Housing

A few comments today: I like Sheila Bair.  She acts like a regulator should. When she warns of government exposure in mortgages, you should read the subtext as "if we in government are going to be the entire mortgage market, we…

Michael Burry, the former head of Scion Capital LLC, made a big name predicting the housing market’s decline by taking short positions against it as lionized in Michael Lewis’ book "The Big Short."

A great article in this past weekend's Washington Post highlighted many of the major issues affecting the US housing market and most of those issues point to lower house prices.  In particular, the self-reinforcing psychology of…

By Win Thin, Senior Currency Strategist, BBH Harvard Professor (and former IMF official) Kenneth Rogoff expects some Eastern European countries to face sovereign crises over next 2-3 years.  In a weekend interview, Rogoff predicted…

In a recent FT Op-ed, entitled "Estonia’s recovery defies economists and academics", columnist John Dizard argued that "the “internal devaluation” policy, which means cuts in nominal costs such as wages and rents, was very…

By Jake Weber While it may be hard to believe, the housing market hasn’t been the worst-performing real estate sector in terms of price. The index for the Case-Shiller Composite-20 index for residential real estate peaked in July 2006, and…

By Annaly Capital Management Existing home sales can’t go to zero, can they? They clocked in at 3.83 million on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis in July, down 27% from the prior year, half of the 2005 peak of 7.25 million and the…

If you haven't read Monday at the Treasury: an overlong exegesis, Steve Waldman's review of his meeting at Treasury with Tim Geithner, do so. It's a great piece. Steve's piece certainly showed how Tim Geithner and I agree on public policy.…

By Michael Farrell, Annaly Capital Management My fellow mortgage market participants, On Tuesday, I attended the “Conference on the Future of Housing Finance” hosted by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Housing and Urban Development…

By John Lounsbury. In a previous article reviewing my attendance at a small discussion group meeting with Treasury Secretary Geithner and other senior Treasury Officials, I left out one very important topic that was covered.  I also…