patrick.net

>> I have seen too many Chindian science and engineering PhDs falling for the same logic when they take out ARM or even I/O loans buying investment homes at the top

Agree on Chindian herd mentality.

Why every chinese couple I see has two children and majority of them one boy and one girl. How do they do it? Why not three?

@PermaRenter,

The answer is $$$.

It is considered parents' full obligation to pay in full for kid's tuition all the way through college or even graduate school, so an extra child = extra tuition. Most parents also aspire to leave one home free and clear to each kid, so that's an extra financial burden. Two is optimal because one of them is a backup kid, just in case something happens to the other one.

I know some who have two boys or two girls.

well compared to the typical boomer American parents, Chinese parents can sacrifice everything they have for the future generation. Not that this is the best way to raise children, but I have seen most Chinese parents pinching every penny so as to leave the biggest stake possible to their kids, and they expect their kids to do the same for the next generation. The end game in life is to grow family wealth as much as possible.

However, since they raise their kids in America - land of debt, quite a few of these 2nd generation Chinese get disgusted by their parents' frugality and start squandering early in life.

Well, you see, they drown the unwanted ones in the bathtub and the restaurant up the street has some extra-tender "peking duck" that week.

OO I have seen that with Vietnamese parents and kidds .... the parents are such pinchpennies because that's how they had to live on the farm and in the old country, and the kids get disgusted with it and squander ..... so then you see the parent with their teenage kids buying "blingy" stuff with the parents having this long-suffering look on their face .... part of the old culture was to give the kids what they could too, after all.

I wonder if there was this kind of split between European parents and their kids 100+ years ago when they came here? I remember Artie Shaw saying his parents just accepted poverty and suffering, and he was like "To hell with that!" and started playing sax after seeing a guy play one in a vaudeville show, wearing a silver suit no less. He then changed to clarinet because it's easier to carry lol.

I agree with all the views that said this had nothing to do with Math.

Buying a house meant paying X$ per month which is effectively 0.65*X due to tax rate (or some such proportion). Compare that to the rent Y being paid now. Only additional cost is Y-0.65*X. That difference was not much and houses always appreciate. Ergo, buy the house.

Most of the people I know who bought used this simple comparison.

Lose interest on down payment ? Why should I worry about that ? It's no big deal anyways. Property taxes ? Oh, they cannot be deducted due to AMT ? Really ? This AMT is too complex, I don't have the energy to understand it. ARM resetting after 5 years ? Who knows that happens after 5 years, don't worry too much. Opportunity costs of future mortgage payments ? Man, now you are really hurting my brain. Don't analyze so much, dude. House are never a bad investment. Just buy what you think you can afford (without actually calculating all this), and get on with life. Life is too short (meaning it's better to own a house than actually enjoy life.)

Oh I don't know? One of my wife's co-workers (Viet gal's) husband died while she was raising 5 sons. I remember the husband, great guy. Anyway this gal worked 3 jobs and as she got older the elder boys picked up some of the slack.

The boys understand her sacrifice so they continue to show their appreciation. Nicer cars (but no bling lifestyles). She was able to get them college but there weren't any free houses.

StuckinBA,

Best Description of FB Mentality for 2007!

Hands down! You've managed to cover the "thought process" from 2000 up to present in two paragraphs. Nicely done.

It has nothing to do with math - neighbors and co-workers buy a house which means it is time for you to do so as well.

Duke Says:
Step 1: Buy Microsoft Excel

Obligatory potshot: If that is your step 1, you have bigger problems than math. :-)

Anyway, I know someone who is smart enough to _write_ spreadsheet software - and she still went and bought a condo earlier this year. Not a Chindian either, but someone who came into some relatively easy money and decided to go ask a realtor what she should do with the $$$.

I have seen too many Chindian science and engineering PhDs falling for the same logic when they take out ARM or even I/O loans buying investment homes at the top.

Well, anything is possible with someone with permanent head damage.

Precisely! Even during Tangelo’s purported personally conducted phone survey where he asked loanowners in some of their neg. am. products why they weren’t concerned about the increasing level of debt the response was “the home is appreciating more quickly than the neg. am!”

DinOR, I just find it interesting that anyone could get a neg-am loan but a "day-trader" needed 25K equity in his account. :)

Seriously, this isn't Math or Logic. I tend to think this is a problem where ingrained historical "truth" did not keep up with reality. Let me explain...

Earlier, it took real savings to go buy a house. You had to scrape together a 20% down-payment, and show some ability to service the 80%-LTV debt load. As a result, houses 'appreciated' slowly and in any slowly changing system, there is less likelihood of a disconnect between input parameters and output result. Since the rate of change is slow, the results are more predictable and inputs are tempered by realistic expectations. And because it takes hard-work and diligence to get that money together in the first place, there was a certain self-selecting quality to the participants in this market.

People sorta got used to this - and buying usually made more sense for so long that it became a truth that people accepted without feeling the need to re-evaluate whether it still applied.

Once the fliptards started getting 90%-103% LTV financing, all this suddenly changed. None of the old benchmarks seemed to make any more sense, and short-term empirical data showed that foolish risk led to big rewards. This started drawing in more and more people, who were not really equipped- mathematically, financially or temperamentally - to play this. Dumbass rules started becoming common ("We are a 3 income family because my house is a third income, ha ha.") - and what was worse was that people began to believe that these dumbass rules worked, because they saw dumbasses made a lot of money in 2005.

Things are already changing now - and like all pendulant phenomena, it is on its way to over-correcting. The only people who actually have the capacity to even _understand_ what the f*ck is going on are those who have the math, logic and economic comprehension, plus the necessary patience to put focus these skills on an analysis of the situation. Your average doofus, even the generally sensible one, doesn't quite grasp all the things that are going on in the credit markets.

By the way, I spoke to three people today - lay people, not very acutely vested one way or another in the housing market - they all independently conveyed their impression that Cupertino prices have fallen based on anecdotal data that they saw in their neighborhoods. One of them lives near Garden Gate, the other two are by Foothill.

DinOr 3:10 PM ---- that is cool to hear about.

Frankly, the normal American standard for raising kids is to kick 'em out at age 18 to sink or swim and tell the little fuckers to get lost.

This after barely feeding them and showing no support for schoolwork or much of anything at all.

which is why I love this site! I want to see the US system as we know it and grew up in it just DIE and this site is.... Doomerlicious!

And here is my WTF-moment of the day - I see a reuters headline in my RSS feed, "Wall St sinks with Bhutto killing".

Why on earth would Wall Street sink because of this? Oh, I get the whole "instability" angle, but really? IMHO, this actually plays into Musharaf's hands, since he can delay elections and use the army to repress dissent in the grand tradition of military despots everywhere.

It seems to me that anytime Wall Street "sinks", the MSM scrambles for some one-time reason to hide a secular pullback. "Yeah, it crashed today, but that was because of Bhutto, and that won't happen again - so good time to buy now." I mean, REALLY?

And here is my WTF-moment of the day - I see a reuters headline in my RSS feed, “Wall St sinks with Bhutto killing”.

Thankfully, it has nothing to do with this:
Citigroup Inc (C.N) may need to slash its dividend 40 percent to preserve capital, and with Merrill Lynch & Co (MER.N) and JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) may write off $33.6 billion of debt this quarter as the global credit crunch deepens, a Goldman Sachs & Co analyst said. I can see the jihadists now: "Let us time this conflagaration to coincide with the analyst report from Goldman Sachs and the Case/Shiller report."

Whatever happens, a bank dies, a tiger jumps a too-low wall, blame "TERRORISTS" eco or otherwise.

SP,
I agree. They'll use any excuse they can to just tap the RESET button a little. They won't actually hit it. They'll just bleed the lamb until until the powers that be say ok, were in position, let 'er tank.

Basically they have to give themselves time to clean out the safe, the desk drawer, and the flowerpot with fake flowers that's stuffed with bills inside. And raid the fridge.

Then, let 'er tank.

let ‘er tank

Good. Then those who "foolislhy" saved cash can buy assets at realistic prices.

Headset says: Good. Then those who “foolislhy” saved cash can buy assets at realistic prices.
Mish vs. Schiff, and it looks like Headset is picking Mish (deflation) as the winner? I'd have to say Singapore, China and the Mideast investment funds might agree with you.

EBGuy,

You nailed it. I have been packing away cash in Treasuries, banks and Credit Unions looking to pick up houses after the decline. Those two Mish rebuttals to Schiff sound like music to my ears.

But if Schiff is right, I'll just be another clown like that guy who invested in a national chain of bath houses right before AIDs kicked in.

Let 'Er Tank! LOL!!

But you 'feel fng"? What, you feel like the fuckin' new guy? Ooooo Kkkkkk.....

At least you didn't say you feel like a REMF.....

There will be deflation on things you don't need, and inflation on everything that you absolutely need.

Pay - deflation, therefore housing - deflation, construction materials - deflation. Lack of confidence also means the credit market and stock market go into deflation

However on the other hand, the government will just keep printing, because that is what they are here for in times of financial difficulty. But the newly printed money won't go back to housing, stock market or bond market any more. A multi-year boom typically means mis-allocation of resources, so the newly created digital money will go into sectors that have been under-invested seeking profit, instead of bailing out underdogs.

Therefore both Mish and Schiff are right. We will have both deflation and inflation.

prezident Musharaf has a lot less power now. With the killing of the PM he is faced with a situation he might not be able to contain. If he falls... Umm, what u gonna do boy?

Marty

Dec. 2005 = loose credit for everyone!
Dec. 2007 = loose nukes for everyone!

Mhrist Says:
prezident Musharaf has a lot less power now. With the killing of the PM he is faced with a situation he might not be able to contain.

Well, we will see - I expect he will use this as an excuse to delay elections and strengthen his grip by re-imposing a martial dictatorship.

My point was that while this is a significant issue politically, I don't believe the crap in the MSM about _this_ being the main cause of Wall Street's slide today. IMHO, there are far more relevant pieces of bad news on the economic front, whose impact the MSM is neglecting to report honestly. EBGuy referred to a few of them. There is also news of more downgrades from Fitch, recessionary unemployment numbers, accelerating housing price declines in October, and... risk premiums jumped on lower end of commercial paper. Each of these would have had a far greater impact on Wall Street than yet another dictator getting rid of yet another political rival.

SP, I was answering why the assassination made things difficult there.
Err, about here... you crazy? We are fuked... Who is gonna own us is the question?

Marty

"historical "truth" did not keep up with reality"

Great observations throughout. At some point, even those w/ resources and half a brain began to see that it PAID to be a doofus! Once the David Lereah School of Doofu-nomics got traction there was no turning back!

I don't know if anyone recalls the tales of the jerk-wad realtor I was forced to deal w/ earlier this year but last night took the cake! My wife and I were at home when we heard little steps scurry up the stairs. Daughter #2 is on her honeymoon (thank God) and #1 was still at work. So we knew it couldn't be either?

Stepped outside and saw the most pathetic realtor "gift" of all time! It was a plastic Santa bag sealed with a twist tie and below it the caliber of Christmas card school children exchange before the holiday break! I (reluctantly) took it inside and saw it was the kind of cookies you get to stuff lunchboxes and some Twix bars and other assorted crap. The card said "DinOR Family" (like the clown couldn't even remember our first names?)

I didn't know if it was intended to be an insult or if this was really all the guy could afford? Truly pathetic.

SP,

I suppose I deserve that. :)

I am not advocating Microsoft, but I will say that using a spreadsheet with the built-in functions is far better then the closed form solution. I used to do it that way as the flaw with having an advanced math degree is doing everything analytically.

So trust me, get your favorite spreedsheet program and use it.

Then, understand the risk. After all these years of appreciating homes it is finally turning back to a time when we used to say, "I am stuck in my house."

"I am stuck in my house"

See, I don't get that mindset?

"Seller/Owners" (TM) (As it seems ALL "owners" are thinking about selling...?) don't have any call to be upset or feel duped. In the past (prior to the disconnect SP describes) a 15% correction would have equated to 3 to 5 year's worth of appreciation! A major stretch of your life down the tubes!

Condo flippers were looking for that A MONTH! So when the market comes roaring back the Seller/Owners should be able to recover that in short order, right?

Math aside, how many of these would-be-flip-ahzz stopped to measure their choices even had appreciation returned to more historic norms? Would it make sense to go teaser rate in a 2-4% environment?

So when the market comes roaring back

Such BLASPHEMY!!!

All kidding aside, the condo market over the past 30 years has shown so many falls that I wonder why so many think condos are a good investment. Maybe this time people will think of a condo purchase as a place to live and thus just another living expense. That is, for those who like to combine the disadvantages of apartment living with the disadvantages of home ownership while diminishing neither.

...I wonder why so many think condos are a good investment.

Me too.

I've come to think of buying a condo as the RE equivalent to owning a knockoff Rolex or a replica kit car. Same functionality as the real thing, (in this case a single family detached house: shelter.)
Intended perception: “I OWN my apartment... err, home.”

Not trying to offend… It just is-what-it-is.

I think this presentation (Money as Debt) is very illustrative in showing the falacies of our pesent monetary system.

http://video. google.com/ videoplay? docid=-905047436 2583451279

Usury or the concept of earning interest on loans had been loathed from historical times as evil. However this has been now been sold as an integral part of modern society. Fundamentally it is this "interest" charged by banks and other financial institutions which literally creates money out of nothing. When you pay X% on a loan or mortgage, does that X have a relation to any reality? Think about it. We are given terms like 'Market opportunity cost" etc., but are these real or just concocted to fool the masses. As I have mentioned before, in this forum, the branch that is Economics is a highly dubious subject, as it is practised and taught today.

Till we had the gold standard there was at least some basis for the "money" being circulated. But without it we are now literally creating money out of nothing. And it is the financial institutions who gain out of this and not the people actually producing the goods and services. This imbalance is growing stronger by the day as we hear the millions Wall Street is getting as bonuses, in spite of their Institutions running at a loss.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

"while diminishing neither" LOL!

After all we've been through as a group, it would be pretty silly for me to say my 200k condo was "an investment"! I truly was happier when all I had was "the disadvantages of apartment living"!

We'd been owners all of about 4 months when we were shamed into a $50 a month hike in HOA's. That aside, we won't even consider any dwelling that can't be paid off on a 15 year note (or sooner) without discomfort. Not saying we necessarily WILL, just that it's outside our comfort zone.

With the HUGE price reductions and withering demand we've seen for spacious pool homes in Vegas and Palm Springs I'm pretty sure you couldn't call those "an investment" either?

After watching "Money as Debt" video, I now understand:

1. Why higher tax is good compared to government borrowing and paying interest

Federal Reserve 1913
The Federal Reserve Act was the most important legislation of the Wilson era and one of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of the United States."[21] Wilson had to outmaneuver bankers and enemies of banks, North and South, Democrats and Republicans to secure passage of the Federal Reserve system in late 1913.[22] He took a plan that had been designed by conservative Republicans—led by Nelson W. Aldrich and banker Paul M. Warburg—and passed it. However, Wilson had to find a middle ground between those who supported the Aldrich Plan and those who opposed it, including the powerful agrarian wing of the party, led by William Jennings Bryan, which strenuously denounced banks and Wall Street. They wanted a government-owned central bank which could print paper money whenever Congress wanted. Wilson’s plan still allowed the large banks to have important influence, but Wilson went beyond the Aldrich plan and created a central board made up of persons appointed by the President and approved by Congress who would outnumber the board members who were bankers. Moreover, Wilson convinced Bryan’s supporters that because Federal Reserve notes were obligations of the government, the plan fit their demands. Wilson’s plan also decentralized the Federal Reserve system into 12 districts. This was designed to weaken the influence of the powerful New York banks, a key demand of Bryan’s allies in the South and West. This decentralization was a key factor in winning the support of Congressman Carter Glass (D-VA) although he objected to making paper currency a federal obligation. Glass was one of the leaders of the currency reformers in the U.S. House and without his support, any plan was doomed to fail. The final plan passed, in December 1913, despite opposition by bankers, who felt it gave too much control to Washington, and by some reformers, who felt it allowed bankers to maintain too much power.

Wilson named Warburg and other prominent bankers to direct the new system. Despite the reformers' hopes, the New York branch dominated the Fed and thus power remained in Wall Street. The new system began operations in 1915 and played a major role in financing the Allied and American war efforts.

DinOR said:
So when the market comes roaring back

Like a tiger in S.F. zoo...