The Housing Bubble

Agree with your sarcasm. Most economists see imigration as a good thing because wee see it in much lower prices for produce, etc. I think Captain Credit is Lou Dobbs in disguise.

It’s a damn shame that we have a working sub class in this country who want to be self-sufficient, support their families, and generally law-abiding citizens. I admire a lot of our migrant workers because of their value systems; much more than the lazy American who wants gov’t handouts and sits around getting pregnant and watching Jerry Springer every day. Let’s keep this in perspective.

Comment by Moman
2006-09-21 06:33:17
much more than the lazy American who wants gov’t handouts and sits around getting pregnant and watching Jerry Springer every day. Let’s keep this in perspective.

Lets do just that. Keep it in perspective. Yet you use a stereotype where I posted facts. And sadly enough, why I called a spade a spade when referring to corporatists, the barking moonbat brigade shows up.

It’s hard for me to agree we should kick out an illegal immigrant working for their family when there are so many citizens sitting at home taking handouts. I compete with highly-paid intelligent Indian workers in my job but it makes me a better person for it. I could go to Congress and whine about the H1-B visa program but I’d rather spend my time improving my own skills.

Comment by Moman
2006-09-21 06:50:00
“It’s hard for me to agree we should kick out an illegal immigrant working for their family when there are so many citizens sitting at home taking handouts. ”

And another stereotype, same theme. Secondly, if you want law and order, it applies to all situations. Otherwise, laws are meaningless.

Captain Kangaroo, if you think this is a “law and order” administration, I’ve got a $600,000 1 bedroom condo with granite toilet seat to sell you.

We’re living under a kleptocracy, and they use whatever tools work (racism, xenophobia, rabid nationalism) to whip the sheep in the direction they want.

Why are 1/3 the occupants of the Federal prison system illegal aliens?

You missed the point Radar… Law and order for us, kleptocracy and lies by them.

Comment by Skip
2006-09-21 07:29:34
“Why are 1/3 the occupants of the Federal prison system illegal aliens?”

But the soothsayers and mindless headline drones insist that the 20 million illegals are all hardworking, law abiding God fearing people and us dirty, lazy stupid Americans should be grateful to the corporatists.

We’ve been blaming our neighbors and letting the corporate whores walk away for too long now. The charade is over but their are still a few apologist stragglers out there willing to spout off and repeat the same rusty lies. But they get wacked pretty hard nowadays. Deservedly so.

what is legal about “illegal immigrant”? or do we just ignore it so that a business can reduce its labor costs? Bottom line is we need to secure our borders in this age of terrorism. I don’t mind immigrants coming and following the legal means to become a naturalized citizen. while one can say that people complain about some US citizens being too lazy to work themselves and expect a gov’t handout, that is just as much a stereotype as illegals coming over and wanting the same thing and wanting to impose their culture on ours — some of this is true, but not across the board.
America is slowly losing it’s traditional foundation and values that made it great and I think illegal immigration and unconstrained capitalism (that hires illegals or allows CEO’s to give themselves fat bonuses while laying off workers) is part of the problem.

there is enough finger pointing to go around. major reforms are needed. First and foremost, the borders need to be secured.

Captain:

“Secondly, if you want law and order, it applies to all situations. Otherwise, laws are meaningless.”

I generally agree with you, but there is much more than meets the eye to this immigration issue. It’s not as simple as saying “send them home” and blaming the issue on corporate America.

Moman said:

“I compete with highly-paid intelligent Indian workers in my job but it makes me a better person for it. I could go to Congress and whine about the H1-B visa program but I’d rather spend my time improving my own skills.”

What you leave out is the fact that a lot of times, these H1-B visa workers are paid much less money for the same job, forcing Americans wages down, and taking jobs away. Embrace it brother, all the way to the poor house!! Anyone who believes our immigration policy and control, or lack thereof, is beneficial to the average american, is delusional. It lines the pockets of the super rich while systematically destroying the middle class.

Comment by BanteringBear
2006-09-21 10:47:55

“What you leave out is the fact that a lot of times, these H1-B visa workers are paid much less money for the same job, forcing Americans wages down, and taking jobs away. Embrace it brother, all the way to the poor house!! Anyone who believes our immigration policy and control, or lack thereof, is beneficial to the average american, is delusional. It lines the pockets of the super rich while systematically destroying the middle class.”

And those that embrace that insanity are the same misguided and uniformed schlocks that are dumb enough to grab onto non-existent issues like abortion, gay marriage when thrown out there by the creeps that are currently in power.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Hey what happened to the rest of my post?

Well said Diogenes. But just don’t call a spade a spade and implicate the international corporatists, where the blame for this lies.

If the kid’s getting up at 6, he’s got to have some kind of work ethic.

Az slim,
You’re right about the new immigrants and their work ethics — and their offspring who DO NOT, as a rule, share this ethic. I don’t know why, but the US-born children of these hard-working immigrants are not like their parents.

BTW, for those who think unwanted pregnancies, drugs and a welfare mentality are more common in Americans than these new immigrants, try going to a largely Hispanic high school. You will see a disproportionate number of pregnant girls (because they don’t believe in abortions??) and kids in gangs, on drugs, etc.

Not sure where you get the idea that Latinos are here to work hard and be self-sufficient. How about those free clinics and emergency rooms? Free breakfast and lunch at the free school with free school supplies? Free WIC and food stamps? Free room and board in our prisions (with free defense attys as well)? I think you apologists for illegal immigration need to get out more.

Just taking a drive along bristol street in Santa Ana and it has to be the poster street for the deterioration of a former middle class burg into the illegal alien swamp hole of Orange county.

I’ve always thought that you could write an interesting fictional I hope) story about somebody who develops a great new stock-picking piece of software, and tries like hell to keep it from being relesed to the marketplace. It’s “stolen” and suddenly the hordes are using it. It becomes obvious within a year that the inventors had shorted all the stocks that the software said to buy, making millions. The kicker? Turns out that they did nothing illegal.

My understanding is that it was not playing the spreads on US government paper that doomed LTCM, regardless of their leverage. The irony in the events noted perhaps lies in the observations in Lowenstein’s book that it may have all started with Thailand somehow,(from summaries of the book)”… when across Thailand, property prices plummeted. This sparked a panic that swept through Asia. As banks went bust from Japan to Indonesia, people took to the streets - events so improbable they had never been included in anyone’s models….” “…But in December of 1997, the Thai currency crashed and 56 of Thailand’s top 58 finance houses were forced to close overnight. The crash triggered an economic recession that rippled across Asia. And when, months later, Russia announced it was defaulting on its foreign loan payments…”
That Amaranth could lose that much more than LTCM while utilizing that much less leverage , makes it all the more frightening to me. You have to wonder how prudent it is for pension plans etc to be investing in these vehicles.
Anyhow , the big question is can CSI:Miami hang on to the top spot in the ratings or will Lost go back to its roots and win viewers back?

The 1997 Thai contagion brings to mind the butterfly effect idea from Chaos theory: Could the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect

You are correct that those crisises led to their defualt, but I don’t think LTCM owned the crisis assets (they may have had a small position in Russian debt but most of their bet was on Italian bonds which were supposed to benefit (and did) from Euro integration (eliminating the currency discount once the Italian government wouldn’t control the printing presses.

Following those there was an additional flight to quality that resulted in a rush into especially the on the run treasuries that LTCM (and most banks) were short(thereby further widening spreads). They were right that the off the run treasuries were cheap, but when everyone is making the same bet as you and gets burnt in the same way there isn’t anyone left who can come in to take advantage of the situation for a now bigger profit (that’s essentially the function that broke down and nearly casued a major disaster).

Finally you had lots of folks smelling blood in the water and front running anything that got big sales (knowing that there was a huge distressed seller out there but not knowing it’s exact positions).

Eventually new smaller funds (Citadel’s name comes up a lot in the stories) did come in and take advantage of the prices but not right away.

Having worked for a pension fund that lost money on Enron (in the bonds, equity made money on their side), pensions don’t exist not to take risk, they exist to spread it around and let the flexibility of a long horizon even out a risky investment. Even with a loss on Amaranth, I’d be surprised if San Diego’s pension’s alternative investments (venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds) underperformed the S&P 500 or their bonds over the last few years. If pensions don’t take on some risk, the contributions (in that case resident’s taxes) must be much higher to cover a larger contribution level.

Here’s a great summary on the whole thing and why the Fed stepped in it wasn’t to (and didn’t) save LTCM who’s partners wen’t bust it was to save the much larger banks who had bigger bets using the same basic strategy.
Skip down to the second section for the discussion.
http://www.economist.com/background/displaystory.cfm?story_id=172042

Bluto — what you write makes sense and hopefully pension funds, in particular, will be shown to have a relatively small stake in them. But I’ll bet that a lot of retiree representatives and, in the case of “public” pension funds, taxpayers, will be demanding to see the level of risk very soon. That begs the question of what is the greatest portion of such funds’ money should be invested in max-risk endeavors. What has periodicall been wondered on this board, exactly who is it that has all these zillions of dollars at risk?

In Thailand, coups are pretty close to a normal way of changing government, though less desirable than elections. Thaksin had promised to step down and didn’t. The key is always the response of the King, and the King has tacitly acknowledged that Thaksin should have gone when the getting was good. There is rarely bloodshed in these coups, though they are serious enough.

I don’t know of any public pension funds that have more than a few percent of assets invested in altenative investments (everything from their office building to hedge funds). Most spread it among several hundred managers (with occasionally a few concentrated investments with managers who’ve been around for many cycles and have enough status that they turn away far more money than they invest (KKR, Carlyle, Kleiner-Perkins, etc).
Public fund managers make good money (typical salaries are in the low six figure range) but that is a small fraction of what they could make in private fund management (they rarely get the bonuses that make up the majority of a private fund manager’s pay). This typically makes it difficult to retain good people in good times.
Typically an investment in alternative equities reduces the overall risk of the fund as mathmatically measured because they aren’t correllated with their investments in stocks and bonds (for example the last really bad year for hedge funds was 1998 which was a pretty good year for stocks) and 2001 was a terrible year for stocks but a pretty decent year for hedge funds. Pension managers spend a lot of time worrying about the problem that goes by fancy names but boils down to when bad things happen they typically happen to many areas at once (the best example is the Asian currency crisis). Long story short they are probably way below the optimal mathmatic investment in alternative investments.
As far as the zillions behind hedge funds, it’s only about a trillion dollars (which sounds like and is a whole lot) but is pretty small in the whole game of things. US household equity ownership totals about $9 T (half directly and half through intermediaries), bank deposits are about $6 T, and other assets are aout $15 T. Real estate is about $19.5 T (of which about $9 T is financed). Total household assets are about $62 T offset by total household debt of about $11.5 T.
As far as who owns the trillion dollars some is pensions (I’d guess about 50-100 billion), some is college and other endowments this is probably another $100 million or less, and the rest is mostly individuals (not to many governments invest in funds indirectly or directly). The individuals are higher net worth (the bar keeps dropping but assume at a minimum $50,000 in liquid investments and a net worth of at least $250,000.

It’s been a while since I read his book , but if memory serves Lowenstein suggested that if they had stuck to their orginal plan of convergence bets , they would not have blown up at all. But it was their move into products outside their initial expertise that started the downfall , especially the equity volatility bets. Anyway their losses were reported to be as follows:
The total losses were found to be $4.6 billion. The losses in the major investment categories were (ordered by magnitude):

* $1.6 bn in swaps
* $1.3 bn in equity volatility
* $430 mn in Russian and other emerging markets
* $371 mn in directional trades in developed countries
* $215 mn in yield curve arbitrage
* $203 mn in S&P 500 stocks
* $100 mn in junk bond arbitrage
* no substantial losses in merger arbitrage

My concern is that I wonder how many “hedge Funds” actually hedge any of their positions at all , apparently Amaranth was lacking in this regard. But like you noted , I guess if Pensions etc have minimal expopsures to any single entity, not much harm should come.
Early estimates show the HFN Hedge Fund Aggregate Average, an equal weighted average of all single manager hedge funds in the HedgeFund.net database, was +1.14% in August and is +6.66% year-to-date (YTD). August was the first positive month after three straight negative months in a row for the Aggregate. The HedgeFund.net database consists of over 6,700 current hedge fund, fund of fund, and CTA products.”
So as a whole they seem to be underperforming the DJIA this year. Of course there are stellar performers in their I’m sure , but as a whole I just wonder if it is worth the risk. That’s hard to know.

Bluto, It is not the capital in the funds that bother me. It is the leverage. It is the 86.5 billion dollars per day that are created in the derivative market and hedge funds margin is ~1%. A minor miscalculation and the derivatives and funds are up for grabs.
Hedge funds have underperformed the market as a whole for the last 10 years. When the hedge fund bubble pops, who will bail out the hedge fund managers?

To give some idea of what the huge notional numbers represent, I present the following numbers. Let us imagine I own 500 shares of Google worth $203,425 at today’s close. Because I’m tired of earning the return on these shares, I decide to buy 5 December put options and write 5 December call options with a strike price of $400. The net of these two transactions will result in a payment of $5550 to me (less commissions). Doing this will result in 0 exposure to Google’s market fluctations. When the options will expire my shares will be worth $200,000 and I will make about 1% over the next 3 months. So my economic exposure is now the same as if I owned treasury bills.
However in the rolls of finance I just “created” $400,000 in notional value of scary derivatives.
You would expect hedge funds to underperform the market because they are supposed to be hedging. It’s pretty rare that anyone extends credit to hedge fund managers who are pursuing strategies like Amaranth’s (and you’ll note that while their position dropped 50% no one is looking to bail out their lenders). The ones with crazy scary leverage are supposed to be pursuing strategies such as the one I outlined with my google shares. You can make money if that goes to say 1.5%/quarter and you can borrow at 1% if you can borrow enough of the transaction. It’s not 40% annually but many investors would be more than happy to earn 10% that’s not tied to the volatility in the equity markets.

Whoa , hold on there. You lost me.
If you are long 500 GOOG shares , and buy 5 puts AND sell 5 Calls , you are net short (long puts) in the underlying stock in theory. I assume you would designate the calls written as covered by the shares owned as I doubt too many places would be crazy about letting people write naked on Google :-). That would leave you with net postition of long 5 GOOG DEC 400 Puts. This does not result in zero exposure to GOOG market fluctuations. It results in no exposure beyond the net of the premiums less commissions paid should GOOG increase in value from today’s close , as the Puts will expire worthless and the loss on the shorted calls(which will be exercised in this case if not closed out) will mirror the gains on the shares owned - but this scenario does allow for participation in any move in GOOG shares down below strike , no?

Never mind - I think I maybe figured out my mistake? If the price of GOOG were to come down , the calls you wrote obviously would expire worthless , but then you would have exposure to the dropping share price in the form of the actual shares owned, which would then see that dropped hedged ny the puts- right? Jeez, my head hurts just thinking about it.

Anyway , it’s an interesting strategy. I wonder if you would be able to levergage the situation? IOW , if you could buy the GOOG shares on margin , maybe some of these trading places are getting say 5-1 leverage, so to own the GOOG you’d need only put up 40 thousand as opposed to the 200. Would they let you do that and still write calls as covered even though you are leveraged on the underlying stock? That would seriously increase the % returns you could realize if you could do it that way.
Anyway , I heard on the radio this morning that San Diego Pension has 20% of its assest in hedge funds , spread across 10 funds. Assuming they spread it evenly over the 10 , that would be only 2% of assets exposed to any single fiasco(these numbers seem to make sense since the Pension reportedly had $7 Billion is assets and made a $175 Million investment in Amaranth, or about 2.5%) , so though that is more than I expected , still not as scary as it originally sounds. And they have apparently done very well over time in these funds.

Exactly and you should be able to lever that as much as you could with treasuries (10:1 would be fairly conservative because the lender faces no risk although there is lots and lots of hedge fund money out there that pursues exactly that strategy so typically you are getting about 10 bps over swap rates rather than 50 bp. It’s hard for individuals to borrow that cheaply unless you have a big account.
That’s why blanket statements about derivatives being bad are hard to make. (In reality in my senario it’s highly likely that there would be at least 2x my notional value created as the option trader who took the opposite position would come back to the market with more options to hedge his position.

Derivatives almost always exist to transfer risk, which either means that someone is reducing their risk (as my fake google short did) or accepting that risk (someone buying a single option or writing a naked option). Anyone who survives more than about six months with any level of leverage is either exceedingly lucky or has figured out how much risk their capital supports and stays within that limit.

well, in that sense we’re already hearing it in the NAR-expressed sentiment that “all the bad press and bloggers (WE are the terrorists) are responsible for the housing market tanking.”

NAR chief egonomist, Mr. David L., recented was quoted as saying that the housing bust was due to media, terrorists, and those damn sellers, who didn’t know the housing boom was over “last year”.
Yeah, those sellers are sooo “last year”.

Back in ‘02-’03 terrorists were being blamed for the runup in real estate prices. “In uncertain times, people’s nesting instincts are supercharged, and they’re willing to pay more for their own home sweet home.”

Bringing up terrorists is just a political ploy. Scare-mongering to get votes.

I didn’t really see that young woman wistfully touching her dead child’s forehead in Beslan. Nothing to see here. Move along.

that depends on which economic school you stick to.

Defining inflation/deflation by the change in the general price level is a definition that is totally useless nowadays, because there will always be increasing and decreasing prices at the same time. But the money supply can go only one way at the time (the downside being that such a number is easier to hide than individual prices).

This has me worried. I think that if rates go down enough, this whole bulls**t housing bubble-inflation process will start all over again.

No, it won’t; think Japan; lots of write downs/losses; the supereasy credit expansion is about to crumble onto itself.

Money is debt. The general level of prices is affected by credit and debt expansion, and the cost of debt. If the supply of credit and debt (money supply) were fixed, inflation would be impossible, however prices of some goods may increase, while others contract due to supply/demand equations.

http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_05/mauldin020705.html

Compound interest and velocity of money take on new meaning when viewed in the context of government debt monetization and fractional reserve banking. ALL money (debt) that has EVER been created ALWAYS seeks a rate of return, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (unless it is stashed in a shoebox under your bed).

The article referenced above mentions that the velocity of money has slowed since cash rich corporations are sitting on it. I believe that this is incorrect, and that we have reached a point in time in history where the velocity of money is running at the maximum (maximum velocity). This is a matter for debate in another forum. We’ve also reached a “peak” of money (debt) creation to the extent that the requestors of debt have exhausted their ability to service debt based on flat or declining inflation-adjusted wages, and we are now about to witness the “liquidation” phase as it pertains to real estate. Call it the “affordability index” on money. Even if debt were to be priced at zero interest, it would still be unaffordable, but it would not change the supply of money and credit. The ONLY way to contract or decrease the supply of money and credit would be for the government to operate in surplus, or for the Fed to increase the bank Reserve Required Ratio, or for the Fed to “sell” assets acquired during the course of open market operations.

What worries me is the Fed continuing to dump money into preferred interests, i.e. into corportions, startups, and banks without any accountability, and expanding the money supply that way, and preservation of bubble-peak prices through inflation.

I don’t think the are going to be able to do that across the whole U.S. but in techy and banky areas like the bay area and Seattle I wonder if this can keep going for awhile. In San Francisco there still seems to be a lot of funny money in the system.

There is a difference in trying to increase the money supply and actually increasing it. Inflation occurs when it actually increases - a la the late ’70’s when borrowing continued inspite of the increasing cost of credit. Japan is classic deflation where increasing the money supply was cheap but no demand for it.

yes, you have to look at demand or better at increased production (which is growing at 1-2% yoy, at most i you use real statistics and not the bls**t). The trouble is that 99% of the increase in demand for money nowadays is artificial and has nothing to do with real economic activity.

I recommend all 7, INCLUDING and especially commodities. A metals dealer says that whatever the probability you think “all hell will break loose,” invest an equivalent percentage into precious metals. My prediction is between 5% and 10%. Also add to the list high yield CDs. Bank of America has a 10 month 5.35% CD special. Minimum $10,000 gets you in.

How can #7 (money markets) generate a loss? Or do you mean when measured against inflation?

I think the comment is made in reference to a large-scale economic meltdown. The suggested investments are the *least* risky investments, but they can still lose. The circumstances under which they could lose would be dire, but it is conceivable.

Dave get you some Southern Co., Puget Sound, and grab some pine! (just kidding-sorta)

KIA wins first prize. Bill in Phoenix, good stuff. I’m betting 50/50 within 5 years. Physical PM’s, cash and Short term US T-bills only.

P’cola Popper, what do you mean “grab some pine”? As in buy some land?

“Grab some pine”-is what the basketball coach says to the player when he pulls him out of the game and puts him on the bench. The bench was made of wood from a pine tree.

I was agreeing with Fred Hopper’s comment and kidding Dave a little bit. Nothing mean intended.

O.K. thanks for clearing that up. I do seem to recall that saying before I just wasn’t putting it in context.

(… and of course a 40% average drop would imply tens of thousands of properties, in the most bubblesome regions, on the foreclosure/auction/multiple lot auction for pennies on the dollar of their ‘peak’ value….)

“i doubt the idea of a 40% average fall in u.s. housing prices over the next 5+ years seems at all outlandish to most of the posters on this board.”

I buy it. Further, I think that there is a decent chance it won’t take 5 years, at least in many pockets. That is in large part because of the change in IT and specifically the Net — the way and rate at which news spreads. If you don’t read the news on the Net, you are hearing about Net-based news from others who do. Look at how quickly you know a lot any significany event. As news travels faster and wider, more people will put two and two together and see that, if they any plans at all of selling their property within, say, five years, maybe they’d better get off their duff and do it now before the price goes even lower. Even if this applied only to empty and second-home housing, I’d think it would affect comps enough to create a downward spiral sooner rather than later. And as far as the Fed rescuing anything with lower interest rates, no way — there are so many bear-trap ARMs ready to re-set that there’s no escape — only a matter of sell or drop off the keys, IMO.

news travels faster? don’t think so …

in the 1635 tulip mania in the Netherlands, prices crashed 90% within a week after the bubble was pricked (by a discovery in France). That was long before the telephone and the internet, when news still traveled by horse or pigeon. If anything, it looks more to me like the internet severely prolongs the manias of today.

What about radio? Today, you can borrow up to $1,25 MIL with no income verification, according to an ad on LA’s biggest news station (KNX).

many EU countries don’t have a free rental market. e.g. in the Netherlands most of the rental market is controlled by semi-government institutions who decide if you can rent or not. Also renting is heavily subsidized, except for high-end properties, where rental supply is extremely limited. As a results many homeowners prefer government workers or people on social security (if they don’t pay the rent, at least they get the subsidy directly from the government and that is usually more than what the renter has to pay).

Don’t you guys take The Economist? How about reading blogs — are you the only one?

i think it’s mostly a psychological issue. Why worry about housing if it keeps going up forever al around you? The media here are still preaching the message that RE is the sure and easy way to richess and they have more than 15 years of fact to prove it. Most EU countries had there last housing bust one generation ago (around 1980). Many people make more money from owning a home than by working. Even on investment forums etc. the % of people that can see the dark clouds on the horizon is very small, so they are simply ridiculed and ignored.

The upbeat RE psychology in Europe will not change as long as there is no major crash in the US; and even if the US crashes the media will tell us that ‘Europe is different’ (sure it is, bigger RE price gains and even more loose monetary policy …).

yes, the EU real estate market has a correction around 2001/2002 (not sure about the exact date). In my country high end properties crashed by 20-30% within a short time and the speculative fever that existed before that time (people standing in a cue to bid for every overpriced property) ended abruptly. In London (UK) high end properties are often still below their 2001/2002 peak value.

But the market came back with a vengeance and EU property prices are (much) higher now almost everywhere. If you look at average prices for the UK or Netherlands it is hard to see this correction, because at the same time that the original bubble areas nosedived, a new bubble began in the outer areas thanks to the ‘equity locust’ phenomenon. This has kept the averages rising ever since. So, the EU bubble is still growing thanks to ever more expansion and easy money from the ECB.

I’m not sure about Greenspans role in this, the introduction of the Euro in 2001 was certainly a major factor (lots of black money flowing into real estate, artificially low interest rates, in some countries RE suddenly seemed ‘cheap’ because of the euro conversion factor). Yhe last housing bust in the Netherlands around 1980 was -40% in 1.5 years. Because of the unprecedented credit expansion, it’s anyones guess as to how this bubble will end; but it don’t doubt that it will end badly for the average citizen.

I live in Central London, and there was another short correction 3 years ago - when I bought my house!

In my case, I bought for 16% less than asking. Price (note - NOT value!) has subsequently gone up by 35%.

yes.

but the trouble is that credit is only king as long as the current central banking system keeps working; and I guess they cannot continue this for much longer because the virtual economy is overtaking the real economy.

Getstucco,
What are you betting on the yields?