From the Press of Atlantic City:
Timeshares in southern New Jersey hit by foreclosure
When times get tough, the timeshare has got to go.
Owners of timeshare resorts in southern New Jersey apparently feel that way, as nearly 30 of them at the Fairway Villas at Seaview in Galloway Township have gone to sheriff’s sale in recent weeks. The condominium association was the plaintiff in some of the cases, and the banks that financed the purchase loans pursued other claims.
So far, there have been no takers.
“I have never seen one go to a third-party bidder,” in the few years she has worked with the sales, said Jillian Taylor, a clerk in the Atlantic County Sheriff’s Department.
Since Jan. 1, 27 timeshares at Fairway Villas have been put up for sheriff’s sale, said Deputy Sheriff Ted Kammer. Of those, 19 reverted to the condominium association or the lending bank and eight are pending.
Timeshares used to go up for sheriff’s sale every so often, but “all of a sudden, we’re seeing quite a few,” said Sheriff Frank Balles.
There are several timeshare resorts in Atlantic County, mostly in beach communities. Purchasers, often after listening to a high-pressure sales pitch, buy one week per year in a given unit. They are considered part-owners of a condominium, and pay annual maintenance fees to the resort’s homeowners association.
When owners default on those maintenance fees, the condominium association forecloses on the property — or in this case, the particular week at the unit — and it goes to sheriff’s sale, Balles said. If no one buys, the deed reverts to the association.
From MarketWatch:
Bernanke sees ’11 foreclosure starts at high level
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said late Monday in a speech that he expects to see a very high rate of foreclosure starts in 2011. “We hope to see this decline by next year,” he said. Bernanke added that foreclosures are negative at a macroeconomic level for the United States. “The most important transmission mechanism is that, so long as foreclosure are creating an ongoing supply of housing vacancies, we we will be seeing continued softness in house prices,” he said. This in turn affects household wealth, consumer confidence, consumer liquidity and the rate of new construction, he added. “The high rate of foreclosures is obviously a serious problem and one of the reasons why our recovery is not as strong as we would like it to be,” he said.
From the WSJ:
Lenders Near Pacts With Regulators in Foreclosure Probe
Fourteen U.S. lenders are on the verge of agreements with federal bank regulators to overhaul their handling of foreclosures and treatment of delinquent borrowers in response to allegations of abuses that emerged last fall.
Regulators including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Federal Reserve and Office of Thrift Supervision could announce the agreements with the banks and thrifts as early as next week, though a date wasn’t final, according to people familiar with the matter.
The regulators are likely to act ahead of state attorneys general, who are also in talks with the banks. Those discussions are moving at a slower pace amid disputes among several state officials.
Bank of America Corp., J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co. and 11 other home-loan servicers have been under investigation by their regulators and state officials over breakdowns in procedures for handling foreclosures and requests for loan assistance. Several have acknowledged using so-called robo-signers who filed documents to foreclose on homeowners without personally verifying their contents.
Good Morning New Jersey
I hope you hear inside my voice of sorrow
And that it motivates you to make a better tomorrow
This place is cruel no where could be much colder
If we don’t change the world will soon be over
Living just enough, just enough for the city!!!!
From CNBC:
No Spring Break in Housing: Prices Likely to Keep Falling
Housing prices will not get a Spring bounce and will actually fall during the industry’s historically best season as buyers continue to wait for that elusive “housing bottom,” according to surveys and analysis by two top Wall Street firms.
“Our monthly survey of real estate agents indicated a decline in buyer traffic in March, as buyers chose to wait for more signs of balance in the market,” said Credit Suisse’s Daniel Oppenheim, who surveyed 1,200 real estate agents from across the country. “We would expect additional weakness in pricing, as sellers will likely attempt to use price to sell their homes as the end of the traditional spring season nears.”
It’s a vicious self-fulfilling cycle as buyers continue to wait for what they deem to be a bottom, in turn, forcing sellers to lower prices even further. Prices of single family homes fell 3.1 percent year-over-year in January to just above the April 2009 low, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Index data released last week.
“A large component of the housing decision is based on the expectation for future home prices, which are naturally a function of current conditions,” said Michelle Meyer, Bank of America Merrill Lynch economist, in a note. “Until it appears that prices are bottoming, many potential homebuyers will remain on the sidelines.”
Meyer estimates home prices have fallen 30 percent from the summer of 2006 until now and will fall another five percent or more this year.
Number 2 The deadbeats now have to be compensated because their forclosure documents were signed by vice president Robo
Oh just stop by the branch for some apple pie will forgive and forget everything.
Here’ s your worthless mortgage, wipe your face up with it.
Plume, I don’t have a problem with rich people. Hell, I’m trying to get rich myself, and I truly believe the poor need to pay some damn taxes.
However, I do have a problem with banksters who enriched themselves by selling bad loans, packaging them and collecting commissions based on frauds.
Financial engineering is no more than fraud married to malinvestment.
I have also always been 100% for the abolition of capital gains taxes. To my uniformed eyes, it appears to be double taxation and should be stopped based on that alone.
“The most important transmission mechanism is that, so long as foreclosures are creating an ongoing supply of housing vacancies, we will be seeing continued softness in house prices,” he said.
20% still to go, kids. The trend is your friend. Like an ocean after a storm, every asset eventually finds its natural balance.
tick… tick… tick… tick…
Yesterday’s thread, re: Sloatsburg, NY
Many years ago, was with a friend who was pulled over for “failure to yield” for pulling out on to the highway a quarter mile in front of a Sloatsburg cop (no lights/siren). Among the six tickets he received in one traffic stop were “bald tires” and “failure to maintain”.
Sloatsburg:
Same here. They said I didn’t use turn signal to change lanes. Sure. That place is like going through rural Georgia.
Gary,
To add insult to injury, he also got a parking ticket right after that in Harriman State Park as we tried to pack up our crap and get the hell out of Dodge.
You guys are worried about traffic tickets? How about giant, irradiated sea monsters?
“This time nobody will be blamed for not carrying the decimal comma. While a few weeks back TEPCO scrambled to lie to the public that a reading 10 million times higher than normal was really just 100,000 times above threshold, today TEPCO, whose stock hit an all time low in overnight trading, finally admitted the truth that radioactive Iodine 131 readings taken from seawater near the water intake of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant’s No. 2 reactor reached 7.5 million times the legal limit. This means Godzilla is most likely very close to hatching. But it gets worse: “The sample that yielded the high reading was taken Saturday, before Tepco announced Monday it would start releasing radioactive water into the sea, and experts fear the contamination may spread well beyond Japan’s shores to affect seafood overseas.” In other words, as TEPCO was dumping 11,500 tons of radioactive water in the sea, it already knew, but kept away from the public, the radiation was nearly ten million times higher than legal limits. At this point we truly marvel at the stoic ability of Japanese people, and most certainly its east-coast fishermen, whose jobs are finished as nobody will want to buy any fish in the foreseeable future for fear of radioactive toxicity, to accept such lies, very often with an intent to hurt, day after day, without anger spilling over in some form of violence.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tepco-knew-radiation-seawater-75-million-above-normal-it-started-dumping-radioactivity-sea-m
How about the strategic defaulters that stayed in the home while saving the mortgage and tax money.Now getting paid another $21k to vacate the house.Don’t we feel stupid?Some of this are actually high earners that don’t see a reason of continuing to pay a depreciating asset.
Bill Gross on CNBC now, very nicely insisting that yield must be paid.
yo (16)-
Only suckers pay.
We’ll be making progress once they add Olive Garden and Red Lobster to the pile along with Sbarro. Another chain that I really can’t figure out why it exists is Subway. Why someone desires lettuce and tomatos on a piece of bread made by Dupont is beyond me. One slice of meat and cheese is not a sub, it’s a scam. In fact, we need to eliminate about 100 food chains so the real Mom and Pop shops can thrive again. Geezus, we really have become a stup1d f*cking country. Like I said once before, just change everyones name to either Dorfman or Blutarsky.
Doom (15):
That Zero Hedge article was the first thing I saw this morning. It is a shame that the gubbmint of Japan is so blatantly lying to their people. I really thought they would be more forthright with the people about the seriousness of the situation. Shows you how naive I am. All gubbmints follow the same game plan when in a crisis. Deny, Deny, Deny…..What really concerns me is the water they are trying to store on site. Must be the really nasty plutonium stuff. How much worse than 10 million times over the legal limit is soon to be discovered.
Funny thing about time shares. They are a great deal in florida BK sales, quite often they go for $1 if you pay the annual fee with it. I read an article that some smart NYers who want to winter in florida pick up the 12 weeks a year they want to go for 12 bucks. They can always walk away from their 12 buck investment.
If anyone ever see’s a super cheap BK in the Marriot Seaview timeshare near AC I would be interested. I stayed there once and close to NYC and fun stuff for kids. Maybe like under $1,000 bucks, I would rather pay one dollar.
More on the Fukushima disaster…..
And so with each passing day the veil of lies at Fukushima is being lifted. For all those who had been scratching their heads how it is possible that Fukushima would have a (very high to begin with) radiation level in the millisieverts if indeed the plant had experienced a Chernobyl style meltdown and “inadvertent recriticality”, when it should have been far higher, here is your answer. According to NHK, “a radiation monitor at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant says workers there are exposed to immeasurable levels of radiation.” Unfortunately for the workers present, the monitor is not being metaphoric: “The monitor told NHK that no one can enter the plant’s No. 1 through 3 reactor buildings because radiation levels are so high that monitoring devices have been rendered useless. He said even levels outside the buildings exceed 100 millisieverts in some places.” Perhaps it is time for the discredited Japanese government to form a committee to investigate whether TEPCO, with or without the complicity of the NHK, was counterfeiting radiation reading over the past month, and thus sacrificing the lives of the 50 brave TEPCO workers who are committing an act of suicide by continuing to stay at the plant. Who knows: maybe they would have a different opinion if they actually knew their presence there is a guaranteed death sentence.
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/fukushima-radiation-literally-charts
Want to Retire in Chile?
Free Report. Retire in or Visit
Safe, Stable & Beautiful Chile.
http://www.InternationalLiving.com/Chile
re #23 – Rinse and Repeat lies and all
Same thing happened in Chernobyl.
Glow Boys and Gamma Sponges
Fukushima’s Suicide Squads
By RUSSELL D. HOFFMAN
They call them “gamma sponges” and “glow boys.” The teams are called “suicide squads.”
Richard “Rich Rad” Meserve, former Chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission — and now head of a mindless Washington pro-nuclear lobbying think-tank — calls them “jumpers” as if it were something fun to do. Or perhaps he considers the job healthy exercise. The suits are certainly very heavy, the work arduous, tedious, and dangerous.
Everyone learned to called them “liquidators” after Chernobyl, but there, they called themselves “bio-robots.”
Why? Because they had to replace the robots that didn’t work, on account of the fancy electronics don’t work in highly radioactive environments. That’s true today, too.
Their job? In Chernobyl it was to do things like: Heave sand and lead from a helicopter. For a total time over the reactor of just a minute or two.
A couple of trips. Then it’s someone else’s turn.
Or shovel radioactive graphite off the roof of the building for 45 seconds.
Then it’s someone else’s turn.
Or run in and turn a valve part way.
Then it’s someone else’s turn.
It required approximately 800,000 such young men to “clean up” Chernobyl (and I use the term “clean up” very, very loosely!). Virtually all were conscripted.
Now, they’re dropping like flies. It’s called the Chernobyl Syndrome:
“Heart, stomach, liver, kidneys… nervous system… our whole bodies were radically upset [by the radiation and chemical exposure].” — testimony of a liquidator, from the movie Battle for Chernobyl (highly recommended).
Their children and the children of people who were downwind from Chernobyl often wear what’s called the “Chernobyl Necklace”. It’s the scar across their throat, left over from thyroid surgery.
Far worse abnormalities and deformities await many others, as well. Thyroid cancer is just the tip of the iceberg, though perhaps the easiest one to prevent and to cure.
The authorities supposedly kept track of everyone’s radiation exposure, but really it was bogus. Needles on radiation detectors were pegged on “high.” Radiation detectors themselves were in short supply. Cumulative dose badges were practically unavailable. Nearly everyone’s exposure was projected, estimated, and calculated instead. These bogus records were then used by the Soviet state later, to deny that Chernobyl was the cause of their comrade’s illnesses.
In Japan it’s happening again: Needles are pegging on “high”, detectors are in short supply, and exposures are being crudely estimated.
The “heros” — as the media have aptly dubbed them — who are working at the highly-irradiated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant right now — are reportedly receiving 20 times their normal day’s pay for a day at Fukushima Daiichi.
And perhaps a thousand times their normal daily radiation dose.
Hardly worth it, but thank goodness somebody is willing to do it at any price. The world appreciates their effort. The problem is, nothing’s working. Polymer sponge diapers (I kid you not, that’s what they’re trying) aren’t working. Concrete isn’t working. Sawdust and shredded newspaper (I kid you not…) isn’t working. The plant is still leaking enormous amounts of radioactivity.
And they say that could go on for years.
Every nuclear power plant has the potential to become the next Fukushima. The next Chernobyl. Or the next “worst industrial accident ever” — worse than Chernobyl. Worse than Fukushima.
Shut ’em down. This is crazy. We sacrifice our fellow citizens. We sacrifice ourselves. We sacrifice our future. We sacrifice our children. Shut ’em down forever.
SIDEBAR
Here’s an initial Fukushima cancer forecast from Richard Bramhall at the Low Level Radiation Campaign:
417,000 cancers forecast for Fukushima 200 km contamination zone by 2061
Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), Professor Chris Busby, has released calculations of the cancer incidence to be expected in fallout areas of Japan. Using data from the International Atomic Energy Agency and official Japanese web sites he has used two methods to estimate the numbers of cancer cases. He compares these results with estimates derived from ICRP modelling.
The “Tondel” Method is based on a conservative study by Martin Tondel in northern Sweden. This examined cancer incidence during 10 years after Chernobyl. It differentiated the varying levels of land contamination and found that the disease increased by 11% for each 100 kiloBecquerels of fallout per square metre of land surface. Professor Busby has applied this factor to the zone up to 100 km from the reactors, where IAEA has reported, on average, 600kBq per sq.m radioactivity. In the 3.3 million population of this 100 km zone a 66% increase over and above the pre-accident rate is predicted in 10 years. This implies 103,329 extra cancers due to the Fukushima exposures between 2012 and 2021.
Similarly applying the “Tondel” method to the ring between 100 km and 200 km from Fukushima (population 7.8 million but lower concentrations of fallout) 120,894 extra cancers are to be expected by 2021.
Assuming permanent residence and no evacuation the total predicted yield according to the “Tondel” method is thus 224,223 in ten years.
The second method is derived from weighting factors advised by the ECRR on the basis of the different ways in which different radionuclides behave in biological systems. This predicts 191,986 extra cancers in the 0 – 100km circle and 224,623 in the outer ring. Probably half of these will be expressed in the first ten years and the remainder between 10 and 50 years.
Assuming permanent residence and no evacuation the total predicted yield according to the second method will be 416,619 of which 208,310 will appear in the first ten years. There is thus good agreement between the two methods.
The ICRP method predicts 6158 additional cancers in 50 years which, among the 2½ million cancer cases expected normally in that population over half a century, would be invisible and deniable. (The report with all methods, assumptions and data is a pdf linked from the front page: http://www.llrc.org/)
More Fuk-u-shima maybe they can try paper mache
http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/04/04/when-sawdust-fails-what-happens-now-at-fukushima/
what, no google homepage art..
“Today, in 1933, FDR signed an Executive Order prohibiting the private ownership of gold.”
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/04/05/2151303/house-republicans-ready-to-unveil.html
25 % top rate is a start.
Debt, Hype
In totality, Fukushima stands a good chance of being worse then Chernobyl. The various governments will never publicly discuss this, but if you look at the rate of fallout generated and the net potential environmental effects, it is a real possibility.
At least 1 reactor and possibly 3 of the 4 are seeing intermittent re-criticality events. They cant even begin to clean the mess up and mitigate damage until they can stop the re-criticality events.
one of the really nasty aspects of Fukushima is that at least 3 of the 4 reactors are compromised and dumping decay products into the ocean and local water table. Chernobyl never had that issue and the Russian authorities did everything they could to prevent that from happening ( radioactive products hitting the water table ). They cant even hope to stop the flow of radioactive products into the ocean and water table until the get they reactors cooled which is probably on the order of months at a minimum (re-criticalities generate huge amounts of heat, so that could be a little problem). Since the cooling loops are destroyed and the buildings so highly radioactive they are forced to do a once through loop that pumps the cooling water into the core then right back to the ocean. The amount of cooling water needed is just too great to be held in am improvised system.
Another nasty little catch-22 they are running into is that water acts as a moderator and slows neutrons which acts to promote nuclear fission reactions. By pumping water into the core they are promoting criticality events to some degree. But they obviously have to pump water in in order to prevent run away melt downs.
Fukushima also cannot be entombed like Chernobyl was since it has substantial damage to the facility that provide a direct path for radioactive material to flow into the ocean and water table. To entomb this they would have to find a way to seal the plant from the bottom up. That would be one of the great engineering challenges of recent history.
Barring a massive kamikaze cleanup effort on the order of Chernobyl ( several hundred thousand people) they will most likely have to let this thing “burn” itself out over the next several years while it continues to leak radioactivity and they continue to put on show efforts that have minimal real effect. They cant begin the real cleanup process of dismantling the reactors until the materials and facilities cool enough (both temp and radioactivity) for them to be worked with. I believe it took about 5 years for the slag from the TMI melt down to coll enough to be removed by robotics..
-just a highschool janitor who read too many physics books.
Bill Gross tanked the bond market …but only momentarily ,wonder if he want back in at much lower prices /higher yields ?
Pain,
They want to stop water flow? They probably need to consider something like this:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7011
Of course they have to handle the ocean as well. Like i said before a herculean engineering task that japan doesn’t have the money for right now and would probably take multiple nations to pull off. It’s also kind of hard to find people willing to be bathed in neutron beams while they work.
re: #29 – Kettle1 – Every marine dredger on the planet should be deployed there. The could build out the beach enough to prevent the nuclear runoff from reaching the ocean. At the same time there should also be trucking in billions of cubic yards of sand to bury the whole damn place in sand and boron.
http://www.dcsc.tudelft.nl/Research/Old/Dredger_Rotterdam.jpg
Ket,
I hear that Tepco will give any janitor who brings his it her own mop and bucket a free ticket to Fuk-u-shima and $10,000 for an hour of work as part of the mop-up operation.
I hear that those who have participated have reported a warm glowing feeling that no other job can equal.
Diablo Canyon.Diablo Canyon. PAGING Diablo Canyon. Please call the NRC and FEMA.
Pain,
Shell has demonstrated an interesting tech along the lines of my previous link for use in the in situ extraction of shale oil. They create the ice wall around the target area and then heat the internal area for an extended period. This demonstrates that we should have the tech to maintain the ice wall against substantial temperature gradients.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576242923804770968.html
Vee know who you are, veher you are, mit whom you are speaking, unt vhat you are doink.
Juice
You dont want to even consider burying that reactor until its cooled and re-criticality is no longer possible, otherwise you may end up build the mother of all dirty bombs.
You are right that they should be building a monster lagoon to isolate the facility from a free connection to the ocean.
Vee are der app company, vee don’t need to care.
Where is Lilly when we need her?
Shore
If someone ever ran a real PFMEA risk analysis then a number of the existing reactors such as diablo canyon would be shutdown immediately. Those risk may be low, the consequence of failure too great.
Indian Point is another good one. The consequence of a major failure there, in the middle of a massive population center and direct access to the ocean would be cataclysmic.
i like it No takers for Jersey timeshares | becoming discovered Jersey Real Estate Report now im your rss reader
Why they have not gotten some massive water lnes in there perplexes me. Spraying from a fire hose, one must be wasting the vast majority if what one sprays.
Indian point was a stupid idea in the first place and retaining it is beyond beyond.
Salt mine time
Juice 32
Any ships used in that dredging effort would probably have to be abandoned afterwords due to contamination.
re #44- Better a couple of ships than your Ahi Tuna don’t ya think? Cesium works it way up the food chain just like Mercury. It is absorbed by marine plants, which are eaten by fish and — like mercury — tends to become concentrated as it moves up the food chain.
Kettle1 – MSM says no worries there is plenty of water to dilute it all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/29/world/asia/29safety.html
Juice,
Tokyo’s fate is at the will of the winds
“Japan’s Fate Subject to the Winds” at http://seekingalpha.com/article/261668-japan-s-fate-subject-to-the-winds
“What has struck me as strange in this crisis is the lack of aggressive attack from the get-go. The more aggressive you are during the early stages, the more options you are able to create to mitigate a nuclear event – and a boiling water reactor’s failure tree is slow moving. Do not believe because there are not daily events to watch that technicians are getting a grip – this is the nature of this beast.”
“If the winds decide, the highly populated areas further south in Japan could be subjected to lethal levels of radiation. Japan’s future is literally resting with the winds. No country will accept radiated shipments coming from Japan.”
“The ability to transfer power between zones is limited to 1 GW through frequency converters. This is literally nothing when you consider total generating capacity is 81 GW in the 50 hz zone where the damaged power plants lie. This electrical distribution problem will not go away in 6 months.”
and
-Trouble at Fukushima reactors No. 5 and 6 — Cracks are allowing in radioactive water that could destroy emergency generator and other vital equipment
Juice 45,
absolutely. Although it may be too late for tuna. The 2 major breeding grounds are off of japans east coast and the gulf of mexico. We already “nuked” the gulf with oil and corexit. The juvenile tuna are currently off japans east coast about about to migrate to the US west coast where they become adult and are caught.
Juice,
I havent heard anyone mention strontium yet. strontium and cesium are the big problem isotopes in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
I have a timeshare for a one week studio I bought back in 2001 at the Legends resort and I haven’t seen the place since although I hear it’s basically a welfare hotel where people get killed. Its value is that in exchange for a less than $300 maintenance fee and some charges to Interval, I get a timeshare say in Aruba for a week at the Marriott for around $500-600 bucks.
The only issue with the Florida Marriotts in Orlando is the places are nice but the annual fees are around $1,000 which is why so many people are looking to unload them.
You can also go on Ebay and get these now for a dollar like John says.
Dan Legends is a run down shit hole and a welfare hotel but no one has been killed. A matter of fact very little police news for my town comes out of there.
Someone just sent me this about the huge percentage of graduates in India who are unfit for employment:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703515504576142092863219826.html?mod=WSJ_World_LEFTSecondNews
Shore [52];
Some don’t even bother graduating, they just fake the credentials. Nothing important like a call center, merely airline pilots.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110324/lf_afp/indiaairlineeconomycorruptionsociety
Mike,
Let’s take a walk down memory lane………
Three arrested in Vernon murder
Published: Monday, August 18, 2008, 12:21 PM Updated: Monday, August 18, 2008, 12:30 PM
By Laura Craven The Star-Ledger
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Three New York residents were arrested today in connection with a homicide at Legends Resort in Vernon early Sunday, according to the Sussex County Prosecutor’s Office and the Vernon Township Police Department.
Jacob R. Gentry, 27, Jarrod C. Gentry, 20, and Emily M. Henry, 24, all of Port Jervis, N.Y., were arrested in Port Jervis and charged with offenses related to the homicide of David Haulmark, 36, who had been residing at the Legends Resort, a condo hotel off Route 517.
The suspects are originally from Michigan. Haulmark was from Oklahoma.
All four had recently been living in the areas of Sussex County and neighboring Orange County, N.Y.
Jacob and Jarrod Gentry are charged with murder and endangering an injured victim. Henry was charged with aggravated assault and endangering an injured victim, authorities said.
Vernon Police were called to Legends shortly after 3 a.m. Sunday on a report of an injured man on the sidewalk outside the east entrance to the resort. Haulmark had severe head injuries and died at the scene.
An investigation led to the identification and arrest of the suspects. An autopsy conducted by the Sussex County Medical Examiner’s Office determined Haulmark’s died from multiple blunt force trauma to the head, neck and face.
Jacob Gentry, Jarrod Gentry and Emily Henry were all charged as fugitives from justice by the Port Jervis Police Department based upon the New Jersey charges and lodged in the Orange County Jail pending extradition proceedings. The investigation is continuing.
Shore 52
At my current client, several of the production personnel have a mixture of Bachelors, masters and doctorates. The degrees are useless and most of them purchased the degree from Gujarat University ( in the same region many of my clients manufacturing personnel are from). According to some of the manufacturing people, a masters can be had for about 5K USD in a plain envelope to the right person at the university. They tell me that this is common throughout the Indian education system.
And to think I had to earn my masters dergree through hard work and large endowments to the unvisity (i.e. tuition) I would have saved myself 45K sans the cost of the flight. Would have gotten a nice vacation out of the deal too. Damn!
It makes sense the Indians turn out worthless degrese, when you don’t use toliet paper you need to find something to use all that paper for.
Kettle1^2
Off topic, you posted a link to an article a while back about an individual who filed a suit or some kind of action trying to remove/challenge any liens on his property. Long and the short of it is he didn’t have to notify MERS because they said they weren’t the lender/nominee/something… and this person’s suit went unchallenged.
I hope you have a clue as to what I’m talking about… if you do, could you please tell me what kind of suit or action it was and possibly post that link again?
thanks
Joyce
That was in Utah and the cases were bases on the particular Utah State laws involved. The same case may not stand up to the governing state laws in other states.
From the Salt lake City Tribune:
A Utah court case in which the owner of a Draper townhouse got clear title to the property, even though he still owed $132,000 on it, raises new legal and financial questions about a property-records database created by mortgage bankers.
The award of a title free of liens means that whoever owns the promissory note on the Draper property — likely a group of faraway investors — no longer has the right to foreclose to collect on a delinquent loan. Indeed, the townhouse owner has sold the property and kept the money. Those who own the promissory note probably don’t even know what occurred.
Last year, the owner of the Draper property contacted attorney Walter T. Keane to help him deal with lenders, though Keane won’t say what the problem was and the owner declined an interview request.
The lawsuit over the title to the townhouse named Garbett Mortgage and Citibank FSB as the holders of promissory notes as recorded on trust deeds filed with the recorder’s office. Integrated Title Services was listed as trustee of the Garbett Mortgage trust deed, while First American Title was the trustee of the CitiBank trust deed.
But there also was another entity listed on the trust deeds called the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS). The Mortgage Bankers Association, the Washington, D.C.-based trade group that represents major mortgage lenders, created MERS in the mid-1990s.
Under the state’s quiet title laws, Keane said he did not have to name MERS or serve it legal papers in the lawsuit because it was not the legal owner of title to the property. Those were title companies. In addition, attorneys contend, MERS cannot be the “beneficiary” or holder of the promissory note because it readily has admitted it has no financial interest in any notes or mortgages.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/51006287-78/mers-property-mortgage-loan.html.csp?page=1
Joyce,
Mish’s blog also touched on this:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/01/utahs-quiet-title-law-bypasses-mers.html
Pain 56
I just asked on of the operators, and according to him a PhD in engineering costs about 15 – 20K if you want the degree without ever showing up. You name will be added to all of the official documentation and paper work needed for the degree and an “artificial” transcript is generated.
Well whadaya know, India is a nation full of JJ’s and they’re even smarter than the Mexican quants!!!!!
Kettle1^2-
Thanks for the quick response. And I appreciate the disclaimer. I’m not trying to or even thinking about applying this logic. I currently rent and just wanted to share this story with a friend of mine.
Whoever is trying to fix those reactors in Japan probably has mail-order, payola degrees, too.
Still surprised nobody’s suggested nuking the runaway nuke. Such tempting, stupid and irrational ideas get floated in economics all the time, and people actually try to implement them (e.g., creating more debt to solve a gamma implosion of debt).
dan (63)-
Frank’s Mexican quants didn’t work out for him. He got fired as barista in the cafe of the hedge fund where he was working behind that harebrained idea.
Evidently, Mexican quants can’t model economic outcomes in places like the US, where long-term debt/GDP ratios top out at about 187%.
A timeshare in south Jersey. Sounds like the W.C. Fields joke about preferring to be in Philadelphia over being dead.
Debt 65
The idea has been very quietly mentioned. Nuking the reactors would be a very good way to irradiate a substantial portion of the human race. All a nuke would do is vaporize/pulverize all of the debris into fine particulate and then place said radioactive particulate high in the atmosphere after which it rains out across the globe.
Nuking Fukushima is the exact opposite of containment.
here is a simulation for you ;)
http://fallout.bethsoft.com/
Great article on the Indian folks and their degrees. It just makes me feel so m’fing warm inside. Did I tell you part of the training I had to do for my new replacement just hours upon his arrival from India? I had to teach him the difference in valuations in American currency. Yup. “No, Chandrashekhar, this one is the penny and this one is the dime.”
Japan depopulated, more earth quakes to come. Shippers taking containers off line for fear of contamination, radiocative ships and planes arriving at (air)ports. Wait till the rad waves hit Hawaii.
vodka (68)-
Thanks. If this is the case, then by all means I say do it!
Kettle,
The problem with Indian system is, it used to be very difficult to track someone’s credentials. These days, you can use services like WES to find the fraudulent cases easily ( you have to ask the guy to get you the WES evaluation). Most of the firms that hire these graduates actually don’t care about this issue in India. They just use interview process to identify reasonable ones and employ them.
DL (70)-
We can afford to lose Hawaii. I’m still not sure those mf’ers like us, anyway.
As a state, they’re like the cleaning woman who acts like she owns your house.
piney (72)-
Yeah, run ’em all thru an interview and just hire the ones who talk well. Screw education, training and competence. We don’t care about things like character and follow-through, as long as there’s a steady supply of guys who will work for a baloney sandwich a day, sleep 8 to an apartment and kiss the boss’ ass.
Most wall st places don’t count indian degrees for much, but they do know what schools are real. They have to take a skill set to be hired and must don’t count the indian degree in determining starting salary. It is kinda like putting on your CV you like photograhy as a hobby,
pine_brook says:
April 5, 2011 at 2:31 pm
Kettle,
The problem with Indian system is, it used to be very difficult to track someone’s credentials. These days, you can use services like WES to find the fraudulent cases easily ( you have to ask the guy to get you the WES evaluation). Most of the firms that hire these graduates actually don’t care about this issue in India. They just use interview process to identify reasonable ones and employ them.
Is it time for the soft landing quotes???
My hero!
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703696704576222590253291266.html?mod=WSJ_PersonalFinance_PF4
Sorry Grim, it isn’t you. Or Clot.
Debt,
The world population is close to 7 billion. People are going to do anything to get a job.
I am not justifying anything. It is a sad reality.
Nom [77];
We’re not worthy…
Pine [78];
The thing that supprises me is not that people who will lie to get a job; its that the people hiring want to be lied to; it seems everybody wants to be lied to. It doesn’t matter how implausable the lie is, people want to be lied to because it takes them off the hook.
The clearest example of this is in elections viz a viz sports allegiances. Hillary couldn’t be a credible NY senatorial candidate in 2000 without claiming to be a Yankees fan. Giuliani, a man as identifiable as anyone for his close allegiance to the Yankees, had to declare his admiration for their arch-rivals the Boston Red Socks in 2008 because of the concentration of Sawx fans in southern New Hampshire, home to the earliest of state primaries.
Its an absolute blue pill society.
Juice: Passed through there a couple of weeks ago; saw it. Too bad Toll got involved over there. That whole little area is really great and still is. I know this example isnt Toll, but what happened in front of Lua says it all. It is only a matter of time before the same happend to HTB and Maxwell. I know for a fact about HTB, because the tenant’s group and an architect we know inspected some of the pilings out there on the cove. They were never sheathed properly and and I have to assume not maintained either. Unless it is being remediated….is that the reason for the fencing on the cove?
Juice X says:
April 4, 2011 at 11:09 pm
re#144 – Chi – new high rise going up across the street from your old digs you might be surprised how many foreign languages spoken here, sometimes I think I am back in the W. Village again.
NOM….YOU CAN SUCK IT!
FRONT PAGE
WALL STREET JOURNAL
APRIL 5, 2011
A Tax Man Takes Account Of His Life
CPA Lives Better, Works Less Thanks to Art of Deduction
By LAURA SAUNDERS
In the thick of tax season, most certified public accountants are chained to their desks grinding out returns.
Doug Stives, a CPA from Red Bank, N.J., went skiing in Utah.
“I always dreamed of coming here for peak conditions,” he said in mid-March between runs at Snowbasin Resort.
The trip is among the many perks that have accrued from his decision, in 2006, to become, in effect, The Most Tax-Efficient Man in America. The experiment has led to a new career, frequent travel and obsessive documentation of expenses, such as a $6 hot dog he recently bought in the Philadelphia airport.
The “aha” moment came to him, he says, after a college approached him about a teaching gig and he realized he could put into practice many of the tax strategies he had learned over the decades.
Step One was to change jobs. Mr. Stives had been a partner for 36 years at The Curchin Group, an accounting firm. By accepting an offer to teach tax and accounting courses full-time at the Leon Hess Business School of Monmouth University in New Jersey, he was able to tap into a broad array of tax-free employee benefits not available to him at the firm.
Step Two was the formation of Doug Stives LLC, the separate consulting business to which he attributes an impressive array of expenses. In general, people who are employees and have side businesses are often in the best position to maximize the tax code’s benefits, say experts. Mr. Stives calls this “the best of all worlds.”
The result, says Mr. Stives, is that while he earns less than 75% of his earlier pay, he takes home almost 90% as much. And he says he reaps another $40,000 a year in tax-free benefits from his college gig. Among other things, the school adds to his 401(k) contribution and provides tax-free, discounted health plans for Mr. Stives and his wife, plus disability insurance. As a partner in the accounting firm, he had to fund such expenses himself.
Not that all is perfect now. One peeve: dealing with what he calls “airline nonsense”—long lines, rising fees and canceled flights. But overall, he says, “my quality of life is so much higher.”
His wife of 40 years, Elizabeth Stives, agrees. “We travel so much now for his business,” she says. “Next is Lake Tahoe.”
Mr. Stives, 64 years old, says he’s too miserly to focus solely on maximizing deductions—a practice he calls a “rookie’s mistake.” In 2010, for example, he spotted a bonanza in “bonus depreciation” for large SUVs used in a business, but didn’t need another car. “Sometimes my cheapness overcomes my love of tax savings,” he says. “My wife will tell you I got her on sale.”
Instead, he says, he uses the tax code’s many quirks as the means through which he can live a fuller life.
The Schedule C form, used to report profit or loss from a business, is key to his strategy. On this form goes all of his income and expenses from his consulting work—advising clients, preparing returns, helping write textbooks and conducting continuing-education seminars that CPAs need to maintain their licenses.
Mr. Stives chooses the locations for his seminars, most of which are sponsored by accounting groups. Often he opts for vacation destinations like Hawaii or Yellowstone Park. “People learn better when they are relaxed,” he says.
Tax rules allow him to work for only three days of a 11-day trip and write off the airfare and a majority of other costs, he says. “To deduct the airfare, you have to spend more than half your working days on business, but travel days don’t count, and neither do weekend days you wouldn’t work anyway,” says Mr. Stives. “So I can leave on a Friday, teach for three days midweek, and return the following Monday.”
His wife usually flies free using his frequent-flier miles, which are tax free.
Having his own business also allows Mr. Stives to bolster his retirement fund. As the older owner of a one-person defined-benefit pension plan, he can put in almost 100% of his pretax self-employment income a year on top of his Monmouth 401(k). For the 2010 tax year he will probably put in 80%, he says.
Mr. Stives hired his wife for office support in part to qualify for an IRS-allowed Health Reimbursement Arrangement that covers out-of-pocket medical expenses with pretax dollars. He deducts her pay—$300 per month for part-time work—and half her payroll taxes on his Schedule C as well.
Then there are the flurry of tiny deductions that add up. He writes off allowable mileage and food expenses on business trips. He claims a home office, cellphone, his computer (a percentage), professional dues and subscriptions to publications.
Mr. Stives says he is careful to observe IRS rules. He has a contract for each speaking gig, and keeps one for his wife’s arrangement, too. He uses one credit card for business expenses, making sure it provides a year-end summary by category.
Most zealously, he hews to the IRS’s gold standard of “contemporaneous record-keeping” by noting expenses on his Outlook calendar soon after they occur. He saves all receipts, putting them in a milk crate in chronological order in case the IRS comes calling, although he says his personal return has never been audited.
Mr. Stives says he discovered his enthusiasm for accounting while a student at Lehigh University in the 1960s. The son of a New Jersey Bell executive and a homemaker, he arrived at college, “sick of literature and history. I didn’t want to hear another word about the Civil War. But then I took an accounting class and thought, ‘I can do this!'”
At Monmouth, Mr. Stives was voted the Hess School’s Most Outstanding Professor in 2009, and now directs the M.B.A. program there.
“The most important lesson I teach my students,” he says, “is that just because something is deductible, that doesn’t make it free.”
Students say they especially enjoy his creative-deduction exercises. His latest challenge: “Say you have a friend who is a client and you charge him about $500 a year. You’d like to spend $2,000 on a big night in New York for two couples—limo, dinner, Carnegie Hall concert. What would allow you to take a deduction?”
The answer: “The client has a rich father who just died and you may get estate work.”
More proof a tax the tax code needs to be reformed. Kudos to him for working within the rules of the system to his benefit
WSJ
INDIA NEWS
APRIL 5, 2011
India Graduates Millions, but Too Few Are Fit to Hire
By GEETA ANAND
Many recent engineering grads in India say that after months of job hunting they are still unemployed and lack the skills necessary to join the workforce. Critics say corruption and low standards are to blame.
BANGALORE, India—Call-center company 24/7 Customer Pvt. Ltd. is desperate to find new recruits who can answer questions by phone and email. It wants to hire 3,000 people this year. Yet in this country of 1.2 billion people, that is beginning to look like an impossible goal.
So few of the high school and college graduates who come through the door can communicate effectively in English, and so many lack a grasp of educational basics such as reading comprehension, that the company can hire just three out of every 100 applicants.
India projects an image of a nation churning out hundreds of thousands of students every year who are well educated, a looming threat to the better-paid middle-class workers of the West. Their abilities in math have been cited by President Barack Obama as a reason why the U.S. is facing competitive challenges.
Yet 24/7 Customer’s experience tells a very different story. Its increasing difficulty finding competent employees in India has forced the company to expand its search to the Philippines and Nicaragua. Most of its 8,000 employees are now based outside of India.
In the nation that made offshoring a household word, 24/7 finds itself so short of talent that it is having to offshore.
………..
But 75% of technical graduates and more than 85% of general graduates are unemployable by India’s high-growth global industries, including information technology and call centers, according to results from assessment tests administered by the group.
…………
Mr. Singh and several other engineering graduates said they learned quickly that they needn’t bother to go to some classes. “The faculty take it very casually, and the students take it very casually, like they’ve all agreed not to be bothered too much,” Mr. Singh says. He says he routinely missed a couple of days of classes a week, and it took just three or four days of cramming from the textbook at the end of the semester to pass the exams.
Others said cheating, often in collaboration with test graders, is rampant. Deepak Sharma, 26, failed several exams when he was enrolled at a top engineering college outside of Delhi, until he finally figured out the trick: Writing his mobile number on the exam paper.
That’s what he did for a theory-of-computation exam, and shortly after, he says the examiner called him and offered to pass him and his friends if they paid 10,000 rupees each, about $250. He and four friends pulled together the money, and they all passed the test.
CHI-FI NOTE: WHY WHY WHY DID I NOT THINK OF THIS WHEN I WAS WORKING AS AN ACCT TA?
Move all the Japanese folks to Michigan and you will see a major Detroit revival. This will be in exchange for forgiving all the US debt to Japan.
sorry for the duplicate postings…just caught up with the last 18 hours just now….
[82] chifi
As in suck the life out of the corpse? Sure, and I am.
Side practice is proving stronger than I had planned. Was going to branch out into education law (there’s a real need for parents who are entitled to IDEA help for their kids, but get smack from the school systems), but now I have to put that on hold.
And yes, I am deducting everything I can. 5 figures of billing thus far this year, and I don’t expect to pay dime one in tax on it.
85
I think the Japanese have suffered enough.
And if my research shows I can get away with hiring my 7 year old as an office assistant, paying her to take out the trash and bring in the mail, I will. Shifts income to the lowest bracket (up to kiddie tax limit), and gives her earned income to put into an IRA.
[89] redux
that’s a Roth IRA btw. Nonsensical for anyone in a low tax bracket to put money into traditional IRAs.
[86] chifi
So you weren’t referring to my posted link, that you reprinted in toto?
# 81- Chi – I think they are finally building a new wraparound park to Weehawken along the cove hence the fence. I would not be surprised if the whole thing fell in, the wooden pilings which you can see when the tide is out look rotten. There recently was a state grant given to fix the road in front of LUA $1.5 m for 60 ft. At that price they are going to need about $50 m to fix the whole thing.
[82] chifi
“Students say they especially enjoy his creative-deduction exercises. His latest challenge: “Say you have a friend who is a client and you charge him about $500 a year. You’d like to spend $2,000 on a big night in New York for two couples—limo, dinner, Carnegie Hall concert. What would allow you to take a deduction?”
The answer: “The client has a rich father who just died and you may get estate work.”
+++++++++++
I can make an equally persuasive case that my bar tab at the next GTG is deductible as a business development expense.
[79] moose
“Nom [77];
We’re not worthy…”
Speak for yourself. This is actually quite easy, if you keep deductibility in mind at all times. However, I think things are going to turn for Mr. Stives. It is the whale who surfaces that gets harpooned.
25. Juice Box.
I would like to comment but since I do not have a degree in nuclear science, I have been told that my antinuclear stance is ignorant and based on nothing more than liberal fear mongering environmentalists.
” environmentalist’s hyperbole. “
Confused [85];
You mean next to all the muslim immigrants? That should be fun, in a Running Man/Bartertown sort of way.
Babs – let them build all the nuke plants they want on the Upper East Side and Greenwich CT. I am not against Nuclear power when applied sanely. We can and should develop “Nuke 2.0” that won’t poison the whole planet but alas you cannot make nuke weapons with Thorium and unfortunately you cannot drive the price from $6 a pound to $60 a lb unless you have a cartel that controls the mining and the price. Thorium is found in abundance throughout the world and part of the Administrations Energy Policy should be focused and funded on developing this much cleaner version of Nuclear Energy.
More on it here for the non-nuclear scientist.
http://energyfromthorium.com/essay3rs/
Moose,
Ninjas V Barbary Pirates!!!!
Juice,
my question has always been the same: Where’s the “off” switch.
Barb,
Who needs an off switch?! I say we restart “Project Pluto”!!! Why worry about meltdowns or off switches when you can slam the entire reactor into enemy targets?
are those enemy targets on planet erph?
#80 – The Moose is loose again. Comparing unrelated situations again.
Let’s just suppose that you knew, just like everyone else, that the politicians were campaigning and wearing the hat of the home team because that is what politicians do.
Did you have a point to make?
Kettle1 – We need to disassemble Xanadu and float it there on barges ASAP.
http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/04/83374.html
Radiation-shielding sheets to be installed in Sept. at earliest
TOKYO, April 6, Kyodo
A plan to cover damaged reactor buildings at the crisis-hit Fukushima nuclear plant with special sheets to halt radiation leakage cannot offer a quick remedy, as the sheeting will be installed in September at the earliest due to high-level radioactivity hampering work at the site, government sources said Tuesday.
The government had asked Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the Fukushima Daiichi power station crippled by the March 11 quake and tsunami, to study the installment of radiation-shielding sheets, and a major construction firm commissioned to examine the idea said the construction will not start until June, the sources told Kyodo News.
30-yr [104];
Seeing connections where others do not has served me well. The point is actually quite pertinent to the used house sales racket, and the vast majority of its practicioners – obvious lying (“Real estate only goes up!”) is noxious and odious.
The point is also that politicians wear the hat of the home team because some sheep (one man, one vote) are dumb enough to vote someone into office because of it; that speaks highly of our nation, doesn’t it?
Juice
India just banned seafood imports from japan for high iodine and cesium levels. Bye bye JPY.
There goes authentic wasabi…
Does Wendy’s new natural fries use sea salt from Japan?
Ate Ful-u-shima engineers working for Boeing?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576244782850491122.html
Are
Kettle,
This sounds a bit like a recent discussion we uad;
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/04/06/world/asia/06nuclear.xml
Had
Nothing quite as comforting as an assessment that parts of fuel rods from spent fuel storage were blown a mile away.
Pick up some light summer reading for the beach……
http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=ayLSbFoO5wac
[115] chifi
Sounds a lot like a course I took with Prof. Vinnie Ferraro at Mount Holyoke College.
(and yes, I was the only male in the room other than Vinnie).
History Intl channel has a program on called “Day after Disaster.” It is a documentary about a hypothetical nuke detonation in DC.
Not one of the best advertisements for the Nompound that I have seen, but a pretty good one nonetheless.
United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semimolten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores.
snip
The document also suggests that fragments or particles of nuclear fuel from spent fuel pools above the reactors were blown “up to one mile from the units,” and that pieces of highly radioactive material fell between two units and had to be “bulldozed over,” presumably to protect workers at the site. The ejection of nuclear material, which may have occurred during one of the earlier hydrogen explosions, may indicate more extensive damage to the extremely radioactive pools than previously disclosed.
snip
The assessment provides graphic new detail on the conditions of the damaged cores in reactors 1, 2 and 3. Because slumping fuel and salt from seawater that had been used as a coolant is probably blocking circulation pathways, the water flow in No. 1 “is severely restricted and likely blocked.” Inside the core itself, “there is likely no water level,” the assessment says, adding that as a result, “it is difficult to determine how much cooling is getting to the fuel.” Similar problems exist in No. 2 and No. 3, although the blockage is probably less severe, the assessment says.
Some of the salt may have been washed away in the past week with the switch from seawater to fresh water cooling, nuclear experts said.
A rise in the water level of the containment structures has often been depicted as a possible way to immerse and cool the fuel. The assessment, however, warns that “when flooding containment, consider the implications of water weight on seismic capability of containment.”
Experts in nuclear plant design say that this warning refers to the enormous stress put on the containment structures by the rising water. The more water in the structures, the more easily a large aftershock could rupture one of them.
snip
Fabius isn’t gonna like this, especially since it comes from a liberal tax accountant:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20110326/bs_ac/8148778_new_york_times_gives_false_information_on_general_electrics_zero_income_tax_bill
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/02/us/02superintendent.html
School Official Finds Retirement Is Just A Higher Pay Grade
mice (106)-
That is also one of the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.
“Seeing connections where others do not has served me well.”
sizegenetics
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