real-estate
Beware Clowns Bearing Financial Advice
A friend of mine sent me a link to a YouTube video (after jump) featuring Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, and longtime critic of the debt-fueled U.S. economy. The video is comprised of interviews on financial news channels in 2006 and 2007 – before the subprime meltdown morphed into a full-blown Wall Street [...]
Real estate market still sinking
Oct. 17,2008. New records are being set almost every day now - too bad they’re all bad. The Commerce Department just reported that construction of new McMansions and luxury condos dropped an unhealthy 6.3 percent - a decrease of 1.6 percent was anticipated.
This brings the home construction to the lowest level since 1991. And the [...]
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 [...]
Decline and Fall: the Wamu Saga
The Fed’s took my bank- for a day, it turns out. According to Marketwatch,
the federal Office of Thrift Supervision shut Wamu down yesterday
and put the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in charge
of dealing with what was left of this once thriving thrift institution.
The FDIC wasted no time, auctioning off remaining deposits- including
my $2.62- to [...]
Get out the Bubbly?- by Greg Strid
Sales of existing homes and condos increased 2.9 percent
to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 5.03 million,
crawling past the 4.85 million low-ball concensus estimate
from America’s practitioners of the dismal science- sometimes
known as economists. So, is it time to bring out the bubbly?
This marks the strongest showing for existing home sales
since last October. But, sales are [...]
Hillary’s Rate Freeze Screws New Homeowners
Hillary Clinton has been touting her bold plan to save the crumbling housing market, which would call for a halt on foreclosures for 90 days and, most alarmingly, an interest rate freeze on mortgages for five years. There’s only one problem: her plan will screw new homeowners by increasing mortgage interest rates. It would also [...]
The credit bubble blew up in ‘05
Sales of new homes fell 2.8 percent from December’s levels, and the median price of an American castle dipped to $215,000, which amounts to a 15 percent decline from year ago levels. I am actually tired of writing about the continuing dismal saga that is this nation’s housing market.
I wrote a rather long-winded essay in [...]
2007: Naughty Banks Spanked- by Greg Strid
The meltdown in the market for subprime mortgage
securities is fast unraveling into a banking crisis that
threatens to drag the American economy into recession.
During the final stretch of the greatest housing bubble
in American history, financial institutions were tripping
over themselves to extend excessive amounts of credit
to prospective buyers that were lacking in both
qualification and responsibility.
No document loans, [...]
Major Home Builder Hovnanian Reels from Losses
The real estate market’s death spiral is taking a heavy toll on publicly traded home builders. Hovnanian Enterprises, the embattled and bruised New Jersey-based McMansion builder reported another staggering loss in the quarter that ended October 31. The total amount of red ink generated amounted to $469 million, or $7.42 per share. This compares to [...]
Wall Street Relies Too Heavily on Interest Rate Cuts
A decaying housing market, deteriorating credit conditions, a sickly dollar, sky-high oil prices, two expensive and useless wars, and the looming mass-retirement of baby boomers are the main ingredients that will create the fuel for a tumble in US economic growth over the next year or two (or three or four, etc.)
Yet the party on [...]
