While my tea cools, a few observations from this morning’s perusal of the headlines:
- Can You Afford To Live Here? Can You Afford Not To? The Sunday LA Times had an interesting article on the housing market in Los Angeles, and the sticker shock that folks find when they move here [Update: jumbach pointed out a similar article in today’s Sacramento Bee (registration required)]. This is a good article to send to people that don’t understand LA Real Estate. But it is not just Los Angeles: an elected official in Half Moon Bay (LA Times) has been priced out of living in the city that he serves. And prices won’t be going down: Experts don’t expect the bubble to pop, but simply to have a slow leak (Daily News). What will happen, they predict, is that the rate of accumulation will slowly decline. That latter article had some interesting statistics: In 2004, only 26% of the buyers were first-timers, and that is expected to keep sinking. A typical first-time buyer had the following profile: (a) between the ages of 30 to 40 years old with the median age of 32; (b) nearly half were married and about 33 percent single; (c) many pooled resources and co-owned properties—shared purchases increased 13.2% last year. For first time buyers, the annual salary was $75,000 and the median price of the house $401,500.
It is also true that many of the affordability calculators don’t fit the SoCal market (Daily News). After all, with prices so high and affordability so low, why haven’t sales cratered? In 1989, part of the last great bull housing market, homeownership in California was 53.6%. It moved up slightly the next year and continued that trend as the market tanked and prices fell. But, when prices began moving up in the late 1990s, so did ownership rates. Last year, when prices hit record levels that were eclipsed last month, ownership in California averaged 57.1%, 10.3 percentage points under the national average. True, only two states, Hawaii and New York, had lower ownership rates. The article posits this is because how people buy houses differ out in California, which more creative financing, help from parents, and shared purchases.
- You Are What You Eat. According to the AP (reported in the Daily News), whole grains are good for you. This is not just dark bread :-), but real whole grains. I wonder what the Atkins folks make of this, but I’ll note that even the Atkins folks have modified their diets (Reuters) to not look at net carbs, but the glycemic index. On the other hand, people on strict raw food vegetarian diets are thin but healthy (Reuters). Don’t want to be thin and healthy. Then visit Burger King (Daily News), where the new Enormous Omelet Sandwich carries 730 calories and 47 grams of fat and comes with two eggs, sausage, three strips of bacon and two slices of melted American cheese on a bun.
- Get Sleep. Get Nookie. According to a report issued by the National Sleep Foundation (Daily News), millions of Americans have such bad sleeping habits that they’re too tired to have sex, too cranky to work, and they doze off at the wheel or experience other problems. Roughly one-fourth of respondents who have partners report that their sexual relationship has been hurt because they have been too sleepy. They had sex less often or lost interest in having sex because they were too tired. More than half of those surveyed experienced insomnia and nearly one in five said they feel tired almost every day. Personally, I get about 5 hours of sleep, but I think I’m part of the small group of adults — less than 10 percent — who can get by with six hours of sleep or less a night.
- Pentagon Taking Over Air Force Programs. According to the AP, the Air Force, has been forced to surrender oversight authority for 21 weapons programs worth a combined $200 billion. This is primarily due to a lack of Air Force officials to provide oversight: there is no Senate-confirmed Air Force secretary, undersecretary or chief of acquisition, especially with the departure last week of Peter Teets, who was the Air Force undersecretary as well as acting secretary. The 21 programs include a $59.2 billion Boeing contract for C-17A Globemaster II advanced cargo aircraft, and a $31.7 billion Boeing and Lockheed Martin contract for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (this is the one of most interest to me). Decisions on moving these and other programs beyond certain designated milestones will be made by Wynne rather than by an Air Force acquisition official.
- Verizborg and S-Borg-C. The Wall Street Journal, via Reuters, via Yahoo is reporting that MCI Inc. on Tuesday accepted a sweetened takeover offer of $7.6 billion from Verizon Communications Inc. This is supposedly a better position for both Verizon and MCI, and the markets like it better than Quest buying MCI. It comes on the heels of SBC buying AT&T, and Nextel and Sprint merging. As a Verizon customer, going back to the Generally Terrible Equipment (GTE) and Airtouch days, it will be interesting to see what this brings.
I’ve probably gone on long enough. I do welcome comments on these observations.
