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Here is your open thread for the weekend beginning Friday March 22nd, 2013. You may post random links and off-topic discussions here. Also, if you have an idea or a topic you’d like to see covered in an article, please make it known.
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Why Buy in the Highlands?
1.) After clearing the pass, the mules would go no farther.
2.) Just emigrated from Turkey, and want to experience real American opulence.
3.) Grew up in the Bronx, and miss the projects.
4.) Blew the down payment on the tricked out Grand Caravan, best we could do.
5.) DUIβs mean I have to walk to my Gymboree manager job.
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http://www.cnbc.com/id/100581861
This article talks about the low wage temporary employment jobs market we are basing the lower unemployment numbers on.
I want to couple that with this idea that in Cyprus the government had the idea to tax savings accounts. Where is the little guy supposed to put money? Real Estate I suspect, because it’s the safe investment.
I don’t look at Real Estate as safe, there are way to many investor dollars in the mix along with these historically low interest rates that have driven up debt loads. Higher Real Estate prices mean higher debt.
I think the next round of Fed movement, which is long over due, should be to raise interest rates, and give our savers some relief, and incentive. We really should be looking more at the middle class than what will continue to benefit banking.
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RE: David Losh @ 2 –
One New Good Idea Can Completely Change a Country for the Better
Rather than regurgitating failed old ideas that destroyed it.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Edmund Burke
1795
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RE: Blurtman @ 1 – Wow, you touched on all 5 of my housing hot buttons. Do you know me in real life? I’ll be buying in the Highlands tout de suite.
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RE: Blurtman @ 1 –
Just to clarify, you’re talking about Issaquah Highlands, as opposed to “The Highlands” near 145th and 3rd NW, the exclusive country club neighborhood founded by Bill Boeing and a few others, or the Renton Highlands, home to some of the best Vietnamese sandwiches?
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RE: Ira Sacharoff @ 5 –
I believe you are correct, he’s talking about Issaquah Highlands, a nouveau riche ant farm, originally known as Ken Behring’s Grand Ridge Project which Seattle Weekly appeared to term a land development Californication.
http://www.seattleweekly.com/1999-09-22/news/brian-derdowski-californicated/full/
Issaquah Highlands is a place we merely don’t want to go as opposed to The (Seattle) Highlands, an old money enclave populated by a laundry list of Seattle business elite where the guard at the gate won’t let us go. After all, one of the most significant sticks in the bundle of rights that make up private property is the right to exclude.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Highlands_(Seattle)
In 2009, two brokers living across the street from each other in Issaquah Highlands in a 900K Burnstead and a Million Dollar John Buchan each got foreclosed out approximately two years after buying. I think they were both no money down and picked up a commission check when they bought in so it was a little hard to feel sorry for them when they gambled with somebody elses money and only got a 25 or 30K commission rather than the 10%+ per annum appreciation they rolled the dice for. That seemed to fit the neighborhood and the Behring legacy, but I don’t think that’s exactly what the Weekly ment by Californication.
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RE: Blurtman @ 1 –
I just watched “Deliverance” and found myself getting home sick.
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RE: Ira Sacharoff @ 5 – Yes, the Issaquah Highlands. The Horror. The Horror.
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Why Your Skyrocketing Rent Is Bad for the Economy
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/03/why-your-skyrocketing-rent-bad-economy/5069/
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A real American hero. Shame on you, President Obama, for not prosecuting war crimes. You are a coward, when this country needs a hero.
********************
Young is more specific about who he thinks really killed him. He blames former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney for invading Iraq under false pretenses.
βYou may evade justice, but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans β my fellow veterans β whose future you stole,β Young wrote in the open letter on Truthdig.com.
Tallying the losses from the war, Young doesn’t hide his disdain. He calls Veterans Affairs inept. He calls the Iraq war a total failure and a diversion from the war on terrorism heβd signed up to fight after Sept. 11. He says he would have been just as miserable withering away from fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, he writes, βbut I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love.β
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-iraq-veteran-suicide-20130321,0,500135.story
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