Simply Amazing!

Christmas is over and I'm in the office trying to catch up on a few things before New Year's Eve. I was reading a Barron's article about the ratings agencies and their conflict of interest problems, their out gunned night school MBAs and their modeling issues. What a bunch of hooey! It seems like all the finance types involved in the securitization business were willfully ignorant of conditions that exisited in the real estate world beginning in 2002. Thats when the no doc and 2/28 loans started to make their presence known and when the folks who wanted to play fast and loose with the bank's money started emerging. None of what is happening today is a surprise. Now the $64 question is what happens next? I'm still unclear, but I tend toward saying that the economy and especially the real estate world is in trouble for the next few years.

Whew! Boy do I feel better now that Harry Reid has declared the war is lost. I sure am glad Harry wasn't in charge in 1942. We might all be speaking German or Japanese now!

Having been involed in real estate on a daily basis I have been watching the market and have been telling people that would listen that things were getting scary out there for the last few years. I might have been a bit early, but it appears now everyone is catching on. The subprime mess that is getting all the press is just the beginning. People have been living high on the hog on the back of rapidly appreciating real estate values and easy financing terms and now the music has stopped and there are way more people then there are chairs. And the pundits and experts that say this will not cause widespread or noticeable problems in the overall economy are living in Wonderland. The mortgage industry layoffs are just beginning. The construction industry layoffs are just beginning. Going forward lenders are tightening their standards for homebuyers, builders and developers. This tightening is going to have significant ripple effects across the economy from Wall Street to Detroit to Hollywood to Main Streets across America by cutting jobs and cutting consumption as people are unable to borrow "fun" money for vacations, granite counter tops and new cars.

With all the market based issues that are taking place and that will emerge, add to that the prospect of Congress getting involved to "fix the problem" and things get ugly!

After watching and listening to a portion of the Plame testimony yesterday, I couldn't help but feel embarrassed and disappointed. Despite numerous recent examples contradicting the idea, I still like to believe that at the heart of things, Congressmen have the best interests of our Country at heart. Watching and listening to them question Plame, I came away thinking that Congress is just about the show. The questions were repetive and narrowly focused. And even now, we still do not seem to know the answer to one simple question: Was Plame covert? She says yes, but the record, including her prior testimony would seem to indicate otherwise. What a sad distraction this is.

So President Bush will give his State of the Union speech to night and it is all wrongheaded. Atleast that seems to be what the media thinks in advance of the speech and they have fresh new poll numbers to back their views. I think I'll just wait to hear what he says and make my judgment then. I'm sure there will be some items that will cause me to cheer and probably a few that cause me to cringe, but just let me hear and I'll decide. Why must the media try so hard to marginalize and tilt what should be a very important annual event for our country?

But since they have published their stories already and the accompanying polls....How could 3/4 of this country not support what we are trying to do in the Middle East? I can see disagreeing with the execution, but the overall goal of a stability relatively free (we're not entirely free in the US are we?) in this region of the world would be nothing but a boon for everyone. Why not supoort that? And let's not forget, having the a convenient target in their neighborhood has probably helped prevent another terrorist attack in our neighboorhood!