The fact that Wall Street has returned to gifting executives millions of dollars in bonuses says that we are right back where we failed during the previous administration, EXCEPT the unemployment rate has gone up AND housing prices are continuing to fall. Unemployment is bad enough but ring the alarm for housing prices in decline. That American dream is buttressed on owning a home.
7 Reasons Housing Is Doomed (no M.F.)
It isn’t simply owning a home either but the ideal that home ownership was a path to becoming middle class. It gave your family stability and equity that you could assume risk against to start college loans or even consider retirement. That dream is over now for Americans. Until we regulate the brazen recklessness of Wall Street we will not be able to truly stabilize our economy. Putting Wall Street in a headlock isn’t the final solution either, however it is a start.
DP – Housing prices have actually stabilized and increased in the 2nd quarter according to the Case-Shiller price index:
http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/index/CSHomePrice_Release_082562.pdf
Dom C,
A Federal report says the opposite…
http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2009/10/19/daily88.html
The Fed report is for homes mortgaged by regular people (read: working class). That Standard & Poors article you dropped might be describing just the multi-million dollar joints which are still being built.
Case Shiller is actually legit. IIRC there’s an CS index for each of the Top 20 metro area US cities.
I agree tho that house prices could decline more from here. There’s not enough jobs, & far less jobs with the stability for someone to take the massive cost/risk/debt of a home. Mofos will get roomates ala the proverbial Mexican imigrant steez (no Reggie White / Rush Limbaugh/ KKKramer jic) if need be.
IIRC the long term history of housing prices is 3-4X median annual salary. If median salary ~40,K that would put the house prices at 120-160K for “regular cities” like Atlanta or Denver. Cities like NYC, SFO, etc will always be higher because of limites space on an island, mountains, etc, & because rich Saudis/Chinese/etc like to cop a 7th home there. But as US continues its fall off process, they might copp the 7th home in Dubai, Bangalore, or Rio de Janeiro instead of NYC/SFO.
Random thoughts off the dome [||], forgive any partial incoherence