Quote from PohPoh:
We need a real economy, not one based on consumption and housing..
It's what we USED to have, when the economy of this country was actually GREAT.
Letting these shitty companies collapse is the BEST thing we can do..Purge the economy of its excesses. Punish the fool hardy. Sure, it'll hurt. But it has to be done...
The thing with housing is that there is absolutely nothing the Fed can do. Home prices HAVE to fall...
If not, and if the Fed can keep gauzing up a gushing jugular, then the USD Dollar will get absolutely shredded. In that scenario, people can keep their 800K townhomes, but they will be paying 10$ / gallon for gas, and 5$ for a loaf of bread...
Wait till interest rates are in the double digits...the big question is will that number have a 1 or a 3 in front?
You just don't get it, do you?
Have you ever taken a course in Capital Markets? Monetary Policy?
How about Econ. 101A?
Your thinking never gets to the point of explaining just what mechanism it is that is going to CREATE CAPITAL FOR INVESTMENT in our nation's economy to help it grow. Have you ever noticed that?
YOU ARE NEVER ABLE TO ANSWER MY QUESTION.
For you, it's all about consumption, shitty companies, shitty loans, scumbags selling paper, going into debt, etc. . . . Yet, never in any of your posts do you explain where CAPITAL is going to come from to finance a growing economy and stimulate investment.
You act as if the sole purpose of the banking industry and system is to support the housing market, and then you go on to "discount" such a sector, only to then ( quite naively ) talk about what this country USED to make that made us so great.
Oh.... you mean all of those gas-guzzling vehicles out of Detroit, or those ball-bearing manufacturing companies from Ohio? I'm surprised that you haven't mentioned a Zenith, RCA, or Westinghouse television set, either!
Get real.
Not only is your understanding of the capital markets highly naive and you are incredibly misinformed when it comes to the housing sector, but you live in a fantasy land of yesteryear.
Are you even aware of just how little the housing sector is represented in the economic growth of this country?
Try about 10% of the Economy.
While it's true that the contribution of residential investment to GDP growth has been unusually large since 2001, on average, it's still only about 0.3 percentage points of an average total GDP growth rate of 3.1% during this time.
During the much longer period since 1947, residential investment accounted for only about 0.1 percentage points of growth out of a total average of 3.5 percent growth in GDP.
0.1 - 0.3 percentage points.
The direct impact of declining residential construction
and associated spending on furniture and household equipment typically subtracts about 1 percentage point from GDP growth for a number of quarters during a housing slowdown. That's a fact.
But you post and post on ET as if the investment in residential housing construction is off the charts and is the ONLY thing that this country does anymore and that Fannie and Freddie need to go under so that this country can get back on the "right" path again.
( Do you even have any idea where mortgage rates would be without Fannie or Freddie securitizing mortgages? )
Next time, try doing some "homework" before you post about the banking system and the economy.