patrick.net

Go daddy, go :-)

In a way, high housing prices were self-inflicted by the consumer who completely bought the hype. Not just those self-indulgent Boomers, but how many smug BayArea hipsters thought it was unstoppable, even after the local dot-bomb carnage? Can government really beat common sense into people? The public reacts negatively to moral suggestions from on high that we downsize our expectations/consumption: be the first on your block to live within your means! Yeah, they're going to jump on that!

Similarly Wall St. had little inclination to do anything but maximize their returns, and leverage the hell out any real equity--who would stop them? Why manage stable portfolios when the other guy can "promise" 10X the return to investors? Here lies part of the core problem--why conduct real business development if you can spin bubbles for higher short return?

In the not-so-distant future, a cabal of economic elites who control the nation's banking and credit systems conspire to destroy the structure of the financial system, so they can transfer vast amounts of taxpayer funds to themselves through government assistance programs set up to "rescue" the very financial system they destroyed.

http://www.minyanville.com/articles/tarp-paulson-bac-c/index/a/21019/from/yahoo

If I were a bank I would refinance the house if I could keep an equity stake on the deed for the remainder of the loan as a second position.

Here is a price reduction for an SF mid-rise development in Mission Bay:

Radiance? All reasonably-sized units are still priced above $900K.

I don't think so... :) No thanks!

I agree completely.

I actually went and looked at the model one day I happened to pass by there before Christmas. They had a snotty saleslady (you know the type) who put on the air of "you should be so lucky to live in this exclusive development". Bleh. I'm not falling for it. Look for further reductions.

and how much are these going for? (In Emeryville, does EBGuy ave some inside info ??)

http://www.vue46.com/

They advertise on the radio. Doesn't look all that great to me.

I vote for people exploiting people. Because f--- it, we might as well make it official. Justme and Patty, the issue is "arbitrary". You can gaze up at Buffet and that's unfair, but there's a whole fanout of J6P behind you who think you Bay Ayrean SW salaries are a grotesque anomaly.

Society should rode the coattails of its greatest, not revert to the LCD.

Bleh. I’m not falling for it. Look for further reductions.

Yep. :) I think so.

If you are interested in SF, nowadays there are quite a few choices in Pac Heights.

Also, the spell checking on my iPod makes me wants to scream. ;o

(In Emeryville, does EBGuy ave some inside info ??)
Click on "Details and Registration" from the main page... $200k off... what a bargain... I'll bring my checkbook. Pretty funny, someone on Socketsite just called Mission Bay (Radiance development) the Emeryville of San Francisco.

TOS,

Unbelievable. Why would a "successful" 65 year old need to borrow so much to buy a home? By that age, she should should have saved enough to pay cash. Instead, she used the wannabe tools of a variable rate mort combined with a HELOC.

Notice all the comments on her blog that sympathize with her. Unfortunately, that dipshit mentality affects Washington, too. They will pass that second bailout bill under the guise of aiding the general economy (that is, allow the public to continue borrowing to support consumption at thier "entitled to" level). In reality, this bailout will just transfer wealth from our decendents to the current banking elite. The overextended among us do not care about the long range affects of the bailout, just as long as they see a chance to be rescued from thier folly.

Note Washington's current catering to the lowest common denominator with the extension of the Digital TV transfer date from Feb to Jun. We will see 4 more years of similar action, where the short-sighted and irresponsible are held out as victims, needing government to force the prudent and responsible to bail them out.

Opps, I meant "TOB" not "TOS"

No insult intended!

And "Oops" not "Opps."

You would think I was the one who developed Brand's spell checker.

Accumulate a big pile of dollars, or gold, or whatever, and live off of that in a small house.

That's what I did. Works for me.

But in regards the "land tax". Wouldn't this be a problem for actual (as opposed to corporate) farmers? What about people who put land into a conservation trust?

Society should rode the coattails of its greatest

A rode is a sailor's term for an anchor line, attaching the boat to the bottom. Maybe this was a Freudian slip on your part. ;)

Brand,

so you are saying that people generally never think that they are getting more than they deserve. and that they often think anyone who gets more than them does NOT deserve it?

As read in that blog post:

"Suddenly, four deals I was in, all of them capable of making me financially secure, either fell out of escrow or went on "hold."… Not an uneducated victim of a greedy mortgage broker. And not a speculator."

Those "four deals" were um…real estate, weren't they? With the RE bust well underway, this "entrepreneur for forty years", or more accurately realtor, did not know the direction of the market? If you ask me, she's the worst kind of whiny victim, because she bought into her own faulty sales pitch, and now that it has cost her, she wants her own bailout. A not too surprising conclusion, if her circle of "entrepreneurs" think she deserves sympathy. There's nothing like a "clique of the brilliant" to breed the worst kind of idiots.

KurtS,

Right on.

Anyone who will publicly characterize themselves as "successful" should be viewed with the utmost suspicion. They are either narcissistic, deluded, brain dead or all three. Plus they are probably nasty on top of that.

We tried petitioning our leaders, and they ignored us.

We tried voting them out, but the Wall Street financed pro-bailout politicians were re-elected.

Now is the time to take direct action to put down-ward pressure on housing prices.

STOP RENTING!

If we all moved in with our parents, or got additional roommetes to move in with us, we could put downward pressure on rent. This would bankrupt many speculators, and the houses they currently own would be put on the market, driving down house prices.

If you hope to buy a house someday, renting is a big mistake. Not only are you spending the money you could be saving for a downpayment, you are also keeping your worst enemy, the speculator, in business.

Don't Buy!

Don't Rent!

Save every single cent!

I posed a question on her blog on those "four deals", to which she clarified they were her "investments", whatever that means. So not a realtor, "not a speculator", but all the same trying to close on four properties--and has the audacity to complain about her reset mortgage? I can only guess her "four deals...capable of making her financially secure" were either rental properties, or foreclosures she planned to flip. Both assume a quick market turnaround. Quite a few assumptions there...especially for now.

"If I didn’t create jobs, you wouldn’t have one. Period."

Original Bankster, right--what an IDIOT statement, from a lady who cannot cover her own mort. I'd love to see Surfer-X skewer this one bwahhaha!

Original Bankster,
Perhaps she can spend a week at EST, get back to that "higher plane" and outwit all us puny mortals and that pesky market reality? You know, living in Marin I encountered these 'tudes 24/7, particularly my ex and her family. Time for a massive reality check you navel-gazing crybabies.

Anyone who will publicly characterize themselves as “successful” should be viewed with the utmost suspicion.

Absolutely. "Sucess" is the perfect alignment of will and reality. Anyone who thinks he is "successful" enough is not wanting enough.

The best idea regarding taxes someone posted as a snarky comment but its brilliant.

Since the government/fed is creating so much new money from thin air....why don't they simply ELIMINATE THE INCOME TAX and print all the money they need? Leave us the eff alone with all the deductions/incentives.

Its true the 'inflation tax' would be higher but it would mostly hit people with tons of USD and I suppose they might buy real estate to hedge?

Of course everyone has a different useless idea on taxes. really a waste of time to discuss....

I got some critical insights from this thread which will be lifelong learning:

1. Wall street pigmen depends on continued high valuation of assets like home. Low valuation means low bonus for wall street pigmen.

2. Wall street pigmen needs a continuous supply of "buy and hold" suckers so that they can drain wealth from warm bodies generating wealth from their physical and intellectual labor.

3. baby boomers will continue intergenerational wealth transfer via tax policies and bailouts. Barrack Obama and Alan Greenspan are baby boomers.

by Lee Adler

There are 2 points I’d like to make about today’s economic data. The Bureau of Labor BS released the official unemployment rate this morning. It was 7.6%, which is bad enough. The first point I want to make is that what they don’t emphasize is that the real unemployment rate is 15.4%. This rate includes discouraged workers and those working part time because they cannot find full time work.

Click to enlarge
This is a statistic that the Bureau of Labor BS has kept since 1994. Only recently, since the economy has begun to tank and bloggers and non-mainstream publishers like yours truly have been featuring this data point, has the mainstream media picked up on this number. It’s usually down around the 4th paragraph of page 2 of the article. This is by far the worst reading in this indicator since they began tabulating it in 1994. The next worst reading was 12.8% at the inception of the data in January 1994. January is always the weakest month of the year, but this month’s increase of 1.9% was by far the worst on record.

Approaching 65, got in an IO loan and HELOC'd out, obviously she doesn't have a brain for entrepreneurship.

A alleged startup VC fund partner doesn't even have enough money to buy her home free and clear? That sounds very fishy to me. It seems like she is providing marketing consultancy service, man, that will scare away enough clients. And she is a PhD.

PHD=Permanent Head Damage, I am glad I escaped that program early enough to avoid a permanent damage.

http://earth911.com/blog/author/fhardaway/

has a picture of Francine Hardaway

Francine Hardaway

Working with startup technology companies, entrepreneurs, and social causes. Angel investor, business coach, mom, yoga practitioner, blogger, golden retriever fan, social media junkie. Connected woman.

http://earth911.com/team/content-and-public-relations/

Francine Hardaway, Ph.D.
Social Media Editor
Francine is an experienced technology marketing strategist, a former Entrepreneurial Fellow at the Berger Center of the Eller School of Business, University of Arizona and a former Advisory Board of the Medical Informatics Program at Arizona School of Health Sciences. She is currently a partner in Stealthmode Partners, and previously built the largest marketing/public relations firm in Phoenix. Before starting Stealthmode Partners, Francine was VP of Marketing for Innovative Environmental Products.

Francine’s interest in the environment goes back to the ’70s when she built a geodesic dome home with solar heating, cooked in a solar oven and grew an organic garden. She is in charge of all social media outreach for Earth911.com, and also uses her experience writing and blogging to provide content for Earth911.com.

I guess I should be impressed by her credentials, as my own can't possibly compare. Then again, I have an OK sense of judgment, and didn't act like an Utter Tool and buy into this mess. What's her excuse?

@TOB lmao...she should go back to flipping husbands.

PHD=Permanent Head Damage, I am glad I escaped that program early enough to avoid a permanent damage.

OO, congrats!

Shes also got all the ideological accessories: environmentalism, 3rd world adoption (like Madonna!), and my favorite: YOGA Expert! God this woman is the spokesperson for BITCH.

You know, I despise New Age Smugism. ;)

@TOB,
Right--it's a complete mindf*ck, but I see other people "get it" too. A lot of their Yuppie spawn are the same way--good luck pointing out their self-delusion. I hope reality hits hard with these types and their "credentials". If one could compare their real contributions over the past few decades, I'm sure it's fraught with self-serving assumptions and poor strategy. Any wonder why our economy circles the drain? I'm sure they played their part. Anyway, I've just heard too much crap from them.

"I happen to practice non-attachment to material things"
Oh good--may you get your wish.

OO,

supposedly Mark Twain said something like "don't let school interfere with your education", but I didn't find that quote attributed to him on Google. Did find this one, though:

"Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned"

Housing is the biggest expense in nearly everyone’s life

I thought that would be tax! :(

Another gem from Francine Hardaway:

...
Howard Lindzon can’t get a bank charter, and neither can I. We were both part of separate groups of investors trying to start new community banks last year. But the government has frozen the startup bank process in Arizona, one of the worst state economies in the nation. Both Howard and I work with entrepreneurs, not real estate people, and we’re not dumb. We know that now’s the best time to start a bank. But we can’t.
....

(emphasis added)

401K SCAM ALERT : Target Date Fund

Target-date retirement funds were supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Then 2008 happened. And all of the 264 target-date funds sold by the 39 mutual fund firms that market them performed poorly and contrary to expectations.

Indeed, the most conservative target-date retirement funds - those designed to produce income - fell on average 17% in 2008 and the riskiest target date retirement funds - designed for those retiring in 2055 - fell on average a whopping 39.8%, according to a recent report from Ibbotson Associates, a Morningstar company.

Not a single target-date fund had a positive return, according to Tom Idzorek, Ibbotson's director of research and author of the report.