Actually, the following joke is obsolete: I can tell you exactly where interest rates are going, because Ben Bernanke told me (and everyone else): zero, for a long time. So, just substitute “stocks” for “interest rates.” Enjoy . . . Einstein dies and goes to heaven only to be informed that his room is not yet...Read More
What Happens When Artificially Low Interest Rates . . . . . Rise? Does “financial repression” have a better ring to it than “market manipulation?” If so, you’ll like this piece from today’s Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page: However well-intentioned, the Federal Reserve’s continued purchase of long-term Treasury securities risks camouflaging the country’s true cost of...Read More
Shackling the Bond Vigilantes In a world where pundits divide into those who think the federal government should be doing more to help the economy, and those who think it’s already done (way) too much, economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman lands squarely in the former camp. In fact, you might say that he is...Read More
Regular readers know that I don’t make market predictions — stocks or housing. However . . . given the carnage last week on Wall Street, you’d certainly except a “respite rally” sometime soon (also called a “bounce” — or, depending on the overall environment and what happens next, a “dead cat bounce”). In the meantime,...Read More
Mortgage Rates, Gas Prices on the Move One of the signs that’s something afoot in the financial markets — as it is now — is that interest rates re-set several times in one day. (More typically, they re-set every few days.) Although the increments have all been small, that’s been happening all week in the...Read More
Low Interest Rates — Then & Now Three (four?) years into the housing market downturn, what conclusion is it possible to draw? In retrospect, it seems obvious (at least to me) that it was a liquidity-driven phenomenon. Add a tsunami of cash, subtract any vestige of underwriting standards, and real estate will go up. Subtract...Read More
