Does this bother you? What is the rate of foreclosures in your state?
Question:
Gas prices are going through the roof, making any unnecessary travel a burden to household budgets. Buying trends are slowing because people can't afford to go out and shop.
Dow Jones Market Watch News Service reported in the August 23 issue.
"Recession will be nasty and deep, economist says.
Housing is in free fall, pulling the economy down with it, Roubini argues. "This is the biggest housing slump in the last four or five decades: every housing indicator is in free fall, including now housing prices.
And the drought conditions are killing the ranchers and farmers in shortfalls of production.there just isn't any rain or grass.
"350 farmers and ranchers have signed a petition for drought relief that's headed straight to Washington DC. It's the third worst drought in our nation's history. http://www.kxma.com/getarticle.asp?artic...
Answer:
You have a lot of doom and gloom. You bring up a good point on the foreclosure situation. It used to be that people put at least 20% down on a house. No more. People do 100% financing and interest only loans. Too often people are living above their means. They spend too much on things they want, but do not need. How about the negative savings rate? This explains a lot more about the demise of the middle class because people have a spending problem.
I call it a buying opportunity...
low-income folks that actually manage their money wisely can finally buy some real estate..
Well, I live in MA. I don't know the forclosure rate here but I do know is is not 20%.
Gas prices stink here too and our unemployement rate is about 4%. Housing prices are high and coming down...at least I see nice homes on the market for a long time.
However, do not dispair...I have seen worse in my lifetime, i.e., Mortgages 9 to 14% leveling off at 8.3/4, standing in line for gas, unemployment 12%, all the men in the family were out of work at the same time, before the "pill" all wives didn't work, the school dept laying off art and phs ed teachers as superfluous. The Salvation Army serving coffee at the Unemployment Office in freezing temperature..
Too. the DOW is now over 11,200 and I remember when it took 35 years post WWII to hit the big 500... then 5 years 1000... then 10 years to hit 10,000 ...and then watch it drop 500 points in a day and everyone thought it was dooms day.but it wasn't.
When 9/11 happened the miracle was that Wall Street even got its doors open that first week and the DJIA went down somewhere between 500-700 pts for a day or so but came back up within a week.
As for the farmers, we have had droughts before. I have seen us spend our way out of a recession. It made absolutely no sense to me...but it worked? The supply side economist called it Supply and Demand.
I've seen gold hit 850.00 an oz and silver 15.00 oz furing the Oil crisis. We had the BCCI scandal way before the Enron debacle. That was just in my lifetime...there were scandals way back to the civil war. We have survivived. We've had rumblings about immigrants before.
What IS new on the horizon are these terror threats...I worry about Homeland Security being a cash cow for the wrong people. When I see only 2 guards on duty at Penn Station 2 years post 9/11... I have to ask myself...how can 2 military security guards handle a problem there when ove 100,000 perple pass through there daily? What kind of security is that? Where are their priorities?.
I see things I wished I didn't...that mess in New Orleans. We can go to the aid of another country and clean up that place for "democracy" but not our own people. These insurance companies are legally stealing money from people by not paying out. The levies they are rebuilding are not going to hold up. They said so today on CNN.
Look at the Big Dig in MA? The biggest federally funded engineering project ever in the USA, bigger than Hoover Dam and the ceiling is falling and killing people. What kind of workmanship are we paying for? All projects should come to a halt if that is going to be the result.
There are women and children getting no support here and we have little kids with bleeding hearts and lonely elderly people with no families nearby having to deal with a new world order they'll never understand..
No sir, don't worry about the housing slump...it will come back with avengence...just as it did before. 35 years ago you could buy a dream house for 35,000. If they are overpriced...they'll sit
there but the world will not come to an end over that..
As for the dooms day sayers...they all have a book to sell, a market to cash in on, or promote for their own selfish gain. It is business as usual that's all..
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