The real news is that foreclosure rates are the highest in eight years, and still rising.  Worse, the trend is a skyrocket--steeply climbing.  

Add to that the fact there are many ARM (adjustable rate) and IO (interest only) mortgages out there written on the assumption that the properties would be resold (flipped) at a higher price before the rate adjustments to the loans kicked in.  Well, starting sometime around last summer, the housing market went into a coma:  Prices quit climbing, and houses quit selling.  Flipping ground to a halt.  There are a lot of people, including small-time speculators, caught in mortgages that they will not be able to afford when their rates reset.  

The bloodbath should begin next summer.  Which is to say: mass bankruptcies of stuck homeowners and speculators.  

Meanwhile, watch those foreclosure rates.  Expect them to climb.  

When foreclosed houses go back on the market, they will press down prices further, exacerbating the crisis for the stuck homeowners, whose loans will be greater than the value of their collateral.  They will not be able to sell and pay off their debts.  

This is, likely, the Beginning of the End:  Mass foreclosure, mass bankruptcy, and the collapse of the US house of cards as one economic failure leads to another throughout the banking system.  Collapse of credit and housing-related industries will spread in a cascade of lay-offs and business failures to a collapse of the entire economy.  

By next summer it should be obvious to everyone, and a cause for general panic.  Plan your own life accordingly.  

There will be happy-talk to the end, even beyond--this might play out in as little as a year, but might take several years to reach bottom.  (The last housing crash took six years from bubble-burst to rock bottom.  The Great Depression took three years.)  Either way:  

Expect it to be worse than the Great Depression.  

Ingrate. Never in American history have so many people owned (a mortgage to) a home.

And as of this Tuesday past, across the nation, employed homeowners with dependents have reason to rejoice. For the unitary asshole has decreed they should receive "tax relief" on previously untaxed premium payments for health insurance.

This measure is sure to simplify price collusion among health insurers and provide a plethora of new investment products for any capital foreclosed by the mortgage industry.

Do Californians understand at all the good a life our government provides?

I read that article at SFGate this morning.  It seemed to imply that the sky is not falling and that this is just a minor bump.  Yet, underneath that very same article was a link to another article about how the housing market is a slump.  So, hmmm....it seems to me that a doubling of foreclosures and a soft housing market does not make for a strong and robust economy like dear chimp said we had.


There's a sense that people in America aren't getting the truth. - George W. Bush (Gee, ya think?)