April 27, 2008

HP'ers - A fringe bunch of nuts, hoping for a big housing bust, screwing up the entire economy


So here's how HousingPANIC (I assume it's us) is positioned by the mainstream media in a recent interview with a couple of investors:

Reporter: What do you think of bloggers who seem to root for an even bigger bust?

McEnearney: I'm not seeing that.

Foster: Good Lord. I'm not either. I'm hoping it's just a fringe bunch of nuts. Because, you know, I think that would be awful for the whole economy.


So I guess a few questions and statements come to mind:

1) We're indeed rooting for home prices to come down. Do you want to know why? BECAUSE THEY'RE TOO DAMN HIGH, NOT BASED ON THE FUNDAMENTALS, AND NOT GOOD FOR SOCIETY OR FUTURE GENERATIONS. GOT IT?

2) We're not a "fringe bunch of nuts". WE'RE SANE, RATIONAL PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTAND BUBBLES AND FINANCIAL MANIAS, AND ECON 101, AND MADE WISE FINANCIAL CHOICES, UNLIKE THE MILLIONS WHO DID NOT AND ARE NOW SCREAMING FOR US TO BAIL THEM OUT.

3) These investors apparently have never googled "housing bubble". Too bad. Lots of good stuff on that crazy google thing nowadays.

35 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sometimes you feel like a nut sometimes you don't.

Burn Baby Burn

Anonymous said...

Massive mortgage fraud and unaffordable housing is good for the economy?

Anonymous said...

badge of honor

Anonymous said...

Let the eat penut butter with their ramen...

GT said...

hey you made this article keith..

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/26/AR2008042600172_2.html

That has not been enough to convince Alex S. Cohen, who moved to the Washington area from California two years ago. In that time, Cohen has been watching housing prices fall on blogs such as HousingPanic and waiting for the right time to buy. But in the meantime, the 28-year-old engineer is focusing on investing in the stock market.

"As long as you're beating inflation, you're fine," said Cohen. "Beating inflation is the minimum that an investment should do, and most of my investments do better than that."


i'm guessing this is all that came from your request the other day for dc area people to chime in??

tater said...

I am a "cashews" kinda' guy.

Anonymous said...

my only regret has been that i didn't go out to california and take advantage of this no money down, no doc subprime loans and then i also regret that i did not get a massive heloc on it, that way i can play jingle mail....

Anonymous said...

All of us DC HP'ers know Razzi & that other reporter that do the Monthly "live chats" for the WP are full of pipe-dream RE BS.

We had people call them out & nail them to the floor with their wrong, stupid & severley biased opinions.

Quite frankly, I real surprised they both still have jobs !

Anonymous said...

If she'd written "Fearful Homedebtor" instead, she'd be whistling a different tune.

Anonymous said...

Washington DC is different.

Anonymous said...

This will be a long war and will cost millions of people their financial lives. Bulldozers, gubmint bailouts, currency devaluation, sleazier lending, no dirty trick too low, no stupidity left off the table. Fortunately, for me, I am dug in like a tick on a hound's ear. I can wait until the whole fed gubbermint collapses if that's what it takes.

Anonymous said...

I predict that the fires are going to start up in the canyons around LA this week , again.......and nobody will know how they started. burned down mcmansion. no worries mate...

Anonymous said...

I've got some follow-ups:

What do you think of REIC shills who spew utopian fantasies of infinite debt-fueled economic growth without any repercussions?

Are you familiar with the term "Ponzi Scheme?" How about "Bag Holder?"

If a business makes a series of poor investments, such as granting a no-money-down loan for $700,000 to a family making $80,000/year, should the government use tax money to save that business from failure? Why or why not?

What does the phrase "too big to fail" mean to you?

Define "Market Price."

Anonymous said...

"...20 percent a year is fine for a year, maybe for two or three years...It's a good time to buy...

...At one time I owned 72 houses. They can be wonderful investments."

alba said...

I want to know more about the ratio of the price of homes versus the median income of a particular area. I most certainly could not afford my last home; barely afforded it while I lived in it. It was a great investment, but now I want comfortable living for my family. What are the past rules of thumb, and are they based on 20% down? Will we get back to those figures in CA?

Anonymous said...

"But, yet, and I've never seen this before in all our other recessions, there is a ring around Washington now."

"I have no idea why, I really don't."

OF COURSE YOU DON'T KNOW WHY, YOU EFFING RETARD, YOU JUST SELL REAL ESTATE AND TELL PEOPLE BUY NOW, BUY NOW, BUY NOW!

WELCOME TO ORANGE MAN'S RING OF FIRE BABY!

THE ROOF, THE ROOF, THE ROOF IS ON FIRE!

IF YOU AIN'T GO NOT EQUITY LET THE MUTHA-F#CKER BURN!

DOPES!

Anonymous said...

You forgot tinfoil hatters in your put-down poll.

Tinfoil girl

Anonymous said...

.
.
.
We would not be "bitter" if housing prices reflected increasing wages and good jobs so that people could buy more expensive houses.

But today's housing prices are entirely based on fraud. Nothing else. And it is time it comes to an end before it wrecks the entire economy...

Chris said...

Maybe that reporter should write a new book entitled "How to Buy a House Without Crapping Your Pants".

BTW, I've started a new blog called "Pop Goes the Housing", so click on my profile to check it out. Eventually it will be entertaining, although never to the level of HP which is the gold standard. My previous ID was "Chris G" but I changed it to plain old "Chris".

Anonymous said...

Being insane in an insane world = sanity. If the insane world of MSM and REIC targets you as a nut = you're sane! Thanks Keith, thanks informed HP contributors.

Anonymous said...

So, now they are seriously questioning where we are heading, and asking if we (Hp'ers) have it figured out.

Too late suckers.

Now, how do we capitalize on their demise?

Paul E. Math said...

Did you notice their ages? One is 81 and the other is 74. I'm trying not to be age-ist here but c'mon, these guys probably don't even know how to use a word processor, much less 'the internets'. What would they know about the economy as a whole, except for what the MSM and the NAR tells them?

This housing bubble is certainly a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon so their prior experience would provide them with very little help. Knowledge of the nature of bubbles and speculative manias would help and these 2 salesmen showed clearly that they have no such knowledge.

Anonymous said...

But wait, there's no housing bubble in DC, it's different here, we have the government teet!

blogger said...

Remember it was seasoned "investors" like these who lost hundreds of billions for their banks because they didn't see the housing bubble, when nuts like HP'ers saw it a mile away

BTW I decided to play nice with the reporter, who didn't call us nuts and correctly stated that we are rooting for house prices to go down

Frank R said...

"Remember it was seasoned "investors" like these who lost hundreds of billions for their banks because they didn't see the housing bubble, when nuts like HP'ers saw it a mile away"

Like Kiyosaki says, so-called "financial advisors" have to work as salesmen for a living because they're too dumb to know how to invest for themselves ... so WHY WHY WHY would anyone ever take their advice?

The same goes for these so-called real estate "investors."

Anonymous said...

Who's calling us brownshirts? Browncoats more likely!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browncoat

Anonymous said...

Proud to be an HPer.

Embarrassed to be an American.

America Sucks.

Anonymous said...

dude- it's McEnerny and Foster, two clueless used-car salesmen/Realtors.

also some history behind the author/interviewer, Elizabeth Razzi is a housing perma-bull at the Washington Post who was brutally called out for claiming there were only six houses under 350K in all of Fairfax. she wrote that! turns out there are 2,500+ fitting that description. she hates us because she's a whore for real estate and we called her out on that.

Anonymous said...

That "they" feel the need to acknowledge us at all betrays their terror at what they have caused.

Lost Cause said...

Waaaaaa...they are saying bad things about us in the press....waaaaaa....they are talking down our stock....waaaaaa....can I have another $29 billion please....

Anonymous said...

"WE'RE SANE, RATIONAL PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTAND BUBBLES AND FINANCIAL MANIAS, AND ECON 101, AND MADE WISE FINANCIAL CHOICES"

OK, that yelling was sane and rational...

I guess it's all relative. There are certainly a fair amount of kooks here. The wackos make it entertaining. It helps me illustrate the concept "don't get ahead of yourself" to others.

Maybe some made a wise financial choice, concerning housing and the current market. People have posted here that they don't buy stocks, or have it all in gold, or keep cash in hand only. That's hardly wise. Not to mention all the bad picks people have made in anything but housing.

IMO the best summary is: even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Sorry. The truth hurts.

Anonymous said...

Should we also root for Oil prices to rise? Think of all the money that will make for all the Oil investors. Why are high prices a good thing? Maybe if people didn't have so much money tied up in their house they'd have more to spend on the rest of the economy, which would be good, no?

Anonymous said...

There are certainly a fair amount of kooks here. The wackos make it entertaining. It helps me illustrate the concept "don't get ahead of yourself" to others.<<<


why don't you blow it out your size 58 shorts fat boy anon at 7:55 pm.

Anonymous said...

Actually reading all you wackos becomes dull and boring after a while.

It's all Bush's fault..... right wing conspiracy, blah blah...
Waaaaaaaa. mommy change my diaper....

Anonymous said...

Listen. You guys are nuts. You keep gloating about how you were "right" about the housing crash. Well, this type of thing happens every few years in housing, and will happen again. I guess you will be "right" again in another 10 years. Th part that makes you all nuts are that you are enjoying this. Most of the bitter renters on here would be perfectly content for the whole nation to be foreclosed and shortsaled so they can come in and qualify with nothing down and pay $60,000.00 for a new home. Dream on. Houses are moderating and being purchased, and will NEVER fall to what you want them to. Regardless of your wishes and flawed economics.