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OPEIU meets with Fannie Mae

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Jim,

From your post:

"All the extra appraisal groups only appeared in the years just before FIRREA, when any kind of designation was required to get any business from the bankers, and mortgage brokers."

NAIFA was founded in 1961. Is that what you are referring to as " in the years just before FIRREA"?

Pretty long stretch, wouldn't you say?

Brad Ellis, IFA, RAA

I am only going on when I was approached to join by sending my fee, I did not really go and look up their incorporation papers. Prior to their soliciation I had never heard of them. So anything is possible. But it seemed I was getting a solictation a week from new associations.

Jim
 
Steve,
I appreciate the way you and David have disagreed but kept a professional tone.

Your paraphrase does not reflect what I thought I posted. It seems simple to me, but if the way I write it confuses people with degrees in finance, then maybe I better go back to the drawing board.
  • The transaction cost and risk of moving the pension fund GSE holdings is enormous (billions) compared to the potential benefit in dues (millions, maybe).
    No competent financial management team is going to endure that cost and risk for the anemic upside of impressing a few appraisers.
    The greatest likelihood is that the decision has already been made to reduce gradually the pension’s position in GSE bonds, and that claim that this move is being contemplated and made on behalf of appraisers is a marketing ploy (marketing device, whatever term).
    The GSE’s are not stupid and they will see through this.
    Also, this “news flash” was first released a year ago and I posted that it was a bluff and took the usual personal guff that come along with it. The announced deadline for “results” is passed. Nothing happened and that support the bluff theory.
 
David, you wrote,
“Anyone sexist (or stupid) enough to say thousands of Nurses don't have a clue what they're doing with the union?”
BTW, no one mentioned the nurses except you. While I can’t speak to your suggestion of nurse infallibility or the degree to which their situation is analogous to appraisers, there is an article in the LA Times that reminded me of your rhetorical question.

----------------------------
FROM LA TIMES
A blow to organized labor, Boeing Co. engineers in Southern California voted Friday to kick out their union after years of bitter internal feuding.
The decertification shuts down the small 56-year-old Southern California Professional Engineering Assn., which represented about 4,300 engineers at Boeing facilities in Huntington Beach, Long Beach and satellite locations.
"The union is no longer in existence and the contract is void," said the union's chairman, B.T. Klein, an electrical engineer. "It's disappointing. This is the end of an old and proud institution." National Labor Relations Board officials said the vote of 1,677 to 1,237 to decertify was one of the largest of its kind in decades. In 1998, more than 1,000 engineers at Lockheed-Martin Corp. in Palmdale voted narrowly to decertify their union, the Engineers and Scientists Guild.
The loss is expected to hurt organized labor by undercutting its argument that white-collar professionals can benefit from union membership.
Friday's ballot count at the labor relations board's offices in Los Angeles capped an emotional two-year feud that began when officers of the small SCPEA decided to affiliate with a larger national union, hoping to gain resources and bargaining clout.
After a search, two likely national unions emerged as candidates, and both were eager to take on the job.
But officers and members were split over the choice. In the end, top officers went with the 140,000-member Office and Professional Employees International Union, alienating backers of the rival union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace.
That split spawned lawsuits, unfair labor practice charges, competing Web sites, appeals to the AFL-CIO and, finally, the decertification petition. Supporters of SPEEA were joined by engineers who opposed any union and encouraged by Boeing management.
"We had the perfect storm," said Kevin Kistler, OPEIU's organizing director, who was recently named trustee for the local to try to build support before the vote.
Kistler said the union would review the results this weekend and decide whether to file an objection to the balloting. If not, he said, it would stay in touch with supporters and consider filing for a new election in a year.
"It's not a good day," he said, "but it's not the last day either."
Others said it was unlikely that Boeing engineers in Southern California would ever again support a union. They noted that only about one-fourth of the 4,300 engineers covered by the contract paid union dues even in the best of times. Now, after two years of bickering, that support would be even smaller.
"What we saw here was a blatant subversion of the democratic process," said Richard "Chip" Terracina, a SPEEA supporter who said he tried to "work within the union system" but eventually filed the decertification petition in frustration. "What we've always said is they've got to listen to the will of the membership. They never did that, and this is the outcome."
Boeing chief counsel William Hartman was thrilled by the outcome. He emphasized that the company was not actively involved in the decertification process, saying that "we've always expressed a preference to deal with our employees directly."
The Southern California Professional Engineering Assn. was created in 1945 by engineers at Douglas Aircraft Co., which through a merger later became McDonnell Douglas. The company was acquired by Boeing in 1996.
 
Jim McGrath writes:
”…you must be better than I thought, now you can determine people's motives. I always thought due diligence was doing reasonable research to discover the correct information.”
Jim also writes,
"One other point, in the past, all your rants about Bill Sentner were about his actions in your appraisal organization, but now your complaints are about the union. Which is it? Or is really just about Bill himself, and this is the only way you have to attack him? "

Jim, for a guy who questions the reasonableness of delving into the motives of others, you spend a lot of time in this thread speculating about my motives.

Despite how you may choose to interpret my posts, all my comments related to actions and policies of the AGA-OPIEU, etc, regardless of whom it’s President happens to be. NO comments were about Bill, per se. However, if he is going to be the only President the AGA ever has, then that is whom people will have to quote as a source for policy statements. Then, I suppose, anyone who has the audacity to question or disagree with those polices or statements can be defamed as a ranting attacker of Bill.

To my knowledge, the AGA is the only "appraisal" organization whose President and members post on this forum with messages about how the AGA is better than other organizations and why everyone should join. This is clearly SPAM. For whatever reason, the management of the forum has chosen to allow this to continue. If the AGA were to stop SPAMMING this forum, then you would not have to endure my "rants" about the Union and I would not have to endure your "rants" and other criticisms of me. I do not recall ever initiating any posts about the Union on this forum. I only respond to them. For a guy who knows about due dillegence, I am sure you would have no trouble reading this thread to figure out whom has been the target of the "attacks."
 
Steve,
I appreciate the way you and David have disagreed but kept a professional tone.

Your paraphrase does not reflect what I thought I posted. It seems simple to me, but if the way I write it confuses people with degrees in finance, then maybe I better go back to the drawing board.
  • The transaction cost and risk of moving the pension fund GSE holdings is enormous (billions) compared to the potential benefit in dues (millions, maybe).
    No competent financial management team is going to endure that cost and risk for the anemic upside of impressing a few appraisers.
    The greatest likelihood is that the decision has already been made to reduce gradually the pension’s position in GSE bonds, and that claim that this move is being contemplated and made on behalf of appraisers is a marketing ploy (marketing device, whatever term).
    The GSE’s are not stupid and they will see through this.
    Also, this “news flash” was first released a year ago and I posted that it was a bluff and took the usual personal guff that come along with it. The announced deadline for “results” is passed. Nothing happened and that support the bluff theory.


    • Steve, it's too bad you have failed to keep a professional tone. Again you mouth opinions but few facts. This is a bluff because they havn't moved at your opinon of speed. They wouldn't risk the expense, because you don't think they should. You really should be a financial advisor, instead of a lowly appraiser. With your training and expertice, you could straighten out Enron and all the incompetent companies of the world.

      Maybe you could even help the Wall Street Journal, they had an article the other day about the FannieMae FreddieMac bubble that may be about to burst, because of overinflated property values. Possibly the AFL-CIO financial advisors read it and think it is time to get out before the next S & L crisis. If that is so, that will help the appraisers, or is that just a ploy by a paper to generate readers.

      And if people with financial degrees are confused by what you say, how about us poor peons? Or is that who you are trying to confuse, because we don't have financial degrees, and you think we don't know the difference.

      Jim
 
Jim,
And your point is...
 
8)

Jim,

Steves outlining the fact that the AGA has nothing but promises, and that they talk a good talk but can't walk the walk does not require a financial degree. So far that's all the AGA has done is talk. No action. Just talk. What is that line "Show me the money"? All I have read from the AGA is a commercial for joining them. No thanks. I know enough to recognize a fact from fiction.

Keep up the good work Steve. Just because some are confused is no excuse to not cite fact and differentiate that from fiction, and the excuse of confusion may be an unwillingness to learn, when presented with facts that are easily understandable when one wishes to understand the essence of the subject.

Don Clark, IFA
 
8)

Jim,

Steves outlining the fact that the AGA has nothing but promises, and that they talk a good talk but can't walk the walk does not require a financial degree. So far that's all the AGA has done is talk. No action. Just talk. What is that line "Show me the money"? All I have read from the AGA is a commercial for joining them. No thanks. I know enough to recognize a fact from fiction.

Keep up the good work Steve. Just because some are confused is no excuse to not cite fact and differentiate that from fiction, and the excuse of confusion may be an unwillingness to learn, when presented with facts that are easily understandable when one wishes to understand the essence of the subject.

Don Clark, IFA

Are you saying that the AGA by itself with little or no support from many appraisers, has not accomplished more than the IFA, or even the AI? Or did you want to see FannieMae and FreddieMac admit they are outgunned before you will stop criticizing? I don't know who is more confused, you who can't explain your objections, or me, who can't understand why anyone would object to an effort to change some of the problems appraisers are facing.

I don't belong to the Union, and they aren't asking me to help them or even to give them any money. Why should I not root them on and hope they succeed? How is it harming me, or especially you?

If they don't suceed, will you then cheer that you shot them down, and ended the first real effort on the part of anyone to do something for the appraisal profession? Or will you stop and think, gee, what if we had worked together, what would have happened?

Think about it, is a grudge against Bill Sentner, the major factor in your life?

May God Bless you.
 
Don Clark says the AGA is all talk.

I am a member of the Guild, and a few years ago, I was glad that Bill Sentner was talking loud and clear, when I had a problem with the Arizona Board of Appraisal. The Board was way off base in coming at me, and I think Bill's "talk" went a long way toward solving my problem with the Board.

According to a recent newspaper article, the AFL-CIO has 125,000 members in Arizona. That's more than all the Realtors, all the appraisers and all the mortgage brokers in Arizona at least several times over. That's the kind of numbers that determine legislative outcomes.

I will always be a Guild member.
 
Hi folks,

I'm thinking about yesterday when the markets were down over 400 points before some smart fund managers began buying up some bargains.

Now some of you are presuming that the ploy of pulling funds from GSE MBS's is going to work. So, I'll tell you this:

1. The AFL-CIO is not going to pull any funds at all from these investments, UNLESS their investment managers determine they are bad investments. Those managers have a fiduciary responsibility to the union members NOT to do that.

2. Should they make that determination- that the MBS's are bad investments, or comparatively so, they will shift funds to buy "bargains" as they perceive them.

3. They, like many fund managers, may well be very shy about taking risks right now. Remember that they have different priorities than do general fund managers- they are dealing with pension funds. They do not need to be seen as superstars producing by enormous returns. They are judged by different standards and these portfolios are being reviewed very carefully by others, including the rank and file themselves.

4. Anyone who thinks they will make investment decisions for millions of members to press a point for whatever the relatively tiny guild membership is will be simply kidding themselves.

Sit back and think it through.

Pension fund managers did not limit the appraisals they order to union members as they were asked to do 2 years ago.

The union has not gotten any noteworthy portions of or full laws passed. They lost the PA fight over AMCs.

The strength of the AFL-CIO has not been used or available to the AGA apart from getting some meetings with legislators who simply listened and did nothing noteworthy.

I am guessing the same result will occur with the GSE's.

We will all be better off to wait and see what happens. Everything else is simply assumption that is not backed up by either fact or by history.

If you want to belong to any organizxation, it is your choice. No one should be chastized for those decisions- to join any particular group or not to join. But, do not translate hope into fact. They are very different things.

Brad Ellis, IFA, RAA
 
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