patrick.net

User-volunteered data is of very poor quality. I never input anything remotely close to my real profile, I forged birth date, irrelevant zip codes, income and whatnot, and I know lots of people are doing it, for the fear of identity theft. Most people I know have dedicated email addresses that is not linked to their main email address just for signing up things. Those advertising companies focusing on user volunteered data are just fooling themselves.

so im kind of like a super-sheep, i tell the other sheep where the wolves are. BAAAA!

If they listen to you they are not sheep. :)

IMO "Web 2.0" is one of the most undefined terms ever invented.

Amazon must really be freaked out by me since I'm a dictionary-definition "intellectual": I read books of all points of view. For example, in the field of religion, I have copies of various bibles, book of mormon, koran, bhagavad gita, and so forth. I have copies of das kapital, mein kamph, the federalist papers, the prince, and many other wing-dingy political tracts.

I'm sure I show up on various govenment scans of "radical terrorist" suspects until they find out who I am. I have been cleared by all the military and "other" :) government agencies as a trustworthy person of the highest level, including being put on a 6-hour lifestyle polygraph fishing expedition.

Peter, I bought my Boxster on Ebay. My friends thought I was nuts!

" If he does it, he's in."

You mean that all I have to be is a weasel and I get a promotion. Man, I have been doing this life thing backwards.

You forget. I'm now retired. I don't care about that stuff anymore.

The DQ Guys are even more pathetic than NAR.

http://www.dqnews.com/News/California/Bay-Area/RRBay080313.aspx

But it's not realistic to think many sellers are going to drop a $600,000 or $700,000 asking price down to $550,000 just so a buyer can finance with a conforming loan. We can only conclude that a lot of activity is just on hold, hence the spectacularly low sales counts," said Marshall Prentice, DataQuick president.

Yes, Mr. Prentice, if you keep imagining that price declines will not happen, then they will not happen. It's all in the attitude. Pretend that things are fine, and they will remain fine.

"With the Federal Reserve trying to pour Draino into the lending system, it will be interesting to see how things play out if jumbo financing does come back online. Theoretically, there could be enough pent up demand, enough catch-up activity at the high end, to result in a statistically bizarre record median home price," he said.

Pent-up demand ? This pent-up demand has been going on for years now. It's still in the pent-up mode ? Dude, this was a phony demand. It was all created out of thin air by excessively leveraged debt market.

And that phony demand is not coming back. People do not get any more funny money to play monopoly. Now it has to come out of their paycheck. So keep dreaming. Keep singing songs that please your masters. It's entertainment to us as well.

@siba,
The mildly funny thing is that much of the Bay Area report from DQ is cut-and-pasted from the So Cal report. They are sure getting desperate.

We are going to find out soon that raising conforming loan limits is not going to be a panacea. There's just not that much more demand left.

It is interesting that sales volume was actually UP in SF proper. I wonder what's up w/ dat?

TOB,

What you say actually makes perfect sense to me. I worked for a company for years that had the sleaziest management. I would watch America's Most Wanted to see if they would show up. Now I see the logic. The only people that were safe in that company were the board and that was questionable.

We should not kid ourselves though. Of course raising conforming loan limits will have some effects at least for the short term.

I believe there is some pent-up demand. There may even be a small rebound in some prime Bay Area housing markets.

However, bear markets are full of sucker rallies.

I’ll work Voltaire and the origins of the word cretin into conversation and people might actually mistake me for being ’somewhat’ sophisticated

Or ignorant, if you repeat the origin of the word "cretin" described above. The word has nothing to do with Crete. It comes from French, and is an abberation of a French term for Christian. That is, despite his handicaps he is still "Christian." Sort of how we us the word "special" for a retarded person today.

Peter P :

Will increasing the conforming loan limit offset the -ves of psychology and tighter credit conditions ? If yes, why do you think so ? I would argue that all that will happen with the increasing of limit is a little bit of drop in the interest rate. Would you be saying the same thing if interest rates had dropped by 1% ? This has so far moved beyond the howmuchamonth payment thinking. People are thinking how much they will lose by buying now.

And what is this pent-up demand you talk about ? Of course, there will always be demand and every house can be sold in a day if priced right. But pent-up demand means to me that an above normal group size buyers *who are willing and able* waiting on the sidelines. The sales that I see happening are happening not because the buyer saved $250 on monthly mortgage, but because they bought the house 80K below asking.

There is no pent up demand. There is a shortage of qualified, able buyers at these priced. Period.

* at these prices

There is no pent up demand. There is a shortage of qualified, able buyers at these priced. Period.

Many on this board belong to this group, and any of us may capitulate at any point. ;)

This has so far moved beyond the howmuchamonth payment thinking. People are thinking how much they will lose by buying now.

In prime areas, people still have the will to buy for now. Some buyers were sidelined because of the jumbo loan issue. The new conforming limit will surely enable these buyers.

I would argue that all that will happen with the increasing of limit is a little bit of drop in the interest rate.

There seems to be an improvement of 50 - 100 basis point over the old jumbo. This is not insignificant.

1% is $600/month for a 720K mortgage.

(Alternatively, with the same payment, how much more can they now afford?)

http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2008/03/if_the_pluggedin_readers_are_right_jumboconforming_loan.html

(Since Randy is not back yet I have to be the voice of reason from time to time.)

Many on this board belong to this group, and any of us may capitulate at any point. ;)

Are all the 12 of us going to clear the Bay Area inventory ?

Please dude. The market started falling before the rates started going up. You of all people understand that this is not an interest rate problem, this is a solvency/servicing problem.

BTW, that Paulson guy is pretty proactive, won't you say. He is going to get tougher on mortgage brokers. I am so glad that he is going to save me from all the predatory lenders.

he leveraged all his assets

That has to be the most eloquent wat of saying "hocked" that I've ever heard.

The Original Bankster Says:
re: manufacturing. So we believe govt data when were trying to prove a point (re. SP’s very official looking list)

Here is the source for trade information -

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/press.html

It is independently verified US Gov data, so please be warned that it is not as trustworthy as The Original Bankster's data. :-)

@ DinOR

go ahead and use the Voltaire story to impress, but for the love of Homer Simpson, please skip the hogwash on the cretin etymology. I would definitely skip it in the presense of a Cretan - they tend to be rather idiosyncratic and even violent, in a Sicilian kinda way :-)

I should say that my last comment bears the imrimatur of my expertise in the subject matter. As an idiot, I know cretins intimately.

So are people formerly from Crete "ex-cretions?"

Sorry.

They would be Headset if only there was such a thing as "people formerly from X"!

LOL! Bad joke, bad grammer. What's not to like!

We should cut it out though. Our humor is probably in bad taste. Besides maybe there are Cretans working for the all seeing gov. dept. tasked with monitoring blogs for subersive activities...

Treasuries Fall as 10-Year Sale Draws Lowest Demand in 4 Years
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aokOVOAIBy30

Beginning of the popping of Treasury bubble.

Richmond sez:
If I want to buy foreign chocolate, I’ll buy Nestle’. And I do. NOT CHOCOLATE BUYING ADVICE

And if you want to buy American chocolate, buy something good like Scharffen Berger (although they got bought by Hershey, so they will probably f*ck it up too in a few years).

Once you've had good chocolate, man, you won't ever want to eat those sugar-loaded lumps of chocolate-flavored dog-crap that Hershey's peddles to the masses.

Only Scharffen Berger sells undutched cocoa powder, which contains very high amount of antioxidant. I usually stock up on those 2kg bags. Undutched cocoa is far more flavorful than dutched, sweetened powder, and of course much more healthy.

I am actually trying to look for a backup undutched cocoa source, just in case Hershey screws it up.

TOB
your post of 9:27pm is totally nonsensical - either you're drunk or you need to go get some sleep.

Cyprus' problems have nothing to do with linear B and the origins of the greek language and of course none of it has anything at all to do with the origin of the word cretin. I should stress that there is NO propaganda campaign on the etymology of cretin either. I would know.

Agreed completely on Hersheys and ScharfenBerger.

On the issue of GSE conforming loans (the new kind) can any of our resident experts comment on the recently issued standards? What do they mean? Is it a relaxation of standards or just an increaase in the limits which will then be of little consequence?

TOB
you have no idea what you're talking about. There is no issue of "indigenous rights" in Cyprus. There is no confusion on the origin of Cypriots and no connection between that and theories of languages in the region which may have predated Homer's greek. There is no conspiracy to hide the connection of the word cretin to the IQ of Minoan (or was is Roman era) Cretans.

You should look up non sequitur too.

My opinion on the benifit of blogging:

Everyone should try to get your news from sources where they have the budget to do their homework. Hard numbers ARE important.

Blogs are great places for commentary.

The value in this blog is the sample-sized slice of society it provides.

We have a few subject matter experts that are quite helpful for framing an issue, then we have a large slice of good ol average folks who comment within that framework. Kinda like looking at the market, the numbers will take you so far, then the phychology takes you the rest of the way.

On a different topic: how much does federal economic cheerleading bother you? Bush will appear on tv today to say the economy is not in recession. Huh? Isn't that like when the Iraqi generals where giving a live interview saying they were beating the invading Americans and the tank rolled by in the background?

TOB

Look I'm gonna try one more time and that's it: you are trying to find connections between unconnected things. Neither greeks nor turks are semitic. Therefore even if anyone cared how greeks pre-homer wrote noone would be using it as an argument today vis-a-vis the "intercommunal problem". And nobody is. Unless they are a cretin.

in classical teaching, the word cretin derived from Crete, in a much similar way that lesbian derived from Lesbos.

Yes, Lesbian derives from lesbos although it was not used to mean gay until modern times. Cretin does not derive from Crete. Repeating it doesn't make it so. A person from Crete would be a Cretan today and Cretes/Cretekos in Greek. Grab a classical greek dictionary if you are truly interested and look it up.

On a different topic: how much does federal economic cheerleading bother you?

It doesn't really bother me because it seems that the more the Prez says that, the tougher it is for him to go along with any bailout. To the extent that anyone will ask him first of course if he's out there on record that there's no problem, maybe he can be a roadblock.

I guess a "European Bank" refused Bear Sterns counter-party on a transaction earlier this week and the stock is down hard just after the open. Can anyone add to that?

I finally have my counterargument.

1. S&P claims mark-to-market is done or nearly done. Total cost *in their estimate* is $285 billion.
2. Fed, through the TAF, has put out over $300 billion.
a. But, the TAF only accepted MBS at a fraction of face value so total liability to taxpayer is 'co9ntained'.

On the face of it, I have my answer. The Fed has deftly blunted the worst o the over-correction forestalling the margin call and the spiralling of margin of collateral and margin calls. Since banks have only 60 days at the TAF we we likely see more to come from the governemtn to permanently hold this collateral to prevent bank insolvencies, but it certainly seems the FED addressed the correct problem - the solvency crises.

Of course, their are ample opportunities for Doom and Gloom still, but at least we are seeing the counter-argument I was hoping for, even if it was not articulated.

Wow - my little screen here is not editing properly. Sorry for the unreadable goop above.

OO,

Frankly having to parse your words so carefully is why I keep attendance to said events to an absolute minimum. One needn't have eyes on the mayor's office for the most innocent of comments to backfire. Besides, it's exhausting isn't it?