That's one happy beaver!

Here's the HUD law that helped start it all

http://www.hud.gov/library/bookshelf12/pressrel/pr00-317.html?ref=patrick.net

"

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fail to make a good faith effort to achieve the affordable housing goals, the Secretary of HUD has the authority to impose civil money penalties of up to $10,000 for each day the failure occurs.

Families are considered as having low and moderate incomes if they make no more than the area median income, which varies by community. The national average for the median income is $47,800.

These new regulations are among a series of actions HUD has taken to increase homeownership in under-served areas, particularly among minority Americans. Though America's homeownership rate is at a record high level of 67.7 percent, there is a disparity between the rate for white borrowers and others. The homeownership rate for whites is 74 percent, while it is 46 percent for both Hispanics and African-Americans.

"

Vegas was supposed to be a sure bet. NOOOOT!

One of my buddies (the same one a few blog posts ago that claimed to have been calling the housing bubble 'forever' although I remember him saying very much the opposite before this all became mainstream), stated to me last year that Vegas was a for sure thing. One of *HIS* friends was supposed to buy one of those Vegas condos with his mom and for whatever reason it never happened. So a year ago, I reminded my buddy about how that was a fortunate thing (albeit unintentional) that it didn't work out but my buddy refuted "Are you kidding?! Vegas isn't affected by any housing slow downs!". Oh really?

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1868932,00.html?cnn=yes

Greatest predictions of 2008

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/The-Worst-Predictions-About-bizwk-13926696.html

The scary thing about it is that these predictions were each made by the corresponding industry's lead figure. Pathetic amateurs

Bush buckles! Revokes pardon for Real Estate fraudster

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/24/bush-revokes-pardon-of-sc_n_153399.html?page=7

It's a good thing that he revoked it, although, it shows still how corrupt the system is to even allow the consideration of this POS for a pardon from the President of the United States. How did the real estate industry become so powerful and so far reaching?

Bush pardons real estate fraudster

And you wonder how we got this far in the mess? With the PRESIDENT of the USA pardoning pieces of shits like this? For a sack of crap to have such far reaching connections is unfathomable.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/New_Yorker_pardoned_by_Bush_pled_1223.html

Shorting Muni-Bonds - Who called it?

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=adSvg08A04KI&refer=patrick.net

Booyah!

"We've hit the bottom"

I have heard this almost once every week for the past 2 years or so, from one person or another. It is either or both in regards to the stock market as well as real estate pricing. This time, I'm going to make a blog entry of it just so that we remember.

C.H. - 12/14/2008 - Sunday while we were strolling to the Manhattan Beach pier to watch the fireworks. His claim is that he did not see any down trend in pricing. Now, we're keeping track.

USA compared to China

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/opinion/24friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
"It actually started well, on Kau Sai Chau, an island off Hong Kong, where I stood on a rocky hilltop overlooking the South China Sea and talked to my wife back in Maryland, static-free, using a friend’s Chinese cellphone. A few hours later, I took off from Hong Kong’s ultramodern airport after riding out there from downtown on a sleek high-speed train — with wireless connectivity that was so good I was able to surf the Web the whole way on my laptop. Landing at Kennedy Airport from Hong Kong was, as I’ve argued before, like going from the Jetsons to the Flintstones"

Nail on the head:

"To top it off, we’ve fallen into a trend of diverting and rewarding the best of our collective I.Q. to people doing financial engineering rather than real engineering. These rocket scientists and engineers were designing complex financial instruments to make money out of money — rather than designing cars, phones, computers, teaching tools, Internet programs and medical equipment that could improve the lives and productivity of millions."