I am headed to Europe this week and will be reading and writing my quarterly wrap up for next week’s Solari Report. If there are any issues you would like me to address, please feel free to post them here.

6 Comments

  1. Here is a question I have been asking everyone here in our county since we got our reassessed values on homes and land. When the reassessment which was done at the height of the Real Estate Bubble -2007-2008- comes in at 34% average increase for most home owners and in some cases 100% increase how do the people make a case for having that reassessment redone in light of the precipitous drop recently.
    I asked the mayor of our town and she admitted she couldn’t get the price they have now assessed her property at but that “they won’t redo” the assessment. Who’s they and why can’t we the people who are the government demand that something be done? This seems again to be a case of the tail wagging the dog.
    The sense that we cannot do anything is profound in so many people.

  3. A friend of mine in Florida, she paid $149K for her brand new 4 bedroom house. She put $30K down.
    Assessors came by 2 years ago, and re-assessed the house, payment went up from $899 to $1199. The houses in her sub-division, were selling for $119K, now they are selling for $84K! Who is doing anything about this deflation????? When these banks gave loans to people….they did not have any money to back up the loan, right? Maybe 10% of the loan they were giving the people right?
    So,stupidly, my friend puts down 30K, and its totally lost, but the bank looses nothing in actuality.
    In fact they gained 30K, plus the $1200 in payments a month for 3 years…So, how does the bank settle that with a person? And I told my friend, ask them where the title is! Did Europe buy any of their homes like this over there? Or were they just buying our mortgages bundled up via e.g AIG?
    And whey they bought those investments, did the pay the price of the home loan or just what the bank had invested in the loan which in some cases was zilch? If the bank forecloses on my friend, then the bank acturally wins…cuz they got her $30K and a damn good house, work about $190K.
    So, with my logic I don’t feel like that banks need any bailing out…they just need to sell those houses now even at a deflated cost, and they will still make alot of money…It’s my friend who put $30k down that lost the $30K, she should be bailed out I think! If she does by chance a short sale does she have to make up the difference to bank? She would have to go into debt for that, how is this all coming down for all these people in the USA, no one talks about that on the news.? Let us know how EU and Russia is doing when you get back…I’d like to know if inflation or deflation is taking place. I heard too that Ford has already built energy efficient cars for them that gets 70 miles to the gallon/liter! And EU is demanding electric cars. Why is it they are doing that for EU but not for us? I would think that there would be an independent car maker somewhere who would start up a darn good business over here and get those cars on our roads. If you meet one over there, encourage him to come over to the USA and build them here!
    WE have elected you Catherine to be our financial ambassador! LOL! Have a good trip and be safe, I’ll be praying for you. Your calm voice and attitude is keeping us going…Thank-you for all that you are doing.

  4. I think addressing the latest slide in the dollar and the commitment of the FED to buy up treasuries and agency debt would be interesting reading.

  6. Regarding China/Russia suggesting basket of currencies replace the Dollar and your place based focus:

    Are local currencies, place based, relatively unaffected by U.S. dollar if we earn the local currency instead of trade from the dollar to the alternative currency?

    Who’s a best success story for local currency?

    Mortgages: I hear that mortgage rates may stay down for a long time. If that is likely, why? Will the LIBOR act very differently?

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