SF – The Burning Platform

The Global Real Estate Bubble Is OFFICIALLY Bursting

Guest Post by Harry Dent

The global real estate bubble is bursting.

After imposing a hefty 26% tax on foreign buyers, and a 12% to 16% surcharge for buyers who flipped their house between one and two years, Singapore real estate has declined 21.5%.

Vancouver has taken similar measures, and – surprise, surprise – its real estate is down 24% in just five months!

That’s what I mean when I say that when bubbles burst, they do so dramatically and rapidly.

But this is likely just the beginning…

I put Singapore into razor-sharp focus in February of last year when I noted it had some of the most expensive real estate in the world. It has the highest standard of living of any country in Asia – even higher than in the U.S.!

The problem is that the country is 100% urban and has limited land – making it incredibly susceptible to the kind of bubble that’s formed there.

And boy, has one ever.

Continue reading “The Global Real Estate Bubble Is OFFICIALLY Bursting”

Obama Feds Using Hidden Microphones to Record Conversations in Bay Area

Via CBS SF

OAKLAND (CBS SF) — Hidden microphones that are part of a clandestine government surveillance program that has been operating around the Bay Area has been exposed.

Imagine standing at a bus stop, talking to your friend and having your conversation recorded without you knowing. It happens all the time, and the FBI doesn’t even need a warrant to do it.

Federal agents are planting microphones to secretly record conversations.

Jeff Harp, a KPIX 5 security analyst and former FBI special agent said, “They put microphones under rocks, they put microphones in trees, they plant microphones in equipment. I mean, there’s microphones that are planted in places that people don’t think about, because that’s the intent!”

FBI agents hid microphones inside light fixtures and at a bus stop outside the Oakland Courthouse without a warrant to record conversations, between March 2010 and January 2011.

Federal authorities are trying to prove real estate investors in San Mateo and Alameda counties are guilty of bid rigging and fraud and used these recordings as evidence.

Harp said, “An agent can’t just go out and grab a recording device and plant it somewhere without authorization from a supervisor or special agent in charge.”

The lawyer for one of the accused real estate investors who will ask the judge to throw out the recordings, told KPIX 5 News that, “Speaking in a public place does not mean that the individual has no reasonable expectation of privacy…private communication in a public place qualifies as a protected ‘oral communication’… and therefore may not be intercepted without judicial authorization.”

Harp says that if you’re going to conduct criminal activity, do it in the privacy of your own home. He says that was the original intention of the Fourth Amendment, but it’s up to the judge to interpret it.

The Shaking Continues: The Most Dangerous Volcano In Mexico Has Erupted In Spectacular Fashion

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

More than 25 million people live in the vicinity of Mt. Popocatepetl, including Mexico City’s 18 million residents. At 2:32 local time on Tuesday morning, the most dangerous volcano in Mexico roared to life in spectacular fashion, and this has many experts extremely concerned about what is coming next. Popocatepetl is an Aztec word that means “smoking mountain”, and historians tell us that once upon a time entire Aztec cities were buried in super-heated mud from this volcano. In fact, the super-heated mud flows were so deep that they buried entire Aztec pyramids. A full-blown eruption of Mt. Popocatepetl would be a catastrophe unlike anything that modern Mexico has ever experienced before, and considering what has been happening in Ecuador, Japan and at Yellowstone over the past week, I believe that there is great reason for concern.

The eruption of Mt. Popocatepetl very early this morning took residents of the area very much by surprise. The following is how one Mexican news course reported the news…

The volcano Popocatépetl came to life at 2:32 this morning, sending out a column of ash that fell on much of the city of Puebla and closed the airport.

The National Disaster Prevention Center, Cenapred, said the volcano spewed ash to an altitude of about three kilometers above the crater.

The explosion was accompanied by the emission of incandescent fragments which were reported to be landing up to 1.6 kilometers away, northeast of the volcano, which is commonly known as El Popo.

But words cannot really describe just how spectacular this eruption was. If you are interested, you can view video footage of the moment when Popocatepetl erupted right here…

Meanwhile, seismologists all over the globe are speculating about which area of our planet may be hit next.

Continue reading “The Shaking Continues: The Most Dangerous Volcano In Mexico Has Erupted In Spectacular Fashion”

CHALK UP ANOTHER NEEDLESS DEATH: Thank the Democrats’ Treasonous Quest for Open Borders

Guest Post by Dan Cadman Via Doug Ross

By all accounts Kate Steinle was a vivacious young woman with a bright future ahead of her — until she met her death at the hands of an illegal alien while strolling on a San Francisco pier with her father, who witnessed the fatal shooting. The alien was quickly apprehended by police and identified as Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a citizen of Mexico with seven felony convictions and five prior deportations from the United States.

According to media outlets, Lopez-Sanchez was arrested by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who discovered that there was an outstanding warrant for a drug violation and did the right thing: They turned him over to the police for prosecution and filed a detainer requesting that they get him back at the conclusion of the charges. That’s where things went seriously wrong.

What did the district attorney’s office do? They promptly declined to prosecute and the warrant was dismissed. (I would bet good money that, whether they admit it or not, the reason they wanted to drop the charges is because they figured the subject could just be dumped back on the federal government saving them time and headaches while compounding someone else’s.)

Meanwhile, Lopez-Sanchez had been booked into the San Francisco County Jail. What did they do? Refuse to honor the detainer filed by the agents who had given them the subject to prosecute in the first place, simply releasing him instead to the street, where he wandered around until he shot Ms. Steinle to death.

Continue reading “CHALK UP ANOTHER NEEDLESS DEATH: Thank the Democrats’ Treasonous Quest for Open Borders”

$1 MILLION DOESN’T BUY WHAT IT USED TO

You too can live in a tiny dump for the low low price of $1 million courtesy of Janet Yellen and her bubblicious levels of zero interest rate debt dropped from helicopters on Wall Street. You can pretend to live like the .1%, except in a 1,300 square foot hovel. This will surely end well.

San Francisco

Skybox Realty

Headed to the city of cable cars, fog and killer home prices? Move to this $929,000 apartment that is within walking distance of the Financial District and Union Square. Listed as a “Spacious 1 Bedroom + Den, 1 Bath,” it’s a cozy 837 square feet. Bonus points: It comes with a parking spot.

Los Angeles

Redfin

In Los Angeles you can get a little bit more square footage for your money than in San Francisco. How about this $930,000 home that’s 3 bedrooms and 1.75 baths for a total of 1,332 square feet. The West Los Angeles home is even big enough for a second refrigerator and a finished two car garage.

Arlington, Virginia

Virginia Seekford Smith

This two bedroom, one bathroom home in Arlington, Virginia, will cost you $1 million, but you get two adjoining lots for a total of 5,000 square feet of space. The average sale price of a luxury home in Washington, D.C. is $2,402,000.

Miami Beach, Florida

Redfin

This two-bedroom, two-bath home comes in just under $1 million, listed at $995,000. It’s located one block from a park and comes with a private pool. It also happens to be located in the city with the highest average luxury-sale price in the U.S., at $8,337,000.

Buena Park, California

OC Homes Realty

This $1.1 million home is 1,050 square feet of a three-bedroom, 1.5-bathroom house. The listing describes this house as “Excellent Exposure of Busy Beach Blvd & Artesia Blvd in Buena Park.”

Here are the 10 cities with the priciest luxury housing in the fourth quarter:

Rank	City	Average Luxury Sale Price
1	Miami Beach, FL	$8,337,000
2	Los Angeles, CA	$4,808,000
3	San Francisco, CA	$4,668,000
4	Boston, MA	$3,380,000
5	Irvine, CA	$3,180,000
6	Kirkland, WA	$2,506,000
7	Bellevue, WA	$2,435,000
8	Huntington Beach, CA	$2,426,000
9	Washington, DC	$2,402,000
10	Fort Lauderdale, FL	$2,353,000
		Source: Redfin