Freedomshift

Earlier today, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported that mortgage applications dropped another 1.2%, declining for the sixth consecutive week and the 10th of the past 11, which has all but put a nail in the coffin of the housing "recovery" (for some perspective on why, read this ). But does that mean that as demand for mortgages dries up on even the smallest bounce in interest rates, that unless one is flush with cash, one is shut out of the housing market? Not at all. The reason for that is that as demand for conventional mortgages plunges, demand for un conventional ones - those which marked the mania phase of the last housing bubble, Adjustable Rate Mortgages, are back to 2008 levels. Read more: here

Bullet holes in Michael Hastings car?

There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice. — Charles De Montesquieu Cheye Calvo only intended to be home long enough to grab a bite to eat and walk his dogs. Calvo worked full-time at an educational foundation in Washington, D.C., but he also had an unusual part-time job: he was mayor of the small town of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. In 2004, at age thirty-three, he was the youngest elected mayor in the history of Prince George’s County, Maryland. Now thirty-seven, he lived with his wife, Trinity Tomsic, her mother, Georgia Porter, and their two black labradors, Payton and Chase. Calvo was due back in town later that night for a community meeting. Read more: here

In various articles and in my latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution Of The West, I have pointed out that the European sovereign debt crisis is being used to terminate the sovereignty of the countries that are members of the EU. There is no doubt that this is true, but the sovereignty of the EU member states is only nominal. Although the individual countries still retain some sovereignty from the EU government, they are all under Washington’s thumb, as demonstrated by the recent illegal and hostile action taken on Washington’s orders by France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Austria against the airliner carrying Bolivia’s President Evo Morales. Flying back to Bolivia from Moscow, Morales’ plane was denied overflight and refueling permission by Washington’s French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese puppets and had to land in Austria, where the presidential plane was searched for Edward Snowden. It was a power play by Washington to kidna

A Purple Heart Marine was groped and swabbed by TSA agents recently at a California airport while on his way to a ceremony to honor him as veteran of the year in his district. Cpl. Nathan Kemnitz sustained severe injuries from a IED detonation while on duty in Fallujah, Iraq in 2004. While traveling to Sacramento, to receive the award, TSA agents at Sacramento International Airport pulled Kemnitz aside for additional screening. When the screeners ordered him to lift up his arms for a full body scan, the decorated veteran told the TSA goons that because of his injuries, he cannot lift up his right arm. ‘My right arm doesn’t work. It’s a lot of hassle for me to do that,’ Kemnitz told The Military Times. The screeners then proceeded to probe underneath Kemnitz’s medals, while feeling under the Marine’s waistband and swabbing his shoes for explosives. Disgusted with his treatment, Kemnitz’s escort Patricia Martin snapped photos of the search and made them public. Read more: here

Wondering how the blow out in interest rates is impacting commercial banks, which just happen to have substantial duration exposure in the form of various Treasury and MBS securities, not to mention loans, structured products and of course, trillions in IR swap, derivatives and futures? Read more: here

We as a nation had an unparalleled, historic opportunity to set things right in the aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown. Alas, we blew it. Instead of tearing down what had failed spectacularly, we chose to do more of what failed spectacularly: cartel-crony capitalism, centralized wealth and power and an expansion of our financialized debtocracy. Gordon Long and I discussed this epic miss in  Window of Opportunity: Blown! While it's certainly easy to blame our corrupt, self-serving leadership, we have tolerated their "more of the same." It's been said that a people get the government they can tolerate (as well as the one they deserve), and the American people have tolerated an expansion of everything that is systemically destructive because we dared not risk our share of the Savior State swag. Read more: here

Read more: here

We were promised by the cognoscenti of PhD economists that higher mortgage rates would not affect the so-called housing recovery. They devoutly prayed to the god of momentum that "rates were still low historically" and "housing is on a self-sustaining path" and numerous other truisms that always fail at the turning points. Well, it appears from mortgage application data that things are not looking so hot. Read more: here