RECENT BLOG POSTS
Home equity loans are back as home prices rise. “Borrowers Tap Their Homes at a Hot Clip” blurted a recent Wall Street Journal Headline. It was bound to happen with rising home prices. Didn’t get a raise? or working two jobs to make ends meet and need cash? If you own a home you may be in luck. T...
06/09/2014
The European Central Bank just announced that they will be instituting negative interest rates. That means bank customers (banks holding deposits at the European Central Bank) will have to pay to keep their money there. Banks that pay the ECB to hold their Euros are not going to want to pay inter...
06/04/2014
Artificially low interest rates encourage companies to use their cash to buy back their own shares to drive up their share prices, rather than to invest in their businesses. This explains why the economy is showing limited growth but the stock market is hitting record highs. According to CapitalI...
06/01/2014
Stocks Soar While Housing Market Stumbles and GDP Turns Negative Something is terrible wrong According to Fed Chairs Bernanke and Yellen quantitative easing was supposed to boost the stock and real estate markets and produce a “wealth effect”. The real estate market is slowing down with pending h...
06/01/2014
Over the past five years the Fed has printed $4 trillion to buy near worthless mortgage backed securities from otherwise bankrupt banks and to fund 90% of the U.S. government’s deficit spending with the stated purpose of boosting real estate and stock prices. The Fed now appears to be realizing t...
05/28/2014
The United States is able to incur massive deficits funded in part by foreign purchases of U.S. debt and more recently and increasingly through the Federal Reserve’s (the Fed) purchases of T Bonds as part of their multi-year/multi trillion dollar quantitative easing (QE) program whereby they prin...
05/25/2014
http://www.foxbusiness.com/economy-policy/2014/05/16/housing-starts-up-sharply-permits-highest-since-2008/ New home sales are way off their peak of 6-8 years ago and are still at levels last seen in the 1960' and 70's when the population was far less numerous. The Law of Small Numbers: http://sma...
05/16/2014
The Obama Administration and federal regulators are concerned that the housing “recovery” is in jeopardy. As we noted last month the housing recovery that never was, is over. Existing home sales are falling as are mortgage applications, home ownership rates and new home construction.  Five long y...
05/14/2014
The 1st Quarter 2014 GDP Number 15:27-18:20 The first quarter GDP was up just 0.1% in the first quarter and the weather was blamed for the poor economic performance. Cold weather can't derail an entire economy. Recent tornados in the south may also be blamed for a lack of 2nd quarter GDP growth, ...
05/03/2014
Who Will Buy The U.S. Treasuries That The Fed Stops Buying? With the Fed seemingly determined to end its multi year/multi trillion dollar money printing quantitative easing (QE) program, many have pondered who will buy the U.S. Treasuries at the current prices in order to maintain low interest ra...
05/02/2014