Fuck it.....I might as well take all my 401k money and buy beer with it. At least then I could sell all the empties as scrap and get some money back. Plus I'd be really drunk for a long time, which would probably make me feel better. Of course, being drunk, I'd miss a lot of work and probably get fired which would mean I'd need bailing out.
Still not sure what the heck is going on with my vaca, and probably won't know until tomorrow afternoon. Not too f-ing happy about that, but what can you do when the GCs are sick. IF I miss my trip, I"m going to be pissed. Of course, maybe I'll just spend the whole time working on the jeep and actually get something done. Probably not, but you never know.
Later
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
AM I stupid
or are all the talking heads ignoring one way to save, well not save, but at least stimulate the economy while also potentially strengthening the housing market? My idea is to purchase houses on the open market and begin tearing them down. I don't care how you do it, you could buy foreclosures or REOs or whatever. Then just strip the fuckers bare and tear them down. I don't remember a lot from economics back in college, but I remember supply and demand and our problem right now is we have a ridiculous excess of supply and demand has fallen to historically low levels. This low level of demand is exacerbated by the sudden return to sane underwriting practices and also by the fact that people are scared to buy a house that will instantly be worth less than they paid.
So, then we tear the fucker down, as so eloquently stated above. This does 2 things, the way I see it. It supports the contracting/construction community, which has been pummeled over the last couple of years and has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. The other is that by reducing the # of homes on the market, you can start to establish a floor under the price of housing and give people some certainty that their house will not be instantly worth less than they paid.
Just a thought, but here are my numbers which are VERY loosely based on some googled numbers and may not reflect reality.
We have 100 million homes in the U.S. give or take.....of that, probably 20% or so are for sale at any given time, so approximately 20 million homes. In the US, per the most recent Case/Shiller numbers, the median price for a home is around $200,000. I'll use $300,000 to make the number more realistic, but I'm also going to say that number includes the cost to tear down. I'll assume no recovery from the stripping of the home of things like fixtures, cabinets, HVAC units etc. I'll assume any recovery covers the cost of stripping it out.
300,000homes x $300,000/home = $90,000,000,000. We still have over $400Billion available in the TARP that our good friend Mr Paulson doesn't want to use at the moment. What better way to support the economy than this? Yes, it's a total writeoff, and that money will have to borrowed. Do you really think that we are going to recover a lot of money from TARP anyway?? Cuz if you do, I need some of what you're smoking.
anyway, that's my thought of the day.
Later
So, then we tear the fucker down, as so eloquently stated above. This does 2 things, the way I see it. It supports the contracting/construction community, which has been pummeled over the last couple of years and has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. The other is that by reducing the # of homes on the market, you can start to establish a floor under the price of housing and give people some certainty that their house will not be instantly worth less than they paid.
Just a thought, but here are my numbers which are VERY loosely based on some googled numbers and may not reflect reality.
We have 100 million homes in the U.S. give or take.....of that, probably 20% or so are for sale at any given time, so approximately 20 million homes. In the US, per the most recent Case/Shiller numbers, the median price for a home is around $200,000. I'll use $300,000 to make the number more realistic, but I'm also going to say that number includes the cost to tear down. I'll assume no recovery from the stripping of the home of things like fixtures, cabinets, HVAC units etc. I'll assume any recovery covers the cost of stripping it out.
300,000homes x $300,000/home = $90,000,000,000. We still have over $400Billion available in the TARP that our good friend Mr Paulson doesn't want to use at the moment. What better way to support the economy than this? Yes, it's a total writeoff, and that money will have to borrowed. Do you really think that we are going to recover a lot of money from TARP anyway?? Cuz if you do, I need some of what you're smoking.
anyway, that's my thought of the day.
Later
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
been a while
So it's been like 2 weeks since I posted and I find that I sort of missed it. There's quite a bit going on, so I'll cut to the chase.....
At work, we've been busting hump in budget preparation and meetings for the last week or so. I was traveling last week and got quite a bit done, although not as much as I might have liked. I did get some disturbing (to me) information. It's only really disturbing to me, and mostly because I had high hopes for our new master and commander. I was sitting in the conference room (traveling, remember?) and he comes in and cuts to the chase about how they paid the previous owner for a bunch of items that we were kind of holding in reserve. Now I have no problem with him getting paid. What upsets me is that the other shareholders (oh yeah, those guys) know about it too, and it sounds to me like they aren't going to get paid for the value of them. That's just wrong, and I was sorry to hear NM&C (New Master and Commander) say it.
At home, I need to just insert my house, my family and all my possessions into a bubble and disinfect them. The golden children are sick again, with some really nasty stomach virus that has laid #2 child really low.
Again about the economy. Toll Bros reported today, and the news was uniformly bad. A big mall developer is in serious danger of defaulting. I'm not going to recap the news for anyone, because all you have to do is hit CNN for an update. All I'm pointing out is that the news sucks, and we need something positive to happen to give people a shot in the arm. I used to think this was mostly about confidence, but I've sort of converted to the thought that consumers are just tapped out and couldn't spend if they wanted to. I think the housing bubble just masked it and gave us a few more years because credit was so stupidly easy to get.
I had a phone interview last night with some CPAs that represent a fab shop back in La. They are looking for a CFO and I have an opportunity. I'm not sure about the job, mostly because of the ridiculously rural location, and the fact that I want my daughters to grow up thinking being smart is a good thing. I'm probably going to meet with them the week of Thanksgiving, so we'll see what happens and what the area looks like. Truth be told, if they were to offer to buy me out of my house at no, or minimal loss, I'd jump on this sucker in a heartbeat even with the potentially fucked up location.
More later
At work, we've been busting hump in budget preparation and meetings for the last week or so. I was traveling last week and got quite a bit done, although not as much as I might have liked. I did get some disturbing (to me) information. It's only really disturbing to me, and mostly because I had high hopes for our new master and commander. I was sitting in the conference room (traveling, remember?) and he comes in and cuts to the chase about how they paid the previous owner for a bunch of items that we were kind of holding in reserve. Now I have no problem with him getting paid. What upsets me is that the other shareholders (oh yeah, those guys) know about it too, and it sounds to me like they aren't going to get paid for the value of them. That's just wrong, and I was sorry to hear NM&C (New Master and Commander) say it.
At home, I need to just insert my house, my family and all my possessions into a bubble and disinfect them. The golden children are sick again, with some really nasty stomach virus that has laid #2 child really low.
Again about the economy. Toll Bros reported today, and the news was uniformly bad. A big mall developer is in serious danger of defaulting. I'm not going to recap the news for anyone, because all you have to do is hit CNN for an update. All I'm pointing out is that the news sucks, and we need something positive to happen to give people a shot in the arm. I used to think this was mostly about confidence, but I've sort of converted to the thought that consumers are just tapped out and couldn't spend if they wanted to. I think the housing bubble just masked it and gave us a few more years because credit was so stupidly easy to get.
I had a phone interview last night with some CPAs that represent a fab shop back in La. They are looking for a CFO and I have an opportunity. I'm not sure about the job, mostly because of the ridiculously rural location, and the fact that I want my daughters to grow up thinking being smart is a good thing. I'm probably going to meet with them the week of Thanksgiving, so we'll see what happens and what the area looks like. Truth be told, if they were to offer to buy me out of my house at no, or minimal loss, I'd jump on this sucker in a heartbeat even with the potentially fucked up location.
More later
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