The Wall Street Journal says the " The Housing Crisis Is Over "
 

The dire headlines coming fast and furious in the financial and popular press suggest that the housing crisis is intensifying. Yet it is very likely that April 2008 will mark the bottom of the U.S. housing market. Yes, the housing market is bottoming right now.

How can this be? For starters, a bottom does not mean that prices are about to return to the heady days of 2005. That probably won't happen for another 15 years. It just means that the trend is no longer getting worse, which is the critical factor.

Most people forget that the current housing bust is nearly three years old. Home sales peaked in July 2005. New home sales are down a staggering 63% from peak levels of 1.4 million. Housing starts have fallen more than 50% and, adjusted for population growth, are back to the trough levels of 1982


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1210...ml?mod=WSJBlog



If you ask me, after sitting here watching the stock market rise for the last few months Its about time people start to speak the truth about the economy. Market is really hight, and then this from the WSJ.


:upsidedow

i agree.

That make some real nice statements in that.

they wont cuz they want more bad news to circulate to get a democrat in the white house.... and not lose any seats.... liberal media is everywhere... : (

Eh, the WSJ doesn't say the housing crisis is over.

An opinion piece, written by a hedge fund manager, says it's over.

If interest rates would get a little bit lower and stay that way for a long time then more people would be able to re-fi and maybe the market would do better, and the economy would improve from people not getting ass fucked on their mortgage payments.. giving more people more money to spend on video rentals, fast food, groceries, etc.. shit that cycles around our economy.. maybe they'd start buying more porn memberships too..

Something tells me that they do a little research before they just publish things like that.

Exactly.

i think it depends on the area, i think its probably true for some areas, and not even close to being true for other areas.

I hope he is correct. It is my same opinion. I just sold my house last March and bought the same day. It would be nice to find this is the bottom and stabilize my current appraisel.

From everything I read its not even close to over. This month a shitload of variable mortgages will rise to their new rate I heard on the news.its not close to over thats why the fed chairman is telling banks to work with their customers for real because its going to get alot worse if they dont.

The editor needs to neither agree nor disagree with the premise of an opinion piece. It's a finely written piece by a hedge fund manager. The arguments are cogent but like any other such piece it may turn out to be correct, incorrect or anywhere in between. Maybe next week they publish an Op-Ed by Robert Shiller. There have been maybe Op-Ed pieces with differing opinions in the WSJ.

Eh, no.

They obviously check if the piece is seemingly well-argued, but they don't necessarily agree with it. Provocative and controversial opinion pieces draw readers, so those are the ones that get published most often.

However, if you want the actual opinion of a newspaper, read the editorials.

Whatever you do, don't tell pornguy who owns WSJ ;-)

Its definately not over. Deliquencies and foreclosures are rising month by month and in fact 2008 will be year of prime. Housing invetories are still growing. Add to that mix 120bucks oil,food inflation, healthcare inflation, slowing economy, etc.
Of course in some areas it could be ending , like in some ares its beggining.
Definately dont believe mainstream media, they didnt see housis crises coming, they didnt see economy going into recession, they wont probably see end of housis crises too...

Actually, some mainstream media did see it coming.
http://www.economist.com/

One of my other subscriptions ;-)

Economist
WSJ
Oil and Gas Journal

Shiller's book, BTW, was a FANTASTIC argument for a coming housing bust.

It's not even close to over. :)

Fuck the housing crisis.

If you were stupid enough to take out an adjustable rate mortgage when fixed rates were at historic lows, then you're an idiot who deserves to lose their house.

If you were a bank who gave out mortgages to people with no credit and no income, you deserve to go bankrupt.

If you were an investor who bought commercial paper backed by subprime mortgages, you deserve to lose your money.

If you bought a house after prices had double digit increases for several years because you thought prices would keep going up at that pace forever, then you're an idiot and deserve to lose your money.

When the tech bubble popped nobody was trying to bail out the people who were long on the NASDAQ or who used margin to buy internet stocks.

Prices may have fallen substantially in the past year, BUT they are still higher than they would have been if housing prices had increased at a normal rate (i.e. kept pace with wage inflation) since the year 2000. So it's all relative.

What I want to know about the whole subprime mortgage issue is....if you take out a mortgage with less than 20% down, you have to pay for private mortgage insurance (PMI) to protect the lender in case you default on the loan.

So how the hell are banks and bondholders losing money if these things are insured? Shouldn't it be the insurance companies going under and not the banks/brokerages?

You are missing one of the driving forces behind this whole situation, though: the credit rating agencies.

Investors often didn't invest in sub-prime mortgages, but in investment grade-rated securities.

They invested in collaterallized debt obligations (CDO) which contained, or were made up mostly of, mortgage backed securities.

If these investors didn't do their due diligence then that's their own damn fault. We don't bail out people who buy corporate junk bonds, we shouldn't be bailing out these folks either.

If rating agencies such as Standard and Poor gave AAA ratings to subprime mortgage-backed securities, then I'm sure there's a class action lawsuit in the works.

In fact, the equivalent article on more familiar ground would state that :

Conversion rates have been going up steadily, for all types of content, there's a serious problem of unmet demand that very few available production studios are working full blast to fill, the model crisis is so bad that people are out there offering police officers and investment bankers competitive pay packages, and the legal environment is so positive that congress is considering increasing subsidies, along with passing legislation to require regular masturbation on medical grounds.

Obviously, it would also come from someone in the process of selling stock in porn companies.

Can you call it now ?

Doesn't look over to me.

Yep.

You do realize that the reason some of them are being bailed out is the welfare of the economy as a whole, right?

Bear Stearns, for example, wasn't saved because people felt sorry for it. It was saved because letting it collapse could have triggered a domino effect, ultimately leading to economic meltdown.

Alas, standardized procedures cover their collective asses. Besides, if Standard & Poor's and Moody's went under, the whole financial system would be pretty much screwed.

True.

Investors unfortunately didnt knew that rating agencies are crooked.

Does this looks like current AAA rated company?


http://elispics.biz/abk.jpg

It is...

Why it is AAA rated? Cause otherwise as one indepedent rating agency (edgar jones) suggest, with BBB status this company deserve (ABK and its competitor MBI, both biggest mortgage bond insurers), half of wall street would be BK or would need to raise a capital significantly.


Thats one of the reall reason for credit crunch, noone believe those rating agencies anymore....



""America's biggest mortgage bond insurers collectively need a $200 billion (Ł101 billion) capital injection if they are to maintain their key AAA credit ratings, a figure that dwarfs a plan by New York regulators to put together a capital infusion of up to $15 billion, a leading ratings expert said yesterday."

and

""Banks worldwide may need to raise as much as $143 billion of additional reserves to satisfy regulators if bond insurer rating cuts trigger downgrades for the securities they guarantee, Barclays Capital analysts said.""


and:

"Everyone thinks they're looking at the cliff over Armageddon," said Ed Rombach, senior derivatives analyst at Thomson Financial. "If you think the write-downs have been bad so far, the next write-downs could be twice as big."


That was big whole game in JAN/FEB with too much bullshit games and I am sure rating agencies were pushed to not to downgrade mortgage bond insurers.
Suddendly, all that problem with ABK and MBI was forgotten.

I made a lot of money with put options on both of those pigs, but when they hitted 5 -8 bucks, all that wallstreet/goverment bullshit game has begun.

The WSJ is read by people who are financially secure (most part)... many of the people getting fucked over don't deserve it. The speculators deserve it :2 cents: