Stilltitled

Recent Republican Party doctrine has emphasized the power of the individual, but underestimates the importance of connections, relationships, institutions and social filaments that organize personal choices and make individuals what they are….it is the main impediment to Republican modernization.

—David Brooks

The unexpected resurgence of Le Petomane, Joseph Pujol 

Le Petomane the movie

Le Petomane, the second movie

Le Petomane the book

Overall Foreclosure Report — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions from RealtyTrac

• 303,879 U.S. properties during August, a 12% increase from the previous month and a 27% increase from August 2007, though this was muted by “a big spike in activity last August.” August filings were 11 percent higher than the previous record of 273,001 set in May. 
• One in every 416 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing during the month
• REO Properties more than doubled from a year ago to 90,893.
• New Jersey ranks sixth in terms of the percentage increase in filings, month over month – 40% increase in August over July 2008, and the foreclosure rate ranked 11th – one filing in 536 households
• New York ranked 33rd at one in 1,444 households

“In August the total number of U.S. properties that received foreclosure filings as well as the national foreclosure rate were both the highest we’ve seen in any month since we began issuing our report in January 2005”

– James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac.

Home Sale & Price Reports

• Home prices: 15.9% decline YoY in June in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas, according to the S&P/Case- Shiller index, though the NAR reports a 4-7% decline
  • Additional 10% decline expected by Lehman through the end of 2009
  • NAR expects prices to increase 2-4% in 2009
• New Home Sales:  508k in 2008, 463k in 2009, 35% and 40% fewer home-sales, respectively, than 775k in 2007.
• Unsold Homes:
  • 3.9 million unsold existing single-family homes, the most since at least 1982.
  • There is an 11.1 month supply of existing unsold homes at the current sales pace, up from 4.6 months in September 2005.
  • The Pending Home Sales index in the Northeast fell 7.5 percent to 73.6 in July and is 13.2 percent below a year ago
  • The PHSI for the US fell 3.2 percent to 86.5 from an upwardly revised reading of 89.4 in June
  • “The Northeast region retreated following a robust gain in the previous month” – Laurence Yun, NAR Economist

“The chickens have come home to roost. Real estate inflation bailed out an awful lot of bad loans.”

—Jim Croft, founder of the Mortgage Asset Research Institute

Alaskan Senior Assistant Attorney General Michael Barnhill has increased efforts to stop the ongoing ethics investigation over the firing of public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan. He bases these efforts on the suggestion that the investigation is inherently biased and threatens to refuse subpoenas for seven Palin administration officials who have not cooperated with the probe.

If Mr. Obama wants to win, he needs to remember he’s running against John McCain for president, not Mrs. Palin for vice president.

—Karl Rove

1. Palin’s office approved a state job for a friend and campaign aide with whom she shared a land investment, financial records and interviews over the past two weeks show.
2. She hired a former lobbyist for a pipeline company to help oversee a multibillion-dollar deal with that same company.
3. She named a police chief accused of harassment to head the state police.
4. She sent campaign e-mails on her city hall account while serving as mayor of Wasilla — conduct for which she later turned in an oil commissioner on ethics charges.
5. She suggested that she opposed the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere,” but when she campaigned for governor, she said she was in favor of the bridge.
6. She hired lobbyists to get more than $27mm in federal earmarks for local projects in Wasilla – among the highest per-capita in the nation

[these issues] raise some serious questions about her judgment and serious questions about her standards of ethics in public service. [it] may be acceptable in Alaska; it would not be acceptable in Washington, D.C., a place whose norms she wants to change.

James Thurber, director of American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies.

bloomberg
fact-check

Palin is connecting because, like a reality TV show’s most sympathetic contestant, she puts front and center the inexperience, imperfection and pain that most professional politicians work so hard to hide.

—Marc Fisher

If 100-year floods visit markets every decade or so, it is because our knowledge of the cards in history’s deck keeps expanding. When perceptions change, liquidity evaporates quickly. Indeed, the belief that one can safely get out of a “liquid” market is one of the great fallacies of investing.

—Roger Lowenstein