This situation isn’t confined to California, however. Developers in a number of American cities are cutting prices of new construction to the bone, offering incentives (like Porches in the garage) and in all probability, begging people to take properties off their hands.
But mark my words. Panic hasn’t even set in yet.
Posted in Economy, Housing BubbleAnd his name is Ron Paul
Dr. Paul smells something big happening, and is entering a statement about it into the Congressional Record. When the history of the early 21st century is read a hundred years from now by my descendents, I sincerely hope they are reading the inspirational story of how the ideas of Dr. Ron Paul saved this nation and the liberty of her citizens. I don’t believe those children will be reading about an evil Bush family who plotted to steal those freedoms from us, but rather a greedy and bungling clan who misused the trust a nation placed in them to put us all in a very, very difficult place.
I’d be happy if there were no villains in the story, just heroes and dolts.
On November 4th, please write-in Ron Paul for President.
We cannot afford the inexperience of Obama or the ignorance of McCain. It’s too critical a time for our Republic, and many, including myself, see it coming to bad end if things don’t change for the better very, very soon.
Ron Paul for President. He’s withdrawn from the race, but not from the revolution.
WhatComesNext.net stands with Dr. Paul.
Posted in Economy, Housing Bubble, Peak Oil, Politics, Society, US, War
Financial Armageddon today points us toward a Washington Post article The housing bubble, in four chapters, a really well distilled look at what will go down as the biggest financial debacle in history. Tulip Mania and the tech bubble of the 1990s will be seen as mere wanna-bes when the history of financial inflations and crashes is written.
Reading this again shows not just how gullible people can be, but how many people in our society grasp on small incidents of luck and success and quickly assume they represent hard, long-term reality. I’ve been preaching Peak Oil, housing bubble and the long-term non-viability of the subprime mortgage market for quite some time. Those who I used to preach to (I save my breath these days) considered me at best, misguided and at worst, a paradoid, delusional crank.
I must admit, it’s a difficult thing to hold my tongue when I hear someone who was so quick to dismiss my ideas 18 months ago now crowing about “these problems they’re starting to read about.” It further illustrates that most of us in this society are born suckers, walking around with big signs that point to their wallet and say “pick here.” I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to who a year and a half ago were convinced that home prices will always rise, pausing only momentarily for thought when I asked “is everyone’s income going up to match real estate prices? And if not, how will people continue to pay ever-increasing prices for homes?”
Well, it’s all crashing down now, and sadly, many are losing those homes they mortgaged everything for, then second-mortaged again for boats, vacations, vacation homes, pools, plasma TVs and more. I can’t imagine anything sadder than loading the kids into the car as you leave your home, moving into a smaller rental house, or apartment, and then getting up in the morning to go to your job. What a heartbreak.
But it’s happening every day, in increasing numbers. If there was ever a time to get debt-free with money in the bank, and a house that could lose 25% of its market value and still show equity, now is that time. I’m happy to say your editor has been blessed enough to get there.
It is a nice place to be. Come join us.
Here’s a couple places to start:
Trapped by debt? Free yourself in 7 steps from MSN Money. A possibly outdated article, but some good ideas nonetheless.
Live on Ten Thousand Dollars a Year by George Ure of UrbanSurvival.com gives with some great ways to cut costs. If you bring home more than $10K, you can then put the surplus to work elminating your debt.
Posted in Economy, Housing BubbleWhat humans tend to understand very little about, is the cyclical nature of civilization, and more specifically, society. Apparently, evolution of our species has built into it the assumption that things will either a)stay the same pretty much forever, or failing that, b) improve a little or a lot (depending on just how grand your sense of optimism is).
But that’s sadly, a misreading of how it all works. Everything in our world and universe, for that matter, works through the machine of cycles. It’s built into the source code of our existence, and to deny it, is just self-delusion. We see it and teach it in our educational institutions, study it in our labs and think-tanks and even applaud it in our entertainment (Think The Lion King’s ‘Circle of Life’. But when it comes to life in the U.S. and the Western World, we think it can only get better, bigger and faster, forever and forever.
We are wrong. Read more »
Posted in Economy, Global Warming, Housing Bubble, Peak Oil, Politics, Society, USLew Rockwell has an excellent discussion of Presidential candidate Ron Paul’s book “Freedom Under Siege”.
Make no mistake about this. Among the candidates we see in the media every day, Ron Paul is our nation’s only hope for financial repair and security. Fortunately, more and more people around the country are waking up to this fact, but will we number enough?
While you’re reading, for an excellent background on what got us in the financial mess we’re in (hint: it’s happened before), read William Bonner and Addison Wiggen’s Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of the 21st Century.
Posted in Economy, Housing Bubble, PoliticsAs the economy “implodes in show motions,” as a number of analysts believe is happening, we’re still plagued by the “permabulls” and those who simply believe that it’s always turned around quickly, so it will do the same this time, too.
How naive. One of the design flaws we humans seem stuck with, is a short memory. Sure, we remember bits and pieces from our childhoods, good and bad, and we even remember certain things from almost every phase in our development as adults. What we don’t seem to have, is a very sharp collective memory. I got out of the late 90s Mutual Fund fiasco before it happened, because of an annual report I got from my particular fund. It was essentially a catalog bragging about the smart people they had managing the funds. All I saw were a collection of people who had been going to Jr. High sock hops when the 1987 crash happened. I realized that the people managing my money had no experience in any kind of market, other than one of the bull variety. So I pulled my money, shortly before the wheels came off the market. I moved money to metals (Gold was in the $200 range) and never looked back.
Everywhere today, the evidence of the wheels coming off the bus is present. Whether in complicated matters like the subprime and derivatives disasters-in-the-making, or in simple things like the fact that corporate budgets are demanding zero-expense-growth in the face of significant increases in the cost of doing business (meaning layoffs to hold the budget), the story is clear. We’ve got some economic hurt coming. But yet, there are those who say “it’s always gone up, and it will, this time, too.” Well, the economic tide will rise again, but the questions are these:
1. When? Certainly not in a couple months. Too much voodoo has been used to keep the balloon inflating. It will therefore, take a lot longer to reinflate.
2. Will our economy, nation, even society look the same when it does start back up? No guarantee of that. Make no mistake, the status quo has put us in a serious, serious situation that it won’t survive. The longer the correction is delayed with artifice and voodoo, the more substantive change will be required to start upward again. It may even take a reboot.
Posted in Economy, Housing Bubble, Peak Oil, SocietyOn the lower right-hand side of this page, you will see that WhatComesNext.net supports Ron Paul for President in 2008. There is no better justification for this, than this short video during the testimony of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee on November 8th.
I suggest you watch it, and when you do, you’ll see that Ron Paul has a precise grasp on the problems in our system right now. It’s a grasp that none of the other candidates for the White House seem to want to talk about, and whether that reluctance is because they don’t understand the situation, or because they don’t believe there’s anything they can do about it, their refusal to address the issue is a litmus test that takes them out of the running for my vote.
Posted in Economy, Housing Bubble, PoliticsIf you still doubt there’s a serious problem with the Real Estate industry, this posting from The Housing Doom Bubble Blog should give you pause. This is truly a "preview of Housing Armageddon."
El Mirage is a new, "suburb" of the Phoenix market, a community built on cheap oil/gas and 50+ mile round-trip work commutes. It’s a community that cut the ribbon at the top of the market, and now is suffering the consequences of the ridiculous hyper-confidence of buyers paying more for homes than they can afford, and lenders lending more than can be repaid.
Follow the link and look at all the gavels.
I live in the Phoenix area, but we bought our real estate before the excessive inflation of the prices, and in fact could have (read should probably have) sold our house 18 months or so later for over twice what we paid for it. We could still take a tidy profit, if we wanted to sit with the for-sale sign out front for long enough. But as I occasionally navigate the southern and western "suburbs" that stretch half-way to Tucson or Yuma, I just shake my head and say to myself that’s a really nice Bed, Bath and Beyond and a pretty big Starbucks, but when gas hits $5 a gallon and the layoffs hit, wave after wave, again and again, how will people make money to buy the stuff in the stores? Or even keep these houses?
As Jim Kunstler says in The Long Emergency