This is going on all over the world......from the Australian (A national newspaper)

How big a doo doo is the mortgage mess? A modest meadow muffin - from Anne Randolph Murray -http://reinfogeek.typepad.com

There is a eerily familiar echo in the mortgage credit markets: Analysts saying one thing while others at the same firm claim the opposite?

If you have lived for at least six years, you will recall that Credit Suisse First Boston, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase all touted Enron stock up until a month or so before it collapsed. The analysts claimed they were misled by the bad data being fed by, and the hard ball that was being played by, Enron.

Stan O'Neal, CEO of Merrill Lynch & Co will likely be “shot at dawn.” Sure he will resign, but if he didn’t, the board still would want “his head on a stick.”

He did three things that are each next to inexcusable as a leader of a publicly held business. 1. He led Merrill during a period when they lost billions in fixed asset trading. 2. He began an unauthorized probe to determine whether or not a merger with Wachovia Bank was possible, when 3.

Serious investors can find significant advantages in understanding what has just occurred in these times of manufactured financial uncertainty.

Happy Independence Day. We live in a country that began with a revolution. A country that lost 620,000 lives standing up for principles of freedom and equality. A country that has the vision to create such apparently illogical economic tools like credit cards, credit scores, home equity lines of credit and subprime mortgages to help people live a better life and own homes.

Oh me Miserum……”look how much money we will lose on irresponsible borrowers letting homes go to foreclosure?’

Nothing could be further from the truth. The music stopped and Wall Street hot shots got caught holding the bag. Bear Stearns has anted up $3.2 Billion to save a hedge fund and give comfort to all of the other investment banks they borrowed money from to fund their Mortgage Backed Securities hedge play.

We publish Personal Real Estate Investor Magazine. In the course of our business we meet many real estate agents and brokers who are uncomfortable with the whole idea of individuals investing in homes.

Investors are variously seen as serial home buyers who help launch new projects by being the first in with seed capital, often buying off the plans.

The New York Times asks is this a dull economist joke. “Does an economist with a real estate agent selling their house get more money than the adventurous economist who decides to sell without one?”

The answer is when the cost of sales commissions are factored in the do-it-yourself seller ends up better off.

Level Set

Wall Street uses this phrase for a sudden positive change in market numbers. Today the U.S. Commerce Department and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reported new home sales were way up in April, but prices dropped dramatically.