Pages

Thursday, February 19, 2009

This Is Awesome

This sums up the mood of a good chunk of America. Rick Santelli of CNBC goes on a nice rant on the Chicago trading floor... awesome.

16 comments:

  1. (Found via Yeshiva World, forgot to insert.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. rick santelli is awesome. Im surprised you got this via YWN when it was drudges lead headline for hours...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Truthfully not a big Drudge guy, but most importantly because it was on my Google Reader and I just got back inside after being out for a few hours. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I don't think anyone on the floor of an exchange is a good representative chunk of the US.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That was invigorating! Anyone care to translate Chicagoanese? It's challenging for me to understand accents from outside New York. Will pass on to RD.

    ReplyDelete
  6. It's ridiculous. We've known for over a year that loan modifications are absolutely necessary. Otherwise, everyone suffers. Homes will be repossessed, house values will plummet even more and vacant homes lead to crime. The result will be that people who pay their mortgages will live in crime-ridden neighborhoods and won't be able to sell their homes without taking a huge loss. While people who can't pay their mortgages will relocate to apartments in different neighborhoods.

    The real question is how anyone can force bondholders to give up their rights to prevent load modifications. I'm not sure how that problem was solved.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The Santelli rant made my day. The fact that the guys on the floor were cheering him on made it even better. During the Great Depression FDR badgered Wall Street until investment froze. We can't let that happen again.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Gil - Vehemently disagree, both in the present and certainly for the future. Now if only I had the time to explain why...!! (Maybe later! :) )

    ReplyDelete
  9. I saw this live before work this morning and actually applauded! He spoke for many of us.

    ReplyDelete
  10. "...whether we want to subsidize the LOSERS' mortgages..."

    Yep, conservative compassion at its best.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Gil - Not going to have the time, but perhaps the relevant stat in this piece sums it up well: 70% of foreclosures are not the owner's primary residence. (Also just read elsewhere that over 50% of modified loans re-default within 6 months, 36% within 3 months, so modifying loans as a solution seems to be a horrible idea even if it did NOT have other negative impacts.)

    ReplyDelete
  12. >Yep, conservative compassion at its best.

    Thats irrelevant.

    Was he right or wrong?

    ReplyDelete
  13. Ezzie: Read that stat again in the article. There's more to it than that. The issue is whether we will have a large number of empty homes for sale in our neighborhoods. I think the answer is yes.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I agree there's more to it than that, but a) I don't think the current impact is as bad as you think; and b) I don't think that loan modification is the way to solve the issue, both in the present and certainly for the future.

    ReplyDelete