- I was quoted fairly extensively in the 2010 looking forward story in the Seattle Times http://is.gd/5DnNq #
- 4 more WA banks added to FDIC oversight list http://is.gd/5F9PA #
- Great roundup of recent government interventions in the housing market from @CalculatedRisk http://is.gd/5FHNm #
- "By early next year, many will come to regret their decision to delay buying a home." – @RonSims 9/4/08 (prices down >10% since then) #
- Here's a really rosy (sarcasm) 2010 outlook re: Boeing from @SeattleTimes http://is.gd/5FLti #
- Bloomberg still incapable of printing accurate headline, again runs the misleading "Home Prices in 20 U.S. Cities Rose" http://is.gd/5FMKs #
- Odd, the Boeing article I posted earlier today seems to have totally vanished from the @SeattleTimes website. #
- An editor @SeattleTimes informed me that the Boeing article was accidentally published early, and will go back up later this week. #
- Will we be reading WaMu stories for the entire next decade as well? http://is.gd/5GNQx #
- Seattle is #1 by a longshot. http://is.gd/5GS7C #
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Interesting Times article. I thought it strange that the writer didn’t quote you, Tim, in the last part concerning renting.
RE: fabuladocet @ 1 –
Almost struck me as being opposite land. Glen Crellin is not expecting home prices to increase. Neither is the President of Windermere. Someone from Cobalt Mortgage is warning against the shadow inventory of homes foreclosed on but not on the market. What in tarnation is going on?
The only voices of consistency are Tim Ellis and J. Lennox Scott. How’s that for a pair of strange soulmates?
Rather unfortunate that Viking Bank has been put on the oversight list. I was considering moving my checking and savings account to them.
I’m also pretty astounded by Bloomberg (and other outlets) not at least adding the word “Index” to their titles. Talk about misleading headlines and stories. Of course this story is pretty much last months story with the details (half-way through the article) updated. Sad.
Geithner: “We were very careful from the beginning … to say that we are going to focus the bulk of the financial force on bringing interest rates and mortgage rates down to cushion the fall in housing prices and help stabilize home values, which will feed into people’s basic sense of financial stability.”
Hey Turbo Timmy. How come you couldn’t “cushion” the rises in rents a few years back? That would have fed into people’s basic sense of financial stability. Or how about “cushioning” the fall in interest rates (the one that you and the Fed engineered) that creates additional malinvestments and forces people living on fixed incomes to consume their capital or put it into the casino market in a desperate attempt to keep their heads above water? That would feed into people’s basic sense of financial stability. Or why not quit pretending that any of this Quixotic distortion of the economy serves any kind of social good whatsoever and just admit that renters, savers, and anyone else who refuses to stick his/her head into the noose of debt slavery is a second-class citizen in your Orwellian vision of America? Hell, even some basic honesty might feed into people’s sense of financial stability.
Sorry, I can’t resist sometimes.
RE: Ira Sacharoff @ 2 –
Exactly! It’s a soul-mate pairing worthy of CNN’s thankfully cancelled Crossfire, except unlike the show or Scott, Tim generally makes sense. I’d love to see a more responsible journalistic tradition here in Seattle, or the USA, or really anywhere for that matter, but there seems to be a rather formulaic strategy of finding opposite opinion holders and letting them state their opinions; letting the hapless reader try to arrive at the “truth” presumably somewhere in between. Of course, this practice is bunk, since not all opinions are created equal. For instance, I admire Tim’s iconoclastic and clear-eyed analysis, as do many of us here. As for J. Lennox Scott, it makes me think of Sinclair’s Law, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
By fabuladocet @ 5:
Sinclair’s Law should be extended. What happens when the salaries and fortunes of not one man, but hundreds of millions of men, become intertwined and mutually dependent?
What’s difficult for the solitary man to understand becomes the collective delusion of a society.
By Gene @ 3:
When Viking Bank goes under, and their executives are unemployed, it will be one of the best days of my life. That company is run by a bunch of amoral A-holes.
RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 7 – Never seen you this upset, what is the rest of the story?
Wow, is this the “vent” thread or the “twitter” thread?
That was a particularly nice rant @ #4, CCG, and one with which I agree.
Where’s “Trigger”- we need a little positive mojo here to go with our cold perspective.
Inventory under 7000 units. “Casual sellers” pulling out.
RE: shawn @ 8 – It’s a long story and I’d rather not go into it, but let’s just say there were some firsts dealing with that bank that I’ve not encountered since.
RE: Kary L. Krismer @ 7 –
What happened to the rational, calm and collected Kary Krismer? Is 2010 the year he’s going to let it all loose?
RE: Ira Sacharoff @ 12 – I might even make a prediction!
I predict that Kary will not make a prediction in 2010. However if he does, I predict it will be very off and it will be last one from him, ever.
RE: shawn @ 14 –
I predict that Kary will make a prediction in 2010, and it’ll be one of those very “out on a limb” predictions like ” Jim McDermott will get re-elected to congress in 2010.”