Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Recession

You know that people are starting to see things your way when the amount of hate mail you get slows to a trickle. When I first released my video about the housing bubble in 05, I had tons of people emailing me and telling me how stupid I was.

"What do you know? You have no credentials. You are no expert. By this time next year, you'll be eating crow." Etc. etc. Ad nauseum.

Well, if anyone of my detractors had some crow pie stored away for me, I wouldn't know, because I haven't heard from them lately.

Where are you?

I miss your eloquent and thoughtful missives...

"YOU DUMBASS THER IS NO NATIONAL HOUSING MARKET SO THEIR BY DEIFNITION CANNOT BE A NATIONAL HOUSING BUBBLE"

You are correct, sir.

There is no national housing market. But, when someone buys a house in a local market, where does that money come from? The local bank? At the end of the day, the HOUSES might not be aggregated, but the MORTGAGES used to buy them damn sure are. And that is how the contagion spreads.

I guess shortsighted people just take a little longer to see the lights of the oncoming train. The recession is on in 08, and if you don't act to secure yourself, you'll be one of the people smashed by a wave that "no one could see coming."

From the BBC:
A wave of foreclosures and evictions is about to sweep the United States in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage lending crisis.

This could destabilise the US housing market and may also lead to further turmoil in financial institutions, who collectively own $1 trillion (£480.6bn) worth of sub-prime debt.

The effects of this have already been seenin terms of bank failures and currency devaluation. Look at Gold right now. When Gold is high, people are uncertain. Look at the Dollar. It's losing all its value. Any doubt what people are uncertain about? It's the economy, stupid.

Yet people are still trying to manage perceptions:
Chief Executive James Owens said on Tuesday there was a "high probability" for a soft landing for the U.S. economy after a period of slower growth.
Sorry, James, You're Wrong. Just like Leslie Appleton-Young was when she said the same thing about the housing market. There is not going to be a soft landing. There's going to be a crash. And the sooner people learn about it, the sooner they can start preparing for it.