patrick.net

Oh.

Weird, I thought your profile was Brentwood. Sorry for the mistake.

It did, thank you helped me realize I had not updated it... No need to apologize, I don't want to be that GUY that is slamming anyone, I want to have a spirited well thought out dialog, I really feel for many reasons, that our Ca. BA in-particular is OVER PRICED and headed MUCH LOWER I want to talk about it, I live eat and breath economics (as a laymen) but I get off on the thought pattern it makes us think like.

cvoc,

Some inlaws of mine relocated to a townhome settlement there, the breadwinner works as a staff at UCB. I really like their location because it is easy bicycle distance to the BART. Of course they overpaid for it in 2008 but that is a different story.

They drive to the BART but since it is such a short distance could easily handle peak oil gasoline prices.

If you ever wanna get together at the Starbucks in "The Shops" where sometimes I go during seemingly endless weekend afternoon visits sitting around the living room listening to inlaws "catch up" about others who I don't know who/what they are talking about, gimmee a yell.

Wow, this topic has been all over the place.

At the end of the day, the pro-housing arguments are predicated on the recession ending and the economy (jobs, wages, etc) continuing to recover. IMO this is not a sure thing. We could quite likely see a return to negative GDP this year. People are still getting behind on their mortgages, banks are still failing (118 so far this year), unemployment claims are edging back up - all signs that the last few quarters of growth was pure govt papering. Now that the support is being withdrawn the downturn is resuming. And I believe the Dems are going to get trounced this Fall so the possibility of more stimulus is diminishing by the day.

Instead of pendulums and dams, my analogy would be a boulder and a hill. The govt stopped the boulder halfway down the hill but the potential energy is still there. If there is sufficient strength in the economy it could be moved back up the hill but I don't see from where that energy would come. Most likely the govt support will continue wither and the boulder to continue it's move down the hill.

So that's the reason I'm not buying yet.

I like the analogy of the Bolder being on the hill, rather apt... Nicely done. With tomorrows data (existing housing sales likely to be down 16% consensus is 12.9-13.2 Bloomberg) I think its going to come in worse then that, 25% is my personal GUESS with revised GDP at .5 consensus is 1.4 I think jobless claims on friday.

I am thinking 535,000 and that will bring the stock market way way down, on any giving day this week if not all week.

But bottom line this weeks data is going to confirm what many of us have been saying all of last few months of 09 and all of 2010 and we have a lot more to go through. While none of us want that to be the case, when you stop and think about it, almost has to be. Unemployment headed higher, foreclosures, banks, etc... we are in a deep deep de-leveraging hole, that should take about 5-7 years total, and we are in year 2 of 7 and very few of these bulls will be super surprised to see where housing pricing in the BA for example so much lower, and destine to stay that way.

sybrib - we can hope. But as i recall also, the founder the Pet Rock, who came from Los Gatos did very well. Couple of guys from Santa Cruz made the first Wine Coolers, bright idea.

Pet Rock.. well he made a cool million on that ...