July 2006 Archives
Carnivals:
RINO Sightings Recommended: Bloggin' OutLoud and aTypical Joe, for the fact that they agreed to host a discussion debate upon gay marriage, posted on each other's sites, and kept it civil, issues oriented, and engaging. Also Pigilito Says for an article on the published research - or lack thereof - on intelligent design.
Carnival of Personal Finance Recommended: Brian Kim (how to make that raise really count) Stop Buying Cr*p (reading credit card offers. If something sounds like I might be interested, I read the entire thing. Carefully. Twice before I sign, which I never have. Otherwise it goes to the shredder)
Carnival of Real Estate
Carnival of Investing
Carnival of Capitalists Sorry I don't have time to go through it for recommended articles.
"I am married but want to refinance my house only in my name. What do I have to do?"
This is actually pretty easy, and there are at least two ways to potentially accomplish this, depending upon lender policy and the law in your area.
Most lenders policies require the property to be titled in a compatible manner to the loan. Some few do allow the spouse to be on title and not a party to the loan, in which case they will be required to sign the Trust Deed, although not the Note. Most lenders, however, will require that if you are the only one on the loan, the property be titled in your name exclusively. So your spouse will be required to sign a quitclaim to "Jenny Jones, a married woman as her sole and separate property" (Or "John Jones, a married man as his sole and separate property). If you don't like the title being this way, that's fine and don't sweat it. You can quitclaim it back to "John and Jenny Jones, husband and wife as joint tenants with rights of survivorship" as soon as the loan records. What matters is that the people agreeing to the loan, as of the moment the Trust Deed comes into effect, is reflected in the official title of the property.
For those intelligent individuals whose property is in living trusts, this is also a common feature of getting a loan on the property. The lender will usually require it be quit-claimed from "John and Jenny Jones, trustees of the Jones Family Living Trust" to either the sole individual who qualified for the loan, as in the previous paragraph, or to "John and Jenny Jones, husband and wife as joint tenants with rights of survivorship."
All of that is the easy part. Now comes the hard part. If one spouse wants to be the only one on the loan, then they must qualify on their own. Only their income may be used. However, since most debts in a marriage are in the names of both partners, typically they are going to going to be charged for most debts on their qualification sheets. This really is no big deal if that particular spouse is earning all of the money anyway, but in most cases these days, both spouses are working, and they want to buy the biggest home they can, so it can be difficult to qualify them for that home based upon the income of only one spouse. Here's a typical scenario: He makes $5600 per month, she makes $5000. They have two $400 per month car payments and $120 per month in credit card minimum payments. But he has rotten credit, so they are hoping to secure a loan on better terms. By A paper full documentation guidelines, she only qualifies for a PITI payment of $1330 ($5000 times 45%, minus $920), which might get a one bedroom condo in a not so hot area of town. So then they have to go stated income in order to qualify for the loan on the home they really want. As a couple they qualify for payments of $3850 ($10,600 times 45%, minus $920), which will get a decent single family residence in an okay area of town. You, the readers, can guess which of the two properties the average couple in this situation is going to shop for. Unfortunately, many times her profession is not one where the lender will believes she makes twice what she really does without verification. This is a real issue, especially if they went and got a prequalification from someone who figured both of their incomes in the equation, so here they are with a purchase agreement and they can't qualify like they thought they could. This is one reason I've learned never to trust someone else's pre-qualification of a buyer, because in this situation, the only way to make it happen is to put John, with his rotten credit, on the loan. Because he makes more money than Jenny, he will be the primary borrower, and so the loan will be based upon John's bad credit history, not Jenny's above average FICO. There are ways to potentially get around this, but sometimes they work and sometimes they don't, at least in the sense of getting John and Jenny a better rate on their loan, or of qualifying them to get a loan at all. Better to get John's credit score up where he will qualify for a good loan beforehand, of course, but usually these folks want a loan now so they can get this home they've already signed a purchase contract on. The ability to improve credit scores in a short period of time is limited, and it's even more limited if John and Jenny are short on cash, which is usually the case.
These can all be issues with the spouse who makes less money, also. Reverse the incomes, so that John, with his bad credit, makes $5000 per month and Jenny, with her good credit, makes $5600. So at least Jenny is primary on the loan, now, but most people are not in professions where the lender will believe they make almost twice what they really do, so stated income A paper doesn't fly, and John and Jenny have to go sub-prime because if you put him on the loan, both spouses must qualify A paper and John doesn't. Sub-prime means higher rates and a pre-payment penalty, unless you buy off the prepayment penalty with an even higher rate.
Now, in point of fact many borrowers these days are ones that have settled upon a property before they even considered a loan, and are determined to get that property no matter what they have to do. Alternatively, they may have talked to someone about loans who gave them a budget which was in fact accurate, but they liked this property so much that they are utterly ignoring that budget. Such people are going to end up with bad loans. They want more house than they can really afford, and they want it now. I can get the loan for them, any competent loan officer can get it for them, but there will be consequences down the road, because there are still those pesky payments they have to make (or negative amortization that builds up. Or both). A loan you cannot afford is a course for disaster, and the longer you're on it, the worse the disaster gets.
But so long as a couple is qualifying for a loan where they really can make the payments, it's all okay. The one thing that bites a fair number of people is divorce, where one ex-spouse figures that because he (or she) qualified all by themselves so they should be able to make the payments all by themselves. But the loan officer used stated income without telling them, and once that other income is gone, it turns out that they can't make the payments. Not only can they not make the payments, they cannot qualify to refinance now. Typically, most people live in denial about this for way too long, ruining their credit to where they can no longer qualify for the loan on the lesser property they would have been able to get if they had done the smart thing in the first place.
So one spouse qualifying for a loan on their own has some real issues to be aware of, and that will turn and bite you if you're not careful enough.
Caveat Emptor.
UPDATED here
UN rights body orders US to shut "secret" jails.
No word on well-known gulags worldwide. Or several dozen entire countries that imprison their entire population.
Mexican Man who lied to get Border Patrol job sentenced
I ran a whole series on this guy last August
Willisms has an excellent piece on pension reform
What did you expect? Caracas threatens oil cut in case of US aggression
The fact is that thanks to forty years of ignoring alternative energy sources such as nuclear, political opposition to developing US petroleum sources, and just generally not having the guts to carry through with making a bad situation better, the US is stuck with the large oil producing nations. With the economies of China and India growing as they are, the oil producers no longer need the US as a customer. Their leverage on us: enormous and growing. Our leverage on them: still significant but decreasing.
Don't you think it's time we got off the ball and started doing something about this?
The Al Gore of Mexico? Mexico left takes election protest back to streets
I know that the Mexican elections were not clean. All three parties routinely play games with the voting. What I do not see is any real evidence as to whether PRD cheated better than PAN. Did PAN take an election that PRD would have won, or did PRD make it look closer than it was? Nobody knows right now. But the election results is all they've got and there is zero evidence another election would return a better (as in cleaner) result.
Mexican elections are a joke. But they're the best thing they've got.
Spot on! Rove says voters not stupid
Rove said work, family, friends and other interests consume much of voters' time and crowd out campaigns and policy.
"The American people are not policy wonks," he said. "But they have great instincts and they try to do the right thing."
Every so often, Mr. Rove comes out and says something like this that convinces me he is, if not a genius, at least more in touch with the heart of the US than any other political figure in a long time.
ICANN to Cut U.S. Apron Strings?
I hope not. Private entities are too subject to demands from state actors like China and North Korea, and we could find ourselves subject to "politely requests" to alter or delete content lest we find ourselves stripped of our domain names (or even, potentially, access). Don't even get me started on the UN "solution." I would be willing to have a consortium of democratic countries with a free press, although most nations fall shorter than they would have us believe. But it appears to me, even leaving aside the question of who built the internet, that the United States has done an excellent job, far better than any other country would have a prayer of having done, in its stewardship of the internet. Actually, in my opinion, if the US were to cede stewardship to any other actor currently on the table as a serious proposal, we would end up creating a second internet within a very few years, in reaction to unacceptable changes said entities would put the internet through. That "Internet II" would quickly gain the lion's share of the internet market. Or we could just save ourselves the trouble by not ceding control of the internet in the first place.
Blackfive illustrates why the UN is the worst possible place to deposit custodianship of the internet.
More identity theft woes: Sentry Insurance says customer data stolen They buried the lead, but if you read the article, over 112,000 people.
This is going to continue until we make it impossible. How? Not by making the penalties tougher. Not by making the data more secure. With appeals and the like, criminal or civil penalties are a joke. Nor is any amount of security is going to stop those in charge from turning, as happened here. But by requiring biometrics, and notifying the real owner immediately anytime someone tries to use their identity, even if it's them. The idea is to make certain it is them. By putting the information out there where anybody can tell that the person using the identity is not the rightful owner if only they will do their due diligence. Mind you, this is going to be scary, and our concepts of privacy are going to change radically, but it's the only way to make it really work. Otherwise, the situation is going to get worse and worse as the identity thieves get better and better, to the point where our global financial markets are going to collapse or come very close to it.
Texas Rainmaker notes John Bolton smacking down John Kerry
Or, Knowledge of details beats denial of issue. Every time.
HT to enrevanche for a link to an article in the
Economist telling us that welfare to work, far from being a right wing reactionary ideal, reduces not only the welfare rolls but poverty as well.
Perhaps if the left did not claim every idea that does not come from their end of the political spectrum was a "right wing extremist, out of the mainstream" idea that will cause a catastrophe, I might believe them more often.
Via Below the Beltway, So Big and Healthy Grandpa Wouldn't Even Know You, indicating how well we have it, or, to put it another way, capitalism extends lives, and makes them healthier.
Mortgage Fraud Blog has an article on avoiding mortgage fraud through stopping appraisal fraud.
Powerline notes more reports of Iraqi WMD being boved to Syria.
a humorous Mideast Idol
Asymmetric Information notes some troublesome news on the economic horizon.
The thing holding the economy and consumer confidence together right now is a large influx of foreign dollars buying US Treasury bonds because the return is decent and it's more secure than anything else in the world.
Folks, if the chinese (and others) stop buying dollars because they think the returns will be better (or more secure) elsewhere, and look for the thirty year fixed mortgage to go to nine percent at least. If they start transferring their money that's already here out, I have no idea how bad it'll get. And sooner or later, this will happen. What are we going to do when that happens, other than go through a severe economic contraction? The time to start planning is now, so that when it happens, we're ready to take ameliorating action.
Harry Reid stuck in denial: 1994's "Contract with America," was an "urban myth."
On the contrary. It was a list of ten specific issues that the Republicans were committed to bring to a floor vote. Not to pass, although they really did try and succeeded with seven and partially with another, but to bring them to a recorded floor vote so that people could see how their representative voted. Most of them had been languishing in committee for years, because that was an easy way to avoid the tough votes where either way you voted you were going to get someone angry, either the voters or the big campaign contributors.
Most of these issues had large constituencies, people who were committed to them. Offering them a commitment to bring it to a floor vote gave a lot of these folks the impetus to switch their vote to the Elephant candidate. Many of these folks had three, five, or even all ten of the issues that they supported and had given up ever seeing happen. In short, this was a market making activity that brought people from being uninterested in politics to being dedicated Republicans because of the Contract With America. Those who were on the fence but supported one or more of the issues went Republican. And those who did not support them weren't in play for the Republicans anyway.
The Republicans committed themselves publicly to the Contract with America, and en masse. No quibbling around the edges. There would be Floor Votes on these issues, period. Furthermore, the issues in the Contract were in line with what a lot of Republicans and their bases of support believed, and had been campaigning upon for years, not something they discovered overnight because some focus group or high powered consultant told them there were votes in it. Their commitment was believable, the way a Democratic commitment to national security is not.
There is a reason why Democrats have completely lost the hearts of the American middle. Deep down, most of the population realized something on September 11, 2001: We are not immune to the attacks that the rest of the world had been suffering for at least thirty years prior to that, and instead of figuring out ways to enhance our national security while nonetheless preserving our rights as Americans, Democrats are utterly obsessing about not abridging one jot or iota of the most ridiculously farfetched among those rights that grew up during a long period when we were immune, no matter what the effect upon national security. It's going to take an awful lot of hard work on their part before anyone is going to believe the Democrats really mean to safeguard our national security, and they're going to have to walk the walk as well as talk the talk, which means some votes on some issues that are going to alienate their most extreme supporters. I'll believe they mean it on national security when they're willing to risk some wrath and votes on the part of their far left supporters in favor of national security measures that really do protect the national interest. Until then, no deal, at least as far as I'm concerned. I have seen exactly zero evidence that any Democrat other than Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller even understand this.
First, a warning. There is some foul language below. I found myself unable to discover or remember less colorful words that conveyed adequately the information that needed to be conveyed.
Next, a sampling of some of the most current news out there:
As usual, Israel has it right while the rest of the world has it wrong: Israelis resolve to use more force
In other news. Bush-Blair call for international force. With a new UN resolution to enforce. What I want to know is how this would be different than all the other UN missions, all the other UN resolutions. Insanity: Trying the same solutions and expecting different results.
neo-neocon on What does Ariel Sharon have to say. I've seen many articles of the sort she refers to, teaching Palestinian children (and others in the broader Arab world) to hate Jews. They get ignored, because it doesn't fit the reader's preferred world view. Bill Whittle has something to say about that.
Via Dr. Sanity, a series of photos that should put anyone's doubts as to Hesbollah tactics to rest here.
Belmont Club writes some theoretically speculative fiction that is spot-on the probabilities, as far as I can tell.
I, for my part, am disgusted and past disgusted at people who have the evidence put up right in front of their eyes that these terrorist (Hesbollah) are never going to quit trying to exterminate Israel and the Jews so long as there is one Hesbollah or one Jew in the world, and still refuse to believe it because that one point of hard data conflicts with all of the things they want to believe, but have not one shred of hard evidence in favor of.
Given the fact that Israel has shown they are willing to live with Hesbollah, but Hesbollah has shown it is spectacularly unwilling to accept any compromise as anything more than a platform from which to launch their next attack, there is only one rational thing to be done. Exterminate Hesbollah. I can hear the shocked gasps from here. Well, screw that. There is no moral equivalence here. Israel has shown itself willing and able to abide by agreements that it's negotiating partners live up, or even sort of live up to. Witness Jordan and Egypt. Hesbollah is not. Indeed, they are making use of an Islamic technique that goes back to Mohammed and works because all of the decent people of the world that are farmers and bus drivers and especially real soldiers want peace so badly they will go to absurd lengths to preserve it, even when it is plain that hope is completely false. Well Hesbollah doesn't. They don't even pretend they want peace. It is so far past time to wipe these murdering terrorist scum off the face of the earth that I still have difficulty with the fact that Ronald Reagan didn't order it in 1983. Israel is doing the world a favor with every one of these hard-line extremists they kill, and if they ever did succeed in their goal of destroying Israel, the rest of the world would then reap the fruits of their labors. So consider Israel told "Thank You!" from me every time one of these enemies of civilization falls over dead. If I ever have the opportunity to thank an Israeli in person, I will.
Yes, it bothers me to see kids killed in the exchange of hostilities. It bothers me severely. But I put the onus for that squarely where it belongs, with Hesbollah, who hides in their midst, shoots out from groups of civilians, and hopes and prays that Israeli answering fire kills some "innocent" children and women and old men. IT IS A WAR ZONE! From time immemorial, civilians have known to get out of war zones. In Croatia, In Bosnia, in Kosovo, there were refugees. In Rwanda, Uganda, Congo, Sudan, there are refugees. Evacuate, at least until the bullets stop flying. From the dawn of time, civilians have gotten out of the way of hostile militaries. Why does the civilian population not evacuate southern Lebanon? Why can the civilian population not evacuate in this one instance. I'll tell you why! Some of them are Hesbollah supporters. The rest are being prevented from leaving! By Hesbollah! The Hesbollah supporters have made the determiniation that if Israel kills them while shooting at Hesbollah fighters, it'll give Hesbollah ammunition to claim the Israelis are uncivilized brutes who go looking for civilians to shoot. This is Bullshit. No, I'll go one better. This is utter Bullshit, purified and refined three times, down to the most essential, concentrated elements of Bullshit. It is bullshit so lost in its own self-justification, it has no clue as to even go about locating the truth. If Israel had wanted - or even been willing - to inflict those kinds of casualties on civilians, anytime in the past, it would not currently be under such heavy threat from all sides. It is a miracle that anyone in Israel is even willing to negotiate for peace under any circumstances. If the United States had ever been, since 1945, under such heavy attack as Israel thie entire time since its creation, there would be a nuclear desert surrounding us. If the Soviet Union, or China had been under that kind of threat, there would have been worldwide nuclear devastation just because they might as well do the rest of us in while they were at it. Israel has been nuclear armed for decades, and that they have not lobbed so much as one of them at their dedicated enemies is such a tribute to their will to stand for the essential principles of civilization that if the sorry nations of this world are ever looking for the best possible guardian for all the nuclear weapons of the world, I will nominate Israel. Compared to them, the Amish are quasi-pacifist weaklings.
I've said it before and I'll keep saying it. In the war between Israel and her enemies, the vast majority of the reason that there is even talk of a war - so close to 100% of the reason that there is fighting that the remainder just isn't worth talking about - is that the Islamists and other people think Death to Israel is more important than Life for their islamic co-religionists. This war will continue until either that changes, or every single one of the participants on one side or the other is dead. Israeli soldiers stand apart from civilians, shelter civilians behind them, even enemy civilians, and do not fire upon them except when they absolutely must to preserve their own lives. Israel as a nation has acted with so much decency and self-control that the rest of the world should be praising them for their saintly restraint. Their opponents target civilians, conduct war from population centers, hide within civilian populations, and use human shields as much as they can. I would prefer that the Islamists, Palestinian and otherwise, changed their minds, and decided Death for Israel just wasn't important any more. But neither I, nor anyone else, nor any combination of anybodies, has the power to force those Islamists to make that choice in their heart. It has to come from within, and it is showing exactly zero evidence of even being a debate. If they will not change their minds, if that must be the case, I'd rather'd share this world with the Israelis than the Islamists. I'd rather my daughters got to share this world with the Israelis and their self-control than had to share it with the Islamists and their hate and self-immolation. If anybody has any doubts as to what the Islamists would do to Israel if the situation were reversed, and they had the military advantage, exorcise them. Israel would be gone in fifteen minutes, and no UN or EU or American handwringing would change that or even put it off by the amount of time it takes to say "Mind Your Own Business!" We would be completely ignored. The only reason those kidnapped Israeli soldiers are even alive is that the Islamists hope to exchange them for literally hundreds of Islamists being held in prison - nice, civilized, prison, having been convicted in open, public, trials - who are being held because they committed or were intentionally involved in deadly terrorist attacks upon Israeli civilians. What happened to the Israeli civilians that that the Islamists captured but didn't think they'd be able to exchange? Research it yourselves. The answers are available on the internet. I found the original stories (and others from the same day) in less than sixty seconds.
I am so glad that Israel finally had the intestinal fortitude to go after these enemies of civilization that my only worry is that some other enemy of civilization pretending to be a nice, diplomatic, civilized human being will talk them out of finishing the job.
People are understandably hazy on the difference between pre-qualification and pre-approval. Pre-qualification is a non-rigorous process whereby somebody says that based upon the information as presented to them, it appears you'll qualify for the loan.
Pre-approval should be more rigorous. For A paper, it should mean that you've few the final loan information, including qualifying rate, income information, credit, etcetera through one of the automated underwriting programs, and it has come back with an "accept". All that is needed is the actual information on the property, and the actual underwriting.
Now due to the nature of the loan and real estate market, very few people actually get a pre-approval. Why? It costs money to do all of that, and takes a lot of time. Furthermore, it's based upon a qualifying rate. If rates go up, you have two choices: live with a higher rate or pay more money to buy the rate down, and sometimes no matter how much money you pay, the old qualifying rate isn't available. You can't lock the loan with any lender that I am aware of until you have a specific piece of real estate, so your rate will float between pre-approval and a fully negotiated agreement to purchase.
Furthermore, people have an unfortunate habit of stretching to the very limit to buy more house than they should. If you attempt to build in a little margin on the pre-approval, you're going to qualify them for less money than someone else.
Now with sub-prime lenders, they don't have Fannie and Freddie's programs to fall back upon, and if Fannie and Freddie will approve you, you shouldn't be getting a sub-prime loan. So in most cases, they have to go through essentially a full underwrite of the file, and agree to pay a cancellation fee if you don't fund within X number of months. Remember also what I told you about having an underwriter do part of their work now, part later. Every time they pick up that file is a real possibility that they will find something wrong that is a good reason not to fund the loan, or imposing a condition that the borrower cannot meet. Result: Dead loan, and in this case where you thought you had it covered, it really ticks off the client, understandably so. I'm a broker; I can always submit elsewhere, but direct lenders are stuck, and the client doesn't exactly like paying that cancellation fee, either.
Now many seller's agents are getting tired of getting left at the altar because a pre-qualification means so little, and are starting to demand a pre-approval with offers. Maybe a couple of years ago they would have gotten it; not in the buyer's market we have today. I submit an offer on behalf of a client, they are required to submit it in any case. In today's buyer's market, sellers are (or should be) eager to accept any qualified offer, but most seller's agents wouldn't know what a qualified buyer was if it bit them. Income documentation? Credit Score? Debt to income ratio? They are happily clueless, and they don't know how to negotiate for an appropriate deposit, with appropriate controls on who gets it and when. Furthermore, they don't want to drive off potential buyers, although this is exactly what requiring a pre-approval does. A good buyer's agent knows better in this current market, knows they aren't really necessary no matter what the listing says, but on the other hand they don't want to waste time with an unqualified buyer in the first place, and many of them have no more clue than listing agents what a qualified buyer looks like.
I've told you before that a large number of listing agents are lazy clods whose skills are mostly limited to getting the seller's signature on the listing agreement. They don't want to do the work they have more than once, and will drive off willing buyers who actually are decently strong, hoping for someone like King Midas to roll in so they only have to do the work once. Never mind that if they do it right, most of the time the clearances and such only have to be done once. But in the current market, driving off any willing buyer with a decent chance of qualification is a good way to have the property sit for months. Every so often, when I'm calling around to check about showing properties, an agent will tell me that they have two offers. Right. After it sits for six months, suddenly two separate groups decide it's worth buying when everything else on the market is languishing? If the two offers are real and not a figment of someone's imagination, neither one of them is good, or it would have accepted it and the property would be in escrow. If such offers are real, they're desperation checks from the sharks.
But even in a seller's market, requiring a pre-approval is counterproductive, and may mean that you are disallowing the person who would give you or your client the best offer, and may indeed be a well-qualified buyer. Yes, it may stop you from dealing with some of the "riff-raff", but the work it saves you could cost your client thousands of dollars, and you signed on to do that work. So if you're a potential seller, ask questions about this potential situation.
Caveat Emptor.
UPDATED here
Reading the papers, I see all kinds of garbage about mutual funds. Probably the biggest single piece of garbage is that only the so-called "no load" funds are any good. They focus only on the cost of the "loaded" fund, as if there is no benefit to be had from the fact that the "load" pays a professional advisor to help you out. Indeed, it has been well established by DALBAR that net returns of investors with paid advisors, in aggregate, tend to significantly outperform those of investors without.
It's not just investment knowledge, no matter how much people protest that they know every bit as much as the professionals. If you aren't, you don't. It's investor psychology and not being so emotionally involved in the problems and knowing what to do in the first place so as not to spend so much of your money on basic mistakes. This isn't play money you're working with, and if it was, the experience wouldn't help when it came to making real investments. When you don't get do-overs, and the time you've lost and wasted is the worst thing about the situation, and when the average investor makes three avoidable mistakes costing twenty percent or more of their portfolio value, five percent plus a quarter of a percent per year doesn't look like such a bad investment. On the same theory that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client, show me a financial advisor who handles his own "big money" without paying for advice and I'll show you an advisor to stay away from.
With that said, some people are bound and determined to do it all themselves. That's fine, so long as you admit to yourself that it's likely to cost you money, and that the ego thing is more important to you than the money.
What I look for, what most professionals look for, in a mutual fund family, is three things. Good Asset Class coverage. Sticking to a fund's stated modes. Willingness to change a fund management if the performance lags the class over time.
Good Asset Class coverage has to do with the standard categories of funds. Small versus large versus mid cap. Value versus Income versus growth. Bonds versus stocks. I want to see funds within the family that "hit the corners". Large Cap Growth, Small Cap Growth, Large Cap Value, Small Cap Value, Investment bond, Government bond, "High Yield" bond (aka "junk"), Income, and preferably multiple international choices as well. I may not put money in every category, but I want it available to me. I insist that Value be Value, not "growth and income." Real Value funds are harder to "sell" laypersons on, but long term, they tend to outperform growth.
The second thing I want is that the management sticks with the fund's asset class, and doesn't play funny games with the definition. I don't like funds that break type to chase today's returns. A full explanation as to why is beyond the scope of this essay, but For a quick illustration: A few years ago, there was a very hot no-load fund family. Literally top of the demand curve. Everyone wanted their funds. They advertised like hell to attract business, and it worked. They got almost fifty percent of the money coming into mutual funds for a while - and every single fund of theirs put their money into basically the same companies. I did a comparison on them and could not find two of their funds with less than a forty percent investment overlap. This was basically using increased demand to drive price, and hence, temporary paper returns. But this couldn't last, and they went from being the darlings of the market to absolute bottom in one year.
The third of the most important things that I look for is willingness to replace a bad fund manager on behalf of the family management. I'm not looking for immediate replacement if they lag the class for one quarter. I'm looking for family management that is willing to replace someone that consistently lags the class over time. This is harder to get than you might think. Typically by the time that someone has risen to fund manager, they've been with the family for a while and know where most of the bodies are buried. "Charlie" who heads the family goes golfing every week with "George" who's doing a rotten job and deserves to be replaced, but you don't fire your golfing partner. It's all among friends, right? Well, no. It's my money this clown is wasting.
There are a couple other things that are highly beneficial. Limited number of investments, preferably a maximum number set in the prospectus. Twenty to thirty investments is the optimal tradeoff between diversification and dilution, and most funds are too dilute. Availability of Sector funds is also a big plus. But none of them is as important as the big three.
Caveat Emptor.
China says activist broke his own neck
Coincidentally after being pushed down 23 flights of stairs? Or is this a case where they are going to claim that it was cause and effect linked by the laws of physics? "Action. Reaction. Criticize the government, break your neck. It's just the way things work."
The Chinese government is real sensitive about criticism of its Three Gorges project. Seems like a national pride project, because I don't understand how the economic benefits are going to outweigh the costs.
Not all of our allies in the war on terror are democracies, or wholeheartedly on our side: Pakistan urged to probe 7 reporters' deaths
"The handcuff has been identified as those of the kind standard issued by government agencies. Bullets were found at the scene at which his body was left. These bullets have been identified as types frequently used by government agencies," said David Marash, a CPJ board member.
Dean Calls Iraqi PM an 'Anti-Semite'
And this helps the situation get better how? Are we going to use our troops to replace him, starting the whole democratic process over again? In Howard Dean's wet dreams maybe.
Reminds me of this classic Tom Lehrer song
And till they've seen the light,
They've got to be protected,
All their rights respected,
'Till somebody we like can be elected.
Ah, for the good old days when Democrats ran the government, and we could use military force anytime we wanted, because the media wasn't looking for excuses to criticize the government, eh, Howard?
Related Reading: this hero's story (The fact that he was used for suppression of democracy by US politicians in Central America in no way diminishes the fact that he was a hero)
Tie the competition up in court: $1 million per month.
Share price hit when the strategy comes to light: 4.6%
Preserving exclusive rights to an expiring patent that is 30% of our revenue: priceless.
Some things money can't buy. That's why we use lawyers.
Bristol says Plavix deal under U.S. criminal probe
In related news, Sorry, that tax plan is patented
lawyers who knew about the patent on the stock option GRAT "did not take it seriously" because this is such a widely used technique.
In other words, they successfully patented something everybody's been doing since dirt was new.
Is there anybody left who thinks our patent system is not broken? (Besides lawyers making a heck of a living manipulating it, that is)
Patents and copyrights should be awarded and renewed by non-lawyer professionals who spend most of their time working in the field at question. I'm to the point where I believe that lawyers should be barred from getting involved at all in the merit or lack thereof of a patent
I can't count the number of times in the last 25 years I've seen a "requests for prior examples" circulated by someone who has to spend the money for a lawyer to break a completely BS patent. At least fifty. Probably a hundred, perhaps twice that or more. Patents are supposed to advance knowledge, not hold it back.
Global warming advocates officially jump the shark: Scientists: Warming Triggers 'Dead Zone'
If that doesn't work, next week they'll blame it for Al-Qaeda.
Cool! A New Wave: Scientists Write on Water
But how far behind are "pop up" ads?
Worth Reading: Michael Barone on the collapse of Doha.
The next chapter of Bill Whittle's remarkable essays is up at Eject! Eject! Eject!. I wish I had a fraction of the talent for writing about the nature of Civilization he does. I hope he keeps on for many years, because, in the nature of his previous post, we've all got to clap for all we're worth.
Al-Qaida calls for holy war against Israel. This is not the first time Moslems have called for holy war against Israel. This is not even the first time they have been frank about their aims:
al-Qaida now views "all the world as a battlefield open in front of us."
(snip)
"It is a jihad (holy war) for the sake of God and will last until (our) religion prevails ... from Spain to Iraq," al-Zawahri said. "We will attack everywhere."
Now what are the chances that politicians will pass up political games in order to deal with this? What are the chances the moonbats on the left and isolationist wingnuts on the right will believe them?
Israel decides not to expand offensive
Thus marking it as essentially defensive in nature. A true offensive would sweep through Lebanon as a whole (at least) in order to annihilate Hesbollah. But they are limiting the territory they are cleaning out to that within easy rocket range of Israel. 1400 rockets launched towards Israeli civilians in the last three weeks, and counting. I'm actually disappointed in the decision, as it removes any possibility that this will come to a final resolution unless the Israeli cabinet changes its mind. Hesbollah is not going to change. They get their funding and other support from the mullahs in Iran, they get their hate from anti-Jewish propaganda and holding generations old grudges against Israel for winning a fight the Arabs started.
The difference between understanding war because it's been constant for the last sixty years, and not understanding it because it's been 140 years since the last fighting on your soil: Deadly conflict brings out harder Israeli edge
Even among Arab residents of Haifa, Israel's third-largest city and one of its most mixed, there was little sympathy for Hizbollah or Lebanon, where more than 400 people, most of them civilians, have been killed by Israeli air strikes and shelling.
"I am an Arab but I am also an Israeli," an electrician, who gave his name as Nabil, said as he helped friends clean up a restaurant that has been closed since the fighting began on July 12.
neo-neocon and Michael Totten on the current political situation in Lebanon.
Lileks has his own thoughts.
Jawa Report has an email that makes a liar out of the UN - Hesbollah was using them for cover. LGF has more. Wizbang has still more details, in that the UN allowed Hesbollah to set up their post around and within the UN post.
Big Lizards notes the size of Israel's opposition as opposed to Israel.
Victor Davis Hanson notes that for the chattering classes, it's more of the same outhouse, different day. How long before those who keep believing, against all evidence, that Israel's enemies are peaceful, consider changing their minds? Have they all got to be dead before we can have an honest conversation?
Just like "we'll beat any deal!" in any other competitive sales endeavor, this is a game. Actually, it's even more of a game for loans than it is anywhere else, used cars included. What they are hoping is that you'll go there last, and tell them what the best thing you've been quoted, and then they can sell you on their loan and most people will go with them, because "we're here, not there."
The first issue is that anyone can give a low quote. It's like the old joke, "Your lips are moving." Unless they guarantee that quote, that's all they're doing: flapping their gums. All a quote is is an estimate, and I've more than adequately covered the games it is legal to play with a Good Faith Estimate (or MLDS in California). By itself, A low quote means nothing. Loan officers can, legally, quote you one loan and deliver a completely different loan at a completely different rate with a completely different (higher, or course) closing cost. Without some kind of Loan Quote Guarantee, a quote isn't worth the paper a verbal contract is printed on.
The second issue is that even if they are quoting a loan they intend to deliver, unless they are quoting to the exact same standard, the quote game favors the lender who pretends third party costs don't exist, who pretends that you're not going to get zonked for the add-ons that you are going to get zonked for at the end of the process, the lender who quotes based upon a loan that you do not qualify for. Are you going to pay these costs? Absolutely. Would you rather know about them at the beginning, so you can make an informed choice, or get blindsided at closing (assuming you even notice)?
The third issue is that they are looking for safe harbor, and they're hoping you give it to them. If someone brings them everyone else's quotes, they know what everyone else has talked up, how big the lies are that the prospect has been told, and they just have to tell one that's a little bit better. This is trivial when you've got all that information you've been freely given. This is called false competition. You've metaphorically given them a mark, and told them to "tell a more attractive story than this one." Easy enough in a storytelling context - tell the same story with a little more sex - and even easier with loans.
A good loan officer has no need to know what quote you've been given to tell you what the best loan they can deliver is. Tell them to quote you the best loan they can without this information. Ask them if they'll guarantee that quote, because a quote that isn't guaranteed - as in they pay any difference, not you - is worthless. That's how you can choose the best rate that can really be delivered, not by allowing someone the advantage of knowing how much they have to lie to get the business.
Caveat Emptor.
UPDATED here
Officially now a "buyer's market". This is at least twelve months behind the power curve here. Inventory (Supply) is climbing. Demand is falling. And for the kewpie doll, prices will...?
Related: Housing market slowdown rippling across the economy
I think once enough sellers get it through their heads that the bull market of two years ago is gone, and start asking reasonable prices by today's standards, the housing market will start flowing again. There is tremendous desire, at least here locally; what there isn't is a lot of places to live at prices people can afford with sustainable loans.
Blame the artificial scarcity caused by opposition to development, opposition to high density housing, and the recent psychologically driven feeding frenzy.
Attorneys: Accused troops won't testify against each other
In the notice, the Marine Corps said that it intended to call each man as a witness to testify against his squad mates in the alleged premeditated kidnapping and murder of 52-year-old Hashim Ibrahim Awad on April 26 in Hamdania, Iraq.
Seigel's co-counsel, Joseph Casas, said the notification of the government's intention is part of its legal strategy. Once Jodka or the other men invoke the military equivalent of their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, that opens the door for prosecutors to use hearsay statements each may have made.
Not to mention this little item generally called failing to abide by the rules of discovery (at least as I understand them). If it is discovered that the charges are bogus, the Corps is hosed, the way they've treated these Marines (and one sailor). But nobody can say they're not doing their best to convict them. Perhaps if they are acquitted, even the grievance mongers will agree they might be innocent of the charges?
Probably not. But we can hope.
Six death squad members caught in Iraq
U.S. military commanders have struggled to quell the violence and have only recently intensified their efforts to disrupt groups of Sunni gunmen and Shiite militias responsible for much of the violence. Last week, U.S. and Iraqi forces conducted 19 operations specifically targeting death squads. All but two were in Baghdad.
What happens when you try to make an omelet without breaking eggs? Same things happen when you try to make a civilized liberal democracy without taking on those driving it towards barbarism.
Bush, Maliki agree on more US troops for Baghdad, which is intelligent under the circumstances, so long as you don't allow it to turn into a real life version of Whack-A-Mole.
And some Congresscritters are evidently completely ignorant as to the nature of alliances. You don't expect our allies to agree with everything, just like we don't agree with everything our allies say or do.
A group of House of Representatives Democrats circulated a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert urging the Illinois Republican to get an apology from Maliki for denouncing Israel or cancel his address on Wednesday to a joint meeting of Congress.
Ron Bonjean, Hastert's spokesman, said there was no intention to cancel Maliki's speech, and accused Democrats of "political gamesmanship during an election year."
The important thing is they are working with us where our aims intersect, and aren't working against us where they don't. That's an ally. Perhaps not a perfect ally, but an ally. Iraq would be a poorer place if we tried to turn it into an ersatz US. Could it be political gamesmanship? Absolutely. Could it also be sheer rank stupidity? Yep. What was that about attributing to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity?
3 hospitals south of I-8 could fail, report says
All kinds of complaints about the state of the system, but nothing about the elephant in the room causing it. And they laud the report for it's "honesty"?
In related news, Lawmakers offer immigration alternative
Why will we not accept what we can get now? Even the unmodified Senate Bill is better than nothing, which is what we'll get if this stalemate continues. I want the house bill, but I'm willing to compromise and try for more later. All or nothing is a good way to get nothing - which keeps us on the course for disaster we're on.
Got a question asking if zero cost loans really exist. They do. I've done several dozen myself, for clients who listened to me about the nature of the market.
Let me define what a zero cost loan is. It is a loan with a higher rate deliberately chosen so as to get a high enough rebate, or Yield Spread, to cover not only the loan provider's margin, but all closing costs you would normally have had to pay as well. So that except for any cash you get, your loan balance should not increase by a single penny.
Even on a zero cost loan, you're likely going to write a check or even more than one, but they are for things like Prepaid interest. Prepaid interest is not a cost; it's paying money that you would have owed anyway in a slightly different manner, a little sooner than you otherwise would have, and you will get it back by not having a payment the next first of the month. Matter of fact, prepaid interest is the reason there is no payment due on the first of the next month. You're not skipping a payment. You never skip a payment, and any contention to the contrary is reason enough not to do business with that particular loan provider. You generally have the option of rolling prepaid interest (along with other prepaids) into your mortgage, but then you're paying interest on it and it's stuck in your balance forever. Ditto an impound account. That is your money, not a cost of the loan. We are talking zero cost here, which is an entirely different thing from the lender absorbing money that you would have had to pay anyway. But in a true zero cost refinance, no money gets added to your loan balance. $X before the refinance, and $X after, not $X+6000. You will likely need to pay for the appraisal (if required) out of pocket when the appraiser comes out, but you get that cost refunded upon funding for a net zero out of pocket. True zero cost. This does entail accepting a higher rate, and therefore higher payments than you might otherwise have gotten, but if you only intend to keep the loan a relatively short period of time, you start ahead by doing this and there is not enough time for the lower payments to break even. For instance, a while back I had a par rate of 6.25% on a thirty year fixed loan, but providing your balance was at least a couple hundred thousand, I could do 6.625% for literally zero cost. If you were planning to sell in two years but your current rate was eight percent, as many people have nowadays, but their credit has improved now to where they qualify A paper, this saves them a lot of money for literally zero cost, so there are no "sunk costs" to "recover"; it's pure profit from day one. I happen to think that with rates as volatile as they have been the last few years, it makes a lot of sense to choose a zero cost loan. If rates go down half a percent six months or a year from now, you can go get a rate that much lower for zero cost when they do. If you paid two points to get the rate, it's going to cost you the same two points again to benefit by as much.
Now this is not to say that you shouldn't be on your guard when someone talks about a zero cost refinance. What most lenders mean when they say "zero cost" is "No money out of your pocket." But thousands of dollars (including multiple points) can still get added to your loan balance, where you not only pay them, you pay interest on them. Many lenders will talk about putting money in your pocket, when what they are doing is adding not only that money but all the costs and all the points to your loan balance, and people who have been doing this every two years wonder why their loan balance is ten times their original purchase price. I call these Stealth Cash Out Loans. There is no such thing as a free lunch. You paid for the cash out; you're going to be paying for the cash out for many years, just the same as you paid for your closing costs in the previous paragraph with a higher rate than you would otherwise have gotten. The difference is that money added to your balance tends to stick around for as long as you own property, whereas a higher rate is over as soon as you sell or refinance that particular property. If you choose a zero cost loan, your balance should transfer straight across; you are continuing to pay it down as soon as you write the first check on the new loan. Whereas if you chose a loan that adds thousands of dollars in closing costs etcetera to your balance, it's going to be years of payments before you're back where you started. Here is a list of Questions to Ask Prospective Loan Providers in order to pin down what they are really offering.
A true zero cost loan not only has no net "out of pocket" expenses, it has literally zero added to your mortgage balance. They do exist, mostly for well-qualified A paper borrowers, despite what certain skeptics might say, and for most people who qualify for them, they are something you should strongly consider, whether you're planning a purchase or a refinance.
Caveat Emptor
UPDATED here
RINO Sightings recommended: Politechnical (the nature of pacifism), legal redux (copyrighted files)
Carnival of The Capitalists Recommended: Wenchypoo (corporate security)
Carnival of Debt Reduction Recommended: Debt Collection Lawyer (debt collection)
Watch your back when Fox News wishes well.
You've got to have some serious respect for a Legacy Media company with the guts and savvy to hit back at its critics. If you'll notice one thing about the attacks, it's that they're all actually counterattacks. But then we know the Legacy Media expects people to just sit there and take what they dish out. After all, when you can't do anything to the bully, that's the best thing to do. But Fox has their own network, and if they want to strike back, they have the means.
You've got to read it for nothing more than the way they kissed off Ted Turner.
As a public service, I've added John T. Reed to my siteroll. As a debunker of extravagant claims, he's done yeoman's work. His list is impressive.
The right thing to do: Bush presides over soldiers' citizenship
Groups meeting in smoke-free cities
Something to always keep in mind: Low-ball your employees, and you do the same to customers. But this has been known for thousands of years: "Do not bind the mouths of the kine that tread the grain."
There are places that are wonderful bargains on the surface where I will never shop again, because the costs of their customer disservice outweigh any benefits I may receive due to lowered cost. My time is valuable, and if I have to spend an extra half hour, or if I can't get what I need, that's more costly than the few dollars I save, never mind the extra stress and aggravation.
Cool! New Life in Dead Star, the wavefront of which reached Earth in 1987.
Amid all the outbreaks of violence, a hopeful sign in Iraq from Iraq the Model
Once again, Scrappleface has skewered a pretentious politician.
Somebody asked, "What are my legal options when there's a change on a good faith estimate."
Short answer: Sign the documents or don't. Same thing with a Mortgage Loan Disclosure Statement here in California. Neither one means anything binding; that's why they call the one an estimate. Nonetheless, because there is a perception that they mean something, that people think the lenders are trying to disclose everything fully. The fact is that some are while others aren't, and there is no correlation with size of the lender, how well known they are, or even what the loan officer at the next desk over is doing.
The fact is that if the loan officer cannot persuade you to sign up, there is a guarantee that neither they nor their company will make anything. This creates an incentive to tell you whatever it takes to get you to sign up. Once signed up, most folks consider themselves committed or bound to that lender, and stop looking around.
But the only documents that mean anything, legally, all come at the end of the loan process. Note, Trust Deed, HUD-1. So you can see the motivation exists to pull a bait and switch, or more often just not to tell the whole truth. Nor will they point out the differences at closing from what you signed up for. That would get you upset to no good purpose, from their point of view. The fact is that a majority doesn't take the time to spot the difference, and of those who do, some just don't understand how to spot the difference. Of those who do take the time, and do spot the difference, most will cave in and sign just to be done with the process, and of course there are those who are trying to purchase who won't get it and will lose the deposit if they don't sign.
The fact is that these forms are estimates. They may or may not be accurate estimates. In some cases, the loan provider tells you about every single dollar you're going to need up front, in others they might as well be telling you the loan is going to be done for free at a rate two percent below any real loan out there. If they can't get you to sign up, they don't make anything, so the incentives are for them to over-promise and under-deliver. In other words, tell you about something better than what you'll end up with. Now the loan officers know what it's going to take to get the loan done - or they should know, anyway. But they often tell you a fairy tale that might as well begin "Once upon a time..." to make it seem like their loan is better than the competition, because if they can't get you to sign up, they don't make anything.
Now, the fact is that the vast majority of people out there go out shopping for loans in the wrong fashion. They find someone they think they can trust, because they are family, because they are the scoutmaster, or because they go to church with them. Exactly what type of loan will they deliver, and at what rate? With what costs? It is always a trade-off between rate and cost on any given loan type.
Even less likely to get a good rate at a decent cost are the people who do shop around, but won't give loan officers a chance to figure out what's really the best loan for them. The first group of people might stumble onto someone trustworthy who gives them a good loan at a reasonable rate for a reasonable cost; these people are going to fall for the biggest lie, because a loan officer can always tell you about a better loan than really exists and they are motivated to get you to sign up. They call around asking about the lowest rate or the lowest payment, and don't want to hear anything else out of the loan officer.
The fact is that it's going to take a good, in depth conversation about your situation for a loan officer to figure out the best loan for you, and you want to have that conversation with at least three or four loan officers. Why? Because the first one could have told you exactly what they thought you wanted to hear. Ditto the second. Keep going until you hear a couple of different suggestions. Furthermore, once they've given you their suggestions, ask about the other suggestions you heard in the past. Don't shop by lowest payment; that's a good way to get stuck with an abomination like the so-called Option ARM or another loan type that you don't want. Don't shop by interest rate alone, because you'll get stuck with a loan that has six points and you'll never save enough money on the payments to recover those sunk costs. Shop by the trade-off between rate and cost, because there always is one.
Now at the end of the process, the lender has all the power. You need or want this loan, and they're the ones with it ready to go. In the case of a purchase, you've got a deposit you're going to lose and a home you wanted that you won't get if you don't sign the loan documents. If you sign the documents, you are stuck with the loan, that probably isn't on the terms you were originally told about. I pointedly did not say "promised" because the earlier forms are not promises unless somehow guaranteed, and very few loan providers guarantee their quotes. Chances are, if they won't guarantee their quotes, they are not telling the entire truth about the loan they are telling you about.
The most important question on this page of Questions You Should Ask Prospective Loan Providers is "If I say I want this right now, will you personally guarantee this rate with those closing costs, and will you cover the difference (if any) between the quote and the actual final cost?" You won't get a flat "Yes." If you do get a flat "yes", they're making a promise on something that is not under their control, and I wouldn't trust it as far as I can throw an aircraft carrier. What you're hoping for is something like "Subject to full underwriting approval, yes we will guarantee this quote as to rate, type of loan, and total cost." This is a simple sentence that makes a specific guarantee subject to a reasonable condition, as loan officers never know if a prospective borrower is intentionally hiding or shading something at loan sign up. If you get a response full of nonsense about how long they have been in business, how they honor their commitments, or any such equivalent claptrap, then they are trying to buffalo you. None of the stuff when you initially inquire about the loan is a loan commitment in any way, shape or form. I'd rather have a higher quote that was guaranteed than a lower one that wasn't, and I strongly suggest you adopt that attitude as well. For an illustration as to why: If the quote is guaranteed, there's no incentive to stick you with a rate an eighth of a percent higher so they can make a little more money - they're going to have to make it good. There's no incentive to pad the closing costs with junk, because they've got to turn right around and give it back to you. If I offered you a choice between two envelopes, one transparent where you can see the $100 bill (guaranteed), and the other one opaque where I told you there might be anywere up to $110 in it (not guaranteed), which envelope would you choose? The same thing applies to whether the loan is at 6.5 percent with no points and no more than $3400 of closing costs guaranteed, or 6.375% with no points and no more than $3000 of closing cost, but not guaranteed. From my experience, the first quote intends to deliver a better loan than the second quote.
So (if you can't find someone who guarantees their quotes) how do you force the loan provider to deliver the loan they told you about in the first place? You can't. But you can give them a better reason to do so, if you have more than one loan ready to go. This gives you a third option. Your options are not limited to signing the first set of loan documents they put in front of you. You can sign the others. More to the point, because there is another loan ready to go, you can use that fact to negotiate a better deal - one that more closely adheres to what you were told about in the first place. If provider A won't do it, provider B will. If one of the two providers won't move, then the other one is likely to get your business. If the other provider gets your business, the first provider makes nothing. If they will give you the better loan, that's what you want, right? Keep in mind that if either provider actually provides the loan they talked about in the first place, you are miles ahead of the game. But this puts the power to control the transaction where it belongs, with you.
Now the loan provider is going to make money, or they won't do your loan. Judge loans by the benefits and costs to you, not by how much they loan provider is making, or whether they even have to disclose it (brokers do, direct lenders do not). The important thing to you is that you were delivered a thirty year fixed rate loan at 6.5 percent without paying any points, as opposed to 6.625% with one point and higher costs, not that loan provider A had to tell you they made $4000 by doing it while loan provider B doesn't have to tell you anything. Sounds obvious, but I have seen people who chose the higher rate at more cost for the same loan, even stuck themselves with a prepayment penalty where my loan had none, because they thought I was making too much. In point of fact, I would have made a fraction of what the other guy did make, and therefore, by the only universal measure, I performed work considerably more valuable to my client. So don't shoot yourself in the foot like that.
Now expect to spend a little bit extra (about a $100 retyping fee, if you're the one who orders the appraisal and therefore controls it) on the second loan. That $100, together with the extra time you spend getting the other loan through, is the best, cheapest, most cost-effective insurance policy you can buy anywhere for any financial purpose. It will not indemnify you for your losses, but the odds are overwhelming that it will certainly keep you from losing several times as much, by giving the loan providers a concrete incentive to deliver the best loan they really can deliver. From my experience, and that of my clients who have brought me more horror stories than most folks believe, I would judge it unlikely that either loan quote will be as good as the loan the loan provider originally talked about, unless one company or the other guaranteed their quote, but with another loan ready to go, chances are you'll get something a lot closer to what they talked about in the first place. Even if you can find a loan provider who will guarantee their quote, a backup loan is a really good idea, because going to court to force them to deliver is costly and time consuming, and you need that loan now. The existence of the other loan is an excellent reason to actually produce that loan they talked about way back on day one, with the initial Good Faith Estimate or Mortgage Loan Disclosure Statement. Because no matter how little they make with the loan they told you about, if they don't produce it they will make nothing.
Caveat Emptor.
UPDATED here
You play the game well
you've got the knack
your hand in the till
and the knife in the back
head for the hills
leaving them flat
how come you treat everybody like that?
-Al Stewart Angel of Mercy
The Reality of Real Estate talks about how agency - or actually, abuse of agency - is ruining real estate, and makes an excellent suggestion on how to reform it on the seller's side. On the buyer's side, the solution is as simple as signing a non-exclusive agency agreement instead of an exclusive one. The fact is that the market in the past has made being a seller's agent more lucrative for the same amount of work, and so that's what most agents concentrate on, but to lose sight of the buyer's interest is no better than to lose track of the seller's.
Walkin' like a millionaire
smilin' like a king
he leaned his shopping cart against the wall
He said, "I been a lot of places
and I seen a lot of things
but sonny, I seen one thing beats them all
I was flying back from Lubbock,
I saw Jesus on the plane
...or maybe it was Elvis
you know, they kinda look the same
Don Henley, If Dirt Were Dollars
The Landlord Blog discusses how to profitably deal with the tenant from there. I believe we've all met the lady in question at some point or another.
Breaking rocks in the hot sun
I fought the law and the law won
I fought the law and the law won
I needed money cause I had None
I fought the law and the law won
I fought the law and the law won
-Bobby Fuller Four
Matrix tells us broker bashing is passe - and largely misplaced. Not to mention counterproductive. To quote John Ruskin, "There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey."
Climb every mountain, search high and low
Follow every byway, every path you know.
Climb every mountain, ford every stream,
Follow every rainbow, till you find your dream!
-Rogers and Hammerstein, The Sound of Music
Bloodhound Blog talks about marketing and service, saying, "There is always room at the top!" I can only have one Pick of The Week, but this is a Recommended Article.
Who can say where the road goes
where the day flows
only time
-Enya, Only Time
Free the Drones has a good article on the basics of whether renovations are cost effective as an investment. For the sort of stuff most people want to do, probably not.
Monday Morning you looks so fine
Friday I got travelin' on my mind
First you love me, then you fade away
I can't go on believin' this way
-Fleetwood Mac, Monday Morning
Landlord Schmandlord with "How to minimize the risk of paying extraneous fees at closing". Pretty decent article, as far as it goes.
Something you've heard
somewhere you've seen
too real to ignore
you've chosen not to believe
from the black of their pain
to the white of their fear
in the dust they die
while eden lies near
-Berlin, Like Flames
The Future of Real Estate Marketing Talks about Yahoo! Answers in "Impart Your Wisdom With Answers." On one hard, a lot of people putting their collective expertise together to answer questions is good. On the other hand, in my experience people choosing the answer they want to believe is a real opportunity to fool themselves into something bad.
Don't leave false illusions behind
don't cry 'cause I ain't changing my mind
so find another fool like before
'cause I ain't gonna live anymore believing
some of the lies while all of the signs are deceiving,
-Alan Parsons Project, Eye In The Sky
Welcome to SpotLight talks about how unscrupulous agents "buy" listings by agreeing to initially list the property for more than it is worth, only to start pressuring the client to drop the price.
Don't know the reason,
Stayed here all season
With nothing to show but this brand new tattoo.
But it's a real beauty,
A Mexican cutie, how it got here
I haven't a clue.
This one's a two-fer. First we have Queercents talking about foreign real estate markets, and then we have Nubricks discussing the growing phenomenon of retiring abroad.
So you can get on with your search, baby, and I can
get on with mine
And maybe someday we will find , that it wasn't really
wasted time
The Eagles, Wasted Time
Your host reserves the end of the section for himself with, Deadlines in Real Estate Transactions. Get. It. Done. Now.
I don't believe in first impressions
For just this once I hope that looks don't deceive
I ain't got time for true confessions
I've got to make the move right now
Got to meet that girl somehow
-Billy Joel, Get It Right The First Time
Real Estate Tomato tells of the state of his local market in and around Sacramento. The important nugget of information for everyone to pull out is price your property correctly to begin with - don't start high and reduce over time.
Well I'm not the world's most masculine man,
but I know what I am and that I'm a man,
so is Lola.
-The Kinks, Lola
Yo Chicago compares what Chicago's cameras, lit with a blue light, to the more famous sort - only this is with real estate prices. The nugget of information for everyone to pull out of this is that a buyer's perception is everything.
Can you hear me? Are you listening? Has your programme disappeared?
I can see you, I am watching you, I've been planning this for years
Chris de Burgh, The Devils' Eye
A little vicarious amusement from Zillow Blog, talking about Million Dollar ZIP Codes
Next week, the Carnival of Real Estate will be at Real Estate Marketing. For More Information on past and future hosts, check out the Carnival Of Real Estate Home Page.
Every so often I get questions about loan cosigners. The main borrowers do not qualify on their own, so they get someone - most often mom and dad - to cosign. Now this is a different thing, or so I understand, in the other major credit areas - automobiles, rent, etcetera. But this is about Real Estate.
The only time this usually makes a difference is in credit history. The main borrowers qualify on the basis of income, but don't have enough of a credit history to qualify. Sometimes they just don't have enough open credit to have a credit score. This is rare, but I did have one executive couple who made a habit of paying cash for everything (a good habit, I might add). They had precisely one open line of credit, a credit card they paid off every month, and the major bureaus require two lines in order to report a credit score. No credit score, no loan. It's that simple. Even there, the solution was to walk in to their credit union and apply for another, not to get a cosigner.
When you bring other folks into the loan, you're bringing their credit history, their potentially high payments, and every other negative they have into the loan. Most of the time, the folks who are willing to cosign do not materially aid the qualification process.
Pitfall number one: If the cosigners make more money than the "real" borrowers, they now become the primary borrower, and it becomes a loan on investment property as far as the lenders are concerned, adding restrictions, raising the trade-off between rate and costs of the loan, and perhaps making the loan require a larger down payment. This does assume they won't live there, but usually if they were going to live there, they would have been on the loan in the first place.
Pitfall number two: The cosigners are overextended also. Sure, they make $10,000 per month, but they have payments of $5000 per month already. There's nothing left over where the bank sees them as having enough money left over to help you out. They may, in fact, have money to spare, particularly if they make a lot of money, but according to the standard ratios, they do not. You can't have the cosigners be stated income or NINA if the main borrowers are full documentation. If you have to downgrade to stated income in order to qualify, that is going to cost a lot of money through higher rate/cost trade-off. Obviously, better that you qualify for a lesser loan than that you don't qualify at all, but you don't want to downgrade if you don't have to.
Pitfall number three: This one hits the cosigners. They are agreeing to be responsible for your payments in the event you don't make them. Suppose they want to borrow money for something else. Especially if it's a large amount of money, as real estate payments tend to be. It really cramps their ability to qualify for other things. This works the other way, also. People come to me for real estate loans who have agreed to be cosigners for a car loan are responsible for the $400 per month for that loan. Many times, this means they don't qualify for the real estate loan. So we have to prove to their prospective lenders that the "true" borrowers are making the payments. This is usually not difficult, but if the cosigners wrote the check for the payment anytime in the last six months to a year, it can be problematic.
Pitfall number four: This also hits the cosigners rather than the main borrowers. Suppose a payment gets made late. It impacts the credit of the cosigners as well as the "real" borrowers. It doesn't matter if you're the "real" borrower or the cosigner, it hurts your credit just as much and for just as long. If you cosign, you want some kind of proof that payment is being made on time, every month. You shouldn't cosign if you don't have the resources to make that payment pretty much indefinitely. Furthermore, should the cosigners decide to cut their losses, it can take months before the monthly hits to the credit stop. If the "real" borrowers don't want to liquidate, the cosigners may have to go to court to get out of it, and the only people who are happy there are the lawyers.
Now suppose the loan being applied for has a Debt to Income Ratio maximum of forty five percent, and the cosigners make $10,000 per month, but they have expenses of $4300. This will mean that they only have $200 per month to contribute towards qualifying for the new loan. If the "real" borrowers weren't fairly close to qualifying without them, they aren't going to qualify with them. If they have expenses of $4600 per month, they have nothing to contribute to the loan qualification. In such cases, the work of asking them to apply is wasted.
Caveat Emptor
UPDATED here
Via Don Surber a humorous tale of How to Get The Police To Hurry
Hong Kong democrat speaks.
Is anyone really surprised that communist China is advocating authoritarian solutions, as opposed to democratic ones? Trying to keep things under their control as opposed to allowing the people to choose? Playing games with election rules?
Great Britain didn't really have any choice but to agree to allow Hong Kong to revert to China. They didn't have the force to defend it against a determined assault, as China's negotiator pointed out by saying, "We're not Argentina." But the long investment that Great Britain made is being squandered, a little at a time. Of course, China's rulers are trying authoritarian methods to keep a modernizing population in check, and they are going to discover that relying upon the power of the peasantry to do anything they are told is problematic when that peasantry no longer holds the balance of power.
It may take generations and happen peacefully, or it may be very bloody and very quick, but China is headed for a political revolution. The Chinese communists may have dodged the bullet that took out the Soviet Union, but in so doing they put themselves squarely into a landslide of political liberalization, which goes with education and leisure time and disposable income. I don't think even world conquest would allow them to stop it, because they are relying upon the rest of the world to act as free societies act in order to make it work, and if they were to conquer the world that would no longer be true.
I love it when brutal, murdering dictators are caught in a catch-22. I'm just hoping as few other folks as possible are hurt when it comes to a head.
Louisiana doctors outraged at murder accusation.
First off, it's an accusation. Nobody is above an accusation, as anybody who cannot be accused cannot be held responsible. The people concerned still have to face a jury, and the evidence that exists for the charges may or may not be sufficient to convict them. As I understand it, though, not to charge them given the evidence the prosecutors have would be inexcusable. But if the apparent facts stand up under trial, they took it upon themselves to administer lethal injection to four of their charges. They didn't have to stay, and I, for one, wouldn't have faulted them for leaving. But they made a decision that was not theirs to make, depriving four people of their lives, because they thought they were suffering too much. Why not let the people involved make that decision? Why not just roll the dice and see if they survived or not?
This is not triage. Triage is concentrating your efforts upon those who need it most in such a way as to save the maximum number. You don't concentrate on those with minor, non-life threatening injuries because you can get to them later. You do concentrate on those who need help now but won't take more than their share of resources, because your objective is to save as many as possible. And if the person would require more resources that could better be used on other folks, you don't terminate them, you just put them off to the side and hope hope you can get to them before the worst happens. If the allegations are true, what these people did was murder, and far from seeing extentuating circumstances, I see aggravating ones. It was their duty to try and save these people, not to administer lethal injection. Like if a cop came by and used their official position to come into your residence, then pulled out a gun and shot the people in order to rob the residence.
Below the Beltway notes that NASA has registered the name "Orion" for its next generation manned space vehicles.
Lest you be unaware, Orion has a prior history as a name for a space vehicle, of which I definitely approve.
And in fiction, at least two major relevant works, Orion Shall Rise (which every libertarian should read) and Footfall
When Victor Davis Hanson and Dr. Sanity tag team the hand-wringers and enablers, you know it's going to leave a mark.
Via LGF, Outcry as border guards seize British 'dirty bomb' lorry heading for Iran
Okay, that's our Scary Story For Today. Too bad it isn't fiction.
Posting at 10:30 Saturday night? Now you know I have no social life. Please come back Monday morning for the second Carnival of Real Estate. New original articles are set to post tomorrow, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursay.
Carnival of The Vanities Recommended: Western Resistance (a story of a Filipina maid's experiences in Saudi Arabia. WARNING! A lot of very bad stuff! Not for the weak of stomach)
The Latest news in the self-destruction of the Donkeys: Lieberman trails anti-war foe in Senate primary
The three-term senator and vice presidential nominee in 2000 has support of 47 percent of likely Democratic voters against 51 percent for Ned Lamont, a millionaire who gained on Lieberman by portraying him as too supportive of President George W. Bush, the Quinnipiac University poll showed.
But the poll, which has a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points, shows Lieberman prevailing in November's mid-term election if he runs as an independent.
The Donkeys can't win with this strategy, and they lose the centrists further and further with these purges. If you examine Joe Lieberman's voting record, it's definitely left wing. But he is a solid supporter of the President on one issue, and he's not afraid to vote his conscience. The average voter looks at that and says, "Even though I may agree with the Democrats more, they don't want me if I disagree with them. Maybe I'll join the Republicans, who are willing to put up with dissent in the ranks, and some of the foremost dissenters are looking like good bets to win their next presidential nomination."
Or to take a more mundane example, the guy who demands absolute total loyalty from his friends isn't going to have many.
At first glance, Bush Speaks at NAACP doesn't appear related, but it is. Blacks have been completely loyal to Democrats for over forty years. carrying water and voting for Democrats despite real fixes for the urban underclass (which they say is their reason) not being on the Democratic agenda. Eleven percent was better support than a Republican had had from Blacks as a group since Eisenhower. But let the blacks start looking at other solutions than the Democratic ones which have been failing for the past forty years, let them start voting Republican, and the Democrats are no longer nationally competitive.
Lest you be confused, that's a Bad Thing. I am not a Democrat and do not agree with most of their parties agenda, but we need two healthy nationally competitive political parties to remain a healthy republic.
To be certain, Joe Lieberman does bear a certain amount of the blame for this, by stating publicly and early on that he'd make an independent run if he loses the primary. I'd expect Republican partisans to do the same. But to challenge him in the primary in the first place is counter-productive.
Decision '08 has more thoughts. Money quote: ""Hey, we've only got three seats, but at least they vote exactly the way I want them to...""
UPDATE: Corrected disagree to agree
Fed chief says inflation expected to fall but he could still raise rates anway. What do you expect? He's a banker, not an economist. Banks have a phobia about inflation.
His base realization comes about a year too late for the economy, even if he intended to act on it, which he said he doesn't.
Patch of Titan resembles Earth
Justice prevails: Judge overturns Wal-Mart law
I really dislike WalMart, but this was essentially the state of Maryland reaching out and passing a law for them only. It did nothing beneficial, and penalized WalMart for their success.
House Votes To Acquire Soledad Cross
Way too much energy and money has been spent on both sides of this issue over the last twenty-off years. Maybe now that the end is in sight, they'll move that energy to something significant, like maybe, I don't know, urban planning? Dealing with the governmental waste and corruption in America's Finest Banana Republic? Perhaps getting rid of the political machine that runs San Diego and prevents the other stuff from being dealt with?
Yes, I am older than twelve and I do know better. But I can hope.
Ford Shares Down After 2Q Loss
This was all known information. One wonders why people that would sell upon this information were still invested in Ford. The reasons appear to be that they are on schedule or a bit ahead with phase I of a plan to save the company, which is to stop doing things that are costing them money. This will buy them time to execute Phase II, which is to design and produce cars that people want to buy at the prices they can charge. No word on how that's coming yet.
Cool! On your mark, get set: Science! Kind of Improv Science Teaching. Now there's a reality program I could really enjoy! Not to mention creating celebrities worth celebrating!
Iran rejects demands to freeze nuclear work, warns UN
Tehran has repeatedly insisted that it is ready to negotiate, but at the same time has rejected any "preconditions" being imposed.
"Iran has welcomed the offer from the big powers, and the examination of it is continuing. This takes time, and the reply will be given on August 22," said the statement, billed by state television as an "important announcement".
Q: How long does it take to decide whether you're going to negotiate?
A: Long Enough to get you terrorist catspaws to engineer a confrontation with Israel to distract attention!
My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy illustrates.
The administration, however, recognizes that this is a delaying and distracting tactic, and even the Russians are waking up:
Western countries have presented Russia and China with a text that would require Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing activities.
"My instructions remain to get this resolution passed as soon as possible, this week if possible," the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said on Wednesday.
Russia has also hardened its tone against Iran, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signalling on Wednesday that Russia may agree to sanctions if Iran refuses to budge.
On the subject of our UN Ambassador himself, Atlas Shrugs notes that at least one former opponent has become a Bolton convert.
I keep saying that Harry Reid's best option on Bolton at this point is to slide his confirmation in on some innocuous other bill. Because if President Bush renominates him, the hearings are going to be political disaster for anyone opposing Mr. Bolton.
ROFASix has some excellent thoughts on the Stem Cell Veto.
Q and O also injects some much-needed rationality.
Democratic Underground also reacts. The Alleged Thought Process is hysterical.
Just one more, this one having to do with prominent Democratic politicians. After ROFASix's recitation of the facts of the matter, the score is perfect - seven of seven - executing the political pander manouver, as opposed to scientific evidence.
The Kossacks are doing their presidential poll. Favorite nominee as of when I looked? Russ Feingold with 1659 votes out of 4140.
Here's his voting record
I shouldn't need to say any more.
Q and O suggests that Israel adopt terrorist methods of warfare.
Cool thought, and a good idea on the face of it. Then you ask, "what happens next?"
Then larger state actors, such as, say, China or Russia get involved. Even India. Some group of Chinese mercenaries with no official connection to China destroys, say San Diego or Washington DC with a nuclear warhead that "somehow" went missing from official inventory.
This is a supremely cheap way to wage warfare that is extremely expensive for the opposition. It would also destroy civilization and have us living in mud huts fighting off the mutants in a real life game of Aftermath, by making it impossible to govern and impossible to defend yourself.
No thanks.
It shows that someone is thinking, though. Keep at it. Somebody is going to have the stroke of genius that make the problem much more soluble. For my part, I'll join the folks trying to think of that something.
Armies of Liberation notes that the Yemeni regime is encouraging free access to jihad (or hirabah) for its youth.
Every few days, I get junk mail wanting me to buy Mortgage Life and/or Disability Insurance.
Buy regular policies instead.
These are not, in general, good policies of insurance, because the benefits go straight to someone else.
Mortgage Life Insurance is straightforward enough. It's decreasing term insurance - the insurance company's favorite kind of policy. As it goes along, the payments stay the same, but the coverage decreases as you pay off your mortgage. The problem is that until you get into your sixties the cost of insurance per thousand dollars should not increase swiftly enough to counterbalance the fact that you are theoretically paying your mortgage down. Not to mention the fact that level term policies exist for about the same amount of money, and that term is a poor form of life insurance in the first place.
The idea is that if you croak, the mortgage gets paid off. As in the money goes straight to the lender. Well, even assuming that you don't refinance, this is a bad deal for your family. Let's look at the situation, and the time value of money. I keep using $270,000 as a mortgage amount, so lets stick with that. Assume you have a 7 percent thirty year fixed rate. Or you can invest the money and keep paying the mortgage out of the proceeds. You pay the loan off, and your family have nothing, while still needing to come up with property taxes and homeowner's insurance and maintenance money. But let's say you put it into a variable annuity that earns a net of 9% (the market does 10-13 over time, depending upon who you ask). Your monthly payment is $1796.32, and adding reasonable amounts for property taxes and homeowner's insurance, it goes to about $2170 per month. You end up with 363 months of payments - 3 months more than you could possibly need. On a forty year schedule of payments ($2050 monthly PITI payment), the money would actually last 590 months - an even better situation. So instead of having nothing and needing to come up with money every month, your family's housing needs are completely taken care of, with a bit left over, and that's on a somewhat pessimistic projection. Even if the fact that the market isn't even over time messes them up, at a minimum they've got many years of making the full house payment before they have to think about selling. Additionally, they have the option of using some of the money for other things like say, college for the kids so that they can support the surviving spouse. Or college for the spouse, so that they can support themselves. One hopes that you get the idea. Furthermore, if you have a regular policy of life insurance, your family can always choose to use it to pay off the mortgage. With mortgage insurance, you do not have that option. I can tell stories of people who had it, and the family lost the house anyway because they didn't have the cash flow for the other expenses of owning a home.
Mortgage Disability Insurance is the same concept, applying to disability insurance instead of life insurance. If you are disabled, it makes your payment after some elimination period (the elimination period is the time after you qualify but before you receive benefits - short elimination periods are expensive!).
This has two problems, same as mortgage life insurance. First off, that's a horrible way to allocate tax-free money - straight to anyone else. The second problem, unlike mortgage life insurance, is that it's not enough money. Disability insurance should replace fifty to sixty five percent of your income, depending upon your situation. Depending upon the lender and the program, maximum qualifying debt-to-income ratio is 36 to 50. This is a total of all debts, including mortgage, property taxes, insurance, and any other monthly obligations like credit cards, car payments, etcetera. All mortgage disability pays is your actual mortgage loan payment, and it shouldn't take a mathematical whiz to see that this is clearly going to be insufficient unto the task. You're going to need another policy anyway, so why not just buy one good one and save yourself a second set of administrative costs?
Caveat Emptor.
Got a search for "mortgage closing documents do not sign changes."
Unfortunately for this person, the documents you get at closing are what legal folks call a contract of adhesion. This means you can either accept it, sign, and adhere to all the terms as presented, or you can walk away. Basically your choice is to take it or leave it, in exactly the form presented.
Now on those rare occasions someone actually has the intelligence and good sense to walk away from a situation where the terms have been changed, the prospective loan provider does have the option of offering you a better deal as incentive to do business with them. Like, say, the loan they originally talked about to get you to sign up with them. Mind you, they don't have to, and the costs of that other loan may mean that they would rather do no loan than that loan.
Now I'm not a lawyer, but the way contracts of adhesion were explained to me is that if there is any legal ambiguity, it will be interpreted in your favor. This doesn't mean you can claim you thought it meant something different than the average person would understand; this means that if there is a legally ambiguous wording that could legitimately be interpreted two different ways, and you and your lender disagree as to the meaning, the courts will generally rule in your favor. Once again, the law is different from place to place and the courts have the final say; check with your lawyer.
Now in the loan world, it is much more common than not to be offered a loan contract at final signing which differs in some material form from the loan terms that were described to you in the beginning. The loan provider will generally offer you a loan of the same type, and usually at the same rate, but most often the costs to get that rate will be significantly higher than were listed on the Good Faith Estimate or Mortgage Loan Disclosure Statement. Neither one of these forms is in any way, shape or form a legal commitment, nor are any of the other forms you get at the beginning of the loan process, such as the Truth In Lending Advisory.
The only thing that means anything is the loan contract, or Note, that you are offered at the end of the process, together with the HUD-1 form, which is the only accounting of the loan required to be correct and complete.
Now the difference between the initial teaser loan they talked about and loan contract they actually got approved is one of the reasons why the less than ethical providers out there often want a cash deposit for the loan, particularly if their rates are not particularly competitive and they know it. If they're nervous someone will come along behind them and offer you a better deal, they want a cash deposit so that they still get something if you pull out, and many folks obsess about the cash deposit to the point where I could offer them a deal that saves them several times the cash deposit, and they still wouldn't switch. This isn't to say not to pay the twenty dollars or whatever it costs them for the credit report, this is to say don't deposit the appraisal fee (several hundred dollars, which should be paid at point of service) or even part of a point "to be refunded if the loan funds" within a certain amount of time. Chances are the loan isn't that great, particularly not the real loan they are really going to offer, and that's why they want to lock you in by having something to hold over you if you don't sign on the dotted line at the end of the process.
Caveat Emptor
UPDATED here
Isn't this rich? Carter blames 1980 loss on Walter Cronkite
"Updated opinion polls right before the election took place showed that we had slipped," Carter told Shirley. "And it was primarily because Walter Cronkite and everybody else was talking about it being the anniversary of the hostage taking."
Gee, Jimmy, you don't think it had anything to do with the fact that you allowed it to go on for 444 days, 365 at that particular moment that you are griping about, and that it was still going on at the time? Seems at least as newsworthy as the anniversaries of the Iraqi invasion to me. How about the fact that you were the worst excuse for an economic leader we've had since Herbert Hoover? That you gave away the Panama Canal despite it not being in our domestic interest and the fact that a decision wasn't due for thirty more years? That you allowed the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan essentially unopposed? How long do you want me to go on? The fact is that we were suffering from a national disease, and you were the symptom in chief. Ronald Reagan helped most of us to recover, but there still is that portion of the populace led by yourself among others that is evidently beyond help.
US News (2d item) reports that Senator Tom Coburn Of Oklahoma has introduced a bipartisan bill to create an online searchable database of all federal spending. I think this is a fantastic idea, and it apparently has an excellent chance of passing. When the average citizen now has the means to tell how much is being spent and for what, this is certainly a powerful tool for those who contend too much is being spent.
Finally, US News has a fascinating article on the "eyewitnesses to history" project, with some particularly interesting accounts:
One of Lincoln's doctors
The genesis of the Interstate highways? Eisenhower's report on highways from 1919
Letter from a concentration camp liberator, and one from a survivor
A letter home from an escaped slave who had joined the Union Army
Thomas Jefferson on the storming of the Bastille
National Treasures, all of them. Most of them are worldwide treasures.
Indonesia didn't relay tsunami warnings. So much for their griping after the previous tsunami about the United States didn't care enough to establish a warning system for the Indian Ocean, didn't care enough to warn them. We did, and they didn't pass it on.
It was only a matter of time, and I wonder if this is the first time it's happened: Endangered Flower Illegally Planted for purposes of killing a twenty acre development.
I'm a pretty solid envionmentalist, but people have to live somewhere. See The Economics of Housing Development for an in-depth discussion of this phenomenon.
Browsing YouTube:
MATURE CONTENT ADVISORY Lord of The Rings Parody: The Council of Elrond Nothing shown on camera, but language and That Which Is Implied may not be for everyone. END MATURE CONTENT ADVISORY
Chad Vader, Dayshift Manager
First official confirmation of what I've been saying for months: San Diego home prices dip as condo fever cools.
I still think they're living in fairy tale land, though. Por ejemplo:
"The conditions aren't there for a big rebound in prices or for a big drop," he said. "We would need a big drop in interest rates to get any significant movement on prices on the upside. We would need to see some significant job losses, a recession at the national level, to get a big drop in prices."
Sky-high inventory. Rising rates leading to prices people cannot afford. Forty percent of all purchase money in the last two years was negative amortization, another forty short term interest only.
There are fantastic deals out there, a fact which I go into on my other site. Prices have fallen, and it's only manipulation of how they have been reported that has kept it from being reported before this. I think they will drop further, as inventory keeps piling up, but I don't know. What I do know is that it's a terrific time to be looking for a long term real estate investment, especially if you've got some cash. As I keep telling folks, the only time the value is important is when you go to sell or when you go to refinance. The bargains that are out there are there now. There may be more or better bargains later, if the price drops more, and people get more desperate, but there are bargains now, where there just weren't any two years ago. Find a good Buyer's Agent (*grin*), and you'll be very happy. Here's a link to an article I did a while back on my other site: Clients Who Can Still Make Money in San Diego Real Estate
Via Dean, Top 10 things likely to be overheard from a Klingon Programmer
The Anchoress has a story of an Afghani man who took a year to create a magnificent rug for President Bush.
Carol Platt Liebau on the issues of the stem cell debate.
Coyote Blog has a good post about estate tax and the stepped-up basis that is currently in place, and how repealing estate tax would also repeal stepped-up basis.
I would add one more thing: Do the people concerned have any idea how tough it can be to establish tax basis for investments bought by parents or grandparents twenty, forty, or eighty years ago? Stocks are tough enough, but things like real estate? Can you imagine documenting to the IRS satisfaction how much was spent to maintain or upgrade it?
I am by no means a defender of estate tax. I want it gone, as taxing assets that have already been taxed is vile. But it is important to do it in a considered manner, and there are things higher up my hit list.
I keep getting hits for this, so people must want it explained. Loan Amortization is nothing more than the process of paying the loan off by regular payments over time. Leave it to the experts to come up with a fancy word for an everyday process, eh?
A loan which is fully amortized (or fully amortizing) is one which the required payments will pay it off in full by the end of the term of the loan. Fixed rate loans are the classic example of this. A thirty year fixed rate loan has 360 payments of equal amount, at the end of which the loan will be paid off, assuming you have made all the payments on time. The last payment may be somewhat smaller due to the fact that they may round the payment up to the next penny, and over thirty years it makes a difference.
However, most hybrid ARMs are also fully amortizing loans. The difference between these and the fixed rate loan is that the rate, and therefore the payment, is fixed only for the first few years, and after that the rate varies based upon an underlying index. Nonetheless, the loans are still calculated to pay off the entire balance by the end of the loan. You are welcome to keep them after the fixed period if you want to, but few people do.
Balloon loans are partially amortized. Their payments are calculated as if they were a longer loan than they are. Because they amortize based upon a longer loan period, the regular payments do not pay the loan off in its entirety by the end of the loan. Unlike the hybrid ARM, these loans are over in a shorter period of time, and you do not have the option of keeping them. You must either pay the loan off, whether by paying it or by refinancing, or sell the property.
I don't see it in a federally approved list of loan terms, but I have heard interest only loans called delayed amortization. These loans, whether fixed rate or hybrid ARM, have interest only payments for a given time, and then amortize over the remainder of the loan. For instance, a five year interest only loan is then paid off (amortized) over the remaining twenty five years of the loan. Note that when they start to amortize, they will then have payments that are higher than the equivalent fully amortized loan, because the balance is paid off over a shorter period. They will also typically carry a higher interest rate (most subprime lenders charge 1/4 percent higher interest rate for an interest only loan, and there are additional limitations on availability).
If there were such a thing as an interest only loan that stays interest only until you refinance, it would be an unamortized loan. Years ago, I was invited by a company to take a seminar because they offered these to financial planners clients. Fortunately, when I checked NASD regulations, I found out that what they were trying to sell was prohibited. The interest rates they were talking about were very high as well. The reason I said "fortunately" about finding out NASD regulations prohibited what they were doing is that I later found out that they were a scam and shut down by the regulators. I might have found out had I done all my due diligence, or it's possible I might not have. Either way, I'm glad I didn't have any clients with them.
Finally, there is the negative amortization loan, where if you make the minimum payment your loan balance actually increases, effectively digging yourself deeper into whatever hole it was that motivated you to do it. There are circumstances where they are the best thing to do given the situation, but in my opinion, (at least for owner occupied property) it should be a temporary solution of last resort.
Caveat Emptor.
UPDATED here
RINO Sightings Recommended: Armies of Liberation (more two facedness in Yemen) , Respectful Insolence (debunking alternate medicine)
Carnival of The Capitalists Recommended: Econbrowser ($80 oil), Insureblog (health care options), View from a Height (Chavez' effect upon Venezuela's economy)
Carnival of Personal Finance
Carnival of Investing
Carnival of Real Estate
I will be hosting Carnival of Real Estate next week. You may submit via Conservative Cat or email me directly by Sunday 3PM Eastern, Noon Pacific)
A "No **** Sherlock!" moment: Study: Many People Not Prepared to Retire
When I can't go to a fast food place or any number of other low skill employers without seeing seniors working there. When in all my time as a financial planner, I was the only person on course for a real retirement I encountered? Most people aren't willing to give up spending every penny now. Somehow they just never get the idea that all the warnings out there about not saving enough for retirement applies to them.
I am not there yet, but I intend to be prepared to retire even though I have no intention of actually retiring. I'll probably slow down at some point and I may even change careers again. But actually retire? Only if my health deteriorates so much that I can't work. Work isn't just a paycheck to me, and if it is to you, it's time to do something about it. Right Now.
Japan insists on quick N. Korea resolution Smart of them. If history is any guide, we're about to see a major expansion of the War on Terror.
Via Argghhh!,
A World Without America?
Victor Davis Hanson pulls no punches on the facts of the War on Terror.
Just when you thought the New York Times had taken every punch that was coming, along comes Lileks Screed with a haymaker that hits like a runaway train.
I don't often say or link to things with this verbiage, but Captain's Quarters has Saddam Hussien's shopping list. Of supplies to create WMDs.
Via Instapundit, a person who understands what is at stake: Thank you for delaying my flight
neo-neocon deconstructs and deflates the idea of a "proportional response".
The idea of a modern civilization takes a lot to maintain. It has an amazing capacity not only for repair, but also for self-replication, that would have been unthinkable sixty years ago. Nonetheless, the raw materials, the power, and most essentially, the skills base have got to be there to keep it functioning more or less at a reasonable level. Attacks that smash the power generators, kill the doctors and nurses, and prevent medicine and supplies from reaching the hospitals kill people just as certainly as a bullet to the head, even if the damage is done on a less personal level. Not to mention the direct casualties of the attacks that Israel has been suffering under since 1967. It's a miracle and unbelievable monument to the Israelis resourcefulness that they have a country at all after nearly forty years of this.
I am not interested in nearly sixty year old grievances of the Palestinians against the Israelis. There were two approximately equal populations of refugees created at the same time. One group, the entire world is familiar with. The other was created when Israel successfully defended herself at creation, and these were Jews against who the Islamic governments of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and others dispossessed as vengeance for the success of other Jews that the effected populations literally had no control over and little commonality with save a common religion. This second group, having been in their hearts Egyptians, Syrians, and Iraqis (among other nationalities), once dispossessed by bitter arabic governments who lacked the justifications Israel had, decided that if they were going to be treated as Israelis, they might as well become Israelis, and were welcomed with open arms, given citizenship, and made new lives for themselves. But they still have better claims against the Arab governments who threw their grandparents out of centuries old homes, than the descendants of Palestinians who at least committed treason towards Israel and were dispossessed for that very excellent reason. The Jews who were dispossessed committed no crimes and were dispossessed anyway. But since Israel was looking to create a prosperous modern nation, not nurse grievances, these dispossessed Jews were welcomed with open arms, and got on with the business of creating a new life on a new homestead. When you get to the bottom line, that is the story of Israel.
If there is any doubt in your mind that Israel has shown by words and deeds that it wishes to live in peace with Moslems, consider the fact that since its inception they have willingly granted citizenship and equal rights to Moslems who were willing to swear allegiance. They have Moslem political parties who participate in Israeli elections, Moslem soldiers who serve in the Israeli defense Forces, and any number of important personages who happen to be Moslems. Israel has been about the creation of a nation and a civilization, but her neighbors have given her no peace these last sixty years. The one time Israel attacked (1967), they had four nations outnumbering them twenty to one massing armed forces on their borders with clear signals of intentions to invade. Not to have struck pre-emptively in that situation would have been suicide, especially given that Israel's border in those days were far smaller and more difficult to defend (the West Bank reaches within nine miles of the Mediterranean, about half the distance of the typical American commute). Every other time, it has been an incessant pounding and escalation of attacks, or actual armed invasion, that forced Israel to either retaliate or suffer the destruction of their ability to form a state and a society.
Had the inhabitants of the West Bank tried to make a new life under the Israelis, they would have been full fledged participants in the Israeli political process by now. Egypt made peace and got the Sinai back in 1978. But ever since those territories came under Israeli control, two generations ago, they have been more interested in Death for Israelis than Life for Palestinians. Nor have Israel's arab neighbors done anything for the Moslem co-religionists like what Israel did for dispossessed jews. If they had, the problem would have vanished by now. But always the grievance against Israel was more important than the well-being of these people whose plight they supposedly hold in such concern. Israel has a large population of Jews descended from those expelled from Moslem lands who could nurse the same grievances, but have built new, successful lives for themselves and their descendants.
The point I am making is that the Israelis have taken every reasonable opportunity to turn the other cheek, which is not even a Jewish admonition, while the surrounding Islamic powers have done everything in their power to cut that Israeli other cheek off. Yes, I've got a lot of sympathy for third generation refugee camp residents, but I put the onus of responsibility for them being there where it belongs: on the Palestinian leadership and the Islamic powers surrounding Israel. Not upon Israel, which has done everything it reasonably could have short of suicide, in the name of peace.
This now appears to be ending. A people who have been trying to make peace with the Islamic world for sixty years, and who have received nothing but death and despite and destruction for their efforts, are running out of patience. When not only those running Israel, but their parents and grandparents and even great-grandparents can remember nothing but war against the Islamic self-appointed enemy, you can forgive them perhaps finally running out of patience and maybe taking a few destructive steps of their own to remove their enemies' ability to inflict that death and despite and destruction which Israel has suffered under for the past two generations.
Lebanon either is a sovereign state or they are not. If they aren't, Israel is pacifying a barbarous no-man's land which has been the source for continuing attacks upon it for at least thirty five years. If they are, then the Lebanese state is responsible for seeing to it that persons within its territory do not attack other sovereign states, and those states (Israel) who suffer recurring attacks are quite within international law to treat such attacks as acts of war. Any idea of "disproportionate response," by it's very nature, implicitly attempts to let intentional but largely less competent or less effective acts of aggression off the hook of responsibility; yet they were planned and attempted by persons who are legally competent adults. Had Osama's two planes missed the Trade Center Towers, it would still have been an act of war. If Mexico invaded but their army was routed by half a dozen Border Patrolmen, it would still be an act of war, just not a terrifically competent one. The intention of starting a conflict remains. Suppose the Japanese had misgauged when attacking Pearl Harbor and all crashed off the coast of Oahu. Do you think it likely FDR would have let them off the hook with a stern warning about "Don't let it happen again!"? No, their other attacks on the Philippines and Wake Island would have made their intentions all too obvious, and so it is in the Middle East today. There comes a time when it becomes obvious that the only way to get peace is not to rely upon a forbearance of a sworn enemy, which has been nonexistent in this case for sixty years; the way to peace is to remove your enemy's ability to wage war on you, no matter what it takes, whoever else suffers as a result. It is not as if those who suffer collateral damage have no responsibility or culpability for the series of events which led to said damage. By any reading of international law or moral and ethical guidelines of responsibility, those who had the responsibility for stopping those attacks and failed to do so, and failed to request assistance to do so, bear every bit as much of the blame as members of those terrorist organizations who made the actual attacks.
Now this morning while I was tightening up the article, news that Olmert Sets Conditions for End to Fighting. Quote, "the fighting in Lebanon would end when the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas were freed, rocket attacks on Israel were stopped, and the Lebanese army was deployed along the border." All obviously necessary conditions, and something any other country would demand under equivalent circumstances. Far more lenient than most countries would demand, as a matter of fact. Wars of conquest have been fought over less than Israel has suffered in the last few weeks, let alone over the sorry course of this conflict. To accuse them of disproportionate response is to invite laughter from anyone familiar with the actual events of the last sixty years in the Middle East.
Not too long ago on a property I was selling I called an agent up on the day a transaction was supposed to close. He asked me the question, "Well who says it has to close today?"
"The contract that both of our clients agreed to," I told him, "I'll be bringing over a notice to perform later today."
He got all huffy and defensive and tried to talk me out of it, of course. His client was having difficulty finalizing the loan. He offered to fax me over a loan commitment, and it wasn't even in compliance with the purchase contract. The other agent didn't have a clue, being unwilling to take the few minutes to figure out what it said. Buyer's market or no buyer's market, he got the notice to perform as fast as I could take it to him. I didn't fax it; that could have been claimed to go astray. I hand carried it over. My client kept the deposit.
The issue at stake, most critical to sellers, but important for buyers also as well as costly to borrowers, is time. That seller can only have one escrow transaction on their property in the works at one time. If this buyer cannot perform in a timely fashion, they are spending money they would not otherwise have spent because of it. In most cases they are paying for an extra place to live while this joker of a buyer, or more precisely their agent or loan officer, bumbles about and wastes time. Around here, that's usually thousands of dollars per month. It has gotten to the point where one of the options I always consider is asking for an explicit "per day" escrow extension penalty for my client right in the purchase contract. That way, the buyer had better know right up front there is a deadline and will not treat it in some lackadaisical fashion, and if their agent does, well that's between them. Of course, in a buyer's market like this one, it scares a lot of buyers away, so discretion is advised.
Another way to cut unnecessary expense to my listing clients is a leaseback clause. What this means is that they can stay in the property, paying only appropriate daily rental on an equivalent property, for 30 to 60 days after the transaction records. That way, they don't have to arrange for new housing ahead of time; they can wait until the transaction is actually finalized, and then make arrangements. Of course, this means the buyer doesn't get possession right away, which many of them don't like, to say the least. They've gone to all this trouble to qualify for the property, scrimped and saved and now they're paying a mortgage and don't have the property. Nonetheless, it's a viable alternative to penalty clauses and sits a lot better at the beginning of the process when many of them are nervous about qualifying. As one final note to this idea, in order to get "owner occupied" loan rates as opposed to higher "investment property" rates, most lenders have a requirement to move in within 30 days, and this can, theoretically, create a conflict for the buyer.
On the flip side, suppose the seller is unable to perform? Cannot deliver good title, cannot get the clearances and inspections done, cannot get their lender to approve a Short Payoff, any one of a number of issues? Now the buyer is sitting here with an approved loan, and the clock is ticking on their rate lock. I always want a rate lock that will cover the entire contracted escrow period, but I don't want my clients to pay for a longer lock than they have to. So now the contracted escrow period is up and my client's loan is ready to go and the documents have been signed and it's ready to fund and for the entire transaction to record, but the seller is sitting over there with their thumb metaphorically you-know-where and the rate extensions are costing my client a tenth of a point for five days or a quarter point for fifteen (depending upon the lender), always charged in full on the first day of the extension. On a $500,000 loan, a tenth of a point is about $500, and a quarter is about $1250. In a buyer's market, like this one, it may be a good idea to pre-negotiate a "seller unable to perform" penalty.
Of course, in most transactions, it's not the buyer and seller who are really at fault. It's the agent or the loan officer. They are getting paid for getting it done on time, among other things, and they are dropping the ball, either due to a "manana mindset" or because they are responsible for too many transactions or because they don't want to tell their client they have to spend some money, or because they're just an incompetent flake.
For loan officers, add "they promised a loan they couldn't deliver" to the list. It happens disturbingly often, as the incentives are in place to promise the moon in order to get you to sign up, then play the "wait and hope" game of waiting and hoping the market drops far enough that they can deliver something that at least looks similar to what they promised. There are no loan extension fees in this case, or at least there shouldn't be, because to lock your loan would defeat the entire purpose of "wait and hope." On the other hand, in those situations the market has a distinct tendency to rise, and when it does, you pay the new rates that are even higher than what was really available at the time and that you could have had if you has listened to the guy who told you that rate really wasn't available. If the rate is locked and the rates go up, I don't care and neither does my client. If the rate is locked and the rates go down, a broker can offer a lender a choice between losing the loan and giving their client the better rates, and resubmit it elsewhere if they take the former choice. If the rate is not locked, you are stuck with whatever happens in the market. Period.
The point of this article is that it is likely to save you money to get everything done right away, and even if the other side in the transaction doesn't, it puts you in a much stronger position from the point of view of negotiating, or from the a legal perspective if the whole transaction goes down in flames. Yes, an appraisal is somewhere between $300 and $500. Yes, a building inspection is about the same. Yes, the other reports run into some significant money, as well. But delaying will cost you more, which may be measured in terms of small percentages of the overall transaction, but when you do the math, it works out to thousands of dollars, not mere hundreds.
Don't wait for the deadlines. Definitely don't wait until after the deadlines. They are there for a reason, and they will cost you money. Get it done right now, and if your agent or loan provider will not or can not, document it. Loan providers you can drop any time until you sign the documents and often afterward, but you typically are stuck with agents once the transaction begins, at least until it finishes. Nonetheless, wouldn't you really rather that agent (or their insurance) was liable to cover your losses plus the cost of recovery? Document their failures to indemnify yourself.
Caveat Emptor.
UPDATED here
"Trust Deed Incorrect Legal Description"
There are all kinds of legal descriptions. Lot, Block and Map, or just Lot and Map, are probably the most common. Sectional portions (Portion A of Section B of Township C, Range D) are probably next most common, followed by "metes and bounds", and often the two are mixed. Finally, in some areas of the country (like Southern California) there are remnants of prior systems here and there, like the Ranchos here, parishes in Louisiana, etcetera. What they all have in common is descriptions of the boundaries of the parcel concerned. Condominiums are based upon cubes of airspace exclusively with an undivided common interest in the communal property.
There are technically incorrect legal descriptions, and there are significantly incorrect descriptions. There are three main categories.
1) Descriptions that describe the land with some technical difference. Missing an easement, missing part of a defined lot, something like that. This is by far the most numerous of these errors and basically means nothing. They land the trust deed describes was pledged as security. Practically speaking, these might as well not have the imperfection, and if you fight in court, you're probably wasting your money. If the legal description is missing part of the land, but the whole thing is only one legally zoned lot, they're going to get the whole thing, by and large. If it's out in the country somewhere and not covered by things such as lot regulations, they might split the part that was covered by the description off from what wasn't covered. Obviously, only part of the property was pledged as security, right? But most of the time, the lot cannot legally be subdivided anyway, and the lender is likely to get the whole thing.
2) Descriptions that partially describe the property. There are three main subcategories: a) they describe part of the property, but not the whole thing b) they describe part of the property and part of some more, and c) they describe the entire property and some extra besides. Subcategory a, that describes part of the property but not the whole thing, usually count as the "technical difference" category. In other words, no big deal. Subcategory b, where they describe something extra as well, is only of special note if you owned the other piece of property, also, at the time the Trust Deed was signed. Otherwise, you deeded property you didn't own. Your neighbor may end up defending his title in court and coming after you for his expenses, but you can't deed away what you don't own. It's the part that you own that's important. Subcategory c, like b, is only interesting if you own the extra property as well. Then the lender might get a little extra! Otherwise, you can't deed away what you don't own.
3) Descriptions that describe another property. You can't deed what you don't own, so unless you owned the other piece of property as well, the lender is basically out of luck. It is to be noted that they're still going to do their best to come after you, and your neighbor may come after you for his expenses in defending his title, and the cops may be interested in you if they think you intended fraud.
Of course, the law varies and you should check with your lawyer and it's the court's decisions that are final. Your mileage may vary; these are just some rules of thumb.
Caveat Emptor
UPDATED here
A while back, I got an e-mail asking me what my favorite books for investors and real estate folks were.
My response?
Unless you're going to practice professionally and undertake the study necessary to do a good job of it, personal financial advice books are largely a waste of money. The only reason I read them is to find out what the latest rationalizations are for avoiding professionals.
Every personal finance book I've ever read has an agenda of selling more (and future) books that conflicts with the ostensible purpose of making the reader as wealthy as possible. The one book in this category I've seen where this was outweighed by the good advice is Rich Dad, Poor Dad - which I suspect is already on your list. In fact, the best method of long term success is finding a good professional and making a long term individual plan, and the money you pay that professional is likely to be the best investment you'll ever make.
This is why the approach I take on my site is often weighted towards mathematical models, to debunk the nonsense and hype. My recommendations for reading would tend be in the way of college texts and similar things.
Any comprehensive logic text. Make valid arguments a habit. Spot bad links in an an argument.
A beginning psychology text is critical. Learn the importance of psychology in personal finance and get to the point where you always challenge your conclusions.
Double entry Accounting and tax texts. You cannot play the game well if you do not understand the system for keeping score.
One each freshman (college) calculus, physics, and chemistry books, that teach how to handle numbers and approaches that handle the entire system, with plusses, minuses, and second and third order effects. Learn that optimizing individual terms of an formula does not necessarily optimize the entire formula, and the more complex the system, the more likely this is to be true.
The NASD Series 6 and 7 license exam prep books. You have to be sponsored to take the tests, but anybody can read the books.
One of the California Principles of Life Insurance license exam prep books. I understand New York state may have an even better program.
Above all, believe it or not, various military works. Sun Tzu, Frederick the Great, and Von Clausewitz in particular. Sun Tzu is easy reading, but if you're not careful, you'll miss something critical. Frederick is fairly straightforward. Von Clausewitz can be heavy going
but teaches too much to be foregone.
For real estate investors, I would add a good real estate license prep course. For mortgage loans, well, the reason that's such a heavy area of concentration for this site is because there is nothing out there that I've found, and misapprehensions are legion.
There is no shortcut to competence or genius. Looking for shortcuts is a good way to waste your time, your money, and lose a substantial chunk of change when you could have made money instead. Nor is studying the market the only requisite for success. You won't often find people recommending you read a couple books and act as your own lawyer, and many of the best financial planners I know pay almost no attention to the day-to-day happenings of the market. Paying a professional puts somebody in your corner who should know better - and if they don't, if gives you someone that you can hold responsible, something that is not a feature of any of the self-help books that make a lot of people a very good living, but in my experience do more damage than good.
Caveat Emptor
Citgo to stop selling gas to U.S. stations Might make a significant price difference in the midwest, where it mostly applies.
Killer kangaroo, demon duck of doom roamed Outback Prehistoric weird animals in Australia!
Hurray! San Diego bans smoking at beaches, parks
"Nonsmokers are fed up and fighting for their rights to clean air," said Robert Berger, president of Healthier Solutions Inc., a nonsmokers rights group.
No kidding. If smokers were conscientious about their exhaust, it would never have come to this. Unfortunately for the conscientious among them, there are too many who aren't. I am tired of being unable to enjoy or even to patronize public places I pay taxes to support because people will not control their exhaust. I'm perfectly willing for private owners to set the rules in their establishments, providing they tell me the rules when they are trying to entice my custom. Publicly supported spaces are a different matter entirely. I don't have the option of refusing to pay that section of my taxes they represent.
This information is useful only in the aggregate: Mortgage Rates Drop for 1st Time in 5 Wks. it's always a tradeoff between rate and cost. If you don't include the cost to get that rate, it's like saying gasoline sales are up. Just as there are two components to gasoline revenues, price per gallon and gallons sold, there are two components to mortgage rates - rate and price to get it. You can assume that where people are going to choose is going to be approximately the same relevant frequencies on the rate/cost tradeoff scale, but that is an assumption, and it may or may not be valid. I don't know. I suspect no one does. This is just a measurement of the mean rate that was recorded, and may have no correlation with whether the mean rate/cost tradeoff went up or down, and it's a delayed measure - useless for consumers trying to lock loans today.
Plame sues Cheney, Rove and Libby for revealing her identity.
Now we have removed the last vestiges of doubt as to what the agenda was. Sure it was stupid to confirm Bob Novak's information, but when you're listed in Who's Who for crying out loud, it gives no further information that this country's enemies would care about to confirm the information. Confirming publicly available sourced information is not a crime, and if it is a tort, it should not be.
I really don't think Wilson and Plame want to go through discovery with Cheney et al. It would be an exercise that not only destroys whatever remaining credibility the Disloyal Duo may have, but a political disaster for the Donkeys, as well.
The Corner )or at least Jon Podhoretz) agrees with me.
Captain's Quarters has a lot more analysis of how silly this is going to make Plame and Wilson look, including the .pdf. Read it if you're in the mood for a laugh.
NIMBYS run amok Scripps Ranch residents sound off about new airport plan
I have zero sympathy for these folks. They were a major force in the City of San Diego not taking it over back in the nineties, protesting in favor of moving the ownership to the Marines because they thought that was going to be the same as the Navy. When they discovered the Marines needed Harriers and Helicopters (particularly large helicopters), which make a lot more noise than Navy aircraft, they carried on about that as if the world was ending. They delayed and delayed the airport resolution demanding study after study because the solution was all to obvious as well as consistent, that is, Miramar. Now that there are no other accessible commercially viable sites left, there is no other answer but they are still stonewalling. Far as I'm concerned, these people can take a long walk off a short pier.
Grow up.
Paralysed man moves computer cursor through thought. We are on our way! From there, it's not long until they can move other things. Not that much further until we can replace the neurological reason he may be paralysed. And the thing that may drive it all is the ability of the average person - paralysed or not - to link directly with a computer while their hands, etcetera, are otherwisse occupied.
We're going to need those cars that drive themselves, you know.
The Supreme Court Taketh Away and Congress Giveth Back: White House agrees to court-martial-style trials of terror suspects
Arianna Huffington, of all people, is wishing for the equivalent of soccer's red cards in politics. I believe she fancies herself as the referee, when in reality, she'd have been carded off herself years ago.
I vehemently disagree on the subject of some one individual, or small group of individuals, being able to dispense political red cards. For one thing, what would happen when someone said they didn't like the job they were doing? Red Card, of course.
There is a Red Card, of course. It's administered by the electorate to those politicians it deems to have become too obnoxious. It's called losing elections. We don't need any lesser group setting themselves up as arbiters of what constitutes legitimate debate.
Of course, this goes hand in hand with the left wing idea that if those poor ignorant masses would only do as their betters instruct, we'd all be singing Kum-Bi-Yah in no time.
Or at least until the first group of totalitarians armed forces arrived.
On the Israel-Gaza-Lebanon front, Hisbollah is owned, lock stock and barrel, by Iran. Hamas gets a lot of funding from the crazy mullahs. If anybody thinks this entire episode of kidnapping Israelis is a coincidence instead of intended to take heat off the Iranian nuclear issue (after all, they don't have bombs yet), I have some beachfront property in Wyoming.
Q and O has an open letter to Lebanon worth reading. It applies to other nations as well.
Tigerhawk notes Saudi Arabia taking Israel's side, if not quite explicitly.
LGF publishes a letter from a Lebanese group on the israeli invasion. I'm not familiar with this group; for all I know they could be puppets of Israel.
LGF also notes that Iranian Revolutionary Guards (known to be in Southern Lebanon) may have fired a ballistic missile that hit Haifa. If this is so, the gloves may come off; It would certainly be a valid causus belli for Israel. About number two million and one.
Wizbang notes that Hezbollah may be planning the transfer the two soldiers it kidnapped to Iran. Causus belli number two million and two.
Kesher Talk has a roundup from the Arab side
Hot Air has more, including a video of detailing the Israeli accusations that Iranian guards fired the missile. I suggest you watch the video.
I do not want a confrontation with Iran, but if one must come, the worst we could do is delay it until they have nuclear weapons. If we have to nuke them in order to survive, our allies in the region (including 1.2 billion Indians) will reap fallout, and I suspect China would use the fallout to manufacture an incident. The US can flatten Iran if we have to. I don't want to, but if it must be done, a thought I am becoming resigned to, best we do it now while we have the luxury of being humane and conventional.
Of course the Evil Overlord in me is wondering if this was all carefully orchestrated by the folks in the White House as world cover for giving Israel, the US, and any allies he may have lined up a shot at Iran. Unfortunately, the situational facts of the kidnappings and Palestinian situation speak against this.
The slightly less Macchiavellian side of me answers back: Bad Evil Overlord! The shalt not feed Delusional Paranoia
what happens when house doesn't appraise?
I presume this question meant "for the necessary value according to the lender's guidelines".
Lenders base their evaluation of a property upon the standard accountant's "Lower of Cost or Market." This is intentionally a conservative system, because the lender is betting (usually) hundreds of thousands of dollars upon a particular evaluation, and if something goes wrong, they want to know that they'll be able to get their money back.
When you're buying, purchase price is cost. When you're refinancing, there is no cost basis, we're working off of purely market concerns, except that for the first year after purchase, most lenders will not allow for a price over ten percent increase on an annualized basis. Six months, no more than five percent. Three months, about two and a half. Mind you, if you turn around and sell for a twenty percent profit three months later, the new lender is going to be just fine with the purchase price, as long as the appraisal comes in high enough.
But as far as a lender is concerned, you can see that no matter what the appraisal, the property is never worth more than purchase price on a purchase money loan. There is a transaction between willing buyer and willing seller on the books and getting ready to happen. It doesn't matter if the appraisal says $500,000 and you're buying it for $400,000. The lender will base the loan parameters upon a value of $400,000.
But what happens if the appraisal comes in lower than the agreed purchase price? For example, $380,000 instead of $400,000? Then the lender considers the value of the property to be $380,000, no matter that you're willing to go $20,000 higher. You want to put $20,000 of your own money (or $20,000 more) to make up the difference, that's no skin off the lender's nose. Matter of fact, they are happy, because it means they still have a loan, where they would not otherwise.
Keeping the situation intact, if you planned to put $20,000 down (5%) on the original $400,000 purchase price, the loan is probably still doable, albeit as a 100% loan to value transaction instead of a 95% one, which means it will be priced as riskier and the payments on the loan(s) will doubtless be higher than originally thought. The same applies if you were going to put $40,000 (10% of the original purchase contract) down, except that the final loan will be priced as a 95% loan ($360,000 divided by $380,000 is 94.74 percent, and loans always go to the next higher category).
Suppose you don't have the money, or won't qualify for the loan under the new terms? That's why the standard purchase contract in California has a seventeen day period where it's contingent upon the loan (many sellers agents will attempt to override this clause by specific negotiation). If you get the appraisal done quickly, you have a choice. You can attempt to renegotiate the price downwards. How successful you will be depends upon several factors. But if you're still within the seventeen days, the seller should, at worst, allow the deposit to go back to you, and you go your merry way with no harm and no foul, except you're out the appraisal fee. This is not to say that the seller or the escrow company has to give the deposit back; they don't. You may have to go to court to try and get it back, depending upon the contract. The escrow company is not responsible for dispute resolution. If the two sides cannot agree, they will do nothing without orders from a court. If the seller wants to be a problem personality, you can't really stop them without going through whatever mediation, arbitration, and judicial remedies are appropriate.
Suppose the appraisal comes in low on a refinance? Well, that's a little more forgiving in most cases around here, at least with rate/term refinances where you're just doing it to get a better loan. If you have a $300,000 loan and you thought the property was worth $600,000 but it's only worth $500,000, that just doesn't make a difference to most loans. Your loan to value ratio is still only sixty percent, and it probably won't make a difference to residential loan pricing (commercial is a different story, and if you have a low credit score it might also make a real difference). On a cash out loan, it can mean you have to choose between less favorable terms and less cash out, however, especially above seventy to eighty percent. There are ways to prevent wasting money on an appraisal, but once it comes in, it is what it is. If the underwriter sees one appraisal that's too low, they're going to go off that value, and if you bring another appraiser in, the underwriter will usually average the two values, so even if the second appraiser says $400,000, the underwriter who has seen a $380,000 property will value it at $390,000 (not to mention you pay for two appraisals). And a low appraisal can mean that the reason you were refinancing becomes impossible, so you're better off walking away.
Caveat Emptor.
UPDATED here
Carnival of Liberty Recommended: Homeland Stupidity (dairy industry regulations), London Fog (Milton Friedman on do-gooders)
Both predictable and completely consistent with past actions: Iran Plays For More Time. Basically, they are trying to give the West, or more precisely, the leaders of the west, who are democratically elected, an excuse to look the other way while Iran develops nuclear weapons. Failing that, do their best to delay action until it is too late.
detainees to be given Geneva Convention rights.
I've just agreed to host the second Carnival of Real Estate. I do have a reservation about a Carnival of Real Estate, which is the major reason I didn't try to start one, and that is steering a middle course between "bash the professionals" (as all too many forums on the internet do - see the financial ones for some pretty egregious and stupid examples) and "Everything is so beautiful!", the standard sales-oriented garbage that tries to tell you that real estate is "so wonderful!" and how you "always make money!" and all the similar nonsense put out by boards of Realtors® everywhere.
Funny! You know the singularity has arrived when... over at Dean's World.
Armies of Liberation has the human rights report for Yemen. Execreble.
Finally had the opportunity to watch Serenity. I liked it quite a bit. I had never had the opportunity to watch Firefly (there are only 24 hours in the day, and my usual passive entertainment ration is about 5 minutes per week these days), but I was impressed by the writing and acting and the way the effects didn't try to be spectacular, they just told the story. My wife also liked it, and said we'd have to get Firefly now.
Because most loan providers will not guarantee their Federal Good Faith Estimates or California MLDS forms, I've been telling folks that the best suggestion (other than doing their loans myself, of course!) that I can give them is apply for a back up loan. But some mortgage loan providers will guarantee their quotes, and this article is about those guarantees, their limitations, and what to watch out for.
Loan officers are not the only ones who play games in the mortgage world. Borrowers do it. A lot of borrowers do it. Some are actually intending fraud, some just want a better loan and don't see anything wrong with painting their financial picture a little rosier than it is. Furthermore, there are reasons that lenders will decline loans that are not obvious. It has happened to me that I couldn't do a loan at all because of fairly obscure points that the borrowers weren't trying to conceal, they just didn't know they were important, and I didn't think to ask.
Keeping this in mind, loan providers are leery of offering guarantees, and indeed, since only an underwriter you will never meet or talk to can authorize the loan, for a loan provider to make a guarantee that there will be a loan is nonsense. The most they can say is, "Based upon my experience, I see no reason why this would not be approved," or, better, "Subject to underwriter approval, your terms will be this." That's a key phrase. Keep in mind that loan provider guarantees are few and far between, and as a result, there is no standard terminology to use. I, as a loan officer, cannot promise the loan. I can promise, however, that if the loan is approved as submitted, it will be on a given set of terms.
Now it happens that loan officers can manipulate you by submitting a loan that they know will not be approved. This is a lot of work and often "poisons the well" at that particular lender, but then they can tell you sorry, you do not qualify for that loan, but there's another one over here that you do qualify for, and now that you've already selected them, they are no longer competing on price, and they build a much higher margin into the newly proposed loan, secure in the knowledge that you're unlikely to be shopping other lenders at this point.
You can counter that by asking what the guidelines are for the loan they are submitting. What is the maximum debt to income ratio? How much income do you need to qualify? Ask them to compute it out for you, and watch what numbers they use. What loan to value ratio is the rate predicated upon? What does the property need to appraise for in order to make that happen? (This can also help you spot hidden fees, albeit rarely. Comparatively few loan officers can tell you how much it's really going to take to get the loan done.) How much time in the same line of work are required? Here's a whole list of questions you should ask prospective loan providers.
Now, as to the form the guarantee should take: It should include the type of loan, to include an industry standard name for that loan type, so other loan officers you shop with know right away what they are talking about. It should also include the cost to get that loan. How many points of origination, if any, and how many discount points, if any? How much in total closing costs? How long of a lock is included?
You should beware the term, "thirty year loan," unless the words "fixed rate" are in there. A thirty year fixed rate loan is the standard loan that most folks aspire to, but it's usually the highest rate out there. The words "Thirty year loan" describe an Adjustable Rate Mortgage (ARM), or a hybrid ARM. A few loan officers will even describe hybrid ARMs as "thirty year fixed rate mortgages," because they are fixed for an initial period. So ask them "how long is that fixed rate fixed for?" here is an example of one way to disclose it right. So you always want to ask, "How long is it fixed for?" if they do not volunteer the information.
If it's a balloon loan, that means you have to refinance or pay it off before the end of the loan. Mandatory, required, there is no more loan after that point. If it's an ARM or hybrid ARM, you also want the margin once it does start adjusting and the name of the underlying index to become part of the guarantee. You don't have to refinance hybrid ARMs, and you're welcome to keep them as long as you like what they adjust to, but most people refinance before the end of the fixed period or very shortly thereafter.
Finally, you most especially want whether or not there is a pre-payment penalty to be part of your guarantee, and if yes, the nature of that penalty. A loan with a prepayment penalty should be a much cheaper loan than one without, as you are looking at agreeing to pay about $12,000 around here if you refinance or sell while it's in effect. The phrase, "What would that be without the prepayment penalty?: is one of my favorites. But you have a right to know, and a loan with a prepayment penalty is likely not as good a loan as one a quarter to a half percent higher for the same cost, without a prepayment penalty. If you already know you're going to need to sell before it expires, it needs to be more than that. So make sure you find out, is there a prepayment penalty, yes or no? If Yes, how long is it for? Is it a hard penalty or a soft one, and does it strike from the first extra dollar or only after you pay down more than twenty percent in a year? These all make a difference, and you should be aware of their nature, and it should be honestly disclosed to you when you are shopping for a loan.
Caveat Emptor.
UPDATED here
RINO Sightings Recommended: Armies of Liberation (the possibility for a freely elected government in Yemen)
Carnival of Personal Finance Recommended: Experiments in Finance ("How I learned to care about economics")
Carnival of Capitalists Recommended: Liberty Papers (market distortions due to land use regulation)
This is intelligent and worthwhile. TTLB is trying to motivate some folks to set up a system to deal with DDOS attacks. I have no idea of the technical issues, but I like the idea of anyone who is the subject of one being able to metaphorically thumb their nose at the attackers.
Judge: FBI Raid on Lawmaker's Office Legal. No kidding. This was obvious to anybody who could read the Constitution. Except maybe congresscritters. Although I'm not certain they can.
Iraq the Model on the situation for Iraqis in Baghdad.
I think their central government better get hopping to do something about this. If it takes soldiers on every corner to enforce the peace, that's what it takes. A country that allows its citizens to be intimidated like this is on the ropes.
Dr. Sanity has a long article about child rearing that may open some eyes.
She missed, however, the compare and contrast with standard leftist american ideologies such as Why mommy is a Democrat, and Friends don't let friends vote Republican. Maybe it's because I'm right of center and most of my social friends are pretty left-wing, but the vast majority of what I see aimed at delegitimizing, denigrating, and dehumanizing one's political opponents is aimed from left to right. Perhaps I'm just more sensitive to stuff aimed from left to right. I certainly have no problem finding rightwing delegitimization of the left when I go looking for it, yet the vast majority of what I come across on daily websurfing and in personal conversations is aimed from the left at the right. Perhaps it's just that I try to go looking for opposing viewpoints, and I'm certainly not attracted to those sites that, IMHO, make a habit of known kneejerking. But it seems that 95% of the time when I encounter a partisan behaving badly, it's a leftwinger. This is even more lopsided than the ratio in the other direction was when I was much younger in the early 1970s.
It's gotten to the point where it's so "Dog bites Man," that I just don't want to hear about moonbats behaving badly any longer. I know all about Kosola and Frisch Fraying On The Fringe. I'm tired of reading the same nonsense over and over and over. Maybe if we just start ignoring them when they go over the line, they'll realize they won't get publicity (which is what they want) and stop. In short, I used to be disgusted. Now I'm just annoyed enough to change the channel. Not that I advocate giving them a free pass if they do anything actionable. But like the class clown out for attention, if you just pretend to ignore them, they'll modify their behavior until they're worth paying attention to again.
Michael Barone on the Mexican elections. Informative as always, showing the electoral faultlines comparable to those in the United States.
Captain's Quarters has some analysis on the Israel-Palestine situation that has been said roughly ten billion times before, with the difference that now it seems to be picking up a critical mass of adherents. The world may finally have seen enough evidence of the pathological state of Palestinian politics to be prepared to support necessary Israeli countermeasures.
Regime Change Iran on Mohammed Al-Baradei and his hook up with Tehran.
Siflay Hraka on why the NutRoots™ has gone so overboard against Lieberman. You'd think with a 0-21 record they must be getting desperate for a big, provable win. You'd be right. Let's hope for one more swing and a miss from them in a manner that cannot be denied, and maybe we can get back to occasionally constructive dialog.
Did some 'roll updating. If I'm on your roll and you're not on mine, please email me so I can rectify the matter. Spamsites, con artist sites, and similar nonsense need not apply.
Wall Street loves fear and greed. Every time some bad news hits, a lot of benighted investors sell investments that were basically solid. Causing the price they can get for their investments to drop (higher supply, lower demand). Every time a piece of unexpected good news hits, you can expect stock price to take a jump, and people rush in and pay too much for the security. Emotions: buy for too much, sell for too little, and pay transaction costs both ways. It's a recipe for tanking investments.
One of the first thing every financial text tries to teach you is dollar cost averaging, but few people learn it and apply it where it counts. If the company has solid management and it's doing well and is well positioned, chances are that them missing earnings per share targets by 7 percent for the quarter is just unimportant. It might be if it's part of a trend, but past results, or trends, rarely get reported with current ones in the financial press. Actually, you're lucky if they tell you about special charge offs influencing the result, or special one-time gains in the case of good news. Accountants can hide a lot, and make it appear to be other than it is. For these reasons as well as the above, you could do worse than to make "buy on bad news, sell on good" your investing mantra.
People get all kinds of irrational in the short term, especially about money. This is behind most of the legendary stock run-ups of the last several decades, most of which quietly slid back down after hitting a peak. As long as the reasons you thought the company was originally a good investment apply, keep on doing what you were doing.
Now I'm going to run a table of a $100 per month under two different suppositions. The first is that there is a smooth 10% annualized increase in price. The second is a small random walk (real world, prices are more volatile than this). Watch what happens over three short years.
| month 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 | smooth increase $10.00 $10.08 $10.17 $10.25 $10.34 $10.42 $10.51 $10.60 $10.68 $10.77 $10.86 $10.95 $11.04 $11.13 $11.23 $11.32 $11.41 $11.51 $11.60 $11.70 $11.80 $11.90 $11.99 $12.09 $12.19 $12.30 $12.40 $12.50 $12.60 $12.71 $12.81 $12.92 $13.03 $13.14 $13.25 $13.35 | total smooth 10.000 19.918 29.754 39.509 49.184 58.779 68.295 77.733 87.093 96.376 105.583 114.713 123.769 132.750 141.658 150.491 159.253 167.942 176.559 185.106 193.582 201.989 210.326 218.595 226.795 234.928 242.995 250.994 258.928 266.797 274.601 282.340 290.016 297.629 305.179 312.667 | value smooth $100.00 $200.83 $302.50 $405.01 $508.37 $612.59 $717.67 $823.63 $930.47 $1,038.19 $1,146.81 $1,256.32 $1,366.75 $1,478.10 $1,590.36 $1,703.56 $1,817.70 $1,932.79 $2,048.83 $2,165.84 $2,283.81 $2,402.77 $2,522.71 $2,643.65 $2,765.59 $2,888.55 $3,012.52 $3,137.53 $3,263.57 $3,390.66 $3,518.80 $3,648.00 $3,778.28 $3,909.64 $4,042.09 $4,175.64 | volatile price $10.00 $10.20 $9.80 $9.60 $10.50 $10.80 $10.10 $11.00 $10.70 $10.90 $11.20 $10.80 $10.60 $11.00 $11.50 $11.80 $11.00 $10.90 $11.60 $11.60 $11.90 $11.99 $11.75 $12.00 $12.40 $12.60 $12.00 $11.80 $12.40 $12.80 $13.00 $13.25 $13.00 $12.90 $13.40 $13.35 | total volatile 10.000 19.804 30.008 40.425 49.948 59.208 69.109 78.200 87.545 96.720 105.648 114.908 124.342 133.432 142.128 150.603 159.694 168.868 177.489 186.109 194.513 202.853 211.364 219.697 227.761 235.698 244.031 252.506 260.570 268.383 276.075 283.622 291.315 299.067 306.529 314.020 | value 100.00 202.00 294.08 388.08 524.46 639.44 698.00 860.20 936.74 1,054.25 1,183.26 1,241.00 1,318.02 1,467.76 1,634.47 1,777.11 1,756.63 1,840.66 2,058.87 2,158.87 2,314.70 2,432.21 2,483.52 2,636.36 2,824.24 2,969.79 2,928.37 2,979.57 3,231.07 3,435.30 3,588.98 3,758.00 3,787.09 3,857.96 4,107.49 4,192.17 |
Notice that the ending price is the same in both cases, but that under the volatile scenario, you have acquired more shares, and have therefore made more profit, by $16.53. Why? Because you bought more shares when the price was lower, and fewer when it was higher. This "weights" your good months for low prices more heavily than your bad months with high prices. Keeping in mind that you invested $3600, your profit is $592.17 instead of $575.64, that's a difference of three percent in the amount returned.
Now real world security prices are somewhat more volatile than this, and if you maintain this discipline for decades instead of years, the difference will be larger - much larger. I've seen five percent of the entire net result, as opposed to a hypothetically smooth return that ends up with the same price at the end of the period. That's the difference between $20,484.50 after ten years, and $21,508.72, and all from the same $100 per month (that would be $12,000 if you'd tucked it into a mattress).
People do the silliest things, jumping in and out of investments for short term inconsequentials. Just because they do it, though, doesn't mean you have to copy their foolishness. Indeed, having the intestinal fortitude to keep investing in a strong solid security when they hit a rough patch is one of the best times to be investing, because you're buying at depressed prices, when all those folks who panicked bucause the CEO's daughter had triplets, or similar nonsense that has negligible impact on long term performance, are selling cheap. If the reasons you were buying no longer apply, get out, but so long as they do, temporary hits to the price are a good thing when you're buying.
Caveat Emptor.
"buyers agent refuses to make offer" was a search hit I got recently. This is yet another reason not to sign exclusive buyer's agent agreements.
My guess is that the CBB is lower than the agent would like. The CBB is the "cooperating brokers" payment - that share of the selling agent's commission that will be paid to another agent who brings in the buyer.
Now, to repeat what I've said before, the listing agreement gives the entire commission to the listing agent if they bring in the buyer themselves, or if the buyer has no agent. But if they want buyer's agents to bring their buyers to this property, or if they want it to sell quickly, they'll make certain the buyer's agents have a good reason to bring the buyers by - in the form of a high CBB. Three percent seems to be average around here now, up from 2.5 about a year ago, and properties that want to sell go higher. Even the discount brokers that will settle for 1% to list (or a flat fee) will tell you to offer at least three to a prospective buyer's agent. It's not mandatory, of course. But it does work to sell the property.
Now, the default buyer's agent contracts (exclusive and non-exclusive) in my area specify a 2% commission from the buyer to the agent but state that any commission paid by the seller is to be used to offset this first. What this means is that as long as the agent finds you a property paying at least 2 percent to buyer's agents (CBB) the buyer pays zero. See What Do Buyer's Agents Do? for more information. (If they don't find you a property, no commission or other obligation is incurred)
Now my attitude is that as long as my buyer isn't going to have to come up with cash out of pocket for my commission, I want to move from "looking" to "negotiation". Because my contract with the buyer is non-exclusive, they are free to look elsewhere, and with other agents, cutting me out of the process entirely if I don't perform. Therefore, my motivation is to find them the property they want, and get the transaction moving. This isn't particularly virtuous on my part; That's where the incentives are. I haven't seen a CBB lower than 2 percent ever, that I can recall, except for a few greedy, almost always drastically overpriced FSBOs.
Suppose, however, Joe Realtor has your signature on an exclusive buyer's agreement. Now he's got your business locked up for six months or a year, no matter what. You can't buy anything without Joe getting paid. This creates a different incentive. Now Joe can pick and choose what properties he wants you to see, what properties he wants you to make an offer on. If you don't like his work, you are still stuck with him until the agreement runs out. If you go elsewhere and buy a property, Joe still gets paid, without really doing anything. If Joe gets two and The Other Guy gets two, and the CBB is only three, that's one percent you've got to pay out of your pocket at a minimum. Maybe two percent, because The Other Guy is going to take the viewpoint that he did the work for that property, and is entitled to the full commission. When lawyers get involved, you never know how it'll end up. My only advice to to heed Sancho Panza's words of wisdom, "Whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, it's going to be bad for the pitcher." The legal system makes a pretty good substitute for the stone.
So Joe Realtor thinks he's got your transaction locked up with an exclusive agreement. So he's thinking of this transaction as being in the bag, and he wants to make it as large as possible in his favor. So if the CBB is listed as 2.5, or even 2, he isn't interested. He wants three at least, more if he can swing it. He also wants the transaction to be as large as possible, by the way, and if he can think of a way to talk you into a property where the only way you can qualify is a stated income negative amortization loan, boy has Joe got a paycheck coming!
Now it happens that flatly refusing to make an offer is one of the ways to potentially break an exclusive agency agreement (the relevant legal stuff varies). On the other hand, Joe's not going to let you go willingly. By the time you've spent fourteen months in court and thousands of dollars for your lawyer, you will probably wish you hadn't, particularly when it turns out that your claim is a "he said this, the other guy said that," case, as you have no documentation. Better to just wait until any claim Joe may have is moot. Better still not to sign the exclusive agreement in the first place.
Now, if you're a seller wanting to make the best possible profit, you might want a listing contract which gives more than half of the overall commission to the buyer's agent. The larger their commission, the more buyer's agents you attract, and therefore, the more buyers. It's a "catch more flies with honey" sort of thing. Mind you, the listing agents will resist this, but until you sign their contract (which has to be exclusive, by the nature of things, at least for a given property), you are the one who holds the power to control the transaction by walking out. Don't stint the listing agent, as they're the professionals who you're counting on to help you out in marketing and negotiation. But giving incentives for buyer's agents to bring buyers to your property, instead of the one two streets over, is typically money better spent in all but the strongest of seller's markets.
Caveat Emptor.
UPDATED here
Coke re-evaluates trade secret protection. Specifically, how to protect them.
Test of New Method of Spacewalking Successful
Not to mention their description of the view:
"It's beautiful," Fossum said. "The thin glow of the moonlit Earth below."
And when Mission Control pointed out to Sellers that he could view Britain over his left shoulder, the British-born spacewalker said: "Wow! Oh, my goodness. It's a beautiful day in Ireland."
Looking down at the Caspian Sea several minutes later, Fossum said: "This is a good view ... I'm in a dream; nobody wake me up."
Just because our parents screwed up the possibility for us doesn't mean we have to mess it up for our kids. Any of the next couple of generations could likely make the big step off earth possible for their kids, also, but somebody has to actually do it before earth runs out of the necessary resources.
Interesting: Coral can change its skeleton composition.
If they can marry, this requirement is completely fair on the part of employers. Gays at Globe told to marry or lose benefits. Since homosexuals are allowed to marry in Massachusetts, relaxing the requirements for marriage that heterosexuals have makes no sense, and could be grounds for a lawsuit on the part of those heterosexuals. "If John doesn't have to marry his boyfriend to get him benefits, why does Jim have to marry his girlfriend?"
Hurray! Volokh Conspiracy notes that the UN Conference on Small Arms is ending with no document, and no plans for a follow up conference. Hurray for John Bolton, and others!
I've written a spreadsheet that compares two loans in a time dependent manner to help one answer the question of which loan really is better for you. It turns out I'm a little surprised by how quickly paying a point or two tends to become worthwhile. I've tried a couple dozen examples thus far, and it's working out to generally about two years or a little less when you add everything up, even when you consider the later effects of a higher balance.
I'm toying with the idea of making an email of this sheet and my "own versus rent" financial computations spreadsheet a "premium" when someone donates $X to the site. Feedback?
Calderon wins Mexican presidential race By about 250,000 out of 41 million votes cast. Just half a percent, and both candidates won about 35% of the vote. Mexico has no electoral college. His opponent, Obrador, is vowing to fight it in the courts. He wants his supporters to demonstrate, and is blaming fraud, which is likely true to a certain extent, if in both directions. ("What am I supposed to do, accuse him of cheating better than me in front of the others?") Obrador is vowing to fight in court. Let's hope the battles stop there.
Don Surber found an article where the Mexicans are basically saying they would not be supportive of unsportsmanlike conduct.
If at first you get people mad, Keep trying and maybe they'll get mad anough to smack you down like the self-important nincompoop you are.
"Our military will continue with missile launch drills in the future as part of efforts to strengthen self-defense deterrent," said the statement, carried in state-run media. "If anyone intends to dispute or add pressure about this, we will have to take stronger physical actions in other forms."
What are you going to do, starve in their vicinity?
More:
U.S. officials: Second long-range missile test unlikely
The long-range missile, the Taepodong-2, which some fear is capable of hitting the western United States, failed almost immediately after launch, said a senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of the intelligence on the testing.
It spun out of control seconds after it was launched and the North Koreans never had operational control of the missile, the official said. It failed so quickly, the official added, that the United States was never able to ascertain in what direction it was headed.
Okay, this is good news in context, but who spilled the beans and why does he (or she) still have a security clearance and why isn't he (or she) in jail?
Belmont Club is noting that even the hardcore european critics of missile defense are getting interested.
As if it weren't already obvious: Bush: I'd rather be right than popular
"When history looks back, I'd rather be judged as solving problems and being correct, rather than being popular," Bush said.
"The president that chases the opinion poll is the president that will have failed policy," Bush said in an exclusive joint interview along with his wife, Laura, at the White House.
I can hear his predecessor saying "D'Oh!" from here.
Lieberman to Opponent: 'I'm Not Bush'
Joe Lieberman is a pretty leftwing kind of guy, if you look at his overall voting record. But he's also a decent human being and looking out for the best interests of the United States, and he's willing to to vote with the political opposition to those ends, so the NutRoots want him purged, a la Trotsky.
I don't know why I suddenly wanted to filk this song:
One purge over the line, Sweet Stalin,
One purge over the line
Sittin' out east in a gulag baby,
one purge over the line
Scrappleface, as usual, has me beat.
LGF has the video.
If you ever wondered why most of the movies made are a waste of your time, here's your answer: Hollywood's Hottest Investments
Beastly Colors: Mammoth Blondes and Really Hairy Brunettes Blonde Mammoths??
I'd say something snarky about "THAT explains extinction!" except that then the blondes of the world would...
Age of the Sierra Nevada revealed At least 40 million. The results are indirect circumstantial information, but we're not talking criminal convictions here, so enough circumstantial evidence becomes convincing.
Sometimes the obvious needs to be said: How Eisenhower solved illegal border crossings from Mexico
Now, blaming Bush for thirty-odd years of what came before his term, as the article does, is simply unreasonable. But the article illustrates that the problem is solvable, if only someone spends the political capital.
Edwards says: "When we start enforcing the law, these various businesses are, on their own, going to replace their [illegal] workforce with a legal workforce."
While Congress debates building a fence on the border, these veterans say other actions should have higher priority.
1. End the current practice of taking captured Mexican aliens to the border and releasing them. Instead, deport them deep into Mexico, where return to the US would be more costly.
2. Crack down hard on employers who hire illegals. Without jobs, the aliens won't come.
3. End "catch and release" for non-Mexican aliens. It is common for illegal migrants not from Mexico to be set free after their arrest if they promise to appear later before a judge. Few show up.
Well, duh!
Read it: neo-neocon on The Pied Pipers of Palestine. Old news to me. But every once in a while one should be reminded exactly how sick the enemies of civilization are.
Big Lizards has some questions about Townhall.com website amalgamation.
I hope the day is not fast coming where it's a choice of which major amalgamation we join, and if we don't, there's zero chance of getting traffic from anyone. First Pajamas Media, now Townhall. If anyone hasn't noticed the Pajamas Media brethren becoming far less willing to link outside their group, you haven't been paying attention. Now it appears Townhall.com is pulling the same sort of nonsense. Okay, that's their right - but where do they get the new writers, and how do they determine what's good?
Of course, the jury is still out on whether the business model will work. But one thing every business model needs is prospecting for new products, and being willing to look wherever it takes to find them. I just don't see it happening with current amalgamation groups.
Armies of Liberation notes than a journalist has been killed for an anti-regime article, and the killers cannot be aprehended because (wait for it!) they're being sheltered by the powerful.
Reading Jane's site gives me a keen appreciation for what democracy advocates (and accountability and transparency advocates) go through anywhere else other than the United States.
They may call him Chimpy McHitlerburton, but no matter how many opposition articles are written criticizing his administration, I've never heard of any retaliation on the part of the administration part on any level beyond verbal lamentation. Not credibly, anyway. Most of us do not understand how incredibly good we have it.
Captain's Quarters continues to do yeoman's work on reporting on the Iraqi WMD discoveries.
Chemical Projects in 2003
Anthrax and Saddam
Volokh Conspiracy has a rather neat article about housing discrimination and restrictive covenants. Restrictive covenants are where property cannot be sold to a given ethnicity, in this case, "yankees" (people from above the Mason-Dixon Line).
These are actually fairly common, almost more common than not, with properties that are old enough. The covenants still run with the land, but are unenforceable. The subsequent owners bought under the covenant, and so it becomes part of the consideration, and as such, cannot be removed without potentially risking the property. But they cannot be enforced either - the attempt runs afoul of more federal and state laws than I can name. But if those laws were ever removed, the covenants would once again be in force. This would have some interesting effects in law, as most of them here in San Diego are in areas with large amounts of minorities.
Now what they should do is pass a law removing restrictive covenants as may currently run with the land. That way, if bigots of whatever ethnicity ever did manage to get ahold of the government, they wouldn't have such ready made lever in the case of a large number of properties being already restricted. At a minimum, it would force them to start from square one. Besides, this removes a little more of the stain of racism, at no cost to anybody.
Warren Buffet, you missed out. Here's the charity you should have donated your $37 billion to, at least in my unworthy opinion: Tau Zero Foundation
Carnival of Liberty Recommended: New World Man (thoughts on our Founding Fathers)
Carnival of Personal Finance
Carnival of the Capitalists
Carnival of Vanities
(How pathetic! Three large carnivals with no recommended posts, although I did pick up an idea for an article.)
Bullets: check. Feet: check. Pain: check. Blood: check. Difficulty walking: check. It appears North Korea has shot themselves in both feet. Rice Cites World Outrage at N. Korea. Seventh N. Korean Missile Intensifies Furor
Mexican Vote in Limbo They do not have the traditions of democracy we do. And yes, they have a lot of "clean election" issues. This could be trouble. Civil War type trouble.
Popcorn Time! Riehl World View covers the financing of the left half of hte 'sphere.
Nathan Newman has a post worth reading on US Grant, Civil War General and out 18th President.
Belmont Club has an Independence Day post about a a staunch American and friend of the United States.
Right now X is offering me a loan that looks something like this:
80/20 No down payment
On the /80: 6.5% FIXED interest for 30 years, interest-only payment option for 15 years
On the /20: 8.75% FIXED interest for 25 years (amortized to 30) 6-month lock for 1-point ($3800) refundable fee with float-down option
My response:
Devil is in the details.
Is there a pre-payment penalty?
They want 1 point to lock for 6 months? Cash, I presume? Quite frankly, the usual cost for locking in six months out is about three points. Nor is X usually that cheap on the lock (they have some excellent rates, but what they're quoting you is a market current quote for a 30 day lock. Long term rates are expected to rise, and long lock periods aren't free. There's something they are not telling you.)
What are the discount/origination on the underlying loan? How much are they going to charge in closing costs to get it done?
Will they guarantee their quoted costs (as in they eat the
difference if there is one, not you)? You might want to ask them all of the questions here
A developer's condo sell out is not the most difficult loan, but it's a long way from the easiest, as well. There are a lot of lenders that will not do them. Furthermore, what's being presented to you looks much cheaper than is likely to be true. If you insist on going with it, call me thirty days before the place will be done, and I'll do a back up loan, because I don't think what they're offering you is real.
he did get back to me as to what lender X's response was:
Is there any pre-payment penalty on this loan? NO.....
What is the total refundable cost for the 6-month lock? YOU PAY 1% UP FRONT AND IT IS REFUNDABLE IF YOU CLOSE WITHIN 6 MONTHS (emphasis mine)
How much will the closing costs be to get this loan done? I DON'T KNOW WHAT YOUR ESCROW AND TITLE COSTS WILL BE. YOUR LENDERS COSTS WILL BE APPROXIMATELY $1,200. (emphasis mine)
Is the rate being quoted based upon full documentation, stated income, NINA or EZ Doc? 100% FINANCING IS FULL DOC....
Do I have to pay any discount points, points of origination, or any other points to get the quoted rates? NO POINTS NOR ORIGINATION FEE (ONLY THE 1% LOCK IN FEE OF WHICH WE SPOKE) (I prefer no points)
Regarding third party costs, can you tell me, or will the papers you send me make clear, the following third party costs:
- Appraisal fee: THIS SHOULD BE AROUND $400 BUT IS PART OF THE $1,200 I QUOTED.
- Total title charges: ??????????
- Escrow fee: ???????????
The builder has already assigned an escrow and title company for the property — may I use this company with the (lender X) loan? YES!
How much, total, will I be expected to pay X upfront, out of my pocket, to get this loan? THE $400 FOR THE APPRAISAL AND THE 1% TO LOCK IN....
How much, total, if any, will be added to my mortgage balance on top of what is quoted? ????????????????? NOTHING IS ADDED TO YOUR MORTGAGE.
If I agree to this loan after reviewing the papers, are the rate and closing costs guaranteed, and will X cover the difference (if any) between the quote and the actual final cost? WE'VE BEEN IN BUSINESS SINCE X. WE CONTINUE TO STAND BY OUR COMMITMENTS. (emphasis mine)
Now for the emphasis points, last first
-This question of is the rate guaranteed requires a simple yes/no response. This evasive reply tells you the answer is no, but that they don't want to admit it. If this answer is not yes, none of the other stuff is written in anything more permanent than beach sand somewhere below the high tide line. It's funny they mention commitments. Neither a Good Faith Estimate nor a Mortgage Loan Disclosure Statement (the California equivalent) is a loan commitment, or any kind of commitment at all. Regulations leave so much room for the unethical to maneuver without running afoul of the law that either one of those forms is nothing more than the loan officer or company wants it to be. A few are right on, and those companies will typically guarantee their quote. More are somewhere in the ballpark, amazingly enough usually noticeably on the low side. And quite a large fraction are nothing more than an exercise in creative writing. He didn't guarantee his quote. Tell me this: Two companies are bidding on doing building work for you. Both are large firms. The first company asks you all sorts of questions about specifications, and guarantees they'll get it done for $5000, and if there's a problem on their end, they will fix it for no additional money. The second says they think they can do it for $4500. Which would you feel more comfortable with? If you know anything about building contractors, the latter is a joke compared to the former. Lenders and estimates on the initial paperwork to get you to sign up are, if anything, worse.
-I do business with this lender. Their costs are $1295 not including the appraisal to brokers, who perform some of the services they charge their clients for performing. By the time you've added escrow and title, you're roughly at the $3400 mark.
-It's easy to talk a good game to most folks who aren't experienced with how the game is played. The point of this particular game is trying to lock you in with that 1 percent cash upfront payment, so that when clients discover that he's not going to be able to deliver what he's talking about, they'll be thinking about recovering/losing that money, rather than focusing your attention on getting the best loan. This is called creating a distraction, and is in accordance with the tell you anything to get you to sign up school of thought.
When it comes time to close, he'd be licking his chops due to the fact that the client paid $3500 (or whatever one point comes to) cash upfront, and when he delivered something different, the client believes they have no choice but to agree in order to save their money. I've offered people in that situation a loan that was more than 1 point better, and they still went with the guy who had rooked them out of the 1% upfront, because they're worried about that cash when they should be worried about the rate/cost tradeoff.
He also went to the builder's lender
If I'm interested in getting my monthly payments down lower and I consider getting a 5/1 ARM loan to do so, is that a completely horrible idea, or could I refinance into another 5/1 ARM after the first five years to continue getting a pretty good rate, if for example the 30-year fixed rates
have gone up a bunch in 5 years?
That's precisely what I've been doing for the past fifteen years. On the other hand, with the difference in rate/cost tradeoff being so narrow right now between a thirty fixed and a 5/1 (roughly a quarter of a percent interest rate wise), there's a strong argument to be made for the loan you never have to wonder about. Where I thought I would never have a thirty year fixed rate mortgage, I'd consider it if I were going to buy or refi right now. Don't know if I'd do it, but I'd think about it.
80/20 No-down 5/1 ARM
No pre-payment penalty
Total loan amount: $379,900
80%, $303,000: 5.25% fixed & interest-only for 5 years, payment: $1329.65
20%, $78,000: 9.5% fixed for 5 years, interest-only for 15 years, payment: $601.50
Total monthly payment: $1931.15
Aside from the fact that the putative loans total $381,000, which is likely picking nits, I don't believe that loan exists, as 5/1 ARMS are running up around 6.25% at "par" right now. I couldn't find a lender that is even offering 5.25, no matter how many points you paid, and that's wholesale. He attached some GFEs which show $4180 in points charges (plus $875 in pure junk fees and about $150 in well padded costs on the first loan and shorted the likely interest, in addition to all the real stuff), adds $5000 that he's evidently already paid to the closing costs, requires another $3200 plus at closing, and still comes up with final first loan of $303,920.
On the second, the loan required another $1140 in fees but a loan amount of only $75980, thereby balancing the 80/20 requirement correctly, at least, thereby negating the nitpick in the previous paragraph.
(I'd also shoot his agent for not negotiating any givebacks, given the current market, except I'm prepared to bet he didn't have one. I've covered some of these issues, precisely as they relate to this particular situation, at the end of this article), of which which I'll reproduce the relevant section here
Unfortunately, you've already (probably) put a deposit down and you said in subsequent email that the home has appreciated while it was being built, so the developer has incentive to throw roadblocks in your path. Your transaction falls through and not only do they get to keep your deposit but they can turn around and sell the home for more. Preventing this kind of nonsense is what buyer's agents are for (it also gives you someone easy to sue if something goes wrong!). Unfortunately, most developers will not cooperate by paying a commission to buyer's agents for precisely this reason, which means that the average buyer will decline to pay an agent out of their own pocket and try to do the transaction on their own, which leads to situations like this.
Now the market is falling, but it looks like to me the guy paid full asking price (since he's local to me, I can look), and the market is incredibly squishy on prices.
Now getting back to the loans, this is how lenders Play The Game of getting you to sign up. They are looking for you to build what salesfolk call commitment to a loan before they tell you the whole truth - usually by springing it on you at closing. They make it look better than it is for a while. They can do this because the only form that has to have correct accounting is the HUD 1, which comes at the very end of the process (It's usually prepared by the escrow officer. You should get a provisional when you sign loan documents and a final within 30 days of the end of the transaction). In the case of a purchase, this is usually at the last possible instant, which means that if you haven't prepared a back-up loan there is no time to get one before the deal goes south, which means your choices are limited to sign or lose the property, the deposit, and all that time and aggravation. This is providing that you even notice. Industry statistics say that somewhere around half the folks won't, and even on refinancing, where people can almost always just keep the loan they have without bad consequences, eighty-five percent or so of those who do notice will cave in and sign.
Caveat Emptor.
UPDATED here
July first marks one of the turning points in the year for California real estate, as property taxes are collected for a period running from July 1 through June 30. They are paid in two installments, the first due due November 1 (past due December 10) that covers the first six months, from July 1 to December 31. The second is due February 1st (past due April 10th), and covers the second six months, from January 1 to June 30. Other states have different set ups. For instance, Nevada property taxes are paid quarterly.
Now it happens that most folks don't actually pay their taxes until just before the "past due" date. If you have an impound account, the bank doesn't send the money until sometime around December 8th and about April 5th. But they are due and payable on the dates above, and whether you are refinancing or selling or buying, if they are due they need to paid either before the transaction is consummated, or through escrow. Prorated taxes aren't part of refinance transactions. If they're due, they have to be paid, and the current owners need to pay all of them. But for sales, what happens is the property taxes are paid past the date of the sale, or not paid up until the date of the transaction.
Let's pick a date the transaction closes. Say June 15th. The taxes were paid back in April through June 30 by the seller. But the seller didn't owe taxes past June 15th; they don't own the property any more after that. The buyer owes the other fifteen days worth. So the way it is handled is that the buyer comes up with, in addition to the purchase price, fifteen days of property taxes and pays those to the seller as part of the transaction.
If the effective date of the sale was, on the other hand, July 31st, and the seller has paid only through June 30th, then the seller will owe the buyer for taxes for the month of July, because the buyer will be paying those come November. So thirty-one days worth of taxes are taken off of the sales price by escrow and given to the buyer because they will be paying for those thirty-one days worth of taxes in November.
Prorated sales taxes are part of most sales transactions. The only exceptions are those taking place within the periods from November 1st to December 10th, and February 1st to April 10th, where taxes are paid through escrow, and not even those if the current owner already paid the taxes. Be advised that the last couple of days can be tough, especially if you have to walk them in, so if the transaction hasn't recorded at least three or four days before the end of the grace period, you want to go ahead and pay the taxes. If the transaction doesn't close, the government doesn't care why they weren't paid before the end of the grace period; you'll have to pay a penalty for being late.
Caveat Emptor.
UPDATED here
Carnival of Investing Recommended It's Just Money (chasing returns in the market)
Dean's World has a declaration, that I wish to subscribe to, of a sort that I have ascribed to for a very long time, and wish to register my support.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men and Women are created Equal, that they are endowed by nature with certain unalienable Rights, which among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among Men and Women, deriving their just powers from the Consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown, that Humanity are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of those living under Dictatorships of whatever form; and the history of the world's present Dictatorships is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over their people. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world:
Dictatorships subject their People to:
Laws without their Assent, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good;
The obstructed of Justice, by refusing their Assent to Laws for establishing independent Judiciary powers;
Prison without Trial by Jury;
Their Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries;
Taxation without their Consent;
Swarms of Officers and Officials to harass them, eat out their substance, and loot their possessions;
The expropriation of their commerce, products, and monies for personal use;
Corruption so vast that bribing officials and officers is the only way to get anything done;
The dissolution of what ever Representative Houses they suffer too exist, for opposing with manly firmness their invasions on the Rights of their People;
And Death by the bullet, sword, and tank treads for only demonstrating their Right to be heard.
The Worst of these Dictatorships subject their People to:
Mass Impoverishment, Famine, and early Death;
A border-to-border Forced Labor, Concentration, or Reeducation Camp;
Internal and foreign Deportations and mass Migration that deprives them of their Homes, Villages, Communities, and Roots;
Torture, Rape, Genocide, Democide, and Demoslaughter;
Rule by Fear;
And the Death and Destruction of Aggressive and Imperial Wars without the People's Assent.
We, the Free People of this World, therefore Declare, appealing to the Souls of Dictatorships' Victims for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the People of the World, solemnly publish and declare, that all Dictatorships are Criminal Governments; that their People of Right ought to be Free; that they ought to be Absolved from all Allegiance to these criminal Governments; that the sovereignty and independence of these criminal Governments ought to be totally dissolved; and that as fellow Human Beings their People ought to have the full Power to speak their Minds, follow their own Religion, peaceably Assemble, establish Commerce, elect their Representatives, and to do all other Acts and Things that Free People may of Right do.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Rightness of our Declaration, we mutually pledge to Communicate this declaration far and wide, and to support by whatever peaceful means at our disposal the freeing of these subject People.
Here is the standalone that you can email to anyone. When I checked it out, it told me that I was only the fortieth visitor. From a website that gets as much traffic as Dean's World, I think it's time to tell my fellow citizens of the world that we can do better.
Below the Beltway following up on his previous post against farm subsidies.
When I say I want to end corporate welfare, I mean it. I want farm subsidies, and everything else of comparable nature, gone. If we, as a country, don't need a particular thing for its own usefulness, we shouldn't be collecting taxes at the metaphorical point of a gun in order to subsidize them. It's wasteful, inefficient rent seeking behavior.
An intelligent, and unexpectedly strong response to Iranian delaying tactics: Iran Has Until July 12 to Stop Enrichment
Over at my professional site, I have satisfied the compliance officer and gotten up template posts, including the first examples, of real loans and real bargain properties here in San Diego.
category link for potential Bargain Properties is here. I hope to do at least a couple per week.
category link for loans. I intend to do posts based upon this template about once per week.
here is the category link for both
I hope to have a link to my office's local MLS up over there within the next few days. Right now, I'm explaining to them that rational internet users hate frames.
Out of time for today. Have a safe Independence Day, and tell a vet or serviceperson thank you. There will be a new article tomorrow and Wednesday, but I won't be doing more writing until Wednesday.
Patriotism. The word has come to have all kinds of connotations, many of them negative. Ask ten different people what they think of when they hear patriotism, and you'll get ten different answers. Ask a hundred people, and you'll likely get ninety different answers.
It has become fashionable amongst many who want to be considered intellectual elite to disparage patriotism. Yet Isaac Asimov, the quintessential intellectual's intellectual, author of more than 300 books varying from science fiction classics to mysteries to scholarly works and popularizations in multiple disciplines, had a, well I'd say routine except that it most certainly was not. It concerned our national anthem, and he gave it repeatedly, not just once, explaining the history behind it and actually singing "All Four Verses". I never heard it live, but I heard a recording once. I couldn't find a recording on-line, but if you haven't seen it before, it's well worth reading - you're in for a treat if you click it.
If you've never heard the other verses, and thanks to political correctness and a failed educational system, many have never heard of them, you can be excused for not understanding what patriotism, particularly American Patriotism, is all about. "The Star Spangled Banner" tells a story, of a British invasion that could have crushed the United States, but failed. The first verse tells of uncertainty, the second of triumph. The third may be considered boastful and over the the top by some, but not by me. It does not name the British, perpetrators of that particular invasion, and it does convey a vital sentiment, necessary for any nation to survive. But the real crux of the anthem, the point of the story, is in the fourth verse:
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation,
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n - rescued land
Praise the Pow'r that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, for our cause is just,
And this be our motto--"In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Many have disparaged this as symptomatic of a war-mad America, centering their scorn and their case upon one word - "conquer" - in the fifth line. They only betray their astounding ignorance of history, particularly the history of the time when the Anthem was written. Read a military history of Napoleon, whose shadow looms over the entire era, sometime. Conquer was used in the battlefield sense, of one side or another going down in crushing defeat, and the other holding - conquering - the battlefield. Most military histories barely touch upon the aftermath of battle for the losing side, but the term "sacking" should give you an idea. Placing all that was of value - and I do mean all - in a sack and carrying it off home was a time-honored victor's tradition. Many military men throughout history have become wealthy through the act of sacking. Not to mention the "little items" like raping and enslaving the population and burning whatever was left. This practice did not miraculously cease sometime around the Peace of Westphalia; it carries through to today in many militaries. The British did it to Washington in 1814, albeit in watered down form. Haven't really researched it, I'm not familiar with any raping or widespread murder they did. Washington was at the time a very new city - only about twenty years. It hadn't had time to accumulate much in the way of artwork or municipal treasure. The British did, however, set it ablaze as they left. Despite the damage that was done, this basically makes their behavior a marvel of decorum by all but the most recent and westernized of criteria.
Patriotism, to me, is a product of love. If you cannot love, you cannot feel patriotism. It isn't an unthinking unwavering unquestioning sort of love, and our country has certainly done many things in its history for which we ought to be ashamed. But well-founded patriotism, like the love between husband and wife in a strong marriage, becomes stronger from a sense of perspective, not weaker. I may say my wife is perfect, but I am well aware that this is a convenient fiction to make our marriage stronger, and, even if I were given the opportunity, I wouldn't trade her for the world's hottest sex kitten with the wealth of Midas and enthusiasms for doing exactly what I want every time I want exactly when I want, and I feel nothing but pity for those poor souls who would make such a trade for their spouse. Better to have no partner. That's the nature of love. It is always possible to find it, but the path to it can be blocked by your current alliance of convenience.
Similarly, a strong sense of perspective makes my patriotism deeper. One of the most maligned and misquoted lines of all time is Stephen Decatur's, "Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong." Particularly in these latter benighted days when we have no perspective upon the progress of government. At the time when he said it (1816) there literally were no other democracies or representative republics in the world, not as we understand the term today. The United Kingdom came closest, and even there, Parliament was controlled by the great nobles and their houses. There had not been a reapportionment in centuries. This doesn't sound so bad until you consider that in far less time, we have gone from a place where our two biggest states, population-wise, weren't even a part of the system to one where they form roughly 20% of the electorate. How representative do you think our government would be if the electorate was limited to our original thirteen states, in proportions existing in 1787? That was England in 1816.
The tyranny of the majority has been rightly denigrated, using phrases such as "least common denominator," and I admit to occasionally indulging in it myself. However horrible the decisions of majorities may be, however awful the atrocities they may commit, when you contrast them with the things done by rulers and ruling classes who were not majorities, one word leaps out to describe the misdeeds of majorities: limited. They were limited in scope and limited in time. When the worst single event that we can point to is the Moro Crater Massacre, the United States positively shines by comparison with every other major power in the history of the world. The westward expansion of the United States, while suffering any number of shame inducing incidents ranging from the Trail of Tears to Wounded Knee (where a not inconsiderable amount of evidence paints a picture of the Sioux sharing a large part of the responsibility). By comparison with the Russian drive eastward, our westward expansion was a model of enlightened concern. Yet the very fact that such items are a part of national consciousness at all says something overwhelmingly positive about Americans, that we are willing to face responsibility for the misdeeds of our past. Indeed, our bloodiest conflict to date, the Civil War, springs from the fact that our ancestors, collectively, grew this national consciousness and that the majority were becoming increasingly willing to rectify an injustice that was being done to human beings who had the misfortune to be born to the wrong set of parents. The first seeds of the civil war were yet to be sown when Decatur said those words, and yet he, indeed, most Americans from the time of independence onward, was able to recognize that the mechanism for error checking existed in the United States, as it existed nowhere else in the world at the time. The United States was - is - a global pioneer in the process of error checking government. To desire perfection is natural, to demand it as a condition of loyalty is self-defeating. John Quincy Adams made a famous retort to Decatur, "I can never join with my voice in the toast which I see in the papers attributed to one of our gallant naval heroes. I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong. Fiat justitia, pereat coelum. My toast would be, may our country always be successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right." It is, in the abstract, a seductive vision. Unfortunately we do not and it is unlikely that our descendants ever will live in a world wherein Adams' retort makes sense. Countries that are just but not successful, down throughout human history, have not typically had the opportunity to change become right. There are few enough of them throughout history. Athens, for all her glory under Pericles, was not just, even by its own standards. Countries that are successful but not just, however, have the opportunity to become more just, and the United States has done precisely this any number of times. Better to be both successful and just in the first place, but if you must choose, successful is the critical element, much as it may gall persons of conscience.
But the real kicker is just the every day fact of the nature of being human. Remember that gorgeous wealthy sex kitten I talked about a while back? The one that makes every heterosexual male into a drooling idiot, and incites the green eyed monster within the heart of every communist? How long do you think she's going to put up with Joe Average, to whom the term "six pack abs" means they slosh like the contents of one? And do you think, that in the course of doing whatever it is that she does to earn and maintain her fabulous fortune, that she's going to tolerate you wasting several hours per day in front of the TV or surfing the internet? Unless the male concerned is one of that percentage whose predilections naturally fall exactly into the same boat, that marriage is going to turn into hell very soon, when she tells him to "shape up!" and "Start earning some real money!", and indeed, countries where they pretend their leadership or the country itself is perfection have an extremely strong tendency to turn into the worst hellholes on the planet. For examples, see the communist government of your choice. Pre-1945 Japan. Imperial China. Any number of religiously based states, not the least of which are most modern Islamic governments. When I want to find a good country, I look for one with a solid record of confronting its history and making good upon past injustice, not one where they sweep such events under the rug as nonhistory, or, almost as bad, admit that they happened but shrug them off as part of the overall injustice of the universe, as Mexico and France both make a habit of doing. At the very least, the country must consider the causes of the injustice and take steps such that it is less likely to be repeated. There really is nothing we can do within the framework of a just society to recompense descendants of slaves for the misdeeds against their forefathers, nor is there anything within the framework of a just society that we can do for those who suffered from decades of discrimination. Every such proposal I have heard perpetuates the injustice, rather than removing it. But we have taken steps to rectify the situation, and to prevent it from happening in the future. Those who were discriminated against are now part of the power structure, a power structure that will not allow a return to those days, no matter who is the proposed victim class.
This, then, is why I embrace our country so strongly, why I love it so much I have difficulty communicating the depths of my feelings. Not that it's perfect; it's not, and it is not reasonable to expect or demand it to be. But that we have this error checking mechanism, the ability of every adult citizen to look metaphorically look in the mirror and decide they don't like what they see, the ability of even those who are not adult citizens to convince us of the error of our ways, and a governmental system that responds to the desires of the people to reform themselves and it for the better. Certainly, Plato's philosopher-king might provide better, more just decisions more quickly, but then again, they might not. How do we pick a philosopher king? Looking back over the entire sad history of the human race, I see many examples that claimed to be for the benefit of the governed and those around them; those who lived up to that promise are pitifully few. Furthermore, once they have their hands upon the levers of the state, it is typically hideously expensive, in all senses of the term, to replace, demote, or even restrain a philosopher king.
Who do I credit with the development of this profoundly important country that I love. Well, it rests upon a foundation of each and every citizen. Pat yourself on the back, or better yet, pat your fellow citizen, especially if you disagree with them politically. Much as I might rail against political excesses in the opposition, the fact that the political opposition exists and is unafraid to exercise political opposition is essential, not to mention the fact that we expect the party in opposition to become the party in power periodically, and for the party that has fallen to eventually regain its fortunes. You may hear me calling upon the opposition for discretion in their opposition, never to cease their opposition. Interrelated with this is the fact that our military, both officers and non-officers, is drawn from the entire population. Oh, there are definitely parts with heavier representation than others, and parts with lesser representation than others. But those are freely chosen, based upon who tries and how hard they try, not part of the system of selection. As a result of which, the US military is better integrated with the society it defends than any other military I can name. The thought of using the American military to control Americans (beyond stabilization in the wake of disasters) is ludicrous beyond belief. Indeed, the fact that American service personnel are American citizens first has brought any amount of misconduct you'd care to name into the limelight of our public discussion, where it could be remedied. The American military is the American citizen, brought together under military discipline for the purpose of doing what those same American citizens have decided to do, and anyone who disparages the owners of these websites here, here, here here, and here, should first take a moment and ask whether their preferred organization has participated in the liberation of concentration camps? Has their preferred organization risked life and limb and horrible death against an enemy convinced of their right to conquer the world, and pushed those subhuman scum back into their territorial base and removed them from power so they can never again threaten the rest of the world? Has your preferred organization broken centuries old slavery and piracy organizations? Stood up to and removed mass-murdering dictators? Stopped cold two systems that wanted to enslave the world in the last century, and is it currently locked in a struggle with a third, where their own humanity and restraint towards their enemies means a much higher casualty list among their own ranks than would otherwise be the case? Remember the old Bugs Bunny cartoon where he gets super carrots and becomes Super Rabbit and goes out to face the most anti-rabbit character of them all, and when he runs out of super carrots and faces an opposition that has obtained them, he says, "This calls for a REAL hero!" rushes into the phone booth and comes out dressed as a Marine and singing the Marine Hymn? I've never loved or identified so strongly with Bugs Bunny, that most quintessential of American heroes, as in the moment I understood that cartoon. These men and women don't have super-powers, they aren't perfect little gentlemen and ladies, and they don't serve a system that is perfect, but they do such an awe-inspiring job of advancing the human condition when they are needed, that tears flow every time I think about their contribution to the world, and the advancement of those within it, whether they are Americans or not.
Finally, if you're saying blessings, add one in there for George Washington. One of the better generals of his age, he had the opportunity for power and turned his back on it. Forget Jefferson, and Madison, and Patrick Henry, and all of the other founding fathers and their noble words, and those magnificent founding documents the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution and Bill of Rights. Any number of successful revolutions in this sad sorry world have had high rhetoric. The vast majority fell from within, to the successful revolutionary who led the battles and then decided to retain that power through their control of the military. Washington stands almost alone among those who had or could have taken that power, and declined to abuse it beyond the natural and intended span when it was given. Two centuries on, his example stands not only as a beacon to follow, but as a stark statement of the fact that there is no irreplaceable leader, and any president who failed to follow in his footsteps of relinquishing power would never be able to hold onto it, being displaced from power by the very military they would have relied upon to maintain it.
This, then, is my reflection upon patriotism. It comes from a desire for a just society, requires the mechanism of a country whose power structure confronts not only current events, but past deeds with an eye as to the errors that might have been made and avoiding them in the future. I love this country, not because of the happy accident that I was born here, but because of what it is and what it has done and what it stands for. Because it knows it makes mistakes, and makes the best possible effort to rectify them and prevent them from happening again. Because of this, we do the best we can with what we have when we have it. It isn't elitism, it's simply the desire of the common person to make the situation as good as it can be made right now. It's not to be afraid of war or conflict, although anyone who is rational is. But there's a little bit of Rodger Young in anyone that can understand his story and why he undertook the series of actions that ended up costing him his life.
For those who cannot, you have my most sincere pity.
Most days I get loan wholesalers coming into my office. I'm always happy to talk with them, providing they want to talk about what I want to talk about. They usually want to talk about this gimmick and that gimmick and the other gimmick. They feed me lines about service and fast turn around and quick approvals and loan commitments. Ladies and gentlemen, these are all things that every lender should be capable of, and if someone hoses one of my clients, I'm no longer interested in doing business with them. Now, everybody makes mistakes, it's how they deal with mistakes that I am interested in. I'm very forgiving if they make their mistake good, completely unforgiving if they do not.
What I want to talk about is two things. The first is loan programs nobody else has, or that nobody else has in that category. Suppose a lender has a program to deal with people in default just like everyone else with only a small penalty. I'm all ears, and I make certain that goes into my database. I expect the rates for the underlying program to be higher, but that's cool. I'll price loans with them anyway, and if they're the best I can do for the client, I'll use them. Next time I have somebody in default, though, they get my first call, because they've got something nobody else does, or very few do.
The second thing I want to talk about is price. A loan with given terms is the same loan no matter who is carrying it. So long as they are both legal, my client sees no difference between National Well-Known Megabank and Unknown Lender from Nowhere. The loan is the same. If the rate is the same, what's important to my client is how much they have to pay in order to get it. This comes back to The Trade-off Between Rate and Cost. If one lender's par pricing is a little bit lower, I can either get the client the same rate cheaper, or I can get the client a lower rate for the same price. There is otherwise no difference between standard loan terms for the standard loan types. I can get the client a lower rate if they'll accept a prepayment penalty. If they want a true zero cost loan, the rate will be higher. How much higher or lower? That varies with time and the lender involved. But except for the rate printed on the contract and the cost to get that rate, these loans are the same.
Now wholesalers don't want to talk about price, and they don't want to compete on price. If they're competing on price, they're making less money in the secondary market. Less money for the same work. I can't blame them. Suppose I walked into your office and proposed cutting your pay by somewhere between twenty and fifty percent? Somehow, I don't think most of you would appreciate it. But now turn that around, because you're in my office now, shopping for a loan, and you want the loan with the terms you want at the best price possible. If I get a lower price from the lender, I can pass it on to you. I can maybe even make a little more money while still saving you some money. Aren't you entitled to a bonus when you make money for your company or their clients? Ask yourself this: If I saved you $1000 and $20 per month over the next best quote, would it break your heart if I made an extra couple hundred? When I'm out shopping, it doesn't bother me at all. By delivering the item on better terms to me, that company has earned whatever money they make.
This doesn't mean I necessarily look for the lowest price. Many times I'll buy something that is close to the top of the line? Why? Because it has something worth more than extra money to me. What is worth extra money in real estate? Getting you a better bargain. You spend three percent instead of one, but your $500,000 home sells for $25,000 more, or it sells when it perhaps would not sell under a less aggressive marketing plan. $25,000 minus 2% ($10,000) is $15,000 in your pocket because your agent can afford to market and negotiate more aggressively on your behalf, never mind the difference between selling and not selling. Can a full service agent guarantee a better result? No. But I can tell you through personal experience that I find it much easier to get a better bargain for my clients who are buyers from someone who listed with a discount brokerage or flat fee place, and my clients are probably going to think I'm superman before the deal is done. But note that the difference in price does have to be justified. A loan is a loan is a loan, as long as it's on the same terms.
A couple days ago, I got an email calling my attention to someone calling me an "alarmist", and furthering that with an accusation that I was trying to paint everyone else as a crook. Nope. There are a large number of basically honest practitioners out there, and a significant number of scrupulously honest ones. But there are also a fair number of people out there who, like my loan wholesalers, don't want to compete on price. Do I blame them? In most cases, no. As I said the day I launched, this is the way they were trained and they don't know a better way is possible. Plus they want a larger amount of money for the same work rather than a smaller. Many of them resist changes for the better for the consumer because it means they will make less money for the same work. Seems like every day there's a seminar advertising that they'll teach agents and loan officers how to attract clients without competing on price.
Well, suppose someone makes enough money per transaction to be happy, even though they are competing on price? Then what they want to do is attract more business, which is a part of what I'm trying to do here. More importantly, I'm trying to give you, my readers, the tools necessary to get yourself the best possible bargain. Nor am I trying to tell you that I'm purer than the driven snow, and I don't think I ever have. That is for you to judge with the tools I put out, and there's no way to know for sure unless and until I do a transaction for you.
How far you want to go with these tools is up to you. Real Estate transactions are the biggest transactions most folks undertake in their lives, and as a consequence, small percentages tend to be a lot of money by the standards of lesser transactions. If you only want to do a few easy things, they should save you some money. If you want to do the work for the whole nine yards, they should save you a lot more. But when you have the tools, you are better armed consumers, more likely to get bargains that are better for you, given your situation. Like all tools, they are to be evaluated on the basis of how well they do the job. If they are used properly and nonetheless fail you, you are right to fault them. If there are tools that do a better job, you are right to use those instead. But to say, essentially, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" is not the optimal response to the issue. Through issues clients and potential clients have brought me, I have encountered every single issue I raise here. There not only is a man behind the curtain, you need to keep your eyes on him and you need to learn how best to deal with him. That is what this site is about.
Caveat Emptor.
UPDATED here
For those is San Diego (or people who need a loan anywhere in California), over at my professional site, I'm going to be starting quasi-regular features on loans I can really do at the time I post, and properties of interest in the San Diego area.
If you're in Manhattan, of course, these properties will seem cheap to you. If you're somewhere housing prices are cheap, they'll seem outrageous.
Nothing there yet except an introductory post. I'll try to do at least one set of each per week.
Here's the link for The loans only
Here's for properties only
Here's for both
Carnivals:
RINO Sightings
Below the Beltway has an intelligent post on ending farm welfare. I have always wondered by what logic we subsidize active farms, but this is just land that used to be farmland.
Combs Spouts Off covers the conviction of a Saudi man and his wife for slaveholding, among other offenses, right here in this country. Money quote: "What did he do?" from the man's daughter, who wins today's People Unclear on The Concept award.
Slaveholding is vile, abhorrent, and completely unacceptable. That anyone continues to tolerate it today, 117 years after Brazil banned it, the last western country to do so, is nothing short of an abomination. Even non-western cultural backwaters such as Nepal banned it so long ago (1925) as to be essentially beyond living memory. Why does it persist, and persist so strongly that they don't even realize they did anything wrong when it's explained to them, in Islamic countries?
Multi-culturalists, you may now hang your heads in shame. Because there are lines that must not be crossed by anyone - and this is one of them.
Yemen is correcting their voter lists. Okay, there are dozens of games that can be played with elections even if the list of those eligible is correct. But there are hundreds, if not thousands, of games that can be played if the list is not correct. So mark this as a step in the right direction.
On Hamdan, Combs Spouts Off has an article worth reading on Hamdan, which leads me to wonder if impeaching Stevens and those who joined him in this opinion is likely to be productive. They willfully ignored the directly worded commandment of Congress in the law that there be no judicial jurisdiction, a right they have repeatedly ruled Congress possesses.
A point needs to be made here. That these justices ruled at all on the case is a direct violation of the law. They are not intended to be judicial monarchs, or even oligarchs. They are not supposed to have authority to make the law, only to interpret it, and the point needs to be made that they cannot stray too far from the mandates of the legislatural branch.
legal redux has more, reinforcing what I just said.
Mark Steyn has the justices discovering a right to jihad.
I am Batman. Actually, we all are Batman. Spiderman, too.
I'd say that this article at Jihad Watch is evidence in the against column for Moslem peaceful existence with the West.
Buzz Machine is asking the two Times to come up with a statement of principles in when they will and will not print information such as the disclosure of the SWIFT program. This makes good sense, and we can then judge them upon the contents of those principles and how well they adhere to them.
It has become all too clear, however, that the two Times will print whatever is to the detriment of the political party they do not like, and suppress what is detrimental to the political party they do.
I got a search for how one spouse could sign while the other was out of town, and act on their behalf. Since both spouses usually need to sign real estate papers, this is a real concern.
Actually, almost anybody you designate can sign for your real estate transaction, whether or you're available. The usual thing is you're out of town for some reason when closing happens, and so your spouse signs for both of you, themselves in their own right, and you by Power of Attorney, but it covers all kinds of situations, and not just real estate.
The document required for this is called a Power of Attorney. You must sign it and have it notarized that it was really you that did so. In it, you designate one particular person who has the right to undertake an action or group of actions, and they then act on your behalf, as your "attorney" for this matter.
Powers of Attorney can be made for all sorts of things, not just real estate transactions. For instance, pretty much everyone should have a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care. Powers of Attorney can be very broad and ongoing or limited to one specific action in a limited range of time. You set this up at the point in time when you execute it. Whatever terms you set up when you signed it are binding, both upon you and the person you designate. Most stationery and office supply stores have ready made ones where you just fill in a few blanks and you're ready to have it notarized. I've seen ones with check marks, but those are dangerous in my opinion, as when a precise check mark was placed on there is a matter for considerable legal dispute.
It is a misconception to believe that this person must always be an actual licensed attorney. In general, they need not be an actual attorney, only a competent adult. I'm sure there are circumstances when being an attorney is necessary, but it is not necessary most of the time. There may be circumstances where you may want a licensed attorney even where it is not legally necessary, but there's a major difference between being legal and being smart.
I've seen not only spouses used, but other relatives, close friends, and professionals such as accountants and attorneys. Note that the person you designate does not have to accept, and does not have to act even if they accept. The idea is to get their consent first, and make certain they know your mind in the matters you designate them for.
Extremely important: You really need to trust the person you designate to act in your best interest. If they sign something that you would not have, you are still stuck, as long as it is within the mandate of that power of attorney. Whatever contract they signed on your behalf, you have to live up to the terms. Your designate doing something you would not have is a side issue between you and the person you designated. That person with your power of attorney designate's signature on a contract can force you to live up to that contract, which is how it should be. Otherwise, nobody would accept powers of attorney, and they would be regarded as one more way to run a scam. They're not supposed to be a scam at all, it's intended to be a way for one person to do another person's business legitimately.
Caveat Emptor
UPDATED here
A new Canadian tool can re-grow teeth. Sorry about the Yahoo link. The article mentions using it to grow bones also. It doesn't mention this, but I'm wondering if it would help osteoporosis. If so, it could significantly help quality of life, and extend how long people can work and take care of themselves.
Later: here is a link that will likely be more permanent.
Supreme Court mostly endorses Texas Redistricting. I find it ominous that the one esception they made was District 23, which was evidently redrawn for political purposes, but in doing so put hispanics is another district, and the court said that part was illegal because it disadvantaged hispanics. Right when the VRA is up for renewal. Good timing, and I hope this gives Congress the cojones to put amendments into the VRA that it has needed for twenty years.
Supreme Court Rejects Military Tribunals. Okay, so our forces can hold them indefinitely, but cannot put them on trial, which would have at least the possibility of clearing them. Otherwise, they're in for a potentially long wait (A policy I agree with, by the way). Exactly how is this a victory for those who want the enemy combatants released?
Has anyone else figured out why these prisoners are in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as opposed to say, a base in Turkey or Central Asia or one of our remaining bases in Germany?
Here's a hint: Suppose one of the prisoners escapes. Where is he? What do you think Castro is going to do to him? Castro's political options reduce to repatriating them or making them disappear into a shallow grave somewhere. Much as he hates the US, what happens if someone he repatriates subsequently does something else terrorism related? Game, set, and match to the U.S.
Looks like Blackfive agrees.
How Failure Breeds Success. Prediction: The companies in the article who persist in being willing to swing and miss will stomp their competition. Most major companies who went under did so because they played it too safe. RCA developed the technology we use today for flat panel screens but were too concerned that it would take business and money away from what was their cash cow at the time, conventional color television sales. So someone else developed it, and instead of RCA getting the money, that someone else did, and their color TV division still lost the business. RCA is gone; they're just a nameplate someone else uses for branding.
Roots of human family tree are shallow. This always seemed obvious to me, but they've got mathematical models. I do wonder if they account for the fact that most people in the past were born, lived, and died in the same place.
USA Today retreats from BellSouth, Verizon report. This was journalism of fairy tales from the beginning. Ask yourself: how hard would the government have to work under existing legal programs that have the courts' approval? Why should public megacorporations agree to open themselves up to privacy act suits, costing millions to billions? The companies accused demanded a retraction. USA Today gave them the most miserly one they could get away with, on the Friday before a long weekend buried in the middle of the paper.
Stolen laptop with veterans data recovered. It says in part
"A preliminary review of the equipment by computer forensic teams has determined that the data base remains intact and has not been accessed since it was stolen," the agencies said in a statement. "A thorough forensic examination is underway, and the results will be shared as soon as possible."
Please, if you are one of those veterans, or may be, do not take their word for it. Take precautions now, or continue them if you have already done so.
via Q and O, Why are Muslims not integrating into Western societies?
I want to be able to integrate muslims into our civilization. Much evidence exists on both sides, depending upon, in my estimation, the will of the individuals and communities involved. If the muslims will integrate, they are the same as any other citizens. But if they will not willingly allow non-muslims the right to live their lives as they wish, then the community of moslems must be destroyed.
To automatically answer "Yes," to the question of whether muslims can integrate sufficiently into modern civilization is no more open-minded than to automatically answer "No." The fact is that the evidence runs both ways, the jury is still out, and it is most likely to return a mixed verdict.
Michael Totten has an article with some evidence in favor of "Yes."
Thank you to Wizbang for telling me about Let's Say Thanks, sponsored by Xerox. Pop on over and send a card or two or several dozen. I particularly liked Courtney's design.
My reasons for supporting Israel over the Palestinians are much the same as Jay Tea at Wizbang, to which I add the attitude of the respective sides. If the Palestinians were willing to settle for a state in Gaza and the West Bank, they'd have it by now. Whether they have admitted Israels' right to exist in legal theory (Fatah) or not (Hamas), they have made it their de facto policy to do their best to destroy Israel. The fact of that matter is that they exist on Israeli sufferance, a fact which they have found it convenient to ignore for decades.
Big Lizards has more.
Captain's Quarters has more worthwhile thoughts.
Iraq the Model notes that the Iraqi Prime Minister has clarified that his amnesty offer does not apply to those who have killed troops, be they Iraqi or foreign.
Yet another causus belli, if we want it:
US, Iraqi forces clash with Shi'ite militia
Iraqi security officials said Iranian fighters had been captured in the fighting, in which a sniper shot dead the commander of an Iraqi quick reaction force and two of his men. They did not say how the Iranians had been identified.
Captain's Quarters has more.
He's right. It's not foolproof, but accent is a valid method of identifying origins.
Traffic in June skyrocketed, enough so that I was questioning my server logs. Per day traffic almost doubled from May, which was my previous record. 124,033 visits, 265,160 page views for June, an average of 4000 per day, and a couple of days in the last week went over 6000. Running total 507,186 visits, 1,482,355 page views as of the end of June. But if it's not real, I can't find evidence, so I'll relax and enjoy it. Thank all of you for stopping by, a bigger thank you to those who participate, and especially thank you to those who spread the word.
The Book on Mortgages Everyone Should Have
What Consumers Need To Know About Mortgages
The Book on Buying Real Estate Everyone Should Have
What Consumers Need To Know About Buying Real Estate
Buy My Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels!
Dan Melson Amazon Author Page
Dan Melson Author Page Books2Read
Links to free samples here
The Man From Empire
Man From Empire Books2Read link
A Guardian From Earth
Guardian From Earth Books2Read link
Empire and Earth
Empire and Earth Books2Read link
Working The Trenches
Working the Trenches Books2Read link
Rediscovery 4 novel set
Rediscovery 4 novel set Books2Read link
Preparing The Ground
Preparing the Ground Books2Read link
Building the People
Building the People Books2Read link
Setting The Board
Setting The Board Books2Read link
Moving The Pieces
Moving The Pieces Books2Read link
The Invention of Motherhood
Invention of Motherhood Books2Read link
The Price of Power
Price of Power Books2Read link
The End Of Childhood
The End of Childhood Books2Read link
Measure Of Adulthood
Measure Of Adulthood Books2Read link
The Fountains of Aescalon
The Fountains of Aescalon Books2Read link
The Monad Trap
The Monad Trap Books2Read link
The Gates To Faerie
The Gates To Faerie Books2Read link
Gifts Of The Mother
Gifts Of The Mother Books2Read link
C'mon! I need to pay for this website! If you want to buy or sell Real Estate in San Diego County, or get a loan anywhere in California, contact me! I cover San Diego County in person and all of California via internet, phone, fax, and overnight mail. If you want a loan or need a real estate agent
Professional Contact Information
Questions regarding this website:
dm (at) searchlight crusade (dot) net
(Eliminate the spaces and change parentheticals to the symbols, of course)
Essay Requests
If you don't see an answer to your question, please consider asking me via email. I'll bet money you're not the only one who wants to know!
Requests for reprint rights, same email: dm (at) searchlight crusade (dot) net!
Add this site to Technorati Favorites
Subscribe to Searchlight Crusade
My Links
-
Heavy Lifters
- Instapundit
- Hot Air
- Wizbang
- Victor Davis Hanson
- Q and O L Places I get to as often as I can
- Soldier's Angels
- The Anchoress
- Argghhh!
- Armies of Liberation R
- Asymmetrical Information
- Belmont Club
- Tim Blair
- Eject! Eject! Eject!
- Jihad Watch
- Michelle Malkin
- Neo-neocon
- Powerline
- Protein Wisdom
- Real Clear Politics
- Mark Steyn
- Strategy Page
- Vodkapundit
- Volokh Conspiracy Personal Finance, Economics and Business Sites
- Bloodhound Blog
- Financial Rounds
- Free Money Financea> Other sites I've linked and visit
- Ace of Spades
- Ann Althouse
- The Anti Idiotarian Rottweiler
- Atlas Shrugs
- Professor Bainbridge
- Baldilocks
- Beldar
- Blackfive
- Classical Values
- Coyote Blog
- Daily Pundit
- Drudge Report
- IMAO
- The Jawa Report
- Just One Minute
- Libertarian Leanings
- Liberty Papers
- Normblog
- Patterico's Pontifications
- Right Wing Nut House
- Samizdata
- SCOTUS Blog
- Stop the ACLU
- Unalienable Right Consumer and Research Sites
- Better Business Bureau
- Consumer Reports
- NASD Home
- California Department of Real Estate
- California Licensee Lookup
- California Department of Insurance
- National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC)
- Do Not Call Homepage
- IRS Charities Search
- Internet Fraud Complaint Center
- SEC Home Page
- Stop Mortgage Fraud
- Report Mortgage Fraud Debunking Many so-called Real Estate Gurus
- John T. Reed Worthwhile Web Comics
- Sluggy Freelance
- Day by Day It is site policy to list the main page of every site I reference. Sometimes the real world intervenes and I haven't gotten to it yet, or one falls through the cracks on a long post with multiple references. It is also site policy to list the main page of every site that lists this one on their equivalent roll, as well as the main page of all sites that are members of any of the same groups this site is a member of. Please send me an email with a link to the main page of your site if I've overlooked you (dm at the domain name). For the clue-challenged, note that it is a requirement for your link to appear on every page of your site, just like mine does, and I will not link to spam sites.
********** Advertisement **********