patrick.net

Great summation.

Yes, so much of the Bay Area was built out into the 70's.

My years in San Jose were 1969-1998, a few days before 1999.

So much has changed, for the negative, in the seven years I've been in Phoenix. Many businesses are outsourcing, or outright moving to NV, TX, or AZ. Philips moved their A/R and other operations out here. The employees were told they could come to AZ or quit their jobs. Apple moved a lot of stuff to TX in the 90's. Intel in out here big time.

I hope there is a correction, there must be one coming. A couple of hundred new millionaires at Google cannot sustain the millions and millions of average workers trying to squeeze out a middle class lifestyle.

Silicon Valley was always a little more expensive than other places, but not excessively beyond median incomes in average areas like southwest San Jose.

I still long to go back to the good old days of the 80s, but I guess your really can never go back home. I went back for a couple of days in July after a four year absence. So much has changed while much has remained the same. San Jose fit like an old glove after a few hours of driving around to see my old haunts. Oakridge Mall is TOTALLY different and modern...almost alien looking from the original. It's as if someone dropped it in from outer space. That K-mart at the Intersection of Blossom Hill and Santa Teresa Blvd. is now a Kohls...etc.

IBM is now Hitachi/IBM, etc.

I don't know what else to say about a 1,400 sq. ft. stucco house selling for $750k other than I want to cry.

At least I'm the first poster...

Happy New Year!

happy new year.

Great and honest posts today.

Here's an interesting article by a black talk show host who's a mechanic
in South Central Los Angeles. His name is Terry Anderson.

His talk show comes on after mine, here in Phoenix on KFNX Sunday nights. You can listen live via the web.

How about 4-7 families moving in to share a house next door to yours?

How about your next door neighboors harvesting corn in their front yard...third-world style?

This is not America.

http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_12_19/cover.html

Actually, the article is not BY Terry Anderson, although it mentions him.

I stand corrected.

Anyway, interesting article.

And yet another interesting article on the French Riots in the same
magazine.

Click here: http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_12_19/cover.html

The article is entitled FRENCH LESSONS.

Same link but home page.

_reads thread_

_shrugs_

_goes back to http://www.fjcruiserforums.com_

Cheers,
prat

Hap Hap Happy New Year All!

Southsiders (Suze Orman included) didn't want this year to end! It is now 2006, and with it, ominus realities. While I hope it's not another 88 years until we have something, anything (1959 AL Champs) to celebrate I do believe that 2006 will go down as the year of the "reckoning"! One of the articles Patrick posted blandly observed that "there is nothing left to do but to sit back and watch". MAN! This is GUHRAND! I'm savoring this more than waiting 46 years to wear a White Sox ball cap without getting grief! Yes; all good things in time and yes, all "crash" fans will be WELL rewarded! Mind you BULLS, this is not the same as the guy on the street corner waving a "THE END IS NEAR" sign. You no doubt will be eager to point out that yes, eventually, even this bum will be right. You won't have to "haunt" Vegas to see subdivisions unfinished. Ya see BULLS, being a builder is risky even in the best of times. The meter is ALWAYS running. Bridge Loans don't have sick days. When "in-fill" and smaller builders can't move inventory their first concern will not be "Mister You can't go wrong with RE"! It will boil down(rather quickly) to saving their own hyde. There will be NO friends during the crash. Realtors (TM) will turn on buyers, sellers, their employers and yes, their own young! Mortgage brokers will turn on their lenders. Borrowers will turn on brokers and "appraisers" and this whole thing will look JUST LIKE Elliot Spitzer and his "Witch Hunt". Everybody looking for someone to blame! Unlike the "Tech. Wreck" which seemed to unravel before you could say SELL!, The RECKONING will be televised! In glaring, harsh, unflattering and protracted light. Enjoy.

Umm... can we talk a little bit about real estate bustage and stuff, or is that too boring? Like, the factors that could make the bust worse in the Bay Area than anywhere else? :-)

newsfreak says (in part and poetically, though wrongly blaming Bush) that:

"Until America becomes
post post-modern
and uses solar, wind,
invents new better,
and boots out
the fanactical fundamentalist
old world order
20th century Bushites,
we will continue to attract
many who come to consume..."

Actually, the forces of the old world order
are the forces of sanity...not the forces of
whole wheat toast, Grapenuts and nude beaches.

As for the term post-modern, it's merely a euphemism for nihilism.

The trend in towards cultural desolation and tribalism as witnessed by
today's youth sporting nipple, nose, and tongue rings, odd winged-tatoos
prominently displayed on the edge of girls' butt cracks, ass haning out of their holey jeans, chicks pulling down the front of their pants as far as they can get away without revealing their packages, as seen on the cover of every other magazine at the grocery checkout stand, are all post-modern (nihilistic) trends...

This is the reductio ad absurdem of the 60s-era/Baby Boomer/
Ben and Gerry's Ice Cream/Greatful Dead/hippy-ass/"it takes a global village"/Bonged-out Boomer crowd, of which the Clintons are the patron saints.

Just more flotsam, jetsam and liberal death wish gibberish...

Suicidal if you ask me...

I see the same behavior among chinese, turkish & Korean immigrant tech workers/managers. US-born or raised folks of all ethnicities are a world apart, and working with/for them is highly enjoyable. This is really quite a conspicuous issue for me on a daily basis.

It is a culture/class issue. More like Great Mall vs Stanford Shopping Center.

When it come to real estate, these Indians want to buy all homes in Cupertino and Palo Alto, and drive the home prices even higher.

I do not like to see that happen, but it is free market at work.

American workers and small business owners are already under pressure from American Big Business. Why should we also be subject to competition from these foreign intrests.

The tide of globalization is unstoppable. Either cheap labor comes here or employers will have to hire cheap labor elsewhere. Which would you prefer?

Blame airplanes, the internet, and the global financial system.

Umm… can we talk a little bit about real estate bustage and stuff, or is that too boring? Like, the factors that could make the bust worse in the Bay Area than anywhere else?

We should try... but it is like predicting the sunset at 4pm. Since it is so certain, it is no longer interesting. :)

Ok, I give up.

Peter P writes:
The tide of globalization is unstoppable. Either cheap labor comes here or employers will have to hire cheap labor elsewhere. Which would you prefer?

Blame airplanes, the internet, and the global financial system.

Global openness and free trade seem to be cyclical. In the U.S. several laws limiting immigration were enacted in the late 10s and early 20s, and the prohibition laws seem to have had a certain anti-immigrant angle (targeted towards not-so-puritan catholic immigrants from Germany, Italy and Ireland perceived to endanger the prevalent culture).
Judging from the comments here, we may be heading for a turn of the tide?!

Global openness and free trade seem to be cyclical.

Individuals are mostly irrelevant. So long as money flows freely, globalization will be going strong.

Judging from the comments here, we may be heading for a turn of the tide?!

Perhaps. However, unless global enterprises are deterred by cetain geo-political events, or a global depression, the tide will go on.

New thread: Bay Area housing crash continues

Hey Peter, I put up a new thread too. Should one of us take ours down temporarily so there aren’t too many new threads?

Don't worry. No one worries about having too many threads on Ben Jones' blog. ;)

Multi-threading might lead to too much confusion and thread under-utilization

It may make it slightly more difficult to inflation thread bubbles though.

Oops. There is no thread bubble!

this blog may have jumped the shark in the last couple weeks.

Nah. It's just taking a nap. It feels much better.

It thinks it will go for a walk!

Cheers,
prat

Sunnyvale_renter,
Your opinion is important and should be heard. Keep it up and dont be discouraged. RE is directly effected by the things you mention.
Some people cant handle the truth but need to learn that it cant be avoided.

Sunnyvale_Renter Says:

"The truth is NOT pretty...And yes it affects RE when your job is gone, when the 15 illegals in the house next door have decided they want your house too and move right in, the police being too busy trying to quell food riots, when the Chinese Army is landing on the West Coast with almost no resistance because of their sleeper agents in the national laboratories, defense installations, defense corporations, and your corner store, and in fact evene occupy the position of police chief in your town (SF)."

Ten years ago, I would have thought you were a kook.

Not anymore.

Maybe a little far fetched on the police chief angle,
but there ARE many, many Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA)
front companies in the U.S. gathering technological info. and spying.

Many new immigrants aren't assimilating but want to continue their country within this country. And why not? They don't have to obey our laws, so why not just do whatever? Isn't that the 60s friggen' hippy ass ethic anyway?

California is capitulating and history is repeating itself in the Balkanization of a once great state.

Ancient Rome was never defeated from without, they just degenerated to the point that barbarians simply walked in.

You think the average liberal clown in San Francisco will even lift a finger to defend this country? No way! To busy living a hedonistic life of pleasure. Even my liberal cousin, who writes for a major lib newspaper,
thinks places like Santa Cruz are too liberaled out.

When the windfall tax profit from all of this housing bubble nonsense stops feeding California's coffers for its huge beauracracy, I wouldn't be surprised if many of the barbarians that have come to expect free government handouts take to the streets to take by force what they think is theirs by virtue of entitlement, when the free ride ends. I mean, what have they got to lose?

Even the Catholic Church and monasteries screen out those they deem undesirable and set standards for quality applicants. Why shouldn't we have some basic qualifications for citizenship...like obeying our laws?

You either see it or you don't. The liberal mind seems to be incapable of seeing reality for what it is. History mearely repeats itself...

This year's Darwin Award goes to the California liberals, purveyors of the great liberal death wish...

I was just thinking about the theory of white people being originally from Africa, as all mankind, and moving north to northern europe. I wonder if they were in search of a peaceful place away from people of color.
As a white person living in the bay area, I sometimes wish I could go someplace like Idaho and just be around other white people. The choice would be to endure the cold weather but be around people that were like me. I wonder if this was a simular choice made by the 1st northern europeans. I raise this point at the risk of censorship on this blog.
I should point out that the migration of white people out of California will have an effect on property values just as the outsourcing of jobs will.
And before I'm tagged as a racist, take a look in the mirror. There's nothing about what I'm writing that's the least bit racist.

That is SCARY to me. Personally for me, things look much better back in INDIA. Outsourcing has created a HUGE opportunity in India and the local economy is growing gangbusters.

The US is creating a future strategic competitor.

Like it or not, globalization is here to stay. The major challenge infront of the Americans is “to move on and innovate”. Friedman says “it doesnt seem to be happening” and I couldnt agree more.

Very true. Unless we are to fight a third world war, international trading interests will ensure the progress of globalization. This interest group is huge and powerful as a collective.

In the long run, if everyone in the WORLD becomes more PRODUCTIVE and contributes, the US will enjoy a MUCH better lifestyle since goods and services will be CHEAPER. (If not for China and Taiwan, you wouldnt get no $200 PCs).

I agree. This is all part of globalization.

Sunnyvale_Renter Says:

"Ten years ago the stuff I’ve talked about here was kooky indeed. Now it’s becoming normality. In fact, it’s a very forseeable future."

Exactly. The problem is, if we get a looney left-wing Pres. like Hillary
Clinton, the right-wing backlash will be worse than in the Bill Clinton years.

The liberal excesses of the Weimar liberals will bring about a fascist
right wing response that plays on people's fears.

The problem is that since we see reality for what it is WHEN it is,
we're the oddballs.

I guarantee you, if a quasi-fascist movement starts in this country,
once again, you and I will be considered kooks for not jumping on
the bandwagon and for alerting people to the danger.

That's the curse of dudes like you and me. We're never in fashion.

See, when I grew up in San Jose, actually from '68 then leaving in '98 for Phoenix, people basically got along. We had black guys, Mexicans, Asians, etc. but everyone pretty much got along because we all grew up in Cali.

The new immigrants don't care. In a way, they are like Americans in that they import their lifestyle. Unfortunately, our lifestyle isn't moving 20 people into one house and growning corn in your front yard with the goats.

"Unfortunately, our lifestyle isn’t moving 20 people into one house and growning corn in your front yard with the goats."

Or, should I say, fortunately!

When I got here in 70 we rode dirt bikes in the east foothills. There was a good mix of whites, blacks, chicanos and of course all of the asian groups. There seemed to be a certain harmony but occasionally there was a little violence. Many of the parents worked at the Ford plant in Milpitas or the other one in Fremont. Locheed was a big employer too. The Sillicon Valley was just being born. You could work at the Ford Plant and buy a house for $30k. The bay area was a great place to be with lot's of blue collar home owners. A new Cadilac cost $10k. Good jobs paid $8 bucks an hour. Those seem like the good old days.