China's Empty City

 If you build it, he will come -

This video has been making the rounds on Internet and it really got my attention. It seems that the US is not the only country in the world who thinks they can spend their way into prosperity. The Chinese think they can build their own Field Of Dreams, an entire city in Mongolia. They are hoping that the residents will come, but the problem is that the only ones interested are investors, and anyone from the west coast can tell you how badly that will turn out.

But hey it's different in China, real estate prices only go up there. It's a fact Jack.

529 Dropouts - Yahoo! Finance

More Parents Are Becoming 529 Dropouts:
"When Michael Singer of Coral Springs, Fla., started saving for his children's college education about six years ago, he relied mainly on a 529 savings plan sponsored by the state of New Mexico. Then the 49-year-old high-school teacher lost about half of his 529 savings because of an Oppenheimer bond fund that had bet heavily on mortgage-backed securities. Mr. Singer decided not to make the big contribution he had planned to his 529 this year, and he is now saving for college on his own, mostly by investing in municipal-bond funds and individual bonds."

With all the articles that have been written about the stock market decline, the vast majority of them were focused on 401K and IRA plans. This is the first one I've seen that even mention 529's. Pity the poor middle class couple who have seen their house, 401K and 529 plans take a dive in recent years. Actually there are probably quite a few generous grand parents that are in the same boat.

Which brings me to my most favorite under reported Elephant In The Room story, the College Tuition Bubble. For close to forty years our elected officials in Washington DC have felt it their duty to Socially Re-Engineer our society into a Utopia where everyone owns a house, has a college education, and works at a job that doesn't require dirty hands. In other words, a society molded in their own elite image. They are trying to deal with the fallout of the Housing Bubble, quite badly I might add, and don't have a clue about the tuition loan problem that is making Debt Slaves out of a generation after generation of young people.

House debtors have learned  the hard way that they've been deceived by the promise of  the great American Dream of home ownership. Now recent graduates are learning that they have also been deceived by another American Dream, a College Education. They've indebted themselves for many years to come, only to find that all their hard earned degree will buy them is a job as a night manager at McDonalds. A job where ironically they get their hands quite dirty.

Afghanistan, Khair (goodbye)

The American Way of Abandonment - Pat Buchanan:
"When America is about to throw an ally to the wolves, we follow an established ritual. We discover that the man we supported was never really morally fit to be a friend or partner of the United States."

I ran across this article by Pat Buchanan about a week ago and as usual found it a valuable lesson in modern history. I tucked it away in my memory bank but with all of the news about Obama waffling on Afghanistan and the talk of how corrupt the Karzai brothers are, the article came to mind immediately. If Pat is correct, and history repeats itself, we are out of Afghanistan right quick. And then watch the Return To The Killing Fields in all its horror on late night TV and the Internet.
On a lighter note, I've always loved the quote by Henry Kissinger:
"In this world it is often dangerous to be an enemy of the United States, but to be a friend is fatal"

New Bank Rules and More Lies

New Rules and More Lies Hide Cancerous Commercial Real Estate Loans: 
"Commercial real estate is blowing up so what do regulators do? The answer of course is to come up with new rules and regulations that will allow banks to ignore losses.
On October 31 the Wall Street Journal reported; Banks Get New Rules on Property."

I'm finding that the longer this Financial Crisis drags on, the stronger the language gets from the economic bloggers. Terms like Lies, Cheats, Thieves, Corrupt, and Banksters are becoming more common place. Check out Jesse's Cafe Americain for another example.
Now if Joe Six Pack and our Selected Officials started using the same words with the same anger in their voices, maybe we could fix this thing. Who am I kidding, Joe Six Pack is too busy trying to put food on the table and Congress is to busy lying, cheating, stealing, corrupting, and acting as lookouts for the Banksters.

Castles In The Sand

Dubai's Shut Up Finance: 
"We have heard of project finance, debt finance, LBO finance, islamic finance... we have even heard talk of Green Finance (self serving smile). But until yesterday, we never had the pleasure of Shut Up Finance."

The above post deals with Dubai's Bubble, which can't just be referred  to as a real estate bubble. It is really more of an Opulence Bubble, akin to what has happened here but on a vastly larger scale, and an almost cartoonish outcome. However like Dubai's Shut Up Finance our government has it's own Shut Up Policy, and it goes something like this:
Those who doubt the value of the Health Care Bill
should “shut up”.
Those who doubt the results of the Stimulus Program
should "shut up".
Those who doubt the value of Cash For Clunkers
should "shut up".
Those who throw Tea Parties
should "shut up".
You get the point, the boys and girls in D.C. just want to do things their way, and want us all to "shut up".
To which I respond, not too respectfully I might add,  
"In Your Hat".

Pick Ups At Home Depot - Las Vegas Sun

The New Faces Of Day Labor: 
"It sounds like a George Lopez joke:
Times are so bad that I saw an Anglo day laborer standing outside Home Depot the other day.”
Except it’s true.
In the latest sign of the Las Vegas Valley’s economic free fall, U.S. citizens are starting to show up in the early mornings outside home improvement stores and plant nurseries across the Las Vegas Valley, jostling with illegal immigrants for a shot at a few hours of work. Experts say the slow-starting but seemingly inexorable trend is occurring nationwide."

It saddens me to read an article like this for two reasons. The first and most obvious is the sympathy I have for the human suffering Americans are enduring during these hard economic times. The second is more political, and stirs the emotions of deep rooted anger at the current thinking of the DC elite. I feel anger at our politicians, our businesses, and immigration activists who constantly tell us that Americans don't want just any type of job. They don't want the non-college level jobs that have been exported to other countries in the name of Globalism. They don't want jobs that they feel are beneath them like laborer jobs, plumbers, electricians, heavy equipment operators. You know the kind of jobs our fathers did to put food on the table for us, so that we could live the American dream. According to our "fearless leaders" those jobs are better left to illegal migrant workers, or to off shore call centers and foreign manufacturers. My God, what red blooded American would want a manufacturing job in this day and age?

As I said in a post I wrote a few days ago - "these days I am starting to pay close attention to what the Left has to say. Their intent for what they say may be different than mine, but their observations ring true."

I give you this link to a Slate Magazine article entitled  What Are The Jobs Americans Won't Do? . Read it and you decide if the Left doesn't have a point. Besides I'm too pissed off at this whole fiasco, and Mr. Gross has a better flair for words than I, but I'm getting there.