America's Descent Into a Third World Country Has Begun.

All investments included a degree of speculation.

 

Maybe if the environmentalist in California didn't put up laws on top of laws restricting land use for developers maybe homes wouldn't cause 3 million dollars.

 

Would you equate investing in Google to buying a lottery ticket?

What about holding shares in a dividend bearing stock with a lottery ticket?

Playing the currency markets is speculative, but not without basis in fundamentals and study.

 

Wrong. The inflate the money supply, which increases their yield in taxes. That is why even with the Bush tax cuts, returns are up. Taxes were cut, but instead of productive gains, inflation has also inflated the tax returns.

In fact, IMO, there is no better example of monetary expansion being the driving force of inflation.

Everyone should be wary of artificial prosperity under a fiat currency. There are hundreds of years providing historical example of this.

 

USA still has plenty of resources. For instance, the US is a leading producer of oil. The US produces 8 million barrels a day against 3 million produces in Iran. The problem is that we consume 26 million bpd.

The same problem with agricultural land. The US losed 5 acres of farmland to development per minute.

Over consumption, population growth and uncontrolled illegal immigration is turning the US into a third world country.

 

well said bogart

 

Gtech, you know this is not about us tearing down this country. You tear down the country by looking the other way. We have a crisis in the housing market, and true patriots will tell the truth, and offer solutions that can help us get out of this mess.

 

I just ignored that comment Tesla.

Remember what Samuel Johnson said,

"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."​

 

You are confusing risk with speculation, two very different things.

 

The current year-to-year housing price decline of 6.7% is the biggest decline since April 1991 decline of 6.3%.

 

My new house lost about 3 grand in value in about 2 months!

 

That isn't too much. It's a paper loss. The real people in trouble are California, Las Vegas, AZ, Florida and the Northeast.

In places like Austin Texas they are giving aways houses. A 4 Bedroom/3 Bath is 162,990 with 2,320 Square Feet.

http://www.lennar.com/TX/Austin/BellFarms50's-DiscoveryCollection.html

 

I know, was just an example

Houses here however have been on the market for more than a year, the one I bought brand new, 3 bedroom, huge loft 'where a 4th bedroom would be', 2 car garage, 3 bath, etc, etc for even less than the house in Texas you quote

 

Just make sure you don't get stuck in the dangerous routine of buying a house, and then drawing cash out against it's appreciation to pay the mortgage.

Lots of people got these low interest ARMs, and now that their houses have lost value, they won't be able to make the mortgage payments, THEY COULDN'T AFFORD IN THE FIRST PLACE without using the appreciated value to refinance.

 

Trust me no ARM here and as long as business doesn't die no problem in paying the payment

Actually refinanced for a better rate and to pay down some of the loan $300 a month savings roughly is something I like

 

To a small degree yes. Winning the lottery include a high level of luck while google stock and future earnings are based not as much on luck but on the assumption/speculation that A google can continue to build market share in the search area and that they can monetize other forms of media like online video or mobile phone to justify there 54 time P/E ratio.

 

Speculation, in the narrow sense of using it as financial speculation, involves the buying, holding, selling, and short-selling of stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, collectibles, real estate, derivatives, or any valuable financial instrument to profit from fluctuations in its price as opposed to buying it for use or for income via methods such as dividends or interest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculation

 

Wrong. One is random, the other can be researched based on fundamentals.

 

Over the last 5 years home values have appreciated over 100% in some market and more in others, so for house values to fall 6.7% is really small when taken in context in 5 or 10 year periods.

 

Fundamentals only explain the company up to now (present day) not what the future may hold. Fundamental will not explain to you that there may be two college student in an MIT or a Stanford dorm room building a new search engine that will beat google. Let’s not forgot that 10-15 years ago aol was the leading search engine.