patrick.net

Japanese kitchen knives are sharp and they've gotta cut something. For now I will cut sweet potatoes and yams, then throw them in the steamer. The bank owes me, not vice versa. By not buyer an over priced house, I will keep it that way. I could get a rental or buy in Chang Mei, Thailand. I can also put up a small cottage on a part of a dear friends acreage/s in Nevada County, CA for a stateside solution. I could remain where I am in So Cal part time care giving. I won't be taking out a toxic loan or any other kind of loan. Far better to own parts of the bank than have some bank own chunks of me.

CB that was very rare... very few. I can speak for my experience at Intel and AMD. In addition to the IPO I worked on back in 1993 there were no IPO
shares except a few few. It was a different world back then.

Space Ace was correct.

My wife's dad used to work for HP, AMD, and a few startups in between. Prior to the dotcom time, startups actually paid BETTER because they didn't offer any IPO shares, and had to offer a higher monetary pay to justify the risk the employee had to take on, since the job might be gone next month.

Also, back then, the startups were of much better quality, because the benchmark for getting money was much higher (less cheap money flowing around). If you just had a biz plan and no in-house technical talent, the odds were you wouldn't see a dime from the VCs, as opposed to the late 90s (and the recent web 2.0 dotcoms), any freshly minted MBA with any remotely interesting idea could get funding.

There were far fewer rushed-to-market type of startups. Usually the startup already had a half-baked product with a few potential customers (PAYING CUSTOMERS!) on the sideline. Stuff like web 2.0 photo-sharing sites without any meaningful revenue stream would have never gotten enough money to get to the market.

The late 90s made it widely acceptable that an idea with no revenue model is perfectly acceptable. Just make it big and hope for an acquisition. So in a sense, we see far more startups funded by subprime VC money compared to 20 years ago.

Back in the day. I found working at top F500 companies actually paid less because your responsiblies were limited. In startups your salary was higher because you actually had more responsibilites. They paid more because fewer wanted to work for risky ventures and hiring was difficult. As I recall startup was a notch higher than goverment work. People seem to forget there was no such thing 'get rich from IPO shares' until Netscape IPO back in 1995. After that you could get away with rich stock valuation with no revenues.

I think IPO shares are great... they give employees great motivation to make a difference. Lots of fun and work...and the work was fun. I will never work for F500 again, but there are not that many great ideas out there in startups today. Keep an eye on NetSuite IPO ... aside from that I really dont see much out there.

I am referring to startup experience in the 70s and 80s in the earlier post.

Good for you CB... you must have been very early employee. Thats always the key.. get in early.

Sorry I dont go back that far to the 70s...

Defaulting borrowers will certainly lose that stellar credit rating of theirs, or the pretend stellar credit rating to go along with their pretend income and pretend downpayment.

The pain will be very real though.

I wonder how that would affect the FICO scoring system overall? If X million borrowers default and ultimately foreclose, doesn't that pull the skew further to the left? Like 40 is the new 30, could 600 become the new "good" or "very good" credit rating if we see precipitous foreclosures nation wide?

I'm assuming the credit bureaus set the definition of those tails (the "excellent", "good", "fair", "poor" categories), but I do not know if they're distributed evenly per capita.

The credit scoring system would remain unchanged. More than anything the lenders would want to avoid the high risky defaulted borrowers and be able to measure apples to apples across time trends when reviewing credit information.

Software as Services (On Demand) looks promising. Its a low cost alternative. Same or better bang for less money. Salesforce did well. IntAcct start up in SJ also looks good... as does OpsSource... all on demand software companies...

I should add SaS companies are tied to mission critical operations of an enterprise. They are a must have.... the downside is they focus on young to mid-level companies.. if we have fewer new companies than revenue growth would be effected.

make money by reworking classic hits

It took me about 30 seconds to think of a 'next big IT thing' which failed from 20 years ago that could be implemented quite elegantly now, although there are ubiquity effect issues.

newsfreak:

NINJA = No Income No Job no Assets

With regard to NINJAs, it will depend based on the person. My guess is that those who are true NINJAs will just walk away from their little sojourn in real estate, while the faux NINJA (no job because their real estate office closed, etc) believes he does have assets (his real estate, damn it!) and will fight tooth and nail to keep it.

PAR,

I have identified a couple of short sales using propertyshark.com. You can register for free and get 15 houses a day. They provide a lot of information for a free service. The downside is I don't think they provide info to a lot of areas.

PaloAltoRenter Says:

> I have a question for you engineers out there.
> I want to do kind of a mashup but I don’t know
> if the data is easily accessible. Tell me if this
> is possible: Grab current for sale price (from
> anywhere, MLS, Ziprealty, etc) and the previous
> sale price (Zillow).

You might want to send an e-mail to this guy:

http://flippersintrouble.blogspot.com/

The Chronicle this morning had some bad news for homeowners:

“Americans borrowed $2.2 trillion from 2004 through 2006 in the form of adjustable loans, which start with low monthly payments that reset to higher rates. As those loans reset, 1.11 million people will lose their homes, according the study by First American CoreLogic”

But good news for chunky single cat ladies:

“MeowChatters are people who create online identities in the names of their cats, and interact on Internet forums and e-mail lists and in chat rooms.”

Who says Web 2.0 is not big? I wonder how long before the Meow Chat IPO?

P.S. Someone posted an (real) link to the hottest Web 2.0 companies a while back and some of the people I sent it to thought it was from the Onion…

LowlySmartRenter,

To some degree... that's already happened. There was a time when "having good credit" meant NEVER having a late payment! (Let alone a BK or foreclosure).

Now having "good credit" means not having a late payment or BK in the last 2 years. Normally I agree w/Space Ace but when you really think about it FICO scoring is more art than science. Even lenders freely admit they don't fully understand it! My guess is that nationally FICO's will drift south as will the determining factors for "good credit".

As always, I'm making concious efforts to make my score irrelevant.

FAB,

That study assumes flat prices. Apparently the stated delta is 70K foreclosures per 1% price move. If that delta is linear (which may be a big 'if'), price falls of 16% would double the number of foreclosures.

The study also confines its attention to ARM's. IMHO the 800lb gorilla currently in the room is future deterioration in the failure rate of fixed rate mortgages.

FAB

http://valleywag.com/

If you want to become an invited commenter there I'll see if I can get you a password. I've written a couple things for them. Not only do the roast the Web 2.0 chicanery, but they expose how absurd the guys & gals running most of these "companies" are.

I'm puzzled about NINJAs.

Can they be people who cannot admit to their occupation, nor report their income, and whose assets are subject to seizure?

If so, it won't be an ARM reset that separates them from their houses.

I thought ninjas are just hired assassins, in this case, we can only assume NINJAs are out to kill our economy.

Q: Were NINJAs hired by Al Qaeda to kill our wrong God/Godless economy?

Japanese knives are very light and very sharp. The downside is that they tend to be more fragile and may be harder to sharpen. You'll need at least a Chinese made cleaver (high carbon steel please) around to do the heavy work.

Anyone here own Kyocera ceramic vegetable peeler? Amazon has some for under $20, which seems like a good deal if they stay sharp for very long.

astrid:

I think you must be right.

We could ask Quentin Tarantino... ;o)

Btw, my wife recently chose the "J.A Henckels" 13 piece knife set for her 15 year company gift. They arrived last Friday and we noticed several "blems". The block had "short shots" in the coating and you could see the seams where it was splined together. The handles didn't feel all that solid and then we noticed the dreaded "Made in China" label.

What a great 15 year gift! (What kind of message are they sending?) Uh... we'd out-source your job if we could but haven't figured out a way yet? Pffft, we boxed it back up and she called yesterday for the return shipping label. (I think she opted for the ladies Movado watch).

Silly DinOR, it's not too late to return that and get her a nice set of Globals for not much more.

Oh, nevermind...silly Company.

DinOR could still get her Globals or Nenoxes or if he really wants to splurge...

http://www.japanesechefsknife.com/KDSeries.html#WIDTH:%20368px;%20HEIGHT:%20258px

Anyone here own Kyocera ceramic vegetable peeler? Amazon has some for under $20, which seems like a good deal if they stay sharp for very long.

My only problem is that it looks more like a toy than a knife.

A dangerous item should look more dangerous than it is, not the other way around.

NINJA loans would be useful for people who earn incomes without ever having a job. Not necessarily black market folks (like drug dealers and prostitutes), but gray market people, like those avoiding collection on judicial judgments -- especially from marital dissolution. It's not that hard to "earn income" meaning "have things paid for" with a small businesses or two and a collaborator you can really trust, like a sibling.

RE: gray market people

I am sure they come without warranty.

Randy H Says:

> FAB http://valleywag.com/
> If you want to become an invited commenter there
> I’ll see if I can get you a password.

Thanks for the offer, but I waste enough time making fun of FBs on this site that I don’t have the time to make fun of companies that allow people to chat with cats (or pay real money for “sex” with cartoon hookers) on another site…

Randy H:

Agreed.

Still, I wonder what part money laundering played in big coastal towns' RE bubbles. And if they'll exit. Why would they?

Astrid,

Holy crap. $300-$1,000 for 1 knife? Does it cook your food for you and give you a massage after dinner too?

"Holy crap. $300-$1,000 for 1 knife? Does it cook your food for you and give you a massage after dinner too? "

I can't afford them myself so I don't know.

Though I would warn you against accepting massages from kitchen knives. That's probably not safe.

astrid,

"Now THAT's a knife!"

Actually her choices were limited to any item listed in their 4 page catalog. Normally I try not judge product quality by it's country of origin. I have a Malaysian made Fender Strat copy that I play a HELL of a lot more than my U.S made 1974 Strat so none of that really bothers me. Then again, I don't work for Fender (TM)!

I always recommend cold hard cash in place of gifts, unless I'm giving to somebody who can't tell a Cutco from a Nenox, then I buy them a set of Analon and know that'll be the best knife they ever own.

I always recommend cold hard cash in place of gifts, unless I’m giving to somebody who can’t tell a Cutco from a Nenox, then I buy them a set of Analon and know that’ll be the best knife they ever own.

We almost printed the PayPal Accepted logo on our wedding invitations.

"We "almost" printed the Pay Pal Accepted logo on our wedding invitations"

Brilliant!

Brilliant!

Too bad we didn't. The result: many wine glasses. We do not even drink.

I don’t give wedding gifts. It’s called tough love.

I always give devaluing greenbacks.

I can't say it's a direct result of NINJA Loans but now when you go to C/L for formerly "hot" markets (like Phoenix and LV) most of the RE postings are "Save your home from foreclosure" and "We buy distressed properties". And of course the inevitable "How to profit from.... distressed/foreclosed etc. etc."

Wow. What a difference from just a few months ago.