First of all, it is by no means certain that any court, Supreme or otherwise ("Supreme" is trial, not appellate level in some States, such as New York) would side with a bank for any reason other than the law. Judges can be bought, but they are watched more carefully and expected to be more independent than legislators.
Second, a mortgage foreclosure is a radical government intervention into the market. The government picks a winner, and physically removes a party from possession of a piece of land in favor of another party. In a traditional action "at law" one party could only be awarded money damages. Foreclosures are actions "in equity", meaning parties demanding an extraordinary physical remedy must come in with "clean hands" and observe every procedural requirement to the letter. The Kansas Supreme Court is following longstanding property law in requiring strict adherence to procedure in foreclosure proceedings.
wish I had a bunch of bobsledding footage and then I could do something so the 'common man' could understand
what CR is saying, for example - Jim the Realtor, here in this vid he doesn't get all doe-y eyed about being at a World
Heritage site... hell no, he gets right to the point! YouTube - Jim TV Realtor Stops Real Estate Californiacation and Goes Global
....
off to see Kill Bill Ninja
"The reference to the game of musical chairs was a remarkably candid description of the situation in which executives like Prince found themselves, and of the logic of rational irrationality. Whether Prince knew it or not, he was channelling John Maynard Keynes, who, in “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,” pointed to the inconvenient fact that “there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole.” Whatever the asset class may be—stocks, bonds, real estate, or commodities—the market will seize up if everybody tries to sell at the same time. Financiers were accordingly obliged to keep a close eye on the “mass psychology of the market,” which could change at any moment. Keynes wrote, “It is, so to speak, a game of Snap, of Old Maid, of Musical Chairs—a pastime in which he is victor who says Snap neither too soon nor too late, who passes the Old Maid to his neighbour before the game is over, who secures a chair for himself when the music stops.”"
The program would provide as much as $15 billion in fresh liquidity for as long as three years and would purchase as much as $20 billion in tax-exempt mortgage bonds issued by state- sponsored housing finance agencies through the end of this year, a person familiar with the matter said. The program may be announced as early as Sept. 30, said the person, who didn’t want to be named because the plans haven’t been made public.
“there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole.”
A minor blip for the classical Invisible Handers explaining why laissez-faire is always the best of all possible systems. You mean the market doesn't automatically provide the optimum level of investment by society as a whole? Assume it does.
I mentioned recently as long as the people maintained faith...well more and more we are having REM Losing My Religion moments with capitalism around the country in both print and other media. Fall is here, is that a revolution in the air? I sure hope not.
Az has a low income program to buy a home. When I looked at it, doesn't make much sense. You have to be low income, ok. You had to make payments that equalled a mim of 30% gross income, too high. Could go to 50% gross income, forclosure for sure. The funding went to the downpayment and closing costs, so the price of the property was inflated, however you had to buy at 20% under current market. And the house had to be move in ready.
1 currency now -yogi (profile) wrote on Mon, 9/28/2009 - 9:16 am
“there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole.”
A minor blip for the classical Invisible Handers explaining why laissez-faire is always the best of all possible systems. You mean the market doesn't automatically provide the optimum level of investment by society as a whole? Assume it does.
What are you trying to say?
Did you actually read the article, or just the excerpt?
Actually I did read the article, Cinco, but it wasn't news to me. What surprises is that people still think a so-called "free" market prices "rationally" for the benefit of a group of individuals behaving "rationally". Has never been there or ever done that.
blackwaterwannabe
hope they do call you back like they promised. sort of like banks making courtesy calls, in that it makes you nervous. shouldnt promise if they cant deliver.
*1 currency now -yogi (profile) wrote on Mon, 9/28/2009 - 9:31 am
Actually I did read the article, Cinco, but it wasn't news to me. What surprises is that people still think a so-called "free" market prices "rationally" for the benefit of a group of individuals behaving "rationally". *
Sorry; it wasn't clear from your first response. I have to agree in part, even thought I'm a "free marketeer". I think we need a new understanding of what free markets really are, and how they are accessed, used, and maintained. More like a village common than the Wild West. Perhaps I'll write something about it in future, but not now-
Good one Dawg. I was thinking more along the line of the chicken using the tires to hop across, kinda like hopping stones across a river, only way to keep from getting wet.
Beanie Babies was one of my favorite bubbles ever...
The idea that a plush toy, not dissimilar from what you'd get in a claw-machine for 4 bits, could be worth a few thousand bucks, if it was the right one... was the height of absurdity~
Our local Habitat for Humanity group ends up having to foreclose on about half of the homes that are part of the program. Even in the HFH world, with all the counseling and sweat equity breaks they provide to the homeowners, half still are unable to satisfy the terms of the deal. I don't see how this program would fare any better.
Ran into an Irishman in NZ, that had been in Laos, and he had never experienced how fun fungi can be, and had a 'shroom shake, and nothing happened, so he had another, and then one more...
Homeownership is one of those odd things that supposedly gives you security while taking away your freedom. If renting weren't seen as something only powar people do, then I would have trouble not advocating almost everyone renting.
HP Loancraft asked for $700 Billion with a 3 page request, and Congress told him to pound sand, so he came back with a 451 page request for $787 Billion, and they said ok.
jd
i know he did and i know they did complete with all their pet porkies, any one know just how much pork was in that "tarp"? i remember that nascar was in it for something.
edit for word someone else must have put, there i took "help" out.
I keep replaying the video of Alan Grayson grilling Benjamins about where the half trillion dollars went, and Benjamins has the look of me, when I was 8, and I broke a window by throwing a baseball at it, and my mom asked "who did this?"
mp if you are on. A puchaser of a house encumbered by a mers mortgage is
entitled to a defense if the 2nd forecloses against them.
All the mers mtges I've ever seen have the mers info and a phone number and
a mtg id number the first 2 being pre-printed. There is no blank to fill
in.
Mtg is security to the note. Note is the primary instrument. A lender can
always ignore the mtg and just sue on the note. Seldom done, because of
the collateral is juicy and right there. But if the collateral just had toxic waste
dumped on it and the borrower had other assets to levy on, they just might
sue on the note only.
The mtg "follows" the note.
When paying off the prior mtg, I was always worried about whether the money
would get to the right servicer or owner, since I often got a pay off from someone
other than the record showed, or the borrower was actually paying. I always let
my underwriter know, so they'd be on the hook. Nothing bad ever happened yet,
and I'm not paying off many loans now (that aren't short sales in foreclosure),
so the problem has gone away for a while.
All as per last thread.
If the title companies find themselves on the hook for bfps because of this,
they will stop dealing with mers, or put in an exception saying they are not
insuring this so fast your head will spin. They have nowhere near the
money to insure a risk like this.
josap
they cant stop doing what they are doing can they? by that i mean the fed throwing "money" at everything. they cant stop and i dont think they can shut it down easy or any other way. just sort of have to let "nature" take it course.
The consumption and housing category’s contribution to the index improved slightly in August to –0.48, following a contribution of
–0.49 in July. Housing starts increased to 598,000 annualized units in August from 589,000 in the previous month. The sales, orders, and inventories category also improved in August, contributing –0.08 compared with –0.11 in July.
Am I right that these represent second derivatives? That -0.48 is, as it seems to be, negative? That they're saying sales, orders and inventories declined as a category in August?
Why is this spun to the optimistic side? I don't relish seeing overt or covert pessimism in reportage, but would appreciate neutrality with the statistics reported and, to the extent thought necessary, described.
This kind of manipulation destroys all confidence; surely that's not the intent?
Well, that is the problem. They can't continue to print either. The more they print the less the dollar is worth, Asia is buying short term treasureies now, rather than long term. So they can bail on short notice if they need to. Lots of people callling for a new reserve currancy as we have pretty well messed ours up badly.
And if all they can do is print to save us, what does that say about any real economic recovery? Can there be a recovery with millions of homes and CRE still to forclouse?
It seems we are now in the "between a rock and a hard place" part of the enconomy going down or moving slowly upward. I think the adjustment to forever higher unemployment and a much lower "middle class" are going to be the tricky part for main street.
Now that I've settled into work, let me begin my morning with my customary: "Woo! Look at that Yen!"
.
You can now return to your regularly scheduled thread.
josap
i've adjusted all ready,and ready to re-adjust and maybe even re-re-adjust,if it comes to that. i whined and cried and cussed,doing it and probably will do the same but not as bad. just really cant figure out what to do if/when social security goes toes up. i guess just punt.
Examining the CR graph of the The Chicago Fed National Activity Index(3 month moving average) the -1 point appears to more closely coincide with the end of all recessions noted than does the +0.20 . While we're not at that point yet we seem very close.
Off topic: If I read all of the other comments correctly not one of them pertained to this issue. Can anything be done?
The only thing that warrants this climb this morning is that WallStreet must be convinced that World War 3 is starting this week. If that is the case... well, climb away.
Probably it's just me but, if I see one-sixth of an average day's volume recorded in the first twenty minutes of trading on no news, then I tend to think it means nothing.
josap
lots of voters between 55 and 105 but since when do they listen to voters?
shill
we got a 3-front war going on now. i would ask if They are crazy!!!!! but since i think they are anyway, why bother? what about things might be getting a little hairy in the econ field and its just a little respite? you know. scare the hell out of us, for a bit.
cr starts us off and most of the time comments sort of stay around about his comment, but sometimes one thing leads to another and another and another. learned a lot. thats just the way it is.
You are assuming that people will have a say in the matter. After the USSR collapsed, millions of pensioners literally starved or froze as their payments were suspended or inflated away to nothing. Nothing they could do: the system broke down.
jd
thats the reason they got those 401k well we know how that worked. besides you really arent paying for yourself.your parents grandparents are who you are paying for Your kids and grandkids pay for you. i had no problem paying for my grandma or my mom
and my daughter and grand daughter dont have a problem paying for me. i asked them.
You would probably not need a lot of money to drive the market higher if there was a big conspiracy to do so. Let say I buy 1 share of GS from you @ $200 (previous value - $175) , I have effectively driven the market higher without sacrificing a lot of my capital. Now, to wait for the final bagholder to show up. Simplistic view, but not completely improbable, no?
I disagree. The world didn't end when the USSR collapsed, or when the British empire decayed to nothing. I think we are on our way to a fiscal crisis, which means some folks are going to lose a lot.
I believe a lot of the bond rally comes from 2 places -
1) Money Market funds moving into Bond Mutual Funds. The Funds Flow data supports this. Bond Mutual Funds AUM have been growing at a healthy clip over the past few months.
2) Return of Leverage, in a variety of forms. For structured product, the TALF and PPIP programs are creating new demand with levered capital. Add in all the folks just trying to tag along for the ride, and you can get a huge amount of momentum going. I also have the feeling that many of the banks are extending leverage out to the buy-side again.
As to the equity rally, it only takes two people to make a price go up. Volumes are still very low comparatively speaking.
When I see dolts writing about how awful boomers are, I have to laugh...
We are the ones that paid all the money into SS, and we are ones that are gonna get shafted, along the lines of what happened to those in Russia, circa 1991~
Examining the CR graph of the The Chicago Fed National Activity Index(3 month moving average) the -1 point appears to more closely coincide with the end of all recessions noted than does the +0.20 . While we're not at that point yet we seem very close
If a marathon runner had both legs amputated in a car crash and was on the verge of recovery, wouldn't you think it a bit silly to begin speculating if they could beat their world record time?
Does anyone have a link to the raw data for the graph? I'd like to plot the integrals of the data between zero crossings. It appears to me that in earlier eras, the net area above zero outweighed that below zero, but lately that has not been true, with the exception of the period from '95-'96 to '00. Thanks-
*Rob Dawg (homepage, profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Mon, 9/28/2009 - 10:58 am
True enough; GS doesn't really need any money to drive it higher, just a fast internet connection-
True enough; GS doesn't really need any money to drive it higher, just a faster internet connection-
There, fixed that for ya. Wink
*
Congressman Gayson seems like his heart is in the right place, but I think he is a bit misguided.
Grayson keeps trying to get the Fed to tell him who received all the newly created federal reserve credit. And while I'd sure like to know where all the new Fed credit went, I think Grayson should hammer home the fact that the Fed is only creating the new credit in order to bailout financial fraud and/or to cover up its own incompetence. If Grayson were to ask the Fed WHY they are creating such massive amounts of credit, the Fed can't answer without indicting itself.
Once it is publicly established that the Fed is incompetent and/or criminal, finding where the money went will be easy.
Aiding and abeting financial fraud is criminal activity. Failing to regulate on such a massive scale also rises to the level of criminal activity in my view (criminally negligent).
gabyjan (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Mon, 9/28/2009 - 10:57 am
cinco-x
since you brought it up which is faster t1 or t3?
and could we put gs on dial-up i would pay for it.
Ask one ot the IS guys; Broward maybe? Additionally, in this realm, proximity matters too. Being right-next-door to the exchange is better than being in New Jersey for example, and much better than Nome, AL. mS count-
The economic indicators comprising the CFNAI are drawn from five broad
categories of data: (1) output and income (21 series); (2) employment,
unemployment and hours (24 series); (3) personal consumption, housing starts
and sales (13 series); (4) manufacturing and trade sales (11 series); and (5)
inventories and orders (16 series). All of the data are adjusted for inflation, and a
complete list is contained in appendix A.
This 'aint no ECRI, will have to read more before I understand what the chart is saying. My first guess is that they compare to the cycle peak for continuing unemployment claims, or unemployment rate -- without being set up to address a longer duration of unemployment such that people drop off the regular plan or the interventionist shrinking of the labor force by the BLS. Kick in a SA manufacturing mis-signal due to the irregular production schedule this year, and that could be the sum of what the chart is saying. Now to see what's what in the background (thx for the quick link CR)
I'm not on horrid dial-up today, so I can actually keep up with the conversation.
The only worse than starting a sh@t-storm in the comment threads is starting a sh@t-storm and not being able to keep up with it because the Internet connection speed is from the early 1990's.
However, it's my first day back in the office after being on the road for a while, so I won't be able to spend too much time on CR today. Unfortunately, I'm more of an observer than participant today...
According to this article, SS goes cash flow negative in 2016. In other words, SS will have to start redeeming some of the special treasuries in the "trust fund" to make payments. This means even more Treasury borrowing.
Social Security is projected to start generating surpluses again in 2012 before permanently returning to deficits in 2016 unless Congress acts again to shore up the program. Without a new fix, the $2.5 trillion in Social Security's trust funds will be exhausted in 2037. Those funds have actually been spent over the years on other government programs. They are now represented by government bonds, or IOUs, that will have to be repaid as Social Security draws down its trust fund.
*noob goldberg (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Mon, 9/28/2009 - 10:59 am
Way to be on topic, Noob!
Well, I got burned in what will forever be referred to as the 'umbrella incident'. So I'm trying to turn over a new leaf Smile
Amputated marathon-runners seemed as close to on-topic as I'll ever get...*
You do realize that the wheelchair competitors in marathons kick the $#it out of the legged runners, right? Not sure if this matters in this discussion-
So, I guess we'll run up to 10k here and have a quick wave of euphoric buying thereafter...then maybe we'll celebrate with crash 2.0
(prediction is subject to change, some restrictions may apply)
You do realize that the wheelchair competitors in marathons kick the $#it out of the legged runners, right? Not sure if this matters in this discussion-
This is precisely why a person--such as myself--should stop using metaphors to describe the economy.
noob goldberg
oh i know what you are talking about, dial-up was so slow that my windows updates came in after i got the dsl modem thursday,
microsoft said uh huh we aint got time for this we'll go back when her dsl is up.
noob goldberg (profile) wrote (in reply to...) on Mon, 9/28/2009 - 11:09 am
You do realize that the wheelchair competitors in marathons kick the $#it out of the legged runners, right? Not sure if this matters in this discussion-
This is precisely why a person--such as myself--should stop using metaphors to describe the economy.
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/////They are now represented by government bonds, or IOUs, that will have to be repaid as Social Security draws down its trust fund. ////
So it seems is the rest of our financial system. We have been robbing Peter to pay Paul for a very long time.
Maybe they just pass out the bonds and lower the value that way. Who knows what they will come up with, or not, There is a gov scam for every issue nowdays.
I think the majority of boomers are gonna get nothing, when push meets shove...
I disagree - I think they'll tweak things. They'll means test the recipients and they'll raise the salary cap that they collect SS premiums. That combo will make it sustainable.
As someone married to a boomer, barely post boom (by my calcs - dad was in korean war, not WWII) - I want SS to get tweaked.
I agree that boomers are the ones that have paid the most into the system, and most at risk of getting the most screwed.
Quick read through, but no time to test sensitivity, leads me to believe the following are behind the indicator's turn around:
1) Only uses SA data, we have had a weird year to say the least and that plays a big role in estimating the # of employed based on SA
2) It's adjusted for inflation, we haven't had a comparable low/deflationary period in the series
3) Industrial production, very heavy weighting
They do count unemployment rates, but to a lesser degree and more interestingly -- a negative weight! The higher unemployment goes, the more positive this indicator becomes
does this mean consulting clients are no longer going to pay $125/hour for new grads to write SQL reports?
I'm not sure if clients will want to pay consulting firms anything for new grads to write SQL reports. Not much to report if the company isn't growing, and internal IT projects tend to be the red-haired stepchildren of non-IT companies.
They do count unemployment rates, but to a lesser degree and more interestingly -- a negative weight! The higher unemployment goes, the more positive this indicator becomes
There's got to be some fascinating underlying econometric rationale for that, most likely involving some sort of strong correlation between datasets.
As someone who frequently deals with retirement budget forecasts, Social Security isn't the one you should be worried about. It's the Medicare trust fund that will have the worst troubles, and much sooner.
Social Security's problems can be cured by slightly later retirements, slightly higher contributions, slightly higher population growth, slightly higher wages, or slightly higher returns on the trust fund.
Medicare's problems have no easy financial cure if current trends continue. It's only real cure is a series of cures. Certain very expensive conditions have to either have a cure or a prevention. I mean this with no snark. If there were large scale reductions in heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, Medicare funding could be in far better shape.
Check out this poll for Chinese real estate http://home.eeo.com.cn/bbs/thread-225878-1-1.html
8月北京现房签约量环比降幅45.73%,期房签约量环比下降5.63%。楼市调整拐点是否出现?
The number of contracts for completed and yet-to-be-completed residential housing in August fell 45.73% and 5.63% respectively compared to the figures for July.
Has the real estate market reached a turning point?
你认为是楼市回调迹象明显吗?Do you think it's obvious that the real estate market has reached a turning point?
( 单选 ) 参与人数 1149
不好说 Not sure 350 (30.46%)
是的 Yes 219 (19.06%) 3. 不是 No 580 (50.48%)
你认为楼市回调的主要原因?What's the reason for the correction? ( 单选 ) 参与人数 1149 1. 超出购买能力 Houses are no longer affordable 978 (85.12%)
2. 二套房贷政策收紧 A tightening of the lending policy in regards to second house buyers 78 (6.79%)
3. 信贷增速下降 A sharp decline in new lending 93 (8.09%)
你认为未来房价走势如何?How do you see the future of housing prices? ( 单选 ) 参与人数 1149
1. 不好说 Not sure 248 (21.58%) 2. 继续上涨 Will Continue to rise 687 (59.79%)
3. 有所回落 Will experience a modest drop 214 (18.62%)
你今年是否有买房计划?Do you have a plan to buy a house this year? ( 单选 ) 参与人数 1149 1. 有 Yes 873 (75.98%)
2. 没有 No 276 (24.02%)
你能接受的房价价格是多少?What price can you afford to pay for a house? ( 单选 ) 参与人数 1149
1. 20000万以上 Above 20,000 yuan per sqm 0 (0.00%)
2. 10000-20000 Between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan per sqm 85 (7.40%)
3. 5000-10000 Between 5,000 and 10,000 yuan per sqm 372 (32.38%) 4. 5000以下 Below 5,000 yuan per sqm 692 (60.23%)
If there were large scale reductions in heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, Medicare funding could be in far better shape.
not necessarily. recently, there was a report that predicted Alzheimer's rate would explode in the coming years. Why? A combination of better diagnostics, but more importantly, people are living longer, providing more time for the brain to turn to mush.
we all die of something, and we'll spend gobs of money trying to prevent said something...
I find it hilarious that 85% of respondents feel prices are unaffordable but 60% think they'll continue to rise. Who do they think is going to buy them?
If Mers can't foreclose all they have to do is file an
assignment of Mtg to the real owner and start the suit.
But I haven't read that Kansas case.
(from the previous thread)
MERS wasn't trying to foreclose in the Kansas case; they were trying to reverse a foreclosure sale that had already happened. Basically they were trying to undo a foulup that had resulted in the wrong second lienholder being attached to the foreclosure filing.
What the Kansas court found (aside from dismissing on grounds that the filing was untimely) was that failure to attach MERS to a foreclosure filing is not, in and of itself, a fatal error. As far as I can tell they didn't reach any conclusions as to MERS's standing to file a foreclosure action, because that wasn't at issue in the case. (I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they were found not to have standing, though, and were required to do what you suggest--it seems to be implied by the ruling even if not actually found.)
I'm not sure but I strongly suspect that the sale proceeds were less than the outstanding balance on the first note. If there weren't going to be any proceeds to the second lienholder, all the appeal was going to do was to further delay completion of the foreclosure...it's odd, and a bit amusing, that the failure of the appeal to reverse the foreclosure sale is being presented as a victory in homeowners' campaign to avert foreclosure.
some investor guy (profile) wrote on Mon, 9/28/2009 - 11:26 am
Social Security's problems can be cured by slightly later retirements, slightly higher contributions, slightly higher population growth, slightly higher wages, or slightly higher returns on the trust fund.
Medicare's problems have no easy financial cure if current trends continue. It's only real cure is a series of cures. Certain very expensive conditions have to either have a cure or a prevention. I mean this with no snark. If there were large scale reductions in heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, Medicare funding could be in far better shape.
Wouldn't your "cure" for Medicare put an additional burden on Social Security? Just askin'
If Grayson were to ask the Fed WHY they are creating such massive amounts of credit, the Fed can't answer without indicting itself.
You forget the "Delphic Oracle" speech classes required of Fed chairmen. They can talk for hours without anybody having any idea what they said! Bernanke isn't the master Greenspan was but I'll bet he can dodge that one.
I'm thinking that due to the eradication of most diseases (Scarlet Fever sounds more like a porn name, nowadays...) that there's gonna be a lot of people hitting the century mark the next 40 years, scads more than right now...
Negative weight for unemployment rate. Lagging indicator? Matches the brief, i.e., identify onset and cessation of recession?
It's not a recession predictor, it's a weighted average of economic activity indicators. I can't fathom in what realm unemployment would be considered a positive contribution to economic activity.
I can't comment on that as I don't know which region/city they'd be from or what going rates are in cities over there. I'll have to ask some friends what their houses are worth on a sq-ft basis.
It's not a recession predictor, it's a weighted average of economic activity indicators. I can't fathom in what realm unemployment would be considered a positive contribution to economic activity.
It's a common situation in multivariate regression. As a single predictor, unemployment is associated with low output, but after adjusting for other factors, the effect of residual unemployment (changes not predicted by other factors) is negative. And, as EHP mentions, if UE is a lagging indicator, that will happen. Periods where UE is worse than other indicators will happen towards the end or after the end of recession, while UE will be better at the start, so on average UE worse than other predictors happens with better economic output that UE better than other predictors does.
noob, I probably have the context wrong. Not sure.
I just strikes me that inflection points are obscured by UE data, and negative weight sharpens the data set if that's what you're looking for.
Oh and I have no idea, let's just get that out there right now.
If this was an indicator that I actually wanted to explore (and I can't today simply due to time) my normal modus operandi is to pick up the phone and dive into the department responsible for it. You might not hear back for a week or two, but there are actual human beings on the other side of each of these indicators who's sole purpose is to prepare this report. They are a wealth of knowledge about how the data is collected, aggregated, and analyzed, and I usually love picking their brains.
You forget the "Delphic Oracle" speech classes required of Fed chairmen.
Fair Economist,
Yeah, that is a hurdle for sure.
But I'd like to help Grayson in his attempts to draw attention to the Fed's shenanigans. I really think Grayson would be more successful if his questioning highlighted the Fed's incompetence and the fact that the Fed is very likely covering up and aiding/abeting criminal activity. That's something the public could easily grab on to. As it stands, the public wrongly believes the fed's actions are for their benefit. The facts are otherwise in terms of income, wealth, economic distribution, total output, inflation, employment, stability, etc.
"I can't comment on that as I don't know which region/city they'd be from or what going rates are in cities over there. I'll have to ask some friends what their houses are worth on a sq-ft basis."
In Bejing 1 bedroom apartments in the University District that cost somewhere between 10-20k usd back around the late 90s are selling for 250k usd very easily (and possibly a lot more, with multiple offers)
I wasn't the one to mention anything about unemployment, other than it is given a negative weighting. Which does make sense as you say.
What I'm not sure about is how they normalize the data series. It's trained to a desired mean and standard deviation.
Academics estimate that the total amount of hot money in mainland China is in the vicinity of 200 billion to 300 billion US dollars, accounting for some where between 10 and 15% of the country's foreign exchange reserves.
In the wake of the US financial crisis, hot money rapidly exited China's markets last September, but as property market began to heat up, speculative funds have returned.
...
There's been a surge in the amount of hot money flowing into China over the past two months, according to Li Youhuan, a researcher in Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences, who has been researching speculative funds since 2002.
Wang Tao, chief economist at UBS Securities, estimated that nearly 56 billion US dollars, or about one third of the total 170 billion US dollar second quarter increase in China's foreign exchange reserves, could not be explained by reference to either money inflows from the trade surplus or fluctuations in the foreign exchange rate. The foreign exchange reserves growth figures for the second quarter were significantly higher than that registered in the several preceding quarters.
The central bank's foreign exchange accounts provide further evidence that hot money is back. Data released by the People's Bank of China revealed that in the first quarter, the central bank purchased an average of 100 billion US dollars worth of foreign currency every month. However, from April, this figure began to increase dramatically and climbed to nearly 290 billion US dollars in May.
Wu Nianlu, a professor from the Graduate School of the People's Bank of China, said that while it was possible that the surge in the amount of foreign currency purchased by the central bank could be due to inflows of hot money, he also noted that this growth may also have been affected by the foreign currency deposits of domestic Chinese individuals and foreign currency loans extended to domestic firms. Economic Observer News- China business, politics, law, and social issues
It's a common situation in multivariate regression. As a single predictor, unemployment is associated with low output, but after adjusting for other factors, the effect of residual unemployment (changes not predicted by other factors) is negative. And, as EHP mentions, if UE is a lagging indicator, that will happen. Periods where UE is worse than other indicators will happen towards the end or after the end of recession, while UE will be better at the start, so on average UE worse than other predictors happens with better economic output that UE better than other predictors does.
I'm a story-based individual, in that I can't accept the results of a multivariate regression analysis without understanding the underlying mechanisms.
So let's hypothesis: in a situation near the end of a recession, unemployment (the lagging indicator) rises at the same time as business revenue. Since this results in greater returns per man-hour worked, the correlation is that rising unemployment leads to rising productivity for remaining employed workers. The flip side, of course, is that as unemployment reaches zero investment into personnel trends toward diminishing marginal returns and reduced productivity per man-hour worked.
Makes me wonder about the Fed's stated goal to provide for maximum employment...
Anyway, I'm just having fun as the devil's advocate here. I'm sure everyone at the Chicago Fed knows what they're doing. They're certainly smarter than I am.
At most it's a problem for second lienholders relying on MERS to inform them when an underlying lienholder has brought an action. Even with the worst possible interpretation I don't see how title has been sullied.
There is no way of determining what happened to a mortgage once it went behind the MERS curtain.
Really? You ask them, they tell you. You request documents, you get them.
If it's really a question of accurately determining the lienholders on a property, MERS has been an enormous improvement over the frequently messed-up county recordations of the past. Which is precisely why it will come under fire by attorneys representing delinquent borrowers, who want nothing more than confusion among the note holders.
Really? You ask them, they tell you. You request documents, you get them.
If you're a member of MERS. Let me repeat that:
If you're a member of MERS. And that's my point. It isn't transparent.
Now, as to your comment about the legal sources Morgenstern quoted in her article, according to Randolph's biography on University of Missouri's website:
"A specialist in Real Estate Law, Professor Randolph has been chair of the Property Law Section of the American Association of Law Schools and has chaired the Missouri Bar Property Law Committee. He is a Missouri Commissioner on Uniform State Laws - a delegate to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL), and has been on drafting committees for several Uniform Laws. He served six years on the governing council of the ABA Section on Real Property, Probate and Trust Law and currently is co-chair of its Joint Committee on E-Commerce and Electronic Transactions."
Lower in August. That's a suprise, not.
Have they officially canceled Christmas yet?
First of all, it is by no means certain that any court, Supreme or otherwise ("Supreme" is trial, not appellate level in some States, such as New York) would side with a bank for any reason other than the law. Judges can be bought, but they are watched more carefully and expected to be more independent than legislators.
Second, a mortgage foreclosure is a radical government intervention into the market. The government picks a winner, and physically removes a party from possession of a piece of land in favor of another party. In a traditional action "at law" one party could only be awarded money damages. Foreclosures are actions "in equity", meaning parties demanding an extraordinary physical remedy must come in with "clean hands" and observe every procedural requirement to the letter. The Kansas Supreme Court is following longstanding property law in requiring strict adherence to procedure in foreclosure proceedings.
wish I had a bunch of bobsledding footage and then I could do something so the 'common man' could understand

what CR is saying, for example - Jim the Realtor, here in this vid he doesn't get all doe-y eyed about being at a World
Heritage site... hell no, he gets right to the point!
YouTube - Jim TV Realtor Stops Real Estate Californiacation and Goes Global
....
off to see Kill Bill Ninja
Comma,rads
Party on, apparatchiks...
I'm getting the funny feeling they might not call me back to work like they promised next month.
Anybody else 2?
Rational Irrationality The real reason that capitalism is so crash-prone. by John Cassidy
Definitely worth a read; from the New Yorker
"The reference to the game of musical chairs was a remarkably candid description of the situation in which executives like Prince found themselves, and of the logic of rational irrationality. Whether Prince knew it or not, he was channelling John Maynard Keynes, who, in “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,” pointed to the inconvenient fact that “there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole.” Whatever the asset class may be—stocks, bonds, real estate, or commodities—the market will seize up if everybody tries to sell at the same time. Financiers were accordingly obliged to keep a close eye on the “mass psychology of the market,” which could change at any moment. Keynes wrote, “It is, so to speak, a game of Snap, of Old Maid, of Musical Chairs—a pastime in which he is victor who says Snap neither too soon nor too late, who passes the Old Maid to his neighbour before the game is over, who secures a chair for himself when the music stops.”"
Nature interlude...
YouTube - Marty Robbins Sings 'Man Walks Among Us.'
What field or industry?
Duke, +1 mash-up.
Housing Agencies May Get $35 Billion in Treasury Aid (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
State housing agencies in the U.S. would get help in providing mortgages to low-income borrowers under a U.S. Treasury Department program to provide new liquidity and purchase mortgage bonds, Treasury officials said.
The program would provide as much as $15 billion in fresh liquidity for as long as three years and would purchase as much as $20 billion in tax-exempt mortgage bonds issued by state- sponsored housing finance agencies through the end of this year, a person familiar with the matter said. The program may be announced as early as Sept. 30, said the person, who didn’t want to be named because the plans haven’t been made public.
“there is no such thing as liquidity of investment for the community as a whole.”
A minor blip for the classical Invisible Handers explaining why laissez-faire is always the best of all possible systems. You mean the market doesn't automatically provide the optimum level of investment by society as a whole? Assume it does.
About the only difference between Wall*Street and Monopoly (with an unlimited amount of money) is perhaps just a roll of the dice...
Duke..........Best thing you've ever done, IMHO......Good one....
I mentioned recently as long as the people maintained faith...well more and more we are having REM Losing My Religion moments with capitalism around the country in both print and other media. Fall is here, is that a revolution in the air? I sure hope not.
Az has a low income program to buy a home. When I looked at it, doesn't make much sense. You have to be low income, ok. You had to make payments that equalled a mim of 30% gross income, too high. Could go to 50% gross income, forclosure for sure. The funding went to the downpayment and closing costs, so the price of the property was inflated, however you had to buy at 20% under current market. And the house had to be move in ready.
They had really set it up not to work.
China launches probe into imports of US chicken
The article requested is no longer available.
LOL the chicken vs tire wars have begun.
Gives entirely new meaning to "Choking the Chicken"
ha ha
.......why is it everyone wants our 300-million customers? .....Duh.........because "they're professionals".
Actually I did read the article, Cinco, but it wasn't news to me. What surprises is that people still think a so-called "free" market prices "rationally" for the benefit of a group of individuals behaving "rationally". Has never been there or ever done that.
TARP working? Government auditor tells all...
TARP working? Government auditor tells all...
blackwaterwannabe
hope they do call you back like they promised. sort of like banks making courtesy calls, in that it makes you nervous. shouldnt promise if they cant deliver.
How did the chicken cross the Pacific? By dodging the oncoming tires.
I can see the op-ed cartoons now.
That is a funny visual Rob.
josap
a bad one in either might kill you
Sorry; it wasn't clear from your first response. I have to agree in part, even thought I'm a "free marketeer". I think we need a new understanding of what free markets really are, and how they are accessed, used, and maintained. More like a village common than the Wild West. Perhaps I'll write something about it in future, but not now-
.......once you've heard a "rod knock", it's too late to do anything except find a nice, wide, safe place to park.
Good one Dawg. I was thinking more along the line of the chicken using the tires to hop across, kinda like hopping stones across a river, only way to keep from getting wet.
For all you goldbugs out there-
BSR, we are driving down a canyon road with no sholders.
There may be a road grader coming our way as well.
....and for the deflationist:
Money figures show there's trouble ahead Private credit is contracting on both sides of the Atlantic. The M3 money data is flashing early warning signals of a deflation crisis next year in nearly half the world economy. Emergency schemes that have propped up spending are being withdrawn, gently or otherwise.
Beanie Babies are a better hedge.
isnt this what they said would happen if they didnt do whatever it was they had to do to save us?
Beanie Babies was one of my favorite bubbles ever...
The idea that a plush toy, not dissimilar from what you'd get in a claw-machine for 4 bits, could be worth a few thousand bucks, if it was the right one... was the height of absurdity~
yea gabby, that is what they said.
wonder what they will say this time around?
duke
have an extra ganja milkshake on me. nice work. (do we have a milkshake icon yet?)
Our local Habitat for Humanity group ends up having to foreclose on about half of the homes that are part of the program. Even in the HFH world, with all the counseling and sweat equity breaks they provide to the homeowners, half still are unable to satisfy the terms of the deal. I don't see how this program would fare any better.
there ya go
jd
at least it wasnt as bad as the tulips,people are just crazy
GabyJ,
Isnt' "what" what they said?
Ran into an Irishman in NZ, that had been in Laos, and he had never experienced how fun fungi can be, and had a 'shroom shake, and nothing happened, so he had another, and then one more...
whoops~
Homeownership is one of those odd things that supposedly gives you security while taking away your freedom. If renting weren't seen as something only powar people do, then I would have trouble not advocating almost everyone renting.
From the Day-Late-and-a-Dollar-Short files:
Don't bank on your home as an ATM The coming decades won't repeat the dramatic rise in real estate values that previous generations experienced, economists say. It may be time to return to viewing the home simply as a place to live.
josap
are you looking for another "paulson moment" complete with 3 page order to congress? do you think timmay has the whatever to do it?
HP Loancraft asked for $700 Billion with a 3 page request, and Congress told him to pound sand, so he came back with a 451 page request for $787 Billion, and they said ok.
No Gaby.
No more 3 page docs, no Timmy doesn't have a pair that big. But I just don't think anyone will buy into doing what didn't work all over again.
Nor am I sure they can come up with something new. It would have to be more money through the back door with an apology later.
jd
i know he did and i know they did complete with all their pet porkies, any one know just how much pork was in that "tarp"? i remember that nascar was in it for something.
edit for word someone else must have put, there i took "help" out.
the back door being? what about this reverse whatever the fed wants to do/is doing with money market funds is it a sort of back door?
I keep replaying the video of Alan Grayson grilling Benjamins about where the half trillion dollars went, and Benjamins has the look of me, when I was 8, and I broke a window by throwing a baseball at it, and my mom asked "who did this?"
And i'd say, "what window?"
++++++++++++++++++++++++
YouTube - Alan Grayson: "Which Foreigners Got the Fed's $500,000,000,000?" Bernanke: "I Don't Know."
yep, looks like back door money to me.
mp if you are on. A puchaser of a house encumbered by a mers mortgage is
entitled to a defense if the 2nd forecloses against them.
All the mers mtges I've ever seen have the mers info and a phone number and
a mtg id number the first 2 being pre-printed. There is no blank to fill
in.
Mtg is security to the note. Note is the primary instrument. A lender can
always ignore the mtg and just sue on the note. Seldom done, because of
the collateral is juicy and right there. But if the collateral just had toxic waste
dumped on it and the borrower had other assets to levy on, they just might
sue on the note only.
The mtg "follows" the note.
When paying off the prior mtg, I was always worried about whether the money
would get to the right servicer or owner, since I often got a pay off from someone
other than the record showed, or the borrower was actually paying. I always let
my underwriter know, so they'd be on the hook. Nothing bad ever happened yet,
and I'm not paying off many loans now (that aren't short sales in foreclosure),
so the problem has gone away for a while.
All as per last thread.
If the title companies find themselves on the hook for bfps because of this,
they will stop dealing with mers, or put in an exception saying they are not
insuring this so fast your head will spin. They have nowhere near the
money to insure a risk like this.
josap
thank you im learning this stuff
No problem Gaby,
Just remember that what I am offering are opinions based on my own point of view. Someone else may see things differently, and they could be right.
josap
they cant stop doing what they are doing can they? by that i mean the fed throwing "money" at everything. they cant stop and i dont think they can shut it down easy or any other way. just sort of have to let "nature" take it course.
Lot of green
FINVIZ.com - Stock Screener
Should dump real soon.
shill
what do you mean dump?
i love me some recovery in the morning.
is back with a vengeance!
The consumption and housing category’s contribution to the index improved slightly in August to –0.48, following a contribution of
–0.49 in July. Housing starts increased to 598,000 annualized units in August from 589,000 in the previous month. The sales, orders, and inventories category also improved in August, contributing –0.08 compared with –0.11 in July.
Am I right that these represent second derivatives? That -0.48 is, as it seems to be, negative? That they're saying sales, orders and inventories declined as a category in August?
Why is this spun to the optimistic side? I don't relish seeing overt or covert pessimism in reportage, but would appreciate neutrality with the statistics reported and, to the extent thought necessary, described.
This kind of manipulation destroys all confidence; surely that's not the intent?
No news and no volume...I just do not see it holding...Ill watch the dollar that seems to be the tell all these days.
10,000 is a huge psychological number for the hoi ploy, and we'll get there this week by hook or by crook...
Well, that is the problem. They can't continue to print either. The more they print the less the dollar is worth, Asia is buying short term treasureies now, rather than long term. So they can bail on short notice if they need to. Lots of people callling for a new reserve currancy as we have pretty well messed ours up badly.
And if all they can do is print to save us, what does that say about any real economic recovery? Can there be a recovery with millions of homes and CRE still to forclouse?
It seems we are now in the "between a rock and a hard place" part of the enconomy going down or moving slowly upward. I think the adjustment to forever higher unemployment and a much lower "middle class" are going to be the tricky part for main street.
Rocky, that's the JPM opening punt. So we'll see.
The pump on the back of Xerox, which is making the transition from dead horse to critically-ill horse.
Yawn.
Now that I've settled into work, let me begin my morning with my customary: "Woo! Look at that Yen!"
.
You can now return to your regularly scheduled thread.
So, lower economic activity equates to a higher market?
josap
i've adjusted all ready,and ready to re-adjust and maybe even re-re-adjust,if it comes to that. i whined and cried and cussed,doing it and probably will do the same but not as bad. just really cant figure out what to do if/when social security goes toes up. i guess just punt.
ON TOPIC Chicago Fed
Examining the CR graph of the The Chicago Fed National Activity Index(3 month moving average) the -1 point appears to more closely coincide with the end of all recessions noted than does the +0.20 . While we're not at that point yet we seem very close.
Off topic: If I read all of the other comments correctly not one of them pertained to this issue. Can anything be done?
SS won't go toes up unless the world ends.
How many voters are there between 55 and 105?
The only thing that warrants this climb this morning is that WallStreet must be convinced that World War 3 is starting this week. If that is the case... well, climb away.
If we only stayed on topic:
I would learn less.
I would be bored to tears after the 100th comment.
shill,
Probably it's just me but, if I see one-sixth of an average day's volume recorded in the first twenty minutes of trading on no news, then I tend to think it means nothing.
"SS won't go toes up unless the world ends."
Will my check be delivered to the afterlife?
You won't get your check in the after life Pavel. Unless one of your kids tries to game the system.
nevadabuilder inquired:
"Off topic: If I read all of the other comments correctly not one of them pertained to this issue. Can anything be done?"
++++++++++++++++++++++++
I'd just keep building homes that nobody wants in the Silver State, which is most of them...
Hehe look at Glod go....cannot have it both ways Ben.
josap
lots of voters between 55 and 105 but since when do they listen to voters?
shill
we got a 3-front war going on now. i would ask if They are crazy!!!!! but since i think they are anyway, why bother? what about things might be getting a little hairy in the econ field and its just a little respite? you know. scare the hell out of us, for a bit.
Quite possibly Gab.............Must use every tactic at our disposal don't ya know.
I'm not gonna get one cent from all the money I put into social security, but it's no biggie, I made other plans...
But imagine a 60 year old presently, banking on it?
cr starts us off and most of the time comments sort of stay around about his comment, but sometimes one thing leads to another and another and another. learned a lot. thats just the way it is.
No problem. It was an early August this year- and cold, too.
DOW 10,000 this week- hoodathunkit?
It won't just be the voter 55+. All those over 40, who will have to suport mom & dad will not be happy either.
Do you really want mom moving in with you? Or MIL?
Will all the people who have paid into the system just roll over and not scream?
I don't think so.
Any idea where all this money is coming from to drive the stock, bond & commodity markets higher?
Seriously. It's as if the money is appearing out of thin air.
If you alreay knew the answer why did you ask the question?
josap:
You are assuming that people will have a say in the matter. After the USSR collapsed, millions of pensioners literally starved or froze as their payments were suspended or inflated away to nothing. Nothing they could do: the system broke down.
Ask Pavel about the hardships this caused.
Angry Saver
Maybe Mutual Funds, end of the quarter.
my dad turns 65 this year. he doesn't even care about SS; he's just glad that he no longer has to pay (that much) for health insurance.
jd
thats the reason they got those 401k well we know how that worked. besides you really arent paying for yourself.your parents grandparents are who you are paying for Your kids and grandkids pay for you. i had no problem paying for my grandma or my mom
and my daughter and grand daughter dont have a problem paying for me. i asked them.
Nuke, I did say the world would have to end first.
Total collapes is the end of the world as we know it.
You would probably not need a lot of money to drive the market higher if there was a big conspiracy to do so. Let say I buy 1 share of GS from you @ $200 (previous value - $175) , I have effectively driven the market higher without sacrificing a lot of my capital. Now, to wait for the final bagholder to show up. Simplistic view, but not completely improbable, no?
dude, can't happen. the market's, like, efficient.
josap:
I disagree. The world didn't end when the USSR collapsed, or when the British empire decayed to nothing. I think we are on our way to a fiscal crisis, which means some folks are going to lose a lot.
I believe a lot of the bond rally comes from 2 places -
1) Money Market funds moving into Bond Mutual Funds. The Funds Flow data supports this. Bond Mutual Funds AUM have been growing at a healthy clip over the past few months.
2) Return of Leverage, in a variety of forms. For structured product, the TALF and PPIP programs are creating new demand with levered capital. Add in all the folks just trying to tag along for the ride, and you can get a huge amount of momentum going. I also have the feeling that many of the banks are extending leverage out to the buy-side again.
As to the equity rally, it only takes two people to make a price go up. Volumes are still very low comparatively speaking.
Do not believe the "money on the sidelines" hype.
When I see dolts writing about how awful boomers are, I have to laugh...
We are the ones that paid all the money into SS, and we are ones that are gonna get shafted, along the lines of what happened to those in Russia, circa 1991~
angry saver
you are kidding? right? you forgot the snark?
True enough; GS doesn't really need any money to drive it higher, just a fast internet connection-
If a marathon runner had both legs amputated in a car crash and was on the verge of recovery, wouldn't you think it a bit silly to begin speculating if they could beat their world record time?
Way to be on topic, Noob!
///After the USSR collapsed, millions of pensioners literally starved or froze as their payments were suspended or inflated away to nothing. ///
That looks like the end of the world to me. People starving and freezing to death in the streets.
cinco-x
since you brought it up which is faster t1 or t3?
and could we put gs on dial-up i would pay for it.
True enough; GS doesn't really need any money to drive it higher, just a fast internet connection-
True enough; GS doesn't really need any money to drive it higher, just a faster internet connection-
There, fixed that for ya.
LOL Gaby, I would chip in.
Well, I got burned in what will forever be referred to as the 'umbrella incident'. So I'm trying to turn over a new leaf
Amputated marathon-runners seemed as close to on-topic as I'll ever get...
noob,
Thank goodness you said marathon, and not 100 meter dash double-amputee sprinter...
Does anyone have a link to the raw data for the graph? I'd like to plot the integrals of the data between zero crossings. It appears to me that in earlier eras, the net area above zero outweighed that below zero, but lately that has not been true, with the exception of the period from '95-'96 to '00. Thanks-
Thanks- you knew what I meant
Congressman Gayson seems like his heart is in the right place, but I think he is a bit misguided.
Grayson keeps trying to get the Fed to tell him who received all the newly created federal reserve credit. And while I'd sure like to know where all the new Fed credit went, I think Grayson should hammer home the fact that the Fed is only creating the new credit in order to bailout financial fraud and/or to cover up its own incompetence. If Grayson were to ask the Fed WHY they are creating such massive amounts of credit, the Fed can't answer without indicting itself.
Once it is publicly established that the Fed is incompetent and/or criminal, finding where the money went will be easy.
Aiding and abeting financial fraud is criminal activity. Failing to regulate on such a massive scale also rises to the level of criminal activity in my view (criminally negligent).
Thoughts? I'm going to e-mail Rep. Grayson.
Some of those guys are awful fast (I've watched them compete professionally a few times), but it's not for everyone.
First we have to see if this patient can walk again, before we start speculating about running.
Aw noob. Now I want to talk about umbrellas!
Ask one ot the IS guys; Broward maybe? Additionally, in this realm, proximity matters too. Being right-next-door to the exchange is better than being in New Jersey for example, and much better than Nome, AL. mS count-
This 'aint no ECRI, will have to read more before I understand what the chart is saying. My first guess is that they compare to the cycle peak for continuing unemployment claims, or unemployment rate -- without being set up to address a longer duration of unemployment such that people drop off the regular plan or the interventionist shrinking of the labor force by the BLS. Kick in a SA manufacturing mis-signal due to the irregular production schedule this year, and that could be the sum of what the chart is saying. Now to see what's what in the background (thx for the quick link CR)
you are kidding? right? you forgot the snark?
Gabyjan,
Do you really need to ask?
I'm not on horrid dial-up today, so I can actually keep up with the conversation.
The only worse than starting a sh@t-storm in the comment threads is starting a sh@t-storm and not being able to keep up with it because the Internet connection speed is from the early 1990's.
However, it's my first day back in the office after being on the road for a while, so I won't be able to spend too much time on CR today. Unfortunately, I'm more of an observer than participant today...
Congressman Grayson is creating a shadow of a doubt, which takes time...
cinco-x
isnt gs in the exchange? and isnt that favoritism?
josap:
According to this article, SS goes cash flow negative in 2016. In other words, SS will have to start redeeming some of the special treasuries in the "trust fund" to make payments. This means even more Treasury borrowing.
My Way News - Social Security strained by early retirements
Social Security is projected to start generating surpluses again in 2012 before permanently returning to deficits in 2016 unless Congress acts again to shore up the program. Without a new fix, the $2.5 trillion in Social Security's trust funds will be exhausted in 2037. Those funds have actually been spent over the years on other government programs. They are now represented by government bonds, or IOUs, that will have to be repaid as Social Security draws down its trust fund.
You do realize that the wheelchair competitors in marathons kick the $#it out of the legged runners, right? Not sure if this matters in this discussion-
So, I guess we'll run up to 10k here and have a quick wave of euphoric buying thereafter...then maybe we'll celebrate with crash 2.0
(prediction is subject to change, some restrictions may apply)
T1 - 1.544 Mbit/s
T3 - 44.736 Mbit/s
Cinco-X
The Fed is a legless ant
What's wrong with being 60 and banking on Social Security?
I mean, relative to banking on anything else?
You think future Social Security benefits for a 60-year-old are less bankable than a job and paycheck?
This is precisely why a person--such as myself--should stop using metaphors to describe the economy.
noob goldberg
oh i know what you are talking about, dial-up was so slow that my windows updates came in after i got the dsl modem thursday,
microsoft said uh huh we aint got time for this we'll go back when her dsl is up.
Yes, it appears to me that GS is effectively the exchange, and as for favoritism, what can I say, I like Broward?
LOL; please don't
Shssh! That's supposed to be a secret
peoples
got to go to the store and simulate the economy. have fun. and stay out of market,
OT: Taken from a Westlaw spam email:
What is old is new again?
I think the majority of boomers are gonna get nothing, when push>meets<shove.
/////They are now represented by government bonds, or IOUs, that will have to be repaid as Social Security draws down its trust fund. ////
So it seems is the rest of our financial system. We have been robbing Peter to pay Paul for a very long time.
Maybe they just pass out the bonds and lower the value that way. Who knows what they will come up with, or not, There is a gov scam for every issue nowdays.
Juvenal Delinquent (profile) wrote
I disagree - I think they'll tweak things. They'll means test the recipients and they'll raise the salary cap that they collect SS premiums. That combo will make it sustainable.
As someone married to a boomer, barely post boom (by my calcs - dad was in korean war, not WWII) - I want SS to get tweaked.
I agree that boomers are the ones that have paid the most into the system, and most at risk of getting the most screwed.
does this mean consulting clients are no longer going to pay $125/hour for new grads to write SQL reports?
Quick read through, but no time to test sensitivity, leads me to believe the following are behind the indicator's turn around:
1) Only uses SA data, we have had a weird year to say the least and that plays a big role in estimating the # of employed based on SA
2) It's adjusted for inflation, we haven't had a comparable low/deflationary period in the series
3) Industrial production, very heavy weighting
They do count unemployment rates, but to a lesser degree and more interestingly -- a negative weight! The higher unemployment goes, the more positive this indicator becomes
I'm not sure if clients will want to pay consulting firms anything for new grads to write SQL reports. Not much to report if the company isn't growing, and internal IT projects tend to be the red-haired stepchildren of non-IT companies.
There's got to be some fascinating underlying econometric rationale for that, most likely involving some sort of strong correlation between datasets.
As someone who frequently deals with retirement budget forecasts, Social Security isn't the one you should be worried about. It's the Medicare trust fund that will have the worst troubles, and much sooner.
Social Security's problems can be cured by slightly later retirements, slightly higher contributions, slightly higher population growth, slightly higher wages, or slightly higher returns on the trust fund.
Medicare's problems have no easy financial cure if current trends continue. It's only real cure is a series of cures. Certain very expensive conditions have to either have a cure or a prevention. I mean this with no snark. If there were large scale reductions in heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, Medicare funding could be in far better shape.
Check out this poll for Chinese real estate
http://home.eeo.com.cn/bbs/thread-225878-1-1.html
8月北京现房签约量环比降幅45.73%,期房签约量环比下降5.63%。楼市调整拐点是否出现?
The number of contracts for completed and yet-to-be-completed residential housing in August fell 45.73% and 5.63% respectively compared to the figures for July.
Has the real estate market reached a turning point?
你认为是楼市回调迹象明显吗?Do you think it's obvious that the real estate market has reached a turning point?
( 单选 ) 参与人数 1149
3. 不是 No 580 (50.48%)
你认为楼市回调的主要原因?What's the reason for the correction? ( 单选 ) 参与人数 1149
1. 超出购买能力 Houses are no longer affordable 978 (85.12%)
2. 二套房贷政策收紧 A tightening of the lending policy in regards to second house buyers 78 (6.79%)
3. 信贷增速下降 A sharp decline in new lending 93 (8.09%)
你认为未来房价走势如何?How do you see the future of housing prices? ( 单选 ) 参与人数 1149
1. 不好说 Not sure 248 (21.58%)
2. 继续上涨 Will Continue to rise 687 (59.79%)
3. 有所回落 Will experience a modest drop 214 (18.62%)
你今年是否有买房计划?Do you have a plan to buy a house this year? ( 单选 ) 参与人数 1149
1. 有 Yes 873 (75.98%)
2. 没有 No 276 (24.02%)
你能接受的房价价格是多少?What price can you afford to pay for a house? ( 单选 ) 参与人数 1149
1. 20000万以上 Above 20,000 yuan per sqm 0 (0.00%)
2. 10000-20000 Between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan per sqm 85 (7.40%)
3. 5000-10000 Between 5,000 and 10,000 yuan per sqm 372 (32.38%)
4. 5000以下 Below 5,000 yuan per sqm 692 (60.23%)
EHP:
Negative weight for unemployment rate. Lagging indicator? Matches the brief, i.e., identify onset and cessation of recession?
Sounds OK, then.
Push>meets<Shove = When financial chicanery runs out of new ways to obfuscate.
If there were large scale reductions in heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, Medicare funding could be in far better shape.
not necessarily. recently, there was a report that predicted Alzheimer's rate would explode in the coming years. Why? A combination of better diagnostics, but more importantly, people are living longer, providing more time for the brain to turn to mush.
we all die of something, and we'll spend gobs of money trying to prevent said something...
and they'll raise the salary cap that they collect SS premiums.
Which only raises future liabilities. More can kicking. Which doesn't dispute JD's comment at all and might even reinforce it.
I find it hilarious that 85% of respondents feel prices are unaffordable but 60% think they'll continue to rise. Who do they think is going to buy them?
Equities up over 1%. 10 yr yield drops to 3.29%.
One of these must be wrong.
Lawyerliz, if you're still on....
(from the previous thread)
MERS wasn't trying to foreclose in the Kansas case; they were trying to reverse a foreclosure sale that had already happened. Basically they were trying to undo a foulup that had resulted in the wrong second lienholder being attached to the foreclosure filing.
What the Kansas court found (aside from dismissing on grounds that the filing was untimely) was that failure to attach MERS to a foreclosure filing is not, in and of itself, a fatal error. As far as I can tell they didn't reach any conclusions as to MERS's standing to file a foreclosure action, because that wasn't at issue in the case. (I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they were found not to have standing, though, and were required to do what you suggest--it seems to be implied by the ruling even if not actually found.)
I'm not sure but I strongly suspect that the sale proceeds were less than the outstanding balance on the first note. If there weren't going to be any proceeds to the second lienholder, all the appeal was going to do was to further delay completion of the foreclosure...it's odd, and a bit amusing, that the failure of the appeal to reverse the foreclosure sale is being presented as a victory in homeowners' campaign to avert foreclosure.
Wouldn't your "cure" for Medicare put an additional burden on Social Security? Just askin'
If Grayson were to ask the Fed WHY they are creating such massive amounts of credit, the Fed can't answer without indicting itself.
You forget the "Delphic Oracle" speech classes required of Fed chairmen. They can talk for hours without anybody having any idea what they said! Bernanke isn't the master Greenspan was but I'll bet he can dodge that one.
I'm thinking that due to the eradication of most diseases (Scarlet Fever sounds more like a porn name, nowadays...) that there's gonna be a lot of people hitting the century mark the next 40 years, scads more than right now...
noob goldberg,
Less than $65 per sq ft is their target too.
It's not a recession predictor, it's a weighted average of economic activity indicators. I can't fathom in what realm unemployment would be considered a positive contribution to economic activity.
China will tax your moon cakes! That should stimulate the non-SOE economy
Economic Observer News- China business, politics, law, and social issues
noob, I probably have the context wrong. Not sure.
I just strikes me that inflection points are obscured by UE data, and negative weight sharpens the data set if that's what you're looking for.
I can't comment on that as I don't know which region/city they'd be from or what going rates are in cities over there. I'll have to ask some friends what their houses are worth on a sq-ft basis.
It's not a recession predictor, it's a weighted average of economic activity indicators. I can't fathom in what realm unemployment would be considered a positive contribution to economic activity.
It's a common situation in multivariate regression. As a single predictor, unemployment is associated with low output, but after adjusting for other factors, the effect of residual unemployment (changes not predicted by other factors) is negative. And, as EHP mentions, if UE is a lagging indicator, that will happen. Periods where UE is worse than other indicators will happen towards the end or after the end of recession, while UE will be better at the start, so on average UE worse than other predictors happens with better economic output that UE better than other predictors does.
How very odd that capitalism is gonna crap out almost precisely 20 years after communism up and died?
7 out, line away...
Oh and I have no idea, let's just get that out there right now.
If this was an indicator that I actually wanted to explore (and I can't today simply due to time) my normal modus operandi is to pick up the phone and dive into the department responsible for it. You might not hear back for a week or two, but there are actual human beings on the other side of each of these indicators who's sole purpose is to prepare this report. They are a wealth of knowledge about how the data is collected, aggregated, and analyzed, and I usually love picking their brains.
I just don't have time today...
You forget the "Delphic Oracle" speech classes required of Fed chairmen.
Fair Economist,
Yeah, that is a hurdle for sure.
But I'd like to help Grayson in his attempts to draw attention to the Fed's shenanigans. I really think Grayson would be more successful if his questioning highlighted the Fed's incompetence and the fact that the Fed is very likely covering up and aiding/abeting criminal activity. That's something the public could easily grab on to. As it stands, the public wrongly believes the fed's actions are for their benefit. The facts are otherwise in terms of income, wealth, economic distribution, total output, inflation, employment, stability, etc.
"I can't comment on that as I don't know which region/city they'd be from or what going rates are in cities over there. I'll have to ask some friends what their houses are worth on a sq-ft basis."
In Bejing 1 bedroom apartments in the University District that cost somewhere between 10-20k usd back around the late 90s are selling for 250k usd very easily (and possibly a lot more, with multiple offers)
I wasn't the one to mention anything about unemployment, other than it is given a negative weighting. Which does make sense as you say.
What I'm not sure about is how they normalize the data series. It's trained to a desired mean and standard deviation.
@LawyerLiz
Liz, thanks for your response this morning concerning MERS.
I've been doing more reading and it's apparent that we're going to being hearing a lot more about them.
Basically, my suspicions were correct.
They've sullied every title they've laid their hands on.
...
mp, can you explain? I'm pretty sure this isn't true and I'm wondering what you've read that seems to indicate that it is.
Yalt, read this, then start googling. It's a goddamned mess. And it becomes extremely political--with some familiar names--very quickly.
FAIR GAME; The Mortgage Machine Backfires - NY Times
I'm a story-based individual, in that I can't accept the results of a multivariate regression analysis without understanding the underlying mechanisms.
So let's hypothesis: in a situation near the end of a recession, unemployment (the lagging indicator) rises at the same time as business revenue. Since this results in greater returns per man-hour worked, the correlation is that rising unemployment leads to rising productivity for remaining employed workers. The flip side, of course, is that as unemployment reaches zero investment into personnel trends toward diminishing marginal returns and reduced productivity per man-hour worked.
Makes me wonder about the Fed's stated goal to provide for maximum employment...
Anyway, I'm just having fun as the devil's advocate here. I'm sure everyone at the Chicago Fed knows what they're doing. They're certainly smarter than I am.
At most it's a problem for second lienholders relying on MERS to inform them when an underlying lienholder has brought an action. Even with the worst possible interpretation I don't see how title has been sullied.
Yalt, MERS is not transparent. There is no way of determining what happened to a mortgage once it went behind the MERS curtain.
And it was intended to be that way. Read the member rules for MERS at their website.
There is no way to construct an unbroken chain of property rights.
Really? You ask them, they tell you. You request documents, you get them.
If it's really a question of accurately determining the lienholders on a property, MERS has been an enormous improvement over the frequently messed-up county recordations of the past. Which is precisely why it will come under fire by attorneys representing delinquent borrowers, who want nothing more than confusion among the note holders.
If you're a member of MERS. Let me repeat that:
If you're a member of MERS. And that's my point. It isn't transparent.
Now, as to your comment about the legal sources Morgenstern quoted in her article, according to Randolph's biography on University of Missouri's website:
"A specialist in Real Estate Law, Professor Randolph has been chair of the Property Law Section of the American Association of Law Schools and has chaired the Missouri Bar Property Law Committee. He is a Missouri Commissioner on Uniform State Laws - a delegate to the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL), and has been on drafting committees for several Uniform Laws. He served six years on the governing council of the ABA Section on Real Property, Probate and Trust Law and currently is co-chair of its Joint Committee on E-Commerce and Electronic Transactions."
The guy is a recognized authority.
whatever happened to the bloomberg FOIA request regarding the FED Reserve?