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Productivity - Wage Gap Grows
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The Equation Defined
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Will the NY Attorney General Bring Doomsday Charges Against Wall Street? If So, How Long Will He Survive?
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New York Post Claims Census Falsifies Unemployment Figures
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How Many Jobs Are Needed to Keep Up with Population Growth?
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VAT or Value Added Tax is Getting a Look in D.C.
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U3 and U6 Unemployment during the Great Depression
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The war on the middle class
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House discusses 401k/IRA confiscation
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Tax Cuts for the Rich Do Not Generate Jobs
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attention - Ginnie Mae - Government National Mortgage Association. Ginnie Mae, unlike Fannie and Freddie, is entirely operated by the government.
I would be curious (research project) to see how its doing compared to Fannie/Freddie.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
The bill for the government's attempt at propping up the housing market is about to come due.
Our own experience shapes our perceptions and how we interpret things. Home ownership was considered "A good thing," almost an entitlement -- for a long time, mortgage payments and rents were pretty much equal, and after 30 years you owned it. And inflation sped up the rate at which you built equity -- so after, say 7 years, you were ready to trade up. I believe we came to regard inflation as an entitlement as well -- cost-of-living raises kept the pain down. We felt bad for those living on "fixed incomes." Greenspan had a few years of low inflation and always had an invitation to the White House. How could you argue with success that seemed to confirm his key theories? And tax cuts -- Dick Cheney said, "It's our due." Experience confirms our wishful theories. But this time, it is different. Things got way out of control and inflation isn't bailing us out. Let's hope Ben brought some magic to the party. I want to believe!
Frank T.
we put 5% down and probably a more grueling underwriting process.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
It just seems that doing things which make sound financial sense, just generally, has been flow out the government window for at least 15 years.
When I read this, I was horrified.
Note, one of his recommendations to fix the FHA is to require a 10% down payment on a home.
the intentional and explicit economic policy of the previous administration after most of the testimony particularly about the part of adding all of those lenders.
It is a shame though that they have severely damaged a good program - FHA.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Do you now how to pull out quotes from PDF's? As well as take image snapshots for graphs? I use foxit reader and the bad thing is one needs to reformat a lot of the text, but you can grab most text out of files. It also has a PDF image capture to easily extract out graphs.
So, if you want to pull out specifics from detailed Academic type papers (always link to the original and cite the author!) this is doable.
There is a host of tools in the admin forum for writing up posts.
But, frankly just a link to something doesn't tell us much on what exactly someone is looking at.
Consider EP the "readers digest" of large economic research papers. We kind of try to pull out the most critical piece of intel so the reader doesn't have to swim through 200+ page documents or 8 hours of video testimony to find the juice.
because I am interested in his approach and suggestion that what is needed now is massive debt forgiveness in the mortgage market. But then I came across this online:
Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire
This was published in 2003 from what I can tell.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
I know central banks feel it their perogative to "intervene" -- but it makes you wonder what the dollar is really worth. Could it be that their public explanation is one thing, but actual motive is to avoid shocks to the financial system -- smooth out the dollar's slide? A kind of cooperation among the financial elites?
Frank T.
and their U.S. Treasury holdings, #1 is China, Japan is #2.
I find it disgusting our policy makers as well seem to view Americans only as consumers.
I mean the entire concept that they should be focused on income, Americans as producers I don't even enters their brains.
The quote is:
They are not coming to our aid but their own export-driven aid.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Every week it seems they revise upward the previous week to make the initials look like a drop. Then, various financial press blaze the headlines on this magically "drop".
I'm not even posting these anymore once I realized the pattern and compared each past release, saw the upward revisions every week.
I'm not going to claim they are manipulating anything, but I will assuredly claim that metric has way too much noise in it to jump up and down for joy every week.
Remember that the Germans and Japanese looked after their self-interest trade-wise. So China's stockpiling may be in anticipation of future need (our strategic reserves of metals and oil come to mind) -- I know I'm being redundant. But I also remember the Hunt brothers corner in silver. China isn't subject to the CFTC, and may decide someday to play hardball with central bankers.
Frank T.
I only used the debt held by the public as opposed to total debt to come up with the 1.74 trillion number. The total debt includes funny money (debt held by Social Security) and so doesn't reflect the balance of all inflows and outflows. Of course, "debt held by the public" doesn't either, but it's much closer to reality. In addition, the correct comparison is Sept 30 to Sept 30 (or Oct 1 to Oct 1). It's especially dangerous (from the point of accuracy) to add a day at this particular time because every year there is a rather large increase in the amount of debt between Sept 30 and Oct 1. As Yves Smith would say "Quelle surprise". It's just more data manipulation.
J Venom made the statement that "nobody believes" the U3 numbers anymore. Unfortunately that should come with the caveat that "Nobody" is generally restricted to those who read financial blogs and pay attention to the actual numbers. I don't know how large that number is, but I rather doubt that as a percentage of the population, it's more than single digits. But reality as experienced on the ground is becoming increasingly disconnected from the numbers. The consumer confidence surveys show an increasingly large difference between "current conditions" and "expectations". I'm not sure what happens when the citizenry at large no longer believes what the government tells them, but we seem to be headed in that direction.
"No Tier 1 institution may be given any government assistance unless and until anti-trust actions have been initiated against the institution."
Arguing for such a provision would be in the spirit of "working within the system" but seeking ways to hoist the bastards on their own petards.
We know that when one national economy fails it reverberates around the globe, i.e. contagion.
Nobody believes those numbers. Hell, U6 is as close to the truth we're ever going to get. I suspect we're already in the 20s with regards to unemployment. And it wouldn't surprise me, once we hit bottom, that 1 in 3 will either be unemployed or substinance level partially employed.
The numbers from the Treasury from September 30, 2008, to October 1, 2009.
Increase in national debt: 1,895,794,267,407
Percentage increase: 18.91%
Percentage of GDP: 13.396%
The Democrats stopped representing their base at the same time the GOP did. One is the party of "do what we must to keep OUR political jobs" while the other is "do what we must to muster suspicion and do what we must to keep OUR political jobs." The question is, which is which?!?
Not when you have China buying Gold. The Chinese are fantastic students of history. They studied us, how we originally made it, and are playing by our old playbook. They talked up free trade, along with others, but do not really play that game. The book Bad Samaritans highlighted this very well.
No, China can pull it off because at the end of the day, they can lower the cost of production to make a "Chinese middle class" possible. They can artificially keep costs like labor down through coersion. Indeed, they are worse than any villain in a Charles Dickens novel (ironic given their Marxist origins). They can keep commodity prices to where they almost want, because right now they are really the only major buyer. I say almost, because they have a neighbor to the Southwest who could take them on, India is basically China 1985. But getting back to producer costs, they will only accept so high a price, and if it isn't to their liking they can walk away and leave the counter party holding the bag. Simply look at the recent reports of Chinese firms defaulting on comodities contracts.
But I have another nagging suspicion. This is bordering on tinfoil hat, but hear me out as I want your take. They've been purchasing a LOT of gold and other precious minerals. Outside of production needs, what if they are forming their own basket of goodies. What if China, when their domestic consumption has reached a certain point, decides to finally float their currency? What if they are also making a play to make it, in what could be, a basket of reserve currencies, so that they could purchase oil in their money instead of a foreign denomination?
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