The bowl of popcorn isn’t large enough...

I work in Silicon Valley and make what I consider to be a decent income. But then on a daily basis I will see very obvious signs of obscene wealth.

I have a new founded appreciation for rusty vehicles now.

How does someone manage to always have a total shit-eating grin on their face?

Maybe the rust acts like a sort of “Crumple zone”?

I don’t give a shit anymore. Its all just a goddamned joke. Another day where ridiculous shit, perhaps in the not so distant past would’ve led to the president being removed from office, and yet here we are and nothing is happening and I’ve lost faith if anything ever will. There are SERIOUS issues with our political…

5th gear: Maybe its because I live in the Bay Area where people like to buy tons of european cars but the large numbers of Land Rovers I see here would make you assume they’re doing well and that they are cutting staff is sort of surprising

I always hated those ugly ass bubbly looking fords.

Exactly. As it is now our mortgage is cheap and less than we ever paid in rent. If we sold then we would then be at the mercy of the current market.

I agree with what you said. Well put.

I believe we’re saying the same thing here. I should have more carefully clarified what I meant by “housing market” because the last boom was indeed kept artificially alive due to those aforementioned “exotic loans” which in turn resulted in shit-tons of money that immediately evaporated into nothingness once the high…

I am not sure you’re understanding what I’m saying here. The big factor we’re dealing with now are home prices. Recessions are indeed what tend to drop prices. This has happened at every single cycle. If there are those whom are patient, save their money, watch the markets, look at interest rates then a recession and…

Unfortunately that is what I also thought around here in the SF Bay Area: A LOT of homeowners here are pretty old. In fact the rancher home 60's era neighborhood I live in is full of folks who bought these houses new. The lady who owned ours was in her 90s.

The cause of the last recession was the housing market and the prices that became unsustainably high. Prices are once more at unsustainable levels. The market is overheated. As far as building more housing, yes-I agree that there needs to be more built- way more. But for example around here in the SF Bay Area they are…

Nah. I like where we live and want to just live in the house until I die or retire

I’m not saying its ideal but its perhaps the most likely of scenarios. Its happened again and again and is cyclical in nature. The DOW goes up and up for 10 years then crashes, a recession hits, people lose jobs and homes, home prices fall and the whole cycle starts all over. Its just the reality of how the economy…

Way to make a point...

But what recessions do is drop prices on existing properties. That certainly happened around here in the SF Bay Area where housing supply has been an issue for decades. Prices fell here by almost 45% which meant it opened up more affordable housing. That’s how we wound up buying. They way I look at it is that home…

“No” what?

That’s what was assumed during the last bubble. I recall around here that when the recession and housing crash hit it revealed that an awful lot of the folks you thought were well-off, having their BMWs and their million dollar homes were just hanging by a thread. A lot of them wound up losing their homes as soon as…