Top 10 Great American Towns

Money Magazine has just published its annual "Best Places to Live " list. Topping its list is Fort Collins, Colo., which was awarded the No. 1 ranking for its city  offerings but suburban feel, good schools, plenty of parks and open space and a solid economic base with large employers like Colorado State University and Hewlett-Packard. However, this town made the news in 1997 when a flash flood derailed a train, ravaged two trailer parks and killed five people. Other towns making the top 10 are: Naperville, Ill.; Sugar Land, Texas; Columbia/Ellicott City, Md.; Cary, N.C.; Overland Park, Kan.; Scottsdale, Ariz.; Boise, Idaho; Fairfield, Conn.; and Eden, Prairie, Minn. If your state isn’t represented in the top 10, you can use the site’s tool to locate a Best Places to Live finalist in your state. Another interesting list on the site is its "Pricey Homes/Home Appreciation" ranking, with Newport Beach, Calif., topping the crew with a median 2005 home-sale price of nearly $1.4 million. You can also look up top 25 cities for various categories, such as those with the cleanest air, skinniest population, shortest commute and most singles.


Americans are flocking to places that offer big-city opportunities and amenities — with a lot more green space and a lot less stress. See the top 10 Great American Towns. (more)

1. Fort Collins, CO
6. Overland Park, KS
2. Naperville, IL
7. Scottsdale, AZ
3. Sugar Land, TX
8. Boise, ID
4. Columbia/Ellicott City, MD
9. Fairfield, CT
5. Cary, NC
10. Eden Prairie, MN

Best places, state-by-state

Texas is home to the most finalists on this year’s list. See the best places to live in your favorite state.

• Texas
   
• New York

• California
   
• See the rest

Top 100

See America’s best small cities, plus the 10 best big cities, including detailed city stats and customizable maps.

• 1-25
   
• Best big cities

   
• See the rest



Best Places To Live

---

Wednesday’s bond market opened in negative territory following the release of the CPI, but has since staged a rally to move into positive ground. The stock markets are showing significant gains with the Dow up 155 points and the Nasdaq up 27 points. The bond market is currently up 12/32, but this morning’s mortgage rates will still be higher by approximately .2 50 of a discount point due to weakness late yesterday. However, if the bond market can hold this morning’s gains, we should see afternoon improvements to mortgage rates of approximately .125 of a discount point.

This morning’s key economic report was June’s Consumer Price Index (CPI). The Labor Department reported that the overall reading rose 0.2%, as expected. The bad news was the core data reading that rose 0.3% compared to forecasts of a 0.2% rise. This indicates that core prices rose more than expected, which is bad news for the bond market. It led to the early weakness in bonds this morning.

Also released this morning was June’s Housing Starts report. This data gives us an indication of housing sector strength, but is not considered to be of high importance. It showed a much larger drop in new starts than was expected, but has had no impact on this morning’s mortgage rates.

The good news came from Fed Chairman Bernanke himself during his testim ony to the Senate Banking Committee. In his speech, he indicated that inflation was still a concern in the economy, but that economic weakness could ease those pressures. That, with other comments made, was construed to mean that the Fed might be ending its rate hike campaign in the near future. This helped rally stocks and bonds and led to reversal in the bond market this morning.

The markets are taking his words as quite favorable, which is somewhat justified. However, we have seen before where the translation was thought to indicate that the rate hikes were ending only to see bonds fall again once another theory became prominent in the market. My point is that today’s rally is based more on speculation than factual data. Therefore, we need to be very careful because rates will move higher quicker than they come down. It will take only a single statement by the right person, particularly a Fed member, to reverse this morning’s gains. Accordingly, I am holdin g the current lock/float recommendations. There is a decent possibility of seeing a slight improvement to mortgage rates this afternoon, but in my opinion not enough to justify floating and exposing yourself to overnight conditions and tomorrow’s possible pricing.

The only other report of any relevance scheduled for this week is June’s Leading Economic Indicators (LEI) at 10:00 AM tomorrow. This Conference Board index attempts to measure economic activity over the next three to six months. While it is not a factual report, it still is considered to be of relative importance to the bond market. It is expected to show a 0.2% increase, meaning that we may see a slight increase in economic activity over the next few months. A decline in the index would be good news for the bond and mortgage markets.

Also worth noting is tomorrow’s release of the minutes from the last FOMC meeting. There is a possibility of the markets reacting to them following th eir 2:00 PM ET release, especially if they show some divisiveness by its members when voting for the last increase to key short-term interest rates.

If I were considering financing/refinancing a home, I would…. Lock if my closing was taking place within 7 days… Lock if my closing was taking place between 8 and 20 days… Float if my closing was taking place between 21 and 60 days… Float if my closing was taking place over 60 days from now… This is only my opinion of what I would do if I were financing a home. It is only an opinion and cannot be guaranteed to be in the best interest of all/any other borrowers.

a la mode

---

 If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
      ~James Madison

      The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.
      ~H.L. Mencken

      The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.
      ~Albert Camus

      It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
      ~James Madison

      If you live long enough, you’ll see that every victory turns into a defeat.
      ~Simone de Beauvoir

      How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?
      ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Those are all valid quotes.

Yet, if brought up regarding the [1] recent revelations that Bush’s security apparatus is monitoring private money transactions on a global scale in its war against terror, each would be dismissed by supporters as irrelevant given the “obvious need” to fight terror and enemies of the U.S.

Yet one can’t help but figure that once such practices become normalized, the tools necessary for oppression of freedom are forever in the hands of a government, and therefore subject to future misuse.

We bring this up because of the likelihood of capital controls in the future of U.S. in an attempt to prop up the dollar should years and years of constant inflation (that is, in the classic definition of the word, meaning increasing the money supply) finally catches up to the U.S. Whenever a financial crisis happens in a country, smart, entrepreneurial wealth seeks to protect itself however it can. When a nation’s politicians and central bankers gear up for policies that enable them to confiscate citizen’s wealth in order to play god with the economy, the result is that wealth wants to flow out of a country. Enter capital controls, which prevent the free movement of capital to where the market deems it should go..

Sound far fetched in the supposed “land of the free”? While often not talked about, but our very own St. FDR — Franklin Roosevelt was guilty of just such a scam. After the Federal Reserve managed (or, mismanaged, as the case would be) to engineer the 1920s bubble and subsequent crash and credit contraction, leading to the depression, FDR stepped in and placed severe restriction on the free movement of dollars in the U.S.A. For example, while you won’t be taught this in school, [2] gold was made illegal to own by the common citizen. The reason? Because it presented valid competition as a safe haven for wealth vs. the dollar.

FDR and his cadre of economic meddlers (Keynes, Friedman, et al) had it in their minds that they would not only partially default on the dollar, but that they would expand the money supply vastly in order to bail out the economy. By printing dollars out of thin air, they would be used to buy FDR’s New Deal projects. But we used to learn in economics 101 that wealth gained by printing money comes at the expense of those already storing their wealth in the currency. What the new money gains the old money loses. Not being stupid, the more entrepreneurial citizens holding the wealth would soon enough be selling dollars for something that couldn’t be counterfeited, and FDR’s dollar would have dropped substantially as people exchanged dollars for the only currency to have lasted thousands of years: [3] gold.

That said, in this modern age, should we end up in a financial crisis that would require the Federal Reserve to work with the U.S. Treasury to inflate the dollar at an even faster pace than it is currently, one could expect people to exchange their dollars fairly quickly for alternatives. In the face of authoritarian laws like those from FDR, many would still choose to exercise true freedom in an attempt to move their money offshore. Enter all the lessons Big Brother learned in tracking offshore money movements thanks to the War on Terror.

This may sound as if it is an unlikely circumstance to ever unfold, but tipping points historically hit fast and unexpected. And, as regular readers of Vigilant Investor know, the U.S. economy and Federal Government face enough structural headwinds where scenarios of the dollar losing its status as the world’s reserve currency need to be weighed.


Credit: Bill Coppedge

Vigilant Investor

---

---