News, Research & Insights for American Homeowners, Patriots & Constitutional Conservatives
Change.
Yesterday I noted that the latest fundraising numbers for Barack Obama came to $45 million, but that combined his fundraising with that of the DNC. Politico breaks it down further to find that the actual total money raised for Obama by three different committees in February comes to $39.4 million — far off of the [...]
"I’m putting my money where my conservative, free-market principles are."
We’ve heard plenty about the advertisers who bailed on Rush Limbaugh in the fallout over his remarks about Sandra Fluke. We’ve even heard about at least two advertisers who want back in after bailing out, at least one of whom was told, “No, thanks.” Today, our own Boss Emeritus announces that she has become a [...]
When your own losses aren't enough.
Americans sunk tens of billions of dollars into General Motors in 2008 and 2009, money which they won’t see any time soon, if at all. The Obama administration strongarmed senior creditors in an unprecedented politically-engineered bankruptcy to get taxpayers to eat the costs of old pension obligations and boost the UAW. All of this was [...]
“I feel that it’s okay because, I mean, I have no income and I have bills to pay.”
Via the Daily Caller, a snifter of civilizational decline at the end of a long day. Granted, $700,000 sounds like a lot of money, but by the time the Democrats are done with their messaging on contraception they’ll have you convinced that that’ll cover maybe five years of birth control. (In fact, thanks to O’s [...]
Sneaky
The massive, $109B transportation bill looked – briefly – like it might sail through Congress and to the President’s desk, but now it seems to have stalled again. The delay was not caused by some huge delegation of elected representatives suddenly waking up and realizing they have to spend our money more carefully, though. No, [...]
Class warfare.
A lefty blog seized on this and naturally it got picked up almost instantly by big media. Click the image and watch the clip. She’s talking about having MS and how money may come and go but the value of friends and family endures. Run that through the progressive soundbite distort-o-lyzer and you get “Ann [...]
So why don't insurance companies voluntarily cover contraception?
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius yesterday assured a House panel that the contraception mandate will actually pay for itself. “Who pays for it? There’s no such thing as a free service,” [Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Tim] Murphy asked. Sebelius responded that that is not the case with insurance. “The reduction in the number [...]
The way things stand today, housing won’t “bottom” this year, it won’t bottom next year, and it won’t bottom the year after that, and should you come across someone who has money and disagrees vehemently, please give them my email so I can make some extra cash on the side.
How do I know this? Well, I’ve been right since 2007 and that would be pretty remarkable if there was anything else that could possibly have happened… but there couldn’t have been, so the more interesting question is how can all these people running our show be so consistently wrong? That’s the question, and I’ve asked it before… are they stupid or lying?
Housing can’t bottom because there’s essentially no demand for housing, okay… very little demand for housing… and you don’t need a calculator to figure this one out. Follow me here…
Just try to remember what I’ve said countless times… NOTHING goes down in a straight line.
Warren Buffett admitted yesterday that he was “dead wrong” about housing when he predicted it would recover by now. That’s cute, isn’t it? The billionaire made a boo-boo. Ooopsie! But, he’s still a billionaire and the people that listened to him in 2009 and 2010 are the current wave of foreclosures at FHA, which by the way, is the new sub-prime and the next bailout for sure.
Buffett has no idea what he’s talking about. He’s been living in the same house in Omaha, Nebraska since 1958. Have you been to Omaha, Nebraska? Well, I have. And the fact that some multi-billionaire is still living in the same house he bought in 1958 in Omaha is not quaint… it’s not “old school.” It’s f#@king nuts. Insane. Weird. Like, as in… needs some sort of clinician to diagnose it, sort of weird.
I don’t know what his deal is… but I’ll bet it’s difficult to pronounce.
That means that more people stopped looking for work, not that more people found it.
The participation rate sunk to 63.7 percent last month, which is the lowest since May of 1983! Do you remember 1983? I do, and it was God awful. It means that roughly 88 million people in this country over 16 years old not only didn’t have a job, but weren’t even trying to find one. Not even trying.
I’ll bet they’re a cheery, upbeat bunch. Probably all out looking for houses to buy now that we’re hitting the bottom and all. Maybe Buffett will put them to work so they can all buy homes in Omaha…. and then kill themselves.
The employment-to-population ratio, which is the percentage of Americans that have jobs… HAS NOT CHANGED AT ALL. It’s 58.5… the SAME as it was in January 2010. Oooh baby… what our dust, we’re recovering now.
Oh, wait. That’s right… I totally forgot… everything’s fine… it’s a “jobless recovery,” remember? So, why is Bernanke so worried about the whole unemployment thing anyway? It’s “jobless” so we’re right on track, we’re in line with the forecasts… hitting the numbers perfectly.
The “headline” unemployment rate in which we like to bathe in this country only counts people who answer the phone and tell the survey taker that they’re actively looking for work. And if more people were looking, then the unemployment rate would be a lot higher. So, what Obama really needs is for more people to STOP LOOKING. And if that doesn’t make you want to chew on glass all by itself, then I don’t really know what to say to you.
Seems like most folks are cooperating though, because at the beginning of this month, based on the latest census data, the Labor Department increased the number of working age people by 1.5 million, and of those 1.25 million were not even looking for work, so you gotta’ figure they’re all Obama supporters, right? Just doing their part.
Bloomberg’s got the data here, in case you feel a need to check my numbers.
The Fed chief continues to do the only thing he can do, I suppose… come right out and promise low interest rates until at least 2014 and pump money into the system like a mad man. The problem is that money isn’t exactly going places.
Since the recession in 2008, M1 money supply has increased by an absolutely jaw-dropping 60 percent, coming in over $2.2 trillion in January of this year, and with no end in sight… it’s going higher for sure. And tons of cash makes the stock market happy, but today’s cash flood isn’t doing much for the economy.
Money supply is one part of the equation, but the other component to the deal is called “velocity,” and the velocity of money in this country has fallen off a cliff, going from 10.37 in late 2007 to 7.09 as of late 2011. Ouch.
Velocity of money is about how fast money is changing hands, buying goods and services… you know, making for economic activity. And the scads of money Bernanke continues to pump into the system with reckless abandon isn’t moving… it’s not changing hands… he’s just pushing string, get it?
As a result of all this, what they call the M1 “multiplier” has stayed below the 1.0 level for the last three years. The multiplier effect is an economics term that refers to the amount of commercial bank money that’s created by central bank money. So, it’s like the Fed increases it’s loans to banks and its purchases of government securities (called bonds) and by doing so pushes money into the commercial banks who are in turn supposedly “encouraged” to loan it out and earn interest, and thereby turn the Fed’s one dollar into more than one dollar.
Except it’s not happening, right? In fact, between August 2008 and November 2009, bank reserves grew by 500 fold, from $2 billion to one trillion. The banks didn’t lend it out. They didn’t find the excess money very encouraging. Do you know why? Because they knew that we were getting screwed, that’s why.
They knew we were in debt big time, because they’re the ones that put us there, and they knew that we’d be getting no help from the government, so there weren’t a whole lot of people to lend it to without taking on too much risk. So, they just kept it. And that’s why I keep saying, it’s not a liquidity crisis, it’s a credit crisis.
So, you know you have a credit crisis if the money multiplier is 1, right? Because if banks were lending the money out, the multiplier would have to be greater than one, right?
And when you have a credit crisis, then many people can’t buy houses, and that means that the prices of houses will go DOWN. And that means that we won’t spend like we used to when our houses were worth a lot more and there was credit available, and that means companies will make less money and lay people off. And that leads to more foreclosures, which puts additional downward pressure on house prices, which leads to more foreclosures still.
So… super low interest rates for an extended period of time… literally trillions in cash sitting in bank reserves with more being pumped into the system every day, but with the velocity of that money falling and a multiplier that stays at 1… add it all up and what do you get?
Well, on one hand you get a stock market that’s artificially pumped up by the Fed’s assurance of continued low rates, and a free flowing money supply. But on the other hand you have anemic velocity, a multiplier stuck on 1, and unemployment that’s only getting worse, which means company’s won’t be growing they’ll be shrinking… so you has is an economy that’s deflating.
Bernanke would rather deal with just about anything than deflation, so he just keep a-printing and a-pumping hoping against hope that one day the banks will be so bloated with cash that they loan it to anyone that asks. It’s really quite sad, if you think about it. Poor little man… only knows one trick and when it isn’t working all he knows to do is just try it over and over again. Makes me get all teary eyed, poor guy. Someone should really teach him a new trick.
Last thing… take the artificially pumped up stock market and hold it up next to the dog-doo economy and what do you see? You see some seriously over valued stocks, which is another way of saying that you see stocks priced to deliver some exceptionally poor returns to investors.
Because one day, the Fed won’t be able to pump, because the pump she will run dry, as all pumps do. And then what will be holding up the market at these levels… uh oh… no clothes… run away!
Then you’ll hear, “Come Mr. Tally man, tally me banana,” and daylight will come and you’ll want to go home.
Oh yeah… and then there’s always Greece, et al. Can’t forget them. Opah!
You might want to bookmark this page, so as the election gets closer and thing get even better than they are today, you’ll be able to contain yourself.
Mandelman out.
Plus, a reminder from Ramirez.
Will another campaign to generate more money for government subsidies on green technology, especially electric vehicles, impress voters in 2012? Not exactly, according to today’s Rasmussen poll. Some may call it crony capitalism, Scott Rasmussen calls Obama’s policies “trickle-down environmentalism,” but either way it doesn’t impress voters at all: As president, Obama called for putting [...]
A new list of usual suspects
For those who were dismayed by the President’s decision to nix the Keystone XL pipeline, you may think it was an effort orchestrated primarily from the White House. While that certainly was part of it, you may have noticed a rather prominent and very public campaign taking place to stop the project showing up in [...]
A new list of usual suspects
For those who were dismayed by the President’s decision to nix the Keystone XL pipeline, you may think it was an effort orchestrated primarily from the White House. While that certainly was part of it, you may have noticed a rather prominent and very public campaign taking place to stop the project showing up in [...]
Smug.
At a Planned Parenthood awards luncheon in Dallas yesterday, PP president Cecile Richards reiterated that all is well between her organization and the Susan G. Komen Foundation now that Komen will again consider Planned Parenthood as a potential recipient for its breast cancer research and prevention grant money. “The good news – the wonderful ending [...]
Crunch.
I’m skeptical, especially if you count his Super PAC as part of his campaign. (And who doesn’t?) But the basic logic makes sense. If you depend heavily on a small-ish base of wealthy donors who are capped by law on how much they can give, then you’d better win early to grow that base before [...]
Oh, you're ready.
To cleanse the palate. Nearly a hundred years ago, Mencken began an essay on Lincoln this way: “Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States—first, murder stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero; [...]
Oh, you're ready.
To cleanse the palate. Nearly a hundred years ago, Mencken began an essay on Lincoln this way: “Some time ago a publisher told me that there are four kinds of books that seldom, if ever, lose money in the United States—first, murder stories; secondly, novels in which the heroine is forcibly overcome by the hero; [...]
Don't have the money? Borrow it!
Forget complicated theories about Kenyan anti-colonialism, Wilsonian progressivism or Wright-style liberation theology: This is the key to understanding Obama. He must have learned early in life that some girls love a big spender — and decided to become one. And I mean really become one: Under his administration, deficit spending per person is $17,000. Whoever [...]
Zients can dance and steal your money.
This seems like such a simple question that even a Washington bureaucrat should be able to answer it. Does the President’s budget increase spending over the agreement reached on spending last year in the budget compromise? Not only could acting OMB director Jeffrey Zients not answer it, Sen. Jeff Sessions actually gets Zients to say [...]
“I don’t do nearly as well when I focus on my competitors."
With polls showing a collapse in support and money reportedly dissipating from the campaign coffers, Newt Gingrich needs a gamechanger — badly. Gingrich has decided that his ideas were his original gamechanger, and he’s going to start focusing on them rather than on attacking his competitors: Newt Gingrich said he’s backing off his attacks on [...]
Of course.
He’s intent on killing this program. Remember when he tried to kill it slowly back in 2009, promising to fund it until the current participants graduated high school and then to pull the plug? We’re talking about something like $20 million in a budget of $3.8 trillion and somehow he can’t scrape together the money [...]
Details are still forthcoming about the settlement between the federal government and attorneys general and the five largest servicing banks but one interesting twist that is already emerging is how the dollars are being divvied up and distributed. The total number touted, $25 billion, includes both dollars paid in cold cash to the states, dollars paid in cold cash to wronged consumers, and "credit" for reducing principal or refinancing. The estimates I've seen suggest only $5 billion is in either of the cash categories, with the relief to any particular consumer likely to be $1,500 to $2,000. That suggests that $20 billion could be available for rewriting loan terms to help consumers.
But, the effects of the settlement are likely going to vary by state. Iowa's Attorney General, Tom Miller, who led the 50-state investigation, has described a division of Iowa's money that would look quite different from the above-described distribution. He says Iowa's slice of the total $25 billion is likely to be $40 million. Make sense to me; Iowa has a small population. But of that estimated $40 million, Iowa will get $15.3 million in cold hard cash. That is 38% of Iowa's relief coming in hard dollars to the state, whereas $5 billion of the $25 billion estimated for the nation suggests a 20% cash payout. Iowa is taking almost twice the percentage of its haul in cash as in "credit" for principal write-downs/refinancings. Then there is the issue of what the states are going to do with their cash. Attorney General Tom Miller suggests the money should go to the groups directly aiding homeowners in trouble. But other states have other ideas. Missouri's governor has proposed using at least a chunk of its money to support higher education. Read about it here, which also contains a list of the cash payment going to each state. And Ohio seems to be planning to use at least some of its cash to demolish blighted property. These variations in how much cash states get and what they'll do with it are just one reason that consumers may have to struggle to make sense of this settlement and benefit from it.
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