AGBeat » Ken Montville

Fannie and Freddie – R.I.P. – what happens next?

Ken Montville — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 12:47:07 +0000

The handwriting is on the wall. Fannie and Freddie failed as Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs) and are now wards of the State. Talk about your socialism. It seems that when push comes to shove and the only people willing to take mortgages off the hands of private lenders (banks,etc.) are Government bureaucrats, well, I guess that’s OK. Unfortunately, even Congress — that bastion of [...]

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Why Real Estate Regulation Doesn’t Work

Ken Montville — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 14:51:10 +0000

Last week’s post about imagining a world without Government, er, interference in our lives got me to thinking a little. I try to avoid thought as much as possible (as my detractors will cleanly attest) but something in one of the comments caught my attention. To wit: AG could and should be discussing rather more specific real-estate related issues: home [...]

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Imagine There Was No Government (Apologies to John Lennon)

Ken Montville — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:11:08 +0000

OK. In the spirit of fellow AG columnist Fred Glick, this will be a short one. It seems from my last post (and I may be wrong) that there are a lot of people who think that the best type of Government is No Government at all or one so limited as to be close to No Government. So, class, [...]

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When a Simple Majority Equals Socialism

Ken Montville — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 12:31:42 +0000

It seems that the “‘Just Say No’ to Everything” party just can’t seem to get their story straight. First, everything the President was proposing regarding health care reform, addressing climate change or financial reform, was turning toward Socialism and the only way the “‘Just Say No’ to Everything” party could stop it was by threatening a filibuster which, in the [...]

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Immigration – Bringing it on Home

Ken Montville — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 13:00:38 +0000

Entrepreneurial Initiative You may have hear that the Mid-Atlantic States got a bit of snow last week. Two blizzards back-to-back that dumped anywhere from a couple of feet to almost 40″ depending on where you were and how the wind was blowing. The first phase was the one that hit hardest. 18 hours of straight snow and, for my wife [...]

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Playing With Numbers. Budgeting in the Age of Polarization

Ken Montville — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:00:28 +0000

This week the President rolled out his budget. There was a lot of hand wringing and posturing about the size of the budget — now measured in trillions — and the size of the deficit it projects. Yawn. Can we please talk about something else? Torturing the underwear bomber (not to be confused with the shoe bomber)? Maybe the snow [...]

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A Housing Fix or a Jobs Fix? Chicken or Egg?

Ken Montville — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 13:00:48 +0000

Now that health care reform is being given the slow morphine drip which can be characterized as assisted suicide or euthanasia Washington has turned its attention to jobs, jobs, jobs. It seems that everyone has gotten on the bandwagon about the unemployment situation (still in double digits) since there seems to be a “populist” uprising in the country. At least, [...]

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Scott Brown, Health Care and the NAR

Ken Montville — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 12:16:34 +0000

OK. We lost. The “‘Just Say No’ to Everything” party is doing their end zone happy dance all over the media and the pundits are foretelling the doom and disappearance of the Democratic Party. Senate Minority Leader, John Boehner, is saying health care reform is dead. Christopher Dodd, retiring Democratic Chair of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, [...]

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Onward to a New Decade – Predictions for 2010

Ken Montville — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 12:28:43 +0000

When the ball came down on Times Sqaure to usher in the new Century we didn’t vaporize as many had thought (remember the Y2K hysteria?). Will the same be true for the second decade? Some predictions (please check back in December 2010): 1. Health Care Reform will either die completely in the conference committee or get so watered down as [...]

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Being ‘Friended’ by a Politician

Ken Montville — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 13:00:27 +0000

I was on Facebook recently, minding my own business (Well, ok, I was minding everyone else’s business. I was on Facebook.) when I got a “friend” request from from someone I didn’t know. Nothing unusual there. I’m sure we all get tons of requests from strangers. In fact, a vast majority of my “friends” are other Realtors who, I guess, [...]

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