Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Charles Mitchell and the 1929 stock crash

thehustle.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 93 posts

Re: Charles Mitchell and the 1929 stock crash

#31

Post by ReptileMan »

tjr225 wrote: post #26
Shorel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is properties again. And harder this time. Except this time it is worse. It's not about the rising prices of properties, but the idea that there isn't something else more profitable than real state long term that makes me feel the economy is stuck in a bad place. Cryptocurrencies are noisy news-makers, but their total value is still very small compared to basically anything else.

Property is intrinsically limited. Property in desirably places is especially intrinsically limited. You’re basically lucky if you own any property at all at this point. Just take a gander and how much property in Hong Kong or Amsterdam costs and you’ll start to think it is cheap in the US. It’s only going to get worse. Do you think that people are going to desire living in Santa Monica or Queen Anne less over the ne…

Except why is no one asking the question why so few places are desirable and doing something to alleviate it.

Re: Charles Mitchell and the 1929 stock crash

#32

Post by silisili »

tjr225 wrote: post #26
Shorel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is properties again. And harder this time. Except this time it is worse. It's not about the rising prices of properties, but the idea that there isn't something else more profitable than real state long term that makes me feel the economy is stuck in a bad place. Cryptocurrencies are noisy news-makers, but their total value is still very small compared to basically anything else.

Property is intrinsically limited. Property in desirably places is especially intrinsically limited. You’re basically lucky if you own any property at all at this point. Just take a gander and how much property in Hong Kong or Amsterdam costs and you’ll start to think it is cheap in the US. It’s only going to get worse. Do you think that people are going to desire living in Santa Monica or Queen Anne less over the ne…

> Property in desirably places is especially intrinsically limited.

Yes...but property values are way up all over. Boise, Phoenix, Nashville...even middle of nowhere Kansas.

El Paso is having it rough. They've always had super cheap houses to the point of unbelievable...what most would consider a decked out mansion for 300k or so, and a 3+ percent property tax. Guess what's happening now that everyone's regular ol 150k house is now worth 400k?

Valuable property will always have value, but the vast majority of US property is not so desirable. It's already stalled, and it's going to be a bloodbath next year.

The real question is what happens when all the buyers of the last 3 or so years are underwater? We either end up in 2008 again, or tons of bailouts which just pushes inflation further towards the houses being worth it again.

Re: Charles Mitchell and the 1929 stock crash

#33

Post by logifail »

> "The bank was just basically selling anything that came along that they could make money on, and really weren’t telling investors about what their internal investigations had uncovered about the quality of the securities."

That line sounds like it could be straight out of The Big Short (2015), essentially nothing has changed in the best part of 100 years.

Re: Charles Mitchell and the 1929 stock crash

#34

Post by socialismisok »

ReptileMan wrote: post #31
tjr225 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property is intrinsically limited. Property in desirably places is especially intrinsically limited. You’re basically lucky if you own any property at all at this point. Just take a gander and how much property in Hong Kong or Amsterdam costs and you’ll start to think it is cheap in the US. It’s only going to get worse. Do you think that people are going to desire living in Santa Monica or Queen Anne less over the ne…

Except why is no one asking the question why so few places are desirable and doing something to alleviate it.

Plenty of folks are, but if the thing you want to do about it is decommidify housing you get a whole lot of people saying, "that'll never work!" Without actually engaging with the ideas.

Plenty of ideas and people trying out there, just not much interest from the every day person.

Re: Charles Mitchell and the 1929 stock crash

#35

Post by kortilla »

tjr225 wrote: post #26
Shorel wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is properties again. And harder this time. Except this time it is worse. It's not about the rising prices of properties, but the idea that there isn't something else more profitable than real state long term that makes me feel the economy is stuck in a bad place. Cryptocurrencies are noisy news-makers, but their total value is still very small compared to basically anything else.

Property is intrinsically limited. Property in desirably places is especially intrinsically limited. You’re basically lucky if you own any property at all at this point. Just take a gander and how much property in Hong Kong or Amsterdam costs and you’ll start to think it is cheap in the US. It’s only going to get worse. Do you think that people are going to desire living in Santa Monica or Queen Anne less over the ne…

> Do you think that people are going to desire living in Santa Monica or Queen Anne less over the next few hundred years?

Milwaukee and Detroit were pretty desirable not that long ago. Cuba was quite nice 80+ years ago. Hong Kong was desirable globally just 10 years ago. What is “desirable” changes from many other factors so property investments absolutely aren’t a given.

Land in the middle of nowhere barely beats inflation and has varying degrees of ongoing costs depending on the jurisdiction.

Re: Charles Mitchell and the 1929 stock crash

#37

Post by throwaway290 »

Shorel wrote: post #22
bruce511 wrote: post #10

The crash didn't happen because of 1 banker, but it did happen because of things he, and his contemporaries dreamed up. Basically bankers make money when money flows. It flows only when "there is something better". So to keep making money there always has to be "something better" and ultimately that becomes unsustainable. 1929 was a re-adjustment, where all the bullshit is cleaned away. It was perhaps the first time…

I think it is properties again. And harder this time. Except this time it is worse. It's not about the rising prices of properties, but the idea that there isn't something else more profitable than real state long term that makes me feel the economy is stuck in a bad place. Cryptocurrencies are noisy news-makers, but their total value is still very small compared to basically anything else.

I think it's scarcity (or to be precise scarcity mentality, which would probably extend into post-scarcity). The very reason for trying to find profit in the first place, real estate crypto or whatever, arises from wanting to outcompete someone else for resources.

Re: Charles Mitchell and the 1929 stock crash

#38

Post by rippercushions »

Shorel wrote: post #27
bruce511 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exclusively crypto, but when I see adverts for crypto on TV, and hear it pitched over radio, then I wonder. At that point it's appealing to the least sophisticated investors, which to me is the first signal of a bubble. The nature of a ponzi scheme is that it starts small, but then has to appeal to an ever larger group. This ends with mass advertising to reach the biggest group of all. Then what? Couple this with…

Every time someone says cryptocurrencies are 'a bubble' I know they are not paying attention. Or for some reason think there is going to be a single event that will finally end cryptocurrencies. Or they have an agenda and want them to end. It's not a single bubble, that stuff happened several times already. They lost more than 50% of their value in a short amount of time, several times already. It's a boiler. Its per…

I don't think anybody is expecting cryptocurrencies as a whole to cease to exist. I do think a lot of people, including myself, see the current turmoil in the market as only a precursor to what will happen if/when Tether implodes and a whole lot of funny money is suddenly sucked out of the system. In crypto history terms, this would be a Mt Gox level event, which crashed prices by over 80%: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox#/media/File:Bitcoin_ex... (log scaled)

Re: Charles Mitchell and the 1929 stock crash

#39

Post by lmm »

ReptileMan wrote: post #31
tjr225 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property is intrinsically limited. Property in desirably places is especially intrinsically limited. You’re basically lucky if you own any property at all at this point. Just take a gander and how much property in Hong Kong or Amsterdam costs and you’ll start to think it is cheap in the US. It’s only going to get worse. Do you think that people are going to desire living in Santa Monica or Queen Anne less over the ne…

Except why is no one asking the question why so few places are desirable and doing something to alleviate it.

Because housing policy is set up so that homeowners in desirable places are the ones who have control over whether more housing gets built there, and unsurprisingly they vote to enrich themselves at the cost of everyone else. The only way to fix it is to set planning rules strictly at the national level, but who's going to vote for that?

Re: Charles Mitchell and the 1929 stock crash

#40

Post by DSingularity »

silisili wrote: post #32
tjr225 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property is intrinsically limited. Property in desirably places is especially intrinsically limited. You’re basically lucky if you own any property at all at this point. Just take a gander and how much property in Hong Kong or Amsterdam costs and you’ll start to think it is cheap in the US. It’s only going to get worse. Do you think that people are going to desire living in Santa Monica or Queen Anne less over the ne…

> Property in desirably places is especially intrinsically limited. Yes...but property values are way up all over. Boise, Phoenix, Nashville...even middle of nowhere Kansas. El Paso is having it rough. They've always had super cheap houses to the point of unbelievable...what most would consider a decked out mansion for 300k or so, and a 3+ percent property tax. Guess what's happening now that everyone's regular ol 15…

Why would they sell? They live there now.

Why also would builders not keep prices high buy produce less?

2008 was bad loans coming to head. I don’t think it’s going to be the same.

Post reply on HN