patrick.net

I don't mean to stop the circle jerk here, but She-Man cannot claim to have 5.5 million in assets. That's horseshit since he's levered multiple times over and better pray that this laughable 0.1% rise in GDP isn't a harbinger of things to come(which it is).

Once you can post the deeds to your complexes free and clear, then we can bow down in admiration.

Read all about her here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2617020/EXCLUSIVE-From-dirt-poor-daughter-Mexican-mother-used-kids-steal-plastic-princess-Donald-Sterlings-arm-The-rise-V-Stiviano-disturbing-racial-secret-mysterious-changes.html

I actually have some respect for her. She did what other females with no real talent, brains or looks do, she leveraged what she had into some fame and dough.

I prefer her to Michelle Obama, Michelle's champagne wishes and caviar dreams are paid for by you and me.

SFace says

That's how it had always worked and will be more so in the future. Assets are used to acquire more assets and housing is a function of too much savings. That is why income/price ratio is as unimportant as ever when valuing assets.

No, it's function of leverage (plus special deductions/exemptions) where it has clearly an edge over other vehicles.

SFace says

Housing is a tax sheltered assets for most and tax deferred assets for others. When the combine that with prop 13, step up basis, and forever ownership in a stable country, it is a class of assets to hold forever and accumulate. The liquidity risk is easily mitigated with cash out available to the rich at less than 2% and 4% to most.

makes sense?

Sure, but housing is no different from other bubbles (except for its great leverage and crony exemptions/deductions) and people will be destroyed with the next housing bust for the benefit of those who got in earlier. It is not meant to fluctuate like this and being used as a highly-leveraged vehicle chasing maximum yields, and that's why the boom/bust cycles are more frequent. It's like stock speculation on steroids. These policies and the subsequent bailout-scrambles are exactly responsible for the rising inequality and unpredictability of the economy.

WOW! The UNtrustworthy are certainly in control of what information is apparent to the people!

Say hey! This was in the Wall Street Journal on March 30, 1999. Note "... how much it will buy."

Holy cow/interesting/compelling ...!

And where is it up to date??? Right here ... see the first chart shown in this thread.
Recent Dow day is Wednesday, April 30, 2014 __ Level is 104.8

WOW! It is hideous that this is hidden! Is there any such "Homes, Inflation Adjusted"? Yes! This was in the New York Times on August 27, 2006:

And up to date (by me) is here:
http://patrick.net/?p=1219038&c=999083#comment-999083

WOW! The UNtrustworthy are certainly in control of what information is apparent to the people!

And "ThePublic Be Suckered"
http://patrick.net/?p=1230886

mell says

That's hogwash, as their incomes are decent but the real issue is that they have been taxed to the hilt by the Obama administration since inception under the guise of class warfare (usually referred to as wage-slaves), instead of taxing the 0.1%-1%. Taxes are way too high on these income brackets (200K+) and the Democrats are responsible for it (doesn't mean the Republicans would have done it vastly differently).

This is a good point. There are many people in the top 5% who are getting hosed on taxes relative to people in the top 0.5% or the top 0.1%. The AMT, as an example, hits these people the hardest. Many of the tax benefits that apply to most of the population are completely phased out for these folks. Most of the people in the bottom 4.5% of the top 5% tend to be wage-slaves, whereas the top 0.5% tends to have the majority of their income as capital gains.

The solution? Change the capital gains tax rate to be the same as the ordinary income tax rate as it was under Reagan, which will allow rates to be lowered slightly on the bottom 4.5% of the top 5%.

clambo says

I prefer her to Michelle Obama

Yeah, I mean, Michelle Obama only went to Princeton and Harvard Law, then worked for a major law firm, the city of Chicago, and the University of Chicago (and made almost 2X then-Senator Obama's salary there).

She's completely inferior to this stupid whore whose main claim to fame is fucking pro athletes and having a sugar daddy. What the fuck is wrong with you?

SFace says

makes sense?

Makes sense until it does not. SFAce, you are pretty smart logical guy, so you can always come up with a thesis. Look at JCP and Yahoo. When I read your posts on those, they also made sense, until the trend changed.

Leveraged asset accumulation worked so well during crazy population growth that we experienced since WW2. I think we are at the peak of population growth. Developed world is already done. It's only a matter of time before emerging markets follow. Leveraged asset accumulation might not work as well in the next decade.

Nothing is wrong with me, what the fuck is wrong with you?

I don't give a shit where michelle "let them eat paella" went to school, nor what seat warming job she got at a hospital.

I have no respect for Michelle because she is like Marie Antoinette, she spends my and others money for her lavish junkets. Her China mystery tour cost us a fortune, in addition to her other junkets using our money.

clambo says

I have no respect for Michelle because she is like Marie Antoinette, she spends my and others money for her lavish junkets. Her China mystery tour cost us a fortune, in addition to her other junkets using our money.

This is moronic. The first lady has subtle PR responsibilities. She's supposed to act like the first lady. I'm sure the security and entourage part of it are just as annoying to her as it is to you.

But as I said, it's moronic. The morons of the other party (not nearly everyone in the other party) come out for every President to talk about how much golf they play, or how many vacations they take, or how much the first lady spends redecorating.

Whatever, man.

I'm proud to say that when I criticized Bush or Reagan it was NEVER about that kind of bullshit.

Can't you see how much of an asshole you are ?

Any White Rep/Con/Tea that watches or participates financially in any way(buying tickets & sports crap) with any sports team at any level that has black players might be a N-lover.

Let "those" people get rich on your hard earned dollar. How you like it,White Rep/Con/Teas?
Take those targets off your asses ,they are too big & easy to kick. roflmao

marcus like lots of lefty liberals can't resist getting nasty and name calling. Why?

Michelle flying around the place having junkets, going to China, Spain, Africa with her mother and her daughters wasn't a job or diplomacy.

This is why I respect Sterling's girlfriend more, she at least isn't blowing the taxpayers money, rather Sterling's.

The news said that now they can enter a period of "healing." Give me a fucking break.

yeah I don't pay to watch sports ever and of course basketball is one of the most mind-numbing of them all to watch.

Once in a blue moon going to a game has been fun, but the last time I was at the stick I decided I would not go back there.

of course, the other irony of the woman in question is she was badly treated by Mexicans for having a black father.

So are we allowed to talk about Mexican racism or is that also "racist"?

tatupu70 says

Reality says

It wasn't just I thought they would. They actually did! Because market prices for everything else dropped even faster than wage decline: gasoline went from $4/gallon in 2007 and early 2008 to nearly $2/gallon at bottom in 2009. Median house prices went from near $300k to below $200k.

New employers with reduced debt load would be able to bid up wages more, not necessarily in nominal terms but certainly in purchasing power parity terms.

No, they didn't! When you are umemployed, it really doesn't matter if gas prices went down by $0.50/gallon now, does it?

The vast majority of workers are still working even in the onset of depression. Unemployed are the relatively small minority, and they would only stay unemployed by choice if the government is paying them to stay unemployed (like extended unemployment benefits) or banning them from working via laws like raised minimum wages.

New employers pay the market rate for labor. That rate is set by supply and demand. And when demand is down, as control point rightly stated, price will go down as well.

Nominal price go down, but purchasing power go up. You are forgetting the very rationale for Keynes' entire theory: wage is sticky, and more sticky than other goods and assets being re-priced.

control point says

What do you mean by "weight of value of AAPL in the overall corporate market place"? Do you just invent stuff on the fly? Market capitalization is what it is.

Is the weight of AAPL in the S&P 500 equal to the weight of AAPL's market cap in the overall market cap of the country? Even just talking about the stock market - the S&P 500 is not the entire stock market, after all.

You are changing topic, but I will play along with you. The Willshire 5000 dropped even more. Are you so out of touch as not realize small caps have higher Beta (volatility) than large caps?

The current market cap of the S&P 500 is about 16.8 trillion. Current outstanding US treasuries held by the public is 12.4 Trillion. The S&P fell 50%+. The market value of treasuries didn't fall anywhere near 50%. Someone owns those debt instruments, and they add to that entities net worth.

Then advocate for government default during next recession. Notice, government debt is an entirely government enforced identity theft scheme on the rest of the population.

All of this is to say that comparing the percentage drop in value of a partial segment of the country to income is useless. Especially in the middle of an enormous deleveraging event. Incomes are not leveraged, market caps are

The rich are more leveraged than the working stiff. Deleveraging event is proportionally more injurious to the rich than to the working stiff. That's why government intervention to counter deleveraging has exacerbated the wealth disparity.

tatupu70 says

New Renter says

But if you have a dollar you can buy that something but if its $100 you can't.

OK--but I think you get the point. Prices falling 10% really doesn't make a hill of beans difference if you lose your job.

Prices fell far more than 10% in a recession. Think 50% or more for commodities, like in 2008. Your steady-state mindset is killing you. Losing a job means transitioning to a new job in the absence of government meddling incentivizing unemployment and preventing employment.

FortWayne says

Speaking of gas prices, what the hell is with the 4.67 / gallon lately? And Obama, got no balls to stand up to oil companies to get this addressed.

Hahahahaha,...ohhhh. You crack me up. Like the President can control the price of oil.

Ohh man. If only you had the slightest clue.

sbh says

What we are seeing now is the result of half a decade of FED QE. In case you don't remember, and it certainly doesn't feel like it, the crash took place more than half a decade ago. We are allegedly in recovery for half a decade now. LOL. How is that FED pumped recovery that you advocated so much half a decade ago feeling to you now?

He's desperate not to answer the question because it would violate the bible of demand presumption. Even with skyrocketing labor supply and crashing demand for it the working stiff is always "going to get a better deal" eventually if only because of crashing asset values. He may be broke and eating dirt but his standard of living is rising. This is why depression is such a beneficial thing: it gives everybody a much better deal on the things they aren't going to get.

What skyrocket labor supply are you talking about? Has the population been skyrocketing? The sensible worker is always assumed to be on the lookout for a better paying job. That's why hiring managers always prefer poaching workers who have current jobs over people with long unemployment, the latter of which is what government unemployment extensions produce.

"Broke and eat dirt" is what the whole country would be doing if wannabe fascist fools like yourself are allowed to "structure" other peoples lives, like your ilk did with dumping milk into the ocean and burning livestocks to maintain price levels when your saint FDR was in office.

sbh says

Brilliant. Before they suffer the virtues of a job killing depression they are yet to be fired so they should rejoice! This is the price destruction sweet spot and they better get some. Once they are laid off, well, it's still their fault because they aren't contributing to the destruction of wage value by taking a 25 cent an hour job working in pools of toxic waste.

The solution, clearly, is the virtuous deflationary destruction of the value of everything: labor and goods alike, such that nothing costs anything and nobody gets paid anything. This means that everyone is employed whether they earn or produce anything or not and hard money reigns. What could be more beautiful?

Are you so clueless as not to understand price discovery in economics? What the heck do you mean by "nothing costs anything and nobody gets paid anything"? Do you live in a vacuum? How would anything be produced if nobody is paid anything to produce them?

The entire Keynesian argument rests on the observation that Wages are more sticky than goods prices and capital asset prices during a depression. The purpose of Keynesian inflation is to reduce real wages via inflation so as to reduce the real wage level without the psychological shock of nominal wage reduction. In practice, as we have observed for decades, the real wages of the worker has been stolen by the banksters and other capital holders via centrally planned inflation.

corntrollio says

You are looking at stock indices themselves with dividend reinvested without taking into consideration transaction costs. Index funds are not the same as indices with dividends reinvested. Funds have transaction cost and tax cost when trying to track indices, which have very different stocks over a long period of time.

I've always gotten dividends reinvested for free. If you are not getting this, stop using your current shitty broker and find a better one. As for transaction costs when tracking indices, if you are buying a shitty index fund, you are buying a shitty index fund. This is almost a non-issue if you are buying low-fee funds from someone like Vanguard.

The 14,000 employees of Vanguard have to be paid by someone, and that would be you! On top of that, you are ignoring the counter-party risk: Vanguard itself.

According to Morning Star, the year to date SP500 gain is 2.56%, whereas the Vanguard500 YTD gain is only 1.76%. That is significant under-performance.

Reality says

The rich are more leveraged than the working stiff. Deleveraging event is proportionally more injurious to the rich than to the working stiff. That's why government intervention to counter deleveraging has exacerbated the wealth disparity.

This is 100% false. Median net worth is somewhere around of $80k. Median household debt is about $70k.

You really think the rich have leveraged almost 50% of their assets?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-21/median-household-debts-rise-as-percentage-owing-shrinks.html
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/06/12/chart-of-the-day-median-net-worth-1962-2010/

Someone owns all this debt. How many working stiffs own treasuries, corporate bonds, munis, CDOs, etc.

The rich OWN the debt. They are so unleveraged short term interest rates are zero and have been for years.

control point says

This is 100% false. Median net worth is somewhere around of $80k. Median household debt is about $70k.

You really think the rich have leveraged almost 50% of their assets?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-21/median-household-debts-rise-as-percentage-owing-shrinks.html

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/06/12/chart-of-the-day-median-net-worth-1962-2010/

$70k median household debt is only 140% of median household income. Most rich households certainly have total debt (not debt service interest payment) more than 140% of their annual income. Income/wage is what's more sticky during a recession than asset prices.

More importantly, you are forgetting the corporate entities that are mostly owned by the rich. They are where the rich take on vast leverage. The mega banks were found to be 50:1 leveraged in 2008.

Someone owns all this debt. How many working stiffs own treasuries, corporate bonds, munis, CDOs, etc.

The rich OWN the debt. They are so unleveraged short term interest rates are zero and have been for years.

Short term interest rates are set by the FED.

A lot of bonds are held by mutual funds and retirement funds. Banks and other financial institutions able to borrow at near-zero interest rate at the FED window also own a lot of bonds, and consequently become very highly leveraged in that pair of trades.

I wonder if the alt-A/sub prime people (50% of outstanding mortgages) could have refinanced anyway?

The Fed never could stimulate the growth of the economy. The proof of course is although interest rates have been zero %, GDP growth has only been 2%.

clambo says

The Fed never could stimulate the growth of the economy. The proof of course is although interest rates have been zero %, GDP growth has only been 2%.

The only Feds objecive was to save it's precious banks but now that GDP is actually in negative territory and the economy is now collapsing, Yellen is now attempting to stop this runaway freight train ....BRACE yourselves!

http://investmentwatchblog.com/recession-alert-u-s-economy-expands-by-just-0-1-in-first-quarter-mortgage-applications-sink-to-lowest-level-since-december-2000/

http://investmentwatchblog.com/10-reasons-why-the-economic-collapse-is-here/

Reality says

$70k median household debt is only 140% of median household income. Most rich households certainly have total debt (not debt service interest payment) more than 140% of their annual income. Income/wage is what's more sticky during a recession than asset prices.

Thtat's just silly. Rich households have exponentially more income producing assets bought with their debt. As long as the revenue continues to service the debt then the price of the asset is irrelevant. How is income more sticky in a recession? People in the median get laid off a lot earlier than the top executives. There's nothing sticky about zero income.

Reality says

The vast majority of workers are still working even in the onset of depression. Unemployed are the relatively small minority, and they would only stay unemployed by choice if the government is paying them to stay unemployed (like extended unemployment benefits) or banning them from working via laws like raised minimum wages.

Ridiculous. Why would they stay unemployed when new companies are offering them better opportunities than they had previously?? That's what you say happens, right?

Reality says

Nominal price go down, but purchasing power go up. You are forgetting the very rationale for Keynes' entire theory: wage is sticky, and more sticky than other goods and assets being re-priced.

Sure--if you are one of the lucky ones that doesn't lose their job, then your purchasing power might temporarily go up. I know that "I got mine, f&^* you" is your motto, but it's not a good way to run an economy.

Reality says

More importantly, you are forgetting the corporate entities that are mostly owned by the rich. They are where the rich take on vast leverage. The mega banks were found to be 50:1 leveraged in 2008.

Taking an equity position in a corporation does not mean you take on its leverage. You could buy $1k worth of Citigroup, and if they are leveraged 1000 to 1, it does not mean you have personally taken on $1M in debt.

Reality says

Short term interest rates are set by the FED.

A lot of bonds are held by mutual funds and retirement funds. Banks and other financial institutions able to borrow at near-zero interest rate at the FED window also own a lot of bonds, and consequently become very highly leveraged in that pair of trades.

As of the most current FED balance sheet, Lending to depository institutions, liquidity swaps, lending through TALF, & TALF itself all are less than $500 million. Maiden Lain I, II, III have balances of $2B. Lets conservatively say that, at most, lending to depository institutions in any form is currently less than $4B.

http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/quarterly_balance_sheet_developments_report_201403.pdf

The FED also holds $2.3T in Treasuries.

Compare that to the outstanding balance of $1.65T in Treasury Bills, and $12.6T in total Treasuries.

Treasuries held by the Banks themselves leverage by borrowing from the FED is a bucket in the Ocean.

The FED clearly has sufficient market size to affect interest rates, but to say that they set interest rates, even in the short term, while they own around 1/6th of the market for treasuries is a bit of a stretch. 5/6th of the price of treasuries is set by the market, after all.

clambo says

Michelle flying around the place having junkets, going to China, Spain, Africa with her mother and her daughters wasn't a job or diplomacy.

OK--perhaps you should detail what is and isn't a first lady's job then.

clambo says

Michelle flying around the place having junkets, going to China, Spain, Africa with her mother and her daughters wasn't a job or diplomacy.

If any publicity is good publicity,,,,this is the most anyones ever cared about anything basketball related, during the nba playoffs to boot

zzyzzx says

clambo says

Michelle flying around the place having junkets, going to China, Spain, Africa with her mother and her daughters wasn't a job or diplomacy.

I know you don't care about the truth, but as usual, this is another lie from teapartynation.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/photos/redflag.asp

Hey c'mon Tat. They're trying to feed the hate, and you're killing it with those damn pesky facts again.

clambo says

marcus like lots of lefty liberals can't resist getting nasty and name calling. Why?

Because I thought maybe you were capable of a little refection or introspection, and that even for a moment you might get insight into what criticizing Michelle's trips says about you.

Since you'll never see it, I'll say it again. You're a moronic asshole.

And btw, I never suggested her trips were or are about diplomacy.

Call it Crazy says

Tat... Do you REALLY think her flying to China with the kids and mom was done for diplomacy??? Really??

Do you think the Chinese really give a crap about her (or the US) for that matter??

Read the link I provided--it answers your questions pretty well.

Funny you calling Republicans racist when it's the Democrats who support racist legislation like Affirmative Action.

Call it Crazy says

Snopes..... Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha..

Maybe you should provide links from Mother Jones too....

lol--like I've said before. Truth has a liberal bias.

I have not seen any concrete evidence as to how many jobs ZIPR/QE created or saved. All we know is conflicting data that while unemployment rate went down, the labor force participation rate went down which indicates that 1 - population is getting older and 2 - people dropped out of labor force due to "discouragement." So to claim that without ZIRP/QE there would be massive unemployment and depression is at best a guess.

clambo says

I actually have some respect for her. She did what other females with no real talent, brains or looks do, she leveraged what she had into some fame and dough.

I prefer her to Michelle Obama, Michelle's champagne wishes and caviar dreams are paid for by you and me.

She is a gold digger, a slut, a whore, and a back stabber. It's hard to have any respect for a woman like that.
No billionaire is ever gonna trust her.