Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, March 19, 2013


Rather than say "enjoy" today's newsbites theme song, I simply ask you think about today's newsbites theme song.

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6 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/rising-cost-of-corn-ethanol-credits-alarms-hill-89043.html?hp=l14

Congressional committees are taking note of a massive spike in the price of corn ethanol credits that refiners use to meet the EPA’s "renewable fuels" mandate — amid concern it could increase gasoline prices.

(*SMIRK*)

* "TAKING NOTE," HUH? THAT'S GREAT... JUST SUPER...

House and Senate energy panels are eyeing the price of ethanol renewable identification numbers, or RINs, which have skyrocketed from pennies a gallon to more than $1 per gallon in recent weeks.

* YET ANOTHER SCAM CREATED BY THE INSIDERS, FOR THE INSIDERS! FUCK THE PEOPLE... AS USUAL!

A spokesman for Valero, the largest independent U.S. refiner, said refiners can do only three things about the spike in the short term: Increase gasoline exports to countries that do not have the added RIN cost, decrease the amount of gasoline refined, or shift the costs to gasoline consumers.

“I suspect a combination of all three things happening with refiners,” said the spokesman, Bill Day.

* ALL THREE INCREASE DOMESTIC PRICES...!

“We’re just in the middle of a tornado trying to figure out what to do,” said Stephen Brown, vice president for federal and government affairs at independent refiner Tesoro. “But we can all agree this is not a good thing for consumers.”

* DOES ANYONE... ANYONE AT ALL... BELIEVE THE EPA GIVES A RAT'S ASS FOR CONSUMERS...???

At a public meeting March 8 in Michigan on EPA’s proposed 2013 volume requirements for the renewable fuels mandate, Marathon Petroleum testified that corn ethanol RINs prices could amount to a 10-cent increase in gasoline prices.

* FOLKS... THE ENVIRONMENTAL EXTREMISTS - AND COUNT OBAMA, REID, AND PELOSI IN WITH THEM - WANT THE PRICE YOU PAY FOR FUEL TO GO UP IN THE HOPE THAT THIS WILL "ENCOURAGE" YOU TO BUY LESS AND THUS "POLLUTE" LESS. THEY DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR WORK SITUATION OR YOUR PERHAPS WANTING TO VISIT "WHEREVER" "WHENEVER."

Refiners are blaming the price rise on a “blend wall” they have long warned about, in which lower demand for gasoline clashes with the increased annual volumes of renewable fuels that they’re required to blend in gasoline. The mandate is rising toward the ultimate requirement of 36 billion gallons per year by 2022. Refiners say they are forced, in turn, to purchase the more costly RINs to prove compliance with the mandate.

* REFINERS SAY THIS BECAUSE... umm... IT'S TRUE!

March 19, 2013 at 3:09 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/27m-federal-study-why-do-lesbians-have-higher-risk-hazardous-drinking

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $2.7 million to study why lesbians are at a higher “risk for hazardous drinking.”

* FOLKS... YA CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP!

* FOLKS... WHATEVER TOTAL GOVERNMENT SPENDING WAS FOR THE LAST YEAR WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON WAS PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES... I SAY WE RESTRICT NEXT FISCAL YEAR'S SPENDING TO THAT. (NOW THAT WOULD BE BIPARTISANISM!)

The University of Illinois has received grants since 2009 for its project, "Cumulative Stress and Hazardous Drinking in a Community of Adult Lesbians," which aims to develop “culturally sensitive” strategies to prevent lesbians from being drunks.

(*JUST THROWING MY HANDS UP*)

The study is being led by Tonda Hughes, professor at the Department of Health Systems Science at the University of Illinois, an “internationally recognized expert in the area of alcohol use among lesbians,” according to the University.

(*HEADACHE*)

Dr. Hughes has been receiving grants administered through the NIH National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) to study women and alcohol use since 2002. Hughes was the project leader for that study between 2002 and 2005, which received a total of $1,479,783.

* QUESTION, FOLKS: $1,479,783... THAT'S A LOT OF FUCKIN' MONEY - IS IT NOT? $2.7 MILLION... THAT'S EVEN MORE THAN $1.4 MILLION - RIGHT? THESE ARE STUDIES... STATISTICAL STUDIES... SURVEYS... SURVEY DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS... (*PAUSE*) HOW EXACTLY DO YOU SPEND THAT KINDA FUCKIN' MONEY ON SURVEYS...??? (I'D LOVE TO SEE THE EXPENSE ACCOUNTS... I'D LOVE FOR A FORENSIC ACCOUNTANT TO GO THROUGH ALL THE PROJECT "EXPENSES.")

The University of Illinois is not alone in receiving federal funds to study “sexual minorities” and their propensity to drink. The University of Washington has been awarded $1,154,445 since 2010 for its project “High Risk Drinking in Emerging Adult at-Risk Women,” which seeks to find out why young lesbians and bisexuals face an “elevated” chance for hazardous drinking.

Old Dominion University in 2012 received $446,056 for its study titled “Minority Stress, Alcohol Use, and Intimate Partner Violence Among Lesbians.”

As CNSNews.com previously reported, the NIH also is funding a study to examine why “three-quarters” of lesbians are obese, spending a total of $1.5 million on that research.

(*SILENCE*)

Requests for comment from the NIAAA and Dr. Hughes were not returned by publication of this story.

March 19, 2013 at 3:23 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323415304578368843570154814.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop

When a business loses $15.9 billion a year, some changes are typically in order—say, cutting costs. But not for the U.S. Postal Service, which is nominally run by Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe but is really run by the management gurus in Congress.

Mr. Donahoe said a few weeks ago that he'd end Saturday mail delivery later this year without a Congressional order not to, so naturally Congress is telling him he can't do it.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

In their continuing resolution to fund the government through September, those great fiscal conservatives in the House whooped through language that the Postal Service interprets to mean it must deliver on Saturday.

The Senate is expected to do the same this week.

* WE'VE GOTTA KILL 'EM. IT'S THE ONLY ANSWER. YET... WE CAN'T KILL 'EM. IT'S NOT A VIABLE ANSWER.

* STILL... WE CAN HOPE AND PRAY THEY DIE... LOTS OF THEM...

(*SHRUG*)

Republicans Bob Corker (Tenn.) and Tom Coburn (Okla.) say they'll offer an amendment on the Senate floor to let the Postal Service drop the six-day delivery requirement. It probably won't pass, but at least the vote will show who puts the care and feeding of postal unions above the interests of taxpayers.

* FOLKS... (*SIGH*)... THE POINT IS THAT REPUBLICANS CONTROL THE SENATE AND...

(*SHRUG*)

* WE DO NOT LIVE IN A FUNCTIONING TWO-PARTY NATION STATE. HELL... WE DON'T LIVE IN A FUNCTIONING ONE PARTY NATION STATE! AMERICA IS DYSFUNCTIONAL!!!

March 19, 2013 at 7:00 PM
William R. Barker said...

* THREE-PARTER... (Part 1 of 3)

http://www.testosteronepit.com/home/2013/3/18/housing-bubble-ii-but-this-time-its-different.html

We have seen it for several years now: foreclosure sales — there were 5 million since the peak of the housing bubble — have become the hunting grounds for "investors" with two goals: hanging on to these homes until the Fed’s flood of money drives up their value; and defraying the expenses of ownership by renting them out.

And funds have a third goal: collecting management fees. Thousands of smaller investors have piled into the game. And so have the giants.

Blackstone Group LP, the world’s largest private equity firm, plowed over $3.5 billion into the housing market, according to Bloomberg, to gobble up 20,000 vacant and foreclosed single-family homes. It just fattened up a credit line to $2.1 billion to do more of the same. Colony Capital LLC, which already owns 7,000, is putting $2.2 billion to work.

* HOW MUCH OF THAT $3.5 BILLION WAS THEIR OWN MONEY... AS OPPOSED TO BORROWED MONEY...? (OBVIOUSLY A $2.1 BILLION CREDIT LINE IS... er... A CREDIT LINE...)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

March 19, 2013 at 10:51 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 3)

Last year, institutional investors made up 19% of all sales in Las Vegas, 21% in Charlotte, 23% in Phoenix, and 30% in Miami. It had an impact. In the latest Case-Shiller report — a three-month moving average for October, November, and December — home values soared 9.9% in Atlanta, a bigger jump than even during the peak of the housing bubble. Las Vegas popped 12.9%, and Phoenix 23%. It’s getting hotter. In February, compared to prior year, asking prices jumped 14% in Atlanta, 18% in Las Vegas, and 25% Phoenix. Seen from another point of view: in January, the median price of a single-family home in Phoenix skyrocketed 35%.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

“We recognized that prices were moving faster than people expected,” explained Devin Peterson, a Blackstone real estate associate, to Bloomberg. Despite that, they’re still “finding opportunities to buy.” They might not be able to rent them out very quickly, but they’d rather not be “missing out on a few points in home price appreciation.” The race to buy is on. The next housing bubble is inflating.

* REPEAT:

The race to buy is on. The next housing bubble is inflating.

Money — which the Fed hands to its cronies at the frenetic pace of $85 billion a month — magically finds places to go and drives up values, and transactions take place, and paper gets shuffled around, and homes change hands as banks get out from under them, and fees and commissions change hands too. It inflates GDP, which is what everyone wants. And Chairman Bernanke can contort his arm slapping himself on the back.

Trying to rent these places is another story.

Only household formation solves the problem of vacant homes... but that takes years or decades.

Housing is zero-sum: when you move into a new place, you move out of the old place at the same time. So it becomes available. And someone else goes through the same process.

[F]ormerly foreclosed homes have now been pulled off the for-sale inventory list.

Hence the “tight” inventory.

And they’ve been transferred to the for-rent inventory list where they don’t bother anyone.

Except the owners.

(Colony Capital, for example, with its 7,000 homes, has an occupancy rate of 53%.)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

March 19, 2013 at 10:52 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 3 of 3)

Suddenly, the market for single-family rental homes (unlike apartments, which cater to different people) has turned into an elbow-to-elbow affair.

The pressure on rents is huge.

Year-over-year, rents edged up only 0.5% in Atlanta and dropped 1.7% in Las Vegas. For Phoenix, Bloomberg cited Fletcher Wilcox, a real estate analyst at Grand Canyon Title Agency: median rent per square foot rose 3% year-over-year in February 2011, and 1.5% in February 2012. But in February 2013, it fell 3%.

This tendency was confirmed by others. On the west side of Phoenix, where investors have concentrated their purchases of single-family homes, rents dropped by $100 a month last year — a stunning 10%! — according to James Breitenstein, CEO of Landsmith which has dumped most of its Phoenix properties. He is seeing similar pressures in Las Vegas and Atlanta. “There’s a whole bunch of rental supply that’s coming on that used to be sitting empty in bank portfolios,” he said.

Timing couldn’t be worse. Occupancy rates of single-family rental homes are already low (53% for Colony Capital) but [in addition] investors are buying ever more properties and flooding the rental market with them just when the stream of people who’ve gotten kicked out of their foreclosed homes is tapering off. With rising costs and declining revenues, the rental part of the business model collapses.

As the Fed’s money is trying to find a place to go, prices may continue to rise. But with the economics to support these prices — namely rental revenues — giving way, the remaining reason to buy would be a singular hope: economically unsustainable price appreciation. The definition of a bubble.

At some point, not being able to make money on rentals, investors will try to bail out. Then, the process of a Fed-inspired housing bubble blowing up starts all over again.

March 19, 2013 at 10:52 PM

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