Current Economic Issues | Forum profile

With sales of newly built homes jumping to the highest level this year, the Southern California housing market continued to show slow but steady improvement in November. Total sales of new and resale homes sold in November 2009 were down from the prior month due to typical seasonality, but results were up nearly 15 percent from November 2008 and represented the 17th consecutive month of year-over-year improvement. snip Absentee buyers...

stupidity/greed and corruption... sometimes it can be difficult to tease the two apart...

Quote: Quote: ...while buyers who appeared to have paid all cash – meaning there was no corresponding purchase loan – accounted for 24.4 percent of sales... Is that saying some people feel the housing market, with deflated (but uncertain) prices, is a better investment than the traditional institutional instruments? We've seen something similar in our very rural community. The lumber/hardware store where my son works has seen a shift...

There is also "Shadow Demand"..... Thursday, December 17, 2009 Report on Housing: 'Shadow Inventory’ Increases Sharply by CalculatedRisk on 12/17/2009 06:48:00 PM From Bloomberg: ‘Shadow Inventory’ of U.S. Homes Climbs, Report Says The number of homes that may be in the pipeline for a sale because of foreclosure and delinquency climbed about 55 percent to 1.7 million at the end of September, according to estimates by First...

Quote: Originally Posted by Laidback Al AlaskaDenise - I don't know about your local community, but my interpretation is different. Now that the real estate market has retreated from stratospheric levels, the smart money (i.e. the people who still have cash) can pick and choose among the good values in the current real estate market, (i.e. desperate sellers, short sales, foreclosures, etc.) . What would people do with these properties -...

> fear not the falling Dollar if the Dollar goes down, USA is worth less. Some will benefit, as always, but in total it's bad for USA. A falling currency precedes insolvency and loss of country-debt-rating. It can't be good for USA.

A bitterly stark analysis from the candy industry about where we stand today. http://www.confectionerynews.com/The...t-of-recession Weekly comment Counting the human cost of recession 07-Dec-2009 Related topics: The Big Picture Return to profitability. It’s a phrase that businesses have been yearning for, but as more of them are starting to use it, it’s time to ask: At what cost? In a straight-talking world, a return to profitability often...

http://laverdad.com.mx/desplegar_not...CAL&nota=21447 Increased Suicides Alert By: Fidel Amaya | Date: 2009-12-15 Mexico While for some the end of the year represents joy, celebration and emotion, to a significant section of the population also represents the opposite, sadness, loneliness, depression among others. These are some of the factors indicated in December that the statistics of suicides will increase by up to ten percent...

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN KICKS OFF $7.2 BILLION RECOVERY ACT BROADBAND PROGRAM "December 17, 2009 - Vice President Biden today kicked off $7.2 billion in Recovery Act broadband grant and loan programs, of which $2 billion will be made available on a rolling basis over the next 75 days to bring high-speed Internet to communities that currently have little or no access to the technology...The awards are not only expected to provide initial job...