Monday Open Thread
This is your open thread for today. Please post random links and off-topic discussions here.
Off-topic comment? Interesting link?
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19 comments:
Not normally a conspiracy theorist considering I work for the federal government, but does anyone think that the drop in oil prices seems to be related to the elections in November??? All of a sudden one month before elections oil drops to 60 a barrel?? Seems like a strange coincidence to me. I'm predicting after November oil to jump back up to around 70.
Secondly, my federal brethren are going to start cracking down bigtime on the major mortgage brokers, AKA WAMU, Countrywide etc. I believe we are starting to see the first wave of panic.
The drop in oil prices has been cancelled out by the big news story of the day -- Foley. Bring on the crackdown!
True Lake hills, Foley has pretty much dwarfed everything in the news right now and probably will continue to do so until Nov.
Foley? Are you guys watching / listening to / reading the same news sources I am? Because as of last night, the Foley story became yesterday's garbage. It's all N. Korea, all the time now!
Speaking of which, considering that Seattle is the closest major US city to this nutjob and his new nukes, I wonder if the news will have any affect on the psychology of people around here, with respect to home purchasing.
I wonder if the news will have any affect on the psychology of people around here, with respect to home purchasing.
hahaha! I can see the headlines now, "Real Estate crash due to Seattle nuke-shadow, toxic loans go nuclear!!!"
matthew,
Do I see a conspiracy with the timing of the drop of oil and the Nov election.
Youbetcha! ...and I'm a Republican.
The GSCI the weighting of oil in its index, and all the hedge funds that track that index had to respond by selling a trainload of oil futures.
That is how "they" knew that gas would drop in price this far in advance. However, this won't last forever, and will revert back to the normal market level, adjusted for any supply output cuts in response to dropping prices.
End result? Higher prices.
The only question is if the changing of the GSCI was done at the behest of the Administration, or if the GSCI was changed to favor them without their direct involvement.
It's like Hollywood releasing a movie to time with the presidential election, or 99% of the stories that run on ABC/NBC/CBS/PBS/NYTimes/WashComPostduring election season.
I'm going to laugh my ass off when the oil prices spike in Nov-Dec.
Personally, I hope the news on 11/6 is how the GOP will hold both houses, and the news on 11/8 is how the Dems have the House and they will take the Senate if they can steal a close seat that has yet to be certified.
Seattle actually does have one of the highest risks for a disaster to strike us...
Huge active fault line, Mt. Rainier and St. Helens, and we are probably the #1 target of N. Korea (along with Portland and San Fran). Mt. Rainier is long overdue to erupt.
I should say we are the number 1 U.S. target of N. Korea.... Seoul and Tokyo being at the top overall
If you want REAL manipulation, try this:
885 trading days since the last 2% down day on the S&P.
That is beyond a statistical fluke.
Eleua,
I have also wondered about the current run of the S&P. I watch Bloomberg t.v. in the morning and almost everyone sees the DOW and S&P gaining another 3-4 percent despite the indicators showing that the economy is slowing. It is eerily similiar to the market of 1999. There are VERY few bears out there, and the people that are bearish are being laughed at.
I was reading that while the housing market is a very small percentage of GDP, it has accounted for about 40 percent of our economic growth since 2001. But yet the people on Wall St. seemingly think that the real estate slowdown will have very little impact on the DOW and S&P. Am I missing something? This seems to defy logic to me.
Am I missing something? This seems to defy logic to me.
You are not missing anything. The scads of fund managers all get paid based upon how they perform against each other. They are not stupid. They know their job is based upon staying in the game until it is over, lest they miss a big move.
The problem comes when it is time to go down, they will have a powerful urge to sell, and all sell at the same time.
Ruh-ro.
Repeat after me.
"It's all one trade."
Say this over and over again, until the markets make sense.
Housing, stocks, dollar, bonds, 401(k), Babyboom retirements...
It is all one trade.
It will also be one trade down.
I guess what I am saying is the fundmanagers and the lumpeninvestoriat all believe they can leave Cinderella's ball at 23:59:59.99999.
Ain't going to happen, but many are goint to try.
Going down?
Personally, I wouldn't waste the electrons to post on the Rain City Blog. The only intelligent comments I see out there come from people who post regularly here, anyway.
You're dead on with your analysis of their belittling of the "bubble" argument. Posting there is futile, though, and reminds me of the classic quote:
I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig.
You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.
---George Bernard Shaw
The good point of posting on the RE blogs is that it brings others to this site. I remember when I first starting looking to buy I was in Greenlake and they were building townhouses next to be friends apartment. I saw a realtor outside and asked her how much they were going for, she told me 425,000 each. I thought to myself, wow, this market is out of control.
Surfing through various RE sites I eventually found this one, and found that yes, there are rational people in the world who were thinking like myself, that this market does not make sense. By fighting the battle both here, and on the RE blogs, you can hopefully save someone else from making a grave mistake, by buying a house in this over-inflated market.
Unfortunately there is just not enough information out there to inform first time buyers of their impending peril. Unfortunately before I found this site all I heard and found online was "Seattle is different, there is no bubble here."
"Look at the other west coast cities, its cheap to live here compared to Cali". Etc Etc. Its good to hear the other side of the story, not championed by mortgage brokers and RE agents, but rather by independent thinkers without a stake in the market in which putting food on the table means making another inflated sale.
BTW, I think its great that Synthetik is championing the cause of informing people on all of the other blogs. Hopefully this will bring about some change, or at least some inspired discussion.
Federal regulators are going to start analyzing loans at federally chartered institutions. There is an article about it on Ben Jones page : "http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/". I had been hearing rumors about this for a while but apparently now its going to happen. Not sure if this was posted on here a week ago or not, just saw it on his page today.
One theory going around on the web is that the military may have aggressively bought up oil on the market over the summer as part of a set up for a drop in pricing this Fall.
I seriously doubt this.
The military purchases fuel months in advance, and does so by Congressional mandate. The DOD budget is approved by Congress, and you can bet that if the Administration put in a huge buy/sell order that would turn the election, the minority party would scream like the little girly men they are.
The best theory that has surfaced was the Goldman-Sachs Commodities Index was tweaked to spark a massive selloff in oil futures.
It would be too difficult to use the military, too easy to trace, and too easy to derail.
It would appear that king county has stopped allowing downloads for deed of trust on the website.
They're drafting an ordinance.
It's true that deeds of trust are electronically mined, especially by shady mortgage lenders and insurers in the Southern California area. (What's the matter, Upper Mexicans? Ran out of suckers in Orange County and San Diego?)
AFAIK, deeds of trust can be removed from the Records Website by request. The bulk of Deeds of Trust do NOT have social security numbers.
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