Housing

What follows is a more comprehensive re-write of my take on the latest bailout proposals by the Obama Administration. I felt the original write-up was a bit rushed and one-sided. I have tried to outline the objectives of the bailout plans…

Economist's View: One of These Things is Not Like the Others Fed's balance sheet rises to record in latest week | Reuters Columbia Center misses mortgage payment | Seattle Times Newspaper FT Alphaville – Stacy-Marie Ishmael –…

David Rosenberg, Chief Economist at Gluskin Sheff, has recently given a couple of different views about the near term future for housing prices. These views are different only in degree: both are negative. Home Prices May Drop 20% Further…

Mortgage fraud was rampant during the housing boom. Regulators were asleep at the wheel during all of this. But now we are getting some indictments as WFAA News 8 in Dallas reports (hat tip Housing Wire). This television station did the…

I see Diana Olick’s recent comments about government mortgage modification programs as proof that these props will not work. She says: Despite extraordinary loss mitigation efforts that have resulted in the execution of approximately…

Meredith Whitney was on CNBC in London this morning. She concentrates her comments on mortgages and banking. She sees the winter lull as a harbinger of renewed softness in the housing market. Note: the FOMC statement today reiterated the…

John Hussman notes that the very large non-subprime Alt-A and Option ARM cohort interest-rate resets lie ahead of us and not behind us in his latest weekly market commentary. In my view, this is a very big problem for the US banking sector…

FT Alphaville – Tracy Alloway – Some useful things I’ve learned about Germany’s hyperinflation’ Another Real-Time Economic Indicator Is Rolling Over And Showing Contraction FT.com – Martin Wolf – Germany's eurozone crisis nightmare…

Ann Lee and Dan Alpert joined Bloomberg’s Pimm Fox today to talk about the housing market recovery. Lee, a professor of finance at New York University, was sceptical that population growth predicts any substantial increase in housing…

About a month ago I wrote a post called “The coming wave of second mortgage writedowns” the gist of which was that the big four banks (Citi, JP, BofA, and Wells) had a shed load of exposure to now worthless second mortgages. With many first…