Some news links of interest from Sunday's Oregonian.

• Renter's market
  Soaring house prices and falling rents give financial incentives to sell the home and move into a rental
• Beyond Portland, a wary view of PGE
  Public officials in the state say they are concerned about Portland's capacity to buy and run the utility
  GAIL KINSEY HILL
• Metro area's millions float other schools
• 
  A delusional state
  Oregon must confront a mental health crisis that runs from its troubled state hospital through its prison system

All we need now is a link to food and we will have most of the interests of readers covered.

Glorified renters (buying property at the top of the market with near-zero down) is somehow an indicator of wealth for equalizing school funds among school districts and is used by bond folks to determine Portland's bonding capacity for buying PGE (while framed as only a revenue bond).

I wonder when Portland might like to negotiate a deal to buy Fred Meyers from the Oregon Investment Council too. Food is essential, you know. And it can enable Portland to not only extend it's regional reach beyond Portland within the state but across state lines. It won't have the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to worry about, just a bunch of negotiated arbitrary decision making (back room stuff) is all that it would take.

Hey, Erik, I'm hungry. The real delusion is that the present values of homes are somehow intrinsic, quite apart from the level of wage income of businesses that do not directly feed off taxes, an indicate health. In the last 4 years property values have gone up and real wages have gone down. We have an unbalanced economic system that cannot right itself without a little electric shock, I suppose.

{I guess I could spend more time, some other time, to make a funny well integrated point, but . . . I'll just move on for now.)

http://www.oregonhunger.org/; hum? . . . . they could suggest that we raise the standard deduction and make it a little easier for low income people just to help one another, as they always have and always will.

If the "Dreamers" would just snap out of their delusions of wealth then they might apply property taxes only to the equity of the glorified renters. There really is little difference between a mortgage lender that puts a mortgage document into a bank's (or other financial institution's) list of assets and a so-called residential property investor claiming ownership and charging rent. The rent, the economic rent, is just a charge for the use of some else's money to obtain shelter. The investor (small timers local investors, that is) uses the cost of money to determine the rent that must be charged to cover, you guessed it, interest payments.

The extraction of interest payments is making me hungry. If the interest rates pop up to 10 12 or 14 percent, would that cause a shock, but be a good thing to stop the delusions of city leaders? Why don't we just assume, for planning purposes, that the interest rate is no less than 10 percent right now!

A 200,000 dollar 30 year mortgage at 5 percent interest the yields a monthly rental cost for that money of 1,074 dollars.

A 200,000 dollar 30 year mortgage at 10 percent interest the yields a monthly rental cost for that money of 1,755 dollars. (An increase in rent of 700 dollars.)

A 122,383 dollar 30 year mortgage at 10 percent interest the yields a monthly rental cost for that money of 1,074 dollars. (A decrease in home purchasing power to a mere 61 percent of that at 5 percent interest payments.)

The present home price bubble translates to increased, and escalating, economic hardship in the future, in the not so remote future.

We will again be reading about "Rent, Electricity, Schools, Delusions," and yes food, in the future too. But who will connect the dots? The bond issuers can connect the dots, for themselves. The bankers and mortgage buyers can connect the dots, for themselves.