Dollar Resuscitation

The dollar was practically code blue last week. Bill Gross, head of PIMCO (largest holder of U.S treasury debt) dumped all of the U.S. debt they were holding in anticipation of the U.S. running out of buyers for their notes (primarily the government buying their own securities back). The evidence of a collapsing dollar and increasing interest rates were there. The dollar was declining, the printing presses were printing money as fast as they could, gold and silver were rising, and the government was spending. Japan's earthquake was and is very tragic, but to some degree it provided a momentary breath of life for our currency, at least in the short run. The U.S. announced that it will continue to buy up its own debt. Translation, apply a butterfly bandaid to the huge gash and hope it holds the bleeding for a while. I personally think we'll hit 8-10% mortgage rates by the end of the year, but for the next 3-4 months we have a reprieve. I see gold and silver prices continue to fluctuate slightly, but not far from where they are trading now with a dramatic rise in the fourth quarter.

Creature from Jekyll Island

This will be my first Blog. I titled it Creature from Jekyll island because this financial book I read two years ago changed my financial outlook completely. I have been a real estate property flipper for 12 years now and it's certainly been a roller coaster ride. In 2009 we flipped 550 homes with a skeleton crew, I'm still not sure how we pulled it off, it was an extremely mad pace. This put my total properties flipped over 12 years to around 1600 homes in 15 states. When it comes to real estate I would say I am a very focused real estate investor, but late in 2009 things started to change for me, I pulled my head up out of the rehab projects and the daily grind of the trustee sales and started to worry about where the government was getting all this money to bail the banks out and where the real estate market was heading. It's then that I read this book. I didn't believe it at first, but then I did a lot of research and verifed the information and concluded OH CRAP he's right. This is usually my reaction to Glenn Beck programs as well. He's sarcastic but he's right. My blogs are intended to help shed some light on the financial situation of the U.S. as I see it and where I think it's heading. I spend a lot of time pouring over posts, articles, graph's and blogs through the week to keep a grasp on what's going on. Over the last year and a half most of the money I made was not in the real estate market but actually in Gold, Silver, Silver minning stocks and options. In the last few months I have witnessed some very interesting things regarding the financial condition of our country and I want to share the concerns I have in up coming Blogs.