{"id":2430,"date":"2007-12-26T13:19:44","date_gmt":"2007-12-26T20:19:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=2430"},"modified":"2007-12-26T13:19:47","modified_gmt":"2007-12-26T20:19:47","slug":"the-odysseus-medal-until-we-start-fixing-what-is-really-wrong-well-continue-to-struggle-in-quicksand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2430\/the-odysseus-medal-until-we-start-fixing-what-is-really-wrong-well-continue-to-struggle-in-quicksand\/","title":{"rendered":"The Odysseus Medal: “Until we start fixing what is really wrong we’ll continue to struggle in quicksand”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The story of the year is the lending crisis, so it’s no accident that this week’s Odysseus Medal should go to Morgan Brown for Struggling in Quicksand – Why the Government Continues to Exacerbate the Problem<\/a>:<\/p>\n

So here’s the rub – all of these “do gooders” are making the situation exponentially worse. Their rash actions are actually making it HARDER to get financing. Witness the spreads in jumbo vs. conforming loan amounts. Witness the restriction of loan programs. Witness the increase in underwriting stipulations. Witness the interbank rates compared to the Fed. The fact is that all of these bail out programs (which they all are in one form or another) have added MORE uncertainty to the system. They have not improved the psyche of the people with the money. And those are the people that count right now. If the people who hold the cash don’t want to lend it because their return is unclear we’ll never see the calming of the mortgage market.<\/p>\n

The idea is not to make Fannie and Freddie buy everything in sight; the idea is to make the mortgage market a transparent and friendly investing environment so that cash returns to the secondary markets (and debt markets in general). Will that take time to work out? Absolutely. Are any of these rash knee-jerk reactions improving the situation? Not at all. We shouldn’t be worrying about how to bail out responsible people. We should be looking at how to fix the credit and debt markets to provide transparency for investors. Transparency builds credibility. Credibility builds confidence. Confidence drives investment. Investment drives down costs of borrowing, increases program expansion and makes markets healthy.<\/p>\n

Until we start fixing what is really wrong we’ll continue to struggle in quicksand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Krista Baker takes this week’s Black Pearl Award with How To Create Your 2008 Business and Marketing Plan<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Identify the gaps. Now that you’ve documented where you are and where you want to be, where are the gaps? For instance, if you made $50,000 in 2007 and want to make $100,000 in 2008, what does that mean? First, $50,000\/12 = approx $4200. If you want Read more<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The story of the year is the lending crisis, so it’s no accident that this week’s Odysseus Medal should go to Morgan Brown for Struggling in Quicksand – Why the Government Continues to Exacerbate the Problem: So here’s the rub – all of these “do gooders” are making the situation exponentially worse. Their rash actions […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,3,6,5,23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2430","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-blog-carnivals","7":"category-blogging","8":"category-marketing","9":"category-real-estate","10":"category-the-odysseus-medal","12":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2410,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2410\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-12\/","url_meta":{"origin":2430,"position":0},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"There are 36 entries on the short list this week. That's a ton, but, even so, it's less than half of what we started with. Given that it's a holiday week, there was a lot of great stuff this week. We knew that going in, because both Jeff Kempe and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2542,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2542\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-17\/","url_meta":{"origin":2430,"position":1},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"January 27, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"There are 18 entries on the short list this week, out of a long list of 78 posts. A lot of news, so a longer short-list. Upside: A boatload of fascinating reading. Vote for the People's Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2448,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2448\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-13\/","url_meta":{"origin":2430,"position":2},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Only seven entries on the short list this week, but the long list was barely 25 posts. Vote for the People's Choice Award here. You can use the voting interface to see each nominated post, so comparison is easy. Ahem: Please don't spam all your friends to come and vote\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1835,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1835\/easy-nomination-form-for-the-odysseus-medal\/","url_meta":{"origin":2430,"position":3},"title":"Easy nomination form for The Odysseus Medal","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I built a quick and easy nomination form for The Odysseus Medal competition. You can continue to use the BlogCarnivals entry form, but I put this together to make it easier to nominate posts written by other people. The form lives at the top of The Odysseus Medal information page,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2737,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2737\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-is-open-23\/","url_meta":{"origin":2430,"position":4},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"March 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"My take is that the most important news this week was Zillow.com's announcement that it will be doing background checks on the loan originators it will be referring to consumers as a part of its forthcoming mortgage product. In consequence, this week's short list is all about Zillow's announcement and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1907,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1907\/last-call-for-odysseus-medal-nominees\/","url_meta":{"origin":2430,"position":5},"title":"Last call for Odysseus Medal nominees","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 9, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I changed the graphic at the top of the page for the better part of last week, an homage to Kris Berg's excellent post, but I don't think anyone noticed. We have a bunch of great entries for The Odysseus Medal, but only you know what we're missing out on.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}