economic indicator

[bulldog tile]

Invest in someone you trust implicity - yourself - your business venture. Over the years, I've had better returns reinvesting in my company than my investments in stock. Although when cd's were paying 19+% under Jimmy Carter I did quite well. No penalities for early withdrawals with me.

[MudMaker]

OK Davy.. You called the top.... Now I need you to call the bottom....

and what about this? 401k's come up every now and again, but it sounds like there are already works in progress to attack our 401's

[Davestone]

I said before i think this is a long overdue correction and will slack off at about 10,500...unless of course Europe gets worse as it looks like it is with the new downgrades and people panick.I don't believe this is the end yet,i think that will sneak up on us.

And you know i've never been wrong.

Oops, i hadn't seen the news today,markets tanking, Obummer on vacation again..i tack another 1500 on the loss,Dow hovers around 9,000,you heard it here folks.

[java]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=iRzr1QU6K1o

[java]

From Zero Hedge...



While indeed homes have never been more affordable... one must pay for them in constant gold. Yes, holding gold over the past century has as of this point effectively defeated any of the accumulated home price inflation over the years, and when expressing home prices in terms of gold, the average home is now more affordable than ever before. We said gold. Not dollars, not yen, not spam, not Nobel economics prizes. So for everyone who wants to exchange some of that shiny metal into the most valuable and capital intensive investment the average American will do in their lifetimes, this is your moment.

[Davestone]

I don't think we're at the pinnacle yet Jason,i'd say we have a ways to go before we've seen the bottom of real estate,or the top of gold.

[cx]

Don't even have a guess about gold, Stoner, but I do believe we're at or very near the bottom of the real estate market.

[Steve C]

Originally Posted by Dave

I don't think we're at the pinnacle yet Jason,i'd say we have a ways to go before we've seen the bottom of real estate,or the top of gold.

I'll second that.

[Tiger Mountain Tile Inc]

I agree that we're at or near the bottom of the real estate market...in US dollar terms. The RE/gold ratio I think will get more extreme than it is now. But this is just an opinion.

[ob1kanobee]

I wouldn't be concerned as much about the bottom of real estate but more concerned about when it is gonna go back up or start back up and when it does, xactly how slow is it gonna rise and I'm not talking about inflation either.

[Steve C]

I guess they're all just opinions right now. None of us knows what's coming up, but I think it's going to be a pretty big deal.

In my opinion, the people who've forecast a lot of what's happened up to this point (Gerald Celente, Bill Bonner, Doug Casey, and numerous others) are worth listening to, but even they say they don't really know what's going to go down (or up).

Sure is going to be interesting to see what this thing looks like, though.

[sandbagger]

the real estate market will pick up right after people go back to work - which will be right after Obama leaves office. It really isn't all that complicated.

[Davestone]

Well, we do know these things.
Mortgages will not stop resetting till after 2012.
Large banks are already beginning to hedge their exposure by blocking locking in jumbo rates.
Commercial real estate never fully crashed....as it will.
Most of the (exposed) foreclosures have been bought in some areas.In other words...what happened,where's the recovery?
There is a huge shadow inventory of foreclosed or almost foreclosed homes that will appear on the market shortly.
E.U will almost certainly crash and will drag us down.

[bulldog tile]

The last big real estate bubble to burst was farm land in the 70's. Farmers had thousands hedged against their property, then one day their property was worth very little a lot of family farms went under. That market has yet to come back. Here an acre of farm land was going for upwards of $6 - $8000 per acre in the 70's and today the same property is only around $2500 - $3000. Similarly, it will be a long, long time before the housing market comes back because in my opinion:

The stimulus bought very few toxic accounts - the banks have to absorb them.

Bankruptcies are still at an increased rate which will take millions of people out of the housing market for years to come and the banks have had to absorb the write off.

Foreclosures are still at an increased rate and the banks have had to absorb the write off.

Local, small town banks received no bail out money but are receiving the brunt of absorbing the write offs.

At last count there over 12 million unoccupied homes across the country.

The market is still flooded with homes with a smaller market to buy them and banks that are not bending over backwards to make a loan especially to people with a bankruptcy or foreclosure in their history.

I've always been an optimist but I just don't see any short term fix to this economy.

[sandbagger]

Originally Posted by Donnie

Local, small town banks received no bail out money but are receiving the brunt of absorbing the write offs.

While in general I don't disagree with the thrust of your post (ie, pessimistic), this one jumped out at me. Generally speaking the small banks are doing just fine precisely because they did not get caught up in the scam of making loans just to make loans. These bankers actually ran credit reports and required a source of income to make the payments.