We find ourselves agreeing with Peter Schiff more often than not around here, so I thought Doomers might find the following interview with Schiff interesting. [My apologies for the poor video quality, and I recommend hanging in there after the "breaking news" about Japan.  It's quite short.  Hat tip Freedom's Phoenix.] I couldn’t tell you if Schiff is right about gold and the dollar, but can tell you he’s right about housing.  This is going to take awhile.

We’ve got houses– lots and lots of houses.  Some are part of the National Association of Realtors “official” inventory, but many are not.  In fact, there could be another year’s worth of inventory hiding out there: [Thanks L!] A supply of 1.8 million homes either owned by banks or poised for foreclosure potentially hangs over the nation’s real estate market, according to data released Wednesday. This “shadow inventory” of residential real estate — property that is in foreclosure, has a loan 90 days past due or has been taken back by a lender and is not yet listed for sale…
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(Crossposted at Doom Network) What if the United States was a corporation? What would the financial statements look like? Mary Meeker and other contributors decided to ask that question when they published a report called “USA Inc.” in February 2011. In the report, they generate income statements, balance sheets, net worth graphs, and “corporate” debt data for USA Inc. The report also goes into great depth about entitlement spending programs including unemployment, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. This is what they had to say: Imagine for a moment that the United States government is a public corporation. Imagine that its…
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(Crossposted at Doom Network) The Standard and Poor’s/Case-Shiller numbers for January have just been released today and they show some dire trends. Reuters has a copy of the S&P data here. While the eternal optimists kept saying, “See, the market’s recovering!” when the prices were climbing in 2009, many bubbleheads knew better — and it turns out we were right. The numbers indicate the market is heading toward a double-dip. Who know’s how low it’ll go this time. Reuters reports: U.S. single family home prices fell for the seventh straight month in January, bringing prices to just above April 2009…
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Sunday got off to a rocky start as CBC’s Martina Fitzgerald cheerily announced at 8AM Atlantic Time that workers at the base of the No. 2 reactor building at Fukushima had recorded a you’re already dead reading, and this was mostly confirmed on the internet by Voice of America; looked like a major breach of containment. ============================= UPDATE (see my comment below): GE energy prospects with Dr. Guy Suits and Ronald Reagan (’50s and ’80s) — Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4.  You’ll see where this is going. ============================= Fortunately, within an hour this was retracted and…
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Too often lawmakers believe that if they don’t like certain realities, they can just legislate against them.  One such case is recent legislative attempts in four states to prevent using “distressed sales” as comps- even when such properties are often comparable:  [Hat tip Freedom's Phoenix] Four states – Illinois, Maryland, Missouri and Nevada – are considering legislation that would prohibit or restrict the use of “distressed sales,” such as foreclosures and short sales, as comparable sales as a part of a residential real estate appraisal. Homebuilders and real estate sales agents are concerned that the prevalence of distressed sales, and…
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xxxxxxxxxx‘And doom is luminous today’ xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx“Physicists have broken through; some are dismayed to find xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThe new air they inhabit xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxThey share with poets. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxGovernments (who?) can misconstrue xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx…” (107)1 Not Faust nor Fludd need be surprised: engines of transmutation shudderingly overwhelmed by angry seas; salt sprouting by tonnes (a fortune in their day) where engineers are sending sea to bandage sea’s damage; sand in gears. xxxxAlchymists’ dreams had long lay dormant, but now the heartbroken Polish governess has left for Paris and physicists have broken through; some are dismayed to find a zircon staring back at them from rapidly shallowing…
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(Crossposted at Doom Network) While many bubbleheads have known for some time that the housing market is doomed and is nowhere near a recovery, it seems the mainstream media is finally catching up. MSNBC reports: Two high-profile reports on home sales this week confirmed that the housing market is still mired in a deep slump with prices still falling and sales activity sluggish at best. In fact, the market may be in much worse shape than even those numbers suggest. Figures from the National Association of Realtors that are among the most closely watched indicators on the housing market have…
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In its attempt to save the housing industry, government regulators have come out with one dumb bailout after another. The FDIC may have topped them all however in their recent proposal to pay borrowers up to $20,000 to walk away. [Thanks L!] The five biggest US mortgage servicers were told this week at a private meeting with regulators to consider paying delinquent borrowers up to $21,000 each as part of a broader settlement of the foreclosure crisis. People who attended the meeting, chaired by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on Monday, said the industry-wide “cash for keys” program would involve…
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With all the sound and fury in the real world lately the amero gap has been bouncing around a bit, eventually broadening to -238 basis points by yesterday’s close; however, … The Fed’s own holdings of MBS ticked down a mere $0.255 basis points and foreign central bank holdings of US obligations also barely budged. This week’s numbers are as flat as a bunch of pancakes. This week’s Reuters report1 was, as usual, based on the weekly update from the NY Fed’s H.4.1 table site,2. Here is Doom’s updated CSV version3 of the agencies and treasuries foreign central bank holdings…
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Foreclosure-gate has slowed down foreclosure rates as lenders go back to straighten out their paperwork. This has hurt the budget of Florida’s courts: TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Gov. Rick Scott on Tuesday approved part of a plan to keep Florida’s courts operating in the face of a $72.3 million deficit expected in the current budget year due to a drop in mortgage foreclosure filing fees. Scott’s budget director, Jerry McDaniel, notified Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Canady that the governor has agreed to his request to temporarily shift $14 million earmarked for mediation arbitration and court education within the system’s budget to…
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If you are looking for a house that you can move into tomorrow and want a lot to choose from, you might want to consider Florida.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, almost one in five homes in Florida is vacant: [Thanks L!] On Thursday, the Census Bureau revealed that 18% — or 1.6 million — of the Sunshine State’s homes are sitting vacant. That’s a rise of more than 63% over the past 10 years. Having this amount of oversupply on the market will keep home prices depressed and slow any recovery. . . . The vacancy problem is…
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I often read through a lot of dumb stuff in the course of the day.  For the most part, I’ve learned to skim over it.  Now and again though, a comment is just too silly to go without comment.  Today’s mindless quote of the day comes from across the pond in Britain.  The Telegraph was discussing the British housing market and said,  House prices drop by £45,000 since start of credit crisis.  I usually like The Telegraph, but how’s this for deep analysis? Analysts suggested prices would have dropped further if supply had been greater. I see why the reporter…
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There are a number of loan modification proposals out there for underwater homeowners.  Virtually all of them however, claim to be only for homeowners who actually occupy the property– not for investors and speculators.  Here’s one such example: NEW YORK — The Obama administration is seeking to force the nation’s five largest mortgage firms to reduce monthly payments for as many as three million distressed homeowners in as little as six months as part of an agreement to settle accusations of improper foreclosures and violations of consumer protection laws, six people familiar with the matter said. Here’s what this proposal…
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I think this is the first MSM reference to the issue since the Thursday NYT story, where the relevant paragraph was redacted only a few hours after publication … WSJ (3/20 ’11): Japan Nuclear Dangers Linger Despite Progress A separate storage pool for spent fuel rods also is drawing the attention of some Tepco and safety officials. The area, which takes fuel rods from all six reactors, is located near the No. 4 reactor. The pool is nearly full with 6,375 units of fuel, according to Tepco. // Joonhong Ahn, a professor of nuclear engineering at the University of California,…
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