To: Ilaine who wrote (21118 ) 8/12/2007 3:14:48 PM From: carranza2 Respond to of 219578 we ain't seen nothing yet. Agreed. The pig will be in the python's middle in the Spring.everybody, and by "everybody" I mean big lenders like Countrywide, was asleep at the switch The stories were well-known. They've been known for at least a couple of years. SI is full of them. The Real Estate Bubble Thread is amazing for this. No verification ARMs, etc. Well known and perfectly predictable resolution. A new generation of idiots who don't remember the S&L crisis. The RE bubble, like any other bubble, intoxicated many people with visions of easy money, big houses, unending ATM, etc. Much pain, much sorrow, on the way. And it will ripple throughout the economy and throughout the world. But there will be lots of opportunities for the sagacious. I am taking a cautious, tentative 2x leveraged position in an ETF which shorts the Russell 2000 as I believe small caps will hurt the most from the credit crunch. I plan to increase this leveraged short position as things go south. I learned it can be done in an IRA, so the tax benefits are even better. There is always the other side of the coin. How do you figure mass transfer of wealth? I see a lot of bubble value simply disappearing. Many of the structured packages sold by the Wall St. scamsters to overseas investors, hedge funds, etc., will be belly-upping. Can't say that I feel sorry for them. Anyone who buys millions/billions of subprime paper to juice up returns deserves to be decapitated, financially speaking. Like here in NO, I think the banks are going to be unwilling to foreclose on any kind of massive basis. I see a lot of deals being made, losses being shared by the bank and the borrower. The Federal government will probably intervene somehow if things get truly horrid just as it did in the S&L days, ease the way, kick the bubbling ball down the road so it is someone else's problem. I see the borrowers who would have never qualified for a loan as having gotten a free ride at the expense of whoever ultimately holds the confetti paper their loans were written on. If they were smart enough to somehow have capitalized, i.e., by selling before bubble burst and not getting into anither funy money deal, good for them. But folks who take teaser rates and ARMs are generally streeetching for the brass ring, and were poor risks to begin with, i.e., not very prudent, so I doubt that many of them figured out how to maintain a permanent advantage from their ticket to the party.