patrick.net

A true capitalist society is as rare as a true communist society. None of these ideologies are truly compatible with human nature.

To me, the difference has always been about one thing and one thing only: Force (or coercion).

A truly free person (capitalist, if you will) will detest force. Everything is voluntary. You have a service to offer or goods to sell; the buyer either wants that or not.

A socialist, on the other hand, uses force and feels that is the solution to problems. Take someone;s money away by force and use it to "solve problems".

Imagine if the federal government didn't have the authority to do all that coercion.

Scene: ['World' News show on local telly]
Bryan, The Personal Finance Reporter: "And so, at this point, the direction of the stock market depends on whether the expectation of a rate cut in September will turn out to be real."

Katherine, the talking mannequin: "Well, thank you Bryan - let's certainly hope for the best, come September."

WTF? Has the notion of stocks going up all the time become such an article of faith that news-anchors are now openly rooting for it as "the best" outcome no matter what?

SP
[Not their real names, I didn't care to figure out what they were.]

Katherine and Bryan have side businesses as Realtors. :)

"Quentin Hardy says Wall Street is looking for the Federal Reserve to be its `love monkey`."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz2GDHfYkeI

I don't know how many of you out there are interested in this sort of thing, but here's a nifty new Google maps plugin for calculating your neighborhood's relative "walkability": http://walkscore.com/

Unfortunately, my neighborhood scored a poor 26/100 :-(. On the bright side, though, Rob Dawg would probably say the tool is hopelessly TOD-biased and therefore irrelevant.

HARM :

Thanks for the link to the OpEd in NYT. As much as the moronic calls for a bail-out are coming out, we are also seeing some nice rebuttals. Grant is a well known person and NYT is widely read. All hope is not lost.

We all said many times that Bernanke is in an unenviable position. The man seems to be doing a decent job. The cries for rate cuts have been going on forever and the rate has not changed for a year now. The discount rate window stuff is not a bail-out. The problem with that was the timing - that it happened on an option expiration day.

But of course with housing downturn picking momentum and election getting closer it's showtime for BB. We will know soon.

It is amusing that Bill Gross, "Mr. Bond Trading Master" has turned out to be a Pinko Commie.

It is even more amusing how "free market" enthusiasts preach the gospel of the free market untill it decides to punish them for their own mistakes, then they come crying to their hated Government to bail them out.

A bailout would only make the situation worse. The housing bubble was fueled by the same thing that underlies all asset bubbles: rampant creation of credit/debt. The only reason real estate prices rose so much is because people were willing to take on the largest debt burdens in history in order to bid them up. And the only way they could "afford" their houses was to take on interest only and adjustable rate loans. When borrowers need to take out such suicidal loans just to service their debt, especially in a period of extremely low interest rates by historical standards, it should raise red flags for the astute observer.

The downside of this bubble is the same as all historical asset bubbles: the market punishing bad decision making. Because the boom occurred on a massive scale, the punishment will also be applied on a massive scale. Those that took on mortgages they could not afford will default, those that invested in the asset backed securites holding said mortgages will not have all their principle payed back to them, and the pain will ripple though the system. The dark side of Capitalism -- Joseph Schumpeter's "Creative Destruction."

So what exactly are we to do about the people who are going to lose their homes? Admittedly, some of them are likely victims who were lied to by unsrupulous lenders, but the majority of them just wanted to get in on the boom and make a whole bunch of money on a real estate "investment" like their neighbor did. We could certainly use our tax dollars to pay their mortgages, but what kind of message does this send to the people who made the correct decision not to jump on the bandwagon and buy an overpriced house? It creates moral hazard and undermines the functioning of the system by tacitly encouraging stupid decisions.

Obviously, I think that we should let the market work its course and clean out the bad debt. It most certainly will destroy the bad debt that has no chance of being paid back, that is unless we have the Government go into even more debt to pay it back. The Government attempting to help with housing "affordability" is a big part of what started this whole mess in the first place--and housing doesn't look so "affordable" right now, does it? History has shown that it will be a lot easier on the majority of us if we take the pain now rather than trying to keep pushing it off into the future. The reason Japan had a deflation for 15 years after their stock bubble followed by a real estate bubble (sound familiar?) was because the Bank of Japan did everything it could to prop up all the bad debt that was taken on during their boom years. It all defaulted anyway, but the pain was spread over 15 years in a slow motion train wreck rather than having a quick crash and getting it over with.

There used to be a joke that "A conservative is a liberal who got mugged and liberal is a conservative who got arrested."

Adapting this to be the punchline for this topic is an exercise for the reader. :-)

SP

I was talking to a friend about this bail-out topic and it suddenly struck me that there is an excellent analogy for this.

Imagine if the government did for everyone gambling in Las Vegas! Would it be better for the common good? Would it even be better for the gamblers in the long run?

How is the wall street any different?

When it comes to the market, don't you need to have a loser so you can identify who the winner is ? I mean, what we call money is just a number that is used for keeping score. The smartest guys in the room can only play their games for so long before it all unwinds. Just once I would like to see the financially responsible win. Let's hope.

One might consider this an extension of Randy's point above---I'm often amused at how conviniently people define "financially responsible" in their own image. Who's to say that the savers are the financially responsible ones? Defined in traditional measures like putting down a 20% downpayment, that's the cultural notion of "responsible", as defined by the last few decades. In other cultures and time periods, a 20% downpayment would probably be seen as ludicrously small. Today maybe it's too much.

Perhaps the bulls, brokers, gamblers and hedge fund managers think they are the financially responsible ones. Instead of piling up money in dead assets, they are investing in the economy, which in turn creates wealth and jobs. They deserve to see that success protected. And there is nothing wrong with lobbying the government. It's a democratic republic, after all---every citizen can have their voice. Should wealthy people not exercise their additional influence simply because Joe Saver lacks such means?

Reserve your moral outrage for the people who lied on loan applications or deceived their clients. Getting busted for taking excessive risks is just a part of capitalism. But you can't expect the busted parties to just bow their heads and shuffle out quietly. Fighting to keep your assets is part of capitalism, too. So long as they don't break the law, that is a proper functioning of our economy.

Unfortunately, we will probrably have enough of a bailout to stop houses from falling in price to the proper level. This artificial higher level will increase house costs for future buyers/renters, since the pressure to sell or rent out will be relieved.

If new loans require down payments, that will put take people out of the buyers pool and add them to the supply of renters. Thus rents will go up for the houses that are available for rent.

People may have to realign their thoughts on home expense. A house cost that was typically 1/3rd of a families take home pay will now become 1/2 of the take home pay.

I know that higher mortgages should lower demand for house purchases and thus add to homes available for rent, but this is the factor I think a bailout will suppress. I say this because I live in a 1 million population metro area that has 5 large military bases. The military quarters allowance acts as a mini-bailout for this area. Asking rents here have increased, homes that were $1400 last summer are now $1800.

Brand,

Interesting point of view.

It reminds me of a newspaper article about credit cards. The article refuted the idea that people who paid off their credit card bills every month were acting responsibly. Instead, such "thrifty" folk were said to be merely freeloaders, using for their convenience a system supported on the backs of the minimum payment crowd. Exploiters. if you will.

Brand Says:
Defined in traditional measures like putting down a 20% downpayment, that’s the cultural notion of “responsible”, as defined by the last few decades. In other cultures and time periods, a 20% downpayment would probably be seen as ludicrously small.

Right. The ancient Aztecs required 30% down, and the Babylonians required 40%! (However, they had a base 60 numbering system which makes comparisons more difficult.) Further, the Trobriand Islanders require a pigskin full of conch shells AND high tide insurance, and that's no small potatoes...

The word 'mortgage' is feudal Anglo-Norman meaning 'dead wage' basically, an amount that was going to pay off your pitiful homestead and 1/4 acre farming lot to the guy you bought it off. The borrowing aspect has come about as banking products have evolved, and the 20% is a prudential amount set by the banks to cover their asses in the event of a property downturn of up to 20% where they also have to foreclose on you and they can therefore recover 100% of their costs at your expense. The banks have adjusted their risk profiles over time to the point today where we see 0% deposit loans with self-reported income and no docs, both inflating prices and setting up a credit disaster waiting to happen... and no-one in the banking or govt finance sector saw any of it coming! Amazing.

HeadSet: My objection is mostly to the emotion and moral overtones of these conversations. In your example, if paying off the credit card debt was the highest financial return activity for that person, then they made the financially responsible choice. They have certainly not deceived anyone by paying off the balance. However, a person carrying a balance hasn't deceived anyone either. They have simply made a different choice. We can argue the merit of that choice based on math and common sense, but not on moral grounds.

"The word ‘mortgage’ is feudal Anglo-Norman meaning ‘dead wage’ "

I noticed the "mort" (dead) in "amortize" also. I assumed it meant the loan "died" after a series of payments.

Getting busted for taking excessive risks is just a part of capitalism.

Agreed.

But you can’t expect the busted parties to just bow their heads and shuffle out quietly.

And why the hell not? When I went close to 4 years with mainly marginal/temp work in the early 90s recession, I ended up with thousands in late/collection fees tacked onto my already large student loan balance, which I had to repay with interest. I faced what (at the time) appeared to be lousy future prospects of ever paying it off, and felt incredibly depressed and quite hopeless.

At the time, I was told by many a more fortunate Boomer/Silent Gen (who themselves had little or no college loan debt at my age) that I should "suck it up" and "stop whining". I was told that learning to repay my debts was a character-building experience and would teach me the downside of leverage. In the end, of course, I did just that, and I later realized that they were basically right. Took me 11 years and much in the way of fogone gratification, few luxuries like eating out/movies, vacations, no new cars, etc.

If I had to make good on my debts, why should parasitic motherf*ckers like hedge fund managers and Ponzi scheme specuvestors get a free pass courtesy of taxpayers?

"they are investing in the economy, which in turn creates wealth and jobs. They deserve to see that success protected.

I hope you were being tongue-in-cheek with this. What "wealth" have these debt-pushing parasites created? What product/service have they produced that was of any benefit to society? What have they accomplished except lining their own pockets via asset speculation, with the added "benefit" of bankrupting a sizeable chunk of the middle and working class?

You were joking here, right?

here used to be a joke that “A conservative is a liberal who got mugged and liberal is a conservative who got arrested.”

Even more OT, but a variation on this I've heard is that, "if you're young and not a liberal, you're heartless. If you're old and not a conservative, you're stupid."

The word ‘mortgage’ is feudal Anglo-Norman meaning ‘dead wage’

I've heard that, too. However, I was always hoping that the real meaning for "mortgage" re: mort = death was that you paid the thing until you were basically dead.

Brand,

My post was intended to be in the same spirit as your post.

Instead of logos, the newspaper article used good ol' ethos. The article claimed it was immoral per se to pay the balance each month.

HARM says: If I had to make good on my debts, why should parasitic motherf*ckers like hedge fund managers and Ponzi scheme specuvestors get a free pass courtesy of taxpayers?

Let's separate the emotional aspect from the financial mechanics. You can't argue that your life sucked thanks to your finances, and thus all financial failure must result in peoples' lives sucking. Sometimes people get lucky and sidestep a bullet, and you can't really begrudge them that.

From a pure financial mechanics perspective, if you had access to a method of curing your debts via your contacts and influence, would you not have done so? These guys have the importance and means to tap their powerful friends for favors. Unless it's outright corruption, what moral flaw exists there? The printing presses don't run for Senor HARM, but they might run for Bernanke's buddies. Is that wrong? Money is just a tool, after all, and it can't be "fair" to everybody at every moment ("fair" in quotes because that's subjective anyway).

HARM says: What “wealth” have these debt-pushing parasites created? What product/service have they produced that was of any benefit to society? What have they accomplished except lining their own pockets via asset speculation, with the added “benefit” of bankrupting a sizeable chunk of the middle and working class?

They used their cleverness to generate very large returns on their investments. Isn't that what all of us aspire to financially? A great many VCs, private equity firms and hedge funds have invested into sectors like biomed, tech, industrial, financial and real estate. Those investments create jobs and keep the economy moving forward. Sure there are a few real jerks, but for the most part these guys are straight-up investors who become employers and producers in the U.S. economy.

I fail to see how anyone has "bankrupted a sizeable chunk of the middle and working class." You're going to have to fill me in there.

Brand :

Appreciate your contrarian point of view. But pimping houses to each other does not CREATE real wealth, only an illusion of wealth.

Now how much of the responsibility rests with borrowers, mortgage brokers, brokers of MBS, buyers of MBS, rating agencies, politicians, Fed etc will be an eternal debate.

It was all probably perfectly legal. If no one broke the law, no one gets punished. Clamoring for the bail out is also their legal right. Ridiculing them as cheap un-capitalistic is our right and we are right in doing so.

@Brand,

So "might makes right" then? The end justifies the means, especially if your rich/well connected enough to be above the rules and basically buy your way out of debtor's prison?

Hmmm... questionable ethics, there.

I fail to see how anyone has “bankrupted a sizeable chunk of the middle and working class.” You’re going to have to fill me in there.

In case you haven't heard, a lot of people out there took on some dodgy mortgages to buy houses they could not afford --some by choice, others due to questionable bait-n-switch tactics and/or outright fraud by commission-hungry brokers. Foreclosures and bankruptcy filings --despite so-called BK "reform"-- are up and rising. As we get further into the current multi-year cycle of option-ARM resets, we can reasonably expect these levels to rise even higher.

A great many VCs, private equity firms and hedge funds have invested into sectors like biomed, tech, industrial, financial and real estate. Those investments create jobs and keep the economy moving forward.

Conflating actual entrepreneurs (like Randy) who add real value, create real jobs and build real products with toxic-debt pushers insults the real entrepreneurs. These assholes (brokers, neg-am/NINJA lenders, MBS/CMO pimps) are the Wall Street equivalent of neighborhood drug pushers.

Changing tracks here a little bit.

Isn't Evergreen area of San Jose part of Bay Area ? It was another "hot" area which the rich Asian immigrants were supposed to keep high forever. It seems to be in a bit of trouble though.

The inventory id over 500 now ! It never went above 400 in 2006. ZipRealty shows over 100 reduced listings for prices less than 1M.

One sad case is for MLS 743115.
Desperate situation. Running out of time. Divorce sale huge house with a pool and spa.

And an interesting case where the cut the price by 40K after one week on the market. MLS 744952.

It's time to officially declare Evergreen as not part of BA. Prices can never fall in BA.

Brand,

Are you just jerking my chain here/playing devil's advocate, or are you being serious?

Anyone else seeing rents rising in their area?

If so, another reason not to have a bailout.

Brand subscribes to the 'every man is an island, entire unto himself' belief system that never questions the logic of where the money comes from, or the utility of the work performed, or the question of equality of human reward and a stable and decent social settlement. Fortunately, other people do think of these things, which prevents societies falling apart totally at the seams.

skibum Says:
Even more OT, but a variation on this

Actually, the joke I referred to was very much on-topic to this thread about opportunistic capitalists.

Ob-housing:
12973 PIERCE RD, Saratoga, CA 95070
Price Reduced: 07/24/07 -- $1,978,000 to $1,928,000
Price Reduced: 08/03/07 -- $1,928,000 to $1,850,000
Price Reduced: 08/15/07 -- $1,850,000 to $1,780,000
Price Reduced: 08/16/07 -- $1,780,000 to $1,699,000

Nearly 300K drop in 45 days on the market. Are sellers finally catching on?

SP

And here's another one - a 6 acre vacant lot on Peach Hill Road, adjacent to Villa Montalvo arboretum.

Price Reduced: 02/10/07 -- $3,500,000 to $2,500,000

SP

The sale history on the 12973 PIERCE RD, Saratoga, CA 95070 is 10/31/1996: $480,000.
The 10yr graph shows that the value was $600,000 on Jan 05. How the heck can it be valued at $1.6 mil in another 2 yrs??

@Brand

Say a developer likes your choice piece of real estate that you are living upon. Convinces your city to evict you under eminent domain, paying you only what you originally paid 10 years ago (so you lost out on appreciation and inflation gains, not to speak of speculative gains). By your thesis, them's the breaks, the developer simply used legal avenues of influence to equitably pursue their interests. By what standards and values do you say this scenario is equitable?

If there is a bailout, then I will know as a rational investor that the American financial system has truly taken leave of its senses to assign ever-increasing valuation to the simple activity of trading houses to each other irrespective of fundamentals. And I'll feel even better about my wife's and my decision to leave, start a new business offshore, shift out of dollar-denominated assets in our investments, lay low, and pursue multiple citizenships, while sitting out the hopefully temporary fiscal insanity that grips the nation. Remember, you wouldn't even be able to so glibly talk about the equitability of a bailout were it not for the American dollar's reserve currency status. Lesser currency regimes that talk of such imprudent ventures are thoroughly and roundly thrashed in the FX markets pronto, so I have no idea where you get the notion that the dollar regime can get away with the same.

My business is having its best year ever this year, and there are increasing confirmations that I've developed a niche that is relatively recession-proof (as if successfully starting the business in the middle of the dot bomb wasn't verification enough), but that doesn't blind me to the steady erosion of the middle class. If wage to housing expense ratios and other fundamentals don't re-align, then the consequences aren't going to be pretty for an economy so heavily dependent upon consumer spending. A bailout will only exacerbate the erosion.

StuckInBA says: It was all probably perfectly legal. If no one broke the law, no one gets punished. Clamoring for the bail out is also their legal right. Ridiculing them as cheap un-capitalistic is our right and we are right in doing so.

Stuck, I believe you understand what I am saying, although perhaps we disagree. While people may have been financially irresponsible during the bubble, I do not feel that is the same as a moral infraction. Foolishness is not necessarily immoral. Likewise, I do not think that offering liquidity to big banks is a moral issue. It is one of financial responsibility within the nation. Our leaders must decide who gets the money and who doesn't. There will be some immoral behavior during that process, but the vast majority of it will be with good intentions. I think we can scoff at foolishness, but I get annoyed when fools are automatically painted as morally stunted misanthropes.

HARM says: So “might makes right” then? The end justifies the means, especially if your rich/well connected enough to be above the rules and basically buy your way out of debtor’s prison?

In effect, I proposed that from the morality point of view, the end justifies the means UNTIL you do something truly immoral. Asking for money is not immoral. Providing money is also not immoral until it seriously affects another moral obligation.

I happen to think many such actions are unwise, but foolish is not the same as evil.

In case you haven’t heard, a lot of people out there took on some dodgy mortgages to buy houses they could not afford –some by choice, others due to questionable bait-n-switch tactics and/or outright fraud by commission-hungry brokers.

The former is simply foolish, the latter immoral. The latter should be punished with the full pressure of U.S. criminal and civil law. My point is simply that being stupid and buying a house that you can't afford is not immoral. It is obviously foolish, but those are not the same thing. Read my reply to Headset. I am not disputing that a lot of fools did financially foolish things in the last years. I am simply disputing that all the fools are uniformly bad people, and that our tremendous wisdom gives us the right to judge them from a moral standpoint. I am extremely tired of the self-righteous attitude of people celebrating others' folly and the resulting humiliation and pain.

Sidestepping a financial blunder might make people here wiser. It does not necessarily make them morally superior.

Brand's perspective is reasonable, and I don't think anyone should get exercised about out. It's just that he's arguing an abstract point from a relativistic philosophy point of view. I'm a bit surprised DS doesn't see the irony in that, what with relative bias in narratives and all. After all, isn't it the ruling regime that defines the normative, by definition.

The problem with Brand's type of argument is that they difficult to refute on an equal footing. But they also strike many people as viscerally "wrong". So the counter arguments are practical in nature, and you end up with people getting bent out of shape when they're comparing apples to oranges anyway.

The credit card example was a perfect one. From the credit card providers' point of view, people who pay their balance in full are categorically free-riders. They not only cost the credit card company profits (boo hoo), but they cost the merchants transaction fees, and they cost all the other credit users their aggregate portion of burden. Add in reward points or airline miles and the burden spreads further. But from the perspective of the credit holder who pays in full -- like I admittedly do and have done for years -- they are anything but free-riders. They're responsible/smart/clever/moral/etc.

And the line is somewhat arbitrary. Most here would probably say that paying your credit cards in full every month is just plain smart and not at all immoral or otherwise unseemly. But I suspect many of us would also say that someone who habitually transfered money from card-to-card before paying it off only to create free rewards was somehow working the system and exploiting a loophole. (I know you can't do this much anymore, but a few years ago you could cycle money through 3-4 cards every couple months quite easily).

I learned this lesson when I was a kid in bumpkusville Ohio. My friend and I figured out a loophole in a Dairy Queen contest that effectively allowed you to go get a free banana split every hour, after buying the first one. We did this one Saturday a few times, then we started getting them for other kids and showing them how to do it too. The owners canceled the contest when they ran out of bananas. In the end I ended up losing most of what I'd eaten and the owners refused to run any more contests. I'm not sure who was more clever.

apostasy says: Remember, you wouldn’t even be able to so glibly talk about the equitability of a bailout were it not for the American dollar’s reserve currency status.

It's only money. The rich already have massively more of it than I. That was true before a bailout, it will be true after a bailout, and it will even in the absence of a bailout at all.

What I consider quite "equitable" is the fact that I live in a country with hugely better healthcare, technology, nutrition, infrastructure and entertainment as compared to any previous generation. I can vote, write and worship as I please; I have a considerable list of human rights. As long as that progress keeps steadily marching along, I have relatively few objections to the obscenely rich getting even richer. If they dodge a couple financial bullets by having the right connections, it doesn't bother me until they break the law.

Somebody posted an article about how the middle class chases the appearance of luxury, effectively lowering its own standard of living in the process. I am not one of those people. In fact, I've posted many rants about people nearly bankrupting themselves to drive a Lexus, hold elite club memberships and install granite countertops. I don't believe that the rich people in this country are shafting the middle class, so much as we're shafting ourselves.

Let the dollar erode, I guess. Strong dollar and weak dollar each have their own benefits, as do many other financial forces. I do object to your point about housing costs getting too expensive. Our houses have gotten huge and stuffed with luxuries compared to all previous centuries. People don't need such oversized structures, and if the middle class is eventually faced with that understanding, I will not be shedding any tears.

Randy, thanks for pointing out the futility of arguing specifics vs. an abstract philosophical view. Perhaps that will frame the debate differently.

Put succinctly, I think that rich people might be able to use their influence to more effectively save themselves from their financial blunders. While that seems intuitively "wrong" to a lot of middle class people, I question if it is truly immoral by definition.

"I happen to think many such actions are unwise, but foolish is not the same as evil."

There are cases in which foolishness is not the same as evil. However, large-scale foolishness is indistinguishable from evil. It is not always possible to separate the two.

"Put succinctly, I think that rich people might be able to use their influence to more effectively save themselves from their financial blunders. While that seems intuitively “wrong” to a lot of middle class people, I question if it is truly immoral by definition."

It is good to question this, I think. Given that all things are connected, it is also valid to wonder who pays when the rich use their influence to save themselves from financial blunders. I doubt the rich necessarily imagine doing any harm when they take steps to keep life as it should be for themselves and those they love. But what are the unintended consequences? Maybe there is less money in the government coffers to provide health insurance for poor children, and some kid dies when an untreated ear infection becomes meningitis.

The above may not be the best example, but in general, we Americans are not so fabulous at considering the consequences of our actions. And I think that the unwillingness to do so may in fact be a moral failure.

Phil,

ignore the zillow graph. Since it doesn't have the year-by-year data of neighborhood transactions sorted out, it just plotted the graph randomly.

The Pierce road property is grossly over-priced at $1.7M even based on today's "fair market value". A comparable property in Saratoga sold for around $1.5M before the jumbo loans got yanked.

If I am not mistaken, this property is situated very close to a cemetery. That will definitely discourage all the Asian buyers.

Graveyard next door? Wow quiet neibors that won't complain!