It’s coming. One big mess.
How do I know that? Because when the Sheriff is the undisputed leader in selling homes, a State Supreme Court Justice is asking lawyers to do pro-bono to help in the backlog of foreclosures [1], and people are taking to the streets to save public housing complexes, we have the beginnings of a revolution.
This country started with a tea party- and it may end in a “credit crunch party”- as the effects of the government worried more about the banks and the stock market than the people and their pantries.
NOLA Protesters Vow to Keep Fighting [2]
…Police said 15 people were arrested on charges ranging from battery to disorderly conduct. Four people were taken to hospitals — two of them women who had been stunned with Tasers — and five others were injured and treated on the scene, police said. All four in the hospital were stable, police said.Protesters said they pushed against the iron gates that kept them out of the building because the Housing Authority of New Orleans had disproportionately allowed supporters of the demolition to pack the council’s chambers. Dozens tried to force their way in.
At the peak of the confusion, some 70 protesters were facing about a dozen mounted police and 40 more law enforcement officers on foot.
One woman was sprayed by police and dragged from the gates; emergency workers took her away on a stretcher. Another woman said she was stunned by officers, and still had what appeared to be a Taser wire hanging from her shirt.
“I was just standing, trying to get into my City Council meeting,” said the dazed woman, Kim Ellis, who was taken away in an ambulance.
“Is this what democracy looks like?” Bill Quigley, a Loyola University law professor who opposes demolition, said as he held a strand of Taser wire he said had been shot into another of the protesters….
How can a City Commission hold a public meeting with locked gates in a democracy? What has happened to our system? Has it been so corrupted by money that the people who we are supposed to be serving are no longer our customers?
This is why I’m running for Congress.
And if you are wondering who Phil Herman [3] is, according to billboards and his site, he’s been Dayton’s top Realtor for, well, ever. Time to change your tagline, Phil, the Sheriff has a whole section of the paper for his listings, and it’s every week.
And if you are saying, well, I’m not going to lose my house, I don’t have a bad loan, just remember, when there is no one left who can buy your house- what will it be worth? Will you be willing to demand action then?
David,
The riots in New Orleans had nothing to do with the credit crunch. Somehow (intentionally or otherwise) you managed to leave out a few things in the article you’re quoting.
The council was meeting to make a decision on whether or not to demolish a publick housing complex that was so badly damaged during Katrina that it’s been closed for habitation. Their plan was to demolish it and replace it with a new housing development with “affordable homes.”
The reason the “gates were locked” is that the council chambers were already jammed past capacity. Should the meeting have been postponed and moved to a larger venue? Probably. Should the people wanting to protest the demolition gone ahead and attacked the police when they were turned away? Well, you take your chances and face the consequences. The difference between this riot and the protests of the early Patriots is pretty simple. The Patriots were fighting for the rights of independence and self-governance. The rioters in New Orleans were fighting for more dependence on government and a handout.
I think a lot of the housing was scheduled to be demolished PRE-Katrina bc it was unsafe. That is what happens when you take down walls so you can make your two bedroom apartment into a four bedroom suite bc you cousin lives next door.
The sheriff is not selling that many house by the way – the sheriff does have a lot of house though. Nobody is buying, and it will be some time before that market changes for the better. At the end of the day there are a lot of guilty people – and don’t make people who made good choices feel bad for everyone who did not. This was not rocket science – yes, the mortgage companies are scum of the earth, as are a lot of businesses, but the “too good to be true” lesson was not followed by many. Like i said before, investigate many options, talk to many people you trust, people you know have the answers you need, but too many people thought “hell i can have my $350k house for $1000/month” ………. come on, how dumb do you have to be? really? The shit is list in the paper for God’s sake – but then again many of these folks can’t read.
Lies your history teacher told you. . .
1. America is a democracy.
When anyone who has actually read the document knows, Article IV Section 4 of the Constitution states: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”
So it is the RESPONSIBITY of the citizens to elect officials to REPRESENT them in a manner that they desire. It is the RIGHT of those people to vote, not act like spoiled children when they aren’t given the RESPECT they have fooled themselves into thinking the deserve simply by being American.
Can I trademark the phrase ‘The Constitution is Good’?
How about ‘Personal Responsibility works’?
Pedro – W E L L S A I D !!!
Pedro is correct. In my “Dear Son” letter to you, I quote the American Creed, which specifically calls our county “a democracy in a republic.”
just testing.
Lies the main-stream-media told you… 1) A ‘Credit Crunch’ in housing and consumer lending is leading America into a Recession. . . Bank lending to Businesses is HIGHER this year then it was last year, where you are having a ‘credit crunch’ is in the rate at which Banks lending to other Banks (i.e. smart banks who stayed away from the sub-prime mess not lending to those who did). A quite healthy reaction to bad borrowing practices. Something that you Mr. Esrati have cited as a reason America is on the road to ruin is number of home foreclosures. Even when you dive into the numbers, you see it is really a manufactured crisis. In the midst of this ‘storm of foreclosures’ an amazing 98.9% of non-sub prime mortgages are NOT IN FORCLOSUE, the riskier sub-prime market boasts 95% of mortgages that are NOT IN FORCLOSUE. All in all, upwards of 96% of all mortgages are paid on time every month. What is always over looked is that a good number of the actual foreclosures aren’t families whose bread-winner just got his GM Assembly Line Job outsourced, but are Donald Trump wannabe’s trying to make a quick buck on properties during the housing boom and have walked away from an investment, not a home. So even if China buys up the 3% of homes in foreclosure, when exactly will they ‘buy America’ as you stated when outlining your reasons for running? Now let me educate some of you on line of credit, i.e. Credit Cards, another victim of the Credit Crunch that is leading the U.S. into ruin and another way that big bad corporations are fleecing the little guy. Most would assume that everyone relies on credit cards to survive when THE TRUTH is that over 55% of the U.S. Households either have no credit cards at all or have a credit card with a zero balance. Of the other 45% carry a median balance of a whopping $1,900. A far cry from the much used mainstream media scare tactic that “the average credit card balance is $8,000”. The… Read more »
Pedro good info about the markets. Feel free to trademark the phrase just make sure you include these sections in the discussion.
Article I Section 2
Article I Section 9
Article IV Section 2
America the land of the free….well at least in hindsight.
There’s a good ongoing discussion at the Urban Ohio business & economics subforum on the housing/real estate/construction industry and the credit crunch.
Mostly about the national aspect of this, but there are Ohio examples. Unfortunatley that site is down for a bit while they switch severs, or I’d link to that discussion.
I did make a minor contribution by posting a graph of housing permits, by month, for Warren County, for the past few years. The census “County Business Patterns” has this for selected Ohio countys, and Warren would be a good place to look for the impact of a credit crunch/housing bubble collapse as it was one of the fastest growing countys in the state.
I might update tht graph and post it over at my blog as a quick local look at the housing downturn
As for David’s larger theme of “one big mess is coming”, for the Dayton area its been coming since 1970, so we don’t see this long-range trend, just individual crisis points.
I’ve blogged on this twice, the long term economic stagnation of this region, the decline of living wage jobs, and the widespread marginal increase in poverty. These were prompted by a Columbus Dispatch series on Ohio’s big seven citys, but it is somwhat relevant to David’s thread header opener:
The Orgins of the Urban Crisis (a Dayton version)
http://daytonology.blogspot.com/2007/12/origins-of-urban-crisis-dayton-version.html
Riding the Poverty Train in Montgomery County
http://daytonology.blogspot.com/2007/12/riding-poverty-train-in-montgomery.html
Pedro or should I say Lawrence Kudlow, please provide links for the quoted data. I think it one takes a look at the bail out orchestrated by Wall Street it is not about the Credit Crunch, it is about solvency for the banks. The funds are unwinding and the banks do not have enough cash on hand. I am a Rick Santelli believer.
I think if you read some of the interesting data associated with housing in Irvine you might get some floor level view about the future purchasing power of the American Consumer. The ATM is dry and nobody wants the leftovers. Take a look at the housing data in Irvine. Notice the price and then the last sales price, then the days on the Market. Then read the Irvine House Blog for an in depth analysis of how underwater some of these people have managed to achieve.
Pedro, you can take the party line, drink the kool aid or whatever, but if America has to pay back its debt, it will never be a good consumer again.
And yes I am not worried about the Chinese, because I think America will default on its obligations.
As promised, the graph of new house permits in booming Warren County over the past few years:
http://daytonology.blogspot.com/2007/12/housing-crash-in-warren-county.htm
The drop in permits in 2006 and 2007 (up to July in 2007) is quite visible. Perhaps a local manifestation of the real estate crisis.
Greg, or should I say Paul Krugman, forgive me if dismiss your ‘response’ to my post as nothing more than antidotal evidence and not a real rebuttal of anything I presented. That Irvine Housing Blog was a haven for speculators who weren’t able to cash-in during the boom and now are playing the class-warfare card since they couldn’t strike it rich. What amazes me is that you good liberals are lapping it up like these folks are victims. David loves to cite the ‘Credit Crunch’ and the ‘Foreclosure Crisis’ as reasons that we are on the fast track to third world nation status. I gave you numbers that I obtained through quite rudimentary data mining to show that those are both MANUFACTURED HEADLINES. Those banks that used an artificial debt-to-income ratio (that was based on a sub-prime-rate and subject to change) just to get loans approved are the ones that are seeking money (credit) from the more established banks that did not (National City & 5/3rd for example). The more established banks are too smart to lend it. That is your Credit Crunch; a bad business practice has been snuffed out by the market place. Let me reiterate that more than 96% OF ALL MORTAGES ARE PAID ON TIME EACH MONTH. If I’m drinking the Kool-Aid by presenting an argument based on empirical data then pour me another heaping helping. Sure there are areas like Irvine where people (AND SPECULATORS) over-bought in the hopes of turning a quick profit, but that happens all the time in our free-market. If a localized housing slump causes you to panic then that is really a you-problem. I heard it snowed real hard in Colorado last month, so we should cancel school in Ohio this June. That is about as valid as sighting a blog as a primary source in your reply to my arguments. So here is a quick run-down of our soon to be insolvent economy Employment 95.3% Homes not in foreclosure 98.9% Keep up your Krugman rhetoric long enough and maybe you’ll just get the recession you are praying for. Merry… Read more »
If it is rudimentary, provide the links as statistics have a way of being manipulated. As I have stated it is not a credit crunch it is a solvency crunch, but hey when all of your information comes from the Bush Whitehouse or Faux News, what can the Oracle expect. Expand those horizons Pedro and if you think Dayton does not have a problem, then you and Larry ought pull your heads off those lines and study the markets a bit. Here is the link for the foreclosures in Montgomery County
Hey Pedro, how about citing how many people involved in the construction and real estate are 1099 personnel? Do you know? Help the Oracle pull his head out with your magnificent statistics. Provide data please, not Kudlow or Greenspan BS. Nice work by the Fed to decide to push America toward a poor investment of its credit into a sprawl inducing housing market. I expect more out of the supposed sages that drive policy in this country Pedro, maybe you do not or you made a crap load of money off of exploiting the ill informed and ill protected by the Compassionate Conservatives.
Merry Christmas!
Greg,
Interesting post (although I tend to side with Pedro on this on). Let me just pick out two seemingly minor things you wrote…
“Statistics have a way of being manipulated.” – Or as my first stats profressor at WSU said “Statistics never lie… but liars use statistics.” I am not calling you or Pedro (or anyone else) a liar, but manipulated statistics are often used by BOTH SIDES to make their cases.
I’m curious about your statement of how many people in real estate and construction are 1099 personnel. What do you mean by that? Is paying someone via a 1099 a bad thing? If so, why? And what if that person is perfectly fine with being paid via 1099 reporting? Forgive my ignorance on this, but I’m just trying to become more informed.
¡Felíz año nuevo!
Juan
1099 Employees are independent contractors and as such do not pay into the Unemployment insurance and therefore cannot file for unemployment.
Here is a nice thread for discussion or take a look at this information discussing problems with the data.
Here is a quote = “The primary basis for calculating local area unemployment statistics is the count of residents claiming unemployment insurance benefits under state law.”
If you are not able to get unemployment you are not counted as unemployed. Nice.
The numbers of interest are “not actively seeking work” and the labor force participation rate. The labor force is defined to include unemployed people actively seeking work.
Its pretty much accepted that the ‘unemployment rate’ undercounts true unemployment.