Granite Countertop and Radiation

Do you remember the days when granite countertops were all the rage? Well, now they're asking: "Are granite countertops bad for your health?" It seems that some granites have high levels of radiation even radon gas coming out of them. Buyer beware...

Copyright 2008, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Peak Oil and Economy

[Hat tip to Vox Day] WND reports "Discovery backs theory oil not 'fossil fuel': New evidence supports premise that Earth produces endless supply" (which is a free summary of for pay article "Abiogenic Hydrocarbon Production at Lost City Hydrothermal Field" Proskurowski et al. Science 1 February 2008: 604-607).

This could explain why oil is plentiful and new reserves are added, not reduce over the years. This could also explain why old, "exhausted" oil wells are found to be refilled with oil. Granted, we do pump them out sooner than they can be produced but still it seem to me that the peak oil fears are as manufactured as oil themselves.

As for the $100 crude? It's only a matter of time before it too falls down. I've worked for an oil exploration company for 12+ years and owned many shares (including stock options which I exercised for modest gain) so I had and still have interest in following crude prices. Over the years, it's gone up and down and the current peak has to be some combination of war "premium" and a lot of speculations and exchange rate premium (Middle East buys more from Europe so the dollar amount has to go up to cover the difference with the weaker dollar vs the Euro). If you ask me, commodities like crude oil and gold are in a bubble: it's only matter of time before they get deflated, just as the housing bubble is (still) deflating as I type.

BTW, currently my net worth is 80% short of the stock market (DXD, QID, SH and SRS). Overall I'm ahead but this week was not good for my portfolio. You should be (or keep) reading blogs like CalculatedRisk to see (they have nice graphs every once in a while) that we have just begun the downturn of the economy and over time the stock prices, I believe, will follow. Overall attitude, though, people are more bullish than bearish. Stocks should be a leading indicator but it's not all too reliable since people look at future performance based on past results. Stock valuation tools like PE ratio works if the economy is growing but not when the economy reverses: more companies will report fall in earnings (including negative numbers) as we are now seeing: WSJ has a great summary page.

Copyright 2008, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Housing Crash: Foreclosure increasing

RealityTrac has a great map of USA with where the foreclosures are taking place. Click for it details.

We're just getting started since various ARM resets will take place over the next 4 years, and as these loans resets, people will find that they cannot pay their mortgage. That is, it's one thing to see a rise of few dollars or even $200, but when it resets at 50% or 100% of current payment, then it seems impossible and people have been and will continue to abandon their mortgages. And, if these reset charts are any indicator, things are going to get ugly for the next few years.

Keep in mind that foreclosure process takes months if not years to go through (and doesn't help when politicians put out moratorium to halt foreclosures -- the pain is delayed and made worse in the long run).

Some think that rents will go up with rising foreclosures but that's a mistaken notion. People will return to their parents or double up with their relatives (siblings, children, grandparents, etc.) -- so the demand will decline. The foreclosed homes will eventually turn into rentals. People who cannot sell their homes will turn into rentals. Which means that rental supply will increase (along with lowered demand), and all this will translate into seeing the rents get lower and lower.

The coming recession/depression will not be pretty, in my opinion....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Housing Bubble: Japan vs US

"Take It From Japan: Bubbles Hurt" came out Dec 25, 2005, but is a good reminder on what happened in Japan and how we in America is going through the same thing right now (popping of the bubble). We'll see how far down we'll go and how long it'll take to hit bottom this time around.

Here are two great quotes:

"During a bubble, people don't believe that prices will fall," he [Yukio Noguchi, a finance professor at Waseda University] said. "This has been proven wrong so many times in the past. But there's something in human nature that makes us unable to learn from history."
In the 1980's, the expectation of rising real estate prices made many Japanese homebuyers feel comfortable about taking on huge debt. And they did so by using exotic loans that required little money upfront and that promised low monthly payments, at least for a short time.

What they mean for us today in America, I'm afraid the answer is: only time will tell....

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Strongest vs Weakest banks

If you haven't seen this list, make sure your money is safe:
"The Weiss Watchdog: Strongest Banks and Weakest Banks"

As pointed out by a poster in thehousingbubble blog.