December 24, 2006

HousingPanic Stupid Question of the Day



How on earth will we pay it all back?

Or will we?

36 comments:

Anonymous said...

After studying economics for over 35 years, I am as perplexed as anyone about the debt explosion. My father back in the 1960's was already preaching gloom and doom about credit outstanding. Remember in those days stores mostly carried their own credit, and a lot of people were in debt to local merchants. . . .we have perhaps heard to song, "owe my soul to the company store."

My best guess is that there will NOT be a meltdown (at least not all at once like 1929), but instead we will see a depreciated dollar (hence inflate away the debt), sub-prime mortgage holders being foreclosed upon, and moving back in with mom and dad, a few hedge funds collapse, a few banks collapse (with forced mergers with stronger banks), and even some international bailouts - China still wants a market to sell Chinajunk (tm).

Spending Christmas once again in Zurich, let me tell you, the bankers and insurance people here are in "high clover" as my Aunt from North Carolina would say. . .London and New York - ditto. . .financial bonuses are at record levels. . .the money just continues to flow from the have-a-little's to the have-it-all's. . .we are certainly in a new era of Feudalism. . .

Bill said...

we wont!

Anonymous said...

Can you find one single instance in history where we did not get a meltdown with such hockey stick curves?

Anonymous said...

inflation will make it all go away in real terms.... Humans live a "nominal" existance and therefore won't really notice.

Anonymous said...

Why pay it back? Our society has pushed the limits on debt and there is no turning back. Borrow as much as you can and just make the monthly payments.This is what it has all become.Who is going to make us pay it back?Why should we pay it back?This is the new economic model. They can't grow the economy through job creation so they do it through debt creation.

blogger said...

Saw the new clint eastwood wwII movie yesterday and the big push was to talk americans into buying war bonds - a worthy cause back then

now we are fighting a trillion dollar war, we're deficit spending in the hundreds of billions so our rich people can get a tax break they don't need, and we suckered the rest of the world into buying our bonds to fund it all

brilliant

Anonymous said...

dont even try tp pay it, just write it off in a bankruptcy reorganization.

Vega said...

We are not gonna pay it back.

The creditor banks are gonna be in big trouble.

And so will the Chinese and Japanese.

It will end in a collapse of the monetary and financial system.

Resulting in Depression and Deflation.

Paul E. Math said...

Inflation seems to be the path of least resistence. Metrics on inflation will be modified as skillfully as possible to try to disguise the full scale of the inflation. As long as the fed can keep it from running out of control then 5 or 7% inflation for a few years might allow us to escape from this credit bubble.

Though I believe we are in a bubble for credit and housing, when I play devil's advocate and try to think of ways that we will avoid a full-scale meltdown, inflation is the one possibility out there.

And it makes me angry because it discourages prudent saving and fiscal responsibility and restraint while rewarding the instant gratification of debt-financed purchases.

Anonymous said...

No - it won't be paid back. People like Casey Serin will just BK...

Anonymous said...

We are not gonna pay it back.

The creditor banks are gonna be in big trouble.

And so will the Chinese and Japanese.

It will end in a collapse of the monetary and financial system.

Resulting in Depression and Deflation.

Not necessarily. FDR used the power of Government to re-organize the banking system, issue credit to get the economy moving again etc. Our system was always a "credit system" not a "money system".

You dont have to allow this to simply destroy entire nations. You have an orderly bankruptcy re-organization.

Anonymous said...

An interesting one is actually leveraging this up by some financially smart home owners. If you have a non-recourse home loan - and have cash and so no real concern about a ruining of credit and the property has dropped significantly, say 40% then there is nothing to stop you using jingle mail, let them foreclose, get out of paying back your loan (non-recourse loan otherwise it doesn't work ) that's 130% say of property value and buying a similar property, for cash of course at that 40% discount. Yup, you pay taxes on this "gain" of course but its still ok. Interesting idea!

Also, all of the below in varying proportions:

0. debt transfers to some government entity - delinquent loans get sold to the govt by the lenders for say 80cents on the dollar. The taxpayer is in effect on hook for the rest, a la S&L rescue.

1. debt liquidation - the lenders will take some of the pain, the borrowers get off scot-free, save for ruined credit.

2. conversion of delinquent debt to equity by the lenders via outright ownership changes to rental, "leases", fig-leaf remortgaging terms of 50 years so we can all pretend you are a home owner but its still really just renting - All this guaranteed and underwritten by some government agency.

-K

Anonymous said...

Euro/Swiss/Jap Banker:
Yeah uhm Uncle Sam, we need that $10 trillion we lent you back

Uncle Sam:
Hmm you know what, I'm totally tapped dude, sorry can't help you out just now

Euro/Swiss/Jap/Banker:
What the fuck? What did you spend $10 trillion on?

Uncle Sam:
Well for one, we built all these cool planes, satelittes, bombs, this shit is fucked up nasty. We can blow up for example a specific cafe in Paris with a flick of a switch from North Dakota, that's how fucked up this shit it. That alone cost up $80 billion to develop. Then we put these satellites out there that can tell us what the Japanese prime minister's first shit in the morning looks like, that was like another $400 billion.

Euro/Swiss/Jap/Banker:
Right, OK, uhm you know what, why don't you just pay us back when you get a chance, or not, you know whatever, we're cool.

Uncle Sam:
Hey as long as you're here, I have my eye on that new iPod but you know like I said I'm a little tapped out, can one of you guys spot me $1K?

Euro/Swiss/Jap/Banker:
Sure thing Sammy,just sign right here

Anonymous said...

You borrow a little, the bank owns you, you borrow a whole lot, you own the bank ... and we borrowed so freaking much ... when the bank (chinese, japs, arabs and foreign investors) collapses, we are almost in the only position to "help them" by loaning some of their own money (by printing it of course). Good buy inflation, welcome hyper stagflation. AKA economic paralysis.
Cool.
Cow_tipping.

Anonymous said...

mark in SD,

I think you have it right. The question
is though, will we have disinflation first?
And if so, how do we time that? How hard
will it hit the mining and energy juniors?
GLD and SLV? These are the technical issues
that will make or break.

-mc

Anonymous said...

The US national debt stands at 8.61+ trillion dollars today and growing.

The Japanese national debt stands at 6.6 trillion US dollars today.

The US gdp is roughly 3X that of Japan.

Japan loans money far cheeper than that of the US percentage wise. Japans gov bonds carry much smaller yields than the US gov bonds.

Smart investors abroad borrow cheep money from Japan and buy US bonds.

This is called the carry trade. It is a no brainer, Slam dunk-mission accomplished.

Switching gears, you will notice that 'giant 120 meter ski jump' of a debt chart you posted all started when Nixon took the US off the gold standard in 1971 thereby making all foreign debts of the US payable in dollars-paper dollars.

What I am attempting to show is as long as the world accepts dollars as the world currency, deficits apparantly do not matter, for if they did; Japan with its national debt of 165% of GDP wouldhave/shouldhave gone BK long ago.

What I do not understand is this, since deficits apparantly do not matter, and the US has the reserve currency of the world, then why doesn't helicopter ben drop us all a cool million for each citizen thereby really stimulating the worldwide economy and domestic consumption? Just think we then could all afford a MCmansion and a lennar crakerbox too for a vacation home. LOL

Anonymous said...

Supply side economics voodoo at its finest. Its the republican way.

The fed supplys the dollars at any and all cost. When the music stops you better be holding a chair.

Anonymous said...

So your chart basically reads that the 'gipper' Ronald Reagan trilled the US national debt during his term, and that was more than triple over the last 200 years in american history?

Amazingly historians seem to place reagan towrds the top of all presidents in ratings.

Me thinks there will be adjustments to this downwards as time goes by.

Anyone notice that when all that borrowing started in earnest the equities markets also went up in tandum? Correlation, I say you bet.

Anonymous said...

'trilled'=trippled

Anonymous said...

So your chart basically reads that the 'gipper' Ronald Reagan trilled the US national debt during his term, and that was more than triple over the last 200 years in american history? Amazingly historians seem to place reagan towrds the top of all presidents in ratings. Me thinks there will be adjustments to this downwards as time goes by.
++++++++
Man, I hope so. The "Gipper" was one of the worst Presidents our country ever had, and I'm tired of the way people have canonized him as some kind of "great leader."

Anonymous said...

Boys and girls,

Last time I checked the president does not spend any money. Congress writes spending bills, each and every one of them. From 1954 ot 1994 Democrats controlled Congress, including the 1980s during which the debt skyrocketed.

FlyingMonkeyWarrior said...

Spend all you want, they will print more.

Anonymous said...

The second graph looks pretty bad on the surface. Total debt grows from $1.25T to $10T. 2005 is 8 times as high as 1980!! But the same graph plotted as % of GDP wouldn't look nearly as dire.

nominal GDP in 1980 was $2.789T
nominal GDP in 2005 was $12.455T

So debt as % of GDP it went from ~45% to ~80%. Still a hefy increase but not an 800% increase as your graph suggests.

Anonymous said...

Then we put these satellites out there that can tell us what the Japanese prime minister's first shit in the morning looks like, that was like another $400 billion.

Yeah, but you couldn't tell that 19 hijackers were about to run 3 commercial jets into the WTC and Pentagon. You know, your BS really sucks.

Anonymous said...

that's because Bush was in on it..DUH, everyone knows that. And fucknut, those pieces of human muslim filth didn't come asking for money did they. You are denser than a filthy muslim's jiz.

"Yeah, but you couldn't tell that 19 hijackers were about to run 3 commercial jets into the WTC and Pentagon. You know, your BS really sucks."

Jip said...

>>Or will we?<<

I think that's the plan of the banks and fiance company...

Anonymous said...

- Loudoun County Assessed Residential Property Values -
($ Billions)

Year Assessed Value
2000 $10.8
2001 13.8
2002 17.6
2003 20.9
2004 25.7
2005 33.3
2006 47.3

Anonymous said...

I remember watching economists saying similar things about the tech bubble. They couldn't understand why the stocks were way overvalued.

Well, in the end, things reverted to sensibility.

As long as Americans are fat and happy, no one is going to complain about the rich getting richer. But if things should collapse, all bets are off. Remember what happened to Marie Antoinette.

Anonymous said...

The U.S. owes so much money to foreign countries such as China it's like we think we own our house but really our creditors own it.

Who really is or will be in control of the United States?

Anonymous said...

"The Fear Economy: We thought that the Great Depression couldn't happen again. But could it?"
Written By Paul Krugman, 09/30/01 AND EVEN MORE RELEVANT FIVE YEARS LATER:

"Here's my nightmare: America's recovery from its current slump [2001], whenever it comes, is tentative and short-lived, because the business investment that drove our boom in the 1990's remains stagnant. Eventually the housing bubble bursts and we have another slump; then we have another weak recovery, this time driven by deficit spending, but that, too, fades out. Eventually we look around and realize that it's 2009, and the economy still hasn't fully recovered from the slowdown that began at the end of the previous decade."

Sound familiar? Is this happening now?

Read the full article at:

http://tinyurl.com/ye8rc6

Anonymous said...

RE: Loudoun assessed values of property.

I did a fast curve fitting ( www.zunzun.com for online fitting ) on that and extrapolated to 2012. Here is what you get:

2000 9.95239312037626
2001 12.8185445594197
2002 16.510107934283
2003 21.2647904555877
2004 27.3887557198286
2005 35.2763382007975
2006 45.4354352416281
2007 58.5202115890109
2008 75.3732223805126
2009 97.0796669691012
2010 125.037267098026
2011 161.046269022732
2012 207.425364997854

Is it really credible that a property worth 450K will be worth 2 million in 2012, in REAL TERMS ? The trend is just not sustainable. In brokerese, "trees don't grow to the sky".

Its same ole' same ole'. I did the same analysis with AOL, with Krispy Kreme. With KK, I seem to recall that the inflated P/E ratio at their height implied that every American ate a KK donut every 2 days...


-K

Anonymous said...

sk you have way too much time on your hands buddy and I suggest you look for a hobby

stuckinthecity said...

Anonymous said...
dont even try tp pay it, just write it off in a bankruptcy reorganization.

Sunday, December 24, 2006 3:50:54 PM
-------------

The only problem is that the BK rules have changed.

stuckinthecity said...

1. debt liquidation - the lenders will take some of the pain, the borrowers get off scot-free, save for ruined credit.
-----------

I predict an adjustment to the credit score system. In a few years, a 500 score won't be TOO bad....

Anonymous said...

President's write budgets, Congress authorizes spending. Reagan's budgets asked for even MORE spending than Congress authorized. AND, the Senate was under REPUBLICAN control for 6 of the 8 raygun years.

Republican "leaders" brought us here. They should all be shot.

Anonymous said...

When a borrower nation defaults or defrauds a creditor nation, it can sometimes lead to a war. Just a little thought there. I don't think we'll default - taxes will go way up before that happens. But, I can imagine that some of our elected huksters at the top might try hustling the east by paying them back with a steeply devalued currency.