http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/10/shirky_on_coase.html

like most all econtalk podcasts, is totally worthwhile.

…and, we’re there. Some extraordinarily-big moves in the last few months; I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it keep falling.

…Oh man, we’re getting scarily close to the $303,000 price that the most crazily-negative pundit, the one who I always thought was exactly right on, predicted so long ago.

Will we reach it? Will it be the bottom?

Kaboom!

Consider that the average for FF is 85%.

‘Moderate’ at least!

The thing that continues to amaze me is how very long people can go without realizing that they have a deficit. Heck, I only scored a 30% on Famous Faces. If you search around the blog, you’ll find incredible failures in this area (not recognizing my son, or even myself), and I didn’t realize that I had a problem until I was…what, 42, at least.

…another $5K down this month, and a drop of 13% from when we started tracking this 11 months ago.

…another $3K down — that’s less than 1% this month!

…another $7,000 set on fire since the last time I checked a little over a month ago, and $48,000 lost since last August.

“It’s a Cinco de Mayo miracle!”

Still, at least we’re getting down to more reasonable values. I’m still thinking of $300K or so as a pretty firm floor, barring the Rapture, which would put a fair number of properties on the market.

That’s pretty good, and I’ll kick in a 5% donation to Kiva whenever a new loan is originated, so that will help them, and then when I check out, all of the repaid loans will eventually revert to Kiva donations. Should be a long time from now, of course.

Let’s see: to help 1,000 people around the world, I’ll have to live another 40 years or so. Wow, that sounds like a long time. Maybe I’ll just keep adding to Sylvia’s fund little by little until I only have to live another 20 years.

Or (or!) rope in Sean to manage the thing after me. Oh, we’d help 1,000 people, easy, then. Gotta write a will.

It’s like a Neapolitan ice cream, or perhaps an Australian box jellyfish (though the latter are just a tiny bit bitey, so maybe it would be better to stick with the ice cream)

Thanks to everyone who has donated!

…a gain of $500 this month.

If it can manage to lose another $2,000, it’ll have fallen 10% since my original post.

Another big fall this month, and almost $37K since we started keeping track. Woof!

consortium Hopkinsian topically …

modest improvisers,kettles Ghent Dar:radioactive …

Slowing down, perhaps, but the bottom’s still a long way’s off, as the many Option ARM loans issued at the end of the boom all start to max out and enter their mandatory conventional payoff phase.

A loss of $26K in less than 4 months. No bottom yet!

I will never believe that this is the bottom — not even close. We’ve got at least another 10% to go, from this point, probably more like 20% or 25%.

In other news, I see that Zillow has announced plans to slash its workforce by 25%.

That’s a drop of $21,000, 5% or so, in about two months, and $13,000 over the last month. No bottom yet!

Ooh, and on September 23, Dr. Housing Bubble reported that DataQuick had the median California Housing price at $301K; that’s actually lower than my $303K call, so I guess the housing fiasco is over! Good news!

Oh, wait…my $303K call was for Southern California prices. Carry on falling, then.

“Leave it.” My (emphatic) reply.

But how nice, and unexpected, to see them actually listening!

We’re fucked!

Oh, and you didn’t say, “Happy Equinox!” Shame!

The US government officially went bankrupt on August 15, 1971, when Nixon, at the behest of the finance kingpins of his day, broke the Bretton Woods agreement, and from that day forward, foreign central banks could no longer redeem their dollars for gold. It took 59 years for the deadly combination of politics and central bank alchemy to break the dollar. It took another 37 years to get to the “end game” that we’re finally starting to witness.

Any steps taken to prevent liquidation of insolvent firms will… a) postpone — not eliminate — the liquidation; b) greatly increase the degree of moral hazard, and therefore future systemic risk.

What we have here is the Perfect Storm brewing. Just as expenditures for Medicare and Social Security ramp up for millions of boomers going on the dole, revenues from a debt-crippled service economy taper off. What happens when government revenues can no longer pay the interest on the national debt? What happens if foreigners turn up their noses at Treasury auctions? Worse, what if foreigners race to unload their dollar debt holdings? What could possibly close our trade deficit at that point?

I don’t see any way out of this except through hyperinflation — the full-on, Weimar-style variety. It’s coming. I don’t know when. But it’s clearly inevitable. And it will be terrifying in certain geographic regions.

Think of America as tomorrow’s Zimbabwe, but on a much larger scale. Add to this our ready-to-go concentration camps, our paramilitarized state and local police, and our government’s new freedom to spy, command and control, and you’ve got the USSA — the United Socialist States of Amerikka.

The pisser is that it was all avoidable.

It’s a shame that most Americans don’t have even a modicum of interest or knowledge in economics or history. They’re about to learn the hard way.