Things are getting better, go spend some money.

home sales AND new construction without considering home values is meaningless.

Its only when the values rebound that you have an indicator of the over-saturation finally going down. This process will be slow because its a vicious cycle problem. The ones with the property are also the ones with the loan issuing power, and they are being super selective compared to the last 15 years about who they loan to, because they are so exposed by having so much property and so little liquidity.

carguy123 wrote: ... They generated more than $92M in gross sales which was a 32% increase over last year and had a 16% increase in attendance over last year...

Collector cars ( the buyers certainly aren't buying them to drive them ), are also seen as a good place to put money when you do not trust the stock market or things like gold or maybe even real estate. So not necessarily a good sign.

I think you need to look at the percentage of cars that will be driven vs. those that are parked in a garage. I don't really see people putting money in a hard asset and locking it away a sign of confidence in the economy. Hopefully that is not the case.

bravenrace wrote: One of the many reasons economies recover from recessions is that people an companies can only put off buying products and equipment for so long. It's one reason why many economists think that the Government shouldn't try to fix recessions. They usually make things worse, as they did in this case.

So had the Govermnet frozen spending, and not bailed out GM, what do you think would have happened?

I'm pretty sure that 1) 300,000 people would have lost thier jobs with GM and Chrysler, probably that would have lead to this whole area going into a funk without any decent cash movement.

What happened was that the banks froze lending. And took a LONG time to start it back up. Freezing that stops the flow of cash through the economy. Flow stops, sales stop, more jobs are lost. That's exactly what happened in the Great Depression.

Government spending keeps enough going so that it does not freeze. Government LENDING (which isn't spending, but acting as a bank), allows companies who lost the ability to loan people money to buy stuff (whether it be for consumer goods or for new factory stuff). That keeps things moving.

that's the main point of spending during a recession. Being that my industry has been recovering nicely over the past 3 years, as opposed to the rest of the world figuring out how to pick up the pieces of GM, Chrysler, and proably Ford, and supply the world with cars, I'm quite pleased with how the spending has worked out.

Any saving this industry allows makers of stuff to sell things to our employees. Like the ones who needed a new washer, but needed the cash from the federally funded bridge project. Or the ones who got new New Ballance American made shoes, but needed to increase their research grant.

We keep getting told how bad the economy is, and it's not great. But I don't think it's nearly as bad as we are being told it is.

You're pretty sure about a lot of things that make zero sense to me.

madmallard wrote: home sales AND new construction without considering home values is meaningless. Its only when the values rebound that you have an indicator of the over-saturation finally going down. This process will be slow because its a vicious cycle problem. The ones with the property are also the ones with the loan issuing power, and they are being super selective compared to the last 15 years about who they loan to, because they are so exposed by having so much property and so little liquidity.

One other problem about the housing industry to be a main indicator- I would be willing to bet that more people are willing to ignore the "American Dream" and do their own math to see if it's better to rent or own.

We don't have a shortage of real estate in this country, outside of a few large population/small space areas. Real Estate growth should be right at population growth, and that's IT.

Using it as a speculative market, and then using that speculative market to make up some new insurance/gambling was what caused this to crash in the first place.

bravenrace wrote: You're pretty sure about a lot of things that make zero sense to me.

So you think if GM failed, everything would be ok, and instantly recover?

Just that one question.

alfadriver wrote:

bravenrace wrote: You're pretty sure about a lot of things that make zero sense to me.

So you think if GM failed, everything would be ok, and instantly recover? Just that one question.

First, when did I say anything about GM? Second, there's no point in answering just that one question, because the answer is not complete without considering many other factors. I just don't see any point in arguing with you.

Here's what you said.

bravenrace wrote: They usually make things worse, as they did in this case.

In reference to what governments do to reduce the effects of recession.

This government bailed out GM. How did that make things worse?

That is one core way to keep money flowing through an economy- by keeping people employed.

You make a blanket claim, which I put reasonable response to, in some details of why, which you claim you don't make sense of, so I boil it down to one part of that.

And since the GM bailout was roundly disliked as a government program here, it seems like a very easy example to say how non action would make things better. Go for it.

Our business was completely dead through '09 & '10. We acquired one of our competitors last April after working on the deal for 1.5-years. We finished '11 with the biggest deal either company had seen, and business is still good.

I'm hesitant to be optimistic, but there's no denying business is better than it has been.

bravenrace wrote:

Ian F wrote: I'm doing my part... ordered a set of new wheels for the E30 yesterday.

Are you? Where were they made?

99.9% sure: China. But the alternatives are simply way out of my price range.

http://www.nlmotoring.com/XXR-531-wheels-15-inch-Hyper-Silver-p/53158083.htm

I had resigned myself to TRM C1's, but these look better, are a tad cheaper at the pre-order price and if they come in reasonably close to the projected weight, I'll be happy.

madmallard wrote: home sales AND new construction without considering home values is meaningless. Its only when the values rebound that you have an indicator of the over-saturation finally going down. This process will be slow because its a vicious cycle problem. The ones with the property are also the ones with the loan issuing power, and they are being super selective compared to the last 15 years about who they loan to, because they are so exposed by having so much property and so little liquidity.

My oldest brother is a real estate agent, he is half owner of his firm. He's a pretty smart guy and has been doing it a long time, so when he says something about the real estate market I listen.

Three weeks ago he and I were discussing aspects of my househunting, and he made this observation: the foreclosure curtailment will end sometime around May of this year, that's when the claims people have against lenders for 'robosigning' etc will all have to be in. At that point, the process will move forward again. Some few in foreclosure will probably get theirs adjusted etc but the vast majority will not because they are truly in default.

He refers to that as 'shadow inventory', as in: it's out there, it's just not observable at the moment because it's waiting to come on the market and it will be a flood. Once it does, that will keep housing prices low for at least a couple of years.

Add to that the Big 5 (Chase, Wells Fargo, BoA, Citigroup and Ally) have agreed to a $30 billion settlement which includes more oversight meaning mortgage underwriting will get tighter. That's a recipe for continued slower sales and thus prices held down.

That all means: don't expect the housing market to drag the economy out of the doldrums. Also don't expect a big rebound in housing values anytime soon. There may be 'pockets' where this won't happen but they will be few and far between.

Actually its mostly pockets where foreclosures and shadow inventory issues will exist, and if you live in one of those areas only public confidence will hep you out, but most of the country doesn't have that kind of issue. Most of the country has had a second hand smoke issue of people being scared it might happen to them so they slow down in everything they do.

The Robo signing issue is slowing down the speed of the foreclosure process which means we'll see a surge when they finally finish all the resolution of it. But don't expect it to stop housing values except in those selected areas.

Home sales have already picked up in most of the country, even in the hard hit areas. If you look at the rest of the economy it's picked up or picking up. Housing and public confidence are the 2 big items still left down.

But then housing should be shelter first and investment 2nd. Losing money's not cool, but how often has that happened in America? It's not the norm and shouldn't be treated as such. This too shall pass and probably quicker than you think.

Funny, I just got an email from Zillow notifying me that the value of my house just decreased by $5,500. Now, I don't put a lot of stock in the value that Zillow lists, but sine they base values on comparables in the same geographical area, I think this indicates that home values IN MY AREA are going down, not up. So no, my confidence isn't going to go up any time soon.

I'm going to postpone every possible purchase until after the election. I don't want the wrong guy to get credit for improving the economy.

One thing we can always count on is that if the economy improves, the person or people that take credit for it won't deserve it.

bravenrace wrote: One thing we can always count on is that if the economy improves, the person or people that take credit for it won't deserve it.

If that's the case, then probably the blame isn't deserved, either.

Seriously? You don't think a politician that caused a problem would still attempt to take credit for its correction?