Home Equity Loans: $674 Billion in Total Loans. When The Household ATM Goes Out of Order. First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Even Fifth Mortgages.
Home equity was once seen as a cushion for a rainy day. People built up home equity as a means of paying off their home loan and saw it as a source of security. The days of the mortgage burning parties were all but lost in this housing bubble. The roots of the housing bubble […]
34 Million Americans Receiving Food Assistance – 6 Million Increase in One Year: Five Charts Showing the Status of U.S. Employment: Manufacturing Pounded, Participation Rate at Multi-Decade Lows, Part-time Employment at Record Levels, and Less Layoffs with few Hires.
There is something troubling when the theme of recovery is never tied to U.S employment. The American worker is suffering. This has not changed. The solace being offered is that less people are being fired. I suppose the 26 million American workers who are unemployed or underemployed might find some comfort in the jobless recovery […]
Why Budget Deficits Matter: Government at a $1.26 Trillion Budget Deficit for the 2009 Fiscal Year. Three Times as Large as Last Year and we still have Two More Months of Data.
The notion that deficits do not matter is a widely held and deeply ingrained economic philosophy. This line of thought took a stronghold in the 1980s and has seemed to stick to our ever-growing dismay. Yet budget deficits do matter if we are looking at an economic horizon that is longer than one fiscal year. […]
Stock Market Dollar Store: U.S. Dollar Down 12.5 Percent and S&P 500 Up 50 Percent since March. How the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve Juice the Stock Market.
Americans have missed one serious correction since the manic stock market took off in March. Since that time the value of the U.S. dollar, the bedrock of our economic system has fallen a stunning 12.5 percent. Currencies should not fluctuate this much especially the world’s reserve currency. Back in December, I talked about how the […]