If there is one consistent message coming from the Democratic Party today, it is that the so-called “public option” for ObamaCare is NOT, repeat NOT inevitably going to lead to a single-payer system. Any claims that it is are, of course, just Republican lies and spin.
Someone needs to tell Barney Frank that:
…sadly, this actually gives me a new respect for the intellectual insights of Miss South Carolina 2007:
This incredible picture from the MailOnline shows just why this argument for man-made global warming is just a bunch of garbage.
Try to imagine, if you can, the amount of carbon dioxide, ash, pollutants and other harmful chemicals are inside a cloud so big it can be photographed from space. Mankind just isn’t capable of producing the amount of “greenhouse gases” and other pollutants that Mother Nature has been doing for millenia on end before the time of the dinosaurs. Not even a nuclear bomb can produce that level of destruction.
And yet here we are. The polar ice caps haven’t melted. The sea hasn’t swallowed the land. Huh.
How about that?
Could it be that their secular religion which elevates man far above his actual place in the ecosystem and in the cosmos is responsible for the hysteria? That maybe, even with all of our history and technological advances that we are still small, insignificant blinks in the span of time that Earth has existed? Would that cause the entire Leftist ideology to collapse in on itself if it were forced to admit it?
The answer to all of the above is: yes.
The folks over at gooya.com say it far better than I could:
I posted the following in a comment over at Megan McArdle’s blog in response to her post “Why I Think the Housing Bubble Has Not Yet Bottomed” :
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Investing genius Peter Lynch wrote a wonderful book back in the ’80s called “One Up On Wall Street” which a lot of people evidently need to pick up and read.
He talks about how to know when a market has truly hit bottom, and he says essentially that a market hasn’t hit bottom until the conventional wisdom is to completely give up on it. Only then is the stage truly set for the market to come back. As long as there are still a large enough group of people claiming that “it has hit bottom,” it hasn’t really hit it yet.
[On the flip side, you know a market has hit a top when everyone is convinced that there's no possible way it can come down. Sound like a good description of the real estate market before the bubble burst? Anyone?]
Even a quick perusal of the comments here bear outs exactly what Lynch was saying. There are still far too many people trying to justify the current pricing of real estate to believe that it truly has hit one. Oh ‘this neighborhood is different’ they say. Sure. That’s what they said in California a few years back. People will always want to move to California. Umm. Yeah. Not so much.
Every self-justifying reason in the world isn’t going to change essential market dynamics – especially in light of the current economic situation:
1) Unemployment is still increasing which means more people are going to lose their homes. The GM and Chrysler bankruptcies – and the attendant daisy chain of layoffs – haven’t even begun to work their way through the system.
2) Banks still hold an incredible amount of foreclosed property inventory which still hasn’t hit the market.
3) There are lots of owners already behind on their mortgages who should be foreclosed upon, but banks aren’t willing or able to take the writedowns on the property so they’re holding off foreclosure until they clear some of their existing OREO inventory.
4) Interest rates are rising because of the obscene level of federal borrowing that the Democratic Congress and Obama administration have necessitated with their feckless spending. That’s going to reduce the amount that the average household can afford to spend on a house by increasing the monthly payments.
5) Oil is still going up which is going to cause more layoffs and take larger portions out of the family budget for heating and transportation costs – again reducing the number of potential buyers and the amount they’re going to be able to pay.
6) The prospect of higher taxes and higher household costs because of new government mandates and spending is inevitable unless the political dynamics change in Washington – which they won’t until at least November 2010.
7) State and local governments are facing budget shortfalls as their revenue declines which is going to lead to either government layoffs or increased taxes – neither of which is a plus for the economy or for housing prices.
Continuing declines in prices of homes in outlying areas will continue to have a deflationary impact on prices in the center of urban areas as well. As homes in “Suburbia” become ridiculously cheap, the perceived value of living “downtown” declines as large numbers of potential buyers for urban properties wind up opting for larger homes and more land in the suburbs at significantly lower prices – thereby decreasing the number of buyers willing to bid up the prices on urban properties.
I could go on and on, but the reality is that there isn’t a single reason to believe that the housing market is bottoming. Every single economic indicator points to an increase in financial pain for households across America. Combined with the demographic (Baby Boomers retiring with not enough people to buy the houses they’re trying to downsize out of) and cultural (People are no longer willing or able to finance high-end lifestyles by constantly borrowing against their home equity: “Keeping Up With the Jones’” is no longer the order of the day) changes, only someone with their blinders on or a complete ignorance of economics could believe that we are anywhere close to seeing the end of the housing decline.
I know people will protest: ‘But what about this blip or that blip of economic data?’ That’s exactly what they are: blips on the radar screen and certainly nothing approaching a definable pattern. Markets have been in free fall and need to pause to figurately ‘catch their breath’ every now and again. There has been absolutely zero confirming economic data to show a pattern of a base being established: just an occasional relief from free fall records.
Buy now if you want to. But as a cautionary lesson you should read the LA Times article from a couple of days ago where a young family bought a house in April for $175K because they believed people who told them the bottom was near. A comparable house in the same neighborhood sold in June for $130K. Think about how long it will take that family to earn back that $45K they just lost in the last 60 days and ask yourself if you have that kind of money to throw around. If the answer is no, then you know whether or not buying a house right now is a good idea.
If there’s any evidence that Sarah Palin is doing the right thing, it’s that she has evidently begun annoying Beltway Republicans.
I guess that the inside-the-Beltway crowd still hasn’t figured out that their way is the wrong way. The base tried to tell them in November when they stayed away from the polls – resulting in Democratic victories in previously uncontested Red states. But they’re so disconnected from voters that even messages like that and the Tea Party demonstrations have made only the most superficial impact on them.
Palin excites the conservative base. Even if D.C. Republicans don’t think she’s a viable candidate for 2012, they should embrace her for the simple reason that their base does. Until the Beltway crowd figures out that slipping anonymous quotes to the media in exchange for invitations to the right dinner parties isn’t going to get you votes at the ballot box, they’re condemned to repeat their losses of 2006 and 2008.
