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 […]
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 […]
Commercial Real Estate, Construction and Finance Employment: How Commercial Real Estate will drag the California Economy Deeper into Recession. 32 Percent of California Construction Jobs Gone.
California is heavily dependent on real estate. That should be of little surprise to you but many have a hard time understanding how devastating the housing crash is to employment in various sectors. California for 30 years relied on housing even though in many years, it was in a bubble. That is why in 2009 […]