Reply #22: From another fake news channel. [View All]

As Ozy pointed out above. When you're shedding 5-600,000 jobs every month, housing is saturated, and I'll add nobody is feeling very secure, you ain't going to have any recovery.

A saw this at Automatic Earth last night on housing.

http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/

Ilargi: So yes, the confidence game works for now, and it no longer matters anymore how bad the news is. When the spin machine churns along at full speed, there's no news so bad that it can't be turned on its head, dressed up to the nice and sold as a hot virgin all the boys would commit a crime to lay their hands on. The question of course remains how long it will work, but for the moment we're stuck in a make-believe world suspended somewhere between the naked emperor and the ugly duckling. GM's bankruptcy came a big step closer again today as bondholders sounded a NO as decisive as it will be painful, not least for themselves.

US consumer confidence may have risen, but not on account of the workers, pensioners and dealers in the automotive industry. Neither will legislators and civil servants in California and soon 45 other states be donning smilies and party hats. And though there will always be voices that claim this morning's Case/Shiller housing numbers shoot greens, shooting blanks is a lot closer.

In April, about 475 American homeowners per hour were served with paperwork drawing them into one step or another of the foreclosure process, every hour, 24 hours a day. The CS Monitor envelops official data for inventory numbers and home values in a cloud of uncertainty: the paper estimates that 70% of done-deal foreclosed homes, for fear the prices they’d fetch in auction would be too low, are simply not put up for sale. 500.000 homes just sit there waiting for the tide to change. The report also suggests that the Obama administration exerts pressure on banks to keep them from trying to sell the properties.

All this serves to prolong an unrealistically high price level, as well as a hugely underestimated number of available homes. And that's still without all the owners who’ve simply removed the For Sale signs from their lawns. One consequence is that the poor people who buy homes today pay prices that are actively, artificially and substantially elevated by government policies. First through Fannie and Freddie's mortgage purchases, second through these don’t ask don't tell foreclosure policies. A government that tricks its own citizens into greatly overpaying for what is likely the most costly purchase in their lives, it truly is quite something from an ethics and morality point of view. But everybody's silent on the topic, nobody dares touch that scary real world out there.
(More) http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/
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As far as I'm concerned, the US is both fiscally and morally bankrupt right now. We have no money for ANYTHING, but we are still fighting 2 wars to prop up the appearance of an empire that doesn't know it's dead already.

They won't even debate whether or not that corporations should have to pay their share of legally required taxes. California is about to eliminate welfare and close all of their parks. The only growth they're going to have out there, is converting the Governators Mansion into a prison, after the riots start. They can't afford to build new ones.

We're at a crossroads in history. But, not the one they're talking about.