[davelj]

I defer to Jeremy Grantham on issues of macro-market valuation issues because his logic is always impeccable on these matters. If you normalize profit margins (“if profits don’t mean-revert then capitalism is broken”) and mean-revert valuations (along with interest rates), the S&P’s fair value is about 900 right now. A certain group of folks will always try to come up with justifications for higher valuations during a bull market but these justifications will prove faulty… eventually. Doug Short does a lot of Grantham-like mean reversion work on his website: dshort.com.

[davelj]

I defer to Jeremy Grantham on issues of macro-market valuation issues because his logic is always impeccable on these matters. If you normalize profit margins (“if profits don’t mean-revert then capitalism is broken”) and mean-revert valuations (along with interest rates), the S&P’s fair value is about 900 right now. A certain group of folks will always try to come up with justifications for higher valuations during a bull market but these justifications will prove faulty… eventually. Doug Short does a lot of Grantham-like mean reversion work on his website: dshort.com.

[davelj]

I defer to Jeremy Grantham on issues of macro-market valuation issues because his logic is always impeccable on these matters. If you normalize profit margins (“if profits don’t mean-revert then capitalism is broken”) and mean-revert valuations (along with interest rates), the S&P’s fair value is about 900 right now. A certain group of folks will always try to come up with justifications for higher valuations during a bull market but these justifications will prove faulty… eventually. Doug Short does a lot of Grantham-like mean reversion work on his website: dshort.com.

[davelj]

I defer to Jeremy Grantham on issues of macro-market valuation issues because his logic is always impeccable on these matters. If you normalize profit margins (“if profits don’t mean-revert then capitalism is broken”) and mean-revert valuations (along with interest rates), the S&P’s fair value is about 900 right now. A certain group of folks will always try to come up with justifications for higher valuations during a bull market but these justifications will prove faulty… eventually. Doug Short does a lot of Grantham-like mean reversion work on his website: dshort.com.

[davelj]

[quote=Doooh]So is it illegal as I described the situation?

I’m ready to go to war over this, these are my tax dollars bailing out Bank of America, and this realtor is purposely digging the bank deeper into a hole by not accepting legit cash offers on the next business day after listing the property.[/quote]

This is just a nitpick. BofA paid back its TARP plus dividends (and warrant profits). Whether it (or any of the other banks) should have received TARP at all is another issue entirely. I despise BofA, but they’ve paid us back. That’s just a fact. And, in fact, I believe that the bank-specific TARP money has almost all been paid back at this point in an aggregate sense. That is, the losses have been more than offset by the dividends and warrant profits. There are still a few hundred banks with TARP but they are all so small that the aggregate number is a few billion dollars. You could write them down to zero and the banks will still show a net profit to the Treasury on TARP. Again, to be clear, I’m not saying that TARP was a good idea, merely pointing out that the banks will repay us on an aggregate basis (which is a slightly better outcome than I expected).

Now… where you can bitch and moan more legitimately is with respect to Fannie/Freddie. Because we’re bailing out those guys to the tune of hundreds of billions. And that’s real and in the here and now. Now, as I’ve explained many times, we’ll get our nominal dollars paid back from Fannie/Freddie… but it will be quite some time in the future – probably a decade.

Again, just a nitpick.

[davelj]

[quote=Doooh]So is it illegal as I described the situation?

I’m ready to go to war over this, these are my tax dollars bailing out Bank of America, and this realtor is purposely digging the bank deeper into a hole by not accepting legit cash offers on the next business day after listing the property.[/quote]

This is just a nitpick. BofA paid back its TARP plus dividends (and warrant profits). Whether it (or any of the other banks) should have received TARP at all is another issue entirely. I despise BofA, but they’ve paid us back. That’s just a fact. And, in fact, I believe that the bank-specific TARP money has almost all been paid back at this point in an aggregate sense. That is, the losses have been more than offset by the dividends and warrant profits. There are still a few hundred banks with TARP but they are all so small that the aggregate number is a few billion dollars. You could write them down to zero and the banks will still show a net profit to the Treasury on TARP. Again, to be clear, I’m not saying that TARP was a good idea, merely pointing out that the banks will repay us on an aggregate basis (which is a slightly better outcome than I expected).

Now… where you can bitch and moan more legitimately is with respect to Fannie/Freddie. Because we’re bailing out those guys to the tune of hundreds of billions. And that’s real and in the here and now. Now, as I’ve explained many times, we’ll get our nominal dollars paid back from Fannie/Freddie… but it will be quite some time in the future – probably a decade.

Again, just a nitpick.

[davelj]

[quote=Doooh]So is it illegal as I described the situation?

I’m ready to go to war over this, these are my tax dollars bailing out Bank of America, and this realtor is purposely digging the bank deeper into a hole by not accepting legit cash offers on the next business day after listing the property.[/quote]

This is just a nitpick. BofA paid back its TARP plus dividends (and warrant profits). Whether it (or any of the other banks) should have received TARP at all is another issue entirely. I despise BofA, but they’ve paid us back. That’s just a fact. And, in fact, I believe that the bank-specific TARP money has almost all been paid back at this point in an aggregate sense. That is, the losses have been more than offset by the dividends and warrant profits. There are still a few hundred banks with TARP but they are all so small that the aggregate number is a few billion dollars. You could write them down to zero and the banks will still show a net profit to the Treasury on TARP. Again, to be clear, I’m not saying that TARP was a good idea, merely pointing out that the banks will repay us on an aggregate basis (which is a slightly better outcome than I expected).

Now… where you can bitch and moan more legitimately is with respect to Fannie/Freddie. Because we’re bailing out those guys to the tune of hundreds of billions. And that’s real and in the here and now. Now, as I’ve explained many times, we’ll get our nominal dollars paid back from Fannie/Freddie… but it will be quite some time in the future – probably a decade.

Again, just a nitpick.

[davelj]

[quote=Doooh]So is it illegal as I described the situation?

I’m ready to go to war over this, these are my tax dollars bailing out Bank of America, and this realtor is purposely digging the bank deeper into a hole by not accepting legit cash offers on the next business day after listing the property.[/quote]

This is just a nitpick. BofA paid back its TARP plus dividends (and warrant profits). Whether it (or any of the other banks) should have received TARP at all is another issue entirely. I despise BofA, but they’ve paid us back. That’s just a fact. And, in fact, I believe that the bank-specific TARP money has almost all been paid back at this point in an aggregate sense. That is, the losses have been more than offset by the dividends and warrant profits. There are still a few hundred banks with TARP but they are all so small that the aggregate number is a few billion dollars. You could write them down to zero and the banks will still show a net profit to the Treasury on TARP. Again, to be clear, I’m not saying that TARP was a good idea, merely pointing out that the banks will repay us on an aggregate basis (which is a slightly better outcome than I expected).

Now… where you can bitch and moan more legitimately is with respect to Fannie/Freddie. Because we’re bailing out those guys to the tune of hundreds of billions. And that’s real and in the here and now. Now, as I’ve explained many times, we’ll get our nominal dollars paid back from Fannie/Freddie… but it will be quite some time in the future – probably a decade.

Again, just a nitpick.

[davelj]

[quote=Doooh]So is it illegal as I described the situation?

I’m ready to go to war over this, these are my tax dollars bailing out Bank of America, and this realtor is purposely digging the bank deeper into a hole by not accepting legit cash offers on the next business day after listing the property.[/quote]

This is just a nitpick. BofA paid back its TARP plus dividends (and warrant profits). Whether it (or any of the other banks) should have received TARP at all is another issue entirely. I despise BofA, but they’ve paid us back. That’s just a fact. And, in fact, I believe that the bank-specific TARP money has almost all been paid back at this point in an aggregate sense. That is, the losses have been more than offset by the dividends and warrant profits. There are still a few hundred banks with TARP but they are all so small that the aggregate number is a few billion dollars. You could write them down to zero and the banks will still show a net profit to the Treasury on TARP. Again, to be clear, I’m not saying that TARP was a good idea, merely pointing out that the banks will repay us on an aggregate basis (which is a slightly better outcome than I expected).

Now… where you can bitch and moan more legitimately is with respect to Fannie/Freddie. Because we’re bailing out those guys to the tune of hundreds of billions. And that’s real and in the here and now. Now, as I’ve explained many times, we’ll get our nominal dollars paid back from Fannie/Freddie… but it will be quite some time in the future – probably a decade.

Again, just a nitpick.

[davelj]

[quote=urbanrealtor]

Its the bank’s responsibility to make sure they are not getting screwed.

But good luck getting them to be as diligent as they should.[/quote]

Exactly. Some appraiser provided the lender with a broker price opinion and I’m betting that the buyer in this case at least hit that BPO. Now, the appraisal might be screwed – this happens a lot these days – but it’s the lender’s job to make sure that doesn’t happen. Once someone hits the BPO… the lender will often just take that offer and punch the ticket even though patience would have yielded 10% more.

[quote=Doooh]
Tell me this, isn’t the most prudent thing to do, in this housing environmental we find ourselves in, is to find my own underwater seller who hasn’t listed his delinquent mortgage/home, and convince him to sell to me?[/quote]

Yes. I just did this with a condo – a girl I know sold it to me in a short sale. It never hit the MLS. For reasons I won’t go into, I knew the appraisal was going to be way off as a result of appraiser laziness, so I just hit the BPO with an all-cash offer and the lender accepted it almost immediately.

[davelj]

[quote=urbanrealtor]

Its the bank’s responsibility to make sure they are not getting screwed.

But good luck getting them to be as diligent as they should.[/quote]

Exactly. Some appraiser provided the lender with a broker price opinion and I’m betting that the buyer in this case at least hit that BPO. Now, the appraisal might be screwed – this happens a lot these days – but it’s the lender’s job to make sure that doesn’t happen. Once someone hits the BPO… the lender will often just take that offer and punch the ticket even though patience would have yielded 10% more.

[quote=Doooh]
Tell me this, isn’t the most prudent thing to do, in this housing environmental we find ourselves in, is to find my own underwater seller who hasn’t listed his delinquent mortgage/home, and convince him to sell to me?[/quote]

Yes. I just did this with a condo – a girl I know sold it to me in a short sale. It never hit the MLS. For reasons I won’t go into, I knew the appraisal was going to be way off as a result of appraiser laziness, so I just hit the BPO with an all-cash offer and the lender accepted it almost immediately.

[davelj]

[quote=urbanrealtor]

Its the bank’s responsibility to make sure they are not getting screwed.

But good luck getting them to be as diligent as they should.[/quote]

Exactly. Some appraiser provided the lender with a broker price opinion and I’m betting that the buyer in this case at least hit that BPO. Now, the appraisal might be screwed – this happens a lot these days – but it’s the lender’s job to make sure that doesn’t happen. Once someone hits the BPO… the lender will often just take that offer and punch the ticket even though patience would have yielded 10% more.

[quote=Doooh]
Tell me this, isn’t the most prudent thing to do, in this housing environmental we find ourselves in, is to find my own underwater seller who hasn’t listed his delinquent mortgage/home, and convince him to sell to me?[/quote]

Yes. I just did this with a condo – a girl I know sold it to me in a short sale. It never hit the MLS. For reasons I won’t go into, I knew the appraisal was going to be way off as a result of appraiser laziness, so I just hit the BPO with an all-cash offer and the lender accepted it almost immediately.

[davelj]

[quote=urbanrealtor]

Its the bank’s responsibility to make sure they are not getting screwed.

But good luck getting them to be as diligent as they should.[/quote]

Exactly. Some appraiser provided the lender with a broker price opinion and I’m betting that the buyer in this case at least hit that BPO. Now, the appraisal might be screwed – this happens a lot these days – but it’s the lender’s job to make sure that doesn’t happen. Once someone hits the BPO… the lender will often just take that offer and punch the ticket even though patience would have yielded 10% more.

[quote=Doooh]
Tell me this, isn’t the most prudent thing to do, in this housing environmental we find ourselves in, is to find my own underwater seller who hasn’t listed his delinquent mortgage/home, and convince him to sell to me?[/quote]

Yes. I just did this with a condo – a girl I know sold it to me in a short sale. It never hit the MLS. For reasons I won’t go into, I knew the appraisal was going to be way off as a result of appraiser laziness, so I just hit the BPO with an all-cash offer and the lender accepted it almost immediately.

[davelj]

[quote=urbanrealtor]

Its the bank’s responsibility to make sure they are not getting screwed.

But good luck getting them to be as diligent as they should.[/quote]

Exactly. Some appraiser provided the lender with a broker price opinion and I’m betting that the buyer in this case at least hit that BPO. Now, the appraisal might be screwed – this happens a lot these days – but it’s the lender’s job to make sure that doesn’t happen. Once someone hits the BPO… the lender will often just take that offer and punch the ticket even though patience would have yielded 10% more.

[quote=Doooh]
Tell me this, isn’t the most prudent thing to do, in this housing environmental we find ourselves in, is to find my own underwater seller who hasn’t listed his delinquent mortgage/home, and convince him to sell to me?[/quote]

Yes. I just did this with a condo – a girl I know sold it to me in a short sale. It never hit the MLS. For reasons I won’t go into, I knew the appraisal was going to be way off as a result of appraiser laziness, so I just hit the BPO with an all-cash offer and the lender accepted it almost immediately.

[davelj]

[quote=CONCHO][quote=davelj]
[That is, I’m assuming that the genetic modification increases yields in some way, shape or form… which means more food… which means less starvation and/or more inexpensive food. Where you stand depends upon where you sit. Again, I have little doubt that folks starving in Africa are up in arms about “Frankenfood” – anything with “food” in it will be an improvement.][/quote]

In India, a country no stranger to hunger, farmers have been committing suicide en masse because their farms and livelihoods have been destroyed after switching to GMO crops. Tens of thousands of Indian farmers have killed themselves so far after falling into debts brought on by poor-yielding GMO seeds that must be repurchased each planting season. Prince Charles has been working to bring this horrific situation into the public eye for years, but to little effect in the USA, apparently.

As a side note, Prince Charles has long championed sustainable and organic agriculture practices and even tends his own organic garden.[/quote]

I’m no expert on this by a long shot… but are you suggesting that going all-organic would increase crop yields around the globe? In other words, if we abandoned GMO, fertilizers, etc. – all of the “bad” stuff – would the resulting yields not decline on an aggregate basis?

[Author]

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