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Pent up demand's Comments Stream Stats
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- Total Comment Stream rating - = 7
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Will a 7% Mortgage Threat Doom Fannie and Freddie?
Well I guess somebody has to be long these companies.
The GSEs are dead men walking for reasons mostly of their own making. The GSE shareholders and management have had how many years wetting their beaks whilst enjoying their "implicit guarantee"? Well, I guess they should have been smart enough to realize that if they ever needed to call in that market management and equity were going to be taking a beating.
I agree with the previous poster. The only sane course now is to make the de facto nationalization official. In which case there is no reason to have two entities. Freddie was created in the first place to provide some semblance of competition for Fannie.
Economists have shown that much of the subsidy that the GSEs were supposed to be providing to the mortgage market accrued to management and shareholders. The end of the GSEs would not mean the end of mortgage securitization.
Banks Wising Up? Short Sales Increase [Housing Tracker]
NYT - 'Prime Loans About to Implode': Where's the Evidence?
These pollyanna's seem to think that housing will work like the hyperactive stock market where the half-life of a "story" is measured in minutes. Yes, everyone's read the same stories -- doesn't follow that it's all priced in.
Which Inflation Is It Anyway?
Financials: How - And When - We Reached the Bottom
You can lay all this at the feet of progressives, winslow. I mean the original progressives back at the turn of the 20th century who gave us the Federal Reserve system and the income tax. They set in motion the economic forces that are coming to bear on us today.
Financials: How - And When - We Reached the Bottom
As for the article, I would point out there was a similarly sized rally in financials from August to October last year, which has of course turned out to be a sucker's rally.
I think the scenario an investor needs to think very hard about is a situation where businesses start cutting jobs in a bigger way. What happens if official unemployment rises from these historically low levels? Then the other shoe would drop on the HELOC and credit card areas. Not a prediction; but in that scenario even the healthier banks will suffer badly.
Financials: How - And When - We Reached the Bottom
JPM's Dimon: Prime Loan Losses Could Triple [Housing Tracker]
Have Price Declines Solved Affordability Crisis? [Housing Tracker]
Nice strawman. Okay, how about my situation? I make about $200k/yr on average. I have a wife who stays at home with 3 kids. My job is in Manhattan. There is no place that I can afford to buy that is less than ~90 minutes from work (each way). So my choice (if the rats in Congress succeed in propping up housing) is to rent forever, possibly having to move every couple years, or move to the ex-urbs and see my kids only on the weekend (since my average workday is 10-11 hours).
My $0.02 is that when someone of my education and ability cannot afford to own a home within a reasonable distance from work, there is most definitely an affordability problem. Let alone the people who aren't as fortunate as I am in the job/career department.
I don't want subsidies; I want the gov't. to stay the hell out of the way and let things find their natural level.
Fannie & Freddie: Why Government Support is a Good Thing
Your argument reduces to "we need to get the share price up to lure in the marks." Good luck with that.
15 Notes on the Current Market Stress
What We Can Do To Reverse the Oil Crisis
Overselling the Case for Indexing
These studies are not an argument for the end of active management, but I think they probably make a good case that management fees need to fall.
The Disastrous Future of the U.S.
The climate models are not simply imperfect, they are worthless. They can't even do a decent job of backfitting the data they have, much less make valid predictions that can be proved. Before I subscribe to a radical CO2 reduction program (which will drastically reduce the standard of living of every person on Earth), I'd like a bit more proof that it would actually reverse the warming we've seen thus far.
"Climate change" is a political & religious movement, not science.
The Disastrous Future of the U.S.