Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (308183)	10/30/2006 7:22:45 AM
From: Taro	Respond to of 1583736

Clinton created the house bubble. We all know that. Taro

To: Road Walker who wrote (308183)	10/30/2006 4:04:06 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583736

But I think the pessimists have a stronger case. There’s a lot of evidence that home prices, although they’ve started to decline, are still way out of line. Spending on home construction remains abnormally high as a percentage of G.D.P., because banks are still lending freely in spite of rapidly rising foreclosure rates. John, do you know how many times I've heard this in the last 15 years? Back in the late 1980s, LA's median was around $300k. Then it got hit by the mother of all recessions.......over 1 million jobs were lost. Think about it......a million jobs. Then LA had riots........for a year after the riots I heard gun shots throughout the city every nite before going to bed. The city was on the edge of anarchy. Then LA got hit with a major earthquake in 1994. All this garbage took plage within 3 years. At its low point, the city's median hit around $250k. By 1998, it was back up over $300k. Today its around $550k. And let me tell you, this is a city that is hardly growing.......certainly its growing much slower than any city in FLA. So then, if the perfect storm of negativity that hit LA in the early '90s couldn't destroy its housing market, why would I believe the current malaise will? With that in mind, I bought TOL at $24. Currently its around $30. In case I am wrong and the doomsayers are right, I maintain close stops. What else can I do?

To: Road Walker who wrote (308183)	10/30/2006 5:09:16 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583736

Here's a chart showing housing inventories since 1989. While the current rise is significant, its well within past inventory levels. And if you notice the little notch at the end of the graph line........that indicates inventory totals may have started to level off at the current rate:

To: Road Walker who wrote (308183)	10/30/2006 5:14:54 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1583736

I can't remember if it was you or Chris who posted the article by David Brooks mentioned in this article but here is one person's reaction: The View From a Political Perspective By Jim Griffin Commentary You don't have to accumulate much experience with markets, whether as a short-term trader or long-term institutional investor, before cyclicality of one sort or another impresses itself upon you. What's true in markets is derived from what's true in life; from string theory and electromagnetism to the more easily observable and comprehensible movements of the moon and tides, everything is cyclical, apparently. For example, politics. With midterm elections dead ahead, David Brooks offered a longer-term wave-pattern perspective on liberalism vs. conservatism. The New York Times columnist noted last week that the 1932-to-1968 period of dominance by liberalism led to such accomplishments as Social Security and civil rights advances. By 1980, the cycle had changed, and conservative dominance brought about a renaissance of the economy through deregulation and "the rebalancing of the culture to emphasize family, work and individual responsibility." Sometimes, however, neither ideology is dominant; there are changing times when, in a sort of first-derivative-goes-to-zero, it is not clear what will dominate in the future. Brooks suggests that this is one of those times; whether Republicans lose their majorities or not, conservatives have exhausted their agendas, and the Reagan coalition is unraveling. Identification with the Republican Party is falling, but Democratic affiliation is not rising. "Instead, there is a spike in the number of people who do not identify with either." With the political first derivative now at zero, he posits that the next period of political dominance is likely to be achieved by whichever ideology is best able to address today's defining challenges. His list: confronting Islamic fundamentalism, managing entitlement spending and the "stultification of government," coping with emergent China and India, and "the growing importance of cognitive skills and cultural capital, the need to surround people, especially children, with stable relationships if they are to flourish." This sort of thinking may be above my pay grade as an economist, but I believe it's important on occasion to step back for a longer perspective in order to put our daily cyclical interests in context. In this time of saturation advertising by political campaigns, Brooks' formulation struck me as an insightful hypothesis that is not obviously refuted by contemporary data. Whatever the outcome on Nov. 7, he suggests, change is upon us.