Friday Lite

This will brief as preparations are being made to catch a plane tomorrow for a trip back east for most of the next week. There's no telling when the next post will show up here - the laptop will be in tow, but being an inexperienced road warrior, there is a great tendency to admit defeat and give up at the slightest technical difficulty.

To the Keystone State

Easton and Allentown are the destinations and a visit with family and friends is the purpose. Flying is not missed much here - it used to be routine to travel four-five-six times a year on business, but no more. From the look of crowds, traffic, lines, and the dearth of empty airline seats to enable spreading out on recent flights, less flying seems better than more.
OK, the idea of spreading out just caused something to resurface after many years and the story must be told - hopefully this will brief.

Many years ago, while waiting to board a flight in Kansas City, two grossly overweight, but otherwise very pleasant looking young women were sitting two seats apart while waiting to board the same flight as your erstwhile frequent flyer.

It was natural to imagine the poor SOB who might be stuck between these two 300-pound ladies as there was barely enough room for a small child in the seat between the two in the waiting area. Realizing that a middle seat was all that could be had for this leg of my journey, the odds of holding the unlucky ticket were quickly calculated and the initial trepidation quickly ebbed.

A short time later while boarding, fear quickly returned when, walking down the aisle watching for elbows and checking seat numbers, the two large ladies were spotted in the general proximity of the seat indicated on the ticket in hand.

Hoping that depth perception was playing tricks on me, as row after row passed and the women drew closer, it was soon learned that the unlucky SOB was me.

They were very polite and apologetic and did their best to not violate the imaginary plane extending upward from the armrest, but it was a ridiculously futile effort that a passing flight attendant promptly noticed as one hand was meekly raised for attention.

There happened to be one empty seat on the plane - an exit row next to a man who couldn't bend his leg (seriously - this is all true) .

The relocation was promptly accomplished and soon the large ladies from Kansas City were breathing easily again, spread out over the middle seat as their girth demanded and a little less red in the face.

Real Estate in the Golden State

The reports coming from DataQuick for California real estate sales are getting worse by the month. There is likely to be a rebound of some sort coming sometime soon - it may not be very big or last very long, but something leveling off somewhere for just a month or so would be a good sign for panicky sellers and real estate agents alike.

Buyers seem to enjoy the current trends. Here are the latest reports:

• Bay Area home prices decline, sales slow
• Steep Increase in California Foreclosure Activity

The numbers are actually worse than the headlines, particularly if you live in Sonoma. The outlying areas with lower prices always seem to inflate last and deflate first:
According to this report from the Sacramento Bee, further inland things are worse.

The dips were especially pronounced in Placer County, where median prices of new and existing homes and condominiums were 14.3 percent lower than in September 2005. Median prices -- where half cost more and half less -- were down 12.2 percent in Yolo County and 7 percent lower in Sacramento County.

"Prices are dropping every day, and they're not little any more," said Mike Toste, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent in Antelope.

Yikes!

That's A Start

The Housing Market Index from the National Association of Homebuilders has rebounded. Not much but it finally stopped falling after eight months and reversed direction from 30 in September to 31 in October.
That almost looks like it was a joke - like someone compiling the statistics said, "You know it came out to 30.32 , but let's round it up to 31, just so it looks funny on a chart".

The Horse Has Long Since Left the Barn

They may as well leave the barn doors open in the hope that the horses will return on its own - it's not likely that closing the barn door will do much good now. At least that's what one could conclude after seeing this page at the Federal Reserve website.
Oh well. Better late than never?

Your Guesses

Here they are - the complete list of guesses for the year-end prices of oil and gold. The lucky winner gets a free one-year subscription to Iacono Research, but if you just can't wait until the New Year (something to consider, given recent moves in the precious metals), you can always request a free, no-obligation trial subscription by clicking here.
The prices for oil and gold indicated by the yellow circle are from Wednesday - it looks like they're already headed toward the area of highest guess-density.

ooo

Last week's cartoon from The Economist (delivery was delayed until Monday).


Is it me or does that look like Alan Greenspan with razor sharp teeth?