Free Republic

WASHINGTON – Ben Bernanke presided over his first meeting as Federal Reserve chairman in March 2006 believing the nation's economy could pull off a "soft landing" from falling home prices. Three months later, Bernanke had begun to grasp that he and others had underestimated the risk housing posed to the economy. Newly released transcripts of Fed meetings during Bernanke's first year as chairman show that, among Fed officials, he often expressed the most concern about housing. But no official, according to the transcripts, recognized the extent of the damage a housing bubble would cause. A year later, the housing market's...

This seems like a really bad idea to me. Talk about crony capitalism. Individual buyers will be shut out from buting these properties.

When it comes to the feminist version of history (sorry — herstory!), it’s hurrah for Gloria Steinem. She started a magazine nobody ever read. And cheers for Billie Jean King, the tennis player who proved a young professional athlete could beat a 55-year-old slob. Give it up for Indira Gandhi and Hillary Clinton, who proved that you could sweep into power on the coattails of your dad or husband, and by all means let us celebrate Oprah Winfrey, who proved that you could spin mystical mumbo-jumbo, airy empowerment talk and perpetual wounded victimhood into a billion-dollar sisterhood racket. What about...

If you heard more "Merry Christmas" than "Happy Holiday" during the 2011 holiday season, it may be a sign that using "Politically Correct" language is going out of style.

The bust that began in 2007 has just begun to ravage tax revenues in communities from coast to coast. The problem is unlikely to subside soon. For instance, Baltimore collected $815 million in property taxes during the most recent fiscal year. Next year, the figure is predicted to shrink to $803.5 million. The following year, $773 million. The year after that, $735.7 million. The year after that, $729.4 million. “I don’t see any quick fixes over the next four or five years, to be honest.” Baltimore already faces a budget deficit of more than $50 million next year. “Obviously, it...

MONA CHAREN DECEMBER 23, 2011 Merry Manly Christmas and Hanukkah The code of the gentleman is not obsolete. This is the time of year to turn our thoughts to noble sentiments and inspiring stories. William Bennett, who has established something of a cottage industry in uplift, has a new book out that celebrates and explicates all that is bracing, wholesome, affecting, and necessary about men and manliness That such a book is required, it must be acknowledged, is not good news about our cultural health, and Bennett introduces The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood with tidings...

Real estate agents are famous for putting a listing in the best possible light to close a sale. On Thursday, the industry's national trade association confirmed that its monthly data have been painting a rosier picture of the pace of home sales since 2007. As msnbc.com reported in March, the National Association of Realtors has been overstating the pace of existing home sales by more than 16 percent. The trade group now says just 17.7 million existing homes were sold from 2007 to 2010, not the 20.6 million it originally reported. The NAR made no changes to its data on...

State officials say a New Jersey man and his adult son were wounded in a pheasant hunting accident this weekend, then shot a second time while they were discussing the first mishap with authorities Both shootings occurred Saturday morning in the Colliers Mills Wildlife Management area in Jackson. The first shooting involved a single hunter who fled the scene, while the second involved a group of other hunters. The victims — identified only as two Jackson residents, ages 60 and 34 — each had pellet wounds to their face and hands, but the injuries were not considered serious. A state...

30 percent of home owners "under water". Home values will drop another 3-5 percent and stay at that level the next few years.

WASHINGTON — Who is paying for the two-month extension of the payroll tax cut working its way through Congress? The cost is being dropped in the laps of most people who buy homes or refinance beginning next year. The typical person who buys a $200,000 home or refinances that amount starting on Jan. 1 would have to pay roughly $17 more a month for their mortgage, thanks to a fee increase included in the payroll tax cut bill that the Senate passed Saturday. The White House said the fee increases would be phased in gradually. The legislation provides a two-month...

Single-family originations will likely dip in 2012 because of fewer refinances, according to Frank Nothaft, chief economist at Freddie Mac. The market will see a refinance burnout, Nothaft said, with a dwindling pool of eligible borrowers and higher mortgage rates by the second half of 2012. Nothaft projects $1.3 trillion in single-family mortgage originations in 2011, compared to $1.14 trillion in 2012 and $1.07 trillion in 2013. The Freddie Mac projections for 2012 come as a Pew Research Center study showed a record-low number of adults married in the U.S. About 51% of all adults were married as of 2010,...

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Moscow today, in the largest of more than 70 protests across Russia, to voice their anger at alleged election fraud and to demand that the results of the parliamentary elections be cancelled, a new election be held, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin resign. Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, one of the organizers of the rally, explained the protesters’ demands to ABC News. “Our demand is to cancel these criminal elections, because Putin stole about 13 million votes. Secondly, to fire Mr. [Vladimir] Churov, who is responsible for the election and to...

Imagine that you are in the business of lending money. At one time, the business model was simple; money was lent to people who had a high probability of repaying it. The rules were then changed by federal government in the interest of "fairness," with laws passed such as the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and federal agencies like Housing & Urban Development (HUD) activated. To stay in business, you must follow the government's dictates. Then the government changes the rules again by changing the percentage of loans that go to certain types of borrowers in the interest of "fairness." Just...

Stocks closed in negative territory in thin, shortened trading Friday as investors were reluctant to go long ahead of the weekend and amid ongoing worries over the euro zone. The Dow and S&P posted their worst Thanksgiving week since the Great Depression on a percentage basis. The Dow Jones Industrial Average erased their gains to finish lower, led by H-P [HPQ 25.39 -0.39 (-1.51%) ] and Chevron [CVX 92.29 -1.46 (-1.56%)]. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq also ended lower, logging a seventh consecutive decline. Some traders are watching for 1,150 on the S&P as the next key level. The...

Why work in America?

For decades we were warned that when the Baby Boomers started to retire that this country would be facing a retirement crisis of unprecedented magnitude. Well, that day has arrived ladies and gentlemen. Back on January 1st, the Baby Boomers began to retire and more than 10,000 of them will be retiring every single day for years to come. Most of them have not saved up nearly enough money for retirement. At the same time, private sector pension plans are failing all over the place, hundreds of state and local government pension plans from coast to coast are woefully...

Thanksgiving is the holiday that pulls families together, squeezing them around a table for a feast of turkey, tradition and togetherness. We encourage conversations meant to be personally relevant, but sometimes they turn into a horizontal Babel, with each generation speaking in a different tongue. It's a stretch to identify an entire generation by its tastes in fashion and music, but such tastes offer strong clues. You can separate boomers from Generation Xers and millenials by who prefers the Beatles, Michael Jackson or Lady Gaga. Seniors who came of age during World War II still groove on Glenn Miller and...

Dee Dee Myers, former press secretary to President Bill Clinton, goes on Meet the Press and calls Newt Gingrich a political "sociopath." Does moderator David Gregory call her out? Nope. To the contrary, Gregory proceeds to play a clip of convicted felon Jack Abramoff accusing Newt of "corruption." View the video here.

The tar sandhills near Mills in north central Nebraska, through which the Keystone XL pipeline is planned to be built. The woman seated before the row of suited state legislators in her red Husker team hoodie was choking on tears. She had grown up on a farm in Nebraska. Her parents had grown up on farms, in the days before electricity and running water, and now she said generations of toil and sweat could be destroyed in an instant by a $7bn pipeline project. A leak from the pipeline, which would run from the tar sands of Alberta to the...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Home prices dropped in nearly three quarters of U.S. cities over the summer, dragged down by a decline in buyer interest and a high number of foreclosures. The National Association of Realtors said Wednesday that the median price for previously occupied homes fell in the July-September quarter in 111 out of 150 metropolitan areas tracked by the group. Prices are compared with the same quarter from the previous year. Fourteen cities had double-digit declines.

Will Baby Boomers be the last generation to enjoy the modern concept of a leisure-filled retirement? It's a worthy question to ponder in light of a new Pew Research Center report showing a growing wealth gap between young and old in the United States. Using government data over the last 25 years, Pew found that households headed by those over 65 have made "dramatic gains" in economic well-being, while those headed by younger adults have fallen steadily behind. In 2009, elderly households possessed 42 percent more median net worth than their same-age counterparts had in 1984. Young adults veered in...

Despite all the evidence of the past several decades, you still have not grasped one simple fact: that, just about a century after the last one ended, we engaged in a great civil war, one that will determine the kind of country we and our descendants shall henceforth live in for at least the next hundred years — and, one hopes, a thousand. Since there hasn’t been any shooting, so far, some call the struggle we are now involved in the “culture wars,” but I have another, better name for it: the Cold Civil War In many ways, this new...

Dustin Hoffman’s graduate is rooting for Mitt Romney. Woodstock’s attendees are donating to the Republican National Committee. Haight Ashbury’s residents are complaining about big government. The long-haired, dope-smoking, free-loving baby boomers are becoming majority-Republican and politically indistinguishable from their elder cousins in the so-called “silent generation,” according to a new Pew Research Center study. That’s the takeaway lesson from a comprehensive new study of the baby boomers’ changing political attitudes released Thursday by the Pew Research Center.

Winding down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was never going to be easy, given the mortgage giants' market dominance and the housing lobby of Realtors, home builders, banks and others arrayed against reform. But if even a Republican House of Representatives can't take a baby step toward a private market after some $142 billion in taxpayers losses, who will? It's a question that House Speaker John Boehner might consider as he reads a letter that Florida Republican Bill Posey and New York Democrat Gary Ackerman are circulating to fellow Members for signatures. The letter supports an amendment to an appropriations...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: As I mentioned, "With his jobs plan stymied in Congress by Republican opposition --" this is the New York Times. The truth is his jobs plan is stymied in Congress by his inability to get Democrats to vote in majority for it. "-- President Obama on Monday will begin a series of executive-branch actions to confront housing, education and other economic problems over the coming months, heralded by a new mantra: 'We can’t wait' for lawmakers to act.' According to an administration official, Mr. Obama will kick off his new offensive in Las Vegas --" where he...

Banks Not Wanting to Lend is a myth. It’s a trendy thing to blame the banks for not wanting to lend, but it’s not reality. Don’t get me wrong…most everything else might be able to be blamed on them, but not this. This is what makes the problem in mortgage and housing so fundamentally grave. It’s just not as easy as lowering rates, doing a mass refi event, or pulling Foreclosures off the market. After nearly 5 years, if there was an easy fix (such as printing trillions of dollars in order to try to create inflation) housing would be...

Most people have no idea that Wall Street has become a gigantic financial casino.  The big Wall Street banks are making tens of billions of dollars a year in the derivatives market, and nobody in the financial community wants the party to end.  The word "derivatives" sounds complicated and technical, but understanding them is really not that hard.  A derivative is essentially a fancy way of saying that a bet has been made.  Originally, these bets were designed to hedge risk, but today the derivatives market has mushroomed into a mountain of speculation unlike anything the world has ever...

Congressman: Obama should unilaterally ‘refinance every home mortgage’ [VIDEO] By Nicholas Ballasy - The Daily Caller 11:43 PM 10/21/2011 Virginia Democratic Rep. Jim Moran told The Daily Caller on Thursday evening that President Obama should “refinance every home mortgage” without congressional approval in order to “reset the economy.” “Absolutely, I think [Obama] should do that but there are not a lot of places where he can act unilaterally,” Moran told TheDC during Conservation International’s Oct. 20 dinner in Washington, D.C. “If he chooses to act unilaterally,” Moran said, “the likelihood is that there will be language in the appropriations bills...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The percentage of Americans who owned their homes has seen its biggest decline since the Great Depression, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The rate of home ownership fell to 65.1% in April 2010, 1.1 percentage points lower than it was in 2000. The decline was the biggest drop since the 1930s, when home ownership plunged 4.2%. The most recent decade-over-decade drop, however, only tells half the story. Home ownership during the 2000s "was really high in the middle of the decade, up to almost 70% at one point around 2004," said Ellen Wilson, a survey...

NEW YORK -- In Tiffany Spaulding's 12 years in the pharmaceutical industry, she has worked for three companies, two of which no longer exist, and relocated to four states. Now 39 and living in Brookfield, Conn., she hasn't had a promotion in five years and says she sees no chance to advance, stuck behind a wall of baby boomers. She would quit and turn her hobby of jewelry design into a business, she says, if not for the home and school loans that eat up half her salary. Spaulding, according to a new report, is a typical member of the...

Destiny Is Demography By Bill Bonner 09/16/11 Baltimore, Maryland – The San Francisco Federal Reserve bank came out with a gloomy forecast last month. Its analysts said that stocks were likely to earn paltry returns over the next 10 years. The reason cited was simple enough; stockholders don’t live forever. ‘Demography is destiny,’ said Auguste Comte. ‘It works the other way around too,’ he might have added. If they thought they were going to live longer, America’s most ubiquitous age cohort — the baby boomers — might continue to buy stocks. Instead, the cold hand of the grave is on...

LOS ANGELES – Carol Willison has made lots of financial sacrifices for her two children over the years, including paying most of her older daughter’s medical school tuition. But Willison’s generosity has reached its limits. Not only doesn’t the 60-year-old Seattle woman plan to leave her daughters an inheritance when she dies, she’s trying to spend every last dime on herself before she goes. “My goal is when they carry me away in that box that my bank account is going to say zero,” Willison said. “I’m going to spoil myself now.” Upending the conventional notion of parents carefully tending...

Baby boomers who came of age during the social and political upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s tended to call themselves Democrats, and as time passed, that identification strengthened. In 1969, far more in the 18- to 29-year-old age cohort — the front end of the baby boom — called themselves Democrats (35%) than Republicans (21%). A decade later, when they were 28 to 39 years old, their identification with the Democratic Party over the GOP was even stronger (45% to 19% in Gallup's surveys). But starting in the 1980s, attitudes of the baby boomers began changing. Polls found them...

They say there are only two sure things in life: death and taxes.  Thanks to unbelievable gains in medical technology in recent years however, most Americans are now able to delay the former inevitability for decades longer than their ancestors.  Because of this, at a time when America’s real estate industry is struggling, there’s one market sector that’s proving to be recession proof: senior housing.  According to a recent article in the New York Times, “[d]emand for nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and retirement communities is expected to balloon in the next two decades as baby boomers retire and the incidence...

Older people almost always seem to think they had it tougher than “kids today” do. So some older folks are striking back against the privileges enjoyed by today’s young people. And this doesn’t bode well for the future of society. Consider a recent story out of Pennsylvania. “The owner of a small restaurant outside Pittsburgh is banning children under the age of six, saying they regularly disrupted other customers’ meals,” the Wall Street Journal reported recently. “I’ve decided someone in our society had to dig their heels in on this issue,” the owner (a former teacher, luckily not of grammar)...

There is nowhere left to hide. America’s governing elites begin to internalize the magnitude of their failure to generate jobs. CBO now predicts worse than 8% unemployment until 2014. America begins to engage, seriously, with the implications of the faltering dollar and reconsider the appeal of the gold standard. From The New Yorker to The National Interest to The Washington Monthly to The Nixon Foundation, thoughts turn to gold

LEADVILLE, Colo. -- A black bear went into a tent in a central-Colorado campground and bit or scratched a sleeping teenage boy's arm. State wildlife officials say the boy was camping out with his family in the mountains near Leadville when the bear grabbed him early Friday. Colorado Division of Wildlife spokesman Randy Hampton tells KMGH-TV the boy needed medical care, but his wounds didn't appear to be life-threatening.

INDIANAPOLIS - This week on Eyewitness News, we begin what we call the Generations Project. All this week, we will look at baby boomers. If you are one, you may learn something about yourself. If you're not, perhaps you will recognize characteristics in someone you know. Either way, we hope it will lead us all to a better understanding of each other. We've all heard the term "baby boomer." But who fits into the generation? Baby boomers were born from 1946 to 1964. Their age today is 47 to 65. Like every generation, boomers have unique characteristics and values that...

In Running on Empty, Peter G. Peterson excoriates the "we-first" attitude of retiring baby boomers.  Having read Peterson's take on boomer retirement, one is left with the impression that boomers are selfishly intent on bankrupting future generations and driving America into permanent decline to boot.  Happily, Peterson concludes, there is a solution: higher taxes and reduced benefits.  This is what Peterson calls "real leadership." Breaking promises and raising taxes may seem like "leadership" to some, but in fact it is just another effort to excuse and facilitate irresponsible spending by future administrations.  The common refrain of every liberal commentator...

Knee replacement surgeries have doubled over the last decade and more than tripled in the 45-to-64 age group, new research shows. Hips are trending that way, too. And here's a surprise: It's not all due to obesity. Ironically, trying to stay fit and avoid extra pounds is taking a toll on a generation that expects bad joints can be swapped out like old tires on a car. "Boomeritis" or "fix-me-itis" is what Dr. Nicholas DiNubile, a suburban Philadelphia surgeon, calls it. "It's this mindset of fix me at any cost, turn back the clock," said Dr. DiNubile. "The boomers are...

There were a few grim statistics in Bank of America's annual survey of rich people. Over half of respondents doubted their children would be as wealthy as they are. By comparison, 96% of Boomers were wealthier than their parents. And more bad news for babys of Baby Boomers. Only 49% of rich people said that leaving a plump inheritance is a "personally important use of their wealth." Financial security (90%), financial freedom (78%), travel (64%) and quality of relationships with family and friends (53%) rated as more important uses of wealth. Perhaps the Boomers feel this way because most of...

Liberals of the Baby Boomer generation are fond of calling conservatives hypocrites. If a conservative sets a moral line with regard to sexual behavior, then falls short, Baby Boomer liberals point and shout and laugh with glee. If a conservative stands up against government spending, then has a home loan backed by Fannie Mae, Baby Boomer liberals suggest that the nefarious conservative doesn’t mean what he says. If a conservative says that marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman, then gets divorced, Baby Boomer liberals shout that the conservative no longer has the right to argue for...

I have often said to my mother, who is a baby boomer and liberal, that my generation (Gen X), would have to clean up the mess that her generation left behind. As time wears on, that statement rings more and more true.

I follow what’s being discussed about Social Security. A Google alert produces 20 stories a day on average. In my view most of it is drivel. The passionate (and prolific) supporters of Roosevelt’s great legacy constantly make the same assertions. That SS has a Trust Fund that will last until 2037, and that SS does not have any impact on the deficit. Neither of these things are true. When you look at a financial statement always look first to the lower right for the “bottom line”. It's no different with SS. Their bottom line for 2010 was a deficit of...

Companies are quietly redesigning their products to accommodate the needs of (shh, don’t say it aloud) aging baby boomers. So reports the Wall Street Journal. “The generation that sent diaper sales soaring in the 1960s, bought power suits in the 1980s and indulged in luxury cars in the 2000s is getting ready to retire: The oldest boomers turn 65 this year. . . . But there’s a catch: Baby boomers, famously demanding and rebellious, don’t want anyone suggesting they’re old.” Marketers, always alert to the sensitivities of this most self-absorbed of cohorts, are developing products and shopping environments that will...

The German government on Friday said it was working on a bill aimed at battling a growing tide of complaints against noisy children in what is a rapidly ageing society. Regulations on noise fall under Germany's emissions laws, and a bill tweaking these is due to go before Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet in February, a spokesman for the environment ministry said. "Noise made by childcare centres, playgrounds and places where ball games are played do not generally constitute a harmful environmental effect," the Passauer Neue Presse daily cited the bill as saying. The government is also working on an amendment...

In keeping with a generation’s fascination with itself, the time has come to note the passing of another milestone: On New Year’s Day, the oldest members of the Baby Boom Generation will turn 65, the age once linked to retirement, early bird specials and gray Velcro shoes that go with everything. Though other generations, from the Greatest to the Millennial, may mutter that it’s time to get over yourselves, this birthday actually matters. According to the Pew Research Center, for the next 19 years, about 10,000 people “will cross that threshold” every day — and many of them, whether through...

FROM the moment they entered the workforce in the 1960s, baby-boomers began to shape America’s economy and politics. They will do the same as they leave. The first of the estimated 78m Americans born between 1946 and 1964 turn 65 in 2011, the normal age for retirement. As their ranks swell in coming years, the burden of financing their retirement will mount. So will their electoral importance. Retiring boomers will squeeze the economy from two directions. The number of people enrolled in Medicare (federally funded health care, available from the age of 65) will grow from 47m in 2010 to...

Eighty percent of baby boomers are pessimistic about the current direction of the United States, according to the Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends study released Monday. Who can blame them, with retirement and pension funds shrinking and with the unemployment rate near 10%? The boomer generation consists of adults between the ages of 45 and 64, according to the The Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank. "Most Americans are pretty glum three years into a Great Recession and a jobless recovery, but even in that context, the baby boomers stand out," said Paul Taylor, co-author of the...