patrick.net

I have a weird wish to see Bush play the fiddle on TV in from of Wallstreet as it Burns :)

*front

Section 8 will just have to cut their benefits. Maybe they will start handing out tents to people that can't afford housing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN97tmw6qvY

A run for liquidity!!!

Stuck in B.A. says: I feel bad saying this. But maybe we as a society deserve this. When debt is considered wealth, what else can happen?

Don't feel bad. My very first rant on patrick.net was about the instant gratification mindset and how people were living the good life on credit. Sooner or later they have to pay the bill; that applies to our country as well. Everyone thought houses and cheap credit were a get rich quick scheme. I know lots of people who withdrew home equity to buy cars, vacations, boats and other depreciating assets.

My deep hope is that our nation comes to its senses about its own consumption, especially the needless consumption. We burn through water, energy, luxury goods, credit and entertainment at an absolutely phenomenal rate. There is a price to pay for keeping up with the Joneses, and if we're going to get our mojo back as a country, we need to pay that. Hard work, conservation, saving, building productive assets--that's what makes a nation wealthy. The entitlement attitude never dies quietly. We're probably going to see just how messy it gets when the repo guy is hauling away all the Mercedes, Audis and jet skis. Many of those second homes declared as primary residences will get carted off, too. And people who have been rolling huge balances between 0% APR cards will eventually get caught when nobody else will issue fresh plastic.

The U.S. needs to realize (again) that the only things we really deserve are the rule of law, our individual freedoms and the fruits of our own hard work.

TOB,

I value my citizenship as well. I get mad to think about how the US is diluting the value of my "share" of American stock to illegal aliens.

*sarcasm on*
Because of the crap going down and the shrinking supplies of cheap oil, I think the US should adopt a thug plan. We should use our weapons to take what we have not earned and just refuse to honor the existing debt that we have. Why not pull all of our military forces in Iraq south to the southern oil fields of iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia? Take the oil and feed our oil hunger. While we are at it, we should tkae their gold too. In return we could drop them left over food past the expiration date that we did not eat.

*sarcasm off*

I think the only way to clean up this whole mess is to get rid of the weeds and leave the healthy plants.
We should round up all the idiots who have IQ less than 100, don't even have a high school education and are a burden on our society and then send them to a remote island. We should get rid of all the "Useless born here europeans", illegals/H1bs from india/china/mexico back to where they belong.
Can you imagine a country without all these crooks who created this financial mess and all the fat asses who consume fifty times more than what they produce.

Hey TOB : Get the fu*k out of my country and go back to germany !

TOB says: as for the rest of your points, I notice that the attitude of people situated one or two notches above me is : “this recession won’t effect me! poor little amerislobs, theyre getting whats coming to them.”

I doubt that I am two economic notches above you; I am certainly not in the top 10%. I'm just a normal middle class engineer. I expect to have a house, wife, kids, a typical American car (Camry, Explorer, etc), take typical American vacations (beach, mountains, lake, camping), play fetch with my dog and maybe have a garden for relaxation. I expect to earn a decent wage, have adequate health insurance, and otherwise lead an unremarkable life.

All this bullshit about foreign cars, expensive clothes, plasma TVs, eating out five nights a week, holding season tickets to pro sports, cruises, tropical timeshares, fancy jewelry, bling and faux wealth... it's just marketing and foolishness. If you work your ass off, sure, you can have those things, but they aren't coming to you. Nobody is born deserving them. I decry the average American's obsession with living large, especially when easy credit replaces hard work.

I'm not sad that the illusion will come to an end for many people. Most folks weren't buying things to survive or better themselves. It was indulgence. Well, too much candy rots the teeth, and eventually you have to face the dentist's drill. And it's not schadenfreude, either. We can't build a stable society when the gold leaf is only a millimeter thick.

Brand wrote :
"All this bullshit about foreign cars, expensive clothes, plasma TVs, eating out five nights a week, holding season tickets to pro sports, cruises, tropical timeshares, fancy jewelry, bling and faux wealth… it’s just marketing and foolishness."

excellent point.

self regulation has limits. There is a reason cocaine is banned and not left up to citizens to control thier impulses.
Human beings are not rational like the economists dream.There has to be a limit on how much and how credit is offered to citizens.Most people can't make rational decisions. They will take more debt than they can handle.

TOB : get the Fu*k out of my country and go back to germany.

Oh Bap33, when will you learn that all the welfare, section 8, and food stamp expenses will never come close to the corporate welfare costs we are incurring?

Seriously, think about it. How many welfare queens would it take to meet the cost of our bail out of the Wall Street set who the current administration wish to make "whole"?

Your rage is misguided my friend. If you wish revenge on those who suck money from the rest of us for no good gain, then you are targeting the wrong demographic entirely.

As my father always advised (wisely), follow the money trail. We spend far more on corporate welfare than we could ever spend on the truly needy. 3 trillion or so to the yacht-owning jet-set crowd make me far me more nauseated than the piddling amount we spend to take care of those who are truly less fortunate.

Give it a rest, why don't you?

TOB, I'm with you in spirit. I don't like to sound racist or anti-immigrant. But it does bother me to know that so many come from abroad and refuse to assimilate. They're using a loop-hole, taking advantage of our doctrine to take in the poor and disenfranchised to allow them to create a new life and perverting it for their own selfish, economic ends (i.e. they maintain foreign-citizenship and regularly send funds home, all the while not learning or giving a sh*t about "America").

By the same token, H1-B visa holders, and even illegal immigrants employed under a fake social security number, are helping support our greedy Social Security and Medicare systems. Whether they love America, assimilate, learn English, or not, they are contributing to our GDP and our entitlement programs. Remember, H1-B visa holders and illegal immigrants can never apply for these benefits. They pay and get nothing.

Perhaps that offers some solace?

Okay - let me take a stand even if Patrick does not.

This is a housing forum.

Nothing productive ever comes from these rants about race and immigration. If you want to discuss those items, please go to and immigration or culteral anthropology site.

I am sick of this board being hi-jacked by these discussions.

Patrick - deleting posts is fine. I am betting (almost) no-one would mind.

Lets see we have, so far:

Roche, ebay, HP, Yahoo (previously)
Goog is at 438 from a 52 week high of 747

IT is an easy defer. So, I am going to jump in and guess Cisco is next on the job-loss parade.

We know VC funding is wayyyyy down.

We also know price destruction is collaring HELOCs meaning 'safety net' equity to get past periods of job loss are drying up.

Things are getting tough.

There is an old saying, "Don't bet against the Fed"

The problem is this: what is the Fed saying.

It bails out Bear. Then it takes the Mae's into consefvatoreship. Then it allows Lehman to go under but it seems like it will do something to prop up AIG?

Um, look. I can figure out what to do financially if the Fed intervenes.
I can figure what to do if the Fed allows the cascading failures to occur.

But interveining some times and not other times. Uhh, is this like a personal thing for Paulson from his old GS days? What the heck are they doing!?!

Duke,

Thanks for continuing to post here. I feel the same, this is not a housing blog anymore.

Patrick,

Please do something about it.

Having GS come out with the kind of results doesn't give much confidence to market. If there isn't a bailout of AIG then, we can see duke's prediction of 8500 soon. My guess is, there will be some kind of patch work which won't look exactly like a bailout.

Just wanted to chime in and say I'm interested in the housing-related posts too. Another vote for deleting off-topic posts and/or strongly discouraging them.

There is so much fucking welfare out there-just open your eyes. I know at least 20 crack-head's that don't contribute shit to this country - they are a fucking drain on society. They fucking complain that they have to leave the bar to go pick up their free grocieries from the county food pantry(they register in the morning & then have to go back to pick up their food).They all work cash jobs when they feel like it. They all knock up their whore girlfriends & then get free sec 8 housing. They just keep their clothes in the trunk of their car, so they don't technically live there. I've seen so much fucking welfare in my short lifetime. I've done remodling work in both Illinois & Wisconsin on these sec 8 apartment complexes-it's always the same. Not one mother fucker works- the place is always filthy. Always some whore w/ kids while 3 guys sit on the couch all day watching Springer. Shit one time I got freaked out so many mother fuckers came out of their apartments - I didn't know what the fuck was going on. My boss said it was government cheese day- trucks came around giving out tons of free food to able bodied 20 yr olds. Cut these mother fuckers off right the fuck now or else this country is going to continue to head right down the shitter!

I seem to recall an article a while back about the solvency of the Fed. The way Ben has been throwing money around lately. . . how low are we on that thermometer? I think the Fed had like 800b?
As many have pointed out: lowering rates has no effect since these are all solvency issues. Banks, brokerages, and even insurers chased returns, massively over leveraged, and lent money to hedge funds which were even MORE over-levereadged. As this unwinds, it seems like it may be just too much money for even the Fed to handle.
I am very glad to see ECB put in 75b, and London put in 25b. I am nervous about Ben putting in $75b as we have already poined up, what, like 500b? With more than 200b to go for the Mae's? And as securitized assets starts kicking bck - as far as the Fed.

I mean Yikes!

So - back to housing.

I have urged all to have a strong cash position. Get a very secure job. And be patient. Buying should make sense in a few years. If it does not make sense at that time to buy its becasue the tent cities and the soup lines will make it obvious that buying that dream 3/2 in Palo Alto doesnt make any sense to anyone.

TOB:Most of the mooches I personally know grew up middle class with hard working parents, so my only conclusion would be that public schools helped mold them into worthless pieces of shit...

At this point, we've already lost. They should let AIG fail with the rest of the insolvent banks and financial institutions. They never have, and will never do anything for me personally, so why should I pony up to save them.

TOB was right earlier in this thread. They could have built every family a brand new house with the money we've already spent to bail everyone out. This is fucking ridiculous.

The market is practically BEGGING to crash. Just let it. Why drain all of our bank accounts for another 2 years while everyone slowly goes broke. The real problem with their interventions is that they are fucking up the one thing that could actually save an average american at this point in time... A REAL ECONOMY.

We WILL go back to a real economy. We didn't forget how to be productive. It just didn't make sense when you could make 3 times as much shuffling paper.

Just let it happen. Let's get this over with.

It appears that it can't last much longer.

Who knows what would happen if we wipe out foreign holdings. But in light of that risk it would be prudent to get out of Iraq and re-enable our military to PROTECT our country.

It's not like the rest of the world will be doing peachy without us consuming all of their goods. We should be able to hold our own in a fight.

Look, I'm not saying it's optimal by any means. It's just starting to appear that it's going to happen regardless. Why fight it? We'll be better off accepting it and dealing with the consequences while we still have firepower to do so.

They can keep making toasters if they want, but no one is going to buy them. It has nothing to do with what I want.

Duke,

Indeed, "what is the Fed saying". It is almost like the following was taking place:

BigInvestors/WallSt realize that financial stocks are a lost cause, but try to bully the Fed into yet another rate cut by taking down the entire stock market. Fed signals that it will not bite. In a sense, the Fed calls the bluff. BigInvestors blink and back off, and engineers a "rally on the bad news"

By the way, is the "selective enhanced enforcement against naked shorting" still in place?

S*it, did you all see that RFIXX money market fund is dipping to a NAV of 0.97 as of this evening because of losses on Lehman Brothers?

This is getting very serious....

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/money-market-giant-freezes-redemptions/story.aspx?guid={691A8CB9-B98F-4677-87D3-1CC274AB5103}

No mention of this at the front page of www.reservefunds.com.

try this link for justme

http://tinyurl.com/6jv8zv

WOW - Breaking the buck will have some consequences!

http://tinyurl.com/6jv8zv

On top of that - frozen funds!

Thanks, Paul.

http://www.cranedata.us/archives/news/2008/9/

"The Dow Jones story also says, "[​S]​everal money funds reported holdings in Lehman paper in their most recent filings.... One example is the Primary Fund managed by New York money manager The Reserve. As of May 31, the $​64.​85 billion Primary Fund had some $​785 million in Lehman commercial paper and medium-​term notes." It quotes Crane, "​Their holding of Lehman is not large enough to threaten the NAV," and adds, "`​The Reserve has historically protected the NAV of its money funds as needed."

OOOOOOPS!

So it boils down to whether "The Reserve" has enough private reserves to prop up the Lehman losses and get back to NAV of 1.00. But depositors may still be frightened and create a run on the fund, and this may snowball. very bad.

AIG is being bailed out

http://www.cnbc.com/id/26747020

I was hoping the FED would let them fail too.

TOB wrote: "sure is funny how the banking industry was all about deregulation until the shit hits the fan. funny that"

where are all the rebuplican's who want a self-regulating free market.
what a joke !
Even a casino needs some regulation :-)

TOB,

I like the decimal in front of the trillion dollar number. When you say it like that, it does not sound too bad :)

It only amounts to about $3000 per an American citizen!

Well I see on the TV that it is 85 billion and not 850 billion :) It is not quite as bad as I first thought.

I am now considering taking as much money as I can out of my bank account. I am not scared of losing it due to a bank failure. I am more scared that it will buy less and less stuff.

Today I bought some M193 Ball to replace what I used yesterday. I was shocked to see it went from $6.00 per box to $9.00 per box in just 3 months! I am not stretched yet, but it won't take much more before my standard of living gets hit in a noticable way.

*note that is just an example of inflation that I have seen and not an endorcement of buying firearms out of fear*

Because when you lose money, you just take tax dollars!

..and threaten public with financial collapse if they don't want to part with thier money. Wow !
Somebody needs to publish a book :
" 100 ways top 1% have screwed the rest "

thenuttyneutron says:

I am now considering taking as much money as I can out of my bank account. I am not scared of losing it due to a bank failure. I am more scared that it will buy less and less stuff.

Aren't you saving for a down payment on a house? In that case, your money in the bank is becoming worth more.

Yes I am saving for a home downpayment. That is in an Emigrantdirect acount and amounts to about 20k. I am talking about my fun money account that only has about $1k in it. This is the money I take from my cut of my weekly paycheck and use it for anything I want. Toys, eating with college buddies at reteraunts etc. It is money I can burn without the wife getting mad. She gets the same deal as me with her check.

This way we can spend money on what we think is cool but the other thinks is a waste and have no fights over it.

I burned what I thought was $80 of M193 ball yesterday. Today I find that it is now 50% more and cost me $118.00! I use this amount after 2 trips to the range and restock what I use every other month or so. Why not take all my fun money out and buy the toy accesories now while it is cheaper? I hav money burning in my barrel :)

* I have money burning through a hole in my barrel :)