After more than a year of a housing bust, and eight months of a credit crunch, its hard to believe that the real estate market could get much worse. With suburbs turning into ghost towns, major Wall Street banks going under, and people losing their homes right and left, you would naturally think that we must be near the bottom.
And yet, if you look at the raw numbers you realize that the real estate market could get much worse. In fact, it is likely to get much worse in the coming years.
You don't have to believe me. Look at the numbers for yourself.
The dispute flared again at a labor conference in Dearborn, Mich., on Saturday, when SEIU protesters attempted to gain access to a ballroom where Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the nurses association, had been expected to speak. Several people were injured in a scuffle, including a 68-year-old woman who fell after being pushed.
DeMoro accused SEIU members and staff last week of stalking nurses association board members at their homes, looking through windows and shouting
There is quite a war going on with the California Nurses association. Anyone else know more details please post, but this is pretty amazing, these sorts of tactics of one union to another.
The economy is always a yin and yang, with one thing tending to counterbalance another. In the past I have frequently differentiated one such tension between the "Kudlow economy" for the top 20% (actually more like top 5%) which prospered mightily during the Bush/GOP malAdministration, and the "Bonddad economy" of the bottom 80%, which saw little or nothing of the alleged prosperity.
Until late last year, consumption in the Kudlow economy more than balanced the distress in the Bonddad economy. Then, the balance changed.
I am here to deliver a message which I fear will be as welcome as a skunk at a wedding reception: I believe the balance is about to change again, at least briefly, back in favor of the Kudlow economy. Even if you disagree strongly, I hope you take the time to consider the evidence I amass below.
In 2007, buoyed by strong performances by dynamic emerging economies such as China. India, Brazil, and Russia, world merchandise trade in value terms increased by 15 per cent to $13.6 trillion (£6.8 trillion).
The action is intended to address a crisis in the market that has forced Citigroup Inc.'s Student Loan Corp., SLM Corp. and about 50 other lenders to stop writing some forms of student loans. The companies cite increased borrowing costs, cuts in government subsidies for education loans and a lack of investor interest in securities backed by loans.
Without government action, demand for federally backed student loans would outstrip supply, industry officials said. About 7 million borrowers will need more than $68 billion in federal loans this academic year, according to Education Department estimates
Speaking before a panel of the House Financial Services committee, Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich. and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., urged action as Americans face rising unemployment and sluggishness in the overall U.S. economy
With stories of food riots in third world countries and $4 a gallon gasoline by this summer, inflation certainly seems to be rampaging. Whether this continues or not is not just of concern to market watchers. Aside from the incredible pain food inflation in particular puts on the poor worldwide, domestically US workers are never going to get raises to match inflation rates much in excess of 3%. So, the more necessities like food and gasoline go up in price, the less Americans have to spend on other things, like mortgage payments, health care premiums, or educating their children, let alone retirement savings. In short, the worse inflation stays, the more severe our recession will be.
I addressed this issue previously in a post entitled Why Inflation isn't the problem in which I said:
I want to bring your attention to a Frontline documentary called Sick Around the World. It is an interview, comparison/contrast of other health care systems in most assuredly capitalist nation-states.
Frontline allows all shows to be watched on line, in full. Journalist T.R. Reid documented an exceptional overview of other health care systems from capitalist economic nation-states. I hope others watch and we start analyzing health care policy proposals from an economics and populist viewpoint.
What astounded me is the lower costs that other nations have in comparison to the United States.
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