A Fine Line Between Hope And Delusion
A report from The Real Deal on Florida. “When Argentinian developer Alan Faena announced an ambitious high-end condo project in Miami Beach three years ago, Faena House became a symbol of the heights to which developers could take the luxury market, shattering Miami-Dade’s residential price record with the $60 million sale of its penthouse and selling out its lower units to a who’s who of Wall Street bigwigs. But four months after hedge fund honcho Ken Griffin closed on Faena’s duplex penthouse and the unit beneath it in September 2015, he placed the them back on the market for a total of $73 million. Not long after news broke of Griffin’s sprint for the exit, resale inventory began piling up at the 18-story tower. By early August, $148 million worth of Faena condos were up for grabs, representing about 20 percent of the units in the tower. Some of those have lingered on the MLS for a year now.”
“The same is true for many of Miami’s shiny new luxury buildings. By the count of development tracker CraneSpotters.com, there were nearly 11,000 condo listings (not including preconstruction) in Miami-Dade County east of I-95 in late August. The average asking price was just north of $1 million, or $572 per square foot.”
“PMG Principal Ryan Shear said his firm is in no rush to get out the door with its latest project. The developer is still clearing out the remaining inventory at its four South Florida projects, including Echo Brickell and Muse, which are under construction, as well as its completed projects Echo Aventura and Sage. ‘I hate to say this, but we were lucky,’ Shear said. ‘It’s definitely not as fast as it was, and there’s definitely been some price depression.’”
From Mansion Global. “One might imagine that a Hawaii beachfront vacation home associated with Hollywood A-Lister Julia Roberts would attract multiple bidders. However, it has not yet happened. After lingering on the market for more than 18 months, the actress recently cut the price to $19.5 million from $29.85 million, trying to find an interested buyer. Such cases aren’t rare. On the East Coast, Gwyneth Paltrow and her ex-husband Chris Martin have recently reduced the asking price of their TriBeCa penthouse to $12.85 million from $14.25 million, when it first came to the market in March.”
“Actor Matthew Perry had to settle for $2.85 million less than the original $25 million he thought his Malibu home was worth. Pop singer Katy Perry sold her Los Angeles home for $1.36 million less than the original asking price. Singer and fashion designer Jessica Simpson’s Beverly Hills estate was sold for $6.4 million, almost $1.6 million less than what she had wanted. The list goes on and on. Leonard Steinberg, president of brokerage firm Compass in New York concurred, adding that in the real estate markets, correct pricing is everything. ‘Assuming a celebrity associated property is automatically more valuable than market rates can be hopeful…and there is a fine line between hope and delusion,’ he said.”
The Pocono Record in Pennsylvania. “The once proud and formerly gated Pine Ridge private community in Bushkill is facing dire financial problems as many residents have fallen behind in their homeowners’ association dues leaving the community with a $450,000 budget shotfall. Board members have sought help from local and state officials and, in a recent letter to residents, the association noted that it does not have enough money in its budget to make it through the fiscal year.”
“Board members said state government may have to intervene. ‘I don’t believe many of our residents have ever recovered from the recession,’ said Alexandra Tutuianu, the community manager at Pine Ridge. She added that 147 homeowners in Pine Ridge have lost their homes to foreclosures in three years. ‘We have tried everything in our situation. Once a homeowner files for bankruptcy, you can’t touch them. We’ve asked residents to pay what they can and they have to realize that the community cannot function without the amenities that we need.’”
The Wyofile on Wyoming. “On April 28th, Mark Frausto went to work at Alpha Coal’s Belle Ayr mine, only to learn it was his last day. Along with 37 others at Alpha’s two mines, Frausto was let go. He’d worked 14 years with Peabody Coal, but only one with Alpha. There would be no severance package, no month’s pay, no buffer at all but filing for unemployment. Frausto’s layoff came just one month after Black Thursday, March 31st, when Peabody and Arch Coal cut 465 miners between them. ‘We didn’t know what the future was,’ Frausto says.”
“In real estate, the number of houses on the market has increased steadily over the last six months. In March, there were 417 houses up for sale, close to double what there was a year ago. By August, that number was up to 553. Rental properties still report a slow market, which indicates movement out of the city by more mobile energy or service workers who lost their jobs. Apartment complexes that used to have waitlists now find themselves with vacancies and offer reduced rents.”
“‘People are moving out faster than they’re moving in,’ said Jordan Newell, a leasing agent with Highland Properties, which manages three Gillette apartment buildings with affordable housing. Out of their 200 apartments, 37 are vacant.”
The Real Deal article is lengthy and has a lot of good information:
‘In January 2016, Related bumped commissions to 10 percent at two of its projects in Greater Downtown Miami, the Brickell Heights 02, which was 89 percent sold out, and SLS Lux, which was 95 percent sold. Though these cases involved projects that were already out of the ground and approaching sellout, for some in the industry, the moves set off warning bells.’
“It sends terrible signals to the market, that you can’t sell, that you’re desperate,” said Key International’s Ardid. “What you’re saying with 7 percent is forget about my product — I’m giving a higher commission because I need sales. Bring buyers here because you’ll get paid more.”
Here’s a graphic with some price cuts:
http://therealdeal.com/miami/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/priciest-biggest-condo-sales-large.jpg
From the Wyoming article:
‘According to voting data for Campbell County, there are 14,678 registered voters ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Only 1010 of them are Democrats. Darryl Anderson, a well informed voter who prefers to be an independent but registered Republican to vote in some primaries, says that he’s watched a political hardening occur in the energy workers who frequent his auto repair shop.’
‘The sense of being victimized by a “war” on coal has gotten much stronger, and the EPA, never very popular here, has become a dirty word. “Probably more so now than it was three years ago,” Anderson says.’
‘Gathering around a table between their turns at the lanes, this bowling team’s members have little doubt about what will decide Gillette’s future. “It all depends on November,” Michaels says. He supports presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has promised to abandon the U.S.’s global commitments to limit carbon emissions and roll back a moratorium on federal coal leasing.’
‘Michaels’ daughter Jenikah, a high-school senior, agrees with her father. If Hillary Clinton is elected, she says, “this town will go off the map.”
We bankrupted some folks…
Crooked lying Hillary will say anything to get elected.
Stupid people will believe she is “fighting for us” and vote for her.
Natural gas may still be cheaper than coal whatever Trump does.
The US labor market has not looked this good since the 1970s, judging solely by initial jobless claims.
The number of first-time filings for unemployment insurance fell to 249,000 last week, according to the Department of Labor.
That’s just 1,000 more than the lowest level of this economic cycle, in April.
The four-week average of claims, which evens out some of the week-by-week volatility, fell by 2,500, to 253,500, the lowest level since December 8, 1973.
Economists had forecast that claims climbed to 256,000 last week from 254,000 the week before, according to Bloomberg.
Because it’s a weekly data series, it tends to be volatile and subject to revision. But the claims report is one of the timeliest ways to gauge how the labor market is doing, and usually gives an early warning when things are going south.
But right now, claims tell us that the labor market is solid. The weekly print has not risen above 300,000 for 83 straight weeks, the longest streak since 1970.
The claims numbers come ahead of the September jobs report on Friday, which is forecast to show that the US economy added 172,000 nonfarm payrolls, according to Bloomberg.
those unemployment numbers are a joke.
They know what the real numbers are but this political bs continues.
What are the real numbers? Where do you get those?
Plenty of jobs out there for the skilled or educated. College grads see about a 3% unemployment rate.
Personally, I believe that more interesting is information about household income. A good job market means that households should be earning more money (on a real basis, not just nominal).
However, changing demographics skews this data…as more people retire, there are more households where there is dramatically less income–which may be totally independent of the job market.
And so, what really matters is how different household groups are doing.
The Census keeps the following buckets, households householder under 25, 25-44, 45-64, and 65+.
Here is the raw data.
http://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?src=bkmk
I pulled this data from 2005-2015, and then adjusted for inflation, and the results are pretty interesting:
1. The only age group that is doing better than 2005 is the 65+ age group. I can only attribute this to people working longer/retiring later. All other age groups have real median household income less than it was in 2005.
2. Growth in median household income was pretty weak even before the crash. From 2005-2006, it was sub 2% for all age groups, under 1% for 25-64.
3. Median Household income growth for households under 25 got beaten up more than all other groups, but is now going up the fastest at 5% per year for 2013-2015 (2016 data isn’t available).
4. Median Household income growth for households from 25-64 grew by more than 3% from 2014-2015, the best growth in median household income in a decade (if not longer).
5. Median Household income growth for all age groups other than 65+ didn’t really start turning positive on a year-on-year basis until 2012-2013.
Based on this data, which I’m sure the Fed is paying attention to, there is finally some broad based income growth…2016 should mark the year that we finally exceed 2005 numbers on a real basis.
beyond rising stock and home prices nothing has changed as usual.
Did you want the gov to ask Apple to pay people more? Apple has $86 billion in cash. People get paid what they are worth.
The gov should stop the cheating–agreed.
“2016 should mark the year…”
that 5% of the population has left the workforce. Participation rate is back to 1978 level.
ZIRP is lifting the top tier and pulling up the median. That isn’t much of a benefit for bankrupting the nation.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART/
Participation rate is also influenced by demographics (fewer 75 year olds participate than 40 year olds…and if the 75 year old population is growing faster than 40 year old population…you get a falling participation rate, all else equal).
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
Labor force participation rate is down, yes, but not nearly to 1978 levels when you look at the main working age population.
Median household income takes into consideration the effect of people not working, working part time, etc.
Looking at these statistics by specific age cohort takes out the influence of the changing age composition of the population.
Additionally, the median household income does not increase with increasing income inequality. In fact, if all you do is increase the household income of the top 5% of the population, but leave the rest the same, the median will not change.
In other words, median is not an average.
Test, what is the median of the following 5 numbers?
1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Answer: 3
What is the median of the following 5 numbers?
1, 2, 3, 4, 500
Answer: 3
In other words, pulling up the top tier will not pull up the median as you suggest. If the median is rising, the middle must be rising, not just the top tier.
People get paid what they are worth.
Suzanne said the same thing about the houses, too.
You must agree though Hillary wasn’t worth 250K per speech.
Silly, she wasn’t being paid for the speech. She was actually being paid for the political favors.
Suzanne said the same thing about the houses, too.
apples and oranges
Willful ignorance?
The old timers are not working less.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11324230
More math schooling:
What is the median of the following 5 numbers?
0, 1, 3.15, 3.25, 700
3.15! The average peeps doing better?
See how the average household is not automatically better just because the “median” went up? It is a deceptive statistic and shame on the Fed for running it up the flagpole.
The old timers are not working less.
Yes, but there are more all of them all of the time, making up a larger portion of all adults.
I can’t see a good reason to be concerned with the average instead of the median.
If you read my earlier post, you would see that I noted how more people are working later, which is why median household income for folks 65 and older went up almost 20% while the other age groups were pretty much stagnant. The incomes of these households went up because more of these people were working.
There is still a dramatic drop in participation rates as people age into retirement ages. It’s simply a less dramatic drop than it was 25 years ago.
Instead of falling from 80% participation rate at 50 years old to 30% at 65, it falls from 80% at 50 to 40% at 65.
Old timers now are working more than old timers in 1990.
Old timers now are working less than younger folks now.
Old timers in 1990 worked less than younger folks in 1990.
All three are true statements.
HOWEVER, now, old timers are making up a greater and greater share of the population, which is why looking at ALL households over time is deceiving.
Example:
Let’s say that 90% of households have their head less than 55 years old, and 10% have head greater than 55 years old. Participation rate is 80% in the former, but 40% in the latter.
The average participation rate across the entire population is 76%.
Let the population age a bit, and now let’s say that 85% of households have head under 55, and 15% are over 55, but the participation rate is the same for each age cohort as before.
The average participation rate across the entire population is now 74%.
If you are looking at participation rate over time as an indicator of labor market health, you are getting a false reading, because the change is entirely due to a shift in demographics.
And we know that we are in a time of such demographic shift right now. Looking at the same age cohort is the only way to compare given changing demographics.
Luckily, we don’t need to worry about sample sizes of 5 with this data. That said, most of the “wealth inequality” discussion revolves around the top 1% (or top 0.1%). Whether this group does dramatically better, or dramatically worse has almost NO impact at all on the median.
What matters is how the lower 95% are doing. You and I both agree. In that regard, here is the applicalble data:
http://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/income-poverty/historical-income-households.html
Look at the first table under H-1. It shows the upper bound for each fifth of households in the US…in other words, how much income it takes to be in the bottom 20% of households (more than this number and you are in the next 20%).
That number on a real basis bottomed in 2012 at approximatly $21,265, and now is at $22,800. From 2014-2015, that level increased by 6%. To be in the top 5%, the number increased by about 4%.
This is not a median, and it’s not skewed by how well the top 1% is doing, but it shows the same pattern as the median…namely that any meaningful improvement in household incomes only started recently (like from 2014-2015), but it shows that improvement hitting each quintile of the population by at least 4% from 2014 to 2015, with the lowest quintiles rising the most on a percentage basis.
Go to Shadowstats for the real unemployment numbers.
Too funny.
And they are asking for a state bailout too.
We need these amenities. We are the special snowflakes…
It is for the children…
We’ve asked residents to pay what they can and they have to realize that the community cannot function without the amenities that we need.
“They have to realize that the community cannot function without the amenities that we need.”
A fun preview of what will happen to all these amenity-laden luxury towers when people start having to choose between paying the mortgage or paying the HOA.
First to go will be the chauffeured car service, the water hookup in the dog grooming salon, and the residents-only restaurant. But what happens when they can’t afford cleaning service for the yoga studio or power for the screening room? And the HOA will just keep going up because fewer people will be paying in.
PS. Has anyone seen the film “High-Rise” on Netflix? It’s an intense visceral metaphor for class warfare and the property ladder, with some spot-on moments. The quote above pretty much sums up the movie. And my favorite line - “I know everyone else is in debt too; they just must be better at hiding it.”
‘Assuming a celebrity associated property is automatically more valuable than market rates can be hopeful…and there is a fine line between hope and delusion,’
Real estate and celebrities don’t mix.
6 Lessons From Nicolas Cage’s Real Estate Catastrophe
Actor Nicolas Cage lost a fortune through ill-advised real estate investments. Here are the six takeaways for average homeowners and investors.
John Persinos
Nov 12, 2015 2:28 PM EST
During his career apogee in the early 2000s, Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage was one of the highest-paid celebrities on the planet and was making as much as $40 million a year. Over the course of Cage’s nearly 30 years in show business, his movies have grossed a combined total of $4.7 billion. Then the wheels came off the wagon.
In 2009, the once high-flying Cage filed for bankruptcy. At the age of 51, he’s only now climbing back to financial solvency, largely by making as many movies as humanly possible. Still, tabloid headlines have recently referred to Cage as financially ” down and out.”
How could a multi-millionaire movie star fall so far, so fast? Simply put, Cage made colossally stupid real estate investments — and dug a deeper hole for himself through poor management of his property-related debts and obligations.
…
We must start an HBB gofundme site to support poor down-on-his luck Nicolas. Because everyone deserves a second chance to be an FB.
First it was a cartoon frog meme that was considered racis, now a cartoonist is banned from twitter:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/151301555066/the-week-i-became-a-target
Who’s next? The roadrunner, pepe le pew? Maybe Charles Schulz (peanuts author) was a nazi - yeah, I bet he was related to Sgt. Schulz from Hogans Heros! Its all a vast right wing conspiracy and society needs to be purged of cartoons and comic strips, its for the children!
Think about what free speech will look like if Hillary is elected. You will not DARE to criticize Madame Prezident. Posters everywhere of her, photo shopped pictures from 20 years ago while she lies in an ICU on a dozen machines. Relentless talk of all things Putin - the source of all war, pestilence, famine and that embarrassing body odor you just cant get rid of. Welcome to Orwell’s 1984.
What Twitter did was wrong. And some of your future vision may turn out to be close to the truth. But this historically has gone both ways, with overreaching not limited to the left. Conservatives have wanted to remove Doonesbury for what seems like forever.
He says that he was not banned, but shadowbanned. Of course, you’d to waste some of your life figuring out what the difference is.
Of course, some people would say that Twitter is a private corporation and should be free to do what it likes. The Dilbert guy is using Twitter for free, so he was able to spread his nonsense to thousands of people free of charge for a long time. If he doesn’t like Twitter, he should get together with other grog people and start his own rival service.
There is a rival service - http://www.gab.ai
People get too upset about what happens to them on social media. In many way, it’s kind of toxic.
Shadowbanning doesn’t just happen on social media. It happens to third party merchants on the larger e-commerce sites like Amazon and Ebay all the time now. Their internal search engines bury/manipulate listings at whim. It’s called “throttling”.
who’s who” = who’s dumb
blinded peakers
‘After lingering on the market for more than 18 months, the actress recently cut the price to $19.5 million from $29.85 million’
But there’s no bubble some say. A lot of this started in 2014. Expensive art, cars, wine, all have dropped a bunch. You have to back up a bit though. Were these $100 million painting selling prices so high all along? No, mansions and these things soared after 2009. Right about the time global QE happened.
Very true, but I think it goes back even before QE, it’s just that QE made it exponentially more bonkers.
I remember reading that Rob Lowe sold his Montecito mansion for $42 million in 2013. I googled it and he also sold another Montecito house for $25 million in 2005 after paying around $10 mil to build it. Both numbers are so far outside of rationality for the times that it’s like buying a Cadillac in the 1950s for what it would cost in today’s money. So did QE just torpedo the rich-person economy 50 years into the future, where ordinary mansions in small vacation towns cost $50mil?
Just one anecdotal example, of course. But it stuck in my mind because I thought at the time that it was literally beyond reason that a B-level actor like Rob Lowe would have a $42 million house. We’re not talking Tom Cruise here.
There’s all this nonsense about “Trump calls himself a genius and he lost over $900 million in one year?” I’m sure that’s not the story, and I don’t have all the facts.
That $900 million loss likely covers 15 years, maybe $60 million a year from 1981 to 1995. Before 1986 you could depreciate property over 15 years, and you could use the losses against other income, wages, dividends, other profits from other businesses etc. It’s been a long time and I don’t remember if the Passive Activity Loss rules came in 1986 or 1990, and that changed it so you can’t use the loss on your apartment building against your wages, dividends etc. Of course this made your actual return far less than your projected return when you invested, and property values tanked (along with other reasons.)
Also, it’s just depreciation, it’s not like he was selling rooms for $100 a night when his costs were $120.
And this has been posted elsewhere, but it bears repeating, Net Operating Loss deductions are available to EVERYONE, there’s no special loophole for Trump or “the 1%” etc.
Sounds like Trump lost a fortune in business and was bailed out by his bankers and knowledgeable tax adviser. I guess there is a certain kind of genius involved.
So, PB, how did Bill and Hillary amass over 200 million dollars since leaving the White House dead broke? Honest public servants don’t make even close to that kind of money.
And this has been posted elsewhere, but it bears repeating, Net Operating Loss deductions are available to EVERYONE, there’s no special loophole for Trump or “the 1%” etc.
That’s nice to know in case anyone’s making that claim. But it would to safe to guess that much less than one percent of the population will ever have a loss of 900 million on their 1040.
There was a major real estate downturn in the early 90’s. Loan workouts, etc. take a long time to resolve.
It is highly likely that the $900MM was related to the resolution of one or more of the problems that arose from the early 90’s RE downturn.
And I resemble your comment about the NOL deduction. I don’t think I had a specific “NOL”, but I had a suspended loss due to passive activity rules that I was finally able to take in 2015. Plenty fewer zeroes than Trump, but a suspended loss that I took later, none-the-less.
Who twacked my Twitter shares?
alphabet
Have they ever made any money? Seems like this social media stuff is a bunch of hype and smoke and mirrors.
valuations are crazy stupid
markets have become to big to fail
NSA must have paid well to scan yahoo/hotmail/gmails.
Snowden, get out of the house, see the movie
Deplorable.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/dozens-of-former-gop-lawmakers-announce-opposition-to-trump/ar-BBx4RHS
“Former” GOP lawmakers, which means they’re all on the gravy train of the globalists lobbies.
“Our party’s nominee this year is a man who makes a mockery of the principles and values we have cherished and which we sought to represent in Congress,” the group said in a statement.
“Given the enormous power of the office, every candidate for president must be judged rigorously in assessing whether he or she has the competence, intelligence, knowledge, understanding, empathy, judgment, and temperament necessary to keep America on a safe and steady course,” the letter continues. “Donald Trump fails on each of those measures, and he has proven himself manifestly unqualified to be president.”
“In nominating Donald Trump, the Republican Party has asked the people of the United States to entrust their future to a man who insults women, mocks the handicapped, urges that dissent be met with violence, seeks to impose religious tests for entry into the United States, and applies a de facto ethnicity test to judges,” the group said.
“He offends our allies and praises dictators. His public statements are peppered with lies. He belittles our heroes and insults the parents of men who have died serving our country. Every day brings a fresh revelation that highlights the unacceptable danger in electing him to lead our nation.”
Trump has repeatedly been stung by high-profile defections from Republicans, including military leaders and former administration officials from both Bush presidencies.
“It is in that spirit that, as Donald Trump’s unfitness for public office has become ever more apparent, we urge our fellow Republicans not to vote for this man whose disgraceful candidacy is indefensible. This is no longer about our party; it’s now about America. We may differ on how we will cast our ballots in November but none of us will vote for Donald Trump.”
………………………………………….
This worked out real well for Mitt Romney. NOT. But these guys don’t have Mitt Romney money, and won’t when Trump WINS.
“Given the enormous power of the office, every candidate for president must be judged rigorously in assessing whether he or she has the competence, intelligence, knowledge, understanding, empathy, judgment, and temperament necessary to keep America on a safe and steady course,” the letter continues.
Every candidate running for the House of Representatives, Senate or the Oval office is carefully scrutinized for their potential impact on Israel’s annual funding and access to state of the art military hardware.
So, their constituents voted for Trump and they still didn’t get a clue? Earth to the Republican Party: You’re shitting the bed.
When Trump loses he’ll be seen as the one who messed the bed and these Republicans as the people who got out the bed beforehand.
what happened to the HBB poter in FL that bought a house near the beach 6 months ago?
Hope it’s on the west side
I bought one in Jupiter Fl. a few miles from the beach over 4 years ago.
It has hurricane shutters on it now with a full refrigerator and freezer with a generator and lots of water in the garage.
Good luck Jethro. You got a John boat just in case?
“You got a John boat just in case?”
No, but I still have the same F250 I had when Hurricane Wilma crushed one side of the 8ft bed with a palm tree on the second side of the storm after the eye passed.
Broke out my Echo, cut it off, cut it up and went to work.
Careful with those John boats. That was the vessel I was using when I had my tragic boating accident and lost all my firearms overboard before the Great Hillary Gun Grab of 2017.
Never put all your rifles in one John boat.
What type of roof? Insured?
CBS exterior, hip roof with dimensional asphalt shingles and fully insured for wind.
Sounds tough… now if only you did not still have to drive to the beach and park like everyone else.
It is. He bought in Pinellas County.
I don’t want anyone’s home destroyed, even that of a real estate speculator, but if the storm makes landfall near Port St. Lucie, we’re all going to find out just how sturdy and/or up to code bubble-era construction is.
Muggy hasn’t been posting much. He is on the Gulf side I think.
The only thing Muggy has to worry about this storm is the people fleeing it.
So far it’s been kind of quiet over here in my neck of Tampa Bay. A little rain, a little breeze that comes and goes. That’s about it.
This hurricane is going to be “intersting” for Florida real estate.
1. Which homes were built to code
2. Which homes should have never been built at their location
3. Which homes have insurance
4. How much insurance will increase for next year
5. Which owners will demand a bailout. No one could have predicted this…
6. Which houses were abandoned and now destroyed. Maybe the banks and FB were hoping for something like this all along…
They should not be able to insure homes on barrier islands (gov backed).
Barrier islands are temporary, like sea walls.
Let’s get rid of all subsidies
Surfs up
Who wants the USA to escalate the war in Syria?
Who want to make sure Russia does not get it — at all costs?
What do we win?
Bush War is $6 trill, what did we get?
uhg
Jill Stein is the least interventionist candidate of the top four candidates including Gary Johnson, who (sadly) should be completely non-interventionist based on the libertarian philosophy.
A vote for Jill is taking away a vote from HRC and giving Trump a chance to ruin America and go debt king on us.
Testify. Jill Stein and Gary Johnson are the Controlled Opposition, and our Sweet William is a Useful Idiot in Hillary’s eyes.
Hey Sweet William, instead of being the parrot on Hillary’s shoulder, maybe you could educate yourself on why so many Deplorables are supporting Trump.
http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/10/05/must-read-of-the-day-i-listened-to-a-trump-supporter/
I think that you or someone posted that yesterday. The writer writes, “This is not a person who is stupid or racist.”. That means that she’s not deplorable. Though the story sounds like it may be partially made up.
‘Who want to make sure Russia does not get it — at all costs?’
That would be the neocons/Clinton gang. Russia and Syria have been allies for 50 years. Russia has long had a naval base there, sparsely manned because it isn’t very strategic. This is more pointless, bloody regime change, courtesy of Obama and Clinton. 400,000 dead. $6 trillion would buy half the houses in the US, BTW. But sure, let’s cast another meaningless protest vote.
Russia can have Syria. USA gets Cuba. Lets make a deal.
If Hillary gets elected, we’ll probably have a war in the phillipines as well. Because you can never have enough war.
Don’t forget that show Cupcake Wars on the Food Network. It started during the Obama administration, of course.
The way we’re socially re-engineering our military, we’ll be fighting our necon wars with cupcakes, all right.
That will make wars a lot cheaper.
The Tampa Bay Times carried Sen. McCain’s senile warmonger editorial this morning. I about threw up in my mouth, but that’s the establishment thinking.
Trump says : “I think under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the generals have been reduced to rubble. They have been reduced to a point that’s embarrassing for our country,” Trump said at NBC’s Commander-in-Chief Forum in New York on Wednesday.
Trump has made a proposed buildup of the U.S. military a centerpiece of his wider agenda to “take back our country.”
“I’m going to make our military so big, so powerful, so strong, that nobody — absolutely nobody — is gonna mess with us,” Trump says in a video posted on his campaign website.
To pay for the expansion, Trump said he’ll ask Congress to lift the so-called “sequester” spending caps that were enacted in the Budget Control Act of 2011. That would add roughly $450 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
sounds warmonger-eee
You’re right, it does. This kind of bravado sounds like the lead-in to a pro wrestling match.
We need a complete re-think of strategy and objectives. Even Brzezinski acknowledges this.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/08/25/the-broken-chessboard-brzezinski-gives-up-on-empire/
I’m tired of watching my country be the schlongeEE. Trump will get the USA back to being the schlongER.
Trump’s unpredictability is going to make adversaries think twice about provoking him.
Both Dump and Hitlary believe in the primacy of the state over the individual. I am still surprised Ben Jones knew Ron Paul personally and has decided to really back up someone totally the opposite of Ron Paul.
http://reason.com/archives/2016/10/06/donald-trump-and-hillary-clinton-have-mo
“Different but same
Donkey Hotey/Flickr
What if the most remarkable aspect of this presidential election is not how much the two principal candidates disagree with each other but how much they actually agree?
What if they are both statists? What if they both believe that the government’s first duty is to take care of itself? What if they both believe in the primacy of the state over the individual?
What if, in clashes between the state and individuals, they both would use the power of the state to trample the rights of individuals?
What if the first priority of both is not to decrease the size and scope of government but to expand it? What if they both believe that the federal government may lawfully and constitutionally right any wrong, tax any behavior and regulate any event? What if they both want to add a few thousand new employees to the federal payroll, give them badges and guns and black shirts, and engage them as federal police to insulate the federal government further from the people and the states?
Please don’t post entire articles or I’ll get sued.
What if they are both statists? What if they both believe that the government’s first duty is to take care of itself?
This person needs to take a freshman political science class at a community college somewhere. It’s pretty primitive to think that the government looks after its own interests as opposed to those of certain interests within the country, unless he’s referring to government employees.
“Bush War is $6 trill, what did we get?”
Jesus is still scheduled for a cameo appearance.
1. Stay in the USD
2. Complain about Yellen and Fiat money in general.
You can only choose 1.
https://news.bitcoin.com/china-bitcoin-capital-flight-fintech/
As growth in the world’s largest bitcoin-trading country slows, correlations in the USD price of the Yuan and bitcoin are leading to suggestions that investors are using the currency as a go-to money transfer method.
“Interestingly, the larger price movements in the digital currency have tracked devaluations in the [Yuan],” Investopedia writes today.
Citing an RMB/BTC graph from Bloomberg, the publication notes that upticks in the BTC value per USD closely follow government moves to devalue the Yuan.
“When these events occur. . .the price of Bitcoin soon follows,” it comments.
Despite such activity staying confined to a very small section of society, since China still has the most traders of Bitcoin worldwide, so the numbers involved still hold significance. In the 30 days to October 5, traders exchanged 42.5 million BTC for Yuan, compared to just 352,000 USD in same period.
“The price of Bitcoin lately does seem to track to a certain extent the dollar price of the Yuan, and it makes sense that Bitcoin could be used as a tool to exceed money exchange limits set by Chinese regulators,” Investopedia adds. “If true, the price of Bitcoin may spike once again the next time the CNY is lowered.”
Bitcoin as a get-out for Chinese investors has been a conspicuous phenomenon for some years, yet if current trends continue, both the Bitcoin community and traditional investors will start expecting a legislative response.
“You can only choose 1.” - by that I mean you can only chose one of those two.
But your article is about escaping the Yuan. Makes no sense at all.
There are plenty of alternate strategies.
Do me a favor and please up the words “analogy,” “metaphor.”
Is Yuan a fiat or not? Is the nature of one fiat different than that of another? If so, explain.
Congress- no brains, no headaches:
following the presidential veto override of the Sept 11 bill last week, a group of Iraqis are planning to sue US seeking monetary damages for the US invasion of 2003.
I hope they win. I hope the people in the US win against the Saudi’s for 9/11 too. Maybe the government would think twice next time.
Me, too. I also hope that all countries get their own nuclear weapons so the neocons would have to wage wars in their own country.
I hope the Saudis get their day on the courts and spill the bins on Mossad and CIA help they had.
Cant we have the Saudis pay the Iraqis and call it all even?
Dont worry, the Iraqi oil will pay for the war. We must have extra by now.
“Dont worry, the Iraqi oil will pay for the war.”
That fugg’n Dubya… seriously incompetent.
Report from Las Vegas, just tried to put in an offer for a new construction and was told that they do not accept offers on new builds. It is full price or nothing. This is in a high 300’s neighbourhood so not entry level by any means.
I know now is not the time to buy but given the location we were willing to pay very close to asking only wanting to get rid of lot fee. Would not even entertain it.
Time will tell if they are right or if you are lucky.
The speaker condemns the GOP nominee all the time. He’s called him out for joking about someone shooting Hillary Clinton, anti-semitism, racism, insulting a Gold Star family, praising an Iraqi dictator, inciting violence, and associating with white supremacists, among other things.
But Ryan is still endorsing Trump for president.
“My idiot windbag is better than your corrupt politician?”
But…but…how can freight volumes still be collapsing when Goldman’s helmet-haired hobbit keeps assuring us economic growth has been robust?
http://www.businessinsider.com/things-are-getting-ugly-in-the-us-trucking-industry-2016-10
There must be some transportation-related statistic which has no bearing on the economy. Remember the infamous Baltic Dry Index, the favorite Zero Hedge indicator a few years ago?
Oh dear. Hackers are doing what our lapdog media would never do: spilling the beans on Hillary, the DNC, and their pay-for-play corruption and influence-peddling. Are you clutching your pearls, PB?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-06/hacker-dumps-thousands-emails-close-clinton-insider-reveals-hillarys-new-email-addre
I love how the Fed’s Faceplant page is being trolled by the awake and aware. This is comedy gold.
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1072300072847984&id=1043592612385397&refid=17&_ft_=top_level_post_id.1072300072847984%3Atl_objid.1072300072847984%3Athid.1043592612385397%3A306061129499414%3A3%3A0%3A1472713199%3A-2656696189458760041
AWOL Afghan trainees in the US must be lining up early to vote for Hillary. There can be no other explanation.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-06/dozens-afghan-troops-go-missing-during-training-military-bases-us
The wind is really picking up, Hillary just flew by my window.
Clinging desperately to her broomstick?
Phony, from now on I will hear this when I see Hillary…
Miss Gulch/Wicked Witch of the West theme music
Getting slick and rolling it off the cuff and working a small room like a boss:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?416581-1/donald-trump-holds-town-hall-meeting-sandown-new-hampshire&vod
If you can’t walk down a flight of four stairs (last Friday) without taking the elbow of the Secret Service, you are too sick, too weak, and too old to lead, please just die already.
I don’t watch TeeVee on a big screen TeeVee. I stream The Donald on C-SPAN on the laptop after work. And he does at least one rally every single day.
Where is that sick, sad, old bag of bones that the Democrat Party nominated? She is dying. Half dead and one foot in the grave.
Expect the airbrushed Hillary, the medicated Hillary, the walking dead corpse Hillary at the debate Sunday. This woman died months ago, she is just pretending to be alive.
I want to see her stop pretending and die on stage, on live TeeVee
Even a “Weekend at Bernie’s” Hillary can serve as a conduit for orders issued by her Goldman Sachs puppetmasters.
I won’t stop posting about this here until Ben Jones stops me.
So many dead cities, lives without futures, in the manufacturing towns and cities of post-industrial Ohio.
Got heroin?
The Democrat Party wants these people to die, to disappear.
If Manhattan and West Los Angeles and Washington were to disappear tomorrow, it would be no net loss to the United States.
They contribute nothing. They build nothing. They are parasites.
Hundreds of millions of Americans love the movies and TV that comes out of Hollywood. People are constantly talking about all of the new series on Netflix and Hulu.
But some of the former sheeple are starting to unplug from their electronic opiation. The MSM must be horrified.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ratings-fumble-for-nfl-surprises-networks-advertisers-1475764108
In West LA’s defense, some hot women live there.
Stepford candidate
Hard Times: Lost on Long Island
HBO documentary from 2012; I remember hearing about it when it first came out.
I’ve only watched the first two minutes. The first guy interviewed is like the Zelig of NYC. He was at the World Trade Center for the first bombing, on the Long Island Railroad when Colin Ferguson shot it up, and at the World Trade Center in 2001 when it collapsed.
Sorry, it was late.
Full documentary on youtube Hard Times: Lost on Long Island.
Is a massive international market meltdown inevitable in case Trump wins?
The Financial Times
Globalisation
Trump angst looms over economic elite at IMF meetings
Global policymakers fret discreetly about Republican candidate
Donald Trump. It is beyond hope that he will moderate his attacks
© Reuters
4 hours ago
by: Shawn Donnan and Claire Jones in Washington
The world’s economic elite spent this week invoking fears of protectionism and the existential crisis facing globalisation while avoiding any mention of Donald Trump by name.
But the US presidential candidate and his anti-establishment politics have loomed large at this week’s annual meetings in Washington of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. He has been a sort of Voldemort for the global economic order — like the villain in Harry Potter, his name is spoken only in hushed tones and behind closed doors.
“It is terrifying,” said one senior official of the prospect of a Trump victory in the November 8 election before laying out a scenario in which a President Trump would lead the US into a default on its debts, the collapse of the dollar and US treasuries as safe haven assets and the tumbling of the global economy into a 1930s-like crisis.
…