The Housing Bubble

‘after years of a sizzling home sales industry along the Peninsula, some local money lenders are sensing a cooldown on the horizon’

We were just discussing San Mateo with rental and jingle and they said it was bullet-proof because of all da’ MONEY. Lenders? But jingle said it was all stock options and why would anyone there need to borrow?

‘I think a lot of people are starting to realize that if you are going to sell something, do it before it drops…I think it is at an all-time high’

Wow, these guys are really smart too.

‘In real estate, slowdowns require quick thinking. And that’s just what real estate agents and homebuilders are doing as Southwest Florida’s housing market rounds the curve from hot to not-so. Matt Lane said his firm leaves no stone unturned in its marketing. Yet one of the brokerage’s most effective tools, he said, is also one of its simplest — an emailed sheet that sorts local data into ‘changes favoring buyers’ and ‘changes favoring sellers.’ ‘Data doesn’t lie, and when a market slows, the best content to market is the facts’

Yeah Matt, but do you send those emails to the buyers or the sellers?

Houses depreciate.

The top headline on Drudge is the Washington Post SPLC/ADL sponsored content “article” that I posted yesterday. Then underneath that there is this link (highlighted in red text, to rally the base) which confirms that Matt Drudge is not a libertarian, because Matt Drudge is a neocon:

http://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-commander-we-can-destroy-israel-in-under-8-minutes/

No “smaller government” or “less regulation” or “lower taxes” happening here.

On the subject of neocon, and “real journalists” there’s this too:

“An article about a long-running lawsuit against Sheldon G. Adelson, the paper’s new owner, had just been cut in half for the print edition on orders from the top editor, and the reporters were disturbed by what they considered editorial interference. With two other colleagues conferenced in, they discussed the possibility of a byline strike.

The problem is particularly acute for The Review-Journal. Mr. Adelson, the chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, is a casino magnate, a powerful Republican donor, a patron of education and a fierce defender of Israel, and his myriad interests present an almost singular example of how aggressive journalism can collide with the pursuits of a paper’s owner.

That new dynamic has roiled the ranks of the newsroom, creating a divide between top editors who see it as part of their job to review coverage of Mr. Adelson, and staff members who chafe at what they perceive as inappropriate interference. In the nearly six months since Mr. Adelson purchased the paper, at least a dozen journalists have quit, been fired or made plans to leave soon; many cite a strained work environment and untenable oversight, in particular regarding the coverage of a bitter legal dispute related to Sands’s operations in Macau.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/business/media/in-adelsons-newsroom-looser-purse-strings-and-a-tighter-leash.html

Sheldon Adelson is a neocon. Political candidates that take his money are neocons.

No “smaller government” or “less regulation” or “lower taxes” happening here.

SPLC sponsored content as presented by the New York Times:

“The shootings took place everywhere, but mostly outdoors: at neighborhood barbecues, family reunions, music festivals, basketball tournaments, movie theaters, housing project courtyards, Sweet 16 parties, public parks. Where motives could be gleaned, roughly half involved or suggested crime or gang activity. Arguments that spun out of control accounted for most other shootings, followed by acts of domestic violence.

The typical victim was a man between 18 and 30, but more than 1 in 10 were 17 or younger. Less is known about those who pulled the triggers because nearly half of the cases remain unsolved. But of those arrested or identified as suspects, the average age was 27.

Most of the shootings occurred in economically downtrodden neighborhoods. These shootings, by and large, are not a middle-class phenomenon.

The divide is racial as well. Among the cases examined by The Times were 39 domestic violence shootings, and they largely involved white attackers and victims. So did many of the high-profile massacres, including a wild shootout between Texas biker gangs that left nine people dead and 18 wounded.

Over all, though, nearly three-fourths of victims and suspected assailants whose race could be identified were black. Some experts suggest that helps explain why the drumbeat of dead and wounded does not inspire more outrage.

“Clearly, if it’s black-on-black, we don’t get the same attention because most people don’t identify with that. Most Americans are white,” said James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University in Boston. “People think, ‘That’s not my world. That’s not going to happen to me.’ ”

Michael Nutter, a former Philadelphia mayor, who is black, said that society would not be so complacent if whites were dying from gun violence at the same rate as blacks.

“The general view is it’s one bad black guy who has shot another bad black guy,” he said. “And so, one less person to worry about.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/23/us/americas-overlooked-gun-violence.html

Remember, this is all just a sideshow to the globalist narrative. The Davos/Aspen set don’t actually give a sh*t about black poors wasting each other, with guns that aren’t registered and weren’t purchased legally anyway.

The globalists want to grab the scary looking guns.

The ones you don’t fire holding sideways.

The ones that can resist and defeat tyranny.

FoxNewsHate rallies the base:

“Al Qaeda has returned to its longtime base of operations in southern Afghanistan and is plotting new attacks against the West, fifteen years after being overrun by U.S.-led NATO forces following the 9/11 attacks, according to a published report.”

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/05/23/al-qaeda-reportedly-back-in-afghan-heartland-plotting-new-attacks-against-west.html

No “smaller government” or “less regulation” or “lower taxes” happening here.

Another article for all the Big Government authoritarians:

“In the current scheduling system, marijuana is placed in the same “most dangerous” category as heroin, one of the most powerfully addictive and dangerous illegal substances on the planet. Psychedelics like peyote and LSD and the party drug MDMA (ecstasy) round out Schedule I.

Meanwhile, tobacco and alcohol, the two most widely used and deadly substances in the US, are nowhere to be found. Fentanyl, a painkiller approximately 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine — and hundreds of times more powerful than heroin, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — is in Schedule II.

To many observers, the US’s drug scheduling seems arbitrary. To understand why, it’s instructive to look back at how the schedules were made.

The five groups were determined during the approval process of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970. The scheduling of most drugs was determined by Congress during the debate over the bill and was supposedly chosen according to the scientific and medical evidence at the time.”

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-drug-scheduling-system-heroin-marijuana-2016-5

War on drugs = Big Government.

No “smaller government” or “less regulation” or “lower taxes” happening here.

Long hot summer in California this year:

“Stubborn drought conditions and an epidemic of dead and dying trees mean California is facing a potentially catastrophic fire season, federal officials said Tuesday as they promised to send extra money and personnel to the state.

Similar circumstances contributed to record acreage lost to wildfires in the West last year, including three blazes that laid waste to Lake County, and top officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture said improved rain and snow totals during the winter did little to ease the threat.

Four straight dry winters before this one wiped out sugar pines, cedars and oaks throughout the Sierra and other mountains in California, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said during a briefing on the fire season in Washington, D.C.

“You’ve got 40 million dead trees. You’ve got 40 million opportunities for fire,” Vilsack said. “You’re looking at a very serious situation.”

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Drought-dead-trees-add-up-to-big-fire-danger-for-7534092.php

“This sucker could go down” — George W. Bush

California is the most impoverished state in the country:

“Portland, like Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, has declared a homelessness emergency. That allows the city to cut red tape and seek more federal assistance. The four cities and their surrounding counties account for an estimated 70,000 homeless. The U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department says a third of America’s homeless are bedding down in California alone. The National Alliance to End Homelessness estimates almost 600,000 people sleep outside, in emergency shelters, or in transitional housing around the U.S.”

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-save-night-sleep-20160524-snap-story.html#nt=oft12aH-1li3

‘the board reported Odessa’s monthly housing inventory climbed to 5.1 months of inventory in April, 2.3 months more than the same month of last year. Homes spent an average 58 days on the market in April, a week longer than April 2015. In the same time frame, active listings increased 63 percent to 473′

I talked with a UHS that has contacts in Midland the other day. He said it’s a freaking bloodbath, and the job cuts are outta sight. FWIW.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, so I need an update on the current names of the cast of characters.

Is it safe to say that Apartment 401 is one and the same as Professor Bear/Get Stucco/CIBT/et al?

What handles has Exeter/Housing Analyst been using lately?

Is Bill still hiding his gold in the pantry behind the oatmeal?

‘For the first time in recent memory, the number of closed and pending home sales in the Portland area saw an annual decline…With the housing market on a tear, the report had become predictable from last summer into this spring – the number of closed and pending sales for a given month was either the most since before the recession, or the most of all time’

There’s always this sense of amazement: ‘it stopped going up.’

‘But the 2,611 closed sales in April marked a 4.5 percent drop from the same month last year, and pending sales fell from 3,613 in 2015 to 3,076 this year’

Then, “Oh no! It’s coming back down!”

Really, what did you think was going to happen?

From yesterday:

—————————-
Comment by oxide
2016-05-22 12:56:59
So, where are the mortgages where the monthly payment is less that fully amortized PITI? Not 0% down. Not low FICO. Less than fully amortized PITI.

Comment by Ben Jones
2016-05-22 14:23:36

[article from northern Idaho] ‘For many programs the income limit for Kootenai County is now $90,000 annually with a home cost limit of $312,300. If you are a one- or two-person household that income limit lowers to $73,680 or $85,960 for three of more in the family wanting to use a first-time loan, a tax credit/Mortgage Credit Certificate loan or an FHA loan with a second mortgage to cover the down payment. All other IHFA loans are allowed for folks making up to $90,000 in income.’

‘An MCC is an on-going federal tax credit that can continue year after year for as long as you retain the loan and occupy the home as your primary residence. The amount of the MCC tax credit is based on a percentage of the amount of mortgage interest you pay on the first mortgage loan. The exact percentage of first mortgage interest you can claim is determined by Idaho Housing.’
———————

Ben, I gave this a quick look and couldn’t find where the monthly PITI was less than fully amortized. This looks like the state will pitch into give a little boost to the MID, but that’s about all. But it’s certainly not an I/O or a neg-am.

Anyway, your article just confirmed another prediction that I made: that house prices would not drop to where J6P can afford them. Instead, the price will stay high and various levels of government would pitch in for some part of the payment.

I have meetings all of today.

Wall Street Journal subscriber paywall article excerpt:

“Student loans are often blamed for the record-low homeownership rate among young adults. But new research suggests that young people without a college diploma face especially big hurdles to owning a home.

College graduates ages 18 to 34 years old without student debt will need just over five years of additional savings to afford a 20% down payment for a starter home, defined as the median home at the bottom third of the market, according to research to be released Monday by Apartment List, a rental listing website. In comparison, it takes college grads with student loans about 10 years. For those who haven’t graduated from college, the wait to buy a home swells to nearly 15.5 years.

“It’s really everywhere that people without college degrees won’t be able to afford homes. They could be stuck renting for a long time,” said Andrew Woo, director of data science at Apartment List.

The report is based on a survey of 31,000 respondents and looks at how much people in each category are currently saving, coupled with how much they have already saved and are likely to receive from friends and family.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/homeownership-elusive-for-young-adults-without-college-degrees-1463909402

Wall Street Journal book review:

“But while radical libertarianism tends toward anarchy, postmodern leftism has a totalitarian impulse. The goal of a postmodern progressive isn’t universal truth, which supposedly doesn’t exist, but power, which is presented in the guise of equality and social justice. The left’s quest for power isn’t of the goose-stepping, arsenal-building kind employed by 20th-century dictators, Mr. Holmes takes great pains to insist. But, he allows, progressive liberals are “willing to dip into the totalitarians’ illiberal tool box.”

Look no further than the effort to gain power over language and debate on college campuses, through concepts like microagressions, trigger warnings and safe spaces, which police the expression of ideas. This is done in the name of inclusiveness and diversity, but in reality it’s a demonstration of power over those who think differently.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/progressivisms-macroaggressions-1463950160

Wall Street Journal — How the West (and the Rest) Got Rich:

“If capital accumulation or the rule of law had been sufficient, the Great Enrichment would have happened in Mesopotamia in 2000 B.C., or Rome in A.D. 100 or Baghdad in 800. Until 1500, and in many ways until 1700, China was the most technologically advanced country. Hundreds of years before the West, the Chinese invented locks on canals to float up and down hills, and the canals themselves were much longer than any in Europe. China’s free-trade area and its rule of law were vastly more extensive than in Europe’s quarrelsome fragments, divided by tariffs and tyrannies. Yet it was not in China but in northwestern Europe that the Industrial Revolution and then the more consequential Great Enrichment first happened.

Why did ideas so suddenly start having sex, there and then? Why did it all start at first in Holland about 1600 and then England about 1700 and then the North American colonies and England’s impoverished neighbor, Scotland, and then Belgium and northern France and the Rhineland?

The answer, in a word, is “liberty.” Liberated people, it turns out, are ingenious. Slaves, serfs, subordinated women, people frozen in a hierarchy of lords or bureaucrats are not. By certain accidents of European politics, having nothing to do with deep European virtue, more and more Europeans were liberated. From Luther’s reformation through the Dutch revolt against Spain after 1568 and England’s turmoil in the Civil War of the 1640s, down to the American and French revolutions, Europeans came to believe that common people should be liberated to have a go. You might call it: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-west-and-the-rest-got-rich-1463754427

London Times — Hobbit star says Hollywood has its own Savile scandal:

“Allegations that powerful Hollywood figures have been protecting child abusers have circulated widely in recent years and Anne Henry, co-founder of Bizparentz, a group set up to help young actors, said: “Hollywood is currently sheltering about 100 active abusers.”

After the convictions of several industry figures and claims by Corey Feldman, another former child actor, that he had been “surrounded” by molesters when he was 14, Henry warned that a “tsunami of claims has begun”.

Henry estimated about 75% of child actors who “went off the rails” later in their career had suffered abuse. “This problem has been endemic in Hollywood for a long time and it’s finally coming to light,” she said.

“I don’t believe the most powerful people in Hollywood are sitting in a darkened room plotting to spread paedophilia. But very bad people are still working here, protected by their friends.”

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hobbit-star-says-hollywood-has-its-own-savile-scandal-b0snv9lb2?shareToken=073f12e5dabe45d32c7bf64a23992911

Hubris:

Markets to Fed: You don’t have our blessing to hike yet

It isn’t last call yet for this house party.

More big government for the authoritarian badge lickers and uniform fetishists:

“Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, is expected to sign into law the nation’s first so-called “Blue Lives Matter” law, extending hate crime protections to men and women wearing a police badge.

The bill, passed by the legislature in Baton Rouge this week, is controversial, coming amid a national debate over the shooting of unarmed black people by police officers. Expanding hate crime protections to all active and non-active police officers is seen by some as an attempt to muzzle law enforcement critics and to undermine efforts to curb the use of excessive force by police.”

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2016/0521/Louisiana-Blue-Lives-Matter-law-How-big-a-shift-in-police-brutality-debate

I read an article in Patrick Buchanan’s American Conservative a few years ago that noted Louisiana has a higher per capita incarceration rate than Russia did under Stalin.

No “smaller government” or “less regulation” or “lower taxes” happening here.

Hedge funds starting to bet against housing bubbles. Bullish!

http://wolfstreet.com/2016/05/23/hedge-funds-bet-meltdown-australian-banks-housing-bubble-record-short-positions/

You voted for socialism. Don’t complain when you get socialism.

And people wonder why the Donald is so popular…

——–

They’re Coming For Your Home
Townhall.com | May 23, 2016 | Katie Kieffer

Effectively, AFFH regulations will eliminate local zoning in 1,200 cities and counties (see if yours is on the list) by mandating new federal rules based on race and income that will override all local jurisprudence.

Today, if you want to live in a certain neighborhood in America—you are already 100%free to move into that area. There are no laws hindering Hispanics, African Americans, women, gays, Muslims, poor people or any other so-called minority or “protected” group from living in the neighborhood of their choosing.

Jimmy Carter knew it. Bill Clinton knew it. Barack Obama knew it. Hillary Clinton knows it. The dirty little secret is: if you can convince people that you will help them buy homes, you can turn them into voters for your party. Because humans have an innate desire to own and care for a special plot of space, and call it home.

Obama’s great “recovery” has created so few jobs that—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Longitudinal Surveys program—over half (55%) of Millennials are moving back home with their parents by the time they reach age 27. Conniving politicians know, as more Millennials start families, the pressure to move out will escalate.

What the AFFH really does is create a new definition of victim that has never existed in America. If you are low income or a minority, AFFH assumes that you are a victim.

AFFH creates a new definition called “fair housing choice,” which states that the federal government must micromanage local zoning so “individuals and families… [are] able to achieve fair housing choice given the legacy of segregation, ongoing discrimination, and residential patterns that offer different levels of access to community assets.”

A preview of coming attractions once the takers overwhelm the makers. Forward!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/05/21/venezuela-how-the-socialist-paradise-turned-into-debt-and-hyperi/

“Far right” populism sweeping Europe as voters turn against Establishment political parties that have become the adjuncts of the oligarchs and crony capitalists. How much longer will the EU and ECB be able to force European taxpayers to cover their banker cronies’ gambling losses and lavish trillions in printing-press “stimulus” on the .1%?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/cyprus-far-enters-parliament-voters-protest-101437532.html?nhp=1

Mr. Banker won’t like this:

“Many banks don’t have clear policies when there are questions. Discrepancies can occur when the amount a customer writes on a deposit slip doesn’t match the amount actually deposited, or when the teller makes a data entry error, or when the bank’s computers don’t capture a good image of the deposit slip.

“Consumers should not be denied timely access to the full amount of their deposits,” CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a statement. The new guidance “should make it clear that we expect financial institutions to take steps to handle and resolve deposit discrepancies and avoid consumer harm.”

Last August, Citizens Bank was ordered to pay $18.5 million in refunds and penalties for not crediting customers with the full amounts of deposits. Citizens is Greater Cleveland’s third-largest bank, with 9 percent of local deposits.

Citizens kept the money when there was a discrepancy between the customer’s deposit receipt and the amount actually deposited, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said. Regulators believe Citizens shorted customers by millions of dollars over a six-year period.”

http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2016/05/banks_cant_simply_pocket_money.html#incart_river_home

Decades of failed U.S. drug policy and this is what you get:

“Death can strike anywhere in Acapulco these days: A sarong vendor was slain on the beach in January by a gunman who escaped on a Jet Ski. Another man was gunned down while enjoying a beer at a seaside restaurant. In the hillside slums that ring the city, a 15-year-old girl’s body was found chopped into pieces and wrapped in a blanket, her severed head in a bucket nearby with a hand-lettered sign from a drug gang.

The upsurge in killings has made Acapulco one of Mexico’s most violent places, scaring away what international tourism remained and recently prompting the U.S. government to bar its employees from traveling here for any reason.

In response, Mexico has lined the city’s coastal boulevard with heavily armed police and soldiers, turning Acapulco into a high-profile test case for a security strategy that the government has used elsewhere: When homicides spike, flood the area with troops.”

http://www.denverpost.com/2016/05/22/drug-violence-grips-acapulco/

Another plug for the book “Gangster Warlords” by Ioan Grillo:

http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/gangster-warlords-9781620403808/

Cloward-Piven is real:

“Children from families with incomes at or below 130 percent of the poverty level (or $31,536 a year for a family of four) are eligible for free meals. Those with incomes between 130 percent and 185 percent of the poverty level are eligible for a discounted meal, which costs no more than 40 cents.

An Enquirer analysis of federal data shows participation in the school lunch program has grown dramatically in Greater Cincinnati: 49 percent over the course of 10 years in local Ohio counties, and 22 percent over the course of five years in Northern Kentucky counties.

At Cincinnati Public Schools, participation in the program increased 13 percent between 2005 and 2015. During the same time period, enrollment at CPS dipped 7 percent.”

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2016/05/22/what-cps-doing-combat-poverty/83078530/

More big government for authoritarians who hate the Constitution:

“But a powerful new insider account undermines the idea that the inspector general’s office offers whistleblowers a safe route. John Crane supervised the whistleblower-protection unit of the Pentagon inspector general, which has oversight responsibility for defense department components such as the National Security Agency. His story, told at length in Mark Hertsgaard’s powerful new book Bravehearts: Whistle-Blowing in the Age of Snowden, suggests that an office meant to aid whistleblowing can put whistleblowers in danger.

This is someone who was deep inside the system who says the system failed. Much of the book deals with the case of Thomas Drake, an NSA employee more senior than Snowden, who became concerned after 9/11 over warrantless surveillance and took his concerns to the inspector-general’s office. Crane’s suspicion is that instead of protecting Drake, as his office should have done, Drake’s identity was passed to the justice department.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/23/national-security-whistleblowing-inquiry-edward-snowden-analysis

2banana’s Rule.

Conservatives are more than happy to live under the same laws and taxes they want for everyone else.

Liberals/Progressives expect to exempted to the same laws and taxes they want for everyone else.

Do you think obama’s daughters will have to worry about this ever? Private schools up to college, a “gap year” visiting National Parks, secret service protection in gated/fenced housing and then off to Harvard…

———–

Obama’s plan to reintegrate ex-convicts into society raises crime fears
Washington Times | May 23, 2016 | Andrea Noble

The Obama administration has gone into overdrive in the last two months, pushing administrative policy changes to make it easier for ex-convicts to rejoin society, but at the same time sparking concern that reforms will increase crime and jeopardize safety.

The federal efforts have been spurred on in part by bipartisan criminal justice reforms enacted at the state level and changing public opinion that has warmed to second chances, experts say.

Reforms have included recommendations to make it easier for ex-offenders to obtain state ID cards, removing questions about criminal history from federal job applications and suggestions to do the same for college applications, and warning landlords that rejecting renters based on their criminal history may violate federal law.

Leona Helmsley was right, only the little people pay taxes:

“Since 1713, when the Great Council of Geneva banned banks from revealing the private information of their customers, Switzerland had thrived on its reputation as a stronghold of financial secrecy. International élites could place their fortunes beyond the reach of tax authorities in their own countries. For Swiss wealth managers, who oversaw more than two trillion dollars in international deposits, the promise to maintain financial privacy was akin to a religious vow of silence. Switzerland is the home of the numbered account: customers often specify that they prefer not to receive statements, in order to avoid a paper trail. In light of these safeguards, the notion of a breach at H.S.B.C. was shocking.

According to a 2012 study by James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinsey who now advises the Tax Justice Network, the world’s wealthiest people salt away at least twenty-one trillion dollars beyond the reach of tax authorities. In a book published last year, “The Hidden Wealth of Nations,” the economist Gabriel Zucman offers a lower, yet still enormous, estimate: $7.6 trillion, or eight per cent of the world’s personal financial wealth. Zucman calculates that “the fraud perpetuated through unreported foreign accounts each year costs about $200 billion to governments throughout the world.”

H.S.B.C., or the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, traces its origins to 1865, and its early success to the opium trade. The bank has grown substantially over the past two decades—it now has nearly fifty million customers—and it has acquired a reputation for being less than scrupulous, even by the loose standards of international banking. In 2012, a U.S. Senate investigation concluded that H.S.B.C. had worked with rogue regimes, terrorist financiers, and narco-traffickers. The bank eventually acknowledged having laundered more than eight hundred million dollars in drug proceeds for Mexican and Colombian cartels. Carl Levin, of Michigan, who chaired the Senate investigation, said that H.S.B.C. had a “pervasively polluted” culture that placed profit ahead of due diligence. In December, 2012, H.S.B.C. avoided criminal charges by agreeing to pay a $1.9-billion penalty. The company’s C.E.O., Stuart Gulliver, said that he was “profoundly sorry” for the bank’s transgressions. No executives faced penalties.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/herve-falcianis-great-swiss-bank-heist

Funny how the Oligopoly and its media border collies had no issue with stupid voters as long as the beneficiaries were its annointed water carriers such as Obama and Hillary. But now that a wild card, Trump, has shown up, suddenly the MSM has decided that ignorant, low-information voters might not be such a good thing after all, at least when they vote for non-oligarch annointed candidates.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-must-weed-out-ignorant-americans-from-the-electorate/2016/05/20/f66b3e18-1c7a-11e6-8c7b-6931e66333e7_story.html?postshare=9311463843952700&tid=ss_tw

More jawboning from one of Yellen’s flying monkeys. Maybe the only good thing to come from the coming collapse is that the Keynesian fraudsters who led us down this primrose path might finally face real justice in a federal pound-me-in-the-a$$ prison.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/feds-bullard-contrasts-fomcs-slow-normalization-of-rates-vs-markets-no-normalization-2016-05-23

The most successful scam in American history, the Federal Reserve, continues to use its control over our money issuance and monetary policies to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the .1% at the expense of everyone else.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-fed-has-fueled-inflation-and-its-helping-the-rich-2016-05-23

Brits are getting fed up with the fruits of globalism and “fundamental transformation.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/immigration-backlash-at-the-heart-of-british-push-to-leave-the-eu/2016/05/22/db54ad60-1c27-11e6-82c2-a7dcb313287d_story.html

No “pent-up demand” for $500,000 retirement homes happening here:

“Retirement is not easy for a large number of Philadelphians, a new report by City Controller Alan Butkovitz’s office concludes.

Just 44 percent of elderly households in the city receive some sort of retirement income other than Social Security, according to the report, “Retirement Security in Philadelphia,” which is to be released Monday.

That’s a problem. The average Social Security income is $16,429 a year, but a senior household in Philadelphia - a single person or a couple - needs $28,750 a year to meet basic needs without relying on public assistance, according to the report.”

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20160523_Retirement_is_hard_for_many_in_Philly__study_shows.html

Current Drudge headline article on Baltimore:

“As we await the judge’s verdict in the Officer Nero trial, one prominent lawmaker is calling for peace throughout the city.

Congressman Elijah Cummings says the city called for justice and whatever verdict is reached is justice.

With all eyes on the courthouse awaiting a verdict for Officer Edward Nero, Congressman Elijah Cummings is asking residents to stay calm.

“We must remain vigilant to our moral code of peace, no matter what the verdict,” Cummings said.

http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2016/05/20/rep-cummings-calm-nero-verdict/

Freddie Gray was murdered by Baltimore police.

Which doesn’t justify looting all the Oxycontin from Walgreen’s and burning down your own neighborhood, but when that happens later today it should make for some really good TeeVee.

Opinion: The Fed has fueled inflation — and it’s helping the rich
By John Coumarianos
Published: May 23, 2016 8:56 a.m. ET

Higher stock and real estate prices don’t benefit average Americans

It may come as no surprise that in the aftermath of an epic single-family housing boom and subsequent bust, millions of more people have been renting — without much new multifamily housing supply until recently.

This situation has let to strong gains for apartment REITs and an astonishing ability for property owners to raise rents.

Now a research paper by Rob Arnott and Lillian Wu of Research Affiliates in Newport Beach, Calif. asks why the CPI doesn’t reflect the inflation that is apparent in places where people spend their money.

Arnott and Wu argue that the four biggest expenditures for most people — rent, food, energy, and health care — have been rising. Since 1995, rents have been rising at 2.7% clip, energy at a 3.9%, food at 2.6%, and health care at 3.6%. Notably, these four expenses account for 60% of the aggregate of people’s budgets, 80% of middle-class budgets, and 90% of the budgets of the working poor.
…

Pricey Del Mar home market showing cracks as buyers pull back

Berkeley and Palo Alto, CA Housing Prices Down YoY; Berkeley Plummets 13% QoQ

http://www.zillow.com/berkeley-ca/home-values/

Excellent read.

————–

Greetings, Slaves
Richard Fernandez - May 21, 2016 - Pj Media

We expect revolutionaries to be indifferent to money. Yet in reality the Left thinks about nothing but money as the Venezuelan socialists who have stolen $350 billion from the treasury, according to the Basel Institute on Governance, should have proved to the world. If it’s any consolation to the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders is not as indifferent to lucre as he seems. Sanders’ filings show he’s received money from Super PACs and donors with links to Wall Street — so he may be normal after all.

Perhaps the first major 20th century writer to realize that the ambition of all true Communists should be to become billionaire revolutionaries was Hilaire Belloc. In his 1912 book, The Servile State, Belloc argued the then-burgeoning Communist movement would find more success ditching Leninism in favor of an alliance with Crony Capitalists to reinstate Slavery. “Slavery, or a Servile State in which those who do not own the means of production shall be legally compelled to work for those who do, and shall receive in exchange a security of livelihood.”

Belloc argued that the only two exits from the evils of crony capitalism were an expansion of property holdings to the great majority of the people (the classic conservative program) or collectivism. Of the two alternatives, the elites would find collectivism far the easier path. He wrote, “if you are suffering because property is restricted to a few, you can alter that factor in the problem either by putting property in the hands of many or the hands of none … a trust or monopoly is welcomed because it ‘furnishes a mode of transition from private to public ownership.’” Crony capitalism furnishes collectivism so well that the Servile State becomes indistinguishable from the Workers’ Paradise and its leaders equally interchangeable. Thus we have billionaires who become men of the people and men of the people who become billionaires.

Where both Belloc and Orwell may have erred was in assuming the Servile State could fix the sustainability problems that doomed Leninism. The hope of finding a lasting formula for collectivism lies at the heart of the USSR’s reboot and the EU and Hillary’s socialism in words but crony capitalism in deeds strategy, in contrast to Bernie Sanders’ hair-on-fire socialism. Nobody argues with the collectivist goals, just about how to pay for them. Both the EU and its American imitations are attempts at finding a socialism which can pay the bills. Unfortunately the present political crisis raises the possibility that the Servile State itself is inherently unsustainable.

The issue which dogs Hillary and which no cosmetic distancing from Sanders will solve is that the middle class is losing faith in the platform. The political turmoil threatening to break apart the EU and the American Blue Model is rooted in the fact that both are broke and have no prospect of meeting obligations as manifested in the stagnation of wages in the West and also in the collapse of the “security” safety nets for which the present-day slaves have traded away their freedom. The progressive campaign is essentially predicated on the assumption that a sufficiently resolute government can defy the laws of financial gravity. There is now some doubt on that point.

Collectivism cannot even pay its pensions. “The present value of unfunded obligations under Social Security as of August 2010 was approximately $5.4 trillion. In other words, this amount would have to be set aside today such that the principal and interest would cover the program’s shortfall between tax revenues and payouts over the next 75 years.” One of the culprits, ironically, is that the socialists have succeeded all too well in changing mankind’s dreadful habit of forming families and breeding children.

It’s not just the Government that’s broke but also its political partners. Recently the Teamsters’ Central States Pension Fund announced that it was bust. Unless it gets an infusion of taxpayer money, pension benefits for about 407,000 people could be reduced to “virtually nothing.” Orwell famously said that “if you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” What he and Belloc failed to anticipate was that the boot might rot to pieces and fail to fulfill its function to oppress.

Teamsters who are able to intimidate everything find they are finally helpless against addition and subtraction. At the end of it all they, like everyone else who has mismanaged their pensions, can pay their retirees “virtually nothing.”

In the face of this failure perhaps it is time to revisit Belloc’s alternatives. If the only remaining path is to encourage a return to the popular ownership of property and making markets freer as opposed to cutting deals with monopolists — then so be it. Technology may be working in favor of the path not taken. As intellectual property becomes the dominant means of production, every human is automatically born with a certain amount of capital, provided Planned Parenthood doesn’t get to him first.

Lincoln Steffens thought he saw a future that worked but it was cruel fraud. Why not try property this time instead of slavery? We’ve tried being slaves. Let’s try being free. Belloc points out this idea is so revolutionary that anyone who espouses it will almost certainly be suspected of mental incapacity.

‘More than 2.5 million Americans earned income via on-demand platforms like Airbnb Inc., Etsy Inc. and Lyft Inc. in 2014, and the companies generated an estimated $15 billion in revenues. But the companies don’t withhold taxes on the income they pay to people who provide services or sell items via their platforms.’

‘The companies are required to notify the IRS of that income — and send service providers a 1099-K form of their yearly earnings to file with their tax returns — only if they earn at least $20,000 and have 200 or more transactions in a year. The rule applies only to companies that get paid by credit card.’

‘A study by researchers at American University has found that more than two-thirds of those who earned income from the platform economy never received a statement of their earnings. The study, which surveyed 40,000 members of the National Association of the Self Employed, found that many people who earn income on the platforms are confused about when, whether or how to report their earnings on their tax returns.’

‘The study said the current system ill-serves the millions of people who earn income from the platforms, by exposing them to possible audit and penalties for misreporting their income. “At best, these small business owners are shortchanged when filing their taxes,” the study said. “at worst, they fail to file altogether.”

Bigger and bigger government with more and more regulations and higher and higher taxes will save us and solve all our problems.

————-

20,642 New Regulations Added in the Obama Presidency
The Daily Signal | 5/23/16 | James Gattuso & Diane Katz

The tide of red tape that threatens to drown U.S. consumers and businesses surged yet again in 2015, according to a Heritage Foundation study we released on Monday.

More than $22 billion per year in new regulatory costs were imposed on Americans last year, pushing the total burden for the Obama years to exceed $100 billion annually.

“ST. PETERSBURG — The top-floor penthouse of the Ovation, a luxury condo tower on Beach Drive in downtown St. Petersburg, has sold for a record $6.9 million.”

http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/realestate/downtown-st-petersburg-condo-tower-penthouse-sells-for-a-record-69-million/2278579

Windermere, FL Housing Affordability Improves As Prices Crater 9% YoY

http://www.zillow.com/windermere-fl/home-values/

Tampa, FL Real Estate and Homes for Sale-16,130 Homes

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Tampa_FL/radius-5

Tampa, FL Price Reduced Homes for Sale-5,251 Homes

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Tampa_FL/shw-pr/radius-5

33% of Tampa sellers reduced their price at least once

‘Oil traders awaiting a recovery in crude are turning to floating storage after benchmark Brent prices more than halved over a span of two years, according to Morgan Stanley analysts led by Adam Longson.’

‘Unlike previous oil storage trades, however, this one is unusual in that current oil prices and storage costs ought to make it unprofitable. Morgan Stanley estimates that the one-month Brent storage arbitrage currently produces a loss of $0.48 per barrel, while its six-month equivalent loses $6.11 per barrel.’

‘That suggests “no incentive to store oil on ships,” the analysts write. “Yet, banks are seeing a sharp uptick in interest to finance storage charters. This storage is not happening for profit. Rather, the market is looking for places to store oil. To profit, traders need to hope for oil prices to rise enough to pay for the new debt incurred for this storage.”

“The increase in floating oil comes despite disruptions in the Atlantic Basin and an out-of-the-money floating storage arb[itrage], suggesting markets are not as healthy as sentiment suggests,” the Morgan Stanley analysts write. “It also highlights the speculative nature of much of the oil bounce this year.”

Lahaina, Hawaii Housing Affordability Improves As Prices Plummet 9% YoY

http://www.zillow.com/lahaina-hi/home-values/

‘The buyer who did win the bid may have a Monday-morning headache crunching the numbers on how much they just paid,’ said Israel Hill, a managing broker at John L. Scott Real Estate specializing in Northeast Portland.”

Just ask, “You gotta roll with it” Caitlyn Vestal. She had to take prescription pain relief once she found out how much she overpaid earlier this year!

FWIW: Here’s an article from 2012 that has an interview with James Hansen, aka The Father of Global Warming.

If the Father of Global Warming says it will be so then, hey, it is destined to be so. (link to follow).

“What will life be like if carbon emissions continue to grow?”

“James Hansen: Well, if we allow emissions to continue at a high rate, in this century we’re going to see ice sheets begin to disintegrate. And one of the things I write about in my book is the effect that will have on storms, because as Greenland begins to release more fresh water, cold fresh water, and Antarctica does, what it does is cool the North Atlantic Ocean and the southern ocean, and that increases the temperature gradient between low latitudes and middle and high latitudes. And that will increase the strength of storms that are driven by horizontal temperature gradients. So our children can look forward to increasing storms. And with a rising sea level that is going to lead potentially to a very chaotic situation, because once you have hundreds of cities in the situation analogous to what happened in New Orleans, then we’ve got an economic situation that’s just out of control globally.

“In the long run, if that really happened, as I point out in the book, over centuries, we could actually get a runaway greenhouse effect, and then that’s it for all the species on this planet. And as I try to point out, there’s no practical way to escape from this planet; we can’t even transfer one species to another planet. I discuss the monarch butterfly and just how complex it is. And for us to hope that we could transplant life from our planet to another planet is really unrealistic.

“What is the runaway greenhouse effect?

James Hansen: A runaway greenhouse effect means once the planet gets warmer and warmer, then the oceans begin to evaporate. And water vapor is a very strong greenhouse gas, even more powerful than carbon dioxide. So you can get to a situation where it just — the oceans will begin to boil, and the planet becomes so hot that the ocean ends up in the atmosphere. And that happened to Venus. That’s why Venus no longer has carbon in its surface. Its atmosphere is made up basically of carbon dioxide because it had a runaway greenhouse effect. Now the earth, it can go unstable either toward a cold climate or toward a hot climate. And the earth has had a runaway snowball earth situation. This happened most recently about 700 million years ago. The earth froze all the way to the equator.

“So these runaway situations can occur. We’ve never had a runaway greenhouse effect, because if we did, that would have been the end. Once — that’s a permanent situation. In the case of a snowball earth, when the earth becomes ice-covered, then the planet can escape from that situation because volcanoes continue to go off, but the weathering process is greatly reduced. So volcanoes put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and it builds up more and more until there’s enough to melt the ice. But we can’t push the planet off of the runaway greenhouse end. That’s the end for everybody if we do that.

How long would this take to occur if we stay on this path?

James Hansen: Well, you would have to — first of all, you’d have to melt the ice sheets, and that takes a while. The Antarctic ice sheet is a couple miles thick. But with continued rapid increase in greenhouse gases, that — you could melt the ice sheets in less than a century. And then things start to get hotter and hotter. So over a period of several centuries it would be conceivable to have a runaway greenhouse.”

There’s more for those who care and for those who dare.

Again, FWIW.

Another apartment flip:

‘American Realty Advisors has acquired a newly built, 314-unit multifamily property in the Union Station submarket of downtown Denver. Featuring a two-story below-grade parking garage, the building also offers approximately 58,000 square feet of ground floor retail space. Elan Union Station will be rebranded as ALARA Union Station.’

‘ALARA Union Station’s luxury features include bamboo floors, quartz countertops with tile backsplashes, undermount sinks and stainless steel appliances. A state-of-the-art fitness center, two interior courtyards featuring a resort-style pool and stainless steel grilling stations are among the luxury amenities of the building. Also featured are a bocce ball court, large outdoor fireplace, resident lounge, two private offices, large fully-connected conference room, pet spa, bicycle and ski maintenance shop with lockers and bike wash and private residents-only elevator to the ground-floor grocery store.’

‘A 48,000-square-foot King Soopers, a subsidiary of metro Denver’s dominant market-share grocer Kroger, anchors the ground floor retail. The remainder of the ground-floor retail is leased to Wells Fargo, high-end pet food store Kriser’s and The Pig and Sprout, a new restaurant concept from a Denver-area restaurateur.’

my county reports 16% vacancy for commercial RE
A look on LoopNet makes that number look way low
is it like unemployment where you have to have your building listed to count?

advise

‘Clinton’s widely shared family photos have done little to convince Pullmann that she’s a good mother or grandmother. “I’ve seen her Twitter feed holding her little granddaughter, and Bill’s behind her and I’m like ‘Look, you hate Bill’s guts … [and] how much time are you spending with that baby? Not much, you’re campaigning for president, you can hardly sleep.”

‘Pullmann feels no kinship for the secretary of state based on gender. “I actually think it’s offensive to say I should vote for someone because she has a vagina,” she says.’

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/23/women-female-voters-us-election-hillary-clinton

‘Self-driving cars? Nobody wants one’

‘It’s probably the most revolutionary thing to happen in the automobile industry in a century. And apparently nobody’s interested. A new study from the University of Michigan finds that only 15.5% of drivers say they’d want to own a fully autonomous vehicle once the technology becomes available. That’s very low, given how much publicity self-driving cars have been getting.’

‘The biggest perception problem seems to be safety, with 66.6% of drivers saying they’d be very or moderately concerned about riding in a self-driving car. Only 9.7% said they’d be unconcerned.’

If they showed these people how much these cars would cost, probably only 1% would want them. And the 1% already have drivers.

‘Jim Wunderman, Bay Area Council president and chief executive officer, told the San Francisco Business Times that “Traffic is horrific. People living in the Bay Area spend an average of 78 more hours in traffic than the rest of the nation and the Silicon Valley isn’t far behind at 67 hours. Residents are considering just how much all that extra time is costing them and looking elsewhere. Our housing shortage is pricing workers, families and others out of their homes and out of the region. These problems threaten to erode our economic vitality and diminish our quality of life.”

‘This isn’t only happening in San Francisco, Silicon Valley residents are now moving out of the area faster than they’re arriving. According to a study conducted by the Silicon Valley Competitiveness and Innovation Project, the California tech corridor lost more than 7,500 residents to other areas of the United States in 2015. That was the first time in four years the area lost more domestic residents than it gained.’

‘So what can the Bay Area to do keep all its inhabitants happy, thriving and able to afford to stay? That depends on how seriously leaders take residents’ concerns, Wunderman said Yolo, Stanislaus, and Stockton are rapidly becoming spillover housing for the Bay Area. The issue is that we think housing is too expensive which means we need to develop more houses, but the Bay Area Council report found that more residents than not think the region will experience a downturn in the next three years, so this makes developers hesitant to start large projects that could take years if the cost of homes is going to decrease. The Bay Area will always be a desirable place for people to live and nobody can say when this bubble will burst but is the writing on the wall?’

‘Adam Modzeleski is a real estate professional with Rainbow Funding and Realty, located in Newark for more than 30 years’

Do smarter people make more money? Or is it the risk takers?

Germans trying to buy the devil -

Bayer bids $62B for Monsanto

Thinking about mortality and this song He’s Gone by the Grateful Dead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvWO0h_TNeM

My friend T died of an Oxycontin overdose and was found dead by his dad face down in their back yard at age 26 a month after his mom died of cancer. I saw half the family die in a month. T’s brother and only sibling was my roommate in college.

I am shocked, shocked! that a Hillary Clinton crony and fundraiser, who just rammed through a measure to give 200,000 Virginia felons voting rights to help elect one of their own, is under FBI investigation for illegal campaign contributions.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/23/politics/terry-mcauliffe-fbi-doj-federal-investigation-campaign-contributions/

From TED (run time = 5:13) …

“How Free Is Our Freedom Of The Press?”

https://www.ted.com/talks/trevor_timm_how_free_is_our_freedom_of_the_press

Some longtime Democrats can no longer stomach their party’s endemic corruption, or more likely, are butt-hurt over their small cut of the graft and patronage.

http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/05/23/shaun-king-of-the-daily-news-why-im-leaving-the-democratic-party/

A preview of coming attractions once the collectivist comrades of the DNC install their Permanent Democrat Supermajority kleptocracy.

http://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/98435/ferfal-understanding-societal-collapse

Democrat = corrupt to the core.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-23/former-clinton-foundation-board-member-probed-over-unlawful-campaign-contributions

Hey, I am just as racist as the next guy, but Trump????

Get rrrrready to rrrrrrumble….

“He could bankrupt America like he’s bankrupted his companies. Ask yourself: How could anybody lose money running a casino? Really.” Clinton was apparently referring to Trump’s Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

If you like your corrupt influence peddling, you can keep your corrupt influence peddling. Hilary for Prison 2016!

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/virginia-gov-terry-mcauliffe-under-fbi-investigation-possible-campaign-violations-n578946

Our Permanent Democrat Supermajority isn’t going to build itself, you know.

http://www.mrctv.org/blog/border-apprehensions-surge-past-fy2014-numbers

Ventura, CA Housing Affordability Surges As Prices Plunge 16% YoY

http://www.movoto.com/ventura-ca/market-trends/

Hillary Clinton’s Email Story Continues to Get Harder and Harder to Believe

Emails poke holes in Clinton’s initial explanation for why she decided to exclusively use a private email server

Chris Cillizza | Washington Post - June 30, 2016

On Monday night, the Associated Press published a piece noting the release of an additional 165 pages of emails Hillary Clinton sent from her private email address while serving as secretary of state. These were emails that had never been previously released and only were made public because of a court order in response to a request from a conservative group.

And yet again, the emails poke holes in Clinton’s initial explanation for why she decided to exclusively use a private email server for her electronic correspondence while serving as the nation’s top diplomat.

Let’s start with this from the AP story: “The emails were not among the 55,000 pages of work-related messages that Clinton turned over to the agency in response to public records lawsuits seeking copies of her official correspondence.”

Remember that Clinton and a small group of people working for her reviewed all of the emails she sent from her private server and made the decision about what was solely personal and what was work-related. She handed over the work-related email and permanently deleted those that she and her team decided were purely personal. She wound up deleting more emails than she turned over to State.