Give a country a democratic system, and pretty soon the poor will figure out how to use it for their own purposes. Their leader and voice in Thailand was Thaksin Shinawatra, an ex-cop from humble origins who became a telecommunications billionaire. He was a demagogue who cut as many corners in politics as he had in business, but he genuinely did represent the poor, both urban and rural, and they voted for him in their millions. [1] OK class, the Mickey Mouse club is adjourned. Just follow the link, sit back and let one of the world’s leading warfare analysts…
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Derided by elitists as phony, the tea-party movement is spontaneous, decentralized, frequently amateurish and sometimes shrill. If it has a father it is CNBC’s Rick Santelli, who called for holding a tea party in Chicago on July 4. Yesterday’s gatherings were made up of people who may never meet again (there’s no central collection point for email addresses). But the concerns driving people to tea parties are real, growing and powerful. Politicians ignore them at their peril. [1] Thanks bud. Until you outed yourself I thought we’d have to post an "eat crow" apology on our own sidebar

According to data from ARMLS, (Arizona Regioinal Multiple Listing Service) home sales in the Phoenix metropolitan area have seen a year-over-year increase every month since June 2008.  Inventories have been declining, foreclosures were down in March and the government has unrolled new foreclosure prevention measures.  Does this mean that we’re likely to see the median sales price, which has been falling since March 2007, stabilize any time soon? Don’t count on it.  Here’s several reasons why: Sales About those increasing sales, take a look at the percentages of homes sold in different price ranges March 2009 versus the previous couple…
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I do question how much "predatory lending" was was actually "predatory"- too often buyers turned a willing blind eye to the problems a mortgage presented.  I have spoken with older borrowers though, who were taken advantage of, as the WSJ has reported: [Thanks L!] In 2006, Carol Couts, a 66-year-old widow in Yuba City, Calif., was living in her home, payment-free, when a mortgage broker persuaded her to refinance her no-cost mortgage for one that exceeded her monthly income by more than $400. She can’t afford the payments, and unless her lender modifies the loan to make it affordable, she’ll…
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"The Huffington Post wants to have citizen journalists at as many of these tea party events as possible. If you think you’d be interested in attending one of the Tea Parties and reporting back to us with dispatches, photos, or video, click here to sign up. We’ll contact you shortly with further instructions." quoted in [1] The blogger(!) who quoted the above letters-of-fire is apparently a professional TV weatherman. Here he’s asserting that for-profit blogs can’t solicit for volunteer stringers. (IANAL either, but with real newspapers I think the deal is you have to enter into a genuine independent contractor…
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Something for Doomers to think about … . . . . . .   ML-Implode To Conference With Mike Morgan (GoldmanSachs666.com) On Blogger Free Speech Effort by Aaron Krowne ML-Implode will be present on Mike Morgan’s Wednesday, April 15th conference call (details below), which is being arranged to kick off organization efforts in response to the Goldman Sachs attack on www.GoldmanSachs666.com . Goldman Sachs sent Morgan a cease and desist letter. Morgan responded by filing a Complaint in the United States District Court against Goldman Sachs. Aaron Krowne and other representatives and volunteers from ML-Implode will be in attendance on…
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Nothing real new here, but I thought our Roubini fans would appreciate this:   Embedded video from CNNMoney.com Video

There’s a whole bunch of vacant REOs out there, and an ever growing number of homeless people.  There are advocacy groups out there now who are helping the homeless become squatters: [Thanks L!] MIAMI — When the woman who calls herself Queen Omega moved into a three-bedroom house here last December, she introduced herself to the neighbors, signed contracts for electricity and water and ordered an Internet connection. What she did not tell anyone was that she had no legal right to be in the home. Ms. Omega, 48, is one of the beneficiaries of the foreclosure crisis. Through a…
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Here’s a clue- when someone says the above to you, it’s a really, really bad idea. [Hat tip T.M.!]  

There isn’t much likelihood you’d get the two confused, as GoldmanSachs666, the blog, is devoted to the notion that Goldman Sachs, the bank, secretly created the current financial crisis through neglect or design. … Yet a cease-and-desist letter sent to Morgan last week from a law firm retained by Goldman Sachs wants his blog taken down … [1] Even Fox can see what’s coming, and they don’t like it one bit.

If you’ve had a sleepless night recently and turned on the TV, you know there is no shortage of infomercials on the joys of buying foreclosures and short sales.  The reality isn’t as pleasant as the shows portray, as shown in this Washington post article:  [Hat tip Freedom's Phoenix] As bargain hunters turn their attention to foreclosures, many are discovering the toughest challenge is dealing with the banks that repossessed the homes. These banks are usually quick to accept a bid and write a contract. But the closer buyers get to the settlement table, the greater the potential for bureaucratic…
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The builders of [US] railroads and canals had gone bust [in the course of the Panic of 1873], but they left a transportation infrastructure that in time bound regions together. Commodities – kerosene from Eastern coal, wheat from Western fields, canned fruit from Southern orchards – flowed down this web to the great ports of the US seaboard. Ton by ton, America remade itself into an export powerhouse, the China of the day. [1] It’s frustrating how The Monitor gets it about Professor Nelson’s analogy, and then completely drops the ball on the little detail that America was the emergent…
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Baker, who plans to dress up as the Statue of Liberty, said governments should act as households do and not spend money they do not have. [1] On February 15, 2003, Mrs. M and I walked in a protest march for the first and, to this point, only time in our lives.  That was authentic.  So were the biblically proportioned bank riots a few months ago in Thessaloniki. Same goes for the political unrest occurring as we speak in Thailand.  I have serious doubts, however, about the genuineness of the nation-wide protests being orchestrated for Wednesday, the 15th of this…
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One of the M cousins has a birthday today …

The issue with the sidebar has been fixed.  All the old links are archived, and new ones should begin appearing soon. Software (like WordPress, which powers this site) is designed based on how it is expected to be used.  Links are all handled together, rather than in pages, since it’s faster and it was anticipated that only a few links would be in the system at a time. We had 37,864 links in our system, and WordPress was not happy.  The links in the relevant articles section of the sidebar are frequently updated with relevant and breaking news – if…
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