Milton Ezrati, Lead Economist at Lord Abbott, opened Information Management Network “Distressed Investment Summit: Credit Crunch Investment Strategies for Institutional Investors” conference on Monday. From his viewpoint, the market is running on emotion, which is covering up current market fundamentals. And the market ran on emotion over the last couple of years, which previously covered… [Read more…]
March 5, 2009
It wasn’t Ali-Frazier or even Hagler-Hearns, but the live debate hosted by University of California-Davis Institute of Government Affairs last night between Michele Boldrin of the CATO Institute and Washington Univeristy and J. Bradford DeLong of UC-Berkeley – “Stimulus SmackDown: Can Deficit Spending Save the Economy?” – proved entertaining nonetheless. As you might conjecture based… [Read more…]
March 4, 2009
The Obama administration released the details of the housing rescue today, and the WSJ put together a nice “Fact Sheet” that I just reviewed. Here’s the money reward if you purchased a home you could not afford, or were a lender that eschewed the standard practice of lending to credit-worth people: Servicers that modify loans… [Read more…]
March 3, 2009
As the market continues to unravel and the socialist agenda of the current political administration moves farther along its path, my source of solace has been the late, great Milton Friedman. “Uncle Milty,” as he’s known throughout economic circles, had much to say regarding socialism, the government’s constraint on markets, and American business. Socialism in… [Read more…]
February 12, 2009
In case you missed it, Seeking Alpha posted a recent article I authored: http://seekingalpha.com/article/119580-can-we-expect-a-springtime-bounce-in-housing-prices I usually re-post the articles here, but this one was a bit lengthy with lots of graphs, so in the interest of time, I’m simply linking to the article from here. Enjoy!
January 18, 2009
This week, the Mortgage Banker’s Association released the “good news” of mortgage rates falling and loan applications rising. But is it really? The Mortgage Industry From the mortgage industry, there’s applause when mortgage rates fall and loan applications rise. Considered healthy, innovative, and robust in 2003, the longer terms effects of this outlook are now… [Read more…]
December 22, 2008
(Author’s Note: This article was also published on Seeking Alpha on December 25.) With the continual prodding by many to initiate 4.5% mortgage rates to pacify the current housing market glut, it’s important to distinguish the effects based on two categories of buyers: 1. Existing mortgage refinancing2. Home Purchase Mortgages Fundamentally, the problem with this… [Read more…]
December 19, 2008
Came across this article on Portfolio.com – “Against Lower Mortgage Rates.” The author, Felix Salmon, presents some good analysis, digging into Hubbard & Mayer’s oped piece in the Wall Street Journal this week and using some of their own research to build a case against the proposed 4.5% mortgage rate.
December 18, 2008
Earlier this week, I suggested lower price levels would spur housing demand far more than lower mortgage rates. Using John Taylor’s position that the Federal Funds Target rate was below the levels recommended by the Taylor Rule, it would appear that cheaper money led to the current housing glut but my conjecture is that cheaper… [Read more…]
December 14, 2008
(Author’s note: This article was published on Seeking Alpha on December 26.) I received a link to this article on Twitter from Paul Kedrosky, author of Infectious Greed, on John Taylor’s criticism of the Federal Reserve’s recent monetary policy. I was drawn to the post because of the chatter that I hear from residential mortgage… [Read more…]
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March 19, 2009
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