Seattle Bubble

The Center for Economic and Policy Research came out with another great paper this month titled The Cost of Maintaining Ownership in the Current Crisis
Here’s an excerpt from the summary (emphasis mine):
The collapse of the bubble in the U.S. housing market is creating chaos in financial markets while throwing the economy into a recession. It [...]

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Stop the Mortgage Bailout, Patrick.net, and Seattle Bubble were featured this morning in a segment called Opposition to Proposed Homeowner Bailout Growing on NPR about the various government bailout plans.
You can listen to the full three-minute segment on NPR’s website. Here’s a little clip of my appearance:

The house Mr. Kaste and I were standing [...]

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There’s a new site called Stop the Mortgage Bailout that aims to draw attention to the anti-bailout cause and educate people about what a bailout would really mean.
From the site:
A bailout is morally irresponsible because it encourages irresponsible and irrational behavior. Here is a short list of the many “moral hazards” that a bailout enables:

A [...]

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A friend pointed me toward an interesting radio segment that aired on local public radio KUOW today: Should the Federal Government Bailout Banks and Homeowners?
You can listen to the full segment at the link above. Here’s a short excerpt from the beginning:

It seems that most of the people that called in were against a [...]

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Here’s a follow-up to yesterday’s condo re-version story. Just in time for the condo conversion mania to switch directions, while supply and demand do that thing they do so well, here comes the State Legislature to “fix the problem.”
Renters forced from their apartments to make way for condominiums would get more time to find [...]

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Looks like the City of Seattle is getting in on some of the home “owner” bailout action.
The City of Seattle is offering a helping hand to homeowners facing foreclosure.
The pilot program would offer $5,000 loans to 40 families.
Wow, $5,000, huh? That will let some overstretched buyer keep making their adjusted-ARM payments for about… six [...]

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