ragerunner

Even with a budget impasse fixed or kicked down the road, look at what Dimon has to say about the bond market. It's going to turn on the US sooner than later. Dimon Says Bond Market Turn Assured on Budget Impasse "He was asked today whether bond markets would turn against the U.S., which has been able to borrow at near-record-low rates. “I can’t honestly tell you I know it’s going to be two years or five years, but it will happen,” Dimon said. “It is a matter of time and the United States can’t borrow indefinitely.” Dimon joins Bill Gross, manager of the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., in raising alarms about the effects of government debt on bond rates." http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-10/dimon-says-bond-markets-to-spurn-u-s-if-deficit-is-unresolved.html

China, like most have more than their share of problems. One of the reason the US has been able to continue it current debt binge is because most of the big boys, Europe, Japan, etc. are in the same mess.

This has been discussed in the past, but if the US ever loses its reserve status the game is up. China's State Press Calls for 'Building a de-Americanized World' “It is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world.” As nations around the world fret over the U.S. budget impasse, that is the conclusion of a not-so-subtle commentary published by China’s official Xinhua News Agency on Oct. 14. Key among its proposals: the creation of a new international reserve currency to replace the present reliance on U.S. dollars, a necessary step to prevent American bumbling from further afflicting the world, the commentary suggests. “The cyclical stagnation in Washington for a viable bipartisan solution over a federal budget and an approval for raising the debt ceiling has again left many nations’ tremendous dollar assets in jeopardy and the international community highly agonized,” says Xinhua. “The world is still crawling its way out of an economic disaster thanks to the voracious Wall Street elites,” it adds." http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-14/chinas-state-press-calls-for-building-a-de-americanized-world

We just keep kicking the can and sticking our heads in the sand, hoping magic will save us. The Fed's 'hidden agenda' behind money-printing "I believe that one of the most important reasons the Fed is determined to keep interest rates low is one that is rarely talked about, and which comprises a dark economic foreboding that should frighten us all." "Thanks to the Fed, the interest rate paid on our national debt is at an historic low of 2.4 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office." "But isn't it fair to ask what the interest cost of our debt would be if interest rates returned to a more normal level? What's a normal level? How about the average interest rate the Treasury paid on U.S. debt over the last 20 years?" "The CBO estimates that by 2020 total debt held by the public will be $16.6 trillion as a result of the rising accumulated debt. Do the math: If we were to pay an average interest rate on our debt of 5.7 percent, rather than the 2.4 percent we pay today, in 2020 our debt service cost will be about $930 billion." "In 2012, that amount was $1.1 trillion, meaning that if interest rates went back to a more normal level of, say, 5.7 percent, 85 percent of all personal income taxes collected would go to servicing the debt. No wonder the Fed is worried." http://www.cnbc.com/id/101062461

WOW, the NAR finally said it, prices are just to high to support the housing market. :drunk: You think!!! Sales have now fall in June, July, and Aug three of the four main selling months of the year. Pending home sales fall 1.6% in August "WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Sales contracts on homes fell 1.6% in August -- a third month of declines -- led by drops in three of four U.S. regions, according to data released Thursday by the National Association of Realtors. NAR cited higher interest rates and prices, among other factors." http://www.marketwatch.com/story/pending-home-sales-fall-16-in-august-2013-09-26-1091014

I wonder how many American's got a 12.4% raise in July? U.S. Home Prices Climb at Fastest Clip in 7 Years "Index Shows 12.4% Annual Increase in July, but Signs Emerge of Moderating Gains" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303759604579094982298639724.html

Yes, in the Denver region. We had no flooding or issues in our area, but thank you for asking. We love it here, lots of sunshine, quick easy access to just about everything outdoors you can think of and Denver is turning into a great metro area with all of its TOD and transit developments. Hope you get to fulfill your dream one day.

No way. There must be a mistake. Banks sued for alleged Libor manipulation "JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Credit Suisse and 10 other international banks have been sued by a federal credit union regulator on charges they manipulated a financial benchmark used to set rates on trillions of dollars in loans. The National Credit Union Administration lawsuits charge that the banks conspired to rig Libor, the daily London Interbank Offered Rate that's used to set the rates on mortgages, car loans, student loans, credit cards and complex financial derivatives contracts." http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/09/24/libor-manipulation-lawsuit/2859893/ Here is a idea, why not let home prices rebalance with income levels? All they did was blow another giant bubble that is unstainable and will continue to cause damage to the housing market for years to come (and the economy). Its amazing how desperate our nation has become to flip or sell houses. Long-feared mortgage meltdown is here "Atlantic Equities analyst Richard Staite projects a 55 percent year-over-year decline in third-quarter mortgage production revenue for the eight large-cap U.S. banks he covers, which in addition to JPM and Wells Fargo include Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, PNC Financial Services Group and U.S. Bancorp. That's a huge figure, reflecting in part the spike in refinancing activity in the third quarter of 2012, however, Staite expects mortgage revenue for the group to decline 45 percent quarter-over-quarter." http://www.cnbc.com/id/101055006

As long as the big investment firms keep buying, the housing market will remain above water, but if they stop and these numbers also keep falling, prices will collapse. Maybe household incomes actually needed to rise to sustain the new housing bubble? What a concept. There Is Now No Doubt That Rising Mortgage Rates Are Hitting The Housing Market "The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) latest weekly survey of mortgage applications showed plunging numbers across the board. Mortgage applications for the week ending September 6 fell 13.5% from a week ago. This is a five-week low. Refinancing activity plunged 20% to its lowest level since June 2009." Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/mba-mortgage-applications-september-6-2013-9#ixzz2ecUJU4wq Mortgage apps plunge, refinancing hits 4 year low as rates soar "That puts the index at its lowest since November 2008 and the depths of the financial crisis." http://www.cnbc.com/id/101025316 Home values rise, but millions still drown in debt "The negative home equity rate fell in the second quarter of this year, the fifth straight quarterly drop, but it is still alarmingly high and continues to hamper the housing recovery. Currently, 23.8 percent of homeowners with a mortgage, or approximately 12.2 million, owe more than their homes are worth, down from 15.3 million one year ago, according to the report. Some, however, are still so far underwater that even with fast-rising prices, it will take years for them to see any home equity." http://www.cnbc.com/id/100995592

US home prices rise at marginally slower pace: S&P/Case Shiller http://www.cnbc.com/id/100988918 Check out the video interview with Shiller, it worth the time.

Must have more QE. If not all is lost. America has become the new Japan, without cheap money and QE dumps the economy will return to negative terrority. US durable goods plunge in July, cast shadow over Q3 "Orders for long-lasting U.S. manufactured goods recorded their biggest drop in nearly a year in July and a gauge of planned business spending on capital goods tumbled, casting a shadow over the economy early in the third quarter." http://www.cnbc.com/id/100987214

It appears all that 'new' wealth on Main Street is starting to affect housing and this drop came in the middle of the summer buying season. Also, that median price has a long way to fall before it returns to a historic balance between income and home costs. We would have been much better off, long term, if they had not blown another housing bubble. New-home sales hit lowest rate since October "WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Sales of new homes slumped in July with each region seeing sizeable drops, in a move that raises questions about the recovery in the housing market." "New-home sales fell 13.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 394,000 in July, the lowest rate since October, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported Friday." "Also Friday, the government reported that the median price of new homes ticked down to $257,200 last month. The supply of new homes on the U.S. market in July jumped to 5.2 months at the current sales pace — the highest since January 2012 — from 4.3 months in June." http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-home-sales-hit-lowest-rate-since-october-2013-08-23?dist=lcountdown

And the great recovery continues. With all the growing wealth on main street, home prices and rents should continue to shoot to the moon and beyond. Report: Household income below end-of-recession "The average American household is earning less than when the Great Recession ended four years ago, according to a report released Wednesday. U.S. median household income, once adjusted for inflation, has fallen 4.4 percent in that time, according to the report from Sentier Research. The report is based on an analysis of Census Bureau data." http://www.cnbc.com/id/100980411

I think a large percentage of them will and are.

More evidence that the housing rebound is being fueled by large investment companies and not as much by individual buyers. These investment companies will only buy if profit can be made, as prices rise the profit end is get smaller and smaller. Report: Half of All Homes Are Being Purchased With Cash "More than half of all homes sold last year and so far in 2013 have been financed without a mortgage, according to an analysis by economists at Goldman Sachs Group." "There’s no exact way to know who is responsible for all of these cash purchases, though they are likely to include some combination of investors, foreign buyers, and wealthy homeowners that don’t want to go through the hassle of getting a mortgage before closing on a sale. Mortgage lending standards have sharply tightened up since the housing bubble, with banks scrutinizing borrowers’ tax returns and bank statements to verify their incomes and the source of their down payment." http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2013/08/15/report-half-of-all-homes-are-being-purchased-with-cash/

Another boost for the part time low wage numbers for the BLS employment stats. Meijer plans to hire more than 9,000 in five states "Midwest retailer Meijer Inc. plans to hire more than 9,000 new employees in five states in the coming months." http://www.ibj.com/meijer-plans-to-hire-more-than-9000-in-5-states/PARAMS/article/42878

Shocking, just shocking. I am sure they have learned their lesson and everything is on the up and up now days. Feds: Bank of America lied about mortgages "The U.S. government has accused Bank of America Corp. of civil fraud, saying the company failed to disclose risks and mislead investors in its sale of $850 million of mortgage bonds during 2008." "Bank of America's reckless and fraudulent origination and securitization practices in the lead-up to the financial crisis caused significant losses to investors," said U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina Anne M. Tompkins. "Now, Bank of America will have to face the consequences of its actions." http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-57597258/feds-bank-of-america-lied-about-mortgages/

I have posted numbers mainstream articles that show it has. So prove it hasn't.

Interesting read. Never mind the Czech gold the Nazis stole... The Bank for International Settlements actually financed Hitler’s war machine "The documents released by the Bank of England are revealing, both for what they show and what they omit. They are a window into a world of fearful deference to authority, the primacy of procedure over morality, a world where, for the bankers, the most important thing is to keep the channels of international finance open, no matter what the human cost. A world, in other words, not entirely different to today. The BIS was founded in 1930, in effect by Montagu Norman and his close friend Hjalmar Schacht, the former president of the Reichsbank, known as the father of the Nazi economic miracle. Schacht even referred to the BIS as “my” bank. The BIS is a unique hybrid: a commercial bank protected by international treaty. Its assets can never be seized, even in times of war. It pays no taxes on profits. The Czechoslovaks believed that the BIS’s legal immunities would protect them. But they were wrong. The Bank of England’s historian argued that to refuse the transfer order would have been a breach of Britain’s treaty obligations with regard to the BIS. In fact there was a powerful counter-argument that the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia had rendered any such obligations null and void as the country no longer existed. A key sentence in the Bank of England documents is found on page 1,295. It reads: “The general attitude of the Bank of England directors of the BIS during the war was governed by their anxiety to keep the BIS to play its part in the solution of post-war problems”. And here the secret history of the BIS and its strong relationship with the Bank of England becomes ever more murky. During the war the BIS proclaimed that it was neutral, a view supported by the Bank of England. In fact the BIS was so entwined with the Nazi economy that it helped keep the Third Reich in business. It carried out foreign exchange deals for the Reichsbank; it accepted looted Nazi gold; it recognised the puppet regimes installed in occupied countries, which, together with the Third Reich, soon controlled the majority of the bank’s shares." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/bank-of-england/10213988/Never-mind-the-Czech-gold-the-Nazis-stole....html

BLS number is BS Rate’s closer to 11%, former insider insists "Keith Hall believes the US economy is a lot sicker than the 7.6 percent unemployment rate would lead you to believe. Hall was, from 2008 until last year, the guy in charge of Washington’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agency that compiles that rate. “Right now [it’s] misleadingly low,” says Hall, who believes a truer reading of those now wanting a job but without one to be more than 10 percent. The fly in the ointment is the BLS employment-to-population ratio, which is currently at 58.7 percent. “It’s lower than it was when the recession ended. I think that’s a remarkable statistic,” says Hall, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. That level tells Hall the real unemployment rate is actually about 3 percentage points higher than the BLS number. If the jobless rate is unacceptable at 7.6 percent, it’d be shockingly bad if he is right and the true rate is 10.6 percent. How could they be so different? I asked the former number-cruncher. No surprise here. I’ve been saying it for years. Hall confirms that the jobless rate that makes the headlines — called the U-3 by BLS — doesn’t take into account people who have stopped looking for work but does count as employed folks who have worked as little as an hour during the preceding month." http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/bls_number_is_bs_jaKS2Nc8Yu2TrnETK2bXEM

I feel bad for those in areas were home prices are rising rapidly and yet incomes and job pay are not. The new generation coming into the workforce is being squeezed from all sides. Mort Zuckerman: A Jobless Recovery Is a Phony Recovery More people have left the workforce than got a new job during the recovery—by a factor of nearly three. "In recent months, Americans have heard reports out of Washington and in the media that the economy is looking up—that recovery from the Great Recession is gathering steam. If only it were true. The longest and worst recession since the end of World War II has been marked by the weakest recovery from any U.S. recession in that same period. The jobless nature of the recovery is particularly unsettling. In June, the government's Household Survey reported that since the start of the year, the number of people with jobs increased by 753,000—but there are jobs and then there are "jobs." No fewer than 557,000 of these positions were only part-time. The survey also reported that in June full-time jobs declined by 240,000, while part-time jobs soared by 360,000 and have now reached an all-time high of 28,059,000—three million more part-time positions than when the recession began at the end of 2007." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323740804578601472261953366?mg=reno64-wsj.html?dsk=y

Where did all the post go? All that QE debt and still no escape velocity. Economists Across Wall Street Are Axing Their Forecasts For US Growth "Today's disappointing U.S. retail sales report is sending shockwaves across Wall Street's economics departments. "The disappointing 0.4% m/m rise in US retail sales values in June increases the chances that GDP grew at an annualised rate of less than 1% in the second quarter," said Capital Economics' Paul Dales. Barclays just cut its Q2 GDP growth tracking estimate to 0.5% from 0.6%, reports CNBC's Bob Pisani." Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/economists-cut-q2-gdp-forecasts-2013-7#ixzz2Z9ZUe98V

Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail How HSBC hooked up with drug traffickers and terrorists. And got away with it "The deal was announced quietly, just before the holidays, almost like the government was hoping people were too busy hanging stockings by the fireplace to notice. Flooring politicians, lawyers and investigators all over the world, the U.S. Justice Department granted a total walk to executives of the British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism money-laundering case ever. Yes, they issued a fine – $1.9 billion, or about five weeks' profit – but they didn't extract so much as one dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying abuses." Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster-bankers-too-big-to-jail-20130214#ixzz2KuYrIjeS Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

Good luck to him. He will even have to fight some other states - including Ohio's Attorney General. Between the loop holes already being used by banks, lawsuites, lack of funds and now this the Dodd-Frank Act is just getting weaker and weaker. Eight states join lawsuit challenging Dodd-Frank Lawsuit: System to dismantle a big failing bank is unconstitutional "WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Attorneys-general from eight states have joined a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of regulations setting up a system to dismantle a big failing bank so its collapse doesn’t cause collateral Lehman-like damage to the economy. The attorneys-general are joining onto a lawsuit filed in federal court in June 2012 by the State National Bank of Big Spring, Texas and two conservative action groups that are challenging key parts of the Dodd-Frank Act." http://www.marketwatch.com/story/eight-states-join-lawsuit-challenging-dodd-frank-2013-02-13?dist=afterbell

TARP: The bailout success story that wasn’t Commentary: Wall Street’s bailout sinkhole keeps sinking "Remember the Troubled Asset Relief Program, better known as TARP? When we last heard from the Treasury Department, on Jan. 23, TARP was being wound down. It was, in the estimation of Timothy Geithner & Co., a success: 93% of the $418 billion disbursed had been collected including $70 billion last year. But hold the Champagne. It ain’t over till it’s over." "The idea that TARP is somehow a wash because a few banks repaid the bailouts with interest is misleading. The reality is that bailed-out firms essentially wrote off their losses on taxes. As of Dec. 30, TARP was still owed $67.3 billion, including $27 billion in realized losses — which is to say, that money is gone and is never coming back." "A new report by SNL Financial shows the Treasury Department is taking a beating in auctions of the Capital Purchase Program, one of the pipelines through which bailout money flowed. The auctions essentially sell off TARP debt and equity to private investors. Unfortunately, investors aren’t really interested in zombie-bank debt. It’s been selling at an 8% to 20% discount. The last auction, on Jan. 25, met with a 35% discount. In all, the latest CPP auction cost taxpayers $104.5 million." http://www.marketwatch.com/story/losses-mounting-in-bank-bailouts-2013-02-12?dist=countdown