The credit crisis we’re currently enduring has been a long time in the making. Arguably, you could stretch all the way back to 1971 when President Nixon removed the United States finally from the gold standard, making our currency a fiat currency. Since then, and especially since the late 1980s, we’ve been inflating our currency
A few late night thoughts. Without digging into all the economics, the short version is this: 2008 economically is poised to be somewhere between hideous and horrifying. Take your pick: subprime, alt-a, gasoline, wheat, corn, student loans, etc. Any way you slice it, the economy is in a tailspin. That said, the show must go
I read with dismay this story on MSNBC about people breaking into their retirement funds to pay for housing and other debts they’ve accrued. Now, understand that I work for a financial institution, a lending company. It is in my short term interest and financial welfare to recommend that people should always pay their debts,
Here is a dead simple solution for foreclosed houses: offer these at cut rate auctions to affordable housing developers like CASCAP in Cambridge, MA. These agencies can use the properties, otherwise fated to decay, for affordable housing for the poor and homeless. Why we won’t embrace this solution: Few businesses understand the sunk cost fallacy.
Give people about a month after their subprime mortgage payment balloons to obscene proportions and it’s not hard to guess that in some cases, that will lead to divorce and broken homes. The next big wave of resets begins in March 2008, based on the CSFB data in the chart above. Buckle your seatbelts and
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETQj3a221EQ[/youtube] The market crashes, turns to ashes that you’re dancing on while some fat lady cues up for a song. You just don’t panic, so they said in all the good books that I have read. You just lay back and feed your head, but that ain’t clever, that never got nothing to sell, hell,
Take a look at these Google search trends for the word recession. And for just 2007: You don’t Google it if it’s not on your mind.
