Tag

stimulus bill

How Big is the Housing Bailout?

Digesting the Housing Bailout Apparently, no one knows at the moment. I haven’t had time to digest the details of the just-announced housing bailout. But what I find interesting, from briefly scanning news accounts, is the discrepant price tags attached to it: I’ve seen the total cost pegged at anywhere from $75 billion to more...
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$8,000 Tax Credit Q & A

Parsing the Home Buyer Tax Credit Realtors are already fielding questions from clients (see below) about the newly-passed $8,000 tax credit for home buyers. Details are still sketchy — the stimulus bill’s provisions repeatedly shifted — but the gist of it appears to be: 1) a scaling tax credit of up to $8,000 (not the...
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Seed the Bottom of the "Food Chain"

Scorning the Financial Gods — And Paying the Price After the tech bubble, the healthy and natural progression dictated we enter recession. Alan Greenspan never allowed us to take that medicine, opting instead to inject the economy full of fiscal and monetary drugs. The resulting imbalances steadily built through the years and arrived at our...
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Tax Credits vs. Low Rates

The Right Stimulus for Housing There now seems to be a clear consensus that, to help the economy, government must first do something to help housing. However, there’s still no consensus about what. The two leading strategies are: One. Using taxpayer money to basically subsidize mortgage rates down to some previously unheard of number, like...
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