From Barrons:
Nothing’s wreaked quite the havoc on the U.S. economy, and indeed the national psyche, as the six-year slide in home prices. It wiped out some $7 trillion in household wealth, savaged bank balance sheets, and induced the Great Recession and the tepid recovery.
Yet there are unimpeachable signs that this national nightmare is now over. Home prices are starting to rise, if somewhat haltingly, in most areas of the country. And a number of forecasters predict home-price increases around 10% or so nationally over the next three years, with some metropolitan statistical areas, such as Midland, Texas, and Bismarck, N.D., likely riding the energy-exploration boom to better than 20% jumps in residential-real-estate prices. The turnaround, in fact, appears to be arriving exactly on the schedule that Barron’s laid out this year in a March 19 cover story entitled “Ready to Rebound.”
Of greatest moment, perhaps, was the release two weeks ago of the S&P/Case Shiller Composite 20-City Index that showed a jump in home prices of 2.3% in June over May. Likewise the Case-Shiller National Index in the second quarter rose 6.9% over the first-quarter level, before any seasonal adjustment. And for the first time since the summer of 2010, the National Index actually nosed ahead of the year-earlier quarter’s reading, if only by 1.2%.
“This increase in home prices, unlike the one that occurred in 2009-2010 as a result of the temporary tax credit for first-time home buyers, looks to be for real,” says David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “We probably won’t see a V-shaped recovery in housing, with prices overall going up 20% in the next year. But this rally has legs, and prices will definitely be higher next year.”
…
“It has been six years since the housing market last experienced the gains we saw in the July numbers, with indications that the summer will finish up on a strong note,” says CoreLogic CEO Anand Nallathambi. “Although we expect some slowing in price gains over the balance of 2012, we are clearly seeing the light at the end of a very long tunnel.”
…
Yet some keen observers of the real-estate market, such as Moody’s Analytics’ Mark Zandi, are optimistic that home prices will rise as much as 10% from current levels by the end of 2014, once the shadow inventory is worked down over the next year or so. He points to such factors as the continued rise in effective rent rates (the main competition to home ownership), low mortgage rates, steady though slow improvement in job growth and improving availability of bank credit.“We’ve clearly reached a key psychological shift in home buyers’ psychology, where folks are now starting to worry about missing the boat, rather than fearing whatever house they buy, no matter how attractive the price, can only go down in value,” Zandi explains.
First, mf’er!
“We probably won’t see a V-shaped recovery in housing, with prices overall going up 20% in the next year. But this rally has legs, and prices will definitely be higher next year.”
Based on what fundamentals? Job growth? lol! Wages? lol! Where is the credit and and financial security? A 20% rise by next year is the prediction but they never tell you why.
Ernest,
I’m scouring the inventory… nothing to even bid on. I think I’ll lowball a piece of sh1t today just for the he11 of it. How do I tell that young couple that bought my house that the contingency clause is going to slam the door on them?
I posted this one last week because the same exact houses are still sitting. This house s.ucks. They put a jacuzzi bath in the basement while the house screams for help. They just dropped the asking price $60,000. That’s a start.
http://www.trulia.com/property/3087437256-136-Clinton-Ave-Hillsdale-NJ-07642
By the way, the Democratic Convention was very sad, from the quips I’ve been seeing. The place was half-filled and all I know is that they booed G0d and Romney is Goebbels.
“Booed God”….seriously? My lord you are functionally retarded. Hurry up and buy another house before you get shelved again….
I feel sorry for the other side… they really have caved to the fringe freak show. The level of destruction achieved in four years by this administration is astonishing.
7. It would have been a whole different story if McCain would’ve won. I agree. We would all be living in caves sending smoke signals instead of this internet thingee. And Sarah, man she would’ve been great for the Country. Oh woe is me. Woe is me.
Hurry Up Gary! You can only get a loan while you have full time employment status….make a choice now….time is ticking. We all know how volatile those private sector tech jobs are, what with outsourcing an all. Bain style. Baby. DRILL!!
Anybody read this??
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/greed-and-debt-the-true-story-of-mitt-romney-and-bain-capital-20120829
Romney got an FDIC bailout from Uncle Sam and then stiffed the gubmint….class act. P.S. The head of the PDIC was Mitt’s dad’s pal.
Gary 2 Im starting to ignore all the numbers and headlines and base everything on what’s going on in my own backyard friends, friends of friends, neighbors, and coworkers who all have so much anxiety and fear in them as far as the future and they know the fundamentals are not there. Yup keep posting those year over year, month to month numbers.
Remember these?
“I promise that I support traditional marriage-1 man-1 woman.
“I promise 100% transparency in my administration.”
“I promise NO NEW TAXES on a family making less than $250K a year.”
“I will allow 5 days of public comment before I sign any bills.”
“I will remove earmarks from PORK projects before I sign any bill.”
“I will end Income Tax for seniors making less than $50K a year.”
“I will bring ALL of our troops home within ONE year.”
“I’ll put the Health Care negotiations on CSPAN so everyone can see who is at the table!”
“I’ll have no lobbyists in my administration.”
“I’ll close Guantanamo.”
“I’ll resign if I don’t cut the deficit in half by the end of four years.”
“I’ll cut the debt by half in my first term.”
The truth about who is responsible for our massive deficit
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-11/news/30013193_1_budget-deficit-government-spending-tax-collections
Obama’s approval ratings are so low that Kenyans are accusing him of being born in the United States.
Modern American Currency.
One dollar bill: George Washington.
Five dollar bill: Abraham Lincoln.
Ten dollar bill: Alexander Hamilton.
Twenty dollar bill: Andrew Jackson.
Fifty dollar bill: Ulysses S. Grant
One hundred dollar bill: Benjamin Franklin.
Food Stamps: Barack Obama.
“Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it’s dusted itself off, it’s had a shave and a shoeshine, and it’s back out there running for president.”
Despite a growing population, fewer Americans have jobs today than when Obama took office. And the jobs pay less, too.
With the release Friday morning of the August job numbers, there are still 261,000 fewer Americans employed than when Obama became president. Almost a million — 822,000 — fewer Americans have permanent jobs.
That’s because you didn’t build that!! Now go get me a pack of Newports!
Democrats may not want to hear it, but Reagan faced an unemployment rate as high as 10.8% and was able to drive it down below 8 percent within 14 months. By contrast, unemployment under Obama peaked at 10.0%, eight months after his “stimulus” was passed, and after another 33 months it is still above 8%.
This guy is a f*cking mope. Him and his wife, the one who’s proud to be an American, should leave quietly. 17 vacations, over 100 rounds of golf and counting…
How much deficit did GWB run this country?Who benefitted on that?War in Iraq,tax cut for the rich,bail out for the banks and the rich.
O’s deficit is staggering only because when he took over the economy was in a free fall that there was hardly no revenue.He laid off goverment workers.And he had the duty to provide for all the millions that lost their jobs and their homes.Even till now revenue is not near to what we had during GWB.Millions are still jobless and gave up.Companies are making money with less workers.Productivity is at its highest.Your solution is let this people starve and be homeless like the 3rd world.At least O helped the people that used to pay taxes,when they used to be called middleclass.
Fast Eddie says;
“Food Stamps:Barack Obama”
” Mitt Romney – a man whose own father built cars and nurtured communities, and was one of the old-school industrial anachronisms pushed aside by the new generation’s wealth grab – has emerged now to sell this make-nothing, take-everything, screw-everyone ethos to the world. He’s Gordon Gekko, but a new and improved version, with better PR – and a bigger goal. A takeover artist all his life, Romney is now trying to take over America itself. And if his own history is any guide, we’ll all end up paying for the acquisition. “
President Barack Obama’s job approval reached a 15-month high during the Democratic National Convention this week, according to a Gallup poll.
The poll, conducted Tuesday-Thursday and released Friday, found that 52 percent of Americans approve of the president’s job performance, up 3 percentage points from the previous survey, conducted Monday-Wednesday. In the latest poll, 43 percent disapproved of the job Obama is doing, down from 45 percent.
Obama’s job approval hadn’t topped 50 percent in the Gallup survey since a poll conducted June 21-23. The latest approval numbers are the president’s highest since a survey conducted May 29-June 1, 2011, in which Obama registered a 53 percent approval rating.
Fast Eddie says:
September 8, 2012 at 7:42 am
Obama’s approval ratings are so low that Kenyans are accusing him of being born in the United States.
Gary 18 And did not blame Bush, I mean Carter
[6] Essex,
Every news outlet reported it. Some delegates hoped and jeered when the leaders tried to put “god” back into the platform.
“If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s gonna be a one-term proposition.”
Buh-bye.
“Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected,” chuckled Obama.
Oh well, what’s a Trillion dollars when you’re the party of compassion.
Fast: A really dismal jobs report yesterday and downward revisions to June and July.And there are so called experts talking about a housing recovery with legs!!! In my mind it is just too funny!
Juice from yesterday. Qe3 is coming, I don’t in what format but it is. BErnanke cannot say the Fed stands ready to act, then have yesterdays dismal jobs numbers and then do nothing. The market is addicted to QE, its coming. We will have a better idea after next weeks FED meeting.
I think I’ll come back here on Monday. Baa Baa!
3b,
Yes, a housing recovery. After the barrage of sh1t I’m forced to look at, I need to recover. I wanna make an offer on something just for the sake of making an offer. That 500k plus range is dismal.
Can we please ban the word inherit from the rest of this election cycle?
How about we replace it with “take ownership of the problem”?
Inherit implies no choice, that it was something thrust upon us unexpectedly. We had no idea. He knew full well going in, he could have quit pretty easily.
He didn’t, so it serves as an excuse, a perfect cop out. Had anything been fixed, the words used to describe it would be radically different.
Instead we get, yeah, we didn’t fix it, but hey, it wasn’t our fault.
I can do a great job as president of Utopia too.
Happy Belated GRIM…
Like a bunch of firefighters standing around a burning building, shrugging their shoulders saying, it’s OK, we didn’t start it.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443589304577633773199268632.html
The New,New home market
One last rant, this time about outsourcing.
I’ve spent the greater part of 17 years in the outsourcing business, and have worked for some of the largest BPOs in the world. All I know is outsourcing, it’s the only business I’ve ever been involved in. I am an expert outsourcer. I can take a company’s non-core back-office processes and do them better than they can, for cheaper than they can. I can allow them to free up capital, resources, and focus to invest in their core businesses. I can help them be more flexible, I can help them improve time to market, I can help them make their customers happier than they ever have. I’ve helped failing companies, who were being dragged down by a lack of productivity, turn around and succeed. I’ve helped to repatriate jobs back to the US, from off-shore, by leveraging enough technology to improve productivity, so that it was again economical to manage that business in the States. I’ve used technology to helped to bring jobs to economically disadvantaged areas in the US, in some cases being the largest employer those towns have ever seen.
Equating outsourcing with destruction of companies, that’s just silly folks. When GE builds a turbine engine for Boeing, that’s oursourcing. When ADP cuts your payroll check, that’s oursourcing.
For anyone to blindly say outsourcing is “bad” or “evil”, all that tells me is that you’ve got no idea at all how business operates, and you probably shouldn’t be running one, let alone a whole country.
Let’s move backward on the productivity scale, maybe back to the dark ages, that’ll help us be more globally competitive.
[35] grim,
The folks who oppose outsourcing are tapping into a very old meme. It’s the same meme that gave us the term “sabotage” from workers trying to disable machinery by throwing their sabots into the works. Same for monkeywrenching.
And on the flip side, realize that anytime you buy something in Walmart or any other big discounter, or buy the lower cost competitor instead of the higher-cost local provider, you force companies to off-shore to remain competitive.
The minute that price becomes more important to the American consumer than the origin of manufacture or service, we’ve lost. It’s done. Even offshoring can’t fix that.
Y’all get what you deserve, don’t you understand?
You can not simultaneously bitch about offshoring, outsourcing, and the loss of manufacturing jobs, whilest simultaneously bargain hunting in the stores.
35. and 36. Working with an American firm to streamline or do project work or provide a jet engine is NOT the same thing as moving entire backoffice operations to India. Not.
Yes, and you are completely incorrect.
Boeing can hire engineers, Boeing can build a factory, Boeing can hire more workers, and Boeing can build an engine. They choose not to, because someone else can do it better. Therefore, they oursource the development and construction of engines to their partner, GE. Why? GE can do it better than they can, for less money than they can. GE, or Rolls Royce, or whoever, have economies of scale in that area that can’t be matched by Boeing.
Likewise, companies can hire armies of payroll clerks to cut checks, and have the chief officer sit in his office for 23 hours a day signing them all, and they can hire couriers to deliver them all across the country on horseback. Of course, they’d waste so much time and money every year that could have been better spent, reinvested, helped to grow the company. Why shouldn’t they outsource their payroll department to ADP? Wouldn’t you?
Would I displace teams of workers just to save a little cash? Probably not.
Would I displace teams of workers just to save a little cash? Probably not.
If my salary came from the endless supply of extortion better know as tax dollars, neither would I.
What you are not mentioning is the looting of the American corporation and the cost-cutting and downsizing and then the Super Sizing of the CEO bonus based on said cuts and savings. Quite simply, it’s selling out fellow-Americans so that you as CEO can pad your nest, raid the company coffers, and move on.
It’s great for those with no real alliance to anyone but themselves, but for those of us who love this Country it is disgusting. It started with mass firings at places like ATT in the 80’s and it became standard practice.
I interviewed with Satyam years ago and the whole place made me sick. I’ve since moved on with my life, but spent about 13 years in high tech. I’ve worked with Fortune 100 firms and small start-ups. Grim, there’s not a helluva lot you can teach me about “outsourcing” no matter how you spin it.
40 – Inherent in that statement is the assumption that you can remain competitive enough to stay in business. Maybe you are lucky enough to run a monopoly or to operate in some other protected industry. Probably more likely that you are in the public sector, and you don’t really need to understand what revenue is.
I’ve got an easy test to show the hypocrisy in your statements, take your pants off, shirt too.
Where are they made?
I hope you say the US, along with everything else in your closet, otherwise you are part of the problem.
Open the borders for doctors lawyers
CEOs see how fast your theory goes out the window. Problem is we just put the little workers in competition with the low paying jobs in the 3rd world. I want to see the rest of the pro in competition with the 3rd world then I will get back with you if you still have the same opinion
Or maybe we can fix the monetary system bringing the costs of college down (for all including doctors/lawyers) and remove the licensing requirements
Joblessness is the greatest threat that the country faces. You cannot gripe about not having enough work opportunities and then advocate shipping jobs overseas.
#18FE
“Democrats may not want to hear it, but Reagan faced an unemployment rate as high as 10.8% and was able to drive it down below 8 percent within 14 months”
Heres a small news flash, UE was 7.5% when RR took office and he drove it up on his own. You say that this place has raised your IQ, can i suggest your next topic is political history. Start with RR, look at what both sides say about him and make your own determination. You want a food stamp president, RR is your best nominee.
Quite simply, it’s selling out fellow-Americans so that you as CEO can pad your nest, raid the company coffers, and move on.
The Oblama administration and his cronies have made a perfect living doing this.
I got out of my way to wear Lucky Jeans and Redwing boots. I buy used clothes from eBay. I drive a Ford. Try to buy used stuff which doesn’t reward anyone for offshoring.
48. You really should get out more…
Re: 3B – No QE3 it will do nothing for housing this time. The only avenue is stimulus since we are at zero bound interest rates. I know you have read Bernake’s play book he has told Congress more than once it is now in their hands to create jobs. We are Japan circa 1993. Just take another look at what they did Stimulus after Stimulus at Zero bound. Here is a good article from the NY Times from a few years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/world/asia/06japan.html?pagewanted=all
Fabius,
Your guy s.ucks. Let’s be honest, he totally s.ucks. He started talking 4 years ago and that’s all he’s done. A mope, a bullsh1t artist, and a con man. He was elected by the tat and muffin top crowd. They’ve stooped down to contraceptives and abortion… that’s what they’re left with after all other excuses were tried. I’m embarrassed for my country. My country. My country. We tried, he failed, time to move on.
Essex – The real Democratic party is the Green Party. Those fat lazy bastards down in Charlotte some of whom were teachers who should have been in the classroom for the start of school just want a handout.Every Dem Politican in NJ was there and they weren’t there for your interests.
#39 grim,
You are right and wrong. Yes it make sense for Boeing to outsource its engines. But when it goes with GE, it is American jobs and domestic revenue, with Rolls Royce, the jobs and the revenue go offshore.
With this discussion there is a big distinction to be made between white collar and blue collar manufacturing. White would be high value, high tech devices, low would be low value, high volume devices. There was a push starting in the 80s to move away from Blue collar manufacturing, into more Service centric industries. So instead of Brenda and Eddie graduating and going to work at the plant, they went to the call center for a job. Globalization came along and now both blue sides are getting hit. Add in the education bubble to get to the white side, and you have one of the founding cores of todays issues.
Reagan vs. Obama – Reagan went from 10.8% to below 8% in just over a years time. Obama s.ucks.
http://mjbehindthecurtain.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/uer_rvo.jpg
52. I ‘m willing to give the guy another term so unravel the mess. I will bet the rest of America goes along with that. We shall see. If in fact Romney gets in so be it….I won’t complain. It will just be another administration and we’ll see how things progress.
56
you mean regress… doesn’t matter who wins of the two criminals
Re: 35 – Grim we cannot be globally competitive with slave labor, unless we want to have slaves here too. Take The case of the wealthiest company in the US, they know what the real deal is when they outsource their manufacturing.
http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/karl-denninger/2012/01/23/apple-and-america-chinese-slave-labor-problem
I still have black appliances so I guess we are back in style now, although I am sure they are not the “right” kind lol. I have formica too, not a fan of granite, partly because of the possible radon esp since I spend a lot of time in our kitchen and using the counters. I like some of those new Formicas 180sx or something like that, they have nice edges etc. Corian maybe? I’ve also seen really nice wood ones. Will have to check out Marmoleum.
Jill says:
September 7, 2012 at 3:48 pm
Ann #75: Gee… If I wait long enough to replace my 1970′s yellow formica countertops, laminate will be back in style. So, y’all, if you were replacing your countertops now, what would you get? I’ve been agonizing over kitchen flooring for years now…went from laminate to cork to plank vinyl and now I’m considering Marmoleum Click in the Van Gogh or Sahara colors.
Fast Eddie, you need to find some new towns. Whenever you can’t find something you like in your price range, it means the town isn’t right for you. Those towns are very expensive for what you get JHMO.
Fast Eddie, Meant to add, 500 is still a rough price range in those towns. The housing stock in Bergen County is horrible, I don’t know why anyone lives here to be honest (including myself). Try Mahwah or Oakland, best value towns in BC. Mahwah is even better than Oakland because the taxes are lower.
58 – the solution is easy, just don’t buy apple products.
Instead if you go to the mall on this rainy saturday, you can watch your fellow Americans, who don’t think it’s a problem, hand over at least a quarter of a million today.
#52 FE
He’s not “my guy”, I think of him as the only credible choice. You want to feel some embarrassment, join the moderate republicans on this board as their party implodes. The number one problem is Congress. The biggest issue in Congress is the GOP has gone off the rails. Until they become an effective party of opposition again, the Dems are a lock in 2016 and probably 2020.
In the 2010 elections, the GOP could have taken the Senate, but they put up Sharon Angle and Christine O Donnell. Now in this cycle, we have Akin. That should have been a solid red win, but it stays blue. Are they deliberately trying to throw it?
Ann,
I know, I’m looking everywhere. Believe me, I am.
Here are some decent listings in Mahwah for example…
Nice older house on the Cragmere side of town…
http://www.coldwellbankermoves.com/property/details/3157111/MLS-1229758/228-Miller-Rd-Mahwah-NJ-07430.aspx
This is a good one, needs some fixing up, but it’s a nice street, near Ramsey, and it has a large lot.
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/296-Myrtle-Ave-Mahwah-NJ-07430/37957546_zpid/
This is a nice one too, doesn’t need as much fixing up, nice area of town
http://www.coldwellbankermoves.com/property/details/2916030/MLS-1208579/4-Stone-Fence-Rd-Mahwah-NJ-07430.aspx
Another decent one on an acre of property:
http://www.coldwellbankermoves.com/property/details/3152691/MLS-1229466/67-Fardale-Ave-Mahwah-NJ-07430.aspx
Re: #62 – Grim that is not a solution, do you really believe that slavery and bribery is capitalism?
Fabius,
Congress has been in the hands of the dems since 2007, two of those years with a super majority. Talk about going off the rails, just look at the last 5 years. And Akin? Akin? Who gives a flying f*ck about Akin. He’s a whack job. What does f*cking Akin have to do with epic UE, poverty, salaries being slashed and crushed, diversion, division, gloom, despair and no light at the end of the tunnel.
Ann [61],
That would be an option but it’s just too far from jobs, school, etc. I appreciate the input though and open to any suggestions.
#55 FE
Add in the 5% rate from 2007 and you sort of prove my point.
I wrote a comment with some decent listings in Mahwah but it had links, I think it is stuck in moderation….Anyway, the addresses are 228 Miller, 296 Myrtle, 4 Stonefence, 67 Fardale
Where do you work? Mahwah is pretty accessible, just jump on 17 and you’re down by the Hillsdale latitude in a few minutes. Or 287 over to the Parkway. Oakland is a good town for a 287 commute or a 208 commute, not so much a 17 commute, but it’s still doable.
You need some new towns, you are banging your head against the wall over in that area! Good luck.
grim (35),
Good for you! Everyone should work to improve economic efficiency where they can, and let people focus on their comparative advantage. When someone invents an engine that doubles horsepower and mpg, most people can recognize that this is progress, and admire the engineers. If someone can figure out how to provide better services while using half the labor cost, that represents the same kind of economic advance. And deserves the same admiration. The economy is always changing, and for it to continue to move forward, people have to adjust and anticipate where they can add value. Economics is about making the most of scarce resources.
Ann,
The radius of the search is expanding, believe me. :) In fact, I’m leaving in about 20 minutes to see a few homes.
[3] Eddie, open up that wallet a little more if you want to stay away from the riff-raff. Just cough up the extra quarter-mil and get a nice house. You can’t expect the seniors an boomers to just give their house away, can you? And don’t worry about the young couple trying to buy your house. You are doing them a favor by not selling it to them.
Oh good, expand that radius. There is a real bargain in Oakland being open housed tomorrow 31 Skytop. I think it’s listed at 530 but those were going for 700 back in the day. It’s a small lot, but a newish house so no renovations needed. GL!
[39] grim I agree to a point about outsourcing, the key is getting the trade deficit under control. Leverage is the problem- and it artificially raises prices here. Until it doesn’t. How about we outsource Medicaid and Medicare patients- need a hip, go to India. Want it done in the USA, pay cash, no Medicaid/Medicare accepted. I’m sure they are just as cost effective and efficient in the hospitals as they are in the call centers. Keep the USA hospitals only for emergent care.
#51 Juice: Any thoughts than on how Bernanke proceeds next week.
Redneck: You know nothing about AT&T if you are willing to make that statement. I worked there and understand how a management team hads to rationalize the workforce of the company. Rationalize is the correct word; it is not a euphemism. People needed to be fired, because the revenue line did not support the structure and management layers. I am the first person to villify Bob Allen, who as a CEO, the best complement I can give him is that he was a scratch golfer. That said, it is specious to shoot the messenger…….when monopolies and oligopolies are thrown up against real world class competition, people with funigble skills are going to get hammered. In this country we have had repeated examples: Walmart, the telecommunications industry, autos, steel…….take you meds before your post again or chow down on some KFC to keep you fat, dumb and happy.
Essex says:
September 8, 2012 at 10:38 am
What you are not mentioning is the looting of the American corporation and the cost-cutting and downsizing and then the Super Sizing of the CEO bonus based on said cuts and savings. Quite simply, it’s selling out fellow-Americans so that you as CEO can pad your nest, raid the company coffers, and move on.
It’s great for those with no real alliance to anyone but themselves, but for those of us who love this Country it is disgusting. It started with mass firings at places like ATT in the 80′s and it became standard practice.
I interviewed with Satyam years ago and the whole place made me sick. I’ve since moved on with my life, but spent about 13 years in high tech. I’ve worked with Fortune 100 firms and small start-ups. Grim, there’s not a helluva lot you can teach me about “outsourcing” no matter how you spin it.
3b – more of the same, back in 2010 he did nothing until the week before the midterms, which was too late to have any effect on the election. It was intentional, and will be again this time.
Whenever anyone associated with the Obamunists discusses college as an entitlement, you can tell they are lying whenever their lips are moving……this part is great “And the government would block some student-aid dollars from being used at schools that don’t offer value or affordable prices.”…..how exactly is that done? by some nazi-fascist-education czar?
Targeting Youth With a Pledge on College Costs
By JOSH MITCHELL
The Player: Barack Obama
The Play: Promising to cut college-tuition growth in half.
The Strategy: Mr. Obama’s pledge Thursday to rein in college tuition is a direct appeal to the young voters who fueled his 2008 election but whose enthusiasm has waned amid high joblessness and mounting student debt.
Mr. Obama, outlining his goals for a second term at the Democratic National Convention, called for cutting the rate of tuition increases in half over the next decade, while also preserving federal student-aid programs. “I refuse to ask students to pay more for college,” he said.
Few issues galvanize young, middle-class voters and their parents like climbing college costs. Many of them are taking on student debt and facing high student-loan bills despite having no job or earning meager wages. Student debt was a major theme of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and gained mention in convention speeches this past week by Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton.
Tuitions at four-year public and nonprofit private colleges and universities have, on average, grown roughly 40% over the past decade after adjusting for inflation, according to the College Board. Under Mr. Obama’s goal, tuitions would still grow above the inflation rate but more slowly.
The Obama campaign offered only a vague plan for how to achieve this. A $1 billion program would be created to reward states that put in place college-pricing changes and provide stable college funding, it said late Thursday. The federal government would promote new practices and technologies that cut costs, including more online courses. And the government would block some student-aid dollars from being used at schools that don’t offer value or affordable prices.
Higher-education officials say the biggest factor in rising tuitions is state budget cuts, over which the federal government has little control. Colleges and universities say they must raise prices to cover those cuts. Achieving the president’s goal is “very difficult to imagine” without big changes in how colleges draw funding, said Terry Hartle of the American Council on Education, a trade group representing colleges and universities.
Education consultant Mark Kantrowitz said Mr. Obama’s proposals don’t appear to involve enough funding to bring down college pricing significantly. Tuition growth is likely to slow in coming years as the economy improves and state revenue increases, he said, but meeting the president’s goal would likely require a bigger turnabout.
Meanwhile, Obama critics, including Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, say federal student-aid policies championed by Mr. Obama are part of the problem. Those policies—including broad lending by the government, unlimited borrowing for graduate students and a program that ties borrowers’ payments to their incomes and forgives some of their debt—are fueling tuition inflation, those critics say.
The Result: Mr. Obama’s proposal draws a contrast with Mr. Romney, who has called for a diminished federal role in student aid. On Friday, Mr. Obama trumpeted the idea on the stump without offering details how it would work, suggesting this could become a popular talking point. Mr. Romney’s campaign, meanwhile, issued a statement saying the goal was another “hollow promise.” Some students will no doubt find appeal in the president’s message of slower tuition rises, but the economy and jobs continue to loom as overriding election themes.
(58)
Juice,
This is the key portion of that article:
“Absent intentional interference in our monetary and economic system on both sides of the Pacific what happened can’t be sustained. Americans cannot buy iPhones without money to spend on them and they cannot have those funds absent “free credit” and ponzi bubbles without good jobs.”
The raping of the middle class in every way possible would have backfired very soon if it wasn’t for the loose money/east credit from the Federal Reserve System. That hid the decline for a few decades. Other things like ‘free’ (ha!) trade deals, monopolistic protections for certain industries, and disregarding the rule of law for the protected classes only exascerbated the situation.
In other words, absent the intentional distortion that is generated by massive deficit spending by state, local and federal governments what happened can’t as it immediately self-corrects.
(last one)
That’s what productivity improvement is, it’s what powers the natural (price) deflation that is the ordinary state of all economies over time, and it brings common improvement in the standard of living for the majority of the people.
#58 Juice: I am curious to see what effect it has on the 10 year.
I found a house for Gary!!
http://www.njmls.com/listings/index.cfm?action=dsp.results&city=OAKLAND&county=BERGEN&state=NJ&zipcode=07436&openhouse=&keywords=&mls_number=&location=OAKLAND%2C+NJ&proptype=1&minprice=&maxprice=&beds=&baths=
77. I only mention ATT because it was a pivotal moment that opened people’s eyes to the nature of corporate America. Prior to that mass layoffs were not the norm and corporate loyalty was something most workers understood. After that being RIF’ed was commonplace and folks became somewhat disenchanted. Free Agency reigned, job jumping ensued and security and the Company Man became a thing of the past.
#84 Don’t kill me gary, just kidding!!
MSNBC
A possible tornado has touched down in New York City’s boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn Saturday afternoon, NBCNewYork.com reported.
Fire officials are reporting structural damage and downed power lines in Breezy Point. Multiple trees and power lines have also been reported down in Flatbush, along with possible structural damage.
A tornado watch will remain in effect for parts of Queens and Brooklyn, as well as counties in Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey.
——————————————————————————–
At 10:54 a.m. Saturday, the National Weather Service Doppler Radar indicated a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado near Rockaway Beach moving northeast at 25 mph. An earlier warning indicated another severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado near Sheepshead Bay, or near Flatbush.
Other locations in the warnings included Canarsie, Crown Heights, Howard Beach, Kennedy Airport, Ozone Park, Forest Hills, Jamaica, Little Neck, Clearview Expressway, Whitestone, Jackson Heights, Flushing and Bayside.
Anyone in the path of this dangerous storm was advised to move indoors and to the lowest level of the building, away from windows.
As a card carrying redneck I can tell you that many of my friends from flyover country are diehard Republicans. Knowing that many of them are very bright, but not especially well-informed, is one reason that I have always leaned left.
I’m proud to be a redneck. I love KFC. I love my Mustang. I love my Country and yes, I love God. I just don’t need to government to tell me who I can marry, when I can procreate, and how that Corporations are “People”.
Having worked in a few corporations, albiet non as mediocre as AT&T, I can safely say that they are very prone to exploit those who serve them and that if it was not for the rights won by those who came before us, we too would be working for $2.00 a day. Or maybe $10.00 if you are an Ivy League grad.
3b not until next year, it is just too close to the election, and they have no cover. The Fed cannot allow rates to rise, unless they decide to throw in the towel on the manipulation of long bonds and housing “recovery”. They are going to have to expand their balance sheet a few trillion more next year, most likely after an emergency stimulus bill of a few trillion makes it through the new congress.
I for one am not buying, I don’t see it as an investment for a while just a depreciating asset . We will need at least 5 more years for a real recovery. I have a three year old and another one on the way next month. My wife and I are resigned to the next few years to stay put unless something drastic changes. We have a nice place with plenty of activities for small children, we can and do walk everywhere and the commute is short, my car stays garaged most of the weekend. Life is good for us we have two incomes and loads of liquidity to do whatever we want when the time is right. It isn’t right “now”I will just stay a dirty renter and enjoy raising my children here with lots of other young families.
grim (35)-
16th century, dead ahead.
“Let’s move backward on the productivity scale, maybe back to the dark ages, that’ll help us be more globally competitive.”
Funny how the undercurrent of protectionism from the leftants on this board is becoming more pronounced.
Print. Repudiate. Turn to protectionism.
This was BC Bob’s call here about five years ago…and it’s all coming true.
AT&T was a bloated company, stuffed with a middle management level full of complete dunces who produced absolutely zilch. I spent a good deal of my early RE career helping those bags of blood buy and sell property. Most of the ones I dealt with had the financial acumen of a six year-old.
A very large portion of the technology innovations the world enjoyed for the last 60 years or so is a result of AT&T using its monopoly profits to sponsor the long-term strategic R&D done at the Bell Labs. At its peak it had more scientific brainpower than what you can find today in all of the Silicon Valley, at least on the software/hardware side. After the break-up the workforce of Bell Labs went from tens of thousands to thousands (under Lucent) to an insignificant number (today, under Alcatel). Number of patents went down in parallel. Short-term, the consumers benefited from AT&T getting dismantled – they got cheaper phone calls. I think, long-term the U.S. competitiveness lost big time.
From yesterday
Mikewaited, you say you have a paving guy?
I am in Union County. Any idea how much psf I am looking at? Folks telling me I will pay a lot more now due to asphalt costs being so high but what guarantee do I have that if I wait a few years, they will be lower? Driveway is pretty ugly but functional, would love a low cost “repair” solution to buy me five years until I can afford a full redo. Welcome any thoughts / opinions about this. Seems like its purely aesthetics though on some level I think I am pockets where water runoff is directed towards my foundation rather than away.
On another topic,
grim (35) do you really think that people (Americans) hear outsourcing and include US-based outsourcing as evil along with all offshore? I don’t think so. Seems to me the average Joe hears “outsourcing” and pictures the guy answering his chat session for his Snapfish questions or back-office IT work in general. I don’t even think the average voter thinks of GE making engines for Boeing (or getting their check cut by ADP) as outsourcing but rather as partnering. Sort of becomes semantics, no?
I agree with you that the same people complaining about offshore outsourcing are buying lots of crap at Wal-mart but if someone is lumping you into the same category as a call center in Bangalore, they are not worth getting into the debate with.
#85 3b, that is one of my favorite listings ever. What’s not to love!
250k I will ask PSF but it is most likely driven by size of job, area?
Mikewaited
>>1890 sq. ft.
single width driveway , entry to garage is in the back so there is a “parking lot” big enough to turn a car around in .
Shovel Ready wasn’t as shovel ready, but they still somehow managed to spend all the money…
Without guarantees in student loans and the option of default, college tuition would be about 12 k a year at schools charging 40k a year. And wtf is the point of “cutting growth in half”? Not for nothing, but tuition at these same schools was 20k a year 10 years ago. If you cut growth in half, the nominal increase in tuition will still be equivalent to what it was 10 years ago. We need to cut tuition in half.
I worked on a project at Lucent when their stock was $70 a share. Good times. Long gone. Thanks Carly! Freakin’ retards. Wow ChiFi. Don’t you feel like an @sshole after you post sometimes?
…FWIW the ‘project’ went on to win the “President’s Award” at Lucent, we beat IBM Global Services for the deal, talk about bloat. The project increased productivity and I used American labor from a Boca-based firm to do the work….
250 k will check out Monday post Monday night on number.
I think Gary should live in a town named after him. This might suit: http://www.trulia.com/property/3063206564-356-Dallas-St-Gary-IN-46406
This is also completely charming AND affordable, though how one fits 4 bedrooms into 998 sq ft is a bit of a mystery: http://www.trulia.com/property/3055665401-529-Second-Ave-Gary-SD-57237
The list of businesses in town suggests a crying need for IT support.
ben[99]
On average, in-state tuition proper in the public schools (countrywide) is still much less than 12K. I agree 100% that loans have to be made dischargeable – but I disagree with you on what happens when they get there. You say tuition will drop from 40K to 12K, I say 3rd and 4th tier private schools will totally die off, and tuition in the top 50 schools will continue going up as it is doing now.
Punch no taxes listed on those , I can just imagine .
[91] money,
Protectionism is inevitable. I’ve been saying that for a couple of years. I agree that the currency may have to tank for it to come about.
On average, in-state tuition proper in the public schools (countrywide) is still much less than 12K. I agree 100% that loans have to be made dischargeable – but I disagree with you on what happens when they get there. You say tuition will drop from 40K to 12K, I say 3rd and 4th tier private schools will totally die off, and tuition in the top 50 schools will continue going up as it is doing now.
I know, public universities would drop to 5k, private universities to 12k. Top 50 schools tuition can’t keep going up. Those degrees are not worth the money and there would be a true market keeping a lid on them. All these kids that are going to Brown now are leaving school 200k in debt and struggling to find jobs starting at 35k a year. The only reason they continue to go is a false belief in the value of the degree and a government willing to finance the debt either directly or indirectly through subsidies and guarantees. If the liquidity that drives the loan market disappears, 50k a year tuition will be a distance memory.
(105)
Cobbler,
It is possible, but I think less likely. The schools, unless they want to fold, will cut useless administrators, cut back on luxury condo-esque dorms, not pay 200K for a professor to teach 1 hour a week, stop offering certain nonsense majors (and I dont mean Liberal Arts in general… Sports Management? really?), etc etc.
The schools know where the waste is… if they choose to remain open, they will make the changes.
At a protest last year at New York University, students called attention to their mounting debt by wearing T-shirts with the amount they owed scribbled across the front — $90,000, $75,000, $20,000.
“I couldn’t believe the accumulated wealth they represent — for our industry,” the consultant, Jerry Ashton, wrote in a column for a trade publication, InsideARM.com. “It was lip-smacking.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/business/once-a-student-now-dogged-by-collection-agencies.html?_r=1&hpw
ben[108]
As for the public 4-year school, it can’t be run on 5K a year per student without extra state money, at least without eliminating any classes with less than 40 students and any tests not using the scantron. 12K a year private school can exist in principle (eliminate all the research, increase class size), this is what today’s U. of Phoenix/DeVry are – what they charge in excess of 12K is profit – but there is no niche for it between the state college and for-profits. As for the Browns of this world, very few students there use loans or Pell grants – more than 50% are full-pay, for the rest most aid is grants from the school’s own funds. They can easily double the tuition and still have way more than enough candidates.
joyce [109]
not pay 200K for a professor to teach 1 hour a week
Usually (at least in the field I am familiar with), the said professor is fetching $1 mln and up in research grants from which university grabs half, so his teaching is essentially a bonus for the U. Many other high-paid profs have endowed chairs, etc.
Administrators can and should be reduced – but this won’t happen until the school is bankrupt. Useless bureaucrats are always the most entrenched (as an example, look at what most people in your company HR department are doing).
cobbler,
I agree about the administrators/bureaucrats. Also in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with separating the teaching and researching functions from within a college to outside.
(slightly off topic)
Would you happen to know if the majority of the research grants come from industry or federal goverment or other?
$50,000, $100,000, $200,000 school debts?
I’m not so sure it’s the CEOs who are looting America.
They create that money out of thin air and then use the gun of the government to collect from them for life. Make the type of debt dischargeable (like every other kind) and the problem is all but gone.
How about dischargeable at a higher rate & what we have now at it’s rate.
Only knowledge that’s valuable is the knowledge of how to survive in apocalyptic conditions. Killing/field dressing, agriculture, maintaining firearms, etc are the only worthwhile pursuits.
joyce [113]
On separation of teaching/research: there is such an interplay of teaching and grad school in meaningful universities that it is pretty hard to do – and will also destroy the undergraduates involvement in research, which I think is one of the main features that still keep our higher ed as a top banana globally, at least in science/engineering fields. BA-only schools rarely do any serious research and the profs there do a lot of teaching and get very few grants (also, are paid much less). 2-year schools – zero research, all teaching.
As for grants’ source – depends on the field, and on where between “pure” R and “pure” D the work sits. Industry has zero interest in sponsoring stuff expected to bring money later than 5 years from now – so the financing is from NIH, NSF, etc. On the “D” side, especially comp sci and some engineering stuff, money is largely from the industry.
ernest [118]
In apocalyptic conditions you don’t need field dressing, just eat the whole thing – fir, guts and all. Make the broth from the bones and hoofs/nails. Have to spit out the teeth, though.
Claws, not nails. No cannibalism.
Doom is nigh. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
As for the Browns of this world, very few students there use loans or Pell grants – more than 50% are full-pay, for the rest most aid is grants from the school’s own funds. They can easily double the tuition and still have way more than enough candidates.
If they could double it, they would have already. Not many people would go to Brown for 50k a year if they had the option of going to a Major University for 12k a year. The second the government stops subsidizing the loans and allows bankruptcy, tuition goes down everywhere. The only reason a school like Brown can squeeze out 50k a year from everyone is because every other school is approaching 30 to 40k a year.
Seems silly that the NYT would vilify the debt collectors, but completely support the establishment that enabled that debt to be accrued.
I’m sure the NYU tuition fees associated with the cultural anthropology program are completely acceptable too.
Why not send the debt collectors after Jon Corzine?
If you thought house priced were crazy..
http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2010/06/higher-education-bubble-its-about-to.html?m=1
I remember getting ready for graduate school and pricing out a number of institutions. It’s a lot like buying a house. You see eye popping tuition at places like RISD, RIT, USC, NYU, and you say hmmmm. Then you remember that you have to eat and pay rent. At that point public Universities looks better. You move to the place you want to be and establish residency. A year later you attend as an in-state student for under 1/2 the cost of out-of-state. Then you get a job on your own merits. The most satisfying experience was beating out Ivy leaguers for a first class job at a firm in NYC that was just getting ready to go public. Chasing the brass ring is not easy, but it doesn’t need to cost you a million bucks either. Same with homes.
I grew up in a country were college education was not subsidized by the government.Universities takes only cash payments,they dont care where your money came from as long as it is cash.They offer Academic Scholarship thats it. Only the can afford went to college.The gap between the rich and the poor grew every year.Look in the 3rd world how many families live in cardboard boxes.The country offers a state university that is the best in the country but only the best can go.
Taking away the government from education does not solve the problem.Most develop countries even give free college education in State Universities.This is what we need.We dont need to spend trillions of dollars in defense.We need to spend on the future of our kids not to give police protection in the world.That is the job of the UN and other agencies.We can keep developing new tech to defend ourselves but not be everywhere to protect the world.We need to start looking to ourselves and our future.
Taking the government out of our lives is a guaranteed failure.We were the envy of the world once,we failed because of greed.Greed will not be the answer now.
(123)
grim,
exactly!
One day, I will stop being amazed on how wrong you are. Is the gap between rich and poor growing in the US now? with more and more invovlement in education… so I guess that is not the PRIMARY driver for the widening gap.
I agree we shouldn’t police the world. That is nonsense, but neither should the UN or anyone else. That would make each and every country, including the USA, subservient to a unelected board that has questionable allegiences. Pure b.s.
‘Taking the government out of lives is a guaranteed failure’??!?!?! Are you serious? What is that quote that says most people do not yearn to be free only to have a benevolent master. I know which camp you fall into and it sickens me. The government is not an all powerful being that can do no wrong (usually quite the opposite). It is made up of flawed, corruptable (if not already corrupted), and probably sociopathic people. The govt exists to protect the best it can our freedoms and protect our property.
127.yo says:
September 9, 2012 at 10:43 am
I grew up in a country were college education was not subsidized by the government.Universities takes only cash payments,they dont care where your money came from as long as it is cash.They offer Academic Scholarship thats it. Only the can afford went to college.The gap between the rich and the poor grew every year.Look in the 3rd world how many families live in cardboard boxes.The country offers a state university that is the best in the country but only the best can go.
Taking away the government from education does not solve the problem.Most develop countries even give free college education in State Universities.This is what we need.We dont need to spend trillions of dollars in defense.We need to spend on the future of our kids not to give police protection in the world.That is the job of the UN and other agencies.We can keep developing new tech to defend ourselves but not be everywhere to protect the world.We need to start looking to ourselves and our future.
Taking the government out of our lives is a guaranteed failure.We were the envy of the world once,we failed because of greed.Greed will not be the answer now.
My solution is full government subsidies to State Universities,cut the cord outside that.Let the can afford go to Private Universities without government help or loan guarantees.Only the rich will go to this schools unless they offer scholarship to the poor.This Universities might produce the best in the country but that is how it is now,no difference.Let student loans be errased by bakruptcy to get rid of future student loans.Your choice is free education from State Universities if you can pass entrance.If you cant pass the entrance a reasonable tuition amount to get educated
Because we are trying hard to become a third world.
joyce says:
September 9, 2012 at 10:55 am
One day, I will stop being amazed on how wrong you are. Is the gap between rich and poor growing in the US now? with more and more invovlement in education… so I guess that is not the PRIMARY driver for the widening gap.
re: # 10 – The NY Times article on Student Loan Debt shows a picture of a woman who owes $55k putting her child into what looks like a new SUV with leather seats. Doesn’t seem like too much of a struggle for her.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/business/once-a-student-now-dogged-by-collection-agencies.html?_r=2&hp
Default on Student Loans, Default on Mortgage no consequences.
Does anyone here think these people are going to buy your house? Right now 1-6 student loans are in default.
Think of all the things that we gave up,spent to make and change the world to a democratic.Iraq is one.We gave up our manufacturing to make the world richer.How much money and still giving to the world? Now we are broke we have the same mentality as the 3rd world.I watch myself and only me.What happened to give me your poor,your tired? Come to America work hard and you can attain your wills. Today more families are trying to survive with 3 or more incomes.Why? because of greed.Companies don’t have to look out after their workers.Workers don’t have loyalty to companies.At least I see the 3rd world going our old way.I have friends that are retired at 58 with company pension.What do we have here now? We are being told we cant retire until 67 or more,no more company pensions.Fewer people able to put money in 401k,no savings,Is this not a 3rd world?
“We were the envy of the world once,we failed because of greed.”
When in history did the USA become the envy of the world? I think it occurred MUCH much sooner than you. The USA was an expirement in liberty unparalleled in history. In which direction is the growth in govt (and as a result the growth in corporatism) going? More or less? And which way is the gap between the rich and poor going? wider or narrower?
(113)
Why do you bring up strawman arguments regarding our nonsensical and unlawful foreign policy? I have never defended that. It is a complete waste of lives and resources (with emphasis on “lives’).
This article was posted above. This analysis is 100% correct. Note that the ‘greed’ would have backfired on them if it wasn’t for the government protecting them in various ways.
http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/karl-denninger/2012/01/23/apple-and-america-chinese-slave-labor-problem
This is the key portion of that article:
“Absent intentional interference in our monetary and economic system on both sides of the Pacific what happened can’t be sustained. Americans cannot buy iPhones without money to spend on them and they cannot have those funds absent “free credit” and ponzi bubbles without good jobs.”
(and this is also noteworthy)
“The raping of the middle class in every way possible would have backfired very soon if it wasn’t for the loose money/east credit from the Federal Reserve System. That hid the decline for a few decades. Other things like ‘free’ (ha!) trade deals, monopolistic protections for certain industries, and disregarding the rule of law for the protected classes only exascerbated the situation.
In other words, absent the intentional distortion that is generated by massive deficit spending by state, local and federal governments what happened can’t as it immediately self-corrects. (!!!)
That’s what productivity improvement is, it’s what powers the natural (price) deflation that is the ordinary state of all economies over time, and it brings common improvement in the standard of living for the majority of the people.”
134. Joyce. Read more and you can answer these questions yourself.
And more thing. Needing more than 1 income … you probably attribute that to ONLY shipping manufacturing jobs oversees. I attribute it to many things with that being a tertiary reason.
But even if that is the sole reason for decimating individuals’ incomes, why did and why still are the costs of housing, food, energy, education, health care rising without any hint of slowing? Dare I say the four letter word… inflation?
133.yo says:
September 9, 2012 at 11:17 am
Think of all the things that we gave up,spent to make and change the world to a democratic.Iraq is one.We gave up our manufacturing to make the world richer.How much money and still giving to the world? Now we are broke we have the same mentality as the 3rd world.I watch myself and only me.What happened to give me your poor,your tired? Come to America work hard and you can attain your wills. Today more families are trying to survive with 3 or more incomes.Why? because of greed.Companies don’t have to look out after their workers.Workers don’t have loyalty to companies.At least I see the 3rd world going our old way.I have friends that are retired at 58 with company pension.What do we have here now? We are being told we cant retire until 67 or more,no more company pensions.Fewer people able to put money in 401k,no savings,Is this not a 3rd world?
Essex,
They were rhetorical questions, genius.
Ask any citizen of the world before 2008 if they want to live and work in the US.Even now.most of the 3rd world will choose to live in the US .We still have a better life than most.That is sliding very fast now.Greed is not the answer.
joyce says:
September 9, 2012 at 11:18 am
“We were the envy of the world once,we failed because of greed.”
When in history did the USA become the envy of the world? I think it occurred MUCH much sooner than you. The USA was an expirement in liberty unparalleled in history. In which direction is the growth in govt (and as a result the growth in corporatism) going? More or less? And which way is the gap between the rich and poor going? wider or narrower?
Keep responding to the imaginary things you think I said.
joyce,
For many people myself included confidence in tomorrow is much more important than liberty as perceived by the libertarians. My main problem with our today’s system is that it destroys this confidence, rather than trespasses on one’s liberty.
Senior citizen devastated after home he built as a teenager was ransacked by bank when it foreclosed on the WRONG address
As a teenager Alvin Tjosaas, now 77, helped his parents built a home in Twentynine Palms, California
He has spent more than 50 years vacationing at the home with his family
Wells Fargo mistakenly ransacked the home twice this summer, breaking down doors, smashing windows and walls and taking Tjosaas’ possessions
The bank were meant to be foreclosing on a property 10 acres away
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2200508/Wells-Fargo-Senior-citizen-devastated-home-built-teenager-ransacked-bank.html#ixzz25zIYouiI
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/09/hedge_funds_risky_ties_to_reve.html#incart_river_default
In case anyone was wondering if the new,new Revel is in good shape. It seems that
a few Hedggies have an interest in the joint. They will also take it over when if fails.
Taxpayers screwed again .
Why aren’t the perpetrators being charged with breaking and entering, theft, and criminal vandalism?
Why is it that when a bank commits a crime, it’s a “mistake”?
141
Cobbler,
No one can have confidence in the future while with each passing day a law is passed that destroys our rights. The confidence in the present and future is being destroyed because the rule of law is a joke. Case in point …
…142
Essex,
I bet the people hired by Wells Fargo will not be punished for trespassing, vandalism, and a whole host of other laws they broke… and needless to say, none of the people at Wells Fargo will be punished for all of those criminal law violations either.
There is the slightest chance that person will get a civil payout after a long long wait. But that doesn’t negate the fact that criminal laws were broken and no one will be held responsible.
Grim,
A mistake, an irregularity, paperwork error, sloppy filing, etc etc etc
“Sorry Officer, I didn’t realize I was removing this television and jewelery from someone elses home, I honestly thought this was my house, this is all just an honest mistake.”
They offered him $250k but if he wanted he could really hammer them and possibly, based on a court win, make these practices more visible.
Yeah. Supermodel Curse Strikes Again (hopefully)
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/mark-sanchez-tryst-eva-longoria-jets-latest-non-132659635–nfl.html
Now if we can just get the team on the cover of SI
joyce [145]
What exactly constitutes our rights and the rule of law is always open to interpretation from the SCOTUS and all the way down… Remember that 160 years ago you’d have a right to own slaves and your wife wouldn’t have a right to vote… 90 years ago you would have been jailed for brewing some beer at home… 60 years ago an employer could have asked you to pass a lie detector test before offering you a job, and many RE properties carried covenants prohibiting its sale to those of certain races or religions…
cobbler,
I understand. But as you said earlier, the “system” is the problem and what you just expanded is the system again. Our natural rights come from the (individual) bottom up and not top down.
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.” –Thomas Jefferson
[141] cobbler,
Respectfully, I disagree. We have a system that does both. The barriers to upward mobility are greatest for those at the lowest rungs of the ladder, both socioeconomically and commercially. The entrepreneur cannot easily compete with the corporation; the mom-and-pops cannot compete with the chains; and much of this is not due to taxation or lack of access to things like capital, but regulation that makes growth burdensome.
what’s more disturbing is that they refused to even acknowledge what they did and hoped the guy would just go away until he contact the media. This isn’t the first story of this kind. My question is, where the hell does all the crap in the house go? Does it end up on Storage Wars?
joyce (140)-
Until the actual person died, I thought Yo was Kim Jong Il.
grim (144)-
Dunno. Ask Moose.
“Why aren’t the perpetrators being charged with breaking and entering, theft, and criminal vandalism?
Why is it that when a bank commits a crime, it’s a “mistake”?
nom [152]
Having spent my working life in the most maligned and harassed sector of the American industry (chemicals), I need to say that the regulation as such is burdensome but fairly manageable; moreover, in Europe and Japan it is if anything more restrictive, and even China these days pushes the industry around quite a bit. Special and uniquely bad here is the tort system with joint and several liability clause combined with general science distrust and illiteracy, and an undue importance given to the opinions of those who don’t have any subject knowledge (from jurors in the trial to all sorts of NIMBYs to professional writers of Citizens’ Petitions) but are given an ability to decide on its fate.
Corporations are only considered persons when they are in the process of bribing politicians or buying elections. When they are committing crimes, they become faceless, above-the-law corporate entities again.
Ernest Money,
That was hilarious! Sometimes I just can’t help myself and engage in conversation.
157
Ernest,
Spot on…
Yo,
There was never a free lunch. Someone has to pay for 8 weeks vacation and 60 year old retirement. Maybe it was easier when you never bought a phone, let alone replaced every 2 yrs., people travelled 100 miles for vacation, and old people just died rather than getting blitzed with 100k of healthcare to give them a 50pct chance of a few more years. And people bought crap cars without competition threatening the profits that paid union benefits. Globally, rags to riches is becoming easier than ever, but that’s partially at the expense of the complacent US lower to middle-income folks who think graduating from a US high school should guarantee a global top 5 percent lifestyle. I’ve got family stuck in that mindset but I left that behind, after making some hard choices and self-assessment.
joyce [151]
I probably should take a philosophy refresher when I retire, if the state then still allows the seniors to take county college classes for free.
In the globalized world the society/country with the bottom up concept of rights unfortunately is at a serious disadvantage due to much slower decision-making process (if the decisions are made at all)… I guess we are observing it, no?..
Ragnar [160]
You’ll be surprised, but the U.S. is rich enough to bring everybody to a global 5% (OK, make it 10%) lifestyle at a cost of very marginally slower GDP growth and bringing the ratio of the prices for “stuff” to services back to where it’s been in the 1980s. This will never happen since the majority (a) wants cheap stuff and (b) thinks that lazy, dumb and unlucky people should be punished together with their children and grandchildren
Another question worth asking is WHY we even have a dept of education? Since States generally establish standards and administer just about every facet of education here in America….!!!
Abolish this entire entity and with that savings alone provide a decent state education for every college student.
Essex,
Reagan spoke of getting rid of the federal Dept of Ed, I think. People incorrectly assume govt departments improve quality and availability of something, despite centuries of evidence to the contrary.
You ever wonder how we got into this mess? We use to have pension that is gone the 3rd world have it.We have 2 weeks vacation some 3rd world are working on a one month vacation.How did we trade place with them? You guys ever wonder? APEC and other world organization that we promised t make their lives easier.Not too long ago China is poor as dirt but we promised to buy their products remove tariffs.The US is the biggest consumer of the world and we paid that money to China and now the rext of the other countries.You ever wonder why we survive before the so called globalization.We manufactured and bought our own products.The rest of the world wants high quality product even if it was more expensive.That is the US.Why suddenly now,we are willing to give up what we had for the exchange of a companies profit?There is no difference how they did business back then.Only difference is we open the trade.In return we got less and they got more.
Look at what is China and Russia is saying at the APEC yesterday. This is where our leaders gave up alot if our livelihood.TRADE BARRIERS MUST BE SMASHED DOWN!! And they got the long end of the stick.We were doing alright until we agreed the rest of the world should prosper.
——————-
Chinese President Hu Jintao said Beijing would do all it could to strengthen the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and boost prospects of a global recovery by rebalancing its economy, Asia’s biggest.
President Vladimir Putin said trade barriers must be smashed down. He is hosting the event on a small island linked to the Pacific port of Vladivostok by a spectacular new bridge, a symbol of Moscow’s pivotal turn to Asia, away from debt-stricken Europe.
Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/china-russia-sound-alarm-on-world-economy/467828.html#ixzz260ltZrhy
The Moscow Times
You guys ever wonder how they prospered? Removing trade barriers is supposed to have equal gain for all countires.What did we gain with trade with china? Trillions of debt.With Mexico? They got our car manufacturing jobs.Can anybody tell me what we gained opening this trade barriers aside from high quality coke? I cant think of any gain for our country that we opened trade barrirers aside from cheap goods.
We did alright making and buying our own before this.
My friends, if there was any question that the end is nigh, this… this… puts all nay-sayers to rest:
http://shine.yahoo.com/fashion/hug-jacket-coat-cold-lonely-164500181.html
And, in case you missed it my link above, the name of the jacket is the “Kelley Green Puffer Jacket.” That’s right, the “puffer” jacket. Yes, the end is nigh.
I don’t know what Putin is going to sell… they don’t produce anything competitive besides weapons (which don’t need WTO I guess) and commodities (ditto).
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New Frontier in Student Debt: It Stifles the Housing Recovery
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With the start of another school year, the air is once again filled with angst over the high cost of college. But the discussion is shifting. It’s not just about runaway tuition inflation anymore, or even the individual hardship that excessive college loans create for graduates. Now we’re talking about how student debt is everyone’s problem because it is crushing the economy.
Total student debt recently crossed the $1 trillion mark, more than Americans collectively owe on credit cards. New findings conclude that this debt is shutting young people out of the housing market, further depressing what is already the economy’s most troubled sector. According to Denied: The Impact of Student Debt on the Ability to Buy a House, a report from the youth advocacy group Young Invincibles:
“As monthly student debt payments increase for college graduates, so does their struggle to qualify for a mortgage. Looking at a key factor in qualifying for a mortgage—the debt-to-income ratio—we find some disturbing results. … Home purchases create jobs and spur economic growth. Cutting out a cohort of graduates who previously participated in this market will add another drag to an economy only just emerging from the Great Recession.”
This drag was probably inevitable. Student debt held at graduation has jumped 46% since 2000; total debt held by the public has soared by 511% in that period. Fed Chief Ben Bernanke has said he does not believe student loans will foment another financial crisis, as mortgage debt did five years ago. But the student loan burden can’t help but forestall things like auto and home purchases. Starting salaries for college grads have not kept pace.
Read more: http://moneyland.time.com/2012/09/04/new-frontier-in-student-debt-it-stifles-the-housing-recovery/#ixzz2614E6gHk
It’s pretty simple. America had complete control of the world. A superior economy and a strong middle class. We used to import the worlds most talented workers from around the globe and make them our permanent citizens. We should have never dropped trade barriers. The only certainty with dropping the trade barriers is that wages will eventually equilibrate. The American wage has gone down while the foreign wages have gone up (but not by much). Ross Perot said this would happen. Al Gore said it wouldn’t. Instead, Gore painted Perot as some greedy corporate schill.
sx (170)-
This, from a dolt who has been 100% wrong, 100% of the time.
“Fed Chief Ben Bernanke has said he does not believe student loans will foment another financial crisis, as mortgage debt did five years ago.”
I always knew folks would come around to.protectionism.
Protectionism is the final indicator of total economic failure.
Nom [173]
Unfortunately, we’ll get a protectionism as a consensus policy only when it is too late: right now, it would take 5 to 7 years to rebuild the industry if we go in this direction; in 2020 the answer will be “never”.
It is about equal gain not about protectionism.Develop countries have more to lose competing with a 3rd world without a defined method of exchange.We have high cost of salary ,education,health care.We eliminated trade barriers while our cost remained the same while competing with a low cost country.We compete with countries like China,Russia that have opposite of what we have.Free education,low wages reasonable health care.
WE DID TRADE WITH ALL THIS COUNTRIES before we eliminated ALL trade barriers.We always did fine until WE AGREED THE REST OF THE WORLD SHOUL D PROSPER.We used to protect what is in our interest.That is gone.It is not protectionism,it is protecting your interest.We are in a disadvantage on an all out elimination of trade barriers.
Unfortunately, protectionism today won’t really work. In the past we didn’t rely on barriers, we relied.on productivity. Making it better. But the world caught up; Detroit learned that first, followed by the rust belt then the South.
I knew we were screwed when Marty McFly said “whaddya talking about doc? All the best stuff comes from Japan.” In fact, what really killed us was the collapse of the eastern bloc. Communists were lousy competitors and fear of their military was the basis of our economic strength.
E. Money,
You have mail.
nom [177]
Protectionism always works, the issue is how much it slows down the country’s growth and affects the quality of life – and this depends on how far the protected industry is behind the foreign competitors. Had we followed Ross Perot in the early 1990s, our growth till say 2010 probably would have been the same or even better than with NAFTA/WTO. If we go there now, we can expect probably 5-10% drop in PPP incomes compensated by a jump in the labor force participation: those with the job on average will have to work longer to buy a new toy, but mid-skill jobs will be easier to get. If we go there in 2022, it will be a disaster: the industry will have to rebuild itself from the scratch – both the plant and labor skills. We may see as much as 30-40% drop in PPP incomes, not gain much of industry (you can’t make something from nothing), and gain a potential for a serious social unrest.
Shhhh…don’t tell anyone that Clinton is responsible for NAFTA
yo says:
September 9, 2012 at 5:55 pm
You guys ever wonder how they prospered? Removing trade barriers is supposed to have equal gain for all countires.What did we gain with trade with china? Trillions of debt.With Mexico? They got our car manufacturing jobs.Can anybody tell me what we gained opening this trade barriers aside from high quality coke? I cant think of any gain for our country that we opened trade barrirers aside from cheap goods.
We did alright making and buying our own before this.
Believe it or not, tomorrow I get to sit through 60 minutes with the master of malaprop, the recoverong coke addict himself W……on the eve of 9/11 no less. It hadn’t crossed my mind until I saw some of the TV programming tonight……..ugh…I will report back should anyone be interested………wow, if I was only a scum bad, I could make so much money selling annuities and oil/gas REITS….shame….BTW, this National Harbor MD place is a trip…….clear a strip of land with eminent domain and drop a pre-fab mini-city down……..on the Potomac
http://nationalharbor.com/
That’s b.s., 200 years of protectionism and tariffs served this country well. When you have free trade within the 50 states, its more than enough to generate full fledged prosperity. That’s what we had, free trade in the country, and tariffs for the mercantalists looking to siphon the wealth out.
#180 Chi
For clarification, Clinton’s admitted mistake is that he signed it into law when he could have stopped it. GWHB did the heavy lifting and claimed it as his legacy so I would call it a technical tie.
Gordon ends his paper by listing six headwinds that he believes will, when combined with the effects of diminishing technological advancement, reduce our average yearly economic growth to a depressingly low 0.2%:
•Demographics: the population is aging, and the onetime economic benefit of women entering the workforce has already been realized
•The plateau of educational attainment: the U.S. is slipping in international measures of educational success, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to afford postsecondary education for many
•Rising income inequality is restraining growth because there are fewer people with disposable income
•Globalization is forcing low-skilled but high-paying jobs abroad
•Any effort to cope with global warming will slow the economy
•Both consumers and the government are overly indebted and paying down that debt will slow growth
All six of these headwinds are widely considered to be real threats to the American economy. And if Gordon is right about the Internet ultimately being a productivity dud, the U.S. may indeed settle into a period of the kind of slow growth that characterized much of the world before the first Industrial Revolution began in the 18th century.
Read more: http://business.time.com/2012/09/04/is-u-s-economic-growth-a-thing-of-the-past/#ixzz263s5WKYl