Guest Bloggers

I spent some time this morning reading two articles in the NY Times about Obama's $275bn housing plan. I thought to myself that I wanted to know more about this plan. Is it a smart plan? What are the problems with it? How likely is it that this plan will be helpful in ending the decline in the housing market?

And my mind turned to a blog commenter named JLM who has left some of the best comments here about the pickle we are in with housing and how we are likely to get ourselves out of it.

So this morning I asked JLM to tell us what he thinks of the housing plan. He's agreed to do that and when I get his email I will post it to this blog.

He will be the first and only guest blogger to have posted here in the five+ years I've been doing this.

I still plan to post every day and please don't think I am trying to lighten my load.

But I do think that this blog is slowly turning into a community and its high time that some of the stronger voices get some air time.

Next up will be Steve Kane on IP, if he takes me up on it!

#Weblogs

Comments (Archived):

  1. stone

    The market fell below 7500 today. It’s the market telling us that they don’t like the plan and don’t have confidence in Obama as leader. Even the real estate short ETF (SRS) went up more than 5% today.

    1. Carrie

      The market spent the past five years while we were getting into this mess climbing higher and higher. The actions of the market do not make a sound barometer.

  2. Roman Giverts

    Fred,Clicked the link to JLM’s comments on your blog… his comments are like his own blog on your blog. Amazing.I finally get why disqus is so cool.

    1. daryn

      i think roman has hit the nail on the head here.. Somewhere between disqus and zemanta there is opportunity for comments and reblogs to be their own destination.

    2. fredwilson

      There’s a lot more that can be done to surface voices like JLM’s via disqus

  3. Michael F. Martin

    If you really want to get the inventors’ point of view, you should invite Nathan Myhrvold to guest blog. I bet he’d be up for it.

  4. Shane

    Good God, it’s up to 275B now? This is scary…

  5. Emil Sotirov

    Why not lighten your load. We don’t want a burnt out Fred in a year or two.The frequency of your posts is not what keeps me coming back. With the feeds and all, you don’t need a persistent mediatique presence to keep us “glued” to your blog. Don’t act as old media.You post (no matter how often), we’ll come.

  6. Guest

    We don’t need no NY Times nor JLM to tell us about the freaking Obama housing plan!!!!All we need is Rick Santelli!http://www.youtube.com/watc…Seriously, though, the level of discourse in America is getting more and more depressing… I had hopes that after the election people will cool off a bit and start looking at the situation in a more rational way…

    1. markslater

      totally agree -that chap is great to watch

  7. ppearlman

    u could hire an entrepreneurial editor to run a sister site where your community writes and even allow others to submit for approval and post the v best. great content w the right backing these days can become a force in publishing v quickly and i’d bet such an avc metablog would flourish organically… no brainer..

  8. andyswan

    The final verdict on this sham has already been delivered and got millions of views today and the #2 and #11 spot on Google trends because of the chord it struck: bit.ly/teapartyThe new socialist order can keep trying to take our money at gunpoint in order to prop up the irresponsible/unlucky/lazy/greedy among us who aren’t working their ass off to pay their mortgage….in order to further prop up the nanny state property tax receipts and lock down another dependent voting block….But at some point, WE are going to stop showing up. Stop paying. Start fighting back.This is the logical equivalent of giving a cookie to the kid that hit his sister on the head with a sippy cup.It’s mind-numbing that supposedly intelligent people find “solutions” in rewarding irresponsibility and punishing responsibility.The hypnosis is over…..ta-da! it was a Chicagoland Socialist the entire time!

    1. kidmercury

      now that’s the spirit! :Dregrettably though i think we still have a ways to go. i am truly amazed at how brainwashed the obama worshippers are. i thought slick willie clinton was a smooth criminal, but even with the saxophone that fool has nothing on obama. i almost have to admire obama for being such a great con artist. i know i couldnt do it!the new world order is just beginning though, and obama is just a front man for a larger and more sinister agenda. the only hope is for the american people to wake up, get informed, get politically active, and demand a return to the Constitution (i.e. limited govt, sound money, etc). things are only going to get worse — A LOT worse if the new world order agenda, which is openly stated, is to be believed (and there is not much reason to doubt them as all other aspects of their openly admitted agenda have come true and they continue to take actions consistent with advancing their openly declared agenda and no one is really trying to stop them).as always, it is the Truth that sets us free.9/11 was an inside job,kid mercury

  9. GL

    @stoneHow much better would the market be if McCain and Palin where at the helm? I’ll take my chances with Obama. He’s hungry and *trying* to make things happen. Will he stumble? Sure. Will he trip? Sure. Will he fall? Let’s hope not. We can agree to disagree on which side of the aisle we piss on. However, at the end of the day the world has and going to change and we’re all in the same boat.

    1. stone

      I agree that we cannot accept failure from Obama but can you honestly tell me that President Obama is doing well so far?

  10. Carrie

    I have a question for JLM and you as well. Would it make sense to set a floor for housing prices? Say for instance the government agrees in some areas the prices need to drop by atleast 20%, so any houses that are foreclosed on and are for sale for less than 80% of the last purchase price, they step in, buy the house for 80% of last sale value, then rent it out for the time being. Would this help stablise the markets by making it possible to value all of the mortgage backed securities etc?

    1. fredwilson

      I think that setting floors on prices is a bad ideaIt won’t let the market work properlyI’ll forward to JLM and get his take too

      1. Carrie

        Thanks for your reply. I understand it dosen’t let the market work properly, but the current plans involve distorting the market as well, and in part rewarding those who made poor decisions.

        1. fredwilson

          I like the idea of a damper better than a floorhttp://fredwilson.vc/post/8…