Posted on 03/16/2008 8:58:36 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
and I remember the inflation rate at 21%.....
you work...you save...you invest a little....and now what do we do.....
bought more tomato sauce and spaghetti today....meant to buy dry milk....
It is not going to be fun to watch CNBC today. The Demoncrats and RINOS are going to get slapped this morning. Big time. Hold on.
Looking at this from a historic viewpoint, I would have to say another world war was in the offing.
We already knew we were at war, but have been denying the reality of it.
Hillary will, of course, blame Bush, Obammy will blame bush, and the timing couldn’t be better. The blame is on Bush but every member of Congress for the past 60 years as well. The bubble is bursting. The overspending of Government is solely to blame.
I am no expert but it seems that Greenjeans is the culprit...not only for keeping interest rates too low and encouraging rampant real estate speculation....he has been shooting his mouth off since leaving his throne and he has undermined Big Ben......
JP Morgan bought Bear Stearns for 3 cents on the dollar. Even at that firesale price, the US Gov guaranteed JP Morgan they would absorb their losses on the deal—think about that one and tell me things aren’t really bad. Where is our already broke Government going to come up with all this $$ when they can’t sell their devalued treasuries? And the Bear Stearns failure is probably the first of many to come. Something is going to give soon. It will not be pretty.
“Didn’t housing prices go up as mortgage rates went down?
Wouldn’t prices drop enough to encourage buying? I knew people who purchased houses during the late 1970s stagflation. I swear I remember the mortgage interest was more than 20 percent at that time. They survived. The rest of us survived.
No one is saying that’s going to be easy.”
You bring up a good point but I’d fill in a couple of missing points. First, homes had not blown up in price so far outside of their long term price envelope, roughly equal to 3x median income. Secondly, qualifying for loans back then was quite conventional, requiring solid down payments. Most homes during that era were sold with seller-financed second mortgages. When rates later came down, there was ample opportunity to refi to lower rates. I think I was paying 13% on a first mort and 11% on a seller second on a home I bought in 1983.
Why the current situation is different is because: Despite their recent decline, homes are still selling for prices outside that 3x median income benchmark, and with rates already so low, there is likely to be no great opportunity to refi. Indeed, mort rates have actually risen in response to the Fed lowering rates just recently.
I just need to hang on a few more years and collect my early Social Security, that's been a great government managed plan I can depend on. /sarc.
depends on how y ou look at it. might be bargain prices to jump in and buy too. Have to research, but might be terrific time to buy up rather than sell.
This is the guy who wrote the best book on the Clinton crime family. He has got just as good a handle on this story as well. Jorge made a COMPLETE fool of himself last week when babbled about America having a strong dollar policy. It was either completely dishonest or what is even worse, it was an admission that his administration has a policy which COULD NOT HAVE FAILED more, because the dollar has never been weaker.
I don’t understand how the price of anything can go down if oil keeps going up up up. Fuel costs affect everything.
As of last Friday, US treasuries looked extremely popular to me, and I bet they’ll be even more popular on Monday.
McCain didn’t even know Congress had banned lightbulbs! He pooh-poohed the idea to an interviewer, and when it was pointed out that it had already been done, he changed the subject. I guess you have to give him points for having that much presence of mind.
Unfortunately, what folks went through in the 30s was a grand repurposing of the federal government towards socialism, entitlements, nanny-statism, and an outright confiscation of Constitutional money, namely gold. I have little faith that things will turn out much better in this, the era of the ME ME ME generation.
Let those sovereign wealth funds flee. Let the Chinese government take their investments with them too.
What happens if we stop buying Chinese and even pay them in full? That's less than one thousand dollars per citizen over there.
It's going to take a lot more than that to stave off revolution with millions more out work and all the corruption and other state-threatening problems in Red China.
The euro blasted higher anyway, driven by hot money flows. The funds are beguiled by Germany's "Exportwunder", for now. It cannot last. The demented level of $1.57 will not be tolerated by French, Italian and Spanish politicians. The Latin property bubbles are deflating fast.
I believe it's true, no group of sovereign countries have ever shared a single currency successfully.
Either they combine into one country or give it up. It's been a picnic now there's trouble abrewing. Will the Euro survive? No. I bet.
(Though some like the Euro's protection against an individual country's currency being devalued.)
The northern countries are not happy with the southern countries performances, I believe. Real trouble abrewing.
Well, I don't know. It might be worth it to see the Arabs eat sand.
“I seem to recall japan tried to get out of their mess by having zero interest...how did that work out ?”
Wll. Bernanke is smarter than the Japs. You see, if you cause the sub prime debacle by printing money, then the cure must be to print money.
if we are all paying MORE of our money on gasoline, that leaves LESS for food,entertainment, clothing, cars, etc......
people can't really cut off the food, but surely the entertainment,retail and auto industries have got to be feeling the pinch from slow sales....so why aren't they discounting greatly?...no one is buying their stuff and they have to unload it....so why haven't THOSE prices at least come down....
in a real good and normal recession, one can usually make up for losses by picking up "deals"...so where are the deals?
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