Refinancing debt into prosperity – most mortgage activity for refinances with applications up 97 percent from last year and car sales are down by over 50 percent from 2001.
Shuffling papers around on your desk does not mean you are being productive but might give the appearance of activity. Refinancing debt in countries in an insolvent position may feel good for the moment, but ultimately the position is unsustainable.  You buy yourself a window of opportunity. With the Federal Reserve pushing mortgage rates to […]
The desert mirage of easy housing profits – Phoenix Arizona home prices on track for four consecutive years of year-over-year home price declines. 55 percent fall from peak and nominal home prices back to 2000 levels. What happens when investors dominate the market?
The foreclosure epidemic in states like Arizona and Nevada is breathtaking and incredibly disheartening. Prices have cratered much more quickly than the methodical rise up in the last decade. Home prices in Phoenix now sit precariously where they did in 2000 without adjusting for inflation. These desert communities largely built on a dream, fast construction, […]
The wonder years – over 70 percent of GDP comes from personal consumption. For the past decade home equity and credit from other sources fueled growth because of falling household incomes. What happens when credit contracts and home equity evaporates?
In a debt based economy a credit crisis is similar to an uncontrollable virus spreading from house to house. The slow infection hibernated for decades until it went into a pandemic. It is troubling to see how the middle class is slowly being dismantled. However there is one silver lining of the home price correction. […]
The coming failure of Operation Twist – The Federal Reserve resurrects a program from the 1960s named after the Twist Dance. Appropriate timing for a Dancing with the Stars nation.
The Federal Reserve has literally run out of ideas. Operation Twist, a throwback to the 1961 action taken by the Fed named after the Twist Dance fad at the time, is now back in 2011. This time the Fed plans to purchase $400 billion of bonds with 6 to 30 year maturities while selling bonds […]