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Tag: Bailout (page 1 of 1)

June 23, 2010

There are Only Four Things Certain Since Social Progress Began

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

(alternatively entitled – with all due apologies)
Though I’ve Belted You and Flayed You, By the Livin’ Gawd That Made You;
You’ve Made a Worser Man of Me, Socialism

 

“And a woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke”  (from The Betrothed).  I have loved Rudyard Kipling from the very first time I read Gunga Din.  His pace and pattern appeal to me, as does his archaic sense of manhood.  I have argued before, and dare say would do so again quite successfully, that his poem If  is among the finest pieces ever written in the English language.  Of all the inspirational articles I have written and the many orations I have given, much time could have been saved had I simply gone in, recited If and walked out.  If you have never read it, stop what you are doing now and do so.  The answer to just about every event you may encounter in your life is contained in that poem.

This post, however, is not about Kipling’s great work If.  (If it were, I would certainly link to my own, real estate based homage to wisdom, and I’ve done no such thing.)  No, this post is about another poem Kipling wrote, one I am chagrined to admit I only recently discovered.  More mortifying still, I discovered it only because Glenn Beck is using a couple of lines from this poem to plug a new book of his.  (I’m not denigrating Mr. Beck, only lamenting the discovery of fine art through it’s crass commercialization.)

The poem refers to Copybook Headings and I was unsure what those were.  For the one or two of you out there as simple as I am, copybooks were primers used by school children to perfect their penmanship.  Across the top of each page was written a Biblical passage or similar lesson of moral imperative.  The children would copy the line over and over on the page below, thus improving their cursive and at the same internalizing certain truths.  Truths that, according to Mr. Kipling, are forgotten at our own peril.

Printed below in its entirety, this poem was written almost 100 years ago.  But you’d be amazed Read more

April 14, 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen….Lower Your Prices By Making things Products…

by

Instigator, anthill kicker.

Author website

I’ve been a freelancer, mostly, since November of 2007.  (I closed about 4mm in loans in 2008, mostly 1st quarter).  I’ve built websites, blogs, I’ve set up CRMS, and I’ve created landing pages, and sold a variety of e-books.   I created an ill fated subscription service, (got it up to 30 members, then remembered the things I hate about loan officers) and I’ve built a ton of websites, done a ton of writing, and had an utter blast.  I’ve delivered sometimes, f’d it up sometimes, and learned more faster than I ever have at any period of my life.

One of the things I learned…and that Dan Kennedy would freak out about is that lowering your prices means more profit, more relaxation, and better, happier clients with a chance to succeed.   I used to charge people about $2,000 per blog.   And I’d do a reasonable job with the blogs. I’d spend time training people in what WordPress does, I’d train them in how to post, I’d share my analytics with them, and I’d go through it.  But for $2,000, you gotta have value.  So people would continue to call.  The service I offered wasn’t worth $2,000 to them, they felt like something MORE was needed.  And honestly, they were right.

I had more time sunk into support and followup than the stuff that I was charging for.   So, I thought some more about it.

And decided to lower all of my prices on everything I do.  Because if you’re only charging $700 or $800 it’s a far different situation than $2,000.   People can afford it, and it’s easier to meet that expectation.  They have a level of indifference about the outcome because, honestly, $700 bucks isn’t going to make or break most months for most people.  You can increase value by adding more information (videos etc) and it’s a BONUS and not an ENTITLEMENT.

To do that, though, ya need a defined process.   The blue ocean thing: everyone was using the Thesis framework for blogs, why not make ’em look cool?  I mean really cool? Take away the option from the customer, sell a Read more

February 4, 2009

You’re Gonna Need a Shovel

by

Real Estate Renaissance Man

Author website

When I was young, my father taught me a very simple story:

A man walks by a big room and sees that it’s chest high in manure.  “Quick,” he says “someone get me a shovel.  There must be one helluva horse in here somewhere!”

Now the message was always clear: don’t be afraid of hard work and look upon every situation with an optimistic eye. Lately though, reading the paper has been a lot like running into that room; only I’ve begun to realize there’s no horse in there. Just a whole lot of shovelin’.

The latest pile can be found in a column by Dean Calbreath, a well-respected staff writer for the Business section of our local paper: The San Diego Union Tribune. You can read the full story here: Government Spending is Tool to Revive the Economy, although the title itself is about as subtle as a sledge hammer to the head. (I wonder if he was being ironic with the word “tool”?) In the column itself, Mr. Calbreath expects politicians debating the “stimulus package” will take heart in a new study by UCSD economist Valerie Ramey which concluded that for every $1 the government spends, it generates $1.40 in economic growth. Uh… yes, you read that right. The government is generating 40% growth on its spending programs. Wow! We really can spend our way out of a problem.  I mean Mister, at 40% growth we’ll be out of this recession in a quarter or two if the government will just get it through their thick heads to spend enough. (When I read utter nonsense like this I am reminded, as I so often am, of the wit and wisdom of Homer Simpson. Upon realizing he and a few other characters were literally trapped at the bottom of a hole they themselves had dug, Homer hit upon an elegant solution:  “We’ll dig our way out!” As the screen fades we can here Chief Wiggum say, “No, dig up, stupid…”)

“Raising spending stimulates the economy,” Ramey said.  “On average, government spending raises gross domestic product and raises employment, although it sometimes leads to Read more

October 3, 2008

Mortgage Market Week in Review

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

Well, here we are on Friday again. Are you getting motion sickness from all of the news and rumors that are flying back and forth? Wow has it been another week to forget, hasn’t it?

Here are the topics we’re going to talk about today: The Bailout/Rescue Plan, some very weak economic reports, the credit markets and do bankers really trust each other?

First, there were several economic reports that came out. None of them were good. Here’s a rundown of them:

1. Jobs – the jobs report came out this morning and showed that 159,000 jobs were lost in September. While the number was lower than what the markets expected (they expected 200,000), it was a very weak report.

2. Factory orders came in down 4%. That’s not the direction we’d like them to go.

3. Car Sales fell off a cliff in September. Ford’s sales dropped 35%. Ouch.

4. A couple of reports on personal incomes, personal expenditures and the like came out and they weren’t good.

If these were the only issues that we had, we’d have our hands full and we’d see mortgage rates drop due to the increased weakness in the economy.

But that’s not all. The credit markets have taken a major hit in the last week. What’s happening with that? A couple of brief highlights:

1. Banks are very concerned about running out of money (capital). Wachovia (more on this later) and Washington Mutual have been “bought out” to keep them from going under. Other banks are concerned that the losses they are experiencing will not enable them to keep their capital ratios where they should be. Due to that, there is an increasing reluctance to lend to commercial customers and to lend to consumers. How bad is it? I’ve heard a variety of conflicting reports. What I can say from personal experience is that for people (consumers, not businesses) who have the following: 1) Some equity in the Read more

September 30, 2008

Tom’s Top Ten Reasons He Doesn’t Like the Bailout….

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website
  1. Because a government intervention the financial systems rarely works well.
  2. Because it fails to acknowledge the fundamental shift that is occurring in our society as we move from being “overleveraged” to using credit responsibly.
  3. Because Nancy Pelosi likes it.
  4. Because no one has been able to prove that by buying this garbage from the banks, it will do anything to actually help credit get done.
  5. Because Barney Frank likes it.
  6. Because JP Morgan and the FDIC were able to work out a very smooth transition when Washington Mutual closed down last week and it was done without any unusual interventions.
  7. Because the bailout refuses to consider that not all banks are equal.   Those who are most likely not going to make it would get the same government money as those who are perfectly healthy.    That’s just not right.
  8. Because Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Michigan) voted against it, and I have a lot of respect for Pete.
  9. Because the Main Stream Media is preaching an unbelievable amount of panic, distrust and fear and they are doing it with items that are not factual.
  10. Because the government hasn’t done a good job (because I don’t believe they can) in showing that there’s a connection between buying bad assets from the banks and helping Main St.
  11. Because Citigroup and the FDIC worked out a “take over” of Wachovia without any significant market disruptions and without any unusual bailout efforts.

Okay, so it was actually 11.   The point is, the bailout is not good for our country and not good for our economy.   Are banks going to fail?  Yep.   Do I hope that “my bank” isn’t one of them?  Yep.   But like Jeff Brown says, we know how the story ends up and we’ll all be fine.

Tom Vanderwell

September 29, 2008

An Update on the Bailout….

by

Mortgage Officer

Author website

and yes, after doing some more reading on it, I do still consider it a bailout.

I’m going to put a copy of a post that Yves at Naked Capitalism wrote in italics and then my comments will be interspersed in bold print and then I’ve got more thoughts at the end.

Hope this helps you understand it better.

Congressional Charade: Changes in Bailout Bill Cosmetic, and Everyone Knows That

For a quick, one-stop synopsis of the Mother of All Bailouts (as of this month), see this readable version at Clusterstock (we’ve become a recent convert to this site).

Reader and sometimes contributor Lune, who was once a Congressional staffer and still subscribes to the the inside-the-Beltway press, provided a wrap of their coverage of the bailout bill. It makes clear that everyone understands that turning Hank Paulson’s three pager into a 110 page draft made for a nice fig leaf but made virtually no substantive difference.

Gee, why doesn’t that surprise me.   They added 107 pages of rules and regulations and it’s basically just spelling out the same difference as before.

From Lune:

Well folks, we’re almost to a done deal (certainly closer than Thursday). The Hill papers are reporting that they’re getting closer in both the Senate and the House to the needed votes to pass the new bailout bill. Roll Call gives the most frank assessment of what happened over the weekend in an article entitled “Same Bailout, New Dynamic” (subtitle: Outrage Prompts Sales Effort).

All the late-night talks, last-minute demands and dramatic pronouncements aside, the fundamental structure of a $700 billion Wall Street rescue plan that Congress spent the weekend wrangling over has not changed significantly from the outline proposed by a bipartisan group of Senators and House Members last Thursday.

Did you hear that?:  It’s basically the same deal as last week Thursday, just spun differently.

“This is in essence the same,” said Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who attended those talks.
. . .
Assuming enough House Republicans agree to vote for the package, it appeared that the House could vote as early as today, while the Senate might have to wait to take it up Wednesday after Rosh Read more

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