Displaying items by tag: Asset Securitization Crisis

Many people ask me for investing advice, something that I am quite reticent to give over casual conversation. There is one aspect that I do offer freely though, and that is the push for the return of common sense. When people ask me what sectors to invest in, and whether banks are a potentially good buy or not, I remind them that buying stocks for the longer term is no different than buying a chunk of any business. The question is, "Is this a good business prospect?".

Just imagine if I came up to you and pitched my business for an investment along the lines of the following...

"Listen, Dude! I have this big banking business that does several billion dollar per year. It is very sensitive to the business cycle and as you know, Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke - two of the smartest and most honest people this universe has ever experienced - says that the worst is behind us and the economy is growing. Hey, even the NAR says that we should buy a  house now, and they have those high falutin' fancy economists to crunch numbers for them. So, with that being said, all you have to do is look past the fact that I had to get bailed out by the government several times to the tune of many billions of dollars. My lawyers may also want me to disclose that some smart ass investor/blogger types say that we are coming off a high in the business cycle, but we have Optimism Driven Reduction of Risk Reserve due to our very rosy outlook. Due not be deterred by the fact that the collateral behind our loans has depreciated by as much as 42% and is still on the downfall. I know that blogger/investor guy that is starting to get a few seconds of airplay says we are in a Real Estate Depression That Is About To Get Much Worse, but truth be told, it's really a matter of semantics. A depression is generally a 20% drop in values surround by severely depressed economic activity. We are experiencing 40%+... See! The numbers don't match. It ain't a depression! What that blogger dude fails to realize is that my whole industry is under the protection of the US gubment - that's right, we are directly indemnified by .GOV. In case you didn't get the memo, FASB Appears to Have Bent Over For The Final Time & Accuracy In Financial Reporting Dies An Ignominious Death!!!

We have put out record profits, as the government supports our paying out that vast majority of what should be retained earnings as salary, bonus and other unearned compensation. As a matter of fact, the government has actually funded this exercise with tax payer dollars! I'm telling you man, this is the best gimmick since that PT Barnum guy and his snake oil. There's an ass for every seat." [continue reading up on this topic, for it is highly illuminating. Of course, it doesn’t end there. After all, Buried Deep Within The Files That The Federal Reserve Released On Their MBS Purchase Program, We Found TARP 2.0!!! More Taxpayer Money To The Banks]

Does this sound like a sound investment to you?

I made an appearance on CNBC's Fast Money show yesterday. It was a very short clip on real estate, and the fast moving short clips are not conducive to the communication of the thick, fact heavy style of analysis that is common to BoomBustBlog, and yours truly. Nevertheless I am quite thankful for the opportunity to share my contrarian views in the mainstream media.

Now that I have (quite honestly) issued my most sincerest thanks, let's attempt to remedy the shortcoming of the limited amounted of time that I had. You see, after the 3 minute hit ended there was a brief discussion of commercial real estate in which I didn't get to participate, thus I will take the liberty of doing so through this medium.

Yes, commercial real estate has shown some marginal increases in the last quarter, and REITs have been on fire. The issue is, many publicly traded equities have detached from their underlying fundamentals. Let's reference “A Granular Look Into a $6 Billion REIT: Is This the Next GGP?” The following are excerpts from it:

Yesterday I notified, In Case You Didn’t Get The Memo, The US Is In a Real Estate Depression That Is About To Get Much Worse. Today I will show specifically how things will get much worse. The numbers came out for new home sales today, and they were atrocious - and that's after a downward adjustment for the previous month's numbers. Follow the chart with the pretty colors below, keeping in mind that many economists believe that new housing construction is a pre-cursor to economic recovery.

Yes, we are in a balance sheet based, real asset depression. If you take a look at it from an empirical perspective there should be no surprise in this statement, but since most derive their information from the mainstream media media and the sell side of Wall Street (both of whom have a preternatural proclivity for the positive spin) this may come as a bit of a shock to a few. Let's ponder the term "depression" as outlined in Wikipedia with some Reggie edits:

In economics, a depression is a sustained, long-term downturn in economic activity in one or more economies. It is a more severe downturnrecession, which is seen by economists as part of the modern business cycle. than a

Well, we have had a severe downturn in real estate in much of the EU, the middle east, the UK, Japan, and definitely the US. See "The Inevitable Has Finally Been Admitted In Europe: The Macro Experiment Has Ignited Inflation Without Commensurate Growth & Rates Will Spike" for a series of graphs that compare real estate markets in several of these countries.

The Wall Street Journal reports: US housing data may have understated extend of collapse.I can do naught but laugh. Are they serious? Don't they even bother to read BoomBustBlog? The WSJ story goes on to read...

The housing crash may have been more severe than initial estimates have shown.

The National Association of Realtors, which produces a widely watched monthly estimate of sales of previously owned homes, is examining the possibility that it over-counted U.S. home sales dating back as far as 2007.

... The group reported that there were 4.9 million sales of previously owned homes in 2010, down 5.7% from 5.2 million in 2009. But CoreLogic, a real-estate analytics firm based in Santa Ana, Calif., counted just 3.3 million homes sales last year, a drop of 10.8% from 3.7 million in 2009. CoreLogic says NAR could have overstated home sales by as much as 20%.

While revisions wouldn't affect reported home-price numbers, they could show that the housing market faces a bigger overhang in inventory, given the weaker demand.

In December, NAR said that it would take 8.1 months to sell some 3.6 million homes listed for sale at the current pace, but the number of months it would take could be even higher if sales are revised down. Any revisions wouldn't have an impact on homeowners, but it could have consequences for the real-estate industry. Downward revisions would show that "this horrific downturn in the housing market has been even more pronounced than what people thought, and people already thought it was pretty bad," said Thomas Lawler, an independent housing economist.

NAR said the data, which are used by economists, investors and the real-estate industry to gauge the health of the housing market, could be revised downward this summer. Lawrence Yun, chief economist at NAR, wasn't specific about whether and by how much the revisions could reduce reported sales, and he raised the possibility that the CoreLogic estimates have understated the number of home sales. "This is a very important issue, and we are looking at it carefully right now," Mr. Yun said.