From the WSJ:
With Low Supply, Asking Prices Rise for Fifth Straight Month.
Home sellers are staying on the sidelines this summer, which is helping to firm up prices in more U.S. housing markets.
The number of homes listed for sale rose by just 0.5% in June from May and was down 19.4% from one year ago, according to Realtor.com. Slightly less than 1.89 million homes were listed for sale in June, which is lower than at any time in 2011 or 2010.
Listings are down in part because banks have been slower to move foreclosed properties onto the market and investors are buying up more of them at courthouse auction sales and renting them out. Meanwhile, traditional sellers are frequently unwilling to list their homes amid signs that prices are turning around in more markets. And in some of the markets with the biggest inventory drops, many owe more than their homes are worth and may be unable to sell without taking a big loss.
Compared with one year ago, listings were down in all but two of the 146 markets tracked by Realtor.com. Inventory has fallen by nearly 58% in Oakland, Calif.; by 49% in Fresno, Calif.; by 47% in Bakersfield, Calif.; and by 43% in Seattle.
Big inventory drops are pushing up prices. Median asking prices rose for the fifth straight month and were 2.7% higher than one year ago, though they were up by just 0.05% for the month. By contrast, last year’s disappointing spring sales season prompted sellers to cut prices by 1% in June from May.
…
Another sign of the improvement this spring: The median age of inventory listed for sale fell by nearly 10% from one year ago. That means sellers are finding buyers more quickly for their homes.
Active Inventory
Essex
June 2006 – 3762
June 2007 – 4185
June 2008 – 4301
June 2009 – 4157
June 2010 – 4243
June 2011 – 4451
June 2012 – 3665 (Down 17.7%)
Hunterdon
June 2011 – 1659
June 2012 – 1462 (Down 11.9%)
Morris
June 2011 – 4981
June 2012 – 4278 (Down 14.1%)
Passaic
June 2006 – 2775
June 2007 – 3085
June 2008 – 3001
June 2009 – 2847
June 2010 – 2956
June 2011 – 3224
June 2012 – 2781 (Down 13.7%)
Somerset
June 2011 – 3303
June 2012 – 2926 (Down 11.4%)
Sussex
June 2011 – 2682
June 2012 – 2266 (Down 15.5%)
Union
June 2011 – 3909
June 2012 – 3289 (Down 15.9%)
Warren
June 2011 – 1404
June 2012 – 1161 (Down 17.3%)
From Bloomberg:
For-Sale Homes Decline in a Sign of U.S. Housing Bottom
The number of homes for sale dropped in the U.S. last month, led by shrinking inventories in California from San Francisco to San Diego, as buyers returned to one of the country’s worst-hit housing markets.
There were 1.88 million single-family houses, condos, townhomes and co-ops on the market nationwide in June, down 19 percent from a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors’ website. Seven of the 10 metropolitan areas with the biggest inventory reductions were in California, Realtor.com said in a study released today.
The shrinking inventory is an indication that the U.S. residential real estate market has “bottomed out,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Chicago-based association. The number of homes for sale plummeted throughout California, where prices plunged and foreclosures soared during and after the U.S. recession. Transactions and values are beginning to recover in the most populous state.
“The markets that underwent the biggest pain after the bubble, these are the markets that are showing the fastest price recovery,” Yun said in a telephone interview from Washington. “Buyers recognize that prices over-corrected — a great bargain opportunity.”
And the counterpoint from Housingwire:
CoreLogic: Negative equity pushes prices up in certain markets
Homeowners in negative equity are driving prices up in certain U.S. markets by sitting on the sidelines and refusing to sell at a loss, CoreLogic suggested in its July MarketPulse report. The end result is a lower inventory of certain homes and rising prices on what homes do go up for sale.
Home prices in May increased 2% from year ago levels, CoreLogic noted in its latest Home Price Index report. June prices also grew 1.4% over May levels.
As for what is driving all the price growth, CoreLogic claims in the 100 largest markets, those regions with the fastest appreciating values are in states carrying a high share of homes in negative equity and strong demand for distressed real estate.
“Negative equity is keeping many potential sellers out of the market, which keeps a lid on inventory and combined with the reduced flow of REO properties has led to much tighter market conditions for lower priced properties, particularly in the hardest hit markets,” CoreLogic said.
CoreLogic discovered the lower end of the home market is rebounding at a rate that is three times faster than the rate recorded in the upper end. This is driven primarily by distressed sales at the lower end and strond demand.
White House efforts to push widespread refinancing of mortgages for homeowners who owe more than their properties are worth may be limited by banks’ stretched capacity to originate loans and their concerns that the borrowers are too risky.
By the end of May, 78,000 homeowners with mortgages at least 5 percent larger than the value of their homes had refinanced into lower interest rates under the new rules for the Home Affordable Refinance Program, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported yesterday. Of those, 11,000 borrowers were defined by the agency as deeply underwater, owing at least 125 percent of their homes’ value.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-17/obama-home-refinancing-effort-hits-banks-risk-capacity-limits.html
Wow, inventory at 2006 levels. We experienced this crunch two months ago. We needed to buy but barely anything was available that didnt have a sold sign on it.
Completely conjecture, but if there was a measure of pricing spread, I think it would have been narrower in 2006 than today. Yes, everything in 2006 was priced high, but the relative difference in pricing of similar properties wasn’t as wild as today, and to a large extent (like it or not), many of these were supported by comps. Today? It’s relatively easy to find a 100k variation in pricing on similar properties.
The raw inventory number doesn’t capture the shortage of actual/saleable inventory. The home priced at $100k above comps isn’t for sale.
If you want to argue that “shadow inventory” is still very high and should be counted in the overall inventory numbers, I’ll argue that “wisher/dreamer inventory” is just as high, and *should not* be counted in the overall inventory numbers.
Bring on the foreclosures, we need the inventory. I think the market could easily absorb a foreclosure and short sale rate of at least 3x what we have today without a negative impact on prices.
Doom is imminent. No hope. No recovery. Not in our lifetimes.
Chifie, re. #85, last thread:
“A capitalist system, Zingales says, succeeds only when competition—both political and economic—flourishes. Some suggestions: eliminate all government subsidies, whether direct aid or tax breaks; mandate better data disclosure from government and business; strengthen support for whistle-blowers.”
It makes sense to me. The temptation to “manage” economic activity via tax policy is strong; however, all it does is to distort the market and prompt folks to find was of gaming the system, rather than spen their time innovating or building real value.
“Homeowners in negative equity are driving prices up in certain U.S. markets by sitting on the sidelines and refusing to sell at a loss”
Good. In a way, this is a return to the old days when people did not simply view their house as another investment vehicle. If one can afford to pay one’s mortgage and one likes one’s house, who cares if its value has dropped?
[9]Shore Guy says: “Good. In a way, this is a return to the old days when people did not simply view their house as another investment vehicle.”
Yeah, try to get a 60 year old guy to sell you his house at a price that wasn’t an “investment vehicle” for him. Old days my *ss. How long ago was that. Around here I find 80+ year old timers that paid 15k for their houses wanting 450 for them. Yeah, those old timers have no intention of using their house as an investment vehicle. Not.
9 – That really seems like the kind of meme that propogates quickly and is widely believed, just because it seems like a plausible explanation (kind of like the sun is our god because it’s a big glowing orb in the sky, what else could it be?). I really wonder where and how one gets the survey data to back that up. Unfortunately, I think the question could be framed in a way that the surveyor could get whatever result she would like… “If you could sell your house for the 2005 price, would you list your home for sale?”
Secondly, what is the context? If someone wants to sell in order to finance the purchase of another property, isn’t it the relative difference between property values that is the important figure, not the absolute value of either? Does it really matter if the price of your property is 30% lower, if the price of the property you want to buy is 30% lower as well?
Why not come up with a new mortgage product that allows one to carry the negative equity from one property over to another? Think of it as a cash-in refi where the note stays the roughly same, but the underlying asset changes. Does the note holder really face any additional risk in this scenario? Doubtful, in fact they would likely face less risk since the buyer is moving to a more desirable property.
Meat 7 , Jesus at least let me have my coffee before ending the world.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/07/writing-with-antonin-scalia-grammar-nerd.html?mbid=gnep&google_editors_picks=true
The first time Bryan A. Garner, a lawyer and writer, met Antonin Scalia—over breakfast at the Washington, D.C., Four Seasons, in 2006—the Justice spent the early part of their conversation praising a magazine essay he had recently read on English grammar and usage. Garner, who has now written two books with Scalia, felt that it would be bad form to interrupt, but when the Justice had trouble remembering the essay’s author, he suggested a name. Scalia assented. “Sir,” Garner replied, politely, “that essay is a review of my book.”
snip
Justice Scalia had initially proposed the breakfast after declining to sit for a more formal interview on writing and legal advocacy. By the end of their meal, Scalia had changed his mind, and the two have gone on to form a productive and collegial, if unusual, working relationship. The interview, Garner’s first with a sitting Justice, took place the following October, and he has completed others with almost two hundred state and federal judges, and nine of the eleven Justices who have sat on the Court since. “You’re something of a SNOOT yourself,” Scalia told Garner as they ended their interview, invoking Wallace’s pet phrase for a grammar and usage fanatic, “and that makes me happy.” (Other SNOOTs, according to Scalia, include former Justices Harry Blackmun and David Souter. Ruth Bader Ginsburg shares their zealousness, but, Scalia said, she’s “too polite.”)
“Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges,” the first book co-authored by the pair, appeared in 2008. Their second book, “Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts,” was published by Thomson/West last month. The nearly six-hundred-page tome details Scalia’s judicial philosophy, which they call “textualism.”
snip
Between books, Garner spends most of his time holding legal-writing seminars for practicing lawyers, travelling more than two hundred nights a year in an effort to break the bad habits of a profession bound tightly to its precedents. “Word for word,” he has said, “lawyers are the most highly paid professional writers in the world. But the literary tradition in the profession is probably the worst.”
One of those seminars, held last month in the ballroom of a Manhattan hotel, drew close to forty lawyers. “Judges are people, too,” Garner implored his students, and “hyphenating well, punctuating correctly, is not below your pay grade.” But the documents he collects from courts and firms, and teaches lawyers across the country how to fix, show him how much work he has left to do. “How can lawyers write this way?” he wondered, mid-lesson, looking at a memo near the end of the day. “It’s as if we’re not even alive to the language!”
snip
Big Ben is speaking today and tomorrow, he is really really going to pump up the economy and pump up Wall Street the next two days. I heard he even borrowed a Magic Mike Cock Pump.
Big Ben is speaking today and tomorrow, he is really really going to pump up the economy and pump up Wall Street the next two days. I heard he even borrowed one of those Pumps from Magic Mike in order to get the job done.
“Around here I find 80+ year old timers that paid 15k for their houses wanting 450 for them. ”
You can wait them out, lol. Their heirs, on the other hand….
Just the place one wants to have security be a shambles (especially 40 years on from Munich):
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/17/sport/olympics-security/index.html
Olympics security failure is ‘humiliating shambles,’ boss concedes
“London (CNN) — British lawmakers tore into the chief executive of the security contractor that will be unable deliver enough guards for the Olympic Games, forcing Nick Buckles to agree Tuesday that the fiasco is “a humiliating shambles for the country.”
Buckles, the chief executive of G4S, said the company should not have agreed to provide 10,400 guards for the Olympics, six days after the security giant admitted it could not do so.
“We regret signing the contract,” Buckles said under pressure from lawmakers.
snip
Realtor/Banker/Fools:
KEEP YOUR SUPPLY OF OVER PRICED SHEISSE!
This story is desperate hype in light of yesterday’s horrible retail numbers, to amp up the end of the abysmal 2012 selling season.
READ MY LIPS – I AIN’T PAYING FOR YOUR FOOLISHNESS AND THIEVERY!
90% of foreclosures being held back and will eventually be put on market, dropping prices.
Banks keeping deadbeats in homes via zero interest rate financing is an abuse of the consumer and the banking system.
Properties
NEAR 2007-08 HIGHS?!!!? REALLY?!!?
TAXES EQUAL TO 2008 HIGHS!!!
TOO MANY PENDING FORECLOSURES TO ADD TO INVENTORY!
TOO MANY BOOMERS GONNA SELL!
Economy
NO GROWTH IN GDP.
NO JOBS.
CRITICAL SKILL SHORTAGE.
Pool of Buyers
CONSUMERS RE-LEVERAGED.
NO PERSONAL INCOME GROWTH.
TAXES INCREASING.
Still think HOPE & CHANGE will save your day?
Mwwwaa Haaa Haaa!
Roll your sleeves up. There’s real work to do.
Try, just try discovering prices of residential properties sold in the last 75 days.
It’s not in state or county databases, yet.
Miracles of miracles will occur and property prices will populate those databases by October – AFTER the selling season is OVER.
Mwwwaa Haaa Haaa!
Local Property Taxes Down for Sixth Consecutive Quarter
by: Jennifer DePaul
Monday, July 16, 2012
The Rockefeller Institute of Government released a report Monday that shows property tax revenue declined 2.8% in the first quarter of 20120, marking the sixth consecutive quarter when collections were adjusted for inflation.
“property tax revenue declined 2.8% ”
If revenues are down 2.8%, cut spending by 3%. Problem solved.
We’ve been looking to buy now in Brielle and are seeing exactly the same facts play out there. Homes on the same street priced so far apart it makes you wonder what may be wrong with the lower priced home. Invevitably the lower priced home is under contract before we can even get in to get a look. Should we be expressing an interest to the sellers of properties already under contract? My realtor hasn’t suggested this, but why not?
In at least 50% of the cases, the heirs have already spent the money…..of those, probably 1 in 4 have had it go up their nose or some equivalent….
Shore Guy says:
July 17, 2012 at 8:27 am
“Around here I find 80+ year old timers that paid 15k for their houses wanting 450 for them. ”
You can wait them out, lol. Their heirs, on the other hand….
Why look now?
prtraders says:
July 17, 2012 at 9:12 am
We’ve been looking to buy now in Brielle and are seeing exactly the same facts play out there. Homes on the same street priced so far apart it makes you wonder what may be wrong with the lower priced home. Invevitably the lower priced home is under contract before we can even get in to get a look. Should we be expressing an interest to the sellers of properties already under contract? My realtor hasn’t suggested this, but why not?
Mwwwaa Haaahaaa:
I wish you were the Legend, but what you are writing is too coherent and the syntax is too good….but still, very nice!
Mwwwaa Haaahaaa:
Requests? please try to use the words friskies, schmuck, and half groan…..
We are going into recession part 2, perhaps even part 3, or just a continuation of the first one. Prices rising my @ss. I gurantee that when I buy over the next couple of months, prices will still be falling.
Is CC’s Tax cap working?I just got my property tax bill for 2012,increase of 1% from 2011.$6608 to $6676.WOW!! 16 years in this house,first time I felt so excited.
I live in Edison.You can say anything bad about my town.I live 1 block away from the train station.My kids went to the Edison school sytem.My son now works for MS and one exam away from getting his accounting license.He graduated from Rutgers .My daughter graduates from Rutgers business school ,Supply Chain next year.We are 5min away from Piscataway campus.Saved me a ton of money not paying board and lodging.A middleclass family able to achieve some families can’t, is an achievement deserving some minimal gloating.
I’m just saying that my (unreliable) sense is that the market is still broken. The other thing is that I am actually finding “good people” losing jobs. I’m seeing muscle being cut in the workforce. Bottom line, depending where you are, the market has been frozen for 4-7 years. Some people are just at their wits end and must have a home. The mortgage rates are just an excuse……
3b says:
July 17, 2012 at 9:22 am
We are going into recession part 2, perhaps even part 3, or just a continuation of the first one. Prices rising my @ss. I gurantee that when I buy over the next couple of months, prices will still be falling.
Is CC Tax cap working?I just got my property tax bill for 2012,increase of 1% from 2011.$6608 to $6676. 16 years in this house,first time I felt so excited.
I live in Edison.You can say anything bad about my town.I live 1 block away from the train station.My kids went to the Edison school sytem.My son now works for MS and one exam away from getting his accounting license.He graduated from Rutgers .My daughter graduates from Rutgers business school ,Supply chain next year.We are 5min away from Piscataway campus.Saved me a ton of money not paying board and lodging.A middleclass family able to achieve some families can’t, is an achievement deserving some minimal gloa.
Is CC’s Tax cap working?I just got my property tax bill for 2012,increase of 1% from 2011.$6608 to $6676.WOW!! 16 years in this house,first time I felt so excited.
I live in Edison.You can say anything bad about my town.I live 1 block away from the train station.My kids went to the Edison school sytem.My son now works for MS and one exam away from getting his accounting license.He graduated from Rutgers .My daughter graduates from Rutgers business school ,Supply Chain next year.We are 5min away from Piscataway campus.Saved me a ton of money not paying board and lodging.
Is CC Tax cap working?I just got my property tax bill for 2012,increase of 1% from 2011.$6608 to $6676.
There is low inventory but it doesn’t stop buyers from making low offers. Just put a property in Edgewater under attorney review. Ask was $272,000 and initial offer was $215,000. They settled around $250,000. When seller saw the initial offer his reaction was, the buyer isn’t serious. I asked him if he was serious when he listed it more than a year ago for $340,000.
Is CC’s Tax cap working?I just got my property tax bill for 2012,increase of 1% from 2011.$6608 to $6676.WOW!! 16 years in this house,first time I felt so excited.
I live in Edison.You can say anything bad about my town.I live 1 block away from the train station.My kids went to the Edison school sytem.My son now works for MS and one exam away from getting his accounting license.He graduated from Rutgers .My daughter graduates from Rutgers business school ,Supply Chain next year.We are 5min away from campus.Saved me a ton of money not paying board and lodging.
#27 Chicago – Couldn’t agree more, the market is still broken! We have not yet reached the new normal and still don’t know what it will look like.
Good people?. I want great people. Good looking, motivated, well dressed, smart, will work cheap, loves the job, loves me, makes me look good. Good people can only make me look good, I want to look great all the time.
But off course they have to be only 90-99% as good looking and smart as me, anymore and there greatness might make me look good.
Also too good looking not so good. I had a chance to hire this smart girl and give her a good raise. She was perfect, great personality too. Only trouble she was blonde, bubbly and had big boobs, oh yea she liked to go out to happy hours and lunches with people at work. A sensible asian girl with a nice body is a better choice. The blonde bombshell, would have got me, sued, fired or divorced in a matter of time. It would be like trying to work while I was hungry with a plate of orioles and a fresh glass of milk on my desk. You know it would be distracting. But then again there is an old saying if you want a job done right hire a fat ugly girl, so that does have merit. Although Don Drappper had one and she was not so good, I think Fat Ugly girls coast sometimes and many are stupid, people just assume when they see a fat ugly girl or an asian at work they are smart and assumed the hot blonde is dumb. It is a wonder anyone can get a job
chicagofinance says:
July 17, 2012 at 9:28 am
I’m just saying that my (unreliable) sense is that the market is still broken. The other thing is that I am actually finding “good people” losing jobs. I’m seeing muscle being cut in the workforce. Bottom line, depending where you are, the market has been frozen for 4-7 years. Some people are just at their wits end and must have a home. The mortgage rates are just an excuse……
3b says:
July 17, 2012 at 9:22 am
We are going into recession part 2, perhaps even part 3, or just a continuation of the first one. Prices rising my @ss. I gurantee that when I buy over the next couple of months, prices will still be falling.
The word “lamppost” is popping up lately with alarming frequency in connection with the word banker in all kinds of respectable places, and I don’t think this refers to, say, men in Armani suits searching for their car keys where the light is shining on the sidewalk after quaffing a few rare cuvee jeroboams of Louis Roederer Cristal. Rather, it seems to suggest a certain unease with the levers of jurisprudence in this republic of grifters, stooges and bought-off lackeys.
Also of late come rumblings from the most august newspaper in the land that certain questions concerning LIBOR-fixing among American bank officials might be entertained in a federal courtroom. But isn’t it a fact that the US Department of Justice has its hands full – not to mention its dockets – with cases of alleged performance-doping by star athletes? Just think: all that effort (and expense!) at repeated prosecutions and Roger Clemens remains at large! His fastball might yet shred the constitution and all the combined sacrifices of our men in uniform in countless heroic wars.
Meanwhile, has The New York Times sent a reporter to chat up the elusive Jon Corzine? It must be an easier job than, say, trekking to a cave in Tora Bora to interview the late Mr. Osama bin Laden – which a few plucky reporters actually accomplished back when – yet Mr. Corzine is now better hidden than the Orang-pendek of Sumatra. And higher-functioning, too, considering his current role as Uncle Scrooge McDuck to the Obama reelection campaign. In what 5th sub-basement of a Robert A. M. Stern-designed luxury high-rise does Mr. Corzine sit with his moneybags of purloined MF Global customer funds writing checks to the Democratic National Committee?
All this is to say that when a few lame rumors of prosecutorial zeal appear in old gray mouthpiece for the status quo, you can bet that the true tipping point of public impatience has probably been breached and the fall of the elites is closer than you think. In the sizzling sauna that the US has become under the regime of climate change denial, the black swans of political turmoil are moistly hatching.
Who knows what form the mischief might take and how the trouble starts. Perhaps a hostage crisis at the Maidstone Club where families of a dozen hedge fund chiefs are held in the pool house by an out-of-work pipefitter from Wantagh high on bath salts. Or a swindled soybean farmer in an Semtex-rigged vest pays a call on the PFG-Best futures trading headquarters in Cedar Falls, Iowa, just as the lawyers and their financier clients sit down in the conference room to an ordered-in lunch of sloppy joes, fries, and slurpees. Or maybe a part-time evangelist off his Zoloft in some broiling strip-mall in a bankrupt California shit-hole sees the numbers 666 resolve among the remnants of his half-eaten enchilada on a Mitt Romney for President commemorative plate and packs up an arsenal of legally-acquired small arms for his journey to the Republican Convention in Tampa….
This is, after all, the country where the Kardashians reign. Anything might happen.
This is also the fruit of utterly failed moral leadership in a rudderless society adrift on a sea of delusion and untruth in an age of accounts unsettled. The battle over which empty suit gets elected president is a preface to the discovery that the national government only pretends to be in charge of anything. As the reality of total, comprehensive bankruptcy simmers up, perhaps a critical number of citizens stop forking over their quarterly taxes – since it would be the same thing as pounding sand down a rat-hole. Then, things really go south governance-wise.
The next revolution in North America could make 1793 Paris look like an Ace of Cakes episode. Lamppost lynchings will seem too merciful. Rather, look for a new realty TV launch: Kardashian Kangaroo Kourt, in which every week a score of obscenely wealthy celebrities plucked from the realms of banking, showbiz and politics are dragged over three miles of barrel cactus in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge behind a Dodge Mopar-loaded Ram Runner (mostly American-made).
In the meantime, let’s just all kick back these hot summer nights on the front porch with a few vodka and Red Bulls and enjoy Jack Abramoff’s new radio show on Clear Channel in which the re-branded “lobbying reformer” offers advice on improving the transaction of public business in our nation’s capital. This is Mr. Abramoff’s first job since completing his prison work-release gig in a kosher Baltimore pizza store. God bless you, Jack.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/america-is-a-rudderless-society-adrift-on-a-sea-of-delusion-2012-7#ixzz20t3SCWMx
Your taxes inflation adjusted went down
yo says:
July 17, 2012 at 9:30 am
Is CC Tax cap working?I just got my property tax bill for 2012,increase of 1% from 2011.$6608 to $6676.
ChiFi
Want to change towns as DD is in middle school. And my wife is as you describe “at wits end….” and not willing to rent again. Plus I’ve got a little renters fatigue myself. Chances of finding and closing on something before the school year is quickly fading, so by default we may be renting come September.
So Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Meyer is 7 months pregnant with her first kid no less.
Anyone care to put odds on Yahoo’s chances of a turnaround?
Been looking through the listings here in Maryland for a while. My wife and I have been putting lists of houses that we think would be appropriate to look at further when we do move on a purchase. I still have yet to make a decision but I’m moving closer towards yes than no recently.
When we went to look back at the houses that we had pulled out 3 months ago I was astounded by the number of units that were pulled off the market. The house didn’t sell in the spring and they just dropped the listing. Not sold, not pending, just stopped trying to sell it on the MLS. My gut feeling is that these homes are still for sale, at the price last listed, just not available through the MLS.
I think some of what we could be seeing with drops in inventory is seller fatigue. Much like people give up looking for jobs and drop off the roles of the unemployed and thus are not counted homeowners are giving up and withdrawing their homes. You cannot keep your home “show ready” every weekend and not have an impact on family life.
Seller fatigue? Out of a list of 10 properties only 2-3 sold, 2-3 were removed from market and the remainder are still available.
#34
Exactly right! With inflation at 2%,property tax at 1% is a deduction
“I asked him if he was serious when he listed it more than a year ago for $340,000.”
good on ya!
Industrial production in the U.S. increased in June, led by gains among automobile and machinery makers that signal manufacturing is boosting economic growth.
Output at factories, mines and utilities rose 0.4 percent last month after a revised 0.2 percent drop in May that was larger than previously reported, Federal Reserve data showed today in Washington. Economists forecast a 0.3 percent gain, according to the Bloomberg News survey median. Manufacturing, which makes up about 75 percent of total production, rose 0.7 percent last month, reversing the prior month’s decline.
The pickup in manufacturing may temper concerns of a bigger slowdown in the industry that has spearheaded the three-year-old expansion. At the same time, factories face the challenges of a weakening global economy and an American consumer hobbled by 8.2 percent unemployment and stagnant income growth.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-17/u-s-industrial-production-rises-in-sign-of-factory-resilience.html
Are manufacturing companies holding off hiring?They rather pay overtime than to hire quickly or it will go to the debate of hiring with experience than training somebody.
“At the same time, figures on manufacturing employment show the industry hiring. An index of aggregate weekly hours worked by factory employees rose in June to 87.6 from 87.3 the prior month, the second highest reading in more than three years, according to the Labor Department.”
you go Yo!
It’s not all bad, I mean you could be bullish on firearm stocks…
Glass half full man c’mon
7.New Improved Meat says:
July 17, 2012 at 7:33 am
Doom is imminent. No hope. No recovery. Not in our lifetimes.
#31 30 Year: I wonder how we reach the new normal, when everything is anything but but normal. I would much rather normall interest rates than these artifically low rates, which in my opinion distort real prices. It may takes years to get theere. I saw something this morning where some someone at Barclays is predicting the 10 year at 1.25. I guess being Brclays they might know something about rates!!!
So Knicks sign Jayson Kid to a big contract and then he rams a pole the next day, now we find out yahoo signs Marissa Meyer to a big contract and 7 months ago she was rammed by a big pole.
Juice Box says:
July 17, 2012 at 9:43 am
So Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Meyer is 7 months pregnant with her first kid no less.
Anyone care to put odds on Yahoo’s chances of a turnaround?
(38)
Did the town/county/school increase other fees outside the property tax?
Did the two cut back on services?
Did your salary increase >2%?
We need capitulation in the ten year. Everyone needs to pile on in this johnny on the pony player and drag the ten year down to around crashes and yields shoot back up.
Low rates cause two bad things, downpayment money is generally kept in safe extremely low interest bearing accounts and low mortgage rates drive up home prices. Neither are good things for first time buyers saving up a large downpayment.
It is much cheaper to pay several people overtime than hire an additional worker when you factor in all the benefits, regulatory burden, administrative costs, and liability.
#47 Rageing JJ: Low rates have not driven up prices, they certainly helped in not having prices drop further, but they have not driven up prices. Juice and Meat are correct ease to infinity. If you take away the propof low rates it is all over.
Only JJ is fast enough
“So Knicks sign Jayson Kid to a big contract and then he rams a pole the next day, now we find out yahoo signs Marissa Meyer to a big contract and 7 months ago she was rammed by a big pole. “
[35] traders,
Ask to do short settlement. Sellers often can be out sooner. Only real drag is your own bank but if you are preapproved, and don’t use BofA, shouldn’t be an issue. Schools will let you enroll if you are UC.
Heck, I’d even let a buyer rent pending settlement provided we were out of AR.
Joyce,
We can agree to disagree
Low rates provided your money more buying power on top of recent declines in prices.
We should not be encouraging more debt considering the state our of economy (and why it crashed)… ergo we need higher rates.
I asked about a short sale just to be free of the mortgage once and for all but they weren’t interested. Finally I called the Credit Union and asked them where I could mail my keys if I wanted to walk away from my mortgage/house….only then did they find a way to let me refinance underwater.
51.Comrade Nom Deplume says:
July 17, 2012 at 10:25 am
[35] traders,
Ask to do short settlement. Sellers often can be out sooner. Only real drag is your own bank but if you are preapproved, and don’t use BofA, shouldn’t be an issue. Schools will let you enroll if you are UC.
Heck, I’d even let a buyer rent pending settlement provided we were out of AR.
#57
For somebody that is against inflation,you are advocating higher interest rates.Think about it.Where do companies get the money to pay for their debt?Where do banks get the money to pay for higher interst rates?The consumer.That is right! Higher interest rates is inflationary.
I will avoid making comments to not ruin your day
joyce says:
July 17, 2012 at 10:30 am
We should not be encouraging more debt considering the state our of economy (and why it crashed)… ergo we need higher rates.
Hey knock it off with that talk. I just may want to refinance again. Sheesh.
54.joyce says:
July 17, 2012 at 10:30 am
We should not be encouraging more debt considering the state our of economy (and why it crashed)… ergo we need higher rates.
Pretty nice post. I simply stumbled upon your blog and wished to mention that I have really loved surfing around your blog posts. In any case I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I am hoping you write once more soon!
Brian what rate did you get? You need to marry a rich broad. An old jewish man once told me you can marry more money in a minute than you can make in a lifetime, while you are still young with your hair and good looks find an ugly rich girl quick. The uglier the richer.
3b – . Over 2 trillion in simple interest has been denied to savers over the last four years of ZIRP. Pensions both private and public including Social Security are now a decade closer to insolvency due to ZIRP. Bernake said ZIRP was for the near term. Well we are at the end of the near term and heading into the long term. The coming fiscal cliff in January only means housing has bottomed on a precipice. It is ready to continue anouther round of plunging prices if rates rise or there is a negative unexpected news on the economy ex. Recession 2.0.
Only question now in my mind is how we will pay for any kind of growth Public or Private? Right now the only way I can see that we have a better chance of reaching escape velocity from the Output Gap is if we start another large war. We won’t do what Krugman wants infrastructure ala Japan and besides there is no way to pay for it other than inflation or forcing cash into Treasuries, which could further tank other asset classes. I can see a bit of bait and switch with savers coming. Congress could even issue war bonds. As Krugman also said we need an Alien Invasion/Alien War or some other Bubble to create jobs and close the deficits and Output Gap. With 10% of GDP being supplied by deficit spending now I can’t see where else we can grow quickly to create jobs in the private sector in the near term. So we head from near term into long term ala Japan for now. Bernake and the army of economists at the Fed are now in uncharted waters. One thing I do know is they want us to forget about the Housing Bubble the helped create, they are out of bullets and they just want us to forget it and just move on. Just take a look the previous dot com bubble as an example. Nobody talks about the NASDAQ anymore they have forgotten their losses and moved on. Same will happen with the Housing bubble. It will just take a decade or so longer to forget.
Crappy 5.5 down from 6.5 last year. that’s why I need Joyce to be quiet. I’m killing myself trying to pay down the principle so I have 20 percent equity….I might also just pay PMI for a while if the math is right then it’ll be eliminated once I have 20 percent equity…..
The end is NOT nigh….I’m going down fighting.
Also, I kinda like my current wife….you think she’ll let me convert to mormon? Maybe I could keep my current wife then marry a rich ugly girl? You have to do whatever it takes to make it in this world!
59.raging bull jj says:
July 17, 2012 at 10:43 am
Brian what rate did you get? You need to marry a rich broad. An old jewish man once told me you can marry more money in a minute than you can make in a lifetime, while you are still young with your hair and good looks find an ugly rich girl quick. The uglier the richer.
Yo,
Bankruptcy (restructuring and/or liquidation). The economy would be better off in the medium/long term if the businesses, who are only barely hanging on (aka being propped up) due to ZIRP, would restructure NOW rather than dying a slow death for 30 years. We are following Japan’s playbook … they are still in & out of recession after 20 years! We started off in worse shape, so it may be worse for us.
You need to go all Magic Mike, quit this IT mumbo jumbo, stuff your g-string with 100 dollar bills form tanorexic 50 something jersey housewives till you get that 20% equity and refinance. Those old chicks you can give them a pearl necklace while you are screwing them, a major advantage over younger ladies.
Bagholder Brian says:
July 17, 2012 at 10:50 am
Crappy 5.5 down from 6.5 last year. that’s why I need Joyce to be quiet. I’m killing myself trying to pay down the principle so I have 20 percent equity….I might also just pay PMI for a while if the math is right then it’ll be eliminated once I have 20 percent equity…..
The end is NOT nigh….I’m going down fighting.
Also, I kinda like my current wife….you think she’ll let me convert to mormon? Maybe I could keep my current wife then marry a rich ugly girl? You have to do whatever it takes to make it in this world!
#60 Juice: Agreed. Except we already have the so called unexpected, as we are slipping back (if we ever came out) back into recession, along with most of the rest of the world. And then of course Europe, still only scratching the surface there.
JJ: where is the reference to grim and his jaunts to Krakow?
raging bull jj says:
July 17, 2012 at 10:11 am
So Knicks sign Jayson Kid to a big contract and then he rams a pole the next day, now we find out yahoo signs Marissa Meyer to a big contract and 7 months ago she was rammed by a big pole.
Juice Box says:
July 17, 2012 at 9:43 am
So Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Meyer is 7 months pregnant with her first kid no less.
Anyone care to put odds on Yahoo’s chances of a turnaround?
Todays FDIC insured CD rates. Imagine a senior citzen with a five year cd maturing today. Ouch
Issuer Coupon Maturity Yield Coupon Frequency Call Protection
Texas Capital Bank, TX .35% 08/27/2012 .35% Maturity Yes
Mizrahi Tefahot Bank, CA .30% 09/28/2012 .30% Maturity Yes
Plains Capital Bank, TX .30% 10/19/2012 .30% Maturity Yes
Bank of China, NY .50% 01/25/2013 .50% Maturity Yes
Bank of China, NY .50% 04/25/2013 .50% Maturity Yes
Bank of Baroda, NY .55% 07/19/2013 .55% Maturity Yes
Ally Bank, UT .70% 01/27/2014 .70% Semi Yes
GE Capital Bank, UT 1.00% 07/21/2014 1.00% Semi Yes
Ally Bank, UT 1.15% 07/27/2015 1.15% Semi Yes
Discover Bank, DE 1.25% 07/26/2016 1.25% Semi Yes
GE Capital Retail Bank, UT 1.80% 07/20/2017 1.80% Semi Yes
GE Capital Bank, UT 2.15% 07/22/2019 2.15% Semi Yes
GE Capital Retail Bank, UT 2.65% 07/20/2022 2.65% Semi Yes
I Krak’d a few Hos over at the Javits center in my day, never knew grim was a ho kraker.
chicagofinance says:
July 17, 2012 at 10:57 am
JJ: where is the reference to grim and his jaunts to Krakow?
joyce [62]
You can’t be a liquidator and a free-trader at the same time. What you are suggesting is a sure-fire way to very quickly bring the living standards of the majority here to Chindia levels, at the same time creating Columbia-like income distribution pattern. In Columbia, they are waging the war against FARC guerillas for the last 30 years or so… are you looking forward to meet FARNJ guys on your patio?
Shore: can you provide more color about how Romney has no shot to win based on the electoral college? I see prima facie evidence that the O-team is crushing him since Memorial Day…..Romney seems asleep?
To be clear, Romney’s experience at Bain (people can spin it any way that they want), but objectively, he had to achieve there based completely on his merits, and the bar there is so high that I don’t think people can realistically comprehned it. I went to school with a number of these type of people. The management consultants are not bankers. What they are is hyper-ambitious with an indefatigable will to produce content. These guys collect data, analyze, and document…..it is just amazing…..and to see O’s team manage to disparage it successfully is really something….you may not appreciate the results of management consultant’s work, but it clearly has allowed a number of companies to survive in the new competitive paradigm……it is so anti-O it is unbelievable…..O couldn’t do Romney’s Bain job for more than 3-6 months before they would have kicked him out of there…
3b -Just like Bernanke said flattening or slow job growth for now, not a good sign for sure but not “unexpected” quite yet. As I said earlier Bernake is dead set against another QE and wants Congress to get their act together. I know it is like herding cats especially during an election season, so I guess we will have to wait for January when all of the numbers turn negative and the next Congress has to deal with it.
Businesses are not suffering.Unemployment is.They are hoarding tens of billions of dollars.
not everyone is suffering equally. In fact, some “people” are doing fine. Those people are called “corporations.”
President Barack Obama got a lot of grief last month when he said “the private sector is doing fine.” As a political statement, it was about as tone deaf as they come. But as a piece of economic analysis, the president was spot on.
The private sector is doing fine, especially larger companies.
Private-sector businesses, large and small, have increased their employment by 3.2 million since the recession officially ended three years ago. Over the past year, private employment has increased 1.8%, about twice as fast as the population is growing.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-the-best-of-times-for-us-corporations-2012-07-09
More on the conundrum of makers vs. takers:
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2012/07/progressivity-of-taxes-and-transfers.html
Naturally this is aggregate data and means little to the average person. But it also points out that when you add back transfer payments, you dramatically increase the progressivity of a system already deeply progressive. And with the observation that, as a whole, the middle class, which used to be a net contributor, is now a net recipient, you wonder if we haven’t crossed the Rubicon when it comes to the majority of voters being on the dole and willing to continue to vote themselves rich.
I predict, as I have before, that you will see a correlation between the growth of the numbers Mankiw puts forth and this number: http://intltax.typepad.com/intltax_blog/2012/04/460-published-expatriates-for-q1-of-2012.html
cobbler,
Free trade has to be free. A (supposed) free-market economy such as the US cannot trade freely with a communist country like China. We have been giving away access to our economy and getting nothing in return. Trade has to be reciprocal.
chi [69]
I don’t think many people doubt that Romney is extremely smart, a very hard worker and exceptionally goal-oriented in his pursuits. The question is whether his goals if achieved will benefit the majority of the Americans or just his peer group. From the way he operated at Bain, the latter is the case (you may dream of being a part of his pweer group, though).
I will suggest changing,where you get your info
cobbler,
Free trade has to be free. A (supposed) free-market economy such as the US cannot trade freely with a communist country (China). We have been giving away access to our economy and getting nothing in return. Trade has to be reciprocal.
[55] brian,
You do know that short settlement and short sale are two different things, right?
njescapee :33
This guy James Kunstler has an interesting writing style — sort of a Hunter S. Thompson/Thomas McGuane/Mickey Spillane.
His website was worth a bookmark. Thanks for the Link !!
cobbler,
Free trade has to be free. A (supposed) free-market economy such as the US cannot trade freely with a comm_nist country (China). We have been giving away access to our economy and getting nothing in return. Trade has to be reciprocal.
cobbler,
Free trade has to be free. A (supposed) free-market economy such as the US cannot trade freely with a communist country. We have been giving away access to our economy and getting nothing in return. Trade has to be reciprocal.
cobbler,
Free trade has to be free. A free market economy (supposedly) like the US cannot trade freely with China. We have been giving away access to our economy- getting nothing in return.
Trade has to be reciprocal.
cobbler,
Free trade has to be free.
Our (not really) free market economy cannot trade freely with communist countries.
Trade has to be reciprocal.
68.cobbler says:
Free trade has to be free.
The US can’t trade freely with communist countries.
July 17, 2012 at 11:04 am
joyce [62]
You can’t be a liquidator and a free-trader at the same time. What you are suggesting is a sure-fire way to very quickly bring the living standards of the majority here to Chindia levels, at the same time creating Columbia-like income distribution pattern. In Columbia, they are waging the war against FARC guerillas for the last 30 years or so… are you looking forward to meet FARNJ guys on your patio?
joyce
Well, if you end up saying that we can have free trade only with the highly industrialized countries that don’t support their domestic industry, I will agree to have free trade… I only know one such country, which is the U.S.
Free trade is good ,if you can get a trade balance.If the US is running a trade deficit and the country you are trading with is running a trade surplas,there is a problem.I will look first on currency.You can not have a strong currency when you are running a trade deficit and a weak currency when you have a trade surplas.It makes your product more atractive to the stronger currency.It buys more for their money.
re # 73 – Romney was driving around in his speed boat at his 10 million dollar lake house for the last few weekends, refusing to talk about his IRAs and tax returns. It is not a great image flaunting his wealth, he should have toned it down. He has until labor day to change his image and go on attack mode for the remaining two months until the election. O is on message, and will remain so until it gets personal and dirty around October..112 days to go….
#70 Juice: Time will tell. I still think he does another round of QE before the election, the markets expect it. His hand will be forced wheter he wants to or not.
Chifi,
A run for the president is not unlike a prize fight, and a single blow can knock out the other guy in the last moments of a bout and change everything. That said, if this is a 15-round fight, through 6, Romney is flatfooted and sluggish; B.O. is not only pounding his body but landing enough fac shots that Romney’s one eye is swelling and he has a couple of smal cuts that could open up. This is looking like Ali vs. Quarry.
Romney has allowed himself to be defined by Obama’s team. As bad as Obama is, that is not the topic for discussion. Obama is also in the position where he can lose Ohio, PA, and Michigan and still win. If Romney loses any one of those three we can roll out the ghost of Don Meridith to sing Turn out the Lights.
Because of this, I think Portman has to be onthe short list. With his base in Ohio and proximity to PA, it could not hurt. Pawlenty would be good but I don’t know that he helps Mitt win a single state.
It is time for the GOP to dump Mitt and Nominate Hillary. We will end up with someone more conservative than BO who can actually take Democratic votes and win. The party has done so much to become pure that it has all but driven out people who can appeal to those other than wingnuts onthe far right. I would not count out CC as veep. he could throw Jersey into play, and he is bombastic and “real” enough to appeal to folks in Ohio and Michigan; however, if he picks CC, I would see it as a hail Mary play. A CC v. Biden debate would be far more entertaining than one between Romney and Obama.
“refusing to talk about his IRAs and tax returns”
The coverup is worse than the crime; so is the appearance of one. If he wants to win, Romney will have to release seven years of returns.
yo [79]
Balanced trade is good, but when there is a huge labor costs arbitrage you can be impoverishing the majority in the better-off country even when the trade is balanced overall.
My question to you is how is Romney allowing himself to be cowed in this manner. Is the point that Romney is in charge of his team, and he is just too unwilling to make the concrete steps necessary…..this looks like a chess match were the Romey team was prepared for checkers. O seems like he is on autopilot….everything is going on behind the scenes, and he just goes out and stumps with his populist rhetoric…otherwise he is just sitting by the pool with a drink…
Shore Guy says:
July 17, 2012 at 11:43 am
It is time for the GOP to dump Mitt and Nominate Hillary. We will end up with someone more conservative than BO who can actually take Democratic votes and win.
re #83 – Shore The coverup(s) are always worse than the crime and now there are more than one. You think the GOP can replace their front runner in the next 6 weeks and force a brokered convention? It is going to be a tough sell to anyone but the Evangelicals in the GOP to do that.
Cobbler(84)
Labor cost can be balanced by the value of your currency.Example is a post from friday
yo says:
July 13, 2012 at 3:05 pm
From yesterday discussion:
Is a strong dollar good for America?
Its a strong dollar,I sell widgets.In the US they will sell it to me at $2.If I go to Japan they will sell it to me for 100 yen.If exchange rate $1 = 100 yen .I go to Japan give them $1 they give me 100 yen pay my 100 yen widget go back to US happy.
Dollar went crashing lost 50% of its value against the yen (extreme).I go to Japan ,exchange $1 they give me 50 yen but the widget is 100 yen.So I give them $1 dollar more for another 50 yen.Now it cost me $2 to pay for the widget.I go back to the US and my boss say,why go to all that trouble,they can make the widget here in the US for $2.
So Japan not happy, lost my business,go to the treasury and buy billions of US debt to raise the value of the dollar.The cycle goes on and on.
As long as the dollar is in its stature and the US economy remains on the top 3 ,we can keep printing and this countries will keep on buying our debt.They will not care if that paper has no value.
IRAs you can sell with gains being tax free. You should only put your assets that have greatest chance of appreciation in them. This about this. Even with a 3k limit you could have bought 20K worth of Ford bonds with a 9% coupon in 2009 when they were trading at 15 cents on a dollar. That 3k would now be worth 24k plus 6k interest which equals 30K you can withdrawl tax free. Now once should bet his wildest craziest home run shot stocks in IRA, think one share of coke many years ago could not be worth one million, ten shares Apple 20 years ago, etc etc.
Chicago, Gallup currently shows 46% vs 46% (and it’s been a dead heat within the margin of error for quite awhile)
http://www.gallup.com/poll/150743/Obama-Romney.aspx
Nom 51 – Not all districts will. We couldn’t enroll Lil Gator in GR until we showed the HUD from our closing. And that was only because we were enrolling him for the upcoming school year (in April). Had we wanted to move him into GRPS mid year, we would have had to prove we were already residing in our home…and this is after we had already closed on it. The only reason we hadn’t moved in yet was that we had renovations in progress.
“Schools will let you enroll if you are UC.”
Chifi 69 – If Romney’s Bain experience should benefit him, then he should stop running from it. And from his other “accomplishments”.
RETROACTIVELY RETIRED
Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mitt Romney’s campaign, went on CNN yesterday to explain the circumstances surrounding the former governor’s departure from his position at Bain Capital. Gillespie settled the controversy by saying that Romney left Bain and went to work at the Salt Lake City Olympics in 1999 and then “retired retroactively” from Bain in 2002. This explanation has met with criticism and ridicule.
This is unfair. (It was especially unfair for Daily Kos, the home of the liberal netroots, to post a photograph of an Irish setter, identified as Seamus, seated comfortably in the backseat of a car with the word, “Retroactively.”)
The concept of “retroactive retirement” is well-established. Ben Affleck retroactively retired from the cast of “Gigli,” thus restoring his bankability as a movie star. As the journalist Matt Yglesias recalled, Michael Jordan retroactively retired from his two seasons playing for the Washington Wizards, and thereby preserved his basketball legacy. The director Julie Taymor retroactively retired as director of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” when it was an infamous Broadway flop; she then retroactively unretired when the show became a hit. (The matter is now in litigation.)
The criticism of Romney is especially unjust because, after all, he has retroactively retired from other jobs besides the one he held at Bain Capital—Governor of Massachusetts, for instance. During his term in office, Romney sponsored a health-care law with an individual mandate. As Romney said when he signed the law, on April 13, 2006, “Today, Massachusetts is leading the way with health insurance for everyone.” Later, when he began running for the Republican nomination for President, he retroactively retired from that position and said, “what works in one state may not be the answer for another.” Romney thus has a record of consistency in his commitment to retroactive retirement. (Ryan Lizza has written about his mastery of the technique.) Retroactive retirement should not be confused with retrofitted retirement, which is currently being considered by Anthony Weiner, the former congressman who left office amid certain Internet unpleasantness.
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/07/mitt-romney-bain-capital-retirement.html#ixzz20tkT4DKi
yo [87]
Let me explain why balance trade is important but insufficient when you are dealing with huge labor cost difference.
Assume country A exports some special software and widgets utilizing this software, and country B makes only widgets and export them. There are 500 people producing the software in country A, and 50K people making widgets in each country. The trade is balanced. Now, let’s assume the production of widgets in A got outsourced to B. As a result, trade in these products doubles and stays balanced – but we’ve got a huge drop in employment in country A, and a major increase in country B. As a result, the quality of life in country A goes down, and income distribution gets more polar (unemployment insurance, welfare, or a job at the warehouse pay less than widget manufacturing).
From the ecumenical point of view, activities described above are good since they had lifted a whole lot of people in country B out of abject poverty, and even the welfare recipient in country A is better-off than a worker in country B. Since I am not voting for a God or the Emperor of the World, but rather a leader of this country, I’d rather have one that cares about the well-being of our country’s people first.
Sorry, I’m distracted doing like a dozen things right now…..
I guess when i read it I thought it said short sale. Carry on…
75.Comrade Nom Deplume says:
July 17, 2012 at 11:18 am
[55] brian,
You do know that short settlement and short sale are two different things, right?
N.J. comptroller says hundreds should be cut from state pension rolls
Hundreds of municipal attorneys, engineers and other professionals should be dumped from the state pension rolls after banking lucrative time toward retirement payouts despite being banned more than three years ago, state Comptroller Matthew Boxer said today.
In a new report, Boxer recommends the state Treasury Department peel back any years of service earned by 202 professionals since 2008, shortly after the state Legislature passed a law requiring towns and school districts to purge those working as private or independent contractors.
Despite the mandate, Boxer found dozens of local governments have allowed professionals to continue to rack up valuable time in the system as though they were full-time public employees, potentially padding their pension payouts and winning them lifetime medical benefits.
But that is only the tip of the iceberg.
The comptroller reviewed the payrolls in 58 towns and school districts, leaving more than 1,000 others where professionals could be illegally accruing millions in benefits from a public pension fund already considered one of the most distressed in the country.
“We decided to investigate just how widespread the problem of improper participation in the state pension system is, and what we learned is that the problem is extensive,” Boxer said.
A spokesman for the Treasury Department, Andy Pratt, said the 202 names turned over by Boxer will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. The department has only one investigator and does not undertake proactive investigations, instead relying on complaints.
“Beyond that, there are no plans to do anything else right at the moment,” Pratt said.
In most cases, poor oversight by local officials was to blame, Boxer found. Many thought participants already in the system were “grandfathered” after the 2007 law, while others failed to follow instructions to determine if someone is a public employee or a contractor.
“There should no reason they are not aware of what they should be doing,” Pratt said.
Of the 202 ineligible people, 176 were attorneys, 21 were engineers, four were health care professionals and one was an auditor. In some cases, the same attorneys accruing illegal benefits were the ones advising local officials that they could remain in the pension system.
“That just flies in the face of common sense,” Boxer said.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/07/nj_comptroller_says_hundreds_s.html
yo
Only the real value of the currency matters (purchasing power) not the nominal value… but please keep us racing to the bottom.
cobbler
Balanced trade (imports/exports) would be ideal, but the Balance of Payments is more important technically. Without the FED reserve system distrupting everything, the Balance of Payments would always have to be ZERO (netting all countries) because that balance includes investments not just goods & services.
Hey I am trying to book a vacation, Kids want to go to Rocking Horse Ranch, tripadvisor gave it great reviews, any of you guys been there?
[73] cobbler,
You are suggesting that Romney, or anyone else in his position, could not make the transition from business leader to political leader, that he could not take what he knows from business and use it to benefit people in a different way.
There was an old show on television when I was a kid called “It takes a theif.” The premise was that a reformed theif now used his skills for righting wrongs, helping the good guys, etc. Today, we’d point to hackers that now work at Symantec or the NSA. It’s a bad comparator, but the thought is that someone who knows how to navigate the system and derive maximum benefit would also know how best to fix the system’s weaknesses, and do so in a way that isn’t antagonistic to the people who, quite frankly, we shouldn’t be pissing off.
Or we can continue to demonize them with predictable results.
[96] JJ
What happened to letting your prodigious girth hang out in the Hamptons?
Cobbler (92)
You are right in your explanation except you are assuming each countries currency is trading the same value.Put currency values on your example if it will still be trade balanced.
yo [99]
You could put any number there – the assumption is that hardware and software for the widget are equally valued by the market.
Why didn’t they just hire JJ instead?
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/scumbag-club-owner-hired-vikings-warn-rookies-perils-202738249–nfl.html
Joyce ,
tell me again,why we stopped buying american products and buy foreign goods.Because the real value of our currency is strong in turn we lost competitiveness
joyce says:
July 17, 2012 at 12:50 pm
yo
Only the real value of the currency matters (purchasing power) not the nominal value… but please keep us racing to the bottom.
The popular vote does not decide the election; the electoral college does…..just ask Al Gore
Statler Waldorf says:
July 17, 2012 at 12:22 pm
Chicago, Gallup currently shows 46% vs 46% (and it’s been a dead heat within the margin of error for quite awhile)
JJ at $300 per adult + $75 per child — per day — you’ll be burning over $1,000 daily. A Caribbean cruise is far cheaper.
97 – “would also know how best to fix the system’s weaknesses”
LOL. Thanks for the chuckle but the system works just fine for me and my buddies…those weaknesses made us all very rich men. Your naivete is cute but i’m not really looking to “fix the weaknesses.”
#96 Rocking Horse ranch, my kids catholic grammar school goes there every year for 8th grade class trip, been doing it for 20 years it seems, big highlight, everyone always seems thrilled!
nom [97]
Well, it’s a contest between It takes a thief and Tiger doesn’t change his stripes…
My wild guess is that in a really efficiently organized system we probably don’t need 80% of the office jobs we are currently having both in business and in government – so an infinitely good manager should either find the way to redistribute the income stream from the super-productive 20% so that the remainder can either stay idle (pretty bad idea) or create some societal goods without monetary value (from painting murals to coaching Little Leagues), or, alternatively, to pay some of them to protect the productive 20% from the rest. Reflexively, most business execs will choose the second option.
Personally, I actually like Mitt. I’d even vote for him over O if I was confident that both chambers of Congress would go Dem; such a set-up worked pretty well in MA. However, the reality is that his victory will almost inevitably lead to all 3 branches of govt going Republican; looking at your party today, I will feel really uncomfortable living in this country then, and, I am afraid, for many years thereafter.
Chicago, things are close, click the “Next ” button to see various scenarios.
http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/electoral-map
And there remains the VP selection, and presidential debates featuring Obama’s actual record instead of mythology.
Yo
We buy cheap goods from places like China because their workers are slaves.
The US has a trade deficit with the EU.
The US has had one since at least 1997 (maybe since 1993 can’t find data)
Who’s currency is “stronger” according to you?
Cobbler
Assume country A exports some special software and widgets utilizing this software, and country B makes only widgets and export them.(I assume this are exported to country A to be utilized by the software then country B has to be selling the widgets at a lower price to country A or else country A will not buy them from country B) There are 500 people producing the software in country A, and 50K people making widgets in each country. The trade is balanced. Now, let’s assume the production of widgets in A got outsourced to B (because of lower cost?). As a result, trade in these products doubles and stays balanced(not true-country B will hire more help to produce this product and as a result is your next sentence) – but we’ve got a huge drop in employment in country A, and a major increase in country B(exactly). As a result, the quality of life in country A goes down, and income distribution gets more polar (unemployment insurance, welfare, or a job at the warehouse pay less than widget manufacturing).
(which is why it is not balance. To balance this country A:because it cost more for them to make the same widget:country A can not lower its employee salary cost of living is too expensive.Now go back to my example.
A trade balance is something like,example;We buy so much goods in China that we are running a trade deficit.In turn China puts a higher tax(tariff) on foreign goods(our cars) to discourage locals from buying our cars and instead promote their own brand.THIS IS NOT BALANCE
To make this balance-The yuan needs to appreciate (they are running a surplas) so the salary of its workers go up.When its Citizen makes more money they can afford to buy the more expensive goods.Believe me,this people are hungry to taste the BMW,Caddillac lifestyle which they have been doing ever since the value of the yuan have increase and salary have gone up.They need to do more.
Exactly! The yuan needs to go up so salaries will go up with it.Lift their lifestyle so they can afford to buy foreign goods which they have been dreaming of
joyce says:
July 17, 2012 at 2:02 pm
Yo
We buy cheap goods from places like China because their workers are slaves
Statler [108];
Chicago, things are close…
Do you honestly believe that there is any way in hell Obama’s former chief of staff, the current mayor of Chicago, the headquarters of Democratic machine politics, home of the late-reporting wards that got JFK elected, is going to let Obama’s home state go any way buy blue? (Insert “dead girl/live boy” reference here…) Nov could turn into a Mondale-esque 48-state rout, but so long as Rahm-bo is overseeing who counts the votes, Ill. will be the one state going blue. Bet your last dollar.
The US economy is going down because of the slowdown in the EU.This is our trade partner.Our trade has been always equal.There might be a small trade imbalance not as huge as China and the Petro producing countries.
I am glad to hear rocking horse is fun. BTW the going rate for anything decent for a family of five all inclusive is 1K a night, that is what Mohonk, Rocking Horse, Woodloch, Beaches charge in the summer. No flights, short travel time, no cabs, I like all inclusive as I hate getting nickled and dime. That is why I hate places like Disney.
BTW this is not a recession. For fun I was watching and old 1980 movie on Netflix called “How to Beat the High Cost of Living” Watch that movie about the 1980 recession and how quickly prices changed, how jobs were being lost and it will make todays unemployed watching color movies on their wife laptops in their air conditioned mansions seem like a joke. The average poor person in the average NJ block in 2012 would be the richest man in town by 1980 standards
JJ 96,
Do the RHR. Not like Great Wolf Lodge. Nicer/better activities.
food is better and included, too.
JJ…
New York City to Bahamas, 7 days
Cruise Fare $4,795.00
Government Fees $754.60
On Board Credit ($300.00)
————————-
EST. TOTAL $5,549.60
2 Adults, 3 Children
Saturday, April 27, 2013
Norwegian Gem / Norwegian Cruise Line
2-Bedroom Family Suite with Balcony
Category SC
Deck: 11
These Penthouses are perfect for your whole family. Up to six guests can stay in these luxurious Penthouses that include a bedroom with a queen-size bed and a separate childrens bedroom. In addition to the living area, dining area, private balcony and luxury bath with separate shower. Includes butler and concierge service.
Above trip is from cruise.com
Please let me know if you’re looking for a article writer for your site. You have some really great posts and I think I would be a good asset. If you ever want to take some of the load off, I’d absolutely love to write some material for your blog in exchange for a link back to mine. Please blast me an email if interested. Regards!
JJ – only an hour away.
http://longisland.craigslist.org/vac/3145422276.html
Great Wolf Lodge my friend said was great, he has screaming ill behaved boys who like to eat junk food all day. He said it was perfect they could scream and act like white trash and gourge on vending food and fit right in. He said it would be an absolute nightmare to take them to a place like Mohonk.
daycare mom says:
July 17, 2012 at 2:32 pm
JJ 96,
Do the RHR. Not like Great Wolf Lodge. Nicer/better activities.
My kids are not big on the Hamptons. Last time I took them other than Friendlys in Hampton Bays and the Burgers at the Drivers seat in Southhampton they thought it was boring.
The did however, like it the first time I took them there and we stayed at the Hampton Maid Motel, that place is a super great breakfast place, I love their pancakes, not many know it is also an operating motel in back with a pool and a kids playground. Rooms are spotless, located halfway between southhampton and hampton bays it is really convinent. Little pricey but it is by far the best of the bettter hotels. actually it is the cheapest of the high end hotels.
Juice Box says:
July 17, 2012 at 2:53 pm
JJ – only an hour away.
http://longisland.craigslist.org/vac/3145422276.htm
yo [111]
Yuan can’t appreciate so much that the cost of unqualified/less qualified labor becomes similar in 2 countries, at least anytime soon. So, running the trade balanced doesn’t preclude the loss of jobs (though, it presumably precludes the loss of the overall wealth). You either need to create non-exportable jobs (which unfortunately are mostly education, healthcare and construction – each of which has its own problems discussed on this blog, and really can’t grow), abandon the free-trade mantra, or agree to feed a large group of freeloaders/moochers/whatever.
BTW their is a price point that keeps trash out. Sadly anything you do under a certain price point the crowd is icky, kinda like those cheap motels outside disney or junky DR inclusive resorts that do cheap liberty travel deals. Hampton Maid may be three miles up the road from Friendlys in the Hamptons but the crowd is 100% different, if you like sticky placemats with gray haired guys in tanktops with tattoos stinking of cigaretters at 8am mixed in with screaming kids Friendlys at 5 bucks a man is plenty good.
Statler Waldorf says:
July 17, 2012 at 1:41 pm
JJ at $300 per adult + $75 per child — per day — you’ll be burning over $1,000 daily. A Caribbean cruise is far cheaper.
JJ – you missed it last weekend.
http://www.boardybarn.com/
Hey guys, run to buy a house
inventory is down so now is a great time to buy
it doesn’t matter if US is going in recession again, people
loose their jobs, benefits and retirements. It does not matter
that us goes europe way. It doesn’t matter that NY area is
so overpriced when it is hit it will go down hard
Run to buy. Another ponzi scheme tailored to benefit boomers, realtors
and bankers
Yo
The yuan rising against the US$ is different than devaluing the US dollar. Why? Because you cannot just devalue it against China’s yuan. It will lose value across the board. But who care about unintended consequences?
(not that I’m advocating this)
“My question to you is how is Romney allowing himself to be cowed in this manner. Is the point that Romney is in charge of his team, and he is just too unwilling to make the concrete steps necessary…..”
At base, he is showing that he is “too nice” to be president. Carter was a great guy and look how that turned out. One of the things about running for president is assembling a team, from which key administration officials are often filled. Romney has not been impressive in the team he assembled or its preformance thus far. Resumes aside, they are getting kneecapped by BO’s team.
And the Chinese factory workers being slaves had more to do with their form of government than the currency (though their currency manipulation definitely hurts the people… like it does in this country as well).
We should do a bordy barn GTG. next year old timers day.
Chifi great graph for you to show clients.
https://www2.blackrock.com/content/groups/public/documents/image/fp_cotw_july9.jpg
raging bull jj 123,
GWL pkg 4-5 months or more in advance is a decent deal. OK for winter getaways w/ kids during breaks. Yes, sights, sounds and smells are also part of any deal there.
Food at RHR is equal to a very good diner. Fresh, too. Rock on!
I am doing the world tour 11 months ago I went to Beachs Turks and Caicos, three months ago Atlantic and now it looks like RHR, I am also booking a Disney trip for Feb.
My time horzon for vacations is pretty short. The youngest is 5 and oldest is 11. Kids under 4 are a big pain on vacation and kids over 16 are a nightmare too, I only have this five year period to do all the trips. After Disney I want to do a cruise out of NY, Woodloch, West Coast Grand Canyon, San Diego Zoo, Hollywood, Disneyland trip and then of course Europe. Also maybe back on another Beaches trip as so far kids liked it a lot. Also I am getting childrens rates now. Soon as the kids get old and I start getting hit with adult rates game over. Rocking horse only charged $75 a kid and Beachs only charged $250 a kid extra for the whole week. I dont know how people do it with 2-4 adult kids. Some resorts they have them as adults as young as 12. Plus eating out is crazy too when everyone is on adult menu.
daycare mom says:
July 17, 2012 at 3:55 pm
raging bull jj 123,
GWL pkg 4-5 months or more in advance is a decent deal. OK for winter getaways w/ kids during breaks. Yes, sights, sounds and smells are also part of any deal there.
Food at RHR is equal to a very good diner. Fresh, too. Rock on!
Joyce,
I don’t know if you understand how currencies trade.They trade in opposite direction.If the Dollar increase in value against the yuan,the yuan losses its value.We have been asking the Chinese to increase the value of the yuan and they refuse.What we did is devalue the dollar that in turn made the yuan stronger in value.They have to increase the value themselves,we can not keep on depreciating the dollar against their currency,although we can .Look how much did the yuan have gained in value.
Devaluing an over valued US dollar across the board makes our export more competetive across the world.Take note I said over valued.If we are running a trade deficit against a country, there is no reason for our currency to be strong against same countries currency.
joyce says:
July 17, 2012 at 3:35 pm
Yo
The yuan rising against the US$ is different than devaluing the US dollar. Why? Because you cannot just devalue it against China’s yuan. It will lose value across the board. But who care about unintended consequences?
(not that I’m advocating this)
The absolute best vacation I had with my family when the kids were younger was at Casa De Campo, Dominican Republic. All-inclusive. Top, absolutely top shelf liquor, Food was five star, eating Filet Mignon and Lobster every night. Downing it with cognac. The package included a 3 br house, maid, golf cart, all you can eat and drink, of course. Plus the golf courses were there right on the ocean. The resort is seven square miles. It was a paradise. Don’t know how and if it’s changed.
Singapore used to be like China,poor,under developed country.Lee kuan Yew has invision a strong fair socialist country.Everyone has a job and works fairly decent living.
China is on its way of obtaining that.
joyce says:
July 17, 2012 at 3:40 pm
And the Chinese factory workers being slaves had more to do with their form of government than the currency (though their currency manipulation definitely hurts the people… like it does in this country as well).
Chifi said about Obama: “otherwise he is just sitting by the pool with a drink…”
No, that’s the OTHER guy. The drink is probably lemonade, but I think you’re mixing up who’s spending his summer at his lake house rigging family games so he can win.
Europe with kids was the worst. two and half weeks of hell. A family of 5 doesn’t cut it there. taxis take only 4. kids were teenagers by then
I am doing Europe in two trips, First Ireland a few nights at a my cousins place in Dublin, off to Aunts Vacation home in Ireland near beach and then onto rich cousins house on River Thanes in England. Maybe 10 days, Europe part 2 will be challenge, France, Germany etc.
xolepa says:
July 17, 2012 at 5:09 pm
Europe with kids was the worst. two and half weeks of hell. A family of 5 doesn’t cut it there. taxis take only 4. kids were teenagers by then
I am rolling on floor laughing at tripadvisor review of Casa De Campo, Dominican Republic
“excellent hotel except with the kardashian smell”
5 of 5 stars Reviewed July 1, 2012
19
people found this review helpful
it was a great hotel, great staff, but they couldn’t get the stink out after the kardashians left the week before. they also left some of their hair in the shower drain.
xolepa says:
July 17, 2012 at 5:04 pm
The absolute best vacation I had with my family when the kids were younger was at Casa De Campo, Dominican Republic. All-inclusive. Top, absolutely top shelf liquor, Food was five star, eating Filet Mignon and Lobster every night. Downing it with cognac. The package included a 3 br house, maid, golf cart, all you can eat and drink, of course. Plus the golf courses were there right on the ocean. The resort is seven square miles. It was a paradise. Don’t know how and if it’s changed.
Yo
It’s like talking to a wall.
You said the EU is our trading partner and our trade has always been equal when in fact we have always had a deficit for the last 15+ years. Then you said the imbalance is small. How much of a deficit does it take for you to cry for intervention? [Intervention (albeit of a different nature) is what caused all these imbalances in the first place.]
Now you say, if we are running a deficit, we must devalue the currency. Why don’t we devalue it even more against the euro?
The US had a trade surplus with Australia as of right now; should they devalue their currency? Should we strengthen ours?
“The US last had a trade surplus in 1975. The deficit slackened during recessions and grew during periods of expansion. Every year there has been a major reduction in economic growth, it is followed by a reduction in the US trade deficit.”
Have we had a lot of inflation since 1975 or very little?
The truth is that inflation exacerbates the trade deficit.
“A weak dollar — the world’s reserve currency — also has an inflationary effect all over the world, particularly in commodities, Americans also wind up paying more for energy. So, being a net importer of oil, wouldn’t the increased cost at the pump offset gains made in exports (if any)? Yes. Despite a weak dollar sometimes leading to more exports (they increased in 2008, 2010, and 2011), higher energy prices as a result of inflation apparently offset those gains, exacerbating the trade deficit.”
http://useconomy.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=useconomy&cdn=newsissues&tm=4481&f=10&su=p284.13.342.ip_&tt=11&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/gands.txt
http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mttexus1&f=m
I have a trade imbalance with Europe. I take their women, cars and money and leave them with crumbs.
Good night, bank on my REO said will get back to me tommorrow on my offer from Thursday, high speed stuff.
“The truth is that inflation exacerbates the trade deficit.”
And Why?
“Have we had a lot of inflation since 1975 or very little?
Average about 3.5% in about target
“Why don’t we devalue it even more against the euro?”
We did ,remember race to the bottom? Now the Euro is losing value who benefits? Germany.look at their export numbers.
“Yes. Despite a weak dollar sometimes leading to more exports (they increased in 2008, 2010, and 2011), higher energy prices as a result of inflation apparently offset those gains, exacerbating the trade deficit.”
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/historical-inflation-rates/
Inflation in 2008 3.8 2010 1.6 2011 3.2 this are not wild numbers.High oil prices is set to what is assumed use by the world market.Nothing to do with inflation.In fact high inflation for world market will cut use of oil.Think about it.Energy prices like natural gas has been going down.
“The US had a trade surplus with Australia as of right now; should they devalue their currency? Should we strengthen ours?”
They did devalue their currency just recently 2011
I TOLD YOU WE CAN AGREE TO DISAGREE
“Yo
It’s like talking to a wall.”
YOU HAVE NOT EXPLAIN ANYTHING YET
I explained to you a strong dollar will make the yuan weaker in turn makes their goods cheap in the US.
You want a stronger dollar when the trade deficit with China is huge because of their devalued currency.What does that do to employment and manufacturing in the US?
Why does it exacerbate the deficit… read the next paragraph in that post, jeez.
The US$ is still weaker than the Euro (and has been for at least 10 years), so explain how Germany can have an export surplus the entire time?
What will it take for you to realize the imbalances are much more complicated that just the currency? Inflating the currency is not the answer to every economic problem, understand?
“Inflation in 2008 3.8 2010 1.6 2011 3.2 this are not wild numbers.High oil prices is set to what is assumed use by the world market.Nothing to do with inflation.In fact high inflation for world market will cut use of oil.Think about it.Energy prices like natural gas has been going down”
If you think inflation of the US dollar, the world reserve currency, what is needed by virturally every country to purchase foreigh oil (petro-dollars!) has nothing to do with the price of oil… you’ve gone off the deep end.
Now in the same breath you say high inflation will cut the use of oil AND energy prices are going down… but you just said inflation the last few years is not wild.
Do you listen to the words you are saying?
Food, energy, education, healthcare prices have been going nowhere but up.
Will that weaker dollar helping us with regards to China create problems with other countries we trade with? Umm.. yes.
152.yo says:
July 17, 2012 at 7:17 pm
“Yo
It’s like talking to a wall.”
YOU HAVE NOT EXPLAIN ANYTHING YET
I explained to you a strong dollar will make the yuan weaker in turn makes their goods cheap in the US.
You want a stronger dollar when the trade deficit with China is huge because of their devalued currency.What does that do to employment and manufacturing in the US?
I’ve explained to you countless times how inflation is theft (of the middle class and poor individuals).
I gave you examples of countries we have a trade deficit with in which our currency is already weaker. We have a trade surplus with Hong Kong and Brazil; I would say our currency is stronger than theirs.
Your idea that it is ONLY a matter of the currency is completely mistaken.
I hate Bojangles, but Mitt is basically a skimmer. Hard working, smart, tough…still a skimmer. The LBO business model is- at its heart- slice-and-dice, and the fact that he was one of its chief practitioners hampers him from asserting his competence. At the end of the day, if you’re an LBO guy, you get compared to the KKR jokers.
The USD is crap. Yuan is pegged to that piece of crap. Both are crap. Both are in a race to the bottom. Both will get there. Last one to the bottom loses.
Shiny, bitches!
“I’ve explained to you countless times how inflation is theft (of the middle class and poor individuals).”
This is not an explanation.Go back to your threads,if there was any explanation.It is always what you said.
“I gave you examples of countries we have a trade deficit with in which our currency is already weaker.”
Did the trade deficit go down?Just like you said 2008 2010 2011.If not for high price of oil the trade deficit would have been much lower.And high prices of oil was due to uncertainty nothing to do with inflation.
“Your idea that it is ONLY a matter of the currency is completely mistaken”
I never said is a matter of currency.I said, you can not have a strong currency with a country that you are already running a trade deficit.Their currency will get weaker and their product will get more cheaper.
The truth is that inflation exacerbates the trade deficit.
“A weak dollar — the world’s reserve currency — also has an inflationary effect all over the world, particularly in commodities, Americans also wind up paying more for energy. So, being a net importer of oil, wouldn’t the increased cost at the pump offset gains made in exports (if any)? Yes. Despite a weak dollar sometimes leading to more exports (they increased in 2008, 2010, and 2011), higher energy prices as a result of inflation apparently offset those gains, exacerbating the trade deficit.”
True,but prices of oil have ceiling.When it reach a point of no demand.It will find a market price.
“The US$ is still weaker than the Euro (and has been for at least 10 years), so explain how Germany can have an export surplus the entire time?”
After the EU was created the biggest trade was done in the Euro zone.This was the largest economy in the world.This is why the exchange with US dollar went from $1 to 1.50 euro to todays exchange.With the problems in recent years with the help of lower value of the Euro, Germany’s manufacturing has found demand to the rest of the world while its neighbors are dealing with unrest.But tourism is exploding in Italy,France.
“Now in the same breath you say high inflation will cut the use of oil AND energy prices are going down”
I said high inflation in the world market will slow demand of oil.Energy prices ,natural gas in the US are going down.
“Food, energy, education, healthcare prices have been going nowhere but up”
It has been since I have known capitalism.But inflation was always in the 2.0 target.I never said it always hit target.
“Yes. Despite a weak dollar sometimes leading to more exports (they increased in 2008, 2010, and 2011), higher energy prices as a result of inflation apparently offset those gains, exacerbating the trade deficit.””
high prices of oil was due to uncertainty nothing to do with inflation.
China, the largest foreign U.S. creditor, boosted its holdings of government securities in May to the most in six months as the American economy stalled and Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis deepened.
Chinese holdings rose 0.4 percent to $1.1696 trillion, Treasury Department data released yesterday show. Those of Japan, the U.S.’s second-largest lender, rose 1.4 percent to an all-time high of $1.1052 trillion. Net foreign purchases of Treasuries increased $54.2 billion, or 1 percent, to a record $5.264 trillion in May, the data show.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-17/china-raises-treasury-holdings-first-time-in-three-months.html
With QE coming, Central banks are buying and storing alot of gold.Gold has a bull run coming.
New Improved Meat says:
July 17, 2012 at 8:02 pm
Shiny, bitches!
Yo;
You’re saying that US devaluing forces China’s hand on exchange rates… Don’t they have a printing press too?
How has it been possible for banks to grow from less than 4 per cent of the global economy to more than 12 per cent of the global economy without impoverishing others? How has it been possible for profits in the financial sector to be consistently higher than profits from other human endeavors with more tangible products or impacts on our daily lives – such as agriculture, transport, health care or utilities? How has it been possible that banks derive their profits not from the protected and regulated activities of deposit-taking and lending, but from the unsupervised and often unknowable escalation of off-balance sheet assets and liabilities? How has it been possible that pension savings have increased while pension returns have declined to the point where only bankers can expect a comfortable old age? Global banks have built the casinos and tilted the odds in the house’s favour by rigging the data that determines the outcomes of most of the bets on the table. Every one of us that sits at the table long enough – whether saver, investor, borrower, taxpayer or pensioner – will be a loser. It is not a flaw; it is a feature.
http://londonbanker.blogspot.com/2012/07/lies-damn-lies-and-libor.html
[“I’ve explained to you countless times how inflation is theft (of the middle class and poor individuals).”
This is not an explanation.Go back to your threads,if there was any explanation.It is always what you said.]
You are ridiculous… those with first access to the new money (primarily banks) will be able to buy assets (whether PPE or investments) at the current price BEFORE the prices begin to rise. When the new money makes it’s way into wages on a real basis (if ever), the price increases/cost of living has increased and when they go to spend their increased wages (if any) they will be no better off, and probably worse.
I’ve said that many times in different ways with different examples. You just have almost as much trouble with the english language as you do with economics. Do yourself a favor and read the entire book… but I’ll copy below the relevant parts.
http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap23p2.html
The more knowing inflationists recognize that any substantial increase in the quantity of money will reduce the purchasing power of each individual monetary unit—in other words, that it will lead to an increase in commodity prices. But this does not disturb them. On the contrary, it is precisely why they want the inflation. Some of them argue that this result will improve the position of poor debtors as compared with rich creditors. Others think it will stimulate exports and discourage imports. Still others think it is an essential measure to cure a depression, to “start industry going again, and to achieve full employment.”
Suppose, for example, that the government prints money to pay war contractors. Then the first effect of these expenditures will be (to raise the prices of supplies used in war and) to put additional money into the hands of the war contractors and maybe their employees. The war contractors and their employees, then, will have higher money incomes. They will spend them for the particular goods and services they want. The sellers of these goods and services will be able to raise their prices because of this increased demand. Those who have the increased money income will be willing to pay these higher prices rather than do without the goods; for they will have more money, and a dollar will have a smaller subjective value in the eyes of each of them.
Let us call the war contractors and their employees group A, and those from whom they directly buy their added goods and services group B. Group B, as a result of higher sales and prices, will now in turn buy more goods and services from a still further group, C. Group C in turn will be able to raise its prices and will have more income to spend on group D, and so on, until the rise in prices and money incomes has covered virtually the whole nation. When the process has been completed, nearly everybody will have a higher income measured in terms of money. But prices of goods and services will have increased correspondingly. The nation will be no richer than before.
This does not mean, however, that everyone’s relative or absolute wealth and income will remain the same as before. On the contrary, the process of inflation is certain to affect the fortunes of one group differently from those of another. The first groups to receive the additional money will benefit the most. The money incomes of group A, for example, will have increased before prices have increased, so that they will be able to buy almost a proportionate increase in goods. The money incomes of group B will advance later, when prices have already increased somewhat; but group B will be better off in terms of goods. Meanwhile, however, the groups that have still had no advance whatever in their money incomes will find themselves compelled to pay higher prices for the things they buy, which means that they will be obliged to get along on a lower standard of living than before.
We may clarify the process further by a hypothetical set of figures. Suppose we divide the community arbitrarily into four main groups of producers, A, B, C and D, who get the money income benefit of the inflation in that order. Then when money incomes of group A have already increased 30 percent, the prices of the things they purchase have not yet increased at all. By the time money incomes of group B have increased 20 percent, prices have still increased an average of only 10 percent. When money incomes of group C have increased only 10 percent, however, prices have already gone up 15 percent. And when money incomes of group D have not yet increased at all, the average prices they have to pay for the things they buy have gone up 20 percent. In other words, the gains of the first groups of producers to benefit by higher prices or wages from the inflation are necessarily at the expense of the losses suffered (as consumers) by the last groups of producers that are able to raise their prices or wages.
It may be that, if the inflation is brought to a halt after a few years, the final result will be, say, an average increase of 25 percent in money incomes, and an average increase in prices of an equal amount, both of which are fairly distributed among all groups. But this will not cancel out the gains and losses of the transition period. Group D, for example, even though its own incomes and prices have at last advanced 25 percent, will be able to buy only as much goods and services as before the inflation started. It will never compensate for its losses during that period when its income and prices had not risen at all, though it had to pay up to 30 percent more for the goods and services it bought from the other producing groups in the community, A, B and C.
So inflation turns out to be merely one more example of our central lesson. IT MAY INDEED BRING BENEFITS FOR A SHORT TIME TO FAVORED GROUPS, BUT ONLY AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS. And in the long run it brings ruinous consequences to the whole community. Even a relatively mild inflation distorts the structure of production. It leads to the overexpansion of some industries at the expense of others. This involves a misapplication and waste of capital. When the inflation collapses, or is brought to a halt, the misdirected capital investment—whether in the form of machines, factories or office buildings—cannot yield an adequate return and loses the greater part of its value.
What inflation really does is to change the relationships of prices and costs. The most important change it is designed to bring about is to raise commodity prices in relation to wage rates, and so to restore business profits, and encourage a resumption of output at the points where idle resources exist, by restoring a workable relationship between prices and costs of production.
It should be immediately clear that this could be brought about more directly and honestly by a reduction in unworkable wage rates. But the more sophisticated proponents of inflation believe that this is now politically impossible. Sometimes they go further, and charge that all proposals under any circumstances to reduce particular wage rates directly in order to reduce unemployment are “antilabor.” But what they are themselves proposing, stated in bald terms, is to deceive labor by reducing real wage rates (that is, wage rates in terms of purchasing power) through an increase in prices.
Who among us does not feel richer and prouder when he is told that our national income has doubled (in terms of dollars, of course) compared with some preinflationary period? Even the clerk who used to get $75 a week and now gets $120 thinks that he must be in some way better off, though it costs him twice as much to live as it did when he was getting $75. He is of course not blind to the rise in the cost of living. But neither is he as fully aware of his real position as he would have been if his cost of living had not changed and if his money salary had been reduced to give him the same reduced purchasing power that he now has, in spite of his salary increase, because of higher prices. Inflation is the autosuggestion, the hypnotism, the anesthetic, that has dulled the pain of the operation for him. Inflation is the opium of the people.
And this is precisely its political function. It is because inflation confuses everything that it is so consistently resorted to by our modern “planned economy” governments. We saw in chapter four, to take but one example, that the belief that public works necessarily create new jobs is false. If the money was raised by taxation, we saw, then for every dollar that the government spent on public works one less dollar was spent by the taxpayers to meet their own wants, and for every public job created one private job was destroyed.
But suppose the public works are not paid for from the proceeds of taxation? Suppose they are paid for by deficit financing—that is, from the proceeds of government borrowing or from resort to the printing press? Then the result just described does not seem to take place. The public works seem to be created out of “new” purchasing power. You cannot say that the purchasing power has been taken away from the taxpayers. For the moment the nation seems to have got something for nothing.
Inflation itself is a form of taxation. It is perhaps the worst possible form, which usually bears hardest on those least able to pay. On the assumption that inflation affected everyone and everything evenly (which, we have seen, is never true), it would be tantamount to a flat sales tax of the same percentage on all commodities, with the rate as high on bread and milk as on diamonds and furs. Or it might be thought of as equivalent to a flat tax of the same percentage, without exemptions, on everyone’s income. It is a tax not only on every individual’s expenditures, but on his savings account and life insurance. It is, in fact, a flat capital levy, without exemptions, in which the poor man pays as high a percentage as the rich man.
But the situation is even worse than this, because, as we have seen, inflation does not and cannot affect everyone evenly. Some suffer more than others. The poor are usually more heavily taxed by inflation, in percentage terms, than the rich, for they do not have the same means of protecting themselves by speculative purchases of real equities. Inflation is a kind of tax that is out of control of the tax authorities. It strikes wantonly in all directions. The rate of tax imposed by inflation is not a fixed one: it cannot be determined in advance. We know what it is today; we do not know what it will be tomorrow; and tomorrow we shall not know what it will be on the day after.
Like every other tax, inflation acts to determine the individual and business policies we are all forced to follow. It discourages all prudence and thrift. It encourages squandering, gambling, reckless waste of all kinds. It often makes it more profitable to speculate than to produce. It tears apart the whole fabric of stable economic relationships. Its inexcusable injustices drive men toward desperate remedies. It plants the seeds of fascism and communism. It leads men to demand totalitarian controls. It ends invariably in bitter disillusion and collapse.
Yes they do.They buy US treasuries with return
Anon E. Moose says:
July 17, 2012 at 9:46 pm
Yo;
You’re saying that US devaluing forces China’s hand on exchange rates… Don’t they have a printing press too?
Want to reduce your tax bill and get school-loan relief?
http://www.kansascommerce.com/index.aspx?NID=320
Got my tax bill – only $80 increase, almost all due to the county portion. In the last 5 years it’s gone from 20 to 23.5% of the total, to pay for the most useless portion of the government we’ve got. There is not a single bit of these guys responsibilities that can’t be done better either at the state or at the local levels.
that was very good , i will always be here waiting for more updates.http://www.softagon.net
Harumph, harumph.
Now then, as I was saying…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/so-much-housing-has-bottomed-shadow-housing-inventory-resumes-upward-climb
Nothing to see here. Move along. Mind the reality gap!
Mwwwaa Haaa Haaa!
good work done by the blogger, keep up the work going.http://www.peixiurbano.net
When I originally commented I clicked the “Notify me when new comments are added” checkbox and now each time a comment is added I get several emails with the same comment related with “generic cialis cost“. Is there any way you can remove people from that service? Appreciate it!
please when you’re posting, do it carefully not to say the wrong thing.http://www.kitsucesso.com
You really make it seem really easy with your presentation however I find this topic to be really one thing which I believe I might by no means understand. It sort of feels too complicated and extremely large for me. I am looking forward in your subsequent put up, I will attempt to get the cling of it!
Hello There. I discovered your blog using msn. This is a very well written article. I will be sure to bookmark it and come back to read extra of your useful information. Thank you for the post. I will definitely comeback.
Hello my family member! I wish to say that this article is awesome, great written and include approximately all vital infos. I would like to peer more posts like this .
Its such as you learn my thoughts! You appear to know a lot approximately this, such as you wrote the e-book in it or something. I believe that you simply could do with a few p.c. to pressure the message house a bit, but other than that, that is magnificent blog. An excellent read. I will definitely be back.