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Tough Times For Those Nearing Retirement

More bad news on the retirement front. From William M. Bulkeley of the Wall Street Journal yesterday:

One in five middle-aged workers stopped contributing to their retirement plans in the last year, and one in three has considered delaying retirement, according to a new survey by AARP, an advocacy group for older Americans…

The survey, which covered 1,628 employed people over 45 years old, found that 20% had stopped participating in their retirement accounts in the past year, and 34% contemplated putting off retirement. Twenty-seven percent said they were having trouble making rent or mortgage payments.

Bulkeley pointed out the significance of these findings. He wrote:

About 60% of U.S. workers in the private sector have 401(k) accounts, holding about $3 trillion in assets. Earlier surveys have shown workers don’t put enough into 401(k)s to support their retirements, even as such plans have become the main source of retirement support, surpassing traditional fixed-benefit pensions. Labor Department statistics also show more Americans over 55 years old are staying in the work force, a sign that many can’t afford to stop working.

There is a silver lining to all this. Regarding all those middle-aged workers who stopped contributing to their 401k’s— at least their hard-earned money didn’t get swallowed up in the recent carnage on Wall Street.

Source:

“One in Five Baby Boomers Cuts Retirement Saving”
William M. Bulkeley
Wall Street Journal, October 7, 2008

Pollyanna Creep

Once in a while, I’ll refer to individuals who are overly-optimistic as Pollyannas. The term comes from the 1913 children’s novel Pollyanna, which is about a young girl of the same disposition. You’ll know them when you meet them. Their favorite song is Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happen.” In case you’re still a little hazy about the concept, here’s a good example of a Pollyanna in action. Just last week, when all hell was breaking loose on Wall Street, there was a comment on a Chicago Tribune piece which basically said, “Don’t worry, this will pass, it’s all just part of a cycle, the U.S. economy will soon recover and boom again, yada, yada, yada…” Which sounds great— if you believe in a financial system that is devoid of evolution (or de-evolution, for that matter.)

Now, there are some who believe that the U.S. government suffers from something called “Pollyanna creep.” Richard Siklos of The Globe and Mail (Canada) wrote last week:

That’s the dark thinking behind what is known as “Pollyanna creep,” a phrase coined by an economist named John Williams. Mr. Williams, who lives in California, runs a website called Shadowstats.com that trades in the idea that some key U.S. government statistics have become so optimistically misleading as to become essentially useless…

Over the past few years, some of Mr. Williams’ views on economic indicators - the consumer price index in particular - have been echoed by more well-known investment community figures such as bond investor Bill Gross, strategist Stephen Roach, and James Grant. “The numbers are misleading, and Wall Street uses the numbers to help sell their products,” says Mr. Williams, whose chief bugaboos include GDP and unemployment rates.

“Recently, I’d contend that what we’ve been getting is absolutely junk on the GDP,” he adds, despite recent official figures that GDP grew 3.3 per cent in the second quarter, after a small increase the previous quarter. “There’s no question that we’re in a recession, and probably have been in one since the last quarter of 2006. It didn’t start with the housing mortgage crisis.”

According to Mr. Williams, all the big measures have had their methodologies revised over the past few decades to paint the U.S. economy in the best possible light - and this has occurred regardless of which party was in the White House. However, he says, changes in methodology were always spelled out at the time - with rationales for doing so - so it’s not as though this has gone on in the dark of night.

Williams isn’t coming way out of left-field with his allegations. Back on June 9 Elizabeth MacDonald of FOX Business talked about a new book by Kevin Phillips, a political and economic commentator for more than three decades and onetime Nixon strategist, and wrote:

Monkeying around with government data started in the early ‘60s, Phillips says, during the John F. Kennedy administration. It appointed a committee to weigh changes to unemployment data, at a time when unemployment was soaring.

Out-of-work Americans who had quit searching for jobs–even if this was because none could be found–were then labeled “discouraged workers” and excluded from the ranks of the unemployed, though they were previously classified as such, Phillips notes.

In fiscal year 1969, the Johnson administration, with Congress’s blessing, orchestrated a “unified budget” that chucked in taxpayers’ Social Security funds with the rest of the federal budget, a change that let the government get its mitts on taxpayer Social Security funds for the very first time to use for all sorts of spending programs, including pork barrel projects.

The move, though, masked emerging deficits in Social Security funds, as taxpayer funds that were drawn down were replaced with treasury bonds, essentially more government debt.

Next, President Richard Nixon asked his Federal Reserve chairman Arthur Burns, to concoct a new inflation number that would be split off from traditional headline CPI, dubbed “core” inflation, Phillips says.

This new-fangled “core inflation” would simply knock out, due to nettlesome “volatility,” nettlesome food and energy prices. The new number could be shouted from the hilltops and blasted through newspaper headlines whenever the true CPI number was terrifying. It’s a number the markets are still too obsessed with today, though some seem to be surfacing out of this delusion…

I do go on. Let me continue with the cooked government data story.

In 1983, Phillips says the Reagan administration monkeyed around even more with inflation data, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) decided that housing, too, was overstating CPI.

So, the BLS swapped in what it calls an “owner equivalent rent” measurement, what homeowners would pay to live in their homes if they were renters. But that number likely understated housing costs as it is based on overall rent, which stayed flat in most of the country during the housing bubble.

So, the government has cooked up its own housing inflation number that likely understates home prices, Phillips argues, and in turn has understated housing inflation during the recent housing boom by three to four percentage points.

Moreover, Phillips says in the 1990s, the CPI has been subjected to three other adjustments, all delivering a downward bias and all dubious:

*Product substitution: If flank steak gets too expensive, people are assumed to shift to hamburger, but nobody is assumed to move up to filet mignon, he says;
*Geometric weighting: Goods and services in which costs are rising most rapidly get a lower weighting for a presumed reduction in consumption
*And, most strangely, hedonic adjustment: An unusual bit of monkeyshines by which the government says that product improvements in things like computers, cell phones or television actually amount to a reduction in price, so a $2000 laptop with a built in camera is less expensive than a $1500 laptop without one.

Pollyanna creep in the inflation data continued under the Bush administration. In 2006 it stopped publishing the M-3 money supply numbers, which captured rising inflationary impetus from bank credit activity, Phillips says.

Under the Clintons, Phillips says, the nation’s employment figures were massaged and kneaded too.

In 1994, the Bureau of Labor Statistics redefined the work force to include only that small percentage of what it called “discouraged workers” who had been seeking work for less than a year, Phillips says. The longer-term “discouraged”-some 4m U.S. adults who simply are not working-fell out of the main monthly tally. Some now call them the “hidden unemployed.”

The Clinton administration also dropped the number of households sampled for the data, from 60,000 to 50,000, making the number more rickety.

But a disproportionate number of the dropped households were in the inner cities. So, along with a new adjustment formula that is believed to also have cut black unemployment estimates, poverty figures get to look a lot less worse, Phillips says.

So remember this. The next time you hear some economic numbers that seem too good to be true, that might very well just be the case. And as for Pollyanna? Depending on which version of the story you happen to be reading, in the end Pollyanna is paralyzed either from being hit by a car or falling off a roof.

Sources:

“Lies, damned lies and overly optimistic statistics”
Richard Siklos
The Globe and Mail (Canada), September 22, 2008

“Does the Government Manipulate Economic Data?”
Elizabeth MacDonald
FOX Business, June 9, 2008

Weird Housing Tales, Part 10

From the Chicago Reader’s “News Of The Weird” yesterday:

Landlord Richard Ott, 30, was arrested in Newark, Delaware, in August after becoming furious with a tenant couple who’d fallen behind in their rent. According to police, Ott hopped in his Hummer and smashed it into the couple’s front door. When the wife dialed 911 for help, Ott reportedly said, “Tell the police it’s the landlord that tore up the building.”

“N-Ott Cool”

Source:

“Unclear on the Concept”
Chuck Shepherd
Chicago Reader, September 4, 2008

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Landlords Faced With Falling Rents And Occupancy Rates

From the Wall Street Journal back on January 17:

To be sure, rents have continued to rise steadily in many markets. And the housing downturn means that more people are looking for rentals as well, increasing demand. Many would-be buyers have become renters because they can’t get a mortgage in today’s tight credit environment, or because they’re sitting tight in hopes that prices drop further.

Eight months later, it’s looking like the party may be over for apartment building owners. From the Journal last Wednesday:

For the past year, apartment buildings have been one of the few bright spots in the real-estate industry as people forced out of the home-buying market by foreclosures or the credit crunch have turned to renting.

But now the specter of job losses is beginning to spread the gloom into that sector as well. As would-be renters are doubling up in apartments or moving in with friends and families, rents and occupancy rates are beginning to fall in many cities.

Journal reporter Nick Timiraos (who, ironically, wrote both pieces) noted:

The one downside of the housing crisis for apartment owners has been the “shadow market,” made up of unsold homes that owners have put on the rental market.

But that competition isn’t nearly as big a problem as job-loss trends. “In many markets, our new prospects are beginning to resist the current and increasing levels of market rents we’ve enjoyed over the past quarter,” David Neithercut, chief executive of Equity Residential, told investors during this month’s earnings call. While the Chicago-based apartment owner, one of the largest in the U.S., reported an increase in funds from operations of 1.5% last quarter, it lowered its estimates for comparable-property revenue growth.

Sources:

“Home Sellers’ Pain Is Renters’ Gain”
Nick Timiraos
Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2008

“Apartment Buildings Lose Their Immunity To Housing’s Chill”
Nick Timiraos
Wall Street Journal, August 20, 2008

Using The ‘Rule Of 15’ To Identify Local Housing Bubbles

“All real estate is local.” A statement often repeated by those in the housing industry. Now, there might be a way to determine if housing bubbles are local too. CNBC contributor Carmen Wong Ulrich wrote on July 10:

Ever hear of the real estate Rule of 15? I mentioned it yesterday on a segment with Al Roker on the TODAY Show as we discussed a question tossing and turning through many American heads these days: “Should I buy or rent?”

Here’s how the rule goes: Let’s say you’re looking at a 2-bedroom house or apartment:

1) Find the going rent in the neighborhood or location you’re interested in—which you can track down through sites like Zillow.com and Trulia.com—and calculate how much you’d spend in rent a year. Say, $2,000 a month would mean an annual rent of $24,000.
2) Multiply that number—your annual rent—by 15. (in this case: $360,000)
3) Now look up and compare the going price of a comparable space in the same area, to buy.
4) If that number is much greater than your annual-rent-times-15, the location probably still has a way to go down in home value. The bubble here ain’t done burstin’ and you should rent for a while. The last thing you want to be is upside-down on a mortgage—owing more than your new home is worth.

Hmm. Time to whip out the old calculator and try the “Rule of 15” myself:

1) My girlfriend and I rent out a 2-bedroom, 2-bath apartment on the northwest side of Chicago. We pay $1,100 a month, or $550 each, which is more-or-less the going rate in the neighborhood. Therefore, annual rent is $13,200.
2) Multiplied by 15, this comes out to $198,000.
3) I took the average going price of comparable 2-bedroom, 2-bath condo units for sale in our neighborhood, and found that this number comes out to $223,444.
4) The difference between the numbers arrived at in step 3 versus 2 is $25,444. According to the “Rule of 15,” prices for comparable 2-bedroom, 2-bath units in the area are headed south. Judging by the number of “for sale” signs in front of some of these buildings (and in the neighborhood in general), there might be something to this Rule.

Just one thing I don’t understand though. Why the “15?” I’ve sent an e-mail to Ms. Wong Ulrich, hoping for an explanation…

Source:

“Buy or Rent? Learn the Rule of 15”
Carmen Wong Ulrich
CNBC, July 10, 2008

Housing Bailout Bill To Rescue Lenders?

I first heard of Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC, back in 2004. Believing that the housing boom was about to end, in May of that year Baker sold his two-bedroom condominium in the Adams-Morgan neighborhood for $445,000, clearing $270,000 after taxes and commissions. He then rented a two-bedroom condo just two blocks away. While his monthly outlay of $2,200 was about the same as what he was paying in mortgage, taxes, and maintenance at his former place, he invested the remainder of the money in corporate bonds paying about 7% annually in interest. He said at the time, “I’m just much better off renting.” And sure enough, the housing bust came…

I happened to come across a piece by Baker in TPMCafé from July 6 that pointed out some potential problems with the housing bailout bill making its way through Congress. The economist wrote:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is not terribly optimistic about the success of the housing bailout bill going through Congress. They project that 35 percent of the homeowners “helped” under the plan, or 140,000 families, will find themselves again facing foreclosure. The reason for the pessimism is that the lenders get to decide which loans enter the program. Naturally, they will pick homeowners who they think will be the least likely to make it.

I wonder what the folks who support this bill will tell those 140,000 families? Many of these families will struggle to make their mortgage payments for 2 or 3 years, sacrificing health care, child care and other necessary expenses in a hopeless effort to hang onto their home. At their end of their struggling, they will end up out on the street, foreclosed a second time.

That is what Washington policy wonks call “asset building.”

That is what I would call “half-assed.”

While the CBO is pointing out the possibility of 140,000 second foreclosures, they also note that lenders may receive $680 million with the passage of this bill. Baker wrote:

As a result, we see Congress rushing to push through a bill that CBO projects will hand $680 million to lenders. Yes lenders — you know, the folks who issued predatory mortgages on an enormous scale to low and moderate income families in the last few years. Given the structure of the program (it does nothing to prevent loans from being issued at prices that are still inflated by the bubble), it is questionable how much any homeowners will actually be helped.

Sounds like it’s the lenders, not homeowners, who are being rescued by this bill.

Source:

“CBO Projects Housing Bailout Program Will Send 140,000 Families Into Second Foreclosure”
Dean Baker
Talking Points Memo Café, July 6, 2008

The ‘Dream’ Of Homeownership

Back on December 16, 2003, President Bush talked about the importance of homeownership to the national interest:

This Administration will constantly strive to promote an ownership society in America. We want more people owning their own home. It is in our national interest that more people own their own home. After all, if you own your own home, you have a vital stake in the future of our country.

Shortly thereafter, homeownership would reach a record level in the United States as a result of the latest housing boom. However, you cannot have a boom without a bust. I just got done reading the latest housing reports. Let’s just say they remind me of an old high school cheer that went, “U-G-L-Y, you ain’t got no alibi, you ugly, you you, you ugly.” Earlier today the latest updates to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices were released by Standard & Poor’s. According to the S&P press release, the data (current through November 2007) showed “broadbased declines in the prices of existing single family homes across the United States, marking the 11th consecutive month of negative annual returns and a full two years of decelerating returns.” The S&P/Case-Shiller Composite of 10 Home Price Index (10 metro areas) showed an annual decline of 8.4%, a new record low. The S&P/Case-Shiller Composite of 20 Home Price Index (20 metro areas) declined 7.7% year-over-year in November. According to Robert J. Shiller, Chief Economist at MacroMarkets LLC:

We reached another grim milestone in the housing market in November. Not only did the 10-City Composite post another record low in its annual growth rate, but 13 of the 20 metro areas, each with data back to 1991, did the same.

Seven U.S. metro areas are now reporting double-digit annual declines. The list includes:
• Miami, -15.1%
• San Diego, -13.4%
• Las Vegas, -13.2%
• Detroit, -13.0%
• Phoenix, -12.9%
• Tampa, -12.6%
• Los Angeles, -11.9%

According to MarketWatch today, Joshua Shapiro, chief economist for MFR Inc., wrote:

With supply overhang enormous and mortgage financing tougher to obtain, home prices are going to decline considerably further in the quarters ahead, most likely to a double-digit pace on a year-over-year basis before too long.

The S&P/Case-Shiller indices, which track multiple sales of the same homes, are considered by many observers to be the best gauges of national and metropolitan-area real-estate values.

As home values go down in the United States, foreclosures continue to rise. Earlier today, the real-estate tracking company RealtyTrac reported that the number of homes that slipped into some stage of foreclosure in 2007 was 79% higher than in the previous year. In 2007, almost 1.3 million homes received foreclosure-related warnings, up from 717,522 in 2006. Foreclosure filings numbered 2.2 million, up 75% from 2006. Last year, more than 1% of all U.S. households were in some phase of the foreclosure process, up from about 1/2% in 2006. Nevada, Florida, Michigan and California posted the highest foreclosure rates, according to the California-based firm. RealtyTrac also noted a late-year surge in the number of properties reporting foreclosure filings, which they interpreted as meaning many are in the initial stages of the foreclosure process, and who could end up lost to foreclosure in 2008 unless lenders or the government step in. Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s vice president of marketing, told the Associated Press today that, “It does appear that we’re seeing a new batch of properties enter the process.” However, he also noted that recent efforts by the government and mortgage lenders to at-risk homeowners have only had a marginal impact on the foreclosure rate so far. In December 2007 alone, foreclosure filings soared 97% year-over-year. The 215,749 filings last month meant that it was the fifth consecutive month where foreclosure filings topped more than 200,000. Other states in the 2007 foreclosure “Top 10” were Colorado, Ohio, Georgia, Arizona, Illinois, and Indiana.

It’s only natural that as foreclosures rise across the United States, the level of homeownership would suffer as well. On Tuesday, the Census Bureau reported the biggest one-year drop in the rate of homeownership on record. The Bureau report showed that homeowners accounted for 67.8% of occupied homes in the fourth quarter of 2007, which is down 1.1% from a year earlier. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), told CNN Money today:

It’s an incredible story. We’re back to where we were in 2002, which is before the subprime nuttiness and run-up in prices. And it’s not clear how much farther we’re going to fall.

Homeownership rates, which have been tracked since 1965, hit a record high of 69.2% in the second and fourth quarters of 2004.

CNN Money reported that a record 2.18 million homes sat vacant and available for sale in the fourth quarter, up from 2.1 million a year earlier. This matched the previous record set in the first three months of 2007. The report showed that 2.8% of homes not in the rental market now sit vacant, also matching the record high from Q1 2006. CNBC’s real estate reporter Diana Olick had this to say about homeownership levels on her blog today:

President Bush, as I recall, touted that record rate in his mantra of an “ownership society.” Oh well. I’m guessing the current gang of Presidential wannabes will jump all over this one.

But what really gets me in this report released today from the U.S. Census is the little-reported homeowner vacancy rate. It’s up at 2.8 percent, which is a full percentage point above where it was 2 years ago. There are currently close to 18 million vacant homes stretched across this country, a full million more than just a year ago. The bulk of the increase, of course, is in foreclosed homes.

Think about it–more and more empty houses in neighborhoods across America, as the home ownership rate continues to fall. Where’s the “American Dream” hiding in all that?

Did anyone ever stop and think why it is we equate homeownership with a “dream” in the first place? The reality is, in our society some are meant to be homeowners, while others are meant to be renters. Period. Consider the following from James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America from 1931:

The American Dream is “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

By the way, this was the first time the term “American Dream” was ever used. As it was at the beginning of this great nation, the same rings true today. Homeownership is something to aspire to, and not an entitlement. “With opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” No matter what the White House or any other self-interested party may lead you to believe.

And Homeowners Make Fun Of Renters?

As citizens of the United States, we’ve been brought up to believe in something called the “American Dream.” As part of this “dream,” we’ve been told that we should aspire to own the roof over our heads. At no other time was this more apparent than with the dawn of the new millennium. Back on December 16, 2003, President Bush declared:

This Administration will constantly strive to promote an ownership society in America. We want more people owning their own home. It is in our national interest that more people own their own home. After all, if you own your own home, you have a vital stake in the future of our country.

And so homeowners were held in the highest esteem throughout American society. But, there were still the renters, who were incapable of holding a mortgage (let alone a decent job). Those scum of the earth. Back in the glory days of the housing bubble, I read about a landlord here in Chicago who complained that she couldn’t find any decent tenants. What she really meant to say is that she couldn’t find any decent human beings to rent from her. And the cesspool was shrinking. Why was this? Well, there were some among the untouchables who aspired to become homeowners, and did just that, regardless of cost. I believe a lot of it had to do with the stigma attached to being a renter in American society. And the inevitable comparison to the Joneses (who are, if you haven’t figured it out by now, a commercial invention). The situation reminds me of an MTV commercial in the eighties where a teenage couple is talking, and the boy says, “Nobody likes me.” The girl reaches out for him and says, “I like you.” He whines back, “No. Nobody GOOD likes me.” Then silence (they don’t show her embedding her Doc Martens boot in his face).

Which brings us to the two million new homeowners (and falling as I type this) that were estimated to have been created by the housing boom. Mortgages were made available to these individuals so that they could leave the ranks of the houseless heathen and participate in the glory of the “ownership society.” And the aspiring Joneses diligently researched and familiarized themselves with the available mortgage products before signing on the dotted-line. Or did they? A recent study conducted by D.C.-based Peter D. Hart Research Associates discovered the following characteristics among borrowers:

• 51% say they are very informed about their mortgage’s terms and conditions
• 18% say they don’t know their current interest rate
• 25% say they don’t know when their lender will next be able to raise their rate
• 73% say they don’t know how much their monthly mortgage payment will increase the next time their rate goes up
• 40% say they don’t know whom to turn to for guidance if they have difficulty paying

Responsible borrowing? Hardly. It gets worse. On November 2, Brian Montgomery, Assistant Secretary for Housing with HUD, told a congressional hearing that more than 40% of delinquent borrowers do not respond to contact from their lenders until it is too late. Which is really quite sad, considering that industry sources say 50% of those who seek counseling or go to their lenders for help end up staying in their homes with new mortgage products.

As author Charles Simmons once said, “Ridicule is the first and last argument of fools.”

The Anonymous Gang

A few times a week I like to read other weblogs that have a similar focus as mine. The blogs I follow allow readers to post comments. Most of the comments being submitted are constructive. However, a few are sent in from a gang of individuals who like to call themselves “anonymous” and write something that is meant to anger the blog’s regular readers. These dive bombers are never heard from again (as they are probably watching their comments get a rise out of the community of readers). Pretty sad, huh? Anyway, I’ve noticed that quite a few members of the Anonymous Gang are laying eggs on some of those weblogs I read during the week. For example, here’s a comment from today’s HousingPANIC post where the editor is angry about the declining value of the U.S. dollar:

Anonymous said…

Yawn. You’ve been yapping about this for months. OK oil is at $85. And gas is cheaper now than when it was $75 6 months ago.

And here is how awful the economy is. On Sunday I was flying and missed my flight. The flight was at 10:45am. Next flight at 12:15. Booked. At 1:45 booked. I finally got on the 3:20 and that flight was full as well.

You idiots talk about depressions and I have to wait at the airport all day to find a seat on a flight. Some depression. Some economic collapse.

October 16, 2007 12:39 PM

Interesting logic, correlating U.S. economic health with personal travel woes (which can be explained by a number of different things, least of which may be a vibrant economy). Here’s another one that was responding to a Wall Street Journal piece from October 10 that talked about how renters were being evicted because the properties in which they were living were being foreclosed on:

For the last several years, some renters have gleefully gloated over their decision to rent and “wait out the coming housing crash” and then buy properties under stress. Now some of them are finding out that their futures are connected to those in crisis. I say that’s what they get for themselves being greedy and trying to circle like vultures preying on the misfortune of others. I could care less that they are evicted or get a dose of hard reality.

Comment by Payback is hell - October 11, 2007 at 9:37 am

That’s right, shame on you renters for buying homes at affordable prices. Think this individual is in the middle of a bad housing situation? I’m certainly convinced the next one is. The final example is from HousingPANIC on October 8. Please be aware that the poster uses multiple obscenities (kids, earmuffs on). By the way, the comment was the subject of the post that day:

It makes me shiver when I imagine any of you bitter renter peons using the word “think”. It is almost certain that all of you are lacking 2 fundamental things (not necessarily in that order):

1. A brain to think with
2. Home ownership (requiring a brain)

Renters just don’t get it. Renting a shit-hole 1BR apartment is not an achievement it is a statement of utter incompetency and lack of character.

Since I’m an employer I always look at the employment applications looking for housing status. If you’re over 25 and rent you can forget about getting hired! You sorry ass dip-shit imbeciles. You really don’t get it. I might as well talk to the garbage can. Unf*cking believable!!!

Sorry about the language folks. Funny, but if the poster really is an employer (hate to work for that person), aren’t they guilty of employment discrimination? The icing on the cake was when another anonymous poster said “renters in general are human filth” later on in the thread.

As the U.S. economic situation gets worse and the pain starts filtering through our society, I suspect we’ll see more comments like the preceding examples in various public forums. Those looking to stir the hive will be increasingly joined by individuals looking to vent their frustrations due to the situation they find themselves in. What better target than those who recognized the coming financial storm and who may be financially better-off as a result?