Should you walk away from Home Debt? – Irvine Housing Blog
Fed’s approach to regulation left banks exposed to crisis – The Washington Post
Bernanke, who was in charge of regulating the nation’s largest banks, told the audience that these firms were not at risk. He said most were not even involved in subprime lending. And the broader economy, he concluded, would be fine.
Deposit Insurance Fund, UNoffcially – Rolfe Winkler
I’ve juxtaposed that with the reserve balance on the Deposit Insurance Fund. It’s now negative, though that doesn’t mean FDIC is out of cash. And they’ve got another $45 billion coming this quarter, but for accounting reasons the reserve will still be listed as negative.
Stocks 1999-2009: Worst. Decade. Ever. – The Big Picture
The current horrific decade lost half a percent each year on average versus average annual returns of about 10-12% over the past century. Why? This under-performance is payback for the massive gains in the salad days of the late 1990s. As the table at right shows, the gains were far above median.
Home Prices Without Fed Support – BusinessWeek
The U.S. housing market has been on government life support for much of 2009. Thanks to the feds’ bounty of tax credits, purchases of mortgage securities, interest-rate cuts, and home loan programs, new and existing home sales are up. The median home price rose, to $177,900. What happens in 2010 depends on whether the market can stand on its own.
Bill Moyers Journal – Fighting Foreclosures with Steve Meacham (video)
STEVE MEACHAM: One of the unheralded things about this crisis right now is that there’s an awful lot of owners who come to us who cannot afford their home at the inflated value, at the adjustable rate mortgage price. But they have plenty of income to afford their home at the real value at a 30-year fixed. And so why not just give them the property back at that amount? If they’re foreclosed on, the best the bank that can do is sell the property at the real value. By definition, that is the absolute best.
If Deutsche Bank forecloses on Joe Schmoe the best they can do is to sell that property at real value. So if Joe Schmoe can afford the property at real value, why not sell it back to him? But the only reason the banks aren’t doing that is because of what they call moral hazard. They say basically that homeowners should be punished because they signed these loan documents.
These are the same guys who have run our entire economy into the ground and who have been rewarded with billions in taxpayer bailouts and have used billions of that money to give bonuses to the very executives that drove their companies and the whole economy into the ground. And they are citing moral hazard as the reason why they can’t resell that property to the existing homeowners at the real value. That is disgusting and hypocritical and in the extreme.
More homes are poised to hit the market – The Los Angeles Times
A debate has emerged among real estate professionals and economists over how big an effect shadow properties will have on housing prices and sales if lenders unload them onto the market next year.
Fictional Reserve Lending And The Myth Of Excess Reserves – Mish
The above hypotheses regarding “Excess Reserves” are wrong for five reasons.
Euro ‘Diktats’ risk terrorist response across Southern Europe – Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
“Activities by left-wing and anarchist terrorists and extremists are increasing in quantity and geographical spread in the EU,” said Europol.
Video: Goldman and Morgan Stanley were this close to bankruptcy
