Friday, August 29, 2014

Just when you thought you just lived through some of the craziest shit ever...... now the whole world turns Baghdad bob. And you are stuck with one of the most "JV" Presidents ever. Doesn't he look like a smaller man every day?

Monday, August 25, 2014

We are now at a tipping point.

Supply of homes for sale rises to 6 months from 5.6 months. From MarketWatch.

Six months is the magical line between a healthy market, and a market that is blue-hu-hu. But really - we already know the answer to this. July had some of the most favorable mortgage rates since the beginning of the recession. It's really hard to figure out how this works out. There is some school of thought that bond holders are tired of not making money on high yield bonds and that the only reason rates are so low right now is because of conflict in almost all other parts of the world. You can see how meager home sales are now with rates very near 4% give or take a few ticks. Any rise in interest rates will hurt buying activity. Vaporise refi activity. Falling prices will follow. And the Fed has no tools to stimulate whatever may follow. 

So sack up. I think things are going to get a little bumpy.


Old Timey Ford - retread.



Normally I don't re-post cars that have already been on the blog. That would become boring. But I had to make an exception for this truck. This thing is so hard to get good shots of. Red is a really hard color to color match right in photos. It has a ton of stuff going on. Red on busy is a hard combination. Last time it was out in the sun - so that took the degree of difficulty to a whole nuther level. Seen at Goodguys. Video here from 2010.













Sunday, August 24, 2014

Palo Alto Chalk Art.











The shade was trying to eat this piece.











Friday, August 22, 2014

How the media fails James Foley with censorship.

I wasn't going to watch this video at first. I'd seen the Daniel Perl video. But the longer people talked about it it - I finally relented. Only to find out that a great deal of the internet had started scrubbing this video.

Youtube has started a blanket removal of videos with violence. You used to be able to verify you were over 18, then you were able view graphic videos. Twitter has followed suit. And I know the parents asked twitter to take the video down. But it seems like this guys whole mission in being a conflict reporter was to show the horror of the world. It's ironic that Youtube and Twitter now try to make his (and others like him) purpose in life invisible.

And the weird thing about this - the Foley video wasn't anywhere near as graphic as the Perl video. They are not even in the same ballpark.  They didn't show more than a few seconds of the beheading and then a snap to an image of the tragic final result.

I don't take saying these things lightly. I personally have seen one of my family members in a body bag on the evening news. Not killed horrifically like Foley. He was killed in a fire. You see this stuff on the news all the time, but when it's your family member it shakes you to the core. However - it is reality. Maybe you don't want to see it, but the record should be there for future generations.

It's just frustrating to see the internet regressing in freedom right at the time we need it the most. Making it hard for people to see what is happening in the world only makes less people want to spend the time searching this evil out. Just not looking at the images does not make it go away. Nothing can illuminate the horrors of the world like a camera. And for those images not to have a chance to make the light of sun just makes me think the terrorist win. They don't stop because we are too weak and turn away.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

California employment participation rate lowest since records began in 1976.



It is super nice to know that according to the Fed the labor force is closer to what they consider "normal". Which is kinda confusing because California just released it's budget with the above gem. Here.

California simultaneously says they have recovered all the jobs lost from the recession, but goes on to say the participation rate is the lowest since they began keeping records in 1976. I really don't understand how both of these things can be true.

"California's unemployment rate remained steady at 7.4 percent in July. This narrowed the gap with the U.S. to 1.2 percentage points, as the national unemployment rate rose by 0.1 percent to 6.2 percent. However, California's labor force participation rate, at 61.9 percent, is now the lowest it has ever been since records began in 1976. This is in contrast with the U.S. rate, which rose slightly to 62.9 percent in July."

It's also notable that tax receipts are down 11% for California this year. No Facebook to save them I guess. Maybe they could retroactively tax some more people.

Since we are now growing at 4% I thought it would be interesting to see how much progress California was making at paying the Feds back for the unemployment trust fund loans. We now owe more than half of the outstanding balance. What was even more interesting though was Arizona and Wisconsin. They started borrowing again in July. That totally sounds like a 4% growth economy.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Sometimes I see the craziest things.



I'm not sure really what to say about this guy. This seems like the most dangerous way to ride a bike I've ever seen. Especially because he would continue to ride like this while he was splitting lanes. But he drove this way from San Jose through Fremont until I lost him. Traffic was too tight to catch up with him and get more shots. But I could see him in the distance and he rode this way the entire time until I lost sight of him.



BMW i8 concept.



I didn't get that many shots of this car because I thought I'd already seen it. Plus, I'm not really a BMW sort of chick. But, BMW does create some pretty interesting concept cars.

The interesting thing I found about this car is the roof line doesn't connect to the rear quarter panel. I should have tried to get this in more detail, but I was excited about that McLaren. You can see in the last photo the roof line comes down, and then there is a gap between where it connects to the rear quarter panel. Also -apparently is has lambo doors.







Monday, August 18, 2014

After the show.



I hate myself a little for saying this - but I didn't think McLaren's thrilled me anymore. I see them fairly often. I go to a lot of car shows. Though I've never seen one in the wild yet.

That is until I saw this McLaren P1 without the wing. Well, technically I saw the swarm of photogs before I saw the car. I was hunting a Pagani. You may all flip me off now.







Maserati Alfieri







Note - Door is not completely closed. So that's why it looks like it has a weird line. They always want to display these cars with all the doors open, but that makes it hard to get a nice clean shot. And I think the people working the show didn't have access to the security system to open the door so they couldn't close it all the way.





Sunday, August 17, 2014

Sooooooo bad ass.



When I was taking pictures of this car Mr S. said to me - the weird thing is that without the Mercedes emblem, you wouldn't even know this was a Mercedes. To which I replied - I know! That's why I love this car. I'm pretty amazed my shots even came out that well because the Pebble Beach Councours is always shrouded in grey fog. And this is a grey car. Which isn't even a color!

It's a Mercedes AMG Vision Gran Turismo. I guess this car was spawned from the game of the same name on the PS3. Here.















Friday, August 15, 2014

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Here, there. Everywhere. Even in my area.

Bay Area home prices plateau on slowing sales.

"Real estate agents in the East Bay report seeing an increasing number of price reductions, with many homes taking longer to sell than they have for much of the year."

Continued:

"Sales were down or just slightly up in most counties, with Santa Clara seeing the biggest dive ---14.8 percent from July 2013.

For the nine-county Bay Area, sales were off by 6.7 percent.

Investors appeared to be retreating from the region's housing market, as absentee buyers -- mostly investors -- made up 18.8 percent of all Bay Area home sales, the lowest since September 2012"
.

Don't believe me. Believe San Diego.

San Diego real estate cools off: Will rest of California follow?

California is often seen as a barometer for the rest of the nation's housing market. If that is the case, then housing this fall is not looking good. Southern California home sales fell to a three-year low in July, according to CoreLogic DataQuick, a research firm, with San Diego leading the way.

San Diego sales volume fell 18.5 percent in July from a year ago, a far deeper slide than the rest of the state. Prices are still higher than last year, but the gains are easing. The median price of a San Diego home hit $445,000 in July, up 6.6 percent from a year ago. The streak of double-digit annual home price appreciation in much of California ended in June.

You know what could really help this problem? A rise in interest rates.

Deflation nation coming to a city near you.

If I hear another analyst say the Fed is going to raise rates - I am going to bust a vein. It's truly unbelievable they keep insisting on this meme. Based on nothing! Food inflation is starting to tame now. Even crazy Cramer was talking about deflation yesterday.

A few days ago I started reading about record outflows from high yield bonds. And I thought to myself - self, the bondholders are going to cause interest rates to rise. We were suppose to have savage inflation by now and it hasn't materialised, and they are probably tired of not making any money those bonds. If they can find somewhere else to make money, they will likely sell because it doesn't look like interest rates are going to rise any time soon. Rates have been pretty solidly in the even 4% range this week. Some days I can still find a rate under 4%. But it's pretty easy to find a rate at a flat 4% no problem. This is not the sign of a strong economy at all.

Still, if enough of them do sell - it will temporarily make rates rise. And I say temporarily because....... have you seen housing lately? I had to regroup after that GDP number to make sure I thought I was still right about the world.

Southern California home sales plunge in July.

"Southern California home sales plunged in July and show little signs of rebounding. And that, economists say, could stunt the region's economic growth."

Mortgage volume weakens as summer wanes.

"Mortgage applications continue to falter despite lower mortgage rates and far less dramatic home price gains than a year ago.

Last week, total application volume fell 2.7 percent from the previous week on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Applications to refinance were down 4 percent."

Does that sound like anyone is going to raise rates any time soon? Right now, to get any refi activity rates would have to fall under 4%. Otherwise that segment is dead, dead, dead.

Now back to that GDP. I've never seen so many people have to do so many gymnastics to try and figure out how we got a 4.3% economy all of a sudden. Lets say I don't think they are completely lying - where is this showing up? Most assuredly some of that number was do to restocking for the school season and getting ready for the Christmas window. But retails sales are not showing a 4.3% economy. They are at stall speed. Housing isn't showing it obviously. Perhaps we sold a bunch of cars. But to who? Europe, Japan, Australia, and China are falling off a cliff right now. And can cars really add 4.3 percent to our economy? It seems pretty implausible. Then there is the distillates that added .03 to the GDP. Which I think very few people understand. So I guess it's a good way to say the economy improved and not have many people question it.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

What used to be.



I had to put some space in between this post and the last one about Stocktoncon. I want to be respectful. At the same time, some these celeb areas make me pretty uncomfortable. Most of these people are basically doing the celebrity skid row tour. Which should be a wake up call to all of you. Your money will not last as long as you think it will. Even crazy commie Danny Glover must be running low on cash if he is hanging out in Stockton for autograph money. It makes me happy in a way. Because I am a mean person like that. I think he is a horrible person.



I have to give Todd Bridges props. He's holding up pretty well. He was friendly and approachable. There is something to be said about flaming out early rather than later in life.



Richard Kiel is at all of these shows.

Some strange choices were Kristy McNichol, Lorenso Lamas and Linda Blair. All of which were none too happy to be there. They didn't get much traffic at their booths because they were not at all approachable. And unless you paid, they were not letting you get a good shot to save your life.

At least Richard Kiel gets it. He knows a his lane. A lot of people are going to take pictures while passing by. He seems content enough to foster his fan base and make the money he can on autographs and people who want to be in the picture with him. The others just seems like they were forced there by a cattle prod.







Linda Blair was the worst. She was very aware of the camera and rebuffed every single attempt.