Has the Housing Market Finally Hit Bottom?

By Christopher Matthews – Housing and jobs: these are the two keys to the economic recovery really taking off, and while we’ve gotten some positive news on the jobs front recently, real estate prices have more or less continued to decline steadily since their peak in 2007. Housing represents a huge portion of yearly GDP, but more than that it is most consumers main source of wealth. If home prices are rising, so are American’s net worth, and increased wealth will usually lead to increased confidence and spending.

The mechanics of the housing bubble: According Barry Ritholtz, after bubbles pop they usually fall a long way:

“Regardless of the asset class — stocks, bonds, commodities, houses, etc. — assets do not merely stabilize. We have never seen a stock market run up into bubble territory and then revert to fair value. Instead, we careen wildly past that level, to deeply undersold and exceedingly cheap.”

more> http://is.gd/VTjy60

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Mozilla Slams CISPA, Breaking Silicon Valley’s Silence On Cybersecurity Bill

By Andy Greenberg – While the Internet has been bristling with anger over the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, the Internet industry has been either silent or quietly supportive of the controversial bill. With one exception.

But despite the outcry over the privacy violations the revamped bill might allow and even a threatened veto from the White House, tech firms have largely stood behind it–CISPA’s official supporters include Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Oracle and Symantec among others–carriers including AT&T and Verizon have signed on, too.

Google now remains perhaps the only major tech firm that has yet to take a stance on CISPA. more> http://is.gd/xwAPMv

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Lights, camera, action: Romney fights Hollywood’s take on big business

Pasadena City Hall
Category:Images of Pasadena, California
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Christian Heinze – The template of a greedy, heartless businessman who wants to buy votes has a long tradition in movies, books, and television.

“I want to run this town like a business,” Bobby Newport (played by Paul Rudd), said to the constituents of Pawnee, Indiana. “My opponent, Leslie Knope, has an anti-business agenda.”

When it was Knope’s turn, she shot back: “Corporations are not allowed to dictate what a city needs. The power belongs to the people.”

She then added: “Bobby Newport and his daddy would like you to think it belongs to them.” more> http://is.gd/pKFLjy

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Hoping for FiOS, some cities now feel abandoned by Verizon

FiOS installed in Montclair, New Jersey (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Bob Fernandez – Years after Verizon Communications Inc. wired the suburbs of Boston, Buffalo, and Baltimore with superfast Internet, more than one million residents in the poorer urban neighborhoods of those metro areas are still waiting for FiOS.

Ditto, according to a union representing Verizon workers, for Syracuse, Albany, Erie, Scranton, and other Northeast cities. No FiOS.

Verizon has formed partnerships with Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks that critics consider a truce among the telecom giants that could diminish price and customer-service competition for high-speed Internet.

Others have even suggested that Verizon could abandon FiOS. more> http://is.gd/F5ZLmq

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