The Very Expensive Home Buyer Tax Credit – Calculated Risk
This is no surprise and suggests that the extension and expansion of the home buyer tax credit will probably cost taxpayers over $100,000 for each additional home sold.
Market Defies Fear of Real Estate Bubble in China – The New York Times
“This is wild,” said Andy Xie, a former Morgan Stanley economist who is now an independent analyst. “By all the traditional measures, like rental yield, this is a bubble.”
Greek Protesters Clash With Police in Athens - The New York Times
Up to 7,000 demonstrators gathered outside as lawmakers debated the austerity package, which aims to save euro4.8 billion ($6.5 billion) with measures including higher consumer taxes and cuts to public sector workers’ pay of up to 8 percent.
Employment Report: 36K Jobs Lost, 9.7% Unemployment Rate – Calculated Risk
Note: the impact of the weather on the survey is unknown, but was probably minimal. Census hiring was 15,000. So 51,000 jobs lost ex-Census.
Good Grief! – The Big Picture
I suspect it’s possible that municipalities have been digging in, denying grievances in the hope of hanging on to one of their main streams of revenue. After all, how far is the typical homeowner willing to go to shave some bucks off his tax bill?
Fannie, Freddie May Ask Banks to Eat $21 Billion of Sour Loans – Bloomberg
The mortgage firms are looking at every loan more than 90 days past due and “asking us basically to give them all the documentation to show that it was properly underwritten,” JPMorgan’s Scharf said. “We then go through a process with them that takes a period of time, and literally it’s every loan, loan-by-loan, and have the discussion on whether or not we actually should buy the loan back.”
Broader U-6 Unemployment Rate Increases to 16.8% in February – The Wall Street Journal
The U-6 figure includes everyone in the official rate plus “marginally attached workers” — those who are neither working nor looking for work, but say they want a job and have looked for work recently; and people who are employed part-time for economic reasons, meaning they want full-time work but took a part-time schedule instead because that’s all they could find.
Mean Street: Don’t Be Brainwashed by the Housing Cult – The Wall Street Journal
It’s one of my favorite truisms that you can never be too cynical about Wall Street or Washington.
But after watching Bob Toll, CEO of Toll Brothers on CNBC this Monday, I’ll be adding home builders to that esteemed list.
