patrick.net

"Who benefits?"

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say... the boomers.

Utter speculation, I admit. But call it a hunch.

Cheers,
prat

Face Reality,

Welcome back! Hope you stick around a while this time. Agree with you that BA prices are unlikely to fall by October, but seriously doubt they'll stay in the stratosphere forever. Nothing defies the laws of gravity forever (except Realtor hype).

My prediction for the start of a CA/nationwide crash is still no later than end of 2007, though I think modest declines will be underway in most areas by mid-2006. See out "FuckedCounty.com" thread for everyone's 2 cents. $1.3 trillion in adjusting/amortizing neg-ams & IOs + inevitable change in "investor" psychology is bound to pop this sucker by then. If it goes beyond '07, then its truly a New Paradigm.

Definitely agree on the healthcare crisis. No easy answers there, plus Americans seem to be getting LESS healthy and more obese by the minute.

There are obvious ways to solve the healthcare problem... for example, we can introduce some form of "subprime" program. IMO such program is much better than no program in terms of solving a clear and present problem.

The "subprime" healthcare program can be supported by imported medical personnels. Alternatively, we can create some 3 year accelerated medical associate degree to quickly reduce the cost of medical care.

To me, providing medical care at 70% competency to 100% of the public is not a bad choice at all.

I am not kidding.

It would not surprise me if America resurfaces from the soft depression of the early 21st century with a national healthcare plan. But the plan will be a disappointment, because it will simply be a veiled attempt to get young people to pay for the health care of the boomers.

True. If the Katrina disaster has demonstrated anything it's how inefficient government is on all levels. I don't want to get into a political debate, but does anyone really think the government does anything better than can be done private sector? (though private sector hasn't been a rousing success-- but that's another discussion) All government does is tax and spend the money on a committee to decide how the money should be distributed to various state committee's who then vote on which branch of government gets the next raise. How many cents on the dollar of our tax money actually gets spent on anything we vote for?

We must relax our standard of doctors or create another tier of medical care before it is too late. Why should all doctors go through so much education? Why is it considered ethical to keep healthcare so expensive? On the other hand, why is it considered unethical to reduce standard and make sure that healthcare is more accessible?

How many cents on the dollar of our tax money actually gets spent on anything we vote for?

Good question.

Why should all doctors go through so much education?

Since my life is in their hands, I kind of like the "lots of education" part of the standards. I had an emergency delivery with my daughter and had a lesser skilled surgeon taken care of us the outcome could have been a bad one. There are just some things that demand a high standard.

SactoQt, how about having two standards:

1) Regular doctors for those with insurance or those who can otherwise afford high healthcare costs.

2) Associate doctors for those who can afford less.

Patients will be well-informed and they will be able to choose between the two. Providing only high-quality but expensive healthcare options is not necessarily an ethical thing to do.

Peter P

I get where you're coming from, but the liability would probably be too high. Doctors can barely afford mal-practice insurance as it is, and even if people sign waivers, they'd probably still sue, and I doubt there'd be a shortage of lawyers to help them.

I get where you’re coming from, but the liability would probably be too high. Doctors can barely afford mal-practice insurance as it is, and even if people sign waivers, they’d probably still sue, and I doubt there’d be a shortage of lawyers to help them.

I think this is one of the big problems too. As I have said before, we ought to limit lawsuit payout. At least, punitive judgements should be restricted. Reasonable medical mistakes should be punished mildly. Serious mistakes should result in non-monetary.

There needs to be a re-vamping of the legal system too. My former neighber told me that in Great Britian whomever loses a lawsuit has to pay legal fee's for both sides. It dramatically limits frivilous lawsuits, which is something we need here in the states. Maybe if that was in effect it would be easier to limit lawsuits against doctors too.

Anyway, getting late. Nite.

Good nite.

I have particularly enjoyed Randy H's opinion on this site, perhaps because I agree with most of his analysis.

I have enough cash to pay off my current home in BA entirely, and I still have quite a bit of cash sitting on the sideline waiting to get in should the market crashes. I am a conservative person so although I am much more qualified than most folks to "flip" properties, I chose to stay away hoping that I could descend as a vulture when foreclosures go up. However, as the bubble really starts to inflate, my biggest fear begin to emerge. Never underestimate the power of fools, in masses. That means, if the foolks have hujacked the market, the government may have to bail them out and I may no longer pick up dead meat that easily, and my waiting would have been meaningless. If the crash is so hard that unemployment shoots to 25% like the Great Depression, buying RE would be the last on my mind, I might as well take whatever I have and flee the country. But then, where do I flee to? We have been the world's buyer, if our buying power dries up, I see China going to hell first, followed by Japan and a whole slew of players.

So here is my burning question. If the market does crash hard, what is the best way to take advantage of the situation suppose you have quite a bit of cash (80% of my money is in commodity-based currencies, Euro, oil and gold). So, if housing keeps its norminal value, I assume dollar will crash, so I am set up in a position to bet against the dollar. However, lately I have been thinking what if all the governments coerce to keep the dollar up since a crashing dollar does nobody any good (except people like me)? I guess my biggest fear and anguish is BOTH housing and US dollar keep their nominal value!

@OO: "if the foolks have hujacked the market"

Beware the foolks my son!
With the hands that grasp and the head that unthinks!
Beware the hujacker
and shun the frumious Loan Officer!

_smile_

@Jack: The fact that people don't pay for large chunks of their healthcare seems to distort the market. Radiologists, with whom I have some experience, are constantly looking at expensive and (relatively) unnecessary scans ordered by doctors who know that insurance will cover it, and that if they miss something they will be sued until they are blue in the face and a bit bluer in the wallet.

I don't have a good solution, although my neocon-fascist-i-hate-poor-people-and-small-defenseless-puppies gut says: more market. Market for those who can afford, with a strong social net (non-governmental, community and, dare I say, religiously, based) sounds great to me, and it has the delightful advantage of not having even a snowball's chance of being implemented, thereby allowing me to sit idly in the back sniping at whatever solutions do come along:

"Oh, myyyyyyyy solution would be soooooo much better than [insert next failed govt. program]. But will you people ever try it? Noooooooo. Heathens."

See? Now isn't that fun?

Cheers,
prat

Hey surferX, Kurt,
Just bought a Haut last October...I used to drive by that shack of a surf shop on my way to natural bridges (to go boogieboarding) back in high school. I didn't really know if/how good they were. It's nice to know they're thought pretty highly of! Nice looking board though...simple & clean looking.
I found this Yahoo! Bond Ticker talk pretty interesting...the writing is kind of informal...like reading a blog posting...the guy actually mentions the "national ADD" as a reason why there's an 85% chance of September fed rate hike.
http://bonds.yahoo.com/bt.html

I'm 31, solidly GenX and I don't think of this generation as very pissed off (though we have every right to be for reasons that have already been stated). We seem to be the generation that wants balance in our lives, when that is becoming increasingly harder to have.

My husband is researching his next career field, and the one he's interested in is populated mainly by Boomers right now, soon to be retiring. The thing he has heard again and again from people he has talked to in the field is their bewilderment over the fact that this younger generation about to fill their shoes doesn't want to work 60 hours a week and wants to have time to spend with their families. Imagine that!

What selfish, lazy slobs we must be to think that life isn't all about working ourselves into the ground and ignoring our kids. (I guess we learned something from being the latchkey generation.)

Time to post an amusing conversation just overheard...
(from my RE-investing coworker)

"Sell? no I'm not thinking of selling anything until next year (Marin)
So, you're renting that waterfront place in Tiburon, for what--$2000/mo ? (A 2br cliff house)
Are you serious...that makes no sense, that area's very desireable (sounding perplexed). I bet they owned it for a long time...that's why the rent is so low"
(is reality sinking in for this guy?)

Face Reality, I agree with you to some small extent. Except that I think I do have it both ways. I work in a difficult, competitive creative profession, but I can do it at home, and I've made choices that allow me to be home with my kids and be there for them when they need me. I've chosen to work smarter when I can rather than harder--to use my work time as efficiently as I can so that I have time with my kids. To sometimes work at night so that I'm with them during the day--that sort of thing.

I realize everyone can't work at home, so I'm lucky in that respect. But I can't write it all off as luck, because I took risks and made difficult choices and worked hard to have the job that I have.

My husband's career field is a better example of where it's harder to have balance. There's a workaholic culture that doesn't buy into the "work smarter rather than longer" philosophy. I think the balanced attitude there is for people to get as much as they can done during work hours so that they can leave the office at 5 or 5:30, rather than competing to see who can stay latest. It means the difference between having an hour or so with the kids before they go to bed, or only seeing them on weekends.

So I wasn't arguing that everyone should just take the easy, low-stress jobs. I just think making family a priority that's larger than work is a difficult but worthwhile choice.

There’s a workaholic culture that doesn’t buy into the “work smarter rather than longer” philosophy.

Exactly!

If you short them and are wrong, you can lose big $$$$ - so use a stop loss. I am neither long or short the builders, have a short position in one of the mortgage lenders

Very true. Stop loss is not exactly a silver bullet because the market can gap. Keep getting stopped out is no fun at all.

I am implementing some "short" positions using deep ITM Put options, which has minimal time-decay and reasonable leverage. This way, I do not need to worry about whipsaws.

IMO, the secular bull market of the homebuilders has not ended yet. It is not prudent to take straight short positions in them.

(Not investment advice)

And, for a little more irony–the guy’s an economics editor for one of the larger academic publishers.

I am going to pen a publication on brain surgery. :mrgreen:

Part of the problem is that people think that pills work–they greatly overestimate the potential effect of medical intervention at every level.

East Bay Renter,

I am just amazed at the biochemical smorgasborg of patent drugs that some people think they "need" to carry them through the day. I have one aunt in particular who takes a panoply of drugs according to a rigid daily schedule. She has been doing this for years and is in awful health. I (and her husband) believe she would feel much better if she just weaned herself off all these drugs, ate right and exercised more. Of course, by now she'd probably have severe withdrawal symptoms.

I would expect to see more evidence of them in my everyday life outside this blog, but I just don’t see this.

Well, I guess you do not personally know people who "own" 10-15 properties using NAAVLPs. And you must not have chatted with realtors who believe that the risky loans are reaching a boiling point.

BTW, I do not see any evidence of problems in the educational system outside of this blog either. (smily face goes here)

Face Reality, by the way, welcome back too. Can you ask Fake P to come back as well, please? :)

dear all,
I was in brazil. I saw 2 bed room apartments for 100,000
us $. in rio de janeiro. its a very nice country as long as you know portuguese.

so why should you spend millions of dollars on housing in sanfrancisco?

New thread: Stage 1: Denial

I heard that Brazil is beautiful. I wish to visit there someday.

I would expect to see more evidence of them in my everyday life outside this blog,

Well, as an example: I've seen a huge increase in "for sale" signs over the past couple weeks, Marin County and Los Altos to name a few. I think the numbers also support rising inventory. So where are the buyers--haven't the lenders made it "easy" enough for them? ;)

Personally, I guess I don’t know enough about exotic options to mess with them - don’t have a handle on risk control, don’t know how to backtest systems.

Not exotic options, just plain vanilla exchanged-traded options. You are right that they are very difficult to backtest though.

Do you use mechanical trading systems for stocks?

As for gaps up - that is true, but I still won’t take a position long or short without a stop.

Same here.

I think prices are stabilizing finally in the BA, but a crash isn’t in the cards. We’ll see what actually happens.

We will see.

Peter - I use a combination of mechanical and discretionary systems. I must understand the fundamental position to enter - but use mechanical methods to time entry/exit. Positions must be in direction of intermediate trend. Exits are 100% mechanical

Do you develop your own systems? I tend to tinker with my systems until they break, then I move on to work on some other systems. In the end, I just do not have enough faith in my own systems.

Wayne S., you must be brave to use channel breakout (CBO) on stocks. Have you tried that in currency futures? It seems that very simple strategies (like MA cross-over and CBO backtest fine with them.

(Not investment advice)

SuperQ

True true. But there will probably always be 50% of the population that think the leader sucks, but I guess that's democracy. But you are especially right about one thing, the leaders would go to the private sector because all they're really after is power and money, and people of that stripe do stick together.

Re: Jamie and having it all.

I don't think it's impossible to have the time with the family as long as you are willing to adjust the lifestyle. My husband and I could have the McMansion if I was willing to work, stuff the kids in daycare and spend maybe 2 hours a day with my family, but what kind of life is that? Renting has allowed me to stay home with the kids and my husband the ability to work rational hours and actually see his family.
We are moving to a home that has almost 1900 sqft for $1350 a month. To buy the house we'd have to spend at least twice that (with 100% financing) and not that much less even with a decent down payment. I know there are those who think 1900 sqft is more than we'd need, but when you have kids, sometimes a little elbow room is helpful. :)
But really, renting is the way to go right now, we have a very nice lifestyle without living in a debtors prison. But there are those people who really don't get the sacrifices we've made. I've lived in a duplex for 7 years just so I could be home with the kids, and people I know think I'm strange for making that choice. But when I see how other people's kids behave I know for certain that I have done the right thing.

Waynes, have you tried some measures to reduce drawdown? (Like "trading" the equity curve with moving averages)

As to renting, you have to remember that people who buy a house do typically gain equity with time, so that huge amount of money that they throw at the mortgage (maybe even the entire income of one of the partners), doesn’t all go to waste.

But we are not in typical times... People who bought at the wrong time did go under water for years, even in the great state of California. Now, if they buy with a non-amortizing loan, there will be very little opportunity to gain equity over the short to medium term.

re katrina
how can you blame a human being for the acts of mother nature? .in india each year there are floods and thousands die. when i was a student in one of the missionary schools there was a huge disaster in diwi islands of the east coast of india. poor people just accepted it as their fate and whoever survived were just happy to be alive. so when you compare India, where nobody takes blame nor responsibility for anything the response to katrina has been as good as humanely possible.

but americans are not satisfied with humane response they expect every ameican to be heroes and superhumanbeings. In a time of crisis every one has a split second to make a decision either to run for their own lives or stand and help fellow human beings. i dont think it is upto us to judge these moments.

i think it is good to dissect out what went right or wrong

but not go so far as to bring criminal charges against non suspecting nursing home owners.

i love the usa,my adopted home land for 10 years. however i do think that too much litigation, too much of fault finding and
blame game may be couter productive

Face Reality

All good points, and one's we think about. Right now we rely on the 401K IRA's and other investments to save for the future. My husband already has six figures saved toward retirement, it may not be seven figures, but it's a start. I simply think that at this time renting is the choice for us. It allows us to have a balanced lifestyle. If we bought all our money would be wrapped up in the house, so we'd be absolutely dependant on an appreciating market to make buying a smart choice. Sacramento is not the BA and I don't believe for a second this market will sustain the gains made in the last few years.

You are right that it would be tough for me to re-enter the workforce, but not impossible. I am college educated, but if really necessary I'll take a less skilled job if it allows us to make ends meet. I was a school teacher prior to having kids. As you already know, teachers don't make the big bucks and day care would have eaten up most of that income anyway. So financially, staying home works.

As far as helping my kids buy a house in the future? The jury's still out on that one. I don't want to raise my kids to expect handouts. If the time comes and the market is still so out of whack that there is no other alternative, then maybe. But my husband and I are doing it ourselves and I'm proud of that.

hesses fan

Thanks for another perspective. It's too easy to forget how good we have it here and how high our expectations are. And there is NO doubt that we have too much litigation.

dear peter,
brazil i s an awsome country. i went to foz de iguazzu.
the water falls and the park is just amazing.

we also went to rio and sao paulo. saw a lot of americans there . rio is very touristy. sao paulo is huge huge metropolis.

brailians are very accepting of other people. they are very beautiful. very simple and spiritual. also lot of problems like drugs and crime and according to brazilians inept police.

most brazilians want to come to usa. they dont speak en glish well. their

What is your trading technique(s)?

I have stopped trading for a while. Only recently I started trading again. I still have huge psychological issues with drawdowns and faith. As a result, I spend time playing around with systems mostly in backtesting.

So I was mostly a trading system junkie. :(