You would think this would represent the best buying opportunity in 9 years but my fear lays with this expansion of foreclosures that was recorded yesterday. If they cannot find a floor for housing===this will keep happening at a rate that cannot be fixed. I always felt they need to work the angle on Main street--keep the people in their houses--I really believe it's the moral and fiscally responsible thing to do. Give these people 0% financing if need be---but if you keep them in their home and they are paying money back[which also includes home equity loans CC etc... maybe you can find the floor. You cannot saturate the market like this nor can you let this cycle of foreclosure to continue because they go hand in hand. more foreclosures ===no floor on housing=worse credit problem=stunted growth=reccession=depression if this doesn't stop. They are not going after the root cause--they are throwing money at banks to LEND more.

I think baloon notes. Say 5 years. Low interest rate but then they either pay it off lump sum (not gonna happen) or refinance then at market rate. Assume this mess gets cleaned up in 5 years.

Market is like the NBA, last few minutes is all that counts.

Posted by BRIGGS:

Posted by Nalod:

I think baloon notes. Say 5 years. Low interest rate but then they either pay it off lump sum (not gonna happen) or refinance then at market rate. Assume this mess gets cleaned up in 5 years.

Market is like the NBA, last few minutes is all that counts.

I watched that third die hard movie last night--wow what an under rated movie. It wasn't John McClain but the concept of the movie and how things could fall off the table so quickly. I'm starting to really wonder if that is happening now albeit in a different type of way. I'm still a big believer that you buy into weakness but this weakness is a different type of weakness. You have a tremendous amount of wealth lost and the money on the sidelines isn't going anywhere and there is a lot less of it. People can say what they want about hedge funds but I worked for one. They are a HUGE conduit of the market. Now that investment banks have gone belly up--funds are closing left and right----well at the end of the day you have many less buyers and you have all of this automated selling going on. I think this ends when things come to a blistering standstill and baby we are on that route.

Yeah, this is going to be a prety bad recession in the US, but it doesn't mean other countries are suffering as bad as the US (i.e. they could recover faster than the US and you might want to consider investing in them; don't know which one though, or I will be rich). I think it's important to remember, the population in the world is always going to grow, hence there will always be a need for more and better goods/services, which means the world GDP will grow. I say the world and not just US. I believe other countries are catching up to the US in terms of GDP, but will still need a lot of time before surpassing US. The analogy of the USA basketball team in 1992 vs the world, and the USA basketball team in 2008 vs the world is a decent one to make.