Archive for November 17th, 2008

I Know: Let's Just Start Calling ARMs "30-Year Fixed" Again

"Ara Hovnanian, CEO of K. Hovnanian Homes, suggested to Bloomberg TV that interest rates should be temporarily slashed to three percent on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages in 2009. The rate would then rise to four percent in 2010, though it’s unclear what would happen after that." Surely not on new mortgages?! Please click on below to see the "hole" post at TheTruthAboutMortgage blog.  

Mike Folkerth: A Sobering Dose of Reality out of Retail

"The false economy brought on by government-induced inflation and nearly unlimited credit seemed as if it would go on forever… but forever is a long, long time." (mistake in earlier version of the title — hate it when that happens ) Doom friend Mike has collected a Murderer’s Row from the malls.  This does not look good.   UPDATE: "We have all agreed that our gifts to each other this year will be to take $200 and pay that towards our credit card balances." – great idea from Doomer AZSALUKI (see comment #4 below) What, Me Worry? “They” will come…
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Crack of Doom: the Tides of History

"Roubini, Schiller [sic], Schiff and Ron Paul – they were all right!" No doubt this is funnier if you don’t understand German. Don’t worry, we’re nowhere near this point. Neither does Germany represent America’s role in the drama. 1945 was actually the climax of the long process that ended England’s hegenomy. I heard part of Margaret Atwood’s lecture series on debt last week on CBC.  At one point she explained the meaning of "the mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind exceeding small." According to our program, subprime is merely the mid-life crisis for Pax Americana, and shouldn’t…
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AEI Subprime IV.3: Roubini Presentation

Here is Housing Doom’s third installment of our unauthorized annotated transcript of the American Enterprise Institute’s October 30, 2008 seminar "The Deflating Mortgage and Housing Bubble, Part IV: Where Is the Bottom?" [1] This is the presentation by Nouriel Roubini. Highlights "… there’s a growing recognition that this was not just a subprime mortgage problem …" "… this is other huge time bomb of the CDS market where about $55 trillion of nominal protection has been sold against an outstanding stock of only $6 trillion of corporate bonds. " "… the $1 trillion number at this point is not the…
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China's Housing Market Fizzling Too

Like the U.S., China’s housing market is also deteriorating as their economy cools.  Sales in Beijing are down 70% year-over-year: