Here's the latest on the upcoming taxpayer bailout of Freddie and Fannie

Meanwhile word on the street is that Bennie and the InkJets are gonna let Fannie and Freddie borrow directly from the Fed.

Ho.

Ly.

Crap.

Folks, you're looking at the China Syndrome of finance. A meltdown like the world has never seen. We're not talking millions anymore. We're not talking billions.

We're talking trillions. Trillions and trillions.

Where it stops, nobody knows.

Get some popcorn.

HousingPANIC Classic Quote of the Day

From 2006:

While Greg Swann was dissing HP'ers and talking about year-round golf, this wise man was telling anyone who would listen what was about to come... And then it came.


"A significant decline in prices is coming. A huge buildup of inventories is taking place, and then we're going to see a major [retrenchment] in hot markets in California, Arizona, Florida and up the East Coast. These markets could fall 50% from their peaks."

Kenneth Heebner, CGM Realty Fund, a man who could see the future, as quoted in the July 5, 2006 Wall Street Journal

HousingPANIC Stupid Question of the Day

Did HP'ers and your fellow bubble busters save your ass?

Care to put a number on it?

HP favorite target "Third Avenue Lofts" in Scottsdale Arizona now going for more than half off

HP'ers recognize this complex as one of the most obvious bubble-crazed towers of stupidity in Phoenix. So check out this firesale: Here's a 1000 square foot unit that old in bubble-madness 2006 for $895,000, now (trying to go for) only $395,000. And yet likely STILL overpriced based on its P/E ratio. Good god what fool (or fraudster) paid $895,000 just a few months ago? Someone without a calculator (or a realtor) most likely.

And how about those "21 reasons" again? HP has the one reason that really mattered: It's the P/E stupid. It will always be the P/E stupid. Not the pro athletes. Not the golf. It's the P/E stupid.

Here's what I wrote in October 2007 after doing the math, which might have seemed nuts to realtor-believers at the time:

"Seriously, these hilariously overpriced bubblerific units will see drops of 50% to 70% when all is said and done. Just do the math. It's the P/E stupid. It'll always be the P/E stupid."

And now, of course, it's happened.

I'd love to see the (lazy and REIC-ad-supported) Arizona Republic, maybe even Rolodex-of-Realtors Catherine Reagor, do a piece on the foreclosure madness at the Third Avenue Lofts. Every unit would no doubt have story - mortgage fraudsters, failed flippers, Scottsdale posers, cash-back-at-close con artists, realtor investors, and some pretty dumb sheeple who bought at the peak without any regard to the fundamentals.

$395000 LESS THAN 1/2 PRICE - LUXURY SCOTTSDALE, AZ CONDO

A FORECLOSURE STEAL!!! $455,000 PRICE REDUCTION FROM ORIGINAL PURCHASE PRICE OF $850,000 IN 2006 FOR QUICK SALE! QUALITY UPSCALE, MODERN, 1 BEDROOM (1072 TSF) EXECUTIVE LOFT WITH 24-HOUR SECURITY, FULL-SERVICE CONCIERGE, UNDERGROUND/GATED PARKING AND MANY FINE AMENITIES

FLASH: Here's the latest S&P Case-Shiller numbers that Lawrence Yun, the NAR and realtors on commission like Greg Swann do NOT want you to see

"We think the housing market has now hit bottom"

- Lawrence Yun, NAR Chief Propagandist, January 2007

"The BubbleBloggers will someday bawl balefully in private, but they will never, ever admit that they have been very publicly very foolish."

- Greg Swann, America's Most Discredited REALTOR™, July 2006

_______________

Housing prices post record declines - Las Vegas, Miami and Phoenix all saw prices plummet by at least 20%.

Home prices posted another record decline, as most of the nation's largest markets suffered double-digit drops over last year, a survey released Tuesday shows.

The S&P Case/Shiller Home Price Index, which tracks 20 of the largest housing markets, showed prices plummeting by 12.7% in the 12 months ending February. That's the biggest fall since the index began tracking prices in 2000.

"There is no sign of a bottom in the numbers," S&P spokesman said David M. Blitzer, said in a prepared statement. "Prices of single family homes continue to drop across the nation."

Atlanta -5.6%
Boston -4.6%
Charlotte 1.5%
Chicago -8.5%
Cleveland -9.2%
Dallas -4.1%
Denver -5.5%
Detroit -16.5%
Las Vegas -22.8%
Los Angeles -19.4%
Miami -21.7%
Minneapolis -12.5%
New York -6.6%
Phoenix -20.8%
Portland -2.0%
San Diego -19.2%
San Francisco -17.2%
Seattle -2.7%
Tampa -17.5%
Washington -13.0%
20-city composite -12.7%

Should corrupt toxic lender Washington Mutual be allowed to fail?

Yes or no? Will Bennie and the inkjets bail out one of the slimiest lenders in the world? Or is that honor reserved just for Hank Paulson's investment banker buddies?

Bonus question - will their executives go to jail?

And again, for anyone stupid enough to have an account still at Washington Mutual - GET YOUR MONEY OUT OF THAT BANK AND GET IT OUT NOW. How much warning do you need?

Note I have no position in or account with Wash Mut. Just got my popcorn. Extra butter.

Appraisers say WaMu cut corners to increase its mortgage business

Groups Press for WaMu Board Ouster

WaMu cites housing woes for $1.1B loss

Where WaMu went wrong

Washington Mutual to close home-loan offices

A long time ago, in a Galaxy far far away...

You could get a $500,000 mortgage with no job, no income, no assets...

realtors were making money...

Casey Serin thought he was gonna get rich...

Angelo Mozilo was seen as a captain of industry...

George Bush's "ownership society" didn't seem like such a bad idea...

Ridiculously low interest rates made the price of anything seem irrelevant...

HELOCs had money falling from the sky...

Lawrence Yun hadn't destroyed his career...

The dollar could buy things...

CDO's, SIV's, HELOC's, MBS's, CLO's...

Bubble bloggers were "brown shirts", "cassandras", "foolish" and "chicken littles"

Home prices were going up...

Illegal immigrants were embraced and employed...

And homes were get-rich-quick lottery tickets...

This lady in Dublin believed the realtors, believed the media, and believed in the "housing ladder". And she's lost $100,000 already, and counting

So many lied in order to earn a commission.

So many believed, for so many reasons.

The commissions - they got pocketed, with the realtors and mortgage brokers making out like bandits.

The buyers? Well, quite frankly, they got f*cked.

Should have listened to HP.

Housing Woes in U.S. Spread Around Globe

DUBLIN — The collapse of the housing bubble in the United States is mutating into a global phenomenon, with real estate prices swooning from the Irish countryside and the Spanish coast to Baltic seaports and even parts of northern India.

In Ireland, Spain, Britain and elsewhere, housing markets that soared over the last decade are falling back to earth. Property analysts predict that some countries, like this one, will face an even more wrenching adjustment than that of the United States, including the possibility that the downturn could become a wholesale collapse.

HousingPANIC Stupid Question of the Day

So how long have you been comin round here?

Do you consider yourself an HP'er?

We may not agree on everything, hell, it's my hope that we don't agree on everything, cause that would be boring, and that would mean you were nuts too.

Countrywide stock heading to zero, Fannie and Freddie in massive trouble, and the market tanks again. How was your Monday?

Well, the market seems to agree with HP - the BofA / Countrywide Toxic Mortgage ain't gonna happen and shares are in freefall again. Tough to effectively integrate a company when everyone is under investigation or heading to jail too...

Then you have a piece in Barron's about the future prospects of Fannie and Freddie and the massive - and I mean MASSIVE - writedowns to come. Can you say government bailout? Can you say ABSOLUTE F*CKING RAGE FROM HP'ERS? The fact that Fannie owns $314 BILLION in liar's loans alone should FREAK YOU OUT.

And then you have the NY governor (and Clinton supporter) about to resign after a hooker scandal, and yet Mozilo still runs Countrywide into the ground. How's that?

And of course, the stock market is tanking... again...

I swear, housing panic is everywhere.

BARRON'S COVER - Is Fannie Mae the Next Government Bailout?

IT'S PERHAPS THE CRUELEST OF ironies that in the U.S. housing market's greatest hour of need, the major entity created during the Depression to bring liquidity to housing, Fannie Mae, may itself soon be in need of bailout.

At year end, the company owned in its portfolio or had packaged and guaranteed some $2.8 trillion of mortgages or 23% of all U.S. residential mortgage debt outstanding.

But, if the truth be known, a considerable portion of Fannie's losses also came from speculative forays into higher-yielding but riskier mortgage products like subprime, Alt-A (a category between subprime and prime in credit quality) and dicey mortgages requiring monthly payments of interest only or less.

For example, Fannie's $314 billion of Alt-A -- often called liar loans because borrowers provide little documentation -- accounted for 31.4% of the company's credit losses while making up just 11.9% of its $2.5 trillion single-family-home credit book. Fannie was clearly looking for love -- and market share -- in some of the wrong places.

HousingPANIC Quote of the Day

"Today's economy represents one of the most severe housing downturns in American history"

- Richard F. Syron, Freddie Mac chairman and chief executive, January 2008