patrick.net

We are now in the 0.0% to 0.25% range for the FED rate. I wonder how long it took Japan to figure out that a ZIRP was not working.

Jobs, comrades, it is all about jobs.

I have argued here many times for fortresses to cave in big time, you need massive job cuts. This is not happening just yet. The job cuts so far are on the peripheral.

Want to see Palo Alto half price off? Google layoff will do it. Cupertino half off? Apple layoff will seal it. I am not saying all these people living in such areas work at Google and Apple, but that will have a huge psychological impact on buyers and sellers. And I am not talking about contractor layoff, I am talking about at least 10% perm getting the pink slip at GOOG or AAPL.

OO,

The only thing I would be worried about in that regard is that laid-off googlers would suddenly decide that investing in real estate would be a nice hobby. Flashbacks of the dot.com bust flicker before my eyes.

justme,

googlers are not that rich. Most of them are not. Look at the stock price and you can figure out whoever joined after late 05 are having their options under water, and there is a lock-up vesting period, so they cannot possibly cash all out at the top. Most importantly, post IPO, GOOG gives out very few options upon joining, basically you cannot become a millionaire from stock options. GOOG doesn't pay that well either, it pays below the market because of the brand name.

Those early Googlers who can afford a home have all bought a house. They won't suddenly go out to buy a second house.

Btw, USD crashes across the board today. Very nice.

EB and OO,
I think you both hit it right on the head.
My wife and I have been sniffing around the Santa Cruz County housing market as first time buyers. Places like Aptos, Capitola, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley and Soquel have had horribly sticky pricing... even with increasing foreclosures. Watsonville and the San Lorenzo Valley have been getting hammered, but both are fairly undesirable from a first-time buyer perspective. The former places all are much more attractive and have the farthest to go.

What we have seen is realtor foreclosure "specialists" pricing homes out of first-time buyer reach or the smart ones pricing it so low (still not low enough) that they cause a bidding war to break out. The bottom line is that we can still rent a VERY nice house at a rate that is about 1/2 of what the home prices should be. The foreclosed homes priced near (not really that close yet) a decent break-even level to us are complete pieces of shit. Over $50k in repairs to make them liveable. Excuse me, but unless I am batshit insane, there is no way I am going to stretch beyond my rent to drop another $50k in repairs to pay property taxes and further upkeep costs on a pile of crap.

All of the retiring boomer sellers are holding their prices or offer decreases just above the real selling prices. Their realtors (along with the greedy ass mortgage brokers) have convinced them and themselves that now is the best time to buy EVER. Then I watch month after month as they drop another $20-50k and pray some fool is out there with cash.

I don't know what is in everyone elses starbucks every morning, but there are only two ways housing prices are going back up until a normal first-time buyer (like myself) can afford a house. (BTW, an affordable house for me is about $300-330k and the decent houses are still double that in most places).
1) Wages Increase - that is a long, long, long ways away. We have nothing but job losses and pay decreases and wage stagnation for a long long time. Deflation at its best.
2) The Availability of Cheap Easy Credit - This is still around kinda. I can still buy a house with 3% down through the FHA program and those kind of mortgages are part of the price-sticking problem. I could buy a $450k house right this second, but I know better. However, the ARM's and no-doc loans have gone the way of the dinosaur for this generation. That kind of crap is like the 9/11 hijackings... it only works once, but once the trick is known no one is going to let it happen again. It took us over 70 years since the great depression to fool ourselves into that crap again, but I will be dead in the next 70 years.

So anyone that has been trying to tell me that house prices are great right now I tell explain the above two items. Hard to argue that either of those facts of reality are anywhere near the horizon... even realtors and mortgage brokers have been stunned speechless. The only line I ever get from them is "Yeah, but this area is different." It won't be that different from everywhere else when the google millionaires and sillicon valley money is gone. Every person buying a house now is one more person out of the way so that the prices can get to where they are heading anyway.

Btw, USD crashes across the board today

Yep, and the DOW shot up over 300 pts. Rate cuts and other little triggers have caused such swings several times before, only to give back the gains over the following few days.

Rate cuts does nothing to the stock market, but Fed will make sure USD crashes against everything else so that we can pay back our debt easier.

Trade with the Fed, I am all for trashing the USD. Let's go baby.

BTW, when are they going to roll out the 4.5% refinance? I am actually loving this depression or whateversion, free lunches everywhere. I hope we are all going to get some nice rebate check in a couple of months or so, after all, we need to be stimulated too.

Rate cuts does nothing to the stock market

Now that is a puzzling statement, considering past responses to rate cuts along with what happened today:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/16/markets/markets_newyork/index.htm

damenace,

The market hasn't capitulated yet.

It will, trust me. The Alt-A/Neg-am timebomb will do that nicely.

Btw, USD crashes across the board today
FWIW, I am putting in stops on my PM holdings as they go positive. Next cycle down and I am out.

I am so angry now about the ZIRP that the FED is going to use. I hope OPEC stops taking our dollars for oil. They are so foolish to not have switched to something more tangible by now.

EBGuy,

you have to hang on till Benny Boy does his "putting an explicit ceiling on US long-term Treasury yield".

I am not going to miss his action on raw print on massive scale, gotta take a good seat to watch that up close and personal.

EBGuy,

Looks like you see a reprieve and are going to take it! I agree.

OO seems certain the the gov can out-print the de-leveraging.

Time will tell.

I hope OPEC stops taking our dollars for oil.

That might have an adverse effect on demand from thier biggest consumer. A switch to Euro would inflate the Euro vs the Dollar, and the resulting higher USA oil price would cause American consumers to cut back. That cutback would put seroius downward pressure on world oil prices, as seen before when USA demand for oil falls. I have read that oil prices below $30/bbl would put serious economic and political hardship on Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Russia.

Want regime change in Iran? Don't invade, just do everything possible to knock oil down to $25/bbl. And if oil prices do fall that much, I hope we put a high enough tax on it to keep demand low, and have the tax money for US coffers rather than extra profit for theocracies and short dictators.

I am so angry now about the ZIRP that the FED is going to use.

We effectively were at zero interest for weeks now, the 30 year UST yield is probably lower than it ever was, Obama is planning a quadrillion dollar spending spree and the Fed reiterated it buy everything and anything.

Well if that is not paramount to having shot their load, I can't imagine what could be.

>> GOOG gives out very few options upon joining, basically you cannot become a millionaire from stock options. GOOG doesn’t pay that well either

All you have GOOG name to become GOOF Director in some junky startup ...

¡Ay, caramba! In a year when Wall Street imploded, the Big Three automakers neared collapse, and the economy plunged into its worst downturn in at least a generation, finding business and economy "leaders" who messed up badly isn't too hard. But these 10 might well be the worst of the worst.

1) Bernard Madoff. If the federal government's accusations prove correct, Madoff also belongs on a list of America's most active and energetic senior citizens. The 70-year-old money manager was arrested by the FBI for allegedly running the largest Ponzi scheme this side of Social Security, losing an estimated $50 billion in client money. Investigators say Madoff told them that his business was just "one big lie." Terrible news for numerous wealthy individuals, banks, and charitable foundations. A perfect way to cap off a perfectly terrible year on Wall Street.
2) The bailout trio. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, and New York Federal Reserve President Timothy Geithner decided to let Lehman Brothers fail in September, triggering a global collapse of financial confidence, as well as wrecking the money and commercial paper markets. The move also led to massive hedge fund redemptions, which forced them to liquidate stocks. And don't forget the ever evolving $700 billion Paulson plan to bail out the banks. Buying assets one day, injecting capital the next. And the crisis rolls on ....

3) Alan Greenspan. Now when people call Greenspan "the Maestro," it's with more than a hint of sarcasm. Many economists and financial analysts give the former Federal Reserve chairman a large share of the blame for the current financial crisis by keeping interest rates too low for too long during the first part of this decade. They also say the Ayn Rand disciple shirked his responsibility to ensure the safety and soundness of the financial system by resisting calls for tighter regulation of risky bank lending.

4) Angelo Mozilo. The nattily dressed former CEO of Countrywide Financial has become the tanned face of the subprime mortgage meltdown. Mozilo built Countrywide into the nation's largest mortgage lender and enriched himself to the tune of more than $400 million in the process. But as it turns out, lots of those borrowers should have stayed renters. Not that it mattered to Countrywide, since it could sell those soon-to-be-toxic mortgages to Wall Street and beyond.

5) Robert Rubin. It has been a bad run for the heroes of the 1990s boom. Now it's Rubin's turn for criticism, thanks to the unfolding financial disaster that is Citigroup. It looks as if all the company got from Rubin for some $115 million was a strategy for taking on heaps more risk in the collapsing debt markets. The former treasury secretary probably doesn't have to worry about deciding whether to give up his fat private-sector compensation package if eventually nominated by Barack Obama to be the next Fed chair. Doesn't look as if that call will be coming.

6) Richard Fuld. Not only did CEO Fuld watch Lehman Brothers, the 158-year-old investment bank, go down the tubes, but he reportedly got punched in the face in the company gym and was viciously mocked on Saturday Night Live. Under Fuld, Lehman became the single biggest Wall Street underwriter of mortgage debt right into the teeth of the mortgage debt collapse. But in the end, there was no lifeline from Uncle Sam. That was the knockout blow and worse than a punch in the kisser.

7) Barney Frank. This is a quote, from 2003, that the Massachusetts Democrat would like to have back: "These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.'' Turns out that the two government-sponsored entities were walking farther and farther out onto thin financial ice. And as late as last year, Frank wanted Fannie and Freddie to take on even more subprime risk. Washington and Wall Street have to share the blame for the financial crisis.

8) John McCain. At times during the presidential campaign, it seemed as if McCain was going out of his way to prove to voters that he really meant it when he said he didn't understand economics too well. He constantly misspoke about the details of his healthcare plan, let Barack Obama steal the tax-cut issue, and talked more passionately about earmarks than about dealing with the imploding housing market.

9) Barack Obama. If there is one piece of policy advice that economists agree on, it is this: You don't raise taxes during an economic downturn. Doing so would be right out of the Great Depression playbook. Yet even as the economy obviously weakened in the latter half of the year, Obama stuck to his campaign pledge to reverse the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts on income and capital gains for wealthier Americans. Indeed, Obama's transition website still holds out that possibility. And while there are signs that he might instead let the tax cuts expire at the end of 2010, that is not for sure yet.

10) Big Three CEOs and unions. It takes a special kind of incompetence to completely drain away the goodwill of a car-crazy nation like America. Yet polls show that most Americans don't want to bail out the automakers. As with the credit crisis, there is plenty of blame to go around, from poorly designed cars to fat union benefits and complicated work rules. Bottom line: Thousands of workers seem destined for the unemployment line.

This also marks the beginning of America's own decade-long stagnation. We have become Japan, without the cherry blossoms.

Also without the high speed trains.

Also with fat lazy people ...

http://trains4america.wordpress.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MbqktCxYl4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YiUexmgTC0&feature=channel

The video of our lives-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb5Ii0iIcXo

Gaia Online, a social network/virtual world hybrid, has laid off 36 employees, or around 20% 13% of its staff. Of those laid off, 16 were full time and 20 were contractors. From what we’ve heard the layoffs were unexpected by most affected employees - the site raised $11 million in July, and has been hiring employees as recently as a month ago.

=======================

Very Hard Day at Gaiaonline.

Given the huge downturn in the economy, we found it necessary to turn to staff reductions and other operating cost cuts as we head into an uncertain 2009. While we are still anticipating a healthy upcoming year, we're going to grow less than we originally expected, and we have to adjust costs to reflect the new realities.

Above all, our priority is to continue to deliver a great experience to our users. We need to make these cuts to ensure that we can do that for the long-run.

We raised a lot of money from investors a few years back and we've been careful to save most of it - so we do not need to make as deep a headcount reduction as most other internet companies.

But we have a tight knit team of great people here so this is particularly hard. The people leaving - about 13% of our team - are smart, passionate, and committed to gaiaonline. We will miss them enormously.

If you have any friends on the staff who are leaving, please reach out to them and thank them for the amazing work they did to make gaiaonline great.

Cloud computing start-up Egnyte in Mountain View, Calif. had the fortunate timing of closing its first funding round in July after bootstrapping the company since its founding in 2006. CEO Vineet Jain was already seeing a slowdown in tech investments that had only gotten worse since the summer.

"VC firms are not giving out cash, but they're supporting current investments," Jain says. "If you're a new company looking for funding, it's going to be much more difficult."

Egnyte's lean approach -- with outsourced engineers and a six-person core employee group -- has paid off in solid prospects for the business. Other companies are turning to Egnyte's cloud computing solutions to save money.

"Tech is going to be hit hard, but 2009 could be a fairly good year for us," Jain says.

Get some really great engineers, keep the team small and get some Renaissance people who can do a little bit of marketing, a little bit of sales and a little product management," says Will Price, CEO ofWidgetbox, a San Francisco widget startup that trimmed its workforce from 30 people to 18 people, many of whom can operate in more than one capacity. Though Price says there was nothing wrong with the staff that was laid off, "The cuts roughly doubled our cash-out date, so it was a big way to extend the runway."

Yahoo's script for performing the layoff begins when the boss walks up to an employee getting the sack. And then he says, "Thank you, [FIRST NAME HERE], for coming in. I have some information regarding our organization I'd like to tell you in person." The anodyne managementspeak just gets worse from there: "I appreciate what you have done for Yahoo."

http://valleywag.com/5106184/yahoos-secret-layoff-doublespeak-revealed

damenace,

I was a bit surprised by your report on the Santa Cruz (County) market, but then I checked

http://ziprealty.typepad.com/marketconditions/san_francisco_bay_area_real_estate/index.html

and saw that November $/ft2 was down only -6% y-o-y. It appears that the stickyness is indeed stronger than what some other sources have been stating.

Hmmm.

Well, with today's rate cut announcement, is there any doubt left that The Plan is to inflate our way out of the real estate losses?

Monetary policy is all about maximizing profit and minimizing loss for banksters, all the while letting the rest of the population pay for the party.

I was against rates cuts like many here were earlier this year. However, in the case of the massive deflation we're seeing, I think it is generally good for the majority of people to cut interest rates. It doesn't JUST prop up house prices, but makes loans cheaper and lowers investment thresholds as well. It is an inflationary move, I'm not saying otherwise, but we can always 'tax and raise interest rate ourselves' out of an excessive inflationary environment. I'm optimistic about some of the things I'm seeing. I can assure you in many places around the country home prices have actually fallen below their fundamental value, in fact there are some real steals out there, and people buying right are getting a rare chance to have a cheap house price with a cheap loan.

Fed has not shot their load yet.

I am waiting for the big RAW PRINT, big one. Ben announcing to everyone that he is printing as many USD as he wants, and he is dropping them from the sky, through rebate program, employment programs, and subsidy checks with an early expiration date.

"we can always ‘tax and raise interest rate ourselves’ out of an excessive inflationary environment."

Tell that to Zimbabwae and Iceland.

There was someone here who, rightly, called for ZIRP by the end of the year. I recall arguing aginst that possibility as I felt it would be impossible to get the entire world's central banks to all competitvely devalue their respective currencies.

I stand corrected.

Scary blogs by Mankiw and Krugman. In my own, "Forrest for the trees" paradigm I keep thinking inflation is the last thing to worry about right now. We have deflation and since we are walking in the footsteps of Japan, it looks like we will have deflation or zero inflation for some time.

But.

It really looks like another world. Japan could muddle along with its export machine and currency manipulation. Not so the US. The Fed is *trying* to create inflation and the people in this economy are insiting on delfation. However, the word noes not really respoond to our people, it is going to respond to the Fed. With our large outstanding, and growing debt, we are likely in for a hecuva whipsaw event.

About the only thing I can see is that we had better start rebuilding ourselves into self sufficieny ASAP as cheap imports will soon become a thing of the past. We simply must rebuild our manufacturing base.

I'm also more than a bit skeptical about the whole "deflation:" really being the case.

While the bubble was forming, "inflation" was measured by the cooked-and-manipulated-to-the-gills CPI. No "inflation" in houses ot stock prices, no siree!

But if the house and stock prices drop, then suddenly it is "deflation".

Again CPI is trotted out as evidence, but the only deflation in CPI is because oil had its own bubble and then fell from 145 to 45 (roughly). IS there *really* any other consumer-level deflation?

Karl Denninger is on a tear this morning (nothing unusual about that) about the consequences of short-term ZIRP, long-bond ZIRP and so on:

The argument keeps being made that "we had to do this" to save the system. But what's not being talked about is what the real problem was, and who we're trying to save.

http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/692-The-Idiocy-of-Bernankes-Bubbles-and-CNBS.html

It seems prudent to remind everyone here on a housing blog of an old economic maxim:

"It is better to buy cheap assets with expensive money than to buy pricey assets with cheap money"

Home prices are over valued. With rates low and likely going lower going forward there is pressure to jump in. From a purely economic perspective I would urge all not to use rates as motivation.

Of course, any who can withstand the loss of principle to improve quality of life on issues like: shorter commute, better school, better access to things you like, etc then go ahead. Not all decisions in life are economic.