patrick.net

Who are the authors/analyst/bloggers you turn to most often for reliable, relatively bias-free information about Real Estate, economics and/or investing? Have any favorite columns/books/articles? Favorite bubble quotes?

Here are some of my favorite authors/anaylysts:

Here are some favorite Bubble quotes:

"the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"
--John Maynard Keynes

"When the shoe-shine guy gives you stock tips, it's time to get out."
--Joseph Kennedy (just prior to 1929 stock market crash)

"Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
--Prof. Irving Fisher (just prior to 1929 stock market crash)

“South Florida,'’ he said, ‘’is working off of a totally new economic model than any of us have ever experienced in the past” according to a realtor who predicted that a land shortage will support higher prices indefinitely.”
--New York Times, Trading Places: Real Estate Instead of Dot-Coms, 3/25/05

"History has not dealt kindly with the aftermath of protracted periods of low-risk premiums."
(and)
"newly abundant liquidity can readily disappear."
(and)
"As events evolved, we recognized that, despite our suspicions, it was very difficult to definitively identify a bubble until after the fact — that is, when its bursting confirmed its existence."
(and)
"...recent research within the Federal Reserve suggests that many homeowners might have saved tens of thousands of dollars had they held adjustable-rate mortgages rather than fixed-rate mortgages during the past decade, though this would not have been the case, of course, had interest rates trended sharply upward.
...American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage. To the degree that households are driven by fears of payment shocks but are willing to manage their own interest rate risks, the traditional fixed-rate mortgage may be an expensive method of financing a home."
--Alan Greenspan (with irony)

"Homeownership has become a vehicle for borrowing and leveraging as much as a source of financial security."
--Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, Feb 11, 2005

"If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."
--J. Paul Getty

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his NOT understanding it."
--Upton Sinclair

"...capitalism without financial failure is not capitalism at all, but a kind of socialism for the rich".
--Jim Grant

"It's only when the tide goes out that you can see who's been swimming naked."
(and)
"Be fearful when everyone is greedy and be greedy when everyone is fearful."
--Warren Buffett

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
(and)
"Experience keeps a dear school, but a fool will learn in no other."
--Benjamin Franklin

"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."
--Herb Stein (a.k.a. 'Stein's Law')

"It may sometimes be expedient for a man to heat the stove with his furniture. But he should not delude himself by believing that he has discovered a wonderful new method of heating his premises."
--Ludwig von Mises

"Asset bubbles tend to last longer and grow larger than any rational person at the time would have thought possible."
(and)
"In a market rigged to reward the reckless, imprudent and immoral, the very dumbest thing you can be is a market participant who behaves in a responsible, prudent and moral manner."
(and)
"A law that is never enforced is basically the same as no law at all. Scratch that –actually, it’s worse than no law. It undermines people’s respect for law and government, as they watch criminals profiteer from law-breaking with impunity."
--HARM (had to stroke my own ego :-) )

"Friends don't let friends buy overpriced houses"
(and)
"...when I hear someone boasting about their FICO it makes about as much sense as a slave bragging about his healthy teeth and strong back! For what? So you’ll fetch a higher price at the auction?"
(and)
"It's always better [for the borrower] to buy cheap assets with expensive money than to buy expensive assets with cheap money. Down the road, rates will come down and you can always refinance the loan. But you can’t renogotiate the price of the house."
--DinOR (from Patrick.net)

“Broke is the New Black”
--txchick57 (from Ben Jone's blog)

"with a bucket of money and a box of stupid"
--RE/MAX Equity Group broker David Foster (referring to the kind of buyer Oregon sellers are looking for)

"Economics is the art of predicting the past"
(and)
"An economist is someone who will tell you tomorrow why the prediction he made yesterday never happened."
--author unknown

"a rolling loan gathers no loss"
--author unknown (very apt for serial-refinancers)

"If you’re going to do something stupid, do it with large numbers of other people."
--author unknown (referring to "Don't 1099 me, bro!", Mod-Squad, GSE CLL hike, mortgage rescinding, and other awful government bailout legislation)

"A housing correction is impossible, as we are running out of both land and condos. The historic relationship between rents/incomes and owner carrying costs has been forever severed. It's a new paradigm, and everybody who doesn't buy now will be priced out forever. Anybody who does buy will be rewarded with a lifetime of riches, as their property will continue its 30% yearly price increases. Renters, and those unlucky enough to be born in future generations, will be will be unable to afford a $10 million starter home in 10 years. They will live in tent cities, and used Hondas. This asset bubble is different than all of the others - it will never slow down or pop. The gains are permanent."
--author unknown

" A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage."
--author unknown (often mis-attributed to 18th century Scottish writer/laywer, Alexander Tylter)

"Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."
--James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)

“Democracy is an upside-down homeowner, a mortgage investor, and a tax-paying renter, voting on what’s for dinner.”
--"Home-A-Loan", (from Ben Jones' blog, 2007)

"Capitalism works just fine as long as those that make bad decisions have to pay the price for those bad decisions. When those that make bad decisions don’t reap the consequences, capitalism breaks down, since it breaks the risk vs. reward principle."
--"packman" (from Ben Jones' blog, 2007)

"Don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor."
--John Dickinson (character from play "1776")

"God, grant me the capital to accept the things I cannot change; the reserves to change the things I can; and the Fed Auction when all that blows up. Amen."
--Tanta (from Calculated Risk, 2007)

"Human Nature -- we are competitive creatures, and we need some legitimate boundaries. If you haven't noticed, when left to our own devices, too many of us eventually cut corners, eventually leading to the many scandals we have seen over the past decade: Corrupted analysts, accounting scandals, predatory lending, conflicts of interests, option backdating, etc.
That is the risk that excessive deregulation and/or inadequate prosecution brings: With no refs on the field of business, too many of the players eventually become steroid-addled, drug-addicted, quasi-criminals."
--Barry Ritholtz (from The Big Picture, 2007)

"...the reason that people's attitudes have changed [re: defaulting on mortgages] is because the lenders themselves have decided that creditworthiness doesn't matter - that anyone can get a loan regardless of whether they have a track record of paying their debts or not. Why should creditworthiness be more important to the debtor than it is to the lender?"
--"trail", (from Ben Jones' blog, 2007)

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary."
-–James Madison, The Federalist #51 (1788)

"Capitalism without failure is the very worst form of socialism."
-–Peter P (from Patrick.net)

“Nothing cures high prices like high prices”
--author unknown

"Life is hard. It's even harder when you're stupid."
--John Wayne

HARM

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