Few in U.S. move for new jobs, fueling fear the economy might get stuck, too

Few in U.S. move for new jobs, fueling fear the economy might get stuck, too: "Labor mobility has nearly ground to a halt in the past two years, and policymakers are increasingly worried that the slowdown is not just a symptom of the nation's economic struggles but also a barrier to overcoming them.

With many people locked in homes by underwater mortgages, only 1.6 percent of Americans moved between states in a one-year period that ended in March 2009 -- a labor stagnation not seen in half a century."
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Thanks to Shu Bartholomew for this link. People aren't buying homes because they can't sell the one they have. How can they move to another city without a job to go to, and without selling their home?

AP survey: A bleaker outlook for economy into 2011

AP survey: Economists turn more pessimistic for coming year, but most say rebound will endure

Economic growth the rest of this year and early next year will be weak -- less than 3 percent. For the April-to-June quarter, economists pegged growth at 2.8 percent. That's far below the 3.7 percent pace predicted just three months ago.

-- The unemployment rate will be no lower at the end of the year than it is now -- 9.5 percent. A majority think it will be 2015 or later before the rate falls to a historically normal 5 percent.

-- State budget shortfalls pose a "significant" or "severe" risk to the national economy. The loss of tax revenue has forced state and local governments to cut services and lay off workers.

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Memo to Prof. McKenzie: The economy is indeed post recessionary based on the growth figures above. But it's no great shakes as you are noting from the trailing indicators including unemployment and state budget shortfalls.

President of St. Louis Federal Reserve concerned by prospect of deflation

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Debate is intensifying at the Federal Reserve over how best to cope with a weakening recovery, with momentum growing for a concrete plan to prevent a backslide into recession.

That came into view Thursday as James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, offered a specific proposal. He said the Fed should revive a crisis-era program to buy government debt if the country seems headed toward a bout with deflation.

Bullard, a voting member this year on the Fed's main policy-setting committee, worries that the United States could tip into a Japanese-like bout of deflation if the economy weakens. Deflation is a widespread and prolonged drop in prices of goods, values of homes and stocks, and in wages.

For now, Bullard thinks the deflation risk is still low. But the danger could grow. Buying government debt would energize the economy and nip deflationary forces.

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I believe deflation is a very real and present danger to the economy given the paralyzing gut shot it has taken over the past two and a half years that has sucked out all the money and consequently left a large amount of slack in the economy. All that excess capacity of goods and services can't be bought up because consumers and small businesses don't have a lot of dollars in their pockets to spend on them. They become devalued as a result.

It will be difficult for the nation and its economic policymakers to cope with deflation after four decades of being geared to counteract the threat of inflation starting in the 1970s.

Foreclosures up in 75 percent of top U.S. metro areas | Reuters

Foreclosures up in 75 percent of top U.S. metro areas | Reuters
Foreclosures rose in 3 of every four large U.S. metro areas in this year's first half, likely ruling out sustained home price gains until 2013, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Thursday.

Unemployment was the main culprit driving foreclosure actions on more than 1.6 million properties, the company said.
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I guess all of us will just have to stay put for another three or four years...

Books - Mission Creep - Administrative Glut - NYTimes.com

Books - Mission Creep - Administrative Glut - NYTimes.com
In 1976, for every 1,000 full-time students, there were 42 professional administrative staff members, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. By 2008, the most recent year available, there were 84. At the same time, the number of full-time faculty members for every 1,000 students has declined, from 65 to 55, due to the greater use of adjuncts and teaching assistants.

While fewer undergraduates are being taught by full-time professors, the number of administrators keeps growing.
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So say political scientist Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus. And they are right.

Tow fees: Chicago suburbs cash in on towing - chicagotribune.com

Tow fees: Chicago suburbs cash in on towing - chicagotribune.com
Great expose by the Chicago Tribune that blows the lid off the auto impound racket. Municipalities have laws that allow the police to impound any vehicle involved in any way in any misdemeanor or felony, or some specified list of crimes, even something as trivial as an expired license or not having proof of insurance. Doesn't matter who was driving, ever if the owner was at home sleeping when it happened. The car gets impounded and then you have to pay hundreds of dollars to get it back. If you don't pay, you lose the car for good.

This is another of those municipal money grabs, like red light cameras and mandating that all new construction has to be in CIDs. There is also a map that shows the entire Chicagoland area with the details of all the various laws.

Thanks to Fred Pilot and Shu Bartholomew

I can't thank Shu and Fred enough for keeping this blog lively while I was away on vacation with my children. I was able to check in from time to time, even though we were driving, camping, sight-seeing, and spending great times with family. The posts and comments were full of insights and what Bruce Lee used to call "emotional content." Great stuff.

I hope they will continue to post things here from time to time as the mood strikes them.

BBC NEWS | Business | How can water be fairly distributed?

BBC NEWS | Business | How can water be fairly distributed? I think issues related to water will be at the center of politics at all levels in the decades to come.

Homeowners Association Spends $300,000 In Legal Fees Over A Pick-Up Truck - The Consumerist

Homeowners Association Spends $300,000 In Legal Fees Over A Pick-Up Truck - The ConsumeristA homeowner in Florida was awarded $187,000 in legal fees from a years-long court battle over the right to park a pick-up truck in his driveway. Now the homeowners association is going to have to pick up the tab for $300,000 in fees.
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How do you react to a story like this? Do you cheer for the owner who won? Or do you lament the fact that every owner in the development now has to pay for the folly of their governing board? In any event, thanks to Mystery Reader for sending it along.

HOA Foreclosures; Necessary Tool or Extortion Racket? - Real Estate Channel Global News Center

HOA Foreclosures; Necessary Tool or Extortion Racket? - Real Estate Channel Global News CenterAlthough the HOA foreclosure crisis is clearly concentrated in the states of Texas, Florida, Arizona and California, the problem is not limited to these states. Some 33 states permit a nonjudicial HOA foreclosure. Unfortunately, we have no reliable statistics on how many of these HOA foreclosure filings actually lead to seizure and sale of the home. The CAI claims that the percentage is very small. Perhaps.

The fact that HOAs are able to file the foreclosure as a threat and then collect several thousand dollars in late fees, interest, fines and attorney fees for a delinquency that may total only $300-$600 has led critics to describe the situation as nothing more than a "shakedown racket."
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Thanks to Fred Pilot for the link to this detailed piece on HOA foreclosures.

Nevada's Economic Misery May Be America's Future

Nevada's Economic Misery May Be America's FutureNevada has a greater concentration of economic misery than any other state. The state's unemployment rate, which in June edged up to 14.2 percent, has risen faster during the past year than it has anywhere else, and nearly six percent of all homes across the state's desert landscape received a foreclosure filing in the first six months of the year.

While the concentration of misery may be greater in Nevada, it was caused by the same unchecked housing bubble and unregulated financial gambling that brought pain to the rest of the country. If present trends go unchecked, Nevada is America's future.
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Now that's a scary thought.

I looked at President Obama's latest job approval numbers and maybe he ought to be scared, too. An average of seven different polls shows that he is currently at 45.7% approval and 49% disapproval. The election is just over three months away.

Home Vacancies Rise as U.S. Ownership Falls to Lowest in Decade - Bloomberg

Home Vacancies Rise as U.S. Ownership Falls to Lowest in Decade - BloombergAbout 18.9 million homes in the U.S. stood empty during the second quarter as surging foreclosures helped push ownership to the lowest level in a decade.

The number of vacant properties, including foreclosures, residences for sale and vacation homes, rose from 18.6 million in the year-earlier quarter, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report today. The ownership rate, meaning households that own their own residence, was 66.9 percent, the lowest since 1999.
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And yet people keep saying the economy is out of recession--with the housing market still in a trash can and government budgets gushing red ink from the federal government down to the local school districts.

Homesteads and Other Sources of Tax Income - NYTimes.com

Homesteads and Other Sources of Tax Income - NYTimes.comAround the nation, cities and towns facing grim budget circumstances are grasping at unlikely — some would say desperate — means to bolster their shrunken tax bases. Like Beatrice, places like Dayton, Ohio, and Grafton, Ill., are giving away land for nominal fees or for nothing in the hope that it will boost the tax rolls and cut the lawn-mowing bills.

In Boca Raton, Fla., which faces a budget gap of more than $7 million, leaders are thinking about expanding the city’s size and annexing neighborhoods as an antidote. Sure, more residents would cost more in services, but officials hope the added tax revenues will more than make up for it.

And leaders in Manchester, N.H., and Concord, Mass., are taking an approach that might have once seemed politically unthinkable. They are re-examining whether their communities’ nonprofit organizations really deserve to be tax-free.
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Municipal promotion of CIDs is about money, and now cities are getting even more desperate. Soon they will be selling the right to rename the city. BP-Ville! Microsoftburg!

The 18 States Facing The Most Brutal Austerity Cuts

The 18 States Facing The Most Brutal Austerity Cuts
They have Illinois as the third worst, exceeded only by New Jersey and Nevada. I hear the talking heads referring to the "recovery" we are supposedly in, and then I look at the condition of state and local governments and think, "no way, baby."

Professor returns from vacation to find office covered in aluminum foil

News from The Associated PressST. PETER, Minn. (AP) -- A science professor at Gustavus Adolphus College left for a week's vacation this summer and returned to a shiny office. Very shiny. Professor Scott Bur's students had covered his office in aluminum foil. Computer screen, chairs, the ceiling, the floor - all covered in foil. Books and pens were individually wrapped, so was the phone, a ball cap, a bottle and the coffee maker.
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Usually I stick to an aluminum foil hat. Keeps the mind control rays out, you know. Thanks to Fred Pilot for the link.

Amid Washington Heat Wave, Senator Talks 'Global Cooling'

His Al Gore igloo melted, Sen. Jim Inhofe Not Convinced of Warming Trend

Back in February, when Washington D.C. was buried under record-breaking snowfall and the capital was paralyzed, the nation's chief climate change doubter made much of a small igloo down the street from the Capitol building as he took to the Senate floor to refute climate change.

With municipal pay like this, who needs Privatopia?

BELL, Calif. – Residents in this modest blue-collar Los Angeles suburb where one in six lives in poverty were angry: Their city manager was getting paid more than President Barack Obama and the police chief more than the commander of the nearly 13,000-member LAPD.

* * *

Their mayor and three of their four council members, people they see every day at the grocery store or church, approved the contracts, and put an obscure measure on the ballot that allowed council members to pay themselves any amount of money.

And they did: collecting between $90,000 and $100,000 a year as part-time officials.

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What a deal for counties and cities: not only do they shift the cost of providing services onto privately governed HOAs, they get volunteers to run them as well who are paid zip for doing so.

Real estate deflation hits most large California counties

ALAMEDA, Calif. — Assessed property values in California are likely to decline for the second year running, according to a Bond Buyer review of data from the state’s larger counties.

Even though the state’s tax assessment system has the effect of muting the volatility of property assessments, 11 of the state’s 12 largest counties experienced a decline in their property tax roll this year.

* * *

Even the center of the Silicon Valley, Santa Clara County, was unable to avoid a shrinking roll.

“This is far worse than anyone had expected,” County Assessor Larry Stone said in the news release announcing the tax roll. The roll dropped 2.44%, by $7.4 billion.

“This county has not experienced such a devastating drop in property values since the Great Depression,” he said.

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The data show this isn't a typical real estate correction cycle in which prices fall back to earth following a boom. They're actually falling into a deflationary hole in much of California, which along with Nevada has suffered some of the steepest declines in real estate value in the nation.

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently wrote that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who studied the Depression of the 1930s for his doctoral dissertation, so fears deflation that he reportedly said he'd toss sacks of $100 bills out helicopters to prevent it. Memo to the Chairman: deploy a squadron of black helicopters bearing bags of Benjamins to California, starting in my ZIP Code.

Credit card contracts unreadable for most Americans

Credit card contracts unreadable for 80% of Americans"Credit card contracts and other such documents are written in dense prose for a reason: So that the customer will NOT be able to understand it," notes Roy Peter Clark, a national expert on writing and a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. "I may be cynical, but I don't think their writing strategies are accidental, the collateral damage of a bureaucratic mindset. I think those writers know exactly what they are doing."
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Yes. And one might say the same thing about CC&Rs.

Alligator makes a meal of Tempe Town Lake fish | Phoenix News | Arizona News | azfamily.com | Phoenix News

Alligator makes a meal of Tempe Town Lake fish | Phoenix News | Arizona News | azfamily.com | Phoenix NewsTEMPE, Ariz. -- Since the dam at Tempe Town Lake broke and the lake drained earlier this week, one of the big questions has been what will happen to the fish left behind in the drying lake bed.

Well, let's just say an alligator named Tuesday is getting one heck of a meal.
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And he (or she) has a nice smile, no doubt as the result of a full tummy.