By: Peter_Schiff
Currently, Wall Street is divided into two camps: those who feel the Fed should fight recession, and those who feel it should fight inflation. The former feel that a recession can only be avoided if the Fed rescues the economy from the imploding housing market.  To these analysts, inflation is not a problem as it will be contained by slower […]

By: Andy_Sutton
Last week seemed an appropriate time to take a break. The big Fed ‘surprise’ announcement resulted in most columnists dedicating their weekly missives either towards approval or condemnation of the action. Frankly, I am tired of the Fed, tired of the media spin on lower interest rates and the weaker dollar. It is the […]

By: Emanuel_Balarie
This past weekend, I went into my local bookstore and saw Alan Greenspan’s The Age of Turbulence prominently displayed in front of the store. When Alan Greenspan retired, just over a year ago, CNBC auctioned off a painting of the former head of the Federal Reserve, and financial pundits around the world were lauding […]

Julia Harris, Mortgage Expert at Moneyfacts.co.uk – the money search engine, comments: “While the prime residential sector has so far been largely unaffected by the sub prime crisis, the buy-to-let sector is beginning to show signs reminiscent of the subprime market over the last few weeks with tightening credit criteria, the withdrawal of products and […]

House prices defied gloomy expectations and showed another gain in September
But the trend growth of house prices is now the lowest since July 2006
Credit conditions are now clearly tightening for leveraged borrowers
The interest rate outlook has shifted from hawkish to dovish, which could provide some welcome relief to homeowners next year

Headlines
September 2007
August 2007

Monthly index * […]

The US Shiller House Price Index which reflects the housing market of America’s ten largest cities fell by an annualized 4.5%, which greatly increases the probability of a US recession sparked by the deepening housing bear market that has already made itself felt in the form of the Subprime mortgage sparked credit crunch. As an […]

The UK Housing market is teetering on the brink of a crash led by the buy to let sector investors jumping ship. But the messages coming from the major banks and UK central bank are still benign. In many ways the situation is reminiscent of the initial stages of the the early 1990’s property bust, […]

By: Gerard_Jackson
Let us begin with the much neglected Kennedy tax cuts and then follow through with other tax measures. We shall then finish with a diagrammatic explanation of how cuts in capital gains taxes expand both the economy and tax revenues.
Kennedy declared that “it is a paradoxical that tax rates are too high and tax […]

Martin Weiss writes: We are on the verge of some of the greatest market convulsions of a lifetime.And we’re already seeing the first symptoms: Oil surging to all-time highs … gold making a beeline for $800 per ounce … long-term bonds suffering their worst one-day decline since 2003 … and behind it all, the US […]

By ROBERT J. SHILLER

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut — The future of the housing boom, and the possible financial repercussions of a substantial price decline in coming years, are a matter of mounting concern among governments around the world.
I learned this firsthand while attending this year’s Jackson Hole Symposium in the wilderness of Wyoming, where, ironically, there […]

Something I’ve been meaning to blog about for a few weeks now is the surprisingly unheralded arrival of extended listings to the CME housing futures — a reader from TFS Derivatives Corp. has been keeping me in the loop with relevant housing metrics and allowed me to share their weekly housing report with HW readers.
Here […]

By: Captain_Hook
Apparently we have arrived – arrived at the point where any and all problems encountered must now be papered over – and we’ve gone global in this regard. You might want to listen to Jim Sinclair’s talk on why the derivatives problem will necessarily lead us into hyperinflation. I’m not sure I agree with […]

Martin Weiss writes: If you thought the dollar’s collapse would not affect you, think again! Here’s what’s happening:
First, U.S. bond prices are collapsing: In the two days after the Fed’s rate cut, the price of the long-term Treasury bond plunged more than two and a half points, including the worst single-day plunge since September of […]

Sep 19, 2007 — In a panic-induced move, the Fed made the decision yesterday to cut the target for the fed funds rate by 50 basis points. The action was meant to forestall the adverse effects of the current credit crunch and housing downturn, but will in fact do very little to save housing.

Fed’s […]

By: Roger_Conrad
You can throw out your economic models, quantitative analysis and research reports. It really just boils down to economics 101: The Federal Reserve is prepared to do whatever it takes to head off a credit collapse and potential recession.
This economy and market still have some bumps ahead. But the key to stanching any credit […]

It started with subprime mortgages. Now owners of McMansions are defaulting, and the effects of the housing bust are beginning to ripple through the economy.
Read Article [offsite]

By: Peter_Schiff
Helicopter Ben Earns His Wings: Coming at a time when rate increases were needed to combat the sinking dollar and surging gold, oil and other commodity prices, Ben Bernanke’s 50 basis point cuts in the Fed funds and discount rates this week may go down as the most irresponsible move in Fed history.
To America […]

The credit bubble is just starting to unwind, a credit-derivative insider says. And while U.S. borrowers are being blamed for the mess, they were really just pawns in a global game.
By Jon Markman
Satyajit Das is laughing. It appears I have said something very funny, but I have no idea what it was. My only clue […]

In this issue:
A Sea Change at the Fed
Transmission Problems
A 50% Drop in Housing Prices
Wildness Lies in Wait
I Still Think Recession
It’s Good to Be Home The term “sea change” has come to mean a profound transformation ever since Will Shakespeare used it in The Tempest. I think this week we witnessed a true sea change in […]

By: Mike_Whitney
Wall Street loves cheap money. That’s why traders were celebrating on Tuesday when Fed chief Ben Bernanke announced that he’d drop interest rates from 5.25% to 4.75%. The stock market immediately zoomed upward adding 336 points before the bell rang. The next day the giddiness continued. By mid-morning the Dow was up another 110 […]

A total of 243,947 foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions – were reported in August, up 36 percent from July and up 115 percent from August 2006, according to RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine-based foreclosure information company.
This is the highest number of foreclosure filings in a single month that RealtyTrac has […]

Though it dates from 1994, George Soros’ book The Alchemy of Finance is surprisingly relevant to current events. Soros, a billionaire hedge fund manager whose Quantum Funds once cleared $1 billion in a single day, predicts exactly how the mortgage boom and bust will unfold with eerie accuracy. Better yet, his theories offer Fools a tool […]

By: Money_and_Markets
Martin Weiss writes: Yesterday, in our Monday issue of Money and Markets , we told you about the massive and unanimous pressures on Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke to cut interest rates by a half point — the desperate demands of home builders, the panicky screams from mortgage lenders and the wailing cries from Wall […]

By: Mike_Whitney
Alan Greenspan’s appearance on 60 Minutes was preceded with all the pomp and ceremony of a royal wedding. The public relations blitz dragged out for a whole week.
What profound truisms would the elusive former-fed master divulge to the News Magazine’s withered-coquette, Leslie Stahl? Would he produce his crystal ball and forecast America’s blurry economic […]

By: Adrian_Ash
GOLD PRICES pulled back $2 per ounce in London on Wednesday morning to trade just shy of the new 16-month high hit when the US Federal Reserve slashed Dollar interest rates on Tuesday in a bid to “forestall” recession.
“You can throw away your charts in these kind of market conditions,” said one bullion dealer […]

By: Adrian_Ash
Political Ravishment! Or, a Tale of Two Bankers “…O you villain! Have I kept my honor so long to have it broke up by you at last…?”
THE OLD LADY’S in danger, and not for the first time. As a political cartoon by James Gillray reminds us each morning, hung by the door here at […]

By: John_Mauldin
Here Comes A Whale - My friends have at GaveKal have been whale watching for some time. But not for Blue whales or in an ocean. There theory is that Central banks keep throwing dynamite (in terms of liquidity) into the ocean during credit problems, watching little fish die and don’t stop until a […]