unusual.
Eurozone bonds, though still supported by the European Central Bank’s €1.1 trillion (Dh4.5 trillion) quantitative easing programme, had a nasty dose of reality on Wednesday when ECB chief Mario Draghi proved less than sympathetic to complaints about volatility. “One lesson is that we should get used to periods of higher volatility. At very low levels of interest rates, asset prices tend to show higher volatility,” Draghi said.
True enough, Mario, but here is another truth: at higher levels of volatility investors tend to demand lower prices. Bond market volatility is not going to be supportive of bond market prices.
The more volatile an asset is, the more expensive it is to hedge and to hold. As bond volatility spikes, especially at such historically low yields, investors are almost certain to want more compensation for a given amount of inflation and liquidity risk.
Weaker bond market prices, in turn, will not be supportive of equity prices. Bond market yields are the price of money in a competitive marketplace.
As an equity is a call on future corporate cashflows, the higher the discount rate presented by the bond market the lower the net present value of those future dividends or share buy-backs.
…
Foreign media observers noting what our corporate media would never acknowledge: that until the grassroots activists wrest back the Democrat and Republican parties from their corporate usurpers, both will continue to stagnate further into irrelevance.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/6/the-democratic-party-needs-a-swift-kick-in-the-ass.html
‘The Democratic Party’s official symbol is a jackass — and that’s exactly how the party is perceived by the American electorate right now. Only 18 states have Democratic governors, and Democrats hold a majority in both legislative houses in just 11 states. As the New York Times noted, the party hasn’t had this little power since Herbert Hoover was president. And Democrats will continue to get their asses kicked in every election until grass-roots movements organize to oust the party’s corporate-backed incumbents, make a mockery of state party bosses and take the helm once they’ve all been driven out.’
‘Of America’s two major political parties, the Republicans have become the party of extremists determined to privatize the commons, neuter the government’s ability to police polluters and corporate tax avoiders and redistribute wealth to the rich. The Democrats, on the other hand, have simply failed to stand for anything other than a watered-down version of what Republicans are proposing. State Democratic Party chairpeople, committee members, top-level elected officials and check writers have made it clear they have no interest in changing course in their embrace of policies that disenfranchise the middle class, nor are they listening to the grass-roots movements demanding economic, environmental and racial justice.’
‘The last time such a small percentage Americans bothered to vote was more than 70 years ago, when a huge chunk of the country was an ocean away, immersed in war. But blame can also be laid at the Democrats’ feet for failing to provide a noticeable alternative to GOP extremism.’
‘At the federal level, Senate Democrats caved in near-record time last week to grant the president trade promotion authority, paving the way for fast-track congressional approval of trade deals — permitting only up or down votes, without amendments or filibusters — including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the largest, most secretive global free trade deal in modern history. The backtracking of top Senate Democrats such as Ron Wyden and Patty Murray was especially disappointing, considering how Democrats held the line just 24 hours earlier in their refusal to allow debate on the bill because of the trade deal’s lack of even the most basic of protections for workers and the environment. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid lent assistance to Republican leader Mitch McConnell to whip the last few senators in line who had been intent on blocking the legislation. Bipartisanship seems to be possible only when it’s for the benefit of global corporations.’
‘The Democratic Party’s official symbol is a jackass — and that’s exactly how the party is perceived by the American electorate right now.’
Yet Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election prospects have an aura of inevitability. Go figure!
Politics
Is Hillary Clinton’s Nomination Inevitable?
The Democratic candidate is the prohibitive favorite, and finding it a mixed blessing.
A supporter holds an “I’m Ready for Hillary” sign during a rally in Manhattan. Darren Ornitz/Reuters
Noah Gordon
Apr 12, 2015
Hillary Clinton’s nomination is inevitable. Wherever they go, her Democratic rivals will face either confusion—You’re who, again?—or a wall of supporters who are ready for Hillary. And whichever Republican battles his or her way out of the crowded field will immediately have to contend with a tanned, rested, and ready Clinton.
…
Any thoughts on why China’s imports and exports are concurrently falling?
China exports fall, as imports tumble
Published: June 7, 2015 10:51 p.m. ET
By MarketWatch
BEIJING–China’s exports fell 2.5% in May from a year earlier in dollar terms, after a drop of 6.4% in April, data from the General Administration of Customs showed Monday.
The May figure was better than the median forecast of a 5.0% decrease by 13 economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal.
Imports in May fell 17.6% from a year earlier, compared with a 16.2% drop in April, and was also worse than the poll’s median forecast of an 11.0% decrease.
China’s trade surplus widened in May to $59.49 billion from $34.1 billion in April, exceeding the median forecast of a $45.1 billion surplus.
In yuan terms, China’s exports fell 2.8% in May from a year earlier, after a drop of 6.2% in April. Imports in May were down 18.1% from a year earlier, compared with a 16.1% decrease in April.
…
Exports falling because their currency is tied to the strong dollar?
Imports falling because they stockpiled lots of raw materials that they have filled warehouses with, and have decided to NOT add to the stockpile?
Collapsing demand Rental_Fraud. Collapsing demand.