JayB

Do the rest of us a favor and start smoking unfiltered camels and supplementing each meal with a pack of hostess Ho-Ho's.... Seriously though - smoking fast. Thanks for the report and the photos.

If any of them have made any effort whatsoever to obstruct or oppose a more efficient highway or bypass on the grounds that it will deprive them of business they deserve to be maligned, and I'd make it a point never to patronize any of them with owners that said as much in public. If they have businesses that can only survive with the help of congestion, they deserve to go under, and fast.

The Sultan-to-Monroe Megacluster is definitely bad news. Seems like a perfect candidate for a bypass-route, but then perhaps there'd just be that much more traffic and fatalities on Highway 2 unless there were significant improvements made to the portion of the highway that traverses the pass.

I think I remember some folks opposing the move, but it was a small contingent and this was way back in '99 or thereabouts. Since we were talking about an area that was already within the ski area's borders, I think that the only effective argument against the installation of the said lift would have been that adding the lift would diminish both the overall skiing experience at Crystal, and thus the crowds - but the fact that there were stashes to be found back there a week or more after the last storm made the "you'll sell fewer lift tickets" argument less than compelling. Thankfully there's still Southback, and a few other areas inbounds that will continue to yield good stashes, though there's nothing in those areas that can compare to a run from the top of Northway Peak to the bottom of lower Northway. As far as the season passes are concerned, $1000 is pretty steep, but the pass-rates as the tiny-ass, perpetually-icy, powder-grooming (Seriously. One of the more bizarre and depressing elements of East Coast skiing is listening to people on chairlifts express relief and satisfaction when they see that all of the new snow has been groomed under) POS resort-trio has jumped from around $350 to $650, and daily rates are on-par with Whistler - so if I was there and close enough to get the necessary mileage out of a season pass I'd hand over the cash with glee.

"A new Doppelmayr chairlift was purchased last fall for the North Country area of Crystal Mountain. The North Country is a large area of terrain along the north side of Crystal’s designated permit boundary. The lift will provide access to approximately 1,000 acres and increase Crystal’s 1,300 acres of lift serviced ski terrain by 77% to 2,300 acres. The name for the new chairlift is “Northway.” It will deposit skiers at the top of Northway Peak after a ride of just under 10 minutes. From there, skiers face an amazing choice of skiing Snorting Elk Bowl, Northway Bowl, Paradise Bowl and Bruce’s Bowl, following Right Angle Ridge to a variety of expert glades and chutes or heading farther north to drop into places like Morning Glory Bowl and Brand X. Several new trails are to be constructed that will feed into the bottom of the new lift. Tree cutting began on Monday, June 18th in the North Country area. The use of a helicopter will be implemented to remove the downed trees and to help keep the impact on the environment at a minimum. A selection of trees will be cut and removed to clear paths for the new trails and chairlift towers. The footings will be poured as soon as the snow is completely melted. Chairlift towers will be flown in and set into the footings by helicopter in late-August to early-September. The lift equipment itself is unusual in these days of high capacity, high speed detachable lifts. Northway is a double chairlift that will move along at a faster-than-standard rate of 550 feet per minute but will limit skier capacity in the new terrain to 1,200 people per hour. This will increase the existing 19,110 people per hour lift capacity to 20,310. “It’s about the skiing.” said Crystal Mountain General Manager John Kircher. “I’m sure people appreciate the big high capacity lifts that we have on the front side of Crystal. We have a job to do handling the crowds here but we all see how fast the snow gets tracked out. The new lift in the North Country is designed to provide access but keep the snow quality higher.” The new lift service will also serve to spread skier traffic out and keep skiers from funneling back through the base area. The addition of the Northway Chairlift was approved with the Master Development Plan (MDP). Crystal Mountain received the Record of Decision (ROD) in August of 2004 from the U.S. Forest Service. The ROD came following an in-depth review of the Draft Environmental Impact Study issued in August 2001. The MDP, along with 6 alternatives, was originally submitted to the Forest Service in 1999." Goodbye to one of the best stashes of lift-served pow in North America. Those drops at the top of Northway were also some of the most consistently good that I'd found anywere. Just enough air, always had tons and tons of pow beneath them. This is not making the pain of the sentence I'm serving on the Ice Coast any easier to bear. A tracked out Northway will make it that much more likely that I'll find myself being the retarded old-guy trying getting owned while trying to learn new stuff in the terrain park [gvideo]-2865212750885547046[/gvideo] http://www.skicrystal.com/1729.html

Enough waxing poetic about the last visit to Gitmo already, kemosabe...

Too bad the video didn't include contact info for you virendra - soulmates a' plenty for you in that there video. Now how about sending Mark a twenty so that he can buy some breakfast and pay the first installment on the in-store loan he took out to finance his new set of tires...

Mark Dice "My last broadcast will be Sunday August 26th. It has been a great 8 months and I enjoyed all the points and questions the callers would bring up. I had the opportunity to interview some of my favorite authors, and confront some fools who deserved to be confronted. At times I feel I’m preaching to the choir and that my time and energy would be better spend spreading the message to new people face to face. I do not have the time nor the money to continue the show. Once every other week or so I would plug the book at the end of the broadcast and ask people to support me if they like my videos and the show. I can’t tell you how many times after the show is done I will not even sell one copy. More often than not, it’s not even a single one. I can’t remember the last time I sold two books after the show. This was never about the money for me, but I’ve invested so much money and time into fighting the New World Order, that the tires on my truck are bald and I can’t afford new ones (the breaks need to be replaced soon too), and I have sacrificed countless hours of time with friends and loved ones to be doing what I’ve done for the last two years. I actually leave work early on Sundays so I can do the show, and I miss the Sunday night service at my church when all of my friends go. (not to mention spending time with my girlfriend.) I have done this for the country, for the movement, and for what is right, but I am burnt out and broke and very disappointed in the movement as a whole. With google video being so popular, many people just watch videos for free and never buy the DVDs and support the film makers, and it seems people are even more reluctant to buy books. I'm almost out of copies of The Resistance Manifesto and have NO MONEY to print the new run. It’s going to cost about $7 thousand dollars. That and my laptop, which is the only computer I have, is almost burnt. The screen flickers to black all the time, and I fear it may just not come back on. The thing crashes almost every day too. I have a ChipIn box on MarkDice.com if you want to donate to help me get a new one. I'm making about HALF the money at my day job than I did last year because business sucks and the economy is crap. I work in sales management. If I have to get a new job, I won't have all day to research and make videos since I will be forced to become a corporate slave so I don't start bouncing my rent check which I almost did last month. I'm very disappointed in the movement, not only for not supporting my work, but for not fighting for the cause. I showed everyone how easy it was to jam radio talk shows like Hannity and O'Reilly. I should be hearing a half a dozen calls every day about the Illuminati and 9/11, yet I hear none. I have stopped listening to these clowns in hopes of hearing a caller slam them on the issues, because it doesn’t happen. We are the last hope for this country and our way of life, and I’m wondering if most of 'the movement' hasn’t been moving at all. Just sitting by watching. I am certainly not giving up, I am just regrouping and prioritizing my time. I will still be making videos and doing truth jams. I have some other big ideas I’d like to execute in the future too. Perhaps if my situation changes and I have the time and resources I will start broadcasting again, but until that happens I am retiring from Resistance Radio. The last show on August 26th I have a pretty good guest scheduled, provided they don’t back down or have a change of schedule. I should go out with a bang. Thanks for those who have supported me and continue to support me, and Power to The Resistance." http://z10.invisionfree.com/Loose_Change_Forum/index.php?showtopic=13405 Now a message from Mark Dice, and The Resistance... [gvideo]4856528641647293277[/gvideo]

rRppZ_rco-s&feature=dir

I'd talk to Ford Canada as well. While you are at it, send a letter to this guy, and ask him if this is the way he wants his brand represented in B.C. Alan Mulally, CEO Ford Motor Company P. O. Box 1899 Dearborn, MI 48121

Toss some R.E.I.T's into the mix and you've got a stake in a nationwide mix of residential/commercial/industrial properties that's way more diversified than a single home, that you can sell at the push of a button. How about if we just trade a cam of my choosing for your home and call it even....

Depending on the movement of the market, investing the rent-vs-mortgage differential in a diversified portfolio may not return as much as paying the mortgage on a comparable home home, but the risk is far lower, and the liquidity is much higher, and the transaction costs are at least three orders of magnitude lower. The returns on *not* buying anything in Boston in 2005 for the same reasons that I'd be very reluctant to buy pretty much anywhere in 2007 have been greater than zero on a nominal basis, and when you factor in typical maintenance, transaction fees, inflation, etc the balance-sheet looks even better. Investing is like avalanche forecasting on a slope-by-slope basis, or making the decision about whether a snow-bridge will hold. No one can tell what a particular slope or ice-bridge will do at any given point in the future, but you can analyze the risks and make decisions based on the risk-factors that you can identify. I may choose to walk around a snow-bridge that a 300lb'er decides to spend a half-hour salsa dancing and squat-thrusting on top of before he crosses to the other side, and nothing happens, but I don't mind walking a bit longer if it gains me the certainty that I'll avoid taking the big plunge...

In 95% percent of all markets, I'd agree. After the recent, unprecedented credit-fueled run-up, I'm not so sure - but if you factor in the non-financial benefits of home ownership, then things become a bit fuzzier. I've briefly looked at what half-a-mil gets you in Ballard, and I can't fathom any scenario in which that would make plunking down that kind of money, or paying three times that over the life of a conventional loan, or at least 2X as much in mortgage payments as the same property would rent for - for the kind of property that you get for that price. However - forced savings of some sort are just about always better than no savings at all, which is the situation that an awful lot of people in this country are in from one month to the next, so that's another benefit for folks that would spend the rent vs mortgage differential instead of investing it.

and I disagree profoundly... owning a home is a great long-term investment, and a great way to ease your tax burden, enabling you to put more money into retirement, and have the ability to fund those expensive college educations down the road (HELOC, or down-size home, etc) This is the common perception, but it's not one I've heard offered forth by many folks who know what they're talking about that don't have their livelihood tied to the construction, sale, financing, etc of homes in one way or another. Money in a diversified portfolio constructed by someone that knows what they're doing produces better real returns with lower risk than residential housing in every long-term scenario that accurately measures total costs and total returns. Most people will buy a home for a multitude of reasons, some financial, some non-financial. For those who buy, buying a smaller home than you can afford and putting the difference in a diversified portfolio - ideally in a tax advantaged retirement account of some sort - will be a better choice than maxing out your mortgage payment on a primary residence or a combination of a primary residence and a second home in just about every conceivable long term scenario. http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/102603/why-your-home-is-not-the-investment-you-think-it-is

Speaking of veneers, I was driving on a logging road a few years ago on what seemed like compact snow and ice - which it was on the main road. On the spur-road I turned onto, the firm surface hadn't been created by traffic, but by a fairly significant freeze-thaw event covered by 1/2" of old compact snow. Things went pretty well for the first couple of hundred yards, at which point I drove over a slight depression, heard a creaking sound, and suddenly found myself sunk up to my headlights in granular sugar-snow capped off by the aformentioned ice crust. "No problem. I've got the chains, the shovel, the rope, the chains, the come-alongs, etc in the back. This will suck but I'll get out for sure." Long story short, due to some un-anounced borrowing on my buddy's part, and no small measure of stupidity on my own, I found that all I had to extract myself with were a leatherman, a can of coke, a plastic milk-jug, and an aluminum baseball bat. I was about 20 miles from the nearest paved road, I was on a sick-day and would have to account for my presence in the mountains a long way from home while sick, had told no one of my plans, was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and about 1/2 hour after I got stuck a storm hit and it stated snowing about an inch per hour. After 8 or so hours of making water by melting snow by filling the coke can with snow and placing it in the engine compartment when I had the engine running, breaking the ice with a baseball bat, then digging out the sugar snow with the milk-jug scoop I made, and cutting down every tree and branch I could get my hands on and making a branch-and-frond traction path back to the main logging road, I did some chainless rally/momentum-preservation style driving through 8-14 inches of snow while peering through a 6-inch gap in the fog on the windshield, and made it back to the main road with only minor body damage and an overworked clutch. From the time I realized that I was in the middle of something like the real-life equivalent of a rejected McGyver script until I saw the gate marking the start of the pavement, I wasn't sure I'd make it back to the road. My main concern was never survival, but I was plagued by alternating visions having to leave my truck behind for legions of heavily armed ATV or snow-mobile mounted mega-tweakers to use for target-practice/parts/outhouse-duty and/or losing my job. Get home, chain and shovel etc borrowing buddy rolls in and says, "Hey - anything interesting happen today?" I had been about 5-minutes away from abandoning my truck and jogging out before I got stuck, and left a note outlining my plan taped to the steering wheel. I kept the note on the fridge for about a year in the hopes that viewing it daily might help insure that such episodes were somewhat less common in the future.

That's great. Houses are great for the long term, and if you find something you like in a place where you want to live, and you can afford the fully-indexed payments while still funding your retirement, emergency savings, etc, etc, etc, etc - then buying a home is rarely a bad choice - but their status as a long-term investment vehicle has been vastly exagerated, especially after accounting for interest, taxes, maintenance, transaction fees, inflation, etc. For the next 3-5 years, they will be less ideal as a means to fulfill a highly-leveraged get-rich-quick scheme. Anyhow - How about that bet? I choose a number-two link-cam if you're game...

The dynamic in Seattle - rising inventories, slowing sales, and increasing median closed-sale price doesn't surprise me too much, and I imagine this reflects a shift in the distribution of sales activity towards the higher end of the price range. Having said that, I would have put YOY price growth in the low single digits even in "median closed price" metric. IMO, and in the opinion of most institutions that need accurate info to base their decisions on, the Case-Shiller-Weiss index is way more accurate, but even those figures will show positive YOY numbers for July when they come out in a couple of months. However, given the massive and near unprecedented changes in the secondary market for mortgage-based securities that have transpired in the past couple of weeks - especially the large and/or exotic types that can't be resold to FNMA or GNMA - I feel pretty confident that the data will show an inflection point for Sept-Aug of 07, when the changes in the mortgage market start to register in the closed-sale stats. Look for increasing inventory, a fairly substantial decline in sales, and higher DOM through next spring as sellers refuse to capitulate on price and a lack of buyer participation brought on by either failure to qualify for loans big enough to get them into a home that suits their taste, or flat-out balking at the asking price. By late next summer, folks who are either foreclosed on or are in must-sell mode due to divorce, job-related relocation, etc will start to capitulate and begin the process of selling below comps and move the market lower. So - just to make this more interesting, I am willing to bet a cam or ice-screw of your choosing - that the Case-Shiller-Weiss stats for every county within commuting range to Seattle will be negative between October of '07 and October 08 will be negative. Summary of what's transpired in the past couple of weeks posted below: " Worse than LTCM: Not Just a Liquidity Crisis; Rather a Credit Crisis and Crunch Nouriel Roubini | Aug 09, 2007 The global market turmoil got ugly today forcing the ECB and the Fed to inject liquidity in the financial system as the concerns about subprime, credit and debt turned into a full blown liquidity run and crisis. As in 1998 at the time of the LTCM crisis, Fed and global central banks decided to ease monetary policy in between meeting and injected a large amount of liquidity into the system. Coming two days after the Fed tried to prevent perceptions of a Bernanke put by signaling in its FOMC no Fed easing and no bail out of the financial system, the Fed actions today are certainly ironic if necessary given the massive liquidity seizure in the financial markets. But the current market turmoil is much worse than the liquidity crisis experienced by the US and the global economy in the 1998 LTCM episode. Let me explain why. Economists distinguish between liquidity crises and insolvency/debt crises. An agent (household, firm, financial corporation, country) can experience distress either because it is illiquid or because it is insolvent; of course insolvent agents are – in most case also illiquid, i.e. they cannot roll over their debts. Illiquidity occurs when the agent is solvent – i.e. it could pay its debts over time as long as such debts can be refinanced or rolled over but he/she experiences a sudden liquidity crisis, i.e. its creditors are unwilling to roll over or refinance its claims. An insolvent debtor does not only face a liquidity problem (large amounts of debts coming to maturity, little stock of liquid reserves and no ability to refinance). It is also insolvent as it could not pay its claim over time even if there was no liquidity problem; thus, debt crises are more severe than illiquidity crises as they imply that the debtor is insolvent, i.e. bankrupt, and its debt claims will be defaulted and reduced. In emerging market crises of the last decade, we had liquidity crises (i.e. a solvent but illiquid sovereign) in Mexico, Korea, Brazil, Turkey; we had debt/insolvency crises (a sovereign that was both illiquid and insolvent) in Russia, Ecuador, Argentina. The 1998 LTCM crisis was mostly a liquidity crisis: the US was growing then at 4% plus, the internet bubble had not burst yet, we were in the middle of the New Economy productivity boom, households were not financially stretched and corporations were not financially stretched with debt either. In spite of those sound and solvent fundamentals the collapse of Russia – a country then with the GDP of a country such as the Netherlands – caused a global liquidity seizure and crisis of the type experienced by credit markets in the last few weeks: sudden demand for cash liquidity, sharp increase in the 10 year swap spread, sharp increase in the VIX gauge of investors’ risk aversion, liquidity drought in the interbank and euro-dollar market, deleveraging of highly leveraged positions, reversal of the yen carry trades. With the exception of the credit event in Russia, this was not a credit/insolvency crisis. And since it was a liquidity crisis the Fed easing – 75bps – was successful in restoring in a matter of weeks calm and liquidity in financial markets. Even that liquidity episode had painful credit fallout: it is not remembered by most but the entire subprime mortgage industry went bankrupt in 1999 following the LTCM liquidity crisis. So a liquidity shock even triggered credit events. Today we do not have only a liquidity crisis like in 1998; we also have a insolvency/debt crisis among a variety of borrowers that overborrowed excessively during the boom phase of the latest Minsky credit bubble. You have hundreds of thousands of US households who are insolvents on their mortgages. And this is not just a subprime problem: the same reckless lending practices used in subprime – no downpayment, no verification of income and assets, interest rate only loans, negative amortization, teaser rates – were used for near prime, Alt-A loans, hybrid prime ARMs, home equity loans, piggyback loans. More than 50% of all mortgage originations in 2005 and 2006 had this toxic waste characteristics. That is why you will have hundreds of thousands – perhaps over a million - of subprime, near prime and prime borrowers who will end up in delinquency, default and foreclosure. Lots of insolvent borrowers. You also have lots of insolvent mortgage lenders – not just the 60 plus subprime ones who have already gone out of business – but also plenty of near prime and prime ones. AHM – who went bankrupt last week – was not exposed mostly to subprime; it was exposed to near prime and prime. Countrywide has reported sharp losses not only on subprime lending but also on prime ones. So on top of insolvent households/mortgage borrowers you have plenty of insolvent mortgage lenders, subprime and - soon enough - near prime and prime. You will also have – soon enough – plenty of insolvent home builders. Many small ones have gone out of business; it is likely that some of the larger ones will follow in the next few months. Beazer Homes – a major home builder - last week had to refute rumors of its impending insolvency; but so did AHM a few weeks its insolvency. With orders for home builders falling 30-40% and cancellation rates above 30% a few will become insolvent over the next year or so. We also have insolvent hedge funds and other funds exposed to subprime and other mortgages. A few – at Bear Stearns, in Australia, in Germany, in France – have already gone bankrupt or are near bankrupt. You can be sure that with at least of $100 billion of subprime alone losses – and most losses are still hidden given the reckless practice of mark-to-model rather than mark-to-market - many more will. In the meanwhile the CDO, CLO and LBO market have completed closed down - a “constipated owl” where “absolutely nothing moves” the way Bill Gross of Pimco put it. This is for now a liquidity crisis in these credit markets; but credit events will occur given that the underlying problem was not of of liquidity but rather one of insolvency: if you take a bunch of to be defaulted subprime and near prime mortgages and you repackage them into RMBS and then these RMBS are repackaged into various tranches of CDO, the rating agencies may be using magic voodoo to turn those junk BBB- mortgages into AAA tranches of CDO; but this is only voodoo as the underlying assets are going to be defaulted on. And the recent sharp widening in corporate credit spreads is not just a sign of a liquidity crunch; it is a sign that investors are realizing that there are serious credit/solvency problems in parts of the corporate system...."

If you really need clearance and will be driving rough, remote roads in winter then I'd go with the Tacoma/Tundra/Cruiser and get real chains for all four wheels, a tow strap, shovel, some static rope, and a couple of come-alongs. If you'll do virtually all of your winter driving on paved or gravel roads, then a Subaru outfitted with snow tires would be a much better choice in terms of control/handling/traction/etc. I can think of a few times when having clearance was critical - like the time when a freak storm rolled in when I was way, way out there on a logging road when a freak storm rolled in...but I think there's some truth to the notion that extra 4WD capacity can get yourself in situations that you would have avoided altogether with a wagon or sedan.

Nice parody - intentional or not - of all of the precious wanks who feel compelled to venture such critiques in a spirit that suggests that they've been forcibly compelled to read the TR's submitted by others and are thus entitled to certain considerations on the author's part. I have a helpful set of commandments of my own that I will humbly submit for Moses and his ilk: 1. If you see a trip report that does not interest you, ignore it. 2. If by some accident you happen to find yourself in the midst of a TR that does not appeal to you for any reason, avail yourself of the "back" button on your browser and move onto something else. Shalom.

"News, articles, trip reports, gear reviews. Message board. (Pacific Northwest, some features require registration) [Description from dmoz] This site reaches approximately 4,390 U.S. monthly uniques. The site attracts a slightly male slanted audience. The site's audience's interests are clothing (REI), news (Fox News, New York Times) and auto info (Edmunds)." http://www.quantcast.com/cascadeclimbers.com

More: http://data.nationalmortgagenews.com/columns/hearing/ "What We're Hearing By Paul Muolo I'll put it bluntly: if you operate a non-depository mortgage firm (lender or servicer) and don't have a deep-pocketed parent or hedge fund as a sugar daddy you're likely to be out of business by year-end, probably sooner. In the 20-plus years that I've been covering residential finance I haven't seen a financial meltdown this swift since the S&L crisis of the mid-to-late 1980s. One subprime executive who closed his shop a few months ago told me, "This is a liquidity crunch the likes I have never seen...."

As of last November or thereabouts he was calling a bottom for homebuilder stocks and encouraging his audience to buy their stocks. Cramer on Housing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmt5_T2WAQc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5zAvh-iFfU Cramer is essentially an entertainer, and has no fiduciary duty to anyone in his audience, so this is a case of caveat emptor. As was the case with the tech implosion, there was no shortage of people offering counterarguments and analysis that anyone who stayed long on these stocks chose to ignore.

Seems like the adage "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" applies to most folks who could see the trainwreck coming in this sector. Kudos to you if you timed this one right - I'm sure you're making a killing if that's the case. In other news, Cramer may not be too far off the mark with his rhetoric, but I don't think that any action by the Fed is going to make the participants in the secondary market any more anxious to buy tranches of securities constructed from fraud-laden POS ARM/IO mortgages backed bynothing more than declining collateral and the ability of folks who borrowed 5-10X their incomes ability to keep their monthly payments current. Summary from elsehwere on the web.... “The market dropped particularly sharply yesterday afternoon after investors were rattled by remarks by executives at Bear Stearns, the investment bank that has been heavily involved in mortgage securities. The firm’s assurances about its own financial position were overshadowed by bleak comments by its chief financial officer about the credit markets.” “‘I have been at this for 22 years, and this is about as bad as I have seen it in the fixed-income market,’ said Samuel L. Molinaro Jr., Bear Stearns’s chief financial officer.” “Lenders say they are increasingly unable to persuade investors to buy packages of home loans made to borrowers with little or no down payment or those who cannot fully document their incomes. As a result, many companies are no longer offering such loans to potential buyers.” “‘I have never seen it happen so quickly,’ said Steve Walsh, a mortgage broker in Scottsdale, Ariz. ‘Banks always do these little cutbacks here and there. What they are doing now is a liquidity crunch. It’s a credit freeze.’” “‘It seems to me things got every bit as silly in the credit markets in the last few years as they did in tech stocks in the late 1990s,’ said Douglas M. Peta, chief market strategist at J. & W. Seligman & Company, an investment firm based in New York. ‘I still think we may have a ways to go in this.’” From Dow Jones Newswires. “The secondary market that supports a big part of the U.S. mortgage industry has ground to a halt in recent days, a development that dramatically could increase the cost of home loans in expensive regions, experts said.” “The private, secondary mortgage market ‘is not functioning,’ Mike Perry, CEO of home loan specialist IndyMac Bancorp Inc., wrote in an email to IndyMac staff.” “It’s currently difficult to trade even AAA-rated parts of private mortgage- backed securities. Only mortgages that conform to the standards of government- sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, like Fannie currently are trading, Perry said.” “That account was confirmed by Scott Valentin, a mortgage company analyst at Friedman, Billings, Ramsey. ‘We’re hearing securitizations have frozen up,’ he said in an interview. ‘No one wants to bid on these things and then find out that the loans are worthless tomorrow.’” “‘If home buyers are in loans that don’t conform with Fannie or Freddie, given present market circumstances, they will have to pay at least 100 basis points more,’ explained Andy Chow, portfolio manager at a $14 billion San Francisco investment firm. (A basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point).” “That will have a big impact on the housing market in California, Florida and other places where home prices are very high, he said.” “‘In these areas, if home buyers don’t have much money as a down payment, their loans will be too large to conform with Fannie and Freddie’s standards,’ Chow explained. ‘That means people will pay much higher interest rates.’”

Depends on which side of the trade they're on, I suspect. Don't expect many of the folks on the wrong side of the leveraged MBS/CDO/ etc equation to be strolling around wall Street with "Will Arbitrage for Food" signs around their necks anytime soon, though. I suspect that not all of the folks whose homes serve as the underlying collateral for the repackaged loans of various sorts that the imploding securities in question were constructed from may not fare quite as well. Leverage gives, and leverage takes away...

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