"A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. "

It is so simple to follow and absolutely true. You just need the stomach to follow the rule.

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If he wasn't one of the weak hands shaken out during the manipulated correction, then he's looking at $180,000 in 2011 dollars.

Sure beats sitting on a depreciating asset like housing!

Got PMs?

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When, not if, The Bernank cranks up the QE3 printing press, it will be time to get into ANY hard asset other than U$D.

Watch out below!

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I Lied - I have one more thing:


NYTimes: Warren Buffett Agrees with SLyng - hehe, obviously that's not the title, but here's Buffett's Op-Ed piece from today's NYTimes... (we actually disagree on inflation...)

Buy American. I Am

By WARREN E. BUFFETT
Omaha

THE financial world is a mess, both in the United States and abroad. Its problems, moreover, have been leaking into the general economy, and the leaks are now turning into a gusher. In the near term, unemployment will rise, business activity will falter and headlines will continue to be scary.

So ... I?ve been buying American stocks. This is my personal account I?m talking about, in which I previously owned nothing but United States government bonds. (This description leaves aside my Berkshire Hathaway holdings, which are all committed to philanthropy.) If prices keep looking attractive, my non-Berkshire net worth will soon be 100 percent in United States equities.

Why?

A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful. And most certainly, fear is now widespread, gripping even seasoned investors. To be sure, investors are right to be wary of highly leveraged entities or businesses in weak competitive positions. But fears regarding the long-term prosperity of the nation?s many sound companies make no sense. These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have. But most major companies will be setting new profit records 5, 10 and 20 years from now.

Let me be clear on one point: I can?t predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven?t the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower a month ? or a year ? from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.

A little history here: During the Depression, the Dow hit its low, 41, on July 8, 1932. Economic conditions, though, kept deteriorating until Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in March 1933. By that time, the market had already advanced 30 percent. Or think back to the early days of World War II, when things were going badly for the United States in Europe and the Pacific. The market hit bottom in April 1942, well before Allied fortunes turned. Again, in the early 1980s, the time to buy stocks was when inflation raged and the economy was in the tank. In short, bad news is an investor?s best friend. It lets you buy a slice of America?s future at a marked-down price.

Over the long term, the stock market news will be good. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

You might think it would have been impossible for an investor to lose money during a century marked by such an extraordinary gain. But some investors did. The hapless ones bought stocks only when they felt comfort in doing so and then proceeded to sell when the headlines made them queasy.

Today people who hold cash equivalents feel comfortable. They shouldn?t. They have opted for a terrible long-term asset, one that pays virtually nothing and is certain to depreciate in value. Indeed, the policies that government will follow in its efforts to alleviate the current crisis will probably prove inflationary and therefore accelerate declines in the real value of cash accounts.

Equities will almost certainly outperform cash over the next decade, probably by a substantial degree. Those investors who cling now to cash are betting they can efficiently time their move away from it later. In waiting for the comfort of good news, they are ignoring Wayne Gretzky?s advice: ?I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been.?

I don?t like to opine on the stock market, and again I emphasize that I have no idea what the market will do in the short term. Nevertheless, I?ll follow the lead of a restaurant that opened in an empty bank building and then advertised: ?Put your mouth where your money was.? Today my money and my mouth both say equities.

Warren E. Buffett is the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, a diversified holding company.

Here is a quote from the Barack Obama thread from my favorite JCList-er:
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Just a reality check on this. Groovejet wrote this on 10/8. Assuming he actually did what he said he was going to do, here's what would have happened...

If he had $100,000 FDIC Insured account and moved it all into gold at that time, He would have gotten back about 110oz of gold in return.

Today, that 110oz of gold would be worth about $86,500 (US Dollars). So it just goes to show you, there is no such thing as a sure thing. Commodities, like any other exchange traded item, have quite a bit of volatility embedded in them.

If this is indeed a world-wide recession, you can't worry about inflation, you have to worry about deflation. Deflation means the dollar you are making buys you more, not less, and hence gold would be an ineffective hedge against that (not to mention, in a standard recession, the demand for gold for things like jewelry, etc is not very strong, so you're pretty much just banking on its "safe haven" status).

If you think about it, it makes sense that we'll get some deflation: home prices are falling, oil is falling (less demand for it), flat-panel TVs are falling, very little is actually going UP in price!! While it seems food prices have been stubbornly high, those should fall too. Corn is down 50% from its peak, OJ is down 50%, same story for cotton, wheat, sugar and all the rest...those prices just haven't trickled down to the supermarket just yet.

Things are going to get cheaper - of course that isn't necessarily a *good* thing. The reason things are cheaper is because unemployment is higher and people's wages are stagnating...

I'm cautiously optimistic about things though - I think lower oil & food prices will be immediately stimulative to the US consumer and will do more than any stimulus package or tax cut being proposed (by either candidate). Sure, we aren't going to see the economy come roaring back, but we aren't going to be standing in soup lines either. We'll go through a period where people have to actually save money and live within their means, which will be a shock to many, but it's necessary to do. Meanwhile the best way to protect your money is still in an FDIC insured bank account and for the more risk-seeking people with longer time horizons, buying solid, cash producing, high quality stocks at record low valuations. The avg stock has falling about 50% and many others are down 60-70% - time to start sifting through the wreckage. When there is blood on the streets, that's the best time to start buying (and there is most certainly blood on the streets).

That's all I got - enjoy the weekend!

Failed Deals Replace Real Estate Boom

The New York Times
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Published: September 30, 2008

On Friday, Standard & Poor?s dropped its rating on the bonds used in the record-setting $5.4 billion purchase of Stuyvesant Town, above, and Peter Cooper Village, in 2006.

After seven years of nonstop construction, skyrocketing rents and sales prices, and a seemingly endless appetite for luxury housing that transformed gritty and glamorous neighborhoods alike, the credit crisis and the turmoil on Wall Street are bringing New York?s real estate boom to an end.

Last Friday, HSBC decided not to move its American headquarters to 7 World Trade Center, center, after bids for its existing home on Fifth Avenue came in 30 percent lower than it wanted.

Developers are complaining that lenders are now refusing to finance projects that were all but certain months or even weeks ago. Landlords bewail their inability to refinance skyscrapers with blue-chip tenants. And corporations are afraid to relocate within Manhattan for fear of making the wrong move if rents fall or a flagging economy forces layoffs.

?Lenders are now taking a very hard look at each particular project to assess its viability in the context of a softening of demand,? said Scott A. Singer, executive vice president of Singer & Bassuk, a real estate finance and brokerage firm. ?There?s no question that there?ll be a significant slowdown in new construction starts, immediately.?

Examples of aborted deals and troubled developments abound. Last Friday, HSBC, the big Hong Kong-based bank, quietly tore up an agreement to move its American headquarters to 7 World Trade Center after bids for its existing home at 452 Fifth Avenue, between 39th and 40th Streets, came in 30 percent lower than the $600 million it wanted for the property.

A 40-story office tower under construction by SJP Properties at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue for the past 18 months still does not have a tenant.

And the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe last week suddenly pulled out of what had been an all-but-certain lease of 300,000 square feet of space at Citigroup Center, deciding instead to extend its lease at 666 Fifth Avenue for five years, in part because they hope rents will fall.

?Everything?s frozen in place,? said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, the industry?s lobbying association, shortly after the stock market closed on Monday.

Barry M. Gosin, chief executive of Newmark Knight Frank, a national real estate firm based in New York, said: ?Today, the entire financial system needs a lubricant. It?s kind of like driving your car after running out of oil and the engine seizes up. If there?s no liquidity and no financing, everything seizes up.?

It is hard to say exactly what the long-term impact will be, but real estate experts, economists and city and state officials say it is likely there will be far fewer new construction projects in the future, as well as tens of thousands of layoffs on Wall Street, fewer construction jobs and a huge loss of tax revenue for both the state and the city.

Few trends have defined the city more than the development boom, from the omnipresent tower cranes to the explosion of high-priced condominiums in neighborhoods outside Manhattan, from Bedford-Stuyvesant and Fort Greene to Williamsburg and Long Island City. Some developers who are currently erecting condominiums are trying to convert to rentals, while others are looking to sell the projects.

After imposing double-digit rent increases in recent years, landlords say rents are falling somewhat, which could hurt highly leveraged projects, but also slow gentrification in what real estate brokers like to call ?emerging neighborhoods? like Harlem, the Lower East Side and Fort Greene.

At the same time, some of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg?s most ambitious large-scale projects ? the West Side railyards, Pennsylvania Station, ground zero, Coney Island and Willets Point ? are going to take longer than expected to start and to complete, real estate experts say.

?Most transactions in commercial real estate are on hold,? said Mary Ann Tighe, regional chief executive for CB Richard Ellis, the real estate brokerage firm, ?because nobody can be sure what the economy will look like, not only in the near term, but in the long term.?

Although the real estate market in New York is in better shape than in most other major cities, a recent report by Newmark Knight Frank shows that there are ?clear signs of weakness,? with the overall vacancy rate at 9 percent, up from 8.2 percent a year ago. Rents are also falling when landlord concessions are taken into account.

The real estate boom has been fueled by a robust economy, a steady demand for housing and an abundance of foreign and domestic investors willing to spend tens of billions of dollars on New York real estate. It helped that lenders were only too happy to finance as much as 90 percent of the cost on the assumption that the mortgages could be resold to investors as securities.

But that ended with the subprime mortgage crisis, which has since spilled over to all the credit markets, which have come to a standstill. As a result, real estate executives estimate that the value of commercial buildings has fallen by at least 20 percent, though the decline is hard to gauge when there is little mortgage money available to buy the buildings and therefore few sales.

Long after the crisis began in 2007, many investors and real estate executives expected a ?correction? to the rapid escalation in property values. But after Lehman Brothers, the venerable firm that had provided billions of dollars of loans for New York real estate deals, collapsed two weeks ago, it was clear that something more profound was afoot.

And there was an immediate reaction in the real estate world: Tishman Speyer Properties, which controls Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler Building and scores of other properties, abruptly pulled out of a deal to buy the former Mobil Building, a 1.6 million-square-foot tower on 42nd Street, near Grand Central Terminal, for $400 million, two executives involved in the transaction said.

Commercial properties are not the only ones facing problems. On Friday, Standard & Poor?s dropped its rating on the bonds used in Tishman?s $5.4 billion purchase of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village apartment complexes in 2006, the biggest real estate deal in modern history. Standard & Poor?s said it cut the rating, in part, because of an estimated 10 percent decline in the properties? value and the rapid depletion of reserve funds.

The rating reduction shows the growing nervousness of lenders and investors about such deals, which have often involved aggressive ? critics say unrealistic ? projections of future income.

?Any continued impediment to the credit markets is awful for the national economy, but it?s more awful for New York,? said Richard Lefrak, patriarch of a fourth-generation real estate family that owns office buildings and apartment houses in New York and New Jersey.

?This is the company town for money,? he said. ?If there?s no liquidity in the system, it exacerbates the problems. It?s going to have a serious effect on the local economy and real estate values.?

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Right now, I think the ideal portfolio would consist 45 percent of some kind of global money market fund (e.g., a money market fund backed by a combination of U.S. Treasury bills and other countries' government bills), in case the economy goes through a fairly normal depression; 25 percent in one of those mutual funds that supposedly is designed for people who will be retiring when you want to retire, in case the economy goes through a normal recession, then recovers and does fine; 25 percent in a financial institutions mutual fund, in case the economy ends up doing great; and 5 percent in survival gear, in case the economy really, really tanks.

If the economy really, really tanks on a long-term basis -- in other words, we're at the start of a Soylent Green society -- then I think it would be more useful to have, say, a portable solar oven or the ability to fish than to have a pocketful of shiny yellow coins.

Swiss Franc and US dollars are considered "safe haven" currencies. Actually the dollar is doing OK because this is a world wide recession. Gold is doing well. Rental properties are doing well - no one has the backing or balls to buy - but they have still gotta live somewhere.

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Where is Taz when you need him?

I've got to give it to Taz - he's been right on the money so far, but disappeared lately. Must be counting the money he made by shorting the Dow.

Some food for thought - if we're really in for another depression, then there is still time to protect our assets.

What instrument will survive this crisis the best (gold, real estate, Euro, swiss franc - what?)?

Cause sure as heck it won't be the dollar if we have to print trillions worth of greenbacks in this crisis.

Here is a story from Bloomberg detailing the latest release of the S&P Case Shiller Home price index. The NYC component of this index was down 7.4% from a year ago and down about -0.76% from last month - the biggest losers in the index were not suprisingly Las Vegas, Phoenix, and a couple cities in California. Here is the story in case anyone cares:


Home Prices in 20 U.S. Cities Declined 16.3% in July
By Bob Willis

Sept. 30 (Bloomberg) -- House prices in 20 U.S. cities declined in July at the fastest pace on record, signaling the worst housing recession in a generation had yet to trough even before this month's credit crisis.

The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index dropped 16.3 percent from a year earlier, more than forecast, after a 15.9 percent decline in June. The gauge has fallen every month since January 2007, and year-over-year records began in 2001.

The housing slump is at the center of the meltdown in financial markets as declining demand pushes down property values and causes foreclosures to mount. Banks will probably stiffen lending rules even more in coming months to limit losses, indicating residential real estate will keep contracting and consumer spending will continue to falter.

``The fact that house prices quickened their slide before the worst point in credit markets hit this month does not bode well,'' said Derek Holt, an economist at Scotia Capital Inc. in Toronto.

Home prices decreased 0.9 percent in July from the prior month after declining 0.5 percent in June, the report showed. The figures aren't adjusted for seasonal effects so economists prefer to focus on year-over-year changes instead of month-to-month.

More Cities Down

Prices dropped in 13 cities month-over-month, compared with 11 in June. Las Vegas saw values fall 2.8 percent in July, the largest decline.

Economists forecast the 20-city index would fall 16 percent from a year earlier, according to the median of 23 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Projections ranged from declines of 14.5 percent to 16.5 percent.

Compared with a year earlier, all 20 areas showed a decrease in prices in July, led by a 30 percent drop in Las Vegas and a 29 percent decline in Phoenix.

``While some cities did show some marginal improvement over last month's data, there is still very little evidence of any particular region experiencing an absolute turnaround,'' David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P, said in a statement.

Robert Shiller, chief economist at MacroMarkets LLC and a professor at Yale University, and Karl Case, an economics professor at Wellesley College, created the home-price index based on research from the 1980s.

Other Measures

Other reports show price declines continue. The National Association of Realtors said Sept. 24 that the median price of an existing home fell 9.5 percent in August from a year earlier, compared with an 8 percent drop in July. The following day, the Commerce Department said the median price of new homes fell 6.2 percent in August from a year earlier, following a 4.6 percent drop the prior month.

Sales of previously owned homes fell 2.2 percent in August from the prior month and were 32 percent below their historic high reached in September 2005. Declining home construction has subtracted from growth since the first quarter of 2006, pushing the economy to the brink of a downturn.

U.S. homebuilders, buffeted by at least $19 billion in losses since 2006, will ask lawmakers to pass a $15,000 tax credit for all homebuyers, replacing a $7,500 incentive enacted earlier this year that they contend failed to stimulate demand.

``Our members are really hurting,'' Jerry Howard, the chief executive officer of the National Association of Home Builders, said in an interview yesterday. ``The tax credit passed in July seems to have failed to have sparked interest.''

Central bank body warns of Great Depression

Batten down the hatches boyz & girlz, she's getting ready to blow!

Don't say I didn't warn ya!

Such small, small minds...

Who said anything about keeping "money" in a FDIC joke of a "bank"?

At this point I only have faith in the strongest of sovereign funds, short-term US T-Bills, and even that is subject to revision on a month-to-month basis...

The next couple of years will be about return OF capital, not return ON capital

Manhattan Condo, Co-op Sales Decline Most in 18 Years

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On the other hand: even if housing prices are down a bit around here, how many people can say the stocks, bonds or stock or bond funds in their IRAs or 401(k) plans have done that much better?

In some cases, people's cash holdings may have done a little better. (E.g., earned 5%, rather than just holding steady or shrinking a bit.)

But, if the worst predictions come true, and banks start to fail, I think I'd rather own an actual house -- especially if I were pretty sure I could keep making the payments, even during a terrible economy -- than have $50,000 in cash in an insolvent bank.

Keep this in mind: the FDIC supposedly insures your savings account up to $100,000, but that doesn't mean it has to give you $100,000 all at once, or give you $100,000 in uninflated dollars.

Late last year, the FDIC was seeking permission just to pay out $30,000 per account right away and to put "temporary holds" on amounts over that level. It seems to me that, if a lot of banks collapsed, those "temporary holds" could get longer and longer, and maybe that amount that the FDIC would pay out right away would get smaller.

And, if that sort of thing happens to U.S. banks, it's hard to know what would happen with cash in foreign banks.

Under those circumstances, I think owning a house, work tools, or other hard goods could prove to be a lot more useful than owning a bunch of little pieces of paper, or to own a bunch of little gold disks that could be used to make jewelry. It's a lot easier to live in a house than it is to live in a necklace.

Funny how people can't smell $hit until they're drowing in it...

P.S. How do you like me know?

Both of our posts seem consistent to me, except that the bubble has now popped.
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Taz - In all seriousness, one solution to your problem (and others on this board who proclaim the death of the US Dollar) would be getting a currency trading account. I use www.oanda.com - probably the best customizable currency trading platform available. So for instance if you have US Dollar assets that you're looking to protect you can use Oanda to hedge yourself versus almost any currency you want (including gold & silver).

What's more is that you'll earn continuous interest (paid daily) on whatever balance you keep in their account at fairly competitive interest rates. These interest rates usually approximate fed-funds or overnight-LIBOR. Currently Oanda offers 3.3% on USD assets. This is actually a great feature since companies like HSBC Direct or ING pay great interest rates, but you only get the interest once a month so you miss out on some valuable compounding. Furthermore, lets say you swap your USD into euros or yen or whatever you'll earn the interest rate of that currency. For instance if you put your money in south african rand you'll earn 10%/yr but will be exposed to the currency fluctuations of course.

I've traded with them for the last 4-ish years and their quite safe and have great technology, etc. If you're not using for hedging, you can speculate and get anywhere from 20-1 or 50-1 leverage on your money (if you're into that sort of thing). Of course since it's customizable you can decide exactly how much currency you want to buy and sell (i.e. use less than 1:1 leverage if you want). If you're skeptical, they allow you to deposit as little as $100, or even less i think.

Anyway, sorry to shill for Oanda, but they're a good company and it seems like it would stop you & other dollar-apocalypse people from losing sleep over your lost purchasing power. If you have a view that the dollar is collapsing - do something about it and protect yourself rather than complain about what THEY (whoever they is) are doing ...

As a side note (using gold prices right now, which will be outdated by the time you read this) you can buy gold for $900.05 and sell gold at 899.55 (i.e. 50c difference between the bid & the ask) with no commissions. Buying Gold Coins or Gold Bullion would be much more expensive...

The only downside with Oanda is their deposit options aren't very good - Check, Wire, or Paypal - so for me, that pretty much means check, because i refuse to pay the fees associated with wire transfers and paypal's 2.9% processing fee. Depositing/withdrawing with a check is free, but can take about a week to send/recieve money. I usually just deposit using a bill-pay service from my online bank.

Sorry to get off topic... Back to the housing slump discussions...

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I think what happened is that people kept predicting the bubble would pop for about 4 years, but it never popped.

Maybe a lot of companies would have been better prepared for the bubble popping 2 or 3 years ago than they are today, because the companies got lazy and let their defenses slip.

I think the problem is that all of the other firms were so fixated on making money hand over fist on mortgage backed securities that they never took a moment to contemplate what would happen when the music stopped. That GS managed to profit from this mess is a HUGE embarrassment to the rest of Wall Street's CEOs. After all, it would have been a lot easier to justify one's 8 figure salary if "market conditions" explained how everyone was having big losses.

It really makes one question how much of CEO comp is due to social convention rather than talent....
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I'm totally calm, I'm just a little disturbed that after years of being a corporate surf and finally finding success in my ownl business, that chink of coin I've saved-up is being destroyed by a rigged game, that's undercutting my assets by pulling the rug out from underneath me through intentionally devaluing the currency...

And no, I haven't shipped my savings offshore yet, my CDs start maturing this week and I hate the fact that I can no longer securely keep them in the US without fear of the dollar collapsing even further than it has.

I do expect that once this set of events has run it's course that there will be a deflationary reset, but not before the dollar is crucified to make-up for a lack of genuine productivity that's been replaced by gimme economics in 'MeriKa.

P.S. I'd love to be an optimist that is looking forward towards greater & greater growth, but that too I'm afraid is gone.

Good luck one & all, TaZ out

Wow Taz, I don't know you but then again you don't seem like you'd be a barrel of fun to know anyway. Dude step away from the computer, go outside, find a hobby.

And since you're not one of the sheep that currently owns (you go with all that gold & all those worldly swiss bank accounts) stop obsessing cause it won't affect you in the end.

And clearly you don't care about any of the sheep who are foolish enough to own (you are rooting for everyone in the tri-state area to foreclose, correct?) so why get all riled up about it??

Go spend time with friends & family (you have some of those, right?) and bring that blood pressure down a bit. Really, it might make you a little more fun cause right about now, you are certainly not convincing any of us that you're a cool dude.

That being said I'll now go back to living my sheepish law abiding life. Bah, Bah.

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Good for you, short this market all the way down until there is nothin' left to short!

Personally I'm of the opinion that if people invested long-term in companies that are improving the future it would be a much more worthy, HONEST pursuit...

Then again one would hope that shareholders would rather see a return on their investments than enabling executives to pack their golden parachutes with as much loot as possible, but we all know that'll never happen

Not to worry though, after the 60 year super-boom/super-bubble has been totally propped-up with tax payer IOUs to keep the bonuses rolling on Wall St., there will be a complete revultion to casino capitalism!
The worst market crisis in 60 years

taz,

dude you gotta put down the pipe and stop with the conspiracies.

Also the ability to short sell is a sign of a matured market, and it's a very useful tool. Shorters are also the ones that dig up the dirty laundries companies trying to hide, making the general public aware of the issues.

It was through short sell that public first became aware of enron and exposed them.

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This is really bizarre. Deutsche Bank made huge headlines around 2004 or 2005 by predicting that $1 trillion adjustable rate mortgages would start resetting in 2007.

From that point on, I always justified my failure to get my act together enough to buy a house to say, "I'll buy a house when the ARMs reset."

If little old me knew that Deutsche Bank had predicted that the resetting of the ARMs would affect housing prices, and if all sorts of newspapers covered that prediction ad nauseum, you've got to wonder why more people didn't at least hedge against that sort of thing, even if they didn't trade based on it.

Trading around a long term position ( up or down) is just a way to protect your money in a company you like when you have done research. I dont see anything akin to gambling in my opinion. when the odds are in your favor it is just an educated guess.

Is poker really gambling if you know the odds over the long term? its a game of skill so is trading professionally or personally. What gets people into trouble is there money management skills in regards to trading. Thats the real problem for all the degenerates out there.

I see no difference between day traders and "professional" traders, other than one may have insider information and one doesn't...short-term spec is nothin' but the quest for "Money for nuthin, chicks for free".

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Please explain why shorting is more like gambling than any other form of equity investing? The markets as a whole move slowly, but individual stocks are more volatile, with those going up balanced by those going down. Yin/yang, you know?

Personally I think the day trading is the real roulette wheel of the wall street casino, the pure gambling. A friend married a day trader, I think he's no different than a guy playing the ponies who thinks he can't lose because he studies the bloodlines and such.

I knew about that quite awhile ago and my opinion remains the same - Goldman Sachs engaged in criminal behavior when they advised their clients to hold firm, and then shorted the market.

Of course my opinion means less than nothing (I think all shorting is akin to gambling and has no place in capital investment markets), doubley-so my opinion is meaningless now that the Treasury Dept. is more-or-less a defacto dept. of Goldman Sachs...

Have fun kids!

P.S. The US is skating dangerously close to losing ALL credibility in economic and world policy matters.

There is always a bubble...whether it's the internet, credit, or housing. It's the nature of the market. Wallstreet is mob mentality, they will pile on whatever is hot, and ride the trainwreck together when the time comes. Soon there will be a gold bubble

One surprise from the current subprime bubble busting is goldman sachs, it's the only big firm on wallstreet that was not a lemming and even managed to make a killing by doing the opposite of everyone else.

How is that possible? are those guys just better than the rest wallstreet firms? read this pretty interesting:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aEXlKAu61sYU

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Did I say anything about a doomsday scenario?

Then again, for someone that thinks that the last 12+ years of credit bubble is a "normal" event for a nation, maybe now that the banks won't be able to provide party-like conditions imaybe this is doomsday?!?

If I wanted to be a "sensationalist" I could have went MUCH further with how very, very, very bad economic conditions are & accordingly how the utterly stupidity falling prey to realtwhore scammers still looking for the bigger fools out there - In fact, I purposely left the maintenance costs of the last Rent vs. Buy calc (Is it $437 a month or year?) to see if I could make it break even

I didn't even start comparing my $2400 a month two bd. in Newport to buying the same, which anyone with half-a-brain could see would be insanity given the inflated prices 2 bd. condos are going for...

BTW, I ran into Goldilocks on Tunnelle Ave. and she was smokin' crack and asked me if I wanted a "date" for $50


P.S. The Foxtons 1BD.

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Or even better, a case of Colt 45 and some chocolate gold coins and "swiss almonds."