Here's a great treatise on the mindset behind the left's unquestioning acceptance of the "change we can believe in" folks. This explains the comfort the left has with radical Islam, and you'll not like the reasons why. At least you'll understand how socialists, radical environmentalists and Islamofascists make such good bedfellows these days...
Know your enemies.
This is one of the most important articles I've seen this year - please read it all.
A big hat tip to Mike at Sipsey Street, linked here.
2010/06/29
Housing Market HAS NOT Bottomed Yet...
Who was it who said "there are lies, damned lies and statistics"???
For April 2010, the Commerce Department claimed 42,000 new single-family home sales. That's an annual rate of 504,000… and a 15% increase over March levels. In May, it counted only 25,000 new home sales. In addition, they revised the April numbers down to 37,000 and revised March's numbers down by 4,000 to 32,000 after people backed out of their agreements.
What matters is that May 2010 was the worst month for new home sales in America since record keeping began in the early 60's.
The Commerce Department says the average sales price for these new homes was $200,900 - that's a new seven-year low, down 10% from a year ago, and 22% from the all-time high in June 2006.
Thirty-year "A" paper fixed mortgage rates dropped to 4.69% last week, yet applications fell to the lowest levels seen since 1997.
As icing on the cake, a Realtor friend who has sold a few of these "tax rebate homes" suspects that at least half of these recent buyers will end up defaulting, just adding to the foreclosure mess. She says most of these buyers don't fit the profile of someone who can weather an economic storm. (As anecdotal support for that hypothesis, one in ten mortgages in America experienced at least one late payment in Q1 2010.)
It's not over, and there's nothing we can do but watch. It must feel rather similar to live in Oklahoma without a tornado shelter, with a storm approaching...
For April 2010, the Commerce Department claimed 42,000 new single-family home sales. That's an annual rate of 504,000… and a 15% increase over March levels. In May, it counted only 25,000 new home sales. In addition, they revised the April numbers down to 37,000 and revised March's numbers down by 4,000 to 32,000 after people backed out of their agreements.
What matters is that May 2010 was the worst month for new home sales in America since record keeping began in the early 60's.
The Commerce Department says the average sales price for these new homes was $200,900 - that's a new seven-year low, down 10% from a year ago, and 22% from the all-time high in June 2006.
Thirty-year "A" paper fixed mortgage rates dropped to 4.69% last week, yet applications fell to the lowest levels seen since 1997.
As icing on the cake, a Realtor friend who has sold a few of these "tax rebate homes" suspects that at least half of these recent buyers will end up defaulting, just adding to the foreclosure mess. She says most of these buyers don't fit the profile of someone who can weather an economic storm. (As anecdotal support for that hypothesis, one in ten mortgages in America experienced at least one late payment in Q1 2010.)
It's not over, and there's nothing we can do but watch. It must feel rather similar to live in Oklahoma without a tornado shelter, with a storm approaching...
Astounding...
in my blog list I refer to Wm. Grigg's blog, but this article needed to be permanently linked.
It's later than you think in America
Acton was spot on.
It's later than you think in America
Acton was spot on.
Batten Down the Hatches!
I often complain that we have our own PIIGS, and that not enough attention is paid to them. California is our Greece, at least in that it will probably be the first to fall. (How you screw up a state blessed with the economic output of Silicon Valley, Hollywood and miles of agricultural paradise would be incomprehensible had it not already been accomplished!) Illinois isn't far behind, and could still pull out a win in these last laps. Our Portugal is probably Michigan, there being a strong parallel in the loss of industrial base. You get the picture...
Our saving grace thus far is the reserve currency status of the dollar, which makes us king of the fiat hill. In the long view, that's not much of a hill to be king of, and all signs now point to mid-1931.
Here are the "thoughts" of the economic rapist pulling the levers:
Oh, shit.
In the (paraphrased) words of the Mogambo Guru - "forget gold - I'm going long on canned goods and ammo"
Our saving grace thus far is the reserve currency status of the dollar, which makes us king of the fiat hill. In the long view, that's not much of a hill to be king of, and all signs now point to mid-1931.
Here are the "thoughts" of the economic rapist pulling the levers:
Oh, shit.
In the (paraphrased) words of the Mogambo Guru - "forget gold - I'm going long on canned goods and ammo"
2010/06/02
Setting Things Straight: Who Owns Who...
"A man may have to die for his country, but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his country.
He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself."
-- C. S. Lewis
He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself."
-- C. S. Lewis
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