LISTEN UP!
Clear your calendars now, I don’t care what you committed to.
Today – 6:30 PM — Montecristo Lounge at J&R Cigars, 301 Route 10 East, Whippany, NJ 07981
No excuses.
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From the Washington Post:
Regulators relax proposed mortgage rule
Federal regulators on Wednesday softened a proposed rule that would require banks to keep a stake in home loans that they parcel out to investors, for fear that the policy would disrupt the nascent housing recovery.
The move will likely quiet the outcry from industry groups and housing advocates who have cautioned against strict rules that could freeze home buyers out of the market. Banks have warned that a pile-on of new mortgage regulations would raise their costs and ultimately make it more difficult or expensive for consumers to get a loan.
In response, six agencies, including the Federal Reserve, have loosened the definition of the types of home loans — known as qualified residential mortgages or QRM — that are deemed secure enough to be exempt from the extra requirements.
Regulators initially defined qualified residential mortgages as those with at least a 20 percent down payment and no more than a 36 percent debt-to-income ratio. That 2011 proposal raised fears that the definition was so strict that it would limit access to credit for low- and moderate-income Americans.
The new 505-page proposal has eliminated the down-payment requirement and raised the debt-to-income ratio to 43 percent. On loans that do not meet that threshold, banks and bond issuers will have to keep a 5 percent interest in the mortgages as they get bundled into securities for investors. That’s to make the banks retain some of the risk and prevent a repeat of the shoddy mortgage securities created during the financial crisis.
Good Morning, New Jersey! Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
Jesus, for the past 4 hours I’d thought today was Wednesday
Maybe opening a distillery wasn’t the best of ideas.
Strong GDP and Jobless Claims numbers – Clot – Let the guys know to warm up the Tomahawks.
Weekly Claims down 6,000 to 331,000
4 Week Moving Average up slightly (750) to 331,250
GDP revised way up to 2.5% and that’s with the sequester impact
JJ — check this out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/opinion/the-new-flood-insurance-disaster.html?_r=0
The new 505-page proposal has eliminated the down-payment requirement and raised the debt-to-income ratio to 43 percent.
The twerker fans get to buy a house again and some Goldman employee with a really small d1ck gets to buy an Audi from the proceeds of a “new” type of investment.
another one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/29/nyregion/overhaul-and-a-hurricane-have-flood-insurance-rates-set-for-huge-increases.html?pagewanted=all
Sorry, I’m in Stratford on Avon today.
You there on business? You visiting us?
(7)
“As a result, government officials, grass-roots organizations and the residents are mobilizing to prevent the higher premiums from taking hold.”
Organize, lobby, and steal. The american way.
For anyone who ever had the pleasure of spending a day at the old Accident Park:
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/08/inside_action_park_the_worlds_most_dangerous_park.html
#11…I was banned for life from the speedboats in 1981….I miss understood the ill defined hand signals of some 16 year old and ended up swamping and sinking two boats….woops…
The Alpine Slide is probably the most single terrifying thing ever invented. Entirely devoid of any safety features at all. I think by the second or third year, the concrete track was covered in more abraded skin and blood than sand and stone.
Truly the devils work.
That Action Park video was awesome. Brought back a ton of memories. That place was wild.
Alpine Slide – same thing still exists at CamelBack (just to name one) today, no?
http://www.cbkmountainadventures.com/attractions/NEW!-Mountain-Coaster.aspx
15 – Not even close
The mashable video is spot on – watch it. The comment in there about folks not from the area not believing the stories about that place, spot on too, keep that in mind as you read this.
Track was concrete as far as I remember – smooth fiberglass? no way, it was all concrete. Think winter olympics luge track, but made out of concrete, with the sled being plastic with rollers on the bottom.
The track was constructed with absolutely no thought about safety or physics at all, if you tried to go down without braking, you would fly off the track, absolutely no doubt about that. There was nothing holding the cart to the track at all.
Probably better that there was nothing to physically keep the cart on the track, hell, it was probably less dangerous for you to fly off the track then skid down it in your 1982 bathing suit, no shirt, no shoes, no pads, no gloves, no helmet. Oh, and then get hit by the cart behind you.
The comment in the video about the brakes not working was absolutely correct. The brakes were a rod that you pulled up with, simple lever, with some sort of rubber pad to contact the track to stop. If you got a cart with the pad worn down, stopping was nearly impossible, and you’d skid the whole way down with metal on concrete. The other alternative was a cart with some kind of new pad, or the rod bent, in which case you couldn’t build any speed at all.
There was no cart control, you would routinely slam into the person who went down ahead of you if they were being too cautious, or they had the above mentioned brake problem. There were plenty of blind curves, so it was very easy to slam into the car in front at a really high speed, with zero warning to the person in the front car, whiplash galore.
Worst were the folks who freaked out about not having good brakes, and tried to stop the carts by putting their hands or feet out, bad move, very bad move. Although I don’t remember ever seeing the collage of maiming and injury at the top of the ski lift you took up to ride it, that they mentioned in the video.
Again, I really need to emphasize the fact that this thing was built with zero thought about physics and relied 100% on the cart rider’s ability to control the cart, to not die. Imagine taking a 12 year old, with absolutely no training at all, and letting him take a luge cart down an olympic track, with no helmet, no instruction, no training, and no inspection of the equipment. THAT was the alpine slide.
hey update still alive still can’t make it
The old slide on mats the sent you over a jump into a concrete wall, ahh memories from Traction Park. I used to downhill mtb mountain creek ended up with bruised kidneys closest I ever ended up with an injury at the old Action Park.
Spent many Summers at Action Park. The danger of the Alpine Slide, besides getting one with worn breaks, was that in order to stay in your cart on a long banked curve, you would need to lean in. If you did not lean back out when you cam off the turn or if you went into a turn banked in the other direction, you would definitely flip, or at least burn the sides of your knees, when they rubbed the cement track. Flying off onto the grass was about the safest thing you could do on that ride.
I can’t watch videos at work, but does anyone remember their looping slide? It’s got to be on that tape. I think it was open for about a week. This was by far, the most painful waterslide ever. The loop was too small and it would really hurt your spine to bend around it.
The years we used to go, I remember reading about multiple deaths in the speed boat attraction, and once a live wire fell from a poll and landed on a couple slides killing two or three more.
I’m surprised more people didn’t get killed there. At least a third of their rides one could easily take their own lives on.
Remember the surf hill too, with the big jump in it. If you gained too much speed, you would crash into the cylindrical cushion at the end of the track with some insane speed. Not to mention that the surface was so hard that you could break a rib when landing on your chest after the jump. I wonder who insured that place?
That old 100 ft tall water slide at Action Park was the best. It always had a crowd at the bottom watching the free shows as girls lost their tops and bottoms on the way down. You can still see parts of the old concrete Alpine slide when you ride the ski lift up the mountain.
I went to Action Park in the 70’s, 80’s (a lot!), and even the 90’s. The alpine slide was great! I always wore a shirt and sneakers on the slide and I was the fastest of my group, so I would always lead, stop at the first curve, and wait up for my buddies and then we would race all the way down. I only wiped once and it was because I was high on the banking when the “high” part ended before the curve did. My sled flew off the track but I landed on the track, still on by back, still feet first. Luckily I had the presence of mind to keep my arms in and arch my back, sliding to an eventual stop on just my heels and shoulders, luckily I was wearing a heavier collared sport shirt. The deceleration still wore flat spots on the heels of my sneakers and burned about a quarter size hole clear through the back of one should with only about a quarter-sized wound on the same shoulder.
The trick on the Loop-de-loop water slide was you had to press the back of your head hard into the surface of the slide otherwise you would emerge with a nasty headache as your neck snapped back at the bottom smashing your head into the slide where it should have been in the first place.
What they forgot to mention about the wave pool is that they used to provide or rent dense, flexible, neoprene rafts. The first few times there it was like a carpet in the deep end with struggling, nearly drowning, raft-less swimmers often getting trapped (unseen to others) beneath the carpet of rafts and riders at the surface. I’m not sure if the rafts went away before or after the first drowning. It was more like a giant washing machine than it was a wave pool.
My engineering friends and I used up a lot of our sick days at Singer Kearfott in Wayne/Totowa/Little Falls going to Action Park on hot summer days when we were in our mid 20’s on hot summer days in the mid 80’s. We used to call it “Death Park”. Good times, good times.
“I wonder who insured that place?”
There’s a link below the video with the second part of the documentary. In it, a lawyer describes it as at the fringes of legality…..the owner created his own insurance company based in the cayman islands…a huge “legal red flag”…
Re: Action Park
I didn’t grow up around here, and never had the experience of going to Action Park. But watching that video and reading these comments, I’m laughing so hard I’m crying. (Sort of like Action Park itself then, I guess?)
Ah, the 1980s . . .
Action Park is located where the old Playboy Club used to be. The action was in their not on the stupid slides.
Part 2
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/08/best_action_park_memories_from_njcom_users.html
“A 15 year old kid walking around with a budweiser can was not frowned upon…..and not all that uncommon”
I have vague memories of the place….most notably, tanks and tennis balls.
btw, the funniest part is the guy’s son who made Action Park talks about how no one comes up to him with a bad memory. They love their Alpine Slide scars that are 30 years old and its true. Nothing but people laughing up a storm about how their skin was ruined on those user comments.
The tanks and tennis balls were pretty stupid, though driving the tank looked awesome. I don’t think I was old enough to do it though. I did once do a moonflip off of the cliff, over rotated and temporarily lost my suit. I don’t know what it was, but I never saw as much man ass in public as was displayed at AP. Some of it, was even mine.
[26] I beg to differ — the funniest part is the sheer lunacy of that loop-de-loop water slide, which looks like something my 3 year-old would draw. Awesome.
The most interesting part of Action Park is Gene Mulvihill. He supposedly got his start with Bob Brennan and First Jersey/Mayflower Securities cold calling people from a phone booth to pitch penny stocks. Once, when he was convicted of a felony, his “sentence” was to buy Hamburg Mountain, which he later sold to Intrawest Ski Company for top dollar as part of the ski area (they planned on building condos on it) and somehow concealed the fact that it was deed restricted to recreational uses so no development. A friend of mine managed the ski shop at Vernon Valley years ago and claims that the last thing he did every night after closing was to bring bags of cash to Gene’s house in Vernon. I could go on and on, the guy is a local legend.
Attitash Mountain in NH had an Alpine slide back in the early 70’s. I remember riding it as a kid. No safety features whatsoever, you could fly right off if you wanted to.
What a blast that was for a 12YO boy!
Cannot make the GTG even though I’d love to. Back to school night tonight, house walk thru and closing tomorrow.
And you guys are about 120 miles away.
Didn’t anon try to drum up some sympathy for this guy when he looked like a regular drive by victim?
http://www.nj.com/passaic-county/index.ssf/2013/08/man_who_reported_paterson_drive-by_shot_himself_instead_police_say.html
Scores opening at the Taj in september
Food for thought before the chinkbots overrun the place.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100997543
Looks like Lefty is making good on his threat to defect from Cali!
http://www.bankrate.com/lite/real-estate/celebrity-house-for-sale-phil-mickelson-1.aspx
grim (3)-
You’re in the distillery business? Are you in with the Jersey Artisan people in Fairfield?
I want to sell anything that grim distills. Even if it sucks, I can make firebombs with it.
I don’t drink nearly enough whiskey. It is the only tempering influence in my life.
You’re in the distillery business? Are you in with the Jersey Artisan people in Fairfield?
No, this one is my own baby, Silk City Distillers.
So market has improved for good homes in good locations at good prices. We now need dummies to purchase the crappy homes in crappy locations at unreasonable prices. Enter the Feds proposal to lower lending standards. Rinse, repeat..what a joke.
Fast Eddie is in the fcuking house. Anyone else here?
[41]
Dude, you’re like, super early. I’m still at the office.
im here for better or worse. :)
drinking a sam adams in the bar.
for the lawyers:
http://www.skadden.com/newsletters/Agencies_Propose_Revised_Risk_Retention_Rule.pdf
I’m a Guinness guy. Or scotch.
I just lit up a Padron 6 x 60. There is no missing me. lol
Padrons are the best cigars.