I want to gouge my eyes out. What the bloody ef is he doing?
And I say this as a homeowner. The last thing we need is to inflate this housing bubble end more. Dude, just stop. Go move more chairs for Bibi and spread more red carpets for Putin. Even that is less humiliating than this, although it’s mega humiliating.
Clarissa's Blog 
What the bloody ef is he doing?”
Most charitable explanation I can find: 80s brain, he has no real idea what the housing market is like and is stuck in the model “‘”higher prices mean more equity for the middle class… yeah! Prosperity!”
Less charitable explanation: He’s fine with a large majority of the country being shut out of the housing market.
Other explanations?
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He subconsciously wants Rs never to win again without him, leaving him as the only R who could deliver a win at the polls. In other words, vanity and narcissism. Like if I create a mess in department affairs so that the next Chair looks like an impotent fool and everybody remembers me as the last great Chair.
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Which I obviously would never do because I’m not a massive dick.
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“subconsciously wants Rs never to win again without him”
Same thing with conservative/right wing politicians that he keeps sabotaging… He thinks he’s Highlander (there can only be one)….
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I will continue current strategy of not reading or listening to anything the man says seriously, and stick to watching what happens. Dude seems to just get in front of camera and stream-of-consciousness whatever.
But it’s what actually happens that matters. So… will keep watching. RE prices in my area have peaked, and we are starting to see listings go unsold for prices that would have been tempting a year ago. Now: sits on the market five months, then they pull the listing to “wait for a better market”. Good luck with that. There’s nobody left to buy your overpriced unfinanceable house that you have neglected maintenance on for the last 20 years. Flippers are not feeling enthusiastic anymore, because they’re not moving their current inventory at the prices they were hoping for.
I’m not convinced the market can be salvaged at this point no matter what anybody does– the fraud and interest-rate manipulation that have been going on for a decade guarantee a crash, and whoever’s in office when it all unwinds will get the blame. Stupid.
Probably the best any administration could do at this point is… what the current admin appears to be *trying* for (whether it’ll succeed or to what degree is anybody’s guess): freeze prices, and try by various other means to raise wages (for hourly labor specifically), and put a damper on ghetto investor strategies by squeezing Section 8 so that more people can afford those prices. Would be nice if they’d also do an aggressive push against mortgage/occupancy fraud, but I suspect that problem is so large now that any serious tackling of it would instantly crash the RE market.
Election fraud, illegal immigration, and welfare fraud are, sadly, all higher-priority problems.
-ethyl
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I agree that only the results matter. Your points are very well-taken. My biggest issue is that he’s turning away potential voters and if we can’t win the next election we are cooked on every issue that matters. The Dems are rabid and energized for vengeance.
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Yeah, I think we all wish there were *any* better options out there. But after the previous two terms of first: “OMG HE SAID AN UNPRESIDENTIAL THING” and then “There are no such things as confused dementia mumblings you didn’t hear that”… I have no effs left for what anybody is saying, and I hope a lot of other voters don’t either.
Let’s see what happens.
-ethyl
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” only the results matter”
Which at present are, quite frankly, svkking donkeys…. russia gets free reign in Ukraine, the EU no longer thinks of the US as a reliable partner (yeah big parts of the EU suck but big parts don’t) which helps China (and again… russia).
Mass deportations are sidelined into martyr olympics in Minnesota…
4D chess and all that but when?
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I’m not counting on 4D chess. I don’t think anybody in politics is really that smart or capable these days.
But there are a lot of balloons in the air right now, and I don’t think we know yet where they’ll land. If we’re lucky, maybe we limp along for another few decades. If not: well, the republic had a good run, but they all end sooner or later. We’re not that special.
-ethyl
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“not convinced the market can be salvaged”
I’ll start gathering kindling so that when the heretics are burned it will at least be fast.
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Heh. Entire current pricing scheme is built on unsustainable debt and outright fraud. If it *doesn’t* collapse, we’ve got an even bigger problem.
-ethyl
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“If it *doesn’t* collapse, we’ve got an even bigger problem”
I agree, but you’re talking about a transformation along the size of 1989… for a people that are psychologically and culturally completely unprepared to deal with it.
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This is where you get the lovely difference between a problem and a predicament. Problems have solutions. Predicaments… your results depend on your ability to dodge shrapnel, but there’s no avoiding the blowup.
The current housing market situation is a predicament. There are no solutions, only strategies to try and influence the blast radius.
-ethyl
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Look, just think of all the equity you have in your home. As long as you have no interest in moving and your mortgage id paid off who cares? Think of all the masses of people that can be put in jail. Jail means cheap labor for labor that isn’t replaced by AI. Felons often lose the right to vote and can’t get it back. Why are you worried?
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