On Sun, 05 Oct 2008 16:26:52 -0500, Morris Dovey
wrote:

Han wrote:
Morris Dovey wrote in news:48e8e630$0$48221$815e3792
@news.qwest.net:

The booklet covers Federal Reserve notes... Care to take a wild guess as
to how they're secured? (Does "bank paper" have a familiar sound?)


Value, whether fine woodworking, solar installations (BG!!), FR notes or
gold, is best defined as "what a willing buyer would pay for it".

Of course, and it goes without saying that's tempered by supply and
demand considerations.

Problem is definition of willing buyer. In a "hot" economy he is much
easier to find than in an economy just entering a recession. All those
properties secured by subprime mortgages were quite valuable 2 years ago.
Now they're worth much, much less. Most likely they'll be worth much more
again in a few years.

The willing buyer is easy to find - it's finding the willing buyer who
has the wherewithal with which to purchase that's likely to be more
difficult...

I happened on these two radio programs - I've listened to almost all of
the first and expect the second to offer at least as much insight. I'm
not familiar with "This American Life", but they've teamed up with NPR
to produce these - and they go a long way toward explaining the mess
we've managed to produce.

One of the things that makes 'em particularly interesting is that they
consist of interviews with people who were participants at all levels in
the mortgage-generation financial process.

A man who worked for me left the company to pursue other interests.
Not wanting to lose him, I questioned him about the decision and asked
him what he intended to do. He responded that he was going to be a
mortgage loan originator. Seemed odd to me, I guess I didn't fully
understand what was going on, but he was convinced he could "make a
lot of money" doing that.

He did, I guess, enough that he purchased a Pizza franchise and that's
what he is doing now.

Hard to find fault with his decision, he didn't create the environment
or make up the rules. He just capitalized on the situation. In fact
it's hard to lay blame on any person or entity that was capitalizing
on the situation. In manufacturing problem solving, it has always
been a search for the root cause. The root cause in this instance is
those politicians who set the system up and created the environment.


http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jo...shouse/355.mp3
http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jo...shouse/365.mp3

I'm going to guess that if we actually manage to learn from our
mistakes, a lot of these houses will never be worth their original
selling prices after adjustment for inflation and with the interest
rates that'll be required to finance their purchase...

I'll say it again, when a property is selling at three times its
replacement construction cost even considering the acquisition and
development of the land the dwelling sits on and there is no long term
projected shortage, you know something is not quite right.

Frank