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.

But if you go to the home page, then beneath my photo, you will see:

MY BARACK OBAMA FUNDRAISING PAGE
Donate!

And even before then, I have occasionally had to wait for a desired backup to be retrieved from off-site storage, so I presume that we’re in good shape that way.

Talk about being under water; credit card debt has zero equity.

Of course, it’s in bumfuck, California, but that’s still only 20 miles from Palm Springs, which is actually fairly classy. Beverly Hills is further away from Sunland, for example.

My own instincts are that we’ve still got further to fall, and property prices will almost certainly overshoot lower than fair value, because that’s what pendulum swings do. That said, it’s really, really hard to accurately call a market bottom.

So I applaud your purchase, especially if you can pay it off immediately, or at least within the next 10 years. You might have an insane water bill, but at least no rent. And nice restaurants only 20 miles away. And coyotes! (They’re bitey!)

Wow, more than 50% off, in less than a year, that’s…I never dared to predict that large of a drop, though I wondered at the possibility.

[Suddenly whipsawing back to greed]: Hey, big Apple keynote today!

In a tax-exposed account where you’ve had a big run-up, the calculations are different, because selling, and sitting on the sidelines while the carnage clears, has not only the opportunity cost of missing out on any run-up, but also comes with a large tax bill, and substantially reduces your investment capital going forward (though not nearly as much as some of the most spectacular market collapses).

But a tax-sheltered, low-fee account exerts virtually no friction on your ability to exit and wait out a blood bath. The question of when and in what manner to get back in is a good one.

And don’t underestimate the many factors that contribute to the perceived value and stability of US stocks and markets relative to others.

It’s functioning perfectly — the house was tolerable after an hour or so — but it was just so hot (Fri: 96, Sat: 98, Sun: 97) — that the walls would rebake the air, if left to their own devices.

Hopefully it was the kind of too-hard damage that responds well to rest (tendonitis), and not the kind of too-hard damage that screws up your knees for the rest of your life (chondromalacia patellae).

I really expect that it’ll turn out to be the former, “good” kind of knee damage, but we’ll see.

@Chris: Yes, older people make good trouncing targets. It’s just a bit troubling when the actual trouncing happens so rarely.