Housing Boom -or- Bust?

is a graph that puts the current housing boom into a historical perspective.

That is a LONG way to fall.

I said before that the crazy lending practices such as interest only loans and the like are going to cause some serious issues with home values in the not too distant future. The signs of it happening have already started. The last new housing report showed that new purchases fell something like 6%. That is a large drop. The ramifications of such a drop are that building companies now have a large surplus of houses, which means they won't be building new ones until they can move the old ones, which means layoff's in the previously booming construction industry, which leads to people not being able to make their interest-only payments on their houses, which begets forclosures, which then starts to drop the housing values because they are over priced and require an interest-only loan for most to afford. As that happens the fed cranks up interest rates to hold off inflation which cranks up the adjustable rate on those interest only loans pricing more people out of their affordable range thus causing more forclosers. BOOM, crash.

It'll happen, the only questions are when, how fast, and how bad. It'll be ugly regardless. So hold onto that equity in your house so you can absorb the fall. And if at all possible lock that adjustable rate mortgage into a fixed rate as soon as humanely possible.

Exciting times!

Duh!

Can we say 'jumping to conclusions'? After the obsession of the media of John Mark Karr we now have what wasn't much of a surprise come out: here.

10 years after the girl's murder this guy comes forward and gets a ton of media attention and it all turns out to be a load of crap. So I guess the media can go back to speculating on if it was her mother or dad or cousin or dog or cat or whatever. Oh what I would give to get back to a straight-talking media where the anchor's don't think of themselves as TV stars. Jackasses.

How Cool Would It Be...

...to have some sort of units of measurement named after you? As in: such and so is 7 Kautzes. Awesome! Now what needs to be measured that doesn't have a name yet...hmmm....

Snakes on a Plane!!!!11!!1!111!!!

Saw it. Love it. Much more entertaining than you'd think.

Fan Trailor

All your snakes are belong to us!

Yay!!!

Update

Oy!

Thought I'd post a quick update since I sorta fell off the face of the earth for a bit.

1) The boat works! Took it out last weekend while camping at Lake Anna. I thought it broke down again that Friday but it turns out that a $40 part was all it needed and it worked great the rest of the weekend. Even got a few waves up over the bow to soak people. :)

2) I picked up a second somewhat largish long-term contract so between that and the work I'm doing for my previous job (TADOnline) I should be good to go. Kautz Consulting is back, bitches! That, however, is what has kept me so busy.

3) My house has become the revolving door of roommates. The same weekend Luke moved out Leslie moved in and took over Luke's room totally unexpected. For rent, I'm making her deal with the cat fluids. Ick.

4) Today is the day I've been waiting for: Mother Fucking SNAKES on a Mother Fucking PLANE! I'm so hyped! But first, time to go fly some R/C planes around and see if we can have any more mid-air collisions. Yay!

Boat Update

To recap, the gears in the drivetrain of my boat exploded on July 3rd. I took it into the shop on July 5th. I told them I need it back by Aug 10th for a camping trip on Laka Anna on the 11th. Two weeks after dropping it off they called me with the damage assessment. It wouldn't have been so bad except that the drive shaft was suspect as well.

So, after bothering the crap out of them this week they finally completed the work yesterday (August 10th)...down to the wire. I spent 9 hours in the car yesterday driving down to pick it up, taking it to Lake Anna, then driving home. The repairs cost $2115. I guess no mechanical problems for 5 years is a pretty good run.

So I have my boat back and all is good! I fixed the anchor light last night for some night boating and I have a backup solution for my on-going radio issues.

Good times this weekend!

A Funny Thing Happened...

...when I tried to make a phone call today. I received a busy signal. Why is that funny? I couldn't figure out what it was at first. Luckily, my phone was there to tell me it was busy. It occurs to me that I haven't received a busy signal in literally years. Usually it goes to voicemail now.

Anyone else notice that the busy signal has more or less gone the way of the dodo?

Political Views

I've said before that I moved pretty far to the left in response to what has happened since the BS impeachment attempt of Clinton, the election in 2000, and the BS war in Iraq. I wasn't always this far to the left and, in fact, I still linger towards some traditional conservative view points. By traditional conservative I am not talking about the conversatives that hijacked the Republican party in the 90's. I believe in stronger state governments, for example.

Anyway, this is a short post that describes what I think happened to a lot of people, myself included, that shaped our views and pushed us further left than we were before.

I agree that partisanship will be with us for the foreseeable future and while that is a sad thing we need to adapt to it. Peeps like Liberman providing politcal coverage to the GOP crap need to be challenged and made to defend their views via contested primaries. It is a fundemental excercise in democracy and one that hasn't been taken advantage of enough. Do you realize the incumbency rate of federal Senators is over 90%? The only time a senate seat changes basically boils down to when the incumbent senator retires or dies. They aren't being challenged and are not being held accountable to the voting public. Joe Liberman's reaction to his primary challenge by Lamont is a good witness to this. He was totally offended that someone would dare - DARE - challenge him. What an ass.

Opps, went off on a rant there. Sorry about that. Anyway, what shaped your views politically?

Mel Gibson

I used to like the guy, then he went nuts. Totally off his rocker.

In any case, can we stop with the play-by-play in the news about his DUI? I mean, seriously. I think there are probably more important things that could be taking up the airwaves.