Ask Dr. Christopher "Life After Money: Real Estate and Economics" (page 11 of 12) Part II

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Life after Money

Part II

Real Estate & Economics

Why remain in Nevada?

During the last election cycle in 2008 that swept the Democrats to power we loved the commercial chiding Dina Titus for her accent and referencing the candidate as Dina Taxes and that she must be from Taxes. The implication was that although Dina Titus who speaks with a Georgia drawl might as well be from Texas as few outside of the Southern United States can distinguish by and between local southern accents. Unfortunately for Nevadans Dina Titus recently voted for Health Care Reform which at best may be considered an additional unfunded federal mandate like no child left behind, the Republican Yore. States like Arizona, California, Illinois and Nevada remain in critical condition regarding the depletion of reserves, swelling deficits and the vaporization of their tax base. Diverting existing revenues to complying with new entitlement programs will only exacerbate their ongoing financial trauma. We recently read that although facing a staggering $3b budget deficit in the upcoming 2011 legislative session, a bill may be introduced to require that your tire pressure is checked each time you service your car apparently to save fuel and prevent accidents. To us it’s these proposed intrusive idiot laws reference the denial of a body of an imminent collapse perfectly content to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Where you can live and keep your stuff too!

Some states protect credit debtors from judgments. Our favorite is Texas. Here’s why! In Texas the entire value of your home as a single dwelling on 100 acres is exempted from creditors and judgment seizures as are one vehicle per registered driver per household, and lots of other personal stuff is immunized from any seizure to satisfy any judgment creditor {to the best of our knowledge} except of course the IRS; Texas exemptions are codified in the Texas constitution meaning no attorney doorstep trickery. Texas is golden and you can be too! Oh and to sweeten your move to Texas the garnishment laws are very restrictive so for the most part your wages are safe too!

For more information on the brooding apocalypse facing Nevada please access www.Askdrchristopher/badlandsofnevada.com

Florida, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania restrict garnishment actions too and these states average only one-half {1/2} the bankruptcy filings as a percentage of their population versus all other states.

Florida through their vibrant Attorney General Bill McCollum has taken the lead in filing a lawsuit to stop the recently passed Health Care Plan dead in its tracks; so kudos to him.

Currently sixteen states or more have either joined as plaintiffs or friends of the plaintiff or filed their own cases to prevent the diversion of scarce state resources for the implementation of this new law.

Our favorite state is Texas though as it remains an exporter of energy, is bidding out four new nuclear reactors to be located in Amarillo, Fort Worth, Galveston and San Antonio which will require tens of thousands of iron workers, masons, carpenters, architects, engineers etc in the near future and Texans know how to break wind too and we’re not talking Cattle flatulence but a new Texas wind farm recently completed in Roscoe and since it’s located in Texas naturally it’s the world’s largest capable of generating 781.5 megawatts providing enough electricity for 230,000 homes. [74]

Meanwhile Harry Reid on his breakout of denial tour for re-election recently visited the Copper Mountain Solar Plant which employs 300 construction workers. [53] “You betcha”.

When completed the Copper Mountain plant will combine with another solar plant to become the largest in North America; [54] combined they will be capable of lighting up the home town of Harry Reid his old stomping grounds in Searchlight, Nevada with a population of 798 [55] for at least three {3} months a year.

We are actively lobbying Texas to add three {3} more nuclear plants with at least one to be located in El Paso County for the exportation of energy to our friends in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Nevada.

We remain under the impression that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid intends to mothball or severely curtail the operations of the coal fired plants in both Southern and Northern Nevada.

If we loved Health Care we’re going to love Cap and Trade which taxes energy producers to buy and sell “energy credits” based on their level of air borne carbon emissions. Since Nuclear plants emit no emissions they can sell their credits to older plants like those in Nevada which will provide a tax subsidy {credit} to Texans and a tax surcharge to Nevadans. Of course the plants in Nevada could shut down completely and relocate their operations across the border to Mexico where the law is not applicable.

Nevada’s loss would be Mexico’s gain including providing thousands of Mexican jobs probably at a fraction of the cost of what Nevadans earn now and finally since it is rumored that New Mexico is considering storing spent nuclear fuel from the nations plants in or around Carlsbad Caverns; thousands of additional jobs could be created in Western New Mexico and Southwestern Texas.

We appreciate the opportunity afforded us by the rejection of the State of Nevada to complete Yucca Mountain. New Mexico if approved will store Nuclear Waste in a safe secure environment near where we live, play, and work. It’s the least we can do to assist our great Republic in weaning ourselves off of other less reliable foreign energy sources and enhancing our National Security. Thank you Nevada!

Texas is home to the fourth largest city of Houston with port offering a diversified economy with ranching, farming and tourism. El Paso County added over 8,000 jobs in 2008 [51] and is currently experiencing a housing shortage with continued growth expected for the next decade. Texas is currently operating with a budget surplus although a deficit is projected for 2011.

Stock Market Bears

Part V of this VII Part Series Coming Soon

Don't assume that the country's economy mirrors the devastation in Las Vegas, a prominent Wall Street adviser told local investors this week." Las Vegas is not the United States," said Steve Leuthold, founder and chief investment officer of the $4.5 billion Leuthold Group of Minneapolis [57]. Mr. Leuthold spoke at the Red Rock Resort the hotel casino in bankruptcy court as part of the Station Casinos attempt to reorganize their company. Why would Steve Leuthold arrive in Las Vegas and inform the faithful that their local economy is depressed? Don’t they already know? Was he just rubbing salt or promoting another agenda?

Then Steve Leuthold stated that this contagion affecting Las Vegas will not spread to the rest of the country. Is he whistling past the graveyard for the sake of his portfolio? The translation is that: hey your real estate is almost all underwater including the over built commercial landscape, your economy isn’t coming back anytime soon so now is a good time to buy stocks.

Steve Leuthold needs you the retail investor. You see in his business in order to properly book a profit for him and his clients he needs to off load his pricey portfolio to you. You remember the NASDAQ crash don’t you when the retail investor was torched in 2000 or how about last year when the retail investors panicked and sold their portfolios when the market finally bottomed at DOW sub 7,000. People like Steve Leuthold were there to buy your shattered dreams and transfer your retirement savings to his account; and now he and the stock choir are back humming amazing disgrace how sweet the stench of real estate purchased by a wretch like you!

The problem is now that the retail investor isn’t buying. Why? We read in the Orange County Register of Jim Kennedy who lost his six figure corporate development job 19 months ago and thereafter was foreclosed from his condo in Newport Beach, California.

He spent his days visiting his earthly possessions in his storage space, picking up his unemployment checks at his new address at a local Mailboxes Plus in Irvine, packing his daily necessities in his leased BMW, living on a $5.00 a day personal food allowance and hocked his frequent flyer points in exchange for discounts on hotel motel accommodations sometimes dropping the point total expenses from 7,000 to 5,000 by paying $100.00 in cash to extend his stay to four days, the added benefit of a continental breakfast each morning.

Yes he declared bankruptcy. At 46 he is concerned that he is not making any money during his formative years [58].

We visualize additional high end furloughs or pink slips especially in the Public Sector commencing soon in Las Vegas and Clark County Nevada. We recently were alerted in an email from KLAS-TV 8 News Now of Las Vegas that the City of Las Vegas and Clark County, Nevada were considering consolidating duplicate serves that each now provide.

In California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently deflated the incomes of tens of thousand of state workers to the California minimum wage of $8+ an hour or $15,360.00 gross per year. Exemptions for public safety officers and doctors applied. An appeals court upheld his executive order.

We believe that the Eight Judicial District is also ripe for consolidation. Our first choice for furlough is District Judge Douglas Herndon who has accumulated over $200,000.00 for his standing re-election campaign. We remain wary of Judges retaining vigorous fund raising campaigns, their infatuation of the bench, especially when so many are elected unopposed. We believe that the Clark County Commission should furlough Judge Douglas Herndon with the caveat that he retain his war chest. Then he can proceed to his next highest occupational calling as the night shift assistant drive through manager of a local Burger King and in uniform sporting his paper hat can he heard to say, as he leans through the window into the car his greasy thin black tie suspended between the legs of his lone drunk customer late at night, “Sir would you like fries with that Whopper”.

The hip slick and cool investment officers who parade around on FOX Business and CNBC all day long have developed a new language for these high end job losses. They refer to it in code as the new employment mix.

We find it breathtakingly obnoxious that stock pumpers like Steve Leuthold roll into town and hype corporations that at the first hint of a declining economy liquidated their work forces in order to prop up their stock price and now wonder why the retail investor hasn’t returned in mass.

We appreciate that at the time of his visit to Las Vegas Steve Leuthold was not privy to the recently report that although experts projected consumer use of credit to expand by $500m it contracted by $11.5b in February [59] and since consumer purchases comprise 70% of the economy it may indicate any early tell that the stock market is once again a lagging indicator of consolidation and compression.

It appears as though consumers remain ahead of the curve and unlike the government are paring back purchasing utilizing plastic debits and cash rather than credit cards. Shiny pieces of paper or electronic transfers of stock symbols are very expensive in terms of their price/earnings ratios and quite frankly a luxury most people can no longer afford to indulge on the hope that someday they will be able to sell their shares for more than what they paid for them.

If the average person wants to gamble against the house they can traipse on over to the Red Rock.

By the way we wonder if anyone anywhere has recently signed any of the those bogus chits for millions of dollars when and if they were drunk like the real estate guy from Wisconsin or the Import Export guy from Nebraska who have both refused to pay their casino markers and will be granted a show trial and when found guilty of “passing bad checks” will become the first guests in the new Nevada debtors and gamblers wing of the State penal correctional facility.

So Steve Leuthold you’re up against some pretty stiff competition regarding where to drop any disposable income that remains in circulation and listen Steve Leuthod we may be providing a public service by requesting that you refrain from talking about things you know nothing about especially when this stock “bubble” craters again, and one or more of your investors blames you for their wrecked, portfolio, marriage and life.

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