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Post by kramer on Jan 8, 2010 16:03:50 GMT -6
I'm interested in it's EROI. For example refining gas from corn is a net energy loser much like oil from Tar sands and Hydrogen. They consume more energy than they produce. Also I'd like to know how much water the process consumes considering that potable water is a serious issue in many parts of the U.S. today. Prehaps piping seawater from the nearest coastal resource will help conserve the potable water?? I would think that it mix with the underground freshwater source(s) and make the freshwater undrinkable. They should just use fresh water minus harmful chemicals. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Jan 4, 2010 20:32:46 GMT -6
Yeah, I saw that. Interesting.
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Post by kramer on Jan 4, 2010 20:30:14 GMT -6
32% higher jobless Look at the huge divergence in the amount of money paid out by the Treasury for Unemployment benefits versus the number of people claimed to be drawing payments. The difference suddenly grew into a whopping 32% gap. This uncovers potential FRAUD in the reporting of unemployment data. ======================================================= Is The Government Misrepresenting Unemployment By 32%? www.zerohedge.com/article/government-misrepresenting-unemployment-32So, the government is under reporting the jobless, over-stating the number of jobs created from the stimulus, and possibly buying stocks in order to juice the stock market? What a farce. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Jan 4, 2010 13:42:57 GMT -6
In my view (I'm no economist), the government should have let home prices fall on their own. I think trying to prop up home prices is a mistake, especially when the Case-Shiller housing prices chart last showed that they were still 45% too high.
In fact, I think the government is really screwing things up (not just Obama) because they appear to be propping up stock prices, over-stated the number of jobs created under the stimulus and may be under reporting the number of people out of work.
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Post by kramer on Jan 2, 2010 14:13:44 GMT -6
Allowing the labor supply to increase, while labor demand is collapsing would be the last straw. I've never understood the reasoning behind giving amnesty when we have over ten million unemployed and we have been outsourcing millions of jobs. And what happens if they give amnesty to the extended family members of those 12 million people? That could easily mean another 60 million americans instead of 12 million. Now factor in government run healthcare, how much more are these 60 million people going to cost? Even more mind-boggling to me is the idea of cap-and-trade. How is making energy more expensive and scare going to benefit our economy? It would have resulted in a lowering of our economy. Given these three factors, what the hell are the democrats thinking? Kramer
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Post by kramer on Jan 2, 2010 14:04:47 GMT -6
The employment picture was no better. Though the U.S. population has grown by 35 million since 2000, employment has increased just 0.5% over the last 10 years. For the first time since the federal government began keeping such statistics, the number of private sector jobs actually declined. (In both the 1980s and 1990s, employment grew by 20%, and in the 1960s it climbed by 31%.) Just read a report by Joe Lieberman that said 2.7 million manufacturing jobs were offshored between Nov '00 and '04. This report didn't include service sector jobs. I wouldn't be surprised if we've sent over 10 million jobs overseas in the last decade. Democratic Party executives from President Obama to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa have said that their priority for the year ahead is to create good jobs that pay decent wages. As the experience of this deceitful decade demonstrates, the need never has been more urgent. Democrats are going to fix this? That's a laugh. These guys are concerned with meeting the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the way these goals are being met is with our jobs (sending them out under globalization). Kramer
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Post by kramer on Dec 31, 2009 23:41:15 GMT -6
in agreement with kramer- although I blame kleptocrats and not democrats. Well, I blame everybody: Government (dems and reps (dems more than reps)), banks, greedy people, ignorant people, shady workers in various parts of the real estate world, etc. But in my opinion, government gets the majority of blame because it was the federal reserve that came out with a paper in 1992 that listed ways banks could lower their lending standards so that more people with low income could own a home. Add in other government factors such as the low income housing goals of freddie and fannie, the CRA, the funding of ACORN and well, here we are. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Dec 31, 2009 23:35:26 GMT -6
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Post by kramer on Dec 31, 2009 16:17:05 GMT -6
According to this NYTimes article, only 121,000 jobs were created in the private sector in the last 10 years. As of now, there's actually been a loss of -1.3 million jobs over the last 10 years. data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?&series_id=CES0500000001I think the offshored jobs are THE reason why there's been no private employment growth. I think they are effectively subtracted, since they are not added here. We need at least a 1% annual growth of jobs just to keep up with population growth. But we need a higher rate in non-recession years to offset the jobs lost in recessions like this one and the 2001-02 recession. And since we haven't had that, we've seen a net loss in private jobs of -1.3 million since November 1999, while our population has increased by +25-30 million. Looking at the following graph, it shows that every time we came out of a recession, the number of manufacturing jobs increased EXCEPT for the last two recessions: linkClinton singed PNTR (Permanent Normalized Trade Status) for China around October-November of '00. I think this is one of the main reasons why we are losing jobs (NAFTA being another one). Looking at the graph above, this is about the time frame that the number of jobs drop. Interestingly, Joe Liberman came out with a report on offshoring. The very first sentence says "Since November 2000, close to three million Americans have lost their jobs." And this is just for manufacturing jobs. I find this report interesting because Clinton signed PNTR around Oct, Nov of '00 and Lieberman starts his report from Nov of '00. By the way, that report was dated '04 which means we probably lost almost 7 million manufacturing jobs to date. Add in service sector jobs and I bet the number is well over ten million jobs sent overseas. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Dec 31, 2009 15:59:50 GMT -6
These are the same people who grossly overinflated the number of jobs created from the stimulus program. I'm not surprised they probably overstated the growth.
Kramer
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Post by kramer on Dec 24, 2009 15:24:58 GMT -6
That's bullshit, not justice.
For there to be "justice," my mortgage (and everybody else who is paying theirs) balance would also have to be lowered. Instead, us assholes who are paying our mortgages are going to end up paying for these as well.
This mess was in part caused by the government's socialistic desire to have more low income people owning homes and it can be traced back to the 1992 Federal Reserve paper that listed ways banks could lower their lending standards so that more people with bad credit could own a home. Now the government is again going to reward those people by making their mortgages smaller.
What a fucked up time we live in and I lay most of the blame on democrats.
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Post by kramer on Dec 24, 2009 14:13:10 GMT -6
I see this economic mess being extended by the government's moves to try and prop up falling house prices.
And according to Case-Shiller, we've still got another 45% of price correction to go before home prices are where they should be.
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Post by kramer on Dec 24, 2009 14:10:32 GMT -6
According to this NYTimes article, only 121,000 jobs were created in the private sector in the last 10 years.
My question is, is this number calculated by taking the total jobs created minus the total jobs shipped overseas? (I find it hard to believe that it doesn't subtract the offshored jobs.)
Kramer
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Post by kramer on Dec 22, 2009 18:25:07 GMT -6
No, tongue-in-cheek Kramer, we merely require 100% inspection of all imports, paid by the importers. GB And, once again, that's an excellent idea. If it was paid for 100% by the importers, it would cost taxpayers nothing. And it would be a great stimulus with even a greater multiplier. As more inspectors are hired, and more inspections are performed, it raises the price of imports--making American products cheaper in comparison--which will stimulate demand for American products and American labor. It'd be like a jobs bill on steroids. I like this idea. Too bad the powers to be want us to have easily accessible markets with little to no tariffs so other countries can sell their goods to us.
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Post by kramer on Dec 16, 2009 9:41:05 GMT -6
And plenty of Europeans, like Americans, are concerned about jobs being outsourced to cheap foreign labor markets. Exactly. Luckily for us, we have AmericanProgress, the group run by George Soros (the guy who owns the DNC) to the rescue. They want to pass healthcare to help reduce our "anxiety" over globalisation: www.americanprogress.org/events/2007/10/policynetwork.pdfThe above link is a good read. It shows democrats concerned about reducing the world's poverty and see globalisation as a way to achieve this. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Dec 16, 2009 9:08:50 GMT -6
Here's what I think is going to cause a food crisis (higher prices). Farmers are going to be paid to store carbon on their farm land by planting trees on the land that they used to grow food on. And if bio-fuels are part of our future, then even more farmland will be used up.
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Post by kramer on Dec 16, 2009 8:55:28 GMT -6
Here's how we get those jobs back... increase the minimum wage, increase regulations on businesses, and then top it off with cap-and-trade.
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Post by kramer on Dec 1, 2009 21:52:01 GMT -6
I think it's bull shit that some people can get their mortgage lowered just because the price of their home dropped lower than what they owe. If they are going to do this, I think everybody else who has a mortgage should be able to get their's lowered as well.
And I see an issue here with this. I think it's going to slow the fall of housing prices and according to Case-Shiller, home prices are still 45% too high. I think propping up home prices is just going to prolong this economic mess.
This whole mess started with the government's desire to get more low income people into homes starting with the 1992 federal reserve paper "closing the gap" that laid out ways banks could lower their lending standards so that more people with bad credit could qualify for a home loan. The government also gave ACORN something like $54 million since 1994 and Clinton liberalized the CRA in order to get more people with bad credit into homes. It's no wonder the case-shiller housing price graph shows the beginning of the housing bubble around 1996.
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Post by kramer on Nov 15, 2009 19:15:26 GMT -6
These are the folks who blame the CRA for the collapse of the economy; Whether or not the CRA is to blame, the government (democrats and republicans, HUD, fannie and freddie, the federal reserve, and others) share blame for this mess. To blame it all on banks because they lowered their lending standards is wrong given that the federal reserve came out with a paper in 1992 that listed ways banks could lower their lending standards so that more low-income people could buy homes. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Nov 12, 2009 19:46:10 GMT -6
I'm curious if stimulus deficit spending today to create jobs results in lower job growth in the future because of the money that will be taking out of the future economy to pay for the stimulus spending and the interest on it?
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Post by kramer on Oct 13, 2009 12:38:14 GMT -6
I'm curious, are there any sites that list how many manufacturing, service, and other jobs that we have offshored in the last 15 or so years?
I heard Joe Biden say we sent over 3 million since Bush was in office and I read an article that mentioned over 5 million jobs (I don't remember the time span for this number).
Is there some credible site that has this information or some way I can look it up?
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Post by kramer on Sept 7, 2009 11:08:15 GMT -6
I think I see what you are getting at here but take exception with the part about transferring wealth from rich people to poor people. It is and has been the other way around for many years. Well, it may have been the way for many years (although I fail to see how one can get wealth from people who don't have it) but what I am saying is that the UN and many in the environmental movement are trying to equalize wealth both among nations and within nations and carbon tax transfers is the mechanism for this. The ones who are making out and getting richer in this globalization deal are those who are already rich. Transferring jobs (thus wages) from the working and middle American is not taking from the rich, I would not call working or middle America rich. Fair point but you're not thinking like these global poverty reduction people. A typical middle class American lives a way better lifestyle than somebody in a poor state making a dollar a week (or whatever little they make). Transferring jobs from rich countries that pay $15.00 to $40.00/hour to developing nations where they will make probably $10.00/day or more is a great wealth equalizer among nations as it'll lower the standard of living of a rich country and increase the standard of living of a poor country. What it'll do is lower our standard of living and per-capita incomes while bring up poor countries standard of living and per-capita living. This is called "contraction and convergence" although the C&C is usually referred to in terms of equitable global per-capita CO2 emissions. In documents I have read from the UN and left wing think tanks, they talk about global per-capita income convergence by 2100. I doubt that all the poor nations will be raised to our standard of living while ours is not lowered because there aren't enough resources to support the other billions of people having 2500 sq foot homes with 2 cars, a few tv's, etc. Our standard of living will have to be lowered and in many environmental documents I have read, this is stated (although not directly). By transferring these jobs to third world slave labor, they are taking wages from the working and middle America and transferring this wage income that is saved by employing third world desperate workers to the already filthy rich corporate elite. I agree. I don't dispute that corporate greed plays a role. If a few scraps trickle down to the slave labor who now fills these jobs that is a pittance compared to the wealth being transferred to the already wealthy. Most of the nations filling the jobs Americans used to do still have massive amounts of their population living in poverty and inhumane conditions so sickening you would not be able to say they are being enriched. This is true and this has been stated in some of those UN and environmental documents I have read. It is a problem that they are working on. But the fact is, when you have people going from a buck a day to 10 or more bucks/day, that builds wealth. In fact I have read studies that show workers in Mexico are actually worse off as far as wages and standard of living 10 years after Nafta than they were before it. The only ones making out in this game of globalization are the wealthy and maybe for a while the tyrannical and corrupt governments of some who sell their people and resources out for a buck. I'd like to read those studies. If you have a link or two, can you post them? Kramer
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Post by kramer on Sept 2, 2009 23:13:19 GMT -6
Like I said earlier, I disagree that it's just businessman that are behind globalization and with the stereotype that all businessman are all right wingers. For the record, my own reference was to "the Corporatists on the right." I chose that wording carefully, to apply specifically to the Corporatists on the Right, not everyone who might sometimes be classified as on the so-called "right." (i.e., not Pat Buchanan, Paul Craig Roberts, Lou Dobbs, the "religious" right, etc.) But it most certainly is Big Business & Corporations that pushed for globalization and outsourcing, regardless of whether they're considered to be on the "right," the "left," or anywhere in between. Big Business and Corporations were the original advocates of globalization, free trade, and outsourcing to save labor costs. They could have just as easily pushed for tariffs to protect American industry. And they would have gotten them, had it fit into their greed-blinded short-term motivation. But Big Business & Corporate America willingly, knowingly, and unforgivably chose to push for free trade and reduction of tariffs. They did so specifically to access cheap foreign labor, and replace American workers and their production with foreign production. They saw it from the very beginning as a way to access cheap foreign labor, while retaining access to the rich American consumer market. They wanted to have the best of both worlds, by using cheap labor to produce goods to sell to the very Americans they laid off. And they got exactly what they wanted. And these very same Big Businesses and Corporations pushed for easy & expanded credit, through every means possible. They knew full well that if wage-financed buying power declined from outsourcing, the buying power of the American consumer market would shrink. So they pushed for banking de-regulation and any other credit-enhancing policies they could find. And once again, they succeeded. They succeeded in creating multiple overlapping bubbles, that provided credit-financed spending power to offset the loss in wage-financed spending power—a loss that they knowingly facilitated themselves. Once again, Big Business and Corporate America did NOT have to go this route, but they willingly chose to do so. They could have done what American industrialists had always done in previous decades--put up Tariffs to keep cheap foreign goods out. But Corporate America knew bigger profits could be achieved by replacing "overpaid" American workers with starving 3rd-world workers. And they knew they could deceive the public into to going along with it—claiming this was beneficial to American workers. And since they controlled the media, the airwaves, and the Federal government, they pulled it off. Globalists like Bill Clinton & his co-conspirators claimed things, in effect, such as 'globalization will "free up" American workers for higher value jobs, and 'we'll be able to tap the 1 billion+ Chinese consumer market,' and 'globalization will actually create more jobs (i.e., laying of highly-paid production workers will create even more jobs. ). Big Business and Corporate America did have a choice about globalization. And they made the wrong one. And they did it knowingly & willingly. In their fog of greed-blinded avarice, they chose to sacrifice the wellbeing and livelihoods of American workers, while stuffing American workers' lost wages in their own pockets. They put their own short-term interests ahead of the long-term interests of the nation, while destroying America's own wealth-producing capacity, and gleefully redistributing the remaining wealth upward. Big Business and Corporate free traitors are 100% responsible for our economic downturn, and it should be they who incur 100% of the losses. Unfortunately both the Bush & Obama Administrations decided otherwise. Both put the salvation of the rich & malfeasant ahead of that of the people they victimized. Nicely said, I agree with some of it. Here are some excerpts from a recent NYTimes article on paying for climate change mitigation and adaption in other countries: The first excerpt mentions the gap in development between rich and poor nations. The first sentence in the second excerpt talks about building infrastructure (roads, electrical power, water, sewer, communications, things needed to support a modern lifestyle as well as jobs and manufacturing) in these countries. The second sentence says that it'll cost additional billions/year to protect these infrastructures against climate change. Now think about this. Once these countries have new infrastructures, what will they need next? Jobs. And where will those jobs come from? Will they create them out of their own capitalistic entrepreneurs? Maybe a few. Most of these jobs will be filled by the redistribution of jobs from developed countries that have them which is globalisation. www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/business/energy-environment/31iht-green31.html?_r=1&pagewanted=printIn short the UN, which is not exactly a bastion of right wingers, is laying the groundwork for the future transferring of jobs to countries that currently lack jobs. This is one way that the left is responsible for off shoring. Another way to look at it is to just look at what liberals do. They redistribute wealth from rich people to poor people. Well, they are now doing this globally by helping to redistribute jobs from nations that have them to nations that don't have them. But first, we are expected to transfer hundreds of billions of dollars first so they have the means to support jobs.
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Post by kramer on Aug 26, 2009 11:17:26 GMT -6
Guess what it was the large American corporations who pushed Congress and every president since Clinton for so called "free" trade agreements that allowed them to first set up shop in Central American then later relocate to China. But why, to make a buck or to have access to cheap labor so that they can build products to compete with other companies using cheap labor? I think it's both. Up until those "free trade" agreements we didn't have trade or employment problems. It was only after these crooked and Constitutionally illegal agreements were in place that bad things started happening. Globalization has been going on for decades, it's only recently that it took off. I blame things like NAFTA for accelerating it. It was American companies that pushed for MFN status with China. A country that doesn't respect our IP and regularly steals it. Its been estimated the Chinese thievery has cost us $4 trillion dollars. I haven't heard this (american companies pushing for mfn) but I don't think it's not true. All I know is Clinton passed MFN (PNTR) after he and the DNC received illegal contributions from the communist Chinese government. To me, this looks like payoff to China, just like Gray Davis paid off the unions with hefty raises after he received substantial contributions from the prison union. Its American business that regularly replaces American workers often with illegal workers or those brought in under H1-B and L-1 visas to help destroy the lives of American workers. Don't you think there are bleeding heart liberals in government that want to give somebody in another country a good standard of living in the US? These businessmen are also the first to fight any sort protections of workers, IP and critical heavy industries our nation needs to survive. I still think if they don't use cheaper foreign labor, they'll go out of business at some point. Somebody earlier said tariffs equalize labor and I agree with this and don't have a problem using them. But do you think organizations like the UN and WTO would stand for this? I don't because it would hurt the development of developing and least developed countries. Global poverty reduction and wealth redistribution are huge goals of the UN, tariffs on cheap goods from developing countries would hurt their growth. And I agree 100% that we shouldn't be giving away our IP and critical heavy industries (I'm assuming this is your concern). If you want a bad guy look no further than our business leaders. Who needs Bin Laden and his terrorist buddies when you have these assholes who are so willing to wreck this country. Like I said earlier, I disagree that it's just businessman that are behind globalization and with the stereotype that all businessman are all right wingers. The UN and WTO (and other organizations) are working to end world poverty and globalization is a big part of it. The UN is NOT a right wing organization and I believe they are working to help push the redistribution of jobs on a global level.
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Post by kramer on Aug 25, 2009 23:01:03 GMT -6
Liberals, Democrats, progressives, and populists have been criticized historically for trying to divide the "pie" into more equal pieces, while being unconcerned about "growing" the pie. This is, and always has been a nonsensical criticism. In fact, it's the Corporatists on the right that want to redistribute the pie, giving themselves an even larger piece than the mega portion they had previously devoured. I disagree with your claim that its just the corporatists on the right that want to redistribute the pie. The UN is not exactly a right wing organization and convergence of incomes (both among and within nations) is a priority for them. Why do you think they want us to pay eco-reparations and transfer technology and technological know how to LDC's and developing countries? They need this money and technology to build infrastructure so that these countries can support companies and hence get more of our offshored jobs. And since when are people running corporations exclusively right wingers? There are many liberals in corporations. For example, I wouldn't call the CEO of GE a right winger. And the Ford foundation isn't exactly a right wing organization based on what I see them supporting. The same applies to wall street. If you read the book "tragedy and hope" by Carroll Quigley, you find ties between wall street, communists, and the CFR and how a British based group has a goal of bringing the backwards people in countries like Africa into the modern world (and this is just the tip of the iceberg of what's in this book. Quigley was a member of the CFR for 20 years and for 2 years he was allowed into their inner circle where he had access to their secrets. He writes about them in this book.) And he's no conspiracy nut. He hates right wingers and supports what the CFR and the groups tied to it are doing. He was a professor of history at Harvard and Princeton (and I think GMU) and had Bill Clinton as a student and so impressed him that he mentioned him in the 1992 DNC convention speech that you can find on youtube. It's an excellent book if you want to see why things are they way they are today even though it was published in 1966. And I have one other comment on US companies offshoring jobs. What are they supposed to do when we are importing goods made with much lower labor costs that compete with American made goods? They almost have no choice but to offshore. If they don't, I don't see how they could survive. I'm not praising globalization, I don't like it at all and see it destroying this country. But I see this (unfortunately) as a valid reason to offshore jobs. That said, I agree with just about everything else you said. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Aug 10, 2009 19:53:02 GMT -6
from CNBC Shadow Housing Inventory? Only the Banks KnowBy Diana Olick 23 Jul 2009 " Today's relatively good news from the National Association of Realtors only added to the posse of positives in housing data....
So what's bothering me?
Inventory.
For the past few months I've talked a little bit about so-called "shadow inventory." These are the homes that banks have taken back after foreclosures (known as REO properties). In normal times banks immediately turn REOs around and up them up for sale, but that's not happening at a very fast clip these days. The Realtor's chief economist, Lawrence Yun, called it a "business decision" by the banks:
"I believe that many banks including Fannie and Freddie, who are also holding onto some properties, are releasing foreclosed properties in a measured way so as to not to flood the market which they perceive then perhaps could lead them to even more drastic price cuts. So they are releasing properties on a measured pace as a business decision to minimize losses."
So what exactly is the size of this shadow inventory?
Hard to say, but estimates are that it could be around 700,000.
This of course does not include the foreclosures that are still in process, which builder analyst Ivy Zelman refers to as "the pig in the python." Builders are concerned that if these properties suddenly flood the market, their new high hopes could turn right back around.
The good news and the bad news is that investors are back.
It's good because they're sucking up all the foreclosed properties. It's bad because they are turning around and renting them, driving down rental prices and competing directly with entry-level home builders, who really need to catch a break.
Moody's predicts there will be 6.5 million foreclosures between now and 2012...." www.cnbc.com/id/32108755I don't think the 700,000 number is accurate because a bloomberg article about 6 months ago said that there were 19 million vacant homes at the end of Dec '08. Something is not adding up here... My inclination is that the bloomberg number is off (high) by a factor of 10. Kramer
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Post by kramer on Aug 10, 2009 19:45:53 GMT -6
I think we ought to start filling empty factories with skilled people that can take raw materials from the earth and build them into useful things.
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Post by kramer on Aug 7, 2009 16:35:04 GMT -6
There are even more good points made in the article, especially the reference to the article by Denninger. The worst of it all isn't the Fed buying US Treasuries. The worst is the Fed buying worthless mortgage securities, putting taxpayers on the hook for paying them off, and giving the money to the banks and financial fraudsters who created the bad mortgage debt in the 1st place. It's one thing to put taxpayers on the hook for US Government debt. But it's quite another to put taxpayers on the hook for private bank debt and private investor debt. We are paying off the mortgages of private individual homeowners???
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Post by kramer on Aug 1, 2009 17:44:51 GMT -6
I don't trust these revisions and I wouldn't be surprised if they are tweaked such that the economy under democratic administrations do better and worse under republicans.
Kramer
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Post by kramer on Jun 16, 2009 21:54:47 GMT -6
Why can't cable companies offer the option to just pay for the channels you want? I'm subsidizing about 20 tv channels that I don't watch nor want.
Kramer
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