Ben Jones & Patrick: Psychics or Super-Geniuses?
invite response
2007 Mar 6, 9:13am 19,352 views 179 comments
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Greenspan praising ARMS did confuse me. I don't have a good explanation for it.
Your theory could be correct, but in my opinion he was already too rich and secure for keeping his job to be his sole motivation. At that point in one's career, I think "being right" becomes important...
If applying common sense to an obviously distorted market is genius, then they are geniuses!
Now, this house is still for sale! The cheapest (and smallest) 5 bedroom in Pac. Heights. I do see that there is a seismic disclosure. I wouldn't think there would be one in that location.
http://tinyurl.com/2hbwus
For the record, I think Ben and Patrick are very talented, smart and courageous no-BS kind of guys. However, it doesn't take a psychic or super-genius to see that 1 + 1 does not = 11.
The idea that all the so-called "experts" that the press constantly trotted out as credible sources --with no challenges whatsoever-- could somehow have been oblivious to the bubble up til now just strains belief... to say the least.
OT, did you see this news on Bernanke's remarks?
He's putting pressure on Freddie and Fannie to bailout the subprime loans. I was just discussing this with a couple of coworkers yesterday and this is the worst that I thought could happen. Yet somehow I already "knew" it would.
I am just so discouraged that Ben might still be able to prolong the bubble.
http://tinyurl.com/3xsblp
The Federal Reserve Board believes that the GSEs' investment portfolios should be firmly anchored to a measurable public purpose, such as the promotion of affordable housing," Bernanke said in remarks prepared for delivery to the convention.
Together, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac hold about $1.4 trillion in investment portfolios.
The Fed chief said purchases by Fannie and Freddie of highly rated mortgages and their own mortgage-backed securities are unlikely to promote affordable housing.
On the other hand, he said, purchases by the companies of affordable housing products "might add significant liquidity to the secondary markets for such assets, thereby reducing costs and increasing credit availability to prospective home purchasers."
@SFWoman,
"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
--Erasmus
"it doesn’t take a psychic or super-genius to see that 1 + 1 does not = 11."
I can't wait for DS's take down of that Eurocentric assertion!
SFWoman,
That 5 bdrm condo could fit into Peter P's dream bathroom.
It's a very funny listing -- I particularly liked the "Add a garage???" suggestion.
Patrick and Ben have special triple-wound DNA with 3 times the genetic material and intelligence and other as yet undiscovered powers. People like David Lereah and Alan Greenspan, with their mere single winding of DNA never stood a chance... How can they possibly compete with that, even with higher degrees in economics and spending all day watching markets?
You jokers. Everybody knows that 1+1 = 10. You need 1+1+1 to get 11.
In the land of the blind the one eyed man will have his eye put out by the jealous leaders who cannot see.
Cycle excesses are standard and very foreseeable. The cycle repeats again and again. There is nothing remarkable in recognizing this. The genius is in getting the timing right - very right, and doing something to benefit from it.
The true geniuses are those who saw the bubble coming, bought property at the right time before the run-up at low prices, and then sold at the top.
Would it cause an uproar if I suggested that an infinite amount of bears, typing on an infinite amount of blogs, would eventually reach the conclusion of a liquidity bubble? Because let's face it, although it looks like the long slide has begun, in a year we could see that this was all some minor hiccup in the Bay Area economy.
I choose to believe that Patrick and Ben applied common sense about bubbles to Bay Area home prices. But maybe that's because I agree with them. :)
SP says :
Picture a frat party. One guy drives up in a pickup with kegs in the back. The other guy calls in the cops at 1am. Which one do you think will be more popular?
It's obvious by now, but I will say it once more. This SP guy comes up with really good analogies.
What are they going to refinance into, a 100 year loan? Some of these jokers couldn't even afford the interest payments on a fixed-rate IO loan!
sfbubblebuyer
2007 Mar 6, 12:12pm
They need to let the FB's get F'd in their Bs.
What? I meant banks!
In the land of the kings, the one-eyed jack's a joke.
In the land of the broke, the one-eyed homeowner's a genius!
In the land of the F'd Borrower Jackasses,
the man with half a brain is gifted!
Patrick
2007 Mar 6, 12:34pm
I knew you were going to talk about my psychic powers, of course.
Alas, I'm no genius.
Patrick
I would rather be a psychic than a genius. Lucky is always way better than smart. :)
There you have it, folks: we are all part of Patrick's Psychic Friends network. :-)
Are we going to start charging people $1.99/minute to listen to our vague predictions?
Really nothing special about jacking up the rates 17 times, he is just staying the course. He would have been stupid not to jack up rates when the economy "looked" good.
I am pretty confident that the last rate hike was the last under Ben until the next Fed Chairman comes along. The most he can do at this point is to keep the rate where it is, but I don't think he can defy cutting rates that long.
When Darth Lereah said :
"Im am your father Patrick, Join the Dark side and i will complete your training"
then I knew Patric was on to something.
per Par article...
$500,000 option-ARM, monthly payments would be $1,608 for the minimum, $3,454 for interest-only, $3,770 for the 30-year equivalent and $4,862 for the 15-year equivalent.
LOL my rent is only 1/3 of 30yr. at best I could upgrade at 1600 for Condo/TH
but that doesnt include association fees. Man .. Im better off renting and saving the difference.
Peter P
2007 Mar 6, 2:34pm
I just had a scary drive on 101 back from SF. I do not know why Taxi drivers are so aggressive in America. Their counterparts in Japan are always much more polite and safety-conscious.
Peter P
2007 Mar 6, 2:41pm
Peter, try taking a cab in Mexico or Brazil sometime…
I will not attempt that, thank you very much. I think we should make driver's licenses more difficult to obtain.
Peter P
2007 Mar 6, 2:45pm
What would a psychic say about the housing market?
Patrick Killelea says, "US housing crash continues."
Peter P
2007 Mar 6, 2:54pm
The thing that really ticks me off is that drivers in some country are aggressive because of the way they value human lives.
Should we allow the importation of such value system?
PAR Posted a URL that said:
> the East Bay's optional-payment ARMs jumped from 0.9
> percent in December 2003 to 39 percent of all refinance
> loans in December 2006
And
> A $500,000 option-ARM, monthly payments would be
> $1,608 for the minimum, $3,454 for interest-only,
> $3,770 for the 30-year equivalent and $4,862 for
> the 15-year equivalent.
I heard that many people that got the “option-ARMs†didn’t read the fine print to find out that they will not have the “option†to pay the minimum payment for long. I have heard that most of the loans will end the borrowers “option†to pick a payment and go to a 25-28 year amortized payment as the new minimum once they hit 110% of the original loan amount.
Since few people in the northern part of SF have a mortgage of under $1mm let’s look at a typical happy FB couple living in a Cow Hollow condo picking the “minimum†payment (doubling the numbers from PARs Link) on their $1mm loan of $3,216. They are happy to “own†a home and after the tax advantage are only paying about $1K a month after taxes then their friends in the area. What most FBs forget about is that whey they “pick the low payment for a year†they have “added†almost 60K to what they owe.
The “happy†FB will become F’d FBs after about a year and a half of “picking†the minimum payment when the neg am low pick your payment of $3,216 will end (the day the loan balance hits $1.1mm or 110% of what they borrowed) and the new 25 year am payment of $8,128 per month begins…
Peter P
2007 Mar 6, 3:11pm
How do you stop value systems from being imported?
Hopefully education will help.
Peter P Says:
> I just had a scary drive on 101 back from SF.
> I do not know why Taxi drivers are so aggressive
> in America. Their counterparts in Japan are always
> much more polite and safety-conscious.
I have no idea how much money taxi drivers in other countries make but in SF due to the corrupt “medallion†system (that the SF Weekly has recently wrote about) some of the poor guys actually take home less than minimum wage per hour at the end of a shift (even is the work their ass of and drive like maniacs)…
P.S. Since the wages are so low I can’t remember the last time I had a taxi driver in SF that was born in America…
Peter P
2007 Mar 6, 3:22pm
I have no idea how much money taxi drivers in other countries make but in SF due to the corrupt “medallion†system (that the SF Weekly has recently wrote about) some of the poor guys actually take home less than minimum wage per hour at the end of a shift (even is the work their ass of and drive like maniacs)…
That does not mean that we should allow roadway safety to be compromised.
Peter P
2007 Mar 6, 3:24pm
RE: “medallion†system
See, another distortion caused by market control.
Peter P
2007 Mar 6, 3:45pm
Somehow I find it funny that SF and capitalism appear in the same sentence.
Peter P
2007 Mar 6, 3:48pm
PAR, you may want to work with a good agent, one that will give you honest opinions.
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As the rolling bubble crash gathers steam, and even formerly hostile MSM sources now reluctantly admit the bubble --and its bursting-- is undeniably real, one question remains: how did people like Patrick Killelea and Ben Jones correctly predict all this so accurately beforehand?
Nearly two years ago, Ben and Patrick founded their now-famous blogs, dedicated to the national housing bubble. They boldly predicted its demise as "inevitable" long, long before most industry experts would even admit the bubble even existed. Now events are unfolding almost like clockwork, almost exactly as predicted:
My questions: how could such seemingly average Joes ever predict such events when the brightest, most highly paid industry experts could not? I mean, David Lereah went from "no bubble" to "correction's over" in like 30 seconds flat! If the danger signs were so obvious, then why didn't we hear about them beforehand from the NAR... the Fed... Wall Street? It's not as if these frequently quoted (and rarely challenged) "industry experts" could possibly have known about this mess beforehand, but just kept it to themselves for some reason. Like, that's just conspiratorial, tinfoil-hat wing-nuttery, right?
So, if the only way to perceive an asset/credit bubble is after-the-fact (as Sir Alan Greenspan has asserted), then how could Ben and Patrick possibly have known about it that far back? Are they psychic? Are these guys prescient modern-day Nostradamus-es? Or, are they financial super-wizards --real-life Hari Seldons-- who can accurately predict the future with mathematical precision, but posing as regular guys? If the housing bubble was so impossible to predict, even with access to the very best market data and cutting-edge computing power (as the experts insist it was), then how could two ordinary working-class stiffs manage to pull off such a feat by themselves?
Should we be concerned that Patrick and Ben are some form of genetically mutated super-geniuses hiding in plain sight?? How else could they possibly have foreseen the unforeseeable?
Spooky, isn't it? :roll:
Discuss, enjoy...
HARM
#housing