Please bring any canned foods to help those in Marin County that cannot help themselves. A large collection can will be placed daily in front of Frank Howard Allen Realtors at 1660 Tiburon Boulevard in downtown Tiburon.
If you need any help in this regard please feel free to contact me, and I will come pick up any donations (canned foods) you’d like to contribute to this cause during the holidays.
You can reach me at 415-385-7404 (cell phone) to pick up your canned contributions. Or email me at MDLomas@gmail.com
Mark Danforth Lomas: Frank Howard Allen Realtors Tiburon: 415-435-1000
On November 9, 2008 Marni Leff Kottle wrote a very timely article, “It’s a Different Market for Home Sellers” in the San Francisco Sunday Chronicle’s Real Estate Magazine: It’s a Different Market for Home Sellers
And, back in October Marni also wrote another timely and very insightful article about how hard the credit crunch has hit the Bay area. Here’s that article that was published in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Mortgage Update: Mortgage rates dropped last week, providing a dose of welcome news to prospective home buyers. Freddie Mac reported Thursday that rates on 30 year fixed rate mortgages averaged 6.20 percent for the week ending November 6, 2008. That was down sharply from 6.46 percent the previous week.
The retreat in mortgage rates comes as the economy is getting weaker. The drop in rates is good news for people thinking about buying a home. However, tight credit conditions are still making it difficult for some people to obtain financing.
Ann Rodgers, executive director of the Marin Community Food Bank sits among bags ready to be distributed at the Food Banks warehouse. The Marin Community Food Bank agency gives out 2 million pounds of goods each year and will provide meals to more than 3,500 families during Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Hanukkah.
75 Digital Drive, Novato, California 94949
41… / fax: 415-883-5178
You can always deliver donations to the food bank at the above address. You can also write a check and send it to that address. The Food Bank spends $150,000 a year buying traditional food to fill out the Holiday boxes. You can also leave food donations under the 20 foot tall turkey at the Town Center in Corte Madera. The turkey was created by employees of Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic, and has been a fixture at the mall for the last 13 years.
Mortgage rates dropped for a third straight week, reflecting the impact the weakening economy is having on financial markets. Freddie Mac reported Thursday that rates on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage averaged 6.04 percent last week, down from 6.14 percent the previous week. It marked a sharp decline since rates hit a a recent high of 6.46 percent during the week of October 16, 2008.
Concerns about the economy and worries over the fate of Detroit automakers have caused Wall Street’s major stock indexes to hit levels not seen since 2003, sending investors swiftly into government debt.
Thirty year mortgages rates hit a high for the year of 6.63 percent in late July and then dropped to seven month low of 5.78 percent and for the week of September 18, shortly after the government took control of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
Marin’s home sales increased on the strength of condominium sales last month while prices continued to drop, mimicking Bay Area trends. The median price of a single family home in Marin last was $825,000, down from $860,000 last year. 159 single family homes were sold, about the same as the 158 homes sold in September 2007 reported DataQuick of San Diego on Tuesday. Marin Independent Journal’s article: Condos Buck Up Marin Home Sales
And, check out my Marin History web site with the Marin Independent Journal: Marin History
Sunday evening, around around 9pm, smoke and a red glow over Angel Island could be seen from the Tiburon Peninsula. By 11:30 pm the media reported that an estimated 75 to 100 acres on the east side of Angel Island was burning. This morning the media reported that about 200 firefighters were battling a 250 acre wildfire. The photos below were taken from Sausalito and Tiburon October 13, 2008 between 9am and 10am.
Angel Island Fire from Sausalito 9am October 13, 2008
Angel Island from Downtown Tiburon
Helicopter Bailing Water From The Bay To Fight Fire
En route to Angel Island Fire
Firefighters prepare to relieve fellow firefighters on Island
A huge Helicopter siphoning water from the Tiburon Marsh
behind the Town Hall. The wind from the helicopter was blowing
me backwards as I took this photo… while the Tiburon Police
cleared the area.
At this time the fire has spread from the east facing side of
Angel Island to the North side of the 740 acre island. Angel
Island State Park has several historic buildings (that at this
time were not endangered) from the days it served as an
important station for the West Coast as well
as a military facility.
“Not only have individual financial institutions become less vulnerable to shocks from underlying risk factors, but also the financial system as a whole has become more resilient.” Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairsman, 2004
“A critical pillar to market competition and free markets did break down.
I still do not know why it happened?”
Alan Greenspan, the Oracle, never really understood what he was talking about when it came to the economy. Greenspan was so consumed with his own self-importance he overlooked the most basic fundementals of a healthy economy, and helped create the current melt down on Wall Street that has now spread throughout the world. Amazingly, Congress was so enamored with Greenspan they rarely questioned him. And yet, those entrusted to protect our Country…did not. Where is the accountablity?
On October 9, 2008 Peter S. Goodman reported in the New York Times: “George Soros, the pominent financier, avoids using the financial contracts known as derivatives “because we really don’t understand how they work.” Felix G. Rohatyn, the investment banker who saved New York from financial catastrophe in the 1970s, desicribed derivatives as potential “hydrogen bombs.” And, Warren Buffett presciently observed five years ago that derivatives were “financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal.”
Amazingly, one prominent financial figure has long thought otherwise. And, his views use to be held in the highest regard in debates about the regulation and use of derivatives that he refered to as “exotic contracts” that promised to protect investors from losses, thereby stimulating riskier practices that led to the current financial crisis.
Even more amazingly, on October 23, 2008, Greenspan denied before Congress that the nation’s economic crisis was his fault, but conceded that the meltdown had revealed a flaw in a lifetime of economic thinking and left him in a “state of shocked disbelief.” Greenspan was unable to defend his resistance to recommendations to use the Fed’s power to crack down on sub-prime mortgages, and opposing efforts to impose regulations on derivatives (the complex financial instrument that include credit default swaps – that figured in prominently in the current crisis).
On October 23, 2008 Greenspan was asked by the House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, after pointing out that Greenspan had contributed to irresponsible lending practices by rejecting appeals that the Fed intervene to regulate a surging sub-prime mortgage industry and also noted that the list of regulatory mistakes and misjudgments was long … asked Greenspan, “My question to you is simple, were you wrong?” To which Greenspan replied,”Well, partially” And then Greenspan went on to blame overeager investors who did not stop to think about risks. My question is ,”why didn’t Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Chairman, stop to think about risks?” Where is the accountability?
118 Lyford Drive is offer at $3,595,000. Secluded,private, and uniquely situated at the end of a long driveway, where the property backs onto open space. The gated driveway assures your peace and privacy. Have a front row seat to the most spectacular views Tiburon can offer. Amazing views abound from this amazing 3 bedroom 3 and 1/2 bath home of San Francisco through to the Golden Gate Bridge and the Pacific Ocean. For a private tour contact Mark at: 415- 385-7404 cell/direct.
How did we find ourselves in such an economic mess? How could the powers that be not have the foresight to see what was right around the corner? We’ve been led to believe that the sub prime mortgage melt down was the cause, when the truth of the matter is - it’s the derivatives, created by the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act by a greedy Banking industry.
The Glass-Steagall Act, passed in 1933, mandated the separation of commercial and investment banking in order to protect depositors from the the hazards of risky investment and speculation – the cause of the 1929 Stock Market crash. It worked fine for 50 years until the banking industry began lobbying for its repeal during the 1980s.
The main cheerleader for the repeal was Phil Gramm, but there is plenty of blame to go around here. Both Republican and Democratic Senators and Congressmen supported this disgraceful bow to the banking industry which was eagerly signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1999.
According to Wikipedia, many economist have criticized the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act as contributing to the current economic volatility in the Stock Market. The banking industy laid out more the 200 million dollars for lobbying in 1998 according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The banking industry succeeded in their two decades long effort to repeal the act. This lust for banking largesse is as wanton among Democrats as Republicans – right up to the current campaign, according to the Phoenix Business Journal. Both McCain and Obama have accepted substantial amounts of money from Wall Street bankers, investment and securities firms, and their executives during this campaign cycle.
Personally, I believe the Glass-Steagall Act needs to be re-enacted. Before we bail out the banking industry, insurance firms, and Wall Street some reforms and regulations need to be put into place or the game will just continue.
The American International Group – AIG – upon receiving $85 Billion Dollars from the government recently sent executives to a $440,000 retreat at a posh California resort? Where’s the oversight? How many times can the taxpayer’s trust be betrayed before someone steps in and does something? Congress seems to only act in times of crisis… is anyone listening?!
Late in the game our government realized what had to be saved was not the housing market or the dollar, but the financial derivitives industry: and the precepice from which it had to be saved was an “event of default” that could collapse a quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble, a bubble that could take the entire global banking system down with it.
Right now derivatives represent the biggest financial market in the world. Derivitives are financial instruments that have no intrinsic value, basically they’re just bets. “The point everyone misses” wrote economist Robert Chapman a decade ago,”is that buying derivatives is not investing. It’s gambling, insurance and high stakes bookmaking. Derivatives create nothing and they serve to enrich non producers at the expense of the people who do create real goods and services.” As bets, you can hedge your bet that something will go up by placing a side bet that it will go down. Hedge funds hedge bets in the derivatives market. Bets can be placed on anything, from the price of tea in China to the movements of specific markets.
What to do? Re-enact the Glass-Steagall Act for starters. Separate commercial banking from the stock market. Then, have Congress focus on the Dirivatives Bubble and articulate a solution, simply and clearly. Steve Krofts on 60 Minutes last week did a great job of explaining what’s happening. Where’s the political discourse?
Just my opinion.
Some of the information for this post was gathered from Wikipedia, William Kaufman’s “Shattering the Glass – Steagall Act”, the Phoenix Business Journal, and Ellen Brown’s post on her blog (Web of Debt) It’s the Derivatives Stupid!
