patrick.net

I’m sure the other big behind the scenes talks (I’m picturing a bunch of economists and other types chatting it up at the Mangy Moose) will be about, “how the fuck did we get from subprime loans to “AAA” rated MBS’ to hedge funds collapsing left and right?”

hmm. the banks and other lenders deliberately liberalised credit, offered a slew of new products, knowingly increased their risk profile, etc etc. they were absolutely sure a few short years ago that 'if we lend more money to more people, somehow they seem to keep paying -- they don't want to lose their houses, after all -- they'll make any sacrifice before then! we can gouge a whole new pile of people! and let's give them higher credit limits on CCs too!'

spring is sprung, the grass is riz...

the weather has gotten much warmer in the last week or so -- spring officially starts on 1 Sep. 3 weeks of much needed rain just prior also. you can see the forecast for a week at www.smh.com.au if you click the weather link -- but you have to convert °C to °F...

hey, just go to a ‘how to profit from foreclosures’ seminar! perhaps the one seminar casey didn’t get to on his credit card!

go to organize

skibum said:
Why the royal “We”?

I don't know - maybe "Linda The Licensed Realtor" has lice.

SP

yes, when everyone is looking for gold, sell shovels... just cobble together a seminar from all the other seminars, and charge, ooh, i dunno, $4,000, for this 'investment in your education' -- after all, you will make back 10x the cost of the seminar in your first year of trading property! chapter 1: 'how to make money in property even when prices are falling' -- that one always gets 'em in...

I have a question regarding jumbo loan.

When I look up the recent buyer's loan profile, many seems to do their loans the following way:
$650-1000K ARM (clearly jumbo category)
$50K-100K fixed

why would someone do their mortgage this way? Tax reason?

Randy--That letter is priceless.

This just seems like so much political posturing to me. I mean, Obama wouldn't even be in office for over a year (presuming he got into office) anyway. So he can say whatever he wants; promise any kind of bailout he wants; because in the end everything he is supposedly offering would be waaaay too late to do any good.

The fact is, the worst part of this will probably occur before we know who our next president is going to be.

I enjoyed the Bernanke letter. A casual reader sees only reassurances and helpful suggestions. Schumer can have little doubt about the message it contains for him. Very well done.

On the other hand, I'd file the Obama quotes under boilerplate. Legislators and candidates cannot find a poster child. There isn't one.

Linda seems a little out of temper, doesn't she?

John T Reed has even written a piece on Obama now, in his usual inimitable style. While not relevant to the bailout policy, it reinforces the point made above that big party politicians will say anything to capture votes. John Kerry particularly fell prey to this last time round. As per the knee-jerk 'we will keep interest rates low' pseudo-policy of the Labor party so as not to upset anyone at all.

The only party approaching honesty left in this country is the Greens, the third biggest party, although I should properly be allied with Labor, if it wasn't so full of apparatchiks, liars, sell-outs and closeted right-wingers.

http://www.johntreed.com/Obama.html

"or should I say Randolph"

Quite the "sleuth" huh! The man only has a standing invite to his web-site by clicking on his screen name, has given his full name on numerous occassions and has in no way made any effort to "conceal" his true identity!

With powers of deductive reasoning like this it's small wonder "Linda the Licensed" is a Top Producer (TM) :)

C'mon, if her leased Lexus got towed it would take her 3 days to find it! What's next? You're going to once and for all reveal the true identity of the Zodiac Killer!? I can't wait.

What's your take on the subprime mortgage crisis?

The problem will get worse. 68%

The worst is behind us. 33%

27666 Votes to date

What’s next? You’re going to once and for all reveal the true identity of the Zodiac Killer!? I can’t wait.

Nah, I think she'll find Nicole Simpson's REAL killers. And she'll find Osama while she's at it.

StuckinBA,

I agree, the pressure on Ben going forward will be immense. Like you, I'm reluctant to give my "full seal of approval" just yet but if you've read his letter to Schumer (and I suspect you have) he is full of empathy... yet offers... basically nothing? So far he's resisted subtle suggestions (from DL) blown gasket tirades from Jim Cramer and an "end run" by none other than Bill Gross.

Ultimately, he'll have to "throw them a bone" to shut them up and keep the peace but unless it's anything more than a token act I'll continue to give him my vote of confidence. FWIW.

Are there any foreign economies experiencing problems in their own MBSecurities, and not just fretting about ours?

I ask because I think Bernanke would find a much clearer path for setting a lower target rate if there were one or two majors with good reason to do the same.

BoJ has almost no room to move, obviously. But surely there are bubbles expanding in London and Paris?

Bruce,

I'd read that "Basis Yield" (an Oz based HF) is in default. Details at Mortgage Implode.

In truth, I'm not sure the letter from "Linda" is genuine. Firstly, the fact it's from a "fake" email address immediately tells me that this is very likely *not* a realtor. Also, the letter looks suspiciously similar to 2 others I received this year related to my Second Life criticism. Since I wrote about SL again about a month ago there's a good chance that 'hater fanboi' followed me here and made up the rest. Also, it looks like fanboi hater either read a lot about me very quickly (unlikely), or has been a hatin for a while know, long enough to know I bitch about Mill Valley and other stuff in there. Some of those SL cultists were pretty creepy. At least a couple of them took way too much time reading everything they could find about me and then smearing stuff all over their little SL fanboi blogz. I doubt this was a realtor, unless it was a realtor who's also in Cult Second Life.

DinOR Says:
if her leased Lexus got towed

Maybe we should coin a new term for that: TWNED.
e.g. "did you hear about Linda The Licensed? She fell behind on the lease payments and got twned - so she now has to take her home-buying clients around on the bus."

SP

Randy H,

If that's true, that would really be creepy. I woulda thought the Second Life die-hards were all at that convention in Chicago, trying to schtoop each other in real life.

I was reading the other day where someone suggested the re-introduction of shared appreciation mortgages as a possible avenue for sub-prime refinancing. Have SAMs been discussed here? I hadn't heard of these before, and as I presently see it their ramifications frighten me more than that of nuclear weapons.

I woulda thought the Second Life die-hards were all at that convention in Chicago, trying to schtoop each other in real life.

I think that freak convention ended last weekend. If you saw the pictures Valleywag linked, I doubt anyone was schtooping anyone else in that bunch. Let's just say that were I to have been stranded amongst that crowd I would have been looking for relief amongst the glamorous folks one finds playing D&D at a renfest.

The funniest part though was seeing people try to dress up like their game avatars. Clue: if your avatar is a 5'10" edgy supersexbombe with rad "take me from behind" tats who normally dons the kind of microskirts that make grown men weep, but you're really 380 lbs in real life, don't. Just don't, for humanity's sake, please.

Brent,

Good question. My follow up to that would be, "WHAT appreciation!?"

No seriously, the Portland Development Commission effectuated exactly that when they ignited the "loft craze" in the Rose City. These deals were structured so if they buyer held on for a full 10 years, there was no share to the city. If they sold in the 7th it was 15%, the 5th 20%, under 3, 25% of the "appreciation". In addition they were given a tax holiday for those same 10 years (paying only about $150 a month).

This worked b/c they were coming off the bottom (late 90's early 00's) but I can't imagine how that would work with vastly overpriced abodes?

The funniest part though was seeing people try to dress up like their game avatars.

Can you post some pictures?

We've all made fun of "granite countertops" around here, but look:
www.idahostatesman.com/newsupdates/story/145829.html It appears that they can truly be a "hot commodity".

Bruce,

A friend of mine at BNP Paribas in Paris is very, very concerned about the fallout from the American mortgage fiasco. She thinks it is going to cause worldwide problems. She thinks we have a real gold rush mentality to our finances here.

Also, London still seems to be in the middle of a major real estate bubble. One of my friends just bought an astoundingly expensive place in Battersea (south London) after waiting for a couple of years for the market to cool. He said he really expects the bubble to pop, but he was sick of $20,000 (!) a month rent. There seems to be a major rental bubble in London I guess. The prices sound twice as ghastly to me as they do to him because of the currency exchange.

The funniest part though was seeing people try to dress up like their game avatars. Clue: if your avatar is a 5′10″ edgy supersexbombe with rad “take me from behind” tats who normally dons the kind of microskirts that make grown men weep, but you’re really 380 lbs in real life, don’t. Just don’t, for humanity’s sake, please.

LMAO! :)

It reminds me of this (has been around for some time, so my apologies to anyone who's seen this already):

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Io3W0-3uj8c

DennisN,

I have measured the radioactivity of granite countertops and they were at about twice the background when we were at about 6500ft at Squaw. They are truely a 'hot commodity'.

I saw Yiffys on a CSI or some such show. I didn't know they were real.

Randy H,

I just lost my lunch looking at those pics. Yowza!

On a serious note, therin lies the genius of Linden Labs that you must give them props for. They are mining a more or less neglected demographic, and they are sucking them dry with their business model. Gotta give them credit for that.

I guess Ron Paul is even more of a bear than I am :

http://tinyurl.com/ypy478

My eyes!!!

The Yiffys are the least offensive ones.

Looks like our own blog parties have much more grace.

SFWoman, perhaps Google/YouTube will propel Ron Paul into the White House?

@SFWoman

Sadly, Yiffys are real. One of the writers of CSI (Miami?) is very plugged into the gamer-culture. There have been a couple of episodes that touched on the darker recesses of gaming. There was one where some deviant was acting out a GTA plot.

More about "furry fanbois" can be found on Wiki, though the article mainly tries to show how normal these folk are. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furry_fandom

I think the subculture came out of anime/manga/hentai and found an interactive outlet in online games.

Sorry to interrupt this thread, but I just need to know what you all think.

You guys and gals might want to join in on this thread on city-data dot com; or at least see what is posted there.

I joined up and immediately started getting what they call "infractions" (de-merits?) for the wrong reasons; supposedly if you get a certain amount of these, they bann you. I put up shillers graph and they deleted it because they claim it "violates copyright" and even though I explained that it isn't a copyright violation and that it is posted all over the internet, they just ignored me and didn't respond back. I kept my posts very clean and there was no reason any of them should be removed; but they went right ahead and deleted some of them anyway.

Then they said I am getting 2 more points ("infractions") because I am violating their TOS by using my web-site name LongIslandBubble for my handle; their TOS reads:

Only one screen name is permitted per user. Your screen name may not be your email, business name or your profession, this would be advertising, and is forbidden.

I explained that the name LongIslandBubble is not an email name or a business (since I do not make any money) or a profession (bubbletition perhaps?); so I am not violating any of their TOS at least any that they haven't made up yet. :roll:

Patrick.net has always been an open-minded forum that allows both bulls and bears to interact as long as noone attacks each other. It's a shame that all forums aren't like this; especially forums like city-data dot com that only allow the bull$hitters and eliminate the bears.

I'd like to know what you think about how these biased, one-sided forums that favor the bulls over the bears by eliminating anyone who says anything negative about the housing market; even while it is obviously deteriorating. I thought these forums were about sharing information; whether it be good news or bad news as long as the information is true.

What do you all think?

What do you all think?

Just let them drink their own Kool Aid. They can do what they want. It is a free market. :)

By the way, Ron Paul is the only one worth voting for, the others are all socialists!

Just let them drink their own Kool Aid. They can do what they want. It is a free market.

Yes, but do you agree that they are conspiring against me, or do you think I am over-reacting?

Read the thread, it's a pretty good one!

In truth, I’m not sure the letter from “Linda” is genuine.
Thank you Randy, the letter is hilarious but it would be truly frightening to think of Linda as an actual Realtor.
Also, since I regularly harangue Randy about Mill Valley prices... the July DQ numbers show a 10% drop in the median home price (year over year) and a horrendous monthly drop from June -- which I suppose correlates nicely with his recent on the ground observations.
For me, the question of the hour is what will become of CAR's First-Time Homebuyers Affordability Index? Come on Obama, how about some Senate hearings on the REIC. Wouldn't you love to hears this.
Sen. Obama: Ms Appleton-Young, is it true that the California Association of Realtors recommended that first time buyers use an ARM and spend up to 40% of their income on their mortgage, taxes and insurance.
Ms. Appleton-Young: Its just an index that reflects the reality of the marketplace. Hey, we have to make a living somehow. Its not our fault. Mortgage brokers are evil. [breaks down sobbing]

I’d like to know what you think about how these biased, one-sided forums that favor the bulls over the bears by eliminating anyone who says anything negative about the housing market; even while it is obviously deteriorating. I thought these forums were about sharing information; whether it be good news or bad news as long as the information is true.

I say join them. Help them help the hype. Get everyone there to buy with 0% down and a neg am loan.