The $9.1 trillion bailout price tag – American households have lost $6.8 trillion in residential real estate values while mortgage debt has increased
“It takes two to speak truth, one to speak and another to hear.” -Henry David Thoreau For those following the housing boom and bust carefully, the solution to let prices correct is not a novel concept. That is why it is surprising to see headlines, four years after home values peaked and have been falling, arguing for...
US loses ground in competitiveness report
By JOE McDONALD (AP) BEIJING — The U.S. has slipped down the ranks of competitive economies, falling behind Sweden and Singapore due to huge deficits and pessimism about government, a global economic group said Thursday. Switzerland retained the top spot for the second year in the annual ranking by the Geneva-based World Economic...
Consumer Credit in U.S. Fell $3.6 Billion in July
By Vincent Del Giudice Consumer borrowing in the U.S. declined for a sixth straight month in July, indicating Americans are reluctant to take on more debt without faster job growth. The $3.6 billion decrease followed a revised $1 billion drop in June that was less than initially estimated, the Federal Reserve said today in...
Should United States debt be rated as junk bonds?
By Daryl G. Jones FORTUNE — A few weeks ago, Hedgeye, the investment research firm where I’m a managing director, hosted a conference call for our subscribers that posed the question, “Should U.S. Government Debt Be Rated Junk Status?” Given that debt issued by the U.S. government continues to trade...
More than 400 US Banks Will Fail: Roubini
By: Patrick Allen Even if the US and European economies manage to avoid a double dip, it will still feel like a recession, while more than half of the 800-plus US banks on the “critical list” are likely to go bust, according to renowned economist Nouriel Roubini of Roubini Global Economics. The second half of...
Why The Fourth Branch Of The US Government Needs To Be Abolished, And Why “Authority” Should Never Be Trusted
by Tyler Durden Yesterday we presented Dylan Grice’s thoughts on why economists and their opinions should be summarily dismissed as nothing but mere noise on the steep downward slope of a series of failed “authoritarian” policy decisions, which seek to validate one false choice after another, by presenting...
Sellers Cut Prices on 50% of Homes
By Sheree R Curry Homeowners are slashing prices more drastically and more frequently, according to recently released data from ZipRealty. The average price reduction is now 7.1 percent of list price. List prices dipped about $19,000 in August compared with July, across the 26 markets studied. On average, sellers made two price...
Small businesses feel squeezed by Obama policies
By V. Dion Haynes Last year, even as he struggled through the worst of the recession, Chris Upham said revenue at his District-based real estate and construction businesses doubled — allowing him to hire two agents. But Upham said he hasn’t increased his staff thus far in 2010 and he doesn’t expect to for...
Dangerous Defeatism is taking hold among America’s economic elites
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Goldilocks has played a trick on America. Growth is not warm enough to prevent hard-core unemployment climbing to post-war highs and sticking at levels that corrode the body politic, but not yet cold enough to overcome the fierce resistance of the Fed’s regional hawks for a fresh blast of stimulus. The...
Why Lessons From The First Great Depression Mean The Next Four Months Will Be Very Painful For Stockholders
by Tyler Durden Scott Minerd, CIO of Guggenheim Partners, parses through the years of the Great Depression, and focuses on the pivotal 1936, which contained in it the seeds for the destruction of the period of relative economic growth and stability from 1932 to 1936, and resulted in a plunge in the economy in the second...
Bernanke: Shut down banks if they threaten system
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told a panel investigating the financial crisis that regulators must be ready to shutter the largest institutions if they threaten to bring down the financial system. “If the crisis has a single lesson, it is that the too-big-to-fail problem must be solved,” Bernanke...
Lehman boss blames US for bank’s collapse
WASHINGTON — The former head of collapsed US banking giant Lehman Brothers lashed out at the US government Wednesday, claiming it could have prevented the firm’s collapse but failed to act. Dick Fuld — who became a poster child for the ills of the banking sector — demanded to know why the government had rushed...
Widespread U.S. hiring not begun: ADP’s Prakken
(Reuters) – Widespread hiring at U.S. companies has not begun as businesses remain worried about uncertainty over the future of the economy, Macroeconomic Advisers LLC chairman Joel Prakken said on Wednesday. Prakken was speaking to a teleconference of journalists after the ADP Employer Services report on private sector...
Construction Spending in U.S. Fell Twice as Much as Forecast
By Shobhana Chandra Sept. 1 (Bloomberg) — Construction spending in July fell twice as much as forecast, led by a slump in homebuilding that will depress U.S. economic growth. The 1 percent drop brought spending to $805.2 billion, the lowest level in a decade, after a revised 0.8 percent drop in June that wiped out a previously...
Obama Needs Your 401(k) to Balance His Budget
by Bob Adelmann The Obama administration is “taking the first steps to confiscate retirement dollars,” according to Dr. Jerome Corsi who predicts that the end result will be retirees with 401(k) plans holding near-worthless government debt “that will be paid off in a devalued currency worth … pennies on the dollar.” The...
Financial Depression Spreads Among Seniors
By Sherwood Ross – BLN Contributing Writer President Obama has U.S. taxpayers paying billions to meet the costly payrolls of 50,000 troops and 190,000 contractors in Iraq while 20-million-plus jobless are looking for work in USA and can’t find it. Among the hardest hit now are more than 2-million people age 55 and...
The U.S. Path to Collapse
National Inflation Association The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission today held hearings with former Lehman Brothers Chairman Dick Fuld. They are trying to figure out why Lehman Brothers was allowed to collapse, with the belief that the failure of Lehman Brothers caused the financial crisis of 2008. The truth is, the failure...
POLL: Unemployment Affects Three Out Of Four Americans
Mark Blumenthal Nearly three out of four Americans have been directly affected by the recession, either because they have been unemployed or know someone who has lost their job, according to a new survey. The report, prepared by Rutgers professors Carl Van Horn and Cliff Zukin, find that 73% of Americans have either been...
