Robert Shiller Says Double Dip “May Be Imminent”

| August 27, 2010

08/27/2010 The WSJ’s Simon Constable interviews Robert Shiller.  He says that an economic double dip may be “imminent.”   Shiller also believes that when the NBER looks back at the data, Q3 of this year will mark the beginning of the second dip of the recession. Ironically, since up to now the previous recession has never actually […]

One In 10 Mortgage Holders Face Foreclosure

| August 26, 2010

Modest is putting it bluntly…..There was some modestly encouraging news. The percentage of mortgage borrowers receiving foreclosure notices fell slightly to 4.57 percent in the April-to-June quarter.  Government efforts haven’t made much of a difference. Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who have enrolled in the Obama administration’s main mortgage-relief program have been cut loose […]

Just How Important Are Labor Costs…..Answer: Very!

| August 26, 2010

One reason of many for a tough road ahead…..        From JPM……The latest profit recovery (the three red dots) is reliant on declining labor costs like none before it. A profit recovery whose foundation is so reliant on sustained high productivity and low real wage growth should not command a very high P/E multiple.   A recent JPM […]

Illinois Retirement Funds Selling Assets To Pay Benefits

| August 26, 2010

The Canary in the coal mine.     Sounds like a bad situation is setting itself up here…… We went over some of this just a few days ago……It’s an unfolding disaster…. Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System, Springfield, plans to sell $3 billion in investments, or about 10% of its $33.1 billion in assets in the current fiscal year […]

Kicking The Can Down The Road….Then Stepping On It!

| August 26, 2010

Hmm…..Two months in a row, right in the middle of the traditional best seasonal time of the year for real estate….not one new home was sold valued above $750,000 in the whole U.S. according to David Rosenberg (he worked for Merrill Lynch and now resides in Canada as chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff). …..Attitudes towards […]

A Novel Idea, But Way To Logical To Catch On!

| August 26, 2010

In a bid to stem taxpayer losses for bad loans guaranteed by federal housing agencies Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn) proposed that borrowers be required to make a 5% down payment in order to qualify. His proposal was rejected 57-42 on a party-line vote because, …………Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) explained, “passage […]

So…..

| August 25, 2010

An economic recovery doesn’t look anything like this: www.dailyreckoning.com

Most Have Probably Never Heard Of NIKOLA TESLA, But He Was The Genius Behind Many New Inventions

| August 25, 2010

NIKOLA TESLA          THE GENIUS WHO LIT THE WORLD               Nikola Tesla was born on July 10, 1856 in Smiljan, Lika, which was then part of  the Austo-Hungarian Empire, region of Croatia. His father, Milutin Tesla was a Serbian Orthodox Priest and his mother Djuka Mandic was an inventor in her own right of household […]

Given A Choice, Commercial Property Owners Choose to Default

| August 25, 2010

The big players always knew that real estate loans were non-recourse loans. They walk-away voluntarily.  Remember  the commercial market is more professional than housing. As  more of the big boys bite the dust,  the huge bounce will  crest,  and down she comes. Pension funds, insurance companies, small banks, retirement accounts etc. get hammered. Commercial Property Owners Choose to Default By […]

When Dominos Fall…..Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System Enters The Death Spiral….Are Other Pension Plans The Next Shoe To Drop?

| August 24, 2010

Pension funds everywhere had better pay attention to what’s going on with the Illinois Teachers Retirement System.  It’s a wake up call……Hello, anybody there! When the financial crisis erupted, it first hit banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, real estate/ private equity funds, asset managers, and then hit pension funds. But pensions remain very vulnerable because […]

Wagons Hoe……Err, Seems Like The Old Wagon Trains West In The U.S. From The 1840-1850’s But This Is China In 2010

| August 24, 2010

Beijing has a 62-mile traffic jam near the Chinese capital that could last until mid-September.  It has become a symbol of the dark side of China’s automobile age. Officials say traffic has been snarled along the outskirts of Beijing stretching toward the border of Inner Mongolia since roadwork on the Beijing-Tibet Highway started Aug. 13.  The jam […]

Existing Home Sales Fall Hard In July – Can Anyone Be Really Surprised?

| August 24, 2010

Existing home sales fell to their lowest level in over 15 years in July as inventories soared.   It portrays a grim picture for the housing market absent government support. Home resales dropped a record 27.2%  or nearly twice as much as analysts had expected to an annual rate of 3.83 million in July, according to the National Association of […]

Todd Harrison Of Minyanville…..Seeking Solutions In An Uncertain World

| August 23, 2010

By Todd Harrison of Minyanville Seeking Solutions In An Uncertain World  We used to play for silver, now we play for life; ones for sport and one’s for blood at the point of a knife. –Grateful Dead We live in interesting times. During the last two years, a financial virus spawned and infected the economic […]

New Housing Finance Ideas…….Can It Work?

| August 23, 2010

Let’s keep this in mind…..Quoting PIMCO’s Bill Gross on real estate mortgages, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac….”To suggest the private market can come back in and take the place [of the government] is simply impractical. It won’t work”. Sources say the Obama administration is floating the idea  that any federal backing of mortgages be paid for […]

We’ve Talked About Demographic Issues Recently…..They’re Not Going Away Any Time Soon

| August 23, 2010

Bill Gross reviewed demographics in his PIMCO August Investment Outlook, and he showed a graph, “Deep Demographic Doo-Doo”…..Now we can read David Rosenberg’s take on the matter. Today David Rosenberg begins to tackle the U.S. demographic issues from his own perspective, with his preliminary conclusions,  not validating any current optimistic perspectives in the U.S. economy: “starting next […]

Quote Of The Day

| August 23, 2010

Milton Friedman:  “The most efficient way of spending money is to spend your own, and the least efficient way is to spend other people’s”…“If you go out to lunch and have to pay your own bill, you have what you can afford. If someone else is paying, you may just have the steak and lobster.”.

Credit Card Rates Are Climbing To New 9 Year Highs While Most Other Interest Rates Are At Or Near All Time Record Lows!

| August 23, 2010

One more reason that the average person on main street has no chance,  and that’s official! Interest rates continue to drop for the U.S. Treasury, large companies and home buyers, but for most of the 381 million U.S. credit-card accounts borrowing rates have been flying to the upside at an alarming pace. Amoung the reasons:  […]

Hours Worked Index Heading South In A Hurry

| August 22, 2010

The Phillie Fed report was just awful. Buried in the details was the fact that the hours-worked index is collapsing, consistent with previews to past recessions. Very worrisome. (From my favorite slicer and dicer of data, Greg Weldon: www.weldononline.com) Bottom line? It is going to be a tough environment for the next 6-8 years. That […]

U..S. Sounds Alarm At China’s Military Buildup

| August 21, 2010

So, what does our government (boneheads) expect.  The emerging new economic power of the world is China.  They are also the largest holder of our debt (by the way, this sets up the potential of financial warfare).  Doesn’t logic say that military power will follow!  It might behove the United States NOT to sell Taiwan […]

HAMP Not On A Ramp

| August 20, 2010

HAMP stands for Home Affordable Modification Plan…… The key here is that these borrowers are still up to their eyeballs in debt after the modification. From Treasury: HAMP Servicer Performance Report Through July 2010 According to HAMP, there are 255,934 “active trials”, down from 364,077 last month. There is still a large number of borrowers in limbo […]

Just A Theory

| August 20, 2010

Quoted from Art Cashin on the floor of The New York Stock Exchange Yesterday, there was a bit of floor buzz on a Bloomberg TV item.  The story was that when the President headed off to vacation, he assigned two top defense aides to follow him. That raised some discussion about whether an Israeli move […]

PIMCO’s Bill Gross Has A Big Idea…..Question: Is It Fair To Save The Irresponsible At The Expense Of The Prudent And Conservative?

| August 20, 2010

  Aug 20, 2010     PIMCO’s Bill Gross Has A Big Idea…..Actually JP Morgan might have started these thoughts.   Question:  Is It Fair To Save The Irresponsible At The Expense Of The Prudent And Conservative?    Where is the bonus for being fiscally responsible?   Auh, there is none unless your in financial trouble! At Tuesday’s […]

Fidelity Study Says A Record Number Of Hardship Withdrawls From Retirement Funds Are Taking Place

| August 20, 2010

We’re sure that everyone has the best intentions to pay these hardship loans back, but……. A new study by Fidelity says record number of workers tapped their retirement funds and made hardship withdrawals from their accounts in the second quarter. According to the Fidelity study, “Among the 11 million workers whose 401(k) plans are run by Fidelity, […]

CBO Says Its Own Budget Estimate May “Significantly Underestimate” Short-Term Deficit Outlook

| August 19, 2010

Congressional Budget Office director Doug Elmendorf who said that in reality the budget deficit could come in much higher than the just disclosed estimates, and the recent economic data releases have been “more negative” than data factored into the projection. Which, in government talk, means that the real deficit will likely come at least 20-30% higher, […]

Commercial Property Sounds The Alarm

| August 19, 2010

 U.S. commercia real estate mall prices fall almost 11% in second quarter.            Question……To whom would one sell commercial property to if forced in this environment?    The red ink is going to be massive.  The plunge is on.  Let’s hope the powers to be never require this stuff to be marked to market by the small banks or pension funds […]

Greece On Edge As Austerity Measures Backfire

| August 19, 2010

A scary setup……Greece is just the beginning, not an end, we have started a spiral.  The dominoes are now falling one by one.  Life will get a lot harder for the entire world including here in the U.S (we haven’t even got to the austerity part here), we’re now entering the twilight zone.  The solutions are […]

Change In U.S. Employment During 10 Postwar Recessions

| August 18, 2010

Personal Savings Rate Looking Up

| August 18, 2010

Banks Could Face Up To $179 Billion Of Losses On Loan Buyback Demands

| August 18, 2010

By David Mildenberg and Jody Shenn Aug 18, 2010 Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are among 11 lenders that could suffer $133.8 billion in combined losses as mortgage-bond investors and insurers demand refunds for soured loans, according to an analysis by Compass Point Research and Trading LLC. That’s the base estimate by analyst […]

Must Watch Kyle Bass Interview On CNBC

| August 17, 2010

From Zerohedge.com     08/17/2010 The one must watch interview of the week (if not of the year) features Hayman Capital’s Kyle Bass.  Bass, who correctly called the subprime implosion (and profited handsomely from it) as a iconoclast contrarian to conventional wisdom, tells David Faber that “given my outlook on the world, I don’t know how I […]

U.S. Household Debt Dropped 1.5% In The Second Quarter

| August 17, 2010

American households pared their debts last quarter, closing credit card accounts and taking out fewer mortgages as unemployment persisted near a 26-year high, a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York showed. Consumer indebtedness totaled $11.7 trillion at the end of June, a decline of 1.5 percent from the previous three months and […]

Pimco’s Gross Urges `Full Nationalization’ of Housing Finance

| August 17, 2010

Big changes coming to the housing market.  One thing you can be assured of, this will end badly, it always does when the government gets heavily involved.  “To suggest that there’s a large place for private financing in the future of housing finance is unrealistic,”  “Government is part of our future. We need a government balance […]

Matterhorn Asset Management: There Will Be No Double Dip… It Will Be A Lot Worse

| August 16, 2010

The ECRI index is an important leading indicator. It has now fallen for 10 straight weeks. There are three insurmountable problems in the US economy that are of a magnitude and gravity which can only be remedied by money printing: Federal and state deficits will soon escalate at an exponential rate. The US Federal debt […]

Berkshire’s Sokol Says U.S. Economy Faces `Painful Period’ of Debt Unwind

| August 16, 2010

Debt unwind means deflation! The U.S. is facing a “painful period” in the next five years as homeowners and governments unwind debt built up during the housing boom, Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s David Sokol said today.  “All of that just feeds into a slow-growth environment,”“It’s going to be a painful period”  “People have been shocked into […]

Distribution Of Net Worth….Getting Current Using Fuzzy Logic

| August 15, 2010

Even after looking at the market’s rebound from the lows of 2009, nest eggs remain severely impaired.  As of the first quarter of 2010, net household assets—homes, 401(k) plans, pension assets and other investments minus debts—stood at $54.6 trillion, down an average of 18% from the end of 2007.   We actually think the losses are higher but we’ll […]

Baby Boomers And Money Not To Spend

| August 15, 2010

  More at:  www.wsj.com

A Broad Concentration Of Wealth — And Benefits — At The Top

| August 15, 2010

A major class struggle lies dead ahead!   The gap between the super-rich, the wealthy and “the rest of us” has widened, forming what is in essence two Americas.  Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty have reported that the top 10% of earners took home about half of all income.  According to Moody’s Analytics research, the top 5% […]

FHA Makes Some Changes…..But These Changes Won’t Solve The Problem Of “To Little Money Down”

| August 15, 2010

The FHA is almost broke, is government supported and they back 30% of all loans outstanding….To make matters more interesting, in its 76-year history, the FHA has never required a credit score from borrowers.  (No wonder they’re broke).  At a 580 credit score and above, borrowers would be eligible for a 3.5% down payment (still ridiculous).  It is well below scores […]

GDP Contributions….State And Local At Bottom Of List

| August 14, 2010

 

‘Junk’ Bond Issuance Hits Record

| August 14, 2010

This couldn’t be a worse investment for the average person, they call them Junk Bonds for a reason. Take a guess why!  It will end in a very bad way.  U.S. companies issued risky “junk” bonds at a record clip this week, taking advantage of keen investor (idiots) appetite for returns (fools gold) amid declining interest rates and […]

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