Wall-Street

Wall Street v. Real Estate: Which Is More Trustworthy?

by Florence Foote | April 20, 2010

Wall Street (in particular, the S&P 500) has clearly been on something of a tear lately. But as they say in the fine print in all those ads, past performance is no guarantee of future performance. While the same could be said about real estate, at least with real estate, what you see is what [...]

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Commentary

Bailout Economy Has Roots In Obscure Law

by Rob K. Blake | May 31, 2009

Many believe the mortgage and housing crisis which triggered an impending financial system meltdown according to the former Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, would need a Congressional “blank check” to avert disaster. At least, that is what Ben Bernanke and Mr. Paulson told Congress who then gave them the “bailout bill” including the $750 Billion asked [...]

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Economy

Heads I Win, Tails you Lose: This Week’s Housing Data and Mortgage Markets

by Steve Heideman | April 13, 2009

Last week mortgage rates were exactly flat confirming my forecast that rates may not rise for the third week in a row. The week started off strong but ended with a whimper for 2 main reasons: Wells Fargo’s announcement of record $ 3 Billion in earnings Mike Mayo’s downgrade of the banking sector. Mike has [...]

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Commentary

Obama’s Economic Adviser, Larry Summers, Too Cozy With Wall Street

by Rob K. Blake | April 5, 2009

Image via Wikipedia A new story is breaking about Larry Summers, the President’s hand-picked Economic Adviser and mentor to Tim Geithner, the new Treasury Secretary. It seems that Mr. Summers has a very tight relationship with Wall Street firms receiving over $5 million from a hedge fund and $100s of thousands in speaking fees from [...]

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Real Estate

Real Estate / Financial Crisis Turns Deadly; Crisis-Related Suicides Expected To Rise

by Charles Feldman | January 7, 2009

The subprime mortgage turned banking turned credit crisis has morphed, as expected, into a killer. They may not be jumping out of Wall Street windows as some reportedly did after the 1929 crash, but they are walking in front of trains in Germany and slitting their wrists with box cutters in New York. Of course, [...]

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Commentary

IndyMac Bought for $13.9 Billion – A Fishy Deal If You Ask Me!

by Rob K. Blake | January 3, 2009

The FDIC announced late today the sale of the remaining assets of the failed thrift, IndyMac, to a private consortium for $13.9 Billion. Dune Capital Management, J.C. Flowers & Co., and Paulson & Co. spear headed the buy in search of a rehabilitated servicing portfolio Sheila Blair reworked with her aggressive loan modification strategy. This [...]

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Economy

Well, it’s official – it’s a Recession!! What does it mean for Mortgage Rates?

by Steve Heideman | December 8, 2008

The week’s most talked-about story hit the wires Friday. According to the government, the U.S. economy shed 533,000 jobs last month and the national Unemployment Rate rose to 6.7%. This was the largest number of jobs lost in any one month since the recession of 1974. In a normal market, job losses of this magnitude would [...]

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Economy

U.S. Financial Crisis May Be Moderating Some Experts Say!

by Charles Feldman | April 2, 2008

Could that be some light, just a little light at the end of the tunnel? It seems as if, in recent weeks, there has been a steady drumbeat of bad economic news all traced back to that original subprime mostgage crisis. The near collapse (okay, some may argue it was an actual collapse) of Bear [...]

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Real Estate News

Economy Continues To Take A Beating From Housing Crisis Fallout

by Charles Feldman | March 7, 2008

The economy is sinking faster than a mafia hitman wearing cement shoes in water; and, the mortgage/housing crisis is clearly to blame. Wall Street was apparently totally shocked today when the Labor Department reported that 63, 000 nonfarm jobs were lost last month….As Reuters points out, the problem is that Wall Street experts had expected [...]

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Commentary

Weak Retail Sales As Mortgage Crisis Puts Freeze On Consumers

by Charles Feldman | January 16, 2008

It is amazing how what started out as a [tag]subprime mortgage crisis[/tag] has morphed into such an enormous [tag]economic mess[/tag] around the world. On Tuesday alone, the three major U.S. stock indexes went south by more than 2 percent. [tag]Citicorp[/tag], the nation’s largest bank, had to write down $18.1 Billion for loses—loses stemming from the [...]

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Commentary

The Dark At The End Of The Tunnel: Subprime Fallout Hits Global Proportions

by Charles Feldman | November 28, 2007

Here’s just a very small sample of headlines from recent days about the economic doom and gloom being caused by the ever deepening mortgage crisis that started in this country but has now reached out its tentacles to squeeze the testicles of just about every European and Asian nation and threatens to plunge the developing [...]

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Real Estate

Mortgage Crunch Hits Job Market and Stock Market

by Joshua Dorkin | September 7, 2007

The Labor Department today reported that payrolls fell by 4,000 in August for the first time in 4 years. What makes matters worse is that estimates were for this number to increase by 110,000. Job losses included those in manufacturing and construction. Clearly, we can see that the housing market is starting to affect all [...]

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