[justme]

Here’s another tidbit: Wamu is working on floating bonds
in Europe. There may not be anything sinister about that,
but on the other hand it is tempting to think that perhaps
they are trying to unload some US mortgaes in another market.

http://search.ft.com/searchResults?queryText=wamu&x=0&y=0&javascriptEnabled=true

This looks like a bearish sign to me, but what do I know…

[justme]

WaMU passes the buck.

According to this story at Marketwatch,

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Dbc4bPb44FrVg14SF745g5f?siteid=mktw&dist=morenews

Wamu passes on >90% of their mortage loans to the bond
markets.

This seems to mean that WaMu perhaps isn’t as vulnerable to
bad loans as one might think, at least not in terms of
danger of capital losses.

However, as poway has indicated already, it seems that
earnings are in danger of taking a big hit.

In general, I would caution against shorting. For example,
one could argue that Google is quite overvalued. But I would
think more than twice about shorting it.

I’m speaking from similar experience,
here , and I lost a big bundle 🙂

[justme]

What is it you think I did not “get”?
Feel free to explain, I’m not so sure I missed
anything…

[justme]

Misleading.

I find the “heat map” totally misleading. It simply shows
the price/sqft across neighborhoods. This number has got
nothing to do with the “heat” or hotness of the market. It
just shows which part of town has the most expensive houses.
Big deal.

I do however like Sparkey’s idea of making a movie out of
it. But there is still the problem that the resolution of
the price/color map can be 5, 10 or 100(!) % per step in the
color grade depending on the price/sqft range, for example,
$750-799, $800-899 and (!) $1000-1999.

What we need is a map of home price delta (change) from
mo-mo, with a fine resolution on the color scale.

And what about Zestimates? Are they not partly made up based
on input from daydreaming property owners?

Here’s a question to you all: Does Zillow pander to the
homeowners, or are they a neutral dispenser of price
information?

[justme]

There is some limited data on ziprealty:

http://ziprealty.typepad.com/marketconditions/san_francisco_bay_area_real_estate/index.html

One problem with price/area (price/sqft) data is that it
doesn’t capture the “land versus structure” areal size
impact on the total price. Hence it can also look skewed.

Do any of the resident economists have insights to share?
I suspect what we need is to bin (group) the data by lot
size and house size, and deduce a land price and a
structure price (per sqft).

Perhaps property tax data would be helpful, because
it lists the value of “land” and “improvements” separately.

PS: Has anyone noticed how realtors do not understand the
word “area” in the geometrical sense, you have to say
“square footage” or “lot size” :-). For example:

Me: What’s the area of the property?
Realtor: It’s in poway, which is a great school district,
blah, blah, blah

🙂

[justme]

First of all: Rich, you are them MAN! And a very handsome
one, at that :). I think you did a splendid job, you were cool as a cucumber and you kicked major ass with FACTS!

Your counterpart Lee was a windbag of the first degree.
The only thing he had going for him was that he hogged the
airwaves at a rate of 2:1. His techniques were pretty
transparent in retrospect. His strategy was to speak slowly
and at length, trying to sound “resonable and thoughtful”.
Plus he was not shy about interrupting. Luckily the moderator did not allow too much of that.

If I was going to attempt some advice for the next show, I’d
say: Get more long winded, cite some more facts and stats (whether relevant to the specific question or not!), slow
it down a little bit and do your own “reasonable and thoughtful” bit. And interrupt the clown if he says something lame and disingineous. Call him on it!

Thanks again for the effort, you did great.
I can’t wait for the next one. Go get ’em, tiger!

[justme]

The 2-party system that we have is a result of
single-representative election districts, which makes it
pretty much impossible for a third party to get any
representatives elected.

This fact is known as Duverger’s law in Political Science.
There are some interesting articles on this topic in
Wikipedia. The technical name they use is “single-member
district plurality system (SMDP)”.

What would it take to change election laws so that there is
at least 20 representatives per district? Nothing short of a
minor revolution, I think.

But if successful, parties down to 5% would then have a
chance to get represented, and we could have some real
democracy around here.

Add on a parliamentary system, and we would depose (!) the
president when necessary. The advantage of the parliamentary
system is that one can get rid of all the current members of
the executive branch by a simple vote of no-confidence,
unlike the need for impeachment trials, which are also
impeded by the implicit 2-party system.

Having at least a few (4-5) major parties ensures that each
party must actually stand for something to be
successful. Party list elections ensures that the system
cannot be corrupted one representative at a time, which is
what happens in the US. If a representative of some party
behaves corruptly or criminally, the party will lose votes,
and/or the representative will not be nominated on the next
party election list. Since there are >2 parties, there will
be competition for being the less corrupt party, unlike now
where both parties are corrupt and can get away with it.

I’m dreaming of something better than what we have — many
countries in Europe and other parts of the world are
successfully and peacefully governed within a system that
supports multiple parties and truly proportional
representation, down to a small level of granularity (5% in
Germany, for example).

[justme]

We’re all itching to know what happened at the auction!
Correct me if I am wrong, but I’m under the impression
that auction sales are the norm in certain places (Australia?). Wouldn’t it be cool if it was here, too?

[Author]

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