I'll add it to mine. "See-I-told-you-so's" are so much fun.


"Mark Browne" wrote in message
et...
"NOYB" wrote in message
...
snip

All of this is taking place at a time when, according to Harry, things
couldn't be worse for this country.
Well, they're only going to get better over the next 14 months...and
Bush
will win in a landslide.


As you like to say, I put this in a storage folder. We can come back to
this
after the election.

Mark Browne

On Sat, 06 Sep 2003 00:19:13 GMT, bb wrote:

I'll not blame Clinton,
or Bush, but lay it on a normal economic cycle...
=======================================
That's not an acceptable answer even if it does happen to be true. In
politics it ALWAYS has to be someone's fault, and it's ALWAYS the
other guy. If the economy is really so bad, I'd like to know who
these people are bidding up the price of housing to stratospheric
levels.

In my business it has always been a game of musical chairs, good times
or bad. The guys who keep working are the ones looking down the road
several moves ahead, figuring out where to land next, and never
burning any bridges.

"John Gaquin" wrote in message news:knd6b.271
Oh, what's a girl to do?

In Hillary's case, probably another girl.

On Sat, 06 Sep 2003 02:35:04 GMT, "NOYB" wrote:

Productivity isn't just up...it's waaaaaaaaaay up. It really can't go up
anymore.
========================

It can and will. The technological breakthroughs of the last ten to
twenty years are just starting to kick into high gear. Take a look at
that video link Chuck Gould posted last week with boats being built,
and fitted out, using robotic machine tools.

Anyone worried about their job going away should learn some new
skills. Those robots are going to need a LOT of care and feeding.

That's not an acceptable answer even if it does happen to be true. In
politics it ALWAYS has to be someone's fault, and it's ALWAYS the
other guy. If the economy is really so bad, I'd like to know who
these people are bidding up the price of housing to stratospheric
levels.

The Federal Reserve.

Home buyers are the ultimate "payment buyer." The percentage of folks writing
out a check for $468,900 to move into a rickey-tickey cul-de-sac clone 40 miles
from town in "New Westchester Estates" (or some other pretentiously named
community) is likely to be in the low single digits. Even if you can afford to
pay cash for housing, the interest rates make it more atractive to borrow.

Housing prices are no more logical than were the prices of stocks in 1999.
"It's worth it because that's what the last guy paid for the same offering, and
it's going up in value so fast we have to buy now or we'll never afford it
again!"

While declining interest rates have allowed payment buyers to pay some very
high prices for housing of late, those same interest rates cannot continue to
fall. My wife recently mentioned to me that the overnight Fed Funds rate is
hovering around 1 percent. That has to be about the bottom, unless investors
are going to be willing to pay to have their money stored for them. :-)

When those interest rates start to rise, as they will to cover the cost of the
Iraq invasion and attract investors to cover our
record national debt, housing prices could be a short-term victim. People might
want to move to a newer, nicer, house but if stepping up $100k in mortgage
balance at a higher interest rate changes that just barely doable $2500 a month
mortgage note to $4100, a lot of people will decide to
"stay put" instead. At that time, those who
*must* sell will have no choice except to dump the price as low as they can
manage to go, and that will bring the price of all similar houses down as well.

Higher end houses in areas with a lot of unemployment have not appreciated at
all, and have declined in supposed "value" in many cases. Seattle is a good
example.
Our own place is a humble little tarpaper shack, of course, but our run down
dump is surrounded (by outraged neighbors) in one of the priciest districts in
town. We couldn't afford to buy even our meager little hut if we moved to
Seattle today, but we have lived at our present address about ten years.

As the dot.com boom roared on, housing prices in our neighborhood of 100-year
old
wood frame houses blew clear up into the seven digit category. We were shocked
when prices crept up to this level, but the houses sold fairly quickly and in
many cases before there was an advertised reduction in the listing price.

Some of those "Million dollar" houses have since resold. The one on a corner a
block away started at $1.1mm, dropped to $950k, dropped to 895, 875, 845, 825,
and finally $795k before the "SOLD" sign went up. $795k was less than we
remember the house advertised for when it last sold- so it's likely the latest
reseller sacrificed some of his initial down payment just to get rid of the
house at this point....and of course just forget any "appreciation."
Some houses in the neighborhood have started extremely high, dropped a few
steps, and then been withdrawn from sale.

Low end houses (meaning in the low six-figure category in W. Wash) have held
their own and shown some appreciation in this region, but there is a lesson to
be learned from the decline in prices for the
highest priced homes....the price of a house is not supportable unless it is
affordable to enough buyers to create competitive demand.

When the mortgage rates rise much faster than wages, something has to give way.
Price is usually that something.
Remember that when 5% mortgages go to 6%, the interest rate has gone up only 1%
but the cost of money has increased by a factor of 20%....(6 being a number
120% as large as 5). With workers having to strike to get 2, 3, or 4% annual
raises these days, (and many others willing to forego any sort of raise and
just grateful to be working at all) an overnight 20% increase in the cost of
*anything* will put a damper on demand for that item.

Have you tried to find
anyone competent in a Home Depot lately?

YMMV, but a high percentage of people working at Home Depot around here are
people who used to work in the various building trades but gave it up due to
injury, economics, advancing age, etc.

Wages are down enough in some of the local building trades that steady work at
Home Depot pays as well as on-again, off-again work as a framer, wire puller,
plumber's helper, etc. Even though construction is doing OK, most of the
workers on many of the job sites don't speak English. The contractors pick them
up down on Western Avenue every morning, where hundreds of day laborers,
primarily of Hispanic ethnicity, are lined up
sober, dressed for work, and with tool box in hand. The going rate is $10 an
hour- cash paid daily. No questions asked, no records kept, no union demands,
no pesky fringe benefits or workman's compensation insurance. If a guy falls
off a ladder and breaks his back, too bad I guess- legally he was never there.

But I would agree in general. We have a regional large scale variety and food
store
called Fred Meyer. They probably pay thier entry level people minimum wage, and
managers a buck or two more per hour. Walked into Freddie's the other day to
pick up some small item, and there was a big colorful display set up in the
foyer inviting people to apply for "a career" at Fred Meyer. When things were
more robust, all the low wage, undesirable employers had
"help wanted" signs plastered everywhere.
This set up at Freddie's was the first such item that I have actually noticed
in the last few years.

On Sat, 06 Sep 2003 00:17:50 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

If the economy is really so bad, I'd like to know who
these people are bidding up the price of housing to stratospheric
levels.

I think the economy is so bad, but everybody is not feeling the pinch.
How many jobs have been lost in the last few years? Certainly those
people who are out of work aren't bidding up the real estate. I think
the burden of this recession is being felt by the lower end of the
economic ladder. That's pretty normal I guess, but I don't think this
administration gives a hoot about those who are hurting.

In my business it has always been a game of musical chairs, good times
or bad. The guys who keep working are the ones looking down the road
several moves ahead, figuring out where to land next, and never
burning any bridges.

Mines about the same. I'm always surprised to be one of the ones
surviving.

bb

"NOYB" wrote in message
...

Notice how the unemployment rate improved...people are so disheartened
they're giving up and not bothering to report.

The unemployment rate is determined by surveying households. The other
figure is determined by sampling certain businesses. If you sample
households, and the results tell you there were fewer people unemployed in
August than in July, then why do the businesses report a cut in payrolls
by
93,000? Simple...that survey ignores small business. Small business is
beginning to hire in pretty large numbers. If the surveyed businesses lay
off a net amount of 93,000 employees, but the unemployment rate falls,
then
that means these employees are being absorbed into the job market in small
businesses not accounted for in the original survey. "Unemployment rate"
is
the key figure...

"Small business is starting to hire in pretty large numbers" but since those
figures aren't tracked, you have no proof of your theory, right?

Then where do you get your information from and how do you know that it's
not people who've exhausted their unemployment benefits?

"Jim" wrote in message
news:Yrb6b.368926$YN5.247563@sccrnsc01...

Exactly! Companies do not like to lay off workers. They want to make
sure that these
are not little farts in the economy they are seeing before they hire more
workers....the last thing they want is to have to lay them off because
they misread the
indicators. That is why productivity is up.

WRONG! The reason productivity is up is because people are working longer
hours and taking fewer holidays in an attempt to keep their jobs and
livelyhoods.

Gould 0738 wrote:

Have you tried to find
anyone competent in a Home Depot lately?

YMMV, but a high percentage of people working at Home Depot around here are
people who used to work in the various building trades but gave it up due to
injury, economics, advancing age, etc.

Wages are down enough in some of the local building trades that steady work at
Home Depot pays as well as on-again, off-again work as a framer, wire puller,
plumber's helper, etc. Even though construction is doing OK, most of the
workers on many of the job sites don't speak English. The contractors pick them
up down on Western Avenue every morning, where hundreds of day laborers,
primarily of Hispanic ethnicity, are lined up
sober, dressed for work, and with tool box in hand. The going rate is $10 an
hour- cash paid daily. No questions asked, no records kept, no union demands,
no pesky fringe benefits or workman's compensation insurance. If a guy falls
off a ladder and breaks his back, too bad I guess- legally he was never there.

But I would agree in general. We have a regional large scale variety and food
store
called Fred Meyer. They probably pay thier entry level people minimum wage, and
managers a buck or two more per hour. Walked into Freddie's the other day to
pick up some small item, and there was a big colorful display set up in the
foyer inviting people to apply for "a career" at Fred Meyer. When things were
more robust, all the low wage, undesirable employers had
"help wanted" signs plastered everywhere.
This set up at Freddie's was the first such item that I have actually noticed
in the last few years.


Ah, yes...the Brave New Republican World.

--
* * *
email sent to will *never* get to me.