patrick.net

RayAmerica says

Question for Liberals: if a known terrorist knew a city in the USA was soon to be nuked, would you be in favor of …. horrors I know … water boarding to find out the who, what & where’s? Or do we sit by and just let it happen??

Like I said. It's a false choice. Water boarding doesn't work.

Just for the record: I'm AGAINST water boarding terrorists, but if there's a slight chance it would help Liberals think, I'd be worth trying it on them.

According to the news today the Christmas day wanna-be airline bomber is talking again. You think it's because they got around to torturing him? Or maybe the psy ops worked, as has been decided by the military long before 9/11, Jack Bauer, and Cheney.

RayAmerica says

Question for Liberals: if a known terrorist knew a city in the USA was soon to be nuked, would you be in favor of …. horrors I know … water boarding to find out the who, what & where’s? Or do we sit by and just let it happen??

You mean like 911, when the president was briefed about the impending danger yet nothing was done? Or was that okay, because he was a "conservative?" The world isn't black & white. While ya'll waste your time affixing labels to people you don't understand and hate because they believe differently than you, people who aren't considered to be liberals or conservatives continue to commit horrible acts of aggression & terrorism. But I guess it's okay, 'cause they aren't liberals. Nuke the gay baby liberal whales for jesus. yep, that'll do it.

ErikK says

RayAmerica says Question for Liberals: if a known terrorist knew a city in the USA was soon to be nuked, would you be in favor of …. horrors I know … water boarding to find out the who, what & where’s? Or do we sit by and just let it happen?? You mean like 911, when the president was briefed about the impending danger yet nothing was done? Or was that okay, because he was a “conservative?” The world isn’t black & white. While ya’ll waste your time affixing labels to people you don’t understand and hate because they believe differently than you, people who aren’t considered to be liberals or conservatives continue to commit horrible acts of aggression & terrorism. But I guess it’s okay, ’cause they aren’t liberals. Nuke the gay baby liberal whales for jesus. yep, that’ll do it.

So what you're really saying is that you'd rather see an entire U.S. city destroyed by a terrorist nuke than you would seeing a terrorist get a little wet. As far a "gay baby liberal whales" you really should take your meds before posting.

Who needs parking anyways? We're all going to be riding Obama Trains to Nowheresville.

Well where will I park my Unicorn fart powered Egg, they made me trade in my 4X Canyonaro for?

staynumz, I had a longish post to write in here but I really can't be bothered so I'll cut to the chase: I think you're an idiot. Thats rude I know, pardon me, but I really don't see any other way to cut it. "Libs dont like “cheap” parking." "Nothing like taking some freedoms away from the citizens." What are you even talking about? What does that even mean? Do you even have any idea yourself? What do you think is happening in CA right now, budget-wise? And where do you think the money for your police and firemen is going to come from, pixie dust? And I just have to interject here with an observation that will be news to no one, and I don't mean to wear the high hat but I really am so tired of knee jerk reactions to news and ideas communicated in ways that describe absolutely nothing and have no context whatsoever to anything outside of communicating the reactor's personal preference of the moment. Politics isn't anything other than a team sport for some of you people anymore. The issues don't matter, beyond an immediate gut response based on simple selfishness ("ugh, don't like that. It bad, it evil, EVIL. Ugh."), and any action taken by one particular party or other is prejudged to be either bad or good depending on the association with one party or the other. - And: "Obama Trains to Nowheresville." And what the hell does THAT even mean? I think it means absolutely nothing, except you're trying in some awkward way to tell us you're one more person who doesn't like the current gov, for... some reason or other that I'm sure you don't even know, beyond the fact that you probably think (and I'm guessing here so forgive me) of yourself as a conservative free thinker. Pfft. Can't write more here. Too long already.

#include "comment-666630.inc" If we're going to get into the politics of it like Staynumz wants, Republicans are traditionally business owners, and business owners love externalities like government-provided free parking for their customers, efficient public roads that bring their customers to them, and public buses for their employees to come to work on. But iF you want my opinion on this, I look at the larger problem, with a Georgist analysis of where is the land value and who is pocketing it, and the belief that good government can do much good, and bad government can do much bad. The whole thing about casual traffic causing excess congestion is stupid, really. The roads are built to attempt to handle rush hour, and people soon learn to avoid peaks for casual car use. Yeay freedom. If government wants to push people to use the commons more wisely, it should first work to provide those public transit resources, not just blindly tax and destroy parking infrastructure without creating the alternative transit utopia first. Where I am buses run every 30 minutes. This is retarded. 10 minutes should be the standard. But poor people don't have any power in this system so /they/ get the 2 hour commute no matter the time of day. I guess the theory with this is if more normal people are incented to take mass transit then it will both have the ridership and the clout to get more money and investment. I lived for 8 years in Tokyo without a car (parking there IS expensive), I really can't say my freedom was impacted on the whole. Having a totally walkable city gives you a different kind of freedom. Freedom from car payments, fill up costs. Then again I was in my 20s, healthy, with a bicycle; plus, the difficulty of raising more than 1 kid at a time in Tokyo is one of the main reasons why they have so few kids. The public policy issues here are subtle. Doctrinaire libertarians might disagree, but I think we'd be a better nation if we could walk and take the bus more. For me, to get there from here is the question. The free market itself isn't going to get us there, it just seeks profit maximation, which is far, far from what was described in the general welfare clause of the Constitution.

Stopping the crackdown on legal grow ops here in California. Yeay, I think.

Dialing down the religious nut nonsense. Yeay!.

Not getting into a war, even a war of words, with Iran. Yeay!

Doing the Nixonian thing and drawing us down out of the wars he was presented with. Yeay!

Moving to allow open homos in the military . . . Yeay (if you're a homophobe just think of all the lesbians who'll be able to serve. Warms your cold little heart a little, no?)

Moving to reinstate Clintonian taxes on the top 5% or so . . . BIG YEAY!
(I thought the Bush tax cuts sorta made sense for the lower 3 brackets, but the immense top bracket cut was just offensive).

We're not out of the woods and I don't really have much trust that the American people will either be in better shape this November, November 2012, or particularly willing to fight for a centrist Dem like Obama.

~40% of the country is socially conservative. For anything to get done they have to be triangulated into the policy-making.

i dont think house price will sky rocket if there is an inflation.

yes, government is printing money now. but it does not mean every one is getting a raise.

also, the price of food, cloth and some other essential product's prices will increase.

the current housing situation is that some people were not supposed to be home owners. they borrowed above their meaning.

when inflation is happening, people, who are not supposed to be home owners, will think about how to survive first.

after all, the supply is greater than demand.

inflation =/= pay raise, at least for main street

"it seems pretty obvious that the government is hell bent on propping home prices up… "

This is a given, no? If you were in government, wouldn't you do the same?

From the Fed's point of view (humor me that the Fed is part of the government), if that $5T of net borrowing 2001-2008 went poof, things would be very very bad for a very long time.

From any politician's point of view, a) they personally own a lot of property b) 60%+ of the population owns c) renters don't vote anyway, nor are they campaign contributors.

Looking at shadowstats.com, it appears the money supply has gone through the roof recently.

Actually, if you read your own link, you'd read things like:

"the broad money supply now is in monthly decline, soon to be year-to-year decline"

It's a complicated picture. The major mistakes were committed 2002-2007, as M3 went from $8 to $14T in a very short time.

We exported the inflation to our trading partners who either recycled these dollars into GSE bonds, parked them in treasuries (debt held by foreigners has risen from $1.2T in 2003 to $3.6T now), or just have really big dollar balances in their sovereign wealth checking accounts.

LandShark says

is that some people were not supposed to be home owners

This line of thinking simply makes no sense to me given there are 20M vacant homes right now. The only reason homes are expensive is that we bid them up to the point of unaffordability, we tax improvements at the same rate as land (disincenting higher density housing), plus we encourage parasitical capital to buy-to-let single-family housing, an evil practice that should be taxed sufficiently to break its business model. But I digress.

I agree with LandShark above that without wage inflation there can be no housing inflation, unless they "turn the machines back on" by changing the rules of the buying game -- 2% FHA loans, turning the mortgage tax deduction into a straight credit (even typing that out gives me the shivers).

The general theory, and history, is that a rising cost of living will result in rising wages. But that history is from a pre-globalized national economy, where unions were still strong, the capitalist class had actual depreciating fixed capital (production lines, mills, etc) that needed to be running regardless of wage cost, demographics were favorable for economic growth, plenty of land was available to sprawl, 30 years of postwar bliss had resulted in relative economic strength, the Internet hadn't connected India to our economy, and the Maoists were busy shooting their intelligentsia and otherwise engaging in anarchy and not doing our manufacturing for us for pennies an hour.

I don't know how this is going to end. My general belief basis is that the debt overextension will result in repeating Japan's long, unpretty decline from 1990 to 2003 or so. But we've got a baby boom generation turning 55 now, 10 years they're going to be retiring (or so they hope). This is going to get ugly if we don't get our house in order first.

The chart above doesn't tell the whole story. If you put all the Panics of 18xx and recessions and stuff as overlays you'd see that history from 1800 to 1910 was completely pocked with collapse, inflationary expansion, and collapse. It really wasn't a pretty picture, and that's *with* half the continent's wealth almost free for the taking.

"Consumer Inflation" was minimal because everybody was a producer first not a consumer (ie. we had a producer-centered economy not a consumer-centered economy). If anything, that graph is a graph of land demand vs. supply.

To answer your question, I think the best bet is to develop portable wealth-creation skills. Houses CANNOT go above affordability in the long run. It is true that if we see household wage inflation like the 1970s rents & home prices might take another step up, but my game is to not become too attached to this country as a permanent abode. There are better places to live, if you can make a living there.

Well... which poop is less stinky, elepant crap or donkey crap? Now that's the hard question.

I don't know what the hell the brother has been doing so far, but I know I never liked to see a bimbo scrubing old man's back.

I would have taken Ron Paul more seriously in the Primaries.

IMO he was trying to destroy parts of America that makes America great.
In retrospect, I realize now, those very things have already been Hijacked by both parties and adulterated to do their bidding of cheating and defrauding the Americans out of trillions of dollars. What good is Government reform when they are bigger crooks, than the people you expect them to protect you from?

Stay-- I don't even know what kind of car you drive. Why do you think I hate it?

Troy says

My general belief basis is that the debt overextension will result in repeating Japan’s long, unpretty decline from 1990 to 2003 or so.

I agree. I can't prove it, but it sure feels like we're totally retracing Japan's steps. I'd like to see a chart of their money supply. They had a yet bigger bubble than ours and just had property deflation for 15 years. So believe it or not, cash may be the best thing to have for a while.

Troy says

I think the best bet is to develop portable wealth-creation skills.

And I agree there too. Develop skills that are in demand, and teach your children to do that too. That's always a good investment.

The problem with your theorem is this:

IF THE TREE FALLS IN THE WOODS AND NOBODY HEARS IT DID IT MAKE A SOUND?

All of the "printing" has gone to prop up bank balance sheets and that fake money never really existed because it wasn't spent in the "real economy" outside of finance.

We are in deflation. It may be a small number. We may even be bouncing around zero. But we are certainly not in inflation for the meaning of the average individual. Is your paycheck going up? Mine isn't, it's gone down.

If you are looking for ways to "come out ahead" well just do what everyone else does. Save your money and get by. Learn some new skills. There are no TRICKS that are going to save you Joe Schmoe and make you a millionaire while you neighbors wallow in filth and fight over table scraps. I find this sort of discussion usually devolves down to some form of "how can I do some trickery with investing/money in a NON-PRODUCTIVE MANNER to profit". Isn't that the sort of thinking that landed us in the soup?

Yes we all like the idea of buying gold now at $1K per ounce and patting ourselves on the back when it goes to $10K in future. However if that is what is going to happen, you are WAY at the back of the line compared to the rich elite who are first in that soup line. You want a simple way to get rich in future, use your funds to start a FINANCIAL FRAUD COMPANY and sit back and soak up overhead. Or just marry rich.

Well, tell me what kind of car you drive. Maybe that will help me understand the problem.

E-man says

@ Vicente,
I applaud you. I got a good laugh from reading your comments, too.

Just out of curiousity, could you tell what made you laugh?

If you strictly inflation hedge I would easily pick real estate over gold.
There's no guarantees we'll have inflation but
if youre really conservative when you buy then it wont matter if prices go up, down, inflation, deflation.

you'll be able to ride out any of those scenarios.

Except that real estate has yearly taxes and upkeep, so you're losing a significant percentage per year. Also, if you're using leverage (aka a mortgage), then real estate also has an interest cost per year. Inflation would need to be astronomical for you to hold your ground, once you incorporate all the costs.

I dont kow why they want to herd us onto buses and away from the freedom to move about at will. Can you explain it to me? On page 830 of the Liberal Cabal Guide, they say it's to force you to spend time with disadvantaged minorities you'd not otherwise interact with except in a patron-server relationship. Good for you to gain some empathy, and good for them to gain some social skills and probity. I joke, but in Japan the trains are something of a good social equalizer and mixer. Everyone's middle class on the train. It's just one part of the puzzle, really. Having walkable cities would reduce the obesity epidemic, and also reduce energy consumption, ie GDP per kwh. They'd also be more livable. But to get there from here we have to crack some eggs. As I said, the free market is path-dependent and only seeks to find the next local maxima, it can't get to the global maxima of the system without extra-market (ie governmental) help.

Here's what to look for regarding inflation:

1. The Fed gives every man woman and child in this country 100,000 dollars. (hyperinflation)--highly unlikely
2. Suspension of all taxes, or a 2 year tax holiday. (mild inflation)---unlikely
3. Like Troy says, 2% 50 year loans with tax rebates attached, and minimal or no down payments required, all backed by the government. (moderate inflation) --- a likely scenario.
4. Continuation of the Fed's current policies. (mild, persistent deflation) --- more likely scenario.
5. Government (Fed) chooses a Lassiez-Fair approach. (immediate major deflation, followed by stabilization) --very unlikely

The most important thing is that inflation starts when people have more money. When is this? I don't even see this on the horizon, let alone in the immediate future. In '02 - '05, inflation was rampant. People everywhere were living off their home equity. Credit was easily available. Everyone could buy a house. Everyone could afford a new car or two, a great vacation, people spent money on goods and services without blinking. Vegas was always crowded (on weekends, some high end casino's minimum table bets were $25). Anyways, those are a few examples. There are many more. Inflation is not happening now or soon. btw, inflation was massive in those years and gold went up about 200 bucks.

The word "libs" is definitely intended to be impolite, lacking in good will. So it's now on the list of impolite words that gets things into moderation.

toothfairy says

If you strictly inflation hedge I would easily pick real estate over gold.

There’s no guarantees we’ll have inflation but

if youre really conservative when you buy then it wont matter if prices go up, down, inflation, deflation.
you’ll be able to ride out any of those scenarios.

Thanks for props others!

Where I am going to disagree with this line of thinking is "inflation hedge". Gold at least has the advantage it doesn't cost you anything to own I suppose. Unlike real estate which has property taxes and upkeep, etc.

TPTB presume that inflation is desirable AND that we will have it back any time soon. The mucky-mucks like you to think they will have things right as rain 6 months from now, and they've been saying that for how many years now?

Maybe Captain Smith of the Titanic has a wheel in his hands but it's already too late. Or maybe the wheel isn't even connected to anything and they are just putting on a brave face. Central bankers like to jawbone inflation as inevitable and desirable BECAUSE IT BENEFITS THE BANKS to keep your money in circulation every second of every day. For you to SAVE any money is something they abhor, they refer to a "savings glut" like it's a disgusting perverted tendency among the peasants they must correct.

We are unlikely to see anything like normal before 2014, so ride it out until then. I don't see any form of "hedging" for inflation/deflation that makes any sense to me. I like cash. Unless we go Mad Max then all bets are off anyhow.

The Middle Class has been impoverished by a policy that enriches the banks by inflating housing. Even as our wages have stagnated, housing has taken a gradually larger share of that.

Vicente, I have noticed the exact same phenomenon in the costs of college education. Once "low cost" student loans became available, the price of tuition went through the roof. Tuition has climbed far sharper than inflation in every year for most of the past two decades. At the same time, students get the ultimate teaser rate from Uncle Sam---you don't have to pay us back until you graduate and hit it big!

Student debt now occupies a huge percentage of debt for people under 30. Today it's almost impossible for even middle class Americans to get through school without incurring student debt. The banks and government have firmly entrenched themselves into the education framework, with a set of artificial market conditions so powerful that kids can't say no. The lenders have a government guarantee, the interest rate is low and the teaser period is phenomenal, the client base is huge and the marketing is blasted at that client base 24/7. Students also get the loan pitch from an education institution that they otherwise trust and respect.

The government and lenders have actually pulled in a lot of kids who would otherwise wait a year or two, get a job to build up a headstart on tuition and otherwise approach the problem rationally. In short, the Middle Class is also impoverished by a policy that enriches the lenders by inflating tuition.

Brand says

Vicente, I have noticed the exact same phenomenon in the costs of college education. Once “low cost” student loans became available, the price of tuition went through the roof.

Banksters are clearly at the back of this I think, not the colleges. Banksters ultimately want more for themselves and less for us and any way in which they can think to give you an attractive long-term loan that nets them decades of indentured servitude they will do it. College tuition is simple a response to that "easy money" somewhat like housing although in less grand a scale. I went through school with some money from parents and also working sporadically. I see kids in college today doing a slow tour but having to work a LOT to make it through so yes it is harder.

Medical costs have also gone up far faster than inflation, is that due to poor banking policy? Perhaps not.

It doesn't explain everything but the Bubble Economy and Greenspan-enabled INDEBTED LIFE is a the back of a lot of the mess we are in.

When I was finishing up college in the 80's I got my first credit card and spent too much. It took me a year or two after college to dig out of that hole and I said never again and I haven't had any sustained periods since then where I've paid interest to anyone. I like the quote "poor people pay interest, rich people earn it." If you are paying interest on something that is not a profit-making enterprise, you are a gullible peasant plain and simple.

The banksters, government and schools are all in that scheme together. The schools benefit from the huge increase in demand, which allows them to raise prices for arguably the same services. The lenders get a client base and steady payments, with the added bonus that the debt is tough to discharge in bankruptcy. The government ties it all together with guarantees, laws and subsidies.

I'm not as versed in medical costs, so I really can't comment there beyond idle speculation.

HOA is $1,400/ month. ("hot water and trash included") Ouch. 110 units in the complex. Double-Ouch. What do they do with 110 x $1400 = $154k each month? Maybe not all units are charged the same HOA fee. P.S.: sorry, I just now noticed the HOA comment in the original post.

I'd vote for Obama again. But the system is so bogged down that it almost doesn't matter.

"Lots of people seem to think gold / silver is the way to go, but I’ll be damned if I pay $1000+ for an ounce of useless metal."

USD is also useless. For example, you can't eat it. With gold, you can fill your teeth with it, or make your wife a nice necklace. And gold will outlive every home on the face of this planet. Also, if you walk around with gold bars in your pocket and someone tries to rob you, you can hit them over the head with it. Try that with cash.

"If the whole goal of the gov’t is to boost home prices, should I run out and buy someones forclosure?"

The goal of government was to avoid a depression. In that case, you should have placed all of your money in the stock market back in '07.

Brand,

You wrote, "Today it’s almost impossible for even middle class Americans to get through school without incurring student debt."

I agree, since so many of those middle class American kids from middle class families with middle class second parent working in a middle class career to help pay for middle class childcare bills and middle class "get ahead" preschool and to defray cost of middle class 2500+ sq ft home with middle class AC and middle class plasma TV in "higher test score" middle class school district (or else the middle class private school with middle class private school tuition) with middle class tutoring and middle class private lessons, with middle class SUV (with middle class SUV payments) among the middle class multi-vehicles also with middle class payments in the driveway, occasional (ie, more than "once in a lifetime") middle class trips to middle class Disney World often on middle class flights, and middle class trips snowboarding trips to middle class Tahoe, middle class dining out and various and sundry middle class expenses to keep up middle class appearances, and middle class credit card bills.

Yep, our middle class Entitlement middle class way of middle class life has left us with middle class borrowing for middle class tutition at middle class universities. Are you middle class surprised?

So here's a notion for you Inflation Believers.... what if it's 2 decades (or more) of deflation? Impossible you say? Look at Japan.

Mis-informed Noah building your boat so early that it dry-rots and termites eat it, and it is useless when flood finally arrives.

Vicente says

The Middle Class has been impoverished by a policy that enriches the banks by inflating housing. Even as our wages have stagnated, housing has taken a gradually larger share of that.

Vicente! about when do you think the banks started this policy of inflating home prices ? And how did they manage to convince buyers that a $200K should really be worth $600K.

or was it more likely some older family member, even a parent convinced their children buy a home in California no matter what the price is ? Uncle Henry always said real estate was and is a sure bet!

I see the Easy Credit problem plainly apparent in the 80's. I'm sure someone else is more versed in the actual history but I know that mid 80's is when I noticed credit card companies bracketing the student center convincing undergrads to take on their cards. Handing out cards along with some schwag to seal the deal on their future debt obligation. The Credit Card industry is one of their better long-term scams. I see it as part of the greater problem. Banks want to convince you "how much a month" is all that matters, and please ignore this yoke we are placing around your neck.....

Student loans, car loans, credit cards, NINJA loans for house, it's all part of the same thing.

To the way of thinking of bankers, they were making a better life "affordable", and just oh-so-coincidentally it lined their pockets as well. They rationalize behavior that is ultimately destructive to society because they must.

Uncle Henry repeats this mantra about "building equity" because everyone else does. One of my neighbor too talks of the great importance of BUILDING EQUITY, makes it sounds like it's the most important thing there is even more than saving money or investing. I doubt he could explain rationally why this is so, and I'm damned if I know why so many people are programmed to believe it's critical. My feeling is the banks and real-estate agents work in partnership to plant this meme and reinforce it at every turn, just like diamond cartel has implanted the idea of "engagement diamond" in the last century when it didn't exist before.

If I could vote again, I'd have voted for McCain.

Not because I like him.

I'd have voted for him because right now we'd be in the exact same position, and it would show all of these fake "fiscal conservatives" for what they really are -- people who just want to maintain the status quo.

And how did they manage to convince buyers that a $200K should really be worth $600K.

I, too, find this fascinating. Suggestion is a powerful thing, especially when it is complementary to the notion of equity wealth/free money. People who *want* to believe are the easiest to convince, and who wouldn't want to believe they had an ATM where their house used to sit? That's why it has become etched into the present-day public mindset that 250K, which 9 or 10 years ago afforded one a veritable spread in most parts of the country, is somehow now the "low end" of housing. I still see places on Zillow that sold for 190 in 2000 that are assessed at almost 350K. Suggestion.

Things will be back to normal (or something approximating it) when the public buys houses/property for one of three reasons:

Tired of the vacillation often inherent with renting
They really love a particular place for its design
They are at a point where it makes more financial sense to buy and they don't mind constant upkeep or being locked in to one region

There are so many more interesting and even gratifying pits to throw your money into, that I could never get into the whole investment angle of real estate, even when friends of mine were hammering it into me during the bubble. It seems like so many other smash-n-grab ventures that the chronically unimaginative seek out to try and magnify their lots in life rather than slowly building something from nothing. In hindsight, I likely could have played hot potato even briefly and made out like a bandit. But the pangs of regret are just not there. It just seemed so...cheap and larcenist. So lame. It still does, even with Uncle Sam's vehement stamp of approval. Vicente has the right idea. Invest in some upstart. Even if you have your ass handed back to you, it will be far more enriching than gambling.

I agree that the crap was going to hit the fan no matter who was in office. Bush's bailout was a bad omen. But, Bush is not a fiscal coservative.

Allowing the reduction of money lending standards to a point where an illegal invader from mexico can sign for a $300K "stated income" loan to over-pay for some stucco-wrapped POS started this garbage .. and NONE of us (conservos or libs or xxxxxx) would have ever voted for that. Not one. That is the vote we needed.

Where is Code Pink?

Here's a cartoon I like that illustrates my point about Quantitative Easing:

The ultimate point of all this Fed Money being shoveled out to the big banks, is that it will "trickle down" to the citizens. How did that "trickle down" theory work out the last few decades? Seems like at best a light mist now and then.

Similarly I don't see the mechanism for massive inflation, or ANY inflation really. If Bernanke mailed everyone a check for $50K sure we'd have inflation tomorrow, but that's not what they are doing. Everything they do seems targetted in fact at making sure it NEVER makes it into the hands of the peasants, as that might make it seem like a DOLE or something I guess. I dunno it's just watching those supposed "money supply" figures/charts seems meaningless because the money they "print" has no appreciable velocity. At best it's propping up a shrinking credit market during the Great Deleveraging.