A couple of things…

Posted on February 19th, 2009 by ecthompson md

A couple of quick items this morning:

  • I do not think you have to be an economist to figure out that things are bad out there. In spite of Republican calls to slow down, I think we need to speed up. Housing starts for January were down over 50% compared to January 2008.
  • President Barack Obama unveiled a $75 billion package to help prevent foreclosure on millions of homeowners. I’ll have to look at the details but it appears that this will help homeowners refinance their mortgages in order to make their payments easier. You can find the executive summary here.
  • The Federal Reserve issued its annual report, forecasting the behavior of the economy for the next three years. The outlook is, of course, not good.
  • For reasons that continue to escape me, people still listen to Alan Greenspan. He told the Financial Times yesterday that we need to look at some way of nationalizing the banks. I completely agree that this has to be done, but what took Greenspan so long?
  • Finally, Time magazine has come out with its list of the 25 most influential (best) blogs of 2009 and somehow the Daily Kos is not on it. Some of my favorite blogs do make the cut, including the Huffington Post, Crooks and Liars and Talking Points Memo. I would argue that the Daily Kos has changed the game like no other blog and has done so for the past six years.  I’ll have more on this later.

Tags: Economy, Obama administration // 3 Comments »

  • CHRIS COX

    UMMM HOUSING STARTS ARE SLOWING BECAUSE OF OVERSUPPLY SILLY…TOO MANY HOUSES WE NEED TO STOP BUILDING…EVENTUALLY WE WILL REACH AN EQUILIBRIUM AND WE CAN MOVE ON

    THE GOVERNMENT CANT LEGISLATE WEALTH NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU WISH FOR IT

    CLEARLY YOU SHOULD STICK TO PARTISAN SNIPES BECAUSE YOU SHOW HOW SILLY YOU ARE IN YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF FINANCE

    THE DROP IN HOUSING STARTS IS THE MARKET HEALING ITSELF AND IS ACTUALLY ENCOURAGING

  • http://www.whereistheoutrage.net ecthompson

    Chris –

    I would also note the imbalance between wages and home prices. Home prices are coming down but wages do need to go up.

    Thanks for your comments.

  • CHRIS COX

    so how do you propose to force wages to go up?

    did you know that in q4 2008 GAAP earnings for the aggregate snp 500 index was ACTUALLY negative…certainly this is not environment conducive to rising wages is it???

    and with us actually needing to produce things in this country how do you propose wages should increase?

    should we raise the wages for GM F auto union workers when these companies cant even make money at current levels and need to be subsidized by the gov’t…should we make homebuilders pay more money to the carpenters…should we give mortgage brokers more money

    please please tell me how wages should increase when US based companies are already struggling as seen by q4 08 gaap earnings on the snp…especially if we have to compete globally…artificially trying to RAISE wages would just force more jobs overseas…

    again i say to you, you can not legislate wealth, you can only PRODUCE IT, but perhaps i am wrong so if you can leave me a plan that will do this please feel free to correct me

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