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OT: Erroneous trades... Don't know about all online brokers, but Schwab certainly has some protections built in. I placed an order that was $400K over what my account equity was. I received a phone call within 1 minute asking me politely if that was what I had intended. Thanks Chuck!
Win lose or draw, I VOTED... That is what 3,000 American soldiers have died for in the last few years, the right for people to vote. I did not vote for the war, did not support it and can't wait for it to be over.
But I voted. Don't be so proud that you did not.
BRLC: "While the investing public is supposed to get excited about the previous quarter, insiders have not been bashful about unloading stock. According to Stocklemon’s computation, insiders have sold close to $7 million in stock all during the previous quarter, when business was supposed to be “booming”"
That was the exact concern I mentioned a few posts back. In addition to it becoming a commodity, therefore lower margins. It almost seems like I wrote the Stocklemon posting, LOL which I certainly did not!
In summary, I am a buyer of the product - not the stock!
patentlawmeister: BRLC ... purchased one from Staples.com, they were the cheapest at the time and they gave FREE delivery. Can't beat that. They also had a 30 day return policy!
second time I bought it from Amazon.com/Target... It sure is nice to have a large lcd monitor for watching the market when I am on the Elliptical machine.
bbotcs: BRLC, I have owned one of them over a year and have a minor problem with it. Warranty is 1 year of course so I have no intention of fixing it. It was half the price of a SHARP at the time. The picture on both LCD's is awesome. If you put them side by side with a higher end set and had them both set up by an expert, you would most likely go for the higher end set. But the difference is not great enough to pay double for them. Usually you get more features with the higher end. Mostly things that I don't need.
Buying an extended warranty might be a good idea however.
As for the stock, not sure I like the insider selling and how much longer before these TV's become commodities?
bbotcs: BRLC: I have not looked at the stock yet, although I will. However I own 2 Olevia LCD screens. They are widely available and usually can be purchased for a lot less than the name brands like Sharp or Sony. Staples, Costco, Amazon and many others carry the brand. One negative for me in the past has been with contacting the company, not a great experience.
eom
otc: You said "The Aids scare. Anyone remember how Heterosexual aids cases were going to sweep the country"
Do you have a clue as to why that did not happen?
Maybe because a lot of people were scared into protecting themselves.
Do some analysis before you write your posts.
Interesting article on what can or will happen from the bubble/rubble burst. Always scary when a top dog at a brokerage firm is worried. Schwab has always been a straighter shooter than the industry in general.
http://biz.yahoo.com/weekend/ecslump_1.html
I did not participate in this round of the PSL. But I must say that if the Democrats win the majority, they will be investigating KNOWLEDGE IS KING. He obviously knows more about something then is fair to the rest of us! LOL
Kerry is a fool. However the new headline should get him put on the back burner. "Evangelical leader hit with sex claims"
The best thing to come out of Kerry's bad joke is that no one will consider him a 2008 candidate.
Arnie70: I can feel your pain. That is a big hit to take. I know that some on this board are against diversification, people who live off investments should be diversified. I learned that along time ago and live by it.
I hope it turns for you!!!
One served in Vietnam, the other one hid out. OLD NEWS.. Not worth arguing about.
They both suck.
btw - OREGON mails the ballot to the voter, hard to avoid voting unless you are a complete loser. Do any other states do this? It sure makes a lot of sense.
OTC: I am comparing Kerry & Bush based upon foot in mouth troubles. They say some of the stupidest things. The Democrats have been rolling along and Mr. Wooden Kerry tries to be funny.
GWB is as capable a twit as Kerry. Stay the course!
UPFS: New reverse merger deal closes. Unknown and almost no public float at this point. Seems to be a real China company..
Unipro Financial Services Complete $5 million Private Placement
Wednesday November 1, 9:50 am ET
WESTLAKE VILLAGE, Calif., Nov. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Unipro Financial Services, Inc. ("Unipro")(OTC Bulletin Board: UPFS.OB - News), an inactive shell corporation, today announced the acquisition of China Fire Protection Group, Inc., a limited liability company organized under the laws of British Virgin Islands ("China Fire") in a transaction whereby the shareholders of China Fire gained control of Unipro. China Fire's sole business is the ownership of Sureland Industrial Fire Safety Limited. ("Sureland"), a Chinese company located in Beijing, China, specializing in the design, manufacture, sales and installation of industrial fire safety products and systems. In connection with the transaction, the directors of Unipro resigned and elected the nominees of China Fire as directors and the new directors appointed the management of China Fire as the management of Unipro.
Also on October 27, 2006, Unipro sold shares of common stock and Series A and Series B warrants to purchase Common Stock to institutional and other accredited investors for aggregate gross proceeds of $5,000,463 and the right to purchase an additional $3 million of common stock and Series A and Series B warrants at the same pricing within 45 days of the closing of the private placement. H.C., Wainwright & Co. Inc. acted as placement agent in the financing.
On a fully diluted basis (assuming exercise of all outstanding options and warrants), the former shareholders of China Fire own approximately 87.16% of Unipro, the shareholders of Unipro before the transactions described above own approximately 4.44%, and the Investors own approximately 7.97%.
For the six month period ended June 30, 2006, Sureland had revenues of $15,326,973 and comprehensive income of $5,938,713.
Further details relating to the financing are included in the Form 8-K to be filed by Unipro with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC").
The securities were offered to accredited investors in reliance on an exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act of 1933 (the "Securities Act"). The offering has not been registered under the Securities Act or any state securities of "blue sky" laws, and the securities may not be offered or sold absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and applicable state securities laws. This press release does not and shall not constitute an offer to sell of the solicitation of an offer to buy securities.
About Unipro
Unipro owns, through China Fire, Sureland which is engaged primarily in the design, development, manufacture and sale in China of a variety of fire safety products for the industrial fire safety market and of design and installation of industrial fire safety systems in which it uses its own fire safety products. To a minor extent, it provides maintenance services for customers of its industrial fire safety systems. Its business is primarily in China, but it has recently begun contract manufacturing products for the export market and it has begun to provide a fire safety system for a Chinese company operating abroad.
Sureland markets its industrial fire safety products and systems primarily to major companies in the iron and steel, power and petrochemical industries in China. It has also completed projects for highway and railway tunnels, wine distilleries, tobacco warehouses and a nuclear reactor. It is developing its business in the transportation, wine and tobacco, vessels, nuclear energy, and public space markets. Its products can be readily adapted for use on vessels and in exhibition halls and theatres. It plans to expand its marketing efforts to secure business in these industries.
Sureland has internal research and development facilities engaged primarily in furthering fire safety technologies. It believes that its technologies allow it to offer cost-effective and high-quality fire safety products and systems. It has developed products for industrial fire detecting and extinguishing. It believes that it is the only manufacturer in China which has successfully developed a comprehensive line of linear heat detectors.
Sureland operates sales and liaison offices in more than 20 cities in China.
Sureland has been ranked as the leading Chinese industrial fire safety company two times by the China Association for Fire Prevention based on six major factors including total revenue, growth rate, net profit, return on assets, investment in research and development and intellectual property. In fiscal year 2005, it accounted for about 2.5% of the total revenue from the industrial fire safety industry in China. Its key products include linear heat detectors and water mist extinguishers, whose sales volumes are the largest in China. Its products have been used by its customers in more than 20 provinces throughout China.
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Information
This release contains forward-looking information about Unipro that is intended to be covered by the safe harbor for forward-looking statements provided by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward- looking statements are statements that are not historical facts. These statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "believe," "expect," "may," "will," "should," "project," "plan," "seek," "intend," or "anticipate" or the negative thereof or comparable terminology, and include discussions of strategy, and statements about industry trends and Unipro's future performance, operations and products.
This forward-looking information should be considered only in connection with "Risk Factors" in Unipro's Current Report to be filed with the SEC and its other periodic reports filed with the SEC. Unipro assumes no obligations to update any forward-looking statements or information set forth in this press release.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Unipro Financial Services, Inc.
John Kerry has to be one of the great stupid politicans. He rivals GWB. Can't say much more about it. What a jerk!
OT: work_hard: I don't have private messaging. Brinkers timing has made me a lot more money than the price of the newsletter. It allowed me to miss most of the 2000 melt down and got me back in March of 2003. My Southwall position is small so I will be riding it up or down and out!!!
work_hard, I still have a few shares left. I am surprised by the strength of the stock after another bad financial report. Maybe something is up? Same crew that helped WMCO could be involved here.
A nice cheerful weekend read...
GAO Chief Warns Economic Disaster Looms
Saturday October 28, 12:32 pm ET
By Matt Crenson, AP National Writer
GAO Chief Takes to Road, Warns Economic Disaster Looms Even As Many Candidates Avoid Issue
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- David M. Walker sure talks like he's running for office. "This is about the future of our country, our kids and grandkids," the comptroller general of the United States warns a packed hall at Austin's historic Driskill Hotel. "We the people have to rise up to make sure things get changed."
But Walker doesn't want, or need, your vote this November. He already has a job as head of the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that audits and evaluates the performance of the federal government.
Basically, that makes Walker the nation's accountant-in-chief. And the accountant-in-chief's professional opinion is that the American public needs to tell Washington it's time to steer the nation off the path to financial ruin.
From the hustings and the airwaves this campaign season, America's political class can be heard debating Capitol Hill sex scandals, the wisdom of the war in Iraq and which party is tougher on terror. Democrats and Republicans talk of cutting taxes to make life easier for the American people.
What they don't talk about is a dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows, or at least should. The vast majority of economists and budget analysts agree: The ship of state is on a disastrous course, and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it.
There's a good reason politicians don't like to talk about the nation's long-term fiscal prospects. The subject is short on political theatrics and long on complicated economics, scary graphs and very big numbers. It reveals serious problems and offers no easy solutions. Anybody who wanted to deal with it seriously would have to talk about raising taxes and cutting benefits, nasty nostrums that might doom any candidate who prescribed them.
"There's no sexiness to it," laments Leita Hart-Fanta, an accountant who has just heard Walker's pitch. She suggests recruiting a trusted celebrity -- maybe Oprah -- to sell fiscal responsibility to the American people.
Walker doesn't want to make balancing the federal government's books sexy -- he just wants to make it politically palatable. He has committed to touring the nation through the 2008 elections, talking to anybody who will listen about the fiscal black hole Washington has dug itself, the "demographic tsunami" that will come when the baby boom generation begins retiring and the recklessness of borrowing money from foreign lenders to pay for the operation of the U.S. government.
"He can speak forthrightly and independently because his job is not in jeopardy if he tells the truth," said Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.
Walker can talk in public about the nation's impending fiscal crisis because he has one of the most secure jobs in Washington. As comptroller general of the United States -- basically, the government's chief accountant -- he is serving a 15-year term that runs through 2013.
This year Walker has spoken to the Union League Club of Chicago and the Rotary Club of Atlanta, the Sons of the American Revolution and the World Future Society. But the backbone of his campaign has been the Fiscal Wake-up Tour, a traveling roadshow of economists and budget analysts who share Walker's concern for the nation's budgetary future.
"You can't solve a problem until the majority of the people believe you have a problem that needs to be solved," Walker says.
Polls suggest that Americans have only a vague sense of their government's long-term fiscal prospects. When pollsters ask Americans to name the most important problem facing America today -- as a CBS News/New York Times poll of 1,131 Americans did in September -- issues such as the war in Iraq, terrorism, jobs and the economy are most frequently mentioned. The deficit doesn't even crack the top 10.
Yet on the rare occasions that pollsters ask directly about the deficit, at least some people appear to recognize it as a problem. In a survey of 807 Americans last year by the Pew Center for the People and the Press, 42 percent of respondents said reducing the deficit should be a top priority; another 38 percent said it was important but a lower priority.
So the majority of the public appears to agree with Walker that the deficit is a serious problem, but only when they're made to think about it. Walker's challenge is to get people not just to think about it, but to pressure politicians to make the hard choices that are needed to keep the situation from spiraling out of control.
To show that the looming fiscal crisis is not a partisan issue, he brings along economists and budget analysts from across the political spectrum. In Austin, he's accompanied by Diane Lim Rogers, a liberal economist from the Brookings Institution, and Alison Acosta Fraser, director of the Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
"We all agree on what the choices are and what the numbers are," Fraser says.
Their basic message is this: If the United States government conducts business as usual over the next few decades, a national debt that is already $8.5 trillion could reach $46 trillion or more, adjusted for inflation. That's almost as much as the total net worth of every person in America -- Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and those Google guys included.
A hole that big could paralyze the U.S. economy; according to some projections, just the interest payments on a debt that big would be as much as all the taxes the government collects today.
And every year that nothing is done about it, Walker says, the problem grows by $2 trillion to $3 trillion.
People who remember Ross Perot's rants in the 1992 presidential election may think of the federal debt as a problem of the past. But it never really went away after Perot made it an issue, it only took a breather. The federal government actually produced a surplus for a few years during the 1990s, thanks to a booming economy and fiscal restraint imposed by laws that were passed early in the decade. And though the federal debt has grown in dollar terms since 2001, it hasn't grown dramatically relative to the size of the economy.
But that's about to change, thanks to the country's three big entitlement programs -- Social Security, Medicaid and especially Medicare. Medicaid and Medicare have grown progressively more expensive as the cost of health care has dramatically outpaced inflation over the past 30 years, a trend that is expected to continue for at least another decade or two.
And with the first baby boomers becoming eligible for Social Security in 2008 and for Medicare in 2011, the expenses of those two programs are about to increase dramatically due to demographic pressures. People are also living longer, which makes any program that provides benefits to retirees more expensive.
Medicare already costs four times as much as it did in 1970, measured as a percentage of the nation's gross domestic product. It currently comprises 13 percent of federal spending; by 2030, the Congressional Budget Office projects it will consume nearly a quarter of the budget.
Economists Jagadeesh Gokhale of the American Enterprise Institute and Kent Smetters of the University of Pennsylvania have an even scarier way of looking at Medicare. Their method calculates the program's long-term fiscal shortfall -- the annual difference between its dedicated revenues and costs -- over time.
By 2030 they calculate Medicare will be about $5 trillion in the hole, measured in 2004 dollars. By 2080, the fiscal imbalance will have risen to $25 trillion. And when you project the gap out to an infinite time horizon, it reaches $60 trillion.
Medicare so dominates the nation's fiscal future that some economists believe health care reform, rather than budget measures, is the best way to attack the problem.
"Obviously health care is a mess," says Dean Baker, a liberal economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington think tank. "No one's been willing to touch it, but that's what I see as front and center."
Social Security is a much less serious problem. The program currently pays for itself with a 12.4 percent payroll tax, and even produces a surplus that the government raids every year to pay other bills. But Social Security will begin to run deficits during the next century, and ultimately would need an infusion of $8 trillion if the government planned to keep its promises to every beneficiary.
Calculations by Boston University economist Lawrence Kotlikoff indicate that closing those gaps -- $8 trillion for Social Security, many times that for Medicare -- and paying off the existing deficit would require either an immediate doubling of personal and corporate income taxes, a two-thirds cut in Social Security and Medicare benefits, or some combination of the two.
Why is America so fiscally unprepared for the next century? Like many of its citizens, the United States has spent the last few years racking up debt instead of saving for the future. Foreign lenders -- primarily the central banks of China, Japan and other big U.S. trading partners -- have been eager to lend the government money at low interest rates, making the current $8.5-trillion deficit about as painful as a big balance on a zero-percent credit card.
In her part of the fiscal wake-up tour presentation, Rogers tries to explain why that's a bad thing. For one thing, even when rates are low a bigger deficit means a greater portion of each tax dollar goes to interest payments rather than useful programs. And because foreigners now hold so much of the federal government's debt, those interest payments increasingly go overseas rather than to U.S. investors.
More serious is the possibility that foreign lenders might lose their enthusiasm for lending money to the United States. Because treasury bills are sold at auction, that would mean paying higher interest rates in the future. And it wouldn't just be the government's problem. All interest rates would rise, making mortgages, car payments and student loans costlier, too.
A modest rise in interest rates wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, Rogers said. America's consumers have as much of a borrowing problem as their government does, so higher rates could moderate overconsumption and encourage consumer saving. But a big jump in interest rates could cause economic catastrophe. Some economists even predict the government would resort to printing money to pay off its debt, a risky strategy that could lead to runaway inflation.
Macroeconomic meltdown is probably preventable, says Anjan Thakor, a professor of finance at Washington University in St. Louis. But to keep it at bay, he said, the government is essentially going to have to renegotiate some of the promises it has made to its citizens, probably by some combination of tax increases and benefit cuts.
But there's no way to avoid what Rogers considers the worst result of racking up a big deficit -- the outrage of making our children and grandchildren repay the debts of their elders.
"It's an unfair burden for future generations," she says.
You'd think young people would be riled up over this issue, since they're the ones who will foot the bill when they're out in the working world. But students take more interest in issues like the Iraq war and gay marriage than the federal government's finances, says Emma Vernon, a member of the University of Texas Young Democrats.
"It's not something that can fire people up," she says.
The current political climate doesn't help. Washington tends to keep its fiscal house in better order when one party controls Congress and the other is in the White House, says Sawhill.
"It's kind of a paradoxical result. Your commonsense logic would tell you if one party is in control of everything they should be able to take action," Sawhill says.
But the last six years of Republican rule have produced tax cuts, record spending increases and a Medicare prescription drug plan that has been widely criticized as fiscally unsound. When President Clinton faced a Republican Congress during the 1990s, spending limits and other legislative tools helped produce a surplus.
So maybe a solution is at hand.
"We're likely to have at least partially divided government again," Sawhill said, referring to predictions that the Democrats will capture the House, and possibly the Senate, in next month's elections.
But Walker isn't optimistic that the government will be able to tackle its fiscal challenges so soon.
"Realistically what we hope to accomplish through the fiscal wake-up tour is ensure that any serious candidate for the presidency in 2008 will be forced to deal with the issue," he says. "The best we're going to get in the next couple of years is to slow the bleeding."
USBK: If it was an IPO last week why are you waiting for financials??? Sounds more like a shell deal. Do you have a website for the bank??
Insiders buying? That would be something new for EKCS. Can't recall that happening, except for Barchenko loaning money to the company and taking back stock instead of repayment.
Can you say tax loss. They don't seem to have anyone pumping the stock, they just issued a press release that confused the ending of a four year old contract with a new contract. I am afraid that if they announced a 50 million dollar 100% profit margin contract, no one would care.
Since I own this in a tax deferred account I won't be a tax loss seller. But I am still not a happy camper.
Dump Barchenko Senior and hire some real leadership. He has been a survivor, nothing more.
Ignore the rantings of the blind, wed to one party philosophy that assumes they are always in the know. The real facts are that much of America is sinking deeper into a debt that they can't pay off. Much like our growing debt to China and the rest of the world supplying us with cheap goods for T/Bills.
Money & Happiness
by Laura Rowley
The Growing Income-Expense Gap
by Laura Rowley
Friday, October 20, 2006
Consumer prices fell half a percent in September, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. But leaving out food, and the significant drop in energy costs, the so-called "core rate" of inflation rose 0.2 percent.
That's the third consecutive monthly rise for core inflation, which is running at its fastest rate in 10 years. Costs for housing, medical care, and clothing all showed a significant jump.
The Credit Bubble
With the cost of housing, health care, and other necessities rising, Americans are relying more and more on debt to cover basic expenses.
In the second quarter of this year, consumers spent a record $14.40 of every $100 they took home after taxes to cover required principal and interest payments on mortgage and consumer debt, according to the Federal Reserve. The figure rises to $18.06 of every $100 of take-home pay if you include automobile lease payments, homeowners insurance, property tax payments, and rental payments on tenant-occupied property.
And there is more troubling evidence of our credit-driven lifestyle: Some 2.33 percent of mortgages were delinquent at the end of the third quarter, the highest level since 2003, according to Equifax and Moody's Economy.com.
The worrisome part of that figure? Most of the delinquencies were not related to job loss -- the usual suspect when people fall behind on their payments. The vast majority were related to what Economy.com calls "mortgage equity withdrawal," which gauges how much cash homeowners have extracted from their dwellings through refinancing, home-equity loans, or selling and keeping some of the profits.
No Shelter from High Utility Costs
More and more, shelter is straining our budgets: 35 percent of homeowners with a mortgage were paying 30 percent or more of their gross incomes for housing -- up 26.6 percent in 2000, according to a recent Census Bureau report.
This is due largely to soaring home values; the median rose by 32 percent between 2000 and 2005, the report found. (In markets such as Los Angeles and New York, prices rocketed 110.2 percent and 79.1 percent, respectively.)
Meanwhile, that strain will likely grow for homeowners with adjustable-rate mortgages. This year, interest rates are expected to reset on an estimated $400 billion worth of adjustable loans, and $1 trillion worth in 2007, according to the research firm Loan Performance.
Utilities are also on the rise, according to a New York Times report. A decade after electricity was deregulated, a competitive market has not emerged, and state controls put in place to protect consumers will expire shortly. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission warned Congress that "customers may experience rate shock."
Another growing pocket of debt is installment borrowing -- typically, loans for autos and college expenses. According to the Federal Reserve, 46 percent of families had such debt, and the median amount owed on such loans grew by 11.7 percent between 2001 and 2004.
Unhealthy Credit Habits
And then there are spiraling health-care costs. Between 2000 and 2005, workers' health insurance premiums rose 84 percent, while their wages increased 20 percent and inflation climbed to 18 percent, according to a Kaiser Foundation study.
As costs have soared, so have the number of Americans under age 65 with no health insurance: about 46 million in 2005, up from 40 million in 2000, the Census Bureau reports.
Another New York Times article recently focused on the growth in medical tourism -- uninsured patients going abroad to get medical and dental treatment for 20 to 80 percent less than in the United States, including travel costs. I just paid $800 to cap a molar, so Costa Rica is looking more enticing.
How did I pay for my tooth? With a credit card, which I'll pay off in full at the end of the month. Unfortunately, that's not the norm: Nearly two-thirds of consumers carry a balance and pay finance charges each month -- a level that hasn't been seen since the 1990s, according to the Wall Street Journal. The average debt per cardholder is about $5,000, and interest rates on cards have been rising, according to the trade publication Nilson Report.
This expense creep, combined with higher payments to debt service, can make it impossible to squirrel away money for the future. Wages have stagnated for most workers -- the Census Bureau reported that median household income rose just 1.1 percent in 2005 -- the first rise since 1999. Consumer debt is growing three times faster than net wealth accumulation, according to Robert Manning, author of Credit Card Nation: The Consequences of America's Addiction to Credit.
What to Do?
Here are some suggestions for heading off credit-related disaster:
Stem the bleeding by tracking exactly where your cash is going
I've toyed with budgeting software in the past, but found it too time-consuming. This year, I subscribed to an online program called Mvelopes Personal to help analyze our spending; I've found it to be a faster, simpler method than other software.
Minimize installment debt
Don't take out a 72-month auto loan on a brand-spanking-new car; opt for a certified pre-owned vehicle at half the price and pay it off over 48 months or less. (Or better yet, pay cash. When our '95 minivan finally died this summer, we replaced it with a well-maintained '96.)
Pay off your credit cards in full
Make a list of your creditors, the amount owed, and the annual percentage rate on each card -- ranking them from greatest to smallest APR. Direct extra cash toward the highest-rate card until it's paid off. Then shift the amount you were funneling toward the first card to the next on the list, working your way down.
Make retirement savings a priority by joining your employer-sponsored plan or opening an individual retirement account
You can open an IRA with just $100 at financial services firm TIAA-CREF, as long as you invest at least that amount every month.
Do a realistic ballpark estimate of what college will cost for your child
For help, visit Savingforcollege.com or the College Savings Plans Network. At minimum, take the amount you plan to spend on a child's birthday party and gifts and holiday presents, cut it in half, and put that in a 529 plan each year. Ask grandparents to do the same.
Most important, spend consciously. Start by changing just one financial habit this month. For example, when fuel prices fell sharply in September, many consumers took what they saved at the pump and blew it at the mall -- boosting retail sales to their strongest showing since January.
Don't follow the pack. Do some quick calculations on how often you fill up the tank, and figure out how much you're saving on gas from its summer peak. Then dedicate that amount to cut credit card debt or boost emergency savings. The path out of of the credit trap, and the road to genuine wealth, starts with one step.
Lentinman, I agree with you. Although rentals in my neighborhood seem to be brisk. Everything that comes on the market is being rented at high prices (houses, not apts.) I can't figure it out as INTEL is one of the big employers here and they have been cutting people.
A neighbor listed his house several months ago @ $849,000 and today I noticed that it had dropped first to $829 then $799 and now $739,000... He wants out real bad. Already purchased 2 other homes before selling the first one.... IDIOT!!!
AP Exclusive: Reid Got $1M in Land Sale
Oct 11 2:13 PM US/Eastern
By JOHN SOLOMON and KATHLEEN HENNESSEY
Associated Press Writers
WASHINGTON
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn't personally owned the property for three years, property deeds show.
In the process, Reid did not disclose to Congress an earlier sale in which he transferred his land to a company created by a friend and took a financial stake in that company, according to records and interviews.
The Nevada Democrat's deal was engineered by Jay Brown, a longtime friend and former casino lawyer whose name surfaced in a major political bribery trial this summer and in other prior organized crime investigations. He's never been charged with wrongdoing _ except for a 1981 federal securities complaint that was settled out of court.
Land deeds obtained by The Associated Press during a review of Reid's business dealings show:
_The deal began in 1998 when Reid bought undeveloped residential property on Las Vegas' booming outskirts for about $400,000. Reid bought one lot outright, and a second parcel jointly with Brown. One of the sellers was a developer who was benefiting from a government land swap that Reid supported. The seller never talked to Reid.
_In 2001, Reid sold the land for the same price to a limited liability corporation created by Brown. The senator didn't disclose the sale on his annual public ethics report or tell Congress he had any stake in Brown's company. He continued to report to Congress that he personally owned the land.
_After getting local officials to rezone the property for a shopping center, Brown's company sold the land in 2004 to other developers and Reid took $1.1 million of the proceeds, nearly tripling the senator's investment. Reid reported it to Congress as a personal land sale.
The complex dealings allowed Reid to transfer ownership, legal liability and some tax consequences to Brown's company without public knowledge, but still collect a seven-figure payoff nearly three years later.
Reid hung up the phone when questioned about the deal during an AP interview last week.
The senator's aides said no money changed hands in 2001 and that Reid instead got an ownership stake in Brown's company equal to the value of his land. Reid continued to pay taxes on the land and didn't disclose the deal because he considered it a "technical transfer," they said.
They also said they have no documents proving Reid's stake in the company because it was an informal understanding between friends.
The 1998 purchase "was a normal business transaction at market prices," Reid spokesman Jim Manley said. "There were several legal steps associated with the investment during those years that did not alter Senator Reid's actual ownership interest in the land."
Senate ethics rules require lawmakers to disclose on their annual ethics report all transactions involving investment properties _ regardless of profit or loss _ and to report any ownership stake in companies.
Kent Cooper, who oversaw government disclosure reports for federal candidates for two decades in the Federal Election Commission, said Reid's failure to report the 2001 sale and his ties to Brown's company violated Senate rules.
"This is very, very clear," Cooper said. "Whether you make a profit or a loss you've got to put that transaction down so the public, voters, can see exactly what kind of money is moving to or from a member of Congress."
"It is especially disconcerting when you have a member of the leadership, of either party, not putting in the effort to make sure this is a complete and accurate report," said Cooper. "That says something to other members. It says something to the Ethics Committee."
Other parts of the deal _ such as the informal handling of property taxes _ raise questions about possible gifts or income reportable to Congress and the IRS, ethics experts said.
Stanley Brand, former Democratic chief counsel of the House, said Reid should have disclosed the 2001 sale and that his omission fits a larger culture in Congress where lawmakers aren't following or enforcing their own rules.
"It's like everything else we've seen in last two years. If it is not enforced, people think it's not enforced and they get lax and sloppy," Brand said.
SALE HIDDEN FROM CONGRESS
Reid and his wife, Landra, personally signed the deeds selling their full interest in the property to Brown's company, Patrick Lane LLC, for the same $400,000 they paid in 1998, records show.
Despite the sale, Reid continued to report on his public ethics reports that he personally owned the land until it was sold again in His disclosure forms to Congress do not mention an interest in Patrick Lane or the company's role in the 2004 sale.
AP first learned of the transaction from a former Reid aide who expressed concern the deal hadn't been properly reported.
Reid isn't listed anywhere on Patrick Lane's corporate filings with Nevada, even though the land he sold accounted for three-quarters of the company's assets. Brown is listed as the company's manager. Reid's office said Nevada law didn't require Reid to be mentioned in the filings.
"We have been friends for over 35 years. We didn't need a written agreement between us," Brown said.
The informalities didn't stop there.
PROPERTY TAXES LOOSELY HANDLED
Brown sometimes paid a share of the local property taxes on the lot Reid owned outright between 1998 and 2001, while Reid sometimes paid more than his share of taxes on the second parcel they co-owned.
And the two men continued to pay the property taxes from their personal checking accounts even after the land was sold to Patrick Lane in 2001, records show.
Brown said Reid first approached him in 1997 about land purchases and the two men considered the two lots a single investment.
"During the years of ownership, there may have been occasions that he advanced the property taxes, or that I advanced the property taxes," Brown said. "The bottom line is that between ourselves we always settled up and each of us paid our respective percentages."
Ultimately, Reid paid about 74 percent of the property taxes, slightly less than his actual 75.1 ownership stake, according to canceled checks kept at the local assessor's office. One year, the property tax payments were delinquent and resulted in a small penalty, the records show.
Ethics experts said such informality raises questions about whether any of Brown's tax payments amounted to a benefit for Reid. "It might be a gift," Cooper said.
Brand said the IRS might view the handling of the land taxes as undisclosed income to Reid but it was unlikely to prompt an investigation. "If someone is paying a liability you owe, there may be some income imputed. But at that level, it's pretty small dollars," he said.
FEDERAL LAND SWAPS
Nevada land deeds show Reid and his wife first bought the property in January 1998 in a proposed subdivision created partly with federal lands transferred by the Interior Department to private developers.
Reid's two lots were never owned by the government, but the piece of land joining Reid's property to the street corner _ a key to the shopping center deal _ came from the government in 1994.
One of the sellers was Fred Lessman, a vice president of land acquisition at Perma-Bilt Homes.
Around the time of the 1998 sale, Lessman and his company were completing a complicated federal land transfer that also involved an Arizona-based developer named Del Webb Corp.
In the deal, Del Webb and Perma-Bilt purchased environmentally sensitive lands in the Lake Tahoe area, transferred them to the government and then got in exchange several pieces of valuable Las Vegas land.
Lessman was personally involved, writing a March 1997 letter to Interior lobbying for the deal. "This exchange has been through many trials and tribulations ... we do not need to create any more stumbling blocks," Lessman wrote.
For years, Reid also had been encouraging Interior to make land swaps on behalf of Del Webb, where one of his former aides worked.
In 1994, Reid wrote a letter with other Nevada lawmakers on behalf of Del Webb, and then met personally with a top federal land official in Nevada. That official claimed in media reports he felt pressured by the senator. Reid denied any pressure.
The next year, Reid collected $18,000 in political donations from Del Webb's political action committee and employees. Del Webb's efforts to get federal land dragged on.
In December 1996, Reid wrote a second letter on behalf of Del Webb, urging Interior to answer the company's concerns. The deal came together in summer and fall 1997, with Perma-Bilt joining in.
In January 1998 _ just days before he bought his land _ Reid applauded the Lake Tahoe land transfers, saying they would create the "gateway to paradise."
None of Reid's letters mentioned Perma-Bilt. Reid's office said the senator never met Lessman nor discussed the Lake Tahoe land transfer or his personal land purchase. A real estate attorney handled the 1998 sale at arms-length, aides said.
"This land investment was completely unrelated to federal land swaps that took place in the mid-1990's," Manley said.
Lessman said he never talked to Reid or asked for his help before the 1998 land sale, and only met the senator years later at a public event. "Any suggestion that the land sale between Senator Reid and myself is somehow tied in with the Perma-Bilt exchange is completely absurd," Lessman said.
THE REZONING
Clark County intended for the property Reid owned to be used solely for new housing, records show. Just days before Reid sold the parcels to Brown's company, Brown sought permission in May 2001 to rezone the properties so a shopping center could be built.
Career zoning officials objected, saying the request was "inconsistent" with Clark County's master development plan. The town board in Spring Valley, where Reid's property was located, also voted 4-1 to reject the rezoning.
Brown persisted. The Clark County zoning board followed by the Clark County Commission voted to overrule the recommendation and approve commercial zoning. Such votes were common at the time.
Before the approval in September 2001, Brown's consultant told commissioners that Reid was involved. "Mr. Brown's partner is Harry Reid, so I think we have people in this community who you can trust to go forward and put a quality project before you," the consultant testified.
With the rezoning granted, Patrick Lane pursued the shopping center deal. On Jan. 20, 2004, the company sold the property to developers for $1.6 million. Today, a multimillion dollar retail complex sits on the land.
On Jan. 21, 2004, Reid received more than $1.1 million of the sale proceeds. Reid disclosed the money the following year on his Senate ethics report as a personal sale of land, not mentioning Patrick Lane.
A BUSINESS PARTNER'S PAST
Brown has been a behind-the-scenes power broker in Nevada for years, donating to Democrats, Republicans and charities. He represented a major casino in legal cases and dabbled in Nevada's booming real estate market.
Brown befriended Reid four decades ago, even before Reid served as chairman of the Nevada gaming commission and decided cases involving Brown's clients.
Brown's name has surfaced in federal investigations involving organized crime, casinos and political bribery since the 1980s.
This past summer, federal prosecutors introduced testimony at the bribery trial of former Clark County Commission chairman Dario Herrara that Brown had taken money from a Las Vegas strip club owner to influence the commission. Herrara was convicted of taking kickbacks. Brown was never called as a witness.
Brown declined to discuss past cases where his name surfaced, including Herrara. "The federal government investigated this whole matter thoroughly, and there was never any implication of impropriety on my part," he said.
Rents go up as home sales slip
Apartments - Portland-area rates jump 5.6 percent in a year but trail California's
Thursday, October 19, 2006
DYLAN RIVERA
Apartment rents in the Portland area are increasing at one of the fastest rates in the West, jumping 5.6 percent from September 2005 to last month.
The average occupancy rate for area apartments increased to 96.9 percent from 94.2 percent over the same period, according to a survey released today by California-based RealFacts Inc. The change suggests a shift in bargaining power toward landlords, because an occupancy rate of 94 percent to 95 percent is generally regarded as "equilibrium."
The Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton area had an average monthly apartment rent of $789 last month, according to the survey, up from $747 a year ago. The increase gave the area the eighth-largest percentage gain among the 29 western and southwestern metro areas surveyed.
Rapidly increasing rents in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California represent a dramatic turnaround from recent years, when low mortgage rates fed a home-buying frenzy that changed many renters into homeowners. In the Portland area, apartment rents were rising at a 1 percent rate only last year.
A continuing trend of developers converting apartment buildings into condominiums also cut into the supply of rentals in recent years, pushing up the occupancy figures.
Home sales volumes are down this year, suggesting many would-be home buyers are now choosing to stay in the rental market, said Chris Bates, director of sales and marketing for RealFacts.
"It's really the volume that has the first effect," Bates said. "As fewer people are becoming owners, they're remaining renters, so that will keep that occupancy level up and allow apartment owners to increase rents."
RealFacts surveys apartment buildings with at least 100 units, and does not include rental houses. It surveys 346 properties in the Portland area.
The San Francisco Bay area, where home prices in September fell for the first time in more than four years, reflected a similar trend.
In Silicon Valley, for instance, the average September rent climbed by more than 10 percent from the prior year, to $1,450.
It marked the first double-digit increase in the high-tech heartland since the early stages of the dot-com bust in early 2001 when Santa Clara County's average rent peaked at $1,959.
Despite the Bay Area's rapid run-up, Southern California remained the West's most expensive place to rent an apartment, according to RealFacts. The average rent in Los Angeles and Orange counties climbed 7.4 percent to $1,546 while rents increased 7.6 percent to an average of $1,452 in Ventura County.
Rents declined in just three of the 29 markets surveyed by RealFacts. Boise, Colorado Springs, Colo., and Tulsa, Okla., all recorded slight downturns.
Michael Liedtke of The Associated Press contributed to this report. Dylan Rivera: 503-221-8532; dylanrivera@news.oregonian.com
echos: "Give me Liberty, or give me... deathtotaxes"
You can't have me, I am not a member of the Senate Page Brigade! Who said you could use my name?
LOL
bbotcs/msgi: As I recall from living in FL, the newer standards are 140 mph winds. This was not a state wide mandate.
As for old home construction, after the last big SF earthquake, which I survived! Many of those old charming homes, which were well made, slid off the foundations because they were not bolted down. I lived in a pre 1960's home which survived very nicely, but it was not a well made home. No insulation, cheap windows, low quality woodwork, etc.
Today the homebuilder can throw up a decent home for relatively less money because they have systems and specializations that allow them to build them FAST. Plumbing a house with plastic flex pipe instead of copper is amazingly quick and that makes it cheap to produce. And as MSGI mentioned, concrete block and stucco is cheap and quick.
beigle: Why was the closing late? Does the fine print of the paperwork give them an out? If not, tell them you will file a small claims action against them. A very simple process. Collecting the money if you win can be a different matter, but it is a very interesting experience to go through.
I won a claim against a NYSE member firm, but was never able to collect the money because the California office had no assets at the time and the cost involved with getting the dollars from NY was more than it was worth.
I hate Fahnestock & Company! One in a long line of Wall Street Sleaze!
Enjoy the new house!!! Ace is your friendly hardware place! You will know those guys real well. LOL
NGAS usage: NW Natural serving Portland Oregon filed for a 6% + rate increase which they subsequently lowered to approx 3%+. I guess I will not be seeing any lowered bills this year.
Not sure how accurate that story is based upon the Facts. Hedges cut both ways.
Len: Brinker: As you know I am a big Brinker fan. However, so far this week I have used this run up to liquidate most of my holdings at sizeable long term gains. I even bought a few QID's, which I am already sucking wind with! LOL
I will buy some long positions back if the SPY's drop to 125 or so. I figure 5% in money markets will be ok for now. And like MSGI, my wife is working part time, she loves it!
MSGI/ZEN: I second the good luck! MSGI, I know the LAZY part as well. Once you walk away it becomes almost impossible to go back to real work. I would need to be near bankruptcy to work. I would send the wife and kids out first to work. LOL
Interestiing story in WSJ today "The Shifting Calculus of Buying a House"... Only get paper copy so I can't post it. Moody's Economy.com shows 20 cities that will have 10% or more declines in housing prices. Some markets will take until 2009 to bottom.
My former location, Sarasota is a 14% drop prediction and my current location, Portland is only a .8% dip by 2009.
Obviously REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP has no problem with overlooking Foley's conduct.
OWENQ: It was the stock that broke me of the habit of buying individual large cap stocks. I took a major beating and would not touch it again. All my large cap buying is now SPY/QQQQ/VTI ..
May not have answered your question, but it feels like being in a AA meeting and standing up and confessing your sins. Although I have never had to go to such a meeting!
Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Representative Mark Foley, a Florida Republican, submitted a letter of resignation to House Speaker Dennis Hastert today after ABC News queried him about sexually explicit messages with underage congressional pages.
I did not think Republicans were into that sort of thing.
lentinman: Nice mea culpa! In eight parts, classic lentinman. LOL ... But you are man enough to own up to it!
Give Brinker his due, he for whatever logic or reason is right on! Glad I followed his advice.
good luck to us all!
Ugly, Ugly & more ugly. I wonder if that report has already been factored into the price of the stock, or are we looking at $.25 .
I am surprised that they filed today. Could have waited until Friday at 5 pm.
If they don't start getting some non government business, they will be gone!
Bobwins: Suwne, nice looking website and packaging. Buying shelf space in the supermarkets is VERY expensive. Advertising the product to compete with Nutrasweet, etc. is even more expensive. Do you have any idea how they plan to do either? Some retailers might give them some space on a trial basis, but it is very hard to make it that way. The streets are littered with nice looking products that did not have the $$$ to market them properly.
The current cash flow and cash in bank would only support a localized introduction, not enough dollars for any kind of national rollout.
Can the product be bought anywhere at this time? I would be interested to see if it tastes better than the stuff I currently have, which has been banned from use in my house. LOL
originunknown: Exactly right!