Bits Bucket And Craigslist Finds For March 7, 2008
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The Housing Bubble
Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
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Lowest since 2002… Mohammad stocks up on Raman Noodles…
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080307/consumer_confidence.html
That is a one helluva Sad Sack lookin’ feller if ever there was one!
I heard that Wal-Mart is somewhat “culturally sensitive” to the ‘hood it’s in, as Dearborn has a huge Arab population. I’m curious what that means. Might go check it out this weekend.
They carry a large amount of pipe bomb material and sling shots.
Lane
Huh? Is that supposed to be funny?
It IS funny.
Dearborn has a huge Arab population
Which was establish by Christians, who still comprise the majority of Dearborn’s Arab population. They don’t take cheap shots at the local Muslims, although they have received more than their share of cheap shots themselves.
A lot of people don’t realize that a sizeable number of Arabs are Christians.
I knew a lot were, but I didn’t know that most in Dearborn were. I was able to verify that, so hey, I learned something today.
I shake my head in sadness. They gave up one crazy violent ideology for another crazy violent ideology.
How’d you like to be the only arab at the uber-christian anti-abortion meeting.
“SOMETHING has to be done about that horrible clinic! Something to close it down for good!” yells Penny Shrillwasp, looking meaningfully at Abdulla Smith.
Another example of cultural sensitivity: the Albuquerque Walmarts carried construction safety gear (goggles, etc.) labeled with the Mexican flag last spring.
It’s beginning to feel like the late ’70s all over again. We could sure use the 1980 hockey team to pull us out of our doldrums. Too bad the Olympics are another thing that has been ruined.
Bring back ABBA, Polyester, and Disco.
Click my handle for a new Rosie Ledet video i just put up on you tube
Rosie!
Yep, why aren’t more , I mean Any, real musicians focused on by MTV etc. Good local real non synthesized music.
Musicians?? what’s that?? lol
Bring back huge gas guzzling V8 powered land yachts, oh wait a minute we did that already. Alrighty, then lets bring back presidential candidates like Carter and Ford. Hmm…. maybe we did that too…..hmmm no that can’t be.
Feels a lot more like 1973 to me than the late 70s. In terms of stock market, inflation, changes inflation, and recent history of GDP growth and recessions, fall 2007 lines up very well with winter 1973.
which means the Dow will be under 600 by fall 2009? Well, in “old” dollars. In new dollars, maybe 4000?
45% drop 1973-1974.
I remember that. Wow, that really ages me, but I got involved in the markets when I was very young, under 13.
“I got involved in the markets when I was very young, under 13.”
Oh, you were that kid we used to make fun of….but now envy.
We had a kid in our neighborhood that was into trading stocks and made the newspaper (in a good way). I was always curious about what he was doing but I usually went with the default of going to the park for some b-ball. And here I sit, working for the man….good times!
“It’s beginning to feel like the late ’70s all over again.”
More like the beginning of the 1970 recession and 12 more years of pain to come with multiple recessions. The difference, IMO, will be declining inflation and bouts of deflation (please note that the CPI rate, YoY, peaks several months into a recession). I know that most people trash the UST market in its ability to sniff longer-term inflation. I believe that in year 2008 we will know the answer to inflation/deflation resolution.
Jas
The US had jobs then, manufacturing. And China was not putting out tankers full of product.
Recession, Service industry will tank too.
Yeah, we actually made stuff back then. Imagine that.
Hey, we do the inventive stuff and let the rest of the world be our toadies and make it for us.
I just ordered a new MacPro laptop. Apple means California, right? I was assured they make this stuff in the U.S. of A when I talked to sales. Was I surprised when the tracking showed it coming from Shanghai.
I just sent a nice chunk of my money to China after being determined to not buy China when I shop. We’re so hosed.
(BTW, nice computer, I do lots of photography and it’s great for that.)
In retrospect, I should’ve done my research instead of relying on Suzanne…
Just don’t access any secure sites (like your bank account) using your Chinese made laptop. A word to the wise, or paranoid. LOL.
It won’t be like the 70’s until we have gas stations closing for lack of fuel & long lines at the few that are open.
Interesting article in the local rag:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20080307_Worries_grow_as_job_market_shrinks.html
Most interesting section was from a laid off “transportation and logistics” worker:
“I used to have a big network of transportation workers,” he said. “Now I’m networking with a lot of people. Everyone is slow.”
To him, that means that stores are not ordering merchandise and that there will be a trickle-down effect of more layoffs as existing inventories are depleted and nothing new is manufactured to replace the goods.
Disagree on the inventories part. There is far more cr@p merchandise than needed. Not talking about necessities here but stuff nobody “needs”. The companies are doing the right thing for themselves — cutting inventories headed into a recession.
I agree…was at the local homegoods picking up some new frying pans…spoke to the store manager…I asked her if she has seen an increase in shipments to her store…she looked at me kind of surprised and said, “Yes. We use to get 1 to 2 truck deliveries a week now were are getting 3. I don’t even know where we are going to put all this stuff.” She also told me that her clearance isles use to be one side of a store isles, now it has grown to 4 isles…
Also heard that Overstock.Com has been getting an increase amount of phone calls to buy excess inventory…
Sounds good. Might pick up some high-end cooking stuff later in the year.
Getting offers from companies that have never offered them in the past. I think I’ll just wait six months more.
TJ Maxx is also packed with stuff, with new inventory coming in daily. I think Neil mentioned stocking up on cheap, quality coffee beans a couple of days ago…so I did. Also picked up a couple of pairs of New Balance sneakers. The aisles are literally filled with unopened boxes.
you’re making me wish i lived in a town with more than one store
You do. It’s called the Internet and they deliver.
Know of any good internet deals on driveway salt, in 50 lb. bags? All my local stores are out of stock.
Went to same homegoods store in desert and commented on all the stuff. It is High season so this stuff is usually flying off the shelves. Place was jampacked with crap. Garage sale stuff.
I periodically drive NYC-PHL-DC legs for business, which obviously is NJ Turnpike, 95 and DC beltway. Personally, I prefer to drive at night as fewer crazies are on the road, especially PHL-DC leg. Well, over my last two trips that I did over last month I can tell you one thing that were quite weird… Excluding UPS, US Mail and FedEx trucks, I counted -four- rigs on PHL-DC and PHL legs. If was not to count big brown truck, I’d say truck stops were nearly empty.
According to MapQuest, avoiding tolls completely adds only six miles to the NYC-DC trip (though it adds half an hour).
MapQuest is wrong. It adds about 3 more hours to avoid tolls.
yeah, it’s all “containted”…You keep reading more and more stories like these.
Wisconsin Die Casting, a manufacturer on Milwaukee’s south side, has shut down with virtually no notice. The dies are used to make parts for Ford and General Motors.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=725568
Slow here, too:
Job losses continue to sting region (Rochester, NY)
http://tinyurl.com/2bz6hy
One sector that saw improvement was leisure and hospitality.
“More people are spending more dollars on leisure and recreational activities, and a large component of that is restaurants and bars — going out to eat more,” Marino said. The sector added 300 jobs, for a total of 36,900, between January 2007 and January 2008.
That was the only bright spot in Thursday’s report, though. Total private-sector jobs dropped year-over-year by 600, to 426,200.
Those minimum wage eatery jobs aren’t likely to spark and economic resurgence.
Restaurants?
I see alot of half empty lots during drive bys during high time eating.
Trader joes is crammed though with highend/retiree/vacationer looking folks.
Washington’s City Paper gives advice on how to embrace unemployment (including stealing food - he recomends London Broil because it is flat).
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=34682
Also includes resume writing tricks to make sure you don’t get hired and can stay on unemployment.
The article is hilarious.
You might even see more of it. I see this attitude prominently among 20-year olds. Why bother working hard?
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/cover/2005/cover0826.html
If someone asked me to put my creative process on a spreadsheet, where would I put all of those forays to the HBB? No kidding, you guys have been a real spur to my creativity.
wow, businesses still do stuff like this? I guess I’m pretty lucky. The last guy who tried to pull this management science BS on us left to start a B2B dot com, in 2000. LOL.
Quite amusing, lol.
Haw! Haw! Damn.
“At some point recently, probably while you were listening to a Dan Brown audiobook on your commute, those decadent pinko, Socialist, pacifist, cheese-eating, nap-taking, 25-hour-workweek Europeans became the dominant economic power in the world. The EU is the new United States, and the United States is the new…Mexico?
And it’s not my fault, it’s because of people like you! High-earning workaholic assholes like you who feel entitled to buy big houses with gimmick mortgages and drive huge cars that force our government to subsidize gas prices, who run up credit card debt buying products you saw on your Chinese-made big-screen television and then vote Republican so you can pay less than your fair share of taxes! It’s your fault our country is now a second-rate power! Now who’s un-American?! You are! And I’m the real patriot! Ironic, isn’t it? I’m basically a bald eagle flying over Mount Rushmore while Hank Williams Jr. sings the Monday Night Football theme song in the background, and you’re basically John Walker Lindh, American Taliban!”
The kid does have some talent with a turn of phrase. I don’t condone shoplifting in anyway, but the idea of living on steak and peanut butter cups because they are easy to hide under a jacket is very funny. Also reminds me of that scene from Animal House where hiding it effectively wasn’t an issue.
great article. I found myself noddin’ and laughin’ through-out.
I was laid off in November from an entertainment job in LA and have loved being off.
This is very amusing.
http://blogs.chron.com/nickanderson/archives/animation/
Rumor of an emergency rate cut…after the jobs numbers. Futures just turned positive.
ZIRP! ZIRP! ZIRP!
C’mon, baby, let’s get it on.
Jobless numbers just laid a major egg.
doh!
Oh my gosh. Those rate cuts have been working so well. I better load up long positions in the market. It’s just more noise. If they do it, wait an hour and short the mother living sh*t out of it.
How’s that XHB investment looking? Wasn’t that a hedge against rising home prices? That seemed like a great strategy to me after a phony 30 - 70 percent rise in the builders.
The XHB part wasn’t aimed at you Crispy. Rock on!
Agree. This is another lie out there to pump the market. Someone must have leaked the jobs number…
bubblevision is acutally against further rate cuts..”they are not working, they are only making things worse”
Of course they are.
Finite income (assuming any), no more access to credit (neither HELOC nor CC’s), speculative money running into commodities which translate into increasing prices of food and fuel, what’s left over to pay for housing?
TAF increased they will now take yard sale merchandise as collateral.
speculative money running into commodities which translate into increasing prices of food and fuel
I’m undecided about following those people. What happens to prices when that flow of money slows and stops.. which it soon must..
The housing bubble has run to commodities. There’s too much cash in the system. Might as well cut rates, and lend some more!
I’m waiting for the 0% mortgage..like the car dealers did..
The problem with the zero interest loan is that we still can’t afford the principle payments.
Stanislaw that is NOT quite true You can afford the Monthly principle payments Even $360K for 30 years is only $1000 a month
But when you add in the RE Taxes, insurance, repairs, heating and cooling the McMansion, and what about the HOA, condo,or co-op monthly fees. You are like screeewed!
I’m waiting for the 0% mortgage
You’ll get a 0% mortgage when the Chinese and the other foreigners who finance the US “economy” start lending at 0%.
In other words, when hell freezes over.
I for one am glad that the enlightened Muslims are taking over the worlds banking firms. I’m not quite sure though if I have to be a Muslim too to get the “no usury” deal?
You’ll get a 0% mortgage when the Chinese and the other foreigners who finance the US “economy” start lending at 0%.
Why not, they’ve been giving us the for decades, might as well all come down to 0% interest loans, if they continue to be so stupid.
I’m still long. That would be fine with me.
“I’m still long.”
So am I but not when it comes to stocks. What are you still long on, TX? The indexes?
How can you be long the stock indexes without (effectively) being long the underlying stocks?
You want to rephrase that one NYCityBoy?
That’s all I mess with most of the time.
I do have BIDU.
“You want to rephrase that one NYCityBoy?”
Nope!
Channeling the NAR strategy, I see. Admit nothing!
The only things to be long on are gold, silver, oil, agriculture, uranium, coal, gas and water-resources.
Everything else is overvalued imho.
Fellow knife catcher here. Hoping to get some UYG on the cheap today.
Bought UYG at the open and just sold. You gotta love mornings like this.
In rate cuts we (still) trust. How long for these Pavlovian dogs to unlearn AG’s training?
Could this be today’s big fed news, or is there more to come?
Federal Reserve Announces New Steps to Help Ease the Credit Crisis
http://tinyurl.com/2gh36b
The Federal Reserve is taking new steps to ease the credit crises, including increasing the amount of money it will auction to banks this month to $100 billion.
BB has announced a commitment to stay the course until the credit crisis blows over. Expect more to come until it does so (or doesn’t so).
Doesn’t look like Bush is worried about a thing. He’s so happy he couldn’t contain himself and had to do a soft shoe tap for the press on the White House steps. Hmmmm, I smell a rat, how about you?
All is well in the GW household. The rest? Let them eat cake.
auction money? wth does that mean?
i’ve got $5 for this new $5 bill, can i get $6? $6 it is. do I hear $7?
Awesome video, I wonder how much his antics have hurt her.
The morons are still buying. For someone not from Chicago, $400K is a HUGE deal out there. Incomes won’t support it.
Buying in a Rocky Housing Market.
Indifferent to the bleak real estate headlines, 26-year-old Michael Klauer and his fiancée recently bought a two-bedroom condo in the desirable Lake View neighborhood in Chicago. They weren’t in a rush to buy, but when an opportunity presented itself only a month after they started looking, they jumped on it.
The apartment, listed at $519,000, was theirs for only $480,000 — an initial offer they didn’t back down from, even though they knew the seller had bought the place 10 months earlier for $512,000.
“We leveraged the fact that they’d already moved out and were in a [financial] struggle to keep two places,” Klauer says. And even though the condo’s value may drop further, the couple wasn’t concerned since they plan to live in the place for at least three to five years. “It was a good time to buy,” he notes. “Prices are on the down low, and it’s something I could sit on for a while.”
“Prices are on the down low, and it’s something I could sit on for a while.”
REtards and their minions always developing new ways to screw themselves and others.
“down low” “sit on for a while” “screw themselves”
You are witty this morning, ex!
The sellers took a bath for 32k plus commissions and transfer taxes.
I’m betting that the buyers will be down more than that in six months.
“People are waiting for the other shoe to drop,” explains Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel, a New York-based real estate appraiser. “You could even argue that there are lots of people who want to buy, but they don’t want to look stupid.”
You could also argue that prices are still going up, but you would be wrong about that too. Maybe some people don’t want to be stupid.
j miller is the biggest hack- what a jackass
Quit insulting jacka$$es.
Last night, a retired-ex-RE professional who should have known better asked me why i havent bought property yet. I said “prices are falling”.
silence “Oh, Are they? Not here.”
“Yeah.. everywhere. You can’t see it because sales have virtually stopped, so there are almost no comps.”
I’ve come to the conclusion that we are a privilaged few. We get the whole story, from one end to the other nd from side to side.. everything from Wall St reactions to up-to-the-minute foreclosure stats in some far off corner of the country. We have a finger on the pulse and see the whole picture. A piece of the picture is just not enough.
” I said “prices are falling”.silence “Oh, Are they? Not here.”
That is their current means of defense when the truth gets between them and their fantasy wallets. The KoolAde drinkers have nothing left to hide behind but the “it’s different” drives me crazy.
Joey, have you been as amazed as me to find out how many of your friends and colleagues that you consider smart are really so dumb? It has baffled me that people I respected have shown to be so stupid and unwilling to listen. They deserve their losses.
That one was a friend (and a relative), and is anything but dumb. And that’s my point. Being aware of the current state of affairs is a matter of access to the broad but focused, steady stream of information we enjoy.
Joey has a point. If you watch the evening news broadcasts, and even read the Times, for example, which is more than most folks do, you would be hopelessly behind the curve. Only good news this a.m. is Carlyle Capital…last week in Feb. they reported 125+million in liquid assets, this week, they are scorched earth.
I don’t know. I have three friends that bough $1m plus homes during the last 2 yrs. These guys all are smart guys making great incomes ($200k plus). They all were/still are very informed about the RE debacle and what was/still is to come.
So why did they do it? For the most part I think it was to “own a nice home” was the “thing” to do. Renting amongst the “Jones” might make them look bad. The psychology aspect of this RE bubble is the most interesting thing to me. Highly intelligent and successful people are willing to risk $2, $3, $400k (most of their paper wealth) to look good to others. Don’t get me wrong, at times I got caught up in the same mentality but never pulled the trigger. Fortunately for me I am single unlike my friends so they each had “other pressures”.
Maybe it depends which evening news you watch. NewsHour has covered the housing debacle over and over, and it’s been quite a while since they had any bullish A.H. trying to pull the wool over viewers’ eyes.
People bash PBS but NOW and the NewsHour have been way ahead of MSM and a lot more informative.
Amen for Bill Moyer, NOW,NewsHour And PBS..
Otherwise, gosh, we would only have this site for real, current, and international widereaching facts and joking!
I’m going skiing with one of the News Hour producers this weekend. Will pass along your praise.
I have. It blew my mind away. These are some seriously smart people but they just don’t “get” it. It’s like a blanket refusal to open their eyes, and see a bigger picture.
It’s called “The Concensus Trance.” The reason people can’t see it is because if they took an honest look at item A (housing bubble), then they might have to take an honest look at B, C, D, and E, too. And if they were to do that, they would soon realize the truth of Morpheus’s words in the Matrix:
“That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind. “
ITA. Cognitive dissonance.
Those type of people either have blinders on them or wearing rose colored glasses. They don’t want to see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil.
There’s a lot of people in denial out there. Most all of them are highly leveraged in real estate, and have good reason to fear price declines. Their mantra has gone from “real estate only goes up”, to “prices will level off, then assume more modest levels of appreciation”, to “prices have gone down in some places, but not my area” to “prices will only drop a little on my place”, to “I don’t want to talk about it”. Their financial worlds are getting rocked.
As a engineer/science type, I’ve have been around many many high IQ types. What I learned in from the tech bubble is this: High IQ is no substitute for experience.
For instance, if you grew up in a loving household, you don’t fully understand the depth of evil in people. One experience with a truly evil person, and whammo! you are a de facto expert.
The advantage of the high-IQ is how quickly one goes from experience to theoretical understanding. But you need an experience to spark the understanding.
Hmm … why does all this sound so familiar?
Ignorance is a disadvantage at any level of IQ. Smart people who are complacent & lack curiosity aren’t much better than dull people. Lack of experience is only one type of ignorance.
I love how realtors just assume that people can afford RE at its current price level, especially in California. I recall a story on this board about how a supermarket cashier was approached by realtors in the checkout line, trying to get her interested in buying something that was probably 15-20X her annual income.
My place of work began getting spammed big time from a local property company. It started two weeks ago but they’ve largely been blocked now.
Yeah most people still utter the same BS “not here”. But I think the denial phase is starting to break.
Yesterday I saw a personal financial statement from a client of mine looking to purchase some CRE. For the first time in 5 yrs, I actually saw someone admit in writing on their PFS that their home was worth less than what they paid. This client bought their home in Danvile in 4/2007 for $1.8m (in Danville? - it must be a castle). On the PFS he had it worth $1.6m. Unfortuntely for him it’s probably worth a lot less but at least he admits he’s lost $$.
I had this same experience two days ago in Charlottesville, VA. A client was surprised to discover that her assessment (wealthy area west of town) had gone down, and said she was also surprised that there were three houses in her neighborhood on the market (a lot) and she was surprised they hadn’t sold because the prices on them seemed pretty good.
I also know this person well enough to know that she has down some HELOCing and her business is not great, and if they were to suddenly mark down their house by 100K (20%) they would be effectively broke. Being broke is not acceptable, so any new bad knowledge about the housing market is stoically ignored.
1. Interesting that the article cites the nationwide price decline but not the local price decline for 2007. Could this be reverse realtard logic - make the knife catchers think this thing is further along than it really is?
2. The realtor is himself renting and “taking his time” although for this clients there is no time to waste in snapping up the “deals”.
3. The most spoken word in Lake View is “fiancee” Don’t believe me - go there and hear it for yourself! No doubt one is a F.I.R.E. hack and the other is a civil servant of some type (for the benefits of course) - that would be so typical of that neighborhood it ain’t even funny.
Just like on HGTV - gotta get that house bought before the wedding.
I’ve never understood that concept.
Buy the house before the wedding.
Just don’t get it.
Grew up watching me/others live in First apts with new spouse, then a few yrs later buy first SFR.
Something to be said for the old way of striving for something.
But maybe that is the “slave” thingy of old.
I know some local politicians here, and they are so busy going to meetings and this and that, then going into escapist mode to forget all that, that they really do not know what’s happening. Plus the media silence…so, they decide they need to know more about local housing and schedule a presentation by guess who, local developers and realtors. They didn’t learn a damn thing except it’s different here.
Go Already! by Jonathan Chait, Hillary Clinton, Fratricidal Maniac.
“Indeed, Clinton is saying almost exactly the same things about Obama that McCain is: He’s inexperienced, lacking in substance, unequipped to handle foreign policy. As The Washington Monthly’s Christina Larson has pointed out, in recent weeks the nightly newscasts have consisted of Clinton attacking Obama, McCain attacking Obama, and then Obama trying to defend himself and still get out his own message. If Obama’s the nominee, he won’t have a high-profile Democrat validating McCain’s message every day.”
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=ba30ff16-a5af-4035-a883-cf15ffee406c
Holy Cow, Wikipedia could put Hillary’s photo on this page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder
My Dear Dem Friends, I’m sorry but this is really fun watching the Democrats acting like Republicans, ie. self destructing. There just might (maybe?) be a chance for McFein this coming election.
McCant, YoMama, and the Hildebeest.
This is the best we can do?
What a country!
B. O’vomit
And this worn out devisive silliness that won’t work anymore has to do with housing in what way?
this is the bits bucket where there is more latitude. Don’t read the posts if you don’t like it.
Here’s a really funny one
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-david/on-the-red-phone_b_90338.html
They covered that on “morning Joe” this morning. good stuff.
That one is awesome!
Ex,
What TXC said, but more than that, this political season is going to be memorable is oh so many ways. Silliness, yes, thats exactly why it’s so much fun.
Also, have you noticed that we’re quoting people that would tend to lean to the left?
All kidding aside, Hillary and Bill are going to ruin your party if some grown ups don’t stand up and tell them to sit down. Problem is, it won’t happen for a couple of months.
Niether (r) or (d) is “my” party. Pointing out the hypocrisy that elevates one party to some supposed moral high ground as a means to demonize and castigate another makes for great entertainment. Just the idea that (r)’s speak of “morals” and “character” as if they have a monopoly on it side splitting hilarious.
exeter…..Doug Exeter?
The so-called grown-ups are still kissing the Clintons’ asses.
Whoops, almost typed ‘kicking their asses’, which is what I hope Obama will get on with shortly.
He’s going to have a tough time in Pennsylvania… damn…
If they have a “firehouse primary” in FL I will take off work to be there. Btw, you see how this kind of thing would theoretically benefit Clinton b/c the oldsters all luuuuuuv her. However, the heat might get them! Bwahahahah!! Go young people!
Speaking of FL, it’s amazing to me that now certain self-serving elements of the MSM are touting new FL Gov. Charlie Crist as a possible Veep for McCain. Crist is a glad-handing, know-nothing, big spending, deficit-ignoring, beholden-to-state-employees, left-leaning Republican who has more in common with Gray Davis than he does with the Republican party. If McCain chose Crist there would be a complete revolt in the party. He has to choose someone to his right to have a chance, and he will.
LOL was listening to Crist bleat about ‘the Florida voters’ yesterday, while nimbly circuiting the obvious point that it was him, and his party, that got the FL Dems in the situation they’re in now.
Funny how they all want a ‘do over’ but no one wants to actually pay for it. Looks like the Dems will be eating their own children by June…
I don’t know, I don’t see them self destructing…..yet.
If nothing else though, kudos to the Dems IMHO for the most interesting and entertaining campaign I’ve seen in a looonnnnggg time.
“He’s inexperienced, lacking in substance, unequipped to handle foreign policy”
Clinton is 60, McCain 71, Obama 46 years old. Do you think the life experiences of a 60 year old and a 70 year old might count for something? Obama’s Resume for almost any managerial job in America is awfully thin. Union organizer is right up there with
owning the Texas Rangers for job experience. And look how well that worked out.
By your logic, what this country really needs is a Cheney / Rumsfeld ticket.
“By your logic, what this country really needs is a Cheney / Rumsfeld ticket.”
Huh! I didn’t know these guys are running for President.
I am talking about the relative merits of the canidates. I have been around smooth talkers all my business life, never really worked out for me. And Obama is smooooooooooooth!
and Big Dog Clinton was not?
Agreed ET. And another 100 years of McPain in IraK.
Exeter, I don,t know how old you are but do you remember President J. Carter(aka Obama) calling for Americans to burn candles in their windows at night to protest the Iranians holding of our hostages at the US embassy in Tehran? Those were good times in America.
Spin all you’d like but we were far better off economically then than we are now and that is just a plain fact. Further, what is your point in conflating Obama with the Iranian hostage fiasco? President Carter negotiated their release. What did Obama have to do with it?
I’ll take the guy who graduated top 10-20% at Harvard Law and was president of the Harvard law review. Experience only counts if you learn from it. With McCains recent lobbiest scandle it sounds like he learned little from his days as a member of the Keating 5.
Obama’s Resume for almost any managerial job in America is awfully thin.
He has risen very quickly. IIRC, when he went to the 2000 Democrat convention he couldn’t rent a car because his credit cards were maxed out.
Barack Obama and Me, It was the year 2000 and I was a young hungry reporter in Chicago covering a young hungry state legislator
http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-02-28/news/barack-obama-screamed-at-me/print
This is an interesting article that’s written by a man that knew Obama and wrote about him in 2000. IMO it doesn’t necessarity hurt or help him, but it does show some of the inner workings in the Chicago/Illinois politics.
Whats hildebeasts experience? sleeping next to the president. I doubt if even that happened much.
“Whats hildebeasts experience? sleeping next to the president. I doubt if even that happened much.” At least it happened once (Chelsea)
Hillary looks pretty damn good for a 60 year old. I wish I wasn’t at the legal limit for donations to Hillary, the witch hunt here is begging for me to add more money.
Dave….. I compelled the prime contractor on my current project to donate $100k. 50k to HC and 50k to BO. I’m working on the secondary contractors right now.
Ah, yes — now we know why you’re parroting Clinton’s talking point du jour about Obama.
Blog is hungry, ate my posts. Is this the “experience” we are talking about?
http://candidblogger.blogspot.com/2008/02/experience-hillarys-legislative-record.html
Thats a record any candidate can be proud of. Her experience is second to none and she is as good of a candidate as Obama. Either is fine with me.
exeter, which one of these should we be especially proud of?
1. Establish the Kate Mullany National Historic Site.
2. Support the goals and ideals of Better Hearing and Speech Month.
3. Recognize the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
4. Name courthouse after Thurgood Marshall.
5. Name courthouse after James L. Watson.
6. Name post office after Jonn A. O’Shea.
exeter, I hope you are joking or did you not read the post?
exeter,
“Thats a record any candidate can be proud of”
either you are joking or you’ve gotta be kidding me..
exeter,
either you’re joking, or you’ve gotta be kidding me!.
Senator Clinton, who has served only one full term – 6 years - and another year campaigning, has managed to author and pass into law 20 pieces of legislation in her first six years.
His first year in the U.S. Senate, Obama authored 152 bills and co-sponsored another 427. These included **the Coburn-Obama Government Transparency Act of 2006 - became law, **The Lugar-Obama Nuclear Non-proliferation and Conventional Weapons Threat Reduction Act, - became law, **The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, passed the Senate, **The 2007 Government Ethics Bill, - became law, **The Protection Against Excessive Executive Compensation Bill, In committee, and many more.
In all, since entering the U.S. Senate, Senator Obama has written 890 bills and co-sponsored another 1096.
I prefer Obama but HC’s established record of proving her ability to lead exceeds expectations.
Still undecided, but sponsoring or writing bills doesn’t count unless these bills were passed and in effect!
What has been accomplished? I bet most of them were tabled or defeated - just busy work (or resume fodder).
An odd occurrence in Dutchess Co, NY, More REtard games?
3 CreepwellBanker for sale signs all within sight of each other suddenly sprung “sale pending” signs simultaneously. Considering that REtards lack of integrity knows no bounds, my cautious side tells me they’re attempting to re-create a sense of urgency a’la2004-2005 (which will fail).
sales pending=
pending we find 3 greater fools -not likely in this market
Maybe the realtwhores are accepting an “insulting” offer on all three from an investor in return for a kickback…
baby needs a new set of shoes…
Does that mean someone drove past that might have looked in the general direction of the properties for sale?
In Tucson, there are more than a few “Sale Pending” signs. I’m tempted to do a little editing. You know, replace the word “Pending” with the word “Pendejo.”
LOL, Slim, although that usage might not quite ring true in espan~ol. I haven’t heard that word since Miami. As I discovered there, in cycling a “pendejo” is the guy who continually attacks off the front for no good reason.
In Mexico it means “stupid”.
I believe the literal translation is: pubic hair.
no, it doesn’t, it means “friend.” didn’t you ever see Up In Smoke?
In Cuba, I think the translation is closer to d*ckhead.
As Foreclosures Rise, Investors Pull Back
http://tinyurl.com/3cl8qh
Mr. Rosengren noted that a regional effort being coordinated by the Boston Fed with six banks had received over 1,000 inquiries and taken in 50 loan applications in two months. But only a dozen loans have been closed.
Closing a dozen redo mortgages every two months is not a sign of lender desperation. All these so called fixes are more pain for the taxpayer and more relief for the “investor” and the irresponsible FB. These plans are all likely to be too little too late, but the headlines make the political hacks look like they are aware of the problem.
Two from the Boston Globe…
College loans see subprime fallout
http://tinyurl.com/379jsl
Default rate soars on auto loans in pattern likened to mortgage crisis
http://tinyurl.com/2lgzm8
I noticed that the auto loan article was above the fold with a photo, I didn’t notice where the college loan article was…but both articles are humorous, but worth a read only for the laughs, espically the statements that both problems will not be a problem.
“Last year, Chilcot, 21, bought the $15,000 car - a sweet ride with tinted windows and custom chrome rims, and a loan with $370 monthly payments..”
For a 2001 Lincoln?! This is only a bit less the monthly nut for a new BMW. No wonder he was relieved when they repoed the car!
Car payments are the biggest scam on the planet. Pay cash already!
cash? where does one get this cash thing you speak of?
i need my fancy 7 year old lincoln with tinted windows and mag wheels to pick up the ladies
What kind of ladies would those be? Jailbirds? Ladies of the night?
“When lenders sent a tow truck to repossess his silver 2001 Lincoln LS last month, Myles Chilcot eagerly handed over the keys.”
Voluntary repossessions represent 4/5ths of the repo business, and the banks usually send out one of their spindly “white-bread” representatives to drive away in the automobile after being handed the keys. Banks also have these “redline” charts of zip codes; if their chattel is somewhere inside one of these areas they telephone a company that specializes in non-voluntary repossessions. People that grow up families where dad/mom work and pay bills have few clues how the rotten under-belly of society functions or how much it really costs everyone.
Does anyone know where the real value is in saw mills? Do they have logging rights contracts? Is it mostly in their buildings and equipment? Employee know how? Good will? Forward contracts for delivery of goods?
Got someone claiming a bunch of saw mills are undervalued and need to know if the reasons are garbage. Unless they locked the customers into taking and paying for large orders back in 2005-2006, I would think a large loss of value is appropriate in this buisness climate. Even with forward contracts, if the customer is going bankrupt, a large loss of value could be reasonable.
I read a book about the olden days when the mill itself was temporary and almost worthless.. but..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saw_mill
In the twentieth century the introduction of electricity and high technology furthered this process, and now most sawmills are massive and extremely expensive facilities in which almost every aspect of the work is computerized…
fire at Salisbury NC
http://www.wsoctv.com/news/15525002/detail.html
If we have someone set a structure fire that’s an arson and one of our firefighters get hurt, they will be chased harder than anything that’s been chased in their whole life
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?m=20080223
Weyerhaeuser just announced an hour ago that it is speeding plans to close a sawmill in Washington amid weakening demand.
http://www.tdn.com/articles/2008/03/07/top_story/10145558.txt
For more, google-news Weyerhaeuser. Not pretty. If by undervalued he means “Sawmills have value in that one can get joy in watching them go under”, then perhaps….
Almost all the mills are closed here in the NW, some are shutting down for short periods, but most have pinked slipped all the millwrights. A friend, a lumber broker for southern California hasn’t had a call from a yard for three months.
Mills are now worth 0.10 cents on the dollar.
Thanks, everyone. I’m not sure whether the valuation is actually relevant to the issues I’m required to address, but I prefer to have some background info. Thank you again.
If anyone else wants to add, please do. Knowledge is a good thing.
Aren’t NW mills a boom bust boom bust boom bust cycle?
more like a boom (70’s), bust, bust, bust, flatline, bust, bust cycle.
it’s been really grim for a long time….
TAF increased to $100 billion…futures up more. The jobs numbers must be real bad. Printing presses running 28 hours a day now
Now DOWN big…
Probably going for the intraday Jan lows now.
In panic mode, hedge funds are blowing up everyday.
Music to my ears. Hedge funds should never come to have the sort of leverage over economies that they do.
Hedgemonium is breaking loose.
They are, dec revised down.
Employers Slash 63,000 Jobs in February, Most in 5 Year, Feeding Recession Fears
ttp://tinyurl.com/ytgxva
Yep, great time to cut extended unemployment benefits out of the “stimulus” plan, wasn’t it?
Do you expect our clueless elected reps to act otherwise? As usual Congress doesn’t act on information it reacts to it. I would bet that UE bennies get extended pretty quickly.
Who knows, maybe it was all part of the evil plan… extend cash payouts to bankrupt the country faster, while not extending UE (which would actually be spent and help the economy, and also reduce misery), then laugh evilly like Henry Bendix after he’s defeated The Midnighter AGAIN…Muwaahaahaa, you fool! I created you, and you can never escape! Whoops, wrong alternative reality.
LOL
Had to replicate that Muwaahaahaa myself. and LOL.
Thanks.
Goodmornin to ya!
I think you have it switched around. We’re the insurgents, and they’re the authority! Notice that they can see every move that the average saver can think of, as they’ve run every posible scenario already. Alan Greenspan as Old Bendix, Bernanke as the Midnighter, Paulson would be the Doctor!
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
–Mark Twain–
Bankers are pirates in brick ships….
Arrr, Crimson Permanent Assuarance!
Ah! Now I understand the phrase “Built like a brick ship-house”! It has to do with where bankers store their ships!
Some foreigners are buying U.S. commerical RE debt and residential property. What’s fascinating is their reasoning: they believe that the U.S. dollar will strengthen as their economies falter!
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN0646192320080307?rpc=44&pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
They are only looking at one variable. What about if they throw these into the mix:
1) U.S. property prices are still near record high values.
2) The IMF suggests the dollar should fall further.
Two points.
1) I believe they will be vindicated on the dollar.
2) There is an strong element of speculation by RE mobsters on Main Street that foreigners will will support residential RE and keep prices from falling.
Exactly. If they want to play the currency game, why not just buy dollars?? OK, I can maybe understand buying top-rated commercial RE debt — but those who are buying residential RE will likely see any gains in their currency trade wiped out by the falling prices of RE.
Apparently, they are gambling that (perhaps due to govt intervention), real estate will soon always go up again. I guess they don’t believe in the “all real estate is local” hypothesis.
maybe the foreigners are just hedging for their EU real estate (specuvestor properties) that they own. EU real estate has much further to fall once the EU bubble bursts.
“Real estate investors are not experts in currency,” said Michael Pralle, president of real estate private equity firm JER Partners.”
Many of them are apparently not experts in real estate, either.
Shares in Carlyle fund suspended
By Martin Arnold and Henny Sender in London
Published: March 6 2008 13:01 | Last updated: March 7 2008 09:40
“It added that there had been “a rapid and severe deterioration in the market for US government agency AAA-rated residential mortgage-backed securities” in recent days. That had led several of its lenders to mark down the value of its RMBS securities and inform the fund that they would “materially increase” collateral requirements.”
Carlyle Group is made up largely of Bush family cronies. I love it. The moron shrub has systematically undermined any confidence in the US and it’s nice to see a little of that splash back on his family “fiends”.
Papa Bin Laden was involved in Carlyle pre-9/11. We are such sheep to these people. I love to see them get whacked.
Me, too, vt. For me, it is the ultimate schadenfreude. But it is especially so to me because of the role of the dysfunctional shrub administration in the whole debacle. I’d love to be able to listen in on a phone conversation between poppy and someone whose money just went “poof” in the Carlyle Group. “Great goin’, Pops. Thanks for raising an utter moron and putting him into office.”
The sad thing is, Carlyle may have lost big on this fund, but as a whole I bet Carlyle will make a bundle off this recession. Valuable business assets will be available for purchase at rock bottom prices for anyone who has access to cash. Carlyle’s Saudi buddies are sitting on mountains of cash. It will take a while, but they will come out much, much richer than before.
“Carlyle will make a bundle off this recession”
Notes from Jim Sinclair’s Q&A at PDAC last weekend:
“Now that the dollar has been gutted by greed and stupidity, the smart people are all fleeing to alternative currencies and safer investments. If we as small time investors have figured out that we distrust fiat currency and need to protect our assets, one would suppose that people with vast sums of money would be even more frantic to extricate themselves from a dollar implosion. The people at the top
of the pyramid of power may be among the greedy, but they aren’t among the stupid. As Jim says, follow the smart money and see where they are investing and you won’t go wrong. His research in “connecting the dots” in the gold market led him to what he describes as “a corporate
entity in Grand Cayman” who holds the derivatives on Barrick and would get the shares of the company like foreclosing on a house. When asked point blank who that corporation is, he said that he believes it is the Carlyle Group.”
thanks for posting this.
An excerpt from an NYT article in 2001. Jim Baker, referenced in the first paragraph, was Bush The Elder’s Secretary of State, and was a key architect of the 2000 Florida “victory” for Bush The Lesser:
Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker were using their extensive government contacts to further their business interests as representatives of the Carlyle Group, a $12 billion private equity firm based in Washington that has parlayed a roster of former top-level government officials, largely from the Bush and Reagan administrations, into a moneymaking machine.
In a new spin on Washington’s revolving door between business and government, where lobbying by former officials is restricted but soliciting investments is not, Carlyle has upped the ante and taken the practice global.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Baker were accompanied on their trips by former Prime Minister John Major of Britain, another of Carlyle’s political stars. With door-openers of this caliber, along with shrewd investment skills, Carlyle has gone from an unknown in the world of private equity to one of its biggest players.
It’s heartening to know that even “door-openers of this caliber” take it on the chin sometimes.
“It’s heartening to know that even “door-openers of this caliber” take it on the chin sometimes.”
Now that’s what I’m talking about. Also that their infestors have watched billions go up in smoke. It’s a heartwarming moment. More to come, I hope.
There is some bad news here, I think. It’s possible that Carlyle Capital is the spinoff from the Carlyle Group, much like the failed Evergreen was inteneded to take the worst of the mortgage mess from Bear Stearns itself. If true, then the Carlyle Group itself is protected. After all, they are only down 670 million, as they leveraged it 32x. Sorry, but our schadenfreude may be misplaced.
This Carlyle is a publicly traded bond offshoot of the Carlyle which owns half the planet including oil/military and the like. This baby Carlyle was mortgage bonds only. The big boys won’t even notice…..like losing lunch money.
Jobs post biggest drop in 5 years
Report much weaker than expected. Unemployment rate declines, but that’s because there’s fewer people in the work force.
More recession signs
how many private sector workers does it take to support a gov worker ??? edu and health are 50% gov when you do the math
losses were widespread, with hefty cuts coming from construction, manufacturing, retailing and a variety of professional and business services. Those losses swamped gains elsewhere including education and health care, leisure and hospitality, and the government.
“edu and health are 50% gov when you do the math”
I suggest we summarily scrap govt-provided education and health programs, as they are a pure drain on society with no proven benefits. As they say, ignorance is bliss!
Yes, education and health are way overrated. Why should the govt get involved in those wasteful activities? Fortunately, there’s no pork in the defense budget.
Gov Schwarzenegger had cities send out pink slips to teachers, won’t be laid off till next Sep.And Firemen were notified that they too will get mjr reduction in pay, until Fire Season starts.
Well, good then, ignorance is bliss, and your house aint worth sht anyway. Burn burn burn. Is that Nero fiddling again.
The graph which accompanies this article is one of the scariest housing data displays I have seen to date: It shows how U.S. home equity as a share of home values has slid from 84.2 pct in 1947 to 47.9 pct in 2007, with a recent acceleration in the rate of decline and no bottom in sight. The banking industry must have been feasting royally on the implied increase in interest payments, up until the point when foreclosures recently took off like a rocket.
Housing data bad news for economy
Homeowners’ debt exceeds their equity
By J.W. Elphinstone
ASSOCIATED PRESS
March 7, 2008
NEW YORK – Nervous homeowners and economic analysts have been wondering how much worse the housing market could get. Yesterday, they got an answer: plenty.
In 1947, a higher portion of the population were renters. In addition, of the people who owned their own homes, much of the housing stock had been purchased or built before the 30-year amortizing loan became popular - mortgages were for much shorter periods of times, sometimes five years. Accordingly, the percentage of equity would be much higher. The sixties, twenty years after the 30-year mortgage became more widespread is a better starting point.
“The sixties, twenty years after the 30-year mortgage became more widespread is a better starting point.”
Good points you raise, but I prefer to base my perspective on a 1947 starting date, as I enjoy long-term perspective. Five-year mortgages make sense for a country climbing out of a Great Depression, and thirty-year mortgages make sense for a country riding the crest of post-WWII glory, and deluded with the fantasy that real estate always goes up.
30-year amortizing loan became popular ??
Amortization of just about everything !!
Another county invested in something it should’nt have. Margin call, gentleman.
http://www.al.com/birminghamnews/
they’re refusing to pay apparently
They don’t have the money, if they pay, they default on their bonds. One wonders how many more cities and counties were out there stretching for yield.
All yield stretching is local.
uh . . . . all of them?
remember the story that Barry Ritholtz wrote last year about raising money for his hedge fund and being told they expect 30% returns?
Which is why the “markets” in this country aren’t actually “risk capital”. They’re a fundamental part of our government machinery and our social fabric. If the “markets” tank, so does our nation — at a very real operational level.
Inflation, from this perspective, is not a ‘problem’ at all — it is the solution. The Fed will fire all it’s ammo before they succumb to deflationary collapse.
We’re in for a roller-coaster ride in the Dow & Nasdaq. The USD is toast. And gold and silver (good lord, especially silver) are going to the moon.
Worth repeating - 1800s U.S. gold-to-silver monetary value ratio: 16:1. Currently: 50:1 (down from 60:1).
Dow-Gold, 1980: 1-1. 2000: 40-1. Currently 12-1.
Looks promising long-term for silver. The low prices of the 80s and 90s were an aberration, based on Volcker’s tight money, loss of demand due to change in film technology, near-zero accounting cost of production, and a one-off change in perception (now reversing) that silver was not a precious metal.
Permabulls Blame Credit Crisis on Accounting
http://www.thestreet.com/story/10406452/1/kass-permabulls-blame-credit-crisis-on-accounting.html
Hmmm. Nice until the end. There we find that the author doesn’t believe that a “sustainable recovery in credit and equities” is possible because of the big hat and no cattle timidity and lack of imagination of the actions by the Executive Branch, Federal Reserve and Treasury Department.
Thereby implying, presumably, his view that if they weren’t chicken they could fix everything. It is unclear (but unlikely) that he is really promoting harsh measures to crash the system as quickly as possible, thereby bringing about conditions for a sustained recovery among the survivors ASAP.
latest news
Fed says steps needed to address high liquidity pressures
Mark Hulbert
MARK HULBERT
Happy 8th anniversary
Commentary: Monday marks eight years since the top of the Internet bubble
By Mark Hulbert, MarketWatch
Last update: 12:01 a.m. EST March 7, 2008
ANNANDALE, Va. (MarketWatch) — The popping sound you’ll hear on Monday won’t be from the opening of champagne bottles.
Far from it.
That’s because Monday marks the 8th anniversary of the all-time closing high of the Nasdaq Composite Index ($COMPQ 2,220.50, -52.31, -2.3%) . The only popping sound you are likely to hear will be the echo of the Internet bubble bursting.
That echo is still reverberating loudly, of course.
“In today’s world, where investors can move their funds instantly from one currency to another to avoid depreciation, the price central bankers pay for inflation is much higher than in the past.”
Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher
This is the quote of the year.
Yes sir, like a good American I advised everybody I knew to get out of the US dollar last year. But it is pretty tough for Lars and his kids when they don’t make more than 40K and every friggin dime is spent. I am pissed!
Maybe that’s why the witch won’t release her tax returns. Maybe they moved all their money out of the USD. That would look patriotic~!
Cheney did. It’s out there somewhere.
Carlyle group and an island
Bushco moved $$$$$ into argentina land purchase. They really saw the collapse coming. Inside info on GW I guess.
Cheney invested in BEGBX (foreign bond fund) and OIL, I followed suit and have done quite well. Oh he also was invested in Halliburton stock options. They wouldn’t give me those at the same price he got them at.
You are spot on. Folks with no (or negative) savings have no place to hide when the currency is debased.
Folks with negative savings aka debt, come out ahead when the currency is debased.
At least until interest rates go up.
Then of course when interest rates go up the currency value increases.
System effects now dominate.
Capital flight is for real. It’s at the end of the string they are pushing on. They should have seen it coming. They might be asleep at the switch but Mr. Market is not.
Hoz,
Easier said than done. I appreciate your input to this blog immensely.
I could see the dollar value declining the past couple of years, but for the first time in my life, I found myself with a problem I had never experienced in my life. I have over $400,000 mostly in cash from the sale of my home in AZ in 2006. However, I find myself paralyzed as to what to do other than have it in the bank. Last year it was earning 5% interest, however that is over now that the Fed has dropped the rates. I did put $10k into Penn West Energy.
My dad lost his farm in the late 80’s, so I have seen hard times an know oh too well how it sucks not being able to re-pay the bank. I also saw the tech bust and how friends thought Dell, Microsoft and Intel would only go up.
I look at gold and oil and it keeps going up, but my feeling is that I have already missed out on the good money. I don’t want to be the next round of FBs chasing the stuff.
I also have multiple positions in PWE, it is a good dividend payer. I would suggest the following two funds: Permanent Portfolio and Hussman Strategic Growth. Both are designed to withstand bear markets and recession. First one is also a good inflation hedge. Check their performance and you see what I mean.
My plan is to go with the Australian dollar, pays a cool 6% interest now.
Illinois AG Subpoenas Countrywide, Wells Fargo
Thu Mar 6, 2008 6:01pm EST
By Gina Keating
Are the new employment numbers gonna be baaaahhd for housing?
Buy now or be priced out forever!!!!!
Now’s a bad time to buy food, fuel, and medicine…but’s it’s a great time to buy a house!
Little Carl: “A piece of carpet, funny daddy, that’s not a Christmas present!”
Big Carl: “No, it’s you’re supper - make sure you boil it to soften the glue there.”
(ATHF)
your supper - darnit!
TEXT OF COMMENTARY
TESS VIGELAND: One of the questions that keeps coming up in this whole mortgage mess is, how do we not learn from our mistakes when it comes to market manias?
When it comes to lessons about the economy, commentator David Frum reminds us that the definition of “insanity” is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Brooklyn condominium boom not living up to expectations, as existing “luxury” condos languish on the market and plans are scaled back.
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=19013
(“Unfortunately, the banks are out of business,” and not just for developers, said Catsimatidis. “Six months ago a person could walk into a bank and put a $50,000 down payment [on a $800,000 condo] and get the mortgage. “Now the banks are strictly following the old rules of [20 percent down],” he said. “Brooklyn buyers don’t necessarily have $160,000 to put down.)
So 20 percent down is “out of business?” I’ll bet many could put $50,000 down. How about selling a two-bedroom condo for $250,000?
How about selling a two-bedroom condo for $250,000?
Ah, it’s Brooklyn, man. Where everything is hipper and better.
You think this is bad? Here is a gem in Philadelphia:
1514 Pine St, #1F - 2019 sq. feet, $985,000 9/29/2005
I guess they thought it was a steal because a month later they did this:
1514 Pine St, #4F - 692 sq. feet, $985,000 on 10/27/2005
Is this 1F’s closet?
DOW broke 12K support level. Why do I have this feeling that this is not going to end well.
The drop was quickly arrested. I see no reason the DJIA cannot get back above 12K before day’s end. Buy the dip and be happy!
That’s right. We’re in an area of significant support.
That’s right. We really are oversold. The rally when it comes will probably surprise you.
I think it will be tough to get any meaningful rally.
I’m thinking something along the lines of May - August ‘00
but who knows
I don’t know anything when it comes to the white noise interplay between fundamentals that point down and interventions that point up.
When the Federal Reserve allows a bank to submit a loan to a tavern which in turn is collateralized by a promissory note from Lars (I’ll pay you next month) under the TAF guidelines, we are in trouble.
I will frankly be surprised if the stock market cannot get back above DJIA=12,000 before day’s end, especially after the TAF press release filters through to panicky bulls’ muddled consciousness. It would be *bad* for Mr. Market to have to spend a long weekend mulling over the implications of a dip below 12K on the DJIA. (On the other hand, every Friday selloff I have seen in the past couple of years has been reversed by an amazing recovery in irrational exuberance over the weekend, so who knows?)
March 7, 2008 10:03 A.M.EST
That was quick!
BULLETIN
MAJOR U.S. INDEXES RECOVER FROM SIGNIFICANT EARLY DECLINES
Shocker data suggest recession
More U.S. jobs disappearing
Oopps! market back down. I expect a 20% - 40% decline in the stock market over the next year. Why? because we are in a big fat recession. I think its off almost 20% already so another 20% down. I sold most of my index funds last year but still have NEM and PAAS as kind of a anti dollar hedge.
I guess you aren’t expecting the tsunami wall of TAF monies to land in the U.S. stock market?
The first Treasury Auction Facility (TAF)
HAha no but maybe the Commodities market ?
http://seekingalpha.com/article/57934-was-taf-a-success-we-give-it-a-b
[I]t’s important to note that the auctions will not actually add funds to the system because the Fed will have to make less funds available through its discount window, the traditional way in which the Fed provides short-term loans to banks. The liquidity auctions, he said, offset the reduction in discount window lending, so it reallocates funds “from one to the other
“HAha no but maybe the Commodities market ?”
TAF carry trade — see my post below.
Today’s action provides insight to the unpredictability of day-to-day stock price movements. I really thought the market would hold the line at DJIA = 12,000, but so far the evidence does not support my conjecture, thanks to white noise I guess…
“People are already paying 25-30% of their incomes for housing. I don’t see it jumping to 60-70%” - Robert Samuelson, contributing editor at Newsweek magazine.
It seems to me that all the “innovative” financial products were designed to squeeze a higher percentage of income to service debt.
The advent of the 30 year mortgage certainly increased the amount of money one could borrow, leading to higher home prices.
Are there any new loan products on the market that might allow people to borrow more, keep them on the hook longer, that would keep home prices high? Will 40 and 50 year mortgages become new standards? Something else? What is the maximum percentage of income that people will be willing to pay to get a home?
All of these factors I think will ultimately contribute to the new equilibrium in home prices.
“People are already paying 25-30% of their incomes for housing.”
How many years ago did he write that?
I heard him say this on news radio yesterday or the day before, in an interview.
His number is an utter joke, especially when you include capital losses in the calculation. Many San Diegans have payed well over 100 pct of their income (in net worth terms) for the pleasure of owning a home here over the past year.
“Will 40 and 50 year mortgages become new standards?”
Doesn’t matter…there are already “infinity year” mortgages…they are called “interest only”.
Also, the difference in monthly payments between a 30, 40, and 50 year mortgage are increasingly small…not quite enough to become “affordability products”. And again, I/O has them all beat.
“infinity year ” mortgages are just lender Rentals.
Investors Dump Securities From Fannie, Freddie
Mortgage Sector Strongholds Falter
Guarantees from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had been regarded as on par with those from the U.S. government.
Guarantees from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had been regarded as on par with those from the U.S. government.
By David S. Hilzenrath
“…The prices of mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have plunged lately as supply has grown faster than demand. That indicates that their ability to prop up the lending system has declined.
“The implications are quite onerous because this was the one market that was functioning, and moreover, this is the market that the administration was counting on to maintain its liquidity so that it could help all these troubled homeowners,” said Douglas A. Dachille, chief executive of First Principles Capital Management.
“If this continues, this is going to be very bad for home prices,” Dachille said. …”
Washington Post
http://tinyurl.com/2aoyd5
How long before that spreads to treasuries?
As soon as a reasonable stability develops in the international market, US Ts yields will go up.
There are buyers of US T’s, that cannot be said of other bonds or bond issuers.
I do not expect reasonable stability soon.
“…The more significant focus for market participants will be the conditions of the markets themselves. The rolling crisis has turned the markets dysfunctional and malfunctioning. Liquidity has dried up and small chunks of bonds can drive spreads quickly tighter or wider. The direction of the outright market and the spread market is truly dependent on the last large trade as the dealer who executed the trade will often repair to the screens to unwind the trade. Volatility is intense and there is little incentive to hold anything but a small position which in and of itself exacerbates the liquidity problems….”
from Across the Curve Mar 6
today’s post Mar 7
“… The market has dried up.”
http://acrossthecurve.com/
What if they roll fnm and fre back into the government? Wouldn’t that be dilutive?
BTW, matt note that the short-term impact of a repudiation of the mythical Treasury guarantee of GSE bonds would be a flight-to-quality move into Treasurys. I believe this may help explain what we are witnessing today.
Not just yet.
It may well be because the implicit government guarantees of Fannie and Freddie were questioned the other day. From Bloomberg:
What Could Happen
As the losses mounted yesterday, speculation made the rounds that the implicit guarantee — a vestige of the federal government’s creation of Fannie Mae in 1938 and Freddie Mac in 1970 — might become explicit. A U.S. Treasury spokesman, who declined to be named, denied the government would lend its support to their mortgage-backed debt.
It’s understandable that the talk would arise. The two companies are reeling from a combined $6 billion in fourth- quarter losses. An official of the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog, mentioned the possibility of helping them while testifying before a Senate panel yesterday.
“While not obligated to do so, the federal government could provide financial assistance,” said William Shear, the office’s director of financial markets and community investment.
The relationship he described represents the bulk of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s stock-market value, according to a study published in September 2005. Wayne Passmore, a Federal Reserve Board economist in Washington, did the research.
What It’s Worth
Passmore estimated that at least 44 percent of their capitalization, and possibly twice that amount, stems from the “implicit government subsidy” that the companies receive for their debt. This subsidy may be worth as much as $182 billion, he concluded.
Fannie Mae’s value has been cut in half since the study came out, and Freddie Mac’s has tumbled by two-thirds. These losses show the guarantee isn’t worth what it used to be, at least in the eyes of investors.
* * *
Bloomberg.com link to the article
Hmmm, I am looking forward through this mess - housing, credit, etc. I see one stark reality: we are going to need the very best President that we can possibly get. So, I am going to put my “party” and personality biases aside and look closely at each candidate’s capabilities.
I’m very much concerned that we will end up with a President that does not have the experience to govern. Senators are members of legislative bodies, and all we have are Senators. The best I see is Hillary because she has Bill and his experience to draw on. I know this smacks of a 3rd Presidency. I also know that many people react badly to her. Of course, many people react badly to Obama and McCain as well.
I admire McCain and Obama. It looks as if these guys do not have the depth in so much as they have never governed a state or major city. I will say this: we had better hope that we get a real ball buster because we are going to need a strong President. If we have a weak one, we may very well slip toward totalitarianism. All we need is one more W. His problem is not that he was incompetent. He was weak and stubborn about it. He could not change until it was too late.
Of course, this does speak well of all three current candidates. They are all strong, intelligent people. This is a good thing.
I would appreciate your considered opinions please.
Roidy
Roidy,
You state W was ” and stubborn about it. He could not change until it was too late.” Have you noticed Hillary able to admit her vote for the Iraq war was a mistake, and that she was ready to correct course and move on? Of course not. She suffers from the same character flaw as George Bush. She also shares his grotesque sense of entitlement married to a willingness to wildly overstate her competence and experience. She never had national security clearance, whatever she may try to state, and has no real idea of how to handle a crisis, except those initiated by her husband’s infidelities. Apres Monica, she hit the tv newscasts to assert it was “all a vast,right-wing conspiracy”.
Her willingness to use false and devisive tactics, to further damage the country as a whole to protect her own interests is frightening.
She has also refused to disavow the extreme “executive privilege” role envisioned by Bush and Gonzales, has not spoken against outright torture, and the suspension of habeas corpus.
She has not released her tax returns, and she and bill are in violation of the the law by refusing to release the names of the donors to the Clinton library…why reveal how much foreign money and SWF they are in bed with?
Finally, take a look at the bankruptcy “reform” law she sent thru Congress…which she now states she voted for, but “hoped wouldn’t pass”. This is leadership??
Running for NY Senate, she blithely promised 200,000 new jobs…and some folks believed her and voted for her. State has lost more than 30,000 overall, as of last year, and when called on it said it was Bush’s fault. Some Senator.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=ba30ff16-a5af-4035-a883-cf15ffee406c
If you want to understand certain personalities (Hillary), research malignant narcissm. Not pretty.
Spike,
You say “She never had national security clearance, whatever she may try to state, and has no real idea of how to handle a crisis…” This is true of all three candidates.
I really want someone who has been in the executive branch -Govenor, Mayor- and not the legislative.
McCain:1) his moving closer to the Republican Religious Right, and 2) he is a Republican. Let me explain.
I am an atheist and find the Religious Conservative’s viewpoints unsettling. Oh, BTW, The Atheist Left is at least as worrisome. Both extremes seem Fascist to me.
Next is the more sinister of my misgivings about McCain as a Republican. When the Republicans had control the House and Senate for a number of years, there was no “oversight” provided to the Administration. This seems to be about “Republicans shall not critizise one another.” That was the wrong place for such a principle, and they need to come clean and own up.
Obama: Just not enough experience. He can motivate people which is a real plus for the job. He does have stamina and endurance. So do the other two. He is a brilliant young man who does have a real future ahead of him. He will be President some day and a good one I think. He should not be in this term.
Hillary: Her vote on the Iraq War really does bother me. Actually, the only one who is clean is Obama. I don’t hold Bill’s infidelities nor her reaction to them against her. I hold them against him. What is clear is the scale of the problems for the next administration. Dick n’ Bush are going to make sure that the next person in line will inherit a “hell” that will take years and years to get right. I just don’t think Hillary has the exerience to deal with it. She has Bill to help which may be enough. BTW, she does need to consider toning it down some.
So, I just don’t see another choice. Sure I read what txchick posted. So what. One leaked memo does not mean much to me.
Roidy
Bottom line folks is none of the big three knows diddly about macroeconomics. Each would rely on advisors only….which is a norm, but has no individual grasp of sound economic principles evident in anything I can dig up, and I’ve been digging.
There isn’t time, while prancing around the stumping circuit, to learn solid (preferably Austrian) macroeconomic management. Far as I’m able to ascertain, we can expect no miraculous, principled economic leadership from the Executive Office either now or for the next 5 years.
Interesting times understates.
Bill Richardson. He never had a chance, but experience he has.
I always liked Richardson - but I fear he’s one sandwich short of a picnic when it comes to smarts.
Hopefully either Clinton or Obama can find something useful for him to do in the next administration.
Can’t we just go back to meritocracy? I nominate aNYCdj for any job Richardson might being considered for - I know he’s looking for work, and I’m tired of looking at Richardson’s mug.
Can’t we just go back to meritocracy?
Don’t we all wish for that. However, it seems to me that the really “worthy” people in this country (and others) find politics so revolting that they don’t want anything to do with it. So we are left with the guys and gals who can get down and dirty. If it were up to me, though, Ben Jones, Hoz, PB and quite a few others from this blog would have a seat in the cabinet. And I would appoint txchick for spokeswoman. It would be so much fun to watch her cut through the crap.
i agree here. hillary has so much more experience in financial matters. just look at her experience in slaying the cattle market and making 100k with a 1k investment. savvy.
Hows that stack up with GW asbsconding with $15 million from the Texas Rangers without risking a penny? Or liberating $3 million from Harkin Energy before bankrupting the company?
“I will say this: …we are going to need a strong President. If we have a weak one, we may very well slip toward totalitarianism…”
We are already there! Bail outs, govt.controlled financial markets, red light cameras, RFID ID Cards,…
I like the red light cameras.
If they weren’t the new “revenue enhancement program”, and trained the public, then taken down, I’d agree with you. But, I don’t want surveillance of citizens in public places by any level of govt,with cameras .
My sixth grade teacher, herself a Minnesotan, conferred these words of wisdom on me long ago.
Freedom Means Responsibility
By George McGovern
Government should resist the temptation to save us from ourselves.
Words are cheap, especially when they pay well, as when uttered by dying politicos. If McGovern really believed that, why did he propose the negative income tax? If McGovern hadn’t been “saved” by the government (his almost-lifetime employer) he’d just be another merchant in small-town South Dakota.
[BTW, I actually was a McGovern supporter in my undergrad days (UVa) - 1972 was the first presidential election which allowed the 18-year-old vote so there was a lot political activity on all sides - and his daughter Terri (who died in an alcohol-related incident a decade later in Wisconsin, RIP) helped run the campaign in Charlottesville. Needless to say, I was a lot more committed to partying than politics at the time.]
Why can’t an old politico enjoy the right to change his views?
He enjoys the right, but as someone who has lived at the expense of the taxpayer he certainly should be subject to scrutiny and criticism. I read the brief article and didn’t get much out of it. Nothing creative. Seemed like a way for McG to let people know he is still alive, and perhaps cop a few dinner or interview invites.
Have you seen “Definitely, Maybe” yet? You might enjoy it given your familiarity with campaign politics. (As I mentioned last week, there is some great Clinton footage in this movie…)
That’s rather fascinating coming from George McGovern, whom I shall always remember as the inventor of the killer Food Pyramid.
“Words are cheap,…”
I, too, have been guilty of uttering this tired platitude, but upon reflection, you will agree that whether words are cheap depends heavily upon what is being said and who is saying it. Not all words are equally valuable.
Nixon and the congress passed the negative income tax (called the “Earned Income Tax Credit”) after the election . How soon we forget.
Direct link
OPINION
How to Stop the Mortgage Crisis
By MARTIN FELDSTEIN
March 7, 2008; Page A15
“a program of federal mortgage-paydown loans to individuals, secured by future income rather than by a formal mortgage, could reduce the number of mortgages with high LTV ratios and cut future defaults”
That is one stupid plan. Even if everything else were OK, where are people supposed to get the extra income to pay off the government loan? Out of income? Out of their ever increasing income from safe jobs? Pull the other one. Oh, and giving the government loan priority for being paid out of future income (over your credit card bills or your electricity and heating bills) is just fine and dandy because?
“Even if everything else were OK, where are people supposed to get the extra income to pay off the government loan?”
Excellent question, polly! If cash-strapped homedebtors have already financially hung themselves by committing to repay amounts in excess of their permanent residual incomes (after netting out the future value of expenditures on food, transportation, entertainment, education, health care and net savings), what could possibly be the source of monies for these pain-deferral loans? Perhaps the unstated assumption is that with backloaded repayment schedules, inflation can do relatively more of the heavy lifting?
Don’t Follow the Fed
The Wall Street Journal Europe:
The ECB is the better model.
“Many policy makers and commentators, though, seem to sense a parallel with Japan’s deflationary experience in the 1990s or even with the Great Depression in the U.S. This is greatly exaggerated.”
CLICK!
“This weekend the Group of Ten central bankers will convene in Basel for one of their regular pow-wows. The discussions will be fraught.
Almost three months ago, a similar gathering paved the way for an unprecedented bout of collective action in the money markets that was supposed to halt the sense of financial panic.
But three months later, the grisly truth is that market anxiety is seeping back with a vengeance. Thus the crucial question confronting the central bankers this weekend, as they fly in to snowy Switzerland is twofold: first, are we on the verge of a new downward lurch? And second, is there anything the G10 bankers can actually do to stop this?
A downward lurch does look a real danger now, not least because the central bankers themselves are looking increasingly impotent when it comes to tackling the fundamental reasons why sentiment is so fragile….
…Back in the days of the S&L crisis, US banks were not forced to mark their books to the firesale prices. But now the mark-to-market creed has taken hold. And it is a fair bet that if US banks were forced to mark their books to the initial clearance price for a CDO squared, say, some would run out of capital. Hence the trap: in the modern financial system, you can have mark-to-market accounting systems, or quick action to establish clearing prices, but probably not both, without blowing up some banks.
Of course one way to exit this trap would be to abandon the mark-to-market rules for a while, or loosen capital adequacy standards. Some furtive discussions between policymakers along these lines are already occurring….”
By Gillian Tett
“Of course one way to exit this trap would be to abandon the mark-to-market rules for a while, or loosen capital adequacy standards.”
Sounds like more “hair of the dog” intervention is on the way. Just an observation on my part — I am not suggesting there are easy or painless ways out.
“Hence the trap: in the modern financial system, you can have mark-to-market accounting systems, or quick action to establish clearing prices, but probably not both, without blowing up some banks.”
Maybe some blanks need to be “blown up” (in a financial sense). In a lot of discussions, that is not seen as a viable option. Why not? Clear out the institutions that took on too much risk, pick up the pieces, and move on.
“Mr. Balcerowicz, a former governor of the National Bank of Poland, teaches at the Warsaw School of Economics.”
Does the professor know something George Soros (who called the situation at hand the worst financial crisis in 60 years) does not know?
Is bolstering liquidity (and market confidence) part of the Fed mandate?
CENTRAL BANKING
Fed acts to bolster liquidity
Aim is to get cash to banks and add confidence to the market.
Countrywide’s Mozilo concerned about underwriting
Friday March 7, 10:46 am ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Countrywide Financial Corp (NYSE:CFC - News) CEO Angelo Mozilo told a congressional panel on Friday that he is “extremely concerned” that recent tightening of mortgage underwriting criteria has gone too far.
http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/080307/usa_subprime_congress.html?.v=4
o yes, we really need his advise on how to fix things!! wasent he part of the problem in the first place?
Glad to hear he has found religion.
What a joke . Mozillo was selling junk loans to the secondary market and now he has the nerve to say words to the effect that it was for the benefit of giving homeownership and the American Dream to people . Mozillo was pumping up his company (so he could sell his stock options and run). The very reason that Mozillo had been in the business for years should of been the exact experience that would of told him the loans were junk IMHO .
Maybe they wont be able to nail Mozillo for his taking the money and running ,but what about nailing him for gross incompetence or worst pumping up the coming stock ,right when he wanted out .
How does one pump up the Company stock ? By making even worst loans that get fees that you sell to the secondary market that you assume will not go bad for a few years .
“mortgage underwriting criteria”
===
“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” - Inigo Montoya
KB Home Pulls Out of Albuquerque
Friday March 7, 11:14 am ET
KB Home to Pull Out of Albuquerque, Other Areas Due to Sluggish Housing Market
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080307/nm_kb_home.html?.v=1
This might qualify as a weekend discussion topic, but can anyone explain the technical details of what happened in the l-t T-bond market last Friday and Monday? If the MSM covered this, I sure missed it…
Headline volatility strikes market cheerleaders!
March 7, 2008 11:58 A.M.EST
BULLETIN
Stocks pull out of a tailspin
After payrolls and Fed actions, stocks move sharply lower before a dramatic bounce-back.
…
Down more than 100 points early on, the Dow Jones Industrial Average ($INDU:11:59am 03/07/2008 11,950.76, -89.63, -0.7%) was more recently off 63.66 points to 11,976.73, with 18 of its 30 components posting losses.
marketwatch.com
Who is Thornburg Mortgage?
March 7, 2008 2:00 P.M.EST
BULLETIN
THORNBURG MORTGAGE TO RESTATE 2007 FINANCIALS
Losses pile up on the Street
Stocks move sharply lower and then recover impressively. But that, too, is unsustainable.
marketwatch.com
Given the bad news deluge, it is a bit surprising to see the stock market selling off. This seems like a reversal of a recent tendency of the U.S. stock market to rally on bad news days. Perhaps I am just getting fooled by white noise randomness once again…
S&P puts Thornburg ‘A-1+’ comml paper rating on CreditWatch
By Sue Chang
Last update: 2:29 p.m. EST March 7, 2008
Totally ridiculous headline here. Bears cannot slash stocks. The problem is that stock owners are selling their shares for less than they are worth — same problem as a housing market where a few sellers accept lowball offers and screw up the comps.
March 7, 2008 2:12 P.M.EST
BULLETIN
Hungry bears slash stocks
Stocks move sharply lower and then recover impressively. But that, too, is unsustainable.
marketwatch.com
Just finished watching Stan O’Neil testify. He gave a long speech about his rise from poverty to running Merrill. As I listened to his monotone “how could I possibly be corrupt when I came from such poverty” speech, the only thing I could think of was a scene from the first Austin Powers film when Doctor Evil recants his upbringing:
“The details of my life are quite inconsequential… very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet…”
LOL
Thanks, again you all for balancing sheer horror of financial magnitudes to idiocy in humor!
LOL
Property Tax trouble brewing in Chicago?
Our mayor Daley has convinced the county to reopen the window for property owners to contest their assessments. From March 17 through the 31st owners can call to get on a list for reconsideration.
The problem?
The tax levy will not be reduced, which means if some owners get their assessments lowered - others will see their taxes rise regardless. It will be interesting to see what effect this will have on the local market.
This is another great example of “well-meaning” state interference in the marketplace. Cities will never get cheaper to run under the current entitlement paradigm - so the squeeze is on!
It feels like the squeeze is always on in Chicago, whether its property tax, sales tax, sin tax, CTA fare increases, highway tolls, parking stickers, building code violations or any of the other myriad ways the city nickels and dimes us.
Having said that, at least Chicago / Cook County is somewhat realistic in its revenue projections, unlike the pie-in-the-sky bureaucrats who think they can cut taxes and increase government spending at the same time. Even though we’re a city famous for graft, our public entities do get a lot done with all that collected money. As someone who grew up right outside of a barely functioning DC in the ’80s and early ’90s, I’m still impressed by the amount of infrastructure improvement Chicago gets done year-round.
Did I read right that Chicago now has a 10.5% sales tax?
IL has the most serious pension crisis coming up among the states with the larger economies (NY, NJ, CT, MA, CA, etc.)
They are in deep deep deep doo-doo.
Txchick,
I was wondering what you meant by your May ‘00 - August ‘00 comment. Was it re: the Dow, S&P or something else?? Just wondering, ’cause I went and looked at that time frame for the Dow and couldn’t see anything other than maybe a really tight trading range.
If you get a chance, thanks.
market rallied off the April crash in that time period. Lots of people were sucked in thinking that was the bottom. Beginning 9/1/00, the bottom dropped out.
UAE imports of US hardwood products up
Staff Report
Published: March 07, 2008, 01:24
Dubai: UAE imports of US hardwood products are projected to grow to $25 million in 2008, according to a recent study by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC).
The organisation said this growth will be mainly driven by lumber imports, expected to account for 60 per cent ($15 million) of the entire US hardwood shipments to the country.
According to previously published reports by United States Census Bureau, US hardwood exports to the Middle East and North Africa region grew by 32.3 per cent to top $52.2 million during the first 10 months of 2007, and AHEC is confident of a similar growth in 2008.
Big increases
A breakdown of the exports revealed a big increase across all product lines, including the shipment of 5,101 cubic metres of hardwood logs, a 185 per cent rise leading to total exports of $3.9 million; and the delivery of 13,274 cu metres of hardwood lumber, reflecting a 69 per cent jump to $10.6 million….”
GulfNews
I find it mildly amusing and annoying over the terminology. Up here we would call it ‘timber’, lumber is a manufactured product. We are exporting sawed down trees, but no lumber is being manufactured.
Timber sales are good. However, it employs a lot fewer people than sawmills.
Hardwood thats the expensive fancy wood. Softwood is what houses are made out of example Douglas Fir or pine. Someone told me a lumber ship sank in one of the great lakes years ago and now the old logs are being salvaged off the bottom of the lake. The sunken logs being worth loads of money as they were old and large hardwood trees which are mostly gone now.
Absolutely.
Furniture makers, luthiers, and other stringed-instrument makers pay top dollar for the best pieces of salvaged wood.
“hewers of wood and drawers of water”
Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice PLLC
Winston-Salem, NC
Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice PLLC said yesterday that it has eliminated 15 jobs at its Winston-Salem office as part of cutting 45 jobs companywide. Womble Carlyle is the city’s largest law firm with 635 employees after the job cuts. Mainly legal secretaries were cut, but there were other administrative jobs, such as library, information technology and human resources job cuts. Part of the changes included the firm combining its billing services at its Winston-Salem office. The firm also contracted out some technology services to a vendor in Georgia and outsourced word-processing services to a vendor in India.
Winston-Salem Journal - March 5, 2008
Even law firms are outsourcing.
Yes, heaven forbid some fat ass partner take a $5K per year pay cut so some $40k/year legal secretary doesn’t lose her job.
Everybody have a great weekend. Wake me when its January, 2010.
The Grand Kabuki dance of Congressional grilling is underway…
Financial CEOs play defense on compensation
By Robert Schroeder, MarketWatch
Last update: 12:51 p.m. EST March 7, 2008
What is to prevent MegaBank, Inc. from playing a TAF carry trade strategy?
1) Borrow $bns with toxic MBS as collateral.
2) Park $bns in PMs or FOREX.
3) Repay $bns with devalued $US, effectively executing a stealth writedown of the value of toxic MBS?
Or is that the point?
Fed opens cash spigot to ease tightening credit squeeze
2 hours ago
Bush economic adviser: Growth may be negative this quarter
- I thought neg growth is actually Shrinkage. Not growth at all.
Correct me if I am wrong. Thinking now of some things that I would call shrinkage, not neg growth…..;>
• Lawmakers question CEOs’ high pay as firms take nosedive
Hey, they call housing price declines “negative house price appreciation”…and I’m not kidding.
Firms that are losing money have “negative earnings.”
We can no longer tolerate bad news. That’s why the word “issue” has become a euphemism for “problem.” I think it began when the MSM began to describe equity market drops as “volatility.” Funny how there’s no mention of volatility when equity markets spike up. “Volatile market” is simply a euphemistic phrase for “bear market” hence all of those retail investor articles with headlines such as “Investing in a Volatile Market.”
The Economist uses the dreaded “R” word:
“DECOUPLING” is the source of a great deal of controversy. Economists argue about whether or not emerging economies will follow America into recession.
http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10808782&fsrc=nwl
Emerging economy = beta greater than 1 = worse slowdown than America.
End of story, at least for the short run.
The long term story may have a very different ending, but only after a trip through purgatory.
–
When the inflation rate in the US starts to fall it will fall like a rock once the economy has been in a recession for 4-6 months. Until then the inflationists will have a field day. It may well coincide with the bursting of the current Commodities Bubble. Bubbles always last longer than I thought based on my past record. — Jas
-x-x-x-x-x-
U.S. inflation pressures at four year low - ECRI
Fri Mar 7, 2008 9:40am EST
NEW YORK, March 7 (Reuters) - U.S. inflation pressures ebbed to a four-year low in February due mostly to disinflationary moves in interest rates and in loans, a U.S. economic research institute said on Friday.
The Economic Cycle Research Institute’s U.S. Future Inflation Gauge (USFIG), designed to anticipate cyclical swings in the rate of inflation, fell to 115.9 in February, its lowest
since January 2004 when it was 115.0, according to ECRI data.
“With the USFIG dropping to a four-year low, it is clear that the widespread worries about an uptrend in U.S. inflation pressures are not warranted,” said Melinda Hubman, research
associate at ECRI.
The downward move in the gauge was moderated by inflationary moves in measures of commodity prices and of jobs, Hubman said.
The FIG’s annualized growth rate, which smooths out monthly fluctuations, fell to minus 5.4 percent in February from minus 3.1 percent in January, revised from negative 3.0 percent.
ECRI also revised the January reading in the USFIG index to 117.7 from an initially reported 117.9. (Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Walker Simon)
http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSNAT00378820080307
How do you get deflation when the FED is pumping 100 billion in TAF loans into the system every month? So far, fed injections have been far larger than write downs. Factoring in the coming stimulus package which will increase demand (and prices) across the spectrum and you still have a money supply that is growing!
As the US goes into a recession, foreign countries will begin to drop the dollar as the lose faith in our ability to repay our debts. This will cause the dollar to continue its fall against foreign currencies which will cause prices to rise on imported items.
I hope the Fed ex guy gets here soon as I’m waiting at home at my computer to get my new camera which I stupidly had sent to my home instead of work and after 3x I am suprised they will try a 4th. I am ready to go to San Diego this weekend so I hope I don’t miss him for a 4th time. Signature delivery I guess I didn’t read the Camera site store part about that. I bet when I have to go pick the kids up at school he comes by and misses me!! And yes I just had a expresso drink in a can why do you ask?
Whoa lookat that I just hit my price on more NEM and PAAS. Stock market is not happy today, too bad. Bernake is going to cut rates again I think? and down goes the dollar. Kinda sad for the dollar to have this loon at the central bank.
Cut rate policy is fully priced in.
Aha! moment…
2:15 Hoenig: Time to end off-balance-sheet “fictions”
2:15 Hoenig: Sceptical financial firms can reform themselves
2:15 Hoenig: Sees need for sweeping reforms in banks, regulation
2:15 Hoenig: Fiscal policy could be more useful in current crisis
2:15 Hoenig: Leaving rates too low too long could spark inflation
2:15 Fed’s Hoenig: Too much burden on rate policy in credit crisis
“My own view is that we should be cautious in our expectations of what monetary policy can accomplish and consider some of the longer run consequences of excessive reliance on monetary policy,”…
Curious if Hoenig made an independent decision to take the U.S. stock market out back and shoot it, or is this a coordinated action?
2:15
Here come the Societe General lows again! What’s the excuse this time?
I’m buying Ciena and Bidu in this dump however.
…what the economy and banking systems really need is something the Fed can’t give them, because the problem isn’t a shortage of cash, it’s a shortage of
trust.
the real story of the last 6 years is wage disparity and a divergence between the haves and the have nots. Housing would have not have been an issue if the wealth had been spread by the haves to the have nots. Oh well, the rich get what they deserve - a depression with losses across all equity classes.
last
630 yearsThese CEO’s that are engaged in the Hearings by Congress should be going through hearings regarding their accountability on selling junk loans to the secondary market . It’s very serious that the lenders pumped up the market by this absurd faulty lending and these very acts (maybe in large part for their own self-serving motive of a pumped up CEO Compensation package.)was why the faulty lending didn’t stop .
In other words , if we are going to pay CEO’s stock options based on performance , we better make darn sure that they don’t act in a way that encourages short term gains ,at the expense of our entire financial structure . What do you say about CEO’s that allowed defective liar loans and massive fraud in the market place in the name of short term fee profits ,(knowing they were going to sell the loans off). We need a different type of hearing because they aren’t going to be able to nail them on compensation packages that were sit up by the Corporations .
I would like to see hearings on them justifying pumping up the faulty lending . I don’t think it is acceptable that CEO’s say that everybody else was doing it so we had to remain competitive .Everybody was allowing fraud ,so we had to allow fraudulent defective liar loans also and create a false market ?F-k these guys . Maybe the moral of this story is that huge compensation packages for CEO’s breeds faulty self-serving leadership of a Company , rather than greater returns for the stock-holders .
The PPT is workin’ hard baby!!
It’s technically a double bottom with a higher low. Nice if it holds up.
Are you saying it is a good time to buy the dip? (I hope so, since I did today…)
I need some private lessons. ;o)
Come on PPT! 12K, you know you can do it.
That SO ain’t going to happen…ten minutes to go, 11,908.
Bank Mistakenly Starts Foreclosure Process On Wrong House In Kissimmee
KISSIMMEE, Fla. — A Kissimmee homeowner was in England when he learned a Florida bank had mistakenly started foreclosure proceedings on his house.
As it turns out, Denroy Bell didn’t even have a mortgage with the bank, Citi-Residential. The bank admitted that it’s dealing with so many foreclosures in Central Florida that it made a mistake.
Bell’s neighbor called him when she saw the locks being changed and the pool empty.
“It was like the army came up and took over the house,” Esther Goshop, a neighbor, said.
Bell lives primarily in London and rents out his home when he’s not in Florida. He said the bank apologized for the inconvenience.
Bell wants the company to pay to clean up the pool and change the locks back.
http://www.wftv.com/news/15523844/detail.html
My the British are nice people. I’d be suing for mortgage fraud.
Can’t think of a bigger MF than foreclosing on a non-existent mortgage.
On the other hand, it is pretty cool that they have a roving foreclosure army activated and operating.
Dollar sinks lower after US data
By Sarah O’Connor
Published: March 7 2008 11:43 | Last updated: March 7 2008 20:04
If this recession is to be a vanilla one like the last two, we should expect a bottom and a solid recovery in the stock market within the next month or two. Some rules of thumb: (1) after 3 rate cuts, (2) six months after easing begins, (3) a couple months before the end of the recession.
As far as the easing, we are already a little behind schedule for recovery. As for recession, if one started in December and is to end by summer, that also should portend a soon-to-be rising stock market.
In fact, if the market is still making lower lows into March and April, it’s a pretty good indication that the recession will be deeper. And even if the market rallies, which is quite possible, my guess is it will roll over again later in the year.
In other words, the odds of a shallow and short-lived recession would appear to now be decreasing significantly, according to market signals.
FDIC default page update:
Hume Bank in Missouri closed (google it)
33 depositors over the FDIC limits, dont become a statistic.
GLOBAL INVESTOR
‘Doom and Gloom’ has just begun
Bearish newsletter editor finds little cheer in most assets
By Barbara Kollmeyer, MarketWatch
Last update: 8:53 p.m. EST March 7, 2008
Certainly an author of money and banking text books realizes that many who cannot afford their ARMs could not afford refinancing into a fixed-rate contract, which, assuming the same interest rate as on the ARM, carries a higher monthly payment?
“Congress should temporarily expand the Federal Housing Administration’s authority in the near term: The FHA should be able to make larger loans to homeowners who live in their own homes. Why? Many creditworthy homeowners got trapped in adjustable-rate mortgages and couldn’t refinance.”
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/03/06/meaw_pm_adv_fha/
Just when you thought they could stoop no lower…. Here’s the latest blurb on the Missoula Organization of Realtors “Market Trends” page:
MOR is in the process of reviewing the market trends information to determine the best way to reflect the Missoula market on a consistent and ongoing basis. If you have suggestions about the type of information that would be most helpful to you, please feel free to contact us at comments@MissoulaRealEstate.com.
Why bother with data at all? Remember, this is a non-disclosure state. So now, in addition to having no sales info on specific houses, Missoulians have no info on sales volume and median price. Of course that’s because the ##s are so poor. Last week, I was on the page and it showed the slowest December in five years, in terms of number of houses sold. Better stop putting out the data when that happens!
You sure can tell who realtors work for — sellers.