Summer is upon us. Liam is also enjoying a lot of Dr. Seuss. Hence the title.
Speaking of summer, Memorial Day happened. I hope everyone had a lovely long weekend. And there's no better way to honor those who risk life and limb on our behalf than by having a barbeque and drinking some fine American beer, right? As long as we do that once a year, we can pretty much just sweep under the rug the crumbling infrastructure and accused corruption of the VA healthcare system (whose budget increases annually and quality of care down-spirals at about the same pace). Because if you're drunk enough you can't hear dying veterans complain.
This is both disgusting and true. The commoditization of our military personnel seems to have reached a horrifying inflection point that I hope our elected officials will rectify. America's "anything for profit" model is failing those who protect us and turning us into a soulless machine. Probably not okay.
Keeping the "happy subject" train rolling, some classy 22 year old went on a stabbing and shooting rampage in Isla Vista because he didn't have too much luck with the ladies. Who would'a thunk a sociopathic, self-absorbed mini-Hitler would have trouble appealing to the opposite sex? I thought chicks liked that stuff.
Consequently, lots of publications are running "Virgin dies after murder spree" as their headline which makes me SO HAPPY that we are coming together as a society and making this look stupid in an effort to dissuade potential copycats. Of course, all this craziness caused Twitter to go all a'twitter with #YesAllWomen, a campaign to raise awareness about women being harassed. Because kidnapped Nigerian girls, oil still washing up all over the Gulf Coast and all sorts of other perfectly viable causes no longer have hashtag campaigns on Twitter and are hence no longer worth worrying about.
I'm all for causes. I am. Call me jaded, but it gets harder and harder to think that anyone out there ACTUALLY gives a damn and/or is actually DOING anything about stuff. Seems more like a trend. Like snapping a selfie with a homeless person in the background and posting "Totes magotes would have given him a sandwich if I didn't already max my card at Macy's yesterday LOL #NewSkinnyJeans"
Darden sold Red Lobster to Golden Gate Capital. So next time you're chowing down on fish that was likely raised in China beneath a suspended chicken coop (I would love to tell you that I'm making this stuff up but I'm not; your fish eat chicken poop aaaalllll day) I want you to remember that Olive Garden is not sharing in the profits you are creating. So... yeah. You go think about what you did.
Meb Keflezighi won the Boston Marathon, representing the first American to win since 1983. Also nobody exploded. So that's a step forward.
Former owner of the Clippers Don Sterling got punted for life from the NBA after saying racist comments to his girlfriend. Did he say some pretty offensive stuff? Buddy sure did. Does ANYONE abstain from saying things in private that if taken to the press would likely besmirch their fine name? Probably not. Does that expunge him of his mistake? Nope. But before we start accusing the kettle it may behoove us to look at the pot in the mirror. Because blackness. Which is a double entendre in this context.
If you got that last joke, give yourself a high five.
Love barefoot running? Think it's good for your feet? Well, you're dumb and wrong (sadly I am too). But now you can hop on board the class-action lawsuit train and sue Vibram and get a partial refund! That should heal the cracks in your bones that will induce early-onset arthritis! Because health care is so "affordable" now!!!
See what I did there? I made it political. I made dumb feety shoes somehow political. I deserve a job as a pundit. Because punditry is all about making entirely unrelated things somehow serve your political leaning. And I can do that. With feety shoes.
FHA is under heavy pressure from the National Association of Realtors to lower their mortgage insurance premiums. This sticks them in a weird spot. The FHA would love nothing more than to wean the American housing market off of their loans. Simultaneously, they feel the need to keep the mortgage insurance premiums to hedge against the possibility of another wave of defaults. But they don't want to be the "bad guys" and choke off an already shaky housing recovery. It will be interesting to see if they bow under NAR pressure or maintain their present trajectory.
I'm starting to feel like the one paragraph of legitimate mortgage-related information that you endure once a newsletter is akin to the 10% actual meat that allows McDonalds to call their hamburgers "beef". But there it is. Eat up, kiddo.
After a scandal surrounding faulty ignition switches randomly turning cars into high-speed caskets on wheels, GM did a massive recall because dead people are evidently considered bad for one's corporate image. If I were in charge I simply would have simply re-branded and tried to appeal to the daredevil/parkour crowd, as they seem pretty interested in self-destruction/mutilation.
Economic indicators coming in lately concerning business spending, industrial production, job growth and all sorts of other stuff that none of you pay attention to but definitely complain about when they're not doing good have been, well, doing good lately. Not super good but consistently good. And that's a good thing. Sorta puts a big question mark over how long interest rates can remain at their presently depressed levels. But it's been all quiet on the western front in that regard thus far.
In the meantime, home prices have been heading north. With a decent head of steam. Nothing overly crazy and it is definitely exposing itself to a moderate pullback once the Fed's free money policy ends. But stock prices have told us that the value of the American market and ALL the assets under that umbrella (including real estate) have a staying power that is worth noting. So if you're thinking about picking up a place "sometime in the next 12 months" I'd like you to realize there is a strong possibility that your dream home will be a tad more expensive when you get around to buying it.
So get off your ass is what I'm saying.
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