I am serious. Steven Beard, an analyst interviewed on Market Place this morning, said that the data on existing home sales, which showed a modest increase in sales in February, could mean that the crisis in mortgage backed securities is over.
Excuse me, but do the "experts" on Market Place have any clue what they are talking about? This release shows house prices in the Midwest and West falling at more than a 20 percent annual rate over the last three months.
Okay kids, what happens when house prices plunge? That's right, people default on mortgages. They have homes that are worth less than they owe. Rational people often decide to give their $300k home back to the bank rather than pay off a $400k mortgage.
In other words, February's data on existing existing home sales should have told any real expert that we are likely to see much greater problems in the mortgage market in the future. Where does Market Place find these "experts?"
A second Trump administration will cement a right-wing majority on the Supreme Court for a generation, and put our collective future in the hands of someone who will be virtually unchecked by our institutions. The country has shifted rightward, and the reverberations will ensue for potentially the next few decades. In this climate, a robust independent media ecosystem will be more important than ever. We're committed to bringing you the latest news on how Trump's agenda will actually affect the American people, shining a light on the stories corporate media overlooks and keeping the public informed about how power really works in this country.
Quality journalism is expensive to produce, and we don't have corporate backers to rely on to fund what we do. Everything we do is thanks to our incredible community of readers, who chip in a few dollars at a time to make our work possible. Any amount you give today will help us continue reporting on what matters to our democracy.
