2011 archive

Job prospects for process-servers continue strong, according to the Chicago Trib:

According to Fiserv, a financial analytics company, home values are expected to fall another 3.6 percent by next June, pushing them to a new low of 35 percent below the peak reached in early 2006 and marking a triple dip in prices.

Several factors will be working against the housing market in the upcoming months, including an increase in foreclosure activity and sustained high unemployment, explained David Stiff, Fiserv’s chief economist.

Should home values meet Fiserv’s expectations, it would make it the third (and lowest) trough for home prices since the housing bubble burst.

To Dr. Gerry Mander, the therapist the stars trust, at the Guardian:

Dear Dr Mander

I’m fed up with people saying I’m rich. My basic pay is quite modest and the tributes I get are approved by my remunerations committee. Yes, I got an increase of 49% last year. So what? I am a wealth creator. Attacking me is just the politics of envy.

King Croesus of Lydia

Dear Croesus

The “wealth creator” line might be more persuasive if your empire wasn’t built on plunder and slavery.

See the rest of Dr. Mander’s column at the link.

Andrew Ralmsley, writing in the London Observer, demolishes the notion that participants in the “Occupy” protest don’t know what they want. It’s a long and detailed rebuttal of that idea.

Frankly, the pundits who promulgate that notion are doing the pundit equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and going “Na na na I can’t hear you–and neither can anyone else.”

The default response of establishment opinion is glibly to dismiss these protests as a passing spasm which cannot achieve anything because the movement is either wildly unrealistic in its aspirations for a new world economic order or too vague in its demands. It is true to say that the protests vary in their tactics and are disparate in their goals. Movements like this are often woven from multiple threads of grievance, a tapestry of dissent which can be both a source of initial strength and an ultimate cause of weakness. But they are loosely united by common themes: fury at corporate greed, resentment at lack of economic opportunity, concern about social inequality and alienation from a conventional politics that appears incapable of doing anything serious to address and redress public discontents.

(snip)

On top of the billions of taxpayers’ money already committed to rescuing the banks, the eurozone leaders have just signed up to providing billions more. Yet from the nabobs of finance there is still not a whisper of a hint of a scintilla of humility or penance. The Institute of International Finance, the main industry organisation, reports that banks are handing more guaranteed bonuses to new employees than they were before the financial crisis. Governments have neither punished those who wrecked the economy nor taken adequate steps to ensure that they will be more accountable and responsible in future. Sir Fred Goodwin – why the hell is he still Sir Fred Goodwin? Three years have elapsed since the bubble burst in 2008 and yet we are still waiting for the fulfilment of promises of systemic reform. The wonder is not that people have been provoked to occupy parks and squares in every continent but Antarctica. The wonder is that this did not happen earlier.

Apparently, some banks are reconsidering debit card dipping:

Chase and Wells Fargo are joining the list of banks that won’t be charging customers to use their debit cards, as the backlash over Bank of America’s planned $5 monthly fee continues.

The retail banking arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co. will stop charging $3-per-month fees for using debit cards when its current pilot in Wisconsin and Georgia is completed in November, a source with knowledge of the bank’s plans told The Associated Press. The individual asked not to be identified because the bank has not officially announced the program will not go forward.

I still carry cash for my Wawa cup of coffee.

When I sold my house in Delaware, I did not take in as much as I had hoped (though I was not under water, having instinctively distrusted all those banksters who wanted me to “refi to take the cash out”), but you have to play the cards you are dealt.

Apparently, not waiting was the correct strategy:

New Castle and Sussex counties fared best in terms of year-over-year sales, rising 5.3 percent to 1,241 in Sussex and dropping just 2.5 percent to 3,328 in New Castle. Kent dropped 11 percent to 888 homes sold in the first nine months.

Sales prices slipped 10.5 percent over the year to a median of $170,000 in Kent and 6.6 percent to $198,100 in New Castle. Since 2008, median prices have fallen 20.1 percent in Kent and 13.9 percent in New Castle.

That’s all the counties in Delaware.

Yesterday was a ho-hum day on the responsible fiscal front. Only one bank got blanked. (I was busy watching the ball game.)

All American Bank, Des Plaines, Illinois