patrick.net

Interesting commentary by Charles Hugh Smith on this chart and subject:
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay14/small-biz5-14.html

"1. Barriers erected by cartels and the government. Cartels prosper by eliminating competition, and the easiest, cheapest way to restrict competition is to influence government to create regulatory barriers that raise the cost to levels no small business can afford. There are dozens of examples of regulations that do little to "protect the public" (the usual rationalization) whose primary intent and effect is to suppress competition."

Robert Sproul says

Cartels prosper by eliminating competition

Good point, a NY taxi license is 500k for one taxi.

"The Obama administration last week released a long-anticipated policy paper with an innocuous title: “Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values.” Valley executives, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs should read it for insight into why and how big government plans to engage the once-dynamic and lightly regulated high-tech industry. “It is the responsibility of government,” the report declares, “to ensure that transformative technologies are used fairly and employed in all areas where they can achieve public good.” That statement is a portent for increasing collisions between West Coast entrepreneurs and East Coast regulators."

http://www.city-journal.org/2014/cjc0509mm.html

"This is in fact the reason why no amount of data mining and statistical analysis will ever settle disputes in the field of economics. Keynesian economists will forever quote historical data from around the Great Depression as evidence of their crisis theories and policy recommendations, just as those who subscribe to monetary explanations of the business cycle (as we “Austrians” do) will forever cite the same or similar data in support of their theories. It is a common complaint that anything can be proven with statistics, and in the field of economic debate this seems to be true to a large degree. (I subscribe to the “Austrian” explanation of economic crises not because it fits the data better but because it fits the principles of economics, the laws of economics that allow us to analyse the cycle in the first place. A detailed analysis of Keynesian theories leads to conflicts and mismatches with some key economic principles. This makes this theory much less convincing.)"

"In the 1990s, Paul Krugman was known as a free-trade Keynesian. When financier Sir James Goldsmith published his anti-free trade pamphlet “The Trap” in 1994, Krugman criticized it and Krugman correctly pointed out that Sir James failed to grasp even the basics of trade. Appropriately, Krugman referred Goldsmith to Ricardo’s work and the great economists’ essential a priori insights as to the benefits of trade, benefits that must even accrue to allegedly “inferior” (less productive) trading partners (see my earlier point on Ricardo’s theorem). Ricardo, who had then already been dead for 170 years, did not have the better data but the better theory, as Krugman rightly acknowledged."

"Economic science versus natural science: The fundamental difference

“’All daffodils I have seen have been yellow, so the ones I have still to see will probably also be yellow’; refinements apart, the generalizations of natural science all rest on reasoning of this type, and none of them are certain, in the sense that we can see them to be necessarily true.” (Brand Blanshard, Reason and Analysis, 1962).

Natural scientists observe that A always coincides with B and make inferences from this “coincidence”. In analyzing inanimate objects and instinct-driven non-human animals, this has been a very powerful technique. Why? – Because in the “natural world” there appear to be many regularities and reasonably stable relationships that allow us to make these inferences. Or, to put it differently, the natural world does not know valuing, purposeful behavior, or “free will”. This changes fundamentally when we introduce human action."

"Humans appear to be unique in that they consciously act, that is, evaluate a situation, make choices, purposefully interfere with their surroundings, and consciously re-shape part of their environment. At the core of this process is the act of valuation, of preferring one thing to another. None of this is observable in non-human affairs. It is the unique feature of human action, and human action itself (not the consequences of it in the physical world) is the subject matter of economics. As Mises pointed out, one day we may be able to determine which chemical or physical processes cause a person to prefer A to B in a specific situation, but until we have done so there remains an unbridgeable gap between natural phenomena and the phenomena of human action, and they require fundamentally different techniques (this is called methodological dualism). When dealing with humans we have to assume an element of “free will”."

OK let's all pretend that it's NOT Obama's fault.

But now you REALLY have to ask your self...

"What in the fuck is he doing to fix it?"

Especially when he's so hell bent on having the middle class finance his grandiose visions of socialism. One would think, that he would recognize he needs a shit load more of entrepreneurs so he could tax more.

CaptainShuddup says

"What in the fuck is he doing to fix it?"

That is the problem, it's like FDR all over again.

“…the sciences of human action differ radically from the natural sciences. All authors eager to construct an epistemological system of the sciences of human action according to the pattern of the natural sciences err lamentably.

indigenous says

CaptainShuddup says

"What in the fuck is he doing to fix it?"

That is the problem, it's like FDR all over again.

Sometime the problem with what someone did, was what they didn't do.

When I say "what is he going to do" I don't mean give small businesses incentives or any unfair advantage.

All I expect is our government to make sure that large corporations
A)aren't given an unfair advantage over small busieness or any business for that matter.
B)make sure that large corporations aren't using their money, might and power to give them an ufair advantage that is detrimental to small business growth.

NOw please don't play stupid, it's only the very same fucking considerartion that OBama's hand picked Greenie bastard's got, when our Government stepped in and interviened when China tried to give us Cheap solar panels.

Well guess what?

We fucking GOT Chinese solar panels, OH YES WE DID.
Our Obama funded Solar panel companies CEO's raided their Tax funded company and drove them into bankrupcy, then formed new corporations that took full advantage of those cheap Chinese solar panels. Who now buys them, for pennies on the dollar over what they made them for. Then mark them up to the point. That now you can buy Solar panels for less than half of what they cost in 2008-2012. When we were making them. But still double over what the Chinese were offering them to the American public.

Large corporations who are in the FIX, got the savings, and passed the fucking on to the consumer.

That's what I mean when I say our government should "Do something".

Quit being obtuse.

CaptainShuddup says

When I say "what is he doing to" I don't mean give small busienss incintives or any unfair advantage.

That is small potatoes, I'm talking about the ACA, Frank Dodd, and TBTF

All this shit is a gargantuan yoke to the economy, directly and indirectly.

Fuck the small shit, I'm talking about nation ending shit.

indigenous says

Fuck the small shit, I'm talking about nation ending shit.

ACA is the first step of the transition from our truly disastrously rapacious national health system to one more like the rest of the world, with cost controls and more -- at least more effective, since prior to ACA gov't -per-capita expenditure on health was already more than many other nation's total expenditure -- government intervention.

ACA is far from "nation ending". Stop watching Fox, get out in the world, grow a fucking brain, and learn how to use it.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=Ak2

Gov't expense on health care / GDP.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=Ak4

private expense / GDP, showing it go from 9% in the 1990s to 11% when the economy tanked and the denominator melted away.

UK and Germany have 40% tax-to-GDP, many other eurosocialist states are pushing 50%. The US is down at 27%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP

the bottom line is simply we've given ourselves too many tax cuts and allowed the 1% and 0.1% to accumulate too much economic and political power now, power that conservatives are apparently honor-bound to defend to their dying breath.

We've also made colossal malinvestments in empire-building, conservative enterprises the GOP are trying to slow-walk from today, or at least not pay for via the higher taxes necessary to retire these trillion dollar debts run up since 2001.

We can argue bullshit all day and all week, but the bottom line is health care, education, real estate, legal services, finance, transportation -- all higher-order functionality of our economy -- has become rather completely fucked over by rent-seeking "professional" class and legislative partisan gridlock.

Compounding matters is our colossal trade deficit that is making our national fisc increasing unstable, as we are not even able to fully support ourselves, unlike the more successful export-oriented eurosocialist states.

Hell, even Greece is running a trade surplus now.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303775504579392520969915920

I will decide whether I'm pro or against this when I learn the details of the implementation. ;)

Bellingham Bill says

t least more effective, since prior to ACA gov't -per-capita expenditure on health was already more than many other nation's total expenditure -- government intervention.

What makes you think that gov't intervention did not cause the high per capita health care costs in the first place?

Bellingham Bill says

-- has become rather completely fucked over by rent-seeking.

The rent seeking is as much by public unions as by cronies.

Bellingham Bill says

Compounding matters is our colossal trade deficit that is making our national fisc increasing unstable, as we are not even able to fully support ourselves, unlike the more successful export-oriented eurosocialist states.

The trade deficit is not of too much consequence albeit when it runs too long in one direction, as with China as industries are lost, mercantilism is too much of a benefit to the government as with Germany and China at the expense of their people.

I might add that one of the problems with the trade deficit is that Milton Friedman created a floating exchange rate that automatically adds to the money supply. The target amount is 3%, imagine what that looks like compounded over 40 years. This means that there is plenty of inflated money to buy Chinese goods.

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street
If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet...

Tax Oxygen, Sunlight, Time, Space, and every element on the periodic table.

Trust me when I say that Tax and Spend and Outsourcing is going to work if we just give it enough time. Another couple of years, decades, centuries and Millenia will prove this soon enough.

justme says

Senator Mark DeSaulnier is a fool. What a royally stupid idea. The correct solution is HIGHER GASOLINE TAX.

The point is road financing, not punishing or promoting particular behaviors.

Everyone wants a free lunch, nobody wants to pay for it.

Vicente says

If you cut that stream drastically by driving hybrids or electrics

If the electrics use hydrogen in a fuel cell, then standard fuel taxes would apply.

If they use batteries, then aren't utilities already charging taxes?

Hybrids still use both gasoline and (taxed?) electricity (if they are plugins).

In all cases, it would seem that the idea of a per mile tax already exists by virtual of fuel consumption. Unless someone is running his car in neutral all day.

Vancouver sees the country’s biggest drop in new home prices

The price of new homes dipped in the twelve months to March, according to the New Housing Price index released by Statistics Canada May 8.

Year-over-year, prices were 1.1% lower than a year ago. This represents the biggest drop in the country compared with all other major cities. Ottawa-Gatineau came in second place with a decrease of 1.0%.

Victoria (down 0.9%), Edmonton (down 0.1%) and Charlottetown (down 0.4%) were the only other cities where prices dropped over the year.

http://www.biv.com/article/20140508/BIV0111/140509925/vancouver-sees-the-country-8217-s-biggest-drop-in-new-home-prices

Vancouver is the canary on the tar sands.

Heraclitusstudent says

Is this the decline of standards of living, or is this deliberately organized scarcity?

The best land is always claimed first.

Land value comes from more than the natural amenity of location or just its natural productivity (ag or mineral), it is largely driven by what commercial, governmental, and cultural amenities are accessible in the local community.

Canada, on the top half of the continent but with less population than California, has 60 acres per capita, but most of these acres have minimal community amenities.

shows ~6 major metro areas. That's where the land value is.

A very similar story applies for Australia, alas.

Tons of land, but you've always got to outbid somebody else for the good locations that are accessible to and thus provide a modern, 21st century standard of living.

This is the basic thesis of Henry George's Progress and Poverty. Discovering it last decade was a real a ha! moment, LOL.

John Bailo says

If they use batteries, then aren't utilities already charging taxes?

That isn't earmarked for ROADS. You want to tinker with the structure fine, but to data it's been fairly simple, tax the fuel to pay for the roads. Now it's getting complicated.

edvard2 says

There's a big difference between having 5.5 million 'worth' in assets versus being actually worth 5.5 million bucks. Nevertheless, different people have different things they invest in because they feel they are either safer, better, or more likely to generate income. ALL are risks. Real Estate is perhaps a bigger risk since its value is heavily tied to the overall job market and in particular the success of the middle class. Seeing as how the middle class has been stagnate for years with little evidence in any meaningful change, that is a consideration.

Yes, all are risks. I know you're biased toward stock while I'm biased toward real estate. Our debate will likely go no where so we will have to agree to disagree.

Have a wonderful Mother's Day weekend.

Share of Stimulus going to banks and lawyers, FOO = 100%.

Share of stimulus going to firms that can have ROI=0%.

Any questions?

Gotta love my partner. He rents that 4-bedroom house in Brazil for $1,150/month, and he's charging the visitors an average $100/night/room. He's almost fully booked. The "Beautiful and Spacious Suite" is his own bedroom. LOL! He's truly a business man.

https://www.airbnb.com/s?host_id=10133644

edvard2 says

Real Estate is perhaps a bigger risk since its value is heavily tied to the overall job market and in particular the success of the middle clas

Demographics is going to drive a lot. Unlike smartphones, we can't import land, and we're not building near enough new housing at any rate.

is the basic lay of the land, demographically from now to 2060. Blue is age 22-79, red is age 22-39, showing the induction of Gen Y (the echo boom) along with the original boomers, who are still going to occupy if not consume housing for the next few decades.

Our economy is a battle between rent-seekers, and landlords still have a very strong whip hand, even compared to doctors hospitals and corporate america overall.

If Coke raises prices, you can skip a week of Coke consumption or go store brand. You can't skip a week of paying the man for housing. Try it sometime at least.

Bellingham Bill says

Tons of land, but you've always got to outbid somebody else for the good locations

Now add in more warmth and rainfall from global warming plus off grid technologies like solar, hydrogen and greywater recycling.

You can go "off grid" all you want but if the nearest Trader Joes is more than an hour away, count me out.

Then again my big biz idea (the one thing I'd do if I had $10M of capital available) is a global Costco / Whole Foods / Trader Joes delivery service, since I do see reliance on weekly shopping to be the big pitfall of OTG life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_Joes

http://www.theflyingpig.com/tfp/shop.asp

I here by am officially changing my position on a future of George Jetson flying cars. At first I thought man was too stupid and needed protecting from such carnage. Interstate off ramps would like the aftermath of a Hornets nest meets soap suds.
But Fuck 'em, put rocket launchers and pules phaser lasers to vaporize bad drivers veering off in your direction.

But of course that would still wouldn't make us neither immune nor impervious to wonton lust of the Liberals who want to tax every one for shit, because it gives them a hardon.

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 Friday, May 9, 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

What I find so so amusing about the bulls patting themselves on the back about how well they "understand the market" is their ignorance of the acts of the Fed and the Treasury. Yes Ignorance...ignore...ance! How in denial can you be? How can you even CALL it a market at all when the Fed has been spending up to one billion dollars a day on failed mortgage-backed securities for not just a week or two, but continuously, day in and day out, for up to SIX years, now.

One of the reasons the crash is so apparently coming is that even the dovish Fed hold-outs are are now warning of the dangers of stopping the tapering of QE. 9 figure per day sums have been propping up your favorite. "markets" for years and years.

Explain to us one more time which fundamentals are going to replace the 85 Billion dollar per month goose, as it is slowly reduced to nothing but a fowl dinner for two.

When I hear an RE bull bragging about his winnings on the back of mind-bogglingly massive money printing is not a thought of "rats...I wish I'd been more optimistic about that market too", but rather. "yeah well you're not really welcome, but I'll say it to be the bigger man. You're welcome. But our children's future pain on your behalf is hardly my pleasure."

And I'll take a cup of the java...as long as it's "ice" coffee.

Jeez, I'm sure glad the upper classes have so many arguments.

deepcgi says

ignorance of the acts of the Fed and the Treasury. Yes Ignorance...ignore...ance!

The steam is running out of em big time. Market forces will work its way out from here on cuz federal debt is simply unsustainable.

http://www.concordcoalition.org/issues/indicators/projected-debt?gclid=CMq4iNOCo74CFYJqfgodPXQA6g

In California we pay 78 cents per gallon tax, that's enough.

So not only do you pay taxes on every gallon you buy, you pay extra taxes on every mile you drive. As usual the bums and welfare cases will be exempted. The same fools will then claim they want progressive taxation and would want the rich folks to pay their "fair share" and increase the per mile tax for people with money to a gazillion percent. Then the bums will demand a new car with the extra money-while living in Malibu in sec 8 housing- all the while screaming about income inequality and how evil the 1% are.

No country for hard working folks. This country is only for people who know how to work the system-weather you are a bum or a billionaire.

clambo says

that's enough.

It's never ENOUGH.

deepcgi says

spending up to one billion dollars a day on failed mortgage-backed securities

while there is a strong correlation between Fed MBS buys and home prices:

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=Amg

(MBS YOY growth is blue, Case Shiller is red)

"failure" has no meaning to the Fed, since it is the only entity in the dollar bloc that can print.

Plus you have to demonstrate how the Fed's MBS purchase have "failed" already; with prices well off the 2010 lows, no new borrower should be underwater now, even with a low-down FHA offering.

No doubt I have family a little outside Toronto. It's expensive up there. I don't know how they afford real estate. It's like Orange County Ca or San Francisco prices for everyone. Plus wages have stagnated like USA. I mean a movie costs you about $13 and that's couple years ago. It's plain expensive in Canada.

The Professor says

Buy now or be priced out FOREVER!

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=AmB

blue is money supply

red is case shiller

showing money supply has doubled since 2005, while prices are just about back to 2005 levels.

I can't see the future, but I do know everything is predicated on higher home valuations, the system is totally biased towards enforcing that trend.