Weekly News Round-Up

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The Feds dropped the rate .25%–trying to help out banks, mortgage lenders, and the housing market, only to have Wall Street retaliate for what many considered an insincere drop. I guess there is a bigger difference between .25 and .50 than I thought. But that’s what you get when us uneducated folk do the thinkin. So I am leaving it to the big guns to do the ‘splainin to y’all. Here it goes:

Over at Transparent Real Estate, they probe the Wall Street drop in an article by Pat Kitano titled “A Lazy Rate Cut Crashes the Market.” Or if you prefer a catchier title, read “It’s Déjà vu All Over Again” at Socketsite, or if you like snarky, you can head over to the Business Week site, which has an article by Karyn McCormack audaciously titled “The Fed: Wall Street’s Bitch.” Ouch!

You gotta love the writers over at Slate. On Monday writer Daniel Gross penned an article titled, “Worst. Forecasters. Ever. The Cockeyed Optimists of the National Association of Realtors.” There are some great one-liners in the article, such as: “As a profession, economists project growth when a recession is about to start and project recessions when the economy is poised for continued expansion.” And “Macroeconomists have successfully predicted nine of the last five recessions.” Ouch, again! The article pokes fun at the folks over at the NAR, but brings up valid points and tries to tell us like it is.

Over at Seeking Alpha, there has been a spate of blog posts on the mortgage crisis. You can take your pick from “Yesterday’s Rate Cut: Bernanke Grows A Spine,” ” Subprime: We Have Nothing to Fear But Forbearance,” or “Fannie and Freddie Warn: More Gloom Ahead,” among others. In fact, they are good source of overall market news with a large stable of writers.

In a story slightly off topic, but somewhat comical, SFGate has an article by Carol Lloyd on the duties of real estate assistants. You can find out what they do, which in one case includes loading a pot pipe and literally murdering their benefactor!

Earlier today maven Anna Hibble wrote a post that gives you a snapshot of SF real estate. It shows the change in # of sales, sales price and DOM from November 06 to November 07, along with a handy dandy map of the 10 districts it reports on.

I have saved the best for last: Tune in, TiVo, or otherwise record Friday’s Today Show. Redfin will be featured, making practical recommendations for home sellers to succeed.

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