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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Carragher who wrote (49010)	3/30/2006 3:38:42 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

LV land prices drop 47 percent in fourth quarter Average cost for acre hits $376,200 By HUBBLE SMITH REVIEW-JOURNAL Housing prices are flat, high-rise condo projects are canceling sales, and now land values have dropped by almost half in Las Vegas, local research firm Applied Analysis reported. The average price for an acre of vacant land in the valley was $376,200 in the fourth quarter, down 47 percent from the previous quarter and down 28 percent from the same quarter a year ago. Several factors contributed to the decline in land prices, Applied Analysis principal Brian Gordon said Wednesday. Foremost is the sale of 2,675 acres in North Las Vegas by the Bureau of Land Management. Olympia Group paid $639 million, or about $239,000 an acre, for the land. Secondly, there was a shift in investment activity toward other Las Vegas Valley locales that have below-average pricing, Gordon said. "We saw significant investment in the north and northeast part of the valley that traditionally carry lower-than-average prices," he said, "so with the shift in the mix of property sold, that also contributed to a lower valleywide average." Among the transactions were a $55.1 million purchase of 106 acres ($365,600 an acre) at Craig Road and Fifth Street in North Las Vegas and a $28.8 million for 80 acres ($345,600 an acre) at Tropical Parkway and Donovan Street in the north submarket. Looking at the fourth quarter of 2004, Gordon also saw high-density condominium sites being sold at a premium that did not occur a year later. One noteworthy land transaction in the fourth quarter was a 0.84-acre site on Las Vegas Boulevard north of Sahara Avenue, the site of the canceled Liberty Tower condo project by Australian developer Victor Altomare, that sold for $5.5 million. Land prices that shot up by as much as 99 percent during the past 18 months are "clearly unsustainable," Gordon said. "The economics of land pricing, escalating development costs and modest increases in interest rates will not allow for average land valuations to reach well beyond the recent peak, at least not in the near term," he said. Jeremy Aguero, founder of Applied Analysis, said parcels that have the ability to capitalize on density and develop "new urbanism" projects will allow pricing levels to reach in excess of $1 million an acre. Creative, risk-taking developers will likely hold land values up early this year, while speculative investors are finding it difficult to "make the leap," he said. reviewjournal.com

To: John Carragher who wrote (49010)	3/30/2006 3:46:57 PM
From: mishedlo	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

'If you start looking at them as humans, then how are you gonna kill them?' ... ... Casey told us how, from the top down, there was little regard for the Iraqis, who were routinely called "hajjis", the Iraq equivalent of "gook". "They basically jam into your head: 'This is hajji! This is hajji!' You totally take the human being out of it and make them into a video game." It was a way of dehumanising the Iraqis? "I mean, yeah - if you start looking at them as humans, and stuff like that, then how are you going to kill them?" He says that soldiers who served in his area before his unit's arrival recommended them to keep spades on their vehicles so that if they killed innocent Iraqis, they could throw a spade off them to give the appearance that the dead Iraqi was digging a hole for a roadside bomb. Casey says he didn't participate in any such killings himself, but claims the pervasive atmosphere was that "you could basically kill whoever you wanted - it was that easy. You did not even have to get off and dig a hole or anything. All you had to do was have some kind of picture. You're driving down the road at three in the morning. There's a guy on the side of the road, you shoot him ... you throw a shovel off." guardian.co.uk

To: John Carragher who wrote (49010)	3/30/2006 10:19:18 PM
From: regli	Respond to of 116555

I was involved in setting up an ASP that provided home based call center services for companies in 2001. It was useful both for onshore and offshore services. Oracle used it for tech support of their small business clients. The key to it was, just as in that article, that any phone line could be used as long as the agent also had an internet connection. However, offshore call centers will not go away. I just consulted on the creation of a VoIP call center in the Philippines. Labor costs including overhead there run about 1/10th compared to the States. No homeshoring will compete with that especially now that connectivity costs have dropped so drastically and VoIP quality is at a very high level even using very affordable equipment (Asterisk on Linux).