patrick.net

Clinton was rotten at military stuff. He just didn't need a Military, he didn't piss people and their countries off.

But he didn't LIE to them either.

2010 WHAT I WANT: Bay Area home prices will revert to 1997 prices + inflation
2010 WHAT WILL HAPPEN: Same thing as always. A shit load of people in the Bay Area will continue to receive multi-million dollar inheritances and keep prices ridiculously high... everyone except me.

inflection point says

4X,
I do not have any respect for either Bush or Clinton.
Obama has owned this since January. No one said he would have it easy or he did not start off with a handicap. His honeymoon is over.
There are already many facts in. Perhaps you could see them if there was a little more transparency in Government. I am sure that is coming any day now.

I understand, some of the decisions that have been made I dont agree with but I also see a certain level of pragmatism that is necessary when making decisions. Obama has to counter the negative attacks made by Republicans and choose the right paths else he will open the flood gates for negative attacks. Even if Obama chose the Republican views for healthcare, economy and war he will still get attacked.

Healthcare - If he did nothing to push reform, Republicans would attack that he did not fulfill his campaign promise

Economy - If he did not push tax credits, cash for clunkers, bailouts, etc., Republicans would attack that he sat on his hands.

War - He sent more troops, which is exactly the same thing Republicans have been preaching about not standing down....yet Republicans attack him for spending more.

There is no winning for President Obama, Republicans are going to attack everything in attempt to sway public opinion.

Tenouncetrout says

Troy will be bitching about the Obama administration before the year is out.
He’s like the only one of 5 people in America that still clicks the yes button on the CNN Obama popularity poll.

The Republican attack machine is swaying public opinion, even convinced many of you that Healthcare reform is a bad thing making it difficult to cut profits of the doctors, insurance companies that are gouging. I see you are joining the sheeple Trout, you might want to try thinking about the benefits of these bills before allowing the Republican attack machine to influence your stances.

"The Republican attack machine"

Where do they keep it, next to their "Republican Love Machine"

You guys invent the craziest shit, when you can't explain your parties crappy policies.

At LEAST republicans that loved Bush and his practices, just keep focused on the man, when you talked about him. They didn't venture off and give the Democrats credit for his failings.
My brother would defend Bush as long as the day light. Never blames the democrats, just admits those things we hated, is what he likes about him. He's a career military though, where did you get your Koolaid?

At the risk of being stoned as a false prophet, I predict housing, with the exception of various but very limited pocket markets, will continue to be stagnant, in spite of the predictable hype that prices and sales are "increasing." The banks are withholding literally millions of foreclosed properties from the market in an attempt to keep the supply somewhat manageable. Unemployment will continue to worsen which will further diminish the confidence of a high percentage of otherwise potential home buyers. Also, buyers of foreclosed properties have decreased which will further increase the glut of the unsold foreclosed units. The next huge financial shoe to drop will be commercial foreclosures which will further erode confidence. 2010 will be a very pivotal year. The Federal Government has already played most of the cards they have in the deck and it hasn't worked. Borrowing huge amounts from foreign lenders, printing enormous sums of fiat money without obtaining results spells a lot of trouble if things don't turn around dramatically in the very near future.

He’s a career military though, where did you get your Koolaid?

It's pretty simple. There's only two choices right now, seeing my country actively destroyed by the far-right or somewhat mismanaged by the center-right.

Can you honestly attempt to say the 1990s and the 2000s were equally bad??? Granted, a lot of the bad stuff of the 2000s got rolling in the late 90s (trade deficit with China, expansion of the money supply).

It's a scam, but I don't blame the parties, I blame the American people, nearly half of whom now think Palin might make a good president.

Social Conservatives form a pretty impressive voting bloc; they may only be 30% of the vote, but they swing 80-90% Republican. That's a pretty strong core to build a coalition on, as demonstrated by the Bushies in 2000 and 2004.

I'm not a Democrat because I love their policy, I'm a Democrat because Republicans are fucking idiots. I hope we can at least agree on that.

again your making my case, but you fail to realize that Obamamonium is just a continuation, he hasn't exhibited one single thing that would suggest to me. That we will have any positive growth moving forward. I don't care who started it, he's been at this for a year. And until someone actually addresses all of the leaks that is killing free trade and market forces turing around and creating a healthy economy, it will be a year or so from that point. He's been in office since Janurary. We should be at a turning point, where the horizon is literally months away. But it's still years.

Obama is really putting that... that thing... that stuff... umm umm, he does to use...

What did he say his qualifications were when he was running, again?

Tenouncetrout says

all of the leaks that is killing free trade and market forces turing around and creating a healthy economy

could you expound on this in some detail? I'm not entirely sure what "market forces" we need right now. Their work 2003-2008 -- in Wall Street finance, mortgage lending, oil trading, health care -- kinda reminds me what Katrina did to NOLA. "Free trade" sounds great but we have a rather serious trade deficit with China and OPEC and I think this is impoverishing us on the macro scale, not to mention the major move of offshoring and H1Bing all sorts of tech-y jobs to lower-wage Indians this decade. Moving to a Walmart-centered service retail economy isn't going to really work in the long run.

AFAICT we can't have a "healthy economy" with one-third of us with no discretionary income, 10% owning the majority of the wealth while one in four children living in relative poverty, and 750,000 people cycling through prison every year, and $700 billion being borrowed to police the middle east, defend Poland and Ukraine from Russia, and Taiwan from China.

Tenouncetrout says

What did he say his qualifications were when he was running, again?

No (R) on the ballot after his name is good enough for me. After 8 years of active neo-conservative and corporatocratic "creative destruction" it's going to take a lot of time just to figure out what the hell to do going forward. "I don't have any solution but I certainly admire the problem."

blind hate makes you part of the problem, and not part of the solution. Your automatic skipping of any "R" is not only sophmoric, but it shows a lack of individual thought. Shame.

An article I read said, "Now comes the hard part: Removing the tubes without killing the patient."
I guess the economy is the patient, the liquidity they've been putting into economy is tube, and those guys in washington are the doctors.

The funny thing about doctors is, most of them are not the patient, they never been, but they still say they understand the pain and know how to treat it.

And what we got there in washington are not even real doctors, most likely are spin doctors. No wonder if they've been putting wrong painkiller in wrong tube into wrong hole.

We will see what's gonna happen when the effect of painkiller is thinning out.

Wow it is interesting to see the politics injected into a blog about real estate.

To everyone reading this:

Bap33 says

Your automatic skipping of any “R” is not only sophmoric, but it shows a lack of individual thought. Shame.

I'm talking at the national level. Mr "Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran" was just echoing the dangerous neo-con FP adventurism that has cost this nation over a trillion dollars this past decade, and his employment of Gramm "The economy's fine -- you're all just a bunch of whiners" as economics advisor betrayed McCain's alignment with the economic policy of the conservative Republican establishment, the same policy that is also going to cost us around a trillion or so in misinvestment. Then we get to Supreme Court picks; I don't want to see any more Roberts and Alitos on the bench, TYVM.

I actually voted for Tom Cambell for Senate in 2000 and don't regret that vote since that bitch Feinstein isn't just a moderate Republican. I'd rather have a liberal Republican rather than a fake Democrat, but as long as the current Republican party is just a coalition of religious whackjobs, militarists, and right-libertarians, I'm forced to take my vote elsewhere.

camping says

Why are you quoting a 2008 speech? We’re about to enter 2010. Things have changed quite a bit since that speech. Everything he has been saying recently is that the Fed has to fight deflation - hence interest rates at 0-.25%. With such rates he’s trying to create inflation - it’s obvious.

And failing miserably. Jawboning is one weapon in the arsenal. Colorado just lowered minimum wage in recognition of the FACT of deflation.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=9456010&source=patrick.net

The problem is that the majority of Republicans and Democrats no longer represent the people that put them in office. Everyone is out for themselves. Lobbyists and special interests buy their votes. Its going to take something significant to break that chain.

Both parties have cornered the market in greed and stupidity. We just get left paying the bill.

Tenouncetrout says

“The Republican attack machine”
Where do they keep it, next to their “Republican Love Machine”
You guys invent the craziest shit, when you can’t explain your parties crappy policies.
At LEAST republicans that loved Bush and his practices, just keep focused on the man, when you talked about him. They didn’t venture off and give the Democrats credit for his failings.
My brother would defend Bush as long as the day light. Never blames the democrats, just admits those things we hated, is what he likes about him. He’s a career military though, where did you get your Koolaid?

Name one public policy sponsored by Republicans over the past 50 years that has been aimed at improving our lives?

Troy says

Tenouncetrout says

What did he say his qualifications were when he was running, again?

No (R) on the ballot after his name is good enough for me. After 8 years of active neo-conservative and corporatocratic “creative destruction” it’s going to take a lot of time just to figure out what the hell to do going forward. “I don’t have any solution but I certainly admire the problem.”

You failed to mention that arch-conservatives liked him simply because he was willing to invade Iraq, Afghanistan.

4X says

Name one public policy sponsored by Republicans over the past 50 years that has been aimed at improving our lives?

The clean air and clean water acts. Although that's getting pretty close to your 50 year window and way before what could be called (in polite company at least) the modern Republican party.

The sponsor of the Clean Air Act was Ed Muskie, a Democrat from Maine. It did pass Congress with 100% support from both parties.

On occassion, Republicans will vote for social changes but does that make them pro-citizen?......I am starting to feel that Republicans truly have no concern for social welfare and only want to focus on business intiatives.

Your thoughts?

4X says

Republicans truly have no concern for social welfare and only want to focus on business intiatives

you say this like it's a bad thing. To the conservative, business creates the wealth and owns the table and all the money on it. Labor is entitled to what it can negotiate from Capital, and not a drop more.

I am somewhat sympathetic to this, as it is generally aligned to how the world works. I see a role for government to break and redistribute the economic power of the few to the benefit of the masses, but as the Soviets demonstrated one cannot liquidate the capitalists wholesale and expect to run an efficient ship. The Russians repeated and indeed compounded the error in the 90s by giving away all the previously collectivized natural wealth to private entities, impoverishing the masses to the great benefit of essentially mob bosses and the connected.

Name one public policy sponsored by Republicans over the past 50 years that has been aimed at improving our lives?

Well, Nixon did end our Biowar programs in '69, including testing on US citizens and the dissemination of BW agents over the states of California, Texas and Florida.

Love him or hate him, this qualifies as an improvement.

wish i was lucky says

We aren’t used to the poverty that they have in other countries - so when the hard times really hit there’s going to be one huge pissed off mass of people.

We can live for decades on all the crap we've bought since 1995. Seriously. 1998 wasn't so bad, and anyone can buy a 1998 car, a 1998 TV, a playstation, etc. for pennies now.

All that remains is food, energy, housing, health care. Food can be subsidized (hello gov't cheese), energy too, that just leaves housing, there are like 20 million vacant properties right now, most with minimal costs involved in bringing them back into use. Obamacare for all.

E-man says

If we want to control our government and have them work for us, we have to split up our votes

? I'm a leftist -- I'm what everyone who calls Obama a socialist is thinking of.

I fail to see how voting for theocrats is going to result in more liberalism, other than through some aikido-like realization of the inherent contradictions of capitalism that the Republicans have a demonstrated talent for creating. Hoover 1929, Eisenhower in 1958, Nixon during the oil shock, Ford with Whip-Inflation-Now, Reagan with the S&L Crisis, Bush with the 1991 recession (my first as an adult), another Bush with the 2001 recession (we can agree that this is Clinton's doing insofar as recessions can be blamed on Presidents) and the follow-on Mother of All Bubbles 2002-2007.

Perhaps McCain winning last year would have worked out for the best. Funny thing is, I'm old enough now that it doesn't really matters who presides over the decline, my children aren't going to have English as a first language anyway.

If McCain had won it would have been pretty much the same stuff Obama has done without the health care mania.

Pray for gridlock in government, our only hope they cannot pass anything.

propitup1 says

Wow it is interesting to see the politics injected into a blog about real estate.
To everyone reading this:

You must be new here - that's half the threads now days. Driven by a few, I mostly just ignore.

pkowen says

propitup1 says

Wow it is interesting to see the politics injected into a blog about real estate.
To everyone reading this:

You must be new here - that’s half the threads now days. Driven by a few, I mostly just ignore.

Yea, every thread is political after the first few comments.

Thats because 4X loves the banter.

First, quick note on politics... I don't care if your left, right or center, most of us agree that housing prices in the areas we live in are too high. Most of us were not for the bailouts in the beginning, and are skeptical to the effect that it has had. Heck, even most of us are against the health care bill working its way through congress, even if we are for health care reform in principle. So, despite all of the bickering and banter back and forth, when you get down to brass tacks, most of us agree on far more than we realize.

That aside, back to the main point of the OP.

As far as what to expect in 2010, the biggest unanswered question as we entire this year is unemployment. Now I know that it's a lagging indicator, that they calculate it differently now than they did decades ago, and that there is debate as to which number best represents the true number of people out of work, but no matter how you measure it, there is no debate that unemployment has risen sharply as this crisis unfolded. If it continues to rise then we may be in for more trouble than we realize. If it abates, then perhaps the worst is in fact behind us.

http://www.fasttrackteaching.com/Charts7_Large_Unemployment.html

Well... here are my 2 cents. America will have to open up another war front in Yemen... the machines have already started rolling... Since America is already bankrupt and the Chinese have high stakes in Africa, this one will be a bit tricky for Obama. The question is, how long can Obama bail banks and people out if America has to open the Yemen front? With employment growth nowhere in sight, I fear it'll be a free fall.

wish i was lucky says

There isn’t enough money to pay for all the Welfare, Housing, MediCal, Schools, Unemployment Ins., Workers wages, Pensions etc.etc. and still run the Gov’t. We’re kind of at the point where you have to decide between food or toilet paper.

Funny thing is if they raised taxes -- I don't care on what, really -- California's high home prices and rents would eventually be pushed down in response and everyone would be happy. It'd be just like Sweden, but with a lot more Mexicans and Central Americans :)

is RE still "flat" if you factor in the Obama bux and other stemuli? It may be still actually flat, I just wondered if you factored that stuff into your thoughts. It is cool to look back. Good idea you had, hunting this down.

Reading this thread just goes to show that the handful of posters here on Patrick's page that post BS day in and day out weren't as smart as they think they are........most were terribly wrong last year and most of what they post in 2011 will be wrong as well.

inflection point says

Camping,
That term your looking for is inflation. The law of supply and demand.
Bernanke’s gamble is that the Fed can park trillions in the banks, buy mortgage back security’s and US bonds. They are fighting a rear guard action to prevent the collapse of the housing market. Unfortunately, the problem is too big. Those naughty MBA’s on wall street created a lot of debt.
The velocity of money has been low, not really moving in the economy (by design) which is what makes us different than Zimbabwe. He has been “successful” so far.
He will fail. Sooner or later people will figure out that the FED is the only buyer of government debt. The few other buyers will exit stage left.
Thats when the fun begins.
Just a note. I do not think any of this is really funny and I blame our government for letting it happen.

lurking says

Reading this thread just goes to show that the handful of posters here on Patrick’s page that post BS day in and day out weren’t as smart as they think they are……..most were terribly wrong last year and most of what they post in 2011 will be wrong as well.

When my kids were little, we used to buy the national enquirer prediction issue and tuck it in with our christmas ornaments. Then, when we were unwrapping them the next year we'd read what didn't happen. If you keep them year after year, you get to read the bogus statements of some who claim to have "successfully predicted" some event, and then refer to their actual prediction where they said no such thing.

It's fun.

Nomograph says

Looking back, overall the bad news bears lost. No hyperinflation, no new wars, no economic collapse, and RE was mostly flat.
Good thing I didn’t plant potatoes.

The further RE prices fall, the easier economic recoveries will occur. Otherwise it will continue to be sluggish for many many years.

thomaswong.1986 says

Nomograph says

Looking back, overall the bad news bears lost. No hyperinflation, no new wars, no economic collapse, and RE was mostly flat.
Good thing I didn’t plant potatoes.

The further RE prices fall, the easier economic recoveries will occur. Otherwise it will continue to be sluggish for many many years.

How do you figure that?