Top investor sees U.S. property crash

[Herman Munster]

http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USL1470530620070314

Commodities investment guru Jim Rogers stepped into the U.S. subprime fray on Wednesday, predicting a real estate crash that would trigger defaults and spread contagion to emerging markets. "You can't believe how bad it's going to get before it gets any better," the prominent U.S. fund manager told Reuters by telephone from New York.

"It's going to be a disaster for many people who don't have a clue about what happens when a real estate bubble pops. "It is going to be a huge mess," said Rogers, who has put his $15 million belle epoque mansion on Manhattan's Upper West Side on the market and is planning to move to Asia.

Worries about losses in the U.S. mortgage market have sent stock prices falling in Asia and Europe, with shares in financial services companies falling the most. Some investors fear the problems of lenders who make subprime loans to people with weak credit histories are spreading to mainstream financial firms and will worsen the U.S. housing slowdown.

"Real estate prices will go down 40-50 percent in bubble areas. There will be massive defaults. This time it'll be worse because we haven't had this kind of speculative buying in U.S. history," Rogers said. "When markets turn from bubble to reality, a lot of people get burned."

[Roland99]

1. I'm not a top investor. In fact, I'm not an investor at all and I called this a long time ago.

:eyes:

[Warpy]

6. It didn't take a genius, did it? I saw it, too

Prices in my town didn't skyrocket because builders were slapping up huge suburbs seemingly overnight. At the height of the frenzy, there were planeloads of real estate speculators buying up those houses to make a quick buck. 34% of new construction was bought by speculators, 25% of new construction bought by Californians, alone. I'm sure many of those mortgages were creative ones, the interest only with the balloon payments or the ARMs with the teaser rates.

Real estate ads are now crowing "2 years young! Never lived in!" as speculators realize they're in grave danger of getting stuck and are starting to dump their properties, or at least try to. This area is so overbuilt it will likely take several decades of people flocking to this part of the country just to get it all occupied. Some of the houses in my area have been empty for a year or more. Nobody is buying now, even with no bubble in this town and still low 30 year fixed interest rates.

Don't ya just hate being right?

[Deja Q]

2. Okay, will top investor tell us what those who did the manipulation should get?

Apart from a golden spoon?

Interesting he's movin' to Asia. How's that going to help him? And who's going to buy it, especially with him whining "The sky is falling!!!!!!!!!" in the process. I hope Donald Trump buys his flat... :eyes: actually, I hope nobody does.

Besides, last I heard the air quality over there sucks. Hmmm, let him move over there then.

I just don't know what to say...

Yes, some people didn't read the fine print. Others got greedy. But those doing the buying aren't the only variable in the entire equation. I wonder how many people he told to buy when lendin' was high 5 years ago?

[Ress1]

3. Top investors shoul know best

because they're the ones who caused the real estate problem. They come in and inflate the prices and then get out when things start falling apart, they do the same thing in the stock market.

[live love laugh]

4. So this is why they created that bankruptcy bill. They expected this. n/t

[AnnieBW]

5. I Feel Bad For the People Victimized By Sub-Primes

I was in that boat back in 2001-02. We bought our house (NOT a McMansion) in 2000. We had a fixed-rate mortgage. One year later, my husband got laid off in the tech downturn. We were down to one income, and having to make a $1500 mortgage payment. Naturally, we fell behind. Wells Fargo was all over us like flies on shit. We were forced to declared Chapter 13, he got a job that was able to start covering part of the bills, and we eventually dug and refinanced our way out of it. Fortunately, we had a lender that was willing to trust us, even though we'd had a bad record in the past. We repaid that trust by paying promptly within the first 5 days of the month for a year. Then we refinanced back to a "normal" lender - with a fixed rate.

I feel bad for those people that are being victimized by these damn predatory lenders. But, I have NOT ONE BIT of sympathy for the lenders. As far as I'm concerned, this is their karma coming around to bite them in the ass. It's unfortunate that the CEOs will continue to get big paychecks while screwing the people that they suckered. Wells Fargo did everything just this side of illegal to screw us over. Heck, they actually DID do illegal things, like forge signatures on documents that people had never signed.

Two words when you buy a house, folks - FIXED RATE. If you can't do it, scale down your expectations.

[LSK]

7. I am not sure, I think investors are panicking themselves with the subprime fray

[papau]

8. I agree - Jim Rogers is not to be taken too seriously - IMHO

this photo is from 40 years ago - the 100 year old man (albeit born 19 October 1942) is wrong so often, but acts like he really is the smartest person in the room because of his 1970 to 1980 co-founding of a fund with George Soros, and is so right wing always, that I find it hard to take him seriously about anything.





Top investor warns of Russia stock bubble
Wed Mar 14, 2007 12:49PM EDT

By Elif Kaban

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Prominent emerging markets investor Jim Rogers said Russian equity markets were overvalued and could burst "sooner rather than later," revealing the skeletons in the cupboard of its "outlaw capitalism."

"I wouldn't put a nickel of my own money in Russia, and I wouldn't put a nickel of your money there either," Rogers, a long-time commodities bull, told Reuters by telephone from New York on Wednesday.

"Everything about Russia is one big bubble, and it's going to pop. It's going to happen sooner rather than later," said Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in the 1970s and has focused on commodities since 1998.

"When that happens, people will look around and say, how did that happen? That's when we'll find out about all the skeletons in the cupboard."

The fund manager said the Russian state was confiscating assets and company owners were cashing out via a series of initial public offerings in London.

The Kremlin has muscled its way into big deals with foreign companies under President Vladimir Putin and taken control of strategic industries including oil.<snip>

[Roland99]

9. Why the subprime bust will spread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2769209&mesg_id=2769444