Boycott Citigroup . . . Pay Higher Taxes?How do ordinary citizens disgusted by serial government bailouts of Wall Street register their displeasure? Assume that you are not prepared to join the ranks of the posse comitatus, and mail in your 1040 next April with just an expletive scrawled in crayon at the top, no payment...Read More
Fern Hill Foreclosure Goes Fast Yes, the home was priced $200k below tax value. And, yes, it was located in a strong neighborhood (Fern Hill) near Cedar Lake, and sat on a one-third acre lot. Still, it was a bank-owned foreclosure with zero curb appeal and more than a little rough around the edges, being...Read More
Turning a Corner?? Mortgage rates barreled lower a second straight day today, dropping from 5 5/8% to 5 3/8% for thirty year loans. That brings the two-day drop to almost a full point, roughly equivalent to a 1,000 point rally in the Dow Jones average — which, not coincidentally, is what the stock market gained...Read More
Check Out Floyd Norris’ Blog in The New York Times! In a column today titled, “Accelerating Falls,” Floyd Norris, The New York Times business columnist, made a rare mistake in his analysis of the latest S&P/Case-Shiller housing numbers. Specifically, he reported that, according to Case-Shiller, the Minneapolis market peaked in 2003. I emailed him to...Read More
Big Drop in Mortgage Rates I don’t know what button the Fed or Treasury pushed today — I’ve been mercifully out of the news loop* all day, doing what realtors do — but clearly something happened to drive mortgage rates dramatically lower. Rates fell from around 6% yesterday to 5 5/8% at the end of...Read More
Name that Bank Executive! You helped lead one of the country’s biggest banks for a decade, during which time you collected hundreds of millions in compensation. Now that bank needs an open-ended cash infusion from U.S. taxpayers to stem the bleeding. First installment: $300 billion, with more (perhaps much more) to come. What do you...Read More
