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CA renter
Participant[quote=Jazzman]You need to be on the right side of prices not rates.[/quote]
^^^This.^^^
Buying at market lows (or at least “normal” levels) is far more important that buying with low rates.
Participant[quote=kev374]decided to skip the new car for now, going to wait until next year. In the interim I could always rent a car through relayrides.com if I get the urge to do a Sunday drive.
Given the ridiculously low amount I drive I think the ala carte approach of renting when the need arises makes more financial sense as I not only get to drive various cars but also don’t have to deal with the overhead of maintenance, insurance and the headaches of parking (I have only a 1car garage and street parking in a PITA)[/quote]
Good decision, IMHO. Flu, flyer, JoeC, etc. all made some good points, too. Save more, think seriously about what you want in the future: wife, kids, house, etc. That will have a major impact on every part of your life, especially your finances. Also make sure your wife-to-be and you agree on long-term plans for childcare, taking care of parents in old age, etc. What if one person needs to leave work in order to manage caregiving for kids or parents (don’t forget potential illnesses where you might **need** a full-time caregiver)?
Good luck!
November 21, 2015 at 2:18 AM in reply to: How will unfunded “pensions” affect the local economy? #791501Participant1. Going through that LA Times article, and it says nothing at all about CalPERS lying about their returns. It says that they will be lowering their return assumptions because the overall investment climate has changed, and pension funds may not be able to meet their existing return targets (because of the Fed’s gross manipulation of interest rates over far too many years -CAR) if there is another crash. They have lowered return assumptions in the past, are evaluating the need to lower them further, and are proactively shifting their risk profile and trying to make more conservative assumptions. This is a wise and responsible policy.
2. I have yet to see Jerry Brown “calling bullshit” on CalPERS. Please include a quote (a real one, not one of your “edited” ones), and cite your source.
3. My link is a link to the original/primary source of the information. The LA Times and the WSJ are secondary sources. You have yet to show anything from the CalPERS site that is “bogus,” as you say.
4. The statement about public employees not earning SS was directed at those who think that public employees earn both a SS benefit and a DB pension benefit at the same time. As a matter of fact, even if they’ve earned SS from another job in the private sector, that benefit that they have already earned from SS is **reduced** if they receive a retirement check from a public DB pension plan.
https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10045.pdf
https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10007.pdf
5. It’s also funny how you think that a 20 or 30-year return history is more “cherry-picked” than a fraction of a single year’s return. You really are dense, Pri.
So far, I’m the only who who has presented credible data from original/primary sources. You are the one who has relied on biased secondary sources.
November 20, 2015 at 8:10 PM in reply to: How will unfunded “pensions” affect the local economy? #791500ParticipantI shouldn’t even be responding to your trolling, but I will do so one more time…
1. The LA Times is more biased than CalPERS, and CalPERS is, one would assume, the original source of the information that the LA Times is citing.
2. The information on the CalPERS site is factual. If you take issue with any of their numbers, please post a credible source showing how CalPERS is lying about these numbers.
3. Yes, you need to learn how to cite credible sources. Specifically, you need to learn about the difference between a primary source, and a secondary source (which is where the spin usually happens).
Good luck!
——–edited to add: Just looked up Melody Petersen, the journalist who wrote the LA Times article. It’s clear that she has a right-wing, pro-privatization perspective because her other articles about the Military Industrial Complex don’t show the same sort of hawkish stance. To the contrary, they are glowing articles talking about all the jobs that will be created when the govt spends tens of billions of dollars on more war planes that we don’t need, and shouldn’t be building.
http://www.latimes.com/la-bio-melody-petersen-staff.html
Additionally, in that article, she quotes research from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Though they claim that they are “non-partisan,” SIEPR was founded by George P. Shultz and Michael J. Boskin, both of whom have been deeply involved with the Hoover Institution.
http://www.hoover.org/profiles/george-p-shultz
http://www.hoover.org/profiles/michael-j-boskin
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The Hoover Institution’s purpose and scope statement:
“This Institution supports the Constitution of the United States, its Bill of Rights and its method of representative government. Both our social and economic systems are based on private enterprise from which springs initiative and ingenuity…. Ours is a system where the Federal Government should undertake no governmental, social or economic action, except where local government, or the people, cannot undertake it for themselves…. The overall mission of this Institution is, from its records, to recall the voice of experience against the making of war, and by the study of these records and their publication, to recall man’s endeavors to make and preserve peace, and to sustain for America the safeguards of the American way of life. This Institution is not, and must not be, a mere library. But with these purposes as its goal, the Institution itself must constantly and dynamically point the road to peace, to personal freedom, and to the safeguards of the American system.”‘
– Herbert Hoover
http://www.hoover.org/about/missionhistory
Epic fail, Pri. You still haven’t shown anything that indicates CalPERS was lying about it’s numbers. Nothing.
Try again.
ParticipantAnd these investors may, or may not, be the types of investors who have the ability or desire to stick around during a housing market crash.
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“Foreign Persons Receiving Rental Income From U.S. Real Property
U.S. real estate professionals and rental agents/property managers are encountering an increasing number of situations that involve foreign persons’ acquiring U.S. real estate as a part-time residence, for investment or in some cases to conduct a U.S. business.”
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“The latest data from the National Association of Realtors, which was released last summer, showed that foreign buyers had scooped up $68.2 billion of single-family homes in the U.S. in the year ended March 2013. That’s about 7 percent of the total U.S. market. That was down slightly from the $82.5 billion invested during the same period of 2012, but up from 2011. The fastest growth in foreign buyers was from China and Canada.”
http://www.cnbc.com/2014/01/07/us-dominates-list-for-foreign-real-estate-investors.html
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler]The Crazy part was if you wanted to buy 10 homes with nothing down and no collateral other than the house you were buying, there was not much to stop you.
Not seeing anything like that now.
Something like that only happens once.[/quote]
A lot of the money coming into the post-crisis housing market is coming from overseas. We don’t really know what’s going on over there WRT their lending and where this money is really coming from. Was it borrowed or leveraged in some way? Is it the result of a bubble overseas or in other markets? Bubbles cause bubbles, especially when you can use bubble money from one asset class to leverage purchases in another asset class. If one of the bubbles pops, they might all collapse, much like we saw in 2008.
Just because we aren’t seeing as much of the crazy stuff in our domestic mortgage market doesn’t mean it’s not happening in another market. What we do know is that a lot of money has been flowing from central banks around the world, and all of that money has to go somewhere. Where is it going?
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“The outstanding balance of margin loans on the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses climbed to 4.4 percent of overall market capitalization on July 2 from 3.6 percent on June 12, before the rout began, as the attached chart shows. The data doesn’t include unregulated borrowing, which Bocom International Holdings Co. estimates at around $322 billion. That would increase the debt to market cap ratio to more than 9 percent.
Higher leverage may undermine government measures to stem the steepest three-week rout in the nation’s equities in a quarter-century. Margin traders reduced positions for nine days through Thursday, the longest stretch of declines on record, even as the central bank cut interest rates and the securities regulator eased margin-trading rules.”
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Just when investor fears over plunging Chinese stocks appear to be calming down, the country’s frothy corporate bond market is stirring concerns it could be the next domino to fall.
Investment funds have flowed rapidly into corporate bonds since the stock market collapsed in June, triggering a surge of debt issuance. Demand has compressed corporate and sovereign bond spreads to their narrowest in four years – an oddity, when industrial profits are falling and credit risks are rising.
While bond investors say corporate bond prices are not at unreasonable levels, they are wary a sharp correction could be sparked by a bond default from major state-owned companies or a change in monetary policy.
“What concerns us is the narrowing credit spread between corporate bonds and government bonds, despite shrinking corporate profits,” said Zhou Hao, senior emerging markets economist at Commerzbank in Singapore. “In addition, we are also worried about the rising leverage ratio in bond positions.”‘
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/27/us-china-debt-idUSKCN0SL2YF20151027
Participant[quote=Jazzman]^^^That misses the point that CAR is making, but it was more than just interest rates and lax lending. The chronology might go something like this:
Recession and loss of manufacturing
Deregulation of financial markets
Creation of complex financial products
Dot.com bubble
Monetary easing
Collateralizing risk and risk transfer
Lax lending due to risk transfer
Lax regulatory scrutiny (due in part to misplaced loyalties)
Denial followed by collapseBanks used to lend your money to borrowers. That risk was transferred to investors. Consumer driven economies enjoyed huge increases in lending and the apparent guarantees offered by risk transfer. What was not to like about it? Well, we are puny humans and give in easily to our irrational side.[/quote]
Exactly, Jazzman. The low interest rates caused investors of all stripes to move further out on the risk curve in order to reach certain return targets. This, along with financial instruments that appear to shift risk (thanks to deregulation), is what causes lax lending standards.
The lax lending standards are the effect, the low interest rates are the cause.
November 20, 2015 at 4:13 AM in reply to: How will unfunded “pensions” affect the local economy? #791488ParticipantFeel free to double-check their numbers. Get back to us with what you find.
Participant[quote=bearishgurl][quote=FlyerInHi]Bg, even with stagnant or decreasing population we need to build. In Japan, they still build despite population getting old.
In with the new, out with the old. That’s the way it is.
Quality is life is up. That’s why people still come here and house values are up. The market does not lie.[/quote]
brian, I am ALL FOR “In with the new, OUT with the old.” That’s considered “infill building.”
What I am fundamentally against is MORE SPRAWL created in outer lizardia.
I don’t think SD County’s population increase (if any) is actually due to Americans from other CA counties and other states moving here.
It is likely from foreign in-migration and births over deaths coming mostly from our existing immigrant families. Most of those families (esp Asians, who lived their lives in their home countries in MUCH MORE crowded conditions than we have) rate SD as having a good quality of life today because it IS good …. to them. SD County doesn’t look nearly as good to the well-established US citizen (in and out of state) living in their paid-for homes within their own (roomy and bucolic) settings in far more well-planned counties than San Diego.[/quote]
BG, existing residents have been opposed to new growth and building for many, many decades. Those who’ve enjoyed open space and the use of land that wasn’t theirs (as most of us did in our youth) feel encroached upon by new people who take our open spaces and corn fields, orange groves, etc. and turn them into rows and rows of homes crowded onto ever-smaller lots, then fill our roads and freeways with too many cars, causing us to spend more and more time stuck in traffic…
I know people who are third-generation Californians (or more), and they didn’t think that the BG’s of the world were an improvement to their city/state, either. I’m sure the Native Americans who lived here before us also felt as though things were better before the Europeans got here.
It’s a bit silly to think that there should be no more housing growth just because you want the value of your house to go up. For as long as more and more people want to live here, we will need more housing. We are nowhere near the point where we are “running out of land.” A mere 15-30 minute drive will prove that we are not out of land. And if they close some military bases, as they’ve done in the past, we could have a LOT of extra land for development.
Not saying this is what I want, either, but we have to be honest about the facts. We have not run out of land, and nobody is obligated to inconvenience millions of other people just because some people want the value of their houses to keep going up.
ParticipantThank you for posting that, sjk.
It is strange how everyone seemed to agree that the credit/housing bubble that brought us to our knees in 2008 was the consequence of holding interest rates too low for too long…and then they tried to “fix” the problem by doubling down on the same policies that caused the problem to begin with.
The bursting of the current bubble (when it happens) has the potential to cause even more destruction than the 2008 bubble because governments and central banks around the world have used up most of their ammunition in an attempt to manipulate prices and grow this most recent asset bubble.
Too many people have no money left over every month because their #1 expense — housing — has skyrocketed over the past ~15 years, with only a few years of relief that came about as a result of the crash.
ParticipantAgreed, njtosd. We love animals, and our dog is a part of our family, but he does not have the same status as our children; not by a long shot.
Some people genuinely seem to love their dogs more than their own kids or spouses. It would seem logical to assume that people who feel this way probably like the fact that dogs, in particular, provide love and loyalty without any expectations of their owners. They often have unconditional love for their owners, so it’s understandable why some people love them so much; but it’s also odd (IMHO) to love an animal more than your own family members.
This past summer, my husband had to intervene when a woman was intentionally burning her dog’s feet. When they tried to rescue the dog (they had to subdue the woman in order to do so), it became very aggressive with the rescuers and defended its owner. There is no limit to the loyalty some dogs feel for their owners.
November 19, 2015 at 12:43 AM in reply to: How will unfunded “pensions” affect the local economy? #791458Participant“Fact:
CalPERS investments have earned an average 7.6 percent annual return over the past 20 years and 9.4 percent over the past 30 years.
CalPERS investments earned 13.2 percent in Fiscal Year 2012-13.
CalPERS assumed rate of investment return is a long-term (20 years or more) average. Any given year is likely to be higher or lower than the assumed rate.May 9, 2014”
https://www.calpers.ca.gov/page/newsroom/myths-vs-facts
This covers a period of time during which we’ve seen two massive bubbles and subsequent crashes, plus a recession that was steeper than any other recession since the Great Depression.
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They are trying to be conservative since the Federal Reserve seems unlikely to allow interest rates to “normalize” for some time to come.
Additionally, some of this money will come from public employers, some from public employees (reductions in pay, benefits, etc…as we’ve already seen since 2008), and some from other special interest groups and private contractors.
Participantdup
ParticipantAnd I did answer your question regarding catcalling. Your post also shows a lack of understanding about how power (political, economic, physical, social, etc.) affects relationships between groups. If you’re the person in power, you’re going to perceive something like a catcall differently than someone who is in the less-powerful position.
[quote=zk]
Here’s another question for you: You said I probably had no idea what it was like to be catcalled by strangers. I mentioned that that had actually happened to me on a couple occasions, and that I really liked it. I was watching “The Seventies” a couple weeks ago on CNN. Great show. They had footage from the ‘70s of feminists having an “ogle day,” where women would ogle men. There was a feminist trying to “harass” a man on the street, in front of TV cameras. She was saying what nice legs he had and how his pants brought out the best in him. She didn’t seem to notice the look on the guy’s face, which was some surprise, but mostly pleasure. The guy was loving it. She went on to say, into some microphone, how they were trying to show what it felt like to be catcalled by strangers. I remember thinking that those women didn’t understand men at all. I think most men would really like getting catcalled by women they didn’t know. And the main reason these women didn’t understand men is that, like so many feminists in the ’70s, they believed gender identity/behavior was a social construct. They thought that men and women were mostly the same, prior to social conditioning. So they thought that, since women don’t like being catcalled, neither would men.
Do you think that if all children were raised in a gender-neutral fashion, that boys would hate being catcalled by strangers, or that girls would enjoy it? Do you think if a girl, one individual girl, was raised in a gender-neutral fashion, that she would enjoy being catcalled, as most men would?[/quote]
[quote=CA renter]Um, yeah… This really shows how little you know about sexism and misogyny. Re-read my post to scaredy* about why women want men to protect them — the one about how many females are sexually assaulted before the age of 18 (which is an understated statistic). See, many/most women perceive sexually aggressive men to be threatening, so they don’t take catcalling as a compliment, they consider it a threat.
After all, female groupies and male stalkers are similar in almost every way, other than their sex. So why are stalkers considered threatening, while groupies are considered to be fun, or maybe a nuisance?[/quote]
*Referring to this post:
[quote=CA renter]
Why do women want men to protect them? Because men are generally more capable of providing protection due to their generally larger size, greater strength, and more aggressive personality. This is especially true if women are not allowed to arm themselves.
I cannot express enough how differently people behave around a woman who is escorted by a man (especially a larger man) vs. a woman who is alone. I’m sure that most women will attest to having been catcalled by large groups of men (at a minimum), groped, aggressively cornered, molested, raped, etc. at some point in their lives, often by men who are decades older than the victims. Some females have been exposed to many violent/sexually violent situations by the time she is twenty years old. These offenses very rarely occur when women are being escorted by men (this assumes that the escort is a trustworthy male since it’s not terribly uncommon for the escort to become the perpetrator).
All too often, these offenses occur at a very young age (<18 years old), and these exposures to sexually violent men tend to cluster in a girl's youth, when they are ~13-20 years old -- and the younger ones are most definitely understated in official statistics, for obvious reasons. These exposures to violent/sexually violent men at an early age make females feel physically vulnerable where violent men are concerned, and certainly cause women to seek out men who are capable of protecting them from these threats. The age/size differential for young girls who are victimized by older/larger males adds to the perception that men are more powerful, both as a potential threat and as a potential protector.
This is why men who are tall, muscular, and selectively aggressive are sought out by many women. It’s also why so many women end up in abusive situations, because they have a difficult time discerning between those who can protect them from danger and those who are a danger…because these different types of males often share the same traits.
This is why cops and criminals often share the same traits, too. Those who are in charge of selecting law enforcement recruits sometimes have a difficult time discerning between the strong, unafraid, aggressive “good guy” and the strong, unafraid, aggressive “bad guy.” Cops and criminals often share the very same traits, by default.
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“Children
15% of sexual assault and rape victims are under age 12.3
29% are age 12-17.
44% are under age 18.3
80% are under age 30.3
12-34 are the highest risk years.
Girls ages 16-19 are 4 times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape, or sexual assault.”https://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims%5B/quote%5D
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