Of housing booms and busted houses

When my husband left the military, he left the military.  No hanging on to clearances and suckling at the teat of a defense contractor.  Instead, he became a home improvement contractor.  We had gone to a community college and gotten licensed as general contractors in order to pull our own permits to build a house a few years earlier, so we had that going for us, and so long as it was just a family operation with no employees we didn't have to worry about health coverage.  

During the not-quite six years we had that company, we saw shoddy construction damned near every day.  Quarter million dollar houses that had settled so much in one year that picture windows had cracked and doors no longer hung square in their frames.  I learned quickly that there were certain developments that we wanted no part of, the houses were just too fucked up.  I couldn't look one more homeowner in the eye and say "I'm sorry, but there is simply nothing I can do to help you.  The window I can put in will crack within a year, too, because the problems are structural.  You need to consult with an attorney and take these problems up with the builder."  

The Kansas City area has seen a lot of construction fraud indictments of major builders - the guys who don't just build houses, but neighborhoods - for selling poorly built houses that were built from substandard materials.  Even the people who bought decent houses by developers like Rodrock didn't get what they were paying for when they bought that name - A Rodrock Community in brass script on stone at the entryways to various Johnson County cul-de-sac rings of hell.  Don't get me wrong - I loved Rodrock houses.  We made a hell of a lot of money and put three kids through private school and at least one of them through college putting new windows in Rodrock houses that were only about seven years old.  I would have been furious over spending a few grand to buy new windows, but in context, those homeowners were happy campers.  They  were happy that they only needed new windows, given what they were reading in the paper about Pulte and Miller houses, so they didn't mind paying that nice young couple with the well-behaved teenagers who helped in the family business a handsome fee to have precision work done inside their dream homes by a guy like my husband.  He does artisan-quality work - or did, anyway.  Foot surgery a few years ago sidelined him and kept him off ladders for a year, and when we sold the house we bought to restore and sell, he sold the equipment when we moved to an apartment - an apartment that was over-built over a century ago, with windows that are still square.  

One of the reasons we didn't try to resume the business when he was able to was the fact that poorly built homes had mushroomed and avoiding them entirely simply wasn't an option.  Besides that, when I called our insurance agent to get a quote on renewing our liability and our bond, our premiums had tripled in the two years since I had last paid them - because shoddy construction had led to claims and that raised the premiums on all of us.  Throw in the fact that gas was now three bucks a gallon and an F-150 loaded down with tools and windows doesn't exactly sip the stuff, all the supply houses are in North Kansas City and all the people who can afford to buy new windows are in Lenexa, Overland Park and Olathe - it was no longer the money-making proposition it had been just 18 months earlier.  

And the problems are nation wide.

...The furious pace of home building from the late 1990s through the first half of the 2000s contributed to a surge in defects, experts say. It caused shortages of both skilled construction workers and quality materials. Many municipalities also fell behind inspecting and certifying new homes.

At the height of the boom in 2005, more than two million houses were built in the U.S., according to the National Association of Home Builders, a trade group. Criterium Engineers, a national building-inspection firm, estimates that 17% of newly constructed houses built in 2006 had at least two significant defects, up from 15% in 2003.

Residential construction-defect claims filed with insurance companies in the current housing slump have been receding, "but the ones that are being filed are pretty severe in terms of the total damage alleged," says Paul Amirata, vice president of claims for Axa Insurance Co. in New York...

...Because of tumbling real-estate values, those stuck with faulty houses say repairs often cost more than the homes are now worth. Many say they can't refinance their mortgages or sell, and they have no equity to leverage for repairs.

Defects are also a concern for those shopping for a home. Owners generally are required to disclose housing defects to potential buyers. Buyers of new homes should scrutinize purchase and warranty contracts with a real-estate attorney, with special attention to arbitration clauses and liability releases...

...Owners of defective properties say they're finding it even harder to get repairs now because of rising builder bankruptcies. Some builders, especially smaller ones, also carried inadequate liability insurance, construction experts say. Other homeowners say they are hamstrung by mandatory binding arbitration clauses in purchase contracts and new-home warranties, as well as "right to cure" laws, which require homeowners to notify builders and give them a chance to remedy a defect before the homeowners can file a lawsuit. More than 30 states have some type of right-to-cure legislation, according to the home-builders group.

There are a hell of a lot of houses out there that are not worth what it would cost to repair them - in some cases, such as mold and mildew from shoddy plumbing installed by non-union laborers who didn't necessarily have any plumbing experience - the houses are worth less than the cost of repairs to make them safely habitable.  

Families are having their financial lives and futures ruined and banks are getting stuck with bad loans and entire subdivisions are migrating toward golf courses.  

And as if we didn't have enough problems with sleazy builders and shoddy construction - we have a huge problem with poison Chinese drywall headed down the pike.

Sweet Jesus, I'm glad we are out of the home improvement business.  I'm starting to think that my husband broke his foot at the most opportune time possible.  Talk about your blessings in disguise...


Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheyGaveUsARepublic-FrontPage/~3/va4m8HKW6tU/of-ho
using-booms-and-busted-houses

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Bernie Sanders on the Filibuster Solution

After Senator Franken was certified, a lot of people cheered "60" and a lot of other people worried the caucus wouldn't hold. 

Bernie Sanders has a solution. A good, working, solution. He gave an interview to HuffPost where he said:

"I think that with Al Franken coming on board, you have effectively 60 Democrats in the caucus, 58 and two Independents. I think the strategy should be to say, it doesn't take 60 votes to pass a piece of legislation. It takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster. I think the strategy should be that every Democrat, no matter whether or not they ultimately end up voting for the final bill, is to say we are going to vote together to stop a Republican filibuster. And if somebody who votes for that ends up saying, 'I'm not gonna vote for this bill, it's too radical, blah, blah, blah, that's fine.'"

How simple, how elegant.

This gives the opportunity to those Democratic tools of corporate America Senators who would never vote for a certain piece of Democratic legislation to still stand with the majority of Americans their party.  

In other Bernie Sanders news, he has placed a "We Need Single Payer" petition on his website. You can view information on his Single Payer bill, and why Single Payer is the best option here.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

"Randy Babbitt" by Sinclair Lewis (1922): Chapter
XI

http://www.americanliterature.com/SinclairLewis/Babbitt/Babbitt.html
American Literature
home authors books short stories SHORT STORY OF THE DAY children?s section store

Library » Sinclair Lewis » Babbitt ? now reading, CHAPTER XI
Previous Chapter Next Chapter
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
I

THEY had four hours in New York between trains. The one thing Babbitt wished to see was the Pennsylvania Hotel, which had been built since his last visit. He stared up at it, muttering, ?Twenty-two hundred rooms and twenty-two hundred baths! That?s got everything in the world beat. Lord, their turnover must be--well, suppose price of rooms is four to eight dollars a day, and I suppose maybe some ten and--four times twenty-two hundred-say six times twenty-two hundred--well, anyway, with restaurants and everything, say summers between eight and fifteen thousand a day. Every day! I never thought I?d see a thing like that! Some town! Of course the average fellow in Zenith has got more Individual Initiative than the fourflushers here, but I got to hand it to New York. Yes, sir, town, you?re all right--some ways. Well, old Paulski, I guess we?ve seen everything that?s worth while. How?ll we kill the rest of the time? Movie??

But Paul desired to see a liner. ?Always wanted to go to Europe--and, by thunder, I will, too, some day before I past out?, he sighed.

From a rough wharf on the North River they stared at the stern of the Aquitania and her stacks and wireless antenna lifted above the dock-house which shut her in.

?By golly?, Babbitt droned, ?wouldn?t be so bad to go over to the Old Country and take a squint at all these ruins, and the place where Shakespeare was born. And think of being able to order a drink whenever you wanted one! Just range up to a bar and holler out loud, ?Gimme a cocktail, and darn the police!? Not bad at all. What juh like to see, over there, Paulibus??
Paul did not answer. Babbitt turned. Paul was standing with clenched fists, head drooping, staring at the liner as in terror. His thin body, seen against the summer-glaring planks of the wharf, was childishly meager.

Again, ?What would you hit for on the other side, Paul??

Scowling at the steamer, his breast heaving, Paul whispered, ?Oh, my God!? While Babbitt watched him anxiously he snapped, ?Come on, let?s get out of this?, and hastened down the wharf, not looking back.

?That?s funny?, considered Babbitt. ?The boy didn?t care for seeing the ocean boats after all. I thought he?d be interested in ?em?.

II

Though he exulted, and made sage speculations about locomotive horse-power, as their train climbed the Maine mountain-ridge and from the summit he looked down the shining way among the pines; though he remarked, ?Well, by golly!? when he discovered that the station at Katadumcook, the end of the line, was an aged freight-car; Babbitt?s moment of impassioned release came when they sat on a tiny wharf on Lake Sunasquam, awaiting the launch from the hotel. A raft had floated down the lake; between the logs and the shore, the water was transparent, thin-looking, flashing with minnows. A guide in black felt hat with trout-flies in the band, and flannel shirt of a peculiarly daring blue, sat on a log and whittled and was silent. A dog, a good country dog, black and woolly gray, a dog rich in leisure and in meditation, scratched and grunted and slept. The thick sunlight was lavish on the bright water, on the rim of gold-green balsam boughs, the silver birches and tropic ferns, and across the lake it burned on the sturdy shoulders of the mountains. Over everything was a holy peace.

Silent, they loafed on the edge of the wharf, swinging their legs above the water. The immense tenderness of the place sank into Babbitt, and he murmured, ?I?d just like to sit here--the rest of my life--and whittle--and sit. And never hear a typewriter. Or Stan Graff fussing in the ?phone. Or Rone and Ted scrapping. Just sit. Gosh!?

He patted Paul?s shoulder. ?How does it strike you, old snoozer??

?Oh, it?s darn good, Georgie. There?s something sort of eternal about it?.

For once, Babbitt understood him.
III

Their launch rounded the bend; at the head of the lake, under a mountain slope, they saw the little central dining-shack of their hotel and the crescent of squat log cottages which served as bedrooms. They landed, and endured the critical examination of the habitues who had been at the hotel for a whole week. In their cottage, with its high stone fireplace, they hastened, as Babbitt expressed it, to ?get into some regular he-togs?. They came out; Paul in an old gray suit and soft white shirt; Babbitt in khaki shirt and vast and flapping khaki trousers. It was excessively new khaki; his rimless spectacles belonged to a city office; and his face was not tanned but a city pink. He made a discordant noise in the place. But with infinite satisfaction he slapped his legs and crowed, ?Say, this is getting back home, eh??

They stood on the wharf before the hotel. He winked at Paul and drew from his back pocket a plug of chewing-tobacco, a vulgarism forbidden in the Babbitt home. He took a chew, beaming and wagging his head as he tugged at it. ?Um! Um! Maybe I haven?t been hungry for a wad of eating-tobacco! Have some??

They looked at each other in a grin of understanding. Paul took the plug, gnawed at it. They stood quiet, their jaws working. They solemnly spat, one after the other, into the placid water. They stretched voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs. From beyond the mountains came the shuffling sound of a far-off train. A trout leaped, and fell back in a silver circle. They sighed together.

IV

They had a week before their families came. Each evening they planned to get up early and fish before breakfast. Each morning they lay abed till the breakfast-bell, pleasantly conscious that there were no efficient wives to rouse them. The mornings were cold; the fire was kindly as they dressed.

PAUL WAS DISTRESSINGLY CLEAN, BUT BABBITT REVELED IN A GOOD SOUND DIRTINESS, IN NOT HAVING TO SHAVE TILL HIS SPIRIT WAS MOVED TO IT. HE TREASURED EVERY GREASE SPOT AND FISH-SCALE ON HIS NEW KHAKI TROUSERS.

All morning they fished unenergetically, or tramped the dim and aqueous-lighted trails among rank ferns and moss sprinkled with crimson bells. They slept all afternoon, and till midnight played stud-poker with the guides. Poker was a serious business to the guides. They did not gossip; they shuffled the thick greasy cards with a deft ferocity menacing to the ?sports;? and Joe Paradise, king of guides, was sarcastic to loiterers who halted the game even to scratch.

At midnight, as Paul and he blundered to their cottage over the pungent wet grass, and pine-roots confusing in the darkness, Babbitt rejoiced that he did not have to explain to his wife where he had been all evening.

They did not talk much. The nervous loquacity and opinionation of the Zenith Athletic Club dropped from them. But when they did talk they slipped into the naive intimacy of college days. Once they drew their canoe up to the bank of Sunasquam Water, a stream walled in by the dense green of the hardhack. The sun roared on the green jungle but in the shade was sleepy peace, and the water was golden and rippling. Babbitt drew his hand through the cool flood, and mused:

?We never thought we?d come to Maine together!?

?No. We?ve never done anything the way we thought we would. I expected to live in Germany with my granddad?s people, and study the fiddle?.

?That?s so. And remember how I wanted to be a lawyer and go into politics? I still think I might have made a go of it. I?ve kind of got the gift of the gab--anyway, I can think on my feet, and make some kind of a spiel on most anything, and of course that?s the thing you need in politics. By golly, Ted?s going to law-school, even if I didn?t! Well--I guess it?s worked out all right. Myra?s been a fine wife. And Zilla means well, Paulibus?.

?Yes. Up here, I figure out all sorts of plans to keep her amused. I kind of feel life is going to be different, now that we?re getting a good rest and can go back and start over again?.

?I hope so, old boy?. Shyly: ?Say, gosh, it?s been awful nice to sit around and loaf and gamble and act regular, with you along, you old horse-thief!?

?Well, you know what it means to me, Georgie. Saved my life?.

The shame of emotion overpowered them; they cursed a little, to prove they were good rough fellows; and in a mellow silence, Babbitt whistling while Paul hummed, they paddled back to the hotel.

V

Though it was Paul who had seemed overwrought, Babbitt who had been the protecting big brother, Paul became clear-eyed and merry, while BABBITT SANK INTO IRRITABILITY. HE UNCOVERED LAYER ON LAYER OF HIDDEN WEARINESS. AT FIRST HE HAD PLAYED NIMBLE JESTER TO PAUL AND FOR HIM SOUGHT AMUSEMENTS; BY THE END OF THE WEEK PAUL WAS NURSE, AND BABBITT ACCEPTED FAVORS WITH THE CONDESCENSION ONE ALWAYS SHOWS A PATIENT NURSE.

The day before their families arrived, the women guests at the hotel bubbled, ?Oh, isn?t it nice! You must be so excited;? and the proprieties compelled Babbitt and Paul to look excited. But they went to bed early and grumpy.

When Myra appeared she said at once, ?Now, we want you boys to go on playing around just as if we weren?t here?.

The first evening, he stayed out for poker with the guides, and she said in placid merriment, ?My! You?re a regular bad one!? The second evening, she groaned sleepily, ?Good heavens, are you going to be out every single night?? The third evening, he didn?t play poker.

He was tired now in every cell. ?Funny! Vacation doesn?t seem to have done me a bit of good?, he lamented. ?Paul?s frisky as a colt, but I swear, I?m crankier and nervouser than when I came up here?.

He had three weeks of Maine. At the end of the second week he began to feel calm, and interested in life. He planned an expedition to climb Sachem Mountain, and wanted to camp overnight at Box Car Pond. He was curiously weak, yet cheerful, as though he had cleansed his veins of poisonous energy and was filling them with wholesome blood.

He ceased to be irritated by Ted?s infatuation with a waitress (his seventh tragic affair this year); he played catch with Ted, and with pride taught him to cast a fly in the pine-shadowed silence of Skowtuit Pond.

At the end he sighed, ?Hang it, I?m just beginning to enjoy my vacation. But, well, I feel a lot better. And it?s going to be one great year! Maybe the Real Estate Board will elect me president, instead of some fuzzy old-fashioned faker like Chan Mott?.

ON THE WAY HOME, WHENEVER HE WENT INTO THE SMOKING-COMPARTMENT HE FELT GUILTY AT DESERTING HIS WIFE AND ANGRY AT BEING EXPECTED TO FEEL GUILTY, BUT EACH TIME HE TRIUMPHED, ?OH, THIS IS GOING TO BE A GREAT YEAR, A GREAT OLD YEAR!?

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Read The Full Article:
http://ejectsturgell.blogspot.com/2009/07/randy-babbitt-by-sinclair-lewis-1922.ht
ml

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Dems Get Hit at Home on Health Care

Can there be any doubt what these job loss numbers mean? More people will be struggling to keep their health care insurance. However, when you’re getting big money from insurance companies, which includes many Democrats, it seems you’re[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.taylormarsh.com/2009/07/02/dems-get-hit-at-home-on-health-care/

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

America's Effective Unemployment Rate at 18.7%

Each month, I receive from Leo Hindery an update on "America's effective unemployment rate" which includes not only the official unemployment figures but other data points showing off-the-books unemployed or underemployed people.

The numbers are staggering and are aggregates of official data. They matter because various Obama administration officials including the President himself started off calling for huge stimulus packages to help generate "jobs, jobs, jobs!"

But now, I have been hearing more and more from senior Obama economic team members about the jobs they hoped for coming at the very tail end of an economic recovery. Others are talking about a GDP recovery -- but not a jobs recovery. They are admitting as well that they underestimated the severity of this recession and its impact on unemployment levels.

And all this while Goldman Sachs and other financial houses have seen their balance sheets get cleaned up and bonuses surge.

Hindery writes:

Here is a June 2009 version of the summary that calculates the Effective Unemployment Rate, which is now 18.70%, and the Effective Number of Unemployed, which is now 30,172,000.

There are currently 14,729,000 officially unemployed workers, as just announced. However, this figure does not include the combined 15,443,000 workers either (1) in the "labor force reserve" because they have abandoned their job searches (i.e., 4,278,000) or (2) underemployed because they are "part-time of necessity" (i.e., 8,989,000) or "otherwise marginally attached" (i.e., 2,176,000).

The effective unemployment rate is therefore 18.70%, instead of the official 9.51%.

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of workers who are officially unemployed has increased by 7,188,000, while almost twice as many workers - 13,290,000 - have become effectively unemployed. And all the while, we should have been creating around 2,250,000 new jobs (i.e., 18 months times 125,000 jobs per month) just to keep up with population growth.

In June, the number of workers officially unemployed increased 218,000, while the number of workers effectively unemployed actually decreased 35,000.

It's important to see the entire picture of America's jobs profile -- no matter how unpleasant.

I recognize that credit bubble related recoveries are hard to work out and are usually quite slow -- with job growth at the back end. This all makes sense -- but with Christina Romer out raising expectations again with giddy talk predicting a V-shaped recovery and given the "jobs, jobs, jobs" mantra of President Obama himself -- the gap between the job figures expected and the disappointing economic realities generated may be politically consequential.

-- Steve Clemons directs the American Strategy Program and Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation and publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Cheers and Jeers: Thursday

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Time Out for Badness

Hot damn! Always love it when the new Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners are announced. Some favorites from this year's batch of deliberately-awful prose:

Runner Up, Adventure:

In a flurry of flame and fur, fangs and wicker, thus ended the world's first and only hot air baboon ride.
---Tony Alfieri, L.A.

"Dishonorable Mention":

Before she was Tabloid Sally, the impossibly foxy movie star who destroyed marriages like a busty ball-peen hammer, before she was Nobel Sally, the mercurial chemist who cured chronic halitosis, and before she was Pulitzer Sally, the honey-dipped scribe who brought Washington to its knees, she was just little Sally Barns from Crow's Neck, Neb., Bill and Margie's daughter, a doe-eyed pixie who loved fairy tales and onion rings.
---Roger Collier, Ottawa

Science Fiction Runner Up:

George scratched his head in abject puzzlement as he tried to figure out where he'd parked the rocket this time in the 100-acre parking lot of Nallmart 75B, but then he remembered that a ship-boy had taken his DNA key---but which one, the  elly toned humanoid or the atmosphere-of-Rylak-hued android; scanning the horizon, he at last turned to Babs and asked "how green was my valet"?
---Leigh A. Smith, New Douglas, IL

And the 27th Grand Prize Winner, David McKenzie of Federal Way, Washington:

"Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin' off Nantucket Sound from the nor' east and the dogs are howlin' for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the "Ellie May," a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin' and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests."

The rest of the worst here.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled recession, climate change, and hand-to-hand political combat already in progress...

Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Saddam Hussein Considered ‘Security
Agreement’ With U.S. To Counter Threat From ‘Fanatics’ In Iran

Yesterday, the National Security Archive released declassified FBI reports detailing both the bureau’s interrogations and “casual conversations” with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. According to the documents, Hussein told FBI agent George Piro (one of only a few agents who spoke Arabic) that he let the world believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he feared appearing weak to what he considered his country’s real threat, Iran:

Hussein’s fear of Iran, which he said he considered a greater threat than the United States, featured prominently in the discussion about weapons of mass destruction. … Hussein said he was convinced that Iran was trying to annex southern Iraq — which is largely Shiite. [...]

“The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors,” Piro wrote. “Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq.”

Saddam “felt so vulnerable to the perceived threat from ‘fanatic’ leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a ‘security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region.’” If that could not happen, only then, he said, would Iraq reconstitute its WMD programs.

Piro revealed to CBS’s 60 Minutes last year that Saddam “didn’t want to associate” with Osama bin Laden and viewed him “as a threat to him and his regime.” The new documents expound on Saddam’s distrust of Al Qaeda and bin Laden, whom he called “a zealot?:

Hussein replied that throughout history there had been conflicts between believers of Islam and political leaders. He said that “he was a believer in God but was not a zealot…that religion and government should not mix.” Hussein said that he had never met bin Laden and that the two of them “did not have the same belief or vision.”

When Piro noted that there were reasons why Hussein and al-Qaeda should have cooperated — they had the same enemies in the United States and Saudi Arabia — Hussein replied that the United States was not Iraq’s enemy, and that he simply opposed its policies.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and numerous members of the Bush administration repeatedly cited the (now debunked) threat from Iraq’s supposed WMD program and Saddam Hussein’s alleged links to Al-Qaeda as the main justifications for launching the invasion of Iraq more than six years ago. The U.S. could end up spending trillions of dollars in Iraq and today, 130,000 U.S. troops remain there, 4,321 have died (4,639 total from coalition forces), and more than 30,000 have been wounded. Over 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion while millions have been displaced.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Sean Hannity goes Daffy Duck on President Obama

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player! DOWNLOADS: (131)
PLAYS: (934)

Sean Hannity usually just smears President Obama for the things that he says and the policies he puts forth, but on this segment he actually attacks him because someone in the audience had a quacking duck ring tone.

Hannity must feel threatened by the insane ramblings of Glenn Beck because in this segment it's quite apparent that Hannity is just "Daffy." FOX really has gone hog wild off the wall since Obama took office. Sure, their ratings are going up but that's because they want to attract the crazy people demographic. Hey, and it's working.

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

After the Bubble: A New Direction for Housing

Originally posted by John Petro at DMIBlog.The housing bubble provided some clear indicators that[...]

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OpenLeft-FrontPage/~3/NU9_ctZsCGY/after-the-bubble
-a-new-direction-for-housing

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!

Market Update: Boeing (BA), Ford Motor (F),
Toyota Motor (TM), American International Group (AIG)

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/jutiagroup/~3/7_cLhMleHRk/

Add to del.icio.us

Digg this

Post to Furl

Add to reddit

Add to myYahoo!