A Normal Ending After Decades Of Extending Booms
A weekend topic on the global manias, starting with this report by James J. Green. “‘The only thing that really matters in asset allocation is sidestepping some of the pain when the rare, great bubbles break,’ writes Jeremy Grantham in GMO’s latest quarterly letter to investors, recounting his investment firm’s ability to tapdance around what he calls the three greatest bubbles of the past 100 years: the Japanese equity bubble of 1989; the 2000 tech bubble, and the financial crisis of 2008-2009.”
“So where are we now? Speaking of bubbles, Grantham concludes that ‘unlikely as it may sound, in 12 to 24 months U.S. house prices – much more dangerous than inflated stock prices in my opinion – might beat the U.S. equity market in the race to cause the next financial crisis.’”
“He argues that we may have thought that the notion of another real estate bubble occurring so soon after 2008-’09 would be ‘psychologically impossible’ due to the ‘intensity of the pain we felt so recently,’ but cites the rapidly rising home prices which ‘at this rate will reach one and three-quarters-sigma this summer’ — sigma referring to the number of standard deviations from historical averages.”
“And the psychology argument? Many observers are missing the housing bubble, he says, ‘driven partly by the feeling that the substantially higher prices in 2006 (with its three-sigma bubble) somehow justify today’s merely one and one-half-sigma prices.’”
From Bloomberg. “John Burbank, the hedge fund manager who in 2015 warned of a China-led global economic slowdown, said he expects a ‘major’ Chinese currency devaluation and a U.S. recession within the next year as debt levels rise and central banks are stymied on monetary policy. ‘For both it will be a normal ending after decades of extending their booms,’ Burbank said in the letter obtained by Bloomberg. ‘We think this is a time full of peril and repositioning that heralds either the start of a new market reality, i.e. inflation and too much liquidity, or the beginning of the liquidation.’”
“‘The Fed policy response now seems to be a function of global growth concerns rather than domestic considerations,’ Burbank said. ‘This essentially brings forth a period of global monetary policy convergence rather than the anticipated divergence.’ There will be ’substantial’ opportunities to make money once the ‘massive dose of central bank anesthesia wears off financial markets,’ Burbank said, adding that the dollar will resume rising ‘once markets embrace the fundamental truth of the consequences of divergent monetary policies.’”
From CNBC. “Rampant speculation in China’s commodities markets could very well be the next ‘black swan’ event that rocks global markets and possibly the global economy. Though very little attention has been paid to this recent action, speculative excesses in China’s commodity markets have taken traders and investors on a wild ride, which may likely soon spill over to the rest of the world.”
“Trading volumes and volatility have been so extreme they make the recent swings in Shanghai and Shenzhen’s stock markets look mild by comparison. Chinese speculators have driven up, and then down, the prices of everything from iron ore to steel, and from soybeans to egg futures.”
“Prices in most of these commodities have fallen back to earth after massive, but relatively brief, spikes in prices. But, that’s not to say more damage hasn’t been done to China’s already fragile market system and economy. The recent rebound in commodity prices, here at home, and the affiliated rebound in raw materials stocks, could have been driven, at least in part, by those very speculative excesses in China.”
“The ‘fake-out breakout’ also could have suggested that supply of, and demand for, raw materials is coming back into balance in a world burdened by a commodity glut. That, too, appears to be have been a diversion. These rolling bubbles are making the Chinese economy more and more unstable and more susceptible to a much-feared ‘hard landing’ in the economy. That has implications for the Mild Mild West, where growth has been hard to come by and could be upended by another deceleration in Chinese economic activity.”
The Epoch Times. “International financial and investment analysts have been keeping a close watch on China’s debt crisis. The majority of analysts predict that, once the bubble bursts, China’s economy will sink into a decline similar to Japan’s situation in the 1990s. Actually, from a technical perspective, China should have already experienced several rounds of financial debacles. However, due to fundamental differences between China and Japan, the playing out of China’s anticipated financial crisis will look quite different.”
“The Chinese economy is also driven by real estate. But asset allocation is impacted by China’s unique economic system and government intervention. Bad debt comes from several main sources: real estate, large state-owned enterprises, and local governments. China’s banking sector is owned by the government, and state-owned enterprises are known as ‘the eldest son of the Republic’—they will naturally be bailed out. With these inseparable ties of interests, the fate of China’s banking industry is destined to be different from that of Japanese banks.”
“We could say that China’s banking sector is in worse shape than Japan’s banking industry before its economic bubble burst. However, before jumping to the conclusion that China will have a financial crisis similar to Japan’s, we need to remember that there is a fundamental difference between China and Japan: in China, financial stability is tied to the stability of the Chinese Communist Party.”
“In other words, China’s state-owned financial system ‘lives and dies’ with the regime. In Japan, even if the Japanese Cabinet were to collapse, it would have no direct impact on banks. China’s financials crisis is the result of the government meddling in the economy and the regime tying its own stability to the county’s financial stability. Accordingly, the last protective measure for China’s financial sector will be the gun. Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes will use any violence necessary to maintain their power.”
“But abuse of power not only distorts the market, it also destroys it. China’s 2015 stock market crash serves as an example. Chinese people are the victims of the debt crisis, paying for it through rampant inflation.”
Cover your eyes RW and JM:
‘Many observers are missing the housing bubble, he says, ‘driven partly by the feeling that the substantially higher prices in 2006 (with its three-sigma bubble) somehow justify today’s merely one and one-half-sigma prices.’
On this:
‘He argues that we may have thought that the notion of another real estate bubble occurring so soon after 2008-’09 would be ‘psychologically impossible’ due to the ‘intensity of the pain we felt so recently’
This intensity and the impossibility are important, because a mania is largely a psychological thing. How long ago was my post titled flippers selling to flippers in Los Angeles? Recall the hedge funds rush, the TV shows, the multiple offers in every nook and cranny of this country. Where’s the intense pain? I see greed run rampant.
Impossible? We hardly missed a season of “Flip A House With Your Eyes Closed!”
And all along the way it was “poor baby, those bad banks were the problem, here’s a 125% LTV refinance that you can default on three times and nobody will say boo.” Or just live there for 5 or 8 years paying nothing.
Pain? There should have been lender pain too. Thousands in prison. High publicity trials, and perp walks. Nope. Instead we got foam on the runway for the banks. Still do to this day. Where’s the pain at Fannie or Freddie. How much of the mortgage market are they backing?
I’m not saying “pain” is a desirable thing. But learning lessons, especially after an epic greed bubble, either did or didn’t happen. And the echo bubble this guy is referring to is just a bubble interrupted, IMO.
I was checking out local RE listings on line yesterday. Holy Cow, just about every listing at the lower end is marked “Pending”. But once you get to a certain price point, not so much.
What I’m seeing is that the “lower end” is inflated, and the higher end deflated. And that’s not just here, but I’m seeing the same thing on the Greenwich, Ct real estate blog that I glance at every once in while. Lower end inflated, higher end languishing and suffering price cuts. Mid-range just sort of hit or miss. Weird.
Of course, “lower end” around here is up to $150,000. In Greenwich, it’s $900,000 - 2 million.
This is just what happens when you have to pay fully amortized PITI from Day 1, with no ARM, grace periods, or I/O neg-am nonsense.
On the low end, prices are too high for renting out to pencil out, and not appreciating quickly enough for Blackrock et al to buy and fix up. Prices are too low or too flyover-like for the Chinese to launder money in. So you’re left with actual end-consumers. They have a PITI limit and can’t go above, not even with 0% down. End consumers will bid up to a point and then stop.
On the high end, the rich aren’t renting and itching to buy. They are trading up and can afford to wait and be choosey.
Not weird at all.
my hood is 190 x rent
w a Hilary’s coming boost for feds
Boston Metro Housing Prices Crater 9% YoY As Statewide Sale Price Plummets
http://www.zillow.com/ma/home-values/
Yeah, but the end users are getting sucked into frantic bidding-up at the low end. Around here, these are concrete block shacks that are realistically worth around $60,000 to $80,000. Even less, really, if the market were sane. They’re going for double.
And don’t get me started on some of the “low end” Greenwich Ct. sales. A million or two. Really? In any other market they’d be $200,000 to $250,000. Maybe. And yet they’re “snapping them up” while those back and mid country “estates” languish. Yep, the hedge fund money has dried up.
Also Connecticut looks to be going the way of Illinois. The governor and his cronies in Hartford depend on Fairfield County money to dispense largesse to the underclass.
Reading the Greenwich blog is interesting. Many of the posters sound like “let them eat cake” types. One guy keeps trying to warn them where Connecticut is headed and they just laugh at him and accuse him of being nutz. Even if I had the money, I wouldn’t buy there, because then I’d be one of Governor Malloy’s bitchez.
Same in LA. Plenty of multi-million dollar homes sitting unsold in the hills; little to no inventory in the flats where the mortals live.
It does seem—from my observations only—that the market cooling is heading to the lower end though. I suspect hiring is subsiding and more owners are choosing to exit at a peak. But, gosh, between the contradictory economic reports and the pending election, who knows for sure what will happen.
“But, gosh, between the contradictory economic reports and the pending election, who knows for sure what will happen.”
What I’ve been reading/hearing rumblings about is the mother of all bubble bursts coming, derivatives, some ridiculous number like $540 TRILLION. Two months before the election, so end of August /beginning of September. Based on some sort of cyclical analysis about the timing of RE bubble 1.0 and the dot.bomb bubble bursts and some other stuff.
Come to think of it, that timing pretty much matches what played out in the months from September 2008 throug the November election. I recall both McCain and Obama voicing opinions on how best to stop the financial market wrecking ball that was running amok in order to prove their financial crisis management skills just before Election Day.
Pre-Election Economic Crisis: The 2016 Sequel!
The low end probably won’t see prices beaten down until the next recession. Kind of like last time, actually.
What we saw in the SF Bay Area as the dot com implosion gained force, post-2000, was the high end slowed to a trickle, while folks who were priced out of the high end started buying low-end (”affordable “) housing. So the East Bay housing market kept rising while the South Bay slumped.
By contrast, all was toast in the post-2008 episode.
Price cuts already on the LA low end–even with slim inventory:
5633 Fountain Ave, LA -$10,000 5/7
1618 Allesandro St. LA -$6,100 5/12
1033 S. Plymouth Blvd. LA -$35,000 5/3
The real estate engine may be seizing faster than expected.
Does this sound like speculative excess being wrung out of the market?
‘The glory days are ending for hedge funds’
‘Hedge funds and other alternative investing groups such as private-equity firms have been enjoying the best of both worlds for the last several years. Since the market bottom in 2009, they’ve benefited from a huge run-up in stocks, engineered in part by the Federal Reserve. They also gained a lot of business as banks have given up riskier activities, on account of new regulations passed in 2010. The hedge fund industry now manages a staggering $3 trillion worth of assets.’
‘But the friendly environment has led to an explosion of funds, crowding many trades and making it harder to find the larger returns investors expect from hedge funds. The friendly environment has led to an explosion of funds, crowding many trades and making it harder to find the larger returns investors expect from hedge funds.’
Glory days? Friendly environment? Crowded trades? Oh the pain and anguish, since 2009.
Let’s not forget the serial speculators in China:
‘Rampant speculation in China’s commodities markets could very well be the next ‘black swan’ event that rocks global markets and possibly the global economy. Though very little attention has been paid to this recent action, speculative excesses in China’s commodity markets have taken traders and investors on a wild ride, which may likely soon spill over to the rest of the world.’
‘Trading volumes and volatility have been so extreme they make the recent swings in Shanghai and Shenzhen’s stock markets look mild by comparison. Chinese speculators have driven up, and then down, the prices of everything from iron ore to steel, and from soybeans to egg futures.’
‘Prices in most of these commodities have fallen back to earth after massive, but relatively brief, spikes in prices.’
They sure have learned their lesson. Remember “revive the A shares, benefits to the people”? Protestors demanding the government bail out whatever the latest loony gamble they make?
‘In other words, China’s state-owned financial system ‘lives and dies’ with the regime. In Japan, even if the Japanese Cabinet were to collapse, it would have no direct impact on banks. China’s financials crisis is the result of the government meddling in the economy and the regime tying its own stability to the county’s financial stability. Accordingly, the last protective measure for China’s financial sector will be the gun. Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes will use any violence necessary to maintain their power.’
It’s a good thing we haven’t hitched our wagon to such a regime.
Pain? There should have been lender pain too. Thousands in prison. High publicity trials, and perp walks. Nope. Instead we got foam on the runway for the banks. Still do to this day. Where’s the pain at Fannie or Freddie. How much of the mortgage market are they backing?
When Ron Paul ran in 2008 on a platform of restoring honest money and a sound financial system, and bringing the Wall Street-Federal Reserve Looting Syndicate’s massive swindles to a screeching halt, only the intelligent, principled portion of the electorate - the intrepid 5% - supported him. The rest, being a mass of zombies, mindlessly voted for more of the same. So yes, there should be pain for the banksters, but instead there’s pain for the taxpayers and future generations.
I’m not saying “pain” is a desirable thing. But learning lessons, especially after an epic greed bubble, either did or didn’t happen.
I will go out on that limb, Ben, and say that the “pain” was a desirable thing, stolen from us by the actions of the Federal Reserve. The pain would have had a very valuable, instructive purpose: a generation would have learned that trees don’t grow to the moon, that fundamentals do matter; they would have looked at the world, investments, or debt the same way for the rest of their days—and they would have been the wiser for it.
Instead, they learned the opposite of what they could have and should have learned: that the guilty (banksters and speculators both) go unpunished; that failed bets get backstopped by the government (GS, AIG counterparties); that the DOJ will look the other way when sordid deeds are done by the well-connected (Federal Reserve board insider trading); that freeloaders get loads of free stuff (5-8yrs of free rent!); and that if you missed timing the bubble right the first time, try try again with the next bubble that will be right on its heels.
Yeesh.
they would NOT have looked at the world, investments, or debt the same way for the rest of their days
https://www.gmo.com/docs/default-source/public-commentary/gmo-quarterly-letter.pdf?sfvrsn=28
Here’s the full quarterly GMO letter. The graph is interesting. According to Grantham, the prior bubble fully deflated, as measured by price/income ratios (which is what he uses to determine how far stretched we are from “normal”).
For perspective, a 3 standard deviation event means that it is approximately 0.15% tail event (i.e. very rare).
A 1.5 standard deviation event is about a 6.5% tail event.
Thank you I read the article and loved the insight. On housing I did notice that we haven’t been above a 1.5 sigma event other than the 3 sigma event and that 6.5% event, and increasing is a little concerning. However, I believe we are a year or so away from large scale (national) negative HPI.
I am seeing pricing resistance in the higher end product here in the Sierra foothills. People are refusing to buy because of pricing levels! This is MUCH different from 2006, where people bought everything, no matter what the price. That is the difference between a bubble and the ebb & flow of the market correction today.
‘A 1.5 standard deviation event is about a 6.5% tail event…People are refusing to buy because of pricing levels.
The data twins. Let me offer some analysis about you two from having watched you post over the years. It doesn’t matter what circumstance, information, behavior or statistic you are given. You waive it off. Dismiss it. 100% of the time. That’s data too.
Now we’ve got to where people are saying, “there ain’t no way people can pay this much money back.” The amounts are too large compared to incomes and where they are in life. It’s obvious they actually intend to cash-out refinance ever so often and then sell and trade up or leave California with their housing lotto and buy a house for cash somewhere else. It’s an ATM again, and the line is around the block. Dismiss, 100% of the time.
You guys aren’t going to like the stuff I’m finding for the coming week.
‘Quicken Loans, the largest Federal Housing Administration (FHA) lender in the country, is standing its ground in a government lawsuit for allegedly knowingly submitting claims for hundreds of improperly underwritten FHA-insured loans.’
‘This is not the first time that the online mortgage lender has pleaded its case against mortgage fraud allegations from the Department of Justice (DOJ) and will likely not be the last.’
‘The Detroit-based lender claims the government has enjoyed “extraordinary profitability for FHA’s insurance program” through its efforts, saying the company’s participation in FHA’s program will earn the government more than $5.7 billion in net profits “from the insurance premiums collected above and beyond claims made from over $40 billion in FHA home loan volume closed by Quicken Loans during the 2007 to 2013 timeframe.”
“After three years of struggling to understand the DOJ’s position and methodology,” Emerson noted in a previous statement, “it is time to ask the court to intervene. It’s a shame the DOJ would choose to attack the country’s largest and highest quality FHA lender … at the very time our nation needs expanded access to credit for middle-class Americans who benefit most from the FHA program.”
My clock says 6:03. Jingle, you can have a loan at 6:11. How much of that sweet equity you brag about do you want this morning?
It seems like Quicken Loans is currently filling a similar role to Countrywide’s in the last episode. It figures, since some of Quicken Loans’ managers are former Countrywide execs.
Big Short’s version of housing bubble entertains but reality disappoints
Fears are mounting as real estate industry isn’t known for level-headed behavior at the best of times, and across the US, this isn’t the best of times
Suzanne McGee
Sunday 28 February 2016 11.12 EST
Last modified on Monday 29 February 2016 08.28 EST
One of the contenders for best picture at this year’s Oscars is The Big Short, the saga of just how we merrily raced off the side of a financial cliff in the years leading up to 2007.
The movie somehow manages to make entertaining the insanity behind both the housing bubble and the golden years on Wall Street that accompanied it. It chronicles how a few naysayers saw the writing on the wall, recognized that the frenzy of lending to subprime borrowers likely would come to a grisly end, and bet against the trend, massively.
Even as the film’s stars and producers prepare to walk down the red carpet, however, worries of a new real estate bubble are mounting.
…
I like everything you post. I just don’t always completely agree with some of it.
My point here is that we are seeing prices drop because people are refusing to pay the lofty prices. That is good. That is healthy. A decade ago, people paid whatever it took to buy the house…without any second thoughts. Thanks to the HBB (and other reasons) many people now know better.
Is housing overpriced today? Probably in some areas. Is it a huge bubble ready to crash? Probably not. We don’t have the bubble mindset needed to create the bubble….people have already stopped buying overpriced deals, that’s why the prices are dropping.
“…My clock says 6:03. Jingle, you can have a loan at 6:11. How much of that sweet equity you brag about do you want this morning?…”
None. I waited about 20 years to find the right investing conditions for real estate. I made my choices by 2010 and now I’m just managing the portfolio, collecting cash flow and retiring debt. It has been a life changing experience and is providing a comfortable retirement plan, God willing and the creeks don’t rise!
Going deeper underwater by the month on rapidly depreciating houses isn’t much of a retirement plan.
Bankers, after losing millions of dollars in from fraud and greed, should at the very least have their molars cracked and forced to drink Cactus Cooler for a month.
“‘We think this is a time full of peril and repositioning that heralds either the start of a new market reality, i.e. inflation and too much liquidity, or the beginning of the liquidation.’”
The start of a new market reality which is …
Door Number 1: Inflation and too much liquidity
Door Number 2: The beginning of the liquidation
I’m betting on Door Number 2 in part because of this chart …
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M2V
Cash, baby. Go to cash.
Two things about that chart which I find puzzling:
1) No matter what else is occurring according to the official economic news, that chart has plumbed new historic lows for years on end.
2) Central Bank spokesmen never, ever comment on this anomally, even though they continue to track the metric and make it publicly available.
“The ‘fake-out breakout’ also could have suggested that supply of, and demand for, raw materials is coming back into balance in a world burdened by a commodity glut. That, too, appears to be have been a diversion. These rolling bubbles are making the Chinese economy more and more unstable and more susceptible to a much-feared ‘hard landing’ in the economy. That has implications for the Mild Mild West, where growth has been hard to come by and could be upended by another deceleration in Chinese economic activity.”
The chart you posted seems to also be indicative of deceleration. I wonder why the central bankers who produce the chart seem reticent on its relationship to real economic activity.
I can say our household contribution to money velocity has decreased by a good deal since pre-2008. Even though our household income has increased over the period, it has been swamped by the increase in our expenses. And so my cash stays in my wallet for the most part anymore.
Even though our household income has increased over the period, it has been swamped by the increase in our expenses.
The purchasing power of every American household continues to be eroded by the Fed’s deranged money-printing.
If you could live in cash, there never would have been a housing bubble.
Renting pretty much amounts to living in your cash, or at least a fraction of it.
And by that reasoning, buying is like living in cash and getting cash back.
Renting from the bank simply gave u MT Pockets.
Remember……If you have to borrow for 15 or 30 years, it’s not affordable nor can you afford it.
Buying for most (which I assume includes you) is bundling today’s price and interest rate into a long-term contract to repay the loan in fixed installments over most of your remaining financial lifetime. The important difference is between the long-term nature of a mortgage versus the short-term commitment of a rental agreement. If home prices and rents keep going up, and your ownership costs aren’t too much higher than rent on a comparable place, buying may prove advantageous.
Entering a long-term financial contract to facilitate a highly-leveraged investment during a period of extreme financial volatility seems to me like a risky gamble, but I guess I am somewhat alone on this view, as nearly everyone I know who can qualify for a mortgage buys.
“…living in cash and getting cash back.”
Is that a reference to the hapless housing market victims who found themselves with an underwater mortgage after spending home equity ATM money on vacations and toys?
I find it curious how the MSM never connects the dots between underwater mortgage victimhood and cash-out ATM financing.
The connection seems obvious enough for even MSM financial journalists to grasp.
Program to help strapped homeowners will aid only tiny percentage in Chicago: study
South Side houses and Lake Michigan on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2015. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)
Gail MarksJarvis Reporter
Chicago Tribune
A new national program aimed at helping people with overwhelming mortgage debt is only going to give relief to 1.1 percent of those borrowers in the Chicago area, according to a new RealtyTrac study.
RealtyTrac said 6,137 mortgages here are “seriously underwater” and eligible to have some of their principal forgiven through the program, which was announced by the Federal Housing Finance Agency in April.
Although some housing market experts have said principal reductions are necessary to help troubled areas bounce back from the housing market crash, Daren Blomquist, senior vice president of RealtyTrac, said relief provided by the program is merely “a drop in the bucket.”
In the Chicago area, 215,863 homeowners are seriously underwater on their mortgages but don’t qualify for relief because they are living in their homes and making mortgage payments, he said. The relief applies only to mortgages owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Loans also had to be at least 90 days delinquent on March 1 with balances of $250,000 or less.
…
“Entering a long-term financial contract to facilitate a highly-leveraged investment during a period of extreme financial volatility…”
I know a number of folks who bought in the period between the 2008-09 collapse and the onset of the Fed’s housing market reflation program in January 2012. If you were going to buy between 2000 and now, this was one of the best times.
However, that does not mean it was a good time to buy. Since the Fed overrode fundamentals by propping up the market, we won’t know for some time now whether the long-run price dynamics will favor or disfavor the buyers who bought in this window.
I know buying property during that time worked for me. The houses cost less than renting, so they had positive cash flow. Each month my debt reduction grows. Sure, we can wait another 10-15 years to see if I got a “good deal”.
I’ll own everything free and clear and be comfortably retired.
What makes you want to assume a desperate Fed won’t choose door number one? Neither sounds attractive.
The Fed and its oligarch controllers are going to do anything and everything that will faciliate the continued looting and asset-stripping of the 99% by a corrupt and venal .1% in the financial sector. That’s what the Fed does. That has been the Fed’s sole purpose in life since its clandestine inception on Jekyl Island by a confab of the robber barons of the era. And with 95% of the electorate bending over on demand for the Oligopoly, the swindles will only get bigger.
Not to worry. The “Magic People” aka Keynesian fraudsters at our central banks have our backs.
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/05/14/ecb-admits-were-the-magic-people-in-a-clown-show/
‘The European Central Bank can still conjure up policy surprises if needed to combat economic shocks and restore euro-area inflation, Governing Council member Vitas Vasiliauskas said. “Markets say the ECB is done, their box is empty,” Vasiliauskas, who heads Lithuania’s central bank, said in an interview on Tuesday in Vilnius. “But we are magic people. Each time we take something and give to the markets — a rabbit out of the hat.”
‘The 42-year-old Vasiliauskas… refuted the notion that the central bank wouldn’t be able to react to shocks such as a sudden worsening in the international economy. “Such conversations, such speculations are taking place before every meeting,” he said. “We still have a lot of tools and we can make surprises for the market. I don’t see for the moment any need for a new rabbit because we should implement what was agreed, what was announced.”
‘The Lithuanian governor singled out a second round of targeted long-term loans to banks as the most powerful addition to the ECB’s palette. The so-called TLTRO-II potentially offers to pay lenders to take central bank cash, the idea being that they pass it on to companies and households as loans. The first operation is scheduled for June 24. “This measure, personally for me, is very sexy,” Vasiliauskas said. “It can make direct impact on the real economy.”
‘Vasiliauskas also backed the ECB’s decision this month to stop production of the 500-euro banknote. The measure was taken because of the note’s perceived role in crime, though it drew criticism in countries such as Germany and Austria.’
“I think modern societies shouldn’t concentrate on cash — alternative ways of payment are more effective,” he said. “Personally, I was supportive. Less cash in a society is better and safer for everybody.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-11/ecb-can-still-pull-rabbits-out-of-the-hat-council-member-says
It would be best if no one let Vitas handle sharp knives or scissors.
“And for my next trick…
Watch me saw this lovely economy in half!”
“I think modern societies shouldn’t concentrate on cash — alternative ways of payment are more effective,” he said. “Personally, I was supportive. Less cash in a society is better and safer for everybody.”
Safer? I don’t see this push against cash being driven by law enforcement and intelligence agencies. It’s being pushed by central bankers.
Draw what conclusions you may.
Landlords who scrambled to buy homes earlier this year are beginning to rent them out, providing tenants with a flood of properties, research suggests.
A record number of sales took place in March, as buyers tried to beat last month’s Stamp Duty deadline.
That has resulted in an 11.5% rise in rental properties being listed in April, according to data from the website Rightmove.
Some places, like Worcester, have seen rental listings surge by nearly 50% .
Even in London, the number of homes for rent rose by 9.1% last month, says the research conducted by investment firm Property Partner.
It looked at 90 towns and cities across the UK, and found that the supply of properties went up in 82% of them.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36285049
looks like tis a good time to rent in Worcester.
A good time to rent not if you live in Eire.
Not since May 2008 have average monthly rents across the State been at this level, a new report from Daft.ie shows.
And the supply of properties to rent is at its lowest level on record.
Rental costs shot up by 9.3pc in the last year, the new report shows.
Surging rents is just one of the challenges facing new Housing Minister Simon Coveney as he begins his first week in the new portfolio.
Rents rose by an average of 2pc in the first quarter of 2016, the report says.
The average monthly rent across the State is now €1,006 - an eight-year high.
Dublin rents were up almost 9pc in the past year, and are now above their previous high, which occurred in 2008.
But there were even stronger rises in cities outside the capital. The highest rate of inflation countrywide was in Cork city, where rents rose by a staggering 16pc in the past year.
Galway, Limerick and Waterford all recorded double-digit rises in rental costs.
Outside the major cities, rents have risen by 8.7pc in the last 12 months.
http://www.independent.ie/business/personal-finance/property-mortgages/rental-crisis-revealed-average-monthly-rent-in-your-county-as-nationwide-average-soars-above-1k-34700246.html
Authorities are trawling thousands of documents and bank transactions to trace house deposits and rent that went missing after the sudden closure of six Melbourne real estate agencies.
The money went missing from LJ Hooker Glen Waverley, Keysborough, Mount Waverley, Burwood, Doncaster and Box Hill, which have all been closed since April 21.
Consumer Affairs Minister Jane Garrett on Saturday said the first two compensation payments totalling more than $200,000 had been approved from the Victorian Property Fund, with another 15 applications received from affected vendors and landlords.
More than 100 customers have been affected by the closure of the franchise run by Judy Nguyen, also known as Judy Thanh Truc, and husband Joseph Ngo.
Ms Nguyen told media outlets she had been set up, and that the account had been “hacked” but LJ Hooker rejected her explanation.
She has since put two multi-million dollar Melbourne properties on the market to pay back missing money, but Consumer Affairs have blocked any potential sale as the investigation continues.
https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/trawling-missing-melbourne-house-money-034210561.html
You’ve got to love Real Estate Agents, a finer bunch of people it would be difficult to find.
Australia, so much land so few houses strange.
PRIME Minister Malcolm and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten have gone head-to-head at Windsor RSL on day six of the nation’s longest Federal Election campaign.
But neither candidate was able to fully satisfy one audience member’s demand for a solution to the most pressing concern of many Australians: the spiralling cost of housing.
Hosted by Sky News’ political editor David Speers, the “people’s forum” on Friday night pitted the Government’s jobs-and-growth campaign against Labor’s promise to take on the big end of town and put funding into public health and education.
Both leaders were forced to answer tough questions from the audience of 100 undecided voters in the marginal seat of Macquarie, canvassing housing affordability, superannuation, health and schools funding, and balancing the budget.
The scandal-plagued banking sector was a vexed issue, with Mr Turnbull oscillating between chastising and defending the banks.
He managed to slip in a surprise announcement that the Government was pulling the plug on its plan to slash bulk-billing incentives for pathology and diagnostic imaging, which would have forced cancer and diabetes patients to pay for tests from July 1. But there was no magic wand to make Australians’ housing angst disappear.
Mum Julie asked why young families were not allowed to dip into their superannuation to buy their first homes.
“Children need a home,” she said. “Twenty years from now, if these people haven’t gotten into the housing market, they’re not going to be able to afford rent … I just want to know, who’s going to help?”
http://www.news.com.au/national/federal-election/prime-minister-malcolm-turnbull-and-opposition-leader-bill-shorten-face-off-in-election-debate/news-story/e192dff375b9247b752f6db807545e72
Square is getting an assist from one of basketball’s greatest ever players.
On Wednesday, the San Francisco-based financial services company announced that Earvin “Magic” Johnson will join its board of directors this summer. The NBA Hall of Famer will work on a board, which already includes Square cofounders Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey; investors Roelof Botha, Vinod Khosla and Mary Meeker; former Harvard president Larry Summers; and former Goldman Sachs executive David Viniar.
Jun 17, 2015 @ 02:16 PM
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2015/06/17/basketball-legend-magic-johnson-joins-square-board/#6afa81fe40e0
NBA legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson informed Square Friday he will resign from its board. He is expected to leave the payment processing company immediately due to “significant” time required by a new venture of his, according to CNBC, which broke the story.
“With Square’s success in the tech space and our shared vision to have an economic impact on small businesses and especially the unbanked and underbanked around the world, this has been a tremendous opportunity,” Johnson said in a press release. “Unfortunately, due to new projects that will require significant time commitments, I regretfully have to resign. The company has an outstanding board and I truly believe that Square will continue to have an immeasurable impact on this world.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/13/magic-johnson-informs-square-he-is-resigning-from-its-board/#ixzz48cvPPGXt
Well that didn’t last long.
“And the psychology argument? Many observers are missing the housing bubble, he says, ‘driven partly by the feeling that the substantially higher prices in 2006 (with its three-sigma bubble) somehow justify today’s merely one and one-half-sigma prices.’”
Such shortsightedness can lose you alot of money.
AKA “anchoring”—which is a well-known cognitive bias, causing people to be inaccurate in their assessments.
Anchoring to a bubble price that has already been well established to have been due to a bubble; thanks, Fed!
Business
Hedge funds aren’t what they used to be
By Sabri Ben-Achour
May 13, 2016 | 8:19 AM
It’s not looking like the 90s anymore. Big insurers like AIG and MetLife have said they’re slashing their investments with hedge fund by between half and two thirds. - DOUG KANTER/AFP/Getty Images
Once upon a time, hedge funds were great.
“In the 1990s, hedge fund investors made a lot of money,” said Simon Lack, managing partner of SL Advisors and author of “The Hedge Fund Mirage.”
Particularly, Lack said, “between 2000 and 2002, when we had the dotcom bubble unravelling and a big fall in equities, hedge funds did a great job — they hedged, they preserved capital, they added value. And that attracted the attention of a lot of institutional investors.”
Being so great — some offering up returns of around 40 percent in their heyday — hedge funds could charge a lot of money: Two percent of what you invest and 20 percent of what you win. And even with these fees, investors flocked to join in.
And then one day, people realized hedge funds weren’t great.
“Their performance as a whole has lagged the S&P for six or seven years,” said Roger Lowenstein, author of “America’s Bank.”
What happened? Well, everyone wanted to invest with hedge funds and then everyone wanted to start a hedge fund.
“There are now 10,000 hedge funds,” said Lowenstein. “Way more than logic, common sense or experience now over many years suggests are that talented.”
So there aren’t 10,000 Stephen Hawking-level geniuses out there all beating the market. On top of that, hedge funds now manage $3 trillion, and it’s a bit hard for all that money in all those funds to find the few slam dunk deals in the market according to Lack.
…
It’s the same as it always has been. Inside information. The ones making money aren’t the great algorithms or math or geniuses. It’s inside information and sometimes computers that for some reason people allow them to use to cheat.
But you’ll vote for the hedge fund candidate right.
The entire system is rigged in favor of the insiders, with captured regulators turning a blind eye.
Not to mention our congress-critters, who are also allowed to use the insider information but it is illegal for the rest of us to do so. They dinged Martha Stewart to make that clear.
Financial Times
United States of America
US stock funds suffer $11bn of outflows
Redemptions since the beginning of the year top $60bn
A Wall Street sign is seen in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, U.S., on Monday, March 28, 2016. U.S. stocks fluctuated, following equities’ first weekly decline in six, as investors assessed economic data for clues on the course for interest rates. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg
US investors have turned to money market funds, often seen as a proxy for cash, adding $6.5bn in the past week
© Bloomberg
May 5, 2016
by: Eric Platt and Joe Rennison in New York
US equity funds suffered their largest redemptions since the start of the year as investors sought the safety of cash, government debt and gold as sentiment continued to sour during the first week of May.
Global equity markets have eased to their lowest level in three weeks, with the FTSE All World index having declined more than 3 per cent since April 19. With markets in Japan and Europe down sharply for the year, the S&P 500 is up less than 0.5 per cent.
Portfolios invested in US equities recorded $11.2bn of outflows in the week to May 4, accelerating redemptions from the asset class since January to more than $60bn, according to Lipper.
…
tis but a flesh wound.
True, though steady profuse blood loss takes a heavy toll over time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4
Not necessarily. ‘Muricans have experienced severe rectal bleeding since 2008 and their votes for hope ‘n change. While they have a dim perception something is amiss, they lack the intelligence to discern the full magnitude of how screwed they are or make the connection with their votes for the crony capitalist status quo.
I dunno… their oligopoly presented choice breaks down to “Hope and Change” or “God and Guns”… both of which represent internally inconsistent ideologies.
They monkeymass knows they’re screwed. They are also powerless. It’s fun to be smug and titter at the normies… but ultimately meaningless unless you wield real power.
This government was designed 240 years ago, for what might as well have been aliens on a distant planet. It’s no wonder it’s breaking down, this is just a natural process. One can cry about it, or one can look for the opportunities it presents. Which choice is more gratifying is dependent on the individual making it.
The only certain thing is that there is no going back. Adapt or perish.
Financial Times
Global equities suffer investor flight
Outflows hit nearly $90bn in 2016 as portfolio managers and funds retreat to havens
yesterday
by: Eric Platt in New York
Investors are pulling money from global equity funds at their fastest pace since 2011, as benchmark indices stall ahead of the anniversary of last year’s record highs.
Redemptions from stock funds have reached nearly $90bn so far this year as portfolio managers and hedge funds struggle to navigate a market that no longer appears driven by radical central bank policy.
Markets have rebounded from a steep sell-off at the year’s start, but confidence has slipped and investors have shifted to the sidelines. The S&P 500, Euro Stoxx 600 and Nikkei have all slid since May began, and $7.4bn was withdrawn from equities in the last week alone, according to data provider EPFR.
…
‘The Fed policy response now seems to be a function of global growth concerns rather than domestic considerations,’ Burbank said. ‘This essentially brings forth a period of global monetary policy convergence rather than the anticipated divergence.’ There will be ’substantial’ opportunities to make money once the ‘massive dose of central bank anesthesia wears off financial markets,’ Burbank said, adding that the dollar will resume rising ‘once markets embrace the fundamental truth of the consequences of divergent monetary policies.’
”The Fed policy response now seems to be a function of global growth concerns rather than domestic considerations’
Remember the number of times the FOMC meeting used the word China recently?
‘a period of global monetary policy convergence rather than the anticipated divergence…the dollar will resume rising ‘once markets embrace the fundamental truth of the consequences of divergent monetary policies’
Wasn’t it a currency thing that set of the big panic last summer? We might find out if you can have your cake and eat it too, Janet.
China
‘Canadians are keenly aware of the recent run-up in housing prices in many parts of the country, but policy fellow Marc Lavoie at the think tank measured it in new terms.’
‘Instead of measuring house prices in dollar terms, Lavoie measured how much the average Canadian house cost in terms of the economic labour required to pay for it.’
‘In 1970, the average Canadian home cost a little over 200 weeks of labour-time. Based on Statistics Canada data on weekly earnings, the average Canadian home cost more than 400 weeks worth of weekly earnings in 2015.’
“This is nearly eight years worth of labour time and about an extra 100 weeks compared to the 1989 peak,” Lavoie said.’
The other headlines linked in this article:
‘Crazy’ bidding wars underway in suburban real estate now, too’
‘Real estate ‘chaos’ has millenials scrambling to buy while they still can’
So housing went from 4x income to 8x income. x-income is a metric which has been around forever. How are these “new terms?” Can someone cut me a policy wonk paycheck for dividing by 50? :rolleyes:
‘Crazy’ bidding wars underway in suburban real estate now, too’
In spring 2005, I got a comment from what I think was a drunk builder in Phoenix. He said something like, “(curse word, curse word) what’s wrong with people making $100,000 from their house every couple of years?”
There should never be crazy bidding wars on houses. We shouldn’t read that Californians are pulling 90k+ out of their houses in a year. Why are house loan interest rates so low? Because the historic default rate is super low, around 1% to 2%. We have a default rate around 11% now. There used to be a system that prevented crazy bidding wars. Appraisers? Regulation? Heck the government and central bank are running this Ponzi.
We recently heard Massachusetts appraisers are hitting the numbers. I’ll remind readers it was about 2 years ago Boston appraisers were quoted saying they were taking things like lines at open houses into account for the appraisals. Then a similar report ran in the LA Times a few days later.
Oh the collective memory hole. So easy to forget, so easy to dismiss.
Donk,
Long term historic metric for resale housing is 2x annual income.
But your neighbor is married both work 2 jobs and sell jewelry on the weekends–welcome to your competition.
Data my friend.
Sunnyvale, CA Housing Prices Crater 7% YoY
http://www.zillow.com/sunnyvale-ca-94086/home-values/
both work 2 jobs
Those who work 2 jobs don’t typically work high-paying jobs.
“Weeks of weekly earnings” is a nice, easy metric to get your brain around. I’ll take a shot at estimating it for San Diego:
Median price (April 2016): $478,000
Median income for a family of four: $63,400
Weeks of wages to buy median priced home at median income:
52*478/63.4 = 392
Take-home: San Diego prices are at close to 400 weeks of income, near the highest end of the range mentioned in the article.
95% of the ‘Murican electorate are deeply and profoundly stupid, which paves the way for cynical opportunists to “represent us” while the real masters of the country are the corporations and plutocrats who’s lobbyists write the legislation and pay off their congressional whores. “Dumb ‘em down and profit,” indeed.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3586858/Screw-generation-Anonymous-congressman-writes-tell-slams-nation-naive-self-absorbed-sheep-admits-never-reads-bills-votes-on.html
‘Screw the next generation’ and ‘Harry Reid’s a pompous a**’: Democratic congressman writes Anonymous tell-all book slamming ‘nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep’ as he admits he never reads bills he votes on
• ‘My main job is to keep my job, to get reelected. It takes precedence over everything,’ an anonymous member of Congress writes in a new book
• ‘Voters are incredibly ignorant and know little about our form of government and how it works,’ he writes
• ‘It’s far easier than you think to manipulate a nation of naive, self-absorbed sheep who crave instant gratification’
• The author is a Democrat in Congress who laid out his complaints to a long-time friend and former Capitol Hill staffer who edited them into a book
‘Voters claim they want substance and detailed position papers, but what they really crave are cutesy cat videos, celebrity gossip, top 10 lists, reality TV shows, tabloid tripe, and the next f***ing Twitter message,’ the congressman gripes in the book.
‘I worry about our country’s future when critical issues take a backseat to the inane utterings of illiterate athletes and celebrity twits.’
Much of what’s in the book will come as little surprise to Americans who are cynical about the political process.
‘Fundraising is so time-consuming I seldom read any bills I vote on,’ the anonymous legislator admits. ‘I don’t even know how they’ll be implemented or what they’ll cost.’
‘My staff gives me a last-minute briefing before I go to the floor and tells me whether to vote yea or nay. How bad is that?’
And on controversial bills, he says, ‘I sometimes vote “yes” on a motion and “no” on an amendment so I can claim I’m on either side of an issue.’
‘It’s the old shell game: if you can’t convince ‘em, confuse ‘em.’
Here’s what the end game is going to look like once the combined forces of the Oligopoly and the Free Sh*t Army have looted the once-productive economy into a dried-up husk while “socialist morality” ensures a free-for-all to steal whatever’s left.
http://www.infowars.com/scenes-from-the-venezuela-apocalypse-countless-wounded-after-5000-loot-supermarket-looking-for-food/
Good Saturday morning Bubble folks! A great time for a light but traditional breakfast and then weightlifting.
The realization of the day is that Fiat money is going to go the way of the horse and buggy. It is doomed, and that is a certainty and a good thing.
Lots of good implications for all of us.
But first I must say, I finished testing the concept myself this week with open source software and I KNOW for a fact that not only can you create your own Wallet privately (Crypto currency bank account, if you will) but you can create your own spending transaction privately and encapsulate it like any ordinary web packet and broadcast it the normal way where other nodes will get it and miners will prove it.you don’t need to rely on any special crypto currency third party software, and that is the key. All that you need is open source code on your machine that you control.
The only way the State can control crypto currency is by destroying Internet, but the state DEPENDS on the anarchic Internet.
It’s not that the end of fiat is going to come, it’s that it is ending NOW as more people get into the crypto technology and develop wonderful things to decentralize the world.
You will be your own bank very soon.
And I would think you better (and I better) relocate your treasures out of ordinary bank safe deposit boxes to private ones. Physical bank days are numbered.
https://news.bitcoin.com/government-will-fail-regulating-bitcoin/
The chicks must sigh and groan, overcome with lust and longing, as you pass them on the street, you crypto-anarchist, you.
How’s this tax scam supposed to work again?
Also weightlifting is not allowed due to the war on masculinity.
Your own tax avoidance technique which you thoroughly analysed with your own BS detector (your skeptical brain) is not a scam.
In unrelated news…”If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.” Thomas Jefferson (in his voluntaryist mode).
Lotsa people “thoroughly analyzed” their scams during the first part of the housing bubble. They got the answers they wanted to believe. Plenty of people in jail after claiming to the IRS that they believed it all. Should be lots more and lots more realtors, bankers, etc. also.
Weightlifting is only permitted if the gym where you work out allows women who “identify as” men to share the shower and the transgender clothing-optional sauna with you. This is a requirement under the new edict from the executive branch of your federal government.
That applies to Hollywierd, not OC.
Even in the best of facilities the sauna is questionable
I see.
You mean like gold certificates are exactly ounce for ounce.
No fiat there. No one will ever find a way to leverage your crypto.
Is it different this time?
The mining of crypto involves labor and capital. In 57 days the second halving of Bitcoin will occur. The reward for mining Bitcoin will be cut in half. In case you laugh, that was built purposely into the agorithm.
What will it do? Make it more costly to mine. This is the algorithmic way of tightening the supply and increasing the cost, as well as value of existing mined Bitcoins.
Keep an eye on July 10 and the price of BTC the next three months after that.
but you can create your own spending transaction privately and encapsulate it like any ordinary web packet and broadcast it the normal way where other nodes will get it and miners will prove it.
Bill, it wasn’t clear to me which part if this was new; can you please elaborate?
This is the algorithmic way of tightening the supply and increasing the cost, as well as value of existing mined Bitcoins.
This element of the Bitcoin plan strikes me as vaguely Ponzi-esque; it says that future miners are paid way less than past miners, very similar to how the top rungs of any pyramid scheme get paid early and handsomely, while the lower rungs get hosed.
No. It is not Ponziesque. The algorithm has a built in schedule of when it halves the reward. It halves it once every couple of years. What it means is that today I might mine 26 Bitcoins. Same as yesterday. Same as a week from now. But in two months it wil be 13 Bitcoins on a single day. In five months it will be 13 bitcoins on a single day. How could it be Ponzi if the same miners today all mine half the number per day that they do now? A Ponzi scheme rewards the early ones more ON THE SAME DAY that new members of that scheme join. So if you set up a mining operation in four months with the same production level as a current minor, you won’t mine any fewer bitcoins than a current minor. You each will mine fewer bitcoins.
How could it be Ponzi if the same miners today all mine half the number per day that they do now?
Think of each miner as the sum of a series of decisions to mine on any given day.
Someone who mined very early on, but then stopped, may have reaped very significant value; someone joining later will always be at a disadvantage relative to them. That is Ponzi-esque.
Plus this “value drops by half” hard-cliff stuff is just plain stupid; a much better design would be to have the value degrade gradually, as a smooth, continuous function of blockchain-length.
That is nonsense. It is no different than me buying ASGN at $2.00 a share in 2009 and selling it at $38 in 2015. That is not Ponzi. How about all that gold I bought at $450 per ounce. Is that Ponzi?
I guess by your definition, anything that goes up in value is Ponzi.
‘Plus this “value drops by half”‘
Where did I write that? Learn to read. The amount of possible bitcoins per block mined drops by half. That actually increases the scarcity of earlier mined coins and will more likely increase the value of what was already mined.
If you don’t like the bitcoins becoming harder to mine and you refuse to own what is mined before the next halving, that is NMP.
Some people!…
I was talking about the value of mining effort appearing Ponzi-esque, which seems to me completely unrelated to buying into anything (stocks, gold, bitcoin) with your other existing currency—e.g. ALL of the strawman examples that you gave.
Still curious about what part of the software that you described is new… Any answer on that?
The amount of possible bitcoins per block mined drops by half. That actually increases the scarcity of earlier mined coins and will more likely increase the value of what was already mined.
That is precisely my point—and the part that appears Ponzi-esque to me. The value of mining effort drops by half; the value of mining effort applied earlier vs mining effort applied later dramatically favors the early entrants. Just like in any pyramid scheme, it’s good to be in early.
Where did I write that? Learn to read.
I didn’t mean the quotation marks to imply that you said that—and I’m sorry that you mistook me to be saying that. All I meant was to give a very brief synopsis of the issue that I was addressing: the “value [of mining effort] drops by half.”
Glad to see someone finally catching on to the scam
“The value of mining effort drops by half.” Assume priced in USD and assuming the cost of a Bitcoin priced In USD doubles, the value of mining effort stays the same..
Think!
the value of mining effort stays the same..
Bill, would you like to make a small wager as to whether the value of Bitcoin doubles or not at the next mining-value halving in 56 days? To be clear, I’m offering to take the “not” side of that bet…
Actually no.
I am not interested in the price moves of bitcoin. I regard bitcoin as a savings account, not an investment. It certainly would be nice if the price goes up above $900 again but that potential is not why I’m in it. I’m in it to vacate the USD.
I don’t bet. I would not bet on gold, I would not bet on Toyota, I would not bet on American Airlines, I would not bet on Apple, I would not bet on Yamana. Yet I own some of the above stocks and own gold. No reason to bet on bitcoin. I also own Litecoin and Ethereum.
I should bet on the USD with you. I expect the USD to either be replaced with another currency or drop to record low values in the next 20 years. The problem is that is a long time to wait for a payoff and I could be dead.
10 people killed in Dallas in one week as violent-crime spike continues.
Experts say what’s happening in Dallas mirrors national trends. Chicago, Baltimore, Los Angeles and other large cities have seen similar spikes in murders.
http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2016/05/10-people-killed-in-dallas-in-one-week-as-violent-crime-spike-continues.html/?_ga=1.199064431.1576673717.1449408317
Hmm I wonder why? Couldn’t have anything to do with immigration or the war on cops could it?
Gun violence! Those guns are just rising up and shooting people of their own volition, despite the best efforts of the thugs holding them to restrain those vicious firearms. But Comrade Clinton and George Soros have the answer: we must disarm the populace…for the children.
Lol, I followed a little of the story about George Zimmerman auctioning off the gun that up and shot Trayvon Martin. That auction got trolled big time. One of the troll bidders used the online ID “Racist McShootface”.
Zimmerman is a profoundly creepy individual.
I find it hilarious that a hispanic jew has racist tendencies.
I found it hilarious that the media morphed him into a “white guy”. Only to have him turn up to be taken into custody about 10 shades darker than the AA prison cop standing next to him. You just know he spent some serious time in the tanning bed, probably on the advice of his lawyer.
Juan Epstein from Welcome Back Kotter was much more loved. Maybe he needs a curly fro.
The wretched are getting more so, and it makes them shooty.
Yep. Somehow those bloc votes for hope ‘n change haven’t translated into actual improvement in their bleak socioeconomic prospects. Who’d have thought a candidate backed by George Soros and Goldman Sachs would only worsen the lot of the 99%?
I don’t think the urban gunslingers are much into the civic duty of voting.
“Experts say what’s happening in Dallas mirrors national trends. Chicago, Baltimore, Los Angeles and other large cities have seen similar spikes in murders.”
Calm down, there is already a plan in place to relocate these murders.
By Paul Sperry
May 8, 2016 | 7:30am
Hillary’s rumored running mate, Housing Secretary Julian Castro, is cooking up a scheme to reallocate funding for Section 8 housing to punish suburbs for being too white and too wealthy.
The scheme involves super-sizing vouchers to help urban poor afford higher rents in pricey areas, such as Westchester County, while assigning them government real estate agents called “mobility counselors” to secure housing in the exurbs.
Castro plans to launch the Section 8 reboot this fall, even though a similar program tested a few years ago in Dallas has been blamed for shifting violent crime to affluent neighborhoods.
It’s all part of a grand scheme to forcibly desegregate inner cities and integrate the outer suburbs.
In expensive ZIP codes, Castro’s plan — which requires no congressional approval — would more than double the standard subsidy, while also covering utilities. At the same time, he intends to reduce subsidies for those who choose to stay in housing in poor urban areas, such as Brooklyn. So Section 8 tenants won’t just be pulled to the suburbs, they’ll be pushed there.
President Bill Clinton started a similar program in 1994 called “Moving to Opportunity Initiative,” which moved thousands of mostly African-American families from government projects to higher-quality homes in safer and less racially segregated neighborhoods in several counties across the country.
The 15-year experiment bombed.
A 2011 study sponsored by HUD found that adults using more generous Section 8 vouchers did not get better jobs or get off welfare. In fact, more went on food stamps. And their children did not do better in their new schools.
Worse, crime simply followed them to their safer neighborhoods, ruining the quality of life for existing residents.
“Spikes in murders” what garbage. Crime rate has been dropping since the 1990s. The murder rare by cops has been increasing.
Fewer unwanted kids born means lower crime.
“Spikes in murders” what garbage”
You are saying in Chicago, Baltimore, Los Angeles and other large cities the number of murders have dropped?
You are terrified that maybe there is really nothing for you to be afraid of?
Few things are as amusing as watching people and countries that voted for socialism getting exactly what they have coming to them. Got popcorn?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/venezuela-president-declares-emergency-cites-u-domestic-threats-020753496–business.html?nhp=1
Americans have vote for socialism for many decades and we have force redistribution of wealth. Ever hear of taxes? Welfare? The “Great Society” crap? Defense spending! Endless wars?
Misery, starvation and death… A laugh a minute!
The end game is starting to play out in Venezuela, as it will eventually play out for our Permanent Democrat Supermajority once the Free Sh*t Army has overwhelmed the productive and responsible with their never-satiated demands for “redistribution of the wealth” and the DNC’s patronage and graft schemes. Learn something, ‘Muricans. This is your future.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-usa-idUSKCN0Y42MT
“You can hear the ice cracking. You know there’s a crisis coming,” one U.S. official said. “Our pressure on this isn’t going to resolve this issue.”
With the Chinese government throwing people out of windows and suppressing and covering up a couple hundred thousand mass protests a year, what will we see when things really get tough?
Unpopular regimes under fire at home tend to launch “wag the dog” wars to rally the populace behind them.
We must escalate the social engineering of our military to be able to confront any threat with sensitivity and empathy.
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/05/13/china-boosts-jet-drills-ramping-combat-readiness/
democratic socialist
vz
Greece
Paging jeff:
Remember the Prays of VW (and others) car dealership fame back in Greenwich? I used to know a couple of guys who worked for him back in the day.
His former residence is up for sale, and what a price cut!
“VW King Malcom Pray’s house at 566 Round Hill Road has taken yet another price cut and is now down to $7.750 million: its 2013 price was $12.995.”
https://christopherfountain.com/2016/05/12/its-a-bumpy-road/
Well, that’s a lively little blog. A comment:
“Dude –
OK. Your blog, your rules. I understand. I WILL OBEY!! But to ensure I properly adhere to your new Gestapo protocols, can you kindly provide me with some guidance? Thank you!
I assume I can still refer to the lying OCD Retard as “the lying OCD Retard”. I can’t think of a better, more honest descriptor, but I am open to ideas. You fascist
.
I see you are still allowing him to post under his various numb da plumbs. But you just want me to stay silent on that? Ignore it? Correct? Kind of like pretending the whole Holocaust didn’t happen? That is what you are asking me to do, right? I just want to be clear on this, Mein Fuhrer. Thank you!
Am I allowed to respond when the lying OCD Retard attacks me? Either as the lying OCD Retard, or as Fatdaddy or Chappaqua Chubby? And what is his fascination with fatness in his numb da plumbs all about Dude? Do you think he massively chubbed up when he quit smoking? Which is easy to do, you know. Chubbing up, not quitting smoking. That is really hard. Only a lying OCD Retard would think it’s easy.
Anyhows, I will try and adhere to your fascist protocols, and appreciate any clarification you may provide, so as not to piss you off and get sent to the cooler. But I liked you better when you burned the witches rather than the reader.
And the holocaust never happened.”
Close-in fights and scathing personal attacks make for some entertaining reading. And talk about a target-rich environment…kind of like when the HBB’s own Pineapples come sashaying in to regurgiate whatever garbage they picked up over at HuffPo….
He sounds fat.
Not to mention angry and old…
“He sounds fat.”
You sound short.
“Well, that’s a lively little blog.”
Lol, you have no idea how lively. Much of it inside ball. Fountain is a Greenwich lifer who, at various times in his life has been an attorney, writer, and now a RE agent for a number of years. He and his blog actually made the NY Times, one of those slice of life profiles they occasionally do.
The comment you posted is from someone who calls himself “Walt”, a sarcastic take on one Walter Noel, the patriarch of a social climbing family in Greenwich and the Hamptons, who hooked up with Bernie Madoff and ran one of the feeder funds to Madoff’s operation.
Needless to say, when Madoff went down, Noel’s fund imploded, (although he and his family seem not to have suffered much themselves) leaving a number of Greenwich and other New England residents bereft of their “investment”. Oh, heck, not just New England residents, one of Noel’s sons in law is Colombian and brought in some money from the old country. That, combined with the perceived social climbing, has made Noel a hated figure of fun in Fairfield County, and Fountain was merciless in posting about him on the blog for a number of years.
Anyway, it’s not clear if “Walt” is in fact Fountain’s own crude, trolling alter-ego, hence some of the banter back and forth.
The poster he’s going after is “AJ”, who has his own blog based around quitting smoking. “AJ” tends to get skewered a lot by the other posters, who consider him a “conspiracy theorist” and a bit “far out”, or as they say in Greenwich, NOCD (not our class, dear). I can assure you, though, that AJ and Fatdaddy are two different people. Fatdaddy is the one who keeps warning people what’s in store for Connecticut and he too, gets reviled because people don’t want to hear about it.
Anyhoo, I read the blog from time to time to see what’s happening in the old nabe, including my old family home which has changed hands like three times since 2005. I usually ignore the political and social commentary. The real estate posts are fascinating, though.
Speaking of alter-egos, congrats to John Miller, for trolling the MSM within an inch of its life.
Miller +1
Bezos 0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meerkat_At_the_zoo_Novosibirsk_Siberia.jpg
From the lively little blog.
The House You Grew Up In Will Be Torn Down
Posted on March 22, 2016
5 Indian Head Road, in the good old days. My friends, the Harts, and before that, the Peards, owned this old classic. Sold for $2.050M in 2014.
5 Indian Head today…
the property is .54 acres in the R-12 zone, so you’re allowed 7,409 square feet. This new house will be over twice the size of the old.
Is there any doubt whatsoever? Not in Greenwich (or Beverly Hills, for that matter). Nope, sorry, but the land is the thing around here, that is primarily where your value is, particularly if the house was built before, say, 1980. So really, nearly every house in town is considered, er, replaceable.
This is not necessarily a bad thing. If it’s happening in your town, it means people want to live there, badly! Detroit, Newark, most of Vermont? Not so much. Friends of mine bought a vacation home in Vermont 21 years ago for $225,000 and sold it last year for the same amount! I guarantee that house won’t be torn down.
So if you live in Tear-Downville, count your blessings.
Amazing, isn’t it? Sometimes I when I look at the lively little blog and see some of the older homes and how nice they are and how well built, it drives me batty when one of the posers sniffs and says “Oh, probably a tear down”.
Destroying our national history to throw up some stucco eyesore that wont last 30 years.
“Remember the Prays of VW (and others) car dealership fame back in Greenwich?”
You mean the VW dealership on the Post Road in Greenwich?
Yep, that’s the one.
That’s where my Dad grew up. He and his two brothers sold the house to Pray when my grandmother passed away in 1967 or 68.
The house was on the Post Road? Of course, it was so different back then. All of suburban NY/FFC was a great place to grow up.
He and his two brothers sold the house to Pray when my grandmother passed away in 1967 or 68.
Whoa, your grandmother lived in a house that’s listed for $7.750 million??? Yowza! What was the source of the family fortune?
“Whoa, your grandmother lived in a house that’s listed for $7.750 million???”
Unfortunately no.
My grandmother did live in a house on the Post Rd. (US1) in Greenwich Ct. that among others was sold to this guy Pray in 1967 or 1968 who knocked them down and built a VW dealership on the land.
Ah, gotcha; thanks for the response, jeff.
‘China April economic activity data disappoints, hiking recovery doubts’
“It appears that all the engines suddenly lost momentum, and growth outlook has turned soft as well,” Zhou Hao, economist at Commerzbank in Singapore, said in a research note. “At the end of the day, we have acknowledge that China is still struggling.”
‘Reuters reported on Saturday that China’s banking regulator has sent an urgent notice to banks telling them to clear bottlenecks holding back lending to private firms.’
From the Bloomberg link above:
‘Wagering against the yuan was a popular bet among hedge fund managers including Third Point’s Dan Loeb earlier this year. Druckenmiller said last week that the nation’s debt has grown by the equivalent of Brazil’s gross domestic product per year even as the economy has slowed from a nominal growth rate of 15 percent to 5 percent.’
“This is an extremely toxic cocktail for companies that have borrowed at 10 percent expecting 15 percent sales growth,” he said at the Sohn Investment Conference in New York. “Our strong suspicion therefore is that a large part of this growth is just credit flowing to otherwise insolvent borrowers.”
Extending booms indeed.
Goldman Sachs has a long and sordid history of telling the muppets one thing, while secretly betting against them. Have “former” Goldmanites Janet Yellen or Mario Draghi tipped off GS “analysts” that another tsunami of “stimulus” is about to be gifted to the .1% to goose our Ponzi markets?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-14/six-reasons-why-goldman-suddenly-warning-about-large-drop-market
We must embrace the new beauty standards as dictated by the Masters of the Universe. Goon, your compliance is suspect….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fashion/people/eff-your-beauty-standards-meet-the-size-26-tattooed-supermodel-w/
Sometimes a lie reveals more than the truth. Why is the Oligopoly media going all-out to frighten Brits into rejecting a Brexit?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/13/house-prices-and-stock-market-will-tumble-if-uk-votes-for-brexit/
Who is most afraid of Brexit, and why? (Hint: follow the money.)
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/05/11/whos-really-most-afraid-of-brexit-and-why/
Islamic fanatics fighting sectarian wars against other Islamic fanatics. Maybe this isn’t fertile soil for a Jeffersonian Democracy, despite what the neocons would have us believe.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/05/hezbollah-mustafa-badreddine-killed-shelling-160514070756124.html
Getting them to slaughter each other with weapons they buy from us is damn profitable.
While Hillary will never face actual criminal consequences for anything she does - she is, after all, a member of the .1% - her e-mail capers could still prove to be embarrassing.
http://theantimedia.org/russia-leak-hillary-emails/
The German sheeple voted for globalism. Now they’re getting their globalism good and hard.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/report-germany-spend-106b-refugees-over-5-years-131633528.html?nhp=1
The latest lunacy from the Keynesian fraudsters running our central banks, who are determined to levitate their Ponzi markets and asset bubbles even while they run the productive economy into the ground.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/helicopter-money-adair-turner-recession-interest-rates-draghi-osborne-economy-a7027621.html
This is what happens when the middle class votes for its own destruction.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/13/americas-middle-class-is-hollowing-out-in-many-cities.html
Oligarch pedophile Jeffrey Epstein used sex with underage girls to ensure his control over a who’s who of high-society figures in the constellation of Oligopoly enablers in the media and politics. But Bill Clinton, a man of undisputed morals and principles, would never have allowed such an unsavory character to influence him or Hillary, that other exemplar of public morality.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/05/13/flight-logs-show-bill-clinton-flew-on-sex-offenders-jet-much-more-than-previously-known.html
“Strong gains in population, jobs and home prices coming out of the recession weren’t enough to shield metro Denver from an erosion in its middle class.
Middle-income households in metro Denver shrank from 58 percent of the population in 2000 to 53 percent in 2014, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.
That shrinkage didn’t come primarily from households moving into higher income brackets, but rather from more households moving into lower-income ones.
By Pew’s definition, a three-person household was middle class in 2014 if its annual income fell between just under $42,000 and about $125,000. Pew offers a calculator on its website so people can see what class they fit into based on household size, income and location.
One of the most disturbing findings in the study is even though the bar needed to enter the middle class dropped from $45,115 in 1999 to $41,641 in 2014, a smaller share of the population was able to cross it.”
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_29884268/middle-class-shrinks-colorado-across-u-s-incomes.html?source=most_viewed
40k is lucky ducky land.
Gun owners, be grateful to the Oligopoly media border collies for knowing better than we do what we want, and what’s best for us.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2016/05/13/katie-couric-silent-majority-want-gun-control/
Ho hum. A big mouth media-created self-appointed spokeswoman for group X says they want to ban Y.
IDC. I will keep doing Y.
I have about as much respect for gun laws as I do for drug laws… My motto is “High as Hell and Heavily Armed”
It is simply inconceivable that a corrupt Democrat-maladministered urban dystopia could explode into “gun violence” this summer, as our Oligopoly betters and their media border collies have assured us that gun control is the answer to such shenanigans, and Chicago has the strictest gun control laws in the country (but no thug control and a PC-neutered police force).
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/05/12/fraternal-order-of-police-prediction-chicago-violence-ready-to-explode-this-summer/
The Oligopoly and its financial organs cannot leave important public policy decisions in the hands of the proles, what with their silly outdated notions of “national sovereignty” and “representative democracy.” The serfs should instead learn to love the lords of the manor and their servitude to the corporate state.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/13/imf-meddling-on-brexit-is-scandalous-skulduggery/
No “pent-up demand” for $500,000 starter homes happening here:
“Student loans are gobbling up a growing share of household debt. Borrowing for education accounted for 10.2 percent of that debt at the end of 2015, about three times as much as in 2005. That makes student loans second only to mortgage debt on family balance sheets, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It adds up to a massive $1.3 trillion in student loans outstanding, 11.5 percent of which is overdue by 90 days or more.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-13/student-debt-is-eating-into-the-household-budget
Another neocon success story.
http://www.businessinsider.com/shiite-militias-isis-iraq-fight-obama-2016-5
“Whoever says there is still an Iraqi state — ask them if they can drive through Kurdistan to Mosul and on to Baghdad,” Jaff said. “There are borders. The Iraqi government doesn’t even control Baghdad.”
‘Capt Shawqat, a Kurdish Peshmerga captain, put it bluntly. “There is no such thing as Iraq any more,” he told The Guardian’s Martin Chulov. “There never was, but now it is clear to everyone. Even to the Americans up in the hills.”
“The US has no leverage in Baghdad, which has long since been ceded to Tehran,” Pregent said.
So the ultimate beneficiary of the neocons’ invasion of Iraq, which has cost the US more than 4,000 lives, tens of thousands of maimed and emotionally damaged troops, and $2 trillion dollars (and counting) is Iran? How many more of these neocon debacles and “unintended consequences” can we afford?
‘Many observers are missing the housing bubble, he says, ‘driven partly by the feeling that the substantially higher prices in 2006 (with its three-sigma bubble) somehow justify today’s merely one and one-half-sigma prices.’
‘Homes are priced higher than ever before in more than a quarter of U.S. housing markets. This results from steady home value growth in recent years, which allowed many housing markets to eclipse previous records set during the housing bubble, according to a report by Zillow Real Estate.’
“Homes were worth more than ever before in 26 percent of U.S. housing markets,” indicating those markets are close to a full recovery, it was noted in a Zillow news release.’
“These new records mean we’re no longer making up ground lost during the housing recession — we’re laying a new path forward, based on demand for housing and economic growth throughout the economy,” said Zillow Chief Economist Svenja Gudell. “In some markets, these new highs are a return to normalcy. The fact that other markets are still off by double digits may not mean those markets are far from being recovered. It just highlights how extraordinarily inflated home values had been during the housing bubble.”
So which is it Svenja, inflated or normal? Oh you don’t know, and why worry? The sun is shining and Svenja wants to walk in it.
This is insanity. Thr Zillow economist mentioned is exactly equating a recovered housing market with historically inflated prices. Let’s see….who benefits from framing reality that way? Oh that’s right. Real Estate agents. Prices are exhorbitant and flipping is rampant. That means it’s a healthy market because Real Estate agents are making massive commissions every time property is flipped, and I suspect quite frequently by them.
And who loses? Every normal American trying to own a home at a reasonable price.
Don’t buy it. Rent it for half the monthly cost. Buy later after prices crater for 65% less.
‘Only a month ago, Chinese commodities prices were skyrocketing, led by a stampede of speculative investors betting on early signs of recovery in the world’s second-biggest economy. Now, not only has the bubble been popped but a dive has left steel and iron futures 23 percent off their April peaks and in bear market territory. This in turn threatens to put the brakes on the restart of steel plants that became profitable as prices rose, as well as drive investors to other markets.’
‘With steel prices falling sharply, the risk now is producers that reopened – dubbed “zombie” steel mills after being idled when prices slumped in recent years – will have to rethink.’
“This month, some good mills are making money but their profits are dropping day by day. The half-dead steel mills that reopened will make big losses – they are uneconomic,” said Xu Zhongbo, head of Beijing Metal Consulting which advises Chinese steel mills.’
‘There remains a significant inventory of unsold houses in some of the smaller, more provincial tier 3 and 4 Chinese cities that developers will focus first on selling before constructing new properties, said Standard & Poor’s analyst May Zhong. “Until we see meaningful destocking in the tier 3 and 4 cities, then we can’t expect construction activity to pick up,” said Zhong.’
‘Such was April’s surge in China’s commodity futures trading that daily turnover in 18 contracts averaged $376 billion over the last two weeks, Morgan Stanley said in a report last week. But the short-term nature of the trading was also evident.’
‘The average holding period in the past weeks for rebar and iron ore futures traded in China was only 2.0 and 2.4 hours, respectively, versus 25.8 hours for Brent crude on ICE Futures, Morgan Stanley said.’
“In China, there is so much cash and people just follow the crowd,” said Xu of Beijing Metal Consulting.’
“This in turn threatens to put the brakes on the restart of steel plants that became profitable as prices rose, as well as drive investors to other markets.”
“… drive investors to other markets.”
These “other markets” do not lure money, instead money is driven to them - driven to them because the market that this money has been driven from has soured.
So in effect we have pools of money being driven (as opposed to being lured) from one market to another market so as to make these new markets profitable as prices of these new markets rise and unprofitable as their prices fall.
And I should do what with my money? “Invest” it with these guys? Add my money to the vast pools of money that end up chasing prices?
No thanks, I’ll take a pass.
Cash.
Oh, I almost forgot an important part, and this part is termed “fees”. There are fees involved in all this chasing, fees that somebody has to pay, somebody ultimately has to pay.
No free lunches here.
‘Just as Chinese builders’ dollar bonds deliver twice the returns of Asian junk notes, S&P Global Ratings is predicting record downgrades. That discord hasn’t gone unnoticed among investors.’
‘S&P took 15 negative actions on China’s developers this year through May 6, versus 12 in the year-earlier period, and it foresees unprecedented ranking cuts in 2016. Moody’s Investors Service said on Tuesday that 44 percent of the builders it rates either have negative outlooks or are under review for downgrade. A Natixis SA survey of listed companies last week ranked real-estate companies as the least able to repay their debts.’
‘While Chinese builders’ dollar bonds returned 14.5 percent in the past year, compared with the 7 percent average for Asian junk debt, much of the gains were due to a lack of new supply as the companies were allowed to access the onshore market. Instead of using the cheaper funds to improve their finances, many property tycoons went on an acquisition binge that rests on the assumption the housing market will keep on booming.’
‘Debt of the 198 listed builders grew 31 percent in the past year to a record high of 3 trillion yuan, according to Bloomberg-compiled data. The median gross profit margin declined by 5.7 percentage points to 26.4 percent in the past three years.’
“Many people focus on leverage but frankly Chinese builders’ immediate problem is the interest payments,” Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist, Asia Pacific at Natixis, said at a press briefing in Hong Kong last week. “Do we see a crisis? No. Helping the real estate sector, banks are lending 4.5 trillion yuan in the first quarter, which is what they lent at the peak of the 2009 stimulus.”
‘Natixis analysis of the 3,000 biggest Chinese listed companies shows developers accounted for 21 percent of China’s total corporate assets in 2015, up from 8 percent in 2004, while their liabilities to total equity doubled since 2008. Garcia Herrero warns against investing in the sector, even though it won “breathing space” with the first-quarter credit binge, the housing-price recovery and planned tax reforms.’
“Every time you see the credit binge in China at the very beginning it can be very appealing,” she said. “The question is whether you get people who will ride it. I think that the story is so clear now that I doubt many people will buy into it.”
We are the magic people.
‘Cheap borrowing costs may be artificially pumping up property values, but strong real estate fundamentals and the global interest rate environment are mitigating the risks, said Barry Sternlicht, head of the $53 billion investment firm Starwood Capital Group.’
‘On CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Friday, Sternlicht was responding to a warning from Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren that low interest rates may be encouraging commercial real estate speculation.’
“He’s right, we’ve created an asset bubble,” Sternlicht said. “But do you really think rates can rise aggressively in the United States, when global interest rates are so low? The dollar will go through the ceiling.”
‘Sternlicht also said, “The core fundamentals of the property sector haven’t been this good in the United States in 20 years.” Starwood Capital specializes in real estate investing. “Housing formation is good. The housing market is OK. Apartment rents are going up,” Sternlicht said, revealing he’s purchased about $8 billion of apartments in the past six months.’
‘But even expensive New York City and San Francisco are cooling off a bit, Sternlicht said. “San Francisco is turning because of the tech bubble … deflating.”
‘he’s purchased about $8 billion of apartments in the past six months’
Mel, you backed a bunch of this paper up. I know you are one of the magic people, but I still see a Joshua tree in your future.
Tsk, tsk. Some of our independent media voices are pushing back against Fundamental Transformation. Once we have our permanent Democrat Supermajority, of course, such hatemongers can be sent to a reeducation camp….
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/05/13/mr-president-go-yourself/
Dear Mr. Jones,
The Central Committee of the DNC is deeply concerned that the HBB is too focused on housing and not enough on promoting the development of the New Democrat Man as a part of our Fundamental Transformation. While the Pineapples on the HBB exemplify the kind of neutered hothouse orchids our male species must evolve into, individuals on here such as Goon and RKH evince a troglodyte conception of what a bona fide member of the male species should be. Prior to dispatching such throwbacks to a much-deserved stint in a reeducation camp, our Masters of the Universe must stress to you your sacred responsibility for raising high the banner of collectivism and strenuously opposing all obstacles to Fundamental Transformation, as we march shoulder to shoulder toward the glorious incorporated neoliberal plantation our enlightened Betters have prepared for us. We will be watching you, Ben Jones, for zeal in your compliance.
Please schedule Two Minutes of Hate for a suitable target.
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/05/14/the-feminization-of-the-american-male/
Where have you gone, Al Bundy, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1srAHbBrpw
CBS News November 13, 2014, 6:57 AM
“The stupidity of the American voter”
“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage, and basically, you know, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass,” Jonathan Gruber said at the Annual Health Economics Conference.
Gruber was a key player in developing the law, and those remarks weren’t the only time an Obama adviser suggested the administration had pulled a fast one with the law.
“They proposed it and that passed because the American voters are too stupid to understand the difference,” he said.
The New York Times, in a glowing 2012 profile, said he not only “…put together the basic principles of the proposal…” but helped Congress, “…draft the specifics off the legislation.”
As a consultant, the government paid Gruber — an MIT economics professor — nearly $400,000 for that work.
His comments, in lectures more than a year ago, have added to critics’ continuing distrust of the law and the administration.
“The architect flat out saying they had to lie — and he’s joking about it with his fellow economics buddies,” Rush Limbaugh said on his show.
ObamaCare Employer Mandate Set to Cripple Small Businesses
With insurance costs skyrocketing, employers are set to face a massive loss
Amos J. Richards | Fundist - May 14, 2016
With transition relief ending to the employer mandate for small businesses in 2016 (and their larger brethren in 2015 – though still classified as small businesses by the SBA) and the rise of employment costs, small businesses which account for ~70% of new private sector jobs and 50% of existing employment, are set to face a whole new level of costs.
As reported today, with insurance costs skyrocketing, employers are set to face a massive loss. If we take ZH’s reported $500/month increase on top of these stats, we see that the average family insurance plan sits at around $1,950 a month now. Of that, employers are going to be set to pay about half, or $975 a month. At fifty employees that’s $50,000 monthly, or $600,000 annually. This sits in stark contrast to the operating environment before the legislation was passed when “employers offered health insurance voluntarily”.
Even if, arguendo, there were other federal or state laws mandating insurance, the cost has risen sharply in the last years leaving both employers and employees saddled with a larger bill – a $500 net raise per month is $3000 more expensive, yearly, per employee for small businesses; at 50 people that’s a $150,000 spend. – or three full time employees.
Most importantly, at the end of the day the administration moved the onus of responsibly from the person to the employer. And notably, it’s not a cost employers can pass on to funding entities – so it’s going to have to be borne by consumers by way of price increases, or by cutting costs (human capital).
Note, we’ve dissmissed the U.S. Treasury report that 96% of employers were exempted from these provisions as somewhat misleading: a random sample of the data provided by the SBA has 3x more people working in the 100+ firm size than the 0 – 20 person firm size (notably, 20 – 99 is clumped together and is therefore unintelligible in this analysis).
I guess the sellers didn’t think the powerlines were suitable for their $1.5M property so they (incredibly poorly) photoshopped them out.
https://www.redfin.com/CA/Belmont/2025-Notre-Dame-Ave-94002/home/1590974
Such egregious misrepresentation and fraud.
Where else but CA.
Hear that sound? Its the crying of the inferior flyoverlander.
Westwood(Los Angeles), CA Housing Affordability Surges As Prices Plummet 20% YoY
http://www.zillow.com/los-angeles-ca-90024/home-values/
“Attorney, Broker And Two Realtors Indicted On Mortgage Fraud Charges”
https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdny/pr/attorney-broker-and-two-realtors-indicted-mortgage-fraud-charges
Rampant Housing Fraud
Update: Housing Formation Falls To Record Low In 2015
https://lawschooltuitionbubble.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/yoy-change-in-household-formation-by-month.png?w=620
Yeah, I know this is a real estate blog and this is not the bits bucket but here’s an interesting/informative/important article about cancer and I believe everyone on the planet should take the time to give it a very close read …
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/magazine/warburg-effect-an-old-idea-revived-starve-cancer-to-death.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage®ion=CColumn&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&src=me&WT.nav=MostEmailed
FWIW and all that.
an interesting/informative/important article about cancer
Saw that yesterday, very interesting. Two of my mother’s doctors have warned her about sugar, others have said a calorie’s a calorie. I got her off Abbott products and switched to Enu, only good stuff in it. Pricey, though. Recommended for athletes, too.
Have to read up on medical marijuana next. Appetite problems.
‘People are refusing to buy because of pricing levels! This is MUCH different from 2006′
‘Venture Capitalists are raising money at the fastest rate in a decade, raking in about $13 billion in the first quarter of 2016. But much of that cash won’t flow into new startups anytime soon. Rather, venture firms are bracing for a downturn and boosting reserves to keep companies they have already backed from going bust, said venture capitalists and limited partners.’
“They are squirrels trying to pack their cheeks full of nuts,” said Ben Narasin, a partner at Canvas Ventures. “Everyone has been waiting for winter to start for a long time.”
‘The extraordinary growth of so-called “unicorn” companies such as Uber and Airbnb – now valued at tens of billions of dollars, based on venture investments – has left many high-value startups with no “exit strategy,” in Silicon Valley parlance.’
‘Burned by previous busts, Wall Street has lost its appetite for initial public offerings from money-losing companies. No venture-backed tech startup has gone public this year, and the few that did last year - including enterprise storage company Pure Storage, and cloud storage and file-sharing firm Box - have seen their share prices steadily sink. High valuations have also scared off potential acquirers.’
‘Until recently, many venture capitalists have had a land-grab mentality, even with more obscure startups such as Magic Leap - an augmented reality company that raised about $800 million in February - or Social Finance, a startup in the highly scrutinized fintech sector that raised $1 billion in September.’
‘Investors competed fiercely to finance hot companies they believed could be the next Google or Facebook. Higher prices for smaller stakes drove up valuations in companies, including many who burned cash quickly in a quest for growth. Many venture capitalists say they overpaid by 20 to 30 percent, and now have to keep those companies afloat.’
‘Over the past six months, however, nervous whispers about a tech bubble have sparked rising skepticism of venture-dependent startups with stratospheric price tags.’
‘The same venture capitalists who jousted in bidding wars for the next great deal just six months ago are now fending off appeals. Canvas Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and Accel Partners - among Silicon Valley’s more prominent firms - say they are getting more calls from peers asking them to join a late-stage round for companies running out of cash.’
I saw a movie just like this once.
The sf bay area equity is coming back into the central valley bigtime. Bunch of locusts pricey out locals.
They have some new shacks here that look like big @ss boxes.
300,000.00 and it can be yours. Hopefully u will still have a job after 10 years and paying the bankers over 100k in interest.
Seems like dangling a carrot of home ownership is the new way to rob people.
“Hopefully u will still have a job after 10 years and paying the bankers over 100k in interest.”
Yes, hopefully (I especially liked the “paying the bankers over 100k in interest” part of your post.)
Pukes work, bankers reap.
I was playing around with this:
http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/savings/loan-interest-calculator.aspx
Your Results
Beginning balance of loan..: $300000.00
Minimum monthly payment..: $800.00
Maximum monthly payment.:$1200.00
Annual interest rate:3.50%
Total Interest on your Loan
Using the minimum payment you’ll pay $1781498.97($1484.58 average per month) in total interest.
Using the maximum payment you’ll pay $238213.06($530.54 average per month) in total interest.
Minimum payment = $1,484.58 average per month of interest that goes to me. (I like it!)
Maximum payment = $530.54 average per month of interest that goes to me.( I link this too, but not as much.)
But then I have to subtract the cost of the money that I get to loan out (money that belongs to people I do not even know. Bahahahahahahahahahahaha) and due to the wonders offered up by ZIRP the cost of this money to me is a wee bit Zirpy.
link = like
3.5 % seems low. A lot of the rates u see floating around are teaser rates.
I think there are a lot of people still stuck with 6- 7% rates because they cannot refinance cause there is no equity or their credit is shit, income is down. They are trapped serfs.
Refinancing is kind of like getting a whole new loan. All the qualify bs comes into play again.
Where is all this money coming from for these home loans?
Seems like it is created out of thin air and then the banks start collecting interest from you.
I read the other day how leveraged the paper money has become.
There is basically 6 cents of paper bills on every 100.00 of savings in banks. Bank runs cannot happen cause there is not enough physical cash to go around.
The financial parasites are destroying the american dream for people.
(Note: These remarks are best read while accompanied by joyous background music.)
“They are trapped serfs.”
Trapped due to the wonders offered-up by numerous Dotted Line Specials.
“Refinancing is kind of like getting a whole new loan. All the qualify bs comes into play again.”
The fees, don’t for get the fees.
“Where is all this money coming from for these home loans?”
Come pay me a visit and I will be happy to explain it to you. If you have delightfully good-looking teen-aged daughter then you have been blessed with a plus; Be sure to bring her along with you.
“Seems like it is created out of thin air and then the banks start collecting interest from you.”
Yes! Oh, yes!
“I read the other day how leveraged the paper money has become.”
At this point it is still a work in progress.
“There is basically 6 cents of paper bills on every 100.00 of savings in banks. Bank runs cannot happen cause there is not enough physical cash to go around.”
This is not the reason: Bank runs will not be allowed to happen because children everywhere need to be protected.
“The financial parasites are destroying the american dream for people.”
And enhancing our own dreams at the same time.
God’s Plan.
These guys will be on the radio in a few hours.
http://www.newamericanfunding.com/refinance.aspx
‘Contact a licensed mortgage specialist today to discuss your refinancing loan options, such as a 15 Year Fixed Rate Mortgage, Interest Only Home Loan, or a Reverse Mortgage Loan. New American Funding is a mortgage lender, not a broker, so you can trust that our experts have your best interest, not commissions, in mind.’
http://www.newamericanfunding.com/investment-properties.aspx
Benefits of buying investment properties:
Increased cash flow: Your investment property can provide income to offset your expenses. You may even profit from your rental property!
Check out slide #9:
http://www.newamericanfunding.com/blog/post/2015/5/12/Cash-Out-Refinancing.aspx
“People have a budget in mind and they will manage to that budget versus saying, ‘Give me as much money as possible’. It varies by the consumer and their personal situation, but they won’t necessarily push the outer boundaries of it.”
-Kelly Kockos, Home Equity Product Manager for Wells Fargo.
“New American Funding is a mortgage lender, not a broker, so you can trust that our experts have your best interest, not commissions, in mind.”
Ben, you are killing me with your jokes.
“I saw a movie just like this once.”
Now we will get to see re-runs and sequels.
(Popcorn?)
Hawaii Housing Demand Plummets 9% YOY
http://files.zillowstatic.com/research/public/State/State_Turnover_AllHomes.csv
By casting votes for Oligopoly-owned candidates, the disappearing ‘Murican middle class is complicit in its own destruction. You can’t fix stupid.
http://www.businessinsider.com/pew-research-center-middle-class-report-2016-5
Watch and learn, ‘Muricans. This is a foretaste of coming attractions once our Permanent Democrat Supermajority installs itself in power by promising ever-more entitlements to its ever-growing dependency blocs.
http://www.businessinsider.com/venezuela-is-falling-apart-2016-5
I read this morning that the Democrat clown car has gotten violent.
Medic! We need a medic down front!
Some of the Free Sh*tters and Soros rent-a-mobs seem to be getting unruly, all right.
It seems that some of the Democrat’s youthful Free Sh*tters at least realize how badly they and their generation are being shafted by the Oligopoly-owned DNC leadership and such Comrades of Proven Worth as Barbara Boxer and Nancy Pelosi, and they’re not taking it too well. They have no problem with kleptocracy - I mean, they’re Democrats - but want a bigger share of the spoils.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/05/dnc_leaders_flee_nevada_state_dem_convention_call_in_sheriffs_deputies_and_hotel_security_as_dispute_over_delegates_escalates_into_violence.html
When Oligopoly puppets tell us that central banks need to be “independent,” what they really mean is “unaccountable.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-ecb-has-become-too-powerful-says-berlins-economic-advisor-2016-5
The sheeple of Venezuela will have to suffer a lot more before they are finally innoculated against the mental illness of voting for socialism.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-13/scenes-venezuela-apocalypse-countless-wounded-after-5000-loot-supermarket-looking-fo
A preview of coming attractions once our Permanent Democrat Supermajority gets done “redistributing the wealth” and the takers go for direct theft rather than waiting for the gub’mint to do it for them.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-14/venezuela-coup-imminent-interview-national-guardsman
Well this is rich. Like all the other “former” Goldman Sachs officials and Keynesian fraudsters running “our” central banks, the UK’s Mark Carney has actively enabled gargantuan asset bubbles and Ponzi markets by lavishing trillions in printing-press “stimulus” on his favored banksters. Now that “investors” have taken on dangerously unsustainable levels of debt to buy into these same asset bubbles and Ponzi markets, Carney warns that this massive debt overhang could worsen a downturn. This clown must be the retarded cousin of Captain Obvious.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/15/household-debt-binge-could-compound-downturn-warns-carney/
“Last week, Mr Carney warned that a vote to leave the EU in June’s referendum could tip the country into recession and force the Bank to raise interest rates to fight off inflation.”
So let’s see if I have this right: The country will be tipped into a recession and this recession will force the Bank (the Central Bank) to raise interest rates to fight off inflation.
Got it.
Freight volumes - a far more reliable metric of the real economy (as opposed to Wall Street’s rigged speculative casino) than our Soviet-style “Everything is Awesome!” official statistics - keep plumbing new depths.
http://wolfstreet.com/2016/05/14/recession-watch-freight-volume-drops-worst-level-since-2010/
Something to remember as you read this: Our economy is a seventy-percent-or-so consumer-based economy …
“Freight shipments by truck and rail in the US fell 4.9% in April from the beaten-down levels of April 2015, according to the Cass Transportation Index, released on Friday. It was the worst April since 2010, which followed the worst March since 2010. In fact, shipment volume over the four months this year was the worst since 2010.
“This is no longer statistical “noise” that can easily be brushed off.
“The Cass Freight Index is based on “more than $26 billion” in annual freight transactions by “hundreds of large shippers,” regardless of mode of transportation, including by truck and rail. It does not cover bulk commodities, such as oil and coal and thus is not impacted by the collapsing oil and coal shipments. The index is focused on consumer packaged goods, food, automotive, chemical, OEM, heavy equipment, and retail.”
How hedge funds “invest” in Washington D.C.’s culture of corruption.
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/05/13/blockbuster-story-how-hedge-funds-invest-heavily-in-washington-d-c-s-culture-of-corruption/
Sunday funnies. Enjoy!
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/05/15/sunday-funnies-112/
“Enjoy!”
Enjoyed.
Heh! Government out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. Gross.
Chicago, with the strictest gun-control laws in the country, is not co-incidently its murder capital. Learn something, libtards.
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/05/15/chicago-is-a-gun-free-zone/
How big is China’s debt bomb, and when will it explode?
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/05/14/chinas-debt-bomb-no-one-really-knows-the-payload/
Quote of the Day:
With rare exceptions, K-12 teachers tend to be no more than their analogs in Hollywood who are simply bipedal budgies that parrot much of the nonsense they manage to remember from the substandard and wholly unnecessary education undergraduate degrees that are worse than useless much like the notion of four years being required to become a journalist; “journalists” who simply become state-fellating stenographers for violence brokers and government apologists who put a happy face on totalitarian excess for a living.
http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/05/14/the-feminization-of-the-american-male/
The whole “education” thing is vastly overrated and a scam. It exists mostly as babysitting and to keep kids off the streets. Now it’s also a jobs program for 15 percent of the working class.
In Arizona they are trying to covertly destroy public education through public charter schools, which part of me applauds and part of me abhors.
White working class males who foolishly voted for their own demise by voting for Ds are finally, belatedly making the connection between their vote for the Oligopoly-annointed status quo and their economic marginalization.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/13/donald-trump-bill-clinton-appalachia-democrats-voters
His new nickname a la Judge Jeannette Pirro is Humping Bill.
Kind of amusing watching Humping Bill’s former conquests trying to cash in by writing tell-all books, which incidently reveal the true extent of Hillary’s evil, scheming, vindictive nature - not that anyone cares.
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/05/15/exclusive-clintons-alleged-ex-lover-hillary-terrorist-sex-addict-bill-told-2000-women/
Humping Bill!! lolz
The Leering Lewd And Crooked Hillary.
Few things are as amusing as watching sheeple who voted for corrupt “socialist” kleptocracies getting exactly what they have coming.
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/05/14/15-may-16-world-view-venezuela-economy-close-collapse-maduro-orders-jailing-factory-owners/
MSM permabulls are going to have major credibility problems trying to explain away the collapse in retail sales.
http://investmentresearchdynamics.com/gaping-holes-in-the-governments-retail-sales-report-for-april/
What collapse?
US retail sales rise is biggest in year
13 May 2016
From the section Business
US retail sales saw their biggest rise for more than a year in April, largely because of a surge in car sales.
Overall retail sales grew by 1.3% last month compared with March, according to the US Commerce Department - the strongest gain since March 2015.
Car sales climbed by 3.2%, a sharp reversal from the 3.2% fall recorded in the previous month.
March’s total retail sales were better than previously reported, falling by 0.3% not 0.4%.
When cars, petrol, building materials and food services are stripped out “core retail sales” rose by 0.9% in April. Analysts had forecast a 0.3% gain.
…
How much more cash do you need to save for retirement now that rates will be pretty much zero for a long @ss time because the national debt needs to remain servicable?
How much cash do you need to save in order to pay your massive health insurance bill everyone month when you are > 70 years old?
More debt = more demand for cash
If demand goes up you supply will certainly also go up.
If there is only ~ 1.7 trillion in physical cash out there where did all the trillions in credit come from? How much leverage is there to all those cash notes?
With Yellen the Felon hellbent on printing away all government and Wall Street debts and liabilities, you’d better save something better than cash for retirement.
Start with a bottle of good whiskey and a handgun, then every dollar you save pushes back the date you have to use them.
By the time the Fed prints (inflates) away the national debt and government liabilities, good whisky and a handgun will be worth a fortune in pre-1964 US silver coinage (the only US money that will be worth anything).
Mao’s Cultural Revolution lives on in the hearts of our SJWs and their cultural Marxist professors. Forward!
http://www.bigstory.ap.org/article/c3805bcab56149df8dc9c7d22ed23347/maoists-still-force-50-years-after-cultural-revolution
Ante up, taxpayers, as our open borders are flooded with new waves of Democrat-on-Arrival benefits-seekers.
http://kfoxtv.com/news/local/cuban-refugees-arriving-in-el-paso-getting-lost
Sloppy Sniper
“And the psychology argument? Many observers are missing the housing bubble, he says, ‘driven partly by the feeling that the substantially higher prices in 2006 (with its three-sigma bubble) somehow justify today’s merely one and one-half-sigma prices.’
https://www.gmo.com/docs/default-source/public-commentary/gmo-quarterly-letter.pdf?sfvrsn=28
Here’s the full quarterly GMO letter.
And they’re dead on with 1.5 as current resale housing prices have a 150% premium added on relative to long term historical price trend.
Chart:
http://picpaste.com/pics/f8928c11640c7b80abecdb101b748c88.1463327933.png
Remember, lemmings, you reap what you vote.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-15/theres-crisis-coming-us-officials-increasingly-concerned-venezuelan-meltdown
The kleptocrats are losing control of the lesser parasites who are demanding a “fair” share of the takings from the productive. The Oligopoly is not going to appreciate such uppityness from its entitlement voters.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/14/chaos-at-nevada-democratic-convention-as-bernie-fans-boo-barbara-boxer-video/
“Investors” are starting to flee for the exits as the commerical real estate bubble moves closer to bursting.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/investing/funds/investors-fleeing-giant-commercial-property-funds-face-price-hit/
We need to stop putting pejorative labels like “criminals” or “felons” on Hillary supporters.
http://nypost.com/2016/05/14/owellian-administration-brands-criminals-justice-involved-individuals/
Another Obama Zombie has buyer’s remorse.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/15/obamas-hope-poster-artist-says-president-has-been-too-quiet
Once again, the Oligopoly’s stenographers in the MSM are trying to cajole the muppets into trusting the Fed and its incessant jawboning about un-possible interest rate rises.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/investors-will-need-more-convincing-before-they-can-trust-the-fed-again-2016-05-13
Did your parents ever refi?
If u r not paid up by age 55 sum ting Wong,bro
Friend I know who grew up on Long Island and lives in Colorado now posted on Fakebook a few weeks ago that he’d never mown a lawn in his life. He flew out to Anchorage yesterday going for his second summit of Denali. People with mortgages can’t do this.
A: what are illegals for?
Who cut the lawn where he grew up on Long Island?
The help, of course!
‘Mike Gleason: Certainly, the information that comes out from the Chinese government is very controlled. I think now, I’ve heard just even recently that if you speak ill of the government’s provided statistics that they’ll send you to prison or try to prosecute you in some way. This is just the opposite of what a free market looks like. What are your thoughts on that? I know this is something that’s been going on for a long time, but they don’t appreciate dissenters, do they Gordon?’
‘Gordon Chang: No, they certainly don’t. The Wall Street Journal report that you referred to where they’re trying to infuse a little positive energy into analysts. As we all know, beginning July of last year they criminalized many forms of trading. They did a lot to prohibit institutions from selling. That’s sort of like the last refuge of a technocrat, where they’re trying to browbeat market participants and analysts. So I think that that’s an indication that the end is quite near because they’ve just run out of solutions.’
‘Monetary policy just hasn’t worked. Fiscal stimulus is adding to their debt woes. They do all of these things and you still have the large capital outflows, perhaps as much as $1 trillion last year, according to Bloomberg. So I think these are desperate technocrats and desperate leaders who at this point don’t know what to do and are just playing for time. As they play for time, they make matters worse, because we saw that extraordinary increase in credit in March. It had very little effect on the economy. It’s a dead panda bounce. Now, I don’t think that they know what to do except to try to imprison people who don’t say nice things about China’s economic potential.’
OMG this blog is so much fun!
“I think now, I’ve heard just even recently that if you speak ill of the government’s provided statistics that they’ll send you to prison or try to prosecute you in some way.”
Bahahahahaha … they should do in China what the Global Warmers want to do in the U.S and just throw some RICO charges against anyone who dares to challenge the mantras. Do it in the name of the children, the ones who will never know what snow is.
“The Wall Street Journal report that you referred to where they’re trying to infuse a little positive energy into analysts.”
Infuse positive energy into analysts by threatening them with prison time? Bahahahaha … the beatings will continue until positive energy is infused.
‘So I think these are desperate technocrats and desperate leaders who at this point don’t know what to do and are just playing for time.”
Bahahahaha … when they are finished over there they should maybe come over here and lend their expertise to our Fed.
Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha … Ben Jones and his jokes. Bahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
‘if you speak ill of the government’s provided statistics that they’ll send you to prison or try to prosecute you in some way’
A couple of years ago I was doing a post a week just on China, using a lot of Chinese media sources. That just went away. They just blew a bunch of money on more credit and the economy hardly budged. Sure their bubbles got a lift, commodities flash trading went nuts, but nothing positive was accomplished. We’ve seen reports saying a Chinese peso of borrowing is producing something like a dime of GDP.
‘Property executives are watching the housing market closely as signs of weakness in listing numbers and auction volumes build and compound the effect of weak results throughout March and April. About 1718 homes will be auctioned around the country this weekend, down from 2000 last week, driven by big falls in auction numbers in Sydney and Melbourne.’
‘Clearance rates have fallen for three consecutive weeks, reaching 67.7 per cent nationally this week, despite the Reserve Bank of Australia’s decision to lower interest rates to a record low of 1.75 per cent and evidence that foreign buyers are pulling back.’
‘But equities analysts point to broader issues hampering activity within the sector, including regulatory restrictions and a tighter lending environment, which mean buyers are still facing stiffer hurdles for finance, even though borrowing costs have dropped.’
‘And other primary indicators continue to track lower. Housing finance figures fell during March, and CoreLogic RP Data indicates that settlement risk is steadily rising as a tidal wave of new apartments approach completion along the eastern seaboard. Against this backdrop, agents including Richardson and Wrench Sydney agent Aris Dendrinos are reassessing commissions to be more competitive.’
‘Mr Dendrinos aims for a 2.2 per cent commission, which he argues has become a 2 per cent commission, with GST inclusive. Yet some agency agreements are now offering commissions as low as 1.1 per cent and a “No Sale, No Fee” clause scrapping the cost of advertising for the vendor.’
‘Brisbane agent Damon Warat is in the same boat, noting that the pace of undercutting is heating up, and he is now making 150 calls a week to drum up listings. This time last year he could “sit by the phone”.
The U.S. Army’s War Over Russia
‘Top brass profess to be really worried about Putin. But a growing group of dissenters say they’re overreacting to get a bigger share of the defense budget.’
‘In fact, Milley’s Army War College remarks seemed to imply that the Army’s problem is not that it doesn’t have enough soldiers, but that it has them in the wrong places. Milley reinforced this view in his April 6 Senate testimony. “We need to pare down our headquarters,” he said, adding that the Army’s top-heavy brigade structure provides a potential enemy with “nothing but a big target”—a point the Army’s critics have been making for the past 10 years.’
‘The argument over numbers and capabilities might strike some Americans as exotic, but the debate is much more fundamental—with enormous political implications. “You know, which would you rather have—a high-speed rail system, or another brigade in Poland? Because that’s what this is really all about. The debate is about money, and there simply isn’t enough to go around,” the Pentagon officer told me. “Which is not to mention the other question, which is even more important: How many British soldiers do you think want to die for Estonia? And if they don’t want to, why should we?”
“The debate is about money, and there simply isn’t enough to go around,”
Yeah? Well there never is.
Never. There never is.
‘How many British soldiers do you think want to die for Estonia? And if they don’t want to, why should we?’
And whose big idea was it to expand NATO right up to the Russian border? Neocons and their “humanitarian interventionists” buddies. People sit around and complain about crumbling infrastructure, while we guard the Polish from their biggest trading partner.
I am trying my best to urge people to get out of the USD and get into some other asset. Even if you don’t like crypto currency get into the Yuan or something by golly.
Every dollar you have in a bank, they lend several times out that amount and use a lot of it to finance the Empire.
‘The National Association of Estate Agents says it welcomes the government’s commitment to establish a public register of beneficial ownership information in a bid to make the purchasing of property more transparent and combat money laundering. ‘
“We very much welcome the Prime Minister’s pledge to ensure that anonymous individuals will no longer be able to buy properties in the UK using shell companies to hide their identity. Properties allegedly bought with dirty money impacts supply in the housing market as they are unavailable to potential other buyers who really do want a ‘home’” says Mark Hayward, the association’s managing director.’
‘Any foreign company that wants to buy UK property - or indeed wants to bid for central government contracts - will have to join a new public register of beneficial ownership information. This will be the first register of its kind anywhere in the world.’
‘It will include companies who already own property in the UK, not just those wishing to buy. The government says foreign-based companies own around 100,000 properties in England and Wales. Over 44,000 of these are in London.’
‘The government claims the new register for foreign companies will mean corrupt individuals and countries will no longer be able to move, launder and hide illicit funds through London’s property market. At an anti-corruption summit in London last week some 40 jurisdictions, including a number of Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies with major financial centres agreed to share their beneficial ownership registers with other countries, including the UK.’
‘An unforgivable lapse in diplomacy was caused when David Cameron forgot his training, his many years experience and the entire rule book of modern politics and said something that was true. This alarming and completely uncharacteristic outburst occurred when he described the lack of probity and trustworthiness of Afghanistan and Nigeria.’
‘He said it in front of the Queen, which gave all the usual royal forelock tuggers a touch of the vapours, hankies were pressed to foreheads and they had to be resuscitated with a cup of tea and a biscuit.’
‘The occasion was the opening of an anti-corruption conference that for reasons of comedy was being held in what the anti-corruption organisation Transparency International called “the world’s prime destination for money laundering”: London.’
‘London is the place that the most crooked captains of industry and villains that run countries come to wash their lucre clean by buying housing, which is why property costs so much there.’
“Realtor Arrested For Sex Crimes”
http://www.wokv.com/news/news/local/jacksonville-realtor-arrested-child-sex-crimes/nrCFt/
Thornton(Denver), CO Housing Affordability Balloons As Prices Plummet 13% YoY
http://www.movoto.com/thornton-co/market-trends/
Another ride to the ocean. Overcast but still cool enough. My hamstrings and quads felt like tree trunks during the ride. 32-34 mile round trip.
Corona Del Mar State Beach May 15, 2016
http://imgur.com/M4GlOzD
crushing.housing.losses.
I am shocked, shocked! to learn that New York oligarchs are fiddling the tax man. Of course, being members of the .1%, they enjoy complete impunity from actual consequences for tax evasion.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/nearly-500-new-yorkers-offshore-accounts-exposed-by-panama-papers-2016-05-15?link=MW_latest_news
Steely Dan - Hey Nineteen - HQ Audio - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J7IrPVLc4U - 393k -
$80 was the price of the cheapest ticket, I think, last time they were here in Las Vegas. I couldn’t bring myself to spend it, but I’d love to see them someday.
A month or two after we moved here ten years ago my brother and I went to see Leon Russell. I was (am) a big fan. It was a small room filled with people who I think were older than us and dressed like hippies. One woman was waving her cane in the air to the music. I think she would have been flashing everyone if she could have kept her balance.
My brother, who in those days thought he was younger than springtime, was furious at me because I was near legless with laughter at the whole scene.
“One woman was waving her cane in the air to the music.”
Since Ben Jones is full of jokes today I thought I would add to the joke pool one of mine …
This is the story of a young college student flying in a two-seater airplane
with just the pilot.
He has a heart attack and dies.
She, frantic, grabs the mike and calls out a May Day.
“May Day! May Day! Help me! Help me! The pilot had a heart attack and is dead and I don’t know how to fly. Someone help me! Please help me!”
She then hears a voice on the radio saying: “This is Air Traffic Control and I have you loud and clear. I will talk you through this and get you back on the ground. I’ve had a lot of experience with this kind of problem. Now, just take a deep breath, stay calm and everything will be fine! Now give me your height and position.”
She then says, “I’m 5′4″ and I support Hillary”
“O.K.” says the voice on the radio, “Repeat after me: Our Father, Who art in Heaven…”