You may have noticed my newsletter has enjoyed a small facelift compliments of my friends at Constant Contact. If you didn't notice, then hi! It's good to finally not be in your spam-box for including the word "mortgage" in my publication!
Let the deluge of new unsubscribes commence.
Being a reputable article about items pertinent to mortgage lending, I feel compelled to begin with the most obvious topic: the World Cup. And Brazil just got thunder-spanked by Germany. Which was oddly satisfying, given our somewhat tumultuous relationship with the Germans. Probably puts a great big exclamation point on the fact that a large portion of Brazilians were less than thrilled about hosting all the futbol shenannigans. Evidently massive costs to the country's coffers to flaunt extravagance while a huge portion of the population wallows in abject poverty isn't exactly the stuff that a strong sense of nationalism is made of. But from our end of things, we made top 8 while not remotely caring about the sport and discovered that our goalie is actually a super-hero ninja (to the point that Wikipedia's article for "Secretary of Defense" was temporarily changed over to 'Tim Howard' in commemoration of his exercise in bad-assery). So that was fun.
In late June, Pope Francis denounced the legalization of recreational marijuana, harshly criticized the banking system that has generated extreme income inequality aaaaand excommunicated the mafia. All at once. To say this guy doesn't give a damn about any political party (or even the "politics" of ending up with some cement shoes) would be an understatement. I think he has a wheel of "random crap I can do to piss everyone off because I'm the Pope and God told me to" in his Pope-cave and he got bored in June. Seriously, this guy is like the Mad Hatter finally got ahold of a Pope hat and is unleashing his master plan of utter senselessness. And I love it.
Speaking of fun religious stuff, Hobby Lobby just walked their unwillingness to provide medical coverage for two types of morning-after pills and IUDs due to a "strong religious preference" all the way to the Supreme Court. And they won. A for-profit business just trumped the employee's legal right to that care, should they choose to go that route, because they think it's "like an abortion" even though those methods prevent conception in the first place. In response, I think I'm going to hire a bunch of people to cross-stitch the message "Congratulations on the unwanted child!" onto a bunch of pillows and try to sell them at Hobby Lobby. Because I'm pretty sure they sell cross-stitching stuff there and I know a good opportunity when I see it.
A recent collaborative study between 13 institutions has resulted in conclusive evidence showing the definitive cause of autism is a genetic mutation. For further information on this topic, please visit HowDoVaccinesCauseAutism.com
In the true spirit of America, an entrepreneur by the name of Zach Danger Brown has begun a kickstarter campaign to make potato salad. His goal was ten bucks. He's raised over $44,000. His primary comment was "It might not be that good. It's my first potato salad." This. Exactly this. This is why other countries hate us. And can you really blame them?
African leadership has recently voted to give themselves immunity from war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. This ruling comes while two sitting presidents and one ousted president are on trial at the International Criminal Court for precisely those things. Because when you think about it, all those people that they stacked tires on, soaked in gasoline and lit on fire KINDA had it coming.
The above definitely happened. A lot. And our diplomats are supposed to respect these leaders on an international stage. Makes you feel ever-so-slightly better about our own terrible politicians.
But I bet I can make you sad about them again!
Hailed as the Democrats' leading opportunity to take the White House after Obama's exit, Hillary Clinton (who has already lost all sorts of elections so I don't know why Dems are all hot-to-trot about her) recently revealed that her family was flat broke when 'ol cigar "smoking" Bill left office. Per expectations, the Republicans jumped all over it as an example of how if she can't run her own family's finances then she certainly can't run the country's. I am gonna have to begrudgingly jump on their bandwagon and say, yeah, you're dumb and I don't want my tax dollars spent on pant-suits and Oprah's latest book of the month.
I spent over ten minutes trying to think of "what would a 66-year old woman blow cash on?" and that's the best I got. Sorry. I'm somewhat disappointed in myself but I've spent too much time on it already.
On the flip-side, Rick Perry has openly likened homosexuality to alcoholism, claiming they both can be "overcome". Because I'm sure all those gay people just randomly decided "Hey, I'd love to be criticized by basically everyone and go through a ridiculous social process of validating my sexuality PURELY because I WANT to and not because I am genetically programmed to feel that way." Glad to see the Grand Old Party is keeping it classy and culturally open.
Except the opposite of that.
A terrorist group named ISIS is spreading like wildfire over Iraq. But Bush already hung that "Mission Accomplished" banner on that big ship that one time, so I don't really care.
Seth Rogen and James Franco are under fire from North Korea's dear leader Kim Jong Il, as he vows "merciless retaliation" against their new movie in which they are depicted as being recruited to kill North Korea's dear leader. Seth Rogen responded by tweeting "usually people vow to kill me after they paid their 12 dollars." To provide contrast, this is what we have south of the Korean border.
I've kept the relevant stuff to a minimum this time because it's predominantly good news and good news doesn't usually excite anyone. But it's seriously good news. The most recent jobs report came in 73,000 over consensus estimates with revisions to previous months putting the first half of 2014 at the best pace since before the recession. Pending home sales for May came in at +6.1%, well above consensus estimates of 1.5%. According to CNNMoney.com Florida has two of the highest ranked cities that people are actively moving to (Orlando at #4 and Tampa/Sarasota at #2). Craptastic GDP numbers (the sole tarnish on an otherwise impeccable report) can be blamed on the terrible winter (because we Floridians fear snow).
So buy Florida real estate. Buy the hell out of it. It never snows here. We may have some epic mosquitoes, but definitely no snow. And we have bug spray for mosquitoes. Do you have bug spray for snow? I DIDN'T THINK SO. Point made.
