Paper Economy - A US Real Estate Bubble Blog

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Pick-A-Writedown, Teleporation, Liabilities Inflate Then Get Burnt To The Ground and Bears Bickering over Bubbles to Become Battle?!

Wells Fargo has decided that they are going to implement a new “Pick-A-Writedown” program whereby they shoehorn their massively underwater “Pick-A-Pay” borrowers into interest only loans rather than face the writedown reality… this is a desperate attempt by the bank and shows how bad their position really is … the best thing these borrowers could do, financially, is to simply walk away from these junk loans.

Buffett’s “all-in” train play has some wondering if there will be a “Rail Renaissance” and appears to be a long term wager against teleportation… So, should “investors” now turn to “green energy” or resurrect “standard oil”?

Wouldn’t the term “liability price deflation” be a more appropriate description of what’s happening to housing rather than “asset price deflation”? An underwater mortgaged house is a liability not an asset… maybe it should be “liability value deflation”… or possibly “liability inflation”.

Someone is burning down vacant homes in Rochester NY and Houston TX… guess they don’t consider homes to be assets either.

A cantankerous Jim Rogers takes a whack at Professor Roubini over bubbles while Roubini says Rogers $2000 an ounce gold call is “utter nonsense”… Is this the start of a a good ole fashioned bear-on-bear smack down!? ... Which Bears Bubble is Better?

... They are ALL bubbles to me!

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2 Comments:

  • So much for the mantra that renting is "throwing money away." How are interest only loans any different? Oh, yeah - you're responsible if the home price declines!

    Re: "liability price deflation", I love it!

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:26 AM  

  • All the home fires in Rochester are seriously in the ghetto. Most of those homes are owned by out-of-state--in fact, out-of-country--investors, who typically buy with heavy leverage. So if they really were arson, that means some guy in Japan or Australia is actually hiring locals to torch his property. Now that's a commitment.

    Incidentally, Rochester is a case study in what happens when home prices become too cheap, compared to price/income, historical appreciation, etc. Outside investors swarm in and rent to section 8, which is populated not by local poor families but by criminals, drug dealers, serious social service cases, etc. from NYC and Jersey, primarily because they can no longer find anyone to rent to them except some Japanese guy who never heard of NY state until he "invested" there. This drives down property values even more, etc. So I'm a housing bear, but I'm not one of the ones cheering for a big overshoot.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 5:04 PM  

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