From the Lower Hudson Journal News:
Middle-income earners priced out of homes
Joel Bodian wants a cozy, two-bedroom home with a tiny yard to share with his black Labrador retriever, Delilah.
The single 63-year-old self-employed mechanical engineer is finding it increasingly difficult to work in his small Brewster apartment.
…
“I sometimes have to a make a model out of sheet rubber, and the glue smell – you can’t do it in an apartment. In a house I can do it,” he said.But Bodian’s search for a modest house at an affordable price in Putnam County has been a challenge in a county where the median single-family home price is $418,000, according to the most recent figures from the New York State Association of Realtors. Even though prices in Putnam have fallen in the past two years, the prices are still too high for some.
“I put a (price) cap at $200,000 – that may seem ridiculous – and it’s ridiculous to real estate agents when I say ‘up to $200,000′ and they hang up on you,” he said.
The scarcity of affordable homes is not just Bodian’s experience. First-time homebuyers in Rockland and Westchester are experiencing a similar challenge, even as home prices drop in both counties. In Westchester, where the median income for a family of two is $77,200, and in Rockland, where the median income is $67,852, families are struggling to find places they can afford.
Bob Paul is a 28-year-old system network administrator in Nanuet, where his wife also works as a teacher. They married during the summer and, after living in a cramped apartment for three years, are ready for their first home to start a family. But he said the search has been harder than they expected in a market where the median home price is $461,750, according to the New York Association of Realtors’ figures.
“The amount of money a moderate-income family would have to come up with – for a house that’s $400,000 you have to come up with $40,000 down. Who’s got that kind of money?” he said. “It’s also hard to save when you are renting. To save and rent is mission impossible.”
…
Norton is working to get a master’s degree in teaching from Manhattanville College and hopes to eventually purchase her first home with her husband, an electronics technician. She tried joining a first-time homebuyers program through Westchester County, but gave up when she was told there was a long waiting list to enroll.The $720,000 median home price in Westchester County has convinced Norton she should start looking elsewhere.
“All the politicians seem to be talking out of both sides of their mouth,” she said. “They say we need to save housing, but we also need to keep property values up. We can’t keep property values inflated. The properties are really overvalued and have been for quite a while.”
From MarketWatch:
Fed reportedly looking into unsecured lending
The U.S. Federal Reserve is reportedly looking at getting into unsecured lending, an extreme step that could allow it to directly purchase commercial paper, according to a report in the Financial Times. The report said the Fed had never done so in its history, but doing so could allow it to participate in the frozen inter-bank money market and the contracting commercial paper market. The Fed doesn’t believe it has the legal mandate to make unsecured loans, so it would need the Treasury to guarantee any losses. The Fed had said in a statement on Monday that “the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department are consulting with market participants on ways to provide additional support for term unsecured funding markets.”
(2)-
PPT can’t keep their grimy hands off anything. They’re tilting at windmills now.
Every new thing they try will just make it worse in the end.
My only surprise? That someone hasn’t tried to effect a citizen’s arrest of Klink.
Ron Paul, where are you now?
“Damn It Feels Good To Be a Banksta”
http://tinyurl.com/4zhzwx
There aren’t any risks to an unlimited and rapidly-growing balance sheet, are there?
If you need money somewhere, you just print it, right?
“If you need money somewhere, you just print it, right?”
tax, borrow, or print.
SAS
I can’t wait for the recession to arrive, maybe the traffic will lighted up. How about lunch in under 1 hour? Where’s the big R?? Will NJ ever see it?
How about tax, borrow and print? That’s Republican way. Maybe Obama will have more brain.
Knock Out: CNBC Confirms Lehman CEO Punched at Gym
“From two very senior sources – one incredibly senior source – that he went to the gym after … Lehman was announced as going under. He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold. And frankly after having watched this, I’d have done the same too.”
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081006150152.aspx
Frank, stay out of the Lehman gym.
#frank: Really, it is getting old now. You have to try not to be so incredibly ignorant.
Lehman Said to Cancel Ex-Employees’ Severance After Bankruptcy
Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) — Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the New York-based investment bank that has fired about 4,000 workers since March, notified some former employees that severance payments were cut off because of the company’s bankruptcy.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=arKer97AQU8E&refer=home
I doubt Dick Fuld was one of them.
he [7],
“Smart risk management is never putting yourself in a position where you can’t live to fight another day.”
Fuld-Economist
BC,
Fuld’s strategy for the past year was lie about how bad things were and hope that they got better. The same strategy as Thain and the rest used and the same straegy being used by the government. Is that what they teach at Ivy League business schools these days?
How come nobody asked Fuld about the bs stock buyback they announced back in Dec 2007 in that hearing or his recurring lies about the capitalization of the company?
“If you need money somewhere, you just print it, right?”
Clot,
I hope they print 24/7.
Unfortunately, you must purge bad debts first, before any chance of recovery. You can print all you want. However, you can’t force a bank to lend nor a consumer to borrow. They tend to ignore the obvious, overcapacity and rising unemployment.
By the way, Frank is still an idiot.
Yo’…..didn’t I make this call yesterday?
chicagofinance Says:
October 6th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
still_looking Says:
October 6th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
watching Fuld? If you just ate lunch, don’t. You’ll vomit. sl
sl: Cut the guy some slack. He has to toe-the-line in order to stay out of jail….there is a least a shot that he might kill himself….he probably would not because it would invalidate insurance policies. He has a good shot of getting divorced. He may also be murdered. I can’t waste my energy worrying about him. I would think that neither should you.
HEHEHE Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Knock Out: CNBC Confirms Lehman CEO Punched at Gym
“From two very senior sources – one incredibly senior source – that he went to the gym after … Lehman was announced as going under. He was on a treadmill with a heart monitor on. Someone was in the corner, pumping iron and he walked over and he knocked him out cold. And frankly after having watched this, I’d have done the same too.”
he [12],
I’ve said for the last 3 years. The IB’s are liars/fraudsters/criminals. On a sad note, I really do hate to see them perish. They have provided many great short opportunities over the years, as they fleeced America. Who now will be at the helm; The Master Carnival Barker?
To comment on today’s article, as it relates to the small local area that I follow, asking prices are coming down, and yet there are still no buyers.
Credit crunch, yes, but also prices are still too high, and there are those on the side lines who will continue to wait.
A lot of listings in my town at the 399K, all just sitting, and rotting away month after month.
However,yesterday a new listing comes on for 449K, very similiar to all the 399K offerings. Why would a seller be so blind, why would a realtor take the listing, who knows?.
It used to be frustrating, now it is just funny or pathetic.
Pretty boy Dickie Fuld says to Congress he got no severance package and did not ask for one, however he took home over 300 million since 2000 and even in September this year he secured three 20 million dollar bonuses for three board members exiting the company at the same time he was asking the government (taxpayers) for help. FYI, he had a double facelift front and back, he is two faced liar.
On another note apparently Dickie does have a heart when he canned Erin Callan she later said to Fortune Magazine that Dickie cried when they arrived at a consensus for her to leave.
3b (9)-
Don’t torment the dolt.
In the short-term muni market liquidity has completely dried up. BAnks a re completely unwilling to provide clients with LOC’s or standby purchase agreements.
HE (12)-
These guys have become pathological liars by the time they’re in 9th grade. That’s how they got into Ivies. Take a rich, spoiled kid and let a nanny raise him, and at about age 45, the result you get is a sort of quasi-intelligent, upright-walking, sociopathic wolverine.
They don’t get to where they are through smarts and hard work.
If you’re looking for the archetype, think Shrub.
One exception regarding the IB liars; Stephen Roach
(20)-
When you remove money from the equation of how a critter like Dick Fuld is made, you end up with a hardened career criminal.
Come to think of it, maybe it’s the other way around. Just add money to the formula of how you form a career criminal, and you get an IB CEO.
Can we cold cock the head of the NAR?
Oh dear lord. Just when you think things can’t get worse, it does.
truecasey.com He’s back.
tosh (23)-
Talk about a piece of useless meat, taking up space…
I find myself sadly identifying with the article grim posted today. I remember being faced with having to borrow $200K for school (undergrad + grad) ten years ago. I turned it down with my rationale being “200K will buy you a house and a car, that’s a lot of money to borrow!” And just 10 short years later when I am about to finish my education and get out and start saving some money, that 200K might buy me a 1 bedroom condo in NJ while so-called starter homes sit at double the price. A 1 bedroom condo isn’t the kind of place I envisioned in NJ to raise a family in.
Maybe I should have just taken the 200K loan. Who knew we would become such a financially irresponsible nation in such a short time. I could have been part of the irresponsibility too.
BAC’s gonna get pasted today. DSL selling its office building to raise cash. Yeah, that’s a sure sign they’ll be just fine when we come out the other end:
http://tinyurl.com/4aolff
BC (21)-
The token bear?
gryf (25)-
Do your patriotic duty. Default on something.
Now!
#25 gryffindor: Have a little more patience. Your prudence will pay off. You will not have to resign yoruself to a 1 bedroom condo.
HEHEHE Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 8:08 am
BC, Fuld’s strategy for the past year was lie about how bad things were and hope that they got better. The same strategy as Thain and the rest used and the same straegy being used by the government. Is that what they teach at Ivy League business schools these days? How come nobody asked Fuld about the bs stock buyback they announced back in Dec 2007 in that hearing or his recurring lies about the capitalization of the company?
Clotpoll Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 8:25 am
HE (12)- These guys have become pathological liars by the time they’re in 9th grade. That’s how they got into Ivies. Take a rich, spoiled kid and let a nanny raise him, and at about age 45, the result you get is a sort of quasi-intelligent, upright-walking, sociopathic wolverine.
They don’t get to where they are through smarts and hard work. If you’re looking for the archetype, think Shrub.
clot is correct
hehehe: normally we are on the same page, but in this case…stuff it
ChiFi
Thanks for the link but its blocked here.
There are tour dates on the DM home page though.
OT: I’m having the worst hay fever of my life. Another strike against Jersey. Anyone else? I feel like I have the flu.
3b Says
October 7th, 2008 at 8:02 am
#frank: Really, it is getting old now.
What’s getting old is all the negative news. In reality the economy is moving along, people still have jobs, homes are still selling for crazy prices.
So stop begin so incredibly ignorant and admit that the country is going to fall off the cliff and by some chance maybe I can buy or a rent an apartment at affordable price within 1 hour of my work.
I represent that remark!
and at about age 45, the result you get is a sort of quasi-intelligent, upright-walking, sociopathic wolverine.
something I wrote to a blog constituted of my high school classmates from about 2 years ago…….
1. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.
2. In the short-run it’s their fault, but in the long-run you have
time to analyze, plan, and react. Ultimately, regardless of how
intractable a situation [personal/business/life] may seem, you have
the ultimate ability to choose.
3. Remember that we have great lives [I mean it]. The glass is 7/8
full. Don’t focus on the 1/8. Your intelligence breeds creativity,
which means that you will be more effective at # 2. You choose
how you want to think, feel, behave.
4. The best accomplishments are to be courageous [of course not
reckless], act with integrity, and answer to your responsibilities.
The following is an article from the WSJ that is a dead-on
description of a former boss of mine. The gentleman [I use the term
loosely] had a PhD in Economics from Chicago.
Regardless of what professional or social circumstance you
experience, we all know these people. Take heart – but also take
control!
==========================================
Odds are you’ve run across one of these characters in your career.
They’re glib, charming, manipulative, deceitful, ruthless — and
very, very destructive. And there may be lots of them in America’s
corner offices.
One of the most provocative ideas about business in this decade so
far surfaced in a most unlikely place. The forum wasn’t the Harvard
Business School or one of those $4,000-a-head conferences where
Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists search for the next big thing.
It was a convention of Canadian cops in the far-flung province of
Newfoundland. The speaker, a 71-year-old professor emeritus from the
University of British Columbia, remains virtually unknown in the
business realm. But he’s renowned in his own field: criminal
psychology. Robert Hare is the creator of the Psychopathy Checklist.
The 20-item personality evaluation has exerted enormous influence in
its quarter-century history. It’s the standard tool for making
clinical diagnoses of psychopaths — the 1% of the general
population that isn’t burdened by conscience. Psychopaths have a
profound lack of empathy. They use other people callously and
remorselessly for their own ends. They seduce victims with a charm
that masks their true nature as pathological liars, master con
artists, and heartless manipulators. Easily bored, they crave
constant stimulation, so they seek thrills from real-life “games”
they can win — and take pleasure from their power over other people.
“There are certainly more people in the business world who would
score high in the psychopathic dimension than in the general
population. You’ll find them in any organization where, by the
nature of one’s position, you have power and control over other
people and the opportunity to get something.”
On the broad continuum between the ethical everyman and the
predatory killer, there’s plenty of room for people who are ruthless
but not violent. This is where you’re likely to find such people as
Ebbers, Fastow, ImClone CEO Sam Waksal, and hotelier Leona Helmsley.
We put several big-name CEOs through the checklist, and they scored
as “moderately psychopathic”; our quiz on page 48 lets you try a
similar exercise with your favorite boss. And this summer, together
with New York industrial psychologist Paul Babiak, Hare begins
marketing the B-Scan, a personality test that companies can use to
spot job candidates who may have an MBA but lack a conscience. “I
always said that if I wasn’t studying psychopaths in prison, I’d do
it at the stock exchange,”
There’s evidence that the business climate has become even more
hospitable to psychopaths in recent years. In pioneering long-term
studies of psychopaths in the workplace, Babiak focused on a half-
dozen unnamed companies: One was a fast-growing high-tech firm, and
the others were large multinationals undergoing dramatic
organizational changes — severe downsizing, restructuring, mergers
and acquisitions, and joint ventures. That’s just the sort of
corporate tumult that has increasingly characterized the U.S.
business landscape in the last couple of decades. And just as wars
can produce exciting opportunities for murderous psychopaths to
shine (think of Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic),
Babiak found that these organizational shake-ups created a welcoming
environment for the corporate killer. “The psychopath has no
difficulty dealing with the consequences of rapid change; in fact,
he or she thrives on it,” Babiak claims. “Organizational chaos
provides both the necessary stimulation for psychopathic thrill
seeking and sufficient cover for psychopathic manipulation and
abusive behavior.”
But how can we recognize psychopathic types? Hare has revised his
Psychopathy Checklist (known as the PCL-R, or simply “the Hare”) to
make it easier to identify so-called subcriminal or corporate
psychopaths. He has broken down the 20 personality characteristics
into two subsets, or “factors.” Corporate psychopaths score high on
Factor 1, the “selfish, callous, and remorseless use of others”
category. It includes eight traits: glibness and superficial charm;
grandiose sense of self-worth; pathological lying; conning and
manipulativeness; lack of remorse or guilt; shallow affect (i.e., a
coldness covered up by dramatic emotional displays that are actually
playacting); callousness and lack of empathy; and the failure to
accept responsibility for one’s own actions. Sound like anyone you
know? (Corporate psychopaths score only low to moderate on Factor 2,
which pinpoints “chronically unstable, antisocial, and socially
deviant lifestyle,” the hallmarks of people who wind up in jail for
rougher crimes than creative accounting.)
This view is supported by research by psychologists Belinda Board
and Katarina Fritzon at the University of Surrey, who interviewed
and gave personality tests to 39 high-level British executives and
compared their profiles with those of criminals and psychiatric
patients. The executives were even more likely to be superficially
charming, egocentric, insincere, and manipulative, and just as
likely to be grandiose, exploitative, and lacking in empathy. Board
and Fritzon concluded that the businesspeople they studied might be
called “successful psychopaths.” In contrast, the criminals —
the “unsuccessful psychopaths” — were more impulsive and physically
aggressive.
Most criminals — whether psychopathic or not — are shaped by
poverty and often childhood abuse as well. In contrast, corporate
psychopaths typically grew up in stable, loving families that were
middle class or affluent. But because they’re pathological liars,
they tell romanticized tales of rising from tough, impoverished
backgrounds. Dunlap pretended that he grew up as the son of a laid-
off dockworker; in truth, his father worked steadily and raised his
family in suburban comfort. The corporate psychopaths whom Babiak
studied all went to college, and a couple even had PhDs. Their
ruthless pursuit of self-interest was more easily accomplished in
the white-collar realm, which their backgrounds had groomed them
for, rather than the criminal one, which comes with much lousier
odds.
Psychopaths succeed in conventional society in large measure because
few of us grasp that they are fundamentally different from
ourselves. We assume that they, too, care about other people’s
feelings. This makes it easier for them to “play” us. Although they
lack empathy, they develop an actor’s expertise in evoking ours.
While they don’t care about us, “they have an element of emotional
intelligence, of being able to see our emotions very clearly and
manipulate them,” says Michael Maccoby, a psychotherapist who has
consulted for major corporations.
In regards to this article, I’ve been told that it’s very competitive in the NYC/NJ area and if one can’t afford to live here, then perhaps one needs to consider moving out of the area. After all, this is prestigous NY/NJ metro and people who can’t afford it are just jealous wannabes. That’s what I’ve been told by more than one realtor so you know it must be true. [still dripping with sarcasm]
its true Gary.
I’m way too much of a loser to live in the N.J.
Fed just announced a CP facility
Fed moving into payday loans!
Fed moving into pawnshop industry!
Where can I get my FedCo platinum card?
Top four reasons to visit NJ
See a football game
Grab a flight
Gamble at AC
Bury a body
So this is how Bergabe and Klink are gonna make all the crap cc and car loan stuff go away.
Who was going to go under if the Fed didn’t do this today?
AT&T said they were on a day-to-day basis w/ CP last week.
I am calling for a 75bp rate cut right before market opens on day short sell ban is over.
Rally on!
gary (36)-
Just remember: the people who told you that are probably inhabiting an orange or blue smock right about now.
Does this mean we can scrap Friday’s bailout plan?
Of course not, silly of me to ask.
Yesterday, the Fed thought that its pursuit of unsecured lending would be illegal.
Boy, those guys work quick. :)
“I am calling for a 75bp rate cut right before market opens on day short sell ban is over.”
Why not wait for the shorts to load up?
John (45)-
Why hedge? I think they’ll go a full 100, and coordinate it with other CBs, so that it’ll be a more even race to the bottom.
We have now entered the end of days.
Watch SOV and NCC at open, Fed is pretty much telegraphing to the markets they won’t let them fail. Like the twins on Dirty Sexy Money no matter how bad SOV and NCC has been they are still family and money changes everything.
By the way SOVs majority shareholder Banco Standandar NYSE ticker is STD. How appropriate for a major money center bank.
100bp is even better. Everyone get on the bus, Big Ben is going to leave the short sellers in the dust.
Maybe I can get a job as a repo man for the Fed?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087995/quotes
“Does this mean we can scrap Friday’s bailout plan?”
Wait. What about the wooden arrows and the Rum?
John (52)-
It is disturbing watching you equate reality to a bad TV show.
“Does this mean we can scrap Friday’s bailout plan?”
Wait. What about the wooden arrows and the Rum?
I’d be all for a bubble in wooden arrows & rum to bring us out of the current crisis. This time it will be different.
100bp is even better. Everyone get on the bus, Big Ben is going to leave the short sellers in the dust.
Along with the dollar
What about the wooden arrows and the Rum?
We drink the rum,sharpen the wooden arrows and use them to hunt down Bill Gross.
Got gold?
“Fed is pretty much telegraphing to the markets they won’t let them fail.”
Tis not the only telegraph that the markets are receiving.
Will the Fed use Utah as a car lot for the repos?
How many cc call centers will they need to set up?
Will they set up the call centers in Hyderabad?
Fed as garbage can. What a concept!
Will the Fed put a floor under SUV values?
And they told us they would make $ on the bailout. HAH. Unsecured cp? Why not all default?
Partners:
There will be a demonstration today at noon in front of the NY Stock Exchange by a group known as “Code Pink”. The demonstration is titled: Wall Street “foxes” in the American henhouse! “Paulson must go” rally!
Assessment
The group’s stated objective is to demand a stop to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson from having unprecedented powers over the US economy and tax dollars.
Excerpt from advertisement: VISUALS: Fox-masked men, chickens, sheep (TBD) “Foxes” in suits, gawking live chickens and other barnyard animals will gather at noon Oct. 7 in front of the New York Stock Exchange to oust Treasury Secretary “King Henry Paulson,” a consummate Wall Street insider who amassed a personal fortune of over $700 million and now plans to use $700 billion of our tax dollars to buy up the trash he helped produce. Americans must have accountability. Paulson must go!
Impact
Today’s protest is expected to remain peaceful, though staff are encouraged to avoid the NY Stock Exchange today, as well as any demonstrations, and be aware that demonstrators may pass by our building on their way to the event. The group, “Code Pink” is primarily an anti-war movement and has had low attendance during recent events. The group may be identified by pink t-shirts or animal outfits during today’s event. Code Pink has potential to cause disruptions, but are not known to be violent. CSBC is in communication with NYPD, who will have additional patrol units on site at the Stock Exchange and throughout the financial district today.
Can I quickly file some articles of incorporation and tap this facility?
#33 frank: You are in deep,deep denial, and or off your meds.
But hey real estate never goes down, we are close to NYC, buy now at crazy prices, before they get crazier, or be closed out forever.
#36 gary: Tey are going to have to revise that spiel.
Can I quickly file some articles of incorporation and tap this facility?
toshiro,
I’m thinking the same.
CNBC portraying Fed move as a “Main St bailout”.
Pure, unadulterated visual and auditory Ipecac.
Can I buy gap insurance from FedCo?
What is the cost of this new facility?
#73 – Kind of add that they would omit that.
Fed release on the new facility, PDF warning.
“Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve may have trimmed borrowing costs yesterday without actually saying so.”
“The central bank used power granted under last week’s financial-rescue legislation to effectively set a floor under its main interest rate that’s lower than the 2 percent target set by policy makers last month. The Fed may now pay interest on bank reserves while it floods financial markets with liquidity, pushing down the overnight lending rate by about 0.75 percentage point to 1.25 percent.”
“Absolutely, it’s a stealth easing,” said John Ryding, founder and chief economist of RDQ Economics LLC in New York and a former Fed researcher.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a2KRwOfPJk58&
#74 – kind of odd – can’t type.
“What is the cost of this new facility?”
JB,
Nobody knows. Why does it matter?
Are they accepting Enron CP?
I always wanted to put a buy recommendation on STD!!!!
Gold VS oil is back a normal ratio of 10:1.
Dow is now worth 10 ounces of Gold.
When Dow was 14K, Gold was in the $700 range which means it was worth 20 ounces.
Simple math tells you that priced in DOW gold doubled in the past 2 years.
When Dow is worth one ounc eof Gold then I’ll jump ship and Buy America and NYSE.
until then enjoy the ride.
If We Get Through This Crisis, We’ll Face Another in 5 to 10 Years — Here’s Why
John – What would it take for you to come to next GTG? I am sure that fact alone will cause stampede.
Okay, if perception is reality and the smoke and mirrors are blinding nearly everyone, doesn’t it stand to reason that this new Fed move into CP will cause at a minimum, a short-term rally, perhaps one long enough for people to completely bail? And it might actually do some good in melting the ice jam in CP? Just a thought. I still think we’re toast, though.
SmithBarney Daily Municipal Bond Commentary
Last Updated: Tue Oct 7, 2008 – 09:14:50
The Daily Municipal Comment October 7, 2008 by Michael E. Lane
The tax-exempt market had a better tone yesterday as Treasuries rallied. There is a growing consensus that the Fed will cut rates before its meeting at the end of October; the street would not be surprised if it happened even as early as today. Liquidity remains the issue for the markets worldwide, and the muni new issue market remains on a day-to-day basis, with the bias toward higher-rated issuers.
Commercial paper that is not ABCP must be secured to the satisfaction of the Federal Reserve. The commercial paper may be secured in one of the following ways:
(i) The issuer pays the SPV an upfront fee based on the commercial paper initially sold to the SPV and a further fee based on subsequent commercial paper sales above that amount; or
(ii) The issuer obtains an indorsement or guarantee of the issuer’s obligations on the commercial paper sold to the SPV that is satisfactory to the Federal Reserve; or
(iii) The issuer provides collateral arrangements that are satisfactory to the Federal Reserve; or
(iv) The issuer otherwise provides security satisfactory to the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve will consult with market participants about other methods for issuers of non-ABCP commercial paper to provide satisfactory security to the Federal Reserve
This is a joke!
“This is a joke!”
make [85],
The fed is a joke.
The Realtors need new Mantra, the old one expired rather quickly.
A new set of real estate fundamentals
In January 2003, Inman News convened a conference on the “Housing Bubble,” during which some experts promised the boom would continue because of six “market fundamentals.” These were the mantra for the industry for more than 10 years:
* The demographics-as-destiny argument. The expanding U.S. population — immigration — would fuel real estate demand well into the next decade.
* Low mortgage rates. Cheap credit would keep home loans affordable.
* Boomer wealth. Prosperity and the rolling over of assets from the Depression generation to the spending generation would continue to ignite home purchases.
* Consumer confidence. At the 2003 conference, Yale professor Robert Shiller of the Case-Shiller home-price index argued that historic bubbles did not burst until consumers gave up on the asset that prompted their confidence. At the time, real estate enthusiasm was as strong as the morning Starbucks coffee habit.
* Low unemployment. The argument was that people who are employed buy houses.
* Unlimited market liquidity. Access to capital seemed unrestrained as Fannie, Freddie and the mortgage-backed securities market was flush with funds.
Do not forget that Fridays passage of the TARP bill all changes the required bank reserve to 0%…..
So is this even fractional banking anymore? There are no fractions left. What do we call that, phantom banking?
Sometimes I think the mainstream media exists only to feed my feverishly paranoid mind.
I pretty sure this story will turn out to be a non-issue. I hope.
35 CF: very interesting article that confirms much of what I’m sure many of us have experienced with executives at various employers. Like pedophiles to the priesthood, the sociopathic personality would obviously be drawn to the chessboard of the corporate power position.
While some antisocial and selfish behaviors can be attributed to habitual ladder-climbing (meaning that at some point, any ambitious person might begin to climb the ladder ruthlessly simply for the sake of climbing), many behaviors obviously occur with the only purpose being to satisfy deep-seated emotional clefts.
Minor infringements on the rights of others or legal infractions can be identified early in careers, beginning at the lower levels of control, such as the first-line supervisor.
Obviously, the goal of personality testing would be to select candidates with the requisite “morals.” One missing – but crucial – element in the portion of the article you’ve pasted is the difficulty of implementing testing and remediation throughout incumbents at the topmost levels.
Another study would be needed to address the problem of negative selection bias toward other ‘more moral’ personalities that would occur after testing. At what point is the organization better off with some “mildly anti-social” personalities? What desired traits come on the same gene and how is the balance regulated?
What is opinion on the board for the current rally? I feel like dead mouse bounce.
#90 – S&P & DJI futures @ 14.7 and 81 pts, TED @ 3.51; not much of a rally. It’s still early though.
Tallying Up
If This Won’t Kill the Bonus, What Will?
Mr. Waxman, chairman of House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, was running a hearing on Capitol Hill on Monday about the latest series of bank failures. He started his questioning of Mr. Fuld, Lehman Brothers’ chairman, not by asking about what led to the firm’s bankruptcy, but by pointing at a chart showing that Mr. Fuld had made some $480 million between 2000 and now.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/business/07deal.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=bonus&st=nyt&oref=slogin
#90/91 – Actually I take that back about the TED. The Fed makes a major announcement, the spread lowers by almost 40 bps and it’s still at 3.51.
when is next gtg?
Per bernanke, The Feb hgas 800 Billion left.
as of yesterday:
“Oct. 6 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve will double its auctions of cash to banks to as much as $900 billion and is considering further steps to unfreeze short-term lending markets as the credit crunch deepens. ”
it looks like they will have to fire up the printing press before halloween. at this rate there is no way they make it the elections
toshiro…
@iran: pics or it didn’t happen.
@toshiro: i see TED spread at 3.69 http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=.TEDSP:IND
10:00 and red?
Rally off!
Guess the Fed actions are working, Morgan Stanley two year bonds are now “only” yielding 23%!!!
MORGAN STANLEY 5.05% 01/21/2011 5.050% 01/21/2011 ISIN #US61746SBS77Price (Ask) 69.860
Yield to Worst (Ask) 22.678%
You guys don’t get it, we need another bad day or two to get our 100BPs, lets beat Ben and Paul till they give us what we want.
Pie chart of american GDP
Services (Includes banking) 67%
Manufacturing 12%
Gov 12%
Ag 0.9%
http://tinyurl.com/4fcj43
Hows this whole service economy thing working out?
China’s central bank dismisses buying American debt
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-07 06:56
The central bank has denied media reports that China will buy up to $200 billion worth of US treasuries to help Washington combat the deepening financial crisis.
Bai Li, spokesman for the People’s Bank of China, said that “it is the first time I have ever heard about such rumors”.
According to Hong Kong media reports, China will initially spend $70-80 billion to buy US treasury bonds.
Bai said the official stance has been published on the central bank’s website, which did not mention any such purchase.
The statement merely said China welcomes Washington’s $700 billion bailout plan; and will cooperate with the international community to ensure financial security.
#96 – Agreed. However I spent my formative years reading RA Wilson, Machiavelli and listening to the DKs. It tends to make me a bit jumpy.
Chi,
What are you all bent out of shape about?
SG
during uncertainty, investors flee to safety, and the dollar has has long been considered the safe currency, thus investors will flee to the dollar (in the short-term) as there are few alternatives at the moment.
Looks like the ppt is down to its last clip.
Nervous time in the Caymans.
ChiFi 35
What you have here is a working definition of a Sociopath
http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html
Trust me I know. I have a full fledged virulent sociopath in my family as Clot can fully attest to. He’s heard the stories.
Best you can do is RUN the other way.
sl
#104 John: 100 bp’s,and than what? Your begging/pleading is very unbecoming. Where is the Wall St tough guy?
#22
“When you remove money from the equation of how a critter like Dick Fuld is made, you end up with a hardened career criminal.
Come to think of it, maybe it’s the other way around. Just add money to the formula of how you form a career criminal, and you get an IB CEO.”
there is a difference between hubris/stupidity and criminality
Kettle 106
Ok if the Chinese are not buying more than 70B then who in the world is buying these treasuries?
You think our allies will help us out? france, germany, spain, albania, kosovo, georgia, wait a minute they’re all broke!
Who’s gonna buy hank’s paper? I know.
NJ pension Fund!
“Take a rich, spoiled kid and let a nanny raise him, and at about age 45, the result you get is a sort of quasi-intelligent, upright-walking, sociopathic wolverine.”
I disagree with the wolverine part. most of this type want to be buddies with everyone more than anything else. the wolverines of this group are the people who grew up poor.
3b (112)-
At the core, all these guys are just very sophisticated beggars.
Much like the rest of the US, they cannot produce anything of real value, so they whine at the teat of gubmint.
skep (113)-
“…there is a difference between hubris/stupidity and criminality”
There is also a way to engage in all three.
ppt is back and now they got Water gun Bazooka’s.
Rather than the sociopath, I like Icahn’s analogy that the typical CEO is like a fraternity president. the truth is that you can only get so far stabbing people in the back and stepping over dead bodies.
Clotpoll Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 10:34 am
3b (112)-
At the core, all these guys are just very sophisticated beggars.
Much like the rest of the US, they cannot produce anything of real value, so they whine at the teat of gubmint
If kettle chart from post 105 is correct – man this is scary…I though manufacturing was still at 30%…
Post 83:
SG Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 9:38 am
If We Get Through This Crisis, We’ll Face Another in 5 to 10 Years — Here’s Why
Great article, very simple and at the same time quite good explanation of last 20 years of World “Economy” – if you can call it that.
Too bad you can not talk about it any simpler… (I think it is REALLY simple and very well written) and most people will read first paragraph see one number and say – it is too hard…
Clotpoll Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 9:31 am
“CNBC portraying Fed move as a “Main St bailout”.
Pure, unadulterated visual and auditory Ipecac.”
One of the very few things of value on CNBC is the guy from the floor in Chicago. Even though he’s on frequently in the morning, I refuse to watch that channel until they dress Mark Haines appropriately: in a big red nose, clown suit, and with an oversized horn.
Assets are Frozen in Iceland – Will be NY Post morning headline.
Russia backing Iceland as world crisis spreads
REUTERS — 40 MINUTES AGO
By Omar Valdimarsson and Keith Weir
REYKJAVIK/LONDON (Reuters) – Russia negotiated an emergency bailout for Iceland and unveiled an aid package for its own banks on Tuesday, while Japan called for greater coordination in tackling the global financial crisis.
The International Monetary Fund increased its estimate of global losses from the financial meltdown to $1.4 trillion and warned that the world’s economic downturn was deepening.
“The financial planet is in total crisis,” European Central Bank Governing Council member Guy Quaden said, capturing a mood of disarray in governments and markets alike.
Around the globe, people are worried about safeguarding savings and keeping their jobs as some of the pillars of international finance give way.
It is all about me, once they cut off the second drive through at McDonalds it is all over.
3b Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 10:26 am
#104 John: 100 bp’s,and than what? Your begging/pleading is very unbecoming. Where is the Wall St tough guy?
9/30/2008
http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/30092008/404/mortgage-borrowers-doomed.html
A massive two-thirds of brokers have been unable to source a mortgage for clients in the past two months, according to the Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association. This surprising statistic highlights just how difficult it is to secure mortgage finance for many borrowers, with even the experts struggling to find us a deal.
The main reasons brokers quoted for the inability to find their clients mortgages are the tightening of lending criteria and the increase in deposits required, as loan-to-values (LTVs) have been cut a problem mentioned by 51% of respondents. After that, 23% of intermediaries cited the withdrawal of products as the biggest impediment.
And this survey was released last week, before the B&B crisis and before hundreds more products were pulled from the market on Monday, wiping out 11% of available mortgages according to some estimates.
So the situation has just got a whole lot worse!
…
How can you avoid this?
Is there anything you can do to prevent yourself being one of the borrowers that brokers, or indeed lenders, cannot help to find a decently priced mortgage?
Well, it’s easier said than done. There are ways you can ensure you can have access to the best deals, but they may not be easy to achieve. Here are three key considerations:
Borrow less.
We would all like to have a whopping 40% deposit but it’s not that easy, is it? However the best and most competitive mortgages are available to those who only need to borrow 60% of the property’s value. However, there are plenty of extremely good deals for those who have 25% to put down. It gets tougher to find a deal the smaller your deposit so it really is essential that you try to save as much as possible. If you have a deposit of 5% for example you will have a pretty small selection of expensive mortgage to choose from. The good news is that with house prices falling, first-time buyers may be able to continue saving for longer, rather than feeling pressured to rush into the property market right now.
Clean up your credit record.
Lenders love whiter than white borrowers with no history of bad credit. This has always been the case and they have always charged ‘sub-prime’ borrowers more to offset the lending risk. Now they simply won’t lend to people with anything other than the minimum of credit problems. If you do have outstanding late payments on any credit agreements, settle them before you even apply for a mortgage. Although remember that lenders can still see past payment discrepancies on your credit file.
Become Mr and Mrs Average.
Unusual requirements are not what lenders want at the moment. Although there are self-cert mortgages out there for those who can’t prove their income, for example, they are expensive and the cheapest deals are available to those in full-time employment, on the electoral roll where they live, and preferably having lived in the same property for a while. Credit scoring often penalises those who move house, and jobs, frequently.
still_looking Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 10:22 am
ChiFi 35
What you have here is a working definition of a Sociopath
http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html
Trust me I know. I have a full fledged virulent sociopath in my family as Clot can fully attest to. He’s heard the stories.
Best you can do is RUN the other way.
sl
______________________________
She ain’t lyin!
uh oh, Ameritrade sent an email blast this morning announcing their financial soundness. Do i need to worry about them now too?
it seems these pronouncements of “solid-footing” always precede a raft of sh!t.
i’m being somewhat sarcastic, I do feel pretty confident in Ameritrade really.
http://clearlakelifestyle.com/2008/03/29/banks-use-of-fico-scores-contributes-to-foreclosure-rate/
“In my opinion one of the biggest problems with our credit crunch and high foreclosure rate is bank reliance on FICO scores. FICO scores do a good job of reporting an individuals past history of repayment of debt. The biggest problem is the scores do not forecast in my opinion the current position of the borrower. To read from Fair Isaac what goes into your FICO score click here. FICO scores miss two important things when considering giving someone a loan, assets and income. Most people credit reports have misinformation that can help or hurt them. You could have two borrowers one with $200,000 in assets making $100,000 a year with a 560 fico score and one borrower with a 800 fico score that has -0- assets and making $30,000 a year. A year ago the buyer with a the 800 fico score was able to get a loan for $500,000 with no asset or income verification and in most cases with nothing down. This happened frequently which is why we are so many foreclosures in the high price ranges. The rate of commercial foreclosures is at an all time low. Why? Because commercial banks looks the entire position of their customer. They look at each loan & property individually and not just a credit score. Commercial lenders always look at the market area of the property, not just when the economy is in a down turn. Looking at the individual property and borrower more carefully will help banks avoid foreclosure in the future.”
NY’s Insurance Superintendent recommends Congress take “a serious look” at the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act.
Bernanke keeps dumping money into the TAF shredder when the FED’s own research says it wont help.
From the FED
“In this paper we documented the unusually large spread between term Libor and overnight interest rates in the United States and other money markets beginning on August 9, 2007. We also introduced a financial model to adjust for expectations effects and to test for various explanations that have been offered to explain this unusual development.
The model has two implications. Fist is that counterparty risk is a key factor in explaining the spread between the Libor rate and the OIS rate, and second is that the TAF should not have an effect on the spread. Since the TAF does not affect total liquidity, expectations of future overnight rates, or counterparty risk, the model implies that it will not affect the spread. Our simple econometric tests support both of those implications of our model.”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the banks have wisened up on lending.
It doesn’t matter that you have a 800 FICO score any more, if your net worth is in the dumps and you don’t bring any money to secure a large stake in the investment then they don’t want to look at you.
I’m still waiting for true stories where people with good assets and good credit scores are having problems finding loans.
Got an email from Capital One today, they want to lend me up to 4 times my income at 5.8% interest. I still don’t want to buy an overpriced McMansion though.
Actually 40% is doable for everyone. Problem is in 1992 newlwed couples bought a tiny one coop bedroom in Brooklyn or Queens and worked there way to starter cape and then to final home. Todays young newlweds want to start at an 700K house and have two new leased cars in driveway.
I still see on LI in the south shore one bed ccops by train that need some work where you don’t even need car for 120, 40% is a whooping 48K down.
We would all like to have a whopping 40% deposit but it’s not that easy, is it? However the best and most competitive mortgages are available to those who only need to borrow 60% of the property’s value.
a good post from another blog:
It seems to point out that the differences between skeptic and clott may essentially be a disagreement over Keynesian Vs Austrian economics.
“Bernanke Theories All Failing
* The Term Auction Facility (TAF) is not working to increase bank to bank lending.
* The Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF) was supposed to prevent more dealers from blowing up. Yet, Lehman went bankrupt anyway and Merrill Lynch had to merge with Bank of America to avoid collapse.
* Slashing interest rates to 2% did not prevent a recession.
* The ABCP MMMF Liquidity Facility may have stopped a run on money markets but it has not done anything to restore confidence in in the ABCP market itself.
Keynesian theory suggests the Fed is in a dreaded “liquidity trap”. The reality is there is no such thing as a “liquidity trap”, at least in Austrian economic terms. There is no trap, because it is impossible to prevent the liquidation of credit boom malinvestments.
Purging of bad debts must take place before a lasting recovery can begin. The mistake the Fed is making is attempting to force liquidity down the throat of a market that does not need it and cannot use it.
Why Aren’t Banks Lending?
* Banks do not have money to lend
* Consumers who want to borrow are not credit worthy
* Consumer spending is 75% of the economy and consumers are tapped out.
* Unemployment is rising
* There is rampant over capacity in every sector but energy
* Banks do not trust each other
* Cancellation of mark to market accounting heightens that sense of mistrust
The problem is not a failure to lend, the main problem is there simply is no pool of real savings to lend. Furthermore, given rampant overcapacity and rising unemployment, there is no reason to lend even if the funding was available.”
I’m sure glad I haven’t heard “Never underestimate the American consumer” in a while.
Ben [132],
We can bury that along with resiliency and goldilocks.
Data compiled by Lombard Street Research shows that the M3 ”broad money” aggregates fell by almost $50bn (£26.8bn) in July, the biggest one-month fall since modern records began in 1959. “Monthly data for July show that the broad money growth has almost collapsed,” said Gabriel Stein, the group’s leading monetary economist.
On a three-month basis, the M3 growth rate has fallen from almost 19pc earlier this year to just 2.1pc (annualised) for the period from May to July. This is below the rate of inflation, implying a shrinkage in real terms.
The growth in bank loans has turned negative to a halt since March. “It’s obviously worrying. People either can’t borrow, or don’t want to borrow even if they can,” said Mr Stein.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/images/2008/us-money-supply-m3.gif
the best was Peter Schiff on 10/4 (cnn or cnbc) saying that Ben Bernanke is a total failure, everything he does is failing and he’s never accomplished anything in the real world. he’s a theory/bookworm guy who wrote a bunch of papers and studied a lot of Depression, but his real resume is garbage.
beware if you try to Youtube this interview, he gets talked over by a little idiot schoolgirl named Stephen Leeb (sp?) the entire time. Leeb believes in his hero Bernanke!
#133 – We can bury that along with resiliency and goldilocks.
You can including “decoupling” as well.
I heard a piece on NPR last night where this guy in a bar advocated that every one of the senators and representatives that voted on the “recovery act” be voted out of office.
“Lets let them feel what it is like to be jobless during a recession”
“Big Ben is going to leave the short sellers in the dust.”
John [55],
I really do wish Bergabe would sprinkle more of that dust, towards the buyers. Is this the rally you envisioned? UGH, didn’t even come close to my short limits. Please Ben, pump some more.
SG,
A qualitative visual presentation of how energy and the business cycle interact. This is just a very general trend and modeled to any one set of data. if it is in any way accurate then it suggests that we could be at an inflection point. The highs become shorter and the lows become deeper.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3062/2917792017_c70a0c610f_o.jpg
(credited to an unknown author)
Thrift shops thrive amid economic downturn By ALAN SCHER ZAGIER, Associated Press Writer
Tue Oct 7, 7:02 AM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081007/ap_on_bi_ge/uneasy_economy_thrift_shops_2;_ylt=ArpYkl5fLHaaj2xWEPRfAW9v24cA
[snip]
The gains are even more pronounced in the private sector. In an industry trade group survey of more than 200 resale and thrift shops, nearly two-thirds of those businesses reported higher sales in 2008 compared to the previous year. The average sales increase: 35 percent
sl: me, too! it’s a special club, isn’t it?
#129 Nicgolas: That should make the housing crash all the more pronounced.
Ain’t nobody gonna pay 450-500k for your POS cape.
Oh Frankie Pooh, An Article For YOU:
“What does Deflation mean in practical terms? Here’s an anecdote from the New York Times on Sunday (“End of an Era on Wall Street: Goodbye to All That”):
“I had a rental on the market for $11,500 a month. On Monday, we got an offer for $8,500, which we countered with $9,500. They came back with $8,000,” she said. “I told them they were going the wrong way but they said, because of what was happening in the financial markets, this is our new offer. And guess what? The owner accepted it.”
Welcome to the new world of deleveraging and downward price discovery. Welcome to the new Stealth Depression. In a practical sense, for anyone who doesn’t make a living in financial markets, the best course of action is to get out of revolving debt, repair your balance sheet, protect your assets and come back to the market later. ”
http://www.minyanville.com/articles/Bernanke-GDP-Fed-government-deflation-depression/index/a/19352
alia,
Yup… like you can’t believe. I tell friends of the stuff that goes on [went on – I have since “divorced” 2 of my family members] and they just gape.
It’s made me stronger, more cynical at times, wiser, sad and grateful [that I dodged that mental illness bullet] all at the same time.
On a positive note, it has significantly strengthened the remainder of my family.
sl
I think we’ve gone through this before, but there is no way the average housebuyer is going to come up with 25-40% down in short order. National savings rate is zero. For people to put away even 10% of their annual income will require a major lifestyle adjustment.
And All Hype can attest to as well… as a “little brother” he has heard volumes of it.
Thanks for thinking of me, AH. :)
sl
MORTGAGE MELTDOWN TO HIT CREDIT CARD USERS
Posted: Tuesday, October 7 at 05:00 am CT by Bob Sullivan
Credit card debt and mortgage debt are two sides of the same coin on the American personal finance landscape. And now, it appears they are poised to become a two-headed monster. Consumers with credit card debt can expect to feel the walls closing in on them in the coming months, as card-issuing banks search for creative ways to cut back on risk and raise cash.
On Tuesday, msnbc.com reported on a new policy at American Express that allows the firm to penalize consumers based on where they shop and which bank holds their mortgage. Given the tenuous state of the credit card-issuing business, expect other issuers to follow suit, if they haven’t already. Experts say consumers also should expect their credit limits to be lowered for what might seem like arbitrary reasons and their balance transfer fees to climb.
“Consumers are probably not accustomed to that but we live in a new world,” said Carol Kaplan of the American Bankers Association, explaining the new caution among lenders. “(Banks) have suffered a lot of losses and they are doing whatever they can to reduce risk. They have people that work all day and all night who try to come up with new formulas to assess risk.”
Some elements of those formulas might surprise you. Few consumers would consider the credit limit implications of the stores they shop at — and in fact, they can’t, as American Express wouldn’t tell MSNBC.com which stores it deems as “risky.” Still there’s nothing illegal about the practice, and with losses mounting, it’s not surprising that card issues are resorting to new tactics.
In the first quarter of 2008, banks charged off 4.7 percent of credit card loans, a 33 percent increase from the first quarter of 2006, according to the Center for American Progress. That timing is no coincidence; that’s when easy credit for home equity loans dried up. In 2009, according to consulting firm Innovest StrategicValue Advisors, banks will charge off nearly $96 billion in credit card debt, double the projected 2008 losses.
That’s why credit card issuers are running for cover.
“Delinquencies and defaults are soaring,” said Robert Manning, author of the book “Credit Card Nation.”
He said believes some major credit card issuers might not survive the current crisis. “They suspended the financial laws of gravity and put individual households on steroids,” he said. “… Now (banks) don’t really know what to do.”
http://redtape.msnbc.com/2008/10/how-credit-card.html
Who posted that property yesterday, close to Sparta? The ad indicated an asking price of high 600K. You also stated that they were asking 1.6 M. Just found out, my brother bid on that, 500K, in early 2006. They laughed, said put a 1 in front of that. He may go back and bid 400K.
vodka (131)-
Get me some lederhosen and a gag ball. I guess we’re all Austrians now.
“Purging of bad debts must take place before a lasting recovery can begin. The mistake the Fed is making is attempting to force liquidity down the throat of a market that does not need it and cannot use it.”
It’s like tranfusing blood into a patient having a massive brain hemmorhage. It just creates a bigger mess at the point of the problem.
“For people to put away even 10% of their annual income will require a major lifestyle adjustment.”
skep,
Correct. We have been discussing attitude adjustments for over 2 years here. They better start adjusting, fast.
By the way, today’s fed actions indicate, at least to me, that they realize the stroke job, bailout bill, really is a non- functional pile of pork.
BC (133)-
Too bad we can’t bury them in Crudlow’s casket.
As prominent Cambridge economist John Maynard Keynes observed in 1931 during the Great Depression: “A sound banker, alas, is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him.
“Purging of bad debts must take place before a lasting recovery can begin. The mistake the Fed is making is attempting to force liquidity down the throat of a market that does not need it and cannot use it.”
Kettle 131 and Clot 149,
Why is it so darn difficult to understand this. It’s soooo common sense to me it sometimes scares me into thinking I’m wrong.
Aussies are turning Keynesians too.
make 153,
The concept is simple, but the consequences are staggering!
Consider this one statement “Purging of bad debts must take place before a lasting recovery can begin
apply that to the US in its current mess. No one is willing to do that because they would have to give up all the paper gains that they have. It would also shoe the house of cards for what it is. TPTB will fight tooth and nail to prevent this.
how the h*ll does Jim Kramer still have a job?
http://blogs.tampabay.com/media/2008/10/how-does-cnbcs.html
Do six talking heads at once on CNBC equal a “sexbox”?
156 moderated. Drat.
BAC inching toward zombie zone.
Just saying…
Bob, debt destruction seems simple when we’ve been discussing facts and theory for a few years.
But it’s a camel through the eye of a needle to anyone who counted on that debt.
Inconceivable.
And relative to your observation that the Fed obviously realizes the bill is useless, I re-assert my opinion from last week that the P document was a weeklong stall tactic. He even thought Congress would walk again. Maybe two weeks bought. Something else was in the works that needed time to go down. I don’t think we’ve seen it, even yet.
Frank,
Have you looked up any cures/therapy for Ostrich Syndrome? You need it.
Since I turned down the opportunity for a 200K education and I currently rent and don’t own, I don’t even have any meaninful debt I can default on to join the “in” crowd.
I have 9 months until I move back to the tri-state. I am starting to consider Connecticut over NJ at this time. I like that the “train town” equivalents over there are much larger in population than some of tax sucking hamlets of 2K people in NJ.
“Inconceivable.”
Pat [160],
Stuck in the muck for a long, long, time. Japan. Assets decline but the debt remains. Deep recession and servicing debt. Good luck.
BTW, anyone catch How I Met Your Mother last night? The entire episode consisted of some serious Jersey bashing, but the conclusion was cute.
#146 skeptic: Agreed,and if that becoems the case, then house prices will fall through the floor.
I like burying bodies in Jersey
gryffindor Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
BTW, anyone catch How I Met Your Mother last night? The entire episode consisted of some serious Jersey bashing, but the conclusion was cute.
There are also the group that used to save a lot by spending their whole paycheck but banking some of their bonus each year. Good luck with that strategy. I am saving up for a trade up house so I have been banking 50% of my earnings for the last two years, I figure within 2-3 years I should have enough.
John [166],
I guess they buried your rally. Was hoping you were right. Need to get shorter.
Rumors being circulated that Citimortgage, Citigroup’s mortgage wholesaler, is being shutdown.
Once again, just rumors right now.
#167 John: Why this fascination with a tradr up McMansion. They are so, well passe, along with granite and stainless steel.
And it really is going to take you another 2-3 years.
#166 John: I will take NJ any day over LI, any day.
“I like burying bodies in Jersey”
John,
Did you bury your H-B’s stocks?
How long before some nukes are for sale on the open market?
From yesterday,
Pakistan facing bankruptcy: Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves are so low that the country can only afford one month of imports and faces possible bankruptcy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3147266/Pakistan-facing-bankruptcy.html
John’s gonna take over the Universe once all these guys with connections are done going down.
Man, then everybody’s gonna have to hear about the hookers and old junkers all day.
Fate worse than death.
tosh (169)-
I think that rumor has legs. I deal with them a lot. They are, undoubtedly, one of the biggest collections of jackasses on the planet.
Of course, at C, that could mean that their ops will be expanded.
3b
NJ any day over LI, any day.
isnt that akin to saying “i would rather have lung cancer then pancreatic cancer”
Who really wants either one?
Pat (174)-
Where’s John gonna find a cul-de-sac in NJ where every hubby makes over 200K/year, drives a ’76 Gremlin and still uses tube TVs and radios?
Haven’t you figured it out? John lives in the 4th dimension and can only join us once he solves the formula for time travel.
Pat (174)-
Given the choice, I’d choose death too.
No doubt.
NJMLS Bergen County Comp Killers!
Teaneck, 601 MAPLE AVE
SOLD: $335,000 1/3/2006
SOLD: $275,000 10/1/2008
Ridgewood, 8 PATRICIA CT
SOLD: $1,105,000 12/1/2004
SOLD: $940,000 10/3/2008
Vodka (173)-
Do they have those cute suitcase models?
Bergabe opens mouth; SKF, SRS soar.
Rate cut coming, Bergabe talking about inflation dropping
half
any guesses on SKF when they lower the rate tomorrow?
Perhaps a deeper issue in the global credit crisis is unbounded capitalism. Heretical, i know. But as capitalism progresses if drives markets to ever higher efficiencies. You eventually reach a point where you encounter a receding horizon of consumption. Corporations have sold every widget imaginable to the american consumer and we the consumers spent every penny we had. The only way to continue a growth based capitalist economy is to crank up the credit machine so that people can buy more widgets with borrowed money.
The Credit machine has now run out of gas as both the banks and the consumers are now out of money and the capitalist economy is starting to sputter as it grasps for another sector of the nation to feed off of and maintain growth.
The underlying problem here is unbounded exponential growth. An annual growth rate greater then 0 is an exponential (geometric) growth pattern.
The problem is not with capitalism per se, but with exponential growth
You know, I regret flicking from C-span and Waxman’s clobbering of AIG. I was trying to decide if CEOs were closet sociopaths, or just plain greedy.
Clott,
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/images/suit.jpg
I hear it comes in a cute Hello Kittie theme for an additional 1oz Krugerrand
The sheeple are getting mad. I feel that this might be a tipping point in American history.
“Ms. Kouba can’t decide whom she should vote for, or if the outcome of the election will help her either way. “You grow up with everyone telling you how important your vote is,” she said, her voice tinged with disgust, “and then Washington does what it wants.””
Go long Pitchforks?
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/07/road-to-november-bellevue-neb/?hp
Oops, I hit submit too soon
NJMLS Bergen County Comp Killers!
Teaneck, 601 MAPLE AVE
SOLD: $335,000 1/3/2006
SOLD: $275,000 10/1/2008
Teaneck, 1828 TEANECK RD
SOLD: $320,000 5/8/2005
SOLD: $403,000 1/14/2006
SOLD: $247,500 10/2/2008
Ridgewood, 8 PATRICIA CT
SOLD: $1,105,000 12/1/2004
SOLD: $940,000 10/3/2008
Hillsdale, 24 CONKLIN AVE
SOLD: $635,000 7/17/2003
SOLD: $635,000 9/30/2008
Hillsdale, 1 KINDERKAMACK RD
SOLD: $469,900 12/21/2004
SOLD: $364,500 10/3/2008
Garfield, 59 SAMPSON ST
SOLD: $305,000 7/27/2006
SOLD: $190,000 10/2/2008
Elmwood Park, 159 ORCHARD ST
SOLD: $463,500 12/6/2005
SOLD: $395,000 9/26/2008
Closter, 66 POPLAR ST
SOLD: $1,100,000 12/15/2005
SOLD: $940,000 10/2/2008
Damn! Rich, that’s ugly! or..Beautiful :).
Which one of these did Frank sell?
Clatrification
The underlying problem here is unbounded exponential growth. An annual growth rate greater then 0 is an exponential (geometric) growth pattern.
The problem is not with capitalism per se, but with exponential growth
An AVERAGE annual CHANGE IN (delta) growth rate greater then or equal to 0 is an exponential (geometric) growth pattern.
Rich,
RW and HD lower than 2004! One HD property at 2003 prices! We are about half way there.
Thanks.
Today’s DOW looks like people are just waiting to hit the SELL button the moment they see a little bit of strength.
What are you guys doing with your positions? Adding or just sitting tight?
Nice article about ARM resets…
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aFLqcpe0qGRc&refer=home
This is probably the juicest piece…
About 121,000 mortgages will reset for the first time next month, according to the Citigroup report, which looked at only securitized mortgages. About 1.8 million loans have already begun adjusting based on benchmark rates, the report said, while 3.7 million face resets scheduled for after next month.
“Almost all” subprime and Alt-A ARMs with a few years of fixed rates, about 60 percent of those prime-jumbo mortgages and about 75 percent of such loans in Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae bonds are linked to Libor, the report said. The loans most often are pegged to six-month Libor.
#189 Rich; Thanks as always.
WTF just happened to MS??!!??
#176 kettle: True, but I will still take NJ. It is a love hate kind of thing for me and my state.
Rich,
Thanks for the stats. 2003 prices have been breached, especially when you look at how some of these have sold 15-20% off of 2004 prices.
Time to start tossing out some chum for the sharks….
Hey I ain’t scared, I am nearly all in bonds. My bank bonds were tanked and since Fed appears to be propping up banks they stopped falling as bank failure rate has slowed. They are now however illiquid so they are in run-off and I am not buying more. However, Fed could care less about bank stock price. The last six months I have been buying only high coupon (over 5%) munis callable in late 2008 to early 2010. Been getting them at par as assumption bonds will be called. None have been called yet. So I will collect my 5.5% coupons and wait till market recovers.
Curent after tax portfolio is:
15% FDIC Insured CDs
10% FDIC savings
30% Munis
15% corporate bonds
15% Triple AAA GIC
15% Stock
I hardly call my allocation crazy risky. I wish it was all insured CDs but what can you do.
Yeah, you’re still wearing tidy whities, at least.
#198 hardplace; ANd th next leg down will IMo be much swifter, 2001-02 around the corner.
I will take NJ any day over LI, any day.
Me too… My bomb shelter instinct hits every time I’m on Long Island. You are trapped in the case of any natural or man-made disaster.
3b – It’s about time houses are sold at more realistic prices. Should 2001-2002 prices hit next year, I may be moving my buying timeframe up. Maybe that blue-ribbon train town fantasy will be possible.
Wow you can buy 5.5% bonds at par today.
Status Filled at $100.233
Bond CUSIP 88880TGJ9
Description TOBACCO SETTLEMENT FING CORP N Y ASSET 05.50000% 06/01/2021BACKED REV BDS ST CONTINGENCY CONTR SECD SER. 2003 B-1C
“What happened to MS?”
Well if there wasn’t a short ban in place the drop wouldn’t likely be so precipitous.
Actually when the US goes down LI is safe as it is not attached to the mainland.
Hard Place Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
I will take NJ any day over LI, any day.
Me too… My bomb shelter instinct hits every time I’m on Long Island. You are trapped in the case of any natural or man-made disaster.
“For people to put away even 10% of their annual income will require a major lifestyle adjustment.”
Major lifestyle change? It seems for me and many on this board spending all but 10% of your take home pay would be a major lifestyle change. I would have a tough time figuring out what I could spend that much money on every month. If people really are having that much difficulty putting away that much, then are we out of touch with reality trying to save?
Yowzers. Gator checks into reality from the pool deck in Mazatlan to find the Dow down 300+ and SRS up 12%! What the heck is going on in the real world?
I am starting to feel like we are Nero fiddling while Rome is burning.
Now our current vacation dilemna. We always put down a ‘Freestyle Deposit’ towards our next sailing while on board. Do we think that we (or anyone else for that matter) will have any money to vacation in the next year? And if no one has any money to vacation, do we think the cruiselines will go belly up?
Actually when the US goes down LI is safe as it is not attached to the mainland
It will keep floating, just like a turd.
It will keep floating, just like a turd.
Toshiro, with your blessing, I have to use that one day for my friends that live on LI and always complain about NJ.
My family just canceled the gift exchange over the holidays.
OMG Christmas is canceled!!
True capitulation hasn’t been reached yet.
#210 – Use it all you want!
#203 hardplace:Should 2001-2002 prices hit next year.
Oh I think that is a given. However, I don’t think a train town will matter all that much any more.
GW tells us to have faith.
Clot, you’ve got to keep the faith and make adjustments to keep your business going. You will be there to take advantage when the economy rebounds.
Well, that’s what GW advises.
The rest of us say always have a back-up plan, sharpen up those cooking knives, and go to Plan B.
“do we think the cruiselines will go belly up?”
Gator,
Don’t know if they belly or just flop. However, they have been a great short, along with malls.
Re 171 – having lived both on LI and in NJ, I’d say that neither side can really claim victory.
In my mind, the pluses of both are proximity to NYC and the ocean. However, the annoying traffic and fuzzy politics in NJ, as well as the disproportionate number of nasty people on LI, balance each other out.
Nicholas, no way. With a name like yours, tell me you are not volunteering to craft up some presents for the clan.
“Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke opened the door on Tuesday for a possible interest rate cut in the near future, saying the worsening outlook for U.S. growth means the Fed should re-think its neutral stance toward monetary policy.”
“Financial markets have been clamoring for another rate cut given the turmoil in recent weeks. The benchmark Fed funds rate for overnight bank loans now stands at 2%.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/bernanke-hints-possible-interest-rate/story.aspx?guid=%7B4DF367AA%2DC693%2D4260%2D9CD8%2D4DA0A475B281%7D
I read something a month or so back that said that cruise lines are revamping their travel routes to increase profit margins.
They were going directly between ports at a slower pace instead of more remote, scenic locations. They were intentionally not staying in ports very long so that you would have to spend a majority of your money on the boat.
They might have a few more cards up their sleeves too, such as dressing the captain up as a pirate to rob you when he gets the ship far enough out to sea.
Fed Sets Floor Below Rate Target, Engineering ‘Stealth’ Cut
The Federal Reserve may have trimmed borrowing costs yesterday without actually saying so. The central bank used power granted under last week’s financial-rescue legislation to effectively set a floor under its main interest rate that’s lower than the 2 percent target set by policy makers last month.
The Fed may now pay interest on bank reserves while it floods financial markets with liquidity, pushing down the overnight lending rate by about 0.75 percentage point to 1.25 percent. “Absolutely, it’s a stealth easing,” said John Ryding, founder and chief economist of RDQ Economics LLC in New York and a former Fed researcher.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aSiAeDH_QZtk&refer=home
I have 11 brothers and sisters (12 total) so it is a big deal to call off Christmas.
He11 no I’m keeping the elves locked up this year.
#218 BC Bob:Financial markets have been clamoring for another rate cut given the turmoil in recent weeks
And I would ask why? what is a reate cut going to do/ Have they learned nothing?
Nicholas #219,
And here I was hoping to get a good deal on a cruise this December due to all this economic turmoil. Looks like I’ll have to re-evaluate the vacation plan.
Further rate cuts would allow them to borrow money free from the FED and then have the FED pay them interest on what they kept in reserve.
This would provide a new source of revenue that has been undiscovered for what, like forever. Essentially this would allow Bank CEOs truly infinite leverage and infinite profit with NO risk!!
Rich52,
I located a place in OBX that is renting quite nicely.
Will be good to sit on the frozen beach drinking frozen drinks and then warming up in the hot tub.
Russia and Brazil crumble as commodity prices crash
The entire complex of commodities and emerging market stocks, bonds, and currencies is now in free-fall as the economic crisis spreads like brushfire, threatening to draw every corner of the globe into the vortex of recession.
Oil, grains, and industrial metals all crumbled as the week began despite the passage of the Paulson bail-out plan in Washington and dramatic moves by European governments to shore up their banking systems, compounding the steepest commodity crash in over half a century. The big exception yesterday was gold, which surged $34 to $864 an ounce on safe-haven buying as the markets came face to face with the unsettling reality that the euro is no healthier than the dollar, and perhaps sicker.
The euro’s dramatic slide over the past two weeks has for the first time exposed the instability of the twin-pillar system holding up global finance. Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas, said investors fear that no one is in charge of Europe’s monetary union. “Who is Mr Europe? What is his telephone number? There is no such thing. We have a cancer eating at the system because even healthy companies cannot roll over their debts, yet the politicians still don’t understand the risk,” he said.
The sudden shift in commodity sentiment has led to a massive withdrawal of funds from frontier markets, triggering stock market routs across Latin America, Asia, and Eastern Europe. The MSCI index of emerging markets fell 11pc yesterday in its worst day ever. Russia suspended trading after Moscow’s Micex index crashed 19pc in its biggest one-day drop since the 1998 default. The state-controlled VTB bank fell 25pc.
“Traders are just sitting there staring at the screens and going, ‘Wow’,” said Ron Smith, a strategist at Alfa Bank. Brazil shut the Sao Paulo exchange after the Bovespa index crashed 15pc in panic trading, led by flight from the resource giants Vale and Petroleo Brasileiro. Mexico’s Bolsa was off 7pc; India’s Sensex was off 6pc.
The Goldman Sachs Commodity Index has tumbled a third since May. Chartists say it is now perched precariously on its seven-year line, threatening to challenge the “supercycle” thesis that became so fashionable at the top of the bubble. “The boom was fuelled by massive speculation,” said Charles Dumas, chief strategist at Lombard Street Research.
“Commodity derivatives in the spring had a face of $10 trillion, so it doesn’t take many bulls to sell and send prices crashing. Remember all those clever bankers saying this was the new investment medium, ‘uncorrelated’ with either assets? Well, it’s correlated now – downwards,” he said.
The Australian dollar, the beacon of commodity sentiment, went into near-meltdown yesterday, dropping 9.7pc against the yen in the largest one-day drop on record as Japanese investors dumped their Uridashi bonds and scrambled to close bets on high-yield economies – known as the carry trade. Brent crude oil fell to $85 a barrel, down over 40pc since the July spike. It is a casualty of the synchronised recession engulfing the entire G7 bloc of leading powers.
Japan and the eurozone are already contracting: the Anglo-Saxon economies are close behind. The new twist is an abrupt downturn in China, until now the dominant force in the oil and metals boom. Albert Edwards, global strategist at Société Generale, said China depends on exports to US and Europe for its lifeblood, and could face banking problems of its own.
“I think China is going into recession as well. This is going to catch investors off-guard.”
Stephen Jen, currency chief at Morgan Stanley, said the “glowing reputation” enjoyed by emerging markets during the global boom was a deception caused by the easy-money largesse of the credit bubble. Strip that away, and the picture looks very different. “They are very vulnerable to a U-turn in capital flows,” he said.
The oil slide has reached the point where it is setting off a powerful chain reaction through the nexus of global markets. It may soon be unprofitable to divert much of the US crop harvest to biofuels, so futures contracts are rapidly scaling back assumptions. Corn fell 6.4pc yesterday, while soya beans were off 5.4pc.
There are fears that Russia could slip into a downward spiral if oil drops to $50 a barrel, which is now the lower end of Merrill Lynch’s forecast. Moscow has become addicted to the oil bonanza, ratcheting up spending so quickly that it may now need prices to stay above $90 to fund spending plans. Veteran analysts say they have seen this movie before.
3b – I agree, though for sellers, being in a “train town” was a rationale for keeping prices high. I would definitely say that watching prices for the last several years, the train towns have taken a bit longer to soften.
3b [222],
A positive yield curve slope turns idiot bankers into geniuses.
Go to CVS and put a pack of trojans in your dad’s stocking.
Nicholas Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
I have 11 brothers and sisters (12 total) so it is a big deal to call off Christmas.
He11 no I’m keeping the elves locked up this year.
Rich 223 – Assuming lack of complete Armageddon, early to mid-Dec is the best time to go. Boats much emptier and no kids. You can get quite a deal on a stateroom, as few people take off that time of month since they all take off for the holidays. We have frequently sailed that time of year in a balcony or mini-suite for what an inside cabin goes for over the holidays or even less.
We all said over a year ago that prices should be the average price of homes on 1-1-00 adjusted for inflation. Looks like we will get that sometime next year.
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NYX 30.40, -1.31, -4.1%) Chief Executive Officer Duncan Nierderauer said Tuesday that if the credit markets don’t loosen up soon, the state of the economy will become “dire.” “We’re not in a depression, but I think the eocnomy is largely stalled,” Nierderauer told businessmen at a meeting of the Boston College Chief Executives’ Club in Boston. “The credit market shutting down the last three to six months has finally tipped us over into what is starting to feel like a recession.” Neiderauer added,” I think if we don’t get the credit markets loosened up pretty quickly, it’s going to be fairly dire.”
John [231],
Fcuk inflation. We didn’t have any inflation during this time period, at least our govt told us so. Nothing personal seller, it’s all nominal.
#224 Nicholas: Complete collapse!!
#177
“Where’s John gonna find a cul-de-sac in NJ where every hubby makes over 200K/year, drives a ‘76 Gremlin and still uses tube TVs and radios?”
awesome
John,
I thought about that contraceptive thing. The problem is I’m the 11th out of 12.
What kind of world would we live in if I didn’t exist…A poorer one I should add.
Advocating contraceptives to my parents wouldn’t be like asking for fewer brothers or sisters, it would be like asking never to be born. I haven’t sunk that low.
Any of you people with dish network check out channel 73?
GREENVILLE, S.C. – Federal agents detained more than 300 suspected Treasury employees Tuesday in a raid at a MBS processing plant that has been under investigation for months.
“Alright you goons wasting taxpayer money on that toxic crap, come out with your hands up.”
“This is FED and we heard Paulson speaking in there. We know what you been up to and your not getting out of this alive.”
MBS processing plant == Goldman Sachs
Nicholas [236],
The turd, thanks Tosh, didn’t deserve a response.
Nicholas, Johnny Boy is worth more than his teasing.
And I’m the youngest of 10 (11, but one didn’t make day three…no surfactant).
The world would be a much darker place without the kid who calls me Mom.
60 Minutes TV article
A Look At Wall Street’s Shadow Market
The web of modern finance;
http://www.thedeal.com/newsweekly/features/chain-of-fools.php
#237 Tom
I had heard about it and thought it was a great campaign tactic. It will have some subscribers up in arms. Their screaming will only drive more traffic to the channel and increase its profile.
For those without Dish, the O campaign bought a complete channel and are running a 2 minute video on the economy on a continuous loop.
I want a million dollar toll brothers mcmansion in a 300K foreclosure in 2010 and for you guys I will park this baby out front.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1976-Solid-AMC-Gremlin-Parts-or-Project-Car-Discbrake_W0QQitemZ260296503516QQihZ016QQcategoryZ5357QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
skep-tic Says:
October 7th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
#177
“Where’s John gonna find a cul-de-sac in NJ where every hubby makes over 200K/year, drives a ‘76 Gremlin and still uses tube TVs and radios?”
awesome
PGC, can you load it up to utb?
Completely OT; Fuji Velvia is just beautiful stuff. Just got back from ModernAge. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.
PGC,
It’s pretty neat. It talks all about his plan and you can buy it for 3 easy payments of $19.99
Now that the Fed is set to lower interest rates, why don’t they encourage banks to start using alternative mortgage products, like option ARMs. Then the circle would be complete.
Did you guys hear the story about Lehman’s CEO Fuld getting punched at the gym?
“Frankly, I sat there and listened and I’m with the guy who apparently, the day before Barclays announced they were coming in and Lehman had already filed for bankruptcy, went over to him in the gym and punched him because that’s how I feel when I, you know, when I watched that,” Ward said on the Oct. 6 “Power Lunch.” “I didn’t think he was contrite at all, I thought he was arrogant.”
Attitude adjustments?
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) – U.S. consumers reduced their debt load by a record amount in August, the Federal Reserve reported Tuesday. Total seasonally adjusted consumer debt dropped by $7.9 billion, or a 3.7% annual rate, in August to $2.58 trillion. This was the first decline since January 1998. Consumer credit rose 2.4% in July. Non-revolving credit – such as auto loans, personal loans and student loans – dropped sharply by $7.3 billion, or 5.4%, to $1.61 trillion, after rising 0.9% in July. Credit-card debt dropped by $612 million, or 0.8%, in August to $969 billion.
Disclaimer- This info came from Washington. They also report that unemployment is 6.1%.
Actually if you have an option arm set to adjust in 2009 tied to Fed Funds you got from Countrywide which BAC is going to knock off some principal you are set. Fed Funds plus two points equals a 3% Mortgage. Now whos the fool!
Coldwell is supposed to start a 10 Day Sale on Friday, convincing many of their Sellers to reduce prices by 10% for 10 days.
Tosh,
Shot quite a bit of Velvia 50 on my old 4×5.
At least a thousand megapixels.
:)
#252 John: They are. Because I am going to get the same house at 50% off peak!!!
#254 – Ohhh, 4×5. I’ve been meaning to go large format. I primarily shoot medium format now (645 & 6×6). Too much cool stuff, not enough cash.
Ben Stein must be reading this Blog, because he finally got it right:
http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/112984
Prohibitively expensive to shoot and print. Unless, of course, you have clients that will cover expenses. Medium format digital would probably end up being cheaper once you factor in film, processing and printing.
I would pick NYC-commuteable NJ over commuteable LI. If I could live outside of commuting range, I would go the other way.
[185] Ket,
Beautifully worded, in mathematical and engineering parlance, but beautiful. My less elegant take was that capitalism, if left unfettered and in a closed system (no growth in resources or consumers), resulted in near total concentration of wealth, such that consumption effectively stopped. Hence the need, in the eyes of the critics of capitalism, for redistribution.
I must stay I like your version better, notably because it substitutes credit for redistribution, which, in a simple model, gets to the same place.
“Big Ben is going to leave the short sellers in the dust.”
John,
Can’t wait for the next rabbit out of the hat. Negative ffr?
BAC officially in (my) zombie zone.
clot – not to worry. Once they buy MER @ 29, they will be alive and kicking.
Confused, 257.
Great summary. Our forefathers are spinning in their graves.
We’ve given back all that they fought for and are once again serfs.
This time to the king of Wall Street instead of England.
I’m going back to bed. Wake me up when Paul Revere shows up.
sl
If big Ben gives us the rate cut, 100BP wait ten minutes and sell your dogs.
Oh no we have started the LI-NJ war again. As a NJ person who actually likes NJ I will settle it once and for all, they are fundamentally the same. High taxes, good public schools, nice wealthy areas(North Shore vs. Bergen, Morris, Essex Suburbs), pretty trashy areas, big hair, bad accents, nasty people, nice beaches. Fundamentally not much of a difference besides being closer to the water in LI suburbs but further from the mainland and LIRR is more reliable than NJ Transit besides that same kind of place.
We have now arrived at the end of days.
Burn baby, burn! Which will be the next check cashing bodega to circle the drain?
Even more important, how much worthless paper can JPM stick to it as it dies?
Like the “signature” of a serial killer…
This week’s schedule:
Wed- further ass-kicking
Thurs- holiest day of year. Repent, or trade? Sort sale ban comes off.
Fri- Failure Friday! Banks half price, 5-7 PM. Rock out to the sounds of DJ Klink.
Sat/Sun- NFL football on the big screen. Free wings. C-SPAN reruns. World financial death watch. $1 pitchers.
John (265)-
Big rate cut? I’m all in, short.
Oops…better start disclaiming again.
Less than 48 hours til the bear raid!
#260
“Beautifully worded, in mathematical and engineering parlance, but beautiful. My less elegant take was that capitalism, if left unfettered and in a closed system (no growth in resources or consumers), resulted in near total concentration of wealth, such that consumption effectively stopped. Hence the need, in the eyes of the critics of capitalism, for redistribution.”
this was essentially Marx’s idea
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A 13% drop the past 5 sessions. Cash truely is king.
A 13% drop the past 5 sessions. Cash truely is king.
Gold is King and cash wishes it was as good as gold.
Skeptic,
Marx did indeed discuss such limitations to capitalism. he wasnt the 1st or the last person to do such. While i do not agree with the majority of Marx’s opinions, i do feel that many of his views on the limitations of capitalism are accurate.
If you are not familiar with it, look into the idea of Steady State Economics.
Nom,
Thanks for the compliment
I don’t know what others are experiencing but, in the past week, I have received a slew of e-mails from some RE agents who even a few months ago were insisting that “prices do not go down around here” and who now are saying “please, please, Please lowball our listers.”
From BP;
CEO –Chief Embezzlement Officer.
CFO– Corporate Fraud Officer.
BULL MARKET — A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.
BEAR MARKET — A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex.
VALUE INVESTING — The art of buying low and selling lower.
P/E RATIO — The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.
BROKER — What my broker has made me.
STANDARD & POOR — Your life in a nutshell.
STOCK ANALYST — Idiot who just downgraded your stock.
STOCK SPLIT — When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.
FINANCIAL PLANNER — A guy whose phone has been disconnected.
MARKET CORRECTION — The day after you buy stocks.
CASH FLOW — The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.
YAHOO — What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.
WINDOWS — What you jump out of when you’re the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.
INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR — Past year investor who’s now locked up in a nuthouse.
PROFIT — An archaic word no longer in use.
I smell forced liquidations by hedge funds. “I see dead banks, they’re EvErYwHeRe. they don’t know their dead!!”–Osment
got any aspirin? my REITs hurt.
sl
Vaseline brand banking lubricant, brought to you by the George Herbert Hoover Bush Administration.
I suggest that folks start calling the White House comment line suggesting that Geo quit, and encourage their friends to do the same. Captain Hazelwood is at the healm and lacks the political capital to get thingd done.
BC,
277 is PRICELESS!!
ROFLMAO.
sl
I think BC’s original content is even better
276
I walked into an open house Sunday and immediately heard the agent on the phone with owner trying to talk them into a listing price cut.
When she asked me what I thought of the place I told her I liked it, (I did), but thougt it was priced about 20% too high. She knew it too, and she was dumber than a bag of hammers.
Anyone can provide an address to mls# 2584964.
Disclaimer: just looking…
#275
“Marx did indeed discuss such limitations to capitalism. he wasnt the 1st or the last person to do such. While i do not agree with the majority of Marx’s opinions, i do feel that many of his views on the limitations of capitalism are accurate.”
Kettle– I guess I should have qualified. I was not invoking Marx as a boogeyman. I agree that his views are on the whole very insightful.
Layoffs Watch ’09: BarcLehs
Posted by Bess Levin, Oct 07, 2008, 4:01pm
Supposedly there were cuts in capital markets today, and the bloodletting was on both sides, Lehman as well as Barclays people. Apparently a couple of the Barclays guys were directors, and the Lehman cuts were all levels, analysts included.
https://njrereport.com/index.php/2008/10/07/inflated-housing-or-affordable-housing/#comments
Nom,
I would argue that simple redistribution would be ineffective. In a capitalistic system you would either need a large enough resource reserve such that it was close to inexhaustible, a slow enough consumption rate such that you will never consume all resources, or a combination of the 2. Any large scale redistribution scheme would be likely to fail in a capitalistic system.
A real life “example” would be if everyone lived to american/european standards, but the global population was less then 1 billion and stayed that low. The other end of the spectrum is if all 6.7 billion humans on the planet lived the life of a tibetean monk.
Either scenario allows for abundant resources for all. But any capitalistic society that is capable of consuming a significant fraction of its resources is almost certain to crash. WHy?
consider the following:(from Albert A. Bartlett)
Bacteria grow by division so that 1 bacterium becomes 2, the 2 divide to give 4, the 4 divide to give 8, etc. Consider a hypothetical strain of bacteria for which this division time is 1 minute. The number of bacteria thus grows exponentially with a doubling time of 1 minute. One bacterium is put in a bottle at 11:00 a.m. and it is observed that the bottle is full of bacteria at 12:00 noon. Here is a simple example of exponential growth in a finite environment. This is mathematically identical to the case of the exponentially growing consumption of our finite resources of fossil fuels. Keep this in mind as you ponder three questions about the bacteria:
(1) When was the bottle half-full? Answer: 11:59 a.m.!
(2) If you were an average bacterium in the bottle, at what time would you first realize that you were running out of space? Answer: There is no unique answer to this question, so let’s ask, “At 11:55 a.m., when the bottle is only 3 % filled (1 / 32) and is 97 % open space (just yearning for development) would you perceive that there was a problem?”
problem with Marx is what he advocates doing as a result of certain limitations of capitalism. you can recognize there are limitations to the system and still embrace it as better than the alternatives
#276 Shore; And yet you still are getting some incredibly dumb sellers/realtors /out there coming on with incredibly dumb prices.
I used to get annoyed/furstrated. Now I just laugh, really what else can you do but laugh??
Skept, 285,
Just being Cautious. Marx is a dirty word to many people
Skept 288.
The sad part is such limitations can be overcome if people as a society are willing to plan long term (50+ years out) and to control their penchant for greed. Short term gain at long term costs. perhaps that should be the US motto
been traveling for a while..
Anyway, couple of quick observations:
“Oil Recession: Analyst Foresees Oil at $40 a Barrel or Lower”
link
The experts here were claiming permanent high oil prices and crashing dollar.
Who knows what happens in the future, but dollar is getting stronger (Euroland is crashing even harder and its budget mess is worse than in the US, Emerging Market is crashing too).
With stronger dollar, increasing drilling and bursting of the oil bubble speculation, oil at $40 is getting closer.
Jamil,
You are right. As always. Plenty of oil out there, no supply problems, all just a bubble.
“Short term gain at long term costs. ”
One thing that could have helped everyone is is companies were allowed to accumulate a fair amount of cash to use in tight times, rather than borrowing. Once raiders started seeing cash on hand as something that needed to be wrung out of companies, it put even more reliance on the ability to borrow.
Another client whacked from their job……also, I know some guys at Barclays….waiting for the bounceback F$*)%I(
my guys are safe :)
ChiFi
Can you email me off list?
e-mail me at
chicagofinance AT yahoo.com
Unrelated question that I was wondering if the gurus in here could help with.
We are renting in Harding and just found out that the house we are renting is in pre-foreclosure and has been since the middle of April (anonymous tip).
So;
a) How long is the pre-foreclosure period before foreclosure is started? This seems like a long time unless they are working something out.
b) If it goes into foreclosure can the bank kick us out in 3 months or something?
The owners have another house just down the road and they bought at the peak so my guess is that our rent is not covering the mortgage we are in and they are underwater on the other one but are using our money to pay the mortgage on their new home.
This could work out in our favor as we want to get out early anyway.
BOOOOOOOOOOOYA!
Updating a story first posted yesterday (Oct. 6). Depeche Mode has renewed its long-term deal with Mute/EMI and is planning to release its 12th studio album April 20, 2009. Past Depeche Mode albums were licensed by Mute to Warner Bros. in the United States but will be under EMI’s control moving forward.
NJ Kiwi,
in NJ statelaw requires that banks honor existing rental contracts for the entire term.
Kiwi/NZ: been in your shoes….wait for the foreclosure and negotiate with the new owners….you may wish to consider to stop paying rent now…you will have at least 60 days rent free before you would need to vacate anyway….I defer to people who would know as my experience is 15 years old. Bear in mind, your security deposit is likely toast, so you may as well find a way to make yourself whole by skipping rent payments….
“Ron Paul reacts to Barack Omama’s slogan”
http://tinyurl.com/4lyphy
Thanks kettle and chicago. But if it is pre-foreclosure, is it almost a done deal that it is going to foreclosure and if so how long is that?
The funny thing is that the owners put in a new AC for us, and are honoring all the repairs that need to be done so it is not adding up why they are wasting money. Why spend several grand on a new AC unit rather than tell us to go ^%$%#$??
“Brazil, Argentina abandon US dollar”
http://tinyurl.com/4dmphk
298 CHifi
Sent!
looking for a good used car. any ideas?
(don’t have access to one of those car auctions where i can get a steal)
sl, 145… i’m the only one in my family to have a “normal” life. i end up feeling more survivor’s guilt than gratitude. …i like to think i’m helping put my therapist’s kids through college. ;>
From the Record:
Linens ‘n Things stores start closing next week
Linens ‘n Things today asked a bankruptcy judge for permission to liquidate all of its stores beginning next week, but the company still is holding out hope a so-called “stalking horse” bidder will emerge to keep the company alive.
A company spokeswoman said late Tuesday that Linens would reveal the identity of the bidder within 24 hours. She said there are other bidders interested as well, and that “it is still a fluid process.” Although Linens has asked the court for permission to close all of its 371 remaining stores, that doesn’t necessarily mean that will happen, the spokeswoman said.
Linens had 19 stores in New Jersey, including stores in Paramus, Secaucus and Totowa.
The Clifton-based retailer today asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Sontchi in Delaware’s bankruptcy court for permission to auction off its remaining 371 stores on Oct. 14 and begin going-out-of-business sales two days later. A hearing on the auction request was scheduled for Friday.
From MarketWatch:
Citi to cut outside mortgage brokers to 1K from 9500: report
Bye bye Citi wholesale
“Bye bye Citi wholesale”
yup.
once again, we were right.
SAS
“Citigroup cutting number of outside mortgage brokers: report”
http://tinyurl.com/4yqubt
#310 – Guess that rumor I heard earlier was right.
That’s a big cut too as those aren’t 8500 individual people, although they could be. That’s 8500 brokers, as in Mom & Pop Mortgage Inc. and 8499 more. Ugly ugly ugly.
Will the flight deck get buzzed by John McCain. MAAAAVEEEERRRICK!!!
dog bites man:
ACORN Nevada Office Raided”
“In July, the two Nevada state agencies involved in the raid, along with the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office for Nevada, formed a task force to target voter registration and election fraud..”
“But it’s not the first time ACORN’s been under investigation for registration irregularities. The raid is the latest of at least nine investigations into possible fraudulent voter registration forms submitted by ACORN — the probes have involved ACORN workers in Wisconsin, New Mexico, Indiana and other states.
In 2006, ACORN also committed what Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed called the “worse case of election fraud” in the state’s history.
In the case, ACORN submitted just over 1,800 new voter registration forms, and all but six of the 1,800 names were fake.
More recently, 27,000 registrations handled by the group from January to July 2008 “went into limbo because they were incomplete, inaccurate, or fraudulent,” said James Terry, chief public advocate at the Consumers Rights League.”
Nice to hear this: “Washington, D.C. – In a letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Senator John Ensign today called for the suspension of taxpayer dollars that ultimately end up in the hands of such controversial groups as ACORN,”
I hope this time feds use RICO and bring the professional voter fraud organization down once and for good.
Will the flight deck get buzzed tonight? MAAAAVEEEERRRICK!!!
gator, 208… dunno, but when i was worried that gas prices would mean we couldn’t afford to fly to see relatives in the UK anymore, husband promised me we could take a boat there. i will be very put out if the boats give up before the planes do.
you ready to watch the WWF wrestling debate btw Omama and Songbird McSh*tstick.
as soon as you blokes realize this is a false debate, and they 2 people are puppets, and get out of the false left/right debate and the liberal/conservative debate, the better we all will be and no longer be suckas!!
This false debate is to sidestep who is really in charge and make you think you have a choice.
Omama “change”
lol
if you believe that… your a robot, wind your ass up, goto work, and pay your taxes till you dies… you sap.
SAS
“Welfare requests spike in Morris County”
http://tinyurl.com/4t9mu7
“Turnpike Authority unveils scaled-back plan for toll increases”
http://tinyurl.com/4yxp52
scroll down to the bottom for a segment that was on Nightline last night about Lehman …and about employees that tried to warn about fraudulent mortgages and doctored documents … they were fired and sued …
http://abcnews.go.com/?lid=ABCCOMGlobalMenu&lpos=News
jamil (315)-
The sucker is you…for believing that either of the candidates is anything more than a bought & paid for mouthpiece for the pitiful status quo.
My big decision of the night is which flavor popcorn to have while watching the “debate”.
from mortgage implode-o-meter
CitiMortgage Wholesale Lending – Prime, Agency
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2008-10-07
NEW! Comment on this article
Emails are coming in from all over the country that CitiMortgage is closing it’s Wholesale Lending division. AE’s are sending out messages to Brokers saying goodbye, or calling to say they were let go today.
“CitiMortgage has announced today that it has made the decision to re-structure it’s Wholesale business model by continuing the Wholesale Division without local account representation. Our nationwide sales efforts will be handled by an inside group of dedicated individuals committed to bringing the best products and services to our valued brokers.”
In the ‘now typical’ fashion of closing shop, it appears first Lenders let go the outside reps and tell everyone you are moving to an ‘in-house’ system. In reality this has turned out to be “the clean-up crew” more often than not. It seems like Citi has done this in the past with First Collateral Services, and their Home Equity division.
“Citimortgage closes wholesale” came in from one AE, but on a conference call today, Citi says the entire outside sales team including management will be let go (last day will be Friday) except for those they keep for their “tele-sales” business.
From a tip:
“Citi is drastically restructuring our wholesale operations, moving to a call center approach and scaling back from 9,500 approved wholesale brokers to 1,000 brokers. All outside AEs are losing our positions and the remaining brokers will be serviced through call centers out of Dallas, TX, Ann Arbor, MI and St Louis, MO. All brokers will be notified this afternoon if business will end or if you are able to continue to work with Citi under the new structure.”
We’ll post more information as it comes in… join in our Discussion Forum for updates throughout the day.
http://ml-implode.com/ailing/lender_CitiMortgageWholesaleLending_2008-10-07.html
sas (318)-
It’s a total sheeple show.
Anyone who votes is complicit in the plot to destroy the American economy.
“After Bailout, AIG Execs Head to California Resort
Rescued by Taxpayers, $440,000 for Retreat Including “Pedicures, Manicures”
http://tinyurl.com/3wrgsr
scribe (324)-
That’s it. Done. You are right; the consolidation/in-house team is the smokescreen for the cleaunup crew.
C wholesale is done. Toast. Road kill. Dead. Never to come back.
They won’t be missed. They stunk, then they were irrelevant.
sas,
When the real and peso abandon the dollar, it’s time to kiss your paper goodbye. How the tide turns. The supply of dollars are exploding. Good faith or an off balance sheet SIV buying unsecured debt.
Thankfully, there is one currency which does not have any liability attached.
“Anyone who votes is complicit in the plot to destroy the American economy”
people are just clueless.
they have been suckers, buying into the propganda.
Its too bad.
SAS
sas (326)-
These are the people who run things. Omama and McPain are just their puppets. People like Fuld and Sullivan are laughing at us; they know we’re dopes. That’s why they can get in front of Congress, sneer at them, show no real remorse and walk away with billions, stolen right out from under us in broad daylight.
It’s just like my buddy at the SEC told me several months ago, when I asked him when the frog walks would start:
“Clot, you’re going to be disappointed. Not a single one of these guys will do a day of time.”
BC (328)-
Better to peg your currency to Charmin.
More value.
I need a Scotch & water over a highball.
I can’t take it anymore.
SAS
I will only watch McPain & Ohdrama if they wear clown suits and red foam noses. Perhaps a grind organ and monkeys would enhance their acts.
Nothing they say has any credibility unless they utter it while looking like Bozo.
kiwi
N.J. renters mostly safe from foreclosure
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Last updated: Sunday May 11, 2008, EDT 11:07 AM
BY DONNA ROLANDO
SPECIAL TO THE RECORD
Comment on this story Email this story Printer friendly version Decrease Font Size Increase Font Size
As a growing number of homeowners struggle with foreclosure, tenants might wonder what America’s real estate crisis means to them.
While nationwide, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, millions of homeowners and renters are in jeopardy of losing their homes, it’s a different story in New Jersey.
Sure, Garden State tenants could be served with a foreclosure notice just like a homeowner, but seldom do they have to pack their bags, said Connie Pascale, senior attorney at Legal Services of New Jersey (LSNJ).
In fact, he said, leaving good rental housing and the protection of the state’s Anti-Eviction Act is probably the last thing that tenants want to do.
“This is an issue well set in the law. The tenants have a right to stay,” Pascale said, describing New Jersey’s landlord/tenant laws as among the best in the nation and a victory for the 50,000-member New Jersey Tenants Organization.
“In terms of eviction, landlords can only evict for good cause,” Pascale advised — and foreclosure does not constitute good cause.
Decades ago, foreclosure could uproot both homeowner and tenant because it was seen as an exception to New Jersey’s Anti-Eviction Act of 1975.
Then in 1986, Pascale said, “The state Legislature made it clear they want to protect tenants.” Legislators put “successors in interest” — like mortgage companies — in the same shoes as landlords in having to protect tenants from foreclosure, he said.
The strengthened law was upheld by the state Supreme Court in 1994, he said.
With Supreme Court backing, the majority of tenants could rest assured that even if they are served with a foreclosure notice, as the legal process will do, they have a home.
While it’s great news for most tenants, there is room for worry.
Under “The Nuts and Bolts of Fighting Evictions,” part of the LSNJ guide to tenants’ rights, an exception to the Anti-Eviction Act is noted:
“If you live in a small building [three apartments or less], and the owner actually lives in one of the apartments, the landlord does not have to provide one of the causes for eviction under the Anti-Eviction Act. But the landlord must still take you to court to evict you.”
Matt Shapiro, president of the New Jersey Tenants Organization, said in such a case tenants may have very few rights, but they should still attempt to negotiate with their new landlords before giving up a good apartment.
Tenants in this case could argue a new landlord doesn’t have the right to void their contract, he added.
It’s a good time to learn the law because Shapiro predicts that foreclosure in New Jersey hasn’t reached its peak.
In contrast to New Jersey’s relative security for tenants, Danna Fischer, legislative director of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said in most of the country, “the lease is terminated when there’s foreclosure and the tenant is out of luck.
She agreed that New Jersey is one of the few states to preserve the lease through foreclosure but there is talk of national reform.
Despite New Jersey’s safeguards for tenants, Pascale said that no foreclosure notice should be taken lightly. Tenants should consider legal advice and turning to a non-profit like LSNJ if their income is low, he said. They should continue to pay rent the same as before unless a court order tells them otherwise. Neglecting to pay rent can be grounds for eviction. Sometimes it’s tricky to know whom to pay the rent to while ownership is changing. If the tenant is unable to resolve the question, they could arrange to pay into escrow.
If you’re wondering what happens to your security deposit, Pascale said whoever takes over the foreclosed property must return the deposit at the appropriate time.
Then there’s the lease. If a tenant has entered a “sweetheart” lease — where rent is unreasonably low — foreclosure may prompt a challenge. If a new agreement cannot be reached, ultimately, the courts may decide your rent.
As a growing number of homeowners struggle with foreclosure, tenants might wonder what America’s real estate crisis means to them.
While nationwide, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, millions of homeowners and renters are in jeopardy of losing their homes, it’s a different story in New Jersey.
Sure, Garden State tenants could be served with a foreclosure notice just like a homeowner, but seldom do they have to pack their bags, said Connie Pascale, senior attorney at Legal Services of New Jersey (LSNJ).
In fact, he said, leaving good rental housing and the protection of the state’s Anti-Eviction Act is probably the last thing that tenants want to do.
“This is an issue well set in the law. The tenants have a right to stay,” Pascale said, describing New Jersey’s landlord/tenant laws as among the best in the nation and a victory for the 50,000-member New Jersey Tenants Organization.
“In terms of eviction, landlords can only evict for good cause,” Pascale advised — and foreclosure does not constitute good cause.
Decades ago, foreclosure could uproot both homeowner and tenant because it was seen as an exception to New Jersey’s Anti-Eviction Act of 1975.
Then in 1986, Pascale said, “The state Legislature made it clear they want to protect tenants.” Legislators put “successors in interest” — like mortgage companies — in the same shoes as landlords in having to protect tenants from foreclosure, he said.
The strengthened law was upheld by the state Supreme Court in 1994, he said.
http://www.northjersey.com/realestate/NJ_renters_mostly_safe_from_foreclosure.html
Anybody hear anything more on BAC branches having “Sorry- Closed Today” signs?
335. Clot;
Snopes says it’s False.
clot SAS,
the current mess seems to echo a milenia old debate. Thinkers since the day of plato have debated whether or not the general population can actually rule itself. The founding fathers has such a debate, hence the creation of the electoral college.
The weakness of a society is the weakness of its people. once its people forget how to be great so does the nation. Until joe sixpack shuts off the TV forgets about monday night football, we are all doomed to a country run by a privileged few.
http://www.fresnobee.com/business/story/918370.html
Fresno Bee – Sanford Nax
“Local Home Sales Strengthen”
Some highlights..
“The number of houses for sale in Fresno and Clovis is shrinking and mortgage firms are once agian hiring people as bargain-basement prices are enticing more people into the marketplace, real estate officials say.”
More than 535 existing houses were sold in September in the metropolitan region – the fourth consecutive month of 500 or more transactions…..
54% of the deals last month were foreclosures…
“But with the banks selling more than half of all houses, there is no move-up buyer.
The median price has fallen 30% in one year -$280,000 to $195,000.
I feel stupid and contagious.
Here we are now, entertain us.
SG – Excellent article @83 – printed it out so I can study it – literally…
DOW drops 1000+ in last 3 sessions. The Bailout Goggles! They do nothing!
Citing extraordinary demand, the U.S. has broadened its freeze on sales of gold bullion coins.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/mint-halts-more-bullion-coins/story.aspx?guid={4D7F54D5-60D6-44B2-AFAE-B4EA5C2F65CA}&siteid=yhoof
yeehaw
Retirement accounts have lost $2 trillion
WASHINGTON — Americans’ retirement plans have lost as much as $2 trillion in the past 15 months, Congress’ top budget analyst estimated today.
The upheaval that has engulfed the financial industry and sent the stock market plummeting is devastating workers’ savings, forcing people to hold off on major purchases and consider delaying their retirement, said Peter Orszag, the head of the Congressional Budget Office.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-na-retire8-2008oct08,0,5294529.story
(344) Kettle1 Just wait till those 2nd graders walk into class and are greeted by a 70 year-old lady with a cane – ME!
344 & 345
Kettle and Cindy
Saw that earlier today. I don’t think I mind the idea of not retiring. Of course, I say that now while I’m still relatively young and healthy, with no end in sight. Ask me that question again in 20 years and I may have a very different answer.
SAS, clot,
hopefully i am wrong, but this could be more then political theatre. Perhpas its all talk and no action. hope so
-The senate was threatened with the US being put under martial law if they did not pass the bailout
– about 4K troops have been deployed around the US as part of Northcom for dealing with civil unrest and put on 24hr standby
– Due to recent signing statements and law changes, troops are only answerable to the commander in chief, that includes national guard troops.
– The northcom troops (3 brigades) just finished a training exercise at fort benning GA covering how to subdue civil unrest
Outside of the political ring, i think that TPTB realize that there is going to be civil unrest at some point as the financial mess progresses and are preparing for it.
I’m sure you’ll all jump on me for this, but who cares?
You feel you have no input into the political process? And why bother to vote for either M or O, cause they’re both puppets? Well, whose fault is that? Answer: it’s all of our faults.
When people get involved in their government—by doing more than voting (which less than half of the eligible voters even manage to do, btw, even in presidential election years)—things can be changed.
Perhaps the current economic crisis will change people’s opinion of this ‘radical’ idea, but based on what I read here every day, I doubt it. Inaction is not action.
(346) Lost
I’ll be 60 soon. Divorced 13 years ago – A quicker start on making my own way would have helped. But my needs are simple – and everything should be paid off by the time I retire…It’s just that “by the time I retire” has changed. Pushed out a bit further, perhaps.
You can see what you need to do so you will be fine. I expected to continue to get COLA’s and that hasn’t happened for a few years now. I wouldn’t figure raises into your plans. What with the costs rising, I haven’t done as much damage to my debt as I had planned to by 60. You can – you have years yet. At least it is a job that is pretty secure. People will probably continue to send kids to school.
That cane may come in handy – you never know..
http://discoverymuch.com/2008/10/07/we-need-this-much-for-the-bailout-pic/
(351) Good one Kettle – Have you seen the dollar bill where George Washington looks like he’s having a heart attack?
[350] Peace
You are preaching to the choir. We may disagree with you about other things, but not that.
Would that I had the time (and those incriminating photos from high school never existed) then I would certainly be leading the pitchfork and torch parade.
sas Says:
I need a Scotch & water over a highball.
I can’t take it anymore.
I have a bottle of The Balvenie that needs killing. That’ll do the trick Then I can make room on my shelf for Cragganmore.
Monty Python – The man who is alternately rude and polite
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1leDAwjtto&feature=related
the bailout
http://www.allvoices.com/image/20163029
This is comforting.. This group got millions in the housing bailout bills.
“ACORN hired inmates, some experts at identity theft”
By Jon Ralston · October 7, 2008 · 3:49 PM
A handful of inmates at Casa Grande had been convicted of identity theft-type crimes and were hired as canvassers by ACORN. Read the devastating affidavit at right.
will this be a blockbuster????
http://slowlygoingbald.com/images/palinclist-thumb.png
bad html
You guys are cracking me up now..
Gotta go see the debate…Only 6:00 here.
for the first time since 98 americans saved more than they spent…..
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/dow-sp-500-approach-important/story.aspx?guid=%7B2D3E860B%2DAD90%2D4E08%2D8FB1%2DC2AC2178560A%7D
kettle [343],
The real price is soaring.
October 7th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
I need a Scotch & water over a highball.
I can’t take it anymore.
SAS
SAS, They don’t make enough hard stuff to numb this.
TeflonOmama: dodging questions left and right.
McPain’s weird arm gestures are causing me pain… HOW? How?? does this man pee??
sl
“You feel you have no input into the political process? And why bother to vote for either M or O, cause they’re both puppets? Well, whose fault is that? Answer: it’s all of our faults”
I marched on DC after I got out of Vietnam service, kissed the asses of the Russians with missles and vodka during the cold war, to try to let them know we Americans aren’t that bad. Made alot of Russian friends over in Moscow.
I can’t do it all.
SAS
McCain is lying when he says he can reach across the aisle…..He caint even comb his dayam hair.
I need a Scotch & water over a highball.
I can’t take it anymore.
yee.. working on my third splash :)
SAS
Another impostor. One of the main culprits. Why does he still have a job? Fcuking incompetent and negligent. He gave the pigs more sheet to play with. Little wonder they got a bit dirty. Asleep at the wheel.
“Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox’s regulators stood by as shrinking capital ratios and growing subprime holdings led to the collapse of Bear Stearns Cos., according to an unedited version of a study by the agency’s inspector general.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a6iXuZJG1L44&refer=home
Omama must have went to the Fred Astair school of dance, because that bloke is dancing all over the place.
SAS
sas, drambuie for me. cheers!
The debate –
Brokaw asked them who they’d pick as Treasury Secretary …
are you ready?
McCain cited Meg Whitman of eBay ….
I can’t wait for tomorrow’s jokes … or clot’s remarks
I don’t hear neither Omama or Songbird McStain talk about the Fed reserve, and the devaluation of the dollar.
“Change”
let me tell you about change, its starts from the bottom up, not the top down.
If you want change, get off your little butt, get involved and get active about issues, and call a spade a spade.
Because if we don’t, and don’t soon…
its over. and you will be crying in the streets saying “what happened?”
SAS
alia,
u bet :)
SAS
Obama will be the perfect Captain for the USS Titanic. The band will play all the way down.
enough of the buzzwords omama.
your a joke.
McStain, you actually said 1 or 2 things I like, too bad your so full of marlarkey…it makes your cheeks puffout!
Keating 5 baby! Keating 5!
SAS
i just estimated this scoth costs $60/oz.
yikes! i better slow it down.
SAS
anyone can join me.
I live down the road from Dive 75.
SAS
Wow I don’t think I have boots high enough to wade through the bs in this debate.
McStain, this guy has no clue about Iraq.
oh, I forgot, songbird McCain got the royal treatment in the military because of his daddy.
SAS
whoops, triggered mod by using one of the candidates names:
he debate –
Brokaw asked them who they’d pick as Treasury Secretary …
are you ready?
Mc cited Meg Whitman of eBay ….
I can’t wait for tomorrow’s jokes … or clot’s remarks
So, who is the winner??
– That One!!
Skipped the debate. Looks like I didn’t miss much.
Just me, hubby, a bottle of Glayva (better than Drambuie. Shh. Scots secret), and “Don’t mess with the Zohan”.
Not hilarious. But a better night than it seems anyone else had.
awful debate and boring, predictable questions. This is best Tom Brokaw can do?
Even Rick Warren questions were much more interesting and revealing about the candidates. Can we please get him or some other non-DC crony to moderate the next debate?
MEG F_(KING WHITMAN ?!?
Man those AIG people are slimeballs. They should just shut that entire company down.
Funny thing about Mc always bringing up Meg Whitman as the economic advising ideal, if you examine her policies regarding Ebay and its increasing profits over the last few years, then put it into govt form, its nothing more than taxation. Meg Whitman nickled and dimed Ebay to the top with one “creative” new seller’s fee after another.
John just isn’t paying attention when it comes to any and all domestic policy. Why? Because quite frankly, its never been HIS problem.
Also,
John thinks that expensive “gold dipped” insurance policies buy you hair transplants. Um, John, you’re lucky if they buy you a colonoscopy. I know, because I own one of those “gold dipped” policies.
He really is a million light years out of touch
Watching Worldwide Exchange on CNBC talking head from Germany, “here we are rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”I all most fell off my chair! Well it took awhile but they figured it out.
381 Barbara
Absolutely.
That’s why I won’t sell anything on ebay anymore. After they take more then their share, paypal does the same. And the ebay fees just increased again as of 9/16.
vodka (347)-
No coincidence. These guys know civil unrest is coming.
We are toast. Just a matter now of waiting for the day when it all goes black. My guess is, the currency race to the bottom will have to run its course. All world rates will go to 0, and all currencies will be worthless.
Then, the shooting starts.
We need a do over………..neither of those clowns can handle the issues we are up against today…..
scribe (375)-
I like the idea of Whitman as Sec’y of Treasury.
She can sell off guardrails, gubmint office desks, gavels and federal buildings on EBay.
Giant USA going out-of-business/liquidation sale.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-wed-cme-citadel-oct08,0,6806722.story
Having a market for the credit default swaps would help.
How else was the sheeple show last night?
From WSJ.com
Housing Pain Gauge: Nearly 1 in 6 Owners ‘Under Water’
LONDON (MarketWatch) — The Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and other major central banks cut interest rates Wednesday in a coordinated move to head off a major global slump. The Federal Reserve cut its key lending rate a half-point to 1.5%, while the ECB cut its key rate a half point to 3.75%. The Bank of England also cut its key rate by a half point to 4.5%.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=881099968&play=1
This guy makes sense to me…
Richard Berstein – We need more than financial solutions – look at employment
Geez.. I got spam from John McCaln.
Seriously. It’s spam. I never signed up for any political stuff and I don’t hand out that email address any more.
It’s on a ton of spam lists since I get hundreds of emails a day from it but this one made it through.
That’s reason enough for me to not vote for him.
His plan spam sucks too.
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