The Blog of Author Mark MacKenzie: It's The Housing Market, Stupid!

In light of Citi's CEO Vikram Pandit's declaration that his company was profitable the first two months of the year which sent traders streaking down Wall St., I have a question, does that mean the government doesn't need to spend hundreds of billions of additional tax payer money to remove the "...

Not as if the government should need anotherreason to fix the housing market considering the devastation it has had on the banking system and broader economy, but the latest news from Reuters about Freddie Mac losing $23.9 billion in the fourth quarter on top of the $25.3 billion loss in the thir...

According to a CNNMoney.com article by Jeanne Sahadi, Mark Zandi the chief economist of Moody's Economy says, "I think there are at least even odds that a third round of stimulus will be needed". Why should anybody be surprised by this, after all, the first one was never even designed to have an ...

Reuters is reporting that Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner's book report on removing toxic assets from banks balance sheets is almost done.  Isn't this what it has come to, this has turned into a 3rd grader doing his first book report.  He was supposed to give a presentation weeks ago, but he w...

Despite the 30-year fixed rate mortgage sinking below 5% to 4.96%, and despite housing affordability being at a record high, and despite an $8,000 first time home buyer tax credit, Americans continue to show very little interest in buying homes. The Mortgage Bankers Association announced today th...

Not that I have ever been a proponent of allowing banks to get into real estate brokeraging and management, the thought of it wasn't something that was going to keep me sleepless at night like a can of red bull would and has been known to do.  According to a blog postby CNBC's Diana Olick, there ...

Meredith Whitney,a banking analyst who has been one of the few people in the country that saw this fiasco coming and continues to be dead on with her assessment of the banking industry and credit markets, is predicting that the next shoe to drop is going to be credit cards.  This prediction alone...

As I have written about before, the government typically reports on and the media writes about a watered down version of the real unemployment rate in America.  They report on what is called the U-3 unemployment rate.  This is the rate which does not include three segments of the work force:  1.)...

According to an article by Colin Barr of CNNMoney.com, "the government is bracing for a big bank failure". "A bill introduced in Congress would give the FDIC, the agency that stands behind Americans' bank deposits, temporary authority to borrow as much as $500 billion from the government to shore...

In order to better cope with the current economic events and keep your sanity, rather than kicking your dog or your local Congressperson, I think that it's necessary to try to find some humor in all of this.  I know it is hard, but believe me, decades from now, when we can finally look back and l...