Last edited Sat Feb 2, 2013, 04:13 AM - Edit history (1)
...for now. Just remember to get ready for the next bubble that's about to burst as the Fed continues to buy Mortgage Backed Securities to keep the too big to fail banks afloat.
First time home buyers, the backbone of stability in the real estate markets, are down 175,000.
Despite the increasingly positive signs of market strength, there are reasons to be skeptical, after all, this is the second time that prices and sales rallied since the bottom fell out in 2006. The first rebound took place in 2009, when President Barack Obama initiated his First time Homebuyer program which provided lavish incentives for potential buyers to sign on the bottom line. The program sparked a frenzy of activity that reversed the direction of the market, but quickly petered out in a matter of months. Could today’s sudden surge in prices be another “false start” or is it the real deal? Only time will tell. But it’s worth noting that the market has never really cleared and that normal supply-demand dynamics have never been allowed to work as one would expect in a free market. In fact, housing is arguably the most maligned and manipulated market of all time. Mortgage rates are artificially low due to Fed intervention (QE3). Inventory is artificially low due to the banks withholding of distressed backlog. Down payments are so minuscule (FHA=3.5%) that homebuyers end up leveraged at a 30 to 1 ratio, the same as the big Wall Street investment banks prior to the Crash of ’08. And, finally, government-backed mortgage modifications (HAMP) provide generous refinancing to high-risk “underwater” applicants with LTV at 125%, a process that makes subprime mortgages look like a model of prudent lending. So much is fake about today’s housing market, that it’s a stretch to call it a market at all.
The derivatives market bubble was a carefully constructed house of cards, deliberately created with the help of multiple agencies and institutions. The private Federal Reserve had to artificially lower interest rates and inject trillions upon trillions into the housing market, the international banks had to invest those trillions into mortgages that they KNEW were toxic and likely never to be repaid. The Federal Government had to allow those mortgages to then be chopped up into derivatives and resold on the open market. The ratings agencies had to examine those derivatives and obviously defunct mortgages and then stamp them AAA. The SEC had to ignore the massive fraud being done in broad daylight while sweeping thousands of formal complaints and whistle blowers under the rug.
This was not some “random” event caused by uncontrolled “complexity”. This was engineered complexity with a devious purpose. The creation of the derivatives collapse was done with foreknowledge, at least by some. Goldman Sachs was caught red handed betting against their OWN derivatives instruments! Meaning they knew exactly what was about to happen in the market they helped build! This is called Conspiracy…
Bail outs to banks don’t necessarily result in lending to businesses and consumers. Why? Because the bail out money is either hoarded (i.e. remains bottled up in the banks in the form of record excess reserves amounting to $ trillions) or is loaned by the banks mostly to professional speculators and investors who realize highly profitable, quick returns in speculative markets (stocks, junk bonds, derivatives, commodities futures, ETFs, etc). The Fed’s QE money injections thus do not produce sustained economic recovery for the general economy. In the last 6 months a tsunami of money coming into the market” from deep-pocket speculators. That’s your “recovery” in a nutshell.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me!
Here's an article that is worth noting...
""Housing starts at 894,000 is near where they were at the depths of the 1981 and 1991 recessions and 60 percent below the peak in January 2006," pointed out Peter Boockvar at Miller Tabak...."
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49901568/Yes_Housing_Starts_Surge_but_Rentals_Are_the_Drivers
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How are Republicans fighting progress in America? Laying off state workers mostly people of colour. Its their strategy to make Obama Democrats look bad . If they (republicans ) cared for America they would be behind the President of All the United States. Obama a socialist??? no ,Far from that.
for clarification.
