It’s clear even to him, by now, that history will no longer regard him as being the most inept American president…
Category: Group Therapy (page 60 of 81)
Okay, it’s hard to believe but tomorrow morning is the first Friday of the month again. Where has the year gone? In some ways it has flown by and in other ways it seems like it’s been about two or three years. Know what I mean?
Any way, tomorrow morning is the jobs report that shows the statistics for the month of September. I’ve had a lot of people asking me what I think it’s going to show and what I think it’s going to do to mortgage rates. I’m going to lay out what I think are the four most likely outcomes and their potential impact on mortgage rates. At the end of the piece, I’ll put my “projections” on which one is most likely to occur.
The Jobs Report Comes In Better Than Expected – Remember, it’s not so much the actual number as it is the difference between market expectations and the actual numbers. But, if the jobs report comes in better than expected, here’s what I expect will happen:
- People will feel better than they did about the prospects for a recovery in the economy.
- People and institutional investors will move money (lots of it – how much depends on how much better) from the bond market and cash and put it into the stock market.
- The stock market will have a very nice upward swing.
- The bond market and mortgage backed securities will suffer from the movement of money.
- Mortgage Rates will go up.
The Jobs Report Comes in about as expected – status quo, mediocre, we just sort of limp along. If that’s the case, I expect we’d see a “non-reaction” in the markets.
The Jobs Report Comes in Worse Than Expected – a little bit worse, but not a huge amount worse. If that’s what happens, here’s what I expect:
- People will feel worse about the prospects for recovery in the economy and we’re Read more
I’ve known for more than a year that I want to write a book about what we’re getting wrong.
As a species, that is.
Through all of human history.
Surely that’s a man-sized ambition — and perhaps also a new high-water mark for the abstract concept denoted by the word “hubris.”
That’s as may be. In truth, this is an undertaking I would rather not undertake. For one thing, I’m busy and, in consequence, I’m physically tired much of the time. For another, this is less a thankless job than it is a task for which I can reasonably expect to be punished. Not officially punished, one may hope, but it seems likely that I will be derided, hectored or hounded, as I proceed with this project. I don’t shun that sort of thing, not ever, but it’s not something I actively court.
But none of that matters. The ideas I want to talk about drive me wild — in the best of all possible senses. I abhor every form of the claim of unchosen duty, and yet I feel that I must go through all this, that I cannot live in peace, much less die in peace, until I have transcribed every bit of everything that races through my brain.
But I can laugh at myself, too, so much am I alike, in my incipient dotage, to Dostoevsky’s Underground Man: “I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man.” Saving the world is a madman’s obsession, after all, a belfry awaiting its loyal complement of bats.
[Continue reading here, if you like. This project is way off topic even for a blog as topically-liberated as BloodhoundBlog, so if you want to follow along at home, the main action will be at SplendorQuest.com.]
Over the last eight days, calls from my clients and mortgage associates having been growing on a daily basis concerning the recent announcement by the FHA delegating mortgage broker approval to originate FHA loans to approved DE lenders. Quite frankly, many small lenders and mortgage brokers are concerned the mega-lenders will yield a big stick and force the smaller players out of the FHA playing field.
In this video, I provide an overview of the concerns, share background information and then present my thoughts.
FHA Delegates Broker Approval to DE Lenders
Note: This is my first video, so please excuse any rookie production mistakes.
Happy Monday everyone. Sean here, with the “I” news team bringing you a few under-reported items from last week. Stay tuned for the Inspirational, the Inscrutable and the Indefensible. You decide if any of it is Indispensable.
The Inspirational:
James Krenov died last week. He was an artist, writer and philosopher who left an indelible mark upon this world. You may not know him, but you have most likely seen the influences of his work in your work. He was a creator of sublime furniture and leader of one of the most highly regarded woodworking schools in the nation (if not the world). Take a moment from your busy day to click here and enjoy a little beauty.
The Inscrutable:
Football season is underway and those wacky kids running the NFL are at it again. Texas receivers Andre Johnson & Jacoby Jones were fined $7500 & $5000 respectively for their roles in a fight during a game last week. In related news, Eagles cornerback Sheldon Brown was fined $10,000 for wearing a Halloween mask to pre-game introductions. Apparently, the NFL feels that a little embarrassing publicity by one player is twice as offensive as the violent offenses of two players… They do say image is everything.
The Indecent, Incredible & Indefensible:
The increasingly authoritarian nature of our Federal government continues unabated. It is becoming widely understood that the Neo-Progressives bridle under scrutiny and brook no criticism; but this is outrageous even for them. It seems the U.S. government is now sending threatening letters of warning to private companies who have the temerity to disagree with the administration’s proposals.
Humana Healthcare notified its customers that proposed health care plans before congress could reduce their benefits. This, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, is simply a matter of fact. The Department of Health & Human Services then sent a letter to Humana as well as all the other private insurance providers of the Medicare Advantage programs essentially saying: “Shut-up… or else.” Click here to read all the gruesome details of central power run amok.
That’s all for now. While you’re out there today, take the time to admire and appreciate Read more
Yesterday I had mail from a Realtor who had proposed the idea of custom yard signs to a listing prospect. The client’s eyes lit up, and he saw not only the immediate possibilities but the future portents. Here’s what the Realtor had to say about it all:
One thing I found so interesting is that any time you mention custom signs, all the agents who don’t use them make comments about how worthless they are, but this guy, the client, the seller, got it immediately. Got the reason for it, could see how it would stop traffic, understood it all — without me selling him on it.
Funny how you have to sell agents on stuff that would make perfect sense to their own clients.
We’re adding three new contributors today. Two of them are envelope-pushing Realtors, but one is a certified, bonafied real estate client, an educated consumer who can tell a hawk from a handsaw — and who isn’t shy about speaking his mind about the utility of either one.
That consumer is Damon Chetson, a BloodhoundRealty.com client from way back and a long-time contributor to our comments threads. Damon is a newly-minted criminal defense attorney in Cary, NC, but he will be talking to us here about how he perceives the real estate industry as an informed outsider.
Robert Worthington is another frequent BloodhoundBlog commenter. He’s a hard-charging Realtor in Manitowoc, WI, and he spends all of his spare time looking for technobabble bubbles to burst.
Greg Dallaire is another Wisconsin Realtor, working out of Green Bay. Not only does he have a first name that rings sweetly to my ears, he sings a song very dear to my own heart: “I’m passionate about implementing technology into my business to increase productivity, improve efficiency, and increase profitability.”
As you might have inferred from my absences, punctuated by brief bursts of brevity — the wit of soul — I’m a busy boy. I’m about to become a busier boy, because I want to undertake a task for the ages. In the mean time, this was my response to the email cited above:
The actual message of Read more
…prepare yourself for the asshole cops…
Just think: If you just keep voting for more and more government, eventually the nanny-state might find a way to stuff you back up into your mammy’s womb. Or, failing that, they’ll exterminate you and everyone you know and love. Either way, the world will finally be rid of the pestilence of pesky humanity.
Black humor? No shit. But at least you don’t have to wonder who’s the asswipe now…
This from my Arizona Republic real estate column (permanent link):
If you live in New York or Boston or Chicago, there will come a day in the Spring when the cold will seem to be in full retreat. The sun will be shining. The icicles on the trees will be melting, and the tickle of the cold drops of water on your hair and neck will make you want to throw your arms out wide and rejoice in your release from the awful prison of Winter.
That happens in Phoenix, too, but it happens six months earlier, on September 15th. Mid-March has its own charms, when the citrus trees open their blossoms and the air is thick with the nectar of heaven perfected. But it’s when the Summer breaks in Phoenix that people come outdoors, knowing that the next ten months will be simply perfect.
Consider: On August 15th, the late-afternoon temperature could be 115 blistering degrees. The sun will be relentless, seeming to hang for hours above the horizon, seeming never to set. The relative humidity will be 40% or more — which doesn’t sound too bad until you remember the temperature. Late in the day, huge storms could come thundering into the Valley of the Sun, flooding the low-lands and even tearing the roofs off of older houses.
That season — we call it “the Monsoon” — lasts from July 15th to September 15th. But when September 15th rolls around… paradise ensues. Daytime high temperatures drop to below 100 and the relative humidity tops off at below 10% — so dry you can smell the dry leaves and pine needles baking in the sunlight.
That might still sound too hot to you, but it’s not. It’s just perfect, an ideal time to be outdoors — all day and all night. There is simply no place like Phoenix, no place on Earth. We suffer, slightly, during the Monsoon, but we are repaid with ten months of the kind of weather that other cities are lucky to see for ten days in any given year.
And Winter — which you are just now beginning to dread — Read more
Brian and I gave a three-hour presentation last Friday to a small group of top-producers at the Phoenix Association of Realtors. We asked Bloodhound Terry Melcher to help us set it up, and she packed the room with some of the most successful Realtors in Metropolitan Phoenix.
Brian was in town to help me shoot promotional videos for BloodhoundRealty.com, and we made a video of the speaking event as well. Don’t pester Ryan for a BHB.TV channel: It’s our usual garage-band quality production.
We cover a lot of ground in the 2.5 hours of video linked below, but there’s not a lot of cutting-edge stuff in there. If you’re new to our schtick, though, this might be a good short introduction to the BloodhoundBlog Unchained way of thinking.
I have always loved Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. It is many things, not least of which is a truly amazing exposition on language. I bring this up because I recently read Brian Brady’s piece entitled Is Social Media Marketing Worth the Effort and quickly imagined myself on a walk with The Walrus and the Carpenter. Greg Swan commented on Brian’s piece by publishing a video of himself, talking to us about his lack of interest in Social Media Marketing. I can only describe this as so eerily representative of what one might find on the other side of Mr. Carroll’s looking glass that it’s borderline derivative! For reasons that will be clear in a moment, I felt compelled to jump into the conversation.
‘Contrariwise,’ continued Tweedledee, ‘if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.’
That’s logic… You just have to love the confidence of that line. What’s even more interesting is how well this quote appears to sum up a few of our SMM darlings. I’m thinking of Twitter here and as a matter of full disclosure: I’ve never used it. As a matter of fact, I don’t believe I’ve used any Social Media in a way that can be measured for Return on Investment or conversion of prospects into customers. As a matter of fact, the very idea of measuring return on investment or counting conversions goes a long way in explaining why so few people succeed in our business: they confuse marketing with advertising. I’m itching to write a piece exploring that malady and will get to it as soon as I can carve out a little extra time. But meanwhile, we have Twitter. I know people right here in the Hound who are so old-school when it comes to marketing that they’re actually successful in this business (I’m not directly referring to the Bawldguy here, but if you’re still unsure I will look in his direction and whistle) and yet even HE has a Twitter account! Go figure…
[This is me, from 09/10/2006. –GSS]
Cathy and I watched The Path to 9/11 on television tonight. I had forgotten that we were in Metro New York for the Turn of the Millennium. My father lives in Connecticut, and we went there that year for New Year’s Day. The photo you see is my son crawling all over a bronze statue of a stock broker in Liberty Park, directly across from what was then the Merrill Lynch Building — on December 30, 1999. I lived in Manhattan for ten years, from 1976 to 1986. For quite a few of those years, I worked just across from Liberty Park, in the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway. At the other end of that little brick park was the southeast entrance to the World Trade Center complex. I worked insane hours in those days, and, very often, when I got out of work, I would go sit at this tiny circular plaza plopped down between the Twin Towers. Not quite pre-dawn, still full dark, but completely deserted — and to be completely alone in New York City is an accomplishment. I would throw my head back and look up at the towers, the fourth movement of the Ninth Symphony running note-perfect through my head.
Everything I am describing was either destroyed or heavily damaged on September 11, 2001. Along with the lives of thousand of innocents. Along with the comfort and serenity of their families. Along with the peace of the entire world.
I don’t believe in any heaven except for this earth, this life — the heaven we make every day by pursuing the highest and best within us. The World Trade Center had its faults. I can detail every one. But it was a piece of the sublime, a proud testament to how high, how good our highest and best can be. I don’t believe in heaven, but when I think of what was done that day, I pray there is an everlasting torment for the men who did it…
Technorati Tags: 9/11
From now through October 31, 2009, I’m offering a copy of Straight Talk About Mortgages – the Book available for free!
Why? Because I want to. That’s reason enough for me, how about you?
Click here to download your copy:
Straight Talk About Mortgages The Book
I’d like to ask two favors in return for a free copy:
- Once you’ve had a chance to read it, let me know what you think of it. Just send me an e-mail at tvanderwell@straighttalkaboutmortgages.com.
- Take a minute, think of someone you know who might be thinking about buying or refinancing their house and send a copy of the book on to them.
Thanks, enjoy!
Tom Vanderwell
This came in for a trackback on my NAR tax-credit video post:
http://hottopics.blogs.realtor.org/2009/09/08/ my-nar-tax-credit-video-“tell-the-natio/
The link resolves to an https address — in other words, a secret inner-sanctum blog. They won’t stand up for themselves in the clean, clear light of day, but they’ll piss and moan to each other in private.
It’s not that they’re gutless, mind you — or not merely gutless. So much the worse, they know they’re wrong — and they still won’t do the right thing.
How horrifying to spend your whole life thinking you’re one of the good guys only to discover that you are every bit as corrupt as Charlie Rangel, immersed snout-deep in the corporate welfare trough, turning a million mostly-innocent entrepreneurs into cheerleaders and lobbyists for even more legislative piggishness, turning three hundred million innocent Americans into cannibal’s fodder for your million-vampire-feast.
Who killed liberty in America, the last best hope for freedom on this Earth?
Was it Alexander Hamilton and the Whig/Federalist/Republican party, the original champions of corporate welfare?
Was it Andrew Jackson and the Democratic party, who wanted freedom for everyone — so long as you’re not black, brown, red or yellow? Or was it Lyndon Johnson and the modern Democratic party, who want freedom for everyone — provided you’re not an American?
Or was it the National Association of Realtors, who helped to turn a nation of hard-working, hard-charging, fiercely independent people into a gaggle of sniveling beggars, who can no longer even imagine paying their own way in life, who spend all their time concocting new ways to despoil their neighbors.
With every passing day, we are that much closer to being a nation of vampires, and it was the National Association of Blood-Sucking Vampires who first taught us to attempt to live by plunder instead of production.
But as much as I despise what they have done, still I feel for them as people. So I’ll offer up this much as a salve for the scabs they can’t stop themselves from picking at:
Redemption is egoism in action.
When you discover you have behaved badly, either willfully or inadvertently, there are three things you must do:
1. Admit your error Read more
Want to know what Realtors can do to help resurrect the American economy? They can get the hell out of the way, that’s what.
Here’s my entry in the Al Lorenz/Don Reedy NAR tax-credit video contest.
Think you can do better? Please do. And tell everyone you know in the media to latch onto this with every tooth they have left in their dainty little lapdog jaws.
This used to be a free country. Whether or not it ever is again depends on what each one of us does now…
Sometimes Life’s End Brings Meaning To Life
If you don’t like mushy posts – now is a good time to move along.
Back in the Spring of 1998, my sister was involved in some sort of charity work that prompted her to call me up one day and say, “I’ve found a cat for you!”
“What kind of Siamese cat is it?” I replied.
“Well… it’s not a Siamese cat – but she’s a really cool cat,” she shot back.
“Sis, you know I’m a cat snob…”
“Doug, the cat’s owner is on his deathbed. His family can’t take the cat. He has attended to all of his affairs – and his cat is the last detail he needs to attend to. She’s a really cool cat!” my sister insisted.
So I agreed to take on this full-grown female feline.
When she arrived, my sister couldn’t remember her name – but that didn’t matter. She was big and fat and colored black and white like a Gateway computer box… so I named her Gateway.
I took her to the vet to make sure she was okay, and the vet told me that she thought she was five or six years old at that time – and in good health… other than being rather heavy.
For the first few months, she kept to herself – often hiding under my end tables. When I would try to pick her up, she would hiss at me and act like she would bite me… so I gave her plenty of space – after all, I didn’t know how she had been treated in the past.
I remember the first time I let her go outside… a neighbor was walking his Great Dane, and Gateway ran up to that dog sideways – trying to look as big and menacing as she possibly could – with her fur standing on end. It was truly comical, as she had no claws – and that dog could’ve made an hors d’ oeuvre out of her.
Over the years, Gateway and I became the closest of friends. She asked for very little, but gave in ways that are hard to measure. She Read more