Here’s a couple of quick takes on housing. Reuters reports that the House has extended the deadline for collecting the homebuyer tax credit from June 30 to September 30. The Senate is expected to follow suit. Expect lots of contracts to be backdated. There doesn’t appear to be any way to kill this thing. Don […]
Archive for June, 2010
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Nineteen Billion Dollars Is A Big Deal
Posted by Tom Lindmark on June 29th, 2010
The blogosphere is having conniptions over Scott Brown’s announcement that he won’t vote for final passage of FinReg because of the $19 billion tax on banks that was incorporated at the last minute. The recurring theme is that $19 billion is a small amount of money and that anyway it’s going to be levied on […]
Italian Economist Reveals That Government Caused The Whole Financial Mess
Posted by Tom Lindmark on June 27th, 2010
An Italian economist has finally pinpointed the cause of the recent crisis. From the WSJ: It was a bad weekend on the World Cup soccer field for the US and England. And a tough one for a pair of their political icons, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, whose regulatory policies were partly blamed by a former […]
Random Thoughts
Posted by Tom Lindmark on June 27th, 2010
Just a few thoughts on the past week. Fannie And Strategic Defaulters Fannie Mae managed somehow to make itself even more unliked in just about every circle with its announcement that it would attempt to bring back debtors’ prisons or at least make life very difficult for anyone walking away from their home. It’s becoming […]
More Bad Revisions For Economic Growth
Posted by Tom Lindmark on June 25th, 2010
The incredible shrinking recovery continues apace. In case you missed it, the latest iteration of Q1 GDP growth is now 2.7%. Remember the initial number was 3.5%, then it got chopped down to 3.0% and now, well here we are in the two’s. To add insult to injury the inventory growth is now reputed to […]
Blowout Preventers And Regulators
Posted by Tom Lindmark on June 24th, 2010
Holman Jenkins had a particularly good opinion piece in the WSJ yesterday on the reliability of blowout preventers. The bottom line is that they aren’t that trustworthy and a lot of people knew that. In typical Jenkins fashion, he points out that this fact has some angles that no one really wants to talk about. […]
Rock Bottom For New Home Sales? Let’s Hope So
Posted by Tom Lindmark on June 23rd, 2010
OK, you know the gruesome numbers on new home sales. Sales down to a SAAR of 300,000 – the lowest number recorded since 1962 when the statistic started to be tracked. March and April sales revised substantially lower and months of supply zooming from 5.8 in April to 8.5 in May. From Calculated Risk, here’s […]
