patrick.net

PAR - I understand what you are saying. But it took under 5 minutes to draft a couple of emails and send them out. Maybe it won’t help, but it certainly won’t hurt.

They probably have spam filters that look for stuff like:

"bailout"
"bastard"
"taxpayer"
"subprime"
"pissed off!"
"ARM rest"

that eats the email before it even gets to them.

In the U.S. Senate, Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record) said he may offer a bill to protect consumers who were "victimized" by subprime mortgages they can no longer afford.

I'm normally the biggest 1st amendment supporter, but this guy should be burned in public for sedition.

IIRC Senate staffers do a rapid for/against sort in high-volume email situations. Some mark thoughtful notes for a best-of folder. Some may filter, but I've never heard of it.

Wow, has Hell frozen over? The LA Times published an editorial I wholeheartedly AGREE with for a change:

No bailouts for sub-prime borrowers:
Trouble in the mortgage market would be bad for the economy. But there's no reason for a federal bailout.

Look at these FB's

When they bought their home in 2004, the Sanons had a feeling they were getting in over their heads - they were right.

Very intelligent people! I have a feeling a company is going to go under....I'm going to go out and buy stock in this company!

Malcolm, please choose your diction carefully. The word "burn" can have many meanings. :)

PAR :

The Sen Dodd bailout plan is a an election minded hoax. He is just trying to be the first one and posturing to be "on the side of millions of people". It's pure BS. Happens all the time in politics.

BUT. "The Bailout" will happen. It could come in any form. The FED has no choice but to reduce rates. Maybe 0.25 or 0.5 to start with and going to 4.0 by the end of the year. It would happen by bailing out the GSEs and letting them buy back all the bad debt from the bagholders. This will save GSE's, this will save the Wall Street banks.

Our friend "theotherside" is jumping here because he thinks it's going to hurt only the JBRs. The truth is, it will hurt the savers due to depreciating USD. But taxes will increase for everyone. And not rain on his parade, but the FBs are not going to get any benefit either. They ARE screwed. The bailout will come too late for any FB to benefit even it comes their way. Only the big banks, GSEs etc will be bailed out.

Isn’t letting bad BUSINESSES fail a critical part of the free market’s “creative destruction”?

HARM, for the record, I don't think anyone should be bailed out, including (especially) the banks and the lenders. Banks are supposed to filled with intelligent, educated people who know how money works. They especially do not deserve to bailed out.

Let them all fail, I say.

Maybe some catastrophe is what this country needs to deter people from (a) looking for the next hot thing to "invest" and (b) spending money that they don't have on things they can't afford.

I thought something productive would be setting up trading positions for the upcoming storm.

Has anyone caught this article?

"You can't believe how bad it's going to get before it gets any better," the prominent U.S. fund manager (Jim Rogers) told Reuters by telephone from New York.

"It's going to be a disaster for many people who don't have a clue about what happens when a real estate bubble pops."

http://tinyurl.com/3defcv

I like Jim Rogers, the investment biker and adventure capitalist.

PAR,

(Sets down pitchfork)

That mindset is much more deeply entrenched over at Ben's. I don't think anyone here is seriously hoping for an end to banking as we know it. On the contrary, I've already said that subprime survivors will pick up and carry on where they left off. A little bruised but once you've had a taste of 3 pts. on a 500K loan honest work just doesn't cut it.

Banking as an institution isn't going to fail, here. Individual banks will. It's like saying the housing crash is going to ruin the american homeowner. Not true. It's going to ruin the FBs. People who own their homes outright, or who bought before the bubble will be fine. People who bought IN the bubble without extending themselves beyond their means will be fine, if poorer. They aren't FBers, just people who bought at a poor time. (And who, if they don't wind up having to move quickly, will be able to mitigage that 'poorer' a little bit.)

Individuals banks and individual borrowers who took risky bets on risky loans deserve no bail out. The banks will get bought for dimes on the dollar, and the borrowers will be back to renting.

Incidentally, there really ARE people who were 'victims' of the housing bubble. But the fraud there is more than "Get this loan, and if you can't pay it, sell and make a ton of cash!" That wasn't fraud. There was a place in the bay area offering 'mortgages' that turned out to be worded in such a way that the 'buyer' would never actually own the house. Instead the 'mortgage' company took their money, used it as a downpayment for THEM to buy the home, and then rented to the mark for enough to cover the mortgage. All of their contracts were set up to look exactly like mortgage forms, but they weren't. Helping these people get real mortgages for the original terms by seizing the assets of the company bilking these people and covering whatever else is reasonable.

Helping the idiots who bought into the housing bubble pay off their mortgages is not. Nor is giving taxpayer money to the banks who stupidly bought/funded these guys.

Peter, jokingly I mean it literally. As in tied to a stake, a lit.

Oh, Malcolm, I am sure you did not mean to do anything illegal. ;)

I know, we're just goofing around. This whole notion does have me a little pissed off because it is playing out exactly as I've talked about for years.

1st they paraded the lenders around, and even had Jesse Jackson testify about how all the deadbeats were conned by predators.

Now, the slippery slope reaches the bottom as heroic politicians discuss how they are going to rescue everybody.

My crystal ball tells me that you will make a lot of money on the back of both FB’s and JBR’s as a byproduct of your objectivity…

Actually in a way they are what props the country's economy up. They are the same people that order everything on TV for $19.95.

Why do they discuss tax relief in these bailout articles? The excessive interest is already tax deductible.

Malcom,

I was kind of scratching my head over that too? That's what makes all this talk so pointless. We've already bent over backwards as far as we can to accomodate RE as a "preferred" investment class what more can we do? Take over and make their payments YET still allow them to take the mort. int. ded?

Banking as an institution isn’t going to fail, here. Individual banks will. It’s like saying the housing crash is going to ruin the american homeowner. Not true. It’s going to ruin the FBs.

...Individuals banks and individual borrowers who took risky bets on risky loans deserve no bail out. The banks will get bought for dimes on the dollar, and the borrowers will be back to renting.

@SFBubbleBuyer,

Great rant --well said. You took the words right out of my mouth.

We’ve already bent over backwards as far as we can to accomodate RE as a “preferred” investment class what more can we do?

DinOR,

Loanownership is the Uh-merikan Dreamâ„¢, don'tcha know?

Listen Baby...

Remember the day
I set you free (on taxpayers' dime)
I told you you could always count on me darling
From that day on
I made a vow
I'll be there when you want me
some way somehow...

This "expert" doesn't have a f*cking clue as to what median mans ! It's kind of funny and sad at the same time. (Sad because people actually believe them as experts.)

From Realty times :
http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20070314_mrktconditions.htm

"The median list price for single family homes in Fremont is $730,000, and the median sales price appears to have increased to $750,000. That is amazing, since many homes sold up to as much as 8 percent below recent comparables," notes one local expert.

s/mans/means

A bit off topic, but this property is on my FB watchlist. Very exciting as the seller is now motivated (which means the listing should languish for another six months).
$1745000 New Price!!! Motivated seller will look at all offers. ELMWOOD (berkeley)
But that's not all, you get a discount if you let the realtor work as a double, secret agent :-)
***Buyers*** If I represent you with your offer, I will credit you back 1% ($17,4950).
http://www.teamfeusier.com/Featured_20_Listings.html

I think I have started sounding like a broken record. Since I was so outnumbered here, I kept looking to verify my gut feelings and post any evidence I find supporting my view. Anything that does not support my arguments, I just forget to mention here. :-)

So here is another one. Median up but individual houses ARE going down in prices. The buyers are not bidding up, they are negotiating down. See my previous post. And also see DQ's latest weakly SJMN numbers. The price per sqft has been down and remained down from the peak. From 507 for most of the spring-summer of last year to 485 for all this year.

If there were true karmic justice in the universe, the purported 2.2 million FBs who cannot afford their mortgages will sell their houses at a significant discount to the current JBRs (assuming there are even 2.2 million of us). Old FBs become new JBRs; old JBRs become homeowners. We'll even let Senator Dodd claim credit for helping 2.2 million Americans reach the American dream.

If there were true karmic justice in the universe, the purported 2.2 million FBs who cannot afford their mortgages will sell their houses at a significant discount to the current JBRs (assuming there are even 2.2 million of us).

There IS karmic justice in the universe.

How can you be so sure that we are not JBRs only because we did something wrong in our previous lives?

Well, I've written to my senators and to Dodd, suggesting that if they voted to make me buy people their overpriced houses that they retardedly bought when they couldn't afford them, I'd vote against them and contribute money to anybody running against them as well.

I also suggested that the bail out for the FBs that they COULD do and probably get support from other people was to let any FB who was forclosed upon structure his debt forgiveness tax into an interest free payment plan with the government. These people are going to be mostly financially screwed once they foreclose/short sale/mail in the keys, and letting them work off the debt forgiveness tax without having to try and get a punitive personal loan (with their credit ratings?) would give them all the 'soft' landing they deserve. And I bet you they won't buy too much home again.

I suggest uncoupling school rights from residency. School rights should be traded separately in a free market exchange.

This way, we can attain better efficiency and fairness.

Heck, let's just privatize all schools and given them merit-based subsidies.

To be fair, Sunnyvale is a relatively low-crime hell-hole. I think it is actually better than Mountain View.

Person, I agree.

Basically, the society wants whatever it cannot have. I have no faith on humanity anymore. I am just going to observe the unfolding of history.

BTW, a school needs the "arbitrary" authority to expell students for the benefits of the others.

So what we have today is people moving farther and farther out into the burbs and bidding more and more to be school districts that are expensive enough that the bad kids’ parents can’t get in, but without a specific law against it.

Exactly. Privatizing all schools is the next logical step, unless people also want to outlaw discrimination by financial status. Oh wait, isn't that just communism? :)

I am all for merit-based systems.

Maybe public schools should be like Xerox (I believe it’s Xerox anyway) and “fire” the bottom 5-10% performers every year. Would make schools better and encourage more parent-student participation.

All they need is to expell those who impede the learning process of others. I am talking about bullies and gangsters.

Believe it or not I have been the top 5% performers AND the bottom 5% performers in school. So I may be biased. ;)

@ Jon,

You're wrong - the JBRs in the great depression with tons of $$$ and no debt did in fact dance in the streets. They bought property at pennys on the dollar! You don't need a job if you have enough $$$ and no debt! Even if interest rates go to zero, with prices falling, cash is KING!

Paul

They’ll gladly pollute the education of smarter kids so that their kids can slurp up some of the prestige. Sad, but true.

True. We need an edcuation system that inspires children.

above should be @PAR

AHM is up 14% today. I bought some this morning and am already up 10%. I know you all think the Alt-A market is going to melt down, but I am betting it won't.

This is a risky bet, so I am only putting a couple of percent of my 401k on it for now.

We should not seek to survive a great depression. We should seek to thrive in one. The question is how.

The system is going to be fine. Even during the Great Depression, 4 out of 5 men were employed. The psychological damage done to people was probably greater than the reality.

True. I wonder why everyone is so afraid of recessions when most people will remained employed. Recession is a good thing because there will be fewer people out there driving on the highways and eating in restaurants. In short, less competition for resources.

Just stay employed and you will love recessions. :)