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Here is your open thread for the mid-week on November 7th, 2012. 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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Don’t blame me. I voted for Herm Caine. 9-9-9!
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-07/was-it-round-housing-recovery
Look out beeeeelllllloooooowwwwww!
The Election is Over in Washington
Maybe real estate and rents will go down now….using them for business profit “grow houses” just got eliminated by the passage of I-502. How many homes in Seattle were purchased with pot drug dealing money by like rich elite organised crime, hades even pot law enforcement lawyers too? We’ll find out soon.
RE: No Name Guy @ 2 – Quite a bit of reliance on one data point, with little or no analysis. With sales heading into Fall and interest rates having risen slightly, lower mortgage apps isn’t all that surprising.
RE: No Name Guy @ 2 –
LOL No Name Guy
They say the MSM is liberal and pro-Obama; therefore the MSM puts lipstick on the economy pig to cover up its ugliness to get Obama elected. Its easy to cook the house price trending books, just get a big pot and boiler some water….
RE: softwarengineer @ 5 – I was recording both NBC and Fox News last night. Interestingly, Fox was generally calling states for President Obama before NBC (based on the vote total–I didn’t watch enough of either to compare each states’ call by each network).
But you’re right about the MSM and economic news. As I mentioned elsewhere, 170,000 jobs created becomes good news, because it’s better than the even more pathetic result that had been expected, even though it means over 30,000 people will not be able to get jobs compared to the prior month.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/tax-break-struggling-homeowners-set-104000079.html
And this will sure help out those short sales. Then again, it (money lost in a foreclosure / short sale) never should have been taxed in the first place, but hey, Congress is full of idiots.
The snark analysis would be that the expiration would be good for house prices – folks would let it foreclose (since they can’t afford the tax bill on the supposed income), then the bank would sit on the place (funded by the Bernake printing press), further reducing inventory, pumping up prices in an “animal spirits” driven bidding frenzy for the 3 remaining houses for sale thereby saving the economy by reflating the housing bubble.
RE: No Name Guy @ 7 –
One Thing We Know for Sure About 2013 Federal Income Taxes at This Point:
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RE: No Name Guy @ 7 – This little excerpt probably applies to over 80% of the people doing short sales or foreclosures.
Also, the exemption set to expire doesn’t apply to non-purchase money/improvements to house levels of debt (house as ATM debt).
RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 6 –
Yes Kary
Did you read about the 2012 30-40% cuts in Boeing’s management defense portion of its workforce? Its in the works, excerpt:
“..Boeing said it could not project exactly how workers would lose their jobs because it would try to place people in its growing commercial business.
A company spokesman declined to say how many jobs had already been cut from the 2010 level….”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-boeing-announce-major-defense-173914601.html
Baton the hatches, get ready for the “unknown” 2013 tax/fiscal Monster Storms ahead….I’d add too, even the commercial sector suffers from a weak airline company profit record too [AA going bankrupt]….perhaps if jet fuel comes down with more world/American jobs added, the slashing of the Boeing military budget can be mitigated in the Seattle area. Time will tell.
.
RE: softwarengineer @ 10 – Boo! Every defense company in America is now involved in crying while positioning their tales of woe and threats in an attempt to ward off a well-needed scrutiny of how all of the defense contracts line the pockets of a select group of citizens at outrageous mark-ups. Instead their promoters keep trying to focus the nation on hammering the Social Security recipients. The lunacy of the elites will not go away easily. The Republicans just proved that. An election that a year ago they were locked to win was completely blown with idiotic positions that made sure that anyone in this nation that had suffered because of the economic collapse would never vote for them. It was an unbelievable amount of hubris at work and the fools paid the price.
RE: Pegasus @ 11 – OK fine, but defense spending is the right’s version of stimulus spending. Cutting it will negatively impact tens of thousands of jobs as well as our economy, no matter what your opinion is on the matter.
Next year is going to be verrrrry interesting!
RE: redmondjp @ 12 – Defense spending is both parties’ stimulus spending. Think those Democratic Senators did not sign off on the obvious looting? Think Obama did not? It is the same thing with the medical industry. Threaten cut- backs and they go bonkers. Both sides are beholden to them. Until we actually rein in these spending fiascoes we will get more of the same until we actually call their bluff. Obama already has sold out to the defense, insurance and medical industries. Do you really think things will change? This is all positioning by those trying to protect their tax-payer funded gravy trains. Nothing has changed.
RE: Pegasus @ 13 – RE: redmondjp @ 12 – The amount the US spends on defense is staggering when compared to what other countries spend. Look at aircraft carriers. China just launched it’s first, and it’s something they bought from Russia or another old Soviet block country. It won’t be operational for several years. We just retired one, and I’m pretty sure it’s because it is being replaced by something 50 years newer.
But yes, it is stimulus, as is over half (if not all) the $1T of deficit spending. Without that our economy would probably contract to below 2005 levels. But hey, everything must be fine, because we just re-elected a President, right? /sarc
RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 14 The finances of a country are indeed a national security issue. Funny this never seems to come up in political discourse. I’d argue that cutting our defense spending by 40% would be a NET POSITIVE toward national security.
By wreckingbull @ 15:
Didn’t Romney try to point that out several times during the FP debate? Of course, that was because is differences with President Obama on FP were minimal, and President Obama was weak on the economy (but record deficit spending made that not matter).
RE: Pegasus @ 11 –
I Agree With You and Pegasus Both
But to butcher ax the only federal expense our Constitution actually allows in writing, defense of our country….then go into a temper tantrum when home mortgage tax deductions are possibly eliminated, sounds too much like the Tea Party elite. Cut them, not me.
It also reminds me of what AZ’s SB 10170 Bill and now Washington State’s Initiative 502 states rights possibly being flipantly challenged by Obama’s DOJ, irrespective of our Constitution’s 10th Ammendment, which allows states to dictate their own laws by majority voter rule, that are not specifically referenced in the Constitution.
Defense of our country is specifically referenced in the Constitution BTW. Our American Constitution isn’t just toilet paper either.
RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 14 – Taking a page out of Catch-22, perhaps we could sell our pre-owned military hardware to China.
RE: blurtman @ 18 –
They’re Broke Now Too
We severely slowed down buying from them.
We’re all on the world Titanic together, heading for the iceberg.
Germany even blamed America for their recent economic calamity….it was all our fault….we slowed down buying their stuff….
By softwarengineer @ 17:
Not quite what the 10th Amendment is about. I suspect the lawsuit on 502 will turn on whether there’s any basis at all for having weed a Category 1 drug.
Stated differently, I think the result of the suit might be different if we had legalized cocaine.
By blurtman @ 18:
I think our 50 year old nuclear aircraft carrier would be a step up for them.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-19710040
RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 21 – Perhaps China can outsource defense spending to us, and contract with us to attack ourselves. I think that could be stimulative.
RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 20 –
We Need a Constitutional Law Professsor’s Opinion on That One
Albeit I agree with you that the federal controlled substance laws are on the books, but who the hades cares anymore about federal laws on the books anymore, we let hoards of IAs loose in this country and let the Confederate Flag slavelord companies hire ’em anyway [with subsequent hoards of identity fraud duplicate Social Security numbers that the SSA, the banks and the Credit Agencies CLEARLY knows about, but covers it up anyway, maybe your’s and mine Kary, we wouldn’t know either]….irrespective of federal immigration laws on the books.
We gave hoards of American organised crime employers federal law slack, now its time for the majority of the voters to get the same kind of “wink and the nod” treatment too ;-)
I know, then the [same?] organised crime can’t cash in on Pot Prohibition and a 80 year losing war on drugs. God forbid that happen…LOL
Fooking Geithner.
The election entertained the gullible masses with the illusion of choice.
Kill the bankers.
Secret Documents Show Weak Oversight of Key Foreclosure Program
“The documents also show how the Treasury Department coddled servicers that weren’t complying with the program’s rules. Once a year, servicers are required to certify that they are complying with the program’s rules. But servicers define for themselves what it means to comply. A company that admits violating the rules is allowed to merely submit a cover letter with their certification stating the exceptions and how it would fix the problems.”
“The documents were hard to obtain. They came as a result of two Freedom of Information Act requests by ProPublica. Initially, the Treasury Department, which administers HAMP, refused to release any documents at all. It was only after ProPublica appealed the denial that Treasury agreed to release some documents, although with large portions blacked out.”
http://www.propublica.org/article/secret-documents-show-weak-oversight-of-key-foreclosure-program
Heavily Armed Karl Rove Spotted At Top Of Electoral College Clock Tower
WASHINGTON—Sources confirmed this afternoon that a heavily armed Karl Rove has positioned himself atop the Electoral College clock tower and is planning to pick off at least 50 electors with a high-precision sniper rifle.
Wearing a black tactical ammunition vest with multiple submachine-gun magazine pouches, a holster containing an extra semiautomatic handgun, and several M67 grenades clipped to the chest, Rove reportedly walked up 27 floors to the top of the clock tower, which overlooks the Electoral College’s main quad area and offers the Republican strategist a perfect vantage point to assassinate electors as they exit the Swing State Dining Hall and the Twelfth Amendment Science Building.
Law enforcement officials said Rove appears to be primarily targeting Electoral College attendees from Ohio and Florida.
“Mr. Rove is armed, extremely dangerous, and, we believe, mentally ill,” said lead FBI agent Peter Coburn, adding that his team is working with Electoral College Campus Security to move the institution’s 538 enrolled electors out of harm’s way. “Several witnesses who saw Mr. Rove begin his ascent to the top of the clock tower said he looked stone-faced and was muttering something about making good on his promises to Republican super PAC donors everywhere and to Jesus Christ almighty.”
http://www.theonion.com/articles/heavily-armed-karl-rove-spotted-at-top-of-electora,30309/