I was in this wintry wonderland yesterday morning in Joshua Tree National Park.

Wow, SNOW!!! (hey, I'm in Israel. Give me an-exclamation-break).

For those of us who are or who are married to people who are on disability, I say a mild "hey."

This reminds me.

Am I a horrible, horrible person, for staring at the hooks on the replacement-arms of the guy who's got no hands in uni (I don't study with him, but I see him from time to time), and go "wow!"? Because deep down, I think it's very cool, but I hate the idea of staring at his replacement-arms with shiny hooks and wondering how they work and maybe embarrass him by doing that.

Also, today in uni: my Greek history prof. brings the "what if Persia would have won over Greece?" question. My first thought: "there would be no Hanukkah! Bastards!".

And last week in uni: my Europe-in-the-early-modern-area prof. told us about the times when he studied theology in Norway and he and his classmates took a train to Sweden to see Life of Brian when the movie came out. My friends though I was nuts when I said I would have paid to hear their remarks while watching.

SF cold weather definitely feels "colder" than other places I've been. I think it's the dampness - the cold gets in deeper somehow.

That and many of the houses / apartment buildings aren't really insulated or heated efficiently at all. Our place had electric heater units in the front room and in the back bedroom (of a 4 bedroom railroad flat) and no storm windows. That first winter I was there we all piled into the one heated bedroom to sleep.

That and many of the houses / apartment buildings aren't really insulated or heated efficiently at all. Our place had electric heater units in the front room and in the back bedroom (of a 4 bedroom railroad flat) and no storm windows. That first winter I was there we all piled into the one heated bedroom to sleep.

The first year I lived in SF, I was amazed at how expensive it was to heat our apartment. (We ended up just not using the heat.) It reminded me of the bills we had heating a house in Madison when we had that winter with all that below zero weather. Except it was 40s-50s in San Francisco. That place had no insulation, single-pane windows that let tons of air leak past....

Yeah, we have one heater for the apartment and that's in the living room. It does nothing for the rest of the house.

Some gloom-n-doom from 60 Minutes: A Second Mortgage Disaster On The Horizon?

Interesting and depressing article. My main question is, why did so many people assume that housing prices would just keep going up?

The NYC snow has calmed down a bit, but when it started those were the biggest "flakes" I have ever seen. It looked like cotton balls falling from the sky! Now it just looks like snow.

Giant snowflakes.

My main question is, why did so many people assume that housing prices would just keep going up?

Because since WWII, while housing prices might have gone down in certain regions of the country, housing prices nationwide never have gone down.

My main question is, why did so many people assume that housing prices would just keep going up?

Irrational exuberence.

It all reminds me of the dotcom bust and all the articles postulating that it was a new and unprecented economy which would never come down.

I mean they've been talking about a "real estate bubble" for about five years. From what I've learned just from this latest crash, it was not hard to see or anticipate how this would all go down. You keep lowering interest rates and overextend credit and this is what happens.

I think our biggest problem to face with Econ 101 is going to be the national debt. They just can't go on as they've gone on, and if China pulled in all its vouchers then there'd really be a problem.

Frankly, the mortgage crisis is as nothing compared to what could happen in that eventuality.

Of course, the Chinese would not benefit from that scenario so it's less likely. And yet, it's not hard to imagine circumstances where they might think it beneficial to drop an economic bomb. I can kind of see it as an economic nuclear threat, built around the gamble that China could recover more quickly and dominate the market the way the U.S. has. Five to ten years of economic mayhem and they come out on top. That sort of thing.

Because since WWII, while housing prices might have gone down in certain regions of the country, housing prices nationwide never have gone down.

Yeah, I get that, but housing prices since 2000-ish suddenly were rising far faster than before (when they pretty much followed inflation, right?) Shouldn't a lot of people at least considered the possibility that housing was in the midst of a bubble?

I've been curious about the various ratings agencies that gave AAA ratings to CDOs of subprime mortgages. It turns out that one of these ratings agencies had modeling software for CDOs that couldn't even accept a negative number for the appreciation of property values. IOW, their models were physically incapable of evaluating falling housing prices.

It all reminds me of the dotcom bust and all the articles postulating that it was a new and unprecented economy which would never come down.

I think it's this. The "this time it's different" syndrome.

Of course, the Chinese would not benefit from that scenario so it's less likely.

I think I'll start whimpering anyway.

Irrational exuberence.

Yeah. I'm just surprised that maybe 99% in the real estate/mortgage/financial businesses succumbed to it.

It all reminds me of the dotcom bust and all the articles postulating that it was a new and unprecented economy which would never come down.

Yeah, I remember all that. It seems as if the media was just in the business of telling people what they wanted to hear. (Dow 36,000?)