Tuesday, January 17, 2012

@09:46, @15:32, 01/16/12 2, 4

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New Home Sales and Housing Starts Click on graph for larger image.
We are often asked why the numbers of new single-family housing units started and completed each month are larger than the number of new homes sold. This is because all new single-family houses are measured as part of the New Residential Construction series (starts and completions), but only those that are built for sale are included in the New Residential Sales series. We categorize new residential construction into four intents, or purposes:


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  • TimesPeople recommended a user:
    Jan 15, 2012
    Clawhammer Jake
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    celaeno_darkharpy@yahoo.com
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    • Henry recommended a blog post:
      Mar 7, 2011
      Does IMF Stand for Impressive Macroeconomic Flexibility?
      So the IMF is holding a meeting on rethinking macroeconomic policy (I was invited but couldn’t make the timing work.) And the Fund’s chief economist has already made it clear that he’s open to some serious revision of the prevailing paradigm.


      http://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/turkey-why-erdogonomics-are-about-to-burst-his-own-bubble/

      TURKEY: WHY ERDOGONOMICS ARE ABOUT TO BURST HIS OWN BUBBLE

      Recep Erdogan….slight inflation problem
      Another former high-ranking military officer was arrested in Turkey the week before last. General Ilker Basbug is the most senior officer so far to face trial in a series of investigations into alleged anti-government plots. He is also charged with ‘running a terrorist organisation’, although the Government is predictably vague on what or where it is.
      But while Recep Erdogan is tightening his grip on the once secular State now heading for Islamist correctness, certain aspects of the Great One’s religious zeal have backfired. He won a third term last June by creating an unprecedented boom. Based on Sharia interest rules, the scam demands that interest rates should never be higher than inflation. It’s dangerous mumbo-jumbo rather than economics, but nevertheless it makes people feel generally well-off and ready to vote for him….until it starts to unravel.
      Basically, Erdogan’s economic growth is just a Muslim version of the US after 2004: cheap money that should’ve been capped and cooled down has been allowed to rip ahead in order to enable re-election. But it can’t last much longer.
       _____________________________________________
      All the telltale signs are there in The New Turkiye. In 2011, the mergers and acquisitions sector grew 59% percent to $8.8 billion. The country’s $735 billion economy grew by more than 8%, as the Central Bank cut interest rates three times to ward off any EU-affected slowdown. And – most notable of all – the national deficit soared to a record $10.1 billion as imports jumped nearly 43% versus an 11.7% increase in exports. According to some data, for much of 2011 Turkey was the only large economy in the world growing faster than China’s.
      Also the usual downsides of uncontrolled free-market economics are starting to appear. Since 2007, Turkish data has shown income inequality worsening…..yet more of that trickle-down wealth gushing upwards, I’m afraid: by Q1 2010, the richest 20% of the population had a household income 8.5 times higher than the bottom 20% – an imbalance that grew by 7% in just two years.
      But now reality is peeping round the corner. Just before Christmas, Merrill Lynch added its voice to Goldman Sachs’ in warning of the risk of an imminent recession. “With the [Sharia] complexity of central bank policy and the need for corporates to absorb their foreign exchange mismatches, the result could manifest itself in a recession which we do not believe is fully appreciated by the market,” Merrill said. Turkish companies now have $59bn of dollars in short term obligations, many of which come due in the next few months. So ‘sensationally complex’ (aka zealous) is the interest rate policy, says Goldman, some bankers allege it has become hard to perform an old-fashioned carry trade, and that many portfolio investors are just waiting until the benchmark rate is increased to deal with Turkey’s bloated current account deficit and rising inflation. Then we are likely to see a very hard landing indeed.
      The Asia Times’s share tipster ‘Spengler’ pulls no punches:
      ‘Among all the dumb things said about the so-called Arab Spring last year, perhaps the dumbest was the idea that the new democracies of the Arab world might follow the Turkish model.
      In fact, if you had invested in the Turkish model (that is, in the Turkish stock market) at the outbreak of the Arab revolts, you would have lost about half your money. If you leave your money in Turkey, you probably will lose the rest of it. Turkey is not a model. It is a bubble, and it is bursting, starting with the stock market and national currency. I am shorting Turkey not for any political motivation, but because the Turkish government economic policy is a clown show.’
      But what did our Prime Minister David Cameron have to say on the subject of ‘the Turkish Model’ when he was last in Ankara?
      “I can tell from your enthusiasm and the enthusiasm of the entrepreneurs that I met outside this incredible building that there is an enormous spirit of enterprise and entrepreneurialism and industry and business and trade here in Turkey, and that is one of the reasons that I want our two countries to build this incredibly strong relationship that I will be speaking about this morning.
      “I will remain your strongest possible advocate for EU membership and for greater influence at the top table of European diplomacy. This is something I feel very strongly and very passionately about. Together I want us to pave the road from Ankara to Brussels.
      “….protectionists see the rise of a country like Turkey as an economic threat we must defend against, not as an opportunity to further our prosperity….there are some who fear the growth of a country like Turkey…they seem to think that trade is a sort of zero-sum game. The whole point about trade is that everyone can benefit from it.”
      You see, the trouble with Dave is that he is such an economic, social and geopolitical lightweight, if we didn’t nail his feet to the ground he would simply float away. As I have posted in the past, Cameron’s idiotic words in Ankara will come to haunt him as the years pass. But above all, they display clearly that he is just another braindead New Paradigm mercantile globalist: nothing wrong with the system, no alternative, everyone’s a winner, roll up yer sleeves, jolly good show, silly Socialists and tooth-suckers blah blah blah blah blah oh look, I’m halfway to Mars  how did that happen?
      Meanwhile, Rambling Recep continues to drone on at will. He recently observed that
      “If a leader is Muslim, he cannot commit genocide because Islam forbids murder.” The context was Erdogan’s defence of Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir for his massive destruction in Darfur. Nobody seems very clear about why he said it, but for myself I have no doubts at all, and never have: Recep Erdogan is a madman. Even worse, our incompetent Foreign Office is mad for having anything to do with him

      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/

      Debt crisis: live

       
      Economist Joseph Stiglitz has said EU austerity will eventually kill the eurozone, as Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti urges Germany to help smaller nations through the debt crisis.
      17 Jan 2012
      | Comment

      Sketch: Nick Clegg braves the fat cats' den

      Nick Clegg pushes for 'Mansion Tax'  
      Michael Deacon watches Nick Clegg tell the City of London about the trouble with the "economic elite".
      17 Jan 2012
      | 10 Comments

      Eurozone's 'big bazooka' is left in tatters by S&P downgrade

      Eurozone's 'big bazooka' bail-out fund is left in tatters by S&P downgrade  
      Plans for a €1 trillion "big bazooka" to stem the debt crisis have been crushed as Standard & Poor's stripped the European Financial Stability Fund of its AAA credit rating.
      16 Jan 2012
      | 106 Comments

      Merkel won't be the one smiling if Germany loses its AAA rating too

      Merkel won't be the one smiling if Germany loses its AAA rating too  
      Poor old Sarko. Fancy resorting to "scheduling problems" to get out of this Friday's hot date with Angela "triple A" Merkel.
      16 Jan 2012
      | 3 Comments

      When, oh when, will Europe face the truth?

      When, oh when, will Europe face the truth?  
      Countries with a triple-A credit rating are becoming an endangered species.
      16 Jan 2012
      | 45 Comments

      Debt crisis: as it happened January 16

      S&P strips eurozone bail-out fund of AAA crown, saying it is "no longer fully supported by guarantees from EFSF members rated AAA", as Greece to send officials to US for talks with IMF over bond swap impasse.
      16 Jan 2012
      | 770 Comments

      Europe still refuses to face economic reality

      Telegraph View: EU leaders display a remarkable reluctance to address the root causes.
      16 Jan 2012
      | 43 Comments

      S&P cuts bail-out fund rating: statement in full

      S&P has stripped the eurozone bail-out fund of its AAA crown, saying it is "no longer fully supported by guarantees from EFSF members rated AAA". Here is its statement in full.
      16 Jan 2012
      | 5 Comments

      Portugal's debt costs soar as France passes bond test

      Portugal's borrowing costs jumped to record highs on Monday, as investors had their first chance to react to a series of downgrades by Standard and Poor's (S&P) that saw the country relegated to "junk".
      16 Jan 2012
      | 36 Comments

      Greece sends officials to US as default fears grow

      Greece has sent top officials to the US for talks with the International Monetary Fund as it returns to centre stage in the eurozone crisis over fears that a debt deal impasse with bondholders could trigger a messy default.
      16 Jan 2012
      | 16 Comments

      Moody's says France AAA but reviewing outlook

      Moody's on Monday confirmed France's triple-A credit rating but said it was still reviewing whether it would maintain its "stable" outlook for the debt-laden country.
      16 Jan 2012
      | 5 Comments

      Greek bonds face 60pc loss

      Top stories: Greece, Carnival, Bovis Homes and Stanley Gibbons.
      16 Jan 2012
      | 2 Comments

      Greek bonds face 60pc loss

      Top stories: Greece, Carnival, Bovis Homes and Stanley Gibbons.
      16 Jan 2012
      | Comment

      Eurozone debt crisis likely to be over soon, predicts HSBC

      The European debt crisis is likely to be over in a "reasonably short timeframe", the chairman of HSBC has predicted.
      16 Jan 2012
      | 78 Comments

      Bonus cuts hit holiday homes

      Austerity has finally arrived in the City - of a sort. Scaled-back bonuses are hitting the market in banker property hotspots such as the chichi Cornish resort of Rock, say estate agents.
      15 Jan 2012
      | 141 Comments

      Markets braced as Merkel warns eurozone crisis will drag on

      Global markets are set for a rocky day of trading after German leader Angela Merkel warned that it could take many months to rebuild confidence in the eurozone and schisms over financing the bloc's bail-out fund re-emerged.
      15 Jan 2012
      | 274 Comments

      China can grow 8pc annually for two decades

      China can maintain annual growth of 8pc for the next two decades, the World Bank has said.
  • TimesPeople recommended a video:
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    Being Garifuna
    It is vital to those who take the label.
    Thus I will respect it.
    "WOGS start at Calais."
    is easy and deadly.
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    A very civil winter party.
    http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/trinidadandtobago/index.html?scp=2&sq=trinidad&st=cse

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  • TimesPeople recommended a video:
    Jan 16, 2012
    TimesCast | 2011: The Year in Media
    The Web is essentially different from television.  
    The two do not combine easily.  See:
    Marshall Mcluhan
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Mcluhan

    Tetrad

    Main article: Tetrad of media effects
    In Laws of Media (1988), published posthumously by his son Eric, McLuhan summarized his ideas about media in a concise tetrad of media effects. The tetrad is a means of examining the effects on society of any technology (i.e., any medium) by dividing its effects into four categories and displaying them simultaneously. McLuhan designed the tetrad as a pedagogical tool, phrasing his laws as questions with which to consider any medium:
    • What does the medium enhance?
    • What does the medium make obsolete?
    • What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
    • What does the medium flip into when pushed to extremes?
    The laws of the tetrad exist simultaneously, not successively or chronologically, and allow the questioner to explore the "grammar and syntax" of the "language" of media. McLuhan departs from his mentor Harold Innis in suggesting that a medium "overheats", or reverses into an opposing form, when taken to its extreme.[18]
    Visually, a tetrad can be depicted as four diamonds forming an X, with the name of a medium in the center. The two diamonds on the left of a tetrad are the Enhancement and Retrieval qualities of the medium, both Figure qualities. The two diamonds on the right of a tetrad are the Obsolescence and Reversal qualities, both Ground qualities.[76]
    A blank tetrad diagram
    Using the example of radio:
    • Enhancement (figure): What the medium amplifies or intensifies. Radio amplifies news and music via sound.
    • Obsolescence (ground): What the medium drives out of prominence. Radio reduces the importance of print and the visual.
    • Retrieval (figure): What the medium recovers which was previously lost. Radio returns the spoken word to the forefront.
    • Reversal (ground): What the medium does when pushed to its limits. Acoustic radio flips into audio-visual TV.

    Figure and ground

    Main article: Figure and ground (media)
    McLuhan adapted the Gestalt psychology idea of a figure and a ground, which underpins the meaning of "The medium is the message." He used this concept to explain how a form of communications technology, the medium or figure, necessarily operates through its context, or ground.
    McLuhan believed that to fully grasp the effect of a new technology, one must examine figure (medium) and ground (context) together, since neither is completely intelligible without the other. McLuhan argued that we must study media in their historical context, particularly in relation to the technologies that preceded them. The present environment, itself made up of the effects of previous technologies, gives rise to new technologies, which, in their turn, further affect society and individuals.[18]
    All technologies have embedded within them their own assumptions about time and space. The message which the medium conveys can only be understood if the medium and the environment in which the medium is used—and which, simultaneously, it effectively creates—are analyzed together. He believed that an examination of the figure-ground relationship can offer a critical commentary on culture and society.[18]

    [edit] Technological determinism

    Main article: Technological determinism
    Media determinism, a subset of technological determinism, is a philosophical and sociological position which posits the power of the media to impact society.[77]
    McLuhan explains technological determinism as it relates to media.
    "the printing press, the computer, and television are not therefore simply machines which convey information. They are metaphors through which we conceptualize reality in one way or another. They will classify the world for us, sequence it, frame it, enlarge it, reduce it, argue a case for what it is like. Through these media metaphors, we do not see the world as it is. We see it as our coding systems are. Such is the power of the form of information." [78]
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrad_of_media_effects

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_and_ground_%28media%29

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_determinism
    The author of this discussion believes in progress.

    I am not at all sure of progress.  Technologies certainly shape perception.  Whether one perceptual construct is an improvement on another needs careful consideration.  Certainly technologies displace other technologies.
    The braid of civilization includes all technologies.
    Petty bickering over position hides power with paint.






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