The Housing Bubble

Oh, the huge manatee!

https://www.google.com/search?q=oh+the+huge+manatee&biw=1283&bih=535&tbm=isch&imgil=sq6L0mBRCEtQZM%253A%253BBRYvJStnipSKwM%253Bhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.flickr.com%25252Fphotos%25252Foctopusgallery%25252F422299939&source=iu&pf=m&fir=sq6L0mBRCEtQZM%253A%252CBRYvJStnipSKwM%252C_&usg=__eHozRn5BqSnCTcPrurzSt5qLc2g%3D&ved=0CCcQyjc&ei=iiGdVbmXDob8tQW81qrABQ#imgrc=sq6L0mBRCEtQZM%3A&usg=__eHozRn5BqSnCTcPrurzSt5qLc2g%3D

IT’S ALL PART OF THE PLAN.

Duh.

(NostraDanus)

World
Chinese Government Struggles in Attempt to Stem Distress in Stock Market
Authorities rush more emergency measures to halt what is turning into crisis of confidence
Beijing’s efforts to stabilize the plunging Chinese stock market aren’t yet bearing fruit. WSJ’s Gregor Stuart Hunter explains what’s going wrong.
Photo: Getty Images
By Lingling Wei
Updated July 8, 2015 12:33 p.m. ET

BEIJING—The Chinese government struggled in vain Wednesday to prevent the distress in the country’s stock markets from spreading, as it openly fought market forces it has pledged to give a larger role.

Early Wednesday, the Chinese authorities rushed out another raft of emergency measures to halt what is turning into a crisis of confidence in leaders’ ability to steer the economy. But before the day was over the equities selloff had spilled into offshore trading in the Chinese yuan and worsened a drop in global commodity prices.

Wednesday night, China’s securities regulator said controlling shareholders and executives who own more than 5% of a company’s stocks aren’t allowed to sell their holdings for the next six months. Any violation of the rule would be “treated seriously,” the regulator said.

It didn’t help that China’s central bank extended funds for loans to buy shares. Nor that the agency that oversees China’s oil giants and other state enterprises forbade them from selling their shareholdings.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index ended Wednesday 5.9% lower, after falling as much as 8.2% early in the session. The drop meant that $3.5 trillion yuan ($564.6 billion) in market value has been erased since a mid-June high—or one-third of total capitalization.

Even China’s safe-but-dull government bonds tumbled as brokerages and mutual funds sold debt to raise cash to follow the government decree to buy stocks.

“Market confidence has collapsed,” said Shen Jun, a strategist at BOC International Holdings Ltd., the investment-banking unit of state-owned Bank of China Ltd. Risks are growing that the stock-market crisis will “evolve into a financial crisis.”
…

A quick check of the map shows Kent, OH is about 45 miles southeast of downtown Cleveland.

I imagine that the winter weather in Kent is cold and dreary with copious amounts of cloud cover and snowfall.

What is it about Kent that caught your attention?

Arvada, CO Housing Prices Fall 16%

http://www.movoto.com/arvada-co/market-trends/

Goon is back!!!
I like Goon - a true nome du guerre!!

My wife and I went to Kent State. Lived in Stow for a bit before moving out. Honestly it’s a very easy place to live: light traffic, below the snow belt, low crime…..but that’s about it. Pretty boring there mostly.

“Now that Denver is over, it’s time to think Oil City”

“Kent, OH is pretty nice”

Like a virus, progressives vote and rule one metropolis after another, destroying the lives of law-abiding hard working people, then pull the rip cord when it becomes unbearable for them.

We’re running out of towns to run the failed utopian experiment. How about just leaving everyone alone and staying in your crime infested, politically correct, californicated shit hole.

White Progressives - More dangerous to the American way of life that any terrorist could dream of.

Marketwatch dot com
Opinion: China’s stock market crash is just beginning
By Howard Gold
Published: July 8, 2015 5:15 a.m. ET
The underlying problem is that the investing culture is immature

Since the Shanghai Composite index dropped to a 52-week high around 5,178 on June 12, it’s been downhill all the way.

In just three weeks, stocks listed on mainland China’s most prominent exchange tumbled 30% from their seven-year highs. The even more speculative ChiNext Index has lost 42% of its value over 21 days.

Investors and traders who piled into Chinese shares over the past year, causing Shanghai to rise 150% and other markets to catapult even higher, faced margin calls on their highly leveraged positions and started selling with both hands and both feet

It was the biggest rout in this volatile market since 1992, and it prompted the Chinese government to take strong measures.

Last week the Bank of China cut short-term interest rates for the fourth time this year. Regulators relaxed margin requirements and cracked down on short sellers while state-run media tried to calm jittery investors with happy talk. That did little to stanch the hemorrhage.

Over this past weekend, government authorities and “private” Chinese brokerages and companies announced even more dramatic moves to prop up stocks:

• Brokerages and mutual fund companies said they would buy billions of dollars worth of Shanghai shares.

• A state-owned investment firm said it would buy China-based ETFs.

• Twenty-eight companies said they would put planned initial public offerings on hold. IPOs were the focus of the most intense speculation.

• Regulators also increased the kinds of assets that can be used as collateral to buy stocks to include — are you ready for this? — people’s homes. I’m not making this up.

The goal: Show retail investors that the all-powerful Chinese government had their backs and that the “Beijing Put” was alive and well.

Except it wasn’t. Shanghai opened up a strong 8.5% on Monday, despite Greece’s resounding “no” vote in Sunday’s referendum. But shares slipped throughout the trading day and closed up only 2.5%. On Tuesday, Shanghai slipped 1.3%.

That was a clear sign that the government had taken its best shot and failed. Which means that the most likely direction for Shanghai, Shenzhen and other mainland exchanges is down, down, down.

Morgan Stanley, which made a good “sell” call on China weeks ago, now expects Shanghai to fall as low as 3,250 by mid-2016. Citigroup analysts told clients the sell-off has a “long way to go.” I agree, but I think it could go much, much lower.

As I’ve written many times, China, Brazil, Russia and other emerging markets are suffering through secular bear markets that will last years. Since Chinese stocks represent more than 20% of some emerging markets ETFs, the pain will likely continue well into this decade.

Secular bear markets feature sudden, violent rallies, and mini-bull markets that fool people into thinking they’re the genuine article. In real bull markets, indexes repeatedly top their previous highs; in bear markets, they never do.

So it was an ominous sign when Shanghai hit 5,000 and then reversed sharply. The previous all-time high was over 6,000 in October 2007. We thus have an eight-year down trend.

Back in 2007, China was booming as the government rolled out massive new infrastructure ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games, which by any measure were a huge success.

But after the financial crisis, the Great Recession and a domestic real estate bust, China is struggling to hit the government’s 7% GDP growth target. When the property market crashed, desperate Chinese authorities encouraged novice investors to channel their speculative energies into the stock market.

Now that’s reversing quickly as massive margin calls swamp the government’s efforts to stop the rout.

The underlying problem is that while the Chinese economy has made great strides and become a global powerhouse, China’s investing culture remains backward and immature.

As John Mauldin wrote in his “Thoughts from the Frontline” e-letter this week:

“Chinese individual investors are not primarily ‘value’ investors. Sky-high valuations don’t seem to faze them. They are primarily momentum investors who buy whatever is moving and sell whatever is falling.

“According to my friends who go to casinos and watch the Chinese gamble, they tend to jump on a ‘trend’ such as red coming up on the roulette table repeatedly — never mind that the odds are only ever 50-50. Red is seen as hot and therefore the way to bet. That carries over into trading styles. …”

When highly unsophisticated investors run into trouble, they panic quickly and try to get out at any price. The same inexperienced bettors who drove Shanghai up to 5,000 will take it way down, maybe to the last bear market low above 1,700, maybe even lower to 1,500 before it finds a long-term bottom.

When Shanghai was peaking at 5,000 in June, I gave you five words of advice: Get. The. Hell. Out. Now.

To which I’ll add five more: And. Stay. The. Hell. Out.
…

People in charge do not always do what an individual thinks they should.

Today supposedly the market was in free fall again, so it is well past Dan’s line in the sand.

“Since June 12, the Shanghai Composite has lost an unnerving 32%. The Shenzhen market, which has more tech companies and is often compared to America’s Nasdaq index, is down 41% over the same period.

courtesy CNN

Over half the companies listed have requested their stocks be withdrawn from trading. I guess that means tens of millions of grandmothers who can’t sell their shares at any price.

Professor Bear, did you get a screenshot of that?

Comment by Albuquerquedan
2015-07-08 03:11:16 …I was wrong.

I stand corrected: trading has been halted/suspended on 71% of Chinese stocks. That’s one way to inspire confidence in your market - LMAO!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-08/china-trade-halts-hit-2-2-trillion-as-state-intervention-fails

Not just Chinese markets

Sum ting wong

Wi tu lo

Ho lee fuk!

All kidding aside, though, does anyone else find this Chinese stock market sell-off just a little strange? I mean, given the fact that China manipulates and lies about everything having to do with finance, how does this happen? Don’t get me wrong, Washington and Wall Street aren’t too shabby at manipulating and lying. I just thought China would be able to prevent this sort of thing and at least make it look good, even if it wasn’t, like here in the US.

I guess what I’m getting at here is, could this be something that has happened due to Washington/Wall Street “intervention”? I’m thinking of that massive hack, and the South China Sea islands, the attempt to end the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, so could this be some sort of pay back orchestrated by Washington or Western financial forces?

Stocks in China are in free fall.

Markets across Asia followed China’s key share indexes into the red Tuesday despite further efforts from Beijing to stave off the relentless fall in Chinese share prices.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite closed down 5.9% for the day, having fallen by as much as 8.2%, while the SSE 50 index of the top 50 stocks on the bourse ended down 7.2%. The CSI 300 of the largest listed firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges was down 6.7%.

Authorities acknowledged that panic selling had taken hold among Chinese investors.

A China Securities Regulatory Commission spokesman said markets were “full of panic emotion and the number of irrational selling has been increasing,” according to a report in the South China Morning Post.

One-third of the value of Chinese stocks has now been wiped off in three weeks.

I hate it when writers sugar coat a story that way.

Working pretty good really.

Here is some advice:
1. Be white
2. Don’t live in or near a black or Mexican hood
3. Don’t live near a trailer park
4. Don’t hang out with Fox News watching, fat, white, Biker scum
5. Stay away from weird religious cults

In many small towns in the South, life is still like the 50’s or 60’s; pretty sweet. There is an alternate reality. You really do not have to participate in the low-life’s world.

But….but…..but Obama money was supposed to solve all this right?

Mr. Daniel Crowman has been frantically $hitting all over himself while backpedalling.

What do you think his losses are on that depreciating house he bought in 2010?

I have been consistent on both, I have not backtracked from my $80 oil prediction by the end of December one bit.

Market Snapshot
U.S. stocks set to tumble on global jitters
By Anora Mahmudova and Sara Sjolin
Published: July 8, 2015 8:41 a.m. ET
Microsoft falls premarket on jobs cut report
Bloomberg
Alcoa results on Wednesday mark the unofficial start to the earnings season

U.S. stock-index futures recovered some of the sharp losses seen earlier Wednesday morning, but were still trading lower Wednesday, as investors grappled with a major selloff in Chinese shares, jitters over Greece and the coming Federal Reserve minutes.

The unofficial start to the earnings season, which comes with Alcoa’s report after the market close on Wednesday, was also weighing on investors’ minds.

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (YMU5, -0.81%) dropped 113 points, or 0.6%, to 17,569, while those for the S&P 500 index (ESU5, -0.77%) lost 12.7 points, or 0.6%, to 2,061. Futures for the Nasdaq-100 index (NQU5, -0.73%) shaved off 26.25 points, or 0.6%, to 4,396.

China selloff: The moves come against a backdrop of sharp losses in the Chinese stock markets, where more than 40% of the country’s listed companies were suspended for trade at the start of the session. The Shanghai Composite Index SHCOMP, -5.90% has now shaved off more than 30% of its value over the past month, amid a sharp correction in the country’s financial markets. Read: China’s government had no reason to intervene in the stock market

Greece is still the word: The Greek debt crisis remains a focus after Tuesday’s Eurogroup meeting and eurozone leaders’ summit concluded without progress on a bailout deal. The EU has now given Athens a deadline of Sunday to produce a credible reform proposal and reach an agreement with lenders, or risk sliding into bankruptcy and a eurozone exit.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told the European Parliament on Wednesday that the government will present a detailed reform list in coming days. Meanwhile, Athens submitted a request for aid through the eurozone’s bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism.

Greece’s banks and stock markets remained shut on Wednesday, but the Global X FTSE Greece 20 ETF (GREK, -1.34%) shaved off 1.9% premarket.
…

He who panics first, panics best.

Is it bad that I’m rooting for a rout of world stock markets?

I’ve been saying for a few yrs that I’ve been holding off investing until this bubble pops. I thought it would be a few more years, but we might have a market worth buying by the end of the year.

Recently, the market has been way too high, basically no upside and tons of downside. I missed the 08/09 crumbling but am ready this time.

Oh dear… bad timing for a “glitch” given panic situations in other corners of the globe…

The NY Times
New York Stock Exchange Suspends Trading
By NATHANIEL POPPER and MATTHEW GOLDSTEIN
July 8, 2015

The New York Stock Exchange unexpectedly shut down trading in all of its listed stocks late Wednesday morning.

The exchange did not immediately give an explanation for what caused the shutdown. In an alert on its website, it wrote: “Additional information will follow as soon as possible.”

The New York Stock Exchange, which is now owned by Intercontinental Exchange, has had, like other stock exchanges, technical difficulties in the past, but the scale of the problem on Wednesday has little precedent.

Nearly 45 minutes after the shutdown, there was still little clarity on what was causing the problem. Stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange continued trading on other exchanges, such as Nasdaq.
…

Oh no, not the pig food!

China Market Rout Spreads From Stocks to Price of Pig Food
July 8, 2015 — 1:31 AM PDT
Updated on July 8, 2015 — 4:24 AM PDT

China’s stock rout spread to the country’s commodities markets as investors rushed to raise cash.

Everything from silver to sugar to eggs tumbled with the Shanghai Composite Index, which crashed to a three-month low on Wednesday. Government measures to stabilize equities are failing to stop a stock market collapse.

“People are selling everything in sight to get their hands on cash,” Liu Xu, a trader at private asset-management company Guoyun Investment Co. in Beijing, said by phone. “Some need to cover their margin calls in the stock market, while others are gripped by fear that the Chinese economy will be affected by this crisis.”

Metals including nickel and silver on the Shanghai Futures Exchange fell to their daily limits, while rubber entered a bear market. The volume of copper traded was almost six times the three-month average. Steel rebar and iron ore, as well as eggs, sugar and soybean meal dropped to the lowest level allowed by their exchanges.

“Agricultural products in my view are collateral damage in this selloff,” said Liang Ruian, a fund manager at Shanghai-based Jianfeng Asset Management Co. “Pigs are still going to eat, so what does this stock market stampede have to do with soybean meal?”

Commodities globally have cooled this year, in part on slowing economic growth in China, the world’s largest consumer of energy, metals and grains. The Bloomberg Commodities Index, which tracks 22 raw materials, is down more than 6 percent so far in 2015. It was little changed on Wednesday, after falling to a three-month low the previous day.

Spillover

Even as sentiment had soured on speculation demand is weakening, Wednesday’s selloff was triggered by the stock retreat, according to Ivan Szpakowski, a commodities strategist at Citigroup Inc. in Hong Kong.

“It’s less commodity specific, and it’s not even reflective of a deterioration in economic growth or commodity demand,” Szpakowski said. “That’s not what we’re seeing. We’re seeing a deterioration in sentiment and a spillover from the equities market.”
…

Not keynesian monetarist

I’ve done pretty well with my treasuries. Tell us where you would park 100,000 Gold it’s getting crushed, guns (that’s a lot of guns), property?, Europe china ? Cash in the bank? stocks. Nothing is safe.

I’ll start putting new money in commodities as at some point there will be a push to create jobs, and I’ve cashed out some, but what are the alternatives.

Are you one that’s been predicting hyperinflation for the last 5 years?

Heh, Lew is probably one of the China meltdown orchestrators, so he’s probably not off the mark. OTOH, unintended consequences and all that.

Read “Men On Strike” by Dr. Helen Smith

There’s no unswallowing the Red Pill…

Actually, she is a student at FSU and the daughter of a semi-famous MD in Orlando.

Looks to me like he shoved her, she told him to pound sand jerk, and he punched her. Yeah, “warning all men”. Whatever.

You gotta live here to understand that this figure will accelerate in time.
At a bit over $3k a min. that is the equivalent of a 6 mo tax installment for one typical Ch*tcago bungalow homeowner on a 60 by 120 die cut lot. That is an ugly number.

And because this is the Washington Post, no comments allowed on the article

Sad panda, boo hoo. No comments really diminishes the fun. Of course, you know that this story will be on Breitbart, the Daily Caller, etc. You’ll be able to enjoy the insightful, eloquent comments that the readers on those sites make on a story such as this.

“Jasper Spires stabs whitey 30-40 times…”

Gimme an N…

While feral young blacks are quite dangerous to white guys, they are even more dangerous to law abiding black guys trying to do it right.

Glad I live in a state that respects my right to defend myself with a loaded concealed handgun.

If you live in one of the Fascist states, I recommend Krav Maga training, which will teach you how to defend yourself against knives, blunt objects and firearms at close range.

Or…you can call 911 and have the attacker wait for the police to show up and stop him.

This was in the paper the other day.

Colorado’s Effort Against Teenage Pregnancies Is a Startling Success

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
JULY 5, 2015

WALSENBURG, Colo. — Over the past six years, Colorado has conducted one of the largest experiments with long-acting birth control. If teenagers and poor women were offered free intrauterine devices and implants that prevent pregnancy for years, state officials asked, would those women choose them?

They did in a big way, and the results were startling. The birthrate among teenagers across the state plunged by 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. There was a similar decline in births for another group particularly vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies: unmarried women under 25 who have not finished high school.

“Our demographer came into my office with a chart and said, ‘Greta, look at this, we’ve never seen this before,’ ” said Greta Klingler, the family planning supervisor for the public health department. “The numbers were plummeting.”

The changes were particularly pronounced in the poorest areas of the state, places like Walsenburg, a small city in southern Colorado where jobs are scarce and many young women have unplanned pregnancies. Taking advantage of the free program, Hope Martinez, a 20-year-old nursing home receptionist here, recently had a small rod implanted under the skin of her upper arm to prevent pregnancy for three years. She has big plans — to marry, to move farther west and to become a dental hygienist.

“I don’t want any babies for a while,” she said.

More young women are making that choice. In 2009, half of all first births to women in the poorest areas of the state happened before they turned 21. By 2014, half of first births did not occur until the women had turned 24, a difference that advocates say gives young women time to finish their educations and to gain a foothold in an increasingly competitive job market.

“If we want to reduce poverty, one of the simplest, fastest and cheapest things we could do would be to make sure that as few people as possible become parents before they actually want to,” said Isabel Sawhill, an economist at the Brookings Institution. She argues in her 2014 book, “Generation Unbound: Drifting Into Sex and Parenthood Without Marriage,” that single parenthood is a principal driver of inequality and long-acting birth control is a powerful tool to prevent it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/06/science/colorados-push-against-teenage-pregnancies-is-a-startling-success.html

the GOP is seriously ignorant. This will end up costing US all a lot more money (as usual).

The pro-life community is another reason this country’s demographics are going to be so amazing in coming decades…

More and more unprepared, bad parents having kids means schooling and protecting your own kids gets tougher. Which means responsible people have less kids. Which, long term, is a recipe for idiocrazy.

This is the world that people like 2Ban and NorthTeasterner want.

Dumb people are also much more amenable to corporate boot-licking.

Yep, and WSJ offline, too.

Sum ting rong.

CRATERRRR!

… halted just as the Dow and SP500 are poised to break down below the all-important 200-day moving average, LOL. Quite a coincidence that this happens right at a critical price support point.

Maybe the Chinese have traced their market troubles to short sellers in NY and are taking corrective action.

You sound just like him Liberace. We’re not discussing “viewpoints”.

Data my friend.

I have hardly disappeared. I think it is much closer to you disappearing, weren’t you saying when the Greek government was elected the Greeks would never be leaving the Euro? Getting pretty close now.

Yep. There were a millipede’s worth of shoes dropping in short order through fall 2008.

Hang Seng fell 45%, Shanghai fell 70%, slightly delayed DOW fell 50%.

History rhymes. What rhymes with tater?

The upside is oil $90 cheaper than it was that summer!

The year of the “glitch.”

If the new Chinese companies cannot raise money in their stock market they will raise it elsewhere:

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/business/consumer/Didi-Kuaidi-gets-US2b-Uber-to-invest-in-China/shdaily.shtml

China stock market freezing up as sell-off gathers pace
By Samuel Shen and Brenda Goh
SHANGHAI | Wed Jul 8, 2015 11:32am EDT
By Samuel Shen and Brenda Goh

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s tumbling stock market showed signs of seizing up on Wednesday, as companies scrambled to escape the rout by having their shares suspended and indexes plunged after the securities regulator warned of “panic sentiment” gripping investors.

Beijing, which has struggled for more than a week to bend the market to its will, unveiled yet another battery of measures to arrest the sell-off, and the People’s Bank of China said it would step up support to brokerages enlisted to prop up shares.

The CSI300 index (.CSI300) of the largest listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen closed down 6.8 percent, while the Shanghai Composite Index (.SSEC) dropped 5.9 percent.

With nearly half the market on a trading halt and another round of margin calls forcing leveraged investors to dump whatever shares could find a buyer, blue chips that had been supported by stabilization funds earlier in the week bore the brunt.

“I’ve never seen this kind of slump before. I don’t think anyone has. Liquidity is totally depleted,” said Du Changchun, an analyst at Northeast Securities.

“Originally, many wanted to hold blue chips. But since so many small caps are suspended from trading, the only way to reduce risk exposure is to sell blue chips.”

More than 30 percent has been knocked off the value of Chinese shares since mid-June, and for some global investors the fear that China’s market turmoil will destabilize the real economy is now a bigger risk than the crisis in Greece.

“Also, the ripple effect from the market correction has yet to show up,” wrote Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts in a note. “We expect slower growth, poorer corporate earnings, and a higher risk of a financial crisis.”
…

“Back to 2,500 in Shanghai Index”

Wait a minute…I thought the plan was to not pass GO, and head straight back up to 4,500.

What gives?

Martha My Dear from the White Album (1968) is pretty nice

Written about Paul McCartney’s pet sheepdog, nothing political…

Hot Chocolate - It started with a Kiss (1982)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3pf7o-9OOk

The funny part is that worker participation is down because there aren’t enough good paying full time jobs. The reason for this is that demand is down. The reason demand is down is that the middle class is being gutted via trade, technology, tax policy, etc.

Now in a world of falling demand and the need for fewer workers his solution is to have people work more hours. Well that just means worker participation will continue to fall. Trickle downists just don’t get that the problem we have right now is decreasing demand and concentrating the wealth will only make this problem worse.

It just got uglier.

I’m pretty familiar with guns. Never had one fire on its own.

So your giving all the small investors 6 months to exit their positions, and minimize their losses, while large investors sit on toxic equities with no value that was bought on margin? Wont that force them to sell other assets just to cover margin calls in 6 months? In 6 months, the Chinese equities will be worthless, and larger investors will be forced to dump alternative asset classes to cover loans, resulting in a bigger global catastrophe.