February 2009
Gekko was Wrong…Greed is Bad
September 16, 2008 by REALonomics · Leave a Comment
EDITORIAL
A re-post from iVoteAmerica, dated Monday, September 15, 2008.
In the movie Wall Street, Gordon Gekko proclaimed to shareholders, “Greed is good!” Gordon was wrong. Wall Street was wrong. The real estate and mortgage industries were wrong.
Oh, by the way…Alan Greenspan was wrong too when he proclaimed that subprime lending was “innovative” and “beneficial to consumers.”
Sound economics and the art of lending are predicated upon the borrower’s capacity to service the debt, pay it down over time and deliver return to the lender.
The concept of borrowing without capacity is foreign to all western economies and you won’t find it on any campus in America in Economics 101. Neither you nor many of your friends was ever taught the principle “you can have something for nothing.”
No One Whined about the Flow of Money
From about 2000 through 2005 greed was good to Wall Street and to the real estate and to the mortgage industries. No one whined about the money back then.
The Anniversary of My Ignorance
September 12, 2008 by REALonomics · 1 Comment
Some things just stick in our minds. There are certain tiny memories that implant themselves in our memory banks and take up residency for reasons unknown to us at the time.
Such was the case for me in September, 2005.
That was the month and year that I first noticed the beginning of the waning of the real estate market. Not that I was too concerned, having sold my company in April of the same year. The market reports and online articles that typically flood my computer screen seemed different than those to which I had become accustomed. I noted the change and went on. “Oh well,” I remember thinking, “just a statistical blip…a temporary abnormality.”
Little did I know that this would be the anniversary of my ignorance.
In the Summer of ‘05
In ‘05, the market was ablaze, sales were happening, loans were funding and people were still entering our industry in unprecedented numbers. The gold rush was on!
Within and throughout the real estate industry there was attitude. We were strutting our stuff like peacocks in a 4th of July parade. Companies had shattered their all time sales records. Being a million dollar agent was akin to being in preschooler. We were producing $10 million, $20 million and even $50 million dollar agents, like water from an open spigot. Agents had become accustomed to $100k, $250k and $500k incomes after a couple of years in the business. Most of them spent every cent of it on guess what? Real estate.
But now, looking back, I’m asking myself, was there too much pride, too much self-confidence? Were we shackled by our lack of clear thinking and proper vision?
Were we engaging in ignorance? Were we flirting with a dangerous kind of collective ignorance?
REALonomics Launches National Political Blog Network
September 9, 2008 by REALonomics · Leave a Comment
The iVoteAmerica (iVA) voter, polling and blogging network has been on my chalkboard for several years, delayed only by the call and priority of other projects.
Because we wanted our faithful readers, authors and commentators to know first, REALonomics is pleased to announce that it has cooperated in spearheading the launch of the iVoteAmerica Network (iVA). iVA is a national polling and blogging network that includes political polling and blogging (Plogging) for all fifty States. The iVA network creates an online political blogging forum for each State allowing people to post to the left, the middle or the right of any issue.
As we have discovered in the last 12-24 months our industry is confronted with many challenge that have us wound up with politics and politicians. With the recent takeover of FANNIE MAE and FREDDY MAC by the Fed, we need to reconsider our ability to influence outcomes by creating voices. The iVA Network is one way we can do that.
The iVA Network incorporates polling as a means of measuring participant opinions on a variety of political and social issues. At its heart iVA is a political blog or, what we call a “PLOG.”
We simply are not vocal enough…we are informed, we vote, we care, but we are not vocal enough in the competitive political arenas. My vision for the iVoteAmerica Network is to simply deliver a political platform for people who vote. Who votes? People who own real estate vote, people who care about the influence politics has over us, our families, our industry and our lives. – Donald Teel, Founder