A map of where U.S. job growth is spiking

The White House recently touted that U.S. businesses have added more jobs than any time since the 1990s, with unemployment dropping to 4.9%. President Barack Obama called the economy “the strongest, most durable” in the world.

So where exactly is all this job growth?

Cost-estimating website HowMuch.net used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to create this three-dimensional representation of the number of jobs added by metro area. As you can see, the action is on the coasts, where California led all states with more than 464,000 jobs related.

Conversely, North Dakota, a victim of falling oil prices, saw the biggest decline at -19,000.

The Greater New York metropolitan area, which includes Newark and Jersey City, showed the highest increase for any single metro area in the country with 156,400 new jobs. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles metro area, including Long Beach and Anaheim, was second at 135,100 jobs.

Lafayette, La. and Davenport-Moline-Rock Island, Ill. were the hardest hit.

In terms of growth rate, Idaho Falls, Idaho. was tops in the country at 4.5%. The heart of Silicon Valley posted an increase of 4.4%.

Overall, the number of jobs grew in 280 of the 286 metro areas.

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Lansner: Home affordability chasm between O.C., U.S. widens

Orange County’s price of paradise keeps getting steeper.

The gap between the share of people who can comfortably afford to buy a home here and elsewhere in the U.S. has, sadly, never been wider, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index.

This quarterly benchmark measures the financial burden of homeownership by determining how many of the homes sold in a three-month period would be “affordable” – house payments at prevailing mortgage rates that are no more than 28 percent of the median income.

I tossed this benchmark into my trusty spreadsheet going back to 2005, when NAHB/Wells economists started tracking Orange County affordability. I discovered the county’s huge “affordability gap” – local housing was 47.3 percentage points more unaffordable than U.S. homes – with 16 percent affordability here in the fourth quarter vs. 63.3 percent nationwide. That gap is wider than the homebuying mania days of 2005 and the more recent high point set in 2014’s first quarter.

Look, it’s not much of a surprise that Orange County had the nation’s third-worst home-affordability score as 2015 ended. What’s painful is the gap is growing as home prices outpace pay.

Lansner: House hunting momentum rises but consumers grow antsy

Are Americans finally in a serious homebuying mood?

I recently stumbled upon a slice of the monthly consumer confidence survey by the Conference Board that asks folks about their intent to buy a home in the next six months. Let’s face it, nothing says “I’m financially secure” than purchasing a residence.

I tossed a half-century’s worth of data on consumer desires into my trusty spreadsheet and found that starting late last year, the poll showed a noteworthy increase in the interest in house hunting. In the three months ended in February, an average 6.3 percent of those American adults surveyed saying they’re ready to buy a home. That’s up from 5.3 percent a year earlier and up from the 3.63 percent bottom, which hit in December 2010.

The uptick is part of a longer pattern. February was the fourth consecutive month with 6 percent or more of those polled having homebuying plans, the longest such streak since 21 straight months in 2006-2007.

This real estate euphoria isn’t a total surprise. Last year, Americans bought 5.5 million existing homes, up 8 percent in a year, and the best year of since 2006. Builders sold 544,000 more residences, up 11 percent in 2015, and the best year for new homes since 2007.

Of course, a cynic would note that the last bout of homebuying mania ended poorly in the Great Recession. But at this juncture in the business climate, renewed interest in homebuying seems to be a welcome turn in a less-than-remarkable recovery for housing.

“We’re seeing a bounce-back in the housing market that took much longer to achieve than other parts of the economy,’ says Conference Board economist Lynn Franco. “The consumer remains optimistic, and that bodes well for housing.”

While I believe our media leaves plenty of room for improvement, I am thankful I don’t live in a country where the media is under State control.

Chinese property mogul silenced for criticizing state media

BEIJING (AP) — Following its pledge to more tightly control media, Chinese authorities shut down microblogging accounts belonging to a real estate mogul and frequent government critic after he lambasted state media organs for swearing fealty to the ruling Communist Party.

The Cyberspace Administration of China published on its website Sunday remarks by a spokesman saying Ren Zhiqiang had published illegal information that harbored “evil influence” and urged other online celebrities to behave as “role models who follow laws and regulations.”

Known among his more than 30 million online fans as “Cannon Ren” due to his tendency to shoot off on topics ranging from neoliberal economics to housing policy, the 65-year-old stood out in recent years as a high-profile persona who dared to challenge the party leadership in a political environment increasingly intolerant of dissenting voices.

Ren was again a prominent critical voice last week, when he lambasted state media outlets for hosting Chinese President Xi Jinping, who had urged journalists in newsroom visits to focus on “positive news” and to “love the party, protect the party and act in the interest of the party.”

The downward substitution effect in action.

Oakland is the new urban hot spot as San Francisco homes get too pricey

Have you noticed? Oakland has become an urban hot spot for housing, arts, food and, of course, tech. Today, more than 16,000 new residents call Oakland home. Businesses from Uber to Sunset Magazine are moving their headquarters here, and there are more than 300 new restaurants, bars and cafes.

So what happened? People and businesses are crossing the bridge from San Francisco’s high prices in search of more affordable solutions. Buyer’s housing priorities are increasingly less defined by borders and more by price, neighborhoods and proximity to work. Businesses are also looking at affordability, as well as access to transportation. “Why not Oakland?” is the new buzz. The whole market is undergoing a ‘spreading out’ phenomenon, and the search for affordability is driving it.

When Zillow announced this years’ predictions for the hottest neighborhoods in the nine-county San Francisco metro area, it came as no surprise to Realtors working in the East Bay that all five of the projected hottest neighborhoods for 2016 are in Oakland.

“The neighborhoods on our list of the hottest neighborhoods for 2016 are the places we think home values will rise fastest over the next year,” said Svenja Gudell, Zillow’s chief economist. The five Oakland neighborhoods that made the fastest growing list are: Jefferson, Fairfax, Arroyo Viejo, Oak Knoll-Golf Links and Havenscourt.

HELOC Abuse on the rise

In a new white paper titled Home Equity Lending Landscape, CoreLogic says that in the recent past homeowners who wanted to tap the equity in their homes might have looked to a cash-out refinance. The housing crash and the record low interest rates that followed have perhaps modified that behavior. “After years of being out of favor,” the company says, “home equity lending is making a comeback.”

For the past two year home equity loans (HEL) and home equity lines of credit (HELOC) originations have been growing as homeowners reclaimed equity in their homes and lenders regained confidence in the market. In the last three quarters of 2015 there were 976,000 new HELOCs put in place with combined limits of $115.8 billion; both numbers the highest for those quarters since 2008. The numbers were up 21 percent and the dollar volume increased 31 percent over the same period in 2014.

Home price appreciation has sharply reduced the negative equity that existed a few years ago, especially at the bottom of the market. According to the Federal Reserve homeowners have regained more than $6 trillion in equity since the first quarter of 2009. By the end of the third quarter of 2015 there were more than 15.6 million borrowers with loan-to-value (LTV) ratios below 50 percent, another 18.3 million with LTVs between 50 and 75 percent and 30 million more who own their homes free and clear. Thus there are increasing numbers of people who are able to borrow against their homes’ value while job growth and increasing consumer confidence have increased the number who are willing to do so.

Mortgage Delinquencies at 11 Month High

Mortgage delinquencies rose in January, topping the 5 percent mark for the first time in 11 months Black Knight Financial Services said on Monday. The rate, at 5.09 percent, represented a 6.62 percent increaseMortgage delinquencies rose in January, topping the 5 percent mark for the first time in 11 months Black Knight Financial Services said on Monday. The rate, at 5.09 percent, represented a 6.62 percent increase from the previous month although the rate is still 7.10 percent below its level in January 2015.

Mortgage loans that were 30 or more days past due numbered 2.58 million in January, an increase of 167,000 month-over-month but down 189,000 from a year earlier. There were 831,000 seriously delinquent loans, that is loans 90 or more days past due but not yet in foreclosure. That was also an increase from December, up 23,000, but 239,000 loans fewer than in January 2015.

There were 71,900 foreclosure starts during the month, a 7.94 percent decline from December and 22.94 percent year-over-year.

The foreclosure inventory – homes in the process of foreclosure – continued to shrink as well, down 30,000 units month over month to 659,000 properties and 226,000 fewer homes than a year earlier. The percentage monthly and annual decreases in the inventory were 4.63 percent and 25.69 percent respectively.

The rate of completed foreclosures (measured as a percentage seriously delinquent loans, was 2.17 percent. This was a 15.61 percent rise from December, a month when, Black Knight said, many lenders declare a temporary foreclosure moratorium but it was also 24.76 percent higher than in January 2015.

At the end of January there were a total of 3.23 million mortgages that were 30 or more days past due or in foreclosure, up 137,000 units from December but nearly a half million lower than the previous year.

The rate of loan prepayments, historically a good indicator of refinancing, dropped to .81 percent, down 29 percent during the month to its lowest level since February 2014.

The five states with the largest percentage of non-performing mortgages in January were Mississippi (13.0 percent), Louisiana (10.49 percent), New Jersey (10.38 percent), Alabama (9.25 percent), and West Virginia (9.19 percent). All five posted improvements in their delinquency rates year over year, the largest at nearly 13 percent by New Jersey.

The data came from Black Knight’s “first look” at information that will be presented in more detail in its Mortgage Monitor. The company said the March edition of the Monitor will be out on March 7.

The Donald—–The Good And Bad Of It

America will need the Almighty’s unstinting favor if Donald Trump becomes our 45th President. Still, blessed be The Donald for running a demolition derby in the Republican primaries.

There is no hope for the future of capitalist prosperity and a free society at home and world peace abroad unless the Republican Party is destroyed. And, by golly, Trump may well accomplish the deed.

We need to be clear. There is no longer a Republican Party rooted in the main street highways and byways of America. What’s left of it is not really even the xenophobic, nativist, crypto-racist flotsam and jetsam of the populist right that Trump is successfully calling to political arms.

The fact is, the GOP has mutated into the Warfare State party. Nestled comfortably in the Imperial City, it operates a plethora of special interest rackets which underwrite its incumbents’ bi-annual electoral campaigns out in the provinces.

In the interim, GOP politicians idle their time in the capital and on foreign junkets conjuring and embellishing scary stories about terrorist threats and hostile regimes. So doing, they perceive enemies of the American Imperium to be stalking the planet everywhere and even creeping onto these exceptional shores.

In a word, as the party of the Warfare State, the GOP’s main business has become promoting the agenda, campaigns, machinations and glory of the Imperial City. Whenever its pro forma rhetoric about small government and fiscal prudence becomes inconvenient to the needs of the military/industrial/surveillance complex or the fund-raising requirements of its special interest rackets, the GOP’s putative conservative economics platform quickly becomes “inoperative” in the Nixonian vernacular.

There is no better prototype for the new GOP than Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain. Their agenda consists exclusively of promoting and superintending Washington’s foreign projects, occupations, alliances and maneuvers. Cycling through Tel Aviv on a regular basis, showing up on the battlements of Kiev and lecturing the Chinese about maritime law in international waters, for example, they comically imitate the first century Roman Senators they fancy themselves to actually be.

Yet after decades in Washington they and most of their Senate colleagues have accomplished nothing that resembles the old Republican verities. In fact, during 2000-2006 when Republicans controlled the Congress and the White House, not a single welfare state program or agency was eliminated or even reformed, while vast new expansions of education, Medicare, agriculture, alternative energy subsides and much more were piled on the pre-existing heap of state.

Accordingly, the Federal spending share of GDP grew faster than at any time in history; and the $4 trillion worth of new national debt incurred during the eight Bush years smashed all prior peacetime records.

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Once Upon a Time, There Came a Negative Rate…

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Charles Koch says he agrees with Bernie Sanders — on one issue

Bernie Sanders probably never expected to hear the words “I agree” from one of the Koch brothers.

Billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch are at the helm of a political organization that spends hundreds of millions of dollars pushing free-market ideas in elections — and Sanders has made no secret of his disdain for them.

Sanders, a Vermont independent senator and democratic socialist, consistently cites the Kochs as he warns against the country’s shift toward an “oligarchic society” where a handful of billionaires control the economic and political system as the gap between the rich and poor widens.

It turns out, Charles Koch thinks he’s right — at least, when it comes to a “rigged” political and economic system.

The chairman and chief executive of Koch Industries, in a Washington Post op-ed, wrote: “The senator is upset with a political and economic system that is often rigged to help the privileged few at the expense of everyone else, particularly the least advantaged. He believes that we have a two-tiered society that increasingly dooms millions of our fellow citizens to lives of poverty and hopelessness. He thinks many corporations seek and benefit from corporate welfare while ordinary citizens are denied opportunities and a level playing field.

“I agree with him,” he wrote.