Interestingly, foreign tourists such as Japanese who used to flock to San Francisco no longer want to come here at all to see San Francisco.

Why?

Because the entire area has been turned into a 3rd world cesspool by the invading hordes of 3rd worlders who came to the bay area because of the IT jobs they wanted to steal from Americans. They come in, clean out, and go home. And while they are here, they do nothing to maintain the area and become a blight. San Francisco is a hellhole now and no one in their right mind wants to visit it.

So, the idea that brining in more people will help tourism is a lie - the opposite has already been proven to be true.

The Hill Brent Budow wrote a scathing op-ed demanding jobs from team Obama and this Congress. Don't let the GOP off the hook, they are even worse, if that is possible at this point.

"...But stop paying your property taxes for that period of time and see what the government does...."

Are cities doing this to banks that foreclose and who thus (I assume) now own the foreclosed house? From what I have heard, banks have been trying to be owners and non-owners of these houses at the same time, depending on whether they benefit or not. Cities have been left holding the bag, to say nothing of the loss of collective mil value in the abandoned or devalued properties.

This series is so great, I thought to myself "Maybe it's time to buy a TV and subscribe to the satellite thing." (That would be IF I can get a line-of-sight with the TV satellite, which I couldn't manage with either of the internet satellites; and, although I subscribe to a pretty-good little local rural wifi network, it's too slow to stream video.)

Anyway, that led me to google around for a TV assembled in the U.S., which it seemed to me I had read was maybe available. Of course, components would be made in Asia, I understood that. The company that I had heard about was Olevia, which (alas!) appears not to have survived the recession! (It was assembling TVs in the U.S. back in 2008.) Other than Olevia, there is Vizio -- which is HQed in the U.S., but not actually doing any manufacturing here.

My source:

http://www.thinkyourwaytowealth.com/2008/02/16/can-i-actually-buy-a-tv-made-in-the-usa/

Anyway, I am happy about ABC World News! Of course, the idea isn't to make everything in the U.S.A., just to balance exports and imports, but that does start at home!

What would make me much happier would be some teeny-tiny coverage of the concept of the across-the-board tariff.  Just a teeny tiny bit of coverage SOMEWHERE in mainstream media -- is that too much to hope for, considering that probably at least 50% of the U.S. public would like the idea, if it would ever be discussed?

I've been wanting to say this since I first read this post.

The federal government revised the Food Stamps rules to allow people who still have more than $2,000 in assets to get them -- IF they are not receiving any income. In other words, if you're unemployed and not getting any unemployment but still have more than $2,000 in savings. Fed picks up cost, except state has to pay 1/2 administrative cost. So far New Jersey has not updated its law concern assets.

Here's the AP article on this that I read last fall:

More working families getting government food aid

By MARK NIESSE, Associated Press Writer Mark Niesse, Associated Press Writer – Fri Oct 22, 4:45 pm ET

HONOLULU – Lillie Gonzales does whatever it takes to provide for three ravenous sons who live under her roof. She grows her own vegetables at home on Kauai, runs her own small business and like a record 42 million other Americans, she relies on food stamps.

Gonzales and her husband consistently qualify for food stamps now that Hawaii and other states are quietly expanding eligibility and offering the benefit to more working, moderate income families.

Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reviewed by The Associated Press shows that 30 states have adopted rules making it easier to qualify for food stamps since 2007. In all, 38 states have loosened eligibility standards.

Hawaii has gone farther than most, allowing a family like Gonzales' to earn up to $59,328 and still get food stamps.

Prior to an Oct. 1 increase, the income eligibility limit for a Hawaii family of five was $38,568 a year.

"If I didn't have food stamps, I would be buying white rice and Spam every day," said Gonzales, whose Island Angels business makes Hawaiian-style fabric angel ornaments, quilts, aprons and purses.

Eligibility for food stamps varies from state to state, with the 11 most generous states allowing families to apply if their gross income is less than double the federal poverty line of $22,050 for a family of four on the U.S. mainland. The threshold is higher in Alaska and Hawaii.

With more than 1 in 8 Americans now on food stamps, participation in the program has jumped about 70 percent from 26 million in May 2007, while the nation's unemployment rate rose from 4.3 percent to 9.2 percent through September of this year.

"We've seen a huge increase in participation due to the economic downturn," said Jean Daniel, a spokeswoman for the USDA's Food and Nutrition Service. "That's the way this program was designed."

In addition to helping alleviate economic pressures, many states embrace the popularity of food stamps because their cost — $50 billion last year — is paid entirely by the federal government. States are only responsible for paying half of their programs' administrative costs.

Food stamps have been blasted by some Republicans in this midterm election season as just another federal entitlement program, with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich framing the vote as a choice between "the party of food stamps" and Republican policies that create jobs.

Participants in the food stamp program, technically called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, receive a per person average of $133 per month to buy staples including milk, bread and vegetables.

Shortly after Hawaii announced it was raising its eligibility limits starting this month, three carloads of 10 seniors drove to the Kauai Independent Food Bank to ask if they qualified. Nine of them did, said Judy Lenthall, executive director for the food bank, which helps people apply for food stamps.

"We saw an immediate and overwhelmingly wonderful response," Lenthall said. "It surprised us how fast it's spreading."

States that have relaxed food stamp eligibility did so by moving to a system where applicants could qualify based on their income, and their other assets such as real estate, vehicles and savings accounts could be ignored.

Basing food stamps on income alone allows the newly unemployed and the elderly to seek government food aid without having to first sell their property or exhaust every dollar they've earned, said Sue McGinn, director of the food stamp program in Colorado, which will expand eligibility beginning in March.

"They won't have to wipe out their savings to apply for benefits," McGinn said.

Many of these states also raised income limits, although applicants still have to show they're essentially living at the poverty line after accounting for allowable deductions, including elder medical expenses and child support.

"It helps moderate and low-income people who are struggling," said Stacy Dean of the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "They're doing everything we want: they're working, paying all their bills, taking care of their kids, and they still don't have enough money at the end of the month to put food on the table."

Since 2000, the only states that haven't enacted the lower food stamp eligibility requirements are Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming.

In Hawaii, where everything from milk to gasoline is typically the highest in the nation, the changes are welcomed by Gonzales and others.

"As long as my kids have good food, that's all I care about," Gonzales said. "It makes a tremendous difference."

___

Online:

Food and Nutrition Service: http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/

... when people you know are desperately seeking jobs too, and they are qualified enough ... what can we expect of those who do the hiring? Would you turn your back on a friend or even on the son or daughter of a friend? If you do that, pretty soon your friends turn their backs on you and on your sons and daughters. It's more than the notorious 'good ol' boys' -- it's the way of the world.

The only solution is full employment. Start with this: full employment policy as a primary objective demanded by the public!

Sounds like the banks are more compassionate than the government. If you don't pay your mortgage for several years then maybe the bank will let you live in the house.

But stop paying your property taxes for that period of time and see what the government does. First, they'll charge you an unbelievably high interest rate, like 17.5%. Then they'll put a lien on your home. The sherrif will kick you out of your home. The government will sell it for whatever they can get, take the money for back taxes + interest, and your savings or credit record are history.

See: Delinquent property taxes recouped in lien sale

"The percent interest that will be charged to property owners, in addition to their delinquent taxes, will have a 17.5 percent annual interest rate, ..."

I'm not advising anyone to stop paying their mortgage, other than to say an individual should have no moral qualms about deliberately defaulting on their mortgage even if they can pay (a strategic default). Assuming that individual has sought proper legal and tax counsel to protect themselves and their family, they should be able to do exactly what Morgan Stanley and many other businesses have done. Donald Trump has made a career of walking away from his bond obligations, and he has just run for President of the United States.

The question, rather, is what happens to the United States if tens of millions of Americans decide to walk away? You point out in your article that 10.9 million mortgagors are already underwater, and these borrowers we know are the most likely to strategically default. Suppose Robert Schiller is right and we get a further 20% or more depreciation in housing values. How many more millions of Americans are now underwater? Suppose the recession bites hard again now that government and Fed stimulus are being withdrawn, throwing millions more out of work. Suppose millions of retired people and others living off their investments, which are now earning 0%, deplete their capital and find themselves in poverty? The articles about people living rent free for two to three years are spreading, and now television news has begun carrying stories. Plus, it is becoming increasingly clear that the banks often cannot prove they are the mortgagee, that they don't really want possession of the home and the obligations of upkeep and tax payments, that they don't want to take write-downs on their biggest asset class, so they let defaulters linger for years in their property rent free.

On the flip side, what's the penalty for the homeowner strategically defaulting? A trashed credit rating doesn't mean anything these days in an economy in which banks aren't lending except to people like Donald Trump. In some states, the banks can go after all the homeowner's assets, not just the home, but so far the banks haven't pursued these rights against people who by and large are bankrupt anyway. Besides, if over 50% of all mortgages are legally suspect thanks to MERS and sloppy bank securitization practices, then a lawyer can easily challenge the right of a bank to take any remaining assets.

There has to be a tipping point where millions of homeowners join their underwater neighbors and stop making payments on their mortgages. It could be financial desperation brought on by a recession that turns into a depression, it could be jealousy that other people are getting away with free money, it could be collective anger at the banks and their predatory practices, it could be a general breakdown among American public opinion that paying back a debt is an honorable thing to do, or it could be a combination of these things.

What if 20 million or more Americans stop paying their mortgage? That would be nearly a third of all mortgagors. At that point, the four Too Big To Fail banks which own the bulk of America's home mortgages are out of business. So are most of the second tier regional banks. They no longer would be able to pretend these defaults were meaningless or wait until they are cured, because their cash flow would dry up, and no amount of Fed liquidity programs could replace the trillions of dollars that have disappeared.

The federal government would be scrambling to find the resources to shore up the FDIC, which is already bankrupt and would need massive capital infusions, again in the trillions of dollars, to protect depositors in the failed banks. The government would have to decide whether it is going to pursue foreclosure against one third of all homeowners, leaving one third of the nation's housing stock empty. As you can see, there is a point where the sheer numbers of people who decide to initiate their own reverse mortgage payment scheme will overwhelm the economy in a multitude of ways.

Bear in mind also that this process is well underway, and may be unstoppable. People have lost faith in the banking system as fair, and that has undermined the essential sense of responsibility that has always been the foundation of the creditor-debtor relationship. The doubts as to whether a typical homeowner can identify the party who legally holds their mortgage are growing as one court after another challenges the banks on their rights to foreclose. Lawyers all across the nation are looking for work, and here is a whole new field of endeavor open to them. If enough people find they can no longer pay their bills, the home mortgage becomes a large and tempting payment to let lapse. As the CEO of Wells Fargo said earlier this year, his bank was shocked to learn that people are defaulting on their mortgage first, while continuing to pay on their credit card loans. That is the reverse of previous experience.

This is the stuff out of which Financial Armageddon arises - a sort of "Argentina" moment when that country defaulted and a massive deflation brought down everyone's earnings, as well as most costs, to a much lower level. And why shouldn't this happen in the US? The American standard of living has been under pressure for nearly 25 years from global labor arbitrage; our earnings are slowly approaching those of workers in China, our housing values have already collapsed over 40% in three years, and costs in this country are going to have to come down as well if people are going to survive. In a general deflation, people will grab on to whatever cash flow they can find, and the home mortgage payment is about the juiciest there is. By withholding so much cash, the American homeowner has the power to destroy all of the big banks and throw this country into a severe depression. It would be the equivalent of a tax strike where wage earners refuse to pay the government what is owed in taxes.

If enough people participate, it becomes very difficult for the government to enforce payments, despite what will no doubt be extensive efforts by the federal government to coerce and shame people into complying with the "system."

There is so much going on. First Warren isn't going to head the CFPA, no surprise and supposedly is being blocked by 40 GOP in the Senate.

We have the never ending debt ceiling argument. In fact so much is going on, I think I'm going to do two link posts, one today and another tomorrow.

I cannot wrap my head around the flow of funds report to get what the hell is households to explain those numbers. This is a Federal Reserve release so I might just put up what other people who are credible found. I'll do that as a blow post.

Next, we have a jobs crisis, a retirement crisis, a middle class destruction crisis and we cannot even get one policy, nothing, to turn this around. This is our money party at work.

Let's write about that, how one cannot get a single thing through Congress, this administration too, that would actually be effective.

That's the point of this site, to write about things that matter. What mattered is how the fact Obamacare is a corporate lobbyist written nightmare was taken up by the Tea party and the GOP, but they don't want to fix anything, nope, they want to make it worse.

You can say that as a strategy. They grab something everyone is unhappy about and bang on that, as "Repeal", but behind that is an agenda to make the situation worse.