Frontier goes Chap 11...

[Andy]

Tariffs = bad, free trade = good.

I'll give you a mulligan on this one. WAY too simplistic and easy for me to tear that apart.
Does this mean that you're in favor of Open Skies?

Trade surpluses or deficits are unimportant, because the basis to measure them disregard the movement and input of human capital and concentrate only on hard goods.

I'm not trying to dog you here because I think that most people share that misconception. The balance of trade numbers are divided into two different categories; 'Balance on Merchandise Trade' and 'Balance of Services.' Combined, they give us the balance of trade. Please note the following .gov link: http://www.census.gov/indicator/www/ustrade.html
Note that both goods and services are included in the trade figures.

We can argue econ all day long, but I'll leave you with one point: human capital is not measured well (some say at all). Microsoft's value is not in its capital assets on the books, the value is in the brains in the organization. What's the capital value of the Google engineers?

You're mixing different measurements. Human capital is considered an asset, just like a building or car. Human capital is an intangible asset. It appears that you've confused human capital with services.
If you're trying to measure human capital on a balance sheet, here's a good read: http://www.afcpe.org/doc/vol1512.pdf
This is a separate discussion that has nothing to do with international trade balances. Foreign countries also have human capital; it's not measured in trade balances, only the end product of a service provided.

 

[Andy]

Interesting discussion Andy... thanks.

Had judgment day with the my accountant a few weeks back and discussed this point. In CA (unsure of other states, but it varies as Lear mentioned) your ORIGINAL first is non-recourse. However... and a big HOWEVER... when you re-fi, your loan is now recourse in CA!

This recourse will act as an important brake in the downward housing pressure in many distressed neighborhoods.

FWIW ... I'm reading 2012 for the subprime mess to run its destructive [global] course.

BBB

BBB, good hearing from you again.

So the recourse loan is taking root? That, along with 20% down payments, are going to be the norm for home loans when this is over. And I think that HELOCs (home equity lines of credit) are going to be rarer than flight engineers.
The result of mortgages being recourse loans is that the family that defaults on a mortgage will have to declare bankruptcy in order to not be in debt for the rest of their lives. With the way that the BK laws were rejiggered several years ago, it's tough to go straight chap 7; you will normally have to go chap 13 which means that you will have to be paying back your creditors for five years.
While a bankruptcy will screw up your credit, it's gotten a lot easier to repair your credit. Even in a recourse situation, walking away from your house isn't always a bad move. A friend of mine in the DC area is underwater by more than $100K. I pointed him to www.youwalkaway.com.

Making mortgages recourse will slow the decline, but I don't think that it will stop it. By traditional measures - ratio of housing expense to income - housing is overpriced and needs to decrease. Housing prices got inflated with artificially low interest rates (risk was underpriced) and exotic mortgages.
While subprime is pointed to as the reason why the housing market's going down, the Pay Option ARM is going to end up being much more destructive in the long run. Those are deadly. Throw in SISA (stated income, stated assets) and NINA (no income, no assets) loans, otherwise known as liar loans, and we've got a whole lot of pain in front of us.