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Ricin Suspect Used His Home to Elude Police
Tim Lynch
An interesting report from the Washington Post:
Dutschke went into hiding on Thursday to escape the media attention. The FBI and local law enforcement officials spent five hours hunting for him before his attorney revealed her client’s location.
Evidently, the attorney directed the police to her client’s home address.
James Everett Dutschke, 41, was taken into custody about 12:50 a.m. Saturday at his home in Tupelo, Miss., the FBI said.
According to the story, that’s the very same house the police searched earlier in the week. Note also the number of law enforcement agencies that were on the case:
Among the government agencies that joined the FBI in the investigation were the Secret Service, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Capitol Police, the counterterrorism section of the Justice Department’s national security division, the Mississippi National Guard, the Mississippi Office of Homeland Security and multiple county and city law enforcement units.
And they needed the attorney’s help to discover Dutschke at his home? As Glenn Reynolds likes to say (in jest), “we’re in the very best hands.”
Policymakers might just want to take stuff like this into account when the agencies say their budgets can’t be cut and that their surveillance powers must be “enhanced.”
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Gold and Silver • NETHERLANDS: HEY, LET’S BRING OUR GOLD HOME
NETHERLANDS: HEY, LET’S BRING OUR GOLD HOME
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01 … gold-home/
Reports are coming in that the Dutch Christian Democratic Appeal party on Wednesday formally addressed the issue of repatriating the Netherland’s gold reserves, according to a (loosely translated) report from rtl.com cited by both Seeking Alpha and noted economist Jim Rickards:
Now #Netherlands wants #gold back bit.ly/S4Bj3L. My 2011 interview got that ball rolling bit.ly/zaBz7M. Cameo @laurenlyster
— Jim Rickards (@JamesGRickards) January 16, 2013
“Part of the Dutch gold stock is now in the basement of the De Nederlandsche Bank in Amsterdam,” the rtl.com report explains. “[The] Netherlands has 24 billion in gold. Only 11 percent of it is actually in the Netherlands.”
“The rest [was moved] just before the Second World War,” the report adds, noting that since being moved in 1938, 18 percent of the Netherland’s gold has been kept in London, 20 percent in Ottawa, and over half (51 keep) “deep under Manhattan in New York City.”
And for those of you who didn’t know, the Dutch actually have quite a bit of gold to their name:
“All the Gold in the World displayed in gold buillion bars ranging in sizes as following: 1 gram, 5 grams, 10 grams, 20 grams, 1oz, 50 grams, 100 grams, 250 grams, 500 grams, 1 kg, 400oz. United States and World Government Gold Reserves and World Total Gold is visualized as well.” (demoncracy.info).
“The Dutch government says it has 612 tonnes of gold — with a value of around 24 billion euros — and is thereby in the top 10 of countries with the biggest gold reserves,” Netherlands Info Services explains.
The CDA’s motion to repatriate Dutch gold comes shortly after Germany’s central bank announced yesterday its intention to bring home approximately $36 billion worth of gold from the United States and France, TheBlaze’s Billy Hallowell reports.
“The Bundesbank said in a statement Wednesday that it will repatriate all 374 tons of gold it had stored in Paris by 2020. An additional 300 tons — equivalent to 8 percent of the Bundesbank’s total reserves worth about $183 billion — will also be shipped from New York to Frankfurt,” Hallowell notes.
However, although the move by both the CDA and the Bundesbank is noteworthy, it’s not entirely shocking. Indeed, as Netherlands Info Services reported in November 2012, the Germans and Dutch have been talking about repatriating their hard assets for some time now.
“More and more citizens, politicians and economists in Europe are questioning whether the foreign gold reserves, which their country possesses on paper, are still in fact physically there. Germany decided last month to move to verification,” NIS notes.
“In the next three years, the German Bundesbank is to recall about 4 percent of its gold reserves from America, at the same time looking to see if the ingots are pure,” the report adds.
Apparently, the Germans suspect someone has been playing around with their gold reserves.
Statistics: Posted by DIGGER DAN — Tue Apr 30, 2013 12:52 am
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Forget North Korea, Weak or Strong: South Korea’s Strength Is Why America Should Come Home
Doug Bandow
Joshua Keating over at Foreign Policy offered a thoughtful commentary on Rob Montz’s North Korea documentary, “Juche Strong,” after last Thursday’s screening at Cato. Keating contended that the film, which suggests that pervasive regime propaganda has created at least some degree of legitimacy in the minds of many North Koreans, makes a case “that the United States needs to maintain its current military commitment to the region.”
No doubt, it would be better for the Republic of Korea and Japan if the North was made up of “cowed and terrified people who will abandon their leaders at the first signs of weakness,” as Keating put it. But even popular determination and commitment—so far untested in an external crisis—go only so far. The question is not whether the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a threat, but 1) whether it is a threat which cannot be contained by its neighbors and 2) is a sufficient threat to America warranting U.S. led containment. The answers are no.
First, the DPRK has amassed a large army with lots of tanks, but training is limited and equipment is antiquated. The North’s forces could devastate Seoul with artillery and missile strikes and a 4,000 tank surge might reach the South’s capital, but North Korea would be unlikely to ultimately triumph. The latter is weak in the air and with a decrepit economy can ill afford anything other than an unlikely blitzkrieg victory. Nor could Pyongyang look to Russia or China for support: the Cold War truly is over.
More important, the ROK, which currently possesses around 40 times the North’s GDP and twice the North’s population, could do much more in its own defense. South Korea has created a competent, modern, and sizeable military. Is it enough? Only Seoul can answer.
If the South remains vulnerable to a North Korean strike, it is only because the ROK decided to emphasize economic development and rely on America. That made sense during the early days of the Cold War, but no longer. There is no justification for turning what should be a short-term American shield against another round of Soviet- and Chinese-backed aggression into a long-term U.S. defense dole. It doesn’t matter whether the North Koreans are “Juche Strong or Juche Harmless,” as Keating put it. South Korea can defend itself. (Doing so would be even easier if Seoul and Tokyo worked harder to overcome their historical animus. Alas, they feel little pressure to do so as long as they both can rely on Washington for protection.)
Second, the DPRK poses no threat to America requiring an ongoing military commitment. Even in 1950 the Pentagon did not believe the Korean peninsula to be vital strategically, but the Cold War created a unique context for the conflict. Today a second Korean War would only be a Korean War. Tragic, yes. Threat to America, no. Pyongyang is an ongoing danger to its neighbors, not the United States.
The North matters to the United States primarily because Washington remains entangled, with troops, bases, and defense commitments. That is, North Korea threatens America because Washington chooses to allow North Korea to threaten America.
Of course, proliferation would remain a concern even without a U.S. presence in Korea, but America’s garrison does nothing to promote denuclearization. To the contrary, Washington is helpfully providing tens of thousands of American nuclear hostages if the DPRK creates an arsenal of deliverable nuclear warheads. It would be far better for U.S. forces to be far away, out of range of whatever weapons the North possesses.
North Korea is only one side of the Northeast Asian balance. It doesn’t much matter if Pyongyang is weak or strong so long as South Korea and Japan are stronger.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Canadian • Re: Toronto home sales drop 17 per cent
Toronto, Vancouver home sales fall sharply in March
Canadian Press | 13/04/03
.
Patrick T. Fallon/BloombergHome sales in Canada have been heading lower since last summer when the federal government tweaked mortgage lending rules..
.TORONTO — Home sales in two of the country’s largest real estate markets were down sharply in March compared with a year ago, according to the real estate boards in Vancouver and Toronto.
The Toronto Real Estate Board said sales were down 17% at 7,765 sales through its MLS system last month compared with 9,385 in March 2012.
.The drop came as the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver reported a decline in sales of 18.3% at 2,347 sales in March compared with 2,874 sales recorded in the same period a year ago.
The sales last month were the second lowest March total in Greater Vancouver since 2001 and 30.2% below the 10-year sales average for the month, the board said.
“While home sales were below what’s typical for March, we are seeing more balance between the number of sales and listings on the market in the last two months, which is having a stabilizing impact on home prices,” said Sandra Wyant, president of the Vancouver board.
.The sales-to-active-listings ratio was 15.2% in Greater Vancouver, the first time the ratio was above 15% since May 2012.
In Toronto, the drop in sales did not seem to affect house prices as the average March selling price crept higher compared with a year ago.
The Toronto board says the average price was $519,879, up 3.8% from March 2012.
However, Vancouver reported that the MLS home price index composite benchmark price for all residential properties in Greater Vancouver was $593,100, down 3.9% compared with a year ago.
Home sales in Canada have been heading lower since last summer when the federal government tweaked mortgage lending rules.
In July, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty moved to tighten mortgage rules for the fourth time in as many years in order to discourage those most at risk of becoming over-leveraged.
The record high levels of consumer debt among Canadians has also raised a red flag from Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney and others who have warned that interest rates will rise at some point — raising the cost of borrowing.
.
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/ … =2cc8-2c4e
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Wed Apr 03, 2013 4:55 pm
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Canadian • Toronto home sales drop 17 per cent
Toronto home sales drop 17 per cent
TARA PERKINS
The Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Apr. 03 2013
Sales of existing homes in the Greater Toronto Area in March were 17 per cent lower than a year ago, the local real estate board said Wednesday.
Market observers are eagerly watching housing data this season to see if the market will experience a spring rebound. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty scolded banks in March for cutting their mortgage rates, fearing that the low rates could cause the housing market to heat up again. The government has taken steps to cool the market because of fears that consumer debt levels and house prices are too high.
Toronto is one of the cities that policy-makers and economists are keeping a close eye on, with its condo market, in particular, singled out as a potential trouble spot.
The Toronto Real Estate Board said Wednesday that condo sales in March were down by more than 18 per cent compared to the same month last year, while the average price was 1.7 per cent higher.
Meanwhile, sales of detached homes in the downtown area covered by the 416 area code fell 21.6 per cent.
In total, 7,765 Greater Toronto Area homes sold over the Multiple Listing Service real estate website last month, compared to 9,385 last March. The real estate board noted that Good Friday was in March this year versus April last year and “generally speaking, there are fewer sales reported on statutory holidays and weekends.” The average selling price was $519,879, up 3.8 per cent from a year ago.
The numbers come one day after the local real estate board in Calgary, which was expected to be a hot spot in the country for housing sales this year, said sales fell by more than 2 per cent compared to last March. The only type of home that saw an increase in sales last month was the condominium townhouse market.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-o … e10712624/
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Wed Apr 03, 2013 9:48 am
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Jardines: The Supreme Court Retreats to the Home
Jim Harper
The Supreme Court ruled today in Florida v. Jardines that “use of trained police dogs to investigate the home and its immediate surroundings is a ‘search’ within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.”
It’s the right result. The Court was divided 5-4, though, and the case shows some of the same fissures around Fourth Amendment doctrine that U.S. v. Jones did last year.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Scalia, won’t clear up the doctrinal debates, which are sure to continue. Instead, it retreats to the home. The specific protection for “houses” in the Fourth Amendment, he wrote:
renders this case a straightforward one. The officers were gathering information in an area belonging to Jardines and immediately surrounding his house—in the curtilage of the house, which we have held enjoys protection as part of the home itself. And they gathered that information by physically entering and occupying the area to engage in conduct not explicitly or implicitly permitted by the homeowner.
Property law gives strangers an implied license to approach a house for the variety of purposes they may have. “But introducing a trained police dog to explore the area around the home in hopes of discovering incriminating evidence is something else. There is no customary invitation to do that.”
Justice Scalia did use the case to answer a question left open by Jones. He emphasized that the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test from Katz v. United States (1967) built upon, and did not supplant, the Fourth Amendment’s foundation in property. He specifically declined to use that test in the holding.
The dissent objected vigorously to the idea that approaching the front door of a home via the walk was a trespass.
“[G]athering evidence—even damning evidence—is a lawful activity that falls within the scope of the license to approach,” Justice Alito wrote. “And when officers walk up to the front door of a house, they are permitted to see, hear, and smell whatever can be detected from a lawful vantage point.”
The dissent also rejected an argument put forward by the concurrence: that the reasonable expectation of privacy test is an alternative ground for the holding.
Yes, Justice Kagan would also have used “reasonable expectations” to decide the case, but her concurrence covers more important ground than that. As she did at oral argument, she fixed on the government’s use of the dog to perceive things that couldn’t otherwise be perceived. That’s what searching is.
“[P]olice officers came to Joelis Jardines’ door with a super-sensitive instrument, which they deployed to detect things inside that they could not perceive unassisted.” And later: “[A] drug-detection dog is a specialized device for discovering objects not in plain view (or plain smell).”
In the Cato Institute’s brief in the case, I emphasized that drug-dog detection was but one form of chromatography, the use of which the court should treat as searching because it “look[s] for or seek[s] out that which is otherwise concealed from view” (quoting Black’s Law Dictionary).
I also emphasized the poorly recognized twin-relationship in Fourth Amendment doctrine between “plain view” and constitutional searching: “A ‘search’ occurs when government agents seek out that which is otherwise concealed from view, the opposite condition from what pertains when something is in ‘plain view.’”
And I argued: “This Court should find a ‘search’ to have occurred in this case because the use of a drug-sniffing dog made perceptible to government agents what they otherwise could not perceive.”
I’m gratified to see Justice Kagan, joined by justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor, adopt this reasoning, whatever its source. The Court’s women, it seems, have the best Fourth Amendment reasoning in this case.
The result today is clearly favorable for Joelis Jardines and mildly favorable for Fourth Amendment doctrine. Any case is a good case if it declines to use the failed “reasonable expectation of privacy” doctrine. And, as was the case in Jones, the concurrence is where the real action is.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Canadian • Canadian home prices are overvalued by about 20 per cent
TARA PERKINS – REAL ESTATE REPORTER
The Globe and Mail
Published Monday, Mar. 04 2013
The rating agency’s estimate of how inflated prices are was included Monday in details of a new financial model that it is proposing to use to estimate the potential losses on pools of residential mortgages, which form the backbone of a number of securities that Fitch rates.
The agency said that, based on its sustainable home price model, it estimates “at the time of publication, that prices are overvalued by approximately 20 per cent in real terms across Canada, with regional variations.”
But “because of the effects of inflation and price momentum, it is not expected that prices would drop by this amount,” it added. “If growth halted and prices began to drop, it would be expected to take several years for home prices to revert to their sustainable values, depending on a number of factors such as government support and credit availability. With this timeframe, the actual observed decline in prices could be as low as 10 per cent.”
The agency noted that prices have continued to climb, with small corrections, since 1996, “and specifically since 2008 have risen when underlying fundamentals suggest that growth is unsupportable.”
“This story is similar throughout Canada,” it added. Its estimates of the overvaluation in Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia and Quebec are 21 per cent, 15 per cent, 26 per cent, and 26 per cent respectively.
“Actual nominal [price] declines could range from the low single digits for Alberta, up to more than 15 per cent for B.C. and Quebec over the next several years assuming values start falling immediately and taking into account inflation and other market dynamics,” it said.
Among the four largest provinces, Alberta is the least overvalued because it already went through a house price correction when crude oil prices fell in 2008, and prices have not returned to their 2007 peak. Prices in B.C., on the other hand, quickly rose to record highs after the global recession.
Generally, while low rates have kept payments down for all borrowers, higher home prices have led to larger mortgages, eroding much of the benefit for new buyers, Fitch said.
“Price-to-rent ratios are now 60 per cent higher than their 30-year averages,” it added. And the average property price is now five times average disposable income, up from the long term average of 3.5 times
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-o … le9257855/
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Mon Mar 04, 2013 12:30 pm
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Canadian • Toronto new home sales drop nearly 35% from year ago in Janu
Toronto new home sales drop nearly 35% from year ago in January
Garry Marr | Feb 26, 2013
More from Garry Marr | @DustyWallet
Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
Only 562 low rise homes sold in the GTA last month, down from 1,174 from a year ago, said the Building Industry and Land Development Association.
New home sales in the country’s largest housing market continued to decline in January, off almost 35% from a year ago.
RealNet Canada Inc. said there were 1,248 homes sold across the Greater Toronto Area in January, compared to 1,918 a year ago. Sales were down about 44% from two years ago. They were 686 high rise sales in January across the GTA, down from 744 a year ago.
High rise prices remained firm with RealNet Home Index showing they climbed 2% in January, on a year over year basis. The index price is now $435,722 for a condo.
The Building Industry and Land Development Association says the low rise market has slowed because of government land policies and that has pushed the index price on a low rise home to $639,588, a 16% increase from a year ago.
“The tale of the low-rise market is illustrated by constrained land supply and a lack of product and choice,” said the group, in a release.
BILD said only 562 low rise homes sold in the GTA last month, down from 1,174 from a year ago.
“People still want to purchase a detached, semi-detached or townhouse in the GTA and over the last few years, we have seen a reduction in sales of ground-related housing,” said Bryan Tuckey, chief executive of BILD, in a release.
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/ … =11dc-0440
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:12 pm
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Canadian • Re: More adjustment to come in Canadian home prices: Carney
Deo Vindice wrote:
Maybe it’s time to get out of home ownership for awhile.
You know, sell the house, park the money in PMs, and rent until prices fall off the cliff, then buy back in.
I wonder if there is any one advocating THAT kind of strategy?
Very few
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Mon Feb 18, 2013 12:20 am
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You Can’t Go Home Again, cont’d
By Brink Lindsey
In an earlier post criticizing Paul Krugman’s “Twinkie Manifesto,” I tried to make a simple point: just because economic policies produced good results at an earlier stage of economic development doesn’t mean they’ll work well today.
Now enter Brad DeLong and Matt Yglesias, two of the smartest progressives in Blogland, who in an effort to tweak me make exactly the same mistake Krugman did.
Let’s back up and review. Here was Krugman’s argument: (a) back in the ’50s the top tax rate was 91 percent, union density was high, and the economy boomed while incomes converged; (b) therefore, a return to dirigisme would be good for both growth and widely shared prosperity. I responded that correlation ain’t causation: the early post-WWII decades were an economic Golden Age, but that’s because the conditions for growth were so favorable that the country prospered despite the bad policies Krugman now longs for.
In identifying some of those favorable conditions, I mentioned, among other things, (a) the opportunities for catch-up growth in the South and West, facilitated by big advances in transportation (e.g., the U.S. highway system built during the ’20s and ’30) and (b) the rapid accumulation of human capital as reflected in soaring high school and college graduation rates.
Yes, both of these factors involved public investment at either the local, state, or federal level, which led Brad and Matt to pounce. See, they argue, Big Government was good for growth!
First of all, I’m a Hayekian classical liberal, which means I’m fine with a government role in funding roads and schools. So Brad and Matt’s attempt to play “gotcha!” misses the target.
But back to the main point: what are the contemporary policy implications of the fact that some public investments in the first half of the 20th century — when government spending levels were much lower, and the economy was much poorer and less advanced — aided growth? As economists Vito Tanzi and Ludger Schuknecht show, returns to government spending in terms of social welfare declined rapidly in the second half of the 20th century. And now we’re in the second decade of the 21st. Hey Big Government, what have you done for me lately?
Let’s look specifically at education and infrastructure. Both sectors are dominated by government, and both are hot messes of waste and mismanagement. The way forward in both sectors will involve greater reliance on competition and private sector involvement, not less.
So sorry, Brad and Matt, I know it’s Thanksgiving and all, but you can’t go home again either.
You Can’t Go Home Again, cont’d is a post from Cato @ Liberty – Cato Institute Blog
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