September 15, 2007

HousingPANIC Stupid Question of the Day


Seriously folks, did you think you'd ever see runs on banks in your lifetime?

I didn't.

But here we are. And away we go.

Get ready to see some real serious sh*t.


20 comments:

Anonymous said...

This October will be one hell of a month here in the US.

If something isn't done - and FAST - we'll have a similar run on the banks here.

Anonymous said...

Can't we just get this crash over with already?

Anonymous said...

Seriously folks, did you think you'd ever see runs on banks in your lifetime?

Yeah, the S&L crisis in the 1980s. Here in Maryland there were long lines at Old Court Savings & Loan (until they discovered Jeffrey Levitt and his shopaholic pig wife had embezzled everything).

Old Court S&L

blogger said...

You would have to be insane to have money at Countrywide or Indymac bank no matter how high the savings account rates are there

Giving them your money is like dropping the soap in front of Mark Foley or Ted Haggard

Anonymous said...

PKK (grandma-63 years old)

I had old grandparents, born in the early 1880's, and my parents were
8 and 10 in October 1929, old enough
to remember everything and what followed. Both were interested observers of history;as
an only child for 5 years,they
talked to me as if I were older and
told me their memories as soon as I
could talk. In fact my earliest memory is the day WW2 ended (V-J
day). I only recognized the events
of the day when they described them later as something I remembered.


My Dad told me to always watch what was going on, as signs would be
obvious years ahead. Never think you are immune to attack. One time it's one group, the next time it's you.Never count on anyone with authority to tell you the whole truth, rather as little as possible. Think for yourself and dare to be different in a crowd;
better still don't trust crowds and go your own way. Seek out information; don't wait to be given
it. Don't take no for the final answer, look for other solutions, or create your own..In other words
figure things out for yourself.
As I zigzagged through life, I
used all of this advice at one time or another. And so I knew the housing story as presented the last
decade couldn't possibly be true.

He thought the safeguards in place
would save us from another disaster. But we have dismantled most of them so more money can be
made, right? And lost, as the case
may be.

My mother taught me many things
about seeing with a true heart and
looking beneath the common, quick
answer, because it often contains
a lie..

I remember thinking as various
mechanisms governing investment and
banking in the last 15+ years so
have been deconstructed; "isn't that necessary to prevent....?"

I began to wonder if banks couldn't fail after all. In the late summer
/early fall of 1992 I had a dream
a public announcement went out that
we were to go home and turn on our
televisions, and not stop at the banks to take anything out. We
would be addressed on television with further instructions. The weather seemed similar to that time
of year. And as I have mentioned
before, I've been dreaming of a
big economic implosion worldwide
since I was 3+..

So I've been watching. And waiting
and doing my own information gathering. I suggest you might all
want to know more about gardening.
There's a lot of land around us; it's just under the lawn.

Anonymous said...

And I watched 3 news channels yesterday, yet no mention of any financial trouble whatsoever.

Oh, they talked about Iraq, and Shillary Clinton, and OH! there was a new baby panda born.

But no mention of the biggest worldwide economic collapse in the history of the world happening right under our noses.

jaye said...

People are too busy using the plastic card to give any thought about an economic collapse. I don't know of anyone who has any real need for anything that they can't get from one source or another. The government is eagerly there to give financial assistance and medical to anyone who takes the time and effort to go get it.

I'm not sure how this will all play out, I've been waiting for this time in my life for 50 years. What does it mean for the average guy? If there's a run on the banks, there will be runs for the grocery stores. Fill your shelves at home now while food is plentiful. The soup lines will be here soon.

Anonymous said...

"Anonymous said...
PKK (grandma-63 years old)

I had old grandparents, born in the early 1880's,......."

Thanks for a great post. I was adopted at birth, in 1948; by people in their late 40's who had lived their young adult lives in the Depression. Generation wise, you could say that I was raised by what would have been my grandparents.
What a difference that made. Mom and dad never had credit cards, paid cash for everything except housing, even cars, and had no installment payments on anything. Through the years, their houses were always 30yr fixed, and usually paid off in fewer than 10. We lived well, just didn't, absolutely have to have, every new thing that came down the pike.
When they passed away in the nineties, the heirs and relatives were totally amazed (I was executor) by the amount of assets that two retired factory workers had managed to sock away! Houses was free and clear, as were the cars, assets passed flawlessly to the heirs thanks to an estate planning service through our church (the probate lawyers were NOT happy!)
I also grew up on stories of the Great Depression. There were times, growing up, that it really bugged me to have such "old fashioned" parents as compared to my peers. My parents didn’t spoil their kid. My parents didn’t buy everything and anything, just because it was the latest trend. The classic SNL skit “If you can’t afford it, doesn’t buy it” was always running in my house! We just didn’t know that someone would make a comedy about it years later! These lessons were not lost, or ever forgotten.
It's a shame that spoiled America doesn't have a clue about what's about to hit it! For many, nobody was around to tell them about the Depression. Most wouldn't listen anyway.

So, who’s on American Idol this week?

Anonymous said...

For anone interested, I am old enough to remember the 1972 house price collapse.

The following is my recollection of what happend around here, in Surrey. Houses had gone up by about 50% between January and August 1972, and then everything ground to a halt.

No one could raise the money to buy and, at the same time, no one was willing to sell for a price less than their expectations.

The result was that the market ground to a complete standstill. Prices did not collapse immediately, but drifted down for the next 2 years and, eventually, were about 20% lower.

However, that was at a time of high inflation. The real price drop amounted to more like 40%.

With inflation now at a very low level, I think it not unreasonable to expect prices to drop about 40% over the next few years. i.e.

A house valued at £500,000 today will probably fetch about £300,000 in a couple of years' time. Let's face it, a house price correction has been well overdue for at least 3 years now.

http://www.iii.co.uk/investment/
detail/?display=discussion&code=
cotn%3ANRK.L&threshold=0&it=
le&pageno=3

Anonymous said...

The biggest bubble of all is government spending and federal deficit. Wait until that one explodes.

Anonymous said...

All Amercians want and deserve is truth in government. If the ship is going down we need to know. Sadly, we can't count on our government to give us all the facts. They think we can't handle it.

This is where we have to take the bull by the horns and get out of the debt that is strangling our country.

If anyone is up-side-down on a home get out fast. Properties will continue going down as the great debt bubble unwinds. Let the big egos who think they can handle it be the ones left holding the debt bag. Don't get stuck!!!

Anonymous said...

Great song about the crash...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewiXA_he6VQ

Anonymous said...

1929 all over again

Anonymous said...

It's no joke if you're too old to start again and your life savings are on the line:

link

I for one am not surprised to see runs, and I expect a few more here in the US. Countrywide already had a run last month. Those of us old enough to remember the S&L crisis know that you don't have to back to the 30s for experience with runs.

The UK system seems especially bad though - their government insurance isn't worth crap. I have confidence that most banks won't fail, and the FDIC really will pay off depositors if one fails - more likely, they'll find a buyer to take over a small failure, and they'll find a way to keep a TBTF bank from going tits up. Still, who wants the hassle of having to deal with FDIC and having your money tied up for months or even years while they sort out some mess? I didn't rush for the exit when the subprime mess hit, but as soon as my CD matured at Countrywide I damned sure cashed it out and went elsewhere. Definitely keeping below the FDIC limit in any one institution - these chaps in the UK with a million quid in a single institution, what are they thinking?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
PKK (grandma-63 years old)

------------------------------------
Thanx

Anonymous said...

Before, they were constantly putting up pictures of Britanny and Paris to keep peaple's minds off of the Iraq war...

Now they're going to show the brutal expose of soldiers being killed in Iraq to keep people's minds off the economic implosion.

Anonymous said...

runs on banks...

I could never admit it as even I thought it was a doomsday prediction.

Anonymous said...

Doomsayers, listen!. You are correctly sensing a change, but wrongly labelling as bad, negative etc. Think of our current allocation of economic resources for manufacturing and so on. Most of the stuff people buy, probaly 95% or more, are just junk that have no correlation with our survival. Just excess junk...plasma televisions, perfumes, excessive cars...the list just goes on and on. The point is that our current economy is almost entirely geared up to produce, import and consume excess junk with very low quality and short life-span. Our species could do well without almost all of it, or do even better. So if this turmoil achieves a reduction in the way we abuse our dear earth to appease our excesses, then it is a blessing. So what you are afraid may be the thing that helps the planet to survive. Future generations, if around despite us, would identify it properly as a blessing.. To conclude, in the long run, it really truly profoundly does not matter how we all do in terms of consumerism. Quite on the contrary.

Anonymous said...

I expected it. I couldn't read HP and the other Housing Bust blogs so much and not have expected things to get this bad, but I still shake my head because it boggles the mind no matter how you look at it. I hope every one of those people is able to get out every last penny of their money.

Anonymous said...

I hope every GOP voter in Ohio for the 2000 and 2004 elections looses both thier jobs and their homes.

They asked for it.