credit
Credit is Tight, but its NOT the Bankers’ Fault
I came across a fantastic article earlier this week in the Washington Times – who would have guessed? Like everyone else, I’m quite distressed by the current global financial disaster. I’m also confused as to how it all started, and what solutions the government and private sector should seek in order to halt the economy’s [...]
Citibank Announcement
1.28.09- It’s nice to see that even after losing $28 billion in just over a year and getting almost $350 billion in federal investments and guarantees, Citibank (aka: Shitibank) has not changed its money-losing ways. I just got a fancy letter from this troubled bank informing me that my line of credit was increased to [...]
Prophetic Cartoon – Housing Crushes Economy
I created this cartoon in 2006. The following year marked the top of the real estate market, and as it turns out, the end of excessive financial leverage. In early 2005 I began studying the effects that the explosion of exotic loan products and the deterioration of lending standards were having on home prices. I [...]
Six Months of Job Losses and the Credit Bubble
Poof! That was the sound of approximately 62,000 jobs vanishing from the U.S. economy last month. June marks the sixth straight month of job losses. As for the month of May’s half percentage point spike in the unemployment rate to 5.5 percent – it stayed the same for June as well. Whaddya know? That huge [...]
Market Meets Reality
The stock market met reality yesterday – it did not go well. Record high oil prices and a warning about inflation form the Federal Reserve smacked sobriety into U.S. investors. Oil traded at $135 a barrel and the minutes from the Fed’s late April policy meeting implied that further interest rate cuts are unlikely [...]
Pending Home Sales Plunge
More bad news emerged on Wednesday from the beleaguered housing market. The National Association of Realtors reported that pending sales of existing homes collapsed by 12.2 percent in July. The Pending Home Sales Index, as it is known, is based on actual contracts signed, and it swooned to register 89.9- the lowest level since September [...]
Giant Mortgage Lender Files For Bankruptcy
American Home Mortgage, one of the largest mortgage lenders – and a glaring symbol of unsound business practices- filed for bankruptcy early this week. Mortgage lenders like American Home Mortgage are responsible for helping to inflate the largest housing bubble in American history. Now investors are running from the crappy mortgage-backed securities originating from these [...]
The End of Easy Money- by Greg Strid
The End of Easy Money
Stock markets around the world have been slapped
around the past few days, with the worst carnage
occurring today. The venerable Dow and S&P indexes
were each down by 2.3 percent, and the tech-laden
Nasdaq was off 1.8 percent. Losses of 2 percent were
the norm across continental Europe; the greatest pain
was experienced in Great Britain, [...]
Take my house, please!
The housing market has been cooling off as of late. The sale of single-family homes declined 5 percent from June to July, and are off 11.4 percent from a year ago. Although the national median home price rose 1.5 percent over the past twelve months, there are signs that the frothiest coastal markets are [...]
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