01.30.08
Sub-Prime
I don’t usually watch 60 Minutes, but as I was flipping through Sunday night, I saw an interesting story about all of the homes that are in foreclosure in Stockton, CA. Steve Kroft interviewed a couple who had purchased a small home in that part of the world a few years ago who now need a swift kick in the butt. The conversation went as follows:
But Matt and Stephanie Valdez say they knew exactly what they were doing when they bought a small two-bedroom for $355,000. They could afford the initial payments and planned to refinance the mortgage before the interest rate jumped to 11 percent. But they couldn’t do it because the value of the house had fallen below what they owed on the mortgage. They say they can afford the higher payments, but see no point in making them.
“The house keeps going down, payments keep going up. Where’s the logic in that? And how can we fix it? I mean, that’s what this whole thing’s about for us is how can we fix this? And if we can’t fix it, then what do we do?” Matt Valdez asks.
“Why pay a $3,200 payment on a 1200-square-foot home? It makes no sense,” Stephanie Valdez adds.
“That’s what you agreed to do when you bought the house,” Kroft points out.
“Fine. If the value is going up. But we’re not going anywhere. The price or the value is going down. It makes no sense because we will never be able to refinance and get a lower payment. There’s no way,” Stephanie Valdez replies.
“You’re saying, essentially, that you’re going to stop making payments on it? You’re just gonna let it go into foreclosure?” Kroft asks.
“You know, that’s the only advice we’ve gotten so far is walk away from the home. We don’t want to do that to our credit. Why can’t our mortgage company work with us?” she says.
I always thought that the reason that you should pay on your house was so that you will have some place to live; these two seem to be really shortsighted. I guess if you can’t be part of the solution you should at least exacerbate the situation.
01.22.08
Misc. Links
An interesting article about men who get pec implants. Here are before and after pics (notice the dramatic lighting in the after condition). This guy paid $12,000 for that itty bitty chest; he could have paid, at most, half that for a 12-month gym membership and seen better results.
Judicial Watch has uncovered some memos detailing Hillary’s plans to rule the world — or at least it’s health care.
The governor of Kentucky is begging for ideas to save the state money. I don’t know what this guy gets paid to do.
Goth couple gets kicked off a bus; her parents must be so proud. Seriously though, look at their faces, they could be brother and sister.
01.07.08
Straight Men Are The Best Drivers
A study at the Queen Mary, University of London have concluded that straight men are better drivers than both women and gay men. I’ll being thinking of that the next time some some apparently lost man nearly runs me off of the road (it’s disturbing, but in a town of about 20,000 people that happens to me or my wife about once a week — it really upsets her).
01.05.08
Classic TV Intros and Saggy Pants
310 classic TV intros. He’s also taking suggestions for any other shows that should be added to the list; there aren’t many though.
01.01.08
Investments
I checked on the performance of all of my investment accounts this afternoon. For a year with a whole bunch of volatility I didn’t do too badly.
My taxable investment account registered a gain of about 9.57%; which beat 2 of 3 major averages (DJIA: 6.43%, S&P: 3.53%, NASDAQ: 9.81%). I owe most of that to owning Apple at a couple of different times, and two or three well-timed short positions of other equities. My wife’s Roth IRA gained around 8% and mine lost about 2%. I took a more hands-off approach with these, and I bought some stuff in my IRA near a high point towards the middle of the year and never really recovered from that. I also checked my 401K and despite some reshuffling in May, I could only make 3.9%; there’s only so much I can do with that though.
I been getting better at paper-trading commodities of late. Since opening it in the middle of October, I’ve gained a little better than 11%, and that’s after being off about 40% at one point.
