Housing Market Graph Update

Hat tip: JP's Real Estate Charts



It looks like we are finally back to about where the market should have been by now based on historical real estate values. However, with the glut of foreclosures on the market or soon to be on the market, and the excess supply of housing that must be soaked up, the market could drop further or it could take several years before the market starts heading back up again.

See my previous posts on the mortgage collapse/correction:

Oct 4, 2008 Where is the defense of free markets?!

Nov 21, 2008 Deregulation vs. Fannie & Freddie

Feb 21, 2009 Housing Price Decline Not Done Yet

Feb 21, 2009 Sowell: Housing Crisis Caused By Government

Mar 25, 2009 Obama puts troublemaker in charge

Feb 13, 2010 2 Graphs: Jobs and Housing prices

VIDEO: Soak the rich! Oops.

I haven't posted anything in a while because I don't think anyone really reads my blog but myself. But I was reading back some of my old posts from 2008 and 2009 and found them very informative. :) I found a lot of facts, events, stats, graphs, and videos that I had completely forgot about. So, if nothing more than to catalog my thoughts so I can review them again in the future, I'm going to try to start posting to my blog again.

First up, I have to post a video from back in March by Bill Whittle, who demonstrates how bankrupt the idea is that if we'd just soak the rich, we'd have plenty of money for the government. Enjoy.

We Are Over-educated

I've come to the conclusion a few years back that way too many people are going to college. Sure, some jobs require advanced training, but the traditional college degree seems like about the least effective way to get trained to do a job. And many college degrees are about worthless in terms of getting a real world job. We are wasting so much money and early life productivity with so many students wasting 2-6 years borrowing money instead of making money. If they were able to start saving 10 years earlier (5 years of college + 5 years to pay off college debts) and use the magic of compound interest over time, and add 5 more earning years, there's a good chance they could come out ahead. I've seen statistics that only somewhere around 30% of the jobs really require a college degree while well over half of high school graduates at least start college, and that something like 60% of college graduates currently work in jobs unrelated to their college degree.

Anyway, I saw this article which confirmed everything I have been thinking. Please read it and tell me whether you think higher education system and the messages we tell our young adults need changed or not.

Sarah Palin's Qualifications

I've never understood why so many people think that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be president.

I'll certainly agree that she did not do well in some of the interviews during the 2008 campaign, and while many of her Facebook posts are actually very strong on policy, as have some of her op-ed's in the Wall Street Journal and on National Review and some of her speeches, she needs to improve at speaking as eloquently as a tv commentator.

But from a standpoint of previous government experience, an objective look arguably makes her as qualified if not more qualified than Bill Clinton in 1992, Howard Dean and John Edwards in 2004, and Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Barak Obama in 2008.

I know that sounds odd, but read this piece on Conservatives4Palin.com and tell how that doesn't stack up to the experience of the candidates I listed above.

Bill Clinton lost a U.S. House race in 1974, was Attorney General of Arkansas from 76-78, and was elected Governor of a simarly small state with a smaller budget than Alaska's (although he did serve 3 1/2 terms as governor). Howard Dean was a Vermont House member for 4 years and then Lieutenant Governor of Vermont for 5 years before serving for a little over 2 terms as governor of Vermont, one of the smallest states in the Union where the governorship is not very powerful. John Edwards only previous political experience after his 2-decade career as an ambulance chaser was that he narrowly won a U.S. Senate race in 1998 and thus had served part of 1 Senate term. Romney's only prior government experience was a failed US Senate run in 1994 and 1 term as Governor of Massachusetts. Hillary Clinton, apart from being Bill Clinton's wife, only had experience in an official capacity as U.S. Senator for 8 years. And of course Barak Obama was only a State Senator in Illinois, and spent less than 2 years in the U.S. Senate before making running for President a full-time job.

If those are all perfectly fine resumes in order to be President, I don't know why Sarah Palin's resume as PTA member, city council member, long time mayor of fastest growing city in Alaska, Alaska Oil and Gas Commissioner, and most popular Governor in the U.S. (at the time she was picked as the VP candidate by McCain in 2008) isn't sufficient. If you don't like her, then fine, you can say that. If you think she could have done better in the Katie Couric interview, then fine, even she admits that. If you buy into all the media bashing she has taken and find her controversial and don't like her style, then fine, I readily admit the media hyperventilates about her. But don't say she is not qualified. Objectively, she is qualified. She hasn't spent 30 years in the Senate like McCain or 2 full terms as Governor of a populous state like George W. Bush, or served as Vice President for 8 years like George H.W. Bush and Al Gore, but her qualifications fit right in with the rest of the candidates I mentioned earlier.

Afghanistan Media Messaging Failure

This poll is infuriating. Well, not the poll itself, but what it tells us about the utter failure of the U.S. and NATO to communicate to the local Afghans.

The poll says that 92% of Afghan men in the Taliban strongholds of the Helmand and Kandahar provinces HAVE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF 9/11!!!! Unbelievable.

It is definitely hard to win the hearts and minds of Afghans to side with us instead of the Taliban when they are completely unaware of why we have our military in their country! If they are unaware of 9/11, then I think it's safe to say they have not heard even the most basic messaging from the U.S., and could not view our military there as anything else but an unprovoked invasion by a foreign military.

If I was in charge of the U.S. military, the first thing I would have done way back in 2001 is air drop in hundreds of thousands of tiny radios with enough batteries to last a couple years and then start broadcasting a message that could be picked up on those radios. I also would have dropped millions of leaflets over every single town or village until in would be almost impossible for anyone in the region not to understand what provoked us to come there and why they should side with us instead of the Taliban, or at least why they should moderate the Taliban and kick out all the Al-Qaeda types.

I know literacy it very low in the rural Afghanistan regions, so I'm not sure if distributing a newspaper would have helped much (that actually goes for the leaflets too), but I would have tried that too.

Getting the messaging right from the start could have saved thousands of U.S. soldiers and Afghan civilians lives.

Dream Act a Nightmare?

The Dems are back during the lame duck session and Harry Reid is following through on his pandering to the Hispanics during his recent campaign, and will bring up the DREAM Act for a vote again. On the surface, the DREAM Act sounds reasonable, and is supposed to give illegal aliens who entered the country as kids and have completed college or served 2 years in the military a path to citizenship. But consider some of these details:

1. The DREAM Act Is NOT Limited to Children, And It Will Be Funded On the Backs Of Hard Working, Law-Abiding Americans

2. The DREAM Act PROVIDES SAFE HARBOR FOR ANY ALIEN, Including Criminals, From Being Removed or Deported If They Simply Submit An Application

3. Certain Criminal Aliens Will Be Eligible For Amnesty Under The DREAM Act

4. Estimates Suggest That At Least 2.1 Million Illegal Aliens Will Be Eligible For the DREAM Act Amnesty. In Reality, We Have No Idea How Many Illegal Aliens Will Apply

5. Illegal Aliens Will Get In-State Tuition Benefits

6. The DREAM Act Does Not Require That An Illegal Alien Finish Any Type of Degree (Vocational, Two-Year, or Bachelor’s Degree) As A Condition of Amnesty

7. The DREAM Act does not require that an illegal alien serve in the military as a condition for amnesty, and There is ALREADY A Legal Process In Place For Illegal Aliens to Obtain U.S. Citizenship Through Military Service

8. Despite Their Current Illegal Status, DREAM Act Aliens Will Be Given All The Rights That Legal Immigrants Receive—Including The Legal Right To Sponsor Their Parents and Extended Family Members For Immigration

9. Current Illegal Aliens Will Get Federal Student Loans, Federal Work Study Programs, and Other Forms of Federal Financial Aid

10. DHS Is Prohibited From Using the Information Provided By Illegal Aliens Whose DREAM Act Amnesty Applications Are Denied To Initiate Their Removal Proceedings or Investigate or Prosecute Fraud in the Application Process

Here's a press release with more details on all these points. The devil is always in the details.

The U.S. Budget Trends

I looked up the recent years of federal spending. We are spending a LOT more while revenues have dropped over the past couple years. You have to start looking at these numbers to start getting the concept of how bad of a situation we are in. In 2009, revenues were $2.165 trillion and on the spending side just the categories of Social Security, Medicare, Health (includes Medicaid), and Income Security (unemployment insurance, federal pensions, housing assistance, food stamps, etc.) added up to right around $2 trillion. People complain about war spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, but those are only $100-150 billion annually. I say "only" only in comparison to the rest of the massive amount being spent. With the deficit at $1.5 trillion, even if you stopped the wars tomorrow and could save all the money being spent on them, you would have only cut out 10% of the deficit.

Year            Receipts    Outlays    Surplus or Deficit(−)
2008            2,523,999   2,982,554    -458,555
2009            2,104,995   3,517,681    -1,412,686
2010 estimate   2,165,119   3,720,701    -1,555,582

By the way, the last Republican Congress' budget for fiscal year 2007 (before Democrats won in 2006 and took office in 2007 and created the 2008 budget) was $2.7 trillion. Bush's first budget was in 2002. We did not like that he let the budget increase so fast. But he signed off on a spending increase from $2 trillion to $2.7 trillion, an increase of $700 billion, in 6 years. The Democrats and Obama have increased spending by $1 trillion in just 3 years! And this as revenues were dropping.

Overall, spending has over doubled since 2001 even as revenues are currently only 9% higher than 2001.