so uh i uh told ya so (on another board). :yak:

I sold everything in my largest 401 k to convert it to an IRA about 2 weeks ago. Its still sitting in cash:wiggle: :jump1: :jump: :humpty:

I sold everything in my largest 401 k to convert it to an IRA about 2 weeks ago. Its still sitting in cash:wiggle: :jump1: :jump: :humpty:

wish I had. Now I have to wait it out. My money would be safer under my mattress. :smash:

Ben, Glad to see you're keeping your eye on the ticker today rather than funnin with guys on the other site. :jester: Somehow I have this vision of you right now sitting in a chair on a Wall St sidewalk eating popcorn waiting for jumpers though. :lurk: After the banking troubles we had in 1990-92 I'm really surprised that they could have allowed so much easy money this last go-around. Thanks Alan Greenspan :cheers:
So where do we go from here? Any word on the street on another banking blowout?
Ed

:hidin:

I have time on my side, just recoverd from the recession that started the day Bush took office :rolleyes:.....

Inflation is near 20 year lows. Unemployment is between 4.6 and 4.7% (near 25 year lows). Taxes are at 20 year lows.

Bush's recession is killing us all.

I guess it's Bush's fault people decided to buy houses they couldn't afford.

God forbid there would be a little personal responsibility in this country. I'm waiting for the TV commercials of lawyers recruiting people to sue their banks for lending them money.

Inflation is near 20 year lows. Unemployment is between 4.6 and 4.7% (near 25 year lows). Taxes are at 20 year lows.

Bush's recession is killing us all.

I guess it's Bush's fault people decided to buy houses they couldn't afford.

God forbid there would be a little personal responsibility in this country. I'm waiting for the TV commercials of lawyers recruiting people to sue their banks for lending them money.


1. unemployment figures might not be accurate. DOL's methodology is a bit ... creative.

2. it's not Bush's fault that people decided to buy houses they couldn't afford - it's Alan Greenspan's. :jester:

2. it's not Bush's fault that people decided to buy houses they couldn't afford - it's Alan Greenspan's. :jester:

you beat me to it.. :wavey:

i was reading that due to the high foreclosure rate

property values will continue to fall

and there will be a surplus of 500,000

homes for sale with nobody to buy them.

I just got my house tax assessment evaluation today. It went up 25 % from 18 months ago though my house is probably worth slightly less than at that peak. The re-evaluation 18 months ago was double that from 3 years before. Yep - taxes are cheaper and out pacing inflation, as just about every other bill from utilities to medical... Now I need another job just to afford this, not because I'm getting laid off :wall:

Believe me there were plenty of signs we were heading into a recession in early 99, I just wasn't experienced enough to recognize them. The recession was WELL underway before the election, people were just riding the wave onto the beach...

Good for one , bad for another , etc. If 500K houses become available with no one to buy , doesn't that mean the price goes down. I suppose that's bad for your current house but good if you want to buy a new one? I think it all evens out eventually.

I can remember driving by these beautiful huge houses being built thinking "who the heck can afford these?" I wondered what they did for a living. Well it turns out..... they couldn't afford them.


Anyway , when its all over , we go to the grave without a cent.

Enjoy what you have!! (where did I hear that before?) :)

Market is negative for the year. Even energy stocks. Global stocks are neutral after last years 22-28 pct global growth we are not going to see that this year.

There are individual stocks to be had but far and few inbetween.

The market is direction is bearish, on the edge of recession, one more issue and we'll have a fall with electronic trading throttling.

Maybe gas at 3.00 on the east coast will do it.

funny I was working in a neighborhood that was just being developed last week. I asked the builder how much the houses were going for, he says 675 is the average. I said who the heck can afford them, he says most of his buyers are young people who are getting interest only mortgages, and betting that in 5 years the houses will appreaciate enough for them to sell and make a profit. That's a big gamble in todays RE market.

3 in the hood here, all over 700 down from 850 unsold in 6 months.

I just got my house tax assessment evaluation today. It went up 25 % from 18 months ago though my house is probably worth slightly less than at that peak. The re-evaluation 18 months ago was double that from 3 years before. Yep - taxes are cheaper and out pacing inflation, as just about every other bill from utilities to medical... Now I need another job just to afford this, not because I'm getting laid off :wall:

John, I hear ya. I can't tell you how many people I've encountered who felt like they had to sell their homes because they couldn't afford to pay the constantly rising property tax and maintenance AND healthcare AND energy. Yeesh, almost left out uniformly rising homeowners insurance premiums post-Katrina. A lot of these folks are retire-ees on fixed incomes. It's especially loopy here in the Northeast, with the influence of Wall Street largely driving up real estate and housing prices.

Much of this can be attributed to a buttload of liquidity (money supply) floating around. If you increase the global money supply for whatever reason (like Alan Greenspan did after he overtightened leading up to the dot-com bust and after 9/11), that money is going to be creating speculative asset bubbles like we've seen in the real estate market, energy (to some extent, enabling technologies like online trading and China/India supply/demand are major factors too), and gold prices.

Most people don't realize this, but we also increase the money supply every time we import more than we export by buying some fancy cheap gizmo from China, as this leads to a trade deficit that has to be financed (by an IOU) by somebody.

This fiat money that gets created by our trade deficit gets circulated back into the U.S. economy - foreign governments like China and Japan and OPEC nations buy things like U.S. Treasury bonds and U.S. government agency bonds that finance mortgage bankers here in the U.S.

The result is that the price of money goes down further, and there's plenty of easy money to get a home loan, which, coupled with lax lending standards (hey this money has to go to work for us), causes people to stampede into real estate and thus causes prices to go UP.

Of course, the party is over when people realize they can't pay their mortgages after they reset ... and they default, and then the government steps in to stanch sub-prime mortages. One spigot of liquidity is thus shut off.

This theoretically cascades into consumer spending , which props up 75% of the economy. When consumer spending slows, then factories and service businesses shut down and we get a recession. That is one of the fears in the stock market.

HOWEVER ... in this case, so far all the leading economic indicators point to slowing growth, not a recession. Housing woes won't likely spill over into consumer spending. So the experts say.

Next year is another story.

So, at some point, when the stock market corrects further (say, 10% off of this year's high), and it will be a bumpy ride, it might be not a bad time to scoop up some shares opportunistically.

There's no magic in economics. That house is 700k because someone will pay it even though they can't afford it. State and local taxes are high because social spending in your area is high. Medical bills are high because you have to pay for everyone who got treated but didn't pay.

We are living in a culture of irresponsibility, and we're all paying for it.