The Housing Bubble

It is exactly what would happen in this country if we had economic numbers much stronger than expected. The Chinese stock market likes easy money, if the GDP had come in at 6.8%, the market participants would know that more interest rate cuts and other easing was on the way, now that China’s housing market and trade surplus is helping the economy, the interest rate cuts are placed on hold:

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/business/Chinas-GDP-remains-at-7-percent-in-Q2/shdaily.shtml

I believe the GDP growth figure was 7.000000% or something like that…

Really, the world is said to be growing by about 3.5% per year and oil consumption is rising by about 1%. Similarly how do you compare electricity growth in China to GDP growth when they are closing their most energy inefficient plants and moving GDP growth from manufacturing to services?

There are three kinds of falsehoods: lies, damned lies and statistics.

– Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour

Exactly what I said above. However, I would add this, the PTB in this country do not want Americans to see China as a success because that would point up just how much we are failing. The PTB in this country are globalists and while I respect TJ, he is buying their line that it is all good and we should not worry about trade deficits. If we are world citizens that might be true. But we are not and our trade deficits, just like our budget deficits means we are living beyond our means and in the future we or our children will have to live below their means. The Greeks are learning this lesson do we have to experience it before we make changes? The Chinese government is not trying to promote globalism it is trying to promote the development of China. Our leaders are trying to promote globalism and not necessarily the development of the U.S. The results can be seen every day.

Roll the tanks south.

Buy the f*cking dip

Especially in China

Please. I appreciate the cash flow…..

“RENT”

I like the Broadway play. Interestingly, the play took place in a run-down low-rent district in New York that has since gentrified and is now unaffordable… La Vie Boheme no more

All they need to do to fox this is grow government bigger and bigger, have more and more regulations and increase taxes higher and higher.

That and import more and more muslims…

These days they don’t even have a naive hope that their candidate isn’t controlled by Wall Street and the oligarch puppet masters. At least with Obama people could suspend their brains and pretend something new was going to happen.

The first time I ever heard O’Malley talk about Wall Street was just a few weeks ago. Doubtless after he sniffed the political winds.

He was a champion of the poor who introduced casino gambling to Maryland. Also a champion of the poor who increased the sales tax, a regressive tax.

The easiest way to stop abortions is to use birth control

http://www.infowars.com/feinstein-youre-not-a-real-journalist-unless-you-draw-a-salary/

are=our

Look, we have a guy in office who refuses to build an oil pipeline.

This same guy has no problem having tankers sit in the Persian Gulf - a massive waste of energy and at massive expense.

Those two acts tell one all he or she needs to know.

Jesus was African

So Jesus would settle on the Samsung Galaxy Edge?

Another interesting point about that Trump red in South Florida is that both Rubio and JEB! are from that area, and it looks as if their neighbors don’t much care for them.

However, JEB! has some wide swaths of Texas. He should just move there, his son already has. Not that I would wish that on Texas, but it’s sad how that great state has become a vassal territory for Bush carpetbaggers.

Wonder how Jade Helm is going there?

My SJW betters assure that all of the Dreamers™ and Salvadoran and Honduran and Guatemalan Acts Of Love™ will grow up to be doctors and astronauts

I was in downtown Lake Worth, Florida several years ago and it literally looked like it was not part of the United States anymore

The fact that a lot of people in Florida are Googling doesn’t necessarily mean that they support him. There’s a lot a stuff on the internet that ridicules Trump. People may be searching for that.

Don’t buy yet if the Fed is serious this time about near-term liftoff.

Not advocating anything illegal, but I would smile if William Kristol died in a fire

Markets Commodities Precious Metals
Gold Prices Fall After Yellen Reiterates Plan to Raise Rates
Gold prices have moved lower for months in anticipation of tighter U.S. monetary policy

By Tatyana Shumsky
Updated July 15, 2015 9:24 a.m. ET

Gold prices pulled lower on Wednesday after Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen’s prepared remarks to Congress reiterated the U.S. central bank’s plans to raise interest rates later this year.

The Fed hasn’t wavered from its path toward tighter monetary policy as the domestic economy continues to improve despite threats from turmoil overseas, Ms. Yellen said. The testimony, which will be presented at 10 a.m. EDT Wednesday to the House Financial Services Committee, kicks off two days of hearings before lawmakers.

Gold prices were trading near unchanged ahead of Ms. Yellen’s remarks but fell 0.4% to $1,148.70 a troy ounce as investors reacted to the news. The most actively traded gold futures contract, for August delivery, was recently down $2.80, or 0.2%, at $1,150.70 a troy ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange.

“The interest rate hike is coming,” said John Payne, senior market analyst with Daniels Trading in Chicago.

“Gold is a gauge for the behavior of the U.S. Federal Reserve going forward,” he said, adding that prices are trading near the year’s lows, which is a reflection of investors bracing for a monetary policy move from the central bank.
…

Crude Oil - Electronic (NYMEX) Dec 2015
$53.83
Change -$1.15 -2.09%
Volume 17,044
Jul 15, 2015 9:53 a.m.
Quotes are delayed by 10 min

Previous close $54.98
Day low $53.79
Day high $55.30
Open: $55.14

52 week low $51.80
52 week high $94.42

Phony, please keep posting articles like this, it is directly related to housing (changing demographics, hello?), and the Social Justice Warriors™ who post here need to get slapped in the face with this on a daily basis

Thank you

So the big news here is that the DHS secretary doesn’t read Drudge.

It’s lucky for AlbuquerqueDan that he is a lawyer here in the U.S. instead of in his beloved China.

I love how promiscuous millennial women are

Get your Tinder game dialed in and it’s like ordering a pizza

I woke up this morning after a very heated yelling match with my son last night and realized I really don’t like Millenials very much.

If we cut one inefficient government program by even 1% - we will turn into Somalia.

That is what all the democrats on this board opine.

Of those items, the government absolutely should be collecting enough revenue to keep pensions, Soc Sec, Medicare and VA programs solvent. Those are solemn promises made to ordinary citizens, and in most cases ordinary citizens have paid into those programs over decades.

The feds do not have an obligation to collect revenue to solve the budget problems in state and local budgets. If a state were to default, the Feds would have to bail them out, but that’s another topic.

No

Sheldon Adelson needs us to pay for his next war

Falling prices is the cure.

Caveat - by in my post above define government to include state and local government i.e. local government and state governments should they also do the same.

+1 Aside from comprising sophisticated minds this board also sports some very talented comedians. Always welcome

Talked to a lady in the grocery store yesterday after mentioning how expensive laundry detergent was. Among other things she said her son was 6 months away from retirement from the New York City Fire Department.

She said he is 41 years old.

No

Politicians’ jobs are to get re-elected (or elected). Any surplus raised by one politician (or group of politicians) will breed more spending from new politicians promising more free cheese to get elected.

We need to starve the beast, not feed it.

We need rational reform of entitlements (too much waste and fraud currently)–a surplus will take reform off the table.

Read the Simpson Bowles plan from 2010 if you want to see what rational reform looks like.

Yes or No. Do you support generating enough government surplus”

by raising taxes no

Check

I saw Earth Wind & Fire perform at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach

Is that Limbaugh you’re listening to or Hannity?

Iran poses zero threat to the sovereign territory of the United States

Read the last part again: the sovereign territory of the United States

California. Let it dry up and fall off.

She could eat puppies at this point… if Bernie doesn’t take her down, she will run against the winner of the GOP clown car, and win.

Hillary Clinton: a fully owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.

Otherwise known as “an intellectual annex.” The phrase is trade marked by the Bank of England to refer to the United Sates Central Bank between the two great wars.

Raw Squid anyone?

It would have been awesome.

He Could…Go…All…The…Way! - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8d3dr7-fdU - 155k -

But Bruce or uh, Caitlyn probably saw this and wouldn’t have it.

Chris Berman Crazy Rant - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TLG_LtWhj4 - 248k -

So the whole vote thing was a…

Quint (Character)
from Jaws (1975)

Here lies the body of Mary Lee; died at the age of a hundred and three. For fifteen years she kept her virginity; not a bad record for this vicinity.

Goldman Sachs rules the world.

They had to report 7% GDP growth. Imagine how much worse the stock market crash would otherwise have been!

For now, it appears the Chinese government’s efforts to kill the market have failed.

Billionaire Paul Singer: China Crash Is ‘Way Bigger Than Subprime’
by Beth Jinks and Simone Foxman
July 15, 2015 — 6:37 AM PDT
Updated on July 15, 2015 — 12:20 PM PDT

Hedge fund manager Paul Singer said that China’s debt-fueled stock market crash may have larger implications than the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, echoing warnings from fellow billionaire money managers Bill Ackman and Jeffrey Gundlach.

“This is way bigger than subprime,” Singer, founder of hedge fund Elliott Management, said at the CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha Conference in New York in response to a question about China’s crash potentially affecting other markets. Singer said it may not be big enough to cause a global financial market conflagration.

China’s stock market has dropped from a June 12 peak wiping out almost $4 trillion in value in less than a month after investors who borrowed to buy shares had to unwind trades. Markets tumbled even as President Xi Jinping’s government ramped up efforts to stem the rout, including preventing share sales of companies.

The threat to markets from the country is a bigger concern to Ackman, who runs Pershing Square Capital Management, than Greece.

“China is a bigger global threat by far,” Ackman said Wednesday at the conference. “The Chinese stock market is a fairly remarkable phenomenon and I think kind of a frightening one.”

Ackman said he’s worried about China’s lack of transparency and questioned the reliability of its economic statistics, the same day that China said gross domestic product rose 7 percent in the last quarter.

“If you look at the Chinese financial system, you look at shadow banking, you look at the amount of leverage, you look at how desperately they worked to keep the stock market up. It looks worse to me than 2007 in the U.S,” Ackman said.

Gundlach Comparison

DoubleLine Capital co-founder Gundlach compared the stock market there with the Nasdaq in 1999, 2000, when technology stocks collapsed.

“China is really kind of concerning,” Gundlach said in an interview with CNBC at the conference. “China is far too volatile and murky to invest in.”

Mary Erdoes, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Asset Management, said at the event that China’s equities markets don’t reflect the economy.

“It’s been 25 years of 7 percent growth,” said Erdoes. “No other country has displayed that. Not even the U.S. There’s a lot going on in the economy and it’s completely disassociated with the stock market.”

These recipes might come in handy for a certain China booster who frequents the HBB:

1. HERB’S CROW HASH
Skin the crows. Cut away … broth, lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for 20 minutes. Thicken with flour. Serve over rice or toast. Serves 4.
Ingredients: 14 (broth .. crows .. flour .. leaf .. lemon .. mushrooms …)

2. CROW CASSEROLE
In skillet brown the crow breasts, then place … another layer of sauerkraut and pour sauerkraut juice over it. Bake two hours in oven heated to 350 degrees.
Ingredients: 4 (bacon .. breasts .. onion …)

3. FAMOUS KENTUCKY CROW
Mix one cup Old Crow Kentucky Bourbon with … manure crust and remove crow. Throw crow away. Serve manure with LARGE shot of Old Crow Kentucky Bourbon.
Ingredients: 3 (bourbon .. crow .. manure)

4. GRANDMOTHER’S APPLE CROW’S NEST
Slice apples into pie plate, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, spread dough over apples. Bake in hot oven 25 minutes. Turn upside down on plate with …
Ingredients: 7 (apples .. dough .. flour .. salt .. sugar …)

5. SMOTHERED CROW
Sportmen learn that the crow as well as … and occasionally add a bit of water. Cook until tender. Season with H.P. Sauce or Worcestershire sauce. Serve.
Ingredients: n/a

China’s Stock Market Will Unwind Like Long-Term Capital Management
Jul. 14, 2015 7:54 AM ET

Disclosure: I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. (More…)

Summary
- A massive sell-off in China’s stock market destroyed $4T in value in one month.
- Panic selling came to a halt after the government suspended trading, causing illiquidity in the market.
- $355B in margin debt has propelled the market, and will accelerate the downturn after trading restrictions are lifted.
- I expect China’s market to unwind like Long-Term Capital Management did in 1998.

The massive sell-off in China’s stock market over the past month seemingly came out of nowhere. About $4 trillion in value has been wiped out since mid-June when the Shanghai Composite peaked. Incessant reports of the government banning investors from selling stock and threatening to arrest short-sellers has made for great theater. It’s rare that a potential wind-down of this portion happens, but the very first thing that came to my mind was Long-Term Capital Management (”LTCM”).

LTCM was a hedge funded founded by former Salomon Brothers trader, John Meriwether, in the early 90s. It was staffed with some of the most brilliant minds in finance. The fund raised a staggering $1.25 billion - the largest startup ever. LTCM’s strategy was to use computer-driven trading to exploit price disparities in global securities, and hold them until they returned to their long-term averages.

At the beginning of 1998 LTCM had quadrupled its capital to nearly $5 billion. However, in the summer of 1998 a Russia defaulted on its $14 billion in sovereign debt and devalued its currency. Within five weeks all of LTCM’s capital was wiped out.
…

Moneybox
A blog about business and economics.
July 15 2015 2:20 PM
China’s Stock Market Is Falling Again. This Was Entirely Predictable.
By Jordan Weissmann
Sorry, buddy.
Reuters

For a little while, China’s stock market seemed to be rallying from the nausea-inducing crash that wiped out a third of its value in a month. Now, it’s back to falling, albeit a little more slowly. Over the past two days, the Shanghai Composite Index is down 4 percent. Tally the ups and downs, and it’s off about 26 percent from its June heights.

There are a few reasons why shares are dipping again. But one of the biggest, as the Wall Street Journal notes, is simply that investors are finally free to buy and sell stocks like normal again. Most of them, anyway. At one point last week, trading had been suspended for more than half of all listed corporations on China’s markets. Currently, only about a quarter are still sidelined. As more companies have resumed trading, “they’ve pulled money away from other stocks … causing the overall market to go down,” as one source told the Journal.

This speaks to the bigger flaw inherent in China’s attempts to keep its stock market afloat. In the last couple of weeks the government tried just about every intervention imaginable to support prices. It more or less ordered brokerages to buy. It loosened rules about borrowing in order to purchase shares. And, yes, it let half the market go idle. (Chinese stocks automatically stop trading once they fall 10 percent, but investors seemed to think the number of companies asking for pauses was “unusually large.”) The problem is that all of these approaches were more or less temporary fixes and did nothing about the fact that Chinese investors are deeply overleveraged, which has been one of the main forces driving stocks down. It was predictable that as the government loosened its grip, the fall would start again.
…

Bill Ackman says China’s stock market is more ‘frightening’ than Greece and even the U.S. in 2007
Beth Jinks and Simone Foxman, Bloomberg News | July 15, 2015 2:38 PM ET

Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager who runs Pershing Square Capital Management, said China is a far bigger concern to markets than Greece and that the country’s stock market scares him.

“China is a bigger global threat by far,” Ackman said Wednesday at the CNBC Institutional Investor Delivering Alpha Conference in New York. “The Chinese stock market is a fairly remarkable phenomenon and I think kind of a frightening one.”

China’s gross domestic product rose 7 per cent in the last quarter as policy makers stepped up support, boosting the country’s stock market. Equities have since plunged from a June 12 peak wiping almost US$4 trillion in value as investors that borrowed to buy shares unwound their trades.

Ackman said he’s worried about China’s lack of transparency and questioned the reliability of its economic statistics. While the country has good long-term prospects, shorter term you have to be concerned, he said.

“If you look at the Chinese financial system, you look at shadow banking, you look at the amount of leverage, you look at how desperately they worked to keep the stock market up. It looks worse to me than 2007 in the U.S.”
…

Finance China
China’s stock market swings, as measured in Greek economies
by Stephen Gandel , Stacy Jones
July 10, 2015, 1:41 PM EDT

China’s total stock market loss since mid-June is roughly the equivalent of 9 Greece economies. But such comparisons miss a larger point about the risks associated with Greece’s economic woes.

In the span of a week, investors have been flung from worrying about Greece to China and now back to Greece, with a brief stop at the New York Stock Exchange in between.

Earlier this week, in a mashup of economic woes, a number of commentators pointed out that the $3.3 trillion that had been lost in China’s market swoon made up the equivalent of 14 Greeces, as measured by that country’s GDP. Nice stat! China’s market has since recovered a bit. So we are now down to $2.1 trillion in lost wealth, or roughly nine Greeces, since mid-June. So that’s good news. But also still a lot Greeces.

The comparison highlights two points. First of all, China is much, much bigger than Greece. China’s GDP of about $10.5 trillion is 43 times bigger than Greece’s, which is $238 billion. So we should care much more about the economic woes of China than those of Greece. The second point of the comparison was to say, hey, look at just how much wealth has been lost in China. That’s got to have an impact on the economy, not just the market.

But that’s not really the case. Yes, China’s stock market drop has destroyed a lot of Greeces, if you want to measure it that way. That seems bad. But take a step back. China’s market run up before the crash also created a lot of Greeces; 18 of them, to be precise. That should have been great for China’s economy, but it wasn’t. Even as the Chinese market soared earlier this year, retail sales continued to fall.

There are 90 million stock market accounts in China. But only 50 million of them are active. That’s less than 4% of China’s population. And two-thirds of those have less than the equivalent of $15,000 in them. Less than 1% of the accounts have the equivalent of more than $1 million.

“There was no sign of a wealth effect when the market was up 100%,” says Andrew Rothman, investment chief strategist for the Matthews Asia fund, one of the largest U.S. mutual funds focused on China. “We won’t see much of one on the way down either.”
…

Canadian recession fears grow as interest rate drops to another record low
Economy meets standard definition of recession after shrinking in two straight quarters, with Canadian dollar hitting lowest point since 2009
Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz takes part in a news conference upon the release of the Monetary Policy Report in Ottawa.
Photograph: Chris Wattie/Reuters
John Barber in Toronto
Wednesday 15 July 2015 15.14 EDT
Last modified on Wednesday 15 July 2015 16.47 EDT

The Canadian dollar has plunged to its lowest point since 2009, and the country’s clouded political future became even murkier as the Bank of Canada dropped its key interest rate to a record low for the second time this year, confirming that the national economy is shrinking as the country heads into an election.

Bank governor Stephen Poloz carefully avoided using the word “recession” as he announced the rate cut on Wednesday, bringing the central bank’s overnight lending rate down 25 basis points to 0.5%. But the indicators that inspired the move showed that the economy had shrunk for the second quarter in a row, meeting the standard definition of recession.

“Global economic developments have been quite disappointing,” said Poloz. “Canada’s economy is undergoing a significant and complex adjustment.”

But the government’s critics laid the blame for the decline with Stephen Harper’s governing Conservative party. “We’re the only G7 country to be in recession in 2015,” shadow finance minister for the Liberal party Scott Brison told the Guardian. “What’s clear is that Harper’s only plan – tax cuts for the rich and cuts in social services – is not working.

“Harper’s economic record is in tatters,” he added.

Adding to the discomfort, Poloz’s announcement came just days after US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen suggested interest rates south of the Canadian border could be raised before the end of the year.

Anticipating the news last week, Harper blamed falling oil prices and other outside factors for the persistent weakness of the Canadian economy, an excuse at least partially endorsed by the central banker today. The prime minister vowed to respond with “strong fiscal discipline” that would not “spiral ourselves into deficit”.

But the reality of economic shrinkage and falling revenue will almost certainly destroy his party’s key election promise to balance the federal budget for the first time since it came to power nine years ago.

“Most of the damage here was self-inflicted and it is absolutely illegitimate to say we’re at the mercy of global pressures,” economist Jim Stanford, of the labour union Unifor, told the Guardian. “Canada’s economy is uniquely weak compared to our trading partners, and its weakness has been compounded by a number of policy errors.”
…