Housing Doom no longer feels so alone following trends in foreign central banks’ net buys of US obligations. Early Thursday, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph posted a story [1] speculating that the recent strong selling of US treasuries suggested a quiet dumping by the Chinese. It’s especially good to have company this week, when both short and long term trends got knocked into a cocked hat. Foreign central banks, in a complete 180 degree turn from the previous week, bought a fair number of treasuries but sold even more agencies.[34] The agencies selloff was by far the biggest negative result…
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From Yahoo Finance this morning: WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of homeowners receiving foreclosure notices hit a record high in the spring, driven up by problems with subprime mortgages. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported Thursday that mortgage-holders starting the foreclosure process in the April-June quarter reached 0.65 percent, marking the third consecutive quarter that this figure has set an all-time high. The delinquency rate, which tracks the number of people who are behind in their payments but have not yet entered the foreclosure process, was also up sharply during the spring, rising to 5.12 percent of all loans, up nearly…
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One of the joys of the internet is the ability to jump in the old Wayback Machine and see what was being said a few years back on current issues.  What I recently found interesting was seeing how much the housing industry was being pumped by the Bush Administration, starting with President Bush’s promotion of homeownership as The American Dream in 2002. A good window into the mindset of the Bush administration is seen in comments made by Secretary Mel Martinez of HUD, to the National Association of Homebuilders in Las Vegas, Nevada, January 22,2003.  The whole speech is worth…
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