Frankly, this is a ridiculous generalization. How do you think people in S.Korea, Singapore, Scandinavia etc escaped poverty after WWII ? It was because of globalization. Globalization is pretty much the only hope unskilled people in the developing world have.

Your statement may have some truth in the US (still, those uneducated people in the US have better quality of living because of globalization – cheap AIDS drugs, computers, cellphones etc.)

This is the one I was talking about this morning, purchased in 05 for 500K ( I believe),a and now in foreclosure. Thanks in advance.

During our annual meeting with company CEO’s the following question was asked:

“food inflation healthcare costs, educational costs and gasoline prices are rasing. Company making record profits. Are there plans to start adjusting employee’s salaries to address rasing cost of living?
Our standard increase for base-pay is at 3%/year – are there plans to increase it?”

CEO’s answer: “Our company increases are in-line with industry standards, if you do not like it – quit.” So far NOBODY quit.(we haven’t lost ONE person in over 1 1/2 years due to them quitting. few retired, few got fired but NOBODY got better job and quit.

And if they are at the bottom, then they are not going up any time soon (probbaly not for years). I did live through the last down turn in real estate, so I soeak with a historical perspective.

As far as a good tiem to buy, well in the realtor world it is always a good time to buy.

And why rush? A good time to buy? Well my yearly rent on my nice 3 bedroom 2 bath home in my prestigious Bergen County town is substanially less than than the cost to buy. And with property taxes at around 10k in my town a year, why rush?

Plus not convinced that prices are any where near bottom, so again why rush?

To pay all that extra principal, and all that extra interest, on that extra principal, on top of the 10k a year in taxes?

No thanks. I figure I can wait another year, prices certainly will not be going up guaranteed.

I have a huge down payment, no debt, and nothing to sell. I believe I am golden to both a seller and his or her realtor.

As far as unemployment, based on all that is unfolding, I believe it is reasonable to assume that unemployment will continue to rise over the next 6 to 12 months at least.

One final point with all the inventory out there, and another overall bust of a Spring selling season, there are either a lot of others out ther like me, waiting, or else there are others out there who want to buy, but who cannot get the financing, or some combination of both.

Not saying I completely disagree with you. It may not be Egypt, but still the Middle East.

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/citi-moves-top-banker-to-middle-east/

Of course though he works for an American company.

Well put.

That’s four sentences – I disagree with all of them.

If prices are at bottom and not going up, would be a good time to buy than pay rent.

If you can guess unemployment numbers than good for you, I can’t.

If you wait for all clear signal, it will be too late.

As someone said before, if you try to pick the bottom, all you get is a smelly finger.

I just deleted a spreadsheet from a shared network that I can’t get back at the moment. I guess that makes me a real “NAR” job. LOL!!

Nah. He paid for the lesson. And the first one was a freebie.

And if unemployment continues to accelerate, and I believe that it will, than prices will fall further.

Way too early for the all clear signal yet, especially considering this thing only really started getting interesting less than a year ago.