I’ve been noodling this post for a week and finally decided to buckle down and write it. Not because modifications and foreclosure moratoriums have become politically correct but simply because there aren’t any compelling reasons that I’ve seen advanced so far that convince me that it will do anything substantive to change the current economic […]

Sales of previously owned homes were down 3.1% in October from September and were 1.6% below the 2007 October sales number. The inventory of homes for sale fell from 4.27 million to 4.23 million. The median price declined to $183,300 nationally which is 11.3% below the October 2007 median price and takes the price level […]

Paul Kedrosky’s Infectious Greed had another great graph that illustrates why you don’t want to get to giddy over the stock market rally of the past couple of days. He’s had it up for a while, so I hope he doesn’t mind if I borrow it. Note that all but one of the other top 13 […]

Just about everyone had their take on the Citi bailout today and for my money, Felix Salmon did the best job of analyzing the deal and drawing conclusions that strike me as reasonable. In summary, he feels as if nothing was settled by the actions of the Treasury and that the end game is still […]

Ok, this is something of a blockbuster. Here’s the latest from the WSJ: The federal government agreed Sunday to take unprecedented steps to stabilize Citigroup Inc. by moving to guarantee close to $300 billion in troubled assets weighing on the bank’s books, according to people familiar with details of the plan. Treasury has agreed to […]