Do You Think These Important Omissions Are Just Coincidence?
A report from Kieth Jurow at Market Watch. “Remember all those sub-prime mortgages that blew up in 2007 and popped the housing bubble? The widely-held consensus is that millions of them were foreclosed as housing markets cratered. Since then, the remaining ones have been quietly disappearing as markets recovered. Here is the problem: That is just a fairy tale.”
“Collectively, loans from the bubble period that were not guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac were called non-agency securitized mortgages. Researcher Black Box Logic had an enormous database of non-agency loans until it was sold to Moody’s three years ago. At the peak of the buying madness — November 2007 — its database showed 10.6 million loans outstanding with a total balance of $2.43 trillion.”
“In 2016, Fitch Ratings first published a spreadsheet showing what percentage of these loans had been delinquent for more than three-, four-, or five years. Here is an updated table showing the 10-worst states and how the number of deadbeat borrowers has soared.”
“In 2012, just 2% of all these delinquent borrowers had not paid for more than five years. Two years later that number had skyrocketed to 21%. Why? Mortgage servicers around the country had discontinued foreclosing on millions of delinquent properties. Homeowners got wind of this and realized they could probably stop making payments without any consequences whatsoever. So they did.”
“Within the last two years, important graphs and tables showing the extent of the delinquency mess have disappeared from reports issued regularly by Fannie Mae, mutual fund provider TCW, and data provider Black Knight Financial Services.”
“According to a TCW spokesperson, the graph is no longer published in the firm’s Mortgage Market Monitor because there did not seem to be much demand for it. Really? This graph had appeared in their report for years and showed the extremely high percentage of modified non-agency loans where the borrower had re-defaulted.”
“Meanwhile, the omitted Fannie Mae table also showed the rising percentage of modified Fannie Mae loans that had re-defaulted. Its last published table showed re-default rates of almost 40%. Do you think these important omissions are just coincidence?”
“A majority of the loan modifications involved adding the delinquent-interest arrears onto the amount owed (known as capitalization). I have seen several reports showing that this amount is often hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single loan, particularly in California. So huge numbers of these delinquent loans are on properties that are likely still underwater after more than 10 years.”
“More than one-third of all non-agency securitized loans were originated in California. Most of those underwritten in 2006 and 2007 were ‘stated income’ loans where the borrower did not have to verify his/her income.”
“Given the awful underwriting standards of these loans, why does no California metro appear in the table shown earlier with the 10 worst metros? By the middle of 2015, according to the database of BlackBox Logic, more than 40% of all outstanding California non-agency securitized loans had been modified.”
“Here is the key consideration: When a loan is modified, it is no longer considered to be delinquent.”
The Review Journal in Nevada. “The small house in central Las Vegas stands out a bit because of its salmon-colored exterior but otherwise fits right in with the neighborhood of older, low-slung homes. Since the recession, its value has also shot up — but that’s not much of an anomaly either.”
“The salmon-colored house at 109 Woodley St. in the 89106 ZIP code has traded hands multiple times in recent years. It was purchased at a foreclosure auction in 2010 for just $49,100, but most recently sold for $235,000 in October, property records show.”
“Realty One Group agent Jeff Prenger said he is selling a house down the street, at 215 Woodley St., for ‘pretty much’ the asking price, around $275,000. The current owner bought the home at a foreclosure auction last year for $150,300, property records show.”
“Prenger said he heard from a neighbor that the house had been empty for four or five years and had squatters.”
“Affordability concerns, sparked by fast-rising values and higher mortgage rates — sales totals have tumbled in Las Vegas, and the once-depleted inventory of available listings has soared.”
Comments are closed.
‘According to a TCW spokesperson, the graph is no longer published in the firm’s Mortgage Market Monitor because there did not seem to be much demand for it…the omitted Fannie Mae table also showed the rising percentage of modified Fannie Mae loans that had re-defaulted. Its last published table showed re-default rates of almost 40%’
Remember when we were updated on the redefault rate every quarter? That stopped years ago. Remember last year when Attom reported on the states/cities that had foreclosures, mostly from the 2014 origination, up bigly for three months in a row? Wa happened to that?
I come across shadow inventory articles all the time but don’t post them much cuz of all the crater going on, I don’t have time. I made plenty of videos showing abandoned shacks/foreclosures everywhere I bothered to look. “Oh, conspiracy!” I’ve probably posted a dozen articles over the years with UHS saying straight out “the lenders are hiding shadow inventory to keep prices from cratering”.
Believe what you want. But the whole shortage thing is blown. The banks got their runway foamed. Now we find out what happens next.
‘the neighborhood of older, low-slung homes. Since the recession, its value has also shot up — but that’s not much of an anomaly either’
Video: New state study shows fluctuation in Bryan/College Station housing market
https://www.kbtx.com/video?vid=506308082
Bryan/College Station
Cute. Buying at the top of the market is a great investment.
because there did not seem to be much demand for it…
I know what that means. A few years ago my favorite orange juice seller started putting 58 oz in their container instead of 64. Same size container, you all know about this. I called them to tell them they had just lost a life long customer and ask why they did such a thing. The answer was “That’s what our customers wanted us to do.”
Here ya go Blue have fun…….
Here We Downsize Again – Dec. 2018
https://www.mouseprint.org/category/downsiz/
Heh. It reminds me of those 100-calorie snack packs. It seems that people will pay more money for less product in the name of dietary convenience. At least for junk food. BTW, orange juice is beginning to gain a reputation as junk food (all sugar).
Ha, in CA, Tropicana boldly announce$ with a bottleneck tag:
“New $ize! 52oz!”
Along these lines, Apartments.com has stopped providing the total number of apartments available in a given area. It was a great metric to gauge supply.
Once the cratering and slashing began, the ‘no inventory’ lie doesn’t work.
“Home Sales Collapse In Sacramento County”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-17/december-home-sales-collapse-sacramento-county
Just like last time, Sac and all outer lying areas started to crater faster and earlier than the RBA (Real Bay Area). I’m looking at the Mountain House area just for the grins, as there’s no way I’d live all the way out there to commute back and forth to the bay. Thus far, oddly, I haven’t seen much of a slide yet, but there’s a long way to go, as prices there are up at least 70% from the 2012 lows, and 30% just from 3 years ago. Insanity.
I feel like there’s a phenomenon with housing on the outskirts of actually desirable areas where people work and play , whereby prices had been so outrageous for so long that a ‘trend’ of looking in the periphery for homes drives up prices there in a way that makes them oddly sticky. Of course, i am only first hand knowledgeable about the “insanely cheap” flyover country where it is believed that minimum wage workers can buy homes and still save for retirement in 401ks, but the areas nearby my designated “good” town are showing that kind of appreciation you cite for the Bay Area periphery. people still get in bidding wars because compared to the crazy crazy coastal level sticker prices the remote workers or tech transplants or retirees are willing to pay for the town with the (allegedly) better restaurants it feels (almost) reasonable.
That’s actually not true. The far flung areas are oftentimes the last to crater as they’re they places where people are escaping to, running from high prices and high taxes. Those sales take place after the sale of the house in the high price area, so they tend to follow the trend, not set it.
The boondocks are always cheaper, but having become unaffordable for the locals, the prices only make sense for equity locusts. Once the peak has come and gone, and the expensive areas start cratering, that starts affecting the boondocks, too, because that’s where the money was flowing. The price declines are first experienced in the higher priced areas, then people start realizing “hey, why would I pay that much out in the sticks for this crap when I can buyer closer in for x dollars?” and that’s when the sticks crater to oblivion.
A weird thing happened 10 years ago. Because we foamed the runway and kickstarted Bubble 2.0 as quickly as we did, the sticks never really cratered, at least where I’m from. Craterus Interruptus.
When you say “where I’m from,” are you talking about Colorado or northern CA? Because I don’t consider you “from” northern CA. You’re a recent transplant. Further, that area (Sac foothills) cratered huge last bust, but wasn’t allowed to fully decline, of course, because of the Fed’s asset-pumping schemes.
When you say “where I’m from,” are you talking about Colorado or northern CA?
I’m from Wyoming.
So you’re talking about Wyoming prices? OK. Because the Sacramento foothills got eviscerated last bust.
Chino Hills, CA Housing Prices Crater 12% YOY As Borrowers Face Crushing Housing Losses
https://www.movoto.com/chino-hills-ca/market-trends
(From the highe$t peak$ in Chino Hill$, one is able to gaze yonder @ the orange glow of Thee.OC!)
Thee.oh.$ee @ x3 Bubble$! = bubbliciou$, keep chewing!
Bubble Watch: Orange County’$ wor$t homebuying dip since ’07
Jonathan Lansner
PUBLISHED: February 25, 2019 | Categorie$: Busine$$, Hou$ing
Buzz: Orange County house hunters, facing a host of buying hurdles, balked in 2018 as home $ales $uffered their large$t percentage-point drop in 11 year$. |Source: CoreLogic
Dissection
Everything from pricier mortgages to economic and political uncertainty to uneven home inventory may have spooked buyers.
Here are 14 facts from CoreLogic’s report on the Orange County homebuying market, full-year 2018 results vs. 2017.
Let’s $tart with the big picture view …
1. Buyer$ balked: 35,020 Orange County residences sold in the period, falling 8.6 percent vs. 2017. It’s the biggest dip since 2007.
2. Wide$pread $lump: At the neighborhood level, 2018 sales were higher than 2017 in only 16 of 83 Orange County ZIPs.
3. Too pricey? Orange County’s median selling price for all residences was $725,000 — up 5.8 percent vs. 2017.
4. Broad price gains: 75 of 83 Orange County ZIP codes had higher median selling price in 2018 vs. 2017.
5. $ingle-family home$ dip: Sales of the industry staple were 20,934 — down 9.1 percent vs. 2017. The median selling price was $775,000 — up 4 percent.
Budget-challenged buyer$ were certainly hurting …
6. Condo$ cool: Sales of the bargain hunter’s favorite were 9,232 — down 10.1 percent. The median price was $505,000 — up 6.3 percent.
7. Bottom $oftened: In the 27 least expensive ZIP codes — where the median sales price is $650,000 and below — 9,309 homes sold. That’s down 11.4 percent compared with a year ago.
8. Relatively fewer bargain$: There were just four ZIPs with median prices under $500,000 vs. seven in 2017.I
9. Cheapest ZIP$? Laguna Woods’ 92637 had a $350,000 median price and Santa Ana’s 92701 followed at $353,000.
Meanwhile, at the upper cru$t, it was $luggish, too …
10. $low top: In the 27 priciest ZIPs — with median sales price beginning at $807,500 and higher — 11,560 homes sold. That’s down 9.1 percent.
11. Builder$ $lip, too: New homes, a pricey niche, had 4,854 sales — down 3.4 percent vs. ’17. Median price was $942,000 — up 11 percent.
12. $even-figure growth: There were 10 Orange County ZIP codes with median selling prices above $1 million vs. nine in 2017.
13. Most expen$ive ZIP$? No. 1 was Newport Beach’s 92661 with a median of $3.2 million. Next was Newport Beach’s 92662 at $3.06 million.
14. Ocean$
chill: In the county’s 16 beach-close ZIP codes, 7,108 homes sold in ’18 down 7 percent vs. ’17.
How bubbly?
On a scale of zero bubbles (no bubble here) to five bubbles (five-alarm warning) … THREE BUBBLES!
Here is one for you: “Santa Monica implodes as the Mexican drug cartel and international embezzlers liquidate real estate holdings leaving only cash-strapped millennials in bidding wars for $699K 1 bedroom condos”
Median Sale price down 35.3% YoY.
So Cal is an awful place to live the last 40 years. It sold out to the Chinese, Persians and Mex cartel. The traffic is a nightmare and the beaches are so crowded with kooks they are not worth the effort.
Isn’t 500 to 700k what 1 BR condos should cost in Santa Monica? I mean, they’re 400 to 600k in downtown AnnHarbor after all!
Remember when we were updated on the redefault rate every quarter? That stopped years ago. Remember last year when Attom reported on the states/cities that had foreclosures, mostly from the 2014 origination, up bigly for three months in a row? Wa happened to that?
(Eye roll) Come now, Ben. Only tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists believe the MSM and REIC suppress data and information that doesn’t fit The Narrative. Why, a recent Time magazine cover I glanced at in the cover of my doctor’s office said journalists are “guardians of the truth.” Surely TIME wouldn’t put that on the cover if it wasn’t so.
“In 2012, just 2% of all these delinquent borrowers had not paid for more than five years. Two years later that number had skyrocketed to 21%. Why? Mortgage servicers around the country had discontinued foreclosing on millions of delinquent properties. Homeowners got wind of this and realized they could probably stop making payments without any consequences whatsoever. So they did.”
Gosh, I wonder who created all this moral hazard?
It is in the lenders interest not to foreclose when the number of delinquencies are so high. It is best to allow the borrowers to slide rather then end up with abandoned houses that will screw the values of entire neighborhoods, many of which are mortgaged to the hilt by the same lenders.
Then there is the issue of taxes: The puke who is sliding on his mortgage payments won’t be sliding on his taxes. Better for the puke who lives in the house to pay the taxes than the true owner of the house, which is the lender. Same for upkeep. Let the puke who is living in the house spend the money and energy for upkeep rather than the true owner.
If/when then time is ripe the lender can and will kick the occupant out. Until then the house can remain in a sort of holding pattern.
Remember: If it is ever the case that the house’s value rises above the amount that is owed on it then it is the lender who is the one who occupies the catbird seat.
Yup. These lenders basically are speculating on appreciation, that is, that the value will appreciate back up to the value on the lender’s books. It’s better to lose $100K in mortgage payments than to sell during a downturn and realize $200K+ losses in book value, back taxes, and maintenance.
Why should think the lender is destined to lose $100,000 in mortgage payments? If the house is sold at the right price then the overdue mortgage payments would be covered, would end up in the bank’s coffers.
The trick is to get the recovery back to the point where “values” were just as stupid as before, which is not all that difficult if the population is dumbed sufficiently.
That narrative only works with a steady supply of subprime mortgage wielding DebtDonkeys.
Tim Geithner?
Oh dear. What is this world coming to when the values of “classic” homes are plummeting? Will the classic car bubble be next? B..b..but when I “invested in” that cherry 1969 Camaro SS with my home equity, I thought I would recapture my glory days and cause the ladies to sigh and groan when I rolled up next to them at stoplights.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/selling/desirable-propertys-dramatic-13-per-cent-price-plunge-proof-of-downturn/news-story/c2631846838e62051d92ab6d6aff7f1f/
First Old Yellen assured us there will be no new financial crisis “in our time.” Now China’s top banking regulator declares that China has put its financial house in order, confounding the naysayers who had predicted a banking meltdown. So party on, friends and neighbors – thanks to our all-omnicsient central planners, we have reached a permanently high plateau! Buy moar stawks!
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/2187626/chinas-banking-regulator-declares-victory-campaign-curb
Buy moar stocks, or get your wealth inflated out from under you forever at the Fed’s preferred rate of 50% every 35 years (2% each year), with allowance for slightly higher inflation whenever it suits them.
Home sellers are using spy cameras to spy on the lookey-loos at their open houses.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/another-woe-for-home-buyers-is-the-house-spying-on-you-2018-03-13?mod=mw_latestnews
Lol back before easy access to security cameras I encountered a homeowner hiding in her basement at an open house. At least I think it was an OH and not a scheduled showing. She revealed herself by answering a question I asked aloud , it was very bizarre. It was a house I liked, overpriced and wasn’t wanting to buy at the moment…. but I surely didn’t want to get into dealing with someone that weird and/or paranoid and/or deceptive !
Not only are us renters far better looking than most “homeowners” (mortgage debt donkeys), it would seem we’re also more financially astute.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/23/bay-area-high-earners-choice-made-for-them-rent-not-own/
Most loanowners with a mortgage look at least a decade older than their real age.
Sad 🙁
Most. I feel better with a mortgage than I ever did with rent. No more stressing about rent going up. Also, my one financial goal was to own a paid-off house when I retire, and I’m pretty on track for that right now.
Next join your local tax watch dog group
Mine. Fcta.org
Might not be legal in md.
Do you plan to retire in place?
Regarding the MarketWatch article: Is there anyway to specifically research these delinquent addresses or loan numbers? Curious to see what in my neighborhood may be coming available in the next few months…..if any at all.
I don’t know how to do it definitively but, Zillow has a pre-foreclosure setting. It’s not the greatest but it might pinpoint some suspect addresses. (you’ll need to create a Zillow account to get the exact address.) Once you have an address, I think you can look up the current owner and possibly the loan activity. I remember one of the HBB posters did that with a deadbeat in FL named Lynn Smolyzinski (something like that).
FASB Rule 157 suspended. Mark-to-market —> mark-to-myth. If you don’t like the outcome, change the rules…
Crony capitalism not = to true capitalism. Similar to socialism.
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” (at your peril).
Potemkin village all the way down.
Since 2009 the Fed + gov’t is the eCONomy. Just look at stock mkt.
Not different materially vs. Mississippi bubble. The Fed + other CBS = John Law + Banquet Generale… History repeats.
I think you just nailed why Eurozone government debt is paying negative yields while Uncle Sam’s remain positive. Everyone expects some kind of stealth future writedown of US obligations and is demanding payments for HODLing the writedown risk.
“is demanding payment$ for HODLing the writedown ri$k.”
“In 2017, the $100 bill took the crown as the most popular U. $. bill, doubling since 2007, which has helped drive the sharp rise in currency and other liquid a$$ets as a share of GDP:”
“It could be driven by a global fear of negative interest rates in Europe and Japan,” he said. “Or it could be a savings vehicle for U.S. households worried about another financial crisis, or it could be driven by more demand from the global underground economy.”
The death of cash has been greatly exaggerated — just look to the $100 bill
Published: Feb 25, 2019 | MarketWatch
In 2017, the $100 bill took the crown as the most popular U. $. bill
I wonder what “popular” means in this sentence? I could believe that 100s are getting printed the most, but they’re still pretty rare in daily life. Kind of makes you wonder if they’re only popular in the sense that pallets of them get sent to interesting locations around the planet. And occasionally “lost” there.
What went wrong?
“In late 2015, something started to go wrong. The Fed, itself, started raising interest rates. Rates went from effectively zero to about 220 basis points. This meant that the Fed now had to pay a great deal of money in interest on what was then $2.6 trillion (now $1.6 trillion).
At the same time the Fed did nothing to increase the yield on its investments. In fact, it only decreased its holdings of securities with maturities longer than 10 years by about $200 billion to $2.2 trillion.
This was the classic squeeze that drove the savings and loan industry out-of-business in the U.S. – i.e., borrowing short at variable rates and lending long at fixed rates. Yet what are supposedly the brightest financial minds in the U.S.let it happen to the Federal Reserve even though they knew what had happened to the S&Ls from following this strategy.
One can only speculate as to why the Fed did nothing to re-adjust its holdings to increase their yields. My view is that the Fed was trapped by an accounting decision. Unlike any other banking institution in the United States, the Fed does not mark any of its holdings to market. Its capital to asset ratio is 1.09 percent.
If it had sold its low yielding bonds and replaced them with higher yielding bonds, it would have been forced to publish its unrealized losses. These losses would have wiped out the agency’s capital. The Fed would have shown itself to be insolvent. The agency that backs all of the money in the U.S. – the Federal Reserve notes in your pocket – would be shown to have no money itself.
I am sorry but I think that this is simply totally inexcusable. What makes it so troubling is that these same people are entrusted with setting monetary policy for the U.S. and regulating the banking industry. It makes it a bit more understandable that they can come up with questionable concepts like “normalized interest rates” and can change their opinions about the economy in the wink of an eye. ”
Richard X. Bove | CNBC |Feb 25th 2019
Financial Strategist at Odeon Capital Group
Fed’s balance $
heet management is co$ting taxpayer$ money
The profit that the Fed makes on the loans and securities it holds fell 37.6 percent in four years, banking analyst Dick Bove said.
Bove a$$erts that the Fed is using a borrow-$hort lend-long $trategy that helped cau$e the $avings and loan cri$i$.
The agency that backs all of the money in the U.S. – the Federal Reserve notes in your pocket – would be shown to have no money itself.
Right there you took a wrong turn. FR notes are not backed by anything. They aren’t money at all except for government edict. The FR creates notes at will. They cannot be insolvent by definition.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again with the hope that it sticks in at least one person’s mind: the Federal Reserve is neither federal nor a reserve.
It’s time to start a conversation about ending the Fed, ‘cept pols are nowhere to be found. Ron Paul was like a voice in the wilderness.
It’s time to start a conversation about ending the Fed
TPTB have succeeded in keeping the number of people who even know what the Fed does far below the critical mass required to actually change what they do. Their friends would have to sell them out to change anything. But that won’t happen as long as their friends still want dollars.
New Port Richey, FL Housing Prices Crater 34% YOY As Florida Floods With New And Defaulted Housing Inventory
https://www.movoto.com/new-port-richey-fl/market-trends/
Zillow disagrees
“Within the last two years, important graphs and tables showing the extent of the delinquency mess have disappeared from reports issued regularly by Fannie Mae, mutual fund provider TCW, and data provider Black Knight Financial Services.”
My old friends of a very good friend.
The entire Jurow article speaks directly to the rampant internal graft, fraud and corruption at Fannie, Freddie and HUD.
25 million excess, empty and defaulted houses can’t be hidden.
Zillow predicts 34653 home values will increase 8.8% next year, compared to a 6.6% rise for New Port Richey as a whole
How about you get back to us with the prices that the homes actually end up selling for?
Zillow pulls all of those estimates out of their asses.
Oh, and by the way let’s see what happens to the asking prices of those homes once Zillow starts flipping them for an apparent profit.
Naples, FL Housing Prices Crater 13% YOY As Florida Floods With New, Excess, Empty And Defaulted Houses
https://www.zillow.com/naples-fl-34109/home-values/
*Select price from dropdown menu on first chart
“Given the awful underwriting standards of these loans, why does no California metro appear in the table shown earlier with the 10 worst metros? By the middle of 2015, according to the database of BlackBox Logic, more than 40% of all outstanding California non-agency securitized loans had been modified.”
Look, ma, no foreclosures!
Given how long this situation has endured, what’s to keep it from continuing forever, especially if doing so helps keep the bubble aloft.
“Opinion: Why bubble-era home mortgages are a disaster waiting to happen
By Keith Jurow
Published: Feb 25, 2019 8:55 a.m. ET
Delinquent loans still haunt the housing market”
Gotta love the catchy title of the MarketWatch article. But playing the devil’s advocate, if it’s commonly known that there’s a disaster in the making, why wouldn’t the PTB ensure it will never materialize?
It turns out that an inverted Treasury yield curve has an upside — for home sales!
Mortgage rates fall to one-year low, setting the stage for a sunny spring selling season
By Andrea Riquier
Published: Feb 23, 2019 7:50 a.m. ET
So far this year, the 30-year-fixed has averaged 4.43%, down from 4.54% in 2018
Getty Images
A woman looks at real estate listings in a brokerage window.
Rates for home loans fell to the lowest in over a year as investors remained concerned about economic headwinds, setting up the housing market for a strong spring season.
…
Experts fear a 1960s-style rerun of the Fed letting inflation build up
By Greg Robb
Published: Feb 25, 2019 9:07 a.m. ET
Some eerie parallels exist to the late 1960s, when inflation got out of control
…
“There are even stronger reasons to believe that a bursting of a bubble in house prices is unlikely to produce financial instability. House prices are far less volatile than stock prices, outright declines after a run-up are not the norm, and declines that do occur are typically relatively small. The loan-to-value ratio for residential mortgages is usually substantially below 1, both because the initial loan is less than the value of the house and because, in conventional mortgages, loan-to-value ratios decline over the life of the loan. Hence, declines in home prices are far less likely to cause losses to financial institutions, default rates on residential mortgages typically are low, and recovery rates on foreclosures are high.” —Frederic Stanley “Rick” Mishkin, January 18, 2007.
Frederic Mishkin is a former member of the board of governors of the federal reserve. Today, he is is an American economist and Alfred Lerner professor of Banking and Financial Institutions at the Graduate School of Business.
He’s even funnier than Carlin if he worked on his delivery.
A tenth of a percent drop and it’s “Hooray, Spring is gonna be awesome”! Good luck with that.
The stock market doesn’t care
Housing pfft , 15% % of GDP
Just a flesh wound
What’s the Fed’s answer to recession fears? It’s a preemptive hair-of-the-dog hangover cure, every alcoholic’s favorite excuse for drinking some more!
Economics
The Fed Has Done Much to Delay the Next Recession
Policy makers might not have cut interest rates, but they did the next best thing.
By Tim Duy
February 25, 2019, 7:00 PM
The Fed has eased monetary policy without cutting interest rates.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America
Tim Duy is a professor of practice and senior director of the Oregon Economic Forum at the University of Oregon and the author of Tim Duy’s Fed Watch.
There is one very important rule that all market participants should keep at the forefront of their minds: The Federal Reserve wants to kill your recession call.
That rule came to mind when I saw this comment from David Rosenberg, the chief economist of Gluskin Sheff + Associates:
This is, for the most part, correct. I would qualify the assertion as “the probability that a slowdown turns into recession decreases if the Fed promptly eases policy.” A recession typically occurs when the Fed over-tightens monetary policy or fails to ease quickly when the economy faces a negative shock. My generally rule of thumb is that if the Fed fails to cut rates after the spread between yields on two- and 10-year Treasuries inverts, there is a high probability of recession in the next 12 to 24 months. Prior to the last two recessions, the Fed made what I believe to be a cardinal sin of central banking, actually hiking rates after the yield curve inverted.
…
A recession typically occurs when the Fed over-tightens monetary policy
Recession is a natural thing that happens as a result of over capacity and malinvestment. The Fed acts in response (IMO) an can only make things worse, like oversteering when a car starts to slide. The Fed’s Prime Directive is bank profits, not your well being.
Mercer Island, WA Housing Prices Plunge 17% YOY As Seattle And Vancouver, BC Housing Markets Crater On Collapsing Demand
https://www.movoto.com/mercer-island-wa/market-trends/
Gold discovered? In their way to bring a flipper Zillow has flipped out
Zillow predicts 34652 home values will increase 19.6% next year, compared to a 6.6% increase for New Port Richey as a whole.
Summerland Key, FL Housing Prices Crater 10% YOY As Double Digit Declines Appear Across Florida
https://www.movoto.com/summerland-key-fl/market-trends/