A few weeks ago I put aside a draft post that I had prepared suggesting that the Federal Government should spend its money - not on bailing out financial institutions but rather on buying single-family homes from distressed U.S. homesellers. There would, of course, be some criteria as to which houses are purchased and at what price - I just had
Today's (September 9) editorial in The New York Times, titled "The Bailout's Big Lessons" claims that one of the reasons the government had to act to take control of Fannie and Freddie was that "investors deemed the government's commitment to Fannie and Freddie as either insufficient or not credible." The Times' editorial team then goes on to
I recently finished reading Ori and Ron Brafman's book, The Sway (Doubleday, 2008) the premise of which is that people make decisions (or don't) based on factors ("psychological undercurrents") of which they are not necessarily aware. (more...)
Yesterday's New York Times [August 13, 2008] reported that the funnel of investor money into United States consumer loans and related products is very sticky, if not entirely stuck. In "Mechanism for Credit is Still Stuck," Vikas Bajaj reports that: "A year after financial tremors first shook Wall Street, a crucial artery of modern money
It is hard not to get dispirited by data from the housing world. The national median housing price is down an unprecedented 16% from the second quarter of 2006 through the 1st Quarter of 2008. Not since the Great Depression have we seen declines of this magnitude. (more...)
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