Shipping the housing market overseas. Long-term housing prospects hinge on an economic recovery for working Americans first – No housing bottom until middle class recovers a foothold in the U.S.
The housing market can have no sustainable recovery without the employment market improving. It is incredible that over three years into this crisis that there has been little focus on coupling employment with housing. Banks argue that many are simply not paying their mortgage yet they want the Federal government to ease lending restrictions. Who […]
Debt U – 4,800 colleges and universities in the U.S. and many are putting students into massive amounts of debt. The higher education bubble is getting to a point of bursting.
A few months ago a troubling milestone was passed. In the United States college loan debt outstanding has surpassed credit card debt. As of June 2010 $829 billion in student loan debt was outstanding compared to $826 billion in credit card debt.  Higher education by looking at a handful of metrics is clearly in a […]
How the mortgage interest deduction subsidizes the spending of wealthy families at the expense of middle class families. Average California mortgage deduction for filers is over $18,000 versus $9,900 in Texas.
One of the sacred cows of our economy revolves around the mortgage interest tax deduction. Home buying is heavily subsidized in the United States. The Federal Reserve has injected trillions of dollars in purchasing mortgage backed securities and other questionable assets all for the purpose of keeping interest rates low. Yet this is one area […]
Some American families are $133 a month away from Great Depression like problems – 1 out of 7 Americans receiving food assistance at an average of $133 per person.
The U.S. government is now spending roughly $5.6 billion per month on food assistance helping out 41,836,000 Americans. How bad is it for the lower economic strata of families in our economy? In January of 2007 we had 26,000,000 Americans on food assistance. The economic crisis has added 15,800,000 Americans onto the food assistance program […]