DC follies

When Main Street needed stimulus, they gave the money to Wall Street.

When we needed financial reform (smackdown punishment), they (sloowwwwwwly) brought us Health Care "reform".

We need a Jobs Bill / SBA loan guarantees, but they give us Finance Industry "reform".

Soooooo... when something to stimulate business and jobs finally rolls around, how deep into the new Great Depression quagmire will we be?

Hope, Change = Bad timing, Making it worse.

thw winds of Change, REO brooklyn

In sort of a BAD part of town (Brownsville/Ocean Hill), this "TLC" property was listed at $599,000 just as little while ago


Confucius say: you can't polish a turd

It just landed on Trulia.com as a Bank-owned foreclosure, "Buyer Assumes All Hpd/Aep Violations And Penalties" charmer listing at $299,000.

again... that's an asking price dropping from around $600K to $300K.

Holy Crap.

What a difference a day makes.
_____________________
UPDATE April 4, 2010
at $289,900 ... no takers

the brutal part of this ongoing flogging has not yet begun

Are you happy about the rise in home prices that have occurred in some places these past few months?

Well...

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com in a Reuter's interview said, "Home prices, as measured by the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, will trough in the third quarter of 2010 after declining 38 percent"

here are some other stats he was spouting:

"about 25 percent of single-family homes with mortgages have negative equity"

"7.5 million foreclosure sales will have taken place between 2006 and 2011. The majority of these sales, however, have not emerged yet, with 4.8 million foreclosure sales expected between 2009 and 2011"

"Foreclosure sales will increase, and home prices will resume their decline by early 2010 as mortgage servicers figure out who will not qualify for a modification"

oy.

unemployment rising

I got nothing snarky to add. This is all pretty clear.

Below is a comment from a post at the James Pethokoukis blog at Reuters - 12 reasons unemployment is going to (at least) 12 percent

I’ve had businesses for 30 years.

This is all very simple. Businesspeople are not stupid. They aren’t hiring because:

1. They don’t know what tax increases are coming.

2. They don’t know what new burdensome regulations are coming.

3. They don’t know what changes to the health care system are coming, and if perhaps they will be responsible for everyone’s COBRA or similar for years.

4. They don’t know if it will be harder to fire people in the future.

5. They don’t know if every employee will be allowed to join a union, increasing costs and headaches.

6. They don’t know what new procedures will be invented to upend the bond markets completely, overturning centuries of settled law.

7. They don’t know if Washington will unilaterally cut their compensation.

8. They don’t know if cap-and-trade will double their energy costs.

And on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

I can’t imagine hiring anyone until all this nonsense shakes out. I wouldn’t be surprised to see unemployment above 13%.

I can hold off generating taxable activity a lot longer than Democrats can retain Congress, that’s for damn sure.
- Posted by Chester White

Post Aocalyptic Urban Hell-Hole

Detroit goes from crap to crappier with more crap to come. Their Property Tax Foreclosure Auction was grim.

"On the auction block in Detroit: almost 9,000 homes and lots in various states of abandonment and decay from the tidy owner-occupied to the burned-out shell claimed by squatters... Despite a minimum bid of $500, less than a fifth of the Detroit land was sold after four days."

The Recession is OVER!!!!

The DOW is holding 10,000 this week. Yay!

Let's look at other figures.

1 out of 136 homes in the U.S. are in foreclosure.

Over 970,000 homes entered foreclosure in the 3rd Quarter of 2009.

oil prices are spiking. (speculation much?)

Sound familiar?

Add to that the "4 week moving average" of new jobless claims cresting 530,000...

...and you got a world of hurt.

as icing to the cake let's add: no specific and measurable finance regulation  and   nor reform of any kind.

let's chant it now: "DOUBLE DIP! DOUBLE DIP! DOUBLE DIP!"

double-dip recession

The experts weigh in.

Pimco manages $850 Billion in investment. Their CEO, Mohamed El-Erian, sees a 50% chance of a double-dip in 2010.

NYU economist Nouriel Roubini sees a small but rising probability for another dip.

Pimco Chief Investment Officer Bill Gross sees the possibility rising if the government pulls back too swiftly on stimulus programs.

We'll have to eventually pay for all this stimulus money. But if you crank taxes up, you discourage growth. Don't crank up taxes fast enough and the US dollar is worthless in 10 years. It's a precarious high wire act with a hungry bloodthirsty lion at each end of the line.

Richard Rahn of the Cato Institute breaks it down very clearly:

"As interest rates rise, as they must, and international commodity and other prices rise as the global economy recovers, real, after-tax, inflation and tax-adjusted disposable incomes will continue to fall. This means real consumption can rise temporarily but will likely fall again, giving the United States a double-dip recession."

Welcome to your lost decade, America.

CNBC, a leading whorish cheerleader for Conspicuous Greed has a completely different take; one filled with gumdrop wishes and endless wealth that can be found at the end of the rainbow. There you'll find wads of C-notes flowing from the golden star-hole of a Magical Unicorn's anus.

Here's some CNBC video. Let's see what steps out of the Clown Car: