There is apparent good news in a consistent decline of existing home inventory. DepotofNumbers.com shows a U.S. Metro area aggregate of just under a million homes declining 2.1 percent in just the last week. CalculatedRisk relates to-be-released NAR numbers as well as indicating a 16.8 percent decline in the past month. This certainly sounds like [...]
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Morgan Stanley downgraded European equities to “underweight” Monday, including an increase of their previous “underweight” status for European financials. MS reasons that financials remain until European governments obtain some form of bailout: ”Until we see the emergence of a credible sovereign backstop, the financial sector is likely to continue its long-run underperformance. . . .” In short: no bailout, [...]
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You thought $700 billion was a big number. Of course, when the curtain was really pulled back we found out the Fed had actually lent out over $15 trillion to many banks, corporations, and even international banks. It’s no doubt a loose cannon. Now we find out that Bank of America—which formerly took a measly [...]
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It is an economic axiom: when you subsidize something, you get more of it. For example, easy money piggy-backed on Freddy and Fannie guarantees flowed through banks and into mass housing construction. It was essentially a Fed-induced subsidy to the housing industry. There was a great boom for a while. Then the bubble popped, and now [...]
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Occupy Wall Street may be snowed out, but their representatives assembled are still as warm and cozy as any strange bedfellows. Is it odd that labor unions and civil rights attorneys are now after bankers? Of course, not. Democrat lawmakers Tom Harkin and Peter DeFazio are trying to advance a measure to tax financial transactions. The [...]
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