LA Times on the housing bubble, complete with unsophisticated buyers using their retirement funds to buy speculative property sight unseen.

They’re cashing in retirement funds, selling stock and taking out second mortgages. They’re pouring the money into real estate, often in distant states, often without seeing the property.

One sight-unseen buyer went to his property

He went to visit his dirt.

It wasn’t quite the way he imagined. “It was steeper. And there’s a lot of rocks. Big rocks.”

Well duh.

From Angy Bear, quoting a Miami broker

In Miami, Ron Shuffield, president of Esslinger-Wooten-Maxwell Realtors, predicted that a limited supply of land coupled with demand from baby boomers and foreigners would prolong the boom indefinitely.

“South Florida,” he said, “is working off of a totally new economic model than any of us have ever experienced in the past.”

This is precisely the same snake oil manic bullshit we heard just before the dot coms tanked and took the stock market with it. Much of that money (what was left of it anyway) went into real estate, fueling this new bubble. And it’s about to pop. Interest rates are rising, and in the surest sign of all, when mainstream investors are flocking to new investments and people are saying this is different, it’ll go on forever, then it’s a given that 1) the peak has already been reached and 2) the savvy investors are selling to the incoming rubes.

No Comments »

Poison gas, that is. Which can be created by teflon frying pans.

DuPont studies show that the Teflon offgases toxic particulates at 446 F. At 680 F Teflon pans release at least six toxic gases, including two carcinogens, two global pollutants, and MFA, a chemical lethal to humans at low doses.

It gets worse.

At temperatures that DuPont scientists claim are reached on stovetop drip pans (1000 F), non-stick coatings break down to a chemical warfare agent known as PFIB, and a chemical analog of the WWII nerve gas phosgene.

And don’t use teflon around Tweety, either.

Avian veterinarians have known for decades that Teflon-coated and other non-stick cookware can produce fumes that are highly toxic to birds.

No Comments »

After remarks by Randall Terry — an anti-abortion activist who has been acting as a spokesman for Terri Schiavo’s family, the Schindlers — members of a group calling itself the Revolutionary Communist Youth Brigades seized control of the microphones and blasted Terry as a “Christian fascist thug” trying to interfere in “the most intimate affairs of life and death.”

“[Terri Schiavo's] brain is not functional. It’s not going to recover. Let her die in peace,” pleaded Sunsari Taylor, a member of the group.

Ever notice how the media sometimes won’t even respect the name of a group? They didn’t say Randall Terry was a member of a group “calling itself” Operation Rescue, but did so with the RCP Youth Brigade, when a 30 second Google would have shown them to be an actual group.

No Comments »