“The housing crunch continues. The Los Angeles Times Land Blog has a stunning report on just how bad real estate prices have fallen in California during the past year. According to the California Association of Realtors press release, the median sales price of an existing home fell by a whopping 26.2% from a year earlier. The unsold inventory reached 14.3 months compared with 8.2 months for the same period in February 2007. Nationally, prices fell over the past year at a rate of $338 per week; in California, prices apparently fell at a rate of $2,788 per week. Such declines do not yet show signs of decelerating or even bottoming.

According to  WSJ article, “The credit crunch and market volatility have roughed up other multibillion-dollar hedge funds, which on average have lost about 3.35% this year, according to Hedge Fund Research’s daily global performance index. Platinum Grove Asset Management, the $6 billion hedge-fund firm run by LTCM alumnus Myron Scholes, has lost 13% this month on credit trades, putting it 10% down for the year, according to a person familiar with the fund.

Also, Farallon Capital Management LLC in San Francisco, which manages about $36 billion, has lost 5.6% this year through last week in its flagship Farallon Capital Partners fund.