San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

Thanks for sharing. I found the full transcript elsewhere. When asked whether he thought that sovereign funds were "dumb money," he replied "er... let's say 'innocent money'."

Priceless.

Some news reports quoted the "innocent money" remark out of context and it was hard to figure out what WB meant. He's right, of course.

I predict that, 6 months from now, Buffett will own the controlling stake in FNM.

You beat them when they're down, then, when there's blood in the streets, you swoop in and start buying.

I think that in 6 months, or less, Freddie and Fannie will be nationalized. The shareholders will be wiped out, but the taxpayer will be left holding the bag (i.e., the billions in paper guaranteed by these two monsters will essentially become part of the national debt, although Uncle Sam will resort to semantics and creative accounting to say otherwise).

The war on savers and the war on the dollar will keep going at full steam. There's simply too much political pressure not to bail out FBs and FLs by inflating the problem away. And this will probably happen regardless of who takes office in January.

the Asians own way too much GSE debt for the Fed to let them implode. Shareholders will be killed, but the debt will be serviced to keep our biggest lenders happy or at least not pissed-off at us.

There is "nationalized" and then there "Bear Stearns way", when taxpayers pay the bills but somebody else owns what's left of the beat company.

I still feel that the whole thing is vastly overblown and 0.7% delinquency rate among non-credit-enhanced mortgages does not qualify as "GAME OVER". Unless some major PMI providers implode, talking about nationalization of fannie/freddie is premature.

The US economy is today kept -barely- alive by incest, moral hazard and creative accounting. It won't be much longer, it's heading for the center of the sun.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2...

``If the U.S. government allows Fannie and Freddie to fail and international investors are not compensated adequately, the consequences will be catastrophic,'' Yu said in e-mailed answers to questions yesterday. ``If it is not the end of the world, it is the end of the current international financial system.''

Unless some major PMI providers implode, talking about nationalization of fannie/freddie is premature.

Uh, given the amount of leverage involved, I expect they all might implode.

They will throw every trick of the trade they can to keep the 2 GSE alive. There will be more significant ways attempting to save these 2 much much before they will ever let "nationalization" occur. The stake is too, too high.

I don't believe that we will see "nationalization" of these 2 GSE happens. Many things in between will be tried.

How about repeal Bush's tax cut's for the super-rich and have them foot the bill?

Seems fair to me.