[Warning: The following commentary is only marginally related to real estate / housing.] Despite what some of my readers in the real estate industry may think, I’m a generally upbeat, optimistic kind of guy. I like to believe that things will be better tomorrow than they are today; that American ingenuity and hard work can…
Tag: Economy
Lawrence Yun: “Home values have overshot downward”
In case there is any doubt about whether NAR chief “economist” Lawrence Yun is just as much of a shameless price-boosting shill as his predecessor David Lereah, I present some excerpts from a post he made on Friday regarding the inefficient, expensive, and economically stupid homebuyer tax credit: Unleashing Pent-Up Housing Demand and Sustainable Economic…
$8k Tax Credit: Inefficient, Expensive, Economically Stupid
The intensity of the push from a couple of major national lobbying groups (NAR and NAHB) to extend and/or expand the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit seems to have increased since we last discussed the topic on these pages. With the supposed end of the program coming up in about seven weeks, now seems like…
The Mythical Teeming Hordes of “Pent-Up Buyers”
We’ve been hearing a lot of speculation recently that goes something along these lines: There is basically this enormous teeming horde of potential home buyers out there lurking on the sidelines for no good reason. All we need to do is come up with the right concoction of incentives to get these pent-up buyers off…
Elizabeth Warren: We’re Not out of the Woods
This is a few weeks old, but it’s definitely worth watching if you haven’t yet. Elizabeth Warren, chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel (which was created to oversee TARP), has some frank words about the current state of the banks: Here are a few transcribed excerpts. Scarborough: “Are we out of the woods when it…