There’s always something to howl about.

Category: Investment (page 6 of 20)

The Verdict Is In

Last year on these pages I wrote posts extolling the benefits of EIUL’s. Back then I called them FIUL’s. The common usage for awhile has been the former, which we’ll stick to here. What’s an EIUL? It’s permanent insurance, designed, in essence, to deliver tax free retirement income. Some have called it investment grade insurance. It also has many other benefits, including the ability to pass the entire value of the policy tax free to heirs upon the insured’s death.

My point in the previous posts was that if folks would just be objective, they’d realize 401k’s are a trap, baited by government with paltry annual tax savings to lure us in. What folks don’t know, I wrote, is that upon retirement, a disciplined saver finds out that in 4-6 years they’ve already paid back 30 years of ‘tax savings’. Such a deal.

Why would anyone do that on purpose?

It created a barrage of comments, some seemingly personal, but most disbelieving the information imparted. What’s so ironic, is whenever we guide our clients into these vehicles, it’s at a loss to us. We make not a penny on anything done by the EIUL experts to which we refer our people.

Then why do we advise many of them to separate some of the real estate investment capital from their pile in order to acquire an EIUL? Simple — it’s the right thing to do. Yesterday I posted what happened to those who refused to believe me last year.

Those who manage their company’s qualified retirement plans? Please, pretty please, at least check into this? If you’d at least done your own objective research, you would’ve discovered I was simply tellin’ you the way it was, and was gonna be. And now, the way it is.

Those who saw the information for what it was, did not get hurt in the stock market crash of the last couple weeks. It’s been significantly hurtful to most, and absolutely devastating to a majority of American taxpayers heavily invested in mutual funds through their 401k’s.

Those who chose EIUL’s? They not only didn’t lose a penny, Read more

Greed is Good: How the Rich Get Rich

I think Gordon Gecko was on to something, greed is good. In fact, the combination of greed and fear are even better, or at least they are telltale signs, it seems – for when to enter or exit the market.

Amidst the financial turmoil, Charlie Rose recently interviewed Warren Buffett regarding his thoughts regarding the financial crisis we’re facing as well as to discuss his $3 Billion investment in GE.

A Conversation with Warren Buffet courtesy of Charlie Rose

I happen to like Warren Buffett a great deal. He’s smart yet humble. Sometimes it is difficult to believe that this folksy cornhusker is a billionaire. When Warren pulls the trigger on an investment – and they are generally not small in size – people stand up and take notice. Clearly, you don’t become the wealthiest American by shooting from the hip.

Headlines today indicated that Warren is telling everyone to buy US stocks. Perhaps you’ve heard his quote – I’ll paraphrase:

When people get greedy he gets fearful, when people get fearful, he gets greedy.

I was left with a certain level of confidence despite the current financial and housing crisis – Warren is investing – again, not alittle – but alot. He’s not waiting on the sidelines, he’s investing now. Our stock and housing markets are ripe with opportunity.

Granted we’re all not blessed with billions – but interestingly enough, those who do have the resources should be investing – not in the future – but now. There is and will continue to be turmoil, however, as Warren stated, it is best to be approximately right rather than precisely wrong.

My take and my advice to my investor clients as well as those who are holding out for “the deal of a lifetime”. I think we’re approximately there.

Could prices fall further? Yep, I think they might – but would you rather buy with an approximate risk or some further loss or miss the opportunity all together?

Perhaps this is the most simple example of exactly how the rich get rich. When the majority sit Read more

What Happens to the Early Worm?

Quite a while back I asked a question, if the early bird gets the worm, what is the early worms reward for being early? In this tumultuous market we have already seem many early worms. Several months ago a lot of people began jumping back into real estate only to be crushed by the weight of numerous new market developments. But surely the worst is behind us? Think again early worms…

Real Estate is as slow as the stock market is fast. It takes time for sellers to get desperate enough to lower their price and it takes time for buyers’ incomes to rise to the level where they can afford housing prices. The income / price equation did not get out of whack overnight, so buyers and sellers should not expect it to correct itself overnight either.

The Bloodhound Blog is a very deceptive place. You are looking at some of the best real estate agents in the business here. So when they write that their business has not dropped off, it might lead the casual reader to believe that the real estate market is not in a tailspin or even that real estate is close to a bottom. Do not be lulled into a false sense of optimism. This group is adaptable, smart and most of all well above average.

Consider these national facts about the economy and then let’s draw some conclusions about the future of real estate (taken from the latest release of the Biege Book and other financial sources):

-Consumer spending is down
-Manufacturing is down and declining
-Jobless claims are up and rising
-Housing remains weak
-Housing inventory remains well above average
-Dow Jones has dropped nearly 40% over the past six months

The most significant thing on the list above has to be the decline in the stock market. This represents a decline in confidence in the global economy. This level of decline says that investors believe businesses could be in for sustained economic distress. It stands to reason that businesses in distress tighten their belts by laying off workers and Read more

Peter Schiff: “Our leaders irrationally promoted home-buying, discouraged savings, and recklessly encouraged borrowing and lending, which together undermined our markets”

Peter Schiff in the Washington Post:

Amid the chaos of recent days, as the federal government has taken gargantuan steps to stabilize the financial markets, realigning the U.S. economic system in the process, comes a nearly universal consensus: This crisis resulted from government reluctance to regulate the unbridled greed of Wall Street. Many economists and market participants who were formerly averse to government interference agree that a more robust regulatory framework must be constructed to cage the destructive forces of capitalism.

For the political left, which has long championed the need for such limits, this crisis is the opportunity of a lifetime.

Absent from such conclusions is the central role the government played in creating the crisis. Yes, many Wall Street leaders were irresponsible, and they should pay. But they were playing the distorted hand dealt them by government policies. Our leaders irrationally promoted home-buying, discouraged savings, and recklessly encouraged borrowing and lending, which together undermined our markets.

Just as prices in a free market are set by supply and demand, financial and real estate markets are governed by the opposing tension between greed and fear. Everyone wants to make money, but everyone is also afraid of losing what he has. Although few would ascribe their desire for prosperity to greed, it is simply a rose by another name. Greed is the elemental motivation for the economic risk-taking and hard work that are essential to a vibrant economy.

But over the past generation, government has removed the necessary counterbalance of fear from the equation. Policies enacted by the Federal Reserve, the Federal Housing Administration, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which were always government entities in disguise), and others created advantages for home-buying and selling and removed disincentives for lending and borrowing. The result was a credit and real estate bubble that could only grow — until it could grow no more.

Prominent among these wrongheaded advantages are the mortgage interest tax deduction and the exemption of real estate capital gains from taxable income. These policies create unnatural demand for home purchases and a (tax-free) incentive to speculate in real estate.

Similarly, the FHA, Fannie and Freddie were created Read more

Bloodhound Blog Radio: Fundamentals Trumping “Headline” Risk

Sean “Rocky” Purcell and I discussed his big prediction of the stock market bounce and I repented for my recommendation to stay “unlocked” in hopes of lower mortgage rates.

Download and enjoy this light-hearted 17 minute show

We felt the near-term future for stock and bond markets would depend on the numbers not events.  We’re looking closely at Retail Sales (which were weak) and CPI, specifically Core CPI, this week.

Download and enjoy this light-hearted 17 minute show

Why the Bailouts Don’t Work and Why Wall Street Loves Them

The stock market came back with a vengeance yesterday.  On Friday’s episode of BloodhoundBlog Radio we noted that the market was vastly oversold from a fundamental perspective and suggested a rebound after the weekend.  This was prescient enough that the Mortgage Cicerone made note of it, which is high regard indeed.  So why am I not celebrating?  Because yesterday’s reaction was as irrational as the sell-off.  One thousand points?!  Sure the correction was in there, but so was the exuberance of a seemingly ceaseless font of federal gifts.  The markets like the latest ideas out of Washington and why shouldn’t they?  Wall Street has done a good job creating an aura of representation – most people now believe that was is good for Wall Street is good for America.  How else do you explain the frantic efforts our fearless leaders make each time the market drops?  The rally cry lately seems to be: “If we make the Dow go up, we must be on to something.”  This is nothing new.  For years now the markets have taken a preeminent position in economics beyond their reach or relevance.  One need look no further than earnings reports.  You might report record earnings for your company, yet your stock is pummeled because the reported earnings did not equal what the market had already priced in to the stock.  “You didn’t do as well as we thought you would do based on our self-serving judgment of what is best for you.” (Which is shareholder profits, of course.)

If you believe what you hear from the talking heads (and by virtue of the fact you are reading BHB, I doubt you do) the source problem for the economy is the toxic mortgage derivatives and their tentacle like reach.  Everyone bought these things, even when they didn’t know they were buying them.  Now (as the story goes) our problem is this: no one knows what this stuff is worth.  Everyone is marking down their portfolios, no one wants to risk lending money and the initial bailout (bailout 1.0) didn’t phase anyone; all because we don’t know the real Read more

Obama ups the stakes in his contest with McCain over who can do more enduring damage to the crippled economy

Witness:

Democrat Barack Obama is calling for a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures and a two-year tax break for businesses that create jobs as part of a plan to heal the nation’s ailing economy.

The presidential candidate says banks that participate in the federal bailout should temporarily postpone foreclosures for families making good-faith efforts to pay their mortgage.

He also called for a $3,000 tax credit for each additional full-time job a business creates. The tax break would end after 2010.

Obama also is proposing letting people withdraw up to $10,000 from their retirement accounts without any penalty this year and next.

The Obama campaign emphasizes that these ideas can be done quickly, either through executive order or legislation.

Here’s a question that no presidential candidate, apparently, can answer: Where does investment capital come from?

A ninety-day moratorium to “temporarily postpone foreclosures for families making good-faith efforts to pay their mortgage” is stupid. A loan is either performing or it isn’t. The lender is never going to foreclose on a performing loan, although the threat or foreclosure may not be withdrawn for quite a while.

The corollary? If you want out of your mortgage, you have to stop making payments.

The tax credit is also pretty dumb. If $3,000 is the margin of profitability for a new hire, a few people might get hired.

But “letting people withdraw up to $10,000 from their retirement accounts without any penalty this year and next” will bleed the economy of lendable capital just when the economy is already bled white of lendable capital.

I can’t even think of all the ways this is perilously damaging. It encourages a run on retirement accounts, which will probably drive securities values lower over time. Individuals probably shouldn’t reduce their retirement investment stake just when it has suffered a terrible hit. Freeing up that money encourages still more spending on consumer goods — depreciating assets — where it is now invested in future growth.

But here is the worst feature of this insane proposal: Not only won’t that money be committed to future economic growth, but the people whose job it is to invest that money productively will have to think Read more

If you have cash or can qualify for a mortgage, this could be the ideal time to grab a bargain-priced home in the Phoenix area

This is my column for this week from the Arizona Republic (permanent link).

 
If you have cash or can qualify for a mortgage, this could be the ideal time to grab a bargain-priced home in the Phoenix area

The Phoenix area is hosting a wave of real estate investors like we haven’t seen since 2005. Unlike the novices who came here during the boom, these are experienced landlords. They’re here now because lender-owned homes are selling for bargain-basement prices.

They’re not alone. Savvy home-buyers are scooping up bargains, too, especially first-time homeowners. Interest rates are still attractive — even if the homes themselves are less appealing.

Interestingly, over the last couple of weeks, many of the lowest priced homes have seemed to evaporate. I’m guessing that October is going to be a banner month for closed transactions. Yes, most of these will be foreclosed homes, but buyers are performing the liquidator function, restoring the value of underperforming assets.

With so many homes selling, are we nearing a bottom in the Phoenix market? It’s plausible, if the number of sales meets or exceeds the number of newly-listed homes to be sold. But, even now, around 7,500 homes a month are entering the foreclosure process.

It could be a long time before that inventory is absorbed. And if it comes onto the market faster than buyers can snap it up, prices will continue to decline.

Visualize the real estate market as a pipeline. The home that gets a foreclosure notice today won’t hit the lender-owned market for three to six months. Are there enough investors and other buyers to snap up record numbers of homes, month-after-month, for the next two years — or longer?

The answer to that question is yes — if the price is right. If the demand for low-priced homes already exceeds the supply in the pipeline, prices will stabilize or even start to rise. If not, lenders will be forced to cut prices until buyers find them impossible to resist.

It’s an awful time if you have lost your home, and it’s not great if you are living in a home you cannot sell profitably. But if you Read more

A Look past the hyperbole of “The Great Depression”

My Grandmother is 89. In 1929, she was 10, living in Duquesne, PA, a steel mill town not far from Pittsburgh.

Grandma is still a story teller, although Alzheimer’s has mixed up the palette of her recollections, which makes for some interesting mash ups. Before Grandma’s synapses got all Web 2.0, it was the Depression stories that fascinated me the most.

They were even better than the WWII stories, which were pretty good because she worked in an ammunition factory, but that’s a story for another crisis.

All of Grandma’s Depression stories, from the time a truck carrying oranges jackknifed on the road right before Christmas, to the beautiful indoor pool, gym and library that Carnegie built (where Aunt Emma secretly played basketball), to the truant officer chasing down Uncle Joe, all of them had a three-part moral:

  1. We were dirt poor.
  2. You don’t ever want to be that poor.
  3. Save your money just in case anything like that happens again.

As I got older, I started to understand how being a “Child of the Depression” had molded my Grandmother. The bargain shopping. Walking across the parking lot of the A&P stooped over not because of age, but because she was looking for dropped change. The look of disbelief Christmas morning when my brother and I sat in a pile of un-boxed toys surrounded by shreds of wrapping paper a foot thick, looking for more.

The lingering impact that living through the Depression had on my Grandmother used to interest me as an exercise of amateur psychology, a topic I’d toss around with my parents to show them they got something for the four years I spent doing keg-stands at URI: She was conditioned. Using a tea bag twice is a mild sort of PTSD. Aren’t I clever?

I don’t feel so clever, now. Now I’m recalling Grandma’s somewhat more reliable pre-Alzheiner’s stories looking for tips, or hope, or something…She did always say, poor as they were, they were happy. That’s something, right?

This morning a friend forwarded me a link to something that is on the Wikkipedia page for The Great Depression, a page that probably has gotten more traffic Read more

A Quick Primer on Liberal & Conservative Economic Theory

We may or may not be in favor of the bailout.  We may or may not fully understand what the bailout will or won’t do.  We may or may not be any smarter than the politicians who (in my humble opinion) don’t have a clue what the bailout will or will not do.  But I am guessing we can all recognize good ideas from bad ideas.  It’s easy: the former stimulates business and the latter stifles it.

Case in point (you can read the full story here):

Congressional leaders scrambled Tuesday to come up with changes to help them sell the failed $700 billion financial bailout to rank-and-file members. One idea gathering support: raise the federal deposit insurance limit to reassure nervous savers and help small businesses…

Republican House aides said the FDIC proposal might attract some conservatives who want to help small business owners and avert runs on banks by customers fearful of losing their savings…

Another possible change to the bill would modify “mark to market” accounting rules. Such rules require banks and other financial institutions to adjust the value of their assets to reflect current market prices, even if they plan to hold the assets for years…

Some House Republicans say current rules forced banks to report huge paper losses on mortgage-backed securities, which might have been avoided…

Liberal Democrats who opposed the bill are suggesting other changes. Their ideas include extending unemployment insurance and banning some forms of “short selling,” in which investors bet that a stock’s value will drop…

The conservatives want to

  • Raise the insured limit on bank deposits.  Of dubious actual benefit in my opinion – but tough times call for paper mache measures.
  • Change the mark-to-market rules.  The mark-to-market rules are onerous to investment companies and do not reflect asset values accurately.  This should have been enacted long ago.  Using the bond concept of yield to average life would make more sense.

The liberals, on the other hand, want to

  • Extend unemployement insurance.  What? To stimulate the economy you want to increase the weight of one of its anchors?  I know this is Read more

“Buy when there’s blood in the streets”

I wrote $975,000 in new contracts today. No way they’ll all be accepted, but they’re strong offers backed by a lot of cash. If we don’t get these properties, we’ll go for others. Amazingly, the quality of lender-owned properties seems to be going up even as the prices go down. The lord alone knows what will happen in Washington and Manhattan, but it’s a good time — for now, at least — to be a Realtor in Phoenix.

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Roderick T. Long: “The vast regulatory apparatus that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was thus specifically campaigned for by the business community.”

From The Art of the Possible:

There’s a popular historical legend that goes like this: Once upon a time (for this is how stories of this kind should begin), back in the 19th century, the United States economy was almost completely unregulated and laissez-faire. But then there arose a movement to subject business to regulatory restraint in the interests of workers and consumers, a movement that culminated in the presidencies of Wilson and the two Roosevelts.

This story comes in both left-wing and right-wing versions, depending on whether the government is seen as heroically rescuing the poor and weak from the rapacious clutches of unrestrained corporate power, or as unfairly imposing burdensome socialistic fetters on peaceful and productive enterprise. But both versions agree on the central narrative: a century of laissez-faire, followed by a flurry of anti-business legislation.

Every part of this story is false. To begin with, there never was anything remotely like a period of laissez-faire in American history (at least not if “laissez-faire” means “let the market operate freely” as opposed to “let the rich and powerful help themselves to other people’s property”). The regulatory state was deeply involved from the start, particularly in the banking and currency industries and in the assignment of property titles to land. (Even such land as was not stolen from the natives was seldom appropriated in accordance with any sort of Lockean homesteading principle; instead, vast tracts of unimproved land were simply declared property by barbed wire or legislative fiat.)

The early republic’s two major political factions – to oversimplify a bit, call them the Jeffersonians (as represented by the Democrats) and the Hamiltonians (as represented successively by the Federalists, Whigs, and Republicans) – disagreed primarily about which forms of governmental interference to emphasise. To be sure, both sides paid lip service (and sometimes more than lip service) to the “Principles of ’76,” i.e., the libertarian ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence; but each side quickly deviated from those principles when doing so served its economic interest. The Hamiltonians, whose chief base of support was in the urban financial centers of the northeast, called for Read more

Newt Gingrich: Kill the Paulson Plan. Hard.

US News:

A few quotes and Gingrichian observations:

1) He called it a “stupid plan” that looks like it had been designed by autocrat Vladimir Putin. He also said it will be a “nightmare” to implement and full of corruption.

2) He said the Paulson Plan would be a “dead loser” on Election Day that will “break against anyone who votes for it.” It will hurt even worse with the 2010 election once Americans see what a drag it is on the economy when implemented.

3) He recently chatted with economic historian Alan Meltzer who advocated doing nothing rather than implanting the Paulson Plan. Meltzer apparently joked to Gingrich that this was about the third time he had seen Wall Street scream “the apocalypse was nigh” only to have the economy keep right on chugging along.

4) Gingrich thinks that if the Paulson Plan isn’t passed by this weekend, it is dead and the White House better have a Plan B, economic-growth package ready. Right now, he still thinks it has an 80 percent chance of passage, partly because of Paulson’s apocalyptic tone that if a bill isn’t passed, “the whole world will end on Tuesday.”

5) He advises McCain to play the maverick and come out against the Paulson Plan. Then it will be the Obama-Bush plan.

Much more here.

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Wall Street bailout plan to include more than bad mortgage debt: Feds to absorb unpaid bar bets, inadvertently laundered postage stamps, unredeemed soda cans and insufficient tooth-fairy disbursements

Totally absurd? Think twice:

In the dark of night over the weekend when most people were snoozing, the Treasury dramatically expanded its bailout plan to include buying student loans, car loans, credit card debt and any other “troubled” assets held by banks.

The changes, which were included in draft language that also opened the bailout program to foreign banks with extensive loan operations in the United States, potentially added tens of billions of dollars to the cost of the program.

Although it was a major addition to what was already the nation’s largest-ever bailout, it did not become part of the debate between Democrats and the Treasury over details of the program. A Monday counterproposal by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd included such consumer loans as well as mortgages, just as the Treasury’s draft did Saturday night.

“The costs of the bailout will be significantly higher than originally considered or acknowledged,” said Joshua Rosner, managing director of Graham Fisher & Co., who charged that the Treasury and Federal Reserve have not been “forthright” about the ultimate cost to the public. The plan gives Treasury the discretion to buy the non-mortgage loans and securities in consultation with the Fed.

Conservatives cited the move as a sign that the massive plan to take over bad mortgage debt already is opening the door to further government bailouts.

“Such a large takeover by the government will surely be accompanied by adverse, unintended consequences,” said Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group. “Already, other companies and industries are lining up at government’s door asking for their own bailout.”

In my column for this week’s Republic, I argue that buyers should not even consider bidding on short sales: Too much hassle to catch a falling knife. In the same respect, in this climate, I can’t see any reason for sellers to participate in the short sale process — except, arguably, to extend the amount of time they remain in the home without making any payments.

Capitalism rewards thrift, zeal, planning, self-reliance. Socialism in all its many flavors rewards theft — so long as there is anything left to Read more

The Vanderwell Proposal – “Project Rebuild Banking”

Since Secretary Paulson put his proposal in three pages, I’m going to lay out my proposal in less space than that.   Here goes:

Point #1 – The Treasury is hereby authorized to spend up to $700 Billion to stabilize the banking and financial services sector in such manner as it sees fit.   There will be two main priorities in their decision making:  a) To increase the flow of credit in the banking and mortgage markets so that the healthy of the economy is improved, not hindered and b) To increase the likelihood that eventually the taxpayer will receive a profit rather than incur a loss.

Point #2 – Any institution that sells any “troubled” assets to the  Treasury shall sell them at a price that is established by joint decision of the Treasury, the institution, and a committee formed of 2 members of the Senate Banking Committee, the Vice President of the United States, and 2 members of the House Banking Committee and the chairman of the SEC.   The target price shall be no more than 45 cents on the dollar.   Under no situation will the purchase price be more than 50 cents on the dollar without the joint approval of the House and Senate Banking Committees, and no more than 65 cents on a dollar without approval by the full Congress.

Point #3 – Any institution that sells troubled assets to the Treasury shall immediately reduce their dividend to 20% of what it was (can be adjusted for inflation annually according to the CPI), and all officer level employees (from the CEO down 3 levels on the corporate hierarchy) will have their salary reduced to a maximum of 3 times the average salary that they pay their employees.   So if the average Bank of America employee makes $50,000 per year, the CEO’s salary will be no more than $150,000.

Point #4 – If the institution is currently servicing the debt, they will remain servicing the debt and will provide monthly reports to the Treasury on the status of the payment history, collection procedures and, if necessary, foreclosure efforts.

Point #5 – If a bank, like Read more