Florida

Regardless of the arbitrage opportunities available to "all cash" buyers, who would be happy to park some cash in real estate, the fact that ultraluxury foreclosures are soaring also means that even the "1%" is starting to succumb to reality and beginning to feel the pressure of a financial reality in which only the "too biggest" can never fail. So what are the properties in question? The photo gallery below, courtesy of RealtyTrac, shows just where any given $5 million + property stopped making its mortgage payments.

We had wondered what would happen once private equity players decided enough was enough and foreign oligarchs finished their real estate money laundering transactions. Well, we might be about to find out. According to RealtyTrac, foreclosures for homes worth $5 million or more are up 61% this year despite the fact that overall foreclosures are down 23%. The question is, does this merely represent holdouts from the prior housing bubble, or is it a sign of things to come? Only time will tell.

Just when you thought it was safe to step back into the water of the "fixed" Obamacare website, another glitch, this time in sending data on Medicaid, has The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services writing a memo to the 36 states using the federal website last week acknowledging the information wasn't being transferred automatically and saying another system was being developed to send it. Potentially affecting tens of thousands of Medicaid recipients, ABC reports, "Essentially, if you're a consumer on healthcare.gov, it will tell you you're eligible for Medicaid and the state agency will take care of it, but there's no real way for the state Medicaid agency to know anything about it." The information, according to AP, is incomplete with regard to verifying eligibility and as South Carolina's HHS Director notes, "it's going to be a gigantic logistical mess."

As an experiment, Bloomberg Businessweek typed the names of the 50 states into Google to see what people most frequently ask about them. The questions range from dumb (well, mostly dumb) to revealing, both about the states and about the people doing the searching. Lots of questions about carrying a gun, buying alcohol, getting divorced, and fighting union organizers. Whether a state is in the Midwest or South seems to be a particular obsession. But the most common question about the states is even more basic: Is it a state? or Is it racist?

A zombie government armed with accounting tricks has bailed out a zombie banking industry using even more financial phoniness. A few numbers pushed here and there, and the industry is earning record profits. But out in the real world where people live and work, things aren't so rosy. Zombies make negligent landlords and dangerous neighbors.

• Winter storm lashes eastern U.S., threatens Thanksgiving travel (Reuters)
• Fed Reveals New Concerns About Long-Term U.S. Slowdown (BBG)
• Private equity keeps $789bn of powder dry (FT) - because they are "selling everything that is not nailed down"
• Merkel and SPD clinch coalition deal two months after vote (Reuters)
• Japan approves new state secrecy bill to combat leaks (BBC)
• CLOs are the new black: Volatile Loan Securities Are Luring Fund Managers Again (WSJ)
• Health website deadline nears (WSJ)
• Norway Debates $800 Billion Wealth Fund’s Investment Options (BBG)
• Set of global trade deals stalls (WSJ)
• Berlusconi To Learn Fate In Senate  (Sky)
• Silvio Berlusconi withdraws support from Italy’s government (FT)

With just a week to go until the Obama-promised "all clear" healthcare.gov date of November 30, the president is scrambling to boost enrollment in the 11th hour. As reported by Reuters, the administration announced a flurry of fixes to its troubled HealthCare.gov website on Friday that officials said would soon double its current capacity, a crucial step toward getting the system working by a November 30 deadline. It also pushed back a deadline for people to enroll in insurance plans for 2014 under President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act in a nod to millions of applicants who have been unable to sign up because of technical glitches for nearly two months. The reason for the push is that consumers need to make decisions on healthcare plans in December if they want insurance in place by January.

We wish we could say we didn't warn Boeing's machinists about the key trend taking place in the US economy under the Obama "recovery" but unfortunately we did. Three years ago, to be specific, when we wrote: "Charting America's Transformation To A Part-Time Worker Society" and followed it up with "A "Quality Assessment" Of US Jobs Reveals The Ugliest Picture Yet" in which we explained that while the propaganda machine was fixated on numeric, quantitative, job additions every month, what has subversively going on, was the constant deterioration in the quality of jobs - and specifically the declining wages - available to those Americans who had not rotated outside of the labor force permanently (currently at a record 91.5 million). We say "alas" because it once again took several years before our cautions to be felt by the broader population, in this case the Boeing machinist union struggling to extract a wage increase from its employer: Boeing, whose stock keeps hitting new record highs with every passing day.

You may find what is happening at one Wal-Mart in Ohio very hard to believe. At the Wal-mart on Atlantic Boulevard in Canton, Ohio employees are being asked to donate food items so that other employees that cannot afford to buy Thanksgiving dinner will be able to enjoy one too. On the one hand, it is commendable that someone at that Wal-Mart is deeply concerned about the employees that are so poor that they cannot afford to buy the food that they need for Thanksgiving. On the other hand, this is a perfect example that shows how the quality of the jobs in this country has gone down the toilet.

"We fumbled the rollout on this health-care law," could be President Obama's understatement of the century. In the month-or-so since Obamacare was unleashed 106,185 people enrolled (based on a loose re-definition by the White House). However, in that same period, the WSJ reports a stunning 4.02 million people received policy cancellations. So, in a month, a total of 3,918,205 fewer people are now 'enrolled' in a heathcare plan than before Obamacare. So far, California, Florida, and Washington are suffering the most under Obamacare...

Following the FAA's warning that over 7,500 unmanned drones will be in US Airspace in the next five years, we thought news of yet another domestic drone down was noteworthy. Just a couple fo months ago we reported the crash (and self-destruction) of 2 drones in Florida, and now officials at the 174th Attack Wing suspended all Reaper drone flights in Central New York Tuesday after one of the unmanned aircraft crashed into Lake Ontario about 12 miles from the eastern shore during a routine training flight. As WNYF TV reports, the drone - one of four based at Fort Drum - was operated remotely from near Syracuse. Officials are investigating the crash but added, in some hope of reassurance, "the mission was going as advertised, up to the point where we did lose control of the airplane."

Following the DoJ's 'surprising' August decision to block the $11bn merger of American and US Airways (after approving other airline mergers in the recent past), it would appear the parties have reached a settlement:

*U.S. FILES PROPOSED SETTLEMENT IN AMR CASE IN FEDERAL COURT
*DOJ REQUIRES US AIRWAYS, AMERICAN AIRLINES TO DIVEST FACILITIES
*AIRPORT SLOTS TO BE SOLD UNDER PROCESS APPROVED BY U.S.
*AMR SEES COMBINED CO OPERATING 12 FEWER DAILY DEPARTURES AT LGA
*AMR SEES COMBINED CO OPERATING 44 FEWER DAILY DEPARTURES AT DCA

Some of the initial details (Full statement below) include divesting slots at Laguardia and Reagan National. AMR is trading up over 25%...

TedBits - Newsletter

The cruelty inherent in animal factory farming is something that we as a species should find completely and totally unacceptable. Indeed, evidence shows that when people are exposed to the nightmarish conditions faced by factory animals prior to consumption they demand change. This is precisely why corporate interests have pushed ag-gag laws throughout the nation in an attempt to criminalize the exposure of these methods.

Desperate people do desperate things, and it appears that Americans are rapidly becoming a lot more desperate.  An epidemic of thievery is sweeping across America, and authorities are not quite sure what to make of it. So why is all of this happening?  Well, as we have written about previously, crime is on the rise in the United States, and poverty is absolutely exploding.  In fact, according to the latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, 49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving benefits from at least one government program each month.  Over the past five years, we have seen an unprecedented rise in the number of people that cannot take care of themselves without help from the government.  Millions upon millions of Americans that have been forced into poverty are becoming increasingly angry, frustrated and desperate.  And what we are watching right now is only just the beginning - all of this is going to get a whole lot worse.