Florida

The Dirty Little Secret About Mass Surveillance: It Doesn’t Keep Us Safe

The whispers about private equity exiting the rental market are now out in the open. A few reports are highlighting that some private equity investors are testing the waters for an exit via IPOs. Some have asked why it is necessary for these investors to hold onto properties for a few years before exiting. One of the main reasons is for valuation purposes given that it takes a few years to gather enough workable data on say a block of 1,000 homes and their overall vacancy rates, rental rates, and expense ratios. This would be important if this pool of homes were to be converted into an income stream for investors. Yet many are now looking to exit given how hot the stock market is. You want to sell into momentum. A few other key points include rents falling in places like Las Vegas where investor demand has been incredibly high. Is the hot money planning an exit?

Yes, Government Spooks May Be Listening

The airwaves are full of stories of economic recovery. One trumpeted recently has been the rapid recovery in housing, at least as measured in prices. The problem is, a good portion of the rebound in house prices in many markets has less to do with renewed optimism, new jobs, and rising wages, and more to do with big money investors fueled by the ultra-cheap money policies of the Fed. It seems entirely wrong that the Fed bailed out big banks and made money excessively cheap for institutions, and that this is being used to price ordinary people out of the housing market.  Said another way, the Fed prints fake money out of thin air, and some companies use that same money to buy real things like houses and then rent them out to real people trying to live real lives. At the same time, we are also beginning to see the very same hedge funds that have re-inflated these prices slink out of the market now that the party is kicking into higher gear – all while new buyers are increasingly having to abandon prudence to buy into markets where the fundamentals simply aren't there to merit it. Didn't we just learn a few short years ago how this all ends?

While it isn't news to regular readers, the fact that one of the key pillars of the "housing recovery" (the other three being foreign oligarchs parking cash in the US courtesy of an Anti Money Laundering regulation-exempt NAR, foreclosure stuffing and, of course, the Fed's $40 billion in monthly MBS purchases) have been the very biggest Wall Street firms (many of whom had to be bailed out the last time the housing bubble burst) who have also become the biggest institutional landlords "using other people's very cheap money" to buy up tens of thousands of properties, appears to still be lost on the larger population. Intuitively this is to be expected: in a world in which the restoration of confidence that a New Normal, in which everything is centrally-planned, is somehow comparable to life as it used to be before Bernanke, is critical to Ben's (and the administration's) reflationary succession planning. As such perpetuating the myth of a housing recovery has been absolutely essential. Which is why we were surprised to see an article in the very much mainstream, and pro-administration policies NYT, exposing just this facet of the new housing bubble, reflated by those with access to cheap credit, and which has seen the vast majority of the population completely locked out.

Walmart has just been landed with a hefty $81.6-million fine for dumping waste in both California and Missouri.

The investigation has been on-going now for almost ten years. Walmart has admitted that they dumped pollutants into drains in California and Missouri, as well as throwing toxic waste into trash bins rather than paying to have it treated and dealt with properly.

If there is any market that demonstrates the complete and total misallocation of capital that results from Banana Ben Bernanke’s money printing and artificially low interest rate policy, it the latest phony American housing bubble. With a record numbers of citizens on the food stamp electronic breadline, with unemployment stubbornly high no matter what data you use, billionaire financial oligarchs are running around bidding up “homes for rent” and pricing out the random average person that actually has the capacity or desire to bid. What follows below demonstrates the degree of insanity that has now been unleashed upon the streets of Las Vegas - in their QE-forever induced delirium, homebuilders have gone Chinese and in Las Vegas "permits for new home construction are up 50 percent, twice the national average."

Tuesday's Case Shiller update index showed something very troubling: as a whole, the US housing market in its broadest sense, has barely budged in the past four years (chart). And yet, what is unmistakable, and what has given many the impression that there is a "recovery" (despite clear recent signals to the contrary) are media attempts to spark a buying frenzy in several of the key markets that were responsible for the prior housing bubble, such as Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona. And how do we know they are succeeding, if only until the Bernanke liquidity bubble pops again? Courtesy of articles such as this: "25 markets where flipping homes is most profitable." Nuff said.

If there is one admirable thing about the Case Shiller Home Price Index report (which sadly shows data for February so a nearly three month delay) is that even according to its authors, it is the Non-Seasonally Adjusted number that is representative of what is going on in housing. And, as the chart below shows, very little is going on as the broader price level continues to undulate in a very tight range with little real moves to the up or downside.

But "We Can’t Afford to Irritate the Saudis" By Actually Looking Into Who Backed 9/11 ...  "Especially with Oil Prices Going Up Now"

• Turn to Religion Split Bomb Suspects' Home (WSJ)
• The propaganda is back for the 4th year in a row: Spring Swoon Sequel No Reason for Economic Growth Scare in U.S. (BBG)
• Bernanke Jackson Hole Absence Contrasts With Greenspan Adulation (BBG)
• Large economies promise to boost growth (FT)
• Tata Faces Crisis as $20 Billion Spent on Water (BBG)
• U.S. Eyes Pushback On China Hacking (WSJ)
• Fed's Bernanke sees no U.S. inflation risks: Nowotny (Reuters)
• Austerity on Trial With U.S. Versus Europe Amid New Evidence (BBG)
• Eurozone anti-austerity camp on the rise (FT)
• Spain Aims to Soften Budget Cuts (WSJ)
• Japan's Aso Calls Recovery 'Few Years' Away (WSJ)
• BOJ Said to Consider Price Forecast Upgrade (WSJ)

• Investigators hunt for clues in marathon bombing (Reuters)
• Investigators scour video, photos for Boston Marathon bomb clues (Reuters)
• 'Act of Terror' Kills at Least Three, Injures About 140 as Bombs Wreak Carnage on Marathon Crowd (WSJ)
• Brent Crude Below $100 (WSJ)
• Slower China Growth Signals Days of Miracles Are Waning (WSJ)
• Central Banks at Ease Limit Risk Political Backlash (BBG)
• Merkel plans to quit midterm, says author (FT)
• Monte Paschi Prosecutors Seize $2.3 Billion of Nomura Assets (Businessweek)
• Treasuries back on investors’ buy lists (FT)
• J.C. Penney Said to Seek Ways to Separate Real Estate for Cash (BBG)
• Climate scientists struggle to explain warming slowdown (Reuters)
• Putin Calls for Stimulus Plan After Recession Alarm (BBG)
• TIPS in Longest Selloff Since ’08 as U.S. Bancorp Cuts (BBG)

Did you know that there are thousands upon thousands of homeless people that are living underground beneath the streets of major U.S. cities?  It is happening in Las Vegas, it is happening in New York City and it is even happening in Kansas City.  As the economy crumbles, poverty in the United States is absolutely exploding and so is homelessness.  In addition to the thousands of "tunnel people" living under the streets of America, there are also thousands that are living in tent cities, there are tens of thousands that are living in their vehicles and there are more than a million public school children that do not have a home to go back to at night.  The federal government tells us that the recession "is over" and that "things are getting better", and yet poverty and homelessness in this country continue to rise with no end in sight.  So what in the world are things going to look like when the next economic crisis hits?

Jobs in and of themselves do not guarantee well-being. Suppose that the employment is to dig huge holes and fill them up again? The supply of labor is limited. We must not allow government to create jobs or we lose the goods and services which otherwise would have come into being. We must reserve precious labor for the important tasks still left undone. Instead of praising jobs for their own sake, we should ask why employment is so important. The answer is, because we exist amidst economic scarcity and must work to live and prosper. That’s why we should be of good cheer only when we learn that this employment will produce things people actually value, i.e., are willing to buy with their own hard-earned money. And this is something that can only be done in the free market, not by bureaucrats and politicians. While the free market, of course, does not mean utopia, the path to jobs that matter is the free market.

Virtual currencies are not the only ones having a bad day, at least in USD-denominated terms (which for all those bullish BitCoin, or Gold, or Silver the fiat-alternative currency, not the asset, should make all the difference in the world - alas most people still don't grasp the difference). Another entity that has seen better times is the terrifying accident-magnet also known Carnival Cruises. Following what seemed an endless barrage of TV crews scouring Carnival cruise ships, bringing a new definition to the term "poop deck", the inevitable has finally happened: CCL has been forced to admit that absent changing something very drastically, it is doomed. And since it can't or won't afford to spend billions on CapEx to actually repair and modernize its assets (like virtually every other S&P500 company), it has done the only thing it can: crush prices, and pray to make up for this in volume and impulse purchases what it is about to lose in cruise revenues. As Bloomberg reports, in order to "entice" customers to come back to the good life, Carnival is now offering a cruise at the low, low price of $38 a night, or less than a stay at a Motel 8.