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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (49596)	5/4/2009 2:40:05 PM
From: Maurice Winn	1 Recommendation Respond to of 219732

During the late 1970s and through the 1980s housing bubble, I did, part way through, realize what was going on, and wished I had understood it sooner and bought the stupidest biggest house with as much borrowed money as I could get. But my nervous nature means I probably would have been wary and cautious even if I did see what was going on. < never would have bought a house we could not afford, hoping that somehow we could flip it. > Also in the 1980s in NZ there was a huge deregulatory borrowing binge to puff up assets with debt. Colleagues used to scoff at me for investing in "companies which make things ... financial management is where it's at". I explained that they looked like puff balls pumped up on debt and a wing and a prayer and were likely to pop, leaving a mess. Sure enough, there was a huge bust and swarms of people were wiped out. After the bust, I swapped our house [which we had sold as we were living overseas and it seemed a good time to ditch it with the bust on] for a bust company and sold it a couple of years later when it had doubled and management wasn't what I wanted. So yes, it wasn't for me. Since your clients all recognize they brought it on themselves, they are probably not inclined to take pitch forks to Washington. A few probably blame it on the "big evil-doing banks" for lending them money they couldn't afford, but for the most part, I guess they know they brought it on themselves, like me borrowing money and buying Globalstar shares - a bailout would have been nice, but I would have been amazed to get one. Come to think of it, they should have given me a bailout so that I could keep investing dirty great Tonka Truckloads of money. Maybe my investment idea wasn't so hot, but GM SUVs are obviously not so great either. They say that as we get older, "I've seen it all. Twice". Second time around, there's less shock value. House prices zooming? Yeah, yeah, wait until the debts come in. Alternative fuels? Did that 30 years ago. Stockmarket bubble busts? 1974, 1987, Y2K = hmm, I notice those are 13 year intervals, so 2013 should be the next one. That means a big rise between now and then. But the current boomlet looks too much like wishful thinking. Everyone is being greedy when others are fearful "Like Warren says", not realizing that if they are not fearful, then there is not enough fear and "others", aka themselves, are not actually fearful enough. Mqurice