S&P 500 Over Priced: With 97% of Companies Reporting Q2 Earnings the PE Ratio is Now at 129. The Most Over Hyped Market Rally Ever.
There is probably no better indicator of market volatility than the current price to earnings ratio of the S&P 500. The market volatility is spectacular and we are seeing more gyrations in this recession than we did during the Great Depression. Since March when the S&P 500 touched the 666 mark, the rally has boosted the index by 54 percent. Was this caused by stunning second quarter earnings? Absolutely not. With nearly 97 percent of all companies now reporting earnings for the second quarter, the S&P 500 PE ratio sits at 129. This is by far the most over hyped rally in the world.
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 mania started in 1979 and did not end until this decade. Our first taste of housing bubble glory came in the way of the S&L Crisis created by high flying loans in the 1980s. Yet we have never seen the home become a virtual cash ATM. Underwriting became so lax that getting $50,000 out of your home required a phone call and a few documents e-mailed to your Gmail account. That was it. Robbing a bank would yield less than simply raiding your own home equity.
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 talk. Yet this recession is making it particularly hard for people to find work. That is why we are seeing a spike in bankruptcy rates that rival those of 2005 when people rushed to file before more stringent guidelines were imposed. Even with the banking friendly rules, you can only squeeze so much out of someone who has nothing left.
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. You need to put this into context of your own household. If you as an average American spend more than you make, it will eventually catch up to you. In a more distant past, the American consumer did not have access to debt as they do now. So they in effect had the ability to run localized deficits. Americans took this notion of spending more than you earn to heart. Many bought homes, cars, entertainment systems, and other consumer goods that simply did not jive with their income. This can last for a few years but eventually it will catch up. Now we are seeing the housing bubble burst and bankruptcies soaring.