patrick.net

der Zeitgeist

German. English common meaning: The Spirit of the Age.

Noun. No plural form.
Article: der
Inflection: (e)s/e
Genetive with s or es, dative with e

Declines as:

Nominative der Zeitgeist
Accusative den Zeitgeist
Dative dem Zeitgeist
dem Zeitgeiste
Genitive des Zeitgeistes
des Zeitgeists

And may I add:

La donna è mobile
qual piuma al vento
muta d'accento
e di pensiero

Many here try to keep their bearish thoughts to themselves. It may be time to let your inner bear roar. Fashion is catching up to you.

Do bears roar?

Roaring Bear:

http://resources.bravenet.com/audio_clips/sound_effects/animal_-_bear_roar/listen/

Fewlesh,

from a strategic point of view, inflating hard asset actually will do US good, especially in rebalancing world economy.

China now stands as a country with one of the worst, if not the worst, usage of resources, tons of wastage goes into those Walmart junks, it costs China 6-10 times the same use of natural resources like oil, coal, etc. for producing the same unit of goods compared to US, Japan and Europe, most of their cost savings come from cheap labor at around 1/20 of the US rate. But this is extremely unhealthy for us all, as long as such pricing distortions exist, we will keep buying junk until the next natural disaster hits. US has far less industrial base than other countries, and we have already had a pretty good telecom network set up, so we won't be the hardest hit in the upcoming runaway hard asset inflation. However, since our consumers' junk-buying appetite will be suppressed by the inflated hard asset price, the hard asset inflation cannot last long.

I say let the hard asset shoot up, then let the inflation run away so that people stop buying useless junks and go back to the frugal, basic kind of lifestyle, if there are some road kills in the process, so be it. A few road kills is better than going down the unsustainable path indefinitely.

I also disagree that this will make fiat currency irrelevant. Fiat currency is more than just printed money, it has a whole set of intangibles and tangibles standing behind, our natural resources, social system, internal buying power, scientific advancement, and military power. Will USD become peso? No, as long as we don't lose our good people. Will USD depreciate a lot? Sure, but even after the depreciation, I don't see any other currency single-handedly replacing it, and the world won't ever go back to barter exchange or gold tender era again.

Ground Shifts & House Swallows Man in California: Buries Him Alive
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Associated Press

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192755,00.html

ALTA, California — It was like a scene from a horror film: A 27-year-old man plummeted into a gaping hole that suddenly opened beneath a house, trapping him beneath foundation rubble and killing him.
Authorities say the home, built in the 1980s, may have been sitting atop a decades-old underground mine. Recent rains could have softened the ground under the home, in an isolated area near Lake Alta.
"It's unbelievable," Placer County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Dena Erwin said. "From the front of the house, it's absolutely normal. Then, in the middle of the house, is this enormous hole."
The victim was awake and on the ground floor about 9:30 p.m. Friday when the concrete foundation near the kitchen gave way, sending him plunging into to the ground, Erwin said.
Rescuers had trouble reaching him because the ground began to shift, creating an unsafe situation for work crews. Authorities returned to the home Sunday to try and remove the man's body, though geologists were still testing the house's soundness.

Authorities returned to the home Sunday to try and remove the man’s body, though geologists were still testing the house’s soundness.

But seriously folks, on the one hand every time I turn around somebody I know around the Monterey Bay is buying/just bought a house. I'm not kidding.

On the other hand the signs out front all say "reduced." And the national media is catching the Bubble train, not to mention some realtors. At that point, you know the times they are a changin'.

I'm sure that many buyers believe they caught the knife. But it feels like the psychology is turning.

I just came in from going to a round of open houses. Sherman Oaks and Valley Village. I usually don't go...but I couldn't resist. I told many a wannabe FB to google housing bubble...or log onto Patrick.net. People seemed to be interested to see what the market was going to do. I suggeted they look to the fundamentals themselves and log on. I didn't go out intending to spread the word...but I couldn't help myself. There were 1000 sq. ft. $shitboxes for $999K...just stupid! Amazingly, there were alot of people agreeing with me about a decline. What a differenc from just a few months ago.
I really just try to arm myself with information and fly by the seat of my pants. The open house section feels thicker these days...less like a pamphlet and more like a magazine! If only 15% of the buyers can afford the median priced house...well somethings out of whack! Basic affordability is not just a numbers game...its a feelinf in your gut. I'm sure the bank will tell me that I can afford a million $ house...but my gut says no. I'm not even comfortable with a $750K house even thogh I have several hundred grand to put down. I can't buy something if I don't perceive it as a good value. Today I happened into several people that felt this...but didn't have the facts to go along with it...they needed to know about this site,...and Bens...and foreclosures.com...and zillow...etc. Patrick's readership should be 100,000 instead of 10,000.
I'll get off my soap box now. Open houses make me rant( and rent :)). I shouldn't be allowed to go to them! I should be chained to the house on Sundays and not allowed out for at least a year.

Athena
Wouldn't it be great if the banks called them what they are...suicide loans? Then maybe these idiots would have an idea of what they're actually getting into.
My dear...you qualify for either the 'idiot loan' or the 'suicide loan' Which would you like?......That would wake a few sheeple up!

I mean...they already haveone commonly known as the liar loan...
Let's get real people!
the stupendously gullible moron loan...
The eat shit and then give me the house back loan....

Athena,

I'm renting too since last fall -- for the first time in 18 years. I didn't plan to rent so long, but now I'm in no hurry. Just dumb luck.

Strange days indeed. I've always believed the home ownership credo. Stationed at Ft. Ord in '87, I scraped up all my credit cards and "gift letters" (i.e., undisclosed loans) for a down-payment. "Condo" is a stretch – it was a small, odd 2bdr apt "conversion" for $120K. Nothing was done. They just sold the apartments -- 2bdr 1ba 850sq ft w/ carport, no storage – 2d floor of a 3 story building.

In '87 I knew I'd be eating lots of Ramen and worried about a correction, but I grabbed myself by the ass. I stayed for many years and then traded up for a tiny, crappy 100 year old SFH in PG. On the walk-thru my broker asked, "are you sure you want to buy this dump?"

I worked on the house for more years and it wound up beautiful IMAO. The problem when I sold -- like so many Californians -- it would've been hard to buy my own house despite a great job/very good income. It was impossible to trade up here for the house we need now with a toddler. We planned to relocate, but plans changed after we sold.

Now I'm relieved we're unlikely to lose ground renting. I've always held on faith the arguments that Patrickans laugh at: RE never goes down, don't get locked out, forced savings, etc. I'm not sure what to think today. I started out agnostic. Now I expect many metro areas to experience nominal prices reduction from Oct '05 to Oct '06.

On the numbers, does anyone know when we'll see the OFHEO quarterly report? Is it late? The final qtr '05 came out 1/6/06. I have other questions about OFHEO if anyone is interested.
http://www.fhfb.gov/GetFile.aspx?FileID=4437

Fewlesh,

A lot more would have to happen than massive USD devaluation for the fiat currency system to fail. Keep in mind that even the gold standard was largely a ratchet-pegged fiat system. Every time gold got too out of line with economic fundamentals -- usually petrodollar related -- they just revalued the exchange rates.

I agree on your concerns regarding a world of cheap labor and expensive commodity resources. This would be a dystopian future directly from the pages of whatever scary scifi novel you fancy.

LILLL said:

Basic affordability is not just a numbers game…its a feelinf in your gut. I’m sure the bank will tell me that I can afford a million $ house…but my gut says no. I’m not even comfortable with a $750K house even thogh I have several hundred grand to put down.

I agree completely. I have no doubt we could qualify for something here. The problem is the payments and what we could get for it, which isn't much.

Fewlesh Says:

ZIRP policy for the US. Can anyone actually believe this would be good? Talk about a total destruction of the US currency.

Hmmm. A zero interest rate sounds like an admission of expected deflation. I do not think we can have a negative discount rate, or where people are paid to borrow money. Or can we? Gee, if you think Joe Monthly Payment is irresponsible now............

"...geologists were still testing the house’s soundness."

You've got a friggen' gaping minshaft hole in the middle of the kitchen.

How sound is that?

Still, probably the house is worth a lot of money.
It's California, after all...

A zero-interest rate wouldn't punish savers immediately. If you remained a saver for long enough, however, you'd have your wealth drained into consumption in the form of inflation. That is, you'd be earning a negative real interest rate, so inflation would be like a big tax on your savings going to subsidize spenders.

But, as we head into such a scenario, there should be some pretty wild adjustments to real assets, namely housing. So long as most big-time savers trade in their savings for real assets, including housing assuming it first corrects sufficiently enough, then they'd come out ahead of pre-existing debtors (except for those few savvy and solvent enough to restructure their debt into long-term low fixed rates).

Fewlish,

high commodity price will be very kind to the developed countries like us, Japan, Europe, etc. The reason why China has been able to steal manufacturing base from us is because despite their extremely low productivity and low energy/commodity efficiency, the low commodity price has enabled their extremely low-pay workers to get ahead. But if all workers have to live in an environment of, let's say, 10 times the cost for food and water, then you compete on brain power, not on how cheap you can go. That is the key to success for Japan in a ZIRP environment. Although Japan has been depreciating its currency and subsidizing its export, in a way *inflating* imported resources (Japan is almost 100% reliant on resource imports), it has created an environment that forces its people to be extremely efficient on use of resources, and compete on collective brain power.

The crunch on natural resources won't only put us way ahead of China, but also ahead of Japan, which has no natural resources of its own. We have enough population and resources to just trade within ourselves, or within the Americas when transportation cost gets too expensive, unlike other countries, which will have to rely on international trade. International trade for us is not a necessity, if it enhances our lifestyle, we trade, if not, we shut the door selectively, we trade on our terms.

I have been fully loaded with an anti-dollar position since late 2004, precious metals, commodities and energy, plus a smaller position in FX. The reason I am hesitant to bet big on FX is because if we do get into a free fall situation, which I don't believe we will, all countries will try to do competitive devaluation. We already got a taste of it when Japan and China refused to revalue, and Euro zone refused to hike rate early April despite evidence of inflationary pressure. If no one wants to have a stronger currency and everyone has lots of USD to get rid of, where do they go? The logical answer for me is other benchmark of wealth that are short in supply that cannot be manufactured overnight. So while I believe that USD will devalue against other FX, I am not sure you will see a substantial one, it is probably going to be within 50%, because nobody wants to absorb that 50% shock.

With commodities, I am extremely bullish on agricultural commodities going forward. Loss of land is tremendous around the world in this global asset bubble and transfer of manufacturing base to developing countries. For example, while I was in China a couple of years ago, I saw literally acres and acres of the most productive/fertile land in eastern and southern China giving way to industrialization and residential construction. The same trend is all over in S.E. Asia and South America as well. To make matters worse, land use cannot be changed overnight. If you want to switch an industrial land back to ag purpose, you need to let it "rest" for a few years. Once a food exporter, China is now a net food importer because it doesn't have enough to feed its own population. In the last few years, the trend has been, whatever China buys will shoot up in price, so trend is my friend. If there is a Katrina equivalent happens in China, and probability wise it is very likely because China's environmental balance is already on an extremely fragile balance, bet on China buying ag commodity like nuts, at least it has lots of USD to do so.

Just look around California, land loss is not only spurred by residential construction, but also acreage assigned to winegrape production (same thing happened in Australia), which has already resulted in a worldwide glut of cheap wines. My parents live in NSW and Queesland, and they are telling me that many places that are NOT particularly suitable for growing grapes are now coming online as winegrape acreage, in massive scale. Well, if everyone is growing grapes, who is growing food?

H.Z.,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/08/AR2005080801243.html

Dollar devaluation is no big deal in the grand scheme of things.

Look at England, after sterling lost its reserve currency status, what happened? Sure, there is a gradual decline in the quality of life, but even if that happens, I would rather sit my ass in America than a lot of other countries much lower on the food chain.

Also regarding China:

The US enjoys a tremendous productivity advantage over China in agriculture. In fact, the US is by far more productive in agriculture than every other major country, including modernized Europe. A large portion of the GDP efficiency differentials come from ag, as do energy/resource usage differentials.

Although the elitists may spit at "factory farming" and "GMOs" as they drive to Whole Foods in their hybrids, we will be thanking the productivity gains the agri-industry has made when the global imbalances shit hits the fan.

A ZIRP policy will only hurt savers if savers allow it to. If a saver moves all his money into commodities, energy and precious metals, he will be compensated by the spike in price in hard assets when inflation hits, so that at least he can hope to come out even if not ahead.

A saver staying in USD cash will be royally screwed in this scenario.

As I read ZIRP, it wouldn't work without coordinated fiscal and monetary policy. Not an easy or very likely event. Worse, the changes to taxation would require massive reform of income taxation regimes. Not just federal, but also states. If the feds ever lowered income taxes to anywhere near zero, the states would simply tax most of the difference. Instead, the feds would have to enact punitive punishments to force states to cooperate with coordinated fiscal maneuveres, perhaps by withholding all federal funds. This would no doubt result in massive Supreme Court challenges to states rights, which the current court is disposed to favor.

I'm not going to stay up worrying about this. I'm still worried about plain, old, no-complications stagflation.

H.Z.,

China is an export-reliant country, most of its GDP (over 60%) is generated by exports into the US, Europe, etc. So compared to a country with plenty of internal demand, and hence the internal pricing power, its GDP is very reflective of the truth worth of its goods in the worldwide market.

Are you willing to pay double the price for anything you buy currently that are made in China? I am not, I won't even pay 10% more, because if China cannot make it at this price, let Vietnam make it, let India make it. Therefore, the unit of GDP measure is a faithful measurement in that country's productivity.

Perhaps I remembered the unit wrong, so I apologize for using the term unit of goods.

Who can argue with this logic from the ZIRP proposal, though:

Fiscal policy should be aimed at deterring investment in non-productive financial assets and increasing productive capital spending and domestic employment. We need more engineers and fewer real estate agents.

Fewer MPs! Now that might make it all worth it.

H.Z.,

I am in BG as a sideplay, while I am still looking for other options to get in. The reason why I am bullish is also because of the energy cost, as oil approaches 80, or even 100, who knows, the energy cost of ag also shoots up, for example, natural gas is the main cost component in fertilizer, and as fertilizer goes up, so will basic food price, because as human beings, food intake is not a choice.

I also agree with the carrying cost, and the perishable nature of ag products. That is why I am more interested in grains. Just judging from the chart of wheat price, it does seem incredibly low at the current level.

I love it when the sellers won't drop their price! This is exactly what I want, for them to hold their price for a long time, so that when they finally get a good taste of reality and start lowering their price, they will be far behind the curve as others have lowered theirs first to catch the fewer buyers (sheep) that are out there. These greedy bastards will get burned the most and they are the ones who deserve it the most! :twisted: :lol:

I'm so sick and tired of reading articles about house prices rising, I haven't seen one of these articles in quite a while, has anyone else? The fun is just beginning!

Here's a good article on the Zeitgeist of "extreme commuting."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12438812/site/newsweek/

"Last week I saw a guy going down the highway eating a bowl of cereal, reading the paper and steering with his knees," says Dave Givens, 46, who just won Midas's "America's longest commute" contest for his 186-mile drive to his engineering job at Cisco Systems in San Jose, Calif. (Givens drinks only coffee—five cups.) The result of all these drivers behaving badly: more crashes.

Bwahahahaaa!

Sounds like he's the king of Herculean commuting.

But the real question is: is it worth it?

The answer:

Of course! It's California, the land of milk, honey and McMansions.

NO sacrifice is too great and no commute too Herculean to live in Cali.
Everyone knows that!

Just ask Surfer-X. He'll tell ya!

ajh,

If the US ever faced hyperinflation -- and I mean real hyperinflation, not just high inflation -- then this country would default on its debts faster than you can say "just try'n stop us". Hyperinflation can only occur if a country faces huge foreign debt payments, a loss of foreign investor confidence, and still tries to pay those debts by running the presses. It just ain't going to ever happen here because it doesn't have to. Like you said, we could default on our debts and claim we're not with some clever subterfuge. No one could really do much about it, either, because they would know that we won't willingly fall on our sword while we still have a sword.

Randy H writes that agriculture will help our nation when the Great Reckoning comes, because of the efficiency of our commercial agriculture. I have thought about that too, and I agree with Randy.

I think a bushel of wheat is still below the price it sold at during the last Great Reckoning of our dollar during the Arthur Burns & Miller years at the fed.

But Randy, the bad news is, if you are right, and I think that you are, it means that we will be paying a lot more for our food with our depreciated dollars, in order to match the purchasing power of the other currencies for our food. This as in so many other things, our standard of living will go down.

I don't know how bubba can afford it all when the correction comes.

ajh,

speaking of xenophobia, Australia tops the list.

No foreigner can buy Australia land, period. All foreigners are forbidden to buy Australian second hand real estate, and foreign purchase of first hand real estate needs to be approved by FIRB (Foreign Investment Review Board)
http://www.firb.gov.au/content/default.asp

The only way a foreigner can participate in Ozzie property market is to buy the notorious off-the-plan properties which are incredibly scandalous. Mirvac, one of your largest property developer, just screwed over a bunch of foreigners trying to buy some OTP apartments in Southbank, Melbourne.

You want to buy anything else in Australia? Well, you are up for FIRB review. Your FIRB needs to approve any foreign interest in a corporation above 15%. How is that compared to the US?

Any foreigner can buy land, second hand homes, or a minor interest in a US company. Only that when a majority control in key industries are at stake, we preclude them. If China wants to buy some candy bar company, be my guest.

All countries are cautious in fending off foreign control of our asset, nothing wrong with that. If Ozzies want to critisize us on this, you should look at your own Foreign Investment Act 1975 and 1989 first.

But the Dubai Ports bid for P&O? All the international reports I listened to reported that as straight American xenophobia.

Suppose Hu Jintao had asked President Bush last week whether a Chinese company would be allowed to take over GM, or Ford, or both. What would be the answer?

hmm, sounds like distortion of a perfect free market to me. no good can come of that...

China now stands as a country with one of the worst, if not the worst, usage of resources, tons of wastage goes into those Walmart junks, it costs China 6-10 times the same use of natural resources like oil, coal, etc. for producing the same unit of goods compared to US, Japan and Europe, most of their cost savings come from cheap labor at around 1/20 of the US rate.

randy
see my tail-ender post on the previous thread re offshoring, as i don't think anyone understood the gist of the my remarks on the economic knock-on effects of offshoring, as well as pollution issues...

No foreigner can buy Australia land, period. All foreigners are forbidden to buy Australian second hand real estate, and foreign purchase of first hand real estate needs to be approved by FIRB (Foreign Investment Review Board)
http://www.firb.gov.au/content/default.asp

The only way a foreigner can participate in Ozzie property market is to buy the notorious off-the-plan properties which are incredibly scandalous. Mirvac, one of your largest property developer, just screwed over a bunch of foreigners trying to buy some OTP apartments in Southbank, Melbourne.

hee hee

more free market distortions - scandalous...

The recent US-Oz FTA freed up the extent of US investment in Oz, not that you'd want to, but it was seen mostly as a cool way of laundering dirty money for the Mob, and similar. Great work from a bribed US Congress representing vested interests...

By buying property, you have bought land. I think there is a fair amount of foreign purchasing going on, FIRB notwithstanding. There are ways around it too, looking at some of the HK/China connections here. It's almost funny that the off-the-plan pricing is almost two-tier to set foreign investors up for a gouge...

O-O
My parents live in NSW and Queesland, and they are telling me that many places that are NOT particularly suitable for growing grapes are now coming online as winegrape acreage, in massive scale. Well, if everyone is growing grapes, who is growing food?

They've already overshot, there's 40 000 hectares of overplanting and a billion litre wine lake that can't be sold already.

there's an analogous problem with market overshoot in housing as well -- when housing booms, everyone wants to get in on the act, everyone becomes a developer, lots of new starts, but the lengthy construction time means there's suddenly an oversupply that kicks in too late in the boom, potentially leading to a bigger price crash.

my solution is to have govts control land pricing from the start to avoid speculation and to make housing more affordable for more people in the community by preventing landholders setting the price.

*** Disclaimer: not a free market solution ***

Here's the word from the gub'mint. The latest Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) Quarterly House Price Index (HPI) Report came out 3/1/06.

I believe the big lenders like PMI use these OFHEO numbers for their risk indices correlating median income inter alia to prices.

http://www.ofheo.gov/media/pdf/4q05hpi.pdf

A few Farklese translations and quotes:

Nationally prices rose 12.95% from 4th Qtr ‘04 through 4th Qtr ‘05. The most recent Qtr saw 2.86% (11.4% annualized). These numbers roughly match the 12.55% increase for year ended with 3d Qtr ’05.

“[N]o evidence of a slowdown.”

“Despite recent indications that a slowdown may be forthcoming, … appreciation in ‘05 continued to hover at near-record levels.” (OFHEO Economist Patrick Lawler)

CPI was 4.3%.

“While deceleration continues in some areas, appreciation generally is still extremely strong … Mortgage rates climbed significantly in the second half … but the effect … on … appreciation so far … limited.”

Significant findings….
1. 4th Qtr records in 26 metro areas including Orlando-Kissimmee, FL; El Paso, TX; and Myrtle Beach-Conway-North Myrtle Beach, SC.
2. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ still fastest at 39.7%.
3. Arizona continues fastest by far at 34.9% from 4th Qtr ‘04 to 4th Qtr ‘05. AZ was more than 8% faster than Florida, the #2.
4. The Mountain Census Division became fastest CD edging out the Pacific. The East North is still slowest (Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.)
5. The South Atlantic (East Coast from Maryland to Florida) saw its fastest growth since ‘75, the first period covered by HPI -- 17.81% from 4th Qtr ‘04 to 4th Qtr ’05.
6. For the first time since 3d Qtr '03, a metro areas experienced a quarterly price decline. “Prices in Burlington, NC fell by about 1% from 4th Qtr '04 to 4th Qtr ‘05.”

Changes in the mix of data from refinancings and purchases can affect the HPI. An index using only US purchase prices shows a bit slower growth from 4th Qtr ‘04 to 4th Qtr ’05. A "sale price index" would’ve increased 10.81%, versus 12.95% for the full HPI.

The quarterly HPI tracks average house price changes in repeat sales or refinancings of the same single-family properties. It’s based on analysis of data obtained from FNMA and Freddie Mac from more than 31.2 million repeat transactions over the past 31 years.

OFHEO uses the mortgage records of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the nation’s largest database of conventional, conforming mortgages. The conforming loan limit for 2005 was $359,650. The limit for 2006 is $417,000.

Next HPI will be posted June 1, 2006. I can't wait.

Farkley’s notes re the BA. I gather that HPI tracks the avg change for each given APN as that specific parcel periodically sells from one year or month to the next. Anyone read that different? It apparently excludes jumbo loans, a large component here, right? Does that skew the HPI for BA?

Just stepping in here..
Randy, it is true that American farmers are perhaps the most prolific productive farmers in the moderm world, but this is due mainly on factors relating to the high risk involved. Just one or two seasons of bad productivity can put a farmer under. As a result, many farms have elaborate systems to prevent this. I'll use my uncle as an example. He has a masters degree in agriculture and electronic engineering. He installed a system on his dairy farm that monitors all the cows via a small plastic computer chip mounted on an ear tag. When the cow comes under a scanning device, the computer knows how much of what certain types of grain it will eat to produce the most milk, if it has special dietary needs, whether it is in need of having medications updated, and even if she is now pregnant. A shuttle on the feeding belt measures the correct amount of food, medicine, and so forth for each specific cow. The farm operates like a efficient factory, with the lives of the cows prolonged, and their productivity maintained with minumal waste of feed and maximum amount of healthcare. Most farmers operate in this manner, and this is why US farmers are as advanced.

I also wanted to mention something I heard this weekend that sums up the stupidity of the American economy in general, including home buying of late. Me and my wife went to Home Depot because I had a gift card from Xmas, and since I hate going there, I haven't used it yet. But while we were in there, a pre-recorded voice came over the PA system:" Do you want to buy a major purchase from the Home Depot? Buy now and pay later!" blah blah blah, no interest for 6 months! blah blah blah. Only at the Home Depot."
My wife turns to me and says:" Did you hear that?" "yup" I said. I couldn't believe how amazingly stupid it sounded, yet it sums up how people"buy" things.They don't buy them at all. They've been conditioned like dumb animals that money is a mysterious concept that exsists in banks somewhere, yet they never actually see any of it.
This weekend I was a little depressed because with the good weather came a TON of open houses. It has been raining for 3 months. Nobody at all had been looking at any houses in those 3 months, but on Saturday, It seemed like it was back to lots of Subaru outback and Volvos filled with purple fleece, running shoe, silly ski hat wearing 30 and 40something yuppies lining up to look at these things. I've even saw a "sale pending" sign hanging from a 850k house that's been for sale since November. I want this thing to crash damn it, and now I'm starting to see the same carnival circus that occured last year.

peterus said:

I think we are going to see hyper-inflation. The apartment manager just told me that my rent (2bd 2ba 1000sf) is going to raise 10% from $1460/month to $1606/month.

This is no where even close to hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is 1% PER DAY average price increases. Your rent would need to rise from $1,460 per month to somewhere around $14,000 per month within 1 year to qualify as hyperinflation.

Keep this in mind. There is a huge difference between inflation, even high inflation, and hyperinflation.

I say invest in seeds, shovels, and ariable land. Gotta' eat..