So a President Wearing Clown Mask Goes to a Rodeo…

Townhall.com ^ | August 17, 2013 | John Ransom

[Kaslin]

Let’s put this housing “boom” we’ve all heard about in perspective.

Let’s look at it not just with Progressive-colored glasses, but also with the frank stare of Main Street watching a rodeo clown wearing a presidential mask.

Stop me if you heard this one before:

According to a report by Goldman Sachs all is not that rosy in real estate. The benefits of the housing recovery have been targeted to those who least likely need it.

I’m not just talking about the widely reported disparity in prices between high-end and low-end homes.

It goes much deeper than that. 

Half of all home purchases today are being made with cash, accord to the analysis made by Goldman Sachs.

The report studied data from the census, the realtors' association and the bankers’ association. What it found is worrisome.

For every dollar of purchase price, only 44 cents in being financed compared with 67 cents before the crash.

While it shows that banks can weather a real estate downturn, as can homeowners with such high equity, it also shows that they have accomplished this feat at the expense of broader participation in the housing market.

Mortgage origination in the United States is only about a third of the size it was at the market peak. The $1.5 trillion mortgage market is now only $500 billion, according to Goldman Sachs.

That means that it’s highly likely that you, and you, and you can’t afford to buy a home no matter how good your credit is if you don’t have the prohibitive cash down payment.

With the median home price in the U.S. at $214,200, that means that the average buyer is putting down $119,952.

Is that the kind of money most people have either in cash or equity?

No, of course not. And only liberals would try to convince us that this is progress.

“The analysis estimates that around 20% of all homes sold before the housing crash were ‘all-cash’ sales (or around 30% of sales by dollar volume),” reports the Wall Street Journal. “But over the past seven years, the all-cash share of sales has more than doubled, increasing by more than 30 percentage points, according to economists Hui Shan, Marty Young and Charlie Himmelberg.”

So, as long as you have anywhere from all cash to half cash to buy a home, congratulations, you’re a homeowner.

The rest of us? Well, who really cares about the little people?

And liberals have problems with “trickle-down economics”?

At least when Reagan was president, the trickle you felt from on high was cash and cash equivalents. 

The numbers from Goldman Sachs present the most compelling evidence yet that the bank reform measures known as Dodd-Frank and associated housing “reform” measures instituted by Obama’s consumer Gestapo have failed.

The whole Big State idea of homeownership, in fact, has failed. 

Since the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002, stretching through this current administration, Washington has made a fine mess of what was once the cornerstone of American freedom and prosperity: the financial markets, including and especially, the financial markets that loan money for Main Street homes.

It’s not that these markets weren’t in need of reform or updated regulations.

They were.

Rather, it’s just that the type of makeover that the markets received has been both ineffective at solving the real problems and draconian in effect.

This is how bad it’s gotten: Oil prices-- something we all feel the effects of at the pump-- keep going up as a result of the world-wide monetary stimulus measures by federal reserve banks.

The result?

You get screwed.

Conversely, housing prices set record lows while interest rates were puny.

Again: You got screwed.

And you got screwed by the same design that keeps oil prices high.

How, you ask?

Because one of the benefits of a recession is that consumers are supposed to get a temporary reprieve from high prices, like in oil and housing and interest rates.

You got no reprieve as to gasoline because of Federal Reserve policy.

“The Federal Reserve could increase the risk that the U.S. economy suffers a damaging bout of deflation,” reports Reuters, “if it tapers its bond buying too aggressively, a senior central banker said on Wednesday.”

“Deflation” in this scenario is low, low prices for you, especially for gasoline.

Conversely, the two areas where you might have benefited—real estate and real estate financing—have been closed off to you, this time by federal-- as opposed to Fed--policies that make if difficult for banks to loan money without getting sued.

But the Fed is also implicated here. Why would banks take the trouble to loan money to you-- and risk federal investigation-- at a time when the Fed is providing gobs of money to the stock market, in effect, turning the equity markets into less risky transactions than housing?

Even regular, registered Democrats would agree that too many Obama policies like these  have had the net effect of leaving the poor and the middle class way behind.

This is certainly true in housing and finance, where Obama mostly got his own way. Blame Bush certainly, but in real estate and real estate financing, the system work exactly as Obama & Co. planned it.

They have no one to blame but themselves.

Look, I don’t think all progressives are hypocrites. Only some of them are.

But when progressive policies work out hypocritically in practice, the difference between being dumb and being a hypocrite becomes only a theoretical reality. 

And that theoretical reality contrasts nicely with the actual reality between a rodeo clown wearing a presidential mask and a president wearing a clown mask to the rodeo.

At least the rodeo clown can eventually take off his mask.

[bigheadfred]

did he just call the totus a clown i demand an investigation

[Berlin_Freeper]

Clowns are funny and lovable. Only an Obama Clown is disturbing.

Obama is the one that should be arrested, for disturbing the peace.

[NormsRevenge]

So a clown walks up to the gate at the WH, asks, is the head clown around?

FRee speech? Or living dangerously?

Anything to distract from Benghazi

[TigersEye]

The Congressional Clown Caucus is not pleased with your shenanigans!

[Grampa Dave]

[Fightin Whitey]

Do YOU Like the Circus?

[tumblindice]

I’m going to tell! I’m going to tell!

I’m calling Okra Whinefree and the National Association for the Advancement of Clowns, Purple-lipped.

Geometric logic, clown-haters. Geometric logic.

[andyk]

If half of all home purchases are made with cash, I’d guess they’re not being made by people who need a roof over their heads.

[cloudmountain]

We bought our house in 1982. Things were the same then. We came up with TONS of cash and were LUCKY to get the house at 15%. The going interest rate then was 18%.

We had to live/work overseas to get that kind of money. We couldn't have done it otherwise.

FYI, Saudi ARAMCO (Arabian American Oil Company--Chevron, Texaco, Flying A and Shell, a Dutch company) workers did and do not have to pay federal income taxes and because we were living over THERE we didn't have to pay California state income tax. Win-win for all.

Today Saudi ARAMCO, the number one petroleum company, takes out 12.5 million barrels of petroleum per DAY. The Kuwait Petroleum Company, the NINTH largest company in the world takes out, daily, only 2.9 million barrels of oil per day. Saudi ARAMCO is our friend, thank goodness.

I was told then that Saudi ARAMCO has 200 years of oil reserves. Also, their "Empty Quarter," the Rub Al Khali has yet to be TOUCHED by the company.

The King owns all the oil. The Big Four sold the Saudi petroleum BACK to them in 1982. THEN, the King started making one billion dollars every two and a half days. Boggles the mind. I never could wrap my mind around that much money. Their money is PETRO-DOLLARS.

My husband was over there for their gas industry. Before, all their natural gas, which ALWAYS come us with the petroleum, was BURNED off. The country looked like a giant birthday cake at night. They finally began to collect the natural gas, liquefy it and ship it out that way.

[Iron Munro]

Barack Obama Speech, February, 2012:

“One of the proudest things of my three years in office is helping to restore a sense of respect for America around the world"

[wmfights]

Thanks for posting, this was a good read.

I disagree that a decline in home ownership and higher down payments is a bad thing. People learning to be wary of over extending themselves and understanding that the future will probably not be better is smart financial management. I believe people are adapting to the "new normal" i.e., higher unemployment, less full time jobs, declining benefit packages and stagnation. If you buy a home now it's because that's where you want to live not because you expect to make money on it.

[Standing Wolf]

The whole Big State idea of homeownership, in fact, has failed.

I believe the Big State idea is in the process of failing whole and complete.

[potlatch]

I'll never forget JOKER-BOY. Wish we could have seen Obama's full expression when it happened and I'm still astounded that the parents of a Black child dared do it!

---

[Iron Munro]

Before, all their natural gas, which ALWAYS come us with the petroleum, was BURNED off. The country looked like a giant birthday cake at night. They finally began to collect the natural gas, liquefy it and ship it out that way.

Long ago, during the deepest part of the Cold War and before the advent of the interstates I drove solo from coast to coast and found myself going through west Texas at night. If I saw one car in an hour it was a lot.

All of a sudden, off in the distance, it looked like there was a war going on. At first I didn't know what I was seeing - My initial reaction was that there was an attack of some sort in progress.

We only had AM radio back then and at night, way out in the toolies, you were fortunate to get anything at all on it so there was no news available.

After a while I came close enough to the source of one of the flares to make out the structure and more or less figured out what I was seeing.

[353FMG]

>Saudi ARAMCO is our friend, thank goodness.<

.
Yeah right.

You spent too much time in the sun on your catamaran in Half Moon Bay.

[gunsequalfreedom]

I find it incredibly hard to accept that someone with ambitions to be a homeowner does not have $100,000 as a down payment on a $225,000 home. This article is really messed up.

What the article defines as a homeowner is someone perpetually in debt to a bank and not serious about saving money to actually become a owner of a home.

Shut off the cable TV, get rid of the expensive cell phone plan, forego the new car, diners out, the extra $2.00 a day put into a vending machine.

It is called delayed gratification. It is called I want a home more than I want all these other daily fun things.

[cloudmountain]

Long ago, during the deepest part of the Cold War and before the advent of the interstates I drove solo from coast to coast and found myself going through west Texas at night. If I saw one car in an hour it was a lot.
All of a sudden, off in the distance, it looked like there was a war going on. At first I didn't know what I was seeing - My initial reaction was that there was an attack of some sort in progress.
We only had AM radio back then and at night, way out in the toolies, you were fortunate to get anything at all on it so there was no news available.
After a while I came close enough to the source of one of the flares to make out the structure and more or less figured out what I was seeing.

The flares are something else, aren't they?
There are "pony pumps" all down the coast and valley of California. Many of them used to belong to that old actor/oilman. I cannot remember his name.

West Texas at night? That WAS dark. Nothing there then, darn little now.
I have an OLD friend in central Texas. I occasionally fly down there, to Houston (YEWston) or Dallas, pick up a rental and drive northwest or southeast to visit her. It's a HUGE state with lots and lots and lots and lots of open land.

Aren't you glad you don't have to do that anymore?

[cloudmountain]

I disagree that a decline in home ownership and higher down payments is a bad thing. People learning to be wary of over extending themselves and understanding that the future will probably not be better is smart financial management.
I believe people are adapting to the "new normal" i.e., higher unemployment, less full time jobs, declining benefit packages and stagnation. If you buy a home now it's because that's where you want to live not because you expect to make money on it.

Well said.

[I cannot think of a name]

“So a President Wearing Clown Mask Goes to a Rodeo…”

So a CLOWN wearing NO MASK goes to the White House.......

That’s what the real outrage should be about!