More upside down mortgages a comin'

Bring on the pain.

The 3 rules for dealing with police

Rule #1. never talk to cops.

Rule #2. See rule number 1.

Rule #3. rule 1 still in effect.

things i did this week to take my mind off of the shitty economy

1. behaved like an assclown dicking around on Facebook. (I do that every week)

2. worked on TOP SECRET Alternate Payments system.

3. made a fish... or a monster. a fish monster. fish.

TARP shenanigans

Congress LOVES their pork. They have even used the "emergency" TARP funds to buy 7 Billion worth of Magic Beans (and Pork).

A.D.D. glossary of NYC temporary markets and festivals. 2009 edition

Street Fair - funnel cakes and sausage.

San Gennaro Festival - a street fair in Little Italy, nicknamed the "San Perpetuo Festival", that seemingly runs for about 8 and a half months each year. Allegedly the highest density of sausage and cannoli in the known universe for the month of September.

Holiday Markets at parks - Tibetan jackets, Himalayan salt.

artist markets,
Handmade events,
Brooklyn Flea - hipter-ey Pow Wow of semi-Capitalist maker-sellers (ie - creative survivalism.)

"Pop up shop" - Big boxes attempting to avoid bankruptcy by cashing in on a "street" trend.

"Trunk Show" - An artist (or collective) getting out of the apartment for the day: taking a break from Hulu.com by hanging out at a friend's store and drinking alcohol.

cheap oil forever

Seriously, thats what is reported in an article at CNN Money.

"The world will never run out of oil"... Deutsche Bank analysts

They say efficiencies are increasing and that oil will average $65 a barrel in 2010.

2010 will definitely be an interesting year to see how all the various analyss play out regarding housing prices (40% drop), unemployment (11% or 13%) and oil (spiking or stable).

Feel lucky. Well do you punk?

thw winds of Change, REO brooklyn

In sort of a BAD part of town (Brownsville/Ocean Hill), this "TLC" property was listed at $599,000 just as little while ago


Confucius say: you can't polish a turd

It just landed on Trulia.com as a Bank-owned foreclosure, "Buyer Assumes All Hpd/Aep Violations And Penalties" charmer listing at $299,000.

again... that's an asking price dropping from around $600K to $300K.

Holy Crap.

What a difference a day makes.
_____________________
UPDATE April 4, 2010
at $289,900 ... no takers

the Estate Tax is expiring. Long Live the Estate Tax

Lawmakers are working on what new form it will take.

Most Republicans advocate for the lowest estate tax possible, but Democrats "are not of one mind on this," said Clint Stretch, managing principal of tax policy at Deloitte Tax.

"not of one mind on this"

That sort of describes the Dems on any issue. The kinder. gentler way of saying, "can't get their shit together on anything".

the brutal part of this ongoing flogging has not yet begun

Are you happy about the rise in home prices that have occurred in some places these past few months?

Well...

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com in a Reuter's interview said, "Home prices, as measured by the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, will trough in the third quarter of 2010 after declining 38 percent"

here are some other stats he was spouting:

"about 25 percent of single-family homes with mortgages have negative equity"

"7.5 million foreclosure sales will have taken place between 2006 and 2011. The majority of these sales, however, have not emerged yet, with 4.8 million foreclosure sales expected between 2009 and 2011"

"Foreclosure sales will increase, and home prices will resume their decline by early 2010 as mortgage servicers figure out who will not qualify for a modification"

oy.

mm hm

The Recovery in Zero Sum terms

The idea is simple: 70% of the U.S. economy is consumer spending.

The question is: On what will the consumer spend that money?

Gasoline to power our vehicles is one big expense. It is said that oil moving beyond 100 dollars per barrel can hamper recovery. Some say $80 per barrel is a danger sign, and that we were able to absorb the earlier (pre collapse) increase by using home equity like a bank account.

So with home equity annihilated, that gives us less of a margin.

$80 a barrel is that threshold according to Steven Kopits, managing director at energy market forecaster Douglas-Westwood in New York.

As of right now (November, Wednesday 18 2009 - 11:27:23) , oil is.....


tick friggin tock.

the cure for cancer

...possibly hidden in the vast depths of the Amazon jungle?

i don't think so.

stop eating so much garbage, cut down on your meat consumption. There's your friggin cure.

No Magic Bullet.

in blows the perfect storm

from CNN Money: double dip warning signs

A quick synopsis of these "things that could throw us back into recession".
1. If job losses continue deep into 2010.
2. Flat 2009 Christmas retail sales.
3. Oil in 2010 blasting through $100/barrel threshold.
4. Another year of weak auto sales.
5. Further foreclosures and further downward momentum on home prices.
6. another Bear Market... 20% price drop.

We're in recovery mode, but it's a shaky, fragile thing that can be taken down like a house of cards.

And Big Daddy has already shot his load.

unemployment rising

I got nothing snarky to add. This is all pretty clear.

Below is a comment from a post at the James Pethokoukis blog at Reuters - 12 reasons unemployment is going to (at least) 12 percent

I’ve had businesses for 30 years.

This is all very simple. Businesspeople are not stupid. They aren’t hiring because:

1. They don’t know what tax increases are coming.

2. They don’t know what new burdensome regulations are coming.

3. They don’t know what changes to the health care system are coming, and if perhaps they will be responsible for everyone’s COBRA or similar for years.

4. They don’t know if it will be harder to fire people in the future.

5. They don’t know if every employee will be allowed to join a union, increasing costs and headaches.

6. They don’t know what new procedures will be invented to upend the bond markets completely, overturning centuries of settled law.

7. They don’t know if Washington will unilaterally cut their compensation.

8. They don’t know if cap-and-trade will double their energy costs.

And on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

I can’t imagine hiring anyone until all this nonsense shakes out. I wouldn’t be surprised to see unemployment above 13%.

I can hold off generating taxable activity a lot longer than Democrats can retain Congress, that’s for damn sure.
- Posted by Chester White

mysterious correlation-ey

I was looking at New York Times interactive maps and spotted, what appears to my eyes, a high correlation between murder density and those who voted against Bloomberg.

What do you see? Clear as day, right?

Where the murder clusters, votes AGAINST Bloomberg clusters also.

click for nytimes interactive Homicide map (might require free registration to view)


click for nytimes interactive '09 Voting Results map (might require free registration to view)

this Market will never ever ever again crash. NEVER

speculate, confiscate, sell.
one millisecond at a time.
yeah baby yeah!!!

volatility much?

Gold is off the charts. Safe haven during during a Democrat Tax-n-Spend dollar-weakening frenzy?

Dollar weakening means U.S. manufactured goods will have more international appeal and interest rates will stay low... so equities are holding.

Joblessness and discontent are still rising and will continue that trend. Currently: 10.2% official "adjusted", 17% actual.

2010 = Bye bye Dems
2012 = Hello Reaganomics II

a life of loud desperation

which way will it go?

follow the money

Mike Bloomberg just won a 3rd term as Mayor of New York city after spending about 100 million dollars.

Obama  bought  won the Presidency for about three-quarters of a BILLION dollars.

Power is as Power spends.

why are they shooting at these cans?

SOMEBODY HATES THESE CANS!!!

Economic Recovery or Desperation

DOW posts a near 200 point rally!!!!

Yeah, but it's been dropping up to a hundred points a day the whole week.

We call that VOLATILITY.

i.e.- desperation. Magical Thinking.

in other words: delusion.

Who is profiting here?

the "Giant Squid" with it's millisecond HFT edge and a lot of other professionals.

it's still a closed game for only the Uber-greedy.

Let's see what tomorrow brings us.

Post Aocalyptic Urban Hell-Hole

Detroit goes from crap to crappier with more crap to come. Their Property Tax Foreclosure Auction was grim.

"On the auction block in Detroit: almost 9,000 homes and lots in various states of abandonment and decay from the tidy owner-occupied to the burned-out shell claimed by squatters... Despite a minimum bid of $500, less than a fifth of the Detroit land was sold after four days."

The Recession is OVER!!!!

The DOW is holding 10,000 this week. Yay!

Let's look at other figures.

1 out of 136 homes in the U.S. are in foreclosure.

Over 970,000 homes entered foreclosure in the 3rd Quarter of 2009.

oil prices are spiking. (speculation much?)

Sound familiar?

Add to that the "4 week moving average" of new jobless claims cresting 530,000...

...and you got a world of hurt.

as icing to the cake let's add: no specific and measurable finance regulation  and   nor reform of any kind.

let's chant it now: "DOUBLE DIP! DOUBLE DIP! DOUBLE DIP!"

the medium is the message

newspaper and magazine layoffs every other day, CNN following Tweets and blogs, John Stewart mocking CNN's "we'll have to leave it right there" half-assed non-journalism...

and now gawker.com scoops everybody on the balloon boy hoax revelation.

The medium is the internet. The message is "print is slow, television is irrelevant"

Wowzers!

The federal deficit is now $11.9 trillion.

What the Frack!

How close are we to "Game Over bitches" ?

the Black Hole of High Frequency Trading

Forget about "Skynet becoming self aware" and the machines taking over.

They are already wreaking minor havoc today.

How HFT's are jacking up and diminishing confidence in the stock market.

NYC, teach me to read

one in five New Yorkers can't read.

Everything is OK

Monetizing carbon cleanup

Leave it to Big Business to create solutions.

as reported by Reuters:
New technologies may grab carbon right out of air

New Technologies?!!?!!? How about OLD technologies?

like TREES. Just plant more trees.

You know: replace the 80% of the trees that humanity has "monetized" murdered already.

WTF?

Horrible Quarter-2, 2009 economic figures

GDP is in the hole.
WAAAAY in the hole.
grrreeeeen shoots?

NCIS San Diego... see PENCILS being PUSHED !

If they made an NCIS TeeVee show based on what they actually do, it would be like watching paint dry...

except even more boring.

nation of fear

Children should not ride bikes for fear of injury or abduction.

Al Qaida hangin' in Queens. Anti-terror agents raid a home looking for bomb making materials. Find none. Why? Because a dude suspiciously drove a rental car from Denver to New York.

Sez the Senate: Go ahead, bring yer gun on the train.

Go to college, get raped. (UPDATE: see below)

Bring on the Tea Baggers.
------------------------
* - UPDATE 9/20/09:
not rape... lies. Aaaaaah yes. The REAL STORY here.

no green shoots

look here.

12% of the worlds container ships are sitting dormant in Malaysia rusting away.

1 out of 8 big freighters just sitting there in the water. They expect it might rise to 1 in 4 within a few years if the global economic situation dips further.

National To Do List, 09/14/2009

1. Fix decades-long broken Health Care System

2. Bring back Glass-Steagall Act, appoint National Finance Cop and other Wall Street and Finance reforms

3. Start national debate on Social Security reform.

4. Enact further temporary tax cuts to help growth and prevent Double Dip Recession. Warn of needed tax hikes starting in 2-3 years.

5. End ill advised, artificially induced war in Iraq.

6. Get in big uproar over Kanye West's drunken MTV Video Music Awards behavior.

information is NOT a crime

Except in Britain it is.

The Home Gunsmith, a website disseminating information for homemade firearms. Now dormant. Killed by the British Government. It's owner, Phil Luty, thrown in a jail cell somewhere. No one knows. The British Government is not saying.

You can imprison and kill bodies, but you can't kill ideas.

Information has a life of it's own. The site lives on:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070317052350/http://www.thehomegunsmith.com/

The books are available as PDFs in those corners of the internet where files and information roam free... there for you to access should you need it, so that THIS doesn't ever happen again.

double-dip recession

The experts weigh in.

Pimco manages $850 Billion in investment. Their CEO, Mohamed El-Erian, sees a 50% chance of a double-dip in 2010.

NYU economist Nouriel Roubini sees a small but rising probability for another dip.

Pimco Chief Investment Officer Bill Gross sees the possibility rising if the government pulls back too swiftly on stimulus programs.

We'll have to eventually pay for all this stimulus money. But if you crank taxes up, you discourage growth. Don't crank up taxes fast enough and the US dollar is worthless in 10 years. It's a precarious high wire act with a hungry bloodthirsty lion at each end of the line.

Richard Rahn of the Cato Institute breaks it down very clearly:

"As interest rates rise, as they must, and international commodity and other prices rise as the global economy recovers, real, after-tax, inflation and tax-adjusted disposable incomes will continue to fall. This means real consumption can rise temporarily but will likely fall again, giving the United States a double-dip recession."

Welcome to your lost decade, America.

CNBC, a leading whorish cheerleader for Conspicuous Greed has a completely different take; one filled with gumdrop wishes and endless wealth that can be found at the end of the rainbow. There you'll find wads of C-notes flowing from the golden star-hole of a Magical Unicorn's anus.

Here's some CNBC video. Let's see what steps out of the Clown Car:

unemployment numbers, august 2009

Less job loss claims, but higher unemployment rate?

WHUT?

Last month's report with the record job losses minus the underemployed and no-longer-looking-for-jobs made the the rate dip one-tenth of a percent. Now this month's report has a different spin of Voodoo

"The pace of U.S. job losses hit a one-year low last month but the unemployment rate jumped to a 26-year high of 9.7 percent"

So how does lower job losses this time cause the unemployment rate to go up? Mystery.

Include the UNDER-employed in the figure (crap part time jobs due to necessity... BLS's "U-6" statistic) and you get the real depressing figures:

"a record 16.8 percent in August from 16.3 percent in July"

I won't even go into the stats for minorities, young Americans (18-29)... and worst of all: young blacks and hispanics.

But if you want to gaze at the depressing reality yourself, look HERE.

The last time it was this grim, I was the young minority.

behind the green veil

Not doing anything is as green as you can be. The fabulous MPG king, the Toyota Prius Hybrid helps to lessen our dependence on foreign oil, and is the darling of the LOHAS set.

But the increased manufacture of electric and hybrid vehicles requires a ramp up of rare earth mining operations in the west.

"Each electric Prius motor requires 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of neodymium, and each battery uses 10 to 15 kg (22-33 lb) of lanthanum"

FOLLOW THE MONEY
The chinese for many years have cornered the market on Rare Earth Extraction. The recently reopened Mountain Pass Mine in California is setting itself up to challenge China's market share.

Molycorp Minerals owns Mountain Pass Mine, and Chevron owns Molycorp.

"With appropriate federal assistance for research, development and capital costs, Molycorp Minerals is prepared to move forward to reestablish domestic manufacturing capacity on an expedited basis"

Big Oil has grubstaked it's future on what it knows best: Controlling The Feed of critical resources.

and best of all, you get to subsidize it.

yay!

Fun Facts about Bed Stuy

There are thousands of unique and interesting things about the Bedford Stuyvesant area, all of which I'll tell you now...

---

People enjoy going to Church here. There are many churches on every block. Once there was an eclectic collective of Butchers, Bakers, Candlestick makers, over a half-dozen giant Broadway-sized theaters, motorcycle dealerships, Tailors... you name it. Now many of those same places are churches. Because God is better than the petty trappings of the comfort and convenience that the evil Merchant Class brings.

---

Garbage cans are unnecessary. You can simply toss your trash on the ground. Someone else will pick it up for you!

---

Pizza and chicken wings are the most eaten food. Over 90% of the restaurants serve one or both items. In fact, it's quite difficult to find food in Bed Stuy that DOESN'T lead to Type 2 diabetes.

---

There are only limited varieties of Fromage in stock at the food markets, obscure foreign magazines such as The New Yorker and Time Out New York cannot be bought anywhere, and there are no computer stores at all.

---

Writing on someone else's wall with Magic Marker or spray paint is a fun and artistic way of interfacing with your community.

---

Leaving big piles of dog feces on the sidewalk is a popular activity. There seems to be a secret ongoing competition to see who can leave the biggest, squishiest example. Some folks are so proud, they leave it RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE of the sidewalk. And who can blame them? Art like that, you want to let it shine for all to see.

---

In general, white people tend to avoid the area and rightly so. You see: White people's ancestors OWNED the black people's ancestors, subjugating them through many years of slavery. And some still harbor resentment against the so-called "whitey cracker establishment" for all their past (and some say present) wrongdoings.

Despite the scarcity of white people, one can still find a decent selection of mayonnaise at the markets here.

---

UPDATE 09/13/09:
Police like to harass young black men for being young and black.
And groups of young black men like to beat non-black guys walking alone.
It's the circle of life, Simba.

no statistics, no measurable plan...

...just the present phase of the same permanent war

"There are no quick fixes to achieve U.S. national security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The danger of failure is real and the implications are grave."

   - Barack Obama

garbage in NYC

New York City generates 7 Billion pounds of garbage per year. If the Empire State Building was a garbage can, the city could fill it up with trash EVERY DAY.

Today on 16th Street I passed by a guy who was feverishly pulling books out of a recyclables bag left at the curb for the sanitation truck. He scored big: it looked to be about a hundred books. His "granny cart" was already half full of other treasures.

An hour previous I had carried 10 blocks home, an old Macintosh G4 tower that was left curbside.


A few weeks back, an old record player was on the curb around the corner in front of The Projects.


My girlfriend's wardrobe has at least a dozen perfectly good items that have been liberated from New York's curbside Free sale.

What else in the trash piles is usable? Tons of organic refuse that can be turned into methanol? I'm sure there are plenty of other inefficiencies in the waste stream, and the various re-purposing schemes for them have yet to be imagined.
---------------
UPDATE 29-aug-2009 :
got this bitchen check embosser in Midtown, it was perched on top a giant pile of garbage bags at noon.

tobacco holocaust

From this Reuters article:

"Tobacco use will kill 6 million people next year from cancer, heart disease, emphysema and a range of other ills"

"Tobacco accounts for one out of every 10 deaths worldwide"

Sooooooo... tobacco kills every year about 6 million people (and rising). The Nazis killed about 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.

So tobacco is a perpetual ongoing holocaust. And people pay money to participate as victims.

People publish these kinds of statistics cuz they're jealous of how cool and sophisticated smokers look when they smoke.

random Fun U.S. facts! (for the kids)

In 1860, in southern States, slaves typically numbered about 30% or more of the total population. In South Carolina and Mississippi, slaves OUTNUMBERED non-slaves.

In Kansas there were 107,206 people, 2 of them were slaves. Imagine being those two... like winning the Opposite Lottery.

1 out of every 50 people in the U.S. died in the U.S. Civil War... around 700,000 deaths.

Present day:
1 out of every 100,000   59,000 Americans have died in the current Iraq/Afghanistan wars (as of August 2009).

That is 5,136 people in total. It's no wonder that people are clamoring for an end to the extreme bloodshed. In that same period, about 270,000 Americans died in traffic accidents. Not many Americans are calling for an end to traffic violence or an end to driving in general because that would inconvenience us far too much. How would we drive through the fast food lane and load up on McDeath?

Guns are more dangerous when pointed toward another person.

Killing and/or dominating other people is still a popular sport despite the pain and suffering it brings to all parties involved.

French fries are dangerous when shoved into your face-hole. They are far less dangerous when only rubbed all over your torso while listening to ABBA's Dancing Queen.

Cars are still, by a wide margin, the most dangerous weapon of mass destruction created so far *.


* - unless you count tobacco, refined white sugar, high fructose corn syrup and sharp pointed sticks.

Monsanto = Evil SatanCo ?

Many say "Yes... Super horrible and systematically Evil."

and the U.S. system of "justice" backs them up.

Cynical Assholishness Unlimited. Welcome to "The Land of the Free".

Banks - still sticking it to you

Banks will collect 38.5 BILLION DOLLARS in overdraft fees his year.

new york city subway capacity

The passenger throughput of the NYC subway system is fairly large: during rush hour, over 1000 people every 6 seconds.

and if there was no subway:

"At best, it would take 167 inbound lanes, or 84 copies of the Queens Midtown Tunnel... At worst, 200 new copies of 5th Avenue. Somewhere in the middle would be 67 West Side Highways or 76 Brooklyn Bridges. And this neglects the Long Island Railroad, Metro North, NJ Transit, and PATH systems entirely."

...except Manhattan would need a parking lot three times the size of Central Park so this is all just for perspective.

So I guess a city is an organism... a living entity that grows into itself.

And Manhattan without trains is unsustainable - all commerce would wither within days if there were no trains.

Frumination / frumin.net

town hall meetings... again with the no statistics

Lack, abundance, empathy, intolerance, fear
Like the residents of a termite mound with a chunk ripped off, we scurry around frightened and confused
listen for the hoof beats of the four horsemen

thoughtful, measured Town Hall meetings:


the Other kind:

no stats. just pictures

photos of Hiroshima

And if you think the images are horrible, they are nothing compared to the insane inhuman musings (i.e. - typical rah rah Amerikkkuh rhetoric) in the comments area.

Next time you feel like saying "we should nuke their ass"... remember these pictures.

About half of total health care spending is wasteful

PriceWaterhouseCoopers reports that of the 2.2 trillion dollars spent in the U.S. each year for health care, up to 1.2 TRILLION is wasteful spending.

Over 200 Billion wasted yearly just on inefficient claims form processes. That is about 690 dollars in paperwork waste for every man, woman and child in the United States. Seeing that not everyone is insured and therefore not paying into the system... the "paperwork waste" factor per insured American is more like 814 dollars per year.

(via CNN Money)

say goodbye to the cornucopia of cash

And the headline reads:

Half of mortgage borrowers will be 'underwater'
An estimated 25 million borrowers will owe more than their house is worth by 2011

CNN Money article here.

The Deutsche Bank analysts are at it again:

"If our home-price forecast is correct, roughly one in two mortgage borrowers and one in three homeowners will owe more than their home is worth"

That is IF they are right. If finance people have proved one thing in the past few years it is that just about everyone can be simultaneously wrong.

I have a feeling that the actual outcome will be fairly close to their prediction.

happy days are here again

As deep into the trough of this recession/depression as we've ever been. Despite trillions of "stimulus" money spent, little relief for the unemployed.

Here's the headline:

Jobless rate down for first time in a year
The economy shed 247,000 jobs in July, less than expected and lowest total of losses since last August. Unemployment rate inches down to 9.4%.

CNN Money article here

read deeper: Job losses for July: 443,000

The unemployment rate fell even as employers continued to cut jobs because the Labor Department estimated there were 237,000 fewer people it counted as unemployed.

...even though in actual fact: thay ARE NOT working - they just are no longer counted.

Actual job losses 443,000.