Like cockroaches the idea that somehow, someway people who can’t document their income should nevertheless be given mortgages just can’t be eradicated. The movement to resurrect this monster is gaining steam. From Clusterstock: Realtor.org: No-doc loans are particularly hard to get, locking out people whose incomes are derived from investments or who are able to […]
Archive for July 9th, 2009
Some Ideas On Financing Health Care Reform
This is from Politico.com. It’s a list of the various ways that might be used to pay for health care. I don’t think it requires any editorial comment but I can’t avoid at least one. If you think that this these taxes represent the end and not the beginning of what it’s going to take […]
G8 Calls For Quick Action To Lower Trade Barriers
I always hesitate to proclaim any pronouncement from gatherings such as the G8 as being promising or of interest or a positive step forward. Most of the time political reality pretty quickly neuters any good intentions they may have held. So I’ll go against my instincts and say that the communique on restarting the Doha […]
The Mountain Of Debt We Need To Eliminate
The Daily Reckoning had a chart up today that’s more than a little interesting. Take a look. Scary isn’t it. Keep in mind that this does not include real estate debt. The sheer volume that needs to be unwound is astonishing. I think the chart might, however, overstate the problem. It doesn’t appear to be […]
What Is Plan C And How Will They Solve The CRE Conundrum
The Washington Post has a good article on the Treasury Department’s new task force charged with closing the barn door now that the horses are long gone. It’s called Plan C and their job is to figure out where the next disaster might be lurking in the financial system. That’s how the Post describes their […]
A Better Unemployment Report That Really Isn’t And More Lousy News On Same Store Sales
A bit late getting this up today, so I’ll just post the numbers with minimal commentary. New claims for unemployment insurance fell by 52,000 to 565,000 last week. This was a big surprise. The four-week moving average was down 10,000 to 606,000. Those are seasonally adjusted numbers which is important and I’ll explain why in […]
The Latest Administration Spin On Fiscal Stimulus
It gets more difficult by the day to figure out exactly where the Obama administration stands on their stimulus plan. Early this week the spin seemed to be that we need to give the stimulus a chance to work, that only a small part of the money had been put to work and blah, blah, […]