patrick.net

From San Jose Merc

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_8748487?nclick_check=1

Couple's fuel bills nearing $1,200 a month

This is what happens when you commute from Los Banos. To everyone willing to commute - gas prices will not go down over long term. If the couple adds the 1200 to their mortgage, they could afford a house 200K more expensive.

Houses in East Bay have to be cheaper with the gas cost factored in. If your monthly commute cost is 250, you are just breaking even if you purchase a house that is 50K less.

Doesn't Baño mean bathroom in Spanish?

Lost Cause is so naive. :lol:

Human civilization is always characterized by people exploiting people, or the other way around.

I have no sympathy for that couple, did you notice they have a THIRD car? Also, why can't one of them quit his/her job and move to the city where the spouse works?

"Coffee at Starbucks is out," said Arleen. "And no stopping for Mexican takeout food on the way back home anymore."

She used to get her nails done regularly. Not anymore. Hair appointments are far less frequent.

The trips they used to take to Monterey, Santa Cruz or Reno are now memories. So too are Rick's golf outings to courses along the coast.

"There's 20 bucks for gas, $40 for green fees, 10 bucks for lunch," he said. "It adds up so fast. Pretty soon, it's near $100."

Yeah right, like I really feel bad for anyone who cannot do these things regularly any more...

I have no sympathy for anyone, but that couple is just comical.

UBS, FNM, FRE, NCC, WM, maybe LEH depending upon action.

A serious shit storm is coming.

Every cloud has a silver lining - even a mushroom-shaped one. ;)

At least your "shit storm" may mitigate the high prices farmers pay for fertilizer.

The best case scenario for the US to get out of the shit storm is:

1) more destruction of worldwide supply of food due to weather changes, epidemic, loss of land to industrialization, pollution etc. which is already happening.

2) A total collapse of fiat followed by a brief return to gold standard

We own the most agricultural land in the world, and the US government holds more gold than the next 9 central banks combined.

That will be a very possible way of the re-emergence of USD as the world's reserve currency. But before that, we must inflate away all our debt - particularly the debt obligation owed to foreign parties.

Good article, that one from The Economist.

OO, are you using the Perth Mint Certificate Program or are you doing something different? Do you deal through Euro Pacific?

In the long run, the US is infallible. It has vast agricultural resources and a strong military.

For now, we need to worry about the US Dinar.

Do you guys see the re-emergence of higher denomination FRN's? $100,000 or even $100,000,000,000?

due to weather changes

Thanks for not using the term *climate* change. ;)

Another decent one.

There is 1 guy on Zillow who posts some very useful links. I'll start trying to cross post those here when I can.

Peter P,

I am using PMDS and deal directly with Perth Mint, there is no reason to go through Euro Pacific. When I opened the PMDS account, the minimum entrance fee for non-Aussies was only $100K but now they jacked up the amount by 2.5x and I was luckily grandfathered in.

I have subscribed to John Mauldin's newsletter for a few years now. In general, he is more of an optimistic bear, and he tends to overestimate the pace of recovery, strength of the economy etc.

Expect worse.

He does seem optimistic. But I like to read reasonable optimists (because I am one) as a counter to the worst of the reasonable doom. The truth always lies in the middle.

The truth always lies in the middle.

Between Nirvana and Armageddon.

Speaking of the worst of the reasonable doom...

This post from HousingPanic is just too much. :lol:

http://housingpanic.blogspot.com/2008/03/vegas-home-for-sale-includes-hot-22.html#links

just me,
Um, yeah, the condo-owner's definition of break-even was...unusual. My personal understanding of "break-even" would involve being able to pay off the note when I decided to move out--plus maybe a coffee at Starbucks.

But here is her numbers breakdown for "break-even":
Appraisal at time of purchase: $370K that no one was willing to pay
Purchase price: $350K
Current, personal appraisal of condo: $370K
Expected "equity" after 4 years with no extra payments: $370K+

I know it doesn't make sense. But this is a sensible woman, otherwise, I tend to think that she was processed so quickly and efficiently that she never had an opportunity to think about it. And now she has so much at stake that thinking about it would be dangerous.

I am guessing there is a lot of that going around.

and a strong military.

good jobs program for "Bush Country", some tech diffusion into aerospace and comms, but otherwise what a colossal dead loss to the economy in terms of capital investment.

Eg: PV is running $5/W at the moment. For half the cost of the DOD budgets of the Bush years we could have purchased -- at retail, assuming the producion lines existed -- 480 Gigawatts worth of PV panels, a productive capacity (1TW/yr) capable of replacing HALF of our coal-fired electric generation (saving the coal for more productive industrial uses rather than powering the swamp coolers of the American SE).

But that would be an intelligent use of capital and not what this country is about, anymore.

(sorry, 1 TkWhr/yr in my above)

Without a strong military, our enemies will just come in and take the fruits of whatever "intelligent use of capital" we have.

Without a strong military, our enemies will just come in and take the fruits of whatever “intelligent use of capital” we have.

$250B/yr would still buy us a "strong" military. Outspending the rest of the world combined on "defense" is fiscally insane.

tachikaze,

Good point, although undoubtedly the Bushies would have found a way of giving away the 480GW to some rich friends and then make us pay for it.

Note: With 300M inhabitants, the above is ~1.5kW continuously for every man/woman/child in the country. Not bad, although it couldn't cover the energy wasted in transportation.

Eliza,

So what she meant was break-even on nominal price, when not taking the expense of the payments into account. New math, indeed.

Randy H,

How about posting occasionally also some links to the most fun threads at Zillow? I don't follow them much because it is too much work to find the relevant ones.

I just read an older thread with a nice shootout between you and "dnesemeier". Good work.

Without a strong military, our enemies will just come in and take the fruits of whatever “intelligent use of capital” we have.

The same reason we need a Fed and a central bank. Because "they" have one. Without a central bank actually run by people (as opposed to a programmatic central banking function), our "allies" and enemies alike can just take the fruits of our economy by manipulating global real interest rates. Imagine a future where every commodity export country exports the full weight of their petrodollar inflation right back to us.

$250B/yr would still buy us a “strong” military. Outspending the rest of the world combined on “defense” is fiscally insane.

This is nonsense. We are spending less on the military than Belarus or Ethiopia.

http://www.nationalsummary.com/Articles/Military/military__military_too_expensive.htm

The same reason we need a Fed and a central bank.

Necessary evil, I guess.

$250B/yr would still buy us a “strong” military.

I counter that $25/year will buy us a good welfare program.

It should pay for the hosting of a web page:

GO WORK!

Well when the going gets tough, the tough get going - as in "I quit".

www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/washington/31cnd-jackson.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

HUD secretary Johnson just quit. He cites "wanting to spend more time with his family", and took no questions concerning his being investigated for corrupt practices.

"federal authorities were investigating whether he had given lucrative housing contracts in the Virgin Islands and New Orleans to friends."

"accusations that Mr. Jackson had threatened to withdraw federal aid from the Philadelphia Housing Authority after its president refused to turn over a $2 million property to a politically connected developer. "

Coming this close to the election, I'm sure that the Dems in Congress will fillibuster ANY nominee Bush puts up, so that during our housing crisis there will be NO HUD secretary.

DennisN,

Why IS IT I get the impression there is more going on in Washington over the weekend than there is during the week!? With all the TAF/TSLF, Bear Stearns, cabinet member resignations and Fed over-haul announcements taking place behind closed doors after hours, is this the new standard?

Peter P,

Thanks for the National Summary link. It's good to be reminded of that periodically. Protestors would probably be even more surprised to learn that on a micro-level individual division/dept's operate on bare-bones budgets.

I ran the hangar deck division on a helo-carrier and our budget was around $3,000 per quarter for cleaning supplies, pens, paper etc. Not exactly Fat City?

ran the hangar deck division on a helo-carrier and our budget was around $3,000 per quarter for cleaning supplies, pens, paper

What? That implies that sailors clean up after themselves and are able to read and write.

Coming this close to the election, I’m sure that the Dems in Congress will fillibuster ANY nominee Bush puts up, so that during our housing crisis there will be NO HUD secretary.

Good point. That turns what should be a simple majority Senate confirmation into a supermajority needed to close the filibuster.

Headset,

LOL! Yeah and that included toilet paper! I just think the avg. American (who probably only grumbles to self and is not an active protester) would be surprised at how little trickles down to the rank and file.

I also suspect they don't realize that the avg. junior officer is expected to be a career counselor/marriage counselor/'financial planner', none of which s/he is paid for.

The filibuster stinks.

The Constitution sets out a simple majority rule for most legislation, and strictly sets out the few exceptional cases requiring 2/3 majority (e.g. override veto, Constitutional amendment). The Constitution also permits the House and Senate to "set their own rules".

The filibuster is merely a "rule", and proper construction of the Constitution would find that a mere "rule" cannot trump the Constitution.

The filibuster was originally intended for use in legislation, NOT confirmation of appointees. In the case of legislation, it permitted a few legislators to "hold out for an amendment" to a pending bill. But in the case of confirmation of appointees, it has no such utility. You can't "amend" a human being. With appointees, it's simply either "YES" or "NO" on them.

RE: financial planner

Is the junior officer also a loan broker? :)

I would take any unfiltered military budget numbers coming from a right-wing site with a grain of salt. There's a ton of military spending that's categorized as "off-budget" or "supplemental", such as Iraq/Afganistan/WOT spending. There's also a lot of military spending that gets listed under other non-Defense budget categories, such as as Homeland Security, Energy (nuclear warhead stockpiles, Star Wars research, etc.).

I am not against the U.S. having a strong military or even boosting spending on benefits & compensation for front line troops and combat veterans, who have been getting the short end of the stick for decades. The problem is, most of our current spending is *not* going to the troops. It's going to politically powerful MIC companies like Blackwater and Halliburton, which are largely unregulated quasi-government agencies, and have become bywords for government waste, fraud and corruption.

Aside from institutional corruption, another problem with chronically high levels of military spending (even during times of relative peace) is, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

At least in the Royal Navy junior officers get "rum, sodomy, and the lash". ;)