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Facebook's killer app
2007-08-22 03:32:00
It's the game playing...Inman News's Alice, bless her geogeeky heart, and I are addicted to geography - aficionado Facebook game Traveler IQ Challenge. Simply put, it quizzes you to find a city or landmark on a global map and awards points on how close you can click on the location (I've gotten within 10 km on such a small global map) and how fast you clicked it. With a little mouse-moving practice and arcane landmark memorization, your score improves.Frankly, this is what makes Facebook addictive - not only are you playing online games, but you're "competing" with others in your community. It's a kind of alpha introduction to the concept of massively multiuser games, like Warcraft, which are mostly played by teenage boys and... Korea. Also, since I'm a Columbia grad, all the Traveler IQ players' scores are aggregated and ranked by college.Note that foreign and international studies schools place well.I can imagine independent teams will form all over Facebook to play a varie...
More About: Killer

Embeddable Google MyMaps
2007-08-22 03:25:00
Damon alerted me to it, but it was already on my Googl e Map monitoring radar. It's as easy to embed a Google Map into a web or blogsite, just like YouTube, and frankly I was surprised Google hadn't gone through the simple steps to do so before. Last month, I wrote about how real estate agents can customize Google MyMaps to present map data to their online client base. Now I can easily embed these maps... here's my example of the San Francisco Bay Area's housing prices YoY from June 06 to June 07:View Larger Map (click on the map colors for details) Technorati Tags: Google Maps, mymaps, mashup, mapping, bloggingAdd to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Market pressuring Fed to lowering rates even more
2007-08-21 10:55:00
From Financial Times, Monday, August 20: The dramatic decline in the yield on short-term Treasury bills on Monday further strengthened market expectations that the Federal Reserve will soon embark on an aggressive series of interest rate cuts. By the close of trading the market was pricing in roughly one-and-a-half quarter-point cuts by the Fed?s next scheduled policy meeting on September 18. And more bad news Monday: Investors fled money market funds, considered among the safest instruments, on concern that the funds, which hold $2.5 trillion, have invested in risky collateralized-debt obligations backed by subprime mortgage loans. Sentinel Management Group, a US money manager at the centre of recent market turmoil, was on Monday charged with fraud and misuse of client assets by the SEC. The problems at Sentinel came as a particular shock to US and global markets as it was thought to be investing in relatively safe assets on behalf of hedge funds and futures brokers. Greenpoint ...
More About: Economy , Market , Rates , Rate , Erin

Home buyers, start your engines
2007-08-20 02:49:00
No one seems to be saying this, so... The Fed's switch to addressing the credit markets and the cooling economy with its surprise 1/2 point cut in the discount rate Friday will help the real estate market for conventional A buyers. The reason? --- mortgage rates will start heading lower as the credit markets calm down and factor in the lower interest rate window now being projected. Mortgage rates are highly correlated to 10-year and 30-year Treasury bond rates, but are determined by the price of mortgage bonds. However, last week mortgage rates generally increased over last week (30-year fixed up .03%), while 10-year T-bond yields fell .15%. This Bankrate analysis explains in part the logical reason - during last week's global credit crunch, investors rushed into T-bonds not only because they are one of the safest investments ("flight to quality") but also because investors believed that the Fed would drop interest rates (increasing value of T-bonds) and thus provide a quick p...
More About: Economy , Home Buyers , Home , Start , Engines

BarCamp Block - Web 2.0 Unconference
2007-08-19 11:44:00
I couldn't make it to this weekend's BarCampBlock , a free "unconference" for the Silicon Valley tech community, but the word is "nothing short of extraordinary". Simply put, the Web 2.0 community shows up at morning registration and assembles their programs adhoc on a program board. If you're near Palo Alto, Sunday's installment starts at 10:00 around the block of 600 High Street... it's a kind of block party so follow the crowds.
More About: Events , Barcamp , Lock , Ferenc

Fed finally reacts - the Global Credit Crunch Timeline
2007-08-17 15:37:00
This morning the Fed finally reacts to a most turbulent week of market activity and dropped the discount rate 1/2 point. Here's the domino effect that preceded the rate cut: April 2 - Subprime crisis takes down first major lender - New Century files for bankruptcy June 21 - First sign of widespread credit crunch - Wall Street hedge funds hit hard... Bear Stearns hedge funds near collapse July 19 - Dow closes at all time record high 14,000 - Fed says subprime crisis still contained July 27 - Credit squeeze spreading to higher grades of debt - Dow drops 520 in two days - Corporate debt dressed up, nowhere to go August 2 - Alt-A loans now suspect - American Home Mortgage shuts down August 9 - Global markets start crashing together - France's BNP Paribas and Countrywide, largest US lender unexpectedly send out warning signals begetting investor paranoia about other hedge funds with subprime holdings August 10 - No buyers for commercial paper - Central Banks start pumping funds ...
More About: Economy , Timeline , Finally

Web 2.0 Ahead of the Curve
2007-08-16 10:35:00
Widgetization has become emblematic of a cool Web 2.0 application. Widgets are simply small size applications that can be positioned on a web page, lately by dragging and dropping them into place. Google widgets (Google calls them gadgets) customize the user's home page. Facebook glamorized the widget by offering over 2,900 of them and counting. Web 2.0 applications become more complex A technology product developer wrestles with complexity versus simplicity of use. An internet application is no different... This 2005 Wharton paper  The upgraded digital divide: Are we developing new technologies faster than Consumers can use them? does a good job explaining new product evolution from "wow" to "geeky" to "usable" to "mainstream": "Today we're seeing a somewhat anomalous bump in the evolution of consumer technology products," Whitehouse says. "In the early phases of that evolution, which we are still in the midst of, there was a tendency for manufacturers to add features. G...
More About: Curve , Ahead

Why the stock markets keep falling
2007-08-15 23:50:00
Here's a typical economist speak WSJ article touted as a "primer" on how the Fed injects money into the economy. It is incomprehensible. Frankly, the bemused comments are hilarious. The simple reason markets continue to collapse is just bad news: Asian markets are crashing Wednesday morning following the US fall Tuesday. Investors in all countries are getting hammered by subprime CDO holdings. More significantly, subprime's deleterious effects are poisoning consumer demand for all kinds of consumer goods. Basis Capital, Australia, warns one of its hedge funds may exceed 80% - 8/15/07Mitsubishi UFJ and Sumitomo Mitsui, two of Japan's three biggest lenders, plunged to two-year low after reporting losses associated with subprime.Toyota Motor Corp. and Westfield Group, the world's largest shopping center owner, slid after Wal-Mart Stores Inc. cut its profit forecast, adding to evidence that U.S. demand is cooling.In the US, hedge fund investors this week have a window of opportuni...
More About: Markets , Stock , Fall , Stock markets

ForeclosureRadar.com - like Zillow with vertical market research utility
2007-08-14 01:54:00
ForeclosureRadar's new UI mashes up foreclosure data parsed by properties in the various stages of default - Notice of Default, in auction, or bank-owned - plus Zillow estimates all in a Google Map. Maps are the perfect way to display foreclosure data that tend to clump in neighborhoods. Seeing ForeclosureRadar's maps, I realize Fidelity's Cyberhomes and Zillow could develop vertical products for foreclosures, new home developments, and maps that identify mortgage seasoning (years since last financing) and loan-to-value ratios. Then, real estate professionals can really mine these data... for example: Mortgage brokers can farm neighborhoods and tract developments that have histories of financing or refinancing in 2003 and whose occupants will require new loans when their 5 year ARMs are due to readjust within the next year. Investors or short sale experts can identify neighborhoods with high loan-to-value ratios that are ripe for default.Offer subscription services for onli...
More About: Research , Market , Market research , Utility

Explaining the Global Credit Crunch
2007-08-13 10:49:00
An Economics PhD isn't necessary to understand the global credit crunch now in full bloom since last Thursday. As a real estate professional, it's important to understand how to simply explain this latest permutation on the capital markets to your clients: Why the credit crunch? No institutions want to purchase any securitized loans (called CDOs - collateralized debt obligations ) that are tainted with the subprime loans now experiencing high rates of defaults. Last Thursday and Friday, France's BNP Paribas and Countrywide, the US's leading mortgage lender, sent up red flags that were unexpected - just one week ago both institutions posted press releases reassuring financial stability. So many warning signals have implicated financial institutions with potentially risky holdings (and that includes many of them) as categorically suspect.... globally. Wall Street investors "shoot first and ask questions later". Since money managers have no idea which institutions are exposed t...
More About: Credit , How-To , Global , Crunch , The G

The US isn't the only country with housing problems
2007-08-08 22:36:00
Living here, most Americans would think the US is the only country in the world having a housing problem exacerbated by a subprime crisis.(UK housing appreciation)Real estate prices globally have had similar appreciation rates, and lenders around the world (with the possible exception of France) created similar products to facilitate home buying and investing. The "housing boom and aftermath" is actually a global phenomenon. Any US media attention on the impact of the subprime debacle on other countries has been isolated to their foreign investment exposure to the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs ) used to secure subprime loans. So, did you know other countries are struggling as much as the US? My initial reaction was other countries would likely have tighter lending restrictions or government controls, so they wouldn't have significant subprime or alt-A type liberal lending issues. I google checked some sample queries like "France housing bubble" and couldn't find any citat...
More About: Country , Housing , Problems , The U , The O

Transcendent Web 2.0
2007-08-07 02:00:00
(Web 2.0 makes people smarter)The first part of this two part article is Explaining Web 2.0. Stage 3) Collective intelligence The higher order of Web 2.0 is the potential to understand a topic at an intensely detailed level. Many tech pundits believe we're far from the tipping point; that's an indication of where we are on the internet timeline (it's still early!). Ignoring the arcane details of the "semantic web", Web 3.0 and the visions of the ideal internet, Web 2.0 amasses various perspectives and data from the masses. This content is presented and filtered through Web 2.0 applications like blogs, wikis, mashups, YouTube (or any other video content bank) and Facebook - and over time, begin to fill out the soft details around the hard facts that are generally known about a topic. Before the web appeared, enterprises were seeking solutions to data integration - getting data to talk with each other via systems - geekthink at its apex. With Web 2.0, it becomes evident that data...
More About: The Future , Tran

Explaining Web 2.0
2007-08-06 08:58:00
Web 2.0 was a major topic at Inman Connect last week... I put together this article to explain Web 2.0 to the real estate community and how to use it (with lots of links). What is Web 2.0 and how does one participate? The simplest explanation of Web 2.0's importance in the schema of internet evolution is it empowers all users with a voice and expression on the internet. In order to participate, the users (both real estate professionals and the consumers they are courting) must learn the new languages of Web 2.0 in several stages. Stage 1) Tools are transitioning from the PC desktop to Online Services Web 2.0 is pushing (or rather, attracting) users to proactively interact with the online world as a public forum. Before Web 2.0, the real estate professional simply put up an agent website or sent out a flyer. Consumers, if interested, then began a private offline dialogue with the agent. All this activity was performed using desktop email and publishing products... and ...
More About: Technology , Web 2.0

Giant Steps - a diversion
2007-08-05 01:47:00
Inman Connect was a wonderful experience last week... I'm recouping.. here are two interesting videos of one my favorite musical pieces - Coltrane's Giant Steps... Giant Steps movie (click for the high quality version) by Michal Levy (Really for geeky musicians!)
More About: Diver , Version , Dive , Diversion

Realogy on Yahoo! Real Estate
2007-08-02 14:48:00
Inman is great fun... I'm not real time blogging, nor even real time twittering like I thought Conferences are interesting for insider talk commonly known as gossip... yesterday, I found out before this morning's press release that Real ogy will be replacing Prudential (*not true, see footnote) as partner in Yahoo ! Real Estate . Realogy apparently convinced Yahoo! that they would "open up" the listings site by allowing users to view all data without registration. Consumers hate registration...even the San Jose Mercury journalist who interviewed the Prudential agent who emailed, and then called her because she had to "register" before seeing more information about a property. She mentions that the agent said only 2% actually expressed they were in house buying mode... it seems like a poor marketing strategy to alienate much of the other 98% potential clients just to possibily snare those 2%.Free, open information will boost the credibility of Yahoo! RE... Realogy seems ready to leve...
More About: Events , Real Estate

Welcome to San Francisco
2007-08-01 01:17:00
Inman Connect has officially launched and today, I got the chance to introduce my Sellsius brothers (fresh out of that blog camper!), Teresa Boardman and Todd Carpenter to the best Pho shop in San Franc isco (a 5 star shop that is devalued by Yelp reviewers for its hole in the wall appearance). I was surprised to hear they never tried Vietnamese Pho (pronounced fuh), a noodle soup made with beef broth and various cuts of beef topped by fresh bean sprouts, basil and lime with a squirt of Sriracha hot pepper sauce, a full meal for $6-8. I speculate that Pho shops, already ubiquitous in the City and the Vietnam towns of SoCal, will become the next big ethnic fast food novelty spreading eastward to cities with significant Asian populations. I see them in Sacramento now... Hello finally to all the familiar faces that came alive from those 75x75's at tonight's bar run. Here's a cool map mashup guide of chic things to do in San Francis co.
More About: Events

Business cards > Rolodex > Outlook > Facebook
2007-07-31 10:03:00
Contact management is the killer app of a real estate agent's business. Basically, it's nothing more than huge databases of potential clients... targeted with some sort of drip marketing campaign amid the hopes that one of them will think of calling up when they decide to buy or sell a home. Here's the latest on contact management... and a few tidbits on business obsolescence: BUSINESS CARDS are disposable I threw out every business card I stockpiled in a drawer last month. Here's how I now manage my contacts: All my most relevant and current contact data today are contained in a database at HighriseHQ, an online contact management system. Any other online system will likely do. Most of my contacts in the two social networks I participate in - Linked In or Facebook - are bloggers and others who have simply embraced social networking. I barely maintain these networks, just adding in the relationships for now. All of my past contacts are backed up in Outlook . Note that ...
More About: Business , Cards , Look

All about Inman Week
2007-07-29 23:35:00
Inman Connect San Francisco, starting this Wednesday, August 1 at the Palace Hotel,  will be the focus of real estate this week. I'll be monitoring activities that fall within my range of vision through Transparent, but I'm assuming the main resource centers will be Connect's Facebook group, and the official Connect blog. I've been inviting a lot of new Bay Area bloggers to Blogger's Connect, the first official "pen pal party" of the nation's real estate bloggerati. I'll be acting as a kind of InviteShare and letting conference goers of some of the extracurricular activities going on... feel free to contact me about stuff - link to me at Facebook or TwitterInman's State of Real Estate Marketing Report Last week, Inman News and their fine reporting corps published the State of Real Estate Marketing 2007. The data itself, culled from the Inman readership, provides a mirror for Realtors to understand where they fit into the new marketing paradigm that takes them more...
More About: Events , San Francisco Bay Area , Week , Inman

Stock Market Crash's Silver Lining for Bay Area Realtors
2007-07-27 08:54:00
Another simple concept nobody is discussing... stock market crashes are good for some real estate markets, like the San Francisco Bay Area. Today's 310 point crash in the Dow is about the corporate credit crunch... bonds that back current LBO offerings, formerly called junk bonds back in the 80's, can't find buyers. Today's news was just plain bad... sliding new home sales, reinforcing the continuing saga of foreclosures and builder red ink just added fuel to the fire. This market crash feels like a panicky knee jerk reaction, that's why it bounced back from its 450 point drop. I would venture to say no one knows whether this is the beginning of the bear market or a temporal correction. LBOs aren't directly relevant to today's real estate markets. Simply put, everybody knows there is a lot of investment capital in float that migrates en masse from stocks to bonds to real estate and back again. Treasury yields are dropping as a palliative to cushion the housing markets' woes...
More About: Realtors , Stock Market , Market , Silver Lining , Silver

US Real Estate starting to look attractive to overseas investors
2007-07-25 16:54:00
No one is really out there talking about the wave of global real estate investors starting to eye the US market. Google "global real estate investors" and search through the news and blogs... there's no news about the wall of investment money ready to wash ashore into prime real estate markets in the US. It's a contrarian's dream - the media talks about how the subprime crisis is dragging down the US housing market, but just like in the San Francisco Bay Area, the US market is also somewhat bifurcated. Housing stock in the poorer neighborhoods of cities are impacted by subprime related foreclosures, but much of the market is still chugging along at stagnant appreciation rates. Here are some reasons why overseas investors think US commercial and residential real estate is attractive: 1) Transactions in the US are less risky than in closed, opaque real estate markets like China: The United States has the most transparent and liquid real estate market - Cushman Wakefield 2) Upwa...
More About: Estate , Real Estate , Real , Investors , Active

Using Google Maps to make your site a local go-to destination - part 2
2007-07-24 10:09:00
Home made mapping isn't difficult. Last week, I created a simple, crude Google Map using Google MyMaps that displayed the conditions of the Bay Area housing market, and realized agents could market themselves as local authorities by developing similar maps for their website or blog. Providing a set of simple mapping tools that display best restaurants, architectural history, bus transit and best walks can position your blog as a go-to neighborhood resource... exactly what you want as a real estate agent. Here is a short list of resources Google Maps Mania - blog devoted to uncovering new and interesting mapping applications. Sidebar lists a variety of mapping tools/services that provide local content ideas for real estate agents wanting to create similar maps. For example,Historical San Francisco - displaying and explaining historical landmarksNext Bus SF - bus transit mapSan Jose Gas Prices -  requires manual updating... some sort of feed or mapplet functionality is nece...
More About: Site , Local

Second Space - an Internet Strategy
2007-07-24 09:04:00
SecondSpace 's newly launched real estate websites Resortscape and Landwatch are more than meet the eye. On the surface, both sites continue the online trend towards targeting narrower, more selected real estate audiences to encompass second homes and land purchases, respectively. Other reviewers today may focus on the application design and feature aspects... I'll focus on Second Space's internet strategy and how they plan to tackle real estate. 1) The internet is most efficient connecting buyers and sellers in different and distant physical locales Simply put, SecondSpace's initial real estate strategy is to leverage the internet's big differential advantage in nationwide real estate marketing - figuring out how to identify, buy and manage a property in a locale too far to drive to. It's two entree sites demonstrate this advantage - Resortscape and Landwatch facilitate the connection of buyers and sellers who will usually reside in different and distant locales. They are po...
More About: Internet , Strategy , Econ , Rate

Bifurcation in the Commercial Leasing Market
2007-07-23 13:15:00
Following up on the bifurcation of the Bay Area housing market, David Chavez of Colliers, San Mateo, addresses similar duality found in the commercial leasing pricing at Future of Commercial . Long time owners of commercial property have a decided pricing competitive advantage over those owners who just purchased properties at the prevailing price levels.Related articles:Home pricing bifurcation happening world wide: UK House Prices Increase at Slowest Pace of Year (except London) July 24Bay Area housing market bifurcationTechnorati Tags: commercial real estate, commercial leasing, bay area commercial leasing, colliers, david chavezAdd to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |
More About: Market , Leasing , Merc

An Ingenious Video Contest
2007-07-21 21:03:00
Mashable alerted me to a video contest that is way too compelling - Takkle, a high school sports community site, sponsors contests with sports companies like Spalding, Sports Illustrated and the NBA-backed Hoop It Up neighborhood basketball competitions to get users to submit videos of themselves making the most consecutive three point (college distance btw) shots. The winner gets to participate in a 3-point shootout with NBA players. I swear this will get tens of thousands of aspiring shooting artists, even coaches, to set up video cams in the gym or playground just to record that serendipitous hot streak. The current winning most shots video is 6 consecutive shots... easily beatable... and that's the attraction. Takkle will add video contests for other sports and plans to add celebrity contestants to the mix. This is the next iteration of user generated content as an avenue to celebrity. Here's how it applies to real estate marketing: Real estate 2.0 companies of all colo...
More About: Video , Contest , The Future

Using Google Maps for Marketing Local Expertise
2007-07-19 09:45:00
Epiphany ! I immediately realized after posting the previous article on Bay Area Market Bifurcation that real estate professionals can use Google Maps to continually update their clients on the status of their local housing markets. Click on the map above to link to my Google Map of the Bay Area Housing Market. I can easily update or add more commentary, add pins to show, say, recommended open houses for the week (and explain why I recommend them), and use appropriate Google Mapplets to create an ongoing personalized "mapsite" for my client base, reachable by a permanent link on my web/blogsite. Finally, the map can be marketed online to attract traffic. I built this Bay Area Market map (in about an hour) to answer a question on Trulia Voices. I now notice Trulia Voices readers are clicking on the link to see the map.Now, if only Google Maps will allow readers to add their own comments, update the map like a wiki or subscribe to map changes via an RSS feed... or allow users to em...
More About: Marketing , Local

Bay Area Market Bifurcation
2007-07-19 08:39:00
(I originally wrote this article as a reply to Pete Flint's question on Trulia Voices about the current direction of the Bay Area housing market... I reposted the answer here in order to show the map and links) The latest word on the Bay Area housing market - bifurcation - def: forked or divided into two parts or branches (click on map to link to commentary on the Bay Area housing market... hint: click on the shapes)The current market obeys classic supply and demand - the limited supply of higher priced housing ($1mm+) in demand cities like San Francisco, Burlingame and Palo Alto maintain a seller's market where multiple offers (we've heard instances of up to 40 on the Peninsula) are still common. The large supply of entry level housing ($700k and lower) in counties like Solano and those in the Central Valley were being bought by folks priced out of that San Rafael to Cupertino corridor (trace a thick line between the two ...
More About: Market , San Francisco Bay Area

The End of Armchair Investing
2007-07-18 09:28:00
Bigger Pockets alerted me to the lawsuit against the Marshall Reddick Real Estate Investment Club. I was waiting for this to happen. "Armchair investing" is based on series of seminars and meetings where developers and agents tout $100k-$200k properties for sale in states like Alabama to equity rich California investors. Investors, usually newbies, come to these 3-hour seminars and meet with the agents to purchase property in as little as 15 minutes. When I first attended one of these seminars last year (the subject of one of my first blog posts), I found it mind boggling that such transactions were performed based on trust that the "network" was offering an ethical and real deal. This is a reputation sell. Complete trust is obviously necessary for a transaction that is tantamount to buying 3-5 brand new BMWs in 30 minutes. I expected the first lawsuits would destroy the credibility not only in the Marshall Reddick network, but the other investor networks like Nouveau Riche and th...
More About: Investing , Chai

Project Blogger Review
2007-07-17 23:32:00
Caleb Martini contacted me last week and asked if I might provide a penultimate sendoff review for the Project Blogger s. Caleb really did wonderful work coordinating the contest... I appreciated Caleb's thought to offer, and am eager to do so. I must admit I was not active enough with Project Blogger due to personal business convergence this spring. My friend and Project Blogger London Whitted experienced the same convergence and we'll continue to work on the Future of Commercial blog. With this review, I lump all the new Project Bloggers into one group and make four conclusions. I try to discuss what I think are the pitfalls of new bloggers. 1) Content is king... and it's too tricky to judge content I'll say it simply... blogs are read for content. Design, amazing pictures and videos, and widgets enhance a blog's presentation. The specifics of whether this article or widget works is subjective and the judges performed their reviews according to their own personal code. The ...
More About: Review , Blogging , Logger

Project Blogger - Withdrawal of Judgment
2007-07-17 19:02:00
I took on the role of Project Blogger judge at Caleb's request because I felt a bit guilty about my lack of participation in the contest thus far. I hadn't participated in any voting and kind of assumed we were out of the loop. Controversy ensued... Anyway, I'd like to withdraw Week 13's vote... apologies Caleb and the rest of the Project Bloggers... and do a reset for the final judge. Here are some final perspectives on some of the individual blogs: The Brick Ranch Not eye candy compared to the others... what is the Brick Ranch's charm? OK, I'll disclose a personal quirk that sometimes confounds those around me - I am genetically predisposed to vote for change...  I intuitively gravitate towards people,  ideas and memes that represent constructive revolution. I vote for symbols. Yesterday, I discussed how subjective judging is... I realize I broke the rules by judging the blogs in aggregate... I did yesterday's writing at 3:00am, far past my usual bedtime bu...
More About: Blogging , Judgment , Logger

Selling Snake Oil to China
2007-07-14 09:58:00
Bloomberg reports : US trying to sell scary mortgage bonds to China July 13 - The Bush administration is urging China's central bank to buy more government-backed mortgage bonds in an effort to sustain financing for U.S. home loans. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson is in Beijing to persuade the Chinese central bank to buy more securities from Ginnie Mae, a corporation under HUD that guarantees $417 billion in federally insured, fixed-rate mortgages. New York Times reports: China June Trade Surplus Renews Currency PressureBEIJING, July 10 ?The politically sensitive Chinese trade surplus surged to a record $26.9 billion in June, potentially heightening tensions with the United States and increasing pressure on China to allow its currency to appreciate.Conclusion: If China buys mortgage bonds (in US$) and appreciates its currency (thus devaluing US$), China loses. If mortgage bonds have subprime defaults, they lose value and China loses. Is t...
More About: Events , Selling , Snake