Some longer form columns to begin your weekend:
• The Money-Empathy Gap (NY Mag)
• Why Marxism is on the rise again (Guardian)
• Forecasting Error: Histories of Things That Never Happened (Motley Fool)
• The Stupidity of Computers (n+1)
• Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science (The Atlantic)
• From Bench to Bunker: How a 1960s discovery in neuroscience spawned a military project (Chronicle)
• Who Was Milton Friedman? (NY Review Of Books)
• Habit Fields: How memory works: a brief overview (A List Apart)
• Re-opening the American mind (Spiked Online)
• On Sincerity: Say It as If You Mean It (WSJ)
What are you reading?
WSJ Says (Again) That the Housing Bust is Over
Source: WSJ
Category: Financial Press
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
It is likely that the housing bust will end several times in the next 5 years.
Regarding the WSJ and housing — why do I feel like Charlie Brown and Lucy’s got the ball?
Housing bust over? Really?
Check out what RealtyTrack and CoreLogic has to say about this.
Started to read the NYRB article ‘Who Was Milton Friedman?’
But then I saw the byline ‘Paul Kurgman,’ and stopped right there without even proceeding to the topic sentence.
Kinda like Goebbels penning an article titled ‘Who Was Anne Frank?’ …
On the “housing recovery”, I came across a recent Dr. Housing Bubble blog post that is more of what I’ve been saying, that the banks are artificially restricting supply. He doesn’t state the reasoning quite as I have, but it’s close. Banks have infinite government funding and mark to fantasy accounting, so there is not incentive for them to foreclose and move the REO inventory; that would just cause recognition of losses and crimp bonuses. Instead, they can dilly dally, keep inventory low and prices elevated. I suspect this may even be a plan out of Washington to help subsidize the banks and make it look like there is a recovery.
http://www.doctorhousingbubble.com/the-making-housing-market-sales-up-inventory-down-foreclosure-pipeline-healthy-2012/#comments
Seeing the same thing in Houston. Houses that I’ve seen in foreclosure either never put on the market or taken off the market without changing hands. Many empty lots in fairly nice neighborhoods where builders have bought, tear down and then offer to build a custom MacMansion. The difference from before being, they want to use your money to do it. Meanwhile plenty of already built MacMansions still around, going on and off the market while the realtors talk about the low inventory.
Machinehead, your self censorship is profound. Reject ideas that don’tt fit your emotional paradigm. Feel the hate flowing through you. Did Obama take your gun? Socialize your famiy farm? Surrender to terror? He must have, that’s all you read.
Interesting link to Krugman debate…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2tPfUJ90XI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
machinehead,
You still don’t get it.
Being the “right” wing, means you’re the sucker at the poker table.
Krugman points out in his new book,
this warning about companies like Bain, from Larry Summers “Breach of Trust”
Not only were these companies Robbing workers of their pensions, by Breach of Contract,
but, you too were the target: these companies extract wealth from tax payers, shareholders and bond holders as well. They Laugh at people like you who think you’re “in the club”.
“Breach of Trust” When a WARNING becomes the BLUEPRINT:
http://www.nber.org/chapters/c2052.pdf
Romney on not being Bain boss
Well, actually, [Romney] said, “I was the owner of an entity that is filing that information.” Also that there’s a difference between an owner and “a person who’s running an entity.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/opinion/collins-mitts-political-vortex.html
…but if corporations are people, and runners of entities aren’t owners… then can I have Bain?
Why Our Elites Stink
David Brooks Claims…. “…I’d say today’s meritocratic elites achieve and preserve their status not mainly by being corrupt but mainly by being ambitious and disciplined…”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/brooks-why-our-elites-stink.htm
… But then the data is: “…With ego too big to fail, Iowa broker admits 20-year fraud…”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/13/us-pfgbest-ceo-arrested-idUSBRE86C0YM20120713
So Brooks is wrong again. So PK asks, “Who’s Very Important?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/krugman-whos-very-important.html
John Mauldin’s new newsletter is out:
Sobering.
Have a good weekend.
Businessweek
The Case for Way More Mandates
By Peter Coy on July 05, 2012
Insurance mandates, far from being unique to Obamacare, are all around us. States require drivers to carry liability insurance. Your state government also provides you with–and charges you for–insurance against losing your job. The federal government mandates flood insurance for anyone living in a flood plain who has a federally insured mortgage. Social Security is mandatory insurance against a penniless old age, and the premiums are deducted from your paycheck, whether you like it or not. “This is part of our fabric,” says Ann O’Leary, director of the Children and Families Program at the Center for the Next Generation, a San Francisco think tank.
The logic of getting everyone to jump into the risk pool is powerful: Left to their own devices, many people will choose to go uncovered against fire, flood, car crashes, and cancer. Then, if something bad happens, they throw themselves on the mercy of society. The cruel solution would be to let them live (or die) on the streets. To our societal credit, we are unwilling to do this. A coverage mandate at least ensures that people who create the risks will bear the costs, on average, over time.
People who choose to skip insurance are often more shortsighted than devious. Most Californians who took out earthquake insurance after the 1994 Northridge earthquake have let it lapse, says Howard Kunreuther, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “The biggest challenge we have faced is to convince a person, anyone, that the best return on an insurance policy is no return at all.” The point of a mandate isn’t only to protect people from the consequences of going unprotected; it’s also to prevent the rest of us from having to pick up the tab. That’s why the argument made by some conservatives–including Chief Justice John Roberts–that if the government can force us to buy health insurance it can force us to buy broccoli, doesn’t hold up. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg countered, unlike broccoli, refusing to buy health insurance comes “at the expense of another consumer forced to pay an inflated price.”
…
The bottom line: There are already numerous governmental insurance mandates–auto insurance, Social Security–designed to spread risk.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/60458-the-case-for-way-more-mandates
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/bain-capital-mitt-romney-outsourcing-china-global-tech
WSJ is correct (again). Using May 2012 data, the median national New Home Price bottomed in Oct/2010, has since risen $30,000 and is $2,000 (1%) above the long-term Price/family-income trend line. The median nat’l Existing Home Price bottomed in Jan/2012, has since risen $13,000 but is still (6%) below the long-term price/income trend. Sales volume for both is also far above the recent lows of two years ago.
Realty Bubble Monitor: http://trendlines.ca/free/economics/RealtyBubbleMonitor/RealtyBubbleMonitor.htm
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Neurotech for intell analysts, still an oxymorn………….
25 years ago security tech firms were working object recognition from video feeds from surveillance cameras.
What happened, cheaper to use an eeg hooked to a man (why not a dog) that id’s brain patterns that react to objects than a computer?
What to do with the 5% of GDP……………….
July 13, 2012
That’s No Phone. That’s My Tracker.
By PETER MAASS and MEGHA RAJAGOPALAN
THE device in your purse or jeans that you think is a cellphone — guess again. It is a tracking device that happens to make calls. Let’s stop calling them phones. They are trackers.
Most doubts about the principal function of these devices were erased when it was recently disclosed that cellphone carriers responded 1.3 million times last year to law enforcement requests for call data. That’s not even a complete count, because T-Mobile, one of the largest carriers, refused to reveal its numbers. It appears that millions of cellphone users have been swept up in government surveillance of their calls and where they made them from. Many police agencies don’t obtain search warrants when requesting location data from carriers.
Thanks to the explosion of GPS technology and smartphone apps, these devices are also taking note of what we buy, where and when we buy it, how much money we have in the bank, whom we text and e-mail, what Web sites we visit, how and where we travel, what time we go to sleep and wake up — and more. Much of that data is shared with companies that use it to offer us services they think we want.
…
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/sunday-review/thats-not-my-phone-its-my-tracker.html
Hi Barry, I’m reading “Crisis Economics” by Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm (Apr 26, 2011). Mr. Roubini says that anyone who ever uttered “we couldn’t have seen it coming” is either lying or completely ill-equipped to work in finance or economics. Mr. Roubini saw it coming and he goes into great current and historical detail as to exactly how he did see it. The book is eminently readable and entertaining to boot. I highly recommend it.
Next book up I hope will be “Dark Pool” by Scott Patterson. It just came out and it’s a topic I know very little about.
@ machinehead: Krugman delivers a pretty sick burn:
Economic theory at least aspires to be science, not theology; it is concerned with earth, not heaven. Keynesian theory initially prevailed because it did a far better job than classical orthodoxy of making sense of the world around us, and Friedman’s critique of Keynes became so influential largely because he correctly identified Keynesianism’s weak points. And just to be clear: although this essay argues that Friedman was wrong on some issues, and sometimes seemed less than honest with his readers, I regard him as a great economist and a great man.