[SGVLUG] Back on topic: housing and bear stearns

[Solomon K. Chang]

This actually made me wonder.

I find a small handful of user groups trying to form inland, not the least of which is
the Rancho Cucamonga MySQL Users group.  I've expressed on many occasions that our
industry does not seem to possess as much presence inland as, say, the beach cities. 
As a Claremont Colleges graduate, I can attest that I found it difficult to stay inland
after graduation and still pursue my career.

When driving around Rancho Cucamonga, the only industry that seems prevalent is...
retail?!  I hardly see any large office buildings, factories, or anything else that
might indicate the need for an enterprise-level techie.  I've even heard one potential
(and even older) programmer remark, "I'm looking for a Perl position... but not over
$50K/year. That would be too difficult."  Reading James' comment, I have long wondered,
what do most of these inlanders do for a living that lets them live so far from a
densely metropolitan area?

Some of the higher priced communities in more established areas (read: geographically
close to "enterprise"-level commerce or industry) seem to have held their prices quite
well.  Where is this "housing crash" in those communities?

Solomon

--- "Zack, James" <JZack at unex.ucla.edu> wrote:

> We bought our place last fall and are perfectly happy.  We bought in
> Alhambra near SouthPas, we got a good deal on the place (about 10k below
> similar units in the area).  The price we paid has held pretty much over
> the last few months.  I think the real problem areas are those long
> commuter communities, the 909 if you will, that will have the biggest
> drops in home values.  I never thought those houses out there were worth
> what people were shelling out for them to begin with.  We might take a
> loss short term on our place but we would be happy living here for 10+
> years so no complaints here.
>  
> Personally, I don't think we should be bailing anyone out, banks or
> people.  What sort of lesson does that send?  If we bail out all those
> who got into those situations, what benefit is there for those of us who
> are responsible?  I'll take another stim check  :)
> 
> ________________________________
> 
> From: sgvlug-bounces at sgvlug.net [mailto:sgvlug-bounces at sgvlug.net] On
> Behalf Of Miguel Hernandez
> Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 10:04 AM
> To: SGVLUG Discussion List.; sgvlug at sgvlug.org
> Subject: Re: [SGVLUG] OT: housing and bear stearns
> 
> 
> Yea, it's a bad omen looming on the horizon. Too many key things were
> done incorrectly, imho. You had banks & banking institutions pushing
> sub-prime loans on people who qualified for the better loans. That
> sounds odd until you find out that the banks didn't care because if
> (when) people defaulted, they could re-sell that debt on wall street.
> Adding insult to injury to the beleaguered consumer was that the
> government went to the aid of the banking institutions (partially
> understandable as the banks are a large part of the economic backbone),
> not the folks who lost their homes or are still stuck in bad loans.
> 
> I feel bad for those who bought recently, as Matti said. :(
> 
> --miguel
> 
> 
> On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 6:28 PM, David Lawyer <dave at lafn.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> 	On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 01:45:08PM -0700, matti wrote:
> 	> Hi,
> 	>
> 	> this is off topic...
> 	
> 	[snip]
> 	
> 	> I'm guessing we will see what some people like to politely
> call a
> 	> "market adjustment" is coming to the socal housing prices as
> credit
> 	> tightens and some more banks fail
> 	>
> 	> glad I didn't buy a house in the last year or 2...
> 	
> 	
> 	This is part of a much larger problem: possible financial
> collapse of
> 	the U.S. gov't but it may be years away.  With the gov't bailing
> out
> 	companies who took undue risk, it may wind up that the gov't
> itself
> 	can't keep going into debt anymore and has to go thru default
> itself.
> 	No country has every gone into debt as much as the US (including
> all
> 	forms of debt such as private debt) and not suffered financial
> 	collapse.  It used to be that a way to default was via
> hyperinflation
> 	so as to make the real value of debts nearly worthless.  Old
> postage
> 	stamps of Russia and Germany illustrate hyperinflation.  In
> Germany in
> 	the 1920's it took billions of Marks to buy some of the postage
> stamps
> 	(in my stamp collection) when inflation hit it's peak.  But now
> the
> 	U.S gov't has issued a lot of debt in "inflation protected
> securities"
> 	that can't be made to go away via hyperinflation.  The only way
> to
> 	default on this debt is just to not pay it back.
> 	
> 	So while house prices in real terms may drop, in term of dollars
> they
> 	may hyperinflate along with hyperinflation of everything else.
> If you
> 	would like to read some hyperbole (that is often humorous) on
> these
> 	and related problems  see Kunstler's (author of "The Long
> Emergency")
> 	site:
> 	
> http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2007/12/foreca
> st-for-20.html
> 	
> 	Linux both helps and hurts our current account balance of trade.
> It
> 	hurts since it reduces the monopoly profits that MS can bring
> into the
> 	U.S. from other countries.  But at the same time, the fact that
> Linux
> 	was mainly a U.S. phenomena helps improve the public opinion the
> U.S.
> 	worldwide and this may help the U.S. get more sympathetic
> treatment in
> 	economic matters.  For example, will the oil trade switch to
> euros
> 	from dollars?  Iran has already switched and wants others to do
> so
> 	also.  Iran may win this since outside of Linux (and some other
> 	things), world public opinion of the US is pretty low, and the
> Bear
> 	Stearns bailout (and related gov't loans of "liquidity" to Wall
> 	Street, etc.) makes it worse resulting in a falling value of
> dollar
> 	which leads to inflation as the prices of imported goods rise.
> 	
> 	I wrote about the problem of free trade years ago and did
> 	nothing for years with what I wrote.  It's now on my website and
> while
> 	I've added to it but it's not up-to-date.  Many of the things I
> 	predicted are happening now, but others predicted the same (see
> 	the list of books on the subject).
> 	http://www.lafn.org/~dave/gov/collapse.html
> <http://www.lafn.org/%7Edave/gov/collapse.html> 
> 	                       David Lawyer
> 	
> 
> 
>