Some housing bubble reports from Washington and the Wall Street Journal. "Split power in Congress means lawmakers are unlikely to overhaul how the government backstops more than half the U.S. mortgage market. That provides an opportunity for the Trump administration to take steps on its own—and the industry is lobbying to soften any potential changes. The White House is expected to consider steps in the coming months that could reduce the government’s footprint in backstopping the market through mortgage-finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have been under government control since the 2008 crisis."

"The mortgage industry is wary of potentially disruptive policy shifts. The housing market is experiencing its longest slump in four years. In the coming weeks, the Trump administration is expected to signal its intentions for the companies when it nominates a successor to current FHFA Director Mel Watt. Mr. Watt is due to step down in early January when his five-year term expires. A nominee is expected around that time."

"A conservative FHFA chief focused on drastically shrinking the government’s role in housing could raise the fees the companies charge lenders to guarantee loans, potentially making it more expensive for borrowers to complete a loan backed by Fannie or Freddie."

"The new FHFA director also could decrease the maximum size of a loan that the companies could purchase, reversing increases during Mr. Watt’s tenure that allowed larger loans to get Fannie and Freddie’s backing. Such a move could have outsize effects in expensive coastal states such as California and New York, according to housing experts."

From Yahoo Finance. "With the financial crisis now 10 years in the rearview mirror, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says the U.S. central bank may be ill-equipped to handle the next financial crisis."

"Bernanke said at a conference at New York University that the Fed needs to have expanded powers to lend to institutions that are not commercial banks, which is the only industry that the central bank can offer emergency funds to as a 'lender of last resort.'"

"That tool, Bernanke said, needs to be extended to cover shadow banks like broker-dealers and other non-bank institutions. Bernanke said he disagrees with the notion that banks should be allowed to fall to complete bankruptcy, saying that the risks to the economy would be too large to not have some kind of safety net — like the orderly liquidation authority — in place."

"'If you can’t allow a large firm to fail,' he said, 'then you’re in the situation where in a crisis every large firm is a time bomb.'"

From The Street. "A slowdown in housing has analysts asking questions of Home Depot ahead of its earnings release on Tuesday morning. A shaky housing market is tempering Wall Street optimism on the retail giant."

"'Our key message is that we see a period of housing uncertainty ahead, where the demand drivers that have mattered historically seem to be turning less favorable,' Credit Suisse analyst Seth Sigman wrote."

"The key driver of the concern about Home Depot is the recent report on mortgage application decreases, which has been coupled with worries over continued Federal Reserve rate hiking. Mortgage applications decreased 4% to kick off November and hit their lowest level in about four years, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey."

"'HD is down 15% since an all-time high in mid-September given concerns on the cycle with rising mortgage rates and moderating housing data points,' J.P. Morgan analyst Chris Horvers said."

From Yahoo Finance. "Donald Trump’s election in 2016 was a surprise to many. Other candidates with similarly unorthodox, hardline and nativist views have risen to their countries’ top political posts in recent years. Jacob Shapiro, director of analysis at Geopolitical Futures, a global think tank that studies political movements and machinations, said that the conditions that sweep them into power are easy to see and are growing in a number of places."

"He doesn’t see a halt to the populist wave, because the conditions that created it are still largely intact. 'What’s really going on is you have a global economic system that has basically been running on cheap money, easy capital since 2008 and [now] I think the global economic outlook is trending downward,' Shapiro told Yahoo Finance."