The housing market is looking weak this year.

The big banks have created the perfect coin toss game:

Heads they win, tails we lose.

GWBush should have privatized them - sold them off the federal dole to whomever, whatever investor/banking consortium would buy them BEFORE 2006. By 2006 they had helped explode the “mortgage backed securities (MBS)” as well as all the slicing and dicing of them into “tranches” spreading the highest risk tranches into everything, and excessively boosting the massive lending that created the housing market crisis meltdown that then infected all the banking interests holding all the MBS, creating the 2008 financial crisis. Fani and Fredi could not have been instrumental in that if they had lost the federal government backstop.

Like student loans, this is another thing the govt should be unwinding. This isn’t something the Feds should be doing.

Unwind the things.

Yes, says Captain Obvious. A 40% correction in the blue zones that were propped up by Trillions in taxpayer subsidies disguised as NGO’s. My street alone has four selling and moving because their foo-foo scam of a gravy train is up. Two were US Aid grifters and two were State Department contractors. IOW, full time gardening, dogwalking, yard sign virtue signaling, professional restaurant critic, trough feeders, paid a salary by the peasants.

You can blame Dick Durbin and Barney Frank for the last one.

Yes, correct, well said.

The thing about it is the investment banks such as Lehman Brothers were not offering MBS products in total secrecy, the bank regulators had to know they were doing this. They might not have known just how leveraged this activity was but it wasn’t illegal or done in the shadows.

Also the ratings agencies such as S&P were putting A++ on really bad loan packages and the politicians such as Sen Schummer were really pushing freddy and fanni to make subprime loans that had very little chance of success. I doubt that the Trump Administration will allow the borrowing standards to decrease there is really nothing in that move for him. A much bigger concern would be in my view doing something to ease commercial mortgage crisis not expanding the market for credit default swaps. I personally have been trying to find a REIT to put some money in and just haven’t found one that I’m comfortable with, even as a small investor I can’t do it.

Some talking head yesterday pointed out that when he went to Princeton the tuition was $15,000 and now it’s $80,000, which is 400+ percentage increase during the same time general inflation showed an increase of 107 percent, making Princeton four times as expensive as the economy in general.

All federal aid, grants, loans supporting tuition without any accountability of the colleges for their tuition amounts, allowed the colleges to raise tuition however they wanted knowing the politicians would keep upping how much federal assistance would keep coming, and therefor they had no incentive to try to be frugal and truly cost efficient. In many cases today “administration” not teaching is the largest staff component on campuses across the U.S.

“The Big Short” an excellent movie.

Maybe people’s salaries have not kept pace with pedojoe’s inflation so nobody wants to pay 6.5 to 7% on a home loan for an overpriced house with money they don’t have.

Yes, all the “watchdogs” were warned what was coming, by voices that were ignored, while the watchdogs did nothing till the crisis they had been warned about finally burst. Some of the people who were in positions to lower the massive inflationary rate of mortgage lending, and did nothing, were even rewarded when it was all over.

For instance:

All the major banking and lending houses had headquarters in New York City and were regulated by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. That Federal Reserve bank did nothing to temper the explosion of MBS debt, till after it burst. Timothy Geithner was head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank at the time. Obama made him secretary of the Treasury.

One of the very biggest hot spots of the housing-boom mortgage boom bust was in California, Arizona and Nevada, which are in the region of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Those states also had within them some of the worst finaicial/lending institutions at the time. In the meeting minutes of that federal reserve bank, the President of that bank is noted as warned, more than once, of the impending crisis, between 2005,6,7, and she dismissed it as an issue that was “not a systemic threat” until the s55t hit the fan. That Federal Reserve Bank President was Janet Yellen. Obama made her head of the Federal Reserve.

the great depression in USA was, say, 1929 to about 1946 (war contracts aside).

but economics has its ups and downs. We basically destroyed much of our labor force and infrastructure in the War Between the States, Civil War. That was devastating with economic depression continuing from say about 1865-1900 plus or minus.

One of many proponents of, in effect, stimulating the economy by putting more currency into circulation was that amazing railroad builder Amasa Leland Stanford (Senior), founder of the university in Palo Alto and that state’s prior governor and US Senator. Of course, the railroad was basically funded by the federal government so Stanford was no stranger to the use of federal powers in the making of money.

His US Senate career was relatively undistinguished. One thing he did was introduce the following bill. It went nowhere as it was widely perceived as unconstitutional for the federal government to get itself involved in the home (or farm) lending business. Also, the eastern bankers opposed the bill (not surprisingly, as they did not relish having the federal government become a new competitor in the mortgage lending business).

Some of the bill’s “lofty” or “pie in the sky” political language is germane (indeed, still in use in certain political citcles) today:

https://dynamics.org/Altenberg/ARCHIVES/STANFORD/LELAND_STANFORD/Stanford_LandLoans.1890-3-10.pdf

Stanford was only looking at 50% loans to productive (income-generating) properties (farms, in those days). So his proposal was considerably more prudent than what we are dealing with now.

People like to fear monger.
There are a few things Fed gov should do.
Supporting homeownership for QUALIFIED people is a good thing.
Fannie/Freddie aren’t backing crazy loans, I do this for a living.

What happened in 2008 was very different than today .

We need younger people to buy homes .
Homeowners are less likely to be socialists .

“GWBush should have privatized them”

The current Congress and Trump can do it now during this session prior to the next election.

Not just home loans.
1 thousand to 15 hundred bucks a month payments for car loans.