It looks like the stock market isn’t the only market suffering under President Bush’s economic stewardship:
Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies painted a bleak picture of the housing downturn, pegging it as possibly being “the worst in a generation” in its “The State of the Nation’s Housing 2008” report.
The study noted that housing starts, new-home sales and existing-home sales are at all-time lows since after World War II, while price declines and mortgage defaults are the worst on record.
I’m just sayin’.
Absolutely BEAUTIFUL Fascist
ha ha ha
“Free Market” !
it is rigged so only the big guys benefit,
it is rigged so the big guys aren’t accountable,
it is rigged so the little peeee-ons get screwed,
it it rigged so the community BAILS out the wealthy!
Unlike many Dems, I WANT people who are dumb enough to believe the rush limbaugh ‘free market’ crap to keep voting fascist!
People that DUMB deserve the screwing their getting, AND, yo dummies! keep blaming the Democrats!
This is just like getting ripped off at the gas pump several times a month – I SMILE cuz I think of the TENS OF MILLIONS OF IDIOTS who voted for Bush / Cheney / Exxon ripping them off!
Knowing I’m getting ripped off doesn’t lessen the pocketbook hit, but at least I’m not a fucking CHUMP who thinks these fascist bastards care about me!
ha ha ha.
rmm.
re 1: Apparently, you don’t believe Mark the Welcher’s theory that it all traces back to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff that was introduced under the Aegis of that fruit-cake liberal, Herbert Hoover.
No Depression!
No Depression Part II.
Goldy,
I suggest the time has come to consider where we are going. BHO is going to be our President and will inherit from Bill Clinton a Democratic Party that is far more focused and rational in its composition than at any time since Roosevelt.
My question is simple, is there an “Obamist” movement that is more than just the respect and love some of us feel for this man? If so, how can we use his advent to create a wider good?
I think there is such a movement, albeit as yet unnamed. Two of its key elements are progressivism and pragmatism. BHO is a progressive in that he shares the goals you and I have toward a fair society with opportunity for all.
I suggest that progressive, pragmatic economics will look very different from either the doctrinaire trickle down economics. also called VooDoo by Bush I, but also very different from the social dole envisaged all too often by liberals.
OK … sermon off. How might this affect housing? One thought, coming out of your post, is that we should optimize the opportunity for Americans to own their own dwellings. The two biggest obstacles to this now are the declining income of the middle class and the speculative explosion in real estate prices.
Leaving aside the horrid problem of maintaining a middle class in a global economy, how can our government dowse the bad effects of speculation?
I have a few incomplete ideas:
1. Retro taxation of appreciation … Real estate taxes on sale should reflect the real value of the house over the previous years.
2. transportation ..as you keep pointing out .. if you build mass transit, people move! More projects like the Rainier Ave project would create more lower cost housing.
3. Progressive taxation of property. I suspect that the cost per dollar of city services that support a family living in a four million dollar house are a lot more than the ratio of house prices.
4. Building services into new construction costs. The developments in downtown Seattle are adding about 100k residents but not support for 100k worth of families. Vulcan et al should be required to pay the costs of schools, parks, and other services that will result if their dormitory style condos ever are to turn into neighborhoods.
Some might argue that all of these will drive prices up. I beg to differ. When the taxpayer builds rapid transit, the cost (in land price) of accessible home lots goes down. Progressive taxation is a counter incentive to rapidly rising real estate values. Even my fourth proposal, while increasing Vulcan’s costs, would force them to focus their profit making on creation of housing people could live in rather than on pied a terre for the vulgarly rich.
I suppose I can not wish all this on Obama, but the flavor .. the effort to find solutions that work is what I admire in him ,,, much as I admire Ron Sims or Patty Murry for similar thoughts.
All in all, just addin to your comments.
Did you take a look at the 2006 Report??
Shows from 2001-2005 a series of record setting years.
Just like you KLOWNS to look at short-term results to evaluate an Administration you dislike.
How about the period 2001–current Goldy.
Unprecedented home ownership.
Hoover was a Republican. Rossi is a Republican. McCain is a Republican.
The trolls who spew here are Republicans even the ones who claim they aren’t. All trolls who come here are at least Republican in spirit, no matter what they say.
Hey Goldy…take a look at the latest WASHINGTON STATE Economic Forecast.
http://www.washace.com/files/j.....recast.pdf
Revenue reduction of $166.8 million.
Yet another decrease.
If Bush is responsible for the US Housing Market Slump…isn’t Gregoire responsible for this?
Increases the projected future deficit to
$2.5 BILLION
How could Gregoire justify adding another 8000+ State Workers and a bunch of other campaign giveaways???
The buck stops with Gregoire.
Cynical, you’re a Republican. Your candidate, the Republican Rossi, unlike you, can’t even say Christine Gregoire’s name. It’s always, “my opponent” or “the incumbent”.
You’ll never hear “Governor Gregoire” from that KLOWN’s lips – yours neither for that matter.
And Rossi is too chicken to own up that he’s a Republican on the front page of his own website.
Love your choices Mr. Cynical – Republican KLOWN.
Mr. Cynical typically looks at the fly sh*t in the pepper.
How’s that national debt doing, sonny?
Up about 65% in a single administration? Hint: you have to start some words with “tr” instead of “b.”
re 5: Why do you persist in maintaining that a global economy is a new thing?
It’s not.
Trade items from Japan have been found in Anasazi Indian ruins in AZ that date back 1400 years. Not to mention Marco Polo and the whole era of exploration and colonialism.
You can tell me a duck is an elephant, but that does not make it so. The problem we face today is an overbearing and destructive corporate elite.
Historically speaking, this corporate elite is in about the same position as the French aristocracy in 1789.
“It is time to teach kings that the silence of the laws about their crimes is the ill consequence of their power, and not the will of reason or equity. . . .”
Speech of Marquis de Condorcet (December 3, 1792)
1 Agreed. There’s certainly a droll humor to be found amid the tragedy, watching the right-wing drones get raped along with the rest of us, all the while claiming they’ve found true love.
7 That’s awfully simplistic and a trifle intolerant. I can remember at least a couple of people who stepped in here who were sort of teetering on the brink of tearing themselves away from the preconceived notions that had been pounded into their heads since birth, looking for some encouragement and a few rational arguments to help them jump the chasm.
We appear to have failed them.
How about the period 2001–current Goldy.
Unprecedented home ownership.
The home ownership rate has had it’s largest drop in 20 years.
Facts have a liberal bias, I guess.
11 lucy in the sky w.o a head
English capitalism in the 18th century was brilliant English tool for English firms because they invested their profits in England. Monetarist societies, built on accumulation of money failed to compete. The equation changes when the firms themselves exist independenlty of nations.
What is new is the transnational structure of the economy. In the 1800s, the “colonies” provided low cost labor and raw materials but capital was invested in the mother countries’ factories. In a global economy workers in China and the US are now competing for the same jobs. As a result it is imperitive for government to seek ways of maximizing the investment of capital at home.
There is more to come as companies lose their national identities. The non-national company is still rare. That is changing. Anyone who thinks IBM is “American” is in for a huge surprise. The swiss drug firm Novartis is as American as they are European .. probabaly more so.
If you want a local example, look at Boeing. What is left of Boeing as a work source is high end engineering and assembly. What incentive is there for the peripatetic management firm … wonderfully located in President Obama’s home town, to keep those tasks here? If you were a stockholder and Moscow convinced you that they could assemble 87s for less cost, what would you do?
This is the monster underlying the failed policies of the Bushes. Tax breaks for the wealthy provide no incentive to increase American productivity.
Let me give you a specific example. WA state wants to keep Boeing here. Right? Lets imagine tow different uses for tax dollars. First, we offer Boeing a tax incentive to stay. Lets say we offer them a billion dollars over a period of time. During that time Boeing does have an incentive to stay. Second, instead of giving Booeing the billion we invest in infrastructure that increases Boeing’s efficiency or in education that supports their engineering efforts. You choose .. door #1 or door #2?
11 Anybody got a few spare guillotines?
Yep Bush was/is a disaster .. so was Harding. OTOH I don’t think Wilson is gonna get any medals either.
Both parties can fail, especially when they dip their toes into concrete and let it set. Docrinaire politics is dumb.
What hurts the right now is that it is so doctrinaire. Obamism, at least for now, is pragmatic. As in evilution, what works is always better.
16 I’ve always liked to make a distinction between “industrialists” and “capitalists”. I doubt that there’s any textbook reference to this, but let’s take someone like Bill Gates or Hunter Simpson as an example of the former: someone who sees a corporation as a collection (preferably a “team”) of people, striving to provide some excellent product or service to the organization’s customers.
On the other hand, business is becoming more and more dominated by “pure capitalists”, who see a corporation simply as a collection of money seeking to replicate itself. Concerns for the nature of the product, benefits to the customer, and responsibility to society are seen as inconveniences, if not downright impediments, to the ultimate goal of simply sucking in cash. Hedge-fund managers and other Wall Street “heroes” and the captains of highly exploitive companies–shameless war profiteers, for instance–are examples that quickly come to mind.
The moral implications of this distinction, and the rise to dominance of the latter type over the former, should be obvious to anyone with more than two neurons to rub together.
14 – This is not the place for that. Here, either you get it or you don’t.
And like Rog says, there’s little mercy for those who don’t.
On the other hand there are two kinds of people who don’t get it. Trolls and the kind of more open-minded people you’re talking about. My remark was focused on trolls.
Those people who have the potential of “getting it” can be helped, yes, but again this is not the greatest place for that.
19 – In the strict econogeek sense, capitalism is about increasing the productivity of the economy. “True” capitalists combine portions of their surpluses to increase economies of scale. VC’s are examples of people who gather portions of their surplus to build better mousetraps for the world to beat a path to. Those better mousetraps in turn enhance the competitiveness and productivity of the enterprises who employ them.
However our economy has become less and less about producing and more about rent-seeking behavior. Rents are economic advantages rooted in time or space. Examples of rentiers are franchise owners, claim-jumpers, landlords, real-estate developers, patent/copyright holders, hedge fund manager, day traders, corporate raiders and the like. They seek to get ahead by getting someplace first ahead of someone else. When you talk about the man in corner office being where he is because of what he “owns” more than what he’s actually done, you’re talking about a rentier. Adam Smith talked unflatteringly about rent-seeking in The Wealth of Nations.
The more and more rent-seeking behavior in an economy, the more and more it looks like a ponzi scheme and the more vulnerable it is to collapse like this economy did back in the 30’s.
@15 true, quite a setback, but when the bubble breaks the bubble breaks.
Funny what happens when folks realize that the house they bought with no money down and an ARM, isn’t free…….Not realy funny…
6 Cyn
It looks like total home ownership, as a percentage of our growing population, in 2008 will be lower than in 2001, despite all of your “record-setting years” in between.
We had to sell our house and move from the hinterlands. We had a medical crisis, and with only one income, our payments were too high, we couldn’t stay in the house AND afford gas to commute.
We were foolish, to get into a wonderful house, too far out, for too much money. Looking back on it, we shouldn’t have got our loan. We will be more realistic next time.
Let’s compare Washington’s revenue projections against all other states – OOPS! Cynical is AGAIN proven to know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about economics. When you compare those stats, something Cyn Cyn doesn’t want you to do, you see Washington scores well and better than almost ALL republican-run states. Care to try again Cyn Cyn or would you rather give up and just go back to cleaning toilets at the sex offender unit?
Lucy @ 11: Actually, the current U.S. economy looks like it is more and more taking on the characteristics of the 18th century British Mercantile System – where favored companies under royal patents are granted monopoly trade, price protection, and even law-enforcement powers within their zones of control. Other, less favored enterprises have a much tougher time. This was the system which Adam Smith railed against, and reaction against it was one of the reasons why the trade-dependent New England colonies led the revolutionary movement in America.
I agree. Let’s say, then, that the Roundheads may be about to strike.
So if Bush isn’t responsible for ANY of the bad stuff happening, what is he responsible for?
Of course we know he and the GOP as Rossi would put it don’t want to have us think about that.
28 One enormous difference between the Republicans of today and those who held the franchise half a century ago is that the word “responsibility” has no meaning whatsoever to them.
@ 6 Mr. Irrelevant said
DJI Jan 22, 2001 – 10,650
DJI June 23, 2008 – 11,807
Barely a 9% rise in 7 1/2 fucking years!
And it may very well turn out that the DJI will actually be LOWER after 8 years of the criminal incompetence of the Bush misadministration. And all the while the DEFICIT keeps going higher and higher!
But morons like Mr. Irrelevant will keep clapping their hands and banging their pots in the air, somehow trying to convince people who are not as STUPID as they are that this is a good economic track record!
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Oh, I’m sorry, it isn’t funny.
It’s actually kinda pathetic and scary what a bunch of mushmined dimwitted kool-aid drunk wingnuts can do to a once great country.
It all reminds me of the Onion Headline of the Bush 2001 inauguration speech:
“Your nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally at an end!”
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28784
What, 31 messages and not one mention of countrywide and the subprime 6?
Pelosi isn’t doing a very good job of cleaning up the corruption in her own party.
32 (YAWN!)
Pelosi is too busy not impeaching the worst.president.ever to have to clean up the corruption of former Senator, and current McCain chief economic adviser Phil Gramm.
And besides, Gramm is from the other party. You know, the one filled with anti-American troop haters. The Republicans.
But with Pelosi’s refusal to impeach Bush, I can see why you would be confused.
That and all the wingnut kool-aid you have been drinking.
So, if you’re not better off now than 4 years ago, it shows how useless Gregoire and the Dem Legislature is in this state because apparently it’s only the actions of the President that matters on every issue.
We need some more family values injected into this campaign – you know – like wide stances in men’s rooms and guys who leave their disfigured wives in the lurch because they’re looking for a younger babe with money.