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Author Archives: Lila
Inflation-Inflicted Foreign Governments Buy the Farm…..
Farmland, that is. To wit.:
“The Financial Times reports that Chinese companies will be encouraged to buy farmland abroad, particularly in Africa and South America, to help guarantee food security under a plan being considered by Beijing.
A proposal drafted by the Ministry of Agriculture would make supporting offshore land acquisition by domestic agricultural companies a central government policy. Beijing already has similar policies to boost offshore investment by state-owned banks, manufacturers and oil companies, but offshore agricultural investment has so far been limited to a few small projects.
If approved, the plan could face intense opposition abroad given surging global food prices and deforestation fears. However an official close to the deliberations said it was likely to be adopted.
“There should be no problem for this policy to be approved. The problem might come from foreign governments who are unwilling to give up large areas of land,” the official said.
The move comes as oil-rich but food-poor countries in the Middle East and north Africa explore similar options. Libya is talking with Ukraine about growing wheat in the former Soviet republic, while Saudi Arabia has said it would invest in agricultural and livestock projects abroad to ensure food security and control commodity prices….”
Read more in a fascinating article on the prospects for Asian Pacific business at FinFacts.com
Buying In a Buyer’s Market
Your First Offer is Your Best Offer
This is the most counter-intuitive part of buying in a buyers market. Ordinarily sellers, or more accurately the seller’s realtor, try to create a sense of urgency to buy the house. They want you to think other people are looking, there is going to be a bidding war, you need to get your offer in today, etc. Remember, in a buyer’s market these ploys are all lies. You are the only buyer, and you can take as long as you want to buy the house. Your task in negotiating is to create a sense of urgency and panic in the seller. This is why you make your first offer your best offer.
Start with a bid at least 10% below asking price; however, it can be less if the most you are willing to pay is less. Lower your bid as follows:
***If you are actively bidding on the property, make your offers expire in 5 days. If you are still interested in the property resubmit a fractionally-lower offer after 7 days (make them sweat for 2 days.) Don’t make is so much lower as to lose consideration, but make it enough lower that the seller gets the message that they need to come to your price before it gets any lower.
***If the seller makes a counter offer, retract your offer and resubmit a lower one. Works the same as the time decay offer above. After you have lowered your offer a few times, the seller may panic and take your offer before it goes any lower. This is what you are after.
***Lower your offer $500 each time you speak with the seller’s realtor. Every time they communicate with you, they will pressure you to buy. Lower your bid each time they speak with you to send a message that their pressure is not working, and it is, in fact, hurting their client.
***Lower your offer $2,000 if the realtor uses one of the standard lies I mentioned above.
***If the realtor tells you there is another bidder on the property, immediately withdraw your offer and tell them to call you if it falls out of escrow with the other buyer. Since this statement from the realtor is almost certainly a lie, it will cause them to have to explain to their client why the only buyer around has pulled their offer.”
More at Redfin’s Real Estate forums
The Boom Follows the Boomers…DC Housing Insiders Say Downtown Prices Will Hold Up
MB: Predictions for a year from now? Are we going to be sitting here talking about another 20 percent appreciation?
JB: I think there’s going to be a healthy seven to ten percent growth. There is a strong, healthy market here, and you have a lot of well qualified buyers who have a lot of cash.
MB: You do not think it is going to stop?
JB: It has stopped in other markets already. People forget what happened after September 11? You couldn’t give away an $800,000 house in Washington D.C. for a year. Take Columbia Heights for example. You have a lot of people who bought $350,000 condos and wanted to sell them for $450,000, but you can buy a house for $355,000. It makes no sense. That is a clear example of a housing imbalance. Where you have good housing stock at a fair market price, you will have willing buyers. That is what makes this market very healthy.
MB: What is the price per-square-foot in your various markets?
JB: The price per square foot in Georgetown is $753 but a luxury condominium in Georgetown is about $1,000. In Kalorama, it is around the $650 to $700 market, and depending on renovation it can go as high as $750. Georgetown is about 20 to 25 percent more expensive than Kalorama. Logan Circle is comparable to Georgetown and Kalorama. The condo price per square foot could be as high as $700 to $900, and Capitol Hill is getting up there, too.
CM: I have a different market them what is going on downtown. I don’t see that much appreciation next year, maybe four to six percent. There is a possibility that we might get a bump because of the construction costs, because of Katrina. I also believe that the big builders are going to divert resources. Right now they artificially keep up their supply and demand by only allowing so many houses to be sold per month because they don’t want to get too far out and they don’t have the production capacity to build any more. Because the developers are national, houses are built in factories, and are shipped and assembled on site. I think they are going to take some of that capacity away from those projects and use that to deal with Katrina rebuilding. The effect may be a bigger housing shortage, but I also see that there is an affordability problem. When our average price of a home is over $550,000 and the mean is over $600,000 in Fairfax County, some people find it very difficult to afford housing. Even though I work on the luxury end of the market place, it still all trickles up. Long term, we’re going to go up. Short term, I don’t know if we’re going to have as great as an appreciation as we have had over the past few years.
MB: And what about square footage?
CM: We’re at $250 to $300 a square foot for houses and $500 per square foot for luxury homes. That is construction price, not including land. The lots are going anywhere from $500,000 on the low end to over $1 million.
JF: My market is different because we operate in scarcity of single family homes. Chevy Chase has a building moratorium that is going to further tighten the supply. Builders are not going to want to go in there and take the risk of knocking a house down and putting up a big house. The few houses that do come on in the market are going to continue to appreciate because there is no place to go. In the last three years, the price per square foot for land has gone from $315 to $750 to $800 in prime locations. If you want to buy something in Edgemoore you are at $2 million, and that’s a tear down. In terms of the condo market, unlike Northern Virginia, we are under built to an extreme. The Adagio, in downtown Bethesda, came on the market with 90 units and sold out in two weeks with a waiting list of 3,000 people. According to the last Census report baby boomers represent 52 percent of our market in the Washington metropolitan area. The last baby boomer will turn 55 in 2020. What do boomers want to buy? They want to buy downtown locations, water properties, golf communities—any kind of a second home market. Follow the boomer and you will make money….”
More at Washington Life.
Lord Acton on the Rule of the Unfit
Comment:
And of all classes, “the ruling classes” are usually the least fit. Now, who are the ruling classes today?
Some would say capitalists and corporate leaders.
Here at The Mind Body Politic, where we claim to look more deeply than others into the innards of the political organism, we demur. Our capitalists (that is, the few that remain so among the many more who’ve turned into technocrats) are ruled themselves.
Only look around. Open The Wall Street Journal – Vox Capitis – and check for yourself. Out tumble words and phrases that might as well have come from the Soviet Politburo…. and all of them as soiled, over-handled and badly-fitting as spandex tights in a thrift store: the public good……. democracy… women’s rights…. the national interest….
Now, when have any of these meant anything other than whatever it is any speaker chooses them to mean? (Note: we don’t object to any of these things. We just object to the way these terms are roped into the pursuit of just about any political or economic goal – including those diametrically opposite of the terms themselves”. Remember that “women’s rights’ were a reason we bombed Iraq and Iraqi women and children; we censor political speech for “the public good,” and we want to remake the world “in the national interest.” )
And who, may we ask, shines up these second-hand souvenirs to foist on the average uncritical citizen?
Is it leaders of business….or leaders of opinion ?
My bet is the latter. Over-exposed academics, under-educated journalists, and the whole tribe of professionals experts, prolix pundits and cacophonous commentators who eat up band-width around the planet…..
These are the leaders…as well as the followers…of public opinion.
And it’s public opinion, that great uncouth, whiskered, whisky-soused, splay-footed, smelly-arm-pitted tramp who leads us all around by the nose. High-browed or low-browed, we’re brow-beaten.. one and all… by the chatter of the chattering classes.
Barack Wooster and the Revenge of Jeremiah Jeeves…
“The usual Jeeves story is as follows: Bertie gets in hot water, goes bleating to Jeeves, who brings to bear his infinite sagacity to rescue his master. While doing so, he also extracts a victory of sorts — making Bertie give up something — now a jacket, now a tie, another time his moustache! The story ends with a restored Bertie Wooster calling for a restorative brandy and soda, only to find the effects already at his elbow. Jeeves is perfect.
Unsuitable romantic dalliances are one thing, calling for no more than minor strictures as above, but a permanent change in the status-quo is a different matter altogether. In such instances, Jeeves can be ruthless, as when Wooster contemplates having his sister and her three daughters move in with him (“it will be nice to hear the pitter-patter of little feet about the place, Jeeves“, or words to that effect). Jeeves realizes that immediate and salutary measures are called for. In an unforgettable episode (the only one written in Jeeves’ hand rather than Wooster’s), he puts Bertie before an audience of schoolgirls, from which Wooster emerges a chastened man, cured of his illusions about how charming the young ladies are.
Something similar occurred last month, when Sen. Bertie Wooster (D-IL) was asked about a ripe idea (assumed, naturally, to have emanated from Jeeves). Instead of paying tribute to the great man (“from the collar upward, he stands alone” would have been mot juste), he instead chose to take the tack of I was reluctantly compelled to hand the misguided blighter the mitten……”
Read the rest at Niranjan Ramakrishna’s blogogram.
My Comment (posted at blogogram):
Hey Niranjan –
Good piece. Barack as Bertie, I’ll let fly. But Jeremiah is not Jeeves. He’s some one much more tyrannical and pompous. I’d say, Sir Roderick Spode.
For those who don’t know Wodehouse, here’s a profile of Spode from wiki:
“Spode….. marches his followers around London and the countryside, preaching loudly to the public on the dissoluteness of modern society until a heckler hits him in the eye with a potato….”
And how does Jeeves deflate Spode?
“Before Spode inherited the title of Earl of Sidcup from his uncle, he made a living as the “founder and proprietor of the emporium in Bond Street known as Eulalie Soeurs”, a famed designer of ladies’ lingerie.[1] Out of embarrassment, Spode had long attempted to keep his ownership of the business a secret, though Jeeves discovered the fact in the Junior Ganymede Club’s official Book, where one of Spode’s former valets had inscribed it. In The Code of the Woosters, this discovery allowed Bertie to threaten Spode with public embarrassment and prevent being coshed: as Bertie says, “You can’t be a successful Dictator and design women’s underclothing. One or the other. Not both.” Indeed, whenever Bertie mentions the name “Eulalie” throughout the book, Spode instantly becomes meek and acquiescing….”
Indian reverse harassment cases ending in suicide….
According to the National Crime Bureau of India, more than 15000 husbands have committed suicide after harassment by their wives . Rajesh Hasmukh Desai (November 2006) , Pushkar Singh (February 2008) and Rakesh Sheth (March 2008) are a few.
And in Sheth’s case, the wife was not arrested.
And another case cited on the message board of rediff.com:
“I know of this case in Mumbai.I had mentally predicted knowing the girls family as well as the boy that the so called love marriage would be on the rocks soon.The boy a brilliant software engineer from a traditional family, it appears got enamoured only by her beauty and youth.The girls family was not really well to do but thought of the boy more like the goose that lays the golden egg.
True enough boy played the role of the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg –
somewhere along the line he realised that he was fattening his in laws at the cost of his own aged parents at Bangalore requiring constant medical attention-
he then makes the mistake of correcting his attitude towards his own parents and all hell breaks loose and he is rewarded with a 498A to him and his aged parents as well.
Alas the in laws have killed the golden goose with it…”
The Only Way to Control Greedy Capitalists
“I agree with the sentiment that society’s problems can only be solved by a select group of individuals. However, I don’t believe this select group of people is composed of well-meaning politicians, but rather greedy capitalists. Both are self-serving, but while the politician cares only about your vote, the capitalist cares about your actual needs and wants. Furthermore, a politician only has to care towards the end of the election cycle, whereas a capitalist has to care at every moment a business transaction takes place. Ask yourself this question: in a world of greedy self-serving individuals, is society better off with more politicians or are we better off with more competing capitalists?
A free market’s fruits in a particular sector of the economy produce the optimal situation where product innovation increases dramatically, wages increase proportionally, and prices lower substantially. After time, the price, product and wages in a particular sector will plateau and entrepreneurs will look elsewhere for unexploited vistas where the cycle of better products, lower prices, and higher wages begin anew.
So yes, a capitalist only cares about himself, but by extension he must care for the customer – lots of them, or someone else will. Part of that customer care is hiring the right people, and to attract them, he must care about their needs too or some other employer will.
If you want the capitalist to care about the people, if you want the capitalist to pay his employees higher wages, I have one piece of advice – compete with him…..”
More at Lew Rockwell by Todd Steinberg.
The Unfree Web: Malaysian Blogger Charged with Sedition
“Take note of what’s been happening in Malaysia these past few days since popular blogger and political commentator Raja Petra Kamarudin, 58, was imprisoned on Tuesday after a trial which saw him charged with sedition for having written a blog post.
If the Malaysian government was truly worried about bloggers effecting social unrest, now they have it. Remember, this is a country where any politician worth their mutton—Jeff Ooi was one of several Malaysians who rode their blog and calls for reform to Parliament in recent elections—has a blog, and even the old goats now blog too.
Ex-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has a highly-read blog, as does PM hopeful Anwar Ibrahim.
“They set up their blogs, and they try to close down our blogs.”
Raja is one of the sharpest voices both online and off in Malaysia, so it’s highly suggested you check out his statements to the public right after his sentencing, lbogged by Malaysian citizen media stronghold, Malaysiakini.
More at Global Voices Online
Comment:
Over here in the US, there’s always a chorus of voices in defense of every moron’s right to exhibit his moronity (yes, it is a word) in public….in defense of spam, porn, and of course the non-stop invasion of the privacy of the privates of the Brittany-Paris posse…..which is presumed to have no rights, least of all to sympathy, being made up of the rich, the blonde and the giddy.
But the real defense of free speech usually has few cheerleaders.
On Iraq, on Palestine, on racial issues, on the war between the sexes, on religious belief and the state, on terrorism, on any of the most important issues around, the rule in the mainstream media is doublespeak and slogans. And it’s not much better in the alternative press.
Abroad the threat of jail time lends some dignity to political bloggers. Here we only get sentenced to not being read.
Crude Oil Decoupling from the US Dollar
“Crude oil has detached itself from movement in the US dollar. Movement in crude oil prices suggest that the options markets has a big role to play and a part of the rise in crude oil is attributed to covering by option sellers. Frankly, very few traders and investors expected crude oil prices to rise near $125 at this time of the year. Long term investors will exit their investments once crude oil breaks $150 as incremental returns will fall over $150. Investors have made over 100% returns when crude oil prices rose from $50 in early 2007 to now. Crude oil over $150, investors will not get 100% returns in twelve months once crude oil breaks $150. If crude oil prices float over $200 for a long time whether in 2009 or 2010, there will be real evidence of a global slowdown. Even emerging markets like