The Road to Financial Serfdom: The Official Disconnect of Main Street from Wall Street and the Financial Mainstream Media.
On Thursday with the S&P 500 inching closer to the 1,000 mark it is near impossible to silence the “recession is over” media hype. Of course, this is the same media that missed the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression but here they are predicting the end of the recession. The problem of course [...]
It’s the Jobs Stupid: Why There will be no Recovery until Employment Stabilizes. When Obvious Financial Truth Becomes Uncommon. New Nurses Competing with Old Nurses for Hours Because of Gender Unemployment.
It should be rather obvious that without any sustained job growth there will be no economic recovery. In the same breath, you will have someone tell you that this is no common recession yet when it comes to talking about the stock market they will tell you that in normal times, stocks recover before jobs. [...]
Atlas Vacant – The Commercial Real Estate Bust: Gearing up for a $3 Trillion Headache. Increase in Vacancy Rates and Higher Defaults.
The commercial real estate bust is going to be legendary. We are talking trillions of dollars. The attention of Americans is being pulled away by massive market volatility that has seen the S&P 500 shoot up 44 percent in four months. Yet the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve have kept their eye on this market [...]
Credit Card Companies Placing Financial Landmines for American Consumers: How I lost my 4.99 Percent Fixed Rate and got it Back.
Americans have a love affair with credit cards. Many Americans have more credit cards in their wallets than they do dollar bills. When 8,000,000 credit cards were yanked from circulation many consumers realized that this was a new era of austerity. Credit card debt otherwise known as revolving debt, peaked in September of 2008 at [...]
Negative Equity Nation for 1 out of 5 Homeowners: The Psychology of the 10 Million American Homeowners with Zero Equity.
Recent data suggests that the number one factor for walking away from a home is negative equity. For us to understand this dynamic, it is important to understand why someone would leave a home with a mortgage. According to the U.S. Census Bureau some 51.6 million owner occupied homes have a mortgage. This is data [...]
Bankruptcy Filings up 33 Percent over a 12-month Period: Total 12-month Total of Bankruptcy Filings 1.2 Million. In last Report, Filings up 27 Percent in one month.
Bankruptcy filings are soaring in the United States. In the last data point, we had 134,282 bankruptcy filings for the month of March 2009. Bankruptcy data usually lags 3 or 4 months but the trend is ominous. For the last 12 months some 1.2 million bankruptcy filings have occurred. Much of this is linked to [...]
The Doctrine of Preemptive Bailouts and the Biggest Bailout you haven’t Heard About: The U.S. Treasury Plan C and the $3.5 Trillion You will be Paying.
Last week a story which gained very little traction hit the financial newswires. The U.S. Treasury is working on an internal project informally called “Plan C” which seeks to deal with further problems in the economy before they occur. The anonymous report came out stating the administration is reluctant to commit any additional money especially [...]
S&L Crisis Part Two: Are We Repeating Mistakes from the S&L Crisis? Accounting Sleight of Hand and Mortgage Fraud.
During the savings and loan crisis (S&L crisis) of the 1980s and 1990s a total of 745 thrifts failed. If we look at the history of the crisis, total losses were largely saddled to the American taxpayer. It is estimated that some $160.1 billion was the total bill for the crisis with roughly $124.6 billion [...]
Housing and Banking Deception: 23,000 to 28,000 Foreclosed Homes kept off the MLS or Public View in California each Month.
The math in California housing simply does not add up. Given the amount of sales and monthly foreclosures over the past few months, it would appear that banks are sitting back while a gigantic backlog of foreclosures grows. A few in the media are calling attention to this obvious fraud but not many. The California [...]
The Second Derivative: Employment and the Mounting Job Losses. Measuring the Velocity of Job Cuts in the Current Recession.
In addressing the unemployment situation it is important to look at the velocity of job losses. In January of 2009 we had a stunning 741,000 jobs lost in one month. This by far was the biggest one month cut during the current recession but it wasn’t the biggest one month change. The worst month came [...]
