Friday Lite

The bad news for housing just seems to be getting worse by the day with nary a sign of leveling off or anything resembling a "soft landing". The phrase "soft landing" was very popular up until just a month or so ago as high inventory met high interest rates during what is normally a high volume time of the year.

Two neighbors near here with the same model home on the same street have been in a fierce price competition over the last couple months - $859,000, $840,000, $829,000, $820,000, $810,000.

Holding open houses nearly every weekend, their efforts have elicited no response from buyers, but a neighbor with the same house midway between the two for sale has been moved to action - he posted a For Sale sign out in front of his place too.

From Booming Sales to Booming Foreclosures

One of the homes mentioned above is in foreclosure, possibly two, though it can't be known for certain without ponying up $10 a week to see the gruesome details as listed at foreclosure.com - a persistent, mildly morbid curiosity does not yet demand such an expenditure. According to this report, elsewhere in the state, the foreclosure business booming.

Under some circumstances, a year-to-year increase of 104 percent in foreclosures might be alarming.

But in California, when comparing the second quarter of 2006 to the same period in 2005, it does not mean too much.

That's the word from RealtyTrac, which Wednesday released its 2006 Q2 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report.

A total of 27,606 California homes went into some stage of the foreclosure process between April and June, a 6.54 percent decrease from the first three months of 2006 but a 104.43 percent jump from the comparable period in 2005.

"There's no reason to be alarmed yet," said Rick Sharga, vice president of marketing for RealtyTrac. "We are coming off unusually low numbers, and housing demand has continued to be especially strong. People have generally been able to sell when they get in trouble."

Housing demand is especially strong? Puhlease.

The chart above is not from the accompanying story. The reason that it is included alongside the comments of the unconcerned Mr. Sharga is that it seems at odds with his lack of concern. Extrapolating the number of foreclosure notices in the first two quarters of this year results in an annual rate of well over 100,000 - those are mid-1990s numbers, and many will recall what was happening in California real estate at that time (it wasn't pretty).

No More Monopoly Money

An interesting aspect of the traditional game of Monopoly is that you can see how your opponents are faring just by looking at the cash they have on hand. After reading this report, it is as if there is an ongoing attempt to shape public opinion in such away that money becomes less and less a physical thing.

Monopoly board game players can now pay for properties with debit cards. Game makers Parker have phased out the standard multi-coloured cash in a new version.

Players will instead use a Visa mock debit card to keep track of how much they win or lose.It is inserted into an electronic machine where the banker taps in cardholders' earnings and payments.

Of course the role of the banker also changes with the switch to electronic money, becoming more efficient and more mysterious at the same time.

Obsessed with the Plunge Protection Team

John Crudele at the New York Post, who actually writes some of the more thought provoking commentary on the workings of financial markets, is again wondering about the Plunge Protection Team. In this story, prompted by Rep. Ron Paul's questioning of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke last week, he suggested a few follow-up questions when Dr. Bernanke informed Dr. Paul that the PPT keeps records of their meetings, but that he didn't know where they would be.

Well, Mr. Bernanke, how about you find out! Someone in your position should know if, as former White House adviser Stephanopoulos has claimed, the Working Group on Financial Markets - the Plunge Protection Team - has the authority to interfere with the free market for stocks.

And we'd also like to know who makes decision for the group, politicians or guys on Wall Street. Don't misunderstand, Mr. Bernanke. I'm not saying what the group is doing is wrong. But why should firms like Goldman Sachs - from which two of the last four Treasury secretaries have come - be in a better position than anyone else who gambles in the stock market?

Gambling? Few at Goldman Sachs would likely characterize what they do as gambling - especially now that Hank Paulson is in charge at the Treasury Department.

Search Engine Success!

Like investing in gold mining stocks, sometimes all you have to do to be successful in life is not pay attention for a while. Like a junior exploration company that at first excites, but then disappoints month after month, the oft-stated quest to dominate the big search engines for the phrase "Friday Lite" has yielded only disappointment for the better part of the year.

That all changed a week or so ago.

Today, with great pride, total dominance is reported, the top spots having been nailed down at Google, Yahoo!, and the troublesome MSN, where, some time ago it was feared that The View From Her and Strategic Public Relations would forever thwart efforts made here.

[As suggested by reader Aaron Krowne, links to these erstwhile nemeses are no longer posted so as not to provide them with an asymetrical advantage.]

Get this Man a Fact Checker

The more you read Robert Kiyosaki, the more you wonder how he became so successful and the less you question the motives of John T. Reed. In his latest missive at Yahoo! Finance he proves once again that his heart is in the right place but a fact checker is nowhere to be found.

Gold recently dropped more than $100, or 14 percent, after hitting a 26-year high of $730 in mid-May. With that drop in price, I became a buyer of gold once again.

No, it went down more than $150, about 22 percent.

Back then (1971), gold was pegged at $35 an ounce, and ran to a high of $850 an ounce by January 1980. In the same period, silver hit approximately $40 an ounce.

No, silver hit approximately $50 an ounce.

At the time (1996), gold was around $275 an ounce and silver was around $5 an ounce.

No, gold never went below $360 that year, averaging about $390.

C'mon, it takes about a minute over at Wikipedia and Kitco - it makes readers wonder how much fact checking went into the part about the Chinese gold company and the South American silver company you founded ten years ago.

You can just feel the "dumb money" starting to pay attention to gold because of Robert - in another couple years they'll probably be buying the stuff.

The Gold Cartel?

First the Plunge Protection Team is in the news, and then the gold cartel?. In this story from CBS MarketWatch, Peter Grandich has an explanation for gold's recent rise.

Gold futures extended their prior-session gains on Thursday, strengthened by the falling dollar and dimmed hopes of near-term peace between Israel and Lebanon. Gold for August delivery was last trading up $11.90 at $633.80 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

"A failed shorting campaign by the gold cartel, the slow but continuing death march of the U.S. dollar lower, and numerous bullish geopolitical factors worldwide have all combined to give gold a major boost," said Peter Grandich, editor of The Grandich Letter.

Maybe the U.S. government will take a cue from Parker, the makers of Monopoly, and avert the inevitable death march of the dollar by going all-electronic - either that or they could start replacing U.S. currency with left over Monopoly money.

Potato Bugs are Cool

If you thought last week's story about the guy who designed and built his own wristwatch was a bit odd, just imagine what goes through the mind of the proprietor of this website about potato bugs.

In the FAQ, it is learned that should you spot potato bugs in your garden you should "Drench your entire yard with gasoline and set it ablaze. Once the fire has burned itself out and the ground has cooled, cultivate the soil to a depth of seven feet ..."

Potato bugs!

Forty Seven Percent Sounds Too Low

And finally, from The Onion comes this story about space age paparazzi.

Just days after the launch of SURI-II, whose state-of-the-art instruments are expected to provide the first-ever infrared images of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' infant daughter, a report published by NASA revealed that nearly half of all communications and reconnaissance satellites currently in orbit are engaged in collecting and transmitting data relating to the child-rearing practices of Hollywood stars.
...
"Many Americans today take for granted the ease with which they are able to access the latest celebrity childbirth figures," Fuller said. "It was not too long ago that one had to wait until a celebrity mom attended a film premiere or passed by an open window to know exactly how she was handling her post-partum weight. Now, thanks to the miracle of science, we can identify the exact cravings Gwen Stefani experienced during her pregnancy."

Maybe that explains the increasingly strange behavior of celebrities like Tom Cruise and Britney Spears - they think satellites are spying on them.