[palmer]

It was an easy call then and even easier in retrospect. But one thing I didn't factor in was the huge growth in the Federal Govt. That has kept prices pretty firm the closer to DC that you get. Further than 20 miles out it has been rough with 550-600k houses selling for 350 (bank sale). Go even farther, 60+ miles where I live, and the market is dead except for 150k or less. 100k houses are selling like gangbusters, 300k and up are just sitting doing nothing.

I should go look for an old gold thread since we know the price will never go over $550.

[codercpc]

Wow, what a prophetic post.

I love reading old posts, and this one hit the nail on the head. What is your next prediction, so I can "cash in, or cash out" whatever the case may be?

[BobL]

I agree it was an easy call, in hindsight. When the price of houses are 5 to 10 times incomes in many areas, something is going to crash - but when? In my case I shorted Countrywide and several other financials. It was NERVE-RACKING being about the only person in the country that actually read some of their loan documents (from a Florida county website) rather than simply taking the word of Orangeman.

I managed to ride Countrywide all the way down, and rode the others maybe 25% down, before getting cold feet and bailing. I kept my stock-picking record perfect...which was that every stock I ever ‘owned’ has gone down - but this time I got a nice car out of it. LOL.

I agree, with the feds printing money like mad, and with these sick attempts to prop up housing prices, it’s really hard to predict what’s next. Unfortunately people involved in gold don’t sit around like zombies, but instead are proactive and have already priced in inflation (i.e., when I started shorting, it was late 2006 - I could not believe that these stocks were still near their highs...WHAT IDIOTS were holding them?).

Now we have a new world, where every country is trying to kill their currency at the same time. The logical thing would be to buy land - but it is being inflated by low interest rates - so I wait for the bottom to fall out of the dollar.