6/17/11
The great depression has nothing on us!
Officially we now have the worst housing crash since the Great Depression (and certainly in the history of this country). From 1929 to 1932, new home sales fell 80 percent . During that time the economy imploded thanks to Wall Street speculation and massive debt leverage. During that period the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 89 percent. Now compare this to our current situation. New home sales from their 2005 peak have now fallen by 82 percent! However the Dow Jones is only off by 13 percent from the peak reached in 2007. The big difference in this crisis is that we had a Federal Reserve that bailed out the 'to-big-to-fail banks under the guise of saving the housing market. Looking at what has happened since QE1 (and then, QE 2) it is easy to see that the DJIA was the beneficiary (along with foreign and domestic banking and other well connected interests) of those trillions. The housing market, now in what the so-called 'experts' deem a double-dip...although, here in Palm Beach County the first dip never stopped. Going on five years of the local housing bust I hope people are now begining to understand the term; crony capitalism. Hope Now, HAMP, HARP, foreclosure moratoriums, investigations, indictments, etc. were all just a cover (and continue to be a cover) for a bigger taxpayer-paid bailout scheme...and most of us were not included.