John T. Reed’s news blog

Today’s WSJ editorialized that raising the FNMA/FHLMC mortgage limit in high-cost markets to near $1million will cause another subprime crisis. What? I read every book on that crisis and saw the movie and speeches and panel discussions including the people involved. . Raising FNMA/FHLMC limits played NO role in the subprime crisis. Here is the history of the limits. https://www.hsh.com/mortgage/a-history-of-conforming-fanniefreddie-loan-limits.html  The subprime crash was in 2009. In the years leading up to that the limit was raised to $417,000 in 2006 and stayed at that amount through 2016. As its name explains, the subprime crisis was caused by making loans...

I have an article condemning uncompetitive football plays because they are boring. By uncompetitive, I mean at least one team is not trying to do anything. Sounds like a soccer penalty kick. . One of my suggestions was adopted in the NFL. I wanted the ball moved back to the 25 for a kicked 1-point PAT. Leave it at the two for 2-pt. PATs. Did they adopt that because of me. I doubt it. . But I wrote the article before they did that. . https://www.johntreed.com/.../boring-football-plays-that... The result was what I predicted. PAT kicks stopped being automatic, a.k.a. uncompetitive and...

Today’s WSJ has an article about retirement. Its main point is the 4% rule is out of date. The new rule is 3.3%. That is the amount of your life savings you should spend during your first year of retirement. In one part of the article, they assume you have 50% of your savings in stocks and 50% in bonds. Jesus H. Christ on a crutch! I am not an estate-planning expert. The problem is apparently neither are those who say they are. In order to make a how much to spend your first retirement year recommendation, you have to...

Jason Zweig's WSJ column Saturday was titled "An Investor's Guide to Deflating Inflation Fears." . A more accurate title would be how common stocks and bonds did in past moderately high inflation. Who cares? What to be in and out of in inflation is quite well identified BY THE DEFINITION of inflation. . It is a loss in purchasing power of the USD. So you want to avoid USD-denominated assets, own assets not denominated in USD, and owe USD-denominated debt. Sufficient liquidity for routine and rainy-day expenses is also necessary. . Zweig says T-bills had a slight negative return from...

Today’s WSJ has an op-ed titled “Democrats’ Tax Plan Would Sink Real Estate” . Since I am a real estate investment expert, that is a pretty big statement. The authors cite the 1986 Tax Reform Act and S&L Debacle. . That was bad. I lost $750,0000. However, it did not “sink real estate.” It ended using real estate for tax shelter. And it destroyed the S&L industry. . But If I had owned just single-family houses, instead of apartment buildings, I would have lost little or no money. Thus my most recent book which says to only buy principal residences...